We've all—for the purposes of this here blog entry, anyway—heard this cliché: "Two wrongs don't make a right." Yes, yes, very (sanctimoniously) lovely.
Many of us—at least the smarmily sarcastic ones in the group—have even used this in rebuttal: "But three lefts DO make a right!" (I'll give you a minute while you draw that one out. Oh, you got it right away? Umm. Yeah, so did I.)
Anyway, what I discovered the other day wasn't so much about wrongs or lefts but because the fact that two of my more undesirable traits did seem to cancel each other out, I still made the connection. And so here we are, three (short) paragraphs in and still lost in the Country of Vague. Oops.
Although it has never been "officially" proclaimed, I think it quite obvious that I'm a wee tad bit obsessive/compulsive. Even if you only examine the particular routine I maintained for, oh, about seven YEARS, wherein before leaving the house, I had to—HAD. TO.—locate each household cat and snorgle the beast, dropping precisely two (2) nose-tickling kisses atop her head EVERY TIME I LEFT THE HOUSE, well, yeah. Pass me the OCD crown, for surely I have earned the right to be photographed in it.
Likewise, I have done a neat job of establishing the blossoming case of flaming road rage that I've been nurturing for years, although moreso now that I have to drive all the way to Corporate. Apparently, that's the route most of the Road Rage-Inducers like to take, too.
So. During a recent snowstorm—and we have had way damn too many of these white-screeching, wind-ripping, road-coating nastinesses this year BY FAR, and the record books are totally backing me up, so there—I was making my bitter way home, as per usual. I wasn't doing so well with the creative cursing either, although rather than drop into the deep pits of "FUCK! FUCK! FUCKITY FUCK FUCK FUCK!" I was hanging out in the somewhat reasonable realm of "I HATE YOU! I HATE YOUR PARENTS! AND I REALLY HATE YOUR DRIVER'S ED INSTRUCTOR!"
What? At least I've been occasionally refraining from the F-bomb! This blog-entry notwithstanding. But back to our story, already in progress.
While I was surrounded by drivers for whom I'd already vulgarly expressed my loathing, I noticed a car making its way up the line of traffic. Remember, it was snowing. The road was coated in snow, the cars were churning up snow with their tires, snow was blowing sideways and swirling and churning, AND there was MORE freaking snow coming down. In short, this was not the time to play Indy-500, and yet, here was Joe Teenager (I'm guessing; I didn't get a look at the driver and I will explain that in a moment), doing just that.
When he swerved around me—getting too close for even perfect-weather driving—I was within a quarter mile of the next turnoff. Knowing, as I did, the habits of local drivers, I realized that he was about to perform the immensely offensive Pass One More Car Before The Turnoff maneuver, and I felt a surge of rage that truly surpassed all previous road-ragings: I actually lost vision in my right eye for a split second. Which is, of course, not what you want to be doing in heavy traffic during a snowstorm.
When Joe Teenager not only did just as I expected, but HAD TO BRAKE TO DO IT, I lost my freaking little mind. And I screamed (something like):
"AAAAAUUUGMLTDFLTZ! AAAAAAAAAAAA!"
Now. Much as I was grateful for the fact that I did have my vision back after that momentary—though very real—half-way blackout, in my head, I was still Going Off. Because vocal clarity was still absent, I was mentally screaming at Joe Teenager all the way until he turned off, lecturing him on the sheer—no control-top or reinforced toes WHATSOEVER—stupidity of his "driving," the fact that BY GOLLY IF YOU HAVE TO BRAKE TO GET AHEAD OF SOMEONE YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS BEING AHEAD OF THEM, and oh yes, YOU'RE TURNING THE FRICK OFF SO WHY THE BLANKITY-BLANK DO YOU NEED TO PASS ANYONE?
In short, I was wondering how stupid you have to be to do something like this, and because it was an interesting question, I quickly diverted to answering it. My chain of "reasoning" went something like this:
You have to be really stupid. Well, duh, you have to be stupider than THAT. How stupid? This is an exercise in quantification.
You have to be as dumb as a squirrel. True, but trite. What else have you got?
Your brain has to be about as big as a squirrel's left nut. Oh, come on, think about that. The left nut is bigger than the right, isn't it? Care to rephrase? Right. Yes! Rephrase, AS IF YOU HAVEN'T BEEN DOING THAT ALL ALONG.
You have to be so stupid that if a squirrel's right nut was surgically removed, your brain would not even fill up the void left in his nutsack. Aha! Now we're getting somewhere!
You have to be so stupid that if a squirrel's right nut was surgically removed and your brain was transplanted into its place, there would be so much room left in the nutsack ... Wait a minute. No, really! I'm serious! HEY! ALL ENGINES STOP.
Is "nutsack" singular or plural? I mean, is it all ONE encasing, or is there, like, a divider thingie? Like in a purse with two pockets, you know, and ...
Yeah. I was all calmed down and non-violent by the time I came to the next exit—just a mile or two down the road. Because I got all distracted by the question of whether a nutsack was, technically, a single entity. Because I NEEDED my insult—which only I could hear, Joe Teenager being long gone and OH YES, IN ANOTHER VEHICLE—to be ACCURATE. Precise, yes, I was pretty well there, but by golly, that was NOT GOOD ENOUGH.
Anyway. To make a long story short(er)—though not by much, I imagine—I ended up deciding that my OCD was a wonderful counterbalance to my road-rage, and I would be better served by employing THAT, rather than creative cursing, to calm my angst and, oh yes, hopefully prevent another split-second blackout. Which, let's be perfectly blunt, is way damn more dangerous than the stupidity of others.
I must confess, though, that the image of the squirrel pondering just what the hell is going on with his right nut is a surprisingly reassuring one. (Your mileage may vary.)
March 9, 2008
March 3, 2008
Going Gray
I could blame The Exotic Neurotic for my current fixation with gray. It was, after all, the fashion magazine she loaned me—pure fluff, for an obsession-free half-hour's reading, or so I thought!—that started it all. But I don't need her to point out that I'm plenty obsessive all on my own, so I don't think I really want to go there.
She'll tell me what she thinks. I must be prepared if I want to invoke the dreaded honesty!
Anyway, so The Exotic Neurotic loaned me last month's issue of this magazine, and it was fun to laugh at pair after pair of impossible shoes, each set of which cost more than my whole working wardrobe, and butt-ugly dresses, some of which cost more than my car. Hey, if you can't laugh at the foibles of people who are rich enough to look Damn Good but just end up looking Damned, who can you laugh at?
Right. There's always Rat and Pig. The Apocalyptic Refrigerator series? Best. Comic. EVER.
But I digress. Which means I'm doing a reasonable impersonation of my "normal self," which I guess is good. So. About that magazine!
Things were going along blissfully fine until I got to the page that had the giant-ass bottle of spilled-out nail-polish in what looked to be a deep shade of gray, which I had never before seen in a nail polish. Light gray, sure! Verrrry, very light, which is pretty much not gray at all, but more of a special shade of white. Which hardly seems daring at all, much less worth featuring in the same issue that includes shoes that have a heel designed to look like it's on sideways.
But a deeper gray, a really GRAY gray—now THAT was unusual. And I thought, Wow. That's stupid. What kind of ninny would wear something like that? And yet, I couldn't get it out of my head, and much later in the night, I found myself looking for this odd shade of gray online. Which was where I found out it wasn't actually a deep gray at all, but more of a shallow, light gray, the likes of which the world had seen many times before—or at least once or twice.
See?
The problem was, you see, that I'd been reading the magazine while wearing sunglasses. Therefore, the light gray had appeared darker—substantially darker, in fact—than it actually was. Which was all rather funny, but of course, not being able to get the shade I thought I wanted (nevermind that it was going to cost $18 to get it, because OH YES, I was really, seriously considering GOING THERE, and nevermind that it had originally struck me as just plain dumb) made me want it more.
Why? Because I need a hobby, obviously. It's a distraction, people. A distraction from the winter blahs, the doldrum of gray skies, and ... wait. Okay, so maybe I was just trying to blend in. Reason has OBVIOUSLY been long-since surpassed by obsession here, WHAT'S YOUR POINT?
My point was that I was going to get the gray I thought I saw, and that was that. After establishing that such a shade did not exist in unnature (aka, the local mall), I found myself in the local Walgreens, which OH MY GOD, is a story unto itself, but it's pretty gross, so let's stick to the bit where I found Sinful Colors—a great name all by itself—"Black on Black" polish sitting right next to "Snow Me White" polish, at which point a little night-light went off over my head and I thought, Aha! I WILL MAKE MY OWN GRAY NAIL POLISH! And it will be good!
Or something.
In the process of researching the gray I sought—a matte-gray, mind you, NOT a glittery one, for I am not four years old, despite all mental appearances to the contrary—I had happened upon a delicious description of a shade someone else possessed (at only $8 a bottle, it was a relative steal, but by this time, I was not about to WAIT for it to be shipped to me from who-knows-where), and it was this: "gun-metal gray."
Due to my now compoundly-fractured brain, I had taken this as my cause ... my new quest ... MY HOLY GRAIL OF FINGER-NAIL POLISH, if you will, and what a stupid expression, because even if you won't, I will, so who cares if you won't? Well, you do, but I digress again.
Naturally, once fully committed—yes, I really should have been—I did, in fact, succeed marvelously at creating a shade of gray that very much did match my good old .12-gauge shotgun's metal barrel ... after I dusted it off, that is. The problem this time was was that this shade is virtually indistinguishable from BLACK, once applied to one's nails and seen under normal lighting. Even though if you put your hand next to something that's really, truly black and squint, you can totally tell that it's actually gray.
Being far too lazy to remove ye olde "Too Gray" polish, I waited a week before dumping a strategic quantity out and pouring a similar amount of white into the formerly "Black on Black" bottle. Much mixing ensued, leading me to conclude that if I ever do have my dream "Build a Nail-Polish Workshop" kiosk in the local mall, it eally will have to include one of those AWESOMELY VIGOROUS paint-shaker things—scaled down to size, of course, because nobody needs THAT much nail polish (well, maybe elephants do, but I don't think they'd be looking for shades of gray anyway).
But then. Oh, then! My quest hath ended, and I am now sporting a nice, deep, really-GRAY-but-also-definitely-not-black nail polish, the likes of which THE WORLD HAS NEVER KNOWN BEFORE! Unless somebody else had this idea first, which kind of pisses me off, so let's pretend I'm special, shall we? Great; thanks.
In conclusion, I will admit that the irony of the fact that I put so much time and effort into getting gray ON my fingernails while I have been known to put similar time and effort into getting gray OFF of my hair follicles does not escape me. Just so you know.
And my gray? I will name him "George." Because, while I cannot HUG him and SQUEEZE him and PET him and PAT him, he has amused and entertained me, and that's good enough for now.
She'll tell me what she thinks. I must be prepared if I want to invoke the dreaded honesty!
Anyway, so The Exotic Neurotic loaned me last month's issue of this magazine, and it was fun to laugh at pair after pair of impossible shoes, each set of which cost more than my whole working wardrobe, and butt-ugly dresses, some of which cost more than my car. Hey, if you can't laugh at the foibles of people who are rich enough to look Damn Good but just end up looking Damned, who can you laugh at?
Right. There's always Rat and Pig. The Apocalyptic Refrigerator series? Best. Comic. EVER.
But I digress. Which means I'm doing a reasonable impersonation of my "normal self," which I guess is good. So. About that magazine!
Things were going along blissfully fine until I got to the page that had the giant-ass bottle of spilled-out nail-polish in what looked to be a deep shade of gray, which I had never before seen in a nail polish. Light gray, sure! Verrrry, very light, which is pretty much not gray at all, but more of a special shade of white. Which hardly seems daring at all, much less worth featuring in the same issue that includes shoes that have a heel designed to look like it's on sideways.
But a deeper gray, a really GRAY gray—now THAT was unusual. And I thought, Wow. That's stupid. What kind of ninny would wear something like that? And yet, I couldn't get it out of my head, and much later in the night, I found myself looking for this odd shade of gray online. Which was where I found out it wasn't actually a deep gray at all, but more of a shallow, light gray, the likes of which the world had seen many times before—or at least once or twice.
See?
The problem was, you see, that I'd been reading the magazine while wearing sunglasses. Therefore, the light gray had appeared darker—substantially darker, in fact—than it actually was. Which was all rather funny, but of course, not being able to get the shade I thought I wanted (nevermind that it was going to cost $18 to get it, because OH YES, I was really, seriously considering GOING THERE, and nevermind that it had originally struck me as just plain dumb) made me want it more.
Why? Because I need a hobby, obviously. It's a distraction, people. A distraction from the winter blahs, the doldrum of gray skies, and ... wait. Okay, so maybe I was just trying to blend in. Reason has OBVIOUSLY been long-since surpassed by obsession here, WHAT'S YOUR POINT?
My point was that I was going to get the gray I thought I saw, and that was that. After establishing that such a shade did not exist in unnature (aka, the local mall), I found myself in the local Walgreens, which OH MY GOD, is a story unto itself, but it's pretty gross, so let's stick to the bit where I found Sinful Colors—a great name all by itself—"Black on Black" polish sitting right next to "Snow Me White" polish, at which point a little night-light went off over my head and I thought, Aha! I WILL MAKE MY OWN GRAY NAIL POLISH! And it will be good!
Or something.
In the process of researching the gray I sought—a matte-gray, mind you, NOT a glittery one, for I am not four years old, despite all mental appearances to the contrary—I had happened upon a delicious description of a shade someone else possessed (at only $8 a bottle, it was a relative steal, but by this time, I was not about to WAIT for it to be shipped to me from who-knows-where), and it was this: "gun-metal gray."
Due to my now compoundly-fractured brain, I had taken this as my cause ... my new quest ... MY HOLY GRAIL OF FINGER-NAIL POLISH, if you will, and what a stupid expression, because even if you won't, I will, so who cares if you won't? Well, you do, but I digress again.
Naturally, once fully committed—yes, I really should have been—I did, in fact, succeed marvelously at creating a shade of gray that very much did match my good old .12-gauge shotgun's metal barrel ... after I dusted it off, that is. The problem this time was was that this shade is virtually indistinguishable from BLACK, once applied to one's nails and seen under normal lighting. Even though if you put your hand next to something that's really, truly black and squint, you can totally tell that it's actually gray.
Being far too lazy to remove ye olde "Too Gray" polish, I waited a week before dumping a strategic quantity out and pouring a similar amount of white into the formerly "Black on Black" bottle. Much mixing ensued, leading me to conclude that if I ever do have my dream "Build a Nail-Polish Workshop" kiosk in the local mall, it eally will have to include one of those AWESOMELY VIGOROUS paint-shaker things—scaled down to size, of course, because nobody needs THAT much nail polish (well, maybe elephants do, but I don't think they'd be looking for shades of gray anyway).
But then. Oh, then! My quest hath ended, and I am now sporting a nice, deep, really-GRAY-but-also-definitely-not-black nail polish, the likes of which THE WORLD HAS NEVER KNOWN BEFORE! Unless somebody else had this idea first, which kind of pisses me off, so let's pretend I'm special, shall we? Great; thanks.
In conclusion, I will admit that the irony of the fact that I put so much time and effort into getting gray ON my fingernails while I have been known to put similar time and effort into getting gray OFF of my hair follicles does not escape me. Just so you know.
And my gray? I will name him "George." Because, while I cannot HUG him and SQUEEZE him and PET him and PAT him, he has amused and entertained me, and that's good enough for now.
Back—Not in Black
Unlike some truly excellent bloggers whose work I greatly enjoy, I did not begin this blog to make funny, or crack wise, or expound on topics of great and lasting importance. I think I've done all of those things on occasion—and goodness knows I am inspired by so many people and writings out there in the wide, wide world of the Internet—but as the tagline continues to proclaim, I blog because it's cheaper than therapy, and this means that I will at least pretend not to feel bad when I post something that's a complete and total downer.
Of course, I do, and not just because I was down when I posted it.
That being said, this is not a kiss-off post—"GOODBYE, CRUEL INTERNET! I SHALL NO LONGER BE POLLUTING YOUR ELECTRONS WITH MY MENTAL SPEWINGS!"—not that there's anything wrong with that except I miss them when they go. It is, rather, an admission that I haven't really been trying to write blog entries lately. I wanted to, but because I wanted to write a post of happy memories of Old Lady Cat and could not bring myself to do so because it's so damn hard for me to type when I'm crying because I inevitably get my fingers on the wrong keys smf Eot'f mimfayjrm ejsy upi rmf i[ eoyj od nimvj pg honnrtodj yjsy ypys;;u n;phd—and not only does it blow Word's mind, but you can't tell where your misspellings are because at some point, you also hit the Backspace key (or the <--BkSp key, as it is here on my ancient loaner Windows 95 machine).
Not to mention, I want that piece to be a happy, funny one, which is likewise hard to achieve in a mood that's roughly even with the sewer pipe that runs under my house. If not lower.
So. Given that I can't quite pick up the keyboard where I'd like to, thus providing a beautiful remembrance piece to follow the sad announcement that constituted my last post, please excuse me and understand that I will complete it when I'm able—on some sunny, lovely day when she would have enjoyed curling up right in it—and meanwhile, accept my deepest and heart-felt thanks for your many kind words and cyberhugs ... I appreciate every word, very much.
For now, I have pretty much nothing to offer, beginning with a post on nail polish and most likely progressing to (yet another) road-rage-inspired rant.
Of course, I do, and not just because I was down when I posted it.
That being said, this is not a kiss-off post—"GOODBYE, CRUEL INTERNET! I SHALL NO LONGER BE POLLUTING YOUR ELECTRONS WITH MY MENTAL SPEWINGS!"—not that there's anything wrong with that except I miss them when they go. It is, rather, an admission that I haven't really been trying to write blog entries lately. I wanted to, but because I wanted to write a post of happy memories of Old Lady Cat and could not bring myself to do so because it's so damn hard for me to type when I'm crying because I inevitably get my fingers on the wrong keys smf Eot'f mimfayjrm ejsy upi rmf i[ eoyj od nimvj pg honnrtodj yjsy ypys;;u n;phd—and not only does it blow Word's mind, but you can't tell where your misspellings are because at some point, you also hit the Backspace key (or the <--BkSp key, as it is here on my ancient loaner Windows 95 machine).
Not to mention, I want that piece to be a happy, funny one, which is likewise hard to achieve in a mood that's roughly even with the sewer pipe that runs under my house. If not lower.
So. Given that I can't quite pick up the keyboard where I'd like to, thus providing a beautiful remembrance piece to follow the sad announcement that constituted my last post, please excuse me and understand that I will complete it when I'm able—on some sunny, lovely day when she would have enjoyed curling up right in it—and meanwhile, accept my deepest and heart-felt thanks for your many kind words and cyberhugs ... I appreciate every word, very much.
For now, I have pretty much nothing to offer, beginning with a post on nail polish and most likely progressing to (yet another) road-rage-inspired rant.
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