Things That Deserve Celebration

WARNING:  I’m about to go on a tirade.  I do not wish to offend, or fuck, maybe I do.
I HATE when couples celebrate month to month anniversaries.  In fact, I can’t even allow the word anniversary to escape my lips.  I’m forced to type it for the sake of the post but other than that, absolutely not.  I’m still even undecided about couples celebrating year to year anniversaries that aren’t marriage, even though technically those are the only acceptable ones seeing as the root of the word implies year.

Anyway, in an effort to be obnoxious I’ve decided to compile a list of things that are not properly respected as cause for celebration.

*Finishing a semester—you gotta study and take finals, you have to work for that shit, you can date any joker for a month, but reading like 6 books, writing 12 papers, and pulling all nighters now THAT is worth a celebration.

*Running a marathon—Seriously, those take practice and training.  Did you have to train months prior to be able  to finish dating that person for a month?   Probably the best way to celebrate is just to relax.    But have all your friends over and relax together.

*Getting a job—There are various instances in which this is worth celebration.  It could be your first one ever, or your first big one out of college.  Maybe you just ended that long unemployment streak.   You had to apply, you had to get dressed up multiple times, you had to answer inane questions. Did you have to do any of those to date someone?

*Doing your laundry—You only have two days off a week and somehow you managed to take that much deserved time off and lug your heavy laundry down the road.  Also, you changed your dollars into quarters and when you got home you hung up and folded your clothes. I’ll bet you never had to lug your heavy significant other that far. (I apologize to anyone who’s date blacks out, then maybe you have)

So maybe I got a little ridiculous by my 4th example but I think I’ve presented things far more worth celebrating than a month of dating.  Do you  just want presents that badly?  Please, someone explain to me the reasons behind celebrating month to month dating.  Do you not believe you’ll make it the whole year so you celebrate every precious month?

Seriously, I’m willing to listen.  But let’s be honest, I’m sure all I’ll do is listen, listen and laugh at you.

The Great “Appropriate Things to Say in Front of Children” Debate.

Today there was a small child in my office.  He was presumably the son of a man here in our office to do a voice-over.  Surprisingly, this is not the first time a small child has been in this office, a fact I find monstrously unsettling because I am not a person who adores, coos over, or even cares for the existence of small children.  They do not belong in offices during the day or any other time for that matter.  They especially do not belong when I’m forced to watch Sesame Street or Cailiou on our tv.  (Even try to correct me on the spelling of that cartoon and I’ll go back in time and gut your mother so you could never have been a small child).

Moving along….

Because he assumed everyone in the office was an adult, what a silly mistake for an office during the day, a visitor said “fuck” as he was leaving.  The same man subsequently grimaced and apologized due to the presence of “one of those things that does not belong.”  Get it?

This instance reawakened my ongoing debate with the world about an individual’s  personal decorum concerning the presence of children.   I’m reminded a time in college when my roommates and I all innocently ravaged our meals at Perkins after a night of heavy drinking.  One such roommate expressed an overwhelming desire to throw up, a natural inkling after most of those nights we had in college. (I took care of most of my vomiting the night before, but to each his own)  A DIFFERENT roommate immediately chastised the other for saying “throw up” because gasp! awe! alas! and woah! there was a child nearby!  Me, always just keeping my mouth shout when necessary said, “Why? People in families throw up!”

Hence, the debate is opened.  Why should a baby be allowed in a restaurant to not speak of throwing up but actually THROW UP in front of my face, but such a word should not be uttered in front of a child?

I will say “fuck” here,

I will say “fuck” there,

I will say “fuck” anywhere.

It’s not my job to raise anyone, that’s why I’m on birth control.

Question of the Day

Q: Why do people insist on messing around with the anus?

Discussion: I just find it not to be necessary in so many situations where it occurs

there are usually myriad other options

Black Bill: Hmmm

A myriad of other options for things people do with the anus?

me: no- myriad other options besides the anal option

me: in any variety of situations where we find it

Black Bill: Well, I wish they could find another option for my colonoscopy!

me: and then there are some situations where there are NOT other options

Clap clap

A man just clapped in my face.

 

At work. 

 

On purpose.

 

What the HELL kind of people seriously work here?  I had stopped for about a half second to push my ID more securely into my pocket when I was jolted out of my concentration by a farmer-looking red-nosed lanky old man, clapping at my forehead.

 

“Watch where you’re gooo-iiing,” he sang with his eyebrows raised up into his hairline almost.

 

“Uh.. sorry?” I replied, taken aback.

 

“It’s ok…” Farmer Rude admonished me further, in the most pristine I’ll let it go this time of tones.

 

RUDE!  He’s on my list for sure now.  Don’t think I’ll forget you Abe part 2.  I just got done going nuts on the security guards who stalk me yesterday, and I won’t hesitate to give you your share. 

 

For the love of christ!

Resolutions ‘09

So I’ve been putting off making any real resolutions at all thus far.  The reason is that I feel I am condemning anything I resolve out loud to epic failure, sheerly by the fact that if spoken out loud, it becomes a New Year’s Resolution.  And I know damn well how those have ended up in the past.  For instance, one year I resolved to be nice to everyone.  HAHA!! HAHAHAHA!! HAHAHA!! Oh…

 

So anyway, here is my wishlist of potential resolutions:

 

1 – Lose weight & tone up (I never said these were going to be unique)

2- Work on finding a grad school - and a grad school program for that matter!  I.e. Visit some schools!

3 – Work on my creative writing

4- Get a side job with a publication

5- Decide where my personal life is going… (this was left vague intentionally… rest assured I know what it means in my head)

 

But I won’t resolve to do any of those yet.  Making them a resolution means I can shunt them aside, because that’s what everyone else does and then we can all talk about it together and feel better about ourselves because we’re not the only ones who failed.  We must not succumb to this mentality of sheep!  Is there any other way I can accomplish my big life’s to do list aside from RESOLVING to? 

 

I’m thinking along the lines of doing Weight Watchers for the first time (hey shut up, Fergie did it too!  True story).  You know, where you trick yourself into losing weight because you don’t know the program well enough to cheat it yet?  Which reminds me, does anyone know how to do the new Momentum program and can teach it to me so I don’t have to pay $40 a month to make up for my lack of willpower and self-discipline?

 

Oh yeah #6 on my list of NOT resolutions – Develop some semblance of will power and self-discipline…

 

Happy New Year guys!  Great to be back in the office.  Really.  I’ll be here.  All.  Day.  Every.  Day.

 

Let’s do Happy Hour on Friday.  (Internal Resolution #1 – Look forward to things more often! Possibly by posting in the form of “Notes” on Facebook).

 

Oh and if any of you did go ahead and make a resolution or two… share it with us here in the form of a COMMENT!  COMMENTS are welcome.  RESOLVE (or not) to make more comments on the Crummity .    Just do it.

meh

I was at the Microcenter last weekend, and they had shirts that said “meh”

 

 True story.

 

 They also had ones that said “no I will not fix your computer”

 

Ok can someone please tell me what “meh” means?  I’ve seen it on people like Lynn Greetis’s Facebook statuses before, and the creepy Ben who I worked at Blockbuster with (the one who memorized my roommate’s license plate #s) used to say it.  What is the meaning of this and why does it exist in my world?  Explain yourselves! All I could bring myself to do was stare blankly and unblinkingly at the offending shirts until it was my turn in line, which took ungodly long I must add.  Probably at least 7 minutes with no one else in the store but me.

 

I’m feeling a little upset and confused at the moment.  And like I hope I never start incorporating this word into my vocabulary, ever!  I’m scared.  Don’t let it happen.  Save me.  Tell me what it MEANS!  Here is the urbandictionary definition provided to me by Peter Petrelli: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Meh But this does not yet explain the feeling of great annoyance I feel when I see or hear this word, and why it is used by Lynn and Ben and people at the Microcenter.

 

Comments?

It’s a Sign

Just now, an omen from the gods came to me, indicating I should select a certain long-forgotten bookmarked webpage, and write again in the Crummity.

As I speed-walked bullishly through the tourists back towards work, fretting about being punctual returning from lunch, I happened upon- lo and behold- a tour group.  The man lecturing (at the top of his lungs it seemed) to his captive audience had chosen the obscenely large statue of King Lear in the stone yard facing my building as his subject.  I caught a snippet, and turned my head slightly to hear Joe Tour Leader exclaim:

“Symbolism!  What better sign of REPRESSION than the middle ages??  It all fits perfectly… REPRESSION, here…”

Here, in front of my work building.  My building which is shaped like a cube, where ironically I sit at a cube within it all the live-long day, typing on a keyboard of cubed letters and forming my ass slowly into more and more of a flat square than the round bubble it used to be.  I enter the revolving doors.  They form 4 symmetrical cube shaped voids as I rotate in to…    

“Twenty five is a big age,” a blonde girl with a rectangular face is saying to her immemorable friend by the escalator.

Seriously?  It’s like god himself has a Sharpie Accent at the ready, sees me in my quarter life crisis floundering, flailing, intermittently crying and laughing maniacally, and sends random strangers to highlight the most acutely sensitive moments of it.  It, which right now is supposed to be (according to 99% of my elders) “THE BEST TIME OF YOUR LIFE,” “the time to have fun,” the time not to waste your “unlimited potential” and to “experience everything.”  And here I am next to King Lear’s big toe, afraid to be a minute late back to my desk and not willing to leave work early to cast my vote before 1 a.m. in probably the most historic election of our time because I might get fired from my $$,$$$ (I can’t bring myself to tell you) a year job and have to find another one just like it or go into debt attempting to make myself smarter through school again.

If the big Jeez be so spiteful though, then why did I spend the entire elevator ride up with a crooked smirk on my face at what I’d just heard with my own two elven ears?  Why did I turn around when I got off the elevator and smile freakishly at the people remaining in the car?  Is it because I have a sick sense of masochism and I secretly enjoy my predicament and the powers that be who apparently wish to squeegee my soul? 

Neh, I think it’s more like I’m trying more and more to realize that all you can do if you want to remain sane is laugh.  Laugh at your situation if you can find a way to make it funny, and if you can’t then I dunno… try to think ahead to the future, when you’ll likely look back from where you are and wonder what exactly was so terrible and confusing that I spent hours of silent torture worrying my mind to the core. 

Or if you’d rather just wait for that 20/20 hindsight then you can improvise, and hold a single hair from someone’s head and wait for them to move and it yanks out.  Then you immediately stare out the window until they look away or blame someone else.  That always gets me to laugh.  HA HA!

 

But anyway, The Quarter Life is just a phase… without the bad times we can’t appreciate the great ones right?  I’ll just keep telling myself that.

 

Anyone have any good stories of God spiting them today? 

Credo

Trust no one.

 

Fear me.

Power Outage at Addison

That roughly translates to punctuality outage for everyone, and also, common courtesy and normal behavior outage for CTA-riders at the same time, as I discovered yesterday morning.  With a single running track, half the amount of trains come to pick people up, and naturally their patience begins to wear thin.  Still, even in my compassion for others as I shared their plight, I found myself agape with wonder by the things that people let themselves do, even in the face of such an annoyance.

After waiting for 3 jam-packed trains to pass me by I was set to be 15 minutes late for work.  As the 4th train pulls up, I steel myself and jackhammer down into the tiniest of cart spaces,  like Kirstie Allie at Great America on the Demon.  The huge backpack in front of me is resisting my entrance, I can tell.  As I force myself further still (literally centimeters at a time), the doors threaten to shut and precisely bisect off the left half of my body.  I perform a quick ”Twista.” That is to say, I contort my body and dive, imagining myself in an Olympic luge on the superspiral toilet flush chute.  It works, and I successfully become wedged between the smeared glass wall and backpack boy.  An angry, so angry, midgetesque curly haired girl is in front of me, glaring holes into my abdominal region.  Approximately 3 random arms criss cross my field of vision.

My phone vibrates in my bag.  Curly Furious Sue’s eyes become slits as she manages to singe my bag with her eyes, the rage of 1000 suns firing out of control at the nerve of the audacious vibration.  We stop at Damen.  I twist my head, resembling the Exorcist, to see who else thinks they can get on.  A large, flowered, and certainly purposeful woman makes a meaningful lean.  There is no way.

“There is NO – – WAY!” shrieks Red, the one who owns the freckled arm that is under my chin. 

“There ees…  No way…” states nearby Mercedes gravely, shaking her head as slow as a slow clap.

Mercedes has nice glasses and more space than any of us on the other side of the wall.  If her and Midget Fury could shift a bit, the Backpack would probably be inducing far less pressure onto my rib cage.  But no one cares about that, as I had the nerve to shove my way on like I did.  I had the unauthorized balls to get on the train for work like everyone else this fateful morning, Jeez forbid!

Flowered Giant speaks, in response to the conductor’s repeated explanation announcement: “Yeah, tell that to my boss.  Hmmph.”

Flowered Giant suddenly becomes Flowered Oprah.  Damn straight Flowered Oprah, we have to get to work just like Midget Fury and Backpack Boy and Mercedes!  What makes them so elite!  Thank god you said something because I have not your collossal fortitude and so may well have been Backpacked right out, or burned to a cinder had I uttered my same feelings! 

My phone vibrates again.  MF glares again, with even more hatred than before.  But I am bolstered by Flowered Oprah’s statement of rightousness, so I do not look at Fury in fear this time.  Instead I check my watch with insolence, and see her jet of murderous flames only through my peripheral vision. 

A man wedges on at Division.  The doors close on him once, twice, thrice.  He is tall.  He is unfazed.  He shrugs nonchalantly at me over the heads of Red and Midget Fury and everyone else as he’s finally on safely, and having delayed our journey a full 30 seconds by his bravely endured thomping.

When we finally all exit at the Clark/Lake mecca,  I lose all control and sprint ahead of everyone to the escalator, swerving rudely between the unsympathetic and irritated crowd, though they like me are only concerned with their own inherent tardiness and recently violated personal space.   Although I am now sweating, and the people behind me’s loud foot stomps tell me I could move aside and let the speedier pass me by, I intend to get to the revolving doors first and I will.

And I did.

 

Then I took a cab to work from there saving myself 7 minutes and arriving only 18 minutes late instead of 25, which would have been far, far worse.

 

So damn you Midget Fury and your Satanic glare, and damn you Backpack Boy and your razor sharp baggage, and damn you Mercedes and your stately dictatorship!  And damn you Red and your shrill annoyingness!  Flowered Oprah, you’re cool.

 

This has been a wildly un-PC depiction of just one of my many astounding trips on the El, where people continue to shock yet amuse me each and every day.  Brought to you by the Kron herself.

To All The Crummity Fans

I completely regret the absolute disregard for Crummity updates. Unfortunately, I’ve been working 12-14 hour days and waking up very early to do so. Hopefully in time the Crummity will come back and knock everyone’s heads off.

I always wanted to be able to raise one eyebrow, regrettably, I cannot do so without the aid of this straw.