natties

Don’t Eat What’s In the Can With the Cat Face On the Lid

4 Comments

This is not for human consumption.  Unless you’re drunk and obnoxious, then go right ahead.

Isabel, my illustrious 5# black cat, is elderly.  She’s 14, which in cat terms is just shy of “fossil.”   Isabel is also one of my most favorite cats ever, so I am trying to keep her running and healthy for as long as humanely possible.  One of the elements in the Isabel preservation plan is she eats some high faluting old-cat food.  She gets dry food (still has all 32 teeth) but to keep her weight up she also gets wet food to supplement it in the mornings.  Since Miz Izz is very tiny and only eats teaspoons at a time, one can is enough for about 4 days.  It’s also expensive, so the other two cats (who need no supplementation to their caloric intake, regular Cat Chow is fine for them) don’t get it.  Just Miz Izz.  And Jerry.

Jerry, as we all know, occasionally drinks a case or so of Natties.  You can get good and besnookered on Natties, even though it’s sort of like driving through the ghetto to get to work: it takes longer, smells worse and is a lot more hassle than just taking the freeway.   Anyway, Saturday night, Jerry had been into the Natties from about 5PM until about 11:30, so he’d killed the better part of a Natty Pack (30 twelve-ounce cans) and he was in fall-over obnoxious mode.

Beer goggles…make me see shit all effed up…

I’m not into cooking at 11:30PM.  Even on the weekends, bedtime for me is almost always before 10PM, and earlier than that if I can get away with it.  I’m an early morning person.  I don’t really do late night well.  Jerry has a bad habit of demanding me to fix him food at late hours and then not eating it, which really pisses me off- waking me up is bad enough, but having to wake up to fix food you’re going to waste infuriates me.  So I very seldom indulge his late night snackie wanderings even though there have been times I’ve regretted it later.

I don’t like just turning him loose in the kitchen even though there is always plenty of lunch meat, fruit and vegetables, snackies, whatever, readily available in the fridge.  He has a way of trashing the kitchen that is an exquisite nightmare to try to clean up later.  But I was tired, and bound determined that he would forget about food and pass out soon enough anyway.

Then I heard him rooting around in the fridge, and I had visions that weren’t pretty.  I had to get up and investigate, lest he decide to clear out everything in the fridge, except beer, leaving it on the floor to rot and leaving me to clean up the mess in the morning.  He’s done that before.

I don’t say Jerry is filthy as a horde of hogs in jest.  He has made similar disaster zones in the kitchen floor before.

I walk in to the kitchen and could barely contain myself.  He had gotten out Isabel’s catfood (which had been covered with the bright yellow cat-face lid that I put on it to keep the rest of the fridge from smelling like catfood) and was snarfing it down like it was going out of style.

Then, to my intense amusement, he looks over at me mid-snarf and says, “I think this tuna is rotten.”  Maybe that’s because it was salmon asses and other assorted meat and fish by-products you don’t even want to imagine?   But he finished the can.  I wasn’t going to stop him at that point.  I guess I have nothing to worry about as long as he doesn’t start meowing and trying to lick his balls.

Happy Birthday Great-Grandma, Fighting Over Used Shoes, and Other Pointless Endeavors

2 Comments

Great-Grandma couldn’t stand Ted Kennedy, or any of the Kennedy family for that matter.

Happy birthday to my great-grandma, who would have been 114 today, if she hadn’t died in 1992 at the age of 94.  I miss Grandma.  She was cool.  I would give almost anything for just one more afternoon of coffee and conversation with her, but you get what you get.  I’m just glad that she lived close and I was able to spend as much time with her as I did. Besides having a taste for insanely strong coffee and for discussing conservative politics, she had a collection of tabloids that would boggle the mind.  She always claimed to read them for the entertainment value.  I read them for the entertainment value too, especially the Weekly World News.

The John Deere hat is a nice touch.

Grandma also had a framed, signed picture of President Reagan which I am sure one of the twins (my grandmother’s evil identical twin sisters) ended up with.  I can’t believe the twins (who were in their early 70s at the time) had an out and out knock-’em-down, yank each other’s  hair out, fist fight over her stuff. Besides some clothes and a few nice pairs of size 8 shoes, the Reagan picture was probably the only thing she owned that had any monetary value.  If I know my twin great-aunts (and one of them is still alive-though the one who had the stroke died about five years ago) they were fighting over the shoes.  They wore size 8s too.

I have a strong shoe fetish myself- but even should they be size 7s, I’m not fighting anyone for used shoes.

My twin great-aunts’ altercation over a few pairs of used shoes and a whole lot of worthless kitsch convinced me once and for all: I don’t need dead people’s stuff.  My sisters can have it all.  I am just curious when I die (they are slightly older than me, but they are much better preserved, and will most certainly outlive me) if they will brawl over my used underwear (the bras won’t fit either one of them- unless they add a little extra stuffins,) and not a few pairs of size 7 shoes that only one of them can wear.   The oldest, who was my sadistic childhood nemesis, does well to fit her behemoth meaty feet into an 8EEE.  The other sister also wears a 7B, and therefore, my shoes fit her.

I’ll cut out the middleman and just put my old skivvies on E-Bay now.

Or, better yet, I could E-Bay Jerry’s nasty old whitey-tighties, after he’s worn them for a night of gambling, drinking and the Hershey Squirts:

Of course, there’s a dude who’s already thought of using what appears to be a soiled set of whitey-tighties as a safe.  I can sort of understand the mentality, though I would struggle with the temptation to pick out the cash and then toss the skivvies.

The replacement fridge is up and running quite nicely as of this morning.  The ice is frozen and Jerry’s Natties are cold.  Spuds is in the G&R, and all is right with the world.

The G&R still has the most awesome fried bologna sandwiches.  And cream pies.  And an original late ’80’s Spuds McKenzie.

Things that Suck #501- The Fridge Took a Dump, and #502- Drunken Assholes Smoking in My Car

4 Comments

No, as much as I like the pink fridge, I can’t afford it, and Jerry would crap himself should he have to retrieve his Natties from this.  However, I don’t even think a pink fridge would stand between him and Nattyvana.

The beautiful Central Ohio area just went through a week’s worth of apocalyptic storms followed by interminable stygian heat.  Yesterday wasn’t quite as intolerable as the rest of the week, so I decided I would go to the campground party knowing that if worse came to worse there is AC in our cabin as well as in my car.

It was hot- and I didn’t stay in it too long, but I stayed long enough to munch on some fresh perch (believe it or not, Lake Erie perch is quite nice) and to sit around and shoot the shit for a bit.

Perch is good eating.  Lightly breaded and deep fried.  Mmm, mmm.

By the time I left the campground it had been a nice afternoon, though rather subdued.  Jerry had gotten his drink on pretty good Saturday night, so he was more quiet than usual.  He wasn’t able to get shitfaced yesterday because he had to drive his truck home,  which was fine with me because that meant I didn’t have to deal with driving Tipsy McNumbNuts home.  I live for the small victories.  Attempting to drive 40 miles with a babbling drunken smoking idiot flopping about in the car is most unpleasant, trust me.  It was worse when he and his (now) estranged buddy Terry used to get shitfaced and then demand I take them home at 1 AM.

Joy and rapture.

Paarrtty!!!!!  YEAH, DUDE!

Two drunken idiots, running their mouths, flopping about, smoking, waving around their lit cigarettes (intentionally or not, threatening to burn holes in the upholstery, each other or me) in one car.  I’m surprised neither one of them managed to visit cousin Ralph in my car, though they both came close.  Puke smell does NOT ever come out of car upholstery.  Neither does cat piss, which is why my mother should learn to roll up the windows on her van, but that’s another story.  I would be happy to find an effective method to keep Jerry from thinking the first thing he needs to do when he sits down in my car is light up.

I used to smoke in the car when I smoked- a lot- but by the grace of God I’ve been 10 years without lighting up myself, and now I really despise my car smelling like his ashtray.  I get him back for it though.  Since I love strong scents- they have to be strong or I can’t smell them anyway- I try to find the absolute strongest air fresheners I can find.  One of my favorites is the Chanel #5 knock-off cologne from the Dollar Store.  It probably smells like insecticide to normal people, but with my very limited sense of smell it actually smells somewhat like Chanel.  Jerry hates it even though he knows that’s his punishment for smoking in my car and leaving that god-awful smell in it as well as ashing all over it.  Jerry is not a neat smoker.  Imagine someone with tremor disorder who’s drunker than a monkey with a lit cigarette.  My car actually becomes his ashtray.

I know I smoked for years, but it’s a nasty gross habit.

So I arrive home blissfully un-stressed from a peaceful drive home- just me, the AC on full blast, and Metallica on full blast.  I go take a shower and put on some lounge clothes.  Then I go to the fridge to get some iced tea (strong, no sweetener, and a bit of lemon) only to grab the ice tray and get another shower.  Everything in the fridge freezer had melted- ice cream, (there’s a bloody disaster for you) ice cubes, previously frozen vegetables, and so forth.  Damn, damn, damn.  The irony of this is that the power never went out, the AC unit is (knock on Formica or whatever the hell that stuff is) holding tough and the cable is on.  The chest freezer is plugging away quite nicely, as is Jerry’s small beer fridge out in the foyer.  But the main fridge- the side-by-side 30 year old behemoth fridge that takes up half my kitchen, took a major puke.

I had to move the beer to save the food. Sorry about your luck.

Guess who’s got some warm Natties.

So, because I’m poor and he’s cheap, Jerry gets on Craig’s List looking for a fridge.  There were crazy people wanting $1000 for used fridges- granted they were the high faluting stainless steel ones with the drinky fountains and the ice makers and wine chests and so forth but if I’m going to spend that kind of scratch I want a new one with a warranty.  So Jerry keeps looking and happens upon a nice simple used fridge for $100- about 45 miles away.  I call the guy and tell him I’ll be there in about an hour.  When I get there the fridge is still plugged in, nice and cold.  I gladly gave the dude the money- it’s older, but a nice, clean working fridge- and he and his buddy get the fridge loaded up in Jerry’s truck.

Jerry, of course stayed home in bed, because he’s helpful like that, while I drive off to see some strange people who could potentially be serial killers, who I never met before in my life, in the dead of night, to conduct business.  I knew the neighborhood (not terribly far from where I grew up) and it was in a nicer area than where I grew up, otherwise I would not have taken the risk, (the people turned out to be most personable and cordial also) but sometimes you never know.  I arrived home with the fridge around 11:30 last night, but I did not attempt to remove it from the back of the truck in the dark by myself.  He will regret not helping me unload it last night- tonight when he has no cold beer- but tough titty.  I could care less about beer, so I moved it out to save the milk and cheese.  It’s not as if Natty is going to taste any worse warm.

Does temperature really count for much when you’re drinking canned horse piss?

Today Jerry is supposed to accomplish two things.  One is to remove the old behemoth fridge from the kitchen.  I cleaned it out- at least the big pieces and anything that might rot and stink- so the scrap guy (who is always scrounging for used refrigerators, working or not) can do what he will with it.  The other is to get the fridge I acquired last night in the kitchen plugged in and running.   Let’s see how he does with his assignment.  I have a feeling I am going to be very sore in the morning after I drag these appliances where they need to go by myself.

I get to move this son-of-a-bitch all by myself!

Everyone Has a Purpose, Apparently Mine Involves Graciously Accepting Others’ Shit

2 Comments

Suffice to say I’m not in a terribly great mood today.  The pragmatic side of me says that Jerry was a bit overdue for a drunk-n-stupid episode- it’s been almost a week- so I should be happy with conveniently being out of town and missing the Monday Night drunk-n-stupid.  The only problem with that was I got the Wednesday Night make-up round complete with two of the three elements I hate about the drunk-n-stupids.  One, he started in about money, blissfully ignorant of how much I just plain pay out for his skank ass, and also blissfully ignorant that when you sell crap on E-Bay you have to pay a fee on it, and you have to pay to ship it.  Explaining anything involving money or expenses to him when he’s trashed is like nailing Jell-o to a tree.  I should have just nodded my head and agreed with him- because when he’s shitfaced (even more than when he’s sober) he thinks any crazy shit that pops up in his head is Gospel truth, but I was stupid and decided to set him straight on a few things.  Mistake.   

So I got the oat opera torture until midnight and an attempt at drunken groping that was not only futile but just plain disgusting.  The problem is the only time he even gets horny is when he’s shitfaced, and the only thing he can do about it is slobber all over me and wave his nasty cigarettes around and spill beer all over everything.  Blecch.  My standards admittedly are low, but that’s just plain nasty.  There are a few things that can put an old cougar off doing the wild thing with the quickness:

Cigarettes.  Even back in the day when I smoked, I had the common courtesy to wait until AFTER the deed was done to light up.  Now that I haven’t smoked for years, just smelling cig smoke is enough to make me gag- without waving the damn thing in my face, ashing all over the place, and getting way too close to putting burn holes in my sheets and my skin.

Few people are more passionate about their hatred of smoking than ex-smokers.  Believe it.

Being shitfaced.  Natty Lite is not good for the breath.  Especially when you’re belching up used Natties in my face.  Waving the half-full beer can around in my bed, and possibly even spilling some of that embalming fluid swill in my bed sheets while doing so, does not earn any points for charm either.  Go back to your own hole and be shitfaced by yourself.

If you drink your dinner, do the world a favor- sleep alone.

Country music.  Country music has to be the #1 anaphrodisiac for me, save for extreme body odor.  Being that I am nothing to look at, and am proportioned like a mutant troll I can’t be terribly picky.  But start playing that awful song about saving a horse and riding a cowboy and you might as well understand that you’re not getting any action from me until you turn that torture off. 

I may be poor and white and mostly self-educated, but my family tree does actually fork.

Needless to say, even though he hasn’t had a woody since Bill Clinton was president (and probably never will again), last night was not the time to try to resurrect the dead.  It was certainly not a good time to start in pawing and slobbering on me.

Normally his drunk-n-stupids are just part of life, but last night’s really got on my nerves.  Dad is in the intensive care up north awaiting bypass surgery on Monday.  I spent most of the day Tuesday with Mom while the Dr.s were trying to figure out what was going on with him and what to do.   Now that they know what’s going on and what they’re going to do, they’re pretty much just watching him and trying to get his sugar and sinus infection under control before then. I decided he can watch History Channel just fine in the meanwhile without me sitting around up there not getting anything done except exposing myself to exotic germs and various funky assed diseases- whilst sticking to the god-awful uncomfortable vinyl hospital chair. 

Even so, I’m worn out and freaking out at the prospects of Dad having to have open heart surgery and all that, so I don’t need a ditzy assed drunk keeping me awake and being an obnoxious little titty baby.  Granted, I know that Jerry is both a ditzy assed drunk and a titty baby- he is truly helpless -which is aggravating as hell to me.

Shit: one of the most common elements in the universe.  Stupidity is the other.

This is a guy that if one of the dogs gets a case of the shits and unloads on the floor (fortunately the girls are trained, and this does not happen often) the first thing he will announce when I come in the door is, “Somebody shit on the floor and you need to clean it up!”

Oh, how many times I have wanted to rub his nose in it.  I don’t expect him to get the rug cleaner out, but at least make an attempt.  Scrape it into a bag or something.  It’s just shit.  As long as you don’t eat it, it shouldn’t kill you.

I know he was raised by wolves, but come on.

Happy Lupercalia!, (Remember Our Lupine Friends) and Staying Off the Beaten Path

2 Comments

Ok , so Clara is a dog.  So why am I talking about an ancient Roman pagan holiday that celebrates the wolf?  The Latin word for wolf is lupus (yes, this is where the horrible disease, lupus, got its name, because it ravages those afflicted much as a wolf ravages its prey.) The taxonomic name for dog is canis lupus familiaris.  – loosely translated- the house wolf.  Canis lupus lupus (if you want to discern between sub-species) is the grey wolf.

Most people are blissfully unaware that domestic dogs and grey wolves are the same species.  Same DNA.  Though humans have done some pretty damned bizarre things with the dog in the 15,000 or so years that they have been domesticated, the DNA is still there.  Because dogs have a large number of chromosomes (78) and a tendency toward frequent mutations due to the phenomenon of  tandem repeats, there is a tremendous amount of variation in appearance and body characteristics- from the 1# ankle-biter to the 250# Mastiff.  But dogs are dogs (are also wolves…) which is useful knowledge.  We live with genetically engineered wolves.  In my alternatively wired way of thinking, that’s pretty effing cool. (Science, history and vocabulary lessons today- I’m on a roll!)

Obviously, we humans aren’t terribly good at determining who should and should NOT breed, even outside our own species.

Granted, humans have really screwed up a lot of things, but that’s just Murphy’s Law in action.   As far as dogs go, canine husbandry has both successes and tragic failures.  It’s sad that certain dog breeds are so modified that some can only give birth by c-section (many of the brachycephalic breeds) and others are prone to orthopedic issues (many of the large and giant breeds) while others are prone to devastating cancers.  Inbreeding, as well as breeding dogs that really aren’t suitable to be bred, have only contributed to the plethora of genetic diseases today’s dogs are subject to.

Even with all the fascinating scientific information available on genetics- and dogs are one of the most heavily studied animals in this regard- there are still infinite unknowns.   Breeding is simply setting the wheels in motion for a cosmic crap shoot.   The genetic difference between a Grand Champion, the neighborhood trash-snarfing cur, and the wild wolf out in the woods is infinitesimal.  So eugenics for our canine friends really is what it is for everything else- some science, some art, and a whole lot of blind luck.  Some of us do well in the genetic lottery (and a good breeder has strategies to sweeten the odds) but at the end of the day some of us do well, and others not so much.

 To quote Forrest Gump, “Life is a box of chocolates.  You never know which one you’re going to get.” 

I know Murphy’s Law, and it works pretty well with Newton’s Laws.  “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” (Newton)  Of course, Murphy’s Law can’t leave that one alone without adding a few corollaries such as:  “If nature makes you beautiful, nature will almost inevitably make you stupid,”  “Brains and coordination cannot inhabit the same body,” and, “If you expect him to use the laundry chute, be prepared to use the lawn mower.”

As much as I hate to admit it, (and as much as I really don’t like  touching the skanky Natty-splattered whitey-tighties that would end up lying all over the house) undies vs. lawn care is a pretty fair trade, at least in the summer.  I spend a good chunk of time playing seek and wash with Jerry’s clothes.  He will strip and drop clothing just about everywhere in the house, especially when he’s besnookered, making my laundry adventures begin with a maze!   It’s sort of like an Easter egg hunt only there’s no eggs- just soiled man-clothes. The process of retrieving Jerry’s clothes for wash-time also is reminiscent of searching through the Cracker Jack box.  There’s often a “prize” inside, such as cigarette butts and/or cellophanes, or massive skidmarks – living proof that sharting is real.  You want to be really careful which part of the garment you touch when picking it up.  Usually- though not every time- the waistbands escape unscathed.

Just an FYI: sharting shouldn’t be attempted whilst wearing any sort of garment, and shouldn’t be attempted at all unless your drawers are down and your butt is firmly planted on the commode.

Of course there are a number of things one should really think twice about doing.  Such as this:

“A” for creativity, but “F” for future opportunities to fornicate.  There’s something about a visual of a cat’s ass on your lover’s front area (with the belly button serving a dual purpose as the bunghole no less!) that might just be a little off-putting.

I guess for me it is easier to celebrate a holiday dedicated to the canines (and lupines- same thing) of the world than to ruminate on and on about sappy romantic platitudes. 

I get to go home and hug the dogs!  As I told a friend of mine, I do have something to look forward to tonight.  Jerry’s out of Natties- and if there is any justice in this world he should be good and miserable from last night’s drunk and stupid foray into Nattyvana, and I have three beautiful dogs waiting for me to get home.

For All the Saints, Fanning the Flames, and a Limited Time Offer

Leave a comment

I know that here lately I have been rather drawn to the macabre.  It seems that around Halloween (when the seemingly endless Central Ohio winter effectively begins) and also toward the end of February (when the even more depressing season of Snowbooger Grey sets in) I get obsessed with the issue of mortality- mine, and that of others. 

It doesn’t help that Saturday I had to attend the wake (and yes, it was an actual Irish Catholic wake, complete with noise, a plethora of friends, relatives and assorted others, enough food for an army and then some, and plenty of whiskey and beer) of a dear older lady who I was both surprised and delighted to call a friend.  Then Sunday (which had almost completely slipped my mind) was All Saints’, which is one of the hardest days of the year for me to go to church.  I need to do that- especially on the difficult days- but it’s very hard for me to make a conscious effort when I know I will be streaming tears uncontrollably the whole time.  I don’t handle public displays of emotion well at all.  The whole idea behind All Saints’ is to remember those who have gone before us, which has been especially difficult for me since Grandma died. 

Sadly, I don’t spend enough time with people I care about.  I would have liked to have talked with her one more time, but I missed the opportunity.  I am reminded yet again how temporary life is, and how the people I want to see and talk with a little while longer might not be there the next time I think of them.

It might seem strange, for someone like me who isn’t terribly social and isn’t really into superficialities, that I am so neglectful of the very few close relationships I have.  It’s actually rather pathetic that I avoid human contact to such an extreme.  I have enough excuses- overwork and babysitting Jerry are probably the two biggest drains on my time and energy- but excuses are exactly that.  I don’t make the time.  Even though I do cherish people I deem to be friends, being around people wears me out.  I know it sounds superficial and selfish, but I really have to be intentional regarding who I socialize with, and with how much time I spend being in the company of others.  Otherwise I get stretched too thin and get emotionally and physically exhausted. 

Over the years I’ve discovered I need solitude not only to get my head straight and to make some sense of my fractured and often puzzling emotional life, but I also have a genuine physical need to take that ivory tower time.  Leave me alone and let me regenerate.  Often.  The bad thing is that I don’t get nearly enough opportunity for such regeneration, so I take it where I can get it.   Otherwise I will get physically ill, and end up being forced to stop and get away.

As much as I found it necessary to go to our friend’s wake, I paid for it in terms of just plain coming home depleted.  I don’t know if my exhaustion had to do with trying to keep Jerry out of too much trouble (he almost killed an entire 30 pack of Natties) or just from needing to get away from people for awhile.  Perhaps a combination of both?

Maybe I really am one of those people who would be better off out in the middle of nowhere with sparse company other than books, music and dogs.  It’s been way too long since I was able to be left alone long enough to read a novel (and I do have what promises to be a good novel on the way- 11-22-63 by Stephen King.)  It doesn’t take me long to read a novel – even Stephen King’s novels, which tend to be lengthy- but it seems I am constantly being interrupted with Jerry being unable to get his own pills, being unable to shut up late at night, and constantly whining about his shirts or this or that or the other thing. 

Maybe it’s not fair of me to expect Jerry to take care of himself like a normal adult.  Sadly I have been party to his Helplessman routine for many years, so how can I expect him to take his own pills, iron his own shirts, and keep himself from drowning in the toilet when he’s shitfaced?

I know I am no paragon of virtue by a long shot, but I admit I get tired of the babysitting.  It’s hard to put my foot down because Jerry is incredibly emotionally fragile.  He gets on my nerves, yes, but he’s a lot worse when he gets either shitfaced and/or in temper tantrum mode.  Sadly, he has learned (just like a toddler) that the tirades are a form of blackmail.  “Appease me or I’ll go off again” is the mentality.  While I know that it’s a fruitless endeavor to keep on feeding alligators, way too much of the time I simply cave in and let him have what he wants so he will shut up.  Especially if I’m tired and/or he’s drunk.  The irony here is that in the end I’m just rewarding him for whining.  Unlike a toddler, when Jerry starts in with the whining and tirades, I can’t take him to the ladies’ room and warm his behind.

I know all too well that life is a limited time offer.  I shouldn’t be so harsh with Jerry, even though I lose my patience with the helpless act and with the gambling and drinking.  I know I should cherish whatever time we have even though he does try my patience and dealing with his behavior can be quite draining.

I’ll have time to sleep when I’m dead.  Hopefully somewhere along the way I’ll find time for the Stephen King novel.

Diabolical Sabotage, How Not to Get Things Done, and Basically Farting Off

Leave a comment

I really wanted to Get Something Done today.  Yeah, right.  So far I’ve been mollycoddling idiots, which is not my favorite thing to do.  It’s a few rungs above cleaning cat boxes, or my least favorite activity- which would have to be anything involving cleaning and sorting and/or getting dirty.  I am glad as hell I don’t have to go outside to work, and I am thankful for many other things I don’t have to do.  Still, it gets old when you’ve told the fifteen thousandth ass-pilot of the day that their stuff is not there yet because they are in the middle of a snowstorm.  Your route may potentially be delayed if the freeways are down to 10 miles an hour and zero visibility.  Look outside, you jackwagons!

Anyway I generally don’t like to fart off but my attention span is about that of paint right now.  As soon as I try to concentrate and get something done someone pesters me with something stupid, something that can wait, something I have no control over, etc. and so on.  If we weren’t short handed today I’d put my phone on voice mail and then see how many people solved their own problem/answered their own questions tomorrow.  I would say 85% of the people I talk to with an “urgent” problem either a.) have the answer to their own problem, or b.) are totally farking clueless to begin with, or c.) need to be talking to someone who can actually address their problem and do something about it.   The other 15% usually have a legitimate bitch, and/or something I can actually fix.  So I’m glad I don’t talk to people as much as I used to.  I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again, intelligence is a constant, the population is growing. Unfortunately my patience with stupidity is shrinking which is probably not a good thing, being that stupidity is becoming ever more common.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

OK.  I’ve released some of my frustration with the unwashed masses of humanity.

I am generally not the “huggable” type, even on a good day.  What I would really like to do is go home and have a nice quiet evening of “Dirty Jobs,” cop shows and Chinese takeout.  Unfortunately these are the kind of days I come home to Mr. Drama Queen going off on how someone said something to hurt his feelings at work, so he’s got crank up the stereo, stay up until 1AM and drink a case of Natties to forget about it.

Well, back at it.   I might get something done before the end of the day but I doubt it very seriously.