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This is a jackass who would rather play beach ball than watch the game going on behind him.

These are the people who stand up (thus blocking my view of the plate) to hit the beach ball.

They do not stand up to
1) cheer for the home run
2) root root root for the home team
3) let people pass them by
they just stand up for the fucking beach ball

This is the beach ball that landed in my lap despite my yelling “if that damn beach ball touches me I will pop it and I’m not kidding.”

This is the sad little kid who almost cried after I popped the beach ball.

So I got a round of BOOOOOO and then someone said “YOU DON’T LIKE FUN!” and someone else said “YOU SUCK!” and then I said “watch the game, it’s the 9th inning and we’re only up by 2 runs and the Phillies and the Padres won today so you need to pay attention.”

This is Sunglasses At Night and Kangol Hat guy and they were both really upset with me.

Kangol Hat ripped the (popped) beach ball out of my hands and tried to continue hitting it around the stadium. Sunglasses At Night looked at me and said “you are heartless.”

This was the woman who was really upset about the fact that I popped the beach ball and she turned around and said “that is SO UNCOOL.”

The girl behind me said “that woman is CRAZY” and then I turn around and her dad is taking a picture of her pointing at my head making a face. He took it and said “yeah, you can put it on your myspace!”
If anyone find it on myspace you are my hero.

Eventually, there was no more beach ball, and the dad fashioned the kid a new hat out of the remnants. I got to watch the game. Everyone was happy, except Sunglasses At Night who was pouting. And the Dodgers won.

I went for my monthly trip to Trader Joe’s today. There is a reason I only go grocery shopping once a month, namely the fucking idiots who live in my neighborhood. I would rather eat frozen food for three weeks straight than have to set foot in that place more than once every 30 days. The whole ordeal starts upon entrance to the parking lot, where 33% of the spaces are clearly marked COMPACT and 75% of the vehicles are obviously gas guzzling tanks straddling the lines delineating each spot in a “I can do whatever I want because my car cost $50,000” manner. Then I am forced to circle the parking lot at least 3 times which inevitably results in some 35 year old makeup caked woman on her cell phone nearly backing up into my car. One time I honked my horn repeatedly and the woman kept backing up. I had cars in front of me and behind me, thus trapping my poor little Bleu into the fate of an SUV in reverse. I rolled down the window and screamed at the woman to stop, to which she stopped the car, got out, and said “look, my neck hurts, I can’t turn my head, okay?” Oooooooooh, okay. I’m so sorry that your Thai massage therapist is out on a yoga retreat this weekend and you’ve been forced to suffer the pain of muscular tension. I should have known you were incapable of head movement so why don’t you go ahead and plow carelessly into my car. You’ve earned it.

I finally pull into a spot (marked compact, but my car is just that) which marks the beginning of my odyssey through the parking lot. This resembles the old American Gladiators game where the gladiators shoot tennis balls at you and you run around like a jack rabbit trying to dodge the sting of the projectiles. But in this case you are dodging much more massive objects (force = mass x acceleration) like SUVs and $8,000 baby strollers and 8 year old whining girls in pink furry uggs all of which are far scarier than a tennis ball traveling at 700 miles/hr and certainly can do more harm.

Entering the store heightens my anxiety for two important (and rather telling( reasons. First, it is always crowded with self-absorbed entitled assholes who do not move out of your way. Second, those self-absorbed entitled assholes are cloaked in the most ridiculous outfits of all time (especially when you consider we are grocery shopping here): furry ugg boots with cut-off jean shorts, enormous camo cargo pants with a 14 inch wide belt, and whiny little 8 year olds in sequined asswriting and tiaras that spell out “princess” over their perfectly coifed little heads; the worst part being that my hands are too full and my position too conspicuous to capture these people onto my memory card. The best I can do is the occasional camera phone shot which hardly does anyone justice (see above).

Wandering into the aisles is another hopeless adventure. There’s the 80 year old woman who is blocking the entire dairy aisle because she’s asking an employee to find her specific brand of yogurt which she can’t see on the shelf because she forgot her glasses since that immigrant cleaning lady moved them last week. Then there’s the 9 year old pigtailed girl who is crying tears of frustration and anger because grandma wouldn’t buy her some lemon mints. She even called her mother on her cell phone and shrieked “grandma won’t buy me mints and they’re sugar freeeeeeeeeeeee!” Next was the idiot who parked her cart in front of the cheese aisle successfully blocking everything from asiago to manchego and in her cloud of cluelessness she picks up her block of brie, puts it in MY cart and walks off (I watched for about 3 minutes as she put tortilla chips, salsa and salami into my cart before I pointed out that it is her cart that is preventing everyone from getting their minimum required intake of calcium, and my cart is the one she is pushing to which she giggled incessantly “oh I’m so sorry hee hee” which was ridiculous because my cart had about 30 items in it and hers had about 6). The most painful for me was the girl who had her phone and sunglasses tucked into her cleavage and there was no way for me to lift my camera phone high enough to get a good shot of it so I just stood there in the checkout line contemplating why anyone would think it was a good idea to use that area as a storage unit. I don’t hold my wallet in my asscheeks, do I?

Needless to say I am so thrilled to get out of there that I not only bag my own groceries but the groceries of everyone in the checkout line in front of me just to speed up the process. I literally run back to the car, throw the food in, and get out of there before disaster can strike. It’s a wonder I can handle this even once a month. I might go on a SuperSize Me diet so my food purchasing encounters will be limited to drive-thru windows only where I can contain my frustrations to the confines of my car.

“Mom, why do people say Bam Chicka Bam Bam when we walk by?”

Here we go.

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Please note the matching pink Bluetooth headset, originally uploaded by Malingering.

One of these days I will stop one of these people who is barking at the top of their lungs into their little headset and I will flip them over and shove it up their ass, and until they pass their bowels they will hear this incessant one-sided conversation consisting 40% of “can you hear me? are you there?” which they can’t participate in and then they will know exactly how I feel when I am standing next to them at the stoplight.

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Stupid Hummer, originally uploaded by Malingering.

I risked life and limb for this. The guy in the Hummer was about to back out and I felt certain if he saw me taking this he would have run right over me because we all know people who drive Hummers have no brains and no feelings and are generally antisocial. But I took it anyway, for the good of humanity. It’s so nice being queen of the world.

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I’m starting to feel really old, originally uploaded by Malingering.

There are these Goth kids who stand around on the Santa Monica Pier all day playing Dance Dance Revolution. They’ve clearly memorized every single song on there – but isn’t that sort of un-Gothlike? Aren’t they supposed to be sitting in the corner of their dark bedrooms writing poetry by candlelight and feeding seeds to their pet crows?

Either way, this guy must have spent $20 in the 10 minutes I was standing there and he had a routine for every song on the machine (none of them resembled what Goths listened to in my day… the Cure and NIN… I feel old).

way to make a statement, originally uploaded by Malingering.

In case you can’t read it, this is what it says:

For everything you have…
U.S. Veterans Paid the Proce
This Debt you Can’t Repay
Be Grateful for their Sacrifice
Liberals/Leftists & ACLU Members are Genetically Challenged
THE ENEMY WITHIN: ISLAM – A.C.L.U. – A.B.A. – N.E.A.
LIBERAL MEDIA – HOLLYWOOD – 95% of LAWYERS & JUDGES
95% of COLLEGE PROFS. – 85% of COLLEGE STUDENTS
98% of POLITICIANS AND OTHER MISC. VERMIN

P.S. He’s driving a Toyota.