Today I struck a blow for civility and I'm proud of the results. As usual, I was on the train. As usual a woman sat down across from me and began the ritual of making up a face. She took out her eyelash crimper and started on her left eye. I took out my trusty digital Nikon and pointed it at her. She looked up and glared daggers at me. I blandly continued to zoom in on her at eye level. She flung herself sideways in her seat and huddled down, now working on her right eye in a cramped little ball with her back to me.

At the next stop, she got up, flung another dirty look at me and flounced off to another seat, far away from me and facing in the opposite direction.

Despite the fact that my battery was low and I was unable to get the shot to add to my hall of shame I was pleased with the results of my attempted photograph.

My only regret is that despite the hateful looks, the woman didn't say anything to me about my trying to get a photo. I practiced my most polite and proper response, and never got the chance to use it. So here is what I WOULD have said:

'Madam, that which you are attempting to do in public, you should be doing in private. If you do not wish to be observed or your acts to be documented, I suggest you carry out your morning ablutions in the privacy of your own home, and not on public transit."

Boo-yah!

sitting next to me on the train this morning.

DO NOT PICK YOUR FACE IN PUBLIC!!!!!

Are you fucking mad? Dressed to kill, small child at her side, and she is using an Elizabeth Arden Red Door hand mirror to pull the chunks of dead skin that remained after the last chemical peel off her face. Pulling, picking, scraping and otherwise giving herself a dry facial at 8:30 in the bright light of public transit. Pulling, picking and scraping until some parts actually bled.

EWWWWW. Thanks for making my fucking day. That image is going to stick in my head for fucking ever, no doubt.

Speaking of No Doubt and things that stick in your head, I've had No Doubt's live MTV version of REM's "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine) rolling in an endless loop for about two weeks now. Probably no coincidence that that's how long the war in Iraq has been going on. But there it is. And I can't make it stop. I've tried actually listening to it but that doesn't make it go away.

Another thing that's been stuck in my head for about 4 years now is an old quote from Diana Vreeland: "Pink is the navy blue of India." I'm not sure I know what that means, but I keep thinking about it. It has made an impact on my fabric stash. My studio is starting to pile up with hot pink and rose and orange and coral and saffron and purple. I keep rearranging the piles and there are all these ideas for how to use the fabric pushing around in my mind. (If they could only get rid of No Doubt) (No, I like No Doubt: I just don't want to be singing It's the End of the World as We Know it for another 6 weeks)

Now I want to make a mosaic on the bottle green wall behind the koi pond that says "Pink is the navy blue of India." In some kind of twirly funky type and pink glass and pottery shards. I can see that wall from my sewing machine. I think it'll be inspirational. Or at least cool.

I'd like to think that what I do has some meaning. Granted, my whole career has been one long orgy of ephemera, but still, I like to delude myself that what I do matters. Somehow. To someone. I've won awards for my work. I have had a photo used as an album cover (for Jimmy Buffett, and that is a whole other story). I have a t-shirt I designed in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution. (Another story, but it was for the Y2K team and went to the technology museum... or was it American History?)

But now, well, the web is even more ephemeral than traditional publications. And since I work for a corporate site, not even a very (literally) Flash-y site, my work tends to be a lot of brochure ware. So what am I complaining about today?

This: verbatim from our employee newsletter, an announcement of Passover services. Read it. Then parse out the second sentence.

Passover celebrates the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. It celebrates the victory over freedom from slavery. The story is retold at a "Seder," a festive meal in which freedom is raised as the highest deal in the human family. For more information, contact the Pastoral Care Office, XXX-XXX-XXXX.

As I read this, that means that "freedom from slavery" was the loser in that conflict. I also question the use of quotes around the word seder. I have visions of Dr. Evil using finger quotes. And finally, freedom is the "highest deal" in the human family? Can I get a clarification from some religious leaders about what constitutes a deal?

When I questioned the generating department, they conceded an "i", as in the "highest I-deal" in the human family.

But still, how much more disspirited can I get when this is the level of drivel I am reduced to publishing? And my friends and family wonder why I drink.

I don't wonder. I only wonder that I haven't started bringing a fucking hip flask to the office. Do you think I should send this to Dilbert?

It's the end of the world as we know it, it's the end of the world.....

Or not. Just because America is going to do the unthinkable and start World War III. Or maybe just the Millennial Crusades. You know what? This is just too depressing for me to find any humor, no matter how sick, dark or twisted I let myself get.

I'm going over to my other blog, the PeaceBlog Project, and do some ranting, instead.

Years ago, when I was young, single and living in NYC, I discovered that I had been born with an invisible tattoo in the middle of my forehead. It says:

FUCKED UP? TALK TO ME.

I realized that it was there because people were, and people did. I could be sitting on the subway, minding my own business, and the next thing you knew, the freakazoid with the tin-foil helmet was cozying up next to me, explaining about how cats are Martians and are here to control the dogs.

I'd meet someone and we'd date and then it would be like a bad teensploitation film. They wouldn't go away. Or worse.

I'd find myself pinned to the wall by the girl down the hall, telling me that she thought I shouldn't be dating men, and she was the answer to my social problems.

The funny writer would ask (displaying no humor, and a bad sense of timing) what I wanted to be whipped with, once he got me to bed. The tattoo seemed to be particularly visible when I was drinking at the Lone Star Cafe.

It hasn't gone away. Yesterday after work, I hopped on the train and there was an Adam Sandler look alike in the car. And then he lit up a blunt. Yes. A blunt. The reek of reefer filled the car. A few passengers looked at each other. I coughed politely and said. Um? Sir? There's no smoking on the train.

Right. That got his full attention focused on me. WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP DANGER WARNING WILL ROBINSON! Sounding like Adam Sandler in the Waterboy, the guy proceeded to announce to me that he was "a man, who can do what he wants" and that he was "just smoking some weed here, do you mind?" Cause he wouldn't mind if I took myself off to the other end of the car. And then he cranked up his radio to some station that I don't think any one else in Miami can tune in and told me how the world would be a better place if there were more people like the ones on that station. See? He waved the radio at me. It didn't have a view screen, but I said yes, I saw.

He left about three stops later, still dragging on his blunt. It was generally agreed that if he'd only passed the duchy on the left hand side none of the unpleasantness need have occured.

This FUTTM tat seems to be showing up at work now. I was just e-mailed the following:

I am in the process of collecting all the pre-printed Physician order sets that are being used within the (hospital) system. I have been encountering some problems, and after speaking with R*****, she recommended that I contact you. She told me that she had sent you copies of order sets, which you would have on your computer. I am asking if I could have a copy of these so that we can move forward with the building of orders, of which this is a very important part.

OK. So, if the person sent me order sets, which they did -- electronically -- why aren't they on their computer? I just post these things to the intranet. Which begs the question, why not send the person to the medical forms center on the intranet? And why think that I keep everything on my hard drive?

Why? Why me? Why do I have another 15 years before I can retire. I don't think my liver will hold out that long.

An open letter to the fine, intelligent members of the illustrious art forum known as EatPoo.com.

Fine. You win. Take what you want. I really don't care. I never did care. It was all about the attitude. Clearly you have me on attitude as well as talent, intelligence, wit, and what ever else it is at which you desire to win.

You want to come to my site and rag on me, fine. You want to continually miss the point of my writings and the humor I display? It is your right to do so. You wish to remain anonymous and post bogus sites and e-mail addresses? Knock yourselves out.

You win. You are all, collectively and individually, better human beings than I. I was a fool not to see it from the very first post. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea fucking culpa.

Now, can we all just get on with our lives and forget about each other? I didn't think so. But this is MY last post on the subject.

A while back I posted about band width poachers, and how they suck. I told the story of how I found out that I had some, and where they seemed to be coming from. A couple of folks offered sugestions on how to stop it. I let it pass.

Recent trolling through my stats showed that it wasn't just the photo of my glamorous red shoes (the ones in the comment window) that was being poached, but my masthead, other photos of shoes, even a photo of my dear, dead grandfather. That one was accompanied by snotty remarks about his "hotness" or lack thereof. Which, in all honesty, since the picture was taken around the turn of the last century, were probably justified.

That isn't what's got my knickers in a twist, though. It is the glee with which the poachers announced that I had discovered the theft and bitched about it. They encouraged each other to steal more images. They ridiculed me for caring. They thought they should "force" me to join their chat group.

And that's another thing. Their chat group, as far as I can figure, is comprised of teenage boys with penis size issues, an average IQ in the mere double digits, and an awful lot of time on their hands, which they use to post lame photos, make even lamer jokes, and beg and plead for someone of the opposite sex to fall into their site and stay. They come from all over the world, which makes me sad for women.

And then there is this: even though they are detestable little creatures, they are driving the stats up on my site. When you open your doors to the public, you can't complain when the public walks in.

Things I've seen lately and wished I hadn't:

A woman wearing her coat backwards during the recent cold snap. This one confused me alot. Did she think she'd stay warmer with the opening in the back? Did she think it was faster to put it on that way? Could she have seriously thought it was cute?

Young men wearing those super low-riders, and having to continually pluck at their crotches to pull them up. Or not. Maybe they just like to pluck at their crotches. What's the point of a fashion that you have to fuss over constantly? It'd be like having a manicure that never dried, that you needed to retouch every 15 minutes.

Women wearing acrylics on their big toe nails, and those nails long, really long, and sharp. Do they sleep alone? Do they rip their sheets with those talons? How does that work with a closed-toe shoe? Again, is there really a popular dementia that this is attractive?

Hats that are too small, and positioned askew on the top of the wearer's head. This is particularly a baseball cap phenom.

To paraphrase Ozzie, "Ugly, ugly, fucking ugly."

I went shopping yesterday, and almost came to the end of my patience with the human condition. Every single store I went into, and I was only shopping independently owned boutiques in a small downtown area, had the shoddiest, snottiest help I've ever had to deal with. It is a miracle that I didn't turn into Edina on the spot and tell each and every one of those ratty-assed salesgirls to "get over the attitude, sweetie, you only work in a shop."

Store the First: I go in to pick up my new glasses, which I had confirmed on Thursday would be ready for Saturday pickup. They were, to a certain degree: the one pair wasn't ready because THEIR vendor had sent the lenses without the requested coating. The other pair WAS ready, except for the tint, which hadn't been applied. Could I come back in 20 minutes to an hour. Sure.

Store the Second: My favorite up-scale shoe store is in the middle of their biannual 2 for 1 sale. There are two sales clerks. One is behind the register, the other on the floor. I walk in. I am ignored. I peruse the sale rack, all the while overhearing the girl on the floor in a deep, and to me, personal conversation about breast enhancement surgery. The customer is showing off her new size D- es, but they may be considered C+s. They are discussing the exact size in ccs, and I cannot remember the difference between 500 and whatever the other number was.

Even while she is vaguely considering getting a shoe for me, my clerk is discussing her upcoming boob job with the other customer. This is pissing me off, big time, and nobody is catching the vibes, although, frankly, I think that they are capable of being picked up on a seismic scale.

For what it's worth, these two women were conscious of the impropriety of discussing their boob jobs with the general public: each talked about the dos and don'ts of telling your very young daughter about what Mommy had done. Each concurred that small girls are town gossips. Even a third customer contributed to that discussion about what a six-year-old knows about plastic surgery. For what it's worth: this conversation took place on Saturday, January 25, 2003 on Sunset Drive in South Miami, Florida in a shop called Capretto's. The sales clerk in question is 5'10" tall (I know this because she justified wanting D cups by repeating the phrase: "I'm five-ten, I'm a big girl." over and over. I don't know her name, but perhaps you do. She's having surgery on February 8th at Baptist Hospital as part of a symposium and the fee for the Vanderbuilt University surgeon is only $1,500 which really ticked off the other customer, who had paid $6,500 for her tits.

Hey, bitches: there WAS another human being who spoke English within 3 fucking feet of you. If you think it's inappropriate for me to repeat all this, well think about it the next time you open your fucking traps in public and announce with pride the inner workings of your petty little lives.

PS: I don't care a rat's ass about you, your tit size or the number of children you have.

Store the Third: The shop was completely empty, except for exhorbitantly priced slips of chiffon, poorly sewn into size 0 slut wear. I was asked twice in five minutes if I'd like a bottle of water.

Store the Fourth: In the middle of another sale, all clothing is in a disordered heap in the middle of the room. Nobody asks me anything.

Store the Fifth: Not only do they not carry what I am looking for (very expensive, over-dyed embroidery floss), they "don't pay any attention to what the other shops sell" when I ask if their competitor shop down the street carries it. They argue with me when I tell them that when I stopped in the previous week an hour and a half before their posted closing time, the store was locked and shut. They give me the fish eye and they get none of my money, despite the fact that I like the canvases they have.

Store the Sixth: My glasses still aren't ready, but the sales girls insist on having me wait, while they pour me a glass of wine, offer me nibbly things and apologize for the delay.

OK, readers, which store am I going back to? Of course, the one which offers service. I will never stop doing business with Edward Beiner Opticals, because they understand the concept: If you want me to pay more for something, then you have to offer something more. And they do. They offer service. They remember your name. They are customer-driven.

I find bandwidth poachers just the lowest. It's bad enough that they use one's images without credit and steal one's intellectual property, but to do so by using your own bandwidth is just beyond low. If you like the photo of my glamorous red shoes so much, then right click on your fucking mouse and download it to your own hard drive.

I'm checking my stats and I see a few hundred referrals from a page I can't identify, so I follow the electronic track backwards and find my girlyshoes stuck in the middle of a page of yapping, uh.... well I can't exactly figure out what this particular chat site is about. It may be a room full of yapping perverts, there certainly seems to be enough of them there, but then my shoes are dropped in among a ton of photos of fuzzy little kittens.

I can't tell if the kitten snaps are sarcasm, either, based on what else is on eatpoo.com

Ah well, why should I expect civility from the web any more than I expect it in the meat world.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I hate the living.

Every time the Smirking Chimp talks about jump starting the economy, my portfolio tanks even further. Is it possible to OWE money to a corporation in which you owned what once amounted to valuable stock? Yesterday the SC said he was going to do something and my stocks rose. Today he told the country what he was doing and they sank below sea level.

What can we deduce from this? That Wall Street has no confidence in trickle-down economics in this century any more than the last time the Bushies tried it. Oh, the late 80s. What a fun time that was. I got laid off from Citibank, along with about 20,000 (or was it 200,000) fellow employees world-wide. Yes, you remember those far off days, when yet another Bush (brother Neal, the one nobody mentions anymore) was doing the funky rhumba two-step with Silverado Savings and Loan.... Can you say government bail out of the S&L industry? Sure you can. And then you can remember what it was like going to the unemployement office every two weeks as you tried to find a job in the middle of a recession.

But, never fear. This is going to do wonders for the boys in Bush's smoke-filled back rooms. And while we're on the subject of how to fill the pockets of the already rich, how's about those new cars at the Detroit Auto Show? Bigger, heavier, faster and more in need of Saudi gas and oil than anything in recent history.

Hey, fresh air and water are highly over-rated commodities anyway, right?

Time to go home and drink.

I am definitely over Paul McCartney's fans. I wrote this little rant about why I find Paul less than my favorite musician, and put it on my web site. I never advertised the rant. People keep finding it by putting Paul + McCartney + Hate into a search engine. If they dig at it long enough they come to my site. And then the fun begins. For them, not for me. I have been called a loser, a pathetic loser, fat, ugly, stupid, a teenager, and a slut and a whore. Actually the same guy called me both a slut and a whore.

I think that they are mutually exclusive, at least theoretically. A slut, is, by definition, someone who will have sex with anybody freely and for free. A whore, on the other hand, is someone who has sex for pay. I think that a whore, in her (or his) time off does not have sex with lots of people for the fun of it. I think that on their days off, whores tend to avoid random sex entirely. Hey, I could be wrong, but I'm just saying.

I have been called a pathetic loser for posting my views on my personal website. I have been accused of desiring attention from Paul's fans. Nothing could be further from the truth. I posted my rant for my own entertainment. It wasn't me who put my address on the official McCartney site. It was a fan.

Why? Why would someone who trolls the official site to wank ad nauseum with other fans care to place my rant there? And then to call me a loser when they are the ones who found me by trolling for Paul + Hate. I may be a loser, but I have never in my on-line life tried a search for Bob + Dylan + Hate. Why would I? Why would I care if I found someone who disliked Dylan. No skin off my nose. (There's a huge Michael Jackson joke just sitting there for anyone who wants it.)

Who are these fans and what pleasure do they derrive from accusing me of such personal failures? And why don't they just shut the fuck up already. Threatening me won't shut me up, nor will it change my opinion. But if you WANT my opinion, spending your time on line to debate with other fans far and wide as to which haircut over the years really made Paul look the cutest; well, THAT's what I call a loser.

It's time for my annual office relocation. This morning we packed up our computers and what not and moved across campus to the Towers. OOOOOOHHH. Sounds scary. The Twin Towers. The Two Towers. More like Fawlty Towers. But I am most definitely NOT complaining. From my new desk I can see Biscayne Bay and the skyline of South Beach. Hell, I can see. Period. My last uh, one, two, three offices were bunkers with no windows at all. I'd leave work and see puddles and feel like Sherlock Holmes: It must have rained.

Now I have carpet and windows. And a kitchen. And my own bathroom that I don't have to share with the sort of riff raff a public hospital is prone to. Answer me this: Have YOU ever seen shoe prints on the seat of the toilet where YOU work? I have. I don't like to think about why.

I'm in training. Training to write code. The first question they asked us was what our expectations were for the class. So I said I expected to be reduced to tears at least twice. Half the class are members of a team that already use ColdFusion and just need to learn the ins and outs of the latest version. Another three are developers and then there is me: a graphic designer who was taken by the sucking black hole that is the world wide web.

One of my fellow trainees has decided to hijack the class. She is needy and demanding. And whiny. And she has a stoopid name: Tonda. Yesterday the instructor offered to skip the lab modules and cover more information at the end of the three day class. Since half the class already knows the program and since the optional material is the most valuable to the rest of us we all went YIPEE!

At 11:30 as we were rolling into the next module, Tonda announced that it was lunch time. "This is a big retail area and it's a very busy retail season so if you want us to be back in one hour, you need to let us out now." So our teacher let us out. When we came back, Tonda demanded that we take another vote about the class format because she wanted to do the labs. "I could be getting the same knowledge from a $50 book in front of my laptop at home."

Yeah? Then do us all a favor and go home with the book. There was much eye rolling and hemming and hawing as nobody ever wants to confront a bully. But we all know how charming I am and how much I love a fight, so I finally said, "Look, you're being selfish. The rest of us need the information from the end of the class. You want to do the labs, do them at home."

So we hit a compromise: if she wanted to do the labs with the instructor at the end of the day, he'd stay with her and the rest of us could attempt to beat rush hour traffic. That led to the rest of the day's acting out activities: constant questions, interuptions, and demands that the instructor not click his freaking mouse so fast. I was ready to bitch slap her into the next class room.

Today she's sucking up and trying to take the instructor to lunch so she can have some private face time. He keeps dodging the bullet, but we'll see how it plays out.

There was a poll on the front page of Excite.com today asking if people approved of the use of nuclear weapons as an American response to, well, here's the question and the answers:

The United States issued a warning yesterday to Iraq and other hostile countries, saying it is prepared to use ?overwhelming force? ? including nuclear weapons ? in retaliation to any biological or chemical attack on the U.S., its forces abroad or its allies. (AP)

Do you support the use of nuclear weapons by the U.S. in response to a chemical or biological attack?

Yes: 58% => 3405 votes

No: 31% => 1808 votes

I'm not sure: 9% => 547 votes

I don?t care: 0% => 20 votes

Oh, yeah. That's a fucking cheery statistic to look at. FIFTYEIGHT percent of the respondents think that America should use nukes. Who are these people? What fucking planet do they come from? Have they no concept of the repercussions? Political, physical, biological? Who are they? Is this the Christian fundamentalists looking for Armageddon? I, for one, do not wish to go out with a bang or a freaking whimper. Am I the only person who is frightened by our "president" and his gang of war mongering henchmen in Washington?

Oh, I need a cigarette and a stiff fucking martini. And it isn't even noon.