I Will Pluck You Alouette

Have you ever watched something, that you'd seen when you were young and naive, that upon a tainted adult viewing you grasp a new understanding of the nuances? I've had those moments of "ooooooohhh, wow. I totally didn't catch that the last time I saw this movie." Those little jokes the creators of cartoons throw in, so that parents aren't completely bored to tears when trying to entertain or distract their young offspring.

I had a moment today that reminded me of that feeling.
Apparently, the silly little French song "Alouette" is about the adorable plucking of feathers off of each part of a small lark. Now I'm wishing my 8th grade and college French courses had helped me put two and two together and translated "je te plumerai la tête." I might have then comprehended the head, beak, eye, back and leg de-feathering of a sweet little bird instead of just regurgitating cute syllables strung together into song.

Running, Crouching

Two things that I do that make me question my maturity: running through the office, and sitting on the ground, anywhere. Sometimes I'll stoop all the way down so I can better examine the items on the bottom shelf at the supermarket. It's not unheard of for me to sit on a concrete floor when dogs are at play or proper seats are unavailable. My neighbors and I often sit on the floor in our hallway and chat while their son or bull dog frolic.

Every so often I'll jaunt through the halls at work to catch a phone call or to get something with more haste than the usually sufficient saunter. And then I had a moment of realization. The most powerful and important business people I know certainly would not run through an office unless it was on fire. I was standing in one of the intimidating and ominously large lobbies of one of the talent/writing/below-the-line etc agencies out here while waiting to get into a screening and I saw a fresh-faced suited assistant-type sprinting quickly by. In that moment, I felt he had more succinctly defined his role than the coffee he picked up earlier that day or any phone call he screened.

I've heard that you should dress for work for the job you want, not the job you have. Although I neither ascribe to this advice nor do I think this is a good if you work in say, construction or a similarly blue-collar occupation, I do think the spirit behind it is valid. So for a couple weeks (and in the attempt to mimic the positions to which I aspire), I tried not to run through the office at all. That was short-lived. I guess I will have to accept my place on the totem pole as someone who still needs to scurry sometimes to get her job done.

As far as the sitting on the ground thing, that'll just have to stick too. I get too dang tired standing all the time, but I do understand that there is a time and a place.

Abstaining for Eternal Happiness

(Caveat: potentially controversial, confrontational criticisms of a large group contained)

WikiHow is a little website that comes up on my iGoogle homepage with suggested articles (written by the public at-large) like, How To Cook Filet Mignon and How To Clean a Ferret's Ears. While perusing random articles about friendships and relationships on the site, I came across the following advice that seems sorely out of place and completely lacking in context. I can only assume this is advice by a young LDS woman, for young LDS women. If the general point behind being a Missionary is to convince others that one's extreme religion is the key to eternal salvation, publishing an article on a non-denominational site that promotes unpopular views of sex and relationships might not win friends and influence people.

My favorite parts are in bold below.

How to Wait for a Missionary

You've found your Prince Charming, and now he's gone for two years. Don't fret! No matter how many stories and jokes you hear about girls never waiting for their missionaries, there are plenty of success stories as well.

Steps

1. Resolve to wait.
2. Give yourself plenty of reminders of how wonderful your missionary is. Pictures and old notes are great for this.
3. Write to him every week. It helps to be constantly writing-write a little bit every day. While you're waiting for a class to start or in a boring lecture are prime times.
4. Try not to fall in love with other guys. If you do start liking other guys, make sure you constantly compare them to your missionary. Make sure you emphasize things that you like more about your missionary, and be sure to stew over the things that bother you about the non-missionary guys. If there isn't anything that bothers you, pretend there is.
5. Try not to be too irresistible. The non-missionaries are harder to fight off when you're irresistible.
   

Tips

• The key to waiting for a missionary is to really want to. If you know that your missionary is really the right man for you, other guys won't be a problem.
• Remember that you must grow while he's gone. Increasing your own testimony is essential to a successful relationship when your missionary arrives home. Going to school, learning homemaking skills, and developing your talents are all great things to do.
• Being in charge of keeping a scrapbook for your missionary is a great way to keep him in your mind and others out.
• Remember that two years equal eternity. Know before he leaves that this really is going to be hard. Prepare yourself mentally and emotionally. Most of all, keep in mind that eternity is a long time, and you want to spend it with your perfect man. Two years of loneliness and hard times are worth a wonderful eternity!

Warning

• This article is designed to help you wait for your missionary, not necessarily marry the perfect man. Make sure you know he's the one before he leaves.

I love the advice to distract oneself from all those pesky, boring lectures about learning stuff by writing letters to one's betrothed. And pretending to oneself that those other guys aren't even remotely interesting because they weren't holy enough to proselytize, that sounds great. And certainly don't look alluring in any way, you wouldn't want to tempt anyone.

I suppose it's pretty practical advice if you believe in this lunacy. "People joke" that girls never wait for their missionaries because they probably don't! Teenagers are horny with short attention spans, I doubt most of them wait for their Prince Charming to return from proselytizing for two years when they decide that the unworthy, non-missionary boy that is flirting with them looks pretty hot, right now.

Organized Religion, I don't even know how to handle you.

I'm Sorry I Called Him "Ugly"

I had a girlfriend once who I befriended in a somewhat interesting fashion, and I believe our friendship ended under similarly blog-worthy circumstances. I bring this up because after over a year of not hearing from her, she included me in a mass-distribution email to come on out and support her live in boyfriend's eco-friendly clothing line launch party thing.

Back to the beginning, one time when I was young and single, this friend of a friend came out to the birthday party for that friend at the now kaput Dublin's bar on Sunset (which is supposedly being renovated into a fancy-shmancy bar and tiny expensive food restaurant.) At the end of the night I was so bleary-eyed from vodka concoctions and test tube shots that I remember walking down the stairs in a steaming mass of humanity and thinking when did all these people get here?

My best friend had gone out to pick up his car from the $20 valet but they made him leave the driveway before I was able to get to him. On the phone with him I walked East on Sunset only to turn around West to get to him after a couple U-turns. I was walking past the newsstand and took a step into a tree planter cut out of the sidewalk and not filled quite level again. The depth differential, intoxication and heeled boots combo equaled me completely eating shit and dropping my phone in the gutter. A few strangers picked me up and as I stood, my new friend, all 5'2" of her broke through the crowd of big black guys yelling and whimsically asked, "are you OK?!" She looked like an angel with gleaming white skin and long red hair. I embraced her and asked her to get me out of there at which time the black guys started yelling, "ooooh! Kiss her! Kiss her! We'll pay you!" All I could come back with is "you wouldn't have to pay me to kiss her, but I'm not going to anyway." Thus the beginning of our friendship.

Cut to two years later and the end of our friendship isn't as clearly defined. After an unfortunate string of her dating idiot assholes, actor/waiters, users, and really hot guys with no regard for anyone else she started seeing this not hot, older but working actor (cable TV.) She was telling me about him, and how nice he was and that they'd gone out a couple times but nothing physical yet, she told me which character on my favorite show he was, and I oh-so-uncouthly blurted out with "oh my god, the ugly one?"

My roommate tried to help me back peddle and take it back with various justifications like, "well, not ugly, it's just that his character is so ugly, and he's supposed to not be as attractive as the other guys." I apologized profusely then and then again months later when she told me how much it upset her. Still things between us were never the same. Which, on the friendship scale is hardly the worst offense I could have committed and I wish she had found it within to forgive me for my stupid mistake. And I was genuinely sorry, it was semi-reprehensible to not think for a split second before I openly insulted the nice guy she was proud to be seeing.

I had called her a a couple times after that winter to let her know I was working in her area and that I could come see her if she wanted to hang out. Nothing. No returns. Which, in this city of transplant flakes is not highly unusual behavior, but then I just stopped hearing from her at all. Until...January this year, she included me in a mass email. Similar to those suburban letters families send out at Christmas time to tell everyone how successful their family has been this year. She spoke of her new Pilates studio, and included a link to the property in Venice she and her boyfriend just purchased together. Tastefully, the website included the 7-figure sticker price. I wrote her back to thank her for including me in the update and to congratulate her on all her great life stuff. Never got a reply.

Part of me wonders if she is the kind of woman who sent me that email as a "HA! Fuck you! Look how well I'm doing! So there!" If so, I would be sorely disappointed but there's just no way of knowing. And now she's done it again. Certainly she hasn't given it as much thought as I just have, and I'm glad she's happy with her life, I just wish she would either decide to get in or stay out of mine.

Sympathy, Curiosity, Cash

First of all, not all beggars are Homeless. They may look dirty, transient and generally displaced but I've heard those guys at the foot of off-ramps can pull in upwards of $100 a day.^{[citation needed]} Without taxes and whatnot, that might make for a fairly comfortable existence, depending on your outlook. I'm not trying to disparage the destitute, I have a lot of diverging opinions on the state of Homelessness in the U.S.

While stopping for some iced tea at a McDonald's in Downtown this Sunday, I was approached by a beggar. He surprised me at the driver's side window of my ex-roomie's orangey Honda Element I had borrowed to (not) pick up a piece of furniture. As I was backing out and glancing over my left shoulder, he appeared in my periphery. Holding out his hands with the general pleading in his face that people asking for your cash usually exhibit. I waved my hand "no" and proceeded to reverse. He had a slight look of either indignation or disappointment and it made me wonder what he thought the reason was for why I didn't donate to him.

I'll tell you why, I didn't have any change and he surprised me. I only had a 5 and a 10 and was in the middle of maneuvering someone else's vehicle. Had he caught me face-to-face and with smaller bills in my possession, I may have made a different decision. My slight guilt upon seeing his reaction made me jump to all the conclusions he may have been making about why he struck out. Am I a bitch? Rich suburban girl? Selfish? Republican? I often wonder what other people are thinking in moments like that, especially when I don't get to explain myself and I think they don't like me and when I think the obvious answers are false. I'm working on not caring as much about that.

Once I was approached by a girl with a sob story of her car being out of gas and stranded just over there. I was actually a little intimidated by her and wanted her out of my face, I didn't believe her for a second and as I handed her some money to make her leave me alone, it felt like we exchanged a knowing look. I communicated to her "I know you know I don't believe you and I know you don't care." That was an interesting feeling.

Women Who Can't Cook

These creatures boggle my mind. I know it's not as rare as [insert near extinct things here] but I'm still dumbfounded when I meet one and I study them like caged zoo animals.

I just don't get it. How does one get to be 20-something (caveat: I'm talking about women, welcome to my traditional roles view) and not figure out how to follow a recipe, or throw sustenance together in some sort of semblance of edibility? I think the first things I learned to cook by myself was Kraft Mac & Cheese and scrambled eggs (not together) when I was about 13. I actually remember that feeling of accomplishment a lot more clearly than when puberty struck, or when I learned to ride a bike or where I was when I was first kissed.

This past Friday we went to a friend's place for a small dinner gathering. He cooked fajitas and I brought a corn and bean salad I made from mostly scratch, my corn was a little overripe and starchy so I used a can instead but other than that, all prepped by me. Soaked and simmered the black beans overnight, cut up cilantro, scallions, tomatoes (seeded), can o' corn kernels, avocado, little kosher salt and lime juice. Done. Mmm mmm good.

One girl at the table is 23, only child, natural blonde, from Newport Beach, started her first job within the last year and this creature literally cannot cook soup. She fucked up pasta. I queried, "how do you fuck up pasta?" And she said, "I didn't know I had to stir it." Umm, wow, OK. Don't get me wrong, I liked her just fine. But I was just so confused by the things she was saying. As I was stirring the chicken fajitas, I handed her the spoon, because I think a lot of her ignorance is fear-based, she just doesn't know how and is afraid she'll mess it up or look dumb so she doesn't try. The trepidation with which she approached that pan and the timid way in which she attempted to push that poultry around only furthered my curious observation of this person. There was no gumption at all to her technique. If she had actually had to render the meat healthy to consume from the get-go instead of being welcomed in a couple minutes from the end, I would bet money that the top half of each piece would have stayed raw. However, she was so proud of herself for her contribution to the meal once she stepped away from the stove, that there may be hope for her yet.

She's not the first woman I've heard this from. Once while standing in the kitchen at work, I was detailing for someone some simple meal I had cooked the night before and a freelancer interjected with, "wow, you really know how to cook? I just make my boyfriend pick up P.F. Chang's." I wonder if my slack jaw was as obvious as it felt.

I can't think of a solitary thing, that someone can do for someone else, on a regular basis, that says, "I love you" more than putting forth the effort to make delicious meals. Maybe if you're a trophy wife, just physically perfect in every way, give it up multiple times daily and also converse in a consistently interesting fashion, can a woman get away with not learning how to make food. Plus it's really expensive to have businesses prepare all your meals for you, everyday. More on this topic at a later date.

Shredding My Life, Circa Early Aughts

In packing and moving one's life to a new space, one must determine the value of one's possessions. Yeah, when I was deciding what I actually needed to bring with me in our move, I got to throw out and donate some crap but I'd say the single most satisfying purge was the banker's box chock full of files full of information that was at one time, important enough to name a colored file and keep. Yesterday I stood in front of the industrial grade paper shredder at work and permanently destroyed many old parts of my life. I now delineate some of the stuff I kept and subsequently abolished.

Mind you, this is now 2007. I have not worked in a restaurant since sometime in mid-2004ish. I still had every pay stub and clock out chit from my time in restaurants, from 1999 to 2004. To be fair, and to not totally label myself an anal-retentive freak, my operating partner at unamed-but-easy-to-figure-out Corporate American Chinese casual dining chain, was trimming back our hours after we'd clocked out. Not to screw us out of money per se, but rather to make his total numbers look better thereby making him the Golden Boy of the Southern California stores. Ooooh. Exciting. I kept them as proof of the money that was owed me, but the accounting of said shaving mysteriously never made it to the hands of the Regional Manager. I wasn't over it until I was included in a class action suit that awarded me double what they actually should have paid me in the first place, and my best friend who was still a manager would comp my meals. So karma wins again. Fuck you PF Chang's. I mean, nevermind. It felt good to shred those little yellowed print outs.

There were the notes, office space quotes and emails from the failed startup production company that never paid me. I worked for this guy I met at one of my tables, and we were going to produce content originating mostly from comic books. I'm not sure what the truth of the situation is, but something went awry with the timing of us going public and doing PR too early, or something, and the thing never got off the ground. I'm probably owed about $3000 for my time but seeing as that was 2002, I seriously doubt I'll ever see a dime of it. Shredded.

Papers with the address of where I lived with my ex from 1999-2001, confetti. Old itemized phone bills, kaput. Email exchanges with an ex who is now married with a baby and another bun in the oven, gone. Copies of letters of recommendation from my high school teachers so I could get into college, bye bye.

There was something really freeing about letting go of so much crap and filling up the bin with slivers of paper that at one time resembled the experiences in my life. When I opened the bin to pack it down, I could see the occasional "Victoria" or "Tarzana" where I had inserted the pay stubs in just such a way where my full name or the town I grew up in were not dissected.

The call sheets survived, the copies of my first ever tax refund checks for $14 and $6 did not. The tax returns survived, anything ever related to my time at the boutique talent agency did not. Insurance policies from a car I haven't owned in five years only exist now in narrow strips that will probably be recycled into mushy paper pulp and new blank sheets.

This has been a great year for new beginnings.

Suckers

Similar in tone to my previous PSA post, the following are email forwards that NO self-respecting adult should fall for or forward ever again.

Bonsai Kittens- this email forward is just mind-boggling. Why anyone ever believes it stumps me to this day. The idea that someone would mass-market a way to bottle up and mold kittens into various vessel shapes is just too much. Maybe it's the tug on the emotional heart-strings of people who love cute kittens. This site was launched in 2000 (and occasionally I will still get a petition protesting this barbaric business.) Do a search for Bonsai Kittens and at least you will get Wikipedia and Snopes clearly refuting its validity

Gas Strikes- this isn't going to work. Really. Not driving AT ALL might dent the pockets of Daddy Petroleum, however, if you and your 200 myspace buddies don't buy gas on Tuesday, your efforts won't matter when y'all fill up on Monday (to avoid running out on Tuesday) or later that same week.

Microsoft/AOLBeta- nobody is going to give you any money for forwarding an email to all your friends and associates. Think about it. How exactly is this check for a thousand some-odd dollars and a random-sounding number of cents going to show up in your snail mail box? How would these corporations track your email trail and how would they get your full name and mailing address?

And another thing, Free Money- people are not going to give you free money. If you fall for schemes that involve getting cash for nothing, you are about to get hosed. The world goes 'round on greenbacks, what makes you think someone you don't know to whom you provide no service will just hand you over a large chunk? In case you haven't heard this one before, if someone offers to send you a money order for an amount larger than the room you have for rent, game system you are selling or desk set you're getting rid of; and they want you to cash it for them and send them back the difference...you're about to lose out on the whole amount because that money order is a fake. (And don't do Internet business with Nigeria, just don't.)

Just because an email forward looks legit because it contains credentials like, TV news programs, famous people's names, or a signature with a phone number in it, doesn't mean a lick. Try opening a new window in your browser and Googling that phone number, or better yet, bookmark the website Snopes.com. They seem to know everything by the time it hits your inbox, especially since most of this crap has been floating since before you signed up for your current email address. It's also quite an entertaining website for those slow days at the office.

Please. Exercise discretion and don't look like an asshole to your co-workers. Do two minutes of research before you go freaking other people out with your dissemination of misinformation.

One of My Toxins Released

In the past two or three years, I've had the most destructive, poisonous, self-serving, damaged friends than I've ever had before. Before I get into one of them in particular, let me say that I have disposed of these friendships since. Definitely among the most difficult lessons I've had to learn, but I am so grateful to be rid of these carion.

The motivation for this blog was the PostSecret blog and YouTube video. At the end of this animated sequence of anonymous stranger's confessions, is the phone number for the National Hopeline Network. It reminded me of the time when I needed to call the 1 800 SUICIDE operator-- and it wasn't for me. It was because my co-worker and sometimes friend had threatened suicide to me via work email and I knew she wasn't kidding. This poor damaged individual was bi-polar and I don't mean in that "gosh she's nuts, she's totally bi-polar" kind of way...she was the perfect clincal example of the extreme swinging highs and lows. When she was swinging high she was energetic, sexy, sassy, smart, inspired and exciting. Her low ebbs resulted in sleeping with random men, blaming me for how badly she felt about herself, making erratic plans to quit and move across the country, picking up a shift at the club she danced at and taking large amounts of illegal and prescription drugs.

At one point when she wanted to ditch out on her lease, walk away from her job and move across the country with her cats, I convinced her that her life would be far less difficult if she gave a month's notice at her apartment, saved her income from her cushy job and moved away without running away. Every time her life got difficult over the next two months, I got blamed for why she was in whatever her current predicament was. She decided she would move out of her place a month before relocating, thereby saving the rent money while she couch-surfed. Except that no one had agreed to put her up and she had two cats. She called me a flake to one of our producers because my mom wouldn't agree to keep her cats in fear that ours would be threatened and run away. I was also accused of being a bad friend when I wouldn't let her stay at my place, because I had three roommates and I didn't think it was fair to put them out if she was in our living room for a month, to which she informed me she would sleep with me and Rob would just have to be OK with it. Nevermind that I wasn't OK with any of it.

So. Over the course of her last month in her Beverly Hills single bedroom, I was trying every angle I could to help her board her cats for free, when I get an email that says, "do me one last favor and take care of my cats." To which I replied, "I'm trying, but I'm running out of options because you aren't willing to pay for their care." She replied with, "No, I mean permanently."
"What do you mean?"
"I'm going to go, like tonight."
I naively thought she meant she was putting her ass in her Jetta and leaving the state, so I asked how.
Through our work email she wrote back, simply, "Bottle of pills."
It felt like my heart sank into my stomach.

By the time I read that message, I was already done with her daily crap slinging. I was done catering to her emotional breakdowns and certainly wasn't going out of my way to do her any more favors, so when she put her life in my hands I was furious with her. I was so mad that she gave me no choice but to care, I was so mad because I knew she meant it and I had a clear picture in my head of the contents of the left hand drawer in her bathroom where I once looked for a hair brush. I was so mad, and I didn't want to say so because I didn't want to be evenly vaguely responsible for her fate.

The only thing I could think of to do, so that I could maintain my sanity in front of my bosses and not let on to anyone the severity of the emotions between us, was to hole myself up in the conference room to call the suicide hotline. Twenty minutes later the counselor was sufficiently convinced that she was actually a threat to herself and that I was reacting appropriately, he asked if he could speak to her. As I went to get her, she came to me, puffy-eyed, asking if I would take her calls because she was going to see her doctor to get her prescriptions.

She apologized, promised she was going to be OK and asked me to delete the messages from the server. I didn't. I hung onto that exchange in case I needed to make my case known to HR.

Things between us actually only got worse from there. I did my best to maintain a professional demeanor until she was out of my life while regularly calling my boyfriend and my mom from the car to cry and release the stresses from sitting with that woman nine hours a day.

From my relationship with her I learned how to set boundaries with people. I learned that what I need is important too. I learned what it feels like to have a friendship have no reciprocity and that that's not what friendship is about. And I also learned that I can't save people. That I am not responsible for the well-being of people who don't care to put the appropriate effort into their own quality of life. I'm grateful to her for providing me the opportunity to gain those lessons, and for giving me a permanent portrait of the kind of person I will not allow back into my life.

My Electronics Track Record- 0 for 2

This week, I suck at electronics. First I go and kill my iPod in a truly stupid impatient way then, because I had imbibed a few too many shots of Patron Silver in the pool at Mandalay Bay on Sunday afternoon, my drunk ass left my camera behind me in the back of a yellow cab. Oh yeah, that's me, two of my most favoritist possessions, my Nano and my digital camera, and now I own neither because of my own stupidity all inside of one week. When I realized my wrist was lighter, we were 10 minutes gone from that taxi. I wept at the dinner table while my poor husband probably just wished I would stop.

And, to top it all off, I'm barely even allowing myself to be sad about either loss because it makes me feel like an Elitist American Consumer Pig, because I have another iPod and another camera, I just don't like them as much as the ones I have no longer. The other iPod is big and clunky and it doesn't work with the Nike+ my brother-in-law got me for Christmas. My other working camera is a big ol' manual focus film camera from the 70s or 80s. It's gorgeous and awesome but far too heavy to tote around the average outing, also it doesn't have a flash so not really ideal for evening shindigs.

The silver lining(s) to the loss of my camera: 1) there weren't any irreplaceable pictures in it. 2) the batteries were regular Duracells instead of the much more pricey rechargeable AA's I usually use. 3) It was kinda broken and embarrassing in that "you still have a camera that big?" kind of way, even though it was only two years old. 4) My kick-ass Quik Pod was not attached.

That cab driver was actually pretty cool, and I hope that since it wasn't turned in to lost-and-found (ha.ha.) that maybe some poor cabbie's kid now has a new camera with some sweet features that he'll use for learning skills other than how to post vlogs to his myspace or videos of his friends cracking their skulls on the pavement after a sweet jump. Stay tuned for a separate entry on how much loathing I have for L.A. cab drivers. Truly, I think I'd rather risk getting my car stolen from long-term parking at LAX than to EVER have to drive in an L.A. taxi again.

Childhood Things

I never dreamed to be a ballerina, or a princess. I don't remember those normal girly pubescent milestones, except my first kiss. But not even my first lip to lip contact, just the French one. I might have wanted a pony for all of a few months, but I wanted a monkey for a lot of years. Then someone told me they scream, throw their feces, and can live for 20-40 years. They didn't seem such endearing companions after that enlightening conversation.

My dream wedding was never planned, but I would pair my name with the last names of my crushes. I never dreamed of a princess dress and Cinderella's horse drawn carriage. Pictures of 4 tiered cakes, and 15 attendants and the perfect color scheme were not in my mind's eye. I didn't even know the 4 C's of diamonds until Rob and I started to discuss engagement details. All I remember really wanting was to BE married to someone who loved me enough to give me a diamond and that I wanted to wear a pretty dress. That's it.

I did have a couple kid's names written down and stashed into my sentimental drawer (now my sentimentals are in a cardboard box in the corner of my closet, completely enveloped in shoes I mostly never wear.) I don't remember the winning names except that I thought Amethyst would make a cool middle name for a girl. This hippie-like notion was abandoned long ago.

I do remember being fascinated with Star Wagons, grip trucks...craft service. As a kid and teenager, if I saw a cluster of Star Wagons along the road I would get giddy and keep an eye on them until they were no longer in view. So I guess it's a good thing I ended up married and in production and not in a permanent land of princesses in wedding gowns, grooming their ponies, although in the crazy world of advertising, I might be on set someday with a similar sect of characters. Maybe we can throw them into the next Rozerem campaign.

I Got Called Out

I went out to dinner at Luna Park last night for a good friend's birthday. It was cool, except that I got called out, by someone I'd just met, on my tendency to heavily pepper my conversations with what some might consider offensive language. He was kind about it, not as rude or self-righteous as he could have been. But I was thrown off a little by his apparent criticism of me within mere minutes of sitting at that round table together.

Here's where credit is due. I swear, a lot. I use fuckin' and fuck as conversation fillers and verb emphasizers as often as others may use um and uhh and you know? Credit is also due to him in that he mentioned this to my face instead of calling my friend later and saying, "yeah, I had a really good time, but your friend Victoria sounds really uneducated with as often as she drops the F-bomb."

The conversation progressed into an analysis of when swear words can help one's point be made pointier and how the words lose their power when watered down. Cool. I agree. I fully concur that when arguing with someone (or writing a strongly worded complaint letter) the fewer expletives you spew, the more clearly your point can be heard. I get it. As to the losing their power thing, I'm actually quite a fan of not giving words so much power. Yeah, I don't want to be called an annoying, bitch of a cwunt by anyone, but if we allow "bad" words to ruffle our feathers at every utterance, we'll give other people too much control over our emotions.

I also went on to explain that I have very little call in my life to regulate my usage. My bosses swear freely, my mom, my husband, my roommates, my family, etc. The only person I need to filter for is Zane, because he's only three. Occasionally I'll let something slip, but my policy is to just scan past it and not make a big deal, that way he won't know to focus on the word that causes a stir. If he does pick up loaded words at a young age, I hope he'll accept the explanation that those are "adult" words instead of being told they are "bad" ones.

Again, a semantic that gives words more power.