YYZ. Yeah, you heard me.

I have recently started having some occasional bouts of nausea. It usually happens in the car, but has, sometimes, happened at work. In general, I don't actually, you know, vomit, but it's uncomfortable and if I'm around other people, I get very self-conscious about it. Luckily this almost never happens. 

For a while, I thought that the nausea was a portent of a migraine. Why did I think that, you ask? Because almost every bout of nausea was portentous of a migraine, i.e., they went together, hand in sweaty little hand. 

But! I have been extremely lucky lately (knocks on wood, spits in the wind, shouts from high atop the thing), and I haven't had an actual migraine in a couple of weeks. The nausea persists, though. Then I suspected that it was a reaction to the stress I mostly always experience at work. I guess it's possible, but when and where it happens makes this, to me, an untrained professional, seem unlikely. 

Sometimes, I can stave away the uncomfortable-ness of it by singing. Obviously I can only do this in the privacy of my car (in other places I just take a lot of deep breaths) or bathroom, and I've got my own little playlist of songs I, with my limited range and unpleasant tone, can manage. Sometimes I just go for it (as Patrick, my brother, and Jules can attest, having witnessed it on a recent drive to Northern California. I figured my own brother wouldn't mind, but turns out he had headphones on and/or slept the whole way. I suspect he was listening to white noise meant to drown me out). 

One of the songs I get a kick out of singing is that instrumental masterpiece by those philosophically challenged Canadians, Rush. I've been fond of Rush since forever (I should probably admit that this affection was encouraged by an old boyfriend). Their lyrics are incredibly stupid, the actual music borders on... bad, but I really love them. Wait, did I say "love"? Fine. I love those songs. along with Geddy Lee, however, requires more range, vocal cords and talent than God saw fit to endow me with, so their song YYZ is perfect for me.

As an unabashed dork, vocalizing the guitar and bass parts, the cheesy keyboard line, and the super precise and crazy complicated drum  parts is THE BEST THING EVER. 

I even add in the wood block crack thing that happens about 2/3 in, and yes, it makes me proud when I keep up, rhythm and pitch-wise, with this 10/8, 4 minute, 25 seconds of perfection. 

A piece of cake.

My colleague offered me cake yesterday. "What kind of cake," I asked, thinking of that scene in the West Wing when Donna offers Sam some cake, trying to take his mind off of election results that would make him the Democratic nominee in a race he had no intention of competing in. Donna's answer is, "It's cake." Here's how my exchange went. 

Colleague: Miss Palma, would you like some cake?

Me:  What kind of cake? 

Colleague: Cake I found on the street.

Me: That's the best kind of cake. 

This is why Aaron Sorkin is Aaron Sorkin, and I am not. 

For your consideration: Ian Ziering.

I was listening to NPR this morning, and I noticed that the news lady used the term “bad actor” in describing people who indiscriminately shoot people in Chicago (it was a story, I think, about a Pastor in a small neighborhood who apparently blames Rahm Emanuel for the fact that while gun violence is supposedly decreasing across the country, it hasn’t changed significantly in Chicago, and may in fact [if I had been listening more carefully I might have caught this more definitively] even increased due to his governance). Anyway, the NPR lady used “bad actor” to describe the people contributing to the uptick of gun violence in Chicago, and I started thinking about it.

I’ve heard it before, and it’s been bugging me. I think the first person I heard say it was Trump, while discussing the supposed rapists and murderers who come into this country illegally. So right away it rankled me because that guy has twisted and misspelled the English language in the worst of ways. 

The thing is, I like calling things what they are, not by euphemisms or trendy names. And what are we saying when say “bad actor”? To me, a bad actor is someone who moves their lips while another actor is speaking their lines. Google “bad actor” and photos of Nicolas Cage and William Shatner pop up (I would include Ian Ziering in the list, and could probably come up with more, but that would be mean).

However, that search also came up with the definition of “individual or entity with prior criminal convictions,” and right there I have a problem with it. It seems we’ve been using it to describe people who have either actually committed a crime (the aforementioned rapists and murderers) but it seems to me that people also lump in people who may have committed a crime, or have committed a crime more along the lines of “jay walking,” or "littering." Bad things, yes, but not exactly moral failings (well, maybe). In other words, I don’t think calling someone a “bad actor” is good enough. So and so is a bad actor? Really? Did you seem them on SNL? Maybe we're not supposed to categorize people by what they DO, and that's the problem, but saying a person is "bad" seems not that much better. Can't we just say, So and so is a convicted felon. Killer. Liar. Cheater. Embezzler. Perjurer (I’m surprised that’s a word). Child molester. Corrupt government official. Briber. 

Fishbone knew what they were doing and they called it correct:

The lyin', piss off, sack of shit
Slut trash can scumish
Dirt bag... bitch!

See? Those words have meaning. “Bad actor” is too soft. Yes, it’s mean to call someone working on the craft of acting a bad actor (some people just need to do more work. Some people need to work at Starbucks). But if that’s their only crime, who cares? It’s an opinion, it doesn’t stick, it isn't hard enough. Paul Manafort is a callous sleaze-bag, soon to hopefully be convicted of treason or some other high crime. He's not a "bad actor." Let's save that one for the people on TV.

Acuplaced.

I’m here at Mount Saint Mary’s University for my math/English placement exam. They have coined the term “acuplacer” to describe this exam, and it’s making me laugh. It’s kind of having the same effect upon me as “multi-pass.” Hopefully I perform better on this exam than I did at the one at LBCC, which "acu"-placed me in like, 8th grade algebra. That’s OK – I mean, my math skills probably only go up to 8th grade algebra, and my ego regarding that isn’t all that big, but it was a bit of a disappointment, especially since in 1991 I got a B in algebra at West Los Angeles College (only because my then-boyfriend, insisted on making me study).

By the way, the teacher of that algebra class alledged that Belinda Carlisle babysat for his kids, and I want to go on record right now and call that out as bullshit. Too bad I can’t remember his name.

Anyway, whatever information those two guys drilled into my head has apparently evaporated along with the name of my teacher, so here I am, waiting for another judgment on my non-existent skills. The English part I’m not all that worried about.

I got here super early – I didn’t read the email very well (not a good sign) and thought the exam begins at 9, however, the check-in and drop off of your personal items is what begins at 9 (according to the email; the woman in the office where I’m supposed to leave my stuff said it starts at 9:30). So I’m sitting on a bench outside the Weekend College office (which looks like a combination of craftsman and storybook; were these buildings more extravagantly painted, they would look right at home on Main Street at Disneyland) trying to remember the things that have been in my head for a little while.

On the drive here, a woman in a little Mini pulled up to me on the 110. I was alternating between NPR and the Kevin and Bean Show (like all 46-year old people tend to do), and she was listening to some kind of rap. I couldn’t hear her music clearly because Morning Edition was too loud. But she looked right at me, bobbed her head to the music she was listening to, and gave me the hugest, widest, sweetest smile I’ve ever gotten from a stranger on the freeway.

Considering that I have had some bad experiences on the 110 (I once saw a stray dog get hit by a car right next to me and I cried all the way to work), it was a nice way to start my day.

It’s hot in LA now, and instead of the dry heat we all prefer, incredibly muggy. My mother used to say muggy. Is it a word? Anyway, I’m sweating and I’m not even doing anything except typing and sitting here.

I had lots of things in my head to say, but since I couldn’t just pull over to jot them down and my iphone hasn’t been obeying my commands to “TAKE A NOTE,” apparently most of those things have gone the way of my algebra skills. It made me think of that scene from the West Wing, when CJ goes to check in on Danny Concannon, who is writing a piece about the White House’s decision to kill Omar Shariff (not the character’s real name; I just can’t remember it), and she asks him what he’s doing because he promised to wait three days before filing it, and he goes, “I’m filing in 3 days, I still gotta write it.” At least I remember that, though it's not exactly what's going on with me, which is more along the lines of good old-fashioned forgetfulness. 

So I wrote all the previous paragraphs before I went in to take the test. It turned out that I only had to take the math part, and while it wasn't as horribly hard for me as the test I took at LBCC last year (I swear to god that test was written by the aliens in the movie "Contact") my results still weren't good. I'll be taking Math 2X, which I think means "Math You Should've Learned 30 Years Ago, Dummy." It's OK though, because I don't want to be an engineer or a test pilot or a doctor, so whatever, let me pass whatever remedial math courses I need and get on with it.