The Rise and Fall of the Hormonal Comic

PMS.

Thanks for reading this far. You're quite brave you know, to muster on past such a terrifying apparition. Fearless, or you're acronym-challenged....or maybe just bored. Regardless, as a reward, I'll share a secret with you, but don't tell anyone. Just the people you know. Ok, maybe a few others too. To be honest, I don't care who you tell. It's not like I'm paid really well for this anyway. But I digest.

There are times when I'm funny. Incredibly, get yer diaper on, cork your bladder, blow it out your nose funny. Other times, not so much. Why?

Having less to do than even you, and having a government grant burning a global-warming hole in my pocket, I decided to investigate my own personal science of comedy. I put my humor, highs and lows, on a chart. Using only the finest equipment, namely Dave Barry's weblog, I implemented a 'snork' tracking device and extrapolated my results onto the following Gannt trending mahoozit.

WARNING- the following is quite graphic:

Impressive, yes, yet painfully sparse. While the colors invite one to compare me to Wyeth and O'Keefe, the obtuse angles offer paeans to Cubism. But I divest.
What factors were at work here? Did situation, attitude, stress, hunger, nearness to stupidity, necessitate a gear shift in fun?
I tracked it all, at least for a few minutes. Then I got tired and got a snack.

Eventually I crunched my hard data through a wood chipper and fed the results into a wetvac. It hurt like the dickens, but someone had to do it.

This next step was quite dangerous, so do NOT try this at home - you will frighten your neighbors and upset the cat:

Still not conclusive, but at least I was learning to draw curves. And I got to talk about astral planes and moons being in Uranus. All good. Unless of course you have Venus envy.

Here's the raw 'snork' data, tracking how many laughs I got on a daily basis:

Hilarious, no? I couldn't stop laughing after that one. This data was then ratioed against the time spent per diem on Mr. Barry's webblog:

While that may not make sense to some of you, face it - many things don't make sense, but this has graphs so it must be true. Besides, when was the last time you got to say 'ratioed' and 'per diem' in the same sentence and make it funny? I didn't think so. Plus the urology angle is both concise and obtuse. Snorkal rapture - our cup overfloweth.

As you can see, it's obvious, really, it all becomes vaguely clear - together, the full moon and I harvest a monthly bumper crop of jokes. Spikes of estrogen match peaks on the snorkometer index. Dang, I'm funny when I'm hormonal.
I'm sure some soulful writer will try to juxtapose the pain of PMS with the joy of humor. After I make him laugh, I will slug him.

A bonus discovery - on the rare occasion of a blue moon, my humor becomes, well... blue, stupid. Shocking, perhaps, but if you didn't see that coming, face it - you're stupid. Don't argue with me or I'll cry.

I've mentioned this phenomenon to several friends of mine, and not a single one of them refutes my case. Most of them just leave rather quickly, but hey- no disagreements, just panic, fear, and flight. Which is fine with me. After all, if I want company, I have the moon, my graphs and my chocolate.

Sale!

The other day I got a text message on my cell phone. This is unusual because I don't text message - a cell phone call is more than enough of an intrusion. Why I'd want little letters chattering at me nonstop all day is beyond sanity.

The text message was from not even from a human-type person, but instead from one of my favorite places to overheat a credit card. "Your boots are 30% off!" the message purred, "And there's only one pair left!!!" A double-edged crisis indeed. On the one hand, this was a bit of an intrusion on my privacy. On the other hand, dang, it was a shoe sale, for Jimmy Choo's sake.

Several months ago I had tried on a pair of sharp-looking boots and a crafty salesperson had made note of it, hoping to eventually snare me via text messaging. It worked. I had to rescue my boots before someone else snapped them up. After all, the message said they were mine. If only I could remember what they looked like.

The shoe store was in the next town over. Who knows how many other boot-craving women had been contacted about this and were at this very moment en route to claim my boots. Mine. I had to find a way to beat them to it. Texting back seemed the fastest way. My crafty, super-techy idea impressed my own self - those silly girls who thought they could zip to the mall and win would soon know they were competing with a champion shopper, one who knew every sale, every coupon, and holstered a bottomless credit card. And so I replied, making personal history by sending my first ever text message.

"Yes," I tapped, "Size 8 1/2." send.

"What?" came the reply. I looked at my text message. I had sent, "yeeers 88122!$@" Damn those fat fingers.

"Boots," I begged. "Now, please. Sale?"

"May I help you?" the stupid little box blinked at me.

"The ones I wanted," I tapped nervously. "Boots...me want." Texting a la Tarzan.

"Shall I reserve something for you?" inquired Snarky box.

"Yes... me....boooootz...." Even for me this was getting embarrassing.

"Please visit our store for more information!" chirped the text brightly. Pretty safe response to my gurgling nonsense. I had always disliked the Politically Correct trend, but this new Shiny Nice Customer Non-service had PC beat by a useless mile.

Looking on the bright side, at least I had attempted to text and gotten a response. That was a step in right direction. But if I were to continue my steps, I needed those boots. So I drove to the mall and got them. Apparently they had just gotten a new shipment in since they now had at least eleven pairs in my size. No matter, a crisis in footwear had been avoided. Chicken soup for the sole, as it were.

Dang if I weren't stylin'! After all, if you're gonna flaunt your techy-text ways, you'd best be lookin' good.

A Not-so-fine State of Affairs

From the LA Times today -
Los Angeles television newscaster Mirthala Salinas was suspended without pay for two months — but not dismissed — Thursday from KVEA-TV Channel 52 for covering Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa while they were romantically involved, a relationship that journalism experts said damaged the station's credibility.
...Villaraigosa, 54, did not comment on the merit of Telemundo's decision, saying only that he wanted to concentrate on his job in its aftermath.

Let's see - She gets suspended without pay. He says he's sorry and continues on. The tv station says its credibility was damaged. The government - nope, it's good, thanks for asking. Thank God for low standards.

I could really care less about these people's private affairs, because well, it's private. It takes two to tango and apparently they knew that dance. Whoopee. Alert the media.

Why is this even news? Oooh, scandalous, murmur, murmur, leer & snicker. Does it affect their jobs? If so, wouldn't it impact both? Fire both or hire both.

Thank goodness she probably makes only 66% of what a man would make in that job, since she's out of a paycheck, she's not losing as much. Lucky her.

When double standards are gone and people are judged by their actions, not their sex, somebody wake me. Until then I'm sleeping it off.

And until then don't forget - if you're drunk and disorderly with a cop:
"Jews rule the world" is a no-no.
"What you lookin' at, Sugartits?" is just fine.