Pole Dancing In The Dark

Out to Lunch - a rant

Well, that time of year is upon us and with it comes the insanity of supposedly “celebrating the season.” The reason that I say supposedly is that lately it seems that we are now required to make the season all ready more perfect than it was in the past. We are supposed to go shopping, bake cookies, decorate the house, make dinners, hors d'oeuvres, wrap presents and in general be nice to everyone, no matter how much they annoy the crap out of you.

I don’t know if I have the time or the patience to put up with all that unnecessary crap this year. Actually, I am lacking the patience for anything. I have been downright cranky for the last few weeks. Don’t tell the hubs that I admitted to that, because I don’t want to face his knowing look and the “I could have told you that” smirk – I may be forced to smack him upside the noggin’. See? Cranky. Threatening the hubster with violence. Not good.

Most of the aggravation stems from the fact that I have been working my ass off (figuratively) at work lately because there are some people who just can’t code… making my job harder than it needs to be, especially when testing a new feature. But it isn’t just because the software patches are sometime wonky, it’s more the attitude driving the testing. It may take the software engineers three days to create a patch – but I have to get all the testing done RIGHT NOW!!!

Also, I am so very tired of the same old same old arguments that continually seem to get recycled. I am speaking of the political as well as the personal inter-family ones. For example, my mother – staunch democrat (and I love her anyway) and I were out last night Christmas shopping. She starts out with whole “When Clinton lied, no one died” meme – which I kind of just ignored. I don’t have the patience to broach the whole “Bush didn’t lie and there were a whole bunch o’ dems that believed that Saddam had WMD’s before Bush was even in office the first term and Clinton bombed the hell out of a baby aspirin factory in Baghdad because he believed there was manufacturing of Chemical weapons and when are you going to stop repeating everything you hear at school?” (Yeah, she’s a VP at a Catholic School – and she taught school for a helluva long time as well. It’s where I learned the beauty of a really long run on sentence.) Basically it just boils down to, “STFU.” But I would never say that to my mother. She could probably still wrassel me down long enough to shove a bar of soap in my pie whole – and I would have it coming.

But on the recycled familial debates – it boils down to my brother. I love my brother because he is… my brother and I guess I have to. But as a person, I don’t like him at all. He’s one of those jerk offs that thinks it’s funny to whack some poor unsuspecting slob (which is usually me) upside the head, or on the back, or the ass, or the calf, or in the stomach and then act all dejected when the former unsuspecting slob tries to either 1. retaliate or 2. give him a much deserved verbal lashing about how unfunny that shit is. If it isn’t physical, he also likes to verbally berate people and put them down. No one used to believe me when I told them about this behavior. Fortunately for me, and unfortunately for my favorite cousin (and traveling partner) he decided to unload on her this year while down in South Carolina. The bitch of it is that my mother still can’t seem ot wrap her brain around why I don’t like him, and why I don’t want to spend any time with him while he is home. (He lives in California – thankfully.) Did I mention he also lies and my mother buys completely into it? So, he always makes me out to be the bad guy, but I don’t buy into his games, nor do I defend myself anymore. It’s not worth it. But it does make the season more of a hassle then it needs to be.

The other thing that has been aggravating is the freaking Hollyweird jet set whining about how they are being shunned for speaking out their political views. Holy shit, Tim Robbins alone has been in 10 movies since 2003. Sean “wife beater” Penn has been in seven, and poor Johnny Depp – I’m sure he is crying all the way to the bank with his 14 movies. Yeah, right. You all are suffering tons, I can tell. Now, STFU all of you. I am so sick of listening to you elitist snobs prattling on about how spurned you feel.

Same with all those freak show asshats that think a Christmas tree in the class room is religious oppression. It’s a tree. Get over it. I actually read an article about how there was once school that put up a “Holiday tree” with little paper mittens and sleds and the like with names and wish lists of those who are less fortunate. The purpose was to let children take one of them (if they wanted to) and get a gift for the poor soul that probably wouldn’t get anything other than that gift. (We do the same thing here at work.) A parent complained that it was offensive. Teaching a child the lessons of charity is offensive? Screw you, you moonbat. None the less, the teacher was forced to take the tree down.

Congratulations to the Iraqis –taking the power to vote, and the time, and forcing the polling places to stay open longer to accommodate your desires. It’s awe inspiring and a little sad that more of our own citizens don’t take the time and responsibility to vote.

Anyway, that’s about all the time I have for the rantin’. Chances are that I won’t have too much time in the coming days to update…

So, just in case I don’t get the chance:

Happy Hanukah, Merry Yule, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year. My best wishes to everyone and their families during the holiday season., no matter which holiday they celebrate.

Posted by Ethne at December 15, 2005 04:26 PM | TrackBack