New Method for Paint Removal

Haven't written much lately. Haven't lost interest in this blog, it is only that nothing much has happened other than it is raining so much that I had to make a doctor's appointment so I can have my vestigial gills removed. And there is that messy question of whether to keep the webbing between my fingers. I mean, they make it hard to write with a ballpoint pen, but they're so handy if I need to go into the back yard.

Last night I loaded a flash card into my printer's card reader but the software alternately opened and lost the card contents, over and over again, as if there was a faulty wiring connection. There was no faulty connection, only the dawning realization that this new computer is not the reliable equal of the one that was stolen from me. I did the only thing that works, spent fifteen minutes unloading and reloading the printer software.

I realized that the card reader was not the only thing misfiring. My normally beloved Photoshop program freeze/crashes - something it never did before. For that matter several other programs seem troublesome. Is it the computer? Is it the configuration the new computer uses? Why me?

While the software unloaded the printer program loaded/reloaded, I had a complete swearing, shouting, hissy fit in the privacy of my own home.

Under my screams of anger, paint peeled from my walls. I railed aloud, begging for the downfall and capture of the thieves whose ten minutes of mischief cost hours lost in vacation time handling post-theft emergencies and cost monies exceeding $3,650 in insurance, cash, the cost of installing new doors, installing a security system and the ongoing expense for the security system's monthly charges.
And how can I put a value on the loss of my sense of security in my own home? My lost trust of my fellow beings? That when I leave the house in the mornings there is a well of unhappiness at what I might find on returning in the evening. What personal items will have been fiddled with or rummaged through by some thoughtless feckwit?

I vented. I fumed. I yelled. My cats sailed out of the house, fleeing for their lives.

I swore on the tainted souls of the thieves. I begged for their capture and lock up in a penitentiary. I begged for their use as bitches by their extraordinary ugly, nasty tempered, temperamental and - this one is important - overly endowed 'room mates' in Folsom Prison. I shook my fist at the skies, in hope if any singers serenade the rat bastards at Folsom, may the singer be of the ilk of Tiny Tim and his ukulele on a bad day.

I'm usually a little more forgiving but this computer thing is making me a bit cranky.

Forgive me - I must share

Lions are hunting humans in southern Africa. In Tanzania, annual attacks are up from 40 a decade ago to 100 today; 70 percent are lethal. One lion purportedly ate 40 people. Reasons: 1) People are sleeping outdoors to guard their crops against bushpigs. 2) Lions following the bushpigs find the humans and discover they're tasty. 3) "Once they discover that they can eat people they get quite bold. They are even breaking into people's houses and pulling them out."

Experts' advice to locals: Build your outhouses closer to your homes.

Lesson to Americans and Australians: Stop whining about shark attacks.

REAL man eaters, the Lions of the Tsavo

Free Range Scam

I read this on Salon.com today.

Which leads us to the genre you call "supermarket pastoral." What is it exactly?

"Walking through Whole Foods, I joke in the book, is a literary experience. You need to be a pretty good literary critic, in other words, to figure out what's really being said on these labels. They're written in what I call supermarket pastoral, which is a very persuasive form. I read a lot of labels and I'm still a sucker for it. Free-range chicken, for instance, can mean nothing more than a 20,000-bird shed with a tiny little lawn and a little door that's opened two weeks before the hens are slaughtered. These little yards are purely symbolic. Chickens don't use them because they're too careful. They've never been outside before; there's not enough room for all of them and they're a flock animal. So it's a conceit to appeal to the consumer. When you see "free-range," it's not happening, but if you see "pastured" chicken, which you sometimes will at a farmers market, that's real. And pastured eggs, by the way, are a superior product in every way. I know a farmer in California who grows them. They're $6 a dozen and I consider them worth it."

Michael Pollan

Well count me in as totally bummed. I purchase free-range eggs because I thought these eggs were laid by hens that were running about free; you know, eating butterflies, worms and such.

It's always bugged me that most the free range egg cartons are labeled 'vegetarian diet'. How can a chicken run free and not eat bugs? I want the chickens I eat and that lay the eggs I eat on Sunday morning to know the joy of swallowing a a grasshopper. But no... the poor things are caged, i.e, imprisoned. I was fed a crap story what chickens do in their free time. I am so annoyed.