im in ur reer-vu mirror, steelin ur leed

Beautiful series between the Yankees & the Red Sox just concluded last night with a 5-0 Yankees win — completing a badly-needed sweep for my boys. Awww yeah! They’re still 5 games back, but the series took a nice chunk out of Boston’s lead in the AL East, and now we’re up in the wild card race as well. Numbers aside, it was just three really exciting games of baseball, the best kind, the kind that only really happens between these two teams at this point in the season. It’s good to be a fan.

And but so the most awesome bonus part was, Curt Schilling was the losing pitcher! Jesus BALLS, how I hate Curt Schilling. You know how I, like, hate lots of stuff? Well, I hate lots of individual baseball players a real lot in very violent ways, but the pinnacle, the absolute tip-top of Hate Mountain, is always reserved for Curt “Dickwad In An Ass-Helmet” Schilling. Anything that causes him pain (real pain, not bullshit Rit-dye-on-a-sock stuff) feeds life-giving nectar to the sooty chambers of my coal-blackened heart.

Meanwhile, an image search for this post led me to my favorite Internets discovery of the summer: lolyankees. Helpless, helpless laughter — please go there today! And thanks in advance to Chris, the blog’s proprietor, for the image I snagged — you, sir, are a national treasure.

Ma'am, I'm afraid you've got a hippie infestation.

Funniest news item of the last few days: Somebody set the Man, of Burning Man fame, on fire several days early.

Oh god, you guys, I laaaaaughed and laughed when I read about this — all those fuckin “artists” (aka naked and/or body-painted drugged-out dumbasses) out there for their annual Bullshitpalooza, and the whole thing blows its load prematurely. Good times, Idiot Arsonist — good times.

OK, now, probably some of you are annoyed that once again, I’m harshing on somebody else’s fun, a fun which holds nothing against me. But if you know any “Burners,” and the way they talk about how it’s so fucking great and spiritual and communal and totally the most awesome greatest thing ever in the history of ever, and you compare that with the reality — all those pretenders & posers camping in the alkaline desert for a week (at several hundred dollars a pop), confusing “art” and “spirituality” and “community” with an excuse to do stupid drugs and trip out and go all golly-gee on fellow idiots’ papier-mache sculptures and shit with flames coming out of it and lots and lots of ugly people naked … well, my favorite thing about Burning Man is how it gets all those assholes out of my city for a few days every year.

And of course, when something fucks up big-time, like this year. Heh.

Heckuva job

Second anniversary of Katrina making landfall today, you guys, and just for posterity, so this doesn’t go down the memory hole, take a good hard look at the photo at right — THAT is what your president was doing the day this whole deadly clusterfuck started.

Can you for one minute imagine Bill Clinton yukking it up at some bullshit fundraiser halfway across the country, gladhanding his loyal supporters and ignoring a national disaster underway at the very same moment? Can you IMAGINE it?

And the evil pigfucker Bush has the nerve to tell us, "This town is better today than it was yesterday and it's going to be better tomorrow than it is today."

Fuck you very much, mister pResident. Fuck you and your “more blessed day in the future” horseshit. It is for you that I hope hell, literal hell like in the Bible you claim to love so much, exists and is waiting at the end of your life on earth.

Joint Subcommittee Meeting on the 50-Yard Line

Today’s top news story: Season One of Friday Night Lights is out on DVD today. Y’all should all go rent it, cause the new season starts in October, and you’re gonna want to get in on that — it is the best show on network television, and if you know how much TV I watch, that firmly-held opinion should seriously impress you.

Please for a minute put aside your prejudices against Texass, football, Texass football, and whatever else kept you from watching this last season; Billy Bob Thornton has nothing to do with it, nor does George W. Bush, and the football qua football is not the point, really. I hate football, myself, but I started watching this show to see how closely it hewed to my experience of small-town Texass and its football obsession — turns out, it hewed so closely that it gave me the howling fantods week after week, for reals.

The writing is AMAZING, the setting is ugly-beautiful (they use natural lighting and real locations wherever possible), the kids — while admittedly prettier than your average small-town Texass kids — are kickass actors, and while there are occasional minor details to quibble over (e.g. Coach’s wife wouldn’t have had to look for a job — there’d have been a niiice cushy one all lined up for her from the get-go, on the district’s dime), barely a note rings false; they get to the very marrow of what it’s like to live in a town for which high school football is the end-all, be-all, whether you personally give a flying fuck about the sport or not. The good, the bad, the very very ugly — it’s all there. It’s like these are not fictional characters played by actors — they’re real people, living real lives, and you can’t help thinking about them in between episodes; it’s like you know them personally and you kind of live or die with their triumphs and defeats.

FIRST AND TEN, DO IT AGAIN, RENT! THIS! SHOW!

This post dedicated to DHS Eagles #80, my fave football player of all time. It was always a thrill to watch you play.

He Who Walks Between the Rows

So, are you kidding me? Berto “Torture is Teh Kewl” Gonzalez — Alby “I Spy … Your Phone Calls!” G. — has resigned? Let’s overlook the fact that all morning, the stupid sad-ass no-class disgusting mess Michael Vick’s plea has been the top story on Yahoo, and take a moment to note this development.

This evil swine, who has done more (and more everlasting) damage to our Constitution and our country than any other single actor in the tragic, vile debacle known as the Bush Administration, has parachuted out of the plane that’s flying straight into the goddamn mountain.

And what has our Dear Leader to say of the tidings?

"After months of unfair treatment that has created a harmful distraction at the Justice Department, Judge Gonzales decided to resign his position and I accept his decision," Bush said from Texas, where he is vacationing.

Un. Fair. Treatment.

Yes, the vacationing fucktard in shitboots masquerading as our President tsk-motherfucking-tsks us — the citizenry — about how badly poor little Al has been treated.

Please, God, if you’re up there — let this ball-cancer-in-a-human-suit be the one to pull the rest of the ratking down with him. Amen.

Note to self: Lock liquor cabinet, bedroom door

I started babysitting at age nine, and until the end of high school it was my main source of income. Most of the jobs were fine, and even fun. But there were a few that sucked so bad … here are:

My Worst Babysitting Gigs Ever

--The week subbing for the FT nanny for three girls, ages 18 mos., 4 years, and 7 years: The kids were sweet and all, but I was 16, it was all day every day for a week (starting at 7:00 a.m. on my summer vacation), people looked at me like I was a syphilitic leper when I went places with the three of them (people assumed they were all mine), and worst of all: NO READING MATERIAL IN THE HOUSE. Well, the 7-year-old had some books about New Kids on the Block, but I went through those pretty quickly, and then naptimes and TV time were fucking ETERNITIES.

--Regular gig with a fat ugly baby, W.: I mean it, y’all, he was hugely fat and seriously ugly, and he made the worst. poops. ever. Incredibly disgusting and voluminous ones, and at least a couple of ‘em in any given evening. No idea what they were feeding that damn baby. His parents were INCREDI-NERDS with no good music or movies to pass the time, so naturally I hit the lone old bottle of wine in the fridge once the FUB was in bed. I filled it to the tiny penciled line w/water, and they never noticed. (Nerds, see. Non-drinkers who’d leave an open bottle of red in the fridge for months.)

--Three kids belonging to this couple who were on some sort of religious exploration within the Methodist church (who knew?): I saw their wedding picture — he was married in a brown priest-type robe, similar to that worn by all his groomsmen, and she had a veil down to her knees in front. Three strikes: Only books in the house were religious horseshit, they lived way the fuck out in the country, and they paid DICK (less than my going rate for one kid, forget three) and acted like it was gonna fully stoke the ol’ college fund.

--The five feral offspring of a weirdo budgie breeder (dunno if that was an all-consuming hobby, or what he actually did for a living, but either way, there was birdshit stank all over the place) and a contentious bitch with whom my dad had a long-running theological feud at church: Ranging in age from two to ten or so, these kids required me to team with a friend just to get through the one awful day I spent out at their tumbledown commune-lookin place way the cocksmoke out in Bumfuck, Egypt. The youngest two weren’t potty trained, nor did they wear diapers — think about it. The oldest was clearly used to being in charge and HATED having babysitters, so she spent her time inciting the other four to riot. All but the oldest still breastfed, although thankfully we didn’t have to witness that. Their house was a complete wreck — nowhere felt safe to sit or lean. When finally we were released, my friend and I drove home in utter shell-shocked silence, and neither of us accepted another babysitting job for like a month after.

The sieve and the sand

Internets, I wish this were surprising: The AP reports today that one in four Americans read NO books last year. One in four. Jesus paté on a cracked-pepper water cracker.

And of course, of the people who did read something in printed, bound form, a shitload read “books” like romance novels and religious horseshit, My Pet Goat, Oprah selections and Chicken Soup for the Neurotic Simpleton’s Soul and what have you. (I wish I could be a big enough person to not judge but — well, you know me, Internets. I judge, o yes I judge. ) Small side note: I was pleased to find that my fellow Dems read more than their political opposites — but, again, unsurprised.

And but so here’s the thing: What do all these non-readers DO with their time? I say this as a person who works full time, watches waaaaaaaay more TV than even the national average, works out 4X/week, cooks a real dinner every night, plays bass, cleans the house, hangs out with her husband, talks to the fam every week on the phone, surfs the internet all the goddamn time — and I have read probably 30 books this year so far (in addition to my other reading, e.g. the New Yorker and the Sunday New York Times every week, plus BUST every other month and Harper’s monthly). Granted, once Kid Gleemonex arrives, I’ll have to cut back somewhere, but I’m voting housework and the lower-tier TiVo selections, not reading; I just don’t understand this non-reading stuff. I am never without a book; I am never not reading something, or several somethings at once. I wouldn’t know how to function otherwise.

HOW CAN A PERSON GO AN ENTIRE YEAR WITHOUT READING A SINGLE BOOK?

Out of three billion, comes the One

So she ADMITS he’s the same old lumpy douchebag he was back in high skool, but since she’s spent some time away from their poky little suburb (making hott sexytime with Canada’s Finest) and would now prefer to finish out her days eating potato chips and supermarket dip with reckless sloppy abandon, the divorced basement-cage ladyskin-suit enthusiast with a half-douchebag, half-hellspawn kid is suddenly looking like a catch? Whaaat?

Jesus BALLS. Candace, call me, we’ll go have a beer — you and me got a lot of shit to talk.

Now kids, let's remember to use our words

Scooped shamelessly from a co-worker's email earlier today:

A survey question following the [big HR] meeting this week:

If you weren't able to attend the meeting, what impacted you from participating?

What “impacted you from participating”???

Sigh.

She was a day tripper, one-way driver, yeah

Apropos of a conversation in the office recently: Various drugs I haven’t done, and why I haven’t done them and would never, not that anyone’s ever offered me any: an incomplete list.

Cocaine: Too expensive, don’t want a heart attack, verges into the Heavy Stuff (wherein the involvement of organized crime and/or vigilant law enforcement come into play), IME people using it are totes obnoxious and a boring pain in the ass to be around.

Meth: PLEASE. What a disgusting, backwoods, asshole thing to do. Go back to bangin your sister-cousin-mama and feeding squirrel brains to your halfwit spawn, Cletus.

Whippets: Do I look like the kind of person who would waste whipped-cream propellant when there’s a perfectly good Irish coffee right here just begging for a foamy white topping? Besides, I *heart* my original quantity of spinal fluid, thanks.

Roids: My boobs are big enough already.

X, or E, or whatever the kids are callin it these days: See, the thing is, I hate people. I don’t WANT to get all lovey and huggy and euphoric with every asshole in the room. I also don’t want to trip out to that awful fucking music, or decide against my will that glow stix are actually really kewl after all.

The Tussin: Not the hugest fan of forceful vomiting.

Toads: I don’t lick amphibians, junior.

Peyote: Shaman infestations can really lower your neighborhood’s real-estate values.

LSD: I don’t need to see the mind of god, or explore the universe inside my head for ten fucking hours, or cower at the edge of a cocktail lounge full of vicious flesh-eating lizard patrons while I scheme to find a way to get golf shoes so I can get enough traction in the blood-soaked carpet to walk out of there.

Potty-mouth

So yesterday, I stroll into the ladies' room on this, the second-highest floor of our office building (the one where all the top-level execs have their offices). Friend is at the sink washing up, we nod our "hey"s, and I go into a stall. Someone in the room is talking -- for a moment, I think she's just finishing up some small talk with my friend over the top of the stall door. But quickly, I come to realize -- she's on her cell phone, this Mystery Talker. She's holding a full-fledged conversation about some vacation plans (who's rooming with whom -- so in other words, not some emergency like she's on the horn with 911), with no intention of ending the call, as people come in and out of the room, and there are various flushings and bathroom noises going on. And Internets, as if this weren't bad enough, the Mystery Talker, it becomes apparent, is ... ah ... going number two. WHILE SHE TALKS. I mean, simultaneously. Not to put too fine a point on it, it's fairly obvious what's going on -- not just to us who are so unfortunate as to have chosen this moment to heed nature's call, but to the person on the other end of the line, if you get me.

I could. not. get out of there fast enough.

When I got back to my office, thoroughly traumatized, friend was already in there -- I see her from halfway down the hall, we make bugeyed faces at each other, and as soon as she shuts the door, we both give in to a fit of the howling fantods. The only coherent words for awhile were "What the FUCK!!" and "Who DOES that?!!!" "She was ... she was ... " "I KNOW!!!!" My officemates, two gents who say the rudest, most wrong things all day long (which is why I love them), were kinda grossed out, but not as skeeved as we were. (Dudes. Whaddya gonna do.) Auuuuuuggggh!

So I say again: What the FUCK? Who DOES that?

Sinking ship loses one more rat

Comes today the news that Karl Rove will be stepping down.

I read that headline and — snorting, out loud, in my silent pre-dawn house — I said to myself, “Wait, don’t tell me — he wants to ‘spend more time with his family!’ He’s gonna write a book!” And I’ll be damned if it took even four paragraphs to find out: He wants to “spend more time with his family!” He’s gonna write a book!

Well, I’d throw a party, complete with burning effigies and very strong drink, but I think it’s early to celebrate, yet. Everything this evil porcine fuck puts his soft, dry, puffy, manicured hands on gets coated with a syphilitic slime, and just because fatboy’s leaving, don’t mean he’s gone, know what I mean?

And I wonder what this does for the filthy little shit’s laughable claim of executive privilege, in re: the various scandal investigations now underway at the White House? (That claim, btw, was the funniest one they’ve pulled yet, even funnier than Dick Cheney’s assumption of place as a one-man fourth branch of the gubmint, subject to no law and no man’s will but his own … ).

Don't fucking call me Al!

I've entered a new phase in my life, the one in which all things -- sleeping, eating, working out, going to the day job, reading, various preparations for Kid Gleemonex's imminent arrival, watching the Yanks breathing down Boston's neck (4 GB, bitches!), seeing the sun set over the Pacific -- ALL things are merely ways to pass the time until I can watch Deadwood again.

Halfway through the second season, now, and dreading the day the fuckin well runs dry ...

'buck you

OK so, I am officially Not Allowed to Eat Sugar until Kid Gleemonex is done borned (blah blah blah bullshit technical flunkage of 3-hr glucose test I DON'T WANNA TALK ABOUT IT). Which leaves my range of wordly pleasures greatly diminished -- they took my booze, they slashed my caffeine, they warned me off of sushi and unpasteurized cheese and deli meats and all kinds of things that are fun and good -- sugar was all I fucking had left. And until this morning, I thought even the little caffeine I was allowed was going to be inaccessible to me -- you see, generally, I like a little coffee in my sugar and milk. (Blame Grandma Gleemonex for letting me join her in her morning cup of coffee starting when I was three.)

But oh, this morning, kids -- I tried a new thing: the sugar-free vanilla fake-o shit in my tall nonfat latte. And it was goooooood.

And here's the reason for the tag I'm applying to this post: It was at Starbucks. The Buck. The Evil Empire, killer of mom-n-pop shops across the known universe (and probably beyond), They Who Roast Their Beans Over Fires Made of Live Kittens.

And I'm going to continue to go there for this beverage, instead of to my wonderful and totally kickass favorite, Nas (about which I have said, often and with wholehearted belief, is "everything that's right with America"), because the babes at Nas know my regular order (small double nonfat latte) and make it when they see me coming, and I don't want to throw them off. I'll go there on the rare occasions when I can afford the three packs of Sugar In the Raw that I dump into my regular bev.

But except for those precious, shining days -- the Buck it is. All hail our green-aproned overlords.

756

OK, I loathe -- LOATHE -- the boneheaded and unsportsmanlike practice that has arisen in the past few years of fans throwing back onto the field home-run balls hit by the opposing team. It's just so childish and pointless and crass, and it seems to illustrate the general disintegration of public conduct in our country today.

That said ... I think it would've been HILARIOUS if the guy who caught last night's famous homer had chucked it back. Just this once.

Fakey Mc O’Fakepatrick’s ‘Irish’ ‘Pub’

Or, Ways To Hide Your Teetotaling From Prying Eyes: A public service announcement for the knocked up who are not yet “out.”

1) In group situations, try not to order within earshot of your party. If a waiter comes around, say you don’t know what you want yet, then say you have to go to the ladies’ room, and stop by the bar to order your not-drink.

2) Work with your spouse or drinking partner: You both order the same drink (margaritas, wine, what have you), and sit next to or across from each other so you can set the drinks down side-by-side. You occasionally raise your glass to your lips, but don’t drink; meanwhile, drinking partner picks up the glasses in alternation — yours, then his — so that the levels in each go down fairly consistently. NOTE: This will absolutely require you to be the one driving home.

3) Ordered discreetly, a virgin drink — whether Mary, Pina, Marg, Daiquiri or Mimosa — will always be assumed to be the leaded version; no need to wise your companions up.

4) A club soda with lime is an excellent substitute for a real cocktail; however, you have to have it in the same size and shape of glassware that other carbonated cocktails are served in, and you should say it’s a vodka tonic, not a gin and tonic — people can smell gin, or its absence, lots easier than vodka. Note: Cranberry juice and soda also works as a Cape Codder substitute; glassware rule applies.

5) Fake beers work wonders, but you have to have the bartender pour your O’Doul’s into a glass, preferably under the bar or with his/her back turned, and you don’t want that to show up on the group tab, so you have to go to the bar yourself.

6) If you’re at a private residence, you can rinse out a brown or green beer bottle, fill it with ice-cold water, and carry it around like it’s the real thing. Just make sure no one sees you do the old switcheroo, obvs.

7) And finally, pulling this off is 90% attitude — don’t hesitate to accept a drink (you don’t have to drink it!), don’t try saying you’re sick, or on antibiots (those are red flags these days, if your friends are used to seeing you drink with them), don’t worry that the occasional actual sip you have to take in full view of your companions will make you have a flipper baby (one public sip can go a looong way toward derailing any amateur sleuth types).

If you’re successful, it’s hilarious when you finally reveal your Big Seekrit — I hid my pregnancy-related non-drinking through five loooong months of work events, in-law homestays, farewell cocktail parties, three-day booze-riddled house parties, and Sundays at the cantina, and when Mr. Gleemonex and I came out with it at last, the amazement from all and sundry was almost worth the work it took to cloak-and-dagger that shit in the first place.

Dry this one out, you could fertilize the lawn

What.

The.

Cocksmoking Shatner.

Is today's strip about?

I mean, the world has moved on, we've all moved on, the goddamned everlovin' Special People's Tel ... e ... thon is long over (Shan ... non's disability apparently includes being Spelling-Challenged), and now here we flash back to some sort of voice-over'd schlockarama BULLSHIT about how magickal and awesome that beautiful night under the starz with Stacheless was. GODAMIGHTY.

One-legged man wins ass-kickin contest

There is a special place in hell for scalpers. I struck the motherfuck out trying to get Stevie Wonder tix this morning — at 9:59:59, I refreshed the Ticketbastard page, selected my tix, and hit “buy.” And within 45 seconds, I was fully and finally DENIED. Friend, who also struck out, sent a craigslist posting to me at 10:05 — some scumsucking cocksmoking fucktard was already asking twice the face price for the $99 Gen Admission tix. Die in a fire, assholes.

Soooo ... sorry for the lack of posts lately — took a few days off to hang with Ma Gleemonex, in town for a quick visit before she jets off to Scotland for two weeks. She’ll be back when Kid Gleemonex is born, so I did not get too horribly sad when she left (like I usually do) — I miss Ma Gleemonex, living half a continent away, doncha know.

So — where else have I been?

1) In the bathroom! (I’m at the stage where I gotta pee like every 10 minutes, yay).
2) Getting my ass kicked by the sheer volume of work at my day job — two huge projects, both of which should’ve been done by now but got derailed through no fault of mine, so I’m still in the thick of them, plus a half-dozen smaller but also crucial projects that keep getting pushed back by the two majors … ugh.
3) At Kaiser! In the last week, Mr. Gleemonex and I have been to a regular prenatal appointment, a 3-hour Newborn Care class, a full day session on how to birth a baby, and a “fun” half-day doing my 3-hour glucose test (after which I looked like a junkie, cause you get needle-stuck four times).
4) Having a baby shower thrown for me! (good food, good people, lotsa fun — but EXHAUSTING).
5) Watching Deadwood! (Which has allowed me to keep my sanity through all of the above, god bless 'em).

Back to work, you!