Eyes open, grab phone, check the time. It's 4:30am. Why am I awake?

Brain: "Hey, buddy. I see that you're up. What'ya say we review every mistake and social gaffe you've ever made in your life?"

Me: "What? No. No, I don't want to do that. Not now, not ever."

Brain: "Hey, remember back on the first day of school when you followed all the girls into the girls room? Ha! Good times, good times."

Me: "I said I didn't want to do this!"

Brain: "And then there was that time in third grade when on class field day you were watching the turtle race with the whole class, you put your head down on the ground for an eye level view of the turtles and the teacher must have thought you were trying to look up the girl's skirts. She hauled you to your feet and slapped you across the face."

Me: "People think I drink to dull the pain. When actually I drink because I'm trying to kill you."

Another false fire alarm last night. According to our condo newsletter, it's caused by people seeking refuge from the cold in the parking garage stairwells and smoking / lighting fires to stay warm. I mean, understandable to take refuge, but it's not like one can stay if the alarm goes off. So not ideal.

So I guess we'll probably have another one or two over the weekend as temps drop to -20.

The board says they've gotten approval from the city to instal maglocks on the doors so they can't be forced at night. Certainly have mixed feelings about it, but apparently every time fire trucks roll it costs us a not insignificant amount of money so...

It seems that just as one incident of a company's marketting department blundering on the company's social media account is fading from memory, another one comes along to take its place.

The latest, Gillette, the famous razor makers, took to social media to shake its metaphysical fist at "toxic masculinity". Why? Who in their marketting department thought that by taking a cudgel to their user base they'd increase sales?

Instead, the backlash seems to be trending toward people dumping Gillette products. I bet the person who put forward this brain donor of a marketting plan is praying that it slinks away to a quiet corner to die. Adn as quickly as possible, please.

Now, Gillette is owned by Proctor and Gamble, who continued to use the Gillette brand name and sponsor Gillette Stadium, where the New England Patriots play in the NFL. Damn, that seems pretty masculine. I wonder if the marketting department knows?

Let's ignore masculinity for a moment and focus on toxic behavior. One definition of toxicity would be using your power and influence to denigrate and punish people or a person for traits and circumstances beyond their ability to control.

Using that definition, castigating an entire gender for an accident of birth seems like pretty toxic behavior.

In any event, it seems like a good time to dump your Proctor and Gamble stock.

Ever since the notion of "inbox zero" floated across my attention, i've been perplexed by the mania it attracts.  Maybe 15, or even 10, years ago, it was a bit of a challenge to keep up, but these days, most of my email is either spam or commercial.  The former is shipped off to a processing folder, and the latter is either autosorted or unsubscribed.  The time it takes me to deal with is minimal.  It's never occurred to me to brag about inbox zero because i'm there every day.

Then something like this article pops up and i'm just stunned.  2700 messages in a month?  What on earth are you doing?  People just give up?  Maybe i'm just special, or maybe people just hate me and ignore me.

Tonight the condo's book club did an annual thing they do, which is check out a bunch of play scripts from the library and do a reading. Sounds interesting, but not much information provided, least of all _which play_.

So I go down because how bad could it be? And it is about 10 people, mostly older, and we're all sitting around around a table (there's no designated readers OMG 1) and everyone takes turns reading, switching roles scene by scene (OMG 2) and I've already done the social niceties and kind of committed, and then discover that it's a fucking Woody Allen play and by then it's too late to back out. 

So for two and a half hours I read different roles from _Don't Drink the Water_, trying not to turn the obvious Allen character into a whiny schmuck when I get him, but the language is just so exactly that ... and there's all the misogynistic bullshit, the toxic masculinity, the casual racism, the colonialism, the physical sexual assault (that she later says she hoped he'd do), the terrible plot that doesn’t even have the most obvious and interesting twist, the unnecessary rape/suicide references, the ... just ... OMFG 

Anyway, everyone was super nice, I met some new people in the building, I made some folks laugh, and got compliments on my cold reading, so it wasn't a total loss. 

It could have been worse, said d -- it could have been a hobby script. 

It feels oddly quiet since New Year's, and I am not complaining. I think we're all taking a collective sigh and switching off. I came off with a Christmas Cold so I'm doubly glad for the peace. It feels so odd though, coming off the holiday buzz. And this must happen every year but this year is the first "normalish" feeling year for me in a while so I guess I'm noticing it again. (I said off too many times. Semantic satiation. Also, cold medicine.)

Peace.

Totally a first world problem, but anymore it feels like Thanksgiving is the starting line for a race through the end of the year.

I went home to Massachusetts to visit family at Thanksgiving and stayed for a week. I'm a homebody, so a week away from Chateau Conrad was pretty exhausting for Mama Conrad's little introvert. Then there's the month-long marathon of shopping and consumption leading up to Christmas. This year, maybe it was the timing of the holiday, maybe it was a confluence of the flu, and needing to replace my truck but Christmas' arrival left me feeling Christmas-spiritless.

Plus, there was a shitshow with one of the street urchins in my neighborhood two days before Christmas. The less said about that the better. But, word to the wise. Get a dash cam and make sure it records audio. My cheapo closeout dash cam saved my bacon when I showed the video to the po-po.

New Year's Even finally arrived and I managed to slog through it and watch the ball drop. Poor Jenny McCarthy looked like a drowned rat with all the rain in NYC.

New Year's Day did allow me to see the first use of 18 instead of 19, on a highway sign advising drivers that a road was going to have work starting soon, Deldot posted the start date as 1/2/18. Man, those guys are slow.

But we're here in 2019. I can hide in my house, post a warning that trespassers will be devoured by angry opposums, and relax. For a couple of days at least.

Evil eye bead and hamsa. 

I found this on the sidewalk while walking back from the post office today. Either the universe sent me a protection amulet, a warning, or someone’s earring broke in the traditional Festivus airing of grievances on the corner this past Sunday night. I left it outside on the flagstone to see if someone needed it more than I do. If it’s still there tomorrow, I’ll keep it with the seashells. 

Your kind responses to my short Dec 10 pain-post were recieved with gratitude even though I didn't respond. I sorta went into hidey-mode for a bit.

Wanted to update that I got a very nice Christmas gift of muuuch lighter pain for the four days surrounding Xmas, which was so random and wonderful that I'm going to go ahead and thank you all for the good mojo.

Have a goofy cat photo.

Since Scottish Parliament banned gingerbread men and Baby It's Cold Outside is now Persona Non Grata, these songs will be next on the chopping block. 

1. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus: Subjecting minors to softcore porn. Heteronormative. Underage incestuous voyerism.

2. The Christmas Song: Open fire? Pollution. Folks dressed up like Eskimos? Cultural appropriation.

3. Holly Jolly Christmas: Kiss her once for me? Unwanted advances.

4. I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas: Animal abuse.

5. Santa Claus is Coming to Town: Sees you when you’re sleeping? Knows when you’re awake? Peeping Tom/Stalker.

6. Most Wonderful Time of the Year: Everyone telling you be of good cheer? Forced to hide depression.

7. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: Bullying.

8. It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas: Forced gender-specific gifts: dolls for Janice and Jen and boots and pistols (GUNS!) for Barney and Ben.

9. Santa Baby: Gold digger, blackmail.

10. Frosty the Snowman: Sexist; not a snow woman, assumes the gender of Frosty. Religious anarchist; knows he's going to die and ignores the police. Confident he'll be resurrected.

11. Do You Hear What I Hear: Blatant disregard for the Hearing Impaired

12. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas: Make the yuletide GAY? Wow, just wow.

13. Jingle Bell Rock: Giddy up jingle horse, pick up your feet: Animal abuse.

14. Mistletoe and Holly: Overeating, folks stealing a kiss or two? How did this song ever see the light of day?

15. Winter Wonderland: Parson Brown demanding they get married…forced partnership.

16. I’ll Be Home For Christmas: Not if you are homeless. That’s just Insensitive.

17. Grandma got ran over by a reindeer: Homicide. Extremely violent and promotes alcoholism.

18. All I Want for Christmas Is You: Insensitive to people suffering from Obsessive Compulsive behavior.

19. Deck the Halls; Don we now our GAY apparel. HOLY SHIT!

20. Dominick the Donkey; Ethnic sterotyping, reinforcing gender stereotypes, animal abuse. It's a trifecta!

21. Fairytale of New York; Drops F-Bomb (the gay one; and it’s NOT “fairy”); Promotes ethnic stereotypes. Slut shaming.

22. Do They Know It's Christmas?; White supremacist. Paternalistic. What? Africans can't save themselves? 

Gleefully stolen from various sites on the interwebz and compiled here.