We interrupt your 'net surfing with this public service message..

Btw, since I'm still too html-ignorant/lazy to have added a links section to my blog (and if anyone knows a relatively easy way to do this, I welcome instruction), I'd like to point out that my friend fanny has recently started a blog.. so go look at it and then you can gossip with me about her. Hmm. Did I just type that?

My word of the day: paroxysm

I don't think I've ever heard "paroxysm" said aloud. It means, by the way, "a sudden outburst of emotion or action." I actually used it in an e-mail just a moment ago to my friend Alexandrialeigh. It's fun 'cause it appeals to my very healthy sense of exaggeration.

See how bored not working has made me? I'm frickin' cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. Except for I've decided not to allow myself to eat sugar-filled crap with no redeeming nutritional value.. unless it's real yummy like M&M's, et. al.

Speaking of M&M's, my phrase of the day (credit goes to Larry the Cable Guy) is: "Wow, I'm three M&M's away from holy crap!" Gross, huh?

Now that gas prices have forced me into becoming a hermit, expect more inane and pointless blogs like this one.

Have a nice day!

Ha! I win this round.

Below you'll find the thinly veiled vitriol of my letter to my (21-year-old) landlord's mom requesting a discount in rent due to all the unmitigated (is it ever mitigated?) bullshit I've been through as their tenant. And guess what? Though her response was slightly accusatory on several points (none of which I found to be the least bit valid, like the fact she'd "heard" when my lease was up at the other place I'd been looking at other places to live.. um.. isn't that what people usually do when their lease is up?), yet overall I think she was forced to recognize me as a fellow adult and not some Natty Lite swigging, unemployed college student. Hooray for me. Enjoy.

Mrs. Always Slightly Bitchy,

I'm writing you to discuss my request for a discount on rent for this month.

To begin with, I have been an exemplary tenant since I first moved into the downtown residence in December of 2004. I have always paid my rent on time, kept my space clean, and have always taken responsibility in matters concerning myself and my roommates.

I'm sure by now you are well aware of the specifications of my job, meaning that I'm rarely home. This makes me a preferable roommate in that although I'm frequently not at home, I still pay for rent and utilities as a full-time resident.

I believe myself to be a fairly easygoing person who does not complain without significant cause. At the downtown residence, two roommates moved in and shared what had formerly been "my" bathroom, and I was given less than a week's notice that my situation would be changing. Also, despite the fact that I was now sharing living space with two additional people, my rent and utilities did not decrease. A similar situation occurred when your son began occupying that fourth bedroom. It was never communicated to me that there would be another roommate, nor did my financial responsibility ever decrease.

The reason I deserve a discount on this month's rent is that I incurred expenses due to unresolved issues in the James Island home. These are as follows:

$25.70 - This is the amount I spent on one month's phone service (March 21 - April 23) that did not work due to technical problems with the jack/phone line.

$12.95 - This is the amount I paid for my TiVo subscription for one month which also did not work as it depends on an active phone line.

$15.00 - Because the mail service had not been adequately set up until I contacted the post office, I did not receive several pieces of mail on time including my vehicle tags, which I then had to go to the tax office and DMV to obtain, at this cost, to avoid driving with expired tags.
$8.00 - This is the amount of money I spent on laundry services, as I'd believed I would have access to a working washer/dryer in the James Island residence but did not for the first three weeks.


The total cost of these items is $66.65. This does not include the amount spent on gasoline driving to the DMV, tax office, or to James Island from downtown almost every day during the 2 1/2 weeks that my belongings were at the James Island residence while I was still sleeping on a mattress on the floor of the downtown home.

With all due respect, I would like to remind you that I am a tenant of this property and as such expect a certain standard of living; namely that utilities be in working order. A fair discount is $100. Were I living anywhere else there would be no question as to whether this amount should be deducted from the rent in addition to these problems being fixed.

I chose to broach this subject with you because I consider your daughter a friend and don't wish to cause discord in the household. Also, from what she's told me, she's not in a position financially to provide me with this discount.

I appreciate your attention to this matter and I will await a response so that I know what amount my rent check should be.

Sincerely,
Me

My lungs to me: "Thanks!"

It's been three days since I've had a cigarette. I've been told that 72 smoke-free hours breaks the physical addiction to nicotine, so presumably.. it's all downhill from here. I've been sorely tempted, especially since I found myself at several bars within my "cooling off" period, but somehow I managed to avoid the sweet, heady rush of that paper-encased goodness. Because the goodness is badness! Soylent Green is people!!

Let's just pause here and say, yaaaay (in the voice of Special Ed from Crank Yankers, no less).

One thing that helped (for any would-be non-smokers reading this and desperately hinging on my every smoke-free word for advice) was to have a last sort of blowout smoke-fest. Though I'd been smoking >5 fags per day, Monday night I got wasted and virtually flooded my organ tissues with nicotine. Let's just say that if my lungs were comparable to a nice medium-rare filet, that night they may have bordered on charred. Anyway, the next day I was so vomitous and bleary that I didn't get out of bed until 2:30 p.m., which considerably shortened my first smoke-free day. Plus, even the consumption of food that day was dubious.. so of course the very thought of my former friends, cigarettes, was making me gag.

And after going a full day, something I hadn't done in approximately 7 years, I was so proud of myself I couldn't let myself wreck it by smoking the next day.. and so on. I know this particular comparison is dreadfully inappropriate, but you know how when someone you love dies and people say it'll get easier with time and you don't believe it, but later realize it was true? Okay, maybe I'm reaching with that one.

I may be jumping the gun here, but today, I think I'll change my myspace profile to reflect my new non-smoking status. Say it with me one more time: yay!

I (heart) nature

Last night, around 1:30, I'd just finished watching an episode of Blind Date and was becoming very, very sleepy. I turned the TV off, closed my eyes and.. realized an obnoxious bird was warbling its little heart out from a tree approximately six feet from my window. Yes, at night, in the pitch-black darkness of a street lamp-less neighborhood.

What the hell kind of bird chirps at night, I asked myself. Interestingly, I'd recently seen Failure To Launch with Matthew McConaughey (yum) and one of the subplots centering around Zooey Deschanel's character involved insomnia brought on by a mockingbird that persisted in singing at night.

I'm convinced that my culprit is a mockingbird, too, for as I listened to him, I realized he varied his chirping every few seconds. Every few minutes, he would fall silent, and I'd fervently hope that he'd exhausted his repertoire, but each time, he'd again begin his song with renewed vigor.

Now, I love animals. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a vet until my dad told me that I'd have to put them to sleep. And I enjoy nature extensively - personally, I could never imagine living in a concrete jungle. But last night, as sleep eluded me and the twittering outside seemed to penetrate my very skull, I imagined all sorts of solutions: shooting him (as Zooey did), hurling a brick at him, and, when I realized that I didn't have a brick, some other blunt and possibly injurious object.

As it turned out, I simply went out on the front porch. As I approached his tree, the bird issued a couple of questioning chirps. I grabbed a handful of branches and shook the shit out of that tree. I didn't see him fly away, but the godforsaken noise stopped and I finally went to sleep.

Maybe it's time to start letting my cat outside again.

The pen bites back!

Damn you, blog. I started you so I could air out my every petty grievance without social repercussion - and you've failed me!

Honestly, I thought only three or four people actually read you. Maybe therein lies my mistake. I assumed I could use you to express the thoughts that otherwise would have gone unsaid. I liked to think of you as the point where emotions and intellect first collided before they were tempered by conscience, reflection, and time.

I try not to give much thought to readers. It dulls the edge of my observations, wondering who I might offend. Rational thought doesn't typically fuel a creative spark for me, but naked and unchecked emotion does. Letting words pour out, whether they are of unwarranted aggression, inexplicable pain, or searing truth, is cathartic. Giving form to my feelings through language has always been therapeutic for me in the sense that it enables me to analyze them as though they were a solid object, and therefore put them in perspective.

I say all this, blog, in defense of myself because someone was hurt by something (several things, really) I wrote here, and I feel guilty, not for giving voice to how I felt in such a way that proved very unflattering for this person, but for the fact that I'd never intended the blog as a verbal assault and when she read it, it became that. I don't consider myself a malicious person. Anyone who reads you, blog, knows I think and write like a scathing bitch on occasion, but none of it is meant to publicly tear down someone else.

And P.S. - whomever pointed this girl in the direction of my blog, I have to question their intention. Was it merely to stir the pot? To say, look what this bitch said about you? Well, good job. She read it, it upset her very much, and for no reason. I personally never thought my blog would affect her in the slightest. Anyway, I guess you did it out of friendship to her, but my question for you is: if you were so horrified by what I said, why not comment about it? Why not say, "Hey, you're a fucking bitch"? Why surreptitiously read it and then convey it to others?

Why not? Because truly speaking your mind comes with a price that many people are not willing to pay.

2 reasons to be jealous of me

1. I got to see David Sedaris (a really awesome writer whom everyone should read) do a reading at the Performing Arts Center and it was hysterical and wonderful and titillating and really fucking funny and thanks to a friend, I got to go for free!

2. My mom gave me an early birthday present: a black 4GB IPod Nano. Its joys are offically boundless. And now I join the throngs of people at the gym with little white cords protruding from their sweaty ears. Yay!

It was a Huddle House night.

Yeah, so I didn't get to bed until after 4, and was awakened suddenly this morning by the sound of pounding on my front door (matched only by the pounding in my head).. but honestly, I was less consumed by anger than I would have been, as it was the electrician!! He seemed to be framed by a halo of golden light as he stepped (in slow motion, as the voices of an angelic choir rang through my heart) into my house.

Now if only we can get the phone guy out here, too. After much wrangling, I convinced my roommate that it should not be my responsibility to pay them to activate the jack in my room. I think peppering the conversation with "dealbreaker" and "lease" proved beneficial.

I'm not even going to think about the mail situation today, or the fact that since we are not letting our cats outside yet, the one that's not mine, Mr. Scarlett, is howling incessantly at the door. Nope. And I'm not going to invite the heart palpitations to return by contemplating my financial state of affairs and my lack of work. Yes, I'm still employed, but things are really slow at ol' HQ right now.

Anyway. Positive mental attitude. I'm reading an Augusten Burrows book, whom I love. I've only read his memoirs though, and this is fiction, so it's a bit different. It's called Sellevision.

Okay, that's all for now.

Update

I'm down to half a cigarette a day, so today might be the day I have none. I can't make any promises here, folks, but I'm optimistic.

The odd thing is that I've woken up with a sore throat for the past few days for no apparent reason and I'm wondering if it's a side effect of the Wellbutrin.

In other news, happiness at the new house remained elusive as the power wasn't on and the mail had not yet arrived as of 6:30 p.m. yesterday evening. What precisely do I have to do here to appease the universe so things can move forward? Promise to dedicate my body to science? Sacrifice a goat? Learn how to do a cartwheel?

Please, please, please.

the ongoing move (and associated complications)

The original plan, which is almost hard to recollect at this point, as it's been deviated from many times since, was to move from my downtown house to a brand new one on James Island three weeks ago. I was ready. I was on vacation, and I cut my visit with my dad in Florida short by a day to allow extra packing time.

My information about wtf is going on all comes third hand through my roommate, whose parents own both homes. Actually, despite the fact that she is a 20-year-old college student, the $300k new home has been placed in her name and she is responsible for the mortgage payments, collecting rent, etc. Um, right. Fabulous idea. She doesn't even have a job. I'm sure she's up to the challenge.

The first issue was apparently the inspection, which took longer than expected because "the guy is an asshole." Okay, fine. I had additional time off at the end of the month.

We ended up moving most of my crap except for the essentials (TV, mattress, clothes, coffee pot, cat) because I was concerned I'd have to fly out with none of my things moved. I went ahead and switched my landline phone service to the new residence, believing with all of my naive heart that soon I would follow.

This time, we were waiting for SCE&G to turn on the power, which has always been simple in my experience. You call them, bam, you're frying bacon the next morning. I've inferred from this last debacle that hooking it up to a just-built home is tantamount to the coming of the Apocalypse. You'd think we'd asked the damn electrician to find us the Holy Grail and spit-shine it.

Anyway, that was last Tuesday, and we fully expected power by the end of the day. Nope. We even moved my mattress over there and had to bring it back! Their customer service department, who spoke to my roommate's parents, said something about three weeks. They argued them down to Monday (today). Do we have power there? I sincerely fucking doubt it. And I am on call with my job right now. I could be leaving for parts unknown at any given moment. And I'm still sleeping on a fucking mattress on the floor of the old nasty house.

My latest concern cropped up yesterday, when I was Armorall-ing my dash and decided to rifle through my glovebox. Whoops. Registration's expired. I paid my taxes on time, but I gave them the address to the new house, which I'm beginning to believe is ruled by some dark and hateful nameless power because it refuses to receive mail.
So I'm driving with expired tags too. Our mailbox is actually more like a PO Box on the side of the road with such dubious labelling that my roommate, when describing it to me, had to tell me it was next to one with a sticker of a starfish on it. What?!?

I realize she is young and inexperienced, but my roommate is now officially my landlord and she needs to get this fucking shit done. She and the other roommate, her boyfriend, don't get important mail because they have no real responsibilities beyond whatever dumb college courses they're taking. Do I sound bitchy? Yeah, part of that is they turned the AC off when they left for school this morning and it was 78 degrees in here when I woke up. Fuckers.

Plus, I wanted to watch Grey's Anatomy from last night, but I couldn't because my Tivo ran out of program information because there's now no phoneline here.

Stay tuned. My homicidal urges may actually come to fruition this time.