I’m still out of town with the emm visiting the niecettes and will be for the next few days. It’s super muggy here right now, not to mention skies full of dark clouds and rain drops keeping the thunder and lightening company.

The flight was uneventful; the dude sitting next to the emm was seriously hung-over and the smell of booze wafting from him was disgusting. The emm tells me he was quite interested in what I was doing on the computer, kept looking over, trying to read the screen.

Star and Bar are absolutely adorable, naturally. Bar’s starting to talk a wee bit, but nothing quite intelligible yet except the words hi and bye. Star is Star and nothing there’s changed. She’s still her very own little person. Stubborn! Opinionated! Wicked smart.

Somehow, although I’m on vacation, I was able to post the second installment of Sarah Jane Smith - Fashionistsa Fever Part Two, entitled Inspiration Can Trip You Up, But You’ll Be Better for It. It’s been cross-posted at Scary-Crayon, as well. I don’t know about Wes, but I’m just going to sit back and wait for that email from Lis Sladen to hit my mailbox, telling me how much she enjoyed reading the first two parts and looks forward to the next two.

As if!

Oh, I do slay myself sometimes.

Or even every other day. That’s not to say nothing’s been going on, though. I’ve just been working on other things, like, well…finding a job, which by the way, is not going so well. But more on that later.

Taking my cue from old friend dotk over yonder on the East Coast, I’m gonna hit ya’ll up with a mega-update post. True dat, yo.

The job search. Oh, the job search. Hopefully something turns up in about nine weeks or so, because I don’t know how unemployment extensions work. I’m still looking, every day and have even given up the job site emails in favor of that crazy new-fangled RSS. I’ve gone pretty ape-shit over RSS, but that’s not for this part of the mega-update. A friend of mine from the bookclub I belong to gave me a tip about an employment agency a couple weeks ago and yesterday I had an appointment. The online testing I had to complete prior to the appointment kind of pissed me off: for the Word and Excel portions of the testing, I was unable to use keyboard shortcuts that I know work because I’ve been using them for fifteen years. Oh, that made me so mad that for those questions, I didn’t even fuck around with going through the menus. I just skipped them altogether. My emm was a bit concerned about it, but I told her my scores would be high enough for it to be apparent I knew what I was doing. I was given my results yesterday and am pleased with them overall, although I know both would have been closer to 100% had those goddamn shortcuts worked the way they’ve always worked in the past. I might be all about open source, but come on! I cut my teeth on Microsoft products. The typing test results shocked me so badly that I asked the woman with whom I was meeting if she was certain that was accurate. I do not type 62 WPM and I never have. I think maybe 50 WPM was my previous high score. The best part about the testing was this: although the testing website said a Mac could be used, upon scrolling down a bit further, I was informed the test was only available on Windows machines. Wha…? Whatever. I had to go to 101 and use the emm’s laptop!

This isn’t a well-publicized bit of intel, but I am getting ready to go out of town in a couple of days for a week. Star Tattoo Girl turns three today and since the emm and I were not able to attend last weekend’s birthday party, we thought visiting afterwards would be grand. I talked to Birthday Star just a little while ago and she is very excited about seeing Grammy and Auntie Mickey, but who’s more excited out of the lot of us, I’m not sure. It’s probably a tie. I still remember so clearly three years ago when the sister called the factory to tell me about the baby (no one knew what Smudge would be prior to birth), the (wo) answered the phone before I’d even had a chance to process it had rung and from around the corner, called to the brand new Auntie Mickey to talk to the sister. Those types of things I miss about the (wo). I’ve been giving a lot of thought to sending her an email, and from what Betty told me, the (wo)’s been thinking the same thing, but just doesn’t know what to say. Neither do I, naturally, even almost three months later, so perhaps it’s just better if I let it go and walk away totally.

The second part to Sarah Jane Smith - Fashionista Fever! has been written and posted here, but is waiting in the wings for some final edits to come from Wes at scary-crayon. This installment is much more image intensive than the first and although the opportunities to totally dis Sarah Jane regarding her clothing were not as numerous this time around, I managed to write about a thousand more words, give or take. It’s still snarky, though; I wrote to a friend of mine in New York and told her about it, saying, “…for all its snarkiness, I hope a sense of my absolute adoration of (Sarah Jane) comes through, too.” And I’ve utilized Lightbox this time around, since I really like the way it looks on other websites

More news on the Doctor Who front: I have officially bought my first Doctor Who toy - Dalek Sec! I don’t count the sonic screwdriver as a toy, per se, since not only can I scare the straights when I press the buttons and it makes noise, but I can also write notes to the straights and leave them on their car windows. In regular ink or invisible ink! I really hope he arrives before I leave so I can play with him on the airplane. If there were any air marshalls to be found on my upcoming flight, what are the chances they may be fans of Doctor Who and wouldn’t taser me into submission if I started saying, “EXTERMINATE! WE ARE THE SUPERIOR BEINGS!” in my very best Dalek voice?

And even more news, via a few different sources: The Brigadier will be appearing on The Sarah Jane Adventures next season. YES! I can’t even express how excited I was to read this and am now waiting even more impatiently than before for the new episodes.

I’m not sure when it happened or why, but I totally heart the Brigadier. And I fer realz heart Harry even more.

Around the villa, there’s not too much to report at all. The toy box project I was so stoked about a few months ago has pretty much stalled for the time being. Right now, it’s acting as my dining room table/workbench/desk away from the TARDIScloset and because it’s in such sorry shape, I don’t feel badly when I nick it with a box cutter or my water glass drips on it. I suspect that will all change once I get it gussied up, so I’m really pulling back on that right now. I made a lightbox this morning just because. It’s certainly nothing fancy and I still need background paper for it, but all in all, it came out quite well. I’m very happy with it and as soon as I get Dalek Sec, I’m going to give it a try.

strange cousin susan continues to be tweaked; I updated to Wordpress 2.6 just this afternoon, after backing up the files and the databases with a handy little plugin I found, since the directions found here about database back up might have been written in Greek for all I was able to understand until the plugin saved my bacon, so to speak. I’ve added an RSS feed and found a random image generator so I can showcase the collection of lady pictures my friend Anneke gives me trouble about. I’ve also finally gotten a PGP key, although it was generated from GPG, since that’s free and from what I can tell, the same thing. Searching for my public key on a few different key servers turned up some old keys I’d forgotten about, not to mention a couple on Mysterious Stevenson. It’s hard to believe it’s been almost eleven years since then.

I’ve realized how painfully long this post has become, so I’m going to hold off on the recent trials and tribulations with various open source programs, not to mention the overall love affair I’m still carrying on with it, despite those disappointments.

Would you request any information the FBI, NSA, and CIA may have about you?

I’ve got three letters, one to each agency, stamped and ready to go. I was going to mail them today. I showed them to the emm, since she didn’t believe me when I told her about it a couple days ago.

“Mickey Glitter,” she says, “I understand you’re curious, but do you really think this is a good idea? I mean, what if a simple request puts up all sorts of red flags? What if it triggers an audit on past income or causes you to be audited in the future? What if it makes it difficult to get a loan or a job or…”

“What if it lands me on a no-fly list? What if I’m disappeared? Would you come visit me in Gitmo, Ma?” I replied, half seriously, but only about the no-fly list. I don’t think we’ve gotten to the point of being disappeared by inquiring about records we have the right to see, under the FOIA.

But in Jorge’s Amerika, I can’t be 100% sure about that. If the government has the ability to take away laptops and spy on our electronic communications, then yeah, maybe disappearing could happen.

All half-joking aside - I’m asking in all earnestness. Would you request information like this from the government? Why or why not? Leave anonymous comments, if you’d prefer, although would they really be anonymous? If you’re really serious about remaining so, come back to strange cousin susan via anonymouse.

I’ve had Quicksilver, a rather nifty little program lurking on my hard drive for a while now, even prior to February’s Great Computer Fuck-Up. But until just a couple days nights ago, I had not one clue how to really use it. I’d fucked around with the Automator app for a while before getting a bit fed up with it, so I turned to Quicksilver and decided to figure it out, once and for fucking all.

It took me a little while to get the hang of the program and how it really worked, but once I’d had that epiphany, I knew there was no going back to my Mac without. I’m trying to retrain myself from using the mouse for almost everything to invoking Quicksilver. I swear to God, on every single website I found, the word invoke is used to mean open the program. So far, I’m 35/65, still favoring the mouse, but that percentage is getting closer and closer to 50/50 all the time. I’m just lazy, I suppose; honestly, within actual programs, Word, Excel, or their open-source equivalents, I definitely use the keyboard more for tasks than the mouse. I predict it won’t take me too much longer for the same to hold true using Quicksilver.

Honestly, the program still stops me up quite a bit, but at least I know how to use it now; I used to just get mad at it and call it names and close it. Once I started reading about it, though, I realized what was going on and made a simple adjustment to the reset command in the preference pane and I was off and running.

What I’m still trying to get a handle on are the plugins; I’m sure there’s a huge part of the overall picture I’m missing when it comes to them, but I’m also sure there’s going to be one of those, “Well, of course that’s how the plugins fucking work! DOH!” That point has not been reached quite yet.

I love the glassy, bezeled appearance of the interface and have already lost quite a bit of time playing with the colors. When it got on to about 0130 Thursday morning and I was trying different color combinations, I realized how insane it was and went back to the defaults. The purple is quite attractive, but I’m really leaning towards changing it to Mac’s aqua shade or a nice pink. The jury’s still out on this one.

And because there are others much better at explaining how Quicksilver works and what it can do, here are some links to articles I found most helpful in explaining the conundrum Quicksilver used to be.

Quicksilver at:

Lifehacker - an introductory tutorial; has links for more advanced usage
Dan Dickinson - this is a little old, but it got me off to a pretty good start
43 Folders - a list of Quicksilver posts can be found here

As much as I love Quicksilver at this very moment in time, I hate VLC, in particular the Windows version of it. I’ve bitched about this already: using this on the tele-top has recently rendered it absolutely unusable for anything but collecting dust and vexing me, for reasons beyond my simple comprehension. I was quite distraught, for not only is the tele-top my tv of choice these days for everything, but I was in the middle of screen capping for Sarah Jane Smith - Fashionista Fever!, part one. I needed that fucker to work!

When this started, I thought it was the disks, or the content of the disks (namely season four of Doctor Who) fucking it up. But after testing the external DVD R-W, the internal CD-ROM/DVD drive, and various other disks, not to mention Windows Media Player (I know, I know. I felt so dirty afterwards) and Nero something or other, I came to the conclusion it was neither. Thinking the most logical place to start would be a reinstall, I did and hoped for the best.

Well, it didn’t work; I still had the same weird lag/stutter/syncing issues. I went back to the drawing board and started poking around the internet to see if anyone else had experienced the same thing. Of course, I wasn’t alone, but the forums and articles I found were of very little value to me, for the most part. Many of them were far too technical for me, although some of the initial forum queries described my problems exactly.

The one possible understandable fix I found without getting a headache reading it was to reset the entire program to its defaults. I’ll tell you what, I never messed with the defaults because I don’t understand most any of them, but I reset them, anyhow. Silly, I know, but at least it was something.

Well, that didn’t work, as I kinda secretly suspected it wouldn’t. Off I was again, in search of something, anything to fix it. Unfortunately, I continued running into those very techie fixes and despaired of ever finding the answer I needed in language I could understand. Just as I was about to give up on ever using the tele-top again and realizing I’d have to press my beloved Mac into service (naturally, there are no issues with this program…it’s for a Mac!), which is a huge pain in my ass, I found a little codec thingamajig called K-Lite, purported to play even more file types than VLC, and downloaded it, installed it, and voila! The issues I had on the tele-top magically disappeared for the most part and I smote VLC.

It’s not perfect, this K-Lite; it doesn’t work so well with full-length movies and lags considerably. After discovering that, I tried watching something that wasn’t a movie and had the same result. Not wanting to fuck around with it any longer, I shut the entire machine down and haven’t returned to it yet. That was yesterday and I’ve been avoiding it like the plague today.

K-Lite also lacks the ability to screen cap, which pretty much leaves me back at square one, at least where my recent (and now ongoing) need for them is concerned. So, although it really is a huge pain, I am using the Mac; the inconvenience of this set-up is the simple fact that I refuse to sit in my TARDIScloset to watch television.

Naturally, that makes it necessary to move the Mac from the TARDIScloset and into the living room on a pretty much daily basis. In doing so, I guarantee two things: the added benefit of grabbing audio from whatever it is I may be watching (good!) and needing to reboot the Mac once it’s back in the TARDIScloset so I reconnect to the internets (bad!).

To be honest, so adverse I was to the constant moving back and forth with the Mac, I downloaded the Linux version of VLC early on and thought I’d use Myrna Loynux as my tele-top. It wasn’t simple aversion; it was more like breathless desperation to avoid the entire work-around with the Mac. It’s obvious how desperate I was because Linux is beyond me, very much like all those forum posts I read about VLC, and I’ve made my peace with the situation.

So, as far as VLC goes, I’m pretty much back to where I was when this all started. But at least I’ve got Quicksilver to sweeten the bitter pill. Anyway, I’d rather use my Mac for everything, relocation be damned.

I think I may know why my brain blocked this book out of my memory for so many years, except for the front cover. It’s a damn creepy story, although when I was fourteen, I’m sure I didn’t appreciate all the levels of creepiness. I stopped at my post office box Saturday morning, picked up the book, and when I got home from other errands, promptly started reading and didn’t stop until it was finished. I absolutely could not put the book down. There was no way that was possible; the story of five teenagers plucked for an insidious psychological and behavioral experiment pulled me in, hook, line, and sinker.

That the book was published in 1974 isn’t something you’d necessarily know if you didn’t look at the Library of Congress information page; because there’s not a lot of period slang (probably because the story is set some time in the future), the story’s held up exceedingly well over the past thirty-four years

Unfortunately, the copy I bought has a different cover than what’s pictured here, but that’s probably just as well. This picture itself makes me uneasy enough and obviously did the first time I read the book, since it (the cover) made such an impression on me, to the exclusion of just about everything else.

There are certain parts of the book that float across my mind unbidden, the two that stick in my brain the strongest are the dedication:

This book is dedicated to all the rats and pigeons who have already been here.

and the last two sentences:

And then the wall came to an end, the path took a sudden turn, and they were face to face with a traffic light-a green, blinking traffic light.
Without hesitation they began to dance.

I’m really glad I finally googled this to find the name and now have a copy of it. Certainly, I won’t forget the book’s name again, and when I’ve got a bit of disposable income lying around, William Sleator will definitely have more shelf space on my bookcases.

All business at the beginning, all play at the end!

Let me get the business out the way:

Yesterday I had my first interview in four years. The woman with whom I met was quite personable and I liked her a great deal, but when she learned my salary requirements and I learned her salary budget, friendly smiles were exchanged and we wished each other luck in our respective searches and I was on my way home.

Today I have another interview, again in Irvine, but on the other side. Well, I think it is. When the emm and I took a spin there last night, we got all fa-kyed. Add to that my general and alarming ability to get turned around at the drop of a hat. Or an unexpected the turn of a steering wheel. So, I’ll don The All Black Interview Outfit again today, cursing the near 100 degree weather, very much like I did yesterday.

I’m hoping next week turns up some better possibilities because this week was devoid of them.

Thus endeth the business of this mullet post.

While I’m on the subject of mullets and therefore being distracted, please let me draw your attention to one Billy Ray Cyrus…

Then…and now. Obviously, the hair cut has changed, but definitely not for the better. What the fuck goes through this dude’s head? Yeah, we all the know the mullet is just frickin’ bad, but who told Billy Ray his current look is a good one?

If I may continue on this tangent, please allow me to submit today’s Billy Ray and the elusive Jordan Catalano from My So-Called Life (ca 1994):

Okay, so the hairstyles might not fall into the separated at birth category, but there are strikingly unsettling similarities here. The most troubling is the fact both of these men think/thought this was a good look and no one told them to get their eyes examined. Some friends these two have, hunh?

Getting back on track to the play at the end of Friday’s Mullet Post…

After writing three pages of Fashionista Fever!, I’ve come to the conclusion there’s far too much to have the article be a one-off type thing. I haven’t even scratched the surface yet, so I’ve decided to make it an on-going series. I think there might be enough material for three parts, maybe four, which should keep me busy. While IM’ing with Wes about it last night, I came to the conclusion if it were multi-part, it would give me a better chance to really focus. My emm’s read the first draft of Part One and found it very entertaining and even laughed at one point.

Continuing with my recent infatuation with, and Johnny-come-lately appreciation of LOL, I’ve put up a new picture here. It’s totally non-Doctor Who-related…please, I know it’s hard to believe, even with just the one I’ve done.

So, when I haven’t been writing and LOL-ifying and getting screen caps, I’ve been tweaking the blog: moving, removing, and adding. At least I’m not changing the theme; I really like the five-column layout a lot. A lot-a lot.

I’ve also been downloading a mess of open-source programs and subsequently adding them to my dock. Oh, that poor dock. I used to pride myself on the austere look it had. But that austere look has disappeared, to be replaced by this:

This page pointed me to all the new apps, all of which I like quite a bit. I only know one other Mac person, so I doubt the link above will be of any interest to anyone but her.

And thus endeth the play of this mullet post.

I’ve had this picture languishing on my hard drive for quite a while now; I meant to upload it days ago, but just never got around to it. The whole thing creeps me out, but not in the “Oh my God, I can’t look at this!” way. I did express some of that the other night on the phone with Wes; it’s pretty much passed now, but that’s probably more due to the fact it’s still light outside more than anything else.

Instead, it creeps me out on a “What if it’s not fake?” level, because what if it’s really not? No surprise here: I totally believe in aliens like I believe in ghosts, although I’ve never seen any space aliens, so these types of things do stop me up when I slow down long enough to pay attention.

At any rate, here are a couple handy links to the Denver Post’s coverage:

Video captures alien visitor, Denverite says
Alien video: Puppet or real E.T.?

Okay, now that’s finally out of the way and off my hard drive and I’m off onto other things. What’s likely the most important thing is the interview I have tomorrow. It’s the first interview since I’ve started sending out resumes, although I’m the first to say not that many have gone out. Regardless, I’m glad at least there’s this one. My emm and I made a dry run this morning, so I would be sure to know exactly where I was going tomorrow afternoon; there’s nothing worse than looking for a place you’ve never been before and especially if a) you’re the only one in the car; b) you’ve got the added pressure of an expected appointment time; and c) that appointment is a job interview. I’ve tried on the only appropriate-for-an-interview outfit I own and thank goodness I’ve lost some weight; the last time I tried it on, which was just for shits and giggles, it didn’t fit all that well. So. Yeah, there we go. Got my car gassed up and washed today; it’s the first time I’ve bought gas since late April. I was only at a half a tank and it cost me $35; on one hand, that didn’t surprise me at all, but on the other hand, all I could say was, “What the fuck?”

There are a ton of new S!J!S! sound clips here, namely from “Planet of Evil,” “The Android Invasion,” and “The Brain of Morbius,” so please download them to your heart’s content. I’m still trying to figure out recording levels and all that, so if they’re not totally perfect, mea culpa. This is a totally cool by-product of needing more screen caps and finally breaking down and realizing the tele-top is just not going to work, at least as far as this is concerned. I’m still trying to figure out what the hell happened, although I’ve come to suspect it very well may have something to do with a recent momentary power failure; I was watching some Pertwee serial at the time and when the power failed, the tele-top just froze. Its battery power didn’t kick in at all, which I find a little odd, now that I’m thinking about it a little more. That doesn’t explain why only certain disks won’t play, though. But I finally stopped trying to fight it, only to be totally aggravated in the process and have pressed my trusty Mac into service. Ah, but it’s not as easy as all of that because for optimum comfort, I move the entire TARDIScloset operation into the living room and use the toy box (which remains unpainted) as a table/desk and lounge on the couch, trackball mouse resting on my leg. It’s quite lovely, really, and although I do love my TARDIScloset, it can get really warm in here even with a fan and between you and me, the whole thing about it being bigger on the inside is a bald-faced lie. I only say that because it makes people look at me cross-eyed.

I’ve also jumped on the LOL bandwagon and I’m probably quite late, just catching it on the way down to its death. This is the only picture I’ve captioned so far. Yes, it’s from Doctor Who (”Invasion of the Dinosaurs”) and yes, it’s S!J!S!, but despite that, the hard-core 70s look, not to mention the next-to-bad quality of the picture itself, I really do like the shot, and probably would no matter who was in it. But given enough time and opportunity, I could likely branch out into other television programs and movies.

That’s a great segue into the next topic, but I’m going to hold off for now because it’s time for dinner.

…or how I’ve managed to procrastinate all flippin’ day and now find there’s more behind-the-scenes work to be done before I can get this article off the ground? With the tele-top misbehaving over the past couple days, I’m loathe to even attempt this back-end work on it. That leaves me the trusty Mac, which I can’t use at the moment because I’m working on something else that’s hogging my only disk drive.

You might be interested to know exactly how I’ve dragged my feet and fucked around since about half past six this morning; really, it’s not even fucking around-well, some of it isn’t. I mean, paying bills and balancing bank accounts and grocery shopping shouldn’t be seen as such. Neither should doing laundry and the dishes, nor eating lunch.

But perhaps some other stuff falls into the feet-dragging category: working on new pages at strange cousin susan, but only after creating them once and deleting them purposely; uploading sound files for one of the new pages here; trying to figure out why HandBrake wasn’t doing what it said it would do; Twittering; getting lost at Flickr, wikipedia, and boingboing; reading Azumanga Daioh; organizing files on the computer, even though it wasn’t really a pressing need; tweaking Adium’s appearance ad nauseum; looking for new system icons; and watching two parts of a Doctor Who serial having absolutely nothing to do with my article. At all. Oh, and let me not forget this: plucking my eyebrows. Yes, that absolutely had. to. be. done. today.

Thank God I didn’t paint the toy box. It was far too warm and might have taken away precious time from fine-tuning Adium. Again.

I know I’ve been watching more Doctor Who than is likely healthy lately (since Monday, I’ve watched five serials), but I swear it’s only after I spend the first half of the day on my job search. It’s not even that rewarding because there’s something going on with a) the disks, b) the disk drives, and/or c) VLC/Nero. I’ve yet to test the files on my Mac, because I’m afraid to find out it’s really something with the Windows laptop; it’s pretty much totally replaced my television, and if it dies, I’m not sure what I’m going to do, except press Myrna Loynux into service. I hope to God I don’t have to do that, since I’m not good with Linux at all, and I strongly suspect the disks wouldn’t play because there’ll be Something Very Important missing and I’ll have little or no understanding of How To Install Something Very Important.

I’ve an ulterior motive for watching all these serials, at any rate; similar to that project of old, the infamous Pussy Galore Exegesis (which is still lurking on my hard drive, needing only a good editing and minor rewriting, but still technically unfinished for all of that), which is a typical-of-Mickey over-analysis of the character, her wardrobe, and her sexual orientation, there’s another typical-of-Mickey over-analysis of Sarah! Jane! Smith! and the improvements seen in both her wardrobe (pink striped sox and cammies!) and hair over her time with the Doctor, a thought mentioned a few days ago in an earlier post. Never mind how the character of S!J!S! improved so much; what’s important here is the superficial things…clothing and hair. Wes expressed some interest in an article for Scary-Crayon, and since I do enjoy the over-analysis of such things, I jumped at the chance. I’ve found on a disk all the screencaps uploaded to Flickr of most of the serials in question some months ago now, so I won’t have to download the ones I want to use, thank goodness. What I will have to do, however, is figure out what the hell’s going on with the tele-laptop because the way it’s running now, I couldn’t get a good screencap if my life depended on it.

Maybe I should just reinstall VLC. Maybe it’s been corrupted somehow. Oh, wait. I know…Tammy corrupted it, Tammy and her rubber dinosaur boyfriend. I think it’s all over but the shouting, then.

Still working on clearing out the folder where I keep all sorts of random images for inclusion in future posts. It’s not going so well because I keep adding things to the folder faster than I’m posting them. The two pictures here are of Star and Bar. The top photo of Bar shows what seems to be a magical flying high-chair tray; what is not pictured is el cunado holding the tray just outside the border of the photo. Makes it that much more interesting, I think, because it really does look like the damn thing is airborne. The second photo shows Star’s unnervingly intense blue eyes; this is one of my favorite pictures because of the subject and because it came out so perfectly. No doctoring on either photo, no cropping, either. These are straight from the Fuji.

I’ve been haunted by the memory of this book for since I was fourteen; I remember reading it in 8th grade during our free reading period in literature. Something about the book stuck with me for the past twenty-four years, although in the intervening years, I managed to forget the name of the book, not to mention the name of the author and pretty much everything but the most basic parts of the story. But I never forgot the cover of the book and have actually thought about it for quite a few years, wondering if I’d ever be able to find the title again.

Why I never googled it before now is beyond me, but by typing in just a few search words I hoped were relevant based on my dodgy memory of almost everything - old book about teens and food control fiction, would you believe the fifth entry was it, by way of the Vancouver Public Library? Even with the short description returned in the results, I knew I’d found it. Who knew it would be this easy? It’s obvious I had no clue.

It took a little bit more searching to find an image of the cover I remembered almost exactly, since what I found at Amazon only showed the new cover. Thanks to Wikipedia, I found the exact cover I’ve remembered all these years. I can’t even express how much time I’ve spent trying to recall anything about this book…like the title.

Google. Google. It’s almost as if I just flew in from another planet and had never heard of such a thing.

Would you believe this book is cited in Utopian and Dystopian Writing for Children and Young Adults, according to Amazon? And customers there tagged it with descriptors such as brainwashing, conspiracy theory, and government experiment? None of this comes as a surprise to me; this may be where the whole conspiracy theory aspect of my personality got its start, regardless of the already stated admission that I’d forgotten almost everything about the book. I may have House of Stairs to thank for my interest in utopian and dystopian novels, too, now that I think about it.

I’ve got quite a stack of books to be read, but you know what? I’m going to buy this book. Right now.