Niff.Dot

>So, I will now confess that I have a problem with breeders. I’m sorry if you are one, but that’s just my opinion. Having one or two kids, fine. Five and six is just excessive and indulgent. The human race is not dying out. Quite the opposite. There are too many of us. 10,000 years ago the earth’s population ranged from 1-10 million people. There are now over 6 billion people. The numbers continue to increase logarithmically — so that there will be 8 billion by 2020. There is an upper limit to the carrying capacity of humans on earth — of the numbers that agriculture can support — and that number is usually estimated at between 13-15 billion. The more people, the more agriculture required to sustain such a population, hence the less land devoted to naturally existing ecosystems, and ultimately accelerating the process of extinction. That may sound a wee bit dramatic, but we as people are causing our own demise by our inability to don a rubber or pop a damn pill. I don’t want to hear the “I can’t afford The Pill” crap. Planned Parenthood gave me The Pill for $10 a month when I was in college. No problem. And I was damn broke when I was in college.
I can personally attest to the fact that there are too many people by the large number of people that successfully piss me off and hence make me aware of their existence.

According to Wikipedia (I love that site!):

The world’s current agricultural production, if it were distributed evenly, would be sufficient to feed everyone living on the Earth today. However, many critics hold that, in the absence of other measures, simply feeding the world’s population well would only make matters worse, natural growth will cause the population to grow to unsustainable levels, and will directly result in famines and deforestation and indirectly in pandemic disease and war.
Some other characteristics of overpopulation:

-Child poverty
-Birth rate is high
-Life expectancy is low
-Low level of literacy
-High rate of unemployment in urban areas (leading to social problems)
-Rural people are not gainfully employed (caught in cycle of poverty)
-Insufficient arable land
-Little surplus food
-Poor diet with ill health and diet-deficiency diseases (e.g. rickets)
-GDP per capita is low (under US$765 per annum)
-Many live in unhygienic conditions
-Government is stretched economically
-High crime from people who steal resources to survive
-Mass extinctions of plants and animals as habitat is used for farming and human settlements

Okay, so, “blah blah blah Jenn what the hell is the point of all this I was not in the mood for a social studies lesson…”

Well, I covered the topic of overpopulation as a preface to this news story I saw on MSNBC and became promptly irritated:

This woman from Arkansas just had her sixteenth child. Sixteenth. Why? And I don’t want to hear this “Gift from God ” and “Well of Souls” business. Have your religious beliefs, that’s fine. But not at the expense of the current poverty and famine rates of the planet. For Pete’s sake. They have their own documentary on the Discovery Health channel and another one planned for the Learning Channel. Yes, lets encourage their senseless breeding by rewarding them with the notoriety that comes from cable channels and news broadcasts. The python that tried to swallow an alligator in Florida and lost, that’s interesting news. But this kind of nonsense just pisses me off. In the process of my husband and I researching adoption from China, I discovered that there are hundreds of thousands of children in orphanages worldwide. Abandoned and unwanted, with substandard care, they need homes and parents and dogs and goldfish and birthday parties; they deserve to have healthy, happy lives, to be loved and cared for. But these people, in only what I can dub as an extraordinarily selfish act, have bred 16 times, and, according to the article, are planning to have more. Whaddahell. I hate to make statements like “some people should be sterilized”, but, seriously, some people should be sterilized. Damn, I am irritated. In case you didn’t know.

If you don’t agree with me on this, that’s cool, you’re entitled to your opinion. If you disagree and I have successfully pissed you off, too bad. It’s my blog.

voulez-voulez-vous breeders

> Ba da ba ba, ba da ba ba…Ba da ba ba, ba da ba ba…Ba da ba ba, ba da dee da dee da…

I had the world’s shortest work day today (6am – 9am) which afforded me the opportunity to carve my pumpkin. I’m not so sure the pumpkin had all that good of a time, but I know Duke did. It appears he is quite fond of pumpkin seeds. I named the former pumpkin KooFodder. I just need to keep reminding Koo that it is indeed no longer fodder, it is festive autumn decor. He is having problems with that idea. We’re working on it.

I was also able to unload the dishwasher. Not quite as much fun as the pumpkin carving.

I also picked at my ‘pain in the ass’ painting.

I’ve been working on this damn thing one dollop of paint at a time for 11 months. I just keep looking at it as this insurmountable task that looms over me while I’m at my desk. Will I ever finish it? Dunno. I got a dollop done today though. Graphite gray dollop. Graphite gray kicks ass. My doodle painting is coming along also; been picking at that while I watch TV in the evenings.

The doodle is one single line. I kid you not. It is a tricky doodle. When it’s completed the entire background will be black. It’s also a tedious doodle. Although there is no graphite gray in the doodle painting. Mars black and titanium white are in the doodle painting. That’s it. It’s only 24′ x 24′, so much less picking time involved. The cathedral painting is 32″ x 70″, so quite a lot more picking is involved. Doodle painting would look like a bad acid trip on a canvas 32″ x 70″. I would also probably look like a bad acid trip after painting a doodle painting on a 32″ x 70″ canvas. No grand-scale doodle paintings for me. Well, maybe not yet. I just like saying ‘doodle’. Doodle doodle doodle doodle. Doodle.

I’m thinking if there are any other pictures I can bust out in this thing. This is a very photo-intensive blog. Fun to load up. Who still has dial-up, anyway? Egads.

Voulez-voulez-vous doodle.

Doodle.

>I am getting really bad at keeping up with this.

Prolly cuz I’ve got a lot of sh*t going on in my life and in my head with the new season of ‘Lost” starting, I am booked solid.

My husband and I had back-to-back doctor’s appointments, so to save time, we just thought we’d go tandem. Our doc was a bit busy today, so she appreciated it a great deal, only we had to wait a good while for our turn. So as we waited for 20 minutes in the examination room (he was there to get a clearance form signed by our doc for his new fitness program, I was on a biopsy follow-up), we started droning out the line from ‘Forget Paris’: “you asked for it…you got it…Toyoooota…”. in very gritty and nasally sounding voices. I was tempted to get Bryan up on the table and into the stirrups (our doc has an awesome sense of humor), but he opted not. I found the cool new thermometer-thing that they drag along your forehead to take your temp, but mine was only 74 degrees Fahrenheit, so I theorized I must be dead. I had obviously forgotten to stop moving about.

I inflated several latex gloves and re-arranged the magazine selection. We had fun volley-ing the glove-balloons about for a while. I was trying to find a speculum to pinch Bry’s nose with, but was unsuccessful. I drew some jack-o-lantern on the paper sheet they lay atop the exam table. Doc appreciated the festive gesture.

You don’t want to leave me in an examination room too long. I find ways to amuse myself.

So, we came home and fed the dogs, took them out just in time for it to start raining. And now we sit, me here, dogs on the couch, Bry on the sofa, all three of them watching “Superman”. They seem to be having a good time.

I’m going to go take a bath before ‘Lost’ comes on. I’m such a TV junkie.

Voulez-voulez-vous junkie.

>alien vs. predator was one kick-ass movie. Except for the whole mountain-climbing-girl-teams-up-with-predator thing. That was lame.

>So, thanks be to the damn emulator my husband brought home. Saturday became the Legend of Zelda day. I think I’d played this game maybe once or twice in my lifetime. From what I understand, the premise goes something like this: this chick named Zelda gets herself kidnapped, (stupid-ass), thereby requiring me to risk life and limb to free her from the evil clutches of some wizard-dude named Arghhraghhh, or something like that. So, I’m trottin’ around, can’t find a sword, nor anything else useful, I’m caught in the damn rain, and everyone I talk to is a bunch of rude sonsobeeyatches who tell me to go away. So, as far as I am concerned, ole Zelda can go fuck herself. I’m just going to have fun throwing shrubberies around and collecting random treasures I find underneath. I mean, come on…I’d be willing to sacrifice an arm or leg if the reward was a nice piece of ass. But with my luck, I’d get there, Stockholm syndrome in effect, and she and ole Arrgghhhggrr would have hooked up and he thusly places a curse on my ass. So I opted for the psycho-gardener scenario until it got close to Alien vs. Predator time, at which point I would use my blog as a vehicle for my frustration then promptly bail. Which I have done.

Voulez-voulez-vous bail.

>
The dogs are not mine. They are, in a manner of speaking, my siblings. Arrow, Valentino, Jilly, Saint, Emmy and Andy. My parents kicked me out to make room for the dogs. My brother still lives with them, but his status as a human has not yet been confirmed. We’re still waiting for the DNA test results.

Disclaimer: my parents did not, in fact, kick me out. This statement is intended to assure me of placement in their will.

My greyhound, Gee, has recently been afflicted with bouts of diarrhea. It does not make me happy. It makes me clean up a great deal of shit, which also does not make me happy. I am just all kinds of unhappy at the moment.

So why is it that I feel guilty when I don’t write in here? Hellifiknow. You do need to stop putting this much pressure on me. You’re helping no one.

I had a couple good blog ideas but that was yesterday.

Leemee hone.

Vote for Pedro.

Voulez-voulez-vous Pedro

>Jus’ gonna jot something down here real quick before “The Office” comes on. After that, I need to go to bed since tomorrow’s my Monday. Nice.

Ah, the Koo has come to say hello. Hi, Koo. The Koo has brought me his raggedy chew-duck-toy. He wishes to play. I do not. I am merely awaiting 9:30. Shoo, Koo…Shoo.

Being that yesterday and today were my days off and I went nowhere, nothing exceptional happened. I just took turns zoning out either in front of my painting or the XBox. I was playing the Legend of Zelda today. There is also a rather impressive Sega-version of Jeopardy on there too. Only problem is you can’t pick what player you want, so every time you play, you’re stuck as this guy who looks like the type of guy who’s never been nor never gonna get laid. It sucks. It’s hard to concentrate with this pathetic little fellow peering at me through his bottle-bottom glasses from behind his podium. I don’t want him peering at me. Unfortunately, my requests to Mr. Trebek have gone unheard. ‘Tis a heartless world, it is.

Ah. 9:21. I’m gonna go coozie up on the sofa with the doggies and watch some TV.

G’nite.

Voulez-voulez-vous g’nite.

>
My husband loves me. I know that, unquestionably. But he sometimes does things with the best of intentions that result in my detriment, one way or another.
He was able to find, from what I can only imagine was the depths of Hades, a CD for our XBox, with every, and I mean every, game that was ever created for Atari, Colecovision, Nintendo, and Sega. All of them. Pitfall, Asteroids, Space Invaders, Pole Position, Pong, Sea to Air Combat, Centipede, Mario, Tetris, Sonic the Hedgehog, all of it.

Bollocks.

As these games heavily punctuated my childhood, and couple that with the nostalgia-trip I’ve been on as of late, you can see the problem.

I have been playing Super Mario Bro.’s for three solid hours this afternoon. Three. I came home from work at 3:00, changed clothes, and hopped into our large leather recliner and zoned out. Then remembered that it was past the dogs’ dinnertime, reluctantly paused Mario, fed and walked the dogs, hopped back on once again, and zoned out for another hour.

I have a painting to work on. I have laundry to do. I don’t have time for this shit.

Like I said, I have no doubt my husband loves me. But.

So, World’s-Largest-Doodle painting is coming along well. Or, it was before the damn video games arrived.

Bollocks.

Game Over.

Voulez-voulez-vous Game Over.

>That’s what my evening has amounted to. Depeche mode and peanut butter. Skippy. At this moment, life is particularly good.
Music for the Masses runs a close second as my favorite album to the Depeche Mode 101 2-CD set. Granted, when I bought it when I was in high school, I owned it in cassette tape form. Cassette tapes are my generation’s 8-tracks. I seem hell-bent on aging myself as of late. But if I’m gonna do it, Depeche Mode is a kick-ass-right-on hell-yeah-muthafuckah way to do it.

And the peanut butter? The peanut butter is incidental. As is the grapefruit juice with which I wash it down.

Life, as I said, is particularly good.

So, here is the painting I have been working on; the canvas size is 24″ X 24″ and will be completely filled with the following pattern:

And yes, this image is to scale. Granted these are the beginning stages so it’s a bit shaggy; later I will go in and paint the white and refine the lines. So I’m looking at confirmed mental disorder status by Halloween. This painting is tedious, maddening, monotonous, utterly time-consuming, and bad for the eyes and my lower back.

I love his stuff!

This painting is my kind of shit. Heh-yeah.

I’m going to bed now. I have to get up at 4:30 A.M.

Voulez-voulez-vous too damn early.

>
I have a problem consolidating items on my refrigerator. I just keep adding and adding layers to it. I have to keep buying increasingly powerful magnets to accomodate my refrigerator-memento habit. Photographs, Christmas cards, baby announcements, 2-dollar bills, gift certificates, drawings. Yep. My fridge.