Great movie. High camp. High concept: women are being brain washed into women's lib by the hidden tape recorded messages in their hair dryers. Happy Face cosmetics or something like that. Of course, Flint's women (they are always in multiples) are immune to the messages because he's such a hottie.

Here's my theory based upon observation: the world is being brain washed by the secret, hidden taped messages inside our cell phones. I don't know what the message is, maybe "George Bush is good. George Bush is right. George Bush was elected president. Iraqis flew the planes into the World Trade Towers." Maybe the reason I don't believe any of that is because I rarely have my cell phone attached to my head. And the reason that Dubya's approval rating has gone up is because everyone else on this freaking planet DOES have a cell phone attached to their head and they NEVER SHUT UP.

Is there no place left where there can be peace and quiet? I don't want to listen to your insipid conversations, in any language. I understand enough Spanish to know that those conversations are no more interesting than the ones I'm unwillingly privy to in English. I don't want to hear the music you are playing on your personal music system, be it i-pod, rio, mp3 player or old-fashioned walkman. Turn it down, not up so loud everyone else can hear through your earphones.

I don't want to listen to your car stereos, either. I don't want to hear you, and I probably don't want to know you. And you know what? You probably wouldn't like me either. I have way too refined a sense of propriety.

Bite me.

Today I struck a blow for civility and I'm proud of the results. As usual, I was on the train. As usual a woman sat down across from me and began the ritual of making up a face. She took out her eyelash crimper and started on her left eye. I took out my trusty digital Nikon and pointed it at her. She looked up and glared daggers at me. I blandly continued to zoom in on her at eye level. She flung herself sideways in her seat and huddled down, now working on her right eye in a cramped little ball with her back to me.

At the next stop, she got up, flung another dirty look at me and flounced off to another seat, far away from me and facing in the opposite direction.

Despite the fact that my battery was low and I was unable to get the shot to add to my hall of shame I was pleased with the results of my attempted photograph.

My only regret is that despite the hateful looks, the woman didn't say anything to me about my trying to get a photo. I practiced my most polite and proper response, and never got the chance to use it. So here is what I WOULD have said:

'Madam, that which you are attempting to do in public, you should be doing in private. If you do not wish to be observed or your acts to be documented, I suggest you carry out your morning ablutions in the privacy of your own home, and not on public transit."

Boo-yah!

sitting next to me on the train this morning.

DO NOT PICK YOUR FACE IN PUBLIC!!!!!

Are you fucking mad? Dressed to kill, small child at her side, and she is using an Elizabeth Arden Red Door hand mirror to pull the chunks of dead skin that remained after the last chemical peel off her face. Pulling, picking, scraping and otherwise giving herself a dry facial at 8:30 in the bright light of public transit. Pulling, picking and scraping until some parts actually bled.

EWWWWW. Thanks for making my fucking day. That image is going to stick in my head for fucking ever, no doubt.

Speaking of No Doubt and things that stick in your head, I've had No Doubt's live MTV version of REM's "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine) rolling in an endless loop for about two weeks now. Probably no coincidence that that's how long the war in Iraq has been going on. But there it is. And I can't make it stop. I've tried actually listening to it but that doesn't make it go away.

Another thing that's been stuck in my head for about 4 years now is an old quote from Diana Vreeland: "Pink is the navy blue of India." I'm not sure I know what that means, but I keep thinking about it. It has made an impact on my fabric stash. My studio is starting to pile up with hot pink and rose and orange and coral and saffron and purple. I keep rearranging the piles and there are all these ideas for how to use the fabric pushing around in my mind. (If they could only get rid of No Doubt) (No, I like No Doubt: I just don't want to be singing It's the End of the World as We Know it for another 6 weeks)

Now I want to make a mosaic on the bottle green wall behind the koi pond that says "Pink is the navy blue of India." In some kind of twirly funky type and pink glass and pottery shards. I can see that wall from my sewing machine. I think it'll be inspirational. Or at least cool.

An open letter to the fine, intelligent members of the illustrious art forum known as EatPoo.com.

Fine. You win. Take what you want. I really don't care. I never did care. It was all about the attitude. Clearly you have me on attitude as well as talent, intelligence, wit, and what ever else it is at which you desire to win.

You want to come to my site and rag on me, fine. You want to continually miss the point of my writings and the humor I display? It is your right to do so. You wish to remain anonymous and post bogus sites and e-mail addresses? Knock yourselves out.

You win. You are all, collectively and individually, better human beings than I. I was a fool not to see it from the very first post. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea fucking culpa.

Now, can we all just get on with our lives and forget about each other? I didn't think so. But this is MY last post on the subject.

A while back I posted about band width poachers, and how they suck. I told the story of how I found out that I had some, and where they seemed to be coming from. A couple of folks offered sugestions on how to stop it. I let it pass.

Recent trolling through my stats showed that it wasn't just the photo of my glamorous red shoes (the ones in the comment window) that was being poached, but my masthead, other photos of shoes, even a photo of my dear, dead grandfather. That one was accompanied by snotty remarks about his "hotness" or lack thereof. Which, in all honesty, since the picture was taken around the turn of the last century, were probably justified.

That isn't what's got my knickers in a twist, though. It is the glee with which the poachers announced that I had discovered the theft and bitched about it. They encouraged each other to steal more images. They ridiculed me for caring. They thought they should "force" me to join their chat group.

And that's another thing. Their chat group, as far as I can figure, is comprised of teenage boys with penis size issues, an average IQ in the mere double digits, and an awful lot of time on their hands, which they use to post lame photos, make even lamer jokes, and beg and plead for someone of the opposite sex to fall into their site and stay. They come from all over the world, which makes me sad for women.

And then there is this: even though they are detestable little creatures, they are driving the stats up on my site. When you open your doors to the public, you can't complain when the public walks in.

I went shopping yesterday, and almost came to the end of my patience with the human condition. Every single store I went into, and I was only shopping independently owned boutiques in a small downtown area, had the shoddiest, snottiest help I've ever had to deal with. It is a miracle that I didn't turn into Edina on the spot and tell each and every one of those ratty-assed salesgirls to "get over the attitude, sweetie, you only work in a shop."

Store the First: I go in to pick up my new glasses, which I had confirmed on Thursday would be ready for Saturday pickup. They were, to a certain degree: the one pair wasn't ready because THEIR vendor had sent the lenses without the requested coating. The other pair WAS ready, except for the tint, which hadn't been applied. Could I come back in 20 minutes to an hour. Sure.

Store the Second: My favorite up-scale shoe store is in the middle of their biannual 2 for 1 sale. There are two sales clerks. One is behind the register, the other on the floor. I walk in. I am ignored. I peruse the sale rack, all the while overhearing the girl on the floor in a deep, and to me, personal conversation about breast enhancement surgery. The customer is showing off her new size D- es, but they may be considered C+s. They are discussing the exact size in ccs, and I cannot remember the difference between 500 and whatever the other number was.

Even while she is vaguely considering getting a shoe for me, my clerk is discussing her upcoming boob job with the other customer. This is pissing me off, big time, and nobody is catching the vibes, although, frankly, I think that they are capable of being picked up on a seismic scale.

For what it's worth, these two women were conscious of the impropriety of discussing their boob jobs with the general public: each talked about the dos and don'ts of telling your very young daughter about what Mommy had done. Each concurred that small girls are town gossips. Even a third customer contributed to that discussion about what a six-year-old knows about plastic surgery. For what it's worth: this conversation took place on Saturday, January 25, 2003 on Sunset Drive in South Miami, Florida in a shop called Capretto's. The sales clerk in question is 5'10" tall (I know this because she justified wanting D cups by repeating the phrase: "I'm five-ten, I'm a big girl." over and over. I don't know her name, but perhaps you do. She's having surgery on February 8th at Baptist Hospital as part of a symposium and the fee for the Vanderbuilt University surgeon is only $1,500 which really ticked off the other customer, who had paid $6,500 for her tits.

Hey, bitches: there WAS another human being who spoke English within 3 fucking feet of you. If you think it's inappropriate for me to repeat all this, well think about it the next time you open your fucking traps in public and announce with pride the inner workings of your petty little lives.

PS: I don't care a rat's ass about you, your tit size or the number of children you have.

Store the Third: The shop was completely empty, except for exhorbitantly priced slips of chiffon, poorly sewn into size 0 slut wear. I was asked twice in five minutes if I'd like a bottle of water.

Store the Fourth: In the middle of another sale, all clothing is in a disordered heap in the middle of the room. Nobody asks me anything.

Store the Fifth: Not only do they not carry what I am looking for (very expensive, over-dyed embroidery floss), they "don't pay any attention to what the other shops sell" when I ask if their competitor shop down the street carries it. They argue with me when I tell them that when I stopped in the previous week an hour and a half before their posted closing time, the store was locked and shut. They give me the fish eye and they get none of my money, despite the fact that I like the canvases they have.

Store the Sixth: My glasses still aren't ready, but the sales girls insist on having me wait, while they pour me a glass of wine, offer me nibbly things and apologize for the delay.

OK, readers, which store am I going back to? Of course, the one which offers service. I will never stop doing business with Edward Beiner Opticals, because they understand the concept: If you want me to pay more for something, then you have to offer something more. And they do. They offer service. They remember your name. They are customer-driven.

I find bandwidth poachers just the lowest. It's bad enough that they use one's images without credit and steal one's intellectual property, but to do so by using your own bandwidth is just beyond low. If you like the photo of my glamorous red shoes so much, then right click on your fucking mouse and download it to your own hard drive.

I'm checking my stats and I see a few hundred referrals from a page I can't identify, so I follow the electronic track backwards and find my girlyshoes stuck in the middle of a page of yapping, uh.... well I can't exactly figure out what this particular chat site is about. It may be a room full of yapping perverts, there certainly seems to be enough of them there, but then my shoes are dropped in among a ton of photos of fuzzy little kittens.

I can't tell if the kitten snaps are sarcasm, either, based on what else is on eatpoo.com

Ah well, why should I expect civility from the web any more than I expect it in the meat world.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I hate the living.

I'm in training. Training to write code. The first question they asked us was what our expectations were for the class. So I said I expected to be reduced to tears at least twice. Half the class are members of a team that already use ColdFusion and just need to learn the ins and outs of the latest version. Another three are developers and then there is me: a graphic designer who was taken by the sucking black hole that is the world wide web.

One of my fellow trainees has decided to hijack the class. She is needy and demanding. And whiny. And she has a stoopid name: Tonda. Yesterday the instructor offered to skip the lab modules and cover more information at the end of the three day class. Since half the class already knows the program and since the optional material is the most valuable to the rest of us we all went YIPEE!

At 11:30 as we were rolling into the next module, Tonda announced that it was lunch time. "This is a big retail area and it's a very busy retail season so if you want us to be back in one hour, you need to let us out now." So our teacher let us out. When we came back, Tonda demanded that we take another vote about the class format because she wanted to do the labs. "I could be getting the same knowledge from a $50 book in front of my laptop at home."

Yeah? Then do us all a favor and go home with the book. There was much eye rolling and hemming and hawing as nobody ever wants to confront a bully. But we all know how charming I am and how much I love a fight, so I finally said, "Look, you're being selfish. The rest of us need the information from the end of the class. You want to do the labs, do them at home."

So we hit a compromise: if she wanted to do the labs with the instructor at the end of the day, he'd stay with her and the rest of us could attempt to beat rush hour traffic. That led to the rest of the day's acting out activities: constant questions, interuptions, and demands that the instructor not click his freaking mouse so fast. I was ready to bitch slap her into the next class room.

Today she's sucking up and trying to take the instructor to lunch so she can have some private face time. He keeps dodging the bullet, but we'll see how it plays out.

Yep. Those are actually today's shoes. How come nobody seems to understand the concept of gridlock as it applies to traffic? If there's no room for your car, it isn't going to help matters to drive into the intersection and then block access for the next group of people. And since when did the law become 2X2 through a stop sign. Back in the dark ages, when I took driver's ed, it went like this: First person at the intersection goes first, and then everyone else goes through, one at a time, from the right to the left. Right of way, get it? Here in Miami, maybe because there are so many boaters, people seem to drive according to the laws of gross tonnage. The more tonnage you have, the more right of way you have. And since most people are in SUVs, pickup trucks and minivans, that leaves people like me in the dust. Literally and figuratively.