Fight.

So it's 8:45 AM.

About forty-five minutes ago, I awoke to two really significant, ground shaking, booming type noises. Obviously my mind immediately leapt to earthquake and then sort of halfway came to its senses when it next switched over to a sleep induced, ignorant "but don't earthquakes always happen at night?" before finally settling on the more correct conclusion of "aren't earthquakes not just two, significant booms?"

Then came the fighting. Apparently the little knoll in the middle of the building that I thought was just deck space is actually a fighting arena. Got words to yell? Take it to the arena. I don't know what this dude did to piss his girlfriend off at 8AM but I'm betting he wishes he hadn't done it. I never really understood scream fighting or its purpose. The person you're screaming at is only hearing screams. The only people actually listening to the words are eavesdroppers like me.

At any rate, I hope this isn't going to become a Thing.

Educated.

The fact that I am now a real person seems to have sparked some sort of regression in me. For example:

Since becoming a grown up, I have eaten and enjoyed more peanut butter and jelly sandwiches than I ever ate or enjoyed as a kid. Seriously, I was totally uninterested in peanut butter and jelly until maybe two years ago. I have also played more Mario Kart in the past two days than I've played in the last year. I also bought Lucky Charms for the first time in a really long time and irresponsibly got a parking ticket. If I had a dollar for every parking ticket that I've gotten since being here, I would have earned $2.00 back from the total $90.00 I have donated to the cities of Los Angeles and Santa Monica. I also need to confess that I do in fact love that damn Miley Cyrus song. I do. I do love it. I'm 22 and as formally educated as I'm ever going to be and I Can't Wait To See You Again.

I was much more mature when I was in college...ah, yes. I remember those days. 

Old.

I just threw my back out while color blocking my closet. This might make me an official grown up. Although, let's be real, maintaining said color blocked closet probably will not happen. But for now, it looks pretty cool, like Cher's closet in Clueless. I wonder if they've actually invented that outfit selecting computer software that she had yet.

Now that I'm old and a few days away from the end of my formal education, I find myself doing and thinking about a lot of things that my mom used to say and do that never made sense to me before. Par example:

• 1. Washing fruit before you eat it. I never saw what the big deal was and would constantly neglect to wash fruit before consumption. Now I'll occasionally forget, but when I do I can't help but think not about pesticides, but about how many grotty grocery shopping fingers came into contact with/squeezed the apple that I'm eating. 
  
• 2. Sort of along the same lines- eating the skin of a grapefruit. Not the rind, the white papery skin that sheaths the pulp. When I was little, my mom would peel a grapefruit, pull out the pulpy sections for us, and eat the white skin part that was left over because, according to her, that is where the Serious Vitamin C is. As a kid I thought, "Wow, she's eating the raunchy part of the grapefruit and giving us the delicious pulp. She must really love us. THIS is love." Now I eat grapefruit the same way, in sections, like an orange, and I swear to God, I feel healthier after eating the bitter inside skin.
• 3. Not standing too close to the microwave. In the 90s my mom would tell us to close the door and RUN AWAY from the microwave to protect our brains from Micro Waves. It was probably a little bogus then, and definitely bogus now that microwaves have evolved some over the past twenty years, but yesterday at work when I was microwaving coffee and watching the cup inside to make sure that the foam didn't overflow, I could swear I felt my brain get a little sore.
  

Case in point: Mitch is a wicked smaht grownup.

I can't stop looking at this closet. It's like a beautiful spectrum of clothing. Practically art.

Next thing you know, I'll be getting all riled up and excited about, I don't know...something really mature.

Shoot.

Today is the 233rd anniversary of The Shot Heard Around The World.

April is full of great commemorative holidays with corresponding movies to watch in honor of them. I've always celebrated Titanic Day (Titanic) and Holocaust Remembrance Day (Schindler's List). I can't believe I've never  celebrated Shot Heard Around The World Day with The Patriot or something. 

On Holocaust Remembrance Day 2006 I tried to include Natalie and Eleanor in the Schindler's List viewing, but when  I left the room three minutes into the movie to grab a blanket I came back to find that they'd swapped out Schindler's List for The Sweetest Thing starring Cameron Diaz. I should have known better and learned from the mistakes made on Titanic Day 2005 which was an utter fiasco that resulted in exclusive, VIP-only Titanic Day viewings of Titanic from that day forward.

Anyway. This is the first year that I spend Shot Heard Around The World Day in a part of the country that was blissfully ignorant on April 19, 1775. It's kind of like that joke, "If Helen Keller were alone in the woods and a tree fell down, would it make a noise?" Nobody in California heard a damn thing. The only guys that would have been around to hear anything were Indians, so while everyone on the east coast was shooting and revolutionizing and laying the first tumultuous, bloody bricks of the path to democracy, whoever was over here was just, I don't know, building tee pees, picking berries, painting pictures on birch bark paper, using every piece of the buffalo and crying about litter.

God, I love the east coast.

Bigot.

I've been sitting on this list for way too long. I've given up on it though; it was a lot easier to pinpoint specific hates when I was living in Boston. Here there are just way too many to keep track of.

270 Things That Irk Me

aka

My Hate List

1. alternative spellings for words, i.e. "hawt" and "hunny"

2. adults with braces

3. adults with pigtails

4. 7th Heaven

5. Match.Com

6. when dishes come out of the dishwasher and are still dirty

7. people who sit on the outer seat on the subway.

8. over plucked eyebrows 

9. crossword puzzles

10. raging members of all political parties

11. children over the age of 2 who don't speak.

12. soggy bread

13. over explaining

14. people whose myspace profiles make my computer freeze

15. short people who make up for their small stature by being loud.

16. people who sing to themselves in public

17. Alec Baldwin

18. when people phrase a demand as a question or suggestion.

19. extreme facial hair

20. Fergie

21. lame excuses

22. receipt-less returns

23. When good movies are on TV dubbed over in Spanish

24. Roseanne Barr and her sitcom

25. Faucets that you have to press down to turn on that only run for 5 seconds

26. Hand dryers as a bathroom's only drying option

27. Missing the trailers at a movie

28. The B-Line

29. Sudoku

30. performance art

31. people who sue McDonald's for making them fat

32. scientology

33. car reflector shields, especially ones with Looney Tunes on them

34. Jared the subway guy

35. bad parking jobs

36. old sponges

37. distracting underbites

38. large insects

39. the words "smear" "moist" and "panty"

40. automatic faucets with no temperature control

41. poor timing

42. people who think that the value of a sacagewea dollar will one day exceed $1.00.

43. people who expect quality service/attention when they come to shop 5 minutes before a store closes

44. unreliable wireless internet

45. the phrase "get your feet wet"

46. articles of clothing with wolves/whales/endangered species on them

47. ryan seacrest

48. sitting in a seat filled to capacity on the commuter rail

49. jeans without back pockets

50. real estate agents

51. the christmas tree shop commercials

52. facial piercings that just look like acne

53. inexplicable breaks in timecode

54. Lili Taylor

55. consistently misspelled words 

i.e. "congradulations" "rediculous"

56. movies that feature eddie murphy or martin lawrence in multiple roles

57. snotty children

58. "shaquanna" of the beacon hill cvs

59. freeze frame endings

60. people whose away messages detail every single part of their day

61. people who leave their aim signed on 24/7

62. when traffic is caused by "curiosity"

63. man jewelry

64. people who "heart" things

65. competitive fishing

66. perpetual heavy breathers

67. back fat

68. acrylic nails

69. "tiffany" as a first name

70. commercials for diet pills/weight loss supplements

71. circuses

72. mtv dating shows

73. PETA

74. the fact that some people keep the afore-hated large insects as pets

75. slick hair

76. american chopper

77. court tv

78. all clientele of "armani exchange"

79. joanna newsom and her music career

80. people who wear pajamas in public

81. poor oral hygiene

82. Paul Walker

83. extreme Celtics fans

84. toe socks

85. people who end perfectly civil telephone conversations without warning

86. insufferably slow computers/internet

87. ambulance chasing/medical malpractice lawyers; i.e. Jim Sokolove

88. when the number of self tagged photos on someone's facebook outweigh the number of those tagged by others.

89. grammatical errors

90. people who use sunglasses as an accessory - at night, as headbands, etc.

91. people who regularly refer to themselves in the third person

92. people who use bluetooth hands free cell phone adaptors outside of their cars

93. the quote "never frown because you never know who's falling in love with your  smile." and its implications

94. dancing with the stars

95. overly tan people

96. suffolk university

97. Ayer, MA

98. softball

99. crocs

100. women who refer to their relationship with their friends as a "sisterhood"

101. having to repeat myself

102. overgrown finger/toe nails

103. initials in place of first names i.e. bj, dj, jd,pj, tj, etc.

104. mumblers

105. b/c as an abbreviation for "because"

106. home schooled kids who claim to have graduated "with honors"

107. veganism

108. "light" ice cream

109. beacon hill recycling day/morning

110. the phrase "famous celebrities"

111. commercials for jokes/graphics texted to your cell phone

112. people who take offense to things that should not offend them

113. melissa joan hart

114. semi-homemade with sandra lee

115. obvious table/parking space vultures

116. refried beans

117. Bob of Bob's Discount Furniature

118. the cheapest possible generic dental floss

119. michael moore

120. emeril lagasse

121. direct to dvd sequels that have different actors playing the same characters as  in the original 

122. mothers who feel entitled to things because they have a baby

123. room temperature/warm milk

124. skinny jeans on men

125. guilt-tripping environmental activists that solicit money on the street/in Boston Common

126. frosty lipstick

127. noises caused by teeth grinding, snapping, scraping, etc.

128. tandem parking spaces

129. when crappy cars have "the club" on them

130. st. bernard's central catholic high school

131. people who list "tanning" as an interest or hobby

132. the phrase "behind the 8 ball"

133. heather mills' prosthetic leg

134. david hasselhoff's german fame

135. scraggly dreadlocks

136. the phrase "next of kin"

137. losing games which require no skill

138. when a word ends with the same vowel the next word starts with, forcing an  uncomfortable pause in between.

139. apartment 1

140. huge gums

141. crawling out of the back seat of a 2 door car

142. men who wear more than one polo shirt at the same time.

143. unkempt poofy beards

144. parallel parking

145. incessant text messagers

146. movie talkers

147. ticks

148. online photo albums dedicated to montages of self portraits

148. incessant car alarms

149. H2s

150. all sequels to The Land Before Time

151. "the Ster" as an abbreviation for "Leominster"

152. lazy eyes

153. fat asians

154. people who constantly make new screen names

155. the Trump family

156. when comcast says something is on when it's actually not

157. Dr. Phil

158. low budget local commercials

159. italian pride

160. clumpy eyelashes

161. jehova's witnesses at the door

162. white people with cornrows

163. mouth burns

164. the view

165. bodybuilders

166. broken teeth/injuries leading to broken teeth

167. high pitched barks on large dogs

168. the use of the word "Daddy" out of paternal context

169. matchmaking reality shows

170. jackie's dairy bar

171. constantly injured people

172. lower back and ankle tattoos

173. flat rimmed baseball hats worn with the stickers/tags still on them

174. residents of chestnut hill, massachusetts

175. suicidal contact lenses

176. people magazine covers dedicated to regular people who lost a ton of weight

177. women over the age of 40 who refer to their significant other as their  "boyfriend"

178. when there is 1/2 an inch's worth of juice/milk in a container that has been placed back in the refrigerator

179. the last bowl's worth of a box of cereal with all the cereal dust/crumbs

180. celebrity rehab stints

181. poofy bangs

182. overly maintained straight men (eyebrow waxers, facial-getters, etc.)

183. flocks of motorcycles on the highway

184. drool strings

185. uggs in non-winter climates

186. velour/terrycloth jumpsuits

187. patrick swayze

188. detours

189. concerts featuring a group of American Idol contestants

190. starving artists

191. pro wrestling

192. rick and kathy hilton

193. "heelies" and the people that wear them

194. black lip liner

195. raven simone

196. blatantly self taken mirror reflection photos

197. when travel sites send e-mails boasting a certain low fare, but when you

search for tickets, the advertised price is nowhere to be found.

198. the word "vase" pronounced "vah-z"

199. stage moms/"cool moms"

200. people who move their lips while reading silently to themselves 

201. regular people (read: not wizards or hobbits) who wear capes/cloaks

202. toe rings

203. man vs. wild

204. people who refer to california as "cali"

205. hoop nose rings

206. the use of asterisks for decorative purposes

207. when people ask questions that they already know the answer to

208. one-liners delivered by little kids in action movies

209. the speech impediment where you whistle through your teeth when you talk

210. kidzbop albums and infomercials for them

211. pregnant pauses

212. "the exciting mike adams" on magic 106.7

213. the word "lover", especially when used as a synonym for "friend"

214. moving out of places

215. spy kids

216. whoopi goldberg's eyebrowlessness

217. people who think that by simply leaving a school without graduating means they are an alumnus.

218. michelle pheiffer's upper lip

219. drew carey

220. n*sync members post n*sync careers

221. first names with apostrophes in them

222. king richard's faire

223. public nose blowing

224. full house "family moments"

225. people who pronounce target "tarje"

226. people who eat perfectly normal sized hamburgers with a fork

227. bret michaels' hair extensions

228. alternatives to "common" nicknames, i.e. "shwa" for "joshua" or "topher" for "christopher"

229. ecmobile

230. loose electrical outlets

231. yankee fans

232. pet food commercials that try to make the food appealing to people

233. express trains that do not convenience me

234. excessive, pronounced blinking

235. people who leave the "t" off of words, i.e. "projeck"

236. people who love the nightmare before christmas

237. ventriloquists

238. people who chew more than one piece of gum at a time.

239. when people repeatedly snooze their alarm clock for hours

240. people who wear clothes that are too small for them

241. mealy apples

242. "the hills"

243. people who mistake being loud for being funny

244. facebook initiated protests

245. paper jams

246. the inevitable cigarette cloud outside every building at emerson

247. scene kids who constantly smoke clove cigarettes

248. people who are starved for attention

249. halloween costumes that are uniforms but sexy

250. people who think they are the only busy/tired people in the world

251. midgets in movies set in medieval times

252. people who are ill prepared for subway motion

253. towel swinging at baseball games

254. mustaches

255. tips from celebrities on how to be "green"

256. extended use of consonants i.e. "daysssssssss"

257. days of the week pronounced "mondee, tuesdee, wednesdee"

258. when people add random accents to their names to appear more ethnic

259. when people refer to people that are not their siblings as "brother" or "sister"

260. BU students/anyone who rides the B Line one stop.

261. hyperactive children

262. people who reject knowledge

263. kay jewelers commercials

264. wedge heeled boots

265. people who do not believe in the moon landing

266. when people include opinions about newly released movies in their facebook status

267. people who habitually take before and after photos of plates of food

268. terry "the hulk" hogan

269. people that hover

270. when people who are not cops hold their hand out to tell you to stop as if they were a cop.