seriously now...why bother?!

Lemme' just lay it out there for y'all...I have a zero bullshit policy.

So when this dumbass from my past contacted me on Facebook, trying to friend me, and acting like I wouldn't remember how she dissed me several years back, I let her have it...

"Hey Girl! Remember me? I was so bummed we lost touch years ago. B. just told me you are on Facebook. Wanna hook up again?"

Uh, you mean much like I'd wanna' have someone squirt acid in my eyes?! Yeah, thanks, I'll pass.

Here's how the story goes...

Years ago, when I was still married, I was feeling lost and lonely and looking to connect with people as I felt no connection to my then-husband so I registered myself on some penpal website. There was this gal from another country and we connected. Never having met, we continued corresponding with each other for years through Email and IM.

When some psycho blogger didn't like something I had to say on her blog and turned all her little blogging friends against me, this gal friend of mine had some words for this psycho blogger.

We blogged together. Literally. Until the day that someone hacked our blog, probably the psycho blogger or one of her cohorts. After that, this gal and I had both set up separate blogs and it wasn't long after that I noticed that she had become good blogging buddies with some of the psycho blogger's friends.

While I certainly don't tell anyone who they can be friends with, this bothered me. I think we had "known" each other well enough that we wouldn't do that to each other. Or at least I wouldn't have done it to her or anyone else I felt I had established a friendship with. I explained to her my feelings and she laughed off my words. To say that it was hurtful, would be an understatement. It was much later that we lost touch mainly because I couldn't be bothered with someone I felt was a back-stabber.

There was also another incident not long before all that happened in which I learned she couldn't be trusted. When I was on that dating site, I was in touch with this one guy. One night I was IMing with him and her separately and it became too much of a chore so I just set up a conference where we could all chat together.

Shortly before all that happened, I had been trying to get her to give me her phone number so we could chat on the phone and she either ignored me and/or just kept coming up with excuses. So we're in touch with that guy, it was close to New Year's Eve and he asked me to call him on New Years so I did...only to learn that she had sent a picture of herself to him all dressed up for the New Year's Eve party she was attending with the message "Don't tell Koolio I'm sending you this.". Yep, she was trying to keep secrets from me. Luckily, this guy felt uncomfortable enough about this situation that he told me that and that they had also talked on the phone. Nice, huh?!

I decided I'd had enough of her bullshit so I stopped visiting her blog and stopped communicating with her. Suddenly, there was a rush of Email messages that she wrote me which I chose not to respond to and then I chose to delete her from my address book completely so that all her messages went to spam. She sent me some E-card as well which I chose not to open.

Fast forward to tonight when I got that message from her. My response to her was the following...

Yep, I remember you. You were the one who dissed me when I needed a friend. You probably don't remember and it doesn't really matter at this point so let's just leave it at that.

I knew exactly how she would respond, with trying to lay all the blame on me for the friendship falling apart, and reminding me how she'd written Emails that I never responded to with her not once owning up to the true nature of why I stopped corresponding with her.

I ended up blocking her on Facebook so that she can never contact me again. Then I decided to Email the guy who told her I was on Facebook to let him know I wasn't pleased that she had contacted me only to find out that he had his privacy settings set so that I couldn't view his profile. Since it makes no sense to me to have someone on your friends list and then not allow them to view your profile, I deleted him from my friends list. I'm not like some people on Facebook who just add people to their friends list for the sake of adding. I'm not on the same quest as others appear to be to see who can have the most people on their friends list.

Who has time for all this game-playing bullshit?! I don't know about y'all, but I left high school a long time ago!

stuck on stupid

For those of you not on Facebook, this will take some explaining. So, once again, grab your beverage of choice and chillax. God, I hate that word but yes, I did in fact use it.

A long, long time ago, on an Internet dating site based out of Beverly Hills, California, I "met" a woman we'll call "Fucked-up Nutcase". Yes, I made more women friends than met actual men. Go figure.

Anyway, FUN and I chatted, became "friends" and eventually and occasionally Emailed off the site. We had a falling out, my mind escapes me exactly what occurred, but nevertheless, she acted fruity and I told her that I was losing her Email address. Fast.

Fast forward to early fall when she requested to be added to my Facebook friend's list. I actually had to ask around for someone to remind me who she was! When I found out, I waited several days before adding her to my list, weighing the pros and cons of doing so. I hesitated for a reason, I only wish I had listened to my conscience then.

Facebook has a gazillion and a half of these stupid game applications that you can log into, one of which is called Celebrity Agent. Now let's stop for a moment and think about what a celebrity agent actually does. An agent represents celebrities. It's a cut throat business in which agents are always trying to scam other agents out of their clients because the entire business is about making more money than ten million Donald Trumps put together.

So what is the point of this game? To start, you select six celebrities. You then invite friends to participate because you need those friends to what? What?! That's right, steal from them. And on top of stealing the celebrity in question, you have the option of locking them in for a certain amount of time so that said celebrity cannot be stolen away from you right away. All very exciting, lemme' tell you. *rolls eyes*

So FUN is on my list of people I play against and over just the last few days she's up $20K. So as a celebrity agent, what do I do? I check out her celebrities to find her money-maker celeb. I find her and I swipe her. Fast and hard, hitting below the belt by locking her. Bwahahaha! She's mine!

I leave home to go watch my daughter play in her hockey game and arrive back awhile later to find a crazy-assed IM from FUN. It read:

Miss Koolio...what ya' doin'? I see Obama on your list all the time, he's available and I don't take him...because I don't do that to friends.

*blank stare*

Did I forget to mention that this lunatic is over 50 years old?! I really hope she's not wondering why she's still single. But that's beside the point.

Anyway, I responded to her IM with an Email. In true Koolio form, it was entitled GET OVER IT. Heh.

Of all the people on here, I never expected YOU to whine about PLAYING A GAME. Since it seems you never read the purpose behind Celebrity Agent, you are supposed to steal others celebs in order to make money. I was playing the GAME, you're just kvetching about it.

Honestly, I am very surprised with myself for even dignifying your ridiculousness over such a thing with a reply but even more surprised that you're acting like a 3 year old. Go throw your tizzy elsewhere, I'm not interested.

With that, I deleted her from my friend's list. Silly perhaps, but if I have one less crackpot in my life, the better it is for me. Then I wrote in my status bar...

Koolio says FYI - if you contact me to whine about how you think I'm not playing an FB GAME fairly, I have 3 words for you - GROW UP and "defriend". Have a nice day.

Her response to me:

Koolio...You're right not to have expected me to whine...I wasn't whining in fact I'm surprised u took the remark so seriously.

STOP! Just back the fuck up!! Did I misread something when she sent me an IM clearly complaining to me about my playing the game in what she thought was an unfair manner? Please, someone tell me! And if she wasn't serious, then what was the purpose of sending me the IM in the first place?!

She continued:

Your prerogative, of course...and if you ever feel like being on my list again, feel free.

Okay, that last part was laughable. If I ever want to be on her list again? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! How was she able to turn this around on me and make me look like I was to blame for her bad behavior?!

I'm undecided as to whether I should ream her out or move on. On one hand, reaming her out would be so fulfilling, on the other hand, haven't I wasted enough time on this fucknut??!

Oh by the way...I'm making a buttload of money off that celeb I stole from her! And the sweet part about the whole thing is that she's no longer on my friend's list which means she's no longer someone who can play against me in Celebrity Agent and she can't steal her celeb back.

Ahh, sweet reward. *insert big evil grin here*

apparently i'm chopped liver

I have this friend. We'll call her Connie Clueless. She's very sweet, has a great personality and is a good conversationalist.

Even though she speaks like she's just sucked in helium which makes it sound like she's a total ditz.

But after yesterday, I know for a fact that she is a ditz!

I feel bad for her. About a year ago, her husband was introduced to that awful World of Warcraft and is addicted to it. He comes home, eats dinner and then spends about five hours on the computer into the wee hours of morning. He and my friend don't spend any alone time together anymore, don't go out together, fight about time spent and not being spent with one another, etc.. He's more in love with his WoW than his own wife.

Connie is from Phoenix, Arizona and speaks fondly of it often. She has a few friends here but no one she can really call close. She doesn't like it here and as often as she praises Phoenix does she put down this city. She feels alone and lonely and wants desperately to return to her hometown.

With or without her husband.

I speak to her often and we talk about everything. She has confided in me about her feelings on her life here and her frustrations with her husband and the new love in his life. We talked yesterday, I listened and made a few suggestions about possibly resolving things with her husband and if not with him, then with herself. That friends are great to talk to but therapists can sometimes enlighten us and help things fall into place. I told her, in all seriousness, that she should consider suing the makers of World of Warcraft for breaking up her marriage and frankly, I think she'd have a case. I told her if her husband doesn't have an interest in going out with her, she should plan a girl's night out from time-to-time.

Pay special attention to that last line!

So she said "I don't know. I'm not sure I feel comfortable doing that. All my friends are married with families and have their own things to do."

*blank stare*

Interesting...last time I checked the ink on my 2002 divorce agreement was very dry.

If it weren't for the fact that this is the second time she's said something along those lines to me I'd find it funny, but now I take it personally.

So...if she doesn't consider me a friend, then WTF am I?! What have I been, a pseudo-wannabe-therapist handing out free advice?! I mean, what would y'all call it?! And then there's the question of if she doesn't consider me a friend, do I simply humor myself by continuing to talk to her or stop putting forth my share in the friendship?

This situation is exactly why I am so untrusting of people. As nasty and rude as I can be on here, I am a good friend which sometimes translates for some to take advantage of my kindness.

Motherfuckers.

and this is exactly why i am not in a relationship

A week or so ago, a former lust object of mine resurfaced on Facebook. We started reminiscing and after numerous IM chats and one phone call, it wasn't hard to figure out that he was in an unhappy marriage.

I know, red flag. I have the talent to ignore them when I need to pay attention to them.

So we start talking about his unhappy situation. In no offense to any of you because I don't claim to know your marital statuses, but it pisses me off to no end to hear how people will stay in a marriage just for their kids.

Okay, lemme' tell you something folks, and I can say this because I am a divorced woman with two kids who aren't all fucked in the head from the divorce but ya' know what really fucks the kids up in a divorce? The parents. The fighting and hostility rubs off onto them and that is what affects them. Yes, of course the kids don't want their parents to split and want their parents to be all happy happy, but it's the residual effects the arguing has on them that causes the most damage and not the actual split. Don't believe me? Go do some Googling and read up on it.

Again, I can say that because I was once there. If I wasn't arguing with my ex, then we were ignoring each other. I, too, was one of those parents who told myself I would, I could, stay with my ex simply for the sake of the kids but when it came down to it, the minute I realized how our behavior was affecting our kids, I knew it was time to be selfish for once in my marriage and get out while my kids were still sane!

The fact remains, there is no reason why anyone should ever use their kids as the excuse for staying in a wrecked marriage. My parents did and they are two of the most dysfunctional people I know. I can recall numerous times when I'd find my mother crying in a closet and other times when my sister and I hoped my parents would divorce. Frankly, my father could be really fucking sinister when he wanted to be and it would have done him good to have his balls cut off and shoved down his throat but, of course, that's just my fantasy opinion.

Do you know what happens to the person in the marriage who decides to stay for the sake of the kids? That thing we call a 'spine' shrivels up and disintegrates. If my parents were to get a divorce now, my mother wouldn't know what to do with herself and would probably fall into a permanent catatonic state. Which, in hindsight, wouldn't be so bad because then she'd stop telling me I have a brain tumor whenever I get one of my migraines along with the numerous other health issues she claims she has. Can you say "Hypochondriac?"?! C'mon kids, sure ya' can!

Anyway, divorce...been there, done that, have the T-shirt! Friend-to-friend, I talked with this guy about his situation. It made sense, he got it, he knew that not all would be lost if he and his wife were to divorce. The kids would be sad for awhile and then they would recover.

We've chatted and/or Emailed every day since getting back in touch. Strangely enough, he has such a clear, strong memory of our time together down to the details of our sexual encounters. A bit weird but we were able to joke about it without letting it bother us. Suddenly, I made a comment as I had been for the last 20 minutes of our conversation and he says "Uh...oh by the way, the shit went down last night and I'm moving out soon. I'm so worried about the kids so I won't be able to chat with you for awhile.".

Huh?! How did our conversation go from joking one minute to basically telling me C ya'!!

One of two things happened here...first, I can see a brush off from a mile away and I don't appreciate such a thing from anyone, friend or stranger, more so from someone I consider a friend. Two, it was okay for him to make sexual jokes but the second I make one, he gets all weirded out and heads for the hills?! WTF?!

I will admit that I do have a tendency to read into things a bit too much but what else am I left to think? He's all but admitted to me that he still thinks about me and dangles that little carrot in front of my face and then BAM, he's gone quicker than the Star Ship Enterprise at warp speed!

As someone who's experienced divorce firsthand and who understands the ins and outs of the emotions that come into play during such a mourning period, I'm the first one to understand loneliness, neediness, and a whole multitude of emotions that goes along with first separation, then divorce and then the aftermath when you just want to sow your wild oats 'til the cows come home! I'm also the first one to understand wanting to physically get back out into the dating world but not being ready emotionally. After one experience years ago with a newly separated man that left me kinda' shattered, I made a promise to myself that I would not get involved with men who were not only just separated but also emotionally unavailable mainly because, no matter how much they will try to convince you and themselves, they are just not ready to get back out there after going through what can be such a hurtful process. I just can't do it and up until now, I've been a good girl.

In one way, it's different because this guy is not a stranger to me. When we first talked, we picked up our friendship where we last left it and it was good, familiar and fun. Nothing wrong with that. No promises were ever made to me and even if there had been, I wouldn't have believed any of them. I think what bothers me about this situation the most is that this was supposed to be a friendship, nothing more, and as soon as it restarted, he pushed it aside like it didn't mean shit.

For all I know, I could be reading too much into it and I've put together incorrectly the pieces to this puzzle but nevertheless, it sucks to feel like you've just been shit on when you've done nothing to deserve it. I'll recover, I always do and in no offense to the men out there reading this, sometimes I really hate you guys.

amazon.CON

WARNING! WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT ORDER ANYTHING FROM AMAZON.COM EVER !!!
They will scam and cheat you!

A friend of mine suggested I read Twilight, about the star-crossed relationship between a vampire and a teenage girl (yes the same story as the movie in theaters now). The book was great, the story addicting enough that I wanted to read the remaining books in the series. What I should have done was picked up the rest of the books at a local bookstore but I knew I wouldn't find the time and/or get off my lazy ass so I just decided to order them through Amazon instead. Which I will never do again.

Here's what happened...

Upon receiving an Email notification this afternoon that my order had been shipped, I looked through the receipt and noticed something just didn't look right. With this order, I was eligible for free shipping and handling which, of course, I chose to apply to my order.

Now let me stop to mention that I realize that this recession has hit everyone hard and that all stores and online sites are trying to make money, but I am a long-time Amazon customer and I'll be damned if they try to pull the wool over my eyes!

Anyway, they subtotaled my order to be $29.67 before the free shipping and handling. After they deducted the "free" shipping and handling of $5.97, the total was $29.12. Anyone else see the problem with that?!

Here's what they did...before they deducted the $5.97, they first added it to the total. I was also eligible for some $0.55 "best value" deduction which was also applied to my order bringing everything to $29.12.

Now people, don't even try to tell me that this is normal practice among websites such as this, I've ordered enough shit online and have received enough free shipping and handling to know when someone's trying to scam me. If you're eligible for something that they claim is free, then you don't fucking add it to the purchase before deducting it!!! That's just poor, sleazy business ethics worth reporting to the Better Business Bureau in my honest opinion.

I tried to Email these fuckers and it wouldn't allow me to send the message as I kept receiving an error message that my order number was incorrect and the message could not be sent without it. Well dickheads, if my order number is incorrect then who's at fault for that?!

So I had to call them and of course my customer service representative was someone named Punjab with an East Indian accent. Oh wow, huge surprise there. Punjab's explanation was that I did in fact get the free shipping and handling and that all I was paying for was the cost of the books I purchased. My argument was that if you advertise for free shipping and handling, you don't first add the "free" shipping and handling to the cost before subtracting it. The response given was that it was for their accounting books. Books shmooks, you guys are fucking thieves and don't know your assholes from your elbows!

And while I'm on the subject of annoying companies, lemme' tell y'all another little story...

Last month, some guy who lives in my neighborhood, sent out a mass Email to the residents of my subdivision about giving to a particular charity for the holidays. In the next sentence, he advertised for his pressure washing business.

Here's what I have a problem with...

Promoting a charity is a wonderful thing that one should be commended for. Promoting a charity and then making a plug for your company in the same message is shameful and tacky, to say the least. You deserve to be beaten repeatedly with the keyboard you typed that message on if you pull some asshole stunt like that.

Funny thing is, I don't remember giving this guy, a perfect stranger, my personal Email address nor do I remember ever giving anyone permission to give him my Email address. Yet suddenly, I'm being solicited by this fucker through my personal Email address! Talk about fucked up, trying to drum up business through Email addresses that you received illegally.

The balls some people have, I'll tell ya'! So me being me, I Emailed this guy that I didn't know who he was or how he got my address but that he was to remove me from his group mailing list immediately. I'll let y'all know if I hear back from him. Chances are I will because I'm lucky like that!

stupid people in abundance

Yesterday started out like any other day. Then I guess my intolerance for the stupid people took hold of me.

The first stupid person I encountered was at the supermarket. I was in the checkout line, putting my items on the conveyor belt and the woman behind me was doing the same, her items getting mixed in with my items. The first time she apologized, moving her things back and putting one of those bars inbetween our items but then she kept doing it and the cashier had that motion sensor button turned on so that when an item reaches the end of the belt, the belt stops.

At this point, the woman kept putting her items on the belt, oblivious to what was going on. Or she was just plain fucking stupid and disrespectful. I couldn't put any more of my items on the belt because every time I moved her items back to put mine on the belt, the belt kept moving forward.

Her actions, of course, were delaying not only me but her. I finally stopped, turned and glared at her. Oblivious. I took it upon myself to remove her items and put them back in her cart. This she noticed. And me, well being me, spoke up:

"You are holding me up! I can't check out if you keep putting your items on the belt. Most people would understand that common courtesy is to wait for the person in front of you to finish loading their items before the person behind them does so. So back off and cut it out already or you'll be picking your items up off the damn floor!"

I must really scare the bejeebus outta' people because she removed the rest of her items from the belt and waited for me to finish. If I ever see her in the supermarket again, I'm ramming her fucking cart up her ass!

The stupid people didn't show their ugly faces again 'til after I picked my son up after school when he announced to me that someone had picked the lock on his gym locker and stolen a pair of PE shorts. The lock was then locked again. This was also done to two other of his basketball teammates. I was livid.

You might be asking yourselves why I would be so angry over a pair of PE shorts. Allow me to answer that by sharing the Email I sent to the middle school principal and the headmaster of the school:

Dear Mr. B. and Mrs. H.,

My son, (his name), is on the 6th grade basketball team. Upon picking him up from practice this afternoon, Thursday December 4th, he informed me that sometime after his Tuesday PE class and after his 10am PE class this morning, someone picked the lock on his gym locker and stole a pair of his PE shorts. While this also happened to two other teammates of his, (their names), I am just writing about my son.

I apologize in advance for the harsh tone this message may take on but I am angry. It's not the shorts I care so much about as I do the principle of the matter. I do not pay all this money to send my children to such a reputable school and have some delinquent children (I can only assume that immature children would pull this kind of prank) show such disregard and disrespect toward fellow classmates. Nothing comes cheap at (name of school) and if my son's shorts are not returned to him undamaged within a weeks time, I feel it's only fair to be compensated with a new pair of PE shorts for my son, free of charge of course.

And just so that you know, if and when the person and/or persons involved in this act are found, I will be looking into pressing criminal charges against him/her/them. I don't care if they're my son's teammates, classmates or other students that attend (name of school), I find this situation completely unacceptable and will not tolerate anyone being given a simple slap on the wrist.

I ended the letter with asking them to contact me should they want to discuss things further.

Here's what I think will happen...

The principle and headmaster will contact me offering their apologies and begging me not to take any legal action against the students and letting them handle things.

Trust me when I tell you I will never let that happen! If this had happened four years ago and the previous pushover headmaster was still in control, he would have accepted a hefty donation to the school from the parents of the child/children involved in the theft, brushed the whole situation under the rug and that would have been the end of it. The current headmaster doesn't tolerate shit and will certainly be concerned enough to get to the bottom of things but will probably do whatever he can so as not to let me get involved.

Here's what I would like to happen...

The principal and headmaster will contact me offering their apologies and telling me that I can be involved in the punishment phase when the suspects are found. Here is what I would like to see happen...

1. All persons involved will get a week's suspension that will remain on their academic records. If they know where they articles of clothing are, they will return them to the boys they stole from. If not, they will purchase new PE uniforms for the three boys.

2. During this suspension, they will have to work the entire school day with the school's maintenance crew as a kind of community service. I'm certainly not gonna' allow these children to be suspended so they can stay at home watching fucking TV all day! They're gonna' have to work off their punishment.

3. Upon returning to school, whomever their English teachers are, they will have to write a handwritten apology note of no less than 500 words to the three boys they stole from, the headmaster and the entire school and this will be graded by the English teacher(s). Anything less than a C, and the child fails the English class for the rest of the school year.

And that's my going easy on them.

4. If any of the suspects, if there's more than one, don't want to abide by any of the above, then the police will be called, they will be taken to juvy, expelled from school for stealing and the matter will remain on their school record forever which will make it impossible to get into any decent college.

I know it all sounds farfetched but trust me when I tell you, I'm not letting anyone get away with this kind of bullshit. I will make a lot of noise if anyone tries to quiet me down!

This story is far from being over so stay tuned!

it's wednesday night...do you know where your creepy mute butler and wads of cash are?!

PLEASE tell me that y'all remembered to watch Estate of Panic tonight!!!

If not, I'm deeply disappointed because you missed a lot of excitement.

There was the 34 year old black woman, Adrienne, who if she screamed one more fucking time, I would have reached my hands through the TV screen and bitch-slapped her 'til she bled.

There was the guy, whose name escapes me, who literally lost his pants while searching for cash in the kitchen.

You missed a crawl space under the house not only littered with cash but with seriously huge fucking spiders and snakes.

You missed the kitchen, my absolute favorite room, where the floor had been replaced with icky sticky gunk which stopped people in their tracks. Literally. The guy I mentioned above who lost his pants crawled right out of them while trying to escape the gunk. And one woman slipped, fell over and couldn't remove her hands nor the rest of her from the substance. It may have been exhausting for the contestants to maneuver through that shit but it was more exhausting to hear her say over and over again "I. Can't. Move.". Yeah, yeah, we can see that now shut the fuck up already!

One thing I'm very thankful for after watching this episode, is that the kids will be spending Thanksgiving with their dad this year mainly because there's no fucking way I can eat turkey ever again after what I saw. Resting on a countertop was a turkey. Inside the turkey was cash. And, oh yeah, really big maggots. *yarf*

The last contestant standing visited the vault, this time elevated in a harnass and he had to escape that before escaping the room. Which, of course, he did...$26,000 richer.

I so want to go on this show!

i'm in love!!

I know I'm gonna' regret choosing to write this post at this late hour but I just had to tell y'all something and didn't want to put it off in fear that I might forget some important detail!

It's not about the inappreciative bucket of fuck whose purse I returned to her today while at the supermarket and instead of being thanked, I was greeted with "What did you take?"!! Nice huh?! So much for being an honest person!

It's not about the kid who quarterbacked my son's 6th grade football team and who broke both bones in his left forearm but who's still being permitted to try out for the basketball team. This one really irks me and I will most likely address this topic a little later but for now, I must talk about something else.

There is a new show on the Sci-fi channel, which, if you haven't seen yet, you must watch next Wednesday night! It's called Estate of Panic and while I've always said how I despise reality TV, it's absolute genius! The person who thought up the idea behind the show must have been abused in torturous ways as a young child because anyone who's not that psychologically fucked up couldn't possibly dream up something like this!

The show is hosted by the always fabulous British actor, Steve Valentine, who used to play the somewhat creepy medical examiner on the show Crossing Jordan. In a nutshell, six insane people go to this crazy huge mansion and put themselves through sheer torture while collecting as much money as possible through a series of challenges and not being the last one to do so in fear of being locked in or out.

Let me back up for a minute...today, two of my cable boxes went on the fritz, one of which is in my bedroom. Unfortunately, I'm so accustomed to watching TV while in bed at night, that I ended up watching TV in my family room and falling asleep in there, waking to this show. I missed the first challenge but I did watch them pick through high-voltage wires and a ceiling and walls closing in on them, all the while, trying to avoid snakes, worms, crabs and other nasty creepy-crawlies then would curdle your blood!

So the winner was given one last challenge - go into Steve Valentine's vault, collect more money and escape before the door seals shut. The hitch was having an ankle chained to the floor and having to get loose and exit the vault before the last of ten balls drops or he loses all the money he and the others collected throughout the evening, possibly walking away with nothing. I can hear ya'll screaming "motherfucker"! I know! I was too!

So here's the guy, opening 200 safety deposit boxes, releasing possible tools to help him free himself as well as snakes and other nasties and he finally frees himself with a crow bar, grabs some cash and exits just in the nick of time, winning over $28,000!!!

The best part was Steve Valentine ordering the guy to "Now...get out of my house!" and the guy saying in return "Goodbye creepy guy!" I think I howled loud enough to wake up my neighbors two doors down!

It's genius, I tell you! Pure genius!

as the blog turns

First there was my mystery man who thought it cute to conceal his phone number and identity when calling me. Oooo, a man from my past, how exciting. *inserts finger in mouth and gags*

Then, there was the dude from Fakebook (not a typo) who just a few weeks ago, decided to, in jest I'll assume, make a rude and unnecessary comment to me during an IM chat and I haven't spoken to him since. A few days ago, I noticed he had written me a cryptic message on my Fakebook profile...

:-(

Yep, that was it. Since he wrote nothing more, I had no choice but to use my handy-dandy pictorial-deciphering techniques to interpret his message. Always giving the person the benefit of the doubt, *snicker* I'll assume that his message meant that he was sad that we hadn't been in touch. Or that he was constipated. Or that he realized he was really a woman trapped in a man's body. Or that he found out the hard way that he should never give himself a hot and spicy salsa suppository. Please, use your own imagination as to what he was trying to tell me because I don't really give a shit. While I do believe each of us was put on this earth for a significant reason, mine was definitely not to decipher that kind of juvenile crap.

Since I really didn't feel like responding but did so because I was brought up with proper manners, I wrote the following in return...

?

That says it all, don't you think?! IHe didn't go out of his way to explain himself so there was no reason for me to over-exert myself in my response.

I waited. Two days passed with no response. Again, always giving the person the benefit of the doubt, *wink* I assumed that he hadn't been online lately and therefore, hadn't seen my response. I was wrong. Since writing my response, he had spent countless hours playing word games. Apparently, he wanted nothing more than to be the center of my attention and once he had that, he didn't feel it necessary to explain himself. Nevertheless, I gave him the benefit of the doubt for two more days before writing him an Email telling him that if he wasn't going to be courteous enough to respond, not to waste my time with the game-playing. Since some people only respond to conflict, I figured he would surely respond to an Email like that. I was mistaken. Not wanting to be a part any longer of that kind of crap, I deleted him from my friends list. This guy is yet just another example why I choose not to have a man in my life. Not saying that was the direction in which it was headed but when you talk to someone every day whom you think you really connect with, things tend to happen.

Once again, I blame myself for being in touch with someone like him. I'm not beating myself up or anything like that but the red flags were out there from the beginning and I chose to ignore them. One thing I may not have mentioned when first talking about him was that our mutual friend was a college roommate of mine and they met through that dating site I once belonged to. He and I got to talking about how emotionally unstable she is and he shared an Email with me that he had sent her when she wouldn't leave him alone and take 'no' for an answer. Even though I'm aware that this gal has serious issues, that she's very selfish, self-consumed and I don't hold her in very high regards, I told him his message to her was overly harsh. Here's an excerpt...

"...and I told you never to contact me again. I don’t play games (now that's funny!!) and you live for them. It’s in your blood and you won’t change. I know you and pity your life 39 never married almost at the end of your chances of having a normal child. I guess what comes around goes around....I have a great life B. is doing great in 3rd grade he’s on a football team, basketball team and he and I both have great social lives. Once last time I pity you. I have a great life and wonderful family and friends. You have nothing."

I realize that we all have a dark side to the everyday persona we display to others but that was a little too dark for me! This guy gave off the impression that he is this calm, cool, collected, everyone's-best-friend kinda' guy and then to write something like that just raised that red flag to full staph! I should have stopped contact with him then.

I will add, however, that during the brief time that they dated, she completely used him and while I don't think he had the right to say some of the things mentioned above, he did have a right to be angry. During the time they dated, he paid for everything from meals to buying her clothes and bankrolling her during a trip to a casino. She even had the nerve to ask him to pay her credit card debt and later told him it was a test to see if he was a worthy boyfriend! I'm sure most if not all of you are shocked at reading something like that but if you knew her like I did back in school, it wouldn't surprise you that she pulled shit like that. She was always testing people to see if they were truly worthy of her "friendship". I put that word in quotes because I'm not sure, even to this day, that she truly understands the word nor is capable of being a true friend.

Ya' know the saying "Keep your friends close but your enemies closer"...you wouldn't believe how close she kept me! Now that I look back on college times, some of the things she did to me shows me now that she hated me more than she liked me! For instance, there was the time that I had this boyfriend at school, my first real boyfriend, and was devastated to find out that he had been cheating on me for some time and she knew all about it but never told me. Then, after she knew how heartbroken I was over him, I found a photo of he and his new girlfriend on her desk in plain view, not trying to hide it from me at all. Who does that to someone they claim is their best friend??

Then there was the time my senior year that I became ill enough where my roommate had to call an ambulance. I don't really remember much about it but I do know that she came over and was kind of enough to contact a professor of mine to let him know what was happening and that I would not be in class that day to take his final. However, a few days later, as I laid writhing in bed from a serious kidney infection and violently ill from the medication I had been put on, she called me in the middle of the night one night, crying about how she had puked all over someone's lawn that night from an apparent case of food poisoning and demanded I come over to her room to nurse her! What the fuck you tawkin' about, Willis?! Then she made it clear that she would not be friends with me any longer if I didn't! After that night, let's just say that we would acknowledge each other in passing and that was it. Who has time for that grade school shit?!

In other news, I thought y'all might like to know that Schwartz has so generously been leaving me little Halloween treats. Sometimes he'll alert me in advance that he'd like to make his bu'ness outside and other times, he'll just dump inside whenever the spirit moves he and his bowels to do so. I can't quite figure out why sometimes he tells me and sometimes he doesn't other than he must think he rules the roost and can doo-doo as he pleases!

Enough of that shit (no pun intended, of course)! Thanks for following me over to my new home!