What's making you scowl these days!

Everything in life can't be all rosy. Tell the world about what's making you scowl these days!

-- The Editors

Originally Posted 6/25/98
here's what made me scowl today:
so i park my car in the budget rent a car garage on van ness and california. the garage is open from seven to seven, so when i'm out late with the car, i have to get up and move it back into the garage before i leave for work in the morning. i work from 7:30-4:30 (worked this little deal out so i could get to oakland in time to get some useful training in). this means that i need to move my car into the garage right when it opens at 7:00am and then catch the 7:05 cable car down to one market, where i work.

now here is the problem.

to the employees of budget rent a car, 7:00am means 7:10am, 7:15am and sometimes even 7:20am. HOW HARD IS IT TO SHOW UP TO WORK ON TIME? I DO IT EVERYDAY - EXCEPT FOR DAYS WHEN I NEED TO MOVE MY CAR, ON WHICH I AM PERPETUALLY LATE DUE TO THE SLACK ASS ATTITUDE OF THE EMPLOYEES AT BUDGET RENT A CAR.

whatever, it's 10:00am, i'm moving past that now.

oh, i've got another one.

so i buy a jamba juice every day. often twice a day. each jamba juice i purchase costs me $3.50. add this up and you will see that i spend anywhere from $17.50 to $35 per working week, typically in the same jamba juice outlet located in the one market building.

repeat - i spend between $17 and $35 dollars a week at jamba juice. i am ACUTELY aware of the price structure of the jamba products.

so today, i walk into jamba juice. there is a huge, HUGE, ten foot banner hanging above the counter that reads "SUPER SUMMER DEAL! 'summersize' your smoothie - 33% more for just 95 cents!"

how insulting is this? tell me you're offering a larger size for the summer months. tell me that for more money i can have more beverage. DON'T try to trick me into thinking that i'm getting a great deal by paying a third more for a third more. geeez. how stupid do they think the american public is?

don't answer that.

What's been making me scowl for the past few years is my out-of-control weight gain, and the fact that I have tried everything imaginable to change it, and it's just not happening. Every time I force myself to get on top of that scale, I look down and try to see past my rapidly expanding middle and look at the numbers...and invariably, there'll be more of me there than the last time I did it. Two years ago I was 180lbs. Last year: 200lbs. Now I'm 219lbs.

I'm a 33 y/o female and let me tell you unless you've ever been a fat female you have no idea how bad it is. It is as if the whole world starts looking at you like you should just resign yourself to becoming asexual, and that if you don't do that, then you have some kind of nerve or something! Like people look at me with this facial expression that says "My god, how can you force people to have to look at you when you let yourself GO like that!"

That's right: everyone instantly thinks I MUST be a lazy jerk who sits around eating bon bons and watching soap operas. The deal is, I don't do any such thing. I'm an active person. I take long walks virtually every day, take the stairas, exercise. I barely eat anything at all and what I do eat is vegetables and fruit. Why am I so fat then? I have a medication I have to take that causes weight retention, and in addition to that, my family has been obese at about a 100% rate - everyone in it is either fat or has been fat while they were alive...and for ALL of them, it hit around age 30.

I'm going to try to get off this medication. But it's going to affect my personality if I do, and be very hard on me and my loved ones. Still, apparently these days it's nothing less than an aesthetic crime to be overweight, and I'm sick and tired of having to hang my head low and feel guilty for something I have been trying so bloody hard to control.

thanks for the venting space...

monde

Hey, glad to provide the venting space!
Scowl because people can't mind their own business... and don't feel pressured to lose weight just to make other people's life easier. Screw what other people think.

-- Avery

idiots in sport utility vehicles and huge pickup trucks that try to run over an idiot like me in a geo metro

Generally being eighteen and still living at home. Rawrrr!!!!!

actual voiceover for the tv ad for the REMAKE of "psycho."

"psycho - a new movie by gus van sant."

this actually happened. they called psycho "a new movie by gus van sant." what happened to "psycho - a great old movie by alfred hitchcock stolen by gus van sant, who directed 'good will hunting,' world's most ridiculous, sappy movie ever written by two lame wannabes."

Yeah, my stomach turned whenI saw the ad for the "New" Psycho as well.

Can't anyone come up with an original movie idea?

-- Avery

...I liked Good Will Hunting...

But yeah, I agree. They're just going to completely ruin the movie. It's going to be way too Hollywood-slick and gory. No suspense at all. They should put a ban Hitchcock's work of some kind so that people can't remake them. Rawrrr.

Basically, the entire movie industry is in the shitter. They are so goddamn afraid to take chances or risk offending anyone that nothing gets made but a bunch of crappy films, all of which have "action" in there somewhere.

action-drama, action-comedy, action-romance, action-historical, action-action, endearing-coming-of-age-action, leonardo-de-action-o, children's-action, action-kiss-my-ass.

(after spelling action so many times I'm wondering if I spelled it correctly - it no longer looks right)

Apparently, excessive car-chases, explosions, and the thrown-in-for-effect breasts are never going to offend anyone. The fact that the lack of original stories offends anyone with an IQ over 9 doesn't seem to matter to them.

I'm not even pissed off about pointless violent movies like Blade, either (which is a great 2 hour live-action comic book). Its movies that could be really cool and suspenseful - if they didnt suddenly pull out 17 handguns apiece and totally destroy any suspense there is with lotsa crapy action. That's what pisses me off most.

lights, camera, ACTION!
blow me, hollywood.

ok, i've been meaning to post a scowl about the the step nazi to add to janet and avery's commentary for a while now, but i've been locked into a cold and haven't been really motivated. but now here it goes.

ok, so if you haven't figured this out by now, i'm the boxing instructor whom janet and avery refer to sometimes. for a fairly long time in the fittness industry, i taught a boxing class at powerhouse gym where avery and janet were going. please note: it was not an ally mcbealesque cardio box class where we jump around to music while throwing punches and clapping. nobody arrived wearing spandex and hair scrunchies. it was an actual boxing class where we learned how to throw punches, work defense, etc. and i really dug my class at powerhouse. the people who came were very into what they were doing and were good or on their way to being good boxers. there was no spandex element. i hate the spandex element.

then we hired the step nazi.

the step nazi, otherwise know as john "i own one pair of shorts and they're green hand me a spice girls tape i LOVE to step, step, step," was the new aerobics director, and somehow my class fell under his jurisdiction. the problems started immediately. first he started griping about my class numbers, even though i consistently had more people than any of the other 6:00pm classes, and my people were all repeat business. then there was an issue over some class i subbed. then there was an issue over subbing out classes in general.

but the kicker was the argument over music. john, the AEROBICS director, really wanted to see me make my class into an AEROBICS class. so he kept telling me i had to play "workout music" in the class. i explained that this was not appropriate in this type of class, but he insisted. so to appease him, i would put the tape in, play it during the warm up and then turn the volume down for the rest of the class. until last tuesday when during the middle of my class he walked in, went up to the stereo, and cranked in the spice girls at full volume and then walked out. he did that. he reallly did that. just turned the stereo on in the middle of my class.

it was literally all i could do not to kick his little aerobicizing (sp?) butt right there. i HATE him and his neon butt thong backwards baseball cap while you're working out stop i dont' want to sweat off my makeup type of brood. so the more i thought about it, the more i didn't want to work there anymore because it was clear that john "work those buns" aerobics director was trying to bring in the spandex element.

so i quit.

and then john calls me and leaves a message on my answering machine asking if i'm sybill and do i have a personality disorder. that shit's not funny.

the most basically disturbing part of this whole scowl is that the people who ultimately won in this situation are the matching floral print biker shorts and sports bra oh those three pound weights are heavy step it up one two FREAKS. i HATE the spandex element.

D.J.'s. When I was just a small fry, I listened to the alternitve KTCL, which was then out of Fort Collins, Co. Not Denver, not Boulder, just little cow town Fort Collins. Broke my eyeteeth on this radio station.

And as you would expect from a cowtown producing a radio show, the D.J.'s weren't high paid, know nothing idiots, who could find no better outlet for their absurd antics than radio (they are just too stupid and ugly for news programs, for the most part). No, these guys were most likely local. They were calm, easy to listen to folks who happened to have an incredible record collection and felt the need to share it with the rest of us backwooders. No fucking morning zoo. Wake up at six in the morning, turn on KTCL, and hear music you'd never heard before to the sane voice of a KTCL D.J.

Sometime after I moved to N.Y., they got bought out by a major conglomerate, moved to Denver, and proceeded to suck, along with all the other shit on the radio. Maybe not as bad, but suck they do, nonetheless.

So I refuse to listen to them now, lost anthem of my youth. Now I subject myself to even worse tripe, namely Alice. I don't even know what this station's call letters are, I only know they play a barely passable mix of music interspersed with the most vomitous drivel currently being spewed across Denvers airwaves. The D.J.'s aren't just stupid, they're downright offensive. And they've managed to take the "Morning Zoo" concept to a whole new level: morning, noon, night; come sleat, hail, rain, uggghh. You get my drift.

That's what's making me scowl.

Hmm... strange... we have Radio Alice in San Francisco as well. the morning show is funny, but the rest of the programming just sucks.

Right now, we are watching South Park, which according to Newsweek accurately portrays life in Colorado.

On an unrelated note, I just have to say that it is good to have you on the board, Kimme. Ok. Mushy stuff is over.

damn half moon bay and its damn art and wine festival. backed the damn higway up for miles. damn them.

Our lack of funds. It was something I was dealing with pretty well until today, when, in spite of the fact that I had cash in the bank, couldn't get access to it until about 4:00, and I was without ciggies. This shit is getting old. Ugghh.

Kimme,

Damn, I can certainly empathise with that. We just had to shell out $1200 to the state for last year's taxes. Blech.

$1200.00?!?!? Good lord. Well, I guess me whining about not being able to get a pack of ciggies kind of pales in comparison, huh? Puts things in perspective.

Although I will say, some demon-spawn-from-hell seems to be following Slap and I around these days. One weird fucked up thing after another has been happening for the past two weeks. Other than the fact that he got a new job, everything that could go wrong has. But, I'm happy to say, we're not even close to killing each other. I guess that counts for something, huh? We just scowl a lot, and watch Springer.

Not to mention this insurance thing that happened to me the other day:

When we moved to SF, I worked for Company 1 for almost 2 years, changed jobs, and then ended up going back to work for Company 1, where I am now. When I went for my yearly Doctors appointment the other day I showed them by latest insurance card and was promptly informed that "they don't take Blue Cross." and "would I be able to pay the $100 now?"

I stood there alternately panicking and fuming and racking my brain trying to make sense of how I have been going to this Dr. for 4 years and was covered by insurance when I worked for Company 1 the first time, and now I'm working for Company 1 for the second time, so consequently shouldn't I be covered by insurance NOW? After 20 or so minutes it hit me...I was covered by Avery's insurance back then, as the one that was offered by Company 1 was so shitty.

Now I owe $100. Shouldn't Doctors just accept all insurance plans? It's not like Blue Cross is some weird and obscure health plan or anything. Stupid US healthcare system!

This is kind of a mini-scowl, but I'll post it anyway.

Certain things get lost on me all the time. Like fingernail clippers. A month ago, I finally broke down and bought a new pair of them. Normally I just steal a pair from mom, since for some reason she seems to always have a surplus of them. But I couldn't put this off anymore, because my toenails were begining to bump up against the front of my shoes. Also, I'd woken up several mornings with sliced up legs, though not from MY toenails. Ever noticed how some guys toenails look more like talons than anything else? Sorry, I guess I didn't need to divulge that.

Anyway, we'd moved, and I was sure we were going to find at least one pair of the fifty or so I'd stolen from mom once everything was packed up. You know, maybe they'd fallen behind the couch, or the cat dragged them under the bed or something, and once there was nothing in the way to impede a search, they'd be found. No, they were ALL gone. So I bought another pair. And already they're gone. Probably for good. I've searched everywhere, and they're just gone. They got used once by me and once by Slap.

Where do these things go? I just don't get it. If anyone has any idea, PLEASE let me know.

I'm almost out of Vain hairspray, and I could have sworn that I bought another bottle when we were in Seattle, but then decided that I was just crazy or senile or something because I couldn't find it anywhere.

Then the other night, Avery was looking for a pair of gloves and found it. Apparantly it had fallen behind some shelves in our closet...

But anyway, whenever something seems to be lost in our apartment (that was RIGHT THERE a SECOND ago, I swear!) I always blame the elderly building manager, who I suspect of going into our apartment when we're not there. Paranoia, anyone?

bronchitis is making me scowl, and grimace and make really nasty noises that a human really ought not make.

Hey, I can completely sympathise. I spent a good part of August with bronchitis.

Talk to your doctor. Azithromycin took 4 days to knock it out of my system.

ok,like I havent said it a million times, but i figure if i say it enough...

Hollywood makes me scowl.

We rented Armageddon last night. I knew it was gonna suck, but not THAT FRIGGIN BAD! I was hoping for a fun lame action flick and got a BAD lame action flick.

Christ. Hollywood cant even do mindless fun anymore.

dickweeds.

I know what you mean. While we were at the hotel on Friday, we decided to watch what turned out to be the abominably un-funny "There's Something About Mary" on the hotel pay-per-view channel. $8.95 later, I was still wondering what the heck all the "you HAVE to see this movie" fuss was about. Chevy Chase movies are funnier than this one was!

Ah, Janet, you would have appreciated the banality of "Something About Mary" if you'd seen it with Slap. The boy laughs like a freakin' hyena (sp?). When we saw it it was about 98 degrees outside and about 115 in our apartment, and we went purely to get out of the heat. I don't know if our brains were fried from all the heat, or if Slap just gets into juvenile humor like that, or if it was a combo of the two, but we laughed like a bunch of kids. He was laughing at the movie, and so was I, but in one of those "Slap's laughter is just so infectious I can't help myself" kind of ways.

You'll know what I'm talking about if you guys ever get to the Springs, or we decide to go to S.F., and we finally get to meet.

Hey... tickets to SF are getting extremely cheap...

Well, I am to that stage in the healing where the cough is no longer somewhere underneath my liver but now in the upper part of my chest. In comparison to earlier, I almost enjoy coughing now.

They gave me some sort of antibiotic which came in this blister pack with all of this bizzarre advertizing. The other weird think is that you only took it for 5 days.

But the gist is that I am feeling better, just in time for Winter.

Nita, that's the Azythromycin. It works wonders.

!!!!!???

Avery, I thought you said that I worked wonders....

Getting laid off because of a pissing match and then being lied to about the reason why.

That fucking makes me scowl untill the cows come home. The feeling also allows you to feel like you're gonna throw up at random intervals, even though you haven't eaten all day long.

Another bonus is when this shit happens to you in the first week in December, so that money you scraped together to buy highly inadequate christmas pesents for people suddenly becomes the money you use to keep the creditors off your back.

now mix this all together in a nice big bowl, fold in a half-dead car that forces you to believe in God because you pray to him the entire way home, throw in a dash of self-doubt about everything you're doing....

And you got yourself one big fat cake of Scowl. Slice into pieces, serves everyone.

Share the JOY!

I have a very very bad headache, right at the base of my skull.


Oh, wait, it seems to be all over my skul now.

Ouch.

I just got back from a couple of tours in Nebraska and Hawaii, and moved to Walnut Creek. Yuppie Central. I figured I could live with it since I spend all day in the city anyways. But I digress....the main subject of this is 24 Hour Fitness, not yuppies.

Being the clever boy that I imagine myself to be, I decided to get a membership at 24 Hour Fitness as soon as I got back to the Bay Area. That way I had a place to work out at while I was living with the family, and wouldn't have to cough up another set of initiation fees when I got a job and moved out to a different city. The 24HF in my home town used to be a Gold's Gym and was populated mostly my the hulking brute types, which is perfectly ok by me, and I assumed that any other 24HF would be more or less the same. Wrong!


After getting directions and changing into sweats, t-shirt, and my trusty Chuck Taylors, I headed downtown to the gym. I spent 20 minutes finding a place to park in the garage and started walking over to the elevators.


Irritation #1: The door to the stairs was locked. You would think that people going to exercise wouldn't need to take an elevator up one floor. Ah well. Breathe deep, Chris. Soon you will be one with the weights.


Irritation #2: While waiting for the elevator to arrive, another fitness-minded type walks over and stands next to me. Egad. He's wearing tights. Nonetheless, as a stranger in a strange place I manage to grunt at him in a friendly manner. All I receive in return is a hard stare. Right about then is when my face got really hot and little colored bursts started going off behind my eyes. Fortunately for him I learned a long time to take my urge to punch people in the throat and divert it into more socially acceptable pursuits, like blowing up cars and robbing liquor stores. Still...the only thing going through my mind on the way up to the 2nd floor was a 3rd-person view of Mr. Tights feebly trying to crawl away as I kicked his ribs in.


Small Positive Note: Thanks to my high levels of irritation due to my encounter with this guy, and my subsequent annoyances later on, I had a great workout and broke 2 personal bests.

Irritations #'s 3-many more:

The gym was like a narcissist's convention. Almost everyone there was in tights or something equally uncomfortable and impractical. The majority of the women wore makeup and wore enough perfume to make me gag. There were clots of morons just STANDING AROUND and not even using the weight benches that they were blocking access to. The free weight area wasn't as bad, since the only property that was hotly contended for was right in front of the mirrors, where they could do one-arm curls with those little chrome weights and apparently masturbate to their own image with their free hand. I asked one guy, who was just sitting on the damn pullover machine doing a ham-handed job of hitting on the woman on the machine next to him, if I could work in with him. His response was, "I'm still using it". Sigh. I was sorely tempted to bend his little twig arms that have probably never done a single curl and snap them off. Instead I bit my tongue and patiently explained the novel concept of having 2 people alternate sets on a piece of equipment that they both want to use. Apparently this guy's parents bribed his way through kindergarten. After that little experience, I fell back on the proven technique of staring intently at nothing and muttering to myself when I wanted clear a path through the yuppies.

Needless to say....I'm looking for a new gym. Anyone have any recommendations for a serious weightlifting gym in Walnut Creek? Or is that a paradoxical request?

Yeesh... a non-yuppie type _serious_ weightlifting gym in Walnut Creek... good luck. I didn't even know that they allowed non-yuppies to live there, let alone work out there!

The only gym I know of in the East Bay is Kings Boxing Gym in Oakland... which might be a good fit because it seems that you might have the inclination to punch people (though throat shots are poor form!)

I work in an office with one other person. Whenever he calls someone he feels the need to use the speakerphone, turned up at full volume. As a matter of fact, he is doing it RIGHT NOW! ARGH! Every time he does it I get a funny twingey sensation in my head....strangely similar to that weird lack-of-sleep buzz but with a far greater potential of erupting into violence.


Now he's clicking his pen. Quickly, and not in any discernible rhythm. Soon the very sound of his voice will be sufficient to drive me into


AIGH! Speakerphone again! Clicky again!


My heart is constricting from the irritation. This reminds me of that old experiment with the two monkeys who were kept in individual wire mesh cages. One would get shocked at regular intervals throughout the day. The other one would get shocked only a third as much, but at completely random times. The monkey who didn't know when the zap was coming had higher blood pressure, ate less, and showed more signs of stress than the other monkey who was tortured on a regular basis. It's the same way with this crap. If he made an annoying speakerphone call every half hour I could get used to it. Instead it's like:

quiet
quiet
quiet
phonecall
quiet
phonecall
phonecall
quiet
quiet
quiet
(me twitching in expectation of the phonecall)
quiet
(me relaxing)
phonecall

I feel better.

Incidentally, I notice the message board nag every time I come here. True, no one posts anything here, but how many people are actually coming to this site? I stumbled on it by accident and thought the Scowls were funny enough to warrant return visits. Working as a DBA isn't exactly actiopn-packed if everything is up and running, so I have the time to stop by and take a look at things, and sometimes post a message. If not many people are reading the boards then they should be taken down but if it is a matter of people just being their normal mousy selves and just READING everything instead of contributing, you should do more than say "Let's post, people!" To make a stupid analogy, I get the impression from reading the message board blurb that you are trying to corner your prey instead of luring it out into the open. Maybe throwing out a debate-provoking question once a week would get a few more people posting.

where to start...

1) losing a friend - permanently
2) computers
3) breakups
4) other computers
5) 2 am mailing lists
6) fixing them at 2:15 when they break
7) the fact that i'm on a computer right now
8) having your feet feel like theyre asleep - for 3 days
9) having to go to the doctor cause it scares the fuck out of you
10) the saying "hindsight is 20/20"
11) rash decisions
12) pretty much everything else...

fuck.