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Yeah, so it's prom season.
When I was 16 years old the local regional paper offered me a job writing fluff features. My first article was on prom season and choosing a dress. I have sort of a soft spot in my heart for cheesy prom fashions.
But this weekend so far has been really prom-oriented. The first thing my mother mentioned to me when I walked in the house was my half dozen or so prom and formal dance dresses hibernating in the attic space. I've decided to sell them on Ebay when I manage to drag my ass up to the attic to retrieve them.
Now, I don't know who would want prom fashions from the late '80s. Pastel teal, dark teal, vivid red with a poofy peplum -- we're talking real scene stealers. But I'll put them up for auction and some hopelessly stuck in the '80s, big haired fashion victim will buy them up. She'll be one of those people with big ass wall of bangs and still wearing suede high heeled slouch boots with the loose buckle around the ankle. She'll wear my prom fashions from yesteryear with fingerless lace gloves. Oh yeah.
And then my mom and stepfather took us out to eat at Cracker Barrel this evening for dinner. Apparently Cracker Barrel is part of the pre-prom dinner circuit. I would have been mortified if my date took me to Cracker Barrel for my prom dinner. The place has paper napkins and I'm going to sit there in a full skirt satin prom gown?
Of course, I do realize that there isn't a huge selection of fancy schmancy places to choose from in this region. It's Cracker Barrel or Perkins or maybe Denny's. I wonder how many people have pictures from their prom in this area with a statue of the Big Boy?
My mother's water stinks. Yes, I'm here in the lovely rural cesspool that is my hometown. My mother actually lives outside of the city of Berwick, in the rural route division. There has never been regular water hookup out here -- she has a well in the yard and the water runs through a water softener before it's used in the house.
The water here has always been a source of great trauma for me. Growing up we could never keep white stuff white. If I put a white tshirt through the wash it would come out white-ish. It's the rust in the water. In high school the water softener broke and no one noticed until my hair started turning rust-colored. Oh, and did I mention it was right before the winter formal? So I had brassy, rust-colored hair in all my photos from the formal -- I was hot, let me tell you. It was the '80s so I had big ass hair to begin with, and then the color was, um, horrible.
Because I grew up with it, I never noticed the smell. When Craig and I started dating and he came up to meet my mom, after his first shower he said "There's something seriously wrong with your water. It smells like rotten eggs."
Apparently we also have sulfur in the water and there's nothing that can be done about the smell. And it doesn't really matter because no one else even notices it. Well, that's not true. Ever since Craig pointed it out to me, now I smell the water, too.
Bastard!
So now every time I visit my mom and take a shower, I practically gag because now I can smell the eggs. Ignorance really is bliss.
Yesterday the Boy Scouts Cradle of Liberty council [that's the Philadelphia area Boy Scouts] announced that they would no longer abide by the national charter's policy of sexual discrimination.
I was stunned.
Stunned. Coincidentally, the national office is located in Texas.
Now Boston has already done the same thing, but it's a "don't ask, don't tell" type of policy. To my knowledge, Philadelphia's decision is a bit more final than that -- they just don't care if you're gay, because being gay doesn't automatically make you a pedophile or a bad person or a recruiter for the gay circus.
Shortly after the announcement was made, a scout leader from South Philly held a press conference and announced he's gay. It wasn't because he felt the need to come out on local television, but because he wanted to immediately challenge the announcement...to be sure this new policy is for real and not just a bunch of bullshit for the media.
And it's important -- the Boy Scouts are having their national convention here next week. If you live or work in the city, don't be surprised by the protests you'll see.
While I still think the Boy Scouts [and the Girl Scouts] is an organization that teaches outdated stereotypes and roles, I'm excited that local councils are waking up and not letting the Jerry Falwell types get the last word.
I'll be interested in seeing how this all plays out over the next week or two.
Yesterday I gave up one of my precious ten minute meeting breaks to talk to a co-worker about yoga. I've been doing yoga for many years now -- I took hatha classes from the Picasso of yoga for three years, Bikram for a little over a year, and now I follow a home practice of my own. It's not some weird new age-y shit, but I do admit that it keeps me relaxed enough so that I don't throw down on the street with random people who irk me.
Anyway.
A few weeks ago our HR department started a little noontime exercise stretching class. It's basically the kind of thing meant for immobile old ladies and you don't even have to change out of your work clothes. No thanks. But then someone in another department made some noise about having afternoon yoga in one of the conference rooms, and contacted me to talk about options.
So I gave her a basic sales pitch and recommended my former hatha instructor -- she's really an excellent instructor and she has a studio locally and she already does corporate classes. And hey, if I don't have to leave the building for good instruction, so much the better.
And then I started to think about it.
Would I really want to do yoga with people I work with? Some people are probably going to be OK to exercise with, but then there are going to be people who I don't want to see in shorts. Also, yoga is a very personal practice. I don't want to talk to someone about a meeting I was just in while I'm concentrating on not falling over in balancing stick pose. I don't want to have to politely ignore someone yukking it up during corpse pose.
And here's the other thing: I'm pretty flexible. You just know there's some older woman who is going to be watching me in dancer pose wondering if I was contortionist in the circus at some point....and some guy from IT wondering if he could schnooker me into bed. There's just all sorts of other stuff that goes into doing unprofessional things with your professional co-workers.
I'll have to consider this a little more.
After work today Craig and I are driving up to my mother's house in Berwick. Well, Craig is driving and I will be a passenger.
I really hate going to my mom's house. It's not that I don't want to see my family, but there's never anything to do. I like to make my own fun as much as the next person, but when all you've got going is cows, a couple of stoplights, and bad coffee, there's not much you can do.
Plus, there's the issue of invasion of privacy. My mother is on her third marriage. She and her current husband seem very much in love and I always kind of feel like I'm putting the kibosh on their little love nest. My step-father really likes me and Craig, and we really like him, but I'm sure that they're both glad when Sunday rolls around and Craig and I drive off and leave them alone.
During my mother's second marriage I think she was relieved when we came to visit. It was a diversion from the nightmare. But now that things are good, I feel kind of bad. No one likes to think that their parents are having wild monkey love all over the house, but that's the distinct feeling you get when you walk into my mother's house. Sort of like there was some serious nookie going on just seconds before you walked in the house. It's kind of gross to contemplate, but at the same time I'm happy she's happy.
There's not much on the agenda this weekend. It's supposed to rain, which for those of you living in the Northeast of the U.S., this should come as no surprise. There's probably going to be shopping involved -- there are some outlet stores near Stroudsberg I've been meaning to get to.
By the same token, my mother hates to come down to visit me. She hates large cities. Of course, to her, any town that takes more than ten minutes to drive end-to-end is a large city. So she really hates Philadelphia. Too many people, too much traffic, too many people who aren't exactly like her.
And I'm sure she thinks that she's interrupting Craig and I from getting our groove on. It must be a genetic thing.
I feel, I don't know, kind of out of it and weird today. It might be all the stink and mess those boys left yesterday during Testosterone Day. I swear, I go away for one day and now there's dirty underwear balled up on the floor, flatulent drunk guys in the corners, and empty beer cans all over the coffee table sans coasters.
Or it could be that I jammed my mascara wand in my eye this morning by accident.
Ah, estrogen!
I really did have a mascara wand episode this morning. Now I'm walking around with one eye all puffy and red and without mascara. I look like a freak...or like I have pink eye.
I'm also discombobulated because I forgot to put my watch on. So all day I'm going to clutch my wrist in panic every 20 minutes thinking I lost my watch. Stupid.
And thank you to Mikey, Andrew, Scott, Buzz, and Sledge for keeping things entertaining around here yesterday. I'm really kind of missing the orange and manly skin.
After 8 hours of painting and 3 hours of sitting in a high school auditorium watching students receive awards and scholarships, I am calling it a day. Nicole, thanks for letting me play with you, er, your site I mean. It was great fun. Sorry 'bout the boob picture. I know that was pretty risque! Maybe someday you can do me the favor of guest posting on my site.
Anyway, if y'all find yourselves with extra time, stop by my site (www.buzzstuff.net) sometime and say hi. Love to have ya.
G'nite all.
My anxiety kicked in during my freshman year of high school. I attended Bishop Sullivan High in Baton Rouge Louisiana, a co-ed Catholic school. The school was only ten years old and seemed to have little clue how it would eventually fit into the neighboring community. The extracurricular sports programs at Bishop were top of the line with girl’s soccer, football, wresting, basketball, track, tennis and even swimming yet the school had no pool. On the other hand, the Art department was lousy. Drama, art history, wood shop, band, and show choir were all lumped into two vague classes: Art I and Art II.
This didn’t bode well for a gay teen that needed an extracurricular activity that didn’t involve physicality. Its not that I hated sports or was without desire to play, but rather I hated the phony comradery that went along with it. I wasn’t excited about a sport like touch football because I found it too arousing. It made me nervous.
Freshman Physical Education was at 5th period everyday. My class met in the school’s Cafertorium just after lunch. The Cafetorium was half cafeteria/half gymnasium and even holy ground for weekly Mass. This area was not only cold and damp but it also smelled of beans and rotten milk.
My P.E. teacher was Coach Fernandez; a short, beady-eyed man with curly hair and a whistle and clipboard permanently attached to his side. He wore grotesquely short polyester sweats that no man over 35 years of age should ever be seen in. He seemed the perfect caricature of a high school Physical Ed coach.
None of the other boys had developed into a hairy puberty like I had. This made me feel miserable. I began to admire the other boys’ smooth legs and wished that the hair on mine would magically disappear. Shaving them would only garner more attention. So it was rare that I wore shorts and I became terrified of my family’s yearly beach excursions because it meant I would be seen in swim trunks. I hated my body.
Puberty and I had hit head on. Hair was sprouting out from under my arms, my chest, my legs, and even my face. These were not soft baby hairs, but rather thick dark manly hairs that were only further pronounced by my incredibly pale skin. I didn’t want to stick out during P.E. I vividly remember cloudy winter mornings on the school’s football field where I felt stark naked in tiny gray shorts. Gray was not a color that lessoned the whiteness of my pale skin. I remained frozen the entire period and tried hard not to move around too much. Such a thing might draw more attention. I pleaded with the coach to let me sit on the sidelines during each game. When this didn’t work I forged a doctor’s notice saying that my Ritalin would be keeping me from strenuous activity the remainder of the school year. I was hardly the religious type but prayed god speed for that month-long period when my P.E. class would be confined indoors learning to give CPR to plastic heads.
All of the other students at Bishop loved sports. Everyone else seemed to crave touch football. My schoolmates slammed into one another proudly and gave each other high five’s for the best plays. Luckily, the school’s curriculum required learning badminton. This was a game where long slender racquets were used to slam a ‘birdie’ (a shuttlecock with a floral-patterned wing) across a narrow synthetic net. It became my favorite sport. I also joined the cross-country team because it was a sport that allowed me to run away from everyone else… something I became very good at.
After high school my body image changed. Instead of seeing my hairiness as a bad thing, I began to relish in my difference. If anything the hair on my legs made me seem more masculine than the other boys. I also gained somewhat of a leg fetish. Maybe not so much a fetish like fantasizing about stockings and tube socks, but a fascination with a part of the body that can easy be sexualized.
man oh man. oh man. oh man! i think this is cool, we'll see if it flies, and if not, you can't say i didn't try and i'll have egg on my face.
as i mentioned in my first post here, i am a DJ (7-midnight, EDT). thursday night is when it's the "request show", and that's where you come in. i'd like you to listen (there's plenty of streams to choose from!) and make requests, by leaving a comment. it's that simple, gang. thanks, or something in advance!
a little background:
my station has been around for 20 years as a modern rock station, and we tend to avoid the nu-metal bands like korn and the biscuit, but we do spike in rage/marilyn manson/audioslave/deftones/ministry from time to time at night. in other words: we like to rock, as long as it doesn't suck. plus, a ton of indie-label stuff is on the playlist.
Well, it appears that although Nicole trusts us boys to post to her site she (wisely) does not trust us enough to upload pictures. Ahh, but I think I may have figured out a way to fool her. Wanna see some boobies, boys. Here you go...
(oYo)
Sorry guys, it's the best I could do
OK, it's confession time.
So, everybody's got music that they love, and they sing along to...
But.
Do you have any song that you absolutely hate, but you can't seem to change the radio station? And then you find yourself singing along? And then it's stuck in your head?
Mr. Big's "To Be With You" comes to mind. So does Color Me Badd's "I Wanna Sex You Up". And Backstreet Boys' "I Want it That Way".
You are.... my fire
The one... desire
Believe... when I say
I want it that way.
But we... are two worlds, apart
Can't reach to your heart
When you say
That, I want it that way
(Tell me why) Ain't nothin' but a heartache,
(Tell me why) Ain't nothin' but a mistake,
(Tell me why) I never wanna hear you say,
I want it that way.
Augh. Shoot me now.
Apropos of nothing, I finally tracked down the entire CD of Band of Brothers in MP3 format; this has been one of my holy grails for a while now.
If you've not seen this miniseries, I can't recommend it enough. It puts the human face on war, following Easy Company, part of the 101st Airborne Division, from their formation as a unit in Georgia through the end of the war in the Austrian Alps. My wife, who prefers to watch other things, watched this one and was sucked in on the emotional rollercoaster, caring about the stories of the men.
It's a stunning piece of work, bringing alive history in a way rarely achieved in any other medium. If you ever get to see it, do so. There's a companion episode of the real soldiers portrayed in the series, and it tells of what happened to them after the war.
There's a lot of testosterone in this one, and the kicker is, it's real -- not that artificial crap that passes for entertainment these days. This is a true story, showing the good, the bad, and the ugly (ah-ah-ah-ah-ah, wa-wa-wa) of war.
I'm just your average, everyday guy, so things like this don't usually happen to me...
But, the other day...
Yeah, right. I haven't been laid in forever. But I had ya going for a sec, didn't I?
How's that for a title? Hehe. That oughtta get at least a few Google hits, eh?
Ok, so my cable (therefore internet access) went out for a couple of hours today. Once I got through the panic phase of this occurance, I was able to calm my butt down and I got everything working again. And by "I", I obviously mean my wife. Thanks hon. Anyway, I get back online and jump over here to check out Mikeys pics of naked or near naked women. Do I find any? NO! What's up with that? Yo Mikey, where are ya buddy? How long are we supposed to wait over here? I mean, where are we, the Ukraine? (Apologies to those actually living in the Ukraine.)
As we will see here today, a litte testosterone can be a good thing. But mix too much testosterone with mental illness and throw in a whole bunch of asshole and this is what you get:
In a television interview scheduled for broadcast Thursday, Tyson again denied he raped Desiree Washington in 1991 in an Indianapolis hotel room. But he said the burden of being labeled a convicted rapist makes him want to do it now.
"I just hate her guts. She put me in that state, where I don't know," Tyson said. "I really wish I did now. But now I really do want to rape her."
Tyson made the comments during a recent interview in Miami Beach with Greta Van Susteren, who was taking a look back at the circumstances of Tyson's 1992 trial that ended with him convicted of rape and sentenced to six years in prison.
He served three years of the sentence before being released on parole.
A call for comment to Tyson's adviser, Shelly Finkel, was not immediately returned.
The interview will be shown Thursday night (9 p.m. EDT) on "The Pulse" on the Fox network.
By The Associated Press
Well, that didn't take long, did it? I wouldn't be me if I wasn't posting something about the lies used to drive the U.S. into the Iraq war.
No Bunker where U.S. Bombs Targeted Saddam-CBS
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Baghdad bunker which the United States said it bombed on the opening night of the Iraq war in a bid to kill Saddam Hussein never existed, CBS Evening News reported Wednesday. The network quoted a U.S. Army colonel in charge of inspecting key sites in Baghdad as saying no trace of a bunker or of bodies had been found at the site on the southern outskirts of the Iraqi capital, known as Dora Farms."When we came out here, the primary thing they were looking for was an underground facility, or bodies, forensics, and basically, what they saw was giant holes created. No underground facilities, no bodies," Col. Tim Madere said.
CBS, saying it was the first news organization to visit the site, reported that the CIA had searched it once and Col. Madere had searched it twice as part of efforts to find traces of DNA that could indicate if Saddam or his sons had been killed or wounded.
The network said the main palace in the compound remained standing despite the surrounding destruction. It quoted Madere as saying anyone who had been in the building could have survived the raid.
Shortly after the attack, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters: "There's no question but that the strike on that leadership headquarters was successful. We have photographs of what took place. The question is, what was in there?""
Obviously, nothing, Rummy.
It seems to me that lately there's been a slowly building momentum in some news organizations to reveal the lies used to propel us into the war. If we see more of this over the coming weeks, it means that the media (Fox News excepted, of course) has grown tired of being the administration's conduit for information dissemination.
Fall asleep.
No, seriously, don't fall asleep when coming into work. Why? Well, if you do, you end up missing your stop. I did this last week, and nearly did it again this morning.
I was fortunate last week in that I only missed Grand Central (I live in NYC, in case you hadn't figured that out) by one stop, waking up at 33rd Street. This was a pain in the ass, though, as I then had to schlepp ten blocks back uptown and over four avenues.
Argh!
Fortunately today, I woke up a stop ahead of Grand Central. You'd think the older woman who sits next to me most days would have woken me up last week, too...
In the eight years I've ridden the subway into work, last week was the first time I've fallen asleep on the way into work. Going home is a different story, since my stop is the last one on the #6 -- no chance of missing it!
Anyway, enough blathering about me. Or not. We'll see. I haven't had my coffee yet, so I'll be back like MacArthur and a division of infantry coming ashore in the Phillipines.
Good morning everyone! Buzz here, doin' a little guest posting while our luscious host Nicole is off doing some work thing. Just wanted to...**sniff, sniff**. What the hell is that smell? **Sniff** You know what, it still smells a little girly around here. This is supposed to be Testosterone Day around here so I say lets get rid of this incense , trash these throw pillows, remove those "lovely window treatments" and butch things up a bit. There we go. Now, how about a table facing the big screen TV so that me and the boys can watch a little hockey while we play some poker and puff on some nice, fat stogies! And put on some flannel, for pete's sake! Yeah that's better. *sniff sniff* Ahhh, that's much better. Smells like sweat and beer. Perfect. I'll be back later but for now, sit back, relax, bathe in the manliness of this place today. There's other stud-muffins coming along (along with the promise of some nudie pics from Mikey) so enjoy the ride.
** lets one rip **
Hehe.
greetings and salutations! since it's now past midnight on the right coast-area, i'll do my duty as guest blogger. i am indeed the hardest working man in show business. what do i do, you ask? i'm the assistant program director/7-Midnight DJ at WOXY in cincinnati. if you've seen rain man, that's my station raymond keeps repeating over and over and over. pretty keen stuff, that.
now here's the fun stuff: an excusive, one-day only MP3 for you to digest. ben folds had a side project called fear of pop, and they released one album called 'volume 1'. the tune you're getting features the vocal stylings of one william shatner. it's a hoot, so give it a listen right now and let me know what you think!
that's it for right now. your next destination? my blog. just a suggestion, natch.
You know, I was going to keep it all under wraps. I was going to keep my mouth shut. But I'm just so excited about Testosterone Day here at go fish, I just have to share!
First, there's your guest posters. Or, as I like to call them, the Virtual Virility Posse. OK, not really. But as far as testosterone goes, I think they're all chest hair--
Secondly, there's a limited edition skin that goes with the big day -- you can catch a sneak peak here, skin #9 all the way at the bottom of the list. It'll become default tonight at midnight and last all the way through the end of Testosterone Day tomorrow.
So yeah, think of me while I'm wilting away at my all day long meeting tomorrow. Let me know if there are any problems with the special skin [note: I did not say foreskin, although I was tempted to because I'm cheesy like that]...oh, and if you have a penis and would like to be part of the musky manliness tomorrow, let me know by 10pm EST tonight.
Note: this post updated at 11:12pm to reflect additional guest posters. Oh, and the temporary design is live now. Hope you like it!
One of my wealthy brats Program participants stopped by to have a chat about Board service with my Vice President. I've been running this program now for four years and it's amazing to me how predictable people are.
Everyone wants to sit on the board of an arts agency -- the ballet, the theatre, the orchestra. It's the cool thing to do. It will bring you instant fame and will make you hip to your ultracool blase friends because you can score free tickets to events. It will look great on your resume.
Rarely does anyone prance into the program and lay it out to me like this: "Nicole, I have a real passion for helping the homeless. I'd like to serve with a small agency that runs a soup kitchen." I'd probably pass out if someone said that to me.
Anyway, this kid comes in to talk to the VP. Somehow the VP turns him onto the idea of serving with health and human services agencies because it's the humanitarian thing to do. He sits down in my office [he looks like a 12 year old in a business suit, by the way] and says, "My goal is a big theatre, but starting out I'd like to go with a health and human service agency. Mr. N told me some great things about them."
And I say "Yes, HHS's are great and you can impact the community a lot more with a smaller organization" blah blah blah. "So what types of agencies are you interested in?"
Blank stare.
"I don't really know what health and human services agencies are," he says.
I think I smirked, but I reigned it back in. I explained it all to him, and he still didn't really seem to get it. I could see I was going to have to do all the heavy lifting.
I've decided all I really want in life is to live on my own private tropical island while muscle-y studs fan me with giant feather fans and bring me round after round of Guinness pints. Oh, and I want to wear sequins and high heeled mules every day, but they won't hurt my feet because I will never need to stand -- my boys will carry me wherever I need to go. And hats -- I look good in hats, so I want to wear massive hats all day long.
And some of my cabana boys will tend to a flock of goats and sheep and cows and make cheese for me. My cheese-eth will runneth over-eth.
I'll have money with my own photo on it. It'll be a glamour shot of me with a big cheesy grin. I will be the supreme ruler of my island -- decreeing that organized religion be abolished, anyone can get married as long as it's two consenting adults, everyone will have federally funded health care, and no one is allowed to resort to violence for any reason.
Who's coming with?
In the grand scheme of things, I suppose it doesn't matter that my government's debt ceiling has been raised. I mean, what's $984 billion between friends, right? So what if the national debt goes as high as $7.4 trillion? It's not like I, personally, am $7.4 trillion in debt. I'm not going to be turned down for a credit card or mortgage because the government has an obscene amount of IOUs all over the place.
Does it really matter that my [pretend] children's children's children will be paying off this debt so that George can look good today? Will the future of this country be a pay taxes out the wazoo for absolutely no federal services because things got so fucked up? Because lower taxes now equals higher national debt now, what happens when someone with some sense comes into office? You can cut important services or you can raise taxes to get the extra money to pay down the debt. It makes sense to even someone like me without any real budgeting skills.
Will this tax cut stimulate the economy? I don't have a lot of faith. Did George "inherit" the crappy economy, as he claims? I'm not an expert. But it's been almost four years and he's still trying to pass off the blame onto someone else.
As Bush traveled widely to sell his package, he portrayed the ailing economy as something he inherited, taking care to mention that the recession took place in 2001's first three quarters -- the beginning of his presidency. That period of negative growth was then exacerbated by that fall's terrorist attacks and corporate corruption scandals, he often said.That's just sickening. If you broke it, or helped break it more, own up to it. You know what they say: you break it, you buy it. George didn't do this country any good -- maybe he should be held personally and financially responsible for his share of the national debt. It's not like he's hurting for money, not like the poor saps this tax cut/national debt increase is supposed to help.The intent was to place the problems' creation outside the president's control, while positioning him to gain credit for trying to fix them.
That'll put a hole in his trust fund.
Yeah, so I'm going to be stuck in a meeting all day tomorrow. I need some tips and tricks to keep myself from falling asleep face first on the conference table. As you might know from my incessant bitching, I'm not so good with meetings. I develop ADD and my ass falls asleep, and then the rest of me follows. So I need your help.
But I have entertainment being lined up as we speak...well, for you, anyway. It's going to be testosterone day around here tomorrow. I'll have new manly skin and everything [but don't worry, you can always change it], plus a couple of hot guys guest posting for me, sharing their chest hair virile viewpoints.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Here I am, back at work after a nice four day weekend. There's more work piled up on my desk than I can even manage and I was rudely awakened at 5am but some dumbass banging on my neighbor's door. I think I need to start keeping a flock of hedgehogs so that I can pelt offenders with hedgehogs when they get stupid.
Of course, not like I could sleep anyway -- Craig couldn't sleep. And you know how it is if you share a bed with someone: if one person can't sleep, misery loves company. It's not that Craig actively tries to keep me awake. It's just that he really likes to talk about not being able to sleep and then when I pointedly ignore him, hoping he'll shut the hell up so I can go to sleep, he starts with the big sighs and the large impact tossing and turning. Oh, and then there's the blanket stealing that goes along with that.
I'm telling you, sometimes I wish it was the 1950's and we had separate beds. Oh sure, it's nice to have someone to spoon when it's two degrees, but most of the time it's just an annoyance.
I have always maintained that being married would be a joyous thing if Craig and I lived in a double house, and we each lived in one side of the house. We could have conjugal visits and maybe a shared common area, but I don't want him anywhere near my kitchen, bathroom, etc. That kind of stuff just leads to petty arguments about cleaning up after yourself and switching the toilet paper roll. Craig and I would have the perfect marriage if we could just live in separate but adjoining residences.
So, it has rained pretty much every day for the last couple of weeks. That means I haven't had a good hair day in almost a month. Do you know what kind of effect looking bad for nearly thirty straight days can have?
Plus, I got a little bored today on my day off and I started taking random self-photos. Note to self: never, ever, under any circumstances, take macro shots of your skin. I realize that I'm 31 now and my skin is obviously going to start showing some wrinkles, but goddamn! I don't just have crow's feet -- I have the entire crow on my face!
It's enough to send me screaming to the spa or the dermatologist.
For a completely vain person like me, getting older-looking is difficult. I don't know what 31 is supposed to feel like, and I'm not sure what it's supposed to look like. It's not like I'm running around in hot pants and halter tops or anything -- you know, kiddie clothes. I moisturize and I don't have a lot of late nights or drinking binges. I rarely go tanning or even so much as leave my house without sun protection on my face.
When I look at my face it's obvious I'm not 20 anymore. I'm really whiny about this today, after taking a look at those photos. I probably look like I should -- like I'm 31. But I really panicked today. And combined with an extended period of bad hair, well, it's a recipe for overly narcissistic rambling.
Blah.
Yesterday while I was feeding Statia sushi and Nutella for lunch [no, not simultaneously and not literally], we started talking about the weird people we date for no good reason. Most of us have dated a long string of losers -- they wouldn't be ex-boyfriends and/or ex-girlfriends if they weren't losers, right?
Oh sure, you can decide that someone isn't right for you in a nice way, but when it all comes down to it you usually end up dumping someone because that person is a loser. You would think it would say something about our choice in dates if that's all we end up with, but that's not true -- most relationships start out with everyone on their best behavior and you're blinded by lust or obsession or the dreaded crush, and you don't notice that the person likes to behead animals and pop zits in public. It's only after about a month, when the glow wears off, that you begin to notice the person you're dating is the biggest loser on the planet.
Like most of you, I have a long and varied dating history. Craig and I have been together for a very long time [we started dating around 1993 or 1994], but before then I considered myself an equal opportunity dater. If someone asked me out, unless I knew the person was an axe murderer or something, I'd probably go out. I'm smart enough to realize that some people are hard to get a feel for unless you really spend time with them, and I wanted to give people a chance. What I learned is that first impressions are rarely wrong, and I should have listened to my gut. I would have sat home a lot more, but I wouldn't have spent years wondering why I couldn't seem to date a normal guy. Of course, then I wouldn't have bizarre dating stories to share.
I have publicly named my top five strange dates, but I have never mentioned the number one strangest dating experience until now. I guess I was saving it for a special occasion.
I briefly dated someone who honestly believed himself to be a vampire. And he looked exactly like Howard Stern. And did I mention that he was a pizza delivery boy, lived at home with his parents, and was 35 years old?
How does one meet and begin to date someone like that? Honestly, I have no real recollection of ever meeting him for the first time, nor do I remember how we started to date. Perhaps he used some sort of vampire-y trick to schnooker me into it. Before you know it, he was my kinda boyfriend and we dated for about three months. In all that time, he never once asked if he could bite me, nor did he ever display any sort of vampire-y behavior. And we never really talked about it. And, strangely enough, I didn't seem to be bothered by it. Maybe I was in a fugue state.
What's really odd is that I don't ever remember an official break up. One day we were dating and one day we weren't. And it's not like I was especially fond of him -- he was nice enough, but I wasn't really in like with him or anything.
Maybe one day I'll tell you about the clarinet playing cab driver I dated for a while. Now there's a story.
Oh, the short life span of an aphid on my roses. I took this photo and then squashed the little fuckers dead. And then I took my homemade aphid spray to the rose bush, laughing maniacally the entire time.
I do believe the sun has gone to my fevered brain.
Or it might be the Jerry Springer and other daytime television. That shit tends to make you a little nuts.
So nuts, in fact, that I have spent a small part of my day watching Zoolander, which is one of my new favorite ridiculously dumb movies, and reruns of Queer Duck [you can see all the shows at this link -- I recommend Episode 10 with Jerry Falwell...and it's not really work safe]. Damn that Craig, I would have been perfectly happy not ever knowing Queer Duck existed if it weren't from him. Now I need an Openly Gator tshirt, and an Oscar Wildcat coffee mug. Argh!
So...fascinated....by...the.....small.....shiny....glittering....objects!
I was kind of excited last Friday. There was a voice mail on my phone from a local publishing house, asking if I wanted to come in for an interview.
I should have known better.
The HR chick called me back this morning and was going through their list of extensive benefits. And then it gets to the part where I ask about the salary. "Well, I can't really talk about that over the phone," she says. "But can you tell me for the general range you're looking for?"
I name a number and she sighs. "The position pays significantly less than that, I'm afraid."
Looks like I'm stuck at panhandlers central for now.
What is this strange bright yellow fiery ball in the sky? I stepped outside my house just now to walk over to the post office and felt something strangely warm. I cast a shadow on the ground. I didn't get rain drenched.
It's fucking sunny! And it's not raining. I better stop talking now for fear that I should somehow jinx myself.
I ran into the pharmacy down the block on Sunday to get my birth control pill prescription refilled. The pharmacist asks, "Do you want the brand name or the generic?"
The question confused me. It's understandable [in my mind] to have generic brand antibiotics or pain killers, but it seems wholly bizarre to have generic birth control pills.
When I think of generic, I think of those products in the grocery store that come in a white bag or bottle or can and simply proclaim "beer" or "pretzel twists." I have been brought up to believe that generic means cheap and substandard.
I mean, if given the choice between a a white can of "cola" and a can of Diet Pepsi, I'm sure you can guess which one I'd choose.
So anyway, I kind of stared at the pharmacist for a moment with a twisted up, worried look on my face, while I was imagining the birth control pills failing and me ending up pregnant, and then the huge fucking fit I would throw. "Well," I said. "What is the difference?"
I was on the verge of caving. Because I knew I'd pay less, since my insurance encourages generic drug usage with a lower co-pay. And, hey, I'm almost broke. I take the savings where I can get it!
"There is no difference," my pharmacist told me. "Honestly, the drugs are manufactured by the same company and just packaged differently."
Oh.
So I came home with generic birth control pills. Despite the pharmacist's assurance, I feel slightly like my grandmother who washes out ziploc bags for reuse -- ultra thrifty. If I start wearing my pants backward [an old go fish family trait for the aging], someone shoot me.
One of the perils of not driving is getting a craving for Ben & Jerry's at 12:27am. The nearest grocery store to me is not a 24/7 type of thing, and I wouldn't want to walk through my neighborhood alone right now anyway. You know, because I like not being raped and murdered. No ice cream is worth all that.
So I'm just going to sit here and wish I was insured on Craig's car. Or maybe I'll go to bed and dream of ice cream.
Of course, I'd probably have to drive to ten places before I found what I want anyway -- Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie mixed with Cherry Garcia.
Yesterday on our way home from grocery shopping, Craig and I ended up talking about blood alcohol levels. Specifically, how drunk was the drunkest we've ever been and we wondered what our blood alcohol level was at that point.
I have no clue what is considered an illegal blood alcohol level, although I seem to remember hearing that it varies from state to state. But I certainly know what drunkest moment ever is. Something tells me, however, that my level wasn't anywhere near enough to break the breathalyzer machine.
I just cannot fucking catch a break this weekend. At this very moment there are two people in a car parked in front of my house who are breaking up. I think they must be using megaphones. It's so fucking loud, and woke my ass up out of a deep sleep. Guess what? Can't sleep now!
Frickity frackaty frickety frackety frickity frackaty frickety frackety.
I have a warm fuzzy knowing that I have the next two days off from work. Every work week should only be three days long.
Yay!
We just spent the last hour attempting to ignore a roving band of mullets out on the corner setting off firecrackers. Actually, I spent the last hour trying to ignore them. Craig, because he's like the town watch, spent the last hour with his nose pressed to the window, monitoring the activity and hoping one of them would lose a hand.
Between last night's festivities and today's annoyance, I'm beginning to think this summer is going to be hellacious.
So. The U.S. bombed the hell out of Afghanistan because of the whole al Qaeda thing. The operation failed to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and, while the Taliban government was removed from power, it hasn't changed the country significantly for the better. The U.S. invaded Iraq because Hussein had all these weapons of mass destruction and those weapons might end up in the wrong hands and Iraq has this fictional al Qaeda connection. This operation failed to kill or capture Hussein and, while Hussein's government was removed from power, things are a fucking mess in Iraq [no significant improvement, other than the fact that Iraqis now can starve to death while grumbling about it without being killed for the grumbling]. Did I miss anything?
So now the Bush administration has broken off communications with Iran -- because they might have al Qaeda connections and they might have nuclear weapons. I do believe there is a pattern emerging. What's next? Bombing the shit out of Iran?
Flynt Leverett, who recently left the White House to join the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy, said the administration may be taking a gamble. “It is imprudent to assume that the Islamic Republic will collapse like a house of cards in a time frame that is going to be meaningful to us,” he said. “What it means is we will end up with an Iran that has nuclear weapons and no dialogue with the United States with regard to our terrorist concerns.”You know, I'm suddenly feeling a little queasy.
My favorite fruit is the cherry. Maybe it's the fact that they aren't available year round or maybe it's the just the raunch associated with saying "I like to eat cherries."
Whatever -- but I'm scarving down a whole bag of them today.
Despite the rain and general gloom and raw cold this weekend, Spring has sprung. Wanna know how I can tell? Because a bevy of drunk 15 year olds kept me up last night until 2am.
It's not like they were inside the bar next door -- for being a mullet-friendly local bar, they do a good job of keeping the youngsters outside. But apparently they thought if they hung out outside the bar, some of their cooler peers would happen by and assume they were bar fixtures and, hence, cooler. And they did the typical drunk teen stuff -- fighting in the middle of the street, girls shrieking and falling down in the middle of the street, public puking and urinating, and boys boasting of their sexual prowess.
What I really wanted to do was run out there with a stun gun and some arsenic laced Koolaid for them, but I waited it out. If they come back again tonight or next weekend, of course, I'll turn into the bitchy neighbor and I'll call my pals at the local precinct to come and scatter them. Sure, I'll feel bad about it. I mean, after all -- I was once just like them. But now I'm old and need my beauty sleep. No sleep = cranky Nicole.
I just know I'm going to get an email saying that if I don't like the loud people and the loud bar, I shouldn't have moved next to a bar. To this I ask: have you ever been to Philadelphia? There's a fucking bar on every corner unless you happen to live in the historic district. And then it's every other corner.
No, there's really no way to escape it. Every place I've ever lived in Philadelphia had a bar within 50 feet of my front door.
And you know Craig -- he was up on the third floor with the lights out, nose pressed to the window, monitoring the events of Team Lucid Teen outside. He wants to get a BB gun and become some sort of masked avenger -- sticking up for the normal neighbors by clandestinely shooting idiots with BBs.
It sounds kind of fun, in a mob justice sort of way.
Yes, I am a dirty, dirty girl. Want proof? Go and read my latest entry over at Homewreckers
I have to admit that keeping a garden makes me feel like kind of a post-punk badass. I'm getting in touch with my farmer-y genetics and living off the fat of the land. OK, living off is pushing it. But when I have a tomato sandwich made with the tomatoes I grow I get a little prideful buzz going.
So I keep a garden and I like to cook and knit -- wanna make something of it? I'll go put on my steel toed 8 hole purple Doc Martens and leather pants right now and kick your ass. We'll go! You'll be sorry! You'll rue the day!
As you might remember, Kathy encouraged me to try designing some new skins and play around with the skinning capabilities. I made a new skin the other day and I wasn't crazy about it. So, since I wasn't sleeping this morning anyway, I deleted the first skin I made and worked on two new ones. Ah, the benefits of insomnia!
I kinda like the way the two new ones came out, but I need some feedback. Who wants to take a look and speak up?
Craig and I had a date last night with Mea and her little man. We dragged them to Il Cantuccio. I wanted tiramisu really badly -- it's a good thing they like italian food.
Here's the thing: I ordered rotini with shrimp and tomatoes in garlic cream sauce. I only finished half of it, and the waitstaff graciously packed it up for me to take home. And then I forgot to take it.
Now, here I am. It's 12:30p and I'm starting to get hungry. I really want the pasta. I keep opening the refrigerator and staring longingly inside, hoping the leftover container will miraculously appear inside. And, of course, nothing that I eat as an alternative will be nearly as satisfying.
And on a side note, Mea and her little man witnessed what has become the secret shame of la casa del go fish -- our masturbating cat. Sassy has this habit of propping herself up in the corner of the couch and, because she's so fat, she has to pull her lower belly up to her mouth to lick there. But her paw constantly slips and it looks like she's licking her belly and masturbating simultaneously. It's like the house of sin around here.
I woke up at 5am today. I mean, woke up with no chance of going back to sleep. It was just *bing* eyes wide open, not even comfortable laying in bed, have to get up and walk around, and yet my body doesn't feel right.
I somehow feel off, and I can't put my finger on it.
It could very well be because it's now 6:30am on a fucking Saturday and I'm up instead of sleeping my ass off.
And now I'm bitter about it.
I told someone recently that you don't get into my house if it's a total wreck unless you've seen me naked. I might tell you it's a wreck, but if I let you in I have at least made an attempt at picking up the detritus that lays around my house on a daily basis.
But in general, if I know someone is coming over, I spent a minimum of one hour cleaning up. The kitchen, the livingroom, and the bathroom are the hot spots.
If my mother or someone in my family is coming over, well, that's a different story. It then becomes a multi-day affair that involves scrub brushes.
Because my mother has been known to do the white glove test.
So, now that Cheney has been pressed into service to help pass George's tax cut in a Republican controlled Senate, when the economy doesn't improve and the country goes way deeper into debt, will people wake up and smell the French Roast?
I just read a poll at CNN. 61% of people who took the poll don't believe the tax cut will help them. Considering almost 500,000 people lost their jobs last week, who can blame people for being pessimistic? There are currently 8.8 million people in the U.S. who are unemployed. Sure, you're going to get extra money back if you're married and have kids, but what about single people with kids, or married people without kids, or single people without kids? And even if I did get money back through this tax cut, would it help stimulate the economy? It didn't help the last time, and I did get a little extra money back.
This tax cut is bullshit. So you get a couple pennies back in your check each week -- wow, if you save them up you can afford a bottle of soda in a few months. Will it create jobs? It's seriously doubtful.
The only answer is regime change. Go register to vote.
I was just running down the hall to put some mail in the outgoing mailbox, and I stopped by our Assistant's desk. Another Assistant, Helen, was there talking about laughing at someone's ID card that was really ugly. I thought maybe they hired a really ugly guy in her department, so I asked.
Helen looks at me and says, "No. I'm talking about my husband who is becoming a woman. We're getting a divorce, and I'm currently living with my sister."
That's not something you hear everyday.
I recently re-watched Bring it On, which I don't think you can fully appreciate unless you were a cheerleader at some point in your life. Oh sure, it's a really dumb movie. But I can, and have, had an in depth conversation about this movie with people regarding the cheers. I always argue this point: if you're going to make a movie about cheerleaders, make sure the actor playing a cheerleader is believable.
Eliza Dushku made a believable cheerleader. Maybe she has experience, I don't know. But Kirsten Dunst? No way -- she was a total spaz in action. Her arm movements and hand positions were awful, and her crowd attack in the competition scenes was atrocious. What was especially irksome was how all the black cheerleaders on the Compton Clovers team suddenly turned into white kids while stunting. I really get irate about this kind of stuff. Just like Star Trek fans get pissed when something Trek-related is mis-represented somewhere, I get nuts when cheerleading movies don't use real cheerleaders.
At least I have the grace to be half-ashamed of it.
Despite the fact that I always downplay my involvement, the truth is that I was way into cheerleading. In high school I was the captain of the team in my senior year. I made up all the dance routines and cheers, and choreographed the stunts. I went to cheerleading camp with my team every summer of high school. I won the Spirit Stick. I [*sob*] used jazz fingers. I spent hours practicing cheers.
I'm not sure how I can explain myself. I mean, I liked the cheerleading part of it, but I hated all of my school's sports teams and I hated everyone in my school. It wasn't like I was prancing around with all the other cheerleaders making fun of band kids or goths. Those people were my friends. I was your basic anti-social alterna-girl who ran around in a cheerleading uniform half the time.
In college it was much less un-cool to be a cheerleader. Hey, I got free books out of the deal and that can't be a bad thing. And there were people who were way more into than I was on the team, so I didn't have to do much except learn the cheers, dances, and stunts and show up to games and practices. I wasn't quite as motivated to take charge. Of course, I was drunk a good portion of my off time in college, so that helped.
When I tell people I have chronic cheerleading injuries, they just laugh. "What'd you do, get whiplash from your pompoms or something?" Go fuck yourself, pal. I hate these little wimpy ass cheerleading teams who just run around and look pretty. But I have nothing but respect for teams that work hard and compete and toss up incredible stunts. That shit is hard and cheerleaders get injured constantly.
So take your cheerleading condescension and shove it. I'd like to see you try not to pee your pants when you're being held above a guy's head by one foot, doing a heel stretch with your other foot and smiling at the same time.
A few weeks ago Alexandra and I got into a conversation about sushi, and I offered to make a video on the finer points of maki preparation. I finally got the thing uploaded.
If you want to see a fun[ny] and informative video by me, check out my latest post at Edible.
I really am a huge smacked ass.
With the encouragement of Kathy, I made myself some brand spankin' new graphics and messed around with Kathy's Moxie-d design and came up a skin half my own/half Moxie. It's nothing very pretty, but it's something different -- and you know I'm all about choice. Don't worry, I won't give up my day job.
I'm a little confused about the Prism Awards. Tell me why there needs to be an award for the "accurate depiction of drug, alcohol and tobacco use and addiction in film, television, interactive media, and comic book entertainment."
I understand why showing that drug, alcohol, and tobacco usage are bad is good. You want to make it seem like a horrible thing so the stupid and impressionable part of the audience doesn't think "Wow! Being a crack addict will make me beautiful and cool and successful...I think I'll try it!" I get it. But does there really need to be another entire awards ceremony to reward people for just doing something that makes sense?
And oddly, Ozzy Osborne has received a Prism Award this year. The man can barely function on a conscious level. Because he allows all this to be taped for the world to see, he gets an award. Well, congratulations on being a drug-addled drunk, Ozzy! Woo! Why didn't Anna Nicole Smith get an award? She's obviously either coked up or way drunk at all times -- she certainly gives abuse a bad name. Maybe next year.
I know that Hollywood and awards shows in general are all about excess, but it irks me in my own crazy way to know that an obscene amount of money will be spent on this awards show. People will be treated to a swanky night to be rewarded for not making drug and alcohol use seem cool, instead of channelling the money into, let's say, treatment for drug and alcohol abuse or something similar. It just seems fundamentally wrong. Yay for these big stars, to hell with all you people who might need help.
I believe in the concept of the soul. While I don't believe in the Christian god [or anyone else's god, for that matter], I do believe that souls are reincarnated. I don't think it's directed by a higher power, I just believe it's part of the process...sort of an automatic thing.
I don't, however, believe that you can actually sell your soul, or barter with your soul. But some people do, and if you want to purchase the soul of a young boy, well, now you can:
This is the official certificate recognoizing the owner of it, as the official holder of Zachary Jacob Browns soul. Zach is a well groomed 16 year old, who is currently enrolled as a sophomore at a rigorous Massachusetts high school. Although he is a recreational drinker, his often reckless weekend behavior is offset by his dedication throughout the work week to maintain his C average in school. He is a member of the football team and can often be found at the local playgrounds playing basketball with young boys. Here is your chance to have an opportunity at a better afterlife if you have sold your life, or have had a terrible, haunting life. Don't miss out on this chance to go to heaven and have a great afterlife with Zachary Browns soul!It's all yours for the low, low bargain basement price of $1. I'm tempted. I wonder if it would be like The Simpsons episode when Bart sells his soul to Millhouse.
Misery loves company -- I was glad to see so many people confessing their weird idiosyncratic phobias after my own weird phobia confession.
Gardenwife confessed to being terrified of tornadoes. I don't think that's a phobia -- I just think that's good, old-fashioned common sense. I have only seen a tornado with my own two eyes once in my life. I was on a plane at the Denver airport, and the plane was on the tarmac taxi-ing into position. The idiot pilot came over the loudspeaker and said, "Folks, if you look out the left side of the plane you'll notice a tornado about three miles off. We're not taking off in that direction so we're in no danger. Enjoy your flight." That was the longest five minutes of white-knuckled waiting in my entire life. I thought for sure that the tornado was just going to land on the plane and I'd be screwed. Unlike Gardenwife, I have no believe in god whatsoever, so I wasn't counting on some higher power to save my ass, either.
I have a healthy fear of natural disasters. Floods and hurricanes are the two things I'm least afraid of. I've been through both, and, sure, you can die, but it's do-able. You usually have lots of warning, or at least enough warning to get the hell out of the way. Tornadoes, well, sometimes you get a warning. Since I don't live in a location with high tornado probability, I don't think about it too often. But I would never want to live in the Midwest because then I'd have to worry about it and have a plan.
If I had to choose a natural disaster that frightens the hell out of me, it's earthquakes. Now true -- I don't live in a region known for earthquakes. But the Pocono Mountains [I know, I know, it's the Pocono Divided Plateau -- thanks Mr. Rimple!] were created by that kind of activity, so it's not in the realm of fantasy. It could happen. And, to my knowledge, there's no early warning system available for earthquakes.
What's odd is that I would love to move to California -- one of the most earthquake prone places on the planet. I just can't figure that one out. But when I got up this morning and heard about the earthquake in Algeria, my heart froze. Almost 600 dead and over 4,600 injured is huge. I'd probably pee my pants at 2 pointer, let alone a 6.7 magnitude earthquake. I can't even begin to imagine a building falling down around me or being trapped underneath something -- it's a fear of mine, but I wouldn't say it's a phobia. Because being afraid of natural disasters/violent weather phenomena is smart.
Because I work for a larger non-profit, I forget sometimes that all Executive Directors aren't soulless whores. Of course, I have Jill to remind me of that -- she's pretty spectacular and she's a former ED.
I was just on the phone with a local immigration ED and we ended up talking about the terrible things going on in the Congo, and how we're really getting an influx of French speaking Africans and she really needs some French translators, blah blah blah, and she just stopped and said, "Wow, you're really nice! Thanks!"
It was a weird moment -- I didn't even know what to say.
I used to be one of those naive people who believed that legislation like the Patriot Act was acceptable because [say it with me] if you haven't done anything wrong or you don't have anything to hide, you have nothing to worry about. You know, because the U.S. government would never do anything sneaky, underhanded, or knowingly supress the civil rights of it's law-abiding citizens.
And then I came to my senses.
Many people who support the Patriot Act defend it by saying that, even if someone is wrongly accused, the truth will come out in court. Well, if the accused person can get to court, that is. But even if they do, that's no guarantee. We have many judges on the bench who are too stupid to differentiate between a terrorist and someone with brown skin.
"Anissa Khoder told The Journal News that when her name was called, the judge asked if she was a terrorist. She said she was offended but kept that to herself.She claimed that after giving the judge her explanation for why the tickets should be dismissed, "He said something like, 'You have money to support the terrorists, but you don't want to pay the ticket.' I could not believe I was hearing that."
I'm on a break from a half day meeting. I need help. You know how when you're bored silly and your eyes start to glaze over and your head starts to nod and you start to drool a little? Well, yeah, that's what's happening.
None of this shit means anything to me. It's a ridiculous meeting full of people who just like to talk. The outcome of this meeting doesn't affect me in the least. And yet I have to be there.
You know how you can purchase remote controlled vibrators, so one can get off while you're sitting in your chair? Well, so I've heard and all. Uh, anyway -- I think I need a pocket electric shocker...so when my forehead starts heading for the table I can be shocked back into meeting submission.
I don't play golf. I suck so bad at miniature golf that I suggest crash helmets whenever someone is dumb enough to want to go with me. But I don't think it's a girl thing -- I just have never learned any golf skills and I lack desire to learn and practice. Because golf just seems dull to me.
So, with this in mind, let me just say that I don't understand why there are separate women's and men's golf leagues. There's this whole brouhaha over Annika Sorenstam playing in the PGA, and it mostly seems like a bunch of guys all freaked out because a girl might beat them.
Please let me know if I'm wrong, but golf really isn't a sport about strength, right? Look at the guys on the PGA tour -- most of them aren't in peak physical condition. I could probably beat up at least half of them. Sorenstam looks like she could take all of them in a street fight. From an outsiders point of view, it looks like golf is about stamina, concentration, and putting skills. You don't need a penis for that. In fact, women naturally have better stamina and concentration. For all I know, putting skills come naturally to women, too.
Those skills seemed to miss me, of course.
I was watching my local news this morning while I was getting dressed and there was an interview with some local golf guy who said that he didn't think Sorenstam had a chance in hell of doing well at the tournament. He didn't say why -- it was just your basic "well, she's a girl" type of thing. I got a little pissed off. Actually, if you want to know the truth, I yelled "Asshole!" at the television.
I get a little tired of hearing that women are good enough or strong enough or smart enough to do the same things men do. People are always pointing out that there's been progress made in the last thirty or forty years, and there has. But men still make more than women for the same job in a lot of industries and men in power still condescend to women over just about everything. Take abortion rights, for instance -- this has never been about the right to life. It has always been just another way to take choices out of the hands of women.
Living where I do and doing what I do for a living, I'm sheltered from a lot of that "men are better" crap. The non-profit sector workforce is primarily comprised of women. Traditionalists would say that it's because women are the nurturers and are drawn to jobs where they help people. I don't think that's the reason -- it's more like non-profit wages are sinfully low and some women are used to working for shit wages. I will say that more men are now working in non-profit agencies, but go and visit one...there will be more women. Regardless of all that, because women are in the majority I don't get spoon fed that bullshit about women being inferior, even if it's passively.
And Philadelphia is fairly liberal and it's a large, urban city. If I still lived in my hometown [rural and small], the patriarchal hierarchy would be much more apparent. My mom still lives there and it's easy to see -- all the bosses are male and the secretaries are female. The secretaries fetch the coffee and straighten the ties and the bosses call them "honey." There has never been a female mayor of my town. There never will be -- the population is majority over the age of 50 and, generallly speaking, men over 50 have been brought up to think that women can't think as well as men.
I'm just bummed out about this whole issue.
Who the hell decided to put Clay and Ruben in all white? They fucking look like ice cream men. Or pharmacists.
Cripes.
A woman who is the Executive Director of a local nonprofit agency just called and confessed to me that she couldn't come to an event of mine in two weeks because she's afraid of elevators. My event is on the 52nd floor of a building.
It was all I could do not to laugh at her.
One of my former roommates used to have an irrational fear of raw meat. She wasn't a vegetarian or anything -- just the idea of and sight of raw meat scared the hell out of her. A guy down the hall from us used to date her, and they had a fight -- he chased her around the apartment with a raw steak until she started crying. I tried not to laugh at her for it, but I couldn't control myself.
Sometimes I just don't have a lot of tact.
I shouldn't really make fun of anyone with phobias. I'm deeply grossed out by crumpled up paper -- tissues, notepaper, straw wrappers, it doesn't matter. If it's crumpled up and in my line of sight, I'm going to get fixated on it and increasingly disgusted. Eventually I'll start to feel like I need to throw up. I've never gotten to the point where I throw up, but I feel gross. I have no idea why I feel that way, either. It's just a weird, irrational fear.
I guess the next time I make fun of anyone for having a strange idiocyncracy, they should just throw a wadded up napkin at me. I'm not saying any of you really should -- that's just a hypothetical should. A karmic should.
Psychologists in the UK are saying that "ghosts are the mind's way of interpreting how the body reacts to certain surroundings." The study done involved asking hundreds of volunteers to go into several historically haunted places in the UK and report when they felt something "ghostly" or paranormal in nature.
Their findings point to ghosts being all in one's head. If you're in a place that we, in general, think of as scary we're going to think there's a ghost there. What's interesting is that the majority of volunteers all experienced what they thought of as a ghost in the same locations. The researchers attributed this to the body's natural reaction to magnetic fields present at those locations. The reason I think this is interesting is that ghost hunters use EMF level readers all the time to locate ghosts because the theory is that ghosts are made of energy.
So, depending on your point of view with regard to ghosts, the "body reacting to magnetic fields" idea proves or disproves the research and theories for both entities.
If you've been reading go fish for a while, you know I believe in ghosts for a pretty good reason. Let's just say I'm biased. But my question for the UK researchers would be this: how does one account for group sightings? What I mean is this: if I'm sitting in my livingroom with Craig and three other people, and all of us a] hear someone stomping down my stairs and b] witness a woman appear and then disappear in the doorway, does that mean all of our bodies are reacting to the magnetic fields in the same way by way of audal and visual hallucinations?
I agree with the UK researchers on one point only -- people are more likely to think a spot is haunted if it looks like it should be haunted. Dark, smelly, cobwebby, old...spooky. But that's just a feeling that something is there. Like I said, the research doesn't take into account physical manifestations, like things touching you.
I just spent the last two hours in a meeting staring at a guy in his thirties who is losing his hair but fighting it. While he didn't have the swirly comb-over or anything, he was using what was left of his thinning hair to camoflauge the baldness by inducing volume. He probably shampoos with volumizing shampoo and uses volumizing products, and blow dries his hair with precision and then coaxes every stray strand into place and then plasters on the hairspray to keep it all in place. But he has so little hair that you can see his scalp just shining through his big pompadour anyway. It's a hair farce, but no one is fooled. It just sort of looks like a hair halo.
I don't know why men are so freaked out by losing their hair. There's rarely a graceful way to go bald, of course. The in between stages are always silly looking -- the horshoe, the big swirly "just above the ear" combover, the Matt Lauer. Either invest in a really really good hairpiece or just shave your head. I understand that not all men have a perfectly shaped head, but I happen to find bald heads on younger men sexy. All that soft, smooth skin...just ready to be licked.
Here's my question of the day: why is the water in the Love Park fountain pink? It's not kind of pink, and it's not a pink light shining in the water -- it looks like someone replaced the water supply with Pepto Bismol.
I don't have anything against lawyers. Sure, some of them are scumbags and ambulance chasers, but some of them provide valuable services. Like when I worked in immigration law -- some lawyers do good things.
I have yet, however, to meet a lawyer who isn't a total pompous asshole. My theory is that you become a lawyer because you like to hear yourself talk and you think your bullshit is brilliant.
This morning I got into the office early, about 7:30am. The Vice President stopped by my office to say good morning. Last night at my event I asked a graduate of the program to speak on his experiences as a Board member -- he's a lawyer and he is, quite possibly, the most over the top, smug, bullshitter on the planet. I asked the Vice President what he thought of the graduate.
"He should have been an actor," said the Vice President. "I realize that lawyers are, by nature, theatrical, but he was way over the top. He just loves himself, and he wouldn't shut up!"
Great. As if the participants in this program aren't already self-important schmucks, I have to expose them to the grand pooba of self-important schmucks?
So you know what's next, right? I'm going to get a call from the lawyer asking me how he did. He's also going to try to get me to commit to letting him speak again at next year's Program.
Meanwhile, I'll pray for a bolt of lightning.
Don't you dare click on the link below unless you want to be spoiled...
Now that's the way a season should end! Craig thought a bomb would go off at the last second, which I thought was also an interesting option. Excellent, excellent show. Now that Buffy is over and done with, I don't think I'll be watching anything else except for 24 in the Fall television season. Because, really -- every other show on television absolutely sucks ass in comparison.
I would venture to say that the writers are certainly anti-Bush and anti-war. To write a President so obviously the polar opposite of the fucking joke we have in office just screams "wishful thinking." And the fact that the writers wrote Palmer saying celebrating your freedom instead of chipping away at your liberties is the way to go also makes it obvious. Of course, I don't know what it says that they left things with a chemical weapons attack.
I thought for sure Shari Palmer would die.
Dear Mr. Ridge,
I'm very upset to hear that you and your boys are thinking of raising the terror threat level. Since I damn near bought out the duct tape section of my local hardware, it's just been taking up space in the basement right next to the generator and 10,000 gallons of bottled water I bought in case the whole world ended when it turned 2000. I wish you people would make up your mind -- the world is going to end and then it's not. It is and then it's not. Well, really, you say something awful is going to happen and then nothing does. It's awfully trifling.
Anyhow, the wife and I started using the duct tape. Initially I was taping up my goats and having my way with them, but then Mr. Santorum told me it was just as bad as being one of those crazy buggering homosexuals, so I stopped that right quick. I got morals, you know? So I started taping the wife up and now the tape is just about gone. Good old-fashioned fear sure does flame my passions.
I sure do hope you guys in the government are planning to attack another bad country. I know the President and all them boys said flattening Iraq would do the trick to keep as all safe as houses, but now here we about to raise the terror level again. I sure do like to watch the people get blowed up on the CNN, but it's much better when it happens in another country.
In the meantime, keep up the good work in keeping us all safe. It's good to know we got a good god fearin' man in office to tell us when to be scairt. Well, I'm off to buy more duct tape. The wife and I don't have alot of money right now -- we both lost our jobs a couple of months ago and can't find another job. But if the tape and plastic sheets will keep us safe when the nuclear plant goes up, well, it's money well spent.
Thanks,
Cleetus
Fuckity fuck fuck fuck! It should be a crime against humanity to make normal humans work on a day like today. It's beautiful and sunny and warm -- not a cloud in the sky. Instead of lying beachside or soaking up the sun on my patio, here I am in business suit at work, and I have to work late tonight.
My lunch hour was just spent outside. I just sat down under the Kopernik statue and knitted a sock and watched the people walk by. And now I want nothing more than spend the rest of my day outside. I've got flowers and vegetables to plant at home. I've got my third nipple to dream about.
Argh! Kill me now!
I have anxiety.
Tonight Buffy will end forever and it's the season finale of 24. I have an event tonight. Who is the dumbass who chose to have these meetings on a Tuesday night? Oh yeah, that was me.
But I have a strategy. I only have to be there until 6:45pm to guage attendance. So at 6:45pm I'm packing it up and getting a cab home. I'll be home in ten minutes and I'll have plenty of time to get the VCR set up for American Idol and make some sushi for dinner.
But until I have to leave for the event, I'm avoiding work spending my time reading Buffy-licious stories from the cast and more E!Online Buffy stuff.
Because I'm 12 years old like that.
If I were ever captured or kidnapped and my captors wanted to break me, I think a steady stream of country and bluegrass music, with some Disney songs thrown in would do the trick. Or, as an alternative, hours and hours of Mariah Carey and Celine Dion. Or, a looped tape of someone with a really shrill whistle whistling patriotic tunes. I'd be a blubbering mess within days [or less if you go with the Carey/Dion combo -- that shits lethal].
Somehow I don't think Sesame Street reruns and Metallica CDs would break my spirit. I understand that it's a cultural difference, but still -- Elmo is annoying as hell, but I really do like Oscar the Grouch and Grover. And Lars is hot. Plus, I can sleep anywhere and through anything. Well, maybe not if someone was shoving bamboo sticks under may fingernails.
But that's really not the issue -- the issue is whether or not it can be considered torture and, therefore, is in violation of the Geneva Convention.
According to Article 3, item 1C "[o]utrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment" and item 1A "[v]iolence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture" go against the Geneva Convention. I would have to say that forcing prisoners to endure music they don't like as a way of preventing sleep is cruel torture and it's definitely an affront to personal dignity. Not that Amnesty International is the be all to end all, but they're concerned about it.
I understand the need for the U.S. military to retrieve information from prisoners, but can't they just hypnotize them and drag out the information? Or inject them with truth serum? Why torture them with Barney music? Let's be civilized about this.
This morning I woke up out of a dream that I had grown a third nipple overnight, and that I went back to my hometown and visited my high school. Danny Bonaduce was my high school sweetheart and he was the in the Drafting classroom when I went to visit. I tried to impress him with my experiences after high school until present and he tried to seduce me. It was disgusting. I woke up and felt violated. I really have to stop drinking Diet Pepsi before bed.
I have never dated anyone with a third nipple, but I made a friend of mine date a guy with one. Well, date is such a strong word. There was a boy I had a thing for and he was having a two friends over, so I invited two of my friends over to his house so his two friends would have playmates.
Who thinks it's going to impress a girl to introduce yourself by saying, "Hi, my name is Dan. I have a third nipple."? Ann-Marie spent the night all grossed out and trying not to pull up Dan's shirt to tweak the nipple.
Aw, lookit the little blonde girl -- she's all growed up and has her very own cable modem installed on her home PC! She's too big for her britches!
Yep, that's right -- look out! I'm now able to upload at the speed of light, and you know what that means, right? Let me be the first to introduce you to the go fish playlist in the sidebar. Down a little further....yes, that's the spot! Right underneath the rings.
Hey, mi casa es su casa, but if you direct link to them I keeeel you! Got it? Good! Now, go take a listen.
Have I mentioned how much I really like Poptarts? I'm sitting here chowing down on a Strawberry frosted poptart right now. I'd have to say that my favorite, though, is the S'mores poptart.
Ummmm mmmm.
Remember when I was yammering last month about how the anti-choice crowd would use the Laci Peterson case to their advantage? It didn't take long:
Adding fuel to the already fierce debate over abortion, Republicans in Congress are evoking the Laci Peterson murder case as they try to enact the first federal law to endow a fetus with legal rights separate from the expectant mother.Even better, it's been renamed after Laci Peterson. No, that's not exploitive, is it?
Look, I think it's horrible to murder anyone. I don't, however, think it's worse to kill a pregnant woman than a woman who isn't pregnant. This is simply trying to play on sympathy for Laci Peterson's family and it makes me sick to my stomach. If you want the bill to pass, argue it on it's [lacking] merits -- don't pull the "poor Laci's family won't be able to sleep unless you support this bill" card.
Here's how you know I've gone off the knitting deep end: I happened to be wearing my new socks when I went yarn shopping on Saturday, and when I walked into the yarn shop and asked for a specific type of yarn, the salesperson was unpacking the same yarn I used on my socks -- so I showed off my socks and the salesperson was so excited she called out the shop owner and we all had a spirited discussion about sock patterns. I didn't even feel like a dork about it until I left the shop. Then I thought to myself, "Wow, I'm really a geek."
I have the sudden urge to fly across the country. Since I currently have $11 in my bank account until Friday, I doubt I'll be going anywhere too soon. But now I'm seriously looking into flights...maybe San Diego or San Francisco or Seattle. Just for a weekend...July-ish?
Who wants to let me sleep on their couch?
I was just talking to some co-workers when I hit the "Home" button on my browser. My homepage is set to CNN. When I saw the headline that Ari Fleischer is going to resign I got all excited and yelled, "Holy shit!"
Luckily, there's a breakfast this morning for something or other and not that many people are here in the office. Screeching "holy shit!" at the top of my lungs is frowned upon. But this is exciting stuff.
I've said it before -- something is up and it's time to get out of Dodge. It seems like there's some new White House staff resignation every week or two. Rats, sinking ship, etc. I won't miss Ari and his condescending leer. And this:
The president ended the conversation "by kissing me on the head," the spokesman said.Don't make me sick. Are we supposed to believe that George is a gentle bear of a father figure, giving Ari his blessing with a smooch to the noggin? They better be careful with publicizing that George kisses other men -- the crazy Christian family associations will take that a sign of homosexuality.
Better to leave things with a manly, bone-crushing handshake.
So I'm on the bus this morning, right, and I've got my headphones on. I made myself a little morning wake up mix CD of a little bit of Foo Fighters, a smidgen of Linkin Park, and a dash of The Clash. You know, an eye opener, sans vodka. Anyway, I'm sitting there with my walkman going really really loud and I'm doing a little on-the-fly knitting [Yes, knitting in public. I'm so fucking old.], and there are these two boys sitting next to me. I would guesstimate that they're maybe 15 years old.
Apparently they haven't figured out yet that headphones don't block out all sound. Seriously -- they're sitting there talking about my rack. They must have been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer [the movie, not the show -- and I doubt they would ever admit to it] because one of them said I have "yaboos that defy gravity." You can tell they're getting a total kick out of thinking they're talking about me and I can't hear them. It degenerated into giggling 15 year old boys hitting each other and leering at my tits.
It was my stop to catch the subway, so I put my knitting away, leaned over to the lecherous kids and said, "Hey, thanks for the compliment. Just a hint, here -- girls don't like it when you call their boobs "fun bags."
And then I walked off the bus. I've never seen anyone look more terrified.
I love that commercial for the I-pod where the guy is singing Baby Got Back. It's only one of my favorite songs of all time -- it totally cracks me up. And I love the fact that, no matter what, whenever you sing the song you have to sing it really loud and you have to make some sort of thrusting motion when you say the word "sprung." And you can't sing it and sound or look cool unless you're Sir Mix-a-Lot.
I'm blinded -- the sun has come out today...at 6:11 pm. Oh good -- just in time for work! Oh, and it's supposed to be gorgeous tomorrow and I can't call out? Even better!
What is the fascination with boobies? Everyone has them. Even some guys have a rack befitting of a bra, but men don't seem to be quite so turned on by them. Is it that the boobies are attached to someone with a vagina?
No, really.
So, let me get this straight -- the pope is supposed to be the holy trinity concentrated into one being...sort of god on earth, according to the Catholics. So then god is supposed to be an old decrepit man with Parkinsons who has a problem with homosexuals, feminists, and divorced people?
Just checking.
It kind of says something about the intrusiveness of a piece of legislation when "hundreds of cities and one state have passed resolutions condemning the USA Patriot Act." I'm surprised George and his band of merry morons haven't come out and said that those who are against the Patriot Act are anti-American. I'm sure that time is coming.
Just as those of us who didn't agree with George's actions regarding the war in Iraq, and don't care for the way he's upped the federal deficit to the point where this country will be in unbelievable debt for the next 200 years have all be labelled traitorous anti-patriots, we'll all get a turn.
Don't like the fact that you lost your job and can't get a job? Why, that's un-American! Don't think that Americans should be required to believe in the Christian [i.e., George's] god? You should be rounded up and deported, because you certainly aren't a real American, according to George. How dare you criticize the $15 billion AIDS bill just signed by the President? Don't you care about stopping the spread of AIDS? Well, not when "House conservatives were able to amend the bill to ensure that 33 percent of all prevention funding go to abstinence programs, and that Catholic and other religious groups are not denied funding because they oppose condom distribution." And you know what that means -- if you go to a religious group for treatment you better be willing to convert to Christianity in order to get that treatment.
Come on, Fall of 2004!
So if you read my latest entry at Homewreckers, you know that today Craig and I bought a new patio table and chairs at IKEA and Craig had some, um, difficulties putting the stuff together.
After the table and chairs were all put together, I spent 90 minutes discussing with Craig the layout of the patio. I'm not kidding -- 90 minutes! All because of this stupid tree of Craig's.
Here's the story -- many years ago Craig bought a little red maple bonsai tree. The bonsai thing didn't work out so well, so Craig planted the thing in a regular pot and now it's about six feet tall. Unfortunately, it's really wide and low to the ground. So this tree takes up a good portion of our 10x10 foot patio. And he refuses to trim the tree or place it in a corner for fear that it will a] damage the tree or b] "ruin the shape of the tree."
I know what battles to fight and which ones to let go. This situation with the tree is just too stupid for me to argue about. So I was trying to win the battle of "let's put the tree where it will camoflauge the trash cans." Craig seems to think that this tree should be the only thing on the patio, or that there should be a spotlight on this tree. He also seems to think our patio is massive -- he keeps bringing furniture home from his parent's house, which he refuses to throw out or take back to his parent's house. He also insisted on a huge gas grill.
Now I understand that boys have this thing with grills. Maybe it's some sort of fascination with fire. Maybe it's like cars [you know, with respect to the penis] -- the bigger the grill, the more manly. I don't know. Whatever, it's ridiculous.
My main concern with this patio is to have enough room to grow my vegetables and flowers, have a space to throw a picnic and have enough space for more than just the two of us, and to make the space as attractive as possible.
So I would suggest a layout, and we'd drag everything to the correct place. And then Craig would complain because his tree wasn't a focal point or his grill wasn't in the optimal spot. So I'd suggest another layout, and the whole thing would repeat itself. This went on and on. And there aren't that many layout possibilities when the patio is only 10x10 feet and you've got plants, a massive lounge chair, the new table and chairs, a gargantuan tree, a humongous grill, and two huge trash cans. Finally, I got sick of playing the game and said, "Well, I've come up with all the ideas I can. Because you won't compromise on the tree, I have no other suggestions. If you come up with something more acceptable, let me know." And I walked in the house.
Two seconds later he's out there with a pair of pruners. I walk out there and there are all these branches all over the ground, but the tree looks exactly the same. "Is this thinned out enough?" Craig asked. I just rolled my eyes and walked back in the house.
Some things aren't worth arguing about.
After the yarn shopping and a brief pitstop at IKEA [be sure to check out my IKEA post at Homewreckers], Craig and I arrived home from our field trip only to find a small wonder awaiting me in the mail. That's right -- my Impeach Bush tshirt has arrived! And two bumper stickers! I only wish I lived in Washington, DC so I could stalk a couple of Republicans and slap those bad boys on the backs of their cars!
As is, I'll probably save them for my next trip to Berwick and target a couple of asshats there in my hometown. It's easy pickin's up there -- lots of people who are told what to think by schmucks like Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh. Can't be bothered to do some reading, maybe come to their own conclusions, oh no! Life moves too fast in a town with only two stop lights and more cows than people -- no time to think for themselves!
I was thinking maybe I'd don my snazzy new tshirt and maybe take a run around the old stomping grounds next time I'm at my mom's house. Of course, I might not make it back in one piece. You know how those hicks are -- wouldn't want anyone to threaten their belief structure.
Hey, want your very own tshirt to get the party started? Visit bushoccupation.com and support the revolution! And then be sure you're registered to vote, OK?
Yeah, so it's warmer today in Fargo, North Dakota than here in Philadelphia. By six degrees.
It's mid-May, people! It should be in the low 70s. I should have dreams of the ocean, sand, and deep sea fishing right now! I should be craving that nasty smell of suntan lotion. Instead, I'm thankful I haven't put away my winter clothes yet.
I should be planting my flowers and vegetables today. I'm afraid if I do that they'lle freeze and die overnight. I can only look longingly at the bags of dirt and fertilizer on the patio.
Now excuse me while I go put on my parka.
One of my temps is in this show. If you're in the Philadelphia area around that time period, be sure to check it out. I'll be there one of those days -- if anyone wants to come with, let me know.
I will admit it's a little disconcerting to see someone I work with in his underwear. It's hard to look at him without thinking of his unit.
When Craig and I first started dating I tried to drag him to all sorts of cultural stuff to see what he'd let me talk him into. I really love the orchestra and opera and experimental dance and theatre. Craig sort of likes the orchestra, but refuses to attend anymore opera or ballet. He'll go to modern dance and theatre shows, but he generally hates them. So I appreciate the fact that he'll go with me. That's nice, don't you think?
Craig, however, absolutely hates modern art. He doesn't get it, doesn't understand why it's art, and doesn't think it's interesting. Opposites attract, I guess.
The last 30 minutes of work is excruciatingly painful. My knitting projects are calling to me. My comfy pajamas are calling to me. I need a nap. I need a blankie. I need a cookie and a Diet Pepsi.
I need to leave.
There's currently an Avon war being played out in my office building. You how how it goes: two Avon ladies waging war on one another, secretly scheming to steal customers.
In this case it's an Avon lady and an Avon gentleman. Things are getting out of hand. I heard the Avon gentleman tell some woman in the hall just now that the Avon lady stores all her stock in a rat infested shed. Yeah, things are getting ugly.
I'm just trying to keep off the radar.
Of course, neither of them gets my patronage. Avon cosmetics are crappy and overpriced, and I'm convinced they contain crack or some other mind altering drug. How else can you explain the battalion of women [and men] schlepping this shit to everyone they know?
My mother used to sell Avon back in the 1970s. She went door to door, ready to give her pitch to anyone who would listen. She quit after someone opened the door with butcher knife in his hand, but before she came to her sense I had the full complement of Avon products for children. I had cheesy gold plated jewelry and piss-smelling kids perfume in the shape of a tooth fairy, and all the mini lipstick samples I could ever want.
This turf war thing is weird. The other day I was talking to a co-worker, singing the praises of Max Factor Lipfinity lipstick and Kiss Me mascara. Avon lady stuck her head in the office and claimed that Avon had better products than those and she could prove it. She pulled lipstick and mascara samples out of some secret Avon/Stepford pouch and did some sort of Vanna White-esque hand flourish and told us to try them.
Oddly, everything smelled like...oil. And fish. And then I had a flashback and passed out.
When I awoke my face felt funny...suffocated. I looked in a mirror and Avon lady had gotten at me with her vat of samples.
OK, that last part was not true. Really, we just looked at each and said, "No thanks."
Because crack kills, kids.
So NASA is planning on digging their way to the Earth's core using a "nuclear device"? Didn't those people ever see the movie The Core? Isn't bad enough the Republicans are in power -- are we not destroying the world fast enough?
Yeesh.
I should always be this happy -- I just got back from a Thai lunch of duck with pa nang sauce and discovered that my dear, darling husband bought two tickets to the June Henry Rollins show today.
That Craig, what a fabulous husband! I think I'll keep him!
John Corbett is creepy. He always has this smarmy look on his face like he's picturing himself naked and really digging it.
Ew.
I've spent my morning so far avoiding work [as usual] and updating my comments to reflect the new color scheme on the new skin and doing some plug in work in MT. What a fun and productive morning.
So here's the thing: what are your favorite MT hacks and plug-ins? You know, because I can never avoid enough work on a Friday.
The nature of politics is that, as a candidate, you need to have money. Whether you have family money that you fall into or are born into, or you work hard to earn the money, or you're a champion fundraiser -- you need to have cash to promote yourself. Without the dollars, you might as well not even bother.
And, in a lot of ways, I think that is the downfall of American politics. You rarely get anyone in office who can relate to the average American because they have never been an average American. Sure, there are a few people in office who clawed their way out of poverty and paid their own way through college with two jobs while going to school full-time. But the majority of them grew up in nice suburban homes in nice families and they never had to worry about money or food or bad schools.
Politicians will drum up some sort of stupid story to make voters believe that he/she is just your average Joe. But having a summer job at the country club does not mean that you can relate to the common man or woman. Until a person has spent years working at a crappy job with no future, worrying about living in box on the curb when it's time to retire, and living paycheck to paycheck [or, alternatively, have no job and worry about the same types of things], there's no way to relate to what normal citizens go through on a daily basis.
Let's take George, for instance. George likes to bill himself as a down to earth guy. You know, salt of the earth and all that. He speaks like he barely graduated from elementary school, and takes a vacation every other weekend. We all imagine him drinking a Pabst with a whisky sidecar, and it's believable because that's the kind of image he puts out there for us. Like the Buddy Christ, George is the Buddy President. But George is worth over over $5 million. He grew up untroubled by things that normal people face -- he had private schools and money. George can afford to have the kind of religious fervor that he has because he has had everything he ever wanted in life. There's never been a need to question his god's existence.
How can he relate to me? How can any politician who hasn't had to work for what they have relate to me? Or to any other voter? Unless the politician is part of the minority who used to be a part of the average citizenry, there's no way. Touring poor neighborhoods and non-profit agencies that help the poor or homeless doesn't mean you can possibly understand what it means to be poor or be homeless.
We [the citizens of the U.S.] pay the salaries of politicians. Why should the average Senator make $150K+ per year when I make about a quarter of that? It's not like they work harder than the rest of us. I don't understand why my employee makes more than I do.
I want to reclaim the political process in this country. I want to dial it back to when politicians didn't lie or hide the truth about their beliefs to get elected. I want politicians to vote for things based on what their constitutuency wants them to do, not what they themselves believe. I want the average citizen to be in elected positions, not career politicians who are uber-wealthy and out of touch.
I want things to be the way they were meant to be.
I've been sickened by the increasing conservative hold on this country. People trying to legislate body modifications, spending crazy amounts of money to promote marriage, and combat goth culture, etc. I need to live where the prudes, Deeply Religious hypocrites, and heartless asshats haven't taken over. That's why I think I should maybe move to Spain. Where else can those 25 years old or younger get "sex vouchers"? And I could always get a fake driver's license so I could just say I was 25, right? Hotels are expensive, yo!
Hey, guess what? U.S. has prime view for lunar eclipse Thursday!
Well, except for here in Philadelphia, that is. It's fucking cloudy as hell and we're expecting heavy rain showers shortly.
Bastards. I always miss the good stuff.
I hate the argument that if a woman is half-dressed or dressed provacatively, she must be asking to be raped. It's stupid and assumes that every man finds the same state of dress [or undress] sexy and provacative. Let's not forget little Brittney Spears turning on the masses in her little Catholic school girl uniform, eh? Well, hey, if Catholic uniforms are sexy, than I guess all Catholic school girls must be dressing for sex, right? That damn Catholic church -- always making trouble.
By the same token, does a partially clothed woman promote the spread of AIDS? Some Nigerian priest is arguing that by allowing Swazi women to parade around with their boobies hanging out, they're somehow saying it's OK to have unprotected sex. Somehow I'm failing to see the logic. Bare hooters=unsafe sex?
What's particularly funny is the response: ""It is evident that Apostle Saint Ekho is ill-informed about Swazis and their culture," senator Masalekhaya Simelane said. "Swazi men are attracted by women's naked thighs not their breasts."
So does that mean a woman displaying a bare thigh is promoting unsafe sex? What the fuck? I understand seeing a naked woman is sexually stimulating to the average heterosexual male, but does that mean a] the man can't control his sexual impulses, and/or b] throws caution to the wind upon laying his eyes upon a nekkid rack?
I think someone's trying to generate a "Get out of Jail Free" card for men who rape.
And this is all related to a discussion I've recently seen at two places -- should women be able to serve combat duty in the military? The arguments I've heard against it are these:
And then there's the stupidity attached to women being delicate flowers. I will admit that you might not give a woman a job of dragging something super heavy unless she's a body builder. But women generally have better eyesight and balance than men, so their shooting skills are automatically going to be better. Women generally have higher pain thresholds and have better concentration than men, and that means they're just better suited for combat situations. Men are usually going to be physically stronger than most women, but how often are you going to get in a fist fight with the opposing army? Mostly it's shooting at each other, or flying bombers. As for PMS -- listen up: I've never had PMS in my entire life. Not all of us get it, and some of us even use it as an excuse just to be a bitch. Sure, cramps suck ass, but there's good medication that can either prevent your period all together or make the pain go away for a good percentage of sufferers. And if you're in combat, you'll probably getting the medication to prevent your period all together.
I wish this would put all of the ridiculous excuses to rest, but there's always going to be some old-fashioned conservative bonehead out there who can't see past his or her own crazy ideas. Because women should be cooking and making babies, and men can't control the desires of the penis.
Assholes.
It always happens that way -- the salon gets a new tech, she does my nails perfectly and then she gets shipped out. And then the old crappy techs do my nails and they're all jacked up and filed all weird.
Dammit.
I've already gotten one order for handknit socks, so I might as well open up the whole can of worms. If you want me to knit a pair of socks for you [you can see the socks I knitted for myself here], the cost will be $20-$40 [international orders might be a couple bucks more because of shipping], depending on the yarn and design you choose.
Here are the things I'll need to know:
Email me for a price estimate or to order or whatever.
I also accept orders for handknit baby sweaters -- cost from $40 and up.
That is all.
Yeah, so I was just trapped in a meeting all morning. That last post was during my five minute break. My ass is completely asleep.
I hate meetings. All everyone does is read from a sheet of paper that they've distributed copies of to everyone. I can read, yo. I don't need someone to read to me or make sure I understand the concepts. Unless there's some discussion that needs to happen, I don't need to be at a four hour long meeting.
And I have the attention span of a gnat in meetings. I end up focusing on things that bother me and then that drives me nuts until the end of the torture meeting.
Today it was an account manager who has a unibrow. I don't mind if a woman doesn't wax her eyebrows or whatever. I mean, eyebrow care is a personal decision. But if you have a fucking Bert-esque unibrow going on, you need to do something about it. This woman looks like someone took an extra wide black Sharpie marker and drew a huge line across her lower forehead.
It's frightening.
What kind of moronic, head up their ass fucktards would agree to let a plane buzz the NYC skyline? As if New Yorkers weren't traumatized enough by low flying planes, some asshat thinks they'll set all that aside for returning troops?
Give me a fucking break. All New Yorkers still in therapy should send their shrink bills to the FAA. Dumbasses.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg blasted the FAA for allowing the flight."Considering the world we live in and New York City's recent history, one would expect a little more concern, sensitivity and notice from the FAA when they authorize a plane to fly at that altitude over lower Manhattan," he said in a statement.
For those of you following the tale of my ever changing hair color, here is my new head of hair for May...
I'm not crazy about it. It's a little shorter than I wanted and a little blonder than I wanted. But hey, it's hair -- I can change it! I think I liked it better last time.
Is Clay wearing a Miami Vice jacket?
So it's going to be a Clay vs. Ruben finale, eh? What the hell is this crap about a three night finale? While I realize all the losers up to now will have to come back and be part of the group sing [anyone remember the harem craptacular from last year?], but three fucking nights?
So I just returned from the salon. I was sitting in my stylist's chair after my color, but before my cut. She's on the phone and I'm getting impatient. She finally hangs up, comes over to the chair, and say, "My cat just died."
There's a traumatized woman with a pair of scissors and she's coming at my head.
What do you say to something like that?
So, apparently body modifications are next in line for legislators. Illinois lawmakers are considering a bill that pretty much make tongue splitting illegal.
Personally, I find tongue splits kind of creepy. In fact, it gives me the heebie jeebies just looking at it. But I don't see what the big deal is -- what makes it different from piercing, tattooing, and scarring? For that matter, what makes it different [in principle] from dying one's hair or getting plastic surgery? And what gives politicians the right to tell me what to do with my own body?
This "politicians as our collective conscious" thing is old. I'm perfectly capable of making my own decisions. I don't need someone to give me permission to get my eyebrow pierced, buy colored contact lenses, or shave my legs. They certainly wouldn't like it if the shoe was on the other foot and I wanted to outlaw old man chicken legs or paunchy stomachs or jowls.
I find it incredibly offensive that the legislature is spending time and money on this, wasting tax payer dollars, when there are so many more important things that need their attention. If Illinois were a perfect land and no one was poor or living in fear or homeless, then fine -- I say fuck around all you want. But this is a state that just had a huge hazing incident. They don't have enough to keep their attention focused?
Who wants to see me in a rapturous gossamer cloud of pure delight? Well, look at me right this instant if you can because I'm fucking psyched up! I just found out that Henry Rollins is coming to the TLA on June 16 for a very special show.
I need you to show up at the show. I need you to tell a friend. That's what I need. I need these shows packed out and the house rockin';. From our side of things, I want to make this absolutely clear: We are not going to be casually shuffling through these songs like it's some oldies show and you'll be kind of into it because everyone's hearts were in the right place. We are a trained assault unit. We are going to fuck you up with this music. This is not a Black Flag reunion. Greg Ginn and Chuck Dukowski wrote some of the best songs ever and we are hell bent on rendering them as best we can. If we didn't know for sure that the set was bomb proof, we wouldn't be out all summer wasting everyone's time. This is a one time, one time only tour. We're not looking to cross over to some new audience by playing someone else's music or cash in on some dubious claim to fame. We didn't write any of these songs. On this tour, we are a cover band. I should add that when I say cover, I mean you better take cover when we hit stage because we're not fucking around. I think I have made myself clear on this point.Eeeeeeeeeee! I'm burning up at the mere thought of it!
All Henry has to do is ask and I'm his willing she-bitch.
I must have had an inferior childhood. When Ericalynn showed me how to pop a drinking straw just now at lunch I was amazed. Who knew straws did that?
It seems like some sort of cruel and unusual punishment to go to lunch at a restaurant know for it's beer selection and then not be able to have a drink. I should really have my head examined, choosing Monk's. I have a meeting at 2pm that I've got to not be smelling of alcohol for, and Ericalynn is having quite a hellacious day of her own. A cocktail or four would have been a welcome addition to the day.
Of course, who knows what tortures would have awaited our waiter if there was alcohol involved. Ericalynn told him he looked like Simon Cowell and then asked him if she was the next American Idol. By the bottom of a beer maybe he would have looked like Paula Abdul or Randy Jackson!
Great. Great! Now I want nothing more than a nice pint of something dark and malty. Grrrrr....must attend meeting first!
It was only a matter of time: A lawsuit has been filed in Belgium charging war crimes against Tommy Franks for his actions in Iraq. This lawsuit has been filed by Iraqi citizens.
The case concerns the alleged victims of US cluster bombs in Iraq, as well as incidents where US troops are accused of firing on ambulances and civilians, lawyer Jan Fermon said.With our new "compassionate conservative" Iraqi policy that allows U.S. troops to shoot looters as a warning to others, I can't imagine that this lawsuit will be the last.It is thought unlikely that the case will succeed.
Washington has already warned that Belgium's status as an international hub could be affected unless the "universal competence" law is restricted.
There's something extra special about seeing your old dorm in the news. Two Temple University students got in a fight, and one bit off the ear of the other. It's good to see students embracing their inner Mike Tyson.
"First thing he got was my ear," Sheehan said. "It seems wrong but it was 20 seconds, then he ripped it off, chewed on it and spit it on the ground. He pointed at it with some more profanity as he ran."OK, so here's where it gets really surreal -- Baez, the guy who bit off the ear, is facing an assault charge, but has only been suspended from Temple for a semester. One single semester! I'm well aware that Temple U. is the money-grubbingest institution on the planet, but one semester? Do they think that in one semester Baez is going to be reformed into a pacifist?
Sassy is about seven years old now. Craig and I adopted her when she was three. Sassy was always a strange cat. Most other cats would treat canned tuna or soft cat food like kitty crack, but Sassy wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. All she would eat was hard cat food.
That's OK with me. I hate a pet who begs.
But Craig can't help but tempt fate. Every chance he got he'd see if Sassy would eat whatever he was eating...ice cream, pretzels, chicken. And, since Sassy learned it was OK to eat people food, now she begs for a lick of whatever you've got. When I eat cereal in the morning she sits at my feet and yells at me because she wants the leftover milk.
Tonight we found out she's got a real craving for shortbread cookies. No wonder she weighs more than I do.
I finished my socks tonight during Buffy. How I love to finish a project! So socks finished, only three projects on needles left! Woo!
For anyone interested, the yarn is Schachenmayr nomotta Crazy Cotton. Each sock was roughly one skein. It's a little strange, but I really love knitting socks. Knitting in the round on double pointed needles is fun, and I love the weird presto chango magic of turning the heel. Knitting socks has the added benefit of being relatively immediate gratification-y.
I bought one more bunch of sock yarn last time I went yarn shopping. The next is brown and black wool. It's debatable whether or not I'll be able to control my urge to get the socks started. It's an addiction, I tell you!
So here's something fun -- I think someone spoofed my email account. I received an email today in my account from a @thegofish.com address that wasn't mine and now I'm worried that some smacked ass is sending out billions of spam emails in my name.
Anyone have any ideas what I can do to a] find out who did it; b] prevent it in the future?
Woo! It's Buffy night! You know where I'll be from 8-9pm tonight.
I'm a little sad that Buffy is coming to an end, even with the crapfest that the last three or four seasons have been. I will admit that the blow is softened by knowing that I still get to have my Spike jones fulfilled next season on Angel.
So go play some Buffy trivia quizzes, you know, for old times sake.
I never realized until a few years ago that scrapple was a regional delicacy. When I mentioned it to my friends on the west coast or in Europe, they thought maybe I was talking about Spam or potted meat of some sort.
Sadly, no. Spam and other canned meats are like the rarest, choicest beef cuts in comparison to scrapple. According to one source, "the average scrapple loaf contains the rectums of 4 swine." Let me just say here and now that if it's just the rectum you have to worry about eating, you're concentrating on the wrong thing.
Being from good farmer stock, many of my relatives make their own scrapple [who can forget when my great uncle brought 640 pounds of homemade scrapple to my grandfather's funeral a few months ago?]. I've seen it made. Want to know the secret ingredient?
Well, first, let me explain what happens to the pig. The hogs get slaughtered and have all the good stuff sawed off and you're left with lips and assholes and various other parts that are no good for anything. All these varied parts are laying around on the slaughterhouse floor, which isn't exactly clean. There are mouse hairs and droppings, bugs, and all manner of other stuff which I'll leave to you to imagine. Now the farmer gets a shovel and scoops all that stuff up and then presses it together with cornmeal to get a gray loaf of scrappley goodness.
It's giving me the heaves just thinking of it.
If the amount of duct tape you purchased during the whole terrorism/elevated threat level thing is directly related to the level of your patriotism and Americanism, then Philadelphia criminals are George's angels: our criminals have chosen duct tape as their weapon of choice.
Still, in the past three months there have been at least seven duct-tape related crimes in the area. Bloom said police don't track duct tape crimes, so cops don't know how the current situation compares with previous years.Great! So now on top of me having to worry that my grandmother is going to die from asphyxiation because she has sealed herself for freshness inside her own home on the recommendation of George, I now have to be on the look out for thugs with duct tape.This apparent increase comes after officials told people in early February to stock up on duct tape, in preparation for a possible terrorist attack.
At least now we know what all those extra rolls of duct tape are being used for.
[Please note: I'm completely aware that duct tape was used for crime before this. I'm simply pointing out the increase in duct tape crimes might be related to Homeland Security.]
I'm just an exhibitionist at heart, I guess. How else can you explain that I've now joined the writing staff at two group blogs?
Believe it or not, most of the time I'm a really polite person to strangers. I hold doors, say "pardon me" with a smile when I get in someone's way, and "thank you" when someone holds a door for me. It's common courtesy, and I'm a big believer in it in my daily life.
As a result, I get inordinately irritated when people do not hold to my particular level of politeness. And everyone today so far has been horribly rude to me. This morning I went to Wawa to hit the ATM and I accidentally stepped in front of a woman on the way out. I smiled and said, "pardon me!" and then got the hell out of the way. The woman just stared me down. OK. I held the door for a guy at Dunkin' Donuts on my way to my morning coffee. He gave me a sneer. A sneer!
Now there are days when I'm surly and I don't feel like dealing with people. I will admit to days when I'm just rude to people. Perhaps this is my karmic payback. But even on my rudest days I'm a "please" and "thank you" kind of chick. Maybe I should pack it up and go home.
My grandmother has a doll that scares the bejeezus out of me. Truth be told, she has exactly one doll in her entire house. She's not a doll person, nor does she collect stuffed animals or stuff like that. But this one single doll resides in her house, and has for as long as I can remember. It's a doll of the Chatty Cathy variety, and it's about three feet tall with matted blonde hair and blue eyes that close when the doll is reclining.
When I was little I was freaked out by the thing because it was as big as I was [or bigger, depending on the year]. I never really got all that much taller [5'2"], and so it's still a little disconcerting to be near a doll that's almost as tall as I am. My grandmother has always kept this doll in the guest bedroom and always refused to let me move the doll elsewhere when I stayed overnight.
So whenever I stayed overnight it was just me and the doll -- staring each other down. I'd be sort of in bed with the covers pulled up to my nose, but still ready to bolt at the slightest sign of movement from the doll. And it got worse after I saw Poltergeist -- remember the scene with the clown doll?
When I was about 14 years old the Chatty Cathy doll developed some sort of mind of it's own. The pull string activated voice box started going off on it's own at irregular intervals, usually when I was just about to fall asleep. So there I would be, on the verge of a troubled and uneasy, nightmare filled slumber, and the doll would suddenly shout "I love you, Mommy!"
There have never been any words more terrifying than those.
The doll is still in the house, but, thankfully, the voice box has long since died. It might have something to do with the time I threw the doll down after it kept me awake one night too often. Well, that, and when I hopped up and down on it's chest with my Doc Martens two or three dozen times.
But the stupid doll still stares at me every time I walk in the house. I swear my grandmother puts the doll out just to freak me out.
I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said:
This is a great argument [and basic] argument for keeping abortion legal, but it's also the basis of a really good argument for a lot of things. While I realize that suing the shit out of whoever the hell you want is a basic right, it just seems like we're all just using the judicial system as one big Get Out of Jail Free card when it comes to the stupid shit that we do.
Let's take, for instance, the latest ridiculous suit that seeks to prohibit the consumption of Oreos by minors. You know, because Oreos are dangerously high in trans fat and minors obviously can't be trusted to make even the most basic of decisions for themselves.
And you know, there aren't other really horrible for you food available. If you take away the Oreo, there isn't Krispy Kreme donuts or Big Macs or a myriad of other foods with 1000% of it's calories from bad fat, right? Did it ever occur to anyone that maybe little Johnny or little Jolene wouldn't be morbidly obese at the age of 8 if Johnny Sr. and Jolene Sr. made good choices for them at home? Maybe took the Playstation controls out of their little chubby hands and forced them to, oh, I don't know, go the fuck outside? Trust me, if I'm eating fairly healthy the rest of the time, an Oreo now and then isn't going to make me into a ticking fucking blocked coronary time bomb.
It's called responsibility for our choices. It isn't up to Nabisco to make Oreos less dangerously fattening. It's up to parents to instill healthy eating habits in their kids. It's up to parents to help their kids understand the importance of nutrition and exercise. And if I want to eat a fucking cookie, I will. Because I, unlike the smacked ass litigious fucks around the world, understand the consequences of my actions and accept those consequences. Grow up.
[link found via Confetti Falling]
This is just something that ran through my head a few minutes ago...
If a woman kills her children because god told her to do it, she's nuts, right? Why is it not crazy that George does the things he does because god told him to do it?
Just curious.
I admit it -- I watched the crapfest that was the 90210 reunion last night. I didn't regularly watch the show beyond the first season or two, but I was curious.
What a bunch of pompous schmucks. We were the voice of a generation? What? Did I just hear correctly? 90210 was the voice of a generation? I must have missed something vital -- no one on that show ever represented me or my voice. I never wanted to be anyone on that show. My friends and I watched it and just shredded the show, the actors, and the thin plotlines.
And what was with Shannon Dougherty getting those weird little cameo vignettes? No one else did. I never want to look at her again. Her teeth draw my focus like a laser beam. She just creeps me out.
Mark you calendar: May 16 and 17 is Mike the Headless Chicken Day.
I'm not sure why, but I find myself strangely creeped out by Mike's story. My grandfather used to keep chickens on the farm when I was a kid, so headless chickens prowling the grounds isn't that foreign to me. But the idea that this thing was kept alive by the farmer feeding it through the neck with an eyedropper just kind of skeeves me right out.
There's no way to go through 300+ entries in an hour, but here are my favorite May Day Project entries so far:
What strikes me is how similar everyone's day is, at least on some level.I must admit that I really enjoyed participating in the May Day Project on Saturday. It was really difficult to choose photos that didn't reflect what a mundane life I lead. Who wants to see a photo of my ass sitting couchside, right? But I like the way my day turned out.
My big goal today is to check out some of the other entries in the Project. What, with the Race and all, I didn't really have time to look.
Boohoo, everyone is anti-American. It's dangerous. It's "trite." Yes, I swear to you Jack Straw actually called feelings of anti-Americanism in Europe "trite."
"First of all they did literally save Europe from the most terrible tyranny in the Second World War but in addition if you look at IT, you look at biotech, the things that these days keep us going, make our lives happier and healthier, it's to America that we owe a huge amount.This is the funniest thing I've ever read. So people need to forget that the current administration is intent on enforcing it's will on the entire world arbitrarily and as it sees fit [preemptively], and just buy into the party line that the world would be a far worse place if not for the ingenuity of those plucky Americans?"People need to remember that."
I am an American and that sounds like a whole lot of crap to me. I do think Americans, in general, get a bad rap. But lately I don't blame people for seeing us in a bad light. Our government is acting in a reprehensible manner. Regime change starts at home, yo.
I haven't really wished anyone a Happy Mother's Day today, with the exception of my mother. But everyone and their brother has made sure to bestow their wishes upon me to have a very happy Mother's Day. Mostly I just smile and say thank you.
On Friday when I was leaving work the receptionist told me to have a nice weekend and Happy Mother's Day. I wasn't really thinking and I said, "I don't have children." The receptionist looked panicked and blurted, "Oh, I'm sorry! I just assumed! I'm so sorry!" It didn't occur to me until later that she probably thought I couldn't have children and I was all verklempt about it.
I realize it's a nicety to wish all women of child bearing age a Happy Mother's Day, just like saying "God bless you" after a sneeze even though you have no way of knowing if the person you're saying it to believes in god. It bugs me though. And it's not just because everyone just assumes I have children or want children. It's because people think it's insane that I don't want children.
My favorite response to me telling someone that I haven't any desire to have children is this: Oh, you'll change your mind someday! Children are so wonderful and you're life won't be fulfilled until you have some of your own!
When Craig and I got engaged, we had a conversation about children. Neither one of us really like them. Craig is more tolerant of them than I am; I can only deal with them in small doses. Knowing that it's the fruit of my very own loins isn't going to make me like kids any better. I don't think they're cute or endearing, and I certainly don't think getting puked on and having to clean up shit is something I'd really love to do. I like spending my money on me, not paying for someone else's college or giving someone allowance every week.
It's not like I'm against other people having children. Someone needs to have them. I give people who like children and have them and are good parents a lot of credit. It's a hard job. So Happy Mother's Day to all of you who are mothers and want to be mothers.
Just quit trying to guilt me into having kids.
I can't hula hoop. It's my badge of shame.
What's strange is that I can't do it. I've got hips. My hips are good farmer stock, breeding hips. I should be a championship hula hooper. Hell, I should be able to hula hoop like there's no tomorrow.
But, for whatever reason, I start the hoop going, wiggle and gyrate and shimmy my hips like a nutcase and the hoop just drops like a stone. The only thing I'm left with is the fact that I look like a complete idiot while attempting to hula hoop.
I need remedial hula hoop lessons.
Another Mother's Day, another Race for the Cure. There was a minor set back involving bleeding feet, but I finished. And Tracey did great! She finished a couple minutes ahead of me.
I'd like to thank the following people for sponsoring my run this year: Joe, Sarah, Solonor, Kymberlie, and
If you've never participated in any kind of race for a cause, it's sort of a weird experience. People stop along the race route and clap for you. You might end up, as Tracey did, running behind a father with his young son wearing signs that say "In Memory of Mom" and "In Memory of My Wife," which is really heartbreaking. I ended up running close to a group of survivors who are identifiable by their pink shirts. All of them have signs that say "In memory of" and "In celebration of." I don't think many people run the Race for the Cure just to run...everyone knows someone or is related to someone who has had breast cancer.
And then let's not forget the free spread that Wawa puts out for us after the Race. All the donuts, bananas, muffins, and pretzels you could ever want. Hooray for Wawa, yo!
And oddly, I got to take Tracey and her boyfriend Jim on a brief tour of Kensington on the way to the subway. It's really sad when the cleanliest place in an entire neighborhood is the subway station. But now Jim nows right where to go if he's ever looking for a toothless hooker!
Sadly, I am frequently mistaken for a ho in that same spot. Who mistakes a woman in a suit with a briefcase [with all her own teeth, I might add] as a neighborhood hooker? An optimist, that's who!
I have downloaded 133 songs since Tuesday. Craig tells me he's going to get me an eye patch, a peg leg, and a parrot.
Yes, I have turned into a CD-making obsessed idiot. This morning when I met Tracey for a run, I gave her a present -- a CD hand-burnt and mixed lovingly by me. It's only a matter of time before I start making my own cover art, because I'm a total smack and I take everything way too far.
Eventually I'm going to find the perfect go fish mix and then I'll just start handing out copies like candy to perfect strangers on the street. Stop me before I burn again.
Self-important fucks like Eminem should just hang it up and return to their sad little lives. I'm not an Al Yankovic groupie, although Fat is one of my favorite videos ever. If I was a recording artist and Al wanted to parody one of my songs, I'd say "have at it. do your thing." Because Al's a funny guy, yo. Poor, beleaguered Eminem won't let Al shoot the video for his 8 Mile parody. You just know he's sitting up in his lucite and black laquer decorated home lamenting, "Yo man, I can't have that hack making fun of my art. I'm a serious artist, yo! He's going to step back and show some respect."
Lighten up, I say. There's nothing about Eminem that comes off as thuggish or street smart or ghetto-y -- with his stupid Moby war, and almost throwing down with the dog puppet [or, should I say, directing his posse to throw down with a dog puppet], and now his whining over this whole Al Yankovic thing, he just comes off as an over-sensitive, self-absorbed hack.
I can't say I'll be sorry when his 15 minutes are up.
Please note: this project will be updated throughout the day until I go to sleep. Hold your cursor over the photo to see the time and location of each photo, and double click to get a larger version.
It's time for another edition of Murals of Philadelphia! Woohoo! This is one of my favorite murals in town -- it's located on Broad at Spring Garden.
I'm convinced rubenesque is on it's way back in...even Christina Aguilera can pinch an inch these days.
It's about fucking time -- I'm sick to death of counting the ribs on these skinny ass bitches.
Dammit! Like an ass, I forgot to take my umbrella out to lunch with me and, of course, it started raining like a muthafucker. Now I have that crunchy hair you get when the acid rain hits hair with a little too much product in it. I'm starting to look like I've got a jeri curl going on. Ick.
But the food was fantastic and worth my new "drowned rat" look. To hell with it, I'm going home.
Heee! I'm going to lunch at Morimoto today!
I've been craving the fresh tofu since the last time I was there. This is sick -- I'm actually starting to salivate the thought of it. Of course, it doesn't take much to set me into a food frenzy. I get excited about macaroni and cheese [homemade, of course].
I have also been dying for jalapeno rellenos from Las Cazuelas and curried mussels from Monk's.
Homewreckers: defeating the drunks
I know this will come as a huge shocker for those who have been reading go fish for a while, but I have no patience. Zero. Zilch. Not even a smidgen.
A few years ago I tried to teach Craig how to write simple HTML code. We sat down, I explained the basic format of a single website page written in HTML. He seemed to get it. Then I went on to explain image and URL links, and somehow lost him. I went over it twelve more times, and he still didn't get it. Finally I just blurted out, "I don't understand why you're not getting this. It's so easy."
End of lesson.
This is one of the main reasons I don't want to have children. Kids are trifling to me, because they require good-natured patience. I don't have that. If the kid can't be potty trained the first time I explain the situation, there are going to be problems. It's also the reason I decided against being a teacher.
Let's take poetry as an example. I love poetry. In college I tried to explain how to pick apart poetry to get the deeper meaning to my roommates throughout their various literature classes. No one got it and eventually stopped asking me to explain how to do it because I got all irate when no one could see the obvious vagina references and sexual imagery in Kubla Khan.
You would think that I would have a lot of sympathy for people who challenged in some things, considering my major math problems. Oh sure, I can do the basics, but algebra, geometry, trig -- all far surpass my meager mathematical skills. You can try to explain it to me over and over but I still don't get it. My friend Joe tried to coach me in Logic and was rewarded with a blank stare.
But no. Forays into educating the masses usually end with my hair being pulled out in large clumps.
Oh, sweet Friday! I think I might take a half day constitutional today. Because less Friday is even better than Friday itself!
This weekend promises to be interesting. Tomorrow it's all about the May Day Project. There are roads to run with Tracey, flowers to buy, gardening to do, CDs to burn, Dad Vails to marvel at.
And let's not forget Sunday -- it'll be shoe hitting pavement, sweaty bouncy boobs-a-plenty, and huffing and puffing as I shave half a minute off my time in the Race for the Cure. Don't forget that Tracey is running too this year and we will love you, pet you, and call you George if you make a pledge to the Komen Foundation for our respective runs.
I feel like skipping.
Want to know what my favorite song of all time is?
It's Erotic City. The link is for the mp3 of the Prince extended version but I also really dig the George Clinton version.
I'm serious -- above all other songs, Erotic City is my absolute favorite.
UPDATE: the link apparently doesn't work. I'm trying to fix it.
So I managed to figure out how to burn my very own CD. I feel sort of let down -- it was a little too easy. I figured there would be hours of reading the manual and hair pulling and teeth gnashing. It didn't strike me as something that would be intuitive.
At any rate, it's my junior high CD. You know, a lot of REM, Depeche Mode, Smiths, Elvis Costello, Replacements, and Pet Shop Boys. Oh, and one Marvin Gaye tune thrown in for kicks. I'm listening to it now. It's hilarious -- all that's running through my head is me laying on my bed at home in my mom's house, tears streaming down my face, getting all verklempt over whatever loser I was dating that week.
I laugh like hell everytime I hear someone say that more teenagers today are battling depression. Depressing a teenager is like shooting fish in a barrel. Every single one of them is depressed -- whether they're football players, chess geeks, or goths. I certainly spent many a night in tears listening to Morrissey, planning my suicide.
When I was a kid my mother used to take my brother and I to Hershey Park a couple times every year. Sometimes she just took us through the "museum" outside the park, which was free. Hey, we were poor and had to take our amusement where we could get it!
Anyway, I used to have this reoccuring dream that I hopped out of the little moving car you sit in to go through the "museum" and went swimming in the "chocolate river" so I could steal sips of melted chocolate. In my dream, it was really chocolate. I also dreamt quite often that I'd hop out of the little car thingy and steal the Hershey's Kisses that rolling down the conveyor belt.
It just occured to me that it's a miracle I didn't turn out to be klepto.
Would you say that there's too much diversity in your workplace [if you currently have a job, which is becoming increasingly rare in this crappy ass economy]? Well, if the answer is yes, I have some great news for you -- the U.S. government is trying to make it an acceptable practice to employ you [or not] based on your religious beliefs.
The House is scheduled to vote today on a bill that would allow religious groups that run federally funded job training and literacy programs to hire and fire employees based on their religious beliefs.Well, I guess it's just those pesky faith-based initiative groups George loves. Oh hell, it's OK to allow federally funded organizations to discriminate against me because I'm not Catholic, right? Oh sure. Because I'm sure it won't go any further than that. I'm sure that gender and race discrimination won't be allowed ever, right? I'm sure that it won't ever be legal to discriminate against me because I'm of Scottish descent, right? I mean, it's not like anyone fought hard to make sure I could never be discriminated against for my religious beliefs, right? Oh, you mean this country was founded on the freedom of religion? Well, now, to be able to discriminate against someone for not being Catholic or Jewish or Protestant or whatever does seem, well, completely opposite of the ideals this country was founded on, doesn't it?
[link found via Just as I Thought.]
Chari sent me a link to a story about Philadelphia nude models and their quest to unionize this morning. I heard about it last night and thought about it for a little while. It strikes me that you have to be a Philadelphian to really appreciate this story.
I know that sounds a little weird. The story itself sounds crazy. Nude models needing a union? What? But here is what you might not understand: Philadelphia is a union town. I'm not talking about a normal union town -- Philadelphia is uber-unionized, filled with teamsters and mobsters and people who run their lives according to and for their unions.
A few years ago I worked for a cancer research organization here in town. We had an annual meeting in Philadelphia at the convention center. It cost us way more money to have it here than it would have in, let's say, San Francisco or Toronto. Why? Because the union has to do everything for you, and you have to pay the union employee accordingly. I had to carry a box of brochures that weighed about ten pounds and was half the size of a microwave about 15 feet to a registration table. My organization was fined an obscene amount of money because I didn't call to the maintenance department, request a worker, and then wait an hour until the guy showed up to carry my box 15 feet.
Think I'm exaggerating? Read this article about the situation at the Center. The first sentence pretty much says it all: It takes three labor unions to put down a tablecloth at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. Unions are ruining Philadelphia and its economy.
Before you freak out and tell me that unions are necessary and wonderful -- I am fully aware of the usefullness of unions when it comes to protecting the rights of workers. But when I can't carry a box 15 feet or you need workers from six different unions to put together a booth, there's obviously something really wrong. This place is just nuts.
So the fact that nude models are now unionized doesn't strikes me as so strange because I've been in this weird culture of union dominance for 13 years. What's really troubling to me is that I can see the point of having them unionized. Perhaps it's time to move elsewhere...somewhere less, um, organized.
The last 3.5 hours were spent in a meeting, sitting on a very uncomfortable chair that let out huge squeaks whenever I shifted in my chair. It was a really enjoyable way to spend the time.
I kept hoping a bolt of lightning would somehow sizzle me and put me out of my misery. You really shouldn't trap someone who hates their job for several hours with nothing better than to think of how much she hates her job.
Now I'm bordering on homicidal.
It has become evident that there is a serial groper in our midst. Yesterday five women were squeezed on the fly by a chubby guy on a bicycle in Center City Philadelphia.
I'm quivering with antici-pation to see what unfolds today.
The scene is playing out in my mind. The women all say it happened too fast to react, so the guy had to be moving at a pretty high rate of speed, right? But yet he was able to ferociously clamp on to numerous boobs and butts throughout the day, some hard enough to leave bruises. Does anyone see something not adding up? If you're on a bike and you're moving, the most you're going to be able to do is high five the random buttcheek or boobie. Actual groping and squeezing can only be accomplished during a much more leisurely bike ride. And if the guy was moving slowly enough to accomplish a reach around or what have you, why was he able to get away unscathed? According to all involved, the guy was chubby -- how fast could he pedal his ass away from the scene of the crime?
I have serious issues with respecting my personal space -- so if some stranger on the street decides to grab himself a little taste, he's going to get pummelled. Or at the very least, I will push him off his bicycle and kick him when he's down.
And now I'm giggling.
Oh, how I love the Spring and our ongoing battle of the bees.
Why is it that comment trolls never have a journal/blog themselves? They think nothing of taking things that you say out of context or taking things too seriously and portraying you as the anti-christ, but they don't have the balls to put their own thoughts and opinions out there.
Not that blogging requires courage, but if you want me to take what you have to say seriously it certainly helps.
Now watch, this will somehow turn into me have some deep-seated prejudice against non-bloggers that makes me no better than a white supremist. I'm taking a stand, no more feeding the animals. You can disagree with me, but don't be an asshat.
So I'm sitting in my office just now and the patchouli stink woman stops by my office for an afternoon chat. Today her funky smell is combined with body odor. Yum, yum--patchouli and BO. How did I get so lucky?
Anyway, she sits down and bends over to play with some of my magnets. As she points her butt toward me she lets out a little poot. She sits down and says, "Excuse me. I just let out a little gas."
Who says that? "Let out a little gas." First of all, I have the sphincter control not to let one out in a co-workers office, but if I did and it was obvious, I think I'd probably just say, "Oooo, pardon me for the fart."
Professional? No, but neither is cutting the cheese in someone else's office. And now I'm left with the smell of patchouli, BO, and fart. I hope no one comes into my office.
I get very sad when non-profit institutions with a long history close due to insufficient funding. It was announced today that the Philadelphia Center City YMCA is going to close after 125 years.
Sure, there are still a few other Y's in the city, but none in Center City. That means there are going to be thousands of kids who have to find new after school and summer activities, parents who will have to locate new day care options, and adults who will have to find a new place to work out or meet for social activities. It's sad.
And this is the trend. Both large and small agencies all across the nation are going out of business because they can't generate the funding to stay open. The economy sucks -- people can't afford to fork over a couple hundred dollars to the YMCA as a charitable donation. They can barely afford to pay for their own needs. Some of the Y's funding is federal. The federal funding for charitable organizations is shrinking so we can pay for things like carrying out the Patriot Act and throwing a whale of a National Peanut Festival in Alabama.
You know, important stuff like that.
If you value your rights as an American, I suggest you visit Bush Occupation. My tshirt will be on it's way to me shortly.
I'm sooooo wearing it next time I'm in Berwick.
My good friend, Tom, gets embarrassed every time he hears "Come on Eileen." He's one of those people of Irish descent who turns blotchy red when he blushes.
Every time I call him, I sing "Come on Eileen" at the top of my lungs. I requested the band to play it at his wedding. Once I got a few friends from different parts of the country to handwrite the lyrics and send him a copy. I know it's really strange, but I get a kick out of making him get blotchy.
He told me the first time he heard the song was with his uber-Catholic grandmother who went apeshit and lectured him on the perils of sex and masturbation and "wasting seed." He was 11 years old.
That kind of shit can be traumatizing.
The great "cement" debate has got me thinking. I travel a bit, and I know people from varying parts of the country. I hear all sorts of accents, both foreign and domestic every day.
Sure, Boston-ian accents and South Philly accents do not exactly make one sound like a rocket scientist. But, without a doubt, the accent I could do without ever hearing again is the Deep South accent. If you have a bit of a twang or the softest edge of a drawl, I don't mind it too much. But Deep South accents make me think of incest, overalls, bogs, Bloodhounds, and Deliverance. It's my one serious prejudice. So help me, I hear a Deep South accent and I will immediately assume you can't add or subtract.
I'm not saying I'm right or that it's the truth, but that's what happens to me when I hear that particular accent. I have never been able to watch Designing Women because those accents made my skin crawl. Maybe that's a good thing, though.
There's not much of an accent to my speech. I say a couple of words funny, one of which is "car." Sometimes it comes out as "caaar." But I don't say "warter" [water] or "dindja" [didn't you?] or anything like that [which is common locally]. I will say that if I had to choose an accent, I would choose a Scottish accent. I get weak-kneed for Scottish accents.
It makes listening to Sean Connery speak quite an experience.
I'm not a huge fan of musical theatre. Most of them just take stories way too seriously, and how serious can it be when you're singing and dancing whilst saying your lines? I've seen Les Miserables, Miss Saigon, and a host of other musicals and, yeah, they're big spectacles and impressive productions but breaking out into a jazzy dance number while you're starving or in the middle of Saigon is just kind of silly. I do, however, have a severe jones to see Hairspray, because the production is a comedy and musical=comedy should always be true.
And now Elton John is making The Vampire Lestat into a musical. This just strikes me as a bad idea. I'm an Anne Rice fan, but even the movies made from her books are horrifyingly bad. Now you're going to convert them to a musical? No thanks. I can see it all now -- Lestat kills someone and then will perform this stunning tap number about how much he likes blood.
Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.
So I'm at this private club last night during my work event. Three Geman tourists are running around taking photos in all the rooms [this sounds like the beginning of a bad joke]. They stop dead when they see me standing registration duty outside the room. One of them points toward the room and says, "May I look?" I nod, quietly, hoping I can convey with my solemn nod that if he and his little friends take a photo in my conference room I will have to bounce their silly asses out of there. Apparently it worked. The guy sort of poked his head in, looked around hesitantly, and practically fled.
It could have been my steely glare. I've been told before that my icy gaze/evil eye can turn a man to jelly within seconds. Of course, I don't see it -- I think I come off as ridiculously overblown in those types of situations.
Perhaps I've just gotten better at the dagger stare.
So is the pronunciation of the word "cement" a regional thing? Is it "SEA-ment" or "se-MENT"?
I've always pronounced it "se-MENT" and Merriam-Webster's agrees with me. There's this nifty little feature where you can hear a word pronounced on the M-W site. Ah, the wonder of having a sound card again!
Anyway, I'm sitting here listening to the local news and I keep hearing this woman say "SEA-ment" over and over again. It sounds ridiculous.
Awww yeahhhhhh! Right now I'm typing on my brand spankin' new keyboard! Wooo!
I got home from my event tonight and Craig had it all set up. As it turns out, those crazy UPS fools delivered it right after he got home! Yay!
Now tomorrow I will visit Staples for some recordable CDs and spend the next couple of days figuring out how it all works!
This monitor is fucking huge.
Last night when I arrived home from work there was a UPS delivery notice on my front door. My new PC! Woooo!
So Craig picked up me around 12:30p today and we made a visit to the local UPS. I'm standing there in the office waiting for the staff to bring my package, Craig is standing behind me impatiently with a handtruck, and then my package arrives. It's about half the size of a VCR.
"That's it?" I ask the clerk.
Craig looks crestfallen and grabs for the box and tears it open. A surge protector.
Those bastards at Dell sent my surge protector separately.
So we stopped back at the house to drop off the box. Then we proceed to spend the next twenty minutes chasing down UPS trucks in our neighborhood. I fully expected to get pulled over at any moment for stalking.
You just know there's going to be UPS notice on my door tonight.
Well. Yet another Bush White House staffer is stepping down. This has got to be a record. Does anyone have any clue as to where I can find a complete list of Bush staffpeople who have abandoned ship?
George should be a little relieved, at this one didn't quit in protest. He just wants to run for office. He doesn't seem like a very nice guy though: "He once accused New Yorkers of "a little money-grubbing game" for pursuing $20 billion Bush promised — and later provided — to rebuild from the Sept. 11 attacks."
By now I'm sure you've seen links to the new Homewreckers blog, right? Well guess what? Those poor deluded souls have been schnookered into letting me write for them -- I'm part of the "the wrecking crew."
Be afraid, be very afraid.
UPDATE: As if I could resist: my first post
I have breasts, much like half the other people on the planet. I'm fond of them -- they're nicely shaped and have served me well over the years. I think I'll keep them.
Breast cancer runs in my family. My mother is a survivor and so are several of my great aunts. Unfortunately, a couple of great aunts have not been so lucky in the fight. It's for the survivors and those that lost the battle that I'm running in the Race for the Cure on Sunday.
If you've got a buck or two burning a hole in your pocket, why not support my run? A few of your already have, and I'm really grateful for the support -- thank you so much! Make the world a safer place for boobies everywhere by throwing a couple of bucks at the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. Alternatively, if you've got nothing better to do on Sunday [Mother's Day], come down to the Parkway in Philadelphia and either walk or run the Race yourself or cheer me and Tracey on.
Like all good fundraisers, I don't ask without promising something in return. I found some entertaining boobie-related links for you below....enjoy!
Amy and I pledged a while ago that next time The Amazing Race was accepting applications, we would make ourselves a team and throw our hat into the ring. We missed it the last time, but we should start getting our shit together because the next season is starting at the end of the month.
I hate to admit this, but this news has caused my department to descend on the CBS website to read the bios. All of us love The Amazing Race. No, we really love it. There is no work the morning after a new episode because we're all clustered together talking about it.
So here's the question -- where are they going to go this year? Everyone in the entire world hates America right now. One of my co-workers suggested that maybe they'll just run around Iowa for a month.
[Link found via Held in Contempt.]
So would you rather die young and stay pretty, or get real old and eventually become a boring shell of your former self? Personally, I don't like the idea of getting old. There are the wrinkles and the crepey skin, and that awful smell that really old people get, and everything revolves around your bowel health. No thanks.
And I'm really afraid of getting boring. I may not live life on the edge anymore, but people don't fake narcolepsy to get out of talking to me at parties.
This all comes up because I was playing Google last night. I got bored and decided to Google the names of several former members of the vast go fish harem. I expected that, if I got a hit on any of them, these former beaus would be leading exciting lives of danger and intrigue.
Alas, no.
I found the very first guy I dated in college. His name is Jared. To my utter horror, Jared has a cheesy "Welcome to my personal website" Geocities page. And it's not particularly well-designed. In fact, it's just awful.
What makes it even worse is that he's now balding and boring. He actually has a link so I can check out his magnet collection. Oh my. Having a magnet collection is one thing -- scanning them so I can marvel at his plethora of "welcome to [insert state name here]" magnets is quite another.
I'm trying to forget all that and remember the Jared I used to know. The Jared whose nickname was "Elephant" [guess why] and who partied like a rock star. The Jared who was a pleasure to sleep next to in the dead of winter because he was like a furnace and his frat house didn't have heat. One weekend he took me to New York City and took me on my first carriage ride through Central Park. He was fun and sweet. Now he's, I don't know, old. He probably sits couchside most nights with his wife [who resembles me quite a bit] and picks his ass and drinks Metamucil.
This is proof that I shouldn't attend any high school or college reunions -- seeing old, formerly fun, boyfriends who are now old and boring is sure to be a little too depressing for me.
So. If I had ties to terrorism, was funded by terrorism...I'd be arrested, right? So why is Bechtel rewarded for the same behavior with the Iraq reconstruction project?
According to an article in the May 5 issue of New Yorker magazine, several bin Laden family members -- part of a large, Saudi Arabian family that made a fortune in the construction business -- invested about $10 million in a private equity fund operated by former subsidiary of Bechtel before Sept. 11.To be fair, the Fremont Group spokesperson denied this connection should be relevant because "the family had no ownership stake in Fremont and its investment was made 'well before the events of Sept. 11.' " So if I had been funded by the family of a known terrorist, let's say, five years ago, it's OK? The government wouldn't be nosing around in my garbage and tapping my phones and perusing my library records?Fremont Group, a San Francisco-based private investment firm, once was a unit of Bechtel, and its board still includes Bechtel CEO Riley P. Bechtel and former U.S. Secretary of State and former Bechtel President George P. Shultz, along with several current Bechtel directors.
You know, is it too much to ask for a government that is honest about their dealings? I haven't had a good feeling about the government during my entire adult life. I'm so jealous of older adults that had the luxury of having a President and a government they could trust, that wasn't trying to fuck them over and steal everything they work for in the interest in making themselves richer. I just want representation that I'm not embarrassed of. I want to be able to go to a foreign country and not need to know the phrase for "No, I am Canadian" because being an American is too risky and humiliating. I want the kind of government that I can be so proud of that I can stand up in the middle of any street in the world and proclaim my nationality without fear of being ridiculed or killed.
Is it too much to ask for?
You know, I was happy when Private Lynch was rescued. If the war was going to be stuffed down our throats, the most I could do was fervently hope for the safe return of U.S. troops and the safety of Iraqi civilians in the face of "Shock and Awe" and MOABs and all of that.
The media went into a frenzy over her rescue. Private Lynch was catapulted onto this pedestal of shining military glory. We were told she was a prisoner of war, that she was captured and being held against her will. Of course, now come reports that Private Lynch was well cared for and had excellent medical treatment and caring medical professionals looking after her who tried to return her to the U.S. military.
I don't automatically believe every word -- of the Iraqi hospital, or of the U.S. military. The truth is probably somewhere in between. And yes, I'd be interested in hearing the tale directly from Private Lynch, but, conveniently, she seems to have amnesia. In fact, officials are saying that she "mentally blocked out the horrible things we strongly believe she went through."
It saddens me to think this whole thing has a sinister ring to it. Maybe Private Lynch does remember and doesn't want to spill the beans for fear of infuriorating the top brass and putting her military career in jeopardy. Maybe she remembers, but the amnesia story is a military smoke screen. Maybe she really doesn't remember. Or maybe it's a little more X-Files-y than that. Maybe she will emerge with a Stepford like quality to her and the absolute knowledge that she was tortured within an inch of her life.
I sound like a loon. Pretty soon I'm going to start subscribing to conspiracy theory newsletters and stockpiling weapons and food for the looming governmental plot to kill anyone who doesn't agree with them. This is sick. I feel sick that this scenario isn't completely ridiculous. Cripes, I think I have the vapors.
[Link found via Easy Bake Coven]
Can you hear that? Harps...violins...angels singing...and, I think I can hear the strains of Cool Rider.
Grease 3 is in the pipeline, yo! Woohoo! All I want is a small bit part. I'll play a waitress at the local diner, or a teacher, or, hell, even a parent or bowling alley hanger outer. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
[Link found via Ain't Too Proud to Blog, home of Robyn -- another Grease 2 aficionado]
I don't mind it when it rains, but I have very specific criteria which make it acceptable. For one, it can't rain on a Monday during the workday. It's bad enough that I'm depressed I'm at work, crouching in my cubicle, trying to stay off the radar...but now it has to rain, too?
Sunday, or Monday through Wednesday after 8pm, is the only time it should rain. And I should be in my house, not responsible for going anywhere, with a large supply of comfort food.
Comfort food to me involves the following:
Be sure to put your two cents worth of input into this post-war poll by MSNBC. Take note of the poll numbers now.
Something tells me those numbers will be magically transformed to somehow suggest George is doing a bang up job by the time they get reported.
[link found via Gamer's Nook]
Heh. The 50 Most Loathesome People in America.
My favorites:
34. PAT ROBERTSON-and-Misdeeds: Won't rest until we're all on our knees, praying to Jesus and dreaming of jobs at Wal-Mart.
Aggravating Factor: Back in 1992, said this about apartheid in South Africa: "I think 'one man, one vote,' just unrestricted democracy, would not be wise. There needs to be some kind of protection for the minority which the white people represent now, a minority, and they need and have a right to demand a protection of their rights."
Aesthetic: Inquisitor-perfect hygiene.
16. ARI FLEISCHERMisdeeds: Wherever he ends up placed on this list will not be high enough. This motherfucker carries G.W. Bush's demon seed in his anal womb, gestates a fresh offspring a couple times a day and produces a few Rosemary's steamers at press conferences with all the non-chalance of a Spot Coffee latte jerk. Fleischer is the very bold assertion, by the powers that be, that Americans and their media representatives are too whip-shy to just say, "Wait a fucking minute. You're telling a goddamned lie, Fleischie." He is a brazen challenge from the tri-laterals and Bildenbergs, etc., that they know that we, as the TV umbilical-cable-dependent, won't do anything to jeopardize our little no-compulsory-military-service, double-mocha-under-a-self-contained, climate-controlled indoor-suburban-shopping-theme-park-with-a-Botox-safety-net dream.
Aggravating Factor: He is less life-like than every other who has stood in his rank. Within weeks, there promises to be empirical evidence that Fleischer was produced by the same laboratory that gave us Nixon tron John Dean.
Aesthetic: C3PO melded with Carson Daly operating off a modified Charles Grodin chip.
[link found via Suburban Guerilla]
If you lived in a dorm during college, chances are you hid under the bed or in the closet during a fire alarm at least once. I lived in Johnson Hall at Temple U. for two years. The fire alarms went off at least ten times every week, and every single time you were expected to leave the dorms until the dorm could be swept for a fire source. This could take anywhere from ten minutes to 45 minutes. If you were found in your room you would be fined some obscene amount of money.
I actually went out for a fire alarm exactly once.
The stupid fire alarms usually went off in the middle of the night. If you think I'm getting up, getting dressed, and schlepping my ass down nine flights of stairs so I can freeze my ass off on North Broad Street at 3am for half an hour, you're fucking nuts. I hid underneath my bed. The alarm would go off, my roomie and I would moan and then crawl underneath our beds and fall back to sleep.
Luckily, there was never a real fire. We would have been screwed if there had been. After all, what good is the death of dorm roommate if the other roommate can't claim the automatic 4.0 for the semester?
My friends and I always thought that was a myth. I mean, sure I'd be sad and distraught if my roommate died, but clocking a 4.0 for the semester automatically seemed too good to be true. If that was true, we thought there'd be a lot more homocides in the dorms. I myself netted a 1.2 my first semester at college. If I really thought I could get a 4.0 for killing off my roommate I might have gotten creative...or at least thought about it. I kid!
Anyway, yeah, no fires. We were never caught and fined, although I did discover my Resident Advisor trying to make off with my weed stash once.
But the 4.0 thing is, apparently, true. During my sophomore year some girl died and all her roommates got a 4.0. This is not a friend of a friend situation. I was friends with one of the roommates. It happened early in the semester, and she didn't attend another class for the rest of the semester. Interesting, no?
I wonder if the 4.0 thing is in effect at Western Kentucky University. Over the weekend there was a dorm fire that was set to cover up an attempted murder. Did you notice the roommate was conveniently not home at the time of the fire? Sure. The roommate probably stabbed the girl, set the fire, and then escaped to the library. And it was 4am.
Wonder how many people were hiding under their beds?
Look, I know Allen Iverson is a good player and he brings talent to the Sixers. But can't some other team adopt him? No, really. I'm sick to death of waking up every morning and hearing about some other dumbass thing he's done, or something one of his relatives that are on his bankroll have done.
In the past month alone, some guy tried to take him out and his stupid uncle rear-ended a car in a vehicle owned by Iverson and then fled the scene. Not that expect all sports figures to put out a good image of themselves, but I would appreciate it if he'd quit acting like a moron and lay down the law to the various relatives who are hangers-on and ask them to quit being assholes.
It doesn't make him look like he's "keeping it real" or anything like that. It just makes him look like a fool. And then I get annoyed because I keep hearing his name in connection to crimes and then he complains because the cops treat him like a criminal. And then I get more annoyed because he's complaining.
I'll just shut up now.
Craig and I have this strange bedtime ritual. Every night when we go to bed Craig closes and locks all the windows and pretends make other preparations to go up to the bedroom. I lock all the doors and turn off all the lights. And I have to say, "Look Craig, watch me lock the door." If he doesn't see me lock the door, Craig's pseudo OCD will overtake him. He'll have to check the lock about four times and then he yanks on the doorknob exactly three times, pulling so hard he has cracked the plaster around the door frame several times since we moved in three years ago.
I'm really not sure where his phobia comes from. No one has ever broken into a house that he's lived in, and no one has ever tried to break into this house. He's crazy about all locks. When exiting the car, Craig does the same thing. First, he pulls up on his door handle exactly three times and then he circles the car and checks every single door, including the trunk [even though he has automatic locks]. Then he comes back to the driver side door and checks it again. Then he tilts his head and says, "These are definitely not my underwear." Kidding!
Of course, occasionally, our nighttime ritual is interrupted. Being OCD, Craig hates any interruption to the ritual. Like tonight, for instance -- I came up to the third floor to check my email. He yells up to me, "Hey, are you coming back down to the first floor?"
"I doubt it," I answered. "I'll probably shut everything down up here and then go to bed."
There was a loaded pause and then Craig's panicked voice rose up the stairs, "So I have to shut off every single light in the livingroom you turned on?"
I stifled a giggle. You'd swear we live in a mansion and there are twenty thousand light switches spanning the gargantuan livingroom. In reality, our livingroom is about 15x15' [max] and there are exactly three lights, two of which are currently turned on.
Oh my gawd, he's got TURN OFF ALL THE LIGHTS! Clutch the pearls! Call the police, because this has got to be spousal abuse! Next thing you know I'll be asking him to go kill a neighbor or something! I'm such a bad wife!
It's obvious that I've got some sinister ulterior motive for not turning the lights out myself.
So I'm sitting couchside this afternoon feeling pitiful over my knee, and I'm taking in all that lousy Sunday television programming has to offer. And then a Time-Life commercial comes on. Time-Life has purchased the rights to the Fat Albert cartoon from the '70s and is now offering the episodes on DVD or video. Here's the catch: each episode is $25 $20 $10.
I can buy an entire season of Buffy for $40, and these boneheads think I'm going to shell out $160 for ten episodes of Fat Albert? I like Mushmouth as much as the next child of the 1970's, but there's no way.
So then I started thinking back over the hundreds of Time-Life commercials I've seen over the last few years, and it's obvious to me that they have hired someone my age as their video and music collection requisitions guy. Why? Because my childhood has pilfered and is being sold off at ridiculously high prices.Let's just start with The Muppet Show: $100 for 10 episodes. Someone is drinking too much crack-laced Hawaiin Punch. And then there are the myriad of '70s and '80s compilation albums. And it's not just my childhood -- they're peddling stuff from the '40s and '50s and '60s, too.
I feel dirty.
More fall out from helping Ruby move yesterday: I twisted my knee. I'm hobbling around the house like a 90 year old woman today because every time I take a step my knee gives a resounding twang.
And, of course, I had plans today. Tracey and I had a running date this morning, which I had to cancel. And I was going to make sushi for Statia later on, which I have also cancelled. All I'm going to do today is lay couchside with my heating pad and an economy size bottle of Aleve. I refuse to use BenGay on principle, so at least I won't be smelling old.
Perhaps I will force Craig to be my beck and call boy today. Think he'd listen if I ordered, "Fluff my pillow, bitch!"?
I have always sort of fantasized about running for political office, but never thought it would ever work out - I have a checkered past filled with drunken debauchery, drugs and alcohol, and once I was even suspended from school for threatening to kill a teacher. However, a President was elected who did most of that stuff -- I mean, it's amazing George still has the brain cells to function on a daily basis with all the illegal drugs and high volumes of hooch he crammed into his system.
So, in the interest of making everything public up front [which means it's all out in the open and no one can surprise me with anything during my hypothetical politcal office run], I'm going to come clean: I have appeared in a photograph with my tongue on a penis. No, no, it's true...see for yourself:
I should just devote every Saturday to seeing just how badly I can embarrass the hell out of myself. It beats sitting around picking the fuzz out of my belly button.
I'm constantly doing stupid things. Like today for instance -- I missed my mouth with a forkful of salad. So now I have four tiny tine marks below my lower lip. Yeah, I really stabbed myself pretty hard.
Also on my list of stupid things for today is volunteering to help my friend Ruby move her shit to a new house. Craig and I were at her house by 9:30am [OK, so I volunteered the both of us]. It's the two of us, Ruby, Ruby's parents, and a bevy of Ruby's crazy cult church friends. Ruby isn't even fucking done packing yet [hello, advance planning - look into it]. Luckily Ruby's church minions buddies must have assumed we were already part of the flock -- there was no "So, have you accepted Jeebus as your Lord and Savior?" or "Do you want to join our church? It's super fun!"
But there wasn't a whole lot of moving going on, either. If I help someone move, I help them move. I don't sit around and shoot the shit, gossip about the neighbors, or watch other people move shit. About two out of eight of Ruby's Jeebus freak crew actually picked up a box. The rest of them just got in the way. Oh, and did I mention there were children of the freaks running around, getting underfoot?
What I find especially funny is that a whole troop of Jehovah's Witnesses were out today in Ruby's neighborhood [the place she was moving out of]. The Witnesses didn't seem to know any of Ruby's churchfolk, yet there seemed to be a little stand off. I'm not even joking. I thought for a minute someone was going to bust out some West Side Story moves and the two factions would have a little dance off. Instead, Ruby's friend Tara casually sauntered up to one of them and sweetly asked, "So, are you one of the chosen ones?" The Witness stared at her stonily and walked off in a huff. Of course, Tara should have been helping us load up the truck but that's already been covered.
I used to move quite often. I moved at least once or twice every year for about seven years. I don't know, there's just an appeal to getting to pack up all the shit that has cluttered up your house and start fresh somewhere else. Of course, that was before I started to accumulate a lot of stuff. Now I have real furniture and an obscene amount of kitchen appliances...it's really too much of a hassle to move. I have informed Craig that the next time we move we're leaving the majority of our stuff here. It's not getting packed or shipped or whatever. I'm just going to hack up the furniture and throw it out a window. I'm going to travel light.
I'm not a big fan of pain or inconvenience. In fact, I'm downright wimpy. Did you know that a big part of the reason I take birth control pills is so I don't get debilitating cramps and only have my period for two days [I know that's sort of TMI]? I cried yesterday when I removed the super-adhesived bandage from the site of my blood donation. I whine if I get even a little cut.
People who have super human pain tolerance amaze me. Like this mountain climber guy who amputated his own arm with a fucking pocket knife and then repelled to safety.
You never know how you're going to react in extreme situations, but I can safely say that sawing through my arm with a pocket knife is something that I just don't have the stomach for. I'd draw a little blood and that would be the end of it. You'd hear my sissy screams in Europe.
I'm in the mood to knit socks all of a sudden. So I walked over to the yarn shop on Locust Street and picked up some yarn and some new double pointed needles. Guess it looks like I know what I'm doing this weekend.
I also stopped at Kiehl's. I'm excited -- they have tinted lip moisturizer now, so I can look my best when I'm at the gym or running. Woooo!
But, overwhelmingly, the thing that has perked me right up is the roasted beet salad I picked up at DiBruno Pronto. Beets are yummy and fun -- first you eat them and then you pee pink for three days. Tell me that's not fun!
I'm just going to say this: no one, under any circumstances, should wear white pants. Ever. OK, two exceptions - nurses and other medical related fields are OK, and if the pants are super-lined, then they are acceptable.
I know that there are come cute white pants going around, but they only look good on the hanger. Really. People forget that you can see right through white pants. They tuck their shirts into the pants and then you just look stupid...because you can see the pink shirt through the white pants. It looks ridiculous. Then there's the issue of underwear. No matter what you will have VPL...there's just no getting around it. If you wear a thong, it's still visible and then I can see that shiny ass through the white pants. I'm especially repulsed by people who forget that red underwear under white pants is not attractive. And white denim? Don't even get me started...it's right up there with white leather. Or white pleather. This is not the 1980's -- live in the now.
I'm anti-white pants, yo. Step away from the white pants and no one gets hurt.
Anything in the name of research...
Please post the three most diametrically opposed songs on your playlist, and then post two songs that no one would ever guess you'd have. (Five songs total.)Fine.
Hanson -- my secret shame.
Argh! I forgot that I had another pointless departmental meeting this morning. I ran out to grab a bagel and arrived back at my desk to find a terse note on my chair directing me to join the meeting asap. So I abandoned my bagel and my dreams of boosting my mood, and arrived at the meeting just in time to hear the Vice President cursing out my entire department over something stupid.
And now I have to devote three hours of life every Thursday, plus assorted other time throughout the week, to developing some ridiculous process manual that everyone is going to ignore anyway. Not to mention that the schmuck heading this whole manual thing up is someone no one likes. Under normal circumstances I would not make fun of someone with a lisp. But this woman has real personality issues and I have to listen to her speak for hours, skipping R's and killing S's. It's as if some karmic bad thing in my past is making me suffer....in spades.
Not to mention that when I was on my way back from getting my bagel I encountered something that infuriates me. Let me clarify that -- it infuriates me when I'm in a bad mood. When I'm my normal, smiling, cheerful self, it merely amuses me. What I'm talking about is this: I was waiting at the elevator, had just hit the "up" button. The button was lit. Some fucking asshat comes along to wait with me at the elevator, but feels the need to push the elevator button five more times. Like pushing the stupid button half a dozen more times is going to make the elevator arrive any faster. Like I am too idiotic to push the button the correct way. Like the elevator doesn't like me, but will only respond to someone else's commanding finger.
OK, I have vented and I'll be getting outside soon for a little retail therapy. Feeling a little better....
I'm cranky today.
Here I am, exercising my option not to watch George blabber on incoherently. Instead, I'd like to talk about how much I appreciate my civil liberties. Or, I should say, how much I appreciated my civil liberties before George burst onto the scene and started revoking them.
And now the U.S. government is picking on Canada because that damn Canadian government refuses to frighten it's citizens into handing over their freedoms on a silver platter.
Do you know that I read an entry today about someone being required to sign a release at a dentists' office so the office could hand over the medical records to the federal government? So, let me get this straight -- knowing that I have gingivitis is somehow going to stop some form of terrorist activity?
Things get more and more bizarre with each passing day.
Nothing brightens my day like seeing my azalea bush bloom.
Generally speaking, I tend to think of a job at the White House as the ultimate gig. The hours probably suck, but the pay and benefits are probably not bad -- particularly if you're the White House cybersecurity advisor.
Morale in the Big House must be incredibly bad if working for Ebay seems like a better option than working for George. Has some sort of record been set yet with regard to White House staff resigning during the Bush II administration? It seems like every other day there's some high level staff person heading for the hills.
Not that I can blame anyone -- who would want to work with that slimy pusbag?
Yep, remember a few weeks ago when I mentioned giving blood and told you my tale of bloody woe? Today was that day. Luckily I remembered this morning and dressed appropriately. I hate it when I forget and then have to stretch out the sleeve of a sweater to get to my elbowpit.
I ended up having a lengthy discussion with the nurse about sushi. I had sushi for lunch, about 10 minutes before giving blood, so I wouldn't feel woozy or anything. The nurse was freaked out by the idea of sushi, and then she said that she was under the impression that all sushi was raw fish. So I had to explain to her about veggie sushi, and the cooked kinds, like eel, squid, crab, etc. She was endlessly fascinated and kept asking questions.
Or maybe she was just trying to distract me so I'd fill the bag faster and get the hell away from her.
You know, I get a lot of shit from the uber-patriot, Christian right crowd for saying that Bill O'Reilly is a hate-filled piece of shit, and that the only reason people tune into his show is to see what kind of bullshit he's going to say next. It's the train wreck syndrome -- you just can't look away.
Poor Bill isn't doing so well on radio, it would appear. He's losing to Rush Limbaugh. Not that I think Rush fucking Limbaugh is so much more sane than Bill or anything. Both of them have their heads stuck way up their asses. One can only hope that one day there won't be an audience for their vitriolic spewing.
Have I mentioned lately that I really like my feet? I know a lot of people think bare feet are gross and ugly, but I kind of think I have pretty feet. Everyone thinks they have one perfect feature, and my own little bastion of perfection is my feet. I keep them moisturized and pedicured and there are no things like corns or bunions lurking anywhere. I usually wear a toe ring, and sometimes an anklet -- because feet, like penii, should be adorned.
I fully admit that some people should not be allowed to show their feet. If you don't take care of your feet and have cracked, grey heels, put those dogs away. I don't want to see them. No one else should have to look at that. Or if your feet stink -- hide those bombs. People with skinny feet make me nervous.
My grandmother had to get some toe bones removed last year. It comes from a lifetime of trying to stuff her size seven feet into size five shoes. I can't look at her weird floppy toes. It's a good thing that kind of grossness doesn't run in the family.
Yep, I'm glad it's Spring. I love sandals and open-toed shoes. I love walking barefoot in the grass.
You know, I rotate some of the links on my index page blog reads every now and then. Some of them stay put -- Mrs. Roboto is never going to be rotated off. If you don't read her, than you should:
"So as I'm speaking with my father there are numerous interruptions. My dad puts his phone down and yells a few times at various people. This is unlike my father. Finally, I ask what the deal is. Apparently, the idiot my father works for has banned one of his employees from coming into the office for the next three weeks. Why, you ask? Well the guy was in Toronto attending his daughters college graduation and the Big Bossman is convinced he must now be carrying SARS. He wants the guy to stay at home for three weeks with no pay and what's worse, he wants my dad to hire an armed guard to stand watch at the office building just in case this employee tries to get in. The employee in question has no symptoms of SARS. Ridiculous, eh? So my father, whose job actually has nothing to do with personnel (although as he likes to say "we have no Human Resources department because no humans work here") is busy screaming about how stupid the whole scenario is to anyone who will listen.Every time Amy posts something new I almost get fired for giggling uncontrollably in the office.Did I mention that when they were talking about the whole possibility of chemical warfare attacks a few months back, the Big Bossman made all the administrators get on the phone and find him space suits for himself and his family to wear so that they would be safe. He spent over $5000.00 per suit. My father has said that if there was a chemical attack and he was with the Bossman he'd simply inhale deeply because he'd rather be dead than left alone on this planet with only that asshole for company."
I'm not a big fan of breakfast. Sure, I eat cereal and bagels and scrambled eggs...but only because that is what is available for breakfast. I'd much rather eat sushi, or a cheese sandwich, or spaghetti for breakfast...and I have on occasion [usually the weekends, when I have time to cook for myself in the morning]. Craig thinks that's just bizarre.
"It's morning -- you should eat breakfast food," Craig is fond of telling me.
This morning on the way to work I got a craving for fish. Sure, I could have gotten a bagel with lox [even though there's no decent lox within a ten block radius of work], but I really just wanted a slab of salmon with butter and dill. I mentioned it to Craig and you'd have thought I just announced I wanted to assault random pedestrians with a swinging cat.
See, here's the thing -- it's acceptable to eat breakfast for lunch or dinner, but not the other way around. Why? Who decided that I can only eat breakfast food at breakfast? If I want to chow down on a plate of calamari at 7am, I should be able to do it without fear of retribution from the meal time nazis.
Now where is that tartar sauce?
I'm standing in the mirror this morning making my hair look purty, and Craig [in the shower] says, "Hey, I signed up for a blog last night."
The comb in my hand dropped. So did my jaw. "Oh really? What made you do that?"
"Well," he said. "I was curious about the Horny Goat Weed, so I took it. Turns out that it just kept me awake for an extra five hours....obviously, since I didn't wake you up in the middle of the night. I was bored, so I looked up the word "blog" on Google. I don't know, I just did it. I don't know if I'll ever use it, but I thought I'd at least sign up for one."
Another one dragged into the cult of blog.
