Or, in this instance, the machine.

Got an e-mail from an old client/acquaintance: Your recent e-mail contained a virus.

First, I didn't send her an e-mail. Second, I run Norton 24-7. Third, I NEVER open e-mail from people I don't know with subject lines like: "a good joke" and an executable file attached. For that matter, I routinely trash e-mail of a certain size: approximately 132K, because that seems like the standard size for the Klez virus.

But, being a responsible adult user of computer technology, I shut down all my programs and started a Norton scan. Well, it's been over an hour and a half, we are only half way through the scan, and not even to my second hard drive. But as I anticipated, there isn't so much as a hint of a virus.

Bah and humbug. No pun intended.

Like every other sentient human in America, I've been hearing all about e-coli and samonella and how we need to eat our burgers and steaks well done. To which I have said: Feh. Well done meat ain't worth eating. And I have continued to eat my beef medium rare to rare. I even eat a lump of raw ground beef now and then, when I'm cooking something that uses ground beef. Which I did Tuesday night. And I spent the rest of the evening and Wednesday paying for it in ways that you truly do NOT want to hear about.

Today I'm a little less green. Will I stop eating raw meat? Um, yeah, probably. Will I start eating it well done? Never. I'd rather be a vegetarian. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Self absorbed as I am, several years ago I determined that I needed a new look. This realization was prompted by several things, all of them connected. The first was that my personal, quirky style was starting to show up on the runways and on much younger women. The gauzy, flowing aging hippie act was being co-opted by willowy young things like Jennifer Anniston and Gwyneth Paltrow. Hmmm. Not good. Also, the red hair, which had been quite shocking fifteen years ago was as common as dirt. Finally, there was the birthday that put me closer to 50 than to 40. Aging hippie chick chic had to go.

I thought on this for a while, and determined that mid-career Kate Hepburn, Georgia O'Keefe was the look that could take me into my next couple of decades. Man-tailored shirts and khakis. Long hair, let gone to grey and in a hefty braid down my back. I needed to pare down my jingly jewelry to single, large "statement" pieces. I needed to get a tan and loose weight. Aging beatnik chick.

To that end, I quit dying my hair and discovered that it's still browny-blondey: getting those white hairs throughout, but not in clumps. I let it grow long, too. And for someone with the sort of mop of Shirley Temple ringlets I have, is a mission and a half. For every inch of length I have to grow another three of spiral. And so, three years later, I have enough length to braid.

I tanned, I cleared out the closet. I started wearing solid colors. With great regret, I gave up the wire-rimmed bi-focals with the soap bubble pink and orange tint.

All was going well with the plan and then I started watching VH1 and saw way, way too many episodes of the Big Hair 80s retrospectives. Last week I went and got a David Lee Roth-when-he-was-fronting-Van Halen big hair shag. The really sorry thing is that it looks Totally Kick Ass on me. And my new glasses are Anna Sui tortoise shell cat-eyes. With a sort of ruffle.

Now, every time I see my reflection, I crack myself up.

Things I've seen lately and wished I hadn't:

A woman wearing her coat backwards during the recent cold snap. This one confused me alot. Did she think she'd stay warmer with the opening in the back? Did she think it was faster to put it on that way? Could she have seriously thought it was cute?

Young men wearing those super low-riders, and having to continually pluck at their crotches to pull them up. Or not. Maybe they just like to pluck at their crotches. What's the point of a fashion that you have to fuss over constantly? It'd be like having a manicure that never dried, that you needed to retouch every 15 minutes.

Women wearing acrylics on their big toe nails, and those nails long, really long, and sharp. Do they sleep alone? Do they rip their sheets with those talons? How does that work with a closed-toe shoe? Again, is there really a popular dementia that this is attractive?

Hats that are too small, and positioned askew on the top of the wearer's head. This is particularly a baseball cap phenom.

To paraphrase Ozzie, "Ugly, ugly, fucking ugly."

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.

Fluffy was my beta fish. But he was a beta fish among beta fish. He was magnificent and he lived for 3 years in a spacious bowl with a plastic replica of a small, decaying log. He was rose colored with turquoise flash, like a really nice hot rod flame job. Fluffy loved little ants. He'd lunge at them like a bonzai version of Jaws. He passed in November. Moment of silence.

I missed Fluffy immediately and sought the solace of another beta. Now I have an inky cobalt blue beta named Rover, and frankly, he's a whiner. He's not fit to hold Fluffy's fins. Granted, Rover is a handsome devil, but he just annoys the hell out of me.

When the weather dipped down into the 50s last week, I had to put his bowl outside in the sunshine, because he "looked chilled". He won't eat. He's a fucking finicky eater. He won't eat the fish kibbles that Fluffy ate. He won't eat the more expensive, fancy beta food. He won't even eat fresh ants.

Now, I have a terrier, a pair of siamese cats and a husband. They are all male and they are all finicky eaters. Every one of them likes my cooking. But I will be damned if I'm going to deal with a finicky fish. There are limits, even for me.

I hate to write code. I really, really hate to do it. However, in my job, such as it is, I am being forced to learn to write in Cold Fusion. It's a trial by fire, as well. Write a program, test it, send it live, and oh, yeah, do it by month end.

I am a fucking graphic designer. My training and experience allow me to take the visual equivalent of chicken shit and turn it into award-winning chicken salad. My life has not prepared me to write code, despite having been sent to Cold Fusion boot camp to learn to do so.

I hate computers. I hate what they did to my profession. I hate that the bogus class I took in high school (touch typing) has become one of my most valuable skills. I miss having ink-stained fingers. I miss the smell of photo chemicals. I miss the room-sized stat camera. I miss the leisurely deadlines (right). Well, compared to today's work schedule where you can get a hissy-gram from someone because you haven't changed their web page within 15 minutes of them e-mailing you the changes, they WERE leisurely.

Half the people I deal with have never heard my voice or seen my face. I am just an e-mail address.

Did I mention that I hate computers?

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.

There was an interesting poll in the Miami Herald over the weekend. It seems that almost 70% of Americans have no wish to engage in a war with Iraq. Here's a sample quote from the article.

The informed public is considerably less hawkish about war with Iraq than the public as a whole. Those who show themselves to be most knowledgeable about the Iraq situation are significantly less likely to support military action, either to remove Saddam from power or to disarm Iraq.

Granted, it's been a few years since my high school Americanism vs Communism class, but I seem to recall that elected officials are supposed to govern in accordance with the wishes of those being governed. The other way, in which those at the top do what ever they want, is called a dictatorship, or rule by despot. Revolutions are fought to bring an end to those regimes. Or a war against a certain oil-rich nation in the Middle East.

Here's a thought: if the public doesn't want war, and the public doesn't think that the administration has made a good case for war, and the non-partisan UN team of investigators isn't so sure that there's hidden weapons, then why is our "President" steaming ahead with his toy soldiers. Wasn't this man "elected" on the basis of having no foreign agenda, or even reasonable knowledge? So if he was admittedly clueless going in, a mere two years ago, why should the American people believe that he's capable of reason today?

In other news, a headline straight out of a book from my childhood "The Mouse That Roared" it now appears that if we give Korea more fuel (ooh, oil again, and what business is half the current administration in?) they will stop playing with their nuclear reactors. And when did Korea develop all this nuclear potential? Why, during the reign of Bush the First, and Ronald Reagan.

Does this surprise you? No, me either.

Every time the Smirking Chimp talks about jump starting the economy, my portfolio tanks even further. Is it possible to OWE money to a corporation in which you owned what once amounted to valuable stock? Yesterday the SC said he was going to do something and my stocks rose. Today he told the country what he was doing and they sank below sea level.

What can we deduce from this? That Wall Street has no confidence in trickle-down economics in this century any more than the last time the Bushies tried it. Oh, the late 80s. What a fun time that was. I got laid off from Citibank, along with about 20,000 (or was it 200,000) fellow employees world-wide. Yes, you remember those far off days, when yet another Bush (brother Neal, the one nobody mentions anymore) was doing the funky rhumba two-step with Silverado Savings and Loan.... Can you say government bail out of the S&L industry? Sure you can. And then you can remember what it was like going to the unemployement office every two weeks as you tried to find a job in the middle of a recession.

But, never fear. This is going to do wonders for the boys in Bush's smoke-filled back rooms. And while we're on the subject of how to fill the pockets of the already rich, how's about those new cars at the Detroit Auto Show? Bigger, heavier, faster and more in need of Saudi gas and oil than anything in recent history.

Hey, fresh air and water are highly over-rated commodities anyway, right?

Time to go home and drink.

Well, imagine my surprise when I discovered that there is like, a whole web site devoted to the poem in the Chevy Tahoe commercial. You know the one, James Garner doing a voice over, guy standing on the edge of a remote cliff by his glamorous Chevy. And you on the couch, thinking: Uh, did my mother read that to me when I was a child? Is it Robert Louis Stevenson? Is it Robert Frost? Is it Dr. Suess?

Well, the answer is no. It was none of those men, and you never heard it before you saw the commercial for the first time. It was written by a guy named Patrick O'Leary who works for Chevy's ad agency. And as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter that it was ad flak. I love the recitation.

In fact, so many people love it, that if you go to Chevy's web site and go to the Tahoe page, the poem is formatted as a PDF with nice type and a parchment graphic, suitable for downloading and printing out. Which I just did and hung it over my desk, right next to a particularly poignant Dilbert cartoon.

Yeah, right. Think "Gotta Sing!" Who was that, Gene Kelly?

Anyway, the spouse and I had a lovely new year's eve, thanks for asking. We ate meat, and drank champagne and watched a marathon of Monster Garage. I think I like it more than he does. Is it a good thing to be such a gear head? I so want the PT Cruiser to get a hot paint job. The guy who does all the paint on Monster Garage. That's who I want to paint flip-flop flames on my car. And tons of chrome. Yeah. Big Daddy Roth, you ruled.

We spent new year's day in full cocoon watching our own marathon: All of the Evil Dead, Army of Darkness movies. I say that Evil Dead II was really just a remake of the original Evil Dead, and Marc says that it was a sequel. All of my arguments as to why it's NOT a sequel make sense if you allow that there is a plot in any of these movies. If you don't think there's a plot, then my well-reasoned debate is just crap.

Won't be the first time.

I am definitely over Paul McCartney's fans. I wrote this little rant about why I find Paul less than my favorite musician, and put it on my web site. I never advertised the rant. People keep finding it by putting Paul + McCartney + Hate into a search engine. If they dig at it long enough they come to my site. And then the fun begins. For them, not for me. I have been called a loser, a pathetic loser, fat, ugly, stupid, a teenager, and a slut and a whore. Actually the same guy called me both a slut and a whore.

I think that they are mutually exclusive, at least theoretically. A slut, is, by definition, someone who will have sex with anybody freely and for free. A whore, on the other hand, is someone who has sex for pay. I think that a whore, in her (or his) time off does not have sex with lots of people for the fun of it. I think that on their days off, whores tend to avoid random sex entirely. Hey, I could be wrong, but I'm just saying.

I have been called a pathetic loser for posting my views on my personal website. I have been accused of desiring attention from Paul's fans. Nothing could be further from the truth. I posted my rant for my own entertainment. It wasn't me who put my address on the official McCartney site. It was a fan.

Why? Why would someone who trolls the official site to wank ad nauseum with other fans care to place my rant there? And then to call me a loser when they are the ones who found me by trolling for Paul + Hate. I may be a loser, but I have never in my on-line life tried a search for Bob + Dylan + Hate. Why would I? Why would I care if I found someone who disliked Dylan. No skin off my nose. (There's a huge Michael Jackson joke just sitting there for anyone who wants it.)

Who are these fans and what pleasure do they derrive from accusing me of such personal failures? And why don't they just shut the fuck up already. Threatening me won't shut me up, nor will it change my opinion. But if you WANT my opinion, spending your time on line to debate with other fans far and wide as to which haircut over the years really made Paul look the cutest; well, THAT's what I call a loser.

I'm in the sky tower, watching the buzzards circle. No, really. Capistrano has swallows, Miami has turkey buzzards. Not as romantic an image, perhaps, but they have a certain poetry to them, as they like to circle the Court House. Get it? Buzzards, lawyers... It's humor.

Well, they also hang out around here at the towers. Hopefully nobody sees the irony in their loitering around a hospital.

That's all I'm doing today. Loitering. Banging away at the old keyboard, working on my personal website and waiting until I've put in enough hours to leave on this Friday after a mid-week Christmas. In my head I sound like a Simpson's talking watch. "Are we there yet are we there yet are we there yet?"

Hey. At least I did something when I wrote this: you, on the other hand, are merely reading. Go back to work.

I'm not even a Christian and I'm having a typical Christmas.... I have injured myself in a kitchen accident while making a pie for the Christmas dinner we're going to. I'm depressed from talking to my parents. I'm depressed in general. I'm totally stressed out. There's nothing on TV or radio that ISN'T Christmas, so it makes me feel like a stranger in a strange land. Another one of my fish died. Not the koi. They're doing fine. But the twenty-four cent goldfish went one after the other. And one of the algae eaters died the first day I had him. Probably not enough algae for him to eat in a brand new pond. Not to mention that little bit of lime still leaching out of the concrete. I guess if you are sucking the walls, lime isn't a good thing for you.

Anyway. Bah humbug. I want to go back to bed and sleep through the whole damn thing.