The EU Just Bulldozed the Goondocks.

The Question of the Day is: Can the European Union possibly get any douchier?

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List of Recent Uncharitable Thoughts, in No Particular Order

"You know, if I looked like Shrek, I think I'd do something about it."


"Nice dye job, slut."


"God bless you; those ginormous legs look awfully uncomfortable."


"I'd like to kick his crutches out from underneath him."



"At least when we move, I won't have to listend to Hopalong gimp around all day."



"I bet you sniff your own farts and then smile, you pretentious prick. Who the hell quotes themselves in an email signature?!?!"



"Nice phone you're playing with there, while meandering slowly down the staircase in front of me, holding me up. It would be a shame if you "accidentally" slipped and fell."

Found Whilst Cleaning: Impulse Control

I was searching through the piles of little papers on my desk, trying to locate the login information for the Facebook page under a pseudonym that I forget to maintain. I found this, written on a piece of notebook paper.

IMPULSE CONTROL
A list, in no special order, of impulses I am currently working very hard to control.

• urge to hit someone with a chair
• urge to push someone down the stairs
• urge to say to someone, "That haircut is STUPID."
• related: urge to tell co-worker that her new 'do makes her look 10 years older, in addition to being stupid.
• purple nurples
• urge to go, "Duh da de derp de derp da dope de dope..." while someone is speaking.
• assorted namecalling and slurs:
• doucher, fuckwit, douchebag, asshat, cuntbag, fucktard, quivering pile of douche, faggot, fuckface, bootlip, Hootie, and shouting 'Run, Trayvon....RUN!!"
• urge to punctuate statement with flatulence
• urge to quote Bible verses at people
• urge to tell someone, regarding an ill-behaved child: "Put that thing on a leash!"
• urge to kick small dogs
• urge to end sentences with "SELAH", or "So mote it be."

Look, Rabbit! I Don't Git Mad No More!

I had this brother, see. He committed suicide 14 years ago, an event I can honestly describe, with no melodrama or exaggeration, as the worst thing I've ever experienced. He took himself out in such a way that his body was not discovered for three months. Three long months in which I learned, the whole family learned, that "the worst thing is not knowing" isn't just a cliche', and the true meaning of the word HORROR.

Grieving a suicide is unlike any other kind of grieving, because on top of the sorrow is a pile of anger and guilt. Sorrow because he was gone, guilt because I didn't see clear to stop it. Anger because I felt betrayed and slighted and because of the damage the whole sorry mess did to my parents and my sister and his sons and me. What a selfish prick, I thought. Not only did he decide to exit stage left, he did it in such a way that we were all dragged through three months of fear and grief and uncertainty. Search parties and search dogs and police reports; false reports of sightings and bank activity that raised hopes, only to see them dashed. More guilt because I felt relieved when he was confirmed dead; not the outcome we wanted, but better than not knowing.

A little more anger swirling around the fact that in addition to the anniversary of his death, in August, there's the anniversary of the discovery of what was left of him, which is in November. Anniversaries are hard, and we have two of them. This last August was especially difficult; it's the 19th, and this year a week or two before it fell a celebrity killed himself. High-profile suicides are horrible for survivors, for they bring about the inevitable flood of do-gooding self-help nonsense where everyone tries to convince themselves that it would never happen to them. Look for the signs! These are the red flags! Here are the warnings!

The reality is that someone who means to take themselves out don't give you a heads-up. They don't drop hints. People who are trying to get attention do this; the ones who mean business go off somewhere and do the deed as quickly and efficiently as possible. People will argue with me about this; those people are dead wrong.

Anyway, the histrionic do-gooding is really difficult because it's feels like we're being admonished. We missed the signs, ignored the portents, ran passed the red flags, dropped the ball. We didn't, because that's all crap, but that's what it feels like. And as much as I tried to ignore it all last August sometimes it's just unavoidable, so on top of the guilt and the anger and the grief I already carry around, more guilt is piled.

So this year I prayed. I have a few basic prayers: God grant me wisdom, God grant me strength, and Please Jesus help me not to be such an asshole (h/t to Anne Lamott for this one.) To this I added, "Please help me lose this anger. This particular burden would ease if the anger was gone."

Funny thing, prayers; sometimes you get what you asked for, but make a mental note to add a caveat next time that the vehicle by which the thing is delivered not be unpleasant. My request was granted in the form of excruciating pain.

The expurgated explanation: my brother hurt his back as a very young man, and as a result suffered with severe chronic pain nearly all of his adult life. I knew about his injury, and the one botched surgery plus the additional ones to fix the first one. I knew he went to a rehab hospital for pain management after drugs stopped working. I knew he could never sit for more than 20 minutes and had to either get up and walk around or lay on the floor. I knew he had to quit working. I knew these things, but I did not really understand until I twisted the wrong way and ended up with a bulging discs and sciatica that didn't respond to steroids or physical therapy.

It hurts so bad sometimes I can't think straight. My heart starts pounding; I get flushed and hot. I get the shakes, I get nauseous; I hold my breath and then I get light-headed. All because I sat too long or moved the wrong way.

At some point I realized that my brother had this for 20 years, and had been told there was nothing else they could do for him. This is what he felt like, I thought to myself, except it was worse. Day in, day out, every day for 20 years and no end in sight. Well, hell, I thought. No wonder he opted to bow out. I can't say I blame him. I can't say I wouldn't do the same thing.

So now I'm not angry at him anymore, and that particular load is no longer quite as heavy.

Babs is Out of the Office

I am out of the office.
If you require immediate assistance, I can be summoned but it requires some work.
You will need:
• a container of salt
• chalk
• a live chicken
• a small dagger
• a silver chalice
• matches or a lighter
• a working knowledge of correct Latin pronunciation
Step 1: Draw a pentagram on the floor with the chalk.
Step 2: Stand in the center of the pentagram.
Step 3: Make a ring of salt around the perimeter of the pentagram
Step 4: Cut the throat of the chicken with the dagger.
Step 5: Fill the chalice with the blood of the chicken.
Step 6: Repeat this incantation: “Boden excitant iratus sum, et meam impleat crimine voluntatis.”;
Step 7: Set alight the blood in the chalice, holding the chalice in your RIGHT hand and the flame in your LEFT.
I will then appear, but I will not be happy.
Caution: Boden-conjuring is a dangerous enterprise, and is not recommended unless the problem is urgent.
Please note that I will require a boon for any tasks completed once I have been summoned. This may be Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate, a large Dunkin' Donuts iced coffee (with skim milk and three packs of Equal), an icy-cold can of Diet Coke...or your little finger. Be sure to have all of these items and/or a small, sharp knife on hand prior to beginning the rite.

Box

 

He sealed the box with packing tape and left it on the table before he dragged the blade across his throat. I think it might have snakes in it, or a Hurst shifter rebuild kit for a '76 Nova, or a stack of old letters, a rain-swollen photo album, and some old Tupperware (no lids.)
If it's snakes, they're probably dead by now.

If I look at the box, which I try to avoid, I see snakes. Hooded, black, and angry. When I'm not looking, I can hear them sliding against the cardboard and butting the seam of the flaps with their angular heads, their searching tongues sometimes sticking to the underside of the tape.
I hope there are no snakes in the box. I would really like to open the box and find the Hurst shifter in the same way that I half-heartedly hope that someone will call out of the blue to offer up contents of the unknown-to-me U-Stor unit  he had somewhere that holds the '76 Nova to put that shifter in, along with pictures and letters and his favorite chair, plus a box of record albums so that I could frame "Houses of the Holy" to hang on my wall and say to people, "Oh, that - it belonged to my brother."

It's probably snakes. In August and November and at my birthday they thrash insistently like the time we had to take the cat to the vet in a cardboard box we taped shut because we didn't have a carrier, and the cat thrashed and yowled and pissed in the box, finally loosening the tape enough to push his head through the top and hiss at us. The snakes will do that, someday.
There might be something nicer, something that I would like to have. A vintage Molly Hatchet or Foghat or Uriah Heep t-shirt, for example. Baby pictures and wedding rings. A pressed prom corsage with Budweiser bottlecaps stuck between the brown and wizened petals of the orchids.

At the time the box was sealed, I thought he was ancient but he was younger than I am right now, and I'm not that old. When you're in your twenties, you think everyone over the age of thirty needs to give away all their possessions, wrap themselves up in a bedsheet, and climb to the top of the mountain to wait for the eagles to carry them off. Then some time goes, and you realize that people in their twenties are very, very stupid.
Now that I am an age he never reached, I think I hear the snakes around my birthday and not just the anniversaries.

Why you would box up some snakes and leave it on the table is beyond me. Thinking about it logically, rationally, there probably aren't snakes in that box. Probably it's unpaid electric bills and expired pizza coupons, a stack of Hardees' Moose cups and a half-eaten carton of Whoppers. Of course, it might be that stuff PLUS the snakes; they ate the Whoppers.

What I would like to have, instead of snakes, is a set of hand-written instructions for car detailing, because I can remember some of the things he used to tell me about that but not all of them. Plus a recording of him telling his best Polack jokes, and another of his imitation of our mother which sounded like something off Monty Python.

What I have, however, is a whole lot of nothing. There is nothing because all the material things were in the possession of the woman he lived with at the time, and none of us can remember her name to call her up and ask her for something. There aren't really any snakes, but figments of my imagination; visceral representations of my guilt, anger, and grief. Plus more guilt. There is not even really a box, just a wish to have something material with which to remember, over which to grieve, and a wish to be able to rewinde and do things differently. It's a misguided belief that, if given a chance, I could go back and fix things. This lurks in my peripheral vision as a box on a table.

Just A Thought...

I used to blog anonymously on MySpace. Now this blog is here, and it's under my actual name. I wonder if this has anything to do with why I don't get called back when I apply for jobs?

Udo's Full House

"Man, that Uncle Jesse; what a head of hair!" - Udo

Nickelodeon shows reruns of "Full House" in the mornings. I know this because Udo watches it surreptitiously. I caught him in the act, and he was apologetic.

"I know you think this show is crap," he said, "but I kind of like it. I think that's okay."

I told him he can watch whatever he likes. "If YOU like it, then watch it," I said. And so he does.

Like many Family Hour sitcoms of the era, it's an excruciatingly bad show. Bad jokes, ridiculous situations, and improbable outcomes, all with a laugh track. And oh, the coolness! I realize that any program will bear the vestiges of the fashions of its age, so the most hilarious thing about the program from this present vantage point are the clothes and the hair. Acid-washed denim? Great big poofy perms, and hair-sprayed bangs that stand six inches of the top of the precocious moppets' heads? What in God's name were we thinking about in 1989?

The most cringe-worthy aspect isn't the button-fly Levi's and floppy socks, it's the lingo. I can't imagine what might have been going on in those script-writers' meetings. "So listen, guys; we need to come up with a catch phrase for a toddler. Somethin' HIP, somethin' NOW, somethin' HAPPENIN'!" And they decided on "You got it, dude!" presumably because you coudn't have a two-year-old asking "How's it hangin'?" on network TV during the 8:00 hour in prime time.

Awwwwww...how darling! I mean, I know the little one whose catch phrase this was kind of resembled a monkey until puberty, when the twins that played her sprouted mams and developed perpetual duck-face. (I believe that they make this face, actually, because the bulimia leaves them with constant puke breath, and duck-face-lip occludes the nostrils and blocks the stench. But, I digress.) Still and all; a toddler that calls everyone "dude?" Old ladies and elementary school kids across the country went nuts for it.

 

So the upshot, then, is that I don't like the show, and I don't want to watch it. I don't want to listen to it playing in the background when I'm doing other things. I want to change the channel and hide the clicker; I want to set up the parental controls to block it as obscene.

 

I won't do that, though, because dear Udo loves the show. He thinks the poofy permed hair is AWESOME. He belly laughs at the stupid jokes. The family often hugs and says how much they love each other; they kiss one another on the nose while making sad puppy dog eyes. Soft-hearted Udo, also wont to deliver wide-eyed kisses while declaring his devotion, sits and smiles sweetly as he watches.

 

 

 

SIck and Tired

Things of which I am sick and tired, in no particular order:

biased journalism
horror fiction
conspiracy theorists
classroom mommies
full cart in the express lane, paying with food stamps
zealots
broads
other people's perfume/cologne
newscasters who pronounce nuclear "nuke-you-lar"
"supposebly"
"expecially"
lies
sharia law apologists
jihad sympathizers
media hipocracy
fake nails
tattoos
feather extensions
synthetic fabrics
stripper shoes
other people's children
ghetto culture
Prius drivers
Federal overreach
"women's health"
angry atheists
Facebook
guys hogging the arm machines the gym
couples who work out together
teen moms
shattered illusions

Petulance

Why do I even  bother with this nonsense? I'm not the writer.

Aunt Flo Says, "Gesundheit."

I believe there may be some kind of force out there in the ether, a malign and disgruntled force that conspires against me. This is the reason that if there is a product on the market that I especially like, that product will be discontinued. Weaver's Batter-Dipped Fried Chicken, for example. Ginza brand shampoo and conditioner. Aqua Silk conditioner. Meguiar's Tech Wax 2.0, the car wax squeezed  straight from the nipples of the gods.

When the dark force is not trolling my cupboards, trying to suss out with which products I would be most aggrieved to part, it is causing co-workers to schedule long meetings on the second day of The Curse of Eve. On the second day, the Overlook Hotel elevator doors open up, and blood fills the streets. There are clots the size of small babies, which must be checked for faces before the toilet can be flushed (just in case.) The second day, (and then often the third, and sometimes the fourth) requires the largest absorbency tampons that are made, in addition to the type of extra-long maxi pad with wings and blood-gutters down the side. Frequent trips to the can are required.

The second day is a bad day for a two-hour meeting. Yesterday's meeting took place in a small office, and one of the participants was wearing some kind of flowery, powdery old lady perfume. I kept trying to move out of the cloud of violets, talcum, and presumably, the musk produced by the dread of the impending nursing home. Eventually, though, I breathed in a great big lung bucket full, and promptly sneezed violently. Twice.

Some broads say that they pee when they sneeze. I don't have this problem, but if it happens to be the second day Auntie Flo is in town, it may dislodge something unpleasant. Like, say, a clot. And when  clot is dislodged, a torrent might follow. Which is what happened. And the back-up pad failed, so the effluvia shot over the sides and over the top, like a mongol horde.

It looked like I had been shot in the crotch, and that is why I had to go home and change my pants. Thank God for long shirts.

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 repeat: 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 schools 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 borrowers 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 were 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.

    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.

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)

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.