wonderful words by someone else but me

I've been having a wonderful/terrible time lately with motivation and creativity.  I mean, up until about 6 months ago it was just a terrible time, so that's better.  It's just now I kind of still feel that icky feeling a lot of the time, but I find it hopelessly funny.  What?  I'll never amount to anything?  I'm a terrible artist/writer/person/friend/daughter/pet owner?  Everyone has these feelings and they never go away, no matter how hard you try to do better or ignore them?  Then I roll out of my chair in genuine, life-affirming laughter.  Which usually pisses me off.

Why?  Because I'm special.  Special as a stomach pump.  Just like everybody else.  The wonderful blogger Finslippy is special as a mysterious foreign postcard in the mail, and she has these feelings, too.  Except her can talken more betterer then mine.  Seems like everyone I know is having a hard time with the creative product coming out of their head, not just me, lately.  Read it up, and if you don't believe me or her, listen to Ira Glass.  That guy really fucken knows what he's talking about.

hey, kids! it's the usage nazi!

Dear The Internet,

Discreet and discrete are two different words. They mean two different things. Please stop using them interchangeably, especially in personal ads. "Seeking clean, discrete kinky person, no fatties." Doesn't make any sense. Discrete means, "constituting a separate entity : individually distinct."  

Maybe it's your really deep way of saying you want to be with somebody who can be their own person, who doesn't need to be with someone to feel like themselves. But I don't think so. I think the word you want is discreet, which means, "having or showing discernment or good judgment in conduct and especially in speech : prudent ; especially : capable of preserving prudent silence." "You told my wife we're fucking?! Are you insane? You agreed to be discreet." "No, I agreed to be discrete. And I wanted to tell her. That's just how I roll."

Considering how many other rules of grammar and usage (and spelling, and punctuation) I just ignore, this post might seem a little silly. Especially seeing that I (surprisingly) came down on the side of the them/they solution to the he-or-she/his-or-hers controversy. (That's right, there's trouble over it in the grammar world, and I'm playing fast and loose on the wrong side of town.) But if you're thinking that, you're probably the kind of person who misuses their and they're or hear and here. And jerks off to pictures of Ryan Seacrest holding a puppy. With your mom in the room.

why I love cell phones

I decide to go to the grocery store, right?  And it's, like, 9:30 at night on a Thursday.  I so have this, right?  It's gonna be dead, walk in and right out with the milk and butter and shit.  Then I get there and all my dreams are dead, because every single person that goes to UT is in the goddam H.E.B.  Swerving all over the aisles and being bitches.  And then there's the girls.

I keep running into this Larry the Cable Guy clone, except skinny.  You know, like "How did you know I do meth?" skinny.  He's not got a basket, he seems to just be talking on his cellphone while "I don't just live in a trailer, I manage the park!" Lady next to him is steadily packing WIC-approved items in a buggy.  I'm getting annoyed with seeing them everywhere in the store.  Larry is really clueless, and keeps standing between me and whatever I need to grab, endlessly explaining some random story on the phone.

Then it happens, the magic.  I'm leaning around the dude (again) to get the milk, when he says (clear as day), "Well, I don't know, Mama.  I guess they thought I was all cuffed up and couldn't reach it."

God Bless America, people.  Fuck you if you don't like cell phones.  When I ran into him again in the meat market, he was saying, "Well, hell, I used it to beat the shit out of the back of his car, whadda you think I did?!"