sobering up on the red line

Call me an asshole but I do find it very funny that the soccer moms and pimp daddies that were once riding very high in the BMW SUVS and tricked-out Escalades are now the very same people who are getting extremely stompy and nasty at the gas station.

"I can't fuckin' believe it costs this goddamn much for gas."
"I have to commute over a hundred miles."
"This is getting ridiculous. It costs me forty damn dollars to fill my tank."

Daddy's little status symbol is not looking quite so pretty and shiny in the face of mean and icky gas prices.

Somehow I'll bet certain people find Chicago public transportation just a smidge more appealing these days.

This pretty much sums up most of the reasons I often lay my forehead down against the table after reading the morning paper and remind myself to breathe in and breathe out, breathe in and breathe out.

Thank you Lauriean.

Is it just me or would you also like to kick the easy breezy beautiful beachdancing cover girls in the teeth?

Except for Latifah, but I would like to smack her very soundly about the face and ask her just what the hell she is doing being easy and breezy when she is much too cool for that kind of thing.

Blogger has sort of fucked up my world by changing their little page because now it looks like AOL and I am so confused. I do not handle change well and do not appreciate this at all and even though it is free I would like to file a complaint with the management, stat.

In less anal-retentive world news I am sick of hearing about Donald Rumsfeld but have decided that Rumsfeld would be a great name for a beer. "I'd like a Rumsfeld, please." It just rolls off the tongue very nicely. Perhaps he should consider this after his political career is over since that moment seems to be approaching rather rapidly.

As you should be able to tell from the title of this blog I am a fan of the lite beer and am not one for the hard stuff. It makes my stomach feel yucky and I really don't like the idea of waking up next to someone named Jean-Marc with a shiny shirt draped over my head, or some other such horror.

However I unfortunately allowed myself to be talked into a few shots of the fire water at a club this weekend by a friend who will soon take the plunge into matrimony. Since I assume she will never again be seen with the likes of heathenish unmarried non-china-owning me, I acquiesced.

Fast-forward a couple of hours and there I was, dancing on top of a bar. I am also told that there was singing. I remember none of this. The only part of the evening I remember quite clearly is coming home and wondering when my ceiling had become round.

I came home with a lot of dollar bills that night and can only hope that they were not shoved into the waistband of my underwear.

If one more person slumps into this office and moans "Oh, it's tooooo hot..." they are going to get a swift sandal to the skull because damn it we have been waiting weeks and weeks for the weather to get warm and when it finally does people have to start complaining about that, too.

You just cannot make Chicagoans happy no matter how hard you try. If it is hot we want it cool and if it's cold we want it warm and for Chrissakes you'd think that people would get it through their thick heads that there is no such damn thing as a perfect sixty-eight degree day in this city.

It's part of our charm. We are moody and unpredictable and sassy and tempermental and who likes bland-ass boring people anyway? Take your sixty-eight degree weather and stick it up your ass right along with your people who take Prozac and speak in one-word sentences and listen to blah blah boring Lite FM and drink only one glass of wine for fear of getting tipsy and match all the fucking time like some Burberry ad.

blah blah blah blah BORING.

I called my mother to find out what she wanted for mother's day and she replied, "an ottoman".

An ottoman?

How I long for the simple days of youth in which she was thrilled to tears with stupid plaster handprints and watercolor paintings of her and I with two pieces of hair between us and big red lips.

I swear to God some random sweet-faced elderly woman just came up to my desk and said, "Dear, would you like a cookie?"

I looked down at her paper plate and she had the sort of cookies grandmothers always have - the ones shaped like windmills that taste like gingerbread and are as hard as bricks.

She doesn't work in this office and I have no idea where she came from.

If this is a new idea to boost office morale I am all for it. An office cookie grandma might be just what we need around here.

Truth be told I am sick to death of the swill they call coffee in this joint so I purchased a bag of actual beans along with an actual grinder and came to work prepared to grind my own coffee.

I am more than willing to be the coffee grunt if it means I can have good coffee and I know damn well that my eighty dollar tie wearing boss can afford to shell out for the good stuff.

I tossed some beans in the contraption and as it began to whir every single employee came rushing out of their respective offices to see what the hell that crazy Miller was doing as if I was grinding the boss's fingers for a witch's brew.

My boss was not far behind, and soon the entire clan was looking on in awe as I made REAL COFFEE and wow can you believe it? Have you ever seen anything like it? That Miller is a FIREBALL, she is! People gathered around with their little cups and looked as excited as children at a snow cone cart.

Suddenly I realized I was on the fast track to promotion! My innovative beverage ideas would no doubt stick in the heads of the highers-up and my name would be tossed around conference tables like a hackysack. I was a free thinker and a woman of action and surely deserved a fifty thousand dollar raise.

I was already planning what kind of furniture I would order for my corner office when my boss pulled me aside and said, "Miller, next time get the pre-ground stuff because I think the grinder is very distracting to the employees."

There was also absolutely no mention of repayment for the pricey Starbux beans so I think my days as a coffee vigilante are over.

Foiled again.

Amazingly enough I have actually been working, as has no doubt astonished both my employer and coworkers to no end.

It occasionally occurs to me as I watch friends and family get outsourced and downsized and assfucked that I may indeed be lucky to actually have a job during these turbulent times and that perhaps I should expend some effort or at least appear to be doing so.

This lasted for about a week but thankfully I am back to my old slackhappy self, and thank goodness for that.

While meandering to and fro at a local watering hole this weekend I spotted several young men sporting haircuts that can only be described as mullets. The type of guy I'm talking about is the type that makes a killing writing software for Macintosh but still shops at thrift stores so as to appear rumpled and hip. His Chuck Taylors are ratty and his jeans are unwashed. He does not own any album that has been produced by a major record label and considers this to be a badge of honor.

I am not down with this look or the inexplicable fear of money that lies behind it but I suppose it can be excused if the edge is taken off with a decent haircut. However I believe that there is no excuse for a mullet. None.

I would love to walk the streets of Chicago dressed in black leotards and a ski mask, brandishing a pair of scissors. I would attack unsuspecting men with ponytails, braids, rattails (horror), hippie hair, and mullets; and then I would leave them my calling card, a small black business card with bright gold lettering that would read "YOU HAVE JUST BEEN CLIPPED BY MILLER THE MULLET MURDERESS. DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN AGAIN, BECAUSE NEXT TIME IT WON'T JUST BE THE HAIR."

I think the women in this town would erect a statue in my honor.