I remember when I tried to taste vanilla straight out of the bottle. 'Cause y'know, it smells good, right? So I thought it would taste good, too. But I was wrong. So terribly wrong. It's enough to make you gag. And the aftertaste stays with you for a while. It was so gross.

For the record, Coffee Mate only tastes good when it's in coffee. Not straight. I tasted it this morning (because that stuff smells good, too) and it wasn't good.

How can things that smell so yummy taste so horrible??? And that's vise versa, too. Certain foods smell disgusting. Like brussel sprouts. Lots of people like brussel sprouts. Not me, though. If it doesn't smell good, I won't eat it.

There's a woman at the barn where I board my horses who is less than intelligent. She has a nine year old daughter who is an insufferable brat, but that's beside the point.

A while back, I was standing outside the paddock petting my mother's horse, who happens to be a towering, 17 hand klutz. Stupid Woman's (SW) daughter comes over from the inside of the paddock. Bratty Little Kid (BLK) is inside the paddock with a bunch of loose horses. I tell her to get out of the paddock. She doesn't listen.

So. BLK waltzes right between my horse and her little pony. The pony was being obnoxious, so my horse pins his ears back and lunges at said pony, with LBK still between them. Miraculously, BLK manages to get out of the way.

Had that girl been less than alert, or my horse been any faster, BLK would have been smeared. By my mom's horse.


Another person comes along and yells at BLK to get out. She finally gets her lucky little toosh out of there. So much for listening to Jessy.


Shortly after the incident that made the bile rise up into the back of my throat, SW shows up. A friend of mine asks her if her daughter is allowed in the pasture alone. She replies, and I quote, "Yes, she's old enough to make that decision."

*headdesk*headdesk*headdesk*

I almost walked up to SW and accused her of being a failure as a parent. But that would have gotten me into big trouble, so I didn't.
My horse almost mangled her daughter, which would have been a lawsuit. I need to get some liability release forms. I'll remind SW of her words when a horse sends her daughter to the ICU with a fractured skull. And it's bound to happen sooner or later.

Another case of parenting FAIL happened last fall. We were having a game day at the barn and a girl brought in her paint mare from another place for the day. The mare was put into a stall next to a gelding she didn't know, and they weren't getting along. Paint Mare's owner was in the stall with her, grooming her and whatnot. Then a guy and his daughter (maybe five or six?) come along and the daughter asks her dad if she can go into Paint Mare's stall. The guy says yes, and didn't even ask the owner, or watch his daughter while she went in the stall. The owner tells the kid to stay away from the mare's hindquarters, but does the kid listen? Of course not. Paint Mare tries to kick out at the gelding next to her, and nails the kid instead. Breaks the kid's leg. So they called 911 and had her trucked away in an ambulance. All thanks to the dipshit parent who had his head up his ass.

Those are the kinds of people I'm talking about. The ones that should have been spayed and neutered at birth. I meet more of them every day.

Mankind has pondered and argued this particular notion since forever. Each side has viable points, but I have to initially say that I'm partial to ninjas. *dodges bullets from pirate fans*

It's a very close call, but let me explain.

Pirates have guns, which are medium/long range weapons. They also have swords, knives, broken rum bottles, and any other sharp object that happens to be available at the time. Those are all short range. They have a lot of variety. But in order for these weapons to be effective against a ninja, the pirate would first have to a) find the ninja and b) catch said ninja. Easier said than done. A telescope won't do much good, nor will cannons or swords because ninjas are too fast and elusive.

Ninjas have speed and stealth on their side, along with a wide arsenal of short and long range weapons. Katanas, throwing stars, sais, bow staffs. The list goes on. All the ninja has to do is sneak up behind the pirate and slice him in half. There you go. Dead pirate.

The ninja would mop the floor with the pirate, period. That answers the question forever.

I haven't posted here since January. Oh, deary me.

I'm trying to read The Scarlet Letter and it sucks. I don't like it. Nathaniel Hawthorne has done better works. I don't get why he's so famous for the most dry and pointless piece of literature he ever wrote. Poop on a stick. An Obama-shaped poop on a stick.


I heard they don't expect the economy to bounce back until 2013. That sucks. Now is the time to cut back on spending. Frugality is a virtue IMO.
Bet all the Obama supporters aren't so blindly loyal now. They thought he would wave his majikal wand and fix everything? Come on, people.

And why does everybody finance everything? That's not the way to do it. You save up for whatever you're buying and get it paid for up front. It eliminates the debt and you don't have to worry about it. But people want everything now. They can't wait for anything. Sure, they'll have to make payments every month for the next fifteen years to pay off that brand-new Escalade you bought impulsively, but hey! Short-term gratification, right? Awesome.

Dumbass mofos.

Or at least I'd like to think so. My logic might be inaccurate. Who knows?

Here's what I'm talking about. psychoticraccoon.blogspot.com/2009/01/does-this-seem-like-stupid-idea-to.html

Psycho Raccoon = me.

The Big Read thinks that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicise those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare ---Not if you paid me.
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck --- I saw the movie. It was ok.
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell --- I was shocked. I actually liked it. O.o
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker ---It was really mellow. Almost to the point of dry. I was sad.
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

...Ho dang.

You know how they sold a cornflake shaped like Illinois on ebay for a gazillion dollars? My mom thought if we had a piece of shit that looked like Barack Obama, we could make millions. Think of it: all the democrats in America would be bidding on this one turd. We'd be set for life.

On another note, I had a lesson tonight, and my horsey was amazing. He didn't spook or refuse a pole even once. ^w^ I was so proud of him. (He actually did better than me.)

We didn't have time to put the whole Enchanted Forest thing together, and all the fairie costumes I found either would have been freezing or made me look like a cheap New York City harlot. >.> So, we're going for something a bit more conventional. We're doing a fire and cook out thing again, hot cider, candy apples, etc. I'm not allowed to hand out candy anymore because I like to through it at nasty little trolls --I mean-- kids. And I'd eat it all. XD I likes my costume, though. Rawr.

I think my brother used up all the fog juice, though. I am not going to be happy if Halloween night rolls around and we run out of fog.

I was gonna go to the Trail of Screams, but I have no one to go with. Darn.

I need fog juice...

I keep seeing Obama signs everywhere. I even saw one that said, "If Obama doesn't get elected, racism is behind it."

Come on, people. Race has nothing to do with it (at least for the people I know). I don't trust him. And there's a lot of white supremacist groups that are going to cause problems if he gets elected. I would not be happy if a bunch of skinheads came rioting through the city.

I don't like Obama's background, we really don't need a president with a Muslim background, and I'm worried about the people he would put in his cabinet if he got the job. His associations are what bother me the most. I just don't trust him.

Then again, I don't like anyone running. We need Abe Lincoln. He and Reagan were a couple of the best presidents.

Yay for October! One of my favorite months. I gotta get going on the Halloween decor. Our theme this year is Enchanted Forest and I've been commissioned to make giant mushrooms. I also need a baby dragon... And a dark fairy-type costume. Plus I think my brother used up all our fog juice. Most the decorations are gonna have to be paper mache with chicken wire framing. It's gonna take some time.

I better get hammering away at those SHROOMS. O.o

Which is contrary to what my parents think. They think I'm a lazy bum. But you know what? I cut down a crab apple tree today. Mostly by myself. It was at my mom's friend's house. That power saw was a bitch to work with, but I still have all my appendages,  so  I think I did a pretty good job. At least my mom's friend acknowledged that I know how to work.

I had a barrage of half-rotten crab apples pelting me all day. Have you ever smelled fermented crab apples? Not at all pleasant. I never want to see another crab apple again. They're all mushy and they get stuck to everything. But the smell was the worst part. They'd have to rank up there with some of the worst things I've ever smelled.

And what's with all the Prius? I keep seeing them everywhere. I know they're gas efficient, but it's getting ridiculous. They've got to be the gayest car in the world. Have you noticed that Prius are just the next step of evolution up from the Smart Car? I think it's a Toyota thing. All Toyotas have this weird essence of Japanese about them. Even the mini vans, if you look at them. Personally, I'm a Dodge person. I love Dodge Rams. In an ideal world, I'd have an emerald green Ram with a diesel engine, mega cab and four wheel drive. And I'd have an aluminum Featherlight gooseneck four-horse with living quarters to top it all off.

Challengers are freaking awesome cars, but the gas mileage is horrible. Who can afford to drive those anymore? I can't believe they still make them. When's the last time you've seen someone driving a Challenger? Exactly.

The Lipizzaners were incredible Saturday. (pix = http://forgotten-ragdoll.deviantart.com/ ) They performed perfectly. :)

I went to a horse show at Fox Valley yesterday and watched the halter and showmanship classes. Most the people were around my age, and the horses were freakin awesome. (Most of them probably cost more than my car.) But you wouldn't believe how many people had tail extensions. It was so... fake. You could see were the real tail ended and the extensions began. I could actually see were it was braided into one horse's tail. It looked awful. I don't understand why no one can be happy with what their horse has naturally. If you don't appreciate them the way they are, you don't need a horse.

OH! And the farm in back of my livery yard has a brand new filly. ^w^ She's just a weanling, and she piebald! <333 One of my favorite colors. The owner brought her over and we all got to gawk at her for a while. She's a little cutie. Hee hee I might steel her away someday. >:)

And there's going to be a horse show at my barn October 18. Barrel racing, egg races, Halloween costume contest, the works.

...Well, this was a very horsey entry. >.> As if I've got nothing better to do with my time. (Actually, I usually don't). lol

I took him to the vet and he was diagnosed with diabetes. If we treated him, he'd have to have insulin therapy twice a day and blood tests every 3-5 days to make sure it was working. I can't do that to him. He's 14 years old and I don't think he could handle having 2 shots a day. The treatment's unbelievably expensive, too. He's comfortable right now, but it's never going to get better. I'm just going to try and keep him as comfortable as possible for as long as possible, until he starts showing signs of getting really sick. The vet said he has a little bit of arthritis and he doesn't see so well anymore, either, but he still purrs and seems happy for the time being. My poor Tiggy...

On a better note, I had am amazing dream last night. I was riding my horse bareback around the property and we were running full speed. He behaved perfectly, too. It was awesome. :) But then I woke up and was like, "...Goddammit." lol

I'm going to see the Lipizzaner Stallions, tonight, too.

He was in the middle of a plot of dirt, and he was all dried out. His eye was bleeding, too. :( Poor little froggy.

I picked him up and put him in a creek, and he was happy. :D

My trainer had me doing this weird exercise Saturday and now the backs of my thighs hurt like a mofo. x_x

I did run a mile today, though. ;D

I'm avoiding some of my friends. The ones from my last school. First of all, there was no diversity there and I didn't fit in with anyone at first, so I settled for people I merely got along with. We have nothing in common, and they irritate the hell out of me sometimes. I can only handle them in small doses.

For one thing, I don't like loud obnoxious people, and they're bouncing off the walls all the time. And they're extremely social. They want to drag me to homecoming this year. No.

I no longer go to that school. I don't care about anything that goes on there. Thank you goodbye.