Why, Whitney?
Archive for January, 2006
Annoyances and Sound Byte
Let’s go for the sound byte first, because they’re easier.
Overheard from a Biggest Loser contestant leaving the building:
“I’m not taking my clothes off for anyone!”
Not a good visual. Not even remotely.
Now for the annoyance . . .
One of my several pet peeves has to do with urgency of communication. I never try to turn my urgency into someone else’s urgency. I thank others to have that same consideration.
Last night, a guy I know was blowing up my phone at midnight. Both phones. He called my house three times in a row, and then my cell. It’s like he was calling, getting voicemail, hanging up and immediately hitting redial. Kinda creepy.
Now . . . this guy . . . before anyone starts thinking that he’s looking for a midnight rendezvous . . . he’s a strictly platonic friend, although we’re not extremely close. We usually talk whenever I’m hiring him to do work around my house — like any sort of complication installation. He’s really quite good at contractor work.
In the meantime, I’ve decided that I only answer the phone for a small handful of people after midnight, and since I didn’t immediately recognize the number, I had no intention of picking up. (Truthfully, I have phone issues anyway, but I’ll get into that later.)
He left messages on both phones, and when I checked my cell voicemail, I had a message marked “Urgent,” which was a very nebulous ranting about how I need to call him IMMEDIATELY because he has something VERY IMPORTANT to talk to me about, and could I please call him ASAP.
I was annoyed on two counts. First, a message marked Urgent should indicate the presence of a true emergency, which can be defined as:
- My parents or a member of my family is in danger
- Someone (that I know) has been beat up, maimed or dismembered
- God forbid, someone (that I know) has died
Things that do NOT qualify as a true emergency include:
- You want to make sure that your message goes to the top of the queue
- You’ve been dumped
- You want to know where the party is
- You want me to drop what I’m doing or wake up to do you a favor
- You want money
- Anything else not covered in the official list of true emergencies
The second count of annoyance was the fact that there was no additional information in that message besides that it was very important that he talk to me immediately. If you’re going to leave a message like that, at least give me some context. Tell me what kind of emergency you’re having, and what you need. Jeez.
As it turns out, he needs money.
The Biggest Losers
As my luck would have it, my client’s office is around the corner from the Biggest Loser tryouts at Rock Bottom Brewery this morning. I saw it on the news this morning, and anticipated congestion in my area. It was an accurate concern.
My parking garage issues were magnified as there were a lot of people who didn’t know where they were going, creeping through the parking lot at a snail’s pace.
It’s amazing, though. The line probably expands one full square block, and people have apparently been there since last night. If you’re not in Chicago, you should know that the temperature is in the 30s — it’s hardly camp-out weather. I wished them all a cheerful good luck as I walked by to get to my building.
People keep filing into the office asking what’s going on across the street. One of my colleagues said: “I knew something was going on, because I noticed that all the people in line were pretty big.”
Yep. Pretty much.
The anniversary of a horrible day
A year ago today I had to euthanize my cat, Ellie. It was an awful day, and I just revisited it by re-reading the blog entry from that day. It’s a little better now, but I still miss the old girl.
The new column dropped today!
Grab a RedEye if you’re in Chicago, or click here if you want to catch it online.
Banal daily stuff, and Flavor of Love
I made the radical decision to switch parking garages. I got tired of the inefficiencies. I’m sure I’ve bored you all to tears with my parking technology complaints, but here’s the final straw.
I paid at the kiosk when I entered, and by some grace of God, the machine worked and, for a change, I didn’t have to call the (incompetent) attendant to pry my ticket from the bowels of the machine. HOWEVER, when I attempted to exit the garage, the screen flashed “Unreadable ticket.”
I buzzed the attendant, who instructed me to bring the ticket to the office, which is literally 5 feet away from the gate where I was sitting. I used my flashers, and didn’t bother to back my car out of the lane.
He recognized me — which is an indication as to how often that damned machine breaks down — and gave me a new ticket. I did my usual bitching about how the machines never work, and he told me that I should try the middle gate, because, of the three, it’s the one that always works.
That pissed me off, for some reason. I asked him “Why don’t they ALL work? Why should I have to be careful of which gate I use because two-thirds of them are usually broken? Does that make sense?”
That last question was rhetorical, because I didn’t wait for him to answer. I just stormed off and reclaimed my car. I should probably park elsewhere for a while to avoid another run-in.
On another note, if you have VH-1, you MUST tune in and watch Flavor of Love, the new Flavor Flav reality show which is like The Bachelor — except this Bachelor wears pink suits, gold teeth and carries a cane, and the girls . . . wow. Instead of sorority girls, think gold-digging strippers. Or maybe hoes.
If any of those women thought they were going to make a name for themselves on this show, they should think again. Flav is notoriously bad with names, and has decided, instead of to try and remember their real names, to give them tasteful nicknames like Apples, Peaches and Cherry. When he re-named each girl, he applied their adhesive nametags while opportunistically groping the breasts of most of the women, who giggled with glee.
These women were getting emotional about Flav, which was causing me to lose my dinner. A few of them are actually cute girls, and it pains me to hear them say things like “I’m a hopeless romantic, and the minute I saw him, I knew . . . ”
My fave was the one who got emotional during one of the confessionals. Her fruity/slutty nickname escapes me, but she began crying when she said that Flav inspired her to be loud and boisterous. WTF?
Of course the girls are vicious to each other and all of them are vying for Flav’s hand and all of the diamonds that he can fit inside of it. But the joke’s on them. I have it on REALLY good authority that the featured mansion is not Flav’s house. He doesn’t have any servants, and he certainly doesn’t travel by limo. If anyone reads the newspapers or keeps up with pop culture, they will know that Flav can’t even pay child support!! How would he upkeep a mansion? Hel-loooo!?
But, I can’t blame Flav for riding his wave of popularity. And I’ll certainly be tuning in.
Spite will cost you!
Terry McMillan won her case against outed ex-husband, Jonathan Plummer, but apparently some letters came up in court where she claimed to have been cheating on him for 3 years prior to the end of their marriage.
Now, of course, everyone’s first inclination, when they’ve been wronged, is to try and hurt that person just as much (if not more). I’m sure that Terry wasn’t getting nearly as much sex as she claimed, but the fact that it was in writing probably hurt her case.
She ended up paying him $50,000 to walk away, which is about $49,999 more that I would have wanted to pay.
You must watch this!
It’s the SNL “Chronicles of Narnia” rap, and it’s hilarious. Turn up the volume. I guarantee a good laugh (and no, there’s no nudity or pornography):
Happy New Year!!
I hope everyone had a good night. I certainly did. I went to a fun party with good friends and consumed an immeasurable amount of champagne. It was the perfect way to ring in the new year. I have to say that the entire night was a lot of fun. I was lucky this year. I’ve had not-so-fun years.
I returned home at 5:00, and was somehow able to wake up at 8:30 with my stomach screaming at me — and my head pounding from the 2 bottles of champagne I downed the night before.
I went to breakfast with one of my equally energetic friends, and then decided to go shopping, for some reason. I have no idea why — just thought it was a good idea. I soon abandoned the idea and went home to lounge on my comfy couch and hang with the animals.
