Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Little Stuff Pissing Me Off Today

Grrrrr! Anne is in a bad mood. It's a Loki hangover. He was here for the weekend, and then He departed. It's kind of like crashing after a sugar high.

In honor of this bad mood, I will now list the pesky items that are ticking me off today.

1. I now have to blog professionally. Thank goodness I was able to set up a different account. Still it's like being paid to taste salt water taffy, which means you have to try all the flavors you don't like.

2. My refrigerator broke down. Have you ever noticed that this always happens in the summertime?

3. Mel Gibson meltdown. Prior to "The Passion of the Christ," I rather liked Mel Gibson. He's about my age, and he used to be good-looking. Now he's a washed-out, scary raving lunatic who ought to be watched closely. I wonder what the fundies think of their altar boy now?

4. George Steinbrenner dies. First we must consider what they are listing as cause of death. Heart attack. If that guy had a heart, he never showed it -- just ask the people who worked most closely with him. I am mourning his death, though, because in this household he was the Number One Baseball Executive We Loved to Hate. The mere mention of his name would cause even Decibel the Parrot to hiss. I would nominate Mel Gibson to replace George as household hate-ee, but Mel doesn't own the @$$%^$%@#!! Yankees.

5. I saw someone run over a chipmunk yesterday. Worse than that, I was driving to my daily teacher workshop at the time! I couldn't even stop and consign the sweet little thing to the Green Man. This put me in a blue funk, I assure you.

6. Governor Fat Ass. Ask and ye shall receive! We've got a Republican governor in this state now, and he's acting just like every other Republican since poor Abe Lincoln got shot. He's balancing New Jersey's budget on the backs of the poor and middle class while allowing the state's wealthiest few to go right on being under-taxed and spoiled rotten. Cut your calories, not our salaries, asshole! (If you've never seen this sorry excuse for a human, his name is Chris Christie. I refuse to place his photo on my blog.)

7. The end to New Jersey's traffic circles. It's bad enough that we are losing the famed 1920s-era traffic circles that couldn't exactly handle today's suburban crush. But as the circles get re-made, the "upgrades," with their orange barrels and cones, have made travel far slower. I will sorely miss the take-no-prisoners-only-the-strong-survive mayhem of the circles. Everyone needs a little assertiveness training. Where will we get it now?

8. My readership is down. Booo hooooo! According to my stat counter, my readership has tumbled from three to two. What have I done? (I guess the better question is, "What haven't I done?")

9. Fridays with Thurber. Do you watch "Countdown with Keith?" Have you seen his Friday exercise in vanity, in which he sits in a chair reading James Thurber? James Thurber? Couldn't he had at least picked an interesting author? I don't want to hear about James Thurber's fourth grade class! I want to hear H. L. Mencken's rants against the popular preachers of his day!

10. Supreme Court nominees. You know, as long as Obama is getting accused of being a socialist, why doesn't he act like one? If I stood in his shoes, I would have picked the most rabid liberal activist judge in the nation and stuck him/her on the Supreme Court. How come the conservatives get justices who go to conservative parties and write letters of thanks to their far-right Christian base, while we get blank slates who may or may not change the face of the Supreme Court of the United Corporations?


Mr. Johnson just handed me my final, and perhaps most brutal, piss-off. It's an invitation to my 30-year college reunion next spring. Can I have been out of college for 30 years? I am totally ripening for the buzzards.

So, to my two faithful readers, have a nice day. What do you want me to blog about ... politics or religion ... or my sister? Or Rhodesian Ridgebacks? Kept women? Rat Finks? Tea Party morons? My garden? My cats? Decibel the Parrot? My sordid past as a pole dancer? Just asking.

20 comments:

Maebius said...

My rant is that my own blog does not seme to track RSS feedreader types either, so it looks like there are two visitors, while I have gotten emails off-blog from at least five different people recently wondering something or other.

Can we have a post of the sorted pole-dancing Ridgebacks, and their RatFink riders in your garden? ;P

Erik said...

I know for a fact that Wordpress doesn't track RSS feeds, at least not for blogs hosted on their site: my dashboard shows three subscribers, but when I look at my own feed in Google Reader I see many more than that (a number that I expect will soon drop sharply now that I'm no longer writing)... and that's only on one feedreader.

I have no clue how many people are/were actually subscribed to me, but I see you cited often enough by other bloggers that I guarantee you have more than three readers!

Lavanah said...

I will rant right along with you on most of your subjects (and please don't get me started on Gov. Porkbelly) except 2. I will not mourn the traffic circles once the "improvements" are done. And, Anne, go to your 30th high school reunion-I went to mine this past fall (without my beloved Fr. SL) and had a graet time. Once every 30 years or so is the right schedule for seeing those people who remember us as teenagers!

Kathy said...

Here in Wisconsin it's illegal to brake for animals (except deer) if it will cause an accident. But I still brake for chipmunks and squirrels or avoid them if I can't. Unless they change direction abruptly which you can't predict. So far I've only hit one cat who was sunning himself in the middle of a country highway on a curve with no way to go off the road to avoid him. And a semi tailgating my ass. I cried all the way to Fond du Lac.

What really got to me a few years ago was seeing that someone had deliberately gone off the road to kill some goslings on the side of the road near the marsh.

And I'm totally with you on Obama's Supremes choice. Especially in light of the gay marriage cases that will inevitably be heading their way. It's an important issue for me as my son would like to marry his beloved.

Laura said...

I want you to blog about anything you want. I love your blog...you always make me smile.
hope your day gets better
blessings
~*~

Ali said...

Regarding blog readership, I'm not sure how you keep track of your readers, but I know that FeedBurner (what I use) has been having major problems recently, so that every other day your readership looks like it's dropped by half. It's annoying, mostly because it messes up the automatic average that it generates per month.

Also, Jeff says his readership for Druid Journal is down, too, and he read somewhere recently that the "era of the blog" may be coming to an end, replaced by social network sites like Facebook. Which means even if you don't have "subscribed readers" that are easily tracked, your stuff might be out there circulating on FB without you even knowing about it! (That's a personal peeve of mine, since as much as folks complain about privacy issues, when it comes to posting other people's work - for instance, mine - I sure as hell would like to know about it!)

Victoria said...

From these comments alone you have more than two readers. Does Blogspot not register those who suscribe to you through GoogleReader? Because that's the one I use.

And you're blog seems great just the way it is. I've only been reading for a litte while, but already I'm interested.

Thalia said...

'The era of the blog' may be coming to an end?

They don't make eras like they used to, do they?

I kind of doubt it, unless everyone now has squirrel brains and Twitter it only as much as their attention spans can handle.

Which is a distinct possibility, come to think of it. Crap.

Write what you like, Anne.

Hecate said...

I'll always read you. When you going to BS?

Unknown said...

unless everyone now has squirrel brains and Twitter it only as much as their attention spans can handle.

Unfortunately, this does seem to be the case. It's Internet for people who don't like to read.

I love blogs and loathe 140 character updates. I am now a dinosaur in my 30's. SIGH.

Please keep blogging, I need something to actually read.

yellowdoggranny said...

we're all here and we still love you.
ranting and all..which is sorta the most fun yet.
my rant is why isn't H.Allan Smith more popular with readers..I know he's been dead since 76 or 77 but he was one of the funniest humorist ever and wrote a great friend of h.l.
mencken...was considered by many to be a bad influence on him.
I'm still reading..but I'm not commenting as much..

Intense Guy said...

I know I'd like to read more about the Peace Eagles...

:)

Sometimes I'm afraid to comment - when no one else is - because I wonder if I misread something and my comment is just going to make me sound even dumber than I am.

Moonwolf said...

I read you through Google Reader, too! My stats don't seem to track accurately either -- makes me wonder how helpful they really are!

sott'Eos said...

I read your blog every weekday morning, and not through some other service (does it make me a Luddite that I point my browser directly at your blog?)

Nice try with the "pole dancer" bit, but I fell for that once. My wife said that she did pole dancing when she was younger. Little did I know that half of her family is Polish, and "pole dancing" is just polka!

Don't worry about the chipmunk; the Green Man knows his own.

I hope they don't mess-up your traffic circles too badly. After driving in Europe, I *love* traffic circles, and can't come to a stop at an empty 4-way stop (ubiquitous in the South) without cursing our stupidity.

Kathryn said...

Just keep blogging please.

Well, my refrigerator went - cost $250 to fix it. sigh. But, that was cheaper than a new one.

52% of MA voters fell for Scott Brown and his national security ads. Now there are ads saying how disappointed people who voted for him are because of the way he is voting on the environment. What did they expected from a conservative republican?

Unfortunately, not all democrats in the Senate are as liberal as the President. So, he has to pick someone that all the democrats will vote for. My best guess is that she has to be more liberal than Scalia, Allito and company. I'll take what I can get at this point.

Anonymous said...

Not only that, Harvey Pekar died too. :( I heard it once on CNN and then it was wall-to-wall Steinbrenner for the rest of the day. RC

Pom said...

You can't tell me that 15 people just happened to stop by today which means that your counter is off.

Write about anything you'd like - I'm just here for my near daily smile.

Signed,
Kept Woman

Raven~ said...

Yep, I too read you through Google reader, and when I comment, I sometimes do so in FaceBook

I know a few bloggers are migrating to FaceBook, setting up a feed that imports their blog posts into their FB wall -- because that's the first place many of their respective readers check.

Word verification: derma

Write about the Sensuous :-)

The Traveler said...

I can't seem to find a counter that works on mine.
Write about whatever takes your fancy, you always seem to come up with subjects that surprise me.

kimc said...

Granny -- I loved H. Allen Smith! didn't know anyone else remembered him.