Gadzooks!

Kids will eat carrots if they're chopped up really fine and put into spaghetti sauce.

Until you tell them that there are carrots in the sauce. Then they become Junior Executive Detectives First Class, and ferret out each and every last piece of vitamin-packed carrot from their meal, allowing both the sauce and the spaghetti to go cold while they eradicate all vestiges of Mom-installed veggies from possible ingestion.

Same goes for onions.

Next time? I'm telling them that the orange stuff is Oompah Loompa chips, and the white stuff is unicorn horn. Or giant's toenails; pick your color. This honesty thing simply isn't working out.

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I have a new neighbor in the cube farm. He breathes really loudly. Also? He gets a LOT of phone calls, and this is only his second day on the job. What's it going to be like when he's here LONGER?

Oops! There he goes, sighing again.

I think I can hear him chewing, or maybe he's thinking about chewing, or pondering the possibility of swallowing, or, god help me, he's going to burp.

This, my friends, is why I miss having an office. Dear Lord, where are my headphones???

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I had a lovely conversation with a coworker this morning. If I was any guess of human nature at all, I'd say we are bonding.

More news as events warrant.

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Dear Moron in the HUGE-Ass car in front of me this morning who was driving 10 miles an hour UNDER the speed limit, with occasional forays into very nearly stopping altogether or swerving into incoming traffic:

Get off the fucking phone and DRIVE, goddamit.

Yes, I SAW you. I SAW you hunched over the steering wheel with your ball cap jammed over your ears, driving with the right hand while the left held the phone up to your RIGHT ear (and really, WTF is up with that? You deaf in the left ear?), swiveling your head between the drver's side window and the giant MAP you had over the windshield. I SAW you. I made sure to be able to recognize you and your car, and if I see you driving like this again I swear I'm going to wait for you to stop at a light, then I'm going to snatch open your door, rip the phone out of your hand, tear up the friggin big-ass map, and bellow big words of scorn at you until you get the message that you sir are a menace, not just to other drivers, but to all the kids getting on the BUS that you almost hit because you are clueless, and to your own safety for riling up so many of us who were caught behind you as you inched your aggravating way up Route 1A at peak morning commute time.

I am JUST the woman to teach you a lesson, and if I catch you doing it again, prepare to be schooled.

Sincerely, and I DO mean sincerely,

Tiff.

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Does anybody really care that the money found in Heath Ledger's apartment isn't filthy with illicit drugs? ANYBODY?

Here's my take on the matter: the guy died. The End. I don't really care how, or when, or why, or with whom. Really! I don't!

Just like I don't care who Britney is hanging out with, or what Nicole named the baby, or whether Tara Reid's stomach looks like a chenille bedspread or who has the nicest ass in Hollywood.

OK, that last one? Might be Brad Pitt, but I'm not making a study of it, because I just don't CARE that much.

Leave Heath alone, oh gossip rags and paparazzi and cable teevee and Entertainment Right Now and all the other zillion outlets for brain candy.

Leave Britney alone. Leave Lindsey L alone, and all the other celebrities, celebuties, celebutantes, D-listers, A-listers, and all the listers in between. They're NOT THAT INTERESTING! We do not need to see that they drink SBux, just like us, or pick their noses, just like us, or have bad hair days, just like us. We KNOW this. We, by and large, do not care.

We especially do not care to hear all the most infinitesimal details of the way in which someone so young, so gilded by stardom, so iconic, died. Think about his kid, for God's sake. Step off.

Think about real news. Think about starvation and senseless violence and genocide and futile battlefields full of youthful cannon fodder. Think about global economy or telecommuting or whale hunts or tort reform or interest rates and the world market. Think about atrophysics or prosthetics or staphylococci; think about gardening or sustainable agriculture or housing for the homeless. Think about a million other things than the obvious lowest-common-denominator of airing the dirty laundry of people who are simply not that INTERESTING.

Then go do something about it. I, for one, have had enough. Enough stupid gossip, enough reality teevee, enough backstabbing and rumor-mogering and hatespeech to last me a lifetime.

Give me something else.

Until you do, I'll be over here, listening to NPR and trying not to hear my cubemate breathe.