I owe my dear friend April “Apes” Kincaid a debt of gratitude for teaching me that great word. I don’t really know how to define it, but I can describe it by example and I know when something is ruint. It doesn’t mean ruined or match any of the urban dictionary definitions. Try this example that just happened and made me want to write about it:

So I have this “sort of” friend who calls from time to time, but she really just wants to pump me for information about life updates and gossip about people we know in common…. she doesn’t actually want to talk to me, and we don’t have much in common, and she is always elusive, doesn’t ever tell the truth (then wonders why I don’t believe a word she says), never answers a question straight up (changes the subject or talks about something unrelated).  ‘She doesn’t take calls / she only makes calls’ [Killola reference], and she only calls me while driving (probably when no one else answered and I’m the last resort) then brags about some dickhead guy she hangs out with and…. never mind. I want to hear about that about as much as I enjoyed listening to everyone throwing up on South Park last night. Then, when I didn’t answer, she left a voicemail that was just four seconds of that farting noise that kids make. What did *I* do?!

Ruint!

One definition I wrote that’s close but not quite on is this:

“Ruint” (adj.) pathetic and without foundation; irrelevant; consisting only of meaningless diversion or distraction.

That definition came to me after reading a somewhat nonsensical article on Yahoo news about scientists who allegedly cooled atoms below absolute zero (?).

Like most of their articles, stupid people who can’t spell wrote completely worthless comments, references to politics, Obama, whose fault it is, that sort of thing.  Ruint!

I wrote in a reply to one of those comments:
Are you right?  Who knows.  But I thought this was supposed to be a science article.  It’s definitely not a politics article.  Right or wrong, these comments are off-topic and stupid.  No wonder everyone who wants news and can spell is looking for a better source.
I propose the introduction of a new word into English for your comment:
“Ruint” (adj.): pathetic and without foundation; irrelevant; consisting only of meaningless diversion or distraction.

It’s different than “annoying”, which would be like how I was just now making a drink and putting ice into my glass from a container, carefully avoiding a small bug that had flown in there, but observing when my was glass was full of ice, the bug was unaccounted for. [No, I didn’t just drink it you fools! I threw it all out and got new ice after washing everything!]

A person can’t feel “ruint”.  In fact, usually “ruint” applies only to situations and actions that people do, rather than the people themselves (like in the above example).  Here’s another really good example:

An ice storm froze my car window and caused it to detach from the regulator and fall down inside the door (letting a lot of rain in as well).  On Jan. 7, 2014, on the coldest day of the past year, I spent many hours cleaning the garage to get the car in, and worked off and on for the next two days tearing the door apart to fix this.  The procedure is very involved: I had to follow 23 steps to remove the door panel and more than 50 steps in this great online tutorial for fixing the window problem.  Although I got it fixed, just as I was finishing up, of course I had to get injured.  I cut my hand down near the wrist… out of all that, when I was cleaning the window.  Ruint!  Hit some stupid sharp edge doing the most mundane step in the entire procedure.

Now you know what Ruint means.

And that I like South Park. Don’t miss Grey Dawn (old people driving! eeeek!), Cat Orgy, Scott Tenorman Must Die, Gnomes (underpants gnomes!), Cow Days (“I Declare Shenanigans”).

Although I’m very allergic to cats, I have two: Belly Rub and Velcro. A few months ago, I discovered that Velcro insanely loves sauerkraut. He never gets on the table, but he climbed over me to get to it. I never heard of such a thing. I gave him some and he ate it all.

Velcro got his name because when he was a kitten, he always had the claws out which fastened him to the carpet. When you’d pick him up and pull him loose, it made that same sound as velcro does when you pull it apart. This would happen repeatedly if you’d put him down and pull him back up again… one day I was demonstrating and said “Look, he’s just like velcro” while I was sticking him to the carpet and pulling him back up five or six times in a row, giggling.

I think Belly Rub has itchy skin because I just saw him rolling around on the concrete patio to scratch his back, and when I scratch his back, he licks my arm. Continuously. It’s very funny (and scratchy!) and I need to get a video of it. Belly Rub is fully recovered now from his horrible ordeal last July, my pretty baby lovecat.

Today is Alison Goldfrapp’s birthday and the new moon (which Chris Stein says is as powerful as the full moon), so I figured there could be no better time than now to finally start writing publicly again…. I finally did it.

The layout here *will* improve but I have to evaluate what I’m going to use that will let people comment and leave me with ownership of my content. I’m not sure how the free sites get away with claiming ownership on content written by someone else without paying them, but I don’t want involved in that. “Include me out.” Yesterday, I was doing some research and someone had “guidelines” for writing on the internet (they called it a “blog” but I despise that term; in fact it is on the LSSU List of Banished Words, so I will not use it). This person suggested that because there are so many people out there writing, that one should write on only one topic you are knowledgeable and passionate about. And to that, I say this:

I am knowledgeable and passionate about a lot of topics, I’m funny, and I’m a better writer than most. Sure, I’m no Diablo Cody (except maybe the diablo part;)… more on my favorite crazygrrrl another day… but I’m going to write about whatever I feel like writing about, and say it’s like a smut magazine: If you don’t like it, don’t read it! As for the rest of you, I hope I can bring some Blondie stories, laughs, insight, magic, bizarrely skewed reality, new music, and weird shit into your life.

The title of this thing is “10 Minutes After Midnight”, which is a line from the song “Mid-Day Rebel” off the new Killola album Let’s Get Associated. I love Killola. I love their music and the talented, intelligent, caring people who are Killola and who I am beyond delight to call my friends. And I love what they and their self-published status represent. I will discuss them in vivid detail another time soon…. for now, I’ll just say that is one of only three bands: Blondie, Goldfrapp, and Killola, who I would die without. These three, together with Crossing The Rubicon by The Sounds dragged my ass out of the darkest place imaginable. Goldfrapp turned out to be right: “What you thought you’d lost was just mislaid.”

For those readers of my past work who, like me, are very observant and recall a lot of detail, you might remember that After Midnight was the working title to the movie Intimate Stranger starring Debbie Harry. I’m a creature of the night, and she has an 11 in her email address, and 11 minutes after 11:59 is 10 minutes after midnight. That’s about as appropriate and personally relevant as it gets… just like naming my Debbie Harry fanzine Fan Mail.

BLK 2:22pm
May 13, 2010

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I don’t often edit my older posts with new information, but on “site launch day”, November 3, 2013, I’d like to point out one other strange development: the coincidence that 12:10 also happens to be my lovely girlfriend Steph’s birthday.  I had met her when I wrote the above and had already chosen the name, but I didn’t know her birthday and I certainly had no idea we’d become what we are now!