I’m having a big fight with my sister but I don’t have to worry about her reading this because the fight was about her refusal to read my blog.

I don’t feel she’s obliged to read my blog. I’m just fascinated by her militant stance about not reading it. A couple of years ago, I realized that she hadn’t read something I thought she would enjoy, and asked why she didn’t read it.

She said, “I already know you in real life. So I don’t need to read it!” She sounded really annoyed. My husband still thinks this is funny, and he likes to say stuff like, “Did Bob Dylan’s brother say that, when Bob wanted to play him a song?”

So, I’m not Bob Dylan, but it might be a useful analogy because it implies an inexplicable resistance and an absurd excuse for it.

But, unbelievably, it came up again last week when my sister wanted to list words we hate, and I said, “Oh, guess what, I just wrote a thing about that on my blog! Go look, it’s a great list.”

God I am stupid.

She wouldn’t look and said derisively, “I didn’t realize I had to read it NOW.” Reflexively, I asked, “Can you tell me again why you have this fatwa against reading my shit?”

This was texting, by the way. She changed the subject, leaving my question hanging there. Now I really wanted an answer, not least because she was withholding one. I kept repeating the question, and she would write back, “I have a stomach ache.” “I need to lie down.” I asked, “Please just finish this sentence: I will not read my sister’s blog because”.

Now she texted, “Please stop”. It reminded me of that Beverly Hills housewife who winds up a fellow housewife and then shrieks, “Staahp!”

I wouldn’t stop. I called her passive aggressive. Eventually, she announces that she received an email from a family member, that was about me.  I didn’t believe this for a moment, so I asked to see it. She said, No, I don’t have to show it to you.

I called her and offered her $500 to show the nonexistent email to me. When she refused, I offered $1,000, and she still refused! Now I was laughing hysterically. I called her a  pathological liar and advised getting professional help.

So we aren’t talking. I could apologize for insisting on a question she was not equipped to answer. We could go back to our close relationship, and wait for the next bitter conflict.

I wish I could stop trying to get answers from people! No matter how badly you want one, no matter how desperately you try to get one, there is only silence. Or a lie about an email. Or a defensive complaint about being expected to just be honest. People want to be how they are without having to justify behavior. Fair enough. Or not?

Most of the time, I know the answer but just want the person to acknowledge it. Then it becomes a harangue and oops, you are a monster because you won’t give up. In my heart, I believe that I’m willing to answer any question to the best of my ability. It is a feather in my fucking cap. Just try me!

But. A couple of weeks ago, I had a big fight with my wonderful husband (who will read this) when he referred to my hair as “brown.” I flew into a rage and demanded that he call it “blonde.” When he punted, I ran around the house going “BROWN? Brown! Really??”

I have been inside my house for way too long now. It’s too much. My three modes are boredom, anxiety, or wondering if I’m actually dead already. Actually no, that’s a lie, there is “TV Time” in the evening, when we smoke some weed and I enter the reality of Our Shows. If Netflix isn’t the only thing preventing the complete collapse of civilization, I will eat my hat, and yours too.

In the last few days, my sensitivity to words has been causing problems at home. It’s like a chronic low-grade illness that sometimes becomes acute.

I was starting to read an essay on millennials when the word ‘peruse’ caused me to make a snap judgement: Anyone who would use the word ‘peruse’, in the first paragraph no less, was not worth my time.

I brought this up to my husband, who saw no reason to react to ‘peruse.’

It’s hard for me to accept that some people just don’t care about words that much. Probably most people. It’s such a real, visceral response for me when a word is used poorly or is just intrinsically awful, like peruse.

Some words just make me cringe, even though they are apparently harmless to others. But peruse, come on! There’s just no reason to use it unless you’re deliberately trying to sound stupid. It’s like using ‘loquacious’ when you could just say ‘talkative.’ Or using ‘sans’ for ‘without.’

I wanted to think of a term for this category of annoying words that connote an effort to sound smart. I have only come up with ‘bourgeois’ but I’m hoping for something better.

Meanwhile, someone on the radio yesterday said this about some guy who died:

He was a voracious joke-teller.

My brain went AAAAAAAAAAAAH.

You can’t be a voracious joke-teller, I complained. Maybe the guy was an inveterate joke-teller. Voracious implies an appetite or hunger. It’s bad enough that people always use the cliche ‘voracious reader’ but at least it is used correctly.

I could not get agreement from my husband so I turned to my nephew, a wordist of the highest order. He suggested ‘avid’ for the joke-teller.

Genius, right? Meanwhile, my husband and I retreated into our separate worlds of not caring and caring obsessively about voracious joke telling.

I turned to the Oxford Dictionary online to soothe my nerves.

Definition of voracious in English:
adjective
Wanting or devouring great quantities of food
he had a voracious appetite

Voracious implies something you can take in or ingest, then.  So you can’t be a voracious singer, duh.

But then, there is a second definition:  Having a very eager approach to an activity.  The example given is his voracious reading of literature. Elsewhere I found the example he was a voracious collector.

I’m going to stick to my guns about voracious joke-telling. It is an improper use of a word that was employed just to sound smart but ended up making me furious, but not as furious as those who are sick of my fucking wordist nitpicking.

If you have perused this whole rant, kindly opine on my condition whilst I consider upping my meds.

Cheers.

*extra points if that ‘Cheers’ put you over the top

We are moving box by box, until Monday when the moving truck comes to take the big stuff.  The new house is nice, and a neighbor from across the street gave us a bottle of wine and some cookies to welcome us. We bought huge rattan porch chairs from a guy on Craig’s list, and sitting on the porch enjoying a gentle sea breeze is genuinely idyllic.

But then there’s the window blinds.

I have never had one single thought about window blinds. They played no role in my existence. But that’s over. We’ve entered into a tense conflict over what kind of blinds to get. I want real wood. He wants faux wood, I guess made of vinyl. Wood is expensive and bla bla bla. But vinyl blinds seem creepy and not homey. Why wants vinyl anything?

I kept on promoting wood, and my husband kept on noting that he couldn’t tell the difference, so fake wood was fine. We got increasingly frustrated. It became one of those ‘just admit I’m right’ argument. I suggested that the one who cares most should trump the one who doesn’t fee emotional invested.

I went into another room feeling angry, wronged, resentful, and wounded. Who gives a shit about fucking blinds, I thought. Why give a shit about anything.

I wondered whether the fight was really about control, fear, loss, insecurity. For me, yep, all those things, plus grief, going through old schoolwork and mother’s day cards, art projects, stuffed animals, used hypodermic needles.  I have to keep all these things in my heart while letting go of them physically. At least some of them.

Meanwhile, the motherfucking blinds. I wish we could just get curtains instead. And I need to buy a pink toilet to match the bathtub. I don’t care what it costs because life owes me a pink toilet.

I’m not interested in Royalty, but I love old photographs.   Today I came across a forum for people who are obsessed with Royal families and it is a motherlode of vintage photos.

An unexpected bonus is the number of arguments that break out between the people who post there. I wonder if people have to argue in online forums. Maybe it’s just the competitive nature of people who are proud of their expertise.

My husband reads a forum for audiophiles and he says they don’t argue there.   I’m surprised that guys who can tell the difference between five different masters of a Jimi Hendrix record can accept each other’s opinions without jockeying for authority. But moderators are there to end discussions, so who knows what would happen if the posters were left alone to boast about their rare Japanese boxed sets of obscure Eric Clapton demos.

Check out “Alexander Palace Time Machine” for amazing photos and petty arguments! Start here.

~

* According to a forum regular, here are the Royals who are worst at being Royals:

Prince Charles of Great Britian.
Camilla, The Duchess of Cornwall.
Prince Harry of Great Britian.
Princess Anne of Great Britian.
Crown Prince Philip of Belgium.
Prince Joachim of Denmark.
Prince Albert of Monaco.
Victor-Emmanuel of Italy, Duke of Savoye.
Marina-Doria of Italy, Duchess of Savoye.

ASK A MAN #102: ABOUT NAGGING

“How do I make it sound less like nagging and more like reminding?”
-Sam

“It is of Hebrew origin, and the meaning of Samuel is ‘God heard’. Also possibly as ‘requested of God…’”

-thinkbabynames.com

While I’m no expert in regards to dude-on-dude relationships, I’m going to assume that your domestic partnership is just like the traditional male-female relationship only with 100% more man parts involved. Actually since monogomy is as mythical and rare as the female orgasm, most relationships have more knobs involved than your typical mosh pit but fewer than a Congressional session.

Since you’re asking the question instead of giving out answers I’m guessing you take on the female role in your partnership so my advice to you is to use your supernatural ability to imagine ways to improve interior decoration schemes, but use this skill to imagine yourself as the dominant partner. Imagine yourself running around and doing things, making decisions, dealing with immediate situations like bear attacks or “bear” attacks, driving well, and staving off the advancement of the French by recreating log traps you saw in that Swiss Robinson movie. I think there were net traps as well, but few things are as satisfying as felling trees and trimming them down to their trunks, then arranging them using your Y chromosome-endowed engineering skills in a precariously balanced heap in order to crush your enemies like so much foie gras! I don’t know for sure what foie gras is, but it sounds as if it’s mushy and French, so that’s what I meant by that last simile.

So anyway, imagine yourself out there doing things like stacking up gigantic logs and suddenly this person who knows everything but can’t stack logs and doesn’t even uderstand why you’re out there stacking logs in the first place, this person comes out to remind you that… Look, it’s like I can’t even imagine what would need to be reminded about because everything that’s important is being dealt with.

So what you should do is bring out a beer or, in your case, a wine cooler, because stacking logs is sweaty work, then praise the progress on the log trap, hand over the wine cooler, and then as your “husband” takes a swig, look with love and longing at the bulge in his plum-smuggler shorts, and then remind him of whatever it is you happen to think is so important that you have to interrupt the all-important task of shoring up domestic defense against the incursion of foreign threats.

And even though this is the best possible way to “make it sound less like nagging,” it’s still nagging and you shouldn’t do it. He heard your request the first time.

Question answered.

 © 2011 Anthony Robert Russo

Here’s the situation:

Tonight, my ex-husband came over to visit and offered to wash a fluffy foot-thing. (Don’t ask, but the tag says it’s washable.) I offered to wash it but he insisted on doing it. He probably thought he’d do a better job. (Men.)

Then, he put it in the clothes dryer, which is in the garage, because that’s where we do the laundry. He came back inside for a while and then went out to check the dryer. He came in again to report that the dryer stopped working. It worked when he turned it on, but now it’s broken. Dead. Won’t go on again.

I said something like, Shit, you broke the dryer?! He said something like, No, I didn’t break it, it broke.

I said, Well, my husband will be heartbroken when he comes home from work at 2: A.M. and finds that the dryer is broken. (My husband has been graciously doing the laundry while I have the fucking walker and can’t carry anything.)

This is like an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, but without Larry David.

I told the ex to pay for a repairman. The ex was aghast, and furious. Because “he didn’t break it.” But it wasn’t broken before he used it. In my addled mind, HE SHOULD PAY FOR THE REPAIR. Not only that, we have no money. (I’m aware that this has no moral bearing on the issue, but still.)

Should the ex pay? Or not?

IT ISN’T BIG ENOUGH!

I swear I wasn’t looking for them, but Butt Enhancers have come into my life and I couldn’t feel happier about it. Feel Foxy has the best pictures, but Bubbles has some great items, too. Personally, I am more interested in the Butt Bra than the padded butts. It “holds up the weight of the buttocks.”

I don’t know how your date might feel when you disrobe and your “buttocks” fall to their natural level. I don’t even know if “buttocks” is/are plural, for god sake! And yet, this Butt Bra might be the answer to my prayers!

As luck would have it, I ended up at the glorious website of Shop in Private, where I clicked on “hard to find items.” I was excited to find they had anal bleaching cream, and combination douche/enema bags. However, a click on “Our Strangest Products” produced the Oral Sex Trainer, which exercises and strengthens the tongue.

Whew! I know this is a lot of important information to absorb at once. But the funny thing is, it all started because I clicked on an ad when I was searching the Urban Slang Dictionary for the word “chill,” .

I remember when “chillin'” and “illin'” were new words, and it was fun to use them in conversation. I remember when the suggestion to “chill out!” meant “relax!” Later, you could just say “chill” and drop the “out.” Now, people describe themselves as “chill.” “I’m really a chill person, I don’t party much bla bla” is a common celebrity quote.

My problem is, I think you are a “chilled” person, if you like to chill. Just as you’re a “relaxed” person if you like to relax.

Fuck it. We argued about “chill” all the way home from the mall today. No one will agree with me. This is a microcosm of my whole life.