Never, EVER Leave Home Without it.

Remember Karl Malden’s commercials back in the 70’s for American Express Traveler’s Cheques? “Never leave home without them!” Remember? (Shut up, you fuckers who weren’t even alive in the 70’s. Youth is entirely overvalued. A smooth forehead cannot make up for missing cool shit like Tony Orlando and Dawn, Pong and disco balls. No, disco balls are not the bedazzled testicles of gay men. Although that would be kinda cool. In an “ew” sense.)

If you don’t remember Karl, titleholder of one monumental schnoz—in which there existed a small, underdeveloped country with poor water quality and mud for dinner, or maybe a ball field—then you can look him up on YouTube. He touted traveler’s checks in a time before debit cards made them obsolete; but his message was that in case of unexpected emergency, there are certain fundamentals one should never leave at home. (Is there ever really any other kind of emergency? Planned amputation? Tornado on purpose? I don’t know.)

For example, a woman should always tote an extra feminine product for those unforeseen red tsunamis, which invariably occur before Labor Day when she is wearing white. Unless you are trashy and wear white after Labor Day. But then you are not reading this because you are not my friend.

One should never leave home without a granola bar (unexpected hunger), a cell phone (unexpected abduction), a pair of tweezers (unexpected chin hair), and a surgical clamp (unexpected birth when you thought you had just been eating too many KitKats lately or other medical surprise). Here’s the MOST important thing never, ever to leave at home for any reason. Ever. Your freaking computer. If you are a writer, you never know when an opportunity for readership may arise. Take yesterday, for instance. I went out of town and left my everloving laptop behind. When it became apparent that I would not make it back home in time to write my blog for the day, I could’ve beaten the bloody shit out of myself. I didn’t though because I wasn’t carrying an extra pad.

P.S.- Dear tens of readers, I promise not to miss a day again.

Oh. God. We'll ALWAYS have Paris.

Paris Hilton looking over the city that shares her name. Note her chin hair.

Jesus. When ugly old Humphrey Bogart snarled out of his overbite the words, “We’ll always have Paris,” to his torn-between-two-lovers dame in Casablanca, NEVER did he imagine the heinous association that would forever taint the word “Paris” four decades later. Mona Lisa, the Eiffel Tower, even buttery croissants cannot redeem their homeland because any mention of its name conjures up that other Paris. You know. The one with the hooked nose that is larger than any of her pocket pooches. The one with the mouth-breather stare so utterly blank that there simply can be no other explanation than this: Fred Flintstone lives inside her hollowed-out carcass, working the controls like he used to on the dinosaur down at the rock quarry. Or maybe the little bird inside Fred’s camera needed a new job. Whatever. There is clearly no one home inside that vapid cretin. Her show wasn’t called The Simple Life for nothing.

Why is this skinny sack o’ money constantly in the fricking news? The possibilities:

A) She has a new reality series coming out, so we all need to know exactly when to tune in to see her keen mind working about as fast as dead mule. With ankle weights.

B) She has been arrested, and we all need to tune in to see her spend a harrowing eleventy seconds in jail.

C) She has to appear in court to testify about the “scary” incident of waking up to find that she was in no danger whatsoever because some stalker tried to break into her “mansion,” but her “security team” dispatched his ass in less time than she’s spent in jail.
D) Some stalker (i.e., skank she screwed who probably expects lots of money) has “assaulted” her current boyfriend (i.e., skank she is currently screwing who probably expects lots of money)…and it was surprisingly caught on tape! Just like that time she screwed that skank who then sold the tape to the tabloids because he expected lots of money! That’s fucking news. Literally.

Why doesn’t she just go away? How does she continue to perambulate to and fro even though I am positive L.A. uses those pesticide trucks to fog its neighborhoods? And do you suppose she ever flits around the room like a balloon when her security team lets all the air out of her at night? Just asking.  

photo from

internationalcircuit.com

C*nt Never Could

Gwyneth Paltrow without make-up.

Holy shitwads! Gwenyth Paltrow appeared on Chelsea Lately—the only late, late night talk show with a woman behind the main desk— a couple of nights ago. This is, apparently, BIG news. Or the uproar could be that while on the show, Gwynnie called her grandmother a really, realllllly nasty name for the female genitalia. In case you are too chaste to know what the word is then I’ll give you a hint, and perhaps you’d like to tell me what the fuck you are doing reading this in the first place. Hm? Nothing? Mm-hmm.

For you sheltered mama’s boys, the word that Ms. Paltrow said begins with a “c.” It rhymes with “cunt.” Do you think you have it figured out? I’ll give you a sec. Thaaaaaat’s it. Yeah. Gwyn called her own grandmother that derogatory name because she was trying to riff off some stupid shit that Chelsea said about her grandma, which wasn’t even funny like 90% of what Chelsea says.

Well, my grandmother could kick both their grandmas’ asses in the kitchen; she smoked Marlboro Reds for sixty-five years; and she said things like, “Cain’t never could,” which means “Stop yer fucking bitching and whining and saying, ‘I can’t,’ and just do the goddamned thing I told you to do.” Whatever she told me to do generally concerned  picking shit out of the garden in the Georgia heat and then shelling it for dinner as if I didn’t have better things to do in the air conditioned den where the t.v. was. “Peas cain’t shell themselves,” she’d bleat. To which I’d think, “Cain’t never could, you fucking peas.” I never said anything out loud, or I sure as shit wouldn’t be here whining today.

The thing that gets me about Gwyneth Paltrow’s c-word utterance is that every damned body is so shocked. Is there really anyone who still believes in the sparkling, studio-spun celebrity persona? Rock Hudson screwed boys, people. The jig’s been up for years. Gwyneth does not shit diamonds or have gold for blood. She isn’t immortal, as far as I know, and she calls her grandmother a cunt. She is one of the greatest actors I’ve ever seen, but since when does pretending well mean you’re better than everyone else? Shit. If that’s all it takes, where’s my fucking limo?  I’ve been married four previous times. Don’t tell me I cain’t act.  

Plumbfucking Plumbing

W.T.F?  Does this man not realize he is fucking a toilet?

I have a problem with my plumbing, and, no, I do not mean that plumbing. Although at my advanced age I could technically be talking about that plumbing. But I’m not. You don’t need to know the status of my goddamned vayjayjay. I’m talking about plumbing. You know: water issues in my house. Focus, please. I realize it’s hard to tear your eyes away from the man screwing the john, but try. Unless that little blip in his overalls above the toilet lid is his junk, and in that case, damn. Let’s take a moment of silence.

Amen.

Now. About my plumbing. The first problem is that the water pressure in the kitchen sink used to be about as strong as the stream of an 80-year-old with a bowling ball for a prostate. Then the phenomenally gifted maintenance staff at our complex fixed it. Now when we turn on the faucet, water firehoses out with intermittent jackhammer bursts of nuclear power. The sound is especially pleasing.

My bathtub’s pressure, on the other hand, changes with its temperature. I can choose freezing-ass dribbles or a scalding-ass spray. Neither one can rinse the dry off a cotton ball, but clean is so overrated anyway.

Another fabulous feature of my bathroom is the unintended bidet. You know what a bidet is, don’t you? You in the back? No? Has your head been up your ass until now? Maybe if you had a bidet you would know these things because it would have washed your head out of your ass. 

That’s right. A bidet is a separate potty-looking thing that shoots a plume of water up your ass so that you don’t have to sully your hands or precious sensibilities with toilet paper like the little people. My father had one installed in his master bath once, and I thought, Oh, how cute. His-and-her toilets for the couple who can’t bear to be apart for even one shitting second. Literally. And then I used the weird looking toilet because I didn’t know it was a bidet, and water shot all up my…wait. I said I wasn’t talking about my goddamned vayjayjay. Nice try.

Anyway, my current toilet has a vicious pressure when it’s flushed. Water blasts out of the front at the speed of light, and I swear I don’t have a single wrinkle in the privates anymore because of the defacto laser treatments. And the shock of an unexpected tepid torpedo of H2O to the pelvis-y area is an extra little wake-up call each morning. It’s difficult to go back to sleep once your loins have been bitch-slapped. Plus, it’s hard to argue with the supreme clean of a sand-blasted genital. Wait. What? Am I talking about my…Dammit.

Houston, We Have a Problem.

I blame America. If it weren’t for the pervasiveness of our national language, Spanish, I would not have to be assaulted daily by clueless minions of the service industry who toss off that overused phrase for which life imprisonment in the hold should be the minimum punishment: "No problem." Oooooo. I just want to pummel within a millimeter of death anyone says those three little syllables.

I thank the waiter for bringing my food. "No problem." I tell the girl who let me in front of her in line how much I appreciate her kindness. "No problem." I hand the doctor my entire life savings to pay him the ten-fucking-thousand dollars I owe him for a ninety-second surgery. "No problem." Well. I’m thrilled as holy hell that no one has to put forth any effort on my part these days.

The phrase, “No problem” is the ugly twin-sister of the Spanish answer to "Thank you." Gracias for the taco. De nada. Gracias for the boost over the border fence. De nada. The Spanish phrase means literally, "of nothing" or "It was nothing." In other words, "I didn’t have to expend any unnecessary energy to do that for you. Otherwise I wouldn’t have done it." Every time someone hurls a "no problem" at me, he/she is really saying that I’m not worth his/her spending any real time/money/labor/thought. Every "no problem" is a personal diss, which just gets my goat. And I have a problem with that.

I am a Puppy Killerrrrr.

Except for a couple dozen classes I’ve taught, my entire family, and most of my friends, no one knows what I’m about to tell you: I am a loathsome litter liquidator. I am not proud of this shockingly-earned sobriquet; kitten-killer I could bear. But no. The four-leggeds were not so lucky that summer day in 1989. And neither was I.

On a jaunt to Florida to visit my brother, I took a back road that I thought would be faster. But I was wrong. Just like every time I select the line with the fewest people at Wal Mart, as soon as I am securely positioned, the fucking checker turns out to have the speed and mental acuity of a sloth’s bowel movement; and there I am stuck for hours, which seem to drag on for sixty minutes each.

On the country road, there was a line of cars snailing leisurely along in front of me, and every now and then, the car at the head veered out abruptly to the left and then back into its place. I realized there must be something in the road. There must be something in the road, I said smugly to myself. Just as the car directly in front of me started to swerve, a massive mongrel lumbered off the right side of the road, dragging an abundance of mammilla on the pavement. Oh. That must have been the something in the road, I said smugly to myself, as I chose NOT to divert my path since the obstacle had clearly relocated. 

Unfortunately for all, the obstacle had left its mother-fucking offspring ON the pavement. WHERE they had been nursing. SINCE they had RECENTLY fallen out of the obstacle’s vagina on said pavement. And were NOW all up under my fucking tires. In one big sonofabitching puppy puddle. Mother of God. 

I puked up food from 1992. I couldn’t even look at the canine carnage, so I gunned it and tore up a good mile-and-a-half before I pulled over to take stock of how I was so going straight to hell. There in hell, as I have learned from my extensive Bible studies, an evil cat waits at the gates, grinning, grinning, grinning smugly like some kind of evil cat waiting at the gates to hell.  

A NEW use for Cats

The Chinese Lucky Cat, whose symbol translates roughly as "I am tender over rice."

Cats are good for approximately nothing. They are slightly less important than cockroaches. In fact, most of the world’s greatest tragedies were caused by cats. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, the BP oil spill of 2010: all caused by cats. Or someone who knew a cat. Or someone or something on the same planet as a cat. Or Mrs. O’Leary’s cow in that one case, but mostly cats. Cats are just up to no good and are also the genesis of street gangs, illiteracy and reality television. Plus they lick themselves all the time. Who does that?!

Most people hire someone or at least get an intern. 

If it weren’t for cats, there would be no world hunger, no video rental late fees, no need for plastic ice trays. In a world without cats, bed sores would be a thing of the past. There would be free public transportation in all communities, and eggs would be 25 cents a dozen. The truth is that there is only one possible positive use for cats: anchors. There are enough cats in the world this very minute to guarantee that no boat ever drifts astray again. 

So. What can YOU do to help start this fuck-the-felines revolution? Buy American. Ask your doctor if Boniva® is right for you. And for God’s sake, eat a good breakfast. Otherwise, you will have no one but yourselves to blame when you wake up one bright and shining morning to find a pussy in the White House. Ohhhhhhh, shit. Too late.

F***ing, C***Sucking Cockroaches!

The number one thing in the world I hate, despise, abhor more than poverty, illiteracy, prejudice, torture and unwanted facial hair COMBINED: sonofabitching, buttfucking, asslicking cockroaches. How DARE there be a cutesy cartoon version in Wall-E!? I officially detest Pixar’s art department for implying that those godforsaken cretins could have any redeeming qualities. It’s painful even to write about the motherfuckers. But! I was just fishing for topics, and the universe, bitch that she sometimes is, threw one my way. Literally.

I went to my closet to find a cord for a hearing aid device, and I pulled down a box from the top shelf. I haven’t visited that box since we moved it here from Cucaracha Villa, the rental house we shared with four million roach bastards last year. When I retrieved the box, I knocked down an old make-up container, which had a partially opened zipper. A millisecond later, I spied out of my eye corner a ginormous, black behemoth scurrying across the closet carpet. My usual spastic fit ensued, which my husband and daughter noted with the blithe expressions of flush septuagenarians nursing juleps on the fucking veranda. 

You know, they could have moved their asses a tad faster because that cocksucker wasn’t going to kill itself. To their credit, they both all-foured it in the closet and beat the ever-living shit out of that thing. My hubbie deposited the damned carcass in the toilet where it belonged, and my daughter came out of the closet. But that’s a story for another day.

Not by the Hair of My Chinny-Chin-Chins.

 

My poor daughters. If they are anything like me, they will realize one day while in the middle of watching some cleverly-penned half-hour of workplace comedy that they have multiple facial hairs that did not get proper permission before sprouting from their secret lairs. I discovered my chin-buddies because of the following conversation:

My grandmother, Kitty, to my mother, Charlotte: “Chaaaaahlotte, pull this hay-uh fuh me. I cain’t see up under thay-uh.” She juts out her chin for better viewing.

My mother: “Pull mine first.”

Holy shitballs. If both of them have one…My twenty-year-old self hightailed it to the nearest mirror and strained to see what lurked beneath my jaw line. And there it was! The fucker had been there so long it was spiraling. Spiraling, people. I almost puked. I snatched that sumbitch out of my fatty flesh faster than a diaper-clad toddler wandering in traffic ends up at DFACS. Oh, wait. That’s not fast. DFACS only notices once there’s just a body. But I digress.

I have a right to know, and I want to know NOW. Why, if hair has to go away as we age, why can’t all the hair in my legs fall out? Or the mustache hair? Why can’t that go? Shit. I can donate the hair on my face to Locks of Love, but I look like a seventy-year-old man at the crown. There are only so many ways a girl can pull off a comb-over.

You know what adds insult to injury? I have to lift and separate my chins to find those little follicle-fucking bastards these days. God forbid anyone catches me laughing in a picture. I tend to pull back my head so that my neck gets swallowed by jowl. The only discernible features are teeth and eye slits floating in a puddle of flesh, barely visible. They are eclipsed by the shadow of my monster chin hair.

Some People SUCK.

thewizofodds.com

Oh, good GOD. People are such inconceivable fucktards sometimes. I swear I felt like an Iraqi village today, all besieged and molested. First, this guy who obviously has a wee little peepee cuts me off on Interstate 75 lest I arrive three-point-six fricking seconds ahead of him at the light at the end of the off-ramp.

Then, once I make it to a parking spot after following an idiot on the other end of the speed spectrum who insists upon taking seven hours to go over each of the four-hundred speed bumps in the school lot, I watch this guy light up a cancer stick right in front of the sign that says, NO SMOKING: Because we care. My ASS. The campus security guys smoke right there all the time! And this jerk today happens to also have those preposterous low, low riding jeans puddled around his ankles. What is the point of those? Don’t these nimrods realize they look like they’re walking around in a Depends®-sized shit-diaper?

But then! The best thing EVER happens. I wheeze through the asshole’s wall of smoke and head to the elevator, which is at the far end of a third-floor breezeway. The lift door opens, and out steps a young woman…with a cigarette to her goddamned lips. She whuffs out a copious cloud of the second-hand variety and glares at me with her super intelligent eyes and her “I love humanity” attitude. No matter that it is against the fucking law to smoke here and that there are five billion signs with the little red slash through the lit cigarette. Why, why wasn’t I brave enough to push her ass over the rail? She slipped on her sliminess, officer.

After class, I find myself forced to go to my favorite place, Wal-Mart, home of vraiment chic people with whom I want to have wine and cheese. Vexing experiences today at Wally World! I turn a corner in the sock section only to run into a buggy that some slumbag has left blocking the aisle. In it are the desecrated remains of some high-fat, processed food products. That’s stealing, slumbag! And I can’t even express without apoplexy the water buffalo who barks into a cell phone the entire time it is in line. It does not acknowledge the cashier or the fact that it is not at home in its mudbog. I. DO. NOT. UNDERSTAND. PEOPLE. The upside is that nothing is bad enough that a few good funerals won’t take care of it.

If you Cannot Speak Correctly, Shut the Fuck Up.

And then the crowd rushed forward and cut his balls off because he said, "You've been a real good audience." In my dreams.

And, now. A moment of bitching about the state of the English language in 21^st Century America.

I’m so tired of the phrase 24/7, and its ugly stepsister, 24/7/365. I work tirelessly 8/5 to teach my students to avoid overused words and phrases (cliché’s) like the plague. And, Lord knows, I try my darnedest to get them to avoid using just the plain wrong word or phrase. A student of mine once wrote, “…is it self-exclamatory?” WTF is that?! 

One of my former bosses used to say malapropisms like, “It’s coming down the pipe,” and “We really have to treat these students with white gloves.” Holy shit. Are the students DUSTY? How many people even know that the phrase is “treat ___ with kid gloves” because KID is leather made from baby animals? So it’s softer, and therefore will create a gentler handling? Goddddd. (And kiss my ass, PETA. I don’t wear fucking fur.) If I see one more freaking lower case personal pronoun I, someone is going to lose a nut. I mean it. At the very least, I think capital punishment is in order.

What is going to happen to our future generations? People don’t read anymore, except crap like tabloids, which have the grammatical finesse of a toddler from NOT America. If people don’t read, then they write dumbshit things like “should of” instead of “should’ve” because that’s how it sounds. 

And, get this. A COLLEAGUE of mine stopped me in the hall one evening to tell me that while I was visiting the potty (because, YES, goddammit, teachers have to PEE sometimes), a student had been searching for me. And I quote, “You must have just went out because she had went to your room looking for you.” Thank goodness I had just peed, or I would have sprinkled during the mini-fucking stroke I had. I’m thinking this whole idea in the news lately about educators being allowed to carry firearms sounds better and better every second.

Wait Hate

I hate waiting. Waiting sucks large beefy balls with coarse hair. I spend at least fifteen minutes waiting in traffic on the way to work, one way. I make the trip twelve times a week. That’s…a lot of minutes, which adds up to hours. You do the math because I’m tired. But the point is that I could be doing all kinds of exciting and productive things with the hunnnnnndreds of hours I waste each year waiting. I am sure that cures for cancer, poverty, AIDS, illiteracy and chin hairs on women have not been discovered because researchers were in fucking lines instead of back at the lab discovering cures.

My favorite type of waiting is at the doctor’s office because there is nothing like flipping through a two-year-old golf magazine to pass the time. Doctors continue the practice of populating their waiting rooms with mindsucking materials because they allow their staff to book sixteen patients for each fifteen minutes in the day, and they’re hoping that the crowd will thin out a little from boredom-related deaths.

The best waiting ever is at Wal-Mart. I just cannot beat standing in the 20-items-or-less EXPRESS lane with my ONE item for 35 minutes while the couple who came over from the old country unload twin buggies of supplies for the apparent start-up of their soon-to-be-robbed convenience store. I know they probably can’t read since they don’t know the language yet, but how hard is it to learn Spanish? And aren’t numbers uni-fucking-versal? How difficult would it have been for a WM employee to kindly direct the assholes to a regular line? Noooo. It's way better to just prevent the discovery of the secret of string theory. I almost had it too but I had to go to Wal-Mart for some string.

(Some) Funny Girls Write Books.

(Isn't everything hilarious when you are being paid probably actual money by a photog with a multiculti-lesbian fetish to freeze your skinny ass off on a beach in February? Ah, models.)

Well. I’ve been KINDLING lately, and I don’t mean I’ve become firewood. Or that I’ve recently turned anyone on. I really should say “Kindle-ing” if I want to be accurate, since I’m talking about all the reading I’ve been doing on my Amazon Kindle. I’d toyed with getting one for awhile, and a few weeks ago I snagged a deal at Big Box. As soon as I plugged that puppy in, and whole books and magazines appeared in microseconds, I frothed at the mouth and scheduled some near-future rehab.

The first thing I did was order a whole slew of books penned by comediennes (women comedians for all your dumbshits). I’d been anticipating the arrival of Tina Fey’s Bossypants like a gaggle of gay teens pining for a Kurt-Blaine tongue wrestle. But because I had a couple of days before Bpants’s release, I quelled my desire with Kathy Griffin’s Official Book Club Selection: A Memoir According to Kathy Griffin and Chelsea Handler’s My Horizontal Life.

Kathy r-o-c-k-s. I laughed laaaaaate into the night reading her surprisingly sweet and intimate memoir; but I can say with unvarnished truth that Chelsea Handler’s book was so unfunny that I resent the fact that I cannot even use it as toilet paper if I run out. I want my fucking five dollars back, bitch. (Although perhaps the reality that it was five dollars should have been a clue to its suckassness.)

Tina Fey, now, is just as wicked as Kathy Griffin; but because her humor is a little more cerebral, and she’s selected a better class of friends, Tina isn’t on Oprah’s and David’s and every-damned-body’s shitlist. Hey. Both of those girls swear way more than I do, but nobody’s having a stroke about it. So be quiet, Daddy. (Who do you think taught me all those words anyway? Yeah. That’s right. Bathroom bitches at Parkwood Elementary. But you should have warned me about sixth-graders.)

 

My conclusion #1- If you’re looking for pee-in-your-panties fun, grab a box of

Depends ® and a Griffin- or Fey-produced product.

My conclusion #2- The only upside to anything by Handler: If you need to lose a few pounds before an upcoming special event, read Handler’s shit, and you can puke up food you haven’t even eaten yet. Slimming.

My conclusion #3- If they can sell books, so can I. Go, girl writers.

Keep Your Pants On. Really.

Thursday, I was exposed to two very unwelcome penii. The first man-tube belonged to a fellow who was trimming weeds on the college campus where I work. As I was winding down from an argument with a student who simply could not accept that there is such a thing as an action word ending in “ing” that is not employed as a verb, I glanced out the window. Three floors below, a fellow had a weed whacker in one hand…tally whacker in the other. He was vigorously peeing. While students milled nearby and even passed him on the walkway to his left. Yeah.

I couldn’t tell much else about the guy because of his hat and bandana-covered face. His weeeeeeeeeeeener was either insanely dirty or he was of some foreign descent, which I suppose is entirely possible for a groundskeeper. But honestly. Did I need to see that? Was it just too fucking far for him to walk the thirty yards to the building? I realize we are talking about an educational institution in Georgia, but, shit. We HAVE indoor plumbing.

And, then. As if the universe felt the need to underline the episode, I saw yet another urinary offering that very evening. There’s a Sonic drive-thru close to home, and a road cuts up one side of the parking lot. Traveling that road to get to K. Roger for an unrotten avocado, I witnessed a boy, five-ish, obviously celebrating his birthday because he was wearing the suit. He joyously waved his hips back and forth as he fountained the grass with what minutes before had probably been a slushee. He had his little paws propped proudly on his naked hiney and his head thrown back in pure glee. Where were his parents? Where were his manners? Where were his freaking pants?

I think the scariest thing about the twin tinklers is that ALL things ALWAYS come in threes. Plane crashes. Hurricanes. Unsuccessful Baldwin brothers. And now this. Any second there will be another uninvited phallic faucet lurking around my field of vision. Awesome. Fucking awesome.

Photo from aref-adib.com, © 2005

AMERICAN IDOL Voters Hit a C Sharp.

 

Pia, Schmia. 

The whole celebrity world burst a freaking aneurysm last week when Pia Toscano got booted from American Idol. Whining is one thing, but plastic people tend to go so far overboard. Give it a rest already. Sacknuzzlers. Yes, that girl has strong pipes, but I was so numbed with boredom watching her “perform” every week that I had to conjure new ways to cause myself pain just to snap out of it. 

If I ever have to suffer through her pageant gestures and sealed-eyes-and-thrown-back-head-on-the-last-belted-out-note of another banal ballad, I plan promptly to put out my eardrums with kebab skewers. Just off the grill. 

And don’t even get me started on her fuuuuuuuugly jumpsuit and those rubber bands around her neck. She looked like she was auditioning for a spot in a Kayan tribe. Maybe it’s her next gig. She said she had a “premonition” her time was up. Or maybe she just realized she sucks. The American public, which is always just so goddamned reliable and discriminating, were shaaaaahhhp when they DIDN’T text Pia’s number last week. It’s the first thing they’ve gotten right since 2008.

Photo courtesy of mamapop.com 

Haters Unite!

So. In the category of shit-we-should-all-hate, let’s begin with those plastic seals on the inside of bottled/tubbed products like sour cream or cold medicine tablets or canola oil. I know. I know. The seals protect us from some assplug who gets spurned by a stalkee and then sets out to kill said stalkee and throw the police off said assplug's trail by lacing with rat poison a bunch of containers of some common product at Wal-Mart. 

If the seal is broken, you might want to choose some other opportunity to show all those assholes from work that you are not a pasty, paranoid, spineless wuss. This is no time to be all risky and dare-devily. That seal did not pick itself open. And do you know how I know that? Because those goddamned things require a blow torch and an advanced degree from MIT to open. And there’s no way some plastic seal got into MIT. All right. Maybe if it were made in China. 

But I digress. Whoever invented those things clearly has sadistic leanings. There is never, ever, ever enough hangover to make a substantial tab, plus your hands are probably going to be wet or ooey in some way, and you won’t be able to grip the slippery fricking film anyway. Then you have to go find a knife and cut the damned thing off, and you can never get all of the shards. Is there no one out there who can design an easier seal for God’s sake? It’s the 21^st century. We are supposed to have flying cars and robot maids by now and a dog named Astro. Jesus.

And speaking of that, another thing we should all hate is when people use the Lord’s name in vain! God, that makes me furious. But almost nothing gets under my skin like when people make fun of the mentally ill. I get crazier than a psyche ward full of schizophrenics off their meds. The worst, though, the WORST is when writers end their pieces without a conclusion. Any good writer worth a crap knows to sum up everything she's previously said and leave the reader with a “final-sounding” thought. But a lot of times

Thank You Letters, April 13, 2011

Dear spring weather in Middle Georgia,

     You are usually such an enjoyable season what with your plethora of fragrant blooms, your gentle breezes that whip my hair lightly from my face so that I go around looking like a celebrity in a music video, and your temperate sunshiny days that crisp up nicely after cool-enough-not-to-need-the-AC nights. So I really appreciate your completely considerate shift to one million degrees this afternoon just as I was leaving for work. Keep up the trend! It’s awesome sweating so much that the raging rivulets carve an actual valley between my boobs. A family of deer and a couple of sparrows have moved in. Thanks.

Bloggurl

Dear every single red light from my house to work,

     Thank you for managing to turn red immediately before my car arrived at each of your intersections and for staying red as long as possible even when no other vehicles were visible for three hundred miles. Great work!

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Dear air conditioner in my car,

     Thank you SO much for fucking up. TODAY!

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Dear April 13, 2011,

     The only way you could suck any more is if you were on Friday.

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A F***ing Failure to Communicate

Apparently there has been some fucktastic mix-up in my recent communication with God. I distinctly remember asking for MORE money coming IN, but noooo. Somehow, some celestial assistant doesn't know her/his/its divine shorthand because not only is my bank account hemorrhaging green shit, but Alexis's car is in the shop, and they've set bail at $400. AND the asssuck insurance company to whom we give our monthly premium for their "anorexic coverage plan" just declared my recent surgery bill "ineligible." In tiny, little 6-point Calibri down at the bottom of the page by a 1-point asterisk is the reason for the denial: "This amount exceeds the annual maximum in plan. Because your annual maximum is 67 cents. And we are asssucks." So. Yes. I owe TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. For a ninety-second surgical procedure. Out fucking patient.

I LOVE insurance companies and want to marry them and then catch them with the nanny so that I can divorce them immediately in Vegas and take every single cent they ever made plus the his-and-hers hand towels that were a wedding gift from their liver-spotted great aunt Eula.

I'm not mad. What makes you think I am mad?

Bitch, Bitch, Bitch

Blu-fricking-hoo. I hate whiners. That's why I work hard to keep my whining to myself or only to share it with a few poor, trapped family members. But where is that getting me really? What has burying anger and dismay ever done for me? Excluding the procurement of a Maalox/Tums addiction and expensive stays in "health spas," not a damned thing. So. What do I have to complain about today?

How about the four fucking dollars per gallon that I just spent putting half a tank in my car? My car gets roughly a half a mile to the gallon, so the forty dollars I stuffed into its tank will get me to work and back a little less than twice. I guess I will have to hitch that last couple of miles. On the Interstate. At fricking night. Considering that I pull in a whopping $20 per hour as a RESPECTED adjunct instructor (NOT), it costs more to drive to work than I'm making by going to work. See why people go on Welfare? It PAYS to sit on your ass and eat cupcakes infused with high fructose corn syrup and fried in lard. I'm in!