Disturbances

Not much of a post here, but.......just a few things that disturb me lately....

1. I keep getting myspace "Friend Requests" from middle-aged women in far-off places. I was getting used to receiving requests from chicks named "LatinoBabe" and shit like that, advertising porn sites. That was fine - I just deleted them. But these profiles are of seemingly innocent, post-soccer-mom types with no detail. I delete them right away, because I just don't trust that they are genuine. One of these ladies has sent me two messages, saying nothing but "hello." I have a feeling that if I were to reply, my computer might crash or start sending out ads for free gift certificates for Texas Roadhouse or something.

2. Totally unrelated, but there was just an advertisement for new countertops that actually resist bacteria or something like that. How do they do this, I wonder? I remember buying socks once that supposedly resisted odor. My feet aren't actually that stinky, so I never really judged whether these socks worked. But I look into the future and I can see products coming such as "bacteria-resistant ground beef" and I feel frightened. Because humankind has co-existed with bacteria for thousands of years, but suddenly we are to live in fear of them, despite the fact that there are several million of them per square inch on your body. And of course, news stories like the big "Spinach Scare of 2006" don't do any good to ease people's anxiety. I work with several people who seem to live in fear that their skin will rot away if they don't immediately sanitize it after touching something potentially "infested." If the news bureaus get their way, we will all have that fear soon.

(I am now worried that those of you reading will think that I am a filthy beast who cares not about the germs crawling on his bodice. YES, I do wash my hands. Very frequently.)

3. Not really disturbing - but I have moved into a neighborhood with a lot of neighboring dogs, and they like to bark at EVERYTHING. They don't bark all day, or hours on end, like some dogs do. They just bark at anything that moves, for a minute or so, then stop. So every time I hear one of these dogs bark, I wonder if someone has pulled up to my house, or if there is some commotion outside that I should be aware of, and it makes me want to look out the window cautiously. I have to strive to get used to it, I guess. One of these dogs is "Mr. Beefy", who lives with 70-year-old Pat across the way. He's not very beefy, but I guess he came with that name.

I have been working at it for 2 weeks, and I am only about 25 percent finished with the scraping of my house, in order to remove the chipped paint so that I can prime/paint. Every time I get motivated to go out and climb the ladder and get to work, it rains, or something comes up, or I lose my motivation. I need a kick in the ass, or I need to organize a "let's scrape paint for fun" party. BYOB - lead poisoning is supplied. Behr Paints (a brand sold at Home Depot - very premium) has this website where you can choose paint colors and apply them to various "cyberhomes" on their website, so that you can see the colors in action. Kind of cool - but of course the houses they show are very nice, albeit of many different styles. It's a nice feature, but not very realistic - I mean, the paint will make my house look better, but there will still be blemishes and ugly windows and a bad roof. I wish they had homes like mine on the Behr website, so that I could realistically see what their paints look like on a banged-up, weather-beaten old stick-built house.

Or I should just give up on any type of technology and just mix up some whitewash, buy some oil lamps and a woodstove, and live off the grid. It is so tempting sometimes! Wow, I just got off subject, but I have always had it in my "life plan" that I would live some sort of simple existence along the way, someday, where I was self-sufficient and lived simply. Of course, that simplicity would have to include a computer though. And a fan, because I have to have that "noise" when I sleep. Enough. Good night!