Awkwardly Social

This weekend and yesterday my web server was under a “minor DoS attack,” and my website was down while the (as I imagined them) little dorky web tech guys sat around throwing their Dungeons and Dragons spells at their towers and towers of servers while hackers sat cackling in their mom’s basement jacking off to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It’s annoying to have happen but a satisfying way to look at a world I clearly don’t understand.

I do understand the urge to blow shit up though, and while I’ll never have the technical ability to go in somewhere virtually and screw around with people’s shit, the thought has crossed my mind about how satisfying it would be to do so. I think that comes from a twisting of my mom’s social activism genes. One time before I was born, she released a bunch of lab rats, mixing up the control from the experiment group. I’ve always had a problem with authority and it is in no small part due to my mom telling me that ‘the man’ was never to be trusted. Especially if they were the boss of you. “Question everything” can’t be an easy motto to give your kids - there were many dinner table discussions about why I didn’t believe her about ‘vegetables’ and my ‘need to eat them.’

So if you come to my site and it doesn’t work, you’ll know why. If you come to your site and it doesn’t work, ask yourself, are you the man? Did I fuck with Tamara today?

Because iocane comes from Australia, as everyone knows, and Australia is entirely peopled with criminals, and criminals are used to having people not trust them, as you are not trusted by me, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you.

I made a batch of this shredded chicken with a few minor changes (I used chicken breasts on the bone, instead of serrano peppers I used a can of diced jalepeno peppers and instead of Taco Seasoning I used a teaspoon each of salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, cumin, and coriander) and it is delicious if a bit spicy.

Yesterday, Louie saw me eating it and wondered why I hadn’t offered any to him. And I told him because it was so spicy that it gave me what might be considered an uncomfortable stomach condition akin to food poisoning, or that the chicken went bad and it was food poisoned. Since he has an aversion to spicy food and had been burned by food poisoning of the chicken variety previously (not by my doing, thankfully) he has steered himself far, far away from my delicious chicken.

My evil plan worked.

Could the title be any more explanatory? I think Lula’s programming skills are what caused it. The beating I gave her was her reason she got her shit together while I was gone and made it magically turn back on. Fucking programming dogs, they just don’t keep their code together unless you give them a whack or two.

I started the Harry Potter book and already every few characters I’m confused. I can’t keep track of these people. How do kids memorize all this shit? Oh yeah, they don’t drink and they have practice from memorizing all the lame Pokemon doodle heads*.

And finally, if you get a chance to get Pinkberry because your dog fucked up your website, I recommend not getting lychee’s as your three fruits. It looks like you have 20 bleached and shaved vaginas sitting in your cup of yogurt and might kind of taste like it too.

*When I worked for this guy, he’s from a different time, and he would call people he didn’t like or people he thought were kind of lame - doodle heads. It would crack me up. He saw me at Starbucks the other day and tried to read my journal and I told him it was just doodles nothing he would be interested and he understood immediately.

I didn’t get kicked out of book club. But I did get asked if I was a chicken and would drop out just because of one person and I said, “Actually, yes. Yes, I would.”

Things aren’t very exciting at the moment. My diet and exercise plan is going well, I’ve lost a few pounds and I’m not sure but I think my hanging cloud of doom is hanging elsewhere at the moment. It’s funny when you live with with a hanging cloud of doom all the time, you kind of miss it when it’s gone. You look at yourself askance when you guffaw. You wonder who this person is smiling back at you in the mirror. I don’t know if it’s the diet or the exercise or the extra sun I’m getting, but I’m feeling good. And it’s working for Lula’s separation anxiety, she seems to be so tired that she doesn’t really care if we leave any more. Everyone wins.

Have a good weekend, and treat yourself to some sunshine - it’s nature’s cure.

1. You are wearing scrubs no where near a hospital. Smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk no where near an entry to your house, or any other house. And you are wearing serial killer glasses with a serial killer haircut.
2. You are humming and it’s not a song that you are humming just notes strung together.
3. You avoid looking at the people coming toward you at a run, and then sort of look at them but only at breast level and when they catch you, you look away with a tinge of disgust that tells me you might be into your mother and it makes you feel bad.
4. People scowl at you when you do that.
5. You claim you don’t know what a serial killer looks like, but that’s maybe because you are one.
6. You think people don’t like you because you live with your mother, but really it’s because you share a twin bed with her.

There’s a frozen yogurt* phenonmenon going on in Los Angeles. People are waiting in lines around the block for it. It’s $5.00 for a medium. More about that here. It’s kind of a big deal, so of course I shunned it. The only thing I’ll wait in line for an hour for is a Pink’s hotdog when I’m shitfaced drunk and don’t know any better.

A Pinkberry opened in my neighborhood and I was annoyed because I knew the West Hollywood location saw an increase in local traffic, trash and annoying people. If there’s one thing we already have enough of, it’s cars going to fast and annoying people not stopping at stop signs.

I waited as long as I could to try it, but yesterday my resolve weakened. I had just watched a movie about flying into the surface of the sun - I blame it on that. I decided that I was going to skip dinner and have Pinkberry instead, and if it tasted as bad as I expected it to taste, so much the better I would never have to wonder about it again. The lore about it is, if you like sour milk, you’ll love Pinkberry.

I had to wait in line. At first I was furious, I DON’T WAIT IN LINE FOR SOUR MILK, but the line moved pretty quickly. I ordered a medium with blackberries, blueberries and raspberries. All fresh, none sitting in syrup.

I can see where the sour milk reference comes in, it definitely has a bit of sourness. The texture is heavy and icy, completely opposite of the smooth light fake texture of TCBY, and it’s pleasantly solid. It says no to melting. It is glorious. I want to have it’s babies. The big problem is the price. It’s not cheap but it is convenient. I’m interested to see how they do with their expansion over the next year. Look out New Yorkers, 30 locations are coming to neighborhoods near you.

*There is a bit of kerfuffle about the actual yogurt content in their product, apparently there aren’t enough live cultures to qualify it for the designation. But I don’t care because it’s good.

1. Peace in the Middle East
2. Rid the apartment of dog hair (might be more difficult than number 1).
3. Clean out the fish tank and ready it for new fish
4. Decide if I want to have gold fish again or something more fancy (I decided to go with goldfish but maybe fancy goldfish.)
5. Finish my Book Club Book and the Nerd Bible (or maybe it’s the nerd Book of Morman)
6. Get an oil change
7. Run the uphill in Runyon Canyon (who’s with me? Allie?)( I didn’t run it, but I did hike it)
8. Do a clutter sweep in the bedroom and closet (it might be time to let go of some of my luggage - especially the stuff I will absolutely never use again - I’m looking at you Taupe Suitcase with a broken zipper)
9. Laundry
10. Finish my script so I can make the Producer’s Lab deadline of August 3rd
11. Get a hair cut
12. Make a movie starring Lula
13. Capture the flag (This game changed my life one year at Horse Camp. I went from the quiet girl no one talked to, to the loud girl who was good at stuff like capturing the flag.)

1. Thanks for the thoughts about my dead goldfish. I really liked having them around and this morning as I was going through my ritual of closing the windows and the shades I glanced over to look at them and then remembered flushing their diseased little bodies down the toilet. (As a side note, did you know you’re not supposed to do that, as it can spread disease to the local aquatic wildlife? Um, ew. And also, the local aquatic wildlife is capable of dealing with my poo but not my dead fish? Wow, that’s evolution.) So I was a little sad. The tank was kind of an investment, and I expected them to live at least a year. I’m going to look into some cleaning solutions and see if there’s anyway to sterilize the tank so I can get some new guys. They helped me get through some serious writing block and watching them swim around brought some much needed peace to my swirling mind so yeah, I miss having them around.

2. Operation Senior Citizen Walk is well underway and surprisingly actually working. For those of you who don’t know, I can’t remember if I mentioned it here, I go for a walk every evening with the dog. I promised myself I would just go for a two mile walk every night and if I hated it, well, it was only two miles and it would be good for Lula. Then because I know how to trick myself, I would always put on the required amount of sports bra coverage and if the feeling hit me I would run a little bit too. Because it is easy to trick myself and I am very competitive with myself (wow, that makes me sound way crazier than I actually am) I end up running at least 2 miles every other day. The best part is I feel better, my clothes aren’t quite so tight and Lula is in heaven. The worst part is Operation Senior Citizen Walk takes place on the lovely Los Feliz Boulevard, which is where many Actual Senior Citizens and their 20 grandchildren take their Senior Citizen walks every evening. It can be kind of annoying to dodge them, but the benefits outweigh the negatives at the moment.

3. I’ve been experimenting with my diet. I stopped drinking Mike’s Hard Lime because I was developing a beer belly and switched to a glass of white wine every now and again (fewer calories, more refreshing and who ever heard of a wine belly) with my black beans, corn and salsa concoction (delicious, satisfying and cheap). I’m planning on trying some of the Mark Bittman ideas (registration required, I think) in the coming weeks. As always I struggle for a three o’clock snack that actually satisfies me and keeps my stomach from rumbling all the way home and gives me a little boost for my nightly Senior Citizen Walk. I like the idea of fruit or vegetable sticks, but in reality I dream of coffee and a donut. I don’t believe people when they say they crave carrot sticks, I think they are lying to themselves and actually want carrot cake.

4. Please watch Greek on ABC Friday nights or ABC Family Monday nights. It’s an adorable show, the writing is on par with Veronica Mars and Gilmore Girls and it’s got a great cast. I’m rooting for it because I know one of the executives involved, but more than that, it’s the kind of show I would love to work on and with the departure of Veronica Mars and Gilmore Girls there are fewer and fewer shows I can say that about.

It was kind of a relief to find them dead this morning. They were really, really sick yesterday and my ick treatment seemed to perk up Rudy a bit, but Theo was a goner for sure.

So now I’ve got to clean out the tank and decide if it will be safe to bring new fish into it. Does that sound like a bad idea? Beth, you seem to have some experience with fish, what do you think? Old fish disease haunts a tank or goes away once tank water, filter, ect. is changed out.

They do not look good, people. Things are grim. This is where the doctor would come into the waiting room with his lips pursed together, and the mother stands up and he just stands there and shakes his head and the mother slowly sinks back into her uncomfortable plastic chair.

They are still hovering around the bottom, but now something is going on with their scales. My google search on goldfish sickness didn’t get me very far, but I think they have some sort of fungus. And I think the Fish that Never Got Named is at fault.

Lula thinks it’s funny and lays around the house like this, singing the Death March, and saying, things like, “Glub, glub, glub. I am dying from fungus. Ach.”