Hair Kills

I'm a redhead. And a blonde. And a brunette, and a couple of other things that might not even have names.

When you go from having well-trimmed, mild-mannered, nice people hair to a bushy mane of fierce in a single morning, you notice how heavy hair really is. But the extra weight was definitely not what hurt the most about having extensions of all different colors put in. What hurt the most was the pain.

The colorful extensions were for a L'occoco fashion show, and as L'occoco kept reminding me, 'anything for fashion, right?' In this case, that anything meant millions of tiny heart attacks crawling over my head and gnawing at the battered and threadbare skin that once proudly covered my skull. It's funny how each tug sends lightning bolts of pain straight down into the depths of your chest like a seed of evil winding its way through your body and sprouting up through the top of your head. Well, not funny exactly.

While having the full attention of one stylist for the systematic torture of my head was certainly an honor, when the second one arrived to lend a hand to the barbaric process, it nearly moved me to tears. My heart was torn between the two beautiful women each yanking me toward her by the roots of my hair. It got to a point where all I could do was just close my eyes and think of all the mean things I was going to say about them in this post.

And next on my fashion bucket list: trendy waterboarding.

This fun and games put me in such a bad mood that small talk with my captors was out of the question. Even sex with them was quickly moving off the table. In fact, it occurred to me that if my hairdressers and a pizza deliverywoman stripped down to the skin and began to make love to me passionately right there and then, I would probably have to furrow my brow and say to them, "Ladies. Please. ..Let's be professional." Or maybe not. We'd have to see.

On the bright side, the keratin with which they attached my new hair to my old smelled of honey, jasmine, and cucumbers. On the down side, one among many, I now smell like those three things.

As they continued attaching more and more hair, I began to understand how troll dolls and pokemon wizards feel. There are two things I hate most in life, and having hair in my eyes is definitely one of them. I began to have trouble breathing through my helmet of hair. Finally I could no longer see the screen of my note taking iPhone through the colorful curtain of hair that told my eyes the first act was over. That may be why this post is gradually becoming less and less clever.

Looking at myself in the mirror, I couldn't even see the mirror through all the head fur. And did I mention the pain? My nails dug their way deeper and deeper into my knees as stylists One and Two, Older and Younger, yanked bits of my already malnourished brain through my scalp.

The head honcho hairdresser kept screaming at the other one to make the extensions thinner, which could only mean one thing: more extensions and more pain. Through the blinding stabbings of pain I may have also heard her mention that apparently I have freckles on my scalp. I also have a rebellious face, but that I knew. It has been drilled into me.

There grew to be a total of six stylists standing around me, oohing and aahhing over their creation. By the end I was ready to plead for mercy and tell them anything they wanted.

I wonder if Hitler whistled while he metaphorically put extensions in the Jews' hair.

Finally, after two full hours of continuous and completely enveloping pain, the kind your threshold never gets used to, the ordeal drew to a close. I left with at least one section of my cranium, the section where Younger worked, that has either been fantastically overstimulated or fatally ruined. That would make me either a parietal lobal genius or a vegetable. I plan to blame the events of today if anyone ever complains about my sensational, handwriting, or body positioning functions in the future. Yes, I Googled that.

Also, next time the sink clogs up, you will know who to blame.

As you can see, I learned to take notes on my iPhone without seeing.

Thanks to this merging of minds, however, next year's L'occoco event may feature an idea we kicked around in the L'occoco chambers of anguish: beard extensions. Think Biblical vogue and going all Old Testament up in here. Think Punk Moses and the Parting of the Fluorescent Pink Sea.

Now I'm going to try to get some sleep without any part of my bruised head touching any surface.

PIPA and SOPA and YOU

PIPA and SOPA – Why the Uproar?
By Joe Johnston


Like a poor, browbeaten old man and his shrill, nagging wife, the government of the United States of America has been barraged by the whiny voices of the entertainment and software industries for decades now. The growing stream of grumble from these monopolistic matrons has had only one coherent complaint on its cracked lips: that the US government is not flexing its considerable muscle enough to somehow put an end to the online piracy that is eating into these companies’ profits and ability to personally exploit struggling creative geniuses for corporate gain.

And like a bear awoken from its peaceful hibernation in the dead of winter, the US government has finally stirred its considerable self and decided to do practically the only thing it is really good at: overreact to the threat.

The incessant buzz of the entertainment and software bees is not completely devoid of method in its maddening drone. It is true that the tiny trickle of leftovers given to the actual artists after the conglomerates have all had their cut has been eaten into even more by online piracy. It is true that it is a sort of disrespect and devaluation of quality work to have it thrown to the glutted masses for nothing more than the price of an Internet connection. But the uproar about SOPA and PIPA has nothing to do with the proletariat rising up and demanding its piracy. The problem with these bills is that they go way beyond curbing the copyright infringement underbelly of the Internet. If these bills are passed, they will cripple the Internet as we know it.

PIPA, an acronym for the Protect IP Act, is the third face of a bill that has already been struck down twice by our wise leaders. The third time may well be the charm, but only if the charm means an even uglier and more nefarious potential abuse of power than ever. PIPA will bequeath to US corporations and the government itself the omnipotent authority to sue, punish, and financially cripple any site in the world that they deem to be infringing upon their copyrights.

SOPA, an acronym for the Stop Online Piracy Act, will work hand in hand with PIPA like a pair of gleeful, murderous twins with a grudge against the Internet. Much like the dreaded black list of the Cold War days, SOPA will give corporations and the government the unmitigated power to cut off from the Internet any site that they feel infringes on their copyrights in any way. Not only will this legislation enable these bullies to directly strangle any sites they don’t like, it will also allow the bullies to go behind these sites’ backs and order search engines to cut them off from their traffic and payment processors to cut them off from their revenues.

The main reason this legislation is so thoroughly vilified is because of its vague definition of copyright infringement. If these bills were passed, a video of a man walking by a Starbucks without explicit permission from the company to feature their logo could get YouTube sued for piracy. This article and the website hosting it could get immediately blacklisted twice just for the preceding sentence. A little girl humming her favorite Britney Spears jingle in front of a webcam could become the center of an immediate whirlwind of legal action, and her parents could incur penalties that would make Serena Williams’ $82,500 fine for talking back to a judge look like pocket change.

Call or write your state’s Senators today and insist that your voice be heard on this issue! Just don’t mention what brand of coffee you had for breakfast.

First published at www.mypadmonkey.com. Republished here without permission but with fair use.

The You Is Silent

I hate that I make her feel the way that you make me feel.

I hate that when I don't answer her calls, I know exactly how she's feeling because that's how I feel when you don't answer mine.

I hate that she wants me as much as I want you.

I hate that I am compelled to think up increasingly clever ways of commandeering your attention the way that she pulls increasingly miserable stunts to gain mine.

I hate that I spend hours restlessly waiting for your reply the way that she spends hours anxiously waiting for mine.

I hate that I let her down over and over the way you let me down over and over.

I hate that she throws herself at me the way I want to throw myself at you.

I hate that I am hurting her the way that you are hurting me.

I hate how she feels empty when I'm not around the way I feel cavernous when you are not.

But I love that it feels like I can get revenge on the universe in some twisted way by squeezing the life out of her the way you squeeze the life out of me.

Rice Phase

For better or worse, I go through Damien Rice phases where I can't take my eyes off of floating cannonballs, and I strut around in pajamas for entire days stumbling through the work I have to do. These are not particularly gloomier phases than the rest of the anthill existence, nor are they particularly less motivated. I'm only as bi-polar as the next bi-polar bear, and he's so cuddly and cute.

If anything, they are definitely more poignant phases. Everything takes on a deeper meaning, more things are read into, more lines read between. You could say more thinking is done (therefore more am-ing accomplished?), more pondering.

I used to believe that my Damien Rice phases were triggered by you (plural, obscure, undefined). Now that you has many faces and none of them recent, I am beginning to run out of lightning for my blamestorm. You, perhaps, is a symptom of the phase rather than the other way around.

Be that as it may, I think these are possibly nothing more than a healthy balance for the unbridled optimism and enthusiasm of the high end of the see-saw. They help me to contemplate from my throat, sing from my diaphragm, and stare right through you. Tomorrow I will be back to Jack, Jude, Joe, Jason, Joshua, Justin, and Milow.

I Love It When Songs Use Bad Grammar

I do, I love it when songs use bad grammar. I love when a wordsmith can take a word or a phrase and apply it to something that it doesn't quite fit to, but in the context it just seems to work. I also don't mind it when you desperately need a phrase that might just be a little bit of bad grammar in order to complete a rhyme or a wordplay or a thought. Go ahead and use it.
What I don't like at all is when the lyrical geniuses and word magicians of the pop worlds use bad grammar unintentionally, or when changing it into good grammar would not have made the slightest difference to the cadence, rhyme or thought, and yet they still deviate. For that there is no point and no excuse. Here are some bad examples I would like to highlight:

Lady Gaga -- You and me could write a bad romance. (Or maybe it would be a good romance, just with a lot of bad grammar.)
Snow Patrol -- If I lay here, if I just lay here, would you lie with me..? (Kudos for having gotten it right one out of three times.)
Julie Greeneyes -- In comparison to what You do, my every hope and dreams come true. (Would saying, "my every hope and dream comes true," have made that much worse a comparison to what You do?)
Joan Osborne -- What if God was one of us. (If He were, He might too have been appalled at the grammar in His song.)
Jason Mraz -- May I suggest you get the best for nothing less than you and I. (This from the guy who wrote an entire ode to You and I, both, and managed to get it right in that one. Hint: remove all extra filling and you will find an egregious suggestion to obtain the best for a certain "I".)
Sam Fuller -- This is the start when only come from I. (If that sentence even made sense, I would then begin to seriously criticize the grammar.)
Everclear -- I will buy you a new car, perfect, shiny and new. (The grammar is fine, I'm just still not clear on if the car will be new.)
Bryan Adams -- But that’d change if she ever found out about you and I. (Back of the class, you, with Mraz, Gaga, and Fuller.)


Positive Highlight Surprise GOOD Example of the Night:
Ke$ha! -- I don't care who you are, in this bar it only matters who I ...is. (Haha, classic. That, I love.)


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Date an Outsider

As part of the Change Program and re-evaluating our official stances on everything, I would like to suggest a minor change.

In secular society, many workplaces have what they call a "no inter-office relationship" policy. This means that no dating, non-sexual affection, or sex, is allowed between co-workers. There are many reasons for this--favoritism between a leader / team member in a relationship, debilitating office gossip that tends to follow inter-office romance, tension that occurs when one partner wants to end it before the other--even cases of sexual harassment.

But the main reason inter-office relationships are frowned on is that it creates in the workplace an unfavorable climate towards ...working. Workplace decisions should not be clouded by the possibly career-impacting influence that stems from an emotionally charged atmosphere. So "fishing off the company pier" is looked on negatively, and "getting your honey where you get your money" is discouraged.

In the Family we now have a longer term vision, and just like we're learning the hard way about higher education, secular employment and schooling, etc, I wonder if we either should now or will eventually have to come to grips with the inter-office dating that runs rampant through our workplaces.

People, we should only allow sex / dating / relationships with outsiders! This would mean, conversely, no sex / dating / relationships whatsoever with other Family members (with the possible complication / exception of marriage).

If you are allowed to date your witnessing partner, you can't help but eventually consider it. Soon, your work time and energies, instead of going toward the Offensive begin to be taken up by small emotional conflicts and quickies. You start holding hands when you're out, and eventually you're thinking more about what your partner is wearing / thinking, instead of feeding the sheep sitting before you.

All of this is augmented considerably if he or she is the only person you can feasibly date in your entire city or area.

Very few people, devout Christians or not, are mature enough to separate their professional and personal lives when the two come into such close contact. Human nature craves too much that interaction with your significant or not-so-significant other. The lines gray between work and play, and when there is an area witnessing offensive, manpower flocks to it, abandoning their own works. --But not for the witnessing as much as the sex. And then entire stable missionary works can be upset by the accidental babies that occur in opposite ends of the continent.

And life becomes difficult when you have to continue living with or having contact with someone after it's over. If one of you doesn't move far away or stop frequenting the same places, then there is a mountain of working out to be done, usually during work hours. Either way, the Offensive takes the hit. Although we're all very dedicated people and experts in many spiritual areas, I don't know if you can expect us to be relationship experts too.

If you want to be successful in your work life and communal life, support the Date-an-Outsider project--and keep your personal life where it belongs.

Trust me, i know.


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In Defense of Like

I would like to make a short apologia for the common usage of 'like' in today's English. Displeased critics often attempt to mimic the singsong banter of youth by placing 'like' in front of every word, and then rolling their heads in disgust. Critics, it is often you who are most responsible for the misuse of this word! We who use it know what we're using it for, and there's a definite set of rules that go along with if you want to pick it up. It's also just plain not funny anymore to put it after every single word as a way of mocking young people.

So listen and learn.

'Like,' in today's colorful usage form, was first made popular almost 40 years ago by a California freshman subculture widely known as 'valley.' 'Valleyspeak,' or 'Valspeak' as a sociolect came into being before some of you were born, and when the rest of you were still very young, so you really have no place rejecting it as a 'modern day' abuse.

'Like' is generally used:
To imply an exaggeration (it was like huuge)
As a filler (instead of 'um,' 'basically,' 'irregardless')
As a replacement for the word 'said,' a quotative (he was like, "hey")
To indicate something obvious (like hello)

Consider this:
Like was first used as a subordinating conjunction ('looks like rain', as opposed to 'looks as if rain were coming') in a 1954 cigarette ad, for which it received a similar outcry from critics.
In fact, "(t)he appropriateness of its usage as a conjunction is still disputed.... In some circles it is considered a faux pas to use like instead of as or as if, whereas in other circles as sounds stilted." (Wikipedia)

Bitterlind Syndrome

(ML 32:7)
JENNY LIND, THE FAMOUS SWEDISH NIGHTINGALE, was considered one of the greatest popular singers of her day. Her music teacher said, "Jenny, you've got everything to make you the world's greatest singer, but one thing!" "What in the world is that?" she asked. "I practice all day long, and you say I have tremendous range, versatility, and talent! What haven't I got?" "To make you a truly great singer", he replied, "you have to have a broken heart!" So he thereupon proceeded to break it for her! She fell in love with him, and he jilted her. Then she began to sing from her heart!--The songs she sang became her own--songs of loneliness and tears--not just a collection of words and music--but it was her own heart cry!



Yes, that's a beautiful story, but what about the music teacher? Oh, he was villified and demonized in all her songs hence, when she failed to recognize the favour he was doing her. Also, from then on she was a b%$@** to every other guy she ever met, even causing a few to actually die of broken hearts. Hopefully this got back to the music teacher, to which he probably rolled his eyes.

I'm telling you people, it's all in the way you look at things. Are you a jerk? Or a music teacher?

So Damn Meaningless

(NOTE: If you were referred here by a strange comment on your webpage or in your email, unfortunately that was placed by someone who does not like me and is trying to take this post out of context to hurt you. May I suggest we use this odd coincidence to have some fun instead? Here look at this one, it's fun! --Ur Beautiful. Or this one! --So Last Night Was Healthy After All.)


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I am going to show you a video of a beautiful song, with a purpose.

Atrophy, by The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. Have a listen.

I Hate Rants On Blogs!

I hate rants on blogs! They're so stupid!
There's nothing worse than a rant on a blog! It's so dumb, there's no point to it! All these people just spewing out the first things that come to mind about their bigoted opinions, just sounding like close-minded idiots screaming away at themselves. It's like, if you're gonna sit there and be all furious and start calling people names and generalizations just to support your own angry little thoughts because something riled you all up, well you should just go stand in the corner and I mean it. And that goes for all of you!
I hate people that rant on their blogs! It's so unloving! It just promotes all this anger and hatred and bad feelings going around and there's nothing uplifting or positive about it! Why do people do this?
And the little "solutions" they try to offer, well, they never work anyway. They're not well thought out, not prayed about, not offered in a well-rounded, balanced way, it's just the first thing that comes to the person's mind and they never work. People should just stop altogether.
They're just dragging down the blogging world with their complaining! They're painting bloggers around the world as this angry bunch of people with nothing better to do than vent their feelings on the Internet because they have no actual friends who will listen to them probably, that's what it is. All they can do is sit at their little computers and complain to the Internet because they're too gutless and nerdy to do otherwise. Well maybe they should just keep it to themselves and go talk to their shepherds.
For God's sake, stop complaining! All you people are doing is making a fool of yourselves, that's it. Go direct your anger at something positive and stop wasting your time writing posts that go on and on ranting about some dumb thing.
It's so stupid.
I would never do that.