grievance: american idol's boys looking like women

I will admit that there is no point to this stream of thought; nonetheless, I felt obligated to ask of someone, anyone, this politically-incorrect, socially-unprincipled, consciously-unbridled question:

Why do all of the boys on American Idol look like/"want" to look like women? Furthermore, they all essentially SING like women. Their ranges are super high and they are constantly using lofty, diva-like vibrato.

I have no problem with individual inclinations toward femininity amongst men, make no mistake please. I am just curious about the cause of, and totally baffled by, this bizarre social phenomenon.

Truth be told, I wasn't following this season. (I've been lackadaisical with my television-watching because I watch about 5 shows on television, of which most are not of the reality type and have thus been dormant. [Note: this is not a direct result of my having "good" taste in television. I like shitty, shitty TV. I just don't particularly love reality shows. I'm not a snob about it. I just hate stupid people.])

In any event, I happened upon last night's "boys' performance round" on American Idol, having missed most of the performances. At the end of the show, when they give a quick, 10-second playback of each performance, I was entirely caught off guard to see what I thought to be actual women. I take serious issue with this because American Idol's stylists, wardrobe people, etc. are making these dudes look like chicks:

Yes, that is the same guy. Has metrosexuality taken over the media in such a tempest that I, a native Manhattanite, am unable to identify gender? Pish posh.

-moon

grievance: bar etiquette (silly cocktails)

There are plenty of blogs which come from the standpoint of a bartender or someone who works in service about all the fucked up shit that customers do. So I've been blog-reticent on this matter, in the hopes of not being redundant.

But oh my stars, each and every one of these following drinks is ordered each and every time I bartend. And each and every time, I want to take a pint glass, smash it on the bar and scratch the customer's face out with that beautiful serrated translucence. So in an attempt to NOT go to jail for assault, I've decided to use my experience for good and share with you all...

Drinks to Order If You Want the Bartender to Laugh At You:
1. SoCo/lime shots. Usually ordered by: a douchebag who played football in high school, majored in business or political science, and is currently working at his daddy's company. Always ordered in a gratuitous quantity, like TEN, to give to all his buddies, i.e. the vapid blonde chicks he's with. You know them: the ones who bring purses nice enough to have to wipe the bar with a beverage napkin before putting it down. And the douchebag dudes that look JUST like him, also wearing popped-collared-Polo shirts. Southern Comfort is fucking DISGUSTING.

2. Red Bull mixed with top-shelf vodkas, especially, but not limited to Grey Goose. If you're drinking Red Bull with liquor, you're essentially a crack head. Red Bull, while I do love it solo, is like carbonated SHIT. And if you're mixing it with booze, it's probably nighttime. Nobody needs that kind of caffeine after noon. Your goal with this kind of "cocktail" is essentially to have a heart attack, die, or throw up. It doesn't matter if it's house vodka or fucking Belvedere. You just sound like an asshole.

3. Partially connected to number 2, STOP ORDERING GREY GOOSE. It really isn't that great a vodka. You're paying for a name that you think is trendy and respected. It really isn't.

4. You have no place ordering a dirty martini, (of course, with Grey Goose) at a rock bar. For that matter, the fact that anyone would think such bars would serve mojitos is simply ludicrous. There are people smashing into you from behind, left and right trying to get a drink. You think I'm going to muddle mint leaves? You deserve to be choked with a lime for even asking.

5. If you order Jager bombs or Irish car bombs, you are automatically an asshole.

6. If you order Jager shots, surfer on acid shots, or red-headed slut shots, you are automatically a douchebag. For that matter, kamikazi shots, lemon drop shots and buttery nipple shots make you a fucking pussy.

7. Anything "sour," namely whisky sours, amaretto sours, or (ugh) Midori sours. No, no, no. Those, along with Malibu bay breezes, are also a huge tip off to "I'm 16 years old." If you ARE 16 years old, think of a better drink. If you're NOT 16 years old, message to you: be a bigger loser.

8. I understand that somewhere along the way somebody decided to turn "vodka and tonic" into "vodka tonic," and "vodka and cranberry" into "vodka cranberry." I don't know why, but the linguistic transformation has happened. With that said, there is no such thing as a "gin tonic." Stop ordering them from me. It's just weird.

9. Stop drinking Jose Cuervo. Seriously. It's a Mexican dude pissing in a bottle.

10. Girls, stop drinking cosmopolitans and apple martinis if you're doing it because you think you're Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City. I can ALWAYS tell. You're not fabulous. You're probably FAT from drinking all that sugary, sugary crap. If you're wearing a tutu with leggings and expensive shoes, you deserve a smack in the head.

-moon

raging out at... ryan gosling

"I mean, God bless The Notebook," Gosling says. "It introduced me to one of the great loves of my life. But people do Rachel and me a disservice by assuming we were anything like the people in that movie. Rachel and my love story is a hell of a lot more romantic than that."

Where does one get in line for that?? And who knew it got better than The Notebook?

I'll be sharpening my razors if anyone needs me.

-stars

rageful grievance: purse casualties

Stars' Original Post:

Dear Cigarettes,

Stop FUCKING spilling out in my bag and ruining good smokeables.  I'm tired of reaching into my bag for chapstick and coming out with a handful of tobacco.

Your old friend,

Stars

Moon Addendum:

I agree wholeheartedly.  Especially when it gets in the cracks of lip gloss containers.  Smearing glittering and tobacco-filled ointment to your lips is key.  And I have evidence of a friend's purse dismay in the form of a picture:

-moon/stars

grievance: taxitv

There are very few problems I have with the concept of taxi-cabs. At the top of the list of merits of cabs may be the fact that I do not even possess a driver's license (and got my permit at age 19). A direct consequence of this is not having to elect a poor sap to be "designated douchebag" for the night. And I certainly love anything that facilitates inebriation. There are, of course, other aspects of the concept of taxis which I do love. However, concepts do not always pan out as intended.

In reality, a lot of cab drivers are assholes. And the ones who aren't ALWAYS want to chit-chat with you ONLY when you aren't in the mood to talk (e.g. when you're [spoken very quickly and in one breath, in my typical overdramatic fashion] rushing to school via cab because there is a test and you overslept and you need to take a last-minute look at your notes during the ride and the cabbie wants to ask you how to arrange 9 chairs evenly around a rectangular table [true story]). And there is simply NO polite way to say "shut the fuck up." None at all.

An even larger percentage drive like they're in a high-speed car chase or a car-simulation video game. However, I am not on the run from the police nor will I have another "life." I'm not a Super Mario Brother.

So now I present to you the newest thing to grace taxis - and the WORST since 1996 when they decided to install recordings to play when the driver would hit the meter. These were terrible because they were spoken either in a terrible Staten Island accent, telling you to "rememba to tsake you-wa belawngins when exsitin the tsaxi" or the one of which I have a blurry memory with, I believe, Eartha Kitt meowing or something and then, of course, reminding you to take your SHIT. I was in sixth grade so the memory is faded. Did Joe Torre do one... ?

Ladies and gentlemen, it's "TaxiTV." And it can go to hell.



It makes me furious. For those of you who have not been privy to (or forced into seeing) this atrocity, I shall explain. In keeping with (I suppose) the (unnecessary) technology of today, such as DVD screens in the backs of cars' headrests for children to be mollified, the Taxi and Limousine Commission has put fucking touch-screen "television" screens in the backs of taxicab partitions. This installation went hand-in-hand with credit-card-payment-ready cabs, and a GPS system. Why in the world the person in the back needs to see this screen, I've honestly no idea. (I'm going to break this aspect down because many people have claimed this to be the only real thing which can be defended):

A. If you get into a cab, you tell the driver where you're going and he takes you there. You don't tell him "make a right onto 56th street, then a left onto third avenue," etc. He knows. He does this for a living. Leave it to a professional. In fact, not only is this useless and erroneous information to give to a passenger, it's actually in some ways problematic, as it lends itself to "back-seat-driver"-ness.
B. You have to hit approximately ten buttons to get to the map. It's not even convenient.
C. You're in fucking New York City. Look outside your fucking window. Even if you're in an un-fucking-familiar neighborhood, there are big, green signs on EVERY SINGLE corner of the ENTIRE CITY. Not to mention, with the exception of certain areas, the city functions on an ordinal, numerical grid-system. Reaaaaally? You need GPS? Douche.

Okay. So, you may ask, what other useless shit is on there that makes you so vehemently furious, moon? Well, I shall tell you.
- Garbage, filler shit that has been deemed uncontroversial and vanilla enough, such as 5-second reviews of movies. Thanks. I learned a lot in 5 seconds, Jeffrey Lyons.
- Zagat fucking restaurant shit. Dude, Zagat is pretty much everywhere I go these. Leave me alone, Zagat. Who do you think you are? John Mayer? (See "raging out at... john mayer.)
- Weather. Someone told me that they liked the weather portion. My rebuttal: if you're in a taxi, you've already BEEN outside. You don't need to be TOLD what the weather is if you've already EXPERIENCED it.
- "Don't forget to..." as an "Ask the 'Locals'" bit, with "locals," of course, being celebrities like Julianne Moore or something. And the advice is like "bring the stroller, even if the kids say they want to walk." I don't have kids. And also, what the fuck? I feel like taking advice from your child is never a good idea. The other one I can recall is "bring an extra roll of film." Shut the fuck up. I don't like this because I don't like being told what to do. Especially not by celebrities. Espeeeecially when they don't pertain to me (not only do I not have children, but I own a digital camera).
- Random, skewed, couple-days-old news clips. Just as they're about to tell you some actual information, some shit like the "Taxi Rider's Bill of Rights" comes on. Yes, the yellow sticky thing that used to be stuck to the back of the partition. That used to be the ONLY information you needed. And if I weren't so fired up about TaxiTV, I'd write about the absurdity of granting "rights" to passengers.

I think I've made, thus far, a pretty good case for why this advancement in technology is silly and stupid. But if those reasons don't make you angry, ladies and gentlemen, the real reasons I am furious about TaxiTV:

Fucking inane and incomplete "headlines" on the ticker at the bottom of the screen. Is it not enough that you're in TRANSIT and watching television? You need another thing going on? Dude. Adderall has NO chance against these forms of gratuitous stimulation for people with ADD/ADHD. Or AC/DC for that matter. (Yes, people have AC/DC, clearly.)
I thought I'd share some with you:
- "6.4-Magnitude Earthquake Shakes Mexico." (Ummm - that's kind of important... You couldn't put that on the screen itself?)
- "Polls Open For Potomac Primaries." (Okay, this actually tells me nothing. Are you telling me to go vote? I don't live there. Let me know when there are RESULTS.)
- "Clinton Attacks Obama's Contributors." (This isn't really news. It's how campaigns work. She needs cash. Cooooool campaign manager, Hill.)
- "Homes Evacuated After Semi Overturns, Leaks." (WHAT???? Semi-what?)
- "5 Crossover Vehicles Named Best For Family." (Cool. Care to share which...? No..? Just wanna tell us that 5 exist...? Great. Thanks. )
- "100 Years Easier to Reach Than You Think." (I know, now, that there was some study done that essentially says we will be able to live longer than the past generation. However, this "headline" says nothing. Who is "you"? Who the fuck are they to tell me how difficult I think it is to reach 100?)
- "Britons Sound Off Against Anti-Child Device." (Do Brits hate children? Is that what this is saying? I feel like I'm on Jay Leno.)
- "Clemens' Ex-Teammates Dropped as Witnesses." (Why??? Damnit. I want stories here.)
- "Top Sports Photos of the Week." (Seriously now. What??? I even tried tapping it in the hopes that it was a link to said photos. Nope. Which I guess is actually fine seeing as this is non-news.)
- "Canadiens Player Accused of Stealing Purse." (This is actually fucking amaaaaaazing! A professional hockey player is stealing purses? Love it. This is the one thing I obtained from TaxiTV. However, I have no idea about whom they're actually speaking. Typical.)
- "Weird Chronicles: Modern Music Musings." (This isn't anywhere NEAR a complete thought, let alone piece of news. I do appreciate the alliteration of "Modern Music Musings." I, however, have no idea what this is TRYING to say.)

These "headlines" make me furious. I never thought I'd find something worse than the Post. I was wrong.

With all of this said, and I think I've made a lot of great points, the number one reason I want to have a duel to the death with TaxiTV's creator is...

LOOKING AT IT MAKES ME FUCKING NAUSEATED.

And most people with whom I end up in a cab fight me on it and repeatedly put it BACK on. It makes me actually need to hurl, like reading in a car on a hot day.

Fuck off and die, TaxiTV.

-moon

raging out at... john mayer

Okay, so yes, living in Hollywood, you're bound to have a celebrity neighbor or two. And living anywhere, you're bound to run into your neighbors fairly often. But sometimes, it goes above and beyond the call of neighborly duty and becomes borderline stalker creepy. Welcome to the case of The Gingers Vs. John Mayer. Leave us alone or give us a heads up that we are getting together for the 12th time this week. Two redheads in the foreground of every stalkerazzi picture of John Mayer? Probably us because he haunts our grounds. And we have had enough. Or not nearly enough.

It started for this Ginger years ago when I was a phone operator at a New York radio station. I was 19 years old and passed out asleep at 5 AM on a desk waiting for my shift to start. I could feel a body hovering over me. I fought to stay asleep until this gigantic body began strumming his guitar in an obvious attempt to annoy the piss out of me (or maybe he was warming up for a performance on the country's biggest pop station, but this blog is about me so shut your mouth.) Strike one, John. Don't bother me at 5 AM.

Fast forward to a few years later. I'm working at Mayer's label. Fine, he was there before me but still. My boss at the label sought out my number and called me. John's homebase was New York so without fail, there was a bi-weekly elevator encounter, including one time where the lights went out and we were stuck for about 45 seconds. (Did I pray to be trapped there forever? Mind your business, I will not answer such questions.) Strike 2, John. (Yeah fine, strike 1 Stars for that. But I'm still winning according to golf rules.)

So not too long after leaving that job, I moved out to California. Guess who else decided to change time zones? Out here on the left coast is where things began to get absurd. I managed to avoid Mayer for nearly a year until shortly after the boy I was dating decided he was over it. So in faux celebration, 2 of my girlfriends and I decided to hit up a hotel bar which is no more than 1200 feet from my apartment.

We went in and ordered a round of drinks and I noticed a familiar looking man. I went up to him and tried to place how it was that I knew him. Turns out he was a member of Mayer's band and was in town with John to perform a special holiday show. Of course he was. And here's where it becomes excessive.

JJ invites us to the show and we of course agree. Mayer's stalkerish tendencies aside, he puts on a great show and I love all free things anyway. The next night we decide to hit up Chateau Marmont. Guess who rolls in? Shocking. My body remains a wonderland all over Los Angeles County. Next day we hit up the premiere of Walk Hard, which despite living in LA for a year is the first movie premiere I bother attending. Guess who's on the red carpet promoting his surprise cameo in the film? Yeah, my old buddy J Mizzle. Of course he was. Where else would he be? And is my invisible assistant tipping off the Mayer camp to my every move? Because honestly, I have friends and family I see far less than I see John. I'm actually hard-pressed to think of friends, family, or boyfriends I see more frequently than John. I'm coming up blank.

So as we know, I headed home to New York for the holidays. I hit up a restaurant in Gramercy for dinner with an old boyfriend. We enjoy a nice meal and a few laughs and exit the premises as John is entering. Is there a coast I where I can live in peace? No, Stars, there's only 2 and they're both tainted.

This morning was the final straw, however. Last week, I had a "date" (my god, I hate that word) and went over to Ginger's house to get myself together. A friend of ours decided she would be my angel and straightened my hair for me. This morning I get an IM from Ginger that reads, "YOU HAVE TO BE KIDDING ME. CHECK TMZ RIGHT THIS SECOND." I log in and there's my hair straightening friend smiling up at me, sitting at Katsuya with John. Now he has not only infiltrated both my homes, my Christmas vacation, all the bars I love, but my circle of friends too?

That's enough, John Mayer.

-stars

grievance: fucking shoegasm

Okay. Enough is enough. I saw ANOTHER Shoegasm in downtown Manhattan (see "grievance: attempts at clever plays on words"). And apparently there is a third. Stop this folderol. Fuck you, Shoegasm. I've HAD it with your douchebaggery.

(Crowd "boo"-gasms.)

-moon

shit that sucks - subway edition

Please don't get me wrong. I love the subway and would choose it over any other mode of transportation our fine city has to offer. It gets me where I need to go inexpensively and quickly - and I love all things fast, cheap, and out of control. However in my attempts to use our underground transport system this morning to get from point A to point B, I've assumed a few new gripes and would thus like to address this letter to the MTA. (Please note: I'm writing this on my BlackBerry while riding the 6, J. Lo style).

1. Service changes on weekends - just because it's the weekend doesn't mean that you should feel free to mess with my subway service. Why shouldn't the V run on weekends, and why shouldn't the F stop at 14th street this weekend? Seriously - why is that okay? The L isn't running either, so the MTA has suggested riding the M14 bus instead. As much as I love the subway, I detest the bus. I'd rather ride a fucking camel.

2. My one man mariachi band on 14th street and 6th avenue on the uptown F/V platform (which I couldn't access today because of service changes, see above) - I love music. I live for music. Seeing Susan Cagle play in the Union Square station when I take the 4, 5, or 6 makes me really happy. As do drummers banging on buckets Bring-In-Da- Noise-Bring-In-Da-Funk Style, or even strange old women playing exotic Asian woodwind instruments - though I despise the instances when they're playing simultaneously, 2 feet from each other and not jamming with one another but rather each playing their own cacophonous shit. I love steel drum players. They transport me from waiting on the platform to being on a Caribbean vacation. What I hate is the dude that's taken up residence on my subway stop, exactly in the spot I wait for the train every weekday morning, playing Mariachi music on his guitar while beaming the most offensive shit-eating grin that says "yeah I know this is annoying you and I don't care." We need more subway accordion players like they have in Paris on the Metro that make me feel like I'm the male Audrey Tauteua starring in Amelie. Can we import some please?

3. The attempted humor of the MTA's educational signs - signs about not tripping on the platform, riding the subway while dying, not giving money to panhandlers, and (my favorite) not leaving your newspaper on the train, are not really funny. No puns like "the best news is a clean train. Throw out your newspaper" are amusing. In fact I leave my post on the seat of a V train every day in the hopes of saving some fellow straphanger 25 cents and informing them of Lindsay Lohan's recent falling-off-the-wagon-ness. As far as the other signs go - why are we telling people not to help out the homeless? And, really, do we need signs saying not to hurl on the train? If you're dumb enough to ride the train while profusely bleeding or gushing a pus rash you probably can't read that sign anyway, nor will you find a statement like "we want you to feel good when you ride" amusing.

Okay I've arrived at my destination.

Dear MTA,

Please take these suggestions under consideration.

Best,
Orion

Addendum - signs telling you to hold on to the poles in the subway cars and the rails on the escalator - I have the art of freestanding subway surfing down to a science and escalators really aren't that difficult to maneuver on. On the other hand, while I'm not a germaphobe I would reckon that those poles and rails contain more bacteria than a shitmonkey's asshole - yes a shitmonkey - and touching them should be acceptable only while wearing gloves or if it is the final challenge standing between you and a cash prize on Fear Factor. Even then I'd want a bathtub of Purell standing by.

-orion's belt buckle

raging out at... my top 10

Today is a special day when so many things have created a swelling rage within me that I can not stick to one topic. I must instead introduce my first annual (or however frequently, or infrequently, I feel like doing it) Top 10 Rage list.

In no particular order...

10) My Roommate's Piece of Trash DVD Player
I will readily admit that I am absolutely the kind of girl that reads the novel before the movie comes out so I can snidely look like a pompous ass walking out of the theater saying, "can you even believe they left out the 3rd word in the 4th paragraph on page 26? The whole movie couldn't have possibly made any sense to anyone who didn't read the book." Now this attitude (and it is a stretch, but bear with me) is why I'm pissed off at the DVD player. Dexter, from what I hear, is this brilliant amazing show that I haven't seen. I've had the DVDs laying around and I, of course, have not yet unwrapped them and bothered to watch the show. Of course all it takes is for me to hear that it's coming to CBS and I immediately raced to watch. How could I bitch and moan about how much better the cable version is if I had not seen it? So clearly to keep my grandiose sense of entitlement, I attempt to watch the DVDs today and the DVD player tells me the disc is incompatible. Living with my roommate for a year, I have yet to put a disc in there that does actually work. So now I'm watching dexter on my laptop while the stupid DVD player screen mocks me in the background. I will be going out in the morning to purchase a cinnamon raisin bagel to see if that might be compatible for it. Or at least cross my fingers that DVD players are capable of being choked.

9) Lying Contact Lens Manufacturers
Yes, I know I shouldn't sleep in my contact lenses. And yes, I do it anyway. Almost every night. But I did have the good sense to order the extra oxygen, let-your-eyes-breathe contacts which are supposed to be "okay" to sleep in. Are they? No, they are not. Can I find my glasses? Nope, I certainly cannot. Am I going blind and might this blog be the last thing I ever see? Well now there's one question that gets a yes. Don't offer me extra fake oxygen. It's rude.

8) Javier Bardem
I legitimately can't sleep most nights or go into a convenience store to buy cigarettes anymore as I spend the entire time in a panic waiting for Javier Bardem to come in and airwhip me to death. I'm scared enough of the eye doctor's airpuff. If I ever see Javier Bardem anywhere near me, I will drop dead of a heart attack long before he can get near me with that deadly canister. Frick, now I'm thinking about him again. My roommate will be mad if she comes home and once again can't get in the door because I've created my traditional Bardem Barricade.

7) Lost
Okay (and I'm sure Orion is going to correct me... which reminds me, stay tuned next week for a special orion/stars west coast edition), but Lost is quite possibly the best show of its genre on network television. I would maybe allow Pushing Daisies in a ring against Lost, but any show where the lead actor is a pie-maker is somewhat genre-less. (I will categorize TV based on bakery treats as often as I want and based on the one time I have ever done this [just now], it has proven to be a remarkably efficient and precise classification method.)
But here is my big problem with Lost. And no, it is not how they always quickly and thoroughly answer all my questions within minutes of them being posed, or how it isn't frustrating at all that they do something absurd and never again approach the topic. Actually I've changed my mind. Those are my big problems with Lost. But even more pressing and tragic than that problem is that the costume designer keeps putting a shirt on Sawyer. I believe it's a Biblical reference - that you do not hide your light under a barrel - so the costume designers are pretty much telling God to shove it by shirting the ever majestic Sawyer. That's just not cool.

6) My Supermarket Discount Card
The supermarket discount cards belong to a conglomerate that is also home to such things as socks in the dryer and every Bic lighter I've ever owned. They are objects which are fleeting in my life. They come and bring me joy for a short time and then are just as quickly lost, though not forgotten. There was a period of perhaps 6 or 7 trips in a row to Ralph's when I signed up for a new card because the old one was in the Great Abyss. And my phone number also magically never works.
So I finally have given up and have picked up the habit of punching in my old gentleman friend's phone number. (At least "Pinehog" is good for something). So thanks for the discount, "Pinehog," and you can send me a small gourmet cheese platter for all the points I've wracked up for you in the Ralph's Wine Club. (Come on, who thought I was shopping for a well balanced meal?)

5) Brittny Gastineau
That girl can suck whichever of my butt cheeks is her preferred. A few nights ago, I was walking into a bathroom stall at some Grammy party (God, living in LA is awful) and Brittny Gastineau literally enters the stall with me and yells "Is Paris in here?" Now I've had about a gigaloot of champagne (and yes I did make up that word but it truly is how much champagne I had) and have no idea who this chick is and even if I did, we certainly aren't cool like that for her to join me in a tiny bathroom stall. So the remainder of the conversation goes something like this:

Stars: I have no idea who Paris is.
Brittny: You've got to be fucking kidding me. Where is Paris?
Stars: I'm not sure if you're aware of how tiny this stall is, but the chance of Paris being in here is pretty marginal.
Brittny: You fucking bitch. Tell her I need her.

Okay, what? I'm making it a life rule that D-list celebrities are never welcome in any bathroom stall I'm in. Ever. I have to debate where A-, B-, and C-listers fall on my stall privilege rule. I will get back to you.

4) T-Mobile Sidekicks
I don't have to justify this to anyone who has ever owned a shitkick. Mine is basically being held together by dental floss and a prayer right now. It never works and yet I remain just immature enough to not want to switch to a BlackBerry.

3) My Landlord
My lease is up in less than a month and par for my course, I'm moving, so they're renting out the apartment. With zero forewarning, my landlord barges in with 2 girls to check out the apartment. I was actually head half down in a beer on one couch with a half naked singer/songwriter on the other couch, his head in some Tostitos. We did not need witnesses to that hungover moment. Nor can I imagine it's great for his career to have a spotting of that nature.

2) Tylenol P.M.
I'm a notorious insomniac and I used to be able to trust in my old friends Simply Sleep or Tylenol P.M. in a pinch. Apparently those things are now as effective as a Flintstones gummy vitamin. It's laughable - the non-existent purpose they serve. I don't even get drowsy. I think it may actually have the adverse effect. The next time I go to run one of my half marathons I'm going to pop a Tylenol P.M. I will be sure to finish in record time.

And the top of the Rageout List, the gold medal of suckage prize goes to...

1) CNN.com
Of course I followed the presidential primaries, obsessively checking each number as they came in. And I was delighted with the turnout and pretty much rooting CNN on as their winner projections were coming in quicker than any of the other news channels. But when you click for the more detailed state-by-state delegate breakdown, it informs you in big purple letters which of the candidates no longer have a snowman's chance in hell of winning. Obviously there's quite a few down-and-out candidates who are basically being mocked in lavender by CNN.com for having no votes. But somehow Mike Gravel, winner of maybe not even his own vote, has a big fat zero next to his name, but has escaped the Lilac Mockery. I will be creating "congrats on the goose egg, Gravel" in an array of purple hues to show I think he showed as terrible of a showing as all the other candidates... sans, of course, my beloved Hillary.

-stars

grievance: native english speakers attacking foreigners' english

Let me first say that this is not an act of repentance for having (possibly) offended anyone with either my "English 101" blogs: those blogs are intended to castigate native English speakers because IT IS YOUR FIRST (AND/OR ONLY) TOOL FOR COMMUNICATION, and there is no excuse to not use it well and be proud of your written and spoken word.

It is furthermore not repentance for having offended anyone in my "Foreigners Speaking Too Loudly" blog. Foreigners DO speak too loudly and my theory about this fluoresced as I walked out of class yesterday (furious about this new "rageout target") and joined people screaming in Spanish. Don't get it. I really don't. And I digress.

I was in class yesterday... Oceanography class. Life lesson: don't leave core requirements to your last semester. Bleh.

In any event, the professor's first language is clearly not English. And I actually don't know what her first language is. However... HOW-EV-ER... her English is pretty damned near impeccable. And I just got out of an Astronomy lab taught by an adjunct who A. didn't give a shit about the class and B. LEGITIMATELY did not speak English. (That was fun.) Again: do not leave core requirements to your last semester.

In any event, this BITCH in the class decides she will take it upon herself to CORRECT the professor's English. CORRECT THE PROFESSOR'S ENGLISH?! I don't even do that when English is his or her first language. That's a respect issue. My question to this bitch in the class is "have you ever stood in front of a hundred people and posited that you INDUBITABLY KNEW the answers to all questions on some particular discipline? My guess is no. And if you have, you certainly haven't done it in a language that is NOT YOUR FIRST!" Seriously. The task of being comfortable enough in another language to speak as an authority comes with a lot of pressure. And to bust this nice woman's balls about her having said "most thin" instead of "thinnest" is pretty much complete and utter garbage. (Yes, that actually happened; yes, I've been writing this stuff down; yes, I understand that is not conducive to actually learning.)

The only time speech correction really works (from one person to another) is if there is a systematic error in the speaker's understanding of a language's functional pattern (perhaps a good correction would have been "thinnest" if the professor had in fact said "thinner," but had meant "thinnest"; that is a systematic mistake in which the speaker does not acknowledge the differences between superlative ("-est") and comparative ("-er") constructions. And furthermore, an explanation is necessary. And it should have been done in private, you fucking bitch.

Also, I spent time writing down constructions that the professor did make correctly which are proof of mastery of a language and/or are misused by native English speakers all the time (which leads to my point that most English as a Second Language (ESL) speakers/learners speak far better English than the idiots who are raised speaking it.)

She used "farther" instead of "further" to speak about geographical space. (6 points)
She properly used metaphorical/idiomatic language: "soupy." (8 points)
Formal sentence syntax in a spoken statement: "density of the material in which you're trying to float." Who the hell speaks like that?! Well. I do. And I get flack for it all the time. Oh well. (15 points)
Use of the word "lexicon" (of course, in response to this BITCH FACE correcting her - she did handle it very gracefully though). Use of this word shows several things:
1. That's KIND OF a "hard" word, in the sense that not all native English speakers would know what it means. (Allow me to vouchsafe - it simply means "vocabulary.") (3 points)
2. It shows that she has spoken about lexicology and philology enough to use that word. (4 points)
3. SHE APPARENTLY CARES ABOUT THE WORDS SHE USES!!!!!!! (287356229.44 points)

She gets that many points for the last part because that's a lot more than I can say for a lot of people. So I was actually quite impressed.

So why the FUCK would you, a stupid idiot undergraduate student, feel so pious to flash about your faux-erudite-douchebag-ness to try and destroy power levels in a classroom that are necessary for KNOWLEDGE-TRANSMISSION? And embarrassing a perfectly lovely woman. Ugh. Go to hell.

So, folks... don't FUCKING correct foreigners' speech like this. Soooooo fucked up I can't even deal with it. Plus, you're probably teaching them something wrong. Most foreigners who move to the United States see a decrease in the fluency of their proper English skills because idiot Americans teach them slangs that allow them to be lazy. 'Though I am a big proponent and enjoyer of slangs, I would never sacrifice them for actual language.

Girl in Oceanography class, I hope you read this. And I hope you peed your pants in 2nd grade or something embarrassing that would exonerate you from this. Shame on you.

-moon

grievance: "things" disappearing into a technological abyss

I've never been one to hate on technology (Stars' domain). Nor have I ever been one to write blogs that are spurred by a hatred of something without the purpose of addressing it. This is solely me "bitching one out" because I am irrationally angry at two devices.

Okay... let me begin with the one that was completely NOT my fault (because let's face it... I am indirectly responsible for one of these):

1. My BlackBerry is an asshole. I kept getting messages that wouldn't disappear saying that I have a BlackBerry Messenger (hereto referred to as "BBM [I'm so cool]) message.")  So, instead of wiping the entire device, I decided to remove BBM. Lo and behold, when trying to reinstall it, I got messages saying that my device didn't support this conduit for installation. The douchebags at the Verizon store said I had to do a hard restart, and had to back up all my shit, but would lose all of my messages... so I've been putting it off, because I had e-mails, texts, etc. that contained information I needed to record.

Then, when I'd finally found the time to do that, I tried to actually sync it back (contacts, calendar, what have you). My computer decided it didn't recognize the stupid ShitBerry. So I MANUALLY updated everything back to my computer. Yeah... 'cause I have TIME for that. (Rolls eyes.) But still hadn't extracted any kind of information from the texts, e-mails, etc.

Then, the piece of shit decided one night to just delete all my messages. Great. And then consistently did that every night... and then last night... every SINGLE time I'd sent or received a message.

So... I texted one of my very good friends on Tuesday inquiring about her birthday plans on Thursday, to which there was no response. Then I called her Thursday morning. Then an irate MySpace message regarding her non-response. Then at 1:30AM on Thursday night, I received a phone call from a mutual friend who was with her, "where the FUCK are you?" Apparently she'd texted me with ALL of the information the night before and was expecting I'd be there. Awesome. Really. Awesome.

Oh... and all that time I spent (read: fucking WASTED) manually putting shit back on my computer... was entirely futile because...

2. My MacBook is a douchebag. (Well... okay... more like I'm a douchebag.) I spilled WINE on my MacBook... AGAIN... for the SECOND TIME... in TWO MONTHS. The first time "she" in some ways rehabilitated herself and was use-able. But this time... done. So I was depending on my PictureTrail to get my photos back... and my motherfucking asshole iPod for my music. Turns out, the asshole decided that about 2000 of my 10000 songs were corrupt and while their titles showed up, there was no MP3 to extract. And it's not as if there was ANY rhyme or reason for the target of said corruption. It wasn't a whole album here or a whole folder there. No. It was arbitrarily chosen songs from all over my library.

So after throwing down some cash for some recovery program or some crap (which crashed every 10 minutes, which was AWESOME) I got back most of my stuff. But turns out... a lot of the recovered files are PORTIONS of songs. What the hell am I supposed to do with THAT? They're also named "106, 107, 108," etc. So... this has been really fun and totally awesome.

This was also after spending about a month trying to reconstruct my playlists FROM the physical lists on my iPod manually because my other MacBook (that shit the bed) decided one day to delete my iTunes library.

In a last attempt to get back full goddamned files... I went back to an external hard drive that had been created from the hard drive from my PC (which lit into flames before it froze and died) which had been working JUST fine for a year and a half. Suddenly, it's decided that it will only allow me to drag ONE folder (if that) to my computer before it freezes and makes whirly, eddy-like noises.

So... essentially... trying to contact me is completely and utterly unreliable and my iTunes gives me a seizure just looking at it:



Anyone know whom "��w7o�w0o�w____��_00C - ��w7o�w0o�w____��_00C - 17152 - ��w7o�w0o�w____��_00C 1" is by? Oh... I didn't know that was the OTHER name for two minutes and twenty-one seconds of "Found Out About You" by The Gin Blossoms. Terrific.

(Side inquiry: what about this file made iTunes think it should be genre-d as "Blues"?) Hmmmmmm. You puzzle me so, iTunes. You enigma, you.

-moon