Reading: Artist of the Floating World and Don Quijote

Watching: Amélie again, probably, and I hope I stay awake this time (note: not a fault of the film)

Moving: pretty much nothing

House: pretty much nothing

Garden: picked the pumpkin. Pumpkins, any cockatiel (or maybe just mine) can tell you, are the scariest thing in the world.

28 September 2002: List

Official Start of the List of Stuff I Just Don't Get:

• Wearing shoes paler than your hose. Especially navy hose with taupe shoes. Also brown or black hose with white shoes.
• Wearing white shoes.
• Wearing a skirt that's wider than it is long. If you need the wide, you can't handle the long.
• Wearing shorts whose hem is above the point at which your thighs stop touching. Thighs touching is not a crime (it will recommence being one when mine have ceased to, so watch it), but when friction works the cloth up the inside of the thigh so the short-leg is longer on the outsides and higher on the insides, that look just emphasizes the fat. Really.
• Skorts
• Acid-washed denim. This is, thankfully, out of fashion. However,
• That new denim that looks like it's been dragged behind a truck is not
• Low-rise jeans that show the high back of thong underwear especially when the lisa-annoyer in question is seated. Please stand up. Please. Because I'm not even over the
• Bra straps with spaghetti-strapped top look, though a pretty bra and small bosom make it tolerable.
• Long hair with bangs or how this is different from a mullet.
• Smoking while on oxygen. I think I've mentioned this.
• Panhandling while smoking while on oxygen.
• The person ahead of me in line today who waited until she was at the cashier to ask her companion (not in line with her, involving shouting) which of two pink baby outfits he preferred. Not at all to my surprise, he had no opinion. She lay them on the counter, pondering, and I suggested, out loud-- which, though rude, renews my faith in my self qua loud abrasive self--that while she decided I could just make my purchase. (She bought the footie pajamas instead of the sack thing. Though not quickly.)
• Not fumbling with your parcels and so forth to extract bus fare while you're waiting in line so that when the bus does come, you make the bus even later.
• Saying "waiting on line" instead of "waiting in line." Regionalism? Or just stupid? Maybe a regionalism. The really stupid thing is saying
• "Where are you at?" or "Where is it at?" This sounds crass; furthermore the "at" is implied in the "where." Similarly,
• "When was the last time...?" No. "What was the last time..." or "when did you last [x]?"
• Greer Garson as Elizabeth Bennet. Wrong, wrong, wrong. (However, Lawrence Olivier as Mr. Darcy is yummy.)
• Bumpersticker philosophy. Among them, "Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven." This is pretentious. Also, "Mean people suck." Well, maybe, but saying so makes you mean yourself, see? (Bumperstickers announcing a band or a school or even a sports team aren't necessarily bad. But "If God isn't a Broncos fan, why are sunsets blue and orange?" is bad.)
• Long hair with bangs. What is the difference between this and a mullet? I don't know
• Outie belly buttons. I know this is something you have no control over, but ick. Happily, I have seen only two in my life
• Complicated hair processes that are allowed to grow out. Roots look worse than bland hair; weaves starting two inches from the scalp look worse than thin hair
• Similarly, fake nails with millimeters of real nail at the base
• Not picking up after your dog who has just defecated in my flower garden
• Mowing my grass. Damn it, these twelve feet are my property; those three feet are yours. Long grass has long roots and thus needs less water. Furthermore, it's mine. Geroff
• Watering grass when it's not your watering day
• Watering your grass such that your sprinkler sprinkles the sidewalk on its way to the easement. It's called drought, people
• Why Noah Webster converted "plough" to "plow" but not "drought" to "drowt." Because it's ugly? But "plow" is ugly too. I didn't understand how to pronounce "draught" for years. And there are two pronunciations for "slough" as a noun and yet a third as a verb. I love this language
• Watering grass
• Sod companies growing lots and lots of sod in northern Colorado during a drought when food producers have no water left and stand to waste the water they've paid dearly for all season long if their crops die.
• Growing lots and lots of sod
• "Covenant communities" that require sod and sprinkler systems in the high arid plains
• "Covenant communities" that forbid clotheslines for purported risk to property values
• Preferring electric-dried sheets to air-dried sheets. This is not just wrong but heretical
• Drying dishes with electricity
• Drying dishes by hand (even few enough to fit in a single rack)
• McMansions
• NPR's Car Talk. I stand to be disowned from Charenton for this opinion, but it stands
• Most deejays at all
• Hence, commercial radio
• Not using the mute button, if one is available, during television commercials. Too bad such a thing is impratical for radio
• Colorado Public Radio using an AM station for talk. Leaving the FM station for music is fine, and maybe talk doesn't need to be in stereo, but it does need to be audible without static. Oops
• Automatic transmission, except I have a little bit of sympathy for you if you're regularly in stop-and-go traffic
• Stop-and-go traffic
• Traffic
• "Satin" string Christmas tree ornaments
• Why squirrels can't eat one tomato in five parts but instead take five bites out of five different tomatoes
• How squirrels can be so cute yet so despicable. Couldn't they be scaled, to make hating them easier?
• That spiders do not understand which side of the door they should stay on
• Why I can't tesser between Denver and my goddaughter even just a couple of times a month

This list will be updated. Oh yes.