I’m a cynic at heart, and often (correctly) assume that some conditions are over-exaggerated in the name of selling products to quell your fears. The cosmetics industry is the worst for this; a billion dollar industry created by making women feel bad about aging and preying on the resulting self-loathing. Knowing this and feeling smugly superior about the ability to see the Big Picture doesn’t guarantee immunity, though – if that were true, my morning ritual could be reduced to a quick spray of water from the kitchen and I’d be on my way. A quick mental tally tells me I use a staggering 22 different cosmetic products before I leave the house in the morning; each designed to volumize, freshen, conceal, brighten, smooth, widen and gleam. It’s a pain in the ass, but I’ll still do it every day because I’ve been brought up to dislike how I look with a “naked” face – it’s not MY face; I look like a stranger. I only feel comfortable when slathered with layer after layer of creams and powders and glitter.

(I have a point; bear with me). Since I am so smugly superior about it all, I naturally assumed that products designed to eliminate dark circles from under your eyes are a load of bunk. People don’t REALLY get eye circles; it’s just bad lighting causing shadows and/or paranoia. Those pricey creams don’t actually do anything but fool you into thinking that NOW you won’t age; you’re protected by the cream! What vain fools people are!

Imagine my surprise, then, when I awoke this morning and discovered that not only do dark circles under the eyes actually EXIST; they come in different fun shapes for all your “let’s look half dead” needs. I had honest-to-dog darkness under my eyes this morning  – even Ed could see the dark shapes under my eyes that were not caused by lighting. They were real, and they were triangles. Dark circles under the eyes are for amateurs – I am rocking dark triangles of sleeplessness and woe. Awesome!

I look like the friggin’ Crow.

Here is an ASCII representation of what I look like right now:

apparently i also look like andre the giant

I have no nose, I rose from the dead, and I’m going to kick your ass with several straight-to-DVD sequels. Yeah, you better run. My dark triangles will FUCK YOU UP.

Caw!

For Sale: my iPad

• 1st Gen 32GB iPad with wi-fi
• Pristine condition
• Official Apple case
• Awesome Portenzo case
• This thing, in case you want to be utterly ridiculous like me
• Incredibly useful iPad stand that makes your iPad all fancy
• George has touched it

Asking $550 obo.

Yeah, I’m upgrading. I love my iPad, but I bet I would love the iPad 2 even more. I originally got it to replace my laptop, and it performed admirably – was very, very nice to have around for a dozen or more reasons. I’d actually like to keep both devices so Ed could have a device to take with him when traveling (he takes the 7-year old, 20lb Dell laptop instead), but he doesn’t want it which is for sad. So, I’m selling it. Buy my iPad and love her as I did.

kimli at delicious juice dot com if interested.

The boss is away, so the mice will play serve pie.

It’s Pi Day, and I brought in ALL THE PIES EVER (okay, 8) to feed the office at lunch today. They can’t expect me to do the whole “culture” thing without a bizarrely strong emphasis on nerd culture, so in addition to Pi Day we will be celebrating Star Wars Day, Geek Pride Day, Talk Like a Pirate Day, and SysAdmin Day. Unfortunately (or otherwise, considering I’m talking about work) we’ve already missed International Fetish Day for the year, but there’s always No Pants Day (aka everyday for me).

I should make a Technical Writer Appreciation Day. No one thinks of us until they have to document something, and then people realize how awesome we are. No one in their right mind WANTS to do documentation except for us, but here we are. Appreciate me, damnit! My work is valuable!

As a representative of the People and Culture team, I must always be keenly attuned to diversity. I realize that not everyone is into pie, so in the spirit of entendre equality, I present you this image:

thanks wanda :D

You’re welcome.

I’m bad at everything most people seem to take for granted – today I discovered that I am bad at coffee.

Living between a Tim Hortons and a McDonalds means one of us will go out to get breakfast on non-brunch weekends. I was up and at them before Ed this morning, so I was tasked with the Fetchening – Ed needed coffee; I needed Diet Coke, and some breakfast meats would also be nice. I made it to McDonalds just before the menu changed, ordered up some vittles, and made my way across the treacherous parking lot home .. only to be continually perplexed by the coffee cup. Why won’t the contents stay in it? The lid is on, but it’s spewing coffee out all over me and it’s hot and it stinks. I figured I lost half the cup up my sleeve and down my pants, but when I got home it was STILL FULL. Is coffee magic? I think there may have been magic involved.

I’m still not going to drink the stuff, though. It reeks and now I need a shower.

Stupid magic coffee.

People in the US can text REDCROSS to 90999 to donate $10. Canadians, text REDCROSS or ASIA to 30333 to donate $5 (you can donate by phone up to 6x per month) or donate through the Red Cross website (there are some reports that 30333 still goes to the Haiti fund – honestly, it doesn’t matter; your help is needed). You can also donate through Global Giving if you prefer.

If you’re anywhere on the west coast of North America, stay off the beaches.

Google has set up a Person Finder for people looking for loved ones.

Twitter is proving to be an invaluable resource for news and information – hashtags to follow include #japan #tsunami #eqjp #earthquake – but beware false or misleading information, especially about tsunami warnings.

Al Jazeera was running much more in-depth coverage of events than CNN; you can watch the English stream online.

Live coverage, including emergency numbers for various languages, can be found on the Timeout Tokyo site.

I hate that I can do so little to help other than donate.

Be safe, everyone.

I took the last of my crazy pills on Sunday night, and made plans to fill my prescription for more on Monday after work. Unfortunately, when I got home I was stricken with an intense case of the lazies and didn’t want to leave the house or put clothes back on – no big deal; I have a stash of emergency brain meds for travel/this very reason. I would just take one of those, then replenish my stash later.

You can see the problem here – actually TAKING my crazy pill would have required putting Hot Springs Story down and getting out of bed. I fell asleep long before this could happen, but no big deal – I’d just take the pill first thing Tuesday morning and everything would be super.

Yeah, this didn’t happen either – I forgot all about it until I was actually at the pharmacy refilling the ‘scrip while reeling from the brain zaps. I didn’t really want to double up on the meds at that point so I went back to my normal schedule, but the damage has already been done – I’ve got Mega Vertigo and I’m gamely trying to stay upright because I’m not wearing my good underwear and passing out is just gauche.

If you’ve never had brain zaps, consider yourself lucky. I liken them to that scene in the Matrix where Morpheus is describing their reality to Neo – giant sentient robots roaming the earth sucking the delicious juices out of humanity under an unrelenting night sky; lightning crawling across the ominous cloud cover like electric spider webs. It doesn’t hurt, really, but it certainly doesn’t feel right in any way. It’s .. tingly. I have a tingly brain. Throw in the incessant vertigo, and it’s a wonder I’m able to keep my eyes from crossing. Please don’t ask me anything difficult today.

bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzap

I am not a practicing religionite, but I understand today is a Big Day in Western Christiness – it is Lent. Lent is when you give up things because your life is too awesome and that makes Jeeves sad because he is just a butler yet you have so much, so you stop being happy for a while and this makes your butler rise from the grave and feed everyone tuna sandwiches and chocolate eggs. I do not understand religiosity, but I am always respectful of forced suffering in the name of the Holly Father all the way up there in the mistletoe, so here is a list of things you could consider giving up for Lents:

• Lactose intolerance
• Tetris
• Traffic jams
• Orkut
• Diaper play
• Moisturizer
• Voice mail
• 17th century prostitution
• Full-frontal espionage

These are just examples, mind you – there are so many things you could give up for Lant to make Jeeves feel better about his indentured servitude and also your plan to crucify him so he can return from the dead with sandwiches and brightly coloured eggs. Also, it’s Mardi Gras. Show me your tits.

Ye Olde Office decorating is complete:

pray tell, didst thou complete thine inventory report due on the morrow?

Not shown: the other two flags, which are strung up elsewhere in the office. I’m covered in drywall – I think I have the white lung – but they look pretty good, if I do say so myself. People are already asking what the fuck because they are pretty ridiculous, but my boss likes ’em, my team likes ’em, and I think they’re kind of hilarious so it’s nothing but good over here. I love that I get to do stuff like this at/for work. I think I’ll add some more ridiculous to our intranet.

My team at work is a relatively new team, and people don’t always know what we do. It doesn’t help that every person in PCC does something completely different, either – we are a confusing but attractive bunch. At a meeting, we tossed around suggestions to educate our co-workers as to our roles – wearing hats, or refusing to talk to anyone unless they ask questions in grade school German. I jokingly suggested we needed to create banners to hang above our desks; each depicting what we actually do on a day to day basis. I wasn’t actually serious, but the idea picked up steam and kind of took on a life of its own .. end result, I spent my weekend doing this:

flags!

I couldn’t find a recipe for the style of flag I wanted, so I kind of made one up. They’re not perfect – neither my sewing skills nor my crest-making skills are really existent at all, but they’ll pass. It helps that they’ll be hung from the ceiling, so no one can really look too closely. I’m kind of proud of them, flaws and all – I sewed a thing! Five things! And I only swore at the sewing machine 9 times, and needed Josh to help me fix it 4 times! Craftiness is AWESOME!

I don’t feel very good, though. I had to skip brunch this morning for feeling like hell, and I’m kind of queasy. I’m not allowed to be sick, so I have until tomorrow around 7am to get better. So, here we go.

I may have made a grave mistake.

One of my few remaining shameful secrets is that I joined my office lottery pool. It’s the only place I “do” lottery, and entirely because I don’t have to do anything at all. I give John money once a month, and I get a bunch of emails I completely ignore. I assume someone will tell me if we actually win anything, but I don’t ever think about because it is extremely distasteful and embarrassing to me.

Joining the lottery pool isn’t the mistake. Telling my mother I joined the lottery pool? THAT was a mistake. She calls me twice a week now to ask how our numbers did, and I haven’t got the foggiest idea – I don’t know or care what they are, whereas my mother memorizes every set of numbers she plays and knows within seconds of watching the draw if she won or not. And if I thought she talked a lot about her numbers before – oh god. I wonder if she thinks she finally got through to me; that we’re now kindred spirits united through our love of organized gambling. Each conversation we have is a Beautiful Mind-styled dissertation on number theory and patterns, with some awkward motherly advice twisted to relate to the joys of gambling thrown in to make me incredibly uncomfortable. There’s something so, so wrong when your mother tells you to always buy lotto tickets to the point where “if you don’t have enough money leftover for meat, you can always eat peanut butter”.

I regret my attempt to bond with my mother by telling her I joined the lottery pool. And it wasn’t really so much an effort to bond as it was to get her to shut up about the damn lottery pool. I don’t mind having Rain Man for a mother – it’s the only logical explanation; the woman runs different lottery pools with every person she knows and keeps them all straight in her head – but why couldn’t her weird super power be something even remotely useful and doesn’t cost her hundreds of dollars each week?

Stupid lottery.