Tag Archives: decline of Western culture

I have a Peter Schilling song stuck in my head

August 22, 2008Uncategorizeddecline of Western culture, Indian Burial GroundLicketysplit

Man, I took the trash out, and I found out just how low of concerns my neighbors really are. Not only do they not recycle, they read “In Touch Weekly!” Didn’t even have the decency to hide it under something else!

Although who can really blame them, since this one lady in the building went to court to get the communal recycle bin hauled off because she felt its location made her parking space less convenient. I really do sympathize with her inability to back her SUV out with the flourish to which she was accustomed, but now I am stuck shredding and eating my own magazines, and this is harder than one might think. I saw a woodchuck up the hill, and I am going to see if I can kidnap him to eat the magazines for me. He can live in the washing machine when I am not using it. When I am, well, we will work that out when we get there.

I have to go figure out who I can sue about something. The weather: inconvenient or malicious?

Have you given up?

July 22, 2008Uncategorizeddecline of Western culture, Golden Girls, stupidLicketysplit

It is a banner day when one gets personally invited back to the Republican Party by embossed stationery. I wonder how they found me? Perhaps from my subscription to “Entitlement Quarterly?” Or my presence on the Klan roster? Glory be.

It’s a sad day. Estelle Getty has left this earth, and a small child has figured out how to use a kazoo. I did scare someone into giving me half off a custom framing order though. He even carried it to the car. And I received a preliminary attractive person’s discount on a fine product! At last, acknowledgment that my eyebrows start at the exact proper point on my face. Life is so, so bittersweet.

I am never leaving the house again.

Home improved

July 16, 2008Uncategorizedconsumerism, decline of Western culture, Indian Burial Ground, makeshift chamber of horrorsLicketysplit

Oh, I didn’t mean I was DONE. Just that two walls, some baseboards, and a door are impeccably painted. Like art restorer at the Met painted. I get strange urges while on my knees. The little brush. Oh yes. The tiny one. Give it here to me!

This has taken the better part of 3 weeks, interspersed with cleaning, throwing out, donating, screaming, huffing, stomping, threatening, and other things Bob Vila must do as a matter of course. To celebrate the limited success thus far, a ybab came over and dragged a screwdriver down one of the newly painted walls. We can’t have. You know.

Why did a ybab have a screwdriver? Why ever not? Children need to fucking learn to be useful.

When I was at a large home product chain retailer the other day, I noticed they sell tastefully faux weathered placards inscribed with “Everyday is a gift.” I stuck my head in a foot spa and muffled my screams with a stainless steel polishing cloth.

In other news, Mr. H got stung on the toe by a wasp of some sort.

The rain in Spain

April 28, 2008Uncategorizedconsumerism, decline of Western culture, existential crisis, Indian Burial Ground, townie, ybabLicketysplit

Fellow humans, I am living proof that all it takes is one rainy day to undo a month’s work of feeling pretty spiffy! I should just live in a gro-light.

Instead, I live in a place where someone parks lengthwise across three parking spots, one of them being mine! I live in a place with a husband who snores and refuses to get his sleep apnea mask properly fitted to render it comfortable enough to wear and thus stop the snoring. I live in a place with a small child who pitches an unholy fit about sleeping in her special big girl bed, preferring to climb on top of me at 2 AM and 4 AM. I heard tell that at 4 AM, I actually snarled “You and your waking up and you and your snoring! I hate you all!” before jamming a pillow over my head and crying myself back to sleep. Or I don’t know what I really did, because I don’t remember even saying this. Someone claims I said this. Maybe someone is lying. Maybe someone is delusional due to oxygen deprivation from extreme sleep apnea.

The small child had a fit at the library this morning. Last time she assaulted the sign language bear, and this time she wept 10,000 tears when transparent scarf time ended. I am enjoying a fine cocktail of “Am I horrid parent, or is there something legitimately wrong with her?” This cocktail is a multivitamin and a glass of water and empty promises that someone is going to bring me back lunch soon.

While at the library, I overheard one lump of a woman say “Oh, I never know what to order at Starbucks. Everything on the menu is different.” Starbucks should take a memo and introduce a menu with only one thing on it. Or 30 things with the exact same name and constitution. The other lump who was the target of this declaration replied “Lattes! I love lattes! Get a latte!” And then I wept 10,000 tears, and I fell on the ground and kicked my legs in the air until a janitor came and removed me. That exchange, plus the fact that the LOL, MA newspaper, the Lowell Sun (motto: “We never spellcheck, and we call hot dog restaurants gourmet”), reports that a new wine and cheese shop called “Cest wine, Say Cheese” [sic] is opening, causes me to fling myself on the bed like a be-kneesocked school girl and scream “Get me out of this god-forsaken town!” Can’t you see that I am destined for bigger things? I’m packing my bag and heading to the bus station right now, like Axl Rose in the “Welcome to the Jungle” video. You’ll never take me alive, LOL, MA.

My filing technique truly is unstoppable

April 6, 2008Uncategorizeddecline of Western culture, existential crisis, financial planningLicketysplit

You do not want to know what I did with three days of naps, one father-supervised walk to feed ducks, and a P-Touch. I feel a deep sense of calm in my soul. A place for everything, and all the other stupid crap shredded and recycled.

I even went through a stack of proxy cards and voted them, generally installing incredibly old rich white men on boards everywhere. Sample additional question: “Some tedious meddling killjoy shareholders feel we should not invest in companies that profit from genocide. The board recommends a vote AGAINST this measure, as we wish to swim unfettered in our money bins.” Well, a vote for genocide is OK with m— whoa, wait a minute, reading messes things up again! I voted against profiting from genocide. So far, I’ve lost 3% for the year, so genocide can’t be that lucrative anyway. Don’t worry, the 3% was in retirement accounts, and I’m only 25. Indefinitely. The government is going to have a tough time making me take mandatory disbursements. I have a portrait in the attic I’ll use as ID.

OK, I made the 3% back last week. But still. Genocide!

March madness

March 20, 2008Uncategorizeddecline of Western culture, existential crisis, hypomania, WTFLicketysplit

It’s a good thing I am in good with the powers of the universe because the last few weeks have been bumpy. Emotionally, March is like landing a duct-taped regional jet with a wicked crosswind on the twelve feet of runway Logan Airport can afford. At the end of the twelve feet is the harbor and an LNG tanker, so you see how the stakes are high. November of course stabs me, but March sees me hanging by my feet twitching as the last drops of blood drain away from my head. And then something wondrous occurs from all that oxygen deprivation, and god starts talking to me.

Now, don’t get too ruffled. My god is a pretty lowercase kind of ultimate love, a safety net of interconnected interests rather than a personification. I call it god because I simply do not have a better word. This year, god is telling me we’re in for a flood, but it will be OK. I kind of preferred three years ago when god told me to take up learning Chinese and buy tickets to Spain, but apparently god is not a fan of the exchange rate now.

Last night, Mr. H took it up on himself to show me many links about horrible things happening to dogs. An artist in Honduras, or possibly Guatemala (all those countries look alike), tied up a manky stray dog in a gallery and instructed gallery patrons not to feed the dog. The dog starved to death over several days. The internet responded to the news with all-caps comments about castration, and the pictures were quite sad. Horrible point about how human are sheep and horrible point about how we walk by starving animals and people in the street on a daily basis and also do nothing. I like to think I would have fed the dog and called the damn police, but I am not sure if the Honduran P.D. would have been all that moved.

Then ol’ Mr. H showed me a video of a Marine holding a puppy, and whaddya know, he throws that little fuzzball off a cliff! I live under a rock, and I had not heard of that one. Apparently some people are making the point that the average YouTube looky loo cares not for actual people dying in Iraq (brown or otherwise), but puppies? Do NOT fuck with puppies! I was going to a candle-lit vigil for ending the Iraq war yesterday, but it was sleeting, and I decided not to take a ybab out in that. Oh. ALL-CAPS COMMENT ABOUT PUBLIC FLOGGING.

I was so pissed that now I have to pray for all of these assholes, including Mr. H, who could have kept these things to himself. In fact, I have to pray for the whole damn internet. This is going to take a while. If you need me, I’ll be in my grotto.

Quagmire no more!

February 13, 2008Uncategorizeddecline of Western culture, politiksLicketysplit

Now, did you think “giggity giggity” or “Iraq” when you read that subject line? I meant Iraq! Read my mind! Then I thought “giggity giggity.” Then I had to go check the spelling of “giggity.” Then I saw other open browser windows, little magpie that I am, and I had to check Facebook not-Scrabble and stuff like that. It is a wonder I returned here at all. But I thought I would take a few moments of my precious ybab nap time to rejoice in the fact that Congress and Roger Clemens are finally hammering out an exit strategy for the Iraq war! YES! It is about time, don’t you think? Jesus H. Jones. That is what they are doing, right? I only get to look at CNN for three seconds every day.

The 7 habits of really useful engines

October 30, 2007Uncategorizeddecline of Western culture, from the desk of coot, shenanigans, WTFLicketysplit

Someone in my household has an affinity for a certain telenovela about trains with ghastly faces. These trains are bossed around by a man wearing spats and a top hat no matter the time of day, and the trains are quite concerned with his approval. In the episode we watched the other day, a train named Henry insists he simply will not work in the rain. So Sir Topham Hatt bricks the motherf*cker up in the tunnel where he stopped, all Cask of Amontillado style. And the train is all “Whatever, it’s Britney, bitch,” but Sir Hatt really means it. He disrupts an entire railway line out of pure cold spite, and eventually Henry gets all rusty and infested with spiders. If only they taught such techniques in the business school of today.

We Take Mystery (to Bed)

August 7, 2007Uncategorizeddecline of Western culture, WTFLicketysplit

What if they replicated?
(from left: Pete Doherty’s makeup artist + Scott Stapp’s beautimous woman hair + Valentino’s haunted turban = Mystery, master of the Venusian Arts)

I missed the first fifteen minutes of the first episode of VH1’s execrable new reality series “The Pick Up Artist.” I can only imagine that this means I missed fifteen more minutes of a be-hatted Svengali named Mystery unfurling his ponytail.

The show’s premise is that Mystery, a former Dungeons and Dragons enthusiast (NO, REALLY, I NEVER WOULD HAVE GUESSED) and self-made seduction expert, will teach seven or eight awkward but probably fairly decent human beings to pick up women with a variety of canned strategies. Fair enough. Pop behavioral science is way fun. As much as we try to pretend we aren’t apes, there are ingrained social routines to which we all no doubt respond. Perhaps it is possible to analytically fake personal magnetism if your target is drunk enough or dumb enough. Woman don’t usually have to put forth that kind of effort. Having boobs is generally enough.

I expected to laugh myself silly watching the rest of the episode, but my jaw quickly slackened as I slipped into the existential tar pits. The contestant with the Larry Birkhead hair claims he’s frequently mistaken for a gay man, and then the producers try to tastefully underscore this with a shot of him bending over at the edge of the pool, waggling his chubby bottom in a baboon-red Speedo. They wedged the overweight “teddy bear” contestant into a black number, and posed him on exercise equipment. There’s a sprinkling of garden variety nerds, the awkward Asian kid, the undeservedly narcissistic Pradeep, and Alvaro, who rocks a New Kids on the Block fro and actually almost made me weep openly for him. During the scene where the contestants must demonstrate their “skills” via hidden camera at a nightclub, Alvaro just about cracks from the pressure of having to cold approach a victim. He says in a voiceover “I felt like crying, I felt like breaking a bottle over my head.” Oh, poor baby. In a teaser for future episodes, we see that he is made over with highlights and football eye black under one eye.

After the contestants have miserably failed to make reasonable human conversation, Mystery and his two sidekicks swoop in and show them how it’s done, preening and showing off his “avatar” and pre-emptively rejecting women to ostensibly create more interest (the “neg”). If any Mystery-seducee is willing to come forward, I’d love to ask what the hell you were thinking? Perhaps he and his flocked velvet maxi coat and aviator goggles are in a band? Why, this reminds me of the time I saw Marilyn Manson shopping at Barnes and Noble in Florida Before They Were Famous. It was surely all I could do to not jump on him and buy him Starbucks.

Mystery is living proof that his advice to “just be your self,” your awful, awful self is actually pretty good. Unbridled confidence will get you reasonably far, at least to cable television. Now I can’t unsee all that man hair flipping, and it’s my own damn fault for watching.

(with apologies to Gary Numan)

Vomitola

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