The following are accounts of annoying females -- Feminae Molestae (Not made up, just Latin. Though I suppose one could say it is made up because Latin is dead and therefore technically does not exist. Not Latin, just made up.). I originally wanted to call this "The Kate Saga," since most of these instances involve a girl named Kate, but I wanted to keep the door open for other feminae molestae who might make a worthy display of wtf-ness. On with the show!
I should probably start off by going into some detail about Kate, whom I mentioned earlier, since she is and most undoubtedly will continue to be involved in the majority of these accounts.
Kate is a pretty attractive girl. This makes her being the #1 femina molesta tough to swallow. It wouldn't be so bad if she was a girl from whom you automatically dismiss any possibility of interest upon first glance (ie. "keep her locked up in the cellar she's hideous"). What makes it even more difficult is that I had the fortune (or perhaps misfortune) of seeing the attractive side of her personality, and even had a crush on her for a solid hour. Those feelings faded quickly however, as I began to recall how much I really don't like her. The problem is that the context under which I normally see her is one that brings out everything in her that I hate. That doesn't mean her actions in that context don't point to things about her personality that I don't like though. I pretty much hate her.
I won't start with an instance involving Kate though. I'm going to start with one that involves Kate's friend, Shawn (Not a boy, a girl. Though I suppose one could say that it is a boy because girls are dead and therefore technically do not exist. Not a girl, a boy.). This may be Shawn's only appearance, as she is a fairly reasonable person. So uh, Shawn, if you're reading this, enjoy it while it lasts. Er -- while it doesn't last. Don't enjoy it. While it lasts. Balls.
First, some background on the situation. Bradley Hathaway is a fairly popular poet who is at least one and half years old, as he has been making posts on his website since June of 2004. No biography is provided, and I couldn't find a third party one. Anyway, Shawn told me about him one time. She told me she was writing "Bradley" a letter, throwing around the guy's first name like she actually knows him and he actually cares what she has to say to him. I asked who he was and she directed me to his website. If you're like me, you're too lazy to click that link. Basically what you'll find is that this guy writes in all lower case in his website updates, and, somewhere in there, takes a swing at all caps. "if it says HELP in annoying all caps then i need help." It became obvious to me that this guy has a serious and quite frankly dangerous prejudice against capital letters. I was compelled to give him my thoughts on the matter:
Email subject: Writing 101
Email body: Hey Dickhead, it's okay to capitalize the appropriate letters when you write stuff for your website. No one's going to think you're un-cool. Furthermore, being the popular writer that you are, you should be one of the leading advocates for proper spelling, punctuation and capitalization. Text messaging and MySpace alone are doing enough harm to the art of written communication. The world doesn't need your help in that regard. By the way, your poems are great.
No response as of yet from The Bradley, and he continues to ignore traditional English rules of capitalization in his website updates. Perhaps this is a fight that capital letters just can't win. Anyway, I told Shawn in an AIM conversation that I had emailed The Bradley. What ensued was worthy of the title, Femina Molesta. Here is the conversation in full.
Pflanzenfaser: i sent bradley an email shawn: did you!? what about? Pflanzenfaser: i told him to get his act together and capitalize the appropriate letters on his webiste Pflanzenfaser: haah shawn: are you serious! Pflanzenfaser: yeah shawn: i like the lack of capitalization shawn: its artistic Pflanzenfaser: ................ shawn: heheh Pflanzenfaser: website updates are not art Pflanzenfaser: leave the artistry to the things that are actually art shawn: ohh so you get to say what is art and what isnt hM? Pflanzenfaser: in the case of bradley hathaway Pflanzenfaser: his poems Pflanzenfaser: art shawn: haha Pflanzenfaser: his web updates Pflanzenfaser: not art shawn: says who Pflanzenfaser: he's not putting his website updates in a book and saying "hey read these web updates. they're artistic," is he? Pflanzenfaser: no, he's not Pflanzenfaser: i win shawn: uhhh k
Two words: OWNED EXCLAMATIONMARK.
I think the above is pretty self-explanatory. Well Shawn, you had a good run. Try real hard, and maybe you'll be back on here some day. Good luck!
Kate kate kate kate kate kate kate. Kate. Quite the specimen for observation she is. Her whimsical desires and happy-go-lucky attitude make for a hoopla of annoyances. And that camera of hers. Agh! That camera is like an extension of her own body, its high-speed flash filling the room as often as her own hot air. Put the hunk o' junk down, lady. We don't need a "before-and-after-in-ten-second-intervals" photo collection. Buy a video camera if you have to, but quit snapping pictures! If you're going to take that many pictures, at least position the shots so that you can create a panoramic view after development. At least that would be cool.
Kate is by all means a prospect, and a bittersweet one at that. Every positive comes with a negative. Perhaps only I can see the negative that accompanies every positive, as could be done only by one so judgmental as I. Whether it is a blessing or a curse, I do not yet know. Whether I will have stomped the fingers of all worthy prospects and found myself alone, or sifted wisely through the field of not-quite-so's to find completion in another soul, only time will tell. In any case, Kate certainly won't be the one to complete me, so on with the slaughtering of her reputation.
Kate's first worthy display of wtf-ness was a minor one, and, when isolated, actually can't be called femina molesta. In light of later events, however, calling this instance femina molesta is not inappropriate.
About a week before Thanksgiving '05 was the last time I had my hair cut. This haircut was a two-stepper: one cut at the barber shop and one cut in my dorm room with an electric-powered clipper. I think I was the youngest customer the lady at the barber shop had ever served. My hair was pretty long -- bangs down to my eyebrows, sides well over my ears, and back almost to the crew of the shirt I may or may not being wearing at any given time. I told the lady that I wanted a Caesar cut (a basic short-hair style cut), but she had no idea what I was talking about. I even tried to explain to the "professional" how to do it, but she was clueless. She told me to just look in this book full of hairstyles. The pictures were all of little kids, and a lot of the pages were stuck together. I still wonder why from time to time. Must have been hair gel, or perhaps styling mousse. Anyway, I chose "spike," which seemed to be the closest thing to Caesar. Problem is, I never planned on utilizing the spike, I just chose it because it seemed to be the right length and evenness. Well, actually I just chose it for the length. I don't even know what evenness means. When the lady finally finished her hack-job, she asked if I wanted to spike the front, and I politely declined. That left my hair to be really short on the sides and back, and not quite as short in the front, so it kind of looked like I was planning to be Emo in a few months. I went up to pay with a debit card, but, predictably, they couldn't accept it. I had to walk across the street to the gas station ATM to get cash.
Haircut: $14. Tip: DENIED.
Later that night, I was invited to eat dinner with Kate, Shawn, and Steve. They all wanted to eat at the dining hall, which I surprisingly had no problem with at the time. I think I remember wanting to eat salad. I guess I needed some fiber. Anyway, I was standing outside the dining hall, waiting for whoever else was coming, and whoever else was coming showed up. Imagine that. It was obvious that I had gotten a haircut, yet Kate still asked the question. "I like it," she said. "Thank you," I replied, as in, "Thank you for insulting my intelligence by saying that you like my haircut even though I, everyone, and Jesus knows it looks awful. Spare me." The possibility that she is a freak and actually did like it comes to mind, but her next display of femina molesta shows that that is not the case.
Kickball is not a sport. It's more like a big board game where you are the piece moving around the board. Nevertheless, kickball is offered as an intramural sport at SDSU. And guess who had the great idea of making a kickball team? Wrong! Kate did. And guess who had the great idea of holding a kickball practice? Wrong again! I don't remember who did. How you can practice for kickball, I don't know. You can practice kicking, but you don't necessarily have to go to a park and do kick-and-fetch with a rubber ball to get good at kicking. For example, see the giant caramel frappucino that girl just leaned over and set down on the ground next to her purse? Just wind up and kick that hag square in the nose. Then you can make off with her frozen coffee drink and cool off. If your kick was solid enough, you should have time to flip over and empty her purse and take it as well, forcing her to ask for about 5 of those paper to-go pastry bags to put her stuff in. If you don't have time to do that, your kick wasn't very good. Keep practicing. And maybe at a different coffee shop. In a different city.
During the time that I saw Kate's better side, we talked about music, and she had actually heard of Minor Threat before, which was awesome. She doesn't like Korn though. Boo. I ended up burning a sample of Fugazi for her, which, as I found out in her car on the way to the kickball practice (about 2 weeks later), she still hadn't listened to. I don't have a problem with that though. I didn't listen to the burned Korn CD that my friend gave me for like half a year. Here's what got to me. She tells me I can pick something to listen to (Shawn and Steve were also in the car), and naturally I go right to Fugazi because I figure that's the only band on her iPod worth listening to. I put on "Waiting Room," which is universally accepted as one of their best songs. The song is 2 minutes and 53 seconds long, so more on the shorter side. It starts playing, and after about 30 seconds, Kate says something about the song and then says about Fugazi, "I like them." I'm thinking, "Okay, you've heard 30 seconds of one song, although it is one of their best, and you've already decided that you like them." It was nice that she said she liked them, but still it seemed as though she was just saying it to satisfy me. She affirmed that notion by changing artists when the song finished. Wow. I guess she really liked them because she must have been saving the rest of the songs for later when she could listen to them in solitude and really soak in the music. NOT. What a joke. It amazes me that she thinks she can so casually pull off a two-faced act like that. Look lady, I don't need your affirmation to know that the music I listen to is high-quality, especially Fugazi. Why do you think I'm sharing it with you? Because your music sucks! That's why.
By now you can see why I included the hair story. She didn't actually like my hair cut, she was just trying to be agreeable. Just like she was trying to be agreeable with my music. Why can't people just be honest? If being honest would make you an asshole, just don't say anything! Or at least be eloquent enough to be honest without being offensive. Sometimes I really wish I couldn't see through people. Then again, if you can't see the truth, why open your eyes?
Surprisingly enough, the Fugazi fiasco wasn't the only occurrence of femina molesta involving Kate on that particular night. The inner child in Kate really shone through. For example, when pulling out to leave the rendevous point and head over to the park for practice, Shawn noticed an old-school van parked on the street. She pointed it out, and expressed her liking for it. Kate then chimed in with, "Woah, that's really cool. I want it!" Right... so do you really want it, or are you just being a whimsical child? Are you going to walk up to the house it's parked in front of and inquire about a selling price? No? Then shut it right up. But wait, there's more!
The practice was winding down, and curses! Kate caught sight of the playground. As she started running down the hill towards it, I swear I saw a little blonde 5 year-old with pigtails fastened by red ribbons, screaming at the top of her lungs, "SWING SET!!!" Unfortunately she didn't trip and scrape her knee on the way there, as that would have forced us to leave immediately to go make her boo-boo "all better!" Instead, she proceeded to bounce around the facility like no other, discovering a new slide and yelling, "Shawn! Shawn!" to no avail, but persisting still in her quest for attention with "Steve! Steve!" Try to understand this, Kate. It's a 3 foot high slide on a children's playground at an ordinary public park. NOBODY CARES. As if that wasn't enough, she then starts trying to get everyone else to join in with her fleeting desires with, "Let's get ice cream!" Yeah, ice cream! Just what everyone wants after exercising! Moron. Either that was the last of it or my body's immune system kicked in and knocked me unconscious to avoid any long-term brain damage.
What do fundamentalist Christians do on the weekends? Well, since they don't drink, they do other more creative and constructive things, like watching movies. Er... Such was the case on one particular evening, when the greatest single occurrence of feminae molestae took place. This time, it wasn't just Kate, although she did play a large role. There were no short of 7 feminae molestae involved in this one. Here's what happened.
So it's high time that something social take place on this Friday evening, and a collective viewing of film is mandated. There's just one problem though. Which film to watch? That was something I definitely wanted to have a part in deciding, especially since there were so many females in the group, and letting too many of them have a say on the matter could land me in my room playing Starcraft for hours; that's not necessarily a bad thing, but at the time I would rather have watched a movie. To my surprising delight, little miss pigtails wanted to go get Starbucks (at 8 pm no less), and for some reason everyone else did too. That left me, another guy (named Patrick) and one girl to go to Blockbuster to pick out a movie. It was shaping up to be a good night. The three of us browsed around the store for a while, naming which movies we hadn't seen as we walked by them and giving our opinions on the ones we had seen. We seemed unable to decide on a movie, but we knew that we wanted a comedy. "The Ladykillers" seemed to be the only movie that was supposed to be funny and that none of us had seen. We had been in the store for a while, at which point the (female) representative for the larger Starbucks population called Patrick and asked if we had picked yet. He said that The Ladykillers was looking like the one. The rep relayed this to the masses, and got a negative response from the one girl who had seen it. So then the rep started naming off all the movies we had already decided against either because everyone had already seen it or it was just a dumb movie. Eventually I just told Patrick, "Look, if they wanted to pick the movie, they should have come here and passed on Starbucks." He agreed and promptly hung up on the rep. Good man. The three of us payed an equal amount for the rental and headed over to the viewing place.
We were supposed to watch the movie via movie projector. That would have been cool if the hostess had had a duuuuuuh... wait for it POWER CORD for the thing. Here is the conversation I had with the hostess before the Blockbuster/Starbucks split.
Hostess: Do you have a laptop? Me: Yes. Hostess: Oh, good. Do you have a power cord for it? Me: Yes. Hostess: Okay, great. Could you bring that along? Me: Yes.
Now, what I thought she meant was, "Could you bring [your laptop and the power cord that goes with it so that we can watch the movie because I don't have a DVD player] along?" Turns out she just wanted the power cord, which was supposed to be compatible with the projector. However, it happens to be that only Compaq laptop power cords are compatible. My laptop is a Dell. Nice communication, idiot.
Idiot: Do you have a car? Just trying to help: Yes. Idiot: Okay, great. Can I borrow it? Just trying to help: Yes. ... Just trying to help: Here's my car. Idiot: Oh, you have a sedan. But I need a pick-up. I'm going to buy a big load of gravel. Just trying to help: Oh, well thanks for clarifying that BEFORE I HAULED MY ASS OVER HERE. Idiot. Idiot: lolz!!1
Deep breath.
Plan B was a 12 inch TV. So we start the movie, and the 7 or so girls are already unraveling due in part to the projector failure. This unraveling manifested itself in the form of not being able to shut the fuck up. The beginning of The Ladykillers shows an elderly black woman, who is on the portly side, filing a complaint with the small town's sheriff; one of the movie's funnier parts. Of course none of the girls at the house could tell you that, because they were all busy yapping their traps. The other cause of the unraveling was that "Elizabethtown" was in the DVD player before we put in The Ladykillers. You can imagine where this is going. Pretty soon the girls started murmuring amongst themselves, "Do you really want to watch this? Let's watch Elizabethtown!" Eventually the volume of the chatter got so loud that the movie was no longer audible. At this point, Kate of all people hops off the couch toward the console and reaches her finger for the "stop" button on the DVD player. Of the 6 or so guys in the room, Patrick and I were the only ones to protest, stating again that if they didn't want to see The Ladykillers, they should have gone to Blockbuster and picked a movie themselves, and also that WE payed the rental fee for them. Unfortunately their heads were too far up their asses by that time to hear anything besides their own stomachs growling for Elizabethtown, which all of them had already seen -- probably more than once. So we "voted," which was a sham from the start because there were more girls than guys. Pat and I were the only ones with balls, as the rest of the guys "didn't care," which of course really means, "weren't willing to stand up against the enormous fecal-fest being initiated by the girls they're aiming to bag." Pussies. So Kate stopped The Ladykillers and put in Elizabethtown. I for one was not going to just bend over and take it up the ass, so I turned a negative into a positive and pulled out my laptop to start writing about the biggest bitch-fest in history and how I was caught in its path.
Think about how much anger I'm expressing right now while writing about this, approximately 2 months after the incident. Now imagine how much more anger I'd have expressed if I had written this directly after the fact. I think it's safe to say that my vocabulary would have been much simpler.
I took my laptop behind the couch, so I guess everyone thought I was watching The Ladykillers. I was about to start writing, trying to decide where the hell to start, when Patrick stood up and said he'd watch The Ladykillers with me. I agreed.
The Ladykillers turned out to be an awesome movie; definitely one of my top 3 favorites. Patrick and I finished watching it and returned to the living room where the fecal-fest was winding down (we had gone into one of the bedrooms to watch our movie). Kate was on the couch, and saw me emerge into the living room. "How was it?" she asked. "It was really good, actually," I replied. She continued, "Really? What was it about?"
My head almost exploded from sheer amazement at the gall of this woman. In this case, it's a good thing that I usually don't come up with the perfect line right away, because if I had, I probably would have replied with, "Look bitch, if you really want to know what it's about, WATCH THE GOD DAMN THING!" Thankfully, for the sake of my reputation at the time, I didn't say that. Instead, I replied with obvious irritation, "I don't know, read the box."
The fun never ends, it seems. Of course, I could put an end to this "fun" just by not going where Kate goes. But if I did that, what would I have to write about? Actually, I'd still have plenty to write about. The thing is, by not going where Kate goes, I'd be not going where all my other friends go. Looks like I'm stuck. Oh well. At least I'm getting this collection of stories in exchange for being annoyed to no seeming end.
East Commons, the most popular of the three food courts at SDSU, closes at 7 pm. Which means I need to go there now before they close.
Because of unique schedules and the fact that I like to eat and move on to the next thing in my day without much downtime, I normally have my meals by myself during the week. Of course, there are exceptions. Such was the case in this instance of femina molesta. The star femina molesta in this case was not an exception though. Yep, Kate.
Kateshawnsteve and I had agreed to meet downstairs at around 6:30 pm and head over to East Commons to eat dinner. I didn't bring my cell phone along, since the only dynamic of our plan, the meeting time, was restricted by the 7 pm closing time of EC. Seems I should have though, considering that I got out there at 6:33 and waited until 6:40 without ever seeing the others. I figured either they forgot, or they left without me. Both scenarios seemed unlikely, the first for obvious reasons, and the second because Kate is usually late for these rendezvous. Besides, it's not like they had to hurry over to EC to get in before it closed (it doesn't take half an hour to walk there), and friends are patient enough to wait 3 minutes for you, right? Wrong. I walked over to EC by myself because waiting any longer may have put me at the door too late. About 50 feet in front of the entrance, I saw my three supposed comrades before me. I was going to catch up to them, but as I approached from behind, I thought, "Why should I even acknowledge their presence if they're not willing to wait three extra minutes for me?" So I waited until they got inside to go inside myself, that way I could just walk by them as one of the crowd. Unfortunately they saw me, so I was kind of stuck. I reluctantly said hello.
Kate then inquired as to where we wanted to eat. I didn't give any input, but the other three wanted Panda Express. I was sufficiently sick of Panda by then because I ate it pretty much every day first semester, sometimes even twice a day. Gross. I chose Vinnie's Gourmet Italian Deli. I got my food in no time, while the three had to wait in a big line for Panda, like always. I sat down in the larger seating area, still trying to comprehend why these three would not be willing to wait 3 minutes for me. I figured it had to be Kate's impatience. I began recalling again why I hate her so much, when I got a brilliant idea: finish my meal before the others get theirs, and leave. That would force them to look all over the dining hall for me to no avail, giving them a taste of their own medicine. I began eating hastily. I was about to stand up to go throw away my trash and leave, when the three came from behind me. You'd have thought someone pointed a gun at me from how violently I flinched in my chair. That was possibly the most agonizing meal of my life. I once had to eat this Romanian "healing soup" that my sister's gymnastics coach made for her when she broke her leg. I felt like I was on Fear Factor, but even that meal wasn't as painful as this one at EC. It finally ended, and when I got back to my room, I had a new voice message on my phone. It was Kate telling me that they were going to head over to EC without me, so "maybe we'll see you there."
The swiftness with which a 3-minute time span can make a person who has been told, "I'll be there" think that the one who said, "I'll be there" is for some reason not going to be there amazes me, and is probably beyond my comprehension, so it's really not worth getting worked up over. I simply stand in awe.
After experiencing the fury of multiple feminae molestae all at once in "Movie" and the blatant slap in the face in "Dinner 1," I was becoming accepting of the fact that Kate is just an inherently annoying person, and that getting worked up every time she does something stupid is not healthy. It's ironic that, often times, becoming less passionate about something actually makes being influential much easier. Silly emotions. Always hampering progress.
With this new peace of mind, I was able to subtly call Kate on her stupid idiosyncrasies. The most noteworthy occasion on which I did just that was, quite appropriately, at dinner in East Commons. It was the first Monday after spring break, and I was returning to the dorms from the library. I walked by Kate and a few others as I entered the building, and we exchanged hellos. It was just about dinner time, so I figured they were going off to eat. I called Kate a minute later and found that that was their plan, and asked if I could join them; she said yes. I wasted no time getting back downstairs. There were a total of 6 people in our posse.
This time around, Kate and Shawn got their food first, so they chose the table. They chose a 4-person table. The problem presented itself straightaway, as there wasn't even enough surface for all of our trays. As I sat down, I said to Kate with a blank tone, "Nice table choice." "Oh, thanks..." she replied with a hint of confusion at the end. "Wait, are you being sarcastic?" she asked moments later. I just shrugged, as if to say, "No, this really was a great choice of table." "I can never tell," she says. I gave no reply. I just sat and enjoyed my toasted gourmet Italian sandwich with the satisfaction of having gotten the better of Kate for once.
Ever since I listened to Korn's second album, "Life is Peachy," they have been one of my bands. Currently, I only have 7 bands, so becoming one of mine is a great honor on a small scale. On March 27, 2006, Korn became my favorite band.
Before that day, I had told Kate and Shawn that my sister volunteers at the Invisible Children office in El Cajon (just east of San Diego) quite frequently, and that if they ever wanted to go there to help out, I could take them. They were ecstatic. We went the next Monday, March 27.
The IC office is about 25 minutes from SDSU -- definitely long enough for the three of us to run out of conversational energy. Cue Korn's "See You on the Other Side," their newest CD, which is chock full of creepy sonic noises and sexual innuendo. When we first got in the car, the CD resumed on track 9, which is probably the cleanest and least depressing song on the album. Once that one finished, I skipped back to track 6, because I knew that if Kate heard track 10, "Getting Off," she would ask if we could listen to something else. I didn't want that to happen so early in the car ride. By the time we arrived at the office, tracks 6 through 9 had played all the way through, and about half of Getting Off had played. As we waited at the final stoplight before our arrival point, Kate complained that she was getting a headache. I figured it was because of the music, but it could have been anything, so I didn't offer to change it.
Some of the lines that Kate got to hear during the drive there included, "Love song for the dear departed / Headstone for the broken-hearted," "Choking you gently, gaining control / Hand you the shovel to dig your own hole," and "I'm getting off to you."
When we got into the car to drive back to SDSU, Getting Off resumed, and she got to hear "I'm getting off to you" a few more times. Then came "Liar." Now, the lyrics of that song would appear to advocate domestic abuse, but the "she" is actually the church, and Jonathon is speaking to Korn's departed born-again guitarist, Brian "Head" Welch. Kate didn't know that though, so when she finally heard, "Don't wimp up, fuck her up / One more time slam that door," she had had enough. "Can we listen to the radio or something?" she asked. I saw it coming from a mile away, and it was a beautiful thing.
At last, the tables had turned. I became King Masculus Molesta, and flexed my molesta muscle against Queen Femina Molesta. Things will only continue in this way, as I'll be continually on the lookout for ways to use my subtle sarcasm to undermine Kate's childish ways, and for opportunities to annoy her with my heinous music.
© 2006 Pflanzenfaser