The name game

I am SO using some of these when I make reservations or leave my name to get a table. Can you imagine the looks I’ll get when I respond to “Debizzle – Party of 2″ ?

hehe
_______________________________

1. YOUR REAL NAME: Debra

2. YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (first 3 letters of real name plus izzle.) Debizzle

3. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (fav color and fav animal) Green Tiger

4. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, and current street) Leann Robin

5. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first name, last 3 letters of mom’s maiden name) Kredeyer

6. YOUR SUPERHERO NAME: (2nd favorite color, favorite drink). Purple Water

7. Matt’s right. I’m removing this one. I didn’t like it when I answered it but being the lemming I am, I thought I “had to”. Yes, I’m a dork and I’ve never denied that.

8. YOUR WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (best friend’s middle name) Lea

9. YOUR GOTH NAME: (black, and the name of one of your pets) Black Sam

10. YOUR PORN STAR NAME: (your first pet’s name and the first street you lived on) Angel Vine

My life, my fable

I have written, deleted, re-written, and re-deleted countless posts in the last few weeks pertaining to something going on that I just can’t put out on the Blogosphere. So here is my cryptic, yet oddly satisfying, attempt to get this out of my system and yet not really say anything.

The past few weeks have reminded me of that old story, The Emperor’s New Clothes. I feel like that young child on the sidelines, that nobody listens to, who’s says “Hey, he has no clothes on”.

And somewhere down the road, somebody is going to ask “Why weren’t we informed that he had no clothes on?” and someone else is going to point at me and say “She didn’t tell us” and I’m going to scream like you’ve never heard screaming before.

I’m just saying.

These things I know for sure:

• The truth isn’t always easy to hear, and it certainly isn’t easy to say, so if I’m going out of my way to say it, you can believe it’s true.
• Just because you like your version of reality better, that doesn’t make it true.
• Ignoring the truth doesn’t make it false.

The Emperor is naked, People.

Thank you. I feel better now.

Tuesday twosome

List the last two…

1. Movies you watched: The Producers and In Her Shoes (both on HBO On Demand)
2. TV shows you saw: Super Nanny and Beauty and the Geek (recorded by DVR)
3. Items you purchased: hmm, lunch today and fresh-cut flowers last week (I needed some cheering up)
4. Beverages you drank: orange juice at breakfast and water the rest of the day
5. Internet sites you surfed before starting this post: cnn.com and my local banking site

On the bookshelf, #6

The Closers, by Michael Connelly

Michael Connelly is one of my favorite fiction authors of all time. He’s written 18 novels and I own them all. Well, I own all but the one that just came out and the one that is coming out in May 2007. But trust me, I will own them all.

All but five of the books are “Harry Bosch novels” and The Closers is one of these. Harry Bosch is an LAPD homicide detective, the kind of man you want on your case if you’re wronged and not, if you’re guilty. He works just inside the law, but pushes that boundary when necessary to get what he needs to make a case. He is the kind of officer that drives the higher-ups crazy. But he gets the bad guys, so they go willingly.

In this particular edition, Harry rejoins the LAPD after three years retirement from the force. He comes back to work with his former partner, Kiz Rider, in the Open-Unsolved Cases Unit. He and Kiz are immediately put on to a lead in a 17-year old unsolved murder of a young high school girl. The story is predictable Harry Bosch, in that it isn’t predictable at all. Since this is a mystery, I won’t say much more.

The Harry Bosch novels are the best series of novels I’ve ever read. The stories are written so that you could pick up any of them and read without being lost. But the complex back story and history that carries through from the first book to the most recent makes it that much more enjoyable.

Nothing is off limits with Connelly and we, as the readers, are often taken into the dark side of law enforcement in these books. Police corruption, city politics, and the role of the media on crime have all come in to play during the course of this series.

If you have any interest in crime-drama mysteries, you have to read Michael Connelly. If you like suspense, Los Angeles, law enforcement, or just very well written storylines, you have to read Michael Connelly. Simply put, read Michael Connelly. You won’t be disappointed.

On spam and alcoholics

I was just reading over my blog stats. Those are always good for a few grins and giggles.

First of all, I want to welcome the number of stressed out people finding this little blog. Every single day, many times a day, somebody finds Reflecting after doing a web search on “God grant me the serenity”. I’m imagining hoards of mothers of very small children, over burdened worker bees, and an inordinate number of AA-goers huddled over keyboards looking for some solace. I’m sure this site isn’t what you had in mind, but welcome anyway. I hope you find some small measure of calm while here.

The number of people searching for Lisa Loeb has finally waned and yet the number of people looking for eyeglasses ala Tina Fey remains constant. (Told you, the glasses are totally cute!) And every few weeks, I get a hit from someone looking for “Johnny Carson and Karnac the Magnificent”. That cracks me up — especially when the searcher doesn’t quite remember the name of the act and I get things like “Johnny Carson and the Astounding Mackinac”.

Unfortunately, the number of spam comments received has surpassed the number of legitimate ones. By far. It just happened this week. Thank God for Akismet so I can keep my comments feature on while it gathers all the questionable comments for me to peruse and delete at my leisure.

I rarely read the spam comments — well, because there really isn’t anything there to read. Most of them consist of just dozens of links to other sites, none of which I’ve clicked on, but from their names I infer that they want to help me make more money, have more sex, or make money having sex. But I’m just guessing.

This week, one little spam comment caught my eye as I was scrolling through because it was much less obnoxious looking than the rest. In the text area was just one small, simple phrase:

gimme money

I guess that sex thing didn’t work out for them.