For the love of Pete, STOP!

***This post is rated P, for profanity.***

Will people PLEASE stop using the following expressions, like, EVERYWHERE?

1. pwn : This is entirely meaningless and I will not allow it to creep into my vocabulary.
2. Drinking the Kool-Aid : Every single person on talk radio says this every single day. Aside from being completely hackneyed at this point, it's also a really unsavory reference. Think about it! EW!
3. Thinking outside the box : OK, the moment these words escape your lips, I write you off as completely vacuous, with no original thought, inside or outside of the so-called, alleged BOX. Anything that follows this is all pops and buzzers to my ears. I had a boss who liked to say it. She would say, "OK, people, we need to start thinking outside of the box." What I heard was, "OK, people, I got nothin', but I do love the sound of my own voice." This phrase, and other awful buzzphrases, come about because most people just talk WAY TOO DAMNED MUCH. Having something to say is no longer a requirement for talking, I suppose. For proof, see : Barack Obama.
4. Chillax : Oh, dear God, but this is unacceptable. I heard somebody say this at the book store today. I had to suppress my violent urges.

Will people PLEASE stop doing the following?

1. Talking on cell phones in restaurants. Shut your pie hole. Shut it NOW. This conversation about your tee time can wait until you're done with your x-treme fajitas. Take that fuckin' bluetooth garbage off your ear and talk to your dining companions, you self-important blowhard.
2. Letting your children run wild in a restaurant. I'd like to inform you, Uhura-Looking-Earpiece Man, that your savage, chaos-worshipping children are not even slightly entertaining to me. In fact, they are giving me x-treme indigestion.
3. Borrowing your grandma's handicapped parking permit. Some people really do need these spaces, you know. My mom is one of them, so learn to walk, you lazy slobs.
4. Telling me that I "have to see this movie". No, I don't. "No, but you really do! You have to see it!" No, I don't. "Seriously, you have to see this movie." No, I really, really don't.
5. Parking in front of my mailbox. (That one is just in case any of my neighbors are reading this.)

Better now.

My New Hit Record

I am completely powerless to stop myself from participating in THIS meme, thanks to MCF. I have really crappy image editing software, so, this is about as much as I could do. I've GOT to find that Photoshop disk.

1. The first article title on the Wikipedia Random Articles page is the name of your band.

2. The last four words of the very last quotation on the Random Quotations page is the title of your album.

3. Any appropriate picture in Flickr's Creative Commons licensed photos will be your album cover.

4. Use your graphics program of choice to throw them together, and post the result.

I hope you enjoy Artem Grigoriev's debut album, world must roll on.

The Double Mangling

OK, so, ages ago, I wrote about how I'd mangled my finger. The short story is this: I was trying to fix my pool thermometer with a butter knife (have those words ever been written in that order before?) and the knife slipped, and I cut my left index finger straight to the bone, right across the joint. It hurt. Ever afraid of doctors and hospitals, I decided to effect repairs myself. Long story short: The top of my left index finger is still completely numb and I see stars every time I bump it too hard. And not the good stars, either. Last time, I saw Carrot Top in a negligee. But it is healed, anyway.

Not one to rest on my laurels, I decided to mangle another digit just before Halloween. I was making vegetable soup and had just opened a can of delicious roasted tomatoes. I concluded that the soup needed a bit of water added to it before the tomatoes made an entrance, so I sat the can down on the counter, motivated toward the faucet, and sliced open the ring finger of my right hand on the can lid. It hurt. It was absolutely grisly. Just a few minutes later, John came home to find me trying to effect repairs myself, as before. I showed him the finger and he insisted this one was too bad to avoid the ER.

We went to the ER, I got triaged. The nurse put a band-aid on my finger, told me to be sure I held it STRAIGHT, and told us to have a seat. We waited. And waited. And then we waited some more. Finally, two and a half hours later, I got called back to a room. We waited. Then a doctor came. I showed her my finger and asked her if this little cut REALLY warranted a trip to the ER. She said it most definitely did. Because I had waited in the aptly-named waiting room for so long, my cut had actually begun to heal, so she had to rip it back open again. That was fun. Then she gave several shots of novocaine into the spaces between my knuckles. That hurt. Then she gave me eight stitches and a goody bag of splints, gloves, the scissors and tweezers used for my stitches, and several rolls of tape and gauze, and I went home at 3AM with a grim trick-or-treat bag and a frankenfinger for the holiday. They wrapped my finger HUGE, and I mean HUGE with white gauze. I went home, drank some wine to help me sleep, and mused about two things:

1. How funny it would have been if it had been my middle finger wrapped so big (oh, how I would have relished that).
2. How long I would have to wait for a minor procedure if the Federal Government took over the hospitals. (My theory is I'd still be there now.)

And so THAT is the story of my double mangling. And I still have baseball-looking scar on my right hand, and it still kinda hurts when I bump it.

Pittsburgh

Easing myself back into the blogging world... It's a New Year's resolution.

Here's my review of Pittsburgh, Starring Jeff Goldblum, as posted on one the IMDB message boards (in response to "Anyone from Pittsburgh watch this yet?"):

Lifelong Pittsburgher here. I just watched this film and must say, I was extremely disappointed. Very little actual 'Burgh, and the movie itself started to feel like a collection of random kibbles and bits from a cutting room floor. By the end, I was asking my husband if it seemed to him that Jeff got all his buds to join in this production of The Music Man just for the purpose of making this film. It was weird, I tell you.

The Netflix description said that the director was "blurring the line between reality and fiction". I'm a reasonably intelligent person from sound parentage, and I couldn't figure out where the line was. It got so that TRYING to find the line was just plain tedious. I didn't care.

Finally, I like Jeff Goldblum. I do, I guess. Or whatever. The Tall Guy is one of my favorite movies, so that's something. But I REALLY did not want to hear him speak of "elevating the production" one more time. As if Ed Begley Jr. is Pittsburgh's thespian savior. Uh, please. Saving us from our congenital Begleylessness, I guess? The void that only a heapin' helpin' of Begley can fill? Yeah, thanks so much, Ed, for slumming in Pittsburgh. It means the world to us. Pittsburgh theatre is forever altered by all yinz's greatness.

But they did show Kennywood!