Squeak’s Squeals

Generally speaking, I try to avoid discussing politics here at the ol’ blog, but in my advancing age, I’ve become compelled to start forcing my opinions on others as well.  Please bear in mind, any flaming comments will be declared spam and my mad little Akismet baby will never let you post again.  Anyway… on with it!

Today, I would like you all to bow your heads and observe a moment of silence in memory of the die-hard, tie-dye clad, poetry-writing, wannabe hippie, liberal who once lived within me (back in my college days, when I thought it cool that the President was getting his strange).  For, this morning, I am publicly confessing that come November, my vote shall be cast for the McCain/Palin ticket.*

“But why, Squeaky, why!?” I hear you cry through your sobbing, looking at me with those giant, tear-filled, anime eyes.  “Do you really feel that John McCain can effectively lead this great nation?”

No, my children.  I think John McCain is an embalmed corpse being kept alive by some radioactive, intergalactic technology emitted by Dick Cheney’s brainwaves.

“Then, why, Squeaky!?” I hear you plead.

Because I think Sarah Palin is a member of the Alaskan Eskimo Society of Gubernatorial Ninjas.  I think this woman kicks some serious ass.  And I’d be willing to bet if she accidentally shoots someone in the face on a drunken hunting trip, they won’t live to joke about it.

Honestly, any woman who can survive five pregnancies, five deliveries, a household with five children, run an entire state AND thrive in the barren wasteland that is Alaska, can certainly accomplish as much on a bad day as the ol’ Dick-n-Bush have accomplished, in a combined effort, in the last eight years.

A comment was made to me earlier this week… something to the effect of ‘Do we really want a menopausal woman with her finger on a button that could annihilate half the globe?’  My answer: Hell, yes!  What’s more frightening than a middle-aged woman having a hot flash on a bad hair day with baby vomit on her clothing, standing on a bear skin rug she shot, skinned and tanned herself?  Catch her on the wrong day and some little, previously unheard of country suddenly disappears from the face of the planet as a warning to the others to keep their asses in line.  Besides which, the woman JUST had a baby.  She’s not menopausal yet.

“But, Squeaky, do you agree with her viewpoints on the issues?” I hear you inquire.

No, young Jedi, aside from her opinions on the death penalty, I do not agree with her stance on much else.

“Then why, Squeaky?” You ask again.  And put away those anime eyes.  They’re getting annoying.

Because she has opinions.  That’s it.  Simple as that.  This woman actually has hard and fast opinions.  There seems to be no one behind her, pulling a string, with a hand in her ass, or floating above her in a spaceship telling her what to say and when to say it.  She very simply states exactly what she believes.

Example:

Is she pro-choice or pro-life?  Pro-life.  Even if her own child will ride a short bus.  Abortion is not an option.  She states it.  And she lives it.  And I respect that.  Even if I dont’ agree with it.

“But, Squeaky,” I hear you say, “what about the feminists who think she should stay home with her children?”

HAHAHAHAHA!  My dear, gentle readers, these people are not feminists at all!  These are poor, misguided souls who aren’t sure who they are or what they believe.  “Women should not have to stay in the home and take care of the children!  Women should be able to venture out of the kitchen and into the workforce!  Having children should not hinder a woman’s right to grow and develop and become who and what she wants to be!  Women can do whatever a man can do!”….. but apparently ONLY if that woman is a liberal.  What a crock of bullshit.  Anyone subscribing to this philosophy and calling themselves a feminist, is nothing more than a hypocrite.

“But what’s wrong with Barrack Obama?” I hear you whisper among yourselves.

He is the devil, my sweet babies, nothing more than Lucifer himself.

And is it just me, or does Governor Palin look an awful lot like Detective Benson?

*This statement is subject to change at a moment’s notice anytime between now and November.

Want more political nonsense?  Head on over to humor-blogs.com.

And now, an update on the continuing saga of Officer Sludge…. (and for those of you who are utterly confused right now, read THIS first)….

I just finished another phone call with our favorite, most obliviously unintelligent city cop, Officer Sludge.

He has informed me that he would like to have a list of wanted criminals posted on the website. Fine. Not a problem. [Note: Had I been talking with anyone OTHER than Sludge, I probably would have recommended setting up a database, but I truly think it would have been a lost effort on a man who can't find Windows on his Compaq.]

He proceeded to tell me that his secretary is currently in the process of piecing together the list in question. [Note: My initial thought: "Good. Cuz Lord knows what you would produce."] He then described to me the methods being used in the list’s creation. My question: is it POSSIBLE to have a negative IQ score? And if so, how is one able to function as the head of a special police task force with such a score? Then again, maybe it depends on your definition of “special.”

He and his secretary, he said, had taken every possible avenue to make the final list as efficient and easy-to-use as possible. He and his secretary, he said, printed - FROM THE COMPUTER - all the images of the criminals for the list. Then, he says, he had his secretary HAND WRITE the details about each person next to their picture. At the moment of our conversation, he said, his secretary was in the process of scanning - BACK INTO THE COMPUTER - the pages with the hand-written text and the images they had JUST printed. The secretary would be emailing me the list ASAP, he said.

Fast forward five minutes: a new message in my inbox. Great! Let’s see the masterful work first hand! Uhh… big negatori there, chief. Seems the secretary emailed me a blank white nothing - no message, no text, no images, no attachments…. just the bleak whiteness of an empty message. I replied to her empty message and let her know she had sent me absolutely nothing. She replied to my message… with nothing. There was blank white nothingness, followed by my original message, followed by her original message of nothingness.

These are the people sworn to uphold justice and protect the people of the land. These are the people we rely on - day in and day out - to provide us all with a sense of safety and security. These are the people who catch the bad guys and give them what they deserve. Is it any wonder the internal functions of the local, state and federal prison systems are FUBAR? THESE are the people responsible for running it! Be afraid! Be VERY afraid!

What could be more terrifying than humor-blogs.com?

The condensed story:

Men suck and I am outraged.

The back story:

Yesterday, I completed a site for a local, high-ranking political figure which included information on a special task police team.  For the site, I was responsible for the full design, full code and full back-end CMS development.  A link to the completed work was forwarded to the officer in charge of said special task police team, we’ll call him “Officer Sludge.”  Officer Sludge called my office this morning.  As luck would have it, I - ironically - answered the phone.

Little known - and apparently surprising - facts:

1. I am 100% female.

2. I write code for a living.

3. Roget’s defines “sludge” as ‘a viscous, usually offensively dirty substance.’

The call:

Sludge: “Hiya, sweetie, I was looking at this website and they asked me to look over the section about my special task team.  I can’t find a link to my team anywhere.”

Me: “At the very top of the screen, there is a menu.  It should say Home, About, Enforcement, Assistance and Education.”

Sludge: “All mine says is Education with a blue box behind it.”

Me: “Is the link on the far right side of the screen?”

Sludge: “No.  It’s the first thing on the left.”

Me: “What internet browser are you using?”

Sludge: “Sweetheart, I’m a cop.  I don’t sit in front of a computer all day.  I have no idea what you just said.”

Me: “If you look at the very top of the window, there should be a little picture.  Does it look like a blue E?  Or is it more of a blue circle with orange around the bottom?  Or is it something else entirely?”

Sludge: “Honey, I don’t know what a ‘window’ is.  Where do I find it?”

Me: “Are you in front of the computer now?”

Sludge: “Yeah.”

Me: “Are you looking at the website?”

Sludge: “Yeah.”

Me: “Okay.  You know the box where you type in the website address you want to go to?”

Sludge: “Yeah.  The one that says ‘http://www….’?”

Me: “That would be the one.  Either just above it or just below it, you should see a line of menu options: File, Edit, History, Tools, Help and so on….”

Sludge: “Yeah.  I see em.”

Me: “Good.  Click on ‘Help’.”

Sludge: “Okay.”

Me: “There should be a little menu that drops down.  What does the LAST line on that menu say?”

Sludge: “It says ‘About Internet Explorer.”

Me: “Great!  Your internet browser is Internet Explorer!  Now, click on the words ‘About Internet Explorer’ for me.”

Sludge: “Okay.  It gave me a little box.”

Me: “Good.  Somewhere in that box, it should give you a version number.  Can you read it off for me?”

Sludge: “It says ‘Version: 5.0. ……..”

Me: “Okay.  That would explain why the site is not displaying properly.  It was designed for use in Internet Explorer 7.”

Sludge: “Look, sweet cheeks, I have no idea what you are rattling on for.  My problem is I can’t see what I need to see on the website.  What I need is to talk to the guy who’s working on it.”

Me: “You got him.”

Sludge: “What!?  You’re a woman!  Jeezus!  [short pause] How about this: I’ll find out how to get my hands on this number 7 you’re talking about, then I’ll call you back.  I don’t want to makes things too hard for you to understand.”

Me: “You do that, sir.  Might I suggest you start your quest for the number 7 at microsoft.com?  Although, I could go back and modify the code to make it compliant with your current version.”

Sludge: “No!  No.  Dont’ do that.  No sense in having a woman go in and screw it up.”

The commentary:

Hmm…. where to begin?  Do I dare begin?  Do I make light of the situation?  Or do I go on a full-fledged feminazi rant about how men need to have their wankers firmly attached to their thighs via heavy-duty carpet staples and undergo involuntary estrogen infusions?

Now, don’t go getting your frilly, lace thongs in a bunch, fellas.  I know full well that not ALL men feel the way Sludge feels.  And I truly, TRULY appreciate those men.  My outrage here comes from the knowledge that men like Sludge STILL exist.

Honestly, WTF!?  Is this 1952?  Am I supposed to be donning a house dress and curlers while baking bread and planning a rummage sale for the PTA?  Give me a freaking break!  The simple fact that I have tits is NOT a reason to treat me like an uneducated, incompetent moron!

My absolute favorite part of the conversation (aside from being called a multitude of pet names)?  “No sense in having a woman go in and screw it up.”  That’s my favorite part.  Cuz, y’know, I’m only the SAME woman who went in and made it work in the first place.  But that was alright because it was assumed I had a nutsack.

Start YOUR search for the number 7 at humor-blogs.com.

6am, the alarm started its blaring, vindictive beeping. It’s Friday! The one day of the week the sound of my black, plastic, Wal-Mart nemesis doesn’t bother me quite so much.

I stagger out of my room, tugging on my bathrobe, and fire up good ol’ Mr. Coffee. All is perfectly normal as I set about my morning lunch-packing ritual.

Then Roo emerges from her room.

“Mommy! My nose was bleeding last night!”

“Really? Why didn’t you come get me?”

“I was too tired.”

My eyes flew open as my mind was flooded with images of what she may have done with the blood: on the sheets? On her pajamas? On the dirty laundry? Surely, if she was too tired to wake me up, she was too tired to get herself a tissue. Against my better judgment, I inquired as to exactly what she did about her nosebleed. I was not prepared for the answer.

“Well…,” she started. “I was really, really tired. And I didn’t have any tissues. And my sister said ‘No’ she wouldn’t get me one. And you were in bed. And it was dark. And my nose was bleeding. It was bleeding really, really bad. There was a lot of blood, Mommy. And I was scared in the dark. And no body was awake….”

“Roo! Just tell me what you did with the blood.”

“Well…”

“Tell me.”

“You’ll be mad.”

“If you knew I would be mad, why did you put it where you put it?”

“Cuz I was too tired.”

“What did you do with it?”

“It was dark and I was scared.”

“Roo, where is it?”

“Now, Mommy, don’t get mad at me, OK?”

“Tell me what you did and then I’ll decided whether or not to be mad.”

“But I don’t wanna get in trouble.”

“You’re gonna be in more trouble if you don’t tell me.”

“Fine. Well, come look.”

She opened the bedroom door and flipped on the light. I cringed at the thought of waking JellyBean, but I NEEDED to know what Roo did with her forensic evidence. It took a moment or two before I saw it, but when I did, it looked like a scene from SVU (god, I love that show). I glanced over my shoulder to make sure Benson and Stabler weren’t waiting to haul me down to the station for interrogation.

There, above the top bunk (Roo’s bunk), all over the wall, all over the blanket and all over my WHITE curtain, were dots, spots, spatters, drips, smears and fingerprints - all made in blood. The blanket is multi-colored, I wasn’t too worried about that. The wall is covered in that uber-washable Disney wall paint, I wasn’t too worried about that. My beautiful white curtains with the adorable pastel flower embroidered mesh panels, however, will NEVER be the same. No amount of bleach or stain stick is going to remove all the dried blood from her snot locker.

Now, I would like you all to observe a moment of silence in memory of my lovely curtains. Here’s hoping if Detective Stabler ever shows up at my door, it will be to ravish me, not to haul me in for a murder trial…. damn, that boy is H-A-W-T.

Find the fictional detective of your dreams at Humor-Blogs.com.