Not A Dollarshort

Do not try this at home.

I wouldn't actually say I'm a pyromaniac but, frankly, I like to melt things.

This realization was sparked while I sat in front of our oven (or rather, fire pit) while it was self-cleaning.

For those of you not in the domestic know, self-cleaning ovens clean by incinerating grime and grease at temperatures reaching 1,000 degrees.

Now, I may like to see things melt, but I certainly don't like seeing houses catch on fire. So, I made sure that there were no loose papers or dish clothes around the vicinity of the oven while it cleaned.

That's how an adult thinks.

A child on the other hand would probably want to see just how long it actually takes before something catches on fire.

All in the name of curiosity, I say.

Curiosity inspires children to do near-evil things.

For example, when I was eight or nine, my dad received a package in the mail containing floppy disks -- the 5 1/4 size ones. On the package, there was a warning that said:

"KEEP AWAY FROM MAGNETS!"

Guess how long it took me to get my magnets from my science kit?

I was curious. I wanted answers.

Would they explode?

Would they melt?

Would they actually stop working?

Now, try to imagine the look of defeat and disappointment on my face when -- after rubbing a super-magnet along the stiff manila envelope -- nothing happened.

But back to the oven and my love of melting.

Like most children, I never played with my toys in exactly the correct manner prescribed by the manufacturers. I'm talking about more subtle variations of play -- I didn't, for example, play catch with my hula hoop.

(I did make a hoop skirt with it, but that's another story)

Many of my playtime variations involved heat or fire. Most of the time, art entered the mix.

Two examples which immediately pop into my mind involve my Lite Brite and, on sick days, my vaporizer.

I loved my Lite Brite and played with it in a parental-acceptable manner for many many years. But, sometimes when my family wasn't around, I would exploit the toy's light bulb for its powers to melt.

I would place the little plastic colored Lite Brite pegs on the surface of the light bulb and when they were hot enough, I would stretch them out and shape them into little animals and figures.

Perhaps I missed my calling as a glass blower.

The vaporizer was used in a similar manner. I would use the steam to melt little piles of crayon shavings. The purpose? To melt little piles of crayon shavings.

Of course, children usually overestimate their ability to carry off their plans or activities on the sly. When they get caught for using their imagination (along with fire, heat or steam), they are scolded for their stupidity or for the damage they caused/might have caused.

But really, they're just learning about cause and effect and it's part of the development process.

Yeah, tell me that when I have my own kids and I catch one of them trying to put a fork in a electrical socket.

I hate Perry Como.

Two things that made "justice-loving Mena" come out of the woodwork:

1. The boatload of spam I received today. The kicker? They were sent from a dollarshort address. If you've commented here, you probably received one or two as well.

Because of this, I spent about two hours looking up laws about spamming practices. Apparently, it is illegal to forge an actual email address for spam mailings in the jurisdiction of California. Although I doubt this little ant can move any sort of rubber tree plant, I certainly do not want to let this issue drop. Basically, I want to try to wreak mofo penal retaliation on those fools at TrafficBBS.

Yeah, good luck.

An ounce of prevention:

MT 2.0 has a tag attribute which will encode the email addresses posted on a site. Hopefully, this will be enough of a preventative measure for those who choose to post email addresses in comments. Being completely fed up with spammers, I just removed the email display on all past entries.

2. Heather losing her job because of her wickedly funny weblog.

Apparently posts like "Reasons The Asian Database Administrator is So Fucking Annoying" apparently did not bode well with her never-named employers.

You know the Twilight Zone episode (It's a Good Life) where Billy Mumy wishes "bad men" into the corn field? You know the one -- it's the best episode ever. Perry Como and bad Collies, jack-in-the-boxes and evil little boys.

Well, it's people like the anonymous tipster (who emailed the vice-presidents of Heather's company to inform them of her blog) who make me long for the power to wish bad people into cornfields.

And no, I don't think Heather would abuse that power.

Well, not that much. All in good fun, I say.

I'm thinking that a Dooce's Law is going to come out of this whole situation.

The will to power.

You know, I haven't completely ruled out the possibility of time travel.

Sometimes I think that if I close my eyes tight enough and think really really hard about travelling in time, it will just happen.

As if I can possibly will the impossible to become the possible.

Keep in mind, that I also try to will television channels to change on their own, great dinners to appear on the table, and weight to magically melt while I sleep.

No luck as of yet.

Basically my willing technique could be subtitled an "illustration of laziness."

But back to time travel. For the past couple days -- since the Back to the Future post -- I've been re-examining my time travel priorities.

Now, as you know, I love Back to the Future. But, as a time-travel model, it's a bit too stressful. Throughout the entire trilogy, Marty has to worry about the "future" ramifications of his "past" actions. He's not supposed to talk to people, he can't gamble and he spends most of his time trying to fix the problems he's caused.

He just can't enjoy the ride.

Peggy Sue, in Peggy Sue Got Married (which, incidentally, was filmed in Petaluma) has it a lot better. She gets to travel to a time in her own life, openly visit with younger versions of her family and friends and re-address the priorities and choices in her life.

If I were to travel to another period of my own life, I would have to pick early elementary school -- but only if I could travel with mind as it is today.

Basically I want to be a twenty-four year old in the body of a seven year old.

Talk about precocious.

Talk about a kid with priorities.

Talk about one creepy child.

I want to use my wit o' steel to set all those silly little fools in my class straight -- let them know how life really works and most of all, I need to regulate.

It's all about me convincing the kids that I'm actually quite cool.

You're probably saying, "Mena, I think it's time to get over past wrongs -- after all, eighteen years is a long time to hold a grudge."

And I'd say, that you're probably right. But going back to elementary school and being really cool is some sort of geek fantasy of mine.

Those seven years gave me a lot of excess baggage.

But, I suppose, that travelling back in time with all my current issues would sort of defeat the point of trying to alleviate my problems at their root.

I'd probably disrupt some sort of space/time continiuum and manage to screw my mind and self-image up just a bit more.

Time travel? I think I'll pick Regency England from now on.

Google It.

This is quite a neat idea. Basically, with one click, you can do a Google search on the topic of each of Scott's entry -- the search terms are pulled from the entry's hidden title.

Now, if dollarshort had a different tone to it, I would do something similar to this in a second. But really, how many searches about "mena's childhood" could you possible stomach?

Les terriers sont mes types favourites.

For those of you who live in the Bay Area and like The Kids in the Hall, you might like to know that tickets for their Warfield shows (May 19 and 20) went on sale this morning.

I honestly can't believe I found out about it through some email from a source that I would consider spam. Spam in the sense that I believe my email address was sold to a "partner." Oh well, one good thing came out of my junkmail box.

On an annoying note, I'm going to miss seeing David Sedaris read for the fourth time. Sedaris, Sarah Vowell and David Rakoff are appearing at Berkeley and the show is already sold out.

I'm going to keep trying, though.

Any leads would be greatly appreciated.

Hey McFly!

If I haven't already convinced you that I'm a bit of a loon, then this chart that I made last night should seal the deal.

While driving to dinner last night, Ben and I had our second (yes, second) disagreement in about a month about the progression of Biffs throughout the three Back to the Future movies.

The debate starts innocently enough with a question:

Mena: Which Biff is your favorite Biff?

Ben: Haven't you asked me this before?

Mena: Yeah, just answer -- I forgot.

Ben: Fine... Biffco Biff is the Best Biff.

Mena: Oh, that's so wrong. Old Biff kicks ass.

And then, Ben has to point out that Old Biff is too bitter and that he shouldn't be since he's really the older version of auto-detailing Biff -- a Biff who has lost all dignity and now services the McFly's cars.

To which I retort, "Old Biff is bitter because he had to detail the McFly's car. Just because Auto-detailing Biff is all clueless and lacking a spine at the end of BTTF II doesn't mean he's still not a jerk. Wash Marty's pick-up for thirty years and see how bitter you become."

It's as clear as day.

And the chart?

Well, when you're a major procrastinator and have a house to pack, you have different priorities.

So which Biff is your favorite Biff?

Coloring Contest Finalists.

Update: The Winner has been announced and all the entries have been posted.

The three finalists from the most recent coloring contest are now posted online.

We had to sort through about fifty entries, so if your entry isn't one of the three, don't despair. They were all great and I so appreciate the effort.

Now, go vote!

Oh, and I must mention that those thumbnails were generated with Movable Type version 2.0 beta. I didn't think I'd actually ever use thumbnails but I'm glad we added this feature.

And if you're wondering why exactly I've been so lax posting to A Day Late and dollarshort.org, it's because I've been trying to pack and work on MT 2.0. Thankfully, we launched the beta yesterday.

I did it his way.

Oh my. Last night we watched a rather bland made for television biopic about the life of Frank Sinatra. It was on some sort of true stories cable channel -- the type of channel that's sandwiched between the 24 hour Dana Delaney network and the really bad 1980s romance/drama channel.

Despite the fact that my brows were furrowed with frustration over the odd casting choices, I found myself sitting through a full hour and a half of the movie -- all the way from "washed-up, broke and in love with Ava -- Sinatra" to "That's Life Frank."

It was during the course of the movie that I began formulating a good justification for human cloning.

You know, this is just the sort of thing I usually think about while watching television.

Anyway, I figured that if there was ever a real need for cloning, it would be in the entertainment business -- or more specifically, the biopic entertainment buisness.

Why? Well, the main reason that the Sinatra film was so horrible was that no one looked liked they were even meant to resemble their real-life counterparts.

In all fairness, the backs of John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy were passable -- squint hard enough and you'd think you're in Hyannis Port.

But really, were the producers on some sort of mission to find the chubbiest, non-Italian "Dean Martin" in all of Hollywood?

Or perhaps, they just wasted all the casting cash on their firecracker of a Sammy Davis Jr., who in my opinion, uttered the best line in the whole film.

"They'll all say, 'there goes the cat with the glass eye!'"

Back to cloning. Now, how inhumane would it be to set up some sort of dead celebrities amusement park? In exchange for room and board, the celebrity clones agree to film real-time biopics. It would be a way for the clones to keep their DNA buddy's memory alive while entertaining the masses.

You see, we all win.

Reminder.

Don't forget -- tomorrow, the 18th, is the deadline for entries for the coloring contest.

One room down, nine more to go.

Rattus Packus: A pathologically stubborn species characterized by the overly-optimistic view that everthing has a purpose.

In its natural habitat (a cluttered room or garage) you will hear it shriek it's call: "The minute I throw this out, I'm going to need it."

Predator: Black Hefty bags

--

After six hours in the garage, I managed to reduce these twenty-seven boxes of junk to four boxes of junk. The rest will go to the garage sale masses who will most likely not show up at our house next Saturday or Sunday. Back-up plans call for a trip to the local thrift store.

Pack rat? That's a nice word for what I am. Idiot is probably more accurate.

Some things I have saved throughout the years and can not bring myself to throw out:

Ice cream notecards: My nasty little habit of collecting cards and stationary began early. These were a gift from Audra Duda in the second grade and because they were so nice, I never wanted to "ruin" them. So, I've held on to them for seventeen years.

Prom pictures: These aren't even my prom photos. On the night of prom, I accidentally picked up another girl's disposable camera. Since I developed these after graduation, I never got the chance to give them to her. Seven years later and I still think I'm going to return them -- even though I never talked to her in high school and haven't seen her since. I can't throw them out, though. It's just too tragic.

Sassy magazine: I'm way delusional -- I've held onto three years of Sassy issues because I actually think that they are worth something. But as Ben points out, getting $20 for seven Sassys on eBay really isn't worth the effort. Same thought process applies to my old copies of Select, Vox and Q.

Any stuffed animal: If I anthropomorphize cars and food, do you really think I can just tossed a stuffed "friend?"

The worst part about all this clutter? I'm just going through the boxes that used to be at my mom's house. I haven't even started packing and tossing the stuff I've accumulated post-1995.

I actually created a website to list the items I wanted to sell. And, funny enough, "Simplify" seemed too much of an effort considering the probable amount of interested buyers.

But, hey, someone must want to buy a boatload of Cure records and CDs.