Category Archives: I’m so mean

Punch it

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When I dis­like some­thing I dis­like it with pas­sion.  Take, for instance, the band Bon Jovi.  Gag! When Jon sings it sounds like he’s tak­ing a dump while razor blades are extruded from his anus.  If one of their songs plays on the radio I lurch with a vengeance to change the sta­tion.  Mak­ing mat­ters worse is when a co-worker plays their “great­est hits.”  Yes, I put that in quo­ta­tions because noth­ing is great­est about that band in my less than hum­ble opin­ion.  Talk about set­ting me up for a hor­ri­ble work­day.  Then, I want to punch her in the face because she knows darn well that I hate their music. How­ever, legal restraints keep me from doing so. It would be so cool, for dra­matic effect, if I could rip the disc from the player and smash it with a ham­mer or some how man­age the sound of a nee­dle drag­ging across a record. Instead, I play nice and try to find a happy place.  With any luck, the hot UPS guy will drop his pack­age and bend over right in front of my win­dow at the mall.

punchcoffeemug Punch itFor many years I’ve com­piled lists of movies and musi­cal artists that I’d like to punch in the face. Not long ago it hit me that the vit­riol inspired by these things branched out to other sub­jects, like paja­mas in pub­lic or style being sported by preg­nant women wear­ing reg­u­lar pants but leav­ing them unzipped and unbut­toned to make room for their baby bump. The list is end­less.  Because of that never end­ing list, I needed a place to vent my ire. Wouldn’t you know it! Some­one else had already cre­ated such a blog and fan page on Face­book.  Had this per­son heard about my lists or stum­bled across my blog when I posted about the movies I’d like to give a knuckle sand­wich or could it be pos­si­ble that great minds DO think alike?  Need­less to say, I was slow on the draw. The cre­ator, Jen­nifer Worick, claims she made the expres­sion wildly pop­u­lar.  Uh, not exactly, but I like her style. I solemnly swear on Clark’s blog that I had never heard of it until the phrase was uttered from my lips.  She’s the one with the pub­lished books. So, that pretty much gives her greater cred­i­bil­ity, I guess. And for that I want to punch her in the face. Then, have cof­fee and point out all the things we want to punch in the face in our sur­round­ing area.

    Give me asylum: A monthly request

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    August+19+2010+001 Give me asylum: A monthly request

    Right to the point: I’m a girl who has needed a check up from the neck up. Thumb­ing through the Yel­low Pages for a shrink isn’t what is inferred. Although, that would prob­a­bly do me a world of good. After all, there are plenty of rea­sons for the man­ner in which I act and react to sit­u­a­tions in my life. Knee jerk reac­tions that often leav­ing me wish­ing I was some­one else.

    Stop.

    The eight sided, fire engine red sign is held up in my mind. Maybe it is progress that I’m capa­ble of catch­ing my neg­a­tive responses to even the sim­plest things. How­ever … you knew this was com­ing, right? This past week has been very trying.

    Why?

    Well, fac­ing my increas­ing age is not some­thing that weighs heav­ily on my mind.  Get­ting older means I’m still here on planet Earth.  Good, right? Yes, but as a woman it’s often a bat­tle of the hormones.

    Guys, this might be the point where you wince or stop read­ing.  It is your deci­sion, but it could get graphic.  I’m writ­ing this from the top of my head and know­ing which direc­tion I’ll take is a mys­tery.  If you choose to be brave and hang out for the dura­tion, thank you for mak­ing like Alan Alda.

    My age, which is 45, doesn’t show on my face.  Genet­ics have granted me few wrin­kles and decent skin tone and com­plex­ion.  As a lit­tle girl I’d admire my mother as she slathered Sec­ond Debut mois­tur­izer to her face and neck.  I learned that mois­tur­izer is key.  Unlike my beau­ti­ful mother, I do not smoke.  Diet Pepsi is not my pri­mary source of hydra­tion.  What is increas­ingly obvi­ous regard­ing my age is what I con­sider my uncon­trol­lable hor­mones.  Monthly upris­ings cause me to ques­tion and doubt myself.  Being awak­ened at night feel­ing like some­one switched the air con­di­tion­ing off and the heat on.  The ceil­ing fan is switched to full speed after fling­ing the cov­ers from my damp­ened hide.  Dear God! Help me get through this.

    What’s most dif­fi­cult about this ever present change of life is not the flashes and night sweats.  Not even the sud­den urge to burst into tears moments after want­ing to rip someone’s face off is nearly as damn­ing as ques­tion­ing myself.  Self-doubt becomes a heavy anchor teth­ered to my being and drags me to the deep­est, dark­est, cav­ernous place.

    Fear.

    Log­i­cally, this lack of self-esteem is lim­ited to the week before the dam breaks, if you know what I mean.  Hor­monal surges get a choke hold on logic, unfor­tu­nately.  I’m not one who rushes to the doc­tor and begs for a magic pill to make me all bet­ter.  Please, don’t imme­di­ately sug­gest it because I will toss a major league POO-POO! upon it.  Such things are a last resort in the Book of ‘Riss.

    Nor­mally, I think I man­age to have a han­dle on the over­whelm­ing senses and urges.  The week of August 15–21 lit­er­ally kicked my ass. Men­tally and phys­i­cally.  To put it bluntly, I felt like shit. From the roots of my hair to the tips of my toes it was crys­tal clear that it wasn’t a case of mind over mat­ter.  Not one spot of me was left out of the mael­strom.  Some­times it sucks to be a mid­dle aged babe. I had lit­tle patience for bull­shit.  Give me a real prob­lem to solve or offer con­sult, but don’t whine, piss and moan about someone’s petty crap! Mole hills turned into moun­tains!  I wanted to toss my cell phone into the river and shove my iPod ear­buds in my ears so deeply to drown out the never end­ing parade of wah, wah, wah.  I had my own issues pil­ing up and bury­ing my spirit.

    What stinks about the entire thing is that all I wanted to do was lock myself in a room and chill. That, of course, is not what could be exe­cuted. What did I do? I put on a happy face and tried to see my way through the chasm of my hor­monal mis­for­tune.  The throb­bing, pul­sat­ing three day headache had to be ignored because miss­ing work was not an option.  It occurred to me that work­ing out the ten­sion would be best.  Not this time around.  It weak­ened me and even with the min­i­mal effort I felt con­sumed by per­spi­ra­tion and exhaus­tion.  Nau­sea set in.

    WTF!?

    My son was sick for the first time in over a decade.  We’re talk­ing full blown, call the haz/mat clean up crew pro­jec­tile vom­it­ing in the bath­room.  Poor kid wasn’t even aware what that sud­den urge to purge felt like.  Home alone, he ran to the bath­room with only a moment to spare his stom­ach con­tents from expelling in the din­ing room.  So, with that in mind I con­sid­ered that I, too, was get­ting the bug he had.  He was over­come with fever. I was not.  Plus, I knew Aun­tie Flo was just around the corner.

    With all of this being said it has been made abun­dantly clear that while I say age is noth­ing but a num­ber, it is sig­nif­i­cantly more than can­dles on a birth­day cake or a crow’s foot or two around my green eyes.  It is offi­cial.  Marissa Rapier has reached the era of being hor­mon­ally challenged.  

    Here’s a bonus side note.  I received a free music down­load on the pack­age of tam­pons pur­chased the other day.  Woo! That almost takes away the angst .….….….….….….….….….. NOT!

    But I do dig free­bie tunage.

    Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion Give me asylum: A monthly request

      Don’t you wish your girlfriend kicked a$$ like me? Don’t you?

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      We all have our good days and bad days. The major­ity, myself included, just keep plug­ging along despite what our mood may be dic­tat­ing.  Yes­ter­day was my sev­enth day in a row to report to work. There is no doubt that I let my dis­ap­proval of this sched­ul­ing blun­der be known at every oppor­tu­nity.  In the retail world of optics, work­ing five in a row is often push­ing the san­ity but­tons a bit much. I stand for much of my shift, OK? Not to men­tion, just like anyone’s job, there are aspects about the work place that drive me absolutely bonkers given the chance.  That’s where I have to take in what is use­ful and dis­miss the rest of the din.  It’s dif­fi­cult par­tic­u­larly when my patience is hang­ing on a gos­samer thread.

      Sun­day brought a dis­ap­point­ing call from my lab part­ner of the day. She was ill and unable to come to work. Being the super hero that I am, I said I was up to the task.  I’ve been doing this for 14 years. Grind­ing lenses can be done in my sleep.  Appar­ently the entire county of Kanka­kee sud­denly lost their vision because they were pil­ing in like we were giv­ing away free pizza and beer.  That wasn’t a prob­lem. We needed the eco­nomic thrust.  If I’m kept busy then time flies.  My lunch was packed, per usual, so run­ning out for eats wasn’t man­dated.  I did end up eat­ing on the fly rather than sit­ting down to take a break.  Thank you spinach/turkey/hummus whole wheat wrap! That was gob­bled down. Ha! Gob­bled. Any­way, I often pre­fer to work alone because if some­thing goes awry I have only myself to blame. Tim­ing is every­thing which I also insist on dic­tat­ing.  Live and learn. With excep­tion to some­one being a com­plete doo­fus, and it hap­pens more than I like, if I’m fly­ing solo few things get jacked up. Do what I ask and no one gets hurt. *snort* The work­day is sev­eral hours shorter on Sun­day than any other day of the week. The num­ber of units I made in 4.5 — 5 hours was dou­ble what had been done on Sat­ur­day — an eleven hour span with twice the tech­ni­cians. Get it? I was run­ning my ever decreas­ing in size pos­te­rior off.

      Dont you wish your girlfriend kicked a$$ like me? Dont you?Because we were so incred­i­bly busy (not com­plain­ing), I was whooped by the close of busi­ness.  I did mange to keep my cool for the most part through­out the day.  One dude always man­ages to get under my skin, but that’s just a per­son­al­ity con­flict. Our doc­tor praised me and that was all I needed to get my sec­ond wind.  Still, the idea of going to work for a sev­enth day was very dis­pleas­ing.  In an attempt to get out of work­ing Mon­day, thereby giv­ing me two much deserved days off in a row — Tues­day is my sched­uled day off — I left a plead­ing note for my man­ager to find a way to make do with­out me.  It didn’t fall upon deaf ears, but my pres­ence was still needed.  UGH! Oh well, I get paid and it’s fewer vaca­tion hours I’ll have to use.  What is rather hilar­i­ous about the whole sce­nario is the reac­tion I got from one of my less favorite cowork­ers regard­ing my over the top kick ass per­for­mance as a solo tech on Sun­day.  We were pack­ing it in for the night and I was clock­ing out.  All the tidy­ing and end of day paper­work had been com­pleted. The girl I worked with was still futz­ing around (moooooo) but I was ready to leave.  I said some­thing like, “I’m out of here. Seven in a row and I had my ass handed to me yes­ter­day! I’m tar­rrred. Four­teen pairs!” To which she replied with a dis­gusted tone “I know. I heard.” Very curt. I laughed to myself.  No, I laughed out loud as I walked away. I even threw my head back for dra­matic empha­sis because of her tone. The child in me wanted to say, “I’m super tech and you suuu-uuuuck!” But that would have just been out of line. Plus, I wanted to make an escape in order to get home by 9:00 PM to catch the final sea­son episode of CASTLE.

      Mmmm Nathan Fillion.

        And then there were 6 — Idol Snark-O’Rama!

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        casinos chat

        Well, it appears the dar­ling of the Great White North will be men­tor­ing tonight. I speak of Sha­nia Twain, of course. Oof! She can teach every­one how to sound like they are hav­ing an orgasm while man­ag­ing to sound like a nag­ging whiny ass simul­ta­ne­ously. Yeah, she’s pretty and all — Plus, she got cheated on by one of the ugli­est men to walk the face of the earth, but I don’t dig her tunage. I pre­sume it’s gonna be a honky tonkin’ coun­try hul­la­baloo this evening.

        I won­der how BM (Michael Lynche) will Luther Van­dross the hell out of a coun­try song? Will he swag­ger to and fro to let his balls of steel air out? Y’all know what I’m talk­ing about.
        Will Lee enlist the help of Bag Pipes? A troup or spoon playin’, wash­board scrub­bin’ yee-haw urchins?
        Will Casey James straighten his hair and put down the bro­ken record of a per­for­mance he keeps churn­ing out week after week. If he was fuuuuug-ly he’d be gone by now.
        Will Siob­han calm the vocal squa­ler­ing, leave the but­ter­fly arbore­tum at home and just sing?
        This is right up Aar-chuletta’s alley. He can finally squeak out Ras­call Flatts tunes like they were intended — ear pierc­ingly high and nasal! Sha­nia will love him and likely nes­tle the tike in her bosom to calm his nerves.
        No doubt Crys­tal will crank out some seri­ous sin­gin’ — maybe she’ll play the banjo or mandolin!

          Cougar = icky in the book of Riss

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          While perus­ing my Face­book pro­file for new com­ments, I took note of the numer­ous aggra­vat­ing ads that take res­i­dence on the right side mar­gin. An X is pro­vided to dis­miss the adver­tise­ment, but not before answer­ing why you don’t like it. As soon as you give them rea­son, another ad pops up in its place and often more mis­lead­ing or offen­sive.  One such ad had a header “Classy Cougars.” Uh, whoa. Stop right there. Did that ad just call me a skanky, old broad with a lit­tle bit of cash, fake tits and the desire to uber hump 25 year old men only for the thrill of the kill?

          If you haven’t guessed it already, I despise the term COUGAR. Loathe it. Regard it with great contempt.

          Since it is a made up, social term, I turned to Urban Dic­tio­nary to find the com­mon def­i­n­i­tion of cougar.  Not any­where on the first page does it describe the woman I am.  Far from it and proudly so. For the record, at the time of post­ing this there are 100 def­i­n­i­tions of the older woman on the prowl for youth­ful, male flesh. After flip­ping through the pages, some of the descrip­tions detail a lower-key woman, but still on a quest for younger men who’ll sat­isfy her hunger for sex. 

          cougar ad 300x239 Cougar = icky in the book of Riss

          I real­ize tele­vi­sion shows like ABC’s “Cougar­town” or TVLand’s “The Cougar” try to make the term an accept­able term of endear­ment about women in their prime (40s and 50s) who have a pen­chant for younger men. Women who seek love and com­pas­sion from the younger set. To me, they depict women who, though finan­cially inde­pen­dent and seem­ingly put together, are pathetic, needy and use their quest for sex as a filler for accep­tance. But I real­ize that my per­spec­tive is par­tially due to my view of it being an insult. This brand of sex­ual rev­o­lu­tion is not how I want to be cat­e­go­rized or labeled. In fact, why must I be labeled at all? At least let me deserve the name you call me before stick­ing me with some idi­otic term.  What rubs me the wrong way about cougar is due to the usual pre­con­ceived assump­tion that unmar­ried women in their mid-life fall into the cat­e­gory. Am I sin­gle and in my mid 40s? Yes. Have I dated men younger than myself? Yes. Though I did not seek them out inten­tion­ally. Addi­tion­ally, I do not troll the bars hunt­ing young meat to slam against the wall and do to them what­ever my loins urge me to do.  I’m not a slave to my vagina. Just sayin’.

          For the record, I am not call­ing all women skeevy just because they like to refer to them­selves as cougars. It’s prob­a­bly safe to assume those women are not aware of the neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tions attached to it. Or hell, maybe they are and rejoice in it. All I’m ask­ing is not to be called one nor assumed to be one because of my age and mar­i­tal status.

          And now that I’ve vented, I feel bet­ter … prob­a­bly piss­ing a few peo­ple off along the way.

          com­ments have been dis­abled, but you are wel­come to email me with your thoughts at wildhair65@gmail.com

            I got da burnout blues

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            Ignor­ing that one par­tic­u­lar indi­vid­ual who seems to have a tal­ent for aggra­vat­ing you won’t be easy. You’ll have to bite your tongue, smile falsely and force your­self to be totally dif­fer­ent from the way you are. But why bother? Because you won’t want the scar of a petty argu­ment fol­low­ing your and your com­pan­ions around for the entire evening. Don’t worry. You can do the right thing with­out being untrue to your­self or let­ting them know they’ve got­ten to you. Kill them with kind­ness — tonight. Call them on it tomorrow.

            That was my hor­ri­ble­scope for today, Thurs­day, Jan­u­ary 21, 2010. I sus­pect it’s a good thing I had the headache from hell and didn’t go to work. Oh, I was sup­posed to help out my friend and for­mer boss­man at another store, but he was sweet enough to take pity on me in my moment of pain. I left work early yes­ter­day thanks to the excru­ci­at­ing thump­ing going on in my cra­nium. I’m pos­i­tive Wiley Coy­ote put an Acme Anvil on my face when I wasn’t look­ing.  Plus, the roads were icy and, quite frankly I have no prob­lem admit­ting this, I freak out in shit-tastic weather. I tense up and white knuckle grip the steer­ing wheel.

            There’s a teach­ers’ strike in Kanka­kee.  I don’t get polit­i­cal on this blog; nor do I choose to be con­tro­ver­sial. I bab­ble about per­sonal stuff.  Let me just say that I hope this comes to an end. My son is actu­ally itch­ing to get back to school.   Need­less to say, my lame ass didn’t real­ize that ‘agree to nego­ti­a­tions’ meant NO SCHOOL. The alert sys­tem I’ve sub­scribed to didn’t send me the memo until an hour and a half after Man­cub would start school. So, he woke up early, walked to the bus stop on the frozen ter­rain. The driz­zling rain made it par­tic­u­larly slip­pery. Wet on ice. He came back home after a kindly strik­ing teacher told him that school was not in ses­sion.  How­ever, I did see a cou­ple school buses out and about prior to send­ing him out. So, I don’t totally suck. I have since sub­scribed to a back up alert sys­tem.

            The author­ity fig­ures you’ve been deal­ing with lately are quite happy with you — not only with what you’ve done, but with the rep­utable qual­i­ties you’ve dis­played. They’re not quite ready to show that to you just yet, how­ever. So you’ll need to be patient, or at least fake it for just a lit­tle while longer. You won’t have to pre­tend you’re happy once they offer you a bit more respon­si­bil­ity, though — and that’s what’s com­ing. Oh, admit it. You just love this. Get some sleep. You’ll need it.

            Picture+129 I got da burnout bluesI’m hav­ing a hard time believ­ing Friday’s hor­ri­ble­scope (above). If I have ever run from respon­si­bil­ity in the work­place it is now. There are changes that I’m indif­fer­ent towards. I do what I have to in order to remain employed. But if burnout had a face in the dic­tio­nary it would be mine. I’ve been more than hon­est with how I’m feel­ing, too. Maybe that’s not a wise choice, but there are no chal­lenges on the hori­zon. Oh, it’s mighty chal­leng­ing to endure some of the day to day ding­bat­tery. We all have it, but some take more than their daily dosage of the ding-a-ling pill.

            I’m going to take one bit of advice in my hor­ri­ble­scope, though.

            Get some sleep. I DO need it.

              The cats are on to us

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              I had a ter­ri­ble night’s sleep last night. Man­cub and I learned awhile ago that the key to sleep­ing soundly is lock­ing our furry com­pan­ions down­stairs. It’s not as if they are being sequestered to the dungeon-like Silence of the Lambs base­ment. They have run of the liv­ing and din­ing room, bath­room and kitchen. While they get into noc­tur­nal mis­chief, we sleep with lit­tle to no disruption.

              But not last night.

              Sil­ver is in heat which means she’s howl­ing loud enough to sig­nal male cats in a neigh­bor­ing coun­ties that she’s primed and ready … if they can get at her, that is. Nei­ther cat has ever been out­doors. As a result, they don’t attempt to dash out the door even when they want to get their feline groove on.

              Our usual tac­tic of lur­ing them from my bed­room — their com­mon sleep­ing spot — did not work last night. We have cat treats that leave them Jonesing. Mo-mo has been known to knock the lit­tle bag off the shelf and attempt to gnaw her way into it. She’ll also bully Sil­ver to get her por­tion.  Yes, she’s a hog and the queen of the domain.  I’m fool­ish to believe this is my cas­tle.  Any­way, shak­ing the bag will typ­i­cally send them careen­ing down­stairs obe­di­ently *cough*.  This has been a suc­cess­ful man­ner of giv­ing us just enough time to escape to hall and close the door behind us.

              Last night was different …

              Mo-mo barely raised and eye­brow as she lounged in “her” chair that resides in the cor­ner of my bed­room.  Sil­ver mean­dered half way down the steps but stopped.  If I took a step in her direc­tion she’d get on her haunches ready to sprint up the steps.  Man­cub had placed two treats on the lower steps. Out of view, she crept toward the chick­eny reward, but her keen hear­ing told on us.  She’s sleek and nearly impos­si­ble to catch.

              Queen Bee Mo-mo isn’t usu­ally loud. She’s polite about let­ting me know she needs to go down­stairs when she gets locked upstairs with me. She hops on my bed and lets out a sweet mew and stares at me until it appears that I’m awake.  Then, she cau­tiously fol­lows down the steps. She won’t go to the door until I open the door. Often, if we’ve been suc­cess­ful get­ting Sil­ver locked out, she’ll be wait­ing on the win­dow sill behind the cur­tain. Then, woosh! Before I know what’s hap­pen­ing she’s bolt­ing up the steps. ARGH!

              Last night we weren’t suc­cess­ful.  We just hoped they’d for­get they were noc­tur­nal and sleep or find amuse­ment down­stairs.  We. Were. Wrong.

              Deeply slum­ber­ing (and likely snor­ing) I was jolted awake by the cat­er­waul­ing of dear Sil­ver.  She was spas­ti­cally rush­ing the stairs. That for­tu­nately made it easy to get her down­stairs. She con­tin­ued with her gut­tural groan­ing as the latch clicked behind me.

              On to sleep.  NOT!

              At 4:30 (keep in mind I awaken between 5:30 and 6:00) Mo-mo in her ten­der man­ner … mew. mew. mew. She’s a big cat but has the sweet­est meow when she wants some­thing.  With­out hes­i­ta­tion she joined Sil­ver and I man­aged to get back to sleep quickly.

              Man­cub came in my room and I lay there motion­less when he put his hand on my shoul­der to awaken me.  Fif­teen min­utes later I shuf­fled to greet my son.  I have lit­tle rec­ol­lec­tion of what took place between that time and the time I returned to bed … for TWO or more hours of sleeping.

              Now I feel groggy and loopy.  These cats are smart. They are on to us.  We need a new method.

              14 87 The cats are on to us

                Stop with the Snuggies

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                I have to admit that I wish I had the incli­na­tion and inge­nu­ity to invent an item that would earn me mil­lions. From atop my pile of money I’d laugh with a hearty snort as I watched the fools pur­chase my idi­otic yet inge­nious prod­uct.  The SNUGGIE is one such item. Stop. It! Stop slob­ber­ing all over them and hav­ing par­ties and wear­ing them in pub­lic.  They are enor­mous, fleece hos­pi­tal gowns. To those of you who piss and moan about pajama bot­toms being worn as outer wear yet applaud the Snug­gie, you should be ashamed.

                If you’ve pur­chased a Snug­gie for your­self or a loved one (really, how much do you love them? What’s next? Arsenic Lolli-pops?), you are to watch this video and fol­low their lead.  This is what hap­pens when you suc­cumb to the Snug­gie phenomenon.

                Sev­eral news chan­nels are putting these suck­ers to the test. The ver­dict? Other than the obvi­ous, is that they need to be washed alone or every­thing in your wash and sub­se­quent washes will be cov­ered in the fuzz.  I go to a laun­dro­mat. I swear if my clothes come out of a cycle cov­ered in hot pink fuzz I’m going ballistic.

                  Classmates.rob

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                  classmates Classmates.rob

                  A few years back when my 20th high school reunion was being orga­nized, I joined Classmates.com. At that time it was really the best way to keep cur­rent with the ongo­ing plans.  I’m quite cer­tain free sites like Face­book and Myspace weren’t around or, if they were, they were in their infancy stages. Being part of Classmates.com had one major prob­lem: I had to cough up funds to be granted full access to infor­ma­tion and con­tact with friends.  That grated my nerves, but I assumed it would be worth the invest­ment.  My gold mem­ber­ship was main­tained for a cou­ple of years but con­tact with for­mer class­mates was incred­i­bly lim­ited. I didn’t attend the 20th reunion due to a per­sonal cash flow prob­lem. Ironic, isn’t it?

                  With Face­book — and once upon a time, Myspace — being a social net­work­ing mecca (sorry Clark), it would seem that Classmates.com would real­ize that if peo­ple don’t have to pay to recon­nect, they won’t.  Yet, this morn­ing I received a noti­fi­ca­tion that some­one had signed my guest­book.  I clicked the link only to find that the person’s iden­tity was blocked and their image fuzzed over like those you see on COPS.  If I wanted to see who, what, where, when and why I need to dole out the cash.  No thanks.

                  What I also dis­cov­ered about that web­site (when I was fool­ish to pay) is that you can’t include email addresses or web­sites (such as a per­sonal web log) in your cor­re­spon­dence.  Seri­ously! If you com­mu­ni­cate with a per­son who is not a pay­ing gold mem­ber you’re not allowed to give them your email address to cut out the mid­dle man.  I also find the site quite irri­tat­ing to nav­i­gate.  There ought to be real perks to ante­ing up money for mem­ber­ship to a web­site. Like, how about mak­ing the boy who rejected my invi­ta­tion to go to Win­ter Ball by claim­ing he wasn’t going but went stag , to add insult to injury, come to my house and re-grout my shower?

                  Nearly every­one I know is on Face­book — even our par­ents are sign­ing up.  Some peo­ple choose not to be part of this phe­nom­e­non (yes, PK, I’m look­ing at you).  I can dig it.  Like­wise, I’m one of few peo­ple who are not on Twit­ter. I have to dis­con­nect at some point and I draw the line there.  Besides, I couldn’t give two-rat’s asses about John Mayer or Perez Hilton’s goings on. I digress.

                  Because I use Face­book quite fre­quently (too often accord­ing to an ego­ma­ni­a­cal blogger/podcaster) to pimp my blog, get in touch with friends — replies are often quicker than if sent via email — I have no use for Classmates.com.  That means I took advan­tage of the unsub­scribe fea­ture today.  I’d leave a for­ward­ing email address or link to my Face­book pro­file for those that rely on the site, but that’s VERBOTEN! Psh. Once again, I feel relieved of a lit­tle more fat in my life. At least it’s one less inane email in my yahoo mailbox.