Eyeballs

Okay, so you know those ads about "the money you could be saving with Geico"? I KNOW that it's supposed to be eyeballs on the money, but I'm sorry, they just look like two rolls of toilet paper to me.

I mean come on, if you're going to personify *money* anyway, then why not just go all out and put more eyeball-looking eyeballs on the darn thing! You know, with eye lids and eye lashes and all that. Otherwise what am I supposed to think it is if I don't hear the commercials?

Uh, this is the money that would be like toilet paper to you since you'll be saving so much of it if you switch to Geiko.

Coordinator

Ever notice how the word "coordinator" is becoming more and more common in job titles? It's what gets thrown in there when the employer doesn't quite know what the person is going to be doing. "I'm a research coordinator. I uh, don't actually do the research, I uh, just, you know, coordinate it."

In other words, they coordinate their hands with the mouse in putting the emails from their inbox into their deleted folder.

Raffles

Another cliche is how we always say "I NEVER win anything!" Amazing how we forget what our odds are. Kinda like saying "I never get struck by lightening, or win the lottery, or run into Jerry Seinfeld on the street...."

Political Issues

The thing I don't get is how abortion became such a political issue in our country. I mean I can understand how people see it as a moral and religious one, but trying to push for legislation on someone else's body based on one's own religious values is just futile and unfair, isn't it? And it's not something that impacts everyone such that it needs a law, unlike healthcare, the stock market, or traffic laws. Kinda like: "A woman HAS to go through with the pregnancy even though she doesn't feel ready to put her body through it!" And forget the fact that we have a growing population problem on earth.

Well, I think it's important to eat oatmeal. It's good for your skin and helps lower cholesterol. So I think I'll try to introduce a bill in which everyone has to eat oatmeal everyday for breakfast. Think about it, it could reduce healthcare costs if everyone is healthier due to the oatmeal. "You MUST eat oatmeal for breakfast every day! I don't care that you don't like it and would rather have a muffin!"

Emerson

So Ralph Waldo Emerson said "To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty..."

Yeah well Ralph obviously never came to the desert. Here, each moment has sneezing, itchy eyes, stuffy nose, sweat trickling down your neck, sweat trickling down your boobs, sweat trickling down your butt crack...and ALL of that happens at each moment.

Divorce

I would think that the very possibility of divorce would keep people from getting married. Yet millions of people get married all the time. I mean sure, I can undertstand being in love and therefore wanting to get married, and I can imagine that divorce is hard. But there are some folks who get married and divorced like multiple times.

So why don't those folks just date all the time? Because if you're going to get divorced that many times, then in reality it's just dating relationships all the time that are breaking up, except they're more complicated: you now have to deal with the government being a part of the break-up!

Shampoo and conditioner

They now fall in the category of hot dugs and hot dog buns. I mean, how do I run out of conditioner well before the shampoo??? I still have about 3 washes of shampoo left in the current bottle, and have already made a very noticable dent in the new conditioner bottle. Just can't keep up with the conditioner!

Love letters

I'm not talking about actual love letters per se. I'm talking about the fake compliments that we get in our society. "We had a very talented pool to choose from and our decision was hard. We wish you luck in your endeavors....." blah blah blah blah blah blah...

For once I'd like to see a casting director or potential employer have the balls to simply state the results without the foo foo language:

"Sorry, you didn't get the job." End of fucking storry....or even

"Your audition sucked balls and you're just not good enough for the show." At least I can get a laugh out of a rejection letter like that....

Split ends

You know how they say "stop and smell the roses sometimes"? Well I'd actually like to stop and pick at my split ends. I was at a red light earlier today and happened to find a good split end in my hair and just as I was about to take care of it, the light turned green. I mean, I get that we are in a go-go world and it's actually a good thing if traffic keeps moving but you know, sometimes that extra few seconds to take care of a split end wouldn't be such a bad thing!

A little hair

So there's this little hair on my head. It's on my right temple and by lucky chance I might find it as I'm running my fingers through my hair. And why do I consider it to be a lucky chance? Because it has a very rough texture to it and so it's kinda fun to feel it. It's the most fun hair strand on my head. Of course getting a hold of it can be a challenge cuz of all the other hairs around it, so when I do get a secure hold of it, it's like "victory!" Then it feels good to feel it and when I'm ready, I break it. That's the one fun of feeling a rough hair strand, is the feeling of breaking it.

Now I have to wait another couple months before that piece of hair is back.

I will wait for you little hair!

Margins

So what's the deal with the default right and left margins in MS Word being 1.25????? WHO would set their margins to that? Perhaps undergrads who want to make it look like they wrote a longer paper. It'd be interesting to see how much time we lose fixing such stupid things all the time. I mean, I don't go to the store and buy 1.25 pounds of tomatoes do I?

The last word

Computers are kinda like health insurance, in our day-to-day lives. We need them, but they also cause a lot of grief and are often not very helpful. Like when an application freezes and I hit control-alt-delete to get to the task manager to try to end the program, THAT is when a message comes up saying "Word is not responding" and gives me the option to end it.

Naw, REALLY?

It's not enough that we have people in our lives who have to have the last word, a useless piece of technology does too!

Hangers

Of course we can't make things simple, oh no. The more complicated the better right, cuz that's how the man makes money? I mean, why can't we just keep the hangers that the clothes come on? Wouldn't that save the step of actually purchasing hangers?

What do I do?

It can be confusing to explain what I do being in a psych grad program. I have work, which is referred to as an "assistantship" with the college, so that I can get a paycheck, health insurance, tuition reimbursement. But the assistantship can be with any dept, even one not related to psych. And not only that, these days people aren't guaranteed the same job the entire time they're in the program, and sometimes people have to look for funding from one semester to the next. One year I was a desk assistant, another I was a research assistant. Another year I was teaching undergrads. I also have an internship where I get clinical experience, unpaid. But my program calls this a "fieldplacement." And before the fieldplacement we have a "practicum" that's at the counseling center on campus. And then we have a final year of pre-doc "internship" which is working full-time as a therapist before actually getting the degree. It's like the equivalent of a medical residency, except it happens before the degree is awarded. And of course we take our own classes, have research (thesis, dissertation)...it really *all* feels like work cuz the classes become less didactic and more research-focused. Like now, I'm done with all my actual classes, so I'll just be taking dissertation credits to keep my full-time student status so I can defer having to pay back loans. So moving forward the focus will be on dissertation, internship applications, and whatever type of assistantship I get.

So needless to say, having so many different hats to wear can make it confusing when explaining what I do to people, even people who I'm close to. It's like:

Person: "Hey, what's up."
Me: "Not much, just got back from work so I'm a bit tired."
Person: "I thought you're a student?"
Me: "I am, it's my assistantship."
Person: "What's that?"
Me: "My job at ASU so I can get tuition and a paycheck."
Person: "Oh. So how much do students get paid for doing therapy?"
Me: "Oh well, I don't do therapy for the assistantship. I'm doing some web management stuff."
Person: "Huh? How's that related to psychology?"
Me: Sigh...

Or here's another scenario:

Me: "I have so much homework for my class!"
Person: "I thought you're interning."
Me: "I am, but I'm also taking a class. The fieldplacement is just 3 credits."
Person: "What's a fieldplacment?"
Me: grumble grumble grumble. "The internship."
Person: "Why do you have to be out in the field for that, don't you see clients on campus?"
Me: ARGH....

Or yet another:

My assistantship supervisor: "So hows' it going, how are you progressing in your progam?
Me: "Well, if all goes well, I can apply for residency next year." (I say residency to her because she's not familiar with psych programs, and I assumed she'd understand it from an MD perspective)
Supervisor: "Oh, I thought you were a resident of the state because we pay your tuition at an in-state rate."
Me: GROOOOAAAAANNNNNN

This is all I'm gonna say from now on: (imagine this)

Me: I'm a crazy, helping other crazies, in a crazy system. (as I give the person the finger)
Person: Why are you flipping me off?
Me: I JUST said I'm crazy!!!!

Recipes

Some parts of recipes just don't make sense, do they? Like a "dash" of pepper. Well, what the hell is just a dash of pepper gonna do to an entire casserole? Or a "pinch" of salt. As salty as Americans like things, I think they mean a LAYER of salt, don't they??

The recipe might as well have "a drop of pee." Will make about the same amount of difference as the pinch of salt!

Biting

So we can put a man on the moon, circle Mars, have phones that take pictures, yet how is it that after so many years of biting experience, we still make a mistake of biting our tongues or the insides of our cheeks? I mean here we've made all this progress and we eat at least 3 meals a day, chew gum all the time, yet after who knows how many years of evolution, we still accidentally bite ourselves? I bit the side of my tongue today and if a therapist knew the thoughts and language going through my head, I could've been committed to a mental institution.

So if you think about it, biting someone else would be something we wouldn't hesitate to do, cuz it wouldn't hurt!

"You're an asshole."
"Bite me."
"Gladly."

Mashed potatoes

Mashed potatoes: now that's an interesting concept. I wonder how the idea came about. Someone was pissed off, so they took it out on the potatoes. "I'm gonna beat you senseless til you're mush! Then eat ya!"

I like mine with ranch dressing.

:)

Microwaves

Now microwaves have been around for a while now, yes? Then why do people still not know how to maintain them so that they don't gross out their coworkers? The microwave at work looked like someone had thrown up all kinds of nasty shit in it. Obviously covering the food while heating it is not a concept that most have caught on to, or cleaning up after yourself for that matter.

The place doesn't need a sign that says "Please clean up after yourself cuz your mama don't work heya" (imagine that one in a southern accent). It needs:

"My cat is more respectful than you because she eats her own vomit."

Breakfast

So if we sometimes have breakfast for dinner, then how come we never have dinner for breakfast?

Clapping

So in this acting class I'm taking, our instructor says that "we always clap for each other" when presenting. I mean I get that it's about showing support for each other because everyone's getting out of their comfort zone some, it can be nerve-racking, yada yada yada. But if we ALWAYS clap, then doesn't it lose its meaning? Shouldn't we clap only if the performance brings out clapping in us? Shouldn't the performer know in some way if they suck?

Don't worry, I've thought this through. You don't think I'd say such a thing without thinking through how I'd react if nobody clapped for me now did you? This is what I'd do:

Sit on the ground, take off my shoes and socks, flash my toe and say "fuck you melonfarmers! You think you coulda done that better??? Come up and prove it! I bet my CAT can act better than you!"

Ahem, k, I'm done.

:)