The ABIB

The ABIB

Sunday, January 28, 2007

Self Love: Is There Any Other Kind?

Saw a bumper sticker today that actually made my angry little heart go all pitty pat. It was simple, straightforward and completely out there. It said: I HEART ME (replace the word heart with the actual little red heart shape and you get the real picture). I HEART ME, all CAPS which as we on the 'net know means that YOU'RE SCREAMING.

For a moment I was stopped in my tracks, so amazed was I at the sheer audacity of such a brazen statement. But slowly as I regained my composure, it began to dawn on me: "yes, how perfect, how diabolically, selfishly perfect, and so simple, so pure, so...right, somehow". I HEART ME, motherfuckers! ME, not your smarmy, earnest little Greek chorus of tragedy that goes sailing by me on the beltway and on side streets and in parking lots. Pity the poor Chesapeake Bay (SAVE the Bay!), shout outs to every breed of animal imaginable and some we'd rather not (I Heart My Ferret), and the ribbons, Christ gag me with every conceivable "cause" from "Autism Awareness" to the purple and black"Ravin' Maniacs" football fools, to the ubiquitous yellow "Support Our Troops" ribbons. Ack.

Oh, no, this brilliant soul cut straight through all that do-gooder crap and called a spade a spade, goddammit. I HEART ME, motherfuckers! All the rest of you whiny-ass wimps can eat my dust, I be all about lovin' number ONE! Brought a tear to my eye, it did and as I stared at that little gem for a few moments in the Giant supermarket parking lot I committed to this blog post as a kind of homage, a commemoration, if you will, of someone who clearly knows that when all is said and done, the autistics and the troops and the fucking Chesapeake Bay ain't there to tuck you in at night so you might as well show the love where it's most appreciated: to your own bad self.

The ABIB stands in awe of such evil brilliance.

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Are There Any Creatures On Earth More Foul Than:

TEENAGE GIRLS? I tell you with all certainty that they are directly FROM HELL ITSELF. Minions of Satan, direct descendents all of The Dark One himself, they skulk around befouling this fine planet with their insipid comments, their mulish adherence to "group think" and their monumentally vapid behavior. Plus the fucking bitches are as mean and as dangerous as poisonous snakes three weeks shy of a meal. You've seen them: in the malls, on the street, maybe (godforbid) in your own home. Take care and stay sharp, cause they may sound like harmless valley girls "oh my gawd! fersher!" but they will take your fucking head off, eat your brains and have a good night's sleep. All with a sweet smile and an "I was just kidding!" Don't be fooled; these simpering, cross-eyed, buck-toothed faces will go from smiles to fangs so fast you won't have time to escape.

And that's all I'm going say about it...well, because you never know if one is...around...lurking nearby and ready to pounce. The ABIB is backing slowly away from the computer now 'cause them bitches seriously give her the creeps. Fer sher.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

"In Case of Rapture...

"...this car will be unmanned."

Saw that on a bumper yesterday and didn't know where to begin. For one thing, a WOMAN was driving the car. HAH! What a sad sack: the bitch doesn't even get it that "in the case of rapture" her ass is still going to be driving that old jalopy. I can picture it now:

Christ descending from Heaven, his beatific light shining on his beloved acolytes, his caucasian face beaming benevolently at all the dear souls as they fly on past up to their heavenly reward behind the pearly gates. All the male acolytes, that is. Those poor saps with boobs and a snatch are stuck behind the wheels of their sadly labeled vehicles, faces upturned, waiting for THEIR turn to fly, fly, fly. Sadly, a turn that will never come. Because the label speaks the truth, sistas: unMANNED.

Closed eyes begin to peep open as they realize: what the fuck? I'm still in this old-ass Buick? They scan the now empty landscape, devoid of all of their godly men, who, of course, being MEN, unMANNED their cars at the rapture. Christ, his earthly work now done, waves "bye-bye" as he heads back home, the last of his "unmanned" cars now empty, as promised.

Sorry, Charlie! Better luck next rapture. What a silly little oversight. What's that you say? There won't BE a next rapture? Oh, the irony of it all.

Stop Telling Me What To Do...NOW

How many times have I heard this one:

"Have a blessed day."

No thanks, if its any of your fuckin' business I think I'll just have a regular day.

Sunday, January 21, 2007

The Highway Idiocy Continues

It has been my experience that all other drivers are insane and/or incredibly stupid. Please allow me to refine that further: all SUV drivers are giant douche bags with a constant need to justify their sorry-ass existence to themselves by bullying all other drivers on the road. Fuckers. Just a quickie to illustrate this point since I'm cooking dinner and the ABIB has MAD SKILLZ when it comes to the kitchen!

Baltimore is not known for doing well when the white stuff falls from the sky like it did today. In fact, Baltimore pretty much goes ape-shit when the white stuff falls from the sky. So I'm on the beltway, a five-lane expressway that circles Baltimore where the average speed is about 63 mph. Now the white stuff had been falling for about an hour and it was mixed (as it often is here) with freezing rain or sleet or some such crap. So you'd think that people might ease back to, oh, say THE SPEED LIMIT, which here is 55 mph. Most of us did, in deference to the laws of physics that say: motherfucker if you have to make a fast stop on this slippery ice you are seriously fucked up if you're travelling anywhere near anyone else. Plus, that sorry loser is as fucked-up as you are and he/she didn't even DO anything.

Here comes the big ass bully, the cowboy of the highway, the gigantic SUV barrelling up the left lane at approximately 70 mph. He (notice how I assume this behavior is a testosterone-based affliction) comes up behind some poor sap foolishly driving in the left lane at about 60 mph. What does said SUV do? Inch up (still driving at least 60 mph) to within a foot or two of the other car's bumper and hang there. On the treacherous road conditions, above the speed limit.

What a monmumental fucker! I'm, of course, driving in my car in the center lane screaming at the moron to "please, please, PUHLEEZE, do us ALL a giant favor and drive into a cement divider" and, (as Gandalf would say) "rid us of your stupidity".

Of course, my words weren't exactly quite that genteel, since I'm not an otherworldly being in the guise of a wizard. Yes, the ABIB is a Lord of the Rings geek and the first one of you that makes a crack about it's gonna get it. Here. In this blog. Won't be pretty, guaranteed.

Friday, January 19, 2007

What? I Have to Pay For This?

The ABIB loves a good cup of coffee. That's why I go, every morning of the work week, to Dunkin' Donuts for a big cuppa. It's all good, right? Couldn't be more wrong. The Dunkin' I go to has a drive "thru" window (thru? what? we're so rushed we can't even take the time to read the entire word?). Now usually there are several vehicles in front of me and I place my order:

"dunkydoobassinrah mayahelpu?"
"large coffee please"
"large coffee, creamandzugar?"
"no sugar, extra cream"
"large coffee, nozugarextacweam dollasixseven drithruwin"

There you have it; couldn't be more simple. I have my $1.67 or some amount above that out of my wallet and ready on the seat beside me. Now, as I've said there are always several vehicles in this line; we ALL have approximately the same amount of time to sit on our asses in our heated or air conditioned vehicles, radio on or not, and contemplate whatever it is we want to contemplate. Nobody, but NOBODY in that line is even remotely pressed for time when it comes to having their money ready. Oodles of time, seas worth of time, a vast expanse of time as the two or three or four Dunkin' lovers in front of you slowly advance to the window, pay, collect their booty, and leave. Invariably, though, there's some schmoe who didn't get the remedially simple memo that: YOU HAVE YOUR FUCKING MONEY READY AT THE WINDOW SHIT FOR BRAINS!

We move forward; the glacial, but steadily advancing pace lulling me into the false hope that today, maybe today, will be the day that they all get it right. The planets will align, the karma will hum and all will be right in the world of the Dunkin' Donuts drive-"thru" line. WRONG SUCKER! Why just yesterday it happened. Inching forward, as each giant SUV in front of me cleared the line and drove away my hopes rose. Three more, two more, one more car in front of me and then, well I guess you know what happened next.

You've all seen it: the silhouette of the fucker in the car in front you looks up at the drive-"thru" window attendant with confusion. They exchange a few words that, of course I can't hear, but I always imagine it goes something like this:

"large coffee and two frosted donuts, that'll be $2.25"
"Huh?"
"Large coffee and two frosted donuts, $2.25"
"I have to PAY for this? Oh hell, no! Well you're gonna have to wait while I rummage for the next seven or eight minutes for my purse and then my wallet and then while I forage around in the five or six compartments of my wallet for the money"

And we wait. The rest of us losers with our good do-bee habits, our money out and ready and waiting for OUR chance at the window, we wait. Here's what I think ought to happen next. I think that I should be able to purchase an attachment on the front bumper of my car that, at the push of a button from the air-controlled interior of my front seat, will cause a forged steel "cow catcher" to emerge from the car's grille and then I get to rev my engine and fucking rear end that lazy bitch into next week.

Ahhhhhh...wouldn't that be grand? Then I'd be at the window and, after all, I do have my money ready. More coffee, please.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Those Madcap Minivans

So I'm driving today, which I hate due to the crappy drivers that I encounter wherever I go, basically all of them, reference earlier post on that one. And while I'm driving I find myself sitting behind yet another generic Ford Windstar or Dodge Caravan or, god help us, the Dodge GRAND Caravan. So what's with that distinction? Is the mere Caravan only transporting the harem while the GRAND Caravan is toting around the Sheik himself? Anyway, I'm stuck behind one of those infuriating monstrosities (can't see around 'em, can't see over 'em, can't see under 'em, all you can see is THEM) and I find myself having to stare at the collection of inane messages on the back of said "minivan" (what? was a regular van deemed to have too much of a hippie connotation to the white, suburban mother of 2.5 children and one dog that is their demographic?). So, again, I'm staring at the back of this vehicle and having nothing whatsoever to do (can't see around 'em, remember?) I find myself reading IQ-lowering messages like the puke-worthy: "Mom's Taxi" (get a fucking job, bitch!) or "My Child Made the Principal's Honor Roll at Tiddly-Fuck Middle School", and the preposterously pompous "Again", "and Again" stickers affixed atop the original "brag-worthy" message to the rest of us. Well, guess what, Mom: in case you haven't been paying attention, the public school systems around here are in such a fucked-up, sorry state that your little darling's designation on the "Principal's Honor Roll" probably means that he/she managed to show up at school and not set the classroom on fire for 90 consecutive days. And the "And Again" one, well, I think you can figure that out for yourself, babe.

So I'm reading these silly shout-outs to the rest of us who, of course, couldn't give a rat's ass about their little attendance allstars, but who have no choice, sitting, as we are, behind this squat abomination of a...what, exactly: is it a truck? a bus? a truss? But then my eyes rest on the one that makes me want to exit my vehicle, tear said "Mom" from the driver's seat, trailing the bluetooth earpiece mid-air behind her, and pound her within an inch of her sorry, comfortable little life. Yes, folks, I'm talking about the soccer ball that is affixed to just about every godforsaken minivan and SUV on the roads today. What? Is it some kind of secret cabal that makes you sign in blood when you drive one of those stupid things that your kids automatically have to be enrolled in every competitive sport available today? Which, as you know, ranges from diving to horseback riding, to hockey, curling and (my personal favorite since these kids are generally the biggest assholes among the asshole elite that today's child "athletes" have become) yes, I'm talking about the lacrosse players.

So, depending on how many "Principal's Honor Roll" candidates this bitch has spit out, I could be staring at a soccer ball, a lacrosse stick or the ubiquitous "LAX" sticker (they make lacrosse sticks, I can't fathom how LAX relates to that, either) a baseball, basketball, tennis racket and/or a shadow figure on ballet pointe, for christ sake. Hmmm, I wonder, now I know that this is a "minivan", and I know that it is being driven by a woman somewhere between the ages of 25 and death, and I know that she is wearing expensive exercise clothes (because, depending on the time of day she is either enroute to or from her Pilates class), and I know she's sipping from a Starbucks cup (triple decaf skim latte, no foam, three Equals) and that her hair has been coifed into that generic yet primped style that says: "I've got the money to look like I don't try all that much, don't you admire me?".

And now I see the soccer ball. Thanks, bitch, for that clue as to who you are. I guess without that darn soccer ball to alert me I would never have guessed that I'm late for work and I'm stuck behind the woman we all LOVE to loathe, unless of course you're one of them, I'm talking, of course, about THE SOCCER MOM! Soccer Moms spend all day running errands, going to the gym, getting coffee and talking to other Soccer Moms about their KIDS! And of course, shuttling their little darlings all over creation, because godforbid they should have one freaking moment to themselves to just sit and stare at the wall.

I often find myself wondering how we as a nation can be in the grips of this terrifying obesity epidemic with so many Windstars and Explorers and Caravans, both Grand and not, getting in my way and blocking my view of everything except their goddamn SOCCER BALL STICKERS. Why, we should be setting the world's standard for fitness by my observation, 'cause you know what: these bitches are everywhere!

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Pharmaceuticals: Listen Up

To all of you at the major pharmaceutical companies pouring millions of dollars into research for new drugs to get people to sleep, I have a tip:

Tape any random meeting at any random bureaucracy and I will guarantee that your customer will be in slumberland within mere moments.

So to recap: don't worry your heads about how you're going to pay for those trips to the Amazon River Basin to collect iguana spit or down to the Nile Delta to dig up some 2,000 year-old, preserved camel dung. Just trot your asses down to the nearest Radio Shack, pick up any old tape recorder and find yourselves a meeting to record.

Guaranteed that the endless, droning blather (such that I just heard and had me fighting mightily with the NEED to escape into sleep) that you collect will pay off in spades when these little tape recorded sleep bombs fly off the shelves for you. And just imagine the profit margins! Good times, good times.

Monday, January 15, 2007

Jesus Freaks Through the Wall: My Neighbors, Part I

Oh the joys of living in the squalid, communal, shared-wall existence known in Baltimore as the row home. As in "I live in a rowhome, hon". And I do, god help me, I do. In some places in my house I can hear every syllable uttered by one of the five kids that Giant Jesus Lover (also know as the White Whale) has sired. He of the giant belly, the balding head, the glasses and the short stature (dude stands about 5 foot 5), has somehow convinced two women to breed with him. First wife he divorced after having three kids with her. Interesting, isn't it, how these holier than thou "christian" types frown on everything the rest of us in the secular world do because it doesn't gibe with their view of the world, which is largely informed, by the way, by a 2,000 year old book, but as soon as they personally need something to extricate themselves from some nasty, little mistake, say, a marriage, then with a wink and a nod suddenly divorce becomes A-OK. What a bunch of idiotic saps.

So White Whale breeds with wife number one and she spews out three urchins that we'll call Peppermint Patty (the oldest girl, named as such since her father has said that she'll be the first girl to play professional football, I think you get the picture), the middle boy is Junior Mint (so named since he's Jr. to his father and he's just a shade minty), and the youngest is the Other Girl (so named because, well, she's so nondescript and boring that coming up with a spayshul name for her just didn't make sense). These three are at their father's house, and therefore at MY house, too, constantly. Who knows, maybe wife number one didn't buy into the whole "Christianity is my life" like her wack-job ex and so is deemed "unfit" to mother by White Whale and wife number two.

Wife number two gets her own paragraph because she's just that...I don't know...colossal. We call her Brunhilda. Picture, if you will, a woman who stands, oh, about 5 foot 8 or 9, weighing in at a cool 275 with a face that would stop a clock and a hank of red hair (are you a natural redhead? EWWWWW), that is in a state of perpetual scowl. Brunhilde is so named because she looks just like she stepped out of the Valkyries, sans horned helmet. A big, brutish woman with a face that was etched into stone from 1,000 years of life picking potatoes in the fields of Lithuania and then pounding them into submission with the same zeal that she pounds her kids and the White Whale into submission. She don't give no-one no slack; our Brunhilda rules the roost with an iron fist and woe be to the man, woman or child that opposes her. She'll smite you, motherfucker.

Brunhilda likes to scream and when she screams in her house she screams in my house. So I get to hear this BITCH'S big, fucking mouth every godforsaken day of my life. What a treat, considering at a conversational pitch it's got that nasal, pinched squawking quality that when given the volume that those Valkyrie lungs can manage, can make your ears bleed. I hear her scream at White Whale's first three and I hear her scream at White Whale, and I hear her scream at her two unholy spawn, namely: Frankenbaby and Big Buford.

Frankenbaby is a freakishly giant three-year old whose steps on the hardwood floor of his upstairs hallway can be heard through a closed door. In my house. Through the wall. Yo, I'm not making ANY of this us up. How could I? I mean, really. Frankenbaby has his father's and mother's giant body, his mother's slitted eyes and round, flat peasant face, and his father's short, stubby legs, plus they've got his blond hair in a Marine buzzcut, which is inexplicably the style around here among the blue collar unwashed who are my neighbors. So basically, this incoherent (Frankenbaby still speaks in gibberish that only Brunhilda can understand) giant thunders around the house and babbles and when he gets a wild hair because one of his slaves (I mean step-siblings) doesn't hop-to-it fast enough to suit him, he opens a mouth and lets out a bellow that can raise the dead. So I get to hear him every day, too.

Big Buford is Frankenbaby's baby sister. I'd say she's just over one year old. Basically she's Frankenbaby with icky, pale brown hair tied into a preposterous Pebbles ponytail on top of her head with a pink ribbon. Thank Christ it's pink, to give people a fighting chance when they try to make a typical gender-based comment: "what a cute, little...girl?". We don't hear all that much from Big Buford yet but I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop on that one.

Did I mention that they're Jesus freaks? Did I? They drive a big Chevy Suburban that takes up two parking places on our parking-challenged, little street and they've got that fucking Jesus fish bumper sticker on one side of that big-ass boat of a car and on the other is the ever-so-subtle "She's a Child, Not A Choice". Well guess, what, fuckers: I'd say the jury's out on that just yet. We call that big, obscene vehicle The Jesus Van. It figures, right? I mean, why wouldn't people who are already taking up WAY more than their share of MY air and MY water and MY fucking SPACE on EARTH with their fucking BROOD of cretins, be driving a giant, gas-guzzling, environment-despoiling monstrosity that takes up WAY TOO MUCH ROOM?

In case you haven't noticed, I fucking hate my Jesus-loving, earth-over-populating, giant car driving neighbors who, since I live in a "rowhome, hon", LIVE WITH ME!

Saturday, January 13, 2007

My Job

I work in the equivalent of Tod Browning's "Freaks". For real. Here's the deal: I say all the time that you can't make this stuff up, that if my friends and I went to a TV producer with a pitch for a new office TV show and all we did was exactly describe the people at my office they would never believe it. "Oh, hell no" they'd say, and "nobody is actually this bad". Dude, you have no idea.

Let's start with Thong Boy. See, we give them code names, well, for obvious reasons, of course, but it's also really mean. And that's good. See the title of this blog for explanation of that. Anyway, here's the deal: Thong Boy wears a thong. Just like Stoop Kid sits on his stoop. What? You've never watched "Hey Arnold"? Loser. Anyway, Thong Boy is probably about 50-55 years old and unless you havent' made the connection, the fact that he wears a thong and that we know it because he said so one day at a luncheon (don't even start me) is like one of the creepiest, ickiest pieces of information you can know about a stoop-shouldered, balding, baggy pantsed (in a creepy old man way, you know what I mean) wierdo. It's right up there with "I'm having to wear adult diapers these days". We got one of them, too, but that's the topic of another post.

Thong Boy sits on a funky pillow because he has a bad back. The pillow is covered by a pillow case that, to my observation, has never, ever been removed and washed. Did you get that? Thong Boy sits his funky ass on a pillow (the kind the rest of us lay our HEADS on for Christ sake) all day, every day. Freak. He carries it with him to the cafeteria and sits his funky ass on it down there while he stares out the window, presumably to regain his equilibrium because: Thong Boy is also Nature Boy. He farts in his cubicle (into said pillow, for sure) and he walks around the building all the time, presumably to get fresh air, but in our cubicle farm life I'm always happy as hell when he's on one of his jaunts 'cause you know, he's gone; always a good thing.

So Thong Boy drinks lots and lots of water, I guess because it's supposed to be good for you, who knows, maybe he's also got kidney issues. But he's too fucking cheap to actually BUY some water, so he's got these two-year-old, empty, glass green-tea bottles that he just keeps refilling (at no cost to himself) from the purified water dispenser in the front office that THEY pay for but for some godforsaken reason nobody has ever stopped him and said" Yo, you cheap-ass motherfucker! How about actually contributing a few bucks to the water fund considering you guzzle it down like a freaking' water buffalo." People in offices are WAY too polite in my opinion.

So, because of where we are situated in the cubicle lane, Thong Boy's endless water refills take him past my cubicle, on average, five or six times a day. I can hear him starting his water refill journey: the old, filthy empty bottles clink together annoyingly as he gathers them up, and they continue clinking as he slowly shuffles by, stoop-shouldered, his face always screwed up in the same, infuriating, slightly confused expression. He passes by my cubicle and I grit my teeth because I know that in a few moments he'll be coming back, old-ass bottles filled with water. Cheap bastard.

So what if, one day, I just reached out a foot as he was passing by with his filled bottles and tripped the dork? I can't tell you how many times I've gone over this scenario in my mind: the sight of him losing his footing, the idiotic expression switching on a dime to that one that says: "Oh shit, I'm going down and when I hit the floor, man am I fucked." But the best part would be those old-ass bottles as they go flying through the air (this part I actually imagine in slo-mo), the water spraying everywhere, but mostly on him, and the sounds they make as they hit the floor followed immediately by the thud of him landing on them and maybe, just maybe, cracking one of those suckers all to hell. A shard in the eye? The ear? Sever a fingertip? If that wouldn't keep his sorry ass out of the office for at least a month, then nothing would. Hell, maybe he'd put in his retirement papers. A bitch can dream.

Who Gives a Rat's Ass

The Ravens? Oh, please.

Friday, January 12, 2007

I Hate All Other Drivers!

Let's get one thing straight: most other drivers are lucky if they have like an 85 IQ. And furthermore I'm pretty sure it's way easier to get a drivers license these days than when I got mine. Also, back the fuck away from my bumper, dick. I'm driving 68 mph in the middle lane. Do you realize that the lane to our left is for passing me or are you just hanging back there to be an asshole? Is it my fault that your dick is the size of a cocktail weiner? Is it my fault that your boss just reamed you out in front of the whole department? Deal with it but get the fuck off of my bumper. NOW! Hey! I got an idea: why don't you just go and drive yourself off the nearest overpass? That's a win/win, right? I hate you and the closer you come to my car the more likely it is I'll actually be able to see your Neanderthal face and you know what, that's gonna fucking ruin my day.

Also: to the car manufacturers of the world: when did it become necessary to replicate the approximate light intensity of the sun in the headlamps of new cars? When they come up behind me it's like shielding my eyes from the freaking death star ray and when the fuckers are coming toward me I end up flashing my highbeams in a frenzy of blinded rage until those fucking halogen headlamps are gone. Don't get me started on SUVs...that's for another time.