Got Mah Hair Did

I do it, like, never. So sad. I get it done, leave most of the length, then grow it like a nasty weed for many months before I break down and do it again. When I walked into the salon today, I looked like the Blair Witch with fried kinks of bird's nest flying every which way. There was a dead dog of hair shank hanging off the end, and spastic curls like when people grow their nails for the Guinness Book of World Records.


My new hairdresser is awesome. She's a tres cool chick and she's not afraid of doing what I ask. When I say make it blond, platinum, she's like "Yeah." When I say HACK IT OFF, she's like "Yeah." So she made a pony tail and hacked it right off. It was thrown to the floor and looked like this:


Which I immediately recognized as a Yorkie dog. It totally does look like a dog. See?


So after all the bleaching and further cutting, I went from looking like this:


To this:


Yes, all participants will be protected by the black bar of anonymity.

On an unrelated note, my work friend linked this website on Facebook and I honestly could watch it foreversssss. Animals Being Dicks! Because the scientists say that smart animals are somewhere around a 3-year-old's mental development, so it would figure, yes? I LOVE IT. This website made me so happy, I'm linking it for permanent to the right.

Healed

YAY YAY YAY Internet! What did we do before the Internet? We wallowed. We propped a chair against the door, put on Tusk, and smoked our parent's 1/15th smoked menthol cigarettes. Or, well, you did that, not ME, not ME. Don't tell my mom.

Anyway, after watching that god damned Inside Job I just need a sweet, sweet intake of '85 "Dog & Butterfly" 5:30 am roach smokin,' under the pool table utopia. You know. How you do.

This will heal you, too. First, a blorp.


SCREEEEEEEECH, right? OMG, when I saw this I went half crazy. I had flashbacks to lunch just this past Thursday when I finally vocalized what I'd been feeling so long to my friend, Editor McWorkypants (alias). For so long I've harbored such guilt about the cats. I had them for four months and I sent them back to the org.crazy that I adopted them from. Let me be clear and unapologetic: I love cats. I love animals. I am still allowed to express this freely. It took me far too long to get here.

After too many months (year +) of hating myself for failing these cats, I came to a series of conclusions:

• I sent them back to the service after spending hundreds of dollars on adoption fees and medical care. I could have paid less as a "foster" if I'd known what I was really in for.
• I have only ever known tamed cats, born and raised in human homes. Don't think it makes a difference? Wait till a mostly-feral cat sinks it's teeth into you and ask that question again.
• The whole adoption ideology guilts guilty people into adopting cats without really understanding what a "street cat" is. My particular agency had a MySpace page of cute animal mug shots with tags like "murdered," "burned," hung." And when we were on site, the place stank of urine and hopelessness. Despite every instinct inside me screaming NO, I took two cats. I meant well.
• Never adopt cats when you are emotionally vulnerable. Like, after a breakup. Duh.

I hated myself for too long, but i forgive myself completely now. I believe that my "foster" cats have more appropriate homes with people who can handle them. I no longer believe I have to write off having cats--or any animal--forever. I believed that for so long. Not anymore. Guilt is a poisonous, destructive thing.

Let me just say this: I wish I could get updates on Jack and Snugglebug. I loved them and wanted to be strong/different/holy enough to keep them. Unfortunately, that was never in the cards. As a warning to anyone planning to adopt "rescue cats" please know this: Your agency (major quote unquote) will likely hold the failure to follow through completely against you. That's their right. Too bad, but I understand zeal. It is, for the most part, what these animals need. I will just believe my former cats are OK. Knowing the org involved, I can believe it.

Without further ado, more sugary sweet animals.


Because this is about happiness, I include other things, awesome things, things that will make this more devilhornsawesome. Did you KNOW Journey was on tour with two alternates to the Holy Trinity (Journey, Styx, REO)?? I saw the poster for it when I was out this week and nearly peed. For nonbelievers and other heretics, just know this: Foreigner was a very successful band. They had many number one hits and roller rink moments of majesty. And Night Ranger? Most under appreciated band of the 80s in my book. "Four in the Morning"? Perfection. And Journey? Don't even question. They are, above and beyond, transcendent.

Finally, signing out with one of the greatest songs of all time. It makes me lose my mind every time. This will heal all financial wounds...or not. Still cool tho.

Inside Job

I know I only recommend movies when they are out on DVD--not a big fan of theaters, honestly--but if you haven't seen it yet, you absolutely must rent Inside Job, the documentary about the 2008 financial meltdown. It comes from the same director that created the fantastic No End in Sight.

Inside job does an excellent job explaining the counter intuitive and completely batshit policies and practices that lead to the crisis that began in 08 and still continues on today. There are a lot of shocking revelations in the film--one specifically having to do with leading business and finance professors is particularly upsetting--but the worst part of all is how cyclically corrupt the system of finance and government were, are, and will probably always will be. For a cold-eyed cynic, I found the revelation of never ending, self-serving fraud sickening, disheartening, infuriating.

As a larger issue, it made we wonder why it's never occurred to anyone to make financial intelligence a 4-year required course in high school. I'm not pessimistic enough to believe the US government prefers to keep the masses stupid enough to be led by the nose. That level of distrust would be...criminal? But I do believe that people should be forced to understand finance, from the basic to the complex. We should all understand how to balance our checkbooks, manage our 401ks, get a sensible loan, and ferret out a back-stabbing, government backed Ponzi scheme that makes the top 1% richer and everyone else poorer. At the very least we should all have to watch this movie.

It seems awfully stupid for a government to continue to spit-paste fixes to the financial system for nothing more than show when instability caused by this kind of financial fraud can bring down governments and the societies they are meant to protect. If someone could explain this logic to me, please do.

Game of Thrones!!!

WOW. Wow wow wow. I ignored the hype. I ignored my friend (sorry, bun bun). I ignored the fact that it was an HBO production. Watch Game of Thrones, now.

Let me just say, first, that there is something to be said if a production is from HBO. Never, ever discount it. EVER. Sex and the City (pre-vapid movie stupidity and, erm, the last two seasons, probably), The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, and the EVER LOVIN wonderment of The Wire, the greatest TV series on the face of this earth, were all HBO productions. Yes, in my major nerdville, nyark nyark opinion, The Wire is the best. I love Lost. I love BSG. But The Wire is something transcendent and sweet. When you watch it, you feel lucky that they let you. It is that good.

SO. Game of Thrones! Dayumn. It's a medieval-type swords and (promise of) dragons drama filled with true characters and sneaking humor. Wow! I will admit that my friend's complete obsession coupled with my extreme laziness lead me to finally commit to watching this show. I literally didn't want to get up to find the DVD remote to resume my re-watching of BSG. So, because I have HBO on Demand, I was like, OH WHATEVER, I will play the first episode and fall asleep. And then I stayed up four more hours (til four in the morning) to watch more, more, MORE!!!

There's a grizzled hero, an evil queen, a little person with a cutting sense of humor, bastards, whores, muscled warriors, princesses with power, betrayal, intrigue, and sex sex SEX! Not a family show. Do NOT watch this with the little tykes around...unless you want them to see dirty humping of all kinds. There are...all...kinds. Yep.

So, this is my endorsement for Game of Thrones. Fantastic television. And, if you simply can't stand the genre, watch the intro at least. It is a thing of beauty and charm. Imagine the work that went into it! I can't. I have undying admiration for the nerdwinkles that created it. Beautiful! Same goes for the series.

Hall & Oates

If you wondered, now you know...

I just realized why Hall & Oates were such a comfort to me during the stalking*: Isley Alternative School 1982-1984**. Contracts, lofts, Mrs. Terrill. Best place ever. I must have been subconsciously tapping into the peace and comfort (and happiness) that it meant to me after all of the tumultuous years afterward. This makes me terribly sad and grateful at once.

First, Hall & Oates, via wiki wiki wiki whaaat: Just read it.

Second: * the stalking. I won't go into it too deeply because it concerns my most beloveds: My mother and my sister. Let me just say that in the winter of 1991 my family was stalked by a bad man during my winter break from KU, Freshman year. This was not a stalking from afar. He cut our power, phones, and visited our home, beating on the outer walls and destroying our car. He chased me through the snow. It is impossible to convey the terror: Until you live it, you can't know it. I feared for my life. I feared more for my mother's life. It was a time of sleepless nights and exhausted days. I was, to be brief, fried.

Third: **Isley Alternative School: A beautiful dream. As a child of 10 and 11, I am sad to know that I could never have appreciated how special this school was. No school like it still exists. I guess, in my bitter adulthood, I can not imagine that any school could ever exist quite like this. There were no grades. We worked off of contracts that we had to accomplish every week. There were beautiful lofts. We could listen to our Walkmans. There were treats, always available during class and recess. All grades were mixed in one class: 4th through 6th. We had special, really special, retreats. We camped, played Capture the Flag, and bonded.

Imagine: The last day of school, 30 minutes before the end of day, all teachers released their kids to wander the halls together to say goodbye. Every year, girls would gather in the bathrooms to remove make up and hug...and in the halls? Insanity. We hugged, bawled hysterically, and promised to love each other for all time.

Did I? You bet your ass I did. I still remember my Isley co-students: Kelly Christian, Rhody Cauley, Stephanie White, Brett Barnhart, Mark Sischley, Jeff Ruby, so many more. I cried like an idiot and with no shame. What a wonderful world it was.

So, when the stalking horror happened, during the holiday break, I got Hall and Oates Greatest Hits Volumes 1 and 2 on cassette tape. During the days, when I tried to play video games and relax, I would listen to my new tape and try to escape from the immediate terror. It worked. And ever after, it was my Go-To whenever I needed to calm down and be chill. It works for me now, and will work for me forevermore.

So it makes sense, then, that the biggest album when I attended Isley was Hall & Oates, H2O, which featured the most recognizable song, "Maneater." While it might mean nothing more than fun 80s adorableness to you, it means EVERYTHING to me. It means SAFE. It means HAPPY. It means COMPLETE. God knows some people never get that in life, ever. I know that I did. I am so happy I knew such a sweet, protected world. I wish it on everyone, now and forever, because we should all be so lucky to know that kind of safety and happiness. And, let's be honest, that kind of education: Open, trusting, and thorough, is a rare and special opportunity in our world now. There really is nothing like it anymore.

Dear Hall & Oates, thank you for existing. You are awesome on your own. Thanks so much for being there for me in my most desperate time of need.