Winter Whining, because it's still winter

Do you suppose my daffodils will make it through?
Originally uploaded by V'ron.

It's Friday the 13th, what better excuse to whine, eh? But first, weekend plans to get out of the way: I really don’t have much. There's not a lot of bands I must see this weekend, rather, I need to practice my own stuff for my show coming up. Plus I've got the Cream City Photogs Show coming up. I need to just freaking chill. If I do anything, I'll pop into Marla Karaoke Queen's Karaoke tonight, at the Bavarian Inn at Old Heidelburg Park in Glendale. Marla won't be there tonight, but First Lieutenant Dave will be, banging out the Alice Cooper, and if I do anything, I'll attempt, get this, Motorhead's "Ace Of Spades" only because I'm impressed that there's a Karaoke list with "Ace of Spades" on it.

So I had this whole, "random ramblings" blog entry I was planning on that would have ended up being just a bunch of whining about stupid little things that tick me off lately, but Kurt Vonnegut died and that's not insignificant. I'm very sad about this; I know that people die sooner or later, and Vonnegut was getting up there, but still, I need to pause and say thank you to a man who indirectly taught me how to read. What I mean is that, at the point in my life, (high school), where I was beginning to realize that a great book wasn't just a story in and of itself, it was a "work" that needed to be digested, it was "Cat's Cradle" I was reading when I hit that epiphany. It was a reason I ended up majoring in English in College, and to this day, I still refer to that undergraduate time as "when I learned how to read." Like Dr. Seuss taught so many of us to read when we were kids, I think Kurt Vonnegut taught us how to read as adults.

Anyway, back to living, and my rants.

• Reason No. 57 why you shouldn't count on myspace too much: Right when I've got a bunch of things to "post bulletins" about, the whole bulletin feature is down. How am I gonna find out what to do this weekend? How am I going to broadcast to all my "friends" that I've got this photo show and Loblolly gig coming up? Thank goodness I still know how to configure an email client and use Google/Yahoo. It's sort of how you learn to back up your computer regularly AFTER you lose all your precious data after a hard drive crash. I've learned to keep in touch with my pals outside of myspace ever since that time a few months back when they had that funky bug caused glitch that kept me from being able to log in for a week and a half. But, like restoring a backup, it's still a hassle getting around. Oh, and now a bunch of my "friends" are spamming me. One sent a real message apologizing for the spam and I replied, "Look, if you're ticked off about spam on Myspace, you have way too high expectations to be on myspace. No problem. Its quite obvious you've been hacked, and I'm not going to de-friend you for that. Hack victims need all the friends they can get."
  
  
• The Walgreens Policy of Having To Pay For Your Cosmetics At the Cosmetics Counter: God, I hate this. What, will the register at the front blow up if you try to scan some nail polish through it? If you have to pick up a whole bunch of things PLUS a tube of mascara, you MUST pay for it all at the Cosmetics counter. There are some Walgreenses that get really anal about this. My Walgreens just gets visibly annoyed. What is this all about? Is it because it's easy to shoplift a lipstick? Got news for you, there's NOBODY at the Costmetics counter unless you're buying something, so you could just as easily slip a nail file into your purse whether you're supposed to pay for it at the cosmetics counter or the front. I remember one time I actually got yelled at by the bitch at the east side Walgreens' cosmetics counter. It's like I was robbing her commission or something. I swear to God, the only thing that keeps me going back to Walgreens (besides the convenience, its not like anybody in Milwaukee lives further than four blocks from a Walgreens) is my total and complete hatred of Wal-Mart.
  
  
• Will somebody please post a sign or something to remind drivers going North on I-94/43, approaching the Interchange to I-794/I-43 North that the right lane goes to I-794 East, leaving only two lanes to go North? I can't tell you how many near accidents I've seen (or almost been a victim of) because some dufus decided to merge into the northbound lanes about 50 feet after they were established on the exit ramp to I-794 East. And I flipped the bird at all of them, until I realized that the only reason I know that exit (and thus termination of that far right lane) is indeed an exit is because I drive it every day to get downtown to work. There is really no warning, no obvious clue that this is coming up. If you're just passing through (and I started to notice that a large percentage of people who blow this have out-of-state license plates) and not familiar with this interchange (and the confusing construction around it), you'd have no clue that you're about to make this bonehead dufus move. Now, really, what you shoulddo, even though it's not your fault that you got stuck on this ramp, is be safe, continue on down the ramp, deal with Downtown Milwaukee, and get back on the freeway at, say, McKinley. I know this is inconvenient, but so's having your car in the body shop for a week.
  
  
• Yes, the snow is really grating on me too. April. April snow showers kill May flowers. I already put my snow boots away, and this isn't even fun snow.