passive-aggressive

Attitude, Middle-Aged Angst, and DNR

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I’ve said it before, but since my offspring has more or less achieved the high holy goals of parenting, which are being potty trained, literate and gainfully employed, I am somewhat free to enjoy my second adolescence.

Now that I have a pretty bad ass replica of Théophile Steinlen’s Chat Noir on my calf, I want one more tat. I will wait until fall/winter time to do it, because in the summer two weeks worth of workouts outside of the pool are just too hot.  One bad thing about getting a tat if you prefer aquatic exercise, is you can’t get in the pool for two weeks until the tat is pretty much healed.

I have a DNR on file–  meaning that I do not want to be resuscitated should my heart stop and I’m on my way to the Dirt Nap.  No heroics.  If it’s time for me to die, let my sorry carcass go.  I don’t want to live through a dramatic resuscitation effort only to suck up resources for years- being chronically ill and mindlessly drooling away in some nursing home if that can at all be avoided.   Having one’s DNR tattooed on one’s left chest area (on Hello Kitty’s dress no less- and I’ll have the lettering done in either bright red or black so it’s even more obvious) should drive the point home.

I figure if I’m going to die anyway, why prolong the process?  Maybe it’s a morbid thought, but I want people to be crystal clear that it’s fine by me to keep me off the machines and to let me just die with some comfort and dignity.

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I have to try to get a better outlook.  Granted there have been some incidents in the recent past that have completely pissed me off and demoralized me but I’ve gone through a lot worse.  I may not have much but I do have a healthy sarcastic streak, and comedy is indeed the flipside of tragedy.

Negative-Attitude

I have to change this stuff.

I’ve fallen back into the age old pattern of letting people simply walk all over me.  It’s bad that I’m so used to being a doormat that I have to consciously think about confronting people when they are just plain being assholes.  What is so wrong about calling out the conspicuous douchebag?  I’m sure that my megadouche detection skills are just as good if not better than most people’s, given that I have had exposure to more than my fair share of megadouches in my lifetime.

 

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This is what I want to say to Jerry when he whines about food.  Unfortunately, when he isn’t in the mood for the entreé du soir, it means I either end up going out for subs or to the Chinese joint for his hineyness.  Last week I got to get him a sub, and then a replacement sub, when the zit faced high school kids working the evening shift at Jersey Mike’s committed the unforgivable sin: his Philly cheese steak had green peppers on it.  You’d have thought it was anthrax the way he reacted to a few green peppers. They weren’t even the hot peppers, which if you ask me are quite nice on a Philly cheese steak, among a plethora of other things.  But green peppers?  If you don’t like them, pick them off.  As rude as Jerry is in restaurants, green peppers are the least of his worries.  I bet fast food workers see condescending assholes like Jerry from a mile away.

I’m sure Jerry’s gotten things far worse than a few green peppers on his sandwiches.  Saliva, semen and boogers come to mind.  I understand the longing for passive-aggressive revenge more than most.  I might not actually perpetrate vengeful acts, but I fantasize about them a lot.

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If thinking about passive-aggressive revenge is just as bad as actually perpetrating it, I’m in big trouble.

I Have My Fanny Back!, Transcendental Redneck Moments, and a Beer (in a tree…)

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I love double entendre, but no, I’ve not managed to misplace my ass.  Yet.

Fanny, for the occasional reader, is my 15# silver tabby and white cat.  I named her whilst listening to a classic song by Queen: “Fat Bottomed Girls.”  Fanny was only a 12 week old kitten when I rescued her from the side of the road in rural Fairfield County, (way out in BFE)  and I didn’t think her to be terribly large at that time, but the name took on a life of its own as Fanny grew.  It seems rural barn cat type cats grow really well on premium cat food and relaxed, climate-controlled indoor living.  By the time she was old enough to be spayed, even the Vet commented, “This is going to be a BIG cat.” 

One of the reasons I like our Vet is that she is very seldom wrong.  She was not at all wrong about Fanny being a behemoth.  I wish she were wrong about how difficult it is to treat Lilo’s (our crosseyed and bowlegged GSD/Chow mix) allergies.  Lilo absolutely hates the baths in the special shampoo, but it does help keep her skin from getting all nasty and crusty.  Seborrhea really sucks.  It is manageable with good diet and frequent baths (and occasional cycles of Prednisone) but I wouldn’t wish it on any poor dog.  Especially Lilo, because she is very sweet.

I’ve seen larger cats- somehow our Vet ends up with the same sturdy barn cat types like Fanny, and she’s had some males that have been over 20#, but female cats tend to be smaller than males.  Fanny is probably in the 90th percentile of cat size.  She is large-framed, but she does have some big meat on those big bones too. 

One thing Fanny likes to do from time to time is to sneak out the door when the dogs go out.  Usually I catch her- she’s not a fast runner by any stretch- but if I don’t see her slip out I can’t catch her.  Thursday night I have to admit I was not at my most aware.  Between camping out at Children’s Hospital with the kids and a very sick baby girl, and trying to keep up with the end of the month rush at work, I was pretty strung out at 11PM.  I’d been up and running since 4AM.  I remember letting the dogs out.  Friday morning I realized Fanny must have sneaked out with them as she wasn’t readily available to suck down her morning portion of wet food.   Fanny does not normally miss out any sort of feeding opportunity, and has been known to shove dogs out of the way to get what she has coming.  Fanny backs down to no dog.

I was so preoccupied with my granddaughter that I really didn’t get too worked up about poor Fanny.  By the time the baby was released from the hospital Saturday I was an exhausted mess, and such a sorry sack of shit that I didn’t even go out to try to find Fanny.  I did make some excursions out back Sunday but was unsuccessful.  By yesterday (Monday) I was really getting frantic that she hadn’t appeared at the back door acting as if she were starving to death, so I made yet another foray into the back lot behind the fence under the junk truck and in the middle of the burr bushes.  Finally I heard a weak little mew (for a large cat Fanny has a very tiny voice) and saw her pointy little head peek out from under the truck.   She simply hunched down and let me scoop her up.  So I am delighted to get her back even though I was covered with those damned burrs.

I think I’m going to have to collar and microchip that cat even though she despises a collar. I don’t know where her head is at getting out- there’s no food, the ferals absolutely hate her, and they chase her off before she can even get to the food scraps we throw out for them. 

Just a transient thought- I hate pompous assholes who think they know it all and their shit doesn’t stink, but who go to great lengths to rub other people’s noses in their mistakes.  Never mind that the person who is getting ripped on is the one who actually does something other than fart off and run their mouth about sports and other stupid shit.  The only reason people like that don’t appear to screw up is because the only things they bother to do is showboat, nitpick those who are doing their jobs for them (because they’re either too lazy or  too stupid to do their own work) and bitch about what other people are doing and nosing about in their business.  These same people who seem to be first to make a mountain out of a molehill are always willing to let me do their work as well as my own while they fart off and get into some stupid assed discussion about sports or gambling or other stupid shit.  I really, really, really hate that- although I won’t mention any names.  I would like to engage in some passive-aggressive revenge, but even that’s not worth it.  Those sorts of people are just not worth the effort or the aggravation. 

I know, I know, the best thing I can do is ignore such commentary, and usually I do.  I can take criticism a lot better from those who aren’t lazy snobs who are obsessed with sports, and who admit that from time to time they screw up too.  Dad always said if you never screw up it’s because you aren’t doing anything.  No shit.  Maybe it’s my own fault because I never got interested in sports, but I don’t have the attention span for such bullshit. It’s just too much of a waste of time.  I do really want to throttle the pompous asshole who I am being kind enough not to name….must…think…of…something….else.

On a brighter note, The Bob and Doug McKenzie version of the 12 Days of Christmas has got to be one of my favorite holiday themed songs.  And a beer in a tree indeed.   I love the visual:

Must…not…strangle…pompous….assholes….

How Not to Get My Attention, aka: (Drunken) Aggressive-Aggressive Revenge

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Ok, so I will remove the kid gloves and vent like I mean it.  And I do. 

Last night I had to take the HK Yaris over to the local Toyota dealer for a minor warranty issue.  The right headlight was getting some condensation between the layers of plastic in the lens and housing- a common concern here in Central Ohio Swampland, especially evident during Monsoon season.  I saw more than enough of these when I worked in dealerships, so when I saw the condensation building up in that lamp I figured I’d best address it right away, since it is a warranty issue.  It’s hard for any vehicle manufacturer to construct a lamp assembly of any type that can remain water-tight in a place that gets the rainfall we do here.  It wasn’t a major deal, but that’s one of the reasons why cars have warranties.  While their techie is milking the gravy train (.7 of an hour to R&R a headlight assembly isn’t bad, when an experienced tech can do it in 5-10 minutes, or about .2 hours) changing out my headlight, I sat and chilled out and played a few solitaire games on the DS. 

Hanging out in the waiting room (or “customer lounge” as they call it) was tolerable except for the TV was on the same lame-ass news loop the whole time I was there, and there was some foreign dude who looked like he was from a terrorist harboring country yapping on his cell phone in some unintelligible gibberish.  I’m sure it was a real language, but I have no clue what it was.  German, French or Spanish, I know enough to get slapped- and can understand a word or phrase here and there.  This was some language I had no clue what it was but it reminded me of the noises cats make when they mate.  It might make sense to cats, who knows?

How do I know if he was giving his terrorist buddies the latitude and longitude of the Toyota dealer so they could bomb the place?  Or, he could have been doing what Steve-o does when he converses with his German-speaking friends- mocking those around him.  I can picture that pretty easily.

“Dude, there is this old cougar, who looks sort of like a weird, ill-proportioned troll, sitting over here playing solitaire on a DS.  Man, this is lame!”

I continue to play solitaire and say to myself this guy is harmless and he’s just mocking me to his buddy over in where ever it is that they speak the cat mating language.  So I get my headlight changed out, free of terrorist incidents, to my relief, and I go home.

I knew I was in for an evening from hell when I came home and the dogs were in their crates.  That could only mean one thing- Jerry’s at the hell hole…after swearing up and down he wouldn’t renew his membership there, but of course, he did.  Nice. Not unexpected, though.  I was born at night, but not last night.  I knew he was lying out his ass when he said he was not going to renew.

Not more than three minutes after I get in the door, Tipsy McNumbnuts staggers in.  He insists that he has to mow the grass tonight.  At the same time he is insisting that he is going to need a new lawn mower because the old one probably won’t start.  I should have known at that point to do anything to keep him away from anything involving gasoline, machinery or sharp things.  Then he goes on and on how he needs me to help him mow the grass.

Excuse me?  How in the hell I am I supposed to “help” you mow the grass?  That’s the one thing I’m not doing.  If you want me to mow grass, then consider doing your own laundry, cooking your own meals, getting your own scripts, putting your own crap on E-bay, (wiping your own ass…) the list goes on and on. 

Apparently what he wanted me to do was follow him around while he mowed the grass.  I have absolutely no idea why.

I think he wanted a new lawn mower (and there wasn’t a thing wrong with the old one, until he trashed it.)  But I think he wanted to get my attention, get a new lawn mower,  AND be able to somehow blame me for the old one’s demise.

I stayed outside long enough for him to start the mower up- and it fired up and ran beautifully.  I figured my work outside was done, so I could go in and at least attempt to fix something for dinner.  Yeah.

About five minutes later he comes storming in the back door screaming that I broke the lawn mower.  Granted, he was pretty damned drunk, but I couldn’t see how I could have broke the mower if I was in the kitchen washing dishes. 

Apparently, because I wasn’t watching him, (???) he ran over the metal rod that has been in the yard forever and ever, that he knows about, and jammed the motor completely.  It is officially FUBARed.  Now, I am the first one to accept blame where it is due, but it seems to me that the drunken operator of the mower might have had a lot more to do with its final catastrophic failure.  I will also add that this is a self-propelled push mower, not a rider mower.  Ohio is so weird about DUI that the cops can bust you for drunken mowing– if you’re on a rider mower.  They can bust you on a motorized bar stool too.  This actually happened to some redneck in Newark.  So technically (as far as I know,) drunken mowing is legal- as long as it’s a push mower, and you’re not driving it.

Ingenious, yes, but still motorized, and you do ride it. 

If there is some sort of ordinance against drunken mowing with a push mower, I’d like to know about it for future reference.

Tonight I get to go with Cap’n Happy to procure another lawn mower- at his expense of course.  If he thinks I’m buying him a new lawn mower to reward his wanton trashing of a perfectly good one, he has another thing coming.  If I were to buy him a mower, which I won’t, I would buy him one of these little beauties:

I don’t see how he could destroy this one unless he ran over it with the truck or something.  I am not looking forward to clomping through Sears, Lowes or wherever he decides to go trolling for deals on mowers.  Not at all.

This little foray into home improvement hell with the biggest drama queen on the planet ought to be as much fun as a dental cleaning, a pelvic exam, and a full body wax- all at once.

I might buy him dinner if he behaves– at White Castle.  Mmmm, sliders….

Dingleberry’s Doppleganger, Coyotes, the Tree Hugger Manifesto, and Passive-Aggressive Vindication

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First, a disclaimer.  Jerry (first pic) is NOT Mexican or Hispanic in any way, is 53, not 43, and has never been anywhere near San Jose in his life.  I think the furthest west he’s ever been in his entire life is Indianapolis.  I think he has been to Florida a couple of times, but he’s no regular traveler by any measure.  This being said, in spite of his ancestry (one or two English people- and a lot of Cherokee Indians) he bears a downright frightening resemblance to Mr. Arias pictured in the missing kids hotline ad. 

I’ve gotten my passive-aggressive vindication for the day.

I am glad once I encountered Jerry whilst he was sober he admitted that getting rid of my car is not a viable option to save on household expenses.  I could pinch pennies here and there but my penny pinching would likely be counter productive at the end of the day.  I’m not giving up bathing, shaving, other superfluous hair removal, or hair color.  Nor am I giving up my nails.

I thought about some of the tree-hugger suggestions to conserve resources.  I am thrifty by nature (and almost to a fault at times, out of necessity) which is in agreement with some of the tree-hugger suggestions.  I consolidate errands.  I try to reduce, recycle and reuse when doing so saves me a buck, and it usually does.  I drive the most fuel-efficient  conventional gasoline internal combustion car available (can’t afford a hybrid- neither the initial cost nor the higher maintenance costs, same goes with diesel- too expensive to maintain) today.  However, I can see where some of the tree-hugger manifesto items prove either impractical or too expensive which sort of defeats the purpose.  I can understand the concept of living better with less- that’s just common sense and good strategy.  I draw the line at such things as:

1. Bury your car. 

   Over my dead body.

14. Spend a month tree-sitting.

   Outside with all the bugs, exposed to the sun where my Super White, melanin-free skin tone will turn to blisters, freckles and splotches within minutes?  Bug bites and skin cancer?  I think not.

30. Go to jail for something you believe in.

   Last time I checked, my beliefs (though unpopular in some circles) and activities are not illegal.  Therefore I would have no need, or desire, to go to jail for anything.

31. Don’t own pets.

   WTF????? I think that would be worse than the tree-hugger suggestion to not have kids.  Besides, we humans domesticated these animals.  We are responsible for caring for them- including neutering or spaying our own pets to keep populations in line.

44. Stop using toilet paper or Kleenex, use washable cloth.

  WTF again!  Once I’ve wiped my nether regions with it I don’t want it back even if it has been washed and Clorox’d, which sort of defeats the “saving resources” idea, eh?

47. Democratize your workplace, start a union or collective.

   Unions destroyed my hometown. I can go on ad nauseam on that one, believe it.  Granted, there’s no air pollution there any more, but there are also no jobs.  What point is having a pristine environment when everyone has to move somewhere else in order to work and sustain themselves?  Why did all the Ohio manufacturing jobs end up in southern Right to Work states? 

49. Liberate a zoo.

  Sure…and let’s see how those exotic animals from tropical climes fare here in the Central Ohio swamp– oh I mean, wetlands– against the mercurial weather changes we have here- not to mention the voracious appetites of native coyotes. Canis latrans is in no danger of extinction here anytime soon, even without any tree-hugger assistance.  Liberating the zoos would give the coyotes a few days’ bonus chow, but they really aren’t hurting for grub to begin with.

Sometimes the tree-huggers make some sense, but other times they display the impractical vapid and uninformed idealism of small children.  Who hasn’t heard little kids say such silly things as “Why can’t two boys get married,?” or “When I grow up I’ll never take a bath again.”  Usually kids wise up as they grow up- they learn that in order to procreate one needs involve the opposite sex, and that bathing is one of those means to gain entry into polite society.

Part of the extreme tree-hugger syndrome in my opinion is a refusal to grow up.  The world is not Sesame Street, and even on Sesame Street (I’m amazed I can remember this far back) Bert and Ernie were not married, and they did take baths. 

So there. 

Now that freaking “Rubber Ducky” song is stuck in my head. Damn.

The element that is missing in all the “Save the World” rhetoric is balance.  The reality is that society has not developed a working, viable substitute for the petroleum-fueled internal combustion engine. I don’t say this because my livelihood is in the automotive industry.  There are alternative systems and alternative fuels in development, and I’ll be glad to see it, especially if they involve renewable resources, but they are not commercially viable yet.  This being stated the practical and balanced approach to the oil question should be: obtain, refine and distribute petroleum products using the most cost-effective and environmentally sound methods that are available and practical.  It CAN be done and should have been done years ago.  It is a matter of national security- sorry, tree-huggers- that domestic oil reserves need to be accessed NOW regardless of the litigation happy NIMBYs who whine and cry about it. 

As far as natural selection goes for all you strict Darwinists out there, species have come and gone long before humanity and will come and go long after humans go the way of the dinosaurs.  The species that survive are those who adapt, like Central Ohio coyotes.  I don’t think oil drilling will disturb the coyotes one bit.  Nor will it disturb the hawks or turkey buzzards or the squirrels and chipmunks.  There are species that will go extinct regardless if humans intervene or not- but many species have become far more successful because of humans.  I can think of a few:

Canis lupus familiaris  (easy one- domestic dogs)

Felis domestica (another easy one- house cats)

Rattus norvegicus (not so easy- sewer rats)

Mus musculus (house mice)

Columba livia (pigeons- the “flying rats” of urban lore)

Procyon lotor (raccoons)

Pediculus humanus, also Pthirus pubis (head lice and body “crabs”)

Periplaneta americana (American cockroaches)

and of course, our coyote friends, Canis latrans.

Ground Control to Major Tom, Aggressive-Aggressive Revenge, and Forgiveness is Divine

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I adore spring flowers, especially in the depths of Central Ohio winter.  Right now the weather alone is depressing.

I am thankful that I dragged my sorry carcass to church this morning even though venturing out on a Sunday morning when it’s seven degrees out is difficult when compared with staying in the comfort of my own bed.  But as far as going to church goes,  I don’t “deserve” to be there- I need to be there.

Today’s sermon especially hit home.  Right now our Pastors are teaching on the parables of Jesus.  Today’s text was Matthew 18:21-35, the parable of the unmerciful servant.  Talk about hitting me where I live.

I’m not a very forgiving person.  I do tend to scorekeep, mull over past slights, and I’ve not been above aggressive-aggressive revenge as well as all of my signature forms of passive-aggressive revenge.  God forgives me for all the crud I’ve done- and believe me I have done some pretty shameful and terrible things (no this is not repressed old Catholic guilt resurfacing.)

I find myself more often than I’d like in the position of the unmerciful servant- God cuts me a break, over and over and over again, but I end up feeling slighted and wanting payback every time someone does something wrong or bad to me.

I have to admit that sometimes forgiveness is the last thing on my mind.  Yesterday when my Saturday nap was rudely interrupted and then postponed, I admit that forgiving Jerry for his total lack of consideration was pretty low on my priority list.  He did come off of enough money for dog food (Nutro ain’t cheap- Clara has corn allergy and requires a corn-free lamb and rice diet, but it is a high quality food and they do well on it, so they all three eat it) so coming off of $51 for a 38# bag of dog food assuaged my angst somewhat.  But I shouldn’t be concerned with keeping score.

I am really bad about holding grudges, and I admit I adore getting even.

This is not a good thing because in spite of my sense of humor and oft times salty language, I do take my faith seriously.  I take it seriously enough not to candy coat it with false piety.  Martin Luther said, “Sin boldly.”  I think he meant it as, “Live honestly.”  Don’t put up a front and be who you really are.

Some of the pettiest wieners I’ve ever known are the “Dana Carvey as the Church Lady” types.

Granted, I believe there is a spirit world.  I believe Satan is real, but I don’t attribute everything remotely bad as being of Satanic origin.  Most of the evil in this world is simply the result of fallen and fallible human beings screwing things up, because that’s what we do.

I also believe that those of us who believe Jesus and are following Him fail to do the world any favors by acting “holier than thou” and/or putting up those lily-white goody-goody fronts.

If there is any holiness in me, it doesn’t come from me, believe that.  I am a human being who is most fallible, who screws up constantly, and who therefore has a deep need to be a little more compassionate even when other people are being stupid.  I do enough stupid things myself- let’s see- abysmal choices in relationships, career choices in which I got screwed, disastrous financial mistakes, being gullible, being taken advantage of, taking advantage of others, et cetera, ad nauseam.

I’m pretty sure I will continue to laugh at my own stupidity and the stupidity of others- but I can only pray for a greater compassion and understanding when other people continually do stupid things that piss me off or inconvenience me. (i.e  Jerry is currently whining for me to get him his pills, a task that an adult male of reasonably sound mind and body should be capable of doing for himself but he won’t, so I will have to do it so he will shut up already…)

Tomorrow’s Monday.  I’ll have my chance for good or ill to apply the lesson of today’s sermon.  Lord help me! I will need it.

I know Jesus wouldn’t punch him out or tell him where or how high to shove the pills (perhaps they are more effective administered rectally?) so I will try to follow His example.