Xmas rant: My ears are bleeding

(Reposted from my other blog. Minus the f-bombs)

I’m almost to the point of stabbing myself in the eardrums at work, thanks to the all-day, everyday Xmas music that my boss insists we have playing for the entire month of December. I truly despise Xmas music partly because it’s the same 43 songs played in mind-numbing repetition. What’s even worse is hearing the different versions of same song at least 5 times an hour…Jessica Simpson, if I have to listen to your warbly, fingernails-on-a-chalkboard rendition of “I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” one more time, I will be grabbing you by your shitty synthetic blonde hair extensions and strangling you with them until your eyeballs pop out of your vacant head.

And speaking of that song, what kind of Xmas message is it sending to children? Oooo…I saw mommy whoring herself out for presents with a fat old man with a cookie addiction. Yes Virginia…cheating on daddy is the REAL reason for the season. And what the hell is with these women singers who lament that all they want for Xmas is a man? Pull up your big-girl panties and revel in your independence, you needy bitch…you’re making Gloria Steinam cry.

Also:

Dogs barking Jingle Bells. Where the hell is the SPCA when you need them?

Alvin and the Chipmunks squeaking whatever  that song is that you can’t understand because all you can here is glorified vermin-squeak. Someone call an exterminator already

Boney M. Need to mainline the rum punch and smoke a mountain of the ganga to tune this shit out

At this point I’m so desperate, I’d even listen to that bullshit elevator music The Coffeehouse station plays

Dec 27^th cannot get here fast enough

 

Reframing thanks to The Game

As a certified reading junkie, my mission in life is to provide myself with a continuous stream of reading material. I’m always on the lookout for the next book I need to inhale (“next” being somewhat figurative because if the stack of books in my reading queue number less than six,I make an emergency trip to the second-hand bookstore) because god forbid I even come close to running out of literary crack. Any time I discover a new-to-me authour I get slightly obsessive about having to read anything they ever wrote. Which is how I came to read “The Game” by Neil Strauss and am now questioning every single thing any man has ever said to me as a come-on in the last 25 years.

First, a little about Neil…he’s the guy who wrote the definitive Motley Crue memoir “The Dirt” (and hell yes, they were the dirtiest, nastiest musical degenerates who ever lived and how any of them are still alive is beyond me…still LOVE them though) and also wrote “Emergency” which took my already rampant paranoia about surviving a natural disaster/societal breakdown/zombie apocalypse to an entirely new level. On the other hand, I now know how to evade security cameras, turn a credit card into a knife and why terrorism works (the short answer, according to the book: “Saying “Please get off my lawn” is a much less effective deterrent than, for example, aiming a shotgun at a trespasser and saying, “Get off my lawn or I’ll blow your fucking brains out”. And then doing it. No one will set a toe on your lawn again”…scary as hell, but true). 

“The Game” is about pick-up artists. And not just the douchey pseudo-player that sidles up to you in a bar and starts spewing a cheesy line that has females rolling their eyes before he’s even ended his first sentence…I’m talking about a whole society of guys that have elevated picking up women to a successful art form. They use illusion, hypnosis, social proof, indicators, marketing ploys and every psychological trick known to mankind…they literally have seduction down to a science. They share their knowledge on forums and in workshops. They have their own language (eg anti-slut defense, sarging, peacock, newbie mission, phase-shift). These guys are a community of Horndog-Jedi and they are gaming the shit out of unsuspecting women everywhere. The whole thing is utterly fascinating and a little horrifying all at once.

The funny part? That men can and will form an entire community devoted to studying every angle, every trick, every social, analytical and psychological indicator/response, every scrap of information that will help them succeed in getting in a woman’s pants. And women? Don’t have to do ANY of this shit. No games required. Fundamental proof that the opposite sex? Really is opposite.

And thanks to this book? I will never quite look at a come-on quite the same way again. And my shit test? Just got WAY more difficult.

Legolanche on aisle 14

Last night my son wanted to do a bit of Xmas shopping so we popped over to the mall, which I would normally avoid, especially this time of year. The mall we have in town was at one time possibly the shittiest mall in history. That title is rightfully reserved for the mall in Campbell River...that place is like the Ghost of Malls Past...empty as a tomb, dark, depressing and the odd shopper you encounter looks like they stumbled there by accident and are frantically looking for the exit so they can escape before they're infected by Sad Mall cooties. Our local mall has improved with the edition of several new stores but it still has a long ways to go before anyone would rather shop there than make the 1 hour drive to Nanaimo for franchise/chain-store manna (Oh Chapters, I heart you and your fine and massive selection of reading material so much it's probably illegal).

The biggest thing holding our mall back from jumping into "hey this place isn't so bad" territory? Is Zellers. A big box retailer that specializes in The Trifecta of Retail Suckage... shitty customer service, crap quality and  looking like the aftermath of a tornado.

I have yet to enter Zellers thinking "oh look how clean and tidy it is!". Clothes thrown over racks, the bedding department looking as messy as a teenager's bedroom, and walking through the toy department is taking your life into your hands while you wait for the inevitable avalanche of teetering stack of lego boxes to bury you alive. That is when they actually have any lego. Also, the seasonal department looks like Santa just projectile vomited  Xmas all over the aisles in random clumps. Not pleasing to the eye at ALL

I realize Zellers is a big box store and quantity rules over quality but is it necessary to stock stuff that even a homeless person would turn their nose up at? Even the stuff that is made in Canada looks like it came via a Korean sweatshop. Cheap doesn't need to equal fugly ALL the time.

And please send your employees to customer service boot camp like yesterday. There is never anyone in the individual departments to, oh I don't know...provide service and clean up all the clothes throw all over the place? Where the hell are these people anyway? Having dumpster races out back? Running their resumes over to Walmart?? And don't even get me started on the cashiers...does this place purposely hire the most surly, grouchy people on the planet or do they just become that way after working is Zellers Hell (Hellers?? HA!) after a couple weeks. The one time I encountered a non-bitchy person  working the checkout and judging by her demeanor, her meds were working overtime because NO ONE is that freaking happy without chemical intervention, ever. I think she scared me more than the surly employees ever do.

Thankfully, Target has purchased Zellers and ours will be changed over sometime next year and I can only imagine any changes they make will be for the better. Because it seriously cannot get any worse

Who the hell are you and what have you done with my son????

So the other night I was talking to my parents on the phone and my dad felt the need to inform me that my son is not the same happy child he was 2 years ago. Once the crushing wave of guilt and the inevitable tears passed, accompanied by the "I am a horrible parent who is somehow making my sweet child miserable" train of thought, reality kicked in. My son is not sad so much as he is a hormonal preteen. And since he's 12, we're only on the cusp of all the sullen and the moody, with MUCH more to come.

Already we are venturing into that scary and previously uncharted territory known as The Adolescent  Years, where hormones, mood swings and rank body odor reign supreme. As a female who was an only child, my experience with boys his age are limited to...well...him. I  was so thrilled when he was born, not just because I had a son, but more because he wasn't a girl who was destined to become a bitchy, snarky teenaged girl at some point. I remember what I was like and there was no way in hell I wanted to go through all the horrible teenagery girlie shit again, especially not from the parental end of it. Apparently I assumed my son would get to about age 10 and suddenly freeze in all his cool, young boy glory, skipping his teens altogether and then thaw out somewhere around 24 into a responsible and well-mannered adult...it must have been the sleep deprivation or denial that my lovely boy would suddenly turn into this pre-man species who would spend hours on end in his room on his laptop, eat a family-sized box of Cheerios in 2 days and have feet that emitted a stink that could peel paint off the walls.

Don't get me wrong...I love every stinky, grouchy, Cheerio-inhaling inch of my son. But no one warned me about this stage. Except for the part about eating every food source that was not nailed down...not only was I warned, I was informed my grocery bill would steadily climb until he moved out. And even then he'd still eat me out of house and home when he and his dirty laundry came home to visit. Still, I'll take the quietly grumpy, eye-ball rolling, "mooooommmm....you already saaaaaiiiid that...I KNOOOOOWWWWW" moaning over the screamy drama-queen antics I used to pull any day of the week.

Besides, one day he will give me grandchildren. And payback (especially in the form of a teenaged daddy's girl) can be quite the hormonal bitch

This ain't my first blog rodeo (blogdeo???)

As I stated in my last post, I am currently the proud owner/writer of 3 blogs. And since I am inherently lazy, I'm really not sure how I plan to keep up with 3 blogs, especially since I have issues maintaining 1 blog at the best of times. But I'm seeing a need for 3 because each one is totally different from the other.

My first blog is on a much smaller blogging platform and the blogging part is mostly an afterthought on that particular site. I've blogged there for about 2 and a half years and what I love about it is 1) the other bloggers and 2) I can get away with blogging about highly inappropriate and often raunchy subject matter that most other sites would be calling out the censor police for. The blogging community there is hella fun for the most part, tight-knit and unique from any other blogsite that I've seen. Also I can say the word "fuck" in it's many forms there all the time and no one complains or gets offended. My blog there is one of the most active, but the audience is more site-specific...and I'd like to start writing for a broader audience. There are lots of things I'd like to write about there, but I tend to keep parts of my everyday personal life private, which make me feel somewhat restricted...hence starting this blog. And no, I'm not naming that site...it shall remain my secret, undercover blog, just because being a mysterious bitch is fun for me and annoying for you. Which is in turn fun for me. So everybody wins. Especially me.

My second blog is not really a blog as much as it is a repository for amusing-to-me pics. A couple years ago I was looking for a pic to accompany a post for blog #1 and found the treasure trove that is Google Images and immediately developed an addiction for weird and often horrifying pics that  make you fall over laughing and/or require liberal doses of eyeball bleach after viewing. For the longest time I filled my hard drive with folder upon folder of the stupidest shit I could find (babies shooting lasers out of their eyes? Bread that looks like a mummified human head?? Vagina shaped couches??? Butthurt report forms???? Oh fair google, where have you BEEN all my life???) until I discovered tumblr, which is messed up pic manna. I joined basically to reblog the most fucked-up photos I could find so all the best ones sit in my blog archive instead of taking up so much space on my laptop and thus saving myself the added paranoia of my son going on my laptop and accidentally clicking on my WTF folder and finding a goatse pic, which would result in years of therapy for both of us. So blog #2 isn't really a blog as a much as a giant pic folder. Also, with few exceptions, everyone on tumblr seems to be either college student, a hipster or a combination of the two and since I am a 40 year old who doesn't have 4 term papers due next week and I hate coffee, cannot intelligently discuss String Theory and am not even sure what the hell emo is (an angry Sesame street character with a pierced lip who cuts their muppety arm and writes angsty poetry from the depths of a garbage can next to Mr Hooper's store would be my guess), I don't really find that site a good fit for me.

So what am I doing here? Good question. I think I'd like to broaden my writing horizons a bit and try out my voice in a broader forum. I still plan to write about whatever pops into my head at any given moment (because the voices in my head are like a dictatorship, those bossy bastards) just maybe in a different way. Perhaps minus the plethora of F-bombs and cakes that look like penises.

Right...who am I trying to kid??

Let's get the part about the syrup out of the way, shall we?

I should point out that despite the name, this is not a blog about maple syrup (my apologies to any maple syrup fetishists out there...you know who you are, you sticky perverts). I got to the point in the blog set-up that required naming this blog and my mind went blank. The name of one's blog is supposed to give the reader an idea of what your blog is about...and since this blog is going to me about...uhhh....stuff I'm not entirely sure at this point, outside of it likely ending up whatever my brain farts out at a given time (such as ranting about shit that pisses me off, laments about my son racing towards his teen years, bacon, horrifying things I find on the internet and whatever else the voices insist I write about). But I wasn't too keen on calling it "Stacey's World of Schizophrenic Shit"....content-wise, that could be an apt description but since I'm not schizophrenic (despite the voices), it's not all that accurate. Then I though I could use an old name from one of my other blogs, which I thought was completely hilarious and totally inappropriate (and really not at ALL safe for work) because it had to do with prehensile appendages, but that would definitely have attracted some kind of weird fetish crowd plus I'm pretty sure it violates the TOS. So scratch that.

Then I was getting desperate and annoyed because holy shit, it's a BLOG NAME, not the be-all and end-all defining moment in my life, so just PICK one already. And all I could come up with was Maple Syrup Land. And I don't even like maple syrup that much (unless it's maple syrup-flavoured bacon. And that's more to do with the bacony goodness than the mapley goodness). But I am Canadian and maple syrup is like the official sugar high of Canada. Also I just blogged about maple syrup on my other blog (yes I have 2 blogs. Ok, 3 blogs now. Shut up. I talk a LOT). And I just realized that blogging about maple syrup there and here is making it seem like I'm obsessed with maple syrup. Which I'm really not. However I do believe if we ever get in a war with America one of our best offensive tactics could be putting an embargo on all maple sugar products which would lead to rioting and Americans crying into their dry pancakes...bow down, syrup bitches...your mapley masters demand you supplicate before us (ok, that whole last bit was lifted from my other post...but the the part about supplicating syrup bitches was too good not to reprint)

See what I mean about brain farts? Yeah.

Anyway, Maple Syrup Land it is. I have a feeling I will regret this decision if I start getting emails from gentlemen with helpful suggestions, directions and offers to imbibing syrup of various body parts and orifices. And for the sake of prevention, all answers to those queries would be nofuckingway