Disney Cats Don't Have Assholes

2011-10-08T10:08:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to ignore the anti-Wall Street protesters. It's not easy, as I like to read the blog posts on the National Review, and it's been getting daily mentions out there.

It annoys me. Lots of things annoy me, actually; some things more than others. I really don't like being in a perpetual state of annoyance, as I'd rather be amused. I am more frequently annoyed, these days, and less often amused. It's an imbalance I seek to correct.

Avoiding things that really annoy me is part of my plan to restore my annoyance/amusement balance, and that is why I have been trying to avoid those stupid protesters. I have not done a good job, because I've read a fair number of articles on the subject (excluding the purportedly glowing endorsement from Krugman: how can you sing the praises of anti-capitalist protesters when you make seven figures writing for a paper that advertises for Rolex and Tiffany's? Seriously?) I have read some articles, and so now I am annoyed.

I like to rant when I am annoyed, so here I go:

I have worked in the student aid industry for fifteen years now, and I know those protesters. They're the same ones who failed to file their federal aid applications on time, missed grant deadlines, and screamed at me because somehow it's my fault that they wouldn't be getting aid that semester. They're the ones who missed a line on their loan application, and screamed at me because their wouldn't disburse in time to buy books before the start of the semester.

These are the same kids that spent all six (count'em, six) years of undergraduate study calling up and screaming at people like me because the loan limits weren't high enough. I'll repreat: they screamed and ranted and raved because they COULDN'T BORROW ENOUGH. After all, loans are generally the only type of aid for which middle-class kids qualify. (The free money is for people on welfare; the financial aid system is set up to reward bad behavior, so if anyone in your household is working, you're screwed.)

For Federal loans, the school's determine a borrower's eligibility, and transmit that information to my agency. (Well, they used to under the old system, which was a much better system than the system now in use, but that's a rant for another day.) I used to call school financial aid offices on behalf of borrower's whose loan applications were pending school approval, and the story was always the same: the student was either ignoring requests from the school for verification of their income/status/costs, or was in some way ineligible. Generally, "ineligible" = "crap grades," but not always. I would relay this to the borrower, and the borrower would scream at me. Then the borrower would call up the school and scream at them, too.

After they graduate, or drop out, they call up to scream about how they can't possibly repay all this money they borrowed. In spite of the fact that they are counseled to borrower conservatively, and only borrow enough to cover attendance. (Using loan money to fuel your three-five-dollar-Starbucks-frappuccinos-a-day habit is just a bad idea.) They don't listen, they borrow loan amounts in excess of what they could ever hope to earn with a degree in interpretive dance or filmmaking or basket weaving, because the screamers are often from the most useless and unmarketable fields of study, for some reason.

Then they file bankrupcty, and call and scream at us because you can't discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy. This is stated on the promissory notes they sign when the apply, mind you, but they never read them. Most of them have their mothers completeing the applications for them, so how can they possibly be held responsible?

They default, and they call up and scream because their wages are garnished and their tax refunds seized. Then they decide that the loans aren't theirs; someone stole their identity and borrowed money in their names, so they file fraud claims. When that is disproven, they'll file disability for their depression and anxiety. When that's denied, they'll add fibromyalgia and ADHD to the disability discharge application form.

These disgruntled student loan borrowers, blocking the sidewalk waving their little cardboard sign with their outstanding loan balance scrawled in Sharpie have always been disgruntled. I think they're extra angry now because they lived better when they wre living off student loans. The majority of them are unemployed not because they can't get jobs, but because they can't get the jobs they think they deserve. They're underemployed because they're following some pipe dream ideals of working in some low paying activist job, or forgoing better-paying jobs they COULD get for low-paying jobs they ENJOY.

And the spoiled little smelly shits think it reasonable to expect someone else to now foot the bill for their degrees, like the banks, and taxpayers.

I am slightly bemused by the "smash the system" socialists of the movement, who say they want to overthrow the government. (This will never happen as long as Ted Nugent is alive, by the way.) Ditto the "anti-capitalists" who completely miss the irony of Tweeting anti-capitalist sentiments on their iPhones while eating pizza donated by sympathizers who ring up local pizzarias to place mass orders, paying with their VISA cards.

The student-loan-forgiveness jackasses, however, just piss me off. Perhaps they should have paid attention when they were told not to overborrow, and chosen less expensive schools. Or, more importantly, perhaps they should go back to their respective alma maters and ask why the rate of inflation for higher education is four times that of any anything else?

I hope they actually do affect some change with their villify success/eat the rich/sour grapes bullshit nonsense. I hope Herr Obeekaybee pushes through some kind of legislation to allow student debt to be included in bankruptcies. I predict that when that happens, the banks will jump ship, and people like the "erase student debt" assholes won't be able to borrow themselved in to a hole in order to attend college. In fact, they won't be able to go at all.

Mrs. Kintner Ruminates at the Wave Pool.

2011-09-05T16:07:00.000-07:00

    Udo and I went to hang out in the wave pool at the local amusement park. Me and Udo, we love the wave pool.
    In previous years, Udo was a reserved swimmer. Whether the beach, or the swimming pool, or the wave pool at the water park, Udo stuck close to the side and did NOT get his head wet.
    This year, however, Udo has got the spirit. The gods of summertime water fun must have reached down and annointed him with chlorinated holy water, for he is now a most exhuberant swimmer. He is ZEALOUS. He jumps, he dives, he floats; he puts his face in the water and screams for all he is worth, sounding alarmingly like little Alex Kintner, about to meet his toothy, bloody end.
     So Udo is joyfully splashing and diving about in the wave pool, while I sit at the edge and let the water lap at my toes (noting with some alarm that the size of the arthritic toe-bumps seem to have increased exponentially since last summer, and that the heavily chlorinated water has played hell with my pedicure.)
     Udo's favorite thing in his new gung-ho wave pool repertoire is to do a dead-man's float kind of thing while letting the waves carry him in. He will do this over and over again, or as long as the pool's wave cycle lasts.
     Little boys playing dead in a large wave pool at an amusement park is an alarming thing to the lifeguards; they don't like it one bit. This is understandable, as it must be hard to differentiate between little boys joyfully floating face-down on the waves, and actual kid corpses. The lifeguard blew her whistle at Udo, and told him not to float around like that.
     Udo was sad; Udo's summery wave pool joy had been compromised by a well-meaning lady with a whistle. I tried to explain to him that she wanted to make sure that he was just playing, and was not hurt. I told him that floating around like that makes it look like he was a dead guy, and lifeguards try to keep the dead guys out of the pool.
    Udo looked sad, with big blue watery puppy dog eyes, but did not want to be consoled. "Are you OK?" I asked him. Udo smirked. "Yes, I'm FINE," he said. "Can you please go away now?"
     So Udo went back to playing in the waves, although his splashing lacked the same level of joyful exhuberance. This is the trouble with Udo's complete lack of cynicism. The rest of us in this family expect the worst and hope for the best; Udo expect sunshine, rainbows, and unlimited freezepops at every turn. His heart breaks audibly whenever someone proves disproves his perception of the world as an amazing place with unlimited possibilities, where a guy can dead-man's-float around the wave pool as much as he likes.

Further observation.

2011-08-05T18:00:00.000-07:00

Women who have big fake plastic fingernails and go around tapping them on everything deserve to have their fingertips smashed with a hammer.

Then they should be forced to eat the pieces.

Hey, you at the ATM. Yes, Sheniqua, I'm talking to you. What the hell are you doing up there, programming the damn thing? You've reinserted your card three times, and pushed all the buttons, but I'm pretty sure it's not going to make that TANF money appear in your account any faster. Now move so that those of us who actually have some money in our accounts may access it. Thank you.
P.S....Nice braids.

Can we please call a moratorium on the damned Obama shirts? The fact that I disagree with the man's Keynsian "redisribute the wealth" bullshit nonsense policies notwithstanding, your shirt is offensive. He's the bloody leader of the free world, Lord 'elp us, not Kid Rock. It's not a rock concert, it's not a tractor pull, it's not a charity walk. The face of the POTUS does not belong stretched across your giant bulbous midsection.

Stop it.

P.S....No, you can't.

A cell phone is not a free pass that absolves one from common courtesy. You may be engrossed in your text or posting to your FB page or checking the hits on your porn site, or whatever it is you silly millenials do with those damned things, but it does not give you license to walk the hell in to me because you're too busy to watch wher the flaming fuck you're going.
Asshole.

Lastly, I would just like to reiterate that I hate tattoos. I know, I know...I'm a blinkered, stodgy old lady with antiquated ideas and a stick up my ass. Whatever, jackass; you look ridiculous. They are not beautiful, they are not artistic, and perhaps most of all, they do not make you unique. They do not affirm your individuality. You dig, freak show? They make you look just like every other shitass twenty-something with a bloated sense of self-worth and a lip ring. It's just ugly, and it makes you look trashy. I maintain that the only people that ought to have them are bikers, longshoremen, convicts, and soldiers. If you're not one of those things, don't get one.

And a special note to the tattooed ladies out there: I'd like to come after you with the same hammer I use on the fake fingernails.

Observations (Assorted)

2011-07-26T20:28:00.000-07:00

I'm fed up with politics, and have decided to stop paying attention. I've come to the conclusion that one side is the same as the other; two sides of the same coin, and the coin was formed out of shit. I suspect that the ultimate goal of either side is to implode the system from within by 1) excessive interference with everyday life, and 2) tipping the scales heavily to one side or the other of the wage scale.I feel that it is rather hopeless, and my one regret is that I never got around to stocking up on MRE's and ammunition. When I head for the hills, I'm going to be hungry and unarmed.

(**I have formulated an opinion regarding the current debacle of a budget debate, though. At this point, they may as well be shouting, "Less filling!" "Tastes great!" across the aisle at one another. It may actually be slightly more productive.)

Along a similar vein, I can't decide which pack of zealots I dislike more. Progressives? Evangelical Christians? Naturopaths? Vegans? (Insert vocal racial group here)? People who get all their news from Jon bloody Stewart? People who get all their news from Glenn bloody Beck? Conspiracy theorists? Smart phone owners? Luddites? "Pet parents?" People who are against abortion? People who are for abortion? Union members? Breastfeeders? Anyone who refers to himself as an "advocate"? Have I mentioned "pet parents?"
Decisions, decisions.

A side note: commenting on a local news channel's FB post regarding a study about some supposed extra benefit of breastfeeding and using the term "La Leaky Tit Nazis" will get your post deleted. FYI.

Note to parents of screaming children: if you hit it, it will stop. If you would have hit it a few times when it was much smaller, it would not be screaming right now; it would have learned its lesson. So please, for the love of God, take your squalling lump of meat in to the can and whack its ass a few times.

Pink lip gloss looks smashing when one has a tan.

McDonald's has announced that every Happy Meal will now automatically come with apples, an indication that those in the greasy monolith who make the decisions are a punch of frilly-skirted nancies. I don't want corporations to kow-tow to special interest groups and Obeekaybee's fright of a wife! I want them to tell them to bugger off, whilst lifting a leg and farting. It's fast food, for Christ's sake, it's supposed to be unhealthy! If I were given a chance to make this decision, I would decree that Happy meals will now come with a side of bacon and six Pixie Sticks.

If I ever win the lottery, I will:

*Buy a house where the nearest neighbor is at least a mile away. My moat will double as a swimming pool.

*Special order my Aston Martin

*Spend a whole summer at the beach.Drink in my hand, toes in the sand...

*Turn my current house in to a used book/record shop, zoning laws be damned.

The Blair Witch: Some Thoughts on the Royal Wedding.

2011-04-27T17:05:00.000-07:00

I will not be getting up at 4AM to watch Prince William's wedding. I'm sure that some people assumed I'd be sitting up all night in breathless anticipation, wearing a tiara and an imitation Princess Diana sapphire ring; those people would be wrong.

By the time I do get up at 5:30-ish, I'm sure that the newscasts will be rife with instant replays and commentaries, never mind the impending economic collapse, and wars and pestilence and famine. But the hell with it, we've got us a new princess!

There are things about the royal wedding I'd like to see, though. Former Prime Ministers John Major and Margaret Thatcher were on the guest list; Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were not. I read a commentary that Wills is pissed off at Blair over the way he used Diana's death as a vehicle to further his political agenda, and also the way he goaded the Queen in to making a televised statement in spite of that fact that those kinds of things are NOT in her queenly nature. I don't know if this is true, but I sure hope so. It makes it all a little more interesting.

My friend Rosenrosen suggested that perhaps Brown and Blair might swing by Westminster Abbey and do a drive-by mooning, which I think would definitely be worth getting up at 4AM for. I'd also like to see Blair disguise himself as a kindly old lady, and give the bride a bouquet booby-trapped with a cursed thorn upon which she would prick her dainty finger. This would cause her to fall in to a deep sleep for a hundred years, and all of London would be overgrown with a mighty tangled hedge that no warrior could tame.

Tony would then hop on Cherie's broomstick and ride off in to the sunset. Being the Toniest of Blairs, of course, he would be so busy looking back over his shoulder and laughing maniacally at the havoc he had wrought he would not see the towers of London Bridge looming ahead of him. SMACK, he'd go, right in to the wall, and his head would shatter like a terra cotta pot.

Gordon Brown would just be standing around uselessly, looking frumpy.

That's not likely, though. I'm also wondering how tight the security might be for this ultimate whopper of a shindig. The UK has a very loose immigration system, so that they've been letting in boatloads of disgruntled middle-eastern types for years. These people form little angry clubs and plot to blow shit up, so I'm wondering if the might target the royal couple on their wedding day. This would certainly justify setting the alarm for 4AM.

Given the prince's knack for shunning convention, I also wonder he might be working at dismantling the monarchy from within, which will be something interesting to witness. Then again, once he gains the throne he might go all Henry VIII and start lopping off people's 'eads. This I would also like to see.

Still and all, I'm awfully disappointed that no one bought me a Wills and Kate tea towel for my birthday.

Cloudy with a Chance of Popcorn Chicken

2011-03-23T17:03:00.000-07:00

Udo got in big, big trouble. In fact, Udo got suspended from school for one day because he made a threat against someone. Threats are awful and terrible, and people who make them get kicked out of school for a day.

Here's the gist of what he said:

"I'm going to cut you up, deep fat fry you, and eat you like popcorn chicken."

He was either joking, or we have a fledgling Dahmer on our hands; a second-grade Albert Fish who's only a few years away from learning to cook the livers of small children, and purchasing many, many sewing needles.

My money is on the former, but the school is not taking any chances. Bad, bad Udo had to sit out school for a day. Here is what bad Udo had to say about that:

(Singing) "I-i-i-i-i don't have to go to schooooool on Mo-ho-ho-nnnndaaaaay....lucky meeeee, lucky, lucky meeeeee...." (etc.)

Udo said the bad, horrible, terrible thing about chicken to his little friend. Socially retarded Udo has one little friend, by the way. Some other kid overheard the exchange, and ran and told the paraprofessional who was minding the playground. There were interrogations, apparently. There may have been nipple-twisting and cattle prods, but I cannot say for certain. I'm sure the school people wouldn't admit to it.

Supposedly, Udo gave up the information willingly. When the teacher repeated it back to him, he corrected her. "No, I didn't say I'd fry him...I said I'd DEEP FAT FRY him!"

Udo was in a squirrely mood on Friday, I guess. He had been making smart comments to his teacher all day, and had shaken his fist angrily at the director.

I told him that he should not say things like that at school, even if he means it as a joke. I also told him that the world is full of assholes who like to tattle, and get off on getting other people in trouble. "All your life," I told him, "you will have to deal with assholes like that. When you find those people, you need to stay away from them."

I realize that in the post-Columbine era, the schools have become hyper-vigilant about possible threats. I realize that this is because the schools have to think about liability, and the legal ramifications of NOT taking seriously any word or action that could be perceived as a threat. It seems to me, however, that chasing after the Udos in the schoolyard, the ones who make exaggerated and cartoonish threats amongst their friends, is pointless. I doubt that the alphas who lay painstaking plans to bring Grandpa's guns to shoot up the school are going to waste much time making jokes about it.

The Birthday Party

2011-03-09T15:54:00.001-08:00

My friend’s grandmother called and asked if I was going to the party. I tell her I don’t know anything about a party.

“She’s having a birthday party, and I know you were invited,” she says.

I tell her I never got an invitation. “Oh, sure you did,” says the grandmother. “Look on top of the piano. I look, and there is an invitation. Thick cream-colored card stock, obviously professionally printed. The party is today, and I have to leave right now.

I go to a building down the street from the house where my friend is living. A firehall, or perhaps the social hall at the Catholic church. My friend is there with her extended family. “You aren’t supposed to be here,” she tells me. “Everyone is waiting at the house, and we’re going to make an entrance.”

I go to the house where she lives; her stepfather’s house, the one she grew up in. It’s a ranch house that used to have just a small concrete block by the front door, and not a proper porch. A porch of massive proportions has been built. It has a gabled roof and several levels. It’s full of party guests, waiting for the grand entrance.

Her blind step-father is there, and tells me that the family is bringing a goose. “When they get here, we can cook the food.”

There are lots of people I don’t know, as well as a few I do. Kenny is there, which strikes me as odd because he dealt himeself a fatal gunshot to the head many years ago. It is very dim under the porch.

Three 80’s-era conversion vans pull up and park at angles by the curb. The vans are dented and rusty. The family all jump out of the vans, waving, and the party guests on the porch whoop and cheer.

Someone opens the sliding door on the side of one of the vans, and what I presume to be the goose flies out. It is a massive bird with white feathers, and it is a skeleton from the chest up. It flies up on to the porch, and lands on a table behind me.

“Someone turn on the grill,” says the stepfather.

The bird stares at me with its gaping sockets.

Udo the Barber

2011-02-10T18:11:00.000-08:00

One day when Udo was in kindergarten, during German class, he broke another kid's crayons and cut another kid's hair with the safety scissors. It was funny, apparently, until his regular teacher and the principal questioned him. He lied and said he didn't do it. When they told him they knew he'd done it, THEN he got scared because he realized he was in trouble.

I don't know why he did it, or why he'd ever think that either of those things are acceptable.

I said, "Why the hell did you cut that kid's hair???"

He says, "I didn't like it." Sigh.

When we got home, Udo ran inside ahead of me and locked the back door.
"Don't let her in!" he yelled to his father, and then went to hide in the bathroom. Apparently I'm pretty scary.

I took his CD player away for a week, he's not allowed to play his Wheel of Fortune plug'n'play game, and we WERE going to go to Friendly's this evening but now we're not. I also shouted at him for a while and wacked his ass, the sociopathic little bugger. Then I sent him to bed.

Udo was very, very sorry. Sorrier for the loss of his video game and his CD player than anything else, I think, but sorry nontheless.

He had to write letters of apology to the German teacher, the kid whose crayons were broken, and the kid whose hair was cut. That was a party, I can tell you, as he was not in the mood to write when we sat down to write them. Udo can do anything provided he wants to; if he doesn't want to, he feigns stupidity. This makes me angry, because I know damn well he reads and writes above grade-level. So I shouted at him and whacked him on the head with the pencil, which made him cry. I don't enjoy making the child cry, believe it or not, but he is so infuriating that sometimes I'd really love to beat him with a stick.

However, we got the letters done and he promised not to touch other kids or their possessions. We'll see how long this lasts. Later, he asked me if I love him. I said of course I do. He said, "Sometimes you don't love me!" I told him that when he is disobedient I get angry at him, but I always love him. He didn't look like he believed me, probably because I do things like lose my temper and whack him in the head with a pencil.

On the Rampage.

2011-01-09T17:34:00.000-08:00

I've been reading the news coverage of the shootings in Arizona. I read some articles on MSNBC, just because the old man insist on keeping it set as the homepage and they're right in my face when I log in. I dislike MSNBC's coverage of just about everything, on the grounds that it's dumbed-down, and more than a little biased.

This site, as well as a number of others, are all frothing at the mouth in blind leftist ecstasy because they've all decided that they get to blame this particular incident on the right-wing entertainers they so despise (I call them entertainers because they're not journalists. Just like network hacks like Meredith Viera or that Olberman douchebag more vaudevillians than journalists, but I won't elaborate on that at this time.) People also seem to be calling for the head of Sarah Palin on a platter, as they have decided that it's also her fault.

I don't have the audacity to presume that I can say who is to blame, although my money is on the guy with the gun. I don't watch Fox News, and I think Sarah Palin not only a disgrace to conservatives and Republicans, she makes all women look bad. She's another sinewy, b'suited corporate bitch with a stupid haircut, just like every female executive I've ever encountered; women like her are the scourge of the earth.

The vitriol and bile I've seen in the comments sections of the news stories I've been reading (why, oh why, do I ever waste my time with the bloody Huffington Post?) are coming from those who are gleeful about their certainty that the responsibility for the catastrophe can be laid squarely at the feet of the other side.
"Oh, yay!" they're shouting. "Score one for us!"

It reminds me of April 1997. Hitler's birthday, to be exact. Remember? Two teenage boys carried bags of weapons in to their high school and laid waste to a number of school mates and faculty. Remember that? Remember how the right wingers were pissing their charming underclothes in self-righteous glee because they were convinced that they'd get to pin the whole thing on violent movies, video games, and most importantly, Marilyn Manson?

It was a shining, golden moment for the religious right...except that they were wrong. The shooters were not Manson fans. The shooters, it seems, thought Manson was a tool, and favored German industrial metal like Rammstein. Imagine that! To this day, Manson maintains that Columbine ended his career. Too bad the shooters weren't even fans.

Those kids were narcissistic little turds and were likely psychotic. Just like the guy in Arizona is a narcissistic turd; preliminary reports indicate that they guy is anti-government period, and doesn't seem to favor one side over the other.

Again, I don't presume to know one way or the other. What I do know is that at this point no one knows what really motivated the shootings, and like Columbine, it's possible no one ever will. In my mind, the political affiliations of the assholes laying the turds are irrelevant; whether it's a right-wing evangelical shitting stupid unfounded divisive rants all over the comments sections of national news sites, or a left-wing progressive shitting stupid unfounded divisive rants in the same manner, it's still shit. You can slap all the pretty pink ribbons of justification on that pile of shit as you want...it still stinks, and no one needs it.

Zoo Sign.

2010-12-31T09:03:00.000-08:00

**Credit where credit is due: my pal Rosenrosen made a sign similar to this one, and hung it up in her cube at work in an attempt to prevent people from bothering her. I stole her idea and modified it to suit me.

The North American Boden (praecantrix misellus)

Native to the wilds of Hummelstown, the North American Boden is easily startled once you get its attention, and has been known to react violently to stupidity and the threat of taxation. Selectively deaf, it is only able to be safely approached by people whom it does not dislike. The Boden has been known to slay its victims with a barbed tongue and rapier wit; its mean-spirited sarcasm is often mistaken for humor.

The Boden responds well to "Top Gear**,"70's arena rock, British comedy, and subtitled films. It also enjoys McVities Milk Chocolate Digestive biscuits, icy-cold cans of dietCoke, and dark beer. If you don’t have any of these to offer, then please observe from a distance, and quietly back away.
**BBC "Top Gear," not the shitty American version.

Happy Christmas from the Douchebag Family

2010-12-31T08:55:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking about Christmas newsletters. You know, those long-winded and boring letters that some people tuck in to their Christmas cards where they tell you all about what they've been up to during the past year.

It seems to me that if I cared enough to know about your husband's promotion or your son's hockey league or the family trip to Mexico, I might have called you up at some point during the year to chat. But I don't...so I didn't. There seems to be a new twist to the Christmas newsletter: the Year End E-mail. Maybe this is not a new thing, but this is the first year I received one. This one involved each member of the family listing the top five things that happened during the year, and came with a PowerPoint photo slide show of the year's best photos attached.
It seems that you send this out to everyone in your address book, with no regard to whether or not they might actually give a shit about what happened to you this year. I would think that one would want to be at least a little selective, a little considerate, when sending out something like this. I have email addresses of businesses in my address book, and I'm reasonably certain that Bank of America, LTD Commodities, and eBay aren't terribly interested in my family's lists of of the top five occurrences from the past year.
I would enjoy receiving Christmas newsletters, in traditional paper or electronic format, if EVERYTHING that happened during the year were discussed. Like how the Mexico trip resulted in dysentery and your daughter's very first dose of the clap on account of that terrible business with the Mexican border guards, or how your husband's hemorrhoids got so bad during tax season that you had to spend hours on the Internet tracking down those special ice trays that make ice cubes shaped for rectal insertion. Your struggle to rid your home of bedbugs would be an interesting topic, as would the day you lit the gas grill with the lid closed and burned off your eyebrows. The zenith would be the newsletter in which you announce your impending divorce and/or sex change, although you could only do that once. That's a PowerPoint slide show I'd be interested to see.

Biography

2010-11-03T15:36:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, when I worked in a fun department, we were informed that the intranet site was going to be updated, and they wanted a short biography for each person on staff. My co-workers and I each collaborated on one another's blurbs. We weren't allowed to use them, of course. I found my bio in my email archive today, and decided that it's a shame it's never been published.

"Short, squat, and gruff yet lovable, Linda startles easily. She is not as dim-witted as you think. She likes to swear. When you leave after speaking to her, she makes fun of you. It is rumored that she collects dust. Has 17 confirmed kills in the field.

Once had 4 GI Joe torsos, a pack of gum, a baby starling, 16 marbles and 1 very rare replica of Tom Selleck's moustache removed from an unmentionable area by a veterinarian after a long night of binge drinking Mad Dog 20/20 and doing body shots off a very confused elderly couple.

Nickname: "Butch", "Babs"

Favorite Song: "A Country Boy Can Survive"

Favorite Quote: "Milk, milk, lemonade, around the corner fudge is made."

Marital Status: Yes

Children: Two (Inadvertantly purchased with Marlboro Miles. She thought she was getting a commemorative Dale Earnhardt collector's plate.)

Hobbies: Huffing paint fumes, BMX bikes, Fistfighting, Scrapbooking."

Sweet Leaf My Ass.

2010-10-18T15:22:00.000-07:00

I am sick to bloody death of paranoid pot smokers.

Disclaimer: Everything I'm about to say is wholly anecdotal and based on limited personal experience with dope-smoking fucktards. I have no empirical data with which to back up my claims and accusations, no scientific studies with caged monkeys or lab rats or control groups or placebos. It is based solely on my own observations. Furthermore, I'm not interested in debate. I don't care what anyone else thinks about this particular subject. You want debate? Go somewhere else.

People who smoke pot get weird and paranoid and annoying. They develop a special type of narcisism wherein anything and everything anyone says or does can somehow be interpreted as a personal slight. Because dope-smoking also fries a fucktard's short-term memory, their recollections become half-assed and distorted, so that when they choose to throw past events back in someone's face, they're forty-nine shades of wrong.

You take a fucktard who is predispositioned to depression, and you give that fucktard some pot. The pot enhances the depression, so that its width and breadth and depth increase exponentially. Then you take the fucktard to the doctor, and the doctor gives the fucktard some antidepressant medication. (Which, more than a few studies have shown, are remarkably ineffective in the majority of patients and have no more effect on the clinically gloomy than sugar pills. This is true, look it up.)

Pot is a depressant, as is alcohol. I think that physicians should be required by law to test mopey fucktards for drugs. If they are found to have drugs in their stupid systems, they should be informed that perhaps their outlook would improve if they laid off the depressants. However, there are no kickbacks from the pharmaceutical companies in that approach.

Antidepressants change people, never for the better. So you take a paranoid mopey fucktard with a bad memory and then you throw some Prozac or Zoloft or whatever on top of it, and they seem to get pissed off. Their interests change, their likes and dislikes change. Their personalities are altered.

Then you have a dope-smoking fucktard who was mildly annoying but had some good points and rearrange their personality with the magickal anti-glum pills, and you're left with someone you probably don't want to know.

You might get to the point where you don't want to be around that person very much, and you might discuss this loudly and abundantly with other people who know the fucktard. Then the fucktard might go and commit suicide in the woods with a box cutter so that you're left feeling guilty for the rest of your stupid life.

Or worse yet they don't pick up a box cutter and off themselves, and you're stuck listening to their ridiculous dope-smoking antidepressant-addled bullshit nonsense.

I can't decide which is worse.

Pondering Dawkins.

2010-09-29T16:49:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot about the notion that the world would be a better place without religion. I was watching Ben Stein's documentary "Expelled," which addresses academe's treatment of researchers who study Intelligent Design, and it set me thinking. I've heard the anti-religion sentiment from many camps, from journalists to academics to entertainers. Citing the many atrocities committed in the name of one god or the other, it is supposed that eradicating religion would enable humans to become more civilized and stop lobbing bombs at one another.

I reckon there is a preponderance of evidence supporting this viewpoint, between the Crusades and the Inquisition and the entire history of the Middle East. One could argue, however, that there have been just as many horrors inflicted by one group of flag-waving humans on another group of flag-waving humans that were not motivated by religion. Pick your communist government as an illustration of this, given their fascist tendency to kidnap, imprison, and murder dissenters. The National Socialist German Worker's Party is also a fair example of this; you may know them as the Nazi party.

Buddhists and Hindus also seem to put a rather large whole in the "religion is responsible for all the bad things in the world" theory. Admittedly, I am not a scholar on such things, and there very well could be some horrible atrocities committed at some point in history in the name of the Buddha or Ganesh. In any case, I can't recall any recent instances of groups of pissed off Buddhists bombing shopping malls or abortion clinics. Also consider that there are many religions not only are non-violent, but also are responsible for much of the charity in the world. Do a Google search on the outreach ministries of the Mennonites and review the long list of community services the church provides. The Salvation Army? Great organization, outstanding charitable works...no guns.

Acts of war and terrorism, whether committed in the name of a god or a political party, seem to stem from the very human desire to achieve some kind of perfect state. Whether the result one seeks is heaven or a perfect society, it seems that once a group of zealots are whipped up in to a fever about the possibility of perfection, they will maim and kill anyone they see as an obstacle to its attainment. If you're a Muslim, infidels stand between you and your 40 virgins in heaven. If you're a Christian in the Middle Ages, dirty Muslim heathens befouling the Holy Land stand between you and the Perfect Kingdom of God. If you're a Nazi, Jews, Gypsies, retards, and other assorted imperfect human detritus stand between you and Utopia. If you're an environmentalist, whaling ships, loggers, and people driving large SUVs stand between you and a perfect, pristine planet. Combine humankind's desire for perfection with a propensity for smug self-righteousness along with some faith, ideology, or creed that accommodates both, and you've got a recipe for disaster.

I'm of the opinion that eradicating religion would not make the world a better place. Making a civilized, rational, and concerted effort to contain zealotry in all its forms, however, would probably work to the benefit of everyone.

Obituary

2010-09-10T16:37:00.000-07:00

I wrote this for a co-worker who is actually not yet dead. Names have been changed to protect the innocent.
_____________, affectionately known as "Bear," was recently dragged across the river Styx by the icy hand of death after an incident involving a power surge and a sex robot.

He was born in 1973 to Bob and Shirley _________ in ________, Pennsylvania.

Bear was a 1991 graduate of ________High School, and a graduate of the University of ________, where he majored in drinking, falling in to shrubbery, and harrassing exchange students. Bear was a member of the water polo team, and had many funny stories about wet socks, Uzbekistanian pornography, and van-clearing flatulence.

Bear is survived by: his parents; two brothers, Chet and Botetourt; a retarded uncle who will outlive the whole family; his imaginary wife, Agnes; his dog, Tom; his cat, Cat; and his sex robot, Sparky.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions can be sent to the ___________ Institute for Furthering Sex Robot Technology.

Relational Integrity

2010-08-02T20:50:00.000-07:00

I've been asked, recently, about when I might be posting a new blog. I used to write a lot, taking whatever nonsense was whirling about the old noggin and composing it in to some sort of postable blog-type-thing. Many of these blogs began as snippets of an email conversation, usually with my pal Rosenrosen, or germinated from seeds sown in the midst of some rant.

For several reasons, I am not very often in the sort of situation which used to lead to a blog. For starters, the powers that be at my job at Swirling Vortex, Inc. disbanded my department and moved us to another area. Many of my best blogs are descriptions of, or at least were inspired by, workaday conversations with those co-workers. After the move, those conversations became few and far between.

Emailing with Rosenrosen is also limited, since went back to school full-time and has limited time during the day. We used to get some really good material from student loan industry publications, as well as a financial aid listserv (such as the time we decided that the creator of the FinAid.org web site had killed and stuffed his mother, a la Norman Bates, as well as his first and only date, and had an army of "children" made up of Cabbage Patch and My Buddy dolls.)

The part-time job, while sucking up my free time and probably killing of little bits of what's left of my soul, has provided a bit of blog fodder, but really...how many times can I bitch about doughy fat girls making messes in the changing room? It might have been slightly funny the first time, and even that is debatable.

I recently got a new position at work. It's a lateral move so there is no raise involved, but the job allows me much more autonomy. The previous position involved much updating of tracking databases and third-party scheduling, which I hated. Now I'm back to a much preferable arrangement, which is being given a task and then allowed to go and do it with little interference.

One of these tasks is attempting to alter Access databases. I am not a programmer; I can write SAS queries and I can use AQT to find and update data, but that's about it. Now I have to learn how to do shit in Access using Visual Basic. I think about it a lot; I sit around and think about why none of my queries seem to work and what I might be able to do to change that. There's no blog in any of that, the shit is boring. I myself alternate between falling asleep in my new fancy roomy cubicle and wanting to throw the laptop off the catwalk before skipping up to Human Resources to ask may I please have a job now for someone who's stupid, please? Hyuk.

That's it; that's why the blogging has dried up. That's all the time I have for this rubbish now; I'm going to sit around and think about the relational integrity between the tables in my database and how it relates to their key values.

Udo Unleashed

2010-08-02T20:28:00.000-07:00

Udo is too big for a stroller; Udo is four. I know he's too big, because I get a lot of that "look" from other mommies, which is a cocked-eyebrow/sneer sort of look which says, "Well, aren't just some kind of a lousy mother with a great big kid like that in a stroller?" I get this look a lot.

However, Udo also thinks it's high-larious to run away from Mommy. Udo thinks that Mommy should operate on Udo's timetable, and not her own. So when Mommy tells Udo to "just stand still and wait a minute," he gives her a black look and pisses off to do whatever it is he's itching to do.

This is why Udo has a leash. Udo got a baby leash last weekend, because we were on the way to Swirling Vortex, Inc.'s annual company picnic at a local amusement park. I didn't particularly want to lose Udo in the crowds (although there are days…), and as I stated, he's too big for a stroller.

We purchased the baby leash at the K Mart, and I strapped Udo up in the parking lot.
"What is this seatbelt?" asked Udo, frowing. "I don't like this itchy seatbelt."

"This is a seatbelt for naughty boys who don't listen. Naughty boys who don't listen and run away have to wear an itchy seatbelt," I told Udo.

On the way to the park, Udo sat in the back seat muttering to himself, as per ususal in the third person.
"This is a seatbelt for naughty boys who don't listen. Udo doesn't like this itchy seatbelt for naughty boys. Udo wants to take it off."

Once we were in the park, Udo temporarily forgot about the itchy seatbelt, what with all the merry mayhem and chocolate-y joy. I did not, however. Let me tell you something about child harnesses and the reactions they elicit: they piss people off. Evidently some people, and I'm guessing childless people who have never dealt with stealthy, willfull four-year-olds, have some kind of ethical problem with leashing up a child.

I have one thing to say to these people, who glared at me all Sunday afternoon: YOU JUST KISS MY ASS!!! I'll bet you'd be the first ones to call my skills as a parent and worth as a human being in to question if old Udo over there were to slip my grasp, run away, and end up so much child-killer fodder. So fuck you and your looks self-righteous reproach, you sad, barren gits!

Eventually, the novelty of the park wore off and Udo began to notice the itchy naughty seatbelt again. This is mostly because he kept making attempts to run away, which were thwarted by the leash. Udo would make a mad dash, reach the end of the tether, and be jerked backwards. I'm guessing this is uncomfortable, and probably a little humiliating to boot.

It was a hot day, and Udo got tired from all the walking and sweaty from the itchy seatbelt, so I threw him a bone and removed the harness. He promptly ran away, of course, because he is Udo and "naughty" is what he does.

Hysterical.

2010-08-02T20:20:00.001-07:00

Today my friend Rosenrosen asked if I purchased the re-release of Def Leppard's "Hysteria." I have "Hysteria" on disc, thank you, and have no intention of adding any funds to the Def Leppard coffers by purchasing their poxy re-release. I don't care how many superfun bonus tracks or live performances they included in the "bonus" disc. Rosenrosen claims the bonus disc is actually good, with some interesting live covers. There's an Elvis cover, however, about which she said: "It doesn’t sound like Joe, I have no idea if he’s even singing it. It’s horrendously off-key, and sounds like someone’s drunk Aunt Alice singing bad karaoke at $5/dozen Wing Night at the local Publick House."

This last made me snarf my dietCoke.

I lost a lot of respect for the old DL when I read about some feud they were having with other cheesy metal bands like Dio and Poison. Where does one cheestastic rock bank get off claiming they're better than another? Where's the justification? They all had big perms and made silly faces whilst playing their guitars. So some of them know a few more chords than others; big deal! More to the point, how can anyone get mad at Ronnie James Dio? He looks like a troll. A little long-haired sword-carrying troll who lives in your baseboards, flashes you the evil eye, and steals all your buttons.

Between the feuds and claiming not only that they were never a hair band but also that they were never even a METAL band ( I own 'Pyromania' and I beg to differ,) well...it's all a bit off-putting. Old Joe must be going through menopause, the way he shoots his mouth off about what a great band he has vs. how much everyone else sucks and seems to be bitter and angry about...something. He should take some B-vitamins and go lie down until he comes to terms with the fact that he's no longer relevant.

I understand why Def Leppard is repackaging and re-releasing their old stuff; there's a recession going on. They all maintain residences on several continents, and they've all got alimony payments plus plastic surgery and wig maintenance fees and lots of other rock-god expenses so I'm sure they need the cash. However, they've gotten all the money they're ever going to get from me. Especially after that last stinker of an album.

It hurts my heart, really, because I do love the DL. I really wish these old rock guys would learn to age gracefully instead of morphing in to sad, ranting, botox'd, bewigg'd parodies of their former selves.

Cookies and the Magic Hat

2010-06-03T04:09:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, there was a leprachaun named Cookies. Cookies had a special Magic Hat, and she loved it with all of her little green heart.

Cookies’ Hat was very old, and very magic. It was decorated with all manner of trinkets and baubles, and had been given to her by her dear old elven Granny when she was just a wee bit of a leprachaun still making green wee in her wee green nappies.

Cookies wore her Magic Hat only one day in the year, and that was on St. Patrick’s Day. On that day, Cookies dressed in her finest green suit with her best green jewelry and her best green shoes, and donned the Magic Hat.

Cookies’ magic Magic Hat her extra-special magical powers, and when she wore it she could run faster, jump higher, sing louder, and drink more green beer than any little green leprachaun ever has throughout all time.

All the year long, Cookies longed for that special day when she could don her Magic Hat once more. One St. Patrick’s morn, Cookies jumped from her wee green bed with glee.
“Hurrah!” she shouted. “ ‘Tis St. Patrick’s Day today, and I can once again wear me Magic Hat!!”

Cookies took the special key from the special box atop the special bureau, and ran to where her Magic Hat was kept. She slid the golden box from behind the wee green toilet in to which she passed her green wee. She placed the key in the lock and turned, turned, turned the key until the lock clicked.

She opened the lid of the box, slowly opened the lid…

“Ah, begorrah!!” shrieked Cookies. “Some wank has gone and stolen me Magic Hat!!! Pogue mahone, to be sure!!!” Cookies threw herself upon the cold green lavatory floor and began to weep.

Just then Cookies’ best friend Poo the Druid knocked on the door. “Ah, Cookies! Come out and show us your wonderful Magic Hat, why don’t you??” he called.

“Oh, Poo, sweet friend Poo,” Cookies wailed as she flung open the door to her wee green house. “Some wicked person has gone and stolen me Magic Hat!! Oh, Poo!! Whatever shall I do???”

Poo sat on a stump to think, because that is what Druids do when they are perplexed. After a bit, he said,
“I think I know the scoundrel what stole your Magic Hat, my dear Cookies,” he said. “But I cannot tell you until you tell me that I am pretty.”
Druids are clever and wise, but they are also very vain and very insecure, and need constant reassurance.

“Oh, clever Poo”, cried Cookies, clapping her hands with delight, “of COURSE I shall tell you that you are pretty!! Why, you are the prettiest Poo on this wee green island! You are the prettiest Poo in the whole wide WORLD!!”

This pleased Poo the Druid, so he said, “I’m afraid, sweet Cookies, that your Magic Hat has been taken by the Evil Bear.”

“Oh, dear,” moaned Cookies. “I shall never be able to get me lovely Magic Hat back from Evil Bear, for he is so wicked and diabolical!!”

Evil Bear lived in a cave in the heart of the forest, and he did not like anyone. He did not like Cookies, or her Granny, or Poo the Druid, or anyone else on the island, or even in the world. Everyone was so afraid of Evil Bear!!

Poo the Druid said, “Cookies, you must be a brave little leprachaun, and you must journey to the center of the forest and get your hat back from Evil Bear! If you do not, he will surely do something rude and horrible in your hat!”

“Oh, no,” cried Cookies. “Not that!! Not in my Magic Hat!!”

“That’s right,”said Poo gravely. “If Evil Bear befouls your Magic Hat, then it will no longer be Magic. It will be ruined and nasty FOREVER!!”

“However shall I get it back?” asked Cookies.

Poo pulled a Magic Stick from the folds of his robes. “Take this Magic Stick to Evil Bear’s lair,” he said.
“You must stand at the mouth of the cave and shout, ‘Evil Bear, I have a surprise for you!’ When Evil Bear comes out of the cave, poke him twice with the Magic Stick. This will confuse him, and then you can run in and grab your Magic Hat.”

“Oh, THANK you, Poo,” said Cookies. “I will go right away!!”

Cookies walked in to the forest, and after a day and a night, she reached Evil Bear’s cave. She stood at the mouth of the cave, clutching lovely Poo’s Magic Stick in her wee trembling hand.

“Evil Bear, Evil Bear, I’ve got a surprise for you,” she called. Evil Bear lumbered out from his cave, wearing a cross expression and little else. “What do you want, you horrid little leprachaun?” he growled.

Cookies shut her eyes, took a deep breath, and poked Evil Bear twice with Poo’s Magic Stick.

She waited a moment, and then opened her eyes. Evil Bear was still standing there, but he did not looke confused. He looked angry. “What the hell do you call that??” he growled.

“I came for me Magic Hat,” said Cookies in a small voice.

“I haven’t got your stupid hat,” growled Evil Bear.

“But lovely old Poo the Druid told me that you took it,” cried Cookies.

Evil Bear sighed loudly and rolled his eyes. “What would I want with your stupid hat?”he bellowed. “Do I look retarded??”

Just then, Poo the Druid flew overhead on his broomstick. Atop his head was perched….
COOKIES’ MAGIC HAT!!

“Oh, POO,” shouted Cookies, “wherever did you find me hat!?”

Poo laughed as he soared overhead. “I took your blasted hat, and now I am MAGIC,” he cried. “Now everyone must tell me I am pretty for ever and ever and ever!! Ah- HA-HA-HA-HAAAAAAA!!!!!”
He swooped downwards as he laughed, and smacked head first right in to a tree. Poo’s head shattered like a rotten Halloween pumpkin, and the Magic Hat was torn to bits.

“Oh, woe is me,”cried Cookies. “Thieving Poo has crashed his broom!”

Evil Bear sighed in a most irritated way, and cut Cookies in to ribbons with one swipe of his giant paw. Then he fed her meat to his dog, and made a very nice necklace from her bones.

THE END

A Virtual Arnold Ziffle.

2010-05-20T16:01:00.000-07:00

Last fall my sister talked me in to playing Farmville on Facebook. “That’s stupid,” I said. “I’m not wasting my time on that nonsense.”

Oh, just go create a little farm so you can send me gifts, she says.

Eight months later and I’m level 36; I’ve got a plantation-sized farm with four cow sheds, one super-size chicken coop, a horse barn, a nursery barn (for all my calves and foals,) one manor house, two cottages, a castle, a giant windmill, a greenhouse, a school, a library, a general store, an open-air market, a replica of Stonehenge, countless fruit-bearing trees, and a boatload of livestock (cows, chickens, sheep, goats, reindeer, llamas, pigs, turkeys, ducks, geese, swans, cats, and even penguins.)

It is a monumental waste of time. To be fair, though, I think that I can prove that I rule Farmville and Farmville does not rule me because I plant my crops in accordance with my schedule. I choose what to plant based upon when I know I’ll be available to harvest. I wasted more than a few Farmville coins on withered crops before I began to time my harvests with my schedule. This, you see, is what you call ‘effective time management.’

I was supposed to write a non-fiction piece on Shirley Jackson for my husband’s magazine project. I did the research, wrote notes, and worked up the general structure of the thing in my head. I even have an opening paragraph. It’s not done, though, because time that would have been better spent on this was frittered away on my stupid virtual farm. When I was not tending to my virtual fish, that is.

About a month ago my sister announced that Farmville was eating up too much of her time. “I’m going to sell everything and quit,” she said. Isn’t that just typical? Someone gets you hooked on something, then turns around and stops doing it themselves. This must be what an addict feels like when all their friends start to sign up for rehab.

Ass Burger.

2010-05-20T15:53:00.000-07:00

     My son Udo is an odd little bird. He is, by far, one of the most good-natured,loving, and joyous individuals I have ever known. The world, to Udo, is a fascinating and magnificent place. He's like a puppy, or someone who's just found the Lord.

     Joyful Udo is also rather weird. He's always had a tendency to develop intense fascination with oddball things, like ceiling fans, or heating vents, or satellite dishes. Currently he's obsessed with foreign money. He's interested in what countries call their currency, what the bills look like, how one writes the symbols for that currency, etc. This makes him apt to say things like, "How do you draw the symbol for a yen? Is it like this (draws in air) or like this (draws in air?)"

     My biggest fear for Udo as he entered school was that the school experience would break his little spirit. A fair assumption on my part, as it has a tendency to do that to most children. More so for Udo, however, as soft little hearts are easier to break. My fears were realized on the first day of kindergarten, when Udo was suspended from school for purportedly informing a little class mate, "Today is a good day for you to die."

     Trumped up charges, I still maintain, as Udo doesn't have a mean bone in his body, and when asked couldn't even come up with a definition of the word "die." I suspect he was either coached to say it by another student, or he took the fall for whichever kid actually uttered the phrase. In the post-Columbine world of education, however, an adult does not need to witness a behavior in order for a child to be punished for it, and Udo is so very eager to please that he will confess to anything and he was suspended for a day.

     His school career, while not always quite so traumatic, has not been easy. He has a very difficult time staying on task, whether the task be a worksheet or a group lesson or gym class. Truthfully, he's a bit of a spazz. There's nothing wrong with being a bit of a spazz, unless one's spazzmo tendencies cause one to fall behind in school.

     Fall behind he has, our Udo, so that parent/teacher conferences became increasingly dreaded affairs. "Oh, good! It's conference day! Now I get to go sit in a Montessori chair and listen to the teacher tell me how much my kid sucks!" He's in the first grade, and he's behind in nearly everything, especially in math. He cannot, it seems, grasp the basic concepts.

     Because of this, at the school's urging Udo was evaluated by the professionals from the county's intermediate unit. He has, evidently, ADHD with a smattering of Asperger's Disorder. This last was confirmed by the psychiatrist he will now see regularly. The county people were hesitant with the Asperger's, definite only on the ADHD, but the doctor says he's most certainly got it.

     The psychiatrist said that I was to read as much as possible on ADHD and Asperger's. "The more informed you are," she said, "the more vigilant you can be, so that you can identify behaviors as manifestations of the disabilities." I like this lady, perhaps solely because she said this while explaining that Udo's main problem lies in his thought processes: "His head....it's a mess in there."

     So now this is my project; I read about Asperger's. The more I read, the more I realize that Udo is, in fact, quite the little Ass Burger. (I have noticed, in reading about this disorder online, that some families of afflicted children refer to them as "aspies." You will never hear me use this term, and if anyone ever refers to my son as an 'aspy' I'll correct them. In our house, it's "Ass Burger." )

     Asperger's Syndrome was identified in the 40's by Dr. Hanz Asperger. He called it something else, but his name was assigned to it in the 80's when another researcher re-published some of his case studies. The syndrome belongs to a larger classification of disorders called PDD, or Pervasive Developmental Disorders. Autism is also classified as such.

     Asperger's was recently included as a part of the "autism spectrum," apparently much to the chagrin of those who identify themselves as Ass Burgers. Previously it was identified as its own specific disorder, but the Grand High Council of Psychiatric Pooh-Bahs who publish the Big Book of Spotting Nutters (I've taken some liberties with the names of the entity which publishes the psychiatric standards for diagnosis and the name of that publication as I can't remember what it's really called; I like mine better) have decided otherwise. The Ass Burgers, it seems, don't want to be lumped in with those at the helmet-wearing, pants-wetting, droolcup-carrying end of the spectrum, and I can't say I blame them.

     Asperger's is characterized by social isolation and eccentric behavior, poor gross motor skills (clumsiness,) and preoccupation with a circumscribed area of interest. Like ceiling fans, for example, or foreign currency. It tends to coincide with other psychological disorders like ADHD, obsessive/compulsive disorder (OCD,) anxiety, and depression. Detectable onset of Asperger's is much later than that of autism, as Ass Burgers tend to have average or above average verbal skills.

     The diagnostic criteria for Asperger's are: there must be qualitative impairment in social interaction. In Udo's case, this is illustrated by his tendency to 'parallel play.' When he's on the playground with his classmates, he plays NEAR them, but not AMONG them. There must also be restricted, repetitive stereotypical patterns of behavior, like persistent preoccupation with certain objects (like ceiling fans.) This may also include repetitive motor mannerisms (flapping, twiddling, twitching, etc.) or inflexible adherence to routines or rituals (think OCD.)

     When diagnosing a child like Udo, it must be shown that these behaviors cause a significant impairment in social/occupational areas of functioning. Udo's dreamy preoccupations with whatever his current obsession may be has been a great hindrance to his school performance. It must also be shown that there has been no "clinically significant" delay in language or in cognitive development.

     Udo meets these very nicely, I'm afraid. As I follow the psychiatrist's advice and read as much as I can on the subject, the more I find myself thinking, "My God...that's Udo!" It's all rather heart-breaking.

     The good news, according to what I have read so far, is that many Ass Burgers have positive outcomes when they receive help for their parallel disorders (like the ADHD) and social skills training to help them learn how to function in the world. Little Ass Burgers grow up to be Big Ass Burgers, who remain eccentric, but learn to take the mess in their heads and make it work for them.

Three Cops and the The Stig.

2010-04-06T20:07:00.000-07:00

"Top Gear" is my favorite television program. Hosted by three fey middle-aged British men, the show involves test driving supercars, timed celebrity laps, and ridiculous challenges like racing buses and driving across Viet Nam on a moped. The show also features a "tame racing driver," someone in a white jump suit and helmet known as The Stig.

I watch the Stig driving Aston Martins and Zondas and Bugatti Veyrons around the test track and I think to myself: "God, I'd love to have a go at that!"
The driving, that is, not the Stig. I really, really would.

Being an American, I am wont to declare my affection for and allegiance to things by purchasing a decal and placing it on my car. Therefore, I have a die-cut Stig decal on the back window of my big black Dodge which proclaims: "I AM THE STIG."

By what may be just a strange coincidence, I have been pulled over by cops more times in the last six weeks than I have in the 22 years I've been driving. Cop #1 pulled me over one night as I was on my way home from my part-time job. I'd crossed over the center line a few times, apparently, and he wanted to see if I was drunk. He asked me some questions and checked my information, thankfully not making me get out of the car and do a sobriety test. Cop #1 sent me on my way telling me to drive carefully.

Cop #2 got me for going 52 in a 35. This was not very Stig of me at all, I feel, as one does not really reach a true state of Stigness until the needle hits at least 65. Nevertheless, Cop #2 issued me a ticket. The cheaper kind of ticket that didn't result in the points on my license; the one they give you and make it seem like that hundred bucks it's costing you is a big favor. It was my own dumb fault, as there's a speed trap on this stretch of road every Saturday morning. There's always one of those weird keyboardy-looking radar things set up alongside the road, a fact which on this particular day completely escaped my attention.

Cop #3 pulled me over for a 'rolling stop.' You know what I mean, where you slow down to a near stop, but don't stop completely. It was at one of those intersections where no one ever comes to a complete stop because it's a stupid place to have a stop sign. 500 people probably roll through this stop sign on a given day, but evidently it was my turn to get a ticket for it. Second verse, same as the first; cheaper ticket, no points, hundred bucks and a tug of the forelock. "Thank you ever so much for not giving me points or a bigger fine or shooting me, officer sir."

I don't know if it's the decal that's getting me in trouble. One would have to assume that in order to know about the Stig, all three cops were the sort of fellows who watch BBC America. Somehow I think the odds are against that. And if they do watch, and they are fans, you'd think that rather than inciting them to pull over and issue tickets they'd be saying "Go, Stig, go!" while waving their little clipboards.

My husband says it's because I drive too fast, but he drives like an old lady so what the hell does he know?
In any case, as of late I have been mindful to stay between the lines, watch my speed, and come to a complete, lingering stop. How dreadfully UN-Stig.

Rosenrosen and the Curse of Family Ties

2010-03-26T17:02:00.000-07:00

When I first met Rosenrosen, my political views leaned decidedly to the left. She was, and still is, very conservative. Somehow, though, we managed to hit it off.

I voted for Clinton twice, but during his second term when he said, "We all need to tighten our belts," and then proceeded to start pulling on mine even though he'd promised that only rich people would see tax increases, I began to rethink my stance. Most of our political discussions, though, had me pro-labor and her pro-business and ended in good-natured name-calling. Somewhere around about the time of the disputed Bush/Gore elections, in which I hesitantly voted for Gore and she voted for Bush, Rosenrosen issued forth a prophecy. "You know, hippie," she said, "Your son is probably going to grow up to be ultra-conservative."

"Oh, shut up," says I.

"No, really," she went on, "I can see it now. You'll be sitting around the breakfast table in a tie-dyed t-shirt listening to NPR and flipping through the "Utne Reader," and he'll be there in an oxford shirt and a tie with a copy of the "Wall Street Journal." He'll be like Alex P. Keaton!"

Then she walked away cackling.

Nowadays, age and responsibilities have changed my outlook; my political views now fall in the general vicinity of Margaret Thatcher, a scoche to the right of G.W. and slightly to the right of Hitler. A classical conservative, I think they call it; fiscally conservative and socially ambiguous. Nevertheless, it seems that Rosenrosen's prophecy regarding my son has come true anyway.

He is not wont to wear oxford shirts and ties, but he DOES read the financial pages. He's developed an interest in the stock market, takes note of the rise and fall of the price of things, like gas and milk, and follows politics. I noticed when he was about ten, and he piped up from the back seat,"Oh, boy. Gas has gone up ten cents since last week!" He rolled his eyes, muttering, "Well, that's just GREAT."

In some ways, it's a good thing. Early interest in stocks and bonds is probably a good indicator that a child may be a financial success, and buy his mommy a new house and an Aston Martin. I was thinking I should give him some seed money and open him up an e*trade account.

On the other hand, he could turn in to a nervous wreck and develop an ulcer by the age of 13. He may go prematurely bald, and stalk around the house shouting incoherently at the Bloomberg Business Report while drinking Maalox straight out the bottle.

Snowpocalypse.

2009-12-19T08:25:00.001-08:00

Here's what happens: the weather man predicts some snow and/or sleet and freezing rain, and everyone flocks to the grocery store to buy eggs, milk, bread and toilet paper. No one really knows why, but I have a theory.

Now toilet paper I get. No one wants to be caught out on the can with no paper in the house. One can use anything to wipe, really; an old sock, a paper towel, a page out of the Victoria's Secret catalog, etc., but it's never a good idea. Cleaning up with anything other than the paper made for that purpose tends to leave the roundeye agitated and angry.

But bread, milk, and eggs? I don't get it. Why those foods and not red onions and bagged lettuce? A couple nice steaks and some cole slaw? Townhouse crackers and kumquats?

We discussed this one day last winter at the Vortex, and decided that everyone gets some weird collective urge to make bread pudding. Now I know the fact that people aren't buying up all the sugar and cinnamon as well put a hole in this theory, but bear with me.

The weather man is prophesying certain doom by way of a winter storm, which leads people to think about the apocalypse. Thinking about the apocalypse caused people to wonder, "Whatever does one feed the hordes from the Pit of Hell?" Then some kind of instinct kicks in, possibly the result of race memory and evolution, and everyone goes, "Why, bread pudding, of course!"

In keeping with this, I've come up with a recipe. Write it down and put it in your recipe box, or tuck it in your Bible (perferably in the book of Revelation.)

Apocalypse Bread Pudding

3 Loaves of bread

1/2 dozen (6) eggs

3 cups milk

1/2 C. sugar

2 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. nutmeg

pinch of despair.

Preheat oven to 425, unless your neighborhood has begun to burn in which case pudding can be baked on the sidewalk.

Combine ingredients and pour in to baking dish.

Bake for 45 minutes; top should be brown and crispy.

Garnish with coppery red sauce, or eyeball rosettes.

Serve in warmed pottery bowls, while weeping and gnashing teeth.

Serves four horsemen.

Online Nakedidity: The Great Debate

2009-12-19T08:12:00.001-08:00

There's a girl at work who has all the men drooling all over themselves. She's a tiny, petite girl with a spray-on tan who dresses like an extra from an Aerosmith video in 1987. I originally remarked that she looked like an extra from a Cinderella video in 1987, but my boss said I was wrong because the girls in Cinderella videos were too trashy and kind of gross. My boss really, really likes this girl.

According to my boss and my co-worker, tiny girls are more attractive because a man wants a woman he can lift up and toss around. It must be some kind of innate urge going back to caveman days; a kind of ancestral race-memory with roots in the need to be able to pick up one's woman and flee an oncoming dinosaur or a spewing volcano.

I referred to the girl, whose nickname keeps changing (from "Orangina" to "Tropicana" to "Object,") as my boss' "lady love." I was duly corrected.

"I'm not in love with her. I just want to show her how a demon fucks." Then he mimed what that would look like, complete with devil horn hand gesture. I think most women probably would have taken great offense to this, but I laughed so hard I snarfed my diet Coke. This goes a long way to explain why I'm just one of the guys, and also adds tremendously to my dude cred.

The outfits old Tropicana wears to the office are often less-than appropriate. One of my tasks as the resident good-old-boy/gal of the department is that when this girl is in the hallway or some other common area of the office, I have to sound the alarm. Mostly this is just me running in the door yelling "OBJECT!" I do this regardless of what she's wearing, but some days' outfits require a little more urgency.

One day there was a schoolgirl outfit that had the whole office talking; the men were beside themselves, giddy with lust and ogling at her as often as possible. The women were angry. "Did you see that?" "Who would wear that to work?" "Her supervisor should send her home!"

"Man," says my boss, "you battle-axes better not start complaining and ruin this for me!"

These women were all jealous, although I doubt any of them would admit it. Most of the women in the office couldn't get such a get-up in their size, unless Lane Bryant has started a stripper collection, and even if they could it would look ludicrous. I'm thinking most of us would wear silly sexy stuff like she does if we could.

We had a discussion that day about whether or not this girl had any kind of online profile. Turns out she does, and now there's a half-nekkid "Glamour Shots"-type photo circulating around. The reactions are the same as the outfits: the men are chuffed, the women acting disgusted, clicking their tongues with righteous indignation and muttering about sluts.

I said to a couple of my broad friends that if I had stunning abs like this girl, I'd do the same thing.

"No you wouldn't," said one of them, "and if you did we'd call you names!"

"Yes, I would," I retorted, "and I'd call you jealous."

Who wouldn't want to command that kind of male attention, to wield that kind of power? It certainly must be something to experience, although I'd wager that many of the girls who look good enough to have that kind of effect aren't smart enough to realize it.

Another friend, after viewing the photo, said, "That's it. I'm going to do what I did in my teens, where I only ate once a day, subsisted on water, and I'm going to get down to a size 8." She admitted this is delusional, and said that even if she got thin and toned, she wouldn't post such a photo on the internet because it would scar her kids.

"Think about it-even if your mother were hot, you wouldn't want to see her nipples on the internet, would you?"

She may have a point, but if I had amazing abs I'd surely be tempted.

As A Matter of Fact, They Don't Know It's Christmas.

2009-12-06T07:42:00.000-08:00

In 1984, a passle of bedraggled sexually ambiguous pop stars assembled somewhere in London to record a charity record as "Band Aid." Organized by Bob Geldoff (the singer for the Boomtown Rats,) the purpose of the project was to raise money for starving Ethiopians. A noble idea, to be sure, but it is quite possibly the dumbest Christmas song ever recorded.

Don't get me wrong; I like the song. It's a good Christmas pop song, catchy and with the appropriate number of bell-like tones. To this day, when it comes on the radio I go "Oooh! Band Aid!" and turn it up. I seem to recall that at some point, all the radio stations everywhere were supposed to play "Do They Know It's Christmas?" simultaneously. Or maybe that was "We are the World," I can't remember. If I had worked in radio in 1984, I would have pretended to forget it was time to take part in the total unifying Geldoffing of the world. At the appointed moment, I would have played something else; some Nat King Cole, perhaps, or T.Rex's "I Love to Boogie."

I've always wondered if Geldoff (who's been KNIGHTED, for Christ's sake) is very stupid or was very, very high when he penned these lyrics. Maybe they were written in a hurry, so there was no time to really put a lot of thought in to them. Perhaps he scrawled them on the back of a Wimpy's napkin on the way to the studio and the limo driver took a couple of really hard, sharp turns that caused the words to smudge, and so what he really wrote was intelligent and insightful but by the time the napkin got to Boy George and Simon LeBon it was totally illegible and they had to wing it.

At any rate, I was listening to the song and thinking about how dumb it is, and decided it could use some analysis. The first part of the song isn't too bad:
It's Christmas time
There's no need to be afraid.
At Christmas time,
We let in light and we banish shame.
And in our world of plenty
We can spread a smile of joy.
Throw your arms around the world at Christmas time.

Aw, that's nice. Smarmy and saccharin and silly, just as a Christmas song should be. "Throw your arms around the world" puts me in mind of the "I'd like to teach the world to sing..." Coke ad from the 70's. C'mon, everybody! Frankie Goes to Hollywood say, "Buy the world a Coke!"

The next bit is where it starts to go downhill. I think this is the part of the napkin that got wet:
But say a prayer,
Pray for the other ones.
At Christmastime it's hard.
But when you're having fun,
There's a world outside your window
And it's a world of dread and fear,
Where the only water flowing
Is a bitter stream of tears.
And the Christmas bells that ring there
Are the clanging chimes of doom.
Well, tonight thank God it's them instead of you.

I get this part; pause in your Christmas debauchery to say a little prayer for all those hapless saps who, to invoke the late Sam Kinison, don't have the sense to move the hell out of the desert. The saps have no water save their own tears, poor buggers, and then there's all those clanging chimes of doom with which to contend. This line always gives me pause. Really, Sir Bob? Clanging chimes of doom? Seems like an attempt to wax poetic gone horribly wrong, although I feel it's a great name for a death metal band. The last line, which I assume is meant to be taken sarcastically, is sung by Bono of U2. My husband has postulated, and I agree, that this is the exact moment where Bono decided he was Jesus Christ.

The dumbest part of the song follows:
And there won't be snow in Africa this Christmastime
The greatest gift they'll get this year is life
Where nothing ever grows
No rain or rivers flow;
Do they know it's Christmastime at all?

Well, no shit, Sherlock. It's AFRICA; even when Africa is not in the midst of a drought it doesn't fucking snow. Well, except the peaks of the mountains, so I reckon if the Ethiopians wanted to feel all Christmassy, they could take a hike up Kilimanjaro. Most importantly, a good number of them DON'T know it's Christmas. People in this part of the world are predominantly Muslim, and although there are some Christians, the starving bush people about whom you are singing probably aren't either. I'd expect their religion probably has a lot to do with ancestor worship and praying to rocks. Even if they weren't hungry, they probably still wouldn't know it was Christmas.

The song finishes:
Here's to you
Raise a glass for everyone
Here's to them
Underneath that burning sun.
Do they know it's Christmastime at all?

Feed the world
Let them know it's Christmastime again.

I get it; take some of your Christmas spirit and send some money to Bob Geldoff so he can buy some food for the starving Africans. A nice gesture, all in all, although 25 years on it's reportedly been largely ineffective, as the corrupt governments of these African nations have a propensity for taking the food aid they receive and reselling it in order to expand their personal wealth. Perhaps a better way to let them know it's Christmas than sending boatloads of rice and powdered milk would be to build them some sustainable irrigation systems and send some agricultural people down there to help improve their farming techniques.

What's Eating You?

2009-11-19T20:12:00.000-08:00

This is the stuff that is most irksome to me at the moment. There's no significance to the order; just stuff that's currently pissing me off.

1) “That’s just ignernt.”

Can we get something straight? “Ignorant” has three syllables, and does not mean “rude” or “uncouth.” According to Mr. Webster, the word “ignorant,” (pronounced ‘ig-n(ə-)rənt,) means “Destitute of knowledge or education; also: lacking in knowledge or comprehension of the thing specified.

“Ignorant,” then, cannot be applied to person who insults you, cuts you off in traffic, fails to hold the elevator for you, leaves her used tampon on the back of a public toilet, or commits any other breach of social ettiquette. It also cannot be applied to your boyfriend’s baby mama when she take him back to domestic fo’ mo’ suppo’t, yo, nor can it be applied to me when I say that you who use the word in the ways I have described here should be stuffed in to a cannon and shot in to a wall. I may be an asshole, but I am not ignorant.

2)Speaking of ignorance…

Don’t send me any information about any political process, piece of legislation, university study, or anything else if you got it from any site leaning unabashedly to the left or to the right. I like to get my news and information directly from the news wires, not from media outlets who get the wire stories and edit them. I don’t pay much attention to anything that comes from anything with either “Christian” or “Progressive” in the title. (Send me anything that originated from the Center for American Progress and I’m likely to run from the room screaming, then spend the afternoon hiding behind the couch and clutching my wallet. “Modest” value-added tax my ass!)

You read something you find compelling? Research it a bit, why don’t you? If you’re going to take the time to forward on some information, find a few differing viewpoints, offer up the data, and ask me what I think.

Ditto for health-related news. Someone sent you an email saying that aspartame consumption causes MS? Google it; go out to the Center for Disease Control or National Institute of Health or Mayo Clinic web sites; hell, even Web MD is marginally reputable, and see if you can find anything that suggests there’s something to it before you hit “forward.” Otherwise, I’ll have to do it, and then I’ll have to reply to you and all creation that whatever information you’ve sent me is a bunch of crap; how in Bob’s name can you be such a moron?

3)Fa ra ra ra ra…

Some things about Christmas:

The retail Christmas season starts after Halloween. It’s been like this for years, and it’s not going to change any time soon. Stop complaining about how it's too early and we skip over Thankgiving. No one sings Thanksgiving carols because a) there aren’t any, and b) it’s a holiday created by government mandate. The religious holidays (Christmas, Easter, Halloween) exist because there’s a connection to some high holy day. The ones brought forth because they were tacked on to some piece of legislation? Not so much.

These holidays also garner more attention because they are accompanied some kind of consumption (candy, gifts, decorations) and therefore are heavily advertised. Thanksgiving only really generates revenue for the grocery and travel industries. Perhaps instead of focusing on the proliferation of Christmassy stuff though the month of November, stick with the spirit of the thing and reflect on the things in your life for which you are truly thankful. I’m thankful if I get though the day without hearing someonewhine, “Christmas already? What about Thanksgiving?”

Jesus is not, in fact, the reason for the season. Our modern Christmas, by and large, originated with the pagans celebrating winter solstice. The church assigned the birth of Christ to the soltice celebrations because they couldn’t get people to give up the parties and it was not economically feasible to excommunicate everyone.

Christmas is reverent, holy day to mark the birth of the Son of God, or it’s a noisy, filthy, garish celebration of gluttony, sloth, avarice and any other of the deadly sins. It’s up to the individual to choose, although personally I prefer the schizophrenic approach and make it a bit of both.

4) Healthcare-shmealthcare.

I will concede that the American health care system is imperfect, and that everyone should have access to it. I do not agree, however, that the system is “in crisis,” and I feel that a complete balls-out overhaul of the system is short-sighted and foolhardy.

Whatever work is to be done needs to be done incrementally, tackling one problem area at a time. Some kind of gap insurance for chronic and catastrophic illnesses, perhaps, so that thos who manage to survive long-term illnesses aren’t wiped out financially from all the treatments and services their insurance does not cover.

Government-subsidized health insurance plans for the self-employed or for those whose employers don’t offer insurance might not be a bad idea. Streamlining Medicare and Medicaid might be a reasonable goal.

Examining the reasons that health care costs are so bloody high might serve the country well. The previous administration sought to place caps on malpractice awards, in hopes that this would drive down the exorbitant cost of malpractice insurance. This was shot down, of course, and right along party lines. After all, faithfullness to one’s party is much more important than doing something that might actually do some good.

The healthcare legislation, currently in the Senate, will probably get pushed through because Obeekaybee and his progressive drones are working diligently to push through all of Clinton’s failed initiatives…because they CAN. They’re in a hurry because they know they are not likely to keep their current majority status, so they’re tacking health care and the student loan overhaul because once a few more Republicans are elected, they’ll lose both battles.

If you’re middle class, meaning 200% of the poverty line or above, your taxes are probably going to go up. Haven’t gotten a wage increase in a few years? Struggling to pay your bills? Tough shit. 56.8% of eligible voters participated in the 2008 elections; Obeekaybee took approximately 52% of that vote. For all intents and purposes, then, there are a very small number of people in this country who, in supporting the current regime, think that everyone else just needs to shut up and write out a check. These people are made up primarily of the dregs of humanity who'd never voted before but came out for the last election because they know there's something in it for them, and milquetoast progressives who vote for welfare and taxation out of guilt. Or stupidity, I'm not quite sure.

Udo on Childbearing.

2009-11-13T18:13:00.000-08:00

"When someone is going to have a baby, why does it come down like this?" Udo asks this while bending his legs and gesturing between them.

I ask him what he means. "When someone is having a baby, it comes out here and this thing all splits open," he explains. "Down here where their winkle is."

"Where in God's name did you hear about that?" I ask him.

"Never mind that," says Udo, "why does the baby come down like that?"

I ask him again where he heard about this. He sighs and rolls his eyes. "On that episode of 'Family Guy!" I make a mental note to put the kibosh on the Family Guy.

"Why does the baby come down like that?" Udo asks again. "It looks like it would hurt."

I say it might hurt a bit.

"Why does it come out that way?"

"Because that's how it works," I tell him.

"Oh," says Udo. "Can I have a Popsicle?"

What's on Udo's Mind.

2009-10-31T11:16:00.000-07:00

Udo and I were walking across the parking lot of the farmer's market this morning. It's windy today, and the trees are all shedding their leaves.
"Look at those leaves go," crowed Udo as a gust sent leaves rushing past. "They look like many small people running!"

My husband commented the other day that he had been watching the movie "Little Man Tate," and wondered if Udo sees the world like the kid in the film; in numbers and in negative. I wonder myself, because no one I know has a take on the world quite like Udo's.

Udo has his own ideas regarding what is and is not cool. He had four dollars, so we needed to shop for Hot Wheels. I pointed out a little blue Citroen, a Porsche 911, and a Lotus. "Oooh, look!" I say. "An Aston Martin DB9!"
"Yes," says Udo, "those are very nice." He smiled condescendingly, and chose a 1971 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser station wagon with wood panels.

"I want you to quit your other job," said Udo the day before. I ask him why. "Because Daddy is mean," he says, scowling. "He just yells and yells at me."
His brother Cold Fire interjects, "He wouldn't yell at you if you weren't such a moron."
I tell the boy to shut his face. "You're not a moron," I say to Udo, but he's busy trying to hit his brother.

Udo's brother dressed up as Edgar Allan Poe for Halloween. It was a good costume, I must say; he got a lot of compliments. Udo dressed up as a ceiling fan repair man, complete with a shirt bearing the name of his future ceiling fan repair company. "The Fan Man," it reads, "established 2002," with a picture of a fan he drew his own self. Udo's costume did not get compliments, and Udo seemed to be troubled by this. Udo thinks ceiling fans are the coolest things in the world, and he does not understand why hardly anyone else seems to hold this view.

"Next year," says Udo, "I'm going to be Mr. Bean."

Udo Gets Back to the Future

2009-10-20T17:59:00.000-07:00

"What do you want for Christmas?" I ask Udo.

"Plutonium," he responds without missing a beat.

"Umm...I think that's illegal," I say. "You have to be a scientist to handle plutonium."

Udo's lip quivers and his eyes fill with tears. "Okay..forget it!" He is slightly manic now, so we move on.

Later, I suggest he write Santa a list. Item #1 is "A triangular Bakugan." I'm hoping Santa knows what the hell that means. Item #2 may pose a problem. The list reads: "Alternt Younivers remote control."

"Yeah, I want a remote control, like on 'Family Guy.' The one that you push the button and it takes you to an alternate universe."

"Ummm...that's just pretend. Nothing like that really exists."

Again with the puppy dog eyes, quivering lip, and tears.

"Okay....FINE! No list for me!" He's manic again. I tell him to think about it and go back to his list later on.

Santa has already gotten him his very own ceiling fan, a tie-dye shirt making kit, a big tote full of K'nex (with a motor) AND an Erector set, also with a motor. I'm thinking with the fan motor, the K'nex, and the Erector set pieces, I should find him that plutonium and see if he can't make himself a teleporter.

I bet he could.

Dollars to Doughnuts.

2009-10-20T17:53:00.000-07:00

The General and I are bored. The powers that be at the office have shifted us around and changed our job duties, so that we now do a fraction of what we used to do for the same money. This is what corporate America calls "streamlining," or "realigning the business model."

It's much more efficient, apparently, if we're bored, so bored we are. We pass the time by writing dirty limericks and cooking up hair-brained schemes. Today, after the limericks, the General came up with an idea for a business.

"Dr. Doughnut!" he exclaimed. I looked at him blankly. "You make the doughnuts while dressed scrubs, with a mask and one of those head-mirror things, and fill the doughnuts with syringes!"

The doughnuts are the prescription for whatever ails ye, so they're called things like "Strawberry Suture" and "Lemon Ligature." "Coconut Colonoscopy" sounds especially yummy, I think, as does "Iced Enema."

"That's a coffee drink," proclaimed The General when I thought up that last one. "It's got BITS floating in it." I hold up an imaginary coffee cup and say, "Someone's been eating PEPPERS."

We'll go mobile, buying a used ambulance and kitting it out as a doughnut shop on wheels. "We'll park outside of Curves and make a mint," cackles the General. "The fatties will not need to come to us, we'll come to the fatties!"

I'm not sure this concept would go over well with most. I find that while we find certain things hilarious, others find them odd and probably a little frightening. More's the pity; someone, somewhere, needs to proclaim that their favorite doughnut ever is a Praline Pap Smear.

Observations from the Fitting Room

2009-10-18T10:15:00.000-07:00

I took a part-time job at one of the evil conglomerate big-box retailers, so I fold clothes and hang clothes and do all sorts of menial schlepping a few hours a week. Stop laughing, it will pay for Christmas.

I'm not the sort who tries on clothes before I buy them. I know my size, I only wear cotton because everything else is itchy and sweaty, and I mostly wear black and gray. Unless it's an expensive shop and it's formal attire, I don't try it on. But the rest of you out there, you lug armfulls of clothing to the fitting room, unfold it, take it off the hanger, sweat in it, get your deodorant all over it, rip the tags off it, and then leave it in a pile on the bench.

Schlubs like me pick up said piles, refold, rehang, retag, and send the stained stuff back to the "damages" area in the stock room. (In the evil conglomerate big-box retailer, this is fun because there's usually a container of candy from opened packages somewhere back with all the broken stuff; you get your Arrid X-tra Dry all over the size 38D bra you tried to squeeze yourself in to, you heifer, and I get an Atomic Fireball.) In dealing with these piles of retail offal, I've noticed something that may be important: you're all cheap, and you're all fatter than you think you are.

I pick up and put away a lot of clearance clothing. Right now all the clearance clothing at my particular evil conglomerate big-box retailer is $1.99. Really, two bucks. You really need to fit something on that costs two bucks? Really? Give me a break; buy it take it home, if you don't like it or it doesn't fit, give it to the Salvation Army.

Here's what I spend most of the time refolding or rehanging: JEANS. Specifically, women's jeans misses' sizes 16-18. When I find them, they're generally in great disarray; unbuttoned, unzipped, one leg inside out, and I'm not sure, but I suspect a mite tear-stained. Ditto for size XL or 14/16 shirts, blouses, sweaters, and blazers. Piles of the largest sizes in the misses' department, all inside out, wadded up, and tossed on the floor in what I can only assume was a fit of rage.

I know why; no one wants to admit when it's time to give up the ghost and waddle on over to the PLUS department. I know, ladies; I was there myself at one time, and it's one of the most difficult things one must do. It's time, though; those size 18 misses jeans just aren't going to zip. You are not going to get them up past your thighs, and wadding them up on a ball and agrily shoving them back in to the back of the Lee jeans display is NOT going to change that.

The ones you need, the ones with the capital 'W' after the size which have room for your big butt and will accommodate your gunt, are over there on the other side of the wall. Hey, I'm not judging you. I'm just tired of picking up after your angry changing room tantrums so I think it's time someone told you the truth.

Look at the positive side; perhaps you can go join Weight Watchers or head off to Jenny Craig with Valerie Bertinelli and burn off some of that blubber. Then you, too, can go back to the "Not Fat" department for your jeans, rubbing your fat friends faces in it. When they're all discussing the sales at Lane Bryant or asking who got the coupons, you can say "I don't need to shop there."

Then you can laugh maniacally, revelling in your schadenfreude.

Also, a junior's size 'XL' is like a misses' medium or large. Juniors are for teenagers, most of whom have smaller breasts and hips. They are not for middle-age women, in style or in cut, even for those who are relatively trim. Seriously, you look silly trying to squeeze your mom-hips in to those skinny jeans; knock it off. More importantly, stop leaving them in a wad on the dressing room floor.

Oh, Shit...It's the Apocalypse.

2009-10-17T21:59:00.001-07:00

This week at work was "Disaster Recovery." This is where we test out our "business continuity plan." All the big, evil corporations have them since 9/11, in case another pack of wacky Muslims fly some planes in to some buildings, or whatever the next big disaster might be.

So at 4:00 on Wednesday, we get a "phone blast" (otherwise known as a phone call) to announce that the disaster has occurred and the BCP is effect. (I downloaded a new ringtone just for the occasion..."Shout at the Devil.") So I'm sitting in my little gray cube making jokes about the four horsemen breaching the horizon and cackling to myself. No one knows what the hell I'm on about, as usual.

**Kind of like when I'm sitting in the cube listening to "Glorious" again, and someone comes back to see just what exactly I'm laughing about. "Aaaaaaigh! Covered in bees!!" I say. And they just look at me like I've grown an extra head or something.**

The question is this: in the event of a real disaster, am I going to head out and help get my employer's system back up? Or am I going to pack up the guns and head for the hills? Depends on the disaster, I reckon. Keeping my job is going to be way, way down on my list of priorities when the rivers turn to blood while four Skeletor-looking fuckers gallop by on their way to Armegeddon.

"I'm sorry sir, I won't be hopping a train and coming down to the Agency "war room" in Philadelphia to process student loans. Why ? Well, the Lord of the Flies just came in to my kitchen and demanded that I make him a sandwich. I don't even know what demons eat."

Birthin' Stories

2009-10-17T21:56:00.001-07:00

Birthin' Stories

Pregnant broads are SO touchy, particularly those that are knocked up for the first time. I think it's because there's this ridiculous air of mystery and reverance that surrounds the process of procreation. What a load of nonsense! Once you've done it, you realize that it's uncomfortable and messy and more than just a little bit dehumanizing and degrading. You read those bloody hippie birthin' books, and they make it seem like you're going to poot out your little angel sprog on a misty cloud haze of spun sugar and rose petals. It's more like those scenes in "All Creatures Great and Small" when Mr. 'erriott reaches elbow-deep up a cow to pull out a calf.

I was telling birthin' stories at my class to this pregnant lady. I stated that it's not a good ideal to give birth near a holiday, because the real nurses are all on vacation and you get stuck with surly rent-a-nurse substitutes. I know for a fact that this is true.

My second son, who was the colicky spawn of Satan, was born the day before Thanksgiving. It took three nurses to get me off the gurney and in to the bed. Mind you, I was a mite heftier back then, but give me a break; these people are supposed to be professionals and they treated me as though I were an unwieldy sofa. Have you ever had a team of retarded nurses try to roll you on to a bed after major abdominal surgery? I'd just had a cesarean, and was numb from the waist down but not numb ENOUGH, evidently, because I nearly passed out. It's very unpleasant to have a fresh incision shifted about because some silly bint is heaving you around bodily.

I was up all night, every night I was in the hospital because the nasty nursery rent-a-nurses would not keep any babies in the nursery if they cried. My kid cried, and I'm guessing other babies cried, too. Evidently, the noise was interrupting their card game or their sex-toy party or whatever it was they were doing. So I had this red squalling lump from the pit of hell attached to my breast all night. He was so attached because he would only shut up if he had a mouth full of nipple.

This is why I was awake at 2AM the first night. My legs were still numb, and I could not get out of bed unassisted, but the evil little black-eyed Dominican nurse decided she wanted to take out my catheter NOW. And she did, despite my protests.

"But I can't move my legs yet, I won't be able to go to the toilet."

"You can wait until morning," she said, and proceeded to pull out my catheter in a manner that can be best described as the motion and force that one would use to start a gas engine lawnmower. A lawnmower that had sat in the yard all winter uncovered, and had bad plugs.

I think I screamed. You'd think someone who was not evil and crazy might have come to see what the matter was, but no one did.

The second night, I asked for pain pills around 7. Around 11, no one had brought any but I really had to pee and I wanted to leave the screaming baby unattended in the room in hopes that someone would come and kidnap him.

It hurt to move. I made it to the can, and sat on the bowl crying and passing huge post-partum clots and wishing that my husband was there so that he could help me back to bed and also so I could spit on him (it would have hurt too much to hit him).

After about fifteen minutes, I hobbled back to bed. It hurt to try and pick up the baby after I was in bed, because I had to twist to do it, so I picked him up before trying to get back in to bed. That hurt just as bad, so I sat there and cried for a while.

Let me just say that I am not a crier. People who cry a lot piss me off, generally, so if I'm crying, things must be really bad. This pain was really bad, and could have been avoided if the stupid rent-a-nurse had brought me some bloody Percocet.

I buzzed for the nurse.

"What??" someone bellowed.

"I need help," I said. Which is their job, is it not?

After a bit, some nurse came in, and she was irritated that I'd called. I told her that I needed some pain killers. She sucked her teeth and sighed, and looked at my chart. Then she kind of started, and said, "Oh, you should have had painkillers hours ago."

"Well, I asked but no one brought any. And so now it hurts so bad I can't move."

So she helped me in to bed, gave me an extra dose, and took little Damien down to the nursery.

This is the same night I told the nursery Nazi when she said that she was going to bring the baby to me to feed because he was crying, I said to give the little bastard some formula, because I didn't want him. I know I can't be the only mom whose ever said that sort of thing, but given the expression on her face, I must be one of the few.

This is how it was, you see. And then I got the little squalling lump of doom home, and he was not too terrible for the first few weeks. He slept for four-hour chunks, which is not bad for a newborn.

And then the colic hit at four weeks, and lasted until 8 weeks. Five hours of constant screaming every night, and sometimes a few more hours around midnight.

During a midnight screaming fit, I was sitting on the couch covered in spit-up and leaking breast milk from my cracked nipples and watching 'Rosemary's Baby.' I told my son that he was a stupid baby, and I didn't like him very much. I really, really meant it. He didn't care, he just kept screaming and turning red.

The colic stopped at 8 weeks, and I believe that this was because in the wee hours one morning I informed the little bastard spawn from hell that if he kept it up, I was going to throw him out the fucking window.

So I'm telling my baby stories, because I think they're entertaining and I was conversing with someone else who'd had an evil baby and we seemed to piss off the first-time-pregnant mom.

I told her I wasn't trying to scare her, and she goes "Yeah, right," and didn't say anything else.

Perhaps she'll think of me some time in the middle of the night, when she's trying to rock a screaming baby and she's covered in puke and hasn't slept more than an hour at a time for weeks and her raw and bleeding nipples are sticking to her nursing bra. I won't be thinking of her; I'll be fast asleep in my baby-less house.

Say 'cheese', you little monster!

2009-10-17T21:52:00.000-07:00

Today I took the youngest child to have his pictures taken. I do this because 1) his birthday is at the end of the month, and 2) Christmas is coming (the geese are getting fat) so it's almost time to send out Christmas cards.

This child, we'll call him "Udo," has never been very good at the whole studio-portrait lark. Actually, old Udo is really bad at it. Aside from the photos that were taken when he was an infant and couldn't run away, picture time is a trial.

He will not sit or stand still. He tries to break the equipment, and when he realizes that he won't be allowed to do so, he runs away. Then I have to chase him, and I can't beat him in public because someone might call the cops. But I was thinking that he's a year older now, he might behave a little better. But just in case...

I try to psych him out ahead of time. "Oooh, Udo, we're going to have pictures taken. Yay! You can smile nicely for the lady and say "cheese" like a big boy!!"

And Udo goes, "Yay, let's have our pictures taken!" And up to the point that he's actually in front of the camera, Udo is going "Yay! Pictures!! Say, 'cheese', Udo!!"

(This child refers to himself in the third person quite frequently. I hope it's just some phase through which three-nearly-four-year-old children go, and not that he's a fledgling sociopath.)

Then the photographer tries to get him to sit on a little stepladder thing.

"NO!" yells Udo. She removes the stepladder, and tries to get him just to stand.

"NO!!" yells Udo. She brings over a set of little wooden steps, and miraculously gets three poses out of the child by shaking a feather duster at him. No shit, a feather duster. Have I mentioned that I sometimes wonder that this child doesn't require a drool cup and a helmet with a bite guard?

Then we try for a Christmas background, and Udo screams "NO!!" We try for a plain background with Udo sitting on a little tricycle.

"NO!!" screams Udo. "NO NO NO!!!"

I threaten Udo. Udo wants a Playskool Bulls-eye Ball game for his birthday. He's seen the commercials for this thing on Cartoon Network, and he finds them intensely exciting. He wants one so badly, I'm sure it hurts. He seems to think that the children featured in the ad come with the game. "I will throw the balls, and the kids will say 'yay'!!" he says. "I want a bouncy ball machine for my birthday," he declares about twenty times a day. It's been the first thing out of his mouth every morning and the last thing I hear at night for some time now. So I threaten, through clenched teeth, "You won't get a bouncy ball machine for your birthday unless you sit nicely for the lady and say 'cheese'!!!"

Udo's longing for the Bouncy Ball Machine seems to have suddenly subsided; "NO I WON'T!!" he bellows as he tries to wriggle from my vise-like grasp.

So we did get some pictures, but not many. I had taken along his new little grey cordoroy blazer, hoping to have some pictures taken in his snazzy ski sweater, and some in his little preppie blazer. That didn't happen. I had to make due with some of my own snaps with the digital camera when we got home, and I had to bribe him with french fries to get them.

I hope that this is the child that's saddled with my care when I'm old and infirm. I'm going to spend all my time shouting "NO!!" at him, and if he ever tries to take my photo I'm going to either cry or jam my finger up my nose. I'll always behave the worst when there are people around who might object if he hit me. Then right after he gives me a bath, I'm going to run behind the couch and shit my pants.

Zippers and Pressure Bandages

2009-10-17T21:48:00.000-07:00

Today I was discussing Vasectomies with The General. The General is a certified child-hater, and wants to ensure that he does not procreate with his child bride. He's nervous about the procedure because a) some guy is going to palm his 'nads and b) he wants to know where the sperm goes once your junk has been disconnected.

"What happens to the sperm? Where do they go?" he asks. I say I think your body absorbs them, but he's not happy with this answer. "You had the snip, what happens to your eggs?" Again, I say that they get absorbed, but he just gives me that look.

So I say, "Well, every month I store the egg, and then once a year I poot out a really big one," I smile. "I try to save it for Easter."

He accepts this, but still wants to know about his sperms. So I roll my eyes and go, "They're going to put a zipper in your scrotum, and once a month you have to empty out all the dead sperms. Kind of like emptying a vacuum cleaner bag."

He likes this answer, but wants to know how they'll attach it. I suggest staples, which he does not like, but then concede that they'll probably use dissolvable stitches. "That's what I had with both my cesareans," I say. "Maybe if you're lucky, you'll get a pressure bandage like the one I had."

The General says he does not want to hear this story, but nearly every day I have to hear either about how big his willie is, or how he wants to have his testicles removed and replaced with glass eyes. Turnabout is fair play, so I tell him this:

The day after my second ceserean, the nice intern who helped the OB in the OR the day before came to check me out. She pulls back the sheet, pulls up the hospital gown, and says, "Oh dear...I'm so sorry. Oh, no!"

If you ever find yourself in a postoperative situation and a physician is looking at what's been done to you and says something like this, grab the nearest heavy object you can get your hands on and beat yourself unconcious.

It seems that the evil OR rent-a-nurses had used this pressure bandage on my incision that resembles that puffy Rubbermaid no-skid shelf liner stuff, but has Krazy Gloo on one side.

The intern says that they ask the nurses not to use it, but they do anyway. "I'm going to have to pull it off, and it's going to hurt." She grabs a corner, braces one foot against the bottom of the bed, and pulls. And pulls, and pulls, and pulls. I held on to the bed rail and tried very politely not to pass out. I did not hit her, nor did I yell at her, because a ) I was in much pain and just could not be buggered, and b) she was so nice and didn't LIE to me the way physicians do when they're about to inflict excruciating pain upon you ('you may feel some pressure'). Plus she ran right off and got me a big old handfull of Percocet, and at that time I was nice and polite to anyone who would bring me pain pills, please and thank you.

The up-side of this is that it took care of the post-pregnancy wax I so desperately needed. The General has declared a moratorium on my birth stories, but if I have to hear about his 'nads then I get to tell birthin' stories. Tomorrow I think I'll explain lochia to him.

Oh, Don't Get Your Knickers In a Twist: An Explanation.

2009-10-17T21:45:00.000-07:00

I made a bumper sticker on www.makestickers.com. It reads: "My honor student boiled and ate your labrador retriever, and bound his manifesto with its skin."

I made this sticker in response to a sticker on the vehicle of a woman at my office. Her sticker says, 'My labrador retriever is smarter than your honor student.' I was offended. I parked next to her a couple of weeks ago, and spent a day fuming about it. How can you say your dog is smarter than my kid? My kid is eight and reads on a 7th-grade level! He read at a third-grade level at the age of 5. My kid doesn't shit in the yard, nor does he lick his own butthole (He does, however, bite his toenails which is almost as gross.) My kid has opposable thumbs, for chrissakes'! My kid beat Zelda: Ocarina of Time!! Can your dumb dog do that?

Has your dog memorized any dialogue from Monty Python, 'Better Off Dead,' or 'It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!' lately? Both of my sons have. My son could recite dialogue from 'James and the Giant Peach,' 'Nightmare Before Christmas,' and 'Oliver!' at the age of 2. He could even knew the choreography. Can your dog do that?

So I got to thinking about who beat whom, in evolutionary terms, and I decided that when it came down to it, my honor student could EAT her stupid dog and use all the offal for various and sundry art projects.
And that's the saga of the labrador sticker. Judging from the looks I see on people's faces when they read it, it's slightly offensive.

Tough tits! That was my intention, and now I like to seek out the labrador lady and park next to her. I hope she's just as offended by my statement as I am by hers.

The Children Are Trying to Kill Me.

2009-10-17T21:43:00.000-07:00

Today, in an energetic burst of haus-frau motivation, and because I had some extra time, I shampooed the living room rug and washed the kitchen floor. The extra time is due to the fact that the workload for the class I'm in this session is considerably lighter than the previous two, and I did a lot of my papers on weekend mornings. Also, I went down to Green Dragon on Friday because I was off work and got all the stuff I normally get over at the Big M on Saturday mornings so I had nowhere to go.

I was really on a roll; I moved the furniture and vacuumed and shampooed the carpet one section at a time, stopping to switch loads of laundry all the while. I moved all the chairs out of the kitchen, took all the throw rugs outside to air, and moved around the kitchen with a bottle of Orange Death or whatever that cleaner is called, spraying the most noxious spots.

When one sprays the linoleum with Orange Death, the linoleum becomes slippery. If one is not careful, one's feet might go out from under oneself, and one might end up flat on one's back.

This is exactly what happened to me; my feet went out from under me, my head went backward and hit the solid wood microwave cabinet and my foot hit the corner of the butcher block. I literally saw stars and little blue tweeting cartoon birds.

Now, I'm smaller that I used to be, but substantial enough to make a great big WHUMP! when I hit the floor. The children, who were cackling at 'Mr. Bean' in the other room, continued doing just that. Udo, bless his little cotton socks, did say "What was that noise?" But then Mr. Bean did something high-larious and he forgot to come and check.

I sat on the wet floor, holding my head and watching the blood run out of the gash on my foot. For a moment or two, I thought I might lose consciousness and I was racking my rattled brains trying to remember the symptoms of concussion. All I could think of was the episode of 'Happy Days' where Fonzie had a concussion and Potsie, Ralph and Richie had to make him stay awake so he wouldn't die. I surmised that at the very least, I needed to stay awake so I tried really hard not to pass out.

Neither one of the children came in to see what the matter was. I'm reasonably sure that they were aware that I had fallen, but they somehow know that we just upped the life insurance policies and they were biding their time to see if my little wet-linoleum mishap might prove to be lucrative for them. Also, as far as parents go I'm evidently the meaner of the two. I imagine that the older child said to the younger, "Just pretend you don't know that Mommy's dying the in the kitchen. With her out of the way, we'll be eating frozen pizzas every night for dinner for the REST of our LIVES!!"

Birth Control Video, By Me and Rosenrosen

2009-10-17T21:41:00.000-07:00

The following are exerpts from an email string between my friend Rosenrosen and myself. We were discussing the fact that we could probably make a really effective Health Class video to be used to discourage teenagers from having babies.

Rosenrosen: They should hire us to make a video about the consequences of sex. Like going without sleep for 6 weeks straight, and the ancient Incan monkey god telling you to bludgeon your husband in his sleep.

Me: They should spend a week on lochia, with poster-size photos of the state of one's underpants during the six-week-gorefest that is postpartum.
The posters should be scratch'n'sniff.

Rosenrosen: And a full-length video presentation of hospital-grade breastpumps at work, stretching your nipples out to 18 inches, while the mother sits there, crying that she feels like a cow.

"Mooo-ooooo-oooooooo-oooooooo-oooo! Oh, gawd, what have I do-o-o-o-ne? WAAAAAAH!"

Me: Cut to a video of me, sitting on the fold-out couch holding an engorged breast in one hand and working an Avent manual pump with the other while crying and going, "Look at me...I'm a fucking cow!! MOOO!!! MOOOO!!!"
Zoom in on my husband, who's standing in the doorway bottle feeding the infant.
The look on his face is one of abject terror.

Rosenscary: Next, a scene of my baby screaming for 6 straight hours. And don't edit for time. Make the bastards listen to him scream for the full 6 hours. Make them stay after school, if necessary.
Show me rocking him, singing every hymn from the hymnbook because I've run out of children's songs. Show me trying to take him for a drive, putting him on the dryer, running the vacuum, bicycling his legs, and trying every bullshit method ever concocted to help colicky babies. Finally, cue the dramatic music, and feature my husband saying "I'm too fucking old for this shit."

Next, show my husband's severed head, bouncing down the steps of the mobile home porch, and show me digging a shallow grave in the state gamelands, holding a screaming child in my front-facing child carrier.

Me: Cut to my living room.
It's 1 AM, and every light is blazing because the little shit screams less if it's bright. He's like a fucking anti-Mogwai or something. Show the baby screaming in his little blue boppy with the little bees on it; he is stiff and red with rage. Show me in my post-partum colic clothes: blue plaid shirt, size XXL, great big sweat pants, greasy hair in a messy pony tail, Velma glasses smudged and askew.
'Rosemary's Baby' is on the television, and the sound is nearly all the way up. Somehow, though, I can't hear it over the baby's screams.
My face is expressionless as I turn to the squalling demon sprog and say, "You're a stupid baby, and I don't like you very much."
Skip ahead a few nights, and show me in the nursery at 3 AM. I'm wearing the same colic clothes, and I'm rocking the chair so hard that it's about to break. The springs go "woinka woinka woinka".
The baby is quiet and almost asleep, but if I try to put him down he will scream. And scream and scream and scream.
I am not singing; the son of Satan does not suffer lullabies. It is motion he desires, and a mouth full of bleeding nipple.
I suspect that he enjoys the taste of my blood.
I am looking at the window furtively.
Do I suspect a prowler? Do I fear a draft will chill my baby?
No, I am wondering how I might be able to toss the little fucker out the window and make it look like an accident.

Fade to black.

Mashed Potatoes

2009-10-17T21:36:00.001-07:00

I am the official potato masher at the family gatherings. It's my job, and dinner cannot be put upon the table until I've mashed up the spuds. I have this title because my potatoes ROCK. Ask anyone; you won't find better mashed potatoes anywhere.

The first time I was called upon to mash the potatoes was some time in the early '90s. I don't recall the exact year, nor do I remember which holiday gathering it was, but my mom stood there shaking the electric mixer at me, going "MASH!!" So I did.

Apparently back in those days I really sucked at it, because that batch of mashed potatoes were full of lumps. My brother bitched about it through the whole meal.

"Oh, God," he said. "These are inedible!!" He made a big production of sifting through his potatoes with his fork and picking out the lumps, which he scraped off on to the edge of his plate. "What did you mash these with, your FEET???"

It pissed me off; I fumed.That lousy son of a bitch!! Sit there and criticize my mashing abilities, will he?? I'll show him!!

So every holiday thereafter, I beat the shit out of those potatoes. I put that mixer on 'high,' which made the TV go fuzzy and all the non-cooks in the living room go "HEY!!" I poured in milk and margarine, and beat until my arm and shoulder ACHED.

The trick, you see, is to first mash with a hand masher, then move on to the electric. You spin the bowl with one hand and mash with the other, stopping intermittently to scrape the sides with a spatula. Stand mixers are easier, but old Sylv only has a hand mixer.

My brother, alas, has shuffled off this mortal coil and now complains about stuff in another dimension. And every holiday I, the Official Potato Masher, mash the bejeezus out of the potatoes with a picture of my lump-picking brother in my mind's eye. So while there may be a lump in my throat, there is nary a one in my potatoes.

Humbug: A Rant

2009-10-17T21:30:00.000-07:00

Tonight I have to go to Cold Fire's school for "Winter Festival." He's singing a song with his class, and is very excited about it. He tells me about this little shindig YESTERDAY, mind you, and at first I said 'no' on the grounds that he should have bloody well told me about it well before now. Then he sat around with big teary puppy dog eyes all night, so I relented with the admonition that next time he gives me advance warning or else he can forget about it. I was annoyed because I already had plans for this evening, but mostly because I hate school functions, especially ones that relate to the holiday.

They have this "Winter Festival" every year. I never go because because Christmas programs that aren't called Christmas programs irritate the shit out of me. The school describes it thusly: "This free event will showcase how cultures from around the world celebrate winter holidays."

I prefer to call it "Wiccapalooza." This is probably unfair, as well as grossly innacurate, but it's funny so I'm sticking with it.

I could not care less about what winter holidays other people celebrate. I realize that this probably makes me a blinkered asswipe of a curmudgeon, and I do not give a shit. All those pagans can knock their collective tie-dyed socks off and spend the entire month of December dancing around pine trees in the nude and singing "The Ballad of John and Yoko" in Latin, for all I care. I don't know what Muslims do for Ramadan, and as long as it doesn't involve blowing shit up they may have at it. Perform some clitoridectomies in the name of Allah, why don't you? It's of no nevermind to me. Jews may light a menorah and put on some Adam Sandler; Satanists can skin some baby rabbits and drink their blood in front of a pile of flaming hymens. As the man says, "It's the holiday season, so whoop-de-doo!!" I'll just be over here watching "A Charlie Brown Christmas" under my garish decorated tree, thank you very much.

I understand that schools feel they have an obligation to make sure that no one feels left out and that all their bases are covered. Or more accurately, they must not offend anyone or else they'll get the ass sued off'em.

Still, I get nostalgic for Christmas programs like the ones they had when I was in school. I want to sit in a school auditorium and listen teary-eyed as my child stands amidst a pack of nose-picking 8-year-olds singing about the Baby Jesus and Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer. This, however, would be very unfair to little Rhiannon and little Akbar and little Shlomo.

Rhiannon and Akbar and Shlomo can kiss my butt.

Potty Mouth

2009-10-17T21:27:00.000-07:00

Udo swears like a sailor. Bit of a no-brainer, really, as I swear like a sailor and he lives in my house. He began swearing at a very early age, because like his brother before him, he never pays any attention to anything I say unless it's something I don't particularly want him to hear.

When he was about 18 months old, he was watching me attempt to install a screen in the living room window. Our house is old, our windows are crappy wood frame rope-and-pulley dinosaurs, and all the ropes are broken. The windows don't stay open, and have a tendency to come crashing down on a person's forearms. This is exactly what happened, and I'm happy to report that I did not swear. I did one of those clenched-teeth growly Yosemite Sam "Why you urrrrgh......." type of things, but Udo swore for me:

"Fuckin' hell, Mommy!"

One morning we were running late, as usual, and I was having a hard time getting him in to the car. I dropped my keys and my morning can of diet Coke, which promptly burst, and I couldn't seem to work the buckle on Udo's little child safety seat. Car seats, in general, are designed by child-hating ex-Nazi sadomasochists, and his was no exception. I was grumbling and sighing and fumbling with the latch, and Udo pipes up:

"Jethuth Chritht, Mommy!"

I scolded him for saying it. "That's a terrible, naughty thing to say, Udo!"

His brother Cold Fire says, with an eye-roll and a smirk, "Well, HE wouldn't say it if YOU didn't say it."

"Thanks for the tip, kid," I replied.

He's right; it's probably wrong of me to scold the child for his foul mouth when I'm the one who taught him all the profanity he knows. Lately when he hears profanity from me he recognizes it, and questions me:

"What did you say, Mommy?" he asks with great interest, sounding like an eager undergraduate who's trying to take very careful notes.

"Oh, Udo, Mommy said a naughty grown-up word. Only grown-ups can say naughty words; little boys cannot."

Udo agrees. "Oh, yes...that's a naughty word for grown-ups. Don't you say that word, Udo!"

For a while, his favorite phrase was "What the hell??" and he used it with impunity. He inserted it in to his favorite song from "The Nightmare Before Christmas," so that it became "What the hell is this??" instead of "What's This?"

"Oh, Udo, don't say that" we told him. "That's naughty."

Now he says, "What the naughty?" instead. "What the naughty is that noise?" "What the naughty are you doing, Mommy?" Etc.

Recently he directed his foul mouth at me. I was on the computer, and he was playing with his little trucks and cars on the kitchen floor. There was a sort of crashing sound, and I heard him say:

"Oh, Udo...what you done? Mommy said don't do that, Udo. She such a bitch! Ooooh, Udo, don't you say that naughty grown up word!"

Serves me right, I guess

Brilliant Scheme, Ridiculous Conversation

2009-10-17T21:15:00.001-07:00

Brilliant Scheme, Ridiculous Conversation

**Note: Fat Bob's voice is a lot like Neil off "The Young Ones." Bear this in mind for Fat Bob's dialogue, because it's SO much funnier that way. If you've never seen "The Young Ones." go jump in front of a speeding bus.

The General, his missus, and I have concocted a brilliant scheme by which we will become ridiculously wealthy. I will write a children's book based upn the cartoon-y characters that Missus General draws. Kids will love it, and eventually I'll be living in a castle like JK Rowling, rolling about in piles of money and cackling. It'll be great.

I won't divulge the details of the book, but I will say this: I decided we need a peripheral character called Lizzard. He wears red lipstick, carries a handbag, and shows up here and there to deliver some kind of important information to the main characters. He never completes a message, though, because he's constantly chased off by a giant swarm of angry bees. The General agrees that this character must be included, although most of our audience won't get the joke.

"What if Eddie sues us?" I wondered.

The General says he doesn't think he would. Just to be safe, though, it's decided that should this book ever be published, we ought to contact his management ahead of time and see if there would be any objections.

"That way we can add an extra 'z' to the name and make the bees gnats instead," I say.

The General and I had a conversation a while back in which it was determined that Robert Smith inks lipstick when frightened, like a squid. This evolved from a discussion about what one would say to a particular celebrity, if one should bump in to him/her. For example, if I ever run in to Gene Simmons, I'd say "Dude! You smell like borscht!" If I ran in to Robert Smith, I'd say "Will you wash off that lipstick and comb your hair, for Chrissakes?? You're FIFTY!!!" It all ends badly, with me chasing Fat Bob through an airport, knocking him down, wiping off his lipstick with a spitty Kleenex and stealing his floppy socks. "Help," he'd cry. "That guhl stole moi SOCKS!!"

Then he'd ink.

Today we decided to have the characters in the book take a trip to the seaside just so they can meet a squid called Fat Bob. He'll have high tops, floppy socks on all of his legs, and ink lip gloss when frightened. "Oh, no! Oi've INKED!" he'll say in a most dreary way.

The General says, "What if we publish the book without asking permission, and Eddie calls you up to yell at you because he hates it?"

I thought about this a moment, and said that I'd be so totally star-struck, once I realized who it was, that I'd wet my pants and then pass out. It'd end up with my son picking up the phone and saying, "Mommy will have to call you back; once she comes to, she'll need to change her underwear."

Then Eddie might call the General, and The General would go, "Very funny, Babs...get the hell off my phone! Nice impression of Eddie, by the way." Click.

He'd be totally pissed. "I called the author and she wet her pants and passed out! I tried to call the illustrator, but her husband called me 'Babs,' complimented my impersonation of myself, and hung up on me!" Then he'd definitely sue us.

We wondered if both Eddie AND Fat Bob would try to sue us; what would that meeting in the lawyer's office be like? Fat Bob steals Eddie's lipstick, and they get in to a fistfight. Except Fat Bob just crawls under a table and cries, because Eddie's so much more butch, and Fat Bob would be frightened. Nothing would be accomplished at this meeting, because of the fighting and the fact that the General would laugh himself in to an aneurism, and I'd do the star-struck wet-pants unconscious thing.

Therefore, we'd need to take it up on the Maury show.

"Eddie'd throw his shoe at you!" crowed the General.

I said I'd prefer that he hit me with a chair. "Mmmmm...I hope he's wearing a skirt at the time."

The General: "Eeeew. Stop that."

The whole feud would actually be a ruse for the sake of publicity, though. It'd end up with Eddie hanging around my castle's drawbridge, yelling "I've got some ideas for the next book!" and me up in a turret with a pump-action shotgun going, "Go away, we've already got one!!"

Granddad and Elvis.

2009-10-17T21:13:00.000-07:00

Speaking of Granddads, mine died when I was six. My mom and I had gone to Luton to visit him, as he was in the final stages of lung cancer, and he died while we were there. We were all staying at my Auntie Barb's house. Granddad had the guest room, and my mom and I were on roll-aways in Auntie Barb's front room.

The night he died my cousin Becky and I were standing in the hall outside his room, watching him puke in to an empty margarine tub. Becky said, "'e's bein' sick in a mar-ja-REEN bowl!!"

Part of what made this experience so surreal and therefore so memorable was that I frequently had to stop and translate Lutonian British in to Pennsylvanian English. 'Bein' sick" = "throwing up"; "mar-ja-REEN" = "Parkay," etc.

During this visit, my older cousin Tracy asked my mom if I was retarded. Specifically, "Wot's up with 'er; is she thick?" This was because she had just spent five minutes asking me to hand her cigarettes to her. "Pass me ma fags," she had said, or something thereabouts. "Huh?" I said several times, blinking stupidly, until someone said, slowly: "She wants her cigarettes, luv!!"

The morning after the margarine bowl incident, my cousin and I were again standing on the landing, peering in to the guest room. The bed was stripped, and the aunts were scrubbing everything.

"Where's Granddad goin' ta sleep?" Becky wondered. I said maybe he was better and had gone back to his flat.

I was feeling pleased with myself for remembering to say "flat" and not "apartment", and also because if Granddad had gone home, then Mom and I could go stay with him. He lived in a high-rise with an elevator, and I'd get to push the buttons. Granddad would fix me Tony the Tiger for breakfast, and then he'd take me to the corner shop for an Orangina and a tube of Smarties.

Then one of the aunts shooed us away, and the next thing I recall is going downtown with Auntie Barb. We had to go see some man in an office. I think my mother was there, but I'm not really certain as Auntie Barb did all the talking. They seemed to be planning some sort of a party for Granddad, and the man was asking all kinds of questions about him. I was sitting nicely on a big chair, admiring the décor and wondering if it was Granddad's birthday. The man behind the desk asked another question about Granddad, and my Auntie Barb said "Yes, he died this morning."

Wha???

My mother will tell you that I had, in fact, been told that Granddad was dead before I went with them to the undertaker's. She may be right, as I was an oblivious child too wrapped up in the goings-on in my head to take much notice of important stuff going on around me. I preferred my fantasies to the real world, but sometimes had difficulty separating the two. This is the same reason that I thought my sister's husband was Tony Orlando (as in, "Tie A Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Old Oak Tree.") Give me a break...I was a spacey little kid, he had a mustache and bell bottoms, his name is 'Tony'...a perfectly understandable assumption on my part, I feel.

There was also that whole accent-language-barrier thing. I was used to my mom's accent as it was at home, which tended to lean a bit more to the posh. I think when she came to America, she was careful to pronounce things more clearly and succinctly so that people didn't stand there going "Huh?" and blinking at her stupidly, like me with the 'fags' incident. When she went home, though, she'd lapse in to the vernacular and be dropping her 'h's within a day. (**An interesting aside: she did the same thing when angry, which was a handy guage of just how pissed off she was. She dropped a lot of 'h's the day I got kicked out of Christian school, for example.)

So she probably DID tell me that Granddad had died, but she most likely sounded like she'd just fallen off a market stall on "Eastenders" at the time and my six-year-old self missed something in the translation. "Oh." I probably said. I said that a lot, as I discovered that my relatives didn't get so irritated with me if I pretended that I understood everything they meant.

After the shock in the undertaker's office came the viewing and the funeral. I remember not being allowed in the front room because that's where Granddad was. I didn't see him; I just have a vivid memory of closed french doors and not being allowed to open them.

On the day of the service I was sent to Auntie Maureen's for the afternoon to play with some rosy-cheeked cousin whose name escapes me. I remember the cousin had a fantastic doll house that she did not want me to touch, and we argued about ABBA. Specifically, I loved them and she didn't and we fought about it. The argument ended when I took a swing at her and missed, but knocked a glass of orange juice off the table in the process. Auntie Maureen shouted at us.

Then an announcement came over the radio that Elvis had died, and Auntie Maureen started to cry.

That's it; that's all I remember. The only other thing I remember about that trip was that I went down the road to the high street to get some sweets with my cousins Jane and Tracy. We were standing at the corner waiting to cross the road, and I kicked my leg really hard and my shoe flew off. It landed in the middle of the road, and Jane had to go get it. She was very nice about it and didn't get mad or anything, but then we were never there long enough for the novelty of a weird little American cousin to wear off.

In Memoriam.

2009-10-17T11:19:00.000-07:00

I was driving home from work the other day, through the ghetto, and the car in front of me is covered in decals. There's a die-cut decal on the back window that reads "In Loving Memory (name of thug here) R.I.P. (thug's nickname, thugs dates of birth/death." I've seen these things before, and I think they're silly. These people were over the top, though; they had a massive decal on the trunk with a picture of the thug on it. Great big stupid ball hat, massive white t-shirt, sagging baggy pants, gawdy gold jewelry, and a sullen expression.

"Wow," I said to myself, "that is classy!"

I decided that when I go, I'm going the tacky route, too. I want all my friends to put giant memorial decals on the backs of their cars. I want the "In Memoriam" decal on the back window, a photo sticker on the bumper, and then possibly some magnets. Particularly if I should expire of some specific disease. "Support Aspartame Poisoning Awareness in Memory of Babs!!"

I want my magnet ribbons to be pink and black, please. If my malady should involve the removal of some kind of abnormal growth, I want pictures taken of the growth, and then I want big red 'NO' symbols superimposed over the photo and then made in to car magnets.

"Why stop there?" I said to myself. I want a moon bounce at my funeral, please. And a cotton candy machine, and clowns. In fact, I want the clowns as pall bearers; I want the clowns to carry me out in my box and stuff me in their clown car. Then I want all the clowns to pile in after me, and drive of tossing confetti out the window and honking their horn. aWOOOgah, it will say.

I want silly string and streamers tossed in the hole, rather than the customary fistfull of dirt. The flowers should squirt. Once the hole is filled in, please surround my stone with mylar balloons, garden flags, wind socks, pinwheels, and solar-powered light-up statuary. A garden gnome, perhaps; see if you can find one that is mooning or picking its nose. Lots of stuffed animals, too, because nothing says "I miss this dead lady" like a pile of moldy Beanie Babies.

If I go out in a road accident, please, please build me a giant tacky road-side memorial. Use lots of things that don't hold up well to the elements, like signs made with posterboard and magic marker, cheap silk flowers, balloons, and more stuffed animals. Make me a cross from popsicle sticks and Elmer's glue. Stick a polaroid of me in the middle of it, and some of those religious candles from Dollar Tree.

Finally, I want at least one person to go get my name tattooed on themselves somewhere. Preferably the neck, because nothing says "grace and dignity" like a neck tattoo. Having my face tattooed somewhere would be a nice touch, too, but I'm really pulling for my name and dates on the back of someone's neck. Hopefully a heavier individual, so that my information is partially obscured by rolls of neck fat.

Headed for Disaster.

2009-10-17T11:17:00.001-07:00

Congressman George D. Miller has sponsored and released a new student aid bill, HR 3221. You can read it yourself here:
http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/legislation/StudentAidandFiscalResponsibilityAct.pdf

This bill eliminates the Federal Family Education Loan Program. This is a program in which banks make loans to students, and the loans are guaranteed by the Federal government. The benefit of this program is that banks will loan money to anyone regardless of credit history or income as long as they meet the enrollment requirements at an approved school. The banks benefit somewhat from subsidies paid to them by the feds, but mostly by enabling them to establish relationships with desirable (college-educated) borrowers who often extend their dealings with the banks beyond repayment of their student loan debt. This generates revenue for the lenders by way of bank accounts, mortgages, car loans, CDs, etc.

The program has had some difficulties, with some lenders bending rules regarding borrower solicitation and improper relationships with schools. (It bears pointing out here that much of that mess had to do with PRIVATE loans, not FFEL loans.) The program does have its share of problems, and is in serious need of reform.

However, the Democrats have a bug up their asses about the FFEL because their competing program, the William D. Ford Direct Loan Program, has not attracted as many schools and borrowers as they hoped at its inception in 1993. It's a Clinton initiative; William Jefferson "Cum Stain" NAFTA Clinton. He's a handitard, a liar,and a national embarrassment. But I digress.

Schools and students hate the DLP because it's grossly inefficient and more expensive for borrowers. FFEL loans are cheaper, you see, because those big evil banks give their borrowers incentives in the way of reduced or eliminated fees and interest rate reductions. The feds don't do this because they're more evil than the banks.

Since the Dems are in charge, they're using this as an opportunity to make their shitty loan program successful, by God. President Obeekaybee, George D. Miller, and some other fat greasy politicians drafted the afformentioned student aid bill. The bill eliminates the FFEL in favor of the DLP, as I've stated, but fortunately gives non-profit FFEL guarantors first crack at servicing the loans. This is mostly because the current DLP servicer, a company called ACS, sucks nuts at it.

Good for me, you see, because this means I'll probably get to keep my job. Also bad for me, because I have two children whom I'd like to send to college, and now it's going to cost me a whole boatload of extra loan fees to do it.

"But, Babs!" you may say. "Eliminating the FFEL will be COST EFFECTIVE, and that money is going to Pell grants!"

So say the sponsors of this bill, although most economists beg to differ. Problem here, though, is that middle class people like myself don't qualify for Pell. I make too much money, you see. Most people make too much money, except for people who make bad life decisions. You know, like single mothers and people on welfare and the chronically, willfully underemployed.

If I had spent all my adult years hopping jobs so that I always earn entry level wages, I'm sure I'd qualify for grant money. Silly me, working for all these years, never getting fired or leaving a job unless I had another one waiting. Silly me for not pumping out a boatload of kids to different fathers. What the hell was I thinking?

Not only does this bill increase Pell grants on the backs of the overtaxed middle class, it also sets aside $1.2 billion for historically black colleges and universities. There's a load of schools like this, built post-slavery to educate blacks. All kinds of special allowances are made for them because their graduation rates and grade point averages are abysmal. The president thinks this can be fixed by giving them money, and that the problems have nothing to do with the culture in which these kids are raised, which does not value education or responsibility.

The bill also gives $12 billion to community colleges so that 50% of the population will have post-secondary education within the next ten years or so. Don't get me wrong; trade schools are good. We need plumbers and mechanics and roofers. Community colleges are also great places to get your first two years of college. Associates degrees? Useless. And when 50% of the population has a degree, what's it worth? Not much. And all these students graduating with these degrees will need jobs, which are disappearing over the border at an alarming rate. No one seems to be mentioning this, however.

There's more in this bill that has my blood pressure soaring, but I'll be typing all night if I try to cover it all. Suffice it to say that this piece of legislation causes the student aid system to ream the middle class and reward bad behavior even more than it already does.

High Dudgeon

2009-10-17T11:13:00.000-07:00

Evidently Mike Seaver has a stick up his ass. Mr. Seaver, star of an old sitcom and a boatload of shitty Christian movies, has decided to single-handedly take on those pesky Darwinists by publishing an annotated version of Origin of the Species where he explains Hitler's connection to the theory of evolution and discusses Mr. Darwin's racism and misogyny.

Mike Seaver is a douchebag; of course, he's an evangelical Christian, and they're all pretty much douchebags. Their confrontational, self-righteous style of "winning souls for Jesus" is a case-study in inefficiency, to say the least. I can say this because I walked among them for many years, and I found them to be pompous, self-righteous dimwits who never quite managed to conceal the pleasure they received from telling someone they were going to hell.

They talk about hell a lot, and they talk about the stuff that causes a person to end up there. They like to talk about how right they are and how wrong you are. They like to tell you, especially if you have the misfortune of being a child in their charge, what a steaming piece of shit you are. They don't say "steaming piece of shit," but that's what they mean.

The principal of the horrid school I attended liked to quote that bit out of the Bible that said "Your righteousness is as filthy rags before the LORD." I think it means that the best you can do is never good enough for God, and then I think it goes on to say that He loves you anyway. In our little world, it meant that nothing you did was good enough, ever. For anyone. Any good grade, anything you created or did or said, this bloated Texan asswipe would just say, "Filthy rags."

I could go on and on and on about detentions I received for not dancing in chapel services or refusing to pretend to speak in tongues or forgetting to take the "Houses of the Holy" badge of my jacket and wearing it to school. I could talk about the paddlings I received for questionable spelling sentences, and how the shitassed Texan like to sit us in his office and try to make us cry by forcing us to talk about things he knew upset us.

"Your dad and your brother aren't saved, and they're going to go to hell. Don't you think you ought to try and do something about that instead of just sitting there, letting it happen?"

I got in to one of those retarded internet arguments about stupid Mike Seaver and his stupid Creationist book. Someone said that he was just trying to spread the word of Jesus, and it was about love. Love? Spread the word?

I recall that the Gospels do say to spread the word. Christ says "Feed my lambs," something to be done physically and spiritually. He says to keep the commandments and obey the word of the LORD. He illustrated that one should be kind to the dregs of society, and He illustrated, by plucking the ear of corn on the Sabbath because he was hungry, that maybe we ought not be so uptight about rules.

I don't remember Him advising anyone to dabble in politics; He said "you are in the world, but you are not OF the world." There's nothing there that tells me Christians should get to make the rules or be quite so worried about lawmaking. I don't think He said to get in people's faces, or to make them feel like shit. I don't remember any instruction to go around yelling at people about how they're going to burn, as Mike Seaver is wont to do.

Pointing out that Mr. Seaver and his contemporaries are a great big pile of steaming, dripping evil douchebags who give the faith a bad name makes me anti-Christian. Any first-year Comm major can tell you that the fundamental principle of communication is not just to send the message you want to send, but to ensure that your audience is receiving that message as you intend it to be received.

Perhaps Mr. Seaver and others of his ilk should stop shouting about being persecuted for their beliefs and start thinking about how their message is received. Perhaps they could regroup, reassess their methods, and start sharing their faith in a way that was not divisive or inflammatory. It's possible that their intent really is to share the love and joy of their faith, but this cannot be conveyed by shouting at people and pissing them off.