The Bitterness Blog

Remember how I posited earlier this week that there is a direct correlation between my job loss and the harsh wintry conditions that have lately been overtaking Northern VA?

Is the weather serious right now? Are you fucking kidding me?

I was right.  The ass-raping I endured by my former employer caused some kind of cosmic tear in the fabric of the universe, and this shit-storm is the result.  And it’s NOT OKAY.  Yesterday I had to make my way from the front door to the side of the house to clear snow off the satellite receiver because it was seriously fucking up my tv watching, and it took 2 people to even push aside enough snow to open the front door.  When I stepped outside, I sunk into snow that was thigh-deep, and I’m not a midget.  I heard on the news that 50,000 homes in the area are without power (and to those people l can only express my deepest sympathies, because that sucks serious balls).  The government is closed tomorrow because the metro is only able to operate a train every 30 minutes at underground stations only.  I am seriously concerned that this is the beginning of a new ice age and the end of the human race.  And that picture above?  That’s my back porch, or at least I think it is, but I’m not sure anymore because I CAN’T SEE PAST THE GODDAMN SNOW.  I’m resigned to not leaving the house tomorrow because I’m concerned that if I did I would never make it home again.  You would find me in a month, frozen to death in the snow in my own driveway.

And the best part?  Another snowstorm is expected on Tuesday.

*I totally stole that title from Lauren.  Though she may be slowly dying of boredom, locked alone in her apartment, her ability to make me laugh out loud is still alive and well.

In the time that I have been unemployed, NoVa has had 3 snowstorms.  And now, weather forecasters are predicting 2 feet of snow to hit beginning early afternoon tomorrow.  Coincidence?  I think not.

I’m just saying…

I have a message for the weather gods:

Seriously, again?  This is the THIRD time this winter that I have had to cancel my plans due to inclement weather.  It’s one thing for this shit to happen on weekdays, because then at least I know school children and their teachers are benefitting and I probably didn’t have anything too exciting planned anyways since everyone I know has an actual job to go to during the week (losers).  But weekend snow storms are simply unacceptable.  It takes very little to persuade me to spend my day wearing elastic pants and watching American’s Next Top Model reruns, but I was supposed to get my hair cut today, and fuck if I don’t desperately need a haircut.  My hair is starting to look like that of a homeless person, or the more raggedy of the Olsen twins. Also, the mail didn’t get delivered today, and I was expecting Netflix.  It’s wrong to fuck with a girl’s Netflix delivery.  And now my dad and I are probably going to have ride the metro to tomorrow’s Caps game instead of driving, and I get really stressed out by traveling with the unwashed masses. I realize I’m no longer a contributing member of society, but I still smell nice. I’m getting itchy just thinking about it.

My father has a den, the purpose of which is for him to freely revel in manly things.  Or in his case, old-manly things, because he mainly sits with his feet up and watches documentaries such as The History of Great Britain with the dog in his lap.  (The History of Great Britain is a real documentary, and my father actually paid for it, or rather I paid for it, because he put it on his Christmas list one year.  Meet my dad, and try to contain your excitement.)

Whenever he heads to his den, he usually does so equipped with a diet coke and a jar of peanuts, which I totally support. I love peanuts.  The dog loves peanuts.  We all love peanuts.  He usually has Planters cocktail peanuts, but he also enjoys Planters Spanish redskin peanuts, which are covered in this sort of weird shell that vaguely resembles exoskeleton.  It’s not a hard shell that you have to crack; it’s literally a red skin over the peanut.  Hence the name.

I went into his den the other day to chat, see how Great Britain is doing, make sure he hadn’t died of boredom, etc.  I nearly had a heart attack because on the carpet next to his chair was what I can only describe as the aftermath of an invasion of locusts who simultaneously dropped their outer bugskins before flying off.  I literally gasped and backed out of the room, thinking it was some kind of bug infestation, and tried to figure out how I could successfully remove the dog from the room without him or I having to touch or be touched by insects.  Then I realized they were not bugs, but Spanish peanut redskins, in a little pile, on the floor, next to my 62 year old father.

At that point I became worried in a different way, specifically that my father had, overnight, reached that point in old age where he can no longer efficiently feed himself.  So I calmly asked him what the fuck was going on.

His response?

“You know I don’t eat the skins.”

Yes, I did know that.  But what I didn’t know was how they had all ended up ON THE FLOOR.

Welcome to our humble abode. If you get hungry, check the floor.

My father looked at me like I was crazy and explained that the skins needed to go somewhere and it was too difficult to save them on a napkin.

Then I called my mother into the room.

My father went on to explain that he had every intention of cleaning up the peanuts when he was done with the jar.  Which was over half full.  In other words, my father intended to let the peanut skins sit on the carpeted floor for a day or two, and in fact, already had been letting them sit there, the pile just wasn’t big enough the day before for me to notice.  Apparently the house became one of those eateries where you get free peanuts while you wait for the real food and throw the shells on the floor when I wasn’t paying attention.

My mother called my father a feeble old man (to his face) and vaccumed up the peanut skin and  I suddenly understood, with striking clarity, why I can’t keep my car clean and organized to save my life.  When my mother finished cleaning and left, my father turned to me and said, “Well, it is MY den.”

Touche Dad, touche.

So I played Wii for the first time over the weekend (I know, I know, and I don’t have a facebook page either, so sue me).  I sucked major balls, but by the end I felt like I was sort of maybe possibly starting to get the hang of it.  They have little games designed to get you acclimated to the system, and one of them shows a crowd of Wii people and somewhere in the crowd are two or three identical people and the goal is to match them up.  I was playing with Lauren and Rachael (who, it turns out, is a competitive bitch with no scruples) (much love Rach!), and on one level I kept clicking on these matching black dudes and I could not figure out why it kept making the obnoxious errrhhhh noise to indicate that they were not a match.  Rachael noticed I was having difficulty and gleefully explained to me that the reason I was having issues was that the two characters didn’t actually match.  They were both black guys but not the SAME black guy, and then she even more gleefully explained to me that not all black guys look the same and I’m racist.

How much are we going to miss her when she goes to Bolivia?

In my defense, Wii is its own special and very different world and it takes time to get used to the visuals of it as well as the controls and movements. Secondly… so I was accidentally racist; it happens to the best of us.  Thirdly, those two black dudes looked a hell of a lot alike.

But most importantly, I posit that I was not racist, but rather that the Wii itself was/is racist.  All the white folk in the game had very clearly defined characteristics that allows one to easily differentiate between them.  They have different hair colors, eye colors, facial structure, hairdos, etc.  The black dudes looked the same, because in Wii-land all black people have the same general hairdo, hair color, facial structure, and skin tone.  Worse yet, think of how much time and energy and preparation went into the creation of the Wii and the accompanying games.  During all that time, no one at Nintendo noticed that all the black dudes looked the same?  Clearly, affirmative action hasn’t penetrated the walls of Nintendo’s offices, because if any black folk worked there, they might have noticed the issue.  Or maybe they do work there and tried to point this out but were ignored.

Who’s racist now?

You can see where I'm coming from. Don't deny it.