Typical Phone Conversation, Installment 2

Person #2: "Hello?"
Person #1: "She touched my balls."
Person #2: "Who?"
Person #1: "The doctor."
Person #2: "Yeah, they do that."

Typical Conversation Before Bed

Person #1: "I'm going to work for a Washington Think Tank."
Person #2: "Do you have an offer?"
Person #1: "No."

Alien Vs. Predator, Medium, and Marsupials

Last night we watched "Alien Vs. Predator." When I type "watched," I type it in the loosest sense. My husband slept while I listened to the last 30 minutes of the movie while cutting out Halloween decorations. Apparently, the crafty humans somehow forge an alliance with Predator after stumbling across a war between Predator and Alien, apparently confined to a single building on a planet somewhere in the "Sci-Fi Cliche" galaxy. Why are Alien and Predator fighting? No clue. At any rate, all the humans and Predators are killed off except for one of each. I was always led by the movie title to believe that Predator was a single entity, not a race of beings, but what do I know. By the way, I think I'm still owed a debt of gratitude by B-movie directors everywhere for having sat through "Enemy, Mine." So the movie ends with the final human and the predator defeating the last alien. The predator ship comes down and the human is spared for having fought bravely. The predator captain presents her with the other predator's battle thingy with all the spikes. Very heart-warming. So in the final scene, the ship takes off, leaving our heroine on the planet, and the last shot is of the predator's dead body about to be buried-at-void. Of course, an alien baby pops out of the corpse just before the movie fades to black.

So this morning I have this dream: I am Patricia Arquette from Medium. I am pregnant with three babies all of different levels of maturity (apparently). Then I give birth to one and it is a white kangaroo.

Damn you movie.

My synopsis of the movie: Man meets monster, man meets worse monster, man forges bond with monster #1 to defeat monster #2
--> man realizes man is the worst monster of all.

Ok, the last part may not be in there.

Typical Phone Conversation

Person #1 "So I ended up saving the company a lot of money."
Person #2 "That's great."
Person #1 "Bwaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh."
Person #2 "Don't make that noise."
Person #1 "What, my success noise?"

Best Thing Overheard at the Gym

2 black guys are shooting free-throws. The first guy makes 5 in a row.

Guy #1: "I'm just like Steve Nash."
Guy#2: "That's funny, I don't remember Steve Nash being so black."
Guy #1: "You've never seen Steve Nash in heaven."

Crap

First of all, I would like to say to my dogs that if you do somehow manage to catch a squirrel, and to be honest with you it had to be a pretty stupid squirrel to get caught by my dogs (both of whom have jingly collars and minimal grace and coordination, and one of whom has the turning radius of a truck hauling a double-wide), please, please be sure that you kill it all the way. As it turns out, I do not have the stomach to smash in the heads of crippled, dying rodents at 7:55 am. I also do not like to come home to find that the crippled, dying squirrel has dragged its maimed body several feet, proving how terrible I am for not having put it out of its misery in the first place.

It Finally Rains / Nostalgia

It finally rained today. It's been a while, a long hot while of 97 degree highs. The mornings have been cooler, which is possibly the best thing ever. There is nothing like stepping outside around sunrise when it's smells like brand new world. For some reason, an 88 degree morning just doesn't smell as good as a 78 degree morning.

So when it started raining, everyone in the office sort-of drifted towards the windows to procrastinate, because that is the right of all office workers during any kind of anomalous weather. The drops were beating against the window, and everything looked opaque, but we could see the people in the office across the street looking back at us. Somebody said, "Look, it's the people in the office across the street," like they were some rare breed on the verge of extinction which suddenly shows up at the dumpster behind your house. And it was weird to see those people.

Lately we've been having a lot of turn over at the office, which isn't to unusual in the industry. Even though those people aren't always those you really think of as friends (although, in this case they are for me), you get used to your little jokes and conversations. You look forward to brief interactions throughout your day that become the reason you come back or possibly the reason you don't throw yourself out the window into the path of the next passing big rig. At the end of the day, those are the people with whom you share your small successes. They're the ones you tell your anecdotes to, and the ones who listen to your crack-pot schemes.

The other day I moved desks. I was sitting by the windows, but a co-worker needed more light, so we switched. I can still see out the window, but only to the next building, not down to the street. On my last day at my old desk I realized that I have watched the same three people smoke on the stoop of the next building for the last I don't know how long. It's two girls and a guy. I looked at them every time they came out, I just never paid attention.

Hurricane Katrina Finger Pointing Mad Libs

Why think for yourself when we can think for you in just a few easy steps?
Just fill in the blanks below and repeat ad nauseam:

I can't believe how [Derogatory Adjective] the response of [Name of a Hated Government Agency or Official] was to the [Synonym for Tragic] events in New Orleans. It's obvious that [Name of a Politician] doesn't give a [Adjective] [Curse] about [Adjective for Color or Social Class] people. If the Super Dome had been filled with a bunch of [Derogatory Adjective] [Choose between White or Rich] [Derogatory Plural Noun], [Name of Politician] would have had some [Plural Noun for Expensive Transportation] down there before [Name of Ex] could [Verb] the rest of my [Noun]. I couldn't be more disappointed with [Name of Country or Person - Can Be Your Own Name].

Evolution

I think that when blogs were conceived, the intention was to disseminate information or facilitate discussion. Blogs were probably about stuff like advertising, gardening, or hooking your TiVo to your DVD to your Satellite to your Playstation 5000, complete with diagram. Somewhere a long the way, blogs have morphed into personal gripe receptacles or ways for overly busy people to feel like we still keep in touch. I go to your blog to read about what you've been doing, don't get me wrong, I am grateful for the opportunity to catch up with my friends on the sly in the office, and you come to my blog to see if anything's new with me. If we don't know each other, you are probably just here to make sure that someone is having a worse day / week / life than you. Don't feel bad, we've all done it.

This type of evolution has invaded our existence. Radio used to have programming, then it had DJs, morning shows, late-night shows, and music. Now we have a computer that serves up deep cuts from albums that I didn't even know existed onto identical stations in all major markets. TV went from informative, to situational comedy, to comedy without situation (look, I just can't get in to Seinfeld. Please direct your biting retorts to my ass), to reality TV. I actually got caught up in that "Hell's Kitchen" show on Fox about a month ago when I finally realized that I've wasted my life. This brings me to my final point. People used to do things (yes I'm rehashing the topic from yesterday's post). We used to run and hunt and gather. Now we type, eat Lean Cuisine and pick our pets' poops up with plastic bags. Yes, modern life has officially jumped the shark.

Lists = Evil

The road to hell is paved with lists. There's a list of groceries, a list of channels, a phone book, Google, this sentence. It just never ends. I wanted to complain more about what a cop-out it is to make lists, how we should spend our time doing stuff instead of making lists about doing stuff,
but I've totally lost interest in this post.

Dog Tails

Things dogs' tails should NOT do but manage to do anyways:

1) Knock over your cocktail
2) Knock over your beer
3) Sprinkle hot wax across the room
4) Act as a slapping/knocking/communication device
5) Lift up as an escape hatch for gas
6) Fan said gas towards dog's owner

Things dogs' tails SHOULD do but don't:

1) Prevent dog's butthole from being viewed, smelled, or pressed onto any object, such as furniture with light colored upholstery, the entry rug, or a person's leg