A Merry Christmas to You!

Most frog-on-frog violence goes unreported during the holidays.
Only you can stop amphibian crime.
Call toll free at 1-800-BAD-FROG

Zombie child likes turtles

Peculiar YouTube... um... thing.
Why did nobody alert me to magical zombie turtleboy phenomenon?

shutupshutupshutup

I'm sick of people expressing shock and disgust over American Apparel ads. Do you think your preachy whining is going to stop them? No. Either do something meaningful about it or get over it.

I'm sick of people saying things like, "So much for Global Warming!" every goddamn time it snows. Shut the fuck up. Stop embarassing yourself.

I'm sick of people who shop at Kmart or Walmart and complain about how everything is made in China. If you don't want crap made in China don't shop at box stores, genius.

I'm sick of parents fretting incessantly about lead in toys while feeding their sedentary children cheeseburgers. Great job! You're going to protect your kids from lead so that they can grow up to die prematurely of diabetes or congestive heart failure. Congratulations.

I'm sick of the turkey urban legend. The amount of tryptophan in 1 or 2 or even 5 servings of turkey is not enough to make you sleepy. Sorry. You memorized that big, long, fancy word for nothing.

Josh Groban sucks. Il Divo sucks. Oprah sucks. Dr. Phil sucks. Rude people suck.

Please now to enjoy some gothic bellydancing

uh oh.

OMFG Vampires in Fishkill OMG

GOOD NEWS EVERYONE

Our Happy Hour Chandelier arrived!

No no no, seriously this time:

VICTOR'S BIOPSY RESULTS came back a whole week early and they are NEGATIVE for anything cancer-looking at all!

YYYYAAAAAAyyyaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!

Why do we have stupid pets who scare us by getting suspicious lumps?

I was about 6 years old when I realized that my parents were going to die some day. I immediately undertook a campaign of emotionally separating myself from them because I didn't want to experience the grief that would be caused by their deaths. I tried to discipline myself into indifference and behaved very badly so that they would grow to despise me.

That didn't really work out.

But it did lead me to realize that avoiding the inevitable grief of love is not an adequate inducement to live without it. To live and be made vulnerable by loving is a million times preferable to having a cold, protected, loveless existence. I love Victor. I was so happy when Chris called me with his biopsy results - I felt like I was walking on air! And if they'd come back positive I would've been a fucking wreck. Memento mori... all we can do is allow that finiteness prompt us into being more mindful and grateful of the people, animals, and things we love.

Okay, enough obtuse dime-store philosophy. Now you can go back and follow the Happy Hour Chandelier link - there's video!

Solipsistic Year End Music Review

I was asked by a very prominent music and culture blog to offer my thoughts on 2007 in music.

Ahhh HA haaa just kidding. I don't know squat about new music and nobody cares what I think about anything. All of the following music is stuff that I was listening to in 2007, not necessarily released in 2007. Because this is my blog and I can do it however the hell I want.

1) What was your favorite song of 2007?

Camel Walk, Southern Culture on the Skids
Stagger Lee, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
These Things, She Wants Revenge

2) What was your favorite album of 2007?

My favorite album of all time is Värttinä's Vengeance***.
I like Thievery Corporation, The Richest Man in Babylon.
Also Eastern Orthodox liturgical music.
I have an African Mbira CD I like a lot - in fact I'm listening to it right now this very minute
*** Oops! Edit: Chris was kind enough to point out that my favorite album of all time is Garmarna's Vengeance. Garmarna Varttina Hedningarna swedish fuckers fucking fuck fuck you. Here's a track/video from the album I'm fucking up trying to tell you about (it's a crap video, just close your eyes):

3) What was your favorite concert of 2007?

That's a tie between Waterson-Carthy and Golem, both were at Higher Ground.
Golem really did happen in 2007... I think Waterson-Carthy did, too... but... it's all a blur.

4) What was your favorite thing about 2007?

- Starting my graduate school education. Makes me feel all growed-up.

- I made a new friend, Eva.

- My friend Amanda and her son Evan survived the horrible, high-risk pregnancy and are doing okay!!!

- Casey and Brooke moved away and I'm glad because those guys were jerks and their cats were jerks, too.

5) What are your best wishes for 2008?
- I wish Amanda and Evan an amazing first year together.
- I wish for Vanessa to find an incredible new job that she loves where she isn't totally taken advantage of and treated like crap.
- I wish for Chris to get accepted to the grad school of his dreams.
- I wish for the continued emotional and physical health of everyone I love!
- I wish for the Good Guys to win.

"Yes, it's terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true, the bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats, and, uh, we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after."

C'est Monsieur Lumpy

Here's the boy! They removed three little lumps. Two on his right, one on the left.

We don't have the biospy results back yet, but the vet said that the way she found the lumps clustered makes her more inclined to think this is all allergy related? The bloodwork did not really support this theory, but... I'm trying not to think about it at all. No good will come of obsessing.

You can sorta see the left suture here, and also the spot where they shaved his leg for the IV.

But mostly you can see how annoyed he is by the big idiot human flashing a camera in his face.

He's doing fine! Eating, drinking, behaving, sleeping, going to the bathroom: all normal.

Here's the get-well card from my parents:

Lost and Found Mystery

I spotted this in the Burlington Free Press a few weeks ago.
Most people I've shown it to think it's a code for drug dealers or some kind of covert sexual thingy. What do you think?

How do You spell relief? V-I-C-T-O-R

The vet called! Victor is out of surgery! He is awake and pissed off.

The whole procedure went good, good, good.

His teeth are cleaned, the bumps are out. The vet thinks it may be allergy related? But still may also be the mast cell tumor thing. Chris is picking him up at 4.

So now we just have to wait two weeks for the biopsy results to come back.

I want to see him NOW! I don't get out of work for six stupid hours.

Undead Molly Holiday Gift Guide

Here are some things you should buy because I said so:

This book is written by Vermonter, public access television pioneer, acquaintance of Molly, and Northeast media representative of the Church of Satan Magister Matt Paradise. It's being released Christmas Day but you can pre-order now. You should buy it for the following reasons:
- You can read it at work to agitate and freak out your office mates. I think you should make a behavioral conditioning game of it by reading aloud every time someone mentions Gray's Anatomy, Oprah, or menopause.
- I've met Magister Paradise a number of times, so it's faintly possible that something horribly unflattering is said about me.
- He's smart, funny, well read, and a good writer. You'll probably learn interesting things about religion and culture and stuff.

If you want to get a piece of jewelry for someone whose taste is pretty much the exact opposite of foo foo mall store Kmart mass produced CRAP, you should consider getting him or her one of these rings. They are made of hand-forged Damascus steel by Vermont artist and metalsmith J. Arthur Loose. I HAVE ONE OF THESE RINGS! Chris surprised me with one for my 30th birthday this year. It's strong and beautiful... I love it. You have to commission each piece, so it probably wouldn't be done in time for Christmas, but just call J. Arthur Loose to find out. His name is Jól (pronounced like Yule) and he's a very friendly, awesome, oddball (I mean 'oddball' in the most affectionate possible way), Viking dude and he makes beautiful knives, too!


Remember this shirt? I fucking love this shirt. You custom order this "Intramural Zombie Hunter" shirt from Seibei.com with your name (or whatever word you want), number of your choice, and how much gore you want splattered on it. HOW FUCKING FUN IS THAT???!! They have other great shirts, too, like:
and

AND! If you put in the coupon code "undeadmolly" you will get 10% off your purchase! I am totally not joking. David Murray who runs the site does this "Seibei Nation" thing where he gives coupon codes to bloggers. I have not actually tested this - let me know if you do.

Do you want a "Yes, I'm a fucking hero" shirt like mine? Here's where you can get 'em. Well, actually you can't get one exactly like mine because I have the only girly one ever made, but you can get the 'fucking hero' logo in men's styles, and other zombie-related girly shirts. And 'fucking hero' coffee mugs. 'Fucking hero' baby bibs. And these adorable holiday cards:
All thanks to my genius friends at ZombieDefense.org (who also happen to be my current #1 suspects in the Maeve Binchy mystery).

Confused, afraid.

I got this book a couple of weeks ago. It was addressed specifically to me with no return address or enclosed note or identification of any kind. Just the book. Postmarked Bel Air, Maryland.
I am constantly ordering books from half.com for school. I thought maybe one of the sellers had mixed up my order, but no... none of my sellers in the past 90 days have even been from MD.

Weird. Anomaly?

NO! This one came on Saturday!

But this time there was a return address in NYC and the "Please give me feedback" slip of an eBay/Half.com seller. I emailed half.com to see if they knew what was up and got this response:

Thank you for writing eBay in regard to your concern about receiving
items which you didn't order.

It appears that the items were purchased as gifts. I recommend that you contact any of your family members or friends to verify that these items were in fact gifts.

It is my pleasure to assist you. Thank you for choosing eBay.

Sincerely,

Jean P.

eBay Customer Support

So which one of you weird fuckers is mailing me Maeve Binchy novels?

Too Much Information

I hate it when people at work over-share. Is it because I work with all women? When I worked with mixed genders this didn't seem to be as much of a problem. Here there are no boundaries of social propriety. Someone can suddenly start yakking about the miscarriage they had 20 years ago with no warning.

I hate it when a coworker starts crying. Hate. It. Not. Appropriate. Especially if I'm the only one around. You are not my friend, my family, or my patient, just a co-worker. What am I supposed to do? Hug you? I don't want to hug you. Counsel you? No. I want to run away. Far away where needy, weepy women cannot find me.

It also annoys me when they're having a competative pity party over health issues and someone says to me, "just wait until you get older, then you'll know what it's like". Excuse me? My life isn't exactly a big fucking glamorous party. I have more health issues and expenses than most people twice my age. It almost aggravates me into vomiting lupus stories all over them, but I don't.

I save it all for you.

For example, you know what I did last Saturday? A 24 hour urine collection because my kidneys were not functioning correctly and we needed to find out how much protein and creatinine they were excreting (the best indicator of kidney function short of needle biopsy). For 24 hours you have to collect all of your pee.

You put the special plastic "hat" in your toilet to collect the pee.

Then you pour it into the collection jug.

The sample has to be refrigerated.
When I'm doing a 24h urine I'm pretty much stuck at home because 100% of my pee has to be collected. If I go out, it can't be too far because I have to come home if I need to pee. I can't simply not drink anything because that would interfere with the integrity of the sample and therefore the results.

Then after 24 hours you label your chilled pee with your name, medical record number, relevant dates and times, seal it up in the fancy biohazard bag, and drop it off at the hospital within two hours of completion.

Yep... this is the glamorous, youthful party life I've got.

Maybe they'd be a little more appreciative of their own lives and stop envying my imaginary one if I told them. It would certainly give me a lot of satisfaction to blow one of their fucking obnoxious pity parties all to hell.