Florals, for spring. Groundbreaking.

OK so the Fashion silhouette of the moment is: Bad.

Got those high, high, HIGH-waisted pants paired with boxy crop-toppy things, often with sad 70s Office Working Girl ruffles (even if the top in question is a SWEATER, y'all) and weird flaps and tiebacks and shit. I mean -- not me, I'm personally not wearing it, but like. If it doesn't look good on teenagers, and ya can't make it look good on professional clothing models, then I just. Don't hold out a lot of hope for us Normals. Especially not for me, personally, who has a literal inch between hipbone and bottom-most rib. At 46, I'm in the best fucking shape of my life, my bod is ROCKIN, but I look like the most amazingly misguided/overmedicated child's drawing of a girl in those outfits -- it's truly an abomination unto the Lord who Made Me. Thank christ I'm old enough not to fall for that shit again, midway through my fifth decade on this boiling blue marble, right?

And if it's not that, it's Dresses. Why god why. I don't wear dresses, except on very formal occasions, for reasons I may yet detail here (where the fuck else would I, right?), but -- ok. Look. I like dresses in theory, they look really good on y'all, and DAMN I have the legs for a dress but I cannot and will not wear dresses as a regular thing, so all these cute dresses that like, fucking Gap and Boden and whoever the fuckall Kim France is loving at the moment (and don't get me wrong, I fucking LOVE Kim France, I just have no idea who she's talking about, designer-wise, at any given moment, on account of having lived an entire life of thinking $80 is a real lot to spend on a shirt) are just -- not gonna happen for me.

And so: Here we are again, with me in distressed black jeans, band T-shirts, a flannel as a stand-in for the Northern-California-Perpetual-Light-Jacket-Item, and whatever footwear is at the axis of my personal assessment of Cool vs. Comfortable that particular day. I have Fly London, and Frye, but also I have fleece-lined Cons. So ...

Fuck, man. My Birks -- yes ok I have them, this is who I am now -- need to be tightened after a winter of wearing them (IN THE HOUSE ONLY, I SWEAR) with socks. And y'all tryna get me to wear dresses, or Skinny Jeans with a gotdamn 11-inch rise and a shirt with the lines of a Chinese takeout box. [siiiiiiiiiiiiigh] Whatever.

And when we go crashing down we come back every time

This Is Why People Have Kids' Parties at Kids' Party Places Like Pump It Up or a GodDamn Bowling Alley: A Partial List

• 16 fairies, with wings
• 2 little brothers
• 1 babysitter who was so helpful I should have paid her $500
• 1 parent who was so helpful I probably embarrassed her with the effusiveness of my thanks
• A fairy house painting craft (fucking Pinterest, goddamn) that was actually rather a success
• A cake parade (18 kids marching through the house shouting CAAAAKE! CAKE CAKE CAKE CAKE CAKE!!!, much like drunken adults at a bar when that "Shots" song comes on)
• A fairy dance party (primarily to Taylor Swift's entire 1989 album,* purchased online for the occasion, on repeat)
• The pin the wand on the fairy game (I forgot both the eye covering -- eventually using a scarf that, well ... I just really hope none of those kids had lice that night -- and the fact that there's supposed to be a prize for the winner)
• A fairy egg hunt in the gloaming, which served as the distribution for and stuffing of goodie bags 

Mr. Gleemonex and I are exhausted, but the party was a hit, and Kid Gleemonex was thrilled and grateful (oh my heck, one only turns eight once, doesn't one, after all?), and we are NEVER DOING THAT AGAIN.

---------------------------------------
*Here's how you know a person is An Old: They still call it an album and honestly can't think what the fuck else they're supposed to call it so shut up 

I mean, at least Blaze and the Monster Machines teaches about trajectory, and acceleration, and magnets and shit. GOD.

Could you have imagined that there is, in fact, something worse -- far worse -- than Paw Patrol? Even on Nick Jr. -- I'm not talking about those shouty, cunty, thoroughgoingly awful tweener shows on Disney et. al., which will absolutely not be allowed to play on any computer or televising device in my house now or ever, mark my words --  just good ol' inoffensive-if-occasionally-stupid Nick Jr.

And the answer, if you were imagining whether or not there was something worse than Paw Patrol, is: Yes.

You know what it is? It's Little Charmers. These fucking little student witches with their christing "Charm House" and sparkle magic wands and way-too-adult-poppy theme song and constant refrain of "Sparkle up, charmers!" and fake curse words like "Oh, toadstools!" and so on, which you let your first-grader watch because A) you are trying to let her Be Herself so you don't want to imply that girlieness or bestie westie BFFs are bad things even though you yourself get the mini-pukes just from thinking about the type of girly girl who invariably coos "Awwwwwwwwwwww!" in that singsongy widdle voicey-woicey when meeting a kitten, baby, or other Certified Canonical Cute Thing, and B) surely -- SURELY -- she will tire of it soon. Right? Right. Yes. Certainly. She will. She -- she will. Tire of it. PROMISE ME, JESUS!

Theme weeks are BULLSHIT and I'm not going to do them anymore: A treatise on why not.

So my kid's school has this thing called Red Ribbon Week, which is something or other about not doing crack because it's a ghetto drug, although they just tell the first graders a whole bunch of vague shit about "making healthy choices." Which, fine, whatever.

The problem -- the fucking PROBLEM -- is that they send home, on Friday, this list of all the shit for the themed days for the week beginning the very next Monday. It's a full weekend, and ain't nobody got time for that. So I kiiiiind of ignore it, a little bit, figuring we'll find something that'll do. But then on Sunday night, there is PANIC AND SCREAMING from the first-grader about Monday's Theme: Wear Red.

Kid Gleemonex does not wear red. She doesn't have one stitch, one thread, one ruffle of red clothing. She wears blue and only blue. Always. It is her thing. I remind her of that, and that this is why she has no red: She won't fucking wear it, so I don't fucking buy it anymore. But she won't just wear her school uniform, either, which is the only non-red option allowed. Tears, weeping, a keening ambulance-like wail of distress, heavy yelling (from me), etc. The next morning, the WORLD IS STILL AFLAME WITH PAIN at the goddamned red thing. So she ties her hair with red curling ribbon, makes a braided belt of same which she ties over her uniform, and the screaming stops.

Tuesday: Yellow and black, because "I BEE-lieve in the best Me I can BEE!" Mindful of Sunday night/Monday morning's emotional hellscape, I spend two fucking hours at the mall -- the MALL, with a two-year-old in tow -- dragging every single awful shitty tweener store for something that will do. Christ, there are a lot of those stores -- Justice, H&M Kids, Crazy 8, Old Navy, etc., plus of course Target. I pick up something at Old Navy that is yellow and gray.

Monday evening: Screaming, thrashing, recriminations: "It's got graaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay in it! You don't understand! It's supposed to be blaaaaaack! I HATE YELLOW!" etc. to infinity. Next morning, more of the same. She finally puts on the black velvet dress that is actually the base of her Halloween costume, pulls the uniform skirt over the dress's skirt, calls it good.

Tuesday morning: Back to goddamned Target to try again to find an item for Wednesday's theme: Team/Sports jerseys or T-shirts: "Let's TEAM UP to Get Active & Healthy!" Fascist conformist bullshit aside, Kid Gleemonex -- predictably -- has no such item. They're not BLUE. I find a Giants jersey (you know, they're in the World Series right now -- but this is the only Giants shirt in the entire South Bay, as far as I can tell).

Tuesday evening: WHY DO YOU ALWAYS BUY ME CLOTHES THAT ARE TOO BIG? THIS IS UGLY! (this goes on for a fucking hour).

Wednesday morning: [repeat] [repeat] [crying] Feeling emotionally abused, I finally just snarl "Wear it or don't, but get in the goddamn car." She did, but bitched at me for literally the entire ride and walk and standing waiting for the pledge of allegiance; various accusations were hurled, including but not limited to: me being mean, not understanding things, doing it wrong, could have made our own, she could have worn her soccer shirt, it's my fault she buttoned her cardigan wrong.

The moral of this story is twofold: 1) I begin to see that my kid is just a little bit tightly wound, and 2) Fuck "CRAZY HAIR/HAT AND/OR SILLY SOCKS" day tomorrow, right in the crazy nads.

Need to get this in front of my exec team by EOD Monday so hoping to sync up EOD Sunday.

I do not ever miss my old job. Some of the people, I miss; I miss being in the city, eating in non-chain restaurants, taking a lunchtime walk along the San Francisco Bay. I miss office in-jokes, skiving off work to go get Blue Bottle, meeting up for drinks. I even miss, a tiny bit, actual editing, writing and website work -- I was good at it.

But I do not ever, EVER miss 98% of what I did, or the people who sent me goat-horned bullshit like this.

8 – Can we get more livestock and wild animals that move along the ground according to their kinds? Again, the passion points for our target users (slide eighteen) are ground and animals that move along the ground. Whatever we can do to increase the amount of ground will go a long way toward converting our users from passive consumers into brand evangelists.

California is both the greatest, and the worst.

Goddammit, we have to talk about vegetable lasagna. Or, rather, vegetable "lasagna," because that is some air-quote-deserving bullshit right there.

Why do people think that people who don't eat meat or just don't feel like it today would rather eat a goddamn panful of wet gross zucchini and wrong-textured bell peppers sliding all around over the noodles instead of: CHEESE LASAGNA? The kind that is just like the traditional meat version, but without the meat? It's the same people who, if you say you don't want meat on your pizza, will come back to you with a pizza-like item that is fucking covered with two pounds of broccoli and red onion and (again -- AGAIN -- with this fucking stuff) zucchini. What the fuck is that? I didn't say I wanted a fucking farmer's market on top of some bread, hippie! And listen, don't try to tell me that the vegetable "lasagna" or the Jolly Green Giant "pizza" is healthy, or even "healthier," because it's not -- you already made the decision to eat something that is basically carbs and cheese, so own it, and get that cock-knuckled vegetable shit out of my face.

Makes me actively wish for Global Thermo-mooooo-clear War.

34/40

Y'all know that noise from the old Hanna-Barbera-style cartoons, that percussive noise I've always called in my head the "lickety-split" noise? Where a character is trying to beat feet somewhere real quick-like, but for a few seconds, they're stuck in place while their eyes bug out and their legs just pedal uselessly in a cloud of dust and/or other legs?

I fucking hate that noise. It drives me out of my goddamn tree, and it always has, since my earliest memories. Total rage-trigger.

So it is especially unfortunate that my kids' new favorite show, a computer-animated ball of suck called "Tickety Toc," features this noise on the reg. Multiple times per episode. In between this christing cow character's christing "moo" wordplay (e.g. moooovelous, moooootivation, a-mooooo-zing, etc. forever), that is. I had thought that the worst thing was to find oneself staring into the fathomless void of Dora the Explorer's eyes as she waits for you to repeat "las estrellas!", feeling the dread and angst of all life and knowing the cold bleak infinity that lies beyond.

But no, it's that fucking lickety-split noise, followed by some asinine remark by Tommy or Tallulah, capped with "abso-moooooot-ly!"

It's nodda too-muh!

15/40

Y'all, I just spent the entire school day, 8:50 - 3:00, volunteering at my kid's school (a one-time only gig, I can assure you all). I am sofa king dead, and wiped, and utterly out of can. No more can. All the can was poured out along with three-quarters of those gormless space cases' chocolate milk after lunch.

How in the everShatnering FUCK do teachers do this?

It's turned us into a nation of people who say stuff like "open concept," as if that's even a thing.

These days, whenever I'm mainlining HGTV (which is often. like, really often. shamefully often.), I generally prefer the home-renovation shows (Property Brothers, the weirdly addictive Flip or Flop*), but I still see a fair amount of House Hunters and its various Law & Order-style spinoffs (HH International, HH Renovations, etc.).

And my favorite part of every House Hunters, always, is when one of the twerpy newlyweds realizes what a world-class pain in the ass their partner is. You can actually see why 50 percent of marriages end in divorce: It's because somebody married someone who, when they're both standing in the walk-in closet of the master bedroom (WITH a camera crew), cannot stop themselves making that stupid fucking joke that every nimrod makes about "Haha ok so this is great but where does YOUR stuff go?"

-----------------------------------
*Which Mr. Gleemonex and I are both hoping someday shows a complete, total flameout of a flip -- where Tarek & Christina lose their entire investment and more, ending up selling it for like twelve hundred bucks. 

Cameltoe City, USA

Things I Wrote In Meetings, Date Undetermined, Found in Notebooks I'm Finally Getting Rid of Now That I've Been Free of the Old Day Job for Over a Year Thank the Living Shatner, Which Things I Do Not Remember Writing Nor Do I Remember the Meetings That Caused Them: Continuation of a Series

--Idea: Axl Rose branded line of hot rollers and hot roller accessories

--Put your arms down, you look like an asshole. 

--Food trucks? That's your big idea? FOOD TRUCKS? Jesus. 

--The millennials don't want to be pitched to. SON, WHO YOU THINK INVENTED THAT? Fuck all y'all. I'm sick of hearing about how they want "conversations" and we don't own our own brand. Fuck you self important ADD motherfuckers. Go do a fucking group project and eat some cereal.

--yes, I am staring at your boobs

--[Yet another large drawing of the logo for my fantasy used-book store, Here Comes the Sun.]

--I want you to write ... a theme.

--[Yet another large drawing of a lawn sign for "Chuck Finley, Importer/Exporter"]

--Buy your sofas, chairs, ottomans, love seats, recliners and daybeds at Sofa King -- It's Sofa King Awesome!

--Please Jesus get me out of this before they try to make me videotape myself and watch it.

I was just another fucked-up cleric with a bad heart.

OK, so in my current line of work I don't wear "pants" and no one goes to Starbucks with me and I forget how to talk to adults and occasionally the hem on my brain falls out and oftentimes the most nutritious lunch I have in a week is TJ's garlic hummus with the lite pita chips, but christ do I love my day job (which is fortunate cause it's also my night job, my weekend job, and my holiday job). Here's one of the million reasons why: No one in this house has suggested I attend a webinar as part of my development plan. Suck it, Ragan Communications! Go explain "When you're allowed (gasp!) to break the rules!" to somebody who gives a fuck!

They're real, and they're spectacular.

Note to self: Please, please stop trying to buy bras via the Internets. You keep doing this, and doing this, and doing this, and all it gets you is shipping charges, dashed hopes and body dysmorphia. Go to the goddamn store and get goddamn measured and try on some goddamned bras. Yeah yeah yeah you got two kids, when're you ever gonna have an hour to stand in the goddamned Macy's dressing room getting harassed by the bra lady. I don't know, figure it out. Christ. You with the Internets bra-buying.

From the darkest depths of a neverending Project using tools that were most emphatically not my choice

Microsoft Word, you go to hell.

You go to hell and YOU DIE.

I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel.

And but so here's another thing: Do you ever wonder whether somewhere in all that Duggary Duggarness, there's a Duggar kid who's like, "This fucking SUCKS. I hate sharing a bathroom with forty fuckin other kids, I don't even know if that one over there is ours or not, my mom is just a vagina with a face, I called Jinger 'Jorgia' and she didn't even notice, if I hear one more Biblical math lesson or Biblical history lesson or Biblical fucking chemistry lesson I'm going to burn this house down with everybody in it, my dad is a goddamn lunatic trying to replenish the earth all by himself, I only ever just saw a black person in real life LAST WEEK, there's no way I'm marrying that freaky twerp from that other Christing overpopulating homeschool family we hang with, and I'm sick to fucking death of that beshitted taco pie thing we eat by the 55-gallon drum every fucking Wednesday. The very MINUTE I turn eighteen I am changing my name to Terry Smith, getting my entire reproductive system removed, and FLEEING TO BOLIVIA and they will never ever find me. They won't even know I'm gone till it's time to do the publicity shoot for the next time they have to change the name of our show on Discovery -- 'Thirty-Nine and Counting!' Feets don't fail me now."

Or so the Germans would have us believe.

Me and Acting, or: There Are So So SO Many Reasons I Am Not A Star of Stage and/or Screen, You Don't Even KNOW.

So because I cannot stop myself (decade-long girlcrush), I am re-reading Bossypants in bits and pieces before I turn in for the night. And I'm thinking about Acting, and how for me, that's such burned, scorched territory, never to be traversed.

I did some THEATRE back in the day -- compulsory, in the case of church xmas plays and elementary-school pageanty thingies, but everybody did that stuff.

What astounds me in thinking on it is the times I did it voluntarily in high school, never mind the fact that I am A)spectacularly terrible at it, and B)hate it like I hate group projects, quarterly check-ins with the grandboss, and the thought of actual jail.

Unlike Ms. Fey and others who do this for a living, I did THEATRE not because I actually wanted to, but because in my mind, it was what Alternative kids did. In my defense, there weren't a lot of options in Cowburg High School that had even a whiff of Alternative about them -- Mr. Gleemonex loves to just die laughing at the clubs in my HS yearbook, what with Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Future Farmers of America, Auto Shop, etc.

But I'm still kind of at a loss to explain why I was so sure that Drama Club and One-Act Play and taking Theatre as an elective were so important to me (at least 9th & part of 10th grade, after which I outgrew that particular flavor of horseshit and sampled a few others). I never understood what was fun about it -- it was a lot of extra-hours work, you didn't really control anything (least of all your fellow actors), the word "thespian" is stupid, I certainly didn't "become" Becky Thatcher in my disastrous stint in the role, and hot calzone-fucking SHATNER did I hate the actual performances. I still remember the dread, the angst, the pure distilled loathing of the event ... I didn't even want my family to come to the shows, because I knew I was terrible and I hated everything and its ASS FACE.

And there weren't even any cameras or stagehands and such. If I had to do any acting -- like, say, it was a demand made by people who had kidnapped a family member -- I'd probably end up getting murdered by the crew or my co-stars for gumming up the works. Y'all, I can't even take a normal snapshot -- I stand there all frozen-smiling, trying not to blink, wondering if my chin looks weird, dying to brush that single strand of hair out of my eye, adjusting my stance so I don't look like I have lunch-lady arms, waiting for somebody to TAKE THE FUCKING GODDAMN PICTURE ALREADY, CHRIST IT'S DIGITAL, TAKE FOUR HUNDRED OF THEM TO GET ONE THAT WORKS OR ELSE JUST KILL ME NOW.

So anyway. Actors: My hat is off to you, sirs and madames. I reserve the right to bag on you freely in this here blog, but I'll never not give you credit for doing the impossible.

"I don't have to outlast Dunder-Mifflin. I just have to outlast you."

Yesterday's Team Vision & Strategy Meeting, By the Numbers

Total hours duration: 4.5

Number of large cartoon drawings of horrified, stricken-seeming faces drawn in my notebook: 1

Tally of what my brain said while my manager was speaking:

STFU: 21

YOOYFE*: 7

OH! IRONY!: 3

Times it looked like the consultant wanted to kill us all with a thick and high-powered jet of fire: 3

Absolute neologisms: 1

Specifically: The word "family" used as a verb. Ex.: "Tell us how those things family together."

-------------------------------------------

*You're out of your fucking element

"And Samir Naga- ... Nagan- ... " "Not-gonna-work-here-anymore!"

It's Either This, Or Start SCREAMING MY FUCKING BALLS OFF In These Meetings: A Selection of Things Scribbled Almost Unconsciously In My Notebook, While Wearing a Very Serious Face, During a Ninety-Minute Impromptu Team Meeting Yesterday

Oh, it's a war, all right.

NO KIDDING

[Drawing of a stairwell eight or nine stories high, with stick-figure person falling down the center]

I ain't get paid weekend money

[heavily circled about fifteen times]

have those conversations IIII/ I

processes [long e] III

respectful IIII

White House IIII/ IIII

[drawing of a stick figure w/dunce cap, and thought balloon saying: fml]

I'm expert at excaping

The irony, of course, is that [REDACTED] is the ultimate corporate-speaker

[someone else's handwriting] omg I have to pee

[drawing of an eye with a fork stuck in it]

Oh boy. They have sequins.

So I'm watching actual, live/real-time network TV on Friday night in the Emergency Room,* and something terrible called "Wife Swap" comes on.

And I can't decide which is worse:

--The self-described "all-American Texas football family," with the laughably self-described "trophy wife" (I think you bought it at the wrong trophy store, dude), the members of which prided themselves on being "hard-working" Republican Christians (with that ugly & disgusting assumption such people have, that anyone who isn't at least upper middle-class just doesn't like to work and is a lazy commie welfare cheat) who love football above all else, and having a mom/wife who literally does nothing but cook meat-based meals, clean the tract house, and attend various football-related activities for the two hulking porcine teenage date-rape suspects they called sons.

--The "hippie" family from Georgia, the members of which (especially the dad) do drum circles and "clowning" (not "clowning around," as in, goofing off -- I mean "dressing up like fucking MIMES and putting on little mime shows and shit, unironically, for spectators' presumed wonderment and delight"), have no actual jobs, and have a mom/wife who hasn't shaved her armpits in 20 years (because she doesn't believe in gender roles).

--The very concept of the show, designed to exploit everyone's worst preconceptions and prejudices for trainwreck-style entertainment under the guise of busting those very notions down. BULLLLLLLLLLLSHIT.

-------------------------

*The kid had what turned out to be croup, fixable with a few 'roids, some ibuprofen, and boatloads of Yo Gabba Gabba. But it was after-hours, so off to the ER we went, on the alarmed say-so of the advice nurse after we held the phone up so she could hear the kid breathing her horrible terrifying rattly wheezy breaths. Good times!

FM(W)L, vol. 2

True Tales of the Office: A Few More Things Either Spoken in My Presence or Emailed to Me Recently By Actual College Graduates For Whom English Is Allegedly Their First Language

"We are no longer resourced to that task."

"As noted in the deliverables grid here are the current timings (these dates will likely be adjusted and pushed out as we have been delayed in landing on the stylesetter designs)."

"I wanted to share some insights I culled from a session I attended at [company X] after work yesterday – where [they] provided their learnings of reaching and connecting with their users and customers as well as the media to influence their story externally. I think it’s good food for thought as we think about how we want to position our [work]."

"From what I recall, that was a call-out from [bigboss] to have a couple people report out on [that matter]. And because you’d been tapped, there’s probably an expectation for you to continue."

"Hello [people], thank you for your partnership and contributions-to-date on [project]. I am appreciative of the guidance and expertise which you have shared with our team. As you know, we recently went down two headcount on my team and therefore, available 'people' resources, which were slated against our {x} strategies, have been impacted forcing me to make some tough decisions."

"I’d itemize an action line around your being pro-active in reaching out to business partners. Otherwise, this document could be interpreted as [reacting] rather than taking ownership and driving."

"[Gleemonex], I’d suggest, in the future, not sending out thoughts like that to everyone here."

Also: I am supposed to "own this"

Things I Wrote In A Notebook During Meetings, In Which I Remember Neither The Meeting Nor Writing These Things During Them: A Sampling Of Fairly Recent Vintage, Well Past The Time When I Realized I Shouldn’t Do This Anymore But Proving, I Guess, That The Habit Is So Ingrained That It’s Pretty Much Unconscious/Lizard-Brain-Level Activity For Me

--REPEATED calls to action

--o’ersharing will resolve itself

--Etiquette Q: is it entirely kosher to ask a Q during the first run of a presentation?

--Every variety of muck and lard known to the takeout food industry.

--“action learning”

--[large drawing of a sign on a post stuck into the ground; many graphic flourishes]
CHUCK FINLEY
exporter – importer

--apparently it was serious

--Mathletes

--[large drawing of a sofa topped with an elaborate crown]
SOFA KING
It’s Sofa King awesome!

--I am in ~total hate~ of that idea