The weekly rant

Because there just isn’t enough time to write up all of the stupidity of the U.S. during the week, I spend some of my fridays doing a recap of things that piss me off. After I rant, that’s when I discover more crap in my house that needs fixed (water draining into the basement from the rain, a cluttered back room etc.)

Gas Prices

The media is now trying to outdo each other with clever headlines or sayings about the high cost of gas. I’m sure they think that their cleverness will soothe our wallets as we pay $50 to fill up a lawnmower, but actually its making me more angry:
“Oil on the boil”
“Where the rubber meets the road”
“Car is king” (I have no idea WTF this was about)
and my all time fav:
“No drilling, just stop filling”

Ah, there we have it, yes... just as I suspected. Al “Big Head” Gore (who sold his soul to the devil, in case you hadn’t noticed) is pushing this whole global warming thing. Cars kill penguins, therefore if we make it so expensive to fill your car with gas, then nobody would drive and penguins would continue to poop wherever they are and life is wonderful.

Ben “I will die in congress” Cardin kept saying over and over and over and over (as he does because he truly does believe that if you say something over and over and over and over that eventually we’ll believe him) that instead of drilling for our own oil, we need to come up with “alternatives” to oil. This perpetuates that whole myth that gas companies have (for years) assassinated everyone that has tried to come up with an alternative to oil in order to rake in the dough. Actually, scientists (when they aren’t bitching about Intelligent Design) have tried coming up with alternatives. That whole corn ethanol thing doesn’t work for crap and actually pollutes the air and earth worse than oil (not to mention drives corn prices up so high that nobody can afford a box of flakes any more), and the battery/gas concept works pretty good, but still relies mainly on that whole pesky need for oil. If there WAS an alternative out there... I think the smart people would have come up with it already. There was an article recently on NBC (we edit our “news” the way we want it) about how people in Sweden are burning wood for energy. Um... I can’t burn leaves in my yard because of pollution, but a whole country is burning all of their trees. Nice one. Yeah, I totally buy that. If burning trees was a good energy alternative then why are we trying to put out the fires in Florida and California? Why aren’t we trying to harness that power???

And what’s with the “oil reserve” thing that we apparently are always filling? I just went up on Wikipedia (so I’m now an expert) and discovered that the “reserve” isn’t really a big vat where we store oil, its just a wild ass guess as to how much oil we have here in the states that hasn’t actually been drilled yet. You’ll also notice something very interesting in that the little map that shows the world and has red marked as “countries with the most oil” the US apparently has NONE. Um, ok, then how do you explain that we have enough oil to fuel ourselves for three years if we don’t get oil from anywhere else?

The thing that concerns me the most about this whole gas crisis thing is that we tell OPEC (congress wants to sue them) that THEY need to step up production and make more oil, and yet we don’t do a damn thing to drill in our own country. Why don’t we drill? Well, because we can’t hurt the penguin habitat. I saw that if these penguins are so damn important, then put them on treadmills to generate electricity! Make them work for their habitat.

Frankly, I’m hoping that it gets to the point where nobody has gas, then I won’t have a job to drive to and I can just stay at home like everyone else. How’s that for contributing to helping stop global warming. At the very least, nobody will come and take away all of my junk or take my house because they won’t have a way to drag all of my crap away.

How Long?

I just went over to read Google news and found this:
Yep, Google feels it necessary to include (Burma) in their little toolbar of news. Apparently there are so many stories about Myanmar (Burma) that it now has its own little place in the news toolbar, and because so many people are incredibly stupid, the feel the need to add (Burma) in there. Hate to tell you Google, but people are so incredibly stupid that you should also put a link to your Google map to SHOW people exactly where Myanmar (Burma) is because I'd say about 95% of them either don't have a clue or don't give a rat's back end.

How long must we suffer through the (Burma) stage before people actually "get" that Myanmar was called (Burma) but is now called Myanmar. Its not like they'll put up China (Zhongguo) for those old enough (we're talking 6th Century BCE) to be confused about what land we're actually talking about.

I'm sure that map makers did the dance of happiness when the "Former Soviet Union" split up into its different little pieces that they keep trying to get back, and we suffered through Chechnya (the former soviet union) for a gazillion years until the map transfer. Up until then, everything pretty much stayed the same forever and China was China and Burma was Burma and nobody could find either on a map unless that map had big letters that said CHINA on it. Do maps now come with Myanmar (Burma) on it I wonder? After the whole new naming conventions, map makers actually had something to do, renaming each and every little new named country.

I have to wonder if consultants are to blame for all of these "new" country names popping up. Are governments spending billions of dollars to pay these suit wearing slicky people to come up with new and exciting names that fit the branding of the country while their populations starve? Probably. I'm still waiting to be a citizen of the United, but culturally diverse States of Americanasiafrica. I'd hate to be the one that has to come up with a new anthem for that.

The MOST important news

Hundreds of thousands dying in a Cyclone in Myanmar (Burma).
Earthquake in China killing more hundreds of thousands.
Tornados wreak havoc in the mid-west U.S.
Fires wreak havoc in Florida.

Pfft, who cares about that, what we want to know is what's up with Mischa Barton's BUTT???

A tabloid photographer snapped a pic of Ms. Barton after sunbathing on a balcony (in full public view) and she is now screaming that the evil EVIL photographer photoshopped the pics to add (as one FOX pundit called it) HORRIBLE HORRIBLE CELLULITE on her butt!

This scandal is certainly worthy of "reporters" and "experts" spending about 15 minutes debating how a 22 year old girl could possibly have cellulite. This from a news group that reports daily on the obesity problem in America and shows fat people (from the head down to protect their identity and protect the news group from a lawsuit) sauntering around in all their bulky glory while they rant and scream about how we need to stop the epidemic of obesity. In case you were in a cave all these years, apparently you can catch obesity much like a plague or a cancer. If you don't get that statement, go look up the definition of "epidemic". For the lazy, I even linked it for you.

So, lets take a look at Ms. Barton's butt in the picture. Of course, since the picture is copyrighted, I can't simply put it here or else I'll get sued, so here is my artist's representation of the picture:

As you can clearly see in the picture, Ms. Barton does have dimples on her butt (see the dimple arrows). There is also a towel laying on the chaise lounge that she had just gotten up from (see towel arrow) so conceivably, the dimples COULD have come from laying on a towel and will go away after she gets some blood flow going. This has happened to us all, sitting on something and then retaining that pattern in our skin. It could be that Ms. Barton's butt simply transfered all of the wrinkles and creases of the towel onto her butt.

Of course, she would need enough skin down there to retain the towel prints in the first place, so chances are... she's got some loose butt skin issues going on.

Ms. Barton is screaming that these blatantly fraudulent pictures of her will hurt her career. After all, she does nothing but look pretty for a living and makes a ton of dough just to look pretty. My, what a rough life she has, and for this photographer to show the world that she's got some butt flab going on, well, that just takes away from her "pretty" career. Flab = no money for Mischa.

I think that if Ms. Barton is correct, and she doesn't have flab on the butt, then all it would take is for her to call a press conference (which I'm sure all news media would preempt their reports on the carnage of Myanmar and China to cover) stand on a stage in clear view and drop her drawers. I don't think this would be anything that she hasn't already done in her past or in her career, I mean its not like we're asking her to stand on a stage and explain Quantum Physics or even how to make change from a dollar. She was photographed in public in a tiny bikini and all, so just drop your drawers and show us your butt Ms. Barton. If there's no flab or cellulite there, then sure you were right and this photographer photoshopped your butt. We can all get on with our lives without wondering, there will be no more mystery to this and we can continue to ponder the Loch Ness Monster or other mysteries of equal importance.

Now, if there is flab and dimples, I think we should all sue her for fraud. After all, she markets herself as a thin, perfect little waif and we can't have that if she's got the butt dimples.

Happy Day In Merryland

Hubby and I drove to Wally World (aka: Walmart) for the elusive shoe strings. Rumor had it that the megalomaniacal all purpose chain might just have some brown shoe laces, so we girded our loins and headed to the magical land of mark downs.

Frankly, I ONLY go to Walmart when there is absolutely, positively NO other place on this earth that carries the thing that I need. Frankly, after today I'm thinking that nothing short of an actual functioning organ would be so important to ever go there... EVER AGAIN.

First of all, the circus is in town. Well, a mini strip mall version circus that is, and its parked in part of the vacant lot near the discount mall that really isn't a discount mall (no discount mall could possibly include Sachs 5th Ave and call themselves "discount", but I digress). How did we know the circus was in town? Well, there are the mini "big" tops, and the sideshow trailers and the elephants grazing in a pen. Of course, we didn't notice these things until we nearly plowed into the back of a mini van that had stopped IN THE MIDDLE OF THE HIGHWAY to look at the elephants.

You see, that's one of the quaint traditions of Maryland. People just randomly, and sometimes for no reason, stop on a highway. Sometimes they stop to read a map. Sometimes they stop, then back up on the fast lane because they missed their exit. If backing up wasn't enough, they generally then shoot across three lanes of traffic to get to the exit. This idiot saw elephants, and instead of saying "hey, why don't I pull off into the vacant lot, where I won't be endangering the lives of those drivers behind me" oh no, that probably didn't even occur to the moron. He just slams on the brakes and looks at the elephants.

That being said, you can imagine that when we finally did get to Wally World... we were in a wonderful mood. The mood got even better when we discovered that a new law must have been passed that said "It is now legal for anyone driving a car with handicapped plates to run over pedestrians". Had we known this, we foolishly wouldn't have been walking in the cross walk toward the store when the chucklehead in the minivan came careening around the corner, and even though he saw us walking (my face was only about 2 inches from his), he continued turning, causing us to leap for our lives. I hurled some rather biting sarcasm at the moron, knowing that even if he challenged me to a fight, I could probably tip his chair over and run if it got too out of hand.

Once inside the store, our mood only got better when we were assailed by the smell of what could only be vomit. I'm not sure why all Walmarts smell like someone just hurled in them, but they do, at least to me. You would think with all the discount air fresheners they sell, they could get rid of that smell of sweat, urine, and vomit that permeates their stores. Why does it smell like that? Has anyone else noticed that or is it just stores in Maryland?

Anyway, we actually DID find shoelaces... black ones. AAAAH oh wait, over on the other side, here is the brown shoe laces. Fine, grabbed two of them and ran for the card department, grabbed a box of "thank you" cards and kept running, made it to checkout.

For some reason I find the carousel of bags very disturbing. Does it actually speed up the process to have the carousel of plastic bags? How many items do people lose in an average day because they didn't realize that a bag had been trapped on the wheel of bags? I'm also glad to see that Walmart doesn't require you to actually show ID when you use a credit card, but I did have to put my zip code in. Yeah, there's security for you. That should be implemented at banks to keep our money safe, cuz nobody gonna know my zip code after stealing my wallet with my FREAKING DRIVERS LICENSE IN IT! Sigh...

We ran about of Wally World.

The only thing I'll say about Circuit City (other than "gee, what a shock they're going out of business") is: TURN THE FREAKIN MUSIC IN THE STORE DOWN SO I CAN HEAR MYSELF THINK ABOUT WHAT A CRAPPY STORE THIS IS!

And then we went home.

Commercial Violence

Ok, so I didn’t have a problem back when people hit themselves in the forehead when they realized that they could have had a V8. Sure, nutrition is important to your overall health, but I really didn’t think that smacking yourself in the head was necessary, but its your head, you can hit it if you want.

Lately, though, I’ve noticed that strangers and loved ones are now smacking people in the forehead for forgetting or neglecting 3 of their daily vegetable servings? Are they really trying to tell us that its our responsibility for insuring that people get their daily vegetable servings? Are we suppose to become the daily vegetable serving police? Its bad enough that dogs are getting banned just for their breeds, but now the commercial is showing dogs using their paws to smack people in the head when they don’t eat their vegetables. Apparently dogs can smack humans for not eating vegetables, but mauling them is right out.

So, if pornography causes rape, and video games cause people to murder, are we now going to see gangs of people smacking non-vegans upside the head in the streets? Is this just a small movement that will grow into a total vegan culture based out of fear and bodily harm? What message are we sending to the children by showing such violence?

Shoe Laces... WTF?

Funny title for a blog... unless you’ve tried to buy shoe laces (shoe strings depending on your locale) lately. Have you tried buying them lately? Really? Where did you get them, because apparently in the state of Maryland YOU CAN’T F’ING FIND THEM IN STORES!!!!!!

Seriously! You would think that shoe stores would sell them. NO, they sell shoes. Apparently their mad marketing skills told shoe store owners that selling shoe laces for $1.99 a pair isn’t the way to keep your store open, so don’t sell them and then people will be forced to simply buy a new pair of shoes when their cheap laces break. I kid you not, go into any of the conglomerate chain store shoe stores and I DARE YOU to find shoe laces (in the state of Maryland, that is). There are no shoe laces to be had in any shoe store in the ENTIRE FREAKING STATE OF MARYLAND!

Ok, FINE! We go to Men’s Wearhouse where we bought the stupid shoes... guess what? Yep, they don’t sell shoe laces. Are you FREAKIN kidding me! Oh yeah, you can probably get some tricked out expensive sneaker laces for your incredibly expensive you could buy a car for that price professional athlete hawked specialty shoes, but not plain brown stupid dress shoe laces. I suppose hubby could put a pair of pink neon fluorescent laces in his brown dress shoes, but really?

I came home and googled shoe laces. Guess who has them! No, really, guess! I insist that you guess. YES you can bid on shoe laces on e-bay! Are you serious? I have to buy freaking shoe laces on e-bay? Is that what the world has come to? Seriously? I can’t find local shoe laces so I’m forced to bid on shoe laces online.

Please tell me that Maryland is the only place where you have to waste $75.00 of gas to drive miles and miles to freakin find ONE PLACE that sells brown dress shoe shoe laces? Please tell me that there are other states that haven’t completely lost their sanity and you can actually walk into a shoe store and say “Do you have a pair of brown men’s dress shoe shoe laces?” and they don’t look at you as if you are suggesting they just shutter up their business and live on the streets or throw you out of the store because who in their right mind would break a shoe lace and expect to replace it for $1.99 when they can spend $150 on a new pair of mens’ dress shoes???? Is there such a place, because frankly if I could sell my house in this crap economy, and if I could afford to drive out of this state, I would do it... just so I could buy a pair of freakin brown shoe laces for no reason whatsoever.

SERIOUSLY

Would You Like Crack With That?

I just don’t understand what the big hoopla is over the recent arrest of college students at San Diego State University.

Everyone knows that college tuition is extremely high, so I’m thinking that these brilliant future business leaders found a way to not only help ease the financial burden their parents were facing by putting them through college, but also exercising the educational muscle they were receiving through their education.

I mean, come on! Sure they forgot to write a business plan or file their new company with the state. I’m sure they also neglected to obtain an Employer Identification Number (EIN) with the IRS, but look at what they did do! Not only did they seemingly form a whole chain, almost an Amway-like upline of dealing their drugs, but they utilized technology to market their wares, offered sales (thus having an understanding of supply and demand economics), and worked with foreign dealers, which definitely shows that International flare for business dealings and importing.

I’d say they pretty much earned that degree with their extra credit activities! While people may scoff at the student, 1 month shy of receiving his degree in Homeland Security, being arrested, what better experience for a future agent than to experience first hand the illegal activities and ease at which drugs and potential terrorists can cross our borders! I say give him a job right now so we can learn from this eager young man’s experiences!

I think that the media and police officials need to relax about this whole “misunderstanding” and give these poor (well, ok, maybe poor is a bad choice of words) college students a break. After all, they’re just kids who are about to join the ranks of the gainly employed like the rest of us, and I can’t think of a better business associate than a drug dealer.

Common Courtesy Is Dead

So I'm sitting at the local Panera eating my tasty sourdough breadbowl of broccoli cheddar soup (my favorite) while hubby went to fill his cup with ice tea. Its a beautiful day, we just hit the Costco for bulk goodies, and now we were going to have a very nice lunch together and relax.

I'm vaguely aware of someone wandering around in front of me, then a female voice says loudly: "Do they bus the tables here?" I look up from my lunch and there is a woman standing in front of my table holding some trash items. She repeats: "Do they bus the tables here?" I say "um, over there (I point to the trash container), there's a trash container to throw your stuff in." To which the woman responds with "I'm from out of town." and she walks over to the trash and leaves.

Now, this has me very miffed for a myriad of reasons. I'm old enough to remember a time when people were courteous and had manners. Back in the "good old days" the conversation would have been something like this:

Woman stands up and can't see where to toss her trash. She approaches my table and says "Excuse me, but I'm from out of town and not familiar with how Panera works, is there someplace I should throw my trash, or do they bus the tables?" I look up and said "Over there (pointing) that's where you can throw your stuff". The woman looks at where I was pointing, then says "Oh, thank you" then leaves to throw her items away.

Is that so hard? Seriously, is that really so hard?

The problem with this is that nobody seems to remember those "good old days" and has forgotten how to behave in public, how to interact with other human beings, and just perpetuates rudeness throughout the land. We're doomed.

re: your brain

re: your brain
Originally uploaded by Shmoomeema

Hubby found this song by Jonathan Coulton that pretty much paints the exact picture of how we both feel about our jobs. Its so vivid and true to us, that we even have it as ring tones. I hope you enjoy it.

Junk, Crap, and other things

I just spent a few hours in our cluttered back room. Ok, cluttered isn’t the right word for it, its more like a hoarder’s dream room. Boxes and boxes, piles and piles, stuffed, crammed, and over-flowing with junk.

We haven’t used anything back there in years, so I have no idea why its back there. Oddly enough, we have a storage room that we rent that is also full of crap that’s never been touched in about 5 years. Why?

I DON’T FREAKING KNOW!!!!

Every time I walk through there to let the dogs out back I think “I need to purge this stuff”, and then I’ll walk back into the house. Well, enough is enough. It got to me today, and I spent a good 3 hours ripping the guts out of computers, and stacking broken non-working monitors into a pile. How did we collect so many computers? Where did this stuff come from? Why are we keeping it?

I suspect that my husband is a hoarder, as none of this stuff is actually mine. I’m a minimalist. I have clothes, I have one laptop, everything I’ve bought fits on one bookshelf, and the rest is his. I’m currently surrounded by 5 other computers, a printer (that doesn’t work with my mac) 2 filing cabinets full of stuff that isn’t mine, 5 wall shelves filled with junk that isn’t mine, and frankly I’m getting claustrophobic.

Dear hubby always says “we can sell it on ebay”. Um, who is going to want a viewsonic 15 inch monitor that doesn’t work? Who is going to want a container full of computer parts that we really have no idea what they are? I’m sure that 9600 baud modem will go for a lot, maybe to a museum, but museums typically expect you to DONATE things to them, not pay for their exhibit materials.

Purging all of this junk is tricky when it comes to circumnavigating a hoarder. First he wanted to “inspect” each computer before I took it to the dump. Why? Don’t know. I tried to hook up an old printer to my mac, but it wouldn’t even turn on, so I tossed it in a contractor bag and hauled the bag to the curb. He got mad that I was throwing HIS stuff away. It doesn’t work... would you like me to make it into a bookend? That thought has crossed my mind, taking the bin of computer parts and welding it into something artistic like a swan.

Little by little I fill up a garbage bag of junk and take it to the curb, disguising it as common household garbage. On Fridays, when I’m off and he works, I giggle fiendishly as I drag bag upon bag, load upon load to the local dump. I do have to be careful that I don’t toss something that he may actually want later on. “Honey, what happened to that Windows 3.1.1 video card we use to have for a proprietary computer that was bent into the shape of a “U” that I need for something right this very second?” Yes, its happened before, that look of a deer in headlights when he asks for something that I know full well went to the dump one friday. Usually I guide him to the back room and point to the precariously piled plastic boxes that will tip and crush a human at the slightest touch and say “I think I recall it being in a bin on the bottom in the back”. That usually deters him from trying to get it. Then he’ll make some snide comment about cleaning up that room, and it takes everything in my being not to bash him in the head with the weed whacker I just uncovered after 4 years of being buried beneath the pile of junk.

Where Is My Ketchup?

I ran out of ketchup last week and actually made it to the store and bought some. Ok, I had made it to the store a few times between running out and the time I actually remembered to buy some and forget every time until I pulled into the driveway and screamed "FREAKING KETCHUP!". I was still in the truck at the time, so the neighbors probably didn't hear me screaming about forgetting to buy ketchup for the 4th time and couldn't use that in my mental capacity hearing.

Last night I went to get the new bottle of ketchup out of the fridge, but it wasn't in the usual ketchup spot in the door. I looked on the shelf that held the myriad of things that we buy and never use, but it wasn't there either. It wasn't in the cabinet where we keep other things we've bought and never eat (the one that doesn't have a door, its painted, I just haven't put it back on yet). I went out in the rain to look in the back of the truck thinking that it fell out of the flimsy plastic bag that are now outlawed in Annapolis because they fill up the landfills and don't degrade, even though we were somehow forced to use them when paper became an endangered species and choked landfills. Nope, it didn't fall out.

I came back into the house and pronounced myself insane and asked my husband to please commit me now before I did something really stupid like cook a dog in the oven and take the roast for a walk. He refused. Frankly if he had done this, I would have been dialing the local loony bin, but whatever.

Tonight I get home and decide that I want a soda, so I lean down to pluck one from the landfill choking plastic bag that is sitting on the floor (because it won't fit on the shelf full of Costco sized soy sauce that we keep buying because we think we don't have any soy sauce) and lo and behold... there is the ketchup.

I blame the lack of bagging education given to the local checkout line people. Once upon a time when you went to the grocery store, you had a checkout person and a bagger. The checkout person would manually input the price of your item (which they knew from the little tag affixed to your item and put there by the person responsible for pricing every item in the store), then they would slide that item down the belt so the bagger would neatly pack your entire cart full of groceries into one large brown paper bag. It was an art form, and amazing to watch as every item was neatly placed like a Janga puzzle into the bag, fitting everything snugly.

Along came barcode scanners, and now not only do you have no earthly idea what the price of anything is (slowing up the technologically advanced line because the check out person has to shlep back to wherever you got the item from and see what the price is), but the person hired to price everything is now standing in the unemployment line. They have good company because the expert bagger is also standing in line with them. Now the poor checkout person has to scan each item, then fit it into the flimsy plastic bag (now outlawed in some locales), and heave the bag into your cart.

You take your load of 5,000 plastic bags and try to set them in your gas guzzling SUV in such a way as to limit the amount of shifting that will occur on your drive home, but invariably everything gets tossed out of the bags and you spend 45 minutes trying to cram everything back into plastic bags so you can carry them into the house (without them ripping) then try to figure out what to do with 5,000 plastic bags that you can always take back to the store for recycling, but since I can't even remember my coupons for food, I'm certainly not going to remember to take the 5,000 plastic bags back to the store. I do use them to scoop dog poop into, then toss the poop filled bag into my regular trash, as they have yet to provide me with a poop recycle container.

So, I'm not insane, I did buy ketchup, but it was hidden with the sodas.

What Possesses Me?

Painting the entire upstairs white seemed like a cool thing to do. It would be very easy to sell, as most realtors tell you to paint the place in bland muted colors like “eggshell” and “white” before you try to sell. Its like a blank canvas that the new owners can more easily picture painting the rooms something other than stark, institutional white.

Ok, I’m painting the entire upstairs white. Downstairs is paneled, nothing for me to do down there except replace the carpets when the time comes to sell. White is very white, and frankly its almost impossible to tell where the paint starts and stops and the primer starts and stops. You have to walk back and look and make sure you actually covered every square inch. Frankly that whole painting in a “W” is a pain in the ass, and shoulders and arms, so I prefer the up and down method, making sure to keep within a certain area so I’m sure I got it all.

Then it rained. Rain is a good thing as we’re also trying to get some grass to grow in the backyard, but the whole reason we have issues growing grass in the backyard to begin with consists of 12 fluffy legs connected to 3 fluffy bodies, connected to 3 devious husky heads who love to dig. They will dig during drought, they will dig during floods, it doesn’t matter to them, they love to dig and usually dig for something specific, like grubs or moles. Tasty things that live under the earth.

The walls have been an “earth tone” for quite some time, and for a reason (that I apparently forgot) and that reason was: dogs.

I let the dogs in from outside, being careful to wipe them down with a towel to limit the spray of muddy water on the walls, and wiped their feet to limit the amount of foot prints going up the walls, but no matter how careful, no matter how diligent I am with the towel, they seem to emit their own geysers of muddy water once they’ve hit the freshly painted walls. Smear of dog on one wall, splatter of dog on another, and a pawprint. Why? I don’t know, but a single solitary dog print on the wall, just because they could probably. Hey, look at what I did!

Even with only one coat of paint I was happy to see that a moistened paper towel was able to erase the various mud splatters and smears, but I have a feeling that keeping the walls white will be a full time job until we move. When we start showing the house, I’m pretty sure we’ll need to enclose the dogs in swiffers and mop material to keep them from marring the “ambiance”

Ow

Is it possible to pull an eye muscle? Not knowing if there's even a muscle involved in the whole eye structure, I have a pain in my eye when I look to the right and I suspect its a pulled muscle from reading a whole bunch of technical crap at work. I wonder if there's a workman's comp thing for pulled eye muscles. I would mind a nice paid vacation where I didn't have to read anything for a week or two.