Well, I’m never going to sleep well again.

Ed and I did some cleaning on Saturday to prepare for our houseguest (my American, Chris). I wasn’t really able to do much what with my bubonic plague, but I managed to do a few chores before collapsing in an ungainly heap of angst and mucus. We straightened and vacuumed and recycled and hid all the dildos, and I did laundry. Laundry was really the big “must do” of the day, because Captain Trips causes you to secrete nasty fluids in your sleep and things were starting to get a little gummy*, so I stripped the bed and set out to wash those germs right out of my sheets. Unfortunately, Ed had to help me get the duvet cover off my blanket .. and then the world ended.

My blanket was in rough shape – I know this. It was a down comforter I had gotten as a Christmas gift from my future mother-in-law way back when Ed and I first started dating – I think it was 1998 or so. It was the most awesome, perfectest comforter in the entire world: light in the summer, warm in the winter, smelled like kittens and sunshine, and was cosy as all get out. I’d tried several times over the years to replace it with something newer because it was getting pretty ratty, but every single comforter bought as a possible successor was terrible and I would inevitably start using my favourite blanket again.

Unfortunately, “rough shape” was being a little kind – it was falling apart, and barely held together by the external duvet cover that kept most of the feathers inside. When I opened it up on Saturday to put it in the washer, a blizzard of down came billowing out; significant snowdrifts formed in the freshly vacuumed hallway and beyond. If Ed hates anything at all, it’s things that end up on the floor .. and the lifeblood of my nighttime comfort sent him flying into a rage** that would not be quenched with a mere broom; he needed vengeance. Knowing that I wasn’t all there in the head what with my raging Porphyric Hemophilia, Ed leapt to take advantage of my addled state:

“It’s time for that blanket to go.”

I looked around the feathery room, brushing several clumps of down out of my hair. “What are you talking about? My blanket is awesome.”

“No, it’s not. It’s falling apart and there’s barely any filling left and LOOK AT THIS MESS ALL OVER MY CLEAN FLOOR!”

I was too tired, sick and weak to argue. I knew he was right, even though I didn’t want to admit it (if I tell him he is right too often, he is impossible to deal with). I closed my eyes (because everything was spinning), and said “fine. Do it. Do it now, before I change my mind.”

By the time I opened my eyes again (I may have blacked out – I was really quite sick), my comforter was gone and every trace that it ever existed gone with it. It was the end: the end of comfort, of sleep, of making forts and burying myself in an avalanche of pillows. The end of good times in bed that don’t involve penetration; the end of secret naps after work wrapped in delicious never-ending comfort. It’s over. I will never get a good night’s sleep again. My Flood Parasite is kicking my ass, and SLEEPING SUCKS NOW. Thanks a lot, Ed. When did you decide you hated me?

EVERYTHING IS DIFFICULT and my head hurts. I would like to be better now, please!

*: that was a really gross sentence

**: to be fair, Ed flying into a rage is “mildly annoyed” for most people. the man does not flap.

I’m sick. What started out as a nasty sore throat on Tuesday morning has blossomed into a full blown case of sinusitis, and I’m at home feeling sorry for myself. I was able to work from home yesterday because I felt more or less okay (as long as I didn’t talk or swallow), but as the evening rolled around I got worse and worse. Still, I planned to go into the office today – just because I got no sleep, was hallucinating and couldn’t really stand up was no reason to shirk my duties! I somehow managed to shower and brush my teeth, then promptly fell back into bed. I emailed apologies to work and told them I was in no shape to sit up let alone find clothing and make my way into the office, and then tried to lay back and die as painlessly as possible. It hasn’t worked, so I’m sitting here and doing nothing. I kind of want to play video games, but moving my eyeballs hurts and I can’t seem to remember how to work the controller. POOR ME. Someone come take care of me!

Man, I hate being sick.

I had a brilliant idea this morning:

• Write terrible 50 Shades of Gray fanfiction (maybe about furries? It’s all about pushing the envelope with salacious sex, after all)
• Get a book deal (and dampen housewife panties everywhere)
• Retire rich and puffy (I already have an angled close-up picture ready for the book jacket)

Unfortunately, Kathryn pointed out that someone else already had this idea, and started writing a book using the same methods EL James did for hers (namely, write Twilight 50 Shades fan fiction, change the character names, profit). In a move worthy of applause just because of the sheer volume of balls needed to pull it off, EL James allegedly issued a cease and desist to order the writer to stop plagiarizing her original work.

*cough*

ANYWAY, since I sure would loathe to be set upon by nasty lawyers and big britches, I’ve decided to go with Plan B instead: get Return to Castle Bonerstein made into a movie.

People would kickstart gay video game slash, wouldn’t they?

All people should avoid making out with me today, as I worry that I am getting sick. I woke up with a sore throat this morning, and it seems to be getting worse. This might be karmatic retribution for killing off humanity in Plague Inc last night (with a deadly yet hilariously named parasite called Gnome Scrotum), but I regret nothing.

my version will feature the alien having mildly scandalous sex with liam neeson and the 1879 providence grays

Oh hey, it’s my birthday.

ring pops for everyone!

I am all kinds of old, and will be celebrating my Big Day with carbohydrates. Yay!

Having a birthday fall on a Monday equals low-key celebrations. We did go to Scandinave Spa yesterday with a group of people, but the date was more a coincidence than any particular planned birthday outing (we had coupons that expire soon). Plus, the steam room – 65% of the reason we go to Scandinave – was out of order, so we were a little disappoint. Ridiculously Fancy Brunch at araxi in Whistler helped soothe our steam-free blues though, and it was fun times to be out with friends. Tonight there will be dinner times with additional friends, which I am looking forward to (mostly because I skipped breakfast and I am STARVING). At some point in the future I will collect on my birthday present raincheque from Ed (my fault, not his – at the last minute I decided I didn’t really want or need a Playstation Vita, so I get a present when I figure out what I want), and my birthday will be done. That’s okay, though – I have so very much to look forward to, and my birthday always kind of weirds me out. I’m much better at planning birthday fun for others than I am at celebrating my own, so to that end I am all full up of planning for next month’s batch of friend birthdays. I am happiest making sure others feel the love!

I do hope at some point I will get cake, though.

Birthday!

I am nothing if not an Equal Opportunity Kimli, so here are some half-naked men to go with the half-naked women I posted last night. It’s not quite as amazing as yesterday’s 3 minutes and nine seconds, but .. look at all those man nipples!

As you were, then.

A bird pooped on me today. If I believe my mother’s folksy tales of wisdom, this means I am about to have some good luck. That’s all fine and good and all, but a BIRD POOPED ON ME AND IT IS GROSS! I saw the poopening happen, and thought it had missed me – it was REALLY close, but I was in the clear, right? Until I got to work and checked myself out in the mirror, and .. how did I splotch white paint on the front of my dress? Oh, wait. AUGH!

I scrubbed my dress off with soap and paper towels, and now I am wet all over (but poop free). I am also completely traumatized and grossed out. I want to go home and take seven baths. :(

Yesterday on Twitter I posted an opinion about the religious advertising on my bus (it’s weird). Immediately afterward, I was caught in the crossfire of both the International Association of Rabid Twitter Christians and the Organization of Atheists who Take Things Seriously. On one side, the IARTC were accusing me of hating Jesus, attempting to censor religion, and other things I couldn’t quite understand because their tweets were largely unreadable and/or this:

The far side of the battlefield was occupied by the OAWTTS, who quickly for some reason sprang to my defence. I don’t actually know any of these people, which is evident in that they came to my defence at all – I may be a Kinder, Gentler Kimli these days but that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten my years of verbal sparring with the entire internet. Believe me, I can hold my own and you really don’t want to be on the receiving end of my vitriol.

Surrounded by Twitter idiots (or as they are now known, “Twidiots”), wars about religion waged around me and occupied much of my morning. I didn’t ask for any of it; I simply stated my opinion that ads for bible camp and holy ghost conventions on my bus were weird and a little unsettling. This isn’t me attempting to wave my “Christphobia” (that’s apparently a thing now) in anyone’s face; for the record I also thought the Atheism ads that surfaced on buses last year were weird too. If people had bothered to ask me WHY I didn’t like the ads instead of jumping to conclusions that I’m a baby-eating Satanist (which is only half true), they’d have learned that I think thusly: transit is a public service run by the government, and religious ads of ANY kind don’t belong.

But of course, then people would have to value the opinions of others as much as they claim to, as opposed to only valuing the opinions of those who feel the exact same way.

Leave me alone, Twidiots. I’ll be over here looking at boobs and video games, and you are NOT invited.

This is the best 3 minutes and nine seconds you’ll spend today:

BOOBIES!

These women are what I want to be when I grow up.

On Saturday, Heather Renee and I piled into the Mini and drove south to America. It was a routine trip, with a routine agenda: lunch at Mi Mexico, Target for incidentals and underwear with superheroes on them, and Trader Joe’s for kitchen essentials. We’ve made the trip a thousand times before without incident, and we assumed the day would hold more of the same.

We assumed wrong.

Thing started off badly when we had the misfortune to get the World’s Angriest Man for a crossing guard. He bombarded us with very specific questions: have you ever been arrested? have you ever been in handcuffs? (I really, really wanted to answer that truthfully, but WAM was in no mood for sex play) what do you do? who do you do it to? where do you work? what position does your desk face? when was the last time you ate thousand island salad dressing? He was especially curious about where Renee and Heather worked; being unsatisfied with their answers of what they did for a living. The questions went on and on, until, for the first time EVER, we were “randomly selected” for additional screening.

Angry Man angrily gave us a piece of orange paper, and told us to pull over to the right. We did, where additional Angry Men told us to get out of the car and go inside for cavity searches. I was ordered to leave my car keys on the windshield, and we all had to LEAVE OUR PHONES IN THE CAR. This was the first thing that made me angry – denying me access to Social Media if things went wrong. Not cool, but as they had guns and I did not, I angrily left my phone in the car and stomped off to the Interrogation Centre.

Inside was slightly chaotic, and full of people. Since I had time to kill, I looked very carefully at my surroundings and the people selected for secondary screening with us. With the exception of the people with the guns, Renee and Heather were two of maybe 4 white people in the room: most of the detainees were Hispanic, Asian, or African. HMMMMMM. Maybe I was just being paranoid, but I’ve been pulled aside for “random screening” after having the audacity to be the only non-white person in the room before, so I’m a little sensitive to being singled out. Heather and Renee were appropriately apprehensive about all this, but I was PISSED OFF. Why had we been selected for screening? What were they doing to my car? Are they planning on finger printing us, like they were doing to everyone else? I was MAD, and getting madder by the second. I had squinty face all over, and an ongoing internal dialogue about my options: if they try to finger print me, do I refuse? CAN I refuse? Is standing up for my rights worth my being barred from the US forever? All this and more ran through my head as family after family of non-white people streamed in through the doors. SO MAD, but stuck in line so I fumed and they worried and eventually, we were called up to the counter to speak with Beardy McBorder Guard.

He asked us an abbreviated series of the questions Angry Man had barked at us, emphatically typing on his keyboard the entire time. I volunteered no more than the absolute minimum, and again he was not really interested in where I worked: he asked us all what we did, but only Heather and Renee *where* they did it. Odd, because both of them have far more respectable jobs than I do – they work for Public Service and Educational Institution respectively, whereas I am a trouble-making software brat. Beardy McBorder Guard continued to pound on his keyboard (undoubtedly waxing poetry about our evil Canadian ways), but most of  his attention was reserved for the two female border guards sitting beside him: apparently someone had puked in their Interrogation Line earlier, and THEY weren’t going to clean it up so it just sat there. Awesome.

After a while, Beardy stopped typing and stamped our orange paper a bunch of times, then .. let us go. We weren’t finger printed, and our belongings were relatively unmolested. We weren’t ordered to go to our destination and return immediately, like other families were, and we didn’t have to wait around for additional questioning. I suppose we checked out okay – we had nothing to hide and told the truth – but our questions weren’t answered. Why were we pulled over? What were they looking for? In what way were three Canadians in a small car suspicious enough to require searching? It couldn’t have been the car itself; Ed and I had taken it for a ride down the Chuckanut the day after we got it. It had to be us, but WHY?

We discussed it afterward, and we think the WHY can be boiled down to three points:

• Renee is an International Man of Mystery, and her passport has stamps from such questionable places as Botswana, Vietnam, the Used Kingdom of Cambodia, the UK, and France
• They realized that I was actually half white and therefore didn’t need the additional probing that FULL Asians require for some reason
• Heather is entirely too innocent; they couldn’t believe that anyone is truly that good and nice

The rest of our trip was without incident: we ate lunch, went to Target, bought snacks at Trader Joe’s. There was concern that getting back into Canada would be problematic, but our return was also without incident and we were back home by 6pm: tired, but with our rectums and most of our dignity intact.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens when I go south next.

they’re listening

Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve found the Saddest Place on the Internet. No need to thank me!

Everyone knows that commenters on YouTube are terrifying due to their flagrant stupidity and sheer volume of responses. The same goes for those who comment on news stories, where you’ll find the very bottom of the primordial ooze barrel; the sort of people our extraterrestrial forebeings hoped we would have weeded out of the evolutionary chain long before this point. If it’s even slightly controversial or common sense, you can be assured there’s an entire Bible-based organization out there foaming at the mouth trying to stop everyone from moving forward as a species, all in the name of specific parts of an old book they choose to highlight as “proof” their bigotry is justified.

And then there’s the people who comment on comic strips.

In addition to the web comics I read daily, I also follow a few traditional comic strips on GoComics.com. With one exception, there are dozens of comments below each strip made by people responding to what the characters are saying in each panel. It’s .. weird. I don’t know why it bothers me so much that there are adults out there who start each day by giving advice to the mother from For Better or Worse on how to raise her kids, but it does. It’s creepy. They call back older conversations between characters, suggest things they should do or say, give relationship advice, analyze every little thing. In one strip I read, the commenters are freaking out because the main character made a “Godfather” reference – but she’s only 9, so SHE SHOULDN’T HAVE SEEN THE MOVIE! SHAME ON HER PARENTS! Seriously, what. I know that, in the grand scheme of all the things wrong with the internet, this is incredibly trivial – but I find it incredibly unsettling to see people with such stake in what these fictional people do. It ain’t right. Internet, stop being creepy. Thx!

I have a headache that is entirely too big for me to deal with.

Why all the fuss? This isn’t sexy at ALL.

this started out as wikipedia fan fiction and grew to a 3-book deal with a bidding war over the movie rights.

All you get today is a list of things that suck, and a terrible pun. Sorry.