June 16, 2006

GOOOOOOOD Morning

People tend to call me a party pooper because I do NOT like fireworks in the neighborhood. They call me a worrywort. They call me old fogey (even when I was 19 and told my friends to go do that crap somewhere else ... away from my car and home).

Well, the other half went out to the truck at 4:30 in the morning ... time to leave for work ... walked to the curb, where it was parked under a streetlight, and discovered that someone had pointed a bottle rocket straight at the windshield "to see what would happen." This is what would happen:

Click either image for a larger look.

You can see in the top picture that there are actually two points of impact. One, centered, has white residue not just from the lines of the cracked glass, but from the cement or powder or whatever that's in the bottom of the bottle rocket. Just to the left of that is another white smear of that same reside. And the heat cracked the windshield far beyond just the impact. And of course, the people who did it, picked up most of the bottle rocket "debris." The paper, the little stick thing and the cement plug are all gone.

At least there was no damage to the body of the truck. And at least they didn't set the gas tank alight. Still, this did not make for a good day yesterday for either of us.

I suppose we're both grateful that this didn't happen while driving and that what happened to the neighbor's car a year ago didn't happen to us. Cuz the neighbors were awakened by the police around 4 one morning ... because as they were driving past, young neighbor lad's car was "parked" in the yard.

Yeah, someone had come up the street fast and nailed his parked car hard enough to move it at least a good car length onto the yard. And then they abandoned their car (with all their paperwork and personals still in it) and took off on foot. Completely totaled neighbor-lad's car.

Still and all ... it's not a nice way to wake up in the morning.

Posted by Red Monkey at 9:54 AM | Comments (3) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | TrackBack | Stumble

June 11, 2006

Alligators and Gorillas

So, there's a whole silly reason that I call this blog Red Monkey, but of course, one of the reasons I wanted the red monkey, was because I do adore monkeys and gorillas both. So tonight, as I was watching Growing Up Gorilla on the Discovery Channel, I remembered my trip to the Brookfield Zoo and the pictures I got of a new gorilla mommy.

The best part of the show was watching four little guys playing together. The one male of the group, second to youngest of them all, decided he was a silverback already. Posturing and pulling all the others to the ground, even the one several, several months older and much bigger. Once he'd decided he'd dominated them, he went to the electric fence that separated them from the toddler gorilla-kids, he kept trying to get through the fence to prove himself king of the big kids too!

Ahh, gotta love the politics of the playground. I can remember when I wished there was an electric fence to keep the bullies away from the younger kids, too. In fact, there are times on the internet when I still wish the same thing, what with people not conversing in comments left on other blogs, but instead just spitting insults and venom. And no, I'm not talking about here ... somehow, at least up to this point, I've managed to avoid any trolls or venemous spitting comments, but I've witnessed it on the blogs of many other people. I never do understand it ... it always makes me think of junior high.

In fact, back, waaaaay back when I was in junior high and the abacus had only recently been tossed in favour of some funky hand held device that weighed about 6 pounds and could add, subtract, multiply AND divide!!! (all on one single 9 volt per every 100 calculations) ... anyhow, back in the day, the rage was Lacoste Izod shirts. These were the little three-button shirts with a collar. Sometimes called a polo. Sometimes called a golf shirt. Well, there were Izods back then and then there were just plain shirts. The Izod had the little alligator and was thus considered cool. The reason why is lost in the mysteries of time and the brains of the then pre-adolescents. Everyone wanted that stupid alligator on their shirt.

I just thought those shirts in general were the height of cool. Obviously, they were dress-up shirts because they had a COLLAR. And, still, they were t-shirts. Casual and dress-up all in one package!!! I loved them.

I really didn't care if they were plain, had the alligator or the Sears Le Tigre tiger on them. Whatever.

However, most of my classmates were terribly rabid about the Izod alligator. Oh, you weren't made fun of for wearing a plain 3-button. But you certainly weren't "in" if you did that.

Of course, as soon as I hit seventh grade and junior high, my mother decides this is the perfect time to pick up sewing. And she proceeded to infinitely increase my cool factor by making most of my clothes. It's not that she was bad at sewing, but her taste in materials left much to be desired. At any rate, in my perpetual attempt to make fun of my classmates for being slaves to stupid things, I found a nifty -- and quite large -- alligator applique whilst whiling away the interminable hours at the fabric store. Mom was looking for the cheapest cloth and the best cloth: a search continually doomed to failure, so she usually chose cheap. (I'm surprised we didn't have shirts made out of that funky white crap that I can't remember the name of ... edging? no ... whatever.)

I bounded over to my mother with this freaking three inch alligator and announced that I wanted THAT on one of my shirts. My mother looked at me sadly. Obviously I was a challenged child in terms of spatial relations and she said tenderly, "Honey, no one is ever going to think that's an Izod alligator."

I rolled my eyes in the fashion of teens and pre-teens everywhere. "I KNOW, Mom, that's the POINT."

She reluctantly purchased my joke alligator and dutifully sewed it on one of the shirts.

All I heard that day at school was "That's not a real Izod you know."

To which my reply was a big grin and a delighted, "I know ... that's the point."

There were a LOT of confused kids in my school the first few times I wore the shirt.

But, the saddest thing to me was that while I got a lot of confusion over that shirt, I never did get teased. On the other hand, "Donna" wasn't so lucky. She couldn't afford an Izod. Her mom got her the next best thing, at least in Mom-Think. Donna got a Le Tigre shirt instead. She spent an evening getting the tiger off that shirt and then, skipped athletics one morning and took an alligator off some unsuspecting girl's Izod. She tried to glue it onto her shirt.

Watching the gorilla kids on the tv show tonight reminded me very much of that scene in the girl's locker room in the 80s. A pack of girls, converging on Donna. Yelling at her. Screaming, "That's not an Izod, you faker!" And other, less nice, things. Donna, frightened, insisting that it was. Truly, it was an Izod. She tried to divert attention to me, reminding the girls I had a HUGE alligator. They were tearing at Donna's shirt now, trying to get to the tag on the inside back. Donna was squriming, terrified, trying to get away.

All she'd wanted was to fit in.

All I'd wanted was to let the other kids know you didn't have to fit in.

I got ignored.

Donna got her shirt literally ripped off. And the tag held up triumphantly. Le Tigre.

The coach had to find her a shirt from the lost and found. Luckily, there were some just back from the laundry.

In the show tonight, the slightly bigger toddler gorillas were picking on the littlest one. Something that wouldn't really happen in the wild, according to the researchers, because the older adolescents and the adults wouldn't stand for it. But in this habitat, they get groups of babies, not the adults. So the humans sometimes have to just let the "kids" sort it out for themselves ... sometimes they have to step in.

What is it in us, that makes us go after the weak or those we perceive to be weak? Is it a throw back to some more survivalist instincts in which only the strongest survived and if you killed off the weak, it was more food and survival for you?

I hear some folks, adults, talk about this phenomenon with disgust for the weak. I've heard others talk about with hurt and confusion. Others with a determination to fix it all.

For me, it was in junior high that I realized that this behaviour the adults called "junior high" was prevalent everywhere. I saw adults being just that petty as to be asinine over what brand of clothes someone wore. What neighborhood they "chose" to live in.

And all I could think ... all I can think ... is our need to not be alone really that strong? That this is one of the largest worries in so many people's lives in the western world? (I presume it's the world over, but I don't know other cultures well enough to presume to speak for them.)

Schoolyard bullies. Proving strength like the young gorillas. Proving they're cool like Cordelia in the early seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Proving we're still essentially animals despite our insistence that we're civilised.

Wow. This post took some turns I didn't expect.

Posted by Red Monkey at 7:51 PM | Comments (3) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | People Say I Have ADHD, But I Think - Hey Look, A Chicken | TrackBack | Stumble

May 31, 2006

Airsoft

Umm, just a hint for those of you with airsoft pistols and who get really curious about whether or not they hurt.

They do.

Yeah, see, we've been playing with my airsoft pistol at work to relieve stress ... we shoot at the funny little sticky target that grabs the little green, plastic BBs and holds them there on the target for later retreival. And then we "graduated" to attempting to knock over the Pez dispenser Death Star. And the Playskool Star Wars guys.

In the course of this, naturally, there have been some ricochets. Yesterday, I caught a ricochet just under my mouth. And, finally, yesterday, one of the guys said, "Shoot me." We've all been hit by the ricochets and they kinda sting a little, but they don't really hurt. So ... one of the guys shot the graphic designer. His eyes kinda flew open and he said, "Let's not try that again."

So, of course, this morning, I can't stand the suspense anymore. Does it really hurt?

Hell yes.

I am now graced with a nice BB sized welt on my calf.

Umm, OW.

Won't be trying that again any time soon.

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:13 AM | Comments (3) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | TrackBack | Stumble

May 14, 2006

In Vein

So, in the process of applying for life insurance, naturally, I have to go in for some insurance company basic blood test type physical. Coolio. I get there and the woman preps me for drawing blood. After having been through Hodgkin's disease in 1999 and again in 2001, having a little blood drawn doesn't bother me. So much so, that I usually watch the "little poke" and watch the tube fill up with blood. It's all no biggee to me.

So, as usual, I'm watching the woman make the poke and insert the first tube. Normal. Then she goes to switch tubes. I don't know if she'd just had a heck of a long day or if she was tired and fussy or just unpracticed, but she bobbled the exchange. I could feel the needle start to slide out, go back in ... and, I swear, I could feel it go through the other side of the vein. It hurt. But, okay, whatever. Accidents happen and I have a high pain tolerance, so I was willing to let it go. She puts the little bits of gauze on my inner elbow and the band-aid on top of it. Standard.

We go to the restroom for the obligatory pee test. Well, that is, she waited outside for me to produce the specimen! As I'm setting the now full cup down on the edge of the sink, I happened to look down at my arm. Blood. Running down my arm. Gauze is totally soaked through and I have honestly seen a lot less blood on a scraped knee than was pooled in my inner elbow and beginning to run down my arm.

"Umm, I never stopped bleeding," I tell the woman as she runs her little test strips through the specimen.

"Uh." She studies the little strip and puts it in its tube.

I reach over her and grab a paper towel as I'm thinking some direct pressure is probably necessary by now. "Umm, I'm still bleeding here ... I've never had this happen before."

She reaches over and grabs her second little strip and places it in the specimen and then studies it before putting that one in its little tube. We go back to the little examining room. (And, by the way ... this woman did not clean off the sink very well after placing that specimen cup there. Disgusting!)

On the way in to the examining room, I notice that now the paper towel has also soaked through - although at least some of that was simply from mopping up the mess that had run down my arm already.

"I've bled through this as well," I tell her, now brandishing the blood-soaked paper towel since I'm not sure what it will take to actually get her attention.

"Oh, you're still bleeding? Well, those little gauze pads are pretty thin."

Excuse me? That's all the concern or interest she can muster up? I have bled through 2 of her thin gauze pads, doubled over, the band-aid and now a relatively large paper towel for the bathroom and she's unconcerned about this?

Her solution? Not to tell me to consider continuing the direct pressure. Instead she grabbed 4 gauze pieces, folded them up and tried to tape those down with a regular band-aid. Hmm. And when it came time for her to give me the pre-printed sheet on how to avoid bruising, she kind of shoved it toward me and said, "Well, you're already bruised, so this doesn't really matter now."

Such concern. I'm so glad such a compassionate person is doing anything in the medical field; she has truly found her calling.

I really hope she was simply having a bad day.

But still ... this shot is from today, three days after she drew blood:

The pictures are somewhat washed out. It looks a lot nastier than this shows.

Posted by Red Monkey at 10:16 AM | Comments (6) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | TrackBack | Stumble

May 3, 2006

Mowing

I am never mowing the yard again ... after mowing both front and back yards today ... my knees are killing me, my hip made a hideous crack that could be heard literally across the house ... and I've already taken a pain killer. My allergies are killing me and my eyes won't stop watering.

We're hiring a neighborhood kid to do the yard the rest of the year.

Doesn't he look excited about it?

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:11 PM | Comments (3) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | TrackBack | Stumble

April 28, 2006

Coding Argh

Holy crap, dude.

I just finished making this index page XHTML 1.0 Transitional valid. I think there were 156 errors when I first ran it through the validator.

I first learned to write HTML while using the now archaic Mosaic browser and using the View Source option liberally until I understood how things worked. I joined the HTML Writers Guild and educated myself on web standards. I think I put my first webpage up in late 1996 and joined the Guild shortly after it organized.

Since then, though, I guess I've gotten awfully lazy about my coding knowledge. I was surprised at how many things had changed - which is stupid, I should have more consciously realized that tags would change as the "language" of HTML grew and morphed.

Anyhow, between learning about 9Rules and this review, I decided to clean the sidebar up a bit. I got rid of several pieces that required javascripts that just wouldn't get compliant and were just annoying little toys anyway. I also got rid of my page counter, which at some 22,000 hits makes me a little sad. I kinda liked watching it go up. But, as often as not, BlogPatrol was down or experiencing problems and it really just wasn't worth the delay in page load that it sometimes caused.

I keep intending to really clean up the template and re-adjust this to a three column and better handle the archives adn a few other things (including the new section in the sidebar, "Blog Clutter").

*sigh*
Now I need to run the stylesheet through a validator. Meanwhile, I'm now just hoping that I remember to put _blank in quotes and to self-close my line breaks. Yeesh. I gotta pay attention!

Posted by Red Monkey at 11:26 PM | Comments (4) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | TrackBack | Stumble