I Still Don't Sleep At Night

More letters that weren't addressed to me, often the best kind. These are piles and piles of dead letters and you get to pick the emotion. Do you want to read sad, funny, touching.... I pick one up and wonder about the parts of the story that I am not privy to and never will be. Will my letters ever end up with the same sad fate as strangers read them?

I borrowed this link from Anne at Semi Compos Mentis.

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SoSad


Yesterday I twisted my sister's arm. Today I can't find anyone. I know some of my friends have never bothered and I resent them for it. I try to put myself in their position, and when I do I ask, wouldn't I want to know if she's talking about me? I guess not. Well, then here come the secrets.

Here's a great way to go shopping, get a bunch of new stuff, and not spend a dime. Go to sites like these: Downloads and Freeware. Get yourself some cool freeware and shareware. They've got everything. I couldn't get over it. I picked up a tape clip of Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men saying, "You want the truth? You couldn't handle the truth." You never know when that might come in handy. They had sound clips from all kinds of things, not just tv and movies. I picked up a new browser, a cursor program. They've got those ICQ Lite communication things. It took me forever to try and figure out what they were. I guess they're one of those so-cool computer things that you shouldn't have to ask or something. But if you have a lot of friends, or are social and would like to have a lot of friends, I guess you'd like it. Here's the site that tells more about ICQ Lite. Those two sites above also have bunches of wallpaper, screensavers, software, graphics, games, desktop themes, fonts, and more. This site Elated has webmaster tools including free page kits. They offer help with these as well as direct you to tutorials. Come back with all your loot, check your credit card and it's untouched. Such a deal.

I am back in business. I was freaking out because I had a very sick mouse. The mouse was going crazy, and it wouldn't go where I wanted it to. I went through all the property tricks it had. I tried to give it a new driver, but the computer said the driver was fine. I changed the cursor. I changed the browser. I cleaned it. I gently shook it. I called Dell and they suggested the same things. I posted a message at Microsoft's annoyances.org forum. They suggested the driver. It was nearly impossible to use, and it took forever to scroll a page, but that didn't stop this addict. I just kept on surfing in slow motion, where I think your average person would have waited till another mouse came. This experience did teach me how bad my addiction is. At one point I had cleaned the mouse and I couldn't get the back screwed on again. I thought I wasn't strong enough enough or something. I threw it in my backpack and took it up to the groce
ry store where I accosted a stranger and begged him to fix it. He did but the back on. But it was still broken. I was a desperate woman. Hip hip hooray! The new mouse is here today and I am back to not paying my bills, not cleaning my apartment, not getting dressed and it's three o'clock in the afternoon, not eating breakfast or is it lunch...

I called in at work again today to be with my computer. I reallly am running out of excuses. I mean I even gave my mother a heart attack last month for a week with the computer. Today it was that I was in manic phase. I guess it's time to get out of denial and accept my powerlessness and admit: My name is Maryellen and I am a computer addict. Because it's not just the internet. No, I can also spend hours and hours now looking up errors and what to do about them, posting various other repair questions to forum message boards and news groups and running back and forth between Dell and Microsoft. It's what I do. Here's what I don't do anymore: Brush my teeth. Take a shower. Comb my hair. Clean my apartment. Wash my clothes. Eat. (I've lost 10 lbs. post-computer. Who wants to stop and eat?) I really resent having to take a pee. I need help but I don't want it yet. I still like being an addict. I'm not hurting anyone. So what I blow off work. I still see my children. They just have to instant message me instead of phoning, that's all. But I'll admit I AM possessed. If my ex were alive he'd be pointing his bony finger at me and shaking his head and saying that I had false gods. I know he would. Because I spend all my time in this chair at this table. I resent any activity (except seeing children, family and friends) that deprives me of time with computer. I make excuses when out to get home ASAP. Are other people like this I wonder? I thought that was just if you played video games or something. I know, I sound like the coke head who comes in for treatment saying he didn't know he could get hooked because he never smoked crack. I mean really, I never freebased in the world of computers: I live very simply. I have yet to burn a CD. I haven't yet gotten around to buying any floppy discs. I am not even using my paint, art and music programs and who knows what else.

Here's what I like to do besides work on my computer. (I felt like a guy in the garage with grease up to my elbows working on a hot rod when I said that.) I like to go around the internet and feel like I am eight years old and at Disney World for the first time in my life after a somewhat deprived childhood. I want to see everything, do everything, have everything, experience everything. I don't know what to do first. I do a little of this. Then I run and do a little of that. It is so overwhelming. The thing of it is I feel all alone in this because I am so late in coming to this computer world that everyone else is now blase about it. I'm afraid I'd be embarrassed if they knew my passion for it, not to mention the extent of my sick addiction. So I put it in my weblog for secret keeping because no one reads this.

AND A BIG HUG TO YOU

I do believe we all need our daily hugs. I tell this to my friend Dave. I tell him it cures you of what ails you. I believe it prevents cancer and other serious illnesses. The best is if you hug children every day, and that's easy to do because they are so huggable. You can even hug strangers when you share a moment. You can hug co-workers; neighbors; friends, of course; your teacher; doctor; cleric; the person who sells you your newspaper every morning. You get the idea. Be known as a hugger and you can get away with stealing all the hugs you need. And you'll feel great.

Not only do hugs keep you in good health and feeling great, they also, according to this wonderful piece of news I read this morning are helping thousands of Japanese cope with their economic problems. In Japan's deflated economy, a 51-year-old woman has made it her goal to spread happiness. I want that job. I would love to do that. Imagine how good it must feel. All those thousands of hugs coming back to you. And the Japanese people putting so much into it because they just don't do it--hug. No back rubbing or back patting hugs for them I bet. Well God bless Ammachi, and God bless you. Now go out and get some hugs.

Hi honey, I'm home. I just moved back to the first template I had. Jellyfish it's called--used it four template moves ago. This time it was because my blog was completely missing but I still had the posts. The working conditions down here in blogger hell aren't anything nice. I was going to what I thought was the site of the people in charge, blogger control, and listing my needs for services, and chastizing them when they did nothing. Today I finally read somewhere in Blogger that regular bloggers (as opposed to blogger pros) have no recourse; they fly by the seat of their pants. Only those in the money seats get water after being whipped. I said goodbye to the old template and noticed it had its own goodbye scrawled in already. I'm not making this up. Someone's signature line I guess. Something about best buddies love Sarah. Sarah, I found your template but I don't know where it is. I would like to upgrade. I truly would. But when I check they say Blogger Pro isn't ready yet. So I blog away with my stats showing 0 readers coming yesterday and 0 readers predicted for today, writing a blog that may disappear tomorrow. So who the hell care what I write?

They'll be sorry they treated me like this when I'm an international blogging star like Rebecca Blood. Then we'll just see.

And here's most every wife's and ex-wife's favorite story of the day: you lost what?a Picasso, at the subway stop. What are you out of your mind?" For days they must have had these conversations. No, I guess not. Poor Bill Bailey felt bad enough--like he was in a Hitchcock movie he said about running up the subway steps trying to retrieve the rare print in time to get it back. Just made me think of all the things my ex lost while we were married. I was always surprised he didn't lose a kid, but I think that I helped a lot with that. My ex was lucky like Bill Bailey was lucky. It might have been more than once, I don't remember exactly, that someone found his car keys stuck in his car door, and wrapped them up in a note explaining that this way that didn't look like an invitation to car thieves. He left his keys in the car like that more than once a week. Funny how the car never got stolen. Funny how you can lose a rare Picasso the size of a coffee table. But all's well that ends well. Do you think he'll get much framing business after this?

Quote of the Week: "The only thing Republicans have to fear is the end of fear itself." E. J. Dionne in the Washington Post last week

Well, of course, the FCC did what they had planned to do all along. Georgie gets seemingly gets everything he wants in this incarnation. With his big shot buddies owning the media, I'm sure the neo-cons will have a big hand in programming. Consider this offering coming right at you out of the box: George is now the decisive, cool, knew just what to do hero of the day, in the tv movie version of 9/11. I can't stand that people will believe this--kids will grow up with this idea now based on some dumb tv movie. You know they will. I wonder if George will be doing a cameo so he can get to be an actor too? And do more wardrobe changes like when he was top gun pilot that time? Will he have a say in casting? Who are his acting buddies? If life were fair, they'd get someone from Jackass the Movie to portray that unfocused, not quite there look of confusion. Or they could get the star of Dude, Where's My Car. They need to go for the smirking chimp look, but of course they will gloss over that and make him look like a leader too. And that's why they call it acting. Not that I will be watching anyhow.

I'm sorry little Hushabye, I wasn't here today because I was out running around on you. The spirit moved me and I just had to go out and start a new blog. Here's the link for The Kind of Blog Clear Channel Warns You About. It's a lot angrier than this one. And it's about losing our freedoms, becoming brainwashed, having our own kids turn us in as terrorists. I had to get it out.

Well MsRefusnik let her hair down tonight and got sentimental about the good old days: the rocking and rolling and peace marching and drug-taking Sixties. Back when strides were made in civil rights and not back tracks, when peace and love were the spirit of the community that came together seemingly everywhere. I must stop or I'll get weepy thinking about when having a president meant something. What happened is a friend send me an e-mail about DarK Links. In looking at the directory of the Dark Links site, I was reading in some amazement the categories of interest: anti-social, burning man, pagan, geeks and nerds, and then hippies. I wondered if he or she was a gothic hippie. Hippies had been called a lot of things but routinely classified as "Dark Links"? Well, I went to investigate at Jim Greenlee's Home Site down there in MS, and a very homey site it was--nothing too fancy. It really did feel like I was sitting around in some old hippie's living room looking at old pictures and listening to classic rock. He has some good stuff. He has a project for peace and asks that everyone take a link. Here's mine: Click for Peace.