Tuesday, December 25, 2007

multiple O's with 1 in front of them (yes it was cheap and easy, of course i went for it) :: musical edition

i was originally going to start this final entry of 2007 with 'omg srsly wtf y'all, where did 2007 doth go?' but then i realized, holy shit- 2007 has been an epic year. i dunno about the rest of you, but this past collection of 365 days has been nothing short of extraordinary- not that anything earth shattering happened, mind you. i didn't grow up or grow a set, man up or branch out. nobody i know kicked it, a few got married and spawned, and some made offers on houses; we're growing up but not losing our dumb and young sensibilities.

truly, i'm not gonna lie guys. i've met some amazing people this year, gone through some batshit crazy transitions, and despite not trying or meaning to, have changed who i am as a person. but i know that as b, the snarktastic blogstress, you are expecting at least a modicum of bitchery and listings of 10, so i will keep the existential ponderings for my lj or myspace or what the fuck ever, because this particular entry of wordage and babble is about something we can all agree on, bc for the most part, we all have ears*:

music. say what you will, but 2007 was a fucking amazing year sonically. any set of 12 months that comes complete with reunions of rage against the machine *and* the spice girls, new albums from NIN and radiohead, the latter being released online only and for what *you* wish to pay out of your pretty pocket, and the complete sonic meltdowns despite musical bolsterings of amy winehouse and little miss b spears = awesome. and, okay. much to the obvs, i'm not gonna even start pretending to know everything or anything about music. i've dabbled with songwriting and slapdashery of microphone abuse, and at one point used to crave writing for the big guns at spin, relishing the thought of reviewing tunes for money. but no more. i realize it's totally subjective, and quite frankly, i'm fine with that. also, i love spin for giving me two free subscriptions this year with my coachella and vegoose tickets, but for fuck's sake, they are so pretentious that i really will only read it for free and for what it's worth, those concert tickets were so expensive anyway that 12 magazines is the least i could get out of it for free. also, stop making up band names. i swear, spin. you're just making shit up to make yourselves sound more awesome. cut it out. nobody cares.

um, right. this was at one point about my favorite music of the year. let's hop back to it. so, i did not hear arcade fire at coachella, or manage to find the aural time for spoon's 2007 offering. i loathe justin timberlake and couldn't give a damn about the motherfucking killers or she wants revenge. i'm not gonna lick rolling stone's bunghole and even pretend for a millionth of a second that my opinion matters or that i know what's up. my ears are unsophisticated and ragged, and truth be told i'd probably love a rollicking two-minute pop tune more than a seven-minute masterpiece by some rock legend everyone's worshiping post-cbgb destruction. blah blah blah. shut up. it's called taste because it's personal, not because it's forced. also, i'm slightly defensive. some find it charming.

anyway, here. have the first in a three-part entry, and stay tuned (or not, i know all the planet save for one or two of you is tuned out anyway) for the second and third entries coming before the year is out. hopefully. i mean, not that punctuality matters anyway. actually it might, considering one of my christmas gifts was an alarm clock, but, details. anyway, this collection is thusly and enigmatically entitled:


my ten favorite songs of the year, my ten favorite albums of the year, and my ten favorite musical moments of the year, because 2007 was awesome, and this is how i'm sending it out in style, bitches

first things first: ten awesome songs that own on their own, album or no album, and these are in no particular order, i'm too gd lazy for that sort of craziness:

(oh and ps, where available, youtubey goodness of videos and/or just plain songs have been provided, bc i'm nice to you bastards)

1. say --john mayer
(click this thingey to see the video, but mostly hear the song)
yeah. okay. fine. this pretty much outs me as a sentimental bastard, as much as i try to hide behind cursing, cheap tricks and asshattery. this song is just beautiful. it's strong and comforting, it's got a string section that turns me to jelly, and john mayer is not telling anybody that her body is a wonderland. it is four minutes so full of solid truthiness that i don't care if it treacles out at the end: say what you need to say. amen, whitey whiterson soul brother, amen.

2. sober --kelly clarkson
(le click for le song)
say what you will about miss clarkson (i'll go ahead and say it: 'my december' = not as good as it could have been. yeah i said it, you wanna fight?), but this song is perfection. maybe it's due to our inherent ability to see so much of humanity in the lyrics, or that my idiotic self can identify with a verse in some noble, fucked up way. maybe we like songs with repetetive choruses, however vigilant and strong they may be. whatever the case may be, this song is my top-played on itunes and it is with reason. it is stone and mortar resolve fashioned out of nothing but hope. call me crazy, but i love hanging on the wire like that. this song is just as it sounds: soft, but strong. scared, but dignified. sobriety optional. (though probably helpful, because i learned this year that hangovers suck balls.)

3. quiero --alejandra alberti
(click for musical goodness)
i have no idea who this girl is, or what the frick she's saying. she could be telling us all that the apocalypse is surely mounting, but she seems happy about it, so i'm sold. this breezy little thing was a free download on itunes sometime in the spring and oh my god, it's adorable. it's like the charmin puppy of free songs. wait. charmin uses bears, doesn't it? who uses that little puppy- cottonelle? oh who gives a flying fuckling- point is, this song is quirky happy spanish pop in a bottle three and a half minute bottle. try not to love it.

4. dignity --hilary duff
(press this thing if you want to hear the awesome.)
oh, the duffster. not gonna shit you guys, i love her. (in case you haven't figured it out in months prior, or even further up in this post, i have absolutely no shame. just making sure that's out there.) i have a not-so-secret adoration for her remixes, and i always take 'metamorphosis' with me when i go to the gym. (hahahahah. that makes it sound like i go to the gym. hee.) but 'dignity' is grown-into-her-veneers hilary. it. is. awesome. it's slick, bitchy, and so damn true. it's not news when you've got a new bag, and it's not news when somebody slaps you. eat it, lindsay/paris/britney/whoever. even if you don't dig on the duff, give this song a listen. it's a hilarious yet oh-so-true send-up of the obsessive tabloid era we live in. plus it is ever so danceable, and that's obviously the important part.

5. all my heroes are weirdos --!!! (chk chk chk)
(i dunno, my heroes are relatively well-balanced, but click here to judge for yourself.)
this song is the weirdest little hybrid i've ever met. it makes you want to mosh and headbang while at the same time making you wish you could just space out under the sky and stare at cloud shapes. it is quite possibly a shape-shifting amoeba of a song, with sparse lyrics and a drumbeat that hops all over the place, percussion-heavy and guitar-lite...but it's badass. there is no denying. don't hurt yourself, you've never heard of these guys (i only know of them via coachella and having no show to go to during the 4:00 hour so i settled and damn am i glad i did), but at least give this tune a whirl.

6. girlfriend --avril lavigne ft. lil' mama
(for the record, i covet the pink 'stang in this video. someone get it for me.)
oh come on, you knew i was gonna throw some avril into the mix here. and while the original version of this song is absolutely pitch-perfect pop, the remix is stellar in a box of super. it is a sonic equivalent of caffeinated schnapps, and by that i mean it is impossibly juvenile and non-threatening at first, and then completely spastic and wall-bouncing for the duration. lil' mama wins at raptastic rapid fire, and yanks control from little miss lavigne (well, i guess it's mrs now, but, whatever) for every verse (and if you're as whitey whiterson as i am, you totally know all the lyrics and can actually, uh, 'sing' along. remember what we talked about? no shame. that's right.) but the glory of the schoolyard stomp chorus and bridge belongs purely to the obnox canadian in an absolutely perfect remix adaptation type thingey. no, really. give it a whirl. you like it. i promise. and if not, too bad, you already listened and i won.

7. you give me something --james morrison
(you know you want to hear the fabulousness of soulful ambiguity.)
i know. what the shit am i doing with a love song in this little mix tape of sorts? well, fuck off. listen to the lyrics first of all- it is an *ambivolent* song about *potential* love. this is exactly the kind of song my heart would sing if it were capable of potentially adoring the crap out of somebody. it boils down to 'well, i can't quite guarantee you anything, but...uh...i kinda like you. i might love you. but don't push me. i'm scared. but don't run away goddammit.' plus, dude's voice is hot, and the horn section is gloriously sweeping. it's basically an epic love song for the undecided and emotionally withholding. and that is why it's on this list goddammit.

8. becoming insane --infected mushroom
(press here to become insane along with the rest of us)
this is quite honestly one of the best album-opening tracks i've ever heard. it's killer. it builds so perfectly, from eastern strings to backbeat to layer upon layer to vocals to smashing guitar to all hell breaking loose. it's a romping good time through the limbic system, y'all. i can't elaborate on it much more than that except to say it's infected goddamn mushroom, so why would it be anything less than awesome? exactly.

9. work that --mary j blige
(work it out ladies. or gentlemen. i don't discriminate.)
okay. try to overlook the fact that it was used in an itunes commercial, and ignore its inevitable fate as the new standard in 'makeover montage background jam' in any movie featuring anne hathaway or a sassy black lady- this song is just pure goodness. it's solid. it's not overly busy, but it's bouncy. it's strong with a 'be yourself' vibe but it's not saccharine crap. i mean, seriously guys. it's the blidge. she can do no wrong.


10. let me in --hot hot heat
(click for your final song, aren't you glad it's over? shut up, you love it.)
i could listen to this thing over and over. in case you haven't figured out that my ears are suckers for orchestral sections, strings, and big dramatic punch-up choruses, well, then you obviously don't know me and you make me feel insignificant and why do you have me when i show you NOTHING BUT LOVE. anyway, this is just a kickass rock pop song. that's all there is to it.


and that's that, so far as individual songs are concerned. clearly it's good i decided to avoid writing for music's sake. but like (insert bad analogy of someone repeating unfortunate behavior despite emotional, psychological, or societal ramifications that should totally convince them not to but it never does because hyoomans r dum) .... (i don't know either), i do it anyway.




*if you actually don't have ears, well, for crap's sake how i was supposed to know, i've never met you. stop assuming i can see your general cranial shape and appendages. that's just self-absorbed. good day to you.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

10 really unfortunate names

in the anonymous position i work dutifully for an unnamed employer that does nothing interesting whatsoever, there are occasionally things worth mentioning that crop up from time to time. most of my shennanigans do not make the cut, such as pratfalls, jokes about disco pants and burritos, and the really hot guy who doesn't even know my name. but today, my friends, it's time to show you ten of the things that do warrant an interwebby shout-out:

baaaaad names.

that's right. those of you who know me eye are elle (irl, duh.) know that i glee from an unfortunate namings. it's just...i mean...why? why would you saddle a child with a moxie crimefighter, audio science, or blanket, when you could just name them, well, anything that is not moxie crimefigher, audio science or blanket? well, the mothers of these poor saps must have had the epidurals inserted into their brain stem instead of spinal cord, and the fathers perhaps drunk off one too many 'it's a boy!' congratulatory beers from the guys at work. i cannot fathom any other reason for these monikers. it has rendered me quite baffled.

anyway, in my day-to-day job as a regular person with a regular job, i file a lot of paperwork for a lot of people. (no really, a lot. we got 7,000 pieces of it in the mail on monday alone.) after four months working the grind, i've come up with a list of my ten favorite suckers, whom i will judge purely based upon their name. behold:

ten names that would have me saving up my birthday money since, well, birth, so that i could go down to the courthouse and pony up the $180 to legally change my name once i hit 18, because for fuck's sake, these are not names, they are embarassments, or if i'm marrying into the name, would make me basically *not* marry into it because, just, no. i love you, dearest, but let's create a new name from a random draw of the scrabble tiles, be serious:


1. so-and-so tidd-lard
wait. what? having a bizarre first last name wasn't enough, so you doubled-up and went with 'lard'? holy shit. y'all, i think we have the new definitions of both 'true love' and 'masochism.' i didn't even know you could be *named* after a fat, but, shows what i know. you know what i want? i want a bacon-lard union. or maybe lemon-lard, because that's just culinarily amusing. or maybe burger-lard. oh, the possibilities are endless, and yes, i'm going to think of many of them. my job is boring, you see.

2. such-and-such verewolf-butkiss
wait- how are EITHER of these names? verewolf? really? should i be wary of you at full moons? and should i be wary of your significant other, who clearly sucks up to anybody who'll give out a free lunch? wow, it's a miracle that you two lived past junior high school, what with the teasing. it's also probably just kismet that you found each other and will probably birth many a lupine, butt-kissing baby. this is the glory of marriage folks. entertainment for us.

3. long phat dong
alright, i'm cheating with this one, as it was the find of my boss, but, um. okay. thank you, korea, for your names that just don't translate over here in the us of a. thank you so very, very much.

4. joy loser and randy winner
these people aren't married and probably don't even know each other, but i grouped them as a twofer because i filed their paperwork one right after the other, and thought that they would make the most darling couple, who could get a kicky little house in the country and call it 'happy medium estates.'

5. zsa-zsa cherry
believe it or not, her occupation was listed as a teller, and not a stripper or palm-reader.

6. stephen outhouse
do you think he draws that little half-moon outhouse symbol next to his signature? i mean, i totally would. you've gotta be preemptive with that kind of unfortunate luck. make fun of it first, or everybody is totally gonna own you. and then you'll have no self esteem due to the constant mockery, you'll bottom out, fail your classes, get a crap job, and lo, you will actually *be* cleaning toilets. and nobody wants that, except for perhaps the creators of the rejected characters parade that conan does every now and again.

7. cynamon hellpap
this is, apparently, the buxom, take-no-prisoners villain of a gynecological horror/thriller. i could make an 'open everywhere' and/or 'wide release' joke but quite frankly that's a little too low-brow even for me. oops, i did it anyway.

8. james demon thomas
clearly this kid's otherwise sane mother was in labor with him for approximately two months.

9. the malaise law firm
i don't know about you guys, but i'm taking my business to the feeling-slightly-better-about-it firm across the street. dunno why. i just have a feeling, here.

10. the lynch-belch law firm
okay fuck it. i sat here for like 10 minutes trying to think of a different way to explain why this is funny, and then i realized well jeez, i'm dumb. pure comedy speaks for itself. the end.



now be thankful your name is normal and shut up. and bring me a cookie.

Monday, November 26, 2007

ten things this blogblob is apparently good for

supremely awesome friend: i wish *I* could write a blog people would want to read
supremely awesome friend: but i don't rock like you
yours truly: LOL, no no
yours truly: nobody wants to read it
yours truly: they hit my page, realize it's not full of minihorse porn
yours truly: and leave
supremely awesome friend: hahahahahahahaha

so i'm not gonna lie, i totally have one of those stat-counter things planted on this here blog thingey. i use it mainly to see if i'm getting any action; apparently people in south africa land here on a semi-regular basis and occasionally someone in my hometown drops by. other than that, i'm quite safe in shooting my mouth off in this little corner of the interwebs, because as a general rule, about 3 people visit this thing a day, and that's if i'm having wicked high traffic. (yes i said wicked. what. i'm an eventual new england girl, shut up.)

anyway, curiosity got the better of me and i thought to myself, 'self? why don't you see *what* exactly is bringing the people from cape town to your writing? why are the good people of kansas occasionally checking in? and for the love of crap, how come you get so many visitors at 3 am?'

the answer, my friends, is not blowing in the wind. nay, it is in search engines that we must look. and so look i did. and HAH. my blog basically rules. i took a look at the search engine queries list that my statcounter provides; i can spy on you visitors based on location, based on length of stay, or my favorite, what link brought you here. nine times out of ten it's a myspace bulletin i posted or a link from another blog, but occasionally it's a nugget of hilarity from the search boxes of google, yahoo, and dogpile.com-- for here i give you, because i'm lazy and this is a short entry because i really want to go watch some netflix:


10 seriously awesome search engine queries that have resulted in errant visits to my blog


1. gay urethra wand
okay. my question here is twofold:
a) what the shining hell is a urethra wand?
b) what makes a urethra wand 'gay'?

now, i know from catheters and scopes, believe me. i've spent my fair share of time dealing with crackpot urologists and their shiny, scary instruments (yes, i am a girl. no, we do not like going to the piss doctor.) but never have i ever wondered about the sexual proclivities of said tools of the trade. i wonder if this fine visitor thought perhaps, because of my bisexuality and my IC (look it up, i'm not explaining it) that i'd know what makes a urethra wand and also what makes one gay, but, no dice, gentle reader. no dice at all.

2. reasons why you can't live in the desert
fun fact: if you throw that exact search into google, my blog comes up as the first result. clearly my work on the internet is done.

3. bitch i will cut you
with a gay urethra wand, i will. i swear it!

4. well that's just shittastic
shittastic, for those of you not in the know of the tastic family tree, is the misbegotten cousin of fantastic and the stepson of craptacular. he's a bit rough around the edges, but all he needs is a little love. unfortunately i don't think you'll find that shit in this here blog. moving on.

5. what household item can i shove up my rectum
um. well jeez. i never thought i'd be dr ruth. i'm severely unprepared for this question, but i'll give it a go: if you don't think you could handle putting it in other, uh, orifices, then don't put it in your butt. just sayin.

6. texas rectum murder alcohol
oh that's right. not one, but two search results of 'rectum' yield this little blogspot. have i even used the word 'rectum' in here? i may have, who knows. it might have been during a rage blackout, thank you very for the tip summer roberts. anyway, what's awesome about this particular query is that it explains just what i'd love to do to texas if it were in fact corporial. if texas were in and of itself a gigantic, swaggering cowboy praising jebus and lassooing a cow, i probably would enjoy the hell out of imbibing some alcohol and murdering it somehow through the rectum. why? because driving through texas is two days of nothing, that's why. also, because every boy i've ever met from texas has been insufferable in his own special way. don't get me wrong, i adore some of them, but for fuckin real folks, shut up. if you love texas so much, go have a gay marriage with it and have its lonestar babies. oh wait, texas wouldn't allow that. shut up, texas. also, your chickenfried steak was not very exciting.

7. fuckling
probably the bastard offspring of an asshat and a douchebag, no? i wonder what a litter of fucklings would look like. probably very cute, but very swear-inducing. i bet they crap bitchery all over the carpet.

8. stickybear bop apple rom
yessssss. memories of childhood. i'm telling you, stickybear bop owned all, even if i never could get far enough into the game to feel satisfied before some other dipshit kid at daycare was jonesing for a spot at the coveted computer. oh, sharing. i did not learn you thoroughly in kindergarten. though why anybody found my blog searching for that relic of daycare is beyond me.

9. things you do when your [sic] insane
craptacular spelling aside (obviously this fine visitor and diligent information-seeking surfer of ye olde net did not stumble upon a couple of my previous entries), i feel honored to be the end result of a quest for things to pass the time when you've gone coocoopants or nutterbutter. actually i *should* do that list next. seriously. i'm thinking, 'ten things to do when you want to convince the world you've gone or just want to at least pretend you've gone and tumbled headfirst into a land of padded walls and hug-me jackets.' given that's what i have as my tag line up top there, i suppose it was overdue. thank you, fine purveyor of ask.com, for resting on your laurels, or my laurels, or whatever it is that kids are doing with laurels these days, and snapping me to attention. truly, you have a place in my heart. now just learn how to fucking spell.

10. i accidentally took a decongestant with alcohol
well it's not all bad, really. think of it as a vodka with red bull, but instead of merely keeping you awake all night, your sinuses will be blissfully free of clogging, while your brain will be delightfully foggy. it is perhaps the best state to exist in. i'm so glad i'm not the only person to have discovered this chemical combination, but i am worried, dear reader. 'accidentally' implies that you did not mean to enjoy said chemicals. to which i say, pish posh. embrace it. enjoy it. then probably don't drink anything alcoholic or take an advil for a week. also, you'll wanna drink some water. like woah.



and that's that. of course, honorable mention goes to 'girls smashing testicles', 'minihorses' and 'joey travolta'. obviously human curiosity is the gift that keeps on hilariously giving. also? i must admit, i'm intrigued by the fact that i can post video to this thing. because occasionally i'm lazy and don't feel like typing so much as blabbering, i'm tossing a little bouncey ball of an idea around my cerebral cortex and pondering doing a video list next. thing is, i must remain anon and an enigma (unless you know me, which is 90% of you, but for the sake of remaining a myyyyystery, i shalt not be revealed), so i need something quite visual to do for a list. ten most amusing sights of this godforsaken town i live in? ten things i'm not sure deserve their tenure in my closet? ten tchochkes i totally heart? i draw ten pictures based on your requests? i dunno. my brain is dying here folks. hence, i request you leave a comment with an idea or two. why? because i said so, that's why. also, because you, you're awesome.

so is chuck, which is on right now, so i'm gonna go rot my brain for awhile courtesy of nbc. i'm out, y'all.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

ten things that have popped into my head lately

okay guys. i have a confession that isn't really a confession to make: i have a super-obnox case of ADD. (i had it *before* it was cool, thanks.) most of you who know me enough know this already, but i thought i'd throw it out there into the blogosphere anyway, and i will add that yes, it is legitimate (my GPA makes a handy-dandy bell curve chart based upon whether or not i'm medicated with those little pumpkin-colored triangles of poor man's speed), but i try to ride with it. some folks use it as a crutch, i use it as a surfboard. in other words: some people limp along and bitch about it, i choose to be optimistic, throw myself on it, ride the wave and glee 'weeeeeeeeeee!' before a wave curls over my head, i wind up pummeled into the sand-soaked ocean floor and totally gasp for air before bitching, 'frick, i hate surfing.' but it's charming and fun anyway. at any rate, it's why you all love me, if only because i make the rest of you feel normal by comparison, or that you can say 'strawberry' and it will lead us on a tangentastic conversation about ice cream, perfume, serial killers and yodeling.

so, for better or worse, my mind tends to not pay any attention at all to you or your stories or your commands if you happen to be my boss (this *could* explain why i got fired that one time but i like to pretend it's because the dude was 4'9" if he was an inch and i'm 5'10" and i threatened him with my very existence. also, he looked like a monkey. also, this was a pet store, so i know from animal faces, y'all), and as i was saying before i interrupted myself, like, way to fuckin go, me, i really can't take the time to listen to you. sorry. it's not that i don't want to, it's that i can't. or is it that i don't can't won't not but...wait...what the fuck? the hilarity of this is i'm totally sober while dribbling this refuse from keyboard into blogger box, so, i guess y'all are just that lucky.


anyway, what happens while i'm busy not being able to or not wanting to or won't notting or whatevering in the paying attention department, is wishing i could get proper health insurance so i could get me some ADD meds again. for real. also, though, my brain is just having little synapse blots left and right and wondering about this that and the other existential (or non) thing. i'm sure you know what i'm talking about. you're in a meeting and someone in a suit that looks like it was fashioned out of cotton that interbred with blue playdoh is all 'blah blah blah rate structure blah blah plans are not sufficient for unsecured creditors blah blah donuts in break room' and you're all 'mmm, donuts...my stomach commands i feed it some glorious boston cream chocolate sugary goo-- wait...did i feed my hamsters this morning? shit. they're going to die from malnutrition and here i am, fat and happy with nutrients. i suck. i am the worst pet owner EVER. maybe *this* is why i got fired from the pet store. nah. it was totally bc the dude was a monkey. a short monkey. for real, what's with short men? why they gotta be all napoleon? napoleon. OH MY GOD, you know what would go SO WELL with those donuts in the break room? NEOPOLITAN ICE CREAM! and i know that's totally not 'napoleon' ice cream but you try telling me you haven't ever made that linguistic leap. omfg linguistic leap-- dude, that sounds like a new hero for nbc to try out mid-series. 'he could learn whole languages in a single bound! communication will never be a problem for...lingua frank!' but frank isn't really a good hero name. it's too...well...it sounds like a hot dog. mmm. hot dog. see, this is why i'm a fatass. i have a donut and yet i also want ice cream and a damn hot dog. AND I'M A VEGETARIAN. because i love the animals. which doesn't explain why i'm accidentally starving my hamsters. oh frick on a stick i was supposed to be taking notes. maybe if i just nod and look like i'm taking it all into my head and not my notebook they won't fire me like the pygmy chimp bossman from petland. dammit. i'm out of coffee. and clearly i need a donut to go with it.'

for real. i'm not lying. this is not entirely unalike what was going through my head between the hours of 10:15-ish and 10:17-oclockness a few days ago, though hell if i was actually keeping track. the beauty of this retard-o-sphere that i call my brain, though (awesomely enough, the firefox on-screen spell check does not have a problem with the phrase 'retard-o-sphere', leading me to believe in its utter validity) is that it totally gives me filler for this blog when i neglect it so sorely. because for real, i'm averaging, what- a few paragraphs every couple months? for a writer, i suck ungodly amounts of suck. (______) (that right there is the space i left for you to insert your own 'suck' joke. it's like choose your own insulting adventure.)

anyway, i'm bored and need something to do because quite fucking frankly i'm not in the mood to watch a movie and snark at continuity errors or read or do anything halfway amusing. i've got lyrics i could work on, or books i could read, netflix to watch and a house to clean but f that s, i'm just gonna jot down a few of the brain rumblings that polluted my occipital lobe this week instead. and because i love and hate you all at the same time, i leave them here for you to read if you are just as le bored as i am.


ten things that slipped between the frootloopy cracks of my brain while i probably should have been paying attention to the shit i was scanning and filing, bc for real, the paralegals are going to eat me alive if they get another chapter 7 in their chapter 13 box, but omgsrsly4real i'm a newbie and i claim immunity:

1. yes, the writers' strike is necessary. 110%.
but if it in any way fucks with my ability to see the scrubs series finale, i am not kidding, i will probably suffer an aneurism and bleed out through my nose and cry into my porridge and curse the world. if one has time to do that after their brain short circuits, anyway. also, i have no idea why there was porridge in that sentiment. perhaps the brain malfunctioning has already begun. in short: give the writers their 2.5%, because without them there is no show, and also, i don't want to find pieces of my brain in the breakfast cereal. the end.

2. upon the thoughts of three religions in one department somehow managing to coexist without murdering each other but not without stealing each others paltry shit or possibly coveting mp3 players, you really could shorten the 10 commandments into 'don't do anything i wouldn't do.', and bonus: 'the commandment' just sounds so much cooler and easier to follow, y/y?
for real. george carlin backs me up on this (oh, okay, so my spellcheck protests carlin, but doesn't protest retard-o-sphere? i'm not sure what i believe anymore)- you really could pare down the commandments if you wanted to make managing your mortal soul's eternal salvation more manageable. and no i'm not religious and don't even pretend to be but i got A's in every religion class i ever took, so shut up.

aaaaaaanyway, so basically the thing is this: sir godly mcdemandsalot is all 'don't do these TEN THINGS! others we'll talk about, because i guess i never specifically called out little altar-boy sodomy and/or blowing up abortion clinics in my edicts, so, my bad. oh dear me, i made a bad. according to kevin smith and alanis morissette in a tutu, universe goes splodey right...about...now. but it doesn't because kevin smith made 'jersey girl', proof that even the greatest fuck up. that's right, god gets a mulligan. awww yeah.'

so basically back to the original point of this drivel- i'm looking at this list of ye olde commandments in a handy set of 10 and well, i think mainly what dude (or dudette, bc really, as others far more comedically inclined as yours truly have pointed out, god may just be a chick bc who else has that kind of interior *and* exterior decorating skills? no straight man, at any rate.) was trying to say was this:

"so i totes don't wanna brag, for realsies, but oh my gosh, you guys. for real? i am most probably totally perfect. i honestly, truly can't help that sunshine and rainbows spew out of my ass and butterflies and starlight vomit from my mouth and that i can take and give life in a snap, oh and have you *tried* sunday school? divine! in case you're a terrible horrible godless heathen, though, check it:

coveting its bad, m'kay?
killing is bad, m'kay?
stealing, lying, cheating, all that crap- it's bad, m'kay?
also, i'd appreciate you not worshipping anybody else other than me. i'm wicked insecure and kind of new at this edict stuff, so, yeah. just obey me and everything will be chill, we cool?
and finally, oh my me, SERIOUSLY, anything you think might be remotely bad? IT'S BAD.

so, to sum up: don't do anything i wouldn't do! this does not include, however, raining frogs and flooding things. or creating the platypus. so feel free to wreak global warming havoc and play mad scientist. clearly the 11th commandment was to get rid of al gore."

man, god is a prick. but i can't fault the guy, cause, well, he likes the things in lists of 10.

3. fat cells have too many friends
okay seriously. have you ever noticed that when you glee and break out the self-congratulatory squeals for losing 10 or 15 or howevermany pounds because honestly 10 is but a drop in the vast ocean that is the gelatinous mass of america's thighs (my own included), that if you don't keep a tight lockdown on that shit it comes roaring back with twice as many friends? for freaking real, people. lookit- unless you spend the unnecessary dollars on atkins cereal bars or the south beach frozen meals or whatever cockamamey fad diet is in these days, and/or spend every waking moment at the gym or thinking about going to the gym or berating yourself for not going to the gym, those pounds just come back. and not only do they come back, they come back with some added squish to make you feel all the more ridiculous trying to fit into your skinny jeans. (which, btw, we should all stop doing, bc not even twiggy supermodels can make straight-leg jeans look good. for real. just, no.)

so why this fat phenomenon? because your fat cells are not meant to be loners. they need friends and family and loved ones. they are the most extroverted body part ever conceived by whatever created the human anatomy and they can't survive on their own. if you try to get rid of them, they will pull themselves up by the fatstraps and multiply. if they can't multiply, they call their friends to come over for a fritos-n-margs party. if they can't do *that*, then they cry and their tears turn into new fat cells. seriously. THEY HAVE TOO MANY FRIENDS. your ass will never be lonely, because it's like the freakin spider club for lipids. your stomach? it's the freakin fat cell south beach. upper arms? forget about it, it's fatty tissue U where everybody drinks, hooks up, pukes, and then procreates.

and you know it's true, too. so the next time you realize your fat cells are costing you friends because the world is judgemental even though it shouldn't be because, holy frick, how many of us are fat now, for real, just remember this- your body has its own myspace, and it's multiplying every time you eat a donut.

4. people can get away with anything on the road if they have a good bumper sticker.
alright folks, you can't tell me you haven't witnessed this firsthand. you know how it goes down. you're minding your own beeswax, business, bidness, crap, whatever it is you mind while you should be minding the rules of the road but you're totally fiddling with the radio dial instead, when from out of NOWHERE, a rogue suv busts out of the right lane, cuts you off like it's a pair of scissors and the road is its asphalt ribbon, and speeds through the light before you get the chance, leaving you crammed in the intersection in a cacophony of honking horns and tire squeals. and yet? you're so not mad. why? because that suv, that honking, gas guzzling excuse for a vehicle that nobody needs unless they are perhaps toting the detroit lions to and from a game, totally had a bumper sticker on it that said "say NO to proposition 104!"

omg, you DID say no! holy frick! it's like you're ideological, political soulmates! so what's a little bit of tire shred and engine grind to make sure you don't collide? that car's got *morals*, man. conversely, a cute little vw bug could give you the courtesy wave and let you out of a supercrowded parking lot onto a main drag to hang a left onto an even more crowded yellow-lined artery through town, and before you can give the wave back, you notice this blight on the front bumper:

"W in 04!"

enough said. sure, cute car with a nice person did something good semaritainly, but now you're totally struggling not to say 'GODDAMN YOU! if i lose the rights for my uterus, IT'S ON YOUR UNEDUCATED HEAD, YOU JACKASS!' as you're totally cruising down the street because of their charity of lane space.


what the hell is this driving etiquette cockery? the world may never know, but to be safe from asshattery of a judgemental and vehicular degree, you should probably just cover your bumpers and trunk and hubcaps if you so choose with stickers for everything. every band, every political affiliation, local cause, national cause, awarness ribbon, honor rolls at all the local schools, snarky rebuttals about how your kid beat up the honor roll kid, and carefully placed shout-outs to icanhascheezeburger and homestar runner can cover your rear windshield. on your back bumper you can support the troops, support cancer research, support and celebrate equality, visualize whirled peas, say you voted in every election since nixon came about (hint: it doesn't matter if you weren't born yet, who's going to look?), promote tax breaks, promote public programs, support a woman's right to choose and throw one of those jesus fish up there too. on your front bumper and side windows, be sure to say you honor god but question everything, are an alum of approximately a dozen universities and colleges worldwide, tell drivers to be safe and give bike riders 5 feet while also letting us know you'd rather be shopping at nordstrom and your other car is a broom, the amnesty international candle logo is pretty, and also, you love every mlb, nfl, nhl and nba team. if that's not enough, you can always post the stickers for any and all harry potter hogwarts houses and throw the radiohead toothy bear logo up there, cause nobody doesn't like that guy.

you should now have free reign to cut people off and be a jerk as you see fit. however if you can even see out of any windows, clearly you haven't posted all the stickers, because to support everything and thus piss off everybody/nobody and secure yourself a front-row seat to badassery on the open roads should cover every inch of any vehicle, from a miata to an excursion. c'mon. keep stickering. it's fun. i promise.


5. what's going to happen when hyphenated-name folks' kids start getting married?
i feel like i'm qualified to comment on this because i spend enough time at my job parsing through a client database to find whoever's behind a certain claim, and it's painful enough to find out i have to search for them based on married name versus maiden name versus new name versus changed name versus whatthefuckever, like, MAKE UP YOUR DAMN MIND. even more obnoxious are the hyphenated names, like so and so smith-kincade and joe schmoe-doe. but nay, will this be the end of it? oh no. for i fear our hyphenated friends are starting to pair off and marry and spawn. what, then, i ask, are their children going to go by on that first day in kindergarten when the poor bedraggled sap who got suckered into teaching the finer points of fingerpainting when all she wanted to do was teach calculus, calls roll:

underpaid educator of the youth who will totally be our future, so basically, we're screwed: amber addison?
girl named amber, which, wow, are kids still getting named after rocks?: here!
cog and peon in the education system: johnny bledsoe?
kid named johnny who will inevitably eat paste for money by third grade: heeeere!
lady who wishes she'd majored in drinking instead of education: madison smith-kincade-schmoe-doe?
kid with a name longer than she is tall: ...i think so.
sap: what?
kid with pretentious parents: i don't know if i'm here. i mean, there's 4 of me to keep track of. that's a damn lot of responsibility for a kindergartener, for pete's sake I'M ONLY SIX.
teacher who will need a shrink soon: oh...i...well, yes. you're here.
kid who will be bogarting that shrink bc her parents probably have the money while teacher's craptacular school district health insurance doesn't cover acts of the brain: FOUR NAMES, IT'S INSANITY! WHY DON'T YOU JUST CALL ME CYBIL RIGHT NOW, YOU WHORES?! YOU'RE ALL WHORES!!
paste-eater: ...what's a whore?
amber: daddy says me, when i hit 10th grade!
cybil: i will murder you all, each with a different pointy end of one of my last names. MARK MY WORDS.

so you see, this is a problem. but quite frankly i'm too lazy to fix it.


6. why do we say 'omg you made it?' when someone shows up to a party?
i mean, they were coming from halfway across town, were they not? they weren't, like, crossing the tundra or deuling a yeti or marshalling a parade on the way over, right? there was no fear of decapitation or blizzard warnings or stock market crashes so far as i can tell, so why the hell are you so amazed when people show up to a gig, shindig or soiree you're having when you invited them and there would clearly be no hardship in driving a few blocks? seriously. stop it.


7. is anybody else incredibly alarmed that dane cook is making music now?
go check it out on itunes and witness the godawful emfaux for yourself. yeah i know, i tried to mate 'faux' and 'emo' and clearly they don't go together bc their child is an ugly bastard. and dane cook is adopting it. does anybody else remember when nobody remembered him?

8. why doesn't 'facon' exist yet?

for those with their 'wtf?' faces on, i'm talking about vegetarian bacon. there are some questionable choices available for those of us who don't (or can't) eat meat, and, well, nobody has named it 'facon' yet. IT'S LINGUISTICALLY PERFECT. morningstar farms, get on it.

9. how much more badass would your life be if it had soundtrack backup music?

think about it. based purely on musical clues, you would know as you rounded a corner whether you were about to meet-cute, meet your doom, pratfall, or find your ex totally making out with the new ho under a streetlamp of cruel, cruel soft focus and you could turn and run accordingly. when you met someone for the first time, you would know instantly based on the plucking of quirky strings or the hop of heartfelt bells that you either met someone who is totally awesome or going to break your heart in a million pieces. need to know if you should go into that room? listen to the music marge, it's evil!

also, you'd never have to charge your ipod again. you could time your typing to the rhythm of your personal theme while bored out of your skull at work. putting groceries in the cart would be hilarious for the offbeat arrangements crafted out of bongo drums and a sitar. and, most importantly, you would always feel important. need to give a presentation at work? you could cue up one of those inspirational speech type sonatas and sway the clients in an instant! want a fun date with the guy you totally did meet cute with because you listened to the musical contextual clues? cue up the latest pop treat by the rip off of whatever new disney upstart is hot these days, and you're bound to be having some good times. want a really effective break up? a full string section has you covered.

okay fine. i just want my life to win a grammy, and i may be too lazy to write the music myself.

10. people you think are hot have radar. embarassment radar.

i mean seriously- i just want to know how it is that the person you would least like to catch you sneezing so hard that it propels you out of your chair or possibly date-stamping your hand instead of envelopes manages to catch you every time. it's like they are hardgoddamnwired to not only be wealthy in wallet and good looks, but in embarassment. yes yes, riches of embarassment. take THAT, carrie bradshaw, i can pun you outta the park. it's probably cause i smoke less.

anyway, point is, whoever's in charge of probing the general public's brains should look into this phenomenon, because i know it's not isolated. bitches please, you've all told me stories that are akin to my own humiliation- whoever you're totally lusting to make babies with suddenly knows your every location like you've been implanted with sonar and a tracking chip. nasa should clone that shit. think of all the crime it could solve! actually i don't know if i can think of all the crime it could solve except for perhaps preventing crimes of fashion or stupidity, but this is my blog and fuck you very much, i'll go on rambles if i so choose.

in short: if you're crushing on anybody, be prepared for them to somehow find you dropping your ipod and bleeding out of your nose while laughing and possibly falling out of your chair or off the desk or running into the cash wrap or dropping a stack of freight, date stamping yourself or pricetagging the mannequin or pushing the 'detonate' button or whatever it is you're not supposed to do at whatever job you have. the end.




alright folks, that's all for me. i'm out to enjoy the seasonal delights of turkey day, the drastic influx of diamond ads (sidenote, fuck you jewelers, i'm WAY more special than a rock could ever be, stop telling men they have to resort to sharp, shiny bedecked clichés to win the game of luuuurve) and the inevitable onslaught of christmas cookies and latkes. oh yes that's right. i'm not jewish but oh how i adore those little pancakes. mmm. winter wins. my fat cells (and all their friends) rejoice at the thought of stuffing and cocoa and loafing by the fireside. oh wait, i live in the desert. fuck. okay, so, mojitos, wheat thins, and lounging by the poolside is the apparent order of things.

screw it, i'm actually just going to bed with a book. this is why i'm hot.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

direct quote from son of boss: you have a look that makes people want to give up on life.

okay y'all. i'm not dead. yet. eventually we all be, but as of this particular juncture in time, i am still breathing. my sinuses would like otherwise, but i've smothered the bastards with a liberal dose of dayquil, so fuck you ragweed, and take that, grass pollen, and up yours, scillia and mucus and all that other immune system crap! i've beaten your game of making me feel like death warmed up slightly. though according to the box, this will only last four hours. dammit.


anyway, i am alive. not kicking, mainly because i have godawful balance and also, i can't kick in my work clothes. it'd look ridiculous. but i am alive, and just reassuring you, my gentle readers (all between one and three of you) that more verbal blogger spew *will* be clogging your blog list soon enough. i've just been busy with a new job (i work at a law firm now. i know. but please, save your judgements until you've heard hilarious tales of bad names, chair-spinning games, and the fact that i'm getting paid double-digit dollars an hour. it's exciting.) that keeps me occupied 8-5 during the week and occasionally on saturdays. of course, this is not all that has been transpiring. other things have kept me from wasting my words in the blogbox, and these include but are not limited to:

*a buffy entire-series dvd marathon
*i'm still working at That Store for Fat Chicks on weekends, god help me
*holding friends' crap for ransom in cahoots with other friends, and making ransom notes for said crap out of trashy tabloid magazines bc if you're gonna hold something for ransom, over the top is the only way to go
*laziness
*aforementioned sinus trubs
*intense depression over the fact that i am now saying things like 'trubs'...and 'obnox', 'whatev', and 'oh em gee'.
*random friends stopping by on their way through this state because really, the only thing you can do is visit the sonoran desert, not live there
*coincidentally, go to google and type 'reasons why you can't live in the desert' and see who pops up on top. obviously my work here is done. or should i say, obvi.
*men. feh.
*women. bah.
*OMG NEW FALL TV SEASON
*have you ever let laundry go for, like, five or six weeks and then realized, holy schneikes, i'd better wash that if i want to not go naked to work tomorrow, because for real, they frown if you don't wear hose, let alone clothes, so i guess i should go buy some fabric softener, and what should take a day takes a week and you've still got piles of unfolded laundry and the clean sheets you washed are in a crumpled heap on the floor bc you're too lazy to put them on your bed and also bc there was a red sox game on and who can be bothered with domestic choreyness when they're playing the yanks and totally winning and then they fucking lose and you cry and pitch a fit and drink to make it hurt less but then realize they're still hopefully gonna clinch the eastern division and you would totally wear your blue and red jersey sox shirt if it weren't at the bottom of that tangly cotton abyss that is the pile of unfolded laundry? i have.
*the skins are playing and actually winning games! obviously this phenomenon must be watched. hilariously obnox sidenote, i used to live in the neighborhood next to joe gibbs back in the day when he was the coach and the skins actually won superbowls and shit. he gave out good halloween candy.
*vegoose preparations are upon us. or me. and the friends i'm going with, anyway. you're all super wickedly jealous. i mean it.
*stuff and things.
*possibly other crap.

and that is the long and the short of it. make no mistake, i have been coming up with lists in my head and jotting bits down, and hopefully i'll get around to writing one in full this weekend if i can work it in around doc holliday stalking in tombstone with a friend who totally hearts this one guy who plays him (bc he seriously is cute, y'all) and working dastardly retail on sunday, but until then? i leave you with this:


cranberry juice + southern comfort + a squeeze of lime = love.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

ten things i will not hesitate to do to harry potter spoilers, and i'm not ruling out eyeball gouging

alright folks, let's face it: it is the end of an era. a dynasty, she ends. the sun, it sets upon the edge of the literate sea. this saturday, the bookstores will throw open their doors and prepare for one final record-blasting day of hardcovers flying off the shelves and into the hands of addicts everywhere. pages will flip so rapidly that many a paper cut will undoubtedly spawn upon a myriad of knuckles from reckless page turning at breakneck speed. there will be laughter, there will be sobbing because jk probably totally kills off one or two of our favorite characters, and i mean seriously if any of the trio dies i will die inside and then probably slice my wrists. also, we will lose the ability to geek out over HP conspiracy 'omg what happens next?!' podcasts and somehow reading all the essays on character theory and the tiny details that just. may. add. up! suddenly won't seem as important once we know how it all ends.

at long last, after ten years of wishing we received our own invitations to hogwarts (i'm convinced dad threw mine out because he also threw out my girl scout camp acceptance placements and party invites because he was absent-minded even before he became a professor), we will tear through several hundred final pages of the canon and weep really sodium-rich tears because, frick, that was seriously one of the last vestiges from childhood, or at least not-yet-quite-adult life and we loved it ever so dearly. it was a security blanket, a piece of wonder (not the bread, which was way too flattenable so far as bread goes), and a source of endless joy. yes. joy. if a heartless cynical bastard girl can admit it, so can the rest of you.

alas, after this weekend it will finally be time to put the boy wizard to rest, provided he of course doesn't croak in the last pages, because if so then jk rowling will have some serious therapy bills to pay 'round this world of ours. and so my friends, chew your droobles, swish your cloak, and prepare to say goodbye to harry potter. yes, he of the unfortunate (yet life-altering) scar that apparently came into being in the age before mederma and the amazing friends and the quidditch skills and the amazing heart and the love that will defeat evil. he of snowy owls, misguided romantic attempts (you can't spell 'cho' without 'ho', y'all) and proof that even if you're really only barely decent in school you can still rock the world. he whose happiness and defeat of the dark lord means the world to us.

we, the millions upon zillions of squeeing fans, have already poured our piggy banks into scads of movies, books, scarves, bags of bertie botts and posters and will undboutedly do for years- but not without lamenting the end of the original books themselves. we have fanficked, filked, and flibbertigibbeted (and oddmented and nitwitted, too) whilst wishing for timeturners and totally hearting luna lovegood's radish earrings. we've sorted ourselves into our own houses (if you didn't figure out that i'm a slytherin, i take 50 points from your own house, you obvious hufflepuff), we've cheered for the weasley twins, hated on draco for being such a pansy (and hated pansy too, that cow), wished for our own house elves, and totally rooted for OBHWF. (that's 'one big happy weasley family' for those of you who don't know, and if you're a harry/hermione shipper, u r dum.) we have, in short, invested in these books and this world and jk's masterful storytelling because it has defined a decade of our lives. a decade, folks. for a lot of potter fans, that's more than half their span on this green and blue earth thing we call home.

and yet? there are people out there who are meaner than i am. there are asshats who would wish nothing more than to take this incredible final seventh piece in an epic story arc and shove it up our asses without lube, and then give us a swirly afterwards. if they could, they'd rape the children's lit section of the library (and probably every other literature section, or more than possible, any section of any building that contains books of any kind) with a cave troll's mallet and then set fire to it, only to put it out with pee that smells of asparagus.

i'm talking, of course, about book spoilers. this breed of abortions-that-weren't prey upon those who find happiness (much like dementors, but without the kicky cloaks or ability to actually drain your soul via a kiss, though, talk to me about some of my exes and they might be comparable) in books, which they really can't handle. these numbnutted jizzgobblers lurk around barnes and noble parkinglots, spying on the harry potter midnight parties, waiting to strike with maddening speed and unfortunate accuracy. mind, they have taken the time to pre order their own copy of the coveted tomes so that at the stroke of midnight, they might run into a crowded hall of children, teenagers, twenty somethings, parents, grandparents, and totally exasperated b&n/borders/waldens staff (who are already probably pissed bc a) being open til midnight honks, b) they know they're gonna be working double shifts on saturday and will undoubtedly be spoiled on the book before they get to read it, even with their 30% discount, and c) fuck the screaming children at the HP parties, seriously. put those things in bed. it's midnight.) and scream something akin to:

"______ DIES!! HAHAHAHA!!!"

"THE PROPHECY ______!! _____ WAS _____!"

"_____ KICKS THE BUCKET AFTER KILLING _____!"

"OMG, _______ WAS TOTALLY _______ THE WHOLE TIME!"


and so on. i just pulled these out of my head by the way, folks. i'm not intimating that i know anything about the damn book. hello, if i did, i'd be selling my secrets on ebay for $50 a pop. shit son. i'm as clueless as the rest of you. and you know what? i goddamn like it that way. i want to go into this book knowing only what i do of the past six books. i want nothing spoiled. i want a fresh slate, i want to go through it as harry and co goes through it, not knowing the future, but only knowing it has to come to an end sooner or later. you know, cause the book covers kind of say so.

but there are these nutjob crackmunchers who think it's fun to spoil a decade's worth of waiting, hoping, and wondering. there are assholes bigger than the state of texas just waiting to spring the spoilers on the harry potter friday night parties and saturday morning book buyers. their five seconds of glee as they ruin it for countless people who have waited ten years is supposedly justified in 'eh they're just tards, get over it kids' that non hp-readers bandy about. well, fuck them. know why? because they don't know how to get to platform 9 and 3/4, that's why. and so, without further ado, i bring you:


10 things i will not at all hesitate to do to anybody who even attempts to think about spoiling harry potter and the deathly hallows for me or my friends or ANYBODY AT ALL, and i'm seriously not a legitimately violent woman (why do you think i write it all instead) but i will be bringing a swiss army knife and a can of mace with me to my HP party on friday, so all you ballgobblers are WARNED:


1. i have a wand. you have a urethra. i'll arrange for them to have a meeting.
and it's 15 inches long, baby. just say the word.

2. i will slash your tires.
you're only as powerful as your getaway vehicle, my absolutely fallible friends, and without that? i challenge you to survive a swarming sea of angry potter fans who have just found out you're the reason they hate life and can't enjoy the climax of the series. you're as good as AK'ed. (if you don't know what it stands for, you shouldn't even be reading this anyway. get out and leave the bandwidth for the fans.)

3. i will force every nastyass flavor of bertie botts down your gullet in one fell swoop.
good news! they've upgraded the disgust-o-factor. not only do you have the luxury of sardines, dirt, pepper, vomit, earwax and boogers, but you can now add to the glut with sausage, pickles, rotten eggs, earthworm, and soap! and don't even try to escape me, i've got a very strong grip. my hands, they may be dainty, but i wasn't the all-school champion in mercy for nothing. you utter a single word of how the story goes down, and i guarantee you a night's worth of culinary orifice pain unlike any that was ever designed to be bestowed upon mere mortals. these wrists don't break against your foolish attempts at escape, motherfucker.

4. i will strangle you with my slytherin tie
bonus: it's silk, which means the strangling will be smoother with less skin irritation. bad news for you as you're dead, but, good news for me as the cops'll have a harder time pinning it. go go potter merch.

5. i can break bones.
seriously. don't mess with a fat girl on a mission. she breaks shit just by falling on it. better watch out or your skull/thigh/femur/foot/kidneys might wind up underneath my considerable heft. and, much like option number two, if you can't flee, you can't fend off the hordes of pissed-the-fuck-off potter fans who will fillet you even more thoroughly than i have. after all, i'm just the sentry.

6. i will inform every girl in your life that you have herpes.
for real. after strangling and/or breaking your bones or vital organs, i will steal your phone, call every girl on your contacts list (provided that there are any, seeing as anyone this asstastic couldn't possibly attract any thing with two x chromosomes, not even pansy parkinson, bc you're spoiling her story too, you shitfuck) and tell them all that you've just gotten the herp tests back and they're positively stunning. if there are no girls on the list, i will proceed to step seven.

7. i will also use your cell phone to get your home phone number, do a reverse look up on the internet to find your name and address, and post it all over the internet labeling you as a spoiler.
as an added bonus, i'll say you want chris columbus back to direct the seventh movie.

8. i will train a legion of 11-year olds to bite your ears and nose off at the training noise of "_____ DIES!"
believe me. i'm quite persuasive, and children are so very impressionable. promise them candy and anything is possible.

9. sodomizing via harry potter vibrating broom.
oh i'm not kidding. at all.

10. remember the disgruntled bookstore employees? they have access to book palette forklifts.
and i think, if i know my retail slave brethren at all (and i do, because really, no matter what we sell, we're one and the same heart of hatred towards humanity), if you are the type of bastard who makes everybody angry and especially someone who makes children cry, we will not stop until you are crying and begging for mercy from our fists/mallots/gigantic 500-book, 600-pound palettes fresh from the publishers, just waiting in the stockroom for a giantic spoiler dump-upon. the crunch of your bones beneath heaps and heaps of potter would be a fitting end for the jackhole who decides the series was at all to be messed with. spoil our end and we'll spoil yours, motherfucker.

and there you have it, folks. this is but the tip of the iceburg in terms of my wrath and undying loathing for anybody who dares ruin books of any sort, but i think you get the idea. fuck with me and the ending of potter, and i fuck with your bodily functions and personal safety. now, with that warning firmly out in the open, i will bid you adieu and most likely will be back tomorrow with ten things i will miss most about the series. oh that's right. this topic is so special it gets two posts. hot damn.

Friday, June 29, 2007

ten things to do whilst pmsing like a motherfucker

so it's friday night, and instead of hitting up el charro's for some dancing with the girls from work, taking in a new movie at la cinemazillionscreenplex, or even just crashing at a friend's place for a round of popcorn, soda, and trashy 80's tv on dvd (because my options always come in sets of three), i am instead curled up on the couch with a bottle of chocolate milk, a bowl of fettucini with chicken, and a stack of the OC on dvd (again, options in sets of three) barely able to move and not really wanting to, either. why, you ask? well i'll tell you why, mother fuckin sherlock holmes on the case of a girl who darest not go out on a friday night, I'M PMSING LIKE AN ANGRY DRILL SEARGANT HERE, and the cramps + fat ankles x general disdain for all of humanity divided by hunger for every kind of protein-rich beast sear-marked on a grill square rooted by the most wicked mood swings this side of sybil sort of get in the way of friendly interaction with males and females alike. thus, i have decided to whip up a quick clickable list of things for the ladies to do when the p motherfuckin m goddamn s machine cranks into high gear. so here. i throw it at you and go.

10 things for the ladies to do when the pms is a-raging and murdering the general populace isn't an option, because apparently if they'll throw paris in the clink, they'll def throw you in and orange is *nobody's* color


1. go to hershey park. If not in pennsylvania, visit local godiva chocolatier. they’re better anyway.
this place is magical, i tell you. despite the fact that this was the first place my parents took me after a six week sentence of fat camp (for real, you now officially know a fat camp veteran) and didn't let me touch a SINGLE PIECE OF CHOCOLATE, this park holds many a magical memory. or maybe i'm mixing it up with nostalgia of the hansony kind, since this is where i saw my first *real* concert, all the old-skool dmb and pat mcgee band sessions at wolf trap not withstanding. though perhaps for street cred i should say they did. though the first to decry hanson as useless will say the same of my original virginia-based man-names-band-after-himself and then plays at wolftrap farm park loves, so, nevermind. anyway, back to the point- hershey park shows you how they make the chocolate, and instead of mickey mouse puppets and character costumes baking to 110 degrees in the heat of velour costumes, there are GIANT CHOCOLATE BARS. this obviously wins. why, you might ask, does a woman want chocolate during pms? well wimps might say magnesium, but a lady will tell you, fuck off and give me the orgasmic creamy mouth delight wrapped in a cookie or bonbon form and nobody gets hurt. it's simply a mystery. it is a delectable treat and it holds power over those of us with xx chromosomes. deal. and when i say deal, i mean [men,] deal [with our fucking pms or our general everyday actions by giving us lots and LOTS of chocolate, okay, you bastards? okay.] the end.

2. call your ex boyfriend, remind him what he’s missing in a snarkalicious voicemail and then go play with your ex bf voodoo kit.
i mean really. haven't we all wanted to do this with our boyfriends who are one of the following:

*canadian
*texan
*mid-western
*russian
*english
*any sort of european, actually
*californian
*anywhere-ish
*oblivoius
*stupid
*cheating manwhore
*alcoholic
*illogical
*name-calling
*big-penised
*the best sex you ever had
*the only person who could ever get your damn car to start
*provider of much good music
*provider of much good weed
*the reason behind every angry song you ever met
*again, with the best sex, cause, damn, that was nice

what ex haven't you wanted to break out a voodoo doll on? i'm not saying that shit works, but i'm not decrying it either. go forth, my ladies, and prick him* where pricks were not meant to go.

*yes, i am approximately 14 years old in my use of the word 'prick'. take it or leave it, loves.

3. buy a new voodoo kit if you don’t already have one.
if this isn't a buyable option, visit bath and body works instead. seriously. their 'temptations' line is divine. at least you'll smell lovely (like peaches and apples and lavender!) when the cops show up at your door all 'ma'am, do you know anything about (insert ex's name here)'s disastrous impalement via rhinocerous horns?'

first of all, they deserve death for calling you ma'am, but secondly, you'll smell so innocent and lotion-in-a-bottle lovely that they won't be able to convict you EVER. so do what you will, mes sistres. just don't tell me.

4. do some light exercise. that includes strangling your neighbor for perfectly grilling a delicious, juicy, protein-rich steak and not inviting you.
for real. what an ass.

5. doing some crunches or sit ups can actually help cramps.
however, if you can't manage these, then turn on some fitness show that shows people doing them, and upon realizing you're in no mood and/or shape to follow suit of the bodies on the screen, throw your tub of cheap non-fat ice cream at them. trust me. you're better off with full fat anyway.

6. brain food- which includes fish, fruit, and the souls of newborns.
actually i heard mostly it's salmon and blueberries, but, frick newborns. the fact that we decided not to harbor them in our tubes this month is the reason we're cramping anyway. DEATH, DEATH TO ALL RAFFI-LISTENING LIFE-FORMS.

7. take a bath. equip yourself with the portable phone, a bowl of fruit, a book, and a taser.
first off, the hot water soothes the abdominal muscles. obviously have a phone on hand in case irrepressible gossip from a friend comes over the wire and you seriously can't let a bitchfest slip through your fingers *that* easily, and as for the fruit bowl, blueberries are known to ease the damn cramps. so there, science guys. of course, the taser is obviously for anybody who decides to hijack the phone line, flush the toilet and thus secure you a talktime with the cold water god, or who even dares to enter the bathroom when you are SO NOT READY. trust me, ladies. you'll want one on hand. always.

8. research meathooks on the internet.
determine the best model for your budget, and strongly consider which type of uterine removal works best for you, cause seriously, that’s the problem with being female. in the end, decide bleeding for a bit every month-ish is better than sticking a metal hook up your hoohah. seriously. just imagine the mess. my roommate and i back in college always used to leave cryptic 'pass me the hook' away messages when it was that time, but since then i've decided liberal doses of cynicism and icyhot seem to work better anyway.

9. go to blockbuster. rent a stack of south park, reno 911, animaniacs, and whatever else makes you laugh. top it off with popcorn and goobers.
i really hope this needs no further explanation. humor trumps all, obviously.

10. fuckin slayer.
a dear friend of mine always urges that slayer is the cure to any bad mood. but it's not just slayer according to him, oh no- it's 'fuckin' slayer'. so, really, just crank up the fuckin slayer ('angel of death' and 'god hates us all' are good choices for the beginner) and scream your pretty little heart out. it's the best legal option this side of cutting a bitch and/or setting fire to the union hall. and if you seriously can't handle the hormones making a mush out of your brain and uterus, read up on african ladies and be thankful you don't get your squiggly sawed off with a rock and upon the age of monthly goo, sent into the bushes until your demons are gone, or whatever it is they do over there. no, i don't pretend to know, that would detract from my charming idiocy. the end.


no, seriously. the end. to this entry, anyway.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

ten *more* grammatical things you do that piss the world off

first motherfrickety things first: i'm not dead. i just found things other than blogging to do for awhile, but it turns out that working retail for slave pennies and going through the not-very-well-thought-out motions of a not-even-a-relationship-at-all-but-hey-there's-sex-type-stuff-sometimes (okay i abused the dashes, stop pretending you're better than me for noticing) are not exactly as fulfilling as ranting my pretty little heart out in this wee corner of the information highway.

second things secondly: okay. i did a post about this before, but apparently it has done nothing, NOTHING, to calm the denizens of twittermonkeys out there who still rape the english language like a viking with viagra. SERIOUSLY PEOPLE. LISTEN THE HELL UP BECAUSE I WILL RIP YOU A NEW RECTAL EXIT IF YOU DON'T STOP ABUSING GRAMMAR, SPELLING, AND GENERAL INTELLIGENCE. LOOK, YOU'VE MADE ME SO MAD I'VE RESORTED TO CAPS LOCK AND THIS TIME IT'S NOT BECAUSE MY WIRELESS KEYBOARD FROZE. I'M ACTUALLY JUST MAD AT YOU. AND I KNOW THIS IS TOTALLY AN INTERNET ETIQUTTE THING I'M VIOLATING BUT YOU KNOW WHAT? FUCK YOU PEOPLE, I'M GETTING DOWN ON YOUR LEVEL SO THAT YOU MIGHT UNDERSTAND ME. ZOMGS OH NOES!!!1!!1~ U CANT HAZ CHEEZBURGER, MOTHERFUCKERS. (look it up, i'm not linking.)

anyway, here are

10 MORE things you do in the world of grammar to piss me off, and probably the rest of the learned world as well, so shut the fuck up and take one for the literate team, you jerkholes

1. noone
what the fuck is wrong with you? no, seriously. i want to know. since when did 'nobody' and 'the middle point of the day' basically turn into the same word save for that scrappy little e that just comes out of nowhere like a rogue vowel vanna white is gonna chase down and beat to death with one of her spangly earrings? honestly, you people are idiots. did you pass 4th grade? did you read? ever? even a smidge? then i trust you know it goes like this:

nobody = no one. one being synonymous with 'a person'. no denoting lack thereof. hence, nobody being around? no people? maybe you think no one is watching you make a big ass of yourself when you spell it out as 'noon' with an e like an absolute dipshit. it has never been 'noone' and never will be 'noone', it will never ever EVER IN THE PAST PRESENT AND FUTURE TENSE OF THE HISTORY OF LANGUAGE BE NOONE, you doucheling. where did this come from? seriously it's like everybody woke up one day and decided, "hey, you know that space between the two words that make up 'no one'? fuck it! SPACEWASTER!" congratulations, you're all wrong, and the prize for being wrong is a trip to singapore. and they use canes.

2. woman/women as an adjective
oh, there is no vat large enough in all the land to contain my bilious hatred for this goddamn waste, but if there were i'd be sure to brew it up, bottle it, and then throw it through the window of every jerkfuck who is guilty of this bullshit, and ladies, you're not exempt. everybody listen up, i'm gonna lay this down for you in a two-pronged force of reasoning, not unlike how women use their boobs as a two-pronged attack to accomplish pretty much anything. and gentlemen, if you keep this up, we will stop using our lovelies on you. for real. this has to stop.

reason one: 'woman' is not an adjective. it is a noun. do you know what a motherfucking noun is? (make a 'hahahaha, women are objects!' joke here and i'll be sure to introduce your testicles to my trophy case.) let's think of an example where women gets used as an adjective:

"women voters are expected to support hillary clinton in droves!"

first of all, sweet jesus, no. ho chose celine dion as her campaign song and i'm not voting for anything that obviously has a microchip shoved up her twat so that she might hope to act like a human. secondly, you're wrong. you could say 'womanly voters' or 'female goddamn voters' or even 'voters with fallopian tubes' before you say 'women voters'. i mean let's look at it this way:

"blue eyes voters love hillary."

again, no. wrong, voters, on your love of hilary. secondly, blue eyes are the noun, just like the women. blue-eyed is the adjective. is this making any sense? any at all? even a smidge? look, it's simple: you can't qualify a goddamn noun with another one. use a fucking adjective. women/woman is NOT AN ADJECTIVE. *pulls female hair out*

seriously, think of it this way- basically, it looks like you're saying 'women voters' are voters who vote for women. just like fire fighters are people who fight fires. not that there's anything wrong with voting for women, obviously (but if i hear one more 'we should elect hilary because she's a woman!' whine, i will cut a bitch. seriously. gender should have nothing to do with why you elect somebody. it's about the issues, people.), but for the love of pete, just cut it out with the women as adjective thing.

reason two- since when do we even have to fucking qualify the fact that anything, be it voters, doctors, or bumfuck crazy astronauts in diapers are women? if you motherfuckers absolutely have to make the distinction, just say 'female' instead of 'woman', but if you do i'm just going to start saying 'yeah i'll be back later, i've gotta go see that new man doctor i got. hope i don't get cut off by any dumbshit man drivers on my way there.'

oh and by the way, fuck webster. his dictionary's gonna tell you it's appropriate to use women as an adjective, but that fartknocker went batshit insane anyway. also, the dictionary is increasingly letting more generic 'up to date' (read: abused and malnourished) words and phrases into our acceptable speech, and as it's very well known in my universe, the american public is stupid and wrong, hence, i'm right. so eat it.

3. new and improved
fun fact: no, it's not. if something's new, it can't be improved, because there was nothing to precede it. if it's improved, then it's just building on something that was there beforehand, hence, not new. i propose we start a dialogue, if you will, with the minions of satan's asscrack, aka the marketing ingeneues of every ginourmous foodstuff and household item manufacturer, who are currently shoving this garbage into our cabinets and closets and dinner plates with glossy labels, zippy commercials and packaging that makes us think we're getting more but in fact we're paying more for less. (i'm looking at you, kraft easy mac big packs. what gives, you fuckers?) anyway, said dialogue would follow thus:

world at large: hey marketers!
minions of satan's asscrack: sup?
WaL: cut that shit out.
MoSA: what, berries and cream starburst? sorry, that fruity dancing pilgrim was our bad.
WaL: actually no, that was kind of cool.
MoSA: then what? jessica simpson shilling for proactiv? she hypnotized us with her boobies. also her dad kind of holds a higher rank than us down here in the bowels of hell and he forced us.
WaL: whatever keeps the sillicone a-flowin. no, seriously- cut out the 'new and improved' shit.
MoSA: but...but why? it sells!
WaL: well we're not gonna take it anymore.
MoSA: not if we put it on EVERYTHING, i mean, what are you gonna do, refuse to buy ritz crackers because of a little n-a-i action on the label?
WaL: we'll buy wheat thins instead.
MoSA: we run the packaging for those too.
WaL: ...shit. triscuits?
MoSA: fraid so.
WaL: saltines?
MoSA: for real, we own all the crackers. and the cookies.
WaL: even chicken in a biscuit?
MoSA: especially chicken in a biscuit.
WaL: what's up with those, anyway? i mean, they're not really that chickeny. they are tastebudifically baffling.
MoSA: they are what we will feed on when the teats of the master cannot sustain us, for when the apocalypse comes and hellfire of chicken-type biscuits rain on your villages, he will be too busy to-
WaL: HOLY CRAP IT'S GOING TO RAIN BRIMSTONE AND CHICKEN CRACKERS?!
MoSA: if you don't cease your impudence and demand that we remove 'new and improved' from our labeling processes, it shall come to pass.
WaL: ...will there be dip?
MoSA: only NON FAT SOUR CREAM.
WaL: we are so fucked.
MoSA: enjoy a milano in the meantime. they're new and improved.
WaL: we are fucked and also stuffed with chocolate.

so really i'm sure you all see my point.


4. k instead of c
okay, sign makers, small business owners, cartoon show creators and tiny tots, this kind of bullhankle is just inexcusable. what? i mean, why? why are we destroying perfectly servicable words and turning them into fuglyass angular linguistic stepchildren by murdering the c and replacing it with a k? kool? krazy? kats? kartoons? what's with the k's? are you a white-hooded freak who enjoys burning things at night because you're a total tool with the intellectual capacity of a flea? because unless you have a fetish for a super-pathetic chapter in us history, stop turning every sign and name into the fuckin kkk, savvy?

the following words are to be stricken from the record and replaced with their more more awesome counterparts before we all suffer anneurisms. i'm serious. BAN THIS SHIT:

kat/kats
kool
kash
krazy
kool
kake
krafty
kute
kare
kut/kutting/kutters/kutterz
kolor/kolorz

oh god. my brain. i feel the stem seizing up. hang on, i have to put a round into my skull to make the hurt go away. i realize, though, that making obscene demands of you people so soon is very unfair to you, so let's just start with a little barter, or a bargain, on my part: stop k'ing all over the place, you obtuse little tards, or i will fucking kill you. that k stays.

5. good vs well
holy shit. this crap makes you idiots look beyond stupid, and the real kick in the pants is that EVERYBODY does it, regardless of educational level, age, or lack of carbuncles of the brain. look- i know good is an adjective, as is well. but for some reason which we all should have learned in elementary school, 'good' is NOT what we use to describe our feelings. do we need an example? i think we, in the most belittling sense of the word, do. hence, feast your eyes upon the examples, assrapers:

monkey number one: how are you doing?
monkey number two: good. how're you?
monkey number one: super good, thanks.
monkey number two: awesometastic.

OH MY GOD, WHY ARE YOU SO VERY WRONG? look. maybe it's a linguistic thing passed down from the days of yore, perhaps it's something the dictionary decided, maybe it's just the luck of the grammatical draw- but whatever the reasons may be, we do NOT qualify our feelings with 'good'. you can do good only if you're fucking robin hood and you're doing good deeds, wherein good is aka 'good deeds like robbing the rich to give to the poor who should seriously either move to another location where the rates of pay are better (hint: avoid southern az) or perhaps like, go into business for themselves and stop depending upon the feudal lords) and, wait, what? anyway, no. we are not 'doing good' when someone superficially asks us how we are. we are doing well. well, quite well, superfantastically well, amazingly blindingly orgamisically well- see if i care. but if i EVER see you say 'good' again, i will make sure you can never use it as an answer for another mindless checkout drone again. plausible scenario:

monkey number one: how are you?
monkey number two: ...the pain...the pain in my rectum...i think there's a fork involved.
monkey number one: i'm good too, thanks...wait...what?
monkey number two: SHE WILL COME FOR YOU IN THE DARK OF NIGHT AND CREATE MUCH PAIN.
monkey number two: paper or plastic....?

so basically, stop it. bc i'm armed with a swiss army knife and a grammatical sense of justice.

6. 'of' instead of 'have'
oh my sweet jesus, i can't even begin to-::shortcircuits::

...okay. yeah. look. this madness has got to stop. why? because 'of' is a fucking preposition, and 'have' is a frickety frackafrack verb. prepositions and verbs are two COMPLETELY DIFFERENT DAMNFUCK THINGS. you wouldn't go around exchanging "where in the pictures i took?" with "where are the pictures i took?" well you could, if you went all eraserhead on the space and turned it into 'wherein' and it was the beginning half of your description, ie, "wherein the pictures i took, it was-" oh fuck it. i'm getting too lessony for you fuckers, aren't i?

"but b," you may or may not be wondering depending upon if you're even reading this rant i've so lovingly crafted out of rum and coke, "what the hell are you talking about? what is this 'of' you speak of me exchanging with 'have'?" well if you'd have waited just a few sentences more, i'd have told you. also, i'd not of told you. see what i did there? eh? no. no i'm fairly sure you didn't. let me elaborate, my occipitally challenged friends.

correct: i could have told you, but i didn't.
incorrect: i could of told you, but i didn't, and also, i'm a fucking moron because i think 'of' and 'have' are the same because they sound similar phonetically, but not really, because seriously, 'a' and 'o' make different sounds, so really i'm an even bigger moron than i thought.

seriously. when you throw that 'have' out there after a could or a would or a will or whatever the fuck you want, you're talking about tenses, past tense, future perfect, or swirly parallel ninja tense, see if i give a flying turtle scrotum. 'have' is what makes the tense. 'of' is a fucking preposition. 'of' does not change a tense. look, i can't even explain this properly because i'm not a teacher, mainly because i hate children and don't want to read their shitty handwriting and give them stickers just for showing up, so i can't really drive this home to you people in the form of a lesson plan.

but just fucking heed my advice, would you? next time you find yourself going with 'i would of come but i couldn't,', reach instead for 'i would have come, but i was busy being stabbed to death by an errant lawn dart. from whence it came, it is not known. but the police believe it was the work of the grammar vigilante. she is wiley. but also seriously awesome. so basically, i'm sure that party sucked anyway. because i'm a loser who doesn't know the difference between 'have' and 'of', and i'd only go to a party that sucks anyway.'

7. apostrophes where there should be none

why? seriously. why do you people abuse the apostrophe? did it molest you at an early age? did it shoot your mother? i mean really, WHY? last i checked, it was just some inked junk on a page and it did not have the capacity or wherewithall to hurt you, so why do you abuse it so? for all i know it's chained to a radiator begging you not to subject it to yet another viewing of 'america's got talent'. seriously you fuckers, stop it. unless you're making something posessive or pluralizing an abbreviation, there is no fucking need to throw this bit of ink into the mix. examples would naturally follow:

#1: congratulation's!
first of all, no. no congratulations are in order when you PUT A FUCKING APOSTROPHE IN THERE. congratulations are plural, not POSESSIVE. if you wanted to be really weird about it and be all 'the congratulations thought that we should order a pizza for your grad party but i told the pizza guy that congratulation's order was pretty fucking stupid', then, no. we do not put an apostrophe in a plural non-possessive noun thing. also? i'm surprised you managed to spell it without the d. because if i see another dumbshit do it, i might just knife a vertebrae or two. just sayin'.

#2: hot dog's: $5.50
seriously? fuck you. i saw this bullshit at coachella and i'm sure it's not foreign at many a music or sporting event. first of all, we work HARD FO THA MONEY, and secondly, unless the hot dog is procuring said $5.50 to do a magic dance alongside david bowie and a bunch of goblins, this is unaccepable. hot dogs is not a motherfucking abbreviation, therefore, it is simply: 'hot dogs, $5.50", even though it should rightly cost us no more than freakin $2.50 for a damn dog. and also? i got a package of dogs for $1.00 on sale at safeway with my club card yesterday. stop raising the prices, you assholes. i'm here to see jarvis and incubus and buy their tour t-shirts, not waste my dollars on your machine-pressed meat fillings. you bastards.

#3: your baby's are so cute!
well, thank god you people are so interested in procreating. i mean really, all we need saturating the nurseries and baby gap is a bunch of morons who think that a) the plural of 'baby' is 'babys', and that to pluralize, we need to add an apostrophe. i swear to god, i hope your children grow up to be nobel peace winners so that they can prove intelligence grows out of the garbage heap that is stupidity and genetics, and also so that they can strangle you with the ribbons their medals may or may not be hanging from so that you'll stop cooing at other folks' offspring and being so mind-numbingly stupid. the end. because mother goose fuckin said so.

8. questions with no question marks
okay, manboy behind what would tyler durden do?, this is all on you, buddy. look, i love what you've done with the place. really. i totally have an e-crush on your snarktastic lindsay lohan zingers and don't care if you really do love fluffy puppies, i would drink your site if it came in coffee creamer form. but i have a quibble, nay, a really fucking big problem with you- WHERE THE HELL ARE YOUR QUESTION MARKS? holy shit, man up and stop destroying the noble interrogative. what did it ever do to you, and to the rest of you numbnutted fuckers who refuse to use it? seriously? i want to know.

is this a question.

no, it is just a really unfortunate lump of words that is utterly directionless because it can't be a statement if it asks a question, but it can't be a question if it doesn't have the proper squiggle at the end. so CUT IT THE FUCK OUT, or we will never make hilariously angry bloggy e-babies together, tyler. do you really want that to happen. no. no you don't. but really you don't even know i'm making threats if i don't put a handy little ? at the end of it. so listen up, everybody- stop being such douchebags and mark your questions properly, alright? good. because if you don't, i will simply borrow a comma, flip it upside down, weave it into the question mark, flip the whole business around, and form it into an e-noose and take care of your existence for you.

9. alot
i'm gonna make this short and motherfuckin sweet:

alot is NOT A WORD.
a lot is two words, but it means 'very much', 'many', or, oh hey how's this for convenient, a large amount, perhaps a 'lot'. oh my god how amazing is it that 'a lot' means 'a fucking large lot of whatever it is you're talking about'? seriously. look it up sometime, dumbshit.

10. confounding packaging exclamations
okay this is really only for me, because as a dear friend of mine says, all you need to survive on your own is pop tarts and pizza rolls. i have found that a liberal addition of vodka and v8 splash to said diet is beneficial, but the fact of the matter is this: the good folks at totino's, who make quite delicious pizza rolls, have got to step up to the plate and explain the most obnoxious label EVER. it haunts me. every time i take the crinkly yellow bag out of the freezer and pop a few lovely little treats on a plate and prepare to microwave them into bubbling bready pillows of lavalike cheese and tomato, i can't help but notice the garish exclamation that shouts at me, nay, shrieks at me with the fury of a thousand glue stick-toting third graders hungry for a snack:

'the kids can do!'

i mean...what? what is that? it boggles. what does it mean? was there an oversight? was it supposed to say something like '[this is something that] the kids can do!'? or was it perhaps 'the kids can do [this and a whole lot more if you leave them unsupervised, mom, like, way to not even make your own damn kids' snacks anymore you whore.] perchance it was aiming for '[these cholesterol-ridden goodies are delicious and totally a culinary feat so accessible to young brains that] the kids can do [this and then they'll probably eat too many, turn into lardasses, and then you'll just be left with a bunch of roly poly lumpkins on your hands, you lazy two-bit shiftless parents, seriously, haven't you heard of english muffin pizzas?]'

either way, there needs to be a damn subject in there. it doesn't say *what* the kids can do. and it bothers me so much. i'm pretty sure it's not normal to get a twitch every time you see a totino's product, but, there it is. so step up, pizza roll folks. take out the trans fats and add a damn subject to your stupid instructional exclamation or else i'll stop enjoying your product. and as a lardass myself, that *is* a viable threat, you motherfuckers.


and, scene.

Thursday, February 22, 2007

ten things i will miss about the OC


too soon, cohens and co. too soon.

you guys, i'm sad. i know. usually i'm just level fuschia on the color-coded chart from 'dozing' to 'apocalyptic rage', and i think fuschia is probably one notch below, like, persimmon or something. whatever. opening monologue and i'm already rambling. such as it is- i'm sad. SAD DAMMIT. why, you ask? (or don't, because based on the traffic meter i have so craftily sewn into the html for this page, nobody is reading this drivel. you're all spades healthier for it.) anyway, the answer is this, my friends:

i am weeping inwardly (and soon to be outwardly) on this, the day of the OC series finale. oh, laugh at me if you want, but you know you watched it back in its heyday, if even only in passing. you know the origin of and could repeat with perfect inflection "welcome to the OC, bitch!" and you probably wish for your own Chrismukkuh. hell, you undoubtedly thought mischa barton as marissa 'coop!' cooper was hellaciously pretty as the girl next door and/or hellaciously awful as an actress portraying the girl next door. oh, and you wanted to marry sandy the singular unit of his own upright citizens' brigade. or maybe that was just me.

in any event, you know, even if you never watched seriously, that the OC defined a new era in the nighttime drama; it seamlessly blended adult storylines with teenage pathos, and introduced a seemingly unending stream of emoindiepoprocktronica music into the public's ears every wednesday, then thursday, then thursday earlier, then thursday later, then possibly thursday but might be wednesday but who the eff knows because fox is screwing around with the time slots more than julie cooper screwed every male in newport, nights. yeah i know. i make run-ons. deal.

okay. back to the point- the show was phenomenal when it broke out in its promising storyline of ryan, a bad boy from chino (where they don't even have a pf chang's, ew!) tossed headlong into the glitz, glamour and sun-kissed orange glimmer of monied newport. there was the precious pretty princess of a girl next door marissa and her conniving milfy mom julie, there was eternal indiemo motormouth seth as ryan's foster brother who happened to love summer, the at-first trashy party girl revealed intelligent and driven commander in chief of tanning and the tao of environmentalism. there was caleb, newport's patriarch and mad-libs obsessed father to ryan's foster mother kirsten, the alcoholic ice queen who used to live in a patchouli-infested mail truck at berkley, where she met and then married sandy, the schmear-loving jewish new yorker who served as a great foil for the newpsies (crazy materliastic gossip-mongering marrieds of newport) who eventually became ryan's lawyer and foster father. let's not forget marissa's father jimmy, eventually run out of town by debt, marissa's boyfriend luke (he of the bitch, welcome to OC, the, tagline) who met with many a fisticuff from ryan.

this was the core cast- this was the gold. this was the nearly-all-related, if not via blood then by friendship (and housing situations) that made the OC. when the plotlines focused on familial bonds, on love and loss and the humor that comes from being brothers on a boat, the dialogue sparkled and the stories resonated. the show would later be run into the ground via tertiary characters nobody gave a shit's shit about (just visit televisionwithoutpity.com and say the word 'johnny' and wait for the fireworks of crap to storm the critical barricades), and don't even get the fandom started on crazy oliver, yardguy dj, freaking useless alcoholic squeamy-voiced carter with his stupid stupid ugly beard and zombie!dead!ew-ish rebecca as sandy's long lost love who faked blowing herself up and then tried to destroy the kandy marriage. i'm not even going to mention alex, marissa's catalyst for faux-lesbianism, because, well, the entire world could see 'STUNT FOR SWEEPS' written in curious pink curlicues all over that arc. oh crap, i mentioned it. ah well. alex was still awesome, so okay.

anyway, back to my point- again- the OC was a phenom back when it began, and even through the currents of sludge that the writing pushed it through in the second and third seasons, it has remained sharp with its dialogue and has taught us that even in superficial southern california, you "make your own family." when the show goes off the air tonight, i will raise a glass of merlot (no, kirsten, you may not partake) and toast it with tears and a smile. but before it leaves, i leave you with ten things i will miss most greatly about this wonderful piece of television history. and so, without further ado,

ten things luke ward would totally punch and then yell 'say goodbye to the OC, bitch!' at:

1. ryan.

oh, ryan atwood. your father is in jail, your mother is taking up with lamers and your brother is totally forcing you to steal a car. little did you know it was the greatest thing that would ever happen to you- stealing the car landed you in juvie, which plopped you into sandy cohen's case file, and in turn found you being kept in his poolhouse while he was working on your case. you wore wife beaters, you were a man of few words, you carried skinny girls around a lot like a jesus type figure who had much shorter hair and was way more ripped, and you tended to like hilarious things. read: journey and musicals. you were snoopy in a play for crying out loud. also, you were afraid of heights. that's hilarious for a guy who wants to be an architect.

2. seth.

oh, setheleh ezekiel cohen. you nerdy but cute jew-fro sporting, deathcab touting, comic drawing, imax-watching, slow driving, meta-spouting boy, you. your talk of pancakes and superheroes, your co-authored atomic county comic skewering of orange countyturning marissa into cosmo girl whose powers come from her magic flask and of turning your mother into the ice queen and your father into the litigator, your bagging of alex before she decided marissa was more fun, your somehow dragging in of finding nemo into sex, and nature mockumentary featuring blow-up wales in the pool- they will be missed. as will your raging sense of self-doubt and your perfect smile. what? he said 'chiclets' in the gringos and i was all, 'right on. but they're perfectly shaped chiclets, my man.'


3. the music.

say what you will, but a show that can find useful and not out of place ways to use mia, radiohead, death cab, lady sovereign and modest mouse is kind of awesome. the soundtrack always, always fit the mood of the show (try a montage set to cold play's 'fix you', which was the tv premiere of said song- it could be schmaltzy but it was brilliantly done in my not so ever modeset opinion), and never detracted from the story- instead of furthered it and turned bits of dialogue and action into something much more meaningful. south's melancholy but crystal and calm 'nine lives' showcased ryan's torment in juggling marissa and a pregnant former girlfriend theresa in season one, modest mouse's 'the world at large' really did leave the world at large for marissa after her father leaves and she finds family and solace in the cohen's kitchen for a breakfast of bagels, and in perhaps the finest marriage of music to television in the history of ever, imogen heap's acapella 'hide and seek' narrated caleb's funeral and, forty minutes later, revved back up again the moment marissa plugged ryan's brother with two bullets to the torso. the haunting look he gave her as he fell over in a heap of blood was magnified under eerie and beautiful vocals, and the song became a staple of every OC fan's ipod. go youtube the final scene for the season two finale and tell me you don't agree it was amazing. in conclusion, oc + music = win.


4. the meta and callbacks.

this could turn into a seriously ass-long dissertation on meta if i don't control myself, but the show never did so i don't see why i should. the meta was sometimes funny ('was it little girl in the sixth sense barf?', 'if we could've turned this into a body swap we might've gotten two more years out of this comedy') and sometimes useless ('we tried some new things this year...not everybody liked them') and every time The Valley got used to explain a plot (or lack thereof), the collective audience felt like throwing a vase, kirsten style, at the screen. but alas, we didn't, because flat screens are expensive to replace. in any event, the show had a very self-referrential sense of humor ('oh, it would be *so* cliché to punch me'), a very nod-and-a-wink sensibility, and if oliver doesn't get mentioned in tonight's season finale as he has been in every other, well then schwartz and co, you will have some splaining to dooooo.


5. the horses.

seriously- season one had a major horse kick. we had china, marissa's poor, forgotten until the second half of season three sister's pony. it was owned by julie cooper and it had alopecia. the poor poor equine. if there were to be a spinoff of this show, i'd vote for the horsey...it sounds almost like the OC. come on. be phonetic with me. anyway, after poor the poor hairless minihorse went to the wayside of lost storylines, we could still take four-legged comfort in captain oats, seth's breyer model horse. would i be a total nerd if i said i used to have that exact same horse years ago? probably. and in a moment that was meant to show us exactly how meant for each other seth and summer were, we were introduced to summer's confidante of a pink and purple pretty pony with a my little pony comb and everything. come on. the horsey. YOU LOVE IT. admit it. they could play horseshoes and take in games of polo and dressage. it's almost like the people of the oc dammit. you know i'm right.


6. julie cooper.

holy greatest character ever, batman! there's really nothing i can say that hasn't been said about julie cooper, so here's a partial list of her accomplishments: running jimmy out of town, destroying her daughter's faith in maternal units by sleeping with her ex boyfriend, trying to frame ryan for near-murder, sending ryan out to commit actual murder, planning to murder caleb before he actually kicked the bucket and pretty much leaving him to die because she was inside planning his death and not outside to save him (oooh, le twist!), having a tremendously awesome ongoing commentary with invisible gus, enjoying hot pockets and wine coolers in a trailer, rocking out to seger and def leppard, having the prettiest hair ever, smacking people, giving people evil death glares, swanning about making the most vicious but awesome remarks ever, being an actual caring mother deep down, marrying and/or getting engaged to nearly anything with a dingle and a bank account, being in porn, trying to run newport group, being kirsten's only friend, and last but not least, being the only person ryan could relate to once marissa was dead. like i said- greatest thing since sliced bread. very catty, crafty, bitchy and well-written bread.


7. marissa's really bad acting.

this could be taken one of two ways- we could say mischa barton as marissa had some re-heeeally bad acting from the pilot on (go youtube or dvd the season two premiere furniture-throwing scene for a hysterically glorious over the top screaming session) and that you could make a drinking game out of the words she bastardized (drain your cup when she pronounced pregnant like 'prugnant' or take a shot when she says 'but what about *me*?'). she was truly so awful that it was hysterical and you could either bitch and moan about her lack of talent, or just take it in stride and giggle and get blazingly drunk. come on, marissa would be proud of you for drinking. on the flip side of the bad acting, you could read it that marissa herself was awful- and honestly? after a point it got so bad that i loved it. at first i loved that we had a character who was shown to be perfect that we later found out was anything but. nay, she was an alcoholic anorexic lying manipulative clingy five-fingered-discounting drug-abusing school-ditching furniture and laptop-throwing twig dressed in really ugly hats and unflattering shoes. ...then she just turned into a druggie in a slut spiral and died. it. was. awesome.

8. cohens + 1 kitchen scenes

this was the core of the show. 'but i'm mid-schmear!' remains one of the greatest lines ever uttered on the show, as does seth pronouncing tiajuana to his white mom. kirsten's at-first wary but then very loving surrogate mother to ryan paired with gung-ho human rights!ish sandy (who later became private firm sandy, then unemployed sandy, then head of newport group sandy (wtf?), then finally public defender sandy again) provided the parenting, dammit, parenting! that this show was so splendid at doing when it did it right. seth's endless morning banter paired with ryan's monosyllabic responses but all-encompassing stares ('how does he do that?' seth is left to wonder) was pure awesome tied with a bow of super. plus that kitchen was awesome. i've always wanted an island like the one kirsten had and didn't use save for pad thai ordering for pretty much two and a half seasons. the whole 'you make your own family' theme was what the kitchen scenes were. breakfast, dinner, midday snacking...it was all there in glorious technicolor. favorite moment? 'the homecoming', thanksgiving s1- wherein the entire family (save ryan and marissa, being in chino) yells at each other with one liner after one liner one-upping the one before it. fantastic writing, fantastic lighting, fantastic chemistry, and a not-so-fantastic turkey burning in the oven. pure gold.


9. seth-ryan time.

if the cohens + 1 kitchen scenes are the core of this show, then the seth-ryan time is the nucleus of the cells that make the core. or something. i don't know, i passed ap bio but it was 7 years ago, so anyway. seth and ryan being so completely different at the show's start but automatically forging a bond as brothers was what took the show beyond awesome and catapulted it into superawesome. for four years they bantered, mused and pondered in sarcastic and monotone ways, and for this, they were amazing. a sampling:

ryan: sometimes i think you talk just to make sounds.

seth: well sometimes i do.

seth: you know what i mean?

ryan: hardly ever.

seth: so what's the gp, ra?

ryan: i have no idea what you just said.

seth: game plan, ryan atwood.

ryan: you're just using initials now?

seth: yeah, it saves time.

ryan: well, not if you have to translate.

seth: gp.

ryan: game plan?

seth: good point.

seth, to his boat: ohhh, i've missed you. it's been too long.

ryan: you're talking to a boat, seth.

seth: yeah, i talk to a plastic horse too but that never worries anyone.

ryan: it worries me.

that is but a sampling, but it's enough to show that their dialogue was awesome, and they totally brought the hilarity. there will be a void in the tv world without them.


10. the bagels.

well duh. i raise a schmeared bagel to you, show. breakfast won't be the same without you. nor will lunch and dinner, but, you know, bagels for dinner is kind of frowned upon by everyone whose name isn't sandy cohen. and in case you think you can offer a substitute, be warned:

kirsten: pumpkin muffin?

sandy: yes, darling?

and i'm out. honorable mention to other things that i and i'm sure others will miss include but are not limited to pancakes the bunny, luke and his gay dad, rosa (i guess the day off kirsten gave her in season one's thanksgiving ep is still going), and The Only Restaurant in Orange County. rest in peace, show. it's been an up and down and thoroughly bumpy and sometimes confuddling ride, but it was awesome none the less. hey, does anybody wonder what ever happened to the bait shop? let's pretend it burned down. ciao!