Thursday, April 29, 2004

You know what I hate?

- Painter's jeans. Only people who are actual tradesmen are allowed to wear these things; all others are fakes and trend-hoppers.

- People who talk overmuch about the weather. This is worst during the winter, when a morning forecast for three inches of snow becomes a blizzard by the evening. It's like Whisper Down the Lane with a madness-causing agent.

- Naming conventions. If I don't find out that there actual African people with made-up-sounding names like Aquanda, Tanisha, and Kia, I'm gonna be really angry. I also hate those names that are adapted from common names with the first letter changed, like Taren or Tevin. I reserve special scorn for common names spelled in an annoyingly quirky fashion, like Sandi and Jacqui. Oh, and hyphenated names? They suck. Ladies, take his name, give him yours, or keep your own, but don't try to act semi-liberated by jamming the two together with a hyphen in the middle. A name like Moss-Coane sort of works (in a way), but Galiano-Bagaglia? No, no, no.

- Dog-owners. Some people have this belief that they know their dogs inside and out, and trust in this belief so well that they let their dogs run attended and unleashed, knowing that the animals pose no danger to anyone. It ain't true. I walk around Bala Cynwyd at lunch, on secluded little streets, and to date I've been threatened by dogs on three separate occasions. One dog wasn't very big but was plenty aggressive, but my bluffing was evidently convincing enough to back it down. The second was a big German Shepherd that was content to drive me away from the house in which it lived (that dog could have done me some damage had it felt perkier that day). The third came right up to me, tail down and growling; this one wasn't fucking around. I took a few swings to drive it back, then dodged away and put a parked car between us. After a minute I moved on, but as soon as I broke cover the dog renewed its assault. I'd had enough, and I charged the little bastard, growling myself. That did the trick, and my foe scampered up onto a lawn and cowered there. Feeling manly, I fixed it with a baleful look and then went on my way. I tell you, if I'm ever bitten, I'm coming back with my car, and either running down the little bastard or beating it to death with the Club. I kid alot on this blog, but I am dead serious. The dog that bites me has bitten its last. Believe it.

Tuesday, April 27, 2004

Another long-awaited post

I'm turning over a new leaf and blogging again. Then I'll most likely turn it back over and disappear for two weeks.

North Carolina was fun. Beautiful area (Raleigh-Durham), but I think I'd commit suicide if I had to live there. There's just not much going on, or at least much in which I am interested. Craig and Shawn live in a rather conservative area, just one mile from this Baptist seminary, and there's no way I'm up for that. They're more willing than I to be open about being gay with people who aren't necessarily the most accepting about it. I guess that's another way homosexuality gains mainstream acceptance, but I'd rather gravitate towards people who are already inclined to be open-minded about it.

Southern food is, uh, interesting. Everything is breaded and fried, which is kind of fun as a novelty but gets old fast. Corn fritters are tasty, and cheese grits were good, but to have that stuff every day? No thank you...I like my 32-inch waist. Nobody, but nobody makes biscuits like southerners, though, so it seems that fighting the Civil War to keep them part of the union was worth it. Oh, and eliminating slavery was good too. :-)

Tuesday, April 13, 2004

A long-awaited post

I don't actually know if anyone was waiting for this post, but it seemed to make a good heading. So there!

Star and Dan commanded me to blog a remark I made the other night. We were talking about gay guys and therapy, between which I maintained (and still do) that there is a significant link, and I said, "We put the 'men' in 'mental health.'" I have now discharged my duty.

I'm off to North Carolina this weekend to visit some friends, and I view food prospects of this trip some trepidation. (Hey, is that tripidation?) Some of southern cuisine is tasty, but all of it is rather fatty, heavy, and salty. I had a ham biscuit for breakfast, and it took two glasses of water just to restore the fluids soaked up by the salt in the country ham. Corn fritters were admittedly tasty, but possessed of more grease than I like to think about, and I won't even mention barbeque. Ugh.

Friday, April 02, 2004

Stupid People, Revisited

As I've said in other posts, I very rarely call people stupid, because I think very few truly are. Foolish, yes, but stupid? No. However, because of my employer's new office design, we're all on top of each other, so I get a first-hand view of the intellectual capabilities of my colleagues in Finance.

I realize that numbers people are not creative, but rely on accuracy, procedure, and good organizational skills, and that doesn't make them dumb. The numbers people in my office are just dumb. A few examples:

- Maureen was complaining to one of the techie guys about the malfunctioning voicemail indicators on her phone. He explained that the problem was company-wide, and that the server was hung up but would be reset that night. She said, "What?" Like me, he assumed she just hadn't heard him, so he repeated what he'd said. She replied cleverly, "What?" Finally, he realized she wasn't getting the "server hung up" part, so he reverted to child-speak and said, "Maureen, the server is broken. It's broken." Context, Maureen? Huh?

- The subject of this one is Taryn, and let me state that she got off on the wrong foot with me just because of her name. I hate names that are really just other names with the first initials changed, such as Tevin. (I know some of you have friends and family with those kinds of names, but my blog, my rules.) Also, I hate when basically common names are spelled in a quirky manner, like Marriya (Maria) or Jacqui (Jackie). So you can see how "Taryn", which is really a distortion of "Karen", really ticks me off. Anyway, we had a fire drill last week, and Taryn (grrr) and I were the last ones out the door. I headed for the stairs, but this zero starts pressing the elevator button. Hasn't she ever experienced a fire drill before? You don't put yourself in a small, metal, windowless box when there is fire a-coming. The guy running the fire drill had to direct her to the stairs, and I'm surprised he didn't have to instruct her on how to use them.

- Taryn and Maureen are chatters, and their conversations have an inanity level just short of what would provoke the average person to a letter-opener bloodbath. They're both as thin as sticks, naturally, and they go on and on about how terrible they are with food and they eat too much, their faces are too fat, blah blah. There are women in this company who could eat both of them before breakfast and still have room for a bagel, and they're complaining about that two-sixteenths of blueberry muffin they had that morning? Margaret Cho said the first thing you lose on a diet is brain matter, and these two had very little to begin with. Either that, or they once weighed a million pounds each, all brain.

Writing this post has made me feel strangely liberated. And hungry for blueberry muffins.