because... i am.

is anyone else perplexed that:

• the freaking View is one of the most controversy-creating shows on television? a show where middle-aged women sit around a table, drink coffee, and yap at each other for an hour? no sex, no violence, no R-rated language… just menopause. I guess that’s all it takes.
• the democrats haven’t blamed cold weather on the republicans yet? hello, global freezing? a new movie deal for Howard Dean… An Even Less Convenient Truth? I would’ve thought the crazies would’ve been all over that.
• anyone still replies to “did you get your hair cut?” with “no… I got them ALL cut!!!!”? i mean, ok, I get it; the question is grammatically incorrect. But, for god’s sake, give me a break. it might’ve been 16% funny when you heard it the first time in 3^rd grade from your cheesy dad/grandpa/history teacher. But I am just completely perplexed as to why anyone would voluntarily use that response to any audience past the age of 8. maybe 7.

i like pink.

thank god for boys. sometimes I present myself as being somewhat boy-minded. I like football, I hate shopping (I like buying things, not shopping for them), I am a bad multi-tasker, and I am not overly talkative. However, I do like the color pink, I cannot consume 5 Big Macs in 1 sitting, I enjoy dressing up, I crave chocolate hourly, and, as demonstrated the past few days, I know very little about electronics.

so when my crappy tv broke, I was aided by several notable boys:

1-5: I consulted my group of guy friends by asking the simple question, “what kind of tv should I buy?” Oops. What ensued was a beer-infused i-know-more-than-you-do quasi-argument. But I got good information out of it, such as the difference between plasma, LCD, and DLP (maybe not-so-technical, e.g., “plasmas get hot fast”, and when I asked what DLP was, they said something about mirrors, and I said, “ohhhh, the girl and the elephant thing; yes, I know that.”).

6-7: I also consulted another knowledgeable friend and my dad, who both provided invaluable information on comparing brands, types, the differences between 1080P and 720P, and what kind of hdmi and kjpdrxwwwX cables I needed, etc. (a little more technical, e.g., “I bought a Sharp and love it” and “Uncle Dave bought a Sharp and hated it”).

8-10: looked around at Best Buy and Circuit City, where several boys “helped”, i.e., confused me more when the Circuit City guy tried to convince me to get a DLP tv after I’d convinced myself I wanted the LCD at Best Buy.

11-12: Then was the actual buying, for which another one of my guy friends accompanied me. The hot 19-year-old UNCC student with Versace glasses at Best Buy (who did tell me that Sharps did, in fact, suck, but have improved to top notch quality) and my friend helped me decide which one to buy (in helping, my friend would let me decide and then tell me I was making the biggest mistake of my life; if I then changed my mind, I was informed that I was still making the biggest mistake of my life) and helped me get it from the store up 2 flights of stairs into my apartment.

Finally, I wake up this AM hungover as all hell but excited about watching my new TV, so I set it up AND… cable doesn’t work. figure, hm, should check DVD. oh yes, it works – through all of Wedding Crashers, it works so well. 3 hours later, I check cable again – no luck. sulkily call dad, as now I am getting antsy since playoffs start in an hour. Conversation is something like,

“OK, well what cord is going from the cable box to the tv?”
“a black one?”
“Laura. Seriously. what kind of cord?”
“Daaaaaaaaad I don’t knowwww, it’s black! it worked with the other tv!”

Eventually, we manage to communicate within the bounds of the cell phone-transmitted English language, and he becomes my miracle worker by guiding me through the menu to fix my TV. voila! transmission!!!!! into my home!! such beauty! anyone who does not know beauty does not know a fixed TV.

as such, am v. indebted to all of the above (it only took a dozen of you), esp. those who were not being paid hourly to help me. Gracias. I love my boys.

and … COLTS WON!

don't buy Philips TVs.

2 things i love:

1) exhibit A - the view from my couch
yes, i took a picture, so you can be as amused as i am. After only 3 days of extolling the wonderful, magical powers of DVR, my tv breaks. In Exhibit A you see the 110 lb. tv on the floor and the 2" tv from my bedroom in its stead. Last night, the DVR's bright red light showed that it was, in fact, recording American Idol, though I had no tv to WATCH IT ON (the 2" tv, surprisingly - since it was purchased circa 1942, has no digital outlety thingy). In conclusion, i am buying a flat screen (<40 lbs.) sometime soon (tomorrow) from a reputable brand (Sony).


2) exhibit B - Neutrogena Hand Cream
what i love about it: the only real selling point on the whole tube is Norway's flag with the words "NORWEGIAN FORMULA" written under it............... OH yes, how could we have forgotten?! the Norwegians are certified EXPERTS on hand cream. of course. Just like mathematics and France, Americans just do not get hand cream like those 'wegians.

conclusion foregone

so, i think hippies moved into my apartment building while i was gone. 2 hints:

1) a gaggle of them were playing hackeysack in the yard behind my building when i got back. and by lumping all hippies into hackeysackers, i mean only to assume that hippies don't mind stereotypes when they go out of their way to embody them.

2) there was something that looked like this:



















hanging from a tree in front of my building when i got back. yes, a rainbow fish windsock.....

hmmmmmm.


maybe i'm mistaken, and they've been there all along, but i'm a little miffed at how they afford living in my apartment complex. i thought hippies were all capitalism eschewing, undiscovered artists? of course, maybe the whole gaggle live in one apartment. but then, wouldn't i have smelled the pot by now? oops, stereotyping again.

tell me how this ends

I am such a stupid girl. I come back to my (dorm) room early from our little training "casino night" so I can pack it in early and get a good night's sleep, unlike last night. But instead of picking up my easy Bitter is the New Black book to read before bed, I decide to finish reading the Washington Post I bought on Sunday at Panera (bought for $1.50 , mind you, while wearing the same clothes & make-up from the night before. if churchgoers and teenagers who think it's cool to have Sunday lunch dates are going to gawk at me for blatantly having "shacker" written all over me, then I might as well confuse them and buy a newspaper. oh, the slut can read? how novel…). (for the confused, I'm outside of DC for training for the week and spent last weekend with a friend in Fairfax. and, Saturday night is a blur.)

Silly me. Of course I would come across an article about the "surge." Ah, the surge. How I am already sick of hearing about the gd SURGE, and George hasn't even made his speech about it yet.

Before the Bush-aphiles (are there any left? … er, right?) turn off on me, a warning: you can support George all you want, but this (this - encompassing his handling of the Middle East) is stupid, and there's nothing I can do for you when the world finds out that he's fed us a crock of shit once again. If you had a nickel for every time George said we were winning that war when we most certainly were not, then .. THEN I wouldn't fault you for supporting Bush because you'd have a shitload of money that the reds would help you keep. I mean, in May of '03, George even dressed up in his little flight suit outfit and proudly declared, Mission Accomplished. Good show, sport. maybe he'll do the opposite of Schwarzenegger (yes i had to look up how to spell that) and star in crappy movies after his political stint (come now, you know they were crappy).

This is the thing. Bush is probably about to declare his surge as the next move towards winning the war in Iraq, if winning is even possible anymore. But surge is a verb, an action. And action has gotten us nowhere but deeper in debt, more hated by insurgents, and 3,000 more Americans dead. Perspective - let's move away from comparing to Vietnam and compare to WWII and 9/11. For the U.S., the war in Iraq is already longer than WWII and more deadly than 9/11. Already.

We don't need another action. Remember "shock and awe"? Yeah, that was pretty awesome, wasn't it? Shock and awe - I will always remember picking up a newspaper in England and seeing the front-page picture of a huge cloud of smoke rising above a flame-red city; i remember going back to my flat and staring at the picture and crying. I didn't know why I cried back then, but I think I know now.

We need a strategy. Everything I've heard and read that has been said by the actual men in Iraq has been akin to saying, Yes, of course we have plenty of work to do here, but we don't really know what we'd do with more men, because we already don't really know what we're doing with what we have. What kind of strategy? Now that is beyond anything I might know about foreign policy, diplomacy, war, etc. I really don't know anything about that; it's not my job. But it's mine to be upset that America is making a fool of itself, tripping over its own feet.

And I think the part that pisses me off the most is that I'm sitting in bed writing this goshdarn rant because I can't even sleep without saying my piece of mind first.

This is not a Bush bash, a leftist tirade (pointless rhetoric - ok yes probably); it's me saying I see something wrong and thankfully have the right in this country to say so. In the words of Lt. Gen. Petraeus (Bush's choice to become the top U.S. military commander in Iraq), said in 2003 on the initial march to Baghdad,

"Tell me how this ends."