Author: romcomdojo

Tony Danza’s and My Shared Sensuality: We Explore Astrology

| romcomdojo

With all the fun we had last week dismantling your psychic abilities, I’ve decided to poke fun at astrology today, so if you’re into astrology, it was nice knowing you.  Don’t let the Capricorn kick you in the ass on the way out!

< soft sobbing >

This is what I do.  I push people away because I’m scared they won’t accept me if I gave them the chance to get to know the “real me”.  I’m afraid.  Please love me.

Actually, it’s just because I think astrology is general hokum and balderdash – but you’re free to be into it.  As I remind people all the time, I’m not the police of anything, even when you’ve run into me and I’m wearing a full SWAT team uniform and holding a riot shield.  It was for a sex thing!

I spun my Debunking Wheel this morning and it was either debunk astrology or debunk the Richard Gere gerbil myth, and I don’t feel like getting that edgy today.  I had a lot to drink (vitamins) before I went to bed late last night (9:30pm), so I’m not up for medical/sexual rodent arguments today (I am always up for those arguments).

I am a Taurus.  If you’re into astrology you’re smirking right now and saying, “No shit, Sherlock.”  If you’re not into astrology, you’re welcome to join my anti-astrology club called “Science”.

I found this thing about Tauruseseses on the internet today while I was searching for “general hokum and balderdash”.  It was on an astrology site, and it’s a little mnemonic for how to spell the word Taurus in the most complicated way or something.

Here it is:

T for trailblazing
A for ambitious
U for unwavering
R for reliable
U for understanding
S for stable

There was this crazy long description of the attributes and flaws of the Taurus right before it that was – Oh Mylanta – so freaking long.  I only made it part of the way through before I saw the word “sensual” and just stopped reading.

Know who else is a Taurus according to the article?  Saddam Hussein.  Know who else?  Hitler.  Know who else?  Tony Danza.  If “sensual” applies to me because I’m a Taurus, that means it would apply to all of them, too.

Thank god for that Tony Danza, at least.  His sensuality brings up the average for everyone else.

Honestly, though, I’m still trying to figure out, in 2019, just who exactly the boss was on “Who’s The Boss?”  It’s a real conundrum.  I mean, is the “boss” the woman who hired a male housekeeper employee, or is the “boss” the male housekeeper employee who was hired by the woman?

THERE’S NO WAY TO KNOW.  IT IS ENTIRELY POSSIBLE THAT THE WOMAN IS NOT THE BOSS OF THE MALE EMPLOYEE DESPITE THE FACT THAT SHE IS HIS EMPLOYER.  FOR REASONS HAVING TO DO WITH HOO-HAHS AND DING-DONGS SEXUAL POLITICS.

Hey, I don’t have a degree in Human Resources, mostly because I spend a lot of time trying to avoid all humans, so I’ll have to leave that one up to the court of public opinion.

What that means, basically, is that we’re all going to die having never gotten to the bottom of this debate.  This debate that could have easily been avoided altogether had they kept the original title of “A Bozz Can’t Have A Da Titz, Capisce!”

Please note in this promo photo for the show:   The only person who is, in fact, the actual boss also happens to be the only person who’s not wearing a sweatshirt that says, “I’m The Boss”.

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Uhhhhhh…

It is also clear to me that, where the figurative rubber meets the figurative road, Mona is the boss, because Tony and Angela couldn’t even figure out they had boners for each other until like a million seasons into that show.  Mona tried to get it on with Tony from the very first season because Mona knows exactly who Mona is, which makes her a BOSS.

So let’s take this Taurus mnemonic on one letter at a time to prove how wrong it is.  Like you’re doing literally anything else right now.

T for trailblazing:  This is true.  I invented the laziest grilled cheese where you spray two pieces of bread with cooking spray, put them into the toaster, then when they’re done you take them out and put a slice of cheese on them and stick them in the microwave on a paper towel for 10 seconds to melt the cheese.  No pan required.  No dishes to clean afterwards.  As we have previously discussed, you are required to put yellow mustard on all American grilled cheeses, and don’t give me any shit about it.

A for ambitious:  Please see above.  I’m going to make the mustard thing happen nationwide.  Yellow mustard adds a much needed zip!

U for unwavering:  Once I have decided that I don’t like you, it’s forever.  You should probably move away, or else find some way to live with the fact that every time you walk by me I’ll be fantasizing about you losing big on one of those Japanese game shows where they make you wear a diaper full of squid tentacles to recite the alphabet backwards and if you mess up they chop off your pinky finger.  Do you think you can handle that?  I have a fairly vivid imagination, too, so I’ll have an image of that burned in HD in my brain when I think about it.

R for reliable:  You can always count on me to not ask before taking the last mozzarella stick out of the shared basket – and yes that’s every time, Miss Manners.  I was raised with prison rules when it came to food (and pretty much everything else if we’re being honest here).  If you didn’t snatch food off a platter like a jackal tearing the leg off a zebra carcass, you were out of luck.  You’re lucky I only took the last mozzarella stick and didn’t just grab all of them out of the basket when first they arrived, lick each one of them and yell, “GUESS THEY’RE ALL MINE NOW.”

What was the next letter oh my god this is sooooooo duuuuuuuuuumb.

SCIENCE.

The 40-Something Ridiculous Crying Thing

| romcomdojo

It took me by surprise when I went to have a tire patched at Pep Boys last year and drove home from the experience in full, wailing, sobbing, freak-out mode.  Because as much as I have banned myself from ever crying with eye makeup on, it turns out my desire for mascara-free cheeks is no match for 40-something hormones.

I had a nail in my tire, and it was deflating quickly, so I needed to stop by Pep Boys.  When I got to the service desk, they told me it would be about an hour.  An hour later, they told me another hour.  An hour later, they told me another hour.

Meanwhile, everyone in the waiting room around me was watching videos on their phones of TruTV or something similar, where the shows consisted of people screaming and being chased by the police, and for some reason, all of them had the volume cranked to 10, on phones that were seemingly made entirely of broken speakers.  It sounded like a room full of robot parts being dragged across a floor made of chalkboard.  You know, in a bad way.

(Oh, hey, side note:  When watching a video on your phone in a public place, turn the volume down to a respectable level, you goddamned animals.  Literally NOBODY wants to hear it.  Also, don’t say, “Oh man, you gotta see this!” and then make someone watch a five minute long video on your phone when you’re just out to dinner.  NOBODY wants to have an unscheduled five minute long video thrust upon them when they’re sitting at a restaurant.)

I’m hypoglycemic and my blood sugar was starting to get really low, so I reached for my emergency snack in my purse only to find it wasn’t there, so I had to make do with eating sugar packets from the free coffee station in the waiting room.  As I tossed back the sugar packets like someone throwing handfuls of dead mullet at a sea lion’s gaping maw, I couldn’t help but feel it was a classy move by a classy lady.  /brag

When the service guy emerged from the bay three hours later, he handed me my keys and sent me on my way.  I pulled out onto the road and immediately made a wrong turn, which meant I would then have to make a U-turn.

That was it.

I immediately burst into tears and started sobbing like I was having a nervous breakdown.  This went on for the entire thirty minute drive home. I cried so hard that I had burst capillaries around my eyes the next day.  I cried so hard my neck muscles were sore.  Because making that wrong turn was just IT.  Five minutes after I got home, I was fine.

A few months ago, I got into my car after work and burst into tears for literally no reason.  Then I cried even harder because I couldn’t figure out why I was crying and sobbed and shouted at myself, “I don’t know what’s wrooooonng!!!!!”  Five minutes after I got home, I was fine.

More recently, my boss emailed me a couple follow up questions on a long project I had just turned in.  He asked nicely, as always, because my boss is actually a really fantastic boss.  So anyway, he asked nicely, and then the tears started welling up in my eyes, and I had to leave the office to go collect myself in the ladies room before I completely fell apart.  Because he asked me a couple follow up questions.  Nicely.  Five minutes later?  Fine.

One day I was watching a duck waddle across a street, and I burst into tears.  Totally fine five minutes later.

I have melted down in the past year because the dishwasher had clean dishes in it, because that meant I had to put them away, and I was not emotionally prepared to put the dishes away right at that moment.  Sure, theoretically I could just put them away later, but in the meantime I would sit on the couch and it would just gnaw and gnaw at me that I was lying around doing nothing when there was work to be done.  Basically, I cried over clean dishes because I have a really good work ethic.

To summarize, these are the situations that will make me cry in my 40s, along with a visual aid of Dawson from Dawson’s Creek to demonstrate the crying scale:

(1) Making a wrong turn:

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(2) No reason at all:

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(3) Being nicely asked a couple follow up questions:

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(4) Ducks:

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(5) My own work ethic:

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The only thing they have in common is that five minutes later, I’ll be fine.

40-something hormones?  You figure that shit out.  I have to go make sure that in the past five minutes I haven’t started growing a mustache and a dumpster ass like Mike Ditka.

Building The Perfect Panic Pizza

| romcomdojo

I’m not particularly skilled at this thing called “cooking”.  I appreciate your attempts at being polite when you pretend to enjoy the frozen pizza I made you that is somehow completely burned on the edges and bottom yet still frozen in the middle.  It’s a magical skill, I know.  How does one even accomplish that in a conventional oven?

That being said, there is one kind of pizza that I’m actually pretty good at making:

The Panic Pizza!

Oh, you don’t know how to make a Panic Pizza?  Well hot damn!  Let’s start the Home Shame Economics cooking class!

The first and most important ingredient in a Panic Pizza is the human-shaped dough glob that is you.  Hopefully, you’ve mixed and mashed yourself with so much alcohol and so many carbs the night before that by morning, you’re ready to be scraped off the couch and rise, get punched a few times in the gut, and then tossed up like so many cookies into the air of daylight.  After all, it’s another day for you to try your best at not being a shit show.  Good luck with that, paisan!

Now your dough is ready for sauce.  Since the jar of sauce is too hard to open and you don’t feel like walking all the way over to the cabinet that’s four feet away to get the jar opener thingy, you decide this Panic Pizza will be sauce-less.

You trailblazer, you.  It takes a lot of guts to have that kind of Lack of Motivation, which brings us to our first topping!  Lack of Motivation!

Hang on.  Now you’re picturing a loved one trying to chew the dry, sauce-less pizza and then they get the hiccups when they try to swallow a particularly large and dry bite, then they start choking, you totally suck at doing the Heimlich Maneuver, and then the morgue comes to take their dead body away because you killed them with your dry pizza because you were too unmotivated to get the jar opener thingy.  The hearse will pull away and you’ll be inconsolable, crying, “Why couldn’t I just get the jar opener thingy?  I should have seen this coming!”

Sorry, Lack of Motivation, but the first topping on this Panic Pizza is Anxiety.  Rookie mistake!

So, first layer on some gloppy Anxiety, then Lack of Motivation.  Our Panic Pizza is starting to really take shape!

Now that you’ve got Anxiety going, you can sit back and put your feet up for a while.  It’s time for Anxiety to take over, which means Anxiety gets to pick the rest of the toppings.  That’s what you get for letting Anxiety into the kitchen.  Once that guy comes into the picture, he takes over EVERYTHING.

Anxiety wants you to feel pretty bad about what a bother you are to everyone when you act like this, so let’s liberally sprinkle some Guilt onto the Panic Pizza.  You want to take it right up to the edges so you don’t get a single bite without at least a little of that zesty Guilt flavor.

Now Anxiety wants you to feel really weak for not being able to control Anxiety, so you slice up some Shame and lay it out on the Panic Pizza in concentric circles.  Those circles better be perfect, because if they’re not perfect, then nobody will like you…

…which is just in time to add Insecurity to the Panic Pizza!

Insecurity gets sprayed onto the pizza from an olive oil mister so that you can be sure it’s evenly coated all over the Panic Pizza.  Oh man, despite all your preparation, it looks like you missed a spot.  It’s probably because of the next topping going on the pizza…

…and that topping is Stupid!

Really, nobody could confuse it for anything else, seeing as you’re a grown adult with adult responsibilities who should be more than capable of handling your own jacked-up and self-destructive thoughts by now, but since you can’t, I guess that means you’re just Stupid!

You know what?  Let’s not render the verdict on that one yet.  Maybe you just haven’t tried therapy, religion, yoga, meditation, herbs, oils, deep breathing, visualization, and grounding techniques yet!  Maybe you just need to try harder to defeat your anxiety disorder!

Oh wait.  You have tried?  Tried and failed, you say?  Then go ahead and toss some Stupid onto that Panic Pizza, then pop open that smoky bin next to it, and LAYER ON THE FAILURE.

The only thing left to add to your Panic Pizza is the cheese of Anxiety’s choice, which means you don’t get any cheese, because Anxiety thinks you don’t deserve any.  Instead, Anxiety will give you the last topping in the form of a little cup of that garlic butter “sauce” from Papa John’s, because if that shit ain’t Self-Loathing, I don’t know what is.

Mamma mia!  Anxiety make-uh you the perfect Panic Pizza pie-uh!

Related, I found this at Wal-Mart this weekend.  Feel free to mark this on your calendar as the day humanity officially gave up.

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This is not okay.