Experiments In Mediocrity Small, obscure, nocturnal, dizzy and itchy; I tell weird stories and will give you my opinion on everything given the time. Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 1 0 68 4566

Articles from Experiments In Mediocrity

My Theory on Seasonal Affective Disorder 2007-12-04 15:10:00 It is difficult to write out holiday cards that should have wishes of joy and cheery declarations of love when all I want to do is put a hammer through my head.The weather has turned frigid and I haven't seen the sun in two days. There is sad-sounding Celtic music wafting in from another room, and as a result I've turned my headphone radio up so loud I can heard Bruce Springsteen breathing down my neck. I like Celtic music, I really do, but outside of I Am Stretched On Your Grave, I don't dig the ones involving death and separation very much, because they get it more accurately than I care to notice when I see that I only have a handful of family cards to send out--which, btw, I'd love to do the card exchange thing, but believe me, you're better getting the thing I will post here...whatever that will be--and I can't keep anyone's name straight, especially my own, because honestly, I wrote it once, why do I have to keep writing it down? My mind does not know. Much like when I ...

I See What I Did There. 2007-12-03 17:31:00 The other day, I was gushing about how great it was that I was getting a pack of six replacement springs for my Swiss Army Knife. Today, I got a spring. One spring, and was like, "Where are the other five?"I say I was "like" that because the actual sound I made was not that coherent due to my sore tongue and not something I want to reprint in case children are reading.The error was mine, however. I had been comparing springs on two sites, and the one I didn't go with had a pack of six springs for the price of the one spring I just got, but they charged more for shipping.Have I ever mentioned I don't see very well? Yeah.Ain't no replacement brains to be found on the Internet.But I've got my red knife back, anyway, and the cancelled Yoda stamp on the envelope wasn't too shabby, either. When this spring goes five years from now, if they still sell replacements, I guess I'll get that six-pack.Tags: December 2007, Swiss Army Knife©2000-2007 Lynda B. Naclerio, all rights rese ...

Sundays suck. 2007-12-02 15:20:00 There, I've said it. I hate Sunday. This Sunday has done nothing to change my opinion of its predecessors, as LiveJournal is down, and that is a wrench in the cogs of my life so large that any venting I might have done elsewhere, in a moderate false sense of privacy, cannot happen now.It snowed today. It wasn't a lot of snow, it was pretty, and were I younger and healthier, the sight of the first snowflakes would have carried me through a dozen Sundays on a sparkly patch of icy glee. But no. Now I’m old, and the only place I’m allowed to enjoy the snow is in my backyard. We live on a street many people walk down, and so being a vampire with a hernia tends to clash with the idea of not causing people to slip. The neighbor next door, bless him, shovels the street in front of his house and our house. But he's got tendonitis and pins in his leg. Is it fair for him to have to shovel the street in front of our house? Of course not. But he does it, without asking or expecting ...

How to tell what day it is. 2007-12-01 17:49:00 Tate is on vacation, so one of the few things I looked forward to in December is...well, done in one frame.Not to fear, there is a less-cute, but just as handy tool for people who just aren't sure if it's Christmas yet: IsItChristmas.com. It even has an RSS feed.As for me, I shall try to write something here every day, because I have been neglecting my blog duties almost as much as my own sanity. However, I think you'll agree that it's much better I spend my hour freezing in my yard not writing posts. The double letters are a bbi to backspace over.Tags: December 2007, holidays, Christmas, advent calendar, Tate, The Cat Who Laughed, Is It Christmas©2000-2007 Lynda B. Naclerio, all rights reserved. ...

MS Word Underlines My Name In Red. 2007-11-29 16:51:00 It should surprise no one who used to get e-mail from me that I am capable of churning out 50,000 words. But all on one subject other than myself, for an entire month? This has never happened before. Until late last night.I'm not done with my story, it may take another 30,000 to get it to the point where it doesn't read like CSI: Dick And Jane, but--and I like big buts, I cannot lie--I probably won't finish it until January, as I've got other things going on that really need me.More things in life whould declare you a winner after you've put in enough time on them. Blogs should like, declare you a winner after you post. That'd kick ass. Cars should declare you a winner after you drive them ten miles. There's a toothbrush that smiles when you've used it long enough, but that doesn't count, I want to win at something like raking. There's gotta be 50,000 leaves outside.Tags: November 2007, NaNoWriMo, writing©2000-2007 Lynda B. Naclerio, all rights reserved. ...

I Watch Shrek For The Wrong Reasons. 2007-11-28 20:49:00 I like Puss, the little Antonio Banderas cat, and I'm guessing a lot of people do, because ABC used Puss to bribe me into watching Shrek The Halls, some odd holiday fart joke that was on TV tonight.I realize they only had about 19 minutes to work with, and so they focused on the one winter holiday that has a costume, so everybody could dress up and Puss could become mesmerized my the jingly pom-pom on the end of his hat and.... My feelings for Puss In Boots are special ones. I have to clean up the drool now.I just...I just thought there'd be one character in all of Shrek's friends who celebrated something else. You know, so Disney could market a plush Donkey with a dreidel, Fiona with a sun gong, or Puss with Kwanzaa books. But no, we get another meaning of Christmas story that's like, don't kick your friends out in the snow, because apparently they have no place else to go.If only Puss was in the Chrismahanukwanzakah ad, then I could just watch that and be happy.(For as long ...

I love the Swiss. 2007-11-27 22:38:00 A magazine psychic once told me I'd end up living in Switzerland--the same guy that told me I left my king in India and had a wonky pancreas--and I can understand that, because I *heart* snow and all, but what I love even more than Swiss Miss hot chocolate and puddings are their knives. Not the ones with the corkscrew, just the classic little knives like the one I hid in 2-XL in case I had to battle ninjas.My Swiss Army Knife bob haircut was sorta legendary in my family, you know. Yes, I gave myself a straight, even, total Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction hairstyle (of course I have a picture of it). It was a long time ago, I don't have that kind of patience anymore. It should come as no surprise that the scissors--or rather the spring that makes the scissors work properly--broke. It was a very sad night, during the Powerpuff Girl doll project of 1999, just...poof, right in the middle of Bubbles' shoe.The scissor to my second knife, the red one, finally went on Friday. It was just ...

72 Days 2007-11-21 14:01:00 It's 72 days until my mum is eligble for Medicare, and today we both--at separate times--saw the delightful new anti-smoking ad with the guy in a park...with one leg. He goes on about how many colors his leg turned, and how he ignored the smell, and apparently cigarettes migrated into his leg and clotted there and now he has no leg, but he started smoking in the park 40 years ago. Don't smoke, kids.Gosh, thanks, Ad Council, I want my mum to see a one-legged version of Aqualung while her leg is all weird. Thanks.Oh, um, that reminds me, happy Thanksgiving everybody! No, really, I mean that, I probably won't get the chance to wish you a happy Thanksgiving tomorrow because I'll be unconscious. Pie.Tags: November 2007, television, family, smoking, commercials©2000-2007 Lynda B. Naclerio, all rights reserved. ...

A Good Reason To Keep The Floor Clean 2007-11-18 13:46:00 You never know when you might have a party. Here's the top of my head showing the top of my neice's head where we keep the glasses. She's an excellent drummer.Tags: November 2007, photos, family©2000-2007 Lynda B. Naclerio, all rights reserved. ...

Injuries, when set to music, are fun. 2007-11-17 14:54:00 It's been a while since I gave you some music videos to watch...right? These are like, the best videos ever. I saw them all around the age of ten and they changed my life. Not really changed, I guess, because having watched Laurel & Hardy and Benny Hill from the time I was three, I sort of always dug people getting hit by stuff. Much like my love for intoxicated characters in movies and TV shows, things are just better if stuff is going crazy. For other people.Love's Been A Little Bit Hard On Me by Juice Newton shows why you should never trust anyone to close your car door.Cold Shot by Stevie Ray Vaughn shows why it's okay to love your guitar.She's Right On Time by Billy Joel has to be seen on YouTube, but it is so worth the trip over there...emphasis on trip. If you like madcap slapstick with explosions and good music, this is for you. Yes.I used to laugh so hard at these videos. This should give you some insight to why I think it's funny when stuff falls on me.Tags: Nove ...

The Cleaning Ninja: Episode 1,986 2007-11-16 17:06:00 I cleaned the kettle.Holy hell I can't believe we drink from that thing.I bet the coffee will taste horrible now.*sigh*Did not wear the nice gloves to clean the kettle; now I have steel wool splinters in three of my fingers.Tags: November 2007, cleaning, coffee©2000-2007 Lynda B. Naclerio, all rights reserved. ...

Penance. 2007-11-15 18:23:00 I should start by pointing out that yes, I do have a certain degree of OCD, but I am my own walking cognitive behavior therapist and can control it, within reason and with the use of the kick ass colorist gloves I found under the sink. I don't say this often because I have been told I either cannot possibly control it all by myself, or that I just don't have it. I no longer get into quibbles about that, I don't care. It's like when the neighbors see me standing up and think I'm just not cutting limbs off my trees because they haven't pointed out those limbs to me enough. Same thing. I know me better than anyone else, and I don’t expect anyone else to get every little thing about me (like how much I love those gloves I found under the sink)—I wouldn’t want them to, just like I also don’t want people to take the fact that I don’t have an ice pick sticking out of my head as evidence that I’m perfectly fine when I say I have a migraine.That said, I cleaned the bathro ...

I'm not sure Darth Maul should be the innermost Sith nesting doll. 2007-11-12 16:53:00 I like Star Wars. You know this well, I'm sure. Right? Right. Yes, I loves me the space opera, and had my ISP not dropped alt.fan.porkins, the newsgroup I created to honor the greatest character to come out of those movies, my love would be very apparent indeed.These days I limit my collection to looking at RebelScum.com and saving the pictures. Aye, hard times = no new little plastic friends for me. But it's okay, because my display was starting to take on the look of a Japanese subway car.Now, Nan and her thing for Russian nesting dolls rubbed off on me. We've only gotone nesting doll between us, a bunch of black cats holding pumpkins that we found in Woolworth before they closed. (This post is full of injustice, first Woolworth, then afp, oh, it's unfair!)Looking at it now, I realize it was only a matter of time before someone came up with Star Wars nesting dolls, but I never, ever, ever could have expected them to call them Chubbies.Will someone really go bragging, "I'v ...

It only makes sense if you know why. 2007-11-10 18:45:00 Things like this happen for a reason. I'm sure of it.©2000-2007 Lynda B. Naclerio, all rights reserved. ...

Fixating on the stupid. 2007-11-09 14:06:00 Secure Horizons, the HMO affiliated with AARP in this area, had promised my mother they'd rush an information kit to her...three weeks ago. This week, she got a big envelope from them, which contained a postcard she could fill out for her super-duper information package which will be rushed to her...as soon as they get the postcard with all of her address and everything all over a postcard for anyone to read.I understand the concept of *headdesk*, I really do.My mother has to enroll in a Medicare supplement by December. When she was on the phone with Secure Horizons (three weeks ago), they told her their least expensive plan required her going down to Chinatown. In my head, I heard a line from GTA III, and because I'm tired right now, and because you may know the line I'm tallking about...."Somebody call a medic!"Do I give a crap about AARP at this moment? No, I do not. Poking around on the website (beecause I am not waiting for the next information kit), it doesn't even look ...