the southpark genii and other randomness.

random stuff to keep you people amused until my next post i don't know when:

*wednesday night i watched the.most.offensive episode of southpark that i've ever seen--it was the christmas special about the cuddly little forest animals that turn out to be satanites and are spawning the antichrist, with stan's completely unintentional help. stan kills the mountain lion that could have saved the world but then the dead mountain lion's cubs learn to perform abortions by hanging out at the abortion clinic, and after the spawn of satan antichrist is born and it enters kyle the heathen's body, santa blows the heads off the cute cuddly satanic animals and the cubs save the day by performing an abortion on kyle and pulling the antichrist out of his ass! and everyone lived happily ever after, except for kyle who died two weeks later of aids.

i'm sure i'm leaving out some plot device that, at the time, caused me to gasp! and say OH MY GOD they didn't just say that. matt and trey (because we're on a first name basis) always manage to outdo their previous most offensive episode ever, which i find highly entertaining because i'm easily amused by gross things and it's always fun to guess what newly offensive thing they'll say next. i love that they think of things that i would never, ever think of, and then they put those things on tv and don't get sued. that makes me happy.

*i thought about making a magical fantasy wish list like susan & linda did, but i think i've determined that what i most want is a group of sarah-servants. not that i'm normally down with the servant thing, because i'm not, but this is my magical fantasy wish list wheee! every winter my skin gets dry and itchy and i spend a lot of time scratching, and last night while lying (laying?) in bed trying to reach the itchy parts of my back, i told alvin that what i would reeeely like is my very own person dedicated to scratching me when i'm itchy. after i thought about how nice it would be to have my own scratching person, i decided i would also like other servants to do the following: wash my hair, give me manicures and pedicures, feed me grapes, and make sure my clothes match before i get dressed (among other things). basically i want several mommies.

*i never knew how useful blogger could be until today when i got a(nother) bill from time warner saying that yay! we owe them lots of money for the stupid fucking cable that i cancelled two weeks ago for the third time in the past month! alvin asked when the last time i called them was, and i had no idea but was able to look up my many, bitchy tw blog posts and figure out the exact date. blogger=useful. bitching about tw? more useful than i realized at the time even though i'm sure everyone is super tired of hearing about it.

city services are a beautiful thing. forgetting to take advantage of them: not so pretty.

garbage day in my neighborhood is every tuesday morning, without fail, somewhere between 7 and 9 in the morning. so i know when this happens. it's a loud, weekly event, and sometimes one that i watch from the window because the garbage trucks have this cool mechanical arm thing that picks up the garbage can, empties it, and sets it down! i love the mechanical arm (if you wonder why i'm so impressed with the arm, read below about how there were no arms, or garbage trucks even, in north carolina).

despite the recurringness of this event, alvin and i remember to put our garbage can & recycling bins out by the curb only about half the time. today was not one of those days. this kind of sucks because last week and the week before that we also forgot to put out our recyling bins so now they're overflowing. also, this is entirely our fault. there's no one else to blame.

the current trash situation isn't nearly as dire as it was in north carolina, where we had no garbage collection service because we lived outside the city limits. we had a dsl connection but no means to get rid of our nastyass trash. because that makes sense. instead, we had to drive our bags of trash to the garbage dumping place. do you know how awful it is to chauffeur around trash bags on a steamy summer day? we drove with the windows open, and i remember it sucking extra when we had to stop at traffic lights because then the air flow stopped and we nearly passed out from the stench of our own garbage. even then, though, we were amused by the absurdity of the situation. in between gagging and screaming and generally being repulsed, we laughed a tiny little bit about how funny this story would be once we lived...elsewhere. dealing with garbage is much more tolerable now that it doesn't require the level of intimacy to dispose of it that it used to, but now alvin and i are the problem. we watch the garbage truck drive by our empty curb a couple times a month and we're like, yeah, we suck.

what, me whine?

i just want to say that it's really annoying that i can feel when i'm ovulating, like right this very second. it's wrong and painful, too, but mostly it's annoying. and it hurts. did i mention that i'm bloated and feel cow-like? the bloatedness is here a week early and i think i caught it from susan.

in almost related news, cindy called me a whiner this morning. it was craft day (like yarn and bead craft, kate, not like witchcraft though i could totally get into playing with voodoo dolls) and we were sitting around doing our non-witchlike craft things after eating some tasty quiche, and that was when cindy stuck a camera in my face and i turned ugly because that's what happens when i get anywhere near a camera. i said as much and she said i'm such a whiner, which she said she meant in a nice way, of course, but still. (cindy did make up for calling me mean names by making a very cool ring for me, though. later when i'm not so lazy i'll post a picture of it. it's lovely.)

so craft day was fun, ovulating i'm not enjoying so much, and then this evening--which i was supposed to spend zoned out in front of the tv since that's what sunday nights are for--was ruined by two separate but equally powerful entities: ABC and our president. first ABC decided that they would air a rerun of desperate housewives (not cool), but before the stupid rerun came on the president co-opted all the networks and said that we would continue to capture and kill terrorists in the oops!-we-didn't-realize-it-would-be-so-difficult (stupid stupid stupid) war in iraq that we should support because we need to win. that's what i heard him say, anyway. after his speech that--again--made me want to throw even larger things at the tv this time, desperate housewives started. at that point life wasn't so bad because after desperate housewives is grey's anatomy and i thought if i could just hold out for an hour i could watch grey's anatomy but dammit if that wasn't a rerun that i'd already seen, too. see how hard my life is?! i mean, really.

after many tv-related disappointments i decided i would turn off the tv and go to the grocery store because, you know, i didn't want to break the cycle of sunday night suckiness. grocery shopping turned out to be very fruitful, not because we got any food but because we bought an atari flashback2 game console. wheee! this is the second atari we've had in the past year but this one is way funner* because it has 40! games on it. sadly, not one of those games is frogger. sigh. however, alvin's playing asteroids right now, and it's completely reminiscent of the last atari we had where he played asteroids for so many hours in a row i finally had to pry the controller out of his hands and give the atari to my sister for safe keeping. (alvin's got an 8 am meeting tomorrow. i have a feeling that tomorrow is going to hurt.)

*i know funner is not a real word, but it's much funner to say than more fun.

tagged by susan: five random facts.

1. i have to make an effort to be nice each morning before i've had any coffee, though i am getting better at masking my pre-coffee annoyance with the world (it involves lots of not talking).

2. i love my dogs but frequently describe to them the painful death that will ensue should they engage in any number of unsanctioned activities.

3. i think everyone is entitled to have as much hot raunchy lesbian sex (HRLS) as they want.

4. i've had 13 jobs in the past eight and a half years. i prefer being in school.

5. i have a warped sense of humor and am thankful that most of my good friends do too.

why people go postal.

yesterday i received a letter from time warner saying i owe them $550 for the cable equipment i didn't return after they disconnected our cable and internet services. like hell their hub is worth $550.

so. i had to call them and explain that they kept screwing up our requests to turn off cable but leave roadrunner connected. also, our new as of nine months ago phone number that i've updated with them three times? yeah, they still had our old phone number in their database. wtf are they doing when i call them? they're like, ok, we're updating that information now! (and then i hear clackity clack clack clack keyboard sounds) but are they really?

pertinent but long aside: several years ago i lent a friend a large sum of money and one night while talking to her on the phone i told her that paying me back wasn't a huge deal and she could do it in small increments if that's what worked best. and she said: ok, i'm writing you a check now (scribbling sound) and then: i'm tearing off the check (check-tearing sound) and then she said she was putting it in an envelope and addressing it to me. so it SOUNDED like she was writing this check and sticking it in an envelope, but i never received it. she said it must have got lost in the mail. that's what time warner is like: sure we're changing your phone number! no, of course we're not going to disconnect roadrunner!

it seems that we were receiving free cable and internet because of their inability to get it right, still, but it's not free so much if we owe them $550. they foiled my plan! i had that charge removed and they reactivated the account (complete with cable! fucknuts) but then i had to explain, twice, THAT I DON'T WANT CABLE. and again, they didn't apologize. these people are exhausting me. they're about to make me cry. their fuckups are so fucking predictable that next time i'll just say this:

time warner.

and you'll know what i mean.

ants, and tests, and planes, oh my!

i'm again preemptively posting before kate-berry tells me i have to or she'll no longer be my friend. actually, she has never said that but when i was four i had this friend--brianne--who told me she wouldn't be my friend unless i stood in this huge ant pile in front of her house. apparently as a four year old i was more literal-minded than i am now so i stood there while ants crawled up my legs and bit me. then i cried until brianne's mom rescued me. it was a sad, painful day, full of lessons about not letting insects bite me or taking orders from friends. now i just argue with them and they're like, oh my god you're difficult. and i'm like, i know. and then i laugh. (it's because of the ants!)

now that you people know that i'm not falling for the "i'm not going to be your friend anymore" trick again, we can move on: yesterday i took my final exam for my statistics course, so i'm almost but not quite done with this class. i still have two classes to attend this week, bleh. i'm not even sure i was supposed to take my test, but if no one--like the professor, the only person who knows this particular bit of information-- is going to tell me when i should take my test, then i can't really be blamed for that. i stood in line at the testing center waiting for an empty seat and once my number was called (it was really wrong to have to stand in line and have my number called so that i could take a test, yes) i had to sit in a room full of smelly people. i'm sure that individually they didn't smell so bad, but once you put dozens of people people in a rather smallish room it's not so good. anyhow, i was able to concentrate on the numbers instead of the smell and finished my test in under two hours. the numbers only gave me a headache this time, they didn't make me want to cry or throw up. i bet grad school is going to make me want to cry and throw up. that's what i thought about while i took my test--i'm good at multi-tasking like that.

since i'm mostly done with school this semester, i can concentrate on more important things like getting over my annoying fear of flying before i have to get on a plane in 13 days. and then again in 16 days. really, i try not to think about it because the flying fear is very close to ruining christmas for me (how can i enjoy life when i have to fly twice in one week? can't.) but i'm reading a couple of how to get over your silly and irrational fear of flying books. they are sort of helping, except pilot-author dude keeps likening the mechanics of a plane gliding through the air to 1. paper airplanes and 2. balloons full of air. you know when you blow up a balloon and let it go and it flies around until it hits the ground? like that.

what dude doesn't realize is that for people who imagine the plane falling out of the sky while flying (i know that's mostly impossible, but this is an irrational fear to begin with and you wouldn't believe how many irrational scenarios i've come up with already) comparing real airplanes to paper airplanes and deflating balloons IS NOT A GOOD IDEA because both of those things crash to the ground when they're done flying. dumbass.

the one thing that has helped, however, is when pilot-author dude said to think of a plane as flying on solid columns of air. i like the solid part. i'll pretend that just because i can't see the columns of air doesn't mean they're not there and compleeeeetely solid.

monkey sex is raunchy but so not hot.

yesterday morning i was iced inside my house and was forced to watch the discovery channel. there was this show on about tarsiers, which look like lemurs but supposedly aren't. supposedly.

i wasn't so excited about the tarsiers--do lemur wannabes really deserve their own spot on the discovery channel?--until it got to the part where they mate once a year under the full moon. it sounded kind of romantic, sort of, and i was all about finally! seeing some actual hot raunchy monkey sex.

much to my dismay, the tarsier has taken all the hot out of one of my favorite phrases. tarsier mating goes something like this:

the female jumps from tree to tree and the male follows. the female tarsier, she looks really uninterested. once she gets tired of jumping and has resigned herself to being boinked by the male, she gives up and hangs on to a limb for dear life.

(cue porn music. the discovery channel added in boom-chicka-boom-boom music to make it seem more....realistic?)

then the male starts licking her. this is the part where i began screaming "ew ew ew!"--but i couldn't stop watching if only because i needed to report back to you people about the realities of monkey sex. thankfully, the tarsiers were almost done.

after ten or so seconds (of nasty monkey foreplay? yuck) that seemed much longer than they actually were, the male does his thing for about four more awful, thrusting seconds and then he's done. mission accomplished, but he wanted more. the female smacked him on the head repeatedly--that was my favorite part--until he left her alone. in all, i only had to scream ew! for about 15 or 20 seconds.

by the way, male tariser penis is very small.

the faux fur bonanza.

this evening alvin and i went to dinner with my sister at the olive garden. i slightly embarrassed myself by telling the server dude that i don't like parmesan cheese because it smells like feet. that conversation went like this:

me: does the chicken alfredo have parmesan in it?
server dude: uh, yeah. it's alfredo. are you allergic to it or something?
me: no, i don't like it. it smells like feet.
(server dude looks horrified.)
me: i didn't just traumatize you by saying that, did i?
server dude: i want my mommy! mommy!!

and i thought i was weird.

so after gorging myself on parmesan-free bread and pasta and more bread (mmmm, carbs) we went shopping at mervyn's because they're only half a parking lot away from olive garden. also, an icy rain was starting to fall and shopping is what alvin and i do in cold, inclement weather, particularly if we have to drive to get there.

mervyn's claims that they're going out of business and that they're having huge sales. i believe the going out of business part--they're even selling the tables that they displayed merchandise on, and oh my god their crappy tables are expensive--but they're completely lying about the huge savings bit because i paid what i normally would pay for the two sweaters i bought. the part of my brain that can't do math and doesn't mind being lied to justified the sweater purchases because i was cold. did i mention it was 31 degrees outside? yeah, it was cold like that.

alvin doesn't usually like to shop but he, too, was mesmerized by the savings lies. he showed me the pillows and blankets that we could save 30% on (or we could not buy them and save 100%) and we ended up getting a lovely new comforter that came with pillow shams and a bed skirt. it doesn't entirely match the color scheme in our bedroom but i'm ignoring that right now. it was too pretty and too much on sale to pass up.

and then he took me to the bin of fur blankets, or, as he called it: the faux fur bonanza. alvin's got this thing for fake fur that i will never understand, and the only thing that stopped us from buying a faux fur blanket was that they were fucking overpriced. mervyn's apparently thinks that since they are going out of business they have temporarily joined the ranks of neiman marcus or saks, and they have adjusted their prices accordingly. the upside is that i see right through their lies, plus my new comforter is shiny pretty and i have a new sweater to wear tomorrow.

it's all about the wrongness...and the cringing.

i'm glad i'm not the only person who wants to throw things at the tv when this commercial comes on. i always wondered what was up with her voice sounding weird--turns out she has a german accent. (not that there's anything wrong with that, but i still want to throw things.)

betterment.

i have made peace with the cable gods and am resigned to having cable whether i want it or not, especially since my cable and internet connection apparently are not mutually exclusive. the time warner gods have not only spoken, they have also won. all i have to say is this: karma hurts. (i'm talking about them, not me.) (being perfect, of course, i have done nothing wrong.)

so far this week is going much better than last, for several reasons. here, i will list them:

item 1: mainly, the killer pms has stopped and i no longer want to kill everyone in sight. it was getting so bad last week that every time i left the house i wanted to either a. smack people with my purse or b. rear-end them with my car, and i was vocal about it to the point of scaring alvin (maybe he thought he was going to be smacked and run over? i don't know). i love my car and don't want to hurt it, but the car love was almost superceded by my desire to hurt stupid people. i suppressed it.

item 2: we got a christmas tree over the weekend, at the happy christmas tree farm with the overfed, spoiled goats and the hot cocoa and the happy people cutting down their christmas trees. it's probably my favorite christmas activity ever, if only because i don't get presents anymore. this is so out of character that i have to put it in tiny font: while cutting down our tree, i told alvin that the only thing that would make the christmas tree farm more fun was if we had kids. i know, i don't know where this is coming from either. the wanting a baby thing makes me want to shoot myself or breed, i'm not sure which. i don't know where it came from! it won't go away! wtf?

item 3: if an expensive but necessary purchase made during the holidays qualifies as a present, then i lied and i really do still get gifts: we finally! bought matching! bedroom furniture! now we can toss the goodwill furniture we bought in north carolina and have pretty matching furniture! it will be here saturday. did i mention the prettiness? and the matchiness? wheee!

item 4: one of alvin's coworkers is married to one of our vet people (for we have many vet people), and at alvin's office christmas party on friday night i cornered her--because she's super cool about these things--and complained about the beagle dog smell. she said he probably has a skin infection (this is where i started to feel stupid. i was like, you mean he's not just trying to get back at me by smelling bad? and she was like, no.) and then she called in a prescription medicated antibacterial doggie shampoo, and we picked it up at the vet the next day. how cool is that? i got free food & doggie advice! i was very grateful.

now i have to bathe beagle dog twice a week with shampoo that smells like the inside of a rotting pumpkin. really, it smells like a pumpkin that is past its shelf life but hasn't yet turned black and gooey. this stuff had better work, because i have to put it on the hydrophobic dog and then let it do its thing for 10 minutes. that's 10 very looooong minutes to sit there with a dog that smells like a rotting pumpkin and wants to claw me to death because he thinks i'm doing it on purpose. and he'd better love me.

because they hate me.

so. time warner reconnected roadrunner for us.

and now we have cable again.

WHY CAN'T THEY GET IT RIGHT?

why i hate time warner, continued.

so time warner, in all their infinite wisdom, cancelled roadrunner along with our cable even after they told me they wouldn't do that. they said they're sorry (somehow i think not; this is the second time they've done this) and that they'll send someone out tomorrow to turn it back on. ha. i probably won't have an internet connection until next week sometime. what the hell did people do before tv and internet? what?!

tomorrow i'm getting a massage, because dealing with time warner was just too much. maybe that's what people did before cable--they got massages.

i'm at a coffee shop right now using the wifi since i'm unconnected (and very sad, being unconnected) at home. and the coffee shop i'm at? the one far from my home? alvin's ex girlfriend is here, too. the other coffee shop i avoid because she's always there? yeah, she's not there now. she's here. he's talking to her, which i don't really care about because at least he's not reading this rant over my shoulder as i type.

there had better be an extra good christmas present this year. that's all i'm saying.

why i won't be getting a christmas present this year, or: how alvin worms his way out of shopping.

apparently, since i keep track of our money, if alvin buys me anything i'm going to know where he bought it. and thus, he's not able to shop for anything for me because it wouldn't be a surprise. (i told him the same is true of anything i buy for him, and he said: but i don't pay attention to our financials.)

i hope he's kidding.

i hope the pressure to buy!more!stuff! consumes him and he gets me something nice.