(Photograph copyright 2010, all rights reserved.)
Woo hoo! I can finally say it's Spring! If you want proof, then just go over to my other blog here for proof. See? See? Blue sky, leaves and flowers... SPRING! (And about bloody time, too.)
There is a down side to this, of course. Allergies. After that walk, and after taking the drugs, I thought my head was about to explode. Same today. It put me in a cruddy mood until I decided to just...take more drugs. Headache gone, mockery enabled....let's go! The original letters are here .
(Note: Click on this link , listen to the song and ask yourself. "Does this sound like the LW would think it's a good vacation idea?" If the answer is "yes", then you have proof that the average person who writes to Prudie really IS dumb as a stump.)
1. Wow. Lady you have got some issues, you know that, right? What is all this shite about your "first love"? Tell me, please? I can tell you want to insert "and only" into that phrase and don't have the guts to do it. Kinda rough, though, what with the husband and all. Tell Aunt Messy, I'm right aren't I?
SHADDAP!
I see from The Fray that a lot of people claim to have prophetic dreams, we have some mind readers over there, and a whole buncha other nonsensical twaddle. Whatever. Most of the time when they're "right", the whole thing is open to so much interpretation that nothing was "proved" anyway.
Here's an example:
....I had a dream.....a vivid dream...... I dreamed that I was sitting at my desk and my ass kept getting bigger and bigger.....and there were parties...... OH MY GOD, my ass is GOING TO EXPLODE! (Or I've been indulging in too many damned cookies at the office parties and this is my ass's way to tell me to get off it for a change.)
However. You saw his head explode in a car. Are you CERTAIN that his head didn't explode from frustration at getting yet another damned phone call from some desperate married chick who's clinging to him like a limpet? No?
You ask "... how can I share such a sickening dream with someone who has been offered a job after months of unemployment?"
Ok. I get it. I've met people like you. You say you've been speaking to him about his job search for months. No doubt he unburdened himself to you, told you about his insecurities and cried on your shoulder. I get it. He did that, and it made you feel helpful, useful and (admit it) JUST a teensy bit superior to him.
Because that's what people like you do, right? ALL of your friends need help, or are in a jam, or have terrible problems, don't they? Some might even be deathly ill. Whatever their problems, you seek them out, because only around broken people do you feel whole. You aren't interested in being around happy people that have their lives under control and are having fun. There's no fun in that for you, is there?
Once your "first love" gets a real job and is a happy camper, you're going to drop him like a hot rock, right? Just like (I'm guessing here) the girlfriend that had the cancer scare, or the other one that almost died in that car accident and took so long to recover. Everyone has met someone like you. You're the "crisis friend". You convince people that you only want to help, that you'll do what you can, then you dump them when their lives get back to normal.
So go ahead. Tell your "first love" about the dream. If your wildest hopes come true, he'll refuse to take the job and you'll be able to provide that shoulder again. Not. You know that's not what'll happen if you DO make this huge dramatic announcement.
It'll give him a good laugh when he leaves for work overseas. You know. Where he'll have a stopover in Paris, meet a gorgeous and much-younger woman who doesn't look like you in the LEAST and decides to stay there and make babies with her and live a life of comfort and ease never speak to you again.
Get over yourself. Quit spending your time on the phone with sad single men and START spending time with your family.
2. You silly bitch. What a jerk you are. You see a kid a couple of times a month, you don't talk to him and from that you've decided that you don't LIKE him? Really? Then again, why should he like you? You think kids are stupid? Do you sincerely believe that this poor little bugger doesn't KNOW that you wish he wasn't around?
SHADDAP!
Let's review. This kid's parents are divorced. Check. BOTH of them have met someone else, BOTH of them have new babies, so where does that leave him? Everyone's having fun with their respective babies while HE gets shuffled around between houses like used lawn furniture and you're SURPRISED he's not a happy kid around you? Duh.
I feel for your boyfriend. He should have known better than to reproduce with an unholy, screaming, selfish, trashy bitch like you. Now the poor bastard's stuck with you and your squalling brat for eternity and you're going to make sure he knows it, aren't you?
What do you expect your boyfriend to do? Drown the six-year-old so you don't have to deal with him any more? Sell him to a road crew somewhere overseas? Tell the kid that he can't be his Daddy any more because wifey number two is a.....bitch with entitlement issues? The hilarious thing is that YOU are reconsidering marrying HIM. Gawd that's funny!
Listen, moron. If you marry that man YOU ARE THE KID'S STEPMOTHER. You won't have a choice about having him in your life. That means that you have to act like a PARENT to that kid. I won't even BEGIN to go into the fact that you should have been doing that already. It never sunk in with you that a kid can never get too much love, has it?
No. I quit. People like you can't be reasoned with. You're like the kid that hides all of her Barbies behind the wallboard so that even YOU can't play with them, just to keep them away from everyone else.
Make a decision. Make it fast. When you leave, sign all of your parental rights for your own child over to it's father. Do it now. At least then YOUR kid won't have to deal with you not liking him/her just for being in the same room as your exalted self.
3. So you had to sit through a boring etiquette seminar. Ok. Those things are not designed to be fun. There were some things said that you didn't seem to grasp, though, so naturally you chose to take offense instead.
SHADDAP!
This will be a short seminar. Then you can go home and bitch about me. Hell, you can even bitch TO me, just post your comments below, you idiot.
Managers arrange these seminars for a bunch of reasons. They've got a few people in the office that are...slobs. They dress badly. They smell. They show too much skin. Could be a lot of things. Management is afraid of offending people by singling them out so they subjected everyone to the same lecture.
Here's what they were REALLY saying:
a) It's NOT acceptable to "snow" all over the place. Someone in your office has horrendous dandruff and THIS WAS A HINT.
b) It's NOT acceptable to wear clothes that let the cottage cheese hang out all over the place. Someone in your office is wearing clothes that make them look like a pudding stuffed into a sock and THIS WAS A HINT.
c) It's NOT acceptable to wander around with skin looking like the dark side of the moon with big zits dripping pus all over the place. THIS WAS A HINT.
d) It's NOT acceptable to greet every human being you meet with a surly expression on your face. NOR is it acceptable to greet people with dirty, rotting teeth ( I'm assuming that your company has dental) and breath that smells like the newly opened two week old grave of an unembalmed leprosy victim after a heavy rain. THIS WAS A HINT.
e) You are totally making up the gray hair thing. MORE likely, there is someone (or a few someones) who not only don't wash their hair more than once a year, they don't even bother combing it from time to time. THIS WAS A HINT.
Oh, and tell your colleagues of color that the term "good (meaning light) skin" has NEVER been something that white people use. Only black people use that phrasing. That's something that black people say to other black people in the context of, "Oh, what a lovely little boy! And he has such good skin!"
Tell them to get over themselves. They're hunting for trouble where there very likely is none.
Got it now? Someone Up There wants the staff to start taking care of themselves and make a better impression on clients. You ladies need to get a grip, pay attention to what was said and make the changes. Do it now. And...
SHADDAP!
4. Yadda yadda.... you're broke, the bride bullied you into her pay-to-play wedding and you don't WANT to be a bridesmaid but you're too much of a chickenshit child to refuse...
SHADDAP!
Tell the bride to piss off. You don't have a job, and that means you have no money. TELL HER THAT. She's supposedly your friend, right? So? You don't talk to your friends?
Grow up, concentrate on getting a job and dump this so-called "friend". You aren't doing yourself any favors by keeping her around.
Yeesh.
Oh, Messy, please tell me you don't think I'm full of twaddle. Like I said in my posts, I pretty much just chalk the weirdness up to the oddness of the universe.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, good answers!!
Libby - You have to know that the SHADDAPS are written in whatever way sounds the funniest (at least in my addled brain). I don't say yea or nay as to the psychic stuff. How would I know?
ReplyDeleteI do know that I read people extremely well and can often predict what they'll say or do in certain situations. I don't think that has a single thing to do with the mind-reading stuff, though.
Messy, I dreamt you'd take a photo of a lovely cup with a broken handle sitting on an old weathered board... hmm...
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing how much meaning is packed in that picture: the past and its loss as well as its enduring presence, and so much more... Did you think of all that when you took the photo or was it just below (or above!) the level of words? I think it's my favorite.
Messy, being able to read people like a book and predict what they'll do ~ that comes from having to think on your feet due to an abusive parent. Don't you think? To gauge which way the wind was blowing at any given moment, and then divine which way it would likely blow next, to avoid getting caught in its destructive path. It's a specific skill that's served us both well ~ being able to tell, by various contributing factors and indicators, what might cause someone to be in a particularly foul mood so we could avoid them. I used to get off the school bus and be able to tell, by how the windowshades were positioned on my house, which of my mothers would be waiting for me on the other side of the door ~ I'll bet you had a similar gauge.
ReplyDeleteSee how psychic I am? I KNEW you were going to say something smartass about not believing in all that "nonsensical twaddle". Leos NEVER believe that kind of stuff. ;)
We Leos are a tough crowd, you better believe it! You and I had a training ground that may have been a horrendous thing, Mermaid, but I'm guessing that we both use that skill to our advantage now, right?
ReplyDeleteFor instance.... I don't get overcharged for things like, oh, plumbing, work on the cars, etc. We are the juggernauts of the bargain, the goddesses of the negotiating table, the arbitrators of the social world. It's a distinct advantage, and one that we would be foolish to waste.
Again, for instance I just picked up a very cool pair of Bruno Magli wedgies in beige patent for under $100.00. Yup. Sharp eyes and ten minutes at Nordstrom Rack is all it took.
Congratulations, Ms Messy, on your superb smacking around of LW3, who richly deserved it.
ReplyDeleteBut the executives I know would never be that subtle. My father, who was an exeuctive, for instance, had he had Elizabeth Edwards working for him, would have given her an impossible project, blamed her for the inevitable failure, fired her "for cause" and hired Ann Coulter, as he'd always intended to do.
And would you please smack around Business Etiquette Consultants? It may be different in civilized countries, but here it is an evil profession that appeals to the absolute worst in those who practise and come to relish it. They might even be worse than those Bridal Consultants who only call a wedding a success if they have managed to tack a zero or two onto the original budget. If I ever wanted to convince myself that *1984* is alive and well, I should only have to peruse the Careers section of the newspaper. The corporate climate BECs are instrumental in creating is one in which the object is to make people spend all their out-of-office time turning themselves into Corporate Drones out of an Unallayable Fear of Not Measuring Up.
What makes me nervous is that a lot of things that were driven out only after great pains may well be returning via the back door. For instance, employers now are not supposed to ask applicants about marital status or several other points of personal information. But the social networking sites undermine this. It is taking a risk not having social networking pages, as that can be taken as having something to hide, not being technologically savvy or as not being social enough to be a good team player. At present, most advice about what is on one's page seems to be sticking to advising people not to show themselves in a bad light. There seems to have been a bit of creep, though, from not having pictures up showing oneself to be totally wasted to where one is told not to post even quite innocent pictures. With people now being advised to maintain a sort of fake public page meant to present a wholesome corporate image for prospective employers, it seems that these will be used in unpleasant ways if such isn't happening already. Nothing easier than to use a social networking page to make sure one is hiring people of the desired marital, parental, orientational, religious or political status or affiliation (or not hiring the undesired if their pages don't disprove negative suspicions).
Not that I doubt you, but I'd be very interested to see what proportion of companies really do provide dental coverage.
Kati - that photo was taken in the same location as the rest of the recent pictures. That teacup is the last remnant of my great-grandmother's wedding china. She was married in 1918 at the age of 16 (her husband was 30 or 31). She had her first child at 18, her second at 20 - both girls. The younger one died as a toddler of Scarlet Fever.
ReplyDeleteThe china is a bit of a family joke, though. See Baba was like me - one of the LEAST graceful people on the face of the planet. Over the course of her life, she managed to decimate FOUR sets of good china. The everyday stuff never got counted. Let's just say the lady was rough on the crockery.
I'm exactly like her. There's generally a bandaid on me somewhere, usually because I was doing something in a hurry and not paying attention. She's part of the reason I refuse to own good china, too. We are kindred spirits and I can't be trusted. Mom always tries to foist her beautiful, translucent bone china from Royal Doulton on me. I keep refusing. It would be like giving Steuben glass to a toddler, a bad idea.
hrumpole! Sorry I'm so late getting back to you.
ReplyDeleteI spoke to The Boy about image and etiquette consultants, since he's as corporate as they come. His comment was that a whole lot of young people have to be taught to do everything. He has run across very well-educated hires that:
- Don't know how to chew with their mouths closed.
- Have gum in their mouths at the table.
- Don't know what cutlery is for.
- Think that a polo shirt and faded khakis are "business formal".
- Don't know how to tie a tie.
- Think that cologne is a good substitute for bathing.
- Don't know how to shake hands.
- Don't know how to introduce themselves to other people.
- Think that it's all right to swear in meetings.....
And young ladies who.....
- Think that a tight white sweater with no bra is acceptable in a business situation.
- Speak with a rising inflection on the end of every sentence, so it sounds like they don't know what they're doing - it makes them look juvenile.
There are a zillion other things that seem shocking, but are very common. So many people seem never to have been taught basic comportment that they have to be TOLD how to do, say, answer, sit up straight, chew with their mouth closed, clean their nails once in a while....
That's why those consultants that we all like to mock exist. It seems that parents don't bother with the basics any more.
Messy, dear CUDDLY Messy, I must not be doing something right. I sit at a desk all day every day and some days get pretty long. My ass stays about the same, but my belly keeps growing. Has to be those dreams, right? Maybe it's the cookies, or the Zingers, or the Snickers bars, or the doughnuts. Nah, it's those darned dreams.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely the dreams. I hear if you dream about candy, you get fat. You don't even have to EAT them, just dream about them......because it's not as if there are wrappers in the waste(waist?)basket, right?
ReplyDeleteRight.
ReplyDeleteHey, Messy, i stumbled across the perfect blog for the grammar Nazi in you (and me on occasion). Stormtroopers of spelling have to stick together, you know.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.apostropheabuse.com