I went to a bookstore at lunch.  I was perusing the shelves and came across the Graphic Novels section.  I've only read one graphic novel, Cruddy by Lynda Barry (Poodle with a Mohawk). The novel was darkly humorous though the illustrations didn't do a thing for me one way or another.  Overall, not a staggering work, but entertaining.  That's what you expect from literature that leans heavily on sketches, right?  So, today I scanned some of the titles to see what I might find and came across 'The Life of Che Guevara – A Graphic Novel'  Yes, the revolutionary socialist hero's life captured…in cartoon.  Like Batman and Destroyer Duck.  Somehow that seems as well-played as Che's likeness in flowers and peace-signs on t-shirts sold in Urban Outfitters.  Che Guevara scratch lottery tickets.  Scratch and sniff. Smells like poor people.

This afternoon I was in a meeting with a man who, according to my boss, Janyce, 'has problems working for or with women'.  Definitely he is not a lover of eye contact.  I tried and ended up almost throwing my back out.  I stopped short of stabbing his ocular orbs out with cocktail swords and holding them up to my face. I love a challenge.  I love a cocktail. Unlike the Che marketing team, I recognize going too far.  This guy who can't make eye contact with women is on my project team and so, as his vaginate leader, I intend to help him Overcome.  I'm seriously considering shaving my eyebrows and drawing on new ones to match my mood.  Anger, surprise, befuddlement….I think if one is drawing on one's face during a meeting, all eyes will tend to be on that one's graphic face, yes?  I've been wrong before…with that bag o' rattlers team building exercise, for instance.  Still, it's a theory and its why they pay me the middle bucks.   I'll put a model reproductive system in the center of our conference room.  "Ask the Orofice" will be the ultimate in planning strategy.  I think it would be good for people to have to speak their mind into a gaping feminine void. 

I bought a book about a woman's experience growing up in a brutal alcoholic family and becoming fun and functional and well-to-do against the odds. Sober. There aren't any drawings.  There never will be.  She's asdfjkl;…100%.

Up until a few weeks ago, I never would have thought I’d have to see or hear my longtime friend and co-worker Janus R. make reference to Britney Spears Nether Regions.  Not because it isn’t a topic related to our Important Work for the Government. We often discuss (on our own time, as per BLM IB entitled ‘General Rules and Guidelines for Use of Vocal Chords during Normal Working Hours’) more personal things, such as our children and books, politics and how hungry I am around lunchtime. 
I guess of all the things that life has to offer and that we have to discuss, the genitals of a vacuous has-been teen pop star has just never seemed likely.  For the 13 years I have worked closely with this highly intelligent and logical woman, I have never heard her reference either ‘Britney Spears’ or ‘vaginas’, not literally nor figuratively.  I feel sad that somehow I have contributed to this no longer being the case.  I think, in fact, it is the very thing, in this complicated quagmire of ridiculous bureaucratic buffoonery and outrage, for which I feel the most bad.

It seems that sometime back in November or December (I don’t have the dates because I’ve never actually seen anything official) my computer or my login (haven’t seen anything official) accessed a website or an image that contained a link to, or actual graphic of (???) the unpantied region that is Ms. Britney Spears’ Lady Garden.    Some say it may be on my computer right now as I type these words.  (I did do a search on *brit* and this only yielded a projection file for the British National Grid and a font called Britanic. I’m no Donald Lee, but I assume that these are Safe for the Workplace and not what all the fuss is about).

I’ve been asked, “Katy, how did this happen. What did you do? Do you secretly PINE for young, blonde, bat-shit crazy bimbettes?”
The answers are, “I don’t know, I don’t know and most assuredly not. Were I to turn suddenly, ravingly, link-clickingly queerer than green ink, I would suspect that my tastes would run more toward Christian Amnapour or perhaps even that chick with the big teeth who played a boxer in a movie…I forget her name but she gets beat up a lot in movies and could be hot if I could convince myself she were a 23 year old guy, and I had to, because I was in prison or on a women-only deserted island, or something….

I guess my only idea is that I am on the web a lot, as per the BLM MEMO GENERAL RULES AND GUIDELINES FOR BLM COMPUTER SYSTEM USE, and I access sites that I assume are okay, like Raw Story ( a news site, but it has a lot of entertainment news and it refreshes automatically if you don’t close the window, which I frequently have not. I like to keep informed on the news. To enhance my job skills and such), or The Stranger, an alternative weekly that has an online ‘slog’ wherein the writers post news updates constantly and since my daughter is one such writer, I have historically accessed it, too, a lot (during my personal time) and have read many a post, during my own time, , and felt my job skills enhanced each and every time.
Did I ever knowingly access an x-rated site or image?
No.
I have a framed copy of Britney’s hoo-hoo now, though, thanks to my loving family.
I have seen the picture. It’s lurid and stupid and not worth all the meetings caused on its behalf.
Someone besides me owes Janis and vaginas both an apology.

Remember when I said that I'd update every day? Yeah? Well, turns out I'm a fucking liar.

Last night Jodi and I worked Echo and Jen out at GL.  They both did really well. GL is not an easy place to work because its almost 3 acres bordered by 2 canals and bisected with a spring that makes for 3 foot tall riparian grasses/weeds, plus piles of dead and dying olive trees interspersed with boggy like conditions, all on a hill.  Poor Jen did a face plant in a mud hole at one point, and gave me the look that only Jen can give, the one that says,

"Here we are again, Dangerously Simple Not Patrick!  I'm getting those sheep for you, the ones I got you 12 minutes ago, through the patch of thistle, and sludge. Your Away whistle this time made me want to howl, I have wet feet and my fabulously curly pantaloons are droopy with marsh, festooned with non-edibles….but later at home I'm going to poop on the patio and you can pick it up!"

Scout sat by the gate giving us The Pox with her mind.  I don't want to work her at GL yet. Someday…

That's all for now because I'm having a shitty day. The kind that makes me open and close with expletives. 

I watched a documentary on Woody Guthrie the other night.  I found it interesting that in 1941 the Dept. of the Interior paid Woody to write songs about the building of the Bonneville Dam.  He wrote 26 songs in a month glorifying the construction. 
I think its high time that the DOI dusted off the folksinger/songwriter job description and put it back on the shelf.  I’m going to submit it as part of my Project Plan for a nondescript technology upgrade that I’m involved in. No one ever really reads those things…they just glance at the bulleted items and then SIGN THEM.

• Migrate webservice from AIX O/S to Windows Server
• Outputs to include KML
• User Defined Savable Views
• Caching to mobile device
• Songs about policy and such

See how you can sneak that sort of thing in?
And because I hate my job, I’ll write the qualificitions for the position and ask that I be laterally moved into it.  Nay, PROMOTED into it.
I will hint darkly that if they DON’T put me into the new songwriter for DOI position it’s because of discrimination against My People.  No one will want to dig any deeper into just who I think my people might be. No one ever has, anyway. 

Here are some of the songs I’m already working on:

Ew! Ewe Make me Sick

Sheep Sheep Sheep, Ewe Best Be Movin’ Off
The Bighorns they be comin’
And they don’t need yer cough

*****************************
Cowyboy LIghtnin’

Come on, Ma! Let’s light a fire
Wait 2 years while the pasture’s rested
The fed’s will come and plant some crested
Wheat grass Ho Down

That’s all until I’m getting paid and learn to play some instrument.

When Eric comes home during the summer we have an affectionate ritual I like to call Rollplaying with Red vs Green.  I turn into Atilla the Enviro-Hun and Eric turns into The Only Thing I Want to Recycle. 

This last weekend was no different. 
I was standing in the kitchen in Greeleaf, spooning peanut butter (Western Family, creamy) onto 4 mouse traps and complaining that my thriftstore cowboy boots were chaffing my skin, and that maybe I should aerosol on some sense-dulling chemical…when Eric, who was just standing there, refusing to hold my machete OR spritzer the Wasp spray I kept trying to hand him, (Spring Scent! The last thing they smell is like a fresh seasonal dryer sheet!), when he says to me,

"Why do you hate the environment?"

Now, this is a question that comes up a lot.  It sort of kicks off our roll-play. 

Last time it came up when I wanted to DRIVE 3 miles to the store to get limes for my beer instead of riding my bike and kissing butterflies on the way. He followed me into the garage,
and out onto the driveway. The last thing I hear as I'm rolling up the windows and cranking the air conditioner is,

"Why, Katy, WHY… Hate…Conservation…the earth!!!"

That time I decided to drive all the way to a fruit stand in Eagle to buy GENETICALLY MODIFIED MELON-SIZED limes just to exercise my FREE WILL.  They were too big for my drink, but just right for my point.

Then there was the time before when, after making me watch back to back netflixed episodes of Living Green with Ed, starring frugal (eco-friendly!) funny-in-an-autistic sort of way Ed Begley, Jr.,
and his wife, Factory New Age Blonde, Personality Sold Separately, I suddenly became aware of Intent. We were on our 3rd episode, I'd run out of vodka and realized, simultaneously, that this wasn't a comedy, not intentionally anyway: I was supposed to be LEARNING SOMETHING to MAKE ME A BETTER PERSON. It was like that moment in Soylent Green, only instead of eating people, I was suddenly aware that I was being fed a shitty over the top ideal.

I proclaimed that I hated Ed Begley junior and his bullshit recycled tire clogs and that I wished I had a styrofoam cup because glass was too hard to hold empty.  My wrist hurt with the disappointment of another spent beverage.

Meanwhile, the show had Eric positively writhing in ecstasy.  Low wattage eco-lamps…("You ony need 12 watts to read by if you squint, which is good for your eye muscles!"), raising your own worms for composting….Eric pleaded me to watch ONE MORE EPISODE,

"This one is on PAPER PRODUCTS!" he cried.  I swear he clapped and giggled like a school girl.
On our big High Definition screen Ed was digging through the garbage to investigate evidence of Wanton Waste in the household.

"We have perfectly good hand towels!" Ed cried, finding a small collection (3 tops) of wadded up paper towels huddled in the corner of a half filled trash receptacle.  The camera zoomed to the outrage. Back to Ed's big red face. Out to cover both. 
Ed's hands flew to his head, then to his heart, dramatically.  "OHMYGOD This has to stop!"

Eric was nodding like a solar powered Jesus freak.

"No way, turn this off! It's ruining MY environment!" I said,  "I'd rather have that 10th generation Chinese master from the last episode Feng Shui my woman's bits with the contents of our garage then watch another moment of this …this…ANTI-TIMBER INDUSTRY PROPAGANDA!"  

This Begley guy had Eric at Hand Towel.  I use paper towels FOR EVERYTHING.  I've even made temporary kids clothing. (BRAWNY!) Christmas decorations! (LAZY!)  Sometimes I just like the feel of ripping them off the roll.  But Ed had moved on.

"A HANDDRYER for the BATHROOM!" Eric enthused. "That's ingenious!"

My sarcasm gland released such a stream of bile into my system that I could only stand there cradling my spleen, stuttering expletives.

"Why do you hate conservation?" Eric asked, finally, between shows.

Of course at this point, there isn't too much else to say except,

"Because it hurts the economy."  Something I don't believe or practice except when pushed into a corner by an Ed Begley fan, or the simple love of spring scented death spray.

So, there we were in Greenleaf this last Sunday evening, standing across the kitchen from one another.  Eric, I should mention, refers to wasps as, 'the bees that like Mountain Dew'….he dreams of setting up our 300 yards of Habitrail hamster housing and tubes for the Greenleaf rodents,  fashioning a Hotel California sort of one-way door into it,

"They could have food and water…and a couple little wheels for them to run on…then we can release them back into the wild on weekends!…"

I just stared. 

"We could use those cardboard toilet paper tubes that I've been saving for little dens…"

"I've burned all those in the burn barrel," I told him, putting the baited traps into place. "Along with the plastic grocery bags…and the paper towels that are past their expiration date…"

He gasped.  It wasn't true, but it was what I'd become.

"Want a sandwich?" I offered, motioning toward the peanut butter.

He did not.

"Lunch Hater," I said, making myself one.  I don't actually like sandwiches either though, so I tossed it out into the yard.  Then sprayed it with Spring Freshness.