Scary spice

Two more things, Internets:

1) I bet there are some fucking kickass parties at Rip Torn's house. I mean like Van Halen backstage in 1984 kickass.

2) California, goddamn, I love ya, you know that, but seriously -- what's with those scary-ass warnings all over the vinegar & salad dressing shelves in my goddamn supermarket? Y'all, I was just gettin me some red wine vin to make my awesome shallot vinaigrette, and all over the place there's these little cards all of a sudden: PROP 65 WARNING: THE BALSAMIC VINEGARS AND RED WINE VINEGARS ON THESE SHELVES CONTAIN LEAD, A PRODUCT KNOWN TO THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA TO CAUSE BIRTH DEFECTS AND OTHER REPRODUCTIVE HARM. Had me googling on my iPhone right there in the aisle to find out WTF, and if that's true why they still sellin it to innocent old lead-avoidant me -- turns out you'd have to drink like six gallons a day to even reach this minuscule threshhold for damage, so I went ahead and bought the shit, but ... holy marinated Shatner, why you gotta scare a girl like that?

In the sleepy west / of the woody east

Two things, Internets, and for once only one of them is television-based:

--Sesame Street. My kid is obsessed with it (we got her these two DVDs for Xmas, 40 Years of Sunny Days, which is a sort of best-of from all the seasons), so since we’re about to be driven nutbag by the repetition, we thought we’d TiVo a few current eps. First of all, it’s only on for an unforgivable ONCE a day. Remember when it used to be on like four or five times and you just had to sort of find something else to do while you waited out the horrible, horrible Electric Company and the meh Mr. Rogers in between eps? Secondly, it’s so … earnest now. The skits go on too long, they’re very draggy, there’s none of that punchy quirky jump-in, jump-out stuff they used to just throw in there, there are Serious Lessons all the damn time, Cookie Monster is basically shelved (listen, MY generation wasn’t the one with the childhood obesity problem – I don’t think it’s fucking Cookie Monster’s fault, so why does he get the blame? Why is HE sent off to the Old Age Home for Disgraced and Discredited Puppets? Fuck that noise), and to top it off, all the new characters are these uninteresting babbly little toddler-aged puppets who, like, mispronounce stuff – what kind of thing is that to teach a kid? GOD! Kid Gleemonex lasted about twenty seconds into the ep before she started in with the “I don’t like this one. Mommy, skip it! Want to watch monstos.” (Which is what she calls Grover, et. al. – clearly these fools weren’t monsters, and this crap wasn’t Sesame Street, eh?)

--My gal uncouth heathen linked to this totally awesome sorority rush dress code from some silly bitches at Cornell – srsly, you should read it, it is hysterical, and it totally validates (for the billionth time) my lifelong aversion to this particular subset of female relationship crapola, and besides, for real, girls, you’re at Cornell -- if you really had the mettle for some serious motherfuckin sorority life, you shoulda gone to Vanderbilt or something so give it up. But more importantly to me personally, the tone of this dress code – the intensely personal voice of the writer – put me immediately in mind of this person, the unnamed person from an unnamed part of the Gleemonex past. It could absolutely have been written by this person, with his/her egomania, prescriptive view of everyone else’s life, and unshakeable faith in his/her eternal and thoroughgoing righteousness. It is uncanny. For all I know, that’s actually what he/she is up to right now – yet another completely invented life, this one in Ithaca, New York, raining capricious and terrible misery into the lives of innocent, impressionable teens once again …

Mike Holmes: Godlike man, or actual god in man suit?

Fresh hot new obsesh, y'all. Holmes on Homes.

Somebody done your house wrong? Some lazy good-for-nothin (probably a lush) piece-a-shit contractor drywall over a gigantic skein of live wire, 130 junction boxes (128 of which are totally unecessary) and a mold spore the size of a goddamn Great Dane? Some idiot with a total of four (4) days as a runner on a convenience-store construction site sign on to double your house's square footage (now that the triplets are on their way and also your widowed gramma is moving in), then absconded with the funds and also sued you for $90K more? Fired a crew that you caught replacing your main roof beam with a bunch of taped-together toilet-paper rolls, but they already cashed your checks and now they're so gone, it's like they never existed (sorta like Ian Ziering)?

Mike Holmes will kick ass, take names, put a goddamn vapor barrier on your basement for pete's sake, and bring his guys in (he knows about ... seventy-five guys) to prevent your family from dying in a fire, being crushed under rotted termite-infested timbers, or living forever in raccoon-piss-smelling squalor. And it will look fucking AWESOME. You will weep.

I'm telling you guys: We watched, I think, eight hour-long episodes this weekend. CANNOT GET ENOUGH. MUST HAVE MORE HOLMES. Holmes for President. Holmes for Emperor. Holmes for breakfast.

Wiggity wiggity wack

Weird episode at the cafe at the end of the universe yesterday, y'all. Once I'd signed off of work for the day, I took the kid to pick up some groceries and then to stop at the cafe for a treat. We were the only two customers in the place, which is pretty unusual, and the Disaffected Yute behind the counter was one of the regular staffers, with whom I have previously had zero problems. So I buy Kid Gleemonex a cookie (which I will eat 80% of -- this is my kid, after all, and she'll get heavily into sugar soooon enough -- I don't have to let her start now). She chooses us a table while I wait for my coffee.

The Disaffected Yute ponders a moment, then says, "Can I ask you a question?"

I say, "Ahhh ... sure," cause I'm thinking "Great, he's gonna try to sell me something, or proposition me or something weird that I'm not gonna like."

He goes, "Do you have a problem with authority?"

My mental response: "What the fuck?" (Meanwhile he's, like, holding my coffee hostage until I answer.)

My verbal response: "Not ... really, no. I'm not a fan of running into brick walls with my face."

Disaffected Yute: "Cause *I* do. I definitely do. I don't LIKE it, for one thing." And he's starting to get kind of agitated.

So I'm starting to get a hinky feeling -- maybe I've read too much of that "Gift of Fear" stuff, but still. Hinky.

I take my coffee and try to edge away, saying "Yeah, well -- there are usually ways around stuff that don't affect you that negatively," or something like that. My heart is really starting to beat jerkily, I'm getting seriously nervous.

He says with an air of resolve, "I'm gonna DO it."

I'm all, "Uh huh, ok ..." and I go to sit with my kid and my coffee. He's got his back to me now, fidgeting with stuff behind the counter, and my head fills with thoughts of various workplace shootings and whatnot and how this Disaffected Yute with the Problem With Authority might be about to start his killin' spree with the bourgeois bitch with the toddler and the iPhone (I had taken it out of my pocket with the half-formed idea of dialling 911 -- ridiculous? maybe ...). He starts striding back and forth into the storeroom and clanging stuff together, and I tell Kid Gleemonex, "We are going now. Come with mommy." She looks straight at me and -- instead of protesting and screaming NO and clinging to the chair like she normally would if I tried to cut her off after one bite of cookie -- she said "OK, mommy," and hopped down from the chair and we practically ran out of there.

He meets me at the door (good thing he didn't block my way or I woulda clotheslined him) and says, "Is anything wrong?" and I'm all, "Nope, just got a text, my husband's going to be home in just a second, gotta run!" And seriously, we did -- or I did, carrrying the groceries and the toddler, for the four or so blocks home in some ferocious wind, my heart just pounding and my pits all sweaty.

Took me an hour to come down from that, and goddamn did I feel ridiculous after, but -- that was a primal, unstoppable response to perceived (possible) threat on my part, and I could not have shut it down if you all collectively had sat on me, the entire Internets.

Weird, huh?

Are you EMPLOYED, sir?

Well, Internets, we're dismissed early today, and have the day off on Monday, so before I disappear into potty-training boot camp for three desperate days, I'm'a give y'all some work-related fun bites. Enjoy! And remember: If your job description no longer includes making or fetching lattes for your boss at her whim -- her snippy, passive-aggressive, insane bitchass English whim -- you're doing OK.

Client: You know about final cut pro right?
Me: Yes.
Client: I hear there is a button that makes the video go into focus.
Me: What do you mean into focus?
Client: Well I shot video but it’s all out of focus and I hear there is a button in final cut pro that will fix this for me.
Me: I don’t think that’s possible.
Client: I thought you said you knew final cut pro.

Clients From Hell

Guy A: "For this project, we have a text document with all the copy that will go on our 1,500 page site. We will need to build mockups of all 1,500 pages in Photoshop and update each of them every time there's the slightest text change in the word document."
Guy B: "That sounds like a great way to streamline the work flow and make sure there are no confusions."

Business Guys on Business Trips

• Boss: What's the name of that coffee place?
• Me: Uh, that we ordered from for the meeting?
• Boss: No, no... that coffee place. The one that I like.
• Me: Do you mean Starbucks?
• Boss (snapping fingers): Starbucks! That's it.

Things My Boss Has Said (another Sarah Brown joint)

Irregularities

Can I just ask what is the fucking DEAL with everything in the grocery store yelling about how great it is for your bowels? First that stupid yogurt (the commercials keep saying how great you'll feel & how much energy you'll have and how awesome life will be and how your kids and your dog will definitely start loving you again and your husband will quit cheating on you with that leggy young hottie who -- it is implied -- never has a problem dropping steamers), then the known fiber cereals reminding us all how they were totally on this trend back in the eighties and but only now they taste less like henhouse insulation ("Colon Blow and youooooooooooo ... in the morrr-ning!") , and now it's everygoddamnbody -- pecans in the bakery aisle, certain kinds of milk and orange juice, crackers -- I spotted a redesigned Raisin Bran box, good old little damn Raisin Bran, where there's this tiny little picture of the cereal in question and the other 80 percent of the front was this huge proclamation about DIGESTIVE HEALTH. Why why whyyyyyyyy? Why do we have to talk about this stuff? WHY?

Not even a thin layer of gabardine!

There’s a guy I know who has a thing about “BART pants,” as in, the pants you wear while riding BART: Any pants you wore on BART cannot also sit on your home furniture. You have to change clothes before you sit on the couch.

Now, this rule, and indeed the very concept of BART pants, came up in conversation at work about five years ago, and this bunch of us who used to have lunch together laughed our fucking FACES off at the time and have continued to bring it up again and again over the years – but no one, and least of all me, could deny the truth and also the practical necessity of the BART pants rule.

Because, people: BART is fucking horrible. The seats are all cloth … unsterilizable, un-wipeable woven cloth that’s been in use for decades. Decades of SHATNER-KNOWS-WHAT getting rubbed into them – general Homeless Person Funk, specific human body emissions material (whether in gas, liquid, or solid form), various cooties and vermin, substances which cling to the bodies and clothing of persons from twelve-cat or ferret/snake households, etc. Cleaning is a joke – there’s not a seat or a seatback untouched by a Mystery Stain, a schmear of something it really doesn’t bear thinking about if you don’t want to turn into some sort of housebound manic phobic who bathes in hand sanitizer and shaves her head to make it easier to do a full decon every hour on the hour.

So this past weekend, you get a bunch of dumbasses think it’s funny to go pantless on BART, as part of a worldwide super-hilare stunt of riding transit sans pantalones.

PANTLESS.

ON BART.

Jesus H. W. SHATNER in a frilly metallic thong with the hairy bits hangin out, y’all!

First of all: Are you people STUPID or something? Do you know what you’re exposing yourselves to? Did you give this any fucking thought at all?

Secondly: Do you numbnuts idiots have any idea what you’re exposing US to? Innocent citizens – working, taxpaying motherfuckers – forced to share airspace with your junkular regions! I don’t live in a nudist colony or goddamn Brazil or wherever for a reason, you exhibitionist fucktards! Find another way to get your jollies. GOD!

I got cake like ...

3 MORE SECONDS TO CHOOSE YOUR KNIFE
Is anyone else having trouble letting go of the “Jammies!” video from SNL last week? I woke up at 4:12 a.m. Monday morning, unable to force the ol’ brain needle to skip this track – kept seeing Franco bending the glo necklace, looking around all confused … thinking of “Pills! Pills! Everyone must take at least one pill!” … then the bloody carnage at the end … it’s real weird, y’all.

COME, COME, NUCLEAR BOMB
Speaking of real weird: My friend the Mick sent me a Holiday Card from her law firm. I’ll address this to her directly: OK, so I got this one in January, which is a real improvement over getting the Holiday 2008 one in October 2009, so yay USPS! But the thing is, though I did (and still do) fear the Floating Wreath of Doom on 2008’s missive, I am much more cowed by the half-second-after-the-blast hydrogen-bomb glow of the aught-nine edition. This is the photo taken in the fraction of an instant before the trees all blow toward me and I’m vaporized. Well played, [Law Frim], well played.

IT’S LIKE A THING FROM THE FUTURE, LIKE THE LIQUID METAL TERMINATOR FROM T2 ONLY NOT TRYING TO KILL YOU
I hardly know how to say this, so I’m going to gank the words from the fabulous Blabbermouse:

So. I got an iPhone.

I GOT AN iPHONE!
TRA-LAH-la-LAH-LAH YEAH BITCHEZZZZ!

Hot damn, these things make you a bad wife.

She’s right, as always. I have no idea what went on in my house after I opened this giftie at like 9:30. No clue. But so why now, and not at xmas? Cause today my birfday, y’all! And with that, I’ll conclude this post with a little trip in the wayback machine:

SOMETHING I WOULD HAVE LIKED TO TELL MY 26-YEAR-OLD SELF, NOT THAT I WOULD’VE LISTENED TO ME:
Girl, you are about to go to the Front Room and celebrate today’s birthday by drinking a truly obscene amount of beer with Mr. Gleemonex, the Smeefers, Stinking Kevin, the Asian Sensation, and … um, some other people, maybe Lebowski, I forget who all. Point is: $2.00 pitchers, y’all. So here’s an idea: why don’t you plan ahead and take TOMORROW off? You’re not going to, are you? All concerned about the amount of PTO you have in the bank? Well listen, sister. You’re gonna walk in to work late, sickened (more than usual) by the festering chaos of U.N. Plaza, and your boss’s boss is gonna look at you with your unwashed hair, untucked shirt, fresh-off-the-floor jeans and seen-better-days sneakers and say very dryly, “Casual Wednesday, eh?” And laaaaaugh his ass off.

Irritant

So I was reading the NYT's Book Review section yesterday, which despite the fact that I am a compulsive nonstop reader of books is a thing I rarely do because all it produces in me is a giant untamed raging feeling of WANT IT, WANT ALL THESE, NOW NOW NOW and that's really just unhelpful, life-management-wise, and I come across this, like, graduate skool essay by Katie Roiphe on the "meek" generation of American Male Writers (she names as evidence the truly genius David Foster Wallace and then sorta wanders on to all those Brooklyn kids named Josh and Jonathan and Joshua and whatever, that glib and annoying in-love-with-itself stuff I ain't got NO TIME for, because ugh). I admit I skimmed it -- wouldn't you? -- but I did catch that she was kind of defending my Most Hated of All Lit'rary Hatees, Updike and Styron and the rest of those disgusting lecherous old assholes, on the grounds that a lot of their writing about sex and women was -- allegedly, according to Katie -- intended to be comic. To which I have to say: buuulllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllSHIT.

That's all! OK, so, happy Monday, and welcome 2010!