You're Really Going to Pay Money to See This Pile of Mess?

I can't handle it anymore. I am probably going to commit seppuku the next time someone mentions Sex and the City. I have never despised a TV show as much as I do that awful awful show. Seriously, the hatred and vitriol and bile starts to build up in the back crevasses of my throat with the mere mention of it. I usually get so flustered with my hatred of the show that I cannot articulate exactly why I think it's so awful. I'm hoping that blogging it out will help. I can't promise anything though.

Someone hand me a steel umbrella because I'm being bombarded in the skull with these heavy, leaden cliches Sex and the City keep dropping on me and it hurts - I find it funny when fans of the show (female ones) talk about how it's "empowering" for women. Really? Because the idea that four women have nothing better to talk about than shoes or doing it seems pretty insulting and simplistic to me. So let me get this straight: the show's protagonist is constantly fretting about never finding "Mr. Right" and never being able to get married and have tiny little spoiled fashionista children? And I'm supposed to root for her or at the least, feel empathy for her? Let me guess, I bet the women all love chocolate too! But they worry about it going straight to their thighs! Oh my god, I hope they don't get depressed and sit in their house eating ice cream in their pajamas! Now granted, those cliches offend me first off as a person who hates deserts, ice cream and chocolate. But also, I don't like the idea that the "empowered" woman's main focus is on such material or matrimonial pursuits. Each of the four characters on the show are just two-dimensional facades of characters. So simplistic that's it's wholly insulting.

Ohhhhhh, no she di'nt say that! OMG! LOL! So daring! - Quite possibly the only thing more insulting that the cardboard cutout characters on SATC is how the viewer is supposed to be shocked and surprised by how frankly and openly the women discuss even the most graphic of details when it comes to their sex lives. Really? Because it just makes me think the characters are either not too familiar with the human anatomy (yo, check it, everyone's got the same general layout you have! it's wild!). Even more irritating is the idea that women are supposed to think that the characters are being "naughty" and "irreverant" when they discuss other people's shortcomings. Sorry, if I were writing that for the Sex and the City audience I would have written it in the much more "clever" formula of:

the characters are being naughty and irreverent when discussing other people's, erhm......ummm..."shortcomings"

and then I would insert some winking emoticon and we would all clink our cosmos in our martini glasses together and chortle because me made a double entendre! Me funny and borderline dirty! I swear, the writing on that show is like if you bought every "dirty" birthday greeting card at Spencer's Gifts and taped them together in a long string like some sort of bad blue humor Christmas tree garland. Don't get me wrong. The beauty of a finely-honed and flawlessly executed abortion joke is something to rival that of a Botticelli. So let's play a game. Which of the lines below is from SATC and which is from a tacky greeting card?


“Men cheat for the same reason that dogs lick their balls... because they can.”

“I have low self-esteem, but I express it the healthy way... by eating a box of Double-Stuff Oreos.”

“I'm a trisexual. I'll try anything once.”

"If you're tired of New York you take a nap-a, you don't move to Napa"

(OMFG my brain just exploded that anyone allowed that sentence to escape from their brain and see the light of day)

Just kidding. They're all from SATC. Joke's on you! Well, I take that back. The joke's only on you if you actually see this ridiculous movie. Please make the hype die. Please make the skull-crushing PR go away. Go buy some shoes or something. Just don't give money to these awful writers and perpetuate this dumb stereotype.

PS - I meant to tell you that a Cosmo is not a martini at all. Because you see, a martini is a combination of gin/vodka and vermouth and sometimes olive juice while a Cosmo is just a fancy name and less white trash way of being able to order a Hand Grenade or Hurricane or Jolly Rancher-rita or Sex on the Bloomin' Onion Prep Station or whatever else comes in a souvenir glass you can take home with you when you eat a Red Lobster.

Sex and The City is Awful Part 2: When Friends Agree

And now I will present the chat that followed shortly after I posted this blog. The chat is between my friend Danny and I. And features the idea of feeding the entire cast of SATC into a wood chipper (amongst other ideas):

Old: wanna go see sex and the city with me tonight?

me: fuck you danny
fuck you hard
seriously i think my pulse is still elevated
btw, i added to it becacuse the first draft didn't allow me to fully express my anger

Old: seriously, you should go see it. if you do, i want to be there.

me: oh. my. god. i would totally live blog the shit out of that movie.

me: if you ever want to feel like taking a nap in the sweet embrace of the hereafter by your own hand, by all means go straight to sexandthecityquotes.com

Old: i wonder if samantha makes a penis joke in the movie...

me: OMG!
i'm crashing my ROFLcopter into a trade center as we speak

Old: someone needs to remind her that she was fucking "lassie" from porky's.

me: ummmmmm one better, she was the mannequin that got fed into a paper shredder in mannequin
which was my all time fave movie when i was 5
used to sing the starship "nothing's gonna stop us now" into a hairbrush daily

Old: if this films ends with her being fed into a wood chipper, it's worth it.

me: i want three sequels where each one ends with another one being put in the wood chipper until they are all just a pile of slut stew meat

Old: please add more to your blog. i'm grooving on the wood chipper theme....

me: i really think i should live blog it. go see it and be able to cite factual evidence.

Old: yep. just let me know.

me: also OMG at the inwood all the refreshements including the popcorn is going to be pink tonight!

Old: unless you need to be alone.

me: not kidding

Old: JESUS

Old: big buck hunter: sex and the city version.

me: oh my god. someone please make sure to scotchguard EVERYTHING in auditorium 1

Old: big cunt hunter.

me: like a pair of faded grey velvet drapes

Old: wow. you didn'
yes ...
you did...

me: just sort of ragged and in desperate need of hemming. just sort of frayed and worn thin but with an unmistakable chain smoker sort of smell

Old: you = #1

me: I WIN!
the world loses

Old: can you imagine the hen pen parties who are going attend this thing in droves? all dressed up and shit?

me: the gallo chardonnay will flow down the streets like the blood of a thousand saggy dead cougars

Old: gallo. lol.

me: i want to dress up as a suicide bomber and go see it

Old: i really want to do see it now...
go
people watching might be the allure

me: i'm going to wear a burqua and issue a fatwa against the movie then take out as many single moms as i can

Old: allright. what time am i picking you up?

That's a onesie. For babies. With a wang joke on the front. Of a onesie. For an infant.

Dear Dallas,

We have been together for over twenty years now. Sure, we’ve taken a break from each other those times I moved to London and New York. But you have taken me back when I get sad and lonely and want to come back “home” to you. I appreciate that. I have defended you to the death in the face of the great criticism hurled your way by those who live in “cooler” cities. I defend your low cost of living. I defend you because you are where my friends live. I defend your artistic core that is hidden deep within a hard shell of suburbs and beltways and Hummers and straight ticket Republicans. The others say you’re bad and that you’re greedy and superficial and that you will give refuge to George W. Bush when he is finally relieved of his presidential duties. To them, I still defend you and claim that they don’t see what I see in you. That they don’t know the real you. That all that is just riff raff from outside the 635 loop tainting your image. Sure, I’ve got a permanent chip in my shin bone from when one of your city’s finest decided to haul me into jail for an expired registration sticker only to be kicked in the shin by a drunken lesbian in steel toed Doc Martens who swore I bore a striking resemblance to the girlfriend who had just broken up with her. But I chalked that whole thing up to a big misunderstanding and besides, the shin thing only bothers me in extremely cold weather.

Speaking of weather…..I know you didn’t ask to be settled and populated in the middle of tornado alley AND directly under the sun like a buffet spread under a warming lamp. But here’s the thing, I don’t wear tank tops. I don’t wear wife beaters. I don’t wear shirts without sleeves. Rarely do I enjoy wearing t-shirts without some sort of blazer or jacket over them. I enjoy wearing jeans and sleeves and maybe a light little jacket. Or a dress with tights. But I can’t do that. And furthermore, I have to deal with an insufferable barrage of questions when I refuse to wear seemingly mandatory weather-appropriate clothing. As if I walked into my local bar wearing diapers made of Laffy Taffy. Because of all of this, you make me lazy because I don’t like sweating so I just end up sitting around in air conditioning until the point in time where I have to bravely walk from my office to my car. Once in my car, I again pray to Air Conditioning Jesus to relieve me of my discomfort. Which makes me the lazy, fat American that everyone outside of Blue Collar Comedy fans love to ridicule. Now when I cheated on you with New York, I remember the horrors of trudging through the endless cold rain of October wearing an ill-advised “vintage” wool jacket (read: “wool jacket someone died in and then I subsequently bought second-hand and failed to have dry cleaned”) and thinking of how you were probably back home in Texas all temperate and affordable. But now I think back and other than the overwhelming smell of death that trailed behind me thanks to the secondhandedness of that coat, I do remember that jacket looking pretty nice. Let’s put it this way: you know me and you know I am not a summertime clothes sort of gal. I don’t like cutoff shorts and tank tops and shirts that desperately try to convey my love of surfing or something. I am not a very sporty girl. I like watching sports. At bars. Dark bars. With pints of beer in front of me. So stop trying to heat-stroke me into wearing all cotton and knit and being one of those people who wear flip flops to things other than pool parties and barbeques. It’s not going to work. I can’t move you further from the equator and you can’t make me enjoy tank tops.

Now that we’re on the topic of manner of dress, let me go ahead and delve into the truly irritating side of you. The biggest complaint about you that I hear is that you are a superficial and materialistic city that only values surgically-enhanced looks and working-for-daddy’s-law-firm money. I can’t rebuke that any longer because, well, it’s completely 100% true. You are basically a breeding ground for beauty pageant also-rans and liquor ambassadors. There’s a reason Tony Romo signed such a long contract. He must feel so comfortable in the Zoom Laser Whitened embrace of your unending quest to legally change your name to HottiezBurg. Your nightlife establishments are filled not with likeminded people looking to tie one on and talk trash about whatever current event really boils their blood. They instead are filled with men in expensive distressed denim all intellectually capable of nothing more than a few “hell yeah, bros!” desperately seeking to win the attentions (or drunken sexual favors) of a third year Marketing co-ed who earnestly talks about things like “visions” and “dreams” and “sincerity”. I wish you could just make them all go somewhere else where I don’t have to deal with them and their faux-machismo/earnest and humorless dance of retardation. I’m just trying to have a drink. Clear out.

Normally at this point in a scathing criticism like this one, I would offer some counterpoints about some of the good things you have to offer your citizens. But I’ve spent years doing that only to stop and ask myself if maybe I was wrong about you after all. You are cheap to live in because you insist on knocking down anything more than 40 years old like some sort of demented architectural Logan’s Run and building something cheap and trashy and consumer-driven in its’ place. Then in a final kick to the man vegetables, you intentionally make the new crappy building look old to diffuse the silliness of knocking down a perfectly good old building. You are cheap to live in because there’s always plenty of people who will work somewhere in your borders but choose to live in a town called Promise Ring or Chastity Cove somewhere 50 miles out of the city so that every day they will clog up the roads in their big Suburbans with their big tankards of coffee. All for the luxury of living near a Super Wal-Mart and not having to deal with brown people when not absolutely necessary.

In a horrific deluge of truth and facts and realizations, I have come to see that your sports franchises will never provide me, as a fan, the satisfaction of a championship title. So now on top of having to shield my passport and pretend to be Canadian when boarding an international flight, I now also have to distract the clerk when making a purchase with my Mavs check card. I have to try to muster the unconditional team love that it takes to root for a team featuring the World’s Douchiest Bimbo Afficianado (that’s you, Tones!) and a man whose outside interests include paralyzing fellow strip club patrons, humiliating women who are already so beaten down by life that they’ve taken to lapdancing and making light of all this behavior with self-aggrandizing appearances on World Wrestling showdowns. Neat! Your terrain is flat and ugly, your buildings and roads are wastefully built and horribly maintained, your weather is appalling. And you insist on putting cheese on or in all my food when I don’t want it and didn’t ask for it.

I’ve realized I don’t care to defend you anymore. I don’t care where Greggo is. I don’t care where you want to put a toll road. I don’t care about the super cell with hooked rotation that is bearing down on a town I have never heard of and never intend to visit but for some reason Pete Delkus thinks is more important than me seeing my stories. I don’t care to wade into the unending battle of Denton music scene v. Dallas music scene. Wake me when there’s a full-on Warriors-style battle in the Vista Ridge Mall parking lot. I don’t care enough to get up in arms about where you want to build a new condo. I don’t care about checking out yet another ridiculously pretentious restaurant that serves food on plates that could double as manhole covers where patrons can dine al fresco to better enjoy the breathtaking view of a bank drive through and the rear dumpster area of a 7-11.

You’re trying to be some sort of cultured international city with lofty aspirations of becoming a destination for something other than layovers and telecom conferences. But you should just be yourself. Throw on one of those hard hats that holds a beer can on each side and slip into that “No Fat Chicks” t-shirt and drop the act. No one’s buying it.

Hey, at least you still offer your citizens the exciting and unparalleled probability of being a victim of a violent crime. Keeps us on our toes. WE’RE NUMBER ONE!!! WE’RE NUMBER ONE!!!! CASTLE DOCTORINE FOR EVA!!!!!

Friends with benefits?

Love,
Amanda (von) Cobra

PS – Seriously? 95 degrees today? You're a dick.

Putting the HANDY back in Handywoman?

I have recently realized that I am lacking several basic household essentials that would make my apartment, and subsequently my life, much more comfortable. The only problem is that I am one of the cheapest people on the planet so the chances of me spending any money to rectify the situation is slim to none. So I have improvised. Some improvisations have worked out alright while others could easily be filed away in the "domestic disasters" folder. But the good news is that I also don't have folders or organizers in my house because those would cost money so really, who's counting?

Improv #1: Hammer/Hot Pink Heels

My mom gave me a bunch of art from the time when her family lived in Tehran, Iran. It's cool looking to me though I suspect that actual Iranians would see them as an unholy trinity of Norman Rockwell prints, Sambo cartoons and fallen NASCAR driver memorial art. My mom also realized that I don't have "tools" around the "house" because they cost "money" so she kindly lent me some nails to hang these things from the wall. Once I got home, I realized that if I never shelled out the cash for something as simple as nails, I certainly did not own a hammer. No problem. Luckily I wear heels religiously so I got my hot pink stilettos out. Turns out that in the contest of hammer v. hot pink heels, hammer would almost certainly win every time. Hot pink heel had its' moments and the good news was that when I dropped hot pink heel out of frustration, it didn't cause as much seismic damage as a hammer would have. But a hammer would have probably gotten the job done with far less "never getting your deposit back" collateral damage to the walls. Hammer wins!

Improv #2: Level/Eyeballs and Good Intentions

A level is probably something I could never bring myself to buy. Because it's just a yardstick with a little liquidy stuff in the middle. And once you hang something level, you will never need it again. Until you have to hang something else which surely will be years from now and you will have forgotten all about how hard it is to do without a level or maybe even you will have lost or broken the level if you actually did buy one. So I decided to use the "that looks about right" method when hanging my pictures. I don't like to take things like perspective and where the wire on the back of what I am hanging actually is into consideration. So I end up creating a series of pockmarks and nail holes that kind of resemble machine gun spray when I hang pictures. This would probably not be an issue if I had a level. But my eyeballs are free and I almost always know where they are. So in this case: eyeballs win!

Improv #3: Casserole Dish/Decorative Copper Fruit Mold I Brought Leftover Cranberry Sauce Home In After Thanksgiving Dinner and Never Gave Back to My Mom

There's certain English foods that on paper (and sometimes visually) are disgusting but for some reason I love them and I miss them every time I come back to the States. Like Scotch Eggs. The idea of them is repugnant. However, if there's one on the other side of a pit of cranky vipers, I will just hope there's some anti-venom somewhere near that plate of Scotch Eggs too. So I decided that yesterday, I would make the Trashy King of Trashy Foods. I decided to make a fish pie. The American cousin of which would probably be what I have heard called everything from Tuna Skroodle to Mac-n-Fish-n-Cheese. Although, mercifully the recipe I know for fish pie does not allow cheese anywhere in the process. Unfortunately for me, I realized far too late in the cooking process that one more item on the long list of things I can't bring myself to pay money for is a casserole dish. Or disposable pie pans. Or a bread loaf pan of any sort. Ok, let me level with you. I own two cookie sheets and a broiler rack which all came in one of those "everything you will ever need in a kitchen" box sets. Which apparently is meant for people who will never need to make a casserole. So the closest thing I could find was the mold that I made cranberry sauce in for Thanksgiving last year. Not really anything like a casserole dish. But it was metal, held the ingredients together and did not self-destruct in the oven. So I would say it's a tie on this one. Cranberry mold gets points for all those things. However the final product was not so much casserole shaped as it was decorative scalloped holiday desert shaped. Casserole dish wins!


I wonder if I could get some sort of blogging sponsorship deal with Home Depot or Crate and Barrel. What am I saying? I'm a Big Lots girl and I will never change.

Things I Can't Figure Out Today

1. Why no one other than myself has bothered to ask why there is a seven foot tall replica of an Egyptian pharaoh's sarcophagus just inside the entryway of my office building. I would ask but I don't know to whom questions like that should be directed. There is no Ancient Relics Management office in my building that I know of. I hope it isn't stolen or anything. I would feel awfully bad about my apathy if I come to find that there's some ruggedly handsome archaeologist whose ass will be grass if he can't figure out where he left King Hasapenemtogheoghapwhahpah's coffin.

2. How I ended up being the dropout/burnout of my family. My mom has three Masters degrees in everything ranging from Theater Arts to European History to Health Care Management (yeah, I don't know). My dad (who, by all accounts, was the basis for the character Hank Hill) somehow managed to pull himself away from his combination grill/smoker long enough to obtain his Masters by writing a thesis entitled (get ready) An Empirical Analysis of the Reliability and Validity of Niederhoffer's Cynicism Scale. Oh yeah and he found some time away from mowing the yard on his riding lawnmower to become a private pilot and build an airplane for himself. My uncle is an opera singer and classically trained pianist with a Doctorate in Music Theory who speaks (and sings) in no less than five languages. I, on the other hand, am the kind of person who is so lazy I will just buy new socks instead of having to wash them and pair them back up again. Or I just wear heels instead. Seriously, in some families, the fact that I am gainfully employed and have managed to keep my level of alcoholism hovering comfortably around "functioning" would be good enough to include in the Christmas letter. But in the ridiculously bookish confines of my family, I am the Randy Quaid character from the National Lampoon movies.

3. Why the TV show The Hills exists. Just don't understand what purpose it serves. I don't need to know who any of those people are. They are all awful people who should either be ashamed to be revealing their actual personalities via a reality show or actors who are playing the most vile characters put on air since the pilot episode of Everybody Loves Raymond.

4. Why there's gotta be cheese on everything. I don't like cheese. I don't like the fakey kind nor do I like the more respected "actual" cheese. Please stop putting it on everything. At this point, cheese has just become food glue with which you can adhere any one ingredient to the other. Stop it. This is why the only place left for me to go to lunch is Fuel City. That's right. I'm now forced to eat gas station tacos for lunch because they are apparently the last outpost on the Cheese-On-Everything Railway down which a speeding locomotive of processed orange stuff is hurtling towards their direction at great speed.


Oh and while I am at it, I certainly don't understand THIS. Breasts may look and feel nice and occasionally they can be used as a shelf on which you can rest your cell phone when your hands are full. But that woman is absurd.

Here in My Car, I Know Nothing at All, I Can Lock All My Doors Because Electric Locks Come Standard on Honda Accords........in CARS.....

So I can't get over this desire I have to learn more about cars. Or at least not sound like a total dunce when speaking of them. And unfortunately for me, I found my dad's lectures on how cars work to be annoying and not worth paying attention to. This is the same dad who for months teased me with promises of the "Greatest Birthday Present of All Time" when I was 12. Then on that much-anticipated day, I opened my eyes only to find that my dad decided that, though I had never expressed any interest in such a thing, that he was going to build me a custom dune buggy with some crazy large engine. I'm pretty sure he just the whole "daughter's birthday" thing was just a front. My dad just really wanted a big, loud, dirty and obnoxious dune buggy. So if you're keeping score, that's:

12-year-old Amanda Who Never Wanted Nor Asked For Nor Even Thought About Dune Buggies: 0

Dad: 1

Now I kind of not only wish I had the dune buggy, I REALLY wish I would have paid attention when Dad was doing his best to turn his me into some sort of mini-girl-gearhead. So I decided I would try to learn about cars from the technical side. First off, I want to learn what exactly horsepower is. But then I run into this:

1 hp ≡ 33,000 ft·lbf/min by definition
= 550 ft·lbf/s since 1 min = 60 s
= 550 × 0.3048 × 0.45359237 m·kgf/s since 1 ft = 0.3048 m and
= 76.0402249068 kgf·m/s 1 lb = 0.45359237 kg
= 76.0402249068 × 9.80665 kg·m²/s³ g = 9.80665 m/s²
= 745.69987158227022 W since 1 W ≡ 1 J/s = 1 N·m/s = 1 (kg·m/s²)·(m/s)

Or given that 1 hp = 550 ft·lbf/s, 1 ft = 0.3048 m, 1 lb = 4.448 N, 1 J = 1 N-m, 1 W = 1 J/s: 1 hp = 746 W

cross multiply and cancel out:
550 ft-lb/s 0.3048 m 4.448 N 1 J 1 W
1 hp 1 ft 1 lb 1 N-m 1 J/s

= 745.66272 W or 746 W

Which I am pretty sure is not even in a language that I have ever known. So horsepower is some sort of long division equation wherein numbers are cross multiplied then canceled out. Ok, well now that I'm clear on that I will move on to fuel systems. Fuel makes cars go. Apparently. Also, I once owned a Volvo 740 which had two fuel pumps, neither of which seemed to work for longer than a few months at a time. Let's skip fuel for now and just pretend it's delivered to the engine via a network of fairies and wood sprites.

What about transmissions? This is probably going to be a sticky subject for me as well considering that I once owned a Toyota Tercel for 3 hours which I returned to the dealership after realizing that it should not take 4 traffic light cycles to get your car from neutral to first gear on a manual transmission. Let me rephrase that. It can take four light cycles if you are me and when it does take that long, motorists behind you get very very angry. Technically, I should have only owned the Tercel for one hour but it took me three to get it 12 miles back to the dealership. It could have taken even longer had that police officer not taken pity on me and told me to get out of the car so he could at least get it through the intersection and into a parking lot. So maybe transmission should be another task for another day. Let's see, what else is on a car? Brakes? Those make cars stop. There's also a thing called a rotor that can somehow get badly damaged when you hit a curb very hard and then the shop won't resurface them and you have to buy brand new ones. So I think I understand brakes.

Seriously though, I want to learn about cars. I want to be able to sound cool when I say the phrase "hemi". True story: I thought that was some sort of redneck sexual practice until I found out that it comes standard on Dodge trucks so now I've got it narrowed down to "something on a car that is totally NOT a sexual technique". I don't know if I should take a class but the fact that I have dropped out of college no less than four times leads me to believe that is probably not my best option. When I emailed my dad to ask him how I should go about learning how cars work, he incredulously asked why none of my friends knew about cars then remembered "the kinds you hang out with" which was my dad's nice way of saying "loser musicians and art fags". So please, if you or someone you know can explain to me the basics of how cars go forwards and backwards, email me. I can repay you by giving you a very low speed tour of the Uptown area including multiple extended stops at red lights followed by a symphony of honks and expletives. Any takers?

Finding Something Else to Waste Time Thinking About: Round 1

So now I have more than three months to become a more well-rounded individual in this off-season before I revert back to drinking beer, cursing at the Fox football robot and spending a few hours a day thinking of new creative ways to make fun of Jessica Simpson and Tony Romo. I have tried to get into baseball but old demons prevent me from enjoying it. Also the Rangers blow real hard.

I am trying to support the Stars because:
a) they aren't losing
b) Pantera
c) my previously mentioned theory that Razor Reaugh really looks like Morrissey

BUT, here's my deal. I can't see the puck. I see a lot of guys skating and sometimes when I see them all skate in one direction and clump up around the net, I assume a goal-like thing is happening. Apparently, all that national health care has given Canadians amazing hawk-like eyesight. Either that or Dr. Tylock really IS the most skilled lasik surgeon in the world! Either way, hockey is like soccer on ice with everyone wearing their older, bigger brother's hand me down clothes and pads. But, as I have mentioned often on this blog, I do love parade. Go Stars!

So I am exploring some of the following options:

1. Cars - I like the idea of being a girl who knows a little something about cars. Unfortunately, I am not. I always think that people might be fooled into thinking that when I do things like refill my wiper fluid or check my oil level. But I am secretly staring at the dipstick like a, oh jeebus why not, dipstick. I have no idea what sort of Rorschach test fluid level I am supposed to be seeing. But I really like the show Top Gear (Dear Thor/God/Buddah/8-Armed SuperDeity: all I ask for is 30 minutes alone with James May. Amen) and it makes me think that maybe I could one day understand what brake horsepower means. Only problem: turns out I am a totally stereotypical girl who likes the way things look and drive and have absolutely no interest in learning about how much fuel per second the crank thingy sends to the jiggy-lever. So I will continue to look at cars and make superficial proclamations about them. Let me know if you need help with that washer fluid refilling. I got ya covered.

2. New Music - New music is, in general, very bad or boring or overrated or played by people who annoy me to look at. The only teeny bit of excitement I can muster up is about the new Mudcrutch album. So if under the age of 55, please don't ask me what new stuff I'm listening to. I will probably claim to have just spotted Tony Randall and run away while you are distracted.

3. Catching Up On TV shows That My Friends Always Recommend - Here's the problem:

Lost: Too confusing. Too convoluted. Got in way too late in the game. Don't care if the island is real or if it's all a dream or if it's all a metaphor for something big and awesome and life-changing. When they start inventing comically impossible things out of thatched palm leaves and coconuts like Gilligan so they can do something equally asinine such as put on a talent show in the hopes of attracting a passing ship or plane, I will start watching Lost.

Dexter: So I'm supposed to be torn up because I am technically rooting for a killer because he kills only bad people who "deserve" it? I guess I am supposed to assume that Dexter's ability to judge another person's guilt is better than that of the Dallas District Attorney's office? I'm just saying. Also, if I were Dexter and I were ridding the world of people that deserve it I'm heading straight for the entire cast of The Hills. The fact that they have not already been "dealt with" means that I cannot fully suspend disbelief and buy that the guy is truly trying to rid the world of bad people.

The Wire: Too lazy to actually borrow it from Danny even after his repeated offers and me promising him to commit to watching the first season. Will wait until they come out with a Wire-themed Big Buck Hunter machine.


So basically, I have very little to fill my time and occupy my restless mind until Cowboys training camp starts. God willing, some band I know will play another show in a horrible backwater town or I will get some sort of intriguing skin disease about which I can blog in great detail for weeks at a time. Wish me luck!

Let's Hear it for the Guys Who Just Caused Our Team Another Humiliation!

First off, let me end this Mavs season on a positive note. Well, a positive note about the Hornets. I kind of see this playoff spanking as a blessing for both teams. The Mavs were a starving dog darting in between traffic on 75. Someone needed to just swerve and hit them and put them out of their misery. Even if they had somehow eeked out a win over New Orleans, who wanted to see (and live with the lifelong taunting and shame) of the Mavs being made into makeshift prison sex dolls by the Spurs? It was patently obvious that this season's Mavs and this lineup and this coaching staff was not going to take it all the way. It was like repeatedly trying to put a higher grade of fuel into a Pinto. There needs to be a massive round of layoffs the likes of which only General Motors could rival. There are plenty of people out there who will pontificate on which magic combination of trades and firings will work. I have little opinion. I want to give Dirk one more season to win with Dallas then let the poor guy go to maybe have a chance to not experience a yearly dance of shame and humiliation. I like Terry, Bass and George though wouldn't need grief counseling if any of them left. The rest of the team? Whatevs.

But looking ahead, I have to say that I kind of have a soft spot for the Hornets. They're young (which is weird to see considering the Mavs were comprised of mostly retirees and WWII veterans this year) and they turned around their franchise pretty dramatically in one season. And while I usually find myself picking targets at which to aim great voodoo and hatred towards when the Mavs playoff season starts, I just couldn't find the guy I was going to wish endless diarrhea on. Chris Paul is phenomenal, obviously. Chandler, West, Pargo and (heyyyyyy, check it out I copied and pasted it because unfortunately I can't find the crazy Serbian space language option on my keyboard) Stojaković are all great. I like the idea that they could be the spunky young upstarts who take on the Spurs. And they have handed the Spurs a few good defeats in the regular season. Put it this way: the way the Cowboys slid in the last few games of this past regular season, I wasn't that surprised to see them lose to the Giants in the first round. I was, however, euphoric to see the little team that beat us go on to David-Goliath the evil peeping-in-bedroom-windows-at-night Patriots. So I honestly wish the Hornets the best.