Rest in Peace, MJ.

The countdown to quitting feels like it's taking decades. Every day is like driving to death row, knowing my head will be shoved into a guillotine. I have a hard time even getting excited that every day is one day closer to freedom when I know that I still have to endure the day at hand.

There are things about this town that I'll miss. For instance, I just walked outside of my office, saw a Tequila food truck, got a free taco, shirt, shot glass, and bottle of water, and booty danced to Michael Jackson while wearing business casual for a promotional commercial. MJ's one year anniversary of passing is tomorrow, so a lot of people are playing his jams this weekend. Score!

Dealing with my job and the traffic and the worst people I've ever met and the high cost of living and the liberal propaganda and the sense of entitlement and the entire soul-sick culture of this place has just taken the glamor out of it for me.

My boss often mentions how "sophisticated" she is, and I am using quotes because I am directly QUOTING her, as you might guess. I am also emphasizing this because when you read on about her behavior, sophistication might be lower than the last thing on the list of adjectives you imagine as you visualize her constant MO.

She thinks she's super "sophisticated" because she has a big East Coast chip on her shoulder. I'd love to say, "Lady, not only is Los Angeles notorious for being full of FRUIT CAKES, but a lot of people associate women from Boston with being loud-mouthed yankee broads who drink beer right out of the bottle and pick their wedgies in public." Which is true. But of course, I don't say it. I just sit there and let her sunbathe in her ignorance and imagine myself on a beach in Mexico like that guy from "Shawshank Redemption."

I always laugh to myself a little when she brags about just how sophisticated she is while she sits in her dusty little moth-eaten upholstered chair with her legs spread wide open like she's trying to keep the flies away. I'm telling you. It's like she's ready for somebody to just walk right up and go spelunking in her crotch-cave of death. If I ever bear daughters, the first thing I'll teach them is to KEEP THEIR DANG LEGS CLOSED. Ugh. It's so vulgar. I know I'm not exactly a debutante, but I also know not to be advertising my snatch all over town for everyone in the world to see. It's completely appalling.

As her legs are open at a 180 degree angle, she begins to pick flakes of dead skin off the heels of her feet and then flicks them on the floor. There's a little pile of foot flakes on the floor right under her crusty gray heels. Oddly enough, despite the overall look of her feet and general disheveled appearance, her toenails always look nice. The most sophisticated thing about her is that right after she's finished peeling her heel skin off like she's skinning a dang tuna, she begins picking her teeth. Now mind you, she always has all kind of plaque and beige colored build up around all of her jagged teeth, but right after she's picked all of the 70 year old skin off her cracking heels, she uses the same bit-down nails to begin scraping plaque off her teeth. Unbelievable.

Let's discuss some further sophistication. We have a proper phone-to-phone office transfer system, where if someone has a question in office 1, they can dial office 4 and ask them a question like a normal, middle class American person. Ooooooh, not in my office. Attila the Boss is always yelling and screaming from the back of the office to the waiting room about stupid, trivial, mindless monkey shit. It drives me crazy. "DID YOU ORDER THE STATIONERY?!" "WHY WON'T MY OUTLOOK WORK?!" "I DON'T UNDUH-STAND THIS!" like we know what the crap she is even talking about.

I wasn't raised like that. I just wasn't raised where everyone was yelling and screaming and talking on top of each other like everyone is doing an auditory dog pile on top of everyone else's voice. Ugh. AND, she's a compulsive interrupter. When a client doesn't understand a question, she starts talking louder and louder and LOUDER and slower and SLOWER like the person is some kind of effing retard. She never changes the content of her sentences to make things more clear. She just talks louder and slower and shakes her liver-spotted, nail bitten, plaque and foot-flake crusty finger in the person's face and breaths her halitosis that's bubbling from her stomach all over the office until everyone feels like they will faint. I've never seen anything like it.

The way she contorts her face like she's being exorcised is completely unreal. It's like her face is claymation. She can contort it and make it look so disgusted and enraged that you sort of feel like a dog who has just crapped on the floor. You know you're about to get your face rubbed in it. She began verbally assaulting my client today, over and over and over again, yelling at him for the same EFFING thing, and as soon as she left the room, he looked me like he'd just had the soul sucked out of him, and he quietly and blankly said,

"She is such a bitch."

And I just gave him that understanding, old soul, Paula Deen look.

"The Devil Wears Prada" is like "Sesame Street" compared to where I work.

Let's keep talking Los Angeles-style sophistication. We've hired a new girl that is constantly on my case about what I eat. Let me tell you that the new girl weighs more than my first boyfriend and is about 15 inches shorter than him. I say this not to pick on her, but because she decided that it was appropriate to tell me her exact height and weight the first day I ever met her.

People who think they know everything and openly judge you about something when its quite VISIBLE that they have no authority to do so really get on my nerves. So, this new moose is sitting around, with her fingers always in her mouth, constantly biting her nails off and spitting them on the floor, also with her legs spread wide open like she's keeping the flies away (twins?), and popping her knuckles ALL THE TIME ---always popping those knuckles---CONSTANTLY criticizes me and what I eat. She barrels down the hallway like a bull moose, slumps her robust figure into my office chair, leaving vibrations like the aftershock of a standard Baja Peninsula earthquake, and then begins to RUN HER MOUTH about why my eating a microwave Healthy Choice meal is incredibly unhealthy and I should only shop at Whole Foods. She also criticizes my hair, clothes, and accessories, telling me that I should only buy Michael Kors and should only get haircuts from her hair person. How does a big, frumpy, knuckle-popping moose feel like she is an authority on what I should eat, wear, and look like? It doesn't make any sense, and it's down right obnoxious and rude. If I hear Michael Kors one more time, I might punt kick her butt into the middle of Wilshire Blvd.

The moose is also obsessed with trying to be "California," so she's always talking about "going green" and recycling. She also carries around this big canvas bag that says "I USED TO BE A PLASTIC BOTTLE" on the side of it in all caps. Irritates the crap out of me. Not because I boycott environmentally friendly attempts (I actually recycle), but I get irritated with people who try to be something they aren't. She's from some po-dunk Southern town and she has not only lost her accent and tries VERY HARD to sound "California," but she also attempts to talk about whatever she thinks will make her sound more "L.A.," like stupid effing recycling and stupid Michael Kors.

During the moose's first day of work, she told me that she bleaches her man-beard. She has facial hair and decided it was appropriate to tell me how she maintains it. She also told me that she wants to be a Disney Princess and loves Avatar.

I don't know exactly where I fit in these days. In fact, I really don't fit in anywhere, and I'm OK with that. But there's a difference between feeling like you have no place and realizing that everyone else would be better off if you weren't in the middle of it.

All I can think now is: let them all have each other. Let all of the hippies and yogies and tree huggers and knuckle poppers and "sophisticated" women with their wide-spread legs and heel flakes and hacking and coughing and putrid breath HAVE EACH OTHER.

Last week, I had a traveling experience that would probably be the equivalent to "Home Alone" and "Trains, Planes, & Automobiles" having a baby. I got bumped and was delayed and took planes and SUV's and teleporters all over God's green earth to visit my grandmother for her birthday. I'd get into all of the details of the trip, like meeting wonderful airport friends and having coffee with them and discussing interesting topics regarding hellacious work situations and job search strategies, but the most memorable part of the travel experience was watching a Delta employee at the ticket counter in Memphis with "the look" on her face.

THE LOOK is the one I get the second I pull into the parking lot of my work and I see my boss' luxury car, knowing that I wont even have five seconds of peace in the morning to put my lunch in the fridge or use the bathroom after my hour long commute. As soon as Attila the Boss hears the back door open, she comes flying down the hall like some levitating, possessed demonic presence, blowing her moldy jack-o-lantern breath in my face and screaming at me about what I need to do RIGHT NOW. No time to use the restroom, or God forbid, put away my Yoplait Yogurt.

The employee at the Delta ticket counter had her boss hovering all over her like an effing OCD control-freak helicopter, and she had that look on her face. I watched her roll her eyes and touch her forehead like she was using every bit of spirit she had to keep from smacking her boss in the face. I know the look. I know the feeling.

Yesterday, the lady in my office was a complete nut job, and right when I think the L.A. people that I deal with couldn't get any crazier, she shows me her boob. Well, it was really an absence of a boob. It was like her boob was invited to the chest party, and RSVPed, "I'm sorry, the right boot cannot attend."

This lady, for whatever reason, wanted to "prove" to me that she had a mastectomy. Her shirt flew up so fast I sort of thought it was a mirage. I turned my head in the other direction as fast as I could and thought to myself, "Did that just happen?"

When I was flying back from Memphis to LAX, I sat next to some dewy eyed 22 year old fresh off the boat from New Albany, Mississippi. She lives in L.A. and works for a talent agency and just loooooves it. She kept flipping her hair around and she kept blinking her long black eyelashes real slow like every second she was thinking about working for William Morris, she might just start singing, she was so happy. I remember the comment of a fellow jaded Los Angelian a few years ago when I too had that blissful look of L.A.-flavored virginity. He talked about how this city will chew you up and spit you out. And he was right.

I sure hope that when I move home, I can remember the good things about this town, like booty dancing in front of a tequila truck to Michael Jackson, and for once, not think about knuckle popping, wide-spread legs, and moldly jack-o-lantern breath.