People Who Do Not Have Enough To Do

Here at Aunt Slugger HQ, we are always on the lookout for major news developments in your Aunt Slugger's hometown of Fort Wayne, a charming hamlet in the northeastern part of Indiana. Sadly, Fort Wayne has had some problems lately, including but not limited to more than 20 homicides in the first half of the calendar year. But honestly, who has time to count homicides when there are more pressing matters at hand, like the proposed addition of a subdivision containing homes valued in the $200-$300k range?

Well, for starters, we've got local residents Tim Gardner and Thomas Metzger, who are concerned that these paltry $200-$300k homes will be too close together and will make the place look like a Haitian shantytown, thus driving down home prices. (Tim Gardner and Thomas Metzger: I am going to assume here that you only dimly aware of affairs outside of northeastern Indiana, so here is an article about shantytowns so that you are armed with other topics of discussion besides the value of your home.) Tim Gardner, who took time out of what I presume is his busy schedule of parading himself around town acting like an elitist jerk, went on record to say, "We didn’t expect to be living next to a trailer park."

Grown man. Actual quote.

So today I find myself issuing an Official Aunt Slugger Warning to my readers:

THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO THAN COMPLAIN BITTERLY ABOUT SUBDIVISIONS. THESE PEOPLE ARE SCARY AND WEIRD. TIM GARDNER AND THOMAS METZGER, I'M TALKING TO YOU.

Now, for those of my readers who live in San Francisco, Southern California, New York City, London, or other metropolitan areas where home prices are outrageous, a $200-$300k home in Fort Wayne, Indiana, will net you a lot of house. Even if it did not, a $200-$300k property is nevertheless outside the grasp of many Americans.

But I have left out the best part! The homes in the nearby areas (presumably where Tim Gardner and Thomas Metzger live) are, for the most part, OF SIMILAR VALUE. So home prices are already not that much different than the houses in the proposed subdivision. I am no expert in real estate, but I think the conclusion we can draw from this is that Tim Gardner and Thomas Metzger, along with the other milquetoasts who came to the public hearing to complain, are a greater threat to home prices than the proposed new subdivision.

So readers, beware. And the next time you find yourself feeling down, just remember: Another day spent not worrying about proposed subdivisions in your neighborhood is another day spent being a better person than Tim Gardner and Thomas Metzger.

Sincerely,

Aunt Slugger

Here's a Dude Who Does Not Like His Job

Your Aunt Slugger receives a large volume of letters from her loyal readers seeking advice on how to deal with a job they do not like. Your Aunt Slugger can relate to this particular predicament. Do you think I enjoy providing my unsolicited opinions on political and social matters? Do you think I want to perform a valuable public service function - blogging - day in and day out? My god. If I don't do it, who will?*

But that is the cross I bear, as an advice columnist.

Your Aunt Slugger has also held other undesirable jobs. In college, your Aunt Slugger was a "sanitation specialist" for her university's biology department. Each day after my classes were over, I would head over to the department's basement and open an antiquated dumbwaiter. If this dumbwaiter contained used test tubes, I would take the tubes out, rinse them, put them in special test tube racks, and sanitize them using two specially equipped dishwasher-type machines that rattled so much that they would crawl several inches across the floor each time I operated them. The dishwashers were located in a dirty little room with one lightbulb that swung from the ceiling. I hated this room. I hated the dishwashers. I hated the dumbwaiter. I had to wear a lab coat, goggles, and special gloves because the test tubes often broke into tiny little aggravating test tube bits.

One day your Aunt Slugger reported to the dumbwaiter to find buckets of dirty test tubes labeled "CAUTION: RADIOACTIVE."

"Ha ha ha," I said to myself. "They forgot to take the sticker off."

So I set about getting ready to clean the test tubes when, for the first time, my pea-sized, college student brain flickered briefly. I now know this sensation as "common sense."

You can see where this is going. The test tubes were radioactive, your Aunt Slugger got molested by a guy with a Geiger Counter, and she gave her notice the next day after being forced to forfeit her favorite sweatshirt because it had turned into an all-cotton version of the Bikini Atoll.

In retrospect, this incident explains a lot.

Anyway, so the point here is that I am no stranger to shitty jobs. We won't even discuss my summers spent mowing lawns in Indiana.**

So I know what it's like to want to call your boss and tell him that you can't take one more day making smoothies for ungrateful little fucksnots at the Glenbrook Square Mall. (Another job.) I know this feeling well.

HOWEVER, for all my bitching and moaning, I did not take the bull by the horns like this dude. This guy - Casey James Fury - this guy had just had enough of this shit. "Over it," he must've said to himself when he woke up that morning before he went to go work as a painter and sandblaster on a dry-docked submarine. "I'm going to fucking set fire to this NAVAL ATTACK SUBMARINE."

So he did. Just set the place ablaze.

But it turns out the Casey James Fury, whose photo should 100% be next to the definition of "lazy" in the dictionary, is no master arsonist, and he found himself back at work in only a short while.

So what do you do in that situation? Go back to work? No. No no no. You grow some balls like Casey James Fury, and you SET ANOTHER FIRE IN THE NAVAL ATTACK SUBMARINE.

Oh sure, he now owes $400 million and is spending 17 years in prison, but the bottom line is that Casey James Fury is not spending another fucking day sandblasting that dry-docked sub. Mission accomplished.

So the next time you find yourself looking for a way to get out of work, don't think small. A fake relative's funeral? Amateur hour. Think like Casey James Fury. Think big.***

Sincerely,
Aunt Slugger



*Absolutely everyone. Everyone has a fucking blog.
**Actually, we will. They were horrific.
***With "big" being defined as "a federal or state correctional facility."

A Professional Baseball Player Uses Steroids, Humans Breathe Oxygen, and Other Well-Known Facts

Your Aunt Slugger browses several news outlets each day. In no specific order, these news outlets are

The Boston Globe
NPR.com
CNN.com
The Wall Street Journal
That Foreign Salmon-Colored Newspaper
The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette
The New York Times

Each of these news outlets offers something different. But one thing they all have in common: sports. You can't get through a single one of these news outlets without somehow encountering sports. Your Aunt Slugger hates nearly all sports. The only sports I enjoy are racquet sports that take place in an enclosed court because you don't have to run as far to find the ball, and your chances of sustaining an eye injury are far greater, which would mean ending the game early to go have appetizers. I also enjoy a good game of H.O.R.S.E. (South Side High School Sixth Period Women's H.O.R.S.E. champion '95 right here), because that's a sport that can be played, if not not improved, with alcohol.

Anyway, I realize that other people like sports, so I am not begrudging these news outlets for reflecting the interests of the masses. So I will instead complain about the masses.

Over the past few days I have been carefully avoiding clicking on any stories with the words "Alex," "A-Rod," "Rodriguez," and "Yankees" in the headlines because they clearly do not pertain to me. Instead I have been clicking on EVERYTHING ELSE. I've been trying to drum up interest in absolutely anything besides baseball. Anything at all. But then yesterday I saw this headline:

"Alex Rodriguez Says, 'I am Fighting for My Life.'" 

And I thought to myself, "Oh my god, is he dying?" and I was suddenly consumed with sympathy for this man, who I assumed was suffering from a terrible disease or being unlawfully detained by the North Koreans.

Oh whoops! Sorry! No! My fault! He's been accused of using steroids and has been suspended for the rest of the season.

I don't wish to point fingers here, but which of you fuckers out there is sustaining the interest in steroid use among professional athletes? This, to me, is like reading a headline that says, "Grocery Store Sells Food" and "Pigeon Enjoying Discarded Croissant in Penn Station" and being interested. I should think the real news story is when a professional athlete is NOT accused of using steroids.

But perhaps it's time for me to accept that maybe I am just a statistical outlier when it comes to my interest in these matters, since I am sure a lot of people would say that this is not news. Although they would be wrong.

CNN Wastes Valuable Internet Space

First, I would like to thank my fans for the outpouring of congratulations I received on the announcement of my engagement. I would provide an update on the ring shopping, but doing so is based on the assumption that anyone cares, which people undoubtedly do not. So the update on the ring shopping is that there is no update, because you people have better shit to do with your time.

So we are back to our regularly scheduled Aunt Slugger programming. Today, your Aunt Slugger came across this article by a woman who feels as though she has been ostracized for her decision not to have children. In this article, she goes on to compare herself to gays and lesbians who wish to have children but cannot, and she makes many claims about the hate-filled remarks she has received over the years. She writes,

"The pressure is particularly intense living in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where my husband is stationed in the military. I've had women tell me that I was a horrible person, a horrible wife and a horrible American because it was my 'duty' to reproduce. I was shocked to hear such a statement in 2013."

Let me start this off by saying that your Aunt Slugger does not have kids, unless you count her cat or older brother who has a doctorate but cannot operate a stove. Your Aunt Slugger does periodically receive questions about whether she will have kids, and in fact, now that I am engaged to be married, I have received this question roughly seventeen times per every 24-hour period. It is an annoying question, mostly because it is very, very hard for your Aunt Slugger not to answer this question by saying, "I would love to have kids, provided they do not end up like yours."

But let's get back to our CNN contributor, who apparently believes she is a member of an oppressed minority group. So it is time for your Aunt Slugger to issue a

CRITICAL PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT.

Stop pretending to be victimized in national op-ed articles. You're acting as though you just published The Satanic Verses. And also, stop hanging out with assholes. If people are telling you that you're a horrible person for not wanting kids, you are hanging out with the wrong people. Go find some new friends. For the love of god, you said it yourself: It's 2013. You don't have to hang out with people who are dicks. De-friend them on Facebook, buy a new bumper sticker, and make some new friends. Your Aunt Slugger has friends across the spectrum: with kids, without kids, without kids but wanting kids, and with kids but looking for a good sleepaway camp so that they can get some goddamn rest. And none of them have ever called your Aunt Slugger names.

So please cut this shit out and find something of more importance to write about.

Sincerely,
Aunt Slugger
Childless Advice Columnist Who Does Not Give a Fuck What You Think of Her Childless Situation

Someone Tries to Make a Respectable Woman of Your Aunt Slugger

Dear Aunt Slugger,

Are you married? If not, I think I would like to propose. Please let me know via a notarized affidavit if you are interested.

Sincerely,
Inmate #58791, Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary

I will grant you, Inmate #58791, that your offer is appealing. You have stable housing and possibly access to cable television, which are two qualities I find attractive in a potential life mate. However, your window of opportunity has closed, because just this weekend, your Aunt Slugger received another marriage proposal, and she accepted it.

Yes, readers, you read that correctly. Your Aunt Slugger is engaged to be married. Your Aunt Slugger is very excited about this proposal, because being a married woman will lend some credibility to my advice columns about how to keep your husband happy, since we all know this is a topic your Aunt Slugger blogs about frequently.*

Your Aunt Slugger's paramour proposed to her with the caveat that your Aunt Slugger be responsible for selecting the ring. "I do not want to be held responsible," he said, "for making that decision." After shooting down my suggestion that we buy an Angry Birds ring from one of those grocery store vending machines, he took your Aunt Slugger ring shopping.

Now might be a good time to share with my readers a story from my youth so that you may have some context. When your Aunt Slugger was in the fourth grade, she entered a contest at a local mall to guess the number of Legos it took to build a giant Lego astronaut that was featured in this mall. A few weeks later, I received a letter saying I had won the contest and that the prize was $500 in gift certificates to this mall.

Bear in mind that I would be thrilled with such a prize NOW, let alone when I was roughly nine years old. It was like winning the lottery.

So my mother took me to this mall so that I might spend some of my winnings. Our first stop was the now-defunct L.S. Ayres department store, where I decided I wanted some jewels to complement my fashionable wardrobe of dog sweatshirts. My mother wisely steered me toward the costume jewelry section because I did not know the difference. I proceeded to select about five hideously tacky rings before my mother finally told me to call it quits on the jewels. But I did get my rings, and they were delightful. My mother winced uncomfortably when I would wear them.

Fast forward to today. Little has changed, except that I now have a job and am not constrained by my mother's jewelry store interventions. I buy 98% of my jewelry from established jewel dealers like Forever 21 and Claire's Boutique. I am always the oldest person in either of these stores.

So it goes without saying here that your Aunt Slugger does not belong in a regular jewelry store. And I certainly do not belong in the engagement ring section of a jewelry store. Yesterday, your Aunt Slugger and this poor dude who proposed to her went to a nice jewelry store, where the guy behind the counter looked as though he was fighting off an aneurysm the whole time we were in the store.

"I think I don't like this rectangle here," I said.

"The emerald cut," he said.

Well EXCUSE THE FUCK OUT OF ME. I took geometry in high school, and I know a rectangle when I see one. And that was a rectangle. If it were a dodecahedron, fine. That doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. Call it something else. But your basic jewelry shapes are circle, rectangle, square, flat square, and square with rounded edges.

So it goes without saying that your Aunt Slugger has not yet found a ring, or even a jeweler who does not have one hand on the panic button the whole time she is in the store.

But that does not mean that she is not still very excited. I am busily working on my next column, "How to Keep Dinner Warm While Your Husband Is Working Late."**

Very sincerely yours,
Aunt Slugger


*Never.
**Tell him to put it in the microwave; this isn't rocket science.