Welcome to blog-a-palooza!

So I realize that I haven’t posted in months, but it’s not because I haven’t had anything to say. Au contrair. I have plenty to say, I’ve just been too lazy to put it up here. So I’ve decided to mark the beginning of the new academic year with all the blogs I wrote over the summer while bored off my ass, but never posted. Because I wrote them months ago, they’re mostly outdated, but I wanted to share anyway.

AUGUST Part I:

Okay, so a long time ago I promised a second part to things that piss me off when I'm already in a bad mood, and today I was thinking about this stuff all over again, so here is the promised part two:

1.) Binders.

Yes, normal, everyday, three ring binders. I hate them. They are possibly the worst invention ever known to school supplies. Although my hatred may have something to do with the fact that I spent the last three days at work putting together over a hundred binders for a workshop we're having next week, my wariness with them began long ago, back with my first Trapper Keeper, which in case you don't know, is simply a regular binder with a flap that velcros to the front. Achieving what, exactly, I'm still not sure, but because everyone else had one, I had to too, the way stupid kids do. In any case, my main problem with binders is the fact that they're fucking dangerous. They're impossible to open or close so you have use all this force, and if something like a body part happens to be in the way when those rings snap shut, you might as well kiss that chunk of flesh goodbye. I just had a circle of skin removed from the palm of my hand by a rogue binder ring, and let me tell you, it's a damn unpleasant experience.

Besides the difficulty of opening and closing binders, there's no such thing as subtlety when a binder's up in the mix. Have you ever been sitting in class, and the teacher asks for your homework to be handed in, but you can't hear the rest of whatever he/she is saying because the room has been filled with the sound of a million binders popping open and closed? I have and it blows chunks. And if you need pages from different parts of your binder you have to open and close it repeatedly, not only hurting the shit out of your hand, but causing you to lose all hearing ability for the next thirty minutes.

Another problem with binders is that they don't actually keep papers that safe. The loose leaf papers tend to hang out of the bottom of the binder, and eventually the holes tear, and you have to go out and waste money on those damn expensive little hole stickers just to keep all your shit in the binder. Also if you fill it too full, papers get caught in the rings (or fall out of the rings), paper gets caught in the little metal bar down the middle, and eventually everything in there looks like it was attacked by small mammals.

Also, it's impossible to actually write in binders in class. Ignoring the fact that you can't write on the back of the pages anyway (or the front for lefties) because the damn rings are in the way, but open binders take up too much room. Most desks are too small for them (especially older desks, and especially in college), so what ends up happening is your binder perches precariously on your desk with the front cover and all the papers in front of the one you're writing on hanging off the edge of the desk, threatening to fall off, and pop open, losing/disorganizing all your papers. You'd think that someone out there could come up with something better than this, or at least improve on it. Man, I hate binders.

2.) Hemp.

Back in junior high there was this trend where people would buy these heinously ugly hemp bracelet/anklet deals with beads all sewn in them, and you were supposed to tie them on, and wear them until they fell off, freeing the beads and granting your wish, or helping you find love or some shit. I hated those things. They took forever to wear off, but quickly looked shitty, so there were all these kids walking around wearing things that looked like they'd been vomited up by a cat for months at a time until they would finally fall off. Then in high school all the earthy kids (read: potheads) started wearing hemp chokers and shit, I think because they liked to snicker to themselves that they were wearing a bit of their favorite illegal drug. Then in their thirty seconds of faux activism, they would go around spouting this bullshit about hemp being a much better material than anything else we use because it grows so quickly with so little harm to the environment, yadda yadda, blah blah. Even my sixth grade teacher was into it, making us use paper made from hemp. He used to tout it as the soybean of the textiles industry. Let me just say that too is bullshit. There's a reason why the hemp clothing revolution never took off (besides the conservative claims that it was thisclose to legalizing pot).

Hemp is itchy.

It's as simple as that. It didn't catch on for the same reason that burlap trousers never took Paris by storm. It's an ugly, uncomfortable material that will give the wearer a rash. All the fucking wannabe hippies who disagree can suck my ass. Have fun with your rashes.

3.) Airports.

I used to love flying, but I think that was before I was old enough to realize how miserable it really is. Not the flying part itself, although the constant roaring in my ears, and the fact that they recycle the same nasty ass air on domestic flights (translation: the TB from the guy coughing in 1st class may not get caught in filters and end up floating around in your lungs) is enough to make me drive everywhere. Airports, however, make the plane ride itself feel like heaven for the first twenty minutes. They attract the stupidest kinds of people ever.

The worst are the people who are running late for their flight and get irate with the airport employees. It was your fault you were late in the first place so suck it up, and be prepared to take a later flight. If you know you're traveling with someone who's always late, lie, and tell them the flight leaves an hour earlier than it really does. No matter how you do it, it's your responsibility to be on time. If you were important enough to have a plane wait for you, you'd have your own plane, now wouldn't you?

Also I hate the people who know they have to go through the metal detectors but still wear eight pounds of jewelry, and a belt made out of chains, and shoes with metal buckles, and on and on, so everyone behind them has to sit there and watch them strip out of all that shit before moving on.

I hate the bathrooms in airports. If you have carry-ons and have to pee after (or before) you get on the plane, and are traveling alone, you have to take them with you to the john. Wouldn't it make sense, then to make the stalls a) open outwards so you can close the door without putting your luggage on top of the toilet, and b) make the stalls big enough so that there's room for you and your luggage? Engineers are stupid.

4.) People who claim they dislike something, but then talk about it all the time so you know they really do.

This especially happens with teenage girls when talking about boys:

" Jeez, Susan is so weird, do you know she asked me if I liked Billy!" *insert gasp/other disgusted sound while attempting to hide a smile* "He's so gross! did you see how gross he is? Can you believe Susan asked me if I liked him? Isn't that so weird? I mean what's her deal? Why would I like Billy? I mean we only hang out once and a while, but that doesn't mean I like him...." blah, blah, blah.... when all you said was " hey what's up?" in the way that sounds like a question, but is what we refer to as a question of the rhetorical variety.

This kind of girl really wants you to say something along the lines of "Oh, but Billy's so cute, you really don't like him?" or the ultimate "really? because I think he likes you..." When in reality, Billy probably doesn't give a shit about her one way or the other, or sees her as a friend or little sister or whatever. In short, he does not, in fact, find her interesting in the slightest as far as girlfriend material goes. I really hate this shit. If you like something, say you fucking like it. Don't pretend not to like it and yet be so transparent about your real feelings that everyone around will talk about you behind your back. No really, they will.

AUGUST Part II:

Things I've learned on road trips this summer:

1.) The true name of Radar Detectors.

These nifty gadgets are very nice to have, they look cool and high tech and best of all, when you have one you feel invincible. The problem is that many people have confused the name. Nine out of ten people I saw pulled over had radar detectors on the dash and had, in fact, zoomed past me at some point. Apparently they didn't look closely enough at the box, and thought they bought a radar deflector instead. A radar detector does not keep your ass from getting caught by the cops. It only tells you if there is radar in your immediate area, which doesn't do shit if the radar gun in the area is aimed directly at you. A lot of cops don't keep their radar gun on the entire time and therefore are not constantly emitting waves that will warn you that they're nearby. Most highway patrolmen only shoot when they've got a car in their sight. In that situation when the detector goes off it only means that you should begin to pull over. As sorry as I feel for the poor bastards that get caught, in a way I’ve got to laugh because, hey, better them than me.

2.) The Law of Using the Bathroom on the Road.

I don't know what it is, but no matter where we stopped, in a city or in BFE, every gas station we stopped in had suspect bathrooms. It didn’t matter how big or small, how nice or sketchy, every one had bathrooms that made me pee faster than I ever had before. Leaky things, unidentifiable gunk, weird smells, sticky doors, poorly lit, you get the picture. In one case we were in a large, nice gas station with a super convenience store attached right outside of Tulsa. I went in to use the bathroom, and it was like it belonged to a different building. It was dark and had the aforementioned gunk in every crevice. Two of the three toilets were out of order, so I had to use the handicap one, which, as most girls at least know, is significantly taller than your average toilet. Now, even if I did sit on public restroom seats, which I don't, I wouldn't have sat on this one. It looked like some one had take a power sander to the once smooth plastic finish, and then, just for kicks, stuck a couple lit cigarettes into the surface. In case you don't realize what this means, it translates into many crevices for bacteria to grow. If they ever cleaned the bathroom, which I doubt, there was no way they could get in all those pits and dips. In any case, you see the dilemma? (Warning: possible TMI ahead). Having to squat over a too tall toilet seat, and at the same time control the stream enough so that I didn't piss on myself, was not the highlight of the trip for me. After stopping in three or four places
like that, I figured out the solution: use the bathroom in restaurants. McDonald's will always have a cleaner bathroom than a gas station, because gas stations have no health codes to live up to. The "food" makes fast food restaurants have at least some level of cleanliness, whereas gas stations are only cleaned when the pot head teenager smoking behind the building gets off his ass and decides to splash some Clorox on the floor so the boss won't realize he hasn't done anything.

The absolute worst of the on-the-road bathrooms are the ones behind the building. You know what I mean. You go in to pay for gas, ask for the john, and they hand you a key on a giant block of wood, and tell you to walk around to the back of the building, next to the dumpster where the semis park and the lights are broken. Do you see the issue here? How often do you think they go back there to clean that thing? Like never. It’s much easier to ignore the smell of nasty-nast if it’s behind the building as opposed to drifting through the inside of the store. The worst part is that you never know if the gas station you’ve stopped at is one of those rear bathroom ones, until you’ve already pulled up, pumped your gas and gone inside to pay. At that point all the pee in your body that was just chilling out while you were riding along in the car has decided to rush en masse to your bladder so you have to go like now, thus giving you no choice but to accept the crusty key on its nasty little wood block and follow the instructions around to the back of the building which is most likely shrouded in darkness at all times even if it’s mid-day, and covered in things that creep and crawl and ooze, just waiting for you to pull down your pants so they can crawl up your ass. Can you tell I was scarred by one of these places as a child?

3.) The origin of the "turnpike"

In my travels I've discovered that the English word "turnpike" comes from the French word "tournier poux" which comes from the Latin root "Tournious Poukous" which translates directly into "A way to screw stupid tourists up the ass." Maybe it was just the turnpikes I was on (thank you Choctaw nation!) but every 3 miles on a turnpike there's a tollbooth. My dad, for whatever reason, decided the fastest way to go around Tulsa would not be to go through the city, but to go around instead, using the turnpike that circles the city. Unfortunately the exit we wanted was on the exact other side of where we entered the turnpike, and in the end, we left Tulsa and the Choctaws with about $15 in change by the time we were done. While most were somewhere between 80 and 40 cents, the most expensive toll was $4.00. Four freaking dollars just so we could drive ¾ of a mile down a freeway. At that rate I’d expect something spectacular, like a zoo full of exotic animals dancing along the road, or a laser light show over our heads. The worst part is, sometimes I would throw the change in and the machine wouldn't register, so the light would never turn green. My dad would get impatient and say "Just go," and if you've ever done that, you know a hugely loud alarm goes off, making you feel like you've just robbed a bank instead of skipping out on a 60 cent toll. I spent the rest of my time driving through the blighted state of Oklahoma, waiting for a fleet of ten cop cars to show up with sirens wailing.

JULY:

There's nothing I hate more than when stupid people think they're smarter than me. I don't know whether they think this because I'm so young, or because they think they're just smarter than everyone else, but in any case, they are sorely mistaken either way. I'm not rich enough, hot enough, or connected enough to have gotten into college based on anything but my brain, therefore you'd think people would give me some kind of credit in that department.

What set me off, you ask? I was in a car accident, and while the fate of my vehicular future lies in the hands of a marvelous mechanic named Jerry, my insurance company sent me to Enterprise to rent a car. My roommate drove me, and the minute we walked in the place we could sense something was off. As she put it, it was the most sexually charged atmosphere I'd ever walked into. Everyone was flirting with someone, whether it was customers or other staff members, and it wasn't like we had just walked onto the set of Beverly Hills 90210, hell it wasn't even the set of Beverly Hills Cop. No one in there was higher than a 4 on a 1-10 scale. The only draw, I suppose, was the fact that all the employees were between the ages of 22 and 35. Whoever did the hiring was stupid, because that's a surefire way to have workplace drama.

In any case, we got the creepy guy look-over when we first walked in and were soon after directed to the nearest male representative. That's another thing. Without fail every woman was helped by a man, and every man was helped by a woman. The guy who was helping me clearly thought he was hot shit because he talked to me in that slightly condescending man tone that says, "I know you want me." I don't know what kind of training Enterprise people go through, but it sure doesn't have anything to do with actually learning to be professional or slightly intellectual. His cell phone rang incessantly the entire time I was there, and twice he actually picked it up to see who was calling him. Any decent workplace customer service knowledge dictates that you put your cell on vibrate at least, and ignore it until you're done with whatever it is that you have to do.

Additionally, this guy was just dumb. My insurance company had already sent him all my information, but instead of typing in what was necessary and leaving it at that, he decided to type everything over again, and waste my time. Not only that, but also when he asked where I worked and I told him, he spelled college "colledge." Clearly someplace he'd never been. He then tried to con me into getting the most expensive car on the lot, even more expensive than what my insurance would pay for.

"Oh that nice plain sedan has to have an oil change, but how about an Envoy? Or maybe a Trailblazer?"

I was like, "I've never driven an SUV, and I don't want one. How much is that Grand Am?"

"Your insurance will cover everything on the lot; don't worry about it."

Since when do you tell a customer not to worry about the price of something? In the end he gave me a Chevy Cavalier, which was about the size car I wanted, but quality wise, it's a bit lacking (all Cavalier owners might want to skip this part.) This car is the ugliest I've ever driven, first of all. The body shape looks something like one of those carnival balloons that used to be twisted into an animal shape, but someone undid it, and it's partially deflated, so now it's just kind of an uneven lumpy blob. The interior was made out of the cheapest plastic known to man, like the kind they use on milk cartons. The worst part, however, was that the upholstery was made out of what looked and felt like cheap tweed. You know, the material of old men and British people. The entire time I was driving, my ass was itching. Through my jeans. Good times. Additionally, after he’d given me this P.O.S. car, he then tried to con me into getting insurance on it.

“You know, if a rock hits the windshield or something, then you have to pay for it.”

“That’s why I have insurance.”

“Well but you still have to pay the deductible, and with our plan, you don’t.”

“I can’t afford to pay $40 a day in case a rock hits the windshield. I won’t even be driving that much.”

“Well, but you should at least get it for the first day. See all those cars over there? (Waves vaguely in the direction of four or five cars) those are all waiting to be repaired, and they were just rented out today. Most people have some kind of accident in the first day of renting a car.”

“Could that be because most people only rent cars for a day or two?”

Silence. “You’ll still have to pay the deductible if something happens. Just take it for the day. You can come back in and cancel it at any time.”

I finally just had him give me the insurance to get him off my ass so I could go home, but I went back as soon as I could and had them cancel it. Ugh. I hate stupid people who think they’re smarter than me.

JUNE:

Have you ever noticed that some people seem to have been put on earth for the sole purpose of annoying the shit out of other people? There are situations in your life that are just made that much worse by some dumbass butting their face in and saying just the right thing to put you in a suicidal mood. Here are some of the ones I’ve noticed the most.

Example one:

Person A-
"Oh man, I can’t believe that guy stole my credit card and charged $2,000 worth of stuff on it. He seemed so nice and sweet. And now I have to pay off all the shit he bought, and my rent is due, and I don’t know what I’m going to do. If only I hadn’t left my purse in the coat room at that party. Now my life is completely fucked," Puts head in hands ready to cry in frustration.

Person B-
"Well you know, hindsight is 20/20."

What the hell? Is that what Person A wants to hear? Hell no.

"Hindsight is 20/20" is like the "I told you so" for people who didn't actually tell you jack, but like to feel superior to you. Like they would have told you so if they had known all along what was going on.


Example two:

Employee-
"So, what time is the board meeting tomorrow?"

Middle manager/secretary-
"You know, that info is on a need to know basis, and you don’t need to know."

Say what?

"Need to know basis" is a line always used in movies so some snotty inept politician/federal officer/cop can feel superior to the main character who of course is the only one with the brains to know what's going on. The sayer of this phrase delights in keeping important information from the hero, and our poor guy has to figure it out all by himself. Drama and action scenes ensue. This is okay, because if it didn't happen, the hero would get the info, and the movie would be 30 minutes long. In real life, however, unless you're a fed, a politician, or a cop, this phrase never needs to be used. The kind of people who say it are not only snotty and self important little bastards, but usually the information they have is not only unimportant but, something you didn't really care about anyway.

A similar phrase is "This is an A and B conversation..." This is often said by the same kind of person who uses the "Need to know" line. Now undoubtedly, there are times when it's necessary to tell someone to butt out of a conversation that has nothing to do with them, but just because this phrase can be used, doesn't mean it should be. People who say it, usually accompany it with one of those swiveling neck motions circa 1992 that used to be accompanied by the equally irksome "talk to the hand."

The final phrase that pisses me off to no end is:

"Hot enough for you?"

This is always the first thing you hear when you walk into a convenience store dripping with sweat because your POS car decided to break down on the interstate in the middle of a sunny afternoon in 98 degree weather, ten miles from the gas station. The person who says it is inevitably extremely cool looking; probably wearing a sweater to keep them warm from all the A/C blowing on them. This is a phrase that seems like it was created with the intention of commiseration, but has become the favored manner of many a cool, smirking convience store owner to torture other people during the summer. And when you think about it, even said with the purest intentions, it’s a stupid phrase. Possible responses are the always obnoxious “Nope, I need it to be a few degrees warmer,” the weary “Yeah, wow, it’s hot as balls out there,” and my personal favorite the evil “I’m not in the fucking mood,” glare, coupled with a snarled, "Where the hell are the bathrooms?"

It's my opinion that if these phrases are avoided, it will make the world a much better place.

Okay, guys so that was my summer, blog style. If you made it through, I hope you enjoyed it, and if you didn't...well I guess you're not reading this, are you?