Bitchy McBitcherson's Blog

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  • People Make Me TIRED

    A couple of weeks ago I made a black & white 8 X 10 ad for somebody to use in some dumbass program they were buying an ad in.

    Last week they contacted me wanting to know if I still had a copy, and wanting me to send a PDF of it to another email address. They were purchasing an ad in a new program. Let’s not even address the fact that the first ad was personalized to the program it was being printed in.

    I asked, “You are getting another 8 x 10 ad?” It is an usually large ad.

    He asked, “Does it matter?”

    (more…)

  • How do you spell pretzel?

    A couple of weeks ago a friend sent an IM that read:

    Do you want to do couples with me?

    She did not lead in with anything, it was my first message of the day from her.

    Having absolutely zero idea what she was talking about, I wrote back:

    Umm, I don’t know, are they attractive?

    She didn’t reply and amongst the many messages that followed she never explained, I had mostly forgotten about it, until a couple of days ago when we were in the middle of messaging about her yoga class.

    ME: I might look for a class
    HER: You could do couples with me
    HER: Saturdays at 8:30 am
    HER: It would be free for you
    ME: oh?
    ME: why?
    ME: what makes it couples?
    HER: They do poses where you lean against the other person
    ME: but you can just bring somebody and it is covered in your normal cost?
    HER: Yup, but only for couples
    ME: how long is the class?
    HER: An hour
    ME: do we have to pretend we are a lesbian couple?
    HER: Only if you want to

    That is how I ended up at a couples yoga class at 8:30 in the morning. I am NOT a flexible person. We’re talking mind body and spirit here, so yoga is a long road trip from my home state. Also, I am seriously NOT a morning person. What I AM, is cheap. I was willing to go, at least check out, what could be a free twice a week yoga class. I am able to embrace the fact that I suck at yoga.

    Before the class starts the instructor explains how couples yoga was about providing support, improving communication, and building trust. I give my friend *the look*. Then class began. It was mostly similar to a regular yoga class. – An adorable woman stands at the front of the class and tells us what she wants us to do, using terms that mean nothing to me, to describe positions that I could not get myself into after eating a bottle of muscle relaxants. For some things the couples are back to back, for some feet to feet. We are helping to push or pull each other and achieve an extra half inch of stretching.

    Then things take a yoga bend for the ridiculous. I find myself on my back, instructed to bend my knees and lift my legs, placing the bottom of my feet on my partner’s thighs. She is then instructed to lean all her weight forward and try to place her hands on the floor next to my head. This pushes my legs back into my chest and aims my knees for my ears and rolls my butt and lower back up off the ground. It is supposed to stretch my spine. If you are not laughing right this minute, I am not describing it correctly. Her face ends up about 2 inches from mine. Her mouth twitches as she fights back the desire to laugh and she gazes soulfully into my eyes and says, “Hello”.

    At this point, you might be tempted to imagine your favorite scene from an adult film, or Paris Hilton’s weekly internet accident. Stop. Replace the porn star chicks with two fat housewives in sweatpants. It is a comedy, and I am the star, but somebody forgot the camera (I hope).

    On the next couples pose I opt to let my partner go first, which turned out to be the wrong choice because she got the easy part. She is told to get into child’s pose . While I watch my partner do that, the instructor finishes going through the steps, and I glance back to find the instructor lying on her back on top of her partner, with her head slanted down toward the ground.

    I blink. Twice.

    “Umm, how am I supposed to get there?”
    “Just sit down on her, so your hips line up with each other.”

    Hips line up. Yeah, so what she is saying is that I should sit my ass on her ass. Dancing cheek to cheek. Visions of squashing her to death flash through my head, and I know if it happens, it is going to make the news. I manage to convince myself to sit and somehow lie back. I am not really enjoying it, so I ask how we are supposed to get off and am told to use goddess rising (this very slow graceful “sit-up” using your abdominals and really pushing your hips toward earth). I realize there is no way that is going to happen, so I roll off to one side.

    As we switch off, the instructor tells us to hold the pose as long as the partner on the bottom wants. We are helping them to stretch. I go into child pose and since that involves being face to the floor I cannot watch my friend try to figure out what to do, but I am sure she looked almost as awkward as I did. Soon we are back to back with hips up and heads down, and she says, “Tell me when you are done.” “Oh, I think I’m done,” I reply. She shifts her weight a bit trying to figure out what to do and awkwardly rolls off to the side onto her hands and knees. “You were supposed to get up with goddess rising,” I tease her. “What?! No way!” I guess she hadn’t heard what the instructor said, she was no doubt too busy worrying that I was going to squash her to death and we’d end up in the news. Few people want to waste their 15 minutes with a yoga incident.

    We make our way through the rest of the class and at the end as we are in our final relaxation the instructor comes by and picks up my legs and gently swings them and pulls loosening the hips and stretching the spine a bit. Then she gives a quick massage to my feet! I guess she is trying to get voted “most popular yoga instructor e-var”.

    As we leave my friend asks if I want to do it again. I tell her that I will think about it.

  • Seriously?

    I obviously do not have the proper female level of affection for clothing.

    I’m usually irritated when I need to buy new clothes. I have no idea what my “favorite article of clothing” might be. Invariably, if I like an item of clothing I spill something on it that won’t come out.

    I don’t want an outfit, chocolate or flowers for Valentine’s Day. I certainly don’t want to go out for dinner at a freakishly crowded restaurant. The whole Valentine’s Day concept pretty much gives me a rash, I guess the initials VD are fitting. I do admit that this is kind of cool.

  • Two New Bitches

    My friend adopted two abused dogs last week, and today I got to go meet them for the first time. They are female, and about ten months old and were taken from an owner that was both physically abusive and neglectful. They were apparently skeletons with fur when the foster family got hold of them and have put on a lot of weight, which is frightening because they are both still so very skinny, although these photos don’t show it too much.

    Both dogs were interested in me if I was looking the other way, but any sign that I was aware of them sent them running away terrified. The first night at my friend’s house they were a mess but have settled in and absolutely adore her now. She is retired and has the time to devote to them that they are going to need. Their life started out very rough, but they have found a good home now.

    My post is really meant to be about my friend though, rather than about these two dogs.

    Last night I got an email from her which I will share here.

    I just went to get on the computer and one of the new cuties has chewed through the wire to the charger and the battery is almost dead. I don’t even know if I can get back on but if you can suggest the fastest and best way to get a charger I would be very very happy.
    Miss and love you

    She is incredibly patient, kind and generous and I absolutely love her. These dogs are lucky to have found a home with her and I consider it a great honor and a privilege that she is my friend.

    To all those people who are always taking advantage of her and treating her like crap, I think just about as highly of you as I do the original owner of these dogs.

    Pepper (name subject to change)

    Bonnie (name subject to change)

    Below is the original lady of the house who is doing very well with the two new interlopers.

    April

  • Family Movie Night

    Last night we watched Jesus Camp. Overall I thought it was a well done documentary. If you watch the trailers available on their website you definitely have a very strong idea of what the film is like, it just goes on much longer. It does give a good opportunity to get to know the kids better than the trailer does. Also quite a bit of Ted Haggard footage is featured, which is of course made more interesting considering his recent history. Apparently he was not pleased with the movie, whereas Pastor Becky Fischer did not feel so negatively toward it.

    I am not sure if I think the film would have been more powerful without a dissenting point of view, but since they did choose to portray one, I am glad that they used Mike Papantonio as that voice. He is well spoken, and strong in his own Christian faith.

    The subject matter was definitely not one I felt any joy in watching, but it certainly provided the family with a topic of conversation for the evening.

    The Families on Fire Summer Camp has shut down temporarily due to vandalism at the location they rent out for the camp. I hope the people involved in that vandalism do not think that they did anybody any favors. The ministry is still active, and has yet another reason to stand strong. The vandalism makes it clear, that as with every issue, there are a great many assholes on every side of it.

    The Boys of Baraka is another piece by these filmmakers that has been in my Netflix queue for quite a while. After watching this, it will definitely be staying there, and might even move up a few spots.

  • I Smell Like I Sound

    Huh?

    I am certain those were not the lyrics I was mumbling back when I thought I was singing along to Hungry Like The Wolf a million years ago.

    Yep, I was playing Karaoke Revolution again. It is much easier to get high enough scores to open up new stuff on a song you find at least vaguely familiar. I was definitely no Duran Duranimal, but had reached the point where Hungry Like the Wolf was the last song left that was both somewhat recognizable AND a single note difficulty rating. The lyrics were much dumber than I would have guessed.

  • Rated F’d

    We watched This Film Is Not Yet Rated this weekend.

    The subject matter irritated me to no end, as everyone who knows anything about me knew it would. The movie itself, well I wish it had been a bit better. While the content was something I care about, it definitely was not one of the stronger documentaries I have seen.

    I do not like the MPAA. Actually I heartily dislike the entire system, and that is not all the MPAA’s fault. From the TV networks, to the theater owners, to the studios, to the big chain retailers, they all irritate me.

    I do not like to be told what I can and cannot watch. I do not like to be told what my kid should and should not watch. Most of all I hate for the general public to be relying on a largely arbitrary “stamp” to determine what they let their children watch. It completely infuriates me when they won’t even pay attention to those stamps and then want to complain because they don’t like what their kid watches (or plays). The nanny state does not protect children, it destroys society by relieving so called parents of their responsibility to actually parent.

    One of the useful things about the internet is that there are several sites that do provide detailed content information about films. G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17 and unrated mean nothing to me when it comes to deciding what I am comfortable allowing my daughter to watch. I want to know about themes. I want to know about scenes and the context of the scene. One of the sites that I used to check quite a bit, before they made it so incredibly broken and ugly for non-subscribers was screenit. I actually appreciated it enough that I did subscribe, but again, that was when it worked better for non-subscribers and then subscribers had perks. Now they make it rather unpleasant if you won’t subscribe, and I just preferred to support the old attitude.

    Anyhow, they have the following categories

    • Alcohol/Drugs
    • Blood/Gore
    • Disrespectful/Bad Attitude
    • Frightening/Tense Scenes
    • Guns/Weapons
    • Imitative Behavior
    • Jump Scenes
    • Music (Scary/Tense)
    • Music (Inappropriate)
    • Profanity
    • Sex/Nudity
    • Smoking
    • Tense Family Scenes
    • Topics To Talk About
    • Violence

    Which they first list off as mild, moderate, extreme, etc. If you see something that that makes you immediately certain you wouldn’t want to watch it, or let your child watch it, you can stop. If you are uncertain you can click down for detailed information. Which swear words, which body parts and how many, etc. Of course is you are looking for films with lots of full frontal, such a review can be useful too.

    This I find useful. PG-13 I don’t find useful at all.

    Now they could label a movie however they wanted and I wouldn’t care, except how they rate it affects me. If it is NC-17 a lot of theaters will not play it. They can’t place ads for it in many places. Walmart and Blockbuster won’t carry it. This means that they won’t be able to make nearly as much money, so there is a big push to cut it to an R. Instead of letting the actual consumers decide, the entire system is standing between artists and consumers and making choices on my behalf. Now they often release an unrated DVD later, but that just isn’t the same. For one thing, I have to wait until much later to see it. I do not have a giant screen and spectacular sound system in my house. Not only that, but in many of the cases the unrated DVD releases are no doubt different than the film they would have created if they had just been left alone to tell the story they wanted to tell. There is now added marketing pressure to make more of a difference between the R and unrated version. Then there is the other direction. Getting a G rating is a kiss of box office death if your core audience is about the age of 6, so they add a little extra crap (most often bodily function “humor”) to films to get at least that PG. The assignment of these ratings is affecting the films, leading us to a world with more product and less art.

    I won’t have anything to do with Blockbuster at all because of their policies on NC-17 movies. Their business, and they can run it their way, but I won’t give them my money. Actually I once quit a job over a policy shift along those lines at another video store, but that is a different story.

    Movies should all be rated R anyway, why should kids go see anything without a parent or guardian? Who is going to make them sit down and shut up and stop kicking my seat if they don’t have a parent with them? Oh wait, the parent will probably just be chatting on a cell phone, no doubt calling loudly to complain to a friend about how horrible it is that the movie showed a nipple. I hear so many parents complaining that a PG-13 movie had very objectionable content and should have been rated R. How many times are they going to fall for that PG-13 label and not do further research? Apparently over and over. Is every 13 year old they know the exact same maturity level as every 16 year old they know?

    I don’t even have the energy to start typing about how twisted it is that we seem to be so much more comfortable with violence in this country than we are with nudity. I did enjoy Darren Aronofsky’s assertion that bloodless, exciting, glorified, big action film violence should be for adults only, and lower rated movies should have to show painful, bloody, consequence filled violence instead.

    The MPAA is talking about making some changes, but small DIY improvements are not going to turn an outhouse into a mansion, or even a bathroom. Something is rotten in the state of asinine, power hungry, god fearing, we know what the world should be watching, homophobic, sexual repressed, braindead, holier than thou stupidity, but they are not going to do me the pleasure of bloodlessly cutting out the diseased whole.

    Netflix currently has Jesus Camp on the way to my house for my next viewing displeasure.

  • Kicking Ass and Taking Names

    Today the kid got her junior black belt.

    We are really proud of her. She has been studying for more than 7 years now, and it is a pretty big day, made even more poignant by the fact she is currently on leave from active workouts on doctors orders. She is in physical therapy and working her way back.

    kungfuzap collage

    In her art the belts and degrees are:

    • white
    • yellow
    • yellow first degree
    • yellow second degree
    • green
    • green first degree
    • green second degree
    • green third degree
    • brown
    • brown first degree
    • brown second degree
    • brown third degree
    • brown fourth degree
    • black (then 8 degrees until Master)

    Her belt is a junior black belt, but is well deserved. She is the first kid at her school to ever get one, and in general in her art kids are not given black belts. She works out with the adults too, and in that class she is ranked green. In her art nobody under the age of 16 can be given an adult black belt, period.

    It was a very special day, as several people she has known a long time also got promotions today. One boy, who is really a young man now, got his black belt. He used to live near us so his parents and I would switch off carpooling to class. Now he drives himself. He has turned into an amazing fighter. I love to watch him kick ass out there. Such far cry from when he was first allowed into the adult class.

    Two of our good friends got promotions too. One who we introduced to the school, got his black belt today. The second, that person introduced to the school. He got his green belt. A green belt for the adults is a big deal in the art. It is considered technically a professional, which means legally they are expected to have control over their actions and are responsible for them.

    Two guys got their second degree black belts today. These are guys I have known for years and years now. One has become a good friend of the family through the school. It is always so great to see them kicking some serious ass out there. Love it. I wish I could get better shots of the action, but the lighting there is piss poor.

    All in all, a big day.

    Congratulations to all.

    Just a few small pics for fun, more will be available on flickr later.

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  • I’m Welcome

    We went out to dinner the other night, and I ordered roasted chicken with steamed vegetables, and to start, a wedge salad (wedge of iceberg, with crumbled bleu cheese, bacon, and tomatoes) with the dressing on the side. The waiter repeated back the fact the dressing was supposed to be on the side. He also named the wrong type of dressing. I told him the correct type and reiterated “on the side”. He named the correct type and parroted back “on the side”.

    I freely admit it. I am high maintenance. At a really amazing restaurant with an excellent chef, I will eat whatever the hell they want to serve me, but at a marginal restaurant with marginal food I need to make some adjustments so that it becomes tolerable. Dressing on the side is one of those adjustments. I am picky about dressing and I think most of them are, at the very least, not worth the calories and the sodium that I would far rather wolf down in some other fashion, and a good many of them are downright disgusting.

    Most interesting salads (like those with real bacon on them, which is a great way to consume calories and sodium) have enough stuff going on that they taste good without any dressing. Boring salads are fine with pepper and some lemon on them. Some places have good dressing and then I pour it on.

    The kid ordered a kids meal, which comes with a drink, but the menu did not specify what the drink options were. She asked the waiter if she could get a hot tea with her kids meal. I wouldn’t have been shocked if he had said no, but at the same time the hot tea is the same price as the sodas which I know they offer, and cheaper than the lemonade which I also know they offer with the kid’s meal. He said that would be fine.

    We waited and waited. Our salads arrived. Mine had dressing on it. It was drowning in the stuff. We told the waiter that I had ordered it with the dressing on the side. He stood there looking at me blankly. I repeated myself and he looked at the salad. I explained that I don’t like very much dressing, so I get it on the side so that I can control the amount. He kept staring at me. We had to detail out that I wanted a new salad, with the dressing on the side. He agreed and wandered off.

    Thirty seconds later our dinners arrived. By our, I mean not the kid’s, because surely we wouldn’t all want to be served at the same time. Also, we of course don’t want our salads to arrive early enough to actually consume them prior to our meal arriving.

    I sat and waited for my salad. It arrived, with the dressing on the side. It was a much smaller wedge than before, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that it was missing the bleu cheese crumbles. I didn’t ask for no bleu cheese crumbles. Those help to make it taste good. I requested that they bring me the cheese. I tasted the dressing. It was some of the most disgusting dressing I have sampled in quite a while. I pushed it far aside so it couldn’t infect my salad through osmosis.

    The kid’s food finally arrived.

    The bleu cheese crumbles showed up and I ate my salad, and then my meal.

    When the bill came, they have charged us for her hot tea. I point out to the waiter that the drink was to be included with her meal. He looks at me blankly and then asks “Do you want a drink now?”

    “Umm, no, she had the tea with her meal, but you charged for it.”

    “Oh, the tea.”

    “Yes, she asked if she could get that with her kids meal…”

    “Do you want me to take it off the bill?”

    “That would be great. Thank you very much.”

    Cheerfully, “You’re welcome!”

    I smiled.

  • Turn Around Bright Eyes

    We rented Karaoke Revolution: American Idol and tried it out tonight.

    The American Idol aspect is totally R-Tarted. However the rest is very KR, and I do love KR.

    First let me just take the time to complain one more time, why the fuck does Harmonix keep making these games without any saved player or character carryover. I am so sick of everybody needing to reenter their info every time we get a new game. It is dumb. DUMB. If anybody from Harmonix ever happens by to read this, FIX THIS. Of course now that you were bought by MTV you will probably only become more suckful.

    Alright, so we are all sick, so KR is not really the game of choice, but Gamefly sent it, so there it was. The kid and I made new characters but we didn’t bother to use the EyeToy to put our own “Cameo Face” on the characters. For one thing, we already have been there, done that and they won’t let us move our fucking characters over. For another it is late and we feel like crap.

    Make characters, enter player names. Get started.

    I didn’t look up all the new song options, but I sang “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and “Just the Way You Are”. I sang them both on easy, because I am in a bad mood and don’t want to be rated harshly. Scored Platinum on both of them.

    The kid sang “Unwritten” and “Sugar We’re Going Down” also on easy, she does have a cold. I usually make her get rated at a harder level than me so it is more “fair” because in KR, I like to falsify a sense of fairness. She scored Diamond on both of them. Yeah, she kicked my ass, even with her snotty nose and froggy voice.

    It is mostly like KR except that if you choose the AI option the three dorks babble at you after you finish singing. Also at the end the winner sings an encore of the song they won with. I left and did not listen to the kid reprise her song. Not I was tired of listening to her, but because Indy hadn’t stopped farting the entire time we had been playing, and I couldn’t take it anymore. Nothing like playing karaoke with a dog fogging up the air.

    Anyhow, we bought it. I don’t think I will ever play the AI option again. It just made it take longer and wasn’t any fun. The rest of it was fine and it will be cool to have new songs to mess with. Now we just have to add in all our friends names again. We should be done by the time they come out with the next version.