Stung By a Bee

So, Saturday night as I was coming into my house, I was stung by a bee. I'm not sure it was a bee, but from the little bump that stayed after the horrible allergic reaction, my family and I can only gather that something either stung me or bit me, and most likely it was a bee. Anyway, I walked in and began itching under my bra. At first, we thought this was a reaction to some new detergent or just from sweat. Well, then it spread up my shoulders, up my neck, down my stomach, began itching on my feet and hands. And it wasn't just hives - it was red, shiny, and looked like I had second-degree burns. All of this happened in a span of about ten minutes.

Did we go to the hospital? Of course not, because I wasn't gasping or swelling.

What we did do was go buy Benadryl, use some antibiotic acne medication that I had on hand, and follow that up with some itching lotion. The next morning it had gone away everywhere but my hands, which were stiff and shiny and with bumps all over my wrists. I sat through most of the day with my hands in my lap (when I was awake - I also had some generic Prednisone left over from a previous inflammation on my legs and spent most of Sunday sleeping heavily).

Everything is fine now. During parts of Sunday and Monday I had stabbing pains in the side right where that little original bump still is, but even those have passed. I'd still like to know what the hell it was that stung me, though, so I can avoid it in the future.


Meanwhile, I'd also like to declare that my divorce from a certain recapping website is now final. I've tried to stick to a recap here, a forum read there [I refuse to post ever again after the terrible (but also hilariously victorious) Jay Leno Show debacle]. But even the recaps are really, really boring. Or wrong. Or just there for the recapper to psychoanalyze himself or tell us how he loved Billy Crudup in Eat, Pray, Love. NGS used to say she found they had developed a mean bite that she didn't like, but I still found the meanness funny. But after having given it one more go, venturing in the latest recap of Project Runway, I just don't think I can take it anymore.

First of all the recapper seemed lazy, barely describing anything at all and only glossing over each event without nary a witty remark. Second, he seems like he doesn't even like this show anymore. I remember when recappers used to be in-the-know about everything that went on behind-the-scenes. Not anymore. Tim Gunn was laughing 'til he almost cried and told a designer to turn that lump of coal up her ass into a diamond. Now, it used to be we'd get the scoop on how Tim Gunn had had a petit mal seizure a few nights before, cut his face and bruised himself badly by falling on a bunch of folding chairs, and was probably on a hefty dose of pain meds during filming. Did we get said info (which is all true, by the way)? Did we get any questions about why the ambulance at the end of the episode was placed at the end of this episode when it was really at the end of the previous challenge that THREE ambulance were called (one for Tim Gunn, one for an out designer for unknown reasons, and the shown third for a designer named Ivy)? No questions.

I just thought the whole recap, and a lot of the recaps on other shows, was just boring and uninteresting, which I suppose are the same thing but also I suppose it needed repeating.

Plus, I have divorced other readers. A good number of them are stuck up their own asses. I'm really tired of the attitude that this website is where real intellectuals go, and how seriously PC it seems to be getting. And by PC, I mean people who have to point out how disrespectful every remark made BY someone TO someone is. Or just how overanalyzed every reaction is. Casanova (a Spanish designer) did a cartwheel when he wasn't voted off? That means he didn't respect the judges' collective descision that he is worth another shot. It can't mean he was HAPPY TO NOT BE OFF THE SHOW. Oh, no, it was really a big fuck-you. This is being debated right now. Also being debated? Whether one designer, who kept interrupting another designer, should have been asked to stop talking over designer #2. Shouldn't we give #1 a pass because she's socially awkward and just thinks she's being encouraging even though it comes off as rude? Should it matter if she's always talking over people if she's doing it with intellectual insights into fashion/technique/analysis? The other desgingers asked #1 to stop talking and somehow, that was rude OF THEM.

I will not even begin the story of the Jay Leno Show argument.

I have more examples. The House thread and all the people who point out every little medical (or plotline) implausibility. People who pick apart Hugh Laurie's American accent because he pronounced one word un-New-Jersian. People who pick apart Tim Gunn because he uses a word pseudo-incorrectly (he said "Tin Woodsman" instead of "Tin Woodman" - isn't he smarter than that? I'm so disappointed in his supposed intellect. Really? REALLY? Get a life! - No, that's not what I want to say - Fuck off!). It is not intellectual to nitpick. Not to the point of having to find a flaw just so you can say you found it. It's your pet peeve when people say "Woodsman?" FUCK OFF!

Oh, and because I will never again log in I will never type the post I've been dying to for a while: To the person who said "cacaphonous" is a sound word but Tim Gunn used it as a sight word, I give you synesthesia. Scroll down to the bottom for the best definition. It was totally appropriate that he would see cacaphony when looking at a garment, used in the poetic sense. Fuck off!

(I've been watching Project Runway the most recently, so that's why most of my examples are from there.)

Anyway, that was a way long post. Thanks for reading it, you one, faithful reader you. I hope it doesn't annoy you when people say "Woodsman."

Mark's Costco Chicken Crisis

So, I follow two or three blogs and I introduced you to one of them a while back in the whole late-night mess. It's written by a guy named Mark Evanier and it's pretty entertaining. The other day, he wrote about an incident at Costco where a few guys hogged every rotisserie chicken that particular Costco had at the moment. You can read the original post here and a follow-up here. A lady was so upset that she would have to wait forty minutes for her chicken she threw a massive temper tantrum to the point of using foul language, insulting employees, and making other customers uncomfortable.

One of the things Mr. Evanier says is that the employees had to take it. That is Costco's problem for making it a policy to accept that behavior. I work at a clothing store, and at the first cuss word or insult hurled at one of our employees the customer would be asked to leave. If the tantrum continued they would be banned from the store. To an extent we have to try to be patient, but it's all about the customer's behavior. This lady's was way out of line and unnacceptable.

My biggest beef with this story, though, is the reaction of the other customers, including Mr. Evanier, who you should know I have a lot of respect for. But, none of them spoke up or countered this lady. I'm sorry, but as soon as someone declares she speaks on behalf of everyone I'm going to interject. Furthermore, other customers should have pointed out how they understood the situation and knew it wouldn't be the norm. OTHER CUSTOMERS should have done something. Is it their job? No. Is it the right thing to do? Yes.

But what does this lady think will be the overall outcome of this experience? Costco can't change their routine for these chickens, really, because they can't make excess chickens for the reason they stated and also for the reason that if they didn't have the two-hour rule this lady would probably constantly get old chickens. She wants a fresh chicken but doesn't want to wait while someone else does the work for her? You can't always have fresh and immediate. You just can't, lady.

P.S. I think the word "chicken" should be plural like "fish" and "sheep."

The Reincarnation of the Netbook

After an automatic update earlier this morning, the netbook died. It was stuck in a loop of telling me that Windows couldn't start normally, so when I would try the thousand things the internet told me to do (I got on my father's computer) it would just loop back to the same screen over and over again. Thankfully, our local rent-to-own shoppe - which my mother has a serious relationship with - told me that there was a secret way to recover the system.

So I lost everything I had stored on here. Luckily, I have learned the hard way to back up anything I fear losing on a flash drive, so I didn't lose much. I did lose the Kindle, and even though I got it back later, I lost all of my notes and marks. Small price to pay to have one of my prized possessions back.

The sucky part was that right after the computer recovered a storm hit and we lost power. I hadn't downloaded the Kindle yet at that point, so I had to read a book - a real book - by flashlight to pass the time. It was kind of hilarious. This is another pro in my long-standing debate on whether to shell out the money for an actual Kindle: it would have, most likely, been able to sustain power to read through that two-hour period. But here's another con: we could have been without power for a long time, and a regular book needs nothing other than a source of light. There's always candlelight.