Fnord Incorporated

peeing out my butt and laurie notaro

this is a book review.. seriously…

this is a topic i never thought i would write about. i have never been one for reading on the toilet. i am an in and out man. run in, drop a deuce, flush, wash hands, run away before the smell melts your face off. there is a reason that people i am friends with have always referred to trips to the gas chamber as “fighting a brown demon” or a “holy war”. who ever comes out alive, is obviously in the good graces of their creator and not yet ready for the after life.

unfortunately, i have been sick for a couple days. i spent my whole weekend coughing, fighting off headaches, nausea, dizziness, cold sweats, hot sweats, acid stomach, sniffles, congestion, and poor judgment on movies to watch while ill… well, with the weekend gone and my work being direly short on people, i went into the office today, sick or not, i had to be there. loaded up on tylenol cold and sinus, my numb fingers and cloudy brain plowed through the day. nothing made much sense but i was a warm body where a warm body was needed. tylenol is my friend.. i know it is likely cancerous or will cause me to grow a third testicle on my forehead but hey, it did the trick when i needed it to.

fast forward to getting home after work.

it is now after 10pm. i have not been coughing for a while and i feel phenomenally better… GURGLE… what the hell was that… GURGLE….. ooooh, shit.. literally. tylenol is not my friend.. i think it is the cause of my adverse butt reaction. i hate you tylenol

into the bathroom i go.. i have no idea how long i am going to be in there. every time i think i will be able to escape the horror of it i find that i must stay. as i sat there preparing to cry and give up all hope on a life with a sense of smell, i realize that someone has left a book on the back of the toilet. i noticed it a couple days ago and it caught me off guard. i know people with stacks of magazines, books, even book shelves, let alone those little “bathroom readers”. never has something like this been in MY bathroom to stave off crying, i reached back and picked it up.

Laurie Notaro’s I Love Everybody (and other atrocious lies), True tales of a loud mouthed girl. henceforth to be referred to as ILE.

Laurie, she saved me from wallowing in the fear of my face twisting and dripping into a raiders of the lost ark “i am defying god and paying for it” panic attack. i opened her book and started picking through the pages. i have read it before, about a month and a half ago. i even meant to post something up here about it as it was truly hilarious and made me laugh out loud on the bus a couple times (to the dismay of all those around me).

ILE was a great read. no wonder it caught my attention again in times of great need. Laurie has written many other books, but this one was handed to me and saved me from having to buy it. of course, having loved it, not buying her books is out of the question.. that was a double not positive.

ILE is a collection of stories starting with her getting back into the work force after writing nothing but painfully dry descriptions of kitchen appliances. it details her trials she goes through when she decides to pay the homeless drunk guy to rip out trees from her yard and her inability to get rid of him. you get to learn about babies. you get to learn about crappy emails her sister sends her all the time, bosses who pull guns on you, kidney stones, addiction to pain meds, and blowing snot bubbles out of her nose

my favorite favorite favorite part of the book was the chapter about when she began to play”The Sims” on her computer. she is warned by a sales person to never ever play the game. when she buys it anyway, she is warned never ever to make a digital spouse to go with herself in the game. whew, she straight up ignores the advice and the 11 pages that follow detail all the glory of destroying a husbands self image, wasting hours of her life, fires, pee, fire, pee, job loss, fire, hatred, rotting food, crying, scolding, and death. all in a digital realm and not likely in that order.

so i put down the book when my bowels subsided from their desire to leave my liver and lungs in the toilet bowl, and i ran from the bathroom (hand washing would wait for the kitchen sink tonight). lightning did not pass through my eye sockets and other organs.. all in all my organs are safe.

cool huh?

Check out Laurie Notaro on Myspace
i am sure she will have links to her books for purchase, and if not, there is always amazon.

did i mention she lives in Eugene Oregon and i might have to stalk her?

23,462 emails deleted

after dragging my sorry ass into work today, all i wanted was a cup of coffee and a blowjob under the desk. i settled for coffee and no blowjob. I have a hell of a lot of work piled up for the day already, Outlook was being a little bitch and failed to open, and calls were waiting to be answered. took a couple calls. they sucked.

Outlook finally stops being a memory whore and opens. turns out, i was being a memory whore as well. inside my inbox i have a network message advising me that my mailbox is too full. well.. i suppose that isnt helping with keeping outlook working smoothly.. crap.. now i have to add personal maintenance to the list of things to do today.

deciding to get it done early i opened my work inbox. holy shit.. i keep everything..

I never delete anything at work. it is easier to use a search function and locate info that will be useful later than it is to delete things and determine how useful they will be in the future based on current knowledge. this has saved time and headache numerous times. little bits of data coming in useful when no one would have bothered saving it. i am a digital packrat. apparently, in the process, i have saved a whole lot of stuff that i would never need (assistance requests, paycheck notifications, etc) and due to laziness, today i found myself accosted by a daunting task.. filtering out all the crap and saving only the useful.

it has been 2 hours now and i have officially made it all the way through years 2004, 2005, 2006 and deleted over 23,000 emails. through a combination of generic word filters i have already deleted the bulk of the garbage, but i still have 4500+ emails to go through from 2007/2008.. luckily, over the recent months, i did start cleaning up the garbage on a weekly basis, so it should be easier.

so what does it all mean anyways

you try so hard to keep people in your life that help give it meaning. the ones that are supposed to be your strongest allies spend a few months in turmoil completely hating you and asking you to “understand”. so you try and try and try. it is harder than anything you have ever done.. what happens when you reach the point where you are no longer able to understand?

i have recently been going through this. i want my friend back. i want to know that we are going to be okay. i want her to stop hating me. like a cruel dog owner and a yappy puppy,  i am tired of being beaten and then petted and cooed. i may have to cut ties and run soon. bite the master and leave before the backlash. time to make the beta male go to sleep and let loose an alpha that i an never prove is inside.

this shit sucks.

CNN: Canadian firetruck responding to U.S. call held up at border

FUD: Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt

America, when are you going to wake up and realize that you are just as “safe” as you always were, that you only hurt yourselves and all those you interact with when you overreact to outside influences in a blind and negative manner?

digression: Why did it take nearly a month before i even heard about this?

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/11/14/border.firetruck/

November 14, 2007

From Jeanne Meserve and Mike M. Ahlers
CNN

(CNN) — A Canadian firetruck responding with lights and sirens to a weekend fire in Rouses Point, New York, was stopped at the U.S. border for about eight minutes, U.S. border officials said Tuesday.

The U.S.-Canadian border is more than 5,000 miles long.

Fire officials battling the blaze called for help from fire departments in nearby Quebec, using a longstanding and often-used mutual aid agreement. But the first truck that arrived at the small Rouses Point border crossing was delayed as officials checked documentation of the firefighters and their truck, officials confirmed.

Two other trucks that arrived at the crossing next were cleared in less than two minutes each, a time that one fire official said was still too long considering the situation.

“It’s embarrassing,” said Chris Trombley, chief of the Champlain [New York] Volunteer Fire Department and deputy fire coordinator for Clinton County Emergency Services. “We’re calling for help from another country and the first roadblock they hit is at our border.”

The Canadian firefighters “were asked for IDs,” Trombley said. “I believe they even ran the license plate on the truck to make sure it was legal.”

In the past, firetrucks on emergency calls cleared border checkpoints in 30 seconds or less, Trombley said, although he said identification is sometimes checked upon their return.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection official said the eight-minute delay at the Rouses Point crossing was caused “when one of the firefighters’ admissibility was brought into question.” He declined to elaborate, citing immigration and privacy laws.

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A government source familiar with the case said one firefighter had a criminal record, raising questions about whether he could enter the United States.

Kevin Corsaro of the border protection’s Buffalo field office said the agency’s primary responsibility is to protect the homeland. He called the event an “isolated incident” and said agency officials were meeting with local fire officials to “develop a plan to prevent the possibility of any delays.”

No one was seriously injured in the fire, but The Anchorage Inn restaurant — a landmark in the village of Rouses Point — was destroyed. A firefighter who suffered minor smoke inhalation was treated at the scene, said Michael LeBlanc, chief of the Rouses Point Volunteer Fire Department. The cause of the blaze has not been determined, he said.

Ten fire departments, including the Canadian departments, responded to the fire.

“Would it [quicker passage at the border] have changed the outcome of the fire?” Trombley asked. “Would the building have been burned? Of course it would.” But he said firefighters were getting fatigued fighting the fire and relief was delayed. “Just the fact that it could happen and it could happen again is what has us worried,” he said.

Clinton County has mutual aid agreements with fire departments in Vermont and Quebec, Trombley said, and the county requests help from Quebec fire departments about 30 times a year. It sends help to Canada a similar number of times, he said.

Trombley and LeBlanc said they planned to meet with authorities on Wednesday to discuss the incident. LeBlanc declined to comment. “I don’t have all the facts and I don’t want to mistake what happened,” he said.

“We’ve had a mutual aid system in place since the ’50s and I can’t remember anything like this happening,” said Trombley.