I Am Completely Serious

Why does no one alert me to these things sooner?! I mean, people! I didn’t even know Wein had a LiveJournal! Multiple LiveJournals!

In WordPress? Never use the automatic upgrader for plugins. It broke my whole installation today, and I spent two hours today putting it back together.

(Edit several hours later: Actually, the LiveJournal crossposter’s still broken. Additionally I hate everything, including you.)

“So we’ll take our daughter, me, you, Faraday, and a pie, so that’s six of us counting the pie.”

This is the most hilarious thing ever if it’s for real.

Also, I can’t play WoW right now because the zombies keep killing me. And then, when I turn into a zombie, the guards kill me. I do appreciate the scale of the event, but it would’ve been nice if they’d put in some content for lower-level players.

(The one time I got away from the guards in Orgrimmar, I went and retched all over the orphans. Turns out orphans are immune to zombiedom. Oh, come on.)

ME: thegeekgene says she voted for McCain.

DAD: *a noise as if he is stabbed* See, the thing is, honey, you can vote for whoever you want, but… No. Actually, you can’t.

DAD: See, the thing about this place is, they always mess up my order here! They always mess it up! So I want you to order for me, in Spanish, and see if that -

PAM (WHO IS MEXICIAN-AMERICAN): Okay, what do you want?

DAD: Aqui, aqui – I want aqui – this burrito, aqui burrito – but I want it with meat and cheese only -

PAM’S SON: See, this is his problem, he goes, “I want a burrito with just meat and cheese” -

PAM: You can’t do that.

DAD: Why can’t I do that?! It’s what I want! I make your son here order for me, and he just doesn’t help. I don’t want all this – vegetables and stuff – no rice – nada rice – nada rice-o, nada guacamole-o, nada -

ME: Dad, I will absolutely kill you.

DAD: – nada beans-o – no, why not?

PAM’S SON: Because that’s not a burrito! That’s not what a burrito is!

ME: That’s like saying you want a BLT with nothing but bacon.

PAM, WITH AN EXPRESSION OF INCALCULABLE DISGUST: No, it’s like saying you want a BLT with nothing but lettuce.

DAD: I just want a burrito with just meat and cheese. Nothing else, nada. Oh, here he is – order-o por favor! Uno burrito nada! Uno beer-o? Tu tienes mucho dinero!*

ME, BECOMING MORE SOUTHERN UNDER STRESS: Dad! I swear to god!

WAITER: *looks patiently at Pam’s son, clearly completely used to this*

-

MOM: Aw, don’t chew on the shoelaces, Gandalf! *politely takes the shoe from the dog and places it slightly out of reach*

ME: You know, you should probably like whap him, so he understands it’s wrong.

MOM, WITH GREAT INDIGNATION: I’m not going to whap him!

-

* I have no idea in what context Dad acquired this phrase, but it’s his Official Spanish Sentence, which he brings out whenever the Spanish language is discussed.

People actually update their blogs while I’m awake here. I can’t get used to it.

Today I was in a doctor’s waiting room while Papaw got his eyes looked at (sibling who isn’t here – he can officially drive again! He’s very pleased about that, he thinks I don’t slow down enough at turns), and got to hear an elderly couple enthusiastically cheering the woman who called Obama an Arab. They felt the term to be a nicely cutting insult for a non-white liberal-type. One thing that’s relaxing about not being fluent in a language is that it’s harder to identify the racism. One exists permanently in a hazy fog of “Did that biker guy say something offensive? I wish he’d enunciate clearer so I can look up if I don’t want to sit next to him.” I regrettably speak Kentuckian, and the waiting room was too crowded to move.

PSA: Nobody ever buy something Food City labels “kimchi.” I don’t think they know what that means.

No idea yet when this would start or where it would be but JOB OFFER YES

The email arrived during the period when, for the first time since I got home, I sat down and actually did some work on one of my translation projects. OKAY, I GET IT, I WILL LAY OFF THE WARCRAFT A LITTLE.

Where the cashier gets openly angry when you say you don’t need a bag.

We went to see thegeekgene in Virginia, where she gave me a cookie, I unavoidably got sick again because there was a fajita, and I accidentally bought apricot kernel oil. (The store clerks all looked very sad because their old building had burned down and thus they were in a new one.)

Then we went to see elongated_tito in New York, where she presently resides with the Aunt and Uncle who have strong opinions about dog training and furnishings. They have acquired a gigantic and froofy new house since last year. I kept getting lost in it, it was like an Olive Garden that had developed a low cunning and a taste for human blood. Their whippet took my bowler hat away from me and waved it in the air, taunting, while I struggled to escape their massive couch, capable of devouring anything, even coffee table books about rock gardens, and hope.

We went to a restaurant where I had some pretty good udon with octopus. I hadn’t realized there was octopus in there, Dad got upset when I went, “they cooked this octopus just right.”

Today I went out to lunch with Papaw, ate more grease than I’ve consumed in the past six months combined, and got extremely sick. I do not wish to describe the manner in which I became sick in any great detail (nor would you wish to hear it), but suffice to say that, in all my years of eating things I shouldn’t (chocolate yogurt, takoyaki from a vending machine, a bug), I have never before suffered the condition I did with such severity. Sudden dietary changes are risky.