like mucus

i was going to start this post off with a story about a nickname but unfortunately i can't because i'm too busy being mad at google.

i don't even want to ask what the fuck is with this new buzz bullshit in my gmail because i'm afraid of my head exploding and leaving tiny bloody brain bits on my nice clean carpet when i hear some asinine response.

there is such a thing as being overconnected, google, and your determination to attain global domination truly frightens me.

and that's all i'm going to say about that.


oh, and also, i love my new android phone that hanukka harry gave me.


in other news, my dad died last week and i'm pretty sure he's the one who dumped that shitton of snow all over the east coast just to throw a wrench into our plans for his memorial service.

typical.

maybe i can tell that nickname story now.

so my dad's best friend stood up to give a eulogy and while i was appropriately sad and emotional, i definitely heard derek zoolander saying 'ya-googalie' in my head.

this friend began by sharing how he and my father met when they were five years old in kindergarten. my dad says 'hi, i'm rob mansfield' and the friend says 'hi, i'm mike lucas.'

my dad says 'no, from this time forward your name is like mucus.'

also typical.


on that note, i want to send a very heartfelt thanks to all my wonderful family for coming together from all corners in the midst of a blizzard to listen to me ask mulitple times if my eyeliner was running as i cried.

you guys are the best, thank you!

b's my favorite action hero

i love me some christian bale.

i pretty much will watch any movie he's ever been in no matter how sucky it promises to be.

it all started with empire of the sun.


that bratty little boy who, by the end of the movie, is transformed into a wisened young man has pervaded my taste in leading men for years.

needless to say, b has been subject to my bale obsession and has accumulated a vast supply of knowledge about the actor and his many roles.

this trivia was put to good use this morning when b announced that his new year's resolution was to go on 'the machinist' diet.


for those of you who might not have seen this movie, bale actually transformed his body to about one third of his natural weight by eating nothing more than a plain can of tuna fish and an apple a day for nearly a year.

now, i'm all about supporting b in whatever it is that he should choose to pursue, but come the fuck on.

seriously?

i don't think so.

after maybe a week, the smell of tuna is going to be vomit inducing. and what the fuck am i supposed to do? eat in a cave so as not to tempt him with my normal fare of big salads loaded with cheese and eggs?

as i'm getting ready to go to the grocery store for the weekly shopping, i'm looking at this sparse list of foodstuffs:

apples (green)
tuna (lots)
shit for fuss (not literally, you know what i mean)

i think this time i have to back up his machinist diet and buy some of his favorite snacktime snacks to hide and pull out and be the hero when he decides that he's actually hungry.

how long would you last?

i give myself three days, max, if anyone were ever able to drug me and convince me that it was a good idea to begin with.

burning questions

last night i got mad at a picture.

this picture:


it was mocking me and my inability to recognize a joke. all i was trying to do was browse a few real estate listings (on a legit site) and then i saw this piece of work. i instantly felt self-conscious, 'am i the only moron who can't tell what the fuck this is about?'

reading further into the ad did not resolve any questions i had.


is someone seriously trying to sell this house? what is the entire fire department doing posing for a picture in front of a burning house? exactly how long ago was thomas edison's time? just how bad is the fire damage? who can i rob to get 55k cash?

et cetera, et cetera.

i was going to print out the picture and burn it just to make it feel stupid too, but then i figured it might be the type of picture that likes that kind of thing. and also because i might end up burning down my current home and wind up in a lunatic asylum perpetually mumbling something about fire and cash offers.

on that note, fuck you, picture. you and your weird fire scenario are no longer going to bother me, unless you want to play nice and tell me what the fuck you're all about. then i'll invite you over for tea and we can chat about property lines and vinyl siding.

time travel is possible

today i will not be screaming fuck you, google.

no friends, today, google has supplied me with a good hearty chuckle served up with a side of humility.

i went back to look at my very first emails in my gmail account from january 2005. if i remembered the password or wasn't so lazy, i'd try to login to my hotmail account from college. i'm sure there's more than a few gems there.

but back to google. my pal google here has reminded me of some funny stuff, that i, as an elephant, have surprisingly forgotten. the very first email convo was enough to make crack the fuck up, but i think i need to set the stage a little bit for you.

b and i had been dating about a year and had recently moved out of our home town to where we reside now. i had taken a part time office job while looking for something more permanent. i've never, ever had a desk job before this or after this.

i was an assistant for a concrete company, basically doing logistics and admin shit. needless to say, i was bored out of my mind. i played on the internet all day long, pretending to be ordering supplies from staples. also, i sent many emails to just about anyone i knew about the minutiae of my day.

so there it is, the first thing i read this morning was a string of emails about a black ops garbage conspiracy and a shit-talker. and i don't mean shit-talker like someone who badmouths someone else, but literally, a man who talked on his cell phone while he took a shit. and by talked on his cell phone i mean made sales calls to clients.

reading words of mine from so long ago almost felt as if i was a new observer in the whole situation, sort of like when you hear your own voice recorded and played back for you.

my tone was goofy, a bit condescending, and definitely full of curses. i even ended the final email with 'TMB forever'. (for 'that's my balls' reference please go here).

is that really how i talk/write? it was funny, but also, a bit shocking to see evidence of a style that appears to be unchanged over the course of many years. i used to want to be a career writer. i used to want to write for fabulous foodie magazines and talk about the intricacies of different dishes. i imagined i could have flexibility and employ a safe amount of creativity in my career.

then i took a close look at food writers and realized how awful they are. not only does most food writing read like sandpaper in your mouth, but it manages to destroy everything about food that i love so much with nitpicking. not to mention that my 'style' is apparently not mature or dry enough to be very successful.

so now i blog. i write here on this little slice of internet in hopes of learning more and more about my writing style and to see if there is such a thing as a career in writing, for me at least. maybe, years from now i'll look back on these posts and reflect about how they have or haven't helped to shape my voice.

do you go back in time to read your old words? do you like what you find? i'm curious to know if you experience more fluctuations in subject matter and tone of voice or if your style is inherent and will show in your writing no matter what the topic.

quickie

when i was in college i thought it would be so hilarious to get a license plate for my car that said 'only me'. while i realized exactly how lame that was a minute later, i still maintain that certain situations have a way of happening to me more so than any other person i know.

for example, this morning i went to interview a woman for a spot in her day care for little miss.

i met your average, ordinary woman, who was hoping to get me to pay her real american dollars in exchange for caring for my kid. i'll spare you the details about the other kids with dried boogers on their faces and gazes fixed on the cartoons blaring from an obnoxiously large flat screen tv.

no, the true 'only me' moment was about five minutes into the interview when crazy day care lady went off on a tangent. she asks 'so, you know that virus you get when you give your husband a blowjob and then you have sex and you get it in your uterus?'

to say that i'm not so versed in blowjob viruses is a bit of an understatement.

my cousin noah thinks that she's confused and that the virus actually comes from being ass-fucked and then giving her husband a blowjob and getting a stomach bug from swallowing her own shit.

i can't top that. thank you noah!

don't make me stick a strawberry up your nose

to anyone who is planning, thinking of planning, or might ever in the next twenty years plan a catered event, if you make me plate up this strawberry monstrosity i will guarantee that you will never want to see another strawberry for the rest of your life.


please excuse the drawing, i wasn't exactly in the mood to take photographs the last time this asshole dessert and i were together. it might look all sweet and refined on the outside, but really, it's just that mean bitch you knew growing up who thrived on taunting you ceaselessly.

maybe a dessert can't call you dumb, but it sure as hell can make you look dumb when you have exactly twelve minutes to assemble a few hundred plates and ole strawberry shit decides to have ten million components.

enough with all the specific timing bullshit too, you dumbass dessert. the mousse has to temper but not too long or the ice cream will melt, the panna cotta has to be chilled so that the soup can be poured over it warm, mint oil last so it doesn't bleed into the sauce....AAAHHH!!

ok. i feel better now. sometimes i just need to let it all out.

even though this pain in the ass is on the menu for my shift at work tonight, i'm also working with hook-up chef. actually, i think he's officially slutty chef now that he's moved on to hitting on barely legal waitresses in front of the whole kitchen. regardless, he's sure to provide some form of disturbing yet engrossing display of inappropriate behavior to make me forget all about strawberry shit, for a little while anyway.

on that note, i hope everyone has a fantastic holiday weekend! i know i will, labor day means octoberfest is right around the corner!

ps. i'm still working on my blogtastic giveaway, but i haven't forgotten. i'll have info and pics soon!

i know a guy who actually says 'make that paper' when he means 'go to work'

sometimes it seems that having a potty mouth can bite you in the ass.

there are many times at work that i find myself fantasizing about how nice it would feel to tell the customers what i really think. for example, come on people, you're not allergic to parsley, just say you don't like it. the chef will be slightly less annoyed with you if you're honest and don't try to make up a bullshit allergy.

but our customers never see the inside of the kitchen or get to look the chef in the face. perhaps that enables them to be more demanding. and we never see them so maybe it's easier for us to assume they're being difficult because they have nothing better to do. i can't say for sure, but i do know that not one night at work goes by without at least a few customers submitting some absurd requests, followed by a healthy bitch-fest by a chef.

then i heard about the wiener circle in chicago. their unique flavor of customer service, while amusing to many, was actually developed out of need. the customer base is largely drunk white people leaving the bars. the mostly black employees shout gems like 'how many motherfucking cheese fries do you want?!'

for many at this particular food establishment, it's how they support their families, even if that means taking insults from drunks calling them all kinds of degrading racial slurs.

i found this video of the trash talkers in action, it's taken from a tv program so it's a bit long. right around the 2:25 minute mark you meet poochie, the manager, who seems to be great at what she does. around the 5:00 minute mark, she talks about some of the customers who get a little too carried away with the shit talking.



i'm not exactly sure how long i'd be able to put up with that kind of talk at my job. or maybe i just don't like drunk people. or then again, maybe it'd be different because even the jew slurs don't bother me, and i can't imagine anything someone could say that's not specific to me personally that would upset me.

what do you think? would you last at the wiener circle, or would you prefer to do your shit talking behind closed doors?

i'm even furiouser and more furiouser, updated

i'll put a brief disclaimer here that this post will contain a raw display of my anger at a shitty real-life, personal situation that i usually avoid talking about on this blog like the plague.

but sometimes it just needs to come out.

so, ok, here it is. (deeeeeeeeep breath) i pretty much don't like my dad. except that he's almost dying and i'm the closest (geographically) family member that can take care of all his shit.

it's a burden that i've been struggling with on and off for a while, but in the last month things have gotten bad. and by bad i mean, imagine the worst possible scenario and then add attorney's fees and cockroaches. yes, literally.

when i spend eight to ten hours a day, a full tank of gas, and exhaust every babysitter i know, driving my ass all over the hudson valley to sort through my father's lifetime of fuck-ups, and he doesn't once acknowledge my efforts, it makes me want to beat him with his prosthetic leg.

not that i'm looking for a thank you, but more that he's acting as if he expected me to come along sooner or later and just clean up his mess for him.

i don't even like the guy. we have no relationship to speak of other than the basic, biological connection. yet to let him rot away in his filthy apartment is not only cruel, but also a decision made based on emotion.

my brother is the lucky one. he escaped while he could, now living family-free on the beaches of south carolina. if only i could have run away too.

but i only avoid, i don't run permanently. i don't think i'd ever have it in me to up and leave my life and ask my husband and child to do the same. and that makes me so fucking pissed.

my dad spent his life being an asshole and isolating himself from society and now i have to listen to him complain about all of the doctors and nurses 'getting in his business' i.e., trying to help him live.

after my meeting this morning, i hope i will be at least one step closer to wiping my hands clean of this foul process. but at the same time, i'm afraid to hope for anything. my father is the black hole of negativity, and the more i wish for good things, or even a little piece of mind, the worse it gets. infinitely compounding until the pressure is enough to crush me to dust.

wish me luck today!

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

alright, so maybe i can be a little overdramatic. but that's just it, i have to deal. the routine will always be the same: get all worked up and tense about something and then afterwards realize exactly how much i was over reacting.

and really, even if my dad is a jerk, it doesn't mean i wish him ill will.

sometimes when i want to call b at work and ask him for the love of god to make the baby stop crying, i have to remind myself that i'm a big girl now and i can handle a little unpleasant household issue. i think the same rationale can be applied to this dad situation.

just because it's not fun or easy or exciting or in any way pleasant, that doesn't mean that i have the right to stomp my feet and bitch about dealing with it. that's not going to accomplish anything anyway.

what i am going to do is get on with the rest of my daily life and not let all this mess drag me down. little miss and i are going to the park and then to the gym for a nice long run. i shall return in a better mood, that i am sure of.

(i would really like to unpublish this post, but since so many of you out there have already read it and were kind enough to leave such supportive words i'll leave it. thanks everyone for your kind thoughts!!)

dear so and so; revenge isn't always the answer

dear pants,

ok pants, i thought we were going to enjoy a nice long late summer/early fall season together. you all well-fitting and perfectly cropped just below the calf, me all happy and flirty wearing pants that make my ass look amazing.

but i guess you had other plans.

getting caught on the sharp edge of the eraser holder of a dry erase board may have been your greatest backstabbing gesture yet. the inch long tear on the right butt cheek, below the pocket, complete with bleeding puncture wound to said cheek, has more than tried my patience.

not only did my hopes of having a marvelous, feel-good pair of pants die on that dry erase board, but the humiliation continued as i had to leave a meeting in which everyone present watched your cruelty unfold, and then proceed to crackhead alley, also known as grand street in newburgh. walking in the absolute worst part of town, with a bloody, exposed butt cheek was nothing less than horrifying.

i had thought for a second about how vindicated i would feel by ripping your ass to shreds and using pieces of you to clean monster's crate. then i realized that i'm just so disgusted by your betrayal that i can't bear to look at you anymore. you and your bloody hole are going right in the garbage, and don't come back, you hear!

thank you for your attention in this matter.


sincerely,

i'm not into the ass-less chaps look, ok?!

linky love

i haven't been a very good bloggy friend lately. it's been weeks since i actually found my way to my computer to read all of your clever, funny, insightful, and crass posts that i love so much. i'm not here to make excuses. sure the food poisoning didn't help much, but i still respect all of you folks out there who make the time to not only maintain your own writing consistently, but also support your fellow writers.

and, by the way, as i once told the novelista barista, i absolutely think of blogging as real writing. it takes so much work and time out of your life to manage, not to mention creating something that you want to be an accurate representation of yourself, how could something you pour so much energy into not be considered legitimate?

well friends, today i had the pleasure of two bloggy pals giving me a shout and basically reaffirming my decision to keep up this time-suck of a blog i have here. there have been more than a few times that i thought for sure i was going to just stop posting and be done with it all. but the fact that there's people out there who take even a minute out of their day to read some random story i feel like telling means the world to me.

i love telling stories, it's how my mind works. i make everything into a narrative as its happening. if only i was patient enough to sit down and write a novel, i could have a lot of fun with that i think.

but i digress, my point here was to say thanks to everyone out there who doesn't get bogged down by life and finds a way to share their thoughts and experiences through their writing.

mr. condescending just posted about his 100 favorite blogs he likes to read. he's a guy who knows how to win a girl over with flattery, and also how to play the game without being hated. you walk that line so well, mr. c, you really are an artist! thanks again for the honorable mention, i'll keep finding funny if you keep reading.

it was also brought to my attention that jerrod, over at the yellow factor, was somehow absent from my little linky list. jerrod, i'm going to blame the computer demons for that one, i don't have any other explanations. but in his generous way he gave me a glorious award for me to hang with pride on my sidebar. behold:


oh yeah, i was definitely the kid who made yellow snowballs. it's all the same when you have mittens on, right? right. so thanks again, jerrod! i'll try and keep up with my writing, including the many fuckity fuck curses, and be worthy of this award.

and i can't forget courtney and porkstar, who have so kindly added me to the sweat crew even though they didn't really know me and i asked to join their group.


i still haven't figured out how to make that list so that it links to all the other members, but i haven't forgotten about it. i'm proud to display my sweatiness for all to see.

so for all of you out there who i've been a stranger to lately, i'm on my way! right after i tend to a walking (or should i say running) ten month old who is having a hard time learning that 'no' means 'garbage is not for eating' and 'the toilet bowl is not for hiding toys'.

and the winner is... (there's nothing to win, but nothing to lose either)

i was watching this tv show the other day about a loser. this man is broke, divorced, and lives in a tent in his own backyard. so naturally he attends a seminar on how to employ his natural talents in a profitable way. except that the only innate 'winning tool' this guy could come up with about himself was the fact that he's hung.

right. because the only direction this show can go is for him to become a hooker.

so it got me thinking about what my winning tool was and how i could put it to work for me, without involving prostitution in any way.

the first thing that came to mind is that i'm a decent cook. but then i realized that a million other people can also do that as well. not to mention that i'm lacking both the massive start-up capital and spare hundred hours or so a week needed to ensure that your culinary skills will ultimately become profitable.

i can also knit pretty well. but again, a trillion other people can do that. and i'm way too lazy to maintain an etsy account. besides, i'm also learning that yes, you can have too many throw blankets. and then, maybe i can't knit so well because i can only make things that are square or rectangular. this is what happened when i tried to make a hat for the fuss:



it was a little big.

so what the fuck else am i good at? (besides throwing unnecessary sweary words into sentences)

my moment of clarity has arrived.

i am an awesome negotiator. or i guess you could say i make good bribes. but i like negotiator better, it just sounds slightly more badass.

this is a skill i've had to hone over the years. it wasn't always so sublimely refined as it is today. when i was in college, the power of my skills used to even blow my own mind. like, for example, when i would go out to the bar with a fiver in my pocket and come home wasted and with about thirteen bucks stuffed into my pack of marlboro reds.

there was also the time that my piece of shit nissan sentra exploded on a major interstate, at 11:00 at night, on my birthday, in those dark days before cell phones. somehow i managed to convince the state trooper, who found me crying in a ball fifty feet from my smoldering vehicle, to drive me the forty plus miles to my house instead of following his orders to drop me at the place where they were going to tow my car to. he even let me use the radar thing to clock speeders. it looked like a tv remote from the eighties.

as i matured, so did my ability to reign in my power.

just this morning i successfully convinced the fuss that playing with the maraca i made out of plastic cups, hot pink duct tape, and quinoa is way more entertaining than chewing the nest of wires underneath the desk.



as anyone who's ever had the pleasure of a teething nine-month-old's company can tell you, this is not an easy thing to accomplish.

and if you wanted even more evidence of my winning tool at work, i will now predict that i will become, literally, a winning tool over at yo mama's blog. i'm pretty sure i can convince miss yvonne to send me a care package of insult gum, a handmade card, and maybe some cookies by spreading linky love for all you out there in blogland. i know you want to be a winner too, and you just may be if you head over and check out her contest.

whew. all this talking about myself has tired me out. what about you, dear reader, what's your winning tool*? i ask in part because i care about you and want to get to know you a little better, but also because i want to get some ideas for different ways i can exploit things to make bags of money. alright then, let's hear it.



*please don't creep me out by being perverted. i may be using a dirty pun, but i'm hoping for clean answers.

i miss you too!

hi blog! it'sa meeeee, maaaaaaaaaarriiiooooo!!! no, it's not. it's just plain old me, no cartoon plumber in sight.

it's been a while since we've spent some quality time together. i'm starting to feel like you're another kid that i have to take care of and nurture and shit. fuck that, i have enough responsibility in my life. i need to get back to the way things used to be, where we could tell silly stories and just enjoy a few laughs. no pressure.

over the past week there were a few things that i wish i could have shared with you, but for some reason i don't think i could get it together enough to spend more than five minutes at my computer. and when i did manage to find my way to the internet, it was only to play my neverending scrabble battle.

i thought for sure i was going to be able to write a nice cohesive post about safety coffins and those wackos out in arizona who buried themselves alive to see what it would feel like. talking about how bullshit it was that they had flashlights and sleeping bags in the graves would have done all the work for me.

instead, i'll just give you a picture.


then there's also the story about my unfortunate luck to be in the walk-in at work, carefully placing chives and chervil in their appropriate homes, at the exact moment that two of my coworkers decided a giant refrigerator was the perfect place to have a little secret sexy time.

there's no picture of that.

although, the respective spouses of the two in heat might appreciate a little photo evidence should they decide to go ahead with any divorces.

additionally, i think my dog might be spending some time doing things that i don't even want to imagine. $300 for the vet to tell us that his stank ear is caused by a thriving community of yeast feels like a punch in the babymaker. she gave us doggie monistat 7 and sent our little monster packing.

on a lighter note, perhaps the highlight of the week may have been when b came home from the gym, exceptionally proud of himself for his renewed commitment, claiming that 'in two months my muffin-tops are gonna be gone, son!'

and of course i have to throw some bloggy love to beckybecks who made me a lovely pic of her face on a stick body with huge tatas. we all know how i feel an unbridled kinship to any chick with huge tatas, those things are ridiculously hard to corral sometimes, i feel your pain becky! and thanks for the awesome pic!


so there it is, blog. i'll make a little more effort to not neglect you and maybe you could meet me in the middle somehow. i don't really know what that means, so i'm going to give you a day or two to figure it out.

love always,

your mom.

if i knew how to make a fancy fireworks display, i would do so now

at this very moment i find myself succumbing to the inevitable boob sweat that will plague me for the rest of my days, and also to the fact that during my brief respite from everyday busy-ness i will end up sitting at my computer chugging coffee like it's going out of style.

on this cheery sunshiney morning i can only think about how amazingly awesome it's going to be to have b around for a long holiday weekend. and since i should be doing something else instead of blogging right now, i will offer up a small list of things to look forward to this weekend:

1. not working with dick chef (sexist asshole who won't let me get near a heat source because that's for menfolk)

2. any and all time spent with family so that i can pass off the baby and drink a shit ton of beer in the middle of the afternoon

3. getting out of the house and away from monster's incessant barking and therefore not have to hear myself yell 'shut the fuck up you stupid mongrel' every five minutes

4. eating more hot dogs than i want to count

5. allowing myself to pretend that someday i'll be able to own the boat i've always wanted and picture myself out on the river basking in the sun (as i watch every other assclown in the hudson valley out on their boats that they probably don't even appreciate as much as i would)

6. finally getting a pedicure so that when i wear my flip flops you're blinded by fluorescent orange nailpolish and don't notice how big my big toe really is (or how sad my little nubbin of a pinky toe is)

and i think that might be more than i can handle this weekend, but i'm damn sure going to try. i know this holiday is really about commemorating those that have given their lives in battle, but there are plenty of americans who may not have died but gave of their lives when needed. on that note, i want to thank my brother, a veteran of the iraqi war, and all others for doing what i know i never could. THANKS FOR BEING STRONG FOR ALL OF US!!!

who, me?

i'm really awkward in person. if you met me, spent half a day with me, and then had a minute to reflect, you'd think i was in need of some chemically induced stability.

i often make jokes when others are serious, and become intensely focused when others are lighthearted. sometimes it takes days for me to even realize the emotional discrepancy, but i do eventually see it. i've never been good at reading people, so i'm usually left playing catch-up.

i've come to accept this, but that doesn't mean that it never bothers me occasionally.

recently, at work, i had an experience where someone said to another co-worker 'i'm scared of her, she NEVER smiles' referring to me, in that jokey-i'm-kinda-serious way. the other co-worker replied 'who, HER? she's always laughing, what are you talking about?'

since both of these people are people that i would consider friendly acquaintances, i was a little surprised at the opposite opinions. now, i've been known to say that i could care less what people think of me and that i just 'do my own thing.' but we all know that everybody cares. even if it's just a little bit, only once every few weeks or so, there comes a time when you do actually care.

today is that day for me. so instead of talking about how nice and sunny it is outside, or how cute monster looks curled up into a ball with his tail around his nose, i'll just leave you with one last tidbit from my sometimes irrational logic:

sometimes i feel the more friends i have the more lonely i am. i'll take my three or four good ones, hold them close, and feel comfortable knowing that i don't have to pretend to make sense to them.

i guess that's not all that irrational, maybe i'm too morose for witticisms today.



ps. i can't stop laughing at the fact that i haven't changed the batteries on one of fuss's singy toys and every five minutes or so i now hear 'if you're happy and you know it clap your hands' in that drawn out, demonic, warble voice.

a post in which i will not use the word 'green' to mean environmentally conscious

i may not be the most active environmentalist out there, or active at all, but i do care about rational and real ways that people can bring about change. although sometimes i can't help myself from seeing the stupid in someone's attempt at being smart.

my most recent pet peeve is this:



this vehicle, known as the 'smart for two' car, has already begun infiltrating our streets. this little fella here, while he tries to look all cute and small, is actually going to bring about the demise of our roadways as we know them today.

i do agree that fuel efficient models and less wasteful factories are a good thing for our society, but this car can guarantee only one thing: getting hit hard = certain death. just look at what happened to this one when a stray butterfly accidentally flew into the driver's side door:



this rolling harbinger of death is a clear example of when you can really say 'what the fuck are reinforced steel beams going to do for me here?' don't even get me started on the assclowns who need to ask about putting a car seat in this piece. and to make matters worse, it's still kind of expensive. the base model starts at over $11,000. a car with wheels smaller than my baby's radio flyer shouldn't cost more than 2-3k, in my opinion.

how about i take my $11,000, buy a pre-owned vehicle of a slightly more solid build, and keep one less manufacturing plant from opening up. at least my 4-runner will protect tax payers from all the civil suits associated with the smartshitcar. i can see it now, the endless pile-ups blocking traffic, increasing road rage, and then riots and fires will take over. all those trees they say they're going to plant for the purchase of a new vehicle will be burned to cinders and we'll be left with nothing but tanks and ashes and devastation.

so if you want to help destroy our planet, feel free to roll in one of these bad boys. i promise i won't make faces at you and get distracted by your retardedness while driving.


note: if you try to tell me good things about this car i will stick my fingers in my ears singing 'lalalalala-i can't hear you!'

name games, part two

so here's my secret (which isn't really a secret because i'll tell anyone who'll listen): i want to have another baby, like right now. little miss is seven months old, and i always knew i wanted to pop out the kiddies really closely together for several reasons. not the least of which being that i can finally get the boob job i've always wanted when my body is done incubating my offspring, and by boob job i mean reduction. i want those bad boys downsized, lifted, and tightened so that no matter what i'm doing they always stay in the same place, and also so that i can wear a regular shirt/bathing suit/dress without looking like a porn star/hooker on her way to work.

right, so b's all for this plan (and what husband wouldn't be) except for one thing, we still live in a one bedroom apartment. yes, me, b, little miss, and monster all in one little tiny apartment. adding a new fetus to the mix might make b's head explode. and since i'm not ready to be a single mother i have to just give it some time. although i make it a point to talk to b about babies at least once a day so he doesn't think it was all a phase and i got over it.

moving along, since i can't really talk about baby name stories with b unless i'm currently knocked up, i talk with my cousin who happens to be equally as babybrained as i am. since i'm so intrigued by the fine line between an unusual name and a ridiculous name, i thought i'd share some of the more, um, unique ones we've heard. not to be a hypocrite, because i know i've said before that it's really hard to judge parents for what they name their kids, but sometimes i think that pointing out some of these examples is really just a motivator to help keep myself in check. but i want to say, in all fairness, that i sincerely do feel bad for these kids, and some of the parents.

1. this one came to me courtesy of my mother, a first grade teacher. it's the story of a young, immigrant couple who had a baby girl. the hospital promptly labeled the plastic crib with a pink card that said 'female.' the naive parents thought that in america, the hospitals name your baby for you. so female (pronounced fe-Mal-ay) became the child's legal name.

2. then there's the poor kid who's mom has an awful sense of humor. his real name is something like benjamin mark but she's only taught him that his name is 'beema.' yes, beema, as in short for beemer, as in BMW. so apparently the kid is five years old and doesn't know his real name, and mom insists on using beema. in my opinion, she should have just named him that from the jump and it might not be so bad if there weren't an ordinary name to fall back on.

3. oh yes, my list would not be complete without little 'trezir', as in 'mom doesn't know how/doesn't care how to spell treasure correctly.' trezir seems to be the only one in his (yes, HIS) family who lost the name game, he has two older sisters, nicole and annette.

with all that fresh in my mind, i asked my cousin what she thought about the name barnaby, not barny, just barnaby, for a boy. sure it's not the most common, but it's not like a total joke either, right? i guess i have plenty of time before i really have to go there. my point is that i hope my attraction to different sounding names isn't going to be scarring my kids forever and ever. or at least that they end up in a school where only the adults talk about their weird names and that the other kids don't beat them up because they all have weird names too.

help, i could use somebody...(a real person, that is)

this afternoon, i realized that there a few questions i have that, if answered, i would be able to rest much easier. so i call to you, blogland, to hopefully supply me with some piece of mind:

1. if a bathroom/tub cleaner makes my eyes water and the back of my throat burn, is it unsafe to give my baby a bath in a tub that was just cleaned with said cleaner, or does it just mean that it works really, really well?

2. is it possible that the non-english-speaking maintenance workers at my apartment complex have some kind of special caller id that flashes 'angry psycho' in their native tongue when i call (six times) to get my air conditioner fixed and that's the real reason why they never pick up?

3. is it possible for a computer tard like me to find help on blogger about that stupid word verification that's fucking with comments being posted on my blog? i've gotten several (exactly four) reports of it preventing comments from being accepted, so naturally i spent a solid eight minutes browsing the blogger help links only to become convinced that blogger is totally self-aware and has no real live people involved in any of it's decision making processes. which prompts me to ask, what can i bribe an electronic entity with to allow me to collect comments like the comment whore that i am?

if anyone out there can help with any of the above and at the same time share how you made it past the demon blogger regulator on the comments link, please, please spread your knowledge.

disclaimer: i can only offer payment of one randomly selected, slightly chewed baby/dog toy for any useful information.

any given sunday

for lack of anything legitimately interesting to write about today, i'd like to share the conversation b and i had last night, mostly because i think that anything he says is hilarious so it's nice to let him make the funny for me. the following discussion takes part sunday evening, as we were watching the third game in the yankees/red sox series:

b: OH SHIT! did you just see that?

me: what?

b: what'shisname just fucking STOLE home!

me: (looking up from making grocery list) all i see is pettitte's mouth hanging open like he's trying to catch a fly or something.

b: pettitte's so old he needs a cane to get out to the mound. his slow ass was asking for someone to show him up like that.

me: when is youkilis going to give that poor rat he drapes over his chin a break? i mean, i know he shaved it for his kids charity a few years ago, but unless he plans to do that every few months, why is it back? if he's good enough to bat over .600 (even if it is still april) he should know that not one woman alive actually wants to snuggle up to that thing.

b: i know, i need a goatee like i need a second butthole, which is not at all.

____

b: so do you think it's wrong that i hate on twitter even though i might be the only one?

me: no, you should feel free to hate on anything you want. i mean, i tried twitter and within 24 hours realized that it was way too depressing to sit and type about things that i'm doing for no one to read.

b: yeah, sometimes i feel like 'fuck it, there always has to be at least one voice of dissent, right?'

me: i think twitter is like that restaurant where the servers are all mean to you on purpose because you're supposed to think it's witty and original, when that concept is really only entertaining to a specific crowd.

b: what the...? there's a place where the waiters talk shit to you?

me: yeah, not around here, i think it's in like chicago or something. whatever, i just heard about it somewhere.

b: if a waiter ever pulled that shit with me i'd be all 'who the fuck are you calling me fat for eating greasy burgers and cheese fries and twenty gallons of coke? oh, and do you have cheesecake here too?'

____

me: can the guy from the optimum commercials get with the chick from the progressive commercials and go somewhere to annoy each other to death already?

b: i hope they go to the same place that the douchebags who make car and cell phone commercials will end up. those bastards promise you buckets of happiness and bags of gold and then have 300 teeny tiny words and the bottom of the screen explaining how they can legally lie to you.

____

me: monster, barking at nothing will not distract me from the fact that you just dropped a horrendous stink bomb on me.

b: but what about him compulsively licking his junk and then coming up to give you lots of kisses?

finis.

to pop or not to pop

b and i were recently musing about how annoying the pop performers of today are. and we know all about them of course because we are thirty and still occasionally will tune in for an ep of mtv's real world/road rules challenge. i mean, come on, these people are so trashtastic and narcissistic that it makes for great trainwreck tv. needless to say, the commercials for the new hannah montana movie/soundtrack/concert and other such acts that air during these programs have been subjected to our cries of 'does anyone listen to good music anymore?'

then we realized that they were perfect for their target audience, which no longer includes us. and i'm fine with that. i'd rather clean my house while blasting some mgmt or muse. but i'd sweat the shit out of hannah montana for little miss when she's 12 because that's still better than her smoking up with the rebellious 17 year old boy down the street.

another notable mention here is this kid asher roth. every time i hear his retarded voice claiming 'i'm the champ-I-ON of beer PONG' it makes me want to kill myself. but after i quickly change the channel and my anger subsides, i see that he's just talking about those silly college days that we've all had. except that he's still allowed to talk about them because he's living them. if he actually were my age and singing this crap, then he'd deserve the severe beating i so badly want him to get (just not from me, i'm kind of weak).

this in turn brings me to a conversation i had with b's sister bridget, who was born way after the new kids on the block phenomenon (the original movement, not this lame reunion bullshit). i was explaining to her how when i was in fifth grade, you had to have those over sized buttons of your favorite new kid, the ones that had the little eisel on the back so you could stand it up like a picture frame. and you would bring these buttons into school each day and arrange them on your desk to show your undying devotion to joey or jordan or whoever it was.

my point with this is that if i can evolve from a time where i practiced the oh-oh-AHH-o-oh dance to a song called 'the right stuff' in my backyard to my more refined musical taste of today, then maybe the pop was a necessary right of passage. although, i did also smoke weed out of a dented foster's keg can (my mom actually drank that shit) out my bedroom window when i was 15, with my 13 year old brother, so who am i to judge.

blog, we have to talk...

i'm sure you've gotten a little suspicious the past few days, blog. and as it turns out, you have good reason to suspect something afoot. i wanted you to hear it from me first, i've been cheating on you blog.

i have a new blog that i've been spending a lot of time with lately. it's younger, has a fresh new color scheme, and we have different things to talk about together. i mean, i don't want to lose what you and i have, because i really do enjoy your company. but there are some needs that you can't fill for me.

don't even play like you're jealous, because that will just force me to run off with new blog and leave you behind. we might even have a threesome with my possessed computer. hopefully we'll all get taken over by skynet and christian bale will have to come and save us (me) from the machines.

but in all seriousness, blog, i think this can be the beginning of a very diplomatic open relationship. who knows, with some of the pressure taken off of you, you could really blossom into a funnier, wittier version of yourself.

all i ask is that you give it a try.

thanks, blog, for understanding. you'll always have a special place in my heart.