There ought to be a test

July 15, 2008 | Filed Under Parenting, Social idiocy, Lifestyles of the Heartlessly Bitchy | 2 Comments

The more time I spend around the “general public”, the more I become convinced: the herd needs culling.

I’m not kidding. The gene pool is seriously polluted. But then, dear readership, you already knew that, or you wouldn’t be a fan of this site.

Since modern science has interfered with Darwinian natural selection, I think we need to interefere further and impose a parenting test on all prospective parents. If for no other reason than to protect innocent kids from being born to utterly self-absorbed morons.

One thing that made my blood boil this past week was people taking babies and very young kids to Bluesfest, with NO hearing protection. Kids have much more sensitive eardrums. Everything is still growing, AND they have no choice or knowledge about how to protect themselves - they rely on their parents to do that. Any reasonably intelligent adult should know this.

A typical rock concert has music in the range of 100-125 decibels. Bluesfest was no exception. They were measuring noise in the range of 55-65 decibels over a kilometer away from the site. I rarely go close to the stages because it’s just too loud. But anywhere on the grounds with a child is still going to be exposing them to unacceptably high noise levels unless they have adequate hearing protection.

The worst was the couple with a (probably 8-week old) baby, who were decked out hemp clothing, probably ate all organic food, would likely breast-feed the kid till he was in college, and yet had him by the main stages with nothing more than cotton stuffed in his ears. The bf worked for a large manufacturer in the past. I asked him if they would allow the staff in the plant to use cotton balls for “hearing protection” in an area with 90+ decibels of noise. He snorted in disgust.

Honestly, these people are too STUPID to be allowed to breed! I’m beginning to think that for the protection of the kids, they should refuse parents entry who do not have adequate hearing protection for their kids. It’s illegal to take a child out on a boat without a life preserver or drive them around in a car without a seatbelt. It should be illegal to take them to a rock concert without hearing protection.

In truth, for the babies under 2 years of age at least, it should be illegal to take them to an adult music festival or concert, period, because apparently people are too STUPID to know better.

Pregnant women past 20 weeks expose there foetus to potential hearing loss (and themselves to premature labour) if they go into highly noisy environments as well. If you plan on carrying that baby to term, don’t go to a rock concert or festival past the first trimester.

Here’s the deal people - you CHOSE to have a child. DEAL with the responsibility that entails, AND the sacrifice. Like a movie theatre, or a play, a concert is NOT a place for a baby. If you can’t afford the sitter, you can’t afford to go. It’s as simple as that, so suck it up. You have to learn to an important concept that you should be teaching your kids: DELAY OF GRATIFICATION. It’s a concert. There will be another one. You can see the movie on DVD. Save up the few extra dollars for a sitter for that play, or trade baby-sitting with a neighbor.

You won’t be able to do all the same things you did when you were childless, so just accept that fact and be a fucking ADULT about it. Be the PARENT your child needs you to be. And if you aren’t ready to assume that responsibility and change your lifestyle it’s quite simple: DON’T FUCKING BREED.

�

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Parenthood through the eyes of the Heartless Bitch

July 9, 2008 | Filed Under Parenting, Lifestyles of the Heartlessly Bitchy | 1 Comment

I’ve been bluesfesting this week (as you may have seen from previous posts), and while there, I ran into a former co-worker and we spent a little time catching up. She’s on her 11 boss in 7 years with the same company (they go through VP’s of Marketing like so much used kleenex), but she was taking the week off to enjoy the festival. It’s something she and her husband do each year - they take the whole week off, play with the kids during the day (they have two pre-teen kids) and then go to the festival at night with full VIP passes. She said that last year she realized that for the cost of the babysitters at night (and most of the day on the weekends), it would be cheaper to send the kids off to camp. Her daughter was all for it last summer, but she had to work on her son. Through the course of the year she got him going to cubscout camps on weekends, and used to spending time away. By this summer, they were both finally ready to spend a week away from home. She and her husband loaded the kids on the bus that morning, and as it departed, her husband looked at her and said, “Well, that’s it. We are child-free for a week!”… and she burst into tears.

I said, “Aw honey, save the tears! You have a week of grown-up time after nearly a decade of mommy-dom. Revel in it! The time to REALLY cry is when they move back in at the age of 20, “to go to school”, eat you out of house and home, hog the TV, don’t get up until 2pm in the afternoon, and leave their smelly socks everywhere.” THEN you cry.

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Coaching my staff…

July 9, 2008 | Filed Under Work, The Heartless Bitch Way, Lifestyles of the Heartlessly Bitchy | No Comments

(names have been changed to protect the innocent)

Jane: Dave, can you do something for me?

Dave: What’s in it for me?

Me: Jane, in these situations the answer is always, “I won’t slit your throat in your sleep.” Remember that.

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Singin’ the Blues…

July 7, 2008 | Filed Under The Heartless Bitch Way | 1 Comment

A conversation between me and the bf as we walked home from Bluesfest…

me: “I saw these guys today, pushing a table and chair set home in a shopping cart. They’d obviously just bought it from the Sally Ann. I felt for them. I’ve been in that kind of financial state before. I thought about offering them a ride, but I wouldn’t be able to fit both them and their table in my car. Besides, it will give them a story to tell late one night at a party. I have stories like that…. like living in a $155/month rooming house with condemned plumbing while saving for school.”

bf: “I never had to live like that.”

me: “Yeah, well, you were a child of privilege.”

bf: “Maybe so, but I don’t have a sense of entitlement as a result.”

me:”True enough, but you’ll never be able to sing the blues either.”

bf: (looks incredulously at me): “Come on…. I’m a LEAFS fan…. 40 years without winning The Cup?”

me: “I stand corrected.”

�

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Up on the wrong side of the bed

July 2, 2008 | Filed Under The Heartless Bitch Way | 1 Comment

So I’m rushing into work this morning, because some *asshole* scheduled a 9am concall the day after Canada Day. Oh, wait. That asshole was me. Anyway, after walking across a field to the bus stop and riding the bus all the way downtown (standing room only), I am walking through the mall when I feel something around the back of my knee…. IN my capri pants. WTF?

As I stand on the escalator, I reach down as discretely as possible, and feel around the back of my knee. I can feel something lumpy. Really Lumpy. Shit.

I get off the escalator, and gingerly walk around the corner, to what I hope is a less visible location where there is a bench and nobody else around, and I start fishing UP the leg of my capris… It is VERY hard to do this in a discrete way. To my horror, I pull out a pair of white undies - just as a woman walks past and looks at me with a mixture of shock and amusement. I guess they got caught up in there during their run in the drier? Small consolation that they were clean - I hurriedly stuffed them in my purse, wondering how many people saw this weird bulge on the back of my leg and thought I had some kind of horrible tumor or something? Thank God they didn’t fall out completely while I was walking through the mall, or worse, on the bus! How I didn’t notice them earlier is a testimonial to how BAGGED I was this morning.

As soon as I got to work I made a conscious effort to immediately stuff the offending undies in a drawer at my desk. I had to take my team out to lunch and after the morning’s utter embarrassment, I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to open my purse to pay, and pull out underwear instead of my wallet.

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Random Canada Day Silliness…

July 2, 2008 | Filed Under Lifestyles of the Heartlessly Bitchy, Random Silliness | No Comments

Canada Day here is our equivalent of the US “Fourth of July”. Living in the nation’s capital, we do it up, Bigtime. Parties everywhere, tens of thousands of people thronging the streets, and given that the weather was FINALLY decent for a day, it seems that everyone (AND their dogs) were out enjoying the weather. Some people hate the crowds, but a number of our friends enjoy going out, seeing the sites, and enjoying the mayhem.

Our day started with a group “breakfast”, at 12:30, at a pizza place. I know. The irony kills me too.

(Well, in reality, the day started out with the bf making me late, but I won’t go into THAT here…)

Then we *sauntered* down to parliament hill (the bf insisted we SAUNTER rather than walk at A’s usual break-neck pace).

We arrived in time to Steve-o, our less-than-illustrious PM arriving for the festivities. *MEGAYAWN*.

So we left the crowds, (and the smell of the port-a-cans) behind and went to another popular location, “Major’s Hill Park”. Unfortunately, it was a complete and total zoo as well, and K just wanted to sit down somewhere and not fight crowds… The bf wanted to see if they had “lumberjack” shows on again this year, so we circled the outside of the park down to the show area, and found some guys doing hip-hop/breakdancing. Nope. no lumberjack poles. Ah well.

The requirement for a place to sit and drink beer was voiced, insistently, and since nobody objected, we made our way to a pub on Sussex, and proceeded to stay there till around 4:30pm. Then a few of us headed off to M&J’s for their now infamous Canada Day back yard party which includes killer margaritas and yummilicious burritos. Of course, after LAST year’s “incident” involving desecration of a Canadian Flag, the bf has sworn off tequila AND as such, the killer margaritas. It wasn’t until this year that I learned the margaritas are 75% alcohol. Well THAT would explain why last year I felt like someone had hit me over the head with a brick the moment I stood up! This year I limited myself to just 3 margueritas over course of the whole evening.

On the way there, we wandered along the Rideau Canal towards the “drunk bridge” which would we would have to cross to get to M&Js. The “Drunk Bridge” as the bf calls it, is a footbridge put in just last year, that connects the Univeristy/Residences with the other side of the Rideau Canal - ostensibly to Elgin Street, where many of the bars are. In other words, most people crossing from Elgin to the University side at night, are probably *staggering* across.

There are a lot of interesting people about on Canada day, and this time was no exception. As we were walking down the canal, we saw a guy hustling past us in a red dress. I guess I missed the first one because the bf said, “That’s the second guy I’ve seen in a dress along here. I wonder what’s going on?” We could see another guy coming towards us in a patterned but mostly red dress, with what we THINK was a woman in a red dress beside him… Yep, something was definitely going on. As the guy passed, I realized that it was a former roommate of mine. I told the bf this after they’d gone by.

“Really? He looks really OLD”.

“He’s 9 years younger than me.” (the Bf is one year younger than I am so I can still claim to be banging a younger guy).

“He still looks really old.”

“He was much cuter when he was younger.”

“He didn’t seem to recognize you.”

“If he did, I suspect he wouldn’t have the courage to say two words to me anyway. After all, I did kick his ass out.”

The bf gave me that knowing nod. The “I’d probably not want to cross you again if I’d pissed you off once before” look.

We made it across the drunk bridge without incident, and without running into any more men in dresses. When we got to M&J’s there were jello shots waiting patiently for takers. *sigh* And here I am, facing the fact that I have a 9am meeting tomorrow morning.

Though we had cheap tickets to a parking lot party back in the market, and I would REALLY have liked to see The Cliks, in the end inertia took its toll and we stayed drinking and talking to people at the party. The food was fabulous, but I paced myself on all fronts.

Eventually we all departed (except our delightful but exhausted hosts) for the fireworks at 10:00pm. This year I could walk there by myself, unsupported by A.

On our way back to the car I spotted a woman walking in front of us with 4″ high heels that had red satin straps wrapped/tied around her ankles. I noted that they were very festive - very “Canada Day” in their redness, and that I rather liked them, except that I couldn’t imagine walking 3 meters in those shoes, much less 3 blocks. T said, “Yes, but *she’s* probably a trained professional.”

To which A (my son’s gf) said, without skipping a beat, “Yeah, and I’ll bet it involves a pole.”

That girl is coming along just FINE under my tutelage.

�

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One side of a phone call between my spawn

June 27, 2008 | Filed Under Parenting, Random Silliness | No Comments

[ here. talk to your brother] (passes phone)

What are you wearing?
You are going poop?
That’s OK, lots of people get lonely when they go poop.
I know this girl who announces she has to go poop, and then grabs her cell phone.
You know, usually, I just READ when I’m on the toilet.
Did you tell [your girlfriend] that you were on the toilet?
Oh, that’s very sweet that you’d hold your poop while talking to your girlfriend.
Since the camaraderie and friendship is so tight tree planting did you get one of your buddies to push it back up in for you?
No, I didn’t say anything I just blacked out. Did you hear something?
Did anyone at least have the decency to give you a reach around?
Oh, they were catching?
No, that’s what guys say about their girlfriends.

No. No. No. It was with a girl. You know. Shut up. You just don’t get it do you?
No. It’s with a woman. And it’s not. Though it’s just unfair if I’m not invited.
Yes. I’ll hold the camera.
(laden with sarcasm) Gee… that does sound enticing.
Did you?
Well gee golly that sounds exciting. Really.
No, they are the friendliest kinds of natives. Ask anybody.
They don’t know how to throw tomahawks anymore, that’s a thing of the past. Now they organize their fur trading on blackberries and shit and drive around on segways.
Gee. That’s a change. Natives selling drugs. When did that happen?

How do you poop for that long? I mean, I just hate sitting on the toilet for that long. My legs get numb.
Heh. heh. That would totally suck.
That would be so unfun.
Twice.
I’m pretty good aren’t I?
yeah.
I can hear it flushing though.
Alright, bye.
I’ll think about it.
OK. Fair enough. Will do. Alright.
Bye.
Oh Yeah. Thanks. Now.
Bronze Medal.
Piece of shit.

�

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Best quotes from the cottage this weekend…

June 15, 2008 | Filed Under The Heartless Bitch Way, Random Silliness | No Comments

“Hey, I’m a hot-sauce wimp here. Especially given that the guys in our group measure their virility in Scoville units.”

“It would hardly be a ‘deathtrap’ if it had life-saving devices on it now, would it?” (in discussing whether or not to take life jackets out on the HMCS Deathtrap floating raft)

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And the word for the day is…

June 14, 2008 | Filed Under Social idiocy, The Heartless Bitch Way | 3 Comments

…”SHEEPLE”

as in “People who are SHEEP”. (I wanted to say “people who are fucking sheep”, because I feel that strongly about it, but given the fact that “fucking” can be an adjective or a verb, it could give the wrong connotation and completely mislead my audience. As it is, this post alone is going to get me indexed by the pervs looking for bestiality sites).

I’ve been riding my bike to work lately and it’s given me a whole new perspective on how bad the “herd” mentality in humans actually IS. I have become even MORE convinced (if that is even possible) that most people are, in fact, SHEEPLE.

I take the bike paths for most of my route to work, but for one part, I simply can’t. The streets are so filled with traffic and large scary buses, and narrow lanes, that I take the sidewalk for a short segment of my journey. Now this is a LARGE, WIDE boulevard of a sidewalk. There is room for all on it. And yet, even if I “ding” my bell politely as I approach the herds standing at bus stops, they just STAND there, doe-eyed, if they even look at me, in clusters ALL OVER the sidewalk, and most make no effort at all to move, even though there is plenty of space to step aside and let me through. It reminded me of the cattle I used to encounter on my way to a workplace that was in a rural location. Big, immobile and dumb as posts. They look at you with utter (udder?) vacancy in their eyes.

Fer CRISSAKES PEOPLE. FUCKING MOVE. Show some COURTESY. Step aside. It’s not like it would COST you anything! I’m taking an environmentally responsible option for getting to work. I’m not going super fast. I’m just trying to get through.

And even when I’m NOT on my bike I regularly see people who are willfully fucking oblivious and self-centered and will stop and chat in front of a very busy door way or entryway where people are streaming in and out. Could they step to one side, and not block the entrance? NOOOOOOO. Apparently they simply MUST stop right there to talk on their cellphones or chat with their friends. And we Canadians are so damn polite, we will seldom say, “Would you mind moving to one side? (You fucking clueless and self-absorbed idiot)”. I have noticed this is particularly bad for people getting off planes. Could they stand to one side of the gangway? No. They have to stop and get their family organized in the MIDDLE of the exit ramp.

Of course, my frustration has been driven ever deeper by the fact that I have been involved in an environmental cause - a fight against legislation and companies that, if allowed to continue, could result in radioactive contamination of our food and water supply. We have been trying to raise public awareness and just get people to understand the issues. Unfortunately, the vast majority just want to keep their herd blinders on and really not know anything about it. They have no desire to learn or know or pay attention to what is going on around them. They are SHEEPLE.

We periodically do information sessions, and hand out fliers. Really simple one-page sheets that highlight the main issues and invite people to find out more through a very good website that has plenty of info. It is staggering how many people just put their heads down and bluster past. If you ask if they would just like some information on the subject, they mutter “no. not interested.” Especially frustrating are the “fashion victims” that travel in their own mini-herds (male and female alike), that probably know exactly what is going on in Britney Spears’ life today, but couldn’t care less about anything that doesn’t come from a mall or favorite TV show. Lately I have had to strongly suppress the urge to not jump in front of those types, stare them close in the face and loudly shout, “BAAAAAAAAAAAA!”, just to see the reaction.

Similarly, as I attempt to cycle past the herds on the sidewalk (yuppies in suits are the worst), that completely ignore the bell on my bike, I have to suppress that urge as well.

So many Sheeple. It’s enough to make a Heartless Bitch totally misanthropic.

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“Rudeness Waiting”

June 10, 2008 | Filed Under The Heartless Bitch Way | 2 Comments

One of the most annoying phone habits I have come across is the current societal addiction to what I call, “Rudeness Waiting”.

You know, that “service” that is otherwise known in the industry as “call waiting”?

I have lost count of the number of times I have been on calls with people only to get, “Hold on, I have another call coming in.”, only to be put on hold for some period of time, or dumped out of the call altogether. Once I got fed up and hung up because this happened 3 times in one (not very long) call. Another time I said very quickly, “NO. Let them go to voicemail. I said, LET THEM GO TO VOICEMAIL.”, and I could tell this was a completely foreign concept, but I was pissed off and made my displeasure quite known. This is especially frustrating when THEY are the people that called ME in the first place. It’s like some bizarre Pavlovian effect - they hear the beep of another call and they simply HAVE to answer it.

I don’t have rudeness waiting on my home phone, and it is on my mobile only because of work. Even so, I almost never preempt an existing call with an incoming one.

I mean, REALLY folks. Unless you have some kind of multi-million-dollar financial deal going down, or a relative at death’s door, or an emergency at work, do you HAVE to take that other call just because it is coming in? (Especially when the person you are speaking to is calling long distance?) What ever happened to basic courtesy?�

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There ought to be a test

Parenthood through the eyes of the Heartless Bitch

Coaching my staff…

Singin’ the Blues…

Up on the wrong side of the bed

Random Canada Day Silliness…

One side of a phone call between my spawn

Best quotes from the cottage this weekend…

And the word for the day is…

“Rudeness Waiting”

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