Mail Fraud

In the mail yestrerday, I got the strangest postcard. It was plain paper with a Carlsbad Carverns National Park stamp that was printed onto it with a one cent stamp added next to it. The time stamp said it was from NYC, but there was no return address.

Curious.

I look on the reverse side and there is this quote:

"Give no more to every guest
Than he is able to digest

Give him always of the prime
And but a little at a time

Carve to all but just enough
Let them neither starve nor stuff

And that you may have your due
Let your neighbor carve for you"

- Jonathan Swift

Then at the bottom it says
"Looking forward to seeing you next Wednesday ... Ricardo"

Heh?
Who the hell is Ricardo?
What the hell is this crap?

I must have turned this card over and over looking for some hint as to who or what it is associated with.

Maybe Ricardo is a friend whose name I have forgotten with the effects of early onset Alzheimers
or maybe
Ricardo is going to come to my house next wednesday and use one of my own kitchen knives to "carve" me up and turn my apartment into a blood bath.

If anyone else has received this card and knows what the heck it is all about lemme know.
Otherwise,
Ricardo
whoever you are,
I am most decidedly Not coming to dinner.

Have a Happy Period.

This is the message I found on the strip that covers the adhesive on my Always feminine maxi pad.

Now I am sure this isn't really the topic that appeals to the males out there, but c'mon...you have to see the humor in it.

Have a Happy Period.

That is like saying Have a Rockin Root Canal or Have an Awesome Colonoscopy.
What bonehead thought this genius marketting plan up?

I can see it now... A crowded conference room on the 50th floor of some major NYC building. The Ad-men sitting around..the Always deadline slowly approaching and still no big hook. Coffee and pizza has been ordered because the big man has decreed that no one leaves the conference room until someone has a brilliant plan for the new campaign. It comes down to the new "feminine cloths" which would come with every single pad (basically a wetnap for your cooch) and this dumb ass slogan.

But these brilliant Ivey league people decide that both ideas are just too good to pass up
And the brilliant Ivey League people at Always think it is a great idea too so they put both out on the market.
Great cheers resound from the conference room because no one will get fired and the company has kept the extremely lucrative Always account.

Then one of the bigwigs decides to move to Vermont and make a billion on baby food. Oh wait. That's "Baby Boom" with Diane Keaton. I love that movie.

My point is, is that when I am sitting on the can having a very private moment with myself, bemoaning the fact that I have to go through this process every month when I have absolutely no intention of ever having children, the LAST thing I need is to rip off a sign from my necessary but unappealing product that says
Have a Happy Period.

I would love to find out where that CEO is having his next doctor's appointment and leave a note on a rubber glove that says
Have a Dynamite Prostate Exam!

I mean really.

Amtrak TB

Maybe it was wrong of me. I am normally a fairly empathetic human being. However, the last month of my mom being actually deathly ill has drained me, and my reserve of general human kindness I use when dealing with strangers is low.
So torturing the man next to me on the train was not only justified, but completely inevitable.

I was taking the train from Albany to NYC. I have been on this route a bazillion times. There were seats all around me completely open and this jackass asks if anyone is sitting with me. Not for Nothin, but I have been riding trains since I was 3 years old and there is this unwritten law that says if there are free seats around with no one in them, you take them first before you sit with someone. Amtrak is one of the last forms of freedom mass travel left on the planet. No assigned seats in coach class. In this day and age, nobody wants to deal with the all the politeness and blah blah of sitting with a stranger if they don't have to. Also, there is the added benefit that at anytime, Amtrak could go belly up because no one rides the train anymore. This allows the freedom of stretching out, taking up 2 seats and working on your computer or catching some zzzzs. 2 seats for the price of one! That's the only reason to ride Amtrak!
Don't get me wrong, sometimes the train is packed and you have to share. I am guilty of the fake sleep...you know...when you lay down and pretend you are asleep and take advantage of the fact that people just don't want to deal with people anymore so they just keep looking for another open seat, walking by you instead of waking you. Yeah, i've done it. Don't lie, you have too.

Anyway
This guy asks to sit with me, which totally cheeses me off. I mean there are empty seats EVERWHERE!! The blow might not have been so bad if he had been remotely attractive or even my age.
Noooooooooooo
He is about 55. Kinda rich-stuck-up-acting, which makes absolutely no sense. A rich person would fly the 40minutes to NYC as opposed to the 3 hour ride on the train. And of course rich people hate mingling with the lower classes - which Amtrak caters to. Well poorer people and people with serious drug habits who don't wanna flush their stash before they travel.
So yeah he's not pretty.
I am so insensed by the fact that he is sitting with me when he could literally sit ANYWHERE. I could have said "Wouldn't you like to sit all by yourself over there, sir?" or "Those 2 seats are free" or even "BEAT IT!!" but in my old age I have become fearful of confrontation and have resorted to using passive aggressive methods of dealing with some issues. So I sighed, mumbled something unintelligible and let him by. And then, just to be evil, I started coughing.
I began slowly. I am just getting over a real cold so it sounded authentic. He slipped passed me to the window seat. I cough more, and louder. Out of the corner of my eye I could see him looking at me - surely to asses the seriousness of my tuberculosis and to figure out whether or not the innoculation he had back in 1956 was any good still.
More coughing.
I could feel him recoiling from me. It was fantastic! He wanted to get up and move, but to do that would not only be rude, but would be admitting defeat. He was hoping I would stop.
I stop.
Then I start up again. My coughing having actually brought up a little gift from my lungs which makes it sound like a productive expectorating hack. PERFECT
My friend just presses himself up against the window.
It was terribly fun.
He completely regretted his decision to sit with me.
Then
The Tipper.
I leaned over, touched his arm and asked what time the train was expected to arrive in Penn Central. ( Think the movie "Ghost" where Patrick Swayze and his hot best friend -well before he had Patrick Swayze killed for those bank numbers- are riding in an elevator and they start a fake conversation about some rash his friend has that is terribly contagious and all the people in the elevator freak out as he touched them and coughed)
My inner child was rolling around, laughing.
I was mildly disappointed by his reaction to my touch. I wanted him to jump or startle. He just told me the time. By this time the train had really filled up and there was no where for him to go anyway. My point was made and I can never seem to maintain my anger at anyone for very long. Also the realization that I could have never kept up that act for the entire ride settled in because I have Suduko puzzles waiting for me as well as my U2 albums to listen to. I slowed up the coughing and sniffling, popped a cough drop and started to write all this down.

He stared out the window to look at the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains. Beautiful sight. One of my favorites in all the world, and on a late October afternoon there is nothing like it. I freed my seat partner from the visions of a tubercular death and decided to point out out my childhood home as it whizzed past.

but every once in awhile, I coughed, just to save face.