"In-duh-vidual's name removed: in order for me to be able to use this (thing that she sent me)in the site, and have it be a part of the site, not a static window opening in a separate program, I need the original art/format.

I cannot use a PDF. I cannot pull the art out of it, I cannot embed it in the HTML. When you have a graphic image that you want to use as an element on a page, I need it in jpg, or gif, or as an original Photoshop file, or Illustrator or Freehand, or even as a bmp or tiff.

Just to reiterate: I cannot use a PDF."
What I Wanted to Say:

You stupid fucking git, how many times must I tell you that a PDF is not an acceptable format for me to use on this site? Obviously, at least once a fucking week, since no matter how many times I tell you that a PDF is not a graphic format (OK, well, it is, but not one that can be used as part of HTML), you insist on sending me PDFs and telling me to add them to the hospital's site.

Just in case you were in a coma for the last couple of years, and haven't actually used the fucking internet for anything other than passing lame ass jokes around, the whole fucking point of this endeavor is to be interactive, not fucking brochure ware. Which means, to sum up: I cannot use a PDF, I cannot use a PDF, I cannot use a fucking PDF.

I need the graphics sent to me in a graphic format: Photoshop, Illustrator, Freehand, gif, jpg, bmp, or any other kind of image openable by the first three programs listed. I can use animations, Flash or Fireworks. The one thing that is absolutely pointless to send me is a three fucking megabyte PDF file and expect me to do anything with it.

Thanks for letting me vent.

I have this girlfriend, see. And normally, I wouldn't write this kind of dish about a friend, but she isn't normal. She's a luddite of the first water. She has an e-mail address, but no computer: she has someone pick up her mail, print it out, and fax it to her. I don't even want to contemplate how the reverse works. I know it involves a typewriter. A typewriter, which, in all due honesty, is, in fact, electric.
So this girlfriend has issues with men. Specifically, she is a man-hater. Except for their dicks. Those, she assures me, she likes. But I have to wonder, seeing as how she holds men in such low regard, why she just doesn't keep a vibrator around and save herself much aggravation.

Every time we talk about men, and let me assure you, I try not to, she ends up in this rant about "men retreat to caves when they are in relationships, because they can't handle intimacy."

She goes on and on and on and on and on, and did I say she goes on at great length? about how men can't communicate; how men are all dogs; how men can only exist in one of two planes: the vertical in which you can do business or converse, or the horizontal in which you can do the horizontal mambo. The two planes, she believes, are mutually exclusive.

She informed me during our last conversation, that every single man she has ever been involved with, has cheated on her. I should note that by single man we mean every individual, because she is not so refined in her sensibilities as to stick to the unmarried variety.

This led me to consider the possibility that A) she only chooses men who are emotionally unavailable because she herself is emotionally unavailable, or B) she is more of a psycho than she appears to me, and drives the men, screaming, into the arms of other women -- and let me say that she looks like a bona fide psycho to me, so being more of one is a frightening proposition, or C) she only thinks that they cheat on her (and where does the married guy doing his wife fall?) or D) all men are pigdogs and I should think about my own track record.

I did. And nobody (except the Antichrist, and of course he would) cheated on me in my grand single days. Or if they did, I didn't know or didn't care, seeing as how it was a matter of goose and gander.

In any event, she is currently embarking on a new, dysfunctional and long-distance romance with a man she can barely stand being with when they aren't between the sheets. At least, that was the gist that I gleaned from her last hour-long screed about what sacks of shit men are.

She allowed as how, despite his bad politics, his paternalistic pandering and his harping on her to quit (chain)smoking, she had no desire to change him, and that made him a first in her long line of rejects.

That was a telling sentence, huh? All these losers she's been keeping company with, all these dogs who had to go mark other territory, she's been trying to change them all. Into what? Sausages? Lawn jockeys?

The whole point of men, in my opinion, is that they are not women. They are different. They communicate differently, they hold their silverware differently, they channel surf differently. As the French would say "Vive la difference!" Sure, they're dogs. But hell, I love my dog, too.

But I digress. In fact, I've digressed so much I forgot what the point was that I was trying to make.

I guess it was that if you think the opposite sex is from another planet, maybe you should check your own home address first.

I worked out with Nic Cage last night. Not the real one, the ersatz one who is my trainer. I was so done in at the end of the hour that I almost couldn't get home.

The clutch on Zelda Bleu (a VW Cabrio) is like the clutch on any VW: made of cast iron and requiring a strong leg. I got in last night, and I couldn't press the clutch. My legs were like unset Jell-O. Wobbly. Weak. I couldn't hold the clutch long enough to shift. I thought I was going to need someone to come and rescue me.

I finally got it in gear, and managed to get home with only one episode of losing the gear at a light. Then I poured myself a drink, which was another challenge: getting the screw top off the whiskey, and floated around in the pool until I could feel my toes again.

I think this is going to be great. If I can live long enough to see the results.

Well, at least Daddy's gonna hear some fine music where he is.

Ray Charles died today. And if you don't know who he was, never heard his music, never felt the grace that was his to share with the world, not only have you been living under a rock, you don't deserve ears.

Am I mistaken, or was some of his music placed on the Voyager? Good taste, NASA.

I never got to see Mr. Charles perform live. What a house burner that would have been.

Sigh.

Well, here's a link to take your mind off things. Be careful, it's laugh out loud funny. To me, at least.

Republican Survivor

So the Republicans want to put Reagan on the ten dollar bill? Thanks, but, no.

Here's an idea, though, if they ramrod it through and make it so: boycott the ten.
Refuse to use it, sort of like the giant snore heard round the world (or at least the USA) when the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin tanked. Or the Sacagawea "gold" (colored) coin did likewise.

No, thanks, you'll say to cashiers and bank tellers. I'd rather have ten singles than a single Ronnie. I'll take my change in fives, please. Anything, a bag of fucking nickels rather than have that murdering, lying, xenophobic, two-bit actor in my pocket.

Or, if the Republicans insist on putting him on our currency, how about a denomination appropriate to the millionaire-courting man of the people (hah!) he was: the ten thousand?

Hmmm. A quick search on the US Treasury site reveals that the largest circulating bill is the $100. OK. Make the largest circulating bill the $500 and put Ronnie's mug on that. Works for me. I'll never see one.

No, actually, he wasn't universally beloved and idolized. Certainly not by me, who lost so many of my gay friends during his administration, when the AIDS crisis was in its infancy, and he and his neo-con cabal refused to acknowledge the "gay cancer" and spent no money on research, education or prevention.
I spent the eight years of Reagan's presidency waiting for nuclear winter, waiting for the hands of the doomsday clock to move to midnight.

I have not forgotten that under his stewardship the government grew, Marines were slain in their barracks in Lebanon (and why, exactly were they there?), and his administration side-stepped the rule of law to sell arms to Iran in order to fund the Contras in Nicaragua.

I am neither saddened nor made joyous by his passing. The moving hand has written. The cosmic horse laugh, that the man who remade the Republican Party in his own, ultra-conservative image, could have benefited from stem-cell research (an anathema to those same neo-cons)is merely a sad echo in the universe.

My own mother has Alzheimer's and membership in that awful club somehow connects me to Mr. Reagan's family. For them, and for him, I feel pity. Pity only, and nothing more.

For what this country has become, for the journey that began with Mr. Reagan's single step, for that I feel deep sorrow and loss.