Friday List

The only ones that seem to stick are lists. 1) Pirates!!! When we first started hearing news stories of Somali pirates taking over big freighters I was astonished and then kind of ... confused. Did they shoot cannons at the big ships? Make people walk the plank? Who wore the flouncy shirts and hats? Where was the peg-leg and the parrot? When pirates attacked an American ship earlier in the week I was astonished at the real details... apparently the pirates come aboard the huge gigantor-ship from just a little skiff, using hooks and ladders (hooks!) and take over with their AK-47s. According to a recent AP story, there is even a "pirate stronghold" in Somalia. This is so anachronistic! So crazy! And apparently even with all the smart bombs and unmanned drones and technology that can see through your clothes and read the tag on your panties, we still seem to be unable to break up a ring of pirates on skiffs. All of this is simply to point out yet one more reason I will not go on a boat. 2) My fault again. As I've pointed out in the past, every year I seem to decide to watch one or two new TV shows and they always without fail are the TV shows that get canceled two weeks later. There was Women's Murder Club, and New Amsterdam, and of course the dearly departed Life on Mars (it was a all a dream? are you f'ing kidding me?), and anyway. I Tivo'd "The Unusuals" on Wednesday night but I'm afraid to watch it or it will canceled today. 3) Speaking of TV! For those of us with insomnia, Tivo is the best invention ever thanks to the combination of bizarre keyword searches and all-night availability of saved shows. So when I had a long sleepless night ahead of me last night, I watched the cheese de resistance of TV -- High School Reunion. And I was so perplexed. How could Jessica accuse Maricela of being a prostitute and Maricela just ... stood there? In a white bikini? Why didn't she cut off Jessica's head and eat it? Unless... is it true? Which was never addressed directly! She never came right out and said, "That is a bald-faced lie you crazy wacko!" Maricela just said, "I know who I am and I know my character." Which is not the response I would have gone with personally (see: cannibalism.) And then I remembered that great scene in Shirley Valentine where Shirley meets up with her old classmate who is glamorous and beautiful and successful and later she tells Shirley she's a hooker. Good times. Then it was time for me to take a shower and come to work. TV is my friend. But it is so confusing. 4) Spam I'm surprised that all this time later, since the innernets were invented and the email machine was invented that spam has been an ongoing part of this entire cycle and no one has done anything about it. Since the invention of the electronic mail there has been the electronic junk mail. And no one can seem to stop it! This is just as crazy to me as the pirates. We have Google earth and devices that can record phone calls in space and we have machines that clip our nose hairs for pete's sake. And yet I still get email every single day that says, "Want to have a bigger penis?" and "Learn how to make her sizzle!" (I assume that last one isn't about cooking humans. But maybe it is, who knows. Cannibals!) Pirates and spam seem to be the two things we cannot thwart in life. 5) How green is your garden? This weekend I'm going to do a little gardening out in the ol' back 40. I want to plant mainly herbs this year, but I did really well with the pumpkins last year so maybe I'll try that again, too. The main concern is our water shortage which could mean very limited sprinkler time for the yard. I don't want to get fined for sneaking out back and running the hose over the pumpkin patch at midnight. We may not be able to catch and punish the spammers of the world or the pirates of the wild seas but you know the water police would be at my doorstep in a heartbeat if I so much as turned the hosepipe to the left during water rationing. - - - Have a nice weekend and a happy Easter!