Usually, I leave mother nature alone. I’ll gripe about the ridiculousness of PEOPLE and the stupid things they do all day long, but generally, I let nature do it’s thing. Afterall, it’s NATUR-al. But this…is ludacris. Atlanta is in the midst of the YELLOW PLAGUE!! I’m living in a non drug-induced yellow fog. It’s REAL, it’s nasty, it’s POLLEN.

According to the weatherman, pollen count above 120 is considered extremely high. Our pollen count? 2967. The weatherman was kind enough to demonstrate this, by pulling up to a CAR and doing the weather report by DRAWING IT IN THE POLLEN built up on the car. AHAHAHAH. Slick moves weather guy. Slick moves.

I know what all you non Atlanta dwellers think of pollen…because I used to be one of them. Northerners think, what’s a little pollen? It’s not like having 10 inches of SNOW, pollen can barely be an inconvenience. It’s maybe a few spores that you see floating around…or just something microscopic that bees carry around to make flowers bloom…you know, Discovery Channel type stuff…but you know its there because of all the sneezing you hear around the neighborhood.

NOT HERE. Contrary to popular belief, the pollen doesn’t just sort of settle down nicely over a long period of time and create a layer of yellow on your car. Like a nice layer of snow. No. Here, the pollen ATTACKS like a freakin plague of God. One day I walked outside, and I got hit full in the face by a pollen cloud, covering my clothes and my PHONE within 3 seconds of stepping outside.

The pollen will literally SPLATTER onto your car. Like paint. My car looks like some bad ass wannabe teenage prankster took a yellow paint brush and spackled my car. But yeah, I’m riding it out. No point in washing the car if it’s just going to be attacked again. But the problem is that your car ends up with eyeboogers:

What is that nasty electric-yellow piss colored stain on my windshield? WELL. Since there’s a nice splattering of pollen all over my windshield when I go to drive it, my natural reaction is to MIST. My windshield wipers do a nice job making pollen powder into a nice stream of piss at the side of my windshield. This then dries nicely and builds up into CAR EYEBOOGERS. yum…

The other problem with having too much pollen, is that you have to have heavy duty bees to work with it. So instead of your usual small worker bees, we have SWARMS OF BUMBLE BEES EVERYWHERE! The are larger than normal bees, they are louder than normal bees, and there are like twice as many. This turns a nice picnic or sunathing session into a bee swatting fest.

I thought Atlanta was still considered part of the Bible Belt. We have a church on every street corner!! God, why are you punishing us with this Yellow Plague?! well..i guess we do have a lot of Gays…and according to the Bible/Religious Conservatives, God apparently doesn’t like them…so he’s..sneezing them to death? …

Really? Is this necessary? There is a lot of this in Atlanta. Definitely much more so than up in the north. Back at home, I feel that mothers are appropriately frumpy due to their busy lives driving minivans, working full time in addition to child-rearing.

But here, there is a ridiculous COUGAR EPIDEMIC. I think there are more 40+ hot Cougar Bods at my gym in Buckhead than there are 20-somethings. There are grandmas on those treadmills that are hotter than I’ve ever been in my mere 22 years of life.

ALSO, there are wayyyy too many Cougars who frequent the same Atlanta nighttime hot spots as me. I found this appropriately (or actually inappropriately) dressed specimen of the Club-rat Cougar at Opera on a Friday night, dancing ON THE POLE on the stage! Shouldn’t she be at her son’s HS football game or something? Or knitting? I don’t know! Not only is she a Cougar, but she KNOWS IT and flaunts it by also DRESSING in feline attire…from head to toe! (By the way, I do not know this lady, I asked to take a picture with her and she said yes)

One day, I was sitting at the Verizon store waiting for my phone, when in walks two pretty hot blondes. Closer inspection revealed that they were MOTHER AND DAUGHTER. Why does a mother need to be wearing ripped designer jeans, 5 inch high heels, and 5 lbs of makeup? Why does she need to be 10 pounds skinnier than her daughter, and have hair 3 shades blonder? At 4 pm on a Wednesday?!

I do not deny that these women are good looking, and have kept their bodies pretty damn hot. I applaud them for this. BUT there are better ways of being a hot and old! Look at Heidi Klum, or even Jennifer Aniston. If I wanted to see ass and tits hanging out all over the place, I’d go to a STRIP CLUB, where the strippers are actually still YOUNG. We don’t need to see your drunk tacky selves prowling the town past your bedtime.

My Theory:

Basically, I think that these women have too much time on their hands. My mom works hard everyday, cooked me dinner every night, was completely selfless and made sure that I had the best childhood imaginable. She gave me all the tools I would ever need in life. My mom was too busy making sure she was putting a competent human being into the world to have time to work out all day and go clubbing…and in fact, she is more beautiful because of that. When she dies, she will have left her legacy by leaving the world with the best daughter that she could raise. Nobody will remember if she had a hot bod or not.

Also, I think a lot of these women were basically hot when they were young and ended up getting married too young. They ended up raising their children in their twenties and thirties, only to get divorced. Now that their kids are older, they realized that they missed out their own youth, and are out to reclaim it now. It doesn’t help when they look in the mirror and start to see wrinkles, when their daughters have the beauty of youth. So, they work to be hotter than their daughters by having hotter bods, blonder hair, and higher heels.

Anyways, I leave you with this ridiculous video:

My thoughts yesterday while driving:

the traffic here in atlanta is horrendous. it takes half an hour minimum to go anywhere. even like..down the street to the gym. where i live, there can be traffic even at 6 pm on a Sunday. It’s due to the fact that everything is pretty spread out here, and public transportation isn’t really used. then, if the weather is even mildly less than perfect. rain equates to “drive 20 mph slower, and turn on your caution lights”. if it snows, we have 28 car pile ups…as some of my friends who are still across the Mason-Dixie line have been kind enough to show me links of. Well who’s laughing now? It’s February and I still have yet to lift a shovel! it’s 60 and sunny out today.

yesterday, traffic was worse than usual. EVERYWHERE. not just on the highway. not just around downtown. i’m just driving down some little back road and it’s backed up. THEN i hear on the radio “a ZEBRA has escaped in downtown Atlanta”. like what the??

this zebra..escaped from the circus…lol. imagine if you are driving along with your kids and your kid is like “hey mommy look! a zebra!” an you’re like “sure honey…” and then WHAM a zebra runs into your car. hahahaha!!!!!

zebras are awesome. poor zebra, he just wanted to hang out where the playas play…he’d certainly fit in…i mean look at that coat…the flyest threads in animal kingdon. lol.

Aside from zebras popping up on the highway…due to the lack of sidewalks (since as mentioned before, most of the population here drives), PEOPLE POP OUT OF NOWHERE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT and SCARE THE SHIT OUT OF ME!For example, last night I’m just driving down this like 6 lane road…and WHOA hello! there’s a man, of course he’s dressed in like BLACK, standing in the middle of the road, trying to cross the street. It’s become that when you see someone actually WALKING somewhere, you’re like “what the hell is this person doing? crazy…” lol. probably explains why the gym is always overpacked… forcing us to behave like hamsters.

This also leads to bums who stand at traffic lights and walk up to your car. Personally i think this is more awkward than your average bum in normal cities that sits on the street corner. I mean at least if the bum is stationary, you can walk away quickly like you are busy. At the traffic light…you are frantically trying to look anywhere but at the bum. NEVER MAKE EYE CONTACT. that is an invitation to the bum. There is this particularly nasty bum in midtown, that walks up and down the line of cars, and then when the light turns green, and you drive off, he FLICKS OFF EVERY CAR. pf..yeah that makes me wanna give you money the next time i drive by, idiot. i personally prefer either the nice bums with “GOD BLESS” signs, or those funny ones that say like “I NEED ALCOHOL MONEY”.

OH but what ALWAYS gets me are the middle aged/old asian guys who play the asian violin thing in the subway. Even more so if the thing is so broke it only plays like 4 notes. Man that always gets me to shell out some money…

so..on a completely different note…

i’m seriously addicted to the food network/travel channel, which is funny because I’ve never watched it prior to this year. im working on becoming a “foodie” (Wikipedia: an informal term for a particular class of aficionado of food and drink), although currently im on hiatus due to an upcoming cruise, which will surely become a future post.  Regardless, i’m working on becoming an atlanta yelp celebrity (shameless promo: http://julietc.yelp.com/).

Anyhow, back to the point of this post. So I love Anthony Bourdain and how he travels around the world showcasing all the different and unique cultures through food. Most places have markets, or farms and food is fresh, and is steeped in tradition and cultural flavors.

And then….the next show comes on.. and i see THIS:

MAN V FOOD. basically, this guy goes around the country (good ol USA) and finds places that have American junk food in ginormous proportions- think “5 lb burger” ie triple-bypass-surgery-burger…

no seriously…that’s what they are called… http://www.heartattackgrill.com/ the cooks here dress as doctors, and the waitresses are skanked out nurses.

Then, he takes on a food challenge, which involves him participating in one of those contests where you have to finish enough food for 4 normal people. ow. the pain. his stomach must be stretched to the size of no return, god. he MUST have to purge afterwards.

so i get it. I LOVE chili, i love fries, i love CHEESE, i love CHILI CHEESE FRIES…oh and burgers and hotdogs are pretty freakin awesome. In fact, i can often be found day dreaming about a delicious chili cheese dog and cheese fries…

BUT, what does eating DISGUSTINGLY HUGE portions of greasy food all just slopped together (take for example the sandwich, if u can even call it that, in the video- hot dog bun, 3 lbs of burger, a hotdog, 4 slices of cheese, and a hearty portion of chili poured over all of it; or a philly cheese steak piled with mozzarella sticks and fries) accomplish? Creating a country of artery clogged fucks wearing shirts that say “I beat/survived the (insert ridiculous synonmym for the word “big”) challenge”. whoohoo…

like c’mon. THIS is exactly why the rest of the world thinks we’re unclassy, savage, and fat. a country where we are proud of our delicacies- apparently anything fried and hugmungo. hmm… let’s see, in Sicily, they specially feed pigs and create sausage from centuries old recipes. Meanwhile, we celebrate excess and gluttony in our country by rewarding these restaurants with TV specials and followings greater than some churchs’ congregations…THIS is what we offer to the culinary world? THESE are the recipes that we will hand down to future generations?

hmm…yep. i guess we’re just classy like that, America.

Is there a gene for greatness? Sometimes it seems like it. Families where the parents have accomplished huge great things, and their kids went on to the same thing. Understandably, these kids grew up in an environment where everyone is motivated and driven, and these kids may even be motivated by the fact that they want to do greater things than their parents. And, these kids have more access and resources thanks to their fabulous parents. I say this because I love Wikipedia. I can get lost for hours reading pages and clicking from reference to reference learning all sorts of fun things. I particularly like reading about fabulous families. I like to see the characteristics of these people that drive them to do such awesome things. Here’s a couple that I’m particularly intrigued by:

The AOKI family:

The Dad- Rocky Aoki This guy was born in Japan, and became a wrestler… He qualified for the Olympics, and eventually was inducted into theUS Wrestling Hall of Fame He goes on to work an ice cream truck and study restaurant management. Then he opens Benihana. BALLER. In 2005 the restaurant was already worth $60-100 million Wow. Also, this guy was a powerboat racer (?) and almost died from racing…hmm… so a real risk-taker… 

  Son- Steve Aoki  

 OK so the dad had 7 kids…with multiple women of course (3) Then his son becomes a DJ with his own record label… He’s diversified into headphones, is endorsed by clothing and shoe labels, owns a restaurant with other celebs He was even featured in NBA2k7 as a special celebrity player.

  Daughter- Devon Aoki OK he has not 1 but TWO famous kids. Devon is a model/actress. She’s only 5’5” but she’s been on all the famous runways. She was in a bunch of movies too…    

 The Vanderbilt/Cooper family: 

 So, everyone knows the Vanderbilt family…of shipping/railroad fame.Okay so obviously that’s already really baller.But then they have Gloria Vanderbilt, actress, model, fashiondesigner…artist, author…and who was married like 5 times. How lucky of her to have money, beauty, and artistic ability…biatch.

AND her son ANDERSON COOPER, the (hot) CNN reporter. But what really intrigues me about him is that he obviously has plentyof family money, yet he chose to pursue a career in journalism, and he often goes to dangerous locations and has to live in terrible conditions.I mean, he was able to pursue his dream of finding out the latest news,and become pretty popular and successful! 

Ok so what have we learned?  That super successful people have go through a bunch of lovers ilife…lol. Well actually this sort of makes sense, because they are probably more interested in their ambitions than in their lovers.Also, since they do have that crazy ambition, they become very interesting and magnetic to people, so more people want to datethem/want a piece of them. This scares me. For example, I justwatched Freedom Writers. Where this teacher is SO driven tohelp these underprivileged teens, that her husband ends up leaving her. So does that mean that if I want to be ambitious, and pursuemy dreams, I will inevitably end up alone? I mean, pursuingyour dreams means that you have to be pretty selfish with your time and thoughts. 

Risk taking seems to be a a common factor…in all aspects of life. Such as Rocky Aoki who almost died in a powerboat race? Or Anderson Cooper who goes to all those dangerous places to report the news… Diversification? People who are successful can be successful in a lot of different areas it seems. Shit…I haven’t even achievedONE great thing, let alone in many different areas! 

What else? Successful parents often have successful kids? Unless your kids are sloth money wasters…So, that’s not fair! Working because you want to is very different than HAVING to work. I guess a lot of rich kids don’t HAVE tomake ends meet, so they get to pursue their dreams.But then, just because they get to pursue their dreams, doesn’t mean they are necessarily good at it…so then…what’s the reasoning for these dynasties of successful people? I vote for greatness gene…mainly so that I can feel better about the fact that as every day goes by, I see my dreams float further and further away….. Gosh darn it.