Mr. Whiskers's Revenge

My therapist owns a cat.

You may have read about this before, here or here. I've tried to let the subject die, but it refuses. Every so often, during therapy, I will look at John and remember that he owns a cat. And I will fight the urge to ask about it. I don't need to know the cat's name, really I don't. I'm happy to think of it as Mr. Whiskers. Or at least I am, as much as I can be happy to think of it at all.

But I can't stop now. Mr. Whiskers is so much bigger than any 50-minute therapy session or blog bit. I've been thinking about him and speculating about him and laughing about him for so long that I knew something had to happen, and it was up to me to make sure it did.

And so I've added something new to my resumé. It took me until about 5am, but I did it. I am now a singer-songwriter, for I have penned "The Ballad of Mr. Whiskers."

I may record a performance and put it on YouTube. I'm not sure yet. In any case, here it is, in all its early-morning cowboy-ballad glory.

The Ballad of Mr. Whiskers

Legend has it there once was a mighty, fluffy feline,
They say he lived with a man named John in a pad East of the Beeline.
His eyes were wise, his fur was soft, his claws as sharp as Fiskars,
And legend says he lived up to his name of Mr. Whiskers.

Mr. Whiskers! Yippee-ki-yi-yo!
Mr. Whiskers! In a sweater and a bow!

Well Whiskers was the toughest indoor cat you've ever seen.
He could take on any Tom in that Cat Fancy Magazine.
He lived on milk and Fancy Feast and though he'd sometimes roam,
He was loyal still enough to come when John called, "Daddy's home!"

Mr. Whiskers! Yippee-ki-yi-yo!
Mr. Whiskers! Strolling through PetCo!

Now Whiskers, he looked good in both a sweater and a hat,
And even Santa Claus confessed, "Now here's an awesome cat!"
Mr. Whiskers walked with pride in a collar and a lead,
And though he'd rather now, that cat could swim across Lake Mead.

Mr. Whiskers! Yippee-ki-yi-yip!
Mr. Whiskers! Playing with catnip!

No woman was ever good enough for this noble cat's friend John,
Whiskers frightened would-bes off with a show of cattish brawn.
And so the bachelors lived alone, a counselor and his pet,
But Mr. Whiskers is, of cats, the best of all as yet.

Mr. Whiskers! Yippee-ki-yi-eer!
Mr. Whiskers! Loyal through the years.

John died alone and Whiskers mourned the loss of his dear friend,
Then Mr. Whiskers disappeared and so our story ends.
But be alert, for Whiskers might just pass on by,
You'll know him by his whiskers and the twinkle in his eye.

Mr. Whiskers! Yippee-ki-yi-yi!
Mr. Whiskers! The legend never dies!

Blah blah blah

I haven't updated this in nearly two months. Bad Jill! Bad blogger! Shame!

It's not that I haven't been writing (the frequent updates on my adoption blog are proof of that). Or that nothing has happened for me to write about.

I've mostly gotten very lazy lately, and also depressed. And my fibromyalgia is doing bad, bad things to me. I wake up most mornings feeling like someone beat me soundly with a potato sack full of unripe fruit. Which is not, as you can imagine, a very pleasant thing.

I used to take meds for my fibro, and they worked well enough. But I stopped taking them when I got pregnant, and never started them again. They were expensive, for one. Also, I think one of them might have been doing some sort of damage to my kidneys. And Barbers have kidney problems to begin with.

So no more fibro meds for me. I'm not taking the antidepressant I was on before my pregnancy, either. I'm back on Zoloft. The SSRI I was taking before has a high incidence of liver damage. And I'm very attached to my liver. I've had it as long as I can remember. Also, for some reason, I have always been skeeved out at the thought of anything liver-related. I like to pretend I don't even have a liver.

So apparently I can either have good brain chemistry and lots of energy, or I can have a liver and kidneys. I've rather unsportingly chosen the latter.

I think that's it for now.

Missed connections

I have done a craptastic job of blogging lately. I can think of a number of reasons for it but none of them are very good.

In the time I have spent online not blogging, I have been indulging a guilty pleasure. I am slightly addicted to the "Missed Connections" section on Craigslist. Have you ever looked at Missed Connections?

The concept is a simple one. You're out somewhere - a club, a grocery store, a gas station. You see someone, you make eye contact, maybe you say hi. And then the moment is gone, and so is the person you connected with. So you go to Missed Connections, write up what happened, and see if that person responds.

If I'm honest, I don't read Missed Connections because I have missed any connections. My purposes are much more nefarious than that. I do it for entertainment. Because there are an awful lot of idiots in the world, and these days most of them have internet access.

I stick to m4w, Men for Women, because I've found that men tend to be a bit more ridiculous and maudlin in their posting. I've only gotten a laugh out of Women for Men once or twice. M4w? The world is a scary place, ladies and gentlemen.

I am slightly worried that so many men seem to find "hot" women shopping at Wal-Mart. Especially West Valley Wal-Marts. The West Valley is where 99.9% of violent crimes in Phoenix seem to occur. And Wal-Mart is ... well, have you been to the People of Wal-Mart website? It's a leper colony.

But overweight hoochies aside, there is a sort of poetic stupidity in the subject lines I've encountered. I've been collecting them for a while, and I'd like to share my favorites with you, faithful reader.

I think my favorite so far is "You returned a Derek Jeter Halloween Costume." Brilliant, isn't it? There'll be no mistaking that one. How many people returned Derek Jeter costumes? Actually, I'm not sure, but I think this one is still brilliant, and I never even read the posting, just the headline. The headline is all I ever read, if I'm honest.

Equally brilliant (in its stupidity, anyway) is "You startled me in the alley while I was peeing." Kind sir, while I don't doubt you may have been stumbled upon by a beautiful woman in the alley, do you really think that said woman is going to be interested in a man who urinates in public? Is she going to be sitting home, thinking to herself, "You know, that guy who was peeing in the alley was pretty hot. I wonder if he noticed me?"

There has to be a story behind "I can't believe you bossed your grandma around" and I, for one want to know what it is. I read the listing for this one and I'm still not sure what was going on. Or why a man would be interested in a woman who bosses her grandma around.

"No Tip was big enough, Emily." Was it because Emily was beautiful or because Emily was an unusually competent waitress? The world will never know, because I never read the posting and the listing's expired. Alas. Rest assured, Emily, your efforts didn't go unnoticed.

I have a few questions for the man who posted "T-BIRD ER WAITING ROOM." Sir, who sits in an ER waiting room and checks out the women there? Especially T-Bird. Their patients are either criminals or the elderly. I realize you're stuck there for four or five hours, but maybe you ought to let the doctors reattach the woman's severed hand before you attempt to hit on her. Just a thought.

When I read "I bought eggs from you =)" I sincerely hoped it wasn't from the same people who post every day offering 8 grand to a Jewish egg donor. Perhaps it was a trade, as the same day, posted in w4m, was "to the kind stranger who bought my pumpkin."

Ah, Craigslist. You give so much and ask so little. Idiots of the world, post on. And please be specific.

And now, for something completely different

I don't have anything to say today, but I'm sick of this blog being stuck in the middle of my list on my Blogger Dashboard. Which is my own fault for having more than a dozen blogs, but I digress.

Here's a pig in a bath.

Accentuate the ... negative?

I have been trying for over an hour now to update this blog.

I feel like I have plenty of things to say, but two problems keep coming up.

The first is that I don't feel like I'm particularly funny anymore. I used to be able to crank out three or four rants in a sitting, and find them rather clever and well-written, with at least one turn of phrase of which I was particularly proud. But lately I can't even make a joke about infomercials, which is saying something.

The second problem has to do with a promise I made to myself, one I made, if I'm honest, in part to get my therapist off my back. I promised myself I wasn't going to be such a negative person. That I was going to try to lighten up a bit, try to be humorous without being sarcastic.

It's a lot harder than I thought. I'm not sure what it says about me that I can't be funny without being mean. I don't like the thought. I have always thought that I was just generally a rather clever person. I didn't concern myself with the fact that I was overly sarcastic.

I'm starting to wonder if I've ever been funny at all, or if it was just rudeness. If it's the latter, that's sort of an earth-shattering revelation. My sense of humor is an integral part of who I am. I don't like to think that rudeness or nastiness are such a big part of my personality.

Am I a negative person? I've never really thought so, but lately I've started to wonder. I don't want to be a negative person. I want to be clever and funny without risking offense. I wonder if I can.

But I think I've mostly decided that, if I can't be funny sans sarcasm, I simply won't be funny anymore. I want to be a happy person. I want to be the sort of person that my family can be proud of, that others will be drawn to.

One thing I've learned about myself over the years is that I am capable of doing very hard things, of living through hard things and becoming stronger for it. Lately I feel I've had more than my share of hard times, and I do wish God would back off a bit. But if this is the lesson that I need to learn, I'll learn it.

Maybe I won't be funny anymore. But I am going to try to be happy. I am going to try to be positive.

I should probably start by getting up before noon.

Writer's block and tiny cats

It occurred to me a few days ago that I hadn't posted anything new in a while. I buried that information in the back of my brain for later review and it only just came up again.

I haven't been able to put together anything coherent lately. I don't know why. I certainly haven't run out of things to complain about. Plenty of things irritate me, particularly when I'm hungry.

I'm working on a few good rants, but in the mean time, here are a few things that popped into my head this week. They may or may not be funny. Or interesting.

-When did John Cougar Mellencamp dump the "Cougar" from his name? I think that, considering the pop-culture phenomenon that is the "cougar" he ought to put it back in there. Capitalize on the trend while he can.
-It rained last week. I was looking forward to a good rain because my car is a mess. It rained enough to clean most of the dirt off my car, but not the bird poop. I don't know what those birds around here are eating, but something in their excrement, when mixed with the finish of my Cavalier, formed a powerful epoxy and that stuff isn't coming off without a fight.
I put a feeder in my backyard, and *this* is the thanks I get. Stupid birds.
-My “Check Engine” light has been on since I took my car home from the shop a few months ago. You’d think they would have checked the engine while they were fixing everything else. The light didn’t actually turn on until I’d driven about two miles from the shop.
I’ve decided to “fix” it by putting a piece of electrical tape over it.
-Why does the media always make a big deal about how popular and athletic and smart a missing/killed teenager is/was? Would it be less of a tragedy if some fat, stupid loser was killed by a drunk driver? Is it a matter of not wanting to speak ill of the dead, or do people just not care what happens to unpopular people? Nancy Grace talked yesterday (I changed the channel as fast as I could) about a "beautiful young wife and mother" who was killed by her husband. So would it be okay if she was a single, childless hag? I think to Nancy it would because Nancy doesn't talk about the ugly victims of crime on her program. Ever. If Natalee Holloway had been hook-nosed and greasy-haired and overweight, Nancy wouldn't have given the story air time. Neither would anyone else have.
-Last night I saw a commercial for a nasal spray for allergies. To illustrate how pet dander irritates the sinuses, the ad featured a tiny kitten dancing around under a large, disembodied nose.
I know I hate it when tiny cats frolic under my nose. Of course I'm not sure how I feel about the solution offered in another ad: an army of tiny CG men marching a nasal allergy spray towards my nostril. That worries me a little as well. Maybe the tiny army men could take on the tiny cats, and that way I wouldn't have to take any medication.
-Speaking of which, side effects are getting scarier and scarier. One new nasal spray carries with it the risk of a hole in the nasal septum. I'm not 100% certain of the purpose of the nasal septum, but something tells me it's important and that I'd rather just have nasal allergy symptoms than a hole burnt through the sucker.
-Can anyone give me a reasonable explanation for the current pop culture obsession with zombies? I don't know, maybe it's because my father died of brain cancer last year, but I don't understand the appeal of the dead rising in various stages of decomposition with the purpose of emptying our living skulls. Why would I want that on a t-shirt or a mug or a bumper sticker?
Of course, I didn't get the whole pirate trend either and I don't have a compelling reason for that. Although my ex's pirate fixation doesn't exactly endear the pirate movement to me. My ex is ... let's call him a rotten sack of crap and leave it at that, since my mother reads this.
And pirates? Yeah, guess what folks, they still exist, and they commit horrible atrocities. A British man was brutally beaten to death, in front of his wife, by pirates. Maybe we shouldn't glorify that, okay, Disney? Johnny Depp? Y'all got it?
-There was a big to-do on the news about how swine flu deaths now number 100 or something like that. Yeah, okay, that's sad, but do you know how many people die every year of the regular flu? 20,000. Why aren't we keeping tabs on that?
-I'm sick of hearing about how Mancow Muller has decided, after experiencing it, that waterboarding is torture, for the sole reason that when I hear the name "Mancow" I get this nasty mental picture of a grotesque man-cow hybrid. Can we just call him by his real name of Eric and leave it at that?
-Why do they spend ten minutes discussing the heat on the news? We live in Phoenix. It gets hot. That's not news. If the heat is news to you, maybe you ought to finish moving your belongings out from under that rock before you worry yourself with the news. Phoenix is hot. It's always been hot, it will always be hot.
And you know what? It hasn't been as hot as it usually is! That's news. Shove that in your pipe and smoke it, Royal Norman.
And, finally ...
-Words I do not ever want to hear again: bromance, sexting, waterboarding, BFF, swine flu, twilight, Jonas Brothers.
Thank you.

In Your Face … book.

I will admit to being vain enough that I have “friended” people on Facebook just to see my number of friends go up. I won’t send out requests, myself, but I have accepted friend requests from people I don’t really care about.

For the most part, it hasn’t been a problem. Most people don’t spend an inordinate amount of time or effort on their Facebook profiles, and it’s easy enough to hide updates on Mafia Wars or other applications that I find inane.

But there are a few friends I have – one in particular, who shall remain nameless – who don’t fit into that “most people” category, and whose updates I am seriously considering hiding on my friend feed. This one friend is someone I haven’t seen in the better part of nine years, someone who I was only acquainted with in high school. And yet I know more about her personal life than I do about clipper cuts, and I’m a licensed hairstylist.

This person – let’s call her “Jane” – is under the mistaken impression that everyone she has friended on Facebook is on tenterhooks for more intimate details of her stunningly unremarkable life. You know that video, “The Trouble with Twitters,” where people Tweet things like “Watching TV with my cat” and “I forgot how much I like pickles?” Well, Jane is like that on Facebook. Nothing is too unimportant for a status update, including household chores and her husband’s bowel movements.

For instance, Jane recently baked a fruit-filled cake. How do I know this? Because she had no less than three status updates about said cake, and a photo album of the cake and the people who ate it. We see Jane in the kitchen. Jane mixing the cake batter. Jane pouring the batter into a cake pan. Jane adding the fruit filling. Jane putting the cake into the oven. The cake coming out of the oven. The cake on a cooling rack on the counter. The cake being iced. The cake being decorated. The decorated cake. Several women standing around the cake, smiling. Jane next to the cake she baked. Someone slicing the cake. Someone holding a slice of cake. Someone putting a forkful of cake into her mouth. And several more random shots of … you guessed it. The cake. I exaggerate a bit, but there were nearly twenty pictures in the album and I got a little teary-eyed at the thought that some poor bandwidth somewhere died to put those pictures on the internet.

And the status updates? “Just baked a yummy cake!” “Everyone loved the cake!” “Fruit filling is so yummy!” I’m paraphrasing here, but you get the idea. To hear Jane tell the story, it all started in a Betty Crocker mix factory in Des Moines.
You know what, Jane? It’s a bloody cake. And no one cares.

The cake is only the most recent of her over sharing. Every single picture she has ever taken is on an album on her profile. Yes, your baby may be cute (in an awkward, let’s-hope-he-grows-into-his-looks sort of way), but do I really need to see ten nearly identical photographs of him making funny faces? Here he is in a diaper, smiling. Here he is in a diaper, smiling again. And here he is, this time smiling, in a diaper. I don’t mean to sound cruel, here. But I don’t even know the kid. If I had more than three similar-looking photos of my own nephew, I’d get a little bored. And this woman has more than thirty photo albums on her profile, each more superfluous than the last.

And I have noticed that the people who clog up my friend feed the most (Jane and those like her) seem to have the worst grammar and spelling. I’m reasonably certain these people have graduated from high school, but I’d never guess that if I were to judge on their ability to put more than three words together. These are the people who randomly ad Os to the word “so” in an effort to convey emotion. “I am sooooooooo excited!!!!!!!!!!!” They might say. Because they also enjoy overusing punctuation marks. After all, they think, if one exclamation mark means I’m excited, then twenty of them must mean I’m super (or sometimes suuuperrrrrr) excited. Exclamation mark! My recent rant about grammar and spelling was a direct result of too many illegible status updates by two specific people.

I don’t mean to pick on oversharers like Jane, though. There are plenty of other annoying friend habits that make me want to log off for good (although I’ll concede that some of it has to do with how Facebook is set up). There’s the obsessive quiz-taking that several friends practice. I have hidden many of them from my feed, but, like a particularly virulent strain of the Hantavirus, for every one quiz I stamp out three more seem to emerge in its place. No offense, Facebook friends, but I don’t give a crap what color your aura is, what supernatural creature you are, who your Twilight soulmate is, or what your Native American/Redneck/French/Scottish name is. You’re a fan of not being shot in the face? Of not catching on fire? Congratulations. You’ve acquired common sense. Now, how about becoming a fan of shutting the heck up?

I’m not saying I’m perfect and none of my updates are ever annoying. I’ll admit to being guilty of some of this, myself. I had to find out what Golden Girl I am (Dorothy). But I do those for me. Half the time I don’t post my results on my wall, and I figure when I do it annoys people so I limit myself to one, maybe two a week. And I post other things. I’ve found that I’m most annoyed by repeated quiz-taking when it’s done by people who never do anything else on Facebook. I have friends I know nothing useful about, but I could tell you what their Barbie name is, and that annoys me.

So take heed, potential Facebook friends. I will accept your friend request, yes. But I can only hold back my snarky commentary for so long, and if it’s only a matter of time before you post one too many cake pictures, beware. I will comment. And I will not hold back the snark.

Oh, you humans ...

You just kill me sometimes, you know that?

I try to be good on Facebook and Twitter. Only twice have I left comments correcting grammar or spelling. Twice! And I could have done so at least sixty-three times this past week alone.

On the off chance that the offenders are reading, here's a refresher. And yes, I do see the irony in my being a stickler for grammar and spelling and being so poor at style. What can I say? Strunk and White bore me.

-"Your" indicates possession. If you mean to say "you are," the word you want is "you're" which is a contraction of the words "you" and "are." As in, "I'm sure you're aware that your pants are on backwards."
-Contractions are tricky little things, aren't they? Here's another one: it's. A contraction of the words "it" and "is." "Its" is, like "your," a word that indicates possession. As in, "It's annoying when people don't know the difference between two similar words. English isn't that difficult. Its rules are fairly simple."
-"Their" indicates possession. "There" indicates location. "They're" is one of those tricky little contractions, this one of "they" and "are." As in, "They're parking their car over there."
-So much of English is about possession, isn't it? Here's another one: the apostrophe. This one's important, so I'm going to go all caps-lock on your arse: YOU DO NOT NEED AN APOSTROPHE TO PLURALIZE A WORD. Never have, never will. An apostrophe and an "s" can be another contraction, usually a given word and the word "is," as in "Jill's intolerant of poor spelling." However, if I had just returned from a Jill Convention, I would not need an apostrophe to say, "There were a lot of Jills there." The "s" alone is sufficient for pluralization. To say that "There were a lot of Jill's" there would beg the question, Jill's whats? Apostrophe = possession. I will shout it from the rooftops.
-The following are not words: lite, nite, rite, thru, tho, and any mishmashed abbreviation that one might use in a text message or a chat room.
-It is customary to begin the first word of a sentence with a capital letter, unless you are e.e. cummings. And his work just irritates me. Also, proper nouns should begin with capital letters. Is it really that hard to push the shift key?
-If a word you've typed is underlined in green or red, the computer doesn't like it. Usually, the computer doesn't like it for a reason, and that reason is that you can't spell.

Please keep these things in mind, dear humans. Read them. Learn them. Use them. Because I can keep my opinions to myself for only so long, and once I begin my merciless red-pen rampage, no one will be spared.

Headed nowhere

So. Apparently I haven't ranted in a week now. Blogger says I last updated on the 22nd and today is March 1st.

This is a shame, really, because I'm too dang tired to be clever. I'm too dang tired for much of anything, really, and I have been for about a week. I haven't even finished my Valentine's candy yet and I'm usually a holiday ahead as far as candy goes.

I blame my migraine. Here you might think that I've made an error and that I should have pluralized the word migraine. You would be wrong. If I calculated it properly, I reckon I'd find I've actually had relatively few migraines in my life considering I've been getting them since I was ten. The problem is that each headache lasts at least a week.

A week.

Sometimes - frequently, in fact - longer. So my problem (one of about fifty) is that I've had this headache for a week now and it's made me crabby and unproductive. All I've had the energy for is looking at the same thirty or so websites over and over again and wondering why they don't update every twenty minutes, because I'm bored. Most of them update once daily or so, so I've had to play a lot of video games as well (hey, you try mowing the bloody lawn when your brain's trying to push its way out of your skull).

One of my daily obsessions is a blog called Your Next Gift dot com. Each day there is a new, fairly cool item that would make a good gift. The other day they featured this. It’s a voice-activated alarm clock.

I was excited by the idea at first but upon reading the description I was disappointed. It recognizes 10 commands and none of them are what I need in an alarm clock. I need something that will stop blaring when I shout “Shut up!”

Who designs these things, anyway? What's the point in having something voice-activated if I can only say certain things? Although I reckon this keeps the clock's feelings from getting hurt if I turn verbally abusive after a poor night's sleep.

But anyway. Back to my headache.

I've seen commercials for a prescription migraine drug (that doesn't work for me, if you were wondering) where migraine sufferers have been photoshopped so they're holding their own heads, Sir Patrick Delaney-Podmore-style. The caption is something to the effect that sometimes their migraines are so bad, they wish they could take their heads off.

I could see that, I suppose. There would certainly be some advantages to being headless. I know I'd like to see exactly how my arse looks in a pair of jeans before I leave the house. And if you were to meet up with other headless people, you could engage in all sorts of headless hijinks, as do the members of the Headless Hunt in "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets." But honestly, I've never had a headache so bad I wanted to remove my head. Probably just my central nervous system. You don't need one of those, right? I mean, the peripheral nervous system is such a slacker. Why not make it take some of the workload for a change?

Although I would miss conscious thought, I think. I've had electrical impulses firing in my brain for so long that I think I'd miss that as well. Which is why instead of removing anything vital I usually just take a Frova or two.

Frova is a wonderful little pill that my neurologist prescribed a year or two ago. It is the only thing that knocks my headaches down a few notches. And last October my doctor told me not to take it any more. So I've been forced to tough it out when a migraine hits.

I should mention that my version of toughing it out involves a lot of whining and sobbing and a fair amount of Twizzlers. And hours at a stretch on the computer. Which could prove useful. For all I know, tomorrow's Your Next Gift might be some sort of anti-migraine device.

Or at least something I can shout at if it makes a loud noise.

Blah blah blah

I don't really have anything important to say (do I ever?) but I haven't updated in a few days - 5, actually - and I start to feel guilty for some reason.

You'd think I'd feel more guilty for posting a useless update, but you'd be wrong.

It's not that I don't have anything to say, really. It's that I'm too lazy to say it. It's exhausting being clever all the time. Sometimes I just don't have it in me. I've also got a problem where a topic I really want to write about is still an option on my poll and I feel like I should wait for the poll to end before posting something on that topic. My inner obsessive-compulsive won't let me jump the gun.

I have another problem as well - a topic will seem interesting, and I'll think I have a lot to say about it, so I put it in my poll ... and promptly lose interest. That's happened with about eighty percent of the topics I've come up with. Some I make myself write out anyway. Some I just pretend I never thought of. I'm a big fan of denial.

If you have any ideas for me, any at all (because as you know, dear reader, I live to make you happy) pretty please send them to me at jilleb163 AT gmail DOT com. I'll send you a platypus in return.

Survey says ...

I was in the middle of typing up a beautiful rant about magazines - I just got the March issue of Glamour, despite it being the beginning of February - when my eyes fell on a list I'd written on an envelope.

I like writing on envelopes, particularly the back where the flap is. I always have for some reason. I tend to write important things on the back of envelopes - shopping lists, driving directions, insurance information, deep thoughts about toilet paper, that sort of thing. I frequently forget to remove the envelope's original contents which is why a few days ago I left the house with a bill from Victoria's Secret in my hand - my directions were written on the back of the envelope.

Where was I?

Right. Ranting.

So, the list on the envelope that I'd spotted happened to be the options on Pathetic Blog Poll #3 and the votes for each. Seven people wanted my thoughts on child beauty pageants, by the way, which puts a bit of pressure on me not to disappoint. Or rather, it would if I put any thought into my writing. I in fact put very little thought into what I write, which is why I worry any time someone tells me, "Oh, Jill, I read your blog the other day ..." I'm always afraid they're going to follow that with, "Would you like to go with these nice men in white coats now?" Or "You do realize that the usual way is think, then speak, right? Not speak, then think?"

But if I cared what people thought of my taste and opinions I wouldn't answer the door in my moose pajamas or quote Homer Simpson in the middle of an otherwise intelligent conversation.

Where was I this time?

Right. Pathetic Blog Poll #3. So, it occurred to me that, hey, maybe I ought to consider pontificating on one of the topics I used in my poll. I've used a few already and as I've asked for people's opinions I probably ought to take them into consideration. So my magazine rant is on hold for a while - maybe it'll be on my next Pathetic Blog Poll.

But that's the beauty of this whole thing, isn't it? I can write about whatever I want. I can ignore every topic I've used in a poll and write paeans to the potato if I am so inclined. I can write six or seven rants about the one topic nobody votes for. Because it's my blog! Hahahaha!

I mean, um ... well ... that is ... Oh, come on. I posted a squirrel picture earlier. That's nice, right? If you're not too concerned about the hantavirus or that sort of thing.

I'm sure what I meant to say is, thank you, kind reader, for investing your precious time in my humble little blog. Please take a moment to vote in my poll.

There are a few other things I was going to mention but I can't find the list I made. I think it's on its way to Old Navy with my credit card payment.

Tag – I’m It!

Most people prefer to make a long story short, but I’m much better at making a short story long …

I don’t remember exactly how – I think a celebrity gossip website was involved – but a few months ago I came across a blog called That’s Hideous. As you might guess from the name, That’s Hideous is a blog about ugly things – frequently designer clothing or shoes or on occasion some kind of artwork made with what looked like the skull of a rodent-like dog.

I’ve always felt that quite a bit of, if not most, designer items were absolute crap. I’ve seen celebrities wearing what looked like Jerry Seinfeld’s puffy shirt, and they were considered fashion-forward, just because some greasy, leathery-skinned Italian’s name is stitched on the label of the offending garment. (And I can’t be the only one who’s noticed that fashion designers never appear in public wearing anything as ridiculous as the things they stuff models into for runway shows.)

Where was I? Hideous things, right. Anyway, I can’t begin to tell you how pleased I was to see someone else pointing these things out. A Coach handbag isn’t pretty just because it’s a Coach handbag. In any case, That’s Hideous became one of those websites I checked every day for updates (hence its inclusion in my Daily Grind blogroll). And when I checked it yesterday, under an item about Pete Wentz’s atrocious boots, I found what is, in the vernacular, a “tag”.

Considering the thirteen-odd years I’ve been on the internet, you’d think I’d be more familiar with this sort of thing, but you would be wrong. Tags are rather new to me, probably because I’ve mostly used the internet for baby animal pictures and socially inept rambling. But near as I can tell, when you’ve been tagged, you have to answer a number of questions or make a number of statements, depending on your tagger. You then tag others to make them do the same, and so on, creating a sort of chain-letter of how-well-do-you-know-a-person. There now, I think I’ve explained this all to death.

In any case, after reading Deka’s (who knew she could squeal like a pig? Not I.) I found that my little blog had been tagged (and also blogrolled – thanks, Deka!). I’ve never been tagged before, so I was excited in a pathetic sort of way. And so, to finish my unnecessarily long story, here’s what I came up with.

Ten things I love
1. Disneyland. I’d live there were it allowed.
2. Swedish Fish, despite my irrational fish phobia. Maybe it’s the Swede in me – although they’re manufactured in Canada.
3. My family. Most of them, anyway.
4. Animal Crossing: City Folk. I’m unemployed; It’s all I’ve got.
5. “The Soup” on E!. No one does snarky quite like Joel McHale.
6. Dr. Greg House. Although I’m not sure what that says about me.
7. Celebrity gossip.
8. Cold cereal. Works for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and is healthy as part of a complete breakfast (not that I ever eat a “complete breakfast”).
9. Domo-Kun, that fuzzy brown harbinger of Japanese television
10. Bookstores. I’m a nerd like that.

Ten things I loathe
1. Made up mishmashed words like “webinar” and “guesstimate” and “edutainment.”
2. “The Sound of Music.”
3. Brain cancer.
4. People who run red lights.
5. Katy Perry. She tries so hard to be edgy and hip and it just ain’t working.
6. The rapidly diminishing resale value of my Chevy Cavalier (down to $1300 already).
7. Migraine headaches.
8. Anything with more than four legs.
9. Fish.
10. Bad grammar.

Ten random facts
1. I faint at the sight of my own blood.
2. All of my electronics are pink (phone, camera, computer, Nintendo DS, etc)
3. My picture was in a (now-defunct) teen magazine when I was in high school.
4. What started off as a joke has now led me to the point where I automatically say “Canadia” instead of “Canada” (my sincerest apologies to the residents of America’s hat).
5. I have a good internal clock – I can tell within 5 minutes how much time has passed since I checked a clock and I can wake myself up at a certain time without an alarm clock.
6. I can type 95 words per minute.
7. I’ve had my gallbladder and my tonsils removed (on separate occasions, of course).
8. I used to work in a library.
9. I can’t swim.
10. People in general make me very nervous.

I reckon I'm supposed to tag a few people now as well. I doubt the webmasters and -mistresses of the celebrity gossip sites that I frequent would consider it. So I'm going to pick on family, if they're willing (America being a republic, I can't force them). So I'm going to pick on Holly, Becky, Patsy, Dana and ... hmm ... I know embarrassingly few real people. I'll leave it at four, particularly as I'm not expecting any response.

So there's random fact number eleven: I believe that having low expectations keeps a person from being disappointed.

Houston, we have a problem ...

Or I should say that I do, anyway.

I think I have a blogging addiction.

I started off with just one blog - this one. Then I started taking pictures and began my Domo blog. Then I started a third blog, a private one, as a journal of sorts.

And I've done it again.

I blame my mother.

I have an unhealthy obsession with English usage, and she has always encouraged it. She's as likely as I to point out inappropriate quotation marks and words pluralized with apostrophes. It was only a matter of time before I began photographing examples of abuse and looking for a place to display them. And the time has come.

I am pleased and slightly embarrassed to introduce you to my newest blogging effort, The Language Police. I have no way of predicting the update frequency, as I'm unsure how many examples of language misuse I can regularly capture in my camera phone. But rest assured that if I see it, I will photograph it, and I will share it.

It is, perhaps, worth mentioning that as I was setting up my new blog, I got an idea for another blog. I wonder if Blogger has a limit to the amount of bandwidth they'll allow me to waste at their expense. I should check on that.

And while I do that, I humbly suggest you check on my newest blog and let me know what you think. I am also accepting submissions, so keep your eyes peeled, and I may appoint you Language Police Officer status. I am the police chief, but I could always use a deputy.