The answer would be...is there tea?

Just when I start to think that Twitter is just the latest trendy useless time-wasting gadget that I don't half understand, Neil Gaiman goes and posts this:

So I can read utterly random and sometimes interesting little posts by a variety of famous (and not so famous) people, and reply back equally randomly. Hmmm. Twitter: Facebook's obnoxious little sister. I think it's BRILLIANT.

This place is certainly uncontaminated by any brains!

The plot...thickens? Maybe congeals, like a hearty stew of mistrust and antipathy?

This morning, while walking back from a meeting that the boss ended up being postponed, my new coworker decided to warn me about trusting one of my other coworkers (who happens to be a friend of mine who has worked for this place for many, many year, whereas the one giving me the *warning* has been here for all of - what, maybe three months?) by telling me that my friend "plays both sides". I turned to her and said "Yeah. And? Everyone does." She looked at me for a second before walking on ahead of me. See - here's the thing: I'm very upfront about not being full of raging ambition like some of the folks around here. Some of them then make the tremendous mistake of thinking that I'm not secretly as devious and full of duplicitous intent as they are. Nobody suspects the accomodating, quiet one. The one who no one barely notices over there to the side at the meeting? Yeah. That's me. And I am catching every whispered word and eyeroll, noticing where everyone sits, and calculating who is in good with who these days. This is useful information. Then there are the people in the know who sometimes tell me a lot of things they probably shouldn't, if they knew how I could use it. Oh, not that I would, mind you. But...there's also the fact that they don't know that for sure.

As the saying goes..."Give them enough rope..."

Negative karmic indicators

I found a lump on my dog's abdomen, just behind her left leg. It is soft, and moves a little under her skin when you touch it. I don't have enough experience with cancer to know if that is what I'm dealing with. And I'm afraid to confront the possibility just yet. This is why I was awake until around 2 a.m. - I sat up worrying over it and couldn't shut my brain off long enough to get any decent sleep. She's ten, so it figures that everything would be going wrong with her health. I had taken her into the vet again for another hematoma at the beginning of the week, but we're letting this one heal on its own instead of putting her through surgery a second time. I suppose, looking back a the experience of the first occurrance, we could have done that for the first one, but I was going off of the advice of another clinic that surgery would be the best option. I just wonder how long that bump has been there, and whether the vet would have caught it if she didn't know to look for it?


Yesterday as I was leaving work, the Tannenator's assistant told me that there had been reports of a possible planned shooting at an area Wal-Mart. Of course, no one knew which one, so I was told to avoid all of them. This was no problem, since I make every effort to not patronize the Empire That Sam Walton Built on general principle, but I was immediatly doubtful at any rate. This sounded like typical chain-letter urban legend scenario bull. It wasn't mentioned on the sites for the local papers, or the news stations. I didn't expect it to be. But oddly enough, at some point last night, I got the following mysteriously anonymous text message from some number I don't recognize:

FWD: Don't go 2 any walmarts 2nite there will be an gang initiation and they have to kill 3 women at each Walmart. Tell all ur loved ones Be safe

You've gotta love technology sometimes...

It's all downhill from here, then?

And we're not talking some leisurely roll down a gently sloping hill - more like plummetting off of a sheer cliff face into a yawning abyss.

The state legislature is in session, and they've introduced the potential of cutting state employee pay. This would presumably be across the board, with no regard to salary level or any other mitigating factor. Supposedly, they projected what the savings would be on one percent and extrapolated on that figure to get them to a number that would help to balance the budget shortfalls. Some news sources (the ones that haven't buried the story behind the sports or entertainment "news", anyway) are saying the magic number is 5%, but I heard that the Governor's assistant is saying 10%. My family cannot take a 10% - 20% reduction to our total household income. As it is, my husband hasn't seen a pay increase in several years, and lost his second, part-time job late last year. Everyone wants to tell me that this is "worst case scenario" budgeting and that I really should wait and see what happens before giving myself over to panic and anxiety, and oh of course, just be thankful to have a job at all. And you know what - they're right, and I am. But only to a point, because in no way does that give my employer OR the state the right to either take advantage of the situation (more than they already have) or punish me for their failure to practice due diligence and be good stewards of the people's money. The state's dire financial situation is a result of years of sub-par leadership, mismanagement, and poor decisionmaking. And instead of expecting the state employees from the lowest salary levels bear the burden of these mistakes while further eroding infrastructure and services, consistantly short-changing the state's education system, and short-sightedly rob the rain-day reserves, the Legislators and the Governor should man up and look at cutting areas of redundancy and *actual* waste (double-dipping and ridiculous bonuses and salary levels for state employees in managerial and administrative level positions), increasing revenue streams through sin taxes, and repealing some of the more ridiculous tax exemptions - even if it is the least popular alternative, it is among the most sound options in the long term.

Now with more bite (me)

I just finished a bowl of homemade split pea and sausage soup and a baggie of grapes at my desk. I'm eating at my desk because I had an appointment this morning, which made me a couple hours late for work today. I'm having a hard time finding the motivation to get my tasks in order for the week...I haven't even made my to-do list yet and there were nine missed calls waiting for me when I got here. I'm really starting to get pissed about that, honestly. Is it really necessary to call me that many damn times? I feel like putting an outgoing message on my phone that says "If you are calling with a problem that you should be solving yourself but are going to attempt to pawn off on me in order to make your life easier, please hang up now, and do not try again". I had two projects recently that were done to basically make life easier for others, which, looking back, has been the majority of what I've done in the (almost) five years I've worked here. The other reason I end up getting involved in other people's projects is because the extremely over-educated staff here for whatever reason can't format information on a spreadsheet - I found out today that a PhD didn't know how to use the bar at the bottom of the screen to view a complete worksheet, and I wasn't sure whether to be amused or utterly terrified. I was handed a project last week that had nothing to do with my job anymore, but I was trying to be helpful to my old department and worked it up in a document for them - now they're referring every issue and question to me instead of the person the manager originally gave the project to. It's effing ridiculous. There's just so much to get done, and I find myself really losing interest in it lately. I just end up thinking that there aren't that many people here who care - why should I? It's so nice outside...what the hell am I doing here when I could be by the pool with a Terry Pratchett book and a refreshing beverage? Yes, I know it's the malaise talking, and eventually it will pass. But for now... :sigh:

So, whatever, I guess. I had a busy weekend. On Saturday we drove over to the home office, just to find out that the department we were going to pick some software up from wasn't open (and found out today that their supervisor says they were open...because the employees said they were - someone has fudged timesheets, methinks). There's a giant grass cow in front of the main building. I took pictures, and if I can ever figure out how to get them off my cell phone, I'll post them to fb or something. So, since we were in that part of town and decided not to waste the trip, we went to the "upscale" mall. It's amazing what a slumping economy will do to the attitudes of salespeople who previously wouldn't give someone like me the time of day. The place was practically empty, and I didn't see a lot of people actively shopping, despite the sales that were being offered. We went to lunch over near the football stadium, and in the middle of our meal the local "porn king" walked past our table as he was leaving. Between that and Hulk Hogan driving past me on the way home, my life is full of brushes with near infamy. Saturday night my husband and I were kidless, so we went out to dinner at a local restaurant that specializes in German and Austrian dishes. It was one of the best dinners I've ever had. Then, for a lack of anything better to do, we drove over to our local mall. Two malls in the same day? I don't normally make that many trips to the mall in a month, let alone one day, and I was reminded of why. On Sunday we had a new gate installed, which took a lot longer than I thought, but it looks really good and we can use the side walkway to get in and out of the yard now.

The following is for M, because it is relevant to her interests:

Italy dig unearths female 'vampire' in Venice
By ARIEL DAVID Associated Press Writer

ROME (AP) -- An archaeological dig near Venice has unearthed the 16th-century remains of a woman with a brick stuck between her jaws - evidence, experts say, that she was believed to be a vampire. The unusual burial is thought to be the result of an ancient vampire-slaying ritual. It suggests the legend of the mythical bloodsucking creatures was tied to medieval ignorance of how diseases spread and what happens to bodies after death, experts said.

The well-preserved skeleton was found in 2006 on the Lazzaretto Nuovo island, north of the lagoon city, amid other corpses buried in a mass grave during an epidemic of plague that hit Venice in 1576.

"Vampires don't exist, but studies show people at the time believed they did," said Matteo Borrini, a forensic archaeologist and anthropologist at Florence University who studied the case over the last two years. "For the first time we have found evidence of an exorcism against a vampire."

Medieval texts show the belief in vampires was fueled by the disturbing appearance of decomposing bodies, Borrini told The Associated Press by telephone.

During epidemics, mass graves were often reopened to bury fresh corpses and diggers would chance upon older bodies that were bloated, with blood seeping out of their mouth and with an inexplicable hole in the shroud used to cover their face.

"These characteristics are all tied to the decomposition of bodies," Borrini said. "But they saw a fat, dead person, full of blood and with a hole in the shroud, so they would say: 'This guy is alive, he's drinking blood and eating his shroud.'"

Modern forensic science shows the bloating is caused by a buildup of gases, while fluid seeping from the mouth is pushed up by decomposing organs, Borrini said. The shroud would have been consumed by bacteria found in the mouth area, he said.

At the time however, what passed for scientific texts taught that "shroud-eaters" were vampires who fed on the cloth and cast a spell that would spread the plague in order to increase their ranks.

To kill the undead creatures, the stake-in-the-heart method popularized by later literature was not enough: A stone or brick had to be forced into the vampire's mouth so that it would starve to death, Borrini said.

That's what is believed to have happened to the woman found on the Lazzaretto island, which was used as a quarantine zone by Venice. Aged around 60, she died of the plague during the epidemic that also claimed the life of the painter Titian.

Much later, someone jammed the brick into her mouth when the grave was reopened. Borrini said that marks and breaks left by blunt instruments on several among more than 100 skeletons found by the archaeologists show that the grave was reused in a later epidemic.
Such a reconstruction of events is plausible, as is the link to the superstitions about "shroud-eaters," said Piero Mannucci, the vice president of the Italian Society of Anthropology and Ethnology.

"Maybe a priest or a gravedigger put the brick in her mouth, which is what was normally done in such cases," Mannucci said.

The anthropologist, who did not take part in Borrini's research, said that at a time when bacteria were unknown, such superstitions were a way for the terrified population to explain the waves of plague epidemics that killed millions during the Middle Ages. Jews were also often accused of spreading the disease.

Borrini said the discovery shows that vampires in popular culture were originally quite different from the elegant, aristocratic blood-drinker depicted in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel "Dracula" and in countless Hollywood revisitations.

"The real vampire of tradition was different," he said. "It was just a decomposing body."