Please don't bring me flowers....anymore.

St. Valentine's Day. Men hate it because they are smart enough to know that no matter what they buy, they're gonna screw up. Women know that no matter what they ask for, men will screw up. How such an incredible lack of communication can continue to exist year after unholy year between couples that have been together since the dawn of time I cannot understand.

My husband is the perfect example of this communication malfunction. For years I have been adamant in my insistance that he not buy me flowers. They die. The pretty petals fall like snow onto the tabletop and lie there, stunned and confused. Terribly sad thing, the death of a beautiful flower. Painful to watch. Like plants >:/ He buys them anyways, the poor deluded man. Why? Because he has been brainwashed with sex by all the women before me, and apparently, that works. No matter how I try, I cannot convince him that flowers ain't cutting it for me.

Why does our society place such importance on watching beautiful flowers die a slow, wilting death, anyways? And by flowers, I mean the more they cost, apparently, the better. The more exotic, the more artistic the arrangement, the more the female of the species becomes intoxicated. I just do not get it. Why do men buy them? Well, duh. Why do women want them? Seriously. WTF?? One of my girlfriends once tried to explain to me that the beautiful flower symbolized his and her beautiful, sexual relationship. I asked her what it meant when flower petals immediately started hitting the table like dead flies, and she gave me a dirty look and stomped off in a huff.

So I continue to ask people...how does this translate to romance?? How is watching something spectacular wilt and wither and wail in silent sorrow supposed to be romantic? The metaphor is way lost on me. What I see...."Hey, honey, check this out! It's a hundred dollars worth of death! It symbolizes my dicks reaction to your controlling, manipulative ways, you antagonistic bitch! HAHA! HAAA!"

Really, what are people thinking??

Know what women should be saying? "Buy me jewellery. How's that for manipulative? That way, I can hock the damn thing after I catch you cheating on me, you thoughtless, insensitive bastard. HAHA! HAAA!"

What. Just sayin.

Happy St. Valentine's Day, people. I think..

Caffiend

Like most people, I love a nice hot cup of coffee to kickstart my day with. Or two. Or three. It's proving to be a bit difficult to control the addiction, though. By the time I get to work I'm so wired I'm bouncing. Which is okay, I mean, I have stuff to do, so I can burn that bounce right back down. After about three hours, when the bouncing has reduced itself to merely vibrating, it's time for a refill. Or two. Or three. And thus, the downward spiral into madness, mayhem, and serious addiction continues.
I have tried all the usual methods to control it. You know, alcohol, recreational drugs, electric shock therapy, heavy gambling. To no avail. Then I tried prescription drugs (side effects may include respiratory distress, heart failure, brain damage, spontaneous combustion, aggressive sexual predation...) to no avail. Then I got inventive, and tried acupuncture. Yoga. Herbal tea. Incense. Meditation. Bed of nails. Nothing helped.
Sheer desperation has resulted in my latest brainstorm...taking up extreme sports. My logic being to replace one rush with another. Wisely, I've decided to approach this idea with caution. Introduce myself gradually to the world of Extreme Sports. Which Wikipedia lists as any activity that results in death if an error is made. Right up my alley!!
Thus, I shall do a bit of thinking, and figure out what extreme sport suits me best.

Color me cloudy.

I have to say I'm getting pretty sick of the color grey. It's everywhere. The sky, the ground, the trees, the roads. The sidewalks. The buildings. All grey. Gloomy grey.

Sometimes pretty white flakes fall, and disguise the grey temporarily, but it's still there. Underneath. Waiting to show itself when a bit of warmth tries to cheer me up and instead, melts the pretty white away. The grey attacks my senses with its brooding bleakness. With its neverending nothingness. With its morose melancholy. Oh, the depressing desolation of it. Enough to make the brain want to lobotomize itself.

This is why cars are so important. They come in spicy, cheerful colors. And car washes exist to keep the penetrating grey away. What the hell is it with people buying grey cars, anyways? And silver ones. Silver is a just a fancy way of saying grey. I notice that 80% of the cars on the road are a dismal, dispirited grey. Why do people buy cars the color of the most depressing time of the year? What the hell is wrong with them? Do they not understand? Do they do it on purpose, to torment me? Or are they just so monochromatic themselves that they choose their cars to match their characters? I feel like slapping them out of it. OUT! Out of the deep grey funk you're in! Life should be filled with color and imagination! What the hell are you thinking, a grey car? Dude. Get real. Are you afraid to break out of the greyness? Why even bother with the paint, just throw some clearcoat on that bare metal and have at it.

Seriously. How sad. What's wrong with pretty colors? I want to see pretty colors. I want to see sky blue. And forest green, and aquamarine, and hot fireman red. And sunshine yellow. My car is burnt orange. No matter how much the weather tries, it cannot change the color of my car. It is determinedly bright and perky. Citrus-y, tropical, vibrant. Plus, I keep it clean. It sparkles, it shines, it glows with rich, inviting, glorious color. Winter will never beat me. The sight of my car on a dreary, bleary, ice cold winter day brightens my outlook for hours. Why can't other people understand this? Are they really so masochistic? Oh, look at me. My car is sad. I'm sad. Winter is sad. My fugly grey car reflects my negative, downtrodden, sulky outlook. Feel sorry for me!! Or wait....are they sadistic? How brilliantly evil of them. After all, they can see my happily hued car, but I'm stuck looking at theirs. Bastards! Monochromatic grey bastards!

Well. I'll fix them. A few dozen cans of bright yellow spray paint and a black ski mask, and my winter is about to become a hell of a lot sunnier.

Vandalism. The guy with the grey car made me do it.

I Am A Killing Machine.

Every once in a while I wander through the greenhouse at my local Home Depot. It's so peaceful in there, so many pretty species of luxuriant, tropical paradise plants. I think to myself, "Self, maybe I could just have one, and try to..." and then cold reality hits, and I respond, "No, fool, Just Say No, RUN AWAY, RUN AWAY!".
My track record with living, breathing plants is abysmal. Lower than abyss-mal. It's pretty much a 100% death rate thing. No one is so completely sucessful at killing as I am. Sometimes I kill them quickly, sometimes I take my sweet time. Years, even. I had an umbrella plant that survived through sheer will alone before I hexed it with mighty mites and it died a parasitic death. Well. I needed that corner for something else anyway.
Plants are like people. Each has it's own personality and idiosyncrasies. Issues, even. Some are pathologically self-destructive, and I believe that these are the ones that call to me as I pass by, enticing me with their beauty and lushness..."pick me...pick me...". Most of the time I can resist the call of nature, but sometimes I am weak and cannot control myself and the next thing you know, I am the proud posessor of an emerald and ruby hued jewel of an azalea bush.
My killing method is simple and requires no great amount of planification. It consists of initially giving the plant a perfect place of honor, in full view of visitors. Gradually, as it weakens and becomes more and more beaten down and listless, it gets moved further and further from view, until at last it withers and sulks in a forgotten corner, yellow and dry and completely forlorn.
This saddens me, because it was it's own damn fault. If it hadn't been so beautiful in the first place, and enticed me with it's sinful, glorious beauty to buy it, it wouldn't be dead now, now would it? This is why, in countries where they understand such things, beautiful things are coveted so much that they need to be kept hidden.
Thus, from now on, I shall not cast my gaze upon such sinfulness, but shall keep myself holy and pure by not allowing myself to be put into the position whereby I am weakened and the sin of possession takes hold of me.
And now I must go look at pictures of rose bushes until the blackness goes away.

"Buckle up for safety..."

Woo. It's snowing. Turning to rain. Freezing rain. Woo. This means another slippery, slidey, life-threatening drive to work involving people with crappy tires, people still half asleep at the wheel (coffee, people. Ever heard of Starbucks?), angry truckers on speed, and trophy wives touching up their make-up in their rear views on their way downtown to meet up with friends and get their hair done. My cynical view of the world includes the fact that no one can drive, no one can think, and no one can ever match me in the traffic game. Which means my imminent demise at the hands of one of the above.

I always get this black, heavy, lethargic slow-mo feeling of impending doom whenever some yahoo pulls up behind me at a red light, or when traffic slows from 60mph to 10mph...like as if they're gonna ram me right up the ass because they don't know what the fuck they're doing. Like, why is everyone, like, stopping?!? Like? Doh. Like.

Shit.

If it's a taxi, though, I never feel that way. If there's a taxi following me, I can almost feel the black, heavy lethargic sense of doom lifting and floating away. Phew! It's a cab! I will not die today! I will live on to torment yet still more coworkers, neighbours and relatives!!

So where did this innate trust of taxi's come from?? Certainly not from the movies, where it seems every director has the exact same car scene embedded in his brain. Everyone driving in a movie car scene is a complete and total inept loser except the hero of the day. Every cop, truck driver, construction worker, fireman, and I'm pretty sure if professional race car drivers happened to be cruisin along in the scene, they'd be inept, too. So much for any last vestige of reality in the movies. Though, hardly surprising. Reality and movies do not go hand in hand. I'd make a good director, apparently we share the same views on drivers in general. 'Cept for the lowly taxi driver, who, in my town are the only drivers capable of using turn signals, letting people in, and using hand signals that mothers would actually approve of.

Thus, I've come to realize taxi drivers are one of the last things I have complete and utter faith in. No clue why, I believe in their ability to do the job well. Should the brave little taxi fail me, my cynicism will be complete. My faith in mankind's ability to perform an everyday job and have pride in one's work would be crushed beneath the wheels of reality.

And so, on to another day.