This was going around on the internets the past couple of weeks. The concept of not spending one damn dime on inauguration day as a means of protesting the war in Iraq and the Bush administration.

While I applauded the idea, I fell to the side of Snopes.com as to the effectiveness.
In the event, however, I managed to go the whole day without spending any money, so I did participate, not that anyone or anything would have noticed.

I also managed to watch not one damn minute of Bush2.0's inauguration. At least, not intentionally. While I was at the home visiting Mummy, the TV was on, and I was subjected to the sight of "this is NOT a coronation" his new, multi-bajillion dollar, fully armored, 2006 Cadillac limosine. Even the loonies at the home were unimpressed.

Which reminds me of a story, possibly apochryphal, possibly not, where in mentally ill persons were shown silent footage of Ronald Reagan speaking, and they all laughed at him. It had something to do with lying, but I don't remember the details.

Anyway, RJ is spending the night watching the first three seasons of The West Wing, or, as she says: a REAL president. I'm going to visit the sistergirl and her new puppy.

I go to the gym several times a week, to work out with the Marquis de Steve AKA Nic Cage, my trainer. The gym has a very small area for parking, and so people end up around the corner, down the street, whatever.

But some people are too good for all that, and so the gym has a valet. A valet, people. For the gym. Where you go to work out. So, like, doesn't that mean that you could hike your skanky ass a block or two to get into the gym to work up a sweat?

Am I missing something here?
Something else that I don't get is how women with no body fat anywhere else, can think it looks natural or even remotely attractive to have two huge canteloupe halves on their chests. You can't have tits without ass. Not naturally, at any rate.

For more information about that and why you should have a hand lift if you are going to have that many face lifts, go to one of my favorite guilty pleasures: Awful Plastic Surgery.

I have been noticing more and more of those damned W04 bumper stickers around. Before the election, nobody seemed to want to state out loud that they were going to vote for that goober. All I saw were Kerry bumper stickers. Believe me, I was looking and seeing what was out there, because it was my own sort of market research. To go by bumper stickers, Kerry was a shoo in.

Now that the fix is results are in, everybody and their dog has a Bush sticker somewhere on their vehicle, be it gas guzzling Hummer or rust bucket piece of shit.

Beats me.

I was out and about today, and everywhere I went people were asking me to contribute to charity. Which is all fine and dandy, and I do give, but on my own time, and with my own dime. With my own dime being the operative word here, because most of the people asking for my help today weren't people at all, but corporations.
The clerk at Marshall's asked if I'd like to contribute to tsunami relief, because I could just charge that extra amount along with my purchase of towels and gym clothes. Of course, I couldn't take it as a charitable deduction on my taxes, because the bill would just say Marshall's. Marshall's, by contrast, could then use my contribution as part of their overall expenditure and claim that they, Marshall's, had given x millions of dollars to the relief effort. They could, and they would, and they would never mention that the money came from their customers' pockets and not the corporate bottom line.

You want to donate to tsunami relief? Send clothing and linens and cold, hard cash from the corporate coffers. Use your own net worth to do good, not mine.

The same goes for the grocery store. I'm buying food for my own table, and they are asking me to chip in a few extra bucks for their corporate charity. No. No, I won't. Let your corporate VIPS unlock their own wallets and do the deed.

When I was at the hospital, we were big on the United Way. Every body had to cough up for the public good. Except, I worked on the campaign and I could see who gave what, and let me tell you, those VPs who are still there, collecting their big old paychecks, while I'm out on the street looking for my next job? They didn't give a third of what I did, and they made twice as much. Some of them didn't give at all, or gave a check for a Franklin. But down the line, they were giving orders that the rank and file under them should be giving it up for the poor.

Now that I'm one of the poor, or at least one of the unemployed (and just for the record, I work in one of those fields that the Shrub suggested unemployed people learn how to do at their local community college when they lose their factory jobs) it really rankles me that I'm being asked to foot the bill for corporate America's purely cosmetic acts of charity.

My Sony handheld blew its backlight, so I sent it to Sony to be repaired. The system worked wonderfully: I made the repair request on-line, they e-mailed instructions for sending it back, the UPS store knew what to do, the shipping tracking worked flawlessly, and I was sent updates on when to expect the delivery of the repaired product.

Except, the final update said that the handheld had been delivered to my front door at 6:23pm the prior evening. Which it had not been. I should know, I'd been home.
So I called UPS to ask where, exactly, did their driver think he left my Clie? They couldn't tell me, but told me to stay in touch with Sony for further updates. Now, it wasn't in Sony's hands anymore was it? Why is UPS' fuck up Sony's problem? Not to mention my own problem, since I'm the one missing a handheld.

I told the RLA about it, and he wandered off to walk the dogs. Came back with two dogs and my UPS package. The driver had left it on the front door step of the house next door. The driver had also written the address of the house next door on the box.

I haven't bothered to tell either UPS or Sony that I found my own missing package, because I feel like someone else should have the pleasure of figuring out that the UPS driver is an incompetent idiot.

This guy has thrown packages marked "Fragile" over my fence, pitching them a good six feet into the yard. Then I've filed claims for the broken goods. This guy delivered a clearly labeled package to a house that looks, for the most part, abandoned.*

Today, the RLA and I were out buying frames for his upcoming show. We tried to shop at Pearls, but the clerks were rude, the gumball machine ate my quarter, and the service desk employee refused to make eye contact with me. So we put the pile of merchandise we were going to buy on the nearest horizontal surface and left.

Not making eye contact is a huge annoyance to me. I don't care if you are busy, and I'm going to have to wait for twenty minutes until you can take care of my question: acknowledge that I exist, and tell me how long the wait will be. I can deal with that.

The pharmacist at the local CVS turned his back on me, and refused to talk to me, even though doing so would have solved the mystery of my mother's medications. I had nothing better to do, so I refused to leave the desk until he waited on me. It was a stand-off that lasted two hours. Really. Two fucking hours. He even helped some Pinecrest Princeling who wanted advice on what over-the-counter anti-itching cream he could use for his cat.

When I finally got my mother's meds, I stalked off to find the manager, and told her, in no uncertain terms that this was the first, last and only time I would ever be doing business with her establishment. I also said that I didn't know if the pharmacist was a dick to everyone, or I was just special, but that his attitude was not conducive to her bottom line, thankyewverymuch.

Finally, I'd like to say this about the job market today: what ever happened to a note that says thank you for your interest, interviews will be scheduled blah blah blah, or thank you for your interest, but not a snowball's chance in hell... Or even a phone call. An e-mail that says your application has been received, the process will take
yaddayaddayadda amount of time.

None of the above. I could be sending resumes into thin air, for all I know. Really. America is becoming a service industry country and we have all the service skills of roadkill.

I'm done complaining. For now.

*OK, so I'm being judgemental about the neighbor's lack of yard care and piles of construction rubbish where his front lawn should be. So sue me, I live in the fucking 'burbs, OK? Lawn care is a big issue around here.

I've collected miniatures since I was one myself. My mother collected art glass, and when I was just a mere prat, she'd take me to the antique stores with her, teaching me what was what and sending me to scout the nooks and crannies.

The first piece I got for my own collection was a hand-blown pill bottle, from an antique shop in Newport. I held it in my hand as we made our way to the counter. The gentleman proprietor asked if I had found something I could not live without, and I showed him the bottle, and the pontil mark which made it so valuable. He gave it to me, starting me on a life of collecting.
Right. Like I wasn't going down that road anyway, what with the family of origin and all.

Thank all the gods and goddesses that that little bottle wasn't on the shelf that collapsed today, sending my tiny china and glass animals to the Cuban tile floor, and from there into a million shards.

They are irreplaceable things, of course: the set of glass cats from Venice that my mother brought back to me one year, but not, again giving thanks, the set I carried around Europe the summer I was eleven. The set of Hagen Renaker bear cubs that I've had since I was very small shattered. I've seen them on e-bay, but not in the dark matte finish that mine were.

A porcelain horse, no more than half an inch tall, with legs no more than a sixteenth of an inch in diameter had no chance. Even the doll-house scaled sewing machine made of metal broke when it hit the tiles.

I couldn't bring myself to photograph the carnage. All the pieces are in an ashtray, waiting for me to sort through and salvage what could possibly be salvaged. The rest will go into the graveyard of broken toys, either in the RLA's miniature Halloween Village, or my mosaic on the koi pond surround.