ReaLime is neither real, nor lime. Discuss.

Can I just please ask all of y’all what is the goddamn DEAL with American mass-produced major label “breweries” adding “lime” to their basic light beer product these days? Were any of you, my people, consulted on this, or did the secret sinister cabal of marketing department heads just come up with it in some sort of ungodly justify-my-job all-nighter and decide to push the concept simultaneously on an unsuspecting and ill-defended populace? Conditioned by years of Diet “Cherry” “Vanilla” “Licorice” Carbonated Soda Liquid, fat-free "chocolate" cake bitelets and those horrifying hot dogs with cheez inside, do we, a once-proud nation, now clamor for such a substance? Has it really come to this?

No rocks thrown.

What kind of a bowling alley doesn't have its bar open on Memorial Day? What are we, nine years old? What is this, a Methodist Youth Fellowship outing? What the faaahq?

This post brought to you by our thwarted attempt to honor our nation's uniformed servicepersons by tossing a few stones at our local lanes; there was some kind of fuckin janky carnival in the parking lot ( ... wooooo!) for The Kids, and so the bowling alley couldn't open the bar till after the stupid POS carnival shut down in the evening. We don't roll without a frosty brew or a round of Caucasians, so. I call SHENANIGANS.

Say. What. AGAIN, mothafucka.

Because as fucked up and enraging as the situation with “carry-on” bags and the struggle for overhead bin space already is, American Airlines has decided it could use a little more fuckin with. Fifteen bucks to check a single bag? I get that your operating costs have gone up because the price of oil has doubled somewhat recently (thank your good buddies in the Bush Assministration for that, you bonus-receiving shitmonkeys!) – but why not just increase the fucking ticket price by $15? Why prod even more idiots to bring their full-size suitcases onboard, blocking the aisles with their full-size asses while they try to cram their every earthly belonging into the goddamn bins, causing EVEN MORE AND LONGER DELAYS? I gotcher fifteen bucks RIGHT HERE.

Goin to New York City / I do believe I’ve had e-nough

Internets, I’ve taken my last trip on Continental Airlines.

The Gleemonex family got back Monday night from a trip to the East Coast for the wedding of our most beloved Jew, who is one of the world’s true good guys and possibly the most irreverent person I’ve ever met (in college, proofreading an assignment for him for a Core class, I had to insist, repeatedly, that one cannot refer to Luciano Pavarotti as “a talentless, washed-up old gasbag” in a formal paper critiquing a live performance, even if it was in fact true – we have to use different words to convey the same meaning, son). The wedding was fab, the Berkshires lovely, etc. etc. etc.

However. Continental Motherfucking Airlines.

They beat other airlines’ prices by a good $150 per ticket into Newark -- their hub -- so, stupidly, I booked the flights through them. And I’ve learned an important lesson: You get what you pay for.

--Delays: 1:45 outbound on the redeye, 2:30 inbound on a weekday midafternoon. Unacceptable generally, but with a baby, you feel every single minute of the delay. Made me acutely aware of the shoddiness of their management.

--Bass-ackward boarding: no “travelers with children” pre-boarding (and listen, non-parents: this isn’t an unfair perk for the childed – trust me, you want me to pre-board with my kid and all our shit and get settled before you get on, you freewheeling magazine-reading iPod-listening son of a bitch); no back-to-front boarding (on the way out, it was a total free-for all with no rows called, period), with the consequent clusterfuck in re: overhead bin space that that implies; flight attendants who just stood there and watched the whole bovine struggle (and one who actively encouraged TWO different people to park their shit so that it was blocking emergency equipment, then acted surprised and innocent when another attendant nixed that and made them gate-check the goddamn bags like they should’ve done in the first fucking place, which gate-checking delayed us further); etc.

--“Unscheduled maintenance issues” causing delays both ways, which could have been minimized if Continental didn’t have their heads up their asses (and by the way: listen, Mister Chatty-Panties Pilot, I can’t take Ativan because I’m breastfeeding – could you shut your cakehole about “unscheduled maintenance issues, more serious than we thought”?? Lie, motherfucker, lie. I don’t care what you say, just don’t say THAT).

--Bragging about “the youngest fleet in the industry,” when I can plainly see a sealed-up ashtray in the outside of the lavatory door – haven’t flights been smoke-free since like nineteen-eighty-fucking-two?

--Both flights waaay overbooked, causing more delay while they tried to entice people with $400 vouchers for a future flight … on Continental.

So: fuck ‘em. Goodbye, shitheads.

Parting thoughts:

1) The 6’2” Mr. Gleemonex would like me to point out the crazymaking asshattedness of reclining one’s seat in fucking coach class (done), and I think it worth noting that whoever’s in the seat in front of him always, ALWAYS reclines, while the one in front of 5’5” me almost never does. Shatner’s First Law of Aerodynamics.

2) Who knew so many people would line up to take dumps in an airplane lavatory? People must love it a real lot. We kept thinking the baby needed a diaper change, but no. It was the lav. Dump after dump after dump. Shatner’s Second Law of Aerodynamics.

Proud to be a Californian

Today is a great day for my adopted state, y’all – our state supreme court, the first in the nation to scotch miscegenation laws, just handed down another historic decision: the right of same-sex couples to marry.

I am THRILLED to see this happen – and from a court composed of six Republican-nominated justices and one Democrat-appointed justice, no less! See? Equality doesn’t have to be a partisan issue! Isn’t that amazing?

I’ve never understood the “defense of marriage” people, at all. Defense, my ass. Have you looked at the divorce and domestic abuse rates among fundamentalist xtians lately? Mmm-hmm. And do these morons understand that no one’s going to force THEM to “gay marry”? (This is a phrase I’ve heard used as a verb, unfortunately but hilariously, in real life.) Two dudes or two chicks getting married has exactly the same to do with MY marriage as any other marriage on Planet Earth: less than fuck-all. So what’s the big issue?

It’s two things, closely intertwined: religion and bigotry. The religion part is easy to solve: keep the church ceremony part – the one that you believe matters to big-g God – to y’all’s ownselves like the nice FLDS folk on Big Love. Don’t want to let gays marry in your church? Fine. But you don’t get to keep the state’s goodies to yourselves too, assholes. (Remember? Separation of church and state?) As for bigotry, nothing I can do about that personally, except call every single bigot on it every time I see it displayed. And believe you me, I will.

Of course, the God Squad is on the case already – they got a petition going, with 1.1 million alleged signatures on it, to try to force a constitutional amendment onto the ballot this November. And if that happens, I’ll be working my little hetero heart out to defeat it.

Let freedom ring!

--------

UPDATE: George Takei, whom I have come to love via his appearances on Howard Stern, has a beautiful and eloquent post on the subject on his website. How can people read something like this and not relent, even a little?

The California Supreme Court has ruled that all Californians have a fundamental right to marry the person he or she loves. Brad and I have shared our lives together for over 21 years. We've worked in partnership; he manages the business side of my career and I do the performing. We've traveled the world together from Europe to Asia to Australia. We've shared the good times as well as struggled through the bad. He helped me care for my ailing mother who lived with us for the last years of her life. He is my love and I can't imagine life without him. Now, we can have the dignity, as well as all the responsibilities, of marriage. We embrace it all heartily.

Now, DRINKING outdoors -- THAT'S something I can get behind.

Internets, I went for a quick run on my lunch break along SF’s famous Embarcadero (which used to be a hellhole under an elevated freeway [see Dirty Harry] before the 1989 earthquake fucked the freeway up real good and thank the merciful Shatner, the people of this city said now let’s wait a minnit here – do we HAVE to rebuild an elevated freeway? and answered themselves: no. no we don’t.).

Lots of outdoor eating places along the Embarcadero. Some moderately priced, most hi-toned. And because it was the kind of day that makes me want to run outdoors (86 and sunny), everybody and their co-workers and their sister visiting from Yonkers was sitting outside to eat.

Let me state this for the record: EATING OUTSIDE IN SAN FRANCISCO TOTALLY BLOWS.

No, shut up, it does. It always SOUNDS like such a great idea -- the town is sunny and not prone to temperature extremes. It always LOOKS like a nice day to eat outside. People always want to eat outside on the 7th-floor terrace of my office building. The outdoor parts of restaurants are always full up. People always believe the lie.

But goddammit, one day in about seven hundred is actually the type of mild, windless day that it looks like it is, and meanwhile the other 699 of 700, you’re either roasting or freezing (or both, simultaneously), the wind is whipping your fucking hair across your face so you keep getting mouthfuls of it with your lunch, hot food gets cold while the sun melts the ice in your drink, the fucking pigeons know no fear (nor do the homeless people), little tornados of used paper napkins and sand and cigarette butts dance around between the tables, and meanwhile you’re getting burned by the deceptive-ass sun shining fully down on your un-sunscreened face as you try to keep your goddamned plate from sailing into the bay and taking your fucking fifteen-dollar sandwich with it.

Three-fer Tuesday

Happy Fun Box
Battlestar Galactica: Written lately by Debbie Downer’s even darker cousin Freddy Fuckedup, this show is on FIRE with awesome. They are not screwing around. And I bet they don’t end the series by cutting to black like a bunch of punk-ass bitches, either.

Summertime Rolls
Do you know what makes a damn fine breakfast? An heirloom tomato sandwich. Or two.

Although I Guess it Means I'm Batting Like .800 So Shut Up
Proof that I probably wouldn’t do all that well on Jeopardy! or other time-sensitive quiz-type shows, even though I am just totes smartsk: I failed to come up with SIX of the 30 teams of Major League Baseball in five minutes on this quiz.

All RIGHT! We GET IT! Your COOTER WORKS! GOD!

Oh Internets. Comes today the news that the infamous nutso fundie spazmoid crazypants Duggar family is expecting Christ-bot #18 this January.

Yes, you read that right: eighteen. Eight. Teen.

Cause seventeen ain’t enough. Seventeen don’t form an even-numbered double column of marchers in God’s Holy Army. Seventeen means somebody don’t have a partner for Bible Trivia Nite. Seventeen means there might still be a tiny smidge of elasticity in mom's fagina. Seventeen – the house always has to hit on seventeen, yo!

Holy flaming shitcanned Shatner, y’all.

a.m. flashback

Became almost completely unhinged just now in the card store when "Right Here, Right Now" came on and flashed me back to when we first heard that song in high school (saw it on MTV's 120 Minutes, and don't that date me?), and none of us could agree on whether it was by "Jee-zus Jones" or "Hey-soos Ho-nes." Hysteria augmented by the fact that in my mind I was hearing this in terms of a completely unhinged discussion with the Lab Partner, back in the day. Oh, good times!

Bring the pain

Internets, when I get sick -- which is almost literally never (I think the last time was a bronchial infection five years ago, with the same ailment five years before that), thus affording me my enthusiasm for Doomsday scenarios such as the superflu in The Stand, because I'm pretty sure I'd be among the one percent of the population that is immune -- I get Sick. Day nine and no sign of a letup.

Time now for an Official Damn Kids Endorsement: the Hot Toddy.

--1 jigger of Jim Beam
--1 generous spoonful of honey
--2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
--enough hot water from the teapot to bring it to half a mugful

This fabulous beverage can be enjoyed whenever you please, but is especially helpful as a medicinal tonic for what ails you, particularly when what ails you is a seven-days-running sore throat, a nasal crud fountain, and the Coughing Death Cough of Death.

Ohhh, my co-workers are totes happy I came in to work today.

A little myst’ry to figger out

Noticing the awesome Bonnie Raitt thatch of white hair on the right side of my head this morning (it’s been awhile since my last visit to the salon), I was reminded of one of the funnier parts of this past weekend down at Diamond Mike & Blondie’s: the full-volume 1:30 a.m. sing-a-long of “Something to Talk About,” performed by me and the Sasquatch Artist mostly for the purposes of annoying his wife, who was then in the process of picking the next song for the band to play – good times!

So, the thing about that song is, I knew all the words. No, seriously, Internets – all of the words.

Why? Oh, I think you know why.

I was seventeen the summer it was out, see, and there was this boy. And the song, it spoke to me, in re: my Situation with this boy, a friend with whom I had recently realized I would like to be more than friends. People, this tragic musical episode resulted in my purchase of the cassingle of this fucking song, which I played over and over and over again on the stereo of my 1980 Buick Skylark, and for a perilous few days at the height of this Situation, I considered buying another cassingle, which I would leave in the mailbox at his house, trusting that he’d know who put it there and why. Thank Shatner, I did not do that – but it was close. Damned close.

Oh, Internets. There are so many reasons I wouldn’t be seventeen again for all the money and shoes in the world …