However, my current prescription runs out in T-minus one day and counting. So… do I try to stretch out the prescription in hopes that I’ll get insurance speedily and deal with some withdrawal and shit until next week? Or do I break down and cough up another $249 for another month’s worth of drugs?

I’ll probably just cough up the kizzash; fuck my vacation account again. It will take me so long to save up the last $249 I took out for drugs that it’s hardly even worth it to have anything at this point. Knowing my life, the insurance won’t happen for another 800 years, based on the number of bureaucratic complications everything on earth manages to throw in my way when it comes to health care and reality.

On the plus side of being abandoned– Saki said I could have free reign of his CDs since he has them all burned onto his iPod and doesn’t want to store them all! I scored a ton of awesome shit!!! I now have a ton of CDs that I used to play all the time at work when I worked at the record store because we had promos, but never bothered to buy: Blackalicious. Dan the Automator, Gnarls Barkley, Handsome Boy Modeling School, and… THE POWERSTATION, bitchez!!! Hellz yeah I’m not sweating when the heat is on! I have this on vinyl, but there’s something to be said for having it on CD so you can blast it in the car at any time.

Also: Bell Biv Devoe, Digital Underground, Gorillaz, and the only Beck CD I don’t own (The Information) are now in my collection. I haven’t even finished going through his collection (he has zillions)– that was just the cursory glance!

It poured today; I’m talking torrential downpour. I know, because it started pouring the second I stepped out of the T stop at DTX and continued unabated until 3 blocks later when I reached 220 Franklin St. I accidentally took a wrong turn when I got out of the T and had to go a block out of my way. Do you think the rain would have stopped earlier had I not had to make a course adjustment?

Because of the rain, my wrist brace got all soggy so I spent the rest of the day with my arm smelling like someone had shoved a wet sponge into a sweaty gym sock. Basically, that was what my arm was, so the analogy almost isn’t an analogy at all.

At my job sites, people are getting used to the sight of me. They come up to me and ask plant questions all the time. Yesterday I spent 15 minutes discussing powdered fox urine in broken English. Apparently fox urine wards away skunks, and a lady asked me if I knew where to get it. I had half-a-mind to be like, “I got da hook up. Meet me in the parking garage, floor 4 in 10 minutes. Bring the briefcase…” but I didn’t. I go easy on non-native English speakers! Today I spent 20 minutes discussing the finer points of orchid care with a Chinese woman (the finer points are: don’t ever water them, give them direct sunlight or pay attention to them. They’re kind of like gremlins).

Saki and I went to see Hancock today– it was surprisingly pretty good. I was expecting it to be heartwarming; at least that’s what the previews hinted at. Instead, there was a PLOT TWIST I’m not going to tell you about. Needless to say, it ended up being a completely different movie from the one I thought I was seeing, which was a nice change.

Mmm. Now my arm smells like Palmolive.

I have no idea about the rest. All I know is that I don’t get out of the house a fraction of what I used to. I went to multiple parties in a single night on more than one occasion during that one-month period. When’s the last time I went to ANY party whatsoever? When’s the last time I went out dancing? Oh yeah, I think that was March. Before that? Sometime in November.

Life is passing me by and all I’m doing is lazing around in poverty and nerding out by immersing myself in all my stupid projects. I’ll have time for them when I’m old(er) and (more) decrepit. I need to make an effort to have more fun. Or something.

The problem is: no money. I can’t even ride my bike that much because of my stupid wrist. Will somebody please fix my stupid wrist so I can at least have some bicycle-related fun? Sunday was gorgeous, but I stayed in and cleaned the house because what else am I going to do? Gas is too expensive to even drive my little fuel-efficient car anyplace, I can’t bike much (though I did ride to Newbury St. on Saturday and around Central Square and of course my wrist is killing me now), and I ride public transportation multiple times a day and am sick of it. Besides, if I wanted to take a long walk close to nature, the T isn’t really going to help me out getting there. FIX MY WRIST, HANDS OF FATE!

God dammit! When do I finally qualify for that stupid health insurance? Haven’t I learned my lesson? Yes, I GET IT. DON’T EVER CHANGE JOBS. DON’T GET FIRED FOR BEING A TERRORIST. ok, got it. just hook me up with the Blue Cross and I’ll shut up!

It’s kind of amazing, because normally ads letting you know what a fat slob you are focus on the Beautiful People and what you should look like if you obsessed over your weight constantly, ate nothing but 1/2 container of nonfat yogurt for every meal and did a lot of heroin. However, most of these ads focus on “fat” people. That is, they show pictures of what you’re NOT supposed to look like in hopes that you suddenly say, “holy shit, my stomach is not concave!” and go out and buy their diet pills or green tea diet plan or whatever. It’s pretty awful.

The one in the lower left comes with the caption “avoid muffin top”– they gave it a label! Now whenever I see someone with a little gut spilling over her buttcrack-jeans, the phrase “muffin top” involuntarily comes into my head. Ack! Thanks a lot! How many high school girls are going to sit in the locker room and derisively scorn Uncool Katie Jones’ now-actualized Muffin Top?

Here are the “ideal” bodies; what we’re all supposed to strive for. The captions for each of these revolve around looking good in a bikini, because after all, that’s the whole point of existence.

I personally like “the Pink Patch.” There’s supposedly this patch that you can wear that will make you skinny. Everything is in patch form these days: cigarette-quitting, birth control… does anybody else find it slightly unnerving that something you stick to your skin is somehow silently leeching chemicals into your bloodstream? Even if it *is* pink?

Lastly, there are the before-and-after pictures. These ones really crack me up:

The first one’s caption talks about losing 20 lbs in 6 weeks. The difference between the “before” picture and the “after” picture is way more than 20 lbs. Losing 20 lbs in 6 weeks? Is that even healthy? The second picture is awesome because we learn that not only will you be skinny after going on the Whatever Diet, but you’ll get a tan, too!

The ads read my profile and deliver ads specifically to my demographic, such as diets for “35-year-old Women” — I really wonder what the ads are like for 35-year-old men. I bet you anything that there are not nearly as many “DAYUMMM, YOU’RE A FAT-ASS!” ads targeted at them. I really really hope that my 13-year-old niece isn’t getting as many fatso ads as I am; that would really suck. Like girls need to get screwed up at that tender young age if they aren’t already.

Facebook has added a little feature to the ads, 2 buttons– one with a thumbs-up and the other with a thumbs-down. The thumbs-down one changes the ad if you click on it. Unfortunately, it seems that pretty much all the ads for my demographic are ones decrying fatness, because if I elect to change the picture, it just gives me another one from a different company letting me know how fat I am in a slightly different angle, and how I can fix it with a different preposterous-sounding diet.

Now, with the increase in cheap, available, fat-laden convenience foods coupled with the increase in jobs that require you to sit at a desk all day, Americans are getting fatter. Nobody disputes that. However, you’d think that with the Average American being a little chunkier than the ones in bygone years where people toiled in fields and factories and at other waist-slimming jobs, the attitude towards fatness would be relaxed a bit. However, this is not the case. Fat people have always had a bias against them (except perhaps in the middle ages when fatness was considered a sign of wealth), but I think that people are not only more intolerant of extra pounds now, but also the criteria for what constitutes a fat person has narrowed quite a bit.

For example, check out Marilyn Monroe:

What a freaking fat-ass! Jeez, have another jelly donut there, Tubby.

I know it’s an obvious statement, but in a world where Kate Winslet

and Drew Barrymore

are considered the chubby chicks of Hollywood, then what chance does anyone have? If your dress size is a positive integer, then you might as well be mainlining cheesecake, because face it, YOU ARE DOOMED TO FAILURE! WE all know that if you are fat, you will never live a happy fulfilling life and you might as well just lay down and die right now because people are laughing at you behind you back, you’ll never get a raise, and if you somehow manage to trick some unwitting illegal alien into marrying you, he’ll be screwing a chick in a size -000 dress within minutes. I hope you’re proud of yourself, you lazy slob!

Because, we know that all fat people are fat because they’re lazy and have no self control. Of course that’s it! It’s just like poor people aren’t rich because they’re too lazy to work hard. Is it any co-incidence that there are so many fat poor people? I think not! In fact, how many skinny terrorists do you know? Saddam Hussein certainly was no Twiggy. Fat people are actually terrorists!

Jesus says nuke em all! Fucking Communists.

On another note, my cat, whom I affectionately nicknamed “Lard-Ass” has been on a barfing spree again. I’ve thought that maybe calling him Lard-Ass gave him a complex about his weight and caused him to become bulimic. Then I realized something else recently. In the movie Stand By Me, the character called Lard Ass exacts revenge on the town who bullys him for being fat by barfing on everyone. He enters a pie eating contest, drinks a bunch of castor oil before hand, and hurls blueberry pie all over the audience. This causes the audience members to each get sick and ralph up all over their friends and neighbors.

i don’t know why this piece of cinematic trivia escaped me for so long. I mean, I’ve only seen Stand By Me like 800 times– it came out when I was about 12; the perfect target for a coming-of-age movie, even if it was a fairly trite Baby Boomer Nostalgia flick.

So, I will strive to no longer call Morrissey by his nickname, and go back to calling him Moz. Godspeed, me.

Thus I opted to see Wanted, which was exactly perfect for a day like today! It was awesome! Why did I love this film that had absolutely nothing original about it? I like stuff blowing up, especially when they involve trains. You know how I love disaster movies, particularly ones taking place on transportation vehicles… Well this movie had everything: Stuff blowing up; really cool visuals; car chases; the tried-and-true plot line of taking a novice dork whose destiny, unbeknownst to him lay in greatness, and turning him into a warrior of sorts; vague mystical illusions; James McEvoy who is REALLY FREAKING HOT (even with a [nearly flawless] American accent); AND a giant shoot-out scene on a train that was slowly tumbling off of a bridge into a gorge.

It was the visuals that made this movie so perfect for a crappy rainy day, and I don’t mean just the sight of James McAvoy, although that didn’t hurt. The choreography of the fight scenes and car chases was in that no-way-that’s-impossible vein, but they ended up so perfect it was funny– that was the joke. The joke of this movie was this: the entire premise is fairly impossible; none of this stuff could happen, yet it did. In this regard, it was sort of a winking parody of itself (see Shoot ‘em Up; another example of this, though it pulled it off better).

The action really was part of the movie, too. In a lot of movies, there will be a plot, then some action, then a return to the plot, then a chase scene, then some more movie… but Wanted managed to entangle the action with the plot so they complemented each other and furthered the movie along nicely.

I wasn’t too happy with the fact that they strapped bombs to rats, but at least there were rats present. Rats make every movie better, even if they explode, I guess. Actually, since I enjoy Stuff Blowing Up and rats, you’d think blowing up rats would be the Ultimate Form of Entertainment for me… maybe I’ll have to re-think my stance on rodents as WMDs.

So anyway, if you’re in the mood for some mindless escapism, go see Wanted. It was directed by that Russian guy who did Night Watch and Day Watch, which I saw and didn’t understand for a second what was going on, but visually it was pretty nifty. Did I mention that James McAvoy is h0tt? I was actually watching this BBC drama I got from Netflix called State of Play yesterday, and he’s in it (it also features John Simm aka The Master from the new Doctor Who series). I watched it in order to fill the MI-5/Spooks spy drama -type void in my life and somehow this series got bumped ahead of MI-5 season 4 in my queue. Anyway, it turns out that James MacAvoy’s in this series as well, and as usual, he’s super hot (though he’s got an English accent in this one), even though he looks about 17 in it and I feel slightly dirty. Oh well, I’m gettin’ old; it’s bound to happen. I’m just a Cougar in training, I suppose.

Why do I have such a thing for scrawny, pasty-white Scottish guys? I have no idea. Maybe there’s a support group for this.

Tomorrow Devo is playing with the Tom Tom Club at the harborlightsfleetbankofamericaArcherDanielsMidlandProctorGambleMicrosoft Pavilion tomorrow night. I’ve been wanting to go ever since I heard about it, but I’ve been lacking in the funds lately. Also, there’s a $10 convenience fee + a $5 handing charge (even for will call tickets) which annoys me. The last time I was going to see Devo, I had 2 tickets to a totally sold out show in Central Park where they were playing with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and stellastarr*… and it took 9 hours for the Fung Wah to get to NYC (It usually is 3-4), so I missed it. Will I make up for it tomorrow?

The Whatever It Is This Week Pavilion is a glorified tent outside, and tomorrow it’s supposed to be thunderstormy, blustery, and hail at times, as well as being in the 90s and humid. I don’t feel that bad missing the show under those conditions! Thank you Mother Nature, for helping me with my crippling indecision! Now, let’s hope that the meteorologists are correct and I don’t end up kicking myself for missing another Devo show…

Saki maintains that if a middle-aged creepy guy hits on you, you should be flattered, and happy that he thinks you’re hot, rather than creeped out.

Guys just don’t understand.

I think guys would *like* to be seen as pieces of meat; then they wouldn’t have to bother play-acting with all those extraneous things that females have that just get in the way, such as personality, feelings, ideas, and all that other crap nobody cares about. Dudes just don’t get it if you explain a million times that females are judged first by the sum total of their tits & ass, then by anything else should the judger decide the t & a is good enough to attempt further judgement. It gets REALLY old to have dudes do the once over head-to-toe check-out, resting on the boobs longer than anything else, and once they get to the legs, back up to the boobs as the final eye-resting-place, but guys don’t understand this because I think they’d all like to be ogled.

I remember back in the 80s when Sexual Harassment became the topic of the day. There were several tv sketches and comic strip jokes devoted to showing women seeing men as sex-objects rather than people. In the sketches, the guys were always taken aback and suddenly came to the realization what sexual harassment actually was. This is so unrealistic, though! I’ll bet that if a chick whistled at some guy and pinched his butt as he walked by, he wouldn’t be creeped out by it at all. He’d probably like the attention. The only analogous situation I could think of was if a guy were to go out into the parking lot and find someone sitting on the hood of his car, having a picnic. That’s violating personal space, isn’t it? Also: straight guys sometimes understand if you tell them to picture a creepy middle-aged gay guy hitting on them. However, most dudes would at least secretly be flattered by this as well!

I can say that probably 90% of the time when a 60 year old guy hits on a way younger chick, it’s not because he has such discerning tastes in women; it’s probably because he’ll jump on anything that moves. Or, because he has no idea any other way to treat females other than as walking tits with an ass attached. Yeah, I’m sure he really wants to get to know her by talking for hours while gazing into her eyes at to a romantic dinner and then buying her a puppy.

Saki is flattered when chicks in the gym hit on him– well good for him. It doesn’t happen very often in his world, so let him be flattered. He hasn’t spent a lifetime of not being taken seriously by members of the opposite sex by having his chest addressed in conversation more than his face.

This is where Feminism has gotten us. Nothing has changed all that much in the world of attitudes towards women; they’ve just gone underground. Thanks to Feminism, though, we all notice it more. It’s kind of like Flowers for Algernon– I know I’m always referring to this book, but here’s a quick and dirty synopsis for those of you who haven’t read it: a guy is retarded, all of his “friends” make fun of him and are playing practical jokes on him all the time, but he’s too stupid to realize it and just thinks they’re all having fun. Scientists give him a drug that makes him brilliantly intelligent over a short period of time, but it wears off as quickly as it comes on. In the end, he’s almost as stupid as he was; he’s just smart enough to vaguely remember how it was before and realize that something is wrong, that his friends are all picking on him, and that his job sucks etc.

So, what’s better– to have an idea of what could be, but know we haven’t achieved it (such as women’s equality), or to still be in the dark ages where you aren’t aware that there’s anything wrong?

Women are now expected to have careers, pay for their own food on dates, stand on trains, carry their own heavy luggage, pull their own weight in general… and still find time to raise kids, cook, clean and sew on buttons, all while looking hot. Because, while feminism may have evened the playing field a bit, the point of women is still to look good for men.

Don’t believe me? Some of the most “enlightened” men I’ve dated (OK, I know this is a discrediting item itself if you’ve ever met any of the losers I’ve gone out with), who considered themselves feminists, got pissed off when I did things such as cut my hair without consulting them. I am still floored by the time that Loser X actually reached across the table and pulled the barrettes out of my hair, saying “when will women learn that they look better with their hair all loose. Why do they wear these things?” He was not too thrilled when I gave him a 90-second lecture about how the point of women was not to look good for men, and maybe, just maybe, women didn’t want their hair annoying them in their eyes all the time. He was genuinely taken aback. It had never occurred to him that women didn’t want his advice on how to look good. After all, women are too stupid to know these things! Maybe I just have a chip on my shoulder because my whole life my father and grandfather let me know when I was “letting myself go” because MEN REALLY THINK THAT WOMEN ARE TOO STUPID TO KNOW WHEN THEY’RE GETTING FAT! Now think about it– how many women do you know who are completely comfortable with their weight? Yeah, I thought so.

Basically, all the guys I know who say they’re “Feminists” do so, not necessarily because they believe in women’s equality, but because they don’t like mowing lawns and are generally too lazy to want to do “traditional male” things like fixing stuff. Feminism’s been great for guys, because now they have even less responsibility! There’s no pressure to get married anymore, and if you do, your bitch’ll be there to pay 1/2 the rent. Birth control means you can do anyone you want and not worry about babies at least. And, you’re considered a perverted freak if you DON’T look at pr0n these days! Plus, chivalry is dead, so you don’t even have to think about holding doors, pulling out chairs, or generally impressing the ladies with your debonair attitude or impeccable manners.

So here we are in the 21st century, still getting promoted less, getting paid lower wages for the same work (although I read someplace that this gap is closing for entry-level jobs), but at least we can wear jeans whenever. I guess that’s a plus. Part of me would rather live in the 1800s where at least we all have clearly defined roles, even if they do all suck. At least I could be judged by what I *did* (i.e., I’ve got the skillz to pay the billz– I can bake bread, sew, knit, all that stuff that made you cool in past centuries) a little bit more, since if I didn’t do the required things, we’d all starve to death. It seems that in the modern world, with the advent of cooking appliances and devices that make cleaning easier etc., women have been liberated from housework… so the only think left for them to do is contribute to the expenses and look good. ::sigh::

I wish I could go into a coma for 100 years and wake up in a time when hopefully things are more enlightened. Heh, who am I kidding? In 100 years, the world will be a nuclear wasteland ruled by giant mutant cockroaches. I’ll be they’re totally sexist roaches, too.

However, I had all this beer batter left over, so I began rummaging through my house looking for other things to deep fry. I came upon a tin of sardines… we eat fried fish, don’t we? Why not sardines? Well move over, Mrs. Paul, because deep fried sardines are the shizznit.

After a tin of sardines, though, I still had leftover batter… so I found a can of tuna fish. I remember a recipe I found for fake gefilte fish made from tuna, so why not? I drained it, but I didn’t have any breadcrumbs. BUT, I did have the dregs of a bag of tortilla chips (lime flavored even!)… so I crunched up the chips, mixed them with the tuna, made patties, dredged in flour and then beer batter and deep fried. Their structural integrity is not great, but they taste delicious!

So there you have it… more adventures in Trailer Trash cooking.

Tasty!

I mean, you can be AGAINST abortion, but is anybody really *FOR* abortion? Pro-choice people are *for* having the right to choose, but only because the idea of choice is threatened by people who are *against* abortion.

People are *against* terrorism, but if you are anti-terrorist, what are you for? Pro-leave-us-alone? Pro-peace? (naaah)

People seem to spend a lot of time thinking about what they *don’t* support; people define themselves by what they *don’t* do. For example: vegetarians. Vegetarians will say “I don’t eat meat.” It’s not “I eat vegetables” or “I eat vegetables only” but what they don’t do: eat meat. Not in broad political/social terms, but in small daily activities– people seem to define themselves more and more by what they don’t or can’t do. It struck home at work when I listen to the constant whining of my co-workers and the long lists of ailments. This is the simple example: Shirley doesn’t do heavy lifting because of her bad back. She doesn’t smoke because of her asthma. She doesn’t eat any number of things because of various digestive issues/allergies/whatever. At the end of the day, what DOES she do? I don’t think she knows. She spends so much time concentrating on what she’s NOT, she doesn’t know what she IS.

This is just on the micro-personal level. There’s a lot of bad stuff in the world to be against, but I’ve found that being anti- everything doesn’t necessarily make you feel any better. I mean, I’m anti-war in Iraq, but what am I pro? Pro No-War-In-Iraq? What can I believe IN, rather than just NOT believing in? The absence of war doesn’t imply that there’s peace. It just means that people are not actively engaging in warfare. They might be uneasily eying the enemy, they might be stockpiling weapons for the next time. They might be all holding hands and eating tofu and singing Beatles songs.

Pro-Peace? Even though it’s a trite, vague position, being pro-peace at least causes a goal to do something, rather than the goal to stop or eliminate something. Being pro- things is more tangible in my opinion–it gives you a positive goal to work towards, rather than simply the goal to make something stop or go away. By stopping something, you’re leaving a void, you’re not necessarily proposing a solution.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s easy to see what you’re against, but it’s a whole other thing entirely to know what you’re *for.* In this day and age, the media, the culture, everything focuses on what’s bad and how to eliminate it. It doesn’t focus on what we can improve or what’s good or how we can make stuff better.

So people, go home and write a list of 15 things that you are for, even if they are seemingly small and inconsequential (i.e,. instead of being anti-eating-seafood, be pro-eating ice cream!) and from now on define yourself by what you DO believe in, rather than what you DON’T believe in.

That’s the end of my cheese-ass rant. Normally I am anti-corny, hackneyed sentiments and pro-meaningful, original, eloquent ideas, but I’m not finding the inspiration to explain myself fully, clearly or even interestingly today!