Remember that time I had six cats?

Here's the thing ... I have six cats.

You may recall, back in the days when I occasionally used my blog, when I told you about this cat I took in that wound up multiplying. You may also recall that I said I wasn't going to keep all of them.

I am untrustworthy.

It's not that I didn't try. I tried very, very hard. But you can scarcely imagine how undesirable adorable tiny fluffy kittens are until you're trying to get people to take them. Of course, let's be clear. I'm not a complete incompetent. If my only concern were getting the kittens out of the house, I'm sure I could have done that. My real concern, though, was with finding them homes. Good homes with decent people where I wouldn't have to worry about what fate I'd consigned my babies to. That particular quest was full of many misadventures. One person only wanted kittens that were 5 weeks old. (Why?) One applicant wanted a cat with a predictable personality. (She wanted a dog.) Two sets of neighbors took kittens home and brought them back within a week. (And one set hasn't been seen since.) Then there was the charming if batty French lady my sister's mother-in-law knows from church. She is a lover, and collector, of animals, and swore that she had a good friend who was in want of kittens. Three months later the conversation was veering off in directions like, "Well, I met this couple in the bagel shop, and they seemed pretty nice. They were there putting up a missing poster for the second cat they've lost this year. Want to give your kittens to them?" I've stopped calling her.

So I have six cats. I guess haven't completely abandoned hope of homes. I'm still crossing my fingers on my Auntie Pat, who gushes about how gorgeous one of the kittens is and how much she wants her, but won't take her for reasons it would take a map to get to. Plus, I mean, would you like a cat or two, Internet? It's cool, I trust you.

But anyway. I figured I should tell you about my cats. The first step is admitting you have a problem. My next trick will be devoting an entry a day to introducing the little darlings. Then you'll know everything there is to know about the last six months of my life. And then? Who knows, my friends. Who knows.

Watch this space!

P.S. I also have a Secret Exciting Cat Project that I've probably already told you about. Full disclosure if it turns out not to be an epic failure.

Oh, right, my blog!

So, I made sauce today. It's quite good. I mean, I think it is. As far as I can tell it is. It's sort of hard to taste.

Incidentally, it's almost the 17th of January and I have not been well a single day this year. Impressive! I currently have a sinus infection, which came at the behest of a strangely intense flu. I don't know if it was the swine flu. Maybe! And this was after I rang in the new year with crackers and ginger ale for stomach virus.

There are things that I was going to say! About what I've thought about television shows, or the cat that doesn't want to be our friend (yet), or the stuff I've made with my hot* little hands, or ... well, probably not that, or Comcast, or this and that.

Hi, internet.

*my hands are usually cold.

Oh God, are you still seeing that terrible story?

I did attempt to update a couple times, but then I got bored or petulant or some other emotion that made me not want to do it. So you missed out on me talking about: knitting; dreams; computer programs. Please ... do not weep.

So, anyway, who's good at Excel and is willing to give me pointers? Apparently I've never had cause to use spreadsheets before. I know, right? So now here we are.

You've made some very compelling points.

Top pro, from the Steph: I would make great Tweets. No one would know what I was talking about. That was the whole appeal, basically.

Top con, from the P@: I hate interacting with other humans! It's rather low on my list of likes, and very high on my list of dislikes.

So, percentage wise, how much do you predict my hypothetical Twittering could involve:
- Me entertaining myself (and perhaps, as a bonus, others) by shouting into the void
- Me actually talking to, interacting with, and, god forbid, meeting new others?

This is like part two of the Twitter Interview. The Twitter Callback. It's between Twitter and one other candidate. (The other candidate is "No Twitter".)

Also, as if this entry weren't already ridiculous enough: According to GoodReads, my post tag is literally actually true.

I think I'd like a Twitter account.

Please argue pro or con in the comments.

Ha ha, very funny, Twitter.

I've done very little in the past few days besides watching the situation in Iran.

Well, that's true in a sense, but in another sense I've also been demolishing my bedroom, writing a novel, and having food poisoning. But none of those things involve being too far away from the computer, so.

There's so much information. I've heard terrible things, and recently I've heard some very good things, but it's hard to know what's real and what isn't. I also feel anxious and sad because there's not much I can do. I did send an email to His Excellency the Ayatollah Khamenei today. So, there's that.

I don't see a lot of people talking about this, and I don't know what you know, but here's a bunch of links:

Good ol' Wikipedia
Why you should care
A flyer about what's going on
A coup in three steps
5 reasons to doubt the election results
The Huffington Post
Andrew Sullivan
I don't know what hashtags are, but maybe you do
ontd_political
Why We Protest
Flickr

If you use Twitter: a very simple thing you can do to help is change your Twitter location to Iran, and your time zone to GMT +3:30. This makes it harder to figure out who is and is not tweeting from Iran, which makes the users who are doing so less vulnerable to the government agencies trying to shut them down.

If you're feeling especially charitable, you can set up a proxy for Iranian users.

Worldwide Protests this Saturday

Why I simultaneously need, and do not need, a Twitter.

First and foremost, I don't want a Twitter. I dislike most websites that fall under the heading of "social networking." Also, I don't care what I do all day. If I were doing anything interesting enough to warrant frequent documentation, I wouldn't have the time.

Sometimes, though, I think about what I would write in my hypothetical Twitter. Or something will happen, and I'll think it's just the sort of thing I would Twitter about. You know, stuff that's not really blog-appropriate. I thought about compiling some of these things, and making a blog entry about Things I Would Have Twittered, but I never actually write them down, and then I forget about them and no longer care.

Furthermore, while I may want to write these things down, I don't exactly want people to read them. I don't want people to follow me, I don't want to follow anyone, I especially don't want to follow anyone famous, and I don't want to be in any way connectable or findable. (I totally Googled some people I knew in high school yesterday.)

On some other hand, though, Twitter would provide a great venue for cryptic one-liners. And those are my favorite. I would be utterly delighted to give my inscrutable gibberish as little context as possible. I am positively itching to let you know everything while letting you know nothing!!

... It is not and has never been a mystery why I have trouble socializing.

Can't socialize -- obsessed with crappy book series.

I drooled on myself while I was laughing. It was undignified.

status

In the good news pile, my internet is repaired. Yes, just today. It ... please. In other news, though, I have the plague. But probably not swine flu, and I don't think I will become a zombie, so that's pretty good. Of course, I frequently have the plague. I'd estimate that I have some sort of respiratory infection or inflammation approximately 40% of the time, I just don't tell you about it. It would be like saying, "By the way, I still have fingers." But I mentioned it last time so I feel the need to tie up loose ends. Also it relates to my next two points:

- I was going to make a post for Mother's Day which I'd been planning to write since last Father's Day. I didn't, because I was busy having plague. So when I write it eventually, pretend that it's adorably timely.

- I will be house sitting this weekend, and besides watching a lot of HBO OnDemand and eating less healthily than usual, I will probably be bored. I was going to suggest you call me! You know, if you want to geek out about your new iPod, or if you've had a baby (or want to talk about Lost, whichever), or if you have an international calling card you're desperate to waste, or what have you. It could have been fun! But I kind of can't talk because I have plague. So I hope there's reruns of True Blood.

Things that are currently killing me.

In no particular order:

1. My sinuses. It's too early to tell if I have an ear infection, a cold, swine flu, or if I just breathed in too much pine tree (which may lead to one of the preceding), but the left side of my face is not happy.

2. My uterus? I don't even know what body parts are at issue, but I've been having lots of pain in the lower abdominal region for a few weeks. And no, it's not that thing that women get. Or, I don't know, maybe it's that thing that some women get, me being one of those women. Maybe I should have mentioned that this one was going to be about stuff growing on my girl organs. OH SORRY. Anyway, this is not a new problem, but if this is what it is, it's certainly a new intensity.

3. Money. Or rather, my lack thereof. You know how poor you are? I wish I were that poor right now.

4. My mother. Enough said.

5. The internet, general. For the past three days I have had a slow, wonky connection. This sucks because not only am I on the internet all the time, some of that time spent on the internet I'm actually doing important things that may cause me to be less poor. Also because if I see "Page Load Error" one more time, I may have to do something crazy like go watch television or maybe even read a book. I could have been doing both those things on the internet!

6. The internet, specific. Take a look at this. In the immortal words of the great Christian Bale, NO, FUCK NO!

and, as always...
7. Other people. Hell, it is them.

Update for the sake of updating.

I am still sad, and nothing has felt interesting enough to blog about, but I figured it was time to bump the dead cat post from the top of the list.

It was suddenly a billion degrees over the weekend, and I was ill. I figured the best thing to do would be to annihilate Madagascar with Fluffy Kitten Amoebic Encephalopathy, but the only time I managed to get them, Canada screwed me over by closing its borders and developing a vaccine. Curse you, socialized medicine!

Thank goodness for New Moon filming, though. It has kept me up to my ears in lulz, despite the super secretness of the production. If you ever wondered what happened to Merry's hair from LotR, don't worry. It went to a good home.

Speaking of filming, I may have teared up. I'm not saying definitely, but it might have happened.

yessssssss.

I am RETROACTIVELY HORRIFIED.

This entry is about spiders. Spiders biting, spiders crawling, spiders in places spiders shouldn't be. I'm telling you this up front because I'd want someone to tell me.

So, last night, I was watching the Colbert Report, as I tend to do. Mr. Colbert did a segment on "When Animals Attack Our Morals." It was kinda funny. The last part was about the brown recluse spider that bit a man and cured his paralysis. The complaint was that this spider was trying to usurp the place of Jesus. There was a picture accompanying the story, of a spider. And ... HOLY SHIT, THAT'S IT! That's the spider!

I'm sure I've mentioned this before. When we moved into this house, there were lots of spiders in it. Mostly in my room, of course, because that's how the universe rolls, apparently. It was very unpleasant. Their visits are much more infrequent now, I see one maybe one or two times a year. Which is still one or two times too damn many.

I've tried to discover what sort of spiders they are for lo these many years. It's been surprisingly difficult. The internet was a constant disappointment. I even went to my local college, all, "Can you direct me to the Entomology Department, please?" And they were all, "wut this is a community college." Then, there I was, watching my comedy program, and there it was.

Of course, since the spider story was about a brown recluse, this caused me to immediately go to my computer for more research because omg omg. (Even though I already knew that the spiders are not brown recluses. I've checked that many many times. I don't even live in their habitat range! Still, though.) And hark!! I FOUND THE ANSWER. I found pictures! (I found that I did not sleep well last night.) I even found one fellow who had the exact same problem I did - he had an abundance of spiders that looked exactly the same, except some were brown and some were pale yellow/tan. He wasn't sure if they were the same species or not.

They are different. They are two species of "sac spiders." The darker spiders are called broad-faced sac spiders, and the lighter ones are yellow sac spiders. If you want a visual, you're going to have to Google that, because I am not having it on my blog. Hilariously, I have always been more afraid of the darker variety, because they look more sinister. MY FEAR WAS SLIGHTLY MISPLACED, APPARENTLY.

All my spider worries were, it seems, founded. They are aggressive. They bite. And the yellow sac spiders have necrotizing venom. It is similar to, but less severe than, a brown recluse's venom. So instead of losing a chunk of flesh, it may or may not cause an ulcerated sore which may or may not take several months to heal. The broad-faced sac spiders like to eat dead things, so their bites often become infected. Both varieties give painful bites that feel not unlike bee stings and which, like bee stings, may or may not cause anaphylaxsis.

Did I mention that I found one of these things under my pillow one morning?

Me = !!!!D:

I'm already never sleeping again. And I would like, if possible, for someone to travel back in time, and kill all the spiders I've already killed, so I never have to think about how close I came to touching one.

DID I MENTION THAT I REALLY REALLY HATE SPIDERS?

For Katy, or, I am lazy.

A while back Katy said that she would like to make a compilation of all the Gold that the Fountain Thereof has spouted. And I thought to myself, "I could totally do that. And then share such an endeavor to anyone it might interest!"

And then I didn't because I'm lazy. And also because he was giving an awful lot of interviews around November, and I was OD'ing on Twilight and needed to detox for a while.

Anyway, turns out that one of the lovely ladies at [name of Twilight lulz livejournal community] made some video highlights of the FoG. It's not quite what I was going for, I'll admit. That these are his "best" clips are debatable. It lacks the quotes that were only ever in print. Plus a lot of them are lifted out of context, making them only really funny if you've seen them before. But, on the other hand, I have seen them before, so it's all good for me, and this whole thing required nothing more on my part than writing the rest of this entry. Yay laziness!

Also, I made them purple.

I love this nutball.

No, not Robert Pattinson. Jacob, from TWoP! Yes, him again. And probably all but two of you have already stopped reading. I DON'T CARE. Also, even though this entry is about Jacob, it's still about Twilight because, well.

My Jacob-love is resurging right now for two reasons. 1. Because he is doing more than anyone else to ensure that "Vampire Boyfriend" enters the social lexicon. Way moreso than I am. 2. Because he explains vampire boyfriends (and werewolf boyfriends) like so:


-----
Why's it happening again? Why on earth is our culture playing out entirely vampire boyfriend/werewolf boyfriend right now? And I'm not just saying this because Twilight came out yesterday -- these three series of books I'm talking about started in 1993 (Anita), 2001 (Sookie), and 2005 (Twilight) and pretty much have ruled the bestseller lists since then, even with the variances in quality, readability and WTF between them; seven of the eight Sookie novels are bestsellers pretty much nonstop, which is not something that ever happened before. I think it's pretty easy if you follow the line of blood: The war and the Greatest Generation's reassignment and recapitulation of gender roles becomes the uphill battle of the '50s and the glorious global shout of the '60s becomes the delirious sexual abandon of the '70s becomes the cruelty and sexual artifice of the '80s becomes the total AIDS-related sexual freakout of the '90s ... and we grew up in that, doing the incredibly dangerous undercover work of becoming healthy sexual beings that people have been doing since there were people, with all that crazy on top, mediated for the first time by television telling us back to ourselves in realtime and the endless fucking Baby Boomer retellings and nostalgia and music videos disguised as feature films. We became men and women in the middle of that shitstorm. Vampire Guy/Werewolf Guy is just us telling that story back to the world and trying to decide what to do next.
-----


I mean ... have you ever? The raving starts here, it's in the middle of a True Blood recap, which I don't know if you care about, but just be forewarned, but he's only barely talking about it, if you are.

So I was looking at the internet.

And I saw this piece of flair -- I'm not really sure where from -- that said something to the effect of, "Oh hey, Edward Cullen. Sure, I'd love to go out with you on November 21. I had a date with Harry Potter, but he canceled."

It was fairly amusing, so I'll admit that I laughed. And then I kind of cried. Because if this button were true to life, I would probably be busy leaving 50 messages on Harry Potter's voicemail. Why won't you return my calls, Harry? WE'RE MEANT TO BE. *sob*


Is that Draco in the bathroom? Hell yes it is. He should probably turn around 'cause he's 'bout to get cut. OMFG.

I don't even know anymore.

I realized some while back that my sarcastic voice sounds an awful lot like my regular voice. I don't mean that they're the same - they're separate and distinct, at least to my own ears. But then, everything I write in this blog seems lucid and detailed to me. So, you know. The point is, I understand why some people might not be able to tell when I'm using sarcasm and when I'm being completely serious, even if I think they should know. I guess it's the same as realizing that not everyone thinks the same way you do, even if you think they should.

In the same vein, I tend to think that pretty much everything written on the internet contains some degree of sarcasm. Unless it's on AOL or IMDb. As such, I tend to be floored if it turns out that sarcasm was not the intent. I mean, who the fuck would use the internet without their sarcasm filter on?

For example:
http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h69/devils_angel_8187/c74bf753e8.jpg

"lol, fuck feminism. They take things to far."

"I totally agree. Its ridiculous to me! Its like I am Woman hear me roar! Women don't even know how to be women anymore. They try so hard to be a man and why I will never understand!"

"yeah, I mean I am glad we can vote and that we don't have to be house wives and be controlled by our men, but thanks to feminism we can now be drafted ( the likely hood of that ever happening is slim, but still) I don't think women should be president, police officers, or firefighters. I don't look down on anyone that is any of those things, but I just feel we are to emotional and not tough looking enough for those things. People take advantage of women cops all the time, because people see them as week..even if they aren't. I might get a lot of flack for saying this, but I don't really care."


I mean ... let's assume you're you. And the context of this conversation is a group of people that you generally understand not to be raging idiots, questionable grammar aside, and who generally have a sense of humor. (And incidentally, are women.) Would you naturally assume that this is hilarious sarcasm? Because let me tell you something, I would.

I would be wrong, though.

I joined Ravelry.

You might have noticed this if I added you as a friend. I just went ahead and assumed we were friends! Also if I didn't add you it's because I couldn't find you through search. It doesn't mean I don't also assume that I am your friend.

Furthermore upon this matter, I need to make something for my sister for her birthday. My first impulse is to make her socks, because I love the fuck out of socks, and the making of them and because my sister doesn't have any nice socks. Unfortunately, though, there's a reason for this: my sister is disrespectful of anything that goes on her feet. Sigh.

So I'm thinking gloves. Or hat. Or matching gloves and hat. Oh my God, that would be adorable! But Jesus, I'm not a Rockefeller. Anyway. Ideas?

Yay!!

Jacob is recapping True Blood!

It took me several weeks to learn this because I ... haven't been to TWoP in a while. But this is enough to get me to like it again! Sometimes my affections are fickle. Oh man, I can't wait for him to start spouting vampire apologetics!

Oh, by the way, I've been watching True Blood. On the internet no less. It's okay, I don't expect you to be surprised.

Goddamn it, AOL.

I just got an email telling me that AOL Hometown FTP is being shut down on October 31. I still use that sometimes! And what am I going to do with all my wares? And what of all the xs that are going to appear everywhere I've used those pictures? I HATE WHEN THAT HAPPENS.

Um. Tell me what I should do. I don't feel well and I'm in no mood for thinking.