my very first speeding ticket

81 in a 65, for opening up the taps when i was getting on to 495 this morning. good thing he caught me before i finished winding out 4th gear.

reduced to a 75, but i'm still going to fight it.

speaking of holiday cheer

the beautiful thing about southwest's boarding group scheme is that it shows which people, plain as day, are immoral dirtbags looking to dick everyone else over. thankfully there are very few of these, so you know that most of the other people on the plane got your back. although if your life depended on it, they might not give you their second bag of peanuts. who can say.

i anticipated an easy flight home last night, despite my BWI layover. i mean, everyone is fat and hungover from xmas, everyone is broke but still got presents. nobody is in a rush to get home to go back to work (except me, of course). it should be pretty chill.

i got to the airport early amid mass hysteria about 'new search protocols' and 'unusually high volume' (the only thing that causes 'unusually high volume,' in my experience, is a combo of greasy food and 5 or more beers). so i was first in line in the A boarding group; great. 2 hours tick by.

the other flight lands, people deplane. a middle-aged muslim woman in a head scarf with her poor subservient daughter in tow was squaking in line C, exclaiming that she had an A boarding pass. several helpful samaritans pointed out that she was in the wrong line and had best go over to the end of our line. she went off about how long she waited and how she was not going to get behind other people, despite her error. as we were leaving raleigh and half of the patrons were black women, i did not think her tactics were going to be successful, since they all know what it's like to have to go to the back of the bus.

i waited for her to approach me and ask if she could get in line ahead of me, like all the devious old bags at the post office who remark upon the "complicated appearance" of my mail and wouldn't i like to let an old lady just go ahead and buy some stamps. and of course i would, because i'm a considerate young person. but no; she did the unthinkable. she retracted the aisle tape herself (egads! but no alarms went off) and made to jump all 3 lines.

disinterested and obedient drone that i am, i watched to see how it would all unfold. the airport dude came over and removed the aisle tape from my line and i approached the boarding kiosk. burka lady tried to match my stride with her waddle, but her miniscule stature and bound feet (wait, wrong cultural cliche) were no match for my strident aryan-ness. i pushed my boarding pass past hers amid her garbled protests. the dude was confused and asked what was going on. i said the lady had made a mistake in her boarding group but somehow expected to cut the entire line without asking, which triggered her pent-up string of defensive slurs hissed at me in a contemptuous voice. i attempted to reason with her in the "fair's fair" language of our glourious nation, but she said "i don't want to talk to you anymore" and spat a hateful string of urdu curses likely defaming my mother's goat and its progeny.

by this time the dude at the kiosk had a tentative grip on my boarding pass, so i spun on my heel and headed toward the plane, first to board and rightfully so. in response to burka lady's continued curses at my back, just for good measure i threw over my shoulder "yeah? well if you don't like how it works here, go back to your own country." i couldn't hear her response among the unmistakably ethnic "mmm-hmmms" and "damn rights" emanating from the crowd at the gate.

'tis the season.

happy holidays, bitches!

so i've decided to say happy holidays this year, despite arguments with my brother and dad about it. i feel like 'happy holidays' encompasses both xmas and new year's. i also feel like since jews are cool, i might want to respect their holidays too, since not everybody believes in jesus.

speaking of jesus, they have shirts at the local dollar store along the lines of "property of jesus, XXL" with a jesus fish around the "XXL." which is pretty appropriate cause i think the man done made some extra pork loaves for the people down here - XXL is right.

but in reality, my PC-pro-ness about 'happy holidays' stems as much from my desire to piss off christian fanatics as it does from my eagerness to encompass all strange misogynistic belief celebrations. anyone who thinks 'happy holidays' isn't good enough because it doesn't explicitly honor their commercialized, empty excuse to boost consumerism which uses a pagan symbol as a smokescreen to worship baby jesus, well - suck on my matzo balls. (and i found out i just might be 1/16 jewish - i think that was enough to skip the "ovens only" line - so perhaps i shall incorporate this clever comeback into my regular repertoire).

christmas may be a "tradition" of the US, as much as a country as young as we can have traditions. i'd say accepting immigrants is another thing we do a lot of, so maybe our festive greetings should make them feel a little more welcome - i mean if they can flood the job market and i can pay for their medical coverage, i think we can allow them to celebrate their own winter holidays. yeesh.

and what it really comes down to is, i already got my MP3 player from mom and pops so i don't feel like arguing. happy holidays bitches!!!

addendum

and i also want this so i can do more of this:

official wishlist

so here's what i would give myself for xmas, if i had the means to do so. this list is really for my family, since they don't always know what i need or want cause i'm kind of a weirdo. and now that i have a 4-channel kitchen timer, a headlamp for working under my car, and a clear atomic-synched clock, i don't know how they could possibly come up with anything more brilliant than those gifts (which were so awesome).

teeny mp3 player for the gym [~$125]

sorely needed shoes in paprika or plum, size 11 [~$65]

handbag for work in black [~$50]

cute sweater in white/pink, XL [~$50]

industrious activities

so i'm in the process of making a very specific wish list of my own to post here. so that anyone who's going to get me a present (and i only expect my family to do so, so relax already, just buy me a beer if you like me) will buy me something i want or give up and hand me cash. cause there's a crapload of things i want sorely, but will never buy for myself cause i'm on a budget now and am an anal, impecunious wench who enjoys denying herself unnecessary material goods to atone for sins in a past life.
so don't buy me anything yet till i make that list.

while kz was gone on business for 4 long boring days full of cold toes and countless imagined burglary attempts during the wee hours, i summoned my long-dormant crafty side and surprised him with a real xmas tree and decorations. i'm extremely pleased with myself; pix to follow:

so here's the awesome tree

some snowflakes i made and pasted on the patio door

grocery apocalypse

waited in line for over 20 min for a waddling woman and her unfortuantely fat, carrot-headed schoolgirl daughter to buy 8 sets of 3 rolls of scott toilet paper for $1.20 savings. maybe they need the money to eat? and then she argued over the specified flavor of marie's salad dressing she was attempting to purchase with a coupon for a different flavor. i was about to offer to give her the damn dollar if she would just shut her whiskery, slobbering maw and waddle out to her minivan and shun herself from my existence. but the new tv's they have at shaw's were so strident and distracting, i marely sighed like every other slow-line patron fixture.

as i surveyed my conveyor belt of veggies, i noticed the very large cucumber i was about to purchase. i think maybe i had a rough day because my mind wandered and i daydreamed of, what if this cucumber was really a huge bomb, like full of c4? and when that woman bends over to pick up the penny she's dropped 3 times, i rammed it up her bum and she went *kaboom* and showered the store with bits and pieces of miserly meat, but i was protected from the spray by the big loud tv set? hmmmm.

but no, she just wasted 10 more minutes of my life and i limped back with my aching knees and shoulder to my car, whose brakes are dragging again, to schlep my groceries up to my messy house, to lie around and try to relax and get a good night's sleep while tossing and turning thinking about my application deadlines. i bet i would have felt a lot better if i had just blown the bitch up.