driving me mad

omigahhh, work at the cube farm is mind-numbing! An hour highway commute, rushing alongside others like me, at speeds well above 70 mph, applying makeup, drinking coffee, yammering on the cell, texting...I'm amazed that more people aren't constantly crashing their cars or shooting each other and dying on the highway. It's like a mad dance, people moving in and out...I always trying to leave a nice cushion of space in front of me and some moron ALWAYS gets in front of me and takes away my cushion. And the gas! It's just environmentally irresponsible to use all that gas. And then I get to the farm and I sit and read and write at the computer all day. I only get up to go the the bathroom. And to leave. And then back on the highway, this time the commute can be closer to an hour and a quarter, depending on how long the inevitable backup is leading to the N/S freeway, and I'm getting sleepy..so this is what I've been missing. }:(

katie couric's pissy juicy gym smell

I went to the gym Monday night and decided to take an elliptical facing the bank of TVs. I usually avoid this row of machines because I'm getting so I hate TV. All TV does is shoot stupid beams at you. American Idol? Who cares. Survivor? Lost? Nope. Can't commit. Deal or no Deal? BFD.

But I took the last machine on the row anyway, and the closest TVs were tuned to the news. I don't watch Katie Couric--no, I couldn't give a crap about Katie Couric--so it was surprising to see her shot up full of Botox. She looked like some really angry evil pixie, her eyebrows menacingly arched downward. Compare to this older clip.

Was this really necessary, Katie? Really? Does this really affect your newsreading skills? I guess so, if you speak with your eyebrows.

Other things piss me off at the gym. First, well, Monday nights suck. Too crowded. I hate the gal who wears the sweat pants that say "juicy" on the ass. How about "lactating" across the chest? A guy in sweats that say "engorged" on the crotch? No. Keep your narcissistic mottos to yourself.

Later I'm on the bike. Other people surround me on various machines. There's this...smell. It smells like dogshit. Everybody's moving, and I avoid making eye contact or acknowledging that there's a smell at all. Ladeedadeeda. We're all huffing and puffing and ignoring this smell. I want to check my shoes because I'm praying as hard as I can that it's not ME making this smell. But I play it cool. I finally get off the bike, turn a corner, check my shoes, and it's not me. At least, it's not my shoes.

I go to the chest press machine...and there's the smell again. WTF! It IS me! What IS IT????

In a near panic I run to the bathroom, enter a stall, and begin a sniff check.

It's my shirt. It's new (and black; I always wear black to the gym) and I hadn't washed it yet. It smells like someone took the shirt and picked up a wad of dogshit with it, then hung it back up in the store. And I bought it.

And now I'm wearing this shit-shirt. I'm completely embarrassed, but I'm not quite done my workout. Do I continue? Am I so self-involved that I'm the only one who notices the stench? I decide to try to do only things that won't create a breeze; walking and upper body work is out of the question. I stretch for a minute or 2, curse under my breath then sigh loudly--creating a breeze--and give up.

People who know me know that I value my sense of smell. I'm always smelling things. Is the sense of smell one of the first things to go?

opinions are like belly buttons

It's getting a little tiresome, all these opinionated people being forced to apologize.

You have Isaiah Washington, who apparently has a thing about gay people. He apologized and went to a hate rehab.

Barack Obama and John McCain think American lives have been wasted in Iraq. They're sorry they said that. Michael Richards throws around the "n" word and apologized. Oops! Mel Gibson thinks Jews are the cause of the the world's wars. Wow, I put my foot all the way down my throat with THAT one! Sorry!

Whatever the comment, these public figures have voiced their opinions, which may not be the same as your opinions. Perhaps these opinions could be considered hurtful.

But to mount this loud hue and cry for an apology is pointless.

These are opinions, and everybody has them. To force people to make insincere apologies for feeling the way they do is just stupid. What's the point? Do we really think these people are suddenly sorry for what they've said? Do we think they've really renounced feeling a certain way about gays or blacks or women or Dems or Repugs or Muslims or Jews?

John McCain and Barack Obama apologized for saying lives were wasted in Iraq. Well, lives were wasted in Iraq. Why is saying that something to apologize for? They don't mean that these lives were somehow lived pointlessly; in fact, just the opposite. These people were killed in a misguided attempt by our government to impose its agenda on a sovereign country. We have all lost the potential these people had. You could say they died for the good of our country, but does that make their lives any less wasted in the attempt?

As much as I dislike Anne Coulter and her ilk, she speaks her twisted mind and doesn't apologize. Good for you, Anne. She hates just about everything she doesn't agree with, and she's entitled to say so. Could you imagine how transparent and worthless an Anne Coulter apology would be? And happily, it's my opinion that she's a skanky, opinionated, worthless bitch.

And good for you, Tim Hardaway. You hate gays! You were quite adamant about it. To expect a heartfelt apology from you, when it's very clear how deep-seated your feelings are, is simply dumb.

Peter Pace thinks gays in the military are immoral, and I can only assume he thinks gays in the supermarket and gay CEOs are immoral too. That's his opinion, and he's sticking to it. Hey, Peter, no need to apologize! If that's how you feel, you're entitled to feel it! I and millions of others may think you're wrong, but I'd rather just think you're wrong than demand a lukewarm apology that only serves to make you look like a spineless kiss-ass, which, being the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, is not a good look for you.

So what's the alternative?

We all carefully edit ourselves before we speak our mind, ensuring that no one is offended? Who then determines what is offensive and what isn't? Who do we check in with first? Would dumb blonde jokes still be ok?

So, Mr or Ms. Public Figure, the next time you offer up another one of your dumb opinions, don't follow it with a dubious apology. I really don't have to care what you think or say or feel. I have my own opinions, which I mostly keep to myself.

Oh, except for just now.

i got balls

Are my lame posts the result of a life growing lamer by the day?

I try to dig out of my comfort zone from time to time. This school year I bravely signed up to sub, and what could be scarier than entering a roomful of alien snot-nosed kindergartners when you're first-day ragging, without the benefit of a sedative and an extra tampon?

Earlier last year I wore a velour warmup suit and sported an unflattering Farrah hairdo for my performance as nitwit cheated-upon wife Edie in "A Need for Less Expertise," the role that Anne Jackson made famous, well, nowhere. In the main room of a firehall, the audience thisclose, I made myself cry on cue as well as allowed my costar to remove my Keds and massage my feet--an act of selfless courage, particularly for him because my feet in Keds, and out, are probably not an aromatic delight.

So I'm continuing this trend out of my comfort zone by taking a Little League umpiring class. To become a volunteer Little League umpire. Insanely, way far out of anyone's comfort zone, if you ask me.

I've played ball for what...30-hrumphhrumph years now. Oh, bloody hell, closer to 40 than 30. Anyway, it's amazing how much I don't know about the rules.

Last night I walked up the stairs to the meeting room, filled with close to 40 men and boys (if I ever have a band, THAT's the name of it: "40 Men and Boys.") Heads turned as I entered; clearly I was an interloper. Maybe somebody's wifey, come to bring hubby a forgotten snack or something. But no. I looked around confidently, demurely brushed the hair from my eyes, took my jacket off, and sat my tall blond kiss-my-ass self down, armed with a notebook and a pen, ready to learn.

There's a lot to learn.

Mike, an accountant by trade who takes umpiring very, very seriously (so seriously he has an umpire bobblehead in his car--I mean, that's just sick) gave us a slow rundown of what he hoped to accomplish, followed by a true/false test. After a while, I picked up on the fact that all the answers were false, and he was tricking us.

He spent the better part of the evening telling us about safety issues and how important it is not to argue, so already I'm a failure at umping. But one rule he discussed was 7.08(i) which prohibits a runner from "running the bases in reverse order for the purpose of confusing the defense or making a travesty of the game." So a guy on second could theoretically run to first to draw the throw, allowing a runner on third to score...but he'd be breaking the rules. A travesty and a mockery would ensue, probably followed by bedlam.

I just like the wording of the rule: "making a travesty of the game." Like A-Rod's salary doesn't already do that.

Still, it was as interesting as it probably could've been for a 3-hour meeting about umpiring. And there are 3 more meetings to go. They're always whining about needing umpires, so I feel like I'm doing a public service. But the more important thing is: can a middle-age woman look hot in an umpire uniform?

sit down, shut up and eat your princesses!

Now that I have this fun camera phone I can take stupid pictures wherever I go. Gee, I feel so...so...cutting edge.

I hate that term. That, and "paradigm shift."

Anyway, here's a cereal that unfortunately caught my eye.



Disney's Princess Cereal. Yum, sugar-coated flakes. Cindererella's coy, come-hither look and ever-so-slight suggestion of cleavage says she's ready for a little princess-on-princess action. Snow White, smiling sweetly as her hand fondles her own breast, is sniffing the pink rose--which, of course, is the princess cartoon icon equivalent of saying "hey, your pumpkin or mine?" Or "hey, I'll trade my 7 dwarfs for your regular-size prince." Or, "hey, can I lick your golden slipper?"

The Disney takeover of every single advertiseable object in existence really, really bugs me. All those little whiny 4-year-old princess wannabes out there, begging mom to buy some of this dastardly strawberry cereal--that I hear comes in a variety of shapes including castles, crowns, wands and roses--with 12 grams of sugar, the same as in a serving of Froot Loops.

Now, in case your little princess wants a different role model:



Hooray for the Detroit Shock women's basketball team! Whole grain, all business, with little added sugar. Thank goodness for Wheaties, because I'd never heard of you before!

get outside

Way back when, about 1972-73, my junior high English teacher, Mr. Howard, taught a class called "English Through Rock Lyrics," the coolest class in high school. He would mimeograph (huh? what's that?) lyric sheets of songs by Dylan, CSNY, and others. He would play the songs, we would follow along with the lyrics, and write reports interpreting them. That was the class. Cool, huh?

We picked our own songs for interpretation sometimes; the only one I can remember choosing is Robert Palmer's "Get Outside." ("Sneaking Sally Through The Alley" was too long.) It goes something like this:

"If your vision is holding you
If you can't fathom out what to do
If you can't read what you write
If you find yourself waking in the middle of the night

Get outside
Get outside
Get outside

If you can't decide what you wanna do
If you can't stand what people say to you
If you can't see when your eyes are open wide
If you ask yourself what you're doing and there's no reply

Get outside
Get outside
Get outside"

Clearly the take-away interpretation of this song is "get outside." I don't remember what else I could have said about it, but I'm pretty sure it was probably a load of bullshit.

Mr. Howard was the best teacher imaginable, young and funny. He entertained the class with his cartoons, and once drew a cartoon for me featuring the citizen hippies of Wenonah clearly stoned or tripping and marveling at a nearby squirrel, saying "Look at the squirrel, man." "Cool." "Far out."

How positively quaint.

I'm pretty certain I didn't learn much in that class, aside from learning to listen to music lyrics more critically, searching for subtext. Happily, I don't have to work so hard interpreting lyrics today. Whew! No clever irony or nuance here!

"You can find me in the club, bottle full of Bud
Mama, I got that X, if you into takin' drugs
I'm into having sex, I ain't into making love
So come give me a hug if you into getting rubbed

When I pull out up front, you see the Benz on dubs
When I roll 20 deep, it's 20 knives in the club
Niggas heard I fuck with Dre, now they wanna show me love
When you sell like Eminem, and the hoes they wanna fuck"

--"In Da Club" by 50 (or "fiddy", as the kids call him)-Cent

Now, let me think...what exactly is Mr. Cent trying to say?

boy funk

Yesterday afternoon, five boys ranging in age from 9 to 12 were in my house, playing, wrestling, watching TV.

When they left, I had to get the Lysol out and spray the entire downstairs.

One kid, a friend of Remy's, is quite prolific at passing gas. He makes no apologies about it, he just does it when he has to do it. Doesn't matter if he's a guest at our dinner table, in the middle of dinner; if he has to let one rip, we're all the unfortunate victims of this noxious stench. He gets this curious little look, as if to say "Huuh..what? What was THAT?"

(For the record, I don't fart. That's what I tell my boys, and I'm sticking to it. So I have certain rules about farting; i.e., don't do it at the dinner table, don't do it in my face, and if at all possible, go outside and do it, I don't care if there's a monsoon going on out there.)

So that friend was here, happily farting and giggling while he and Remy practiced their Rey Mysterio/John Cena wrestling moves.

Boo had two friends over. I'm fond of one of these friends; he's an awkward kid, smart, a little unkempt. Perhaps not quite, well, clean. And he's the one who immediately takes his shoes off when he comes over.

It doesn't take long for the choking stench to fill the air, ALL OVER THE HOUSE. I mean, really, you could knock out an elephant with the smell. Add to that the feet stink of the four other boys, along with the armpit stench and repeated episodes of rampant farting...it's a very potent weapon, the combined funk of five preteen boys, surely potent enough to drive even the toughest insurgent from his hidey hole, or perhaps a recalcitrant president from office.

It's something I'd expect to see at Spencers, alongside the x-rated drinking games and fuzzy dice: aerosol cans of "Preteen Funk."

Party guests won't leave? Bugged by the uninvited neighbor who knocks on your door at 8 am just to chat? Is Uncle Bill still an unwanted, drunken unemployed guest on your living room couch? Attack 'em with Preteen Funk! With just a few sprays, Preteen Funk can drive even the most obnoxious guest from your home quickly and easily. Works outside on trespassing children and dogs too!

Want your neighbors to move out? Try extra strength Teen Funk!