My dad is the most boring human being alive.
It's not that he doesn't ever do the things people usually tell stories about their dad over. It's just that, even though he experiences the same things that other men his age typically experience, he does so in a way that manages to be completely absurd and disappointingly dull at the same time.
For example, my dad had a midlife crisis when he was in his mid-40s. Lots of men have these. Two of my uncles experienced these and did what any other sensible man would do and bought red convertibles. (The one on my mom's side bought a brand-new shiny red Mustang; the one on my dad's side bought a vintage 1970s Cougar.) My dad went through a midlife crisis and he dealt with it by... buying a canoe. I swear to fuck, he bought a canoe. That was his idea of dealing with the insecurities that came from being middle aged. At least it was red.
He makes a yearly trip to Las Vegas around September or October. On the surface this doesn't sound like it could possibly end with him being boring, but I assure you it does. He doesn't set foot in a casino or see a show or glimpse the glittery lights of the strip. Nope, when my dad goes to Vegas he does it to ride his bike 200 miles through the fucking desert. And no, not a motorbike--which is what people usually picture when I tell this story. A pedal bike. For the equivalent distance between New York City and Washington DC. It takes two days. None of it is interesting in any way.
My dad is also no stranger to alcohol. Like all good strapping lads of Italian ancestry, he has a very high tolerance for intoxicants. And like people with high alcohol tolerance, when he starts to get drunk he gets really really drunk really really quickly. He's also one of those drunks who, rather than falling asleep, instead gets a burst of energy. What does he do with all this energy? Something hilariously ill-planned?? No, he rearranges the furniture. Every damn time. I got used to sometimes waking up to find whole rooms completely remodelled. On one particularly productive night, he switched the living room and dining room around completely. He once moved the guest room from the second story of the house to the basement and brought his entire office suite--his computer, desk, file cabinet, rolly chair, et al--up two flights of stairs from the basement to the now-vacant room. This is his idea of 'drunk behaviour'.
It's really quirky behaviour, but nowhere near interesting or weird enough to gain any kind of advantage during a 'shit my dad does' conversation at a bar.
Showing posts with label run-on thought files. Show all posts
Showing posts with label run-on thought files. Show all posts
Friday, February 10, 2012
Freeze Frame
Okay, so I know WHY bathroom-mirror-self-portraits have become a staple on the internet. I don't like them, but I know why they exist. Not everybody knows their digital camera has a self-timer feature, or even has a digital camera at all--some smartphones have a self-timer in their camera mode but not everyone knows that, either. (Plus phones won't stand up on their own like a camera will.) So a phone picture is usually the best most people can do on their own. Unless you take it at arm's length, for this you need a mirror, and the only place a lot of people have a mirror big enough is the bathroom.
So I get why people feel like this is their best option, because lord knows they probably haven't got enough pictures on Facebook yet, amirite?
But what I don't get is the circumstances under which all these cell phone bathroom mirror photos seem to have been taken under. You probably can't escape having your toilet in the frame, but is it really that hard to remember to flush? Or, I dunno, put the lid down? Everyone poops, but it makes us kind of uncomfortable when we find ourselves confronted with inadvertent proof of this. I don't care how hot you think you look all carefully posed and primped with your best duckface and come-hither expression--the presence of your gastrointestinal waste in the background puts your sex appeal well into the negative numbers.
Of course, that one could always prove to be an accident--maybe you share a bathroom with a roommate or sibling or someone, and you just didn't realize they'd forgotten to flush? It happens. We're only human, after all.
You can't claim 'ACCIDENTAL!!' when you take one of these lovely mirror portraits while someone is clearly visible in the background having a shit. Sometimes it's a small child, sometimes it's a friend, sometimes it's a significant other. But the fact that someone is there on the toilet in the first place is so full of 'WTF' that there aren't enough syllables in 'WTF' adequate to express just how mystified I am at anyone who posts such a picture to Facebook. Everyone poops. I get it. Everyone usually gets a colonoscopy, too, but that doesn't mean anyone else wants to see pictures of it on the internet.
All of this pales in comparison to those few remarkable souls who take pictures in their bathroom mirrors of themselves on the toilet. And not just sitting on the toilet seat, either, but planted on the throne with their pants around their ankles throwing a double-whammy of duckface and a peace sign or gang sign to the camera. Why would you do this?? What were you thinking?? Even if you were a nudist I can't think of any reasonable explanation for posting pictures of yourself taking a shit on Facebook. Just... TMI.
Maybe I just don't get the younger generation. Maybe all the cool kids are doing it. Maybe they don't find it taboo in the same way my generation doesn't find premarital sex or same-sex relationships taboo. Maybe it's the next frontier of equality.
Or maybe kids today are just fucking stupid.
Personally, I say it's that last one but I could be wrong. I'd say more but it's time for me to go and soak my teeth.
So I get why people feel like this is their best option, because lord knows they probably haven't got enough pictures on Facebook yet, amirite?
But what I don't get is the circumstances under which all these cell phone bathroom mirror photos seem to have been taken under. You probably can't escape having your toilet in the frame, but is it really that hard to remember to flush? Or, I dunno, put the lid down? Everyone poops, but it makes us kind of uncomfortable when we find ourselves confronted with inadvertent proof of this. I don't care how hot you think you look all carefully posed and primped with your best duckface and come-hither expression--the presence of your gastrointestinal waste in the background puts your sex appeal well into the negative numbers.
Of course, that one could always prove to be an accident--maybe you share a bathroom with a roommate or sibling or someone, and you just didn't realize they'd forgotten to flush? It happens. We're only human, after all.
You can't claim 'ACCIDENTAL!!' when you take one of these lovely mirror portraits while someone is clearly visible in the background having a shit. Sometimes it's a small child, sometimes it's a friend, sometimes it's a significant other. But the fact that someone is there on the toilet in the first place is so full of 'WTF' that there aren't enough syllables in 'WTF' adequate to express just how mystified I am at anyone who posts such a picture to Facebook. Everyone poops. I get it. Everyone usually gets a colonoscopy, too, but that doesn't mean anyone else wants to see pictures of it on the internet.
All of this pales in comparison to those few remarkable souls who take pictures in their bathroom mirrors of themselves on the toilet. And not just sitting on the toilet seat, either, but planted on the throne with their pants around their ankles throwing a double-whammy of duckface and a peace sign or gang sign to the camera. Why would you do this?? What were you thinking?? Even if you were a nudist I can't think of any reasonable explanation for posting pictures of yourself taking a shit on Facebook. Just... TMI.
Maybe I just don't get the younger generation. Maybe all the cool kids are doing it. Maybe they don't find it taboo in the same way my generation doesn't find premarital sex or same-sex relationships taboo. Maybe it's the next frontier of equality.
Or maybe kids today are just fucking stupid.
Personally, I say it's that last one but I could be wrong. I'd say more but it's time for me to go and soak my teeth.
Friday, February 3, 2012
appealing traits
The boything had surgery yesterday for his shoulder. He injured it two years ago at work and it took until now to get the company to fix it. He's fine but he called me as soon as he was out from under the anaesthesia and he made less sense then than he does when he's drunk. He sounded way out of it but was feeling good enough later in the day to go to a Magic card tournament even though he was still slightly cross-eyed at the time and high out of his mind on painkillers.
Of course, surgery meant being shirtless in front of hospital personnel, and being shirtless meant everybody could see the marks I left on him when he was here. And since he enjoys it I leave some pretty nasty wounds. Even through his clothes I almost broke skin and he still had the worst of the bruises and teeth marks yesterday morning. I'm not kidding when I say he looks like he was in some kind of life-or-death altercation with a wolverine.
So right up until they put him under for surgery he had to explain to everybody who saw him and his bruises that he wasn't in a fight or anything, that his girlfriend left them because she bites. The anaesthesiologist just looked at him funny and the doctor wanted to ask more questions but was laughing too hard to do it. I keep forgetting how weird that is to most people. To each his own and all. When people talk about it at all, I generally glean they put much higher value in shit I find completely mystifying when considering a partner--I used to not want to date anyone who smoked until I realized I didn't mind making out with smokers--and in the end it comes down to everybody having very different desires.
Even so, most people's list of prerequisites for a relationship is full of more common or vanilla mandatory traits. Has no STDs or children, no wife or prison record, certain physical attributes. I know women who won't date guys who don't have chest hair (I guess because they think it's masculine or some shit), which makes Max all the more a bizarre choice for me because he's completely upholstered and I really dislike body hair.
But that's all relatively normal. Most people don't consider 'CAN TAKE A BEATING' one of their top ten considerations in a partner.
Then again, most people don't make their partners wear collars.
So it's possible I'm just really, really weird.
Of course, surgery meant being shirtless in front of hospital personnel, and being shirtless meant everybody could see the marks I left on him when he was here. And since he enjoys it I leave some pretty nasty wounds. Even through his clothes I almost broke skin and he still had the worst of the bruises and teeth marks yesterday morning. I'm not kidding when I say he looks like he was in some kind of life-or-death altercation with a wolverine.
So right up until they put him under for surgery he had to explain to everybody who saw him and his bruises that he wasn't in a fight or anything, that his girlfriend left them because she bites. The anaesthesiologist just looked at him funny and the doctor wanted to ask more questions but was laughing too hard to do it. I keep forgetting how weird that is to most people. To each his own and all. When people talk about it at all, I generally glean they put much higher value in shit I find completely mystifying when considering a partner--I used to not want to date anyone who smoked until I realized I didn't mind making out with smokers--and in the end it comes down to everybody having very different desires.
Even so, most people's list of prerequisites for a relationship is full of more common or vanilla mandatory traits. Has no STDs or children, no wife or prison record, certain physical attributes. I know women who won't date guys who don't have chest hair (I guess because they think it's masculine or some shit), which makes Max all the more a bizarre choice for me because he's completely upholstered and I really dislike body hair.
But that's all relatively normal. Most people don't consider 'CAN TAKE A BEATING' one of their top ten considerations in a partner.
Then again, most people don't make their partners wear collars.
So it's possible I'm just really, really weird.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
running on fumes, so naturally writing seemed appropriate
So, yeah, as of right now I am working on 48 hours without having slept and I'm really not liking it at all. Holy fuck. I can honestly say I have never felt this physically miserable without there actually being a legitimate medical cause for it--like I just had some kind of surgery, or I'm having a horrific period, or I have the flu, or I'm passing a kidney stone. Possibly all of the above. I was so sluggish at work and so obviously unwell that even the horrible 'hemorrhagic-fever-is-not-a-good-enough-excuse-to-call-out-of-your-shift' top manager asked if I felt okay. (But didn't offer to let me take a break or get a drink or go home.) Yeah, no more doing this to myself. I need a regular bedtime. Operating on no sleep at all is not, it turns out, something I am at all able to cope with physically or mentally. Even that ever-present narrator in my head is talking pretty fucking slowly right now, which never happens. Wow.
Additional bodily development: I am officially dropping an alarming amount of weight at an even more alarming speed. I've had to tighten my watch band twice in the last month. (After wearing it for six months without having to tighten it at all.) I can't wear my ring anymore because it's so loose it sometimes just slips right off. My ribs are standing out more than they normally do and you can see my knee and ankle bones for the first time since I was in high school. My hands have gotten smaller. I mean visibly, noticeably smaller. I'm not a nutritionist or anything but something tells me that if you're losing body fat in a place that doesn't even have a lot of body fat to begin with, something might possibly be going on that is potentially less than completely hunky-dory.
Unrelated: there isn't a single self-service gas station in the town where I work (which is about half an hour from my apartment). Seriously, not one. Everybody I work with thinks this is totally normal but I freaking hate it. I don't want someone doing that for me, I can do it my goddamn self! Having someone else pump your gas is like having someone else tie your shoes--the only acceptable reason is if you happen to be incapacitated or something, and if you don't know how to do it yourself then you're actually kind of pathetic since you lack the ability to do a very basic and very necessary everyday skill. Most of the people at work don't know how to pump their own gas. Seriously. How the hell can you say something like that without the abject humiliation you should be feeling at such a staggering lack of competence?
Really unrelated: let's face it, evolution totally played a lot of really mean pranks on us. I mean just think about it--evolution left us with the appendix, an organ with absolutely no other function except to fuck us over. It either does nothing at all, or it fails painfully and can kill you. Evolution is also in charge of nipples on men, which makes so much in the way of complete nonsense that it's best not to think about it at all because it's only going to give you a headache trying to come up with a reasonable excuse for why men might have once lactated. That's all bad enough, but evolution wasn't going to stop there. No, evolution decided it would be fucking hilarious if all humans made identical noises for intense and unbearable pain and really good sex. The next time you stub your toe, do yourself a favour and tape record the sounds you make. It'll sound like a sex scene soundtrack, I guarantee it.
So unrelated that it kind of looks like I'm degenerating into psychosis: a woman came in to the store today to get a coupon applied retroactively to a purchase. We can do this, but it requires tricking the computer into thinking the customer has returned and re-purchased everything on the receipt and to do that involves laboriously typing in the long barcode numbers by hand, one at a time, and then doing it again to trick the system into thinking new purchases have been made. (This is the only way to do it without requiring they bring all of their purchases back to the store.) Now, this is obnoxious and time-consuming but we still do it. Except that the lady who came in today was fucking insane. She had so much fucking stuff that it required three separate transactions to complete because the system only allows transactions of up to 65 items. Yeah, and it took three of those. I wasn't handling the return myself, and thank goodness for that because if I'd had to I would have gone completely crazy. Instead it was on the manager. I bagged for her because it helped save time, since not only did this woman want every single one of her previous 195 items returned and re-purchased for the purpose of saving a total of about $50 all together (I understand times are hard and you need whatever you can get, but nobody was inclined to feel sympathy), but she also bought another thirty or so. Then I remembered who she was, because I'd had to deal with her before and she's one of the most annoying customers I have ever dealt with. She's the kind of person who refuses to pay the given price for anything, even when the given price is enormously reduced--she's also scathingly cheap and refuses to take any item over $3 and will argue about pennies. The last time I had to deal with her she kept whining about a coupon she swore she had but couldn't produce. But there weren't any out at the time and I had no idea what she was talking about. So she called her sister and demanded that I talk to her, because her sister supposedly had the coupon in her possession and I guess seh figured I could apply it through the phone by magic or something like that and... ugh. Even though she was getting basically like a 95% discount on all the shit she bought, she still bitched because our system will only allow one coupon to be applied retroactively to a purchase. She even wanted to go through the entire process again--which took more than an hour--so she could use both and save maybe a few more cents. At that point she was paying so little that even a huge percentage reduction was only going to add up to a few dollars for the entire four-transaction-purchase.
PROTIP: You are shopping in the 'clearance' section and purchasing items for, on average, less than a tenth their original price and getting a 50% discount on THOSE along with the coupon you had and wanted applied retroactively. You are no longer allowed to try and squeeze savings out of us. The level of your fussy disruptiveness and general demanding behaviour makes the pitiful amount of money you ultimately spend in our store not worth the time, effort, patience, and constant tooth-grinding required to get through the hour-long process of ringing you up without degenerating into a violent psychotic outburst for which the only remedy is rhino tranquilizers.
In all she had over 200 items total, with all her previous purchases added to the armfuls of new ones. (And bitched mightily because the already-dirt-cheap kid's clearance section didn't qualify for the half-price sale.) She paid a total of $90 and the manager outright lied and said she couldn't adjust the same purchase more than once just so the woman would fucking leave. She had so much shit with her that we had to get someone to help her carry her eight bags to her car--we made the two available male employees decide between them, which naturally meant rock-paper-scissors. While they were arguing, the obnoxious customer had left.
If I see her again, I'm going to conveniently come down with anthrax or something so I have an excuse to hide in the bathroom or conveniently faint. Or maybe have a heart attack. Or something. Anything. If necessary I will come down with the fucking Black Death if it means I won't have to deal with her ever again.
Additional bodily development: I am officially dropping an alarming amount of weight at an even more alarming speed. I've had to tighten my watch band twice in the last month. (After wearing it for six months without having to tighten it at all.) I can't wear my ring anymore because it's so loose it sometimes just slips right off. My ribs are standing out more than they normally do and you can see my knee and ankle bones for the first time since I was in high school. My hands have gotten smaller. I mean visibly, noticeably smaller. I'm not a nutritionist or anything but something tells me that if you're losing body fat in a place that doesn't even have a lot of body fat to begin with, something might possibly be going on that is potentially less than completely hunky-dory.
Unrelated: there isn't a single self-service gas station in the town where I work (which is about half an hour from my apartment). Seriously, not one. Everybody I work with thinks this is totally normal but I freaking hate it. I don't want someone doing that for me, I can do it my goddamn self! Having someone else pump your gas is like having someone else tie your shoes--the only acceptable reason is if you happen to be incapacitated or something, and if you don't know how to do it yourself then you're actually kind of pathetic since you lack the ability to do a very basic and very necessary everyday skill. Most of the people at work don't know how to pump their own gas. Seriously. How the hell can you say something like that without the abject humiliation you should be feeling at such a staggering lack of competence?
Really unrelated: let's face it, evolution totally played a lot of really mean pranks on us. I mean just think about it--evolution left us with the appendix, an organ with absolutely no other function except to fuck us over. It either does nothing at all, or it fails painfully and can kill you. Evolution is also in charge of nipples on men, which makes so much in the way of complete nonsense that it's best not to think about it at all because it's only going to give you a headache trying to come up with a reasonable excuse for why men might have once lactated. That's all bad enough, but evolution wasn't going to stop there. No, evolution decided it would be fucking hilarious if all humans made identical noises for intense and unbearable pain and really good sex. The next time you stub your toe, do yourself a favour and tape record the sounds you make. It'll sound like a sex scene soundtrack, I guarantee it.
So unrelated that it kind of looks like I'm degenerating into psychosis: a woman came in to the store today to get a coupon applied retroactively to a purchase. We can do this, but it requires tricking the computer into thinking the customer has returned and re-purchased everything on the receipt and to do that involves laboriously typing in the long barcode numbers by hand, one at a time, and then doing it again to trick the system into thinking new purchases have been made. (This is the only way to do it without requiring they bring all of their purchases back to the store.) Now, this is obnoxious and time-consuming but we still do it. Except that the lady who came in today was fucking insane. She had so much fucking stuff that it required three separate transactions to complete because the system only allows transactions of up to 65 items. Yeah, and it took three of those. I wasn't handling the return myself, and thank goodness for that because if I'd had to I would have gone completely crazy. Instead it was on the manager. I bagged for her because it helped save time, since not only did this woman want every single one of her previous 195 items returned and re-purchased for the purpose of saving a total of about $50 all together (I understand times are hard and you need whatever you can get, but nobody was inclined to feel sympathy), but she also bought another thirty or so. Then I remembered who she was, because I'd had to deal with her before and she's one of the most annoying customers I have ever dealt with. She's the kind of person who refuses to pay the given price for anything, even when the given price is enormously reduced--she's also scathingly cheap and refuses to take any item over $3 and will argue about pennies. The last time I had to deal with her she kept whining about a coupon she swore she had but couldn't produce. But there weren't any out at the time and I had no idea what she was talking about. So she called her sister and demanded that I talk to her, because her sister supposedly had the coupon in her possession and I guess seh figured I could apply it through the phone by magic or something like that and... ugh. Even though she was getting basically like a 95% discount on all the shit she bought, she still bitched because our system will only allow one coupon to be applied retroactively to a purchase. She even wanted to go through the entire process again--which took more than an hour--so she could use both and save maybe a few more cents. At that point she was paying so little that even a huge percentage reduction was only going to add up to a few dollars for the entire four-transaction-purchase.
PROTIP: You are shopping in the 'clearance' section and purchasing items for, on average, less than a tenth their original price and getting a 50% discount on THOSE along with the coupon you had and wanted applied retroactively. You are no longer allowed to try and squeeze savings out of us. The level of your fussy disruptiveness and general demanding behaviour makes the pitiful amount of money you ultimately spend in our store not worth the time, effort, patience, and constant tooth-grinding required to get through the hour-long process of ringing you up without degenerating into a violent psychotic outburst for which the only remedy is rhino tranquilizers.
In all she had over 200 items total, with all her previous purchases added to the armfuls of new ones. (And bitched mightily because the already-dirt-cheap kid's clearance section didn't qualify for the half-price sale.) She paid a total of $90 and the manager outright lied and said she couldn't adjust the same purchase more than once just so the woman would fucking leave. She had so much shit with her that we had to get someone to help her carry her eight bags to her car--we made the two available male employees decide between them, which naturally meant rock-paper-scissors. While they were arguing, the obnoxious customer had left.
If I see her again, I'm going to conveniently come down with anthrax or something so I have an excuse to hide in the bathroom or conveniently faint. Or maybe have a heart attack. Or something. Anything. If necessary I will come down with the fucking Black Death if it means I won't have to deal with her ever again.
Monday, January 9, 2012
Sim-ilar experiences
I was a huge fan of The Sims when the game first came out (holy fuck, was that really more than ten years ago now??) and played the SHIT out of that game and all of its expansions packs until I was well into college. (I became quite skilled, as well. Or at least as skilled as you CAN be.) Even after Sims 2 came out, I sill played the original, mostly because the expansion packs were cheaper now that it was an outdated version. But also because with subsequent releases, my computer was getting older and I'd never had a computer that could actually handle a game that big and complicated--for this reason I never played World of Warcraft or Everquest, either. My old Sims games don't run on my current laptop and I still sort of miss it but I don't have time to play for hours and hours in a virtual real-world when I have an actual real-world that needs chores done and work accomplished and bills paid.
But my mate is a big Sims player and used to bring his laptop to my house, when I still lived there, and let me watch his Sims in 2 and 3 ruin their lives. I always thought the original mis-Sim-ventures were funny but it seems like the developers just deliberately put more and more bizarre options and freak accidents in every new version of the game. I suppose ostensibly to make it more true-to-life but really I'm sure it was for the lulz. Nothing is more lulzy than watching your Sims completely fuck up. (Back in my day the worst thing you could do was lock them in a windowless box without a toilet until they pee'd themselves to death--or drown them in a pool.)
I'm one of those people who thinks video games are awesome spectator sports so I have no problems sitting in the background and watching someone else make all the decisions. My mate made a house for the characters he was writing at the time (he's a novelist) and they behaved the same way in the game as they behaved in the books. It was brilliant. One was very promiscuous and kept having sex with anyone who walked into the house (the pizza guy, the gardener, the maid). She had a baby with some guy--my friend never did find out who--and left it for her more-responsible, straight-edged friend and housemate to raise because every time he TRIED to make her take care of it she would listen to it cry for a few minutes, get frustrated, and then put it on the floor. Which I thought was so funny that I nearly pulled a Sim-accident and pee'd on the sofa.
The one thing that made me laugh so hard I drooled in my lap was when Promiscuous Sim broke the dishwasher and had to call the repairman for it. While that was going on my friend was busy with the other Sim; when he turned his attention back he discovered that Promiscuous Sim had seduced the repair guy, had sex with him, and gotten pregnant. When he left the dishwasher was still broken (doesn't matter, had sex) so the Sim tried to repair it herself. It exploded. She was completely covered in soot, her clothes burned off or blown away, and her hair charred and standing straight up on end.
Naturally she went over to a mirror--singed and messied--and check herself out like she was hot shit.
Then sat down, in the same condition, to have cybersex on her computer.
It was glorious.
On that note, I found this Tumblr because, even though I can no longer play the game myself, I still enjoy hearing and seeing other people's mis-Sim-ventures. I'm not acquainted with the new features of the games but I still understand all the memes and it still all gives me something great to laugh at.
I adore the Sims. It's like a very convenient and harmless outlet for your really poor decisions and bad judgment. Have sex with strangers, ruin your career, put the baby on the floor in the toilet while you set the kitchen on fire before trying to have sex with the Grim Reaper when he comes to take the soul of your roommate--and then with all of that out of your system, log off your computer and like a comparatively normal life with all that shit out of your system.
I wonder if therapists recommend this?
Anyway, go check it out: SIM MEMES TUMBLR.
But my mate is a big Sims player and used to bring his laptop to my house, when I still lived there, and let me watch his Sims in 2 and 3 ruin their lives. I always thought the original mis-Sim-ventures were funny but it seems like the developers just deliberately put more and more bizarre options and freak accidents in every new version of the game. I suppose ostensibly to make it more true-to-life but really I'm sure it was for the lulz. Nothing is more lulzy than watching your Sims completely fuck up. (Back in my day the worst thing you could do was lock them in a windowless box without a toilet until they pee'd themselves to death--or drown them in a pool.)
I'm one of those people who thinks video games are awesome spectator sports so I have no problems sitting in the background and watching someone else make all the decisions. My mate made a house for the characters he was writing at the time (he's a novelist) and they behaved the same way in the game as they behaved in the books. It was brilliant. One was very promiscuous and kept having sex with anyone who walked into the house (the pizza guy, the gardener, the maid). She had a baby with some guy--my friend never did find out who--and left it for her more-responsible, straight-edged friend and housemate to raise because every time he TRIED to make her take care of it she would listen to it cry for a few minutes, get frustrated, and then put it on the floor. Which I thought was so funny that I nearly pulled a Sim-accident and pee'd on the sofa.
The one thing that made me laugh so hard I drooled in my lap was when Promiscuous Sim broke the dishwasher and had to call the repairman for it. While that was going on my friend was busy with the other Sim; when he turned his attention back he discovered that Promiscuous Sim had seduced the repair guy, had sex with him, and gotten pregnant. When he left the dishwasher was still broken (doesn't matter, had sex) so the Sim tried to repair it herself. It exploded. She was completely covered in soot, her clothes burned off or blown away, and her hair charred and standing straight up on end.
Naturally she went over to a mirror--singed and messied--and check herself out like she was hot shit.
Then sat down, in the same condition, to have cybersex on her computer.
It was glorious.
On that note, I found this Tumblr because, even though I can no longer play the game myself, I still enjoy hearing and seeing other people's mis-Sim-ventures. I'm not acquainted with the new features of the games but I still understand all the memes and it still all gives me something great to laugh at.
I adore the Sims. It's like a very convenient and harmless outlet for your really poor decisions and bad judgment. Have sex with strangers, ruin your career, put the baby on the floor in the toilet while you set the kitchen on fire before trying to have sex with the Grim Reaper when he comes to take the soul of your roommate--and then with all of that out of your system, log off your computer and like a comparatively normal life with all that shit out of your system.
I wonder if therapists recommend this?
Anyway, go check it out: SIM MEMES TUMBLR.
Friday, January 6, 2012
INTRODUCTION
I decided to do what I should have done to begin with and transfer and compartmentalize my weirdness into different places so it all doesn't become like the verbal trail-mix from hell. I have just moved all of my scattered thoughts from LJ and other places to this blog, where hopefully I can keep it all in quarantine. My regular blog of collected (and better organized) essays can be found here: Mirth and Matter.
As for why... read on.
I really can't come up with a better word for the thousand little inconsequential and mostly totally unconnected thoughts that zip through my head in any given hour. I don't know that this happens to other people or what but my brain NEVER, EVER shuts up. When I say that I have a non-stop running commentary going on in my mind, I really am not kidding--it's part sportscast, part movie commentary, part narration, part self-evaluation, and part scathingly sarcastic social commentary and when I say it is constant I mean it NEVER STOPS. I'm doing it right now, even as I write this. I've done it so long that I don't really even notice I'm doing it anymore--most of the time it's all in one ear and out the other and I rarely remember any particular talking points or specific comments for longer than a few minutes. There aren't any pauses or breaks or segues anywhere, either--thoughts just blend one into the next without stopping, even when they're (as they usually are) complete non-sequiturs. I'm a horribly disorganized kind of person and my head is no exception. Sometimes I think that having fuzzy hair is like a visual metaphor for what goes on underneath it.
People who write professionally (or think they should) like to offer a lot of 'record your thoughts' advice and suggest keeping a small notebook or a tape recorder or, more recently, using some kind of notepad program on your phone if you happen to have one and using it to quickly jot down your thoughts so you don't forget them. There's nothing wrong with that advice, and I'm sure it works well for many people and I made a good many serious, hopeful, enthusiastic attempts over the years to do it, but eventually I had to concede defeat. Recording the things that go on in my head is just plain exhausting. The sheer amount of completely pointless but long-winded drivel I publish on a daily basis suggests there's an awful lot going on up there and to be frank it's barely the tip of the iceberg. It's only because I can't be bothered to commit most of it to memory and almost immediately forget everything that these entries are not longer and significantly more numerous.
'Scattershot' does it no justice at all but I can't think of another word to usurp and I'm definitely not the sort of person capable of contributing a new word to the English language. For one thing, how would I spell it? I don't imagine many people notice unless they are, like me, the kind of anal-retentive asshole who notices stupid tiny things like this, but I am fairly inconsistent with my spelling conventions. I freely pick between British English and American English spellings (and pronunciations, as well, though you don't get that through text) depending on how comfortable I feel with either. Even when I generally stick with one set of spelling conventions over the other, I still have no problems using the other for certain words in the same spelling family. So while I end words like 'theatre' with the British -re ending, I also write 'meter' and 'liter' (actually, there seems to be a pattern to this--I use the -re ending for everything except units of measurement, where for some reason I feel more comfortable using -er). Even worse, sometimes I'll actually use both spellings of THE SAME WORD interchangeably--like with 'anaesthesia/anesthesia'--and completely at random. Sometimes I'll use both spellings in the same freaking paragraph, though I make an effort to go back and make them all match.
See that? That up there? That is how my mind works all the time. I am not capable of quieting it down, or turning it off. This is the kind of stuff that goes through my head all day, every day. I've gotten good at ignoring a lot of it but it's still there in the periphery, juuuuust invasive enough that I always know it's there even though I'm not listening to it--like a television in another room or neighbouring apartment that's JUST loud enough to be heard but not loud enough to be particularly disruptive.
So this is going to become my sounding board for all of the unconnected thoughts and half-thoughts that my mind collects throughout the day. Don't expect too terribly much insightful, inspiring stuff here because that isn't how my brain works--if it was I'd've had a job in the greeting card business years ago. All entries prior to this one have been coped from my old Livejournal, which was intended to be a fanfiction archive but quickly degenerated into a chronicle of madness just shy of criminally insane. Everything else is new, and will be updated as I see fit--which, as you will soon learn, is just as unpredictable as the contents themselves.
As for the scattershot I've managed to remember today:
Seriously, at what point have you stayed up too late to be entitled to go to bed? When are you basically required to go take a shower and rejoin the living instead of sleeping? I don't actually have a night shift that justifies being able to sleep all day long, but I still stay up late until it turns from 'late' to 'early'. Sometimes I'll actually debate with myself whether or not I'm still allowed to go to bed and will argue so long that eventually I HAVE to get on with my day and don't go to bed at all. I've started calling this 'overshooting the bedtime threshold'.
I really don't like red light cameras, though not for the obvious reasons. I won't say anything regarding their ethical or constitutional validity because frankly no matter what I say I will deeply and terribly offend a whole lot of people. Obviously, though, habitually ignoring traffic signals is not only illegal and dangerous, it's also incredibly rude. My beef with the cameras has nothing to do with whether or not I agree with their very existence, but rather the horrible BLINDING flash that completely bleaches out my vision every time one of them goes off. This isn't a problem during the day because you barely even notice a camera flash in daylight, even one bright enough to flood an entire four-lane intersection with enough light to take a photograph. At night, though, when your eyes are adjusted to a lower light level, the flash is just blinding. It never lasts long,but the fact that my vision is temporarily dangerously impaired is worrisome. I never actually had experience like this with red light cameras before I moved here. Maryland and Virginia had them, of course, but they never used a flash to illuminate the license plate (this is how they send you your ticket)--instead they employed night-vision and very sensitive light-sensing equipment and utilized the ambient light as well as the reflective surface of license plates (the law is, your plate has to be reflective and you face huge fines if it isn't) to read the plate number. This is a much safer system than blinding drivers every time some jerkoff decides he's too important to stop for red lights.
I really need to stop believing that the few minutes I save in the shower every day by NOT shaving for almost three months in any way balances out the inevitable time-consuming and extremely annoying battle that eventually takes place when I DO eventually decide to tackle my body hair.
When I called work today to ask if we had our checks in (we don't, and I am pissed--we're supposed to get them every two weeks but haven't been paid in over a month), I realized that without exception every woman who works there does the same thing. Even Shanon and I, graduates of the Bea Arthur School of Female Baritones, do it. When addressing customers and answering the phones, we automatically adopt a high-pitched, girlish, almost sing-songy way of speaking. Like when you talk to a baby or an animal. When we talk amongst ourselves, we use our normal pitch and tone--but for some reason we ratchet it up an octave to talk to customers. Maybe we're instinctively trying to appear softer, sweeter, more approachable, and less threatening? I've no idea. The guys don't do this but they'd all sound pretty fucking creepy if they did. I'm sure there have been gender-study papers and research done on this.
The compact all my glittery eyeshadows are in is exactly the same size and shape and looks remarkably like a smart phone. (Have a look.)
Of the eight and a half months I've lived in New York, school has been in session for about six and a half of them. Granted my own personal schedule is inconsistent and rarely coincides with local schools, nonetheless I noticed something. This entire time I have not seen a single school bus that wasn't a 'short bus'.
Finding money in pants pockets while sorting laundry is a bit like god rewarding me for actually doing it like a big girl instead of just spraying my dirty clothes with Febreeze and hoping for the best.
Chinese takeout is urban comfort food.
As for why... read on.
I really can't come up with a better word for the thousand little inconsequential and mostly totally unconnected thoughts that zip through my head in any given hour. I don't know that this happens to other people or what but my brain NEVER, EVER shuts up. When I say that I have a non-stop running commentary going on in my mind, I really am not kidding--it's part sportscast, part movie commentary, part narration, part self-evaluation, and part scathingly sarcastic social commentary and when I say it is constant I mean it NEVER STOPS. I'm doing it right now, even as I write this. I've done it so long that I don't really even notice I'm doing it anymore--most of the time it's all in one ear and out the other and I rarely remember any particular talking points or specific comments for longer than a few minutes. There aren't any pauses or breaks or segues anywhere, either--thoughts just blend one into the next without stopping, even when they're (as they usually are) complete non-sequiturs. I'm a horribly disorganized kind of person and my head is no exception. Sometimes I think that having fuzzy hair is like a visual metaphor for what goes on underneath it.
People who write professionally (or think they should) like to offer a lot of 'record your thoughts' advice and suggest keeping a small notebook or a tape recorder or, more recently, using some kind of notepad program on your phone if you happen to have one and using it to quickly jot down your thoughts so you don't forget them. There's nothing wrong with that advice, and I'm sure it works well for many people and I made a good many serious, hopeful, enthusiastic attempts over the years to do it, but eventually I had to concede defeat. Recording the things that go on in my head is just plain exhausting. The sheer amount of completely pointless but long-winded drivel I publish on a daily basis suggests there's an awful lot going on up there and to be frank it's barely the tip of the iceberg. It's only because I can't be bothered to commit most of it to memory and almost immediately forget everything that these entries are not longer and significantly more numerous.
'Scattershot' does it no justice at all but I can't think of another word to usurp and I'm definitely not the sort of person capable of contributing a new word to the English language. For one thing, how would I spell it? I don't imagine many people notice unless they are, like me, the kind of anal-retentive asshole who notices stupid tiny things like this, but I am fairly inconsistent with my spelling conventions. I freely pick between British English and American English spellings (and pronunciations, as well, though you don't get that through text) depending on how comfortable I feel with either. Even when I generally stick with one set of spelling conventions over the other, I still have no problems using the other for certain words in the same spelling family. So while I end words like 'theatre' with the British -re ending, I also write 'meter' and 'liter' (actually, there seems to be a pattern to this--I use the -re ending for everything except units of measurement, where for some reason I feel more comfortable using -er). Even worse, sometimes I'll actually use both spellings of THE SAME WORD interchangeably--like with 'anaesthesia/anesthesia'--and completely at random. Sometimes I'll use both spellings in the same freaking paragraph, though I make an effort to go back and make them all match.
See that? That up there? That is how my mind works all the time. I am not capable of quieting it down, or turning it off. This is the kind of stuff that goes through my head all day, every day. I've gotten good at ignoring a lot of it but it's still there in the periphery, juuuuust invasive enough that I always know it's there even though I'm not listening to it--like a television in another room or neighbouring apartment that's JUST loud enough to be heard but not loud enough to be particularly disruptive.
So this is going to become my sounding board for all of the unconnected thoughts and half-thoughts that my mind collects throughout the day. Don't expect too terribly much insightful, inspiring stuff here because that isn't how my brain works--if it was I'd've had a job in the greeting card business years ago. All entries prior to this one have been coped from my old Livejournal, which was intended to be a fanfiction archive but quickly degenerated into a chronicle of madness just shy of criminally insane. Everything else is new, and will be updated as I see fit--which, as you will soon learn, is just as unpredictable as the contents themselves.
As for the scattershot I've managed to remember today:
Seriously, at what point have you stayed up too late to be entitled to go to bed? When are you basically required to go take a shower and rejoin the living instead of sleeping? I don't actually have a night shift that justifies being able to sleep all day long, but I still stay up late until it turns from 'late' to 'early'. Sometimes I'll actually debate with myself whether or not I'm still allowed to go to bed and will argue so long that eventually I HAVE to get on with my day and don't go to bed at all. I've started calling this 'overshooting the bedtime threshold'.
I really don't like red light cameras, though not for the obvious reasons. I won't say anything regarding their ethical or constitutional validity because frankly no matter what I say I will deeply and terribly offend a whole lot of people. Obviously, though, habitually ignoring traffic signals is not only illegal and dangerous, it's also incredibly rude. My beef with the cameras has nothing to do with whether or not I agree with their very existence, but rather the horrible BLINDING flash that completely bleaches out my vision every time one of them goes off. This isn't a problem during the day because you barely even notice a camera flash in daylight, even one bright enough to flood an entire four-lane intersection with enough light to take a photograph. At night, though, when your eyes are adjusted to a lower light level, the flash is just blinding. It never lasts long,but the fact that my vision is temporarily dangerously impaired is worrisome. I never actually had experience like this with red light cameras before I moved here. Maryland and Virginia had them, of course, but they never used a flash to illuminate the license plate (this is how they send you your ticket)--instead they employed night-vision and very sensitive light-sensing equipment and utilized the ambient light as well as the reflective surface of license plates (the law is, your plate has to be reflective and you face huge fines if it isn't) to read the plate number. This is a much safer system than blinding drivers every time some jerkoff decides he's too important to stop for red lights.
I really need to stop believing that the few minutes I save in the shower every day by NOT shaving for almost three months in any way balances out the inevitable time-consuming and extremely annoying battle that eventually takes place when I DO eventually decide to tackle my body hair.
When I called work today to ask if we had our checks in (we don't, and I am pissed--we're supposed to get them every two weeks but haven't been paid in over a month), I realized that without exception every woman who works there does the same thing. Even Shanon and I, graduates of the Bea Arthur School of Female Baritones, do it. When addressing customers and answering the phones, we automatically adopt a high-pitched, girlish, almost sing-songy way of speaking. Like when you talk to a baby or an animal. When we talk amongst ourselves, we use our normal pitch and tone--but for some reason we ratchet it up an octave to talk to customers. Maybe we're instinctively trying to appear softer, sweeter, more approachable, and less threatening? I've no idea. The guys don't do this but they'd all sound pretty fucking creepy if they did. I'm sure there have been gender-study papers and research done on this.
The compact all my glittery eyeshadows are in is exactly the same size and shape and looks remarkably like a smart phone. (Have a look.)
Of the eight and a half months I've lived in New York, school has been in session for about six and a half of them. Granted my own personal schedule is inconsistent and rarely coincides with local schools, nonetheless I noticed something. This entire time I have not seen a single school bus that wasn't a 'short bus'.
Finding money in pants pockets while sorting laundry is a bit like god rewarding me for actually doing it like a big girl instead of just spraying my dirty clothes with Febreeze and hoping for the best.
Chinese takeout is urban comfort food.
on the job (or: getting paid to do nothing)
(1 Jan., 2012)
I was late to work again today (I officially give up ever trying to traverse Long Island in less time than it took for Ferdinand Magellan to circumnavigate the globe) so my punishment was to reorganize the denim walls. Just huge tall walls stocked with jeans and you have to put them all in size and colour order according to a little roadmap of cards saying what goes where. This is always time-consuming and a huge pain in the ass to do and requires you to basically tear the entire wall apart and start from scratch, especially since nobody puts sizes back where they find them. (Fair enough, though--some of them require a ladder to reach.) Most of the time we don't bother just as long as everything is at least folded but sometimes there's someone who deserves a bit of retail-equivalent hard labour and today it fell on me.
It was, as I expected, a pain in the ass. Though I don't know that it says so anywhere in my files, I am mortally terrified of heights to the point where a kitchen step-stool can make me freak out. For the most part I can deal with this just enough that it doesn't impede my day-to-day life but I am never anywhere near comfortable on ladders. I've told the managers this and politely asked for assistance from other co-workers when I DO need something that requires a ladder. If it's legitimately too much hassle to get someone else, I'll do it myself but I shake noticeably the whole time until I get my feet back on the floor. So I'm fairly sure they're all at least tangentially aware that I don't like heights and the ladder is an unsafe place to put me, but that was probably all part of the penance paid and up the ladder I had to go. And stay for quite some time because, like I said, the whole thing is a time-consuming business.
Actually, in the end I didn't really mind it. It was something to DO so I wasn't going to get in trouble for idling and isn't one of those menial tasks that requires JUUUST enough attention to make daydreaming impossible. So it wasn't that bad. Even the ladder didn't bother me too much but I expect that was more because my mind had begun to wander sufficiently far so as to make me completely oblivious to the fact that I was standing eight feet off the ground.
Weird of the day: When I went to dinner after my shift there were two young (young-ish, probably between five and eight) boys at a table near me being pretty obnoxious. It was the two boys and (I assume) their sister at one table and the parents and their friends at another, leaving the girl, who couldn't have been much more than about fourteen, to mind the boys. Who were just unbelievably annoying and didn't listen to her pleas to behave, sit down, be quiet, stop fighting. It was the worst kind of annoying, too--the kind of annoying that you can't really get openly angry about. Nothing they did was aggressively bad in a way that justifies a total stranger yelling at them, but it was a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts--if they had ONLY been loud, OR fighting, OR playing with their food, it wouldn't have been so bad. But they were doing all that and more and it created a singular entity of annoyingness greater than all of it combined.
The parents were the most infuriating of all, though. They completely ignored the boys and their behaviour until it got to the point where people were staring, and then they made a few token scolding remarks--but not at the boys, at the girl. Not scolding the boys for misbehaving, scolding HER for not controlling them better! She isn't their mother!
Eventually they did do something that merited saying something. The kids started swearing. I usually have no problem with swearing in adults and teenagers provided it isn't excessive, but I am of the belief that you should at least have a compelling reason to swear. Emphasis in an anecdote, shock, or and exclamation are all good reasons to swear. Simply swearing because you feel like verbally cycling through all the dirty words you know? Not so much.
Bonus weird: This is completely racist of me to say, but I found it cruelly amusing. As they went through their list of dirty words, they actually spelled them all out loud. Like it was some Profanity Bee. Without even intending to think this, I thought, 'Well, it makes sense--they ARE Asian...'
I am a very, very bad person.
I was all set to go off at the boys for being extremely rude and inappropriate but someone else beat me to it and told the parents that they needed to be more proactive or they were never going to learn to be gentlemen.
On the plus side, though, they DID spell all the words right so they might be one of those rare vandals whose graffiti has proper spelling, punctuation, and grammar.
Be still my heart!
It was, as I expected, a pain in the ass. Though I don't know that it says so anywhere in my files, I am mortally terrified of heights to the point where a kitchen step-stool can make me freak out. For the most part I can deal with this just enough that it doesn't impede my day-to-day life but I am never anywhere near comfortable on ladders. I've told the managers this and politely asked for assistance from other co-workers when I DO need something that requires a ladder. If it's legitimately too much hassle to get someone else, I'll do it myself but I shake noticeably the whole time until I get my feet back on the floor. So I'm fairly sure they're all at least tangentially aware that I don't like heights and the ladder is an unsafe place to put me, but that was probably all part of the penance paid and up the ladder I had to go. And stay for quite some time because, like I said, the whole thing is a time-consuming business.
Actually, in the end I didn't really mind it. It was something to DO so I wasn't going to get in trouble for idling and isn't one of those menial tasks that requires JUUUST enough attention to make daydreaming impossible. So it wasn't that bad. Even the ladder didn't bother me too much but I expect that was more because my mind had begun to wander sufficiently far so as to make me completely oblivious to the fact that I was standing eight feet off the ground.
Weird of the day: When I went to dinner after my shift there were two young (young-ish, probably between five and eight) boys at a table near me being pretty obnoxious. It was the two boys and (I assume) their sister at one table and the parents and their friends at another, leaving the girl, who couldn't have been much more than about fourteen, to mind the boys. Who were just unbelievably annoying and didn't listen to her pleas to behave, sit down, be quiet, stop fighting. It was the worst kind of annoying, too--the kind of annoying that you can't really get openly angry about. Nothing they did was aggressively bad in a way that justifies a total stranger yelling at them, but it was a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts--if they had ONLY been loud, OR fighting, OR playing with their food, it wouldn't have been so bad. But they were doing all that and more and it created a singular entity of annoyingness greater than all of it combined.
The parents were the most infuriating of all, though. They completely ignored the boys and their behaviour until it got to the point where people were staring, and then they made a few token scolding remarks--but not at the boys, at the girl. Not scolding the boys for misbehaving, scolding HER for not controlling them better! She isn't their mother!
Eventually they did do something that merited saying something. The kids started swearing. I usually have no problem with swearing in adults and teenagers provided it isn't excessive, but I am of the belief that you should at least have a compelling reason to swear. Emphasis in an anecdote, shock, or and exclamation are all good reasons to swear. Simply swearing because you feel like verbally cycling through all the dirty words you know? Not so much.
Bonus weird: This is completely racist of me to say, but I found it cruelly amusing. As they went through their list of dirty words, they actually spelled them all out loud. Like it was some Profanity Bee. Without even intending to think this, I thought, 'Well, it makes sense--they ARE Asian...'
I am a very, very bad person.
I was all set to go off at the boys for being extremely rude and inappropriate but someone else beat me to it and told the parents that they needed to be more proactive or they were never going to learn to be gentlemen.
On the plus side, though, they DID spell all the words right so they might be one of those rare vandals whose graffiti has proper spelling, punctuation, and grammar.
Be still my heart!
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