An actual post I saw this morning on Philly's CL:

(nonsexual) Gluttony Buddy Wanted - m4m - 25

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Reply to: pers-296069156@craigslist.org
Date: 2007-03-18, 12:53PM EDT


I'm looking for a gluttony friend. Here's how it would work:

You and I would meet for one purpose and one purpose alone: to cram as much food into our pieholes as possible. We would go to buffet restaurants, Famous Dave's in South Philly, and other places that serve gratuitous portions of food. We would stuff ourselves until eating more would be impossible without ill health effects.

This would be a regular event but not often. Maybe once a month. It's not good to gorge all the time.

Vegetarians and vegans need not apply. Go eat bark somewhere. I'm not keen on lactose intolerance, either (I'd prefer a foodfriend who can take a sundae) but I'm willing to negotiate on that point.

There would be nothing sexual about our gluttony friendship. I am NOT a feeder. Repeat. I am NOT a feeder.

We are going to split the check. I ain't payin' for your gluttonous ass.

If I like you, we can hang out in a non-food-related context, but the focus will always be on eating almost superhuman amounts of food.

Remarkably, I am not obese myself. I attribute this to my squirrel-like metabolism. You can be obese or not be. Either way.

Now let's start eatin'.

Labels: funny stuff, Philadelphia, weird

Last night, I got home from work and realized, as I pulled into my garage, that I had absolutely no recollection of being on the road at all.

Freaky! Has that ever happened to you? It happens to me quite frequently. Usually, I can blow it off, but last night I was totally disturbed by it. Then my mind started messing with me big-time. For just a split second I thought, Maybe I'm not really in my garage now. Maybe I'm dead. Maybe I wasn't paying attention when I was driving on the highway and I got into an accident and got killed and now I just THINK I'm home.

No one else? Allllllrighty then. Time for me to up the meds.

I kid.

Seriously, though. How is it possible to drive eighteen miles and not be consciously aware of it? Am I on auto-pilot to that extent? I couldn't even tell ya what had me engrossed enough to prevent me from recalling my drive home.

Labels: weird

Hmmm. Seems I have a reader who logged in from a business located at 500 Monument Road...wonder who that could be?

Actually, I do have an idea who that might be.

Edited to add: actually, the address is 150 Monument Road, not 500 Monument Road. Thanks, anonymous commenter, for reminding me!

Let me tell you a nice little story. This is my homage to Ted Casablancas, the gossip columnist from E! That should clear up any questions about the language used in the story.

ONCE upon a time, there were two girls, Dizzy and Lulu, who were best friends from way back. They went to high school together, hung out all the time, were closer than sisters.

Dizzy had the unfortunate habit of dropping her friends every time a new guy entered her life. Lulu overlooked it for a while, because she enjoyed Dizzy's friendship and figured she would grow out of that behavior.

One day, Dizzy met a guy named Vittorio who came along and just swept her off her feet. Like always, Dizzy pulled away from her girlfriends in order to spend every waking moment with Vittorio. At first, Lulu put up with it, but soon she grew tired of Dizzy's disappearing act. Not only that, but Dizzy also shared some not-so-savory things about Vittorio with Lulu. Such as his penchant for calling her fat (Dizzy was a size 10! and was beautiful and statuesque), dicking Dizzy over when they had dates scheduled, and being generally abusive verbally and unavailable emotionally. Yet Dizzy would drop everything and run to Vittorio's beck and call every single time.

Well, Lulu eventually had heard and seen enough. She hated to see her best friend allowing herself to be mistreated, so she began making some noises about Vittorio. As you might imagine, Dizzy didn't take too kindly to this, and even though Lulu had been friends with Dizzy waaaay longer than Vittorio had been in Dizzy's life, guess whose side Dizzy took? Yeah, I know. The man always wins, right?

Then another complication arose: several months after Dizzy began dating Vittorio, Lulu herself began dating a very nice guy named BJ. Dizzy took it upon herself to begin some kind of completely fucked up competition, unbeknownst to Lulu, to see who would get engaged first. Lulu was completely unaware of this competition and in fact wasn't even THINKING of marriage at this point in her life. BJ, however, was. So when BJ popped the question to Lulu, and she said yes, guess who threw a hissy fit because she was NOT the winner of this imaginary contest? Yup. Dizzy was pissed with a capital P. She had been waiting and hoping and scheming and pretty much doing everything in her power to get Vittorio to propose to her, but Lulu (who couldn't have cared less about getting married in the first place!) went and got engaged first, even though BJ and Lulu had been dating five months' shorter than Dizzy and Vittorio. The nerve!!

Lulu, unaware of Dizzy's unhappiness with her betrothal, asked Dizzy to be in her wedding. Dizzy hemmed and hawed, refusing to give Lulu an answer for several weeks. In the meantime, Lulu designed a wedding website for BJ and her. The website was mostly for the benefit of BJ's mother and female relatives, who all lived out-of-state and who felt "out of the loop" of the wedding planning. Because Dizzy had not given Lulu a definitive "yes" or "no" answer about being in her wedding, Lulu didn't include Dizzy's name in the bridal party section of the wedding website.

Dizzy saw this as the perfect excuse to end the friendship. She called Lulu and told her "I just can't take this anymore. You designed a wedding website and didn't even put my name on it for the bridal party, so that does it. I will NOT be in your wedding, since you obviously don't want me to be in it."

Lulu had no idea how to react to this announcement. She felt like she was damned-if-she-did and damned-if-she-didn't. She wouldn't have dreamt of putting Dizzy's name in the bridal party section of her wedding website because Dizzy never committed to it, and Lulu didn't want to put Dizzy in an uncomfortable position. Yet Dizzy took offense to being excluded from the website anyway, even though she never did give Lulu an answer.

Unfortunately, Dizzy never even gave Lulu a chance to explain all this. She stopped taking Lulu's calls and never responded to Lulu's emailed pleas to discuss it.

THE END.

Pretty immature, huh?

Labels: friends, memories, technology, weird, writing

When I'm bored, one of my favorite online pasttimes is checking out the Missed Connection postings on Philadelphia's Craigslist site. Some postings are hopelessly romantic, some wistful, some funny, some angry, and some are just plain crazy. Reading these postings satisfies my need for drama, romance, deception, and sex without the mess of actually being involved in any of it.

A typical posting on Missed Connections goes something like this (some of these are actual postings):

Hot guy on bicycle - West River Drive - Sat. 5/13 (w4m): Our eyes met briefly when I nearly mowed you down with my convertible. You were really cute! Plus your ass looked great in spandex. Pls email me if you read this!

Or:

Leah B. - You stole from me. You are a theif (sic). Everyone will know how evil you are & how many drugs you are on. Crack, heroin, where do you want me to stop. give me back my money!

And the occasional:

Nugget Sauce - Biggity B! MySpace my ass! PJ MD wants to rock it with you all night! I want to dip my nugget in your sauce! You feel me...ouch!

Or:

Richard K. - Liar Liar Liar. If you are dating him, most likely he is already seeing someone else and cheating on them too. If he says he has changed, here is a tip:
-go through his wallet and check for his receipts.
-the nights he says he is somewhere, check up on it. Most likely he is not there.
-But the best one of all! Get his passcode to his voicemail and check his messages! It will soon be all clear to you!
Warn other women!

OK, the last three were real. The first one I completely made up.

On occasion, I have seen names of people that I recognize on Missed Connections. About a year ago, I saw a posting with the name of the sister of a girl who went to my grade school. It was posted by her prom date from 1989. He was looking for her. So I responded to him and told him that I knew who he was talking about, but that she was no longer in the area and that she was married with kids.

He went BERSERK -- it seemed like he was really obsessed with her. I received multiple emails from him for about three weeks, trying to pump me for more information. Which I truly did not have, and even if I did, I would certainly never pass on to a stranger. Eventually I had to put him on my ignore list because he was getting nasty with me.

Then, about a month ago, I saw another posting from him on Missed Connections, asking about her again. This time I just clicked right past it.

I always wonder if someone I know will ever post about me in MC. Guess I'll have to keep reading...

Labels: childhood, funny stuff, technology, Upper Darby, weird

So I've been thinking about asking my ob/gyn about Yaz. It's a newly FDA-approved birth control pill, related to Yasmin (which I'm currently taking), but instead of having 21 days on/7 days off, it's 24 days on/4 days off.

This pill is supposed to drastically reduce the physical and emotional symptoms of PMS and PMDD, which sounds just fabulous to me. I'm tired of the bloating. A week ago, I felt yucky and exhausted and fat. I just wanted to eats heaps of mac-n-cheese (which I did -- OK, not HEAPS, but quite a bit more than I should have) and then retire to my bed for the remainder of the day.

Plus I had my annual review at work, during which time I burst into tears when I was reminded of a particularly bad time for me here back in August. Oh, yeah. You read that right: I cried at work in front of my boss. Yikes. Totally embarrassing. It felt almost as if I had no control over myself. I had to excuse myself to the ladies' room to pull myself together. Then I rejoined our meeting and promptly burst into tears again minutes later. I am most definitely NOT a crier, except for that last week of my cycle. Then I weep at the most pathetic things: roadkill, a clogged toilet, and that credit card commercial featuring the 100 Years song by Five for Fighting. Horrifying, isn't it?

Anyway, getting back to Yaz. I have my annual visit to the gyn in early April, so I guess I'll have a chance to talk about it then. I've done some online research and it sounds OK to me. But the name is so weird. Yaz. That was an alternative group back in the 80s, right? Like a Depeche Mode rip-off, I think.

But today is a new day. I'm on my new pill pack, and all is well in the world.

Hope you enjoyed the weekend!

Labels: deep thoughts, health, weird, work

No, this post doesn't have anything to do with Thanksgiving, though I'm already stressing about that...

This morning, on my way to work, I was nearly accosted by a turkey.

You read that right. A turkey!

I see this bird occasionally when I take Brian's "secret" way to work (aka, the back roads through a rural part of Chester County). He told me about it before but I never believed him, mostly because he said to watch out for the big bird. He didn't know it was a turkey.

I saw it for the first time a few weeks ago and almost died laughing. It's one of the ugliest things I've ever seen! But it is GINORMOUS. It really is a big bird. Usually it just hangs out on the side of this tiny, one-lane road I take, next to a very old farmhouse. I guess it's someone's pet. I think its owner lets it out in the morning to take a walk. This strikes me as hilarious, for some reason.

Anyway, like most of us in the Philadelphia region, it was having a bad morning today, but not because of the SEPTA strike. When I turned down this little, narrow road, I noticed a line of cars at the far end of the lane. This struck me as odd, since it's normally a very deserted road. Then I got up to the corner and found out why there was a backup.

This turkey decided to plant itself in the middle of the road. It waddled precariously to and fro, allowing one car at a time to pass it. Of course, when I got to the head of the line, it stopped moving and just stood there, staring directly at me. I honked my horn, hoping to frighten it off the road, but it didn't even ruffle this turkey's feathers (pun intended). Then I rolled down my window and tried to verbally shoo it away. None of my attempts got even the smallest reaction from this bird.

I glanced in my rearview mirror and saw a line of cars idling behind me. So I decided to take a more aggressive course of action. I put my car in Park, opened the door, and walked around to the front of my car. The turkey stood about 10 feet from me. I did my own version of a turkey dance, or at least what I would imagine a turkey dance to be, while saying, "Shoo, shoo, shoo..."
The turkey just looked at me. I know these things aren't known for their high IQs, but I swear that this particular bird knew exactly what it was doing. As it watched me do my little dance, it let out a high-pitched gobble at me IN DEFIANCE...

Then it lunged at me.

Man, those birds can move! For such an ungainly-looking creature, it covered a lot of distance very quickly. I squealed and jumped back into my car. Just as I slammed the door, it began pecking on my driver's window. If I had been just a moment slower, my ass would've been taking that pecking!

So this Thanksgiving, as I sink my teeth into that delicious bird, I will have a new respect for the turkey.

Labels: funny stuff, local news, Philadelphia, Philly burbs, stress, weird, work