Strange Facts File
February 2012
1 Lonely Donkey: Today I've talked to ... my son, my dog, my kitties, a few chickens, some ducks, and the fucking donkey in the pasture next door!
December 2011
9 Think About It, Spongebob: Mr. Crabs serves crabby patties.
November 2011
28 Because I Could Not Stop for Death: Emily Dickinson, an American poet who enjoyed a reclusive life while writing well over a thousand poems, has been classified by today's psychologists as a neurotic with social phobias. I've never been one to speak ill of the dead unless they were someone such as Osama bin Laden (good riddance to that POS). Thus, henceforth, I speak in Emily's defense.
Emily Dickinson was a passionate woman with shy ways. Her catharsis, her way of getting things out, was in writing those highly esteemed poems. To label her as "neurotic" or as anything without so much as meeting her belittles her outlet and every drop of ink she so gracefully spilled on the pages of what is left of her life.
A big round of applause goes to the crazed morons who psychoanalyzed a ghost!
25 Standing Still: There's an incredible beauty to stillness, in the depths of silence, in hearing even a fraction of the tiniest noise, in listening to the Earth's quiet sighs.
October 2011
31 Pissed Off Collins: Judging by the "tenor" of Jeff Collins's reply to my letter to him regarding HB 854 (see 12 June 2011 below), I'd say I pissed off Jeff Collins. (His reply has not been published here.) If my sardonic stance, arrogance, or perhaps the outstanding beauty of my sharp wit infiltrated his brain with anger, I can't imagine what "Federal Court Blocks Demeaning North Carolina Ultrasound Law" did to him. But I do so wish him well.
28 Lovesong of a Troubled Mind: Running--it's the feel of gravel under your feet, the sound of your breath, your heart, the steady rhythm of all this. It's an escape. Fast or slow of pace, you can get away from years of self-doubt, failures, recriminations, and all the empty demons in your head, at least for a short time.
4 Strange Luck: Let me preface this entry with the words "I have always had the damnedest luck." Murphy's Law is constantly kicking my butt. Generally, I'm able to shake myself off and keep going. Here lately, my life has been weirder than usual. About eight years ago, I got really sick and stayed that way for the better part of a year. I have never been the same since whatever it was struck. No doctor has been able to explain to me what caused this illness, but I do recall it was right after a third administration of a Hep A/B vaccine that everything went to hell.
Back to the present. Last year, my health was horrid. I ended up with a kidney infection, took lots of golden seal, cranberry, raw garlic and water to get rid of it. A week or so after that, I passed a kidney stone. Yeah-yeah. Blah-blah. I know, too much information. Shut up and keep reading. About two months later, I went to my doctor requesting that this person, who shall remain sexless and nameless, take a look to see if there were any more stones in there because I kept having little aches and pains in what felt like my kidneys.
This is the letter I got back from my doctor regarding that ultrasound:
All identifying materials have been cut, because I don't want to get sued.
I read the letter aloud to my and husband then said, "Well, what the hell does that mean?" After a month, I finally had a follow up with my primary doctor. I asked what was going on with my kidneys and was read the following report aloud, word for wordy word:
Don't know what my primary doc was thinking throwing all that medical terminology at me, but it wasn't the last time this unnamed, sexless person did it. When my physician hit the words "This finding is compatible with... acute or chronic renal failure" yada, yada, yada, I just about fell out of my seat. But I also thought, "They've finally found it. Finally, I know what's wrong with me." I thought I had a diagnosis (and not one I wanted). From here, I was referred to a nephrologist, whom I saw some months later.
To sum it all up, my blood was tested and retested along with my pee. Those labs were normal. The nephrologist did not initially make clear to me that the report above didn't necessarily mean I had kidney disease. When I asked if there was anything weird in my kidneys the answer was "You're here, aren't you? You're well?" Given I've been puny all my life and went through that weird illness back in 2003/2004 and have never fully recovered, this was a stupid question. And I don't think Dr. Nephrologist was sure one way or another at that point.
But it's recently come to light that my medical files, for which I signed release forms from my doctor(s) in Maine, were not present in the files of this clinic in North Carolina; for four years, I thought they were. So, as often as not, I was also treated like a hypochondriac by my primary doc; we weren't on the same page. Apparently, I was the only one on the page I was reading! Also, in August 2011, I was told by Dr. Nephrologist that the above report was normal. Can you say "whiplash"?
Finally, I'd had enough. I felt misled. Not only that, but my primary care physician had proved time and again to be a socially inept moron, not only by throwing medical terms at me I couldn't translate impromptu style but by acting like an impatient fruitcake every time I asked a question: even a simple question about sublingual B-12 absorption or "Hey, doc, how long will this whooping cough vaccine last?" I should have followed my instincts about this sexless, nameless person and run like hell four years ago. But we all have bad days. Don't we?
After requesting a copy of my file, seeing that some of my labs indicated trace amounts of blood in my urine and having read up on chronic kidney failure and having found that it's not generally discovered in stage one unless it's caught on something like the imaging I had, I decided it was time for a second opinion. And I got one. My blood was drained again -- still normal. They made me pee in a cup; the pee was normal. Don't know about the cup! But the big deal was the redoing of the imaging. Guess what? That was normal too. And I don't want to see another medical doctor so long as I live, not as a patient. But I guess I should thank the socially inept morons of the world, even though I'm one of them, because I've had a chance to really look at my life, change what I don't like, and start trying to wake up and live again rather than just existing.
September 2011
23 Just Crazy: There's a Kindle magazine called Just Justin dedicated soley to Justin Bieber! Gosh, I just gotta have it!
7 Knowing: Everybody Knows
7 Wax That Monkey: For $250 you can have your whole monkey waxed. Or, if you're not feeling quite so adventurous, for $25 you can have just your baboon done: that's if you're female. If you're male, it'll cost more. Males must have substantially bigger baboons than women! LMAO
August 2011
24 Surnames 1066: Before the Battle of Hastings, when the Normans overtook England, the peoples in this jolly old place did not have last names.
14 Uhh, I Forgot: Back in 2003, I bought this book titled Female and Forgetful: A Six-Step Program to Help Restore Your Memory and Sharpen Your Mind. An awesome title, to be sure. We moved to North Carolina in 2007. Upon moving into our new home, I found this book. I thought, I really need to read this book. It'll help me out so much. So I put the book out where I could see it, next to my bed, where it sat for about a year. I looked at it several times a week, with that same thought: Gotta read this book. Just gotta. Then in 2008, I finally cracked Female and Forgetful open, began reading. Got about a chapter into it. Then said, "Huh." Then said "huh" again. Then I said, "Oh my god. No way." Then I started flipping through that book like a goofer. Whereupon, I realized I'd already read this book. I just forgot!
10 Here Today... : In another move by the species Ignoramus republicana var. dipshitica, Governor Perdue's veto was not sustained in HB 854, meaning A Woman's Right To Be Harassed and Patronized will/has become law. But, keep in mind, like most laws passed by Ignoramids, this one will likely disappear in a few years. Think of the prohibitive laws President Push put on stem-cell research -- dead and gone.
At this point, you might be thinking I'm a liberal. Well, I'm not. I'm not a conservative either. I walk that fine line called common sense.
"Common Sense" -- there's a ditty by Thomas Paine not often taken seriously in this day and age when so many of our politicians think they're royalty and our working class is being reduced to peasants.
July 2011
12 Clearing the Air: Fart. Wave your hand around in it.
8 Wooly Brain Game: There's a plurality in the singularity of sheep.
June 2011
12 Part of My Lovely Letter to NC Representative Jeff Collins ... After He Helped Pass (H.B.) 854, "The Women's Right To Be Patronized and Harassed Bill"
... by the way, if you could maybe see fit to concentrate on something like the economy rather than on suppressing women's rights and trying to shove us all back into the kitchen "where's we kin be barfootin and pregnaint," it'd be real helpful to the American citizenry.
It disgusts me to no end that the United States is in dire straits economically and all certain people in the big "House" can do is take more and more civil rights away from women, just like we're all too stupid to make cognizant decisions about our own lives.
Do something useful with the time my taxpayer dollars are paying you for!
So I went off a little. Ok, maybe a lot. I'm usually more objective in my letters. But I just don't get it. First it was a War on Science, now it's a War on Women. As a female and a scientist, I can tell you I'm just tired of a bunch of religious zealots trying to hijack the government. It's one thing to have certain beliefs, and I do respect that, but it's another to try and ram those beliefs down the throats of millions of people through legislation without regard to the consequences for present and future generations. Did you know these hijackers were trying to pass a bill, H.R. 3, that would require the IRS to audit rape and/or incest victims who chose abortion? Sound extremist? Sounds like a never-ending nightmare for someone who's already been victimized!
It seems, if these people get their way, we women won't even get the right to birth control, as evidenced by the attack on Planned Parenthood that nearly shut down the government back in April 2011.
Also, these nuts are the same people who are going to bitch and whine about their tax dollars going to welfare for women and their "illegitimate" children. Hypocrites! See the far-reaching consequences yet? It's hard not to need welfare when you've got ten kids to feed. If we don't want to pay huge amounts on welfare, we need to educate women and men about birth control, trust women to make their own reproductive choices, not deny females and males access to birth control, and keep extremist agendas the hell out of legislation.
Update: Governor Perdue put the good old heave-ho veto to this bill.
May 2011
30 Sorry Bitch-Whore-Slut: ...I came from Florabama with a banjo on my knee... Actually, I did come from Florabama, from the Deep South in some sort of Gone-with-the-Wind time warp. It seemed there, back when I was young, that women were marginalized, "kept in their place," by some very sexist attitudes. It seemed that no matter what you did as a female you were a bitch, a whore, or a slut.
If you had an opinion of your own, you were a bitch. If you liked a guy and dared venture to call him, rather than him calling you, you were a whore. If you were just left alone in the room with a male in an unchaperoned manner, you were a whore! If you went beyond prude and slept with a guy or in any way let him touch your naughty bits, you were a slut. Actually, if some idiot started throwing rumors around about getting to feel you up, you were a slut. Didn't matter if it was true or not. And if you were really lucky in the rumor mill, you could win the biggest and "bestest" title of Sorry Bitch-Whore-Slut!
You know, one of the saddest things I found about these attitudes is that they were perpetuated in the main by other women.
April 2011
12 Free Falling: I never said I wasn't one of the fallen. (Referencing 10 December 2010 below.)
March 2011
31 Bygone: Did you know Rachel Carson was suffering with metastacized breast cancer while writing her groundbreaking book Silent Spring (1962)? This book was an outcry against the broadscale and senseless use of pesticides and herbicides at the cost of polluting planet Earth while also causing the needless deaths of trees, shrubs, "weeds" and many small animals -- a wholesale devastation of nature's mysterious but beautiful cycles. Yet she never gave up on her effort to write Silent Spring. She didn't allow pity to rule her. She kept right on going and spreading the word of what these chemicals were doing to our ecosystem, to our Earth, until her death in 1964. Although Ms. Carson's message may seem that of a bygone era, it is just as applicable and pertinent today, a day in which chemical companies have become a big enough industry to pollute not just our Earth but the very government that's supposed to protect "We the People."
31 A Cheap Gallon of Gas: We're in another oil conflict -- this time with Libya! Humanitarian aid, my ass! How many countries has our government sat back and watched descend into violent upheavals that resulted in genocide without so much as lifting a finger? I can't count them. Can you? The big difference between those "non-aided" countries and Libya is the presence of something desperately wanted by big egos with greedy, little minds: OIL! This is all about clinging to a way of life that we should be phasing out, not gradually but as rapidly as possible. But I don't see that happening while BIG OIL has its fingers in the money pot. And DO NOT even try to say I am unpatriotic. I love my country. But I am sick and tired of watching the United States of America being used as big industries' cesspool without so much as a "gardyloo" to "We the People."
January 2011
21 For Dessert, I Recommend the... : I recently listened to an audiobook titled The Help, an enactment of Kathyrn Stockett's novel of the same title. There were some very strange pies in this book. But I'm not sure which of the pie scenes was best. The shit pie? Or the pecker pie? Either way, both scenes are funny as hell!
December 2010
20 Fragments: The shake weight. The ahh bra. k.d. lang singing about a little patch of heaven.
10 Nothing's Sacred: A wise man once told me--after I was vilified by a group of people I barely knew--that we are living in fallen times. It took a few days for that message to sink in...for me to realize I shouldn't be so angry or hurt by this newest wave of attacks because so many people, essentially, have lost their way. So many people are angry without stopping to examine why. Or who's at fault, or if there really is a fault line to speak of.
Fallen times, fallen times... Our society reeks of excess. Everybody's trying to be the prettiest, the best dressed, the richest, the smartest, the most religious...rather than just "being." It's all a big competition in which no one really wins. And nothing's sacred. Sex has become lurid on screen, made grotesque by pornography and so easily distributed by kilobytes. Our sacred parts have become commodities. What's more, immediate gratification must be "immediate" or the prize isn't worth the effort. And so many of our children are more in love with technology than with their families, or reading, or playing. Simple pleasures are no longer enough; meanwhile, resource use without foresight abounds, destroying, poisoning, the very Earth we depend on.
Yet so few take the time to understand their falsehoods, their hypocrisies, because it's always easier to be in denial...to blame someone else. The biggest challenge is getting beyond the fear of simply looking at ourselves, of seeing the good, the bad, and the ugly, or admitting that maybe we've been wrong.
4 Money, Money, Money, Money: It's the most evil thing ever created by humankind. Quality of life shouldn't be dictated by dollar signs. Life's all about laughing, loving, grabbing hold of what you are passionate about and hanging on for the ride.
November 2010
18 Vampires, Vampires, Hot Stuff Sure Enough, or NOT!: I've gone through quite a few of the more popular vampire book series over the last few years--won't name names (titles). In these books, humans and vampires are constantly having hot sex here, hot sex there, and generally of the heterosexual variety. But I've noticed in almost every single one of these books that vampires are described as having no heartbeat...because they're dead. Right? Dead, no heartbeat, no blood--in some cases, and no blood flow. So how is it that male vampires can get an erection? Care to explain that?
July 2010
31 Victim Impact Statement: I worked as a legal secretary for about three years back in the early 90's. During the first two years, I worked for a domestic lawyer. When I finally met the man I'd marry, I'd seen so much domestic dysfunction that it took two years for me to tell him that I "liked" him.
The last year I worked in the legal system, I worked for the Florida State Department of Corrections. Rape, murder, thievery, road rage--you name it, I typed up Victim Impact Statements on it all. Some of the details of death and destruction were so bad that I still can't clear them from my mind. Having "witnessed" all the chaos the human species can inflict upon itself, it's a wonder I ever leave my home!
8 Pineapple Cousins: Spanish moss, familiar to those of us from the Southeast and in particular the swampier areas, is not a true moss. It's a bromeliad, a pineapple relative (family Bromeliaceae). Also known as old man's beard, which should give you a good visual, Spanish moss grows as an epiphyte within the branches of trees, such as bald cypress. This "moss's" tropical cousins look very little like it but are also housed within trees--to be more precise, within the dense canopy of the rain forest--where they often serve as water collectors and breeding grounds for colorful tree frogs.
April 2010
2 Strange Dance: Drew Carey, in an illustrious career move, is starring as the host of The Price Is Right.
January 2010
31 Flower Power: Ahh, the beauty of a rose...its fleshy petals...its silken feel. Yet flowers are nothing more than plant genitalia. Think about that next time you poke your nose in one.
October 2009
13 Woolly Bear Urine Testing: This is by and far the strangest entry I have yet made to this file. But here goes.
Woolly bear caterpillars are those cute fuzzy ones that have a brown stripe down their back and are colored black everywhere else. If you had ever picked up a caterpillar, you'd have realized their "legs" end in little suction type discs that enable them to stick to and walk up anything--leaf, branch, wall, finger, string. Woolly bears have been seen as seasonal change indicators for years. You know winter is really coming when you go for a walk in the woods and these fuzzballs incessantly inch across the trail before you. Apparently, Banner Elks, North Carolina, has a lovely way of celebrating seasonal change and the Woolly Worm, as they call it. They have a Woolly Worm Festival in which people enter their caterpillar contestants in a race "up a length of string." The winning caterpillar's owner gets $1,000, and the winning caterpillar's level of darkness (the darker, the worse) predicts how harsh a winter is coming.
Now none of this is weird to me, at least not too much. Quite a few places give homage to woolly bears, but these people in Banner Elks have just made it bizarre.
They do drug testing on the competing caterpillars. Drug testing! . . . Or so they say. To quote North Carolina Farm Bureau's September/October 2009 edition and Banner Elk's Roy Krege "'...don't try to pump your worm full of performance enhancing drugs to help claim the cash prize. You'll get caught and publicly humiliated.
We have a group of doctors and nurses that set up a complete hospital for Woolly Worms... and test the worm's urine. No one has been found guilty of cheating so far...'"
Okay, take a breath and get over your what-the-hell moment, and then ask yourself is this for real? Or has a sense of humor truly been so characterized in print? And by Farm Bureau, no less. Undisclosed sources believe so. As does this crazed house-mom, because she doesn't recall from her Invertebrate Zoology course that caterpillars or any insects have urinary bladders. This particular organ generally belongs to critters a bit higher up on the evolutionary scale.
Now, take a moment to re-read Krege's words then have a smile and a chuckle because we all need those occasionally.
Have a safe Hallow's Even.
July 2009
Impressive Derrière: 31 A dining chair J.K. Rowling sat in while writing the first two Harry Potter books was auctioned off at a price of £20,000 (£=British pounds). It would seem this is not the first auction this chair has been through. I wish my ass could make that kind of impression. Part of the proceeds from the sale went to charity. Visit mugglenet.com to keep up on all the latest happy Harry Potter news!
May 2009
5 Frolicking Goat: Coffee was discovered in Ethiopia . . . by goats.
December 2008
4 Repetition: Alas . . . more boogers.
October 2008
4 Strange Politics: Barack Obama is not a Muslim. If he were, he'd still be an upstanding man.
July 2008
17 Post Bitch: The other day as I was scrabbling through the assortment of sticky notes, trash, and other disarray that symbolizes my desktop, I came across this slip of paper, which I have uncovered and reburied several times over the last year.
Going postal in America!
For a little more background: having just moved in to this new area in early 2007, either my husband or I wrote "forward" or "return" or both on each item of mail we received that was not ours. (That's regulation, right? And we know the previous occupants had a forwarding address.) Yet oh, how quickly the postal wars began. Our "mailman," whom I believe is actually a woman, went into a psychotic tizzy over these utterly reprehensible acts we had committed. Thus she left the above "post bitch" in our mailbox. But note, she forgot her exclamation point!!!!!!!!
April 2008
4 Effect and Affect: A little known fact--the word "effect" isn't just a noun. Oh my, no. Indeed, if you dig into the definition of this word in your dictionary, you'll find a gem of a verb buried there. You see, "effect" can be used as an action word (better known as a verb) as in "to bring about." For example: I effected that effect. This webpage was effected by me.
As you may see, "affect" isn't always the verb of choice when you're talking effects. Now, if you're talking affectations, as in feigned expressions or pretense, by all means, you should use the word "affect" as your verb. For example: She affected a prim smile (but the twit really wasn't happy--or prim for that matter). Of course, "affect" can also mean "to influence" or "effect a change in." Example: Lack of protein adversely affected his growth--what a horrible effect!
That's the verbage for the day. Quite nice to know. Isn't it? :-p
February 2008
16 D & D: Duplicity and divisiveness are two ugly monsters that just happen to walk hand in hand.
November 2007
2 Spooky History: Boo! Since Halloween has come and gone, I thought I'd supply a little background regarding this particular holiday's existence. Join me, if you would, in a trip back through time to a land ruled by our Celtic ancestors (or at least mine).
The ancient Celts believed in an Otherworld: to put it short, where you'd go after you died. And I quote:
There was one day of the year when the Otherworld could become visible to this world: on the feast of Samhain, the eve of 31 October to 1 November. This was a time when the supernatural boundary between the two worlds was broken down and people, the dead and living, could move freely between the two lands. It was a time when those who had been wronged by the living could return and haunt them. Christianity, unable to suppress the belief, adopted it. 1 November became All Hallows Days, or All Souls' Day and the evening before, 'Hallowe'en'.
Peter Berresford Ellis, The Celts: A History (1998, 2004)
Think about this passage next time you see a child dressed as a ghoul, goblin, or ghost and asking for a feast of . . . candy. I hope you had a definitively scary Hallow Even.
October 2007
7 Musical Chicken: "Bach, Bach, Bach, Baaaaacchhhhh." Did you know chickens are great fans of classical music?
September 2007
25 Intensity: My twin sister told me a few weeks back that I am too intense. I scare people. I always thought I was a right old dingbat. I am quite certain I hear bat wings fluttering around in my head at times--and nothing more. That's it! I'm intensely dingbattish. Now that's scary!
6 Deconstruction: The funny thing about life is that no matter what you do--whether it be good, bad, or simply nothing--there will always be some jealous-minded nutbag out there just waiting to tear you down. Recognize this and move on.
August 2007
27 Booger: I found a big booger plastered on a wall in my living room today. Actually, it looked like it had been smooshed into the wall--jammed into the very paint. My son thought I wouldn't mind. I did. The boogery mush acted as an ideal paint remover, however.