Frank Fagg

I just wanted to say that today at work, I spoke to a customer named Frank Fagg. If this were your name, wouldn't you change it? Can you imagine going through childhood with this name? D'ya think you'd get beat up alot?

I hate Sundays

I went to the gym for the first time today, and the first thing I did was to lock my keys, purse, and cell phone in my car. I had to call my parents to come unlock my car. The gym only has one steam room, near the pool, and it's for men and women. Gross. There's a sauna in the locker room, but dry heat is gross. Later, after I worked out, I tried to go to Pollo Rey downtown, and discovered I've completely lost all ability to parallel park. Pollo Rey was closed anyway.

Simon Cowell and Polyanna, go to Hell!

(I reread this post about 3 years after I stopped working with the woman mentioned below. Within a week, I saw her whilst lunching downtown. The universe is messing with me!)

I feel like complaining, but I'm not sure what I want to complain about. There are just so many things. I just finished watching Wonderfalls, which was a really good show. It only lived to see thirteen episodes, but it was so much better than most of the tripe on tv. I hate reality tv! All of it! I wish it would all just disappear. Arrested Development is going off the air, it's just not fair! American Idol is stupider than anything I could have ever dreamed up. So is America's Next Top Model, Survivor, Fear Factor, all of it!

Television ratings seem to be determined by the lowest common denominator. And Fox, though they air weird shows, don't give them much of a chance beyond that. Now I've discovered another show I like, Bones, which is sort of like CSI only better, partly because it stars David Boreanaz, a.k.a. Angel, and Zooey Deschanel's beautiful sister, Emily. But now they've put it up against Lost, which is one of the most popular shows on TV. I had to get a dual tuner DVR just to deal with this.

Are they stupid? I think they are stupid. I think anyone who watches American Idol and then discusses it at work the next day is stupid. I hate Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul, Ryan Seacrest, and that dude who had gastric bypass surgery. I also hate myself for knowing this much about any of them. But I can't escape it! My coworkers talk about it, my friends have forced me to watch it before, it's always on my MSN homepage, and it's all they ever want to talk about on Headline News in the morning! Fuck American Idol! Fuck it right in the ear! I realize I sound like my crazy, embittered grandma, but I don't care. Sometimes the simplest sentiments express things best. And spare me the crap about watching too much TV. All shows aren't crap. Being preachy is crappy, though.

Another thing that really annoys me but is unrelated, is this woman in my office. Her name is, approximately, Julie Anjeweirdo. She's one of those annoying Mormon ladies who thinks she knows better than everyone else, even though she's totally frumpy. Why on earth should anyone listen to a frump? And she seems to do even less work than I do.

Whenever I call her to ask her a question about the ever-changing rules, policies, and procedures of our corporation, she can't ever understand what I say the first time. Every conversation starts out with me telling her that I have a question about x, and whether x be simple or complex, she always, always, always answers me with, "What? What are you talking about? I don't understand what you're saying!" This is because she's not listening. She has the particular position she has because she doesn't really have to do much work.

But the thing that she does that annoys me the most, the thing that just makes me crazy, is that whenever I say something about how this or that policy is unclear or something unfair has been done to a customer, she always says, "Don't say that, be positive!"

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I hate it when people say that! Stating a fact such as, "Mr. Jones doesn't understand why he's been double-charged for every package he's sent in the past month," is not "being negative." Sure, the subject of the sentence is negative--our company is ripping Mr. Jones off, but to be negative would be to say something like, "Our shitty company has been ripping Mr. Jones off for the past month! We suck!" What is the "positive" way to say this? "Mr. Jones wants to congratulate us for so cleverly ripping him off all month?" Idiot.

Or she'll bring out that rusty old adage, "Don't say 'hate.' You don't really 'hate' anything!" Yes, yes, in fact, I do "hate." And what I hate is when people talk to me like I'm five years old! Especially when I'm maybe a million times smarter than they are! Of course, if that's the only way she can ever feel superior to someone, I guess I really shouldn't take that away from her...

I am being driven to murder

I am being driven to murder. Against my will, but headed down that road just the same. Why? "This is Darwin, may I have your name please?"

Laughing Myself Awake

I woke myself up laughing this morning. I don't think I've ever done that before. I was dreaming that Drew Quizenberry (or however you spell his stupid name) was going to be on a new local Sesame Street knockoff show for kids. His costars, aside from muppets, were a chick named Nancy Grape and a guy whose last name was Levine or something. The thing that made me laugh was because I was making fun of all this, and I said shouldn't the Levine guy's last name be Cherry or Lemon or something? Then I started laughing and woke myself up.

"Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About"

I have just discovered the most hilarious website of all time. A British journalist has a website called Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About. It is brilliant, witty, and long. I have been reading it for about 3 hours--it's been an ongoing project for this guy for many years, and he is representative of how British writers are just born funnier than Americans. Americans, (and apparently Germans like this guy's girlfriend), just so often can't seem to handle irony or satire or sarcasm or sardonic wit. They just get offended by it, per my usual experience. Look at the sentence I just read 45 times because it is simply RAD: "I'm surely not going to be able to pick out anything - my searching fingers are now too callused, from running them along Margret's reasoning in an attempt to identify the scar where it's been imperfectly welded to reality."
Oh my God! If I had the knack for metaphor/hyperbole/whatever that this guy does, I'd, I'd....I don't know what I'd do, but every time a thought passed through my brain I'd laugh and clap my hands with glee, no matter where I was or how insane people thought I was. I'd eventually end up in an asylum, drugged and muttering to myself, but, hey, isn't that where old age leads most people anyway?

My biggest pet peeve

I hate it when someone either sees or smells your food at work and says, "Eew, what is that?" I think it's really rude. Like, I don't look at someone and say, "Eew, what are you wearing?" even though that would be a valid question to many people at work, as would be, "What did you do to your hair?" or "What look were you going for when you put your makeup on, pill-popping middle-aged mom? Oh, whoops!"

There was really one lady in particular who used to do this, but she's dead now. Well, not really, but dead to my office, since she quit and everyone hated her. She was a crazy bitch and used to sit in the break room and harass everyone about their food, because everything looked wierd to her. Then I sat by this other girl who, I swear, complained about being able to smell other people's food before they had even taken it out of their cars and brought it inside the building. I read something in Miss Manners or something similar where someone complained about their cubicle mate's stinky food, and Miss Manners or whomever told them to get over it. If I were of some other ethnicity and someone said that about my ethnic food, I'd tell them they were racist.

Maybe I should coin a new phrase and call these people "foodist." And not like the gourmet type of foodist, or foodie. But someone who fears or is offended by strange food that someone else is eating whilst minding her own business and not trying to force others to like!

I say this because I made soup last night, and while it is very yummy, it will probably look wierd and smell strongly, since it has corn, green chilies, and cheese in a creamy base. Oh, yeah, and it has cumin in it, which is very smelly. And I've become apprehensive of bringing anything to work that isn't a frozen dinner because it causes people to freak out so much, which causes me to get pissed off!

The Story of Mr. Black

Stop awhile, and let me relate to you the story of Aubrey Black.

It was a cold Saturday night, and Noel was in town on a rare appearance from Moscow. We had stuffed ourselves with sushi at Zutto and dessert at Le Café, where we ogled and disagreed on the sexiness of our waiter, Guillaume. I thought he had sexy arms, but the unibrow was a turnoff. My old landlord, Terra, had admitted to me, during many forced conversations, that she wanted Guillaume to paint the interior of her house naked.
After the Café, we ventured to the Neurolux, where Noel, Haley, and I encountered a really shitty band of 15-year-olds playing what sounded like pots and pans. At the end of the evening, we and our other friends decided to walk to Taylor’s house for his birthday party.
Taylor’s house was about 25 blocks away, and a stranger asked to join us, as he’d been invited to the party by a friend of his who was already at the party house. He told us he was from Coeur d’Alene and hoped that he would hook up with his friend, Nick Bock, so that he wouldn’t have to sleep under a bridge that night. My friends, who didn’t understand that outsiders could tell jokes convincingly, decided that this stranger was too random for them. One of them decided, in fact, to call him “Random Dude.”
Random Dude, as they called him, told me his name was Aubrey Black. He and I had an interesting conversation as we made our way to Taylor’s house. He told me about how he couldn’t get any healthcare through his job, but that he was glad his little daughter qualified for Medicare, or else he’d be fucked. He told me about how having a child brings all kinds of guilt you’d never know otherwise.
On the way to the party, Haley decided she’d had enough of the walk and ran up to a house at the corner she thought the party was at and pounded on the door. Two teenagers came out, but informed her they didn’t know who the hell Taylor was or where the fuck he lived. Aubrey and I just rolled our eyes as Noel pulled Haley away from the teenagers’ house. As we were leaving that wrong house, Mr. Black tried to say something to Haley, but she just said, “Whatever, Random Dude!”
Once we finally got the party, we split up, Tyler and Stephanie disappearing while Noel, Drew, and I played the short version of Trivial Pursuit with Brian. Taylor was tripping on mushrooms in the corner, incapacitated. The other players forfeited the game when they saw that I was winning, with 4 pieces of pie to the next-runner-up, who had 1. Aubrey Black was leaving, and came over to say goodbye to me, “Look me up if you’re ever in Coeur d’Alene!”
“Whoa, is Random Dude leaving?” Haley asked. “Hey, Random Dude, hope there's a bridge available!” she yelled as he closed the door.
“His name is Aubrey!” I corrected her.
“Aubrey?! Isn’t that a girl’s name?” she laughed.
“He’s really nice!” I countered, but was drowned out by snotty comments by Noel, Tyler, and Stephanie: “Whatever, he was just trying to pick you up!”
“Yeah, he’s a dork!”
(sigh) “I’m getting bored. Let’s. Go.”
I would love to be able to tell you that Mr. Black exacted some kind of fitting revenge on these detractors, but of course that didn’t happen. Noel, Haley, Drew, and I shared a cab to Haley’s house, where I fended off doggy and kitty attacks on the living room futon before Noel joined me, tiring of Drew’s attempts to get into her jeans.
The next day, after Tyler, Noel, Haley, Stephanie, and I drank pitchers of Stella for seven hours, we saw Tayor at The Flicks, where he told us that some party guest had gotten into a screaming match with his next-door neighbor late the night before. We told him about Haley’s mistaken identity teenager encounter, but he didn’t have any knowledge of that. No, he said, his next-door neighbor came outside at about 4:30 to ask people in the front yard to be quiet, but someone had taken offense and threatened to beat him up.
“My next-door neighbor is pissed,” Taylor told us, “He left a nasty letter on my front door!”
“I bet it was Random Dude!” Haley laughed, as did Tyler, Noel, and Stephanie.

I have baby puke all over my neck, but I don't mind. Reed is just so gosh darn cute! What I do mind, though, is the fact that I can't get the stink from whatever Hank rolled in off of me. I keep waffling between wanting to get a dog and not wanting to get a dog, but lately I've just been thinking I might be too lazy for it. But then again, all I ever do is watch tv anyway. But then again, I'm not sure I could afford it. Not to mention the fact that if any future doggie chewed up my furniture or shoes or pissed on my carpet or scratched up my doors or walls, I would go bonkers. But I do have 4 plants, and plants aren't fuzzy and they don't have wet noses. And you can't put silly trenchcoats on plants.