Sure, it would be nice to have a device that would instantly cause others to understand your point of view, but just now what I could really use is a Befuddler. This would be more like a shield than a gun. It would take the efforts of those who try to rob you of independent thought and creativity, amplify the effect, and then bounce right back at the perpetrator. The harder someone tried to be controlling, stifling, and generally no fun at all, the less their own brains would be capable of doing anything at all. Bossy jerkfaces everywhere would end up sitting around twiddling their thumbs, and the rest of us could get on with our lives.

So if anybody knows how to get to Magrathea so I can commission one of these bad boys, I’d be really grateful.

*That would be me.

Wrong. Tonight the Facebook identity gestapo caught on to my little caper. They won’t let me log in because, geniuses that they are, they suspect I’m not using my real identity on that account. Good job, detectives. I suspect my account got flagged because for some time I’ve been ignoring their demands to add phone numbers and more e-mail addresses to my account to make it “more secure.” Tres amusant. My data becomes more secure when I give more of it away? Uh-huh. I would hazard a guess that people who like their privacy are also more prone to pseudonyms. That’s never jived with Facebook. They want their users to cough up the data, and cough it up now. Many people willingly vomit every last detail about themselves without caring who sees. Me, not so much.

From its soulless, sterile blue and gray color scheme to the monochromatic way it categorizes all human relationships as “friends”, I’ve struggled with Facebook from the beginning. Its users — human beings the mighty Zuck referred to as “dumb fucks” — pump every detail about themselves into a system without giving a second thought to what it means. Pop quiz — did you know that hitting the “Like” button on Facebook constitutes a binding legal agreement? Turns out that South Park episode about our cavalier approach to end user license agreements wasn’t so far off the mark.

I tried putting “Loki Kitteh” back in as his new name. Tron must have stopped fighting for the users because I got another error message from Master Control:

Inauthentic Name – Temporary Block
Unfortunately, the name you entered was not approved by our system. Please wait 10 minutes and then try again.
Make sure you enter your name correctly and that it complies with our formatting guidelines. Please note that if your next attempt is also unsuccessful, your account may be disabled.

Inauthentic name? How about inauthentic service? How about creativity stifling identity police? How about there’s nothing wrong with nicknames, pseudonyms, and playing with authorial personas? If Mark Twain were still alive, would you be breaking his balls because he failed to write “Samuel Clemens” next to his Social Security Number on your signup sheet?

Beyond the problem of requiring real-life identity is the issue of what friendship is supposed to be about — enjoying yourself. Loki is pretty damn funny and interacting with my friends on his behalf is fun. FUN. Do you know what that is, Facebook, or did you miss out on that because you were too busy not being invited to parties in college? Do you even know what the Internet is for? Don’t you KNOW that it’s ruled by cats?

At the end of the day, it’s Facebook’s walled garden and if they want to shake down everyone for ID at the door I guess that’s their own affair. The problem is, I really don’t have an aternative. As sketchy as Facebook’s privacy policies are, Google’s are downright evil. Anything you give to either social network is theirs. Forever. No tap tap takebacks. But if you give it to Google+, it becomes public, able to be used by others for profit, and you lose creative control over your images and words. At least all the stuff you give to Facebook isn’t indexed by search engines. Yet.

It sucks to be sent a message by this company telling me I don’t have a place in online dialogue because having a pseudonym is more fun and comfortable for me. Guess I’m going to have to start bugging my sister for those links to her photo gallery again . . .

It’s back. Oh, insomnia, you heartless bastard. I thought I told you not to come around here no more? Ambien was supposed to be the bouncer, but he seems to have gone on a coffee break, so somehow insomnia managed to crash this brain-goo party.

Too much is swirling in my head right now. I miss my cat. I try to ignore the little burgundy box with brass fittings sitting on the bookshelf, and when I do notice it I try to distract myself with clever little musings that Ripley is now Schrödinger’s Cat, immortal and safe in her quantum state of . . . ashes. It doesn’t work. In ten hours it will be three weeks since I felt her heart stop beating. I can still feel her grow cold under my fingertips.

I don’t miss my old state of mind with regard to the meaning of life and the universe and all that, but I wish I was a little farther along in my process of rebuilding a worldview. It sure would be useful right about now.

It’s been too long since I’ve been home to L.A. I miss the beach. I miss the sun. I miss House of Pies in Los Feliz on the way to an adventure, and I miss Canter’s on La Brea at three a.m. after a night out. I miss salsa that clears your sinuses. I miss not having to wonder if it’s warm enough to wear flip-flops outside. I miss having family there that would be sincerely happy to have me visit.

I’m stressed about the future. I need to find a new job. I didn’t think that in addition to family stress and the evil attack of the cancer on poor little Ripley that I’d also find myself suddenly unemployed, even though I’ve been doing as much as I was able to show that I have a lot to offer the company. Despite my efforts I’ve been wedged firmly between the Scylla and Charybdis of apathy and frustration.

I can sympathize a lot with German Shepherds. They’re smart and eager, and if you put them to work they can do amazing things. But if you lock them up in the yard and just give them a ball to chase once in a while and never let them do more, they get bored. Then they get frustrated. Then they get grouchy. Then one day they bite. That’s what happens when you go crazy from being cooped up. In the end, the owner of the German Shepherd just sees a crazy, useless bitch. But the owner rarely, I’ve found, recognizes that they created the situation by stifling potential.

Anyway. Unemployment. I’ve been working on getting myself a promotion for some time, and the timing felt right to try to make it materialize. It backfired. The short version is that I explained that after 3+ years in the same position I was ready for new challenges. Then I got fired. I didn’t hear the words “you’re fired” so much as hear that my boss agreed I was ready for something new and so my last day at work would be next Friday. That’s how you fire someone without saying “you’re fired.” It was a pretty slick coup de grace, I have to admit.

I don’t take it personally. At no point did anybody promise to be Virgil on my journey through the nine circles of corporate hell. I know I was on my own in trying to escape a dead-end position. Any efforts to do well at work had to be based on altruism. That’s rough. Even with a decent paycheck and benefits it’s hard to stay motivated when I know the career potential is identical (zero) regardless of whether I am awesome or I am mediocre. All I had to do was fill a function just well enough not to be a disruption. If I’m not interested in filling that function any longer, well, that’s a disruption. Fair enough. It just would have been nice to know that ahead of time.

So that’s the only part that rubs me wrong — the disillusionment. I truly believed what the organization said about being all about the people, man. Finding out that you’re as disposable as any other schlub working at any other company that thinks of employees in terms of the roles they perform and not the achievements they are capable of is a bit of a letdown. I think in the future I’d be safer working someplace without such lofty Utopian aspirations. Then I can’t be disappointed when they don’t live up to them. I mean, who can, really? I see that now.

But the main point is . . .

. . . oh yeah. So some company treated me like obsolete software. Whatever. I think I’m worth more than that, so I need to figure out my next move and make it like a rock star.

Maybe, like Peter Gibbons, I need to leave Initech behind and get a job slinging a shovel at a demolitions company. Fuckin’ A, man.

Maybe I just need to accept that I’m horribly overqualified for any job that I can manage to get an interview for, but horribly under qualified for any job I’d actually want, and the answer is to give up and work two part time jobs, one at Anthropologie and the other at Peets’ Coffee. I’d have awesome clothing and free wi-fi whenever I needed it. Do I require much more in life? Not really.

Maybe I need a Room of One’s Own and five hundred pounds so the ideas screaming to be let out of my mind can finally escape.

Mostly what I need is a fucking break. In so many ways. I’m ground down. I look it. I can see it when I look in the mirror. I’ve accepted that the universe isn’t fair, and that sometimes no matter how hard you pay your dues sometimes you don’t get a return on the investment. So I have to remember the words of the great Sarah Connor: No Fate But What We Make. Whatever happens next, it’s going to be done on my terms for once. I’m done bowing to Authority for no real reason, and I’m done being a tool for others’ purposes when there won’t be anything in it for me.

If anything, all this shit piling up on me all at once is making me appreciate the good things I have going for me. I have the most awesome boyfriend in the history of the universe. I have good friends who like me for me, with no preconditions to acceptance. I have a remaining cat who has an epileptic hamster in his skull instead of a brain yet despite this is an utterly lovable furball. I have sisters who stick by me thick or thin, and two best friends who I know have my back no matter what. I have a lot more than many people, and I have a lot to offer.

I have tried to get a leg up in the world in various ways, only to be swatted down. Maybe I’ll stop trying to beg for carrots and instead try helping others with whatever it is they’re trying to make progress on. Little stuff like that matters. Whether I’m writing my sister’s English essay so she can focus on Physics or just bringing some brownies to work because I know they make this one dude there like 5% happier, I have a lot to offer the world and I won’t stop handing it out to people who appreciate it. It’s vicarious accomplishment, but it still feels good. For those who don’t appreciate it, I’m just going to have to start setting credit limits on altruism. I only have so many hours in the day, and I’d rather invest where I’ll see a more meaningful return.

Anybody have an opening with benefits and decent pay that will let me just make the world a better place without self-sabotaging organizational nonsense getting in the way?

Thanks to New Years’ resolutions, gyms are always packed for the first couple of weeks of the year before it thins back out to just the regulars. Not surprising. If someone was really serious about fitness they would make it a part of their lives, not set some arbitrary date to try to make it work. This morning was no exception. There was barely any room on the floor and I got to class a minute late, so I sneaked in the back.

The instructor was some guy I’d never seen before, and he was addressing the class as if he’d just taken five hits of ecstasy and decided to create missing scenes from The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

“Today I want you to expand your consciousness and really feel yourselves become one with the universe,” he said, twirling his fingers. He ordered us all to sit in lotus pose with our hands in prayer position — NO, DO NOT PUT YOUR PALMS ON YOUR KNEES — yes, in prayer position only. He made us breathe in and out of each nostril individually, which in hindsight was a bad move as this is the season for niggling upper respiratory infections.

We were then told to move into some cat and cow stretches, except he called them “happy kitty” and “scared puppy.” Down on all fours, he told us to roll our spines into a backbend as we crouched on all fours “spreading the pubis and buttocks wide to feel the openness as we begin our communion with the divine in each of us.”

Normally cat and cow stretches are done smoothly, so that you roll through the spine and warm up the back. And so that you don’t linger at the sight of your classmates’ butt cheeks. The instructor had us linger. And linger. And linger. It became difficult to keep a straight face as I stared forward into the sea of wide open sphincters before me.

“And now,” the instructor gasped breathlessly, “I want you to close your eyes . . .”

Oh thank goodness.

“. . . and I want you to visualize the stars in the universe. Astronauts explore the universe . . .”

No they don’t, I thought, making a very bad start at my yoga practice by not keeping my mind focused on the moment. But astronauts can barely break orbit at this point and we’re still lucky to get them home alive at all. They’re not exactly pwning the galaxy just yet.

“. . . and as we all know, the ancient Sanskrit word for the body is . . . SSSSSSSSSOOOOOOOOOOMAAAAAAAAA . . .”

The word was spoken with reverence. Which was hilarious because that’s totally not what “soma” means at all. I guess new agey yoga teachers with Om tattoos and organic cotton tank tops can be just as ignorant about religion as the worst of the Evangelical biblical cherry-pickers.

“And so, today, as we consecrate our practice to the positive energy we wish to summon in the world, I want you to see yourselves as . . .”

Wait for it . . .

“SOMANAUTS.”

Look. I do yoga. I drink soy milk. I believe in mind-body-spirit unity and all that crap. But this load of hippie manure was just too much for me, and I could tell I wasn’t going to get a thing out of this workout. I rolled up my mat and went home.

Guess I do have a limit for just how much new age bullshit I can put up with in one day. Isn’t it nice to learn something new about yourself?

OUT DAMNED SPOT!

Right now the spot is a probable tumor in my sweet, beautiful kitteh Ripley. I am not ready to lose her, and seeing her in pain is agonizing. Last night, instead of sleeping at the side of the bed as she usually does, she spent most of it huddled on my chest, burrowing in deeper every time she twitched awake. It broke my heart. Early this morning, she got up, politely walked away from me, and violently threw up. I feel like a complete asshole for having to take her to the vet for a CT scan in forty-five minutes.

I’m going to need to keep very busy over the next week or so while decisions are made and actions are implemented. I can only work out so many hours a day, so luckily I’ve got a big box of leftover balls of yarn from various projects. Last night I made a very pretty ribbon and yarn scarf, and I got the idea to make as many small projects as I need to keep my sanity, and make my friends happy by sharing those projects with them.

If you’d like a scarf, pair of mittens, hat, hairband, tie, or some other small project, just speak up. Otherwise I’ll probably just hand you one next time I see you.