Godammit, I’m Mad!

I know it’s not very interesting to hate Gwyneth, but how can one ignore her this week? It’s like she WILL NOT REST until every single person on earth detests her. Is her work done yet? If not, we’re getting very, very close.

Today’s revelation (for me, anyway) is that she advises women in troubled relationships to stop fighting and give their man a blowjob instead. Really, Einstein? You think that might work?

What a fucking imbecile. I love the pictures of her feigned embarrassment even more than I love that awful see-through dress she wore recently. But not as much as I love the time she tweeted something like “niggas all in Paris!” to indicate her down-ness.

There is so much to love, i.e. hate, that it’s almost redundant, like denouncing Hitler. Wait. Am I comparing Gwyneth to Hitler?! Sure, see Godwin’s Law. But if you need to catch the latest Iron Man movie and your revulsion for Gwyneth is getting in the way,  here’s a guide to putting things in perspective.

I don’t need to see Iron Man, so I’m good.

If you believe you were at the forefront of the anti- Gwyneth movement, let’s hear about it! (If you don’t hate Gwyneth, you shouldn’t be here at all, just leave quietly.)

After days of watching death and mayhem in real time on TV, I have a question:

Aren’t the owners of the disastrous Texas fertilizer plant every bit as guilty as a terrorist bomber?

“West Fertilizer Co is a retail facility that blends fertilizer and sells anhydrous ammonia and other chemical products to local farmers. It stored 270 tons of ‘extremely hazardous’ ammonium nitrate, according to a report filed by the company with the state government.  The plant was last inspected for safety in 2011, according to a Risk Management Plan filed with the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

“The company, which has fewer than 10 employees, had provided no contingency plan to the EPA for a major explosion or fire at the site. It told the EPA in 2011 that a typical emergency scenario at the facility that holds anhydrous ammonia could result in a small release in gas form.

“The EPA fined the firm $2,300 in 2006 for failing to implement a risk management plan. The plant’s owner could not be reached for comment.”

Why would you have a fifty unit apartment building right next to this place, not to mention a nursing home? And what is a $2,300 fine to a profitable company? Now there are a bunch of dead fire fighters and streets of houses reduced to smoldering ruins.

But wait: The West plant is one of thousands of sites across rural America that stores and sells hazardous materials such as chemicals and fertilizer for agricultural use. Many are near residences and schools.

I find these companies guilty! I find the EPA guilty! Their disregard for human life makes them worse than terrorists, who are usually driven by a spiritual belief system or perverted moral code other than financial profit.

Thoughts, arguments, insults, anyone?

Watching right-wing psychopath Dana Loesch shouting down Van Jones and Piers Morgan on the issue of gun control tonight, I nearly had a stroke. My husband finally snapped, “If you can’t stand it, turn it off.” It was probably good advice but I ignored it.

Dana Loesch is deliberately and effectively enraging in the manner of fellow cunt Ann Coulter, but stupider, in that she invokes “the covenant with God” in her argument against gay marriage.

Here is what Dana said on CNN about the US Marines who urinated on the corpses of alleged Taliban members:

Can someone explain to me if there’s supposed to be a scandal that someone pees on the corpse of a Taliban fighter? Someone who was — as part of an organization murdered over 3,000 Americans? I’d drop trou and do it, too. That’s me, though. I want a million cool points for these guys. Is that harsh to say?

There is no point in this awful woman. She loves guns, hates gays, quotes scripture, and gets away with bad manners because she’s a woman. She’s an embarrassment to political commentators and the human race. A total fucking cunt.

For the last two nights, we have been watching a new documentary about the Eagles. I have tested my husband’s patience by repeatedly asking “Which one is that?” I still can’t tell them apart. I always thought Don Henley was the other guy, Glen Frey.

The sound of the Eagles triggers a cascade of uncomfortable emotions. As an entity, they make me sick.  The “laid-back” sound, ugh,  awful. The song “Tequila Sunrise” represents everything painful about the 70′s. The mustaches and bad hair, the bandannas, the glowering expressions, the very idea of the Eagles is just lame. The 70′s marked a divisive era in rock music and I was repelled by the “Southern California Sound.”  I recall being contemptuous of my upstairs neighbors who loved The Doobie Brothers.

Remember being young and taking music so seriously that it could be a deal-breaker if a new person in your life turned out to have bad taste? An awful record collection was nearly impossible to forgive. If someone owned an obscure record that I loved, I probably slept with them. Actually, I slept with them, regardless, but that’s a whole other topic.

The Eagles wrote such catchy songs that when I hear them I can’t help singing along. But familiarity is no measure of quality. The Eagles evoke nostalgia without being exciting or satisfying. It’s just elevator music. I don’t care if they’ve sold a billion records. I wouldn’t take one to a desert island even if was my only choice.

The 70′s were the decade of my young adulthood. I had a baby, in the happiest moment of my life. I also had a bad marriage,  a two-pack a day cigarette habit, and little capacity for self-examination. Music was the background for everything. Elvis Costello, Patti Smith, and Townes Van Zandt were the rays of light in the bleak cloud of my domestic life. Bands like the Eagles remind me of anomie and macrame.

Some punk band wrote a song called “Don Henley Must Die” and I still admire the sentiment. even if I can’t tell him apart from Glen Frey or those other guys. Now that I’ve seen the documentary, I hate the Eagles with a deeper sense of their awfulness as people who can’t stop arguing about money and their own importance.

Eagles fans or detractors, jump in!

When I told [a family member] that 26 kids from Sandy Hook elementary school were going to sing at the Super Bowl, he was surprised and disgusted. I asked rhetorically why the survivors from the Aurora movie theater hadn’t been invited. He answered, “Because they’re not cute, and it would be harder to exploit a large group of them.”

He really gets it. Why don’t all Americans get it?

I’m tired of Sandy Hook grief porn. I don’t want to wait around for the Sandy Hook lego set and the Sandy Hook Happy Meal.  I have always been in favor of gun regulations and I’ve signed a million petitions urging legislators to stand up to the NRA. I didn’t allow my kids to have toy guns and and I have no regrets about it.

I wish that people could think about gun crime in America without needing to invoke a specific incident that then eclipses the real every dayness of homicide and suicide death by guns. You could fill the Super Dome with the people killed by guns in Chicago alone.

There were an average of 85 gun deaths each day in 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including two accidents, 53 suicides and 30 homicides.

If Americans needed a good cry before the Super Bowl, they should have been forced to look at some paralyzed veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. Maybe the lights went out during the game because god is disgusted, too.

While I’m at it, I’d like to thank our media for showing us only that one photoshopped picture of Adam Lanza with the huge chin and the bugged-out eyes, instead of the one above that depicts a regular human boy with bad skin and a sad little smile.

Twenty years on, I am still rattled by my husband’s fucking ex. Not only has she opened a tiki-themed restaurant too close to my neighborhood,  she has recently written the following:

“There was a time in my youth, those long gone halcyon days, when it seemed I spent a large part of my life in front of a camera. In the pursuit of an acting career it was standard operating procedure to continuously update and change the 8-by-10s that were the calling cards of all of us who tramped the mean streets of Los Angeles in constant and often futile rounds of meetings in the offices of agents, photographers, producers, directors and various unsavory characters.

“Perhaps in retrospect it is the smiling [photos] that fare the best, as I was innately happy, clear of eyes and had good teeth. For my fiftieth birthday and retired at that point, I pulled out all the old headshots and plastered them over a large wall at my parent’s house, creating a sort of gallery. They made a remarkable display and told a story of my own evolution, not to mention hairdos. The one topless shot, though artistically done and revealing but a modest bosom, shocked my brother. Frankly, I was rather proud to shock anyone.”

There was one thing that each photo had in common, one through-line, one essence captured. It was youth, my youth. And youth is hope. There it is, around the curve of my smiling lips, in the gleam of my eye, in the open expression.”

Jesus. Christ.

I brought up the subject of her uniquely annoying existence with my husband, who flipped out. Why can’t I be normal, he wants to know. It’s easy for him to talk about normal: My ex, though a cunt, stays quietly in his corner and doesn’t open restaurants or write about his modest bosom.

Some things are just awful and they stay awful. Some things fall away in the stark awareness of what really matters.  I am waiting for the ex-wife to move from the first category into the second.

I’ve finally caught up with Homeland, after skipping the first season in a private protest against Claire Danes as a CIA agent. Now I’m cool with Claire, but Brody’s wife is a major irritant.

Whenever the wife is onscreen, I find it hard to stop critiquing her face. Her acting is awful, too, don’t get me wrong. She’s incapable of portraying any emotion with conviction.  Her character is badly underwritten but a decent actress could still bring something to suggest a life form.  Instead, she just strikes a pose and raises or lowers her voice.

Her head is too small for her body, making her look life a dinosaur of maybe a giraffe. But in profile, she looks like a duckling, thanks to that augmented top lip. Stop it with the lips, actresses! Remember Meg Ryan! In fact, I’m going to name Meg Ryan ‘The Alamo’ just to help keep the memory alive.

While looking at pictures of this actress (Morena Baccarin, who I see is considered a super-hot hottie) I learned from an observant stranger that she has the same nosejob as Ashley Greene. I don’t know who Ashley Greene is but let’s compare noses.

Ashley above, Morena below. I wouldn’t want this nose, although you could probably use it as a can opener.

Obviously, I’m feeling cranky and shallow but facts are facts. I love Homeland for its suspense and the tension of the thwarted love story, but that fucking wife is a pain in the ass.

Opinions or objections?

I had lunch today at an Indian restaurant where my friend and I were regaled by the wisdom of a guy I’ll call Mr. Know-it-all.

Mr. Know-it-all (see above) is one of those guys who knows everything. And I mean everything. He reminded me very much of my friend’s ex-husband, who also knew everything. The ex-husband once insisted on telling me something about screenplays, even though I had been reading them professionally for ten years.

Anyway, Mr. Know-it-all had one of the cooks in his thrall, at one point telling the man something about India, the cook’s birthplace. The cook managed to say “India is a place of great diversity” before Mr. Know-it-all ceded the point and moved on to the subject of Pakistan. In his authoritative monologue, Mr. Know-it-all held forth about the economy, manufacturing, Russia, the Rockefellers, the Carnagies, Fidel Castro, Israel, Iran, and my personal favorite, where to get the best bagels in China.

Why do these people exist? Why are they always men?

I have to admit I was fascinated by Mr. Know-it-all, and had to fight an urge to interact with him, just to make him spew forth more information. I suggested to my friend that she offer to marry him, since she’s had so much experience for the position. Sadly, she gave it a pass. We may never know the full scope of his knowledge.

The food was great, though.

Oh, snap! After insisting that his obsession with Ayn Rand is an “urban legend,” a tape has surfaced in which Ryan gushes about Ayn Rand’s philosophy:

“It’s inspired me so much that it’s required reading in my office for all my interns and my staff. We start with Atlas Shrugged.”

What an asshole. Ayn Rand? What is he, sixteen?

And then to lie about it when he’s on record, again and again, of revering her! He had to denounce Ayn Rand because Catholics don’t like her atheism. Look for Ryan to become more rabidly Catholic as the Republican convention draws near.

Anyone who makes his interns read Atlas Shrugged is not only a moron but a fucking heartless cunt.

Gallery Girls is a great way to feel better abut yourself no matter how awful you are.

The latest reality ick-fest by Bravo TV, Gallery Girls follows the pointless lives of some tragically deluded young women seeking a place in the uppity world of New York art galleries. The word “art” is used very loosely here. One of the girls knows what “collage” means but that’s as far as their art knowledge goes.

The main thing is to hate the girls, and the main one to hate is Chantal. She is a truly horrible girl who needs to die ASAP. Presumably she has been told to play up her obnoxiousness but nothing could redeem her short of severing her vocal chords.

There seems to be a conflict between blonds and brunettes and lower Eastside versus upper Westside (or vice versa.) Since I don’t live in New York, I don’t know the significance of lower, upper, East or West. The blonds seem less pretentious, except for the one who always has to wear fur, even under a fur coat.

There’s an awful Asian girl who likes to pose nude and talk about her “pussy.” Her parents deserve our sympathy and a witness protection program.

The girls like to bitch about each other and they all talk like their mouths are full of marbles. Every statement is a question? Because that’s the kind of girls they are?

I went to the Bravo site to look for a picture and was directed to “like” the Gallery Girls on Facebook. The comments there are unanimously derisive, which makes me feel a glimmer of hope.

Let me put it this way: Gallery Girls comes close to giving red lipstick a bad name.  Please just take it away.