My smoothie days are over

Will we ever learn to STOP FUCKING WITH NATURE ALREADY?

(link via the Monk)

I want Versace school uniforms too.

I find this whole thing aboutng high schools exclusively for Gay students profoundly disturbing. Now of course I'm delighted that gay students might finally be able to enjoy an educational environment free from persecution and physical abuse, I'm tickled every color of the rainbow. But what about the rest of us! I just keep thinking of my high school days. I can't imagine my life had there been a separate school for gay students. I would have lost half my friends, and the school would have lost all the people who made that shit-hole vaguely interesting or remotely tolerable. I can't even imagine the horror of daily life filled with nothing but knuckle-headed straight people. Think about it. If you have a school population that is comprised of gay kids, and the threatened, narrow-minded straight kids who like to emotionally and physically abuse the gay kids, and you remove the gay kids... who is left? Bigots who like to beat up gay kids, that's who. What a nightmare! Who the hell want's to go to school with those people?

All I'm saying is if you're going to have a separate school, please, please let a few of us straight kids in. Please? Don't leave us with 'them'.

Making a case for the Beatles (eavesdrop #189)

Two slightly tipsy, elderly men emerged from club Groove on West 3rd street, heading toward 6th avenue. The first paused to admire the mural painted on the club's facade.

"Damn! They got ALL the motherfuckers up in here," he said. He stopped his friend by grabbing his shirtsleeve. His friend weaved, righted himself, "What?"
"Check this shit OUT! They got all the motherfuckers...Dizzy, Miles..."
"B.B. King."
"B.B. motherfucking King. They got all of em."
The second man weaved again, and steadied himself by hanging on to his friend's shoulder. He pointed at more faces, "Damn! Ella, Sarah...whose this dude? Some actor?"
"Awwww man, don't tell me you don't know that dude, he's one of the Beatles. That's um, Paul or Ringo or one of them."
"Beatles?... up there with Dizzy? What do them skinny white mo'fuckers know about shit?"
The first man looked shocked. "I'll tell you what, those skinny mo'fuckers could write some songs." His friend waved him off with disgust. "Listen, those mo'fuckers could write a song...stick in your head and shit. Whatever you say, those ugly English mo'fuckers changed the WORLD."
"You're drunk man; crazy." He started to walk away, mumbling to himself, "talkin' bout some punk-ass white boys changin' the world and shit...stole every mo'fuckin note from the black man..." His friend followed, singing.
"Say you don't need no diamond rings, and I'll be satisfied..."
"Aww shit, you a fuckin' crazy mo'fucker..."
"tell me that you want the kinda things that money just can't buy..."
"up there with Dizzy...Dizzy be rollin' in his grave"
"I don't care too much for money, cuz money can't buy me love...can't buy me LAAAAAAAA OVE!"
"Don't be singin' that shit to me..."
"Everybody tell's me so..."
"I don't see no picture of Little Richard up there. Ask Little Richard how he feels about the mo'fucking Beatles."
"Can't buy me LAAAAAAA-OVE! No, no no, noooooooooo!

moist, like a stink-bomb towlette

I know, I know, it’s not the heat, blah, blah, blah. But it IS the humidity, and it’s hell-humid, and it sucks. The sticky, icky wet that starts the second you move, two seconds later your undies are all up in your shit (and shit) --it’s just unacceptable. I didn’t even know I HAD sweat glands in most of the places I’m sweating; like in between my fingers for instance.

So yeah, I’m cranky. In the spirit of “if you can’t say anything nice…” I’ll just keep my gob zipped today.

The story of my life...

Revealed.

(link via sarah)

Stop making sense

"A coalition of anti-war groups hasd an “Occupation Watch Center” in Baghdad to monitor alleged human rights violations by U.S. troops and the actions of corporations such as Halliburton in rebuilding Iraqi infrastructure. The coalition is also exploring the idea of advising U.S. soldiers in Iraq on how they can claim conscientious objector status so that they could be discharged and shipped home.

Who you callin' a hag?

Hey Maud! Did'ja hear? Did'ja hear!!!!!

...mirror, mirror on the wall, who the f***k is that?

Brief note to anyone who has even the slightest self-image/body-image issues: Never, ever (even if triple-dog-dared) gaze into one of these. Just trust me on this one. If I had been asked to describe my looks at 9:30 this morning (just before the devil box arrived at my workplace), I would have said that although I’m not being hunted down by Ford Agency or anything, I’m not altogether unattractive. Now? At 3:30? I have yet to be able to stop sobbing.

I’m going home. Where’s my bag? (for my head).

Have you accepted Jesus as your personal savior?

Hey single gals...still no luck in the dating scene? How about giving the son of God a whirl.

Oh, I don't know.

My mind, my posts these days --disjointed, scattered, hazy with a chance of sense-- today is no exception.

It took me four hours to pen a letter to our landlord. It took me so long because I was struggling between what I needed to say (in the requisite supplicatory tones essential to good landlord/tenant relations), and what I desperately wanted to say (which was to pointedly suggest that he suspend his slum-lording indefinitely and go fuck himself).

The latter is impossible of course, for a number of reasons. Mostly because our place is what you might call A DEAL in the current NYC housing market. Not a huge deal. Not a "lie-to-your-friends-about-what-you-pay-because-they'll-hate-you" deal, more like a "even-though-it's-a-vermin-infested-shithole-convenient-to-nothing-it's-still-hundreds-cheaper-than-other-vermin-infested-shitholes-so-don't-piss-off-your-landlord", deal. Not to mention how we could easily be replaced in seconds; thousands of wanton trucker-hat wearing hipsters would give up their shag haircuts for rent-stabilized digs in the 11211, so it's in your better interest to keep your big cake hole shut instead of cruising up to your landlord's gruel line and ask for some more.

The downside of having a deal is that you eat plenty of expenditures, and above all, never complain. We just silently fix the broken things, paint and plaster and plumb when necessary, and keep a hefty supply of fly/ant/roach/mouse traps at hand. We turn our only radiator off in the dead of winter because it spews boiling water all over everything, keep the windows shut in summer because there aren't any screens, we sweep up the candy wrappers and tampon applicators and empty dime bags from the hallway, and we fumble in the dark to find our keyhole instead of pointing out that pitch-black hallways are ridiculously unsafe and a violation of city code. And we certainly don't do anything coo-coo like insinuate the main entry door should have a lock on it --even after a neighbor was victim to a home invasion and sexual assault. We do not complain about noise or parties or fighting, about how there isn't a single operational fire detector in the whole building, or about how the kid in 2R throws projectiles at my dog while she quietly naps in the shade in the yard (that we reclaimed, at our expense, from its previous designation as 'building garbage dump', and pay extra to have access to). When we mentioned, once, the deluge of brown water that cascades down the kitchen wall each time the upstairs neighbor uses her sink, and had our landlord dismiss the issue by stating that the leak is, and I quote, "not possible", we did not question his logic. We agreed that the water must be a figment of our ungrateful, overly critical imaginations. We simply keep a bucket under the spot where the *alleged* water flows, emptying it's "not possible" contents whenever it's full. We pay our rent on time. We are model tenants. And until this rent cycle, we've never asked to be reimbursed for a single penny of the grand we've put into our little deal in order to make it inhabitable.

It was the repairs we made to the bathroom that made us finally cry Uncle. We justified eating all the previous costs by tricking ourselves into believing they were preferences. You know, we just felt like having a lock on the door instead of a four-inch hole. And the thousands of other holes in the walls, ceilings and floors? We were simply bored with the partial-lathing motif and tired of the 'skylights' into the upstairs neighbor's place. Hey, who says a sink has to have a faucet? We're just picky, right? Can't expect a landlord to make up for the fact that you're a picky-puss. Anyway, that kind of thinking worked for a long, long time.

Finally the years of water leaks in the bathroom/kitchen area (we had been assured were 'not possible') caused the ceiling to collapse and the bathtub surround walls to rot off of their particle-board substrate. Even then I McGuiver'd for a bit, hung a piece of cloth on the ceiling to catch the debris that fell each time someone upstairs showered, re-nailed the plastic surround walls to the rotten boards behind, caulked and caulked and bleached and Tilex'd and Ajax'd the bejesus out of it regularly. But the shower continued to ooze a rotten black hell-goo each time you used it. On several occasions Id my freshly washed eyes to spy a healthy cockroach or water bug scurry behind the wall, once right over my face while I was attempting to have a bath in the 10" deep basin fronting as a bathtub. The last straw came during another soak: I pulled at a blackened triangle peeking out from behind the plastic (assuming it was just another piece of decayed chip-board), and released a USED SANITARY NAPKIN instead. Okay, if you didn't get the horror the first time... I was laying naked in the tub and pulled some motherfucker's used pad into my bath-water. (For the neurotic over-thinkers [particularly the women]...yes, the next logical thought is, why? Why the fuck would someone stick a used pad behind the shower wall? My answer: I don't know. Perhaps it had something to with the fifteen hypodermic needles I found behind there when I finally tore the whole thing down.)

Call us crazy, but our preference mind-game didn't work after that. We had supreme difficulty pretending that it could be a preference to want to have bugs and sanitary napkins and flaking ceiling bits and hypodermic needles excluded from one's bathing ritual --and we wanted our landlord to pay to remedy the situation. We knew that if we called and asked him to do so we would be told that it is "not possible" for said problems to even exist. We also knew that the few repairs that have been made in this building took five summons from the city and several hefty fines before anything even got underway, and months until completion. And I already spoke to the droves of hipsters for whom some bugs and old blood would be a meager concession if they were able to live within walking distance to the neighborhood see-and-be-seens.

Where did all this begin? Oh yeah. I had to write a letter to my landlord explaining why there were receipts included with the adjusted rent payment for repairs we had to do on the bathroom that we are sure he is sure were not necessary and/or did not exist. And it took me four hours.

Do nothing; better.

” NaDa does nothing in a very efficient way.”

(link via ewer.)

Its like a big John Hughes Cliffnote.

First, go watch the short film 80’s Ending, revel in it’s brilliance, and then meet me back here so we can talk about the robot scene, the importance of robot scenes in the larger world of cinema, and why I’ve become obsessed with building a robot of my own…

How am I supposed to get any work done with all these pink elephants on my desk?

For someone who drinks as much as I do [read: "a drunk", not to be confused with an "alcoholic" who, unlike a drunk, has to go to "meetings"] I am rarely, if ever, hung over. Honest. Can count all my hangovers on one hand..partly because the point for me has never been to get drunk in the first place. No, I'm interested in the more genteel business of Buzz Acquisition and Maintenance, or BAM for you acronymphiles. BAM is a skill really, for some a calling. And when executed correctly does not a night with one's face in the toilet make.

So when I actually get a hangover my embarrassment is worse than the headache and sour tum. Hangovers are the domain of rank amateurs and weekend-warriors, high-school kids who can't drink anything that doesn't taste like candy, frat boys, sorority girls, post break-up bingers, anyone who has ever even looked at a bottle of Arbor Mist. Not me. Not a freaking professional for Christsakes.

The humiliation always drives me to the place I sit today: looking for an excuse or some other cause for 1) the drunkenness and 2) the hangover. Anything other than aligning myself with the rest of the pedestrians who, upon occasion, drink too much. Like starting to drink mimosa's with my friend maud at one in the afternoon, and then, after suffering a supremely girly (and frightening in its increasing frequency) bout with the "I am so fucking fat"'s in the afternoon, resume drinking until I left for a birthday party at a bar, where I drank even more. So sue me. And stop talking so Goddamn loud. And turn that light off.

Danger Will Robinson!

Okay, fuck it. I'm just gonna let my freak flag fly here...I have fallen in love and his name is Boxer. As a matter of fact, my inner geek went so berserk reading all about these way cool-ass, home-made robots (particularly the part about how some are cheap to build and in a few cases, like my *other* favorite, Mr. Head, take only a day), that I ran downstairs to the toy store below my office, shoved a crumpled twenty into the kid's face behind the counter and announced; "I have to build a robot, NOW!" To which he replied: "Well yeah you do...who doesn't?"

And ya know why he didn't even flinch?...because I can TOTALLY buy the stuff to build a robot in their store. How freaking cool is that?

Relax, you're soaking in it.

Phone: *ringgggg*
Me: Hello?
Mom: What makes you happy?

Me: What?
Mom: You know, what makes you happy. I mean really happy.
Me: Oh Christ, it's not time for another one of your "follow your bliss" conversations is it...
Mom: Now just...
Me: because I don't think I'm in the mood for it tonight.
Mom: Why are you so negative?
Me: Okay Mom, I love dish soap.
Mom: I'm being serious...
Me: So am I, dish soap makes me happy. Now go ahead and do your thing where you tell me how I can turn my love of dish soap into a new religion and a stellar, multi-million dollar career.
Mom: (silence)
Me: Go ahead.
Mom: Never mind, your in a place, I can tell.
Me: I'm not in a place
Mom: A real BAD PLACE.
Me: Fine, perhaps I am.
Mom: (pause) Well?
Me: Well what...?
Mom: Well, what makes you happy?
Me: Dish soap.
Mom: You're impossible.
Me: Maybe so, but if you (with growing vocal drama) loved me you'd approve of my undying love of dish soap and accept me as I am: A dirty dish soap lover...
Mom: (groan)
Me: ...A woman for whom dish soap is the only means of deriving happiness.
Mom: What's that racket? Oh...I get it, you're doing dishes.
Me: Yep.
Mom: So if I'd called a half hour ago and asked what makes you happy...what would your answer have been then?
Me: Cheese.
Mom: Cheese?
Me: Would'a been the first thing to spring to mind... since I was eating a big block of Brie.
Mom: Mmmmm, Brie.
Me: Gotta love it
Mom: ...cheese makes me happy too.
Me: So why don't you make cheese? Why are you doing what your doing instead of pursuing a career in the fine art of cheese making?
Mom: Because I don't want to.
Me: But you just said cheese makes you happy...
Mom: Well, yeah, but I don't want to make cheese. I just want to eat it.
Me: ahhhh... dialectic.
Mom: What?
Me: Never mind.

Very, very Sad.

(note to G...yes, I did hear.)

rorschach skyline

Okay...what do YOU see?

Mad-Lib closure

Dear (insert your name here),

I have been doing some (thinking, research, math), and it seems that I was wrong about (our relationship, your test results, your past-due account). It turns out that (I still love you, your health is fine, you don't owe us any money) and (I was crazy to ever leave you, the data was off, the bill was miscalculated).
Please accept my (apology, apology, apology) for any (heartache, worry, trouble) this has caused you. I hope that we can (get together and talk about it, satisfy your healthcare needs, continue to do business) in the future.

Best wishes,
(Everyone Who Broke Your Heart, Doctor Whomever, Creditor X)

Are we there yet?

My ex-husband and I used to say that one of the more compelling reasons to have children is for an excuse to stay put on holidays.

Reasonable folk never expect the people with kids to drive from house to house, relative to relative, usually in some insane traffic jam or snow/rain/thunder storm. No one gives you grief when you say, "Oh, what are we doing for [holiday]? We're going to celebrate by doing [x] here at home..." Even a house-bound granny will forgive your absence, she understands what's involved with taking the kids anywhere, she's been there with the strollers and binkys and sippy cups and diapers and changes of clothes and the prerequisite half a toy store fundamental to toddler happiness (even though --inevitably-- one suddenly essential trinket will be left behind; and oh yes, there will be chaos and misery because of it). People seem to get how you might not want to drive four hundred miles with a cranky little one screaming in the back seat, unload and set up a smaller, travel-version of the house you just left behind, just so you can eat uncle Frank's franks for an hour and then miss the fireworks anyway because you have to leave early to get a jump on traffic. The ex and I used to get giddy with the fantasy of not only NOT having to schlep around all day each holiday, but that it wouldn't even be expected of us. Your family and friends would just have to understand that they had to go to the mountain, not the other way around.

I guess I'm just cranky because G and my travel plans for this weekend were cancelled at the last minute. Unless you've been in this household for the past week you would have no idea what we went through to try to get upstate for a few days, the flaming hoops, the loss of sleep, the expense; all for naught. But that won't matter. We'll get shit anyway...because according to everyone else, we don't have a proper excuse. Like kids, for example.

You lucky breeding bastards. Enjoy the 4th.

Freelance means never having to say your sorry.

I honestly don't mind rules, I just like to know what they are.

Like, for instance, at exactly what time of day does it become inappropriate to go walk your dog in your pajamas not having showered or brushed your teeth yet, sporting little dabs of last night's pimple cream on your chin and forehead, you know, still full of eye-googies and midnight-musk? Because if there is a definitive time, I couldn't tell you. All I know is at 8am I don't get so much as a raised eyebrow... but at 3:30 in the afternoon? I get all manner of odd looks.

Humplinks

Hey President Bush... word has it even The Lord thinks your tax policies are fucked.

This book, written by an acquaintance of mine, has been receiving quite a bit of critical acclaim since its publication earlier this year. And even though I was afraid to read it because I'm terrible at lying and --as it goes with me-- would somehow let on that I hated it if I did...I read it anyway. It turns out that the damn thing is smart and funny and good and I had nothing to worry about. You can get your very own copy here.

And a quick note to whomever posted this ad: Hmmmmm....inviting an anonymous junkie over to your apartment to get high on giggle gas and play with power tools? Have you really thought this through? All I'm saying is...you'd better get this on tape and put me down for a copy.

OCD is not an electronica band

With a single exception, I'd like to make a public apology to everyone I've ever lived with. I'm so sorry. You were right. I get it now.

See, G and I threw a barbecue last Sunday and I still haven't cleaned up completely. Burger flippers, serving platters, and ashtrays clog the sink, there are unused plastic goodies --cups and plates and forks-- to find homes for, a cooler full of beer remains outside, and I have yet to rake up the cigarette butts and bring the garbage bags (which are cinched closed, at least) out to the curb. The fridge is overflowing with the pots and pans of food I hastily shoved behind the door on the night of the party (instead of transferring the left-overs to tidy, space-saving tupperware containers), and I haven't even begun to consider getting out the vacuum, even though my feet are black from the mud path that begins at the back door and ends at the bathroom. No, really. My bed isn't even made.
This morning I walked my filthy foots right past a pile of dirty skewers and tongs and thought I'll get to that later, swear to God, without a single hint of nausea or panic, went right ahead and made my tea in fact. I know! Right? I don't know how it happened, when it became possible for me to do such momentous things, but it did. Not only can I see that I will not die if the dishes sit for a day, I will not perish if there is some dirt on the floor, the world will not spiral out of orbit if a knick-knack is out of place or a sock is not properly hampered, I seem to be actually okay with it. At peace. But now that the world of OCD madness I enforced upon you all in my darker days is painfully clear, I, like a recovering alcoholic, realize I have some reparations to attend to.

So I'm sorry. Seriously. I don't know what that was all about. Weird, huh?