This morning I said “I hate you” to my toothpaste, and I meant it. Every time I use it, the tube needs to be unclogged. It’s been a while since I last said I Hate You to an inanimate object, although I scream it at the TV several times a day. Alternating with “Just DIE already!”

I remembered writing something I called a Hatefest, and when I found it, I was impressed by how comprehensive it is. I know for a fact that I’m still as full of hate, if not more so, than when I wrote it. But my powers of recall and word retrieval are shit. Yesterday I couldn’t remember the word for lint, and tried “fluff” instead.

But back to hate, I am suspicious of people who claim not to hate anyone. Ever. Have you encountered these people? I’ve married two of them. They maintain that hatred is unknown to them. They dislike people, yes, but don’t hate. I used to imagine their mommies admonishing them as children, “No, we never hate! We dislike.” I remember a childhood friend whose mom told us, “We don’t say ‘I’m mad’! Say ‘I’m aggravated!'”

But these non-haters insist that it’s not that; it’s just an emotion they don’t experience. My latest theory is that they hate as much as us haters, but they just name it something else, like anger or revulsion or something. It’s just semantics.

(Unless it’s alexithymia, i.e. the inability to express or identify your emotions, a whole other story.)

If you can’t name at least 5 people you hate, just go away. Or get a note from your doctor.

Let the Hatefest begin!

Taylor Swift
Swiftees
Madonna
The Row
Laura Ingraham
Laura Trump
IvankaTrump
Jared Kushner
Imagine Dragons
That guy in the Strokes
J. Lo
the word “cropped” when applied to clothing
“how’s that working for you?”
Tom Ford
John Hamm
flavored coffee
Mitch McConnell
pro-lifers
butterfly tattoos
new words for homeless
Shein
proving I’m not a robot
Cormac McCarthy
Golden Goose sneakers
The Kardashians
David Duchovny
duck lips
my ex-husband
TikTok
memes
Chihuahuas
celebrity interviews
“got any plans for the weekend?”
Anna Wintour
Jack Harlow
Noam Chomsky
Anais Nin
Star Wars
MAGA
erectile dysfunction commercials
Steely Dan
people who call their dogs “rescues”
celebrities named Hailey
that awful guy who was married to Lisa Bonet
Doja Cat
Coco Chanel
hard seltzer
people who drink hard seltzer

That’s it for starters.

What did I leave out?

It occurred to me that SiteLock is some kind of scam, which is odd, because Bluehost is a widely used and seemingly legit hosting service.

When I googled ‘SiteLock reviews,’ I discovered an impassioned community of SiteLock victims, who were justifiably furious. Some complained about SiteLock harassing them with phone-calls. Some described the difficulty of cancelling the service, and being told they needed to speak to a cancellation agent.

Some complained that in trying to remove malware, SiteLock completely destroyed their websites beyond repair. No one could get their money back.

Some even suggested that SiteLock planted the malware just to charge for removing it!

So now I’m fuming. I call SiteLock and someone says to call back during business hours. I call Bluehost and ask them to cancel the service, since they set it up in the first place. No, only SiteLock can cancel the service.

In the morning, Rochelle at Sitelock explains that only Bluehost can cancel the account, since they made the $500 charge on my credit card. She seems genuinely apologetic.

Rochelle offers to get Bluehost on the phone, and to stay on the call with me.

It is then I meet Steven, in billing at Bluehost. He sounds young, dumbish, and bored. He is the definition of the word sullen. Steven reports that he is unable to ‘terminate the service until it expires in January.’ He repeats this with the exact same inflection at least 20 times. I keep saying, ‘Rochelle, can you hear this?’

Steven puts us on hold to speak to a ‘supervisor.’ Rochelle has gone to look at my blog and we start chatting about Prince. She loves him too.

Steven returns to the call and says in the deadened tone of an executioner, “I can’t cancel the service. It will end when it expires.”

Now I scream, “WHO CAN CANCEL IT, GOD?” Steven is silent. I repeat, “Are you saying only god can cancel it, or that He can’t cancel it either? Are you fucking crazy?” I add, “I’m not asking for my money back, just to cancel the fucking service!” I’m getting sweaty. I’ve lost control.

Steven leaves the call again and returns. “I am now able to cancel your service, ma’am. I can send you an email to confirm this has been done.”

Rochelle gives me her contact information so I can confirm with her later. She genuinely wants me to be happy.

I will be happy when Steven is broke, hungry, cold, alone, and desperate, while some little piece of shit on the phone tells him, “I can’t cancel your service. It will end when it expires in January.”

I think I know the answer! Because I’m on the brink of one!

Haven’t you always wondered what people meant by the outmoded term “nervous breakdown”? I used to picture someone in a padded cell, just lying on a bed, maybe trembling, probably unable to speak, disheveled, with vacant eyes.

I’ve even wished I could have a nervous breakdown, because then someone would take care of everything while I just drooled quietly in a nice sanitarium somewhere.

And then at some point in my life, I decided that I was out of luck, I just couldn’t break down even if I longed for it, it just wasn’t in the cards for me. I’m not the type, I would explain bitterly when discussing someone else’s mental hospital experience.

Well, I have news to report. After enough days of struggling with my website and talking to IT guys who all sound slightly stoned and none too bright, after listening to all these Richards and Darrens and Ethans giving conflicting theories and reasons why things should be working now or not working now, I am a mess.

The sense of powerless multiplied by anxiety and frustration is truly debilitating.

The only relief came in the form of Lauren, an angel who knows all about WordPress blogs and so much more I can’t begin to tell you. She knows about Juggalos, for fucksake. She knows about everything, believe me.

So she agreed to bring my blog back from the Invisible White Screen of Death.

Meanwhile, perhaps sniffing out my anxiety all the way from Arizona  (or tipped off by the IT guys at Bluehost) my web security service, SiteLock, alerts me that I have some malware that urgently needs to be removed. If I don’t remove it, Google will hate me, everyone will hate me and my whole world will end.

However, despite having paid $500 for a year of their security service, they want $300 to remove the malware.

Now, the best/worst part of this is a person names “Sean” at SiteLock. Sean will come out of the gate yelling at you like an angry husband you dared to question about his poker buddies.

Sean seethes with contempt for your ignorance and rage for your audacity in bringing up that $500. He compares the extraction of malware to surgery. Actual surgery. He tells you how careless you’ve been in using plug-ins.  And Sean never backs down. He is aggression personified.

Sean seems like the devil Himself.

But that’s because you have yet to encounter STEVEN, in billing.

I didn’t see the whole show but so what, I’m still doing the Exegesis.

The best thing this year was Kanye West fucking up Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech. Yes, it was rude, and why not? Taylor Swift is a godawful singer and has made me sick ever since the knowledge of her existence was thrust upon me during an episode of Saturday Night Live. A tall giraffe of a girl with stupid ringlets and inappropriate lipstick, she bleats out her songs in a strained voice that makes my throat constrict in sympathy while wielding an over-sized guitar and playing up to the pederasts in the audience by kneeling down on the floor and flipping her head around.

Yay for Kanye West! He loves to make a scene at awards shows, and he couldn’t have picked a better victim to mess with. Ever since he told the American people on live TV that George Bush doesn’t care about black people, Kanye has been my hero.   Tonight, he won my appreciation for making that big awful girl shut the hell up.

Beyonce’s performance was fantastic. Her legs were bigger than ever, in her never-ending tribute to My Little Pony. Pink was especially androgynous as she demonstrated her acrobatic prowess during a torch song about a bad relationship. Her boob was out but covered by a nice pasty.

Jay Z performed a rap song while his pants fell down, and Alicia Keyes appeared to understand why he is a star, much to my confusion. When I remarked to my husband that Alicia is gay, he snapped at me, even though it’s not my fault.

Lady Gaga looked ridiculous and thanked “the gays.” Do they like to be called The Gays? You would think she has learned the protocol by now.

Let’s see, what else? Green Day was embarrassing, Janet Jackson looked fierce, and Russel Brand feels no shame about his shapeless flabby arms, which he flailed around to no good effect.

That’s all I remember. Let me know if I forgot anything important.

“…the creation of Twitter… is as significant and paradigm-shifting as the invention of Morse code, the telephone, radio, television or the personal computer.”

Oh god, if he would only shut up. How does Demi stand it?

“For someone like me who lives in a construct of filtered communication – packaged and polished by the industry that employs me – Twitter has become a new instrument for expressing myself and accessing cultural trends, opinions and information. Twitter is my front door to the Internet and my medium for sharing the content I create while advocating for the causes close to my heart and investing in the connections I want to have with people from all walks of life.”

Yeah, yeah, tell it to the judge. Even though I don’t read his missives or see his TV shows, the fact of his existence is like a dental drill in my cerebral cortex.

What would you like to say to Ashton Kutcher in 140 characters or less?