After talking with my Danish friend who lives in Copenhagen today on MSN and realizing that he is seeing our American exported crap reality shows for the first time, and hearing his accurate assessment of how shitty the whole dating-reality-show concept is, I came to the conclusion that I really must not watch so much television as it is making me very irritable. And the reason I was watching television was so that I could not feel irritable but instead, happily brain dead.

For instance, tonight there was this big horrible Average Joe finale. Average Joe, for those of you in other countries who will get this export in a few months I'm sure, is probably the most destitute idea for a reality show save The Littlest Groom which is so god awful wretched it bears no explanation (okay okay, it's about midgets, a boy midget and 20 girl midgets fighting for his midget love...ugh.) Average Joe is about a bunch of average guys, if average means PAINFULLY PAINFULLY awkward dorky somewhat fat or big nosed or lacking in sweat glands, and one supermodel, if by supermodel you mean a weird lady resembling a kinda drag queen who finished fourth in Miss USA which means nothing to me or anyone else, and a bunch of walking penis-head pectoral flexing him-bos in a house together in Hawaii.

At first, I resisted, even when a friend of mine said I had actually met one of the "Average Joes" (read that as this guy with a fro, acne, who weighed about 10 pounds and looked like a malnurished 13 year old at a Guns and Roses concert) at a party in North Hollywood years ago. I didn't care. I couldn't support a show whose sole purpose on television was to vastly humiliate painfully awkward dorks by making them compete in physical challenges with pectoral flexing himbos all for the affection of the most apathetic, dull and dim witted fourth place Miss USA contestant. But I was suckered in by the sheer cruelty of it all.

Examples of such horrible but can't take your eyes off it cruelty:

1) An episode where painfully awkward nerds were PUMMELED to death in dodgeball by himbos, in a variation of dodgeball which we called "Murder" in gradeschool which consists of big bullies running around pelting hard rubber balls at you until you keel over in pain after which the bullies continue to pummel you while you roll around on the ground half in a comatose. Being a girl, I never had to really play "Murder" but watched many a dorky guy friend suffer from the scars and general terror the game inspired.

2) An episode where painfully awkward dork with no sweat glands paints a horrifying portrait of dragqueen-esque supermodel with no eyebrows (she has them painted on like she's some frightening mannequin) and takes her and the portrait out on a row boat only to have his boat blow up when himbos find a detonator that somehow "appears" in their living room and decide to press it, like the nimwit walking penises that they are, because it has a lever, and himbos like to press things. Actually, the boat only pretends to blow up (fake prop bomb) but it actually just sinks. So guy with no sweat glands has to swim to shore holding ugly horrifying portrait over his head the whole way.

3)The producers have obviously told the would-be-Miss-USA that she must refrain from barfing every time one of the "Average Joes" is around her and that she actually has to feign some sort of attraction to them. She accomplishes this by standing four feet away from them at all times, giving them pity kisses on the cheek like they are all her retarded brothers, and clapping her hands together and saying things like, "GOOD EFFORT!" and "WAY TO NOT QUIT!" and "GOOD FOR YOU! YOU FINISHED! YAY!" which I like to put in the category of "Special Olympics Dates." Her painfully condescending attitude toward the "Average Joes" grows worse as her dates are forced, by the producers, to be more romantic to the point where she is saying, "GOOD EFFORT!" nearly every three seconds and sometimes restraining herself from saying this after one of the Average Joes makes a dorky clumsy move on her. This is coupled with her unstrained whore-ish-ness with the army of walking penises, where after she has "stimulating conversation" with them that involves talk about books (here is the exerpt from that conversation about literature with himbo: "What was the last book you read?" "I don't know. I don't read books.") or talk about cooking ("How do you cook spam?" "I don't know. I think we just leave it in a pan and try not to burn it.") and stereotypes ("People often think I'm...uh...kinda stupid." Long silence. Followed by humping) she decides that the himbos are intellectual geniuses and gets it on with all of them.

Anyway, all this climaxed in a horrible especially "Special Olympics" finale where she actually made out with an "average Joe" while still maintaining a four feet distance and while managing not to vomit afterward. Ack. The agony. Why do people go on this show? Why do people go on ANY of these shows?

I think they are all, even the dorky chubby disfigured ones, trying to use these reality shows to launch their porn careers. That is the only reason that seems semi-viable at this point.

But if I have to hear one more speech about how one of them is destined to find their true love on a national television show involving their true love humping 20 other womem/men right in front of their face (not to mention everyone in America's and soon Denmark's face), I may barf. But that won't stop me from watching next week's follow-up episode.

Date:	2004-02-20 17:25
Subject:	Things could be worse, it could be raining! Er...never mind.
Security:	Public
Mood:	crappy

Rather than bore myself to death by recounting the MISERY that was today (i.e. HUGE sum of money suddenly owed at work to government and me have to sort out though me have no accounting training whatsoever, want to die, people mad at me, everyone screaming running around like headless chickens, but yet headless chickens with their decapitated heads SCREAMING at the top of their lungs...hide...hide....run away....! blech.) I will simply post more useless rambling about nothing. In a sad attempt to sink into denial, pretend the weekend actually means freedom from my day job, and that Monday will never ever come.

Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuugh.

Wondering why it is that super-religious Christians do funny things at office jobs, like post a big gigantic honking picture of Jesus above their computer? And why do they always look like they are one step away from killing you when you ask them a question? And why do they have the Lord's Prayers (or whatchacallems) on little prayer cards taped all around their computer monitors with extremely bloody horrible passages from the Bible about killing, plundering, sinning...etc.? It's scary. SCARY.

So after weird experience that involved super Jesus freak screaming her head off at me at the office and basically convincing me that I will soon die from an office "accident" (oo, I dunno, maybe a stapler misfire or copier explosion) I bitched to this seemingly normal guy I know who always maintains a cool calm expression when all hell is breaking lose all around him. "What's your secret?" I ask him. "Jesus," was his answer.

Dead pan look on his face. I laugh hysterically.

Suddenly realize he is not joking. Try to retract laugh. Then hear myself uttering, "Really? What do you mean?"

Oh god, why did I go down this path of horrible awkwardness?

Jesus loves you, blablabla, Jesus will make everything okay, why am I still standing here listening and feigning curiousity about Jesus-love? How do I get myself into these conversations...and when did the entire accounting department turn into religious fanatics?

So then, at lunch, bring up whole scenario to seemingly normal group of scientists. This leads into whole tangled debate about how the Virgin Mary could not have been a virgin because (YES, other than the most logical explanation that she obviously had sex to make a baby, birds and bees, and since when did God go around raping destitute women who lived in shacks...) laws at that time would not allow her to be legally married to Joseph unless they had "done it"...yada yada. Two more people at table are scowling at conversation, turns out they are psycho Jesus freaks too.

What the heck is going on?

So I have closed the whole Jesus conversation and I don't want any more of it.

In other news, found out that really fruity Chinese guy at work buys Dutch designer clothes. He mentioned this to the Dutch exchange student. She, at first, did not recognize the name of the Dutch designer, but then said, "Wait but isn't that a designer for, like, little girls' clothing?"

Thought this was pretty hysterical. Chinese guy is wearing equivalent of Dutch Hello Kitty! So much cultural nonsense at work, it could almost be a really psychotic sitcom.

Then went on to tell Dutch girl that we, as Americans, view the Dutch as tulip waving, wooden shoe wearing, milkmaids with big flying nun hats and aprons churning cheese. I was backed up on this by a friend, Brian, who kept talking about how cheese was an important part of the Dutch image. "You know. And they've got the vat of CHEESE. CHEESE!" he kept saying. "And why is there cheese? We don't know but she's like on cheese cartons and stuff." Dutch girl stared at me and Brian in absolute horror. We just kept laughing about cheese. For no apparent reason. Once we started, it was just impossible to stop laughing. Dutch girl not amused. Dutch girl hates Americans now. Chinese guy slightly sore at Americans now too.

So we try to make the situation better by telling them how horrible Americans are, blablablabla, no one is buying it. Whatever. At least we laugh at things that aren't funny, we can't be that bad, can we....grrr.

Then Brian starts blabbing about Euro-Disney. Apparently, no one went to Euro-Disney before because French people found the colors used there to be garish and American. WELL WHAT THE HELL DO YOU EXPECT? IT'S DISNEYLAND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. IT IS GARISH AND AMERICAN. THAT IS THE DEFINITION OF DISNEYLAND IN THE DICTIONARY. Ack. So French people painted Euro-Disney to look like a Monet painting, or some nonsense, and now it is all pastel colored like a giant watercolor nightmare and now the Europeans are flocking there like crazy. All of this makes me feel like Europeans are hypocritical bastards. You love America, you hate America, you only accept America if it is in a fondue sauce and lilac lily colored with green hues. Ack.

Personally, I think Americans are full of it too. It turns out none of them even know that Amsterdam is even in Holland, not to mention most Americans would be hard pressed to tell you where Germany is...let alone Michigan or Wisconsin. It's all a sad state of affairs. And ninety percent of people think Al Gore is currently president of the United States. I'm the other nine percent think David Letterman is the president of the United States. And then there's one percent who doesn't even know we have a president because they are too busy watching MTV and telling everyone what happened to Trashella on the Real World every day.

I think I will have to start being an alcoholic. I am too grim and jaded to be sober all the time.

Date:	2004-02-19 22:04
Subject:	Ack pt III
Security:	Public
Mood:	blah

I've decided to add a few more terms:

Street-tango. This is that weird dance you do on a crowded street when a person coming the opposite direction as you blocks your path and you both step to the same way (twice) to try to go around each other. The worst part is when you keep stepping and blocking each other more than twice. Now you are just dancing and it is all very irritating. So you laugh. Only they don't laugh. They just look like they might cry. So you stop moving and motion for them to pass and they run past you in terror. Hmm. Maybe this only happens to me. Once in awhile I do the street-tango with someone and mutually share a laugh with them. Sometimes we both stop and motion for the other person to pass which makes it so much more dorky. Maybe this happens more to me than other people but I find I am constantly doing this in crowds.

Cellbarkers. You know, the person on the cell phone behind you in line at the ATM who cannot stop SCREAMING into their cell about some horrible detail of their life that no one wants to hear about.

Me at ATM today, minding my own business.

Girl behind me with psychotic shrill voice wearing large brimmed hat and sweat pants that say TASTY on the butt. Augh.

Me filling out deposit slip.

Girl starts screaming, "GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!" on her cell causing whole line to look up at her.
"NO WAY! WILL YOU GET OUT OF HERE?? WHAT! HE DID WHAT! HE WALKED IN ON YOU WHILE YOU WERE IN A TOWEL? NO WAY! GET OUT! SERIOUS! GET OUT! GET OUT!"

Mild annoyance. My turn at ATM. Girl is still screaming.

"HE DID NOT! I SWEAR TO GOD! HE DID NOT! NOT! NO! NOT! (hysterical nasal laughter followed by pig like snort) SHUT UP! SHUT...UP! YOU ARE NOT SERIOUS. SHUT UP! GET...OU-"

Suddenly seized by overwhelming desire to grab the phone and chuck it out the window before she can say "OUT" again.

Me leave ATM. Walk quickly out of sight. Can still hear girl screaming.

"ARE YOU SERIOUS? HE HAS A WHAT? A WHAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU, YOU'RE BREAKING UP! HELLO? HELLO? HE HAD A WHAT? A WHAT? A WHAT?"

Oh god. Elevator doors could NOT shut fast enough.

Reminded me of a Louis Black (comedian) routine where he develops a brain aneurism because he's in some store in the mall and two 20-year-old annoying women are having a loud conversation that he overhears. One says to the other, "You know, if it hadn't been for my horse, I would never have made my way through college."

He turns to look to see who has said such a ridiculous thing but the girls have disappeared. He is plagued by why a horse and college would ever be together in the same sentence for weeks until his brain explodes and nearly dies repeating to himself, "WHY DID SHE NEED A HORSE TO GET THROUGH COLLEGE?"

This happened as I was getting off the elevator, having narrowly escaped screaming cellbarker and her hysterical fit, when a college guy with some girl step on to the elevator as I am getting off of it. He says to her, "It's like that time." She's like, "What time?" He says, "You know, that time I was getting off that boat in Nicaragua holding that rock and you took my picture."

I turn around. Doors have shut.

What the fuck?

What rock? What boat? Nicaragua? Picture? Did I just overhear a conversation about a drug deal gone horribly wrong? Rocks in Nicaragua? Why would someone take a picture of that?

All this is to explain why I am in such a foul FOUL mood today. Rocks. Screaming people on cell phone. No money in ATM.

Ack. Ack. AAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack.

Today it rained in Los Angeles (ooo! shock! call the press! wait they're already covering it) reminding me that everyone in LA is a moron and all weathermen are useless. This is because every time it rains in LA, it is proclaimed to be "STORM '04 (or whatever year)!!!" and news crews stand around somewhere where it is raining more than three drops and film the rain on the pavement. Usually, some useless woman newscaster, dressed to the nines in a parka and headgear, then relates how the wind is blowing...camera pans up to tree blowing in wind, how bad traffic is, camera pans to two or three cars hitting a one inch high puddle, and how flooding has occured (note to foreigners, flooding always occurs here, they didn't build this place thinking it would ever rain.) Flooding consists of one inch high puddles, people splashing about, and some freaky street in Compton, where it is perpetually flooding due to being the ghetto and/or some scientific wonder where water is destined to flow even if it only rains for three seconds, and on this same freaky street in the ghetto, there is always a random flash flood and some freaky person sitting on top of their car, which is floating down the street, begging to be saved by news helicopters which are too busy zooming in on individual raindrops to rescue the floating person.

Sigh. In addition, everyone else who is not sitting on top of floating cars, is wearing clothes that are thoroughly inappropriate to rain (like me) because the inept weathermen said it would rain TOMORROW not TODAY and of course tomorrow, we will all wear parkas and it will be 90 degrees and sweltering outside. Also, when it rains for two weeks out of the year, everyone drives their cars off of the freeways suddenly blinded by these bizarre drops from the heavens, and traffic is backed up for miles, even when there is no accident because people are so convinced they are going to lose contol of their vehicles in a one inch high puddle that they forget how to push the gas pedal, causing other people to slam directly into them.

It's all a sign that Los Angeles is not a place where one should live. That's why tomorrow it will be incredibly sunny and everyone will be prancing around like the apocalypse is over because it's all part of some evil ploy to convince you that Los Angeles is not such a bad place after all. But then it will rain again, the news will tell you you are going to die, and one palm tree will fall over...somewhere...and kill ninety people for no apparent reason.

So...whilst sprinting through the rain...feeling my shoulders hunch up and looking upward with a wince...I realized that I am a big baby and that it is just water and why am I suddenly walking around like a cat who has just been bathed, wincing and hunching and all like the rain drops are made of acid? I dunno, but I blame Los Angeles and the fact that I was raised here and my body is naturally inclined to drive itself off freeways when this happens.

Anyhow, I've decided it's time I made a list as I often feel the urge.

Here is a list of words I have decided to try and introduce into the English language that I thought of when I was wincing skyward and hunching.

1) Complisult (pronounced com-plee-suhlt). A complisult is a something someone says to you that sounds like a compiment, but the more you think about it, the more of an insult it becomes.

example: "You look really nice today. (pause) Maybe it's because you don't have those big bags under your eyes for once."

or: "That sweater looks great on you, but I can see your bra."

or: "Did you dye your hair? (pause) Because it looks like dyed hair."

or: "That's so great that you still find time to write. (pause) And what a shame that you can't seem to make any money doing it."

I could go on and on. I am the master of receiving the complisult. It seems that I attract complisults daily. I don't know why. Maybe it is just the fact that I never deal them out so I am a natural target.

2) Giftsult. (pronounced gift-suhlt). Closely related to the complisult, the giftsult is a gift someone gives you that appears to be a gift but is actually just an insult wrapped up in gift paper and a bow.

example: An unscented candle. What is the purpose of an UNSCENTED CANDLE? It comes in a big box. You think it's going to be something rad. Instead, it's a big white candle. You look on the bottom of the candle. It doesn't have a scent. On the bottom of this big honking white candle are instructions on how to light it. So it's really just a candle for idiots. With no sense of smell.

or: Soap. I don't care if it's nice soap. Soap just isn't the kind of thing you put in a box and then put a big bow on. It's soap. SOOOOOOOOOAP. I can only see this as a non giftsult gift if it is the great Depression and there has suddenly been a soap shortage and everyone is smelly and giving someone a bar of soap is like giving them ten pounds of solid gold.

or: Socks. If you give someone a pair of socks, even if they are "cutesy" socks, "glittery" socks, "joke" socks, or worse than all those combined "socks with individual toe bits" socks, what you are really saying to the person you are giving the socks to is that you hope they die...and preferably sometime in the near future.

3) Couchfiller. A couchfiller is a person you invite to a party with the sole intention of them being a body to fill up space on your couch. It is usually someone you would never invite anywhere unless there was a huge mob of other people coming to the soiree that you are stupidly trying to impress by inviting a bunch of couchfillers. I think recently I was the victim of a couchfilling incident. You never know you are...I mean you assume you aren't just a couchfiller- but then someone you don't really know asks you to a party and you wind up sitting on the couch all night- squished between people who all know each other and who tell horribly boring tales about other people they all know in common and I mean HORRIBLY HORRIBLY boring stories and you look up at your host/hostess in complete terror only to find that they have been chatting up someone all night and ignoring everyone else and yet the more you try to escape the situation the more you are slammed with food and drink offers and forced back into the couch and you realize that YOU too have been a victim of couchfilling.

4) SOBYSOL. A Sobysol- my new abbreviation for SO BUSY YET SO LAME, is a term I use in my head to refer to someone who always acts like they are so busy and yet in actuality they are just a lame loser who insists on bombarding you with details of their very busy and mundane schedule.

example: You don't really want to have coffee with someone. But you agree anyway, because you can't think of a good excuse out of it. This person happens to be a Sobysol. Which means that they call you and proceed to list a variety of times and dates during which they can take time from their busy schedule to have coffee with you for five seconds (coffee, which mind you, you do not actually want to have to begin with.) But the THINGS that they are listing that are keeping them so busy are really really lame things that you didn't think people actually compile in a list.

To be more clear, I was supposed to meet person A for coffee. Person A called and asked when I wanted to go. I said Thursday, maybe Friday. Person A then carried on like this:

"Well Thursday in the morning I have to work out at the gym, then I might go to the supermarket, and then at 1:00, I have to meet these other people to talk about stuff they're writing and we might work together on a project, then at 2:00 I have to take my car in to get the oil changed, then around 3:00 I was thinking about seeing a matinee movie and then I might be done around 6 but at 8 I have to go and do some laundry as it is really piling up."

Me: "Well forget Thursday, why don't we just do it Friday night?"

"Friday night is good from 5-6 but at 6:30 I'm going to grab a bite to eat maybe and then at 7:00 I was going to tape this show on TV for a friend whose VCR broke and then after that I have to drop off a sweatshirt my ex-roommate left in my car and then..."

After which I just wanted to scream, "STOP! STOP ALREADY! I CAN SEE YOUR LIFE IS FULL OF MEANINGFUL EVENTS THAT IS PREVENTING US FROM MEETING. PLEASE, PLEASE DO NOT LET ME TAKE UP ANY MORE OF PRECIOUS TIME OR GOD FORBID LAUNDRY WILL PILE UP AND EAT YOU ALIVE."

Sobysol people always seem to think that they are the only people on earth who have to do laundry, buy food from the supermarket and change the oil in their cars. Never mind the rest of us who fail to mention all these things in daily conversation cuz we have, like, jobs that take up ninety percent of our time, and I dunno, the fear of making strangers start weeping in utter and horrified boredom.

Okay, that is all for now. Quite a long entry for my second one. Please leave comments and introduce your own phrases. The English languagae is sadly lacking in descriptive and easy to remember terms for modern day situational blunders.

Ta for now.

Hullo, welcome to my- uh- weird live journal thingie. I don't really know what I'm doing so bear with me here.

This is all because of "floatingwalrus" as he likes to be known, who said he would read my piece of crap entries if I created a livejournal. However, this was a much more difficult process than he let on.

First of all livejournal insists I am under 13 years of age. Having just turned 29, I admit at first I was flattered. But after four times of checking off "YES! I AM OVER 13 YEARS OF FRIGGIN AGE" and pressing submit, the site just kept saying I should come back after I turn 13. Flattery soon turned into homicidal tendencies.

SUBMIT SUBMIT SUBMIT. And is it just me or is that code they give you to copy impossible to decipher? Maybe it is just me. It says I'd only have trouble deciphering it if I was a robot. I've always suspected I am a robot. Seemed like it had accents or dashes in where it shouldn't have. Hmm. Robot baffled. Human wins match. Robot will come back when robot turns 13.