"I Hate to Tell You This, But..."

Don't you HATE when someone starts out with that phrase?

"I hate to say it, but..."

There are endless iterations of it, too. "I hate to be THAT GUY, but..." "I hate to point this out, but..." "I hate to rain on your parade, but..." "I hate to disagree, but..."

IF YOU HATE IT, THEN DON'T DO IT. THAT SIMPLE. Also, guess what? Everyone else hates it when you do that, too. Not just you! How about we make EVERYONE happy and you just keep that little comment to yourself?

It is NEVER "I hate to say it, but your hair looks absolutely gorgeous today!"
"I hate to be THAT GUY, but I really want to buy you a drink."

These kind of people should just say LOVE instead of hate, and it would all make more sense.

"I LOVE to disagree: YOU ARE WRONG."
I LOVE to rain on parades: YOU WILL FAIL."

It would all be more honest that way. And the patronizing condescension they manage to pack into that "but" makes me want to stab them.

I hate to tell you this, but you're not fooling anyone, BITCHES.

My whole point, though, was that I hate to tell you this, but my computer is still on the fritz. (TAKE A NOTE, THIS IS THE CORRECT USAGE OF "I HATE TO TELL YOU THIS." I actually DO hate saying this, because it is TRUE AND AWFUL.)

Not only that, but my phone is about to take its last dying gasp, too. Why are phones that cost $600 only good for an average of 1.5 years? JUST long enough to crap out before your contract is up? I think we all know the answer to that little rhetorical question. Anyway, so my phone sucks and freezes up a bajillionty times if I try to access the internet. It is a smart phone grown dumb. Maybe it has Alzheimer's, and is reckoning back to the Golden Age of the Telephone, when all it did was make calls.

Regardless. I thank you all for sticking with me through thick and thin over here. And, as always, I PROMISE I WILL MAKE IT UP TO YOU!!*

*probability of fulfillment: 1 in 10000000000000000

Autocorrect, DIAFGFA.

Since I am sans computer for the last few and the next few days, or at least until HP ships me my recovery disks, because God forbid they actually include them with the purchase of my laptop, I have been using my phone to keep from falling back into the pre-information age, or the preformed age, as I am wont to call it just now. Also, I have picked up an affinity for run-ons and a dangerous carelessness with verb tense and mood.

My point being, and do you know I hate it when people use that construction? Usually because they often follow it up with the word "is", and nothing bothers me more than a repeated being verb with the possible exception of never knowing on which side of the quotations punctuation should fall.

Anyway, my point is, is that I have been using my phone for ALL THE THINGS. And you know what this experience has taught me, even more than "Don't leave your computer laying around where the kid can manhandle it and delete important system files?"?

It has taught me that I hate autocorrect. HATE. ABHOR. WISH DEATH UPON. DESIRE THE DEMISE OF. It is basically the absolute worst thing, ever. I hate its smug attitude. Its predisposition to replace sense with nonsense. Its maniacal bent toward making me appear illiterate and undereducated. When I type "She lets us go over there if it's nice," I do not want autocorrect to hijack me and instead say, "Should let's go overall there's if its Nick." Not only does this not make sense, it also creates the necessity of deciding between deleting ALL THE THINGS or trying to wade through the whole morass, one errant screen swipe at a time, editing and deleting, because most of the letters are already there, and let's be honest, if you delete and fix it you'll be back at square one with "Show letter use to overnight The if itself Nicole."

Also? Using a phone increases my paranoia that I will lose any note of length by about a bajillionty fold. You know why? Becquerel (What the ever living fuck? I mean, for real. Under no circumstances is that a word.)-- BECAUSE, my phone just shuts down the web browser at indeterminate junctures, losing all information and sending my teeth into fits of gnashing and my robes into fits of rending.

So I'd better sign off, but not before telling autocorrect that I hope it Dies in a Freak Gasoline Fight Accident.

A Flood of Happiness. OR SOMETHING ELSE.

Sorry there wasn't anything here yesterday, and I kind of dropped the ball on proclaiming a winner of the Name That Tune (CONGRATS ANDY!)-- but I HAD A FUCKER OF A DAY, ladies and gents. A fucker of a day.

First, all heck broke loose at work. Then, I overdid my exercise and could barely move. THEN I got into a... well, hubby and I don't really fight, or argue, but we have disagreements. Which, I think, is harder to deal with than screaming. So we had a disagreement and I ended up walking home in the rain. And THEN, instead of being Mopey McMoperson I decided to clean out my entire closet. And mop the floors. And clean the bathrooms. And pick up the kid's room, which is when I noticed that the carpet in his room (located in the basement) was wet.

Yep. Flooded.

THANK YOU, UNIVERSE, FOR SHITTING ON MY HEART.

So I had to rip up the carpet and pad, try to wring out as much water as I could, and set the fans in there. I think we have to get a new pad, but we can save the carpet. Unfortunately, though, the water is still seeping up from the concrete and in through the walls-- and it's supposed to rain again today.

Accidentally taken while trying to call the landscape company this morning

All this because we had the gutters replaced SO THE BASEMENT WOULDN'T FLOOD, and they didn't finish them yesterday so we didn't call the landscape company to dig out the drainage plumbing since they WEREN'T EVEN FUCKING DONE YET.

DAMN IT. So now we have $1700 for new gutters, $1000 for the plumbed pipes, and $300 for a new pad downstairs ANYWAY, even though we spent $2700 to AVOID THAT FUCKING THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS. Well, and the undermining of the foundation of our house and black mold. BUT STILL.

Yesterday can go FUCK ITSELF WITH A RUSTY SNOW SHOVEL, which is the only implement I had to dig the pipe area up yesterday in a vain attempt to divert the water further from the house.

Today, you are preemptively ON NOTICE.

So, I Heard...

You know what I just don't do anymore?

Keep up with current pop culture.

I used to read all the gossip blogs, and look through the magazines... I wanted to know all the things about all the things, and pop culture is actually a large part of urban life. It is what everyone is talking about, all the time.

Out here in Idaho, though? Not so much. Here, the big talk is about Cord taking some 38-year-old woman from Eurasia who spoke NO ENGLISH to the film festival, where they both got so wasted that while crossing the street, one of them barfed and the other peed her pants. Or that Karl is having an affair with a girl who's not even old enough to drink legally, and they aren't even trying to hide it. Or that Luke got into a fistfight at a pastry store over a tiling job. Or that Justin's girlfriend is totally coked out and he is in denial.

It's kind of the same shit as everything you see in the gossip rags, just involving people who aren't as rich, beautiful, or famous. But there is kind of a clear divide between the two, which seems really contrived to me.

I mean, the lives of the rich and famous are generally seen as fodder for public consumption, whereas local gossip is-- well, just that. Gossip. In the derogatory sense. You could argue that celebrity gossip is public domain because these people are public figures, but aren't we all figures in public, in our own domains? What's done in public can be spoken of publicly.

I dunno. I mean, gossip in general is not a savory enterprise. I'm not sure that picking apart every outfit Kim Kardashian wears on the nightly comedy shows is any different than sniping about Lucy and her nip slip at the Mini Mart.

Thoughts?

Make a Run for the Border

I am 100% unashamed to admit that one of my absolute most favorite foods on the entire planet of Earth is a Crunchy Supreme Taco from Taco Bell.

I have never had one with this many tomatoes.

I KNOW! The wafer-thin taco shell! The indistinguishable "beef product," spiced just enough to remind you of enchilada sauce that you know it is supposed to be an American interpretation of Mexican food. The cursory shreds of nutritionally-vacuous iceberg lettuce! The strangely dusty shreds of American cheese (oh the irony!)! The slathering of sour cream, the four morsels of pale pink tomato! Not to mention the rusty orange trail of grease that snakes down your arms, pooling in the bottom of the tortilla shell if it is not devoured within exactly 2.5 minutes of manufacture! And the vaguely vinegary HOT SAUCE, squeezed out of little foil packets onto the taco as you drive down the road!

Holy mother of mercy. These things are so incredibly delicious that I think my salivary glands are going to malfunction if I don't get a stick of gum or something. Hang on.

OK. So for real, though. Taco bell Crunchy Supreme tacos. When I go to the drive through, I order more of them than most deem appropriate. I remember the first time I went there with my then-boyfriend, now-husband. He asked me what I wanted, and I paused for a second before saying, "Um, I guess... six crunchy supreme tacos." And his eyes bugged out from his head a little bit, and he said "WHAT." And I said, "Yeah, no, better make it eight." This was massively cut back from the number I wanted to say, which probably would have given him a straight-up coronary on the spot, and that would have been the end of that relationship.

This is what they actually look like. NOMNOMNOM GET IN MY MOUTH

I try, now, never to order more than four. Well, OK, five. And usually I will try to get someone else in the car to order more than they actually want, "Because you never know if you're going to be extra hungry, and what if we are ten miles down the road and all you want is one more taco, and we can't come back? It's only $1.29. It's worth it to get an extra just in case." And then I take their extra one, because OF COURSE they didn't want another one, most people can't even stomach three of these things.

I don't know, maybe my stomach is made of iron, a little bit. Something about those tasty little morsels calls to me, though. Whenever I go to a town that has a Taco Bell, I make a belabored point of getting my tacos.

SO! Tomorrow, we are going to Twin Falls, the city that is home to the nearest Target. It is about 70 miles away, or something. I am not good with distances. It takes a little over an hour to get there. BUT! There is a Taco Bell in Twin.

Tomorrow, however, is going to be a sad day. I am still on this CUNTPUNTER of a diet, so I can't eat six tacos with a combined caloric content of 13409283325098, 4250923458 of those calories from saturated fat. So I am driving OVER AN HOUR to a place that I visit maybe FOUR TIMES A YEAR, and I am MISSING my chance to gorge myself on tacos.

I am almost literally depressed about this. I am literally sad. Like, I kind of don't want to go, just because I don't want to have to drive by the Taco Bell without stopping. It is going to be all I can think of tomorrow.

FUCKING FUCK GUEWIOFHW:?IGH WOIGHWEGF"OIHFUCK.

I had better be smoking hot by Christmas, or my Christmas present to myself is going to be a 24-pack. Of tacos.

Thanks to Google, I found this. I am torn between horror and understanding.

Good Stuff, BITCHES

What do you think of the cursory addition of the epithet "Bitches" to off-the-cuff statements, highlighting the badassery of the speaker?

I just got back from the gym, and I ran five miles, BITCHES.
That Sichuan pepper went down like a peapod, BITCHES.
I just nailed that test, BITCHES.
I walked to the hospital in a blizzard with a broken leg, carrying my grandma on my BACK, BITCHES.

The thing is, usually, if you have done something badass enough, there is no reason to tack on BITCHES at the end. Shouldn't your statement stand for itself? You ran five miles! You ate a fucking hot pepper! You nailed a test! You... well, I think that last one was just a bald-faced lie. But still. Point being, do we need to call someone our bitch to be badass? If that's the deal, we should be able to use it with regular ol' stuff, and it will still lend badassery to our deed.

I just got back from the knitting circle, and I purled my scarf, BITCHES.
That applesauce went down like water, BITCHES.
I just failed that test, BITCHES.
I lied about my grandma, BITCHES.

Hm. Maybe it does kind of work. I guess you learn something new every day.

BITCHES.

If Today Had a Theme

AAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaauuughaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Siiick.

So although, 80% of the time, I am a bad ass motherfucker, there is at least 20% of the time that I am a mess of frayed emotions and sneaky self-hate spirals and general bitch-and-whininess. I am telling you this because when I get sick, the penudulum swings to the opposite end of the one I'm usually occupying, and ALL I CAN DO is whine. Like a tiny infant.

I woke up yesterday feeling ick, and chalked it up to not-enough-sleep combined with too-much-wine. But it was my throat that was hurting, and kind of my sinuses, and my body was kind of aching. And it didn't get better all day. And I lost my appetite, and my throat got worse, and then by the time I went to bed, I was feeling like someone had beaten me severely and forced me to swallow a pineapple.

Then, as I laid in bed, I got cold. The kind of cold that was like being whipped from the inside of your skin with a cat o'nine tails made of ice. It hurt to move, but I was shivering (and therefore moving) nonstop. So I got out of bed, put on a fleece jogging suit, added two downy blankets to the bed, then huddled under my pile of clothes and covers, waiting to heat up.

Finally, about an hour in, I started getting cozily warm. It was then that my heretofore unused brain realized I probably had a fever, as it was about 75 degrees in the house, and I looked like I was sleeping outside in the tundra. So I got up, took a few ibuprofen, went back to bed.

Passed out. Thirty minutes later, I woke up to go pee, then couldn't go back to sleep because I was worried that Wal-Mart was going to sneak into our store and steal all the wine. Also, I could not stop thinking about the Rogue varietal that we had to bottle in the morning. This is when I realized I was hallucinating.

I drank some water and waited for the ibuprofen to kick in. About 20 minutes later, I started getting uncomfortably warm. I took of the blanket, then the next blanket, then shed my clothes, then finally laid there in my undies on the bed, sweating so much that I literally drenched the blanket. Gross.

Somewhere in here Dust woke up to go to work. Around 5AM I finally passed out, and slept til 9AM, when I woke up feeling like every muscle I had wanted to cry.

I am supposed to do ALL THE WORK on a grant today, and all I feel like I can do is sip tea and lie here inert. I am such a damn baby.

In My Opinion

Preface: If you do not understand that Rachael was being sarcastic, you do not know her well enough, and need to get more of her in your life.

Rachael left me a comment the other day that I was going to address in a rant against relativism in artistic meaning, but I got sidetracked and instead went on a rant against value judgments in general. So... I will come back to a rant about art later. But for right now,

I HATE BLANKET RELATIVISM IN VALUE JUDGMENTS.

You know what? Some things ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS.

This is one of the things that pisses me off to no end. People thinking that their uninformed opinion of something should be taken into account just because there is some sort of wussy "all opinions should be treated equally" mantra floating around out there. ALL OPINIONS CANNOT BE RIGHT, because then A would be both A and NOT A at the SAME TIME, IN THE SAME RESPECT. And that is IMPOSSIBLE.

And who is the judge of this, you say? Because doesn't it end up being put in their hands, the fate of art and taste and all things? YES IT DOES. And I AM THE JUDGE, BITCHES. Actually, I should qualify that by saying I am totally not the judge on most things. I will defer to those more knowledgeable than myself, in most instances. But I can be the judge in areas in which I have been educated. Because I believe that my opinion regarding literature is more informed than most people's opinions, for example. If some illiterate eighth-grader said that Hamlet was a misogynist play that made no sense, I would tell you that he is WRONG. He is not just interpreting the play as it can be interpreted because there are many interpretations and aren't they all right? NO.

And I'm not saying that you have to know Shakespeare's life story, or have read ALL THE PLAYS, or have an earth-shaking love of poetry or theater to love him OR to realize that he IS, unqualifiedly,* a genius. But I am saying that the worth of your opinion depends on your familiarity with the subject on which you are opining.

You are entitled to your opinion in the same way that I am entitled to tell you where to shove your opinion. Freedom of speech does not necessarily entail equality of opinion. You don't go to me to place your horse racing bets, because I do not know a fetlock from a forelock. You go to the stable hands and jockeys and backroom odds-makers, because their opinions are MORE VALID. You don't go to Rachael to tell you how to solve your sinus problems, you go to a DOCTOR, because his opinion is MORE VALID.

And now I am running out of steam because I got sidetracked reading up on fetlocks and sinus problems. Dammit. Let's just have a beer and look at this beautiful picture.

Degas' Ballet Rehearsal. Definitively Beautiful. 

 *Unqualifiedly is so a word. Fuck You, Spellcheck. My opinion is more valid than yours 99.9% of the time.