loveyouhateyou

I kind of hate frogs.

I know, I know. Plenty of people love frogs to the extent they collect figurines of them. Many children’s decor schemes revolve around their friendly countenances. And yet, I hate.

Have you ever noticed frogs come out at the grossest times? When the world is wet and soggy and sloppy they emerge to jump and move at random and unpredictable intervals and get run over into giant patties of mush on roadways. I do not enjoy their texture, their movements, nor the overall look of them. They look diaphanous and vaguely creepy for reasons I cannot articulate. It is very likely a frog may have factored largely in a childhood trauma that I cannot remember because I just don’t LIKE them. The idea of people eating them squicks me out. The idea of someone picking one up or having a giant Plexiglas enclosure of them with no top (looking at you New Orleans aquarium) fills me with dread. DO NOT WANT. I hate you frogs.

I am smitten with Mary Roach, author of such non-fiction shimmery books of wonder as Stiff, Spook, and Boink. I love pretty much everything about her. When I read her books I feel like she’s my BFF. I understand her OCD-like compulsion for research, the accessible comedy of her 14 year old boy with a large vocabulary humor. When I read her books I feel like she might actually BE me, that’s how much I identify with her style.

About enrolling in medium school in Spook:
“There are moments, listening to the conversations going on around me, when I feel I am going to lose my mind. Earlier today, I heard someone say the words, “I felt at one with the divine source of creation.” Mary Roach on a conducted tour of Hades. I had to fight the urge to push back my chair and start screaming: STAND BACK! ALL OF YOU! I’VE GOT AN ARTHUR FINDLAY BOX CUTTER! Instead, I quietly excused myself and went to the bar, to commune with spirits I know how to relate to.”

Yep, I pretty much want to be Mary Roach in another lifetime, and I love her deeply. The only way I could love her any more is if she wasn’t so impossibly lithe and well-proportioned, and perhaps wore dorky glasses. Ya, I’m jus’ JELUSH.

Here in crazyville, I mean Texas, USA, there are a group of people that are enthusiasts of a very specific type of giant truck that also seems to make them lose their minds wholesale: white dually truck owners, I hate you.

I like people who drive trucks. I am not someone who hates anyone who drives anything larger than a Prius. I do not smell my own farts in stemware ala Southpark. I don’t hate trucks. I don’t hate white trucks. I hate giant dually white trucks and then only those driven by insane people. In Texas, that sub-category is comprised of roughly 7% of the vehicles on the roadways.

I know some of these people use their dually trucks for work (which makes me question the choice of white), and I support their need to have enough towing power to pull the USS Lexington, however, I don’t support their complete lack of ability to care if other human beings share the same roads as they do.

Sure, take up four parking spaces. Sure, cut me off and then drive for half a mile in two lanes. Sure, zoom around me with such force that my car wobbles around for twenty seconds in draft turbulence from your giant land cruiser. You can do all of these things. I will just hate you. Feel my wrath, very specific type of white dually pickup truck driver in Texas!

Whether on a plane, in a sushi restaurant, a spa, or just because, I heartily love a hot towel. When someone offers me a hot towel, I just can’t help but get happy. Like F*&K YEAH I’LL TAKE A HOT TOWEL. I generally enjoy warmth, but there’s something a little unexpected about the hot towel. Like a rare luxury who’s custom is not very commonplace, thus elevating it’s enjoyment. I especially love when they are lemon-scented. What could be better than warm, moist, lemon-scented relaxation in towel form? Not much, that’s what! YAY HOT TOWELS!

I was in the grocery store this week and they not only had egg nog out already in the dairy aisle but they had about a third of the case branded as Halloween egg nog replete with crappy illustrations of witches on the cartons and bottles. My mind boggles at the idea of marketers sitting in a meeting going, well, egg nog really sells great around the holidays, but how do we get people to drink it sooner? I’ve got it by jove! Halloween egg nog!

No one needs to drink egg nog more than maybe twice in a year. And both of those times should be in December at parties where the host had a bunch of cheap rum to get rid of. Halloween is a holiday for getting an extra 3,000 calories in candy, not in two glasses of egg nog. I hate you Halloween egg nog.

I have never been much of a cat person. But then one fine day in September, we purchased a highfalutin well-bred oriental cat for my husband’s birthday. And guess what? I love the crap out of this supermodel cat. He is ridiculously awesome. He talks all the time, jumps around crazy like a Labrador, and basically has the personality of a friendly but slightly addled pooch. So, I love you, cats that act like dogs, after half a lifetime of hating you all. That’s right, a hate/love switcheroo!

Hating AT&T is too easy. It’s like hating racism. You would be universally supported by humankind in your hatred of AT&T. But still I must. My husband and I made 8 service calls this week for various and sundry issues we had with our wireless, our VOIP, and our u-verse DVR. We give a car payment’s worth of money every month to AT&T and in many ways the services we get from ma bell are superior to those offered elsewhere, but I still can’t help hating the bejebus out of them for the customer service and general buggy-ness of their tech. I think I have AT&T-related Stockholm Syndrome because I just cannot sever the ties. I think they sense this. DAMN YOU AT&T, damn you to hades! You’re like an abusive ex-boyfriend I can’t stop sleeping with.

This is a very specific love here folks. My love is not for Ryan Reynolds the person or the magazine interview subject, nor for Ryan Reynolds the actor or star of such films as Crap I Never See Unless It Involves Geek Intellectual Property. I have a deep and compelling love for Ryan Reynolds’s lower torso to pelvis region, an area I tend to dub the lower man section. It includes the abs, the line that curves down from the hip toward the bunny trail, basically the part of the man that you look at and think, yes, please rub that on me, rhythmically, for a period no less than 15 minutes.

Objectification? Sure. I’m not proud. But it doesn’t change my love for Ryan Reynolds’s lower man section.