Microsoft Word is the stupidest, most non-intuitive, poorly designed, piece of crap, word-processing program ever designed. The morons who created it should all be taken out and whacked in the knees with bats and have needles poked into their nipples.
Here’s a concept, WORDPERFECT. Want a well-designed document, WordPerfect can do the job. Want a fucked up disaster mess of a document? Use Word.
Piece of shit. I hate it.
It is more fun to have one’s eyeballs poked with pins than it is to telephone an insurance company.
Dear Hairdresser,
Here is a clue: Just because you think my hair might look “cool” with that fancy cut you propose does not mean that I want you to cut it that way. You are not me. You do not live with me and you are not someone I spend a lot of time with. This means that if you suggest a fab new do and I turn you down, you don’t cut it anyway. It also means you don’t cut it like you want to without saying anything at all. It means you do what I want, whether you like it or not.
Dear Person Who Leaves Dog Shit on the Sidewalk,
The reasons you should pick up your dog’s shit are so inherent and numerous, it honestly blows my mind that you don’t know any better. Perhaps you are simply stupid. If this is the case, you are really too stupid to own a dog. If it isn’t that you are stupid, but rather that you are careless or insensitive, then you are too careless and insensitive to own a dog. You would likely accidentally kill it or starve it to death or something. Whatever the reason, if you leave your dog’s shit on the sidewalk, find the dog a better home and go rub some dog shit on your face.
Dear Woman Who Won’t Step Aside on the Sidewalk,
Yes, you know who you are. You are the bitch who has to prove to everyone she encounters just how ALPHA she is, and in doing so, refuses to step even slightly to the side when encountering others. If someone is approaching you and there is a building or some other obstruction on the sidewalk on their side, and things are open on yours, common courtesy dictates that you step slightly to the side to allow the other person passage. You don’t prove your superiority when you refuse; rather you prove your insecurity, your pettiness, and just how pathetic you truly are. And watch out…one morning when I’ve gone without just enough sleep and my hormones are all over the map, I might actually turn around and whack you in the head with my purse. Hag.
Dear Man from blog Watt’s Up With That?,
You are a fucking moron. I realize from your consistent position near the top of the WordPress Dashboard that you must have a lot of readers. I can only hope these readers actually disagree with you, they just have a stronger stomach than I do. I can’t read your drivel or your claims that the planet’s climate isn’t changing. It doesn’t take a geoscientist to walk outside and figure out that things are drastically different. You can try to claim these are “natural” trends, in spite of the fact that nothing natural on the massive scale we are experiencing occurs in under a decade. You can try to turn people off to buying an environmental car because it’s ugly. You can do all your damage. Just know this: Any success you have in convincing people of your stupidity will only harm your children. There will be no frogs for them to play with, or polar bears or bats or numerous other creatures for them to share the planet with (although maybe that is what you want). Your offspring will fry in the sun and drown in the ocean, and just think, you did it to them! Kudos, asshole.
Dear Rush Limbaugh,
You know, I can’t say it any better than Al Franken. You are a big, fat idiot.
Dear Building Managers Everywhere,
It is not necessary to turn air conditioning up so high that buildings inside are 30 degrees in the summer just because it is 90 degrees outside. Buildings need only maintain a consistent temperature all year round, regardless of what the temperature is outside. And actually, your logic in turning the AC up in the summer is flawed. If you are going to adjust the temp inside according to the temp outside, buildings should be colder in the winter and warmer in the summer because people are wearing more clothes in the winter and fewer in the summer. Maybe if you actually turned the AC down your brains would thaw and this would be obvious.
Dear New York City,
Here’s a concept: Recycling. In a city this size, the fact that recycling isn’t required of buildings and is basically non-existent everywhere else is a deadly sin. You are a ginormous city, the biggest in the US. You have an obligation to the rest of the country and the rest of the world to recycle as much as possible. Do you do it? Not enough. You should be ashamed and get with the goddamned program already. Too much of your shit can be recycled and too much of your shit isn’t. Fix it.
Here’s another concept: Not every damn thing needs to be wrapped in plastic. Guess what? Zucchinis last longer outside of plastic and styrofoam. So do bananas. And guess what else? When a customer at a store doesn’t bring a bag, you don’t have to double-bag in plastic, one is more than enough. Or when a customer buys something like a pop or something else obviously intended to be consumed immediately, you don’t need to bag it at all. Plastic is nasty stuff. There are limited circumstances when it should be used, such as in the medical profession. Otherwise it is a non-biodegradable, environmental disaster and your overuse of the stuff, especially considering your enormous size, constitutes a criminal act. Fix it.
Dear Constant Facebook Posters,
Guess what? I don’t give a shit if you’re off to take a run or a shower or grab a cup of coffee. That isn’t the kind of information I think anyone cares about unless you are a celebrity (And people who care what celebrities do are idiots, so why would you want to please them?). It is nice to have a place where you can find that long lost high school friend and see how they are doing and what is going on in their lives. It is annoying to have to hear how so-and-so had to clean up their kid’s vomit last night or every trivial piece of crap they do every minute of every day. Oh, and guess what else? Pieces of flair are stupid. Throwing virtual water balloons proves you have no life and should consider getting one. Ditto with virtual hugs, “L’il Blue Cove” and all the other crap Facebook flunkies dream up to fuck with you. I have an idea, instead of wasting time on Facebook, how about taking all that extra time you have to waste and heading down to the library or the bookstore and getting a book and reading it. Try it, you might learn something.
Dear Self,
Time to stop bitching and pretend to work. Enough said.
Anyone who knows me well knows I am basically horse crazy. I didn’t come out horse crazy, but certainly acquired the insanity not long after birth. I was three years old when my mom took me to visit her little sister and the sister’s pony, Patches. I fell in love. From that moment on, I was hooked.
When I first told my mom I wanted a horse, because her little sister was twelve when she first acquired a horse, she promised me I could have one at twelve as well. She made the promise less with the intention of actually getting me this equine nearly a decade hence, but more to shut up my incessant requests for my own four-legged friend. She never believed her three-year-old would remember this promise. Ah, the naivete of parents. Of course I remembered and at age twelve years, three months, I did indeed receive a pony of my own.
The story of that pony is for another post. Suffice to say I absolutely adored her, but she was only 10 hands tall, which is basically forty inches. Considering I hit 5’7″ by age 10, this pony was much too small for me. In spite of my adoration, I eventually had to sell her and purchased a larger pony. I continued to grow and outgrew her as well. At age 14 I was 5’9″ tall and it was time to move on from ponies. I simply needed a horse to accommodate my ever-lengthening legs.
I had started doing some work for local farmers, helping out with horse training and stable cleaning. Through this I met a couple who had purchased a two-year-old gelding they did not have the time or experience to train. They offered him to me to buy for $200. Having just sold my pony to a good friend for $350, I had enough to buy him. They called him Volcano because he was born on the day Mount St. Helens erupted, May 18, 1980.
I remember the day I went and picked up my very own horse. I was so proud as I walked him up the road along the railroad tracks from their farm to ours. Though I would never have admitted it to anyone, and although I was terribly excited, I was also a bit frightened. He was big! I changed his name to Star Bright because of the bright star on his chestnut face, plus Volcano seemed a name that did not bode well. I took him home and settled him in. He was my horsey companion for the next twelve years. Life in my extremely dysfunctional family was difficult; Star made those years as a teenager bearable and even brought me happiness.
Star was an amazing horse. He could perform circus tricks and would give me a hug with his foreleg in exchange for a treat. I rode him hunt seat and also in gymkhana. At one horse show, I rode him in an equitation semi-finals class in the morning, which we won, placing us in the finals that evening. That day, I rode him in a bunch of gymkhana classes because he seemed to really enjoy the speed and agility required for these gaming events. He won the hi-point championship for the gymkhana. Then that evening, still energetic, I rode him in the hunt-seat equitation finals and we won reserve champion. He was amazing like that. The horse was as happy in a show ring as he was trekking up the side of a hill or at the beach playing in the water.
Keeping a horse after I grew up and moved away from my parents’ farm was a bit difficult to say the least. I moved him around and even leased him for a year while I traveled. I was modeling at the time and spent a good deal of time out of the country. At some point, it became clear that keeping him was not in his best interest. He needed someone who could focus on him and I wasn’t doing it. My parents didn’t keep horses anymore, so he could not go back to their place, and he would have been ignored there anyway.
The day I sold him was heartbreaking. He would not go into his new owner’s trailer. It was as if he knew what I was doing and did not want to go. I felt horribly guilty and sad. I visited him at his new home and he always remembered me. The new owners eventually sold him to someone else, a woman in a small town in the northwestern part of Oregon. The last time I went to visit him, he was 19 years old, and seemed genuinely happy to see me. He rubbed his head on my chest. I rode him and visited, then said goodbye, not realizing I would never see him again. The farm was over two hours from my home in Portland. The next time I tried to contact the owners to arrange a visit, their number had been disconnected. I was not able to locate them and do not know how Star’s life turned out.
Every year on May 18, the rest of the world remembers the day Mount St. Helens blew its ash all over Oregon and Washington, flattening trees and decimating a forest. I, however, remember May 18 as the day my Star was born. Not a year goes by I don’t remember this day and think about the big chestnut horse who made me happy. Happy Birthday, Star Bright. Thank you for being my friend.
Liz Cheney is as big a fucking hate-mongering idiot as her devil father. Spawn of the devil keeps his evil going…
I may have been followed this morning. A woman I had seen on the train got onto the elevator with me and did not choose a floor while I was on the elevator. I do have to say though, that she did not get off at the 6th floor as I did.
When I go to businesses that ask my name, I make one up. Your name? Aristophanes. Spell that one. Then pronounce it.
We are losing. Here is my prediction of what is going to happen: The ginormous corporations will continue to get bigger and proliferate. The masses, increasingly ignorant and sedated with fast food, television, noise, sports, and religion will become even stupider, turning back into the peasants of the middle ages. The power elite are going to win and the poor are going to help them. The poor want to be rich and if they were given the means, they would act the same way so they don’t question being constantly sold and mollified with product, trying so hard, kissing vacations goodbye and futilely trying to shovel their toddlers into Harvard. Since they will not become a part of that which they seek, they go along and buy their lottery tickets, stuffing their faces, plugging earphones into their heads and turning up the music so they can drown out their own oblivion. They believe it when they are told there is a magnificent being in the sky who cares about them and will take care of them after death so they don’t have to concern themselves with the fact that the place in which they are actually living right here and right now carries other possibilities. Numbed and choking on corn and petroleum, they will let the power class continue to take them and take the planet. In time, those of us who are in the minority and see the damage and want change may rise up and revolt, but success is an unlikely prospect.
And a thought from my friend Carin: Something that’s been bugging me. Self righteous boobs claiming to be upstanding and moral whilst they are posing half nude with photographers, getting boob jobs and participating in a meat, sorry, “beauty” pageant. Or teenage twits who claim they are the voice of abstinence-only sex ed while holding their baby that they conceived obviously not through abstinence.
As I walk to the subway, ride the subway, and walk to my office, I’m filled with thoughts and observations. The moment I walk through the door and sit down under the flourescent lights, the thoughts fritter away into the ether. I wonder as I’m walking if I should stop and write some of the thoughts into my notebook, but I don’t do it. My notebook used to be full of thoughts, but right now the only words there are a note I took to remind myself to contact my daughter’s school about an art teacher who smashes art pieces she deems unworthy of her almighty judgment. Other than that, nothing. Is it the flourescent lights? Maybe it’s the air-conditioning. Maybe it blows the thoughts from my brain.
So a week ago I published a blurb about the swine flu thinking everyone was freaking out for nothing. For a few days after, I wondered if maybe I got it wrong. Now however, I’m back to my original premise. I was also right about the foolish overreacting that would take place. Some ountries have banned travel to Mexico. Others have killed off a bunch of pigs. Everyone is still all freaked out. Yet the numbers of deaths have remained quite small and very contained even though the flu itself has shown up in many places. Craziness.
The killing of the pigs really bugs me. In spite of assertions by doctors and other scientists that this flu isn’t caught from eating pork, nor can it be transmitted from pigs to humans, Egypt killed over 300,000 pigs. In response, the WHO came out with a statement that the name needs to be changed because killing pigs is unnecessary.
All the news organizations went nuts when a toddler died from the flu outside of Mexico, the first case outside that country. EGADS! It’s spreading! Someone outside Mexico died! We’re all going to get it! It’s pandemic! We’re all dead! Um, yeah. Lost in the uproar was the fact the child was Mexican and had just been in Mexico. It wasn’t like the flu came crawling across the border, snaking its way north in ever increasing tentacles. Yet that is what the media worldwide seemed to want people to believe.
The actual truth is that most of the people who died had not gotten treatment when they should have. For everyone else who has contracted the flu, their illnesses have been sh0rt-lived and they have recovered. The trick was early detection and intervention. It would be nice if the news media could find a nice balance between letting people know they should do something and acting like lunatics. Unfortunately they usually lean towards lunacy.
The nasty right-winger radio hosts have used the swine flu as an opportunity to spread their hate mongering, lies, and racism. They blatantly lie, claiming that we’re all going to get sick from Mexicans and we better close our borders further. It’s disgusting. Maybe any idiots who believe their bullshit will lock themselves in their homes with a gun and stop wandering the streets. If this happens, I guess in a twisted way the hate mongerers have performed a public service.
Random Thoughts on Everything and Nothing 