Substandard English Usage

You Found Me Here. . .

2010-04-24T23:41:00.002-05:00

but, now I've moved. I'm wily like that...

You can now be bored by fresh, new drivel at substandardenglishusage.com

Simon Hearts Singer

2009-04-17T19:17:00.007-05:00

I am sure you've seen or heard about that nice Scottish Susan Boyle woman with the simple life and the stunning voice. While her lovely voice and sweet story makes me all teary eyed, this is the bit I love:

He fucking looks like he's imagining how her heart would taste coated in breadcrumbs and sauteed in butter.

Friday, A Vignette

2009-04-10T18:47:00.002-05:00

The Yam* was chatty today, feeling helpful. He had to give advice, express appreciation, ask questions so that he could ignore the answers. The Yam does not respect personal space; he stands in my bubble. I think about stabbing him in his eyebrow, and wonder how his wife can stand to be around him. I expect she drinks, and that she has a lover. Maybe several.

The Chatterer* talked on the phone about her child who will soon be attending a party. There is much concern over what the girl will wear, over selecting the right color of jaunty cowboy hat. The girl is under two. The Chatterer does not know that her daughter will one day come to hate her. Eventually, the girl will come home with a shaved head, a bondage collar, and a girlfriend in flannel. Either that, or she will grow into the worst kind of spoiled princess. A young woman capable only of narcissism and avarice. No matter how this turns out, there will be screaming and recriminations.

The Chatterer is contemplating divorce, although she might not even know this yet. She does not like her husband, and likely never did. One day, in a year or 18 months, she will finally find a "reason" to leave him. I wonder if he knows.

I love my job.

*The V.P.
*His assistant

Blue Monday

2009-04-06T19:39:00.003-05:00

Boring night here in the NoCo. After a rather shit day at work, I find myself decompressing on the couch and trying to convince myself that I don't really want to eat the remaining Thin Mints in the house...or at least not all of them.

It's been a boring and rather quiet evening. The Boy was good enough to fix dinner for us while I managed to get in and out of the grocery store without even once considering punching someone in the face, which any more is the best I hope when interacting with the general public. Since then I've planted myself on the couch, surfing the internet for utter bullshit and a few recipes.

Clearly, I need a hobby.

Annnnddd . . . We're Back!

2009-04-05T17:29:00.000-05:00

I haven’t written. Again.

I have parted ways with Corporate Happy Fun Job, and I find that the decompression caused my brain to get all . . . fluffy . . . Not to mention, the sudden dearth of day-to-day contact with douchebags and morons has left me at a loss for things to write about. It seems that without someone actually in my presence being a dickwad, I can’t work up the necessary amount of irritation to write about anything.

Which means that my writing is like a pearl--an un-grammatical, profane pearl. Letters are the nacre I use to lessen the irritating grit that is Other People’s Bullshit. Or something. Doesn’t that sound nice? I think it sounds nice.

The intervening weeks have also seen me take a much needed trip to visit The Esteemed Liquor Fairy in her coastal lair; as well as winter entering its final death throes (even if it is supposed to snow tomorrow, which really? Fuck a bunch of that). April might be the cruelest month, but March turned into a most eventful one.

Now that I’m getting settled, more or less, in the new job and the new season I find that I’m somewhat more inspired to write and participate. Also, although the new job—CHFJ.2, if you will—is in no way as idiotic as the last, working for a living still pretty much sucks.* My new bosses are not either of them swaggering dildos, although the one does have that unfortunate spray tan addiction that makes one look all sweet potato-y. I see in my future many exciting days of self-control followed by evenings of profane venting.

*Currently accepting applications for a patron. Contact me through this blog.

On The Eight Baby Lady

2009-02-25T22:32:00.000-06:00

Ok, so the mother of octuplets? Batshit crazy. The woman exhibits many or most of the classic signs of an animal hoarder. Really, it's uncanny and rather terrifying.

“I know I'll be able to afford them when I'm done with my schooling.” I'm not sure which is more laughable, her plan to support a family of 15 on less than $50,000 a year (even with food stamps and Medicaid), or the the idea that she is going to go back to school in the fall with 8 seriously premature babies under 1 year and 6 other kids under 10.

I would almost feel better if she would just own up and say she was planning to exploit the fuck out of the kids for Discovery Channel and shitty Wal-Mart books. At least then I'd believe she had a plan.

“All I wanted was children. I wanted to be a mom. That's all I ever wanted in my life. I love my children.” Well, fucking AWESOME. You know, animal hoarders claim to love the animals that are suffering in their care. The difference between normal people who love animals and people who hoard animals is that normal people recognize that their means, their space, and their energy are all finite.

Do people manage to successfully raise and provide for exceptionally large families? Yes. However, it's pretty un-fucking-likely that she is going to join their ranks. Most people who have 14 children don't have them under the age of 10--biology doesn't often work that way. Further, most people who choose to have not only older children to help the household run, but an adult partner.

Do I think that there is something wrong with single parenthood? Nope. I don't. Do I think there is something wrong with having really large families? Not exactly. I sort of question the ethics of bringing so many lives into the world from a an environmental standpoint, but really? People can choose to raise their kids to consume little and tread lightly, and maybe that huge family will consume less than the West County trophy family and their 1.1.1 ratio of individuals, bathrooms, and Humscalades.

HOWEVER I do think that there is a fundamental problem with bringing children into the world for whom you cannot provide--regardless of how many children are in question. The only way that this woman can ever hope to provide for those kids is by exploiting the holy living shit out of them, and that's a pretty fucked up plan.

Suleman? Yeah, batshit crazy. Her doctor? Should have his license balled up and shoved up his ass. I have not experienced the pain of infertility. I cannot imagine what that's like. Per her statements, Suleman had difficulty conceiving. Who knows why? I don't believe she's shared her diagnosis.

Whether she needed help to conceive or no, she could obviously carry a pregnancy--the woman already had 6 kids. So her doctor placing six embryos into her 33-year-old body is completely fucking ridiculous. This was not some last ditch Hail Mary attempt. This was a woman with SIX children. Two split? WHO GIVES A SHIT? Even if they hadn't, she still would have had sextuplets. How the fuck is THAT a good outcome, for mom, for babies, or for the community?

Clearly, what we need is for the medical community to step up to the plate and police themselves--with rules and guidelines and big-like-the-hand-of-god consequences for those who flout them. Like I said, I've never experienced infertility, and I'm not a reproductive endocrinologist. There might be cases where it makes a certain amount of ethical and/or medical sense to transfer that many embryos into a woman. This was CLEARLY not one of those cases.

However, if doctors don't do something about themselves soon, then lawmakers will. Don't believe me, and think personal choice will prevail? We have in place all manner of laws to protect people from their own stupid fucking choices. Example? Suicide is illegal. Call 911, say you plan to kill yourself, and soon the cops will be at your house to lock your crazy ass up for your own good.

I've read on various blogs and online communities that this is an issue of reproductive freedom and choice. And to some extent, I agree. Further, laws are very rarely subtle or sophisticated, and by design they are not meant to deal with the individual, but instead the aggregate. It would be a bad thing for lawmakers to regulate the use of these technologies because they really won't be able to do a very good job, but it would be a worse thing for no one to do anything.

The Resignation Letters I Wish I Could Send

2009-02-23T20:20:00.003-06:00

Dear Immediate Boss,

I know you're going to miss me, my knowledge, and the opportunity to take credit for my ideas. However, because you're an ass-kissing yes man, I feel confident that you have a future of middling achievement ahead of you here at Corporate Happy Fun Job.

While I do regret that I will not be present to witness your future grammatical flights of fancy, I can only trust that your tangential understanding of the English language will continue to serve you and your unending pursuit of mediocrity.

I cannot thank you enough for all the important things you've taught me, including exactly how much alcohol a 32-year-old woman can reasonably expect to consume and still make it into work the next day. In return, please do contact me here if you should need assistance in my absence.

Sincerely,
etc.

Dear Swaggering Dildo,

I really do not know how to thank you for the opportunity to labor in in the unventilated mine shaft of your team for the past . . .god, it's so hard to tell time in this place without light. . . let's just call it a year.

Your inability, nay, unwillingness to listen to anything but the throbbing of your own engorged-yet-tiny penis has been an important lesson to me. To wit, that knowledge is secondary to swagger, and that knowledge is secondary to swagger.

When in my new role I am compelled to make a decision I will follow your fine example and simply masturbate--because input from knowledgeable actors invested in the process is for communists and losers.

In short, fuck you. I wouldn't piss in your mouth if your teeth were on fire.

Yours,
etc.

Dear Co-Workers,

God help you. You're all so fucking stupid that I can't imagine how you don't just die because you forget to breathe.

Please note: before my final departure, all inquiries will be filtered through the ticking clock of my remaining days and answered accordingly. Following my departure, please seek your answers here, or when in doubt, here.

Word to your mother,
etc.

Dear Corporate Happy Fun Job,

Behold, my sublime left tit.

I'm out. Peace.

Bitter

2009-02-08T21:20:00.001-06:00

So, this week at Corporate Happy Fun Job has been crazy making. At this point the negativity surrounding my job has gown, cancer-like, to the point where it is beginning to blot out the sun. There is nothing, nothing not eclipsed by the ticking clock that counts the minutes between now and when I have to go back to that place.

I am particularly susceptible to career-related disgust right now because they announced our raises this past week. The fact is this: I knew that I was going to be righteously pissed by the entire affair; that there was no way they were going to give me what it would take to make me happy. What blew me away is how VERY, VERY pissed off I was. As my boss sat there and blathered on and on and fucking ON about how generous CHFJ’s fucking package is, I just sat there and stared at the sheet in front of me. The one that, in black and white, laid out for me just how underpaid and overworked I am; just how worthless the hours I’ve wasted making everyone around me money while I struggle and get nowhere.

What I said was, “I see this, and I am disappointed.”

What I thought was, “Only a fucking retarded person would be satisfied with this, and I am not fucking retarded.”

At this point, I am permanently exhausted. I spend 40-50 hours a week biting my tongue; 40-50 hours a week avoiding the truth; 40-50 hours pretending that somehow I am not totally, terribly, pissing away my life in this ridiculous place with these ridiculous people.

And it’s not working any more. Do you have any idea how much self-discipline it requires to lie convincingly for 40-50 hours per week? Because I sure as shit didn’t. It’s excruciating.

And then, and then, AND THEN . . . The stupid bint asked me to coach (coach?!?) the fucker on our team who has the job I should have—who makes more money than I do—because he’s underperforming.

*sputter*

At that point, I think a part of my brain actually turned black and died. Collapsed on itself, like a wee dying galaxy. The part of me that is the real me, the part of me that I like and bring out off-leash to spend time with loved ones, wanted to jump up and overturn a chair. It wanted respond with a perfectly reasonable “Are you shitting me?” My god, the woman has no sense of irony and no concept of timing.

Instead, I sat there like a whipped fucking bitch and just took it. And today? Five days later? Recalling the conversation makes me want to cry. I’ve become complicit in my own fucking failure, my enthusiastic disappointment.

Working on not spending half my waking life with people I hate doing things I detest, and waiting for Spring.

Musing on a Sunday, Not At the Office

2009-02-01T14:41:00.003-06:00

The lingering winter and my steadily deteriorating work situation have worked in concert to lobotomize me. My brain is mired. I am completely uncreative, totally uninspired, and borderline unable to interact with people. My life has, in essence, turned me back into me at 13, but without the urge to write truly awful poetry.

I mistakenly believed that things wouldn’t ever get as bad at Corporate Happy Fun Job as they did last year at this time. I can only attribute that ridiculous assumption to optimism born of desperation—to have believed otherwise would have melted my soul and destroyed me. Now, in the throes of misery, I’m too close to it to reflect upon it. There is only the one-foot-in-front-of-the-other forced death march, interspersed with momentary speculation about how much my manager resembles a swaggering dildo frat boy.

That explains a lot, actually. That whole swaggering dildo thing.

As works sucks up more and more of my time, the rest of my life concomitantly begins to ravel around the edges. Things like socks and clean panties sort of fall by the wayside, and let’s not even talk about the whole damn dust situation.

And winter. . .winter. I am so done with winter. Rather than becoming more accepting of the entire season situation as years go by, I fight it more and more. I feel like I have done my time and paid my dues, and should no longer have to suffer the indignities of winter. Unfortunately, February is only beginning. Spring is at least a six weeks away, and the days when we can be confident there will be no frost are longer still.

The madness, he is lurking.

On the bright side, the dark and hopeless days of the Bush administration are finally, fabulously, behind us. President Obama (*swoon*) has impressed me incredibly during his first two weeks in office. Further, I don’t believe I’m impressed solely by the contrast between Obama and his idiotic predecessor, but rather by his determination to do right; to be a statesman and a leader rather than a politician.

When he signed the Executive Order to close Gitmo, I sat there sort of dumbfounded, thinking to myself, “Huh. He can just do that. Just . . . make good things happen. Because he’s the president. Fuckin’-A right.” And then he signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law, and I almost wept, because suddenly I no longer felt so much like I had a target painted on my ass and a sign around my neck that said “Fucking Sucker” in letters 3 inches high.

Hand to god, I would likely hump the President’s leg, but it would upset Michelle and his kids and the Secret Service would wallop my ass. The Boy, though, would understand because I am a woman of serious and sudden wants and, as my husband, he knows and accepts this about me.

Welcome, Mr. President

2009-01-20T22:24:00.003-06:00

I had to work today, and didn't get to take time out to listen to the Inauguration address until hours later.

However, driving home from work, I got all teary eyed over the people on NPR referring to "President Obama." Somehow that shift, from President-elect, to President, brought it all home

Since then, I have been weepy eyed over the speech, over the new President's stinking adorable children, over the people who traveled for hours and days to see it happen.

Wow. For the first time in a long time it is a fucking righteous day to be in America.

Buh-bye, Bush

2009-01-19T20:22:00.002-06:00

I can't believe it's over.

We got through eight years. Eight long, fucked up, "Brownie, you're doin' a heckuva job" years, and tomorrow they come to an end. I almost can't believe it.

The economy is terrible, and America has pissed away its good name the world over. Things are as bad as they've been in my lifetime, or the lifetime of my parents, and yet I still feel relief, because the eight year reign of terrifying, mind-bending stupidity is over.

I hear that there is some question that Bush will be able to find gainful employment after he leaves office. Being that unlike most presidents before him he's a barely literate asshat, the traditional occupations of memoir writing and public speaking might be out of reach. I would like to propose that he occupy his ample free time traveling around the country and apologizing to all of us. He can start with the families of the soldiers his lies have killed and work his way around to the rest of us.

George W. Bush, you have been a terrible fucking leader. You are a liar, a cheat, and fucking fool. When history judges your sorry ass, I can only hope that time does nothing to dim the memory of your failings. Better to remember, and not to repeat.

Too Dumb To Teach

2009-01-18T13:34:00.000-06:00

Ok. Seriously?

If you’re so stupid that you:

1. Spend $1100 on a laptop to write papers –and-

2. Buy said laptop with an operating system you’ve never heard of –and-

3. When you prove unable to successfully operate said OS you’ve never heard of, you respond by dropping out of school rather than finding someone who can help you at, say, the computer lab . . .

THEN one can reasonably assume that your school career was not on an upward trajectory anyway.

Who The Fuck Is He Kidding?

2009-01-12T22:37:00.005-06:00

People said, well, the federal response was slow. Don’t tell me the federal response was slow when there was 30,000 people pulled off roofs right after the storm passed. I remember going to see those helicopter drivers, Coast Guard drivers, to thank them for their courageous efforts to rescue people off roofs. Thirty thousand people were pulled off roofs right after the storm moved through. It’s a pretty quick response.

-President George W. Bush's final press conference. January 12th, 2009

Reuters/Jason Reed found at http://tinyurl.com/99r8ns\

Real timely, there George. Note the lack of WATER. And medical personnel. Note the lack of help.

George Bush has been a terrible, terrible president. A blowhard and a fool who cannot speak with the intelligence of the average college sophomore. There are so very, very many things for which to blame him.

None, though, are is incredible to me as Hurricane Katrina. I will never forget the film of the mother with her newborn sobbing to a camera crew to help her because he baby was unresponsive. The people sobbing at the Superdome. Some officious prick general talking how hard it was to get into New Orleans to Anderson Cooper of all fucking people. How Sean Penn beat Bush and most rescuers into the city.

Never have I felt more keenly ashamed of my country. Someday, when I have a child, I will sit her (or him) down, and I will tell her about the most shameful time in American history.

Fucking asshat. When the fucking secretaries from CNN and the weather monkey from Channel 5 beats you into a city, you are fucking slow. Maybe not as slow as you were in school, but slow just the same. Douche.

I'm Just Here for the Check

2009-01-07T22:30:00.002-06:00

I can only describe my current career related mental state as being the final stage of professional grief: acceptance.

Things at Corporate Happy Fun Job are fun indeed. At present, I can best compare our management to my dating and mating habits prior to the boy:
1. Inability to learn from past mistakes
2. Noteworthy powers of denial
3. Insistence that a difference in appearance must indicate a difference in substance

Also similar? If I could go back in time, I would kick my own ass. And if I were the evil overlord, I would most assuredly be dispensing some ass kickings to the people captaining this particular ship of fools.

I have accepted that for the time being I should at least maintain at least a small amount of humility because I do have a relatively secure job, even if at times said job can best be likened to inserting pine cones into my butt. It is what it is. If I could travel back in time, shortly after I got done kicking my younger self in the head for her dating habits, I'd send her off to learn how to do something fucking useful. Alas, non. C'est la vie.

That being said, I am NOT A FUCKING IDIOT. So when I realized today that various co-workers and I were all more or less working for free in an increasingly vain effort to meet the whimsical flights of fancy--also known as goals--laid out by management, it took me approximately 30 seconds to decide that this shit was going to stop. I do, and will continue to, work my ass off. I do a difficult job and I do it well. However, it is a job. My family, my friends, my knitting, my booze, my books . . . these things are my life. My job is a Life Subsidizing Device.

What really blows me away about this entire thing is that so few of my co-workers were even really that pissed off about it. What the fuck, over? I get being afraid for one's job, but really? There is always a bum outside the blood bank looking for a handjob.

Whatever, I went and had a chat with the HR person that basically said we were being indirectly pressured to work for free. I believe she broke into a mild sweat and her butt cheeks took a bite out of her ergonomically correct office chair. That in itself was pretty much worth the conversation.

Seriously, fellow Pink Collar Wage Slaves. Repeat after me. "I am not your bitch."

Mad Dining Skillz

2009-01-05T19:50:00.004-06:00

I love to cook. After a shitty day at work, filled with failure and stupidity, I can come home and do something that 1. makes me feel reasonably competent, and 2. reasonably productive.

Also, whereas at work everything I do counts as pearls before swine, here at least The Boy will appreciate my efforts.

Further, new skills I learn at work inevitably only open doors to new and interesting wells of suffering. Very rarely does a new cooking skill leave me wishing I'd never heard of it, and in the rare instance it does, you can bet your ass I won't be using it long.

Like cream sauces. The secret, I now know, is that I need to be much less of a chickeshit when it comes to heat. Big fire, don't turn around, whisk. Who knew?

Don't answer that.

Getting Here From There

2009-01-02T21:08:00.005-06:00

A few weeks ago for shits and giggles, I decided to add a Stat Counter to this blog. I have it invisible because 1. I don't really care for them much on pages, and 2. I have some dignity and don't need anyone to see how paltry the visit count is, and 3. I don't want any of my two or three regular readers to realize how un-fucking cool I really am and be scared back into the ether.

I get a few hits from places I recognize as belonging to people I know. I also get a lot of shit from, like, India--I suppose most of those kind souls are concerned about the size of my penis and would like to help me enlarge it.

My favorite, though, are the random search strings. A couple folks arrived here after searching for "Bommarito Nissan." Hi guys! If you found this after googling Bommarito Nissan, all I can say is FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND ALL THAT IS HOLY DO NOT DO THAT TO YOURSELF. Life is too short, and frankly, you'd be better off walking--which now that I think about it is what you're likely in for if you go to them for service. Just saying.

The other common theme I'm finding is people who are searching for answers to various grammatical questions. God help them if they find it here. While I can as needed deploy a heaping helping of Queen's English in the service of good, here I mostly don't concern myself with many of the niceties of grammar. Whatever poor bastard takes his or her writing tips from this blog is in a world of fucking hurt. Vulgar, nasty, ill-willed fucking hurt to be exact.

The True Meaning of Christmas

2008-12-27T13:05:00.005-06:00

Christmas is not about celebrating the birth of our savior.

It is not about a quiet contemplation of the year, or a celebration with friends and loved ones.

It's not the about the bustle, or the songs, or the foods that evoke history and home.

It's not even about running around unto exhaustion so that you can suffer through the racist, homophobic garbage spewed by your in-laws. Garbage that is interspersed with "Why don't we see more of you?" guilt trips that you are forced to endure without the sweet blessing of a cocktail.

No. Christmas is about none of those things. Instead? Christmas is about this:

Jason and I received this as a present. I, literally, don't know what to say. The generosity leaves me speechless.

Car Sales 301

2008-12-19T22:32:00.005-06:00

Lessons In Selling Cars To People Who Hate You

1. If I contact you by email, it is because I don't want to talk to you. I don't really want to talk to anyone. I am a curmudgeon, and people annoy me.

If I have sent you an email with a fucking question in it, and did not include a phone number, you can rest assured it's not because I don't know how to fill out a phone. Answer the question. Make me hate you less, and I will call YOU. Promise. Kisses.

2. If I am talking to you, you better not be a complete moron. If I ask you a question, come up with an answer. Today, some idiot who finally annoyed me into calling him by not answering my question via e-mail, I finally broke down called him because I didn't think I wanted this car after all, and just wanted someone to answer some questions so I could be sure. When the figures he was giving me were much higher than his closest competitor--the same car, basically, by a different maker--I told him so. He proceeded to ask me what incentives the other manufacturer was offering.

Fuck. I don't know. I don't give a shit. I care about the end numbers, not the ones in the middle. I spend my workweek babysitting salespeople. Why the fuck am I going to do it for me. And besides, isn't it your job as a dancing sales monkey to know what you're closest competitors are offering.

I now have new insight as to why the domestic automakers are made of fail.

3. If I come into the dealer, I am not interested in having a big cock waving contest with you. I don't get off on negotiation. I don't get off on listening to your shit. Talking to you does not make me feel good. It's a shitty fucking chore. The BEST way to make me happy is to reduce the amount of time we have to spend together. I spend 40 hours a week with douchey salespeople yammering at me, I sure as hell don't want to spend my off hours around it. Let's just wrap this up so I can get to the bar.

4. And finally, most importantly, do NOT insult my intelligence. The tits are mere accessories, and do not negatively impact my higher faculties. I'm spending my precious free time and will soon be spending my hard-earned money. Don't jerk me around and dodge answers to my questions and expect I won't notice.

Tonight, I was standing in a dealership, having just finished test driving the last vehicle I was interested in. I enjoyed the drive, whatever that means, I let the salesman know that I was deciding between this car and one from their close competitor that is comparably priced. So, yes. Price. What will you sell me this car for, Mr. Man? Impress me.

So he goes off to do whatever it is that they do before they come back with a number. I assume he took a good, healthy dump. And he gives me a figure which I know was a bit high, but whatevs. Then he goes on about how the number can come down, based on inventory, etc, and that if I wanted to buy tonight he was sure he could a car much closer to their invoice price.

Hrm. Okay then. I'm not signing on a car tonight. BUT! I intend to make a choice this week. I am BUYING A CAR. So. What's the price? What is the price, you fine crapping, dancing, sales monkey man?

Well, it depends on inventory, volume, etc.

I look around the showroom. The Boy and I were the only beating hearts in the joint not on the payroll.

*cricket*cricket*cricket*

Thanks, for your time.

Maybe I should have mentioned to him that the internet guy said they had surfeit of that model. That they were working to move them, that he would beat any written deal I brought him. And that the fucking piece of shit he'd just brought me was a full $800 above what I knew those things sold for.

Nah. Fuck it.

Professional Literacy

2008-12-18T22:49:00.002-06:00

So, in my work as a Pink Collar Wage Slave I have long labored under the delusion that no matter how frustrating and idiotic my co-workers and bosses behavior is, no matter how non-sensical their decisions and incomprehensible their thought processes, no matter how banal their conversation and shallow their thoughts, that at the very least they were all literate.

Nope.

Yesterday, my two supervisors showed up at my desk with a look of great seriousness on their faces.

"We have a question, and you always have the answer."

"Um, ok"

"So, we have a Report with result X. Do we need to order Common Industry Specific Product to go with it?

*blink*blink*blink*

"Nope."

"Wow. Thanks!"

Now, I did know the answer to that question right off the top of my head. But really? It's wasted brain space. Why? Because the Report says what, if anything, else you need to get to go with it. Says so right there. In English. Plainly written.

*sigh*

So, I think I get a by when I TOTALLY LOST MY SHIT on my boss because I refuse to complete the GODDAMN TPS REPORT FOR EACH AND EVERY FILE.

Ugh. Monday one of the managers is supposed to sit with me for three hours to observe how we do our job. He's been the boatswain on this ship of fools for the past year, and so far all I know about him is he swaggers and glandhands like a total ex-fratboy choad.

Monday goal? Don't get fired for Christmas.

Fourth Quarter Quotes

2008-12-16T21:12:00.003-06:00

Good times of late at Corporate Happy Funjob. . . after several months of slowdown while we assessed where fuck we had gone off track, we're quickly finding ourselves back in the thick of it.

One would think that in the months when were all basically told to sit in a corner and think about ourselves, my co-workers might have learned a thing or two and stopped behaving like such incredible idiots. One, though, would be wrong. It's like they've saved up all their fuckery for the moment that they would have a chance to unleash it.

Part of it is, I know, that I support sales people who are mostly all bunged up because they have been earning less during the months that we've been grounded. I am, to some extent, sympathetic. At the same time, though, most of these mouth breathers make tens of thousands of dollars more a year than I do because. . . Fuck. I have no idea. They don't either. I guess because they sell stuff? I know more and work harder, and the only thing most of these people can do without the support of my peers and I is wipe their own asses.

Ah, the joys of pink collar wage slavery. Another happy accident of accidentally fulfilling at typical gendered job.

Either way, though, production is now ramping up with nary a backward glance at lessons learned. This has, as a result, led to some FANTASTIC conversations between me, my co-workers, and my boss.

Things I have actually said in the past few weeks:

To my boss:
"I hope that isn't going to be our '09 goal, because it if it is, I'm not signing it. I refuse to acknowledge as a goal something I believe to be impossible."

"I'm applying for everything available in the company that isn't actually a demotion."

"I'm tired of the all stick, no carrot performance management philosophy we've adopted"

"No, I didn't look at it. Because I've accepted that we actually cannot be successful, it didn't seem worth my while to see where I'd failed."

To my co-worker, who wanted something by end of year:
"Hahahahaha. No. Not going to happen. If you think someone else can get it done for you, then by all means, request someone else. But they can't do it either. Give it up, let it go, tell the customer."

To a different boss:
Me: "No. I can't stay late."
OtherBoss: "Why not?"
Me: "I'm sorry. I misspoke. I CAN stay late, but I'm not going to. I didn't create this problem, and I don't think it is fixable at 4:30 on a Friday."

I guess I should watch my mouth and be nicer, but frankly unless I walked into the director's office and whipped a tit into his face I don't think I could get fired. It's kind of how my company rolls. Not to mention I know more than anyone on my team including my boss. I know everyone is replaceable, especially in this economy. However, really? They're too fucking lazy, better to put up with the mouthy bitch who knows everything.

The Quest For Project Shitheap 3.0

2008-12-15T18:03:00.005-06:00

Somewhere below "gynecological examination" and "root canal" on my List of Things I Enjoy is car shopping.

However, the Nissan? It is dead. Fuck that fucking car in its fucking carhole. I'm still pissed because I can't even come to a decision about how to get its carcass out from in front of my house. It is, theoretically, still worth money. I guess. But it needs work and I am sure as shit not investing another dime in it.

If it weren't so cold I'd go outside and hit it with a stick.

Anyway, so without the Nissan we have only Ophelia the Saturn. This is a great little car, however, it has over 156,000 miles on it. I'm WAY too big of a chickenshit for this to be our sole source of transportation. That means that we either move someplace warm and walkable, or I gird my loins and shop for cars. If we had a traditionally gendered distribution of labor Chez Nous, I could dump this particular shit chore on The Boy. Alas, though, that's not how we roll.

Fortunately, I have good and generous friends who are willing to help with their knowledge and encouragement. So far, I've only been moderately annoyed with dealership minions, and I have yet to truly want to call someone a motherfucker. I am, to my mind, doing ok.

My sort of unique perspective as a car buyer in the current economy does not escape me. I can't walk by a radio and not hear something about the proposed domestic auto bailout, and I really, really know why the domestic car companies are doing so poorly.

Even now, after all this time, the domestic automakers are building shit. Seriously, there are hardly any domestic cars that I can even convince myself to test drive, and the one that is remotely tempting is basically a Toyota. Seriously. I was looking at a used car online that had less than 15,000 miles and was priced almost 50% less than the new cars I'm looking at, and I still am not sure I want to even test drive the damn thing. If it were a used version of one of the imports I am looking at, it would probably already be in the fucking driveway. Detroit has finally managed to build cars so unappealing that they practically can't give them away.

I say that my car is just a tool, a toaster on wheels, but seriously? I would never buy a toaster that fucking ugly.

Yuletide Dread

2008-12-02T20:27:00.005-06:00

I've decided that my ongoing not posting is really me just doing what I can to seize a little bit of control in world of chaos. Like the way a toddler or a Republican will regress and insist on a binkie or resume pooping his diapers when things don't go his way.

Whatever. Fine. Damn.

Thanksgiving welcomed the return of the holiday season last week. The holidays are always kind of fraught for me. On the one hand, you have food, booze, friends and tradition. Generally, I'm pro all of those things. On the other hand, you have the fact that it's cold; it's dead; dark at 5:00 pm; and my family is all giddybonkers batshit insane. Normally, I can deal with my immediate family's particularly flavorful crazy blend. However, chuck in a couple of hours with the broader circle of the people to whom I'm related by blood or by unfortunate matrimonial choice (not mine, obvy), and in the best of years I'm ready to just stay the hell at home and extract tinsel from my cat's ass rather than face any more goddamn cheer.

This year, however, I'm just...really...adverse to the shenanigans. I know what it is that has brought this all to a head, I have finally come to the point in my life where I have virtually no hesitation telling people what I think or what I feel. Unless I'm actually on the fucking clock, I no longer choose to suffer fools gladly. Hell, even at the office I've stopped gluing glitter and flowers to the shit I say to people. I. Just. Don't. Fucking. Care.

I would like very much to avoid the cousin et al entirely, and I'm sure that by her my presence would not be missed. My grandmother, however, feels differently. For Thanksgiving, I attempted to avoid the situation by visiting Grandma on Friday, but due to the fact that that branch of the family tree lives in a veritable white trash compound, my aunt AND my cousin and some largish percentage of the brood all showed up at one point or another.

The fact that The Boy did not leave me is a testament to his faithfulness and his good heart. I would have probably dumped me for sure.

Even when not present, the cousin and her problems were a constant presence. Grandma, who is old and has earned break, mostly worries in the way of the old who can do nothing to aver the crisis that 1. she knows is coming, and 2. she feels keenly on behalf of the individual too stupid to see it for herself. In this as in pretty much all things, my grandma gets a pass.

However my aunt and the cousin herself have finally managed after 32 years to work their way all the way around to my last nerve. I'm about ready to give them my speech entitled Embrace the Truth for no other reason than that I can no longer Tolerate the Bullshit.

By this time, there are certainly those among you who might be wondering what could be so bad about this cousin. The reasons, alas, are too numerous for me to want to go into tonight. Also, and I admit this freely, some of the car wreck would not trouble you the reader as they do me--the poor fucker who shares, I dunno, a quarter helix or something.

Election Night, 2008.2

2008-11-04T22:51:00.003-06:00

I am sitting in my bar, surrounded by some of my best friends, and we have a new president. There are young black men running down the street with political signs, yelling with happiness. There are strangers cheering at each other on the street.

President Obama. I like the way that sounds.

Can he solve all the problems? No. But at least. . . he'll try.

It's a good night to be an American because suddenly? The promises we tell our children are true.

Hey, Mandy? Wish you were here. It's a good night in the Lou.

Election Night, 2008.1

2008-11-04T20:44:00.002-06:00

Drunker. We paused for the consumption of food. Slightly drunk. We've progressed to candy now.

I would like for Florida to do something to earn its keep, since all it has ever done is cause me pain.

Congratulations, Governor Nixon. Congratulations, Senator Hagan. Dole done got her weave snatched.

I suspect further updates might realize more typos. Sorry, yo'.

Election Night, 2008

2008-11-04T19:33:00.001-06:00

So.

I am sitting here at Mangia, with The Husband and a motley array of lunatics, drinking and watching election results on our laptops. CNN, NPR, MSNBC, 538, and the Douchenozzles at Fox News—we are so fucking wired at this point that I we’re not even getting the same results at the same table.

I waited 2 hours and 45 minutes to vote this morning--a small price to pay for the chance that our culture can get a get out of pulling train for the bible beaters for the next 4 years.

Here’s to hoping, kids. I’m drinking tonight, regardless. Here’s to hoping we’re celebrating, not mourning again.

Go Obama. Get some.

On A Year Ago Yesterday

2008-10-21T21:10:00.002-05:00

I realized today that the last time I ever talked to my friend Russell was a year ago yesterday. He came to my birthday party. We talked and drank, and we made plans to go out for dinner or drinks when I got back from a trip I had coming up.

I wanted to hear about his new girlfriend, and to talk to him about Jason.

Part of me feels terrible that I didn't recognize yesterday for the anniversary that it was. I know, though, that it doesn't exactly matter. If Russell could vote, he'd probably vote in favor of cocktails and butter.

I just wish I had raised that cocktail to him. I will, though. He'd be for it.

Thirty-two

2008-10-20T18:08:00.003-05:00

Here follows 32 things I know, in no particular order:

1. I know how to make a mean pie crust, a nummy cheesecake, and wicked spaghetti sauce and all its derivatives.

2. I know that yelling is probably not worth it.

3. I know that sometimes I'm going to yell anyway.

4. I know that there is no trait more despicable than cowardice.

5. I know how to fit in at a fancy cocktail party and a dive bar.

6. I know that Coco Chanel is right, generally, you should get ready and then take off one thing.

7. I know now that I quite like gimlets. Hooray for new cocktails.

8. I know that I have a glorious bosom. No really, trust me.

9. I know that sometimes, the evening calls for big hair.

10. I know I will land on my feet, even if I do hit all the branches on the way down.

11. I know that when in doubt it either most likely needs more garlic or more salt. Or both.

12. I know how to walk in heels. Even when drunk. I can even do the knee-on-knee-back drunk in heels propped stand. It’s what separates the women from the girls.

13. I know I’m no longer cute. Attractive, pretty, maybe even sexy—I’ll leave that up to someone else to determine—but not cute. Not sure I ever was, but I’ve outgrown it.

14. I know that, for the most part, I don’t give a shit.

15. That said, I know I don’t make enough to vote Republican. Don’t much expect I ever will.

16. I know that I prefer most animals to most people. Animals have purer motives, and are more likely to repay kindness with kindnesss.

17. I know that right now I’m underpaid and undervalued at work, but that’s okay because one day, when the economy picks up, I know they’ll be looking around like, “Why don’t she write?”

18. I know what it’s like to swim alone in the ocean at midnight. In March.

19. I know who my friends are.

20. I know that I’m incredibly, ridiculously, undeservedly lucky in having the friends I do.

21. I know, now, that’d I’d rather eat my own hair than break bread with someone I don’t like.

22. I know what boys like. I know what guys want.

23. I know I don’t give much of a shit what guys—or girls—want. I used to, but I quit.

24. I know I have lucked right the fuck out in finding The Boy.

25. I know that my family might be crazy, but any or all of them would eat through a room of assholes if that’s what it took to save me, and I know I’m lucky.

26. I know that if having a perfect body requires I surrender ice cream, then fuck a bunch of that.

27. I know how to cut in a wall, window, or baseboard when painting, without tape.

28. I know that I’ve made pretty fucking stupid mistakes, but I’m still here, and no one has died, so I better get over it.

29. I know that that having my heart broken has made me a better person.

30. I know that there is little better than sitting up too late with friends talking and laughing and drinking too much.

31. I know that just because someone likes to have sex with women, doesn’t mean he actually likes them.

32. I know that while wine and chocolate won’t solve my problems, they will in fact turn down the volume.

And, as a bonus, I know that I’m a year older, and arguably no wiser, but I’m looking forward to learning some new shit in year 33.

Post Presidential Debate v.1

2008-10-07T23:00:00.002-05:00

John McCain causes terrible vaginal dryness and itching.

Seriously, I think my pussy hates him.

Here's to hoping I have something more intelligent, if not as succinct, to contribute tomorrow.

Post Veep Debate

2008-10-02T21:37:00.002-05:00

Ohmyfuckinggod.

So, Sarah Palin. Let's talk about this.

She is a woman. Ovaries, breast, lipstick, woman. Check. And a wife. And a mother. Fine. Great. Whatever.

She's also a publicity stunt; a disaster; an insult. She sounds like a moron, with her "nookyouler" and her "up there." People keep talking about her like she's the second coming. She's "like us." She "folksy." She's "down to Earth."

Like who? Not like me. She's not like me. Oh wait! Do you mean she's like me in that she's uninformed and intellectually lazy? Then yeah. Okay, then she's like us. Except that she somehow thinks that a $5000 tax credit--to be paid for by taxing workers' employer paid-health benefits--will somehow work as comprehensive tax care.

Look. People thought Bush was folksy, and like us. LOOK AT WHERE WE ARE NOW! This is something we want to repeat? This? So great we want more?

"People are picking on her because she's a woman!"

Nope. People are picking on her because she's an asshat. She is Dan Quayle with a slightly better grasp on spelling. She's uninformed and unprepared. People are picking on her because she's ignorant.

I'm not proud she's running for V.P. because she's a woman and I happen to be as well. Instead, I'm embarrassed that people think she somehow deserves a pass because of the happenstance of her two X chromosomes. Does her inability to pronounce nuclear stem from a wandering uterus? Is that what causes her to support abstinence only education? Pray, do tell.

Sarah Palin doesn't make me embarrassed to be a woman. She makes me embarrassed to be an American. What does it say about us as a people that we would settle for her?

A Quick Post About Nothing

2008-09-29T21:43:00.002-05:00

I should write about something.

I could, I suppose, write about the surprising failure of the mortgage bailout and what it means for our economy. Other people are already doing that, though. I can't really add anything to the hue and cry that hasn't already been said. Spending my days around shallow thinking armchair pseudo economist fucktards has pretty much sapped my desire to consider the matter further at this time. Suffice it to say that I'm not surprised it didn't pass. At this point, frankly, I'm really fucking hard to surprise.

I could write something happy; I could write about the wedding. It was a beautiful, wonderful day that was more fantastic than I could have hoped or had any right to wish for. At the same time, though. Wow. Those were some of the craziest, busiest, most exhausting and wonderful days ever. Frankly, just thinking about writing it all out exhausts me anew. I will get there eventually. Or I won't. Unless an editor wants to contact me and offer me money for my take on things, folks is just gonna have to wait.

I suppose I could talk more about my job. Let's see. I'm now up to 4 forms and 2 audits per each file, plus all the work that has to be done so I can complete all 4 forms and get to both audits. The fact is this, I've died and fucking gone to Office Space. I'm trying to embrace the notion that the universe is trying to shape me using the blunt skulls of my co-workers. Of course, what the universe is really doing is making me drink more and eat a lot of ice cream.

Meh. I'm in the doldrums, I think. Sort of this in-between place while I try to figure out what happens next. I guess I'll know what it crashes through the roof or bursts into flames in my driveway.

Morning Surprise

2008-09-26T10:38:00.002-05:00

I woke up late this morning with a Benadryl hangover. All fuzzy-headed and drowsy, I walked into the kitchen . . .

Huh. What the hell is that in the water dish?

Huh. What the hell is that by the water bowl?

Huh. What the hell is thOH MY GOD WHO IS BLEEDING?

Pug check. Jack check. Bennet--was in her kennel all evening so unlikely but check her anyway. Sammi cat? Where are you, kitty? Ack!

She seems fine, now. Her rumpled-y ear is all swollen, and yes, bloody. However, she's been purring and cuddling and basically being herself. We'll be gong to the vet in just about an hour; I expect we might get a cat lampshade out of the deal. She's napping comfortable on The Boy.

Holy shit, though. Fucking 5 plus feet of blood spatter in the morning before coffee? REALLY? Is this entirely necessary?

Spin FAIL

2008-09-25T22:35:00.006-05:00

I have apparently gone retarded because it just took me 8 or 9 tries to log into Blogger. Frankly, going retarded will probably make much of my life easier--work especially.

Seriously, though, I'm guessing it's because everyone in the whole damn world is online talking smack about Sarah Palin. And why wouldn't they?

I have not watched the entire Katie Couric interview. I quite probably won't. You know? Because if you're going to be that fucking stupid at me, you're going to have to cut me a check. I don't suffer that amount of foolishness for free. I did catch the minute or so where she talked about how because she's governor of Alaska, and because Alaska shares a "maritime border" (that's the Bering Strait, to you and I) and land border with Canada, that she has foreign policy experience. By that logic, the meth lab up the block makes me a motherfucking chemical engineer.

She sounded so ridiculous I would have felt sorry for her except for, you know, bitch should fight her weight. For example, if I knew I was going to be campaigning for THE VICE PRESIDENCY OF THE UNITED STATES, I would at least pull an all-nighter and come up with a better line of crap. I mean, shit, I can't respect someone too stupid use spin effectively.

Part of being a leader is the ability to shine a turd. Epic fucking fail.

So, Palin made me sad.

This makes me happy, though. Deep, happy, belly laughs.

Smile Pretty

2008-08-11T20:57:00.003-05:00

I have discovered that, all to often, there is an positive correlation between the discomfort and embarrassment of an activity and its resultant beautifying properties.

Nothing, I think, proves this better than the tooth whitening strip. The Boy barely even attempts to hide his amusement as I walk around the house, *shlorking* up extraneous saliva and breathing through my mouth, pausing occasionally to spit into a sink.

Sadly, because of my disordered manner of swallowing, if I close my mouth I push the strips off my teeth. I don't know of a solution other than this one. These fuckers had better work, is all I'm sayin'.

Check Out the Pork and Beans

2008-08-04T21:42:00.005-05:00

Sweet holy hell. Behold, my dream job.

People would looked at me funny for sniffing payphones, mashing Fig Newtons onto walls, and throwing pasta at crack houses to see if it would stick (yep--overnight), and along comes "Will It Blend?" to bring form and purpose to my childish visions.

Le sigh . . .

An Open Letter to Bommarito Nissan, et al.

2008-08-02T11:51:00.002-05:00

To Whom It May Concern,

Perhaps the best measure of one's service is that determined by its comparison to others.

So, when I tell you that a trip to the Ferguson DMV on a Saturday in August was a painless joy in comparison to each and every interaction I have ever had with one of your staff, then I do hope you understand my full meeting.

Yours sincerely,
Future Toyota Customer

Extreme Elimination Challenge: Car Repair Addition

2008-07-31T20:57:00.004-05:00

I have, as you may recall, mentioned my issues with my car before. To make a long story short, there is something wrong with it. The check engine light has been on on for, oh, about three years. It runs fine for a car that has 108,000+ miles and has always received absolutely indifferent maintenance. The engine is still fucking there, so whatever is wrong cannot, to my mind, be that goddamn important.

Unfortunately, though, I live in area that requires car emissions tests. Check engine light=fail. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. I made a good faith effort to try to cheat, but alas, it's not as easy as it used to be and I was unable to procure a crooked mechanic who would pass me for $50 cash and a photo of my boobs.

I was not for a moment naive enough to believe that this problem could actually be fixed. Two years ago I pissed about $600 into a hole before some clever lad worked out a cheat that got me through the test (a cheat I was unable to duplicate this time, god knows I tried). Instead I faced the problem head on.

I called the dealership and made an appointment. "Hi. Lemme tell you what's up. My car is not going to pass emissions. The check engine light is on because my car throws a code for a crank shaft positioning sensor--that's always been the issue, and I know it's still the issue because I've hooked it up to a code reader. There is nothing wrong with that sensor, it's been replaced at least twice. I don't expect you to fix whatever the problem is, I don't care what the problem is. I just need to spend $450 so that I can get an emissions waiver. Do what you need to do to make that happen, but that's what I want."

Sensor? Not broken. Car? Not broken. Customer? Not stupid.

Car gets dropped off last night, phone call this morning. The Mensa representative at the dealership called me to let me know my crank shaft positioning sensor is bad, and his Odyssey of the Mind partner in crime on the floor has all these theories as to why that might be.

*blink*

Listen up, Braintrust. The sensor probably isn't bad, because like I said, that's always been the code it's thrown. But go ahead and replace it. Whatever turns you on, buddy. Seriously, I'm at peace with my check engine light. Please do me the courtesy of not fucking insulting my intelligence in the meantime.

"I didn't realize you had this problem before."

Look, asshole. I'm not your girlfriend; try listening to me. I know I told you that because every conversation with you people scars me permanently.

"Well, when your check engine light came back on then, why didn't you bring it back in?"

Because I was out of cars to borrow! And because, like most higher order mammals, I can learn to recognize patterns. I bring car in. I spend money. Car stays broken. After three weeks, the novelty wore off.

"Well, we'll replace the sensor and go from there."

Mmmkay. Bye.

I sit at work trying to keep the Dipshittery Express from flying off the tracks while trying to decide if it would be unseemly for a 31 year old to take up cutting. The phone rings.

"Hi. This is Braintrust from the dealership. We put in the new crankshaft position sensor, and it didn't work."

Really? Shocking. Do continue.

"So we took it back out and put the old one in, and then our tech did some stuff, and it didn't work, and then he did something and then the engine didn't even work and we thought oh shit that's bad and then some other stuff happened and now he thinks he's a woman trapped in a man's body and this one time at band camp..."

Braintrust? Hey. Lemme make this easy for you. The car has 108,000+ miles on it and it runs. I'm not spending thousands of dollars so you guys can go spelunking under the hood. I am there to spend money for an emissions waiver. That's all. So tell you what. Tell JimBob he can do whatever he wants. Seriously. He can do whatever he wants until my bill reaches $445. At $445, I want him to put all the screws back, and get out of my car.

"Well, he says it could be this..."

Great. Fine. Get him out of my car when he's done $445 worth of work. Buh-bye.

A very little bit of time passes before Braintrust calls me back to let me know that I've already pretty much spent that money, and can pick up the car whenever.

Perfect! Great. Thursday is looking up.

But then I start to think. Despite my saying repeatedly that the SOLE reason I have for bringing my car in was to spend $450 for emissions work, I wonder if I did. I mean, he might have done other work that wouldn't count towards that $450, so maybe he needs to throw in an air filter or new hamster or something. I call.

Braintrust is gone and someone else answers. And I explain the situation.

"Well. I have your bill here, and it's $458."

That's fine. I just need to verify that enough of that is money that I've pissed away on you not fixing a problem that you can't identify.

"Braintrust is gone, you see. And the tech that worked on it left at 3:30. I can call Braintrust on his cell phone."

Wait a sec. Don't you have an itemized invoice there? 'Cuz your little partner in crime told me I could pick the car up tonight.

"Well, let me call him on his cell and call you back."

I know then that this is going to end with someone getting called a motherfucker, and I'm equally confident that someone isn't going to be me.

"Hi, this is Mensa at the dealer."

Mmmhmmm?

"If what you're looking to do is pass emissions, then you can't pick your car up tonight. There are a couple of concerns..."

And that is when my left eyeball fell out of my head.

I don't CARE about your concerns. I don't CARE what the problem is. I told you people from the first conversation that I was knowingly throwing money into a hole to get an emissions waiver. I didn't believe for a second you would actually fix anything. THIS HANGS IT--AS GOD AS MY WITNESS I WILL NEVER BUY NISSAN AGAIN. I don't give a shit what you do to the car, I would be perfectly happy to give you $450 to buy your wife something that means she'll have to touch your penis. I DON'T KNOW HOW TO MAKE THIS ANY SIMPLER THAN I HAVE.

"Whenever you go for an emissions waiver, everything has to be documented in a really specific way."

I cannot IMAGINE a parallel universe in which I gave a shit LESS. I told you what I wanted you to do and why. I was clear. I was specific. I was assertive. I don't know how to explain this any better, Fucko. You people make me want to cave in my own forehead with a ball-peen hammer.

"Your car will be ready tomorrow."

Awesome, and only 24 hours later than it should have been. No time at all, really, considering all the shit you didn't accomplish.

My conclusion is this: I really will not be buying another Nissan. The cars themselves are mostly fine, but they hire absolute fucktards to work for their dealers.

If they give me any shit tomorrow, I'm paying with the goddamn title; getting the emergency bridesmaid dress out of the trunk, and going over to the Toyota dealer.

On An Evening's Shopping

2008-07-23T21:08:00.006-05:00

*sigh*

Okay, I think we covered this a couple of years ago but it seems to be time again.

Let's review:

1. Not all women with big boobs have a six pack and the hips of a ten-year-old boy.

2. Women with REAL big boobs often desire underwires. Otherwise, our tits are sad and smooshy. My boobs? Scoff at shelf bras

3. Curvy girls are not all elderly fatasses who should be forced to wear woolen swim muumuus.

I am getting married, for fuck's sake, and have a week in Mexico with various delightful alcoholic beverages being brought to me and my new husband to look forward to. MY TITS SHOULD LOOK GLORIOUS WHILE THIS IS GOING ON.

I have a demand. Someone needs to supply it. Otherwise capitalism fails. If I can't find a bathing suit, the terrorists have won.

What I Did Tonight.

2008-07-17T21:48:00.003-05:00

This evening? I changed my own car battery?

I can make a pie. I make a mean motherfucking eggplant parmesan. And now? Now I can change a car battery.

I love The Boy, yes. But maybe the folks should negotiate for more goats in the bride price or something.

And you know what? This totally goes on the list on of Shit My Dad Was Right About. Working on cars sucks balls.

Car? Fail. Shitty TV FTW

2008-07-16T19:26:00.002-05:00

So.

My car tags are expired. They have been expired for some time--such niceties often escape my notice. However, now that they've caught the notice of the PoPo, it finally merits attention. I figure if I don't do something about it quickly, I'm going to jail. And, unlike The Boy, I don't think that I'm bound for "Sexy Jail." I will just plan to continue doing all my underpants pillow fighting on chick date night while the menfolk game.

Now, the Bitchin' Sentra is not a bad little car. She starts. She runs. She blows hot or cool air on me per my request. She has never abandoned me by the side of the road. In short, she's 1000 times better than my previous boyfriends AND my ex-husband. That said, though, she's won't pass inspection. She didn't two years ago, she won't know. Stubborn bitch.

Short story long, there's a fucked up censor. Or not. The bloody thing has been replaced twice, that's not really what the problem is, and frankly I don't give a tinker's damn anyway. I really don't want to go $1000 in the hole to fix a problem on A CAR THAT RUNS.

Today? Computer fiddling, drive cycle following, blah blah blah. It's fucking JULY, and TOO HOT TO BE DRIVING AIMLESSLY IN TRAFFIC. And I still didn't pass.

Hot, tired, and cranky--I arrived home. Where there is a big tramp on Wife Swamp, and I'm waiting for SuperNanny to start. I don't have cable; I watch terrible television. I have come to like terrible television. I like to feel superior to people with their fucking functional, legal cars. Bastards.

The Weekend In Review

2008-07-14T22:11:00.002-05:00

Not much going on, really, on the personal front.

Good weekend on the home front. Friday night was a quiet evening in, during which the boy and I finally devoted ourselves to our wedding contract. Despite the fact that The Boy and I are agnostic goyim, we decided to make a brit ahuvim part of our marriage. Oddly, two articulate and open people can actually have a pretty hard time saying "I expect this from you and from me in our marriage." We do, however, finally have it well in hand.

Saturday, baby shower of a family friend and his lovely wife. We attended their wedding last year, and now they're expecting. It's wild, really, he and I used to play Star Wars together--hell, our moms were pregnant together. Now he's going to be a DAD. How the FUCK does that happen?

Saturday night? Birthday party for T-Del and Bunny. A glorious night, October in July. Friends, good beer, yummy snacks. Bourbon slush, which is TOO TASTY and a damn shame I'd never heard of it before. Nothing like drunken chit-chat and just random, happy time.

Sunday? Couching. Not much of one anyway.

This is all a good thing, as it took the edge of the idiocy of today, and the week ahead.

Secretary of Japanese Game Shows

2008-07-08T20:55:00.002-05:00

So, today Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson explained the mortgage crisis to people. Here, for your enjoyment, my literary interpretation.

"Because people are dumb, and bankers are greedy, there are a lot of motherfuckers who have houses they cannot afford. You know why? Because no damn money, divided by 12, equals BROKE. They are going to lose their houses. Can't help'em. Bummer. Thanks for coming, cocktails will not be served on the promenade deck."

On a lighter note, the best show in America is now on television. The Japanese really embrace the strengths of the medium of television--that is--the purveying of bright, loud, annoying shit. It would actually be better if we weren't burdened with the stupid mixing in of typical American reality show garbage. I'd rather just see flummoxed Americans getting yelled at in Japanese. That would be better than CANDY.

I Like My "Fuck You" Neat

2008-06-30T21:21:00.003-05:00

So, until today, I'd felt we'd turned a real corner at Corporate Happy Fun Job. I had come to accept that I was, and was likely to remain, a corporate whore. I had made an uneasy peace with doing shit work for shit money, while using my considerable talents to try to provide camouflage for the uncovered asses all around me.

Like any golden age, it had to end. While knowing more than my boss has proven rewarding in its own way, it's not really my goal. Speaking slowly and using small words has its own charm, but really, it gets old. Except for the necessity of a constant exercise of self-control not to throttle the dimmest of my co-workers, my job had lost its zest.

And yeah. I am seriously under-fucking-paid. File monkeys who can barely alphabetize make as much as I do, and they let me make decisions regarding hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yeah. The thought kind makes me tinkle my panties a little, too.

So, as part of my ongoing plan to better position myself on the fluffy corporate tuffet, I applied for a promotion. Since I'm bottle a bottle of wine into an evening spent at home in my underwear with a fiance who is petrified of my ever-accelerating mood swings, I think you by now have safely guessed that I did not get the job.

Considering who actually got the position, I can now see that my mistake has been my failure to veil my contempt behind a thick haze of pot smoke. Apparently, corporate enthusiasm is aided by weed. Who knew?

So, tonight? Drinking of wine and sour grapes. After I work through my considerable snit, I will decide if this is the path for me. I would have, and could have ROCKED this job. However, it might have required slightly more of a personality lobotomy than I am willing to obtain. So, really? Fuck it. Drink up, buttercup.

And, as a note, to my dumb CHFJ boss. Lady? We need to clear up some shit. One, I don't know what I did to give you the impression that I'm the least bit stupid, but that half eyelid look I give you is the result of indifference and a hangover, not low IQ. Two, although I am sick of being smarter than you are, I'm kind of used to it by now and it doesn't bother me. I'm pissed about the money. I don't work because I can't find better shit to do with my days, you dig? So don't expect me to thank you for the chance to continue underpaid. Three, don't blow sunshine up my ass. I'm pretty much a Kinsey 1 and I don't let The Boy blow sparklies up my ass; you sure as shit are not going to get an invite. Don't try to make me feel better about this shit--I know the score and I'm not buying it.

Update

2008-05-30T22:24:00.002-05:00

So, the oven has begun working again.

Additional support for my Unified Theory of Inattention.

Wednesday

2008-05-28T22:21:00.002-05:00

What happened today:

I learned that the impression I've been harboring is, in fact, correct. It's not a good idea until SOMEONE ELSE comes up with it. Good to know; takes the pressure off.
I need to just stop thinking--everyone else is happier that way.

I learned that my boss at CHFJ, while nice enough, has the attention span of the average slow-witted six-year-old. She wears this weird multi-colored ring, though, which distracts me when I talk to her. It's like I'm a bird or something. On the bright side, I find that if I only half pay attention to our conversations, they're less one-sided.

I went to the gym and did not desire to vomit. I call it progress.

I got shoes! For the wedding! They are fucking adorable! I danced about the house! Jessica Simpson is a talentless pop tart, but wow. She slaps her name on some cute ass shoes.

I absolutely aborted this recipe from Gourmet. I don't even know why I bother with recipes for anything except baked goods, anyway. It's like a have a constitutional inability to follow them, or even remember to buy the right goddmamn ingredients. Which is how I wound up with "crushed tomatoes" (what I would call fucking tomato sauce, if I hadn't bought the organic shit) instead of diced tomatoes, and wound up substituting gin for vermouth. I knew I didn't have the right liquor at the house, and I thought about stopping to buy it. Thank god I didn't though, because I remembered the recipe as reading sherry. Which, yeah. Not the same. The gin was fine, though. I guess. Next time I'm going to just ignore the fucking recipe entirely.

Two minutes for the garlic? My undulating right buttock.

And finally? Oven rebellion. As we were wrapping up dinner--an entirely stove-top affair I might add--the oven began to beep in a truly annoying manner. And the oven latch which is put in place for the self cleaning function had decided to engage itself. So, basically, my oven locked itself in its room like a petulant teenager.
Meanwhile, the shitty LED display showed some error code, a quick Google of which indicated that it is some kind of error having to do with, you guessed it, the door latch.

We finally unplugged it to make the beeping stop. It's like The Boy says, "It's the fucking appendix of the oven." I have used that self-cleaning "feature" exactly once, right when bought the house. I don't really get the point. I don't frequently spill grease and shit in my oven, so it I guess I don't feel it's that dirty. Further, it's regularly hot as hell because it is a goddamn oven after all, so I figure it's already reasonably sterile. If I had need of a kiln I might have an opportunity to put this to use. As it is, this is sizing up to be a plot to make me part with money on something lame. Like a new lock sensor or some horseshit.

*sigh*

I'm going to bed.

Eat Me, Republicans

2008-04-27T12:21:00.003-05:00

I started this post off in a much more restrained and civilized manner. I did. But it was wrong. It set the wrong tone; communicated the wrong message. So. Let me try again.

FUCK YOU, REPUBLICANS. FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! I wish your mothers had, collectively, ABORTED your worthless fucking dick waving fucktard asses when they had the chance. The best part of you dried to the sheets on the unholy day of your conceptions. Fuckwit asshole fucks.

Last summer, I wrote at some length about Ledbetter v. Goodyear, in which the Supreme Court decided that in cases of pay discrimination under Title VII , a woman had 180 days from the day that discrimination took place (read: the first time someone screwed her over), not 180 days from the time she discovered the discrimination (read: when she realized she had an uninvited cock in her ass). Basically, continuing to underpay someone on the basis of their unfortunate vagina does not constitute a continuing intent to discriminate. I don't know what DOES, exactly, they don't get into that...because it's BULLSHIT.

Well, some members of Congress were paying attention. They realized that, well, that was NOT how Title VII was expected to work. That, as a matter of fact, using that method pretty much guaranteed that Title VII wouldn't work at all. Instead, they introduced the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which was intended to return the act to the reading that had long been embraced by juries and courts, that is, that each paycheck constituted a NEW incident of intent to discriminate. Basically, the clock doesn't start ticking until 180 days after the asshole employer stops screwing his unwitting employee.

Well, the bill made it out of the House. It arrived in the Senate, where it died on the vine. Under threat of veto (big fucking shocker there) 41 Republicans, plus Harry Reid for some procedural reason that I don't understand but whatever, decided not to vote for cloture--thus preventing a vote and leaving the bill to languish ad infinitum.

Among the reasons for this asinine act is the Republican's altruistic urge to protect women from the grasping claws of trial lawyers. Tell you what, guys. You continue to protect the interests of religious wackos and the filthy rich, and I'll mind my own self-interest, 'kay? 'Kay. More info with fewer profanities here.

So, here's to you, Republican Senators, for making a mockery of justice and equality. Hell? I hear it's warm, and hard to get ice for champagne.

And, just so you know, Fucking McCain didn't vote--which is the same as voting against cloture and for killing the bill. I'm sure there are those among you who might be considering voting for McCain. That's fine and all, it's a free country. But please, for the love of god, don't fucking talk to me about it. Me and my vagina are SUPER pissed off right now and will take it very, very personally.

Quality of Life, CHFJ Style

2008-04-21T18:15:00.004-05:00

Today we had yet another meeting at Corporate Happy Fun Job. I don't know why it still surprises me the sheer number of meetings that occur there and the subset of those to which my attendance is compulsory. It is abundantly clear that I have nothing to say that anyone wants to hear; a feeling which is, I must admit, mutual. Frankly, there isn't anything that they have to communicate which can't be done in writing, although admittedly the vast majority of e-mails are deleted unread.

I recommend a handout. If someone has gone to the trouble of collating, I'm going to at least give it a peek.

Anyway, this was to be a quick meeting about overtime and phone time, that is, the time we spend waiting for people to call from around the nation so that we can either tell them lies in a vain effort to appease them OR marvel at the mind-blowing stupidity of Americans. Since I'm actively cultivating indifference towards every aspect of my job that doesn't actually involve the part where I'm getting paid, I care little about the substance of the meeting--less because I had a pretty good idea what it was about.

So, we're all sitting around, and our supervisor comes in. Without excessive ado, she announces that because we work for a family-oriented company, and because her and the other middle-management goobers are worried about our "quality of life," they want us to cut back on overtime and don't want us to work any extra hours without their approval.

*blink*

I feel like I made real progress in my quest to behave appropriately in the corporate hive because I didn't actually snicker out loud. Puh-fucking-leez. These people would pimp my mother and sell my children into a sweatshop if they could make a buck doing so. It was a statement so utterly farcical on the face of it that I am astounded that she was able to suppress her laughter while she made it. Further undermining my already threadbare credulity is the not-uncommonly known fact that we've already blown through the overtime budget for the year.

Poor fucking planning, yo.

You know the weirdest part, though? Someone in the meeting actually kind of bought it.

*sigh*

On The Mortgage Crisis

2008-04-17T21:48:00.003-05:00

So, I know I promised a full accounting of Floorpocalypse 2008*, but I'm still too close to the crisis to talk about it. If you don't like the way we run things around you, I encourage you to bitch about me on your own blogs. Or message me to complain...I look forward to ignoring you

Instead, I think I'm going to talk about something else that continues to annoy the holy living fuck out of me, the "mortgage crisis." I do reserve the right to veer at any time into more generalized bitching about people being fucktards, but let's just see where we wind up, 'kay? 'Kay.

Because you're reading this, I'm assuming you haven't recently woken from a coma. That being the case, I'm sure you're aware that the housing market in this country is well and truly fucked. Every day brings more and more bad news. Real estate was long considered one of the surest, safest places to invest one's money. I suppose this can be adequately explained by the intrinsic scarcity of land combined with the fact the folks need places to live and store their accretions of crap. Whether it's a rental or a ranch house, a home of some kind is a pretty fucking basic necessity. So what happened?

Stupid happened. In a big and important way.

Lots of people like to blame low interest rates; I can't imagine a parallel universe in which I cared any less, really, about the policies of former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan. I wouldn't want a job where I was somehow supposed to "steer" the US economy, as though such an absurd notion were even a remote possibility--might as well try to fucking test drive Greenland around the North Atlantic. I will weigh in on whether his fiscal policies were good or bad in my next life when I'm pursuing my PhD in economics. Or never. I like never, but I digress...

Bargain basement interest rates did, undoubtedly, contribute to the "housing bubble." When money is really cheap, it becomes possible to borrow more of it. Duh. The thing is, though, that's not what really caused the mortgage crisis, or even the housing bubble.

These things, you see, were actually caused by dummies who really, REALLY suck at math and really, REALLY excel at self-delusion.

Anyone who isn't storing his brains in a pouch duct-taped behind his scrotum (or in her vag...whatevs), should have looked at the housing market of the past few years and realized that was completely beyond the realm of possibility that houses were going to appreciate at, in some areas, double digit rates. Come. The fuck. On. The ONLY way your house should double in value in two years is if all the land to the West of you tumbles into the Pacific and you suddenly have beach frontage.

I'm not talking about a spectacular level of financial savvy, here. You don't need to read the financial trade rags to know that housing prices simply could not continue to gain the way they did in from, say, 2001 to 2005. You know why ANYONE can figure that out?

Because a shit-ton of borrowed money, even at a low interest rate, still winds up requiring a big damn monthly payment. Take the average salary in an area, divide by big damn monthly payment, and you have no one who can afford to live in a damn house. If people can't afford a home, they'll rent. Or move away. Housing prices get high enough, and no one will buy houses.

Which actually might have happened, if not for various "exotic" loan products and the dumb fucks who signed on the dotted lines.

Okay, quick PSA here. If someone asks you to sign something promising to repay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, and you don't understand what it says, DON'T for the love of god and all that is holy sign the damn thing. I'm not talking about all the legalese and whatnots, most mortgage paperwork is made entirely of equal amounts of nonsense and absolute shit. However, there are important bits. They have numbers on them. If the numbers don't make sense, or aren't what you thought you agreed to, or seem to have an unexpectedly large collection of zeros to the left of decimal, then walk away. Maybe shank a fucker with the pen on the way out.

Of course, people didn't do that. They were going to buy houses! Or refinance and put on a deck! A bigger kitchen! Designer Laser Vaginoplasty! As though the general idiocy of people running around off-leash isn't bad enough, banks jumped in to help them acquire absurdly overpriced houses that they could never hoped to afford using any sort of halfway normal loan product.

When finally even interest-only mortgages were not enough to help borrowers overreach to get into houses, banks came up with the so-called "pay-option" ARM products. The premise behind this loan is so stupid that I can hardly imagine the individual for whom it would be appropriate. Still thinking. Still nothing. Maybe people who are in their last year of residency to be a brain surgeon or a crotch redecorator and, as such, expect to realize a 500% jump in income in the next 6-12 months. Maybe.

Now, there are undoubtedly people out there who wound up with these loans who didn't ask for them, who didn't understand the, who didn't really want them. HOWEVER, these are also people who either willfully ignored the fact that the loan in question was substantially below market rates (as though they lived in a rarefied vacuum exempt from the machinations of market competition), or who didn't even bother finding out what a normal loan should have cost them. Whatever. Either way. Please report to the gonad irradiator so that my children never have to put up with your children.

Add to that people who knowingly lied on their loan applications, or allowed others to lie for them. Everybody goes on and on about stated and no-documentation loans and how awful they've turned out to be. Again, duh. If you have to LIE to get into a house, it probably doesn't bode well for you overall. These loans actually have legitimate uses, and if not used in the service of acquisitive morons they aren't necessarily bad. They are now, though, exceedingly difficult to get at all.

Yes, there were stupid loans and bad loan officers. There is plenty of blame to dole out to the loan companies and the banks and the dipshits who weren't paying attention as the lunatics took over the asylum.

Who, however, do I really blame?

I blame the people who didn't read their loan docs. The people who didn't ask a fucking question. The people who decided that somehow, someway, arithmetic just didn't count in their own special case. I blame the idiots who thought that $30,000 income = $300,000 house. Locally, I blame the morons who weren't going to be happy unless they had 4 bedrooms and 3 baths and brand new through and through. I blame the people who, pissing logic and reason the wind, made a series of incredibly stupid choices and who now, on the far side of it, don't even recognize their own culpability.

I have given this a lot of thought, more even then the average bear. I've concluded that a large proportion, possibly a majority, of people who are at risk of losing their homes actually DESERVE to lose them. Yep. You heard me right. Most people who are in this mess put themselves there, and did so either purposely or with so little actual thought as to border on the absurd.

As for whether or not to circumvent the actions of fate and try to save these morons from themselves, I'm somewhat torn. A small part of me does feel bad for the offspring of these unholy unions of greed and stupidity--these kids didn't ask to wind up losing their bedroom because Mom and Dad blow at math. A much larger part of me would like to see something keep things based only on self-interest--I would like my home to at least RETAIN its value (although in my area price gains were much more modest so the crash is not so keenly felt). I like my little 30-year fixed rate cottage, but I do hope to sell and move in the next few years.

That all said, though, I refer back to my earlier points regarding attempting to affect this economy, and to this article, which explains why some people would be foolish to pay their loans no matter what.

Now THAT, my friends, is what we call an unforeseen consequence.

*Credit The Boy for this well-turned phrase.

CarpetGeddon 2008

2008-04-14T17:44:00.002-05:00

A full and detailed accounting of this entire catastrophe is to follow, complete with photos, but until then...two words.

Distressed urban.

Work with me, people

Note To Self

2008-04-10T23:14:00.001-05:00

You know you're ready for spring when. . .

you walk by the shop window in the mall and see a pair of lovely pink wedges and your first instinct is to lick the glass.

Fucktard, Holding on Two

2008-04-08T20:46:00.003-05:00

I found myself in the unenviable position today of having to rely on someone who MAY or MAY NOT have suffered traumatic brain injury in the past month or so in order to do my job. After not one, not two, but SIX requests for this person to do HIS job so that I could do MINE, I finally called one of his employees and asked HER to do it. I would have, by the by, done that in first place, but the demented fucker with a dent in his head just kept answering the goddamned phone.

I spent about 20 minutes this morning thinking about taking up cutting like some emo 13-year-old. Is that weird? That seems weird to me. . .

Career Suicide

2008-04-03T21:26:00.003-05:00

Well, I am now most of the way through a bottle of wine, and I feel like I can say the following with some degree of authority.

Today totally sucked donkey balls.

5 months of failure is about 4 months too many, and finally, after yet another doomed process is implemented with nary a thought to the monkeys who are going to have to actually use it, I completely lost my shit. Lost. My. Shit. Sobbing, howling, OH-MY -GOD-DOES-SHE-HAVE-SNOT-ON-HER-SLEEVE? lost my shit.

And although I completely committed "career" suicide today...because no boss, no matter how ethically suspect, wants to hear an employee compare her shit job with her failed first marriage.

Whatever. No comparison, really. None of my exes have ever fucked me as much as my job does.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe...

2008-03-31T20:42:00.003-05:00

So, yeah. It's been like 70-odd days since I last posted anything. Except for pointing out that my life is pretty fucking uninteresting and admitting I'm a lazy slob, there isn't much I can do about that. I will take this opportunity to suggest that have found yourself sorely missing my participation in the blogosphere, then perhaps you should explore new avenues with your psychiatrist--what you have must not be working.

I guess there are a few things that have dragged me from the morass. Today, as I was sitting in a Corporate Happy Fun Meeting and contemplating burning myself with lit cigarettes, I came to the conclusion that yes, I do have a dead-end pink-collar wage slave job for which I'm grossly underpaid and hideously overworked, but that I might as well try to mine it for humor. Or an opportunity to judge others. Or both. Whatever.

As though the ongoing, slow motion car wreck that is my job isn't enough to make any sane person (which I'm not) batshit crazy (which I most assuredly am), I'm also planning a wedding.

Now, lest you get the wrong idea, I am pleased as punch about marrying The Boy. Further, since I know that many of the misanthropes who read this blog are also future guests, I want it to be clear that I'm happy to be celebrating our commitment through the public statement of our vows and the steady hemorrhaging of money.

All kidding aside...I am totally excited about this whole getting married thing, and I GLADLY declined the offer to elope. That said, planning a wedding has put me back into the mix with other people planning weddings, which means that I spend a decent amount of time surrounded by people who have completely surrendered the restraints of this Earth and are floating around in some sort of la la land covered in tulle and lacking Google. I want to share the stupid with you, my readers.

And, as though having a stupid job and a big fucking party to throw weren't enough, I'm about ready to embrace some home improvement projects. The roommate is moving out; The Boy is moving in; and the carpet needs to go see The Jesus. It would seem, I guess, that my brain is fucking melted--I KNOW nothing good can come of this.
But...I seem powerless to stop.

Of course, at least I'm not in their shoes.

Yeah. The next couple of months should be awesome, interspersed with the occasional hospitalization.

Plays Well With Others

2008-01-15T22:19:00.000-06:00

So yeah. I was totally going to look over the initial version of my annual review tonight, but decided instead that I would rather not spend the evening all pissed off. I mean, I'm sure the review is probably fine, but I'm equally sure that it doesn't say that I "have demonstrated competence at walking on water." Since at this point I think that's a fair assessment of my skills, both the performing of miracles AND the constant dying for sins of others,I know I'm just going to be disappointed.

Further, I figured out today that even if I got a 10% raise (a patent impossibility, don't you think), I would still consider myself underpaid by many thousands of dollars. This made me laugh out loud in my cube in a manner that frightened my co-workers. As far as I'm concerned the entire exercise is pointless, but whatever. The boss people have to do that so that they in turn can be pointlessly reviewed and unfairly compensated in the future. It's the circle of life.

I do know that says is that I need to work on remaining more positive on the floor. I suppose that means it's time to up my medication and start douching with rainbows. JOY!

On Civility

2008-01-13T14:28:00.001-06:00

It would appear that there are any number of adults out running around off-leash who need a refresher course in truth, consequences, and the art of the apology. I know, I know, it’s been a long time since Sandbox when this shit was all originally covered, but that’s why I’m here. Here follows a quick primer on . . .

Civil Interaction One-Oh-Fucking-One

1. Own your shit.
When you were a kid and you hit little Sarah Jane in the head with a plastic bucket in the sandbox, it is un-bloody-likely that Teacher let you off when you said, “I don’t know what happened.” No. You got The Look until you admitted the fact that you did just take a swipe at your little mate in the sandbox, which leads to the fact that . . .

2. Behaviors have consequences.
Or at least they should. Behave like a fucking douche, and expect to be treated accordingly. Using our example, when you clobbered little Sarah Jane with the plastic bucket, she cried and Teacher probably snatched you up by your chubby little kid arm and gave you a stern talking before positioning you with your runny little nose in a corner. After you had used that invaluable time to examine the architectural wonder of two joined walls, you were probably advised to. . .

3. Apologize for fucking up.
Returning to our example, it is likely that after you had ample opportunity to “think about what you have done,” you were told to apologize to young Sarah Jane. It doesn’t matter that young Miss S.J. has since moved onto a snack of lime Kool-Aid and graham crackers and has put you and your little plastic affront quite out of her head. No, your little stunt still warrants an apology. Further, the apology has a set form, along the lines of “I’m sorry I hit you with a bucket and hurt you.” Attempting a variation on “I’m sorry you made me hit you with a bucket,” would get your little snot-nose deposited right back in Asshole Kid Corner.

This, my friends, is really the trellis around which most human interaction ought to wrap itself. Look around, you’ll see these principles at work in the workplace, in the public, and in your personal life. Learn them, practice them, know them, embrace them.

Tune in later, when we cover advanced lessons, such as Cleanliness May Not Be Next to Godliness, But It Is A Helluva Lot Better Than Wallowing In Filth.

On New Years

2008-01-09T21:50:00.000-06:00

Welcome to 2008.

In my lifetime, I've made two New Year's Resolutions that stuck. When I was 15, I resolved to quit eating meat. That one stuck--from the I was 14 time I was a lacto-ovo vegetarian for 14 years, and I still don't eat things that are warm-blooded.

Last year, I resolved to spend more time in bars. THAT one, I must say, has gone like clockwork. In the past year, I have passed countless perfectly good evenings in smoky bars only to wake the next morning reeking so of juniper scented-gin that squirrels followed me. It has been, I must say, brilliant.

This year, though, I don't have much in the way of resolutions. Oh, sure. I can stand some self-improvement. I could eat better. I could exercise more. I sure as shit won't resolve to drink less as that will undo all the hard work of last year, but that still leaves plenty of personal improvement possibilities.

2007, it turns out, was a pretty good year. Sure, there was the unmitigated horror of Corporate Happy Fun job, but at this point I've decided that god hates a quitter and I'm staying until the place makes me start burning myself with lit cigarettes. Sure, one of my co-workers apparently gave up reading for the New Year, but fuck it.

On December 31st, 2006 The Boy tried to chat me up. I was drunk, and felt kicked like a dog, and frankly? I thought he was just fucking with me. By December 31, 2007. I was sitting next to him at a wonderful dinner, waiting to kiss him at midnight. It was, I think, a fantastic turn of events, brought about in no small part by the aforementioned bars and gin, and the fact that when given the choice, I took the chance on turning "right to go make out."

So, maybe that's my resolution. Just as much gin, and more right turns.* Might as well take some more chances. They've worked out so far.

*No more making open spots on my make-out dance card. Don't cry for me Argentina, though. . . we're getting married.

Oh, Christmas Tree . . .!

2007-12-21T15:04:00.000-06:00

Despite what The Boy might say, we didn’t actually steal the Christmas tree.

Last weekend, Saturday December 15th to be exact, Jason and I went to two different Christmas tree lots in an ultimately failed attempt to obtain a Festive Holiday Tree. It’s not that they didn’t have trees I wanted, or that the trees were too pricey, it’s that there were no trees. None. Zero. Negatory on the trees.

At that point, I should have continued slaloming around the greater NoCo area and obtained a freaking tree. However, it was snowing and I wanted to get home and commence the Christmas Cookiepalooza I had planned.

This is me, though, and nothing can ever be simple. I didn’t go out on Sunday to get a tree. And Monday I had to work late, and The Boy was Christmas shopping and I wanted to go with him. Tuesday I didn’t feel good, and didn’t want to go out in the cold. This brings us to Wednesday, December 19th.

Now, I get that the 19th is, as The Liquor Fairy insists, a wee bit late in the season to go out shopping for Festive Holiday Trees. However, I assert that that’s just fucking stupid. People regularly used to put their trees up on Christmas Eve, and if capitalism was working as it should, there would be sufficient trees to meet the demand right up until Christmas. This is yet another failure I will lay at the feet of 7 years of a semi-literate Republican president and our ineffectual Congress, but I digress.

The first lot I went to did have trees, but they were a bit too mangy even for my taste. I understand that, when shopping less than a week before Christmas, some arboreal aesthetic compromises might have to be made. I do not hate on the little ugly trees, I just don’t care to put one up in my home. Plus, I don’t do long needles, which rules out at least half of the trees on any given lot from the word go.

We went then to the second lot, where in 2005 I got my tree like, three days before the damn holiday. Whatever. No trees. Not one.

By this point, I was threatening to start banging my upper body and head repeatedly back against my car seat like an emotionally disturbed child, a threat singularly terrifying to The Boy because he knows that I’m likely to actually do it. However, continuing up the road, we come to the Florissant Jaycee’s Tree Lot. As we get close I can see from the tree that they have veritable shit ton of trees, so I get to feeling pretty sassy.

Then we pull up and there is no one there. Empty trailer. Wet trees lit only by the sickly glow of the sign of the nearby Kmart. The hours on the trailer said that they should be open, but they weren’t.

I suggest we get out and look around. The Boy, anxious not to see his girlfriend have yet another meltdown, agrees, thinking that perhaps we can find a tree and return for it later.

“Fuck this,” I say. “If we find something, I’ll slide a check through the window.”

Nervous laughter.

“You think I’m kidding?”

“No. No, I really don’t.”

Which is why I love the man.

They did have a tree, full with short needles. It smelled of pine, and did not rain a shower of needles when shaken. It was, in short, good e-fucking-nough. “Let me get my checkbook,” I said, turning back to the car.

The Boy proceeds to follow with the tree. “No! We have to put it through the thingie!” I said, pointing the Tree Binding Plastic Netting.

The best part of this story, I think, is not the “buying” of a tree from an unattended dark tree lot, but the fact that we couldn’t get the tree through the damn tree netting thing.

First, he tries to shove it in wrong end first, which I think explains a lot about our sex life. Then, he refuses to apply sufficient force for the job at hand. Then we manage to stuff it through--directly through—leaving the tree unencumbered by netting, which is kind of the point.

I am almost no help because I am laughing hysterically the entire time. Finally, we get the tree bound up, and then we hacked through the plastic net with my keys since neither of us had anything better. Finally, I stuck the check through the mail slot, along with a note written on the tree’s tag telling what I had done and advising the Jaycees contact me at the number on the check in case there was some kind of issue.

I figure I won’t hear from them. They were probably at the bar.

Tuesday Redux

2007-12-11T22:23:00.000-06:00

Tonight was a quiet evening. I got out of work in a pretty good mood, mostly because I'm off tomorrow and don't think there is much my co-workers can do to fuck up too badly while I'm gone. After admonishing them to try not to do anything irritating in my absence, I left for home.

In the car, I heard a Christmas song about a dude standing in line behind a kid buying shoes for his dying mother. The kid wanted his mother could look nice if she met Jesus on Christmas eve. A Christmas song about shoes, dead moms, and standing in line. Fun. Wish I wrote that.

I came home to meet The Boy. We were going to go get a Christmas tree, but it is rainy and crappy outside, so instead we went out to forage for food. I embraced the shame and we went for buffalo shrimp, which in the Lou is a fraught experience involving a trip to Hooters that I don't want to talk about but have to admit before The Boy snitches my ass out. There were buffalo shrimp, and the place was almost devoid of other customers, which was pretty much all I had hoped for.

On the way home, the car began making a new and distinct noise. My car health philosophy is exactly the same as my personal health philosophy--wait to see if it gets better. It didn't get better; it actually got worse. The Boy and I decided that it sounded like dragging. The good news is it's not a bum. The bad news is that it will require actual repair requiring something other than zip ties. I'm hoping a half-assed tack weld will do the trick. I'm willing to let the guy at Meineke look at my boobs or something if that will help. I'm not proud.

Speaking of not proud, after we retired to the house, we shared some valuable time vegging out in front of our laptops, where I found this, and had a big snotting, sobbing cry.

Yeah. D'you have a pet growing up? Yeah? Grab a tissue. Grab the BOX.

Merry Christmas

2007-12-03T23:00:00.000-06:00

Well, my effort to be all cute and hostess-y was thwarted by the cocksmacks at eVite and their stupid limit to the size of photos that they will let you upload. The bastards. I'm sure that I could cut down the size of the photos I'd taken, but wrestling the beasties has left me exhausted and unwilling to fight with my computer.

I think Jack looks mighty damn cute, even if the look on his face suggests a gulag survivor.

Peanut butter. The ultimate dog training tool. If it will make The Beast hold still while wrapped in Christmas lights, I'm not sure what it can't do.

Bella looks so fucking cute in her Santa Suit that I wallowed on the floor after bursting a blood vessel in my brain.

Tonight, On PBS

2007-11-26T22:14:00.000-06:00

So, tonight Le Boy and I were watched a documentary about a lunatic Frenchman exploring the most dangerous place on Earth. Oddly enough, it was not a visitor's guide to Detroit, but a film about a dude in a submarine exploring the bottom of the ocean.

One of the shots was of all these phosphorescent jellyfish, blooping and floating through the sea. Watching their aimless, mindless, actions all I could think of was my co-workers. And calamari.

Which leads, logically, to the next thing, I want to corner the market on the aquatic beasties that inhabit the darkest depths of the ocean--floating around in super-heated toxic water, blind and thoughtless. I want to gather them up, raise them out of the depths. The lack of pressure will cause them to swell to many times their normal size and I will SELL them to snooty gastronomes and the Japanese for thousands of dollars a pound, never mind the fact that their flesh stinks of sulfur and tastes of briny rotten eggs.

Think about it.

Space Staples

2007-11-20T19:47:00.000-06:00

So. Today was a day so bogged down in stupidity that I fully expected someone to whom I was speaking to actually drop dead in the middle of our conversation because he had forgotten to breathe. Had you been a party to the idiocy that I was, you would feel the same.

At one point during the during the day, stymied by the silly workplace prohibition against calling business vendors "cocksuckers," I stated aloud that I hoped the bank with whom I was dealing was heavily invested in mortgage backed securities, and that as a consequence, the women (read: dumb fucking whores) with whom I was dealing would lose their jobs and become homeless. And be forced to reside under a pile of old cheese.

Upon reflection, though, I think the most incredibly stupid conversation of my day was regarding someone who had snail-mailed documents that were desperately needed as soon as possible. Didn't fax them. Didn't e-mail them. Didn't even copy them before consigning them to the dubious care of the USPS. Why, you ask?

Because they were stapled.

Space staples. Coming soon to an Office Max near you.

Pie, Bitches

2007-11-18T15:09:00.000-06:00

I did it. Finally. I finally manned up and did it. I managed to put on my big girl panties and wash away the terrible stench of failure.

I made a pie. From scratch. Take that, bitches.

The last time I tried to make a pie, all hell broke loose. Flour was spilled; dough was thrown; I called apples motherfuckers. And when, finally, I dispatched my then husband to get frozen pie crust, the pie wasn't that good. It was runny and stupid and it pissed me off.

Today, though, the triumphant glow from my unclogged sink drain filled me with a strange sense of confidence. I wanted apple pie, and no pansy-assed frozen pie crust was going to do it for me.

And I did it.

Granted, my pie looked like a C effort in a Home Ec class for the emotionally disturbed, but it tasted pretty goddamn good. Further, I think I broke the code. I actually learned something this time, and I think I can do this again.

My god. The bitch can bake an apple pie. I'm officially perfect.

For Your Viewing Pleasure

2007-11-04T01:28:00.000-06:00

Okay.

I'm not too familiar with the bible, or too down with religion generally, but I gotta wonder . . .

Do you really think it's . . . appropriate . . . to liken Jesus to a toilet lid?

It's amazing what's on tv at 2 a.m. when you don't have cable . . .

Halloween, A Requiem

2007-11-01T19:41:00.000-05:00

Today my friend Russell died. Suddenly. Unexpectedly. Unfairly.

I was at work; it was about 20 minutes before my shift was to end and I was going back and forth on whether or not I was going to stay late or go home. As usual when I’m at work, my cell phone was on vibrate. I paused when it started to go off There are only about five people who call my phone on a regular basis and of those, the only ones I wanted to talk to would know I was still at work and were unlikely to be calling.

I checked the Caller ID. “Russell.”

“Huh,” I thought. “Maybe he’s seeing what I’m up to tonight. Fuck, I don’t want to go out. I hope he’s cool when I just say I’m planning to go hang at Jason and Dave’s. Maybe I can ask if he wants to stop by for a drink and grab dinner next week.”

“Hello?” I answer.

Then things got all fucked up. It wasn’t Russell trying to convince me to get dressed up and go out and celebrate Halloween. It was Russell’s girlfriend, calling to tell me that he had had a heart attack and died.

I met Russell when I was about 21. I was in the middle of my GAF (Goth As Fuck) phase, passing Monday nights at the Galaxy and countless other nights at Haven, aka The Coffeehouse of the Damned. It’s odd, really, but I don’t know exactly how we met. Were we introduced? Did he introduce himself? It would be just like him, but I can’t recall.

It’s sad, you know, when you recognize a lapse of memory that is going to bring you pain in days and weeks and forevers to come.

Anyway, we met. We chatted. At some point he crossed the threshold where I trusted him not to get me cut into little pieces and, when he vouched for a photographer who wanted to shoot me in my corset and full regalia, I went for it. I took my girlfriend and we scoped the place out, but the fact that I was willing to take Russell’s word that this dude (his name was Robert) wasn’t going to try to keep me as a pet says quite a bit about Russell.

The fact is, I trusted Russell on very little evidence. I just did—some gut instinct told me it was okay, and I was right. And when at one he asked me to come up to Haven to visit him some afternoon while he was working, I promised I would come that week

I showed up that Friday, at about quarter ‘til five--typical of me, especially at 21. I half-assed my word, getting there just under the wire to keep my promise.

We hung out. We talked. We made dinner plans; I tried to cancel because I was trying to catch a cat that was hiding out in a construction site. He offered to help, and then he made me pasta out of a jar with artichoke hearts and red chile flakes. At some point that evening, I realized he was interested in me as more than just friends. Maybe he told me so, but I don’t remember.

Time passed, as time does. We became a couple, after a fashion. We were doomed to fail on so very many levels. I was 21 and hell-bent on breaking my heart on the sharp rocks of unwise choices. He thought more of me at the time than I deserved. Kate Chopin describes her short story character Athenaise as someone who did not want to be “loved against her will.” That . . . is pretty damned apt.

Apt? Yes. But ultimately neither here nor there. Even had I not been emotionally retarded we were completely incompatible as a couple. We were never going to wind up doing anything but driving one another batshit. The fact that we wound up friends is, frankly, a small miracle.

We never really broke up, exactly. More I weakly protested that things weren’t well going and he deserved better, and he blew me off and told me I was underestimating myself, and eventually we would reach an exhausted impasse and go to bed. All the while, mind you, while maintaining an “open relationship” that only I took advantage of but was STILL too weak to call “bullshit” on and put an end to.

Eventually, though, we reached the end. I met The Fuckwit, and my on-again-off-again-not-quite-relationship with Russell ended. It wasn’t always pretty. There were hurt feelings and we knew more than enough to take one another off at the knees. At one point I, with all sincerity, offered to brain Russell with an ice cream scoop.

Yeah, the ice cream scoop was probably a low point.

But we managed to come back from that. Eventually, we became friends. Really. Weird, isn’t it?

And now he’s fucking gone. The sonofabitch couldn’t have weighed 100 pounds if you dredged him in flour (he was 5’2”; it made sense), and he ran like he was being chased, and he had a motherfucking heart-attack and died.

So.

A Short and Non-Inclusive List of Things for Which I Wish To Thank Russell, In No Particular Order

Russell had a front-row seat for my nervous breakdown at 22. He saw come almost apart at the seams while I assiduously hid it from all those around me. He did what he could; one can only imagine that the carnage would have been greater had he not been around.

I have been to New Orleans three times; one of those trips was with him and about 8 other people. That one was the best. It was, frankly, a good time. I got on a plane, still drunk, after traipsing around the French Quarter in high heels until the wee hours. That’s how it is done.

Green Curry Tofu, hot. Ultimately, it was Russell that turned me onto one of my favorite foods ever. Thai food, generally, but especially Green Curry Tofu, is like manna from heaven. I can still hear him, “Green Curry Tofu, extra tofu, hot, with snow peas, oh yeah.”

Speaking of manna from heaven, it was Russell who taught me to drink coffee. The man literally put me through Coffee Training, by the end of which I had gone from milky, caffeinated hummingbird water to being able to drink drip coffee black.

Russell was the first person who ever seemed to be attracted to me for my brain. Mostly, Russell was a smart guy who expected the people around him to be smart. During our years of acquaintance, he saw me do a lot (A LOT) of really dumb shit. To his credit, he managed to remain my friend without, really, ever overlooking the dumb shit. Mad props for his ability to forgive.

The Cocteau Twins. ‘Nuff said.

The Sandman. One of the most brilliant, interesting, engaging works of modern fiction I’ve encountered. It just so happens to have pictures.

Russell was the first person who tried to teach me to raise the expectations I had of others regarding their treatment of me. I can’t say that it took at the time, but the sure the fuck worked to plant the seed. It’s not his fault that I was a slow learner.

And finally, Tanqueray. Without which, this blog and my particular flavor of mourning would not be brought to you this evening.

My god, there is so much.

I saw Russell on my birthday. He brought his girlfriend. We chatted. He said something about getting together for dinner that week, but I told him it was bad because I had so much shit going on and that I would call him when I got back into town and things calmed down. I was thinking about calling him and trying to get together next week. Fucking oops.

I guess, after all, we won’t. That’s just something else for which to be sorry.

So Many Shortcomings, So Little Time

2007-10-25T22:58:00.000-05:00

So, The Liquor Fairy is off to trap bats. Sounds like a plan.

I have figured out why I’m not writing more, either here or in other areas of my life. It is, in fact, because the human psyche is built to tolerate so much fucking failure. When it all comes down to it, there is only so much failure that one human mind can endure before it crumbles under the weight of it.

And right now? A quick pit sniff tells me that I absolutely wreak of failure.

It’s not that I don’t already have more than a glancing familiarity with Mediocrity and its close cousin, Gross Incompetence. I have fallen out of more trees than most people are ever lucky enough to try to climb. Lately, though, I taste a new flavor of fucked—one that I must say I don’t much like. Suddenly, instead of the regular 32 Flavors and Then Some of screw-up to which I have historically subscribed, suddenly it’s like a Mochachino Chip Implosion of FuckedUppedNess. With sprinkles.

So, yeah. My job sucks. Sucks. SUuuuuuuuuucccccckkkks.

Everyone’s job sucks, you say? Well yes. Indeed. Indubitably.

Yesterday I spent 45 crying over approximately $12. Twelve. American. Dollars. Broken, crushed, snotting, tear-stained sobs over $12 that was the difference between the deal closing and getting off of my desk forever and . . . not.

The story is too long, not to mention too stupid, to relate. The short version—for real this time—is that I find myself in a situation where I have about three times the amount of work that can be handled by anyone in my position. Our software is the worst piece of shit I’ve ever had the misfortune of touching. I soothe myself by imagining tromping on the balls of the purchasing asshole who picked this thing. For variety I vary the shoes I’m wearing in the fantasy.

Were that not enough, I find myself in the fucking untenable position of explaining many of the finer points (and basics, frankly) of our industry to my co-workers so that they can continue to make more than $10,000 a year more than I do. Every time I help them to re-invent the wheel, I make more work for myself. I hate *everybody*.

I start dreading Monday after brunch on Sunday. I would be dreading tomorrow right now, but I’m a bit tipsy so I don’t actually care. Every day is much like shoving a little hedgehog backwards up my ass, and then poking it in the nose so it gets all spiny. Except hedgehogs are kind of cute, and there is nothing at all cute about my day and the douchebags I am forced to spend it with.

I pray for Death, but Death doesn’t listen.

No. Seriously. I had my wee mini breakdown, followed by pizza and wine and romantic comedy on DVD. I also locked myself out of my house and had to cut open the kitchen screen and crawl through. (Plus last night I fucking punched myself in the eye because my pets are ginormous fatasses who need to NOT sleep on their mommy’s covers.)

I got up today. I went to work. I have decided that for awhile most questions are going to have to be addressed to my PEZ dispenser (“Ask the PEZ head!”). Tomorrow will be the same thing. Things will either get better or will get replaced..

In the meantime, though, I have to scrape up energy. To exercise. To write. To clean my house. Because right now? At the end of each day? All I want is to sit, and stare, and hide my face against The Boy’s neck and get ready to force myself to do it again.

You know what really sucks for me, though? I think there was a chance that I might have been okay at this job if I had only been given some portion of the tools necessary to do it. That’s saying a lot for me. Mostly, jobs are just something I do while I try to find another job. This one? I could have been good at it.

September Sucked, Episode One

2007-10-06T22:37:00.000-05:00

“So, hooker,” goes the imaginary conversation in my head, “where the fuck you been?”

Nowhere. Not really. September was just an exceptionally trying month. By the end of every day I pretty much wanted have a strong drink and a good, cleansing cry and be done with it. Blogging on and on about “Today, people were fucking idiots,” just didn’t tempt me. Weird, I know.

September just sucked. Suuuuuccckkked. The funny thing, though, was that it took me so long to figure out what sucked about it.

Well, there’s the sink thing. What sink thing you ask? Well. My kitchen sink has, shall we say, declined to work any longer. If you fill either bowl of my double sink with water, it just sits there. Occasionally, the drain says “blorp” and then, predictably, nothing else happens. Except that I say something profane.

I have tried everything. EVERYTHING. I have cleaned the trap; plunged the sink (of course while plugging the other drain); disassembled/reassembled the trap so that one bowl of the sink is no longer connected to the other OR the dishwasher so better to plunge. I have utilized caustic products (I know they are bad for plumbing, but so are the elderly and I would fully stuff old people into my drain if it meant my sink would work again).

Finally, in a fit of bullshit misguided can-do spirit, I decided to snake the fucker. I went to the hardware store. I purchased 25-foot hand cranked plumbing snake. I took the trap apart again, no biggie since I’ve had such ample opportunity to get good at it. I cranked. I cranked and cranked and cranked and cranked and cranked. Empires fucking rose and fell. I reassembled the trap I ran the water.

Blorp.

I swore, roundly and loudly.

Rather than moving onto my next plan, burning the fucking pit down and sowing the earth with salt, I decided to walk away and return later when I was refreshed to continue the fight. The boyfriend had a conversation with his brother, who suggested that 1. I should use the cleanout trap in the basement to feed in the snake and mangle disaster back to the stack, and 2. that he had lovely home about half-mile from me that he needed to unload and would cut me a good deal on.

Obviously, if I had any fucking money at all I would not need to know how to make my kitchen sink work. If I had money, I would have called in a professional at the first sign of the blorps. Considering the $30 in my bank account, the lovely four-bedroom that only needed carpet was going to remain a dream, a dream of functional plumbing and a smaller yard.

Finally, Wednesday of that week rolled around, and I decided it was time to put on my big-girl panties and get after the trap.

First, I couldn’t even get the bastard cover off. There was sweating and swearing and WD40 the hitting of a pipe wrench with a hammer. I called my mom for moral support.

“Did you try turning it the other way?”

“Well, no. Lefty-loosey, righty-tighty, right?”

“Yeah, but not everyone has the same definition of left.”

Rose is wise in these things. Plus, she makes a helluva a potato salad and probably still hits like a man, but that’s beside the point. Although I don’t think that left and right were wrong, so much, I do think that turning it right managed to loosen whatever rust or godforsaken mung had the little cocksucker so firmly wedged in place. Meanwhile Rose, being a fine woman and a great mother, showed up to offer assistance and continuing moral support.

Again I forced the snake in, and cranked and cranked and cranked and cranked. I gave myself blisters. I gave myself a forearm that was numb and sore by turns. All I can say is that I’m glad I didn’t feel a need to masturbate for those couple of days because I don’t think I could have managed. It took forever. And it sucked.

You know what’s worse, though, than cranking 25-feet of plumbing snake into the sink access trap in your basement? Pulling it back out.

I found, to my great disappointment, that there are no happy baby puppies playing about in my house’s inner-depths. Bunnies and rainbows do NOT come shooting out of the pipe once you’ve cleaned out all the goop. Nope. Not a bit of it. Looking at the metal coil that I pulled out, for an instant I thought perhaps I had struck oil, since I don’t remember EVER dumping black sludge down any drain in my house. Alas, though, since it smelled vaguely of spaghetti dinners I was forced to conclude it was not oil, just fucking nasty, and that being a grown-up completely sucks. So there.

Reassembling the basement trap, I scurry back upstairs—fingers crossed—to test my handiwork. I run the sink. I wait. . .

Blorp.

Mother. Fuck.

I gave up. I quit. I had a good, cleansing cry. And now I’m waiting for my dad to get back from Oklahoma to help me so that I don’t have to fucking wash dishes in the bathtub.

Stay tuned for our next exciting episode “Why Won’t Kate Just Fucking Hire Somebody?”

Your Regularly Scheduled Ennui, Already In Progress

2007-10-02T22:05:00.000-05:00

Kate's Plan For Career Advancement

1. Grab boss's penis

2. Place boss's penis in a standard table vice

3. Place hand on vice

4. Discuss rate of pay

Sounds like plan, non? I'll keep you posted.

On One Small Lesson Learned

2007-09-11T23:20:00.000-05:00

Six years ago, I had a hangover.

I had been out to late with the then-husband and my best friend. We had enjoyed a wonderful dinner of olives and pasta and far, far too much wine. I woke up the next morning tired and dehydrated with a brain batted in cotton.

It was a glorious morning, the kind of early autumn day that seems as though it were colored out of a 64 Crayola box onto newsprint by an incredibly beautiful second-grade child. I unceremoniously deposited myself into my car to get to my dead-end job that I truly, deeply, disliked.

I don’t know at what point the news from NPR began to penetrate my post-drunk fog. Somewhere on the drive; at some point before I parked, I noticed that Bob Edwards (I think he was the Morning Edition host at the time) sounded completely, totally, confused. Lost. Bob Edwards was, in the coolest and most professional way possible, freaking out.

I walked into the ground floor of the building where I worked. There was a third-rate radio station there, one that got its news directly from some wire. The people in the booth looked gobsmacked; the woman had her hands over her face. The men gaped.

And that was when I realized we were fucked.

I am certain that everyone has a story that is, to a greater or lesser extent, similar. Where they were. What they were doing. What they thought. I remember being unmoored; like I didn’t know the world. Given my visceral, blood-thirsty reaction, I didn’t really feel like I knew myself. As I said at the time, it was like I couldn’t imagine a world without crying in it.

I don’t know that I’ve ever managed to make meaning out of September 11th, 2001. I don’t know if one really can. Maybe there is no meaning that can be made of 2974 dead. No meaning. Just a glass to be raised; a candle to be lit; a prayer to be said.

And, for me? A life to be lived.

Because after the shock of 9/11, I came to and realized that I was only going through the motions of my life, and that I was not doing a terribly good job of it. Once the shock of the attacks wore off it occurred to me that it was inexcusable for me piss away my life in the most mediocre way possible, when 2974 people had abruptly, suddenly lost their lives and couldn’t do anything at all with theirs.

Since then, I have struggled and won and lost and fallen out of trees and hit-every-damn-branch-on-the-way down and hit the ground and dragged myself back up. I haven’t written the great American novel. I haven’t created some great work of art. Hell, I haven’t even cut my grass in weeks. But I haven’t settled for miserable. I haven’t decided that just hanging on is enough.

I don’t think my small life is any, any kind of monument to their lives lost. I do think, though, that my small life would have been incredibly smaller without the remembrance of their unwitting, unwilling sacrifice.

2974 lives wasted is 2974 more than too many. It taught me not to waste one more.

More Excuses

2007-09-09T20:23:00.000-05:00

I have been remiss about posting of late.

"No shit, woman," you say. "That is perfectly obvious from the utter lack of anything new on this crappy excuse for a blog for better'n two weeks."

Well. Yeah. Fine.

The funny thing about this blogging thing is that, when I go a bit without doing it, I feel vaguely guilty and unsatisfied. Because, right now, this is the only outlet I have that I share with other people. When I neglect it for any length of time, I feel uneasy. So, while I have been neglecting the blog, I've also been neglecting the attention whore, love-me-love-me, part of me.

The fact is this. I've had very little I've wanted to write about. I'm sick of blogging about job ennui. There is nothing remotely interesting the fact that I have been hating my job of late. Most people hate their jobs all the time, and it's not interesting. Politics remain screwed. My personal life is, blissfully, uneventful and boring in the best way.

That's all neither here nor there.

The fact is, there are a few reasons I haven't been blogging. One is that summer is ending; and the space between seasons, any seasons, makes me odd. The other is that I think I've been lying fallow, preparing to do other things.

Tonight, though, outside feels like the beginning of fall--it's glorious. So, while we'll have to wait and see, I think I'll be writing more.

Luscious

2007-08-28T11:51:00.000-05:00

Oh. It is a perfectly luscious week in the news.

First, Gonzales quit. I was running late to work yesterday so I heard the first few minutes of The Diane Rehm show. When asked what had finally driven Gonzales to resign despite the continued support of President Halfwit, one of her panelists talked about how he would go to a U.S. Attorney’s office and the U.S. Attorney in question wouldn’t show up to meet him; about how when he would speak to a group, the group had to be scolded into standing up and applauding loudly.

Dance lawyer-monkeys, dance!

President Halfwit says that Gonzales’s “name was dragged through the mud for political reasons.” If by political reasons, George means that Congress felt compelled to curtail the Attorney General’s quest to gut the Constitution, violate the law, and install President Halfwit as Dictator for Life, then he has a point. Otherwise, who does he think he’s kidding?

Just because someone is your favorite whore, doesn’t mean he’s not a whore.

So, yeah. Goodbye Gonzales. Congratulations on “Living the American Dream” by destroying America. Hope you face perjury charges, you filthy cocksucking yes-man.

Gonzales quitting was a fine thing, yes, but I have to say that I’m even more excited about Idaho Republican Larry Craig getting busted for “lewd conduct” in an airport men’s room. Reading about this was like biting into a perfect, crisp apple fresh off the tree. Crunchy and sweet and juice-dripping-off-my-chin glorious.

Although perhaps less vitriolic in his hatred of gays and lesbians than his party cohorts, his votes against allowing gays to marry or offering them protections as victims of hate crime victims is enough to cause me to turn on him and call him out for being yet another hypocritical closet case.

Had he been content to be another pathetic bastard trying to subdue his self-loathing, I would feel sorry for him. However, since he felt compelled to ameliorate his personal sense of shame by attempting to inflict it on others, I feel justified in the following in laughing hysterically at his plight while relishing his public humiliation and, I hope, the impending premature failure of his political career.

I am especially pleased by the stupid desperation of trying to get his Senatorial Wee-wee played with in an airport bathroom. What? No time in the schedule to pay a visit to a truckstop?

Prisoner's Dilemma

2007-08-21T16:40:00.000-05:00

The good news is, my co-workers have started making coffee. The bad news? Someone has introduced decaf into the building.

Our break room has three identical coffee pots. One of these things is not like the other. Some communist has put decaf in one of the coffee pots, and I have no way of knowing which one.

With good coffee, one can generally tell decaf by smell. One can certainly tell by taste. It’s like someone playing a chord incorrectly—something is just missing. There is a note that’s just missing from even the best decaf coffee.

Now, I have friends who for various reasons have given up caffeine. Sort of the way mother pandas sometimes forsake their young, or guppies eat their babies, but that’s their business. They’re good people and I don’t judge them. There are even occasions on which I have been known to order decaf, namely, after dinner on a school night with dessert. Tiramisu without coffee is crime against nature, and if I know I need to get sleep shortly after leaving a restaurant I will order decaf, as long as I know that it has been made from what were once decent beans.

With bad coffee, though, there is no point to decaf. Bad coffee already tastes out of tune. The one real perk is the jolt of wakefulness and the way it can sometimes evoke decent coffee. Bad decaf, though, is just . . . bad. When Jesus looks down from heaven and sees His children drinking decaf coffee, He cries. He did not die on the cross so that sinners could drink decaffeinated Folgers. He wanted us to enjoy his Father’s blessings. Do you know how hard it is to hold a tissue to dry your Holy Tears when you have big, gaping holes in your hands? DO YOU?

Whatever. I don’t care what other people choose to put into their bodies. Their diets of canned peas and stale Krispy Kremes are none of my affair. But the first time I figure out that the reason I’m falling asleep at my desk because I accidentally drank decaf I’m replacing it with Euro Roast cut with methamphetamine.

Lovin' the Late Shift

2007-08-20T19:30:00.000-05:00

It is 7:30, and I am beginning to believe there is a very real possibility I might die at work.

"Why," you might think to yourself, "Katie must be so relieved! She's been so bored at work for months! Surely, she must at least feel relieved that she's needed; that she's accomplishing something!"

No. But thank you for playing.

I'm sitting at Corporate Happy Fun job with a headset perched on my ear in the extremely unlikely event that we're going to get a phone call between now and 8:15 CST. How unlikely, you ask? Well, about as likely as me one day explaining String Theory. To a chimpanzee. With a lobotomy.

Considering the monumental waste of time this is, I'm not that incredibly upset about it. At this point, my entire experience of Corporate Happy Fun America has been one of unmitigated human folly; I have ceased to expect anything better. I knew that the occasional late evening shift was part and parcel of this particular job, so I really shouldn't complain.

BUT . . .

My fellow late-shift suckers have, at least in theory, the possibility of being in some way useful. Plus, as an added bonus, they make a fuck of a lot more money than I do. Which means that they should have to sit here, and I should get to go home and take of this stupid bra. 7:40 is too late on a Monday to have to wear a bra, I think.

Instead, I'll just sit here for another 34 minutes and think about what I want for dinner. I think that cheese will figure prominently.

The Best Hangover Ever

2007-08-16T16:13:00.000-05:00

I have the best boyfriend in the world, perhaps the best boyfriend in the long and storied history of boyfriends. If my boyfriend were a car, he would start reliably, get 300 miles to the gallon, and vacuum his own floor mats.

Why, you ask, am I waxing so fond of the boy?

Because he took me out and he got me really drunk.

After days of feeling ineffectual and useless at work and random other bummers that made me want nothing so much as to take to my bed, Jason decided that he was taking me out for drinks. Nothing fancy, just he and I and our friends in a bar.

It was glorious. Hours of gin and tonic and conversation about things that had nothing, NOTHING to do with Corporate Happy Fun Job: writing, art, the dispensing of romantic advice. For the first time in days I feel as though the wrinkles in my cortex are not filled with dryer lint. I enjoyed people! Wit! There was actual laughter, instead of wizened and bitter chuckles.

Plus, if last night’s company and cocktails wasn’t enough, as an added bonus today I just. Don’t. Care. I am exploring new and unplumbed depths of professional indifference. Right now, this instant, I truly believe that I’m earning every penny of my paltry fucking salary by holding my chair in place. My god. This is absolutely brilliant.

Not Cranky

2007-08-15T17:17:00.001-05:00

Last night, through a liberal mix of alcohol and venting, I managed to work through my excess of vitriol and nastiness. After sleeping in a bit this morning, I woke to find my mood had lightened immeasurably and that I no longer derived a low-grade physical excitement from the mere thought of throwing canned goods at the heads of bosses, co-workers, and other drivers. Crisis averted. I don’t really know what all contributed to yesterday’s exceeding pissed-offedness, a combination of things, I suppose.

One factor, I’m sure, is that it has been unremittingly hot and miserable. It’s so unpleasant that going outside for anything but traversing the distance between one air-conditioned location and another is out of the question. Further exacerbating my sense of heat related isolation is the fact that I’ve been relatively broke. Normally when I’m poor I can walk the dog or something to get out of the house for an hour or so. Yeah. That’s so not happening. Right now the dogs are lucky I’m willing to open the door long enough to let them out; the thought of taking Bennet for walkies is patently absurd.

I know the hot weather will most likely come to an end sooner rather than later. August is the time of summer when it seems like the warm and green will stretch on forever, a never ending cycle of long, hot days and humid nights filled with the songs of crickets and cicadas and white noise of air-conditioners. The fact is, though, that summer will soon exhaust itself and give way to fall.

Indeed, most of the kids around here are already back in school. Somehow that just seems wrong to me, to have kids return so early and cut them off from the glories of going to the pool and sleeping in and staying up late. It seems strange to drag kids into the classroom before we’ve even had the whisper of a promise of the autumn. Even though I understand the reasoning behind it, the thought of being 16 and staring at homework instead of lying in my friend’s hammock and staring up at the sky kind of breaks my heart a little.

Cranky

2007-08-14T20:31:00.000-05:00

Due to a lack of Tanqueray and a simultaneous lack of funds, I find myself at home pursing an affair with my first true love. Vodka.

I have had one of those days where I found myself unable to suppress or ignore the irritants endemic to being a pink collar wage slave. Instead, every typical and minor annoyance made me want to heave my coffee mug at the wall. To be graphic, today was like a yeast infection when you’re taking antibiotics. It was hugely unpleasant and annoying, and it was caused by the normal course of things being all fucked up.

Behold, a brief overview of the things that made me crankier than usual. I apologize for any misspellings or grammatical foibles; I’m busy trying to get a tad tipsy.

1. I would like someone to explain to me why it is that men in offices cannot make coffee. I mean, I know they’re busy making more money and exercising their throbbing male privilege, but give me a fucking break. If I come into work one more time to find a swallow of coffee cooking down into a post-industrial sludge in each of three damn-near empty coffee pots, I’m going to brew a pot using my own urine to serve the slugs in my office.

2. I’m tired of people acting cartarded. You know what I mean, any cocksmack who gets behind the wheel of a vehicle and immediately loses the ability to behave like anything but a fucking douche. You know, like the moron who couldn’t manage to get the ass end of his ginormous piece of dysfunctional Detroit shit out of my way so that I could merge. Fuck you. Fuck your little kid pissing on a Chevy symbol. Can you not see that I need to go home and get a drink? Can not the world see that?

3. Having read/seen a recent spate of stories regarding women who were sexually assaulted and subsequently screwed by the system, I’m left to the conclusion that the only logical course of action for someone who is raped is to kill her fucking attacker—that will at least be something like justice. Apparently, when being screwed against one’s own will, once just isn’t enough.

4. Fuck a bunch of St. Louis summer. 103? Can we just cry “uncle” and be done with it? Damn . . .

Post-Wedding Guest Wrapup

2007-08-13T15:45:00.000-05:00

As expected, this past weekend’s wedding was quite nice. The bride and groom seemed appropriately smitten with one another. The groom’s mother, who has a bit of the control freak about her, managed not to stroke out. At no point did it look like the bride was about ready to kill herself or someone else, which at this jaded point in my life indicates to me that the wedding went off without any significant hitch. Either that or she had the forethought to partake of Lord Xanax, in which case she is a woman who is wise to the world and an excellent choice for a life’s companion.

The only exception I can take with the wedding was that there was a bit too much Jesus Cum-By-Yah shit for my liking. The minister/pastor/preacher/whatever was a brother-in-law to the bride. He seemed a nice enough fellow, if you ignore the excessive clean-cuttedness of his appearance, but for the love of a non-denominational god, I was left wondering if he had just learned the word “covenant” and felt compelled to use it in sentences so that he would not forget it. I’m not sure, but by the time all was said and done I think that all the guests might have been entered into a covenant with him, Cum-By-Yah Christ, the Holy Ghost, and perhaps the neighbors and the local mental health organization.

I for one have little tolerance for organized religion in general, and evangelical organized religion in particular. Although I am genetically Catholic (none of the faith, all of the guilt!), I refuse to partake in any religion that finds women to be unfit vessels for the word of god. If one accepts that Jesus was the son of god born to a virgin mother, then one accepts that a loving human mother allowed her son to suffer and die for the sins of all mankind. That counts as a pretty big sacrifice, methinks, and apparently indicates that god thought a woman was a fit enough vessel to bring his word to us. Otherwise, would god not have just sent Jesus, or built him out of sticks or something? And I’m having none of that original sin bullshit, either. I decline to believe that the stupid are god’s chosen.

Frankly, I don’t buy any of the major articles of Christian faith except that Jesus was a swell fellow with some pretty good ideas. I have been known to chat with Mary from time to time, but that has more with the limitations of my own ability to cope with reality than actual faith.

Now back to our regularly scheduled blogging, already in progress.

There were in attendance any number of people with whom I went to high school. All but one either ignored me or didn’t recognize me. I’m guessing the former because, well, I don’t really look that different. Frankly, I don’t care so very much because my butt was smaller than that of their wives. I try to pretty up that fact however I like, but I’m not one for lying. In the river of any life, are there not shallow patches? Yea, verily.

The romantic history of the bride and groom was sweet and poignant and all kind of Lifetime Movie Network. As I was departing, I had a chat with the groom’s mom, who summed it all up, “He’s loved her forever.”

Well, that’s something, isn’t it?

But not everything. In the end the test isn’t the love he’s had for in the past, it’s the love that he has for her tomorrow and 10 years from now and beyond. That’s what a marriage is, isn’t it? The decision to love someone today despite the occasional desire to strangle him or her?

Bleh. Enough with the mush. We will endeavor shortly to return to our regular schedule of complaints, rants, and wild speculations.

Saturday Plans

2007-08-10T16:32:00.000-05:00

When I don’t have to go to pink collar wage slave job #2, my Saturdays generally consist of sleeping in, followed by perhaps brunch with the boy and some sort of effort to extricate my house from borderline chaos and filth with which I seem destined to surround myself. The evenings often involve friends and dinners or bars, again assuming that I am not working.

This Saturday, though, an old friend of the family is getting married. Our parents have been friends since they were in high school, and our mothers were pregnant with us at the same time. Our families have shared countless barbecues and midwinter parties, and some of my fondest memories of early childhood involve playing with Paul.

Perhaps, if she seems a laughing sort, I will tell his bride how Paulie and I used to play Star Wars in a blue plastic pool in his backyard, or how every summer he seemed to have a ready supply of box turtles. If I get really drunk, I might be prevailed upon to relate my earliest memory of the dashing groom, that is, him pitching a howling fit because the cold butter had torn a hole in his bread at the local pizza place. Although that last might be a story I just save for the other people who went to high school with us.

As Paul and I grew up, we found that we had fewer and fewer interests in common. When we went to high school together we were certainly friendly, but in the distant, nod to one another in the hallway kind of way. Now as adults, we see one another for major events but not much else. Still though, I am very happy for him and his family, and I’m looking forward to meeting his new wife and to hearing about their excitement about their new life.

I like weddings as a general rule, as long as the other guests don’t devote overmuch time to conversing with my cleavage. There is something life-affirming about the human willingness to fly in the face of evident futility and accumulated knowledge and promise lifelong devotion to another. It warms my chill little heart to see people behave with so much hope and so little reason.

That said, though, today a quick little wave of dread washed over me as it occurred to me that this wedding will be widely attended by people who attended my embarkation of my matrimonial Titanic’s maiden voyage just over six years ago. I have seen all these people since I’ve been divorced; it’s not like it will be news to anyone. Hell, most of these people have known me my whole life and probably weren’t surprised that another human being was unable to tolerate my constant companionship.

I feel kind of like a tart who spent a bunch of money to stand in front of a bunch of people with a fistful of flowers and a mouth full of lies. Even though I know that no one but me gives a fleeting fuck about any of this, the fact remains that I do. I sort of feel like I should wear an inappropriate evening gown and my whore-red lipstick to this shindig.

You know what though? I sort of think I should feel this way. Not in some sort of self-loathing-I-deserve-to-be-punished-and-suffer-way, but more that I think it’s important to have learned from that mistake. If it didn’t hurt a little, then wouldn’t that mean that I didn’t, at the very least, mean the words I said at the time that I said them? Even though that marriage was a mistake, and I suspected so at the time, I can at least say that I leaned into the traces and tried to haul that miserable fucker out of the sucking mud of failure.

It should hurt when you break promises, even if they were the wrong promises to make.

This little pang will pass. Tomorrow will be lovely, I’m certain. Perhaps if I’m lucky there will be good music and The Boy will honor me with a dance. That would be a good thing.

Extreme Elimination Challenge: Outdoor Edition

2007-08-06T12:31:00.001-05:00

You know what this day needs? A beach. A cabaña boy. Piña coladas. A nice big umbrella so that The Boy can hang out with me and not be killed by the sun, as he comes from a long lineage of cloud-loving people.

Alas, no. There will be none of that. There will only be Monday and boredom, two great tastes that go great together.

I should not complain, I guess, as I had a lovely and relaxing weekend. Between pink-collar-wage-slave jobs one and two, it had been some weeks since I had had a day off. Considering I’m a generally unpleasant person at the best of times, this was doing nothing for my personality. This weekend, though, I took Saturday and Sunday off for a non-camping and float trip.

I’m not proud of it, but I don’t camp. I just don’t. If there is a hell and I wind up there, after a hard millennium of having my flesh flayed from my body by cruel demons, I expect the only vacation available to me will be camping. I like looking at stars and trees and various other representatives from this, our natural world, but I care little for being eaten alive by mosquitoes or peeing in the woods.

The whole not liking to pee in the woods thing totally horrifies my mother. She took my divorce like a champ. The fact that I remain childless doesn’t make her bat an eye. My economic insecurity is just par for the course. But my reluctance to pee while leaning precariously against what may or may not be a poisonous plant? That’s indicative of some sort of maternal failure on her part.

Further, I don’t cope especially well with the great outdoors. I love it in principle, not so much in practice. Any woman whose reaction to the unexpected out of doors is to yell “Nature! Nature! Nature!” while flailing is NOT someone who much needs to be out in the wild.

My other objection to camping is one that is endemic to being a St. Louisan, that is, most of our camping is done at one of several campsites within two hours of the Lou. These campsites are, often, absolutely infested with the trashiest of white trash one can imagine. Anyone who has ever had the misfortune of waking up at Bass River Resort can back me up on the following statement: long-term human inbreeding should be discouraged. While the occasional marriage between first cousins might not be the end of the world, over generations it should be discouraged.

My initial adult experience of camping took place under such unfavorable and frightening circumstances about 5 years ago. By the end of that weekend there was literally no one in a one mile radius of me that I would not have willingly killed with perfect glee. Although my hatred of the people who dragged me into that doomed and fetid pit eventually passed, my disdain for camping remains to this day.

This weekend, obviously, was very different. First of all, I have a much better class of friends at 30 than I did at 25. It’s been a busy five years, what can I say? Second of all, this trip did not involve any of the major commercial camping killing fields so popular among Those Whose Family Trees Have No Branches. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, my significant other on this trip is not a total fuckwit. There is nothing more exhausting than having to worry about the idiocy of someone with whom you are involved. Since The Boy is a pretty stellar traveling companion and all-around thoughtful guy, it took a lot of the dread out of the situation.

This weekend was a camping/float trip in belated celebration of The Roommate’s birthday. Because she is a thoughtful type, she ensured that I had a place to stay that involved window screens and, more importantly, indoor plumbing. Consequently, I got to enjoy much great company and a moderate amount of intoxication in a lovely natural setting with very little of the actual “nature” getting on me.

Overall, I would count the weekend a success. There was a wardrobe malfunction—the hook that holds the swimming suit top in place finally suffered a failure of structural integrity, snapping in two while paddling the canoe. Hysterics ensured, and fortunately my friend had a very brave little safety pin who managed to keep the girls in check for the remainder of the trip, surviving even the trip on the rope swing.

An Open Letter to Johnson and Johnson, et al

2007-08-01T16:53:00.000-05:00

Dear Deodorant Manufacturers,

I know that in your quest to corner an ever-larger share of the antiperspirant market, you feel that you must always come out with a new and better product. As you pursue research and development in the service of this, our laissez-faire economic system, please bear in mind the following: as you attempt to impress me with ever-more interesting deodorant choices, my basic needs have not changed.

To wit, I need not to smell like an armpit.

Further, not only do I prefer not to “pit out” as they say, I prefer for my armpits to carry no noticeable fragrance of any kind. No lilies, no pears, no vanilla, no rain, ocean, jasmine, violet, ginger, spicy Italian sausage, or whatever other fragrance experiment might be floating around in a test-tube in your R&D lab.

When I shop for an antiperspirant, I am seeking the most easily ignorable product I can find. I want innocuous. I want unimposing. When my boyfriend asks about the unique and beguiling scent I am wearing, I want him to be referring to my perfume. Not the oily goo that I swipe across my stubbly armpit every morning.

In case your market research has failed in some gross way, allow me to elucidate something for you. The purchasers of women’s antiperspirants are, by and large, women. Most women are in possession of countless gels, lotions, creams, sprays, and powders that can and do assist us in smelling like anything hitherto encountered on this or any other planet. There is nothing that you can bring to this party that I want.

Now, I understand that there might be any number of women out there who enjoy the wide-variety of scents available on today’s antiperspirant market; far be it from me to stand between their armpits and life’s scent smorgasbord. All I ask is that when I stop into Target at lunch time to stock up, I can easily acquire a deodorant that neither possesses its own distinct aroma nor leaves giant, chalky marks on my clothes.

If it must smell like something, make it something subtle and forgettable. Powder scent will do in a pinch.

Yours sincerely,
Etc, etc, etc.

Feeding Frenzy

2007-08-01T15:00:00.000-05:00

It is GO LIVE week at Corporate Happy Fun Job. GO LIVE is a very big deal, much fanfare and brouhaha surrounding our stage-one roll-out. Various systems people are wandering hither and yon discovering what we’ve known all along, that is, that this software is about as nice as an economy tub of lube mixed liberally with sand.

In an effort to simultaneously celebrate our GO LIVE and suborn the rebellion in the hearts of the employees, they have been feeding us with in an inch our lives. Today? Cheesecake contest. And cotton candy, sno-cones, and a popcorn machine. The sugar and fat is making us compliant.

I figure if we can’t make this Corporate Happy Fun project work, they are going to cut up the staff and market us as fois gras. Genius, really.

The upshot of this ongoing feeding frenzy is that I have spent the entire day covered in foodstuffs. Cotton candy leavings; coffee that managed to dribble onto my shirt beneath my boobs where I couldn’t see it until I went to the ladies. Fuckall knows what else. On top of last nights unfortunate yard tumble, I am forced to conclude that I am having one of those weeks.

Stoop 1, Kate 0

2007-07-31T20:28:00.000-05:00

I just fell down on my own front stoop.

I wasn't drunk; hell, I wish I was drunk because that would be immeasurably less pathetic. No. Not drunk. Just me, though and through.

I took out the trash, and coming back in I put my foot on the stoop to step up; my foot slipped off; and I crashed to the ground. Thank god the neighbors didn't see me because between the state of my yard and my occasional fits thrown at the sight of Bennet's latest victim they undoubtedly already believe I'm a crank-addled lunatic. It's not even dark yet, I'm just a fucking klutz.

You know what? It hurts A LOT more to fall down at 30 then it did when I was a kid. I should know. I fell down a lot.

I still do.

Some days I'm really fucking tired of the whole me-ness of being me, you know?

On Anger

2007-07-30T17:25:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, I was talking to a friend of mine at a party when he mentioned that he liked my blog. I was reasonably flattered, as I have assumed right along that in general the only people who would read it are those that have to, such as The Boy and The Liquor Fairy, and the occasional stalker who finds it by accident while trolling for victims. Also, I quite enjoy his meandering vitriol, which means that I count him in the .02% or so of the population whose opinions I don’t dismiss out of hand.

As we chatted, he mentioned that one of the things he liked about my blog is the fact that I’m so “angry.”

Hmm.

Even though I knew he meant it in a good way, my first response was to dispute that fact. “I’m not angry,” I protested, “I’m . . . not . . . I’m a pleasant person. I’m NICE.”

Who the fuck do I think I’m kidding? I’m not nice, I’m polite, and sometimes I can’t even manage that convincingly. Hell, I don’t even want to be nice. In fact, I am pretty angry. I’m not joyless or bitter about it, but I spend a decent amount of time in a state of low-grade rage.

Why? Well, god. There are just so many reasons.

I have been pissed about President Halfwit since the word go. I am pissed that he was elected the first time, and I’m REALLY pissed that he was elected again. He’s a fucking idiot of the first order, and I’m beginning to suspect he might be batshit crazy to boot. Do not even get me started on the rest of monsters in his administration.

I am tired of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights being read like lists of suggestions.

Speaking of the Bush administration, I remain pissed off at Ralph Nader. I will always be pissed off at Nader. If Nader’s teeth were on fire, I would not piss in his mouth. I will always, ALWAYS blame Nader for Bush. Every dead soldier in Iraq? Nader’s fault. As soon as the first woman dies after Roe v. Wade is completely gutted by those bastards on the Supreme Court, I’m sending him the picture of her bloodied corpse (which I feel certain will appear in the local paper or online). If he’s dead by then I’m taking it to his grave. I love a futile gesture as much as the next girl, truly I do. There is, however, a line between making a noble but futile gesture and being a megalomaniacal asshole.

While we’re on the subject of dead women, I’m sick of being a second class citizen. I am angry that we cannot manage to treat the decision to have a child as though it were anything but a flippant decision on par with picking a fucking handbag; one that is the exclusive province and problem of women. I’m angry that after all this time, people still talk to my boobs. I’m tired of a lot of things having to do with being a chick. I am sick of “women’s issues” being somehow different and inferior from regular “issues.” Hell, I’m mad that my first reaction upon being told that I’m angry was to insist that I’m not. I should be angry—I’m not stupid. My first reaction should not be to feel bad about that.

BUT, I have it lucky. No burqa. No child marriage. No dowry. I can leave my house. See a doctor. Go to school. I might be cranked about some of the bullshit that goes on in this country attendant on my having a uterus that goes on in this country, but at least I’m here. At least I don’t have a target on me, or a very low price on my head. At least I usually don’t feel expendable.

I am angry about reality television.

I am angry people who don’t have enough sense not to, at the very least, vote against their own best interest. Do you come from a LOT of money, preferably OLD money? No? Then why. The Fuck. Would you ever. EVER. Vote Republican? You stupid ‘git.

I am angry about those stupid health care personal savings accounts folks keep bandying on about it. The whole proposition of “People will choose more wisely if they are spending their own money,” is asinine. Yeah. I just randomly SPEND healthcare dollars. I go to the doctor because I love waiting and old magazines. I take birth control for shits and giggles, not because I don’t want to have a kid I can’t afford to feed. And when the time comes I need a mammogram? It will just be because I want to have my boobs mashed. Are there people who over-utilize healthcare resources? Sure, but most don’t. Most avoid the doctor unless they need to go, either for illness or for a checkup to prevent illness. Since most people don’t like waiting, co-pays, or needles, most people partake as little as possible in the healthcare system.

You know what will happen when people are forced to pay cash for their own healthcare, without assistance from insurance? Lots and lots of dying, punctuated with gangrene and tumors the size of grapefruits.

And finally (for now), I am angry that so many people don’t recognize the difference between “everyday” and “every day.”

Good Morning, Marmot

2007-07-27T13:27:00.001-05:00

On my way to work in the mornings I pass by what I think must truly be one of the ugliest corners in North St. Louis County. A swath of brown, weedy grass to the right of the highway exit runs up to a rusted chain link fence. Beyond that is a patchy parking lot in front of a singularly unattractive building supply warehouse. Beyond that? A Waffle House, a Super 8 Motel, and some other unfortunate NoTell Motel.

The fact is, though, this particular ugly is more than the sum of its parts. Ever been to a crummy dive saloon and see some drunk dude down at the end of the bar with a bad case of summer teeth and B.O. who insists on telling unsuspecting neighbors his sad fucking life story; a story made all the more sad by the fact that all of his problems were largely of his own making? This street corner is that guy.

Or, it was. A few weeks ago I noticed some creature standing in the patch of grass. At first I thought perhaps I was seeing things and that it was time to stop drinking cheap gin, but no. My mom takes that same exit to get to work, and she had seen it, too. We even saw it together when we carpooled for a week.

I have seen him several times. Generally, the wee brown beastie stands majestically, if squatly, with his back turned dismissively on traffic. Instead, he surveys his vast domain—the weedy patch of grass—with a proprietary air. He is, it seems, busy. He cannot be bothered with us stupid humans and our stupid cars. He has all this ground that needs looking after.

After several days of wild and fruitless speculation as to the nature of the beastie (“Is it a beaver?” “It can’t be a beaver, can it?” “What do I know from beavers?”), it was finally determined that this particular critter is a groundhog. We think.

You know what, though? I don’t even care. On the mornings when I exit the highway and I see the fat little thing hanging out in the weed patch, it completely makes my morning. More even then coffee. Today was exceptional, as there was not one but TWO groundhogs doing that which groundhogs do. One was ignoring traffic, while its little friend waddled about in the background hunting for food or breaking in new shoes or whatever it is groundhogs do in the morning.

Good morning, marmot. It’s going to be a good day.

Kate Does Nothing Day

2007-07-24T13:06:00.000-05:00

Last night, the woman at the grocery store didn’t recognize my eggplant. In a world of foodstuffs, I would have thought that the distinctly purple eggplant would have stood out. I was, it seems, wrong. She also mistook my cilantro for spinach, en error that I can’t even follow because one, the only thing they have in common is being green and two, the checker had just rung up the spinach that I did in fact buy. The spinach was easily distinguished by the large, white lettering that read “Spinach” across the front.

I then went home to make a meal for The Boy and me. Black bean burritos with fresh pico de gallo. This was meal was followed by a carbohydrate coma so profound that I wound up having to hide the pillow on which I dozed off because it was so sodden with my own drool. That’s the last time I add rohypnol to my black beans.

After our nap, we took Bennet for a walk. Bennet spent most of her time trying to trip and/or drag me while The Boy and I spent most of the stroll discussing the possibility for a series of children’s books featuring Bennet and my other beasties. Some titles:

Bennet and the Short Bus to Obedience School
Bennet and the Rolled-Up Newspaper
Bennet and the Remote-Control Shock Collar
Jack Does Nothing Day
Bella Destroys the World

and my personal favorite

Bennet Goes to the Korean Deli

Yes. I fully expect to go to hell. That’s okay, though, because my work life of late has done a fine job of preparing me for an eternity of suffering.

The details of the disaster are irrelevant, but I will paint a quick picture in broad strokes. I took a promotion for the opportunity to start up a new corporate department in a brand new facility. Our computer system is notable not only for the things it does not do well, but also for the things it does not do at all. I have spent the past seven weeks either doing nothing, doing nothing and pretending to do something, or testing the worthless software.

I finally realized yesterday that it will require a miracle, a-hand-to-god-Gabriel-on-a-shaft-of-golden-fucking-light-comes-down-from-heaven-and-saves-our-asses-miracle, for this project to do anything but disappoint and frustrate for the first year or so. After that, ho knows? It might just be too late. I am at peace with it, though. I keep up my corporate charade, then I go home and complain to my wonderful boyfriend and drink myself into a stupor. Thus does time pass.

Adding insult to injury, though, today we have corporate muckety mucks come in. I suppose that this is to re-emphasize to us, the peons, the importance of lying to people outside the building. Fine. Something different at least.

Through it all, though, I’m going to keep a smile on my face by imagining the following exchange:

Muckety Muck: “So, how do you feel about being here at Exciting Corporate Startup?”
Me: “I wish my mother had aborted me.”

They Don't Like You, Either

2007-07-22T23:50:00.001-05:00

So Friday night, I went with The Boy to his younger brother’s wedding reception. The wedding proper had taken place 10 days earlier in Jamaica. The reception was a reception. The bride and groom were good enough to trot out their wedding finery for us—they looked lovely. There was food and dancing and, best of all, little girls in fluffy dresses who were all twirly-whirly as little girls at weddings ought to be.

And, like any wedding, there were representatives from the contingent of People Who Were Raised by Coyotes.

I am constantly amazed at people’s inability to comport themselves appropriately. It’s not about knowing which fork to use, it’s about knowing that one ought to make sure that one’s thong isn’t showing before one leaves to go to a wedding. And men? You haven’t been forgotten, this one’s for you. It also means that one ought not to converse with a woman’s chest.

Not one, but two men preferred to carry on their conversations with my tits than with me. They were not subtle, quite the opposite, in fact. Indeed, they drew attention to their admiration of my breasts through their conversation. Not that I could follow what they were saying, forced as I was to watch the top of their heads as they gazed longingly into my cleavage.

What planet are these men from, where apparently there are no breasts? They reacted as though they had never seen anything like it.

I, literally, could not think to do. On one hand, I wanted to embarrass and shame these men. Why would they so obviously impose themselves and their sticky, yellowed eyeballs on me? Whatever would make them think that would be okay. On the other hand, though, I was not raised by lichen. I could not bring myself to risk a scene at another woman’s long-awaited wedding reception.

Besides which, what can you really do to affect someone who would act that way? Mace his ass? I’m at a loss.

On Daughters

2007-07-19T16:29:00.000-05:00

So, a few weeks ago, one of the men I work with took the morning off to go with his pregnant wife to her ultrasound appointment. It was the big one—the one that let them know what flavor of baby they were expecting. When he came it, he was all atwitter with having seen his gilled little offspring swishing around in his watery, temporary home.

No, I’m not using the universal masculine here. The happy couple will be welcoming a bouncing baby boy in some few months, he will be their second. My co-worker was surprised, as he and his wife were both convinced that this baby was a girl. That doesn’t surprise me. I suppose when a woman finds herself playing host to the most perfect of strangers, an unknown so complete that the first indication of its presence is a pee-soaked stick, there is a certain desire to ascribe some sort of trait to it; to give the growing bump some sort of identifiable characteristics.

As Co-worker was discussing this unanticipated penis-enhanced state of affairs, he mentioned that he wasn’t disappointed. He was, in fact, relieved. Relieved that he would not have to worry about fathering a girl; relieved that he would endure fewer sleepless nights and headaches. Relieved because boys are easier.

*sigh*

Now, I feel confident that if Co-worker were in fact expecting a girl, he would still eagerly anticipate the arrival of the little hitchhiker and then devote his life to doing everything he could to make sure she turned out happy and healthy and whatever else it is that parents want for their offspring.

I also feel confident that Co-worker gave little if any thought to what he was saying. Hell, the vast majority of people never give thought one to the trite drivel that spills from their mouths. In his mind, I’m sure that he thinks it’s an accepted truth—girls require more work and worry.

I was vaguely insulted.

No. Not drag someone down to HR insulted. I wasn’t even sufficiently annoyed to point out to him the stupidity I perceived in his statement. Instead, I just thought to myself, “Damn. Do men think we’re made of spun glass or something? What could possibly be so much more difficult about helping one’s daughter become a functioning adult?” I also wondered if he realized he’d discussed the difficulty of girls in front of several women. Women who, by definition, used to be girls.

Like so many things, though, the whole thing became crystal fucking clear once I spent some time really paying attention.

Later that same week, many of us went to a Happy Hour to celebrate the monumental career mistake we all made by entering this particular job. Okay, that was the reason I was there and I won’t speak for anyone else. Whatever, doesn’t matter.

So anyway, there is a group of us sitting around the table. A woman with whom I work brought her husband along, and he was discussing his 17-year-old from a prior relationship. A different male co-worker (CW2) mentioned his own teenager.

As a matter of getting a acquainted, the Husband and CW2 sorted out the genders of their respective high-schoolers. Husband has a daughter, CW2 has a son. CW2 sort of laughed at the plight of Husband, pointing at him and saying “I don’t have to worry about mine. You do.” Husband communicated his agreement with the statement through his chagrined chuckling.

Schmuck.

So. This is all more of the “I am a guy/I used to be a teenaged boy, so I know how they think.” Apparently, because boys and men are lust-filled nincompoops, girls are harder to raise.

What. The fuck. Ever.

I will give CW2 the benefit of the doubt and assume that he has done what he can to teach his sons to treat girls and women with respect; that he has not in fact raised some little monster who after a few keg-stands will require a knee to the groin to take no for an answer. Rather, I assume that he just assume that it is the natural order of things that men are the hunters and women are the hunted.

Clearly, this dude has never seen me on my game.

Once I began spending time with men who could reliably identify and locate the clitoris, I was every bit as sexual as any man my age. While I will not argue that I always made the wisest decisions where men were concerned, I did always *decide*. No one ever “talked me into” sex. Frankly, I’ve yet to meet anyone that clever. Have men lied to me to get me into bed? I suppose so, once or twice I maybe even allowed myself to fall for it. Women do the same dishonorable shit, though, so this whole predator/prey mindset rings hollow.

I don’t want to hear about the catty nastiness of teenaged girls, either. Yes. Many, if not most, teenaged girls have a terrible streak of interpersonal nastiness. However, as I recall, the teenaged boys weren’t measurably better. They’re cruelty just took on a different form. Believe me, as someone who was homely and bookish in my early teens I got an up close and personal experience with the myriad varieties of teen cruelty.

The one thing I will give fathers (and mothers) is that their daughters are at much greater risk of being the victims of violence. Domestic violence; rape; murder, the trifecta of parental horrors and sleepless nights. All of these are much more likely to happen to daughters than to sons.

The solution to this problem, though, is not to welcome daughters with apprehension. Indeed, treating your little girl as though she’s made of fluff pretty much guarantees she’s going to be. If you treat them as reasonable and intelligent creatures, they’re likely to behave as such.

The other solution, obviously, is that parents to need to wake up and smell the 21st fucking century and stop this whole “boys will be boys and I don’t have to worry about my son” attitude. Maybe if parents of boys devoted a modicum of fucking effort to raising civilized human beings, the parents of girls could unload part of the burden of guaranteeing the next generation was not made up of uncivilized knuckle-draggers.

Extreme Elimination Challenge: Michael Vick Edition

2007-07-18T11:38:00.000-05:00

I am not a sports fan. This won’t come as a shock to anyone who has ever talked to me for more than 15 minutes. I like to go to Busch Stadium once a summer or so to watch the Cards play, but that is mostly an excuse to drink beer and eat nachos. Hockey games are fun, but not worth the effort to actually procure my own tickets. Football bores me witless, although now that I’ve been divorced for a couple of years I no longer have an active antipathy to the game. On a boredom scale from 1 to 10, with a 10 being a 15 minute orgasm and 1 being a typical workday here lately, a conversation about sports rates about a 2 or a 2 ½. If I’m lucky.

So, the fact that I’m also going to wade into this whole Michael Vick thing really says something. It says, “I am sick of sports assholes.”

Having read the indictment, I would very much like for some enterprising reporter to figure out where the man was at the times alleged; I wouldn’t mind giving Vick the benefit of the doubt, assuming of course there is any doubt from which to benefit. I would hate to overstate myself or oversimplify the situation.

The fact is, though, I don’t much give a rat’s ass if he was actively involved in dog fighting or not, although the evidence in the indictment seems to point to the fact that he was far more than a passive dipshit who let his cousin freeload on his property. Best case scenario? Michael Vick is negligently stupid, buying property for a shitbum cousin and then failing to do anything to make sure said shitbum didn’t commit any felonies while crashing there. You know what? As a landlord, I feel that one does have some responsibility to make sure that one’s tenants don’t turn one’s property into a meth lab or a whorehouse or a dog fighting kennel.

I don’t know if Vick was legally responsible to make sure that the bruised fruit from his family tree wasn’t engaged in various and sundry illegal activities on his compound in the sticks, but he was morally obligated to do so. It’s not like the cousin was found with a bong full of weed in the kitchen, or even a patch of weed out in the woods (neither of which would even make me bat an eye). Nope. He was found with a farm full of fighting dogs. Unlike, say, a patch of weed out in the woods, dogs make noise. They smell. They do dog things. If anyone ever visited the property, he or she would have to know there were many, many dogs there. The rest would not require Mensa level reasoning to figure out.

I assume Michael Vick isn’t retarded. I assume he’s just a bastard.

I would like nothing more than to see him kicked off the Falcons and bounced out of pro-football. He doesn’t deserve it. I don’t look at it as holding him to a higher standard because if one my Corporate Comrades was similarly worthless, I wouldn’t want to work with him, either. Of course, should my Corporate Comrades do something stupid, I feel certain the powers that be would be unable to suspend or fire him unless he was convicted of an actual crime. Just being a careless, callous cocksmack does not bar one from employment in corporate America.

The National Football League has different rules, though. They can suspend and dismiss their players for their behavior. Even if Vick were not ACTIVELY engaged in dog fighting (a claim which I don’t buy because my brain has not been replaced with paper bags and hairballs), his behavior was so outrageously negligent that it hardly bears thinking about.

Why doesn’t the NFL and their pro-league brethren, I dunno, make it a policy that players facing felony indictments are suspended pending trial? If they are exonerated, let them come back. Convicted? Pack up your cleats, son. Enjoy your life. For the bajillion dollars these dudes get paid to run, sweat, lift, and engage their god-given talents to chase balls around, it’s not to much to ask that they keep their questionably criminal behavior under control for the decade or so they get to play.

Sounds like a fucking plan to me. It's just another form of asshole tax.

A Whole New Lease On Life

2007-07-10T20:59:00.000-05:00

I have had a stupid day.

I sat at work, all day, while two 12-year-olds from the central office attempted to assist us with our supremely worthless computer system. Although it is now clear to me that this toad was foisted on them in much the same manner it has been on us, the unsuspecting end users, five hours talking about all this shit these cheerleaders don't know made me want to chew glass.

World news is unremittingly bad. Iraq is becoming an inescapable monster to which we feed American soldiers and Iraqis alike. Our fearless leader continues to be a halfwit. On the way home from work today I heard that Alberto Gonzales began his illustrious career misleading Senators all the way back in April of 2005 when he told them that, "There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse," despite the fact that he was in receipt of reports of at least six.

Maybe he wasn't lying. Maybe he's just illiterate. Hey, it happens. Just look at President Retread.

It's hot. It's humid. I am fucking sick nigh unto weeping of home improvement projects. I'm tired. I'm crabby. I don't think my meds are working.

Just when I was about ready to say fuck it all, I visited The Liquor Fairy's site, which led me here, which lead me to this absolute gem of a message board post:

I am really excited to have this product over the counter. I was in the clinical trials years ago and lost 40 lbs in 2 months. I kept it off for years until I got off my food plan and quit walking.

I can tell you that my first experience in trying to cheat on this pill was very embarrassing! I went out to eat Japanese stir fry and had my first "accident" - (shall we call it "Alli-opps" now?) before I could get home. I had uncontrollable oily seepage...It looks just like spagetti grease for those of you who are curious.

You cannot get it out of your clothes so I would encourge you to use a panty liner until you find out how you react to the medication. If you are sitting down, whatever you are sitting on will be stained. . so be careful.

On the other hand, if you stay on tract w/ your food plan (low fat) you will not have any problems...or at least I didn't. Occassional gas but I learned when I could pass it (on the toilet)!

Another tip - get a bottle of Grease Release and keep it next to the toilet so that you can spray the bowl after each bowel movement... gets rid of the grease line.

Bottom line. it is kind of like Antibuse for the alcoholic... if you don't eat too much fat you will be ok but if you do, you will pay w/ unpleasant side effects.

I LOVE IT!

I have a new fucking lease on life, hand to god. At the very least, I can have chips and dip for dinner and not have to worry about shoving a tampon up my ass and having to clean my toilet with degreaser. Things aren't so bad, after all.

We Can't Even Have Words

2007-06-25T21:06:00.000-05:00

*sigh*

It’s official. I’ve reached the unfortunate conclusion that it is not a particularly good time to be a woman in America. I’m not sure if there has EVER been a good time to be a woman in America, frankly, but things seem to be taking rather a turn for the worst.

I no longer know why any of this surprises me. I suppose it is because I have made such a concerted effort not to surround myself with typical meatheads, nor do I spend time with misogynists (who can and do hail from both sexes). The downside of that, though, is that I tend to forget my vagina means that I will forever be a second class citizen.

In a fresh and interesting approach to insulting women everywhere, a judge in a Nebraska rape trial declared that no one in the courtroom could use any of the following words or phrases during the trial: rape, sexual assault, victim, assailant, or sexual assault kit. This gag order not only applied to the lawyers, police, or experts in the case, but it also included the woman who states she was raped.

The defense, who asked for this linguistic somersaulting, feels that using words like “rape” implies guilt. They argue that allowing the woman to say “That man raped me,” will make the jury will be unable to rationally look at the evidence and decide if, in fact, that man did rape her.

So the logical conclusion is to require the woman to use the exact same words to describe non-consensual sex as one would describe consensual sex. Of course. That makes perfect sense.

I’ve had a decent amount of sex. Good, bad, and indifferent. I am fortunate in that I have not ever been raped. There but for the Grace of God go I. That said, I cannot imagine being required to describe a sex act in which I was unwilling participant in the same words I would describe sex that I wanted.

Words have meaning. Sex and rape are not the same things. Period. Never. Never. It is an insult to everyone everywhere to even suggest anything different. And that is what this judge’s ruling does. By insisting that this woman describe what she perceives as a physical assault in the same words she would use to describe a consensual act, the judge takes away her ability to accurately talk about the truth as she knows it. Suddenly, the words to describe what really happened to her just aren’t there.

And that, my friends, is seriously fucked up.

Of course, the judge should admonish the jury that what a witness says or how she says it does not constitute a legal conclusion. After all, you might have a random complete idiot sucking air in the jury box who doesn’t realize that a trial is meant to ferret out what really happened. To say that the lawyers and other professionals mustn’t actually use the word “rape” might not be horrifying. “Rape” is a word that carries an immense emotional charge—as it should—and what the cops and the doctors and fuckall knows who else in this situation need to convey can probably be communicated through more exact and less charged terms.

But to say that they can’t use the phrase “sexual assault” is absurd, and to say that the woman can’t describe what happened to her as she perceives it is preposterous and a continuation of a terrible and terrifying victimization. Further, the jury was not even told that the forbidden words were, in fact, forbidden. What must those people have thought as everyone including the complainant tap danced around every term that would reasonably be used to describe the incident they were all supposed to try? A normal person might guess that the woman was, alas, batshit crazy.

I do find myself asking if Judge Cocksmack would have reached this same legal conclusion had this not been a date rape. If this woman were, say, out jogging or selling fucking bible subscriptions, would he have taken her words right out of her mouth? Methinks not. What the fuck do I know, though? Maybe my
uterus is wandering.

Of course, this would never happen in a robbery or a homicide. Rape, though, happens primarily to women. So, what does it fucking matter anyway? I should just be grateful to be out of the kitchen.

Pedicure-a-palooza

2007-06-20T14:33:00.000-05:00

I have, on more than one occasion, built an entire outfit around a pair of shoes. Today though, for perhaps the first time ever, I built an outfit around my toenails.

For some kind reason, my stepmom decided to she wanted to treat me to a pedicure. I don’t know from whence this impulse sprang. Not that she isn’t generally friendly and generous, but she never before expressed any interest in the state of my beauty regimen. Whatever. It was certainly nice of her, and for god’s sake, my feet were devolving into something most un-cute.

So the nice people a the local strip-mall-nail-hut deposited me into their whirly, bubbly, Sharper Image-esque chair and proceeded to bring my feet back from the brink. As and added treat, I got a bling-blingy flower on each of my big toes. Very tropical and fun and girly.

All this means that today I had to pick a pair of shoes that would allow me to show off my pretty pink piggies to their best advantage. Then, obviously, I had to choose an outfit that matches the shoes. The upshot of all this ridiculousness is that I’m having a cute outfit day.

The other perk is that the first time I ever saw the tropical big toe flower was at The Liquor Fairy’s bachelorette party when I met Anna the Squirrel Savior. As a result, toe flowers remind me of a hysterical drunken weekend in Vegas in the company of crazy, fantastic women. Who would have thought that toenails could bring such joy?

Plus, as an added bonus, the magic fingers chair has done marvelous things for my back.

***
I wrote the above draft longhand first, as I sat in a corporate training hell listening to someone describe, in excruciating detail, how to use the software for the phone. For over an hour. This after we had an hour-and-a-half worth of training two weeks ago about how the actual, physical phone worked. Could you ever have imagined such a thing was possible? Me neither. I can now, though. Learning it made me wish I had died in infancy.

You know you’re in corporate training hell when a blog entry about your fucking toenails seems like a reasonable alternative to actually paying attention.

Two Weeks, An Abbreviated History

2007-06-19T16:26:00.000-05:00

While I suppose that interesting and/or good things have been happening in and around my world I have not, of late, been inclined to talk much about them.

So here, a condensed update and informative primer in this, my life.

Yardageddon was a tremendous success. My mother and I spent four hours trimming, cutting, shearing, lopping, salting, and spraying various plants into submission or death. I am impressed at the destruction we wrought in such a short time. Although the ivy lives still, it is much less enthusiastic than it has been and therefore a less favorable environment for mosquitoes and other things that want to bite me. Cheers!

Speaking of my mom, she and I managed to complete some pretty impressive work on her screened-in porch—especially when you factor in that we were more or less making it up as we went along. Although anyone who pauses to even consider me working with power tools would undoubtedly scurry away to hunt up appropriate items for first aid, I am pleased to say that no one was hurt. Who woulda thunk it?

In young puppy Bennet’s quest to drive me batshit crazy, there was a tragic incident involving a baby bird in the yard last week. I wonder, whatever do the neighbors think as I run around waving my arms and yelling? My pets and I, doing our part for natural selection.

I am still looking forward to the upcoming arrival of my roommate. Last night I completed my $20 closet project, again with the help of my incomparable mom. Yes. $20. Here’s what I came to realize. A closet rod is little more than a slightly fancy and shiny stick. I love fancy and shiny as much or more than the next girl, but come on. $15 for a stick that is going to be behind a door that I keep closed? Not if I can help it.

Since this “closet” is actually the tiny room in my basement where the monsters used to hide, I realized there had to be a cheaper yet equally effective way to handle this. The answer came to me in the form of some PVC pipe, some plastic pipe strap, a thing of carpet cleaner, an air freshener, and some $3 wallpaper from big lots. Three hours later, and I am the proud owner of a huge walk-in closet complete with lined shoe rack. A thing of beauty? Perhaps not. A thing of tremendous thrift and effectiveness? Indeed. I got your Design on a Dime, right fuckin’ here.

Last week we attended the 88 MM Productions’ screening of their incomplete 48 Hour Film Festival movie. They were, sadly, unable to finish because some miserable bottom-feeders held up the sound guy. Luckily, no one was hurt. From the bit I saw, the looked quite good. It truly sucks that they were not able to finish, although I am given to understand that the fragment was selected for the “Best of . . .” showing this Thursday. Hooray! And besides, next year they can come back and continue their cinematic misadventures—although in future we hope that the only criminals are those that are actively involved in the filming.

Also last week The Boy and I went to see Much Ado About Nothing in Forest Park. Set in the old West, I think this production did a better job than most communicating the play to those who might not be totally up on their Shakespeare, as well as doing a pretty good job of editing to a manageable running time. For the first time ever, the characterr of Ursula was something other than completely forgettable--that was kind of a cool. The Boy is an excellent picnic companion, and a grand time was had by all.

Finally, I recently had to put into practice the wise advice of The Liquor Fairy. No, not “People who are still puking are not in imminent danger of alcohol poisoning,” although that is good to know. Nope. The bit about “You shouldn’t break bread with people you don’t like.” This weekend I had to choose between eating with a number of my friends and one distinctly non-friend, or spending a quiet evening at home with The Boy. Although a quiet evening at home with The Boy is always lovely and never unwelcome, it was rather a suck choice to have to make—to leave or not to leave. Really though, I find myself asking if it was really a choice at all?

Yeah, no. I don’t think that it was.

Whee!

2007-06-08T23:47:00.000-05:00

The fact that Paris Hilton is going back to jail makes my heart sing.

It's not that I'm a hater. I'm just glad to know that "dumb whore" has not been declared an actual medical condition.

Yardageddon

2007-06-06T17:09:00.000-05:00

Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

This weekend is going to be Yardageddon 2007. It’s been a long time coming. From a tolerable distance, my backyard doesn’t look too bad. It’s shady and mostly green. A bit overgrown, sure, but I’m into that English Woodland Garden look.

Up close and personal though, it’s rather a clusterfuck. I have a superabundance of ivy, which looks fine, but allows for all manner of little fly-y bite-y creatures to breed without restraint and fuck with me mercilessly. There is tree life that knocks on my side door and invites itself in for cocktails and hors d’oeuvres. I think a vine just tried to eat Bennet.

It’s time to get all NoCo on this shit.

I have a weed whacker, and I hope that I have better luck with it than I have with my nemesis the lawnmower. I also have some trimmer thing, I don’t know what it’s called. I don’t need to know what it’s called because I don't care; it will chop plants into smaller bits and that is a good thing. I am going to borrow some lop shears.

Here’s the thing, though, does anyone have any suggestions for how to kill plants at the root? I looked at Roundup, but Roundup costs A Lot of Money, and I am poor. Roundup is out. Off brand weed killer has proven no match for the plant life around here.

Here are the things I’ve been told:

I’ve been told that drilling several holes into the trunk of a tree and pouring salt in will kill it. Done. The house next door has some piece of shit weedy tree just at the fence line that is trying to move into my house. I could cut it back, but why? They have all but abandoned that house, making no moves to sell it or rent it or reattach that siding that blew off last July. Fuck it. I’m sending the tree to see Jesus.

I’ve been told that plain white vinegar will kill plants reliably. Is this true? While not entirely thrilled about the possibility of my yard smelling like a cheap douche, I’ll give it a shot.

Any other ideas? At this point, I would probably put down some fucking Agent Orange if I knew where to find it.

Eat me, Alito

2007-06-02T23:36:00.001-05:00

Did anyone else notice when the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to seriously fuck over all the women in America this week? Anyone? Bueller?

No, it wasn't a reproductive rights decision. Right now they are satisfied on that front, having ruled that the cocksuckers in Congress are better qualified than our doctors and ourselves to determine what medical procedures we might or might not need. Unlike the recent decision to uphold the so-called "partial birth abortion" ban, their latest infernal ass-fucking will piss off any thinking human regardless of his or her opinion on abortion

No, no. This latest judicial slap in the face even screws over women who are safely past their child-bearing years. In Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. the Court decided, in essence, that while it is indeed illegal for companies to discriminate based on sex, it is only illegal for about six months. After that, it's fine. Or, at least, not actionable.

Same goddamned difference.

I suggest following the link and and reading the brief little analytical article on it. I might try to read the actual opinion once my blood pressure lowers itself enough that I can again see clearly, but I haven't yet. Here, though, is a synopsis :

Lilly Ledbetter retired from Goodyear after working there for 19+ years. At the time of her retirement, she earned $559 less than the lowest paid man who held the same position as she did. She had been paid less her entire career with Goodyear, based on the fact that she happened to be a woman at the time she was hired. The Court ruled that she could no longer to sue because Goodyear intended to discriminate only at the time they hired her, and Title VII stipulates she only had about six months from that date to file suit.

So, every time they they failed to STOP fucking her over because she was a woman? That's not important to this story. The fact that discovering pay disparity requires knowing what one's co-workers are paid, a process soundly discouraged by companies and by custom? Not important. The fact that the source of the original pay discrepancy, i.e. a vagina, was not at question? Tough titty.

You have GOT to be fucking shitting me. Seriously. This cannot be 2007. Continuing to fuck someone over for nigh unto 20 years does not constitute an ongoing intent to discriminate?

Fuck you, Alito. Seriouly. Fuck you.

seven/24

2007-05-31T18:30:00.000-05:00

So, this past weekend I did seven/24 VI, the 24 hour theater circus that The Tin Ceiling puts on every year. At 8 p.m. on Friday, 14 writers arrived at the Strasser’s gigantic and beautiful house. There, we were paired off to write 10-minute plays. At the same time, seven directors were auditioning actors over at the Theater at St. John’s. About 8 o’clock the next morning, the directors were presented with our scripts and began to cast and call actors.

Sounds simple, non?

Yeah, right. Nothing like 14 insecure lunatics let loose in pairs to try to assemble some vaguely entertaining narrative fueled only by exhaustion, booze, caffeine, and French onion dip. Further, the writers are constructing plays with absolutely no idea who might be available to act in them; while back at the ranch the directors are evaluating actors with no clue as to what they might need for their play. Figure in the vagaries of potential writer’s block and the ever-present possibility that a writing team might devolve into a sullen standoff, and the project begins with all the needed ingredients for disaster. And this is even before the actors try to memorize 10 minutes of dialogue and blocking over the course of a long day in a largely un-air-conditioned building.

Good times, my friend, good times.

Despite all that, seven/24 is an amazing experience. I understand that over the years there have been some disasters—bad plays or bad actors or writer shortages—but generally when all is said and done some amazing things happen. While I do not know that I would count my seven/24 work this year as an unqualified success, I think it went well overall.

This was the second year I wrote for show. My writing partner was the Boy, which absolutely floored the both of us since it is most unlike Robert the Producer to pair up couples to write. It could have gone one of two ways. Either the Boy and I were going to work smoothly and well, or we were going to wind up wanting to participate in a murder/suicide by the end of the night. I am pleased, and unsurprised, that it was the former. Our idea came early and the writing went smoothly. We finished at 2, which is practically early in seven/24 terms.

I was, and remain, extremely happy with how our script turned out. I have often complained of late that so very many plays tend to be so very, very male. They have male characters pursuing male interests and being compelling and interesting while women are mothers or love interests or pawns. Ours was a very, very female play.

I would like to take another opportunity to give a hearty thanks to god for our director and our actors. Had we not had an awesome female lead, our play would have slurped bilgewater and the baby Jesus would have cried. Who am I kidding? I’m sure our play made the baby Jesus cry anyway, but I thought it was lovely.

I was able to put my finger this year on a phenomenon that affected me last year as well. Writing something and anticipating its performance fills me with dread. All day, I just wanted to lock myself in the ladies room and cry my eyes out. I felt exactly the same last year, and the only thing both events had in common was that I had participated in the writing of something that was going to be performed. In front of people. Who were, you know, alive.

This year I exasperated the problem by getting a bit more personal with the work. When all was said and done it sort of turned into a “break your own femur and suck out the marrow” thing. I asked the Boy, a far more prolific and talented writer than I, if I could look forward to this part getting easier. “Nope,” he responds brightly.

Gotta love a man who tells the truth.

Sadly, my involvement with the production did not end with saving our script to the designated seven/24 flash drive. Oh no, that would be too fucking simple. After falling asleep at 4 a.m., I got a call at about 9:30. It was my inestimable future roommate. “Can you act?” she asks. Sure. Why the fuck not?

Well. I’ll tell you why the fuck not. Just because one was up writing until the wee hours and lacks much in the way of recent theater experience DOES NOT, contrary to what one might expect, mean that one will get a small part. Sometimes, the vagaries of seven/24 being what they are, it just means one is going to play an old lady in a muumuu for 10 minutes or so.

Zombie Killer and the incomparable Becky wrote a terrifically clever and funny play about a dysfunctional mother and son relationship and time travel, but, as I pointed out to Chris late in the evening after several cocktails, it had so many goddamned words. So. Many. Words. I never got those fucking lines anywhere near to cold. When all was said and done, I’m mostly happy with how the show turned out, but I still worry I didn’t do the script justice.

So. Picture this if you will. Me rehearsing and blanking on, oh, about every other line. I am not wearing makeup, which is fine because I haven’t brushed my hair either. I’m sweating and I suspect I’m starting to smell. I woke up with an “Oh my god I wrote a play” feeling of dread, and added to that a sense of “Oh my GOD I’m going to fuck up someone else’s play.” I think my fellow actors hated me before all was said and done, and frankly, I don’t blame them. Hoo-muthafuckin’-rah.

I like to act, and being on stage that night was mostly a good time (except when I was realizing that I’d just fucked up). There is nothing like the immediate “Love me! Love me!” that a loudly laughing audience provides. However, I cannot say that I would call THAT part of seven/24 “fun.” It was a wonderful challenge. It pushed me, not so much as an actor, but just personally. And I don’t think I would ever want to do it again.

Going Soft

2007-05-17T18:05:00.000-05:00

Today is one of those random weird St. Louis days where it feels like you’ve fallen asleep and woken up in another season. Today, St. Louis is proud to present fall, back by popular demand. It’s not bad at all, really, just a bit cool and breezy.

The loveliness of the day is helping me to keep my pervasive crabbiness in check. For over a week I’ve been waiting to hear about a promotion at work. Add to that waiting to hear about a recent audition. Throw in having to work Friday AND Saturday night at Pink Collar Wage Slave Job #2, and we should be rapidly approaching the point where Kate could gleefully punch a fucker in the throat.

Strangely, though, I’m doing okay. Anxious and extra-special whiny, but not seriously having a rage wallow. I must be going soft.

Who Would Jesus Hate?

2007-05-15T13:43:00.000-05:00

Jerry Falwell dead of apparent butter overdose.

Crap.

Now how are we supposed to know which children's cartoon characters are gay, or who should be blamed for the tragic death of thousands?

On Anniversaries

2007-05-13T22:58:00.001-05:00

Yesterday was, in a bizarre example of life’s occasional symmetry, the anniversary both of my marriage and of my divorce.

On May 12, 2001, I meringued up in a traditional fluffy white dress and walked down the aisle to meet the man on whom, it turns out, I had settled. Four years later at 2:30 in the morning on May 12, 2005, I realized that I was finished and that my marriage was over. Normally, I would call it May 11th due to my usual insistence that the next day doesn’t begin until one has slept and wakened, but that’s not important to this story. Whatever. Close enough, non? What does matter is that I can still remember the noise I made when I realized my marriage was over, indeed I don’t think I can forget it, but I don’t think I could ever reproduce it.

Let me pause here and say that I have never, for even one instant, regretted the fact that I’m no longer married to my ex-husband. Hell, I can still almost give myself a facial tic just by thinking about him.

Because unlike many of my fellow humans I do have a tendency to use my forebrain, I have made peace with the mistake that was my marriage and the . . . extraction . . . that was my divorce. The Ex was, at the time of our marriage, a drunk. I sort of knew it, but my wedding and marriage was all about denial, so I went right ahead. In retrospect, I met The Ex far too soon after what was, in essence,a bit of a nervous breakdown and a short but dreadful series of heart bruising and breaking. I didn’t need to get married; I needed an intensive round of the therapy.

That said, The Ex doesn’t get a free pass. He wanted to get married, and I was just the next woman who happened along. I think he knew less about who he was and what he wanted than even I did. Eventually, The Ex got sober. Once he cleared the whiskey cobwebs from his brain and soberly appraised the situation, he realized that he didn’t particularly like me. Which made me not particularly like me, either, but made me like him even less.

Like all things that are ultimately doomed a breaking point was eventually reached, and suddenly the Kate that I had somewhat lost reasserted herself. Realizing that my situation was fucked, my marriage was fucked, and the fool to whom I was married was completely fucked—I decided that it was time to leave. And to take most of the furniture with me.

There is some friendly back and forth among my friends and I as to whether or not he ever really loved me. Since I don’t think he ever really knew me, I say not really. In all fairness, I don’t know if I loved him enough for our marriage to have worked even had the halcyon period immediately following his sobriety continued.

In the moments when I do not feel like tarting up the truth in pretty ribbons and bows, I knew the person I was marrying pretty well. He had all the depth of your standard casserole dish. I failed to predict how out of control his drinking would get, sure, but I knew it was a problem because it was a familiar one (shout out to the family!). The problems we encountered after he stopped being a drunk were unanticipated, but predictable. Oops. His behavior changed, but only because he quit filling the echoing hollow of his empty inner-life with booze and began plotting to fill it with work and children for whom he expected me to care.

I married Mike because I didn’t think I was going to do any better. I divorced him because I realized that it didn’t matter if I could do better because I sure as hell couldn’t feel any worse. After Mike’s surprise at my announced decision wore off his relief was, as I recall, palpable. He wanted out as well, he just wasn’t strong enough to do it.

What took the longest time for me to come to terms with, indeed what still troubles me from time to time, was the fact that I was, after all, the kind of woman who would make these mistakes. I got married for foolish, selfish reasons. This led, inexorably, to divorcing. I failed not because my marriage ended, but because a stupid, weak choice necessitated my marriage ending.

That sound I made on that late, late night when I finally realized that my marriage was finished, that terrible, pained yip, was not the sound of me mourning the end of that relationship. No. It was the sound of realizing that I was not the person I thought I was.

Oh well.

Two years later I am okay with the person I am and okay with the mistakes I made. Not proud of them, or indifferent, but okay. I needed, I think, to fucking burn myself in all that. It seared off an awful lot of fluff. I hope that it didn’t temper me, that it didn’t make me hard; that’s not what I want. I would never want a stupid mistake made when I was young and raw to forever harden that part of my life. I don’t think it has.

I will not, however, be making that fucking mistake again.

Corporate Happy Interview

2007-05-09T18:38:00.000-05:00

So today I had an interview for a promotion at Pink Collar Wage Slave Job #1. I think it went okay, as I put on my happy employee gameface and did my level best to sound like someone who ultimately gives a shit about something besides my paycheck. One of the things I find so frustrating about job interviews at my (crappy) level of employment is how completely full of shit they are.

Looking around my job at present, I’m convinced that the following is a true and accurate transcript of the interviews of at least 3 of my co-workers:

Interviewer: So, what you’re telling me is that you’re functionally retarded, but not actually retarded?

Interviewee: *throws a handful of feces at interviewer*

Interviewer: Can you start Monday?

I wanted to sum up my qualifications as “Look, motherfucker. Some bad choices in my 20s have brought me here, to your mercy. Compared to the boneheads back in the cubes at the other office, I’m a goddamn genius. You should hire me for two reasons: 1: I’m smart enough not to embarrass you, and 2. I would kill myself if I had to do what you do every day so I’m absolutely no threat to you.”

Hooray. As it stands, though, I would like very much to get this new position if for no other reason than because it will bring me one step closer to being able to quit Pink Collar Wage Slave Job #2. Although Job #2 is a source of constant amusement, including explaining to the guy driving the crematorium van why I can’t announce his arrival on the overhead paging system, I’m ready to get back to the traditional single job configuration of the regular spoiled American.

Gone Too Long

2007-05-08T18:20:00.000-05:00

I have, I fear, been horribly remiss about posting of late. I was on such a roll, blathering aimlessly about anything that caught my fancy for more than a few fleeting moments. Then I went to Chicago which, you would think, might lead me on to ever greater flights of literary fancy.

Alas, no. Chicago made me wonder how I had utterly pissed away 30 years with nothing to show for it but a tiny house, an incontinent dog, and a nascent drinking problem. I did get a really good photo of me and the boy out of it. He’s so damn cute when he looks all tough guy. He was even cuter later when we were both completely geeking out about how damn cool The Sparrow was.

Seriously, though. I don’t know what has gotten into me. I’m less than inspired to write of late. Quite honestly, I think I’m so put out with so much stuff that I don’t even want to wade through the disgust to get to my computer to write about it.

You know things are well and truly fucked when you’re talking to a man with a toddler and a brand new, barely finished baby and he’s talking about humanity blowing itself up in 10 years. Personally, I have no great respect for this cat’s intellect or faith in the accuracy of his predictions for the future, but I do find it telling that at the point in one’s life when one should be veritably wallowing in hope and denial, enthusiastically lining all clouds in sparkly, shining silver, he looked into the innocent blue eyes of his newborn son and figured the poor little tosser would only make it to about 10.

And people think I’m a pessimist.

E-mail? What E-mail?

2007-04-18T13:36:00.000-05:00

My dear friend, the esteemed Liquor Fairy, recently blogged in response to the Retread Administration assertion that they have deleted—and cannot find—four years of e-mail that Karl Rove sent from his GOP account, including documents relating to the firing of federal prosecutors.

First of all, damn. Can you imagine what a wretched burden it would have to be to slog through four years of e-mail written by Karl Rove to other Republicans? The thought of it is giving me palpitations. Four years worth of “We should just EAT the poor. And brown people.”

Second of all, and more importantly, Mandy suggests that this “We deleted these e-mails and can no longer recover them,” is President Retread’s latest way of telling Congress to get bent. Instead of claiming executive privilege or screaming “I’m invisible! You can’t see me!” the president’s latest let-them-eat-cake move is just to say “We lost’em.” Worked for Nixon. Okay, not really, but whatever.

Her argument is that the Feds can certainly locate the deleted files on the hard drive in question, or at some servers down at AT&T, or something. And under normal circumstances, I would agree with her. But then? Then I actually take a look a this administration.

This is the person who brought us the war in Iraq. “Bring them on.” Who declared the "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq, back in 2003. President Retread brought us Hurricanegedon Katrina and its shocking, horrific, “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job” aftermath.

We couldn’t get potable water to American citizens. In America. They might NOT be able to get those e-mails back. Hell, I’m half surprised they managed to turn the little laptop fucker on.

I say we let Otto try.