So since it’s Frackday, thought I’d have a little fun with the Dish Network telemarketer who just called. It’s ok to white lie to Nitwits on Frackday.

She: “Are you Mrs. Starling?”

Me: “Yes.”

She: “Can you make decisions regarding your Dish Services?”

Me: “Yes. But I can’t talk right now. A dingo just ate a baby.”

She: “Ok, we’ll call you at another time then! Thank you.”

Me: “Buh-bye.”

Hmmm. My guess is she’s long way from hitting that glass ceiling.

So, last weekend, for my first group ride, I rode with three brilliant women, a NASA scientist, an esteemed lawyer and an operations executive (yes Jeni, that’s what you are). And then there’s me: a person who draws pictures on the web and pontificates about useless stuff. I can’t figure out why they ride with me. It’s obvious why I ride with them. They make me look good.

The girls were really patient with me. It’s been so long, I almost had to ride with training wheels and going up the rollers on Arastradero, I almost went backwards. But it was the kind of ride where our mouth cadence was 200 RPMs and our pedaling cadence was 40 RPMs. I think we covered 35 miles in three hours. For reasons not shared in this post, Jeni gave my left butt cheek a spank while we were riding. Oddly enough, I needed a cigarette shortly after. And I don’t even smoke.

I had so much fun, at the end of the ride, I think I reached my stimulus limit and my head exploded. Poor Jeni had to pick up my brains and stuff them back into my head. It wasn’t pretty. But lucky for her, there wasn’t much for her to pick up.

Wild Dingo’s diet “Zero Tolerance for Nitwits” may be just the diet for you. Inspired by the founder of Wild Dingo, Maggie, who simply never accepted disrespectful, impolite behavior, this simple, two-step diet costs nothing and doesn’t even involve cutting out any of your favorite foods!

Here are the steps:

1. Make a list of ridiculousness that you refuse to entertain.
2. Cut loose any person or thing that falls within that list.

“Cut loose” can be applied permanently or temporarily. For example, “I have to get off the phone now, the dingo just ate a baby,” is a great example of temporarily cutting loose a ridiculous person on the other end of the phone. It’s perfect for telemarketers or nagging in-laws. Of course it helps if you have a dingo. “Burning pot roast” works just as well as “baby-eating dingo.” You get the idea.

Try it! Don’t be surprised if you find yourself instantly 10 pounds lighter and find the world a brighter place.

And don’t be afraid to use that “delete” key for those pestering your inbox. Don’t reply to a ludicrous request. Just hit “delete.” You may even lose an extra pound since you had to burn some calories hitting the key.

Here are a few on the short list of Wild Dingo’s ridiculousness:

1. People who don’t have the grace to recognize generosity. Can’t figure out how to say “thank you?” Read this book  and get back to me.
2. Adults with the social etiquette of a nitwit. See above.
3. Business owners who ask my advice on how to build a web site for free. Hint: Go to the grocery store. Ask the manager how you can get that carton of milk for free.
4. Business owners who ask me to build complex web sites for cheap. You don’t have the time to build your 10,000 product e-commerce web site and only have $200? Well then, I’ll be happy to schedule that for you. Do you have some time between never and a cold day in hell?

Whenever I find myself confronted with poor manners or ridiculousness (it seems I’m a magnet for the ridiculous), I just ask myself, “what would the dingo do?” And darn, if the answer isn’t as clear as a bell. That dingo still haunts me with daily affirmations to keep me blissful.

If you ever find yourself on the other end of my Zero Tolerance for Nitwits diet, don’t blame me. Blame the dingo. I learned everything from her.

So far this is all I have is this:

Do you think I can find investors with a plan like this?

It’s hardly ready. I have so many plans for it, but want to get it launched to the public anyway.

It’s Wild Dingo’s serious side. No room for shenanigans on Upward Facing Dog. No sir! Ok, maybe a few. But hopefully, you’ll find the content of interest.

Now how am I supposed to support my crack habit with health invoices like these?

I’ve been reading Fat Cyclist’s blog for about a little over a year now. He’s just a guy, an average “Joe,” who loves to ride and race bikes. When he’s not riding them, he loves talking or writing about them. He’s a fantastically humorous writer who now contributes to Bike Radar. I’ve enjoyed a chuckle or two from his ability to wax poetically and hilariously about everything bicycles.

Over the last year, I’ve followed his secondary story line of his wife’s battle against cancer, which inspired me to purchase one of his pink jerseys to contribute to his cancer cause. Yes, pink. Anyone who knows me knows how much I “love” pink. But I actually wear the jersey because it reminds me of how lucky I am and how fleeting life can be.

Elden (Fat Cyclist) just revealed on his blog a few days ago, that his wife’s cancer is most likely now terminal. As I’m writing this, I’m choked up. The couple has 4 children and I can’t imagine how he and his children will face life without a wife and mom. My heart is broken from a person I’ve never met, but feel I know well.

While I’m personally crushed by what Elden is facing, I recognize that he has an amazing amount of supporters around the country. Hundreds of caring folks who’ve come out to share whatever words of comfort they can. Say what you’d like about Lance Armstrong, but he’s also among Fatty’s readership, who personally offered Fatty’s wife words of encouragement. Its times like this I see that the gnarly world of the Internet has redeemed itself.

I have a love-hate relationship with the Internet. Today I think I love it.

If you have the time, stop by Fat Cyclist’s blog, read a little of his story and if the urge strikes, offer whatever kind words you can.

Give us a break. We’re an old married couple who no longer whoop it up at Friday night parties and we got hooked on this show. A few years ago, when I was recovering from a concussion, I couldn’t do much but sit on the sofa for a long time. Typically, I don’t care for TV. All the reality bozos make me want to gag. I prefer old fashioned sitcoms of the Seinfeld era. Since our nation’s nighttime creative talent has regressed into the imagination limits of a high school click, I was left with nothing much to do other than read or watch movies.

So Scott rented the first two seasons of Sci Fi’s Battlestar Gallactica. He popped in the first DVD and you couldn’t pull me away. The “reimaged” series is nothing like the original. The drama, the sexy men and women and the show-end cliff hangers, kept me moving from show to show and DVD to DVD for days. The cinematography and film direction are truly Sci Fi’s best. The parallels that the show draws to today’s modern dilemmas are fun too but humans are polytheistic, worshiping Greek-like gods based on the 12 astrological signs (colonies of planets) and robots are surprisingly monotheistic. The intra-political debating, democratic process, religious disputes, terrorism, military policy and rise of cults all draw you into identifying with the plot and even sympathizing with any leader (good or evil) facing such strife.

The show’s psychological elements are equally artistic. The alter-ego of the arrogant scientist who brought humanity to its knees, is a Victoria’s Secret model, whose character is a robot enemy soldier. The mind games between his scientific (atheistic) beliefs and her devoted monotheistic beliefs make your head spin. Her body sure is easy on the eyes while his British voice is easy on the ears.

There are a few weird inconsistencies of the show. Occasionally the dialogue will draw on an idiom, such as a quote from Macbeth and you think, “if humans have never been to Earth (the premise is based on humans looking for Earth, the 13th colony), how could there be Shakespeare?” But then you justify it and think, “Shakespeare could have existed on one of the 12 colonies.”

Being an ex-military officer, Scott fancies the guns, battle scenes, “real” military process and appreciates how Sci Fi handles the reality of how a fighter ship would maneuver in space. (Hint: it isn’t George Lucas-style space fighting.) I fancy the shows mythical and psychological debates. Last season’s cliff hanger was spectacular. The show used a Jimi Hendrix tune with lyrics that paralleled the character’s action and dialogue along with stunning cinematography in the final battle scene all while revealing a huge surprise that made it, in my mind, a metaphorical work of art.

Just look at the first image above. Which painting does it remind you of? Although admitedly, it’s missing one more person, still a decent metaphor to the plot’s religious undertones.

And it’s cast list is decent too, featuring Mary McDonnell (Dances with Wolves), Edward James Omos (Stand and Deliver) and James Callis (Bridget Jones’ Diary).

Unfortunately, this season, its third, is its last. I can’t imagine why Sci Fi would end a show so well-written, beautifully directed and that brought us our favorite swear word, “frack.” Oh, to be in the middle of a dramatic scene where the character calls his enemy a “mother-fracker” makes you want to giggle, but you don’t because the scene is so engaging.

This last season started a few weeks ago, and unfortunately has not met the standards of its prior seasons. Still, we’re glued because we need to know how this is going to end.

If you’re tired of TV, or stuck in bed for a while, go rent these DVDs and start with the first season (there are only two and a half seasons). Even if you’re not a fan of science fiction, you won’t be sorry.

During the ride I noticed my shifting was not working so well and mentioned it to Scott. Now my road bike is in desperate need of being taken apart, cleaned and in need of a new drive train but I’ve been a bit busy, you know, om-ing and all that stuff. We got home from the ride and I had to run to Sarah’s yin workshop so I gave him my bike to put away.

Tuesday, I called Scott at work to tell him I was riding Mountain Charlie and would be back in 2.5 hours. Now this is routine for me. I always tell him where I’m going and what time I’ll be back, because this is the mountains and you just never know. Hit and runs happen all the time. So he says “ok, have a good ride!” And I go.

At the bottom of the 8 mile descent down Old San Jose road, I notice I can’t quite get into my small cog. Ah no worries. Who needs a sprint gear anyway? I toddle along Santa Cruz and at the bottom of Mountain Charlie’s climb that 27 cog begins to look mighty fine to me. Only as I gear down to it and start the climb, klunk, skip, klunk, skip…. Hmmm… it’s popping between my 24 and my 27. So I gear down to my 24, knowing that I can climb in that gear just fine, only to find out the easiest gear I have is my 21. Frack! The last time I had to climb Mountain Charlie in my 21 due to a broken spring, was several years ago when I was quite fit. So there I was, stuck with a 21 and too much pride to push my bike.

Now, the chances of a car or person being on Mountain Charlie in the middle of a Tuesday workday, are similar to the chances of me winning the lottery, without a ticket. Still, you never know when Google Earth’s satellite would be overhead, catching me in the act of pushing a bike up a hill for the entire world to see. So I stubbornly pedaled.

When I got home my thighs felt like lead weights. I called Scott to tell him I was home safe and complained, “I had to climb Mountain Charlie in my 21!” To which he replies, “Oh ya, I know, I worked on your bike this weekend and the shifting is messed up so I set it to so you’d get a few of your middle cogs.” Hmmm. You’d think that piece of information would have been helpful to me prior to my ride, huh?

Now I ask you dear reader, is he mean on purpose or just mean in his subconscious?

I shook my head in disbelief. Someone wants to hire me to criticize their web site? You mean, they want to hire me to be…mean? Surely this can’t be. Being mean is one of my favorite things to do. I like being mean so much that I even married a mean guy. No, he’s not wife-beater mean. He’s mean like, “Jules, your mouth RPM’s are going faster than your pedaling-RPMs” mean. Or mean like, he tries to make me give him my heart rate monitor when I’m riding my bike to make sure I’m working hard enough. And mean like, when he sees a neighbor with trash decorating his front yard, he’ll comment so sarcastically, that I can’t help but gush with love.

Yes, it’s true. I like mean people. And I like being mean. But mostly, I like being mean about ridiculous stuff like poor marketing, bad products, bad advice, bad ideas, bad design and bad taste. And the list goes on. This is probably why I bonded so well with the dingo. She wasn’t a “nice” dog at all. No, in fact, she was a bit mean.  When I first met her, she ate my underwear. But they were an ugly pair of underwear, so she was justified. Yes, we understood each other quite well. Our tolerance for idiocracy was equally matched which made us a nice pair. 

Even one of my peers in my yoga teacher training program called me “sadistic.” I took it as a compliment. It makes you want to come to one of my classes, huh? Secretly, you’re dying to know just how mean I am in a yoga class.

Once I worked for a company that didn’t treat its customers very well. Our marketing department had to design holiday cards for the customers. My idea was to write “Happy Holidays” on the cover, and “you son of a b—ch,” on the inside. That idea didn’t go over too well. Although the V.P. found it so humorous, he shared it with his wife, who would later send me Christmas cards that said exactly that!

I get a lot of clients who tell me their customers have difficulty logging in. The problem is usually user-error. So sometimes when I’m designing a web site that features “login” functions, I secretly want to write in the re-direct page, “Whoops! You moron! You didn’t type your username or password correctly.  Go back to high school and learn to type. Then come back here and try again.”  Needless to say, this never goes over well. Still, it can’t hurt to fantasize.

But when I was being hired to be mean, well, I felt like a kid on Christmas morning. Sigh. Once in a while, the universe throws me a delectable bone, just like this. And I savor every bit of it.

Of course I had to balance all my criticisms with some useful constructive feedback of better ways to design, marketing and develop content. You can’t exactly be taken seriously if you don’t have better alternatives to present. Still, I delighted in being mean, err …being a critic and getting paid for it so much that I’m considering adding “constructive critic” under my list of services. But perhaps I should discount it. It doesn’t seem right to make too much money having that much fun.