Wet Shirt Sleeves

I need to get some fucking wristbands, you know, the kind that collect SWEAT for when I'm washing my face or basically doing anything at a sink that involves putting my hands in running water and taking them out again.

Washing my face: you know that wonderful feeling of putting a hot, damp rag on your tired eyes? Bliss! UNTIL DROPLETS OF WATER STARTS RUNNING DOWN YOUR HANDS, WRISTS, AND TRICKLING DOWN YOUR FOREARM eventually being absorbed into your pajama sleeves, the ones you choose for warmth and comfort but are now going to be soggy, cold yuckiness around your wrists.

And now I don't even know how this happened, that when I washed my hands and put in my contacts my left sleeve got soaked. I fucking LOATHE that sensation. Sitting at the computer with a damp SLEEVE softly bouncing on and off my wrist.

And don't EVEN get me started about wet socks. . . . oh jesus CHRIST!

Disappearing License Keys

You know how when you spend your money on software they issue you a registration or license key?

Yeah, well I have one of those for a piece of software, and it entitles me to a year of free upgrades. So what happens when I try to install the upgrade? It *uninstalls* the old version ALONG WITH THE LICENSE KEY, and then the NEW version wants me to key it in, but of course, I don't know off the top of my fucking head where it's at.

So now I get to waste a shitload of fucking time trying to unearth the code. God I fucking hate this crap. What a goddamned waste of my time.

And don't even say that I should have that shit organized; I fucking *do*! I'm sure I have three versions of it saved safely away, but they are eluding me, probably because the emails don't say the NAME of the software, but some mysterious and completely unguessable company name so search, and scanning my "important reference" and "receipts" folders yields fucking nothing. I want to fucking SCREAM.

More Gravel Raking?

What the fuck is that sound on a pleasant windows-open September weekend? Someone raking gravel again? Someone stroking a very long tube of cardboard with very dry, calloused hands? Someone brushing metal with sandpaper in three foot long strokes? Oh, it's someone sweeping their driveway.

Schhhhhhhhhwwwwwwwwwwwwwiiit! Schhhhhhhhhwwwwwwwwwwwwwiiit! Schhhhhhhhhwwwwwwwwwwwwwiiit!

I would like to stick that broom handle straight up that motherfucker's ass.

Oh god. Now someone is striking up a conversation. Two BOOMING men's voices. HIIIIII. Blah blah fucking blah. I hate the sound of people. When I'm at home, I don't want to be reminded you exist within earshot of me. Go inside and watch some football or something.

Browser Updates, Java, Flash, Windows, WP -- FUCK!!

I am so motherfucking sick of every fucking time I turn on a computer or try to open a browser, having to wait for another fucking firefox or windows or WHATEVER THE FUCK update to take place. Or having our computers and webcams go down in the middle of the night in order for such automated bullshit to take place.

I understand the necessity of it, I'm just sick of it being such an obvious and continuous part of my life. When you have seven or eight machines and need all of them to PERFORM NOW, it feels so repetitive and never-ending. Which I should just accept, because IT IS. It FEELS that way because it IS that way. I just hate it. HATE IT. Sick of the tech treadmill.

Maybe I'm particularly irritated by it because we just got home from spending an AMAZINGLY FABULOUS three nights in a cabin without running water or electricity or cell phone coverage. And now we're back home to all of this intrusive SHIT. The sound of neighbors' car doors slamming, the hum of these fucking computers, the constant bullshit of software telling me it needs to update now! It just updated! Oh wait, needs to update again! Oh, hahaha -- you thought you'd have a break from that but EVERY FUCKING DAY ON ONE COMPUTER OR ANOTHER, there's something that needs to be updated! Let me just snatch a few moments of your time to make you sit here and wait for some bullshit or make you restart everything . . .

I could cry right now, I want to be back in the woods so fucking bad.

YES I want you to bag my fucking groceries!

The hippy-ass food coop. There are so many things I love and HATE about shopping there. The limited hours. The narrow aisles filled with snot-nosed kids and stoned, oblivious slowpokes standing in the middle of everything you want to get at.

I especially hate it when the cashiers don't even move a muscle to bag your groceries. Happened to me today on my horrifying second trip there (one trip a week is too much, two trips in one day? NIGHTMARE) to get the cilantro and coffee I forgot. At the end of our little exchange, the cashier looked at me and feebly ASKED, "do you want me to bag your groceries for you?"

YES. YES I FUCKING WANT YOU TO BAG MY FUCKING GROCERIES. I wouldn't be standing here if I didn't. I want you to bag my groceries just like I want a farmer to grow my vegetables and a butcher to kill the cows I eat. The only way I would want to bag my groceries myself is if THE GROCERIES WERE FREE. But as long as I'm paying for them and you're a cashier and ostensibly have some experience at packing shit properly into those floppy fucking reusable bags, then I fucking want you to finish your fucking job.

I know I'm being crazy about this. I know that it would make just as much sense to me to be the kind of person who realizes customers who pack their own groceries are just helping the line be more efficient and not treating the hired help like slaves. I guess. I mean, I think it's great that some people are into packing their own groceries. Good for them! That's so nice and maybe preferable to them than just standing around while someone else does the work. NOT FOR ME THOUGH.

I *did* my work when I tortured myself SELECTING all of the groceries and PAYING for them. I guess what really pisses me off is getting the message that I'm somehow being unreasonable or lazy or something for thinking that self-bagging should be the exception, not the rule. If I didn't run over to the end of the counter to pack my fucking groceries then clearly you should DEFAULT to what SHOULD be the STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE of bagging my motherfucking groceries! Don't ask me just to make me feel bad. Don't ask me if I *want* you to do it *for me* like you're doing me a fucking favor. You're not. That's part of your fucking job. Yes, I know the word "co-op" is part of the store's name, but you are still getting paid. It's not a fucking volunteer position.

Granola cunt in line behind me got all agitated and grim upon witnessing my lazy-ass refusing to bag my own shit. She shoved past me like I was holding her up so she could grab a paper bag and show me how it's done. Listen, bitch; I brought a REUSABLE bag instead of using PAPER so stick your little lesson straight up your ass. My reusable bag trumps your pushy helping hands.

Fuh-huh-HUCKING hate that shit!!

Dryer Sheets

It's bad enough having to walk down the PERFUME aisle (laundry detergents, fabric softeners, etc.) at the grocery store -- a fucking migraine waiting to happen, but at least you can kind of avoid that aisle with a little planning.

What you CAN'T avoid are the people in your neighborhood who use those products, especially scented dryer sheets, and are equipped with blowholes in the sides of their houses to disseminate the cloying aroma of their laundry drying so it can be smelled as far away as three blocks.

Woe is me with my office window facing our idiot neighbor's garage where her washer and dryer are located. I can't open my window to get REAL fresh air; I have trademarked APRIL fresh air foisted upon me like a toxic gas.

That shit should be against the law. It's a fucking health hazard for a lot of people with allergies, migraines, asthma, chemical sensitivities, etc.

I don't mind when I can smell the smoke from their marijuana, just please don't make me smell that ghastly laundry perfume, mkay? NASTY.

UNsubscribe!

Somewhere along the line I got signed up to a healthy-eating newsletter. I mean, I definitely signed myself up for it, I think because they had good recipes. No complaints there, I just got tired of my inbox having five emails from them (that I never felt like reading) every week and decided to get off the list.

When I finally found the teeny-tiny link to unsubscribe and clicked on it, it took me to a long-ass list of a billion newsletters, each with their own radio buttons to either subscribe or unsubscribe. I had to SEARCH to find the one newsletter I was subscribed to so I could unsubscribe.

Of course, it could've been worse, but still -- really shitty/not-simple, and this annoys me because it's always us pornographers who get the bad rap with this shit, yet mainstream/non-adult gets away with it constantly. Fucking people, wasting their time, high-pressure bullshit.

Deaf Fuckers & Their Dogs

After an agonizingly long, snowy (for Western Washington) winter, we had our second day of spring today. Yes, this is only the second beautiful, sunny day we have had. Tonight it's lovely and the frogs are croaking. I'd love to hear them and enjoy the silence. Maybe open a window for some fresh air.

EXCEPT EVEN WITH THE WINDOWS CLOSED, SOME FUCKER'S BARKING DOG IS INTRUDING ON THE PLEASANTNESS OF THE EVENING. For a fucking hour or so. What the fuck is wrong with these shitholes who let their dogs yap ceaselessly? I'm seriously about ready to get in my car and find the source, pull up to their house and lay on the horn until someone comes out. And just keep laying on it, staring at them, and BARKING madly at them out my window.

Get the picture you inconsiderate festering fuckheads?

DVD Cases

How the film industry makes up for money they lose to piracy: by making their discs impossible to extract from their cases and super-breakable. I know! Let's get people to buy their favorite movies and television shows at least TWICE! How? By impaling each one on little plastic rosebuds with kung-fu grip strength. When they enthusiastically try to remove them, they bend, crack and/or break! AWESOME!

Fuckers.

Ding Dongs & Better Desserts

My birthday was on Tuesday so I've allowed myself a few disgusting treats, namely chocolate susans (those white cookies from Safeway with turd-swirls of chocolate frosting on top) and a box of Hostess ding dongs. Oh, and some Russian Caravan tea sweetened with sugar (I normally try to steer clear of caffeine and, lately, simple sugars).

Aside from the normal guilt (and discomfort up-to/including migraines) I get from eating total crap, I feel horrid about buying SHITTY desserts. I mean, if I'm going to splurge I really would prefer to get really high-quality desserts. There are a number of good bakeries in town, two of which SOMETIMES have Pain au chocolat. The problem is they only have it in the morning, are closed before dinnertime, AND MY WILLPOWER IS AT ITS LOWEST WHILE MY DESIRE IS AT ITS PEAK AT NIGHT.

Pastries and warm bread and chocolate aren't things I want to schedule in advance into the loathsome morning (not that I don't enjoy eating those things in the morning, I just don't *crave* them then / am thoroughly capable of resisting them at a time of day when swallowing food sometimes makes me want to vomit). I want doughy, gooey, sweet, melty and chewy deliciousness AT NIGHT. When I'm in bed with my girlfriend watching overwrought BBC dramas. When it's dark out with no light to distract me from the flavors in my mouth. When I'm setting the stage for my favorite part of the day: the time when I SLEEP.

Sigh. Food is the *only* thing that makes me wish we lived in Manhattan. Seriously.

Hairy Socks

Screech!

Nothing sucks harder than discovering AFTER you've donned socks AND shoes that there's a long hair inside your sock. And it's wrapping around your toes like a tight strand of twine, or simply wedged in your toe cleavage and sharply cutting into your tender flesh each time you take a motherfucking STEP.

Pain and irritation (and anything I have to BEND OVER to remedy) are things I bitch about often.

Motherfucking Phone Books

I get so fucking sick of seeing those yellow pieces of shit and those extraneous other weird off-brand bullshit phone books, assloads of new ones every year, stacking up in the fucking house, wrapped in plastic laying in your yard, blah blah blah. I want to stick those fuckers right up some advertiligious buttfuckers ass. We should be able to opt out of getting those things or press littering charges against them or SOMETHING. They should have a kiosk or something for people to pick them up IF THEY WANT THEM. If, you know, they're living in a world without the internet.

I'm ready to go crazy and find all the stupid phone books lurking in our house, taking up space, gathering dust, wasting paper and just go shrieking out of the house throwing them around, ripping them up, freaking the fuck out.

I'm so sick of being a garbage receptacle/processor in my home. SICK of it. Waste of my time, waste of my space, calling card to robbers that we're not home when you toss them onto our porch . . . I don't want your yellow fucking pages foisted upon me.

I should wipe my ass with a page of telephone book every day and mail it to the fucking shitholes. Oh! You didn't ASK me to RSVP my feces to you? TOO FUCKING BAD. When you quit, so will I.

Fucking Tampon Wrappers!

Natracare organics: do you sit around and laugh at how fucking impossible it is to get the plastic wrapper off your fucking organic cotton tampons? Or are you so totally fucking stoned like most hippies that you think you're doing us all a favor, giving us a puzzle to contemplate while blood drips down our thighs? Around and around and around you spin the tampon, attempting to determine where the wrapper begins . . . or is it where the wrapper ends? Wow, that's deep!

Seriously fuckers -- your natural pussy pellets need a more practical wrapping, not this endless line of yellow with no way to figure out where to try to unpeel the little fuckers. I stood in my bathroom scratching my nail against the plastic trying to find the place to start ripping it off until I fucking screamed. If I could have brained myself into oblivion with your stupidly-packaged product, I would have.

Absolute crock of shit.

PMS

Having an EXTREMELY difficult time with PMS today. I don't want to look at anyone or hear anyone or be bothered by anyone or anything.

MY COMPUTERS ARE MOVING SO SLOWLY. I want to throw things, rip my hair out, and just freak out. Total tantrum welling up in me and just hugely irritable energy.

Everything my body needs to do is driving me nuts/feels like a major interruption. Oh, you need to PEE again? Fucking stupid body, interrupting me. Hungry now, are we? I'll shove some food down your throat, asshole body. Label itching my side needs to be scratched makes me want to shred my skin and rip the shirt to bits.

I've been working on one thing for three days now and I am so fucking sick of it and want to SCREAM. But I want it to be better, not totally half-assed. I know it won't be perfect, but yeah. And every. little. PROCESS involved is taking so much time.

When I forget something and need to go into another room to get it so I can do whatever I'm trying to do, I want to scream and throw things.

So yeah -- PMS means wanting to scream and throw things a lot.

Silencio, Por Favor

I've been up for an hour.

The feeling I have right now of not wanting to talk or interact or look at anyone or listen to their sounds is absolutely painful. I can feel it in my crotch, like screaming tension.

Jesus, send me some fucking medication. I wish I didn't feel this way. But even more than that I naturally, intuitively wish I could cushion and hide myself from the stimuli when it's driving me fucking insane.

I know if I went for a brisk walk/got some exercise I'd feel better BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT I WANT TO DO RIGHT NOW. I just want still, quiet peace.

Since I went off the pill a year ago I've gradually gotten to a state where I feel like I have pms ALL THE TIME. I suspect I have a hormone problem that involves too much testosterone and too little estrogen. God I want my estrogen back. Pleeeeeeeeeease.

Giant Tortillas

I hate giant so-called "burrito" gauge tortillas. I wish I could enforce a no-giant-tortillas-in-the-house rule. EVER. There are a plethora of tortilla sizes to choose from at the store, and the only one that should ever gain entrance into our house is the small/mediumish taco-sized tortillas. NO MORE GIANT TORTILLAS EVER! GAHHHHH!

One problem with giant tortillas is they are impossible to fully, uniformly heat unless you possess a fucking half-stovetop-sized GRIDDLE. Or if you're one of those crazy people who heats tortillas in the OVEN (or an even crazier person who will happily eat a stiff, fridge-cold tortilla). I am a stovetop tortilla-warmer, preferring to warm mine to toasty pliability in a skillet. I detest seeing a giant tortilla outsizing a frying pan, crinkling up around the edges, not getting HOT around the edges. God almighty, spare me that torture. What if I were to try to make a quesadilla? What then? Then cheese wouldn't properly melt around the outside!! Thank god I'm lactose intolerant, otherwise I would REALLY be screaming.

Giant tortillas also ruin my ability to guiltlessly overeat. If you do fill one of those monster tortillas with meat, legumes and vegetables, you know you have before you an entire meal encapsulated in ONE tortilla; you can't fool yourself into thinking you've only had half or one-fourth a portion. If you go back for a second and/or third helping of filling shrouded by giant tortilla, you KNOW you're a gluttonous hog and there's no excuse for it except for your own greedy appetite. With small tortillas you feel totally legit starting out with two or three, then going back for two or three more. Twice. Or three times. And you can tell yourself that THEY WERE REALLY SMALL TORTILLAS!

Lame Ageist McCain Jokes

I am SO WEARY of the "John McCain is so old!" jokes. They're fucking stupid, repetitive, offensive, and useless. I can get behind some of the old pope jokes or acknowledging anyone who's clearly on death's doorstep and looks similar to a doddering corpse, but frankly? I don't view John McCain as ancient so the jokes are lost on me plus there are five billion more interesting jokes to be made about McCain. I don't want to hear the Barbara Walters jokes, either.

I turned off Craig Ferguson the other night because he made an old McCain joke about how he didn't want to have to sit next to him at dinner and feel obligated to cut his food into little pieces for him. Not that Ferguson is worse than the others, I just reached my limit and felt an immense tiredness upon hearing that and couldn't stand to look at his face anymore. Seriously, it's not at all funny. It's stupid and immensely insulting to a huge population of people who are trying to enjoy a time in their lives when many people have much to celebrate and offer the world. Instead of being honored they are met multiple times a day with dismissive, disrespectful, nastily stereotyped messages that they are somehow overstaying their welcome in the world and are silly, incompetent retards to think they have anything to offer society besides being the butt of stale jokes told by unimaginative, juvenile minds to be absorbed by youth-obsessed, elder-hating idiots.

I am not saying I "honor" John McCain or think because he's older he or anyone his age should automatically be praised and worshiped -- I don't -- he's just an example. The whole thing makes me want to make a list of people who've made part of their livings yukking it up making fun of old people JUST because they're old(er) and when they get to be retirement age, harassing the fuck out of them. Hey, you worthless piece of shit! You're over sixty-five now! Fuck off and die!

The way I was raised no one ever got those stupid black balloons for anyone's fortieth birthday. I was taught to celebrate aging and to keep living and working as long as possible. I was never taught to think of older people as targets for discrimination, humiliation, or idiotic assumptions regarding their abilities, fitness, adaptability, attractiveness, etc. I was taught that your value INCREASES with age. Instead everywhere I look we're all being told our worth diminishes with every passing year. It's fucking sickening and I wish people would knock it off. I refuse to accept that being older automatically turns you into a joke.

I'm guessing part of our problem is how mobile and wealthy we are so that it's easy for us to throw away older people into retirement communities, snowbird states, and nursing homes and rarely, if ever, visit and interact with them. We've segregated and dehumanized them. Or maybe it reflects a growing resentment of how much money we are spending/losing taking care of them now that they live longer? Or is it simply because we're a nation of stupid assholes?

Fucking Napster!!

Help request to Napster:

"I don't know what version you changed things, but after years I suddenly can't figure out how to burn a cd. It used to be I just dragged the songs into the window at the bottom, but now? It says to "drag and drop the tracks you want to burn onto "Burn a CD" in your library. I SEE NOTHING OF THE SORT IN MY LIBRARY OR ANYWHERE. WTF????? So frustrating. While I'm griping, might I mention that clicking on the $ to buy a track on the top tracks thing rarely allows me to buy a track? Lameness. I also find it annoying that I buy music all the time, yet am treated as substandard because I'm not a "member". That chaps my hide. I want to pay for individual tracks & own them. Case closed. How does that make me a less valuable customer? Whatever. Just tell me how to burn my cd's.

Oh dear lord: why do the two buttons at the bottom of this form say "Absenden" and "Cancel"? WHAT THE HELL IS ABSENDEN?????"

I have a show tomorrow and want to burn a mix right now but will probably have to wait a week before they write back with some completely useless piece of non-advice. FUCKERS!!

Honkers

Grrrr . . . I fucking hate people who can't haul their lazy asses out of a car to knock on someone's door rather than whizzing up and HONKING so everyone in the neighborhood has to hear them. What the fuck?

One of our neighbors (not even the bad neighbors, but people we generally hear little enough from) has what I imagine is a cranky ex-wife who always honks when she pulls into their driveway. My theory is that she's a fucking bitch who resents sharing custody or something and rather than parking her cunt car and getting out to knock like a civil human being, she decides to disrupt everyone with her impatient beeping. Bitch, get the fuck out of your car! It's not that fucking hard!

It's not like her car will be stolen if she leaves it running for a minute in the driveway, nor is it blocking anyone. Also, she does it regardless of the weather so it's not that she's avoiding rain or cold or anything. It can be a beautiful starry summer night and she still won't get her bitch ass out of the car.

The only excuse for it I can imagine is if she is handicapped. But I don't think she is.

People at the Gym

I could bitch incessantly about people at the gym and how much I dislike them. Today I'll limit my bitching about gymgoers to one thing: LIGHTING.

Our gym has two levels, with banks of gigantic skylights above the top level, which tends to be a quieter area with stretch mats and fewer machines. It is extremely well lit by daylight alone, and totally unnecessary to add obnoxious fluorescent lights during daylight hours. Most of us will turn the lights out when we go up there if they happen to be on.

Except for a few mentally imbalanced and totally inconsiderate people who insist upon flipping the lights on NO MATTER WHAT, and will even bitch at people who turn them off. There's one old guy who feels that way about the lights; he MUST have them on, apparently so he can read (a normal human with normal eyesight could easily read by the natural light). The "funny" part is that he selects the machine in the darkest corner rather than one of the scads of well-lit machines, or machines downstairs where the lights are always on. What the fuck?

Today I turned the lights out when I went up there; no one was up there at the time, but eventually about six of us were happily using the facilities without the artificial lights. Until some crazy ass bitch wearing dangly earrings came up and flipped on the lights. What FOR? WHY??????

She proceeded to spray disinfectant all over her machine of choice BEFORE she ever got on it, in the process spraying Delia who was on the machine right next to her. My guess is she is OCD and turned the lights on so she could more carefully inspect her cootie-covered machine. Either that or she's just a dumb ass. I seriously don't understand people who are afraid to sit down on equipment at the gym. Maybe if it were a grimy gym I could sympathize, but I think it's downright bizarre how germ-phobic some people are.

I'm still not sure why I didn't just get up and turn the lights back off, or "confront" her about it. I know it's not because I'm normal and normal people don't get in confrontations about things like that. I was partly afraid that she might have an actual mental problem. I also didn't want everyone to think/know I'm an asshole. I was also not sure what I would do if I turned the lights back off, and she went over there and turned them right back on; would we just keep going back and forth, faster and faster, like in cartoons? I didn't have the energy to think of what my next strategic move would be. Or maybe I just enjoyed staring at her fat ass and sending evil vibes to her while I was on the rowing machine behind her; it made the time pass so quickly, staring at her and pondering what made her tick.

I wish the gym would adopt a policy of conserving energy during daylight hours, and post a note to keep the lights off up there. I was going to write a suggestion, but they got rid of the suggestion box. Lucky for them.