Friday Rants

It's pouring with rain outside. It's lovely. It's good rain, not the scary freezing stuff that makes it hard to drive. It's also Friday which means I'm done at work for a whole week after this. Finally, it's less than a week until Christmas. All these things should mean Captain Monkeypants is ready to wax poetically about the beauty of the holidays, the soothiness of the rain, the twinkly lights of the beautifully decorated houses she's seen.

However, I'm actually in a mood to rant. Maybe it's because I'm tired. I went to bed too late and I woke up too early. That's my excuse anyway. It also may have something to do with the fact that while fudge may seem like a nice easy way out of a cookie exchange, preparing ten bags with a dozen pieces in it is a sticky and time consuming way to spend the evening.

I was already in a bad mood when I sat down to put the fudge in the pretty cellophane bags I had ready for it. Mostly, it was because of online retailers. Correct me if I'm wrong but we are in a bad way with our economy, right? Which means businesses are failing left, right and center? So, hypothetically speaking, as a business, wouldn't NOW be the time that you would be paying a little more attention to your business practices and customers so that you don't go under with the rest of the victims of this horrible economic environment?

It would seem not. I started Christmas shopping before Thanksgiving. I did a lot of it online this year, thinking it would save time and money. Well, it hasn't done either. I ordered two items within two days each other in the first week of December. Neither has arrived. You're probably thinking, that's ok, there's a week until Christmas.

Except there's not. One of the items needs to be rerouted to California. I'm still waiting for that. I paid for regular shipping, they decided to send it media mail. I am not happy about this. The other company did the same but they didn't even ship it until ten days AFTER I had ordered it. Seriously, online stores, do you really want to screw your customers now? I know how to leave feedback and, trust me, I will.

So, last night, I packed my boxes full of gifts for my Los Angeles friends but there's a big gift missing. This does not make me happy.

This morning, I'm already crabby. I shouldn't listen to the radio in the mornings. Have you heard the new McDonalds ad campaign? I think they're trying to be clever and start a trend. They're trying to get people to say they're "Nug Nuts", meaning they're nuts for chicken nuggets. "Nug Nuts" sounds stupid. It sounds like some overpriced advertising company sat in a roomful of desperate marketing people and said "Hey, let's come up with a catchphrase."

You can't manufacture a catchphrase. They're organic things that grow out of a natural ease of saying them. They're clever or funny. "Nug Nuts" is not funny. It's desperate.

The thing that is amusing about that is I'm a HUGE fan of calling people "NumbNuts" which sounds a lot like "Nug Nuts." To me, "Numb nuts" is just hilarious. It sounds funny and it makes me giggle to say it. "Sugar Tits" also makes me giggle. I thank Danny DeVito and Mel Gibson respectively for those insults. They're fun to say.

"Nug Nuts," however, is not fun.

Speaking, of commercials, there's another one that irritates me. It's for the X-box 360. Have you seen them? Basically, the commercial starts with a family sitting on the couch in a living room watching Netflix. Then the camera pans and moves out and the scenery rotates and you're looking in the back of someone's skull. I don't get it. Also, it's vile. Why do you have a family watching Netflix in the back of your head? I get the whole 360 degree rotation thing and the tie in to the X-Box 360 because I'm not THAT bad at maths but why are we looking at the back of someone's head. STOP IT. I don't want to see that.

In other advertising rants, I'm still irritated by the jewelry commercial in which the guy gets up in the night, gets the pretty necklace for his wife, lays it over her throat while she's sleeping and the first thing she does in the morning is reach for her throat and find it. I get that it's supposed to be romantic and sweet but let's be realistic for a moment. First of all, ladies, is the first thing YOU do is reach for your throat in the morning? Not me- I look at the bloody clock to see what time it is. Secondly, he didn't do up the clasp so even on the stillest of sleepers, the necklace wouldn't stay in position. And I AM the stillest of sleepers, seriously. I've had friends check to see if I still have a pulse in the morning because I don't move while I'm sleeping.

That necklace would be lost somewhere in that bed. Couldn't he do something more romantic like give it to her with her coffee and toast? For me, toast=love. A man that makes me toast AND gives me a necklace at the same time? That's true love. I'm still waiting for that.

Ok, I know, I know, I'm getting wordy. And I'm ranting. I haven't had a rant in a while. Now that I have a nice working iPod, I can't complain about that anymore. So I have to find other things. Bear with me; ranting is the same as venting, it's therapeutic.

Yet it is Friday which means things can't be that bad. I'm heading home for the holidays on Saturday evening which means I can relax, eat too much and not worry about work for a while. There's a lot of good to be found in that. I'll be blogging at least some of next week and I promise to be in a better mood. Hey, at least I'm not ranting about Stephanie Meyer again.

Have a great weekend.