3.10.05: Chimp Me, Baby, One More Time ‹ Blog

Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!
George Taylor, Planet of the Apes

Chimp Me, Baby, One More Time

March 10, 2005

Um, yeah, hi. It’s me. Obviously. Me being Romy. Because this is Romy’s journal, on Romy’s domain, and the only other person allowed to touch this domain is Romy’s husband, and Romy has deliberately set her FTP folder to disallow spousal access, so that every time Romy’s husband tries to mess with her stuff he triggers an alarm that causes rabid chimps to attack him and rip his balls off.

I know. Not funny.

Maniacal chimps aside (we’ll get to those later), I’d like to apologize for the awkward silence. See, after I got all those e-mails you people sent to me—no seriously, I got tons; my inbox was like WHOA, STOP WITH THE E-MAILS, YOU’RE MAKING ME FAT—I told myself I was going to take a little break to read and reflect. There were so many e-mails that I kind of gave up on replying to them all (sorry, sorry, no offense, nothing personal, my bad, so lazy, kill me now, rabid chimps, sorry, sorry). Plus there was that Real-Life Situation™ that some of you already know about, and the aforesaid Real-Life Situation™ is still going on, only with increasing time pressures, so that I’ve been really on edge lately, waiting for various scatological samples to encounter various whirling wind-making contraptions.

But anyway.

It’s only fair that I get up and make a little speech about what I’m going to do with this site (re: last entry), so here goes: I’m keeping the domain, I’m keeping it open and available to all, I’m not changing names, I’m not blurring faces. The general response to my dilemma seemed to be “screw the clients, speak your mind,” which, when I thought about it, was really the only way to go, given my adventurous and danger-defying nature. I laugh in the face of danger! Ha ha ha! So DS.com will remain and flourish, only I may at some future date decide to password-protect the journal (don’t worry, you’ll all get passwords), and there is definitely a redesign coming in the near future. (I’m just not feeling the current look.)

(Note to friends and enemies: This does not mean that I’ve stopped keeping that notebook with all those incriminating details about you people. Contact me for blackmail rates.)

Now that we’ve finished with the official site business, let’s move on to something a little more... personal. (I was going to say “inane,” but... no, actually, that would have done quite well.) To help you slog through the morass of my mentality, I’m putting my thoughts into list format. I suggest taking a break every few bullets—stretch your back, take a walk, pour another vodka, etc. Too much Romy at one time can kill, you know.

Tonight my mother is getting together with a bunch of other local liberals for a MoveOn meeting. She wanted me to go, but I refuse (on principle) to attend anything even remotely resembling a party. (I make exceptions for funerals, particularly open-casket ones.) They were having trouble finding a place to host the gig, and I think my mother wanted me to host it, but I don’t (on principle) host anything (again, funerals excepted). Hell, look at my domain—no hostees. I’ve spent years overcoming my inborn Southern hospitality, and I refuse to let myself slip back into the role of genteel hostess, even for a good cause. Mom tried to tempt me to come by telling me Howard Dean was going to call the group during the party, but come on, it’s Howard Dean—I’ll be able to hear the scream from here, I’m sure.

It also strikes me as ironically amusing that they can’t decide where to host this thing. Can’t the liberals agree on anything?
The other day I bought my first real bottle of moisturizer. I’ve never used moisturizer before, except when I worked at the drugstore and, on slow nights, would sneak into the cosmetics aisle and try out all the makeup and lotion and moisturizer testers, and then the manager would suddenly appear and say, “Have you been trying out the testers again?” and I’d say, “Good golly, no, sir!” And then he’d say, “Hmm. You have ten different shades of lipstick on your wrist.” And I’d say, “Oh, um… hrmph. Hey, how the hell can you distinguish Summer Rose from Old Rose? That’s not very manly, Mr. Metrosexual!” And then I’d be so fired, but my super Jedi powers would totally make him hire me again. Totally.

But I digress.

So this moisturizer—it’s Clean And Clear Shine Control, Oil-Free, Totally Mattifying, Wear This And You’ll Get More Dates And Never Have Static Cling brand—is, like, the bomb. It’s light and soothing and makes me smell the way you picture those girls in the Clean And Clear commercials smelling—soapy-clean and virginal, with a hint of synthetic floral and a dash of Lolita-esque knowledge. I think that if I went to that liberal shindig with my mom tonight, wearing this glorious crap on my face, people would look at me and think, “Wow, funny glasses. She smells nice, though,” as opposed to the usual, “Wow, funny glasses. She looks like Roseanne Roseannadanna.” Maybe Howard Dean would pause during his phone call to remark, “Hey, check it out. That’s a non-pore-clogging substance, people! WOOOOOO!”
For the past week, I haven’t been able to get through a shower without singing—OUT LOUD, so the NEIGHBORS CAN HEAR ME—that goddamn Blu Cantrell song that Janay Castine sang a few weeks back on AI. Stupid, stupid song. Stupid, stupid girl. Stupid, stupid—okay, I have nothing.
My next-door neighbor’s bathroom is right next to our bedroom. This wouldn’t bother me, really, except that he coughs. All the time. Not like *cough*, but more like hackhaaaaackurghspewVOMIT*cough*, and then the sound of running water or a flushing toilet as he waves bye-bye to his phlegm. The only reason I haven’t marched over there and told him to keep it down is that he does this often enough and with enough violence that I’m pretty well convinced that he’s dying from some nameless medical condition, and that I should just wait discreetly for him to kick the bucket. I know, I know—the dying deserve sympathy. You try feeling sorry for someone who thunders to the bathroom every twenty minutes (seriously, I’ve timed him) in the middle of the night so he can drag something up from his chest, spit it loudly into the sink, and then run the water for another three minutes. This guy’s so loud he actually wakes me up at night, and I’m a sound sleeper. But I make it a point not to fall asleep before 12:35 now, because it’s like clockwork—every night, at that exact minute, he gallops to the bathroom and coughs up a lung.

And the really hilarious part? His name is Ralph.
For some reason, Tony has been getting lots of calls lately. Of course, he works all day, so he never has to actually deal with these calls. Neither do I, since I’m too lazy to lean away from the computer and pick up the phone, so our answering machine is now cluttered with a lot of strange messages. The messages are all the same: a long, long pause, then the click of a computer putting a telemarketer on the line, and then the telemarketer saying with an Indian or Spanish accent, “Hello, may I please speak with [insert husband’s top-secret magical name here]?… Hello?… Hello?” Nothing but silence greets them, of course, but they stupidly proceed to say “Hello? Hello?” about four more times before getting the hint and hanging up.

In fact, they just called while I was typing this. I actually picked up the phone this time and went all polite on their asses, with my “No, he’s not here right now, may I take a message?” Actually, it was more like, “No, he—,” because even as I was telling the foreign lady that he wasn’t here, she was saying, “Thank you, goodbye,” and hanging up on me. Bitch. Next time the phone rings, I’m going to pick it up and scream “TAKE US OFF YOUR FUCKING LIST!” into the receiver.
Just did the above to the next caller. Sorry, Tony.
Sometimes when I’m surfing a site that has one of those “do this and WIN!!!” ads—you know, punch the kangaroo or shoot the cockroach or kill the zombie or blah blah blah—I actually punch the kangaroo or shoot the cockroach or yadda yadda yadda. Because hey, it’s fun, and I don’t own a gun so I can’t really shoot cockroaches. I have to get my kicks somehow.
I mentioned Americal Idol somewhere up the list, and I’d just like to take a moment to tell you that yes, I am watching, and yes, I’ve got favorites. My top favorite so far is Nadia, because her hair looks like mine when I get up in the morning. My next-to-top favorite is Bo, because a) he almost broke a mike stand over his leg, and b) I want him to win and form a band called “Bo and the Peeps.” Contestants who bore me include Carrie Underwood (porn name: Carrie Underwear), Mikalah (hate the name, hate the Jewish Princess attitude more—I’ve got the market cornered on that, honey), Scott (look! The angry polar bear from Lost thinks he can sing!), and that one girl whose last name is Sierra (the boys may be back in town, but your cousins are coming out, too). As for Constantine, he’s cute, in a Star Wars Kid kind of way—overdone, painfully sincere, trying very hard to be cool, but not quite making it. It’s hard to get your brood on if that grin keeps peeking out.
I know you’ve only read this far just to read my comments on the chimp attack, but that, quite frankly, is old news. I’d rather talk about the cat who shot his owner. Oh, you insist I comment on the chimpapalooza? Okay then: This just goes to enforce what I’ve been saying for years, which is that chimps are freakin’ dangerous and shouldn’t be made to wear tutus for commercials and such because they are smart and strong and will KILL US ALL one day, only they’ll leave the very last human being left on earth alive just long enough so they can dress him up in a tutu and make him dance around with a banana. Then they will eat him alive, tutu and all. Also, why has that one beer commercial with the guy teasing the chimp not been pulled from the air? I, personally, find it funnier since the attack, but I’m betting most other people don’t.