The Desert Mermaid

Rallied enough from the Deathplague today to actually do a bit of Work-At-Home for the Space Place. So I've been driving myself nuts over this lesson I'm supposed to be designing, because I never actually have been trained on designing lessons.* Finally I sent it off, and today I looked over the feedback and the attachments our Presenter Wrangler sent back, and one of the attachments was a ready-made, far better, actually fun-sounding version of the lesson I was struggling to create myself.

... Why don't we just use THAT?

I will have to ask the wrangler tomorrow. Or possibly next week. I still have the Deathplague, after all. It would be irresponsible to share it with everyone else.


*To the point where I convinced our Presenter Wrangler to give us presenters a lesson about How To Create Lessons. All I ever think of with Fun Activities is bullshit like that one time in third grade that a guy was making some point or other about communication and did so by having us kids give him instructions on How To Make A Peanut Butter Sandwich, wherein he would HILARIOUSLY MISUNDERSTAND said instructions and wind up with peanut butter and jelly smeared all over his face or something. I freaking HATED lessons like that. So I was hoping to get an idea of how to make better lessons than THAT, and showed up optimistically to the Lesson Lesson--

--to discover jars of peanut butter and jelly and bread and utensils waiting in the meeting room. Our wrangler was using THE FUCKING PEANUT BUTTER SANDWICH COMMUNICATION EXERCISE as the basis for his lesson on making better lessons.

I may have cried a little.

(I want to point out that our Wrangler is great, and his tireless efforts to pound education concepts into my head must not go unappreciated. How was he to know that the Peanut Butter Sandwich Lesson was such a specific memory for me? Part of my work-at-home has been trying to figure out how to ask him to give me the very basic of basics on lesson plans. We WILL get this figured out.)

The last few times Dad and I have been on our own, we've spent the evenings watching the All-Westerns Channel. This time around, we changed things up a bit.

DAD: I think I have run out of westerns. Let's watch something else! Here, I've got the AppleTV all set up. Let's watch a preview and decide on a movie.

2 hours later

ME: You know, it says something about us that we can spend two hours being entertained by nothing but previews.

Finally we picked an actual movie. Unfortunately, it was The Europa Report.

ME: Maybe we should have stuck with the previews.

While he and I share many preferences for movies--we both like science fiction movies, and blockbusters, and Coen Brothers productions, and previews--in other ways we have wildly diverging tastes. I like horror movies, while Dad feels that, complex academic and psychological theories about subconscious fears and hindbrains be damned, anyone who watches horror movies is unequivocally a bad person.* For his part, he likes stupid rom-coms and pretentious French movies.

DAD: I think I'll watch some French cinema tonight. Want to join me?

ME: Are there explosions?

DAD: No, but there are other great things! They love slapstick, but then right in the middle they'll all pause and comment on the unbearable loneliness of living, and the ever-present specter of ennui that looms over even the most lighthearted of moments. Then somebody gets his head stuck in a paint bucket. It's like the Three Existentialist Stooges!

ME: ... Yeah, you have fun with that.

So for movies, we mostly went our own ways. Fortunately, we got to spend Quality Time on other projects--such as supervising thunderstorms. The Thunder Switch was on the whole time Mom was gone, and every time another shower started up, Dad would have to go outside to observe.

DAD: I think it's going to rain some more!

ME: So it is.

5 minutes later

DAD: Now it's raining!

ME: Why, yes.

DAD: I'm going out to see!

Then he would walk outside and stand under the eaves, listening to the rain.

DAD: It's still raining!

ME: Keep me updated!

When it wasn't raining, I also continued my attempts to skate.

ME: I really enjoy the feeling of getting better at this.

DAD: That cerebellum is a wonderful thing.

ME: Although we are an entertaining species, considering that we have decided to take that as a challenge. "So, you think you've learned to balance on two feet, do you? Well, what about if I PUT WHEELS ON THEM? WHAT NOW, MOTHERFUCKER?"

Other activities included making and then canceling surgeries (total flake patient in one instance, and in another a patient who called in sick), cooking, and gnawing on vague anxieties caused by the alienation of modern life or half-remembered traumatic experiences or most likely fucked-up brain chemistry (there is a reason he likes the French movies).

ME: Are you having another existential crisis?

DAD: No, it's the same one. It's pretty much perpetual.

ME: Well, all right then. Want to go watch some previews?

My only regret was that he'd already seen John Carter; that would've been a fun one to watch with him. I guess I'll have to figure out a similar movie for the next time we hang out, just me and my dad.


*Okay, I laughed it off when he said it, but later it occurred to me that it kind of hurt my feelings. You don't hear me telling him that the Doris Day movies he loves, which as far as I am concerned are grosser than Slither and infinitely less funny, make him a bad person. And anyway, fuckin' Mister Rogers liked Night of the Living Dead, so YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID.

... Come to think of it, my sister and I inherited our love of bad horror from our paternal grandmother, which may or may not explain a lot about Dad's attitude toward horror.

Okay, who was it who scheduled the nonstop parade of old men as patients today? There has been so much full-throttle geezing since we opened our doors this morning that I am ready to strangle someone. I have been condescended to and hollered at and called "honey" all day. I long to talk to a patient whose brain hasn't atrophied, but alas, it seems that is not to be.

Here's an entertaining experiment: Maureen Johnson asked her Twitter followers to reimagine book covers after swapping the authors' genders. Some of them are painfully funny.

Of course, this just brings home to me that most book covers, aside from being gendered as FUCK, are also terrible. I remember getting fairly grumpy as I shelved books at the library: all the male authors got Jackson Pollock ink splats, and the female authors got random fruit, random flowers, or, for some reason, feet. And then of course there's the Angsty YA: dudes get monochromatic silhouettes, and the ladies get monochromatic greyscale soft-focus girls looking thoughtfully away, possibly at the wind machine that seems to be blowing their hair all over the place.

But then, y'all know my take on covers. I like covers that are splashy and pretty and brightly colored and goddamn LITERAL. Like these Alanna covers. Or any of these. That's the kind of book cover that makes me want to read the contents. I'm not so sure I'd want to read any of the books with whatever the hell is going on here.*

Probably this goes along with the simple principle that if you really CAN'T squeeze an exciting and dynamic scene out of your book to put on the cover, I probably don't want to read it. If your cover has someone chucking a spear at a dragon, or flying a spaceship over a mysterious planet, I get pretty interested pretty fast. If, on the other hand, your cover has, say, a pair of shoes and some doodles on it, I will assume your character's head is so far up her own ass that she never manages to accomplish anything interesting at all. The problem, as illustrated above, is when the books that DO have awesome scenes get stuck with shoes or mooning teenagers. Why the hell would you even PUT that on there when you could have somebody do a Drew Struzan-like splash of awesome?

Listen, publishers: unless your book is a picture book, I get exactly ONE illustration per volume. MAKE IT A GOOD ONE.


*I know I've used this comparison before, but I don't care because it's still a perfect one.

Hoo, busy weekend!

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It turns out a pitched roof doesn't do much good if it connects to a flat awning over one's deck. The entire back half of the thing is sagging dangerously, and it's going to take money--a whole lotta spending money!--to fix it. In a stunning development, our homeowners' insurance is actualy going to pay for some of it. And as long as they're rebuilding anyway, they're going to throw in some skylights for free! Maybe the lighting in my house will actually improve!

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Went to a Passover seder this weekend at Kate'n'Matt's. I had never been to a seder before. I am really not the sort you would normally invite to a seder unless you are exceptionally laid-back. Fortunately, Kate'n'Matt and their other Jewish buddy are exceptionally laid-back, so it was in the nature of a fun dinner party with some tradition tossed in. Also it was vegetarian, and Kate is a great vegetarian cook. Once we got to the part where we can actually eat, it was delicious.

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Finally got some new soil worked into my garden and planted some beets and radishes and carrots, with the assistance of an enthusiastic three-ish-year-old neighbor who has been acting as local anecdotal evidence of the existence of Einstein Syndrome. Until a few months ago the little guy only communicated with squeaks and shrieks, when most two-to-three-year-olds are progressing from two-word telegraphic speech to full sentences. Then one day apparently his brain was all "Hey: WORDS!" and suddenly he went from little squeals to being full on motormouth. He narrated the whole time he scooped dirt and planted seeds and watered the garden and, I think, suggested mixing concrete in with the dirt to make a skyscraper. I ... I may have created a monster.

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So, yes, it's lovely and summery out, and it is marred only by the fact that our next-door neighbors are AWFUL dog owners. They like to leave their stupid fucking pit bull* out on the back porch so that he can launch into a thousand years of barking every time something startles him, such as when a stiff breeze blows through the backyard or a moth lands on the side of the house. You would think this would be an easily solved problem--"Hey, your dog barks his fool head off whenever you're gone, here, I even printed out some tips on how to train him to not do that, thanks"--but these neighbors, like so many bad dog owners, are also terrible people, and a casual suggestion that maybe they should actually pay some attention to their dog results in DECLARATIONS OF WAR. Do not get me STARTED on the Saga Of This Goddamn Fool Dog. It's a tale retold many times in bad sitcoms. I wish it would stay in them.

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But it is so NICE out! I may just head out and climb a tree. Maybe take along my notebook, get this stubborn installment of Scatterstone worked out (it's a great installment, so by god I gotta get it RIGHT!). Or maybe I'll just noodle around on my ocarina. If that dog's gonna bark, I might as well give him something to bark ABOUT.


*SPECIAL NOTE TO PIT BULL APOLOGISTS: I am sure there are lovely pit bulls in the world! I expect they have responsible owners and are themselves the very essence of dog urbanity! There are certainly pit bulls out there with intelligence and poise and the ability to not bark like incessant car alarms! THIS PIT BULL IS NOT ONE OF THEM.

I have long suspected that automated speech-recognition phone trees could be a perfect place to perform psychological experiments--specifically, determining the exact amount of annoyance required to change careful attempts to enunciate commands to reckless streams of shrieked obscenities. Seems I'm not the only one.

Incidentally, back during the two soul-crushing months I worked at the newspaper circulation call center, I found out that it's true that they can hear you when you think you're on hold. You'd hear the most ridiculous things at that point. Sure, there were a lot of random insults directed at the stupid girl on the other end of the phone, but there were also marital spats, "Here's the train coming into the station! Open wide!", what appeared to be large family reunions, and "Who's a good boy? Whoooooo's my widdle iddle wuggums?"

That was perhaps the only really entertaining thing at that job. Well, that and the Common Annoyance Bingo cards I made. You'd be surprised how much the impact of a display of rudeness is cushioned when it also happens to win you a piece of candy from your own desk drawer.

So Work has gone from seeming like an endless string of escort missions of Goddamn Dumb NPCs to the dreaded Giant-Sized Trading Quest Game. Which unlike escort missions are enjoyable in video games, but are substantially less so when it's insurance agencies obfuscating and obstructing and just generally demanding that every request you make be in essay form with complete sentences and at least four notarized signatures saying that yes, the patient curled up screaming on the floor is, in fact, in need of surgical pain relief.

There's probably some fascinating psychological reason why the prospect of having to brave trials to gather the Seven Jeweled Scrolls Of Darkland and present them to the King of Song and Shadow or whatever is terribly fun while the prospect of having to riffle through a chart to gather the appropriate medical records to present to Quality Specialty Neighborly United Health Plans, Inc. makes me want to staple my eyelids shut. But I do not know what that reason is. Possibly it's the sparkly jewels. But whatever it is, I am going to have to start renaming all the medical records "Darkland Scrolls," because otherwise I am going to fall on my letter-opener if I have to fax one more damn pre-authorization request.

Just took a call on Mom's iPhone, and I have a question: How the HELL do y'all manage to hear anything out of those buggers? It's built in the exact opposite shape to one you can put to your ear, and even when you do manage to maneuver it into the one position where the sound actually can enter your head--getting head crud all over it in the process--the speakers are terrible.

Maybe it's just some sort of disconnect I have with Apple products, but it seems really unwieldy. What gives?

Just changed my comment pages to look like the rest of my journal. Grudgingly. I like the stark default LJ comment pages, but it's gotten too obnoxious to try to pick icons with that new interface that does not match the Icon Map I have in my head. MY LIFE IS SO INCONVENIENT. Let's see if this change helps.

So as job interviews continue to get me nowhere, I’ve started working more at Dad’s office in order to score some extra cash. Which is all well and good, except yesterday I got reacquainted with one of those joys of office work: the Möbius conversation. In case you aren’t familiar with this barrel of laughs, it consists of getting told off by an angry old person who seems to think that if the conversation isn’t going their way, they should just start over and this time it should work.

Their main points, repeated over and over, are as follows:

1. They are close personal best friends with the doctor,
2. They deserve special consideration for being totally old, and
3. Also for being in pain

Although if you think about it, 2 and 3 don’t really distinguish them as special cases in a neurosurgeon’s office. Most of the patients we see are old and in pain. That’s too bad, but it is not unique.

As for the first point they make, I never tell them I’m the doctor’s daughter. I just let them ramble on about the piss-poor attitude I’m demonstrating when I politely enforce office policy,* and how ten years ago when the doctor did surgery he said “Come back if you ever need more neurosurgery” so that was an open invitation to call him and complain about your latest medical shit, and how once they do get to talk to him my ass will be SO FIRED because of my piss-poor attitude and did they mention he told them to come back and so forth. I am just polite and professional and respond that I will let the doctor know they called,** and every time they repeat their demands I repeat my answers, until they finally get bored and hang up.

Because, you see, if they do wind up needing NEUROSURGERY, at some point they’ll find out that the inoffensive girl they shouted at was in fact related to the doctor, and they will recall how they were total dicks to her every time they talked, and they will wonder if she relayed their nastiness to her dad. Some folks have no shame, but for the rest—never underestimate the thousand deaths of sudden guilt.

I think it’ll be fun working here again.


*Office policy: We are a NEUROSURGEON’S office, and as such, we will not schedule a consult until you can show us a note from your primary care physician stating “I think this patient needs some NEUROSURGERY done.” Because sometimes your physician finds out that you need something else entirely done, and if you brought that straight here you would be wasting the NEUROSURGEON’S time if it turned out to be a kidney stone.

**Another office policy: we will relay things to the doctor and let him decide if you need to talk to him, personally, because he is busy doing goddamn NEUROSURGERY and does not need to hear you whine about The Sciatica.