Yesterday about 12 flies were killed during the day. The breakdown:
- 5 flies, dead by paper towel (one paper towel per fly; this is why we only buy paper towels in bulk)
- 6 flies, dead by flyswatter (which would have been used earlier only it took me a while to find it underneath the bathroom sink)
- 1 fly, eaten alive by Stanley (who appeared to enjoy it immensely)
Today I have killed only 2 flies so far. The first one was smashed against the French doors in our dining room, which seems to be a popular spot for the flies to congregate. The dogs like to sit on pillows on the floor just inside the French doors where they can get a lot of sunshine. Now, as soon as the dogs see me coming with the flyswatter, they get up and stand underneath the dining room table and eye me nervously. They have not yet figured out whether I am just very mad at the flyswatter or whether the doors are the ones who have displeased me.
The other fly died when it landed on the outside of the potato chip bag. I was so incensed at the sight of my beloved potato chips becoming possibly contaminated that I whacked the fly very hard with the flyswatter; so hard that I couldn’t figure out where the fly, dead or alive, had gone afterwards.
I later found the head of the fly stuck to the outside of the toaster oven door and its body in the sink.
Many of you who know me (well, really only Craig) who have texted me (Craig again) know that I hate when people send text messages to my cell phone (hey, Craig, remember that time when you texted me by accident and I was standing less than two feet away from you? And that other time you texted me, but on purpose? You still owe me thirty cents for those texts, buddy).
This is why I hate text messaging:
- It costs me 15 cents to receive a text. I am already paying for a cell phone which gives me constant access to people — well, except for when I’m driving through a no-service area, and except for when there is so much static on the phone that I can’t hear what the other person is saying. So before you companies get all busy implementing Internet surfing, picture taking, text and emailing capabilities on every wireless phone in the world, why don’t you work on making a phone that will actually let me talk to someone without screaming?
- What’s so important that you have to text me about, anyway? Either pick up the phone and call me to tell me what you want, or if you’re in a place where you can’t talk, call me when you CAN talk. Or email me when you get back to a computer, if you really can’t stand interacting with a live person.
- If you really, really, want to text me, then text me at a landline. Did you know that people on regular, non-cell phones can receive texts FREE? And have it read aloud to them in neutral, robotically polite voices?! This is a promising advance in technology, and I only wish more texters took advantage of it.
Sometimes text messaging is invaluable — and here I’m thinking specifically about September 11 — but most texts consist of messages that could easily have waited hours or days to be delivered, or contain questions which require an immediate answer, and now you have to pick up the phone and call the person back. It is, in short, the lazy person’s way of putting the ball in your court.
A few weeks ago, Chris received a text message. The message, in its entirety, was: “We are going to Minado for lunch. What dishes do you recommend?”
The message almost sounded like it might have actually been meant for him. We live close to Minado and have eaten there frequently. But Chris didn’t recognize the phone number on the caller ID, and when he tried calling it back, all he got was a generic voicemail greeting.
This is irritating because not only did we pay 15 cents for a strange text message and had no way to get in touch with the caller, but the caller appeared to be mildly retarded. Why would you text someone a few minutes before noon to ask about lunch dishes? Do you think we are a dietary version of MovieFone, available at all hours and times to answer your food-related questions?
And hello, Minado is an all-you-can-eat buffet. We don’t recommend dishes at a buffet. We go out there and try everything that looks good to us, whether we know what it is or not, and you should too. If you don’t, then perhaps an all-you-can-eat buffet is not the place for you.
The final straw fell today when I received a text message. I was sitting beside my cell phone when it suddenly began beeping at me.
I picked up the phone and saw that I had received a text message. I could not tell who it was from, so I opened it. Usually I just delete texts right away, but I hadn’t received a text in so long that I couldn’t remember how to do it. Press a few buttons on my cell and it automatically takes you to the text message, so before I knew it, I was engrossed in reading a telenovela of a text message:
“FELICIDADES” Ganaste un TOYOTA HILUX mod. 2007 y $ 15,000 gracias a Telemovil y interacel internacional comunicate a ext. 01150251708906
Whew! I didn’t know what that all meant, but obviously, it was part of some kind of continued story. This segment had clearly been sent to entice me into subscribing to the entire series, which involved, perhaps, a canasta player whose Toyota had broken down despite being a model 2007 car, and thus she had been blackmailed into giving $15,000 to an international cartel who had pretended to want to film the treachery of her Toyota but was now ominously only reachable at 01150251708906.
Fascinating though this was, I decided it was not worth 15 cents of my money to continue to receive each chapter, and I called customer service.
I had asked about blocking texts before, but was told this was impossible. Today, however, it was apparently not only possible but free!
I can no longer send text messages, but I can also no longer receive them. The burden of each 15 cent text is slowly being lifted from me. But if anyone gets Part 2 of that telenovela, email it to me!
From CNN:
At age 30, the human body’s major organs begin to decline
I don’t even know how my feeble skin is keeping my major organs contained.
I had begun to suspect that I was getting old, and tonight I found confirmation.
According to an ad I just saw on Craigslist, I am too old to donate eggs. And not even by just a year or two.
I have never harbored a desire to donate eggs to help out childless people, or to share my admittedly high-quality genes with the rest of the world, so I’m not crying over this lack of opportunity. What I’m crying over is the $5,500 an egg that has been forever denied to me, all because my eggs expired when I wasn’t paying attention.
“If you want to unsubscribe from Marriott EBreaks, click here!”
I clicked.
“We’re sorry, but it’s not possible to unsubscribe from Marriott email subscriptions at this time. If you need immediate assistance, please contact customer support.”
My cell phone rang this morning, startling both me and the dogs because almost no one calls me on the cell, and also because I have the ringer turned way up because when people do call me, I often can’t hear it.
“Can I speak to Sarkus?” the woman on the other end said.
“Who?” I said.
“Sarkus, can I speak to Sarkus?”
“You have the wrong number,” I said, mentally calculating how many of my free minutes this dumb lady had just cost me.
“No, I’m pretty sure I have the right number. Isn’t this — ” and she rattled off a phone number, similar to mine except in the last four digits; so in other words, not really similar to mine.
“That’s not it,” I said flatly. Wouldn’t I know if there was a Sarkus around? Apparently she didn’t think so.
“Oh, sorry,” she said.
I hung up. I would have called back to explain that I didn’t appreciate her assumption that I didn’t know who I was and who was around me at this phone number and that there should be a Sarkus at the end of the line, whatever a Sarkus was, but I felt I didn’t need that much aggravation at the start of my work day.
And also, her phone number was unlisted.
Yesterday Mina refused to eat, went outside, and ate grass to make herself puke. She seems better today, but she still has no interest in eating.
Today Stanley’s stomach is making strange rumbling noises, and he refused to eat breakfast AND his crazy pill. He then went outside and began eating grass. He has not yet thrown up, but we expect it soon. He must be feeling very bad indeed, because he has even condescended to sit on my lap for more than 30 seconds.
I thought Paco was doing well since he ate breakfast and appeared his usual self, but then I found him in his Puke Crate, lying down, facing the wall, paws covering his eyes. He did not even run out and scrabble my legs when he saw that I had lifted Stan onto my lap.
Why do they always get sick just before a weekend?
- When your dog starts barking before 5 am, for the third day in a row, and when you open the door to her room, you see her sitting patiently and expectantly on the chair facing the door, as if waiting for her early morning entertainment to commence.
- When the other dog in the room gazes at you with the long-suffering look of someone who has accepted his lot in life as being woken up every morning before 5 am.
- When the third dog, the crazy one on Zoloft, the one who now sleeps alone in the family room, jumps out of his nest on the sofa, goes outside to pee, runs back inside without even looking at the cars in the garage which he usually likes to hide under, and leaps back onto the couch and burrows into his blanket bed because even he knows that getting up before 5 am to pee outside is completely unnecessary.
No one is currently on ICQ, AIM, or gmail, and no one is answering my phone calls. I am unsurprised by this because, after all, I am trying to reach people on a Saturday night. Most people go out on Saturday nights.
After I left one last, lonely voicemail, I briefly wondered if perhaps I was a pathetic loser for being home on a Saturday night, especially since I don’t even have kids. Then I realized I was not a pathetic loser because I’d had a strenuous day and clearly needed to remain home to recuperate.
On Saturday I:
- Did all of our laundry
- Let the dogs out about a billion times more than their bladders actually required
- Watched two and a half episodes of Frasier
- Checked tmz.com multiple times to see if Britney had done more crazy things (Answer: Yes)
- Started (and finished) reading a really great book (The Dream-Maker’s Magic by Sharon Shinn)
And, most taxing of all, I had lunch with my parents.
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My sneakers originated in Vietnam, were in Hong Kong yesterday, and in the immortal words of Flight of the Conchords:
They’re turning kids into slaves, just to make cheaper sneakers
But what’s the real cost ’cause the sneakers don’t seem that much cheaper
Why’re we still paying so much for sneakers when you got little kid slaves makin’ them
What’re your overheads?
And on an unrelated note, this is one of the funniest things I have read in the last month.
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