The Angriest Bitch in Baltimore

Smartphones: Taking Over Human Interactions One Byte At A Time

2012-01-02T10:20:00.013-05:00

Happy New Year kiddies! Being the curmudgeon that she is, The ABIB is always glad when the holidays are approaching and then even gladder when they are done. Although I do love our sparkly, perfectly-shaped Christmas tree! Anyhoo, been closely monitoring the alien takeover of our species and I'm here to give you an update, folks.

Smartphones: those amazing gadgets that can do everything from the mundanity of making a call (YAWN) to helping you to propagate the species (Hey, Siri, where's the closest sperm bank?). Yes, they have invaded our lives to the point where I have to speak out, to issue in the strongest terms a dire warning: THEY ARE HERE TO ENSLAVE HUMANITY! Yes, folks, it's true, smartphones have been sent by...who knows but my bets are on the Thetans (more on that later), to take over our lives and they're doing it with our enthusiastic, nay, sycophantic complicity. It has reached the point where, if you don't have a smartphone you are considered to be either, a: sadly unhip/downright hayseed-y, and/or b: a fucking cheapskate. See, they have cleverly begun the tide whereby they turn us against each other with themselves as the point of belonging. I know what you're thinking: Hey, ABIB, what's your fucking problem? Are you one of those sadly, self-deluded "superior" types who resist the inevitable, technological move forward? Are you still laughably reading paper books and printed magazines? Are your feet hopelessly stuck in the mud of pathetically outdated Luddite landscapes that keep you vainly rooted to the past? Fair questions, my friends to which I say: FUCK NO! Hey, I have a cellphone (of the non-smart variety...does that make it a "dumbphone"?), I have FIOS, I have Facebook, I Google stuff! No, this is not about The ABIB being a bitter crank (which of course, she is), it is about humans being drawn inexorably into the Android, iPhone, whatever-other-world-construction of our own doom. Can anyone say "The Matrix"?

To wit: I was at the movies the other day and as I was making my way to the restroom, witnessed another theater in the vast multiplex emptying at the conclusion of a movie. Now, generally people go to the movies with at least one, but sometimes several, companions. Ostensibly they do this in order to share the experience, to have another PERSON to talk with about the movie, to be coupled in the same human frame, if you will, namely ENJOYING A MOVIE! So, there I was making my way to the can and was suddenly surrounded by a sea of people WHO HAD JUST SEEN A MOVIE! To my horrified amazement, one by one, immediately upon exiting the auditorium, they whipped out their smartphones and began to slavishly tap things into them. Now, I have to believe that at least TWO of those fuckers were together but I'm guessing the tally is much higher and rather than, oh, I don't know: ACTUALLY SPEAKING TO THE PERSON(S) WHO HAD ACCOMPANIED THEM TO THE MOVIE AND WHO HAD ALSO JUST VIEWED IT, they chose instead to begin communicating with their smartphones. Do you see where I'm going with this people? Where is the logic in actually being in physical proximity to a companion and, rather than engage that OTHER HUMAN in a conversation, instead you choose to communicate electronically with someone at a distance, or perhaps, in a more sinister vein, directly with your phone. This shit is FUCKING CREEPY, PEOPLE! I watched in amazement as they drifted by, unaware of others around them, mesmerized by whatever was being sent to them through the tiny screens in their palms. I tell you, if Rod Serling were still alive this would make the grand daddy of all Twilight Zone episodes.

One need only turn on the TV (see last post on THIS sorry subject) to find oneself lost in a morass of weirdly passive humans all willingly giving up their autonomy to their beloved smartphones. Two commercials in particular come to mind because as I watched them I found myself wondering: who the fuck wants to be like this? The first takes place outside a Verizon wireless store, it's a snowy, pre-holiday night and people are milling around (outside?) when one-by-one Verizon employees begin to activate electronic, smartphone screen-driven versions of things previously available only in the natural world. They "light up" an electronic version of a roaring fire, they activate an electronic tree of smartphone screens that make it "snow". The humans, rather than being horrified at the wholesale robbery of basic reality (FIRE AND SNOW? ANYONE?) are instead mesmerized, awestruck, their blank, shining eyes glazed over with what can only be described as hypnotized emptiness. FLEE MOTHERFUCKERS!! FLEE FOR YOUR LIVES!!

OK, so the second piece of TV commercial evidence I present to you is one for AT&T and their new 4G network, whatever that means. Two lazy-ass motherfuckers are sitting inches apart in lawn chairs, clearly at a football game tailgate party, they are, of course, not speaking to each other or anyone else, rather they are slavishly "interacting" with their AT&T smartphones on the "blazingly fast" 4G network. Three different humans approach them with "news", the first being about ticket availability, he's excited, animated, this is, after all, GOOD news! They slowly raise their deadened eyes and in the MOST INSUFFERABLE manner possible, display their smartphones to him in unison, with proof that, not only do they already know about the available tickets, these two horse's asses have already BOUGHT them and they are waiting at Will Call. The refrain they offer to their HUMAN FRIEND who brought them this information? A superciliously superior snark of "so 27 seconds ago." The message of course being: resistance is futile, asshole; we will always win! This scenario is played out two more times, with the exact same trope: a friend approaches with what is "news" only to be shot down by these two motherfuckers who, in the same shitty way let them know that information gathered in the real world can't hold a candle to their 4G network-powered smartphone reality. And their lazy, fucking asses have never left their lawn chairs. "So 27 seconds ago". This commercial actually makes me want to hurl my television off of the highest building and see it smash into tiny smithereens on the concrete below. "So 27 seconds ago". I saw this commercial for the first time and I found myself wondering WHO WANTS TO BE LIKE THIS? Who indeed...my friends...who indeed. Well, if our smartphone alien oppressors have their way: ALL OF US!

But you don't have to give in! Resist! Buy a cheap-o dumbphone on eBay and use it for calls and (OK, OK) the occasional text! Fight the power! Risk ridicule and the marginalizingly withering bon-mots of your friends as they ironically try to shame you into joining up with the undead. Keep texting on your sadly ancient numbered keyboard, ignore the jibes of "why don't you get a REAL phone?" I have endured all of these and more in the name of the survival of our species' ability to think for itself and not rely on "Siri" (the same name as Tom Cruise's Scientology spawn? Coincidence? Thetans? Hey I watched the South Park episode, I know the deal!) to answer all of your questions. Get a fucking MAP for Christ sake! Wake UP! Think for yourself before it's too late! Don't make me go all Morpheus on your asses, because I would NOT look good in those pince nez sunglasses, people!

TV is Melting...Melting

2011-11-25T13:34:00.005-05:00

So its been awhile. The ABIB has been dealing with a serious sitch that has kept her tethered to home and hearth for some time now. Of course being the pop culture/media vulture that I am that also means that I have been tethered to my TV morning, noon and night. Here's what I've learned while glued to the tube:

1. "The Jerry Springer Show" is way more entertaining than anyone with half a brain and an expensive education, save The ABIB, will ever admit. Being the modern equivalent of the Victorian freak show, it provides one with that dirty little voyeuristic peek behind the curtain that our hoop-skirted predecessors used to pay a halfpence for. Freaks of every stripe with tons of baby-daddy-cheating-boyfriend/girlfriend-teen-seeking-to-have-a-baby-to-her-trailer-park-Mama's-crocodile-tear-stained-chagrin drama and little access to modern dentistry scream, pull hair, spit on each other and practically speak in tongues during the jam-packed hour of mayhem and magic. Plus, the studio audience at any given Jerry Springer taping could, in a pinch, sub in for anyone on the stage. It's a hoot to sit in your living room watching the craziness unfold, feeling vastly superior and haughtily amused, while simultaneously praying that nobody chooses to drop by and actually see Jerry Springer on your TV. Jerry! Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!

2. When all else fails I can actually watch back-to-back episodes of "The King of Queens". But then I have to take a shower afterward.

3. Most daytime commercials are hawking horrible fast food crap and they fetishize cheese. Every foodstuff from hotdogs dripping with eight different condiments to the endless versions of greasy burgers available at a dizzying panopoly of grease joints, to, I kid you not, a cheese-stuffed filet mignon, EVERY SINGLE FOOD PORN SHOT CONTAINS DRIPPING CHEESE! Being pulled apart in slo-mo so that it slooooooowly separates between the two halves of whatever it happens to be dousing, or clinging seductively to a forkful of chicken/beef/fries/tortilla chips. Clearly melting, oozing cheese is the visual food equivalent of the Playmate of the Year for the unemployed/under-employed goons (save superior me, of course) who are watching reruns of "Yes, Dear" at 2:30 on any given weekday afternoon. For the record I think all that melting, dripping cheese looks vaguely like puke and it would never sell me anything. Clearly I am not the daytime TV demographic that these food emporiums are aiming for. Thank. Christ.

4. "Maury" is the low class equivalent of Jerry Springer. The sad souls that appear on Maury Povich's show were not deemed to be highbrow enough by Jerry Springer's producers. Baby Daddy Drama is routinely supported by the hard forensic evidence of a DNA test to determine paternity with Povich himself delivering the news to the man child on the hot seat. Slowly he extracts the test results from the plain, manilla folder as everyone breathlessly waits to hear of this lowlife's next eighteen years in and out of child support proceedings or of his ongoing condom-free juggernaut of baby creation. Invariably the "culprit" affects the bored expression that clearly states: "I couldn't give a rat's ass." Frankly, neither could I, but it's way fun to see the triumphant baby mama leap to her feet in angry, superior glee as she announces how "NOW she's gonna get her money for that baby"! Good luck with that, sis. But these DNA test segments are really just the lead-in to the real power of "Maury". If you have a taste for the truly bizarre, keep watching and you will be rewarded. If you find yourself unable to stop laughing at ladies that have paralyzing phobias of balloons or pickles (I actually saw this on a "Maury" segment), clip on your diamond-studded grille from the Dollar Store and sit back and enjoy because "Maury" is for you, my friend. At this point in the show "Maury" literally has no boundaries. Each of these two women were respectively chased with a fistful of inflated balloons and pelted with a variety of pickles. They screamed! They ran! They tried to crawl into a corner! They could not escape the relentless "Maury" crew members who pursued them with the objects of their phobia with the relentless zeal that can only be mustered by a production assistant hoping to hang onto her job past the end of August. For the record: I laughed so hard I peed a little.

5. The nighttime version of number three above is ALCOHOL. Beer is the most frequently shilled beverage but depending on the hour, the network and the show, you can also be sold all manner of wine and a variety of hard liquor. Where the daytime coin of the realm is clearly shooting at the heart of slothful gluttony, the nighttime counterpart is all about skinny women, bubbles and FUN, DAMNIT! Skinny women raising bubbles to their smiling, Restalyn-plumped, shiny lips, views of skinny women laughing and shimmying in sparkly, slinky dresses, gauzy as a dream, through the bubbles lazily floating in a perfect champagne flute and bubbles foaming aggressively over the top of a beer mug in a clearly sexual explosion of froth and FUN, DAMNIT! Everyone in these commercials is continuously laughing, laughing, laughing. It's a never-ending world of FUN, DAMNIT! I guess it looks like fun if you're slumped on your couch with a chestful of potato chip crumbs and a stomach full of sour beer burps working their way up through all the melted cheese and greasy burgers. Because let's face it: TV is the universal hypnomachine and any time you sit down and flip it on you run the risk of waking up in a disoriented haze seven hours later amid Checkers food wrappers and McRib sauce vaguely craving a glass of something with bubbles and needing to put on a sparkly dress. But you know what? The dress looks pretty good on me.

Praise the Lord...

2011-06-26T13:37:00.004-04:00

I got my car back! Oh happy day! What a joy it is to be driving once again in a REAL car that doesn't smell like stale urine for the first five minutes after turning on the air conditioner. In a car that doesn't prompt people to hum the "Sanford and Son" theme song whenever I drive up. In a car that actually has working shock absorbers that keep every little crack in the road from feeling like a full-on kidney punch.

Aaaahhhhh....so nice. It was really great returning the Enterprise Rent-A-Hoopdee, too. I got the obligatory:

"And how was the car?"

"It was terrible."

"What?" I was a little surprised to see just how startled the Enterprise employee was when I told him that piece of truthiness.

"Well, it was dirty, it smelled pretty bad alot of the time, and I'm now wearing a hernia truss as a result of repeated jolts to my back from the "suspension" in the car."

"Hmmmm...so sorry to hear that."

"Yeah, well."

Nothing more, no offers of any compensation for my trouble, but in all honesty I didn't make any demands either. And the part about the hernia truss? I threw that out there to him just for dramatic effect. I mean, have you ever seen one of those scary-ass things? Yikes. I just wanted to get the hell out of there and conclude this sordid chapter in my vehicular life. My beautiful smelling and looking car was out there waiting for me, it's silver paint twinkling in the sun idling patiently like the loyal, comfortable, excellent little conveyance that it is. Such a relief. And just think of all the free time I have back now that I no longer work for Enteprise Car Rental!

Apparently I Now Work for Enterprise Car Rental

2011-06-18T01:06:00.009-04:00

So a couple of weeks ago my car was rear-ended getting onto the Baltimore beltway and now it's in the shop getting fixed until they feel like giving it back to me. Car repair guys: the frenemies you love to hate. But that's another post. This post is all about getting a rental car to tide you over until your real car is fixed. My insurance pays a pittance daily for me to rent a car from Enterprise Car Rental, a company that has apparently figured out, brilliantly I might add, how to run a business that not only generates easy income, but also gets it's customers to perform the work that any other business' actual employees would be expected to do. To wit: I got the car that was deemed covered under my pittance of a rental allowance and, no surprises here, it was a run-down, tiny, kinda scuzzy (lots of old spills of what I don't want to know staining all the upholstery and black spots of unknown origin or identity on the ceiling [black mold is a strong contender]), make that VERY scuzzy Hyundai Accent. With fucking CRANK windows and manual door locks. Really, Enterprise? Really?

So anyway, I picked it up and drove off the lot already feeling the beginnings of a headache induced by the atomically powerful odor of whatever industrial cleaning agent they used to expunge Lord knows what from the interior of this car. So basically I'm driving around in a hoopdee that smells 24/7 like the inside of a gas station restroom. YAY! I'm already planning how I'm going to call the repair garage hourly with escalating outrage that my CAR ISN'T READY YET, when I turn on the windshield washer to get some shit off the windshield only to find that the passenger side wiper blade is literally hanging off the frame in shreds. What the FUCK!? So now I've got those incredibly ANNOYING streaks that come from a wiper blade that isn't quite making total contact with the glass and the weather man is calling for storms. I'm in a pickle, aren't I? I figure I'll head home and deal with it tomorrow because by now my head is thrumming and I can't feel my nose.

So, brand new day I call Enterprise and in my best, most polite professional voice explain my windshield wiper dilemma and ask what should be done? I'm told to bring it in the NEXT day at 4:00 PM (apparently the only people that hold jobs are the desk jockeys at fucking Enterprise Car Rental but I need my wiper blade replaced so...) and they'll be sure to get it fixed right up. Praying it doesn't rain I plan MY schedule around Enterprise's bewildering timetable because, well, I have to.

Next day, at the appointed time, I drive the little rattletrap onto the Enterprise lot and head on into the waiting room. Nobody is apparently all that busy but I still wait a good five minutes for someone to acknowledge my presence. When they do it's as if I just then walked in because I get a cheerful, bright:

"Well, hello there! Welcome to Enterprise, how can I help you?"

Uh, OK. I explain that I had called ahead and that I'm the one driving the "car" with a shredded wiper blade. Here's what went down:

"OK, well I can switch you out to another vehicle or you can drive down the street to the Firestone place just past the next traffic light and get them to install a new wiper blade."

"Excuse me but the car's right out front; can't you just install a new blade here?"

Now she's getting a little annoyed with my lack of understanding of just how much (or how little) Enterprise actually does to keep it's vehicle fleet in good repair. Listening to her I'm starting to worry about other things...like the brakes.

"Oh, no, no, no, we don't actually SERVICE the cars here. That's done somewhere else. So do you want to swap out to another car or just drive on down the street?"

"Well, if I take another car will I be charged for getting the gas tank from one half to three quarters full which is where it was when I picked the car up?" As I ask this I'm looking at the little white board whose numbers are clearly updated with an erasable pen daily on just what that gas will cost me per gallon, Enterprise-style. I see that today's special price is posted at $5.25 a gallon. I just drove past at least three gas stations posting prices around $3.45 a gallon. Oh, Enterprise, you silly goofballs! You can take your fucking gas prices and go fuck yourselves.

"Oh, yeah. You'd be charged the gas for getting it back to where it was." This followed by a tight, "customer service is SO annoying", smile.

"So just to be clear: my two choices are either I get another car and pay the gas cost, which I see is $5.25 a gallon, or I drive it myself down the street and get the wiper blades replaced?"

"That's correct; of course we'll pay Firestone for the wiper blades."

"I see...well then I guess I'm driving down to Firestone."

She walked away from the counter, made a 30 second phone call to someone at Firestone and told me I could just go ahead down there.

Out I went, back to the rank, scuzzy hoopdee, and drove it, on MY TIME, down to the Firestone station where they replaced the wiper blades and sent me on my way. Thanks Enterprise Car Rental for letting ME help YOU do your fucking JOB because everyone knows just how critical that job is and that, in comparison to the criticality of your job, just how insignificant MY PERSONAL TIME is. Yeah, thanks for that.

So there you have it. I don't remember putting in the application. I don't remember ever being interviewed by anyone but apparently I am now a low-level, car-shuttling jackass who works FOR FREE for Enterprise Car Rental. Folks, it don't get any better than that.

A Story That Should Have Ended In A Classic Spit-Take

2011-06-04T16:20:00.003-04:00

You know the kind I mean: the movie character takes a sip of some nameless drink just before hearing some kind of shockingly funny/surprising/angering news and forcefully sprays said nameless drink all over whoever/whatever is directly in front of them? Yeah, the classic "spit take". Now that we have that out of the way I'd like to bring your attention to an outrage...OUTRAGE...that I just read about. Some fool of a woman went to a Philadelphia area Dunkin' Donuts (or as I affectionately call it "Dunky Doo" co-opting the Bollywood phrasing that my BELOVED Pinky uses when taking my daily coffee order at the local DD squawk box) and alleges she ordered a coffee with artificial sweetener, only to find out, after drinking most of it down, that it was POISONOUS sugar in her coffee not the artificial kind as requested. She drank most, but not all, of it down and began to feel dizzy and light-headed and took herself immediately to the emergency room. Of course, something was WRONG WITH THE COFFEE and as an alleged diabetic she was convinced that Dunkin' Donuts had tried to kill her and now owed her an unspecified but sure to be ginormous sum of money in restitution for her terrible, terrible suffering.

Join me in this won't you: OH! BITCH! PLEASE! Now don't get me wrong: I fully understand the seriousness of consuming sugar when it is medically contraindicated, but even a DOCTOR will tell you that, as a diabetic, a few ounces of sugared coffee aren't going to put you into full-on sugar coma status. Plus, bitch knew to save some of the offending drink so that her ambulance-chasing, on TV at 2AM "lawyer" would be able to have it tested to bring serious scientific evidence to the slam-dunk case against the evil corporate drones that willfully tried to kill his client. Now I know that the world is filled with venal people, many of whom are always waiting for the chance to make a quick buck but this is just plain crazy. This is a client that Jackie Chiles would be salivating over. And I especially draw the line at this kind of unsubstantiated mud being slung at MY DUNKY DOO!!!

Anyone who has EVER tasted artificial sweetner in ANYTHING knows for a fact that it is NOT SUGAR. Likewise, if you're used to the taste of artificial sweetner, which I'm sure this constantly-on-the-edge-of-diabetic-disaster gal must be, you know at the first taste that it is SUGAR. Excuse me, but where does this numbskull's personal responsibility enter into the equation? I've mistakenly gotten sugar in my morning coffee order, immediately recognized the flavor as sugar, and returned for the correct order. NO BIG DEAL! So now, in addition to warning me that my hot coffee order is indeed likely to be hot, I'm going to have to read the disclaimer that it might also contain, entirely by mistake, of course: sugar.

I guess what I hate the most about stories like this is that we've reached this place where anything, from sipping a hot liquid to using a hair dryer, have to be filled with written (and in the case of the hair dryer) illustrated, warnings meant to disabuse the stupidest and most dully unaware amongst us, of the potential for disaster. My hairdryer says: DON'T USE THIS IN A BATHTUB FULL OF WATER OR YOU'LL GET ELECTROCUTED!! Just in case the person can't read there are pictures of said hair dryer falling into a tub full of water with horrible, gigantic lightning bolts aiming directly for the poor soul who just wanted to save some time and dry his/her hair WHILE BATHING!

See, to me the fact that we have to warn people who don't know that when they order a HOT COFFEE THAT IT WILL BE HOT, and that when they BATHE THEY SHOULDN'T USE ELECTRICAL APPLIANCES, we've all gone downhill and it needs to stop. I figure, if someone has to be told that "the delicious beverage they are about to enjoy is hot" or not to use a hair dryer while showering, they should be culled from the herd. Let them use that hair dryer while bathing, get fried and be done with it. Do we really need that DNA around anymore? I'm thinking maybe it's run it's course, you know? Who takes a shower and dries their hair? It doesn't even make crazy-person sense.

So anyway, I'll be hoping to see in a few months time, that this frivolous lawsuit was dismissed by a clear-thinking judge and that this avaricious harpy has been reduced to opening pickle jars at the local supermarket so that she can say she slipped on pickle juice and wrenched her back. But sadly I'm thinking that Dunkin' Donuts will settle out of court thus empowering all of the other pea-brained ninnies out there concocting their own exploits in easy money at 2AM while surfing home shopping channels. If I knew where she was I'd send her a year's supply of Splenda and tell the jackass to just order her coffee black and sweeten it herself. But you can't sue anyone for that, now can you?

Ripped From The Headlines!

2011-06-02T20:44:00.006-04:00

Hi all: read this headline today in my local Baltimore paper and immediately went to the porcelain altar, so of course I figured: why not write about it, ABIB? Here goes: "STDs and seniors: Aging baby boomers help lead to a rise in rate of diseases. From 2005 to 2009 the number of reported cases of syphilis and chlamydia among those 55 and older increased 43 percent according to an Orlando Sentinel analysis of data." All together now: EWWWWWWWWWW!! How many things are wrong with that string of words? Let me try and point them out:

1. The words "STD" and "seniors" should never, ever, ever appear in a sentence together unless it's about the most recent "Senior Week at the Beach" event.

2. "Aging baby boomers". Helluva nerve on the (probably) young whippersnapper that wrote that copy. Don't they know that the words "aging" and "baby boomers" should NEVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES BE UTTERED IN THE SAME SENTENCE? Modern science invented Restalyn, Botox and all manner of cosmetic surgical enhancements specifically so that- LISTEN UP FUCKING WHIPPERSNAPPERS - baby boomers NEVER! FUCKING! AGE!!

3. Finally the expression "help to lead a rise in rate of diseases". Is it just me or does the phrasing "help to lead..." kind of affix a somewhat positive connotation to what is to follow, namely that we old fuckers (apparently LITERALLY) are "helping to lead" to a rise in FUCK BUGS (Oh Lord I hope crabs isn't on the list!). Um...not to put too fine a point on it, but stuff like: syphilis, herpes, chlamydia and genital warts and...well I just can't go on it's too....GROSS!!

So this is a whole, entire article about Gran and Gramps (or the guy she's blowing since Gramps died last year) hanging out in the retirement community and doing the nasty way too much with way too little attention to the minor detail of NOT SPREADING AROUND GRODY SEXUAL SHIT!

So help me out here...what this incredibly informative article is telling me is that all of us old-ass "boomer/seniors" are somewhat sadly, nay, pathetically, fucking around without a care in the world not to mention a fucking CONDOM and in so doing are "helping" to bring about a resurgence in all of these ICKY...conditions. Sorry but that's just DIGUSTING. The article goes on to explain how as we age and our immune systems begin to not work so great, we NATURALLY begin to become more susceptible to all manner of bodily affronts, including those transmitted through a good, old fashioned blowjob when you've just had gum surgery and your sutures aren't done...suturing. Really? Is that what we've come to? When did worrying about a broken hip become worrying about a broken dental dam and some seriously messed-up Grampa jizz? It's all too horrifying to think about.

The only saving grace is that, judging by the fact that this data was collected in Orlando, this epidemic shouldn't spread. After all, as any uncomfortable conversation with your Bubbe about her "Sexy Seniors" class will tell you, old fuckers in Florida only fuck other old fuckers in Florida so hopefully this cesspool will be self-contained. Other than that I figure it's every person for themselves. I recommend a rule of thumb as follows (and to co-opt a baby boomer trope from days gone by): don't trust anyone that can take out their teeth.

A Quickie

2011-04-19T21:41:00.003-04:00

So I'm watching TV this evening and here comes a commercial for some version of Crest toothpaste. So they're shilling all about it's great success with scuzzy, funky teeth and to demonstrate how successful it is they employ a CARTOON, an ANIMATED demonstration of a toothbrushful of the Crest successfully removing green slime (not kidding, it was green) from the CARTOON teeth. OK, I get that no human who actually has GREEN shit on their teeth would be in decent enough shape otherwise to allow for an actual live action demonstration of Crest removing said green from otherwise white teeth. If they've got green on their teeth they're probably a) largely missing most of the rest of them; green on one's teeth is never a good sign; and b) the ones that are left are probably mostly brownish-grey.

So there it is, CLEARLY a CARTOON ANIMATION of toothbrushing-away-the-slime. It's all good until I notice that underneath the CARTOON activity there's a printed disclaimer that says: "DRAMATIZATION". Really, Crest? Really? I'm guessing that the people who need to be told that what they're watching, that is to say, the CARTOON that they're watching is a DRAMATIZATION, probably can't read the word DRAMATIZATION and if they can phonetically sound it out they don't know what the fuck DRAMATIZATION means. When we need to tell viewers that an ANIMATED toothbrush scraping away green slime from CARTOON teeth is a DRAMATIZATION, well then, I think we'd all better just hang it up. Even more disturbing is that I'm watching TV at the same time that this majorly disoriented, r-tard demographic is also watching. Time to seriously re-evaluate my leisure time activities. Fo rill.

Hallway Etiquette

2011-03-19T16:50:00.002-04:00

This will likely be one of my shorter rants today, folks, because, in all honesty, it's such a straightforward bitch that I can't imagine it's going to take all that long. Today we'll be discussing hallway farts at work. Yes, that's right; hallway farts at a workplace where ONLY GROWN MEN AND WOMEN WORK. This is not a daycare center, elementary school, middle or high school where one MAY be able to forgive such behavior. No, this is the same federal facility that you've read about here before with the unfunny "comedians" and the screaming, door-blocking conversations and the hallway obstructing slow walkers. And it's populated by only adult employees.

Now I don't know about you all but I learned that it's rude to fart in a public place at a pretty young age, not least of all because of the high risk of horrifying ridicule and public outing. "He who smelt it dealt it" was always my favorite as it provided the novel twist that someone might try to outwit the rest of us by being the first to accuse but that we were having none of it. We always knew it was that person not least because the cloud of odorous shame hovered in their general vicinity. And don't try to walk away from it, mofo, that bitch be followin' your sorry ass. Literally.

So, here's the thing: I've mentioned before that my federal building has a bomb shelter-y basement within which you can walk from the elevator exit to the cafeteria. As a result there's normally a decent number of people traversing that underground cinderblock mecca going to and from the gym/cafeteria/coffee bar that exist on the ground floor. Two days ago I was walking that path with two co-workers who I am thankful to have working with me as they provide a blessed diversion from the normal caliber of others that I have to deal with on a daily basis. Anyway, there we were, walking from the elevator to the cafeteria when we passed another person walking in the opposite direction, toward the elevator. I nodded with a silent congeniality that I in no way actually felt, as we crossed paths with him.

Not 15 seconds later I and my two friends walked into the most fucking heinous fart cloud I have encountered in some time. And being a person (as all people do) who farts, I feel fairly sure that I can safely call a heinous fart when I smell one. The hallway seemed to constrict as we all gasped for air (an involuntary but dreadfully inappropriate action considering it brings MORE of the stench into your nose) and I believe I actually gagged.

"OH MY LORD!"
"WHAT THE FUCK!"
"MOTHERFUCKER THAT IS HORRIFIC!"

It was everywhere and seemed to last forever. We walked faster; it followed us. It took us to round a corner and travel another good 50 feet to finally escape that wall of stench. Now, you know as well as I do, that the person that we had just crossed paths with was the cretin who had left that carpet bomb directly in our path. I know that because it was too fucking fresh, the air still too saturated to be anything other than very, very recent. So, I'm thinking, that fucker probably figured that as he was moving away from the offensive cloud, that he could never be pinned with the crime. Wrong, motherfucker! I remember your face and now I know that you cracked off that nasty fucking explosion and that YOU. ARE. NASTY MOTHERFUCKER! How much of a rude, ignorant asshole do you have to be to think that something like that is OK? Where were you raised...in an OUTHOUSE?

When I see him again, and it's just a matter of time, I'll probably do something childish like make a loud farting noise on my bare arm as I get just past him. I suppose I could confront him like an adult and demand to know, face-to-face how on earth he thinks it's OK to fart in public and then flee the scene of the crime like the chump that he is. Not unlike a crime scene though, this perp leaves behind air that points a finger with the authority of a good DNA sample. I figure that the loud, childish fart noise might make him think twice before he does it again. But maybe I run the risk of offering him up the kind of secret handshake known only to members of a hidden cabal, as in "yes, I too engage in our forbidden pasttime, fellow dweller of the underground fart chamber".

Whatever, if it makes him at least think twice before he does that again I will have done my job. With my luck though, he'll stop doing it in the hallway and wait until he gets in the elevator. Now THOSE are the worst! The door is closing as it hits you and then it's TOO LATE TO GET OUT! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

The World Continues to Fill With Ignoramuses (or is it Ignorami?)

2011-02-13T21:16:00.005-05:00

Greetings all, tonight I'm here to talk to you about, as the title of this post says, ignorant-ass people. Now, I've touched on the specifics of tonight's tirade in another post about suffering the indignities of Wegman's. But I have to say, this most repugnant demonstration of ignoramussity (made that one up, you betcha) really calls out for it's own, full post. I'm talking about people who continue to talk on their cell phones while they are being waited on by service personnel.
Can I get an AMEN! people? Here's the way it went down. Yesterday I was at a local movie theater waiting while my other half got us a couple of tickets to see The Fighter (good movie, BTW, super call-outs to Melissa Leo and Christian Bale). Anyhoo, I'm standing around idly trying to decide if I want to spring for the $40 snack of popcorn and a soda, when I happen to see the BIGGEST, FATTEST ASS in the lobby saunter up to the ticket window where a perfectly visible ACTUAL PERSON sat taking money and dispensing tickets.
BIGGEST, FATTEST ASS was, whot? whot?, of course yakking on her (yes, it was a her) cellphone. Now, you'd think that common courtesy would dictate that BIGGEST, FATTEST ASS would conclude the call prior to reaching the window but that she would, at a MINIMUM, conclude the call, OR AT LEAST PUT DOWN THE FUCKING PHONE, for the fraction of a few moments that it would take her to speak to the ACTUAL PERSON behind the glass, give said person her money and take the ticket(s).
But apparently BIGGEST, FATTEST ASS was at that moment either: A) Dictating the landing instructions for the Space Shuttle, AS IT LANDED; B) Leading peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians; or C) Providing the final variable in the equation that would result in the cure for cancer. Because, quite frankly, anything less would have meant that BIGGEST, FATTEST ASS was just a common, ignorant douchebag so convinced of her own importance that NOBODY and I mean NOBODY was going to come between her and her critical conversation. Not even a LIVING, BREATHING PERSON with whom she was having an IN PERSON CONVERSATION.
I watched with amazement as BIGGEST, FATTEST ASS continued to chat as she barely acknowledged that the woman behind the ticket counter glass had addressed her; did not fucking stop talking INTO HER CELL PHONE as she sloooooooowwwwly extracted some bills from her wallet, and KEPT ON TALKING as the person took her money and gave her the tickets. I heard, WITH MY OWN EARS, the theater employee cheerfully thank her and extend her wish for BIGGEST, FATTEST ASS to "enjoy the movie!" Needless to say, BIGGEST, FATTEST, RUDEST ASS just kep' on truckin', motherfucker, truckin' and TALKIN', that is.
Now for those of you who have been reading this blog, it should come as no surprise when I say that I find most other people to be barely, BARELY, tolerable. They're everywhere, they get in your way, and more often than should be allowed in a civilized society, they smell. But THIS! This was beyond the pale, I mean what kind of a FUCKING BONEHEADED DIPSHIT can't figure out the basic comportment required to be out in public? Bitch got her enormous ass into her incredibly inappropriately tight jeans. Bitch got her fat arms into her incredibly inappropriately tight sweater. Evidently bitch got her BIGGEST, FATTEST ASS to the fucking movie theater. But apparently bitch don't gotta stop her convo for no-fucking-body up to, and including, someone with whom she is engaged in a person-to-person interaction.
I have to tell you folks, it took every ounce of my self-control and my ongoing desire to not get myself arrested, to keep from marching over to that self-satisfied, ignorant asshole and ripping that phone from her skanky-ass ear. And if an earring came away in my hand, all the better. But of course, I didn't; I simply stared at her and shook my head in the way of all curmudgeons. Problem was BIGGEST, FATTEST ASS didn't even see me and if she had I'm sure her tiny, ameoba brain wouldn't have made the connection that I was staring with my shaming expression at her. And really, even if she had I'm sure she couldn't possibly have cared less. Because truth be told, that Space Shuttle wasn't going to land itself.

Google Instant Search Will Make Your Head Explode

2011-01-07T19:19:00.003-05:00

How do I know this? Because it happens to me every, single, fucking time I use Google since they've instituted their "Instant Search" browser. OK, so not literally. But I'm pretty sure that Google Instant Search is actually a secret plot to thin out the Earth's population since every time I or anyone I know uses it, it clearly shaves seconds off of our lives in straight up stress. And when you're fucking GOOGLE, those seconds really add up.

So what is it about Google Instant Search that pisses me off? What doesn't? But at the top of the list has GOT to be the whole "as I'm typing and Google Instant Search is thinking for me, it fucks up my typing by guessing what it is I'm about to type and making what I'm ACTUALLY planning to type not make the cut". Because by my anecdotal evidence, Google Instant Search NEVER FUCKING GUESSES CORRECTLY! So it COSTS me time, Google ASSHOLES! IT FUCKING COSTS ME TIME!

How ironic. This from Google's helpful page wherein Instant Search's vast array of advantages is detailed. Oh, and I'm going to equally "helpfully" pick them to pieces.

Faster Searches: By predicting your search and showing results before you finish typing, Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search. WRONG! Here's the thing, as stated above: this has NEVER worked for me and only bungles the search criteria I'm typing in WHICH I FUCKING ALREADY KNOW! Also, whose life is so crammed with activity that the savings of, by Google's own estimation, FIVE FUCKING SECONDS makes a measurable difference? To that I say: Hey asshole, if you actually believe that five seconds per search is slowing down your life I'm pretty sure that you're either a meth addict or a hallucinating mental patient. Sorry to break it to you this way.

Smarter Predictions: Even when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, predictions help guide your search. The top prediction is shown in grey text directly in the search box, so you can stop typing as soon as you see what you need. WRONG! Um, I don't particularly NEED predictions that can outthink me. That's just plain creepy. I mean we all saw (and were terrified by) the dystopian future depicted in 2001: A Space Odyssey where HAL kind of took it upon himself (itself?) to make "smarter predictions" to Dave. We know where that ended up. And while I'm on THIS particular gripe can I also mention the DROID for Verizon Wireless whose actual SELLING POINT is to illustrate how the DROID actually is a couple of nanobytes away from being HAL? I mean, really, a couple of nanobytes...sheesh.

Instant Results: Start typing and results appear right before your eyes. Until now, you had to type a full search term, hit return, and hope for the right results. Now results appear instantly as you type, helping you see where you’re headed, every step of the way. WRONG! Again, see above tirade about Google Instant Search "helpfully" providing that NORMALLY WRONG set of results based on what it "thinks" you're trying to search for. Not helping, Google nerds, not helping at all.

So there you have it people. Google Instant Search dissected. I'm not impressed and actually I'm annoyed since I CAN'T TURN THAT FUCKING PROGRAM OFF. Oh, they tell you you can turn off Instant Search. They helpfully point you to the Google preferences page where there is, indeed, a link to turning off Instant Search. Bromides! What they DON'T tell you, of course, is that you have to do it EVERY SINGLE, FUCKING TIME YOU USE THE BROWSER. Once you close out Google for the day, it conveniently "forgets" your preference request. "Ooooops!" Google Instant Search says, "Sorry but my AI tells me I'm sure you didn't mean to turn off my 'helpful to humans' Instant Search so I'm going to 'helpfully' turn it back on for you. You can thank me later when I'm picking out your mate and calculating the number of offspring you can afford." Can we say: "The Matrix"?

Not me, kids, not by a long shot. I am by no means some curmudgeon Luddite, but I'm going to find a way to outsmart that fiendish "helpful" application before it starts deciding what I'm going to have for dinner and what I should plan to wear tomorrow. Not that I'm paranoid or anything.

The Dumb-ering Down of America

2011-01-06T19:38:00.003-05:00

As if that's possible...our little experiment in democracy is already pretty fucking dumbed-down, but that's another post. Today's tirade, kiddies, has all to do with the notion that vanilla do-gooders can just decide one day to muck around in someone else's authorship for whatever wrong-headed PC reason occurs to them. I'm talking, of course, of the publisher who is planning to issue a new edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and expunge every use of the word 'nigger'. Oh, for the LOVE OF...REALLY PEOPLE? REALLY? This from today's New York Times:

A new effort to sanitize “Huckleberry Finn” comes from Alan Gribben, a professor of English at Auburn University, at Montgomery, Ala., who has produced a new edition of Twain’s novel that replaces the word “nigger” with “slave.” Nigger, which appears in the book more than 200 times, was a common racial epithet in the antebellum South, used by Twain as part of his characters’ vernacular speech and as a reflection of mid-19th-century social attitudes along the Mississippi River.

I am so offended by this on SO many levels that I hardly know where to begin. First of all..motherfuckers, it's NOT YOUR LITERARY WORK! It was written by perhaps the most deservedly beloved of American authors, Mark Twain, a man who, in his writing turned the society of his day on it's head and ironically made them look into the face of their own dirty little prejudices. Mark Twain used the word 'nigger' to illustrate the absolute banality of the word and the absolute banality of those who in his time used it. He clearly was onto something that today's cranially challenged "educators" can't begin to grasp. Namely if you call something by its name, if you turn a brightly lighted mirror onto the absurdities of societal prejudices masquerading as "norms", you serve to effectively drain them of any power.

Mark Twain is dead; he can't stand up to this pea-brained little band of sadly mistaken do-gooders and say: "Hey! Keep your grubby little mitts off of my words! I am the author of that book and I chose each and every word in it with deliberation and purpose!" How cowardly, now that he's no longer able to defend his creation, to begin picking it apart in the name of some lame-brained ideal of creative revisionism.

More from The NYT:

Mr. Gribben has said he worried that the N-word had resulted in the novel falling off reading lists, and that he thought his edition would be welcomed by schoolteachers and university instructors who wanted to spare “the reader from a racial slur that never seems to lose its vitriol.” Never mind that today nigger is used by many rappers, who have reclaimed the word from its ugly past. Never mind that attaching the epithet slave to the character Jim — who has run away in a bid for freedom — effectively labels him as property, as the very thing he is trying to escape.

Isn't Huckleberry Finn a better tool as written, for teachers to open an honest dialogue in the classroom about how people use words to subjugate others and how words can offer a direct light into the societal norms of a bygone era? My goodness, books like Huck Finn are historical documents! Should we go back and rewrite history so that nobody will be offended or feel diminished or otherwise disenfranchised? Sheesh.

The larger comment, of course, embedded in this wrong-headed move is that we have become so afraid of looking at truth that even words as written by those long dead are not immune from being hacked at in order to get them to conform to our current appetite for "niceness". MOTHERFUCKING YUCK I say!!

Clearly all of this politesse is absolute anathema to The ABIB, whose very existence is rooted almost entirely in political UN-correctness. So go ahead, whack away at classic literature to your hearts' content, reform everything in the boring, bland image of "Everyone's Happy Valley", but I'm here to tell you it's not right and if we're not careful we'll all be drinking the Koolaid in the name of "what's appropriate". Gives a bitch the shivers...

I Can't Stand It Anymore?

2010-11-25T01:35:00.003-05:00

Here's an idea that can't lose: create a chemical that can be aerosolized and dispersed across the entire nation and once it hits people renders them unable to phrase EACH AND EVERY FUCKING SENTENCE in the form of an interrogative. Something as simple as giving directions becomes an adventure in the misplaced question mark.

Now: So, you head north on Main Street?
Post Chemical Dispersal: You head north on Main Street.

Now: And then you make a right on Elm?
Post Chemical Dispersal: And then you make a right on Elm.

Now: It should take about 10 minutes on foot?
Post Chemical Dispersal: It should take about 10 minutes on foot.

When and fucking where was it decided that every moron in the country needed to sound like a retarded Valley Girl 24 hours a day? I hear it everywhere! At work, on the radio, on the TV and its driving me INSANE!! There is no verbal communication immune from this idiotic affectation. To wit:

I'm trying to take a shit? It's looking like I'm going to run out of toilet paper? I'll head over to the linen closet and take out a new roll? That way when I sit down to take that shit I mentioned I'll have sufficient toilet paper to clean up after said shit? Cause it's a drag? To run out? Of toilet paper? When you really need it?

Haven't we suffered enough? (That's an actual question, by the way.) Isn't it about time we regained our national, minimal IQ and stopped insisting that we all have to sound like high school mean girls? To these valid questions I say: YES! Not, Yes? So, ladies and gentlemen. Put down the question marks and slowly back away. It's for your own good, trust me on this. But of far greater importance: it's for MY OWN good! Break the insidious habit of the question mark, I beg you.

You'll be glad you did. I guarantee it?

Phaedra Parks: Woman on the Verge...of Overacting

2010-11-22T21:36:00.003-05:00

Aaaight, Imma make this one brief: Phaedra Parks is now officially the WORST ho that's ever been on any Real Housewives series and that includes Danielle Staub. I mean, I LOVE me some Real Housewives of Atlanta, I actually want to hang out with Nene like 24/7, but this year's dumbass award has got to go, hands-down, to Phaedra "I AM A Lawyer" Parks. This week Phaedra's in the hospital having her gigantic baby, being induced at 7 months because it's just too big already. Huh? Well, finally tonight the doc weighs in (see how I did that?) and calls it true: this baby is TERM, motherfucker! We're talking 40 weeks! So Phaedra is, as Kim Zolciak would say: "a lying sack of shit." Apparently Mommy Parks who is some kind of...uh...clergyperson...doesn't approve of pregnancy out of wedlock. Uh...OK. Yo! Ma! Welcome to 2010, babe! Guess Phaedra was too busy eating her Lady Fingers with "Barbarian" Cream to clue you in to her...condition. Whatevs.

Anyway to get to the point, this week Ms. Thang had her baby taken out of her by way of tasteful (low incision, you'll still be able to wear a bikini) C-section. Now I've had an actual C-section and I'm here to tell you that you are numb brothers and sisters, numb as in, DO I STILL HAVE ANYTHING BELOW MY ELBOWS THAT IS ATTACHED TO MY BODY? But Ms. Phaedra, once drugged and on the table, commences to whining and crying and gets all: "Ow...Ow! Ooooch! Gasp!"

Phaedra, can we tawk? Time to focus girl. You got the chiseled ex-con husband. You got the borderline "celebrity" law practice (if you count Bobbie Brown and some chick who got kicked out of Destiny's Child before they became Destiny's Child), you've even had the Twilight Zone baby shower replete with ballerinas and...a bizzaro-world courtly dance with Dwight "The Man With No Face" and your gigantic pregnant belly. Time to invest in some acting classes. Heck, hook up with Sheree; she's all about the "work" this year, all about the "craft". Do whatever you have to do bitch, because when you start whining in "pain" during a C-fucking-section, you're poised to become the most ridiculous joke in a veritable SEA of ridiculous jokes. Shit, you're making Kim look normal. And BTW, who knew that Kim was a NURSE? Working a pole in a nurse's costume, by all means, YES, but a real, actual nurse!? Wow....OK, then, nuff said. I'll leave it at that, but stay tuned to this channel which may very well become a weekly comment on the wacky, wonderful, jiggly world that is The Real Housewives of Atlanta!

Does The ABIB Have to Go There?

2010-11-16T19:09:00.003-05:00

Yes, The ABIB has to go there. And frankly it's probably overdue. So I'm reading about this whole "don't ask don't tell" issue that's got everyone's shorts up their crack and I gotta say: Ya'll are FUCKED UP!! Jeez O Man what is wrong with people? Isn't it enough that gay folks can't marry the person that they love in a ceremony of their choosing, in a place of their choosing and have that sanctified union recognized in EVERY FUCKING STATE IN OUR NATION?! And, oh, by the way? Have the same civil rights AS EVERY OTHER TAX PAYING CITIZEN WHO JUST HAPPENS TO FUCK A MEMBER OF THE OPPOSITE SEX! What is wrong with us? As a people? As a culture? Are we really that frightened and narrow and just plain bigoted? Really? Makes a bitch sad I gotta tell you.

So back to the military thingie. I think that every fucking asshole who thinks that gay people should have to serve in silence regarding their true selves, in, oh I don't know....Afghanistan, Iraq, anywhere our military serves on the whole globe, I think that those bigoted, messed-up and just plain confused assholes should have to personally take the fucking place of a hidden gay person serving in the sand of wherever those brave folks are serving. Just to shut them the fuck up. For real.

I keep waiting for us as a culture to do the minimally right thing and recognize folks' rights to live their lives as they choose. Within the law. ALL THE LAWS. To marry openly and be afforded ALL OF THE SAME RIGHTS as tax paying citizens that their heterosexual neighbors are afforded. To not have to hide who they are and who they love for fear of being passed over for a promotion or not being able to adopt a child who needs two loving parents. Regardless of their genders. LOVE IS LOVE, PEOPLE! This is the irony that the haters never seem to grasp: its all about being able to love and love openly and make choices that are right for you. No matter what.

The current rash of suicides among young gay people is the part of this awful story that is the worst. Our cultural inability to reign in bigoted hatred is poisoning the structure of our society at such an elemental level that young gay people are choosing death rather than going forward into a world that should be open to their bright youth, their hopeful enthusiasm and the fresh vibrancy that their souls are ready to bring into our world. This is the most painful outcome of all and I'll leave it at that.

Enough is enough.

I know The ABIB is normally all about the crazy shit but this stuff is serious and it is heartbreaking to me. So, please, do a bitch a favor and STOP IT. Open your hearts and open your minds and I promise you...if you do...you'll see that its right and that it makes you feel better. More connected. More human. And isn't that what's going to make or break us? Give a bitch a break and try acceptance for a change. I promise you it'll be bitchin'.

Who's Got Parking Issues? The ABIB, That's Who!

2010-11-14T10:03:00.012-05:00

What up? ABIB here with today's Gripe Du Jour: people who employ handicapped parking hang tags when their fat asses are more than capable of walking from a regular parking space. I mean, first of all, where the fuck are all of these handicapped hang tags coming from? Is there some vendor stand somewhere in Baltimore that sells these suckers to anyone with cash to spend? Don't you think that the whatever-the-fuck-agency that oversees such things would wonder: "hmmmm....there is an alarming increase in handicapped people in Baltimore based on the number of parking hang tags we're unloading here. Perhaps a study of the air and/or water is in order." Oh, but wait, I'm talking about your average John or Jane Q. Municipal Worker. No such analysis going on there, probably barely the basics of cognition are going on there. Or worse, they're printing the fucking things in their basement.

Anyway, it never fails, there I am at work, shopping, anywhere there's a parking lot and invariably some gigantic-ass SUV (they seem to especially proliferate among SUV drivers, another SUPER PET PEEVE of the ABIB as regular readers know) rolls into the right-next-to-the-fucking-door handicapped parking space and BINGO! there's the little blue and white hang tag. The door opens and out steps some gigantic-assed PERSON, however, and don't wring me out here over this its strictly observational: NORMALLY A FAT ASSED WOMAN or womyn, or woomin or whatever the newest gender-normative spelling is. Yes, I'm here to say it out loud: mostly I see big, fat women lumbering out of their giant, gas guzzling SUVs and parking a mere few steps from the door of whatever retail or office emporium they have chosen to visit. A MERE FEW STEPS. Shit, most of these big berthas could REALLY use the fucking exercise it takes to WALK the normally relatively short distance from any other parking space to the front door.

They lumber their big asses out the door and shuffle on in to...wherever. I'm seething, of course, because, let's face it, I AM the ABIB, after all and just about anything makes me seethe. And when I seethe I seem to amost always imagine...imagine...imagine what could happen...

"Ma'am! Excuse me: MA'AM?!"
"Huh?"
"Ma'am I'm going to have to ask you to step away from the vehicle."
"Wha?"
"Step your ass away from your vehicle, is what I'm asking."
"Who are you?"
"I'm someone who has been appointed to verify the validity of your handicapped parking hang tag and, if deemed invalid, to CONFISCATE IT AND MAKE YOU PARK OUT IN THE LOT WITH THE REST OF US NON-SCOFFLAWS and...oh, I don't know...WALK?!"

I can see her startled, slightly annoyed expression and of course, being The ABIB, it fills me with unbridled glee, but I press on with the bust making her prove WHO she has to haul around that is ACTUALLY HANDICAPPED. Is it your Grandmother, your Mother, your Father, your Auntie Ruth? Who is the actually crippled person whose inabilty to WALK has afforded you that golden parking pass?
Of course I would expect that answer to be in the negatory and then I would get to CONFISCATE IT! Bwhaahahahahahahahahahaha!

Plus I could offer some healthy eating suggestions (lay off the Doritos and lace up the sneaks, sister) to go with her newfound WALKING REGIMEN! HAH! Now, don't get all whackjob on me here, I know that there have to be SOME GIANT GAS GUZZLING SUVs that haul handicapped Gramma to the mall but I'm guessing that that number is somewhere right around three...out of the whole lot of them. But ABIB you ask, how can you just pull a random number like that out of your ass? To that I say, and it's strictly anecdotal observation here, I admit it, but of all the GIANT SUVs sporting handicapped hang tags I've seen in how many cases have I watched an actual handicapped person emerge from the vehicle? Um....exactly ZERO! So my estimation of three is pretty darned generous.

So there you have it, ABIB's Gripe Du Jour and tiny little revenge fantasy all in one post. Can it be that this will be the new format? That I bitch about some asshole doing something moronic and then I get to picture the inevitable ABIB-delivered course correction? Me likey the sound of that! Stay tuned, folks, I'm already mentally plotting the denouement of hapless suckers everywhere.

This Just In...

2010-11-11T11:44:00.003-05:00

Rolling Stone reports that singer Phil Collins said in an interview that he has contemplated suicide. Hmmmmm...well Phil, I'm pretty sure many others did too after having to listen to your shitty music.

Asshole told his wife he wanted a divorce via fax. What a wanker.

Guys, (and Frighteningly, Some Gals) Can We Tawk?

2010-10-29T21:37:00.007-04:00

OK, I've begun this post by specifically CHOOSING to be gender biased. This blog post is almost exclusively aimed at da mens among us. Although I reference gals in the title of this post, I have to say here and now that if you are indeed a female and you suffer from the topic of this post it may be time to just go ahead and have that X/Y matchup done. Fer real, yo.

So, guys, can we tawk (as the title inquires) about a scourge to humanity that is almost (I say ALMOST for a reason) as repulsive as the dreaded skidmark? I'm talking here about...GAG....fucking EAR HAIR!! Yes, you know what I mean...those sickening tufts of...is it really hair?...that are poking out of your ear canal? For the love of everything that is sacred can you...PLEASE...JUST...DEAL...WITH...IT?!?!

I mean, what's up with this mess? You get up in the AM, you shower (prayerfully), you brush your teeth (beseeching you all to do this AT LEAST daily, if not for your own oral hygiene then for those that have to deal with the resulting death breath of not brushing) AND FLOSSING WHILE WE'RE AT IT, and you...oh, I don't know...SHAVE? Comb your hair? What I'm getting at here guys, the common thread that's uniting the beginning of this tirade, is that you have ample MIRROR TIME EVERY FUCKING DAY!!

As in, you're gazing at your own reflection and not recoiling in horror once you get a good, solid look. So, you're in front of a mirror and in spite of every decent opportunity you fucking don't notice the incipient thatch of wheat emerging from your ear canal. WHEAT MOTHERFUCKERS!! And sometimes that wheat is holding onto some absolutely terrifying...I can't say it...earwax? So, um, it's the equivalent of ignoring a giant zit or a coldsore or a WEN in the middle of your fucking mug. All together now: eeeeeeewwwwwwwwww!

I mean, what's the deal with ear hair anyway? Is this some long lost holdover from the pleistocene era when gnats the size of tissue boxes were divebombing our heads? Was the purpose of those ear tufts to keep those fuckers out? Or was it to keep the ol' ear canal warm during those long, cold winters spent inventing fire and the wheel? If so, CLUE UP BITCHES! Them days is long gone! We've had Mr. Schick and Mr. Gillette and Mr. Ronson around for fucking DECADES! They have been creating products to take care of this problem since who knows when? I mean, really, exactly how long has human civilization had the razor? A long, long, loooooooooooooong time, my friends. A long ass time.

So come on, guys...help a bitch out wouldja? Trim that unsightly troll-ass looking forest from your ears and spare all of us the indignity of having to openly avert our eyes whenever we're stuck having to look at your sorry ass. Those tissue box gnats have been gone for millions of years but your ears are still stuck in that earwax-laden, follicularly challenged past. Really? Grab a set of shears and DO WHAT HAS TO BE DONE! The ABIB has spoken; don't make me come at you with a hedgetrimmer!

Did Something Last Night...

2010-08-13T16:35:00.008-04:00

that I'm not particularly proud of. I...I...watched an entire movie on THE LIFETIME CHANNEL!!! Cue scary music and that slicing sound when the crazy dude went off on the chick in the shower scene in Psycho. I can't believe I'm admitting this to anyone let alone blogging about it. Jesus it was just like eating something really fattening but that isn't all that great but you just keep eating it anyway because its brainless and repetitive.

I won't go so far as to divulge the name of the "movie", but since it was on Lifetime you can probably get pretty close just by guessing any title about surviving abusive spouses or surviving abusive parents or surviving abusive drug dealers/pimps. But that last one is only if the protagonist is a teenage girl. What someone SHOULD make is a movie about Lifetime Channel's abusive movies!

So anyway, I sat there on my couch and before I realized what had happened I was actually watching this thing and, well, kind of, wondering how it was going to turn out. In spite of myself. I get the same vaguely shame-filled feeling whenever I watch Ghost Hunters. Holy crap, the "hunters", eerily lighted by a greenish night-vision glow (as if ghosts will only EVER appear in total darkness..what do you mean, ghosts don't exist? philistine!) 'DID YOU SEE THAT??? IT WAS JUST OVER THERE A SPLIT SECOND AGO!!' The camera lamely swings in the direction of the "sighting" which of course is no longer visible but I continue watching all the same. And feel ridiculous yet weirdly powerless to stop. Sheesh.

So I figure that by watching an entire "movie" on the Lifetime Channel I have irrevocably taken that step firmly into post-menopausal middle age. How depressing. I thought I had insulated myself what with the repeated viewings of Family Guy, The Simpsons and South Park. Hey motherfuckers, I watch GLEE for crying out loud! And yet none of those youthful choices kept me safe when the channel changer brought me to the Lifetime Channel and left me there, foundering amongst all the bad dialogue and scenery-chewingly dreadful "acting", the bombastic music and the over-wrought camera work. At the end I felt like one, big bottle of something from Mary Kay. YUCK!!

All the purveyors of the 900 channel reality that is modern television offer parents the option to block what they deem to be inappropriate viewing for their children. Let me say, here and now, that said purveyors would do well to offer we baby boomers who like to think of ourselves as endlessly youthful and hip, (case in point: Old Farts on Facebook) a service that would warn us IN LOUD VOICES WITH LARGE LETTERS that HEY!!! YOU ARE ABOUT TO SWITCH TO A CHANNEL THAT WILL MAKE YOU, HEAVEN FORBID, FEEL YOUR ACTUAL CHRONOLOGIC AGE!!! BEWARE!!! UNLESS YOU WANT TO SPEND THE NEXT 90 MINUTES FEELING TERRIBLE ABOUT YOURSELF MOVE ALONG!!! MOVE ALONG!!!

Hells at least we'd be warned. At least we'd KNOWINGLY commit to bad, soporific old people television. I mean I'm actually scared. What's next: bedtime at 8:30, dinner at 4:00, anything on CBS!? Maybe I'll just hang out on YouTube for awhile, watch some stuff on Hulu, anything to keep me from helplessly turning toward that insidious siren call that I hear even now: Lifetime Channel Presents: The Devil's Teardrop, Bond of Silence or The Client List. Putting down the remote...backing away from the TV...suddenly wondering what's on the Early Bird Special today at Olde Country Buffet. Nooooooooooooooo!

*NEWSFLASH**

2010-08-05T17:21:00.003-04:00

YO, BEEYOTCHES!!! The ABIB is immensely gratified and proud to report that she actually witnessed (with her own ears) the utilization of The Courtesy Flush in the bathroom at work today!!! This, my friends, is a HUGE step forward in the struggle against public bathroom miscreants who from this point forward shall be known as Stink Hoarders.

The ABIB is deeply touched ...wiping a tear from her eye...to learn that her tirades are actually making a difference. Not to mention, being read.

Trapped in the Slowly Moving Humor Free Zone Also Known as “The Elevator”

2010-08-05T13:37:00.004-04:00

OMG!!! OMG!!! OMG!!! OMG!!! I’m finally free of the Elevator of Slow Death by Trite, Stupid Humorless “Jokes”. ABIB here in, as you may know by now, a federal workplace that I go to every day to do….whatever people do at work. So, sometimes I have to ride one of several elevators in my building, generally transiting from my cube to the cafeteria and back, a trip that traverses three floors. The elevators, as many in older buildings, are painfully slow. So when you get on in the basement and have to ride to the third floor you could possibly grow grey as the tiny space stops on floor 1, then on floor 2, and finally, BLESSEDLY, on floor 3 where I speedily exit into the processed, controlled air of the mauve-colored hallway. I generally hope for, and mightily try to achieve, being a lone elevator rider, as in NOT HAVING TO SHARE THAT TINY, AIRLESS SPACE WITH ANY OF THE SEVERAL THOUSAND NITWITS THAT CONSTITUTE MY COWORKER POPULATION.

Riding with others in silence, while not ideal (again, always shooting for that LONE ridership) is at least bearable, albeit a little awkward. Silent co-riders are surely almost palpably aware that they are not alone and are, in fact, in nearly obscene physical proximity to someone who is likely a total stranger. Can do. Even the multiple floor stops are livable especially since each floor means another person is going away.

Soooooo….today I found myself riding up to floor three from the lower lever, a.k.a. THE BASEMENT with not one, not two but FIVE other drones. But not just any five other drones, five of the most cretinous, repellent, downright scirry drones to occupy this particular federal facility. In other words, some fairly normal federal workers. I should have taken the worrisome cue as we all waited in the cold concrete floor, white cinderblock , bunker-ish reality that is THE BASEMENT. The worrisome cue was the “I can’t stand the sound of the normal silences that occupy the spaces between people who don’t know each other so I’m going to fill it with ENDLESS, HORRIFIC “FUNNY” GIBBERISH!!!” that began almost immediately after the moment one of us pushed the button to call the elevator. There I was, in a physical space that, again, most resembles a bomb shelter circa 1962, surrounded by a group of lamebrain idiots whose idea of “humor” is to make exceedingly moronic observations about what’s happening around them.

“Hey is there only ONE of these elevators working?” This barked out in front of the bank of two elevators in front of us.

“HAHAHAHAHA, Yeah! One’s the backup in case the other one doesn’t work!”

“Haven’t you heard about federal contracts going to the lowest bidder?! Welll, we only CONTRACTED for ONE of these to WORK at a TIME!!”

“Let’s make sure that we SAVE A TREE WHILE WE’RE AT IT!!”

The slow descent into hell has begun and although my ABIB-Senses tell me to FLEE MOTHERFUCKER!!!! FLEE FOR YOUR LIFE!!!! I instead stand there, already too numb to move. Within a brief period of a few seconds it was already too late to escape.

“Hey should we try a rain dance?”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Now that one doesn’t even make sense in Stupid Fucker World! A rain dance? Here comes the bile, right on time, ready to spew forth onto this crowd of fucking ninnies if someone doesn’t strike them dumb. Or dumb-ER. Hee Hee.

Finally the ONE WORKING ELEVATOR arrives and everyone jovially piles in to begin the ride to: I see with dawning horror: ALL THREE FLOORS! The hilarity continues unabated once the door whooshes closed with an ominous hiss.

“Here we are; hope everyone put on their deodorant today!”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Oh for fucks sake.

I begin to beam hate waves to every pinhead in the car now moving with agonizing slowness to the first of three stops and YES, mine is the last. SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT THE MOTHERFUCK UP!!!! My silent powers of mind control are not working.

Ding! The electronic “female” talking elevator voice is now announcing for any blind person in the cab (it is after all a FEDERAL facility) Level One: Going Up! No-one moves.

“Hey did someone let a ghost on here?”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

The thinnest thread now exists between my sanity and my self control. Two floors to go.

“Maybe that rain dance did it! Are we on some kind of Indian burial ground?! Cheap land, one working elevator. YEP! Lowest bidder!”

Pencil-necked geek DID NOT JUST DO A CALL-BACK and to some ignorant-ass shit that wasn’t even remotely funny the FIRST FUCKING TIME!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Why do people laugh at shit that isn’t even remotely funny? I mean, COME ON, a rain dance? Ghosts? Indian burial grounds? What’s with the automatic, instantaneous hale and hearty, too loud laughter? I say: remain silent and maybe this corny-ass lame mother fucker will SHUT UP. And then I remember: same as always ABIB, it’s you against the world: all these morons actually find this crap comical.
Well the rest of the ride went by in a blurry haze as I’m convinced that all of my hate beams were backing up on me since none of the dipwads in that elevator from moronic bad joke hell were even remotely fazed, keeping up the hideous barrage of verbal mayhem:

“Here’s your floor! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

“OR ANYTHING YOU WOULD DO!!!”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

until I escaped onto my floor. Plus I’m pretty sure I developed TMJ from the jaw grinding that began downstairs in the 60s air raid bunker.
If I wasn’t so fucking lazy I’d force myself to take the stairs. Maybe the solution is earplugs. Or MAYBE , just maybe, the solution is for moronic assholes who don’t have anything of any interest to say to just SHUT THE FUCK UP MOTHERFUCKER! The ABIB can dream, can’t she?

Directly From The Face Of The Sun

2010-07-12T15:38:00.007-04:00

Hi kids; ABIB here. Yo, now that it's summer you might find yourself thinking, "Hey...I wonder what it's like on the face of the sun?" Well, I have the answer for you kiddos: Baltimore in July! Yes this post is coming to you directly from the fucking face of Old Sol himself, brought to earth for your sweltering pleasure and located directly WHERE I LIVE! Hateful motherfucking summer weather; the bane of my existence from roughly May until whenever global warming decides to release us from its gaping hellish maw. Round these parts that would generally be October at the very earliest. I hate to sweat, I hate the wall-to-wall, smothering humidity, I hate how everyone's tongue clicks when they're talking because they're constantly suffering from heat-induced dry mouth. Did I mention that I hate to sweat?
It reached a zenith here last week when we accrued the - what - 15th, 20th, 5,000th straight day of 90+ degrees? Yes, it topped out one day at a balmy 104 degrees. Combined with the 57% humidity it made every step outdoors akin to slogging your way through hot oatmeal. Even CNN reported on the heatwave plaguing the East Coast and darned if Baltimore wasn't ALWAYS the hottest temperature on the map from Maine to Florida. Also, weather people: STOP BEING SO FUCKING CHEERFUL ABOUT THE WEATHER!! "Hey folks, looks like another scorcher out there today with no real end in sight! Slather up on the SPF 50, grab some water bottles and head to the pool!" Um, what FUCKING POOL?! Don't most of us WORK for a living? So I'm reduced to dashing (except you can't dash in 104 degrees without seriously courting heatstroke) from one air-conditioned reality to the next. Car to work to car to house. Don't be so crabby, ABIB, at least you HAVE air conditioning. To that I say: hey, mofo, it's 2010, if you STILL don't have ready access to air conditioning why not hitch up that horse and buggy and get the fuck back to the 19th century? Folks, the heat brings out the worst in me and as you surely know by now, the BEST of me is pretty dicey.
I had to deviate from the car to work to car to house pattern last Thursday and let me tell you, it was not a pretty picture. Errands should be banned when the temperature rises above 85. But an errand I had so before I could escape into the no-shades-open-72-degree interior of my house (yes I keep it at 72 degrees and it's well worth the privations needed to achieve that blessed inside temperature - who needs food?) I had to make a stop at the local Walgreens.
Out of car - FULL BODY HOT OATMEAL SLAM: FUCK ITS HOT - into the Walgreens - where the PA system was positively BLASTING some random CD of oldies but at least it was cool in there. Got in line with - Christ Almighty - other people. Other people who have been outside in the boiling Sargasso Sea of weather called Baltimore in July and, well, to put it delicately: MANY OF THEM STUNK!!!
The ABIB prides herself on her pristine personal hygiene habits and is sadly often let down by the not-so-pristine personal hygiene habits of others. Which is why I try, as much as possible, to avoid public places once the temps hit, oh, about 80. Blasting muzak, the accursed dry-mouth, a line wait (which is hellish for the ABIB in the BEST of circumstances) and fellow sweating, odorous line waiters. As you can probably guess it didn't go well. By the time I was done with my errand I had reached the threshhold where being even remotely pleasant was a distant memory. A very distant memory. Paid up, gathered my stuff, pushed past the line of olfactory miscreants waiting behind me (FOLKS: IT'S CALLED DEODORANT! USE IT!) and exited the building. WHAM! Back into the muggy, hot wall of hideousness that is Ol' Sol's loving breath, into my now reheated car, whose AC will not have the oommph to blow cool enough to matter before I get home. The next person who cheerily states: "Well at least it's not SNOWING!" Is going to get a karate chop to the solar plexus.
Yes, folks, it's the ABIB in mid-July, cheerless and resentful as ever, posting from the face of the sun, aka Baltimore, MD.

The Snow's The Thing

2009-12-31T21:19:00.009-05:00

This post was originally started in mid-December 2009, before Mamacita Nature hit Balmer with two more cray-cray blizzards. So....consider this one the warm-up.

Mid-December 2009

Before I begin this post I have to say that even though the Jesus Syndicate has moved away I'm still receiving their CHRISTMAS CARD MAIL! Yes, I have actually had a Christmas card for the JS dropped in MY mailbox as clearly nobody lives in that house anymore. So, I now know, even the mailman is in on the conspiracy to NEVER let the JS actually be gone from my life. Maybe it's time I contacted The Savage Nation to let them know that wacko conspiracies afflict us lefties as well.

OK, so the actual topic of this post is around the notion that "if you didn't have a shovel in your hand it's not your space". This is the kind of petty shit I have to be consumed with by living, as I do, in a Balmer rowhome with no access to even a parking pad let alone a fucking garage. We got 24 inches of snow in Balmer a couple of weeks ago which basically meant that the city (excluding my job) shut down. Fine. We paid two yahoos a decent wage to dig us out of that dump of snow, including and especially, our two cars. Once the plows come through, however, they redeposit a foot or so of a snow cliff right next to the car. We shoveled out again and, thinking everything was now hunkydory as there was no further snow predicted, went to bed to dream the ABIB's dreams of anarchy and such. But NO! The person I let use my car to go out for the evening rang the house phone at about 12:30 A fucking M to query:
"Um, where should I park your car?"
To which I groggily replied:
"In my fucking DUG-OUT parking space."
"Theres a truck parked there." Was the reply.
"WHAT THE FUCK???!!!"
So, now it's 12:30 A fucking M on a work night and I'm fully awake and across the bedroom floor in seconds, peering out the window only to see that, indeed, there is a motherfucking TRUCK parked in MY DUG-OUT SPACE!!! Not a truck, really, but one of those useless fucking SUVs that do nothing but suck up our gas, pour shit into the air at a great big rate, and pretty much block my view whenever I'm stuck behind one of them. GIANT HEMIs!!!! BIG TIRES!!!!! YOU CAN EXTRACT GIANT TREE STUMPS WITH THEM!!! I'm guessing that they generally serve as the manhood-consolation prize for having a little dick.

It took me all of 45 seconds to pull on some sweats over my nightgown (attractive image, I know, but HEY an ABIB's gotta do what an ABIB's gotta do), step into my clodhopper snow boots and throw on my ski jacket. Out the door, into the frigid night, at 12:30 in the FUCKING morning on a work night, where I see MY CAR now, tires spinning, stuck in a snow drift, while a FUCKING SUV is parked in my paid-for, dug-out parking space. Oh, MOTHERFUCKER I don't THINK SO!

I also notice that my uber-creepy neighbor is out there (at this hour) calmly clearing the snow off of his wife's car windows. It doesn't occur to me immediately that it's HIS SUV, since it's fucking dark and it's fucking 12:30 A fucking M.

What does the ABIB do in a sitch like this one? The ABIB, being the ABIB, announces her status and her intentions. At the top of my lungs, in the middle of the street, at 12:30 in the A fucking M, here's what I screamed:

"WHATEVER MOTHERFUCKER HAS PARKED THEIR FUCKING TRUCK IN MY PARKING SPACE BETTER COME DOWN HERE AND FUCKING MOVE IT. I'M GOING TO STAND HERE AND KEEP SCREAMING UNTIL YOU FUCKING MOVE YOUR FUCKING TRUCK! AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!"

I screamed for about 25 seconds before I hear Uber-Creepy say:

"Hey, calm down!"

What the what? Man, I don't know how old you are but the last thing you want to tell a hormonal, middle-aged, sleep-deprived WOMAN is to "calm down". As they said in one of my favorite movies, "Galaxy Quest", "It's like throwing gasoline on a flame."

I stalked over to him and asked what he said. Foolishly he repeated it.

"Calm down."

"Is that your fucking truck in my space?"
He chuckled. "Your space?"
"Did you shovel that space out?"
"What?"
"DID YOU FUCKING SHOVEL THAT PARKING SPACE OUT?"
"No."
"Then it's NOT YOURS!"
"What are you saying that you OWN the parking space?"
How I didn't stroke out on the pavement at that moment was a miracle that told me that I clearly was doing the Lord's work. Someone had to set this fucking dipwad straight and I was apparently getting the green light to go ahead and do it. So be it.

Well I took the next several moments to explain to shit-for-brains, that, if you want a parking space, you DIG OUT a parking space for yourself, you don't wait for a neighbor to have a parking space dug out and then assume it's for YOUR LAZY ASS! He backed up a few steps and incredulously said:

"You PAID to have this space dug out?"
"Yeah. I PAID to have this space dug out. Plus, considering that you're driving a fucking lunar vehicle, you can pretty much park wherever you want, asshole. So move your car."

To make a long story short, he at first refused but then I got closer to his house and presumably his sleeping spouse and kid, and started screaming again, so he reconsidered. Atta boy! My car was still stuck in the snowbank but I got it dislodged and went back in the house where I was then wide-awake and up until after 2:00 AM. Next day I saw freakjob and he apologized for not understanding the "culture of the neighborhood" in spite of the fact that it was fuckwad's third freaking winter with us. I wished him a barely audible "Merry Christmas" and continued on my way. So, you see, even threatening scare-oids can ultimately be cowed by a screaming banshee in a nightgown, sweatpants and clodhopper boots. As "Cathy" once said: "Never underestimate the power of going a day without makeup." Or indeed, in the case of the ABIB, even a few moments on a cold winter's night.

The Curse That Lingers

2009-11-25T22:42:00.007-05:00

OK, so I haven't told you all - don't you love how I say that like I assume I have readers - I haven't told you all that The Jesus Syndicate finally MOVED AWAY! Is it blasphemous to thank the Baby Jesus that they finally packed up all their shit into a big ass truck and LEFT? So here I am, thinking, well, FINALLY, Easy Street, USA but then the owner of the house through the wall (the JS were just one in a 12 year string of renters) decided to get out of the slum lord biz and puts the fucking property on the market. So far so good, right? Owners are better than renters, property values rise when everyone owns, blah, blah, blah.

Well, that would be true if only the FUCKING OWNER WOULD STOP WORKING ON THE HOUSE! I want to ask him if he's building the Taj Ma-FUCKING-Hal in there or what? For at least a month there have been workmen in there daily, DAILY! - through the wall - banging, Roto-rootering, drilling, and belt sanding the whole place beginning at roughly 7:30 AM on MY DAY OFF!! The owner, his wife (daintily painting the exteriors of the windows) and a team of about 10,000 workmen have been at this - need I remind you - 50-something-year-old ROW HOUSE from dawn to nightfall. I tell you it's enough to drive a sane person crazy and I am The ABIB, so youze be knowin' what be happenin' to MOI.

So the incessant, daily noise threshold is roughly that of a revving 747 but I'm cool, I can deal; an extra pillow over my head and some heavy-duty earplugs can work wonders. But on the heels of the noise, comes the fumes and when I say fumes I mean everything from poisonous wood lacquer to whatever it is that Roto-rooter dudes snake out of the toilet, K? These old houses have very porous walls; these walls can, as demonstrated in past posts to this blog, clearly transmit noise down to the emoryboard-on-fingernail level, and they can also transmit fumes down to the ingredient level! It's a fucking direct pipeline from that side of the wall to ours. How lovely! I come home and my house is filled with the smell of wood floor lacquer that permeates EVERYTHING: the air, the air coming out of the dryer, the air coming out of the pre-heating oven, and eventually, the air coming out of my fucking trying-to-recover-from-the-flu lungs! I couldn't cook for three days since whenever I turned on MY oven in MY house out came 400-degree, heated toxic chemical fumes. We ate out. I tried to present the owner with a bill but he breezed past me like the slumlord that he is, figuring that if I actually LIVE in this neighborhood, in which he merely deigns to be a rental owner, I must be barely above the poverty level and collecting foodstamps. Fucking arrogant jackass.

So you see, it never ends. Never. The JS finally move their fat fucking asses out only to be replaced by the Toxic Chemical Workteam lead by the slumlord from hell himself. So I've decided that the best way to fight passive agressive shit is with more passive aggressive shit. I put our third car up on blocks in our backyard and left two major appliances (dishwasher and old dryer) on my front porch along with various bags of dogshit and a decomposing carved pumpkin from Halloween. Since it's the day before Thanksgiving I guess you can imagine what that's looking like. Insects that I'm pretty sure are not native to this area. HAH! Try to sell the place now, ASSHOLE! So you see, The ABIB may get momentarily thrown for a loop but that doesn't last, bitches. I can wait it out. I've got a kid in college so I have a third mortgage on this fucking place. I can wait you out Mr. "I Live In Columbia and Only Own a RENTAL Property In This Pathetic Part of Town". I can wait you out, boo; The ABIB Abides. Pour me another White Russian, would ya and Happy Thanksgiving!

Which Tomato Should I Pick?

2009-09-26T21:28:00.006-04:00

The title of this post was an actual question that a young woman spoke into her cell phone today at Wegman's tomato bin. How many things are wrong with this picture? Uh, let me help you: 1. I was at Wegman's, a store that I love which also is a store that I hate, more on this later; 2. A young woman was chatting on her cell phone while grocery shopping; and, 3. She was asking for food selection advice. Now, quite apart from the notion that there is literally probably NO activity in which a cell phone conversation is now inappropriate (including in the can, which I have personally heard with my own ears and posted to this blog), how on fucking earth did this ninny expect to get any useful advice on food selection from the person at the other end of her cell phone?

And assuming that any useful advice could be gotten (go for the red, round one), how did it come to this? We are now unable to choose produce without first dialing a number on our cell phones and consulting with someone at a distance. I'm guessing that this person sustained this conversation long after she left the tomato bin with, presumably, the freshest, most lovely, most PERFECT tomato in the well-organized pile of hundreds. Yes, hundreds; it is, after all, Wegman's. I hear people on their cell phones all over every retail establishment I find myself having to endure. I hate shopping for ANYTHING, largely because it puts me in direct contact with other people which, I'm pretty sure I've made very clear here, I HATE.

"Do you think the white bra or the pink one?"
"I can't remember which shoes I have that will match teal silk can you go check?"
"Do we use Cottonelle or the brand that advertises with the bears that get pieces of toilet paper stuck to their asses?"

I CAN'T REMEMBER is generally the refrain that I hear in retail cell phone convos, that and seeking an opinion from afar on something that the other person can't see, smell, taste or feel. I think this whole obsession with checking via cell phone arises when people think that others judge them to be friendless losers if they aren't continuously engaged in a conversation with someone, ANYONE, rather than just, oh, I don't know, WALKING? through a supermarket-drug store-fast-food-emporium-department store conversation-free! People: it's OK...you're not being judged...we DON'T FUCKING CARE!!!

The worst, however, is when that ubiquitous cell conversation continues into the check-out phase of the shopping experience. This is the most heinous abuse of the technology of cell phones EVER IMAGINED...ANYWHERE! Here you have some hapless, minimum-wage slave checking out your pathetic purchases and you can't even give them the fucking courtesy of PRETENDING to pay attention. Halfway through the perp will do something like this:

"What? Oh, wait a minute...no...no...I didn't want that...take it off the bill. OK, I'm back"

This is ALWAYS uttered in the most annoyed tone possible as if it's the checker's audacious rudeness that is causing the cell phone talker to have to break off their critially important conversation to correct said checker's stupidity...they didn't read the cell phone talker's mind and take out that third gallon of ice cream which will now sit and melt until some other sad wage-slave gets stuck with the "shop back" cart. Let me say it here and now: these people should be zapped through their cell phones until their fucking little ears bleed. I mean, really...for the FIVE MINUTES it takes to check you through the grocery line you can't delay your cell phone conversation? Who are you, THE POPE?

So there you have it; cell phones aiding tomato selection. What could be more ridiculous? Oh yes, one thing could be more ridiculous, The ABIB in a place like Wegman's whose every aisle is crammed with other cart-wielding....people. But it's Wegman's, so I endure. Because Wegman's has a specialty area for everything from artisan breads to handmade friendship bracelets from some cooperative in Guatemala. Wonderfully helpful Wegman's employees in their Wegman's shirts offering me free samples of the most delicious sharp cheddar cheese from a boutique cheese maker in Frankfurt. How can I hate a store that has an entire SECTION devoted only to olive oil? I can love the message and hate the messenger, can't I? Can't I? Oh wait! Maybe I should call my friend Deb and check. Hello, Deb? I can't decide...

Facebook: A Baby Boomer's Fountain of Youth

2009-08-20T21:23:00.005-04:00

So, I have, like every, single other baby boomer in the United States, become a denizen of the sometimes informational, occasionally funny, and too often creepy world that is Facebook. We boomers are convinced that we never age and remain continually youthful, sparkling and current. So something like Facebook, which was started and, previous to our multi-million old-codger invasion, inhabited by actual young people, is right up our alley.

"I love Facebook because it allows me to reconnect with folks from high school!"

Subtext there is, of course, if you haven't seen someone in over 30 years the chances are pretty good that they don't want to "reconnect" with you even in cyberspace. Stalking behaviors are imminent.

"I love Facebook because I can keep up with what my friends, family and coworkers are doing in their lives."

Generally I couldn't give a fat rat's ass what anyone is doing in their lives so this wasn't my draw either. This one is especially annoying when you've got some asshole in your friend's list who fills your daily newsfeed with the pathetic, boring and downright creepy minutiae of their daily little lives. To wit, some recent ones on my newsfeed: "Having lunch with BooBoo in the food court at the mall. Waiting for my cousin."; "BooBoo just woke up and now he's crabby but still cute." "Wondering why I'm still awake at 12:30 when the alarm goes off at 3:30." See, Facebook needs to mail each member free barf bags if they're going to allow that kind of insipid crap to be posted and read by unsuspecting eyes. Which brings me to probably my most infuriating Facebook annoyance: Facebook Quizzes.

"What Disney Character Are You?"
"How Many Times Have You Crossed Paths With Your Soul Mate?"
"What's your Myers-Briggs Personality Type?"
"Eddy Has Just Passed You A Margarita!"

And on and on and on until I seriously fear for my ability to walk upright due to the loss of brain cells just from being momentarily exposed to this ninny food. You know what? I don't want to know how you're doing in Jewel Puzzle, Farmville or Bejeweled Blitz and I NEVER want to participate with your fucking sorry ass in Mafia Wars so QUIT SOLICITING MY HELP!!!

Why just this evening I was presented with one on my newsfeed and it in fact inspired this post.

"What Do Your Eyes Say About You?" I should remind you that the person who took this quiz and whose results are now posted to my computer screen is 55 FUCKING YEARS OLD!!

The little results teaser answer says: "When people look into your eyes they see mysteries galore. You're a deep and intellectual person (PROOF THAT THIS IS NOT TRUE IS THAT SHE HAD JUST TAKEN THIS MINDLESS QUIZ) and others can see that through your sparkling eyes.

Well, I just can't write anymore of this because it's just too...I don't know...ICKY?! Here's what I want to post to this "friend's" wall in response to her sharing this absolute pap with me:

"Watch out! I've heard that this Facebook Quiz is actually a black ops government retinal scan to get you into a national database of douchebags!"

So there you have it. Facebook is a wonderful space on the internet where all of us old farts can now go to feel young again. For those of us who can no longer lower our fat asses into a kayak or step into snow skis without dislodging a hip joint, we can watch all of our other old-ass "friends" post pictures of themselves trying with various levels of success to do those things. And laugh when they clearly miss the mark. And we can stalk their photo albums and feel all superior because "thank Christ WE don't look that fucking old". And we know for a FACT when a posted profile picture was taken AT LEAST three chins ago. But you know what? I have actually learned something from Facebook and all the "reconnections" with people I knew in my youth. Age does lots of things but apparently it doesn't make you any fucking more interesting than you were when last I avoided you at our lockers in high school. And now I know for a FACT that there's a reason I lost touch with you 30 freaking years ago.

Now I know that you're wondering: "Well, ABIB, why don't you just stop using Facebook if it's so annoying to you?" And my answer to that is: I will just as soon as I watch the video that just appeared on my newsfeed called: "Octuplets Mum: I've Screwed Up My Life".

Put That Freaking Shirt Back On!

2009-06-15T20:22:00.002-04:00

And while you're at it, step away from the wife beater t-shirt, too. Holy Crap but I hate summer! The bugs, the heat, the humidity and the shirtless men. White chests, black chests, brown chests, it don't matter. COVER THAT SHIT UP!!! I mean really, summer around here turns the whole world into one big chest fest and I'm here to say IT NEEDS TO STOP! NOW! Why just this afternoon I was driving through Catonsville and lo and behold I pass a group of local teens and one of the guys is shirtless. I have to ask: why, man, why? That look works on NOBODY, but besides that: NOBODY NEEDS TO SEE YOUR ICKY BARE CHEST! And I'm not saying that just some body types need to forget the word "shirtless" ALL MALES...OF ANY AGE! Whether you're fat or thin, muscular or scrawny; the shirtless look SUCKS!

First of all it just plain looks low class. I don't care if you have a PhD in Astrophysics, if you're sportin' the "bare chest in public look" you might as well just go ahead and get yourself a doublewide. Everyone thinks you're living in one, anyway. In West Virginia. Second of all, it can't be comfortable. The sun beating on your repulsive, fish-white skin, your five chest hairs on vulgar display or worse: your copious back hair on what should be illegal display. Just what is the draw of the shirtless look in public? If you're not getting ready to jump into the ocean or a swimming pool within the next eight seconds: KEEP YOUR SHIRT ON, MOTHERFUCKER!

You don't look sexay, (which I'm sure in your addled imagination you do) you just look stupid. And ignorant. Well, both. Now I'm not saying that the male world has to look like a J Crew catalogue, hell I don't care if you're wearing a white undershirt, just so long as it has some sleeves on it and a nice round neckhole. No v-necks; they're just tacky. Plus they make you look like your grandpa.

So to close: summer is bad enough what with the weather, the insects and the never-ending bad television. Please, in the name of all that is holy, don't make us look at your bare chest. EVER.

Fighting for The Lord

2009-06-14T22:23:00.006-04:00

Hey ya'll, it's PAULA DEEN!! Not really, it's just the ABIB but Paula Deen's as crazy as a bedbug and I find her "southern belle on crack" routine pretty amusing. Anyhoo...today's post returns us to one of the ABIB's most favoritest topics, namely her next door neighbors, The Jesus Syndicate or, for this post: the JS. I have written about the JS in the past and they are one of the most venom-inspiring of the ABIB's fonts of angry inspiration. They of the "She's A Child Not a Choice" fucking bumper stickers in crass juxtaposition to their endless screamfests at their endless brood of homunculi masquerading as children. The JS piously attend church every single Sunday; I know this because the noise level through the wall reaches a crescendo at around 8:30 or so every Sunday morning. What with the screaming facistic commands its pretty hard to mistake:

"RAY RAY! DID YOU GET YOUR SHOES ON? DID YOU? DON'T MAKE ME COME UP THERE AND PUT THEM ON YOU!"
"Ray Ray" is four.

"PETER! GET OFF YOUR ASS AND GET THAT FOOD INTO THE TRUCK!!!!"

"SYDNEY!!!!! KNOCK IT OFF AND SHUT UP!!!!"

It goes on and on until they all pile into the gigantic Jesus Van and finally fucking leave. One guesses that they go to church to pray and find some kind of spiritual meaning and...and...Christ I can't go any further. The JS haul their hideous asses to church so that they can piously meet up with other like-minded abortion clinic bombers-in-waiting to pray for the souls of the rest of us headed-directly-to-hell-heathens and to eat crappy homemade cookies and deviled eggs (how ironic, but you know they ARE a church picnic staple). So today being Sunday they were blessedly out until early afternoon and the quiet was delicious.

I vaguely heard them stampeding back into their house at around 1:00 PM but what caught my ear began occurring about 30 minutes after they had returned home. I kept hearing things like:

"NOW IN THIS CORNER! JORDYN SMITH! AND IN THIS CORNER, PETE SMITH!" And then:

"DING DING DING!"

Followed by the grunting sounds of human exertion accompanied by slapping noises. I couldn't help myself and assumed the position at my window of the "weird old lady spying on the neighborhood" that in actuality I am. What I saw surprised even jaded me and that's saying something.

The JS parents also known as White Whale and Brunhilda and lately known collectively as "The Fat Fucks", had tricked their kids out in BOXING GLOVES and were presiding over BOXING BOUTS on their FRONT LAWN! There were other relatives there as well, up to and including GRANDPARENTS! Well you can imagine the ABIB's reaction to this; I became convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt that I had finally somehow migrated into The Twilight Zone. Even for the JS this was fucking beyond the pale!

I watched, mesmerized, as, one by one the children were told to challenge each other to fight. They laced themselves into the gloves and then sister on sister, sister on brother, kindergartner on RAY RAY they proceeded to beat the fucking crap out of each other! It was breathtaking. And all the while the adults, like the Jerry Springer audience that they so clearly are, are screaming instructions and cheering as one after another their kids were transformed into their parents' own personal Sunday Afternoon at the Fights. Who knows? Maybe only the winners got to eat dinner.

Now I am aware of the bizarro-world disconnect between people who are self-described "Christians" and also self-described avid hunters and card-carrying members of the National Rifle Association. Which always begs the question: do any of them actually READ Jesus' guidance? Assuming they CAN read which I admit is a stretch. Wasn't he kind of an advocate of peace, mofos? Turn the other cheek and all that? I mean, give me a break, I'm a fucking JEW and even I know that!

Once one of them had been beaten to the ground and pinned there for a several second count the round was deemed won. The oldest, the one we call "Peppermint Patty", clearly now, without a doubt, destined for greatness on either the roller derby circuit or a woman's football team, if fucking not the straight-up NFL, was generally the winner. Her butch ass clobbered her brother, her twenty-something uncle (and I don't think he was handicapping himself, he looked all in) and anyone else who dared to enter the "ring" with her bullneck self. It was positively horrifying and it went on for at least an hour. At one point White Whale himself laced into the gloves for a bout with his brother-in-law. Watching that fat fuck dance around the lawn taking swings and dodging fists, was actually one of the most grotesque things I have ever witnessed. But you know I kept watching; freak shows are hard to ignore.

Finally after about an hour it ended and I left my post at the window, amazed that I had resisted the almost unbearable urge to dial 911. I mean, isn't shit like this even a little bit illegal? Holy crap, if it isn't it should be. Anyway, I had to post this one just to give you all a glimpse into a typical Sunday afternoon in my neck of the woods, where a simple afternoon with the family somehow takes a wrong turn toward a darker, more frightening place where everything you've ever learned is wrong and the damned write the rules: Look! On the signpost up ahead: The Twilight Zone!

Backer-Inners - Arrogant Pricks of the Driving World

2009-01-25T17:16:00.003-05:00

Hello again, Happy New Year and all that crap. As can be seen from this post's title, today's venomous spleen-letting has all to do with drivers ( I HATE THEM ALL) who back into parking spaces. First of all, what the fuck is wrong with driving straight into a parking space in the first place? The two little white lines, like the runway lights of the driving world, show you exactly where either side of your car is supposed to be. You just look, and you fucking park. Front end first. Couldn't be simpler. But oh HELL'S NO, some assholes just have to make EVERYTHING complicated, don't they? They have to SHOW OFF to the rest of us that their ability to crane their fucking necks around like the green vomit girl in "The Exorcist" is somehow something that we all wish we could do. It literally makes no sense. For one thing, it HAS to be way more trouble than just parking straight in. You have to position the car rear-end first, you have to crane your neck around with or without your arm rakishly hooked over the passenger headrest, and you have to reverse into the spot. Funny, we don't fucking DRIVE backwards, we don't fucking WALK backwards, so why all of a sudden do these fuckwads have to PARK backwards? Are there really that many quick getaways needed in the typical driver's day?

"I'm parking backwards here at this local Starbucks because at any given time I have to be able to rocket out of my parking spot in order to evade the M3 goons who trail me 24/7."

No, I'll tell you why: because they're fucking show-offs, that's why.

Somehow I've always gotten the impression that anyone who would take the trouble to back into a perfectly good drive-straight-in parking space, has something pathetic to prove. Because let's face it folks, if your ego is teetering on the brink of whether or not you can show up other drivers with your outstanding rear-end-first parking skills, may I suggest something you might have overlooked: we don't GIVE A RAT'S ASS!

Whenever I see one of these bozos getting ready to park next to me in this bewildering manner, I always start a slow burn, figuring it's just a matter of time before their "excellent" rear-view mirror skills begin to atrophy and they miscalculate by a few inches thus plowing into my vehicle. So I sit there and wait as they size up the distance, mentally calculating just how to manuever, in reverse, that tiny trajectory that the rest of us just fucking drive into and call it a day. I watch as their reverse lights come on, telling me "here I come mere mortal; watch and envy as I do BACKWARDS what you can only muster the regular way." I watch, in fact, until the stupid fucker turns his/her car off and, smug-stupid-ass expression on their face, meanders over to whatever place of business has drawn their backward-parking ass self to it's doors.

I think I'm going to get little business cards printed up that I can leave under the windshield wiper of every backasswards parking dorkward I encounter. One set will be pink and the other blue. The blue ones will say:

"Congratulations on parking backwards today. Sorry your dick's so small."

The pink ones will say:

"Congratulations on parking backwards today. Sorry your ass is so huge. And/or you're so fugly."

I mean someone's gotta bring these morons down a notch or two, right? And who better than The ABIB herself? As I always say, righteous anger's a fulltime job, kids and I'm out there bringin' it for you every, single day. You're welcome.

A Most Unwelcome Emission

2008-12-09T21:25:00.004-05:00

Ladies and germs, if I may: this post is devoted to another in my ongoing, albeit seemingly random, public service announcements but I heard something today that absolutely has COMPELLED me to write. As you know I have been, for some time now, a purveyor of information that some may dismiss as nothing more than bathroom humor. Literally. To that I say: go fuck yourselves; this shit is fo real, yo! There's folks out there getting bombarded with the most heinous of offenses and frankly someone has to speak up and in some small way, alert the world that perps of this grotesque magnitude exist, indeed, walk amongst us.

Today a coworker came to me extremely distraught (understandably as you will learn) and proceeded to unload (pun intended) a most disturbing story. Said coworker (for what it's worth, a guy...since I've dissed the dirty ladies twice I figured I'd go ahead and spread the shame around) had just come from the men's room where he had encountered, no ENDURED, a horrific event that will most probably leave a permanent mental scar on this poor fellow.

There he was, standing at one of the urinals...doing your typically urinal kind of thing, when out of nowhere comes a very high-ranking MANAGER with whom this employee has extensive dealings. To put it bluntly, it's critical that my coworker maintain the proper sucking-up posture with this miscreant at all times. So, MANAGER saunters to the next urinal, whips out his dick and also begins to do a typically urinal kind of thing. Likewise he begins to engage my unwitting coworker in a conversation. Now, how many times do I have to repeat that TALKING IN THE STALL IS DISGUSTING!!! Unless you find yourself sliding irretrievably into a comatose puddle, it is NEVER APPROPRIATE TO ENGAGE FELLOW CRAPPERS OR PEE-ERS IN CONVERSATION OF ANY KIND!!! For one thing, there are times when breath is a precious commodity, such as when one is squeezing the equivalent of a ripe watermelon out of of one's ass, one needs to reserve ALL one's breath for that very arduous activity. The rare exception is again: help me, I think I'm dying in here or can you spare some toilet paper I'm completely out? And that's only if you're also out of those toilet seat covers, which, by the way, double nicely as toilet paper in a pinch. HAH! Pun intended. But seriously, THAT'S IT!!

Well, apparently this management moron was raised on another planet (as, sadly, so many of them seem to have been) because as soon as his golden stream began it's liquid descent he engaged my coworker in a very hearty conversation whose topic(s) demanded responses. My coworker, being a decent fellow, was understandably completely unnerved by the turn of events but, being the good, upwardly mobile young professional that he is, stammered out some appropriate answers and tried to finish up as quickly as possible. Everything was moving toward as decent a conclusion as could be expected when, like a thunderclap from Hades itself, and, without losing a syllable of his surely inane conversation, MANAGER lets out what has been described to me as the biggest, loudest, LONGEST fart you can imagine. Coworker went so far as to say "he really had to work to get it all out."

Shocking doesn't cover it. Appalled, deeply offended, intimidated and downright terrified begin to address how my poor, unwitting coworker felt. Where to turn? What to say? How to successfully hold one's breath while still trying to maintain the conversation that ABSURDLY was still ongoing once the ass trumpet had concluded it's horrific symphony.

I'm exhausted just writing this, so I can only imagine the trauma that my fellow laborer-in-arms felt, surely must STILL be feeling, to have been exposed to such an inhuman experience. Bewildered by how to proceed he simply finished as quickly as possible, zipped up and excused himself with some mumbled reference to being late for a meeting. He didn't even WASH HIS HANDS properly, so disoriented was he by what had just transpired.

Well, I offered him some Advil and what was left of my Diet Coke, after having given him full use of my Purell hand sanitizer. (Hey, I'm sympathetic, not a fucking saint, he DID say he didn't wash properly, Jeez). He accepted my ministrations and I told him he should seriously consider heading home early which I hope he did; an event like that needs longer than just an evening from which to recover.

To conclude and please spread the word: BATHROOMS ARE FOR ELIMINATING BODILY WASTES, they are NOT CHATROOMS! Do your fucking business and get the fuck out!! Nobody wants to fucking "catch up" with you in there; it's a godamn, fucking bathroom for crying out loud. And please, please, please, if you think that there's even a REMOTE chance that you're going to crack one off, get your sorry, lame, ignorant ass into a STALL!!! This is a civil society we're trying to live in here, either participate in good faith or log off the grid, motherfucker! (Log! HAH!)

Get A Clue Lame Ass

2008-11-01T13:27:00.004-04:00

OK, so The ABIB is driving to work yesterday doing what she always does in the car on that route, listening to the DC all news radio channel. Yes, yes, I know it's probably not the best choice for such an angry bitch, and I know I should be listening to some nerve-soothing classical music but truthfully it puts me directly to sleep.

So here I am, not a morning person, and it's the morning, and here I am when I'd rather still be in bed, and I'm on my way to my insipid job, and it's October 31 in a presidential election year and I'm listening to an all-news radio station. I think you know where this is going. Already looking forward to my Pinky-provided DunkyDoo morning libations I hear this shit coming out of the car's squawk box:

"Polls show that a full 14% of American voters still say they are undecided four days before the election."

It's a miracle I didn't wreck the car into the nearest shabby Woodlawn, MD telephone pole. Or bus-waiting person. And in Woodlawn, MD there are many, many bus-waiters to choose from. The saying "I saw red" literally and quite suddenly made sense to me. ONE IN SEVEN AMERICAN VOTERS STILL SAY THEY'RE UNDECIDED ABOUT WHO TO VOTE FOR!! Motherfuckers can I get a witness!? What kind of a lame-ass, fucked-up, wishy-washy, pansy-ass R-FUCKING-TARD do you have to be to still be "undecided"? These two men (well, one's a man, anyway, the other is, I'm pretty sure, a reanimated corpse of a former man who died in an apparent horrible Jawbreaker accident of some kind) have been stating their political case in the public eye for close to TWO YEARS. PICK ONE, ASSHOLE!! It's not hard; you listen, you think, and you choose. Jesus Christ, I mean, five-year-olds at last night's Halloween candy fest in my neighborhood were able to make fucking choices among way more than two delectable options. Normally in five to ten seconds or fewer.

What a sorry life these losers must lead. I mean, how do they get through the day?

OMG, should I wear the brown pants or the black ones?
OMG, should I have the cereal or the hot oatmeal?
OMG, should I take the Beltway or the back roads?
OMG, should I bring my umbrella or my raincoat?

Holy Crap! Life has to be one, unending horror fest of indecision from the moment they wake:

OMG, should I crap in the upstairs or downstairs bathroom?

to the moment they close their eyes again at bedtime:

OMG, should I sleep on my back or my stomach?

But I feel zero pity for these fucking whack-jobs because I've met them, I wait behind them in everything from Pinky's DunkyDoo, drive-"thru" line to the local Walgreen's. They are infuriating and they are everywhere. Waiting in line, my lower back already starting to give me grief, arms juggling the 15 or fewer (unlike other shoppers I DO FUCKING READ SIGNS) items because I erroneously did NOT get a cart upon entering the store thinking - HAH! - that it would be a quick trip, I get up to one person more before I can check out and...and...OH HAPPY DAY...it's one of those 14% undecided motherfuckers who can barely make it out of bed in the morning without worrying about which foot to put on the ground first.

Oh, NO!! I didn't know there would be TWO kinds of micro-point ink pens available, I thought there was only one! Do you know which one is better because I did not expect to have to make a choice!

This is addressed to the barely-awake, gum-chewing, minimum wage slave who is running the register and who literally looks like she could drop dead at any second. This is the person that "Ms 14%" is asking to help in this terrible, terrible decision. Minium wage slave could clearly not give a rat's ass and just shrugs. I'm doomed and I know it. My back, by now screaming at me to "SIT THE FUCK DOWN, BITCH!", is joined by my arms in the cacophany of ache that has become my lot in life at this moment. Killing this person in front of me becomes a real possibility in my mind but instead I offer, in as pleasant a voice as I can muster at this moment:

My husband buys the Rollerpoint ones and he really likes them.

I realize that the fake brightness in my voice is not fooling anyone. I feel murderous and I sound it. "Ms 14%" belies a certain shock at my tone and looks querulous:

Really? Because I was leaning toward the Bics. Hmmmm....has he bought many of them?

The rest is a blessed haze in my memory because, like when you break your arm or experience childbirth, the pain part kind of fades away. Suffice it to say that I've been up close and personal with this 14% of our fellow Americans and let me tell you, it's not a pretty picture. But I did get my petty revenge in a small, small way. As I finally lowered my big ass into the car and sighed a gush of relief that my back could finally shut up, I watched as 14%, Rollerpoints safely in the bag, spent a few seconds deciding if said bag should go into the front seat or the back and I had to smile to myself. Those Rollerpoints suck; shoulda gone with the Bics. Hope it won't come back as bad karma to bite me on Election Day. ON NOVEMBER 4th GET OUT AND VOTE!! GO OBAMA!!!!

And Layla, Too

2008-07-14T22:02:00.001-04:00

Laylaaaaaaaa......you got my on my knees!

Every Now And Then

2008-07-14T21:58:00.001-04:00

ABIB is overhearing "Dream On" from Aerosmith and every now and then the Angry Ass Bitch gets her good 'ol karaoke sing-along ass going!!!

DREAM ON!!
DREAM ON!!
DREAM ON!!
DREAM UNTIL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE!!!

Truly, peeps, truly.

A First For The ABIB

2008-07-14T21:37:00.003-04:00

OK, the ABIB, by nature, is a largely apolitical creature. It's not that I don't have my political point of view it's just that I normally don't make a habit of foisting it on others. Today, since I'm posting, is clearly somehow different. The New Yorker magazine has made what the ABIB considers to be one of the hugest miscalculations of judgment in publishing since the Dewey Beats Truman newspaper headline of a few years ago.

The cover of the latest New Yorker, as many of you have certainly read, will be composed of an illustration of Barack and Michelle Obamba dressed as a Muslim and an armed terrorist, in a traditional head scarf and giant-ass 'fro respectively. Now the ABIB is not one to normally cast aspersions on most any kind of humor but she has to draw the line at this one, only because she has so little faith in the intelligence of the American voting public. I mean, folks, if someone as fucking innocuous as Rachael Ray is raked over the coals by her sponsor Dunkin' Donuts for wearing such a scarf around HER NECK for Christ sake, don't you think MAYBE that a political figure cartooned with it AROUND HIS HEAD might be so scrutinized??

Barack and Michelle are fist-bumping in front of a fireplace wherein Old Glory is ablaze and above this kindling is a picture of Osama Bin Laden. Now, the ABIB is aware of political irony and she's able to grasp the whole concept of the New Yorker putting out there an image meant to be so ridiculously preposterous as to be "funny". The ABIB gets it. The ABIB's problem is that for the last eight years the American voting public has proven not once, but twice, that it's ability to judge right from wrong and ridiculous from sane and everything in between to be seriously, if not irreparably, broken.

The American voting public, let the ABIB remind you, has TWICE voted in the current administration. What a joy! What a trip! What a nation of IRRATIONAL NUDNICKS!!! Having said that, Dear New Yorker magazine, what makes you think that these same retards will "get" your smarmy little joke of a cover about Barack and Michelle? How irresponsible does American journalism need to get before we finally react and say: DUMB ASSES!!! THE AMERICAN VOTER GETS HIS/HER VISION/OPINION/WORLD VIEW FROM FOX TV!!!! They're probably looking at your fucking dumbass cover and thinking: "AHA!!!! JUST LIKE RUSH TOLD US!!!! HIS MIDDLE NAME AIN'T HUSSEIN FOR NOTHING, MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!"

New Yorker magazine if you're listening, which in your summerinthehamptonsormarthasvineyardorgodforbidcapecode world you're most likely NOT, WAKE THE FUCK UP AND TAKE STOCK OF YOUR JOB AS JOURNALISTS!!! The Fox-informed world of voters don't need any help to be stone cold idiots so STOP IT!!!!

Weebles Wobble But They Don't Fall Down...Or Ever Shut Up

2008-06-27T10:40:00.002-04:00

I've mentioned in another post that I work in a typical cubicle farm whose bureaucratic culture supports a caste system the currency of which is privacy. All offices are inhabited by managers or quasi-managers who are sometimes called team leads, which itself laughably implies the whole "We're all in this together, right TEAM? Except of course that I get an office and get to CLOSE MY DOOR!" Well, as if constructed to add insult to injury, some of these prized oases of sanctuary from the teeming masses are located mere feet away from some poor sap's open-air hovel. I am, as you probably have guessed by now, one of those poor saps. My little home away from home from which I can hear, see and smell just about every human experience save perhaps a gangrenous limb, is a cube as they are affectionately known. Somehow cube is even worse than cubicle; it really brings home the whole notion of tiny confinement, like something out of an old episode of Star Trek where the crew were captured by a vastly more intelligent species with giant, pulsing heads to prove how smart they were, and held in a zoo where they all lived in their own, little clear plastic cube of imprisonment for the bemused public to view at their leisure. At least we aren't made to procreate. Well, at least not ALL of us, but that's another post.

Anyway, here I am, day after day, sitting and "working" and waiting for lunch to begin in my cube when right across the aisle, so close I can almost reach out touch the cheap doorjamb, is an office occupied by one of those quasi-managers. Decent enough guy, keeps to himself, bad jokes are present but blessedly few. So far so good, right? WRONG! On any given day this joker has a steady stream of VISITORS that do NOT share his penchant for quiet obscurity. They talk, they laugh, they "banter" (hateful word) and they basically DRIVE ME FUCKING CRAZY!!! One sap comes by at least four times a day to check in on "the market", as in "how's the market doin' BIG GUY?" And then proceeds to blather forth as if he's some kind of Harvard business school grad hedge fund manager and it's all I can do to keep myself from grabbing the ubiquitous coffee cup out of his hand and smashing it into his stupid little skull.

"How's the market doing now, DICKWEED? You see any answers to your investment questions floating around your head with all the little stars and birdies? How about this for an answer: SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

The ABIB is not the ABIB for nothing, folks. I am one Angry Ass Bitch and depending on the day of the month, the position of the planets and the general functionality of my digestion I can be downright eeevul. Anyway, this post did not promise to be about a coffee-cup toting, self-deluded dabbler in the market, but about WEEBLES!

So, of all the visitors that "Team Leader With Office" gets, the one who inspires the most outrageous combination of hatred, bewilderment and downright freak show curiousity level of interest has got to be, hands-down, the one I call The Weeble. I've described him to others a million times but just like you can't tell a man who's cold what it feels like to be warm, this freak of nature is just, plain undescribable. I will begin the the physical facts as I observe them:

Dude stands about 5'7" tall
Waist circumference: roughly 75 inches
Pants size worn: probably a 42" waist

Wait, ABIB, you cry out with dismay! How can this be? A waist of 75 inches and pants with a waistband of 42 inches! Even you, with your math phobia must see the mistake there! Not so, Doubting Thomases, not so. The Weeble wears his pants around his 42" ASS!!!!! The 75" belly is hanging out there like some kind of freakish, giant sandbar. I mean it is HUGE!!! The only way he doesn't fucking fall forward is by leaning way back when he walks and then waddling from side-to-side. Is it coming to you? Weebles WOBBLE, BUT THEY DON'T FALL DOWN!!!

I've tried to surreptitiously take pictures with my cell phone camera but I've never been able to catch the absolute ridiculous view that is afforded by an in-person peep at this moron. The most amazing power that he seems to possess is that he can somehow defy gravity with his belt. Those pants are literally, LITERALLY, fastened at the crack of his ass, if he has an ass, that is because what appears below the belt line is totally flat. I can't believe I admit that I actually looked! But again, it's like a car wreck YOU CAN'T NOT LOOK! So, how do his pants stay up? The ass is flat, the belly is of an otherworldly proportion and that single, little belt keeps those fucking khakis from just dropping down around his (almost surely) hairless little ankles.

I've told coworkers that for $100 I'd run up behind him one day (he's a real slow mover) and just give those pants a good yank and down they'd come. One good yank, that's all it would take. Probably not even a good yank; maybe even just a fucking strong tug would do it. So far no takers. Did I say that he's somewhere between 55 and death in age that he's sports a rockin' comb-over and wears Mr. Magoo glasses? I'm totally not making any of this up, not one iota of it. I work for the Federal government; unemployable wierdos of all types are our specialty. And frankly, they don't come much wierder than The Weeble.

He's married, recently in fact and I get to hear all about THAT TOO. Oh joy, I think as The Weeble finally wobbles out of the office inches from my chair, now I get to spend the afternoon alternating between mental pictures of Weeble and his Wife trying to find his surely tiny dick underneath all that belly (maybe after awhile with no light or air they just fall off?) and my own sick imaginings of how exactly that freak of nature wipes his ass. I mean, for sure he can't possibly reach it around that 75 inch hot air balloon encircling his waist. Unless, wait a minute, maybe, in addition to the anti-gravity belt The Weeble's found a way, like Marvel Comic's Mr. Fantastic, to stretch his arms waaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy around to the back and take care of business. The Weeble is a mystery, for sure, and as soon as I get a taker, those pants are coming off!

The Courtesy Flush – An Update (Risking Life and Limb)

2008-05-22T10:16:00.003-04:00

Dear Reader, or on my more upbeat days: Readers, as the title of this post suggests, today I had an experience that serves to update one of my seminal blog posts: The Courtesy Flush. You may recall that the subject of that post was the decidedly unfriendly habit among many of my co-crappers here at work to continue to sit amid the fetid air of their business, allowing it waft poisonously into the air of everyone else in the bathroom, until they are totally and completely finished. Then and only then do they flush that horrific mess down. Unfortunately their stench remains for quite some time, almost like the hint of a perfume that lingers in the air after someone has walked by. ALMOST. Because, of course, in this case it lingers like a curse in the air, sometimes for nearly AN HOUR after the perp has left. Absolutely no hyperbole in that last statement. Almost an hour.

OK, so what I didn’t tell you back when I originally posted about the CF, is that, although many of my co-crappers fall guilty of this terrible sin, there is ONE among the many who truly inspired me to blog the original post. I call her “Mother Earth” (for reasons that will go unrevealed) and there is seriously something wrong with her bowels. I have never known Mother Earth to enter the restroom and not unleash the lower GI tract version of World War III. I have learned, through hard, hard experience, that once Mother Earth enters the bathroom, lose all hope ye who enter behind her. No pun intended. HAH! Anyway, not only does she go for a really, really, really long time, her movements are ALWAYS accompanied by unreal volumes of gas. Now I don’t have to tell you what happens to gas: IT RISES!! AND SPREADS!!!

Mother Earth ALWAYS fouls the bathroom for AT LEAST 45 minutes after she leaves. UNSPEAKABLE! I don’t dare to conjecture what kind of food (or not food) a person has to eat to create that DEFCON Level 4 of havoc inside their body. I’ve been trapped in there more times than I care to admit, finding myself the unwitting victim of that hellish expulsion, with nowhere to go and nothing to do but finish as quickly as possible and pray that the uncontrollable gags don’t reach the point of retching.

I feel like I’ve painted a picture for you. Good. Fast forward to this morning. A regular workday, not unlike any other, in the anonymous, grey federal building in which I work. For no discernable reason, word begins to spread among the workers on my floor, that security is evacuating the building. Pish Posh, I think, having heard no official announcement broadcast by the disembodied, flat voice of a barely literate GS3, over the tinny public address system: “Hello? May I have your attention please? There will be a presentation in honor of Huspanish Heritage Month this morning at 10:00 in the Auditorium. Please join us for an hour dedicated to celebrating the Huspanish life. Olee! Thank you.” None of that so I figure this is all just a bunch of bored employees trying to inject a glimmer of drama into their otherwise drab day. I continue “working”.

But the rumor won’t die and eventually the chorus of worker voices is joined by a few managers who intone in the self-important way that only managers can: “We should go”. Okey dokey! You don’t have to tell federal workers twice that it’s time to vacate the building. People begin streaming out in hordes, keys jangling (you never know when its going to stretch into an early lunch or, even better: a whole day). Unfortunately I had finished 24 ounces of coffee five minutes prior and really had to pee. I gathered my things and began to sullenly make my way against the tide of humanity headed for the stairwell, in the general direction of the bathroom.

“You’re going in the wrong direction!” a chorus of voices gaily reminds me. As if I’ve forgotten how to get out of the building.

“Yes, well, I have to go to the bathroom, I’ll be right down.” BUZZ OFF YOU NOSEY ASSHOLES WHAT DO YOU THINK I AM SOME KIND OF RETARD? is what I really want to say (I am the ABIB, after all) but refrain.

I’m almost to the corner, beyond which by a few feet is the bathroom, when a woman’s voice rings out directly behind me:

“I REALLY have to go to the bathroom!”

A cold chill runs down my spine and, as if in slo-mo, I pivot on one foot and look behind me directly into the face of MOTHER EARTH! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

What kind of luck do I have to have to be trying to beat this human crap bag into the bathroom so that I can take a fucking PISS and leave the building along with every other living thing? Right then I realize it: I’ll never make it. I’ll rush into the stall, sit down and start to go, but I’ve 24 ounces of coffee to get rid of along with the orange juice I drank at home before work, but MOTHER EARTH will already have her huge ass spread across one of the toilet seats groaning for its life and within a nanosecond will be eliminating what I can only guess (from the smell) is partially digested roadkill.

At that moment I turned on my heel and retraced my steps, barely registering her startled expression as I bump into her to rush past, heading to the next closest bathroom, at the other end of the building’s hallway. What if we’re being evacuated due to a noxious gas spewing through the vents? What if it’s a fire alarm that’s announcing the fast spread of an electrical fire through the walls? I don’t fucking care if it’s RADIOACTIVE KRYPTONITE, I ain’t going anywhere NEAR the evil domain now claimed by Mother Earth.

I made it to the other bathroom and did my business. By the time I came out the “emergency” was already over and my coworkers had begun to file back into the building with all the enthusiasm of a chain gang.

Yes, I took a risk. Yes it could have turned out badly. But I know for one thing: if I had gone where I was originally headed I may not have made it out at all. If you look at it that way, I took no risk at all.

Venting the Spleen-O-Matic

2007-09-10T20:54:00.000-04:00

For the umpteenth time I straight up HATE MY JESUS FREAK MOTHERFUCKING NEIGHBORS! This past weekend I finally went on the rage bender that these assholes have been provoking for the past four years. I screamed! I howled! I name-called 'til the cows came home. And it felt GOOD people; it felt SOOOOOOOOOOOOO good.

Likely for the past few days they've been alternately praying for my sad, heathen soul and plotting their blue collar revenge.

I'd say the hoopdee with no rear window, expired Pennsylvania license plates, and two kids that run wild in varying stages of undress are an excellent start. Good times, motherfuckers, good times.

Monkey Tits

2007-08-14T21:02:00.000-04:00

OK, first: anyone that reads this post is going to, at some point in the future, thank me. Not unlike my post titled "The Courtesy Flush", I would put this post in the "public service" category. All in a day's work, people; I'm out there for YOU!

Anyway, by now you're likely wondering just what the fuck I'm talking about when I say "Monkey Tits". Ironically you've all seen them: normally on a gal quite a ways past the prime of her physical life, but not necessarily. Some of the fairer sex are cursed with Monkey Tits from day one. A Monkey Tit physique is one in which the boobs are triangularly shaped, usually no larger than a "B" cup, and basically point to the floor at all times. Now you're getting the picture right? Just in case you're not, flip over to Google and do an image search on: "monkey, female" or "ape, female". Trust me; it'll come clear to you.

Well far be it for me to chastise folks for something over which they have no control, which by now you're saying "That poor gal is BORN with Monkey Tits! There's nothing she can do about it! Back off, Angriest Bitch in Baltimore!" To that I say, loudly and proudly: "BULLFUCKINGSHIT!" Yes, she may be BORN with Monkey Tits but my sympathy goes out the fucking window when they, in all their hideous glory, assault my eyes. We're talking about the basic, common decency of hiding that big -ass butt crack, or getting that lazy eye looked at (or at least covered by a jaunty pirate eye patch), trimming that nostril hair and for the love of god tying down those fucking Monkey Tits! Ladies, any department store on EARTH has at least 250 bra styles to choose from, at least half of which are designed to COVER BOOB FLAWS! Use them! Get fitted! Give us a goddamn fucking break from those eyesores! Also: sorry to be the one to inform you, but Monkey Tits are anathema to clingy, jersey-type t-shirts so popular at this time of year. Repeat after me: hiding NOT flaunting is the key here!

Just yesterday I was unlucky enough to be visually accosted by one of the worst pair of Monkey Tits I have EVER seen. What's even more horrific is that IT WASN'T THE FIRST TIME! Oh, no, this particular gross offender displays her Monkey Tittage virtually daily! Picture if you dare, this image, forever burned into my retinas, that I know I'll be dreaming about for weeks to come. She's fat; never, ever a good combo with Monkey Tits, because those flat, triangular wedges just lay on the big ol' belly like some kind of pair of beached fish on a sandbar. So you've got the big belly, the (maybe) B-cup Monkey Tits, all wrapped up in a light-colored sleeveless (porker arms another post topic, no rest for the weary), rayon knit shell clinging to that giant belly and those hapless boobs for all that fabric was worth and stretched to within an inch of it's knitted life.

I happened upon that view and gasped, averting my eyes moments too late. The perp just stared at me with one lazy eye (didn't we TALK about this earlier) googling around like some kind of lonely last gumball in the glass jar. She greeted me with a wan smile and I breathed a half-hearted "hi" and sped past, bumping into the cubicle wall of the sad little person she was visiting. What a nightmarish situation THAT must have been...trapped...unable to politely extricate oneself...from a seemingly endless encounter with, with, AUGGHHHGGUUGHHHH MONKEY TITS!! Sorry...I just need to compose myself.

Ahem. So, let me just conclude with this thought: If you are Monkey Titted, and trust me, you know if you are, first accept my sincerest sympathy, then please, I beg you, for the love of all that's good and wholesome and pure in this life: KEEP THAT UGLY ASS SHIT TO YOURSELF!!

Re-Gifting: When You Care Enough to Send the Very Used

2007-06-10T00:36:00.000-04:00

Just the other day it was the ABIB's birthday. Which birthday, you ask? It is of no concern. Those among you who get that reference know who you are. The ABIB received many jolly cards and wishes from family and friends, but she's writing this post to BITCH (Jesus, you're thinking, even on her fucking birthday?) about a particular birthday scandal. I'm talking about the regift. You know the drill: someone gets some heinous piece of shit for some commemorative day or another and, rather than taking the dreck directly to The Salvation Army (or the landfill), they stash it somewhere hoping it'll magically disappear.

Well it doesn't, of course and days turn to weeks and weeks to months and before they know it the monstrosity has been collecting dust and taking up precious gewgaw space for long enough. Its time to take action, thus the regift is born. Thinking the potential recipient to be some kind of freaking r-tard, the regifter assumes that nobody will be able to discern that their secondhand piece of shit is actually used because, well, it's WRAPPED isn't it? Sometimes well, sometimes badly, but the crap always arrives in wrapping paper, or a box with a bow or even, as in the case of the ABIB last week, in a gigantic birthday-festooned bag.

There I was, surrounded by my birthday haul, when a co-worker peeped around the cubicle corner and croaked: "It's your birthday?"

"Why, yes" the ABIB coolly replied, "as a matter of fact, it is."

"Wow....well, happy birthday!"

Little did I know that my birthday admission was about to lead to receipt of an utterly useless totchke that was FUCKING USED! Lo and behold, following lunch, the same co-worker appears back in my cubicle, this time in possession of a huge birthday gift bag. The giant bag was thrust upon me with an ear-to-ear grin that only later, in retrospect, I realized meant: HERE YA GO, SUCKER!!!

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!" the co-worker chirped loudly, "I hope you like it!"

The subtext being "Because I sure fucking didn't!!" The package inside the giant bag was badly wrapped in, I realized with a sinking feeling, wrapping paper that looked like it had seen better, or should I say NEWER, days. Peering into the cavern of a bag I pulled out the badly wrapped, ill-shaped package and a metal stand that looked oddly like those things that they sell in the grocery store to ripen bananas. Hmmm...I thought, this looks kind of scary.

I smiled weakly and began to tear at the haphazardly wrapped blob of a thing. What emerged was a stained glass bird-house-y kind of contraption with one side open and a small metal bowl perched on the inside.

"It's a candle-holder!" The regifter screeched. "Do you love it? I totally thought of you when I saw it AT THE STORE!" These last words were said a little too loudly and a little too brightly as if to convince herself that she didn't just haul this useless crap out of storage in her attic.

"Oh, a candle-holder. Cool. Hey, thanks so much!"

"You're welcome. Enjoy!"

With that she was gone and I was left with the most useless item I'd ever seen. Suddenly the banana ripener was looking pretty good. Just as I went to stash the whole mess under my desk I realized that there was something else rolling around inside the birthday bag. I reached in and felt what clearly was the tealight candle that was supposed to sit inside the glass birdhouse's metal bowl. I pulled it out and the regifter's fucking cover was completely blown: the candle had been burned down to a nub; there wasn't an iota of wax left inside.

The only thing more insulting than getting someone's unwanted regifted crap is when they don't even try to conceal it. Christ almighty, every fucking dollar store from here to Oregon carries bags of 50 tealight candles for a buck! At least give me a goddamn new two-cent candle! So there I was in proud possession of a yard sale reject that I would never in a million years use. As I looked at the junk I suddenly recalled this same co-worker, a couple of years earlier, bringing in a dress for me stashed in a plastic grocery bag.

"Here", she had said back then, "I can't wear this anymore, it positively floats on me...way too big. I think it would look great on you, though!" At the time I marveled at her ability to leave out the "fat ass" part of "it would look great on you, though!" As in: "I can't wear this tent anymore, it's way too big for me, but you could probably squeeze your fat ass into it."

"Enjoy!"

So here I am, looking at a stained glass birdhouse that inexplicably houses a burning candle. As someone aptly noted: "How convienient: the bird flies in to lay an egg and gets cooked at the same time."

Whatever. It's just a matter of time before someone I can't stand has a birthday or an anniversary or Christmas and then my little regifted birdhouse will fly the coop and become someone else's hideous problem.

I'll tell you one thing, though: at least I'll put in a fresh tealight. I mean, really, it's called manners.

What's That? I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!

2007-05-20T18:55:00.000-04:00

HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAHHAHHHAHHHAHAHAHHA!!!!

MICHAEL!!!! THAT'S FUNNY!!!!

DID YOU SEE WHAT HE DID??? TOO FUNNY!!!! DO IT AGAIN! DO IT AGAIN! DO IT AGAIN!!!!!

I heard that all day today. Yep, it was them: The Jesus Syndicate out on their back porch with their godforsaken (wouldn't that be ironic?) pals laughing those loud guffaws that always mean that someone is forcing enjoyment. And why not? It was the anniversary of White Whale and Brunhilda: they of the endless brood of gremlins masquerading as human children. Probably time to fuck and pop out another homunculus in the name of the Almighty and his son.

"Be fruitful and multiply". Jesus Syndicate members know in their holier-than-thou black little hearts that not only did God himself intone those words but he meant them to go on forever and EVER. In spite of the fact that our little Garden of Eden is getting a little crowded, a little hot and just a tad pushed to its natural limits. "But not for us! Because we're HOLY! The Lord made the Garden of Eden FOR HIS CHILDREN to LOVE!!!!"

I'm sure He also meant for the Jesus Syndicate to keep crapping up the Earth with their giant smoky vehicles that are required since they're so scrupulous about the whole "fruitful and muliply" thing. Need those honking big-ass monsters just to haul your godly brood to the local grocery store. Or, certainly, to CHURCH. Hells yeah, expecially to church.

I've said in this blog that all religious zealots piss me off, but that Jesus freaks are probably the worst of the lot. Maybe that's because I fucking live next to Holy Water Central and have to be up close and personal with their freakish beliefs every fucking day of my life! I figure it's their cross to bear that they have to live next door to a filthy-mouthed cursing Jewess. What a trip! Here's what I do in the shower because I know that they can hear me loud and clear because I can hear their little demons crapping on their fucking potties day and night. Here's a typical daily shower script special delivery from me to them:

Don't be a fucker, go blow a trucker, kiss my ASS mother, mother, mother fucker!!!! Yo, bitches: Whassup in there motherfuckers? Having a fucking good day ya freaking a-holes?

And on it goes. Look, it's incredibly cathartic for me and it has the added benefit of potentially making their ears bleed. I know Brunhilda hears me because halfway through one of my ditties I generally hear her slam the bathroom door in what I can only imagine is Jesus Syndicate-worthy righteous indignation.

And so it goes: they piss me off with their constant, obnoxious, over-populated, incredibly selfish lives and every now and then I get a good one in. Hell, at a minimum I figure I give them something to pray about.

All together now:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!

Another Dunkin', Dunkin' Day

2007-04-25T18:41:00.000-04:00

Hi there! Been a few days, but here we go. Different day, different Dunkin', roughly the same vaguely Indian/Pakistani owner/operators as the other one, the one that I drive through. This one I walked into and was greeted by the omnipresent, over-bright cheer- (and donut eating?) inducing music piped overhead in a constant stream of oafish, too-loud "music". I mean really, does ANYONE call "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy I've Got Love In My Tummy" music?

I walk in at precisely the same time as approximately five other customers. We approach the already formed line of three others in orderly, Dunkin' fashion. I immediately resound to the familiar cadence of my drive-"thru" Dunkin'. Namely, nearly incomprehensible English by way of over-dubbed Bollywood movies. There are four people behind the counter servicing the line in a dizzying fashion, talking over each other louder and louder in an attempt to be heard over the other voices, the shrill announcements of "Lite 98", and the voices of the customers. Some are ordering, some are talking on cell phones and some are (like me) standing in stunned silence waiting for our turn to enter this cacophanous fray. I'm already calculating which "worker" will be barking at me to, very soon now, place my order and quickly move to the side. You gotta get the fuck outta the way cause the next customer is already screaming in your ear in response to several urgent demands:

"What is ya ahda?"

"What did ya ahda?" Presumably a different person calculates what you owe and a third person,

"Cash? Credit?" takes your money.

Now I'm scared; there's only one person between me and the three-ring circus of this Bizarro World Dunkin'. I'm sincerely regretting having come in here.

"YOR ORDA?" He's yelling these word-ish syallables at me, now and I realize it's now or never.

"Large ice coffee."

"CREAMANDSUGA?" Painfully it sounds exactly the same cadence as the tinny voice that I now realize I've forsaken, betrayed and deeply long for as it daily comes out of the little Dunkin' squawk box in the drive "thru" line. Too late; forge ahead.

"No sugar, extra cream!" I yell brightly at his stone face. He rushes off as I shout: "I ALSO WANT A SANDWICH!"

Another worker, a woman this time, addresses me. Her face is stern to the point of being angry and I briefly imagine that the little red dot on her forward is positively glowing in parallel to her angry face:

"Sandwich? What kind? Egg and cheese and sausage?"

I'm deeply insulted that she has assumed that I'll have the biggest, fattest breakfast sandwich in the lineup just by looking at me and it makes me instantly surly.

"No. I'll have egg and cheese on an English muffin."

At just that moment the high-school age valley boy directly behind me gets waited on by worker number three and begins to shout in my ear the specifics of his two dozen donuts order.

"Ummmm, I'd like four of the glazed, two jellies, three with the sprinkles and three of those cruller-things."

"FOUR GLAZED, THREE JELLY, TWO SPRINKLE AND THREE WHAT?"

"THREE OF THEM CRULLER THINGS!!"

"OH, CRULLERS!"

The noise level at the front of this line has reached roughly the level of a revving Boeing 747. Now the woman behind me has to raise the volume of her ongoing cell phone call in order that her INCREDIBLY CRITICAL INFORMATION be heard at precisely this instant by whatever jackass is on the other end of her cell conversation.

"OH TOTALLY! REPORT CARDS CAME OUT YESTERDAY AND I WAS NOT HAPPY WITH ETHAN! WHAT? REPORT CARDS CAME OUT YESTERDAY! OH SHIT, HOLD ON!"

Now another worker was yelling at her wondering "CANIHEPYOU?" and I figured I was close to collapsing when my original guy arrives back in front of me with a large ice coffee that is as black as the ace of spades. Clearly he thought I ordered an ice coffee with no cream and extra sugar.

"I DIDN'T ORDER THAT! I ORDERED A LARGE ICE COFFEE WITH EXTRA CREAM AND NO SUGAR!"

He stops in his tracks and for one dizzying moment I truly believe he's going to fling that large, icy coffee directly at me. At that point it would probably be a relief. This place is an insane asylum. Instead he stomps off, clearly angry that I had wasted that .03 cents worth of perfectly good coffee and prepares me another one. I watched him the whole way to make sure he didn't add anything special to it, like his own spit.

At the same instant he arrives back with my correct coffee order the woman who took my presumed-to-be-a-gluttonous-fatso sandwich order arrives back as well and their voices combine in a perfect storm of unintelligible noise. It's gibberish on speed.

"LARGECOFFEECREAMNOSUGAEGGCHEESEMUFFINANYTINGELSE?FIVEOTREE!"

The orders are still richocheting around my head like an angry swarm of bees as I throw my money on the counter and turn to escape from this loony bin of commerce. As I turn to go I see the line, now out the door, and briefly consider sticking around just to see if anyone's head explodes, but in the end decide it's safer to get the fuck out of there.

Tomorrow I'll be back in the drive-"thru" line at my very own wonderful little Dunkin', thankful for the blessed anonymity afforded when I don't have to leave my car and rub elbows with the great unwashed. Who knew that what lurked inside the actual store was a caffeine-fueled nuthouse of epic proportions? Either that or I accidentally stumbled on the portal to the parallel universe that exists in the tiny little droplets of blue water on the leaves of every tree that isn't green and...heyyyyyy...wait a minute....I think he DID put something special in my coffee!

You're Not Funny. Really.

2007-04-14T17:10:00.000-04:00

You know that book that came out a few years ago: "He's Just Not That Into You"? It was aimed at lame-o retards who just couldn't get those obvious social signals that scream: "GET AWAY FROM ME YOU ANNOYING ASSHOLE!" Anyway, I've got a similar problem where I work except instead of not getting that some guy really, really doesn't like you, I'm saddled with, actually fucking SURROUNDED by, people who mistake cheesy popular "office sarcasm" for actual humor.

Let me give an example. Every day I have to walk past a cubicle that is papered on all vertical surfaces, with "office humor". You know, those pseudo-witty observations that the rest of us are supposed to "resonate" with (HATE THAT WORD), as we go about our work-a-day activities. Designed to give the average dolt a little lighthearted chuckle in his otherwise drab day, they (what a surprise!) PISS ME OFF!!

"I can please one person a day and today's not your day. Tomorrow's not looking too good, either!"

"I was down to my last good nerve and now you've plucked it!!!"

"I'm busy now. Can I ignore you some other time?!"

"I pretend to work, they pretend to pay me!"

"Tell me what you need and I'll tell you how to get along without it!!!!!"

Always ending in at least one exclamation point and often accompanied by a crudely drawn "cartoon" of someone fuming or screaming or jumping up and down or having a stroke or vomiting blood, or WHATEVER, these abominations, these freakish and twisted attempts at "humor" are one of the banes of my existence. See, they start in a good place: the ongoing expressions of impotent rage at the moronic automatons and idiotic situations that the average office worker encounters on any given day. But then they drop the ball by concluding with a "witty", "sarcastic" retort that defuses the perfectly wonderful little venom dart that they could have, that they all SHOULD have become. Here's some suggestions for how they could be vastly improved.

"I can please one person a day and today's not your day. Come back tomorrow you rat-faced, vile little turd so that I can insult you again with your own insignifcance!"

"I was down to my last good nerve and now you've plucked it. Isn't it time I killed you?!"

"I'm busy now, can I ignore you some other time? If not, can I slowly choke the life out of you with my bare hands?!"

"I pretend to work, they pretend to pay me. So now it's time for me to pretend to flatten the complex!"

"Tell me what you need and I'll tell you how to get along without it. NOW GET OUT OF HERE YOU FUCKING INSECT BEFORE I GO MEDIEVAL ON YOUR SKANKY ASS!!!!

See how much better, how much more authentic, how much more GENUINE I've made those pale, lame attempts at bitterness. Being bitter isn't some homespun, halfway-there gesture that almost makes the other person feel awful. Being bitter is a full-on assault, it's gumption times a thousand, it's owning up to that dark well of desperation that lurks just below the surface of us all, it's the red pill that takes you down the rabbit hole!! What? Random Matrix references are my specialty.

"Is it crazy in here or is it just me?"

Yes, ABIB, it's always just you.

Feels So Weird...

2007-04-09T12:08:00.000-04:00

I just got got back from vacation so my rage-o-meter is pretty much on zero. Give it a couple of hours.

"The Ultimate Experience"

2007-03-29T22:11:00.000-04:00

Those words are posted as an advertisement in the cafeteria in the complex where I work. The cafeteria where they are posted is managed by the Marriott Corporation, so we're told the food is really great, not that salty, fatty, over-priced slop that I see there every day. Anyway, I went down to the cafeteria this afternoon to get some ice water with lemon (only 22 cents!) when lo and behold I was captivated by a sign posted by the coffee service.

"The Ultimate Experience" the sign read in a nondescript, aiming-to-look casual font, and it was plastered all over the coffee urns like some kind of Marriott corporate fake-out. The Ultimate Experience? Excuse me? Should anyone DARE to take a cup of coffee and not be terrified that, in so doing, they were courting a growing depression that would eventually rob their life of any hope of joy and pretty much end it all? Because let's face it: after the ULTIMATE Experience it's pretty much all downhill.

Really, The ULTIMATE Experience? In a fucking cup of coffee? Well, shit, if I pour myself one of these magical suckers I might as well lay down and die immediately afterward. It will be, after all, The ULTIMATE Experience. Once I drink this coffee there will never be another experience in my life that will even approach this one since ULTIMATE is pretty much the tip top of anything.

ul - ti- mate (adjective) not to be improved upon or surpassed; greatest; unsurpassed

Greatest. Unsurpassed. Not to be improved upon. You better be fucking careful mofo, cause if you drink this coffee you will never, ever, in this life, approach this moment with anything even remotely resembling happiness or fulfillment or contentment. Finding "Mr. or Ms. Right"? Don't bother; you've already sipped The ULTIMATE. Having children? How could they ever hope to compare to The ULTIMATE, which you have, sadly, already experienced? They'll just be an ongoing and life sapping disappointment to you. Finding any happiness whatsoever through work or an avocation or just plain living? FORGET IT, MOTHERFUCKER! Been there; done that! You drank The ULTIMATE Experience, remember? Give it up!

Which is what brings me to the apex of this blog post: my burning hatred of the wholesale overuse of the English language in the name of the great god of commerce. THE BEST! THE BIGGEST! THE GREATEST! THE ULTIMATE! Is there no advertising executive with even one iota of shame when it comes to using superlatives to try shill for any product from flushable toilet wipes to a fucking cup of coffee?

Why not be more in line with reality? What's wrong with that? Instead of The ULTIMATE Experience why not: "Our hot, freshly brewed coffee. It'll wake you up!" Or: "Take a drink and get a jolt", or how about the simple, straightforward: "Our coffee: have some!"

I'm down with all the misplaced exclamation points, I mean I'm not a total curmudgeon. But for the love of all that is holy, please stop screaming at me about how your piddly ass product is going to be my motherfucking salvation!

I'm ULTIMATELY never going to buy it!

Thank You For Sharing Your Music With Me

2007-03-27T22:27:00.000-04:00

Here in Baltimore we get about 3.5 truly nice weather days a year. It's either not cold enough for snow but cold enough for freezing rain or it's hovering around 100 degrees with humidity levels typical of the Amazon river basin.

Last Sunday was one of those 3.5 beautiful days with sunny skies, temperatures in the 60s and a gentle breeze. Now normally the ABIB is not an outdoor person. Normally just the thought of the outdoors gives the ABIB hives, but Sunday, for some reason was different. I was outside, enjoying the weather and cleaning out my car. I've probably mentioned that I live in a typical Baltimore rowhome community, which means that I, and everyone else in my neighborhood shares a wall with somebody. I'm monumentally unlucky enough to share both walls with somebodies. But one side in particular makes me regret daily my choice of real estate.

"Jesus Freaks Through the Wall" was the subject of one of my posts and they were out in force last Sunday, with all their Jesus freaky-ness in full, evil bloom. Religious zealots of any stripe make my blood boil. They of the self-righteous attitudes and holier-than-thou positions of pseudo superiority. But probably, for me, the worst of the lot are the Jesus freaks. Holy shit they piss me off! Sick fucking wierdos with their judgmental anti-gay, pro-life, I'm-going-to-heaven-and-you're-not crap. To quote a bad movie with one very good line: "Capital P, capital U, capital TRID."

There I was, minding my own business, cleaning out my car and enjoying the communal nature of the day, when suddenly the air was riven with the sounds of the most unspeakably insipid, vile despicable "music" I have ever heard. The spawn of the White Whale and Brunhilda had gotten into their GIGANTIC FORD EXPLORER and had turned the radio on full blast. To a Christian "pop" station. Big truck, big speakers, full blast.

"OUR GOD IS AN AWESOME GOD!!! IN THE MORNING, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, IN THE LIGHT OF DAY, OUR GOD IS AN AWESOME GOD!! AWESOME, AWESOME GOD, OUR GOD IS AN AWWWWWEEEESOME GOOOOOODDDDDD!!"

What the FUCK? WHAT THE HOLY FUCK?! Suddenly all that could be heard, which amazingly enough even drowned out the continuous blast of noise that had been their enormous family squawking and honking and screaming and yelling and basically poisoning the air with their ever-present cacophany of SOUNDs, suddenly all that could be heard was this nauseating treacle with it's freakishly bright voices informing everyone for sixteen blocks that THEIR GOD WAS AN AWESOME GOD!!!

First of all, assuming Jesus Christ exists and if so, that he enjoys hearing music all about himself, wouldn't one hope that, as a freaking DIETY, he would have better taste than "OUR GOD IS AN AWESOME GOD"? Lord have mercy, it sounded like the fucking Wiggles, like Barney the Dinosaur. Wouldn't Jesus be just a little bit more discriminating about songs about him? Shit, most mortals would! I'm thinking that he'd want something a little bit, oh, I don't know, BIGGER? How about the Star Wars theme? Or Indiana Jones? Or even Spiderman for Christ sake! But OUR GOD IS AN AWESOME GOD with the synthesizers and the snare drum and the too-happy chorus of voices? I don't think so, babe.

So there I was, cleaning rag in hand, glaring with my angry, Jewish eyes toward the offending crush of sound, willing them all to instantly DROP DEAD, when White Whale figured he'd allowed enough of the healing power of the music to wash over my heathen head and he ordered Peppermint Patty to turn off the radio. Suddenly I could hear the birds again, the soft "whoosh" of the breeze through the tree branches overhead, the muffled sounds of life in the Garth.

But then the demonic shriek of Brunhilda rang out from inside the house like the screaming of the Hound of Hell:

"JORDAN!!!! WHY ISN'T THE FLOOR VACCUMED?"
"PETER!!! TAKE OUT THE TRASH!"
"MICHAEL!!!! SIT ON YOUR POTTY!!!!"

I take it all back! Your God IS an awesome God! I swear! I swear! I'll listen to the music until I'm cross-eyed, I'll do anything you say just PLEASE SHUT THAT SUCCUBUS UP!!!

Lovely weather we're having, isn't it?

Get Your Fat Ass Out Of My Way!

2007-03-23T11:26:00.000-04:00

The ABIB was raised by two very polite people. Most of their sensibilities in this area were transferred to me so when I get confronted with IMPOLITE people I'm tempted to kick their ignorant asses through the nearest portal. But I don't; I just seethe inwardly and then empty my spleen on this blog.

It happened today. There I was, walking through the lower lobby of my very populous office building, navigating POLITELY through and around the hoardes of other people in my way. It was further crowded by the presence of a vendor selling her sickeningly sweet handmade crap surfeit with little stuffed Easter bunnies, little dancing plush chicks and other hand-made gewgaws aimed directly at the Anne Geddes crowd. Makes the ABIB vaguely nauseous. Which is why you can imagine I was in a bit of a hurry to navigate my way through the horde and get to the cafeteria for my breakfast food. That and since I also pretty much hate most other people, just being around so many of them in one confined space gives me the heebie-jeebies. French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre had it right: "Hell is other people".

I was almost to my destination when smack dab in front of me and everyone else for that matter, was a conclave, a gathering, a fucking herd if you will, of about six big, fat women. Standing there. In the middle of the path. CHATTING!! Chatting and laughing as if they were standing out in a 17 acre meadow rather than directly in the way of anyone coming from or going to the cafeteria. Which, at 9:30 in the morning, as you can imagine is quite a lot of people. So, small space, only one way in and the same way out, with oodles of space anywhere ELSE in the lower lobby, these ignorant bitches decide to have themselves a little "catch up".

GURRRLLLLL, you did NOT just say that!
OH YES I DID!
LOOK OUT, ya'll! Sista 'bout to throw down!
AHHHHHHHHAAAAHHHAAAHHHAAAHHHAAAHHHAAAHHHAAAHHHAAAHHHAAA!!!
EEEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

Oblivious to the huffing and puffing and evil sidelong glances all around them as people squeezed by on every side, these gals just kept on hollering and laughing and BLOCKING THE PATH. I wondered then if, just this once, it would be OK to step out of my learned behavior, risk shaming my deceased parents who I imagine to be occasionally peering down from heaven and let loose with decades of repressed rude behavior. I picture it going something like this:

Say what? He was NOT in that condition on your anniversary!
YO! FAT ASS BITCHES!! LISTEN UP! Everyone in this hallway has had to circumnavigate past your ignorant lazy asses while you stand in the MOST inconvienient place in this building right now. Why don't you all just take your big 'ol butts to the left, the right or straight ahead and finish your conversation in such a way that not everyone but YOU is inconvienienced? OK? I think I speak for everyone here when I say that WE DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR PERSONAL LIVES! MOOOOOOVVVVVEEEE!!!!

Their heads would swivel on their fat necks in shock, at first not really understanding what was happening. A thunderclap of silence as everyone else stopped dead in their tracks since what was about to go down must surely result in someone's imminent demise. Then, outburst relieved, I would stride past, my stiff-necked indignation on display to the outpouring of applause and cheers of everyone else who wanted to do what I did but were, like me, raised to be polite.

SNAP! The ABIB wakes up from this lovely daydream and, with a passive aggressive scowl on her face, sidles past the oblivious buffalo herd as best she can, just like everyone else. Damn my good upbringing!

American Idolatry

2007-03-21T19:21:00.000-04:00

OK, the ABIB is an American Idol fan hook, line and sinker. I get all wrapped up in the tryouts and the inexplicable auditions of some of the freakiest, scariest folks on the planet and then I get all carried away with the top 24 and then the top 12 and so on.

But I have to say that, even as a fan, I'm getting a little tired of having to listen to barely warmed-over copycats who have no original style and aren't called on it. For example, this year's batch has a guy who looks and sounds EXACTLY like Justin Timberlake. Now what's really crazy is that, in the ABIB's opinion, Justin Timberlake is a sucky-ass wigger who just a few short years ago used to be in a boy band. Yeah, Justin, we all remember 'Nsync. But now he's throwin' down like a regular thug from da hood. Please, he was in the fucking Mickey Mouse Club.

So here on this year's AI we have a Justin wannabe for Christ sake. I don't even want JUSTIN to be JUSTIN, let alone have one of my Idol top 12s trying to be him. And the thing that amazes me is that nobody calls him on it. God forbid anyone should try and cover a popular singer and present even the whiff of similarity. The judges enter into a chorus of "KARAOKE!" "I'm not gettin' you dawg; where's YOUR sound?", and the positive kiss of death from Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm: "Well...you LOOK adorable!" If you can't please even Paula you might as well go the fuck home.

But this guy saunters out on stage with the day old stubble and the wigger Marine buzzcut and proceeds to fucking IMITATE Justin Timbergag. The same intonation, the same key range, the same godforsaken endless melisma. Its enough to make a fan PUKE! But the judges smile and heap praise on this KARAOKE MACHINE like it was absolutely the first time they'd ever heard this "original" sound. One of them even cited the way the contestant "reminded" him of Justin Timberfuck. Reminded him? Yeah, like Saturday reminds you of the day after Friday.

It's a real pain in the ass, but I keep watching because I'm a ho for the Idol and it gives me someone to rant and rave at outside of this blog, which is good because I generally have enough unexpressed rage built up after the average work day to fuel a moon launch.

So, bring it on Justina: you keep sounding like a warmed-over version of a really bad singer and I'll keep screaming at my TV and entertaining the neighbors. Or not.

Happy Edibles

2007-03-09T10:55:00.000-05:00

At one time in her past the ABIB was a vegetarian. I had sworn off all animal flesh for a period of several years. What broke my resolve you ask? That well-worn meat eaters fiesta of gluttony: Thanksgiving. Yep, a few years back at a traditional family Thanksgiving meal that slice of holiday turkey on my seat neighbor's plate suddenly became irresistible and I took a piece. It was all downhill from there.

Now, I'm not sure if other fallen vegetarians suffer from the same periodic self-loathing that I do, but at random intervals I'm afflicted with a sense of profound failure. As I sit in the McDonald's line waiting to claim my fish sandwich I wonder: how did it come to this? But by god, I have to believe that it's not only the neurotic, guilt-ridden ex-veges like me that have a problem with the topic of this post.

By Happy Edibles what I mean is the need for humans in the advertising trade to anthropomorphize food. Why, just today while driving to work I saw, not once but twice, a truck with a picture of three smiling dead things. The tableau was creepy and inappropriate and just plain wrong: on the left a vaguely human looking cartoon cow positively beaming with joy, on the right a chicken with roughly the same amount of happiness emating from two twinkly eyes and a beak upturned in an open-mouthed clearly toothless smile, and in the center, with his two gigantic claw arms draped across the shoulders of the other two a red (boiled to death!) lobster with a bizarre set of humanish eyes and a nose. A NOSE! Now, quite apart from the physical impossibility of that since lobsters in their natural state live under water, the notion that humans are actually comforted by the happy faces of something that they are about to devour is just plain ghoulish. Its like something out of Night of the Living Dead. Christ, I felt like I needed to take a shower.

Then, when I got to work I reached into my lunch bag (the ABIB is nothing if not thrifty) and got out a fresh banana for a nice mid-morning snack. Lo and behold, there on the lovely yellow background of the banana peel was a Dole sticker that had a banana with a human face wearing a fucking baseball cap with a tee-shirt labeled "Bobby Banana". "Bobby Banana" was smiling (again with the uber-happiness theme) and cradling a RABBIT in his arms? What the fucking hell is THAT all about? Now my bananas are named, they wear clothing and are pet owners! Is nothing sacred? I mean, it's bad enough when they try to freak me out of eating meat thinking about those cheerful faces and the implied camaraderie of the lobster claws about the shoulder thing, but now the fruits, too? I have to make a decision if I'm going to eat "Bobby Banana" and leave that poor little bunny a homeless, banana-less orphan?

It's all too much; I'm going to back to bed and when I get up it's nothing but bread and water for me. Hopefully my loaf of wheatbread won't have sprung its own personality by then.

The Courtesy Flush

2007-03-03T12:55:00.000-05:00

Let me begin this entry with a definition:

Ladylike, adjective: 1. like a lady; 2. befitting a lady: in a ladylike manner; Also, well bred, well mannered, courteous.

K? I work in an office. I am a female and there are, by my rough estimation, a hundred or so other females with whom I share a public toilet. Now its not like we all have to squat on the same can, there's a few of them in there, but the room that houses them is your typical communal space. Nothing but little stall doors and AIR separates me from the other few gals who, at any given time during the work day, are sitting on the can doing their business.

It's never, ever pleasant for me (and I'm guessing for most women) to use a public restroom. The variance of discomfort ranges from "let's get this over with as quickly as possible" to "Oh, fuck, no! I'll fucking HOLD it". The former is what I feel about my work bathroom the latter, any given gas station restroom. But somewhere along the way the rule book that I (and blessedly a few others) got was somehow not transmitted to the remainder of those BITCHES I am forced to share crap space with. I'm talking about the Courtesy Flush.

We all know that when you gotta go you gotta go and with the coffee and popcorn and other unspeakably horrible-smelling shit that wafts from the (also communal) microwave and that presumably people actually EAT, the ladies that share my crapper gotta go kind of alot. At any given time you can be sitting in a stall, minding your own business when out of the stall just a few feet (maybe INCHES!) away, come the unmistakable sounds of a big dump. I really don't think I need to detail them here; they're pretty much universal in the human species.

I'm stuck there, because, unfortunately, I, too, am mid-dump, and I begin to panic and to sweat and to say a silent prayer to the god of good manners, that this biotch got the memo: At all times we utilize the COURTESY FLUSH! The Courtesy Flush is just that: it's the courteous way to think of others who, through no fault of their own save the bad timing of their own digestion, are stuck seated so near to you that if there were no wall you could embrace. The Courtesy Flush is a flush that you exercise with each emanation from your bowels. Some goes into the crapper? Flush that sucker away! A few seconds later another blast? Flush, flush, flush! The secret of the correct use of the Courtesy Flush is speed. A hairtrigger flushing response is the ideal way to save your coworkers from the horrific situation of being engulfed within a brown cloud of the stench of your crap.

For those of you who have not gotten it yet, what the Courtesy Flush does is, to the extent possible, clear the air of the SMELL of your dump. It's not foolproof; some stink still persists, if say, there was fart action along with the dump action. But that smell, being considerably smaller, is largely contained to the stall. But, Christ Almighty, it's a far cry from the monstrously unthinking, self-centered hos who insist on sitting, flush-less until they are completely and totally cleaned out! HEY! Just because you are enjoying the aroma of your own brand doesn't mean the rest of us are! Don't the choking sounds and the moaning coming from ALL AROUND YOU give you a clue? FLUSH THAT SHIT AWAY, HO!

I've even heard vocalizations coming from other stalls (and maybe even have uttered one myself). They sound almost involuntary: "Oh MY GOD!", "LORD HAVE MERCY!" "Gagggggacckkkk". But does the perp get the message? Nope. She persists on sitting in silence, awash in that unspeakable stench, as the rest of us gag and retch and struggle to get finished as quickly as possible so that we can escape that odorous Hell.

I think that toilets should be rigged with automatic odor sensors that trigger a response whenever one of those lazy bitches refuses to do right by the rest of us. As the stall fills with her stink and the flush handle remains idle, a recorded voice should be tripped on that says loudly and repeatedly in a shaming way: "YOU ARE A STINKY LADY! YOU ARE A STINKY LADY!" followed by the flash of a tiny camera mounted in the stall door that snaps a pic of the ignoramus. Then, once a week, those pics get posted on the bathroom "Wall of Shame" for all to see and identify. So the payment we'd get is a good laugh as we stagger out the door. Considering what that place smells like on any given day I'd hardly call it even but it'd be a start.

The Seventh Circle of Hell...Cubicle World

2007-02-21T13:22:00.000-05:00

Working, as I do, in a rat's maze of cubicles, has given me a new appreciation for the evil genius who invented the "cubicle". Cubicles, it is said, are meant to create a world of collaboration among the congenial colleagues that come, lunch pails in hand, into the wonderful, open-space world of just about every bureacracy on earth. What these mauve and grey colored jungles actually do is create a world of sounds, sights and smells from which you, as a cubicle worker, can never, ever fucking escape. It makes matters monumentally worse when the cubicle village is ringed, as it generally is, by the offices (with CLOSING DOORS) occupied by the elite in our pathetic world: management.

Can't you see it? What they've got going here is a caste system based on the hierarchy of rank that has been awarded to those who kiss ass the very best by those who have kissed ass before them. Dating back to the stone age I see an unbroken string of lips pressed to asses in an obsequious frenzy of groveling. The currency of this evil culture is privacy. If you are important you get to close your door on the teeming unwashed whenever you want.

"I can't stand to see your sorry, loser asses anymore", smartly translates to: "Sorry, my door's going to be closed for a bit, I've got a conference call that requires my attention."

"What a bunch of saps you all are, how I loathe your pathetic insignifigance", becomes: "I've got to close the door for a bit to work on your evaluations".

And finally, the exercising of the true perk of being in the monstrous elite class known as management, "I'm going to take a little nap now and there's not a fucking thing you can do about it. Get back to work!" becomes: "Please don't disturb, I've gotten an assignment from senior staff that has to be done by COB".

So the rest of us sit, cheek to jowl, awash in each other's funk and personal crises without one iota of a sense of self-respect while our feeble-minded managers sit, like so many Jabba The Hutts, behind the blessing of a closed door. I picture them all in their self-important "manager meetings" behind those same closed doors blithely sharing stories and chuckling at their own grossly misplaced sense of importance.

But for me, one of the worst of the cubicle world affronts is having to listen to the pointless "small talk" that passes for communication in the world of cubicle-ites. The favorite topic, hands down, is the weather. Punctuated, as all good cubicle banter is, by the ALWAYS misplaced fake laugh firing off like some kind of mutant machine gun. "Whew is it hot out there - heh, heh, heh; heh, heh it's too cold for me; Holy Mackerel heh, heh, it's not cold enough; wow! How about all that snow? heh, heh, heh; sure would love a heh, heh, snow day; oooooo, how are we going to drive if the weather gets worse heh, heh, heh; have you been outside heh, heh; Is it warm out? Need my coat? Didn't remember my hat, and boy was I sorry HEH, HEH, HEH!" On and on and on and Oh....MY....GAWD! SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU INSIPID MORONS!! Christ Almighty!! What did I do to deserve to be trapped in this wasteland? Let me say this here and now: people who are not funny (which is the VAST majority of humanity) relinquish all rights to polite protocol when they insist on foisting their NOT FUNNY shit on the rest of us. "How's about this one, dorkwad: YOU'RE NOT FUCKING FUNNY! HEH! HEH! FUCKING HEH!!!"

Then there are the lucky bastards that can actually manage to escape into sweet, sweet sleep while trapped in Cubicle Hell. Who cares if everyone can hear you snoring? See your slobbering drool hanging out of the corner of your mouth? Motherfucker, you've ESCAPED! Escaped the mindless, soul-searing "chit-chat", escaped the burps and the farts and the personal crises played out endlessly within earshot of all of us when some poor sap has to make a phone call. "Luann, honey, drawing a pentagram on your teacher's car with an Exacto blade is not good judgement, now is it? Hello? Hello? Hellooooooo?" Awkward silence as we all peer ever more intently at the glow of our computer screens and pray for the day to end. Or for the bitch to shut up. Or both.

Cubicles were created for one thing: to make office workers feel like the unappreciated drones that we are. Privacy? Rats don't need privacy! Peace and quiet? You can get that somewhere else. Here you're one of the many, the proletariat, the underclass. If listening to some slob slurp his coffee and scrape the bottom of a styrofoam cup for 15 minutes to get the last drop of oatmeal every single fucking day makes you want to jump out the window, then dude you best start puckering up 'cause those offices don't come cheap.

Bend over bitch!

The Gender Divide

2007-02-12T17:32:00.000-05:00

How is it that the average middle-aged woman is constanty reassessing her appearance, her demeanor and her wardrobe, while the average middle-aged man is blithely unaware of exactly how boring, homely and unspeakably un-funny he is? I see it all the time where I work: middle-aged men who have likely worn out the welcome mat at home years earlier, hanging around the cubicles of younger, attractive women and offering preposterous "banter" aimed at charming said younger women. And believing that IT WORKS!!!

I mean, dude, have you LOOKED in a mirror this decade? You're not a "playa", you're a fucking homely-ass freak, for God's sake! In spite of your heroic efforts at containing it, your flabby-ass gut is blobbing over your "hip" Sansa Belt slacks and your shirt buttons are hanging on for dear life. How can you not see that? And another thing: stop trying to flirt with us! It's just plain sickening is what it is. YOU'RE OLD AND NOT RICH!!! WE'RE YOUNG!! GO AWAY!!!

Bad posture, yellow teeth, rheumy eyes and that terrifying comb-over, quite against the popular "wisdom" of your current issue of "Old Dude", is not sexy, not appealing and may very well be fodder for legal action. Back off, buster, or we may be forced to yank that bad rug right off your big-ass bald head. And no, it wasn't fooling anyone.

The ABIB Hates to Love...

2007-02-03T17:28:00.000-05:00

Starbucks. I have been known to pride myself, (largely delusionally) on being one of the many, the salt of the earth, without pretense, airs or sense of entitlement. Of course in reality I am ALL of those things and then some. The ABIB is your basic alienated, effete urban snob and like so many others of my ilk cannot get enough coffee. I've said before in this blog that I do love a good cuppa and that my daily routine, God help me, includes the local Dunkin' Donuts drive "thru". What I'm about to tell you now is that on the weekends, being the good urbanite that I am, what I truly and deeply crave is: a venti Starbucks latte.

So here we are, at the crux of my deepest fear: I am, indeed, one of THEM. I just used the words "venti" and "latte" in the same sentence. The fact that I used them at all fills me with a deep and abiding dread and makes me just a wee bit nauseous. But they're DELICIOUS. I love their foamy tops and the creamy steamed milk that perfectly blends with the strong espresso. Excuse me, I have to go puke.

Thanks, I'm back. Anyway, I figure that the penance I pay (and rightfully so) for being such a Starbucks whore, is, well...Starbucks. Is there a more dreadful place on earth than any given Starbucks on any urban street in America? If you've ever been in one you'll know that the answer to that is an unequivocal: OH, HELLS NO!

You know the drill: you get in line to place your order and immediately you realize that for the forseeable future you are going to have to listen to the latest urban-cool music which has no discernable words but does have a digeradoo playing in the background. The music quickly becoming a milquetoasty nuisance, the next thing you notice is that you are literally surrounded on all sides by the scariest people on earth. The person (you think its a person) right in front of you is a woman who is wearing jeans that have a crease (they've been fucking ironed, but not by her, you can bet your ass), are approximately a size one and are just the right level of faded to make them look "hip". Which, on this woman, is the only reason you would ever use the word "hip". She's wearing the latest six hundred dollar pointy-toed, designer high heels and her hair is coiffed to within an inch of it's life. Her nails are perfectly manicured (you can see them because she keeps reaching back to fluff her hair) and she's wearing sunglasses inside. In February. At 5:00 PM. Also, she's talking in a constant, low-level stream into the Bluetoof earpiece of her Blackberry-enabled, five hundred dollar cell phone.

Everyone in there looks like her, except you, in your sweats and your sensible Birkenstocks and your pulled back hair, unwashed beneath last year's Disney World baseball cap. The sounds you hear are almost too much to bear, as voices sing out: "double espresso, triple skim, decaf latte, two Equals" and "cinnamon machiatto with a shot, low fat soy, four Splendas", and "vanilla frappachino, no whipped cream, half ice, half skim", and...and...and God help the poor sucker who gets up to the counter and orders the unthinkable: "a large coffee, please". A thunderclap of silence as everyone swivels in place to look at this alien in their midst, and they all take a single step back to give him a little bit wider berth. His uncool vibe, his plain, sad sack demeanor, his utterly unassuming taste could be, godforbid, contagious! He actually blushes with shame and you feel a certain kinship, a deep empathy (run for your life you poor sucker!!), but you dare not speak as he shuffles out, head down, eyes averted. You dare not because you're still waiting for your delicious, dirty little secret in the shape of a cup full of milky foam. It's that bad.

And it feels like if you don't get your fix soon your head will explode from the psychic dissonance of actually BEING inside the Starbucks, waiting with all of these CREATURES who never, ever, ever stop being obnoxious and nattering about nothing, "I told her that her daughter needs to get into the group, her CHI is out of wack and it's not helping the other kids at all at nap time".

I guess I deserve it. What can I say? I'm a ho for a good latte; we all gotta pay for our sins. And inside your head the chanting begins: "one of us! one of us! gooble gobble! gooble gobble!"

Self Love: Is There Any Other Kind?

2007-01-28T13:50:00.000-05:00

Saw a bumper sticker today that actually made my angry little heart go all pitty pat. It was simple, straightforward and completely out there. It said: I HEART ME (replace the word heart with the actual little red heart shape and you get the real picture). I HEART ME, all CAPS which as we on the 'net know means that YOU'RE SCREAMING.

For a moment I was stopped in my tracks, so amazed was I at the sheer audacity of such a brazen statement. But slowly as I regained my composure, it began to dawn on me: "yes, how perfect, how diabolically, selfishly perfect, and so simple, so pure, so...right, somehow". I HEART ME, motherfuckers! ME, not your smarmy, earnest little Greek chorus of tragedy that goes sailing by me on the beltway and on side streets and in parking lots. Pity the poor Chesapeake Bay (SAVE the Bay!), shout outs to every breed of animal imaginable and some we'd rather not (I Heart My Ferret), and the ribbons, Christ gag me with every conceivable "cause" from "Autism Awareness" to the purple and black"Ravin' Maniacs" football fools, to the ubiquitous yellow "Support Our Troops" ribbons. Ack.

Oh, no, this brilliant soul cut straight through all that do-gooder crap and called a spade a spade, goddammit. I HEART ME, motherfuckers! All the rest of you whiny-ass wimps can eat my dust, I be all about lovin' number ONE! Brought a tear to my eye, it did and as I stared at that little gem for a few moments in the Giant supermarket parking lot I committed to this blog post as a kind of homage, a commemoration, if you will, of someone who clearly knows that when all is said and done, the autistics and the troops and the fucking Chesapeake Bay ain't there to tuck you in at night so you might as well show the love where it's most appreciated: to your own bad self.

The ABIB stands in awe of such evil brilliance.

Are There Any Creatures On Earth More Foul Than:

2007-01-25T18:36:00.000-05:00

TEENAGE GIRLS? I tell you with all certainty that they are directly FROM HELL ITSELF. Minions of Satan, direct descendents all of The Dark One himself, they skulk around befouling this fine planet with their insipid comments, their mulish adherence to "group think" and their monumentally vapid behavior. Plus the fucking bitches are as mean and as dangerous as poisonous snakes three weeks shy of a meal. You've seen them: in the malls, on the street, maybe (godforbid) in your own home. Take care and stay sharp, cause they may sound like harmless valley girls "oh my gawd! fersher!" but they will take your fucking head off, eat your brains and have a good night's sleep. All with a sweet smile and an "I was just kidding!" Don't be fooled; these simpering, cross-eyed, buck-toothed faces will go from smiles to fangs so fast you won't have time to escape.

And that's all I'm going say about it...well, because you never know if one is...around...lurking nearby and ready to pounce. The ABIB is backing slowly away from the computer now 'cause them bitches seriously give her the creeps. Fer sher.

"In Case of Rapture...

2007-01-23T12:00:00.000-05:00

"...this car will be unmanned."

Saw that on a bumper yesterday and didn't know where to begin. For one thing, a WOMAN was driving the car. HAH! What a sad sack: the bitch doesn't even get it that "in the case of rapture" her ass is still going to be driving that old jalopy. I can picture it now:

Christ descending from Heaven, his beatific light shining on his beloved acolytes, his caucasian face beaming benevolently at all the dear souls as they fly on past up to their heavenly reward behind the pearly gates. All the male acolytes, that is. Those poor saps with boobs and a snatch are stuck behind the wheels of their sadly labeled vehicles, faces upturned, waiting for THEIR turn to fly, fly, fly. Sadly, a turn that will never come. Because the label speaks the truth, sistas: unMANNED.

Closed eyes begin to peep open as they realize: what the fuck? I'm still in this old-ass Buick? They scan the now empty landscape, devoid of all of their godly men, who, of course, being MEN, unMANNED their cars at the rapture. Christ, his earthly work now done, waves "bye-bye" as he heads back home, the last of his "unmanned" cars now empty, as promised.

Sorry, Charlie! Better luck next rapture. What a silly little oversight. What's that you say? There won't BE a next rapture? Oh, the irony of it all.

Stop Telling Me What To Do...NOW

2007-01-23T11:55:00.000-05:00

How many times have I heard this one:

"Have a blessed day."

No thanks, if its any of your fuckin' business I think I'll just have a regular day.

The Highway Idiocy Continues

2007-01-21T19:19:00.000-05:00

It has been my experience that all other drivers are insane and/or incredibly stupid. Please allow me to refine that further: all SUV drivers are giant douche bags with a constant need to justify their sorry-ass existence to themselves by bullying all other drivers on the road. Fuckers. Just a quickie to illustrate this point since I'm cooking dinner and the ABIB has MAD SKILLZ when it comes to the kitchen!

Baltimore is not known for doing well when the white stuff falls from the sky like it did today. In fact, Baltimore pretty much goes ape-shit when the white stuff falls from the sky. So I'm on the beltway, a five-lane expressway that circles Baltimore where the average speed is about 63 mph. Now the white stuff had been falling for about an hour and it was mixed (as it often is here) with freezing rain or sleet or some such crap. So you'd think that people might ease back to, oh, say THE SPEED LIMIT, which here is 55 mph. Most of us did, in deference to the laws of physics that say: motherfucker if you have to make a fast stop on this slippery ice you are seriously fucked up if you're travelling anywhere near anyone else. Plus, that sorry loser is as fucked-up as you are and he/she didn't even DO anything.

Here comes the big ass bully, the cowboy of the highway, the gigantic SUV barrelling up the left lane at approximately 70 mph. He (notice how I assume this behavior is a testosterone-based affliction) comes up behind some poor sap foolishly driving in the left lane at about 60 mph. What does said SUV do? Inch up (still driving at least 60 mph) to within a foot or two of the other car's bumper and hang there. On the treacherous road conditions, above the speed limit.

What a monmumental fucker! I'm, of course, driving in my car in the center lane screaming at the moron to "please, please, PUHLEEZE, do us ALL a giant favor and drive into a cement divider" and, (as Gandalf would say) "rid us of your stupidity".

Of course, my words weren't exactly quite that genteel, since I'm not an otherworldly being in the guise of a wizard. Yes, the ABIB is a Lord of the Rings geek and the first one of you that makes a crack about it's gonna get it. Here. In this blog. Won't be pretty, guaranteed.

What? I Have to Pay For This?

2007-01-19T08:51:00.000-05:00

The ABIB loves a good cup of coffee. That's why I go, every morning of the work week, to Dunkin' Donuts for a big cuppa. It's all good, right? Couldn't be more wrong. The Dunkin' I go to has a drive "thru" window (thru? what? we're so rushed we can't even take the time to read the entire word?). Now usually there are several vehicles in front of me and I place my order:

"dunkydoobassinrah mayahelpu?"
"large coffee please"
"large coffee, creamandzugar?"
"no sugar, extra cream"
"large coffee, nozugarextacweam dollasixseven drithruwin"

There you have it; couldn't be more simple. I have my $1.67 or some amount above that out of my wallet and ready on the seat beside me. Now, as I've said there are always several vehicles in this line; we ALL have approximately the same amount of time to sit on our asses in our heated or air conditioned vehicles, radio on or not, and contemplate whatever it is we want to contemplate. Nobody, but NOBODY in that line is even remotely pressed for time when it comes to having their money ready. Oodles of time, seas worth of time, a vast expanse of time as the two or three or four Dunkin' lovers in front of you slowly advance to the window, pay, collect their booty, and leave. Invariably, though, there's some schmoe who didn't get the remedially simple memo that: YOU HAVE YOUR FUCKING MONEY READY AT THE WINDOW SHIT FOR BRAINS!

We move forward; the glacial, but steadily advancing pace lulling me into the false hope that today, maybe today, will be the day that they all get it right. The planets will align, the karma will hum and all will be right in the world of the Dunkin' Donuts drive-"thru" line. WRONG SUCKER! Why just yesterday it happened. Inching forward, as each giant SUV in front of me cleared the line and drove away my hopes rose. Three more, two more, one more car in front of me and then, well I guess you know what happened next.

You've all seen it: the silhouette of the fucker in the car in front you looks up at the drive-"thru" window attendant with confusion. They exchange a few words that, of course I can't hear, but I always imagine it goes something like this:

"large coffee and two frosted donuts, that'll be $2.25"
"Huh?"
"Large coffee and two frosted donuts, $2.25"
"I have to PAY for this? Oh hell, no! Well you're gonna have to wait while I rummage for the next seven or eight minutes for my purse and then my wallet and then while I forage around in the five or six compartments of my wallet for the money"

And we wait. The rest of us losers with our good do-bee habits, our money out and ready and waiting for OUR chance at the window, we wait. Here's what I think ought to happen next. I think that I should be able to purchase an attachment on the front bumper of my car that, at the push of a button from the air-controlled interior of my front seat, will cause a forged steel "cow catcher" to emerge from the car's grille and then I get to rev my engine and fucking rear end that lazy bitch into next week.

Ahhhhhh...wouldn't that be grand? Then I'd be at the window and, after all, I do have my money ready. More coffee, please.

Those Madcap Minivans

2007-01-18T17:38:00.000-05:00

So I'm driving today, which I hate due to the crappy drivers that I encounter wherever I go, basically all of them, reference earlier post on that one. And while I'm driving I find myself sitting behind yet another generic Ford Windstar or Dodge Caravan or, god help us, the Dodge GRAND Caravan. So what's with that distinction? Is the mere Caravan only transporting the harem while the GRAND Caravan is toting around the Sheik himself? Anyway, I'm stuck behind one of those infuriating monstrosities (can't see around 'em, can't see over 'em, can't see under 'em, all you can see is THEM) and I find myself having to stare at the collection of inane messages on the back of said "minivan" (what? was a regular van deemed to have too much of a hippie connotation to the white, suburban mother of 2.5 children and one dog that is their demographic?). So, again, I'm staring at the back of this vehicle and having nothing whatsoever to do (can't see around 'em, remember?) I find myself reading IQ-lowering messages like the puke-worthy: "Mom's Taxi" (get a fucking job, bitch!) or "My Child Made the Principal's Honor Roll at Tiddly-Fuck Middle School", and the preposterously pompous "Again", "and Again" stickers affixed atop the original "brag-worthy" message to the rest of us. Well, guess what, Mom: in case you haven't been paying attention, the public school systems around here are in such a fucked-up, sorry state that your little darling's designation on the "Principal's Honor Roll" probably means that he/she managed to show up at school and not set the classroom on fire for 90 consecutive days. And the "And Again" one, well, I think you can figure that out for yourself, babe.

So I'm reading these silly shout-outs to the rest of us who, of course, couldn't give a rat's ass about their little attendance allstars, but who have no choice, sitting, as we are, behind this squat abomination of a...what, exactly: is it a truck? a bus? a truss? But then my eyes rest on the one that makes me want to exit my vehicle, tear said "Mom" from the driver's seat, trailing the bluetooth earpiece mid-air behind her, and pound her within an inch of her sorry, comfortable little life. Yes, folks, I'm talking about the soccer ball that is affixed to just about every godforsaken minivan and SUV on the roads today. What? Is it some kind of secret cabal that makes you sign in blood when you drive one of those stupid things that your kids automatically have to be enrolled in every competitive sport available today? Which, as you know, ranges from diving to horseback riding, to hockey, curling and (my personal favorite since these kids are generally the biggest assholes among the asshole elite that today's child "athletes" have become) yes, I'm talking about the lacrosse players.

So, depending on how many "Principal's Honor Roll" candidates this bitch has spit out, I could be staring at a soccer ball, a lacrosse stick or the ubiquitous "LAX" sticker (they make lacrosse sticks, I can't fathom how LAX relates to that, either) a baseball, basketball, tennis racket and/or a shadow figure on ballet pointe, for christ sake. Hmmm, I wonder, now I know that this is a "minivan", and I know that it is being driven by a woman somewhere between the ages of 25 and death, and I know that she is wearing expensive exercise clothes (because, depending on the time of day she is either enroute to or from her Pilates class), and I know she's sipping from a Starbucks cup (triple decaf skim latte, no foam, three Equals) and that her hair has been coifed into that generic yet primped style that says: "I've got the money to look like I don't try all that much, don't you admire me?".

And now I see the soccer ball. Thanks, bitch, for that clue as to who you are. I guess without that darn soccer ball to alert me I would never have guessed that I'm late for work and I'm stuck behind the woman we all LOVE to loathe, unless of course you're one of them, I'm talking, of course, about THE SOCCER MOM! Soccer Moms spend all day running errands, going to the gym, getting coffee and talking to other Soccer Moms about their KIDS! And of course, shuttling their little darlings all over creation, because godforbid they should have one freaking moment to themselves to just sit and stare at the wall.

I often find myself wondering how we as a nation can be in the grips of this terrifying obesity epidemic with so many Windstars and Explorers and Caravans, both Grand and not, getting in my way and blocking my view of everything except their goddamn SOCCER BALL STICKERS. Why, we should be setting the world's standard for fitness by my observation, 'cause you know what: these bitches are everywhere!

Pharmaceuticals: Listen Up

2007-01-16T14:04:00.000-05:00

To all of you at the major pharmaceutical companies pouring millions of dollars into research for new drugs to get people to sleep, I have a tip:

Tape any random meeting at any random bureaucracy and I will guarantee that your customer will be in slumberland within mere moments.

So to recap: don't worry your heads about how you're going to pay for those trips to the Amazon River Basin to collect iguana spit or down to the Nile Delta to dig up some 2,000 year-old, preserved camel dung. Just trot your asses down to the nearest Radio Shack, pick up any old tape recorder and find yourselves a meeting to record.

Guaranteed that the endless, droning blather (such that I just heard and had me fighting mightily with the NEED to escape into sleep) that you collect will pay off in spades when these little tape recorded sleep bombs fly off the shelves for you. And just imagine the profit margins! Good times, good times.

Jesus Freaks Through the Wall: My Neighbors, Part I

2007-01-15T11:57:00.000-05:00

Oh the joys of living in the squalid, communal, shared-wall existence known in Baltimore as the row home. As in "I live in a rowhome, hon". And I do, god help me, I do. In some places in my house I can hear every syllable uttered by one of the five kids that Giant Jesus Lover (also know as the White Whale) has sired. He of the giant belly, the balding head, the glasses and the short stature (dude stands about 5 foot 5), has somehow convinced two women to breed with him. First wife he divorced after having three kids with her. Interesting, isn't it, how these holier than thou "christian" types frown on everything the rest of us in the secular world do because it doesn't gibe with their view of the world, which is largely informed, by the way, by a 2,000 year old book, but as soon as they personally need something to extricate themselves from some nasty, little mistake, say, a marriage, then with a wink and a nod suddenly divorce becomes A-OK. What a bunch of idiotic saps.

So White Whale breeds with wife number one and she spews out three urchins that we'll call Peppermint Patty (the oldest girl, named as such since her father has said that she'll be the first girl to play professional football, I think you get the picture), the middle boy is Junior Mint (so named since he's Jr. to his father and he's just a shade minty), and the youngest is the Other Girl (so named because, well, she's so nondescript and boring that coming up with a spayshul name for her just didn't make sense). These three are at their father's house, and therefore at MY house, too, constantly. Who knows, maybe wife number one didn't buy into the whole "Christianity is my life" like her wack-job ex and so is deemed "unfit" to mother by White Whale and wife number two.

Wife number two gets her own paragraph because she's just that...I don't know...colossal. We call her Brunhilda. Picture, if you will, a woman who stands, oh, about 5 foot 8 or 9, weighing in at a cool 275 with a face that would stop a clock and a hank of red hair (are you a natural redhead? EWWWWW), that is in a state of perpetual scowl. Brunhilde is so named because she looks just like she stepped out of the Valkyries, sans horned helmet. A big, brutish woman with a face that was etched into stone from 1,000 years of life picking potatoes in the fields of Lithuania and then pounding them into submission with the same zeal that she pounds her kids and the White Whale into submission. She don't give no-one no slack; our Brunhilda rules the roost with an iron fist and woe be to the man, woman or child that opposes her. She'll smite you, motherfucker.

Brunhilda likes to scream and when she screams in her house she screams in my house. So I get to hear this BITCH'S big, fucking mouth every godforsaken day of my life. What a treat, considering at a conversational pitch it's got that nasal, pinched squawking quality that when given the volume that those Valkyrie lungs can manage, can make your ears bleed. I hear her scream at White Whale's first three and I hear her scream at White Whale, and I hear her scream at her two unholy spawn, namely: Frankenbaby and Big Buford.

Frankenbaby is a freakishly giant three-year old whose steps on the hardwood floor of his upstairs hallway can be heard through a closed door. In my house. Through the wall. Yo, I'm not making ANY of this us up. How could I? I mean, really. Frankenbaby has his father's and mother's giant body, his mother's slitted eyes and round, flat peasant face, and his father's short, stubby legs, plus they've got his blond hair in a Marine buzzcut, which is inexplicably the style around here among the blue collar unwashed who are my neighbors. So basically, this incoherent (Frankenbaby still speaks in gibberish that only Brunhilda can understand) giant thunders around the house and babbles and when he gets a wild hair because one of his slaves (I mean step-siblings) doesn't hop-to-it fast enough to suit him, he opens a mouth and lets out a bellow that can raise the dead. So I get to hear him every day, too.

Big Buford is Frankenbaby's baby sister. I'd say she's just over one year old. Basically she's Frankenbaby with icky, pale brown hair tied into a preposterous Pebbles ponytail on top of her head with a pink ribbon. Thank Christ it's pink, to give people a fighting chance when they try to make a typical gender-based comment: "what a cute, little...girl?". We don't hear all that much from Big Buford yet but I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop on that one.

Did I mention that they're Jesus freaks? Did I? They drive a big Chevy Suburban that takes up two parking places on our parking-challenged, little street and they've got that fucking Jesus fish bumper sticker on one side of that big-ass boat of a car and on the other is the ever-so-subtle "She's a Child, Not A Choice". Well guess, what, fuckers: I'd say the jury's out on that just yet. We call that big, obscene vehicle The Jesus Van. It figures, right? I mean, why wouldn't people who are already taking up WAY more than their share of MY air and MY water and MY fucking SPACE on EARTH with their fucking BROOD of cretins, be driving a giant, gas-guzzling, environment-despoiling monstrosity that takes up WAY TOO MUCH ROOM?

In case you haven't noticed, I fucking hate my Jesus-loving, earth-over-populating, giant car driving neighbors who, since I live in a "rowhome, hon", LIVE WITH ME!

My Job

2007-01-13T12:29:00.000-05:00

I work in the equivalent of Tod Browning's "Freaks". For real. Here's the deal: I say all the time that you can't make this stuff up, that if my friends and I went to a TV producer with a pitch for a new office TV show and all we did was exactly describe the people at my office they would never believe it. "Oh, hell no" they'd say, and "nobody is actually this bad". Dude, you have no idea.

Let's start with Thong Boy. See, we give them code names, well, for obvious reasons, of course, but it's also really mean. And that's good. See the title of this blog for explanation of that. Anyway, here's the deal: Thong Boy wears a thong. Just like Stoop Kid sits on his stoop. What? You've never watched "Hey Arnold"? Loser. Anyway, Thong Boy is probably about 50-55 years old and unless you havent' made the connection, the fact that he wears a thong and that we know it because he said so one day at a luncheon (don't even start me) is like one of the creepiest, ickiest pieces of information you can know about a stoop-shouldered, balding, baggy pantsed (in a creepy old man way, you know what I mean) wierdo. It's right up there with "I'm having to wear adult diapers these days". We got one of them, too, but that's the topic of another post.

Thong Boy sits on a funky pillow because he has a bad back. The pillow is covered by a pillow case that, to my observation, has never, ever been removed and washed. Did you get that? Thong Boy sits his funky ass on a pillow (the kind the rest of us lay our HEADS on for Christ sake) all day, every day. Freak. He carries it with him to the cafeteria and sits his funky ass on it down there while he stares out the window, presumably to regain his equilibrium because: Thong Boy is also Nature Boy. He farts in his cubicle (into said pillow, for sure) and he walks around the building all the time, presumably to get fresh air, but in our cubicle farm life I'm always happy as hell when he's on one of his jaunts 'cause you know, he's gone; always a good thing.

So Thong Boy drinks lots and lots of water, I guess because it's supposed to be good for you, who knows, maybe he's also got kidney issues. But he's too fucking cheap to actually BUY some water, so he's got these two-year-old, empty, glass green-tea bottles that he just keeps refilling (at no cost to himself) from the purified water dispenser in the front office that THEY pay for but for some godforsaken reason nobody has ever stopped him and said" Yo, you cheap-ass motherfucker! How about actually contributing a few bucks to the water fund considering you guzzle it down like a freaking' water buffalo." People in offices are WAY too polite in my opinion.

So, because of where we are situated in the cubicle lane, Thong Boy's endless water refills take him past my cubicle, on average, five or six times a day. I can hear him starting his water refill journey: the old, filthy empty bottles clink together annoyingly as he gathers them up, and they continue clinking as he slowly shuffles by, stoop-shouldered, his face always screwed up in the same, infuriating, slightly confused expression. He passes by my cubicle and I grit my teeth because I know that in a few moments he'll be coming back, old-ass bottles filled with water. Cheap bastard.

So what if, one day, I just reached out a foot as he was passing by with his filled bottles and tripped the dork? I can't tell you how many times I've gone over this scenario in my mind: the sight of him losing his footing, the idiotic expression switching on a dime to that one that says: "Oh shit, I'm going down and when I hit the floor, man am I fucked." But the best part would be those old-ass bottles as they go flying through the air (this part I actually imagine in slo-mo), the water spraying everywhere, but mostly on him, and the sounds they make as they hit the floor followed immediately by the thud of him landing on them and maybe, just maybe, cracking one of those suckers all to hell. A shard in the eye? The ear? Sever a fingertip? If that wouldn't keep his sorry ass out of the office for at least a month, then nothing would. Hell, maybe he'd put in his retirement papers. A bitch can dream.

Who Gives a Rat's Ass

2007-01-13T12:27:00.001-05:00

The Ravens? Oh, please.

I Hate All Other Drivers!

2007-01-12T19:16:00.000-05:00

Let's get one thing straight: most other drivers are lucky if they have like an 85 IQ. And furthermore I'm pretty sure it's way easier to get a drivers license these days than when I got mine. Also, back the fuck away from my bumper, dick. I'm driving 68 mph in the middle lane. Do you realize that the lane to our left is for passing me or are you just hanging back there to be an asshole? Is it my fault that your dick is the size of a cocktail weiner? Is it my fault that your boss just reamed you out in front of the whole department? Deal with it but get the fuck off of my bumper. NOW! Hey! I got an idea: why don't you just go and drive yourself off the nearest overpass? That's a win/win, right? I hate you and the closer you come to my car the more likely it is I'll actually be able to see your Neanderthal face and you know what, that's gonna fucking ruin my day.

Also: to the car manufacturers of the world: when did it become necessary to replicate the approximate light intensity of the sun in the headlamps of new cars? When they come up behind me it's like shielding my eyes from the freaking death star ray and when the fuckers are coming toward me I end up flashing my highbeams in a frenzy of blinded rage until those fucking halogen headlamps are gone. Don't get me started on SUVs...that's for another time.