PEOPLE WHO TYPE IN ALL CAPS!!!!

They annoy me.

Please stop that.

Seriously, learn to type. I can't take you seriously. And by the way, your punctuation is probably out of control, too. And your use of quotes*.


*Noonan, your use of quotes is also "irregular," but I do not mean to indicate you here.

Every Valentine's Has a Loser...

As most of you know, I read Dear Abby the way I attend Central Market Sunday mornings: religiously. If there's one thing that gets me jazzy, it's living vicariously through the types of imbeciles that write her (Please note, I have written her twice. hee.). So today, I guess Abby was feeling all bitter about Valentine's or something because the three daily letters were: my military boyfriend broke up with me and I can't handle it, my marriage is on the rocks because of my wife's homeless brother who boozes in my house and steals my stuff, and this little gem that I'd like to call "Dear Abby, My permanent residence is in Denial City. I'm trapped there and unable to read the writing on the wall. Help? P.S. It's possible that I'm also just ultra-retarded."

Without further ado, Abby's Valentine to me, and mine to you:

DEAR ABBY: Five months ago, I became involved with a gentleman whom I met at church. He is kind and caring -- everything that a girl could look for. We are compatible and get along quite well in more ways than one.

The problem is he is living with someone else, and his job takes up much of his time. When we're together the time goes by so quickly -- and then I hear nothing for days on end. He tells me that he cares for me, and I care about him, but I'm confused. Should I bide my time in the hope that things will improve? Or should I turn tail and run? -- CONFLICTED ON THE EAST COAST


DEAR CONFLICTED: Face it: Your kind, caring, compatible, churchgoing guy already has a hen sitting in his nest. Unless you want to end up with egg on your face, run like the dickens. He's already taken.

You know the best part? Abby is such a weirdy fuddy duddy that she says things like "run like the dickens" and "hen...in his nest." Next she'll be advising us all to get out our *pocketbooks*!

*Pee! Right Now!* Day

This is one of the best and funniest commentaries on Valentine's Day I've ever seen; and I make it my business to see/hear/read a lot.

And Ze is right: maybe we shouldn't be in the doctor's office, just because people tell us to be. This is why I don't really like the concept of a physical. I'm not really sick; I just need you to certify that. Bah.

I Was Born Twice: First, As a Baby Girl

In my sociology of family class, which I absolutely adore, we have been discussing the possibility that there is a third gender, such as the Zuni Berdache. Recently I have been re-thinking gender and the way that it becomes a master identity for us as human beings and defines everything we do, which brought me back to a wonderful book I read about a year ago and have thought of often since: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. This is a tremendous book that thoughtfully and compassionately comments on the nature of sex and gender and family ties in an innovative and unique chronology of a family and a hermaphrodite that embraces war and sickness, riots, peace, prosperity, and mutated genes in the most beautiful language imaginable.

If you read this book, or the link I provided about the Zuni berdache and you want to chat some about this, let me know. If nothing else, I just want to put the idea of a third gender out there and ask you to consider what this means for humanity relative to gay marriage, familial roles, sexuality, etc.

Do you hear that, my inner raccoon?

What the hell man? This is probably the second time I've ever read my Yahoo! Horoscope and it said something almost as gratifying as before when my karma was shiny. None of that business of me being a butthole or everyone in the office thinking my cube and my attitude stink.

Check it, peop:
There's just no easy way to say this, so sit down, buckle up and listen: You've suddenly turned into a magnet for the attention of romantic, spiritual admirers. Awful, huh? Well, as they say, it's an awful job, but someone's got to do it, so do your best. If you don't have a social secretary, you might want to hire someone, at least temporarily. For the next couple of days -- at the very least -- you'll need one!

I have GOT to start reading this stuff everyday! I mean, a social secretary? This is a position I need time to invterview people for!

Schmalted Milkshake, Two Straws

I love Valentine's Day. It's one of my favorite holidays and I get annoyed with all the bitter folks who feel they must decry it in defense of modern living or being an independent person. Blah blah blah.

Maybe *you* have made it into a a depressive type issue of being single versus dating someone and whether or not you will receive some insipid bouquet involving the highly vomitous baby's breath, but let us remember St. Valentine writing so many notes to his friends and well-wishers--not his lover or the editrix of Cosmopolitan--, who probably actually came to see him get devoured at the Coliseum in the spirit of fiendish revelry, but who he naively believed gave a crap about him and came to bid him adieu. I mean, that's really a sweet thought, don't you think? In the spirit of naively thinking people still want to be my friends after knowing me awhile, I like to celebrate Valentine's Day with and for all of my friends to let them know how much I love them, how much I love making food for them, how much I love eating candy, and how much I truly and honestly adore red and pink.

So please understand that my discussion of the new movie The Wedding Date has no bitterness associated with a general dislike of Valentine's Day (True, last year I spent the BITTERLY cold Valentine's Day recovering from 48 hours of projectile vomiting and otrher pleasantries associated with food poisoning, but I am highly grateful for the special bonding time I had with A. in the ER and my neighbor B, who watched me cry as I struggled to swallow a few crackers.), as generally, I like it. No, I love it. I do. You have to love Valentine's Day. Or not love it. But let's not be middle of the road, okay?

Okay, so back to this awful movie. Now, I didn't see it, nor do I plan to, but I think Roger Ebert's comment on it about sums up what I would think if I did see it: "...almost entirely composed of moments when I was shaking my head in disbelief." The Chicago Trib's Michael Wilmington decalres it to be: "...a tossed bouquet full of dead flowers and bad jokes.

Yowza.

So why, oh why, do we continue to get movies that are awful in exactly the same unoriginal ways every year? Runaway Bride was an okay movie, in isolation, but you know, I had already seen Pretty Woman (Gary Marshall, branch out!) I believe I can explain this phenomenon. It is clearly linked,somehow, to these people who are desperate to see " a good date movie," before heading home where one partner will lead the other partner down an insidious path of rose petals, ultimately culminating in enough cheap, freesia candles to make even the most stalwart of Bath and Body Works store managers weak-kneed. And what does this mean?

I don't really know. I do know, however, that I'd like to see a movie like The Wedding Date in which everything is hunky dory, funny, sweet, and generally numbing, until suddenly the bride rips off her veil to reveal that she is actually a three-years dead deranged polar bear with gum disease.

"Lorraine, I am your density...I mean your destiny."

For better or worse, a new phrase is entering into the urban lexicon across the nation: starbucks density.

Your starbucks density is determined by entering your address into the Starbucks Retail Location Finder and searching for all the starbucks locations within a 5 mile radius of your home. The number of search results is your Starbucks density.

Mine is 39.

That's a sad story.

The Importance of Being Civil

Have you ever noticed that when you have a form with checkboxes--it can be online or in the mail, or even one of those tiny little entry pads at giveaways--asking a Yes/No question, they always say:

Yes

or

No, thanks

?

Never just no. And they FORCE you to be nice about it.

Do you want us to give away all your private information? Do you want a million credit card offers and magazine subscriptions to rain down upon your entryway below the mail slot? Do you want those nutty Capital One Vikings to run amok throughout your house? The "no, thanks" is able to at once encompass all the complex feelings you are having upon checking this box.

No, but thank you SO MUCH for asking!

No, but I appreciate your consideration, non-human machine who will "read" this form.

No, and politely refusing your insidious offers is paramount in my life at this time.

Do you think the thanks was added because of the popular practice of people scribbling in a quick "thanks" next to the No box?

No? Well, fuck you.

"You're Killing Me, Alice

Or Adventures in My New Class: Poop Ed Many thanks, Pascale Soleil.

I will henceforth refer to my Abnormal Psychology prof, who is a man, as Alice, because doing so will allow me to keep his actual name anonymous and therefore, not make me do something foolhardy, if enjoyably wicked. Alice will certainly have his comeuppance when I write his teaching evaluation at the end of the semester. I have already composed several lines of what will amount to a verbal incarnation of a hot pizza to the crotch.

Yes, a hot pizza to the crotch, accompanied by the apt phrase: "enjoy your pizza, you f-ing a-hole." I said this to someone once, not terribly long ago. If you have occasion to use such a phrase and such a pizza in such a way, I'd like to encourage you to take advantage. It is memorable.

But back to Alice and the AP class that couldn't.

I am not entirely convinced that my AP class is not an intentional headtrip to see if we are mentally capable of handling such ineptitude and tolerate such intolerance (!) for independent thinking.

It will take too long to explain the particulars of today's student-teacher interaction, which would no doubt leave you weeping in boredom in your delicious sausage and black bean chili (if you have been lucky enough to acquire the recipe from me). All I will say is that our prof gave us a choice of writing on a book (of our own choosing) and a popular movie for our term paper. When I attempted to get my book approved today, I was asked: what? A memoir? Just what is that? Is it a self-help book?

Alice, you are a PhD. In Psychology. Why do you not know what a memoir is?

Is your class to be the bitter pill I must swallow this semester, Alice.? Just my luck, it'll be the freaking placebo.