terribleturnip

Dear people who freak out when a movie is remade,

So don't expletive watch it.

It's actually THAT simple. "It's going to be ruined!" Um, I'm pretty sure that the distribution contract for the new one doesn't actually specify that they have to destroy all copies of the old one. "It'll never be as good as the first one!" Well, you're often right. Although that's mostly because the first one wasn't actually as good as you remember, but it struck a particular chord for you, your friends, segment of society, AT THE TIME. Let the people who are watching it now just freaking enjoy it without you going all geezery "things were better in my day". "They're going to change it!" Please see previous comment. The world's moved on, perhaps you should as well. The damn thing is dated now. You can be nostalgic about it, but for crying out loud, remember that the teenagers (or whatever market segment it's aimed at) have had different experiences than you did at that age, so it's got to be updated in order to not seem hokey as hell. You want to go on a fan board and debate merits of new cast vs old, etc., then you go right ahead. But whine about it on Facebook and know that I'm clicking on the secret "Contempt" button that Zuckerberg keeps promising me but still hasn't delivered.

Dear Women's Clothing Catalogs,

Those of you whose premise is clearly clothing that is flattering/forgiving to the less than wasp-waisted -- I'm looking at you, Soft Surroundings -- maybe you should show the clothing on the people that I'm pretty sure it was designed to flatter. I'm looking at that top and thinking "oh, that'd hide the fat rolls" but maybe only if I were six feet tall with legs up to my armpits and thin from top to bottom. Even worse, if that dress/shirt/top/whatever makes your wafer thin model look fat...I've got to figure that I'm going to look like my own personal circus in it. Now there's a possibility that it will actually look flattering on my stumpy-legged more curves than a mountain switchback, broadshouldered body. So maybe show it on a body that it flatters. Maybe just have that option on your website. Instead of "click to see a back view" you could have "click to see it on some other body types". Just a thought.

Dear Pro-life Demonstrators/Spokespeople,

Why aren't you picketing fertility clinics? If this is all about the sanctity of a fertlized egg, then you should have your panties in a wad over the businesses that flush hundreds of "babies" down the drain on a daily basis. Either you're fundamentally okay with dead babies as long as they're killed in pursuit of an actual live one...which means you should be okay with fetal tissue research since that's using a dead baby to perhaps save already living babies' lives. Or, this really IS all about punishing women like me who want to have sex free of consequences but get tripped up from time to time due to the failure of birth control or human nature.

Dear People who put on their turn signal AFTER they've dramatically slowed down or stopped,

THIS IS NOT HELPFUL. Just skip the expletive turn signal if you're going to do that. Then I just think you're a self-absorbed expletive who was never taught to use turn signals. Stopping suddenly or slowing dramatically with no warning and THEN putting on your turn signal, when I'm already halfway up your trunk...now I KNOW you know what they're for and were just too much of a dipexpletive to use them. Don't rub my face in your failure, my friend. That's a special kind of rage you're firing up.

Dear Restaurant Name Redacted,

I don’t often order salads unless I’m at a decent restaurant…I struggle conceptually with going through the whole process of ordering and paying for what is essentially a bowl of lettuce, with some stuff on it. Often stuff like croutons, tortilla strips, fried chicken and creamy dressings that make the damn thing almost as high calorie as a burger, but much, much less satisfying. Something I could easily make at home for much less money. After all, a mediocre burger is still a burger. Romaine lettuce, plastic tomatoes, giant ass croutons, some shredded carrot and overcooked strips of fried chicken is a travesty of vegetable.

But okay, sometimes you make it interesting – oooh, a little grilled chicken (that I know you grilled yourself, recently), avocado, black beans, corn, red cabbage? And I can dress it with salsa instead of whatever you might be calling dressing? Cool!

And I’ll freely admit, now that I’ve eaten it, it wasn’t bad. But a few things. When I said “no onions, no tortilla chips”, what I meant by that was well, no onions or tortilla chips. That’s why I said it. So they wouldn’t be in there. And seriously, you could be a little more generous with the avocado…after all, fat delivers flavor. But maybe that’s my fault for not using your dressing, but mango salsa instead.

But dudes and dudettes…the lettuce. Look, okay, the jicama, the peppers, the chicken, I get the aesthetics of leaving them in long strips that require a knife to cut up. But seriously, the size of these lettuce pieces! When you make a salad, you want to look down and think, hmm, could I get these pieces in my mouth easily, without leaving dressing (or salsa) all over the sides of my face?

I think the answer is “no, no, I can’t, so I should be making them smaller.”

Unless, of course, Restaurant Name Redacted hires a lot of line cooks with jaws that unhinge.

Ponders the irony of an executive summary that is half the length of the original document.

"Executive Summary" You keep using this word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Dear Work, I've been here for six and a half years now. I'm really grateful for the award, really, I am. But that you spelled my name wrong on the award...I dunno, kind of takes some of the shine off of it.

Dear Fluorescent bulb above my head, Hey, could you blink while I'm looking at you and not wait until I've finally lowered my head to get back to work? You're making me nuts. And my neck hurts from trying to catch you. Although blinking when I blink? Clever bulb.

Dear Facebook, in the however many years I've been on you, have I ever played a game? No, no, I haven't. As a matter of fact, I've spent a significant amount of time blocking other people and their games from my feed. Refusing invitations. Yet daily, you suggest games I might like. I don't expletive LIKE games (unless they're in person and face to face), so put that in your damn algorithm and smoke it! Also, seriously, remember that I would PAY to be able to tweak my feed to block the ten thousand so-and-so just wished you-know-who "Happy Birthday" messages that show up on my feed every day. Your stocks are falling...I'm just saying you should think about that.

Dear Montgomery County, I'm pleased to tell you that despite all of this rain, my basement is bone dry. No more water seeping up from the foundation, no water just shooting out of the sides of the walls like some kind of crazy concealed jet spray. Ever since you fixed the storm drain and put curbs on the street one over, not a single flood! But now I'm pretty damn bitter about the days I've spent shop-vac'cing the basement, the mold remediation, the ruined possessions, the need to invest in plastic shelving and ten thousand plastic bins to keep everything in. Because if you'd just fixed it when it needed it...

Alternatively, there's actually a nascent sinkhole underneath my house, and THAT'S where all the water is going. Which might explain last night's nightmares.

Although those nightmares might also be explained by having three cats that insist on sleeping on the bed with me, one who randomly sneezes on me, one who sneaks up to lie on my head, which would be fine, if only he didn't keep sticking his foot in my eye, and another one that looms over me and purrs HARD, inches from my face. It's like sleeping with the low rent version of the Seven Dwarves.

Dear writers of Being Human, Let’s get this straight. You kill off all the characters I enjoyed and left me with the one that has annoyed the carp out of me since episode 1? Admittedly, it was easier to let go of Mitchell once he fell in love with said chattycathy dippy/dopey character. And then in the beginning of the next season, you introduce three new ones and I have to say goodbye to two of them right away? Seriously. Settle down. I’m trying to decorate a Christmas tree and you’re making me cry non-stop. My only consolation is that I know at the end of this season chattycathydippydopey also dies. And Hal…okay, now that I get to know him better, as the risk of ripping off a whole different vampire/werewolf series, I’d like to do real bad things with him.

Dear headphones, why the hell isn’t your cord two inches longer? That’s all it would take in order to enable me to turn around and access the things behind me. Instead, nearly daily, I’m forced to confront my inability to learn simple things and instead yank you out of the socket, or have the headphones yanked off my head.

Dear cold viruses, are you seriously lined up, holding deli counter numbers? This is number three in a row. I haven’t even had the chance to get over one, when the next one is moving in already. And you expletives are carrying a lot of luggage. Although, on the other hand, since I haven’t felt well and normal since before Halloween, I suppose it’s kinder that way. I may well have forgotten what “well” feels like.

Dear family that ran up an $80 tab in the restaurant and left an $8 tip. I know, math is HARD. That’s ten percent. Now, take half of that, which would be $4, and add that to your ten percent. That equals 15%. Although since you had small children that made a mess of the sugar packet container, shredded napkins and dropped food all of the floor…you should have doubled or tripled that ten percent. If I were empress of the free world, the punishment for undertipping would be to work a certain number of hours as a server. That’d learn ya.

While I was there…

Dear guy at the other table, did you know that you’ve been talking nonstop since I sat down, ordered and ate my meal? Unless the other people invited you specifically to tell them all about everything you’ve ever had a thought about, you should probably let them get a word in edgewise. Here’s your hint, if someone at the table is pointedly not making eye contact with you every time you start talking, and he/she is not socially impaired or blind, then that is your hint, nay, your bodylanguage billboard, flashing in neon, that you are boring them. Look, I’m a fellow yammerer, I know, it’s hard. But seriously, give it a rest, take a break, and ask THEM something. And then resist the urge to follow that up with YOUR opinion of whatever it was they were talking about. Conversation, it’s give and take.

Dear Folks at Cards Against Humanity, well done. The envelopes alone were worth the $12. Although also having various cards that were part of the 12 days of Christmas, most of which are too filthy to make it onto here, past my own self-imposed filter, except maybe for “Slicing a ham in icy silence”, was a special bonus. And the trial game, also too filthy to describe here to any degree, Clusterexpletive, looks fun. Although when your circle of friends includes several ex’s, and the significant others of those ex’s…and the game is essentially a series of hookups, and winning points on whether you complete successful twosomes and threesomes, well, let’s just say, it might take some doing to get the right group to play THAT game.

Speaking of ex’s…

Dear self, do you even HAVE a filter anymore? When talking to your ex about the upcoming party you’ll both be attending, where the theme is Winter is Coming and you’re all going as Game of Thrones characters, you specifically as Cersei Lannister…and you get to talking about what might have prompted your mutual mundane friend to suddenly go all cosplay on you…and you’re both discussing the level of seriousness, like are we expected to BEHAVE in character? (Because we are essentially talking about a party that is comprised mostly of our old D&D group….don’t be judging!) And I say, well, I’m not sure who’s playing Jaime Lannister, but if he’s cute and available, taking it seriously might be just fine with me. And he says yeah, well, except depending on where in the story we’re landing, he could be one-handed and morose. Although you hitting on him might be enough to get rid of the moroseness. And I say “Well, as long as he’s got ONE hand.”

Hmm, maybe playing that game with the ex’s and their SO’s won’t be that much of a stretch….it’s not like they don’t KNOW me.

I'm posting these random bits because for four days I've had a headache on one side of my skull that is probably NOT the same thing as having a spike driven through it, but in my weaker moments, I liken it to that. At one point, when it started, I was laying down and it woke me up and I thought, ah, I'd better not stand up. What if it's a blood clot and I shake it loose and then it hits my heart and BAM, dead. I should just lay here and maybe...I dunno, it might dissolve? And, as queen of the glass half empty, but also empress of WASPY worrying about things that really don't matter, I started worrying. I should leave a note so people know where to find things like bank accounts and insurance. Hmm, the litter box isn't very clean and that'll be problematic. Did I leave something upstairs on the nightstand that should probably be put away, in case my mother's the next person in here? I should put more cat food in the bowl so they don't have empty stomachs and start nibbling on me too quickly. Or text a neighbor and ask her to check up on me if my car's still in the driveway tomorrow afternoon. And as seriously worried as I was about standing up and shaking DEATHCLOT free, I got up anyway because damn the litterbox really did need cleaning, and I had to pee. And I lived. But now it's three days later and it still hurts and I'm stuck in the conundrum of "if I go see a doctor, it will be NOTHING and I'll have to feel embarrassed for not being able to ride out a little headache" or "No one will know what it is, and after dozens of tests and shrugged shoulders, I'll just have to learn to live with it, which I should have done in the first place". OR, blow it off and drop dead over Thanksgiving weekend. So, I'm going to the doctor, but just to cover all pessimistic bases, I didn't want these gems to linger in my drafts folder. (Don't worry, I'll totally live. How could I die, knowing that these were my last words? Seriously.)

( Cut for length, 'cause I do go on, even with stabbing head pains )

Dear Monday,
A pimple inside my nostril? You suck.

(I’m well aware that it’s probably my body’s fault, but it was a rough weekend, albeit in a good way, and my body’s so pre-occupied with little aches and pains and exhaustion that it was probably just vulnerable to peer pressure and Monday led it astray. As Mondays are WONT TO DO.)

Dear Bed,
I do love you so. Especially on Monday nights when I can convince myself that going to bed at 9am is okay.

Dear Cats,
On Mondays, for the love of god, please throw up ANYWHERE but on the bed. In a shoe is even fine. But all I want to do is fall into bed on Monday night. NOT clean up cat puke, throw in a load of laundry because of course, it's Monday, so there are no clean sheets or blankets and then have to convince myself that I WANTED to stay up late waiting for things to wash and dry so I could make the bed up.

A colleague who came out over the weekend to visit the Faire asked me this morning “Oh, my god, how do you do that week after week! I was exhausted on Sunday and am still exhausted, but you do two full days of that, then work all week, and then do it again. I’d die!” And she’s probably never thought about the Faire related laundry, dishes, packing/unpacking, shopping, and household chores and obligations that need to all be taken care of during the week because really, there’s no weekend time to mow the lawn or vacuum, is there?

The short answer is “I have no idea how I do it. I just do.” And that’s probably 95% of it, right there. When you’re used to “going” all the time, day after day, with no breaks, no great periods of relaxation, lying around, doing nothing, it just feels kind of normal to stay in hyperdrive. Don’t get me wrong, Monday nights usually include a good hour to two hours of sitting on the couch, watching a show. At most, some laundry-folding will happen. And I’ll probably have at least started some laundry and done some chores beforehand…but then it is lying on the couch time, and I TREASURE it. It feels all indulgent and pampering. So, do I do that less often than most people? Probably. But I think I squeeze a lot more value out of it.

Yeah, yeah, it’s one thing after another. But a LOT of those things are sharing good times with friends and family. Sure, I could skip the shanty sing, (and I really do from time to time because even I have limitations and will shut some stuff down in order to breathe) but that’s always quality time with a certain group of friends, and singing sea songs loudly, vaguely off-key, is pretty fun. Going

Heh. I think I’ve found what’s probably my motto: Squeezing the snot out of Life.

Dear Congress, while I’m all about positive reinforcement, sometimes a behavior is dysfunctional or dangerous enough that it needs to be extinguished quickly, without the luxury of re-directing the impulses toward a positive behavior that can be rewarded. Seriously. The budget. Clearly you have learned and embraced the complete lack of consequences that comes from shutting down the government because you’re too busy playing “let’s make it look like the other guy is the bad guy”. And while I’d love to have the luxury of having the time to demonstrate that actually governing the country, that cooperating and negotiating with the other side, that doing what’s best for the COUNTRY, not your political PARTY, is what you should be doing…clearly, after several cycles of hurting others and getting away with it, holding the nation HOSTAGE for your own political gain, doesn’t have quite the negative consequences it should have. So. For every day you shut down the government, you lose a week’s pay. And when the government starts back up again, you don’t get it back. Plus, I’m locking you in the Senate/House and feeding you nothing but beans and rice. Pack away your posturing, pandering expletive self and GET ON WITH IT. Afraid your constituency won’t re-elect you if you “cave”…then try appealing to a constituency that understands that it’s actually called negotiation and that no one will get everything that they want because…that’s called FAIR.

Dear colleague,

Your voice is the Urosalpinx cinerea to my oyster of a brain. I KNOW you can modulate it. Heaven knows when you’re on the phone with your kid arranging ride schedules, you can totally go low, and I’m grateful for that. But seriously, try to tap that voice a little more often. Because that loud rasping voice of yours is boring holes, my friend.

Dear various stores with “pick up in store” options,

Seriously, this is the fourth time I’ve placed an order like this and the third time the order has been cancelled because whatever it is that I’m buying, that thing/those things that your system confirmed were in-stock, apparently are not. Or, more likely, being a jaundiced ex-retail store manager, are totally in stock, but no one can find them. I mean, at least this last one, you offered me free shipping to make up for now having to place the order for shipping. Would be more exciting if I didn’t already have a coupon/membership that guarantees me free shipping. So, now, do I invest another ten minutes placing the order on the phone to get my free shipping for your screw up…place the order online to be shipped and use my coupon to get free shipping? Hard call, since I EXCEL at picking the thing that will unexpectedly take the longest. Or, learning a lesson from the last time I placed a “pick up in store” order, where they said I couldn’t pick it up because it wasn’t actually in stock but then I showed up anyway and oh-hey there it was on the shelf. That would undoubtedly be the fastest route to happiness/goal…but I suppose I stand to be pissed off either way – because it really isn’t in stock and now I’ve wasted a trip…or it’s right there on the freaking shelf, right THERE. So many options and all of them promising a throbbing temple.

I met with a supplier that has chafing fuel in gel form, in a big ol’ squeeze bottle so you can refill the cans once you run them down. My rep is like “hey, isn’t this a great idea?” And I’m thinking NO. A thousand times NO. Dude, have you ever BEEN back of the house in a restaurant? Have you met us? We have to put signs up in the restaurant kitchen that say “please stop making penises out of the leftover rice, right now, or I will kill you”. This is the kind of environment you want to put a squeeze bottle of flammable gel into?

I’m a pretty responsible person. Born with a safety patrol vest on. The only rule I don’t obey is the whole speed limit thing. Everything else, I’m all kinds of safe and do the right thing-y.

But oh. If I still worked in a kitchen, there would so be a flaming message on the prep table tomorrow, oh, yes, there would be!

Hey, Self! Remember last October when we swore we’d spend the summer working on tombstones for Halloween…and we purposely left a bunch of the blanks and ones that needed touch up out in the hallway from the living room to the basement, so we wouldn’t forget and they’d be handy? And we spent all summer tripping over them and making the damaged ones worse?

For the record: Yeah, blew it.

Running a couple of errands today, I ran into several amusements. First I got behind a home contractor van labeled Hyman Restoration, which made me giggle a little. It’s an actual name and I’m sure most people are mature and don’t think anything of it. But I’m not, and I did.

Then when I was at the post office behind a man who had several packages marked Fraigle. The gentleman in question was clearly not a native English speaker, so it’s an understandable error. But I’ve adopted it and when I got back to work and a colleague asked me how I was feeling, I couldn’t resist saying “I’m feeling a little fraigle” which made me happy and less fragile-feeling.

On the way back to work I got behind a truck that had vinyl letters on its back window: There is a differance in “living” and “living well”.

There’s also a difference between those who recognize their grammar/spelling limitations and those who think proofreading is for sissies, happily proclaiming those limitations to the world.

Know your limitations my friend, and find a way around them.

Sorry for the brevity – but today is going to be a killer, schedule-wise and I chose to sleep in a bit this morning, not leaving me much time for writing. So, here are some small bits, stitched together without benefit of segues.

Dear OkCupid,

I’m pretty sure that someone who uses the handle “PokerThug” is NOT an exceptionally good match. (OKC sends you e-mails that say “we think this guy is an exceptionally good match”) Look to your algorithms, my friend, because something’s wrong. Although you could also add a few questions that are more pertinent than many of the ones you use. In addition to “Do you think a profile picture that just shows your naked abdomen is a good idea?” you can also add “Would you date a guy who wears his baseball cap on backward/sideways?” and “Would you be seen in public with a guy wearing a fedora and a trenchcoat if it weren’t raining or you weren’t in the middle of a theatrical production”. Because PokerThug broke both those rules. Plus, also Poker. And Thug. The first I could ignore, but not the second.

Thanks to Post-It Notes, I think my generation will seem a little less senile, as we age. Unless you stop judging senility by how much someone forgets, and start judging it by how many brightly colored pieces of paper are stuck up all over their house.

Dear people with whom I’m trying to schedule a conference call,
When you suggest three dates this next week, and I say I am completely booked this week. And the next open dates I have that meet the criteria of another participant, which is no Tues/Thursdays, would be the 25th or 27th. You are not helping when you e-mail everyone “How about this Sunday?” Try to think of as a hand of poker (apologies to PokerThug, as apparently I’m not as poker-averse as I may have implied) where when someone antes fifty cents (hey, I don’t play high stakes), your only option is to match it (so pick the 25th or 27th or say you can do either), up the ante (I can’t do those, let’s shoot for the NEXT week, here are the days I’m available), or fold (expletive it, we’ll never find a date in common, I don’t need to be on the call, send me the notes.) Throwing twenty-five cents onto the table just WASTES OUR TIME. I just SAID I'm not available until the 25th. When I repeat it, I'm pretty sure the repetition will be accompanied by FLAMES.

Weight Loss Contest
So, I sort of skipped that this week. Waddya want, on vacation, then sick, sick, grossly sick. Here’s the good news, though. Despite being on vacation, and being sick (where the only things I can taste are fat, sugar and salt, so you can guess what that meant and while some people don’t want to eat when they’re sick. I am NOT one of those people) I maintained the same weight. So, while I didn’t lose anything, I didn’t gain anything. Since half my colleagues DID gain, during the same time period, I’m feeling reasonably okay about that. I won’t win, but that’s not my goal.

And as proof that I’m all about self-sabotage, I sprained my ankle, so that whole, “that’s it, every day at lunch, I’m walking!’ thing….is all tangled up in a ball of used Vetrap. Vetrap…it’s like an Ace bandage, but thinner and it sticks to itself (3M brand is worth paying extra for if you want it to actually stick). Sure, they sell it for humans in the drugstore, all white-person fleshcolored. Or you can get the stuff for horses/dogs online, for much less, in colors that can either be camouflage by being the same color as your sock/stocking, or make a statement. I’m wearing purple today to go with my jacket. Mostly because I found that wearing black as camouflage made people think that it was actually my ankle that was all wrinkly, or that for some reason I had a sock on. My colleague: “Did you mean to do that? “Do what? Sprain my ankle?” “No, put a sock on one foot.” “That’s not a sock, it’s a bandage.” I’ve already got enough issues with fashion-impairment, I don’t need people thinking that I put pantyhose on, then a sock on one foot and then heels.

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Pleas to people who aren't going to listen to me, anyway:
Dear Restaurant, #42
Facebook statuses that are better not posted on Facebook, but need to get out of my head: #1
Letter to Third Paries v12
Because I've fallen behind on my correspondence...
Last Words
Monday: holding it together just long enough to get back home and to bed.
In which you might have to look something up. It's good for you.
Words.
Why, hello there, Friday, where ya been?

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Entries tagged with dear entity unlikely to respond

Pleas to people who aren't going to listen to me, anyway:

Dear Restaurant, #42

Facebook statuses that are better not posted on Facebook, but need to get out of my head: #1

Letter to Third Paries v12

Because I've fallen behind on my correspondence...

Last Words

Monday: holding it together just long enough to get back home and to bed.

In which you might have to look something up. It's good for you.

Words.

Why, hello there, Friday, where ya been?