kpduty

I need to give up on the internet.

It used to be awesome. You'd go to a website, find a bunch of people who all shared your interests and sense of humor, and then you'd have a rollicking good time. But lately it seems like the internet's raison d'etre is to be a place there one goes to

* make fun of people who disagree with you by calling them "fat"
* make fun of people who disagree with you by calling them "douche"
* become hyper-critical of things that in the past wouldn't bother you in the least
* become hyper-critical of things that you've always been critical of, but now you end your critiques with the words "you douche"

It's just so vitriolic. Take for example the forums at Television Without Pity. Yeah, I know, but I used to be a regular back in the early days of HOUSE, when there'd be lots of fun made in between the insightful cultural and scholarly critiques. I admit, I haven't visited them in ages, because I haven't been watching anything I wanted to discuss online with anybody. But then I became addicted to SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE. I've been reading spoilers for the show here where someone who attended a taping mentioned that a particularly hated contestant admitted to having an "Asian alter ego."

The boards EXPLODED with rage. How could the producers of the show allow such racist content? How dare she stereotype all Asians as sexy! How ignorant that she doesn't understand that "Asian" doesn't apply to just East Asians! What could she be thinking? Never mind that all the dancers who adopt a "ghetto" "blackalicious" hip hop style are celebrated for being able to adapt their styles with such ease. Because this one contestant sucks ass as a dancer (in their opinion) and has caused other, more deserving dancers to be booted on the show while she is receiving obvious preferential treatment from the show. Which is a whole 'nother discussion (argument) altogether.

And it goes on and on and on. The more you disagree, the wronger you are. I want so badly to go in there and say, I love all things "Asian." I'm especially fond of anything Japanese. All I know about Japan I learned from watching AKIRA, but I love Japanese food. Japanese women are so hot. Japanese guys are so hot. They're all so cool, in their city from the future, with its tentacle sex and ghosts made of long black hair and gigantic neon billboards and its vending machines that dispense whatever your heart desires. I love the ethereal mountains in a haze of fog, hiding houses made with delicate paper walls. I WANT SO BAD TO LIVE IN TOKYO.

And according to the boards on TWoP, that makes me a racist.

So I keep reading, my eyes bleeding; my brain begs me to stop, but it's a train wreck of pomposity and rancor and I can't stop looking. Surely, I think, it's not really as bad as it seems, and yet it goes on for page after page. There's no civility: you may couch it in the long, flowery words of aristocrats, but you're still being an ass.

Or a douche.

It's exactly like Ghostbusters 2: the one where the pink slime oozes under the city, feeding off of the inhabitants' ill will. This shit breeds more shit. They're not even talking about me or to me and it raises my hackles.

AND IT'S LIKE THIS EVERYWHERE. Go to any board, anywhere. You can't comment that the sky is particularity blue today without someone telling you YOU'RE A FUCKING IDIOT YOU FAT FUCKER YOU PROBABLY SUCK MICHAEL MOORE'S COCK PLUS YOU WOULDN'T KNOW WHAT A PROPER PASO DOBLE LOOKED LIKE IF IT RAMMED YOU IN THE ASS. YOU DOUCHE.

Why is everyone so on edge, and angry, and mean? I hate to sound cliché, but why can't we all just get along? What the hell has happened to us? That suddenly, no matter how ignorant we are of something, we're obviously right and everybody else is wrong?

And why douche? You know how partial I am to fucktard.

So I went to the library on my lunch break to pick up an audio book I had on hold. I also picked up an assortment of books that will litter the living room coffee table/floor until I get the email telling me to renew them (running across PARASITE EVE randomly on a shelf FTW!).

As occurs every time I go to this particular library, I stopped by the coffee place on my way back to work. I feel I've earned a big ass cup of coffee, after having walked my fat ass all the way to the library and back, carrying the enormous load of my ass and some books I'm never going to read.

The barista, whom I believe has served me before, was particularly chipper today and called me "ma'am" and "honey." I'm at least 10 years older than her. What did I want, honey?

"A large iced mocha, please," I said, trying my best to be pleasant. After all, I'd found just enough change in my lint and fruit fly filled pockets of poorness that I could treat myself to a drink.

"You want whipped cream, ma'am?" she asked.

"OH NO," I said. I'm counting calories, don't you know.

And then I saw it. The signal that death would surely rain down upon Earth from the heavens. The End was NIGH. My world crumbled beneath my feet. Fireworks clouded my vision as though I'd been rubbing my eyes real hard for hours. It couldn't be...it just COULDN'T.

PLEASE...NO...

The coffee place has started taking credit cards.

My one saving financial grace has been that the coffee place never took plastic. When I went to the library, I'd always have to have cash on me, or else I had to do without. I'm addicted to froufrou coffee drinks: the Starbucks near my gyno, when they see me pull in for my Pap smear, rub their hands in glee at the thought of all the money I'll be spending on beverages when I'm done with my appointment. But I can't get these drinks all the time: Starbucks is too far out of the way. That Panera on the way to work every morning? Their drinks are shit. They couldn't make a good cup of coffee if there was a gun at their heads. The other Starbucks near work? No parking, and my ass isn't addicted enough to walk that far.

Although I have made the trip. But I was particularly desperate. And the stop near the library wasn't open yet. And I was REALLY DESPERATE.

But the point is, I usually HAD TO HAVE CASH. And I don't really have the money to be wasting on froufrou coffee drinks. At least according to The Husband. Who thinks I should just MAKE MY OWN, like you can just get up one morning and put boiling water in a cup and add some grounds and poof, you have a cup of coffee. IT'S NOT THE SAME!!!

Seriously, sometimes I think I'm so lazy I'd stop wiping my own ass if I could get away with it.

But back to the coffee. The shop accepting credit cards means that I'm going to be tempted to blow a wad of money every time I go there. I MUST HAVE SUPREME POWERS OF RESISTING. As I sit here now, I can hear the faint siren call.

ICED MOCHA....*sssshhhhhwwwwoooooooooooooo*

That's the approximate sound of someone whistling and beckoning or the wind or something.

Boy, I've got to pee real bad. And my heart's beating so fast it feels like I'm having a heart attack.

Large froufrou coffee drinks are so awesome. And now that I don't have to pay cash, they're even awesomer.

MUST RESIST!!!

Thank God my lazy ass has already made that trip once today, or I'd be in BIG TROUBLE.

Lewis Black has this really awesome routine about the "dumbest thing he's ever heard in his life":

"If it wasn't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college."

The joke, which can be heard below, if basically, WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN, and OH, THE PAIN AS I WILL NEVER KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THAT IS SUPPOSED TO MEAN.

The thing is, tonight The Husband and I had a very similar experience.

We were driving home from an evening of playing board games with The Husband's Boyfriend and The Husband's Boyfriend's Girlfriend. It was pretty late, 12:30 am or thereabouts. We were passing by the Waffle House. Parked in front of the Waffle House, in the street, were two cop cars, lights flashing. The cops were standing on the sidewalk/berm, in the grass, hands on hips, just sort of exasperated or something. And running away from them (actually, it was more of a cross between a slow jog and a quick saunter) was a Hispanic man, no shirt, those horrible long men's jeans shorts, and he's holding a cat. An orange tabby. It looked sort of like our own beloved Commodore Oliver J. "Buster" Poopsalot of the British Royal Navy, arch-enemy of Tess the One-Eyed Pirate Cat and her salty First Mate, Black Jack Pickett.

The Husband did a first-rate job of driving forward and looking backward for an extended period of time, without hitting anybody. But damned if we could figure out why a half-naked Hispanic man would not be trying very hard to escape with his cat from cops who were not chasing him. Unless it wasn't his cat.

Had he been trying to have sex with it in the bathroom of the Waffle House? Did he rescue it from an evening in the pokey, after the cat had perpetrated some crime against Society that required the intervention of the police? And why weren't the cops running after him? Were they full of waffles and unable to run without developing stitches in their sides? Had they already filled their month quota of arrests of half-naked Hispanic men with cats?

All I know is, as I sit here having to pee real bad and needing to go to bed because now it's 2 am, is WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN, and OH, THE PAIN AS I WILL NEVER KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THAT IS SUPPOSED TO MEAN.

Please, PLEASE, for the love of god be on the news in the morning.

Please.

No, this isn't an entry on race relations.

This is an entry about me shoving my nose into the crotch of my own panties.

The Husband and I have been together seven years, many of those years spent occupying the same living space. You'd think that by now we'd have some sort of system down for doing the laundry. Alas, our strategy seems revolve around the laundry lying around the house like warrens of rabbits left to breed unchecked, to the point where one or both of us becomes annoyed into action, or we run out of clothes to wear.

It's usually The Husband annoyed and unclothed fifteen minutes before we have to leave for work that a plan of action takes shape.

Last night was one of those moments. Not only were we desperately in need of clean clothes, but a few nights earlier Tess the One-Eyed Pirate Cat had awoken me from my beauty sleep by hawking up a few hair balls on the comforter. The dirty bedclothes had been hastily cleaned and then unceremoniously dumped on the floor at the foot of the bed. The Husband was pretty pissed about having to walk around the mess on the way to and from his side of the bed, so a decision was made: the laundry was getting done.

First, before he and I are able to actually physically engage in the act of washing the laundry, we have to put away the old clean laundry that we did the last time we did laundry.

See, this is another hurtle we face in our quest for unsoiled apparel. Rarely--if ever--do we wash the clothes and then put away the clothes.

My thinking is it's sort of like Newton's Third Law: if you don't do laundry and it multiplies, then if you do do laundry, then the clean laundry will also multiply.

Or maybe if you don't do laundry it will do itself. Equal and opposite, equal and opposite.

Please bear in mind, I was an English major. I got a C both times I took Calculus.

So here's the crux of the problem: whenever we finally decide to do laundry, all the baskets in which we would transport the dirty laundry to the laundry room, or conversely remove the clean laundry from the laundry room, are either filled with dirty laundry waiting to go downstairs or clean laundry waiting to go upstairs.

And often we go so long between frenzied laundry-doing that we forget what's clean and what's dirty.

And here we come full circle to the beginning of my story: me, home from work following a trip to the grocery, with my nose buried in the crotch of my panties trying to figure out if they were cleaned last night or brought downstairs this morning.

And you know what? Damned if I could tell.

I threw them on the floor, put the stuff in the dryer in the basket, put the stuff in the wash in the dryer, and washed those goddamned panties again.

They'd better come out smelling like fucking roses.

On second thought, maybe they should just come out smelling like Tide and be done with it.

I'm off to clean the litter boxes.

And no, don't get me started on the litter boxes.

I'm sure as hell not putting my nose in there.

You know what's a HUNDRED BILLION GAJILLION TIMES BETTER than giant robots kicking the shit out of each other?

Jet Li and Jason Statham kicking the shit out of each other.

Just thinking that this movie exists and I'M GONNA WATCH IT makes me pee my pants a little.

I thought that after all these years of blogging, it was time that I outed some of the Important Real Life Characters that have appeared in my entries. This way, you can feel you know me a little better than you already do. What with me telling you about how I smell my own underwear and whatnot.

So without further ado, I give you a picture of The Husband in all his Afternoon at an Outdoor Cafe glory.

What, you didn't know I was married to Val Kilmer?

That comes as a shock? Didn't think my big fat ass could attract the likes of The Iceman?

Well, now you know.

I don't know if you know this, but Coldplay sucks ass.

So this past week, The Husband and I have been on vacation.

We've been playing lots of Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Your character turns into a wolf and howls. IT'S AWESOME.

What's not awesome is that all week the basement's been flooding. The Cats are pissed: they come downstairs expecting to poop with impunity, and instead they can't get to the litter boxes because of the standing water. Tess screams about it constantly.

The funny thing to see is when the water's flowing into the office side of the basement, at the bottom of the stairs, and Jack comes down and sticks a paw in and OHMYGODITSWATER and he shakes his paw, and then you can almost literally see his brain reboot and then he sticks his paw back in and OHMYGODITSWATER and then he shakes his paw and then his brain reboots again and the process starts anew until you yell at him to stop.

Normally, he's the smart one.

So almost all week we headed downstairs--either right after we woke up or before we went to bed--to play catch-up with the accumulated water. All the towels in the house have been washed over and over. They smell like summer camp, all mildewy and outdoorsy. At first, we assumed the water was from all the rain we'd been getting: if the ground's saturated and it's raining non-stop or really hard for a short period of time, water will seep up through the basement floor. We think there are a couple of long cracks that are the culprits, although the whole floor could use a new coat of sealant. So as we mopped (well, as The Husband mopped and I looked at lolcats on the internet), we shook our fists at the sky and cursed the weather and figured we'd spend a weekend moving shit around and fixing the floor.

Then the Big Suck occurred.

I don't remember exactly how it happened, but The Husband was looking around the furnace, which was where most of the water was accumulating. We figured the floor underneath had never been sealed, hence the proliferation of water. I saw an insulated pipe that looked wet. The Husband looked at more pipes. I looked at more lolcats. Then, the EUREKA moment.

The Husband discovered that the air conditioner condenser thingie-mabobbie is leaking.

He jerry-rigged this awesome Man Contraption together, which was basically a trash bag duct-taped around part of the pipe, shaped into a funnel that drains into a bucket.

Which we have to empty every couple of hours the air conditioner's running.

This is the definition of suck. We don't have the money to get a new system, which is what most of the web sites suggest: buy a whole new fucking air conditioner/furnace setup. Which we should probably do anyway, because ours are both from the mid-80s. And most places have financing, which we could totally swing, but it would cut into our newly acquired Wii game buying expense.

Plus, I'm enrolled in my dream Intro to Popular Culture class this fall, which makes me orgasm every time I think about it. And I still have to pay the tuition for that.

But a little googling has alerted us to the fact that it may just be a clogged pipe, something a little hot water and bleach may take care of. So we're going to try that and see what happens.

Owning a house sucks ass.

You know what we should do? Move the computers upstairs to one of the bedrooms, and teach The Cats to swim. It's not like they couldn't do with a bath, the little stinkers.

So you'll be pleased to know that the bleach solution worked for the air conditioner. Turns out it was sludge and algae in the pipes after all, and no $10,000 system was needed.

It's been running all day...no water AT ALL ANYWHERE, and the air is toasty cold and smells like a freshly cleaned bathroom!

YAY!!!

The Husband's new name is Mr. Fixthings. Although he attributes his success to my lightning-quick googling, which of course is thanks to my library education.

THANKS MASTERS DEGREE!!!