Ooooh, shiny....

Lady, if your entitle-stroller is so huge that you run over my toes with it, you need to dial it back a bit. However, you actually noticed and apologized, so I forgive you.

Unlike the twatface ZOMGSOOOHEALTHY mom who made a game of whacking me with her knapsack-cum-fanny pack. The other people standing on line with me were starting to fidget as they watched me face. You can claim to be organic, and natural, and healthy, and other buzzwords, but are so utterly unaware of your surroundings that you are banging into people and not apologizing, talking loudly about how fabulous you are and what your fabulous plans are for the farmer's market, you're a fucking poser, and you can suck my left nut.

Same for the dude standing ahead of me, who planted himself squarely in the middle of the aisle while talking at his companion about how considerate and sensitive he is . At least, until he was close enough to the head of the line to just sprawl himself over the display case of the vendor next to where he wanted to be.

Assholes. You are all assholes. When I am Master of the Fucking Universe, you will all find that your bullshit is no longer tolerated.

Is it the English geek in me that gets so offended by shitty speech patterns in telemarketing scams?

On the office answering machine this morning, the message left from the night before: "Hiiii, this is Mallory, from WestTech Systems... um... we're a blah blah"

Other automated messages left on the office machine: "Um, hi, this is John and I'm calling from United Insurance. Um, we're calling you because blah blah."

"UM" pisses me off. "UM" is overused. "UM" is not professional.

You are supposedly representing a professional organization. Do you really think that writing a script that includes the so-called word "UM" is going to make me think that YOUR business is the best available?

Um, not so much.

++++

Headlines in today's local Republican rag blare "STEM CELL DIVIDES AMONG FAITH".

Here's a suggestion, don't act on it right away, just think about it.

Stem cell research is like abortion. If you don't agree with it, DON'T PARTICIPATE.

You don't agree with stem cell research? Don't contribute any of your fiddly bits. Don't contribute any of your money. But then (and this is important) don't then think that you can benefit from the scientific knowledge gained. Don't think that should you and yours have need of the health benefits that you can blithely appear at hospital with your insurance card in hand and be able to walk again.

Of course, this is America, and you certainly CAN fight stem cell research tooth and nail, and when your kid falls from a blind in a tree from drinking too much beer while hunting deer, you can scream just as loudly at the doctors to help him as you did when standing outside the courthouse shaking a handmade sign that swears the doctors will burn in hell.

Oh, wait, no, that was you standing outside the abortion clinic, pretending to not recognize the nurses inside because you were there last week.

Me (grabbing half-empty bottle of crappy Cabernet/Shiraz and growling over not enough bright green nylon tulle in my fabric stash): "Where is the goddamn chocolate?"

He (about to make a comment regarding women and chocolate): "ohhhhh....."

Me: "SAY WHAT AGAIN, MOTHERFUCKER, SAY WHAT AGAIN!"

Some people say "I was like totally a freak magnet today, cuz like all of these creepy people kept like TALKING to me, ZOMG!"

Today, I was a SERIOUS freak magnet. In a way that made the baby jeebus cry.

It was as if I had no personal space because people kept standing NEXT TO ME DEAR GOD RIGHT HERE RIGHT NEXT TO ME. And it's not like I was wearing something revealing. Or something Amish. I was all in black and had on a biker jacket with spikes, fer chrissakes.

On line for breakfast at McD's? Little old lady was so close behind me (with no one else on line behind her) that if I put my hand on my hip and turned my torso a few degrees, it didn't QUITE poke her in ther sternum. Ask my how I know this, go on, ask me. She realized that my elbow was almost in her sternum and that I had a foot of height on her, and moved back a step. Thankee, ma'am.

On a different line for breakfast at McD's, because another cashier opened? My spidey-sense was tingling and I turned my head to see yet another woman with NO ONE BEHIND HER so close that I could feel her breath on my neck. And her little child was in between us. Through my headphones I heard her say (after I turned back around) "Move back, don't touch the lady". Just as an FYI, I hadn't showered yet, felt sort of bad for the kid.

At the laundry, there was no one there but me. NO ONE. The place was empty. 4 rows of machines to pick from, less the 2 in my row and the broken one in my row. Old black dude walks in, and choses the one RIGHT NEXT TO ME. I stare at him with a baffled expression on my face and I could see he was revving up for 'tude. Whatever. If you'd stop throwing (and by throwing I mean HURLING) your laundry into the machine from the table, you wouldn't have to OH NOES stop "loading" your machine when I had the temerity to walk between you and your choice with my arms full of soggy cloth.

Why the fuck would you chose THAT MACHINE RIGHT THERE - THERE, RIGHT THERE! when you had a roomful? I think it's a fucking disease.

I can't complain about the hispanic dude that sat next to me in the laundromat, because there are only two chairs. But all he was doing was calling his buddies, ultimately letting loose a horrific sequence of SDBs and then leaving. I had to pull my shirt up to my nose to breathe, because naturally he walked right past me and my dryer that was less than a minute to finish. Thanks, way to blame that shit on ME.

And then, because it never fucking ENDS, I'm schlepping my luggage full of dry clothes back to the apt and have stopped at the red light. A dude on a bike swoops in and has to do a half lap around me. Because I was feet away from the sidewalk ramp, obviously, and being that far away meant that I was clearly in his road.

GET

THE FUCK

AWAY FROM ME!

Back in NYC it was understood that you had theeeeeees much personal space *holds fingers this far apart* but no one ever touched you, and no one got close to you if they didn't have to. Today, apparently, I had paybacks. Or something.

GET AWAY FROM ME YOU FREAKS!

jennytheonly reminded me about kids these days.

Today this afternoon, I was in the courthouse getting subpoenas stamped, when a pair of youthful twenty-somethings fell into step behind me.

"Oh, yeah, Saturday Night Live in it's heyday, when it was good!"

"Yeah, it was like this big thing, y'know?"

"Yeah, it was funny then."

"Yeah, we used to all get together and watch it, it was like a big deal to us. When I was in third grade it was even better."

"Who was on when you were in third grade? Chris Ferrell?"

"Yeah. Tim Meadows."

...

*facepalm*

There was yet another suicide bombing in Baghdad today. No huge surprise there. And women were the suicide bombers. Even that isn't remarkably abnormal these days.

This, however, is an obscenity:

"BAGHDAD - Remote-controlled explosives strapped to two mentally retarded women detonated in a coordinated attack on Baghdad pet bazaars Friday, Iraqi officials said, killing at least 73 people in the deadliest day since the U.S. sent 30,000 extra troops to the capital last spring."

Mentally retarded women? Is it possible to sink any lower?

God doesn't like being told what S/He thinks, just sayin'...

"Zoo attack victim's family wants answers"

How about... WTF were these guys doing in the zoo after closing time?

Idiots. Don't fucking blame a carniverous animal because your son was a defiant shithead. It's called DARWINISM, people, and there isn't enough of it these days... or rather, there's still lots of Darwinism going on, but the litiginous payouts make them less amusing to bystanders.

And oh yeah, it's not a tragedy, ok? Tragedies are cathartic to a society, taking the sins of that society and expunging them for the spiritual health of that society, and involve the nobility of that same society. Journalists should be taken to task for abusing that word, while I'm on a roll, damnit.

"Childrens do learn," Bush tells school kids.




*cries*

Anyone who knows me knows what I think of guns. I'm a tree-hugging squirrel-humping granola-eating liberal child of hippies who eats red meat.

But gun control wouldn't help what happened in VA. It wouldn't have helped Columbine. Or the Amish killings.

When the establishment immediately hops on the ZOMG TEH GUNZ ARE TEH BAD THEY KILL TEH BABIEZZZ bandwagon, it not only pisses me off, it offends me.

Stop using the deaths of people in the wrong place at the wrong time as an opportunity to further your political career. Media, stop referring to deadly and sad events as "tragedies", because they're not. They're unfortunate events. Tragedies happen to nobility, and are part of a social catharsis in a theatrical religious experience. They don't happen every time a baby dies, or a person is shot, or a train hops off the track.

This was a horrible horrible event, and I feel terrible for the people who were affected, both directly and indirectly. But gun control won't help, metal detectors in buildings won't help, and shrieking from a treetop about your political agenda won't help.