Lipstick on a fish

And the insult parade marches on.
So maybe he insulted her, and maybe he didn't. Maybe he was using metaphor to describe economic policy, and maybe he was throwing in an extra punch for good measure. It seems very possible to me that Obama was in no way attempting to insult Palin when he talked about "lipstick on a pig" and an "old fish." Are metaphors no longer safe? +1 point to Obama.
But the McCain camp saw an insult in the statement, and that is their prerogative. After all, half of the campaign seems to be made up of taking every opportunity to insult the other side. Defending against insults, both real and imaginary, is an every-day part of this process. (and I'm not going to pass judgment on whether this is real or imaginary).
What is worrisome to me, is the big hullabaloo Obama is making over having been "taken out of context." Doesn't he know that a major part of politics is having your statements taken out of context? Goodness, that's half the job description of being president! And all throughout this campaign, both sides have flung the insults equally. He is just as guilty as taking things out of context as anyone else. It seems to me that he is playing the victim card a little bit, and that does not impress me as appropriate presidential behavior. If he is going to be president, he needs to lose the need to turn around and defend himself against every accusation and insult. -1 point to Obama.

Am I missing something here?

Facebook, that wonderful engine of networking, has supplied me with my latest reason to be irritated.
Via the newsfeed, I discovered a party that several of my friends who attend another school are going to. The party is called, and I quote, "September 11th two thousand fun."
Tagline: We will never forget.....unless we get really wasted!!!!
The description is as follows (poor grammar faithfully reproduced): Yes we are fo real. Your probably asking yourself this cannot be legit. But it's totally cool cause Tom is half Indian and suffers from ethnic cleansing daily, and Andrew is from New York City and his dad worked in the World Trade Center. No but seriously we just want to get wasted on a Thursday night and it happens to land on 9/11.

WELL!!!!!!! They wanted to play beer pong and it so happened to be 9/11, so why not incorporate it?h!?!?! What IS the world coming to? It would be one thing if these kids were trying to be offensive. That would be annoying enough, but at least the offense would be intended. These kids probably think they're being amusing....maybe they even feel that in their own way they are honoring the day.

But the classlessness, the general crudity of it all astounds me. It is not amusing, it is not respectful. If you decide to drink on 9/11, kindly leave the tragedy out of it. Maybe some people will find you crass, but that's their issue and not yours. But tying the day to your reason to drink, justifying it with jokes about ethnicity........

I don't think I need to say any more for my utter disgust to be conveyed.

Jobless in La Jolla

My options are exhausted. I tried to transfer down to two separate San Diego CPKs, none of which could use me. One required a schedule I don't have and the other wasn't hiring. My back up plan was Islands, but they're not hiring, and even if they were, they'll only hire hosts.
Brilliant.
I suppose that now I start calling every other restaurant in the area.....but I doubt anyone is hiring in September.
I need to make a server's salary. I can't live on anything less.
This is disastrous.
I know I'll end up stuck in an office on campus somewhere making $9.50 an hour to make copies all day.

I need a solution.

And here's what I don't understand....

After Sarah Palin's speech last night at the Republican convention, Obama's camp said her speech was "written by George Bush’s speechwriter and sounds exactly like the same divisive, partisan attacks we’ve heard from George Bush for the last eight years."
I have heard many say in response to this that Bush purposefully avoids being divisive, but let's ignore that for the moment.
Partisan attacks? Now I haven't been paying the closest of attention, but it seems like I do hear an awful lot from Obama that I would classify as "partisan attacks." Half of what he says seems to be personal and political attacks on Bush and his positions, and those who agree with him.
Which is fine. It's part of the campaign process, I understand that.
But somehow it leaves a bad taste in my mouth to hear one side decry and action of the other side, that they themselves are guilty of.
It's a dirty game, my friends.

To hit and run

Today I was the victim of what could be classified as a hit and run. There was more run than hit, and more hit than damage, but the fact remains that I have experienced just how rude and thoughtless people can be.
Some parking lots have one-way lanes. I was in one such lane, when a black jeep came tearing around the corner and into my lane...the wrong way. I saw him before he turned, saw him hesitate as if he wasn't decided if he should go the wrong way down an occupied aisle, and then saw him go ahead with it anyway. There was definitely not room enough for him in this aisle. Not only is he now coming at me, he's coming at me fast. As I'm opening my mouth to exclaim in his general direction (fruitlessly, as my window was rolled up) he flies by me, clipping my side mirror in the process. Does he stop, or even slow down? Of course not. He didn't even look my way as he drove by me.....a very strange feeling, as if my car had suddenly become invisible.
My ever-quick boyfriend got his license plate number and we called it in.....not that there was much that the cops could do. But at least they were keeping an eye out for a jerk driver in a black jeep.
The mirror only has a tiny scratch on it, and isn't really a big deal. But it makes me so angry to think that people are that inconsiderate. So the lesson for today is, you share this world with quite a few other people. Try not to act like you're the only one who matters.
Please.

I'm surrounded by weddings

It seems these days that I am surrounded by weddings, engagements and marriage. A friend just a few years older than me got married two days ago. Another friend my age is getting married in September. My boyfriend's best friend-also my age-is married with a baby. A casual friend from a few years ago-younger than me-is engaged. A friend's sister-younger than me-is engaged. My ex- boyfriend AND his younger brother are engaged, as well as the younger brother's ex-girlfriend, who also happens to be my friend. Half these people are younger than me. Some of these matches I don't approve of, some I do, some I am skeptical of, but the fact remains that I am SURROUNDED by this marriage thing.

Many of these people I don't believe are ready for the commitment they are about to make. We're all so young. I'm more ready for marriage than some of these people. Yet they are the ones getting married, and I'm the one in love with the one man I will never be able to marry.

My envy at all these people and their happiness knows no bounds. They don't know how lucky they are to have fallen for the "right" person, whatever that means.

What defines if someone is right for you?

Genesis: In which the blogging begins

They say that necessity is the mother of all invention, but I've also heard that boredom is the necessity of all invention. And it is definitely boredom that has given birth to this blog. Boredom, and a desire to do something moderately interesting with my days, something that could potentially grow....if I think of interesting things to say, that is.
The current goal of this blog (subject to change as my whim decrees) is to record the interesting, weird, annoying, astonishing, ridiculous, or obnoxious events that grace my life. The past day and a half have been a veritable goldmine of such occurrences.
Yesterday being the last completely free day before my boyfriend, Jared, starts school again (I'm on the quarter system, lucky me) we decided to go rollerblading in Venice Beach. Uneventful? I think NOT!
It was only about 20 minutes out that Jared began to complain of random pains and difficulty skating. The cause was discovered when we had gotten all the way down to the Santa Monica Pier. Several of the wheels on his left skate were disintegrating. Literally disintegrating. Looked like someone had taken a large bite out of them. We now had to somehow get back to the car. Jared was limping....on rollerblades....quite an achievement. We finally reached a cafe and bike rental. Lo and behold, they sold rollerblade wheels! Lo and behold, Jared's skates aren't standard and therefore the standard wheels they were selling didn't fit. We staggered on to the next bike stand, only they didn't sell ANY wheels, standard or not.
I had a wedding to get to in the early evening, and there was no way Jared was going to be able to make it back to the car. So I told him to sit at the bike stand, and I skated back to the car with his skates, to get his sandals. It was a long way back. The skates were heavy. The sun was hot. By the time I got to the car, I was drenched with sweat. I made the necessary footwear exchange, shooting dirty looks at the minivan parked next to us, in which four kids were smoking. These kids looked like they were 10, which means they were probably 13 because I'm terrible with ages. Disgusting.
I started the long skate back to Jared. He was walking to meet me, his feet completely burnt from the hot sidewalk. So he's limping in sandals, I'm limping in skates, we're both dying of heat and thirst, and it's almost an hour later than I wanted to leave. But no matter....the wedding wasn't until 5:30 and there was no way my family would leave before 4:30.
In the car, I called my mom to let her know what was going on. She chewed me a new one, telling me that they were leaving at 3:45. It was currently 3:30. I am a good 40 minutes from home and I need to shower and change. Yelling ensued. I was left to take my own car to the wedding. Once home, Jared picked out an outfit for me, switched purses, put his GPS in my car, and got me a glass of cold OJ as I took a fast shower. I was out the door 20 minutes later. The wedding started in 40 minutes and the GPS said I'd just make it.
Except that the freeway was intensely congested. Because, you know, it's rush hour. In LA. Brilliant.
I got to the wedding 20 minutes late, only to find that 5:30 was when they started serving appetizers (POUNDS of appetizers) and the ceremony wasn't until 7:20. All that for nothing.
Wedding was beautiful, fun, uneventful (well, except for the groom receiving lap dances from his male friends).
Now it's 11:15 at night. I'm heading home on the 101 freeway. We're flying along, when suddenly, traffic grinds to a halt. Not a crawl. A halt.
I have stopped next to the entrance ramp, and all around me people are finding ways to wiggle their cars over to said entrance ramp, throwing their cars into reverse, and backing down the entrance ramp. Not one, not two.....about 35 people do this while I'm sitting there. Other people are trying to use the rightmost emergency lane to get ahead of the crowd. This strategy doesn't help them, and now all they're doing is blocking any emergency vehicles that need to get through from doing so.
30 minutes we sat there, then suddenly traffic takes off again. When we passed the scene of the crash (less than a 1/2 mile from where I had stopped) all that was left was a flare and some broken glass.

I don't want to get in a car again for a week.

Oh and today's adventure? Trying to go to the eye doctor, where they claimed they had no vision insurance for me. Except they do, because my mom was just in. Oh, and I work at my dad's office in the HR department, and therefore have spent the entire summer staring at my dad's insurance information. We definitely have vision insurance. The receptionist calls the insurance company, and they insist our insurance expired last year. Except my mom JUST brought my brother in. Of course, they have no record at the doctor's that my brother came in...they don't even have his name on file.
I try to call my boss in HR, she doesn't pick up. Neither does my dad. Or my mom. So I leave. Now I have to find another quiet moment to go in, once I've managed to convince the insurance company that we do, in fact, have an active account with them.

A little irritated right now? Oh, maybe just a little.
Stay tuned.....