Hello my lovelies!!

I am just popping in to say that I’m not dead and this blog is not abandoned. ..I’ve just been super busy the last couple of weeks and haven’t had much time to spend online much less post anything.Hell, I haven’t even checked FML or People of Walmart in over a week ~ a sure sign that the world as we know it is in danger of ending.

I could share all of the details of the changes and challenges the past two weeks have posed for me, but I’m not going to. Living it was enough ~ reliving it would be a little too much at the moment (plus I’m pressed for time). What I will say is that I’ve left my hideous job that gave me so much net surfing time and started school to train for a less-hideous job that won’t involve offices or computers at all. It’s all good ~ or will be in the end ~ just chaotic right now.

AND…I emailed myself all of the bookmarks from my work computer (an enterprise which involved, I kid you not, over 200 emails and nearly crashed my poor Blackberry) but have not yet had the time to go through all of them and get them in order again. Until I find the time to do that I’m going to be a bit challenged to remember the sites I really want to share with you.

I do, however,  have a link to share with you…not for any thematic reason…I just happen to know the URL without having to look it up. My Life Is Average is along the lines of FML but more…average…and (I think) even funnier. Dip into it when you have a few minutes and need a giggle, and miss me until I return!

*interlude for geeks*

Sometimes, I just gotta get my geek on. Today, apparently, is one of those days.

If you don’t occasionally feel that same sort of need, don’t even bother with this link. It’s not that it isn’t good, but you won’t enjoy it, and I’m all about saving you precious time to explore other time-wasting sites. Stumble for a few minutes while the rest of us retreat to a sanctum of geekcool.

Wil Wheaton, for those of you who may not recognize the name, played the ever-obnoxious boy-genius Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: TNG. Turns out he wasn’t just a pretty face in bad sweaters…he was, and is, a rather intelligent and funny geek. While I don’t have the exact gamer experience that he often speaks to (lack of opportunity, not interest), he warms a place in my heart. I’m especially enjoying his “Memories of the Future-cast” in which he skewers the show I adored and gives shares some “behind the cameras” memories as well. He seems like a very down-to-earth guy that I’d have fun sharing a beer with (assuming I didn’t go all fan-grrl on him), and I like keeping up, k?

Read it or not…this one is mostly for me.

A disturbing look into the darkness of my soul

(Nah. Not really. Just a peek around a different corner.)

The people who know me IRL are already well aware of how twisted I am, and I’m willing to bet that the rest of you are starting to twig on to the fact that I might be a bit…different…than your typical under-employed slacker. If by some chance you hadn’t noticed that yet, today may be the day that convinces you that you might not want me shaping your children’s brains.

I adore the Thanatos archive. I’ve perused every single one of the thousands of images preserved in here, and I love love love them. I find them beautiful and poignant and fascinating in equal measure and yes, even paid for the full membership so that I could see them all. I resonate with the grief and comfort the pictures on this site still evoke despite their age, and think they speak to our need to explore a universal human experience.

You, on the other hand, might find the pictures on this site completely morbid, or creepy, or gross. (From comments on the forums, it seems that a good number of people do). If you aren’t so up on your Greek, I’ll point out that “thanatos” means “death”, and tell you point blank that these are pictures of people ~ often children ~ taken around the time of their death (usually postmortem). In the early days of photography, the only picture a family might have of their loved one was the one taken after their death, and it makes perfect sense to me that people would treasure these. If you don’t get that, or if death in general squidges you out, you probably want to take a pass on this one. If, on the other hand, the changing of the seasons and approach of Samhain / Halloween has turned your thoughts toward the darker aspects life, you might want to check it out. This archive, lovingly created and preserved, is well worth the time.

A stunning success

My weekend? Complete FAIL. The generally ugh-i-ness of Friday turned into a Saturday spent largely comatose on the sofa with occasion bouts of the cold sweats as my fever fluctuated. Sunday briefly looked like it might be a decent day, until our house experienced its annual “tree-blocked-up-the-sewer” problem and I got to pay the annual $250 “so-we-can-take-showers-and-flush” plumber’s fee. Yeah, that was nice. Felt perfectly fine this morning though, so no excuse not to go to work! I assure you that the irony did not escape me.

Today, however, has been marked with quite the stunning success…though perhaps the “stunning” part is only applicable to my life. My accomplishment for the day: I made it through a very formal Episcopalian funeral without bursting into giggles OR flames! You probably have to know me to understand how big a deal that was; I can’t convey exactly how much of a challenge funerals are for me to sit though. All I’ll say is that funerals in general hit my morbid funny bone really really hard, and very formal Christian settings make me acutely aware of the historic fate of heathens. Thank doG for Twitter…I was able to tweet the worst of my inappropriate reactions and thus keep my head from exploding.

(Actually, I’ll say one thing more:  if you are a priest, and have a speech impediment, you probably need to reconsider the whole eulogy thing. It doesn’t matter how warm and personal and wonderful your eulogy is…you are going to sound like a cartoon character and people will inevitably be reminded of “The Princess Bride.” Or at least people like me will. Just sayin’.)

Success and failure…success definitely feels better, but failure usually gives you the better story. One of my all-time favorite blogs is one that you almost certainly already know about, so just think of this as an excuse to visit it again, k? FAILblog may be the only website that has literally made me weep with laughter. (It has also made me pick my kid up late from school, forget to cook dinner, and make inappropriate snorflegrunts in the middle of boring meetings…but I won’t mention that if you won’t.) The videos, in particular, make me simultaneously guffaw and pray that I never end up in front of a recording electronic device while being challenged by gravity.

Take a few minutes to give yourself the gift of giggles and enjoy the fail.

TGIF…

…and the week can’t be over soon enough.

Some really really good things have happened this week, and some bad things too, but at this point all I care about is the fact that I feel like crap. No, I’m not sick (insert smart-ass comment about my mental state here, if you must) but I’m not exactly well either. My best description of it might be “feeling vaguely icky and exhausted” or, perhaps, “general malaise with a touch of falling over tired.” Either way, it means that my plan for this happenin’ Friday night is to be a lump on the sofa, followed by being a lump in the bed. Oh yeah, this is worth being a grown-up for…

I’ve been wondering all day what link to post and having a tough time deciding. It’s not that I have so very many that I am excited about ~ more like I just can’t seem to raise enough energy to give a f***. So. If you feel like it, go check out Dump sometime. Consistently updated, this site is entirely “G” rated, and not overwhelmingly exciting on a day to day basis ~ kindof the vanilla’s vanilla. Still, they occasionally throw in an image that is WOW! enough to keep me going back regularly.

There. Posting duty done. Later.

Not entirely fluff

Looking back at what I’ve posted so far, I’ve realized that someone might get the idea that I spend all of my time at work sitting around looking at silly fluff on the web and giggling. Not true, my friends, not true!!! I only spend most of my time giggling over silly fluff…the rest of the time I use teh internets to improve my edumacation! I spend plenty of time reading (semi) scientific articles and actually learning things beyond how ridiculous humans are as a species.

Case in point: Mindhacks. This site bills itself as “neuroscience and psychology tricks to find out what’s going on inside your brain”, but is really more theory than tricks (though it does contain information on how to make zombie brain cupcakes – yum!). I designed an independent major in cognitive studies back in the day (what, you thought I was an idiot just because I have such a suck job?!?), so reading about brain-altering drugs and neuroanthropology sounds like a great way to spend an empty afternoon at the desk.

(I even work occasionally. Rarely. For an hour or two a week. If you can imagine such a thing.)

Because “FREE” is a four letter word

Okay, so I totally stole that title from today’s recommended site. Hopefully they won’t sue me. Though what would they sue for? The right not to have to look at my depressing bank balance?

Anyways.  Oh Craigslist, glorious Craigslist ~ that fabulous catch-all of the internet where you can procure the services of prostitutes and get rid of the crap you couldn’t sell at your last yard sale all in one easy stop! I haven’t spent much time there recently myself, largely because of  Item Not As Described.  The kindhearted souls behind this site have already filtered through all of the mediocre and boring entries and present me with only the most hilarious WTF’s, complete with snarky commentary. It’s kind-of like having someone else shell the pistachios for you…lazy, but convenient. You still have to click on the links, though, so I guess they aren’t actually putting the nuts in your mouth…

Alrighty then. I have no idea where I was going with that last sentence but when I start talking about putting nuts in peoples’ mouths I know that my thought process has jumped off the tracks somewhere. Rather than sidetrack you further, I’ll just say ~ Enjoy your weekend, everyone!

Strange goings on

Obviously, I’ve missed a couple of days posting here. I suppose I should apologize or something, but I’ve been dealing with a very strange situation at work and making the best of it so I’m not going to.

What strange situation, you might ask. Well, get this: I’ve had work to do!! I know! Bizarre, isn’t it. Real work, that makes me use my brain and everything. Quite a shock to the system, actually, after so many months of ass-sitting…took me a while to figure out how that whole “working” thing went again. I got back into it, though, and in a few minutes I’m going to walk over a grant proposal that will hopefully get the organization $5,000. (Which makes me probably the cheapest freakin’ grant writer ever but that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms entirely. Grrrr.)

Most of my links so far have been to sites which are regularly updated…always something new to look at. But I have plenty of bookmarks to cool “static” sites as well. They may only be worth a visit or two before I’m done with them, but that doesn’t make them any less interesting. Today’s site is one of those…it’s fun to click through and will kill a good 20 minutes, easy.

Eye Of Science is a German(ish) company which specializes in micro-photography with electron microscopes and other groovy tools that make the very ordinary extraordinary. Bugs and bacteria and parasites – oh my! I love seeing how intricate and beautiful the most mundane things actually are (though I am less fond of thinking about these things living on or in my body). This site has a great gallery – be sure not to click through too fast, because some of the links lead to slideshows rather than one image.

Oh, and this one is totally SFW, I promise.

(In a similar vein of thinking, I recently found an advertisement for this product and simply had to ask why. WHY? Does anyone really need that intimate a look inside their head orifices?!? I think NOT. EW.)

Let’s be trendy, shall we?

Have you ever had this happen to you? You’re cruising along in your life, enjoying your snarky little groove, when suddenly a giant mirror pops up in front of you with neon letters over it screaming “JERK!!” and shows you that you are being as big a jerk as the jerk you are snarking about in the exact same way?!? Yeah. Hate that.

Fortunately for you, that little digression (is it possible to digress before I even get started?) has absolutely nothing to do with the link I’m posting today. I certainly wouldn’t want to leave you for the weekend on that kind of a downer! No, today I am linking to a site that is currently very hot…popping up all over Twitter and Boing Boing and lots of other social media sites I can’t be bothered to keep track of. Regretsy is, indeed, the schizz of the ‘net ~ at least this week.

I normally wouldn’t link to something so trendy (looking like I’m following the crowd just embarrasses me) but damn this site is funny. And twisted. And generally (but not entirely!!!) SFW. Plus, I saw it on Monday, bitches! Before it popped up on BoingBoingGizmodoWSJSpeakeasyFunnyordie and all those other trendy sites. I was leading, dammit, not following!! It’s already 15 bookmarks deep and old news to me. So there.

Regretsy ~ you won’t regret it. (Unless you click on this link while your boss is watching in which case, you will. You really really will. You’ve been warned.)

“It could always be worse”

(This phrase, along with Candide’s infamous “this is the best of all possible worlds” generally makes me want to punch people. That information might be useful to you at some point.)

My week started off with a Monday morning of fasting (including no coffee – I tried to drink it black but just couldn’t do it), followed by a blood draw which will probably result in doctor’s orders to lay off on the BLTs and capped off with having my boobs squished at various angles while wearing BBs on my nipples. (Was that TMI? So sorry.)

NOT the best start to a week. Still, as a rather fabulous new friend of mine said, “it can only go up or down from here”….and I hoped for the upward trajectory. Truly, I did. But several, erm, “chronological challenges” and today’s OMFG I CAN’T BELIEVE MY COMPUTER ATE A WHOLE DAY’S WORK later, with my house no cleaner and my butt no smaller, I think I have to concede defeat. This week is officially a FAIL.

Which makes it perfect for FMyLife, where you can always find someone having a worse dayweekmonthyearlife than you. And laugh, because yeah, it could be worse.