• Make sure that you have two apps, unstacked, near the NewsStand app.
• Drag those two apps together to create a stack.
• As soon as the stack-creation magic starts happening, drag the NewsStand app on top of it and let go.
• If you do it fast enough, NewsStand will go into the new stack!

NOTE: According to others who have done this, if you try to launch the NewsStand app from within that stack, it freaks the phone out, so don’t do that. :) For hiding purposes only!
OCD iPhone screen tidiness freaks, you can thank me now.

Just went to Mission Valley Borders to comfort friends who work there. This morning, driving past, there must have been 100 vultures crowding the door. Just now there were hundreds and hundreds of them, the cashier line going all the way to the rear of the store and back to the front, almost every shopper with armloads of stationery and mass-market crap, DVDs and gift books.…

Where were all you fuckers before?!? When every bookstore is closed and Walmart is our only browsing venue outside of Amazon’s stunted “Look Inside” feature, well, may you and your children stew in your under-read stupidity. Go ahead and join Sarah and Michelle in the ranks of library-devaluing “academic” (read: people with more than a high school education) haters, you pathetic stooges and unquestioning Fox news absorbers! Fuck you all!

[UPDATE]
It gets better! I walked back to my car, taking pains not to be hit in the parking lot by the 40 or 50 endlessly circling cars. When I arrived at mine, two women, both intent on taking my spot, started to inch up so as not to lose the spot to the other. By the time I started backing out, they were staring at each other, both so close to my car that I could no longer leave. I pulled back in to the spot (had I not had to return to work, I’d have camped there all day just to spite their sorry bitch asses), honked and waited. One of them finally backed up, and after I left, she lost the spot to the other lady, who she proceeded to park in with her white SUV, blocking all other cars from getting past. I only just barely saw the beginning of their altercation in my rear-view as I got the feck out.

My ongoing attempt to not hate people, and to cultivate compassion, is dealt serious setbacks by incidents like this. What I should be thinking is “May all beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering,” but instead I am inwardly chanting “May all beings who have caused suffering suffer themselves. May your cars be dinged, may you be viciously ticketed by under-quota cops so that the books you purchase today cost you three times as much as if you’d bought them from a book-and-mortar before it died.” And then I feel ugly and bad for thinking ugly and bad things. How come I have to have existential guilt, and none of those assholes do? It isn’t fair!

</rant>

<tears style=“frustration: high; despair:high;”>

I am still waiting to hear whether I will be chosen, but now I have comrades:

• Visits to Bedlam: madness and literature in the eighteenth century by Max Byrd
• Songs from the black chair : a memoir of mental interiors by Charles Barber
• Walking notorious London : from gunpowder plot to gangland: walks through London’s dark history by Andrew Duncan
• A guide to literary London by Eric Lane
• Guide to literary London by George Guion Williams
• A literary guide to London by Ed Glinert
• Small green roofs : low-tech options for greener living by Nigel Dunnett, et al.

Well, damn. Can a woman have no peace? I barely finished typing in the books when they announced that we can all go home. Bastards. And with all this company.

To quote, David Mitchell in his piece on texting vs. phones, “My god, I’m eighty.”

How Often to Take Your Medication

• ad lib — freely, as needed
• bid — twice a day
• prn — as needed
• q — every
• q3h — every 3 hours
• q4h — every 4 hours
• qd — every day
• qid — four times a day
• qod — every other day
• tid — three times a day

When to Take Your Medication

• ac — before meals
• hs — at bedtime
• int — between meals
• pc — after meals

How Much Medication to Take

• caps — capsule
• gtt — drops
• i, ii, iii, or iiii — the number of doses (1, 2, 3, or 4)
• mg — milligrams
• ml — milliliters
• ss — one half
• tabs — tablets
• tbsp — tablespoon (15ml)
• tsp — teaspoon (5ml)

How to Use Your Medication

• ad — right ear
• as — left ear
• c or o — with
• od — right eye
• os — left eye
• ou — both eyes
• po — by mouth
• s or ø — without
• sl — sublingual
• top — apply topically

Taken from http://healthinsurance.about.com/od/prescriptiondrugs/a/understanding_MD_Rx.htm

I remember being equally thrilled to learn the letter-number combinations that served as shorthand for panda researchers at the zoo. If memory serves, 4C was some kind of erratic movement or twitching. I wish I could find a cheat sheet for that info…

I recently stumbled upon Bad Sex again, however, and coupled with my dog, it has become the final nudge I needed to get back into indulging in the things I love (like cringe-provoking non-sequitur).

No, dammit, I do not think of my dog and bad sex in any sick way. My dog, Hanna, who we got as a pup with three legs, is now eight-ish, and cancer has taken one more leg, leaving her with two on the left side and none on the right. We aren’t sure how much time the operation has bought her, but she is happy and perky and playing and social: no less a joy, and no less full of joy, than she was when we first met. She does not, like the winners of “failure” awards, let loss stop her. She doesn’t seem, anyway, to mope about bemoaning her lot in life, wishing for the good-ol’-four-legged days. She simply grabs what she can, be it food, a squeaky toy, a nice grassy spot in the sun, or affection and wrings all the joy out of it and into her being. She chews on the rawhide she has, wasting no time wishing for the ones that she walked past at PetCo.

Ok, yeah, I know that sounds all self-help-y and fluff-nauseating, but sometimes it takes these things to remind me that life is short. I used to write, out of joy. I used to compose, sing, and play music, also out of joy. I stopped doing these things somewhere along the way, in part because I let myself believe that if I weren’t fantastic at them, I shouldn’t waste my time creating, and should just consume the art of others. I let myself believe, as well, that any attempt that failed was proof that I should give up. Both of these thoughts, however, are bullshit. My brain knows this, and my mind is catching up, thank goodness.

Therefore, the people who win Ig Nobel, Bulwer-Lytton and Bad Sex awards are my new patron saints. They stand as beacons of the idea that failure is:

1. subjective,
2. proof of trying, and
3. practice toward success, not to mention
4. meaningless, if the attempt gives satisfaction.

I will, from now on, sing my own songs, write my own poems and stories, dance my own funky moves and taste everything that is handed to me. Yeah!

The mother of my hedgepig and squirrel, Laurie Pink, will be drawing for charity — £1 per picture! — as part of the Red Nose Day festivities! Donate large, donate hard, and get a picture to boot! (Or of a boot, if that is your wish…) Let her know on Twitter (@lauriepink) what name your donation was made under and the subject of your desired artsy thing. :)