Category: irritations

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Friday, April 13, 2007

Rectal Exam or Tax Day?

So it's just about Tax Day. That wonderful day when we collectively bend over and take it in the arse (hopefully on a metaphorical level, but who am I to judge if that's your sort of thing?) from the Internal Revenue Service, or as I prefer to call them the Iniquitous Raping Scourge.

It really annoys me that I have to account for every penny I've earned, every penny I've spent for which I hope to claim a deduction, save every relevant receipt and paycheck stub, and then at the end of it all, I realise that my boss hasn't withheld enough from my wages, and I've got to just bite the bullet and allow them to rudely shove a (hopefully) gloved hand up my arse and yank out another grand or so.

And yet, where's the government's accountability? I'd really like to see some of their receipts. I'd like to know why politicians can't have a business lunch at Denny's rather than some 5-star establishment. Considering what the patrons of Denny's restaurants are like around here (and I use the word "restaurant" loosely), I'd think the politicians would fit right in with the usual clientele.

The freeways undergoing destruction renovation around here are positively littered with signs claiming "It's your nickel, watch it work". I don't remember being asked if they could spend my tax nickels on ripping up the roads for the next 7 or 8 years. Seems to me that they only just finished ripping up the roads from the last fucking project. Come to think of it, I wasn't asked about that one, either.

So. In conclusion, I think I'm going to write to my local congresspeople and request a detailed spreadsheet of their deductions, income, and all of their income tax returns for the past 5 years. I think it would be truly edifying. The $5,000 government hammer may be a very old joke, but I'm guessing you might still find a few excessively priced items in current politicans' receipts. And if I know where they're going to spend these huge wads of cash, and from whom they're buying these ridiculously overpriced items, I can get in on the action. Please, Governor Gregoire, keep me in mind next time you're willing to spend $10,000 on a haircut. I'll get a Flo-Bee and do it for you for a mere $8,000. Think of the savings. And I'll even take payment under the table so neither of us will have to claim it on our taxes.


One final note: RIP Kurt Vonnegut. You have been my favourite author since I read Cat's Cradle when I was 12 (well, tied with Anthony Burgess), so much so that I named my dog after you: Kurt von Nugget. You will be very, very missed. Rest in peace.

Categories: irritations

.:13 comments | baked by pie at 10.04 AM | permalink:.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly
[...but since she's an old lady, we don't care]

I was ranting to Rob the other night [surprise, surprise] about how all the "you must look younger" advertising on TV is aimed at women. With good reason, of course; women aren't allowed to age these days. If you don't look 20 when you're 60, you're just a worthless human being. Anyway, after seeing the umpteenth ad creating a panic about how not-so-white teeth can make you look like an old hag, I started thinking about all the areas these advertisers are still missing. They've already covered teeth, skin, hair color, hair loss, hair that's too flat, hair that's too frizzy, breast size, body hair, nails, tanning, weight, hell they're even making women paranoid about the youthful appearance of their underarm skin.

And just think of all the poor gynecologists out there, forced daily to look at antediluvian girlie-bits. Oh, the humanity! They've already got ads for wipes to make you paranoid about how clean you are, ads for sprays to make you paranoid about how stinky you are, there are even freaking shaving templates because everyone wants interestingly-shaped pubic hair [you wouldn't want to get bored with it, would you?]; pretty much everything except makeup. Okay, so society has already told us that if women don't look like a prepubescent girl below-the-belt that they're way too hairy and no one will ever want to have sex with them. And besides, you don't want to look older than 12, do you? But I say, instead of removing all the hair, how about we encourage the trend of putting it into little pig-tails? Or adding a few bows here and there. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before someone invents some sort of gynecological make-up.

And what of the state of your ovaries, woman? They're just sitting in there all neglected. Don't you care how young your ovaries look? I guarantee you that without this cream your ovaries will appear shriveled and unsightly. You'll never get a man looking like that, you know.

This is why I'm so glad I don't give a crap about how old I look. Poor Rob. He'll be all distinguished-looking at 60, and he'll be married to what appears to be a desiccated alien mummy - minus the bandages and formaldehyde. Hopefully.

Categories: irritations

.:2 comments | baked by pie at 4.18 PM | permalink:.

Monday, June 05, 2006

Random stuff that flits through my brain, Part #3,720,511,523

Have you ever really thought about the phrase: "If you love someone, set him free. If he comes back, he's yours. If he doesn't, he was never yours to begin with"? Wouldn't this just result in an endless loop? Maybe it's just my logical programmer's mind taking over, but it seems to me that if you let him go and he came back, and you still loved him, you'd have to let him go again. And again. And again. Eventually he'd get really pissed off and leave forever, and then where will you be?

And to change the subject completely, some good news: Rob and I had a surprisingly great meeting with our adoption case worker on Saturday (I'll spare you the details of the unbelievable mess that we've been dealing with for the past month or so, what with the  miscommunication between our caseworker, our agency and ourselves, and the resultant major irritation on my part). We spent 3 hours in the local Starbucks discussing her concerns (mainly my background, of course), but in the end I think we're all happy and feeling good about each other. She's starting to write up our home study document now, so we're nearly ready to submit our dossier to China and get approval from the US government.

Once all that's done, it's basically just wait mode for us, until the Chinese officials send us a photo and information about the baby they've chosen for us (probably early- to mid-2007 - the wait time is nearly 12 months right now). Now we can concentrate on thinking up the most heinous name possible for the little tyke - because we all want to be just like celebrities, right? Right? Damn.

Categories: daily life, adoption, irritations

.:5 comments | baked by pie at 1.22 PM | permalink:.

Friday, May 26, 2006

Tomorrow Rob and I are off to see NIN (with Bauhaus supporting - woo!) again. Unfortunately I had to pass on their appearance at the Sasquatch Festival at the Gorge today, since there was just no way my boss was giving me another day off, so we're going to see them in Ridgefield (down near Portland) tomorrow instead. And since I got my Buzzcocks tickets in the post yesterday, I've still got something to look forward to after what will undoubtedly be the last NIN show I'll be attending for the next five years, if Trent's usual touring schedule is anything to go by.

And just for the hell of it, I've decided we need another caption contest, so please leave your captions for the below photo in the comments. The best caption will win something not entirely unlike useless junk.

Click to view full size

Categories: irritations, daily life

.:3 comments | baked by pie at 12.18 PM | permalink:.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Family Friendly or Freakin' Futile

After visiting my pain management doc this morning, I popped in to Fred Meyer to get my prescriptions filled. While I was sitting there in the pharmacy waiting, I noticed that one of the check-out aisles had a sign over it stating "Family Friendly". All this means is that this particular aisle doesn't have risqué magazines like Cosmo [ooh shocking, get me my nitroglycerin], since I'm fairly sure that Fred Meyer doesn't sell the 'Faces of Death' as an impulse item by the register.

It just seems a little overdone to me. The whole political correctness/protect our children from every-freakin'-thing trend, I mean. First they had black cards laid across the front of these women's magazines so that all you could see of the cover was the magazine's name. Now, apparently, children are so in need of sheltering that they can't even be in the same aisle as these periodicals. Reading a couple of headlines like "How to Have Hot Monkey Sex" and "Humping for Health" might be good for these kids. We coddle kids today in so many different ways (bark instead of blacktop in playgrounds, plastic playground equipment instead of metal which gets white-hot in the sun¹, and a distinct lack of lawn darts and BB guns), but all they have to do is watch the news and they'll be inundated with disturbing images of violence and sexual depravity. Why is a magazine which treats sex as something healthy and enjoyable so frightening? Kids can play violent video games, and listen to music with lyrics exhorting sex and violence, but Cosmo is apparently the work of the devil.

So my contribution to ending the coddling of today's children is that I'm going to start wearing a giant badge that reads:
I have sex
Ask me how!
I'll be a one-woman sex education machine. And don't forget to take a pamphlet about the hot monkey lovin'.

¹: It's just not summer until you've removed a yard of skin by going down a metal slide that's been sitting all day in the sun when it's 100°F.

Categories: irritations, daily life

.:17 comments | baked by pie at 1.53 PM | permalink:.

Sunday, May 14, 2006

An Open Letter to Patrons of the London Underground

Dear Tube Patrons,

Please discover deodorant. When the weather gets up around 20C it's time to learn of its use. I do not appreciate having your sweaty, hairy underarms in my face while trying to innocently travel from Holland Park to Tottenham Court Road. I realise that it's hot, and that we're crammed into little metal containers like sardines, but it's just common courtesy to attempt some personal hygiene so that you don't cause nausea in your fellow passengers.

And speaking of nausea, when leaving the pub late at night after having had a few too many, please empty your stomach contents into the nearest trash receptacle before entering the Tube. I don't think I've ever seen so many people move from one side of the car to the other so quickly before - not even when I saw a well-dressed businessman yark in his own lap years ago.

In closing, I would like to say that London is my favourite city, and I would move back there in a heartbeat if I could afford it, but traveling on the Tube, while cheap and handy, is not as pleasant as it could be. Please work on this.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Pie

Please note that this open letter is not directed towards all Tube patrons, just the stinky, barfing ones.

Yes, we're back. I'll have some details tomorrow (hopefully). In the meantime, you can view a few of our holiday photos here: London photoset at Flickr. More to come.

Categories: letters, irritations, daily life, photographs

.:7 comments | baked by pie at 8.55 PM | permalink:.

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Get thee to a swizzle stick

Hello, my name is Pie and I'm a rageaholic.

Chorus: Hello, Pie!

[Clears throat, leans toward microphone] I'm here because I've recently realised that I'm harbouring rage about everything. I've finally reached the zenith of apoplexy, and I need help (although I have to admit the view's pretty nice from up here). You all know about my road rage so I'll skip that, but now I find I also have work rage, food rage, crowd rage, weather rage, 'net rage, humanity rage and infinite, all-encompassing rage.

I'm always surprised that more employers don't offer mental health days, considering how easily accessible firearms are these days, not to mention the not inconsiderable risk of a slight bruise from a firm and determined poking-finger. Hell, all you have to do is open a newspaper, read a few of the headlines from any news website, or turn on the 24 hour television news network to see the proliferation of unhinged loonies out there. And going insane and turning on your coworkers may have been started by postal workers, but it seems to have been enthusiastically adopted by workers of pretty much every other industry.

So where are the mental health days we so desperately need? Where I used to work, you'd damn well better have an organ dangling out of you if you call in. I tell you, one of these days I'll slip into something a little more maniacal and start leaving banana peels on the stairs, eating coworkers' clearly-marked lunches, and playing Tiny Tim's "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" at an obscene volume in my office. See, I don't own any weapons, so my rampage would have to be sponsored by my sparkling personality with backup provided by a little bad-tempered scowling.

My rage and I thank you for listening. All together now, the "Antipathy Prayer™":

Velveeta grant me
the crankiness to harangue the people that annoy me;
the ingenuity to invent new and creative invectives for idiot drivers;
and the apathy to avoid going postal.

Categories: silliness, irritations

.:5 comments | baked by pie at 12.23 AM | permalink:.

Monday, April 10, 2006

My inner nudist

Do you ever wonder why once we get past a certain age, particular behaviours are not just discouraged but actively prohibited? For instance, what's so wrong with running around naked? When they're young, one of the greatest activities most kids can think of is to yank off the diaper and run free and easy in the breeze. Apparently we're all little streakers on the inside. So why is it that after a certain point, the only people who do this are those who live in nudist colonies (or attention whores who enjoy running through Wimbledon or worse, snooker championships), and from what I've seen, you wouldn't really want to see most of them naked anyway.

Not that I'm saying I want to run around naked.

I just don't understand why, now that I'm physically an adult, I have to act all sober and staid (read: boring). I want to throw my inhibitions to the wind and dance to muzak in the supermarket right beside the cold deli meats. I want to shove food in my face with both hands and no consideration as to where my mouth is actually located. I want to spin around in circles to the point where I get so dizzy I fall over onto my butt. I want to talk to myself in public - not that I don't already do this, I just want people to stop backing away from me and flashing the evil eye when I do it.

Am I so wrong in wanting this? I propose that tomorrow at lunch time, we all strip off our clothes, and dance on our desks like there's music playing only we can hear. I can count on all of you, right?

Please disregard the fact that I will be telecommuting tomorrow, so my little lunch hour escapades will be witnessed by no one except my resident home-office gecko... You should all still totally do it.

Categories: silliness, irritations

.:4 comments | baked by pie at 12.45 PM | permalink:.

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Leavin' on a jet plane

So I came home from work this evening to a message saying that our 8am flight was cancelled. Rob called up and spoke to an airline customer service rep who tried to put us on another flight tomorrow (since we have non-freakin'-refundable hotel reservations). Turns out the only available flight to Las Vegas tomorrow is at 5.30 in the morning. Five-fucking-thirty. And considering we have to be there an hour and a half beforehand, I don't think I'll even bother to go to sleep. But it's all in the name of seeing NIN, so I'll stop complaining.

Anyway. I'll be gone until Monday; try not to miss me too much. I'll bring you back a crappy t-shirt that says, "Pie went to Vegas and all I got was this crappy t-shirt".

Categories: irritations, music, daily life

.:4 comments | baked by pie at 6.31 PM | permalink:.

Saturday, March 25, 2006

They confiscated my tomatoes at the door

Anyone else watch movie trailers peppered with positive comments from reviewers and wonder how the comments have been taken out of context to appear positive? I saw an ad for a film tonight which shall remain unnamed, and the 'rave review' shoved down my throat consisted of the phrases "explosive", "dynamite" and "pin you to your seat". So of course I end up taking these snippets and writing a mini-review in my head. Something along the lines of: "less exciting than if the movie-goer seated next to you has explosive gas", "you'll be thinking about blowing yourself up with dynamite in order to escape", and "the only way you'd watch this film to the end is if the director came out to physically pin you to your seat".

It can't just be me that does this. Can it?

Categories: irritations

.:4 comments | baked by pie at 12.12 AM | permalink:.