Nobody drink the beer, the beer has gone bad!

Internets: Hey, Gleemonex!

Gleemonex: Sup!

Internets: You mean, besides the LOST finale?

Gleemonex: Yeah. [moment of silence]

Internets: [wiping away a tear] Ahem. So. Just one quick question. Take your mind off things.

Gleemonex: Shoot.

Internets: Do you think it would be possible to pack any more douchebaggery into one brief LTTE, whether it was to the Hometowne Bugle-Noisemaker or not? Read, weep:

Cheers for [fellow ignorant letter-scrawling teabagging motherscratcher] and his ability to rebut inferior logic and plain old illogic as is evidenced by his latest letter against the putrid raving and ranting of the most obnoxious left wing regular in your paper's viewpoint section.

As native Americans, his people met the boats of the first immigrants. This should qualify him to attend, organize and speak at a patriotic gathering and label it a tea party. Also, it should permit him to define his intentions without some itinerant soothsayer attempting to mislabel his true intentions.I nominate his latest epistle for letter of the year honors.

Gleemonex: Nope. I think that's max capacity right there.

Internets: [vomits a little in its own mouth] Yup. Boy, does that bunch like their thesaurii.

Gleemonex: Using words like "putrid" and "epistle" makes them sound smartsk. Well, gotta get back to work. Later, dude.

Internets: See you in another life, brotha.

Gleemonex: [sheds tear, does sad little terrorist fist-jab with Internets]

About LOST night … (WARNING: SPOILERS!)

Well. Huh.

Soooo … it was … they were all dead? Like from the time of the crash? But then … what’s with the whole Jacob & [MIB] thing? And Desmond wasn’t on the plane, but he’s there? Is Desmond Jesus? Is Jack? MUST someone be, or can we stay out of the realm of Judeo-Christian mythology in our storytelling for goddamn motherfucking once? Did the end HAVE to be in a church (nice touch with the stained-glass window, though)? Does the island actually exist? All along I wanted it to be real, and the people to be alive (until KIA by, say, smoke-tyrannosaurs, EMEs, crazy jungle ladies, or what have you). Although it is strangely comforting to see everyone at peace in the end, more so than I would have thought, with their struggles over and their battles fought. Also I cried a couple of times. SHUT UP, SO DID YOU.

And … but …

Huh.

I just … I mean … like: whaat?

It wasn’t Sopranos, for which I am grateful (because I don’t want to go to jail and probably I would have when the cops caught me going Left-Eye on JJ, Damon & Carlton’s houses as I had sworn to do if they tried any cheapshit monkey business like that), but it wasn’t Wire-worthy either. It was … strange. I’m going to have to sit with it awhile to see if, ultimately, it was satisfying or not. You?

Dubious decisionmaking, based on unscientific but somehow sensible principles

So yesterday, trying to make room for Mr. Gleemonex's Carvel bday cake, I threw away a Lean Cuisine mini pizza that had been in there since I was on maternity leave -- close to two and a half years it had sat in there, taking up space and midichlorians or whatever it is that keeps a freezer cold (I told you science is not really my strong suit, shut up). It was in there because back in those days, for the first time in my life, I had trouble remembering to eat, or if I remembered, then making time to find and fix something to eat. Those little fucking pizzas were done in three minutes and could be eaten one-handed, and technically counted as "food." I picked Lean Cuisine for the same reason that I'll choose a light beer over the regular version with your Coors, Miller, Bud, etc. -- the taste difference between lite and original recipe is so negligble (which is to say, they're both such crap), why waste the calories on the full-strength version?

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There's another one in there, btw, if you wanna come over to my house and party -- the Carvel box fit fine after chucking just the one, so.

Black Cherry at the Reunion, Red Sangria at pasture parties.

So hey Internets -- when was the last time you had a wine cooler?

I tried one, thinking it would be HILARIOUS and ironic, at some party or other like ... ten years ago? And y'all ... good sweet-carbonated SHATNER was it horrible. Couldn't finish it.

But hey thanks Seagrams, Bartles & Jaymes, et. al., for gently introducing me to the Drinking Life, lo these many years ago in the fair summer of 1990 ...

Sort of like Josie Grossie, only a dude.

Internets, this is the kind of news story I love – a 22-year-old man went to Odessa Permian, told everybody he was 16 and homeless, and becomes a star basketball player, leading the team to a 5-A state championship. Turns out, he had, ahh, somewhat overextended his eligibility, having already had a championship high school bball career in Florida -- and some of the coaches recognized him when he played at an amateur tournament in Arkansas. [sad Price is Right trombone]

I feel bad for the people who believed it, and I guess for the kids who are now going to have to give up their state championship (and, OK, the teams they beat to get there) – but A) are you stupid or something? The guy’s obviously 22, plus he’s 6’5”, come on, and more importantly, B) What moxie!

I’m the kind of person who will always, always give points for style – I’d make a bad math or science teacher, because I’d probably give full credit to answers like these,* and if I were a judge, I’d be inclined not to bring the hammer of the law down on people who had a really good story to tell about their (victimless) crime or committed it in a really funny way (as long as no one was actually hurt!). I don’t know if this makes me a fundamentally unserious person or what.

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*And also because I can’t do math or science, even to save the life of a precious baby golden retriever, so there’s that.

I mean, I love Jane Lynch too, but holy warbling Shatner ...

OK, so let me see if I’ve got this straight: The TV show Glee – it is a show made up of singing? There is scripted comedy/drama, as I understand it, but then several times per episode, there is Earnest Singing? By groups of alleged high school students, with choreography, and they’re covering mostly pop songs of the last thirty or so years? And no one is getting beat up over it, which makes it one of those alternate-universe things? And this appeals to enough Americans that it’s worth not only pretty much every third or fourth US Weekly/People/etc. cover but also a Rolling Stone cover (with a long and really, ferociously terribly-written article, ugh)? And part of said appeal is that the alleged high school kids sometimes sing songs you like? But then how is that better than having some stranger do that song on a karaoke machine?

I … have I missed anything? Am I wrong? Please help me, Internets.

Jefe, would you say I have a plethora of pinatas?

WHAT a bunch of ASSHOLES. Some kids in Morgan Hill, CA, were sent home for wearing (and then refusing to take off) these in-your-face "patriotic" T-shirts w/American flag stuff on them to school on Cinco de Mayo.

I don't think they should've sent them home -- that's giving them more airtime than they ever should've gotten, and the FOX news demographic is already eating it up with a spoon and dribbling it down their fat white blubbering chins -- but A)you cannot deny that this stupid little stunt was designed to provoke, especially with racial/national tensions so high right now (fuck you, Arizona), and B)I do hope their fellow students will take this as a lesson in what raging shitheads these kids are, and shun them accordingly.

You ask your gods for / peace that is everlasting / I am their answer

Threefer Madness
... I may have been spending some time on the Internets lately.

Fuckyeahlost
I trust I don't need to explain this.

Godzilla haiku
Fuck yeah, Godzilla haiku -- awesome and oddly touching, like the big bad nuclear lizard himself.

Tea Party Jesus
The words of Christians in the mouth of Christ -- I have long thought that Jesus would go on a smiting rampage were he to actually come back and see what his alleged followers are doing and saying with his name as a shield (remember, like how he wrecked the ASS of that temple that one time?).

"They're O.R. scrubs." "O, R they?"

Things That Happened At Dinner, A Dinner Which I Bought With My Heathen Atheist Liberal California Money For My Sister And Two Girls (Ages 17 and 18) Whom She Knows From Some Churchy Thing Or Other

--I gave a discourse on how work-study works (it is funded by The Government [ooooooh]; you are allotted a set amount of dollars as part of your financial aid package; you find and perform a work-study job at your college; if you don't get a work-study job, you don't get that money at all because it is hypothetical till you earn it; once you have earned your allotment, you are dunzo till the next financial aid year; how you spend it is up to you but it is counted as part of your "contribution" to your own education).

--My sister and I attempted to explain why we thought that a Chili's or an Olive Garden was everything our town lacked back when we were in high school -- you know, a place to get a decent afterschool/summer job, a place to go on dates, a place to hang out with your friends that wasn't a decrepit brown/yellow McDonald's -- and the girls did not get it at all. They also didn't get why we don't think that the Chili's we now have is so crazy fucking awesome like we thought it would be when we were sixteen. GOD.

--The teen I hadn't met before tonight, Teen #2 (I have in fact struck up a friendship with Teen #1, disagree politically though we almost certainly do; she is good people), texted through fully four-fifths of the meal.

--Also Teen #2 did not thank me for picking up the check. I didn't do this to BE thanked, but listen, kiddo: That shit is just rude. I bet Jesus always said thanks to the people who fed him and his fucking entourage.

--I made a mental note of where one of these homeschooled teens is going to kollege, and now, having looked it up (its slogan is: "Answering God's Call: Every workplace. Every nation."), I am suffering little shivers of fear.

--I tried to explain why Karate Kid is sofa king awesome. Without using curse words. (See above re: homeschooled xtian teens).

--I heartily commended Teen #1 for unequivocally cutting off a nascent relationship with a guy who, after three days of fun flirty infatuation, let it drop that he had a girlfriend already. Who needs to be forever in the role of Auditioning Next Girlfriend, even if he ditches her for you? Ugh.

--I admitted that I, too, couldn't make it past about fifteen pages of Brave New World. Tried to qualify it with "maybe I was just too young when I tried it" and "but I read like a mothafucka!! honest!!", but still felt like Elaine offering Kramer's insane summary of a manuscript she was supposed to read and discuss -- "It's a story about love, deception, greed, lust, and ... unbridled enthusiasm."

--I drank two Shiner Bocks because YAY, BEING (way the fuck) OVER 21! BOO-YAAAAAA!! Would've had three if the waiter had been on his game. My money, my drinks, my beloved baby sister drivin' me home.

Things you forget, living in California

Damn, Texas -- I forgot how beautiful you are this time of year.

You guys, I'm in the Olde Hometowne for a few days with Kid Gleemonex, visiting the fam, and it's been about 12 years since I was here in any season other than the brown/gray/black dead of winter (xmas/Thanksgiving) or the bakey bakey height of summer (late July), and I gotta tell you guys, it's so lovely that it's hurting my heart. Everything is lush and green and overgrown, monstrous almost; it's cool in the mornings but warms right up into a definitely-wear-shorts low-80s for most of the day; the ponds and lakes and creeks are full, the birds are out, the unshaded spaces don't belong to the wasps yet, and the wildflowers -- oh, the wildflowers! I went for a run this morning, six and a half miles out the single-lane road past the cemetery where most of the departed members of my family are buried (a place right now so full of bluebonnets and silence and peace that the phrase "eternal rest" actually makes sense to me, here as nowhere else), and everywhere I looked there were vast carpets of Indian paintbrush, pockets of winecups, mingled stands of Indian blanket and black-eyed Susans, hillsides strewn with pink evening primroses among the tender green of the waving grasses. I saw an actual roadrunner, was accompanied for a quarter mile by a friendly old shaggy dog, could have gone forever breathing in the wonderful smells of late spring -- honeysuckle, fresh air, leaves and water and new life everywhere.

I remember now that this time doesn't last -- it gets more intense for a couple more weeks, then starts to lose ground to the sun's absolute relentlessness. The wildflowers disappear, the grass dies, the leaves turn dark and curl up, waiting for rain, the birds and small creatures retreat to whatever shade they can find, the earth itself gets hot and gives off heat from below. It gets dusty, sweaty, breathless, hard to move around in. And it stays like that for a long, long time.

But for a short while, just before the brink of summer, it is glorious. Glorious.