Category Archives: Maintenance

Exasperation, irritation…

…frustration.

Lacking a punching bag and the requisite energy to jab the punching bag, I need to find an appropriate substitute.  I’m going to assign blame to my hair.  Yesterday, I went for the periodical untangling of the rat’s nest and shearing of the fleece.  As hairdressers are wont to do, mine straightened the curls.  I don’t care for this, as a rule, but she actually makes it look like something other than newsreader hair so I keep my gob shut and let her attack me with the flat iron.  Now I have a headache because trying to keep the mess out of my eyes is a Herculean effort.  The hair – it knows not what to do.  It just wants to hang…straight…in my face.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I usually keep the hair wild and longish so I can hide behind it but I do this of my own volition.  I AM IN CONTROL – not the fucking hair.  This is me.  Right now.

Hi
Contributing to my positively shitty mood is my struggle with a stupid essay I have been trying to write for five or six (sive) weeks now.  Oh yes, I crow about how wonderful it is to limit myself to essays.  I say “Why yes, real writers of books and things, if I get bored or if a concept refuses to come together, I can just bin the shit and move on to the next because I am awesome, lazy and lacking in discipline.”  The sad, pathetic truth is that I might find myself reworking something to the point of madness.  Barking madness.  Madness that results in stuffing cookies in my face and retreating to my bed to snuggle two stuffed bunnies and whichever cat decides to grace me with his or her presence (lately, it’s been Annabel – the kitty that is so muscular and solid, it feels like a cinder block is crushing your legs).  It is as ridiculous as it sounds, especially given the pajamas that I’m wearing when I engage in this behavior.

My undoing, my descent into rambling lunacy came at the hands of an upgrade.  Miss Thang actually got off her ass and renewed the domain and upgraded the website early this year.  The upgrade has given me power and nothing is more intoxicating to Kang than power (ok…maybe a foreign accent emanating from a handsome man or a quality Belgian beer).  Knowing that my involvement with style sheets and CSS results in bad things, I refrained from going anywhere near that mess.  No one wants to help unfuck whatever fuckups I make while coding.  People would sooner try to figure out my parents’ A/V rig than sort out what I call coding and that’s saying quite a lot because the A/V rig cum home entertainment system is a hot fucking mess of a nightmare.

But I’m genuinely irritated because I might have OCD tendencies.

Depending on the device and/or platform I use to access the site, the justification is off.  I make adjustments for tablets and it skews the view for computers.  I make adjustments for computers and tablets and mobile devices suffer.  The alignment looks a lot like my son’s handwriting did in the beginning of the school year (or my husband’s current penmanship).  I look at the analytics and the device mix is 50/50 so no matter my decision, I’m going make sweet, sweet fuckery love to one segment of the wittew audience we have.  And, yes, I might just be like the average male who is driving a car and finds himself lost;  I’m not going to ask for directions or guidance.  I’m going to drive in circles until the tears flow freely and the tank is empty.  Which is where I am now – on a park bench, stroking myself (not in that way, you disgusting pervert) and telling myself I’m pretty and I have value to someone, somewhere (likely only my parents or my kid).

Who's a pretty pony

Right now, the Emotional Traffic Light Engagement essay (see – even the concept sounds clunky) is back in the draft bin for the millionth time, paragraphs are askew in some posts and my sack of fucks to give is very small and lacking depth (Dock just loves that line).

Round Robin Exercise

A refresher for those who have been following since the days of Kang World and an explanation for those who are t3h n00bz.

For a short while, we used to pick a theme and everyone would write something within that. Usually it was some version of longform because I cannot poem.  Seriously, I cannot even write a haiku – I’m that fucking useless in this regard.  But we did this and it was challenging and fun. Please don’t ask me to unearth the archives because I cannot be arsed to code, migrate or resurrect the dead.  My skillz are mad but they are limited.

Anyhow, while we’re introducing some new things:  Go Fuck Yourself Weekly (double entendre intended), we’re going to bring back some old things.  The Round Robin is one but it may not be permanent.

Brian Kurcaba of West Virginia made a horrendous comment about rape, unplanned pregnancy and abortion this week.  Automatically, we decided he was going to be nominated for GFYW.  As I started to work through some ideas, I realized I wanted to tell a story.  Kitten has a story, too. Actually, a lot of people have a story to tell.  These stories are about sexual abuse (any form).  The mere thought of condensing these stories just doesn’t sit well with me.  It didn’t sit well with her or another RMer, either.  After some discussion about how best to approach this topic, keep it isolated from the rest of the site due to the content, be sensitive to others and work with the limitations of WordPress, we decided it would be best if we put the Round Robin in a page (you can see it at the tippy-top, next to About) and have our posts as subs, just as our bios are.  For whatever reason, I decided to spew first.  Just in one of those wormholes today.

This is not funny content.  It’s not supposed to be funny content.  The content is deeply personal, graphic and potentially upsetting.  You’re not going to be able to unsee this, folks.  We ask that you take the time to read the Round Robin detail and respect the rules of engagement.  We ask that you read the detail in advance of reading the pages as they are published.  We’re not going to push them en masse.  From my perspective, not only does one have to be willing to write the story – they have to be willing to hit publish and deal with everything that comes with hitting publish.

So that is what is brewing today.

In a few hours or a few days, the snark will be back.  The snark never leaves.  It does like a nap now and then, though.  And the poets, they’re still here, as well.  Well, they’re actually outside building their first snowman or shoveling snow or complaining about snow or thinking about getting the fuck away from snow.  Whatever.  Normality is just around the corner, y’all.

What goes better with insolence…

…than twee?

I made a few modifications to the website today:  a new theme (isn’t it just fabulous, darling?), some pop-culture Easter Eggs hidden here and there and a few other things that I’m (naturally) forgetting now as I write them down.  I’ll likely either remember them when the bill arrives or forget and yell at Dock for buying some audio gear.  Such is the way my mind functions (or doesn’t) these days.

The old design was that – old.  And while I love what a pine cone represents in relation to a creative process, it was time for a change.  I’m making a lot of changes these days (new tattoo, lop off a fuckton of hair) and thought RM needed a fresher outlook on life.  Or maybe I’m simply projecting as I recover from Kang’s Dark Days of December.

Way, way back in time, when Random Misanthrope was started, I think I went full-bore and signed up for premium-this and uber-that. Welp, Milkface is in private school now.  I drive VWs instead of SAABs, the standard vacation is no longer to Swedenland and Random Misanthrope is run on economy scale because this bitch needs more money in the old retirement fund (Wow…do I sound like the Queen of the First World Probz or what?).  This is my loquacious way of saying :lowers head in shame: there may be ads.  I know.  I’m so very sorry.

Usually, I do most of my scribbling of the thoughts on my laptop which has that marvelous Adblock plug-in.  I don’t see the nasty, little fuckers when I’m reading RM.  One night, as I lay in my bed trolling the internet on the iPad, I noticed the most offensive thing on Random Misanthrope – ads!  Dafuq?  For years I crowed that I would never let commerce encroach upon our artistic paradise for we are esteemed and dignified people. We are writers and poets, for fuck’s sake!  We shall not sully our work with pedestrian and unnecessary twaddle.  But here they were – ads.  Ads on Random Misanthrope.  This is more offensive than a pledge pin on a uniform!

When I changed the site design, I looked into the cost of blocking ads from RM.  $30 annually.  Oh, WordPress.  Oh, silly, silly WordPress. All that AdBlock asks of its users is a donation and you are trying to shake me down for $30 when most people are already running AdBlock? Yeah.  NO.

To those visiting us (all two, three, four of you) via tablets or mobile phones, please accept my most humble apologies for the ads and my unwillingness to pony up $30 per year.  As it turns out, my integrity is much cheaper than I had initially thought.

Domain Change

It would appear that we have legitimized this bastard.  That said, please do not ask who the babydaddy is.  Truth be told, we had a bit too much to drink one weekend and there’s no telling.  So much for child support, eh?

Please reset your bookmarks to reflect the new name and domain.

Many thanks for your patience and sincerest apologies about today’s spam.  We now return to our regular tomfoolery.