The ABIB

The ABIB

Friday, August 13, 2010

Did Something Last Night...

that I'm not particularly proud of. I...I...watched an entire movie on THE LIFETIME CHANNEL!!! Cue scary music and that slicing sound when the crazy dude went off on the chick in the shower scene in Psycho. I can't believe I'm admitting this to anyone let alone blogging about it. Jesus it was just like eating something really fattening but that isn't all that great but you just keep eating it anyway because its brainless and repetitive.

I won't go so far as to divulge the name of the "movie", but since it was on Lifetime you can probably get pretty close just by guessing any title about surviving abusive spouses or surviving abusive parents or surviving abusive drug dealers/pimps. But that last one is only if the protagonist is a teenage girl. What someone SHOULD make is a movie about Lifetime Channel's abusive movies!

So anyway, I sat there on my couch and before I realized what had happened I was actually watching this thing and, well, kind of, wondering how it was going to turn out. In spite of myself. I get the same vaguely shame-filled feeling whenever I watch Ghost Hunters. Holy crap, the "hunters", eerily lighted by a greenish night-vision glow (as if ghosts will only EVER appear in total darkness..what do you mean, ghosts don't exist? philistine!) 'DID YOU SEE THAT??? IT WAS JUST OVER THERE A SPLIT SECOND AGO!!' The camera lamely swings in the direction of the "sighting" which of course is no longer visible but I continue watching all the same. And feel ridiculous yet weirdly powerless to stop. Sheesh.

So I figure that by watching an entire "movie" on the Lifetime Channel I have irrevocably taken that step firmly into post-menopausal middle age. How depressing. I thought I had insulated myself what with the repeated viewings of Family Guy, The Simpsons and South Park. Hey motherfuckers, I watch GLEE for crying out loud! And yet none of those youthful choices kept me safe when the channel changer brought me to the Lifetime Channel and left me there, foundering amongst all the bad dialogue and scenery-chewingly dreadful "acting", the bombastic music and the over-wrought camera work. At the end I felt like one, big bottle of something from Mary Kay. YUCK!!

All the purveyors of the 900 channel reality that is modern television offer parents the option to block what they deem to be inappropriate viewing for their children. Let me say, here and now, that said purveyors would do well to offer we baby boomers who like to think of ourselves as endlessly youthful and hip, (case in point: Old Farts on Facebook) a service that would warn us IN LOUD VOICES WITH LARGE LETTERS that HEY!!! YOU ARE ABOUT TO SWITCH TO A CHANNEL THAT WILL MAKE YOU, HEAVEN FORBID, FEEL YOUR ACTUAL CHRONOLOGIC AGE!!! BEWARE!!! UNLESS YOU WANT TO SPEND THE NEXT 90 MINUTES FEELING TERRIBLE ABOUT YOURSELF MOVE ALONG!!! MOVE ALONG!!!

Hells at least we'd be warned. At least we'd KNOWINGLY commit to bad, soporific old people television. I mean I'm actually scared. What's next: bedtime at 8:30, dinner at 4:00, anything on CBS!? Maybe I'll just hang out on YouTube for awhile, watch some stuff on Hulu, anything to keep me from helplessly turning toward that insidious siren call that I hear even now: Lifetime Channel Presents: The Devil's Teardrop, Bond of Silence or The Client List. Putting down the remote...backing away from the TV...suddenly wondering what's on the Early Bird Special today at Olde Country Buffet. Nooooooooooooooo!

Thursday, August 5, 2010

*****NEWSFLASH******

YO, BEEYOTCHES!!! The ABIB is immensely gratified and proud to report that she actually witnessed (with her own ears) the utilization of The Courtesy Flush in the bathroom at work today!!! This, my friends, is a HUGE step forward in the struggle against public bathroom miscreants who from this point forward shall be known as Stink Hoarders.

The ABIB is deeply touched ...wiping a tear from her eye...to learn that her tirades are actually making a difference. Not to mention, being read.

Trapped in the Slowly Moving Humor Free Zone Also Known as “The Elevator”

OMG!!! OMG!!! OMG!!! OMG!!! I’m finally free of the Elevator of Slow Death by Trite, Stupid Humorless “Jokes”. ABIB here in, as you may know by now, a federal workplace that I go to every day to do….whatever people do at work. So, sometimes I have to ride one of several elevators in my building, generally transiting from my cube to the cafeteria and back, a trip that traverses three floors. The elevators, as many in older buildings, are painfully slow. So when you get on in the basement and have to ride to the third floor you could possibly grow grey as the tiny space stops on floor 1, then on floor 2, and finally, BLESSEDLY, on floor 3 where I speedily exit into the processed, controlled air of the mauve-colored hallway. I generally hope for, and mightily try to achieve, being a lone elevator rider, as in NOT HAVING TO SHARE THAT TINY, AIRLESS SPACE WITH ANY OF THE SEVERAL THOUSAND NITWITS THAT CONSTITUTE MY COWORKER POPULATION.

Riding with others in silence, while not ideal (again, always shooting for that LONE ridership) is at least bearable, albeit a little awkward. Silent co-riders are surely almost palpably aware that they are not alone and are, in fact, in nearly obscene physical proximity to someone who is likely a total stranger. Can do. Even the multiple floor stops are livable especially since each floor means another person is going away.

Soooooo….today I found myself riding up to floor three from the lower lever, a.k.a. THE BASEMENT with not one, not two but FIVE other drones. But not just any five other drones, five of the most cretinous, repellent, downright scirry drones to occupy this particular federal facility. In other words, some fairly normal federal workers. I should have taken the worrisome cue as we all waited in the cold concrete floor, white cinderblock , bunker-ish reality that is THE BASEMENT. The worrisome cue was the “I can’t stand the sound of the normal silences that occupy the spaces between people who don’t know each other so I’m going to fill it with ENDLESS, HORRIFIC “FUNNY” GIBBERISH!!!” that began almost immediately after the moment one of us pushed the button to call the elevator. There I was, in a physical space that, again, most resembles a bomb shelter circa 1962, surrounded by a group of lamebrain idiots whose idea of “humor” is to make exceedingly moronic observations about what’s happening around them.

“Hey is there only ONE of these elevators working?” This barked out in front of the bank of two elevators in front of us.

“HAHAHAHAHA, Yeah! One’s the backup in case the other one doesn’t work!”

“Haven’t you heard about federal contracts going to the lowest bidder?! Welll, we only CONTRACTED for ONE of these to WORK at a TIME!!”

“Let’s make sure that we SAVE A TREE WHILE WE’RE AT IT!!”

The slow descent into hell has begun and although my ABIB-Senses tell me to FLEE MOTHERFUCKER!!!! FLEE FOR YOUR LIFE!!!! I instead stand there, already too numb to move. Within a brief period of a few seconds it was already too late to escape.

“Hey should we try a rain dance?”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Now that one doesn’t even make sense in Stupid Fucker World! A rain dance? Here comes the bile, right on time, ready to spew forth onto this crowd of fucking ninnies if someone doesn’t strike them dumb. Or dumb-ER. Hee Hee.

Finally the ONE WORKING ELEVATOR arrives and everyone jovially piles in to begin the ride to: I see with dawning horror: ALL THREE FLOORS! The hilarity continues unabated once the door whooshes closed with an ominous hiss.

“Here we are; hope everyone put on their deodorant today!”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Oh for fucks sake.

I begin to beam hate waves to every pinhead in the car now moving with agonizing slowness to the first of three stops and YES, mine is the last. SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT THE MOTHERFUCK UP!!!! My silent powers of mind control are not working.

Ding! The electronic “female” talking elevator voice is now announcing for any blind person in the cab (it is after all a FEDERAL facility) Level One: Going Up! No-one moves.

“Hey did someone let a ghost on here?”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

The thinnest thread now exists between my sanity and my self control. Two floors to go.

“Maybe that rain dance did it! Are we on some kind of Indian burial ground?! Cheap land, one working elevator. YEP! Lowest bidder!”

Pencil-necked geek DID NOT JUST DO A CALL-BACK and to some ignorant-ass shit that wasn’t even remotely funny the FIRST FUCKING TIME!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Why do people laugh at shit that isn’t even remotely funny? I mean, COME ON, a rain dance? Ghosts? Indian burial grounds? What’s with the automatic, instantaneous hale and hearty, too loud laughter? I say: remain silent and maybe this corny-ass lame mother fucker will SHUT UP. And then I remember: same as always ABIB, it’s you against the world: all these morons actually find this crap comical.
Well the rest of the ride went by in a blurry haze as I’m convinced that all of my hate beams were backing up on me since none of the dipwads in that elevator from moronic bad joke hell were even remotely fazed, keeping up the hideous barrage of verbal mayhem:

“Here’s your floor! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

“OR ANYTHING YOU WOULD DO!!!”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

until I escaped onto my floor. Plus I’m pretty sure I developed TMJ from the jaw grinding that began downstairs in the 60s air raid bunker.
If I wasn’t so fucking lazy I’d force myself to take the stairs. Maybe the solution is earplugs. Or MAYBE , just maybe, the solution is for moronic assholes who don’t have anything of any interest to say to just SHUT THE FUCK UP MOTHERFUCKER! The ABIB can dream, can’t she?