I have never been so happy to fail a test in my life:

best. fail. ever.

It’s not that I honestly thought I was pregnant – but when you try to decipher symptoms online and every single thing you read suggests you’re probably full of baby .. well, sometimes my imagination gets ahead of my uterus and I find myself peeing on technology to ease my mind. Incidentally, pregnancy tests are expensive as hell. No wonder being knocked up comes as a surprise to so many people.

Truth be told, I kind of wanted the test to be positive – but you should know me well enough by now to know that it’s not because I wanted babies but for two very different reasons: a) it would have been a hilarious update full of shock and b) it would explain away the extremely worrisome symptoms I am trying to find an answer for. If it turned out that I was in fact pregnant, I could easily waltz into a doctor’s office and say “hi, please deal with this” and it would be done. Since I’m not, though, I need to find a way to get someone to see me and explain what the fuck is happening in my regions.

Um, skip this part if you’re squeamish, but otherwise here is a list of the unhappy things going on in my lady gardens:

• Non-stop cramps that get exponentially worse at night
• Blood where there ought not be blood; in formations not normally found in nature
• Sore boobs
• Strange things – possibly ghosts – when I pee

I spent a goodly amount of time online trying to narrow the symptoms down to something I could put a name to, but 80% of the results said I was pregnant (and the other 20% said I was a dog with a UTI). I was worried enough to go out and buy a pregnancy test, but that clearly isn’t the problem – so I’m back at square one, and it sucks.

Truth be told, I’m kind of scared my body is trying to tell me something is seriously wrong – endometrial cancer came up in the search results more than once. I’m almost ready to lie to a doctor to say I’m trying to conceive, just so I can get checked out. At the very least, I’ll probably hit up a walk-in clinic later this week and hope for a referral. Maybe my WSD just needs a tune up. Maybe this is a two month stomach ache. Maybe it’s absolutely nothing at all.

.. but maybe it’s not.

The Mystery of the Gift Noose Man has been SOLVED, thanks to elsewise: the statue is of the Andean god of wealth and plenty, named Ekkeko!

This brightly painted plaster statue from Bolivia depicts an Andean pre-Christian deity known as Ekkeko, the god of abundance, money and luck. Similar statues are also made and sold in Peru. As is customary, Ekkeko (pronounced ey-kay-koh) is dressed in modern clothes with a real knit cap made of wool; he has outstretched arms, an open mouth, and a painted moustache.

Wishes for material goods that are tied onto Ekkeko’s body before noon on January 24th will be granted during the coming year. Once given to Ekkeko, wishes are never removed, so a well-used statue will be loaded down with desires. In contemporary usage, the small items Ekkeko carries are usually placed in clear plastic bags; but also included are colourful cast- sugar “mysteriosos” (mysterious things), an older regional form of offering made to be placed on llama-wool rolag altars as well as on Ekkeko statues.

This Ekkeko is about 7 1/2 inches tall. He is carrying a bag of shredded green paper representing good crops, a bag of white rice, a clay cooking pot, money in the form of a photocopied U. S. dollar, a bag of metallic party confetti for happy times, a bag of red-coloured granulated sugar, a bag of dried herbs (probably Basil), and a pink sugar mysterioso embossed with two llamas. Unseen, because they are on his back, are a small house made of plaster, a blue sugar mysterioso embossed with 7 children, a black llama wool rolag, a miniature set of pan-pipes, a miniature black rubber sandal, and a red truck made of plaster.

Ekkeko’s mouth is open so that he may receive his offering — a lit cigarette, which is put into the orifice after the mysteriosos are tied on him. The length of the ash that forms without breaking off as he smokes the offering is a divinatory sign of how much good fortune he will grant the supplicant during the coming year.

This is awesome.  Now I can relax, knowing what this thing is. I’m not really all that superstitious, but I’m really glad I didn’t take the Gift Noose off of Ekkeko – I would like some abundance, money and luck please! I still don’t know what the foam or balls are supposed to represent – I have my theories, but I can pretty much guarantee they are not correct – but I will leave them on my Happy Gift Noose Man, and add some wishes of my own before January 24th: a picture of a pug, a kitten, and more confetti for additional good times. Maybe some Diet Coke, too. I won’t be offering Ekkeko a real cigarette, but I can give him a pretend one made of paper or candy or other things that may not be appropriate in the office.

Yay for elsewise! You win at the internet!

So I ordered some stuff from my favourite Japanese website a couple weeks ago, and the box arrived this morning. What I was getting was a total surprise – I had ordered the Fukubukuro Lucky Bag 2011, which is basically a big grab bag of random Japanese goodness. I figured it would be at the very least interesting, and at best completely awesome so why not take a chance because random is a lot of fun.

There are a lot of weird ass things in the Lucky Bag, including but not limited to:

• A fuzzy pig
• A strangely offensive bendie doll
• A coy fuzzy tiger making sexual overtures
• A sheet of fake leather to make your cell phone classy
• A golden stork delivering a shiny crystal that I gave to my pregnant coworker who was thrilled
• A pocket that, when squeezed, barfs out a little marble with Doraemon on it
• This thing that looks like a bowl of chicken soup with a plastic pocket containing a coin and instructions written entirely in Japanese
• Herring
• .. and this thing:

happy man has a noose of presents for you

his gift noose includes a fake US $100 bill, a ceramic heart, car and house, a bag of confetti, a package of short straws, some little ceramic balls, and what looks like gauze

he has a real pretty mouth (that is wide open - am I supposed to put thing in there?)

WHAT IS THIS THING?! WHY DO I HAVE IT??! I AM TERRIFIED and kind of jealous of that hood, actually. It looks warm and cute. Seriously though, if you know any Japanese people, can you please ask them what this thing is and if I should be afraid or overjoyed that I have it? It came in bubble wrap but no packaging or information, just a happy dude in a green suit with a bunch of things tied around his neck and a fuzzy red hood.

what.

I am so confused.

I left it up to Twitter as to what I would update with today: sad, deep thoughts or random pictures of shiny toys. Most of the votes were for both in one update, so that’s what you’re getting – a twofer. Sad words and shiny toys ahoy!

I’m fairly certain I had many years of typical happy Christmas times with my mom and dad – there is photographic evidence of this, and I still have a few cherished items I received when I was little. The human brain is funny, though – all it takes is one powerful negative memory to define something, and it’s done. I only have vague recollections of jolly family Christmas goodness with my parents, but I remember the time my mother told me I ruined the holidays because she didn’t like my gifts with brilliant clarity.

Whatever, we all have bad memories lurking in our brains somewhere – that isn’t the point here. What you do with those memories is often what defines a person – I can spend each holiday wallowing in sadness for the Kodak Moments I never had, or I can try to build some NEW happy times so the warm thoughts are bigger than the bad.

I’ve been trying for pretty much my entire adult life to do exactly that; to build some new traditions that I can look fondly on when I’m old and gray. I’m never going to have a big family to do this with – there will never be a pile of children in the other room too excited for Santa to sleep; no grandchildren to shower with toys and baked goods in front of a big tree. I’m okay with this; I knew what I was in for when I became President of Team No Babies – but that still doesn’t change my yearning for ridiculous and trite Happy Family Moments to erase the bad memories that just won’t shake loose. I’ve been trying so hard to build something happy, but it’s just not working and I don’t know if I see a point in continuing to try.

Ed is really the only person I get to buy gifts for, but he doesn’t make it easy. Each year I try to find out what he’d like for Christmas, and each year he gets angry because I ask. He doesn’t want or need anything; he doesn’t care; stop bugging me. This morning I asked about stockings – they’ve always been my very favourite part of Christmas – and it turned into a fight because he doesn’t WANT little stupid things already so could I just stop asking.

Each year we do less and less in terms of general holiday merriment, but I’ve always fought to keep stockings alive. Even if we eventually decided to stop exchanging the more traditional gifts, I’d always planned to still do stockings – it’s a small thing; silly little presents for the sake of bringing a smile. It would mean so much to me to even have this one stupid thing I can claim as a tradition of our own, but no one else sees it that way. It’s a huge chore to have to think of things to ask for, to have to buy things for others, to pretend to care about any of it on Christmas Day – this isn’t festive, it’s a pain in the ass so just cut it out.

So, here we are. Why do I keep trying? No one appreciates it, and my gestures are only reciprocated out of obligation, not love. What’s the point? It would be better for everyone else if I could just get over my desire to build a tradition of happy times, since no one else has fun with this. It sucks, though. A lot. Enough that I’ve gone through a dozen tissues since 8:30 this morning, making my nose even drier than it already was.

Okay, so Christmas is canceled. What about the random pictures of shiny toys?

katamari is how i roll

retro active

in lesbians with you

Using the DIY tool on the Gelaskins website, I made some custom iPhone 4 screens complete with wallpaper. They are pretty awesome; I’m pleased with how they turned out. It was super easy to do, and now my phone is totally mine. Score!

We don’t have a gas leak! Hooray!

The empty unit below us? THEY have a gas leak! Booooo!

The man with the snazzy beard and beeping tool came in and inspected our pipes – nothing. He showed me how the gas sniffer worked, and it didn’t detect an iota of gas out of place – even after pulling out the stove and checking with soap AND the sniffer, there was simply no gas leak at all.

So what was with the really strong gas smell we encountered almost every day?

The Gas Man left when Ed called me again and asked me to mention the empty unit downstairs. As soon as I said it, the building man practically jumped  up and down – there totally was a gas leak downstairs! He remembered dealing with it earlier! Building Man sprinted out our unit to catch the Gas Man and they went downstairs: sure enough, GAS LEAK! We weren’t smelling gas leaking from OUR unit, it was leaking so badly from the unit below us that it seemed as though it was coming from here.

Gas Man is fixing it right now, and Building Man will return on the 20th to fix the last three things wrong with our unit (a missing closet door, a broken exterior window and a messed up blind in the office). Sure, we left the repair list to be fixed until the week before our warranty expired – but what’s life without gas leaks and closets without doors? Nothing, that’s what.

I get my oven back. This excites me in ways you can’t imagine – I think I’ll make some banana bread.

HOORAY!

At the beginning of this week, the area around me looked like this:

a happy little family

By the end of next week, it will look like this:

come back !!!! :(

STOP RESIGNING AND/OR BEING RESTRUCTURED, PEOPLE! YOU’RE GIVING ME A COMPLEX!

I smell :(

It’s ironic because it’s in lower case! Get it?! Hahaha!

Ahem.

I need a new title at work. I changed teams and expanded my role, and my current title – which utterly lacks any kind of flair – no longer quite fits. Since I made up that title, I figure I should make up a new one to properly cover all my many many bases – but what to call myself?

My business cards currently state that I am the Technical Trainer and Documentation Specialist of my company. This is incredibly boring, and only a small portion of what I do – I’m also in charge of building our corporate intranet, planning company events, keeping morale up, and any other random project that falls into my lap. I work for the People and Culture team – it’s like HR with party hats – and I can’t for the life of me think of a suitable title for my position that I could actually get away with having in my signature and on business cards.

I was a unique entity when I started this job three years ago, and I’m still unique – no one else does what I do. My job has changed so much in the last while that we’re going to be re-writing my job description in the new year so we can price me at fair market value (yay raise!) .. but I have no idea what we’d call me.

So naturally, I turn to the internet.

Give what I outlined above, what title would you give me? And please, nothing with “Administration” in the title. I’m not admin, goddamnit. Yes, there is some baggage there.

BUSY! AHH!

NO TIME FOR WORDS!

JUST YELLING!

I’M GIVING AWAY APPS FOR APPMAS ON MY OTHER BLOG! GO ENTER NOW TO WIN! A NEW APP GIVEN AWAY ON EACH POST BETWEEN NOW AND REGULARMAS!

LOUD NOISES!

IT'S THE GODDAMN BATMAN

One of my super powers is the amazing ability to grasp situations really quickly and make building-sized leaps in logic in a single bound. This skill is the only thing that qualifies me to be a technical trainer; I can learn new systems and processes much faster than the average bear.

So while it may sound conceited to boast that I am rarely confused, I am .. well, rarely confused. It is not often that I stare at something completely dumbfounded and unable to make any sense of it, no matter how hard I stare and how agape my jaw is. Granted, this may very well be because I tend to avoid looking at things drastically outside my skill level – you won’t see me attempting surgery or engine-building anytime soon, because I don’t get those things.

It’s not just complicated surgery and mechanics that I don’t get, though. For example, I don’t understand how I’ve been signed up to be a GameCrush whore – I am as confused as I’ve ever been.

Late last week, I received a weird email from GameCrush. I’ve gotten spam from them before, but this was different – it wasn’t an email for the USERS of GameCrush; it was for the “PlayDates”: the girls that sign up and play video games with men via webcam for money. If you’re not familiar with the idea of GameCrush, there it is – men pay hot girls to play video games with them and engage in voice/video chat. It’s about as sleazy and degrading as it sounds.

While trying to figure out why I was getting this email, I learned a few things about the PlayDates. GameCrush encourages them to upload sexy (game related!) pictures to entice men to choose them to play with. The girls are advised to keep their real identities a secret; to make up a PlayDate name and persona for the “Players” (the men who pay real money to play video games with women). You can absolutely upload risque content, but it will likely be restricted to the Players who pay for premium access. These men can look at you, play games with you, rank your appearance and gaming skill, and leave you messages. Here’s what the profile page looks like:

click to embiggen - the profile is blank coz it's "mine"; I'm not going to waste time filling it out so people will pay to play with me (although "be a prostitute" IS on my bucket list ..)

please oh please can i share my likes, dislikes and physical stats with men who want to choose me out of a lineup and hand over money for my time

I think it’s pretty obvious that there’s no way in hell I would ever sign myself up to be a PlayDate. In addition to thinking the entire idea is fucking disgusting, I’m not exactly the kind of girl they’re looking for – yeah, I play games and I’m active online, but a) I’m not docile, b) I’m not “hot”, and c) no one will pay to be graced with my presence. Also, there’s the issue of the name – if I WERE to wake up one morning with an abundance of beauty and a dearth of self-respect, I would NEVER use the name “Kimlibobo” to hide my real identity. There are several issues with that, which I’m sure you can quickly pick out .. not to mention it’s a fucking stupid name.

All this boils down into one question: what the flying fuck is going on here? How did I get signed up for a service I wouldn’t touch with YOUR dick, using a horrible diminutive of my real name, attached to my very real email address? Is this how spam works now, using intelligent targeting and account setup hoping you’ll get curious and offended and do some research? Did someone sign me up for this? Should I be flattered or creeped the fuck out? Why did I just get 15 copies of this welcome letter in my inbox (I used the site’s password recovery feature to see if anything had been set up under my name; after I logged in I got this 15 fucking times)?

Dear Kimlibobo,

Your GameCrush PlayDate account registration is complete. Welcome to the team! We look forward to helping you be successful on GameCrush. If you want to dive right in, visit your profile and start showing the world what you got!

Tips for getting started:

1. Create a profile that speaks to who you are as a gamer! Talk about your favorite games, post photos, let our players know that you are ready to kick their butts – or just to have a good time. Make sure you pick the games you want to play for your library!
2. Make sure your webcam is set up.
3. Once you are ready to play, just sign in. This will open your own personal, public chat window and allows Players visiting your profile to chat with you and know that you are for real.
4. Players on your profile can then request a game with you. You have the option of accepting or declining this request. Obviously, if you decline, you don’t get paid for that game!
5. If Players are being a pain in your butt, please take advantage of blocking and other functions we have on the site. We don’t want you to spend one second chatting with Players who aren’t treating you right.
6. Once you accept a game request, you’ll be taken to the game screen and the webcam feed will start. From this screen you and the Player can decide which game(s) you want to play. The game lasts until you or the Player decide to end it.

So – your next step is to create a profile that tells (and shows) players why they’d have a great time playing you. Visit your profile management page and get started choosing games, uploading photos, and telling players about yourself in your own words.

Thanks for joining!

– The GameCrush Crew

Eww. Eww all over this. What the fuck. Here’s the email I got initially, full of tips on how to get johns players to take me for a ride game:

For all the worrying I did about Got Craft, it was totally fine – even better than fine, actually. I had forgotten that I had bags and bags of Smuttons all ready to go, and the other items I was selling (flower rings and necklaces; contrasts are fun) take virtually no time to make. A few hours spent on Friday and Saturday shored up my inventory, and we were off.

I ended up making about $300 (and spending $70 of it), which is astounding when you realize I’m basically selling porn for $1 a shot (no pun intended). Most of my fun comes from people’s reactions as well as bringing out the DIRTIEST SMUTTON OF ALL TIME to share with a select few – it’s so very, very dirty that I don’t dare display it in the drawers with the rest of them. Ask me to see it some time; I’ll try to keep it in my wallet or something in case there’s ever a lull in the conversation.

Our table was a hub of activity all day – so many people came to visit us! Mikala brought me Diet Coke, Ed delivered some emergency pants and a blanket (we were sitting by the door; it was FREEZING) and .. it was just a fun day. I didn’t start to feel tired until almost 4:30, which was easy to deal with as the doors closed at 5pm. My stuff packs up quickly, and we were out the door with our spoils – Miranda bought pottery and a bucket; I got paper gnomes, two necklaces, some magnets and also a bucket. Crafty goodness is so fun!

Ed was a whirlwind of activity last night, and after I pried myself off the couch there was much cleaning done. My old-school internet friend Chris is coming to visit for a week, and as we’ve never actually met in person I want him to be duly impressed with our spotless kitchen counters and my successful scaling of Laundry Mountain. I even hung a lamp! Behold and admire the brightly lit area above my clean desk! Be amazed at the dishwasher; empty of crusty dinnerware! Bask in our empty garbage cans; each one a sparkling beacon of trash disposal! Totally ignore the gas leak in the kitchen!

Um, we kind of have a gas leak in the kitchen. We turned the gas off last Thursday and have been eating out of cartons since then, but no one can come in to look at it until sometime this week. Ed is convinced our home is about to explode in a fiery ball of toys and cat litter, and I’m just annoyed that I haven’t been able to cook in a week – it is very inconvenient to have a gas leak, although I am grateful that there is still 12 days left in our home warranty thingie.

This should be a fun week – Chris has never been to Vancouver, and there’s a lot to show him. The forecast looks like hell, but that’s what umbrellas are for – and if the evenings clear up, it might be a great time to check out the Christmas Market, the lights in Stanley Park and VanDusen, and whatever is going on along Robson. Good times ahead; no pants necessary.

we had to shoo curious children away - next time i won't put the porn next to the box of pretty flowers

pretty flowers nicely offset the filth in the mysterious black box