It’s true!  Clearly, dear readers, you have been neglecting your charity work this holiday season.  Why not take some time out of your leisurely, Recession-era shopping (“That’ll be one value meal an, uh, 14 Hardee’s Coupons — whoops!  I mean FIFTEEN.  Almost forgot Aunt Gladys.”) and volunteer to help idiots at your local university study for finals?  It’s what the baby Jesus, surely, would want you to do.  Or the Hanukkah Troll.  Either way, soon, you too can be having conversations like this:

“Ok, so the Final is going to cover both World Wars, through the Cold War and into Modern politics?”  I ask guilelessly. 

“Yer.”  I am no longer to be rewarded with actual words, my students just mumble unintelligible things one might hear from a hobo camp after Thunderbird has made a few generous rounds. 

“Alright.  Give me the dates of World War II.”  I sighed, wishing I was allowed to make my kids write my Christmas cards for me as penance. 

“Whut?”  *THWACK*  “Hey!  My ipod!”

“Suck it, doucher.  Dates.  World War II*.”  The ipod is surreptitiously placed under my pile of Christmas cards because, yes, I bring them to work with me, so that the guilt never ends. 

“I don’t fucking know.”  Sulks. 

“Well, then fucking guess, please.”  I begin tapping a pen rather viciously on the pile under which his ipod rests.  *WHAPATA-WHAPATA-WHAPATA* 

Eyeing my pen nervously, finally, the Mayor of Corky town speaks:  “Maybe, I don’t know, 1864?”  Pen ceases. 

Pictured: The Battle of Gettysburg

“What?  That’s… towards the end of the CIVIL War.  No, ok.  Tell you what.  Let’s go back to the 1st World War.  When was the Arch-duke Ferdinand assassinated?”  I would have been alarmed a year ago, now I’m just TIRED.  Teaching is like wandering into a swamp of despair these days, sans map, torch or extra dog to eat when the going gets rough.  Jack London would have loved this shit. 

“Man, I don’t know.  Weren’t we in the middle of the Great Depression?” 

“In 1914?”  I ask, just trying to measure the depth of his stupidity by rubbing my eyelids until they feel ready to flake right the fuck off.  “No, though arguably, the subsequent Prohibition of the 20’s was probably damn near the most depressing shit we’ve ever done as a nation.”  I bark out a laugh, wishing I was allowed to drink on the job, something those Prohibition assholes are probably responsible for me NOT doing. 

“The … whut?”  He asked, finally taking notes and mangling the spelling of “prohibition”: “pro-homission.”

“The… Prohibition.  You know, when no one was allowed to buy alcohol for like 10 years?”  I mean, surely college students, at least, are still shocked into memorizing this terrible time in American history.  He squints at me, like maybe it’s poor vision that is forcing him to LEARN THINGS. 

“You lying.”  He stated simply, kicking back in his chair.  “Where would all the alcohol go?”  A fair point, even from an idiot who confuses Grant’s Wilderness Tour for a Nazi Death March. 

“Well, I mean, some people could still get it.  That was when we had the birth of the Mob.  And moon-shiners.”  I said, trying to back-pedal and figure out where to begin. 

“So, see?  It wasn’t really gone.  You’re just making shit up.”  He determined, smugly satisfied. 

“What?!  Why would I make up the Prohibition?  What possible motivation would I have in teaching you about a fake historical — you know what?  Nevermind.  What are you writing your paper on for this class?”  The last words come up muffled from where my head has descended into the pile of Christmas cards as I try to eat my way through the table and into a safe place of clear insanity, where I might be allowed to live in a clean hospital with no students, puttering about the grounds harmlessly unaware of the Prohibition. 

“Oh, man.  My paper is gonna be LEGIT.”  [Kids are saying 'legit' again?  I feel like I'm in the 6th grade, dancing to "Too Legit to Quit."  It's disconcerting.]  Also, this particular child is a white kid, and from a less-than-credible Southern state’s public school system, so maybe he’s just retarded. 

“Well, good!”  I say, doubtful. 

“Imma comparing the Lindbergh baby with that move, Taken.  Hey, where you goin??  We need to talk about fucking World War I and the space race, man.” 

Too late.  If I can’t drink on the job, maybe I can start drinking in my car. 

Happy Holidays, troops.  Just remember, even in line to buy BP gas cards as gift in the midst of this Recession, at least the Hanukkah Troll hasn’t cursed you with teenagers in the throes of finals week.             

*  Seriously, I had this conversation on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor.  It makes me wish my husband’s high school janitor was around.**

**  In high school, Husband got a petition signed for everyone to observe a moment of silence in memory of John Lennon.  Later, he was accosted, roughed up and threatened by the head Janitor, a mild man named Marcus whom Husband insisted on calling “Tony,” for reasons best left to the high school boy idea of humor.  “Tony” shook my lanky punk husband around for a minute, telling him that he had some nerve, getting a moment of silence for that dirty hippy when his brother had died in WWII and no one had a moment of silence for Pearl Harbor.  I know.  Neither one of us have shit for luck with janitors.

My poor mother was dragged, by my father, to a Republican enclave in The Villages (picture Village of the Damned, but with the cast from Cocoon).  It’s a community where everyone drives  golf cart and no one under 18 is allowed to stay longer than 48 hours (or else they harvest your youthful, supple skin to wear as a suit).  My father, the last lone Republitard in the family, is a member of the Mayflower Society, where people research their connection to the original goddamn pilgrims and then feel good about it, for reasons that escape all common decency and moral sense.  They have meetings, consisting of old white guys sitting around and re-imagining the 17th century, when you could fuck your wife like you paid for it and brown people were still firmly in their place (read: in chains). 

It’s like living in your third grade Thanksgiving play.  It goes without saying the 99% of these whimsical old bastards are indoctrinated with the special loathing that only Right Wing Nut-face radio talk show hosts can provide.  So not only have they claimed a village all their own (though I feel it should be specially marked, warning lonely travellers in the same way we warn tourists about the radiation levels in certain parts of the desert), but they invited every seething bitch-pants of a Republican loser from the last election to come hang out.  It must have been like tailgating with Satan, considering that Palin, Huckabee AND MacBeck were all coming (I call Glenn Beck “MacBeck” for two reasons: 1) he looks like he ate a MacDonald’s and 2) he reminds me of another sociopath, the one from a certain Scottish play). 

In any case, my mother survived, though barely, possibly because she has a sense of humor.  Case in point, she took the following picture. 

Retards AND drinking? Count me in, padre.

I know.  Best. Mom. Ever.

Yes, Sass-fans, in that order.  I awoke to this bright, crispy Fall morning and began it the RIGHT way — discussing Jews and whoredom.  Because I’m generous, I am going to share it with all of you, my dear loyal readers. 

1st:  Luker = Best friend who lives in Brooklyn.  We met in England and, despite a pesky 900 mile difference, are inseparable.  She does not, it should be noted, usually look like a whore.  On purpose. 

2nd:  This post proves the validity of my category, “Jews.”  It also says something about this blog that when I tried to save a picture, calling it, simply, “jew,” my computer told me that there was already a file by that name.  And “jew1.”  I had to make it plural. 

 3rd:  The following IM session has NOT been altered.  I just copied and pasted.  I only took out one name, since an innocent bystander didn’t need to be slandered this early in the AM.

LAST NIGHT:

LUKER    Gah srsly? Want to chat. Am playing spin thebottle diddywhat?

LUKER 9:49 pm
    Are you there? A hassidic jew just asked me to HAVE SEX WITH HIM FOR.MONEY

 TODAY:
 LUKER is available 7:24 am [Sorcia note:  in retrospect, I find this pretty fucking funny]

LUKER 7:25 am
    Woopl
LUKER 7:37 am
    hey-first off, sorry for those bizarre IMs yesterday
    and for that last one i sent you–totally a keyboard mash. i was using my phone

Sorcia 7:38 am
    LOL  Why did you not have sex with the hasidic jew?
    Oh, “woopl?”

LUKER 7:38 am
    lol yup
    sorcia the jew thing was so fucked up
    i was walking home alone

Sorcia 7:38 am
    HAHAHAH  That’s when those jews come out

LUKER 7:39 am
    well i heard these hurried footsteps behind me
    and was like FML

Sorcia 7:39 am
    Did he shake his forelocks and non-foreskin at you?

LUKER 7:39 am
    then they slowed down and he asked me for directions, and they were really bizarre directions, like he knew the answer and just needed a reason to talk to me
    so then he started walking along side me for a block
    and was like “do you like to meet boys”?”

Sorcia 7:40 am
    HAHAHAHAHAHA
    You. are. kidding.

LUKER 7:40 am
    NO I WISH I WAS
    and he was all soft spoken
    and had an accent
    i was like “uh, sometimes”

Sorcia 7:40 am
    Ewwww!!!!  Soft spoken, asking that question?!  Did he also offer a Jewish Van full of kittens?  Jewttens?

LUKER 7:40 am
    then he was like “what about tonight?”

Sorcia 7:40 am
    SHUT THE FUCK UP

LUKER 7:40 am
    I KNOW
    i might have asked him to repeat himself

Sorcia 7:41 am
    You’d have to do it with a sheet between you.  Those hasids are CRAZY

LUKER 7:41 am
    then, i took a huge step away and asked him to repeat himself
    and he was like
    ”will you be with me…..for money”

Sorcia 7:41 am
    HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

LUKER 7:41 am
    FML

Sorcia 7:41 am
    Please, please, PLEASE tell me you said yes
    Will you be with me…. for money.  That’s my new AIM status [Sorcia note:  Still is.]

LUKER 7:42 am
    i said “i’m not that kind of girl [glance down at my outfit] though apparently i look like one”
    THEN
    it gets more fucked up

Sorcia 7:42 am
    APPARENTLY

LUKER 7:42 am
    bc this hispanic guy and his gf come by and he shouts, “Hey, do you speak english?”
    at the jew
    obvs

Sorcia 7:42 am
    HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
    Well, it’s your night.  Maybe you look like a multi-lingual whore

LUKER 7:43 am
    loollolol
    well in that area the hassids own a lot of the property

Sorcia 7:43 am
    Not ALL.  Not, for example,the LUKER building

LUKER 7:44 am
        but its a largely puerto rican/hispanic population
    so THEN
the guy was all like, “Hey man, maybe you can answer a question for me. why the fuck is the rent so expensive? we just got kicked out, my girlfriend’s 2 months pregnant, etc etc”
    THEN HE ASKED THE JEW FOR MONEY SO THEY COULD GET FOOD
    AND THE JEW ALL AWKWARDLY TOOK OUT HIS WALLET

Sorcia 7:44 am
    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Well, he had to be prepared, since he was anxiously awaiting to give you cash.  FOR YOUR VAGINA
    I would have seen that through

LUKER 7:45 am
    AND I WAS LIKE “I GOTTA GO” AND I BOOKED IT
    yeah im kind of sad i never heard what his offer was

Sorcia 7:45 am
    I know!
    It might have been totes worth it
    Just to have in your repertoire     

repartoire?

LUKER 7:46 am
    i totally left a drunken message on your machine about it
    i might sound hysterical
    bc i was laughing
    and also trying not talk loudly in the message

Sorcia 7:46 am
    HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

LUKER 7:46 am
    ”This JEW offered me MONEY for SEX”

Sorcia 7:46 am
    The dog just ran away because of my wild maniacal laughter
    I can hardly type

LUKER 7:46 am
    hahahahahah
    i had to tell you

Sorcia 7:47 am
    This is the greatest day of my life
    You ARE my blog today

LUKER 7:47 am
    YES!

Well Sass-fans, it’s that time of year again.  Yes, once more we’ll be confronted with a horde of ever-increasing pudgy children, faces smeared with goo and one hand already on their trusty toilet-paper roll for when you fail to give up the goods (read: MOTHERFUCKING CANDY).  As my crack dealer is always telling me, you can’t have too much of a good thing, so I’m totally behind the acquisition of candy with little regard for human life.  For those of you who don’t keep these printed out for easy reference, here’s my helpful Halloween Rules. 

You’re welcome. 

Also, for more Halloween fun, I suggest you visit HumorBloggers and enjoy their carnival of hilarity. 

Costumes that I presume will be popular this year, for sheer WTF value are as follows:

1.  Carlos Mencia (I mean, what’s scarier than someone so un-funny who got paid more than Jesus last year?)

2.  Dane Cook (see “Carlos Mencia, White Version.”  At least this is a cheap costume, though.  Just borrow a douchey t-shirt from your older brother and spray your hair with Aquanet the second you roll out of bed.)

3.  Sarah Palin (where DOES one buy a hair bump these days, in time for the holidays?) 

4.  Amy Winehouse (Know what’s scarier than this leaky bag of chemicals and broken teeth?  A child-sized version.  Complete with beehive and needle tracks.)

5.  Miley Cyrus (No explanation needed.  Her life already serves as a warning to others.)

6.  Kanye West (No outfit is complete without bottle of Hennessy and mouthful of crazy!)

7.  Lady Gaga (hell, it looks like she dresses herself from the floor of a child’s closet already, so that’s gotta be a no-brainer.) 

Why the fuck does this even exist?!

And what shall I, your beloved Sorcia, be doing this Halloween?  I am so glad you asked! 

This Halloween, I will be in a wedding. 

Wearing a black bridemaids’ dress, surrounded by guests who have been instructed to wear costumes, and who have bowls of candy on their tables. 

The wedding is going to be held at the Zoo. 

No.  Not kidding.  I feel like I’m going to be appearing on a Sesame Street Special.  Though on the plus side, if any of the groomsmen gets all Heeeey, Lady, I can always toss the fucker into the bear pit.

A few days ago, I noticed that someone had jammed a brambly tree limb, its tip thoughtfully wrapped in what appeared to be a used condom, into my neighbor’s mailbox.  Actually, they thrust the prehistoric dildo down the back of the mailbox’s post, so it stood proudly aloft, announcing to the world, perhaps, that this was the house where lumberjacks came for a good old fashioned raping.  And by God, they were going to rape you SAFELY. 

Homemade Hillbilly's Sexy Time

Tampering with the mail? I wondered.  Federal offense be damned!  Or at least screwed with a wood pile’s reject!  Then yesterday, I noticed that the limb, condom still quivering and attached, had moved a few houses down, now serving as a warning to others, maybe?  Anyone’s house/shed/corn crib could be used as some terrifying backwoods fuck stick paradise?  Or could the stick have developed AI? 

Jude Law WILL fuck you with a stick

Maybe there are just roving gangs of Fuck Stick craftspeople, I thought, shrugging it off, since this isn’t hardly the scariest thing to happen to me in my neck of Bumblefuck Nowhere.

Aaaaand, then this morning.  SOMEONE was decidedly displeased to find the Hippy’s Happy Maker on their mailbox, so they did the only sane, reasonable thing:  They left the Fuck Stick Arts Council Coalition [FSACC, pronounced, "F-Sack"] a note:

Pictured above: the definition of "awesome sauce"

Pictured above: the definition of "Passive Aggression" (condom optional)

I think the more pant-staining hilarity of this moment really comes from the fact that these well-meaning folks wrote the note on their lawyer’s complimentary notepad.  I generously photo shopped out the details, but look close at the above pic and you can see their tag line, “A Full Service Law Firm”…  Though in the context of this wood craft, such delicate wording brings new innuendo to the term, “full service.”  But moreover, is the reference to the lawyer part of a veiled threat?  More bizarre, I think, is that now I’m wondering how long they’re going to leave it in their front lawn. 

And all this time, I thought “Fuck Stick” was just a nickname for this guy:

Seen here with the saddest monkey in the world

Live and learn!

We all make them

I guess this post is timely in that this weekend is our local college’s Homecoming Game, a festivity that coincides with the local Fair, two new bars opening, and a party that requires local buses to offer transportation.  Now, this being a predominantly white, upper-middle class school, it’s not like Homecoming is going to be as hot a mess as, oh, say, Dollar Beers on Thugged-Out Thursday Night in Compton.  But, you know, there will still be some srsly bad decisions happening.  One would hope. 

 My own college years resemble nothing quite so much as a rom-com version of Barfly.  Me and Tequila?  Yeah, we’re no longer friends.  Me and Vodka?  Still on speaking terms.  Me and lying on the concrete at 2 AM?  Well, we all have those friends that we just can’t ignore, right? 

This is why I was horrified when one of my students announced that the sport’s team she is on is having a “dry season.”  She naturally announced this with the dour face one would expect to accompany the words, “we’re having an AIDS season” or “we’re having a Charlie Sheen Fan-club season.”  One poor teammate’s parents had the shitty foresight to birth her, 21 years ago, in the midst of this season of tears, and so her 21st birthday was spent watching Red Box movies and going to the Fair.  Not that eating fried things and watching a Demolition Derby is anything to sneeze at, as far as birthdays go, but you have to admit that both these activities are improved exponentially with the imbibing of, say, a litre of gin.  As my student put it, with eyes that looked like she was discussing dead kittens, “You know what I do on Friday nights?  I DO MY HOMEWORK.  AND THEN SLEEP.”  I suggested that perhaps she volunteer to read to the elderly.  She suggested that I kindly eat a hot dick.  I laughed and said that at least I could wash down aforesaid dick with a tumbler of vodka.  She looked on the verge of dead-kitten tears again, so I swiftly changed the subject.

Here’s the thing:  There is nothing else to do in our college town except get wasted.  There are no clubs (well, there’s one, but we don’t talk about it — it’s half hip-hop club, half transvestite drag show.  No.  Not kidding…), and the nearest town WITH clubs is a 30 minute drive.  Which means every weekend, the stakes for deciding the miserable designated driver get scarier and scarier (“Ok, the first one to get his pubes set on fire totally doesn’t have to be the DD!”).  Our next-door neighbors said that they once found a sorority girl passed out in her car at 5 AM on their front lawn, car still running.  When they woke her up, she asked a) if the party was still raging and b) if she could crash at their place.  My neighbors are in their 50’s.  They like Dale Earnhardt and Puritanical bed-times.  Of course, they also love to top off an evening with multiple boxes of wine, so her drunkenness was seen as only a mild irritation, something rather understandable.

Happy Saturday, loyal readers.  Go make some bad decisions.  And if you see my old pal Tequila, will you tell that son of a bitch that he owes me about 412 hours of my life back?  Thanks.

Look, I am happy for anyone who reads for fun.  You know, reading novels, for pleasure, instead of for work or to sporadically google new ways to get rid of that genital rash.  But Jodi Fucking Picoult (JFP) is just really a bit too much. 

For those of you who remain blissfully unaware, JFP writes books (can’t bring myself to call them “novels”) that are usually fictionalized accounts of modern hot-button issues.  She’s like Nancy Grace’s therapist and ghost writer.  She wrote 19 Minutes, about school shootings, and recently they made one of her 300 page nightmares into a movie, My Sister’s Keeper(about sibling cell harvesting, apparently.  And assistive dogs that can sense epilepsy).   However, whether she’s scrutinizing the Amish, witches, little girls who talk to Jesus, child molestations (a resurring theme) or wives of cops (another recurring theme), I want to save you the trouble of ever having to actually read one of these horrors.  She is so laughably formulaic that you pee a little each time you crack a spine.  Here is the basic synopsis of ALL JFP books:

1.  There will be an ironic title to the book, whose full meaning will not be revealed until the middle of the book.  It will be a double meaning.  It will be deep.  And Ironic.  Did we mention Ironic?  Then, introduce sappy heroine who is likely redheaded [see: pictures of Jodi Picoult] and probably a mother.  She will have ISSUES.

2.  Some giant fucking tragedy will strike (past tragedies run the gamut from teen suicide pacts to singular infidelity to child rape, so you never know).  This will, naturally, upset the sappy heroine.  She will be given at least one introspective chapter in which she gazes at a leaf or a child’s toy or some bullshit and gets weepy.  This will be the part that the people at Lifetime start masturbating and listening to Taylor Swift songs to use in the movie soundtrack.   

3.  THEN THERE’S A TRIAL.  We will be introduced to a plucky lawyer who will inevitably save the day with some “innovative” way of looking at it.  We will be taught that JUSTICE is all a matter of PERSPECTIVE.  So suck it, law-abiding citizens, ’cause that death row criminal?  He saves BABY BIRDS!  You monsters, for putting him on death row for raping a child and killing her dad. 

4.  The sappy heroine and her plucky lawyer will have LEARNED A LESSON.  If they are members of the opposite sex, and the sappy heroine’s husband has been conveniently been offed, they will hook up.  And then JFP will RE-USE these characters in a later book because she arrogantly assumes her readers still give a shit about one of her previously retch-worthy little tomes. 

5.  The World Will Be a Better Place.  For NOW.  There will be another introspective chapter, perhaps from a different character’s viewpoint, and the reader will be left with a little glow of pleasure, feeling that as long as JFP is involved in our justice system, surely the world will improve. 

I usually read these books on vacation (read: DRUNK), so I have actually worked my way through quite a hefty pile of her wordy prose and manically expressed hysteria and emoting.  Just recently I tried to read one sober and it nearly fucking killed me [Change of Heart].  It was like she viciously raped The Green Mile with a giant Lifetime Original Movie dildo, then threw in a wonky priest and a resurrected dog just for kicks.  

In fact, here are some of the more glaring thefts from The Green Mile that JFP shamelessly lifted:

1.  Magic Negro character is a Magic Retard in Change of Heart     

2.  Instead of the innately good Tom Hanks character, who feels guilty over the death penalty, we have an innately good priest, who feels guilty over the death penalty …  because he was on the trial that convicted the Magic Retard!  *gasp of ironic shock*

3.  The Magic Negro is wrongfully accused of raping and killing little girls…  The Magic Retard is wrongfully accused of raping and killing a little girl

4.  The Magic Negro uses his Christ-like powers to rescue a friend from a manly yeast infection, save a dead mouse, and cure cancer…  The Magic Retard uses his Christ-like powers to rescue a friend from being shanked, save a dead bird, and cure AIDS

5.  Both men die despite proving their innocence to the main protagonist (who are each convinced based on the word of mentally unbalanced, illiterate convicts alone), but they leave the world a BETTER PLACE. 

6.  The Magic Negro passes some of his Magic onto the sweet, barely developed-as-a-character Mr. Jinxes (a mouse) …  The Magic Retard  passes some of his Magic onto the sweet, barely developed-as-a-character Claire (a mousey little girl with a bad heart). 

You’re welcome, Stephen King.  I just helped you win a lawsuit.

JFP also clearly thinks she has a pretty good handle on inspirational twist endings, though most are so hysterically heavy-handed that it makes Degrassi Junior High look like serious drama.  Sometimes the “twist” is revealed at the INEVITABLE GODDAMN TRIAL, so the ending will be a wistful reflection on all they’ve all learned.  In The Pact, for example, you discover via flashback that the main female lead desires suicide because she was once diddled in a Burger King bathroom by a janitor.  Or in Plain Truth, you find out that the nice Amish girl didn’t kill her baby — it was the unpasteurized milk to blame!  Or in The Tenth Circle, Eskimos help a young girl come to terms with her nasty habit of calling rape on boys she gives blowjobs to at Rainbow parties (I am not kidding).       

The Magic Retard book ends with a little girl resurrecting her dead goddamn dog.  I could not even make that shit up.   

So, kindly go fuck yourself in a verdant green field full of tragedy and supposed symbolism, JFP.  And please, for the love of all that’s holy, develop Parkinson’s or something to keep your talons effectively away from a keyboard.*

"Researching" her next novel on donkey rape

*If JFP developed Parkinson’s, she’d just write a fucking book about it.  Utilizing the help of some neighbor kid.  Whom she’d become attached to.  Who would then be hit by a car and killed.  THEN THERE’S A TRIAL.  And we’d all learn another goddamn lesson.

For probably some of the same sad reasons that young girls turn to being whores and shooting heroin into their eye balls, or decide to work for Hardee’s, I have lately been pursuing a career as an online instructor.*  Since half the online colleges have drawn their collegiate names clearly from either a broken Latin dictionary or the T9 function of the provost’s cell phone, and since I believe heartily in my own anonymity, I am not about to tell you where I am actually working — suffice to say that I am employed by two online colleges, both of them interchangeable so far as the student demographics (unemployed single mothers, many with names spelled so phonetically as to baffle anyone unfamiliar with the south side of Detroit or the locker room of a local Wendy’s) and bland, mind-numbingly simple course content.  I feel like the late Billy Mays could have sold this shit.  For about what it’s priced at now.  And thrown in a free Sham-Wow (which would be, possibly, be more valuable than the actual “education” these folks are receiving). 

On my first day moderating the online discussion, one student said that they planned on writing an enthusiastic paper about all the brown people who had invaded her great state of Texas and were refusing to learn English just to spite her.  This naturally upset everyone else in the class of Latino background, starting an online Alamo showdown.  The racist student in question thought she was smoothing things over when she stated, “it’s not that I think those people are all hatful and ignorant [sic].  Just the ones in Texas.  Especially in the grocery stores.” 

Also, people who are going back to school tend to be either completely computer ignorant (since the last time they were in an office, they tended lovingly to their pet Smith Corona and their secretary was probably still allowed to smoke at her desk), and thus send me a barrage of wailing, hopeless questions about basic things like checking their “electronic mailings,” OR they are the sassy new generation of text-addicts who respond to my intellectual, grave postings (i.e. “STOP BEING RACISTS!” and “The Pros of Learning to Use Spell Check!”) with content identical to that which is found at Texts From Last Night – equal parts unintelligible, abbreviated and startling in content. 

Meanwhile, I have to read personal emails from them, detailing the soul-sucking nature of their poverty, their multitude of angry teenagers, their usually useless or absent significant others and the inevitable substance abuse problems.  Some of these students are twice my age and have a lifetime more experience in seeing how the world can shit on them.  Some are only 17 and still furious at a youth spent in anger, waste or impoverished humiliation.  No one, apparently, knows how to use or access birth control any longer.  When you’re 23 and have 5 kids, surely you might have thought a good, sound condom investment to be more beneficial than, say, going for the shiny gold promises of an Amway sales manager. 

In totally other news, we are getting close to being done with the house.  It has electricity!  It has plumbing (though no functioning toilets or faucets yet)!  There are walls where once there was plastic sheeting!  A man is putting tile in the bathrooms today!  There are even industrious hedgehogs already at work destroying the garden!  Of course, we still have to refinish the hardwood floors, put our beadboard ceilings up and refinish a pile of re-usable wood that is be-tarped and awaiting my incompetent ministrations in the front yard. 

I will put pictures up when I am feeling less abused by racists, and my muscles have recovered from endless hours of manual labor, my legs toned from relentless hedgehog pursuit. 

*  Reasons being, I am poor and have no remaining dignity.

So, good news: I have a new fan with a hilarious site, making fun of some shit I hate the most — terrible fucking ads.  In honor of his shout-out, I’m reposting this little ditty from my old blog, a tragic little livespace on MSN that just clicking on is like going to visit grandma at the home…  As soon as you’re there, you’re just depressed at all the old things lying around, the slow speed of the place, the overpowering scent of urine. 

Anyway.  This is as true now as it was then:  Diet Pills are bad news, children.  Everyone say it with me. 

“Go take yourself, diet pills!”

In the spirit of such previous posts mocking the film industry (see Man Hanistons and  Lol Gran Torino), I bring you more movie stills from a popular flick that is just dying for a little dry captioning.  Enjoy!

**  Spoiler Alert!  **

If you have not yet seen this hilarious Nazi caper, do so immediately.  Then come back here and enjoy these LOL stills from such a madcap romp. 

LOL Inglourious Basterds!