Raising Awareness: Hands-Only CPR

In the event that an adult suddenly collapses in front of you, American Heart Association advises that Hands-Only CPR be administered, even if you have no formal CPR training. This involves chest compressions only, without mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and can greatly increase the victim's chances of surviving a cardiac arrest.

About 94 percent of sudden cardiac arrest victims die before reaching a hospital, the group said. Up to 80 percent of sudden cardiac arrests occur at home, it added. Brain death begins four to six minutes after a person suffers sudden cardiac arrest if no CPR or defibrillation is given.

What a Potty Mouth

Created by OnePlusYou - Free Online Dating

Around 100% of the pages on your website contain cussing. This is 1011% MORE than other websites who took this test.

I'm such a potty mouth!

On the Internet

In this world that breaks down into little more than digits flying through etherspace, we can be anything we want to be. So. . . I am as beautiful as Halle Berry. I am as wealthy as The Donald. I am as powerful as the Pope. I am whatever I want to be, and you won't know the difference, right? And. . . I can make YOU into whatever I want YOU to be also, and no one will be any the wiser, right?

So says the cyberstalker.

Check this out and tell me: Exactly what is this world coming to? Whatever it is, it can't be good.

"I've just learned that my stalker has taken harassment to the next level. It wasn't good enough to harass me face-to-face, even after legal venues were pursued to put a stop to that. It wasn't good enough to anonymously hide behind the skirts of CPS and file malicious complaints containing fabrications and outright lies against me, because the truth prevailed in the end. No, that just wasn't good enough. Now it's time to take personal grudges and a tightly woven web of lies to the "court of the internets," to be judged by individuals who know nothing more about me than what my stalker has told them - and they believe it. I am a 'hacker' for using Google to find information about my stalker and a 'fat, lazy cunt who sits on the computer 24/7 hacking into and stealing personal records' [MySpace is personal, if it's not set to private???], even though I am working 4 jobs to pay taxes to help support my stalker's lifestyle: Collecting a welfare check every month on top of food stamps and Medicaid, enabling them to have more time to 'testify to the court of the internets' about what a piece of shit I am. I never really thought someone could be this depraved, this malicious, this vindictive and spiteful, even in the face of all that's happened, and now I realize just how deranged this person really is and am fearful for my life, because I don't know just how much farther they are willing to go to try to destroy me."

Being Oblique - Or Obtuse?

If someone is pissed off at {you} for doing something, is there some reason they can't just come right out and say it in as many words instead of leaving you wondering if they're talking about you or someone else?

Let's say I inadvertently piss "Joe" off. I want Joe to come to me and say, "Look, you did {this} and I didn't know you were doing it until after the fact, and what you did caused me a lot of inconvenience. Would you mind not doing it again, or at least letting me know your plans beforehand so I'm not slammed at the last minute?" That was pretty easy to understand and even when you're stressed, tact does not, in fact, have to run fleeing from the building - even with me. I'm not always obnoxious. I want to know if Joe's upset at something *I* did so I can try not to do it again, rather than being told in a vague way that "some people" did such-and-such or abused a privilege or just plain hurt someone's feelings or whatever. I can't help what "some people" do, since I can't control them, but I CAN control what I do and want to know when I've done something, if not necessarily wrong, at least irritating, especially if I'm not trying to be deliberately irritating.

I really CAN work and play well with others, honest!

On The Warpath

Some people need to learn the hard way, after being shown the error of their ways in a polite manner 47 times and still not getting it through their thick skulls: STOP ABUSING THE LAW AND PUBLIC SERVICE AGENCIES DEVELOPED TO PROTECT SOCIETY'S MOST DEFENSELESS CITIZENS, WHOM YOU HAVE VICTIMIZED YOURSELF MORE THAN ANYONE. I'm pissed, I'm primed, and I have a raging hard-on for justice with the will as high as a mountain and a soul of unfathomable depth to persevere to the end and see that justice is served. These same morons who need this lesson are the very ones who taught me that I do have the power to prevail and that in the end, good truly does triumph evil.

My Conspiracy Theory

Microsoft and HP are in cahoots to rip off the average idiot (me) over a many-year period of time to force them to buy new PCs every 2 to 3 years.

In 2002, in dire need of a new computer after someone (a cousin of a cousin) managed to get some ilk on my other PC that tore through the hard drive like the fires in Michigan's Upper Peninsula last summer, I went to Best Buy with a pocket full of cash. Being not so computer savvy, I (stupidly) relied on the salesman to help me pick out what would be best for me, a capital investment to be made in my transcription business and something I would use for years to come (at least 5, since that's what the IRS allows for depreciation on equipment).

I walked out of the store with an HP Pavilion 310n with a 1.1 GHz Celeron processor and thought I was just the cat's shit. Not knowing what all the little numbers meant anyhow and not thinking they really mattered, I didn't care, took it home and set it up. That fucker booted in 28 seconds flat. It burned a whole CD in less than 3 minutes. I was in my glory with that 1.1 GHz over the 333 MHz that was in my previous computer. I could have wet myself.

After a mere 3-1/2 years of use and abuse, my computer decided to take a shit on me for some unknown reason. It wasn't pretty. I lost some unimportant stuff (I'm a freak about backing up things) but got out of it relatively unscathed. Getting back to work, of course, involved doing a SYSTEM RECOVERY. In the apparent great wisdom of the powers that be, recovery CDs are NOT made available with the purchase of a new PC like they used to be, but it's not a complicated process to WIPE YOUR ENTIRE SYSTEM and start over from scratch, especially if you've backed up your junk.

No big deal. I was cruising again.

For a while.

It was maybe a year and a half later. The computer started bogging down on everything. It took 10 minutes to boot up and 10 minutes to shut down. If you opened more than one application, the whole computer would freeze and everything would show "not responding," which is really a bitch when you need one program to LISTEN to the dictation and a second program to TRANSCRIBE the dictation, and let's not even talk about having open an internet browser to research terminology. Task manager would take 10 minutes to open. It was officially a pile of shit. Then I got the bright idea, "Well, system recovery fixed it before, maybe it will again!"

So I tried it, and IT WORKED! Only by this time, XP Home (the OS on this hunk of shit) required Service Pack 2 and about 4800 security patches, so it took roughly 9-1/2 years off my life having to sit through downloads and installations. And putting all my shit back on the PC again. But I was up and running again! FOUR DAYS LATER. . . I was right back in the same boat and in a fit of screaming expletives at the computer and threatening to tie it to the rear bumper of the car and take it for a ride, I reformatted it AGAIN. And reinstalled AGAIN. And put my shit back on the computer AGAIN.

Now another year later, my computer took a shit on me yet one more time, and it was a big dirty stinky one, too. Fortunately, I had backup CDs in hand and just said SCREW YOU as I gleefully hit the system recovery option.

Do you want to do a system restore or a system recovery? Fuck that, I want to wipe this dirty fucker clean and put it out of my misery. RESTORE. MY. ASS.

Do you want to do a non-destructive application recovery or a destructive system recovery? Huh? I thought I just answered that question.

I did it. I wiped my hard drive, user partition, whatever the fuck you want to call it, I don't care. This time, for the life of me I couldn't figure out why it didn't ask me to download and install SP2. The computer worked great without it, so who gives a shit, right? It was running faster than ever, I could open 45 applications if I wanted and nothing even blinked, and Task Manager opened in about a nanosecond. All was good. I was shitting rainbows and puppy dogs.

For TWO DAYS.

In reading about XP, I've figured out what the problem is. HP churned out about a gazillion of these piles of shit with only 128 MB of RAM, pre-loaded them with Microsoft's shitty programs, so in the end all you have is a big pile of shit. I found out that the minimum recommended RAM for running XP is 256, so why the hell did they build them with only 128? And why the FUCK does it now cost me now $44.95 per module (2 needed) to get maximum RAM (512) on this pile of shit that's already 6 years old?

During the last update, I finally saw the forest for the trees. This thing ran great when I got it, ran great for a while each time I "recovered" it (factory installation at that time did NOT include SP2), and started turned to shit immediately after downloading and installing SP2.

Incidentally, my very first computer was purchased in 1995, an Acer Acros with a 386 processor and loaded with Windows 3.1. And guess what? I still have it, and I STILL USE IT! And even though it has no ethernet connections (the reason why I upgraded to the computer prior to this one, also an HP Pavilion), it's STILL a better computer than BOTH of my HPs put together!

Is Your Vagina Depressed?

I had to. I couldn't help it. I was reading FOX News and saw this link, and I had to click it. It was an overwhelming, irresistible urge.

Is your vagina depressed? Here, I'm thinking someone's got a cure for not getting enough nookie, but it's Dr. Manny interviewing a woman and her doctor about vulvodynia (chronic pain syndrome involving the vulvar/vaginal area).

No, it's not a cure for a depressed vagina.

My Girl, My Heart

My daughter, age 3, cracks me up. She's a night owl like me, bless her little heart, and it makes for a rather exasperating bedtime routine when she has to get up for school the next morning.

"Go to bed."
"No way."
"Go to bed now."
"No way."
"You have school in the morning."
"No way, Jose."
"If you don't go to bed, then you can't go to school."
"NO WAY, JOSE!"

I just don't get it. When she was 2, she bugged me for a whole year to go to school and got PISSED when I told her she needed to wait until she was 3. She loves school. She loves the bus. She loves her book bag. She loves her teacher. She loves her friends. She loves drawing and coloring and counting and reciting the alphabet and writing her name. She just WILL NOT GO TO BED. Actually, I do get it but it's a nightmare of a story that no parent and child should have to live through but do, more often than you might think, let alone recite it.

It's 11:30 p.m. and she still refuses to go to bed after 3-1/2 hours of the above conversation. She is busy sharpening pencils for school, even though she won't go. I have an electric sharpener and a box of about 200 pencils for the kids for school, and she thinks she needs to sharpen each and every one of them. Now. Before bed. As though her life depends on each pencil being sharp. Or maybe she's just stalling.

She puts the pencil in the sharpener and grinds away. She pulls it out and sees it's just not pointy enough and puts it back in. More grinding. More checking. More grinding. When she's done, the brand-new, unsharpened pencil might be 3 inches long.

"Another," she says.
"No way," I say.
"Another."
"No way, Jose."
"ANOTHER!"
"NO WAY, JOSE!"

My God, I've turned into a 3-year-old. But you get the picture. She drew 14 E's on the bedroom wall with a crayon. She took the blue marker and "painted" her fingernails since I didn't get to painting her nails with polish in a timely manner. To top it off, she demanded that I let her help me do my Copaxone injection (she likes to push the button on the autoject device) then laughed when I said "ouch." She's not a beast, though, because it started bleeding and she started crying, grabbing for tissues and screaming "Momma owie bleeeeeeeeeeeeeding!" I think (I hope) she's not really laughing about the fact that it hurt but at the face I made when I said it.

Future of America

Still trying to figure out exactly what he's trying to prove. Maybe it's just me.



Yeah, I'd vote for him for President. He can eat powdered donuts without licking his lips. Wonder if he can kiss ass without licking them, too?

My Creative Juices Have Dried Up

I want to be funny. I used to be funny, and proud of every giggle, chuckle, smirk, and belly laugh I could elicit. I think my well has gone dry or something. Or maybe it's just the traumas I've suffered starting with the loss of my mother and ending with the confirmation of my longstanding suspicions that" something is terribly wrong" (documented by one of my myriad of doctors in a consultation note, in a sentence essentially seeming to dismiss me as a flake, when in fact there WAS something terribly wrong). Or maybe it's just due to my cutting back on Mountain Dew consumption.

Where did my funny go? Did someone steal it and sell it on eBay? Is it like the Detachable Penis: I left it somewhere and now I need to stumble upon it at a street sale, buy it back for $17, wash it off and put it back on? I can't believe that it's, like, DEAD or anything. That would just be wrong. That would be cruel. That would be the ultimate cosmic joke.

Something feels like it's missing, that's for sure. I'll look around some more, maybe put up reward posters or something. I'll let you know when I find it, or hopefully you'll just notice it on your own.

Ah, Fluck It

I've changed and rearranged AGAIN, but I'm not done. I need to put my blog roll back up. Maybe I'll get to it in my next life. Or maybe not.

Is THIS the Face of a CIC?

Well, is it? Is this REALLY the face of our nation?

(This collage is GREAT!)

Crooked Is As Crooked Does

I had a credit card issued by a company that shall remain nameless *cough Chase cough* some years ago, for several years. I missed ONE payment (being admitted to the hospital is no excuse for missing your payment, you know) and the APR jumped from 17% to 30%. ONE payment, mind you - no more, no less. On a balance of almost $7000, this was a huge hit to my wallet and the company REFUSED to budge when I requested a lower rate. The reason? I had canceled the card MYSELF previously. I've been paying 30% interest on this balance for almost 4 years now and haven't had a late payment since, yet they refuse to negotiate in any way, shape, or form. Period. End of story.

I put this into a financial calculator and found I would be paying on this stupid fucking credit card for the next 60+ years, to the tune of well over $100,000 (on $7000 "borrowed"). I almost had a fucking heart attack and a stroke all at once, right there on the spot. Talk about usury, but thanks to the Federal Government, those laws do not apply to banks issuing credit cards that have "National" or "N.A." in their name, blah blah blah.

Finally I had enough and said FUCK YOU. I went to CitiFinancial and applied for a loan. They gave me enough to pay off Chase plus a little extra for some medical bills headed into collections, so I could pay them off and protect my credit rating, which had finally started improving. Yeah, it was at like 25% APR, but it hands-down beat the 30% Chase was ass-raping me for and would be paid off in 60 months instead of 60 YEARS. I sure as hell ain't planning to stick around that long, especially not to fork over my cash to fuck faces like that.

I thought things are done, check in hand for the (supposed) payoff balance on the card. They tell me "Well, you see, the billing cycle's already started again and you'll have to pay the accrued interest." "Fine, how much is that?" I ask. "Well, I can't tell you that right now. You'll have to wait for your next statement." Four fucking days into a billing cycle and you can't tell me how much I owe you so I can pay you and be done?

Of course not, because that doesn't fit into their little game.

First day of the next billing cycle, I log on to my account online to pay the shitting balance. You know, the "accrued interest" for the 4 days of the previous cycle. $143.74.

WTF? For FOUR MOTHER-FUCKING DAYS?

Whatever. I pay it and once again think it's done.

But. . . of course, it's not.

I get ANOTHER statement from Chase with the next billing cycle. MORE accrued interest on the $143.74 for that single day. $1.00. ONE FUCKING DOLLAR? ARE YOU SHITTING ME?!?!

So next month I will have to pay you ANOTHER $1.00 for the "accrued interest" on that $1.00 - into infinity?

Oh, they were so kind as to "adjust" that $1.00 charge, of course. Not that it mattered, since I'm done with Chase. The day I paid it off, I took the check from Citi directly into the local Chase branch and bellied up to the counter. The gal who helped me asked me if I were interested in any financial services through Chase. I'm thinking to myself, "Uhhhh. . . I just brought you a check issued by YOUR COMPETITOR to pay you off, and you're asking me if I want MORE?" I told her "Not through Chase. I'll take my business to Citibank, since they didn't screw me for years without the benefit of a little Vaseline." It was mean, yes, and I know it wasn't HER fault, but I was pissed.

And We're Surprised . . . WHY?

Breaking news! (Wonder how long it's been kept under wraps before the media finally got hold of it, and how the media managed to get hold of it in the first place).

WHAT'S IN YOUR WATER?

Why, drugs of course. Yet people act surprised! The public education system in this country has somehow managed to fail to instill basic biologic processes about the human body and the fact that WHAT YOU CONSUME COMES BACK OUT OF YOU IN ONE FORM OR ANOTHER, AND THEN WHERE DOES IT GO? Lesson 1: You take prescription medications for psychotic disorder (neuroleptics - powerful mind-altering drugs), or any drug for that matter, including antibiotics and hormones. Your body does not metabolize the entire dose and the remainder is eliminated from your body (#1 is always cited, but I have to believe #2 is also responsible). These remnants are not 100% cleaned from the end product, your drinking water, as noted in this article.

Naturally, the first thing that came to MY mind when catching this and seeing that antibiotics are being found in the drinking water was: Drug-resistant bacteria. Seriously, think about it. More and more people are taking more and more shit for more and more ailments (or filling prescriptions and not finishing them, which also contributes to the problem, and flushing them down the toilet to be released into the environment). Am I the only one who's noticed the aggressiveness and increase in incidence of, oh, let's say MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus)???

It's claimed that there are not enough data to make a determination about the long-term effects of traces of pharmaceuticals in our drinking water, but this isn't exactly rocket science. If "you are what you eat," then every time you chug down a glass of H2O full of sedatives, analgesics, anti-convulsant medications, anti-anxiety medications, antibiotics, and artificially produced hormones - the whole gamut of artificial, man-manufactured drugs - you're putting this shit into your body and even at low concentrations it has to have some effect, even on a cellular level.

This goes along with what I've tinkered with in my mind for ages: We're destroying ourselves as a species, in more ways than the obvious. We've implemented vaccines that, while they've saved lives, have allowed populations to explode where nature would have "culled the herd." We've introduced foreign substances into our bodies (drugs), leading to our loss of resistance to naturally occurring viral and bacterial species, which we then treat with MORE drugs. There are increases in disorders such as autism and autoimmune diseases and cancers. Maybe if we'd stop messing with Mother Nature, we wouldn't be in this boat.

Yes, it sounds cruel and heartless and I know I'm talking about human lives, but history has shown us that SHIT HAPPENS. As one example, think about the plague and it's long history in human society, the causes and effects - both positive and negative. Now we have modern plagues: Bird flu, AIDS, meningitis, MRSA, West Nile virus, and many others. It's only a matter of time before we vaccinate/medicate ourselves right out of existence.

Horror of Horrors

To be told by a 7-year-old child that her mother hits her on her knees and she is afraid of her mother (which the child has already reported to a CPS worker, who did nothing, stating she didn't feel it was "relevant"). When asked WHY the mother hits the child, the child's response: "My mom hits me so she can take pictures of me and make my daddy go to jail."

The same "mother" who has on 8 occasions filed malice complaints against the child's father (again, CPS workers did nothing, even though malicious filing is illegal and an activity to which the mother readily admitted in the course of conducting a custody battle) and then sent a Laf-O-Gram via instant messenger when CPS swooped in and took not only THAT child, but ALL the children in the home, including his WIFE'S children. The father and his wife have yet to get their names cleared from the Central Child Abuse Registry, where they were listed upon removal of their children - without a plea of guilty/not guilty, without a trial, and based solely on "hearsay" evidence.

People are sick, beating on their kids, but that's just EVIL to beat on them to try to build a custody case against the other parent. When she has accomplished her mission and annihilated the children's father's life, when the children are of no use to her anymore, what will she do to them then? Will we find them in tote boxes with their heads severed, beaten, tortured, and murdered by their so-called "mother"?

Almost - But Not Quite

My 1-year blog-iversary. But. . . I've allowed myself to become quite the slacker with regards to my posting and thought maybe I should do it now. . . Just in case. . . That's just the way I'm built.

Yes, I know I'm strange, so I don't need you to point out the obvious.

It's interesting to see how this little chunk of internet real estate has metamorphosed over the past year, both in appearance and in content. When I started, mostly I just wanted a place to spew some mental diarrhea. I used a canned Blogger template and let it be. I talked about what was on my mind and what I was interested in (hence, "what floats my boat"). Needless to say, I was a bit shocked that other people were actually reading it and coming back for more. I had "the funny" for a while and a lot of people were swinging by for a peek, usually courtesy of some fucked-up Google search string. I loved changing the "look" of the place, even though I know now that most people read these things in readers and probably don't see the "pretties." And, good grief, I could write about damn near anything and have a good time with it. I loved blogging. I loved it so much, I had 3 of the fucking things. It was glorious.

Then the shit hit the fan.

September 12, 2007: Not-so-random events occurred in the culmination of a plot devised by an evil witch that sent me into a downward spiral, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Many regular readers who used to come here (I imagine for the funny, which was now MIA) fled the scene of my trainwreck in progress, screaming and flailing their arms in horror. None of them even had the courtesy to dial 911 on their way out. Thanks. Maybe they'll be back, maybe they won't. In the meantime, I made changes that make my place a bit more inconspicuous on Google search so I don't get many visits from that end, either, and now my readers and I are a cozy community of, like, FOUR.

February 1, 2008: I was restored to my position as a human being in the eyes of the law, the shattered remnants of my life reunited to make a whole ME again. I won't say it was the best day of my life, since that honor is reserved for the days my children were brought into the world, but it was pretty close, and I no longer felt like I needed to crawl in a hole and pull the dirt in behind me. You can bet your bottom dollar I won't stand idly by and allow that walking, talking pile of feces try to destroy me again, though.

But back to the blog. . . Maybe I've found my funny again, which is really the important part to me anyhow. I didn't like who I'd become but now that things are better, I can dig around the recesses of the cesspool that is my mind, hose off what I want to keep and show you the gems that were hiding there all along.

Gross.

More of My Confusion

WHY do people ask for an explanation if they have:

• No intention of letting you speak more than 4.2 words before interrupting you because they already have preformed notions of what the answer will be, usually something that makes you look like a retard, a scam artist, or just a plain old jackass (even if their version of events is way off base).
• The ability to twist those 4.2 words to fit their own malignant schemes to purposely make you look like said retard, scam artist, or just plain old jackass.
• The inclination to misconstrue any information you might have imparted upon them, had they allowed you to speak your piece without interrupting and took what you had to say for face value rather than with the spin they were so courteous as to put on it for you.
  
• The need to act like the explanation, if and when you finally do get it out in its entirety and with any coherency, went in one ear and right out the other without sticking to SOMETHING in the space between?

Second, WHY do these people then tell you that if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask, when they have no intention in the first place of answering them - after all, they're the ones who have the right to question you, not the other way around.

YOU MIGHT HEAR ME, BUT YOU'RE NOT LISTENING TO WHAT I AM SAYING.

Insanely Evil?

I don't know why I get such a kick out of this. Maybe I'm truly a meanie at heart?

Nah. It's just a commercial anyhow - it's SUPPOSED to make us laugh, especially when the guy gets his sack smacked.

What's Next?

Childhood Spanking Leads to Sexual Problems in Adulthood.

What's next? Hugs and kisses lead to sexual problems? Fatty foods? Carbohydrates? Owning a puppy as a child, or maybe NOT owning a puppy as a child? Not having enough coloring crayons in your box?

I'm so sick of the stupid shit money is wasted on to study. I've got a clue for you: What leads to sexual problems in adulthood? In most cases, a parent with a sexual problem. I know a story of a "woman" with two daughters who exposed them to and left them unattended with not one but TWO registered sexual offenders on different occasions during the children's younger years, had sexual intercourse in front of the children, attempted to coach one child to make accusations of sexual abuse against THREE different males when the mother did not get her way and as a means of revenge, admitted to routinely "examining" the girls' genitalia for "abuse," and was alleged by one of the girls to have been the perpetrator herself of sexual abuse against the child.

What did the authorities do? Nothing of significance - against the mother, anyhow.

I know this is not an isolated case, and knowing this, it's no wonder children grow up dysfunctional, not just sexually but psychologically, socially, and morally.