Stop (Auto) Correcting Me!

As a self proclaimed member of the Grammar Police Brigade, I daresay their’s nothing more embarassing then comitting a foh pah.

Ha. Ha.

And yet...I have a love/hate relationship with the Institution of the Auto Correct & Format.

I’d say it sways more toward love a lot of the time. But there have been so many instances lately, mostly on the good old iPhone, where I simply want to gouge out Mr. Auto Correct’s metaphoric eyes. Stop watching me auto correct, you sleek, slender creep!

(And let it be said that I know auto correct can be added and taken away...a technicality for the sake of this entry.)

Fine, I appreciate auto correct most of the time. It’s better to be shamed by an electronic genius in the privacy of my apartment than to cringe and cower when I notice that I’ve spelled something as simple as “occasion” wrong on the world wide web. (That word! Always! Dammit.)

I fear that Microsoft Outlook (GASP!) deserves a big shout out too. Buddy boy tells me when I’ve messed up words in my work emails. He even capitalizes my name for me when my Shift-key-reach doesn’t take. Kitschy lingo flies on Urban Dictionary and Gmail, but it don’t so much fly in an office enviro, got my drift yo?

And though the instances may be (very) few and (very) far between (ha), I am grateful for the time or two where auto correct has called me out on my erroneous homophone usage.

But other than THAT. Seriously auto correct, you pompous ass you! If I’ve made a fragment, then it’s probably on purpose. So shut UP, no I do NOT want to “consider revising” thank you very much. Otherwise I’d screw up the whole point I was trying to get across.

And why the red and green scary underline colors? Though I love, love, love Christmas, I think that’s a little small-minded of you, auto correct. Get some culture up in there.

And update your dictionary. I should not have to “Add” words for you. Get off your lazy ass. It is not my job to

overhaul your entire electronic system. Bonafide is, actually, a real word. So quit it with your threatening dotted red line.

Perhaps I’m more readily able to forgive Word and Works and Pages and, fine, Spell Check in general (though Blogger’s spell check is horrendous - I’m talking dark ages vocabulary), because they prevent abysmal mortification.
But iPhones? In. Sane. Insane I tell you! Yes, texting is faster and easier and lovelier than having to press actual keys. But the downside is that your clumsy fat thumbs get in the way a lot and, so, misspellings are quick to transpire.

iPhone is great when he hits his stride, when he’s being telepathic and reading my mind. I get so excited when a word that looks NOTHING like what it’s meant to be actually pops up after you hit the space key. WAHOO!!



Then there are times that I completely lose faith with the phone. I want to shout at it and, again, gouge its stupid eyes out.

For instance: twas becoming tWas. Why the capital W, iPhone? What language do you speak? Don’t you think that capital W is a little unnecessary? Far too excessive iPhone, shame on you.

And stop capitalizing my abbreviation for tomorrow. I don’t have any friends named Tom.

Quit trying to make “etter” into “errrr” - that’s three letters off! Add ONE letter instead and you’ve got “better” - DUH. Get with the program, iPhones!

Your Maker (Mac-er) is totes brill - so why aren’t you up to snuff yet?

Oh Hi, Dry.

That was a very begrudging “Hi” indeed. An extremely dry “Hi” if you will.

Cause you see, I did NOT miss you at ALL, dry skin.You know, I don’t think I will ever run out of things to No Dankes when it comes to wintertime. And fall and early spring, for that matter.

I’m gonna knock it up a notch. I daresay I hate the bitter cold that is descending upon us for the unforeseeable future.

But when it comes to winter, I despise one element most of all. You see, with winter comes fake heat. And fake heat squeezes the shit out of any moisture our skin can muster. Squanders it. Squashes.

Add to this the superfluous amount of germs. flu germs, namely (which have been running exceptionally rampant this winter! Which translates to more hand washing. Incessant hand washing, actually. (For me, at least.)

I dread the time of year when the heat comes on and the flakes come out (skin not snow). Dehydrated epidermis is awful yo. Awful!

Hot showers are no longer soothing, they’re your worst enemy. I can literally feel my skin contracting, tightening, shriveling into itself after a hot shower. So I make some sacrifices and have a far less enjoyable warm shower instead. Under five minutes (as all showers should be).

Radiators and heat vents are no longer beacons of inviting warmth, but lamentable purveyors of the dreaded - eek - cracked, raw skin.
 

And beware of that pipe running through the corner of your apartment - it is most likely HOT and will undoubtedly BURN YOU. Trust me, I speak from experience.

As if it’s not bad enough that every square centimeter of our winter bodies are red and split and flaking and itching and painful, there’s not a single good remedy for it.

Sure, drink more water. Yeah, like that will do anything. That’s like telling a plant to go find some shade in the middle of the Sahara.

Then there’s: Go put some put lotion on. But of course! Let me just sting the shit out of my poor, poor skin even more. And while it’s burning and flaming and apparently being zapped by a thousand little needle heads, let me try to pick up my can of soda.

But oh, wait, there goes my drink everywhere because it slipped through my slick, greased up hands (this happened to me last week...all over the book I was reading - devastation).

With the advent of wintertime, we become a society of geriatrics - what with our Head and Shoulders, our Lubriderm, our moisture sockies and glovies, our nonstop, 24/7 humidifiers, our omnipresent Vaseline.

It’s a battle, I tell you. A fight against the radiator, the institution of showering, against itchy wool sweaters and bottles of alcohol-based hand sanitizers (60% minimum!), against the icy, cutting wind outside, and hot-air, thirst-inducing office vents within.

It is a very serious, very expensive, very painful battle.

Painful and expensive indeed! This may be a little TMI but my come winter, my legs get so dry they could moonlight as a dried up lake in Death Valley under a microscope. And dry (for me), means itchy. Obviously the last thing you should do when something itches is scratch it.

That’s what landed me an Rx for Cordran Lotion. Liquid gold - literally. That little 60 mL bottle is $50 - with insurance. Without it, gah...I shudder at the thought.

Cordran is a lifesaver. It has saved me from my rabid, scratching self on many occasions. But as it’s pretty much the price of gold, I restrict its usage to very exception(ally bad) occasions. For everyday I use Lubriderm - 13-15 pumps worth for each leg.

That’s.a.lotta.lotion.

While I’m whiling away winter cause it empties my pockets, Johnson & Johnson is loving every second. Rolling in the dough. Man oh man they must sell a shitload of lotion. Ugh.

Reduce.Reuse.Recyle, Retards!

I’m not gonna pretend I’m all “Save Mother Earth” all the time. Of course I waste electricity, paper, water. I am human. But I think what sets me apart from a whole slew of other peeps is that I’m hyper aware of it.

I’m aware of what/how much I waste and put forth (some) effort in curbing it. I don’t take long showers (though that’s twofold - I don’t want me no dry skin), I turn the water off when I brush my teeth, I use a Nalgene bottle, I b.y.o.bag when I go grocery shopping, and - most importantly - I recycle.

Yes friends and foes, kiddies and cousins, moms and pops and grans and gramps, remember those three clever R’s - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle? Well you need to start abiding by that mantra. Like, yesterday, yo!

I know, I know. We city dwellers have it made. It’s as simple as dragging our bags downstairs and eeny, meeny, miny, moe-ing between garbage (plain aluminum), glass and plastic (blue), and paper products (green). Yes, it’s even color coded. Foolproof!

But for you non-city folk, recycling takes effort. It’s different when you’re the one in charge of properly disposing of recyclables (i.e. making trips to da dump - Papa P’s favorite pastime). It’s a pain in the ass. I hear ya! But I’m telling you, you need to suck it up and comply. No ifs ands or buts.

Last week I had dinner at Whole Foods and, come clean up time, was utterly befuddled by their trash system. They’s got a shit ton of garbage options!: landfill, food and dirty napkin waste for compost, clean paper products for recycling, glass, cans, excess COFFEE, omg can’t even remember what else.

I stood there dumbfounded, reading and rereading the instructions before Kelly led me by example. It was bananas.

I know, guys. Not only is recycling a pain in the buttocks, it can also be intimidating. You might feel stupid and silly for a couple of minutos. Perhaps you’ll even feel put-upon (how DARE you ask ME to do some of the sorting, Waste Management!! Who do you think you are, huh? Huh!?!)

This is understandable. Whole Foods and some new fangled sports venues (à la Yankees Stadium) do guilt trip you into recycling - I concur. But they do so with good reason. Don’t you leave those trash cans feeling like you’ve accomplished something, like you’ve made your carbon footprint smaller? Infinitesimally so, yes, but still. Smaller.

And that, my friends, is what it’s all about.

Now please, I don’t henceforth want to be called Preacher Parry - but come on peeps. Get off yer lazy asses and at least, at LEAST start taking proper care of your glass and plastic containers. Maybe even b.y.o.bags when you go shopping. Sing it Maria: Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start!
I cringe - literally cringe - when I see people tossing their Mountain Dew n’ Bud Light bott’s into the garbage right along with their Big Mac leftovers (yikes, musta gotten sick before they could even finish!) Or when I see people swigging out of Poland Springs bottles at the gym. Or when I see piles of soiled newspapers sitting on the sidewalk.

I hate it when certain stupid, lazy citizens of this country - people with full use of their legs AND complete access to recycling bins - toss their no good, very bad toxic containers into landfill-bound garbage cans. They do so without a second thought as to where it’ll end up.

To those of who could care less about doing a good deed, about helping out our planet (oh BOY do I sound mushy or what?? Shut UP Parry!), at least do it for the cash incentive. 5¢ surely ain’t much, but if you collect a whole bunch of 5¢-ers, you could at least buy yourself a few rounds of PBR!

I’ll leave you with this:

“Every year, Americans throw away 50 billion food and drink cans, 27 billion glass bottles and jars, and 65 million plastic and metal jar and can covers. More than 30% of our waste is packaging materials. Where does it all go? Some 85% of our garbage is sent to a dump, or landfill, where it can take from 100 to 400 years for things like cloth and aluminum to decompose.”

That is deeeeesgusting. So let’s quit it, shall we?

(Whew, have I missed my mission in life? Environmental Activist? I think not. But the least you can do is check out recycling areas near you. And yeah, I fully expect a PBR paid for by recycled cans when next we meet.)