Arghhhhh.

As you can see, it's way to damn early on a Saturday morning, and I'm awake. Why, you ask? Becaseu I live in a "changing neighborhood", and my street number is, I believe, similar to that of the (alleged) crackhouse nearby.

So here's the deal: It's 5 something a.fucking m.The bell rings. Whaaa? I stumble to the window, open it, there are two guys outside. "Did you just ring my bell?" "Yeah, is Josie Lo there?" "No... listen... no one is here. Please, please don't ring my bell at 5 in the morning." "Awright, sorry." and they went away, and i staggered back to bed.

This is the second time someone's rung my bell at a very odd hour of the night.

So I'm lying in bed, thinking, I gonna tell folks about this at my next CAPS meeting; I'm gonna tell my trainer, whose brother is a special ops cops, to watch the address; I'm gonna put up a fucking sign that says "This is not the fucking house you're looking for. Go the fuck way and don't ring my bell at 5 goddamn a.m. on a Saturday morning!" (I am nothing if not articulate at 5 in the morning.); I'm gonna put a huge-ass lock on my front gate, and possibly land mines; I'm gonna.... And then I thought, fuck it, I'm gonna call the police NOW.

And here's the thing about calling the police: Your standard drug lord/gangbanger has the 911 band monitored. I know that sounds paranoid as hell, but apparently its true -- so much so, that the city information number (311) expects anonymous 911 calls and transfers them over so your standard drug lord/gangbanger can't trace where it's coming from. So I did that, and they took the info, and they sent someone around to sweep the street. Which, I'm sure, did nothing. But I don't care. I called. I'm tired of taking the path of least resistance/look onthe sunny side of life/always expect the best in your fellow members of humanity tack at dealing with living here. No, I have no evidence they were lookng for drugs, just a suspiscion. No, I don't want to be the Ugly White YuppieScum who comes into an ethnic neighborhood and freaks out, calling the cops for any damn reason, trying to make this neighborhood another Lincoln Park. But hell, I'm not stupid. And if this pisses people off, so be it. I live here, dammit. I'm not going anywhere. Get the hell used to it. And if that disrupts your drug-dealing activities, well, too damn bad.

And I wish I could say that I was standing here proudly, consequences be damned, but I'm not. I'm a little freaked. How difficult is it to figure out that the cranky white chick you just woke up called the cops? (For that matter, do drug lords/gangbangers monitor blog traffic? Oh, the perils of living outloud...) Can I expect another dead pigeon on my doorstep? Is anything going to happen to the house? How's my insurance covereage for Rampaging DrugLord damage? I'm overreacting, I'm sure, but hell, it's scary (and 5 fucking a.m., so I'm not exactly in my right mind.)

Argh. Harumph. OK, I ventted my spleen, I'm going back to bed. Bastards.

Just for reference, this is the sort of stuff I haven't posted inteh past to avoid worrying people like my parents. Oh well. Hi, mom and dad! It's all great! Love you! No worries!

Are you happy now, Newton? I'm posting moe than postcards. Oh, and I hope you're looking forward to your visit!

Happy birthday Mary! You are, as always, funny as hell. I'll miss you when you hie on back to Jersey.

Other stuff: the New York Times ran an article about Coca-Cola's war against (free) tap water, taking a couple of case studies/internal PR/whatever that Coke had posted on its site. (Needless to say, Coca Cola Co. has no problem with the bottled water it sells...) It's been up there for about three years with no one noticing it, apparently. I've got to start surfing corporate BS sites more often.(You have to register, but jeez, people it's the New York Times. It's worth it.)

Selected quotes:

Water. It's necessary to sustain life, but to many Casual Dining restaurant chains it contributes to a dull dining experience for the customer. Many customers choose tap water not because they enjoy it, but because it is what they always have drunk in the past. In response, some restaurant chains are implementing programs to help train crews to sell alternative choices to tap water, like soft drinks and noncarbonated beverages, with the goal of increasing overall guest satisfaction. Oh yeah. I'm seeing "increasing overall guest satisfaction" as the main motive here.

[T]he Olive Garden has recently sent a powerful message to the entire restaurant industry — less water and more beverage choices mean happier customers.....

Olive Garden restaurants, like many other Casual Dining locations, were facing a high water incidence rate. ... Aieeeeeee! We've had another water incident! Alert the National Guard! Will no one be able to make these water incidences stop?

Look! A savior on the horizon!

The Olive Garden asked Coca-Cola USA- Fountain (CCUSA-Fountain) to help them create their beverage plan. CCUSA-Fountain stepped up to the plate and suggested a tap water reduction program named H2NO. ... a crew education kit containing information about beverage suggestive selling techniques (a technique used when a server suggests a profitable beverage in place of water to the customer during the ordering process). ....Restaurant managers and servers use the kit to emphasize the wide range of beverage selections available, including soft drinks, non-carbonated beverages and alcohol. As a side effect, overall check averages should increase. ...What a coincidence! Who would have thunk it!

[A]lmost all participating restaurants realized significant increases in beverage sales and reduced levels of tap water incidence — a strong indication that Olive Garden restaurants succeeded in enhancing the customer's dining experience. Yeah. That's what they were enhancing.

Another fun quote: Water conversion can be a win for consumers too — their meal will always be enhanced by a quality beverage choice. . . which, to my mind, precludes the selection of Coca Cola.

I love corporate America. It's so fun.

The pissy thing is, I tend to order soda water when I go out to eat, because I prefer it to tap water. Now I'm thinking of just sticking with tap water out of spite. Harumph.

Tripp launched a new blog about his quest for funding for seminary. Cool. You go, boy.

The interns are leaving today (although Pat will be coming back the week after next). Esther, in her exit interview, said something to the effect of This internship really made me realize that I can't spend my life writing stuff like this. Thanks for reminding me. Then I checked out Mary's blog, and she's making unemployment look really, really nice. Sigh.

(Don't worry, Wendy, I'm not going to do anything rash. I know I have to pay my half of the mortgage. It's all good. Sigh....)

Cable modem still intermitant at best, so I'm updating from work (after hours, of course). The BrassRing.com site should finally launch tomorrow, which is good. We're cleaning up old stuff and gearing up for new stuff. We'll see how it goes.

Important lesson in urban living: Do not take the bus that picks you up half a mile from a huge high school. High school students are simply not interested in Public Transport Ettiquette, and will not move to the rear of the bus as others get on. That's just the way it is.

Ooh, fun links, both that I found on Feral Living (which I found through Mary's site):

How to Fix a Three-Hole Punch
Self-explanatory. Made me laugh.

All Look Same
Hey, I lived in China for three years, I can do this, right? Nope. Pathetic score. I still say that trying to spot physcial difference between Japanese and Korean people is like trying to spot physical differences between Danes and Norwegians. Cultural differences, sure, but physical? Hmmm. (Even taking that into account, my score was still pathetic.)

More blog and cable modem trauma. Most distressing. So I apolgize for the delay in updating. AT&T Broadband is going to owe me big for this….

So when I don’t blog for a while, I build up rants/pithy comments/stories/etc. Lucky you. Here goes:

I spent entirely too long at Kristin and Maneesh’s barbecue on Sunday. In true Jersild fashion, I had brought entirely too much food (I marinated a bunch of steak-kabob cubes, but no veggies – I figured I could barter steak for veggies. I was wrong.) So anyway, I had about three full skewers worth of cow, and which far more than I can eat, especially after the various “snacky jobbies” that K&M provided. So I was wandering around the barbecue saying “Anyone want some cow?” Strangely, I didn’t have many takers with that approach. Hmmm. Anyway, Dawn ended up having some, as she had come at the last minute without providing herself with a meal, and Maneesh snacked on the rest. Good. I hate to see a cow go to waste.

We also had increasingly drunk people traipsing back and forth to the computer to take thespark.com tests – The Gay Test, The Slut Test, The Purity Test, The Bitch Test and The Death Test. We had some pretty gay, bitchy, slutty people at that party, let me tell you. I think the highest Gay score was 78% -- and, interestingly enough, I discovered the questions are different depending on whether you identify yourself as gay or straight, male of female. I can safely say that the straight female questions were the tamest. Not once in my quiz was the practice of fisting brought up. While I’m sure I should be indignant about that on some level, I actually think I’m ok with that. (the highest slut score was 79%, but we question the accuracy of some of her responses.)

Megan stopped by on her way from Minneapolis to Atlanta on Monday (she has the coolest jobs), and only the threat of serious monsoon rains kept us from going to Ravinia for the cannons and such. Alas. However, I did go out that bright and sunshiney morning to get a bunch of picnic fixings, as I was anticipating a crowd at Ravinia. I now have lots of cheese and dips. Wendy, break in whenever you want to grab some Brie and such.

Movies:

Monkeybone
Eh, ok. You could definitely tell it was from the Producer of A Nightmare before Christmas, not the Director. Tim Burton, why waste your time on big-budget “reimaginings” when you could tackle cool concepts like this?

High Fidelity
Quite good. Kinda depressing – “Love means giving up all pretensions of finding great romance.” Maybe it does, but I’m not there yet. I’m also not dating, so that may mean that my ideals are askew. Great music. Jack Black is fabulous. So’s John Cusack. And I could swear they filmed the office scenes in my building, as we have Joan Cusack’s view.

Psycho Beach Party
It sure was a fun cast to look at (Xander surfing!). Pretty funny. Thomas Gibson’s rhyming couplets, Chiclet’s fugue states, fun with homoeroticism, deep analysis of cheesy 50’s horror movies, and a dance war to boot. Cool.

Miss Congeniality
OK, this I’m going to rant about. There will also be spoilers, so if you haven’t seen it and care, skip this bit.

First off, beauty pageants. OK, fine, I get that there is, in fact, scholarship money involved, and that the women who win do get to espouse a cause. And, say, 50 years ago, when scholarship money/loans weren’t as easy to come by, maybe these pageants made a difference. Now, I’d imagine, they’re just one of the more humiliating ways to beg for money. As for the cause, what are we supposed to think: “Hey, that chick looks good in a bikini, I’m sure her views on AIDS research are sound and well-reasoned.” Not that looking good in a bikini precludes that. They just have nothing to do with each other.

Yes, I can see women stripping away the patriarchal trappings and using the pageant against itself. I appreciated the “To all you lesbians out there, if I can make it this far, so can you!” bit, as that’s a cool way to subvert to pageant for your own ends. I still think they’re a humiliating throwback. Why should a “scholarship program”, if that’s what it is, include a bit where you walk around in heels and a bathing suit? Or an evening gown, for that matter? Urf.

The “Hey, these are really smart chicks!” thing they tried, with the revelation that Miss Rhode Island was studying nuclear physics…. Too little too late, assholes. You’d already established that she was an idiot ditz.

But the part that pissed me off the most was the whole “We’re pigs, you love us” way they treated the men of the FBI. No one ever said anything when they were playing dress-up with “unsuitable” FBI agents. No one objected (til far too late) that they were taking cameras into dressing rooms and ogling the nekkid women. And worst of all, Benjamin Bratt, who I’ll grant you is fun to look at, is a total womanizing, weak, kiss-ass, office-politicking schmuck throughout the movie, and we’re supposed to believe that Sandra Bullock would end up with him. She gets her legs waxed and gets pretty, and then B.B. deigns to notice her. Well fuck you, prettyboy – you like her or you don’t. I seriously doubt she’s going to keep waxing once this assignment is over. Are you going to keep dating her –or sleeping with her? Harumph. I’d have liked it better if she took him out when he leaned in for that kiss at the end. Asshole.

I have no problem with wanting to look good. I would just rather women not feel like they have to spend all their time thinking about it, that they had to be pretty to get any attention/respect in the first place. To hell with that. Yes, I’m being naïve, and maybe just a little defensive (I don’t have three heads, but I won’t be entering any beauty pageants any time soon), but doesn’t that strike anyone else as sad and wrong?