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.

And then the whores come in

12/40

Lost the Docs (some fool paid nearly $160 in the end -- christ, isn't the joke over by that point?), but won a pair of hi-waisted cutoff denim shorts of the type I happily tossed away fifteen years ago for just eight bucks, so ...

Wait, did I just say I "won" those? Might as well get shitfaced on Bartles & Jaymes now, make the experience complete.

There's NO FILM IN IT, DENNIS!

What.

The FUCK.

Is this fucking bullshit waterheaded fuckaround with making books that are only in Kindle?

Twice in the last week I've tried to buy books that I FUCKING WANT (Sepinwall, Takei), and THEY'RE ONLY IN FUCKING KINDLE.

Somebody tell me I'm just being a goddamned old lady all "Where's my glasses? Did you put the cat out? How do ya work this here thingamajiggy? Why can't President Hoover fix my vacuumer-machinerator? He built it!" and it's just that I can't figure it out. Please tell me that, and show me, with the patience of my own great-grandson indulging his beloved old daffy Grannykins, how to find the print products on the Internets because it's just well-hidden to force me to buy Bezos's stupid numbnuts whirligig, would you?

Because if this is the fucking future -- as in, they're not making paper-based books anymore -- then

I FUCKING QUIT. 

When I am King you will be first against the wall

So I'm looking through the restaurants section of Fodor's Hawaii 2012, for I shall soon have need of it, and I find I am mentally totting up:

Words and Phrases You Must Fucking Stop Using When Writing About Restaurants -- I Don't Care That It's Hard to Come Up With Other Words, Because That's What You Fucking Get Paid For: A Partial List

eatery
     This word is the living devil. 

wash down
     Ugh. Puts one in mind of having stuff stuck in the throat.

save room
     In my stomach, you mean? Bleah. Pleasant image.

flock
     Do the locals really travel there in a pack, moving as one? Really? 

decadent
     So sick of good/bad moral judgements & valuations in re: food.

churning out
     This is supposed to increase my desire to go to this place? They "churn out" food?

melt in your mouth
     Again with the mouth stuff.

gobble
     I believe I have already discoursed 'pon this topic at some length.

veggies
     Ditto.

chow down
     Perhaps you want I should chow down at the place that churns out food? What is this, a barnyard?

addicts
     So you mean people who would sell their own mama's pink housecoat for forty cent to get just one rock of it?

I ... can't.

Anyone who didn't see THIS coming is full-on submental.

Much like the Duggars themselves, I say.

He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least among you, you did not do for me.'

Wow.

This -- the below -- is what nearly half of the country believes. They're CHEERING the thought of an uninsured person dying for lack of health care.

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/09/indecent.html

Sully has the video. You can hear these vile swine cheering -- the applause drowns Ron Paul out.

It's times like these that make me wish I believed in an actual, literal Hell. Instead, it's right here, like a bunch of guys who brought smallpox and hunting knives and rabid pitbulls into a mosh pit where the rest of us were pogoing around and bouncing off of each other, and they locked the doors so nobody gets out and as they all thrash around and slash each others' and innocent bystanders' throats, we're all gonna get stomped and crushed and bleed out along with them.

Omar comin', yo!

Couple things real quick:

1) Public service announcement: "We" are not pregnant. "We" may be expecting, but "we" are not pregnant (unless "we" are two or more females who both are currently gestating at least one fetus each in her own uterus).

2) Public service announcement #2: Fuck candles or books or even wine -- you know what is a really, super, ace host/ess gift for when you have stayed in someone's home for more than a couple of days? Cleaning the shower before you leave. Including, you know, the drain area.

I'm'a stick to Holmes Magazine. All he cares about is you do the job right.

Hey SHAPE magazine: I had this whole thing all written in my head, all thoughtful and philosophical and a little bit deep, but you know what? It all really boils down to this:

Nobody would ever tell a man to BYO saltless butterless air-popped popcorn to a fucking movie with his friends so he doesn't pork out on movie popcorn, least of all as part of a bigger strategy composed of other sad, depressing little "tricks" (put seltzer in your "faux-mosa" at brunch with the gals! don't meet up in Starbucks for a scone -- go for a brisk walk!) to keep from porking out in general all weekend long thus ruining the effects of a week of "Spartan lunches" and "rigorous workouts."

Nobody. Would EVER. Tell a man that.

Fuck all y'all.

U Draw Ass

Can we please stop with saying "[something] cum [something]"? Please?

You'd think in the post Beavis and Butt-Head era of modern society that we'd avoid that particular construction, and yet you still see it all over the place. I know, I know, it's real and valid and all that, but A)please, and B)must we?

You can't think of any better way to put it? You don't want to go with the more modern "slash" -- either the word, or the character, or (as with Conan O'Brien) a small icon of the head of Slash? What's your point? You want to show you know how to use the construction, or that you totally know Latin shit, or that you're above the immature giggling that is everyone else in the world's first reaction? Well yay for you. But I'm asking all writers of the world: Please don't, okay?

Thank you, from Gleemonex.

"Can we -- can we have PILLS, and COOK the corn??"

A List of Some Things I Reject

--The existence of a person legally named Channing Tatum.

--The alleged genius of Arcade Fire.

--Macaroons.

--Work parties on non-work time.

--The idea that anyone, anywhere thinks Family Guy is funny.

--The notion of "high meat," which is a near-criminally misleadingly light name for a very, very fucking horrifying thing: Raw, rotted meat, which certain culty freaks eat ON PURPOSE. I learned about it in a New Yorker article, and holy rictus-faced SHATNER do I wish I hadn't.

Now SERIOUSLY, dammit -- I have my rants (the raison d'etre of this blog), and I have my strong opinions about food, and all that, but I try really hard not to comment on what other people eat (at least while they're eating it in my vicinity, because godDAMN is it rude to disparage what's on your friend's plate). But this is waaaay beyond tolerable. This is a hill I will fight and die on.

The online version doesn't mention the high meat, so I'll share from the print version:

Torma ducked into the back of the house and returned with a swing-top jar in his hands. Inside lay a piece of organic beef, badly spoiled. It was afloat in an ochre-colored puddle of its own decay, the muscle and slime indistinguishable, like a slug. High meat is the flesh of any animal that has been allowed to decompose.
...
When Torma unclamped his jar, a sickly-sweet miasma filled the air -- an odor as natural as it was repellent. Decaying meat produces its own peculiar scent molecules, I later
learned, with names like putrescine and cadaverine. I could still smell them on my clothes hours later. Torma stuck two fingers down the jar and fished out a long, wet sliver. "Want a taste?" he said.

You're welcome, Internets. Who wants lunch?

Cluckin' Chicken: The Personal Waterloo of Meat Consumption

So I was thinking about this, and I'm pretty sure I haven't eaten a chicken nugget in ... probably ... twenty-three years. I've eaten fast food now and then, just not nuggets (even as a kid, I'd order the 12-piece box, since I knew there'd be a couple in there that were inedible little wads of gristle) -- in fact, see this handy chart as to what my thoughts are on the various franchises:


GODDAMN, DO I LOVE ME SOME:
Taco Bueno
Dairy Queen

HAVE STRANGE UNSTOPPABLE WEAKNESS FOR, AT TIMES, LIKE MAYBE TWICE A YEAR:
Taco Bell
Wendy's
Jack in the Box
Sonic

CRAVE SPECIFIC ITEMS FROM, AT THREE-YEAR INTERVALS (APPROX.):
Long John Silver's (the crispy bits of fried coating, with malt vinegar)
KFC (chicken strips + biscuits + gravy)

WILL IF I MUST:
McDonald's
Burger King


It's a total of maybe ten-twelve times in a year, eight of which are usually on trips back to the Olde Hometowne in Texass (steak finger baskets! DQ Dude! Frito burrito!); living where I do, there's not a lot of fast food in my path, and there's plenty of good eatin' on the cheap everywhere (not like NYC, but it'll do), plus I just can't really ... I don't know, I don't like it and I don't feel good about myself, my health, the planet, factory farming, obese five-year-olds, the high-fructose-corn-syrup lobby, shame spiral yada yada yada whenever I do indulge, so I just don't eat it much.

But this fucking video featuring the horrifying pink chemical offal mulch that shall become the Nugget, which you've probably all seen already ... jesus scratching CHRIST. It almost made a full vegetarian out of me, instantaneously. It's my "Cluckin' Chicken" (Mr. Gleemonex and Twelve will get that) -- the thing that makes one renounce meat and meat products forevermore on grounds that OMIGOD I'M GONNA PUKE.

Nuggets. Uggggggh.

Our glasses / were empty / but now they're full / with Dazzleberry Lemonade the glass is full

News & notes from what passes for my brain these days

--At this point, there is not a contiguous half hour of my waking life that isn't internally soundtracked by one or more songs from Yo Gabba Gabba. A girl could do worse.

--Consecutive number of Sunday New York Timeses that are on my desk, waiting to be read, including today's: Three

--Amount, on a scale of one to ten (with one being "not at all, fuck 'em anyway" and ten being "GODMOTHERFUCKINGDAMMIT"), that I resent that fact: 10

--Have y'all seen The Hurt Locker? It's real good stuff. Srsly.

--Are you aware of the existence of this bugfuck insane cunt Christine O'Donnell? I wish I weren't, but she keeps intruding on my life, sort of like the infernal she-beast Meg Whitman, only even fucking stupider. And possibly even more dangerous.

--Proving that the Internets are worth something after all: What the Fuck Should I Make For Dinner?

FM(W)L: Assaulted by email

I did not write this. It actually happened to me just now:

Definitely agree, [BigBoss] -- do we know who the right people to tap are within the [divisions] who we can connect with to find out the process so that we can be looped in?

Hang on a sec while I die of death.

Stuck in my craw. (As it were. Heh.)

Look out – Sandy-Vadged Old Lady ramblings ahoy!

1) Listen up, young people: When you are at table with me, put the GOD DAMN PHONE IN YOUR GOD DAMN BAG. My colleague and I were lunching with the new intern yesterday, and the girl kept her phone on the table the whole time, texting while talking, flipping through screens, the whole nine. I was like, why are we even here? This is supposed to be a business lunch, and she might as well have been at her little four-roommate pansexual-house-party/reality-show apartment or wherever it is you kids live these days. I mean, the girl is great, very accomplished and presentable and does good work, but holy app-downloading SHATNER is that rude.

2) My friend, the lovely and truthful J., told a story recently about a very large meeting at the Very Large Global Bank where she works, a meeting which has come to be known around the company as “The Basic Instinct Meeting.” What happened was: A senior-level woman in her late 30s/early 40s (i.e. old enough to know better) was one of the people seated on a dais on chairs that were hidden by no podium or table. The woman was wearing a skirt. There was a Basic Instinct moment. My question is: WHO DOESN’T WEAR UNDERPANTS TO WORK? WHO? WHO DOES THAT? I need to have confidence that the people with whom I work are WEARING UNDERPANTS. I don’t ever want to think about it – I just want it done. UNDERPANTS.

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

Sapping all of our precious bodily fluids

Who are these paranoid delusional submentals who are sent into a sweaty belligerent ignorance-frenzy by the idea of filling out the fucking census?

I mean, I know who they are – they’re what used to be the Unabomber fringe element, the dozen or so backwoods crazies, but over the past decade or so the fringe has become the base and they’ve been whipped into an ever-growing tornado of shouty spittly ignorance by the likes of the pustulent swine-shits Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, et. al., and we are now to the point in this terrible freakshow that there is a significant number of actual American citizens who think that being asked to tell anyone in the government how many people live in their house is the basest, most egregious and horrifying outrage ever perpetrated on free men. Holy Chinese-made-sweatpants-wearing, Funyun-eating SHATNER, y’all.

A few fun facts, Census-deniers:

1) Barack Obama did not invent the census.
2) The census does not exist for the purposes of separating the socialists from the Righteous True Americans. (That would be the Rapture. Y'all should get ready. It's going to be awesome.)
3) The census envelope does not contain a poison which will become aerosolized and kill your family when you open it.*
4) It does not actually wound Barack Obama OR Nancy Pelosi in any personal or significant way if you burn, tear, or rend asunder your census form, or send it back to the government unread with a large ugly word fingerpainted on the front in freshly-shot deer’s blood, so you can save that energy and put it towards making some more misspelled dumbshit protest signs for the next teabag party.

-----------------------------------------------------
*Too bad, eh?

Tofutti Klein

Shit that has GOT to STOP:

So J. Lo thinks she can remake Overboard.

J. Lo is an asshole.

So are the people who have remade Clash of the Titans, and anyone involved in the remakes of Top Gun [oh dear], Weird Science, et fucking cetera.

But not because the originals are so awesome that they shouldn’t be tampered with – just the opposite. Well, some of them are (Red Dawn*, 9 to 5, Footloose, Karate Kid shut up and get your damn hands off it WILL SMITH). But most of them, it’s precisely because they are sofa king bad that they are beyond perfect. People of my generation have seen these flicks hundreds of times – they’re so lightweight, so stupid, so D-U-M dumb – that they complete the full circle around and become GENIUS.

Holy Played-Out Shit-Licking Bug-Eyed Anti-Shatner, Hollywood: GET A NEW GODDAMNED IDEA. Just one. New. Fucking. Idea. Don’t the kids of today deserve a couple dozen dumbshit movies they can watch a million times over the summer and still quote when they’re 36? GOD.

*cracked.com says “The original Red Dawn populated its cast with all the big teen celebrities of its day, which means there's at least a half chance we'll get a Red Dawn featuring some High School Musical bastards and at least two Jonas brothers.” Stand back, protect your shoes, Internets – I’m gonna hurl.