Posts Tagged ‘Current Events’

I apologize in advance

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

Devon and I were chillin’ in the living room, Devon playing a video game and me not playing a video game, since I’ve given up World of Warcraft for Lent. (I’m a recovering Catholic, so there’s no reason I need to observe Lent except that I want to.) We flipped on the TV for Dad, who is spending the night with us, and Dad said…

Look, I’m sorry, I don’t even know how to phrase this without sounding like the biggest dick in the world. I’m sorry, really. Sorry that I think this is funny and need to blog it and sorry Dad said it.

But Dad said, “What’s up with all the negroes?  They’re all over the news.” This was in response to Gov. Paterson and Al Sharpton appearing in back-to-back segments.

My dad is 88 and has Alzheimer’s disease, but I’m pretty sure he would have said the same thing 20 years ago.

Like I said, I’m a dick because I’m still laughing. Sorry.

In other news, I finally had a movie-worthy cabbie experience going from Queens to Brooklyn. I spent last night at Dad’s, and we took a cab back to my apartment. Through the rear-view mirror, I watched the cab driver fall asleep. You heard me. I said FALL ASLEEP. He even did the deep-breathing thing people do when they are FUCKING SLEEPING.

Then his girlfriend called. To his credit, he asked her not to curse, since he had to put her on speakerphone to avoid getting nailed by the fuzz. (Yes, I just said “fuzz.” Deal with it.)

Apparently, his girlfriend was perturbed because he was sleep-working when he should have been home taking care of her sick ass. Literally. Through the speakerphone, I heard: “You motherfucker sonofabitch. I’ve got stuff coming out of everywhere, my mouth, my asshole….”

I love New York.

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iPad: Not the Apple of my i

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

Dear Apple,

I remember a time not that long ago when I was in love with you. You were so young and pretty. And I could drop my first love, the iBook, from a billion feet in the air with no damage. In geek parlance, I admired your constitution score.

Times have changed. With the release of the iPad, it’s like I truly see you for the first time in all your soggy douchiness. You tout yourself as “magical.” No, you are not “magical” — you are an ordinary device in an increasingly crowded field, and a shortsighted one at that. You allow publishers like that other douche nozzle, Macmillan, to jack up the price of ebooks and milk your customers. You’re pissy at Google for having the nerve to compete with you in a free market. You make using iTunes with non-Apple tech like looking for a Cheerio in a cow patty. And lastly, how did your marketing monkeys not see the MAXiPad jokes coming from space?

I am so disappointed in you, Apple. I feel used — used like the 10-cent media whores Steve Jobs has to suck off to get the fawning press he does.

I am ashamed to admit that I still dig my iPod, but I suppose we can be fuck buddies until something better comes along.

Sincerely,
Dirty Hooker

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Print: BP is dropping

Monday, January 25th, 2010

This is hard to write considering I earn my paycheck from the profit fumes of the newspaper industry, but there comes a time in every adult’s life when she needs to suck up an unpleasant truth: Print is dead, and it ain’t coming back.

Print doesn’t know it’s dead yet. Its zombie corpse is still flailing about, threatening to eat our brains, but I have accepted the loss and moved on. I expect my job will disappear within the next few years as newspapers take their last gasp, but you know what? I love my nook. Love it, love it, love it. (Don’t tell the Amazon ads all over this blog, but the nook was wearing a tight skirt, and well, you know how it goes.) I love having my news and books delivered straight to my nook and not having to deal with piles of dead trees. I love getting my news online instantly. I love seeing photos and reading reports from people who live where the news is happening.

I’m sorry, print. We had a good ride, but I’ve met someone else. It’s not me, it’s you.

I’ve been accused of blasphemy by my peers and friends who still love the feel of pages turning. I admit to a certain fondness for stacks and stacks of books, with all  the promise held within. When I learned to read, it was like I’d been given access to a magical language. I used it to read a lot of Choose Your Own Adventure and Encyclopedia Brown books, but still.

I’m filing my affection for paper books and periodicals into the part of my brain that longs for a return to the use of calling cards and proper handkerchief etiquette. I’ll be sad they’re gone, but it’s time.

I am less pleased about the related death of invegstigative journalism. It’s expensive and doesn’t bring in the readers, which means we get endless stories about the latest freak-show Octomom-Balloon Boy-Kid Who Got Suspended For Bringing Utensils to School. I’m clinging to the hope that we’ll figure it all out eventually.

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Looking for some cheer here

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

I seem to have misplaced my Christmas spirit. Until about three years ago, I was so amped for Christmas that people had to tell me to calm my shit down, because it was just embarrassing in a grown woman, and I would tell those people to stuff it, because I had some Christmas cookies and eggnog to devour. Then I would waddle myself over to the TV and watch “A Charlie Brown Christmas” under the explosion of Christmas lights and decorations.

Christmas is always nice (last year I spent it in Rome, which was awesome), but I haven’t felt that giddy excitement in awhile. Maybe it’s because global warming has fixed it so that New York hasn’t even seen snowfall yet. More likely it’s because so many of my Christmas memories have centered around tradition — making Italian cookies that take all day to make, even with three people; decorating the tree; making highly alcoholic eggnog punch; mom telling me not to put so much booze in the eggnog punch; mom begging me to open one of my presents early, because she liked giving them even more than I liked getting them.

When I mentioned that I wanted to start creating some traditions of our own, Devon pointed out that those things tend to evolve naturally. Not sure I agree with that, since traditions happen because people make them happen. At any rate, we don’t tend to do the same thing twice, which makes it hard to create traditions, so I’ve decided to create some of my own. I was too wiped to do cards or decorations this year, but I’m going to do one festive thing if I have to kill people to make it happen.

What do you guys do for Christmas that has meaning for you? (If you don’t celebrate Christmas, let me hear your other holiday traditions. I’m a fan of yule.)

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Keeping the world safe from rogue crafters

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

What’s a girl gotta do to get some sodium hydroxide in this town?

Here’s where I’d normally joke about making bombs and meth, but that would probably put me on an FBI list somewhere. Of course, I was probably put on a list after telling the world that Devon kills hoboes. I’m sure the “joke” about popping Balloon Boy’s only defense against gravity sent up a few red flags, too.

But seriously, all I’d like to do is make some cold-process soap. For that, I need fat, water and lye. I have already rendered the fat of the obese and gathered their tears, so all that’s left is the lye. But I’m told that recent laws make it a ridiculous pain in the ass for brick-and-mortar stores to sell lye. So now I have to buy it online and pay shipping costs for something I used to get easily at the local hardware store.

It’s no wonder I’m becoming more crazy libertarian every day.

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BE AFRAID! — no, not really

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

At a friend’s house the other day, I learned that children in a school in New Jersey aren’t allowed to carry backpacks from class to class anymore, presumably because they’re hauling weapons of mass destruction to history class. I know I would.

When I was in high school, I had a bag that could hold about 4,000 pounds of crap. I carried all my morning books in that bag so I wouldn’t have to trudge back and forth to my locker. I could fit small freshmen in that bag.

Maybe that’s why schools started outlawing backpacks. Good job, me.

What the hell are people so afraid of, and why do they create crap rules that don’t keep us any safer?

Cracked explores the problem with its usual brand of ferocious investigative journalism. I always suspected that Amber Alerts and the sex-offender registry were worthless, at best.

Diddling kids sucks, but if it’s going to happen, odds are it’s going to be creepy Uncle Todd, who REALLY likes giving horsey rides, rather than that dorky loner three blocks down who got nailed once for public urination.

Hell, if anyone had seen me peeing in Mom’s backyard, I could be a sex offender now.

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Gravity rules

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

You know what’s sad? A little boy falling out of a helium balloon and going splat against the Colorado landscape. You know what’s not sad? A helium balloon taking off by itself while a little boy hides in an attic.

Move along, people! There’s nothing to see here!

I’m a cold-hearted bastard, though. When Devon told me there was a boy trapped in a balloon and they didn’t know how to get him down, my response was, “Pop it.”

I was sure I had a maternal instinct laying around here somewhere.

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The TSA wants me to be a hairy Neanderthal

Monday, December 1st, 2008

That’s the only reason I can think of why they felt the need to confiscate my Bath & Body Works Japanese Cherry Blossom moisturizer and shower gel. These pleasantly scented $8.50 threats to national security made it through LaGuardia, but the folks at Denver International Asshats are obviously on top of their game. Last time it was my lavender-scented shaving gel. Interestingly enough, Devon made it through with a 6-inch-long iron pipe in his backpack.

A fucking iron pipe.

Clearly, the threat of giving everyone a really good scrubdown is more serious than beating the crap out of passengers with a fucking iron pipe.

Did I mention it was made of iron? And that it was a pipe?

Now, before anyone gets all up in my grill about not reading the security regs the TSA so nicely changes every six hours or so, let me say that I don’t question their right to take my shit. When I buy a ticket, I agree to all kinds of nonsense, like boarding the flight fully clothed and leaving my spear gun at home. I question their intelligence in deciding that my moisturizer and shower gel, which were about half empty and, volume-wise, would probably have fit in 3-ounce bottles if I’d had bottles to transfer them into, were a greater threat than a fucking iron pipe. If only I’d thought to bring caps, I could have poured the stuff into the pipe and saved myself about 20 bucks.

I also lost an earring. That’s probably not the TSA’s fault, even though I really, really want it to be.

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Citibank to eat my cash

Wednesday, November 26th, 2008

So far, I’ve received two e-mails from Citibank assuring me that my accounts are FDIC insured.

How comforting.

Clearly, I need to find a new bank, but with the rate they’re failing, I’m not even sure where to go. During the Depression, my grandparents kept their savings in the Bank of Old Mattresses, and that seems like a better idea every day. Especially if pirates snatch my savings. A Somali pirate tried to steal my lunch money just this afternoon, and I had to beat him off with a sharpened pencil.

No, wait, I mean beat him up. Beating him off is definitely something different.

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Arrgh, matey!

Friday, November 21st, 2008

When I Googled “pirates,” I expected to get lots of baseball crap. But the Pittsburgh Pirates ended up being only the fourth hit down, preceded by Wikipedia entries on piracy and the video game “Pirates!” In first place was something relevant to my search — a National Post article on pirates in Somalia.

All of the Johnny Depp jokes have been made on Fark already, so I won’t bother, but I don’t get why it’s so hard to catch these guys. Just steal their peg legs and eye patches, and they’ll be gimpy dudes with no depth perception.
It seems pretty simple.
I’m sure international piracy has serious repercussions on blah blah blah and all that, but it’s hard to take this shit seriously when all I can think of are parrots screeching, “Shiver me timbers!”
Then I Googled “shiver me timbers” and found that it essentially means “may God strike me dead.” Which will happen soon enough, no doubt.

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