Shuttin' it down

Like Gordon Ramsay's "Kitchen Nightmares," I'm making some major changes to my crappy underwhelming restaurant. I've become a slave to Facebook. I've begun to comment on things that have nothing to do with me and I need to stop. I had an intervention of sorts with myself. So I'm avoiding Facebook for the next week, month, whenever. I'm not deleting the account, you just won't be seeing as many non sequitur, cryptic status updates.

I quit my freelance proofreading. I also deleted my MySpace account. I also deleted my Flickr account. I'm also closing up my shop at Etsy after the holidays. It's not even fun anymore, I don't have the time or motivation to stay up all night posting in forums and chatting with strangers in an Etsy special interest group. It's been like having a hole in my pocket: a couple of dollars there, a couple of dollars here for fees and renewals. My closet is overrun with boxes of yarn, half-finished projects and ad/PR crap. I'm just going to stick with word of mouf and consignment.

Also, unrelated, a guy I worked with in LA named John Charles Meyer was in the new Christian Slater TV show "The Forgotten." Here's a link to the pilot, where he plays "Quint." Yay, JCM!

I hate the Ice Cream Man

For those that don't know me well, I was born and raised in the middle of effing nowhere. Next door neighbors meant I'd still have to ride my bike, drive a golf cart, or waste gas on idling through a street. Needless to say, I didn't grow up in average suburbia. Little did I know that there was such a thing as an Ice Cream Man that came to your neighborhood every day to sell you frozen treats.

Because I don't see this daily occurrence as normal, I find the presence of the Ice Cream Man abso-frigging-terrifying. I hear the tinkling of "Pop Goes the Weasel" over a loud speaker and I see that ice-cream-sandwich-peddling fiend's van, creeping through my neighborhood, tempting me with sweet delicious TREATS! I say, "No! No, Ice Cream Man, you're not normal!"

By the way, it's 9:23 p.m. on a Sunday and I distinctly hear child yells in the streets. Lock your wigs, bolt down your patio furniture: The children are out.

Newsflash: I hate driving.

It is illegal to drive with your hazard lights on (in Florida). Yes, it is. You can only turn them on when you are not in motion. No, you cannot turn them on during a rainstorm. It just confuses every one and distorts their depth perception. Please, please, please stop doing it. As someone who seems to live in her driver's seat and is plagued by rainstorms 80 percent of her long-distance driving experiences, I beg of you, please. Quit.

If you need me, I'll be in my Jag, running stop signs and swearing at people who get in my way while I'm going to the bank on my lunch break.

A small tribute to a Viking

To perhaps the sweetest, most righteous and excellent beard in all the land. Greg Allard will be greatly missed. His infectious and glorious laughter shone like a freakin’ supernova-on-fire sandwich party. I wanted a beard once, so I photoshopped his beard onto my face because that's what kind of beard I dream of having.

Breaking News: I hate ants.

It’s a fight to the death between us humans and the pharaoh ants. It’s a patient fight -- and I’m totally losing. I have to wait until they take the liver-boric acid bait back to their stupid wall-void home and feed it to all of their stupid wall-void family. But I can't. I must smear every single one that I see.

Conventional sprays and dusts don’t work because they scatter; and not because they sense your presence. It’s because their bodies are so light that the force by which the spray is delivered is enough to pick them up off the ground and give them flight like that the Dumbo ride at Disney World. Or like that time when we tried to kill a spider at the What Manor, but instead of killing it, we birthed a billion of its babies all over the foyer baseboards. Raid simply scattered them like a can of air from Office Depot. Dear god, the ambush still haunts my dreams.

I’ve been reading up on these squatters who think live in our bathrooms. They’re well-known pests worldwide, but most notably in hospitals. They’ve been seen on a baby’s face stealing its precious saliva for moisture, infiltrating sealed sterile bags, contaminating IV bags, and living inside of wounds, spreading infection. I just threw up in my mouth, hold on. Ugh, so gross. I hate these ants. These ants must die.

You can ess a bee of dees, pharaoh ants -- we are so over.