I've been torturing keswindhover with these; now it's your turn.

I recently found this site, which posts WTF? pictures found on real estate sites. In many cases, the Whatthefuckery comes from wondering how anyone could think that picture could help sell a house.

This is always good for my ego, because although I'm not saying I would never keep a lawnmower in the kitchen, I would have enough sense not to leave it there when ReMax came by.

Then there are the pictures that make me feel better about my lack of decorating skills. I may never do a good job, but at least I didn't do this. Or this. Whatever that is.

But as I look, I develop a reluctant admiration for the adventurous folks who had the nerve to do what they wanted with their abode, damn anyone else's opinion. In fact, some of these houses have a fairy tale aspect.

Oh, and there's a running gag about chairs on the site.

ETA: I want a camouflage bathtub of my very own. And either this house is haunted by the ghost of Dali or someone needs to have their Photoshop taken away.

I have three. Email me or comment if you still need one.

I've been following the situation in Iran, of course, and I'm very afraid for the people who are protesting. A big part of me is sure this will end in disaster. But I also keep remembering how I felt years ago when I heard that Lech Walesa had been put under house arrest. I was sure the Solidarity movement was over then.

I also remember a news report around that time. It was an end-of-the-year show, and someone had asked several prominent reporters what story they'd like to find themselves reporting in the year 2000. One said he'd like to report on President Walesa of Poland meeting with President Mandela of South Africa. I snorted in derision. THAT would never happen!

I know that Mousavi is no Walesa or Mandela, but the real heroes of these protests are not the politicians but the people in the streets. May they defy the odds. It has been done before.

Some people should not be allowed to have Twitter accounts. And by "some people" I mean one of my Senators, Chuck Grassley. The Senator is apparently fed up with Obama taking trips abroad and tweets:

Pres Obama you got nerve while u sightseeing in Paris to tell us 'time to deliver' on health care. We still on skedul/even workinWKEND.

Pres Obama while u sightseeing in Paris u said 'time to delivr on healthcare' When you are a 'hammer' u think evrything is NAIL I'm no NAIL.

No matter what you have to say, when your manner of saying it makes you sound more like a sulky middle schooler than a long-serving US Senator, it's time for someone to take the Blackberry away.

Several days into whatever it is that I've caught, it looks like I'm finally getting that day to flop on the couch and recoup, instead of huddling under the covers and coughing and trying to fall asleep because I was too miserable to be awake. It's been a very long time since I've been this sick. I have a Babylon 5 disc from Netflix (I'm up to season 4 on a rewatch) or I may yet try to watch True Blood.

During the brief periods that I was semi-functional and didn't have to spend doing work stuff, I bought a domain name. I'm now considering redoing my website instead of just updating it. Of course, I have no design skills whatsoever.

There is a huge bag full of pastries on the kitchen counter. M:TNG-2 got a summer job working in a bakery. I am just starting to get my sense of taste back and I suspect a daily supply of kolaches is not going to do my waistline any good.

I'm sorry I haven't responded yet to the people who commented a few days ago when I posted that I was sick, but I went and got sicker and am only starting to feel a bit human this evening. I can't talk, which isn't a huge problem at the moment, but presented a dilemma for work yesterday. I couldn't change my voicemail message to say I had no voice and suggest that people email me. Someone kept calling and hanging up instead of leaving a message. After several tries, he did email me, but not before I was tempted to pick up the phone and scare him by making a faint, ghostly, rasping noise.

I'm living on chicken soup, yogurt, tea with honey in it, hard candy, and ginger beer. I'm getting very sick of most of those things. At least today was Saturday and I could spend most of my time in bed.

I think he's given me whatever nasty cold or strep he had last week. I bailed on work this afternoon and I'm actually debating going to the doctor about it.

My family's taking care of me though. He's working tonight but M:TNG-2 is bringing me soup.

If I'm still sick tomorrow and go into veg mode in front of the TV, do I start watching all those DVR'd episodes of Dollhouse or should I watch True Blood? I haven't seen any episodes of either one yet.

George Tiller shot to death at Wichita church

George Tiller, the Wichita doctor who became a national lightning rod in the debate over abortion, was shot to death this morning as he walked into church services.

Tiller, 67, was shot just after 10 a.m. at Reformation Lutheran Church at 7601 E. 13th, where he was a member of the congregation. Witnesses and a police source confirmed Tiller was the victim.

No information has been released about whether a suspect is in custody.

Okay, I've had a few drinks, but seriously, what the FUCK? Who are the men who think this way in the US in the freaking 21st century and how did they ever gain entry into the same sex that produced my feminist husband?

[M]arriage is concerned above all with female sexuality...The very existence of kinship depends on the protection of females from rape, degradation, and concubinage...This is why marriage between men and women has been necessary in virtually every society ever known. Marriage, whatever its particular manifestation in a particular culture or epoch, is essentially about who may and who may not have sexual access to a woman when she becomes an adult, and is also about how her adulthood–and sexual accessibility–is defined...This most profound aspect of marriage–protecting and controlling the sexuality of the child-bearing sex–is its only true reason for being, and it has no equivalent in same-sex marriage...

Few men would ever bother to enter into a romantic heterosexual marriage–much less three, as I have done–were it not for the iron grip of necessity that falls upon us when we are unwise enough to fall in love with a woman other than our mom.

Can gay men and women be as generous as we straight men are? Will you consider us as men who love, just as you do, and not merely as homophobes or Baptists? Every day thousands of ordinary heterosexual men surrender the dream of gratifying our immediate erotic desires. Instead, heroically, resignedly, we march up the aisle with our new brides, starting out upon what that cad poet Shelley called the longest journey, attired in the chains of the kinship system–a system from which you have been spared.

Bet you thought I forgot about this.

No, not that kind of furry.

I have three bird feeders in my yard. One is old and falling to bits and one is a recent gift that seems to be not only squirrel-resistant but also bird-resistant (although I may just need to try another type of bird food), so I haven't been filling it. A third fell apart recently, and I suspect a squirrel of helping to detach the stand from the base, spilling seeds all over the yard. I replaced that one yesterday, and the birds seem to like the new one.

I also refilled the old one yesterday, deciding it might as well serve its purpose until it actually fell to bits. This afternoon, I found it in this condition:



I thought it had just given died a natural death until I saw this on the ground:



It's all gray fur, no feathers and no blood. So, I ask those on my FL with far greater knowledge of natural science than I (that would be all of you), what happened here? Obviously, the replacement of the broken feeder with another that it couldn't access drove the squirrel to the old, decrepit one. But what next? Did one of those owls I hear hooting at night come along and snatch up the squirrel as it tried to raid the feeder? Did it get into a fight with a bird over custody of the sunflower seeds? Or did the stupid thing just fall in and lose a sizable chunk of fur trying to crawl back out?

When I left off, I was writing about going to Italy and being overwhelmed by Florence. Our last full day there, we hit the countryside and were overwhelmed by Tuscany in general.



( towers, churches, wine and gelato )

Next: England

Apparently, if you build this in my neck of Iowa, the dogs will poop on it.





Which leaves the question, what is it? A lawn enhancement? Creative storage when you've run out of garage space? Or some form of deliberately kitschy found art?

( another view of the ...installation )

And Happy Mother's Day to all the moms on my FL!

I accidentally tossed Mr. M's wool cap in the wash. In a hot water wash, because I thought I was sterilizing a bunch of old pot holders.

It's teeny now. Really teeny.

He really likes that cap, even though he has about a dozen in different materials but exactly the same dorky style.

I haven't told him yet.

Someone needs to learn the difference between a "bomb" and a "stupid practical joke." The two terms are not synonymous.

I was mildly alarmed at the headline "'MacGyver-type' bomb found under car in Cedar Rapids," but I figured I would have heard about it already if a really serious incident had happened that close to home. Sure enough, the first paragraph of the story assured me that no one was injured although the "bomb" had detonated by the time the police arrived. Then I reached the third paragraph.

Lt. Kelly Fitzpatrick said a 20-ounce Pepsi bottle had been used to make an explosive device. No damage was done to the undercarriage of the car, he said.

From now on, whenever I watch His Girl Friday, I will imagine Cary was referring to this timeless story, exquisite in it's "WTF? That made the paper?" perfection. The fact that Cary's character was in a jail house when he said the line only makes it better.

( Cock-a-doodle-whoa )

Besides, this should set aside any lingering impression that all people in rural Iowa are doing is worrying about gay marriage. They've got priorities, folks.

I am still fighting my way out from under a busy workload that includes lots of reading, writing and editing, but I did manage to make myself a Dreamwidth account. I wll try to track people down soon and begin cross-posting. I have a seasonal_spuffy story due soon, so I have to start writing something besides boring corporate stuff.

I'm going to finish posting about my trip, I promise. But at the moment I'm catching up on the news, and locally that involves tracking tornadoes, which is distracting. We're fine so far, and it looks like no one has been hurt.

A few items from my Google reading list:

Amazing HELOC abuse. A HELOC is a home equity line of credit. Nearly impossible to get now, these were being handed out like candy during the housing boom, and led to people using their houses like ATMs. This is an extraordinary example. Over $3 million dollars withdrawn on a house that's assessed at less than $350,000?

The first WTF in this exchange is that Joe Barton thought this was a sensible question. The second is that Barton thought that Chu was baffled about anything except how stupid someone can be and still get elected to Congress. I'm not sure if it's the concept of plate tectonics that escapes him, or if he doesn't understand that fossil fuels are not renewable resources.

Thanks to petzipellipingo for linking me to this story about reactions to gay marriage in Iowa. I'd like to see more acceptance, but I agree with the gist of the story, which is that most Iowans get the concept of tolerance. They may still be uncomfortable with same-sex marriage, but they're likely to comment that they're not too crazy about that guy their niece is marrying either, and they're putting up with that, so what the heck. Besides, we have real gathering storms, not to mention tornadoes, to worry about.

Tomorrow is the first day same-sex couples can get marriage certificates in Iowa, and the local Recorder's office is just a few blocks from here. I'm tempted to drive by to see if anyone other than the two guys who are always marching in front of the women's health center bother to show up to object. Mr. M will certainly go by because he's writing an article for a Polish feminist magazine. In the meantime, the Iowa legislature is finishing up its session and completely ignoring the issue, which means it's not likely to reach a ballot before everyone gets comfortable with the notion and goes back to arguing about hog manure spills.

Mr. M clicked over to Newhart from the news for a few minutes, and I spent a few minutes wondering why the actor playing the advocate for nuclear war seemed so familiar. I finally realized it was Simon Jones, aka Arthur Dent.

Our schedule, set up after much searching for the cheapest fares and much discussion of what we each wanted to see most, was confusing but functional. Mr. M and I took off for Europe one day and got there after dawn on the next, except, of course, as far as our internal clocks were concerned it was still around midnight. I knew I was in London for reals when I found myself on the Underground listening to a voice tell me I was on the Piccadilly line heading towards Cockfosters. After locating our London hotel and spending some time walking around London, we visited the Tower. My first choice was St. Paul's, but it was closed to visitors on Sunday. We never did get to St. Paul's this visit, so it's high on my list of reasons to return.

We crashed fairly early that day, of course. The next morning, we flew to Florence, which was a part of my cunning plan to deal with jet lag by sleeping on the planes. ( Unlike most of my plans, this one worked pretty well )

Sleepy now. Future installments will feature getting drunk at a Tuscan winery, our return to England, and meeting the divine keswindhover. And pictures.

Um, what's a Dreamwidth and do I want one? I know I should know and probably once did, but I can't remember.

I had a wonderful time in Italy and England. Not only were the places amazing, I finally got to meet the dazzling keswindhover, who includes being the world's best tour guide among her other talents. Also met up with M:TNG-1, who is attempting to visit all of Europe in 6 months without failing her semester abroad classes.

I arrived home late Friday, which was an extremely long day (it had an extra 6 hours in it, thanks to the time changes) spent mostly on airplanes. Yesterday was spent recovering from a bit of jet lag and a very swollen foot, which was probably the result of those long plane rides. I've been avoiding sitting too long since, which is why I'm only posting now. I'll try to give a full report soon, and to get at least partially caught up with my FL.

I wrote a story called "Nocturnal Emissions" about, yeah, nocturnal emissions. That featured male chastity belts. How did I still manage to get that far over on the "clean" side?

( The 3 Variable Funny Test )

I feel like a failure as a sleaze. Woe.