And You're Tearing Up Your Photos 'Cause You Wanna Forget It's Over

It's 12:30 on 12/31/06, and she turns around and says over her shoulder, "I don't want to get married."

I say, "Me either."

"Let's just be freshmen," she says.

"Let's be freshmen forever," I say. "That is exactly what we need to do."

I was eighteen when I met her. We lived on the third floor of Whitman Hall in Canton, NY, and it was September, 1999. What happens to everything? That's what I want to know. I am telling you I could close my eyes and be there. I would go back in a second, in a snap of my fingers, no question. Back to the beginning. Back to stand there and wonder and worry and drink Blue and have angst and watch the snowflakes drift silently through the naked fingers of the trees. I wasn't cold then. I wasn't cold at all. Because the stars were stark and distant and reassuring, and the streetlights shone orange, and it sort of spun dizzily around you, and it was too beautiful to be cold.

But she is getting married tomorrow night. And this was seven years ago.

So we're telling this story tonight, a freshman year story, about how this one time I was partying in the track suite until 6-ish, and I make my way back to Whitman as the sun is hovering beneath the horizon and pondering coming up. I believe this is exam week as well. I knock on her door. She answers, and goes, "Where's my roommate?"

I say, "I left her there. She was hooking up with Ike in the laundry room!" [Brief detour while we crack up over how several people at the bachelorette evening also hooked up with Ike. In fact, I am not going to lie, a large portion of the night's conversation consisted of rehashing who hooked up with whom and falling into laughter over it.]

So we're standing there talking when Katie strolls in. It has to be at least seven by this time. She walks into the room, and nonchalantly goes, "So. I just left a guy naked. Tell you about it tomorrow. Good night."

But we didn't go to bed. We said, "Fuck it," and went to Dana and got breakfast. Never mind that we hadn't slept yet. It was just because. Because you're still drunk and it's 7:30 AM on a Friday morning, and goddamn is it fun to watch the good kids trek downstairs to breakfast before a rough day of studying. It was the end of my first semester, and I am still not convinced I ever managed to be more obnoxious in Dana in the next three years. But we went to Dana breakfast that morning. It was totally the thing to do. If you had been there, you would have done it, too.

Seven. No way is it seven. Two years, maybe. Three? Okay. But seven. I just counted it up on my fingers.

I am bad at these things. I let things drift. I mean to see people, and I mean to write about the moments I've never been able to get out of my mind, and I mean to really figure out what it all meant, really get it straight in my head, and I mean to call. I mean and I mean and I mean.

And then seven years.

Maybe it's the writer in me, but I feel this driving need to put my past in these little boxes, to get it down on paper, to fasten it in one place so it won't drift. I am telling you, the drifting scares me. Because I want it to be there if I need it. I want it to be there so someday I can look at it and think suddenly, "Oh! That's what this meant." I want everyone to be there. This is what he said to me. This is what she wore. This is what we did on this exact night. This is how it was.

Seven years! No fucking way. Sometimes I feel like I don't know who I am anymore.

"I'm gonna stay eighteen forever
So we can stay like this forever
And we'll never miss a party
'Cause we keep them going constantly
And we'll never have to listen
To anyone about anything
'Cause it's all been done and it's all been said
We're the coolest kids and we take what we can get
You're just jealous 'cause we're young and in love
Your stomach's filled up but you're starved for conversation
And you're spending all your nights growing old in your bed
And you're tearing up your photos
'Cause you want to forget it's over"

New Toys

Yesterday I spent my Christmas money on a digital camera. Yes, I know, with the amount of photos I take and post, and with the amount of Gimp graphics work I do, it might come as a surprise that I do not have a digital camera. I actually don't even have a film camera, since my cheap ass Kodak from college got wet during Katrina and stopped working. Mostly I use Mike's, but his isn't really small enough to take with me in a purse (well, it is, but to the exclusion of all other items such as lip gloss and sunglasses, which are essential items). I got a Nikon Coolpix L3, which is a lower end model that is quite tiny. The resolution and features are good enough to do anything I'll ever want to do. I've been tinkering around with it a little bit. Unfortunately, the esteemed Jolee Bindo is not here to act as an unwilling test shot subject. However, the Grouch, our fifteen-year-old holy terror in retirement, was more than happy to pose. (Yes, that is indeed the kitchen table.)

Geeking Out In Upstate NY

My brother got me Lego Star Wars II for Christmas, and I spent a couple of hours putzing around in it. (It's a children's game, yet I keep falling off cliffs.) I can't install it on my computer, to my disappointment. My laptop only has an ATI Radeon 7500, which is several years old and doesn't support pixel shading or some such nonsense. I will have to either put the game on Mike's PC with the dead LCD screen, or get us a gaming tower that we can set up with the nice monitor (not a bad idea, actually). For now we put it on Bryan's new laptop.

We also installed a wireless router here and had a supremely geeky moment where we were all on our separate laptops in a family chat. Which would have been cute had we not been sitting roughly four feet apart at the time. Now all we need to do is plug in and boot up Neverwinter Nights on our respective computers and go raid dungeons together!

Ha. Or not.

Merry Christmas!

Festive Christmas Rejection

No, seriously, I just got my best rejection ever-- on DCDS: The Short Story. Strange Horizons actually took time to send me a personal e-mail with some good feedback suggestions. I think they had the story about 40 days. It was my first time submitting there. They said try the print prozines just in case, because someone might bite on it (though I think I've already got most of them). I like that it was more than a form rejection, and was surprised that the editor had also perused my website. It really gives me a good opinion of them as a market.

They're right, really. The story is not very tight structurally (composed of alternating past and present scenes, at least one of which I know could go, but then it would screw up the alternating, so I left it in) and it's too long. It's the length that makes it a problem, as most places prefer stories of 3-6K words. I've tried paring it down, but I can't seem to do it without losing bits I like. I will definitely ponder it more, but I'd rather send it a couple more times and spend my time finishing up a few others I've been working on. I'm not wedded to every single one of those scenes... half of them are in the novel anyway.

I have one or two more stories that are very close to being ready. Mike is always bugging me to submit more, and I know I need to, but my definition of "ready" is very picky. Anyhow, I am going to plug Strange Horizons. I really enjoy the stuff on their site, and will submit to them again.

Haha

Mike just rolled over in bed and clearly said, "The point is, it's not him." Then he pulled up the covers and continued to sleep.

Well? Who is it then? ;-)

Major Shopping Coup! A Story in Thirteen Acts

1. I went to Lakeside Mall, Esplanade Mall, and Magazine Street this week in what was beginning to seem like a futile search for a holiday dress. My college friend Ryan is getting married New Year's Eve, and I suddenly came to the realization that all women dread... I hated all my clothes and had... seriously... nothing... to wear.

2. My criteria: something shiny, under $100 but willing to stretch it as high as $120 (I have paid more for dresses I really, really liked, but this is a tricky financial month for me with tuition due early in January), a size 0-4, something red!, or gold!, preferably something to match my amazingly gorgeous gold velvet BCBG shoes which we all know I love. Honestly. It is the holiday season. These criteria should not be hard to fulfill. Right?

3. Wrong. There was nothing that called to me, "Wear me!" Even if it had been in my size, which most things weren't. I am just going to point out that it is actually really, really hard to shop when you are skinny. Especially if you are tall and skinny. It's like that whole thing with boob size-- women who want bigger ones don't realize that the women WITH bigger ones hate them and want smaller ones. I am so over being told, "Did you check in Juniors? They have your size there."

4. So today I went to Canal Place, which was my Last and Only Hope of finding a dress in New Orleans.

5. I went in BCBG and would not even allow myself to try on. It was an act of rigid willpower, since there were several cute, cute dresses. But I was committed to staying strictly on budget, since I have zero dollars to my name right now. No $300 dresses for Sarah.

6. I went to White House Black Market, even though I didn't want another black dress. (True to the name, they only sell dresses that are black... or white. Or sometimes beige or silver.) Unless it had some sort of trim or detailing that matched my gold shoes. And I sort of wanted red, too. I wanted color. Christmas-y color. So I sort of walked through the store quickly, then continued on my way.

7. In Ann Taylor I tried on a black strapless dress, with a rose pattern and a poofy skirt. It was on sale for $78. I had tried on the same dress at the other mall. It looked good, but... I told them to hold the size 0 while I did ONE last check to make sure there was absolutely nothing else.

8. Back at White House Black Market, scanning the sale rack with greater attention. Nothing really called to me, again, but then, I figured it couldn't hurt to see what a couple of them looked like on. I picked two dresses and went in the dressing room. The girl brought me black heels to test out the dress with. I zipped up the first dress, which was shiny and black, with off-white ribbon designs on the bodice, put on the shoes, and stepped out.
9. Both girls in the store were like, "Wow." I kind of agreed. I asked, "Why is this dress on the sale rack? It's gorgeous." They said you would be surprised... it didn't fit a lot of people quite right, and bunched up on the sides. It looked perfect on me, though. Must be my tiny Scarlett O'Hara-esque waist. The dress had nice retro lines to it. I am sucker for that look. It was growing on me by leaps.

10. The girl said, "Can I ask you why you wouldn't get it?"
I said I wasn't actually looking for black, because I had these other shoes.
"A lot of people have that problem," she said.
I said, "But I have equally nice and expensive black shoes that I am not opposed to wearing, either. And this dress is kind of perfect. I am starting to feel like it's meant to be."
She said, "I think that's the best I've seen that dress fit."
I said, "I'm not even trying the other one on. I know better than to question the shopping karma."

11. The dress was $168, which had been marked down to $130. It was on the additional 40% off rack. It rang up as $77. Seventy-seven dollars! Including tax! Whee! So by far the best dress I tried on ended up being the cheapest. I win... at life.

12. When I got home, I put on my dress and gloated for about half an hour. I even took pictures of myself in the mirror. I apologize for the crappy quality of the photos (I had to turn the flash off). I hope you get the general effect, though you can't see the lovely shininess, which is a pity. Sometimes you just need to pose and gloat.

13. Now I am watching White Christmas, thoroughly satisfied with myself. And that is one holiday shopping coup in the books!

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My Mortal Enemy

To the scary lemon spider at work:

THIS IS WAR. When you tried to chop my finger off this summer, I took it for an accident. It went almost down to the bone and hurt like hell and bled all over, leaving a lovely scar on the middle finger of my right hand. I mean, all I was trying to do was cut lemons into wedges so the losers at my tables can have lemons with their iced teas. An iced tea. With a wedge of lemon. It is not that hard a concept to grasp, yet it seems to make people inordinately happy. Some of them even request several lemons! So you see, clearly I have been trying to work with you on this lemon cutting thing.

I want you to know I also hold you indirectly responsible for the chunk of scar tissue that NEVER GOES AWAY EVEN THOUGH IT HAPPENED IN LIKE SEPTEMBER, next to the fingernail on the middle finger of my OTHER hand. Because I would never have been using a steak knife to cut those lemons if it weren't for the fact that you terrify me.

Yes, you, lemon spider. You, of the four sharp blades and the sleek guillotine-esque lines. You, who sit creepily watching me from your perch on the cutting board next to the Coke dispenser. You are a machine of death, lemon spider, but I thought we had learned to keep a wary distance from each other... until today.

I don't know how you do it. How is it you manage to come up with so many different ways of injuring me? You are, after all, just a metal guillotine for lemons. But today I was wedging lemons, and when I slammed the blade down, you managed to somehow catch my hand between the edges of your heavy metal clamp. "Holy fucking SHIT!" I yelled, grabbing my hand. But there was no blood this time. There is, however, a massive bright red blood blister in the middle of a bruise on the palm of my hand. And it really really hurts.

Anyhow, lemon spider, I want you to know that I hereby declare war on you.

You are trying to kill me. But now I'm onto you. So watch out.

Sincerely,

Sarah

Tags: work, lemon spider

Go Saints!

Mike: We're going to Cooter's to watch the game. Do you want to come?
Me: Well... maybe... well...
Mike: What you're trying to say is, you care about the Saints game. You plan to watch the Saints game, but you want to watch it while on your computer doing something else. You don't want to go somewhere where you will have to solely watch the Saints game.
Me: That's it!!!
Mike: I'll just leave the TV on then. Bye.

Tags: saints

Forest Mage... Thoughts

Last night I pretty much knocked out Robin Hobb's Forest Mage between the hours of 1:30 and 4:30 AM. (If this sounds like an odd time to begin a book, remember that I don't actually get home from work on Thursdays until midnight.) I was just going to read for a few minutes, but then I got into it... and then the creepiness started occurring. A huge chunk of the plot revolves around a mysterious plague, during which our narrator ends up working as a gravedigger. I was OK with this, until the bodies of plague victims started reanimating themselves and walking around. I was like, "OK, that is it. No more." I don't know if I've mentioned it here (probably, at some point), but I have this irrational fear of dead people. I tend to blame it on my dad making me look at the mummies at the Museum of History and Art when I was about 7. Yeah. So here I am at 3:30ish, thinking it is way too late and I should set the book down and go to sleep. Except now I was too creeped out to sleep, because I kept thinking about dead plague victims walking around. So I just kept reading.

This was the second book of a trilogy. It continues the Robin Hobb trend of abusing her protagonists. Poor Nevare and Fitz. Come to think of it, she refrained from abusing anyone in the Liveship books. No, wait. Wintrow's own father tattooed his face with a slave tattoo and then shortly afterward his hand got cut off. But that was the first book, and things really did go up from there... really.

Tags: robin hobb, forest mage

Four. Point. O.

Continuing my streak, my grades for this semester appear to have been posted online and are an average of... 4.0. (4.0 plus 4.0 divided by two is... by George, 4.0.) This has been sort of a crappy semester for me, since only two classes I needed were offered. Originally I had thought I would get certified after one year and maybe a summer, but it will end up being two years. Katrina interfered with a lot of my plans, and I will be glad to get my teaching certification finally. Of course, then I'll probably spend another two years finishing the Master's. I'll work on that while I'm teaching. Technically, I could be teaching right now, but I wanted to see how the school situation in New Orleans shook down before getting into the job hunt.

So far at UNO, I have a cumulative GPA of 3.73. That's a pretty nice GPA! Of course, education classes are not exactly rocket science. I will be taking three classes next semester: my English methods course, one on information literacy, and my last internship.

Tags: grad school

Thirteen Things I Want to Do In My Life

1. Publish a book.

2. Purchase my own boat. Preferably of the 20-30 ft variety. Of course, one that sails. Any other kind hardly counts as a boat. (Sailors are snobs.)

3. Travel to Europe.

4. Travel to Africa.

5. Live in an old Victorian house. (With a tower? Dare I hope?)

6. Learn some kind of martial art.

7. Play Star Wars: KOTOR 3. If they ever get around to making it. Sigh.

8. OK, so now we're getting a little off topic because I technically don't have any control over these things, but can I watch another Firefly/Serenity movie? I would certainly want to do that in my life. If someone, ahem, made one.

9. Learn to cook good desserts. I don't know how to make any desserts, except cake out of the box.

10. Have one wall that is entirely built-in bookshelves.

11. Go into space! Do you think, maybe, in like 50 years, this will be something we can just up and do? Maybe? I wonder if the vastness would freak me out completely. But then, I majored in philosophy. I think I could handle it.

12. Wake up in the morning and be able to actually SEE. That is, before I stumble into the bathroom to put in contacts with strength -5.75 into each eye. I am totally sketched out by Lasik, because I don't trust people with lasers around my eyeballs, but I really might get it someday.

13. Own a house in the Adirondacks. I could "summer" there. I could watch the fog hover above the lake in the mornings, and listen to loons, and go canoeing. Just a little crappy camp, that's all. It doesn't even need a road, as long as it has a dock.

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Tags: thursday thirteen

Oh, fine! But ONLY Because I am Busy And Don't Feel Like Making a Real Post

"Your underwear is MINE, human! ALL MINE! Muahahaha."

Tags: jolee, cat

P.S.

You may have noticed I am currently a Jedi. This is because I got sick of the picture I had. It was taken in May, and my hair doesn't look like that anymore. I am in the process of sifting through my files to see if I can find a new one that I like. For the present, however, I am a Jedi with a double-bladed purple lightsaber. If this angers you because you feel it compromises the whole point of a user picture, never fear. You can rest assured that this Jedi does bear an approximate resemblance to me. I even have a cute little ponytail.

Thanks. Carry on.

Tags: blogging, user photo

So Pretty is My Kitty

Deep in the heart of the universe there must be an answer to the question of why the words "pretty" and "kitty" rhyme with each other. There has to be a reason for this.

Clearly it is so I can make up absurd poetry while talking to my cat. Who happens to be both pretty and a kitty, although, as a rather large male cat, I believe he might find such references to be slightly emasculating.

[This entry will not include a picture of my cat, because we have had too many lately, and I don't want people to think that all I do is take pictures of my cat. Who is doing something very cute at this very moment that, unfortunately, the internet will not be privy to. You will just have to imagine it.]

Tags: jolee, cat

The Lies of Locke Lamora

I am all over this book like my cat on clean laundry. Read: rolling and stretching and generally basking with a smirk. The reviews I'd read of it said it was... well, not light, per se, but a fun page-turner. Not amazingly deep, but a good ride. I am loving it so far, but I find myself reading quite slowly, taking long breaks. Like tonight I haven't read any of it yet. (I currently sit about 3/5 of the way through.) It seems this is going to be one I will NEED the sequel to immediately, yet the sequel won't be out till next summer. Rats. I don't suppose I can hold off on finishing it for more than one more day. And then it'll be on to Robin Hobb's Forest Mage, I expect.

But. Lies of Locke Lamora. It is about thieves. Gangs of thieves. Think The Sting in pseudo-renaissance Venice, with cons and scams and a well-thought out underworld with its own rituals and slang. I say pseudo because there is some magic involved, making it plain that we are not in alternate history: we are "somewhere else." (Also, I believe I caught a throwaway reference to there being three moons.) There's a lot of really bad language, and really fun characters. Though the love interest that we never actually see onscreen is a bit annoying... I do love a good love interest. Anyway, these thieves are in the middle of pulling a scam on an unsuspecting noble, involving many disguises, when a new enemy appears in their little underworld and makes a play for power that puts them all in extreme danger. There is a blurb from GRRM on the cover, which means I was not surprised that Scott Lunch doesn't seem to have any qualms about killing off characters. At the moment, Locke and his friends seem like they're pretty much fucked, and I am not sure how they'll get out of this mess. But I'm sure they do, because it is the first of a projected seven adventure novels. And the next one has pirates! (Dies of joy... I probably do not need to profess for the seven millionth time my desire for nautical fantasy to become a valid and popular sub-genre.)

Tags: books, fantasy, scott lynch, lies of locke lamora

A Streetcar Named St. Charles

Yesterday I was driving through Chalmette and making mental note of the progress in the last several months. The drive came shortly after reading this editorial in yesterday's Times Picayune, on the subject of how to deal with other well-meaning Americans who just don't get it. I think it is easy for people to forget what happened here. It's become easier for me to forget. I live Uptown, which was largely spared. However, I also live just south of Broadmoor, and my daily drives take me through Gentilly and Central City. So I'm not that insulated. I've come to the realization that you can't dwell on it every day, or it takes a toll on you.

But it's strange, the things that become "normal." The other day I drove past a work crew erecting shiny new traffic lights at our intersection, and I was so excited I got on the phone to call Mike about it. Every couple days, a building you've driven by every day is just gone, demolished, either a flat pile of sticks or an eerie slab wiped clean. The day after Thanksgiving, we enjoyed a decadent lunch at Commander's Palace, the first time I've been since it reopened, and commemorated the occasion with a tourist-like photo under the sign (taken by the valet parking boy). We wandered upstairs, and through all of the dining rooms, just to get a look at the place: what had changed, and what was the same. And now you can actually get gas on Claiborne. This seems like a given, seeing as it's right by the I-10 exit, but really the gas stations there were closed for a year. Gas on Claiborne is a recent thing, in the last couple of months.

Taco Bell. This one is poignant for me. I admit to strange and unhealthy cravings for Taco Bell. I would live on chalupas if I thought the grease and cheese and mystery chicken wouldn't make me gravely ill. What used to be the Taco Bell on Claiborne-- and, in fact, the only Taco Bell in the Metro area not counting the one on Chartres street that closed-- has reopened, but it's not Taco Bell anymore. It's some dubious fast food restaurant that, from the neon signs in the window, somehow serves Chinese food and po-boys. Heartbreakingly, it still looks exactly like a Taco Bell. Oh, Taco Bell, where art thou? The one just over the border into Jefferson Parish is also gone. I drove by the dead one in Chalmette yesterday. The Taco Bell people seem to have up and pulled out of New Orleans. I have been to the one in Algiers, and the one in Belle Chasse. But if anyone knows of a Taco Bell on the east bank, you need to let me know ASAP.

Even with the flurry of demolishings and reopenings, it still seems like there's something missing. It occurs to me that I think it's the streetcars. My first apartment in New Orleans was two blocks off St. Charles, and my second apartment (fated to live in infamy for having the roof come off and the ceiling cave in twice in one summer) was four blocks away. You could sit on the porch and hear this strange muted roar, this clicking and clattering punctuated by the occasional ringing of a bell. The St. Charles streetcars are old green monsters from another era, and they are loud. Or, they were. They are gone now.

But I remember when I used to take the streetcar to work in the CBD. I used to wait under the yellow sign, sweltering in the heat, with my dollar and a quarter. I used to sit on the wooden seat and lean out the open windows, watching the mammoth columned houses slide by. Everything sort of slides by on the streetcar. You don't ride the streetcar to get places fast. You don't ride if you want climate control, either. There is no AC on the streetcar, and the windows are almost always open. The one time I've gone running on the neutral ground on St. Charles, I still kept looking over my shoulder, out of habit, waiting for the streetcar to roar up and scare the shit out of me. I expected it, but it wasn't there. Just an empty dirt-filled median, with wires dangling down here and there. If there were streetcars on St. Charles right now, they would be rumbling along with greens garlands and red bows affixed to their fronts. The streetcars were always decorated for Christmas. I miss them.

RTA's goal is to have the streetcars in operation by late 2007. I hope this happens. I hear they are supposed to be running them from Canal to Lee Circle starting this month. The restaurant where I work is close to Lee Circle. I think they've been testing the line, because sometimes a streetcar will go by, one of the green ones, pushed or pulled by an RTA truck. We all stop what we're doing and point out the window. "Streetcar!" I think they ought to publish it in the paper, next fall, when the first post-Katrina streetcar will make its run down St. Charles. I would get up for it. Even if it was at 5 AM. I would get up and walk the seven blocks down Octavia Street to St. Charles Avenue and wait for it. I would wait for it under the oak trees.

You ask me, when will New Orleans be back?

When the green streetcars roll down St. Charles Avenue, and not before.

Tags: new orleans, uptown, streetcars, katrina, recovery

Testing

OK, I just migrated to Blogger Beta, which seems to have gone well except for the fact that it's anonymous-ized several of my previous comments. I don't know whether that depends on what kind of Blogger account you guys have. I see I can now use labels for my posts. I might incorporate that into my sidebar... but then, I already use Technorati tags, so would that look stupid with both? I don't know, I was going to move my whole blog off "the Spot," but I have free hosting for my site, and I won't be able to if my blog is there. It would take up too much space and bandwidth. Blogger has never eaten any of my posts or given me any disasters like it appears to have given others. So I'm going to stay here for now, and continue to upgrade my other site, until I have enough extra cash kicking around to buy a nice hosting package.

ETA: Yes, I do believe that does look stupid.

Tags: blogger beta, blogging

Imagine My Surprise

You are a Social Liberal (71% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (11% permissive) You are best described as a: Socialist Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Tags: politics

In Which We Use Our Mad L337 Haxor Skilz

I am peeing myself laughing. Seriously.

It didn't get to be popular until after I graduated from college, so I missed out on most of the fun, but I do have an account on Facebook. So does my brother, and a number of people I know from college, though most of us now have accounts associated with our graduate schools. Recently, Facebook stopped requiring a college e-mail and just let anyone sign up to join. This week my dad, who is a professor, found out that some of his students had created a fake profile for him on Facebook. It was obviously fake because our last name was spelled incorrectly. My dad asked, "What does it say? Can you see it?" I said I couldn't. You had to ask my fake dad to add you as a friend in order to see the page. I doubted they would add me, since it was blatantly obvious that I was related to him. Nevertheless, I said I would attempt to infiltrate the page. Apparently, the kids who made it were not the brightest bulbs in the box. They added me as a friend, giving me access to the page. There wasn't a lot to it, but some things were mildly offensive. I mentioned it to my brother tonight before dinner. He said, "I'm going to add them." I told him not to, because two of us might tip them off that we were onto them. And besides, maybe they just added me because I'm a cute girl. (Which was their FIRST mistake. Heh.) I gave my brother my account info so he could sign in as me and see for himself. Then I went to cook stir fry.

I get done eating dinner, and the phone rings. It is my brother. Seems our darling community college students put the dumbest password ever on the Facebook account, and Bryan guessed it on the second try. It gets better. They made the mistake of using the same password for the Yahoo e-mail address they used to set up the fake profile of my dad. My brother wastes no time in changing both passwords to something only we would know. So basically, we own them. They are locked out of both accounts. We own their entire identity. I feel no moral qualms whatsoever over this because it was a fake identity to begin with. And they messed with the clan.

The question became what to do with our dad's fake profile. Clearly, we now owned their account. We had to fuck with them. Immediately we went in and deleted all the stuff we found borderline offensive. Like the pictures of the Rockstar energy drink and the Hooters Girls. We left the rest of the pictures, except we changed the captions to make fun of the students who made the site. It was clear who had made the site because they added themselves as friends. They were, in fact, my fake dad's only friends. They had put a picture of N Sync in their album. Bryan went and tagged the picture with the kids' names. (When you tag people in a photo album, it sends them a nice little email, which makes this even more amusing.) I said, "We should make an album of really, really lame pictures and tag them in it. Except I'm trying to think of something gayer than N Sync... but it's just not coming." Hey, we're not the ones who put the N Sync picture on there. Fitting, indeed. We changed our fake dad's "Current Status" to "laughing an evil laugh." We added a couple of activities (Hacking. Kicking Ass. Taking Names. Failing Moronic Students.) I threw in some stupid hacker speak. Then we added ourselves as friends and wrote notes on our fake dad's wall, agreeing with the previous notes that, yes, it was a fine site indeed.

We also made a group, titled it "I Tried to Make a Fake Profile for my Prof But Got Shut Down by Hackers," complete with a picture (see left), a group description that says "You all got owned," and we set ourselves up as the administrator, and gave ourselves the title "L337 HAXOR #1." Then we personally sent them all invitations to join our group.

Mike pointed out that if they had secret password questions, they could get back their accounts. We changed the password prompt on the Facebook account to something only we would know. But the Yahoo account proved more difficult. They used "What is your birthday?" Well, their fake profile for our dad listed a birthday of 1/2/55. We went for that. Score. Except there was a second question. "What make was your first car/bike?"

"Fuck," types my brother on IM. And then, a few seconds later, "These guys have sunk to a new low of retardation."

They used our dad's car.

We finally had to stop. But I can't help dropping in every 20 minutes to admire our work and giggle helplessly over it. It is just that beautiful. Of course, we'll probably just delete the account once we've had our fun. But I hope it confuses the hell out of them. (We suspect it's a couple of them getting a laugh out of pretending to be our dad, which would explain why the password was so easy.) I hope they're like, "Dude! Who changed the page? Dude! It wasn't me! What the--??" It is pretty obvious from our snarky comments that it was us. But I likened it to my favorite scene in the movie The Sting, which I happened to watch a couple of weeks ago. The gangster's guy fumes, "I KNOW I gave him four threes! He had to have made a switch!" And Lonnigan snaps back, "What was I supposed to do? Call him for cheating better than me in front of the others?" There's no way these kids can report us for stealing their identity. Because they stole our dad's first.

Our dad has not seen "his" fake site. He doesn't really need to, now. He was going to try and have it deleted by the Facebook administrators. It's not necessary.

...We'll just tell him we took care of it. ;-)

Providing Useful Answers To Life's Questions Since July 2005

Here are some questions/phrases that directed Googling folks to the blog this week. I will try to answer them to the best of my ability. Because it's nice to provide at least some public services. I like to think of it as giving back to the internet community. Thus, I will now commence to dispense advice.

hot soup on feral cat food
I don't know where to go on this one. Is it asking whether to PUT hot soup on food that you leave out for feral cats? Or did someone FIND some hot soup on food that was left out for feral cats, and wonder whether this was some sweeping nationwide trend or some strange cat-attracting trick he or she hadn't heard of? I have some expertise in this, since I put out food for feral cats. So my answer is going to be, No. Shit, no, man. That's just weird. Feral cats do not want your soup.

lsat ruined my life
Well, I was going to sort of commiserate here, but actually it was law school that ruined my life. I didn't really study for the LSAT. I still did OK, though. I got a 162. Despite having to get up at the asscrack of dawn and despite the fact that someone had forgotten to turn the heat on in Hepburn Hall, so I took the entire test in a pea coat, a hat, gloves, and a scarf... Come to think of it, that did sort of ruin my life. Or at least 6 valuable drinking hours of my weekend.

what are craisens
They are like raisins. With cranberries. Dried out cranberries. Cr-raisins. Get it?

This has been a public service.

Really F&%@*ing Cold... And No Books

OK, so SFBC needs to get off their butts and send me my books, over which I have been drooling with anticipation for two weeks. I realize there was a holiday. I realize the books were free, so there is no reason to nitpick how long they take. I realize I live in a post-apocalyptic mail zone. I know all these things. But I still want my box of books. The idea of that box of books got me through work today. Now I am quite vexed.

Oh, the sad sight of my cold empty porch with no giant box of books on it.

In other news, as the title of this post says, it is really f&%@*ing cold. People who live in Caribbean climates should not have to tolerate this. I feel there must be a rule somewhere that says this. It has been between 30 and 40 all day. And there is no heat in our office. Jolee Bindo has his nose buried under his feet. Since I have no fresh happy selection of books to read tonight, I will be forced to play KOTOR 2 again. I expect this will irritate me, because I saved myself into a sticky spot last night and I can't seem to get out of it. I am being attacked by 6 guys at once, and I don't have time to queue up any actions or take any stimulants before they chop us up. Major oops. My character's name is Anaxa Fortuna (Jedi Guardian Level 13). I am playing this time through using this super well-done Twi'lek skin, which you can download here.

Tags: kotor 2

Girl and Cat Regard Each Other Across A Swath of Silver Trees

Tags: jolee, cat

An Actual Conversation @ Cooter Brown's Last Week

Bryan: So you're saying you don't like The Princess Bride?
Mike: I hate that movie.
Me: He's so weird. Everyone likes that movie.
Bryan: But... you like other stuff like it, don't you? You like Star Wars. Do you like Willow?
Mike: I love Willow.
Bryan: Well!
Me: I know!
Mike: Willow has Madmartigan. The Princess Bride only has that guy who keeps going on about "you kill my father, prepare to die." It's repetitive.
Me: Willow does have Madmartigan.
Bryan: I can't believe you don't like The Princess Bride. The Princess Bride is great.
Mike: So do you share your sister's opinions about the Star Wars prequels?
Me: Of course he does.

Straight from the mouths of actual real-life geeks who grew up in the 80's. (But I really am watching Willow right now.)

Tags: movies, geekdom