I HATE It, Y'All

I fucking hate it when people in the Pacific Northwest say "y'all".

It is such fake-ass sounding bullshit. Unless you or your immediate kin that you grew up with are from parts of the country where that is a natural contraction, please stop trying to sound folksy. ESPECIALLY when you're actually being condescending.

Yes I just saw this on a stupid facebook post where someone asked a dumb fucking question and then when people politely explained the answer to her, she was like "it's not so clear, y'all". Here's the thing; if you really want to talk like that say it ain't so clear, y'all. But you're just trying to dumb down and gentle up what you really want to say, which is "my question has still been unanswered, and you don't even understand it, how complex it is."

Like ... just fucking be a straightforward bitch instead of tossing around this whole "I'm an unthreatening simpleton, y'all ... y'all gonna have to SPLAIN this timmee better."

Bright Bird Mornings

June 9th, 2023

June in the Pacific Northwest: the month when days are the longest, and so much of the night is too bright.

Is it my imagination, or is the moon brighter than it was when I was a kid, or even just twenty years ago? PAINFULLY bright … like staring at the sun. A reminder that’s what it truly is: SUNLIGHT bouncing back to us. Reminding us it we’re about to be penetrated to the point of blindness and subjected to inescapable heat.

I am afraid. We’re all on The Raft of the Medusa, in a burning hell of our own making with too many people fanning the flames … adding more fuel to the fire. People who literally would not piss on you — their neighbor — if you were on fire. Cannibals, bullies, and tyrants.

Four in the morning and the birds are SO LOUD. But it’s the time of the year where a lot of the birds have moved along to cooler pastures, so the variety of songs and birdcalls has diminished. Replaced by One. Shrill. Repeated. Warning. Like this one bird stayed behind to sound the alarm, and is only quiet for perhaps six hours per revolution. Over and over, through the smoky-fog, the unending bright blue light in all of its harsh near-solstice permutations, this bird repeats the the same shrill message and I can’t close the windows against it because it’s already too hot and stifling.

“Boundaries are not real”, people are saying, pointing to the wildfire smoke from Canada choking MORE PLACES THAN TREELESS NEW YORK CITY / MANHATTAN.

Right now the boundary between night and day feels unreal. Non-existent. A former figment of my imagination that I can’t pretend to believe in anymore.

Only a shadow of night remains, cast by the big bad sun’s rays, bouncing around the corner where AM meets PM. When I get up after midnight to pee I step outside in bare feet to catch it, wondering why nobody else seems to hear its rhythm, but grateful they are so willfully deaf I can still enjoy some semblance of privacy. Taking sun spots back into bed with me, laying face-down in my sooty pillow. Suffocating to block out the light.

Stupid F*cking Kleenex Boxes

Monday, June 12, 2023

Jesus Fucking Christ, WHY does getting the first Kleenex out of the box have to so fucking annoying, clumsy and inelegant?

Kleenex is a CONVENIENCE item — a wasteful paper product — so I think it should feel more EFFORTLESS to use, right from the word GO. But it is not.

There is nothing like trying to finesse the first tissue out of the Kleenex box without ripping it to make a bitch feel feeble and afflicted with some kind of neurodegenerative disease that primarily affects sensitive aging bitches as they phase out of their compulsive sluttery stage into their dried-out pinched-grimace cranky-ass phase of mid-life jittering around with a cane. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE.

Take these two fresh boxes today. One of them ripped even when I gently tried to wiggle the first sheet out of the box in order to prime it for my wife’s side of the bed.

I did not waste time prepping MY box, though, so when I reached for it actually needing it to blow my nose, of course THE WHOLE BOX lifted up when I tried to pull on the first tissue, and then the cardboard base banged around on my nightstand/sick-old-lady-lapdesk as I “pulled” through the air trying to extricate it from the box which then KNOCKED OVER my pen bag into the residue on my lunch plate, sullying one of my most precious possessions (it’s nigh on impossible to find this Mead pen bag without their bigger bolder five-star branding nowadays).

Sure, they’re not name-brand (they’re Safeway's “Signature Select”), but that’s not the problem; I’ve had the same issue with The Real Kleenex boxes, so I’m not paying more for the same snot-nosed experience I get with generics.

I imagine one of the issues is that they OVERSTUFF the boxes so nobody feels like they’re getting shorted on the paper products they paid for. But really what good is that when you wind up with the first two tissues pulling out together and all ripped up?

I could go on and on about Kleenex boxes: the word “tissue”, that super-aggravating THING my wife does with her Kleenex, and ways I fetishize kleenex to the point of crazy old-lady-bitchiness (why are old bitches so keen on collecting and hoarding and displaying the absolute corniest little pleasures of life?). Also? I have very specific Kleenex PREFERENCES. Woe to you who helps with my errands and selects the wrong fucking type. But let’s save those topics for a revisit or three down the line.

For now, just know how fucking annoyed I was today in the heat of late-spring allergy season to clumsily, wastefully struggle with these chintzy fartknocking disposable snotrags.

 

 

Are Bitches Bad Dreamers?

June 12th, 2023

Why do bad dreams seem like something bitches are more likely to have than happy-go-lucky folk?

Is it because we’re more negative, constantly fantasizing about worst case scenarios, violence and revenge? Is it a product of the same stress, tension, and fears that make us hyper-vigilant and high-strung? Or is it because underneath all of the bitchiness, we’re really motivated to find SOLUTIONS to problems, and idealistic about how the world SHOULD be, noticing and fixating on all of the ways things are no bueno?

I don’t know, but all three of those possibilities seem linked / are different ways of saying the same thing; bitches recognize problems and are alert to them. Our wheels are always spinning trying to work through shit that sucks, FEELING the unfairness and the dangers of wrongness: that behind every problem is at least one churlish insensate beast of a human hell-bent on shitting on others, and those people and their inconsiderate or intentionally-shitty traits are SCARY.

Whatever the reason, I had bad dreams last night, punctuated by repeated groggy wakings to the violent cries and chatter of coyotes nearby through the tiny open window above my head. I tried not to imagine them ripping up and fighting over fawns and neighbor cats who failed to go inside at night.*

Eventually I closed the window, inserted grubby waxen earplugs, and then opened the window again when I spotted a fire ant by my pillow, pinching it in a paper towel and throwing the whole wad outside.

So here it is, another day not started as early as I’d hoped for. Not getting that headstart of banking a few hours of solitude before all The “Normal” People wake up and ruin everything with their noises, judgments and tyrannical social demands.

I should be in a bad mood after the nightmares and late start, but the morning is too pretty to be mad at it. I pulled my filthy nightshirt over my head and ran outside naked, zooming around the yard, and in and out of the house laughing maniacally where my wife was trying to practice her bass.

Two hummingbirds just buzzed my open window. The construction fucks next door are terrorizing the neighborhood with HIDEOUS NOISE of their high-powered leaf blower, and it's not even ten o'clock yet. At least one fly is motoring around my greasy scalp because I have to keep this space cool and open to all manner of pests before it gets HOT in here, turning the loft where I prefer to sleep into a dry cracklebarn of dusty heat when it rises.

Dunkin' on Pretentious Pronunciation

June 20th, 2023

For once social media delivered unto me something perfect in the morning: "Bitchy Joe reporting for duty" from the St. Louis airport complaining about a woman pronouncing "croissant" all (unnecessarily, offensively) pretentious-like >>> mrdtimes3 on instagram 

Yes, this is a very "ugly American" type of bitch. I'm totally all for us making more of an effort to not be willfully ignorant about language and, like, LEARN some, but the tossing-in of sudden-accent-changes for foods and places is still definitely ridiculously obnoxious to me sometimes, too.

4th of July Mofos

OMFG as if the big beautiful bill of bullshit wasn't freaky enough, motherfuckers around here started blowing shit up on 4th of July EVE / last night / on the day of its passing from the great orange anusface into the world he has commandeered as his personal gold-plated toilet spattered with right wing loose stool head-up-the-ass disease. Yeah, you dumb fucks have got so much to be proud of and look forward to and celebrate: more fires, more destruction, more sound and fury devoid of any meaningful contribution or SENSE. More death and unmanageable levels of disaster. GOOD JOB, DIPSHITS.

Like ... IT'S NOT EVEN THE ACTUALY HOLIDAY YET! Do you REALLY have to start blowing shit up at dinnertime on Thursday the day before?!? Can you fucking WAIT a minute and let us have a couple more hours of of imaginary fucking PEACE before you ejaculate smoke and fire and NOISE all over everyone in hearing range?

Of course, right as I'm on the verge of wishing for these morons to blow their own fingers off, I realize that if I had my own bunch of explosives and a semi-appropriate place to set them off, YOU KNOW I WOULD. I ABSOLUTELY FUCKING WOULD. I would be making so much black powder noise and choking singed-finger sparkler smoke and having a whole disguised-by-my-LLC yacht party super-show of giant sizzling light-up-the-sky pyrotechnic magic, your fucking eyeballs would melt looking my way.

Love/hate relationship: with fireworks. With noise. With this motherfucking country.

Bitchy Little Treats Plate

I wrote a whole post bitching about housework, but I'll spare you the agony.

Instead of posting my housework complaints, I'll just post this little saucer of goodies I prepared for myself as a reward / naughty meal after hours of housekeeping:

Lemon cream wafer biscuits, thin dark chocolate Reese's peanut butter cups, blueberries, hot tamales, mini peanut butter M&Ms, peppermint patty, red hots, and a chocolate brownie flax seed muffin with peanut butter on top.

I am grateful for having so many goodies, courtesy of my wife, along with my vintage dinerware. I love the colors and shapes all together, and the super dark french press coffee I enjoyed with it along with peppermint mocha creamer.

While I'm not yet feeling certain that my housework efforts were worth the time and energy, this pretty, colorful photograph makes me feel like I did something worthwhile.

Honestly, the blueberries and muffin were the best parts of my tiny treat platter. I could have done without all the candy, but the arrangement and visual appeal of it sending me such a decadent message of abundance did provide extra satisfaction, and fed me spiritually with its cuteness, visual interest, and textured joyful variety.