Niff.Dot

Oh, honestly.  I mean, that’s a typographical sin! I feel nauseated. I’m not sure how I can recover from this one. I mean, I’ve seen some pretty disgusting things in my time, but this is the pinnacle. A “friend” of mine sent me the link to it. I say “friend” because their status as such is now questionable.

Anyone who knows me knows about my “Comic Sans” issues. You can read about them

here

to gain a bit of perspective. What perplexes me is the inappropriate use of this dastardly font.

Now, tell me this…how seriously can you take this? I mean, honestly. I think I’d almost prefer to die of coronary failure. It looks like a practical joke…you apply the paddles and a recorded voice laughs and says, “sucks to be you!”. Comic Sans = trust fail. It does seems to be prevalent in the medical realm, perhaps in order to help people feel less intimidated…I perceive it as an expression of irresponsibility. I would reject services from any facility who used this crime against nature in their signage. Or at an ATM, or a restaurant…or make me question my personal safety if someone broke into my home or had me at gunpoint.

It just screams “we do not take ourselves, or your safety, seriously”. Or about whatever it is they’re trying to communicate. It’s like a plague…seeping into the cultural consciousness like a virus…

Papyrusis running an ever-increasingly close second in my font-hating inventory. I think they’re both ganging up on us. I don’t know what we need to do to defend ourselves against this typographical tyranny, but I feel it involves copious amounts of Helvetica, Arial, and maybe even a smidge of Times New Roman. Our very lives may depend upon it.

Voulez-voulez-vous

Abject fail. My lower back is killing me. I’m getting old. Youth and vitality fail.

My boss is going to give me a damn heart attack. He tends to randomly scream arbitrary phrases, yell at people on the phone…but this happens in the dead of quiet so when it happens, it causes my heart to jump into my throat and pee the floor. I’m going to have a goddamned coronary. He said he was going to sell my dog to the (insert racial slurs here) at the Teryaki restaurant down the street. I told him that wasn’t cool and now I’ve been instructed shut up for the rest of the day. I think that will make answering the phone a problem. He then asked me if he had any appointments today. I just stared blankly at him. This was not well received.

Now he’s yelling at someone on the phone…it’s very entertaining. He insults people, instructs them to rot in hell, screams “WHAT??” when he answers the phone, I’m threatened on a regular basis, as well as my dog…I feel like I should wear a helmet to work. His favorite line is, “The end is near”. And everyone is crazy. Except for him. He’s somewhat biased.

Why so angry??

I noticed this morning that Doppler is terrified of my electric toothbrush. I think he’s under the impression it’s attacking my face. He ducks and runs away, whines, sometimes even barks at it. I didn’t realize a toothbrush could be so threatening. This information does come in handy, however…I could use it as a deterrent when he starts scratching up the carpet or jumping on people. That’s something they never suggested in Puppy Kindergarten.

Voulez-voulez-vous…uh, shit. I got nuthin’.

www.jenniferlankenau.com

And…a costume shop in Bellevue, A Masquerade, is going to start selling my masks. This is teh hawesome. I’d write more about it, but I’ve been working on the site and masks all bloody evening and I’m freakin’ exhausted. My eyes are going to liquefy if I don’t get away from this goddamned monitor. I need a bath. With bubbles.
Doppler’s sitting on my bed staring at me. Apparently he’s the only guy that wants in my bed.

No time for love, Dr. Jones. I have to get to work so I can be a bazillionaire.

Voulez-vulez-vous html, FTP, CSS, erngh…

Arachibutyrophobia: Fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth.

…

I’m not fond of peanut butter myself, so this is a phobia I’m not particularly concerned with. What I’m curious about is, how did “Arachibutyro” become the root word for peanut butter? I’m sure it has to do with the scientific nomenclature for peanut, or some sort of taxonomic classification. I suppose I can imagine the inconvenience of peanut butter sticking to the roof of one’s mouth, but not so that it causes a cold-sweat inducing panic attack. Skip the Skippy.

Omphalophobia- Fear of belly buttons.
Are you trying to tell me that there were enough people terrified of navels that they had to give it a name? I think it’s a fictitious condition but it sounds fabulous.

Walloonphobia- Fear of the Walloons
What the bloody hell is a Walloon? Hold on…consulting…
Walloons (French: Wallons, Walloon: Walons) are a Romance-speaking people partly from Germanic origin and Celtic origin; in any case a melting-pot[1][2][3] speaking French, living in Belgium principally in Wallonia, more generally the inhabitants of Wallonia. They also speak regional languages like Walloon or Picard.

Ok.
Ack! I missed 11:11. Damn.

Think I’ll take the dog for a nice long walk, barring rain. It seems to have tapered off for the moment. But the weather is a lie, so it won’t last. Drizzle drizzle. It’s that somewhat annoying rain, kinda misty…not enough to warrant an umbrella (well, without looking like a tourist) but after being outside for a considerable amount of time, somehow you’ve become quite damp. I wish it would just rain like it meant it. Like, no holds barred torrential downpour…now with more thunder and lightning!

Never trust a driver that has stuffed animals perched in their rear window.
There’s a car in the parking lot with fuzzy teddy bears and beanie babies in the rear window. Probably because their house overflowed. Beanie Baby blowout.

Andrew is eating those small, chocolate covered donuts (it’s not chocolate, it’s actually a pseudo-chocolate wax-like substance that masquerades as food.) I explained this to him. So he offered me one. I suppose my less-than appetizing description of aforementioned donuts was not a clear enough donut-deterrent.

I’m really digging the unintentional alliteration happening here.

I have crumbs all over my desk from frosted mini-wheats. In my delusional mind, they’re a healthier alternative to the snacking options provided at the nearby mini-mart.
Or chocolate-wax covered donuts.
They leave that waxy film on your teeth. I wonder if there’s a phobia for that.
Macadamia.

I’m out.

Voulez-voulez-vous mukluks.

In the last couple of weeks, conversations, in one way or another, have somehow led me to ask a few people whether they were left or right-handed. However, in each instance, each person had to pause for a moment, think, and say, “I think I’m mostly _____-handed.”

“Mostly?” I ask. “As in, you’re ambidextrous?”

“Well, not completely, I can’t write with my left hand…”

“So you’re right-handed…”

“Yes, well…mostly…”

And then it occurred to me…in this technology-driven age, people don’t use writing to determine left or right-handed dominance anymore. It seems people don’t write all that often these days. Just look at penmanship as a whole…it seems to have deteriorated a bit, and I have friends who have admitted that it is due to lack of practice. I can hardly read a damn thing any of my coworkers write (granted they are men and I have NO problem stereotyping on this one…) and half the time I end up needing them to translate. These little crazy-ass phones are replacing the need for written correspondence, note-taking, journal-keeping (though I’m not one to criticize as I write in my blog but I’ll elaborate on this in a moment); we send terms of endearment in Times New Roman and birthday greetings in Comic Sans (Comic Sans! F*cking hell.). We txt, Tweet, email, comment, reply, fwd, cc, bcc…people’s lives have become so maddeningly busy, it’s all we can muster to maintain our numerous relationships anymore. I’m honestly afraid to get one of these devices, a) because I have an addictive personality and I spend enough time online as it is, and b) the data plan would suck my bank account dry. Most of my friends have these little devices and will be at social events endlessly plugging away on them all night as if they were the Cultural Attaché for China. I confess to a few text volleyballs when I’m at a gathering…but checking email, social networking sites, the weather, their horoscope…honestly. My mom thinks it’s just ‘guys and their gadgets’ but I have female friends that are just as if not more guilty of this. Just look at the number of Facebook status updates that are made via mobile. I think this digitized, hurried, busy universe is why the creators of Facebook hit such a bloody goldmine. It’s brilliance is that just by clicking the “Like” button, you are able to say, “Hello! I exist!” to your friends, or “Facebook Friends”, in a subtle, dare I say, almost passive-aggressive way…of course when you’re one of their 376 “Friends” that may not always work, but for people like me (*ahem*) it’s ingenious.

Holy hell I strayed from my topic.

But I’m tired of typing because I like writing and drawing better. Because I’m right-handed. I’ll straggle back tomorrow. Maybe.

Voulez-voulez vous iPhone, Blackberry, Droid, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile?

The Niff Manual.

The saying: stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results…

Yeah. Haven’t quite caught on to that one yet.

I know I don’t like blogging about “daily blah life stuff” buy hey, everyone needs a Live Journal moment now and again. And this is a blog to myself, so bite me.

So I know one of the things that will help me out of my abyss of self-imposed stupidity, and one is (gulp) a damned therapist. The “just let it go already!” thing? You know, the thing your friends yell at you while shaking you by the shoulders when they’re tired of you bitching about the same damn thing for the 47th time? Yeah, I lack that skill. I need a Rocky-style coach or something. Or electric shock therapy. Maybe a lobotomy if options A and B prove unsuccessful. Something to turn off the hamster wheel in my head because that little squeaky bastard is giving me a headache.

I need my yoga classes back! I feel like a bad-ass when I’m in yoga. And I take better care of myself. Which improves my self esteem. And my frame of mind. Which will help with my jaded, cynical attitude I’ve sunk my feet into the last week and started flinging the unpleasant muck at people who don’t deserve it. People don’t like that. Makes them not want to hang out with you. Go figure.

I need to be more responsible with my finances…money stress sends me into a shame spiral quicker than (almost) anything, and I start conjuring images of my being old and alone and living in a cardboard box eating two-day-old Spam sandwiches out of the trash because I have no retirement saved, etc etc…

I need to quit thinking I want a boyfriend. Right now men are kind of on my shit list anyway. I need to work on all of the above first and then deal with *that* train wreck. At least I don’t disappoint myself as often…(I warned you…cynical and jaded…). My working on my health, taking yoga, art, etc, makes me feel so much better about myself than a boy asking for my phone number anyway. Right…?

(Just say, “Right!!”)

I finally got a job, so that stress is out of the way…a job I LOVE, so, ‘check’!

I need to stop being so concerned about what people are doing/thinking/etc that has nothing to with me. Paranoia should only exist in the Witness Protection Program.

(Niff: People are not always thinking the worst about you. Stop that shit. Only a few are and you can’t do SHIT about it so let it go. For fuck’s sake. A lot more people are fond of you than you think there are.)

I need to establish and maintain my personal boundaries better. I need to quit being such a damn pushover and speak up for what I want.
(What do you think? Do you think that’s a good idea, because if you don’t I can leave this part out of here…)

I need to quit comparing myself to everyone and feeling like I come up short in some or every way possible. Because it makes me sad. And it’s absolutely a stupid behavior.

So, I think this pretty much sums up everything that makes me insecure, mildly unhappy, or everything I think I need to work on to make me a secure, grounded and pleasant human being. I mean, I’m mostly happy and pleasant, but far from grounded and secure. So this is my memo to myself. And, when I get to the therapist-peoples, I can just sit down, hand them this piece of paper, sit back in the comfy chair, and announce, “Here you are…now…fix me!”.

That is how it works, right…?

voulez-voulez-vous I’m not Bob Vila but I do play him on TV…

I just watched a woman lock her keys in her car from my office window. Now, my innate Clark Kent-instinct is telling me to help this woman, but I don’t own a Slim Jim nor a wire coat hanger, and short of slinging my red Swingline stapler through her driver’s side window there’s really nothing I could do for her. It is, however, interesting to watch the problem-solving process in action when the person engaged is not aware they are under observation. She walked around the car a few times, trying every door handle more than once…perhaps she was hoping some pan-dimensional beings had manifested inside her vehicle and miraculously unlocked her doors in the last several seconds in an act of interplanetary goodwill. Giving up on this possibility, she eventually produced a cell phone to (what I would assume) was to call AAA or some other rescue-me-door-unlocking agency and walked away.

I’ve had the privilege of seeing a handful of oddities from my office window so far…last Thursday there was a rather confused girl wearing a jogging suit several sizes too small over undergarments that were several sizes too large pacing back and forth for the better part of an hour in the parking lot. She seemed to be talking nonsensically to herself and would intermittently shake her head in what appeared to be either confusion or frustration (it’s hard to tell these things from afar) and would pause only to hoist her too-large underpants up when they would slip due to her rapid traversing across the lot. I don’t know where she is now. Maybe she figured out the underwear thing and took a bus to Target.

There’s a man who drives a gunmetal gray Volvo who, every day, parks his car, exits, locks it, then examines the entire exterior. Makes the full rounds. Hood, doors, tires, top, tail lights. He goes so far as to open the trunk and examine the interior. Which is always empty. Not even a pair of jumper cables. He must have a lot of confidence that he’ll never have automotive issues. I declare OCD. He works in my building somewhere…his office must be fantastic.

At the moment I’m looking forward to the snow season, when cars start sliding down Denny Street. Call me sick and twisted if you like, but you know you’d watch with morbid fascination if given the chance.

Voulez-voulez-vous ooo ooo ooo lookin’ out my back door…

So, I now have a dove in my room.

I don’t really have a name for the dove. I’ve just been calling it the “it-bird-thing”. I figured since Chilla doesn’t seem to mind being called “Chilla” so much, why the hell would a bird care what he’s called. I was calling him (it) “crazy eye” for a while, but that was far too many syllables and much more effort than I was willing to contribute to this particular avian enterprise. I don’t know what gender “it” is. I suppose I’ll just have to wait and see if it starts shooting some eggs out and make my determinations from there. I think I should put a box in there or something so the potential eggs aren’t lolling about on the wire mesh of the bottom of the cage. And then it steps on them. And then there’s crusty egg goo everywhere. Ew.

I decided to decorate the front of the it-bird-thing’s cage with some of the Pi magnets I made since I had discovered that there were virtually no ferrous materials used in the construction of my room. Not on the window frames, in the bathroom…nothing. So I thought it’d be very feng shui to slap some on the front of Casa de Crazy Eye. Problem is the little bastard has started pecking at the Pi. You DO NOT peck at the Pi. Absolutely not. The Pi is not for pecking. Bad math karma.
I should get a spray bottle and douse the it-bird-thing when it Pi-pecks. Although I think that could be counter-productive to my taming goals which is one of the reasons I was given the it-bird-thing in the first place.

The bird was formerly in the possession of a close friend of mine who also happens to be a magician. This magician had a dove population problem (amorous doves…no birth control) and would like the most recent additions tamed for use in the show. So I claimed one, agreeing to tame it.

So I handle the dove, it shits on me.
Let it hang out on my desk with me, it shits on my desk.
Talk to it, it shits on me again.

I’m noticing some real relationship issues here.

Perhaps I could start by not calling it the “it-bird-thing”. It’s probably not helping it’s self-esteem. The visions of releasing it into the ceiling fan when it rapid-fire shits on me might be causing it undue stress as well. Although it’s wings are clipped so it’d have to be be more of a “dropping” it into the ceiling fan.

Eh. Minutiae.

Voulez-volez-vouz it-bird-thing-pot-pi

Anyone got a Swiffer?

Ok, so I confess I’ve been a bit…neglectful of my blog. It’s a bit dusty.

But hey, I’ve been busy. I got laid off, I had a family tragedy to contend with, I spend hours a day opening emails that read, “We regret to inform you that we have filled this position. We appreciate your interest in this opportunity with us and we will retain your information for consideration in future openings.”, all the while sending out resumes that will result in more of aforementioned emails. I’m a busy girl.

I would however like to take a moment of silence for my (hand-me-down) XBox360. It died today. No more streaming Netflix for me. Which will make unemployment all the more unpleasant. Erngh.

I have been keeping busy. I decided to start a series of paintings in the hope of getting a “show” or something, ya know, make some money. They’re coming along well, I’ve busted out five so far. Fortunately Seattle isn’t a very artsy town so I see no competition whatsoever. I shall rule supreme. Oh yes. Something like that.

I have noticed, as I run errands and such during the day, the large number of people also running errands during the day. And I’m not talking during lunch hour. I’m talking 10am, 2pm…who are these people? Fellow unemployed? Is it that bad? Or what is it they do that they can just cruise around the Hill in the sunshine at a whim? I want to know…please? I want ice cream during work at 3:00 on a Tuesday! Molly Moo at Two on Tuesday.

I have invented a new word during my idle time. “Erngh”. The only problem is, it’s only meant for digital correspondence, it’s not meant to be verbal. I mean honestly, just try and say it aloud. It doesn’t work. You sound like a defective airhorn. I consider it to be the new “meh” just because I consider “meh” and perhaps “teh” to be old and played out now. Done. Although I have heard “sike” making a comeback and that shit needs to be nipped in the bud NOW. As in, when someone says it, men in black masks suddenly appear and cover the offender’s head in a burlap sack and bind their hands in twist-ties, throw them in the back of a van and drive screeching around the corner into an unmarked warehouse and engage in unspeakable acts of grammatical torture. Same with “rad”. Or any played-out 80’s phrase. The 80’s are a cultural FAIL.

I shall miss my streaming Netflix. Bummer.

Voulez-voulez-vous Microsoft FAIL. I am Jack’s total lack of surprise.

This is the Chilla. Yes, I realize he looks a little…annoyed. Trying to get a chinchilla to hold still for a photograph isn’t exactly a simple feat, folks. Imagine a toddler after a few Pixy Stix and a Red Bull then you have a slight idea of what I was trying to work with.

The Chilla does not like being restrained.

Unfortunately the only image capturing device I had at my disposal was my cell phone which doesn’t have the best resolution around, and that in tandem with wriggly subject matter = craptastic photo.

Damn he looks bitter. He’s normally very chipper, I assure you. Photo shoots just aren’t his…thing.

I learned a few things when I acquired the Chilla. He was my first Chilla. Now, I don’t know if this is universal with Chillas, but this one likes drywall. I mean, really likes drywall. And baseboards. Books. Toilet paper. Shampoo bottles with shampoo still in them. Electrical cords that are still plugged in.

Now this one requires some…explanation.

I have (had, rather) one of those Oral-B Sonicare what-have-you electric toothbrushes that have the rechargeable batteries in them and the accompanying docks. However, one morning to my dismay I discovered the battery had died. Which was odd, because it remained on it’s charger daily. During the investigation process, I picked up the cord, and in so doing damn near electrocuted myself. Now, at 5’10 and 140lbs picking up this cord with my fingers shot voltage through my arm and really fucking hurt. Now imagine, if you will, being a 0.5-lb ball of fluff roughly the size of a grapefruit with this exposed wire in between your teeth?? Jesus. I’m convinced he is not organic. Maybe I should name him Stitch, or, something. For Chrissake’s.

However…

On the other hand the way he hops around like a kangaroo carrying things in his wee gummy hands and ricochet-ing off of walls is endearing…he has this giant furry rump that you just wanna grab cuz it’s so cute. He doesn’t like the whole rump-grabbing thing, however, and he chirps his discontent and does a 5-inch vertical leap, which, in my opinion, is worth pissing him off.

Another thing I find peculiar about the Chilla is his output seems to far exceed his input. I know I don’t feed him enough to generate the mess I see in his cage on a daily basis…I mean, honestly…there has to be some kind of flaw in the metabolic processes of chinchillas that pulls matter into their intestinal tracts from other dimensions during digestion or something. Can Chilla crap bilocate? I mean, I let him bounce around the glass door-encased shower stall (no drywall to binge on) and within 2 minutes, it’s a literal shitstorm in there. I mean, seriously…I’m convinced if I put him on a fast for a week he would excrete just as much. That can’t possibly be healthy.

But he’s still cute and sweet and soft as hell and I love his little gummy feet and giant ears and the dopey look he gets on his face when I scratch between them. And I think he’s hella-cooler then my housemate’s cranky-ass cats. I think I’ll keep him.

It’s just the excess feces production and the whole living on drywall and electrical current that freaks me out.

Voulez-voulez-vous ch-ch-ch-Chilla…