02/14/2001

here. I apologize if I passed it on to any of you, and rest assured that I’ll have McAfee running all the time from now on… Lordy, I feel like I spent all day walking and cleaning. By the time I was done with my daily unending Walk of Death and cleaning the downstairs, it was almost noon. I guess that would be because I lolled about in bed for half an hour or so instead of getting up when the alarm went off at 6:45. It’s just so damn hard to drag my ass out of bed when it’s as gray and rainy as it’s been here lately. I don’t remember the last time I saw the sun (okay, slight exaggeration. I’m sure I’ve seen the sun at least once this year…), and there’s no end in sight, according to weather.com. Upon checking that link, I find that I’m a big fat liar. The rain’s supposed to end Friday and the next week or so will be partly cloudy. But the temperature’s going to drop from the mid-sixties, where it is now, to the fifties. Brrrr. Could this get any more exciting, talking about the weather? I rented and watched The Philadelphia Story this weekend, and enjoyed it a lot – hard to believe I’d never seen it, isn’t it? The only thing that really annoyed me is when Tracy Lord’s (Katharine Hepburn) father told her that the reason he was philandering is because he didn’t have an adoring young lady at home who thought the sun rose and set on his ass (maybe not in those exact words, but you get the idea). He was blaming his screwing around on his daughter! What an asshole. But, as Fred pointed out, it was made in 1940. One would hope that these days Tracy Lord would laugh in his face. Katharine Hepburn was just luminously gorgeous, wasn’t she? Well no one can be ugly in black and white – it’s a rule, I believe – but she really was pretty. Back in the day, six years or so ago, I worked as an order entry operator at LL Bean. The word was that Katharine Hepburn would call from time to time to place an order for (I believe) fatwood, and she was a colossal pain in the ass, not wanting to give out her name or credit card number. I never took a call from anyone famous – not that I know of, anyway – but my sister was sitting next to someone who took an order from Christine McVee, she of Fleetwood Mac fame. The funny thing is that we were very sternly warned, during training, that if we got someone famous on the line, we were NOT to act starstruck, but to calmly take the order in a professional manner. And yet, if you DID take a call from someone famous, you could fill out a little form describing the call, and they’d either tack it up on the wall or put it in a binder (I don’t recall which). I also remember hearing that someone took an order from Burt Reynolds, and they spent something like an hour helping him out, and at the very end of the call, he got pissed because something wasn’t in stock and canceled a huge order. Burt Reynolds an asshole? Who’d’ve thought it?! (I am NOT a Burt Reynolds fan, ’cause he was such a flaming asshole when he and Loni broke up. Not that I’m a Loni Anderson fan, either, but couldn’t he have acted with the slightest bit of dignity and tact? Hell no, he was flogging his story to the tabloids in three seconds flat. Asshole.) At the time I was working at Bean’s, I spent the entire time combing through the database trying to come up with a home address or phone number for Mike Mills of REM, due to the Mike Mills obsession I was then going through. Yeah, I was a truly productive employee… Oh, the other thing I saw recently was an anti-smoking commercial. In said commercial, a boy offers a girl a cigarette. She declines because she knows that smoking won’t help her win the karate (or judo, or whatever) tournament they’ll be competing in soon. At the end of the commercial, we see that she’s kicked his ass and won the ribbon. I have no problem with any of that; hell, I’m all for non-smoking commercials. What I have a BIG problem with is this: as the ribbon (or medal or whatever) is put around her neck, she looks at the boy, the one who offered her the cigarette, and what does she do? SHE MOUTHS "SORRY!" AT HIM. Why? WHY? Why should she be sorry? I mean, I know it wouldn’t be sportsmanlike to do a little "I kicked your ass" dance in front of him, but why in god’s green earth would she APOLOGIZE for NOT smoking and therefore having the breath to wipe the floor with his ass? Oh, that’s right. Maybe ’cause she’s the GIRL, and she’s not supposed to win. Silly me, it all makes sense NOW, it wouldn’t be LADYLIKE to win the medal and not APOLOGIZE. Now I get it! On a side note, it used to infuriate me when my mother would say to me "That’s not very laaaaaaadylike!" I always responded with "Who the hell wants to be a LADY??" Okay, I never said "hell" to my mother, at least not until I was out of the house, but I certainly thought it. Who the hell, indeed. "Sorry!" Did y’all have a happy Valentine’s Day? Fred and I agreed that we would only swap cards this year, and I stuck to my side of the bargain, but Fred surprised me with a candle and a little bendy heart with arms and legs. Mighty cute it was, and a nice surprise. Next year, I told him, we’re going out to dinner or something. Happy Valentine’s Day if you like, or Happy Wednesday otherwise! —–]]>