I'm going to steal your Big Wheel.

Dear Male Crotch Cricket Who Lives Down the Street:

I'm sure your parents think you're adorable. I'll bet your grandparents think you're the cutest thing EVER. I, however, think you're an annoying rug-ape, and you're not doing anything to endear yourself to me. Little Robbie of "pretty gatos" fame is cute. You are not.

I eagerly await winter's first snow, not because I'm particularly fond of snow, but because it means that you will not be able to ride your Big Wheel up and down the sidewalk anymore. It's not even that I think you shouldn't be allowed to ride your Big Wheel on the sidewalk. I accept that this is New York and I therefore have neighbors in close proximity. Neighbors who do stupid things like let their four-year-old bratlet ride his hard-plastic-tired Big Wheel up and down the sidewalk with no adult supervision. There are lots of little pockets of "safe neighborhoods" here in this city, and this is apparently one of them, because there are more screaming kids on this block than I've ever seen. And I've lived in Suburbia before, so that says a lot.

No, it's not the fact that you ride a Big Wheel that makes roaring plastic-on-grit sound all day. It's not the fact that you're a screaming brat who seems to spend eighty percent of his time wailing in that fake "Moooooomy! Billy's TOUCHING ME!" manner (okay, actually, that's a big part of why I don't like you) .

The real reason that I don't like you, however, is this: as sidewalks go, the one on this street is fairly wide. There's plenty of space when you're tearing down the street on that garish monstrosity of a pre-bike for you to NOT run over pedestrians. If I have to dive into a tree one more time because you refuse to steer that Big Wheel of yours so that it doesn't hit me in the shins when all I'm trying to do is get the fuck away from you, I am going to grab the handlebars on that little piece of shit, tip you off of it and then run like hell, taking your Big Wheel with me. I will throw it into the first dumpster I can find. And then I will come back and smile in your whiny little face. Please don't make me do this, Male Crotch Cricket. I really don't want to start a fight with your overindulgent yuppie parents. I want to be the quiet lady who lives down the block and doesn't bother anybody. But really, you're trying my patience, and I have precious little of it to begin with.

That is all.

Attack of the Gotti-bes

Okay, it was bad enough when these Jersey(whoops, Long Island) guidos got a television show so that they could show the world what uncouth, disrespectful, "my grandpa was a mob boss so I'm SPEshul" jackasses they are. Okay, fine. To each his own. Nobody makes me watch their show.

But they're spreading. Now I see Gotti-bes all over the place. Some guy in a Caddy blew out a tire on my street and hit a parked car. What gets out of the passenger side? A Gotti-be. I walked to the store to get some half & half for my coffee. What's walking down the sidewalk in front of me? A Gotti-be. Every time I get on the subway, I see clusters of Gotti-bes.

Okay, so you wanna be fake thugs. Fine. But seriously, boys, haven't you ever seen the Christmas special with Mr. Snow Miser and Mr. Heat Miser? Do you not notice the resemblance? Yeah, in my day (I'm so fucking old), we had mohawks and Flock of Seagulls hair. We looked stupid, too. But at least we didn't get our hairstyles from holiday specials targeted at eight-year-old kids. This is Mr. Heat Miser. He likes things to be hot. His hair is supposed to look like flames sprouting from his head, albeit rather cottony flames. He only has three fingers and a nose that looks like it was stolen off of W.C. Fields' corpse. Is this really a stylistic paradigm?

Then again, your mother bears a startling resemblance to Donatella Versace as portrayed on Saturday Night Live, and your house looks like it was furnished entirely by one of those Staten Island "Italian lacquer" furniture stores, so maybe that explains your complete lack of taste. I saw a blurb recently that read that one of you (I have no idea which of you is which) just opened a tanning salon on Lahn Guyland, so at least you can keep that lovely orange glow at a low, low bargain price!

The house across the street has grown a tentacle

The world's largest clothes dryer vent tube appears to have sprouted from the roof of one of the brownstones across the street. I don't know what it is. Perhaps it is an escape shaft for attic gnomes. Maybe my neighbors are opening a laundry. Maybe it's a transmitter to an alien mothership and is sending signals that it's time to attack Staten Island because it just doesn't really "fit" with the other boroughs, you know?

If it's still there tomorrow and I can find one of my cameras, I'll take a picture of it.

I do my best work in alt.

Put your little mousie (no, the computer one, you doofus) over the pictures in these posts. I love alt text.

"Hi, I wrote and directed my own movie and it sucked so badly that now I'm directing porn."

As I mentioned, I watched The Smokers this weekend. As I discovered later when perusing reviews on IMDB, I, like many others, found this movie in the bargain bin at a Wal-Mart (don't ask what I was doing in a Wal-Mart; it was the middle of Pennsyltucky and there was nothing else from which to choose). Also like many others, I thought that the cover art looked kind of intriguing and thought that perhaps this was a sleeper that might turn out to be good. Besides, it was only five bucks.

I'd like my five bucks back.

This movie sucked more than Armageddon, and in my book, that's bottom of the barrel.

Crap, time to clean this keyboard again; my space bar is getting flaky. I knew bruschetta in front of the laptop was a bad idea.

Okay, back to Shit Movie. People, I cannot emphasize this enough- don't waste your time watching this movie. I don't care if it's free. I don't care if you've been locked up in a basement for ten years and this is the only thing you're allowed to watch. Okay, I feel kinda badly for you if you've been locked in a basement for a decade, but still, don't watch this movie.

This movie was written and directed by a woman named Christina (AKA "Kat") Peters. Every movie she has done since this one has been a porno. Frankly, I'm betting even her pornos suck. The movie was also "produced" (read: financed) by Nicholas M. Loeb, who has one of the larger roles in the movie. His father has a bit part. I'm not sure which of them is the lousier actor. The lead actresses (it's an "ensemble" movie of sorts, I guess) are Dominque Swain, Busy Phillips and Keri Lynn Pratt. I dunno if you like any of them, but trust me when I say that they probably wish this flick wasn't on their resumes. Oh, and Thora Birch is in it, too. Almost everybody in Hollywood has a shit flick somewhere in his/her history, I guess...but really, this one is baaad.

Lemme give you the plot (and I use that term very loosely) as I recall it.

Three girls at a Wisconsin prep school (yeah, Wisconsin, no shit; we're not talking Choate here) sit around saying stupid things that are supposed to sound feminist and erudite. I think. It's hard to tell because the dialogue and acting are so awful that I kinda tuned out.

One girl is a slut (Busy Phillips). Clearly, we are supposed to think that she has been damaged by her terrible upbringing, and she's on a scholarship, which must mean she's trouble.

Girl 2 (Keri Lynn Pratt)is uptight. Literally. She can't put in a tampon, but she does manage to lose her virginity in an unimaginative fashion that night. She says "ow". We'll call her "Prude", since I don't remember any of the characters' names.

Girl 3 (Dominique Swain) loves opera and is the Voice of Reason for the group. She also narrates, because this movie is just soooo deep that it's impossible to figure that out just by watching it. Let's call her "Opera Girl".

We learn these things via various poorly acted, hackneyed scenes:
1. Slut is really slutty and has big hats.
2. Slut wears "artistic" makeup and likes to lie on the ground with her legs spread and her panties showing after a particularly tough game of field hockey.
3. Slut is Very Angry At Men.
4. Prude's boyfriend has no personality.
5. Prude's boyfriend comes after two thrusts.
6. Prude is therefore also Very Angry At Men.
7. Opera Girl is the objet du désir of the incredibly bad actor who financed this movie. Gee, you can't see where this is going, right? I mean, it's not like it's gonna turn out that Opera Girl is the lone virgin in the group and one traumatic night, she'll suddenly realize that she LOOOOVES bad actor guy. Oops, did I spoil the movie?
8. Slut, Prude and Opera Girl trade clothes a lot. A huge black cowboy hat that appears to have been made from the hide of slaughtered plushies makes its appearance throughout the movie.


The girls go to Opera Girl's house for spring break, where we are made to understand that Opera Girl's mom is Very Important, Very Busy and Never Home. Opera Girl's sister, Thora Birch (henceforth known as Freaky Sister), is smoking pot from a three-foot-long bong, drinking bad gin and playing with loaded weapons. Naughty girl, Freaky Sister is. Oh, our disaffected youth!

Freaky Sister plays reverse Russian Roulette with Slut. Reverse RR, because there's only one empty chamber in the gun and Freaky Sister points it at Slut and pulls the trigger, then challenges Slut to do the same to her. Slut chickens out and we discover that there were bullets in all of the other chambers and Slut would have killed Freaky Sister. Maybe we should have called Freaky Sister "Nihilistic Sister" instead.

Girls go back to school after playing with gun while doing their nails. Slut decides that the best way to exact vengeance upon all Bad Men (which, apparently, is also All Men) by raping them at gunpoint.

This never actually succeeds. I guess it's difficult to get a boner at gunpoint if you are:

A. Really in love with your Prude girlfriend
B. A dork and a terrible actor
C. Gay

So, more boring crap happens.

Slut gets raped by Older Man in Limo despite pulling The Gun on him (actually, she gets raped ON the limo because she apparently forgets how to run away when she jumps out of the limo and as a result, Older Man in Limo is able to catch her and "do it" to her over the car hood while the limo driver watches, expressionless. Oh, the humanity!).

Prude accidentally shoots Campus Stud (heretofore unmentioned because seriously, I've gone on too long about this shit movie already) in the head while he's pounding her during prom. Before he gets his brains blown out, he's really (really) thrilled to be porking "Rape Girl". Then she shoots him and he's not so happy about it anymore.

[Boyfriend, Campus Stud and Gay Dude pretending not to be embarrassed about having been in this crap movie.]

Opera Girl holds a lighter up to a smoke detector to set off the fire alarm so that Prude and Slut can escape so they can get their stories straight. Opera Girl slips and falls, catching a shower curtain on fire. In one of the most muddled, most stupid, most completely unintelligible and low-budget fire scenes of all time, Slut ends up burning up in the shower. Conveniently, she has brought the gun with her.

Slut ends up getting blamed for everything. Freaky Sister is valedictorian of her class.

The end.

You know what? This movie actually sounds about a thousand times better on paper than it actually was.

Please, if you value even a single firing synapse in your brain, do not watch this movie.

I ate so much food today that my boobs are gonna be bigger tomorrow.

So I forgot to eat yesterday (that happens sometimes). Apparently my body was pretty pissed off about it, because I think I ate the equivalent of several small children today. Holy shit, I'm in pain, I ate so much.

The upside is, my boobs will get bigger. Yay boobs!

My neighbor is tunneling to China through my dining room

For the past week or so, I've been using a laptop in my dining room. The reason for this is both boring and irrelevant. Basically, I had it in there for a reason one day and I'm a lazy sot (okay, so I'm not really a sot, but I dig that word), so I just hadn't moved it back out again.

Have you ever used a rasp?

Well, it sounds like my neighbor is using a rasp in the wall of my dining room. About forty or fifty times a day, I hear this:

VRRRP-VRRRP. VRRRP-VRRRP-VRRRRP-VRRRRRRP-VRRRP-VRRRP-VRRP-VRRP-VRRP-VRRP. VRRP. THUNK. VRRRP-VRRRP. VRRRP-VRRRP-VRRRP-VRRRP-VRRRP-VRRRP-THUD.

Then I hear people cooing and making vaguely intelligible "ooh, GOOD [baby/dog/prisoner-chained-to-the-wall/whatever]" sounds.

VRRP-VRRP-COO. COOOOOOOOO-VRRRRRP-VRRRRRRP. GOOOOD [MUFFLED THING].

There was a book that I read when I was about twelve- The Funhouse, I think it was called. (I was big into horror movies and scary books when I was a kid.) I don't remember much about the book except that there was this freaky little reptilian-circus-freak baby at the beginning of the book.

[Well, whaddya know- it was a book written by Dean Koontz under the pseudonym "Owen West". Must be why it was a stupid book.]

I remember that the reptile-freak-baby-thing had long claws and scales and pointy teefs and green snake eyes (or other equally scarynasty stuff) and that it tried to disembowel its mother when she got creeped out by it and tried to smother it with a pillow. Or maybe, come to think of it, it actually did kill her. Whatever. It was a scary baby-monster. Scarier than the regular ones, even.

Well, I think that's what is living next door to me. I think there's a pretty, white, lacy crib up against the wall, and in that crib there is a fanged, clawed, lizardy thing digging its way over to my apartment. I think it's actually on its way to China, but 'cause it's a lizard and all, it doesn't have a very good sense of direction. Then again, it is heading east, now that I think about it.

If I'm found disemboweled in my dining room, I'm telling you, it was the lizard next door.

This cracks me up. Yes, I'm twisted.

Please, think of the kittens.

Who Put Hash in My Coffee?

I've decided that FreshDirect has gotten fed up with me complaining when they send me dirt-soaked Boston lettuce or can't tell the difference between shiitake and crimini mushrooms and send me the wrong ones. I think that they're putting hash in my nummy (yet reasonably priced) Brazilian Santos Bourbon coffee to shut me up.

Why, you ask, would I think that FD is hashing my coffee? Simple. Because I've spent this entire weekend feeling like a high-on, and I ain't been smokin' nuffin' illicit. Aside from doing a half-assed cleaning job on my kitchen, I've done almost nothing for the past two days, and I've apparently worn myself out so much in doing so that I've needed several compensation naps.

Last night, I watched one of the worst movies ever made (The Smokers). I forced myself to watch it all the way to the end because I just kept hoping it would have at least one redeeming quality (it didn't) and because I'm just stubborn sometimes. At least I surfed the 'net while I was watching it, or else I'd have had to throw the TV out the window. By the end of that crap movie, I felt, just, well, weird. Not physically weird, just kinda mentally detached or something. It was sort of like when I was a disaffected adolescent full of hormones and seething rage. Wow, that movie wasn't just bad, it was toxic.

Today, I don't feel like I'm actually inhabiting my body. You know how, right as you're falling asleep, your body feels kind of tingly and just "not there", like your mind has disconnected from it? Okay, maybe you don't, but I do, and I'm the one yapping here, so just go along with it, okay? Anyway, that's how my body has felt all day.

Or maybe it was just the painkillers I took for my headache.

Never mind.

Holy CRAP, it's cold!

E-mail to a friend-

...

I can't believe I'm whining about 60 degrees, but dayam, it's cold in here.

I shot myself in the eye with parmesan cheese from my Caesar salad. No, I don't know how in the hell I managed that. I have the coordination of a blind, three-legged bulldog with a sinus infection. Opposable thumbs are wasted on me. For future reference, parmesan cheese in the eye is not comfortable.I also had penne with prosciutto, olives and sundried tomatoes in a parmesan cream sauce. A LOT of penne. I now look like this:



And I'm still gonna eat the baklava I ordered, too. Then I'll probably explode and they'll find me in a week when the house starts to stink. My cats will have taken to gnawing on my digits for survival. It will be all over the papers. I'll be the exploded pasta-and-cat-lady.

I won't be the crazy cat lady, though, because the woman who lives in the brownstone on the end of my row already has that title. She has five cats on one floor, four (or six, or something) on another floor, then more cats and some dogs on the main floor. I'm guessing that the basement is just where she stores the cat litter. The neighbors in the brownstone next door to her don't like her because they can smell her house from their house. The other reason that they don't like her is because she's crazy. I've met her. She is. I told the Indian guy next door that she scared me. She scared my movers, even, and they were mostly big scary Russian dudes with tattoos on their necks and their knuckles. Did I tell you that one of them peed all over my upstairs toilet and didn't even flush? He was nasty. And American. The Russians didn't pee on my stuff.

So anyhoo, I have to tell you about this guy on the train tonight. I was coming home and was waiting for the N train in the station at 59th and Lex. I'm standing there reading Time magazine and looking mean so nobody steals my shit or gets in my personal space bubble. Okay, I wasn't looking that mean, 'cause I was reading and listening to music and I'd just had a massage and was feeling all happy and limber. Apparently my butt was tight today, because K--- (the massage therapist) damned near put a fist-dent into my left asscheek trying to work out a knot. She even "wow"ed over it. She's been my massage therapist for over two years, so I guess she gets geeked when I have a knot in a new place. No, not "happy ending" geeked; she's a nice straight girl from Ohio who can't eat dairy. Just geeked that I've brought her a fresh challenge. Yeah, I know, that has nothing to do with the subway guy. Back to the story (my train of thought tends to derail like it just ran over a suicidal homeless guy holding a vat of corn oil, I swear).

I'm reading my magazine and listening to my NOT-AN-IPOD mp3 player and in my peripheral sight (which, as you know, we city-dwellers hone until we have a 240-degree field of vision), I see a suit kinda sidestepping over to my imaginary-line-boundaried section of the platform. I ignore him, of course. He could have leprosy eating away at his face and I wouldn't know because I'm NOT GONNA LOOK AT YOU, PERVERT-IN-A-SUIT-TRYING-TO-HIT-ON-ME-IN-THE-TRAIN-STATION. I just knew that's what kind of sidestepping it was; it's different from regular "fuck, this platform's getting crowded" sidestepping. It was 7:00 PM in midtown, for crying out loud. Pleeeenty of room on the platform, and I don't take up much space, so it's not like he was forced into proximity with me. I could see the whites of his eyes flickering (via my superhuman city bitch peripheral vision) because he was looking at me. You know what I mean; it's just one of those things you pick up on subconsciously.

The N train comes screaming into the station because the MTA only hires maniacs to drive the trains. The on-the-job-sleepers they put in the booths so you have to rap on the glass to wake 'em up when you need an updated map.

Seriously, see? I don't make this shit up.





Okay, that was another derailment. Back to the suit who may or may not have leprosy eating his face.

I can tell this guy thinks I'm gonna head for the right-hand car from where I'm standing, and he starts to step in that direction. I, being the hardass (literally! yay!) that I am, immediately circle to the left and get into that car instead. Suddenly I see a flash of doe-brown and suit guy comes diving into the train behind me. I take the seat immediately to the left of the doors (it's one of the three-butt-divot seats) and he takes the divot on the other end of the seat. There's one neon orange plastic butt-divot between us.

More eye-white flashing. I know he's looking at me. I move my hair to the left side so I can't see him doing it anymore, but then it starts hanging in my face and I can't read about Muslims in Europe who want all Americans to die in a horrible fashion, so I move it again.

More eye-white. Okay, fine, motherfucker, I'll fucking LOOK at you.

I glance over at the guy. Sho'nuff, he's looking at me.

I go back to reading about Muslims.

I feel him still looking. I glance over again. Yup, still looking at me. To cover for the fact that I just checked to see if he was still looking, I now look across the car and watch a fat guy with duck lips wiping something on his suit pants. I think it was eye boogers, because he had his glasses off and his hand was coming down from his (duck-lipped) facial area when I first looked over. More wipey-wipe from duck lips. I snort and go back to the Muslims. Now, of course, I'm not comprehending anything I'm reading because eye-white guy is still looking at me.

The train pulls into the 42nd St. station and eye-white guy gets up to get off the train. I'm happy because now I'll be able to read about Muslims without having to worry about some aging frat boy trying to find a suave way to hit on me on the subway. Maniac MTA train driver apparently decides to take his sweet slow time pressing the damned button to open the fucking doors, because they're not opening, and I can still feel eye-white looking at me. I look over. Yup, still looking at me. Then eye-white gives me a big-ass smile. Well, that really is very nice, and flattering and all that stuff, and I'm safe 'cause he's gonna get off the train anyway, so I give him a quick smile and go back to the Dutch Muslims. Eye-white dude is gripping the pole waiting for the door to open. He's gripping it with his left hand. Which has a nice gold ring on the third finger. Yeah, I smelled that ring when we were still back at 59th St., you putz. What, do I have "fuck me, I don't care about your wife and bratlets 'cause I'm a big WHORE" written on my forehead? Go home and boink Muffy missionary-style while she bitches about the broken toilet; I'm reading about world events here, dammit.

Of course, after he got off the train, I decided that he was actually looking at me the whole time because I had a big black smear of subway grease on my forehead or something. (Must've been 'cause of all that "'cause I'm a big WHORE" crap written on my forehead.)

Because that has really happened to me before (not the big whore thing, the subway grease smear on my forehead thing), but that's another story.

So now I spend the rest of the ride freaking out every time I catch somebody looking at me because I'm convinced I've got crap on my forehead or my massage therapist smeared my lipstick all over my face or something. Of course, I won't pull out a mirror and LOOK, because I don't want these people who think I'm a dumbass with a smear on her face to also think that I'm a VAIN dumbass with a smear on her face. Besides, when this Asian girl started plucking her nose hairs with tweezers, I was so fascinated by the fact that she was doing this that I forgot about my smeared face. She didn't even flinch. She'd just stare into her little mirror, locate a target nose-hair and yank that fucker right out. It was like a car wreck; I just had to look. Okay, yeah, another derailment. So anyway...

I didn't have anything on my face. He was just a dink.

Mmm, baklava...

I'm such a loser...and my cat gets piss shivers

Yeah, this was an e-mail, as well. I swear there's more to my life than my frigging cats. Honest.
...

Okay, so this speaks volumes about my inability to filter even the most mundane detail of my life out of conversations with others, but since I just literally stood in my hallway laughing for five minutes, I had to share...

I had locked the computer for the night and was headed downstairs to do, I don't know, whatever the hell I do when it's too late to go out and do anything but too early to begin the nightly battle with sleep. As I was about to go downstairs, I realized that I needed to clean the catbox, so I did the pathetic-cat-lady scoop-the-poop thing and went to get more litter to put into the box. When I came back, Jacka the Hut was squatting in the box peeing like an Irishman the morning after an all-night green-beer bender. There was a looooong gushing sound, then a series of squirt-pause-squirt. Pause. Squiiirt. Pause...tinysquirt. Pause-squirt. Squirt.

That alone probably would have cracked me up, but what really sent me over the edge was that the entire time while I'm standing there with the container of fresh litter waiting for him to get out of the box, he's peeing and making what I can only describe as kissy-faces. He's puckering up his mouth like he's about to air-kiss Kathy Hilton, and he's doing it over and over again, roughly timed to coincide with the pause-squirts. I think he was offended that I was standing there laughing like hell at him. He gave me a dirty look afterwards.

I'm so pathetic.

Kids Love Me!

This is an e-mail I sent to a friend.
...


So, I was about to head down to the corner store to get beer (I'm nurturing the drunken Viking plunderer-cum-seeding-of-the-Celts portion of my genetic heritage today)...
My retard cats have decided that since they now have an entrance directly to the street, that they are Great White Hunters and that the outside world must be explored and pillaged. Their 'pillaging' consists of me putting them on leashes (gawd, that's so pathetic, but to assuage my 'cat lady' fears, I tell myself that lots of people in New York put their cats on leashes) so that when they decide to tear off as fast as their fat asses can move them, I'll have a way to pull them back in.

When they saw me headed for the front door, they glued themselves to my ankles, so I stuck the leashes on 'em and opened the door. They were about to go ripping down the stairs until they noticed that a SAHM (Stay At Home Mom) and her two munchkins were down on the sidewalk. Jacob, my incredibly ancient scrawny runt who rules the herd, walked right out (he doesn't get a leash because he is well-trained and won't take off and is too damned old to do so anyway) to investigate. Natasha, the Maine Coon slut who bares her belly at anybody who so much as looks at her, strolled out and began lolling at the top of the steps so that she could listen to all of the "ooh, pretty gatos!" praise coming from the street. Jack, the lardass Siamese (seriously, he's an ox; he makes the dog downstairs look like a malnourished sewer rat in comparison) was immediately crippled by fear of the little boy standing there and crouched by the door with his pupils blown up to the size of frisbees.

To make an already long story short, Robbie (the little boy, who is two-going-on-three) was not only totally enamored of the critters, but decided to follow me back into the house when I put the "gatos" back inside because he wanted to stay with the crazy cat lady. The little girl (seven months old) showed me her two teeth in a giddy series of happy "ooh, new lady to look at" grins as I steered her older brother by holding onto the top of his head and turning him in the direction of the door.

I have a tendency to steer little kids like that. I'm not sure you're actually supposed to do that to them, but they always seem to get a kick out of it and their parents never seem to get pissed, so I just keep doing it. Of course, it's probably the fact that I grab 'em by the tops of their heads and start moving them around like weebles that makes them then follow me wherever I go. Anyway, little Robbie threw a classic writhing, squalling temper tantrum when his mom came up and brought him back downstairs so that I could go get my beer to support my dissipated wino lifestyle. Then he followed me to my mailbox and wanted to come inside again. I knew it was true love. I finally got him to go with his mom by promising that he could come back to see the gatos tomorrow but that they (the cats, not the smidgets) had to go to bed now (which, aside from eating and shitting, is pretty much all they do anyway [again, the cats, not the kids, although that's pretty much what kids do, too, aside from enamoring themselves of strange neighbor ladies]), telling him that I was leaving and then starting to walk down the street.

[Editor's note: Holy crap, can I produce run-on sentences, or what?]

When I came back from the store, the mom and her kids had gotten as far as the corner. I waved at the little boy and said, "Bye, Robbie!" He had already forgotten who I was and stood there completely baffled as to how I knew his name. If I hadn't felt like the now-scary "lady who stays home all day and only goes out to get booze", I'd probably have stood there laughing my ass off, but I figured that I should get myself and my brown paper bag back home before I scarred the poor kid with premature exposure to Beck's.
Yeah, I leave a real lasting impression. He just wants me for my cats. Story of my life.

Stuff I would have thought was obvious

Originally posted (by me, duh) on Craig's List Rants & Raves on 5/11/05
...

Now, y'all are free to ignore any of the below, 'cause god knows a lot of you already do, but what follows are a few helpful instructions I once never would have seen myself feeling the need to distribute.

1. If you have foot/nail fungus, don't wear sandals. Or at least wear socks with 'em. Yeah, you'll look like a tourist (or my grandpa). So what? At least you won't see people like me making little retch-faces when they glance down and notice that ghastly yellow-clawed thing you call a toe. And if you have dirty feet, wash 'em. Six months' worth of grime crusted under your toenails is NOT sexy, and when you make those "hey, you're kinda cute," googly eyes at me, I'm just gonna wrinkle my nose at you like you smell bad. Because your feet sure as hell do.

2. If you fart on the train, don't think nobody knows it was you. I knew it was you, you nasty motherfucker. I felt the little puff of warm air from your ass, 'cause it was six inches away from my head. That's not funny. No it isn't. What are you, in fourth grade? It ISN'T. Would you fart on your mom's head? Okay, then go fart on her head instead of mine next time.

3. If you accidentally run into somebody on the street, apologize. You might just improve somebody's mood for the whole damned day, and then they might be nice to somebody else, who might be nice to somebody else...you get it. How much does it hurt your little vocal cords to say, "oops, sorry," anyway? Hell, you might even get a date out of it if you're cute and s/he's cute and y'all are being all cute and nice and apologetic to each other. Now, if you run into somebody on the street on purpose, that's a whole different story. You just have issues.

4. If you like to ride up the escalator and I like to walk up it, don't get pissed at me for doing what I can to keep my butt from growing out of control. My walking isn't hurting you, and I'm sure as shit not judging you (even if you do have a huge ass and could probably stand to walk up once in a while, and I'm not saying that you do), so what's the problem? Me walking up the escalator hurts you, how, exactly? I'm skinny. I'm not bumping your shit, and I'm not stepping on your feet, and I make a huge effort to hold my bags in front of me so they don't bump you, so seriously, what's the problem?

5. If you blow your nose on the sidewalk by pinching one nostril with your finger and then blowing out of the other one, don't get offended when I say, "NASTY!" It is. I can say it if I want to. If you don't want me to say it, don't blow your fucking nose on the SIDEWALK. This isn't a cornfield, and we have these things called "tissues" for sale all over this damned city. Hell, if you promise not to blow your boogers underfoot ever again, I'll BUY you the Kleenex. Forever. Seriously. Give me your address and I'll have drugstore.com deliver 'em every damned week if you want.

Ditto for the whole rumbling dredging up of lugies from what sounds like your goddamned anus and hawking 'em out right there in front of my feet. Do you know how much nasty yellow phlegm I have to step around every day? God, people, go to the doctor, because that should not be coming out of your body unless something crawled in there and died. Like a gerbil, maybe. Just swallow it. It won't kill you. The dead gerbil didn't.

6. If you're walking down the street smoking a cigarette and I walk around you, don't give me nasty looks. I'm trying to keep that monkey off my back, that's all. I don't hate you because you smoke, because I smoked. I just don't want to do it anymore, and I don't like it when your ashes blow into my eye. That stings like hell and when I get to work, people think I'm crying. Well, I am, but that's just because my job sucks.

7. If you're sitting across from me on the subway, don't try to look up my skirt. I know you're doing it, and I guarantee, you're not gonna get a crotch shot. I'm gonna start putting socks in my underwear so you think I'm a trannie if you don't cut it out. Then I'll sit there with my legs wide open, and I'll give you a big ol' drooly "come hither" grin, to boot. I still won't fuck you, though.

8. Skeezy bleached-orange-hair Wal-Mart reject who held the doors open on the train so your apparently retarded boyfriend could wander around the platform gawking at all the pretty metal and peeling paint before finally getting on so that you could then jump on him, wrap your legs around his scrawny waist and dry-hump him for three stops: don't do that. Yes, I glared at you until you got off the train. So did about twenty other people who just wanted to get the fuck HOME. Did it make you uncomfortable? Good, because the conductor telling you to let the doors close apparently wasn't enough to break through your trailer-park-inbred hormone-haze. If I want to see that kind of shit, I'll go to the Ozarks, which is apparently where you came from.

9. If I can hear your bass-thumping gangsta rap music even though BOTH of us are wearing headphones, you're going to be deaf in ten years. That is all.

10. If you walk your dog all the time because you think it will help you pick up women, it's probably not gonna work. At least you're not making those nasty kissy noises at women walking by, so you do have that going for you. And your dog is really cute. I'm still not gonna fuck you, but your dog is really cute.

11. People at the bodega whose female pit bull launched herself at me and tried to hump me horizontal over and over again as I tried to extricate myself from her paws' vice grip around my thigh: you might want to take her to the vet and ask WTF that's about. Your dog is a lesbian, and she's REALLY horny. I believe you that she never does that. Really. Uh huh. My massage therapist asked how I got the bruise on my thigh, and I really didn't want to say, "a randy pit bull tried to make me her bitch, but her tail was wagging the whole time because she's friendly."

12. Don't rub something out of your eye on the subway and WIPE THE EYE BOOGER ON THE MOTHERFUCKING POLE. I SAW that shit. I could see that thing from eight fucking feet away. Do I really need to explain why that is just WRONG?

13. Don't pick shit off your head and eat it. You know who you are. We all see you do it. You do it in meetings for Christ's sake. The worst part is that you look at it before you eat it, as if you're evaluating its tastiness. Do you really not understand why nobody wants to be around you? Take a shower more than twice a week, too. You bathe on Sundays and Thursdays. We can tell. Wednesdays SUCK in that office because of you.

14. Don't wobble down the street yammering into your cell phone and pissing off the people who are trying to get past you but can't because you're weaving like a drunken seaman on a wet poopdeck. Trust me, your conversation is about as exciting as shit in a barnyard, and the next time you do it I'm going walk really closely behind you until I freak your shit out. I might breathe really hard on the back of your neck, too. With my mouth open. After a big cup of coffee. Isn't that annoying? Well, you're the aural equivalent of coffee breath.

15. If you sit next to each other instead of on opposite sides of the train, you won't have to YELL to each other, and the rest of the passengers on the train won't know about your "babydaddy's skanky ho" and how you caught chlamydia from him because of her "triflin'" ass. Maybe you should just quit fucking him.

16. Let me out of the elevator before you rush headlong into it and give me a concussion when all I'm trying to do is drag my ass into that soul-sucking habitrail we call "work". If you let me out, then you can get in, and nobody gets hurt. Otherwise, I'm going to start wearing a hockey goalie's mask to work and headbutt the first yahoo who tries to get into the elevator while I'm still trying to get out. Then I'll stomp over to my desk and sit there all day making Darth Vader breathing sounds while hunching over a stack of papers with my arm crooked around it like schoolkids do to keep other kids from cheating off their tests. I will, of course, make sure that the mask matches my belt and shoes, because I don't want to look sloppy.

I would've made this twenty items, but I think I blew my wad for the day.

Blogs are stupid, but WTF

Sometimes I write shit that cracks me up. Sometimes I write shit that I want to keep for posterity. Sometimes I just need to dump the endlessly derailing train of thought in my head. Here's where I'm gonna do it.