Where Have All the ChapSticks Gone?

America is a culture built upon a slippery slope. We are a people of the addiction, for the addiction, by the addiction.

Just think about it: Alcoholics. Overeaters. Smokers. Druggies. Sex addicts. Potheads.

If there is a commodity, we will - undoubtedly - abuse it.

But there is one addiction that I fear does not get anywhere near enough attention from the media.
Chapstick.

Seriously. There are two types of people in the world - those who are addicted to Chapstick and those who will break out the Blistex only on the driest of wintry days. Only when it’s ten degrees below and their lips are cracking and bleeding and they’re on a chairlift heading up a mountain.
I, unfortunately, belong to the former group of people - the abusers. (And let me just say that it has NOTHING to do with Katy Perry and her stupid Cherry Chapstick.)

Yep, I have an asticktion. My name is Katie and I'm a ChapStickaholic.

If there is not a stick or a pot or a tube in sight, I pace around like a heroin addict waiting for my fix.
The more anxious I become about my lack of chap, the redder my lips get. They scream and burn with hatred over their owners’ stupidity. I have to resort to licking them as consolation which really only exacerbates their chapped-ness.

I’ve been an addict for as long as I can remember. I don’t remember how it started. But either you’re a member of that club or you aren’t. So many people I know never need that stick-o-crack. But for me - well, there’s just no escaping Burt’s vise (such a vice!)

I don’t particularly mind being a lip balm junkie. Unless it’s one of those rare occasions when I’ve changed bags and forgot - the horror - to throw one in.

Really, though, I’m usually quite good about remembering my chapstick. I’d give myself an A- (and that’s pretty amazing considering my forgetfulness). Before I leave my apartment, my mental checklist is something like: purse, chapstick, phone, keys.

Oh yeah, it’s numero dos on my list de importantes.

That’s why it’s so difficult to understand why I have such a poor track record with my sticks and pots and tubes-o-lube. It’s so unfair. Where do they all go???

It’s like that book The Velveteen Rabbit except all the chapsticks in my apartment come alive while I’m asleep and party the night away in true NYC style, hiding themselves by morning. 


Does anyone else have this problem?

I collect chapstick. Let’s see (now this does NOT include lipgloss or lipstick, otherwise we’d be here for hours...oh, and yes, this is my actual lip-stuff drawer. Don’t judge).
 
Four Smith’s Rosebud Salves (two orig, one bramble, one minted). Two Perfumeria Gals. Three Blistex Lip Medex. Two Kiss My Faces. One Banana Republic. One Badger Balm. Four ChapSticks (hate the ones with sunscreen but apparently I’ve got two of them). Some random Aquafina brand kind. Five Burt’s Bees. Bored? OK...I’ll stop there.

I even have a pink Labello chapstick I bought in Rome my Sophomore year of college.

The messed up thing, in my opinion, is not the fact that I have a ridiculous number of lip balms. It’s that I can never seem to find one when I’m in need. Don’t think I’m crazy or anything - even if I did just list all the ones I currently have in my drawer.

You see, like any other addict, I have a preference. A favorito. If you’re a Bud drinker, you’re not really gonna enjoy drinking a Coors Light, now, are you?

My drug of choice is Burt’s Bees.
But maybe I need to start treating my cute yellow tubes with more

R-E-S-P-E-C-T cause seriously, I have never finished one in its entirety.

It’s nuts! They just disappear on me.

Damn you chapstick and your stupid magic disappearing acts.

(Let the record show that after writing this, I cleaned under my bed/couch/butcher block and found three chapsticks in hiding. Makes me wonder. Maybe it’s not the chapstick that’s evil, but rather the apartment...

...spoken like a true addict: Everyone’s lookin’ for someone to blame.)

Bitter Cups-o-Café

I find it most unfortunate that people who have met me in my adult life know me as a sardonic, sarcastic, sneering individual. Most unfortunate indeed.

Alas, there is nothing to do but tell you that I was once a very sweet, kind, caring person (for the most part...we all have our moments). So amiable and benevolent, in fact, that I deemed it my duty to be philanthropic. At the tender age of fifteen, I gave up my Saturday’s to volunteer at my local hospital.

Yes, I would wake up at 8:30 every Saturday morning and be dropped off at the Gazebo Gift Shop where I worked the morning shift. While my peers slept the day away, I chatted amicably with my "coworkers" - women old enough to be my grandmother. And because these elderly women weren’t too quick on their feet, it fell upon me to run the snack counter in the back of the shop.

It was there, in the Gazebo Gift Shop at Sharon Hospital (over ten years ago, gah!) that I had my first encounter with coffee snobbery.

The kitchen at the gift shop was certainly no great shakes. We had the standards: bagels, sandwiches, muffins, juice…and java. I made one pot each of regular and decaf, then poured the brew into thermoses. And these thermoses lasted pretty much the whole day.

One day, just before my shift was over, a woman asked for a cup of coffee. She wanted to know how long it’d been sitting there and I shrugged. Seriously? Coffee was coffee, after all. I handed it to her, she walked away, sipped, and marched right back, demanding I make a new pot. The nerve! Begrudgingly I did so. And now I understand why.

Knowing what I know now, it’s hard to believe that was ever so naïve about a cup of café.

My relationship with joe really took off when I started high school. I’d make Dunkin’s Hazelnut at home and add International’s French Vanilla creamer. Delish! We’ve been pretty serious since then. But I, unfortunately, have become that woman in the Gazebo Gift Shop demanding fresh coffee.

OK, well not demanding. Never demanding. But most sheepishly, passive aggressively trying to get the freshest pot, for sure. I even let people go in front of me if I see that the pot it almost at bare bottom. Because there is nothing worse than old coffee, I tell ya. Nothing. (Alright, well perhaps going to the corner bodega at 3am to find they ran out of Snickers Ice Cream bars is worse.)

For reals, though, freshly brewed coffee is…there are no words. It’s splendiferously smile inducing. Love, love, love it!

By the same token, stale, bitter, burnt java is ferooooociously frown inducing. Hate, hate, hate it. Ruins my whole day. Awful! And Dunkin’s is by far the most absurd, obscene culprit of them all. I don’t understand how they get away with serving customers that watery brown sludge. It tastes like burning toxicity. Like you’re drinking poison. Oh, I’m sorry, do you have a tube running from the bathroom? Probably.

I find that the sludgiest Dunkin coffee comes from the vats. Sure, sure, this is New York City and they do get slammed with out-the-door lines every morning. But why can’t they simply make pots instead of putting it in those thermos-like vats? Trust me, I wouldn’t go to DD’s if it weren’t for their hazelnut and French vanilla hot coffee and their coconut (don’t judge) iced coffee - I hate how Starb’s has only the flavor pumps. They jade the coffee flavor even further.

Dunkin and their stale vats of dirty, flavored water aren't singularly guilty, though. Practically every coffee shop, diner, restaurant, and cart is culpable of serving burnt coffee. They all leave pots on the warmers, sizzling and frying away. Boiling and thickening down to a sepia colored slop.

All decoction delinquents - stale, bitter, and burnt - are equally virulent. They all leave a coating on my tongue, a burning in my throat, and give me a very acute case of heartburn.

Even though I detest every sip of mutilated java, I haven't the heart to dump it down the drain. Nor can I demand a fresh pot - scarred as I am by that woman demanding one of me when I was but fifteen years old.

So I beg thee, dearest coffee shops: make a fresh pot. If the consistency of the coffee is turning to stale sludge, if it has been boiling on the burner for far too long, please. Please just make a fresh pot.

Pepper Imposter

Black pepper is, without a doubt, my most favorite spice. In fact, I find it quite interesting that it’s called a “spice” – I think of it more as a staple. A necessity, really. Like water or legumes or Snickers Ice Cream bars. I do not understand how people dislike pepper. It’s practically the most perfect thing ever – not as acerbic as salt or as fiery as cayenne or as halitosis-inducing as garlic powder.

To be asked to eat something without pepper is, to me, sacrilegious. And though I could never not shake, shake, shake black pepper on a dish I’m about to devour, there is nothing worse than the counterfeit, contemptible “pepper” that adorns restaurant tables.

It’s positively blasphemous. I do not understand how eateries and fast food joints get away with serving those gray and black flakes of dandruff. Horrific! Such an imitation.

For the love of food! Please, please dear restaurants and Dunkin’s, diners and delicatessens, dives and McD’s – please. Can you just provide your devoted customers with some friggin pepper grinders?

There is nothing better than fresh ground pepper. Especially when the peppercorns are black and red and green and white. My oh my! I kiss the glass those shriveled berry balls reside in. It's so unbelievably satisfying to flip over that bottle and grind away, to shake those fresh, fresh specks over salad. Or soup. Or, as is usually the case with me, an entire plate.
Pepper really makes the dish. Every dish, every time.

So why the fjkeajfka do restaurateurs – or households, for that matter – use the imitation stuff? It gives black pepper a bad name. And those packets! Those stupid, minute little packets. Do they really deem that a SERVING? They are such a joke. This isn’t salt, people. A pinch will certainly NOT do.

The pepper found in packets and shakers is pretty much The New York Times ripped and shredded and chopped into diminutive crumbs. That’s why they want you to recycle newspapers, duh, so they can make black pepper out of them!


Lets all start a boycott, shall we? No more using those faux flakes that dining institutions call “pepper”. It really is an insult to the Piper nigrum and its most hallowed, venerable vines.

Ah. In my dreams. If only I had the strength to reject that phony black pepper. Alas, I cannot. The second food is in front of me I reach for that paltry, pathetic shaker. Perhaps it’s mental, but I suppose I would rather suffer through the imitation stuff than eat something that has not been properly peppered.

So until pepper grinders are omnipresent on both plaid, plastic tablecloths and in polished oak dining rooms ‘round the world, I suppose that shaking the bejesus out of the sports section will have to suffice.

Sigh.

The Voice in My Head.

I've always had an odd, somewhat demanding relationship with the voice in my head. And the one in other people’s heads for that matter.

I remember going on a road trip when I was little. My older brother was driving me caaa-razy (for once - usually it was the other way around). He would not stop humming the Star Wars theme song.

And his humming was by no means quiet.

“Sing it in your head!!” I yelled. Then proceeded to pout and pester and push...and pout...until he stopped (not much has changed, one might notice...oh how I kept up - er, keep up - such a façade of innocence).
Who knows what happened (I do have a horrific memory, after all), but I seem to recall being laughed at. My parents thought it was funny that I would say such a thing.

Sing a song in your head. HA.

What’s wrong with that request, I ask? Does no one else have this kind of relationship with the goddamn voice in their noggin? Oh, perhaps instead you prefer - à la Trissi - to talk out loud to yourself.
No, no. Everyone’s got that tiny little angel. And that big fat devil (happy 20th Homer!) - they’re called thoughts.

Man oh man, I even made the horrifyingly obtuse assumption that everyone’s inner-voice (as in all people all over the world) - speaks English. You know, just like me.

Such a patronizingly American supposition.

(In my defense, I was young and naïve when I thought this and really had no concept of the human mind and that it’s possible for people to think in their own tongue. Silly, silly moi.)

Nevertheless, I am f-e-d u-p with the loud, whiny, abusive, relentless, enabling voice inside my head.
Totes O.I.

(That means over it for those of you not down with my colloquialisms.)

From my youth onward, I’ve been hyper-aware of that noisy little monster that sounds, unsurprisingly, just like me. (And I do mean monster.)

We have an extremely tumultuous and tempestuous relationship.

I’ve judged the voice. Tried (unsuccessfully) to squelch it. Disagreed with it. Paid attention to it (perhaps not as often as I should). Told it to shut-the-eff-up cooooountless times.
But there is one regard I have towards the voice that blows all other feelings out of the water. I find that, more than anything, I am angry with my stupid, vapid inner-voice.

It manages at last to work out the perfect sentence, form the perfect speech - then goes and forgets everything before I can say it aloud or write it down.

It tells me my outfit is nice when in reality...ah hem. (Exhibit A - yikes).

It tells me not to eat that fifth cookie, then completely rationalizes my eating it by saying I’ll be good starting tomorrow.

It keeps me awake at night. Good LORD does it keep me awake at night. Insomniarama indeed. No matter how tired my body may be, that little voice inside my head just keeps talking and talking and talking. Nada but nonsense.

Unfortunately, though, it seems like I’m stuck with that damn voice for as long as we both shall live.

Wamp wamp.

Blue Pen Blues

I love making lists. Grocery shopping lists, invite lists, to-do lists.

In fact, I think it’s one of the most fulfilling tasks (of those most mundane tasks that we must fulfill): to write a to-do list and, one by one, cross things off.

Sometimes all the time I add things to my to-do list that I’ve already done, or am in the process of doing, simply so I can cross them off. So I can obtain those little bubbles of achievement before they burst away.
But there is – of course – a catch to my afternoon-list-making delight. A snag in my willingness to write something down and put that perfectly symmetrical X through it. An impediment that leaves me unready, unwilling, and unable to enjoy making a To-Do.

You see...if there is nada but a blue pen present, I simply don’t delight in writing things down and crossing them off. Blue pens leave me listless – in all senses of the word. (How I love the English language! Hooray for homographs!)

Blue ink is positively inferior to black ink. It’s purposeless. Red pens, fine. Teachers wouldn’t know what to do with themselves sans their correctors.

But blue pens? Pointless!
Now don’t misunderstand me. I don’t dislike the color blue. Aqua oceans and cerulean skies are two of my most favorite things. I love the color navy (those sailors aren’t all that bad either). Blue eyes are purdy – though common to a fault.

My point is, I ain’t haterating on the hue de blue – just blue BICs. And Pilots. And Paper Mates. And Zebras. And Pentels.

Poor paper! It’s poisoned by that pernicious, boring, humdrum fad of a color, that stupid, senseless indigo ink.
Poor handwriting! My old fashioned a’s just don’t look as significant and stately in blue as they do in black. Ugh, and it makes barely legible scribbles positively hieroglyphic.


Poor eyes! I feel sorriest for them of all. Those sad, sad little orbs. They actually have to pay attention to that ink long enough to decipher words from its dizzying, unsavory grip.

I daresay the institution of the blue pen is unprofessional. It belongs in middle school along with the other pink, purple, teal, and orange ballpoint misfits.
Believe you me, I loved colored ink! But that phase of my life ended with the last bell of my last class. As it should have ended for everyone with a job. We’re in the real world now, people. This isn’t a place for pretty ink pens – that includes you, blue.



If I can’t find one of my black Pentel R.S.V.P's (medium point, naturally), on my mess of a desk, and there’s only a blue BIC in my line of vision, I seriously think twice about writing something down.

Then I wonder how the hell a blue pen got into my cube.

Then, later, I scold myself for forgetting what I had to do.

All because someone invented blue goddamn pens!
 
Let me just leave you with this thought: There is a reason for the Black Pen Only rule on very important forms and documents.

Easy Difficult Bake Oven

It’s kind of funny that my cooking career peaked before I was 25. Here’s hoping my future husband enjoys making dinner!

I kid...kind of.

Not that I don’t like to cook. I love making intricate, difficult, delicious meals with tons of ingredients.

But now that I live by myself - what’s the point? Part of what I enjoyed most about cooking is sharing the meal, watching other people enjoy it. Both filling and fulfilling!

Me, myself, and I really don’t really give two shits about gourmet dins.

Well maybe I would if I could - but I can’t so I don’t. You see, my rabbit hutch is rather ill equipped to handle any sort of epicurean feast. It’s not properly outfitted with real, grownup kitchen crockery and the sort (I am one of those few miserable NYC folks who went from having a dishwasher to not having one…devastation).
So because it’s just me, and because I don’t have a real stove (or any counter space whatsoever), and because I’m essentially cooking in my bedroom (it’s quite strange), I never really make much.

Boring, yes, but I eat the same thing practically every night: grilled chicken, veg, potato. Sometimes couscous. Maybe spaghetti and meatballs every now and again.

The keyword? Easy. You see, being the spoiled brat that I am, my mom still has a major hand in my dinner. She buys, trims, pounds, marinates, and grills me chicken breasts every time I see her. Which I, in turn, freeze and defrost as needed.

All I have to do is microwave a plastic wrapped potato and boil some brocc or asparagus and voilà - dinna is served.

(Wow, this all sounds quite disgusting. But hey, you’s gotta eat. And it does beat Ramen for sure.)
When I was home sick last week aaaaall I wanted was my mother’s chicken soup. Unfortunately I’m not super duper spoiled rotten - Trissi didn’t make me a pot and hand-deliver it to NYC.

She did, however, share her recipe - and I took matters into my own hands. Yessiree, I put my kitchenette to use and made my very own chicken soup.

Boy oh boy was it a pain in the ass.

I felt like a five year old making a cake in my Easy Bake Oven. Except instead of two ingredients - water and powder - I was juggling ten.

The most difficult part was the chopping. While I don’t have any counter space, I do have a little (very little) chopping block/cart type thing.
Using only paper towels and plates - I haven’t ever used a cutting board in this apartment - I impatiently chopped a sweet onion. I de-stringed, sliced, and minced five stalks of celery. But there was no where to put my chopped goods!

I had to use my bed as a surface while I diced half a bag of mini carrots and some large white mushrooms.

It was annoying. Infuriating. Troublesome. Tiresome!
As if making soup isn’t difficult enough - the all-encompassing time consuming-ness, the plethora of ingredients, the tasting and re-tasting, the stupid, insipid, never-ending simmering - I had to do all of this on a stove the size of a school desk...
...in an apartment the size of a r____t h____h. (Fill in the blanks. Though I do make fun of my apartamento mucho, I love it so and hate to talk too much smack).

Luckily there were no disasters. There was spillage and spitting from the simmering pot, and droppage of the choppage onto the floor. There were dishes and pots and silverware galore (cooking with no dishwasher is madness, I tell you, madness). There was too much soup for my small pot.

But in the end…unlike that funfetti cake I baked that poured out over the top of the pan and coated the bottom of my easy bake oven…there was, indeed, success.

Mmm mmmmm goooooood.

Close Encounters of the Awkward Kind

Now it’s really kind of crazy - insane even - that we New Yorkers manage to bump into people in a city of 8 million. Frequently, even. Goddamn run-ins with people we do not want to see!

Nuts.
What is it about this island? Seriously. Maybe Manhattan has some supernatural powers - like the island on Lost (so sad for the last season!) - and being the vindictive little shit it is, this island just can’t help itself from causing cataclysmic run-ins of an über awkward kind.
I’m sorry, dearest Big Apple, that some lowly inhabitants choose to litter and pee and spit and puke all over your glittery streets - but why take it out on the innocents?

Come on NYC Gods! I’m a good kid! Goody two-shoes even! I never ever (fine, hardly ever) do anything bad to hurt your feelings! So why you’s gotta hurt mine?

Yeah, it could be way worse. I could run into an old boss. Or a rival-sorority archenemy. Or an ex. Or an ex and his new girlfriend.
Thankfully the Manhattan Mystics have spared me from any sort of reaaaaally problematic melodramatic encounter.

But what is up with the universe, yo? Is it sending us signs? Am I supposed to be bff’s with that chick I couldn’t stand in college? Am I meant to marry that dude I went out with a few times? Should I never have quit that awful, awful job? Who knows.

Whatever the spectral spirits of NYC are trying to tell us by throwing people from our pasts into our present paths, well. I effing hate it.

It’s plain awkward!
There I am, huffing and puffing down the street, bebopping to my iPod, and suddenly someone catches my eye. Then there’s the token “Oops, I’m caught” darting glance away. Followed by the holy shit is that who I think it is oh.my.god.oh.my.god shit, shit, shit!!!!! re-glance.
It makes me want to cover myself with my bag, celeb-style. Ugh!

Perhaps my most horrific, most embarrassingly awkward run-in was with someone who I’d kissed (innocently enough) and given my number to (hey, I was tipsy).

Imagine my sober dismay the following day when this guy friended me on Facebook, called and left a message (of course I screened - he wanted to hang out - eek!), then actually had the audacity to text me. It was like Drew Barrymore’s character on He’s Just Not That Into You complaining about endless technology portal problemos - except dude was too into me).
The beauty of said technology, though, is that we can ignore. Dismiss. Delete. Defriend. Block. Screen. Sidebar.
 
However, technology does not save you (unfortunately) from face to face runs-ins. I saw aforementioned freak-of-nature-super-stalker at a party. I pretended to ignore. I played dumb.
It did not work. He approached. Red face, palpitations, and sweaty palms ensued. And I don’t mean the “Oh I like this boy!” kind. More like the “Oh dead LORD this guy is going to stalk and kill me” kind. Horrendous.

And you know, one would think that sunglasses would make you at least a little incognito on street-side run-ins - but no (if they don’t work for celebrities, they’s certainly not gonna work for us common folk). I recently ran into someone I’d had a bit of a crush on plodding along in the Village with a short, mousy brunette. Can we say complete opposites?
 
My Jackie O disguise failed. Uncomfortably unpleasant conversation ensued. N.o. D.a.n.k.e.s!
Alas, I was psyched that I’d put a tad bit of effort into my appearance that morning. Phew!

And so dearest, maniacal, nasty ass universe - all I ask is this: Please oh please oh please at least let me look super cute if I ever have to endure one of those cataclysmic run-ins of an über awkward kind.

Yikes!

Not-So-Sweet Heat

What is it up with New York City radiators? I cannot stand their noise!

Sure, they’ve probably not been switched out or updated in decades. And they do work ten times harder than the average radiator (that’s why we NYCers keep our AC on in the wintertime).

Perhaps they’re so over tenants demanding heat from them. Well, not tenants - landlords. (Seriously, why don’t property owners realize how much MONEY they would save if they knocked down the temp a few degrees in all the buildings in all the city?)

Anyway, so unfortunately I stayed home sick from work last Friday - bronchitis. Wamp wamp!
In my Ventolin-Advair-Levaquin-hydrocodone-NyQuil semi-hallucinatory state, I truly thought the heater was alive and out to get me.

Like the one that Macaulay Culkin was so petrified of in Home Alone.

Unlike Macaulay, though, when I was a youngin’ I liked the heaters in our house. Only now, in my later years do I have a troublesome relationship with them.

I find myself very much annoyed with my radiator’s raving racket. Scared, even, of its clinking and clanking (well, kinda - it was the meds I tell you!)

I get positively peeved at its splishing and splashing and steaming and hissing and roaring and rattling and clattering. Ugh.
What happened to the lovely heaters of yesteryear?

I have such fond memories of our little farmhouse furnaces. Sweet heat, indeed!

I remember taking bowls of Neapolitan ice cream and hiding in the corner near the couch in our living room. I would sit atop the floor vents, waiting for the heat to kick on, slowly eating my sugary snack.

After a seeming eternity, the furnace would get down to business, sending up hot air through the rectangular vent - the time had come for ice cream soup.


Though I never much liked how the ice cream turned brown - so boring - I would stir and stir and watch it melt. Then I would drink down the melty, messy, soup with sheer delight.

But the sweetness of the heatness didn’t end there!



The day Airheads found their way into the Parry household - what a day. We were quite taken with those tart slabs-o-taffy. Thank the lord for Costco and their big bargain boxes!
We had a little grey space heater in our kitchen and one day my mom (who has quite a sweet tooth - methinks that’s where I get it from), laid the Airhead on top of the heater.
I’m sure you can all guess what happened - the tough-to-chew Airhead became soft as putty. Boy was it delish!

So you see, heat in NYC is not so sweet. I suppose I could put a bowl of ice cream on top of my radiator (I wouldn’t dare put an airhead on that dirty behemoth) - but I don’t want to turn the rattling radiator on for all its noise, noise, noise!

Sadness.
I guess there’s nothing I can do. It’s a fight I cannot win. I could not beat the heater in a battle of wits. It’s always going to be loud and obnoxious and scary and clinky and clanky and grouchy. So I suppose I’ll just pile on another blanket.

I miss the days of ice cream soup and soft, melty Airheads. Sigh.

Now all I have to look forward to is a delirious night’s sleep under one too many quilts.

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?