Category Archives: Real Life

Hatefest

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Since the news of the world and the buzz around my office has been aglow with love and goodwill (notice: took down the Bush countdown! na-na-na-na, hey-hey-hey…) and I’m in process of signing on to volunteer long-term with one of the best NYC charities EVER (which I’m not linking to cuz I don’t know how they would feel about that. Suffice to say it has to do with thrift stores) and the world seems like a rosier place all around despite impending doom…I’ve decided to dampen everyone’s spirits with a random list of stuff I hate more than just about anything else in the whole world. It’s like the conclusion of Bush43’s reign of imbecility has left a huge void in the bile-and-hatred section of my brain. So here’s a rather unorganized list. Please add to it in comments.

Stuff we hate

Paper – it’s obsolete
I don’t know why people still print things. And it annoys me when companies, like, say, the IRS, make me print & sign stuff for my electronic tax return. Cuz I don’t have a printer. That’s why I’m e-filing. Losers.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with you”
This is an essential catchphrase for anyone charged with writing condolence letters to people they don’t know very well. I used to get paid to write these letters. I know… it’s just a figure of speech. But really: stop saying this like you’re going to go home and pray about it. Unless you actually are, then please leave me out of it. I have enough problems with the supernatural without your guff sending the hereafter mixed messages.

Just say: I’m sorry your {blank} died.

Robert Heinlein
As a SF nerd, I am always confronted with compatriots who just loooove Heinlein. And then I have to stop being their friend. Because anyone who thinks that Stranger in a Strange Land is brilliant writing is thinking like a 16-year-old boy with a cheesy moustache. There, I said it.

Incessant Photo Snapping (and rude people in theaters)
This clip from Patti LuPone was terrifying for many people, but honestly it kind of made her my new hero. As my friends and family will attest, I have on a number of occasions ranted this same rant at those around me who continue to flash their goddam cameras in my face while I’m trying to have a conversation or eat a damn meal. The question that always plagues me is, well, Can’t you just REMEMBER this instead?

And the gall of people raised in a spectator society to blatantly ignore announcements about photography and turning your cell phones off… the stupid and the oblivious of the world have narrowly escaped getting smacked in the back of the head by a size 9 wedge heel simply because I just lacked Patti’s chutzpah to actually articulate:

So what pushes YOUR buttons?

RIP Zima

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Let’s take a moment of silence, shall we, to honor the classiest of girly fake beers for high schoolers, which has, despite hanging in there somewhat innocuously for the past few decades, finally gone the way of Crystal Pepsi. It’s true, Miller Coors has finally halted production of Zima.

According to the Daily News, “the decision was due to weakness in the “malternative” segment and declining consumer interest,” and that the remaining inventory of the sort-of lemony, mostly gross malt beverage should be, erm, liquidated by December. Apparently, 16 year olds nowadays much prefer to drink their sickly sweet booze in the form of alcoholic energy drinks, as the can design is chic makes it easier to stash in your backpack without any telltale clanging of glass bottles.

This of course does not count the 6 pack of Zima that will continue to live out its 18-year-and-counting halflife in my parents’ liquor cabinet.

From the Chocolate Files: Whole Triumph

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I developed a deep seated love for many things during my 2002 spring semester in London: public transportation, drum & bass, Stongbow, Caryll Churhill and – most fervently –  Cadbury Whole Nut chocolate bars.

The Whole Nut, not to be confused with the much busier Fruit and Nut, is a magnificent combination of sugary smooth chocolate and whole hazelnuts.  It’s as if Mr. Goodbar had a cousin with a cute accent, and after the first time Goodbar brought him by your house, you secretly wished he was your friend instead.

They were at the time sold in vending machines on the London Underground platforms.  This is a game of chance for the consumer, as you never could tell if your delicious snack would dispense before the train rolled into the station.  One such machine provided me with the singular triumph of my chocolate-eating existence, one that I still marvel at years later.

It was a rainy Saturday morning, as most Saturday mornings are in London in March, and I was waiting on the platform at Regent’s Park station to catch the Bakerloo line to Paddington Station. My friend S. was arriving on a 10:30 train from Bath, where he was also spending a semester.  Actually, we were not quite friends, per se.  We’d dated the entire previous year and arranged to go to the UK together, until we broke up just before departure.  It was very, very important that I was nice to him this day.

Unfortunately, the previous night had been spent at a very cheap comedy club located in London’s financial district, stealthily finishing off half-empty bottles of red wine my friends and I lifted from the tables of early-departed middle-aged Brits. Even in 2002, the dollar was doing us no favors and none of us could afford to drink.

We stayed through all three sets, not caring that it was after midnight and the tubes had stopped running. The trek back to our at-critical-mass student flat just south of Camden Town, though not normally that far, was as long and arduous as a Dickensian-era breach birth. I recall lying down in a bus shelter at one point and imploring my brave comrades to go on without me, and the frenzied joy of finding a pay toilet after what felt like hours, holding the door open a crack so that each of us could go using the only 20p coin we had on us.  By the time we reached home, it was after three. But I could not face the guilt of leaving S. stranded at Paddington on his first trip to London.

So with a hefty quantity of red wine still sloshing in my head, I waited dutifully the next morning on the platform, wanting to die.  What could possibly ease my suffering?

The Cadbury machine shone in its royal purple glory, offering chocolate salvation from halitosis and headache.  A quick search of the crevices of my bag yielded two 20p coins, just shy of the 50p needed. I peered from the edge of the platform into the tunnel and saw no train lights approaching. One more desperate plunge into my jeans pockets miraculously came up with a shiny 10p.

In went the coins into the slot. I punched the Whole Nut button.

Not a sound.

I punched the button again. Still nothing.

That is, except for the sound of the train trundling down the tunnel toward me.  My heart leapt. This was no time to be picky.

I rabidly punched the Fruit & Nut, Dairy Milk, the chewing gum, praying for some sugar to get me to Paddington.

The machine reacted nonchalantly as the train doors slid open.  Bleary passengers stared flatly as I waved my hands in front of the slot to get it to hurry. The cheery auto-announcement voice called out the station stop and instructed us to stand clear of the doors.  I hovered halfway between the open doors and the vending machine, full of woe.

Something thunked in the machine.  The train doors began to close.

I lunged at the candy slot, jamming my hand inside and closing a tight fist around the contents.  I threw myself across the platform, diving through the encroaching doors, hitting the train floor and pulling my feet in just as they came to a close.  The passengers stared at me, faces full of English disdain.  Just as I started to feel embarrassed, I opened my fist.

Not one.  Not two.  But three.  Two Fruit & Nut and one Whole Nut bars clenched in my clammy hand.  I held them up for all to see, grinning my victory throughout the train car, dared anyone to mock me. I was Boudicca sacking the Romans.  I was Churchill weathering the storm. The day was mine.

I consumed two of the bars on the way to Paddington and presented the third to S., to welcome him to the city that had been treating me so well.

From the Shy Files: Acrylic Carnage

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My first year of college, I arrived shy and semi-Midwestern, fresh off the minivan to a huge state university four hours from my hometown on the outskirts of Buffalo. Despite its proximity to where I grew up, I might as well have been on Mars.
At orientation I secretly hoped that since I was nice, quiet and quirky, I would have no trouble gaining acceptance in this daunting collegiate community. I wasn’t looking to be the most popular girl ever, but I was ready for the new start and broader horizons I’d expected from going away to college.

I hadn’t counted on the Faux Yorkers.* In place of smiles and excited introductions, I was greeted at orientation with a wall of snobbery; pre-Greek, morning-makeup-wearing suburbanites who giggled at my accent and pointedly excluded me from their reindeer games.  Of course they had all shown up in squadrons from the high schools of Long Island and Westchester County. There was no room in the elevator for this girl from “upstate.” In retrospect I know now these kids had never been off The Island themselves and were grappling with the same massive insecurity we all were at 18. But at the time, their confident veneer was a shock.

By the time I was moving into my dorm room, I was right well humbled. The loop playing in my head was the same shy girl mantra that to this day crops up in my head like a wart that just won’t die, no matter how many times you dry-ice it. They know something you don’t know.

By the grace of Frank** I’d blindly picked a dorm that turned out to be located in the “nerdy” residential community. The ex-urban hordes had been forewarned against it, leaving a population of misfits, computer science majors and people who couldn’t get in anywhere else.

After I’d spent my first two days sulking in my room, Janki came knocking to hang out.  She and Diane (names have been changed of people I don’t know anymore)came from a small town in the Catskills, and seemed very sophisticated to me. They smoked Marlboro menthol lights. They went out dancing to clubs and frat parties, drank Amaretto sours and were dry-humped by strange men of all colors. They were not terrified of other people. And they wanted to include me.

One afternoon, the two of them gathered all the girls on the floor to take the bus to the mall on the outskirts of town.  The purpose? Getting our acrylic nails put on.  I put on my faker face and mentioned casually that I could sure use a touch-up, too.

In fact, I grew up on a sheep farm with hippie parents and had never seen fake nails that weren’t the Lee Press-On variety. This was totally exotic to me.

We arrived at the salon,which was called–I’m not joking–Asian Nails, and all got separate chairs. I was nervous, feeling kind of silly as I’d never done something so blatantly girly. Suddenly I was on my own, face to face with a middle-aged nail technician who was the only one working there not wearing a mask.

Perhaps the fumes had made her careless.  Perhaps a hard life had made her cruel.  Maybe there was a Sadists School for Manicurists.

She must have sensed my reticence and fear of confrontation as soon as I sat down. She must have been lurking in the back of the salon all day, waiting for some young nervous nellie to pounce on. Regardless, she was steel-faced and unflinching as she started cutting up my cuticles. The first few times she jabbed my finger, it stung.  A lot.  But hey, I thought, biting my cheeks, this is beauty stuff, right? It’s supposed to smart a little bit…? As I remained silent, struggling to keep my palms on the table, I’m certain I saw a maniacal glint appear in her eyes.

The 45 minutes that followed are difficult to remember. I must have entered a Yogic state. At the end of it all, I had ten massive new bits of pink and white plastic stuck to the ends of my hands, and rivulets of blood running down each finger. My forearms were sore from pressing my palms to the table. But I did not flinch, I did not cry out, not once, because I’d thought for sure that I was just being a wimp. I mean, people wax their legs, right? That hurts…?

Imagine my surprise when we all bade goodbye to Asian Nails and I commented to my new friends how I didn’t know how much this hurt! Man, you guys must all be tough to do this regularly. Imagine their stunned silence when Diane examined my bloodied fingertips and swore, marvelling that I would let this succubus with a cuticle-pusher methodically lacerate the delicate skin on my fingertips for almost an hour and not say anything.

I filed off most of the acrylics that night and kept all 10 fingers wrapped in band aids for the next 3 days. Going to the bathroom was a challenge.

Now of course, with my much-improved self-confidence, I wouldn’t fall victim to a sadistic fingernail professional. I recently got a manicure and gave a good “OWW” at the first sign of aggressive filing.

Although I still do tell hair stylists they’ve done a great job even if they’ve left me looking like Anton Chiguhr. We all want to be liked.

*This is a term I made up. It refers to people from the suburban areas surrounding NYC (LI, Westchester, Rockland, parts of Jersey) who consider themselves quite the height of fashion and coolness in their velour warm up suits and knock off Fendi bags, and who maintain they are from “the City” even though they only go to Manhattan once a year to see the Tree and buy sweatshop schwag in Chinatown.