No, not my beloved Lucy. One of the neighbors has a crappy dog…and guess where this neighbor likes to let it crap…?

For what seems like weeks I had been finding mysterious “piles” on my front lawn and yeah, I know my yard is not the nicest one on the block but just because I have a bit of crab grass and clover this does not designate my yard as the local canine dumping station! I mean, WHO DOES THAT???  Let’s their dog crap in a neighbor’s yard and just LEAVES IT!!?!

So not too long ago I was able to catch this neighbor in the act…or rather, it was the dog I caught mid-poo while the neighbor stood sheepishly nearby hoping to blend into the bushes.

I’ve seen him around the neighborhood a lot.  He’s an older retiree with a  fluffy, medium sized lapdog and I had already half suspected he was the culprit for about the previous month or so but couldn’t prove it, so I shouted out in a very friendly tone, “Good morning!”

He waved an embarrassed little wave and quietly said “good morning” back.

I said, with a little grin, “Hey…uh…you aren’t gonna just leave that there, are you?” And just stared at him, daring him to not answer me.

He starts patting his pockets…of course, someone who allows their dog to just go anywhere is not going to be prepared to “pick up” after their dog’s impromptu “deposit”.  He stammers, “Well, I would if uh…”

I smile brightly and say, “OHHH!  Do YOU need a baggie?!?  STAY RIGHT THERE! I’ll go get you one!” And I saunter into the house knowing this person knows he’s been caught, can’t just leave now without looking like a total asshat, and has to wait for me to bail him out of his ineptitude and self-serving stupidity by supplying him with something he knows he should have always had with him anyway.

A couple of minutes later, I stroll leisurely back out and hold it out for him and wait. He takes it, kinda looks at me with a “do you really expect me to pick that up” kind of look which got an immediate reactive expression from me which fairly shouted “HELL YES! I expect you to practically lick my lawn clean, jerk!” but then I smiled too so, it was all polite and stuff. He bends down and scoops his dog’s crap off my lawn, into the baggie,  and then has the audacity to look at me all “now what?”.

I handed him a couple of extra baggies and said to him, “I’ve got a garbage bin just over there, please feel free to use it if you need to.  I can take it for you this time though, since I’m here.”  I smiled my happiest “thank you for being an actual human and not a total douche bag” smile and walked his dog’s crap to my bin, which, you have to admit was rather magnanimous of me considering the situation. *smirk*

Just before I got into my car and just before he was past my yard, I said, “Thank you!!  I hope you have a wonderful day!”  I got a tip of the hat and an awkward “you too” and that was that.

Funny how I haven’t seen him since.  Also interesting there have been no more “mystery piles” in my yard.

GOTCHA! SUCKA! Winner is me. Ha!

Can you believe this crap?

Lionsgate announces  ‘Dirty Dancing’ remake

LOS ANGELES (AP) — “Dirty Dancing” is coming back to the big screen.

Lionsgate says it is remaking the 1987 film that starred Jennifer Grey as a naïve dance student and Patrick Swayze as her teacher and lover.

The studio said Monday that Kenny Ortega, who choreographed the original film, will direct the remake.

Ortega says he is eager to discover and cast “the next breakout triple-threats” to define dancing for a generation, the way Swayze did in the original “Dirty Dancing.”

I thought it was bad when the announcement was made for the horrifying remake of “Footloose” (click here to see the trailer for this inevitable train wreck), but now…now they are going after the holy grail of the late 80′s and dammit!  You have got to be freaking kidding me!!!

I know, I know, the original was far from perfect…but it had a cheeseytasticness about it that you can’t (and shouldn’t) try to replicate or redo…someone could lose an eye or something!

And I don’t really care if Kenny Oretga is choreographing it (though that is probably the single redeeming factor in the entire atrocious idea), no one, NO ONE can be “the new Patrick Swayze” and they will NEVER, EVER replace Jennifer Grey’s nose! (You know you were thinkin’ it, it’s alright…look, I’ve got before and afters:

…wishes he was a race car driver works on a race car in his garage.

He works on his car about 30 feet from our patio windows and for some reason, he thinks the time to start revving his engine is at about 9pm+ at night (which sounds remarkably similar to this).

Now…I will say so far he has usually stopped no later than 10pm…but the other night I was pms-ing and simply couldn’t stand it another minute!  So I called the non-emergency number to find out when the noise ordinance can be enforced.

Would you believe 11pm!??!? Yeah. So not happy.

The dispatcher I spoke with was wonderful and very understanding as I expressed my frustration. She said she already had an officer in the area and that she could have him do a drive by to see how bad it was. I thanked her and said “only if he isn’t doing anything, but yeah, that’d be great.”

After a while, the neighbor quiets down (about 10:15) but then me and Mr. Blu see a cop coming down the street so, we went out and chatted with him for a few minutes…described the issue, thanked him for swinging down our street (he was already in the area so no problem he said). It was really a nice conversation and the officer seemed to appreciate the fact that we came out to talk to him about it and while we were all pleasantly chatting away…

…around the corner, down our street comes three miscreant teens on bikes (who have long been a nuisance in our area) with squeaky toys, hooting and hollering and squeaking their squeaky toys in a most peace disturbing and annoying fashion! Mr. Blu and I looked at each other and grinned. Timing is freaking everything! lol!

The officer (who happened to be in an unmarked car) shouts out his window that they are biking illegally (no headlights, no helmets) and they hooted and squeaked at him as they went roaring past completely oblivious that he was a cop.

That’s when the officer flipped his strobes on and the whole neighborhood lit up in red and blue. He then excused himself from us and kinda tore off after them.

We’ll never know the actual outcome but we have great fun imagining the looks on their faces when they fully realized that their asshatery had been discovered…

Anyway…it got me over my pms grump and we didn’t hear another peep out of the neighbor after that. Double win!

[/Rant]

Whenever someone in our house does something against someone else, invariably there will be instant karma.  For example: Daughter #1 pushes  unsuspecting daughter #2 and then proceeds to trip over her own feet and falls down.  Instant karma.  It’s a thing of beauty! *grin*

Here’s another example: Congress (well, “some” of Congress) passes the health care bill into law only to discover a “glitch” that for all intents and purposes ends their current “cushy” health care and subjects them to what everyone else will be using. In other words, the nobles have to eat with the peasants.

Honestly, it couldn’t happened to a “nicer” group of people…LMAO!  AND, on the upside, perhaps this will force them to look very seriously at this new law and truly fix it.  I’m not holding my breath but it would seem that there are only two options:  weasel out of it and try to restore the exemptions that they thought they had so carefully in place (not the best thing to do while the entire nation is watching) or make the plan workable even for the Congress.

I’ve always believed that if Congress were forced to use the same programs they so liberally foist on the American public (health, social, etc), 90% of the problems associated with them would vanish overnight.

NYT: Baffled by Health Plan? So Are Some Lawmakers (article this way —>)   Read more…

…that’s why!!  :D

In all seriousness though, what exactly is the Norwegian Nobel Committee playing at here?   Read more…

How could something with so much potential go so completely down the drain?

I have just finished reading “Mr. Darcy, Vampyre” and I’ve got a few bones to pick with the author.

I will start, though, by saying that I think it a highly imaginative concept- Mr. Darcy being a Vampyre.  Ms. Grange’s idea has the possibility of going in so many directions and she takes us down an interesting path as we are lead into the story.  I give her high marks for originality but a failing grade for not following through which leads me to give the entire book a C-.

Spoilers to follow, read at your own risk: Read more…

Starbucks…we’ve had a good run, you and I.  You were there for me in my ignorant youth and I gave you so much of my money.  You comforted me with your big easy chairs and your cookie-cutter jazz sounds when I thought I needed to feel snobby, when I craved to be just a little bit snooty.  You fed my vanity to my detriment, or so I thought. What you really did was, keep me blind to what a REAL coffee should be.

I know, I know…you say you are reliable and are always with me no matter what city I find myself in…and this is true.  However, I’m afraid I have outgrown you.  You insist on staying the same old you.  You are so last century with your overly roasted, dried up nasty beans.  The only thing you’re still good for is your orange/cranberry scones, but that isn’t enough for me anymore, no…sadly, this is farewell.  Farewell to you Starbucks,  the McDonald’s of the coffee world, my eyes have forever been opened.  It is truly sad that it has taken me this long to find out what REAL coffee is supposed to taste like.  Good, however, that I didn’t have to actually travel to Sumatra’s Gayo Mountain region to find it.

Starbucks…meet my new coffee:

Wandering Goat Coffee Company (clearly in honor of the The Kaldi Coffee legend).

I had a cup of their wonderful brew at a fabulous little desert bar called Nib (a little restaurant that is still SO new to the local scene that they don’t even have a website yet…but let me tell you…FABULOUS!!!). It was presented to me French pressed and was so rich and smooth…I didn’t even need half and half. !!! I AWAYS NEED HALF AND HALF IN MY COFFEE (or so YOU said…LIAR)!!! It was everything I ever dreamed coffee could be…AND THEN SOME!  The best coffee I’ve ever had.

The truth is you wanted me to love you, but you never loved me.  You took, took, took and never gave me anything beyond a false sense of society and a plasticized vision of classiness.   I won’t weep for you though, no…you still have the blind masses devoted to your two-tailed mermaid logo, two-tailed like the two-faced coffee you turned out to be.  I wasted the best coffee drinking years of my life on you!!!

Starbucks, I think if we’re honest with each other, we will see that you won’t miss me, and I certainly won’t miss you.  Maybe if I find myself stranded in a strange city I’ll pop in for a bit.  Or, maybe I’d rather drink pond scum.  It wouldn’t be that much different…now that I understand what I’ve been missing, lo, these many years. LMAO!!!!

Ciao’!

Let’s examine for a moment how this all came about.

• Neighbor sees what looks like a break in next door, calls 911.
• 911 sends officers who upon arrivel are told by person in the house that he lives there offering ID as proof.  Officer claims uncooperative behavior. Arrest is made.

[RANT ALERT] Now, this is a sticking point with me because if a Driver’s License isn’t enough proof, what is?  If Crowley was ticked that Gates didn’t follow his directions to step out onto the porch – tough! Legally (under Massachusetts law) and especially after proving he was in fact the resident of the premises, Gates was well within his legal right to stay put.  It should have ended RIGHT THERE with a “Thank you Mr. Gates. {insert brief explanation} You’re lucky you have such caring neighbors…have a nice day!”  [/RANT ALERT]

• Person arrested turns out to be a personal friend of the the POTUS! POTUS (minus TOTUS, who claims to have been there, but no actual evidence has been provided) remarks to a national audience that the Cambridge police “acted stupidly” (In true presidential fashion, he’s actually using this incident to deflect from his struggling attempt to get ObamaCare online. “Never let a crisis go to waste.“).
• All media hell breaks loose.  (Where is Jesse Jackson when we need him!! Oh…there he is.  And look…it’s Al Sharpton too.)
• POTUS steps in a second time saying: “hey man, come over for a beer and let’s chat.“
• BEER SUMMIT 2009.  A “teaching moment” that will live in infamy.

Such is American politics.  Now…where’d I leave my salt and limes…

P.S.  There’s never an egg-timer when you need one. Now…when do I get my 10 bucks?

This girl (tiffanyd666) has some serious editing chops!  With 2,953,234 views (and counting) you know she’s already makin’ waves.  (my daughters- total Twilight fangirls, are gonna freak when I show them this, lol.)

Okay…

#1:  I didn’t like the movie “Twilight” all that much.  It was…just okay.  Could have a lot to do with the directing, the editing, the piggyback riding…can’t quite put my finger on it.  I will say the actors did a terrific job of portraying their characters as they were written (which in fact doesn’t say much for the book).

#2:  I’m not actually a…what do they call them…a “Twilighter”, a “fanpire” (?) but I did read the entire series.  Mainly because my girls wanted to read them so, we all kinda read them at the same time (which was interesting with only 1 1/2 sets of books between the 3 of us).

My oldest wanted to make the books last as long as possible, my youngest zipped through the series with the speed of a freight train…and me, well – it’s not exactly challenging literature is it. lol.  I finished it before both of them (though I wanted to slap the crap outta Bella so many times, cripes that girl can whine!).  We had a very good time debating the different issues of the series- those being: Meyer’s take on vampires (nicely original), writing style (hey man, I haven’t written a book of my own, I don’t judge), Bella’s inability to make a decision, storyline and twists, the fact that this whole idea of romance sounds awfully familiar, etc, ad nauseam.

Best time I had though was tormenting my girls by telling them the protagonist (Bella) should end up with Jacob (the werewolf), not Edward (the pedophile 100-something yr old vampire).  I did this with much glee because hey, gotta get my licks when I can right?  It is to be noted that both my girls fell head over heels for Edward.  I told them:

*rant warning*

“It only makes sense for Bella to wind up with Jacob because Bella can still be herself with him.  (THAT is a good message to send to teen girls who are longing for guidance, eh?  That they need to be themselves, not try to conform to some hormon ridden lust machine’s idea of what he wants her to be, right?  That if he doesn’t like her for who she is he can just go hang and isn’t worth the gum on the bottom of her shoe? I thought so too.)  She doesn’t have to change anything about herself at all!  True she’d be putting up with what basically amounts to a big smelly dog…(but really, how different is that from most men anyway?).

However, in order for her to be with Edward, she has to change everything about herself (i.e. becoming one of the undead), leave ALL her family and friends, give up EVERYTHING she’s ever known just so he doesn’t wind up killing her accidentally when he gets all hot and bothered.  And what kind of a creepy old guy (ya, I know he’s trapped in some kind of “hot teenage bod” – whatever, skinny/pale/cave-chested/cold was never my bag), who sneaks into her room at night to ‘watch her’ btw… …and who is all ‘I can’t stand the smell of you only because it makes me vant to dr-r-rink your blood’ and then all of a sudden he can totally handle it?  Oh yes…that’s because he’s a supa-star!  Ha.  Dude has ‘STALKER’ written all over his sparkly bad self.

Why does Bella need either of these guys?  Why can’t she just put on her big girl panties and make the obvious choice (which is NEITHER OF THEM)!?  You know…Screw this bs!  Bella should just MOVE THE HELL BACK TO ARIZONA!!!”  (<—–I didn’t actually say that last bit- well, I did under my breath, lol.)

As a mother I simply cannot condone this kind of squishy, co-dependency and overall emotionally driven bad judgement.  I do give props to Edward though who tried to ditch Bella at the beginning of book two (“New Moon”) but their teen angst was too much to suppress (egads…isn’t it ALWAYS!!!?) and he returns only to drag us through two more books of whining.   You’d think a centenarian+ would have learned how to handle a situation like this a  long time ago.

Anyway…none of my rambling has a thing to do with tiffanyd666.  She is an excellent vidder and I simply had to post about her here and share her work with you all.

…it’s that I hate the other drivers on the road.  Not all drivers.  Just the class a, certifiable, cell-phone using, big mac shoving, screaming-at-their-kids-instead-of-watching-the-road morons that our roads are far too overpopulated with.  I mean, is there a ‘special’ driving school somewhere pumping out mediocre graduates of offensive driving? Cause I’m offended!  Anyone else?

Take this idiot incident de’jour for example:  I’m driving along in the left lane (I have a big @$$ truck and so I tend to be a bit extra careful because it’s a little difficult to stop several thousand pounds on a dime – ya…trucks do not equal agile, lol) and this little rice grinder on a lefthand side street (turning left into my lane) decides there’s just enough room to zip in…in front of my 6 ton grill…except there isn’t.  Jack hole stomps his gas and proceeds at full rice grinder speed (which is about 37 mph) and stops just short of committing sure suicide on my left front fender causing me to swerve to the right and the guy next to me to swerve into the bus lane!  And there he was, in the middle turn lane, with his hands flapping around like a crow on fire.  I only saw a little out of the corner of my eye as I went past, but I’m pretty sure ‘gestures’ were involved.  He actually had the nerve to be mad at me because he almost hit me.  I was just driving – minding my own and then I almost had a heart-attack because of this buttnut!  *sigh*

Sorry..this is gonna be a long rant…because I wish I could say it all ended there.  At least the ‘excitement’ ended…sadly, the stupidity continued (and not my own).  For only four blocks further, where the freeway intersects with my two lane (each way) street, some wanker decided NOT to wait at the first green light like a normal person (so she wouldn’t block the intersection as the 2nd light was red), and instead proceeded to drive up behind the line of traffic waiting for the 2nd light on the next block – and in doing so, she did block the entire intersection to cross-traffic (I stopped at the green light this person should have stopped at and just waited for the show to start).

This is an intersection that has a three lane offramp from the freeway emptying into it.  It was bad enough that this off-ramp was now blocked by this person’s inconsideration and poor spacial planning skills…but to compound matters, when the off-ramp’s light turned green, yet ANOTHER turd chaser (from the off-ramp) drives right up to the driver door of the first car (who is blocking all cross-traffic of the intersection) and sits there blocking the entire oncoming line of traffic of the street I’m on.

Did I mention this is during the morning rush hour?

So there we are.  I’m completely blocked, oncoming direction is completely blocked, and the off-ramp is 75% blocked.  Why?  All because of a mini-van who didn’t have a basic understanding of it’s own size because the owner actually bought into the whole ‘mini’ marketing concept which says in a nutshell, YOU ARE MINI!  SO SMALL YOU CAN FIT INTO A NUTSHELL! and is devoid of all logic because logic states that if you drive into an intersection when the car in front of you is actually sticking 10% into himself, then you will be 110% sticking into it and in fact will block the entire thing.  Not only that, but the universal law of blocking intersections clearly states that:

a.) the light you think is about to change green [and is therefore your justification for blocking the intersection in the first place - i.e. "I'll only be here for a few seconds - it's just about to turn green!"], will in fact be the longest freaking light in town (and it is) and it will have JUST TURNED RED (because the traffic system in my town is utterly screwed up – just like every other town).

and

2.) will attract other misguided idiots who think that if they drive right up to your driver door [thereby blocking the entire oncoming line of traffic with not only his full size van-self, but also the trailer that's hitched to him] that their glaring at you will magically enable you to move (which is just silly because you can’t go anywhere! You’re stuck in an intersection!).

The effects of which will entangle the entire traffic area in a web of unjustifiable congestion that will be felt for no less than 7 minutes [in the immediate vicinity], and 20 minutes [in a two mile radius], give or take a few minutes depending on effects of road rage.

When I finally did clear the intersection…and then made my own way onto the freeway (after waiting through 4 – count’em FOUR lights), I saw traffic backed up on the freeway from the off-ramp of the previously blocked intersection – and it stretched down the freeway for at least a half mile.

In short, I was late to work because of a mini-van’s over inflated sense of self-importance.  And now you know why I detest mini-vans.