Headlines from venerable institutions

I do so hate to be the grammar police, but this is just sloppy. A real headline from the NYT today, according to my Google news page:

Michael Jackson Cleared After 14-Week Child Molesting Trial

Someone arrest that trial! It's molesting a child!

Psst. NYT. Why don't you worry less about making me remember a freaking free login to read your newspaper online and more about writing headlines that actually mean what you want them to mean. The modifier you're looking for is "molestation", not "molesting". You are currently modifying the word trial, and not the word child.

It makes a big difference to the meaning of the sentence.

In other news, I highly recommend the new Google customized news/entertainment page, especially if you have a gmail account. (And if you don't and you want one, I have some invites, just let me know.) I especially like the quote of the day. So much so that I actually asked it to show me two quotes of the day, which ruins the "of the day" idea, but there you go. Today my favorite of the two is this one:

If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.
- Vince Lombardi

Which reminds me, I should get to work.

teh n3\/\/ 1337 LOLOMG R0X0R WTF!!!!!111!!

After spending some time on the World of Warcraft forums (note: This is not a plug for other WoW players to do this--I actually heartily recommend against it. It's usually a total downer but it helps me pass the time when I am waiting for large printouts at work and one thread's worth of reading is usually about as much time as I have.) I have finally figured out some of the acronyms and found some funny kiddie netspeak shortcuts.

FTW drove me nuts for the longest time. I could not, COULD NOT, figure it out from context. I finally availed myself of Google, which informed me that it is most probably "For The Win". As in, "Re-spec to 31 Marksmanship FTW, fellow hunters", or more annoyingly, "Re-roll Mage/Priest/Rogue/Warrior FTW."

Who came up with this "For the Win" nonsense? It's not like it's a common phrase like most of the other internet acronyms. I mean, if someone's driving really slow in front of you, do you roll down your window and shout, "Drive the speed limit at least, for the win!"

Also, the spelling of the already colorfully mispelled "noob" has now morphed to "nub" in most circles. I have not checked to see if has similarly changed outside the WoW forums, but "nub", to anyone who's ever read a Harlequin romance novel, tends to put an altogether different image in my head. And it usually has nothing to do with a lack of experience.

I just saw my favorite one, which I would probably start using if the idea of using aolspeek kiddie shortcut-o-rama didn't make me almost as queasy as the thought of eating before 1:00 p.m. At the end of a post angrily attacking the 'views' of an obvious troll on the hunter forums (which are about 37% troll these days, and I don't mean the Horde race) came the rather delightfully dismissive closing, "kthx", which I think could only have been made better as, "kthxbye" or possibly "kthxby" to get in that all important creative spelling requirement FTW.

Which reminds me, parenthetically, of an atheist friend of mine in college who used to sign off her summer letters to me with "Yours in Christ", which is probably still my most favorite closing, but kthx is coming up fast.

kthx. Kathy<--noob (can't get into the new spelling, even FTW)

Excited

Yes, I feel much better than I did last night now. I am trying, as CK suggested, to simply decide to be optimisitic. I spent most of my youth being a pessimist, and if anyone asked me why, I used to tell them that only pessimists can be pleasantly surprised. If you're an optimist, you're expecting the best outcome, so any surprise for you will be a bad one.

People would regularly point out to me that I was spending a lot of time being negative on the chance of getting a momentary pleasant surprise, but it never really sank in. Today, I turn over the new leaf. Just don't expect, like, consistency or anything.

The main reason for my excitement is that my husband is in a car again, and this time, it is getting closer to me rather than further away. Yes, it will take fifteen hours. That is the bad news. I realize this. But the good news is that it will only take fifteen hours, and then it will be over. This is a good thing.

The bad thing is that I've accomplished very little of what I wanted to do while he was gone. I wanted to put some things on eBay, but as someone took the digital camera with him, I couldn't really do that. (Ahem.) However, that is no excuse for not currently having the laundry folded. Hopefully I can squeeze that in after work, as it would be pretty embarassing to be in the house for days and still have a laundry basket full of unfolded clothes.

Urk. Me=slob. But an excited one!

Totally Hysterical

Avast ye Six Feet Under spoilers ahoy.

The irony of the title of this post just hit me. "Hysterical" comes from the same root as "hysterectomy". In fact, here's what I just looked up on my ol' friend the internet:

...the origin of the term "hysterical" which derived from the ancient belief that a woman's uterus traveled throughout her body and caused "the choking sensation sometimes experienced by hysterics."

You know, since only women can be hysterical.

Anyway, I'm way off my point.

I had Six Feet Under on my TiVo since sometime in the middle of the night last night. I TiVo something else during its first run showing, so I had to wait for the sophomore showing. I woke up a little early this morning and I was going to watch it, but I messed around on the internet instead. I cannot express to you how glad I am that I didn't.

I wish I'd seen some spoilers. E mentioned it a little, but it was brief and I didn't really think about it too much.

I got pulled in early. Nate walks through a room in one of the first scenes with some coffee and Brenda nearly gags at the smell of the coffee. (Was she pregnant at the end of last season? I don't think so. Or at least, I don't remember.) I knew right away that she was pregnant. I can be two or three rooms away from a food when I'm feeling sick and the smell from that far away can set me off into fits of near vomiting. (And sometimes, I leave out the "near" part.) Tom had some ribs a few weeks ago that I can still smell, and I have no idea when I'll ever eat them again, the memory makes me feel so queasy.

They dropped several more hints, and then just started to talk about it. Claire bitches about going over to a "pregnant house" and that they should bring wine because, in a pregnant house, they may have forgotten that normal people still drink. That made me a little self-conscious. I know the baby has dominated a lot of my casual conversations recently, and I also know that I've spent a lot of my younger years rolling my eyes at people who don't seem to have anything to talk about other than their kids. I knew that getting pregnant would kill that Kathy for good, but it's weird to be on this side of it and remember what it was like on the other side so clearly.

But boy, am I writing around the point.

When Brenda woke up with the blood, I think my heart might have stopped. You have weird dreams when you're pregnant, especially in the first trimester, and I had one a couple of weeks ago that was extremely grisly. It all came back when Brenda's hand was covered in red and she just looked at it with this clear horror in her eyes.

Then I heard the nurse say "D and C", I actually started crying. I just don't cry at fiction. It's quite rare, anyway. Maybe it's the pregnancy hormones, but part of me, knowing I wouldn't have known what the heck a D and C was before I had reason to read What to Expect When You're Expecting. I felt like I was in on the secret, like I knew before most other people would know what that meant. (Linked above for any of you who don't know what I'm talking about.)

When it became clear that it would be days before they could do the D and C, and that Brenda would have to go through her wedding post-miscarriage but pre-D and C, I kept telling myself to press stop. I just couldn't, though. It was the proverbial car wreck that you can't look away from. I had to see if she made it. I couldn't imagine it. How do you stand there knowing your dead baby is there with you?

If you watch the show, you know how many deaths there are. Every damn show starts with some anonymous death. Tom and I used to make a little bet about the age, sex, and type of death it would be. See? I know it's fiction.

I watched it all the way to the end, including the excruciating scene at the end with Brenda and Nate, in which Brenda says something so raw about what's happening to her that I literally cannot type the letters. It also happens to be exactly the same horrified thought I had as soon as my brain wrapped around what, precisely, was going on.

I watched that stupid episode at 6:00, and I just pulled myself back together about a half hour ago. I don't think this is normal.

I mean, fuck. Does anyone do this and not spend the whole nine months just terrified that something will go wrong? I've been in this fricking house alone for too long.

For those of you who are just horrified to have read all this, my apologies. I know some of you won't be altogether comfortable with this, but hopefully you've already trundled off and haven't even made it this far. What can I say? Maybe I'll be funny in the next post.

I'm a grown up

A situation just occurred in which the younger Kathy would have blown up and started more of a fight than was absolutely necessary in order to resolve the conflict.

I kept my head, repeated the facts as I knew them, backed it up with evidence that anyone with a brain can acknowledge (it's hard to fuck something up before you were even associated with the organization in question...that would be one heck of a screw up).

You know, not losing your head and saying something irrelevant (but immediately satisfying) makes everything even more blissfully satisfying in the end. Nothing better than staying calm, having the other person yell, "Prove it!" at you, and then you take about 14 seconds to produce the paperwork that shows clearly what a dumbass they are.

I love getting someone else in trouble after they've gone out of their way to try to set me up. I never meant any trouble for you. You invited it. You created it. Have fun swimming neck-deep in it.

Revenge is good. Cold, calm revenge is better.

Adventures in Maternity Clothing

I went to the mall last Friday night, because all of my current pairs of pants that I could wear to work all made me want to cry. I'm not that big yet, but I'm big enough to make myself uncomfortable. Worst of all possible situations, really, because that means you have to wear maternity clothes but you are not really big enough to fill them out yet. This means you look silly, or that you are in a Halloween costume and you forgot the pillow.

Speaking of pillows.

I went to the actual maternity store this time, because I heard they have good sales and this is the change of season sale time. What I heard was right, actually. Whole back half of the store was full of sale racks. However, the old adage, "there's a reason it's on the sale rack" was never more true, except for a few select items.

One of the nice women who was working in the store started a dressing room for me, and when I finally gave up looking and decided to start tryin' on, I found my selections, plus a goofy little pillow thing with a long velcro strap attached to it.

I actually giggled out loud when I realized what it was. It's a pretend baby, really, that you can use when you're in your first trimester. It's so you can see if the clothes will still fit you in the second and third trimesters, and to help you pick out pants early that you'll find comfortable later. There are a lot of different ways to approach the waistband issue, and most women like one and dislike the others, depending on what makes them comfortable.

I scoured the internet looking for a picture of the tummy try on pillow to go along with this post, and I was amused to see, among the pages that talk about how to use a pillow to help you sleep in the latter two trimesters, there was also at least one naughty site talking about using pillows for personal gratification. Ha.

Kathy = Big, Lazy, Pregnant, Slob

I have a perfectly good, pregnancy-safe, aerobic workout DVD. I have done it four times. I have known I was pregnant for over a month. That's 26 slack off days.

I used to ride pretty much every day. What the eff happened?

I mean, yes. I'm tired. Exhausted most of the time. My back hurts. (yadda yadda, complain complain)

There are two main reasons. They are these: the DVD both annoys and frightens me.

It annoys me because the host, who is approximately 3,000 months pregnant at the time of the filming, keeps saying stuff like, "Four more for your baby!" Which is emotional blackmail, to my way of thinking. Which means, "Don't slack off, or you're basically giving up on your child! Look at you, you're a terrible mother already!"

It frightens me, because, did I mention? The host is PREGNANT. Not, you know. Pregnant. She is huge. Massive. She was clearly a tiny, athletic woman pre-pregnancy, and when she filmed the video, a comically large, round object was jutting out not only from her stomach, but through her back. Her back, just by the base of the spine, is rounded outward. Convex.

I paused it the first time I did it when she was turned sideways, and then again when she turned toward the camera. There is no way that woman had that baby the traditional way. That baby had to have torn her in half. It is ridiculous to consider otherwise. Don't give me that "it's a miracle what our bodies are capable of" bullcrap. There are miracles, and then there are the standard, unbreakable laws of space/time and physics.

I'm not that tiny, but I'm not so big either. Not small-boned, but my wrists are pretty small. I've never, call me crazy, considered the relative size of my pelvic bones compared to the average woman, nor do I really care to do any investigating on that. Suffice it to say, if I end up looking anything like the host of that DVD of mine, they're going to have to find some sort of major anxiety medication I can take in my third trimester that's safe for the baby.