I never did get that joke. If you’ve got one arm, isn’t hanging wallpaper pretty much impossible?

Anyway, I’ve got two arms but only eighty hours in a day and maybe you know how that goes. And I’m barely making progress on any of my to-do lists.

Don’t you hate that, when you spend hours and hours on things that aren’t on your to-do list? Like vacuuming. I just spent a couple hours vacuuming the whole house, but was that on my list? Nooooo!

I guess life’s like that, but I don’t have to like that.

You know what else I don’t like? Telemarketers! Verizon just called to offer Internet service, which isn’t available to me yet, but could Pa Bell have figured that out before he called me? Nooooo! I know the guy is only doing his job. But as it turns out he’s not doing it very well. He spent five minutes talking to me and he did learn that it’s nice and sunny here in Vermont, or wherever I am. But other than that it was a complete waste of time for both of us.

Well at least I got something to bitch about! :)

I’m sick. Let’s just get that right out in the open. I’ve got this cough that won’t go away and I’ve now got this sinus thing and I just feel really crappy.

And so that puts me in kind of a bad mood, cause I feel really crappy.

Wanna make it worse?

“Oh poor Whiskey”

Uggggh. Please. As in please stop.

I don’t know what it is about hearing “poor thing” that irritates me so. Maybe one of you fine budding psychotherapists can figure it out for me. Just please… spare me the pity.

P.S. If I’ve gotten the Warren Zevon/Linda Ronstadt song stuck in your head… HA!! I love that song!! :)

I was just visiting somebody who left me a comment — that narrows it down, doesn’t it? And there was music that started blaring. God, I hate that!! If you don’t know how to put music/video on your site without having it start automatically, DON’T PUT IT ON YOUR SITE. Geeeeez!!

I was just coming to the conclusion that Black Friday had turned into Black November when Thanksgiving came along. And what was that supposed to mean? The start of the Christmas season, of course!

This is going to sound blasphemous and all, but here goes… What would be so wrong with having Christmas in December?

I know, I’m so out of touch, so out of my mind, but I’m sick of Christmas decorations already and it isn’t even December yet!

For one thing, it’s not cold enough. It isn’t always in the forties the week after Thanksgiving but that’s what our forecast is offering for the next few days. I just can’t get into the mood.

And would somebody please tell me how this works in Australia… isn’t it summer there? And I’ve been to L.A. in December to see the silver Christmas trees all shiny… and that was fine because I was just there a week and back to snowy New England before the 25th. But I digress.

I know this campaign will go nowhere, but I’m going to make my own “Christmas in December” bumper sticker.

On sale now. Get ‘em quick! Oh, and they make excellent stocking stuffers!

You people know how I am, I’m all about clever slogans… so how about this one…

I’ve got a message for all you morons out there that think you’re going to save a few minutes of commuting by running that light that is clearly red.

Here’s my plan, and it’s going to require the cooperation of every licensed driver in America, so spread the word. Whenever you see someone running a red light, honk your horn. And honk it loud.

Not only will this alert anyone who has a green light that their life is potentially in great imminent peril, it will also let the red-light-running know that he or she is an asshole and doesn’t deserve to live. And hey, maybe it will scare them straight, or even scare them into a telephone poll.

I’m totally serious about this. If we can save just one life, or soil the pants of just one bad driver, it will all be well worth it.

It’s OK… go ahead and try and answer the question…

This new sign greeted me when I dropped my daughter at school this morning:

But I wished — more than I’ve ever wished for anything before* — I wished that I’d brought it in with me.

So go ahead and try to figure me out… what in the world is wrong with me?

*Yes, I’m exaggerating, I know. But, well… that’s just what I do.

It’s happened twice this week.

Click here to send a message.

And I’m such a sucker, I fall for it every time.

Time.

Yes, actually, it was Time Magazine I was writing to…

OK, maybe that was a little snarky, but I’ve been driven to the brink, pushed nearly over the edge! You all know I can’t survive without Mr Pockety-Thing in my little hands, and clicked an innocent enough link from CNN to their cousins at Time…

But no: read for yourself.

Phththfth, I say, and I’m being generous.

Oh, so the e-mail comes back…

This happened recently, and that wasn’t even a snark-a-gram that bounced! I was transferring one of my domains from Company X to Company Y, and X sent me an e-mail telling me how much they wished they could keep me as a customer.

Well, I thought, maybe I should explain about the great deal Y has offered and maybe X will want to match it. That’s only fair. So I clicked on the e-mail address provided for my use in contacting them… seconds later, same result. User unknown. Some customer service, eh? And now I’m taking *all* of my business from X and moving it to Y!

Will these companies ever learn? I guess they’re so smart already, they ain’t got nuthin’ more *to* learn! Oh well!

It’s been a while since I’ve had an all-out rant fest. Well I guess now’s the time. Notice how I haven’t posted much lately? I’ve spent pretty much every free moment — granted, there aren’t really all that many of those at my disposal — working on my daughter’s laptop. I cannot even imagine how it’s possible in the 21st century that an operating system could allow software to sneak onto the system. Worms, viruses, whatever… How does a supposedly modern operating system allow the system registry to be altered witthout the permission of the operator? UGGGGGHHH!! I’ve tried the search and destroy, I’ve tried the ad-aware, I’ve even booted live Linux to delete one of the spyware apps. I had gotten the spyware off, according to the reports, and as soon as the system connected to the network, BAM!!! Microsoft sucks, they totally fucking suck.

Well, I feel so much better now. Except that I didn’t win the lottery last night. I know, I shouldn’t get my hopes up. The guy who buys the tickets for our little group came around and asked with my share of the hundred umpteen million. A new laptop, that’s all I really need. A new car would be nice, too.

How about A/C for my truck? We’re going away for the weekend — the whole family with dogs, so we have to take the truck… and we’ve discovered the air conditioner is broken. High 90’s we’ve been enjoying this week, so… no, this won’t do. So here I am at the fix-it shop and I have to watch soap operas with actual sex… what is up with that? If I wanted to see people having sex, I’d buy me some porn!!

OK, I’m going to plug in my old laptop, the one with the five minute battery life and freezes if it twists at all. What can I say, I do that too.

To quote my good friend Killired, “shut the @#$% up!!”

Junior’s baseball team had a really tough game last night and to make a long story short, they lost and they’re out of the tournament. But that’s not what this post is about.

I’ve had it with the parents. The @#$% parents. Not all of them. Just some of them. The @#$% parents. I’ve had it with the @#$% parents. And one @#$% parent in particular.

The other team — let’s call them the “opponents” — they got off to a hot start and a couple of the parents started getting nervous.

“Where’s your spirit?” said the @#$%-est of them all. “I’m not going to cheer by myself,” she said… or something like that. I hope that meant that she was going to stop with the insanity. I thought that she might stop waving the pom-poms and baloons while the opponent-pitcher was winding up and even delivering the pitch. Oh yes, it was so obvious she was trying to distract him.

And it wasn’t as if we weren’t cheering. It’s just that we weren’t screaming at the top of our lungs, It’s just that we weren’t pounding giant noisemakers together. It’s just that we weren’t making total asses of ourselves.

She totally @#$% was.

Most of these kids have been playing organized ball for eight years. This team has been together for the past four. They’ve been practicing and practicing and working really hard at honing their skills. How selfish to diminish their achievements by acting as if the game was taking place off of the field!

When the game was over, the opponent-fans headed for the parking lot and most of them called over to our guys: “hold your heads high” and “you’ve got a great team” — which was appreciated by our side.

And then there was the one opponent-parent saying what the rest of us wished we could say: “tell your fans to shut up.”

I couldn’t agree more.

OK, I did remember the pet peeve I forgot yesterday.

You know when you’re registering for some web site or something and you have to pick your country from a list… I can’t stand it when I have to scroll down to the U’s to get to “United States”.

Now I’m not saying that the U.S.A. should always be at the top of every list, but here’s what I’d propose — take all of the countries where you have registered members and put ALL of them at the top. Chances are there are just a few, and maybe they should be ranked in order. Yeah, so then “United States” will probably end up at the top!

But seriously, if there are only users from two countries already registered, why not put those countries at the top of the list? Huh? Why not?