Open Threads

Does benadryl have a known side effect of giving people bizarre dreams? My allergies have been so bad the past few days that I am taking my pharmacist’s advice and taking a benadryl at night and a Claritin in the morning, but the last two nights I have had really bizarre yet really vivid dreams. The night before last I dreamt that I was a basketball, and everything I experienced was through the up and down motion of being dribbled. That left me a little confused when I woke up.

Last night, I was a detective who was tracking a mass murderer whose method of killing was to strangle his victims, freeze their bodies, and then use an industrial meat slicer while they were frozen, cut them into little pieces, and then dispose of the carcasses one small package at a time by walking around the neighborhood and feeding the neighborhood dogs. The only reason I, the detective, found out, was because all the dogs in town suddenly started biting their owners as they had developed a taste for human flesh, and I found what looked like an uneaten thick ham steak in one back yard but turned out to be a cross section of a human thigh.

Yeah. I should probably write that second one into a horror story.

Purple HazePost + Comments (111)

This has been going on my entire adult life:

John Demjanjuk of Seven Hills, Ohio, born Ivan Demjanjuk in Ukraine in 1920, arrived in Munich Tuesday morning to face accusations of crimes committed as a Nazi death-camp guard.

Mr. Demjanjuk was deported for the second time by the United States on Monday. The first time was 23 years ago, and he was bound for worldwide notoriety, accused of being the unfathomably cruel “Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka,” one of the Holocaust’s most infamous sadists. He was convicted and sentenced to death in Israel, before new evidence won him a reprieve and eventually a trip back to the United States and the return of his stripped citizenship.

But the wheels of justice began to grind again, and the whole process has repeated itself step by step. Monday night, a frailer Mr. Demjanjuk, now 89 and once again stateless, boarded a special medically equipped airplane bound for Germany, where he is accused of being an accessory in the murder of 29,000 Jews while working as a guard at the Sobibor death camp in eastern Poland.

When the first deportation occurred, I was not old enough to drive.

Justice Is SlowPost + Comments (33)

The day went by too fast.

Also, I am burnt out on blogging.

Open ThreadPost + Comments (177)

Nobody could have predicted:

The television ads that began airing last week feature horror stories from Canada and the United Kingdom: Patients who allegedly suffered long waits for surgeries, couldn’t get the drugs they needed, or had to come to the United States for treatment.

[….]

The campaign is being coordinated by CRC Public Relations, the group that masterminded the “Swift boat” attacks against 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry, and is inspired by the “Harry and Louise” ads that helped torpedo health-care reform during the Clinton administration.

I’ve probably already used up my supply of Sully bait, but I wonder how he feels about making common cause with this sort of thing.

Swiftboating health care reformPost + Comments (85)

Today’s do-it-yourself tip: take a screenshot of the blue screen of death (BSoD; you can find it online) and use it as a screensaver. This is especially fun when you own a Mac, and/or give presentations a lot.

Chat about whatever.

***Update***

For cripes sake people, google it.

Open ThreadPost + Comments (97)

I’m really not sure what is going on, but this year I appear to have developed serious allergy problems. I checked the pollen index, and it is high or really high for this region, so I guess that explains why I have been feeling itchy and congested and puffy the past few days, and my doctor said it is just seasonal allergies, but it really is damned annoying.

At any rate, concerned that it is cat dander and not pollen, I went and rented a carpet washing machine and have spent the last few hours ripping my house apart, vacuuming, moving furniture, vacuuming some more, and then cleaning the carpets. About a quarter of the way through, I realized this was a helluva lot more work than I thought it would be when I got this brilliant damned idea. I will probably still be cleaning carpets well past eight o’clock tonight.

On the other hand, they did need it.

*** Update ***

I’ve been throwing cat toys into a bucket to collect them all so I don’t suck them up the vaccum, and I just decided to count them. Counting the ones I found buried in couch cushions, behind couches, wedged behind a speaker, underneath a cabinet, in my winter slippers, and everywhere else, we are up to 62 and I still have two rooms to go. Spoiled rotten cat.

AllergiesPost + Comments (78)

Don’t forget to call your mom!

Happy Mother’s Day!Post + Comments (42)