Okay, I don’t normally do this because I think if you even begin to respond to people’s postings you’re asking for so much trouble (even admitting that you READ postings on message boards is asking for trouble), but who the fuck cares? So, I felt the need for some reason to comment on something – I don’t think that any of my thoughts are original. In fact, most thoughts I have these days I've a million times in my life, so they don’t even feel original to ME. And I can’t imagine that any experience I have, any thought I think, any word I say, or any idea I conjure up is at all unique. In fact, I don’t even know if there is such a thing as an original thought. Sometimes I wonder if any invention wasn’t someone else’s idea before that, but that person never did anything about it. I mean, are we saying that it’s IMPOSSIBLE that E=mc2 (how do you do squared on the computer?) was not someone else’s discovery well before Einstein? That maybe those before him that thought it and told others was not understood, or that no one cared, or no one listened, or he or she never told anyone?? Come on. So, maybe sometimes I put together certain thoughts into one entry, and I like the way it sounds, and I thought it might be interesting to other people because it was interesting to me. Maybe it's not. Whatever. It doesn't hurt anyone, if people don't want to come to my site because they're bored by it, then of course - don't go.

I’ll tell you, if I waited to put things on this site that were nothing less than mind-blowing and original, there wouldn’t be a site. It’s as plain as that. And I think we all know this, but still, you’re all here reading it, and checking it, and pretty consistent with that because I can see how many hits I get. I find it shocking myself that anyone comes here at all, because I don’t think it’s much. But I still have readers for some reason. Maybe people come here just to read it and have more material to make fun of me, who knows, and at this point, who even cares? Even when I’ll have one boring entry after the next, so boring that I don’t even read it over to see if I’ve misspelled words like Manhattan, I’ll still get emails demanding more and more entries – people frustrated that I don’t write more. I know you can’t please everyone, and I’m not sure if I please anyone, but I like having a website. It’s just…fun, in a mellow, simple kind of way. I like putting my thoughts out there, and if no one wants to read it anymore, it’s not like I can blame them. I don’t change the world. I don’t discuss anything important or pertinent like politics or religion. I don’t take too many risks about the outside world, and I titled this site “everythinglori” when I don’t even share details about my personal life – not even my work life anymore (to avoid the problems I had in the past). So, what is the point of this damn thing? I have no idea. I don’t have one. There was a reason at first, but now there certainly is none.

Hey, I know what I want to talk about though for those of you who have been reading this for a couple years – what exactly happened with that last job when I had to stop talking about it here. Please, let me apologize upfront if I’ve already given the details here and have forgotten, but I don’t think I have, and since I’m way out of that situation, I don’t think it matters anymore. Okay, so a little over a year ago, I was waitressing at this new bar in Brighton, MA, as you may know. It was a great source of material (particularly for those readers out there that worked in restaurants and could relate to the hell one must experience to get a tip.) I really liked the place. It was a cool bar, it had a very consistent crowd coming in. I made decent cash – enough to live on without too much struggle. The rest of the staff there was just awesome, and I liked all the managers except for this one total psycho bitch that was engaged to one of the owners. She had NEVER waitressed in her life, and didn’t know shit about it, but was mean to us when things got difficult because she could not relate. One of those typical bosses who kiss ass to the customers as though she was a good person, and then treated her workers like they weren’t good enough to sniff her shit. On Monday nights, she was actually super cool to me for some reason. Let us leave early, totally relax, let us watch TV. It was like she had a split personality. Mondays she was a cool chick, and then the rest of the week, she made people cry, made cooks quit right in the middle of a Friday night rush – I mean, just a total nightmare.

Okay, so one day, I walked into work ready to make some money, and the general manager (whom I loved because he was very kind to all of us) said he needed to talk to me. I already had tables seated who had requested me, mind you. He brought me downstairs, sat me down, and told me that the owners wanted to fire me because of my website. He said they had received complaints about me regarding my website, and they didn’t like me talking about my waitressing experiences on there. They said it was bad for business. Now, this is interesting because these owners had been up my asshole since I started there because they thought I was so GOOD for business because people kept commenting to them about my being on TV (this was all while the Challenge was airing). Bad for business? Hardly. Just that VERY day I had a large crowd sitting in my section that had never been to the bar before just so they could have me as their waitress. Sure, maybe it was to torture me or send well-done steaks back saying they were overcooked, but they were still there! So, they didn’t fire me, but wanted to suspend me for a week effective immediately. (The funny part of this is that shift was my last shift before a week vacation I had scheduled to LA, so it wasn’t exactly teaching me a lesson, you know?) Basically, they said they had received phone calls and messages left on the machines of three different bars the owners had in the Boston area. The reason they thought it was bad business was because my complaints had spread to their other bars – but do you see how that doesn’t make any sense? I don’t work at those other places, and I’ve never been there. Doesn’t it look fishy if customers are complaining about my service at places I’ve never been? These owners looked at it though like I was so offensive that it was hurting all their businesses. Now the nature of the complaint was that I had apparently served these people, and then those people discovered that I was making fun of them on my site. To me, this sounded like whomever I was serving had obviously known I had a site, had READ the site, and then came in for the sole purpose of provoking me, and then ran home to CHECK the site to see if I had mentioned them. So, if someone had done something fucked up, and then went to my site, read me saying something about someone doing something fucked up, ASSUMED it was they I was talking about (even WITHOUT ANY descriptions or specifics), and complained about it, then it was OBVIOUSLY on purpose! They could never prove it was them, and doesn't it seem a little funny that someone would be like, "Hey, that must be ME that did that awful thing"??? It’s as backwards and stupid as it sounds.

So then my bosses said I’m not allowed to talk about that stuff on my site anymore. Now, sure I probably could have sued them – something about freedom of speech, or whatever. I never said where I worked, what town I worked in. Never mentioned any names, never even physically described a single person I talked about. Could it hold up in court? Sure, I guess it could, but who has that kind of time and energy? Anyway, I started to hate working there because of the tension. And then I started to feel really pressured about what not to say on my site. You see, at that time, my website and job at that bar were sources of stability for me, that had now become sources of stress. So, it was very sad for me. And I didn't know how this could happen to me, until I received something in my inbox.

A reader of my site sent me an email to let me know that they had read something on a small and obscure message board of Lori-haters that they were plotting a way to actually ruin my life. They were finding out different ways they could find where I worked and who the owners were and then discussed contacting them to fabricate lies about my service or having been personally insulted about comments I had made about them (pretending to be patrons of the bar) on my site. Just a bunch of sad, pathetic teenagers who decided they didn’t like me on the shows, and they went out of their way to hurt me personally because of it. These kids had never met me, never emailed me, never even been to Boston. I mean, I know I bitch about people on TV all the time. I make fun of everyone I read about in Star or US Weekly. However, I would never go so far as to try and ruin their lives, you know? I don’t actually wish harm onto anyone because I don’t like how they are portrayed on TV. So, all the fun from my job and my website were taken away from me, and then I had a whole new overwhelming sense of disappointment in people of this world. To think that there are such horrible people out there when I never done a thing to them. To think that they’re reading this entry right now and feeling proud of themselves for having done this. The whole thing made me feel literally sick, and I prayed that karma truly does exist because if it does, then only bad things could happen to these pathetic people who have so little in their own lives that they needed so desperately to be involved in mine.

That’s what happened there, in case you never knew and were at all curious. Maybe not an original problem, but it was certainly all new to me.

Oh, I’m on Proactive now. I’ve been using Clearsil every day for literally 10 years – since my sister Kim sent it to me in a gift package to my summer camp (French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts). Though it has worked relatively well, I still get the occasional break-out, during my period my face is like a mine field, and if I skip it for one day, my forehead looks like it’s covered with moguls for an itty-bitty tiny skier. As if there were hidden cameras and we were filming a Proactive infomercial without my knowing, two of my coworkers bombarded me with Proactive preaching. “You don’t need to live like this,” “Look at my skin,” “I tell everyone they should just TRY it! What have they got to lose??” So, I ordered it, and I’m using it now. So far so good, but I’m not a testimonial just yet. They say it takes three months before you have an absolutely flawless face. I'm definitely better, but I’m not there yet. Hasn’t even been one month yet, so we’ll see. But most importantly, my face does not smell like Clearasil…

Question - whenever I hear sappy or cheesy instrumental music, I usually refer to it as elevator music - don't you? But when is the last time you heard music played in an elevator? I'm starting to wonder if I can remember EVER hearing actual elevator music outside of funny commercials or awkward movie scenes. It's pretty damn quiet in there most of the time.

If you had the gift to make other people truly happy - or at least feel peaceful and truly happy for just an hour or so by simply wishing it upon them or touching their shoulder, but it meant a piece of your happiness would slip away for that time being, and you would feel the emptiness for all the happiness you sacrificed, would you do it? What if you never regained that happiness - not even to appreciate that you did something good - not even to feel happiness FOR the other person because your sadness was so consuming - would you still do it? What if that feeling of happiness would eventually return, but only after that person became sad again? Could you feel good that you gave that person happiness for the hour if by only knowing was because they no longer did? I go back and forth between this one. Whenever I think of being happy myself, I think I need to do whatever I can do get it because I deserve it, but sometimes, I almost wish I'd be miserable if it meant someone else would be happy. I'm sure most people feel this at times, but I always wonder what I'd really want because you never know if an opportunity will come when your wishes will be granted. That whole "careful what you wish for..." thing. It's true, isn't it?

I'm gonna go. I don't feel good. I feel a little sick.