First Rant of the Year

Hey, I never professed to stop ranting as a resolution so here’s the first of the year – During my regularly scheduled television viewing the other day I was listening to an entertainment news woman blather on about all the upcoming tv and movie awards shows that we are being inundated with right now.  She was talking about how many “noms” each movie star had.  After I swore a few times in my head about how ridiculous she sounded, it occurred to me that this whole "talking like I’m texting" is getting way outta hand.  Even people who are supposed to be smart are using this crap!  Really, the word “nom” to me is defined as the sound an old man with no teeth makes while he is eating – get it: nom, nom, nom?  One of my top ten stupid words that people use has to be vacay (short for vacation for those people who don’t know).  Is it getting too hard or taking too much of our time for us to enunciate our words?  Are we so lazy that we have to Cole’s notes our speech?  Don’t even get me started on lol and wft.  People, if it comes up spelled wrong on spell check it probably isn’t a word!  Someone also needs to talk to the dufas’s at the Webster’s Dictionary offices because if you all are starting to put this stupid slang in your big book of words I’m not buying.  At the end of the day all we have is words to remind us of our histories.  Why mess that up with shit that just doesn't make sense?  People thirty years from now are going to need Webster's Book of Slang just to decipher what it is that we are writing about.  Do we really want to be known as the people who were to lazy to use whole words? 

The Rosie Project Murder

Over the Christmas break I committed an offence so gruesome and horrific I have been embarrassed to admit it.  I have however realized that confessing is part of the healing process so here you go……

The bloody Rosie Project

Even though I have my E-Library and love the convenience of just being able to order a book online any time, I still do hit the library from time to time.  I don’t actually GO to the library to look for books to read (except to pick up and drop off) no, I do all my library perusing from the comfort of my home on the computer.  I request a hold on the books I want to read and wait, sometimes for months, for the damn things to come in.   They send me an email telling me my book is in and I hustle down to the library and pick it up.  I don’t even need to communicate with humans once during this entire transaction!  The library has a fancy self check out machine!   Doesn’t get any better than that.  Of course the only issue with this system is that sometimes I have to stop reading a book to start reading the library book!  So all this gibberish leads to the library book I pick up over the break.  I was pretty excited about this one.  It’s a new best seller that screamed whimsical!  Everyone can use a little whimsy every once and awhile.  A few days into reading the book I suffer from a spontaneous nose bleed.  Freaky, profuse blood spurt.  Gross really when you think about it.  It was all I could do to get the book out of my way and get to the bathroom!  Of course you can imagine that the book did not go unscathed.  One single drip of blood lands on the paper side of the spine.  Just bloody great.  Of course I make the spot bigger by rubbing it in panic and now I have a smudge of blood on the spine!  Crap.  I probably spent 20 minutes trying my damndest to get that stain out only to realize I was starting to damage the pages!  I felt sick.  Here I had damaged a best selling book that has a wait list six miles long!  It took me two days to get to the library and confess. A part of me was thinking I was going to have a “black mark” on my squeaky clean library record.  I am now the proud owner of a slightly yucky library book that cost me $27.99.  What pisses me off more is that if I had just ordered the thing on my e-account it would have only cost me $13.99.   To make matters worse two days after I paid for the book I get an email from the library saying one of my reserves was in (I was relieved that I did not get kicked out of the secret society of library users) to which I pick up and bring home only to see that the “new” book looks like someone dropped it in the tub!  All the pages are warped and mangled and the final cherry on top – there is a stamp on the inside that says "October 2013 – water damage"!  Really?  That book is a hundred times worse than my DNA infested damaged book.  Think that person did a drop and run?  Oh well, I suppose I could “rent” out my new “Bloody” book to all my friends to re-coup my $27.99, or just keep it in my library as a reminder that sometimes honesty is the best policy – but it’s gonna cost ya.

New Years Resolution 2014 - "Except For" Edition

So you all know my feelings about those stupid resolutions that we all insist on making at the beginning of every year.  No one keeps them!  Seriously.  I just read something in O Magazine that asked if you are making a new years resolution for 2014 and whether you have made the same resolution before?  Well, have you?  I certainly have.  It sort of pisses me off that I would waste a perfectly good resolution on something that I will never (apparently) follow through on.  This year I decided to change it up and try to fix a major deficiency that has been plaguing me for at least twenty years.  I know I am usually a sunshiny, happy person (stop laughing) but the bouts of insomnia I go through are seriously starting to effect my memory and my chipper personality.  Part of the reason I have decided this issue is in serious need of fixing is the recent research that has been put out to the world about the connection between sleep deprivation and dementia in later life.  Apparently, while we sleep our brains have "a chance to clear out potentially harmful waste that build up while you're awake.  This waste includes amyloid beta - a driver of Alzheimer's."  While we sleep there are fancy little "janitors" that "take out the trash" and clean all the crap up!  Amazing!  This however does not bode well for me with my lack of sleep on a daily basis.  My neuron holder if full of brain crap and sleep is the toilet!  So after consulting with a fellow ex-insomniac, I get the "rules" for fixing myself up.  Oh boy.  No wonder my sleep is messed up!  Here are just some of the rules I am required to follow and the Except Fors that I will be instituting:

1.  Get up at the same time every morning - sounds easy?  Except for so far I am sucking at this endeavour.  Must try harder.....
2. Go to bed only when you feel sleepy - really?  Except for I go to bed to get away from the testosterone fest that is my home.  I will have to start locking myself in my office.
3. Avoid naps - You guessed it, this also has been a struggle but I have managed to not pass out at all over the last seven days.  The cats however, are pissed about this one as I am their favourite napping buddy.
4. Avoid caffeine, alcohol and tobacco in the evening - well not smoking is easy since I don't touch the stuff but I really wish this rule list would define "evening".
5. Have a cool, quiet, dark bedroom - again, really? If I can get one of the older money suckers to stop playing video games until 3:00 am every day I would be able to complete this one.  Not. Going. To. Happen.

There are more items (13 in fact) but I won't bore you with them.  It did however, occur to me after reading "repeating a nonsense phrase or saying "one" to yourself repeatedly, induces a relaxation response which helps promote sleep" that the sheep I try to count at night keep stopping on the other side of the fence and asking me questions and then, of course, I have to think about the answer.  I will be looking for much dumber sheep or at the very least quiet ones!

Happy New Year and I hope you keep the resolution you set for yourself.  You only get one a year baby.  Don't squander it!

(References from The University of Rochester Medical Centre for Translational Neuromedicine study and Vancouver Coastal Health Sleep Disorders Program, just so ya know.)