All posts by Licketysplit

Waiting for dumbo

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A child persists in climbing on the dining table, and she listens to me not. I definitely should have gotten a dog. But then again, I couldn’t teach a dog to shout “Banzai!” when it jumps off the table. Life is a series of agonizing trade-offs. Fast, good, and cheap? Choose two. I am so cheap that I only chose one.

For example, I attended a condo board meeting last night in order to find out about the status of our association being charged 293k for the mistakes of a real estate developer and an insurance company. And while I gained somewhat valuable information (we’re screwed), I had to listen to a woman repeatedly ask “What can the board do to prevent floods?” Everyone’s eye drifted to the window, where the river is clearly visible. Yes, what indeed can we do to prevent floods? “Well, did they KNOW this place would flood when they built it?” You mean 100+ years ago, prior to global weather patterns shifting? “Well, what can we DO?” Finally, I yelled “Move!”

Captain Obvious that I am, we are still dragging our feet on putting our place on the market. Various online estimators show an approximately one zillion dollar drop in value. We don’t even have an idiotic sub-prime loan! And we can pay our bills, so there’s certainly no remedy available. It’s just collateral damage. Not looking forward to paying a ton of money for getting out of my apartment. It’s actually a perfectly good apartment, especially since we hammered out how to prevent the river from flooding. The trick was to get in good with the beavers, and they will tell the river to stay the course. We just have to dump beaver chow over the scenic walkway railing at various requested locations. Beavers want “Just Tomatoes” dried mango from Whole Foods, though, and that crap is like $5 for a little tub.

That poor woman went on for another fifteen minutes. Another woman brought her dog to the meeting, and the dog finally ate the first woman. This was a relief to all. I think I am going to look into getting a service tiger for just these situations. Maybe the tiger will learn to yell “Banzai!” too.

What r u into???

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I went to the library yesterday, and it seems that the Dewey Decimal Classification had been downgraded to a “fun suggestion.” Did I miss a state law? I could not find any of the books I sought. My life is the poorer due to my inability to locate “Let’s Sue Ourselves: A Guide to Dissuading Idiot Condo Association Members From Frivolous Lawsuits,” “Arson for Profit,” “How to Force Your Toddler to Eat,” and “So, You Can’t Remember What You Used to Enjoy Because You’ve Been Slogging Through Functional Depression For So Long.”

Oh, hell, I just have January! It is related to November in the DSM. I am going to knit the world’s longest scarf!

The CEO is an illiterate cat with a food item on its head

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I get emails from Morningstar goading me into affluence, here and I see that today ORLY has been upgraded to “consider buying.” Great! This will go nicely with my core holdings of OMG, remedy LOL, and WTF.

For the purpose of making that dumb joke, I found out that besides ORLY, only OMG is a real ticker symbol. What? You mean most of my portfolio is imaginary? That much I know is true. But the good news is that I only need to save one million dollars a year in the last three years before I retire in order to reach my retirement savings goal! I am not going to bother saving until then. I am positive I will make enough space bucks then. It will be a breeze. A chilling breeze, from the depths of outer space.

Also, the river is rising abruptly ahead of predictions. My flood insurance does not become active until the 26th. Timing, schmiming.

Is this stuff a business expense too?

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The murderer across the hall further surprised us by heavily dragging in an inflatable rubber boat. When we next went into the hallway, we found a crumpled piece of gauze on the floor outside his door. I wanted to poke it with a stick, but Mr. H reminded me that this could accidentally link me to scores of heinous crimes. Wouldn’t that be a pisser? At any rate, I hope he got the full value of his FSA for murderers contributions for 2007. It’s so important to keep good records. Did you know rubber gloves and electrical tape are allowed, but not kitty litter? Use it or lose it. I’d refer him to my accountant, but he’s already dead, unfortunately.

I recently celebrated a triumph by liberating an old retirement account that had been misappropriated by former employers, halfassedly refunded under supervision of the Department of Labor, and then frozen in time and avoidance for the next five years. I had to track down people who don’t enjoy remembering I exist any more than I enjoy the reverse, and it took several months of calls and emails and pleading and wheedling and third party involvement to finally resolve. I got my check in my pasty little paw right before Christmas, and I sent it in to my new evil empire, feeling a sense of great accomplishment and relief. At last, this unpleasant chapter and even more unpleasant paperwork was but a distant memory.

Then I got another check for $1.12. MAYHEM FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE. I should put this in my IRA for zombies.

The murderer next door

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I was out kicking cans around the parking lot the other day when I noticed the serial killer who lives across the hall had a new accessory for his brown serial killer car. I mean, come on, who drives a brown car? No one but a serial killer, right? Dead giveaway, pun intended. So on top of his brown Ford Focus hatchback he had balanced a small personal watercraft. A rowboat. This is a departure from the random pieces of lumber that he usually keeps on his roof rack. He is a perpetual putterer, always working on his makeshift chamber of horrors (MCOH) and no doubt assorted holding shanties in the woods.

Now, it’s December. And cold. Water tends to freeze in the cold. But I guess with great fortitude, one could hack a hole in the ice at the edge of a lake and shove off into deeper water. One is already used to hacking things up! The name of the boat is “Wait a Bit,” which is a perfect analogy for all that time-biding he must do in selecting his next victim. Or maybe it’s a clever nod to dropping weighted bits of a body into the inscrutable deep.

He just finished dragging the boat down the hall to his apartment, which I know because I made Mr. H watch through the peephole. I am afraid to get too close to the murderer, limiting my interactions to passing him in the hall. He’s always carrying power tools or bags of orange soda. He eyes my ybab, saying “Oh…what a cute…little girl…” in a hollow tone. I hear loud sawing noises coming from his apartment, and sometimes a tuneless attempt at the scales being played on a recorder, as if a child were just learning. I can only assume he is carefully immuring school children or prostitutes dressed as school children in a corner of his apartment and then dismembering them post-mortem.

From the outside of the building, I have carefully noted that his windows are blacked out with garbage bags, flouting the “white window coverings only” rule of the condo association. I guess they are too scared of him to enforce it! Why wouldn’t you decorate with garbage bags if you already have a bulk pack sitting around from wrapping bodies for storage in your chest freezer? It makes economical sense, and it adds a nice panache to your MCOH.

I would like to ask my other neighbors, the ones who dress as Klingons, what they think about all these shenanigans, but come to think of it, I haven’t seen them in two months. Not since their “Romulans Suck” dress-up World Series party. You don’t think….

Holiday Gift Guide!!!!!!!

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For my Christmas miracle, I am getting the bathroom professionally painted. Our painter looks kind of like Perez Hilton, and it is super tempting to ask if Britney is really preggerz or not!!!!!

WHAT I WANT: someone to READ MY MIND and pick the perfect thing for me, just like I would. Since I am totally proactive, I ordered myself a book from Amazon while I purchased things for my nieces and nephews.

However, I could not read the mind of Amazon.com and know that the 1-click default shipping address is not the same as the default address book address for Stone Age Slow Checkout. “Turn on 1-click,” the button said, so I obediently did, and then I 1-clicked a few times, and then I got some emails today to let me know my order was winging its way to my address from two years ago. Oops. I suppose this is all my own fault for not being a proper steward of my address book and being ever mindful of the awesome power of 1-click, but you’d think the 1-click elves might have noticed the address in that profile is different from the one where I have received eleventy jillion other orders. I ask too much, I know.

So I called Amazon and confused poor Nigel in the customer service holding pen. It sounded like it just might be in India. “Well, who lives there now,” he asked, when I told him the order was accidentally going to an old address. “Not me, and that is my problem.” He was able to re-route things with UPS after thirty agonizing minutes, but for another part of the order, I had to contact that “Amazon Partner.”

It turned out the consenting adult partner had shipped it via the regular post. They suggested I return the one going to the wrong address and order a different one. Since I can’t return something destined to remain out of my physical custody, I then made a bizarre series of phone calls to the USPS 800 number, my local post office, and the local delivery center. “Oh, you’ll need a supervisah, honey.” Luckily, I was put through to a saint named Wayne, and Wayne was able to flag the tracking number so it will be rerouted when it scans in to the delivery center. And moreover, he has a close friendship with both the carrier for my former route and the carrier for my current route. He also has friends who live in my building, so he is intimately aware of the location. Bless us all, Tiny Tim! I think I may get the $12 spy pen for my nephew after all. Lead poisoning ahoy! That was certainly worth an hour of my life. I am sending Wayne a bag of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. I will walk it over myself.

WHERE IS MY DINNER?

May cause inability to LOL

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We are sailing the high seas of December here at the Vomitorium. Two-thirds of us were violently ill for a protracted period last week, prostate and one-third of us is on drugs. One-third of us is planning to snitch the drugs from the other third as soon as humanly possible because one-third of us never met pills we did not like! Shiny, ask shiny, ooh! Like a magpie, one-third of us is.

One-third of us may already have diabeetus!

One cat makes annoying noises under the bed.

One UPS driver once again claims we are not home when we are! We are very much at home. So at home that we wear slippers. We are super relaxed and ready to receive a UPS delivery.

You’re kidding me, right?

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Today I was reminded that a jury of my peers is a pitiful bunch. My peers have dry skin, unflattering haircuts, ill-fitting clothes, and scuffed shoes. Naturally, I fit right in, except for all of those things. Only one of my peers is non-white. 33% of my peers are men. 54% of my peers wear glasses. One of my peers did not bother to show up at all. If only I had known this was an option!

We the jury watched a video about jurying, and the presenter was a judge with a Barbara Wawa accent. Perhaps you have seen it? It is a gweat wesponsibility to one’s countwy to be on a juwy. That looks a little more Elmer Fudd when I wead it back in my head, but it was classic Wawa, I assure you. Our spirits were collectively broken, because I was the only person trying not to die of laughter. Suburban jurying is a little different, I found. On my last round, in Roxbury, the video was greeted with catcalls and errant “DAAAAAMN!s” But here, everyone just sat glumly, all Lester Burnham.

Then I took a bathroom break and stood outside the court room glaring in the little window and shaking my fist until everyone settled. Two hours, start to finish. My powers are getting better. Then I felt rejected: why they no want me? Is it my stench? Is it my hideous undereye circles? Is it the foul breath from the vending machine crackers I ate for breakfast? Because? Seriously? 8:30? That is too early.

Life in these outrageous states

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Indignity watch: I receive THREE copies of a really boring promotional magazine from my insurance company, sovaldi sale all addressed to the same name. There is no contact information for cancelling this to be found on the magazine, on the Web site, or via their 800 number. I am about to write a letter addressed to Snoopy and hope that works. Also, I have a cold. This is a separate problem.

UPS: I WAS HOME AT 10:24 THIS MORNING. Do not make a fool of me. I thought we were friends!

A few weeks ago at the grocery store, a man nearly knocked me over to get to the dairy case. He pumped his fist, half-whispered “YES!” and reached in and grabbed an egg nog.

I write Andy Rooney’s best stuff

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OMG! Target double-charged me for something, and I did not notice. This is what I get for being so super rich that I do not care what things cost. Er, this is what I get for shopping with a Tasmanian devil and blindly clawing at the “AMT OK” button. So I was all bitches, give me back my $40, and we played a round of “Well, where’s the item you are returning?” Not returning, there is nothing to return (how EXISTENTIAL). I am keeping the one thing I did want. It is at my house kthx. “Well, why didn’t you bring it in?” Why, indeed, when I am keeping it. So they were all “Oh we do not believe you. This is clearly an elaborate ruse to defraud us out of $39.99 so you can go buy crack.” At last the sullen millenial or whatever we call college students now allowed that the security guy was back from lunch and could review the tape of the transaction. That $39.99 went right back on my titanium card. You better believe it. YOU KIDS TODAY.

Then I got my new glasses prescription filled, and everyone in the world got 22% less attractive now that I can actually see. Oh no!

I also bought a turtleneck.

I had a surprisingly good experience with Verizon Wireless the other day. I called, someone answered, and changed the thing I wanted changed. How pleasant! And unlike the rest of Verizon. I didn’t even have to shout “HUMAN! HUMAN!” at the automated system.

I lost a sippy cup at airport security because it contained water instead of the allowed juice. Oh, the ethical dilemma! I “declared” my cup as suggested, but then when asked what was in it, I forgot to could not tell a lie and admitted it was water. I asked if they could dump the water for me, and they said they could not open containers because a container might contain something hazardous to a screener. Fair enough, but then how on earth can you enforce the juice rule if you never see what’s in the cup? If I said “This kerosene jug is juice for my ybab,” they would take me at my word? They gave me the option to take my bags, ybab, and the friendly sky cap sherpaing the carseat back through security to empty the cup myself, and I said “Oh no, you keep it! I insist. Look, it has a ladybug on it!” And then they dumped the potentially hazardous material in a trash can six inches away from the screener. Oh well, consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, and there are nothing but big thinkers at the Department of Homeland Security. Also: no one asked to see i.d. for my ybab. Note to evildoers: free pass if you are under 36 inches tall!

MarthaStewart.com ruined my dinner by not seamlessly porting over all my recipe bookmarks after their redesign. I tried making “This page no longer exists. You will be redirected to the home page in ten seconds,” and it totally sucked. Mr. H felt I used to maybe put in milk before I put in the oven, but neither of us could really remember. I’d complain about this, but they still provide no discernible way to reach a human. What really gets me is that I bet the Web staff sit around in meetings patting each other on the back about how they have a 100% decrease in Web site complaints. I am going to disconnect my phone and email addresses to achieve the same goal!

I am sure many other taxing things have recently happened to me, and I will be sure to return and recount them in detail as painful as the initial experience. Caring is sharing! Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go invest in gold and trip a skateboarder.