From the Department of Lethal Idiocy

At the gas station this morning on my way to work, I saw something I had never actually witnessed before - an unusual thing for me, even in this City of Insanity. As I pumped $60 of my soul into the tank, I saw a woman sitting in her car next to the mini-mart, smoking a freshly-lit cigarette. At the gas station. With the windows down. Right next to a gas pump.

Thinking that, given my schedule, today would be a bad day to be incinerated, I stepped briskly away from my car, running through the mental list of items in my purse that would be lost in the inferno, and slowing my gait only when my summer-movie-trained eye judged that I'd be out of the worst of the inevitable massive fireball.

The woman, who by now had noticed I was staring at her, stared right back at my undoubtedly odd-looking scuttle, then took a deep drag and put the car in gear. With excruciating care, she slowly slowly slowly drove a complete circuit through the station, weaving through ALL of the inflammable pumps to reach her exit, all the while alternating between fixes of nicotine and caffeine.

I wanted desperately to run up to her car, pull the Marlboro out of her mouth, stamp it out, and slap her soundly, but that would have entailed going straight through what absolutely should have been the epicenter of the conflagration, and to be perfectly honest, I'm against self-immolation. The daggers I shot out of my eyes hit their target, but she was totally baffled by them. She probably thought I was yet another self-righteous non-smoker (true) who wanted to tell her how bad cigarettes are (true, but in a non-cancerous way). I have no doubt that the day she actually does cause a station fire, it will catch her completely by surprise, and if she survives, she will probably sue.

The Ossim Elevator

As previously discussed, I am a lazy person. My apartment is on the third floor of my building, and rather than take the perfectly good set of stairs that served me so well when I first moved in, I now take the elevator every single chance I get.

Took, rather.

This morning I took the elevator down to the garage level to fetch my load of laundry that had been in the dryer overnight, and when I had recovered these fresh-scented but horribly wrinkled items, I actually hesitated for a moment, then decided to forgo that little bit of exercise for the 10-second advantage of the Incredibly Slow Elevator.

Exercise may be bad for you, but the ISE is worse.

After hauling itself up two and a half stories at eight in the morning, the ISE decided it had done enough work for one morning, and crapped out. In an elevator original to the 1960's-era building, this is not a terribly ho-hum experience, and I do not for a second believe that there are any real safety measures in place. As a matter of fact, with the spare time I suddenly had, I perused the instructions on the plaque above the buttons, and grew to doubt the presence of safety measures even more.

Sure, the elevator may be adequately ventilated, but I'm not thin enough to escape through the air slits, and apparently they're mocking me with the possibility of a telephone. In fact, those unnecessary quotation marks went so far as to remind me that I had neglected to bring my cell phone with me on this otherwise-mundane trip to the laundry room, and that oversight might doom me to an entire day trapped in an adequately-ventilated elevator that is shaking a bit and occasionally lurching. Even if I had "furnished" my own phone, they provide no number for the emergency service of these magical Elevator Companies. That's delightful. In fact, I'd love to call the building manager and thank them for the "pleasant experience."

At long last the elevator finally gave up and returned to the garage level, releasing me finally finally finally out into the open. I chose to take the stairs back up.



Not ten minutes later when I left for work, I hit the elevator call button and stepped inside. As the door closed and I reached for the L button, my eye strayed to that cursed plaque and I realized exactly how much of an idiot I was.

Please Do Not Disturb the Animals

This morning, the most wonderful thing happened on a bus carrying my dear friend Miss Kewl. As the bus crept through morning traffic, it passed a car going in the opposite direction carrying an acquaintance of the woman in front of her. In a city this size, that's quite the coincidence, and the woman on the bus was duly impressed and excited. Rather than waving or gesturing wildly as Miss Kewl or myself (or, please tell me, you) would have done, the woman tapped on the window. The bus window. She tapped on the inside of the bus window in order to catch the attention of someone in a completely different vehicle traveling the opposite direction on a busy street in the middle of rush hour. Now, my science may be a little rusty, but I do know that the decible level outdoors was vastly higher than that inside the bus, and a noise as tiny as the tapping would never survive that din to make itself known against the driver's side window of that passenger car. That one I'm pretty sure of.

Needless to say, her gesture went unnoticed to everyone in the city other than a few fellow passengers on the bus.

Undaunted, she whipped out her Blackberry and immediately began emailing said acquaintence to let them know she had just seen them.

This little incident struck Miss Kewl at the time, and Miss Ossim upon recounting, as a bit of a reverse-zoo. Here, the bird was tapping on her own cage to get the attention of one milling about outside, rather than the other way around. In fact, it was very much like a bird tapping at the wall of her enclosure, trying to get the attention of a fish in an aquarium on the other side of the building. Good luck with that. Let me know how that works out for you. And in the meantime, please refrain from tapping on the glass, as it upsets the animals and they refuse to mate.

Spoiler Alert

Miss Ossim, no longer being amongst the target demographic for young-adult literature, has fallen out of touch with the current hot series in said genre (since the end of Harry Potter, anyway). As such, I was completely unaware not only of the existence of a series called Twilight, but also that a new installment was being released this weekend, adding much-needed new material to the oft-overlooked subject of Vampires.

I became painfully aware of it, however, whilst waiting in line for my coffee this morning at what I thought was a safe local haunt.

Two college-aged girls were in line ahead of me, discussing their plans for the evening. One was going to a friend's birthday party, and the other was going to wait in line at Barnes & Noble until midnight in order to be one of the first to get her hands on the new book. Such fanatics tend to look forward to actually reading the book or watching the movie or playing the game - fully enjoying whatever entertainment experience it is for which they are waiting so patiently (and blogging so thoroughly).

Not this one.

Twilight Fan: I'm so stupid - I looked up spoilers for this book on the internet.
Party Girl: What?
Twilight Fan: It said she gets pregnant. That's so stupid: vampires can't get you pregnant!
Miss Ossim (in her head): They can't? Whew!

Ignoring for a moment the fact that this girl was also well outside the target readership, and ignoring the fact that she had not only ruined the book for herself but was also ruining it for everyone in earshot, it struck me as completely absurd that anyone would be arguing such a moot biological point about an imaginary creature, but upon further thought, she might actually have a point. Have you ever heard of a baby vampire? And if vampires never age, then would a baby vampire remain a newborn for all eternity? For that matter, would it be born as a small cluster of cells or a fused gamete? But if the cells managed to split and develop enough to form an actual baby, can you imagine having to nurse a baby vampire? Of course, this might be the perfect opportunity for someone to develop this idea and, for once, expand vampire folklore. I will not be the one. I leave it to you. Just cut me in on the profits.

Batman Makes Sense.

Last Monday, at offices across the country, people gathered to compare notes about "The Dark Knight" and their opening-weekend viewing experiences. Miss Ossim's office was no exception, although one such discussion did yield the following rather remarkable conversation.

Boss: Did you love Dark Knight? I loved Dark Knight. What did you think of Dark Knight?
Employee: Oh my god, I loved Dark Knight. Heath was so amazing.
Boss: Heath was amazing, wasn't he?
Employee: Oh my god, he was so amazing.
Boss: He was totally amazing. Did you see Batman Begins?
Employee: I saw that and I totally didn't get it.
Boss: I didn't like Batman Begins. I didn't get it. I didn't get what it was about.
Employee: I couldn't tell what Batman Begins was about. I didn't get it.
Boss: Yeah, I turned to my friend ten minutes in and was like "what's this movie about? I don't get it!"
Employee: Yeah it was really... I didn't get it. I don't get what that movie was about. I asked my boyfriend a few minutes in, I asked him "what's this movie about?"
Boss: It was so weird.
Employee: It was totally weird, wasn't it?
Boss: But Dark Knight was amazing.
Employee: Oh my god, so amazing.

Now, lest you get the impression that the employee was repeating the boss in some sort of imitation-flattery ploy, let me assure you that neither one had any idea what the other person was saying whatsoever. They were simply talking at each other for several minutes, and it was a remarkable coincidence that nearly everything they said overlapped several times, bless their hearts.

Lewis Black has warned us that in such situations, we shouldn't think about it or else blood will come shooting out of our noses. Last Monday, I finally came to believe him.

Why Exercise Is Bad For You

I, Miss Ossim, am fundamentally lazy. I try to pass it off as "efficiency," but if I'm perfectly frank, it all comes down to a deep-seated desire to do as little as possible to achieve my goal, if indeed I have anything so lofty in mind.

That said, I was recently hiking a local nature trail, 4 miles into what would eventually become a 10-mile hike. At this fateful moment, as I neared the top of the tremendously long and steep hill, the album I had been listening to finished, and my mp3 player stopped just in time for me to catch the following snippet of conversation between the hikers descending toward me.

Girl 1: Well, ok, so, you guys know about like the Theory of Relativity and shit, right?
Girl 2: Uh, I think so. I don't know - remind me: is that like everything is relative?
Girl 1: Well kinda, yeah...

At which point I finally got the Hold off and blissfully started the music again, drowning out the pearls of wisdom that would have dropped from the mouth of Girl 1. Part of me really wishes I'd heard her full explanation of the "Theory of Relativity and shit," and the rest of me rejoices that those brain cells are still alive.

I have said this many times and will say it many more, but if you're going to speculate and flail while pretending to speak knowledgeably about a topic you know little to nothing about, either do it privately or be funny. As this particular conversation was only ironically funny to the observer, and was conducted in a public park, it counts as neither. I just pray that neither of them are educators.