11:11

It’s 10:37am on a Saturday, I’m lying in bed listening to the neighbors scream.  I looked out the window briefly to find them all standing in front of their apartment, man, woman, and little boy.  The boy sits there and blinks, bleating “HEYYY” every couple of minutes, as if on a timed interval.  The man and woman refuse to look at each other, but holler with this bored look in their eyes like they’re trying to have a normal conversation on the tarmac at the airport, planes roaring overhead.

“YOU GOT A ATTITUDE”

“YOU AIN’T EVEN KNOW WHAT YOU TALKIN ABOUT”

“HEYYYYY!”

I wonder if any of them are thinking about the tons of people who sleep in on Saturdays.  Granted, I’m sleeping almost until 11am, that’s pretty late to be expecting other people to be considerate.  BUT STILL.

Two weeks ago, I was waiting for the bus and I felt a hard tap on my head.  The next sensation was the dribbling of the bird shit sliding down the side of my head and collecting on top of my ear.  Well, that’s fucking awesome, I thought.  Good thing I have napkins in my purse.

One week ago, I was sitting on the bus, reading a book.  The greasy high school boy across from me let out a wet sneeze, and I looked down to find snot chunky with boogers splattered across my jacket sleeves and cuffs.  “Are you KIDDING ME?” I yelled at him, as his immediate reaction was to pretend that nothing had happened.  He ignored me, as if I wasn’t sitting there covered in his snot, screaming at him.  Well, that’s fucking awesome, I thought.  Good thing I have a single napkin left in my purse.

Usually, when it gets to the point that people are actually spraying me with their bodily fluids and then pretending that I don’t exist, it means I’ve been in this stupid city, riding the stupid buses, and following my stupid routine for way too long.  I thought it was the universe’s way of telling me that I’m fucked, really, it’s the universe’s way of telling me to fuck off.

Shutup, faggot

Stephanie sent me this yesterday and it’s killing me.

Shit Sack Comes to Visit

If you ever find yourself shut in a hotel room with nothing to do, please don’t watch the movie “Hump Day.”  I will tell you why, okay?  Shut up for a minute and let me find my notes.

So IMDB sums it up this way:

When Andrew unexpectedly shows up on Ben’s doorstep late one night, the two old college friends immediately fall into their old dynamic of heterosexual one-upmanship. To save Ben from domestication, Andrew invites Ben to a party at a sex-positive commune. Everyone there plans on making erotic art films for the local amateur porn festival and Andrew wants in. They run out of booze and ideas, save for one: Andrew should have sex with Ben, on camera. It’s not gay; it’s beyond gay. It’s not porn; it’s an art project. The next day, they find themselves unable to back down from the dare. And there’s nothing standing in their way – except Ben’s wife Anna, heterosexuality, and certain mechanical questions.

This movie should have been called “Two Dudely Dudes Have 36 Conversations.”  It was seriously like being forced to be in a room with two people you don’t really like who are discussing performance art.  “But dude what if we like, did this?  Dude what if we like, did that?  DUDE.”  They have conversations at tables, in cars, on the porch, on the couch.  Sometimes the girl has conversations with them.  Sometimes she just has a conversation with one of them.  Sometimes one of them leaves the room and the conversation continues because there’s still a dude in the room and he’s having a conversation with his THOUGHTS, man!

The story behind the never ending stream of talking in this movie is pretty stupid.  Naturally, this young pair of cute vintage-inspired newlyweds is trying to get knocked up.  Then what the fuck do you know?  The guy’s annoying best friend blows into town and takes over their couch and is generally poopy toward the whole marriage and children idea.  Because he’s a free spirit, man.  If you’re not traveling throughout your thirties, you’re lame!

(The one good thing I will say about this movie is that they totally got the annoying best friend right.  Every boy you will ever date, have ever dated, or ever thought about dating, has one of these.  Loud, obnoxious, chubby, and generally stupid, they circle until about 8 months into the relationship (if that), then they fucking swoop in full speed and decide to claim their friend back.  It’s your fault he’s been spending so little time with his best friend!  You know he can’t resist pussy, and you keep insisting on giving it to him!  Meh meh meh!  Oh, plus, these guys always experiment with fedoras.  Because they are, in actuality, slightly gay, and a liiiiiiiittle bit in love with your boyfriend–but only in that way that straight men can recognize their love for each other, the closest they ever get to it is thinking that maybe they’re jealous of their friend.)

(The fact that this movie got the annoying best friend so spot on is not a good thing.  That’s because you have to spend an hour and a half with this fat sack of shit and nobody wants to do a thing like that.  Didn’t think about that, did you, filmmakers?)

The “sex-positive commune” described above was actually like a slutty sorority house full of swinging lesbians who didn’t mind having sex with anyone in front of anyone, you know, those super hot-bodied, abused-as-a-child-but-that’s-not-why-I’m-a-lesbian-I’m-just-really-free lesbians.  So there’s this ONE scene where they writhe around on a bed half naked (well, wrapped in hippie print scarves and sarongs) and say the most random, stupid shit about relaaaaaationships, and that’s pretty much all it takes to give people who are actually sex positive a bad name.  Everybody smokes a lot of pot out of super-clean, over-complicated bongs and before long, our hero and his BFF have decided to take all of the Sex-Positive Performance Artists on in a little bet where he and his friend fuck each other on film.  And these dudes are gonna fuckin do it because they’re DUDES!  And plus the fat BFF has “never finished an art project,” and this is the one that he wants to finally follow through with.

So they have about a million conversations about doing it or not doing it, the wife finds out, she cries and wails, then admits that she cheated on her husband after they got married, so maybe he should get a pass to fuck his friend.  “Get it out of your system, like I did” she says.  Yay for sex positivity!

About the only positive in this movie would be possibly getting to settle your morbid curiosity by seeing two overweight dudely dudes bone each other, which they don’t.  They order room service and just hang out like a couple of bachelors.

Fuck this movie.  Or don’t.  I don’t know.  Maybe we should just talk about it a lot and never watch it.

Around the Orifice

There’s this girl in my office who I’ve always known for a fact held the title of Resident Shit-Talker, but boy did she ever go above and beyond last week.

This girl refers to her shit-talking circuit as “making the rounds.”  That’s where you see her coming through the office, down the worn track of carpet between all of our desks, leaning over everyone’s cube walls for however long it takes her to expel the newest stream of shit from her mouth to your ear.  Oh, and I can’t forget to mention that she’s a cunt, the bad kind.  She’ll come to you, whispering, eyes wide and cloudy with concern like she just saw a bloody car accident, and ask you “What…is WRONG…with Kelly’s hair?  Oh. My. God.”  Mere seconds later, you’ll see her at Kelly’s cube, saying “Your hair looks SO cute today!  What are you doing differently?”

Did you ever wonder what would happen to the girls at your high school who acted like this?  Did you think maybe they’d get the Tina Fey “Mean Girls” treatment and grow out of it?  Maybe some do, but in my opinion, those horrible cunts are just in training in high school.  They’re learning how to come off as Super Nice! and just whisper their terrible insults.  I’ll tell you what happens to them: they grow up and work in offices and grow great big dimpled asses, the kind that grow up and over their lower backs, and have to wear plus size Ann Taylor pants.  Oh, and they continue to be horrible cunts, and they think everyone likes them and nobody sees through them.  It’s absolutely exhausting to watch.

Not that I’ve never talked shit, but fucking hell.  It must have been a slow news day last Thursday because the big report we just all had to have was that a certain person in our office went to the bathroom and didn’t wash her hands!  Gasp!  This is horrible!  I KNOW!  What should we do?  I DON’T KNOW!  Isn’t there anyone we can report this to?  WHAT IF SHE’S IN THE BREAK ROOM RIGHT NOW TOUCHING ALL OF THE SPOONS?  She’s disgusting.  We hate her.  Let’s all look at her like “we know what you did.”  Yeah, we should.  Let’s make a concerted effort to make her feel unwelcome.

Look How Your Fat Brain Works!

One thing about working with other people that I’ve just come to accept as The Way Things Are and Will Always Be is that, when there is nothing else to talk about (and sometimes when there is), people will always steer the conversation toward food.  Especially if there is food around, which there always seems to be in the work environment.  Actually, I’m starting to wonder if perhaps people don’t overpopulate the work environment with foodstuffs just so things will be less awkward, so that there will be more to talk about.  Oh wasn’t that a great pecan tart?  Did you have some of that bacon cake and grease juice Sheila brought in?  Gahhh that was gooooooooood wasn’t it?

It’s no surprise that 20/20 found, when they did a sneaky hidden camera test thingy, that people are more comfortable overeating or making poor food choices when others are doing the same.  I don’t think this applies to me, as I grew up “overeating” at every meal, as my mother glared at me from across the table, slurping her Slim-Fast and slicing a Grape Nut in half.  So I’ve always had to be comfortable making my food choices (i.e., the choice to eat) without any support.  However, 20/20 did this little sneakysnake move where they grabbed people out of lines at Disney World, put them in a windowless room, and told them they’d be testing a new chocolate chip cookie or chocolate ice cream.  “Now there is a very high fat content!” they’d say, and you were left to wonder if they meant like, in the food, or attached to the test subjects and slopping over the sides of the tiny chairs.  The sneaky part was that there were always 2 people “testing” the food, and the second person, in true Maury Povich hidden camera fashion, was a decoy!  A sexy food decoy!  Paid to sit in the room and overeat on purpose to see if the other person would do the same!  And sometimes the decoy ate half of a cookie, just a tiny few bites of the ice cream, just enough to taste it.  On those occasions, without fail, the test person would do exactly the same, just a bite here and there.  But when the sexy decoy ate half a carton of ice cream, the person in the white lab coat with the clipboard saying “Go on, eat all you want!,” the test person would do exactly the same, wolfing down scoop after scoop of ice cream, stopping only when the sexy decoy stopped.  More than one person ate until they felt sick, just because the sexy decoy hadn’t stopped yet.

At the end, they gave all of the test subjects $10 and told them they’d been duped.  They showed them the footage and said “Look at you!  Look at you go, rippin’ into that chocolate ice cream!  You had thirty-seven cookies, just because someone else did!  HAHA.  Look how your fat brain works!”  Then the 20/20 Fatty Study Team addressed Mr. and Mrs. John Uh Merica directly and said, “Now isn’t that interesting?”

I have my own food issues, and one of them is that I do not enjoy eating in front of people.  I won’t eat on the train, but restaurants don’t freak me out so much because you’re expected to eat there.  I am extremely uncomfortable, however, eating in the office, under fluorescent lighting, gathered standing with paper plates around a giant airbrushed cake with badly done blue icing baby shoes splopped all over it.  You’re supposed to stand there, eat the cake, and talk.  And if you turn down the cake, you ignite a firestorm of discussion, during which people say all manner of inappropriate things because they feel like fatasses for having decided to eat the cake.  How dare you judge me?!  Also annoying is when I am unable to take a lunch break and have to eat something at my desk.  Inevitably, someone leans over my cube wall and says, “What are you eating?  What IS that?  Hm.  Yogurt?  Is it good?  Smells weird.  Just saying.  Do you like it?  You like yogurt?  Why?  Oh.  You like it.  But are you trying to lose weight?  What are you saying about me HAHAHA.  No, I’m kidding.  You don’t need to lose weight.  I should eat yogurt.  What is that?  Cereal?  Is that in an old butter container?  Why didn’t you use like some brand name Tupperware?  Why did you re-use that I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter thing?  Hm.”

But the funny thing is that all of the obsession with what other people are eating stems from everyone’s own food issues.  Which is also not funny because that is why it will never, ever stop.  I once had a manager at the Footwear Palace where I worked who talked all the time about how she wanted to lose weight, how she’d had to change pants that morning because the others had given her a muffin top, how she’d only had 1100 calories the day before…all unprompted, of course.  Nobody asked her for this information.  But she was butt fuck obsessed with food.  A superfan of frozen Lean Cuisine fare, she would comment, without fail, on anything other people were eating.  She even nicknamed someone because once he brought in chicken fingers for lunch.  She couldn’t help herself.  She also asked him every single time she saw him, even if it was like 10a.m., “What’s for lunch today?!  Chicken fingers!?  I know you love your chicken fingers!  I can’t eat em because I’ll get fat!  More power to ya though!  HAHAHA!” And so on, and so on, every day.  “Whatcha eating?!  MMMMMM.  What’s in the microwave?  Smells GOOOOOOOOOOD.”  Then she’d tell everyone what you had for lunch.  What it looked like.  What it smelled like.  She just could not stop herself.  She didn’t realize how transparently weird she was being about food.

And that’s how one’s boss lives vicariously through their meals.

Is this possibly because mealtimes are sometimes the only break in the monotony of the day, when one gets to reward oneself with food?

My problem is this: there’s an overabundance of processed sugars and complex carbohydrates in my office every day.  Piles of cake and cupcakes and muffins and coffee cake and boxes of chocolatey treats from Dingles & Boomrats (or whatever the fuck that place is called where people order cases of chocolate covered pears with toffee chunks).  EVERY SINGLE FUCKING DAY.  I hardly ever eat anything just because I’m trying to be polite.  If it doesn’t taste good, I’m not going to sit there and choke it down just because you’re going to be offended if I don’t.  This ain’t Craplakistan.  I don’t suck stranger dick just because some guy on the bus is going to be put out for the rest of the afternoon if I decline.  I don’t want bruises on my knees, and I sure as hell don’t want a butt shaped like my desk chair, like everyone else in this damn place seems to have.  But if you don’t eat something at a mandatory office party, you get this “Oh.  You’re not eating.  Uh huh” bullshit.

My other problem is this: I love sugar.  And cake.  And cupcakes.  But only when they taste good.  And too much fake saccharin makes my stomach hurt like a bitch.  So yesterday at my coworker’s baby shower party, I chose an orange instead of the cupcake platter (including aforementioned airbrushing and really bad giant turdlike icing booties).  Holy hell, did I start a fuss.  Every single person I tried unsuccessfully to mingle with said “No caaaaaaaaaaaake?  You’re not haaaaaaaaaaaaaaving any?!?!?!  WHY?  Let me get you some!!!”

So when the cupcakes ran out, somebody whipped out this strawberry cake thing.  It had white icing and strawberries all over the top, and it (deceivingly) looked yummy.  Half of my orange gone, I got a slice of cake and, wishing to avoid that saccharin stomach ache, cut it in half, and put it on my plate.  I’m glad I only took half a slice because the cake fucking sucked.  It was like eating wedges of yellow kitchen sponges smeared with carpet cleaning foam.  And what does my boss say, snidely, as I come stand near her?

“Oh.  You’re having an orange AND some cake.  Oh.”

Voila.  There you have it.  The need to look at someone’s plate and point out exactly what’s on it.

Of course, it’s okay to say that to people who aren’t morbidly obese.  However, if someone said that to the lady who doesn’t leave her office between the hours of 9 and 5, who sits in a special chair with a specially purchased foot rest because of her weight, well, that would be inappropriate.  Of course, we can’t mention what she ate, or how fast.  But you can bring up my food habits all you want.

Last month, there was an event in another building, the building that was basically slapped into the middle of campus for all of the school’s entertaining purposes.  Outsiders from whom we wish to woo funding are shuttled to the ornate building first, given tours of the miraculous space-age HD flat-screen technology equipped “classrooms” (which are never used), and treated to a cafeteria-style lunch downstairs in the banquet hall.  The open room and giant trays you’re given for your multiple plates are a higher-brow way of hanging an “ALL YOU CAN EAT” sign over the door.  Employees, who are not invited to enjoy the banquet except for on rare occasions, talk about the Beale Center* all the time, like it’s some kind of magical candy mountain where all of your dreams come true.  And when they talk about it, they’re only mentioning the lunch you get to have if you’re employed there for the day.  So the week before the event with which my office was supposed to help all day, my entire floor was all abuzz with talk of the amazing Beale Center lunch we were supposed to get.  People were practically creaming their panties, salivating, foaming at the fucking mouth, talking about how loooong of a day the event was going to be, “but at least we get Beale Center lunch!!!”  People from other departments were stopping by and asking if we needed any help that day, because oh, you know, I’m  not that busy that day, I could come by just before lunch and help out…?

By the time the frenzy reached a fever pitch, it was half an hour before the cafeteria door was going to be opened.  Mr. Cornell was wandering the halls aimlessly, as he’d left a special session he was supposed to attend early so that he could be among the first in line for the food.  He kept passing my post at the front desk, where I was supposed to be warmly greeting a bunch of corporate assholes and handing them name tags so they could call each other something other than Asshole.  “It’s almost time for lunch,” he said, “you better go get in line now!  Get in line now, if you want, I’m sure it’s fine.  You should go.”  (Encouraging others to do something first, so that he can follow and then point fingers at the leader if anything goes wrong, is something I’ve come to expect from Mr. Cornell.  It appears that it was part of his education to slime his way through life, letting someone else go first.  If every dude in his graduating class had started fucking each other’s buttholes, well then, he’d really be living the life he dreams of.  But I digress.)

So Mr. Cornell keeps swinging past my station, checking the entrance to the banquet hall (still empty), and encouraging me to “beat that crowd.”  I, who had been near the cheese platter all morning, was full and didn’t want any lunch.  In an effort to cease his incessant buzzing, I said “I’m not that hungry, I’m not eating lunch.”

At first, I thought he’d had a heart attack.  Clutching his chest, he turned pale and sweaty.  “YOU’RE NOT EATING BEALE CENTER LUNCH?  BUT IT’S THE BEALE CENTER.  IT’S FREE!  IT’S LUNCH!  IT’S REAAAAAAAAAAALLY GOOD.  WHAT?  ARE YOU SICK?  AT LEAST GET SOMETHING TO GO AND EAT IT LATER.”  Not only was he flabbergasted that someone would actually choose not to eat sweaty pork steaks that had been lying under a heat lamp for half an hour, a scoop from the vat of mashed potatoes made from the finest mashed potato powder money could buy in bulk at Costco, that someone would turn down free congealed shrimp on a stick, as well as a whole bar of fancy cheeses and fancy crackers on fancy wooden platters, all the soda one could drink and unlimited desserts, NOT ONLY did he have to be personally offended by this, he also had to tell everyone in our office that I didn’t eat that day.

Two weeks later, people are still coming to my desk and asking why I didn’t eat Beale Center lunch that day.  “Well why not?  Why?”  They don’t seem to believe that I just wasn’t hungry.  I just wasn’t!!!

I know that part of the draw of the place is that the food is free, and that it’s presented in giant silver tureens heated with little mini Bunsen burners.  I mean, let an adult loose in a room filled with vats of processed foods, where everyone else is doin’ it too, is like a playground.  And to decline is to start a fucking Lord of the Flies situation.

Ironically, in this analogy, I’d be the one they called Piggy.

And another thing that bugs me about work.

I don’t think it’s quite fair that I should be hunted down and obligated to give money, MY MONEY, my hard-earned cash, to some admin assistant for a present for someone I don’t know or like personally, that I only WORK with, because they got knocked up or engaged or got a new job.

*Made up name, duh.

Michelle Fucking Pfeiffer

Where is your Mother?

I think she’s in Nashville, Tennessee at a Sheraton.  I called her on Monday and she was in a really good mood, she said she was in Nashville, Tennessee at a Sheraton.  I asked her why, and she said because her friend wanted to go and she didn’t have anything better to do “so I thought, what the hell?  I’ll go.”  This is the kind of thing you do in your later years, when you have money.  This is the kind of thing you’re supposed to do when you’re young, but right now you owe Citibank almost $60,000 in student loans and they own your salary for 2 years.

Where is your Father?

He’s living in Mt. Pleasant, California.  The last I heard, he wanted to offer me some money to hang out with him and pretend like I like him so he’ll feel better about himself without really having to do anything.  Turns out, the money is my “inheritance” and probably doesn’t exist and when I said no thanks, he made sure to tell me he’d be giving it to his NEW WIFE’S DAUGHTER, then!  Nyahh!  How does that grab you!!  I bet you’re jealous!

This is  the kind of thing you do in your later years.

Where were you born?

In a house in a small town on red shag carpet.  Aforementioned Mother got on her hands and knees and thankfully, aforementioned Father stuck around at least long enough to catch me on my slippery fall from the womb.  Thanks Daddy!

How many days until your birthday?

13.  I know because I’m counting and also I’m obnoxious so I mention it every single day.  You should buy me this because I don’t have it yet and I can’t figure out why:

What is the closest orange object to you?