Etsy has decided to shut my store down.

After 100% feedback, and 224 sales, I’m shut down. I  can’t even have an account now, even to buy. They are turning me off on Tuesday completely and I am now grabbing all my customer data off.

Reason?  Good Question. They cited “user complaints”, but won’t elaborate further. Since I can’t use the forums or Storque so I’m not sure what they can find to complain about me with, other than I work for Artfire and exist.

I cant say I’m surprised. I’ve been expecting this since September when I joined on at Artfire and announced it here on my blog, so this is just the other shoe dropping. I’ve more or less stayed on out of pure spite.

You can of course find me on Artfire for all your pincushiony needs.

(I just sent this letter to national Operations email address)

Dear National Amusements,

Right now as I’m writing this I’m trying to decide what to eat for dinner after “eating dinner” at your theatre. See I’m trying to decide what would be willing to puke up later should the food poisoning I fear I might have gotten from your food should hit.

See, we decided to splurge today and try the local Cinema de lux in Springdale, Ohio and see Wolverine on opening night in one of your “directors halls”.

It cost a little more than going to the Rave (our usual fave) but the prospect of ordering food from our seats was nice since we were starving and we hoped it would be a better behaved and more adult crowd (wasn’t, still had a chatty housewife and a screaming baby).

It had taken me a while to even find out more about your Director’s Hall Theatres. There is precious little info on your site, and certainly not connected to the page for my theatre where I’d of course want to be able to access it. I had to google it and read a newspaper article in Connecticut about it to get what it was. So there is a head up for you, fix your site. It’s cumbersome as hell.

So anyway, back to the show:

We ordered moments before the opening credits. Finally.

Our food didn’t come until well after the movie started. Like 30 min into it. We had ordered two burger combos (burger, fries, drink) but came on ONE paper tray piled so high it as impossible to deal alone with as there was no place to put it. We sat it on the floor and started eating in the dark. They hadn’t brought any ketchup packets, the burgers, while large, were dressed poorly (barely any ketchup, NO mayo or NO cheese as ordered)

The fries were cold, and limp, largely inedible. The burgers were all but lukewarm… well raw.

Not rare, RAW. There was a cooked outer shell, After a few bites I noticed that meat seemed well… mushy. Soft even. I stuck my finger into the meat, in the dark mind you, and felt the patty. Wet, cool and it pulled away and molded easily in my fingers. My stomach tuned. My husband was so hungry he had devoured his without too much thought other than it was food, and he is a man that likes everything charred to a cinder. I sat mine aside.

After the movie I got a look at it. Not only was my burger raw it wasn’t bloody. Meaning it was barely cooked. Ground beef only gets blood after it gets hot as the fibers break down releasing the juices, this did not even get hot enough to do this, so it was beyond rare. It was raw.

All in all it was a confusing experience, once we’re not sure we’ll repeat, we’ll stick with the Rave. At least they won’t try to kill me.

Jen Segrest

The master of un-invention, Meatloaf, is back. Eeee!!!

His new album is Bat out of Hell III. 3??? How about thinking up a new name you uncreative tank of lard?

And now that he has a new album *I* have to endure him coming on everything from the Today Show to the Tonight Show hacking up old hairballs like Paradise By The Dashboard Light on camera with his hottie singer dujour (who normally wouldn’t talk to him) hanging all over him like a vestal virgin hopped up on Ecstasy.

I’m convinced Meatloaf sold his soul to the devil for the attention he gets.

If Hilary gets the nomination it won’t matter what pedophile crossdressing priest the republicans put up – he’ll win. IF she wins it’ll be four years of her battling on the republican front with more of the same anti-clinton agenda. I just don’t know how she’ll get anything done when being attacked on all sides. I really think it’s time for a clean slate after the last 16 years.

I don’t think Obama can get the crossover/moderate voters like McCain could, and I doubt he can carry the south.

I think McCain could win against any democrat if he gets the nod, but any other republican will have a fight on their hands. McCain is more likeable by the left and independants, of the republicans that is.

And can I say for the record that the democrats shunning the Michigan Primaries to me seems to be petty considering Michigan was one of the few democratic states they had in the last election, certainly one o the only ones in the Midwest. Way to go Dems. It’s called rolling with the punches, look it up.

Freakin' morons at Etsy have set thier server-side image handling application convert your store graphic file to jpg format and reduce quality to somewhere around 35 no matter what file size or type you upload. Even if it's smaller than the size it converts to. It made my nice crisp and clear graphic all schmutzy and look like such crap that I ended up replacing it.

I have given this affliction a name: "Jpeggery".

That's right. I just made jpeg into in a verb.

Go me. 

So the AC went out Sunday. Making a grindy noise, fan stopped spinning. Probabaly not cheap, but it was almost 100 outside. Monday I called a huge local heating/cooling place that has BIG  ads on tv right now and made an appointment as they had the cheapest diagnosis visit fee. Took ten minutes to make the appointment because she kept getting my info wrong. I kept haveing to repeat everything and I'm baking alive and not really all that alert.

Two days pass, and they don't come. So I call when the were officially 30 minutes late to verify they had me scheduled.

I get the same chic I'd booked with, she says "Oh yeah they been tryin' to call you all day".

"Uh I've been here all day, and no one be callin' me. Did they-"

"Hold on a minute honey" and they come back 5 minutes later. "Yeah they been trying to call you, it wasn't working."

"Uh, did they dial 513 first? I'm in Middletown, Cincinnati folks have to dial 513 or it won't go through."

(Ignoring me) "We don't go up that far they said."

"What? I sat in a 90 degree house for two days for nothing? Why didn't you tell me this when I booked the appointment? I could have had someone in here by now! I work out of the house, damn it."

(disinterested) "Yeah, we don't go up that far."

I just hung up. If it had been 90 degrees today I would have driven down there to bitch slap her since I would have been able to get AC in the car to the car to do it.

I instead turned around and called a similarly named local-er place down the road — one that I realized I had meant to call anyway since they had been here before but had gotten the names mixed up when I googled. When I called the the first place I asked "I think I've had you guys over before, right?" the woman lied to me "oh yeah yeah." Freaking liar and incompetent.

Today at least was rainy and 70, instead of more of the stifling heat we've had all summer. 

The second place, the one I'd meant to call from the beginning is coming in the morning. About damn time.

Thompson Heating and Cooling you SUCK! 

Instead of posting the day of the 9/11, I thought I'd post after it. Since 'after' is when everything happened. 

6 years ago today we regretfully woke up to a new world one short day after the incomprehensible act of violence that made the world so much smaller, and yet so dauntingly huge and alien at the same time. It wasn't an easy morning, we didn't rise with the bleary carelessness we had the day before, instead we staggered out of bed after a rough night of attempted sleep. 

6 years ago we were great nation. We were peaceful, and the world largely respected us for acts of our past. We had ethics and values and tried to uphold civil rights, we freed and liberated those held under by more calloused hands. When the attack happened they mourned our loss with us, many holding vigils in their capitols and town squares burning candles for a place most had only seen on tv. They held our hand, and held the other up vowing to help us avenge the despicable crime. We were comforted in knowing we were not alone, that our years of aiding the world might bring them to aid to us. 

And we waited for those many long months that turned into years, waiting for our leaders to avenge our loss. A collective breath turned into many, and we waited some more. Two years pass, and much of the rage with it. We thought they were being careful by not rushing to strike back. Oh how foolish we were.

6 years later we have nothing to show for any of it. We've betrayed those who were killed that day with a war that was aimed at the wrong target for reasons that we may never truly know. We've seen four times as many more of our people die in their name, and killed twenty times more of theirs, with nothing to show at the end of the day. We've let down all the peoples of the world. Those who had once looked up to us in our hour of grief with respect now looked on in horror as when we turned our mourning and wishes for a just retribution into a grasping, desperate act of blind revenge for someone's wrong reason. The guilty still walk unpunished, the venerated dead still lie unavenged. Our leaders flounder desperately, caught in their own web of lies. Most of us are still having trouble facing ourselves in the mirror.

6 years ago the United States I knew died. It didn't sleep, it didn't wander off into the desert to find itself after a bad breakup. It died without so much as a sigh after putting the noose around it's own neck.

The country I see now is not the country I grew up in, the country whose ideals my hippy parents pressed on me. My country did not torture like those we foughagainst, we were above the ways of tyrants and fiends. We did not lie, cheat or steal, we did not plunder, and we did not capitalize on the suffering of others, or our own – and yet my country, and it's leaders, have done all of these in the past few years and much more.

In 6 years we have undone what took over 200 to make. Sometimes I wonder if the rest of the world misses our old selves more than we do. I doubt we'll earn back what we've truly lost in my lifetime.  That's the saddest part of all this. We did far more damage to ourselves than any terrorist ever did.

BBC: Guitarist splits from DuranDuran

First: AGAIN??? What a freakin' loser. He left on the tail of their biggest fame back in 1985, and now after the amazing success of the reunion tour he does it again? I thought he was a stinking weasel then, and that goes double now. Go to hell you sodding mangy rat.

Second: no one freaking told me after this many months??? I can't believe it. I found it in a totally unrelated google search. I used to be up on all the news but obviously I'm hideously old now and out of touch. Whimper.

I know change is hard. I know many readers liked, and miss, the old look. A few have even whined at me. But let me explain… As I said in a earlier post, I wasn’t planning on changing systems as fast as I did but after deleting the 600th spam comment of the night (which was happening more and more often) I was finally so pissed off over the issue I just went and DID it to make it finally stop. Call it a “rage induced moment of clarity”. It worked for me.

The hardest part of being a web designer is trying to sell the client on drastic changes to what they might have grown comfortable with. In a blogs case you have two clients. The blogger and the reader. The readers associate the blog with the look, they get comfortable with the decor. I’ll admit I did makeover for me.

The classic VBB design integrated it into my new professional site over five years ago. In the terms of design and the net, that’s damn near geriatric. Everytime I entertained a change more people would arrive to rave over it (Seems I’m ahead of my time for being retro). So I would say “six more months”. Well that turned into a few more years. For someone in my profession it’s downright unforgivable.

I’ve always said ART is permanent, design is not. That’s why I hate the term “graphic artist”. Art is expression and emotion, it’s only purpose it to be looked at. Pondered. Examined and extrapolated. Art is timeless. Design’s purpose is to sell. To whore an idea, a look, a product. Design is fleeting and mercenary. Evolutionary and extraneous. Design has a shelf life. Both art and design are powerful things, they can even cross pollinate, just don’t confuse them. They are what they are. Design that doesn’t change doesn’t make it art, it just makes it stale.

VBB/VBD was stale.

I got sick of looking at such an old design, and got tired of MT. I had a domain that I wasn’t “using” other than in redirect. Verybigdesign.com’s redesign is on the list for “Things wot need doin’ this year” since BADLY NEEDS updating and a major makover. So, the look of the blog would be changing regardless. And if it’s going to change and move out on it’s own it seemed stupid to update to MT 3.3 on a domain I didn’t want to keep the blog on requiring it to be installed somewhere else as well later. VBB’s install I had was so olde skool it was never converted it to mysql, so it was all cgi-bin run so that’s another huge PITA and slooooow since there was over 3100 entries. It took an hour to rebuild! It was a mess.

Will this look “retro super highway” look stay? Dunno. But I felt it at least needed “Jenifying” until I know what it is I want to do with it for sure. I’m still poking at WP so if you visit and it’s gone all wonky, you know I’m playing right that instant. I hope you like it in the mean time (bonus points if you get the right image…

Also, I have to admit I just wanted to try wordpress. Everyone keeps raving about it, and I like to learn new apps liek that. I have to say I like how easy it is to add things and it’s simliar enough to other apps I’ve customized that I’m not feeling terribly lost.

Anyway, thems the reasons. I hope you stay, I hope you get used to the look if I don’t change it right away, but I promise to not let it get stale again.

Mad TV was on fire. Just amazingly brilliant.

They had a skit of Steve Jobs introducing the newest iProduct, the iRack. I’m telling you it was fabulous. Politically motivated (say “irack” to yourself) brilliance. I dont want to spoil it since I’m attempting to pull it off dvd, I actually tivo’d the show, and recorded the segement to the new dvd burner and am trying to pull it off. New skill for Jenny! Woot! I’ll post a link to youtube or something if I get it to work and get it up…

The current hate list:
The new “anything you can do” Gap ad.
Mario Cantone.
Justin Timberlake’s “exy Back”.
That they are going to make a TV series about the Geico Cavemen.

Nothing makes an impression at a job where I’m pretty sure no one likes me than, on the busiest and most tedious day of the week, to lock one keys in the car the night before.

After spending damn near 20 minutes looking for them (usually in my purse anymore) all over the house, I went outside twice. The second time outisde I spotted them on the floorboard of my car. They’d fallen out of my pocket last night bringing the new iPod baby home obviously. And being as I’m an idiot since I’ve taken to triggering the doors to lock BEFORE getting out. I think you see the level of my overall stupidity by now.

The door was already unlocked so I didn’t need them, thus didn’t notice I didn’t have them.

Argh… waiting for a man in a big truck to help you when you are stupid is so humiliating.

Getting hammered by some MF’ing comment nuke sending me uselss and puzzling spam comments without a name or even links (and what is spam without links? A pain in the ass that’s what!) I’m getting dozens a minute, faster than I can junk them.

That said – I turned off automatic approval and will moderate everything for a day or so until they stop flooding in or the attack is stsopped. I have to sleep sometime.

PLEASE you can still comment! I’ll turn the works on again asap.

Telling me you “did it in Adobe” makes me want to hurt you badly. Adobe is not a program. Adobe MAKES many programs. Photoshop is merely one of them.

iPod is not spelled IPod, i-pod, I-Pod, or Ipod.

Email: Not E-mail, or eMail. All lower case, however, is also acceptable. And things arrive IN your email, not ON them.

When referring to your website, the phrase “on my web” shall not be used unless you are in fact a spider.

All typed exclaimations (LOL, OMFG) should be strictly restricted to only email, IM and texting. If such abbreviated exclamations are spoken aloud you deserve a punch to the throat.

The web is more than 10 years old. If you have used a computer at least 5 years, and younger than 70 years old, your excuses about not being able to understand or work “the internets” will be met with mockery and scorn, perhaps a little bit of being pocked by pointy sticks.

Punishment for use of the word “internets” is nothing less than an atomic wedgie.

START KEY MUST DIE!!!!!! URGHHHHHH!!!!!

See while most windozers don’t seem to touch that key much, working in photoshop and using extensive use of keystrokes (cntrl and alt on pc, command and option on mac) I find that the STINKING START KEY IS GETTING HIT EVERY TWENTY DAMN SECONDS!!!!!!

AAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHH! I have to find a way to disable it that doens’t require regedit… or I’m gonna yank the key off.

EDIT: I found a control panel for this MS natural keyboard that does EXACTLY this very thing – ahhh!!!!!

Now if I can just remap the keyboard for mac layout… without being an admin anyway:
alt into control (mac: command)
start into alt (mac: option)
THEN, and only then, it’ll be one step closer to familiar. I’ve already had to put scotch tape on the keys and put their mac names on them so I know WTF I’m hittin’ in photoshop, since for me they are reversed in order…

WLWT: Thursday’s Bengals Game Moves Thurday NBC Lineup

Wow Bengals versus the Ravens… two teams that can get beaten by a PeeWee hockey squad.

Oh, Yeah prime viewing there… morons.

And Ken Broo, you addle minded sports dork, there are more than ” a lousy million” satellite television users as you claimed on the radio today.

/rant

Even for me three in a week is a lot. This kinda annoyed me this weekend and I wanted to share it.

Kroger’s had Pepsi 2-liters on sale for 88 cents. Thats a bit of a deal. One of the brands is the what we’ve moved over to, Diet Rite Zero, which I have to say is fabulous stuff and even if it had caffeine (which Mr Man is trying to cut down on) we’d still prolly choose it over Diet Pepsi (what Mr Man preferred till now) since it’s really danged tasty.

Anyway we decided to stock up on it since we/I drink a lot of pop. I have never been a water person, I came from a heavy pop drinking house and that’s just what I drink. I’m not making this up but I can’t drink much plain water. Even small glasses can actually make me queesy to the point I’ll have to puke it up – unless it’s ungodly hot and I’m dehydrated that is, then it’s no problem. Even my gastro doc is stumped by that one.

So, back to the story, earlier in the week I went and noticed the same pop shelves were cleaned out bare. We went Saturday before the sale ended and I enter the aisle a foot behind a couple who each have a cart. They stop right at the rack and start filling BOTH CARTS up with the Diet Rite, the product I came for as well.

I went “Hey, I need a few of those.” The woman stops looks at her hubby, and says “How many?” I say we’d like to have 10. (the rack is FULL) The husband says, “ure I think we can swing that.” Then his wife snaps into gear and proceeds to then start filling the cart FASTER. Now both their carts are blocking me so I jump into gear and squeeze through and grab three, squeeze back and dump them in and grab two and then turn around – and there is one left which they realize they’ve just screwed me and don’t take. That’s right – They filled up two cart loads and I got 6. (My guess they ran a drive through, church or store and were scoring a cheaper supply.) They also bought a few other dozen bottles of other Pepsi stuff.

I head to the front and tell the service counter it’s empty because two pigs cleaned it out as I was there and ask for a rain check. The woman at the counter is as stunned as I am when I tell her the story and says that produce has a supply as well and go check there as she hands me the rain check for some more. She was right, there is a decent supply and I grab a few more, (I was tempted to grab more than a couple but after that show I wanted to leave some more for others).

As we approach the line the the sodapigs are there and we’d be right behind them. We walk a few aisles so they don’t notice we have more than we did before when I was in the aisle with them and tip them off there is more to grab.

Now after this is all said and done Mr Man said he fully expected me to issue a screaming public smack down as I’ll freely admit I’m apt to do time to time when someone is being stupid or unbearable but I was a remarkably good girl. I’m sorta surprised too because in my brain while this is all happening I’m beating her over the head with a bottle of Merlot from the rack to my left, then kicking her teeth in and stealing her cart.

This happened (I think) Wednesday but it’s been eating at me and I wanted to see if I was the only one who thought it was insane:

A local talkshow host on 700 WLW (a former lawyer and pal of Sean Hannity), who makes Hitler look like a Vegan Greenpeacer, who is also a catholic who objects to abortion so adamantly that he thinks women who get it should be punished criminally, actually suggested on his show that ALL illegal immigrant women be implanted with IUDs so they can’t reproduce and have native children that will ensure their eventual citizenship.

As abhorrent as he and these various statements are, let’s just deal with the hipocracy here… Who here knows what an IUD does? Anyone? Anyone? (It’s Okay if you don’t, I had to explain it to Mr Man.)

It is essentially a tiny wire or plastic form that floats in the uterus that scrapes or knocks loose any eggs that have attached there after fertilization. (It’s kind of like those wire brushes they put on building ledges to keep pigeons off.)

His stand on abortion is that life begins at conception and we know that IUD keeps concepted (fertilized) eggs from attaching… That’s right, he is all but advocating compulsory abortions by wanting to implant a device in women (who are almost assuredly also catholic) that removes removes fertilized eggs.

Am I right? I am seriously tempted to finally call his show and point it out after 15 years of nearly throwing up every time I tune by.

The Today Show just had you on singing in the street. Ugh.

Here’s my problems with you…

1: MR. ORIGINAL
I’ll give you that Bat out of Hell is a GREAT title for a rock album, the FIRST TIME. But, you have named your three albums, of music that all sounds exactly the same, the same name with roman numerals at the end. Do you realize it’s not witty but lame? Naming albums aren’t hard Einstein. If you have to you can give up and call one the “Black Album”.

2: LET GO ALREADY…
The highlight of your career was being in a a nearly obscene (at the time)and campy cult hit musical b-film and hve been riding that and your mystifying first album’s success for almost 30 years. Stop already. Please. It’s just sad.

3: EW.
You always have some different hot rock chic singing with you (and she’s always a better signer) that at some point have to kiss you or climb on you like a sex kitten. Have you seen you? Do you have to pay her extra for that?

4: ACTING!
When you act out some kind of car make out or couples squabble during a song it’s not musical theatre no matter how much you want, it’s freaking lame. Just sing the damn song.
Laaaaaaame!

5: Yawn.
Three albums in three decades is not a career so much of a long drawn out spasm.

And oh yeah, your voice ain’t what it used to be Bud, a few of those things you sang today weren’t notes. It was pretty sad.

TV Week

1: I think a course of action is clear. Don’t let Limeys present – they curse more as a general rule and are allowed to on TV so are not concious of it.

2: Kids don’t watch the emmy’s anwyay. They barely watch the MTV awards.

3: Religious and parental nuts wanting to sanitize everthing need stopped.

4: Beyonce has fat knees. (oh sorry, watching Ellen right now)

Oh and this from the net – for us BSG freaks:
Beginning tonight the television series “Battlestar Galactica” will travel from outer space into cyberspace. The Sci Fi Channel, which broadcasts the series, has created online mini-episodes, the first of which is scheduled to be posted at midnight. (link)

Dave posted about these records from Baby Rock that take cherished rock groups and translate thier most beloved hits into disgusting twinkly Musak not worthy for an elevator in a doctor’s office.

You know what music I had a kid? Sesame Street and whatever mom was listening to (Beatles most likely). And we were all fine. Did any of you hear Purple Haze at a young age and go home and have nightmares?

As a Cure fan I first pulled up the album of thier songs and was quickly disgusted. Not only were those original songs something I wouldn’t think twice about letting a kid listen to to begin with, but I barely heard a clip I recognized. They even managed to mess up Lullaby, which is an intsrumental and pretty darn fine on it’s own for what it’s named after. Simply hideous. If I were Robert Smith I’d sue.

Enter The Sandman by Metallica sounds like a 50’s jazz trio. I half expected Mel Torme to start scatting.

What no Van Halen album? I just have to hear how “Hot for Teacher” sounds on the Xylophone. (That was for Dave)

What is it with parents nowdays? They have to sanitize everything. Music, shopping carts, door handles… just makes me waht to have a kid out spite so I can rub it in everyone’s faces. I’ll roll her hotdog on the filthy floor I never wash before she can eat it, encourage her to eat bugs, make her sleep with the dogs, play The Wall during storytime and then, my masterpiece… teach her to cuss like a sailor so she can tell off her pre-school teacher. Almost all our cursewords are mostly middle english, germanic, or anglo saxon and I’ll be damned if does anything but use our entire cultural lanuage, damn it. Ain’t IS a word, and a perfectly good one. So there! And most of all she’d NEVER be allowed to own anything like a Wiggles album (or whoever is hot at that time)… but I’m 37 and don’t want kids… so this is all just talk.

Now I have to grab the ipod to go to bed tonight and crank up the REAL Cure to wash this crap out of my synapses.