Item the first: Not all cars have automatic transmissions. Some of us old farts (and gear heads) drive something called a manual transmission or a "stick shift". If you've gone to movies like "The Fast and the Furious", any Bond movie, "Bourne Identity" or any film featuring race cars, you have seen the stick in action. It requires the use of a clutch and a gear stick to manually change the gear ratios in your engine, making use of said ratios to gain or reduce speed. With me? What this means in practical terms is that when we are all driving up a spiral ramp in a parking garage, I have nothing slower than first gear, unless you want to count rolling backwards. DO NOT, repeat, do not pound your brakes on the top of the spiral when you are driving in front of me. Although I keep a respectful distance from your rear fender, there is really nothing else I can do except stick it in neutral and play heel toe with the clutch and the brake and pray that I do NOT roll backward into the jackass who has his front grill stuck to my back bumper like I'm going to...
to do what? We are all in a line on a spiral parking ramp. What the fuck does he think I'm going to do? Pass the car in front of me, and thereby win the very last space in the lot?

Item the second: An elevator is fairly old technology by now. It should not be beyond the average person to understand how it works. However, this morning I learned that is not the case. So in an effort to help those recently deposited in the 21st century by a time/space worm hole, I will explain.

The elevator button only needs to be pressed once. If it is lit, it has already been pressed, and pounding on it will not make the elevator switch directions or arrive faster.

If the big arrow over the elevator door is lit up in green and pointing up, that means the elevator is going to go up. If the big arrow over the elevator door is lit up in red and pointing down, that means the elevator is going to go down. There are no other choices. It isn't trying to fuck with you by pointing up and then going down.

Once the doors open for you, you should enter the elevator and move to the back. Or to the side, if you are the first one in, and there is nobody else there. It is helpful to all the other people trying to get on the elevator to hold. the. door. open. Or you can press the button on the control panel that says "Door Open" and it will hold the door open for others. It actually speeds things up when the doors aren't shutting on people. Also? Moving to the rear of the compartment also speeds up the loading process because people don't have to shove around your fat ass to get into the elevator. The elevator is a public transit device and as such is designed to hold many people, not just you.

While I'm on the subject of packing people into small moving spaces, let's try the same concept out on busses and trains. If there is a door, go through it and keep moving. To the middle of the car. Standing in a doorway prevents others from getting on or off, slows things up, is discourteous and generally just lame.

Thank you. This ends today's lesson in modern technology.

Part the first: The Rude Pundit said it best on Wednesday morning when he said: Has anybody in this bed got a cigarette?

To quote the ur-progenitor of all the past six years of madness: It's morning in America.

To quote the American voting public: "Go fuck yourselves, arrogant Republican chicken-hawk constitution rapers."
Part the second: Miz Shoes Reviews: ANTM

We are back in the house with the bitches and the hos, and surprisingly we are still interested despite last week's recap show. To be fair, the high point of the recaps was watching the Queer Eye for the (Nominally) Straight Model Wanna-be. Well, that and the scene of the clinically insane Moooonique playing echo with Melrose. And the scene of the clinically insane Moooonique stomping on Doritos. To which we can only say, what the fuck was wrong with that girl?

Oh, well, we can also say this: How about a Supermodel Season on ANTM, where they bring back all the most delusional and insane B&Hs. A house filled with Camille, and Lisa, Tiffany and her weave, and Jade and Moooonique and Jayla and what's her name who wouldn't cut her hair and just walked out and the blind girl who wasn't blind when she had to leave in the dark of night, and of course Furonda. Can you imagine? And the judges would have to be equally unbalanced: the Divine Miss Dickenson and Naomi Campbell, whose name has finally been uttered by Tyrant. And she didn't hack up a hair ball or anything. Of course, if it was me that she likened to Naomi, I wouldn't have gotten all smiley and thank you. I would have gone back to the house and packed, thinking that next week it would be my head on the block. I'm just saying, that if you remind Tyra of Naomi? That cannot be a good thing.

So, where are we. Oh, yeah, back at the house with the bitches and the hos. Everyone is laying around thinking that there aren't so many of them anymore to get lost in the shuffle of who sucks the worst. There's a little pity party for Brooke, but not much of one. No, the bigger pity party is the one that Anchal is throwing for herself.

Allow me to sum up: Wah, wah, wah. Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I'm going to go off and make myself feel better by eating a few more pounds of bacon and then stress out over getting fatter not thinner and how come nobody in this house will shut up about my weight already, and why don't they like me? Wah, wah, wah, wah. Repeat ad nauseum.

The lesson this week is how to action model, and they are taught by none other than Gabrielle Reese, who really is the shit. See, this is why I used the title I did on this entry. This year I have liked more of the special guests and been more impressed with the photo shoots than any previous season.*

As expected, Caridee, Melrose, Michelle and Jaeda do well. Anchal sucks and doesn't want to wear a bikini and plays beach volley ball exactly as you would expect a girlygirly to play, which is to say, she all but closes her eyes when the ball comes at her and her dive toward it falls about four feet short of actually connecting with anything ball-like.

The next day, they have to do a shoot (and simultaneously shoot themselves using an infra-red shutter release, and frankly I think that's rather more multi-tasking than any of these girls could possibly handle under any circumstance) with some guy** from NASCAR who is allegedly a hottie and a part time model.

Michelle rocks it, and even climbs up on his car, puncturing the hood with her spike heels. Nicely done, tomboy. Nicely done. She totally commits to the shot. Guess who doesn't? Anchal? Anchal? Michelle wins her first challenge and gets to pick three friends. She picks Amanda, Caridee, and Melrose. MELROSE? Melrose whom everyone despises? What up? The four of them get to go on a free shopping spree at some shop run by? owned by? featuring clothes by? the nameless NASCAR guy. To keep the theme going, they have 30 seconds to run from the starting line into the show room***, grab as much shit as they can carry and get back to the line. Whoever has the most stuff wins, and gets to keep not only her shit, but all the other girls' shit, too. Melrose is the only one paying enough attention to figure out the rules, which means that she wins, much to Michelle's chagrin. And since the whole thing is edited for effect, we have no way of knowing if Melrose was a total dick and didn't share the spoils with the girl who took her to the dance.

The other girls, the girls who are not part of the winner's spree, all bitch and moan and piss and whine about having to be there to see the other girls shop. I may be getting soft, but this season's hamsters still strike me as being the most ungrateful little whiners to date. Jaeda and the hair. Anchal and the nobody likes me. All of them and Melrose is a bitch. Wahwahwah, already. To complain that they have to watch the winners have a good time? Please, girl, just be glad you didn't have to massage Jade.

Next, they have the challenge photo: reaching for product while (in-door) sky-diving. OK, all of you who WOULD have liked to see Mr. Jay toss them out from 20 thousand feet, raise your hands. They all suck. Jay offers up this direction to Melrose: Give it to me, girl; make them all hate you more! Amanda manages to look good, Michelle only sort of. Anchal, despite wanting to in-door skydive all her life, and despite being the only girl to manage a decent angle, still sucks. Ditto Eugenia, et. al.

Panel! The in-person contest is totally lame. Using techniques from improv classes I took 30 years ago in college, the judges pull out an action verb and an adjective for each girl to try to do. Swim frighteningly. Dance aggressively. And so on. Anchal, poor poor Anchal is asked to dance aggressively and needless to say, she fails dramatically. She also runs out of the room. Do you want to guess who gets sent home?

The bottom two are Michelle and Anchal. Michelle is a natural, the judges say, but she just doesn't Want. It. ENOUGH. Like, say, her twin sister. Or Caridee, who the judges are finally beginning to figure out is insane. Or Melrose, who is maybe or maybe not a total bitch, but who, like Lisa, despite being older than dirt and abrasively know-it-all, manages every week to turn out a fierce pic.

So who goes home? Anchal, poor, poor, Anchal, who ran out of the judging panel. Bad move, there, sweetie. Next week they finally travel, and if Tyra isn't geographically dyslexic, it looks like they are going to Spain. Please, oh please, do not make them try to learn flamenco.

* Yeah, yeah, yeah. For a fat girl, she don't sweat so very much.

** What? You think I would watch NASCAR? Puh-leeze people. That's driving in circles. Real racing is Grand Prix racing with, you know, straight aways, hair-pins and wiggly bits.

*** Also known as a Grand Prix start. Ahem.

Born here, although I'm not supposed to call myself a Native American on surveys and census questionaires, which, frankly, I think is sort of a rip. I AM, after all, native to these shores. As such, and since I am not a convicted felon, it is my right (some people, myself included, would say that it is my duty) to cast a vote in every election. And I do. I haven't missed so much as a vote for dog catcher* since I turned 18. I think I had a voter's registration card before I had a driver's license.

So first thing this morning, I went and pounded the shit out of that tacky little electronic device that can't give me a paper reciept. I even voted for a Republican. Not for anything very important, only the Commissioner of Agriculture, and I can't even tell you why, except that I just felt that if there was at least one R in the vote, maybe the (hacked) machine wouldn't eliminate my vote.**

If you live and vote in California, please vote for my old fellow traveler, Larry Cafiero, Green Candidate for Insurance Commissioner.

If you live and vote anywhere, read the Rude Pundit before you go.

If you don't vote, well, first of all, Shame on you. Second of all, shut the fuck up about what you think of our elected government, good or bad, because you pissed away your chance to do something about it. And third of all, when the jack-booted neo-con christian jihadists come to your door to cart you away, remember that you didn't vote. And remember that there were plenty of us out here in the wilderness shrieking warnings like banshees.

* Do people still vote for dog catcher? Is there still the position of dog catcher somewhere out in the fly-overs?

**Come ON, people. I live in South Florida. You don't think there is some serious Republican party-backed shit going down here? Puh-leeze. You have been drinking the Kool-Aid again, haven't you?

I spent the weekend in bed. Sounds delightful, but it wasn't. I was propped up with caffiene, pillows and snacks. I had the laptop on my lap and no less than four books on writing PHP code piled up next to me. I only got up to eat and empty.

What I have to show for it, besides a crater at the head of the bed where I was sitting for 36 hours, is a new shell for the EE site. I blew up the first one. By accident. I have ported all my entries from here and the photoblog over to EE and will probably have to do it again with different parameters set so that I don't have to reformat all the line breaks.

The photo entries don't port well at all.

The hack I found for the more jump (the one you just took) doesn't work. But it does show the entended entry... just all in the first window.

The photo gallery page hack may or may not work, since I can't seem to get my photos in it. I need to go back and try to redirect the program to correctly find my photo directory.

I'm beginning to think this might be easier on a (ick) PC than my mac, but that's just too bad for me. It's going to work on the mac or I'll die trying to make it work.

In the meantime, I'll just keep on writing here, because the anticipated switch is going to be a lot slower than I thought. Dammit.

I know that I said I was going to flip the switch over to Expression Engine, and really, I did install it and tried to customize it and everything, and really, the spam comments are driving me crazy on this platform, but Jeezus H. Christ, that is one tough program. Completely unintuitive, as far as I can tell. No manual to speak of, no third party books at all, at least not that I can find on Amazon.

Sure they have forums and tech support, but I'm a hands on kind of girl, and this is just blowing my circuits all to hell.

So. Anybody out there an EE guru who wants to have some long, meaningful e-mail exchanges with me this weekend, as I try to make the switch once and for all?

I'm cutting bias strips to make bias tape bindings on five quilts.

I totally hate bias strips. I hate cutting them, stitching them into ridiculous yards and yards and yards of bias tape. I hate pressing them, sewing them and finishing them by hand. And yet.

I only use bias bindings on my quilts. Why? Masochism? Devotion to a tradition I gleefully split from when I piece and quilt by machine? I really have no idea why I do it.

I just do. Two of the five are spoken for. The other three will be going up for sale, soon.