Funny how, even if you change absolutely all the variables, the endings still turn out the same. And you wonder whether your lesson in life is to unravel this great mystery, or to just learn to accept it and expend your energies elsewhere.
Damn it, who keeps eating my cheese?
Funny how I keep thinking that I’m hearing Crazy’s cell phone ringtone (annoying) and the usual shriek that accompanied it being answered. *shudder* I will overcome the violent physical reaction someday, I assume, but it’s weird how I’m braced for it anyway. I need to bust out the sage and the holy water to adequately cleanse the crime scene.
Too many nutty people have presented themselves in my life, but it’s so rare that one actually vanishes from it. This is a new experience for me — just let me enjoy it. 😉 Although I do sort of feel bad for the person, as I can be compassionate once in a blue moon, I’m still firmly planted in the “Good Riddance” camp.
Thank god that party season has arrived — I have five on the docket so far for June and hope it’s just the beginning of a beautiful summer. (Read: I hope I can make it to most, if not all, of these events!)
My shirt is entirely too low-cut for office-wear, but I figured I could lie low for the day. Hah — just got signed up for two meetings (first one’s in five minutes). I have a blazer lying around here somewhere — doesn’t match, but I’ll feel better being shrouded on this hot summer day when I’m traversing the hallways.
I was so gloriously crabalicious/bitchy yesterday. Today I’m introspective. I just want to pontificate on the injustices of the world instead of actually experiencing them.
Speaking of injustices, let the meetings begin! 😉
Sabre did a great blog entry a few days back and pointed to an entry on Joss Whedon’s blog about the stoning/kicking to death of a young girl, Dua Khalil, by her (male) family while passers-by preserved it on their camera phones.
Read Whedon’s post here because I can’t say anything more brilliant about it than he does. The CliffsNotes version (below) is enough to make you sick, when you realize this is happening in our lifetime, in plain sight, and captured not for the depravity of the situation but, as Joss alludes, as some sort of an homage to the very event itself. *twitch*
“How did more than half the people in the world come out incorrectly? I have spent a good part of my life trying to do that math, and I’m no closer to a viable equation. …
“Somewhere a long time ago a bunch of men got together and said, ‘If all we do is hunt and gather, let’s make hunting and gathering the awesomest achievement, and let’s make childbirth kinda weak and shameful.’ It’s a rather silly simplification, but I believe on a mass, unconscious level, it’s entirely true. How else to explain the fact that cultures who would die to eradicate each other have always agreed on one issue? …
“It’s safe to say that I’ve snapped. That something broke, like one of those robots you can conquer with a logical conundrum. All my life I’ve looked at this faulty equation, trying to understand, and I’ve shorted out. I don’t pretend to be a great guy; I know really really well about objectification, trust me. And I’m not for a second going down the ‘women are saints’ route — that just leads to more stone-throwing (and occasional Joan-burning). I just think there is the staggering imbalance in the world that we all just take for granted. If we were all told the sky was evil, or at best a little embarrassing, and we ought not look at it, wouldn’t that tradition eventually fall apart?”
Infuriating that this is all just another headline, in the end. When I read the blog entry, I wondered if he weren’t talking about an old issue, because I’ve heard it too many times before. It sickens me that it’s “new” news. It kills me that no one can just live their lives; happiness can yield a fearful situation, if in fact the story is true that she was stoned because of who she was seen with.
It’s her people, for crying out loud — why not try to run the dude out of town, if it has to be that way at all? Treat a woman like she’s stupid and weak and doesn’t know any better, for her whole life, and then punish her for a decision she makes about the company she keeps? God (or Allah or whatever) forbid that the family take responsibility for the way she was reared. Maybe THEY should be the ones bludgeoned to death for not protecting her from the temptations of the outside world that they themselves are allowed to enjoy but that she should never even stop to wonder about.
The mind boggles.
I’m alternating between singing the Hilary Duff song of the same name as the title and “Ding Dong, the Wicked Witch is Dead!” Don’t let the door hit’cha where the good lord split’cha.
This day turned out fairly well, after all. 😉 Quick, who’s buying the first round?!?!
I have a colleague in Pennsylvania who I have e-mailed with about 40 billion times but we’ve never talked. Today he called. Good gravy, there is nothing that makes me happier than hearing a man with a sex-ay phone voice. I couldn’t even concentrate on what the hell I was even saying! Too bad the call was being recorded, but at least that kept me honest and professional and stuff. Rowr.
It certainly took the sting out of a meeting scheduled for 11 being moved to 10 without me or another colleague actually knowing about it. Getting a call that the meeting can’t start without me as it was supposed to be my meeting and all (I didn’t call it, but I was using it to my advantage) was slightly unsettling. I didn’t even get to have coffee before it started! My other colleague came to me at 11 asking why there was no meeting. Communication, I tell ya. Communication!
And I’m not even going to BEGIN discussing the drama that arose in the interim. Suffice it to say, I have earned all of these gray hairs FAIR and SQUARE!!!
When I was little, my ex-stepfather looked right at me and declared to me that I would never go anywhere in life.
I’m not really sure why — I was a straight-A student and pretty damn cute back then, if I do say so myself. 😉 He was just a dick, and even then, I knew it.
I’d blocked the memory completely until someone brought it up while I was back home this past weekend. The thing is, you don’t say shit like that to kids — or to anyone, for that matter. People can take that shit seriously.
But even when my age was merely in the single digits, as it was at the time of the insult, I apparently was very good at considering the source of the insults.
I mean, by the time I was 4 years old, I’d already learned how to say “bastard” because my mom called him one so often when she thought I was out of earshot. Yeah, I had his number, all right. 😉
As y’all know, I’m doing just fine in life, thankyouverymuch. And a hell of a lot better than him, I’ll tell you that. I achieved more in my 20s than he has in his 55 years.
But here’s the funny part. His older daughter is graduating this year. (Surprisingly — I thought he would have raised crack addicts, but both girls are merely teen parents. Yes, the younger daughter is, too. He must have given them the same speech about not amounting to something. Apparently, they listened.)
So the fucked-up part of all this (yeah, I still haven’t gotten to it) was that the high school gave his daughter an award — the “Best Teen Parent Award.”
Um, the hell?
Seriously?
We celebrate that shit?
Fuck, my mom was a teen parent, and all she got was exiled from the mainstream classroom for her trouble. Homeschool the girl until she gives birth — hide her from society. And that was in the ’70s!
Today, let’s celebrate the girls who can probably order napalm on teh Intarweb but who can’t buy a box o’ condoms before they leave a snail trail over the football field. I am pretty sure this award-winning ‘ho has two kids, if I remember correctly. What, so the more puppies you poop out, the more you’ve done to qualify for an award?
Is this what passes for standards these days? Christ.
You know how many awards I got? About 14 poetry-writing awards, as well as excellence in A.P. English and also A.P. history. I also got outstanding student in business, and I wasn’t even following the business track — I was just smarter than the shit-for-brains assholes taking the courses in hopes of it leading to a vocation. (I was on the academic track.)
In any event, it always entertains me, these people who raise themselves up by tearing down someone else. And for a 30-ish man to put down an 8-year-old so cruelly, when he would go on to live a less-than-mediocre life (God gets you back, you son of a bitch. What goes around, comes around, fucker) and the biggest claim to fame his kids would have is to be teen parents. Woo. And don’t get me started on that ugly wife he has now — no wonder he was drooling over my mom (the hot ex-wife) at the high school’s promenade.
I just LOVE it when people’s lives turn out exactly the way they deserve. Sad part is, they probably never really understand why they get what they get, and if we keep rewarding less-than-exemplary behavior, well, I can only shudder in fear for what our society might be destined to become. …
It’s one of those days in which I really, really want to private-blog, but since everyone under the sun has my password, what’s the point of that? 😉
(I may change the password. I know, how’s that for a flash o’ genius, huh?)
I’m trying to figure out what exactly it is about birthdays that makes me want to be sad. I don’t know why. It’s just another day. Well, I guess it’s the fact that it’s a day that’s supposed to be special but it oftentimes gets overlooked that gets me going. An old friend and I used to do these two-week-long celebrations — before and after — by treating ourselves to everything we ever wanted because nobody else was going to pony up and do it for us. New skirt? Happy birthday treat! Hell, get four — it’s my birthday, after all!
I can’t complain, though. I came in to bagels in my honor from my beloved D., and a wonderful card signed by all the usual suspects. I do appreciate, in ways I cannot adequately convey, the way my team never lets a special occasion pass by unacknowledged. Even though they all signed the card, there’s a big ol’ “Happy Birthday” banner over my door and I’ve gotten a stream of cheerful visitors, wishing me well.
It’s hard to be glum around here — even though I did spend my holiday here yesterday and missed out on Sabre’s soiree, it’s all worth it. I look forward to spending the next year of my life right where I am, so that has got to count for something! (Hell, for all the work I have on my to-do list, I might not be able to get up out of this chair for the next year. …)
After racking up about $30 in text-messaging charges since last month, I stayed away from text-blogging all the thoughts I had during the course of the past few days. So now there’s a backlog of useless thoughts waiting to be purged.
* I’m surprised at how many people remembered my birthday. Although I’m more surprised it was more of my mom’s friends than mine. But I did get some messages from some people I miss very much and was thrilled to hear from. 😉
* A $500 cable bill bankrupted me this month. $120 for installation hurt badly enough, but to find out that my premium service plus Internet runs me $102 a month, when my friends in the next town over are paying $89 for the same package, chaps my ass just a twee bit. OK, more than just a twee bit. Yeah, I have more useless channels than they do, but whoopty-doo.
* I love looking at my bank statement after a travel month. I have charges in D.C., Maryland, Virginia (well, those are all standard fare), Texas, Nevada, Ohio and Pennsylvania, too. Within the same week-and-a-half period. It’s the little things that entertain me. (Which would explain a lot!)
* I have new coffee tables! Happy Birthday, Goddess!!! They’re still in the box, but hell, I’ve got ’em!
* Ran into my sixth-grade history teacher. Who remembers me. Fondly, I think.
* A fast-food restaurant in Pennsylvania got my order wrong. But not because they don’t speak English — instead, it was wrong because I ORDERED IT WRONG. It was absolutely joyous to be understood for a change, so much so that I consumed my incorrect meal happily. 🙂
* Retail/grocery stores and gas stations are different in Pittsburgh. The cashiers recognize you and talk to you. Like, ask you how you are, how your family is, etc. In D.C., I go to the same yuppie grocery store at least twice a week and everyone there has to know me by now. But then again, I use self-checkout most of the time and I couldn’t tell you what it would be like to be on a first-name basis with anyone around these parts the way it is where I come from.
* If we could all just say what we mean, mean what we say and shut the fuck up when we’re inclined to talk out of our asses, the world would be a much less complicated place.
* My friend T. told me that if I really want something, I’ve got to fight for it. To hell with silently wondering, waiting and, ultimately, writing it off as something I’m not going to fight for, if it doesn’t come to me first. I don’t know. Throughout the years, I guess I’ve expended so much effort fighting for everything, just so I could look back and know that I did all I could. And I don’t want to look back and wonder if it were just my own laziness (or perhaps my faith in the universe bringing about the “right” ending eventually) that cost me my happiness.
* I’ve got to give props to someone at work who went above and beyond the call of duty. Did what I asked and went ahead and did more so that we wouldn’t be behind just because I missed Friday. I sent a note to him and copied it to the next two levels of management above him to say I noticed and I really appreciated the extra efforts he always seems to expend. Now to me, extra effort should be a minimum standard. But yet, it’s going the extinction route, so it always surprises/pleases me when I see it AND when I happen to be the beneficiary of it!
I’ve been living out of a suitcase for the past three weekends and even for a full week somewhere in there. Just got home to stay, at least for now. The thought of doing anything resembling driving for the next 40 years is enough to make me cut off my ponytail and hang myself with it.
Just came home to see Kadie in the window (I wasn’t sure ’cause the apartment is up high), but when I got in the house, only Maddie greeted me. Which is weird because Kadie’s the social one. I went to the spare bedroom where I thought I’d seen Kadie, and sure enough, the door was shut (read, she was locked inside it). I don’t have any lights in there, so if there are fudgy surprises to be cleaned (as I don’t know how long she was in there), well, I’ll find out tomorrow. Such is the joy that defines my life, I tell ya.
The drive home blew, to put it mildly. Windows were fogged for the final 90 miles. My make/model of car has that lovely quirk, which prevents me from being able to see out the windows. I have to sit far down in the seat so that the idiots who have bright headlights don’t completely blind me, but then I have to sit up high to see over the incurable foggy patches, so I need a chiropractor right about now. I wish I could have just come home tomorrow, but I’ve got to work in the a.m. The effort really doesn’t seem worth it right now. 😉
I went to my grandparents’ grave, as my grandfather’s military footstone was finally laid and I wanted to see it. But it just goes to show that any idiot can get a job, because the moron who did it centered it over both graves (a no-no — it’s just supposed to go over the soldier’s feet), and to say “centered” was like saying I’m completely normal. In other words, not so much. We’re going to have it redone.
Today is the six-month anniversary of his death, although I guess “anniversary” denotes a happy occasion and of course this is anything but. The grass is finally starting to grow over his grave, and it’s depressing, to say the least. Six months later and it still feels like this was all a complete joke that was played on us.
In other news of incompetence, Oakmont Bakery sucks. For the past five birthdays that I spent in Pittsburgh, they’ve either lost my cake or screwed it up. This year it was totally screwed up, but at least they remembered to bake it. (I love white cake, which you have to order two days in advance.)
So, we had to stand around waiting for them to use the right icing (chocolate buttercream). And the decorating was ugly as hell. I keep telling my mom to stop ordering cakes from there (remember this?) — the treats they make are delicious, but they can’t get an order right to save their lives. Morons. It ended up being very tasty, but next cake comes from Bethel Bakery. Damn it. 😉 Maybe they can get it right!
Speaking of tasty treat overload, Mom gets these bizarre insults from her boyfriend’s ex-wife, who is about to undergo gastric bypass surgery and for some reason she calls my mother fat. (My mom is as petite as it gets; the woman never eats. Why did I not inherit that gene?!?!) I finally saw the ex-wife and I said, “Well, isn’t THAT the pot calling the kettle fat?” LOL.
Seriously, just goes to show that people who name-call are just hoping to call attention away from their own very-obvious faults and they’re banking on the people they bother not actually caring enough to respond!
Speaking of fat, I am chagrined that my recent case of gastrointestinal chaos only caused me to lose seven pounds. Seriously? My jeans are falling off of me without a belt. Maybe I need to pick up some more germs to get down to my goal weight! 😉
I was very impressed last week when one of my colleagues said that they were afraid I was going to move back home to take care of my grandfather while he was still here and/or to take care of my mom after we lost him. To the point that there were dollar amounts and computers and Internet compensation as part of the bribery package to set up a satellite office in case I did pick up and go.
I’ve never had an employer want to fight to keep me before. It’s stuff like that that’s keeping me loyal. (Wonder if that offer still stands if I move to Jamaica or something instead!) 😉
In any event, so glad to be home. I need to get my house in order next month; I’d like to actually show it to people at some point. My colleague/friend who kitty-sat while I was in Vegas said she loved the place and also adored my new couch/loveseat, and she has good taste so I believe her.
Well, nothing else coherent to say. Looks like I’ve got to do a whole lot of writing tomorrow, so I may just have to stay fairly local and miss out on a really good party. Or I could just slap a lot of shit together and call it a day pretty quickly since it is a holiday and I’m fucking exhausted but too wired to sleep because I just had four cups of coffee to keep me awake during the drive.
I think I’m going to sleep on my new couch for the first time tonight. It’s too daggone hot in the abode and the rent’s too expensive to actually start paying high utility bills just yet.
Oh, last thing. We went to a community fair last night in Pittsburgh (with Zambelli fireworks — fabulous!) and there was a T-shirt for sale that said, “I’m surrounded by jagoffs.” OMG, LOVED it! But it was a men’s shirt, so I passed on it. But if it was a little more fitted and had a scoop neck, I woulda bought it in a heartbeat. Because truer words were never printed, I tell ya!