okay, so it seems i have some issues to get out

And there it is. I have an email address I have *never used*, that somehow, is getting German spam.

Yes, *that* German spam.

Okay, gateway yes, it's been on the web since, God, 1998; by rights, I should have a *lot more spam* than I actually get, even with two sets of filters going through my email daily. But the IT one? That just makes no *sense*. Grrr. And also, grrr.

I'm just trying to figure out how it happened.

The Sugar Thing and Blood Plays

fyrdrakken posted a link to a recipe I've been thinking about for years--to wit, the sugar-based depilatory that doubles as a tasty treat. Like waxing, it requires a certain amount of growth before use, but hey, we were experimenting, so a lemon, some water, and a long time in front of a pot stirring granule sugar, we *did not manage* to make it work. However, we had some deliciously strange lemon-flavored hard candy come of it. We are trying again this weekend. Will update you here on progress. I cannot see how this will not be hideously painful, whether you are using sugar or wax, but on the other hand, I haven't tortured myself for smooth skin in a long time, so really.

Yes, this is something I do to entertain myself.

Also, we found a digital blood pressure thingie at The Great Eternal Garage Sale to take our blood pressure at home. New family game--we all sit around and compete to see who can get teh lowest blood pressure. Today's lows:

Me:
first time: 114/66, heartbeat 89
second time: 101/69, heartbeat 95

Mom:
first time: 99/65 (sixty something, my handwriting is really bad)
second time: 79/51

Child:
99/61, heartrate 67

I'm asking for a blood test to see if anyone is taking non-regulation medication, as I suspect Mom and Child are cheating and popping blood thinners before taking-time.

No, really. We do this for *entertainment*.

Randomly, the name Wayne?

Okay, now it's just getting disturbing. Is anyone noticing a trend---that if you have the middle name of Wayne, you are somehow destined for notoriety or a serious serial-killing streak? Recnetly, I was listening to Yet Another Lecture about gun control (and I'm fenced on this one, I'm a *Texan*, I've been, near, or around guns since they washed me clear of amniotic fluid) and I was thinking, if we just got rid of the middle name Wayne, there'd be a serious decrease in really freaky crime. I mean, you don't hear a lot of Jason Elvis' going on killing sprees, but there's a really creepy number of John Waynes wandering around with some kind of unbalance in the "don't kill" portions of their brains. So. Hmm.

Actually, all of it was me, just getting frustrated with the entire issue of gun control. Like the abstinence education thing, whereas it has become chic to terrify people into staying away from sex, the overkill on guns is becoming too ridiculous to be able to take seriously, and it *should* be taken seriously. But they always start with the story of the unloaded handgun in the safe deep in the wood behind the house under five feet of solid concrete while the bullets were miles away hidden in a tree, and yet five year old Junior ferrets all of it out, puts it together, and re-enacts something from Doom with his three year old cousin Sissy. The anti-drug campaign--and people, I am not a spokesgirl for drugs, I have way too many clients and One Certain Sister Who Makes Me Nervous, not to mention Incarcerated Brilliant Cousin and so forth, but y'all, lying through the pearly-whites about how breathing in the scent of pot once will addict you for life and end with you hustling on the street with six crack addicted children? I want to send these people who say this stuff to *therapy*. They have reality-displacement issues.

I find all campaigns of terror disguised as education repugnant--don't even *get* me started on some of the crap I saw and read before my son was born and I was deciding against breastfeeding. They didn't actally say in so many words, "you are killing your child", but whoa, so *close*. This isn't exactly a fine line of differnce between 'education' and 'rabid stupidity'. It's really a thick line. It starts when you start lying to make your point, and making the truth a lie as well, making it impossible to believe the truth because you can't see it anymore for all the nonsense piled on top. The anti-teen pregnancy thing--*rubs forehead*. What were they *thinking*? Did anyone in the greater United States really think scare tactics actually *worked*? So far as I can tell, there's now a lot of teen mothers with kids who have been convinced beautifully that they can't do *anything* now that they have a kid, not finish school, not go to college, not get a decent job, they need a *man*, or they are helpless, and oh God, the men they pick, that practically salivate knowing this is the message these girls get. And most of them I wnat to shake and say, *I* got through it, most of the women in this office? Also did it. And yes, it takes time, and yes, it takes a lot of energy, but honestly, Child was learning to talk with me reciting my chemistry to him and probably knows about as much Physical Anthropology as I do, and at this point, I'm not even sure I'm finishing college because I want to, but because I want to be able to point at the diploma on the wall and say, I did that, I finished that, and it took a bit longer than expected, and you know what? You. Can. Too. Christ, for thousands of years, women have been rearing children alone while men wandered off to die in war or killed by pestilence and why the *hell* is everyone treating it like something invented in the twentieth century? And don't even *give* me that stay-at-home mommy crap, cause women would work the fields through pregnancy and the day after giving birth, kiddo attached by a sling. Stay at home mommy was always, always the privilege of the upper classes.

Whoa. I had some PSA rage to get out. I am going to zen my blood pressure down with coffee. Cause really, that will do it. This now ends my biyearly temper tantrum. I'm going to, instead, sit here and remmeber that at noon today, I found out the women of Kuwait were enfranchised and I started crying in the car.