Damn Kids, Get Off My Lawn!

At Citibank we will meet accident'ly

2012-01-26T12:50:00.000-08:00

So you know how the NYT Mag got all redesigned for hipness and such not too long ago? Well, they now have this page of Short Attnention Span Theatre called the one-page magazine, chockablock with ickle tiny bitsies of things, and this last week one of them was a "brain twister" authored by Wil Shortz, whose day job is creating something I hate (crossword puzzles) and who has managed to create here something I hate even more: brain twisters.

Like the stupid riddle about the fox, the duck and the sack of grain and the farmer or whatever who has to get them all across the river in a rowboat without any of them injuring or eating the other (somebody actually asked Mr. Gleemonex this one in a JOB INTERVIEW once, kill me now), things advertised as "brain twisters" make me want to go on a tri-state arson spree.

This one was, specifically: Take "Frank Sinatra," remove six letters, leave the remaining ones in order, and what world capital is revealed?

I DON'T CARE. I don't care and you can't make me, and just because I don't fucking know and don't care doesn't mean I'm stupid and you are smart and clever and awesome. It just means you like these annoying goddamn brain twisters and I don't. "Take 'Frank Sinatra,'" my ass -- I wish you'd TRY to take Frank Sinatra. He'd knock you deader than old dad's hatband. You and that bitch Marilyn Vos Savant can go fuck yourselves.

The only brain twister I like is Stolichnaya vodka. Yeaaaah boyeeee!

M is for Mrs. Scott Strauss, which is also my name.

2012-01-18T10:39:00.000-08:00

Movie Boyfriends of the Golden Age of Teen Cinema, As Assessed By Teenage Me and Grown-Ass Woman Me: The Third In a Series.

7) RANDALL "PINK" FLOYD, Dazed and Confused

---Teenage (well, 20-year-old) Me: Hey now! Great hair, hips look real nice in them jeans, social chameleon, athletic but not beefy, stoner but not dangerous, nice to kids, music fan, stubborn streak a mile wide -- this right here is the guy for me.

---Grown-Ass Woman Me: Indeed. I mean, he'd grow out of adoring his own teen rebelliousness bullshit, right? Surely. He did have the kind of clarity about peaking in high school that your popular types usually don't, so I'd double down on young Mr. Floyd here.

8) BRYAN, Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead

---Teenage Me: AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH DEAD POETS SOCIETY! So cute, so sweet. I will go on a date with him and then I will put my mouth on his mouth!

---Grown-Ass Woman Me: Srsly. Dead Poets Society. Future marine biologist. Goofy, fun date ideas. We don't have to live in the same house as his megabitch sister, so: this'll work.

9) FERRIS BUELLER, Ferris Bueller's Day Off

---Teenage Me: "He's going to marry me." [swoons, dies]

---Grown-Ass Woman Me: Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want? Yes, still. God, what a great high-school boyfriend Ferris would've made. Not sure about the long game, but were I Sloane in that moment, you goddamn right I would've married him that day. It would've made a great story, even after we went to separate colleges and got divorced. Totally worth it.

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Still to come: Knox Overstreet, Jake Ryan, J.D., and more ...

Boris ... why always Boris?

2012-01-11T10:27:00.000-08:00

You know how Louis C.K. speculates as to what a "bag of dicks" is? Like, do they stick out of a brown paper bag, like baguettes, or what?

Well, that turn of phrase was introduced into my life by my Kansass pal K., who knows who he is if he's reading this, and was usually meant in the context of hung over -- as in we'd all be shuffling around Diamond Mike & Blondie's house the morning after a night of epic rocking and he'd go, "I feel like a bag of dicks." And I'd laugh and it would hurt, because epic rocking goes along with many beers and like as not a shot or three of Sauza or Hornitos because even though we are all old now, WE DON'T LEARN.

And but so, in my mind, the bag of dicks has always been something in the neighborhood of five to eight dicks, depending, and they're in one of those flimsy pink see-through plastic grocery bags like they only use in Chinatown and you see everyone schlepping around on the 30 bus, and the top of the bag is knotted and the aforementioned dicks are just kind of sloshing around in there.

E'rbody got they cup but they ain't chipped in

2011-12-19T09:29:00.000-08:00

Lunedi Tricolore

1) So this dread/anxiety/hate spiral about my awful motherfuckin Day Job continues even though I ain't been there since late October (October 25, to be exact) and am not required to report back to it until March something-or-other, and it manifests in strange ways. Such as: A very very long, realistic and detailed dream about being on the project team for a "new concept in coffeetailing" my company is launching, called "Fisticups." A direct competitor out to "seize market share from Starbucks," it's a coffee house aimed at the 18-to-49 male demographic, where you can, you know, buy coffee and coffee accessories, but instead of "Starbucks' more traditionally female 'soft' palette and entertainment options," you get to watch a neverending stream of fights on the big screen (boxing, MMA, etc., matches in real time, plus fight scenes from movies, TV and YouTube). My boss and I were having a bizarre passive-aggressive argument over email with DOZENS of cc's and bcc's (as is our real-life wont) about the chain's tagline -- should it be "Coffee for men," "A manly place for coffee," or (my suggestion) "Kickass coffee"? Also he had "tasked" me with "owning the rights-availability space" to all the fights and clip scenes the chain would use (CAN YOU IMAGINE); he wrote in an email (cc'd to our mutual grand- and great-grand-bosses) that he thought "it shouldn't take much of [your] time," and that finding a "cash-outflow negative" (i.e. "free") way to do it would be "really beneficial around your development plan," plus "a really exciting way the broader team can leverage your talents to the benefit of the team and the company as a whole." KILL ME NOW.

2) The only people who own JetSkis are Kenny Powers and total douchebag econ/banking/financial guys. This is, btw, a conclusion I drew from watching several hours of House Hunters International the other day.

3) Speaking of which: Why are the places they look at on House Hunters International always such total, utter shitholes? I know it's Europe and they don't have normal goddamn toilets or showers, that's a given -- but so many of these joints are actual, literal piles of rocks, with all the amenities of a Delta AirBus and the interior decor stylings of a Soviet Bloc gynecologist's waiting room. Really puts a girl off of her fantasies of living abroad, dammit.

This a Barksdale joint, yo.

2011-12-12T09:34:00.000-08:00

Movie Boyfriends of the Golden Age of Teen Cinema, As Assessed By Teenage Me and Grown-Ass Woman Me: The Second In a Series.

4) DANNY POPE, Running on Empty*

---Teenage Me: River Phoenix. Tears. Longing. The courage of his convictions! He's a musician. Christ would you lookit those eyes. That hair! And he loves Martha Plimpton! WANT. MUST HAVE.

---Grown-Ass Woman Me: River Phoenix. Tears. Longing. The courage of his convictions! He's a musician. Christ would you lookit those eyes. That hair! And he loves Martha Plimpton! WANT. MUST HAVE.

5) BRAND, The Goonies

---Teenage Me: You mean the guy who’s all het up about Kerry Green? She’s way too much prettier than me, I can’t have him, plus he’s old, so forget about it.

---Grown-Ass Woman Me: Well well well, what have we here? Classic older bro – busy with his own life, dismissive of the kid brother and his dork friends, but good-looking and in the end, heroic and a really stand-up guy; deals well with failure (just gets back in the saddle); gets to kiss the pretty girl finally. And turns into Josh Brolin later. Hmm. Yes, yes indeed.

6) JOHN BENDER, The Breakfast Club

---Teenage Me: Bad-ASS!!!! Kind of scary, but really funny. Tempting, verrry tempting. Still – too far outside the boundaries in general. No way he goes to church. We can sign each other’s yearbooks, though, and I’ll parlay that one kiss into a much bigger mythology about myself that I can tell people for the next few years.

---Grown-Ass Woman Me: Son, you got a lot of Issues you need to deal with. Seriously.

Still to come: Randall "Pink" Floyd, Marty McFly, Edward Scissorhands, Ferris Bueller, Jake Ryan, and many more ...

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*It could be argued that Running on Empty is not a "teen movie" in the classic sense, in that there aren't a lot of hijinx and it's actually a pretty serious movie that got a lot of critical attention -- but it has River Phoenix so shut up.

What's with these homies dissin my girl? Why do they gotta front?

2011-12-07T09:23:00.000-08:00

Movie Boyfriends of the Golden Age of Teen Cinema, As Assessed By Teenage Me and Grown-Ass Woman Me: The First In a Series.

1) BLAINE, Pretty In Pink

---Teenage Me: Wow he's pretty. Nice hair. Doesn't embarrass me like Duckie, and OK, he waffles sometimes, but we got to dance together at prom in front of that bitch what's-her-name, Kate Vernon, so: Yay, Blaine!

---Grown-Ass Woman Me: Jesus, you are a weakling. Can't even be man enough to tell me whether we're still going to the goddamn prom together? Willing to ditch me because I'm A Poor? Totally under the thumb of your boy Steph the once and future date-rapist? Get the fuck outta here.

2) KEITH, Some Kind of Wonderful

---Teenage Me: Ohhhhh, what an awesome date he planned out for us! And what a romantic gesture, those diamond earrings! [swoon]

---Grown-Ass Woman Me: IDIOT. Jewelry? You drain your college fund for DIAMONDS to give to a HIGH-SCHOOL GIRL? That's the only thing worse than that awful painting, although, you know, bless you for the effort there. [hairpats] On the plus side, who knew you'd age so well? You turned kind of hot sometime in the last 20 years ... hmm. Still: IDIOT.

3) Mark Ratner, Fast Times at Ridgemont High

---Teenage Me: No. I'm not dating anybody smaller than me.

---Grown-Ass Woman Me: Ehhhh ... on the one hand, he at least isn't a date-rapist like two other dudes I know. But he's the kind of high-school dork that you can't tell whether he's going to grow up into a semi-dorky but awesome guy, or stay hopelessly dorky forever. Tough call ... I guess he'll do, for now. As a sort of friend-boyfriend. We'll practice kissing, he won't knock me up, we'll sort of drift apart when he gets really heavily into some Dork Activity and I finally figure out how pretty I really am* and start owning that instead of letting it get me into bad relationships with crappy guys.

*And by "I," I mean Jennifer Jason Leigh/Stacy. Not I, Gleemonex.

------------------------

Still to come: Randall "Pink" Floyd, Marty McFly, Brandon Walsh [Goonies, not 90210], Danny Pope, Edward Scissorhands, Ferris Bueller, Jake Ryan, and many more ...

Excuse me, Stewardess -- I speak Jive.

2011-11-28T11:43:00.000-08:00

So hey, how was y'all's Thanksgiving? Mine was pretty awesome -- there was the thing where I bought a turkey the week before and left it in the fridge to thaw but then it leaked turkey blood all over the bottom shelf and the vegetable drawer and the coils of the water dispenser and Mr. Gleemonex had to spend like three hours disinfecting the entire goddamn kitchen and THEN we discover on Wednesday evening that you can't just leave a turkey in the fridge for ten days because if you eat it YOU AND YOUR FAMILY WILL ALL DIE, so on Thursday morning I got up at the crack of ass and called Whole Foods and on the edge of panic asked if they had any currently non-frozen turkeys and they were like "Sure, lots, come on over!" and now I love them till the stars turn cold, but other than that it was cool. The baby even slept through the whole meal!

Oh yeah! We got us a baby. A sweeeeet little snurfly baby, who got here via the easiest and fastest labor I could possibly imagine (started at 7:00 a.m. on Friday 11/18, had baby by 1:55 p.m. the same day! whaaaaat!).

And he is such a little smooshy precious guy ... the brother that Kid Gleemonex was convinced she was getting all along. It is awesome, he is beyond adorable, life is so good y'all.

More later ... DK be comin' back now that I'm on leave and getting into a rhythm with this two-kid thing.

I ... can't.

2011-11-08T12:46:00.000-08:00

Anyone who didn't see THIS coming is full-on submental.

Much like the Duggars themselves, I say.

Go on, bow to 'er -- the queen of filth! The queen of slime!

2011-11-08T09:38:00.000-08:00

Y'all.

Y'ALL.

Newsflash: Chili's is AWFUL.

Maybe you already knew that, but maybe, like me, you hadn't eaten there in like fifteen or so years and still had semi-fond memories of it being a pretty OK place when you went there with your friends or on a date back in high school or with your boyfriend for a $4 happy hour pitcher of beer and some free chips & salsa during grad school.

I had to go to Target one last time yesterday for some baby-related odds and ends, and after shuffling around in there, leaning on the cart for actual support, feeling like an obese 103-year-old for way longer than this type of errand normally takes, it was 2:00 and I was fucking starving. I didn't feel capable of making my own lunch, so when I spotted the Chili's directly in the path between me and home (o, the suburbs ... my heart weeps), I stopped in. I thought, I'll get some sort of poppin'-fresh appetizer something-or-other, or like a quesadilla, and that'll do it. How bad could it be?

It was so. bad.

I ordered a combo appetizer plate as my lunch -- the Southwestern egg rolls, the hot spinach & artichoke chips 'n dip, and something called "chicken crispers." The "egg rolls," while not anything that any reasonable person would recognize as egg rolls, were OK -- basically pastry dough wrapped around black beans and cheese and some kind of corn-based salsa. But the alleged spinach/artichoke dip was yucko blucko -- I can't imagine what was actually in there -- and the chicken strips were fucking horrifying. The chicken, though cooked white all the way through, was ... soft. Squishy. Like -- was this even chicken? Or was it Chickie Nobs? The fact that I ate two bites of the Nobs, not just one, should tell you how desperately hungry I was. Eeeeegh.

You could not possibly do worse with this shit -- it was clearly all manufactured in a Chinese nail-polish factory using whatever is left over after they finish making McNuggets, Payless shoes and feline leukemia meds, then partially frozen, shipped over here, warmed in an Easy-Bake Oven, and sold to me for $10.79.

And the more I think about it, the more I realize that this is one of the keys to what ails Republicans -- if THIS is what you think food is; if THIS is what "going out" means to you -- then it's no wonder that your inner life is arid, mean and bankrupt from the very most basic level.

If I'm going to keep living here -- and chain restaurants aside, I do love so much about it -- I might have to quit my job as a professional verbal tap dancer and open a few real restaurants in which actual food is sold to people with functioning taste buds. I'm hereby soliciting spare change, donations, investors and backers of all kinds ...

Mustn't keep Princess waiting!

2011-11-03T10:22:00.000-07:00

So, yesterday I got a pedicure, my first ever.

I am officially on maternity leave now, I was mostly done with the high-priority to-do list items like setting up for the baby, and cooking and freezing a boatload of meals for us. I like it when I have cute painted toenails but I can't reach my feet to do it myself at this point. Also, it just seemed like the thing to do. There are people who do this, like, weekly, and most adult women in the First World have had their first pedicure by this point in their lives, so! Off to the mini-mall.*

This place is new and clean and doesn't reek of birth-defecty chemicals. I'm reassured by their attention to single-use items and hygiene in general. The lady who takes care of me is a very sweet, very professional Asian woman named Yvonne. We talk briefly, I choose the deluxe service package that includes calf & foot massage (my dogs are tired, y'all), and pick out a nice pink enamel for my color. The whole thing takes about 45 minutes, during which I cannot shake the One-Percent, Privileged Rich White Suburban Lady A-Hole feeling that has kept me from doing this before age 37-and-three-quarters. It's WEIRD.

I have a sort of half conversation with the One-Percent, Privileged Rich White Suburban Lady next to me as we watch Family Feud (Christ that show is awful) on the flat-screen TV next to us, I read a bunch of stuff on my iPhone, I do whatever Yvonne is telling me to do, and I field the numerous questions from staff and guests about my scary-big midsection -- you can tell it makes the staff a little nervous that I'm so close to my due date. The massage was marvelous, my feet look great (they scrub off the calluses! whaaat!), I gave Yvonne a huge tip for her gentle treatment of the Pedicure Noob (and also because of Privilege Guilt -- just like the times I've gotten a shoeshine -- it's a strange feeling for a person of my low-rent background to be sitting literally higher than a service person, getting worked on, for what you know is low pay and less respect ... ugh).

Anyway. My point is: I liked the results, I am glad I tried it, but I feel oddly uncomfortable about the whole experience and it is extremely unlikely to become a habitual thing for me. I am not the Idle Rich -- I'm as 99 percent as they come -- and it's hard to imagine ever getting used to this kind of treatment on the reg.

And in conclusion: WOW, do I have to scrape to find a problem. This has been your Privileged A-Hole Report for today.

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*I could make a whole post out of this, but we have noticed that the outdoor strip mall is the dominant form of commerce in the place where we live now. Each one is apparently required by local ordinance to contain the following: a taqueria, a martial-arts center, a nail salon, a tutoring place (e.g. Kumon), a fro-yo joint, and either a dry-cleaner's, a chain coffee shop, or a dental office, plus one wild card slot, which can take any form from Armed Forces recruiting center to pottery studio.

You wish to APPEAR in this spectacle?

2011-10-26T15:07:00.000-07:00

So I'm enjoying The Amazing Race last Sunday night, as I do. There's this team of two guys who were Olympic snowboarders. One of them looks like David Soul, and the other like Bjorn Borg. They have run a good race so far, making good decisions, roshambo-ing to figure out who does what challenge (cracks me up), taking at least a little time to appreciate where they are, that kind of thing. They're pretty hilarious, and had become my favorite team so far.

Until ... [sad trombone] ... it comes out that they're Jesus-jumpers. And just like that, I'm completely off of them. I don't hate them or anything; it's just that what I took for general enthusiasm for adventure and whatnot is suddenly revealed to be religio-based, and therefore (to me) less organic, more deliberate, and therefore inauthentic and suddenly annoying. Why? And what does that say about me? Ugh.

But even worse, they were one of several teams who had misgivings about one of the challenges -- they had to disassemble this Buddhist model shriney thing, take it to another location, and reassemble it (basic memory/stress challenge). But the Christianists among the group (which I swear was half of them, gaah), all expressed -- on camera -- their feelings that what they were doing was bad or wrong or ... something, with the clear inference that they thought that putting their hands on, and moving around, the tchotchkes and knickknacks of another religion would somehow infect them with that religion, leading them astray (and doubtless into hellfire and eternal damnation yada yada yada). And while they're all whining about this, I'm thinking, "If you're so sure of your god, why would this stuff be any more than JUST STUFF to you? How little power does your god have, that touching another god's trinkets & gewgaws would be able to interfere?" Still don't get it.

And on that note, about religious people and reality shows: I have long thought that Survivor ought to do an Atheists v. Christians season -- you wanna juice the ratings, that'd do it. I'd go to the CBS website and buy the stupid buff for THAT shit. Of course, you'd have to endure death threats, possible firebombings of regional network ad sales offices, those Westboro asslinings, and endless condemnatory bullshittery from Repuglican presidential "candidates," but like I said: Think of the ratings!

Woke up quick at about noon / just thought that I had ta be in Compton soon

2011-10-18T09:53:00.000-07:00

Tuesday Goulash

Things that have been said to me by my boss via email in recent days:
--You are passive.
--You need to really own [this stupid fucking assignment that means nothing to no one but him]
--This is not CC’ing anyone else or BC’ing anyone else, FYI
--Anyhow, all this falls into the “bold conversations” reference, as we need to have these.
--This is a critical tool for us, and I know we can all do better around it.

TV right now:
--The Middle makes me laugh so hard that I have to mash the heel of my hand on my belly button to keep it from sproinging off across the room. A couple of times I've thought I might be on the verge of a stroke, unable to catch my breath -- Christ, it's funny! Except when I'm dying of sympathetic cringery for Sue. Oh, Sue. [virtual hug]
--Boardwalk Empire: Shit is gettin REAL up in here. It took all of last season to really find its footing, but now it's one of my favorite things on the teevee.
--The Walking Dead: Hoofaaah, this is some intense olde-tyme horror show stuff. Love it.

Late-Pregnancy UltraVivid Nonstop All-Nite Technicolor SurroundSound Dream Theatre feature from last night: Me and Tina Fey were getting shitty on some cocktail she kept mixing up (which had a vodka base, plus NyQuil and Coco Loco and some other stuff) at her house. My sister came by with some super-buzzkill fundamentalist evangelical xtian friend of hers, who kept trying to evangelize us but thought he was being real subtle. He even asked for a Scotch, to prove how Down he was. Me and Tina just slumped behind the wet bar, giggling, and drank some more FeyBombs while he droned on and on. (NB: This was a much funner dream than the one the other night which ran five times, back to back, in which I went into labor four weeks early and had to keep waking myself up to check whether this was, in fact, happening. It wasn't.)

WHAT does Marsellus Wallace LOOK LIKE?

2011-10-12T09:33:00.000-07:00

Bed Bath and Beyond is the worst store ever.

I've become quite the connoisseur of America's big-box stores, living where I do, and I say this as a credentialed expert: That fucking place sucks.

There's a huge one about half a mile from us. It's acres and acres of fluorescent-lit agony, a carnival freakshow of stuff that looks like something from afar, only to resolve into not a goddamn thing when you get close up.

Having struck out at the comparatively wonderful Target, Pier One, Costco, Cost Plus World Market, and even Toys R Us (a nightmare for another lifetime), I went in there looking for curtains for my kid's room, and some sort of closet organizer system. You'll probably agree that both of these things fall under the first B in the store's name, one-third of its entire goddamn raison d'etre -- "Bed."

Well. It's not like they don't have selection. The joint is jam-packed with what I have to conclude are factory seconds from a fourth-tier manufacturing town in the most benzene-and-bisphenol-soaked valley in China -- every inch of the walls, every inch of floor, hanging from the ceiling, falling out of display stands, there is product. But none of it is quality, none of it is what you need, all of it is some weird third-cousin offshoot of maybe some brand you might have heard of once. The sizes aren't standard -- everything's like two-thirds of an inch off. It's all flimsy, and nowhere near as cheap as the goods warrant. You keep thinking, "Ahh yes, this is the section I need ..." and you wander in and thirty minutes later you're still pawing through this insane jumble of curtainlike matter, mumbling "Who makes thirty-one-inch curtains? Is this faux leather? What's that green -- oh god, I saw this at the mortuary at my grandmother's funeral ..." and finally you leave the store, exhausted and demoralized, with nothing but a little tube of tiny M&Ms that your kid found in some random display near the exit and you want to burn the place down with everybody in it.

Worst. Store. Ever.

Cause I'm sick of your mouth and your two-percent milk

2011-09-22T13:52:00.000-07:00

Three Things To Delight And Surprise

--Mo: Looks way too skinny to be durable, according to the baseball prospectus in 1996 (about the all-time saves recordholder and future Hall-of-Famer, now 41 and still lights-out). I think all writing ought to be like the writing in this here document, forever and ever.

--Jo: There's a blog I read called A Cup of Jo. I kind of love her -- fresh, sweet, interesting, full of gorgeousness. It's almost always an upper for me. But then a small and ugly part of me sometimes kind of hates how fabulous she is; surely the Germans have a word for this conflicting emotion. ACOJ never approaches Gwyneth-flavor smugness -- she's not that way, at all. But everything is so perfect, so design-y; her friends are all these wealthy-looking work-at-home-in-fabulous-cities types; there always happen to be professional-quality photos of professional-quality photo-ready Perfect Moments ... it just (through no real fault of hers) sometimes manages to make me feel bad for eating takeout for dinner and watching TV on the couch instead of biking across the Brooklyn Bridge for a lovely dinner with some lovely friends at a lovely little bistro, you know?

--ROWE: We bout to do this up in my work, y'all. End of this month. HOLY SHITCAKES.

Swatch dogs and Diet Cokeheads

2011-09-20T09:17:00.000-07:00

So the Family Gleemonex went to an alleged "Art & Wine" Festival (at which I saw very little art, and only a couple of opportunities for wine) in the neighborhood last weekend, which turned out to be mostly about the awesomeness of bouncy houses as far as Kid Gleemonex was concerned.

Me, I spent most of the time fascinated, repelled and horrified by these bevies of young ladies from the area's middle and high schools (they were identified by school logos on their ultra tiny-fit tees/tanks and on cheerleader uniforms -- a big part of this festival was performances by school groups in the big tent at one end of the grounds).

Now, recall, we moved here for several valid reasons, such as: great schools (as identified by their California API scores). But these girls -- o readers, these girls we saw.

Roving packs of them, all dressed more or less identically: Tiny tee or tank, shorts of an impossibly tiny smallness in a length such that you'd be able to see the bottom edge of underpant if they wore traditional underpants, which they didn't (them shorts could accommodate thongs only), and some sort of sockless shoe at the end of their early-puberty colt-length toothpick-skinny legs. They roved around in packs, long straight shiny hair aglisten, makeup expertly subtle (with occasional glittery accents), wee t-shirt-bra-clad chests caved in in that painfully self-conscious way that is universal and utterly, biologically unavoidable at that age.

We, my peers, Gen X -- we did not look like that at that age. We shared the chest-caving and the pack-roving, but that is all. We tried as hard as we could to look sophisticated and cool, but our makeup was clownish, our clothing raided from the Golden Girls' condo, our hair permed and curling-ironed and sprayed and mostly utterly inept, our bras stretchy and ill-sized garments out of a box from the Teen section of Dillard's. You could see that we were children, no matter what WE thought of ourselves.

But the Kids Today ... not only do I not know how they get this way -- the sheer energy, the time it must take to develop skills like those -- but also, I am scared to death by what it means. They look so ... adult, but in a creepy way. I know their minds and emotions are in more or less the same place ours were, but they look like 25-year-olds, they look available to men and boys (who, assuredly, will take this look at face value, and subject them to things they aren't ready for). I'm fucking this up here, I'm not saying what I mean -- there's something about it that makes them look like prey, is what I'm kind of getting at. I don't want to go back to the weirdness, repression and body-shaming of my day, and I'm not trying to shut down anyone's, like, sexuality or whatever -- but these ARE still CHILDREN, and it's seriously unnerving to see them present themselves (pretty successfully, if not for the chest-caving) as adults.

Homeschooling begins to make a twisted kind of sense ... ugh.

He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least among you, you did not do for me.'

2011-09-13T09:15:00.000-07:00

Wow.

This -- the below -- is what nearly half of the country believes. They're CHEERING the thought of an uninsured person dying for lack of health care.

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/09/indecent.html

Sully has the video. You can hear these vile swine cheering -- the applause drowns Ron Paul out.

It's times like these that make me wish I believed in an actual, literal Hell. Instead, it's right here, like a bunch of guys who brought smallpox and hunting knives and rabid pitbulls into a mosh pit where the rest of us were pogoing around and bouncing off of each other, and they locked the doors so nobody gets out and as they all thrash around and slash each others' and innocent bystanders' throats, we're all gonna get stomped and crushed and bleed out along with them.

Downerama

2011-09-12T12:12:00.000-07:00

It’s over, which is typically where I come in, so, knowing that about me as you do, indulge me, eh wot?

I fundamentally do not get 9/11 anniversary reactions in the “USA! USA! USA!”/PATRIOTISM NOW vein. At all. Yes, in those first few hours and days, we were wounded, we took it personally, as if someone had assaulted our own grandmama, but why should it make anyone – especially this far out -- feel a surge of patriotism? Especially considering what that well-meant but misguided impulse from millions of grieving and outraged hearts was used for, under Bush/Cheney – it was twisted against us, funneled into things so evil and horrific that we couldn’t have imagined them at the time. We’re still neck-deep in that toxic sludge, and I worry sometimes in my three-a.m.-insomniac way that we’ll never get out – we’re going to drown in it – and it didn’t have to be this way, so fuck you and your “USA! USA! USA!” bullshit right in the ear.

I also fundamentally do not get the “God Bless America” reactions – there’s a huge overlap with them and the USA! types, but it’s slightly different. I am, as you know, somewhere between atheist and agnostic, so of course I really wouldn’t take comfort from god-based platitudes, but someone on Facebook wrote that it “helped that I went to church today” and someone else agreed, adding “It also helped to sing ‘God Bless America’ while wearing the red, white and blue scarf I bought at Ground Zero when the buildings were still smoldering...” Because, see, that wouldn’t help me AT ALL. That fucking song drives me batshit anyway, always has (even back when I was a believer, I thought it was a little bit “Fuck y’all, I got mine”) -- come ON. God bless America – damn, I feel like we’ve been pretty well blessed over the years, don’t you? Billions of people on this dying planet know nothing in their entire lives but misery and dirt, and we – born on third base and forever thinking we hit a triple – want the big sky-fairy to give us MORE? Another band-aid for our Big Gigantic Owie? How about we learn some lessons, grow up, join the community of humanity instead, and quit acting like we’re so goddamned Speshul?

And finally, I fundamentally do not get the “NEVER FORGET!” types. Because seriously – who would? Who COULD forget? Ten years go by, it still feels like yesterday to me – there’s no forgetting something like that. The thing is, I never know if these people mean “Never forget the victims, and honor their lives” – which, OK, yes, I get, although it’s a little bit mawkish if you didn’t lose a loved one in the attacks/aftermath, kind of piggybacking on disaster-porn overload in general – or, as is more likely if you’re posting this on Facebook or your blog as comment-bait – “I PERSONALLY have never forgotten this thing that those dirty ragheads did to us and I hope we stay at war with dirty raghead nations until every last one of the dirty ragheads is exterminated and if you don’t agree you are a godless Muslim commie homo socialist fascist who deserves to die along with them so GOD BLESS ‘MURKA.”

It was horrible, it will always be horrible, for the rest of my life the very thought of it will render me breathless with the memory of the fear and grief and astonishment, I will always wonder how things could have turned out differently for America and the world if someone else’s hand had been steering the ship of state when it happened – but we have to stop using it as an excuse to ruin everything in the entire goddamn world because we’re mad and sad.

Sorry to be such a downer … I’ll be more fun later, honest.

"It's HARD to hit home runs, and where the heck didja get TWO of 'em?"

2011-09-03T09:23:00.000-07:00

God, you guys, I love Paul O'Neill sofa king much!

We record every Yankees game all season long (we have that MLB Extra Innings thing from DirecTV), and my favorites, my real must-watch games, are the ones where Paulie's in the broadcast booth. He's really knowledgeable and sharp about what's going on, but he's also just this goofy dude, a Midwesterner despite all those years playing in New York, and he cracks me up every time I hear him. Last night I thought I was gonna stroke out, listening to this (as near exact a transcript as I could make):

[lull in game play]

O'Neill: Where do people hang out on Labor Day weekend?

Singleton or Kay: ...

O'Neill: I left [for the Stadium] early, thinkin there'd be all this traffic, but there was nobody on the road.

S/K: Maybe they left yesterday.

S/K: Last beach weekend.

S/K: The house shares all end.

O'Neill, to whom the words are in English but make no sense strung together: ... the ... house shares ... all end ...

S/K: Yeah, Jersey Shore, the Hamptons -- guys have shares ...

O'Neill, musingly, baffled, at half-volume: ... shares? ...

[actual baseball commentary]

[some time later]

S/K: So yeah, the shares run Memorial Day to Labor Day, then you gotta get the housecleaners to come in.

O'Neill: So it's like Animal House out there?

S/K: [laughter] Sorta ... not exactly ...

And then there was this, where in another lull in the game, the camera guys zero in on a sixtyish woman in the stands who's knitted a little teddy bear in a baseball cap and is now embroidering something on the front of its shirt. They all try to figure out what it says ("Texiera?" is one guess), then Paul opines:

O'Neill: Knitting. My mom used to knit. [kind of aggrieved] I'd go in a room and she'd be sitting there knitting, and it just looked so boring.

S/K: [laughter]

O'Neill: I mean, there's so many things you can do ...

[crosstalk]

O'Neill: I'd always just leave the room.

S/K: Maybe she didn't really, she only did it so you'd leave.

O'Neill: [giggling] Three brothers and one sister ... maybe so!

How can you not love this guy? Shatner bless ya, Paulie!

Amirite?

2011-09-02T10:04:00.000-07:00

I am on vacation this week, hangin' out with Kid Gleemonex, which has been awesome. Lots of fun stuff (you parents with just boys are missing out on the foofy tea-room restaurant experience, no kidding around), crafts, baking, lots of just nothing in particular (that's in short supply when both parents work, I tell you whut, and honestly it is restorative to the soul).

And but so one day, we went to a local park -- part of the appeal of the area where we live now is that it's absolutely lousy with well-tended parks. We took a picnic, and ate on our blanket in soft green grass under a shade tree -- it was lovely. But then, because we are at a park, we have to do park stuff.

Know what's fucking boring? Parks.

We went over to the sand play area, which to my surprise, for once in her life did not interest my kid -- five or six toddlers mucking around in the sand in the glaring sunlight, moms and nannies and what have you arranged nearby in what shade they could find, most either reading or on iPhones. The slides were too hot -- direct sun, doncha know -- so Kid Gleemonex wanted to swing. Christ, swings are boring for the one who is not doing the swinging, even when your kid is adorable and wants you to push her at varying speeds such as "monster fast," "rabbit fast," and "grass fast." Eventually she got done swinging and went over to the water play area (you push a button and these jets set into a rubberized surface start shooting at random intervals -- a little like the Bellagio only you can play in it and there's no music or light show or booze).

So I took my book* over to a shaded bench and read while she went to TOWN on that water thingy. And here's where I want to get back to the thing about all the moms and nannies on their iPhones and/or reading -- I never understood that, before I had a kid. I was all, oh that's so sad, why do they even HAVE kids if they don't want to play with them? But now I get it. I do. Parks used to be a place where you'd send a kid to play in relative peace and grown-up-free safety -- think about all those Amy & Laura books, the Fudge books, where the playground has nothing to do with parents whatsoever. But now instead of letting them go nuts and burn off all that kid energy farting around with other kids, we're supposed to ENGAGE with them -- hover right over them, climb up the fucking slide if we can fit through the thing, mediate sand-toy disputes with other small humans ... and that is FUCKING BORING. They like playing on playgrounds because they're KIDS -- to them, it's discovery! and skills! and daring! Which is great! But the actual stuff they do in these settings is b-b-b-b-boooooring for adults.

It's only that guilt -- "I should be over there, running through the water jets with her ..." that taints things. So I decided to let it go -- the kid was having an absolute blast, and it would've been less fun and over sooner if I had participated, so we each enjoyed our own age-appropriate activity, and we went home exhausted and happy.

The take-away: When you go to the park, take a book or something.

The end.

--------------------------------------

*The Help, if you must know. Shut up. SHUT UP I KNOW, OK?

He doesn’t care anything about the Confederacy and he says we’re going to get licked. But he dances divinely.

2011-08-22T12:47:00.000-07:00

The Monday Three, Two of Which Are Brought To You By Acquaintaces' Facebook Posts

A pox on those pre-selected packages of school supplies.
I get the convenience from the parental point of view -- one stop, one price, no fuss. But pretty much the only thing I ever really liked about going back to school was the trip to buy school supplies -- lingering over the pencil boxes, choosing exactly the right colors of two-pocket brad folders for each subject, digging to the back of the pile for the completely unblemished, untouched notebooks, adding a fresh new bottle of Elmer's glue, the perfect scissors, clean sharp-tipped Crayolas, pens, Kleenex boxes ... how could you rob a kid of that?

Double smallpox on people who decry their kids' growing up.
Not "Awww, time flies! Remember when he was a little pudgy mooshy baby? And here he is, old enough to give lawful consent in New Mexico!" I mean the ones who go "I demand she stop growing up!" or "First day of fourth grade -- oh how I want her back in kindergarten!" Stop it. Just stop that fucking shit. I don't care if you think it, but keep it inside your thick noggin. It's NOT FAIR to make kids feel bad for the inevitable biological process of growing up. You're saying, in effect, "I liked you better when you were little and cute and I controlled your life and had your unalloyed hero worship. It sucks now that you're all gangly and need deodorant and have a sass mouth and I would stunt you forever if I could. Your existence disappoints me and it's all your fault."

In which something makes me anxious, which has no damn business engendering any emotion in me whatsoever.
You know how Vince and the permanently developmentally-arrested bro posse are all living in some insanely luxurious, spacious, apparently multi-bedroom high-floor hotel suite now? Not staying there -- LIVING there, for an indefinite amount of time? Those places are like $30,000 a night. Those Emirate assholes don't even live like that. Wasn't Vince having money problems not too long ago? Who's footing this bill? Why don't they rent a goddamn house like on Cribs? All this wasted money ... why Shatner why?

BOBBY FLAY is now my SWORN ENEMY, which means he is also YOURS.

2011-08-11T09:41:00.000-07:00

Look, here's the deal. Many moons ago, somebody once linked on their blog to a drawring of two kids sitting on a pile of books, thoroughly absorbed in reading -- done so well, so simple and early-sixties-looking, I loved it on sight -- and the words "There's more to life than books you know, but not much more," which of course KILLED ME DEAD (Handsome Devil, whaaaat), and I bought it in under sixty seconds from this person's etsy shop. It is waiting to be framed and hung in my reading nook -- this sort of dogleg 1/3 of the Master Bedroom (heh. master bedroom) of our new house, for which I already have a wonderful chair (the Luxe chair + ottoman from Cost Plus), and now need only my bookcases, my goddamn books which are still in boxes in the goddamn garage, a good reading lamp, and the Desk I've Been Waiting For All My Life (which I will know when I see it).

Since that time, probably two years ago, that I bought this fabulous piece of art, I have wanted desperately for some more illustrated lyrics/quotations, preferably without attribution, and not the whole goddamn song or whatever -- Beatles, Pixies, more Smiths, all kinds of cool shit -- which I would create myself if I had that kind of graphic artistry talent but I don't, SO. What I need from you is: FIND ME THIS SHIT ON ETSY. I do not know how to navigate that fucking place. I get lost and then cranky and then want to burn the mother down with every twee little crafter in it. Links, people -- direct links to items and shops. PLEASE help me!

I might be a little young but honey, I ain't naive

2011-08-08T10:20:00.000-07:00

So you guys know how much I love Burn Notice (specifically, I love it real hard, and a lot), but the mania for social media (something I deal with in the Day Gig, and which has become a phrase I can't stand) is out of control. In the commercial breaks, when one is not fast enough on the trigger, one will be assaulted with the promos for some online graphic novel they're pimping that's based on the show. It goes like this:

"ENGAGE WITH our graphic novel blah blah blah Burn Notice!"

Engage with. I'm being ordered to ENGAGE WITH a fucking graphic novel thingy ... I can just hear the meetings about (or "around," as is now the term) this idea. "We'll partner with this hot new artist, Joe Yadayada, to capture the buzz/cool factor of graphic novels combined with the cachet of exclusive content and really drive viewer engagement! The metrics'll be off the charts!" They forgot to even cover their naked ambition with some phrasing other than "engage with," which is a CorpComms term if ever there was one. GOD.

Engage this, y'all ...

I got the best one, honey -- it's Nathan Junior. I think.

2011-08-07T13:30:00.001-07:00

So I'm out with the kid for breakfast -- sometimes that's the only thing to do when you're rousted out of bed at the ass-crack of dawn on a Sunday morning, amirite? -- and the place is mostly empty except for some old couples (the male half of one of which was droning on about Obama in a very Fox-"News"-influenced way while the wife ignored him) and two other family groups. One of the fams had four boys under the age of four -- the middle two looked like twins -- and the other had five kids -- three girls, about 12, 11, and 9, and two boys, about 7 and 6.

Now. Here's the thing. Everybody was well-behaved, it wasn't that. It was just ... OMG. Four boys under four. I'm betting the last one was either unplanned or a "Surely -- SURELY -- this'n'll be a girl. What are the odds???" sort of thing. And the other fam -- those two preteen girls were all made up and extremely carefully outfitted, and you could just feel the waves of preteen self-consciousness radiating off of them. It squoze my heart just to look in their direction, especially knowing my kid will be right there in about 8-9 years.

And both fams reminded me of how, back in the long long ago, I thought I'd like to have five kids. My fantasy about this was heavily informed, if not lifted wholesale, from the family in A Ring of Endless Light. You know -- living by the sea in a converted stable, everyone loves everyone, there are dolphins and books and shit. (BTW, that's a great book, which I only realized is actually pretty Godbaggy on re-reading about five years ago -- God stuff and sex stuff generally just flew right past me when I was a kid, the former because I was immersed in it anyway so who noticed a bucketload more here or there, and the latter because I had No Idea What Anyone Was Talking About, Ever, for real).

So but -- five. Yeahhh ... I'm gonna have to give you a no on that one (even if I weren't old as fuck already, so it's too late and a moot point besides). Four's waaay too many for me. Three would be ... well, in other circumstances, like if I could stay at home, I might possibly consider it, but it would be a completely different world, requiring complex and fraught mental and emotional adjustments of a sort that I am not currently up for. I was only able to think of two without reaching for the Glenlivet in the last year or so. I love being a mom, and I'm looking forward to this next one in a pretty profound way -- but after that, I'm done -- and my god FOUR OR FIVE? Holy shit.

This post brought to you by the fact that I am lazy, selfish, and risk-averse. Huzzah!

Omar comin', yo!

2011-07-25T15:27:00.000-07:00

Couple things real quick:

1) Public service announcement: "We" are not pregnant. "We" may be expecting, but "we" are not pregnant (unless "we" are two or more females who both are currently gestating at least one fetus each in her own uterus).

2) Public service announcement #2: Fuck candles or books or even wine -- you know what is a really, super, ace host/ess gift for when you have stayed in someone's home for more than a couple of days? Cleaning the shower before you leave. Including, you know, the drain area.

Fastest-growing non-poultry, non-coffee franchise in the whole of Southern California.

2011-07-21T09:37:00.000-07:00

Three Business Names That Ought Not To Be, And Why Not:

Nothing Bundt Cakes: First, I hate puns. I think this is a pun, yeah? Secondly, in the attempt to be cute, you inadvertently (one hopes) denigrate your own product. Plus, it sounds stupid when you say it. So I won't. And I won't go there.

Buy Buy Baby: Wow, off-putting. I know the BIC (baby-industrial complex) exists to make expectant parents buy a whole bunch of shit they most likely don't need, but my god, the nakedness of it in this store's name! There's one near my new house, so me and the kid went to check it out ... hoo-faaaaaah. No es necesario.

Souper Crackers: Fictional -- and [spoiler alert!] as it turns out, non-viable, but still hilariously awful. Y'all really should watch that clip in the link -- why Shatner WHY did this show get canceled? There is no justice!

I ride this train regularly! Twice a week! So I suppose I've SOME rights!

2011-07-18T10:44:00.000-07:00

Three things for y'all today:

1) Somebody should develop an iPhone app sorta like Shazam for finding out what language people are speaking. These three incredibly & naturally good-looking* tall young people dropped into the four-seat across the aisle from me on the train this morning, and spent the whole time talking to each other in a language I could not recognize. I think it might have been Dutch -- sort of vaguely German-ey (but not guttural), lilting (but not South-African-ey), not many distinguishable diphthongs, no rolled consonants. I wanted to know, and I could not ask -- I'm always afraid I'm going to sound like the worst most hickish rube of all time if I ask, like no matter what words I actually say it'll sound like "HEY GOLLLEEEE WHERE'S Y'ALL FROM?" So get on it, app developers of the world.

2) I wish there were a way to de-frag the human brain, deleting old files as you go, because there is apparently a readily-accessible segment in mine which holds the entire lyrics to the crappy-90s-Aerosmith songs "Crazy" AND "Cryin," along with a pretty reliably complete track of the video of the former (way to cast your teenage daughter in super-hot sexy stuff there, Steve -- ace parenting decision, good sir!). Although had I deleted that segment long ago, as would have been proper, I would not have come up with the oft-used tag "cryin' amazacrazy," itself a ripoff of a long-ago SNL bit that ran a bunch of crappy-90s-Aerosmith songs together thusly ... so, I dunno, maybe the real estate is worth it after all. I can never stand to delete real files on my actual computers, either.

3) Three books that just now made it onto my Amazon wishlist:

This Common Secret
Our Man in Havana
Dear Angela: Remembering My So-Called Life

---------------------------------------
*As opposed to enhanced and/or professional -- you know how you can always tell when a person makes his or her living off of his or her looks? They weren't like that. They were like people who would live in Eden. Give them green contacts and they would be great as Crakers in the movie of the MaddAddam trilogy.

That John Denver's fulla shit!

2011-07-10T20:27:00.000-07:00

Possible Originations of the Source of the Ringing of the iPhone at 3:40 a.m. Sunday

--Robocall/spam

--butt-dial

--insomniac or new parent on the East Coast

--the Better Homes and Gardens $25,000 prize winner notification

--my Kansass friends, wanting to settle a bar bet

--someone on vacation in Hawaii, having miscalculated the time difference, wanting to know the name of that awesome fish place because they want to go there tomorrow

--solar flare

--poltergeist

--Steve Jobs, checking things out (he's a detail guy)

Where My Mind Went, With an Intractable Force that Compelled Me to Get Out of Bed to Go Downstairs to Check the Fucking Thing Because I Can't Sleep Until I Do

--My sister, calling with bad tidings of yet another family illness or death

What It Actually Was
--Your flight to Bumblefuck was cancelled. Here's when the next one is: Two days from now. Go fuck yourself.

Jackal Onassis after-party

2011-07-07T11:24:00.000-07:00

Listen here: If you have white-boy dreds and you describe your occupation as "Infiltrator," then son, you got some growing up to do.

A most fascinating post for all of you, I'm sure.

2011-07-04T15:56:00.000-07:00

And but so the thing is, I am maybe beginning to understand about why all the damn black maternity clothing from last time around. It's because THERE ISN'T ANYTHING ELSE. At least not anything else that doesn't scoop almost to the band of my super-attractive Pregnant Lady Bras, that is -- and listen. I have big tatas during the normal unpregnant years. I have learned a thing or seven about what deep scoop neck and V-neck blouses look like on me, as compared to what they look like on your A's, B's, and even C's -- I look like I am about to ask you if you're lookin for a date, honey? is what. And this is in stuff from, like, Lands' End. Forget the younger, trendier stuff. I do not want the gals up and out there like Lisa Goddamn Cuddy wears em, for chrissake. It is not a work-appropriate display, the top half of your ginormous rack. It is distracting and unprofessional and frankly quite chilly in the modern air-conditioned office environment. And nobody -- NOBODY -- sells a tank or tee that kind of goes straight across the chest -- like, say, a boatneck or relaxed crew -- instead of dipping down to show off Nature's Great Abundance And the Miracle Of Life. Except the ones I've already got ... which are black. So yeah, lotta black this time around too.

I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel.

2011-06-27T15:36:00.000-07:00

And but so here's another thing: Do you ever wonder whether somewhere in all that Duggary Duggarness, there's a Duggar kid who's like, "This fucking SUCKS. I hate sharing a bathroom with forty fuckin other kids, I don't even know if that one over there is ours or not, my mom is just a vagina with a face, I called Jinger 'Jorgia' and she didn't even notice, if I hear one more Biblical math lesson or Biblical history lesson or Biblical fucking chemistry lesson I'm going to burn this house down with everybody in it, my dad is a goddamn lunatic trying to replenish the earth all by himself, I only ever just saw a black person in real life LAST WEEK, there's no way I'm marrying that freaky twerp from that other Christing overpopulating homeschool family we hang with, and I'm sick to fucking death of that beshitted taco pie thing we eat by the 55-gallon drum every fucking Wednesday. The very MINUTE I turn eighteen I am changing my name to Terry Smith, getting my entire reproductive system removed, and FLEEING TO BOLIVIA and they will never ever find me. They won't even know I'm gone till it's time to do the publicity shoot for the next time they have to change the name of our show on Discovery -- 'Thirty-Nine and Counting!' Feets don't fail me now."

Killed a spider with a dollar cause I didn't have a tissue

2011-06-27T12:01:00.000-07:00

Dear Mean, Pissed-Off-Looking Republican Women Driving SUVs In The Far South of the Silicon Valley, Harshing My Mellow:

What is y'all's deal? Why do y'all always look so pissed off taking the curves on a 40-MPH-speed-limit street at 65 MPH? Is it cause somewhere deep inside, you know your stupid fat behemoth of a car seats the exact same number of people and hauls the same amount or less cargo my Prius does, but costs fifteen grand more to buy and a lot more to fill with gas, thus leaving you less money to get a good haircut? (Cause seriously, y'all all have bad Suburban Mom Hair. Honestly.) You don't wipe that mean look off your face, it could set permanently like that.

Sincerely,
I Could've Seen and Judged This Human Vista Every Day in Texass for About One-Quarter the Money, GOD.

---------

PS, in honor of one of my favorite tags, via one of my favorite blogs on the entire Internets: the First-World Problems rap.

I'm'a stick to Holmes Magazine. All he cares about is you do the job right.

2011-06-19T14:21:00.000-07:00

Hey SHAPE magazine: I had this whole thing all written in my head, all thoughtful and philosophical and a little bit deep, but you know what? It all really boils down to this:

Nobody would ever tell a man to BYO saltless butterless air-popped popcorn to a fucking movie with his friends so he doesn't pork out on movie popcorn, least of all as part of a bigger strategy composed of other sad, depressing little "tricks" (put seltzer in your "faux-mosa" at brunch with the gals! don't meet up in Starbucks for a scone -- go for a brisk walk!) to keep from porking out in general all weekend long thus ruining the effects of a week of "Spartan lunches" and "rigorous workouts."

Nobody. Would EVER. Tell a man that.

Fuck all y'all.

Dot says these're gettin too big to cuddle.

2011-06-10T11:17:00.000-07:00

Teen Mom, 16 and Pregnant, who needs all that.

They oughtta make a show called 37 and Pregnant. It'd just be old lady Gleemonex shufflin around the house, findin reasons to do without whatever it was she left upstairs instead of going up to get it, deciding on impulse to go to a Red Lobster for the first time in at least 15 years because OMG CHEESY BISCUITS, falling asleep on the couch in front of Treme at like 8:40 p.m., diggin through the plastic bin of stuff from four years ago and wondering why every item is black (daaaamn girl where's the colors? did you think you could hide it last time or what?), "running" three hilarious/pathetic 12:30 miles around the neighborhood. Hot stuff, I tellya. Where's my teevee money?

Also: No, I didn't actually know what "bourgeoisie" meant, but y'all believed me because I was generally such an incessant know-it-all.

2011-06-08T09:32:00.000-07:00

Confession: In seventh grade? When we were supposed to dissect those frogs, and I went all PETA on it and said it was animal cruelty and blah blah blah and made a fucking federal case of it and got them to give me a model frog instead because of my high-minded crusading morals? Really, it was because I just din't wanna do it. It was grody.

The end.

Or so the Germans would have us believe.

2011-05-25T11:51:00.000-07:00

Me and Acting, or: There Are So So SO Many Reasons I Am Not A Star of Stage and/or Screen, You Don't Even KNOW.

So because I cannot stop myself (decade-long girlcrush), I am re-reading Bossypants in bits and pieces before I turn in for the night. And I'm thinking about Acting, and how for me, that's such burned, scorched territory, never to be traversed.

I did some THEATRE back in the day -- compulsory, in the case of church xmas plays and elementary-school pageanty thingies, but everybody did that stuff.

What astounds me in thinking on it is the times I did it voluntarily in high school, never mind the fact that I am A)spectacularly terrible at it, and B)hate it like I hate group projects, quarterly check-ins with the grandboss, and the thought of actual jail.

Unlike Ms. Fey and others who do this for a living, I did THEATRE not because I actually wanted to, but because in my mind, it was what Alternative kids did. In my defense, there weren't a lot of options in Cowburg High School that had even a whiff of Alternative about them -- Mr. Gleemonex loves to just die laughing at the clubs in my HS yearbook, what with Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Future Farmers of America, Auto Shop, etc.

But I'm still kind of at a loss to explain why I was so sure that Drama Club and One-Act Play and taking Theatre as an elective were so important to me (at least 9th & part of 10th grade, after which I outgrew that particular flavor of horseshit and sampled a few others). I never understood what was fun about it -- it was a lot of extra-hours work, you didn't really control anything (least of all your fellow actors), the word "thespian" is stupid, I certainly didn't "become" Becky Thatcher in my disastrous stint in the role, and hot calzone-fucking SHATNER did I hate the actual performances. I still remember the dread, the angst, the pure distilled loathing of the event ... I didn't even want my family to come to the shows, because I knew I was terrible and I hated everything and its ASS FACE.

And there weren't even any cameras or stagehands and such. If I had to do any acting -- like, say, it was a demand made by people who had kidnapped a family member -- I'd probably end up getting murdered by the crew or my co-stars for gumming up the works. Y'all, I can't even take a normal snapshot -- I stand there all frozen-smiling, trying not to blink, wondering if my chin looks weird, dying to brush that single strand of hair out of my eye, adjusting my stance so I don't look like I have lunch-lady arms, waiting for somebody to TAKE THE FUCKING GODDAMN PICTURE ALREADY, CHRIST IT'S DIGITAL, TAKE FOUR HUNDRED OF THEM TO GET ONE THAT WORKS OR ELSE JUST KILL ME NOW.

So anyway. Actors: My hat is off to you, sirs and madames. I reserve the right to bag on you freely in this here blog, but I'll never not give you credit for doing the impossible.

Giving up, and giving in / put on your Mom Jeans!

2011-05-22T18:18:00.000-07:00

Welllll ... yeah, but no.

Here’s the thing -- I get what you’re saying, but I think you picked the wrong target. Yes, my biggest girlcrush of the past decade, Tina Fey, is quite pretty, and boy, can she glam up real nice.

But I don’t think she’s playing when she runs down her own looks, or breaks out exactly what happens on photo shoots (one of my favorite and most cringey parts of Bossypants, incidentally) to make normal people look like Stars, or puts her characters into purposely unattractive positions. I really don’t think it’s “false modesty and humblebraggin’” in this case, at all.

I think that for most of us, our idea of what we look like gets fixed in resin when we’re about thirteen. We make that into a brooch, and we pin it inside our jackets, and it’s always there against our hearts, no matter what else happens in our lives, how we grow, who we become, what we actually see in the mirror in the present day. Famous doesn’t fix that. Sometimes it takes horrible turns -- have y’all seen that pathetic ghoul Heidi something-or-other, who got 23 plastic surgeries in one day, and turned from a very very pretty young woman into something just desperately hard to look at? Shatner only knows what she’s carrying around inside her own head.

But mostly it takes the more common form -- your old pal Gleemonex’s brooch, for instance, shows a soft-bellied, freckle-faced, weird-toothed loud girl who never, ever knows what to wear and will never ever have a boyfriend EVER. No matter that I grew up, that I’m 37 and more confident of my body and my looks than I’ve ever been, that I eventually got plenty of male attention, etc. etc. etc. That girl is still in there somewhere. My great good luck is that I’m not in an industry in which my ability to make a living is dependent upon my looks, and I don’t compete for my living against genuinely incredibly attractive people, the 20s on a scale of 1 to 10. Tina Fey does.

It’s a defense, this first-strike “I’m such an awkward-o” thing, but I would be willing to bet cash money that she earned it cleanly, and I don’t think she owes it to anybody to let it go. I don’t think it’s a “bit” for her. I think the snapshot immortalized on her own brooch (belabor! belabor! it’s what I do) is a lot like those kinda mortifying pictures she included in her book -- even I don’t have photos as awkward as those, poor kid. I imagine they’d make a pretty powerful mental impression on a person, particularly when that person spends her entire professional life in front of a camera, and even the compliments that she normally gets are of the “kinda cute, for a writer/comedian” backhanded bullshit variety.

So anyway. That just stuck in my craw all weekend long, and now it’s out. Tina, if you stumble across this, Shatner forbid -- sorry for the rando-internets analysis. Whatever you’re doing, it rules, and I love you. Super-hard. But not in a weird way.

Honey badger don't care.

2011-05-16T10:47:00.000-07:00

So I'm in Whole Foods the other day, facing this vast wall of yogurt options. I'm starting to realize that yogurt, which I have discussed here previously, is in the same family of Stuff Rich White Liberals Like as yoga -- time-consuming, expensive, somewhat pointless, requiring special equipment or specialized stores, that kind of thing. But I can eat them on the train when I miss First Breakfast at home due to I have to get up pretty goddamn early to make the train, which waits for no man. And Whole Foods has the biggest selection I've ever seen, with barely a Dannon or a Yoplait anywhere. It's all this crazy shit with total BS benefits ascribed thereunto, but I need some variety because YOGURT, UGH. Anyway so I'm standing in front of it, my kid going nuts with desire to hit another samples table, I'm scanning labels and suffering choice paralysis.

I see one that looks interesting -- calm white label, nice illustrations of fruit, "Icelandic-style" something or other. No hormones, preservatives, additives. Non-fat, 100 calories, trace amount of sugar, no aspartame, MSG, Red #5, motor oil, what have you. It's two dollars per, but hey, cheap if it's your whole meal, and it can be, because hot damn, FOURTEEN grams of protein. I get a couple: Grapefruit, Orange-Ginger.

Days later, starving on the train, I bust out the Orange-Ginger. I'm instantly sorry, with the first spoonful. It tastes like ... a cleaning product. Iceland, you're on notice.

Sad when it looks like Idiocracy is actually a best-case scenario

2011-05-11T15:46:00.000-07:00

And another thing: Still on the south side of the Mexican border, flipping half-crazy through the limited channels on the teevee on Virgin America while trying to keep my kid from getting us kicked to the door with parachutes and a fare-the-well, I saw like forty seconds of something called "Khlowaey and Lamar" or however rich pointless assholes spell their stupid made-up names, and y'all -- the impact on my brain was like getting hit square in the left temple with a fastball coated in bad brown LSD. I am permanently damaged and stupider for that forty seconds; however, I think I'm done wondering what the fuck is wrong with America.

Big Ben, kids! Parliament!

2011-05-10T16:05:00.000-07:00

Meditations Upon a Young Man Wearing a Baseball Cap, Riding a Packed SFO Long-Term Parking Shuttle Bus Quite Late of a Weeknight Evening

"Sick Pig." Well, that is original. Off-putting, yes, but original.

Does he know that is what his hat says? I am thinking of Engrish, which never fails to reduce me to helpless tears of laughter, the slight guilt of which is greatly leavened by my certain knowledge that if I were to attempt to create signage in a foreign language, my efforts would reduce the native-speaking reader to helpless tears of laughter, so. However. To the point. He is a non-white person, possibly of Hispanic or maybe Middle Eastern origin, but almost always and especially in the SF bay area, it is not a safe assumption to make, the assumption as to whether a person knows English, regardless of the person's look or presentation.

Really, that is QUITE off-putting, the more I think about it. "Sick Pig." Why to put such words on your hat?

Generally one would not think of the "Sick Pig" hat-wearers of the world as having the means or motivation to travel by air in a long-term fashion, would one? Are they not more like unto the juggalo type of human subspecies than to the rest of us vacationers, funeral attenders and businesspersons? But this young man -- traveling alone, not with some team of fellow Sick Pigs -- is otherwise dressed fairly unremarkably. Conclusions again refuse to be drawn.

And why does a hat like that immediately set in motion such a complex web of elitist socioeconomic prejudices and assumptions in my head?

The writing. It is off-center, white embroidery on a solid black baseball cap, almost entirely on the right side of the meridian as I regard it. This fact annoys me almost as much as the words themselves do. We cannot be having off-center writing on our hats. It is just Not Done.

CHRIST HOW LONG IS IT TILL WE GET TO THE FUCKING PARKING GARAGE.

By which I mean: FUCK YEAH

2011-05-02T09:43:00.000-07:00

Homesteading

2011-04-26T09:36:00.000-07:00

Random Thoughts on Our First Few Weeks In the Far Burbs

Feeling guilty about the increase in my carbon footprint. Gotta drive everywhere (and oh wretched SHATNER do I hate driving), the city doesn't do compost (so we're back to throwing out food scraps as garbage, which feels like a terrible step backward, until we can get our own compost thing going), I've had to buy a bunch of new plastic-wrapped stuff to get the house set up. On the plus side, the driving adds up to less than what Mr. Gleemonex alone was doing before, so that's actually a net reduction (just feels like more to me personally).

I fear that we have stumbled into a nest of Republicans. Our neighborhood is beautiful, lots of "mature" (meaning built in the early 70s) houses, extremely well-maintained, with aggressively manicured lawns (my kid calls this one neighbor's topiary'd trees "head trees"). And we like the pretty. But ... instead of four (4) Priuses on one block like our old shambly street, everyone here has Trucks. Big Trucks. Our neighbors across the street have two Suburbans and one shiny pickup. I think two people live there. It's weird. And EVERYTHING was closed on Easter Sunday -- even Banana Republic, which I know for a fact is open on Christmas Eve and Thanksgiving Day. The only store in the metropolis that was open was Gucci (which clearly favors making a buck over honoring the Risen Christ, and bully for them). I just ... I get the feeling our Obama signage next summer may stand alone on our street, dig?

We have so far been invited to church thrice, by three different neighbor persons, and have been brought baked goods by one. (My reactions: No, No, No, and Awesome, thank you!) Everyone has been super nice so far -- that's pretty cool. We lived at our old place for seven years, and only ever spoke to the people from one house. Oh, and Mr. Gleemonex talked cars with the creepy psycho-killer from the other end of the street once. But here, we've already met people.

You can make protected left turns and U-turns ALL OVER THE DAMN PLACE here. Now THAT'S being organized for the automobile. I don't like it, the car-orientation, on a philosophical and moral level -- but, you guys: LEGAL U-TURNS. If you gotta drive, best you get to U-turn like a mothafucka, am I right?

I love my commute. I don't love getting up at 6:00 sharp, and it's a bit of an ass-pain to get to the train, but once I get there ... there's this beautiful station, built in 1935, with immense high ceilings, wooden benches golden with age, inlaid floors, old signage and murals, a tiny snack bar nook that smells of fresh coffee in the morning and absolutely heavenly fresh-popped popcorn in the evening. Passing through it is a high, every time (and so much better than that hideous depressing ugly windswept pigeon-shitted Soviet-bloc-looking BART station in the cold that I used to have to use). And my fellow riders -- Caltrain patrons are Commuters, man. No Krazy there. It reminds me of the LIRR, which I will continue to love till the End of Days, and it's an hour each way that I get to sit and write the book that will eventually make me too goddamn rich and famous to need to commute anymore ... but I'll still do it from time to time just for fun.

I love our palm trees, our pool, the view, the space, the feeling that this is ours. It's been exhausting, this move, and there's no end in sight ... but we are home, y'all.

U Draw Ass

2011-04-15T11:23:00.000-07:00

Can we please stop with saying "[something] cum [something]"? Please?

You'd think in the post Beavis and Butt-Head era of modern society that we'd avoid that particular construction, and yet you still see it all over the place. I know, I know, it's real and valid and all that, but A)please, and B)must we?

You can't think of any better way to put it? You don't want to go with the more modern "slash" -- either the word, or the character, or (as with Conan O'Brien) a small icon of the head of Slash? What's your point? You want to show you know how to use the construction, or that you totally know Latin shit, or that you're above the immature giggling that is everyone else in the world's first reaction? Well yay for you. But I'm asking all writers of the world: Please don't, okay?

Thank you, from Gleemonex.

"Oh, Mister Floyd. Will you be gracin us with your presence today?"

2011-04-04T10:35:00.000-07:00

So: We are moving. This is the central fact of the Gleemonex Family's existence at this time, to the exclusion of pretty much all else (including our 12th wedding anniversary, which was yesterday, which we celebrated by packing boxes all day long).

The move is awesome and groovy -- we're going from the tiny 3/1 windswept house at the edge of the continent to this bigass 4/3 Spanish-style thing with palm trees and a pool and good schools down at the southern end of the Silicon Valley, and we are really excited. WE ARE GOING TO HAVE SUMMER AND IT IS GOING TO BE AWESOME. I have been ballz-freezing cold for about thirteen years now, ever since we moved to SF in the summer of '98 and I'm fucking sick of it. Side note, you folks in the SF bay area or possibly also Manhattan island likely find it unremarkable that we are first-time homeowners at the age of 37, while you Midwesterners and Southerners are like, Finally growin up, are ya? Real estate here is fucking Krazy Kart Death Race, I'm telling you.

But anyway. So there's like a million Guys you have to call (carpet guys, carpet measuring guys, fumigation guys, fumigation prep guys, palm tree care guys, PG&E guys, water guys, garbage guys, chimney inspection guys, cable guys, armpit hair remediation guys, what the fuck EVER) and so many boxes to pack ... we've lived here nearly seven years ... you open a closet and BLACK DESPAIR pierces your heart, no kidding. We ever move out of this new joint, we're selling it as is, furnished and with our names still on the utility bills because FUCK IT.

Oh, and also, grave issues with the health of a member of my family of origin have required me to make a visit back to Olde Cowburg right in the middle of all this. Plus the job search. Plus there's international travel in early May (which, again, I am totally psyched about, but could we ADD more complications right this second? I keep thinking of that line from "Just," where Yorke is going "You do it to yourself, you do, and that's what really hurts ...").

To illustrate how completely the moving has taken over our brains, I will share a story.

Me and Mr. Gleemonex are crashed out watching the Yankees. Joba Chamberlain's pitching. We start bagging on him, as always:

"Been working on that Power Eating plan all winter, eh?"

"It looks like he's wearing a turtleneck made of a whole nother guy."

"Lookit those JOWLS. What the hell is in there?"

"He looks like Artie Lange."

And neither of us came up with the obvious. Maybe that's because we are Sophisticates who shy away from the obvious on principle. Or maybe it's because our brains are fucking fried. Either way.

Alison's starting to happen

2011-03-22T16:34:00.000-07:00

In honor of Women's History Month, a Selection of:

Things That Are Makin Me Happy Today!

1.) The 80th anniversary of the Earthly manifestation of the Most High Anointed, the Grand Ka-Boom, the One From Whom All Blessings Flow: William His Highness the Shatner.

2.) Mimi Smartypants -- holy Shatner, does she kill me:

4. Speaking of, who on this train could you take in a fight? Pick somebody to hate. Picture yourself standing up and thumping the hell out of that person. Picture the spilled Starbucks, the torn North Face jackets, the general pandemonium. Maybe he would fight back. Maybe other commuters would join in, vigilante-style, to beat the crap out of you. Picture your black-eyed, bloody-nosed self being carried off the train by the police, still thrashing and fighting. Hey, I won’t be in today. I kicked everybody’s ass and got my ass kicked in return. I’ll check email later.

3) These goddamn little triple ginger cookies from Trader Joe's. WHY SHATNER WHY are they so tasty?

But then there's also, "I want to sit here and read books for awhile. You go back to bed and sleep some more."

2011-03-16T15:39:00.000-07:00

In honor of Women's History Month, a selection of:

Things My Kid Has Said Which May Indicate Smallish Parenting FAILs of Various Kinds:

--I go over to her where she's scribbling away on a piece of construction paper and say, "Hey baby, whatcha doin? Can I get a kiss?" and she, without looking up or stopping her scribbling, says flatly, "I have too much dammit work to do."

--Putting on her socks, she says pleasantly and conversationally, "Pink goddamn socks today."

--As somebody ignores the rules and laws of the road and of common decency and barges into a four-way intersection out of turn, she pipes up from the backseat, "IT'S NOT YOUR TURN MADAM! YOU ARE A BAD DRIVER, LADY!"

--Picking up her apple juice and toasting me, she trills, "I have beer like Grandpa! Cheers!"

-------------------------
Hat tip to the fabulous Sundry.

Now, the Medusa from Clash of the Titans, I didn't have a personal relationship with.

2011-03-08T11:23:00.000-08:00

In honor of Women's History Month, a brief selection of:

Terrifying Women From My Past

--E.G., dance teacher: My first and entirely formative experience of ballet. She brooked NO SHIT, she gave no quarter, she taught ballet old-skool style and if your three-year-old ass couldn't handle it, you could just tippy-toe on out of there. After this, I couldn't really deal with the kind of classes that were all touchy-feely, do-what-you-like, hippie low-standards crap -- E.G. permanently ruined my ability to regard any kind of dance other than classical ballet (taught, practiced & performed at the highest level) as anything but amateur hour waste-of-time hogwash. Incidentally, her first name made my top three for my daughter's potential names. Innnnnteresting.

--L.S., music teacher: Made E.G. look like goddamn Carol Brady with the forgiveness and nurturing ... L.S. was the music teacher for my elementary school and also the music director at my church, so I got a double dose of her during the xmas pageant and the Easter shows. You know how little kids wriggle around, and sing off-key & out of tune, and generally kind of fart around in class? NOT IN HER CLASS, BUCKO. She kept the kind of order Hitler would have creamed his khakis over. And we always had to do terrifying things -- sing all the verses of the national anthem, solo, a cappella, and sans lyric sheet, in front of the class; recite the scales (bass & treble) forward and backward; sign our names to the BAD BOOK if we fucked up. She kept it on her piano. No one EVER got to sign the GOOD BOOK (except maybe Berwie once?). She FIRED US ALL from the second-grade musical for not knowing the words to all the songs without our books in the second week of rehearsals -- cancelled the fucking show, just like that. And you better believe, when it came to costuming for these shows -- church or school -- the moms hopped right the fuck to it and did it exactly to spec. They were scared of her, too. Oddly enough, her first name made the top-three list as well. What is WITH me?

--C.D.'s mom, L.: So unlike my own mom, and I never could tell if she was serious or not, and she was usually serious. C was an only child, and as such, got her mom's Full Attention, and No Wiggle Room. She's one of my mom's best friends now, and I genuinely enjoy her company, but man, back in the day ...

--Mrs. L., fourth grade teacher: Austere, severe, she met her every goal ... in contrast to my lovely sweet third grade teacher, Miss B., Mrs. L. was like a stone wall with dragons for eyes. This year was was a weeder year, the year when kids started falling out to other tracks -- and if you wanted to be a Track 1 kid, you did it her way. I was scared of her, I hated her guts (I believe this is when I learned the word "battle-axe"), and yet in the end, she became one of my favorite teachers of all time, and remains a friend to this day.

--S.S., friend of my older cousin: Rich, pretty, from a big and locally-prominent family, the members of which were all verbal scrappers/fighters/one-uppers. She thought nothing of tripping a little kid like myself -- physically or with words. She liked to play nasty tricks and call out your shortcomings whenever there was an audience. Taught me valuable lessons about that kind of person and how to spot them and keep them out of your life.

Our girlfriends are most chaste.

2011-03-04T08:17:00.000-08:00

In honor of Women's History Month, a brief selection of:

Harassments To Which I Have Been Subjected

--That one coach/"teacher" of science in seventh grade, who assigned seating at the lab tables (which had those tall chairs), and put all the girls up front, basically so he could look up our skirts when he "dropped the chalk."

--This carny who, when I won a roach clip (...WTF?) at some stupid carny game at the Reunion the summer I was eleven, took my prize and pinched it to my shirt right between my 11-year-old boobs.

--Some asshole who tried to take an upskirt photo of me on the BART escalator about 5 years ago.

--A NYC taxi driver -- not a native speaker of English -- who spent the entire ride talking about pretty filthy sex stuff as he drove me on the errand my internship sent me on, junior year of college.

--An elderly, extremely nattily-dressed gentleman in the Willie Brown mold, who upon goggling at my St. Patrick's Day green plaid miniskirt as I crossed Civic Center Plaza on the way to work in 2000, stopped, leaned on his cane, made a curving/hourglass motion with his free hand and said, "Unnh-UHHH! Well-MADE!"

--A homeless guy who, just a few weeks ago, turned as I was passing him on the sidewalk and said directly into my face with forceful but flat animosity, "Hey BITCH."

--These two boys, who must have been about thirteen, who spent most of a day at the public pool trying to grab my friend C. and I in the crotch (we were eight).

Meanwhile, Billy Crystal, Shatner love 'im, gets a little more womanly-looking with every passing year.

2011-02-28T15:02:00.000-08:00

Two questions about last night:

1) Can we employ someone to teach the ladies how not to walk like lumberjacks in their lovely gowns, and also what to do with their arms & hands? Mila Kunis looked like she forgot where her pockets were and was trying to find them all night, Anne Hathaway kept slumping and standing with all her weight on one leg all lopsided, everybody was just stomping around in too-tall heels -- a little grace, ladies, please!

2) Who was drunker -- Bening & Beatty, or ScarJo? Actually, I think ScarJo was out of her mind on like six different pillz (uppers, downers, screamers, laughers, et al.). Maybe she was also drunk, but that glassiness looked pharmaceutical. Bening/Beatty, FTW!

And a couple of random thoughts:
That guy who won for short feature: of COURSE it was an NYU stoodent project. OF COURSE IT WAS. The chick from Winter's Bone: Zaxed out. Like three or four more Xanaxes than the recommended dose. Sandra Bullock: You gotta start letting someone else do your hair. It's possible Halle Berry is the Living Satan, because how else do you look 23 still, and from whence else could that glow be coming? Cate Blanchett's dress looked like she had a lizard riding piggyback, but it was AWESOME when the Wolfman clip finished, and she commented mildly, "Gross." before going on with her presenter's duties. The Auto-Tune bit made me laugh stupidly. Alec Baldwin might actually be a god [note to self: look into this; if true, set up tax-free church in His name].

I don't want to lose my virginity to a piece of fruit!

2011-02-22T13:25:00.000-08:00

Wow, y'all. I finally saw An Education Saturday night, and ... wow. I haven't seen anything that stuck with me like this in a very long time.

I won't bother with plot summary -- that's what the IMDB is for -- but I sort of HAVE to talk about it.

It was funny, it was stylish, Carey Mulligan is a revelation, the script (Nick Hornby!, based on a memoir by Lynn Barber) was great, and but the movie was at times just ... wincingly painful, which is part of what made it so good. This girl, Jenny -- she's a girl, a CHILD, and when the dashing older man David sees her for the first time, there's no getting around it -- he's not seeing some teenager glammed up to look much older than her years; she's sopping wet in a rainstorm in her school uniform. This is extremely hard to defend on his part -- I mean, it triggers VIOLENT feelings in me to think of mid-thirties men leering at teenage girls, no matter what the time period -- and it's to Saarsgaard's credit that he carries it off; he actually doesn't seem creepy, just ... I don't know, wistful and self-deluded or something. And the way he's able to contre-pied her parents, making them think it's their idea to allow Jenny such latitude where he's concerned ... amaaazing.

And the thing is, I understand it from her point of view too -- I was a brainy, striving teenager with a head full of ideas about books and travel and music and culture once, and we all wanted to be seen as older and more sophisticated than we were; that's why older men appeal to young girls: They seem to have it all figured out already. They don't have to learn how to navigate life, awkwardly and in fits and starts, along with us the way boys our own age do. If an older man with the world at his feet takes an interest, it's all too easy to believe he's on the level -- you really ARE special! He really DOES just want you for your mind! And the young person is at such a disadvantage -- they don't know, they can't know, that that's not the way the world works. For me, fortunately, there were only ever just dreamy crushes on men I knew I'd never even meet. (side note: Not only would my own parents have made the man in question wish he'd never been born, but also, my own character would not have allowed a thing like this, honestly; I sensed early and strongly how much I dislike power imbalances in relationships, and it would be hard to be more imbalanced than this -- unless the older guy was in a position of authority in her life, like a teacher maybe. Ugggggh.) For Jenny, there's an exciting, intoxicating romance that ends painfully, and a truly immense life lesson learned young -- as Jenny realizes in the end, "For the life I want, there is no shortcut."

Anyway. Altogether wonderful. Loved this movie. And now I want to see Carey Mulligan in everything, always.

I don't know, Glen. DOES the pope wear a funny hat?

2011-02-14T09:48:00.000-08:00

You know what just fucking wears me out? People who are described as "never sitting still."

It's always meant to show how they're being such go-getters, such deep drinkers from the fountain of life, but to me, that's just frantic and nervous and annoying.

I'm reading one of my dumb fitness magazines -- Shape, maybe? and there's this actress gal they've photographed participating in some hot new fitness trend,and they're like "It was hard to get her to sit still for the session! She's always on the go!"

Ugh, kill me. Somebody like that is always wanting to start up a game, or go see some attraction, or whatever, when really, many of life's greatest pleasures are to be had from a seated or reclined position [ten-minute pause for Beavis/Butt-Head laughter].

Seriously -- whenever I imagine fantasy vacation destinations, it's always in context of sitting around admiring the view from my beach cabana, drink in hand. Or wandering very slowly down windswept side streets, stopping in a cafe for hours. Or staring out the windows of the TGV as an entire country flies by on the way to somewhere I'm going to spend a week without going much of anywhere in particular. Holidays -- I like a board game, or some foosball, but if you're trying to get me into a "fun" little game of flag football I will cut you. Get over here and have another glass of wine, Jack, and knock off pretending we're gonna burn off the 4,000 calories we just consumed by getting lightly sweaty in our nice clothes. At any rate, almost any time ever, all I want to do is sit around and read, which is sort of incompatible with the go-go lifestyle.

To me, the point is slowing down, savoring the moment, being still so you can think about stuff.

Or, conversely, maybe I am just a lazy drunk!

Your call.

"Garcon means boy."

2011-02-02T15:54:00.000-08:00

And then there was the time my dad and I were blue-skying about opening a restaurant in the Olde Hometowne -- I think this was after my freshman year of college, I'm home for the summer, he and I do this all the time (the blue-skying -- which, btw, is something I think makes people nervous about me the way they would get nervous around him because MAYBE he/I is/am just kidding around about getting motorcycles for everyone in the family and riding around the country for a couple of years [yes I can have a Vespa, but I have to be fourteen to have a license so we can't start the trip till next year], or getting a newborn baby tiger and declawing it and raising it like a kittycat in our home to see whether despite all the gentle upbringing it retained its killer nature or not [it's cool, your mom likes cats, she'll be ok with this if we just keep an eye on your baby sister, no problemo], but MAYBE he/I is/am NOT kidding and goddamn if you might not come home from eighth grade to find every stick of furniture in your house out on the lawn in an impromptu yard sale to raise cash for the Faberge egg we were talking about buying at auction ...).

So anyway, the restaurant (or reftaurant -- that one's for you, Mr. Gleemonex!). We discussed various possible locations, then agreed upon a place off the square, which used to be a car mechanic shop and was in this great old hangar of a building. Standing around in the kitchen, drinking sweet tea, we named it, picked out furnishings, planned the menu, booked a bunch of local bands to play, worked out the details of the liquor license (it would have to be a "club," thanks to local blue laws, but we would pay for the memberships so people wouldn't feel burdened), etc.

So then we moved on to, as I put it, "the wait staff."

And he's all, "Wait staff? We're not having a wait staff."

And I'm all, " ... huh? It's a restaurant -- what're they gonna do, go back to the kitchen themselves?"

He goes, "Not a wait staff. WAITRESSES."

The fun starts leaking out of this particular thought balloon.

I say, "But why does it have to be waitresses? Guys can do the job too -- it's good money! Whoever's good at it ..."

He interrupts, "No man wants some GUY waiting his table. They want a pretty little thing who'll charm 'em into ordering a lot of stuff. And they want to have something good to look at."

I am SPEECHLESS. I cannot believe what is coming out of his mouth. I can actually hear my eyes blinking (poik! poik!).

I'm like ... "DAD. That is GROSS. And it is SO NOT TRUE. Nobody cares what gender a waitperson is."

Him: "YES they DO. People don't like to see a man serving food."

More blinking from me (poik! poik! poik!) and then I start to get mad. My summer job is, of course, waiting tables at a "Mexican" joint in town, and it's fucking difficult work and I am not all that good at it, but I get decent tips. And I begin to wonder -- is that why? Because I'm nineteen and cute like most 19-year-olds are? Are they OBJECTIFYING ME with the MALE GAZE?

So I say, "That is not it! AT ALL! It's just that MEN are used to seeing WOMEN in service roles! That just shows how much you buy into the HEGEMONY of our GENDERED CULTURE!"

Yada yada yada I end up storming out.

And, curiously, we never did open that restaurant; I guess it ended up in the "tiger" category instead of the "Faberge egg" one, which is a pity, because up till the argument part, it was going to be a really awesome restaurant.

We don't rent pigs.

2011-01-26T01:40:00.000-08:00

Things Which Make for a Good Bar

--Bag/coat hooks under the bar. I will not linger if I gotta fucking stand there with all my shit over my arm, or sit on my coat on the barstool, or whatever, while I’m tryna drink.

--A foot rail under the bar and under all high tables. It’s a lot less fun than you might think to sit there with your feet dangling all night like some neglected little kid at his rich grandparents' dinner party.

--Configurable barstools. No good having them bolted to the floor at equal intervals or so big and heavy and furniture-y that you can’t move them around to accommodate groups of various sizes and makeups.

--A specialty. Every bar ought to have something it does that is interesting or different or local or whatever, in addition to the basics.

--Nooks. Ever been in one of those joints that’s just, like, one big room, like a Chinese buffet restaurant at a mall? Depressing. No sense of intrigue.

--Dimness. See above. I came to booze it up and talk too loud – don’t make me do it in a setting that’s lit like my fucking office.

--Music. Live, juke, bartender’s iPod broadcasting from the dock back of the bar – doesn’t matter, as long as some human picked it out and it’s playing at the right volume to suit the atmosphere.

--Proper bathrooms. Many of you who’ve been in agreeance (as the great philosopher and wordsmith Kid Rock once said) up til now will balk at this one – but listen: I just mean the ladies’ room at least has to be:

A) Possessed of more than one stall. See above, re: DRINKING.

B) Operational. Each toilet unit has to have a seat, and a working flush mechanism.

C) On the premises (yes, I’ve been to bars that make you exit the building to find the toilet).

D) The approximate cleanliness level of the bar area itself – it’s all relative, and what wouldn’t make me blink at a dive bar will put me completely off my feed in a place that features a lot of fritzy little ‘tini drinks on a hardbacked menu, you dig?

A Thing Which Makes Me Laugh (an occasional series)

Literal New Yorker cartoons. [hat tip: Mr. Gleemonex]
(Note: I do not generally laugh at actual New Yorker cartoons, though as a twelve-year subscriber to the mag, I have read pretty much every one they’ve run in that time … it’s a compulsion. Tractor-beam action.)

"You negotiated your way from a C to an A? I'm so proud of you, honey!"

2011-01-18T09:59:00.000-08:00

I ever tell y'all about the time my dad tried to make me and my sister enter a beauty pageant?

Oh yeah, it was a good 'un. I was in college at the time -- a junior or so -- and my sister a high school senior (I think) and it was summer, all of us sitting around doing nothing in the hottest part of the day in our un-air-conditioned house, and my dad's like, "So hey, the Reunion Queen contest is calling for entries -- you both oughtta enter. You win that, you get [small monetary prize -- like a hundred bucks or something], plus the title, and then you can enter [feeder pageant for Miss Texas]."

Dead serious, he says this.

Me and my sister crack the FUCK up. We're like, Yeaaaaah, no, mkay, ha ha, good one dad.

But he was in a Mood, I guess, so he kind of hunkered down on that position and started really bulldogging us both. I could not fucking believe it -- my sister, I guess, it made a tiny little itsy bit of sense, because she was a cheerleader all through middle, junior, and high school, and beautiful with long blonde pageant hair, and could make a nice living off her singing voice if ever she chose to -- but she had zero inclination for the Pageant Lifestyle, and as for me, what was I gonna do? Stand up there, puffy from all the herbal jazz refreshment (and resultant munchies) and oat sodas I was partial to at the time, wearing all black, and ... what? Spell stuff? Blather for ten minutes about divestment from South Africa? Write a 25-page paper on an arcane topic in record time, using one actual source for every three invented ones, guaranteed to get at least an A- thanks to my flair for extemporaneous bullshit?

Fucking ridiculous.

He's all "But you could win!" And we're all "THAT'S THE POINT, GOD, DAD!"

And it went on and on and we're getting increasingly desperate and yada yada yada it ends up with me and my mom having the worst fight of our mutual lives (one I'm not sure we're quite over, yet) so thanks for that, DAD, and I'm like "You don't get it -- I don't want to be OBJECTIFIED BY THE MALE GAZE!"

Which at the time I hollered, near tears, with utter passion, and which now makes me laugh like a lunatic in my cube 2,000 miles and sixteen years away, but also is TRUE, GODDAMMIT.

Btw, HHL, a smart man, had loooong ago left the room by that point. Would that I had had such sense ...

What if the moon were made of green cheese? Wouldja eat it THEN?

2011-01-17T10:20:00.000-08:00

Gobble.

Pretty much the worst word ever. I see the word gobble, I don't ever fucking want to eat again. And y'all, I LOVE to eat, but this word makes me want to join like ten pro-ana forums and get cracking on the whole cessation-of-food-consumption thing in earnest. So the power of this word is immense. Gobble. Yecccch.

I am aware of a terrible horrible disgustingly named restaurant called "Squat n' Gobble" or something very close to that -- I don't care if it's manned by eight past Iron Chefs under the leadership of Thomas Keller with motherfucking Anthony Bourdain as busboy, I'm not eating there. I won't do it.

The NYT yesterday had an article about South L.A. trying to close the door to more fast food restaurants, and some idiot copyeditor (do they even bother with those anymore?) allowed the writer to talk about this group of teenagers stopping by a Carl's Jr. on the way home from school to "gobble" a bunch of Western Bacon Chees, which nearly made me vomit.

It's such a gaggily evocative word, gobble. Siiiickening.

"Oh, didja hear that? He was GETTIN there. Psssh. Son, you wouldn't know what to do with it if you HAD gotten there, so don't worry about it."

2011-01-11T23:05:00.000-08:00

What's Impeding the Bloggage Lately? A Partial List

--The immense, fantastic suckitude of my job. When every day starts with that sick dready third-day-of-seventh grade feeling, plus a heapin' helpin' of poison loathing, and there's so much work to do that for the third night in a week you're up past midnight plugging away, and you still make what you made three years ago, plus you're bossed by aggressive halfwits, and twenty-five-year-olds are getting promoted over you -- you know it blows!

--Under the Dome. GodDAMN, Stephen King. I WISH I KNEW HOW TO QUIT YOU. But I can't put this (five-pound) thing down, dammit. I'm sick ... and I never want to get well!

--Various and sundry Grownup Life Tasks (getting prequalified for a mortgage, booking travel to HHL's wedding, arranging family social shit, gettin us all to the dentist, payin bills, what have you)

--Running! I never knew I could love it, but reader, I do. Longer and longer distances, higher and higher runner's highs ...

--An inability to handle horrifying shit in the news (for days I've been trying, and failing, to come up with something to say about the murder spree that numbnuts crazy fuckwad went on in Arizona -- I got nothing but outrage and sadness).

--The daily irritation of seeing those Natalie Portman - Ashton Kutcher movie posters in the festering pit that is BART. Now, y'all know I love me some Natalie, and Kutcher, for all his retarday, will always hold a special little place in my heart for my beloved Dude, Where's My Car?, but come ON. It's the tagline that really bothers me: "Can SEX FRIENDS stay BEST FRIENDS?" Because: What? "Sex friends"? Has anyone -- in the history of ever -- used that phrase? I get what you're going for, but THAT IS NOT A THING.

--Unproductive yet awesome shit I find on the Internets (a series of tubes). These two are via my personal Kenny Powers of Internet Awesome, Mimi Smartypants: First, Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeit. Second: The hills are alive ...

I'll hit the ceiling / or else I'll tear up this town

2011-01-06T16:38:00.000-08:00

Internets -- am I wrong in believing that my iPhone goddamn well ought to auto-complete "Loggins"? I mean, if I'm referring to the the man, the myth, the legend, I should not have to get further than "Logg" for it to automatically render the Name of the Anointed [Possibly Some Sort of Religio-Crazy These Days But I'm Too Lazy Even to Google This Vague Unsubstantiated Impression I Picked Up Somewhere] One.

I just. I feel pretty strongly about this.

Loggins. Fuck yeah.

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

2010-12-29T09:17:00.000-08:00

Words and Phrases for Which My Boss Has Used “Benign” As A Synonym

--small

--insignificant

--not legally actionable

--should not take much [of YOUR] time [nb: false, false, false]

--something which is neither here nor there; moot point

--low-cost

--easy

--annoying

--piddling/trifling

What “Benign” Actually Means

be·nign

adj \bi-ˈnīn\

1: of a gentle disposition : gracious

2 a : showing kindness and gentleness

b : favorable, wholesome

3a : of a mild type or character that does not threaten health or life; especially : not becoming cancerous

b : having no significant effect : harmless

Actual Synonyms for “Benign”

anodyne, harmless, hurtless, innocent, innocuous, inoffensive, safe

"Can we -- can we have PILLS, and COOK the corn??"

2010-12-15T14:32:00.000-08:00

A List of Some Things I Reject

--The existence of a person legally named Channing Tatum.

--The alleged genius of Arcade Fire.

--Macaroons.

--Work parties on non-work time.

--The idea that anyone, anywhere thinks Family Guy is funny.

--The notion of "high meat," which is a near-criminally misleadingly light name for a very, very fucking horrifying thing: Raw, rotted meat, which certain culty freaks eat ON PURPOSE. I learned about it in a New Yorker article, and holy rictus-faced SHATNER do I wish I hadn't.

Now SERIOUSLY, dammit -- I have my rants (the raison d'etre of this blog), and I have my strong opinions about food, and all that, but I try really hard not to comment on what other people eat (at least while they're eating it in my vicinity, because godDAMN is it rude to disparage what's on your friend's plate). But this is waaaay beyond tolerable. This is a hill I will fight and die on.

The online version doesn't mention the high meat, so I'll share from the print version:

Torma ducked into the back of the house and returned with a swing-top jar in his hands. Inside lay a piece of organic beef, badly spoiled. It was afloat in an ochre-colored puddle of its own decay, the muscle and slime indistinguishable, like a slug. High meat is the flesh of any animal that has been allowed to decompose.
...
When Torma unclamped his jar, a sickly-sweet miasma filled the air -- an odor as natural as it was repellent. Decaying meat produces its own peculiar scent molecules, I later
learned, with names like putrescine and cadaverine. I could still smell them on my clothes hours later. Torma stuck two fingers down the jar and fished out a long, wet sliver. "Want a taste?" he said.

You're welcome, Internets. Who wants lunch?

"I don't have to outlast Dunder-Mifflin. I just have to outlast you."

2010-12-09T07:55:00.000-08:00

Yesterday's Team Vision & Strategy Meeting, By the Numbers

Total hours duration: 4.5

Number of large cartoon drawings of horrified, stricken-seeming faces drawn in my notebook: 1

Tally of what my brain said while my manager was speaking:

STFU: 21

YOOYFE*: 7

OH! IRONY!: 3

Times it looked like the consultant wanted to kill us all with a thick and high-powered jet of fire: 3

Absolute neologisms: 1

Specifically: The word "family" used as a verb. Ex.: "Tell us how those things family together."

-------------------------------------------

*You're out of your fucking element

"You can get seventy miles to the gallon on this Hog."

2010-12-06T22:43:00.000-08:00

So hey, drivers of automobiles, could I ask y'all a favor? Could you please, if you go to the trouble and expense of getting a vanity license plate for your motor vehicle, go to the further trouble of making it something I can read and understand quickly, so that I don't almost rear-end you on the highway, or miss my exit, or get a spike of annoyance-adrenaline straight to the pineal gland because I don't fucking get whatever asininity you decided to scribble on the back of your stupid dumb Dodge Stratus?

Seriously. I get more goddamned annoyed at the ones I can't decipher than at the ones I can and am incensed by (e.g. the giant Suburban I saw at a gas station once with "BPROLIF", ugh, STFU).

But then again, I'm not one for vehicle personalization in general. One, stickers and decals and whatnot degrade quickly and thus look crappy quickly. Two -- and more importantly for me, having read way too much John Douglas -- the entire rest of the automobile-driving universe does not need to know anything about me or my family. Those stickers you can get that show the exact composition of your family? Yikes, really? Political bumper stickers? Way to get keyed, or piss off a cop and get yourself a ticket for going 37 in a 35. Places you've traveled, bands you like, alcohol you favor? Honestly, for once I'm not Judgy McO'Judgerson on this, it's just -- that stuff is just not something Jimmy Joe Jack on the turnpike or Marvin Creeply out in the parking lot needs to know, you get me?

Although I do appreciate the "W" people identifying themselves to me so that I may shun them, so there's that.

"The Dark Continent is no place for an addict, Elaine."

2010-11-30T07:56:00.000-08:00

Speaking of editorial madnesses: I have, through some mysterious combination of online ordering patterns (likely involving those fucking tank tops from J. Jill, the New York Times and New Yorker subscriptions, the interview suit from Banana Republic, a couple of Boden items, Yankees tchotchkes for my father-in-law, clown costumes, and the family membership to the San Francisco Zoo), apparently tripped a secret algorithm that caused me to be sent the J. Peterman catalogue -- and y'all, it is HILARIOUS! I actually got through the Seinfeld years without realizing this was really a thing -- and now I'm like, fuck, why would Elaine not want to work there for the rest of her life? I sure would! This is comedy gold, y'all, and the creative license is immense -- you can write WHATEVER YOU WANT, and they will print it, and it will sell $425 "Lizzy B" (as in Bennett) dresses, "Viva Argentina!" shirts and "The Rolls Royce of Travel Bags" to rich people with a nostalgia for long-ago eras of travel and adventure that never actually existed outside of Pixar movies.

Note to self: visit website, if there is one, and apply IMMEDIATELY.

Well, what I wanna know is, where's MY stuff?

2010-11-28T14:01:00.000-08:00

Sorry for disappearing, y'all -- Work/Life Balance, as it is HILARIOUSLY called around my office, got way the fuck out of whack, and then we went to the Olde Hometowne for some Thanksgiving good times -- but now I'm back so let's fucking PARTY.

Imaginary Excerpts From the House Style Guide for Southern Living Magazine

--Each article must contain at least one, and preferably half a dozen, "as Southern as ... " similies. Options for the "as" include but are not limited to: pecan pie, family get-togethers, iced tea, family, grandmother's fried chicken, yam pie, family recipes, old Chevy trucks, the flag, the Grand Ole Opry, tradition, traditional recipes, church, going to church, family pews at church, Sunday dinner. Unacceptable: government teat-sucking, abstinence-only sex-ed, redneck jackassery.

--If you must depict or discuss persons of brown coloring, ensure that they are shown in a service capacity, and that they display large friendly unthreatening smiles.

--Be sure to refer to Appendix A for explanation of our preferred code words, especially "heritage" and "whimsical."

--If your Design-focused article features a Gay (as surely they sometimes will, because the Gays are so delightful, with their design sense!), you must not refer to his housemate as "partner" more than once. Avoid using entirely, if possible. Photos must not depict a Gay touching or being near enough to touch another man, whether or not that man is himself also a Gay.

--When speaking of Family, the tone must be both reverent and intimate. Photographs must feature two parents (opposite gender only) and at least two minor children, unless the topic is a Family Business, in which case multi-generational photographs are acceptable.

--Articles about food which do not include the word "decadent" will be stricken from the magazine and the author blacklisted in perpetuity.

Cluckin' Chicken: The Personal Waterloo of Meat Consumption

2010-11-16T10:15:00.000-08:00

So I was thinking about this, and I'm pretty sure I haven't eaten a chicken nugget in ... probably ... twenty-three years. I've eaten fast food now and then, just not nuggets (even as a kid, I'd order the 12-piece box, since I knew there'd be a couple in there that were inedible little wads of gristle) -- in fact, see this handy chart as to what my thoughts are on the various franchises:

GODDAMN, DO I LOVE ME SOME:
Taco Bueno
Dairy Queen

HAVE STRANGE UNSTOPPABLE WEAKNESS FOR, AT TIMES, LIKE MAYBE TWICE A YEAR:
Taco Bell
Wendy's
Jack in the Box
Sonic

CRAVE SPECIFIC ITEMS FROM, AT THREE-YEAR INTERVALS (APPROX.):
Long John Silver's (the crispy bits of fried coating, with malt vinegar)
KFC (chicken strips + biscuits + gravy)

WILL IF I MUST:
McDonald's
Burger King

It's a total of maybe ten-twelve times in a year, eight of which are usually on trips back to the Olde Hometowne in Texass (steak finger baskets! DQ Dude! Frito burrito!); living where I do, there's not a lot of fast food in my path, and there's plenty of good eatin' on the cheap everywhere (not like NYC, but it'll do), plus I just can't really ... I don't know, I don't like it and I don't feel good about myself, my health, the planet, factory farming, obese five-year-olds, the high-fructose-corn-syrup lobby, shame spiral yada yada yada whenever I do indulge, so I just don't eat it much.

But this fucking video featuring the horrifying pink chemical offal mulch that shall become the Nugget, which you've probably all seen already ... jesus scratching CHRIST. It almost made a full vegetarian out of me, instantaneously. It's my "Cluckin' Chicken" (Mr. Gleemonex and Twelve will get that) -- the thing that makes one renounce meat and meat products forevermore on grounds that OMIGOD I'M GONNA PUKE.

Nuggets. Uggggggh.

Four Happinesses

2010-11-10T11:28:00.000-08:00

Possible Reasons, At Any Given Time, That I'm Sitting Over Here Cackling to Myself Like the Office Version of a Crazy Street Person Today

--"Pace yourself, Judy."
Hader is now in that awesome phase on SNL, where he's doing stuff that makes him laugh instead of pitching in wherever needed, and he usually fucking kills me -- but on the John Hamm ep, he did another Vincent Price Special, and y'all, Judy Garland was on it, shitfaced on pills & booze, and he tolerates it for awhile, then goes, as she's swallowing another handful of uppers/downers/screamers/laughers, "Pace yourself, Judy. It's only 7:30." And I DIED. And laughed my ass off. And died again. Laugh/die/revive/repeat. Since TWO WEEKS AGO I've been laughing about this line, y'all -- I typed it into Word, printed it out, and put it on my cube wall at work! "Pace yourself, Judy," I'll say to myself, then laugh out loud. "Pace yourself, Judy," I scribble in a notebook in a boring meeting, then try to cover the snarfling with a cough. "Pace yourself, Judy," I decide will be the name of my production company, then laugh/die/revive/repeat. And it keeps gettin funnier every time I think of it!

--Jesus Gets Around.
He's doin' 50 in a 65! This is the kind of thing that would probably annoy the shit out of my mom, but I can't get enough of it.

--This, which my friend posted on another friend's Facebook wall, in commiseration over a pear-related purse mishap: "I killed [my wife]'s Blackberry by putting in the same pocket as a pear a couple months ago. It squished around so much it got into the keyboard."

--The maniac German of a Spinning instructor who came up to me specially after class on Monday to tell me that "Dat vass excellent vork on de flats today. Very goot!"[very serious face, nod of Schrute-like approbation + clench of fist denoting contained but sincere enthusiasm]. Me, FTW!

There's more to life than books, you know, but not much more.

2010-11-07T16:40:00.000-08:00

So I sat down in front of the Amazon to order a book from my childhood that I think my kid would get a kick out of -- The Worst Person in the World, it was called -- and like an HOUR later, I've got a cart full of not only that, but also the four books in the Class of '88 series I told y'all about once (from four different used-book sellers all over the U.S.), an xmas present for Mr. Gleemonex, a book about the Great Plains by this guy whose writing I have read in the New Yorker, and ... shit, I don't know, there were I think nine items altogether (it was twelve, but I'm going to order my bro's xmas present separately, the Harry Potter 7-book UK edition set will have to come from a UK seller, and I put Lonesome Dove on hold, on grounds I can surely find it in a secondhand store somewhere around here). I am goddamn DANGEROUS with books.

But here are four awesome Internets-based entertainments for you, which are FREE for the looking-at!

What the Fuck Has Obama Done So Far?

Lots, that's what. LOTS.

George Takei's "It Gets Better" video.

Such rrrrelish, the way he says "douchebag."

Don Draper Says What

Say what again, motherfucker.

Shatner does "Fuck You"

Awesomely.

Could you do the rest of us a favor and leave by the outfield? I mean ... they're gonna get you anyway ...

2010-11-01T16:47:00.000-07:00

Nolan Ryan, do you want my advice for how to win a World Series? Do ya? Well, here it is: Quit palling around with the genocidal maniac George W. Bush and his lifesucking wife Laura.

GOD. Texas, man. Can't even watch BASEBALL without seeing those two walking advertisements for abortion. The Series has been huge fun -- I love me some Giants (my NL homeslices), and there's been all kinds of crazy awesome stuff happening in the games, but boy, does it chill the room forty degrees to see that funloving ex-First-Couple on my bigass teevee. Last night when we got home from trick-or-treating with the kid (she went as DJ Lance Rock, of course), Mr. Gleemonex and I watched the TiVoed Game Four, which was all kinds of rawk except for the part where Laura Bush -- ill-bred viper parked right in the good seats, wearing her everyday Nicholson-Joker face mask -- yawned on camera, mouth open wide like one of the goddamn Ewells, not even bothering to try to cover it with a polite hand, fillings countable in HD clarity for thirty full seconds … holy pitcher-dueling SHATNER do I loathe her.

GO GIANTS!

There's a support group for people who hate their jobs. It's called "Everybody," and they meet at the bar.

2010-10-26T14:59:00.000-07:00

So I was looking in my files for my results from one or another of the many personality tests we've done in my group over the years, for reasons too tiresome to go into, and I couldn't find it. I looked under M -- Meyers-Briggs? T -- tests? team meetings? S - StrengthsFinder? W - What Color is Your Brain? R - resources?

No, no, no. Eventually I realized: It was under "H" for "horseshit." Oh, riiiight! I remember now!

In that moment, I was a god - the god of cake - and I was unstoppable.

2010-10-22T14:05:00.000-07:00

WERE YOU AWARE …

1) That there is food that doesn't have salt in it, and that these foods don't taste very good? (This profound and provocative observation brought to you by the fact that I had a great soup from the cafe at work yesterday, but it wasn't great until I added four little packets of salt to it.)

2) That Mr. Gleemonex, upon reading #1, will do a full-body cringe and probably dry-heave a time or two, and then have dark thoughts about my blood pressure, made annoying to him by the next thought, which is that my blood pressure is fine? (Genes are a bitch. I eat salt like other people breathe, with no ill effects on the ol' BP; it's the sugar diaBEETus or the poor ol' beat-up liver, not the hypertension, that'll eventually get me.)

3) That my grandboss gave our entire team a lecture yesterday on how she and the other three Senior Directors (on our team of twenty -- also we have one VP, five Directors, four Senior Managers, and two Managers, none of which are me -- we real top heavy up in my group) are "aware" of some " … well, disrespect in how people are treating each other around here," apparently including "sniping and backbiting" and "complaining to each other about people not delivering things they promised and so forth," and that this was "not aimed at anyone in particular here" but that "everyone should be aware" and that "we're not going to tolerate it" because it's "frankly unprofessional," and that she went on in this vein for nearly fifteen minutes, during which I wrote on my agenda in the guise of serious note-taking: "Probably this is related to me and Blue Flame. Also FYI, everyone here is fucking MISERABLE"?

4) That this right here is the funniest goddamn thing I've seen in AGES?

Because the word "purse" makes me feel a little vomity

2010-10-20T14:53:00.000-07:00

So as part of Operation: Dress Like a Grown-Up, I went and bought myself a genuine Grownup Lady Handbag. (From a store, not a street vendor.) (For the first time in my bag-purchasing life.)

People, Internets: I am seriously, sincerely not a handbag person. I don’t even like writing the word, much less saying it. And I can’t imagine having more than one of these. But I do like this particular item – it’s more of a shoulder bag, or satchel or something, a dark red leather job from Fossil, big enough to hide a file folder containing my resume and have room left over for my Grownup Lady shoes (a pair of Franco Sarto platform pumps, into which I change when I get to the building, because fuck walking in those things out on the street, and who ARE the chicks who do that? These are costume items, people, not real shoes, christ.)

And but so the real trouble with this Grownup Lady Handbag, besides the fact that I feel like a Grownup Lady impostor carrying it, is that there’s nothing in it and I can’t find anything – voluminous pockets, zippered compartments, side compartments, clasped compartments, vast recesses of nothingness into which disappear things like my wallet, the hand sanitizer, the gum, the giant bullshit sunglasses case. I might could fit a whole person in there and not be able to find him or her.

Also, a couple of unanticipated side effects of this Grownup Lady program:

--It’s like a suit of armor, and it lets me be aggressive in ways I wasn’t before. For instance, my boss CALLED ME UP yesterday, basically to rag on me for being all annoyed and hostile in YET ANOTHER spontaneous one-hour megaproject-related clusterfuck of a meeting Monday, and instead of being apologetic and “Golly gee whiz, Mister, I won’t do that again!”, I'm like, "Yes, I was annoyed, because that meeting was annoying, and I'm sitting in it the whole time thinking about all the work piling up on my desk while I'm in this fucking annoying meeting.” It was awesome.

--It’s causing me to have a mild but pervasive case of The Doubts about what I’m even fucking doing, pouring all this time and effort into this job and getting another job (just like it but which pays more), when what I really should be doing is working on the book I started writing a year and a half ago. It’s a good book. You’d like it. If I finished it.

--I felt like I looked so cute this morning that it put me in a super-good mood and I felt really lucky, like something awesome was just around the corner, so I detoured and bought a lotto ticket. I will let you know whether that nets me the $101 million from the SuperLotto tonight! If I do, I’ll buy you all Grownup Lady handbags.

"And Samir Naga- ... Nagan- ... " "Not-gonna-work-here-anymore!"

2010-10-13T08:36:00.000-07:00

It's Either This, Or Start SCREAMING MY FUCKING BALLS OFF In These Meetings: A Selection of Things Scribbled Almost Unconsciously In My Notebook, While Wearing a Very Serious Face, During a Ninety-Minute Impromptu Team Meeting Yesterday

Oh, it's a war, all right.

NO KIDDING

[Drawing of a stairwell eight or nine stories high, with stick-figure person falling down the center]

I ain't get paid weekend money

[heavily circled about fifteen times]

have those conversations IIII/ I

processes [long e] III

respectful IIII

White House IIII/ IIII

[drawing of a stick figure w/dunce cap, and thought balloon saying: fml]

I'm expert at excaping

The irony, of course, is that [REDACTED] is the ultimate corporate-speaker

[someone else's handwriting] omg I have to pee

[drawing of an eye with a fork stuck in it]

"You're comin to the game tonight, aren't ya?" "I have to. I'm pitching."

2010-10-08T06:57:00.000-07:00

Awesome Facts About Tim Lincecum

--He wears the same number as Kenny Powers.

--He struck out FOURTEEN BATTERS, allowing only two hits, in a one-run (as in, the only run scored was the one the Giants managed to get) complete-game victory last night.

--He got caught awhile back in the offseason with some herbal jazz tobacco in his car. Everyone was like, "Huh. Noooooo kidding. Timmy likes to blaze? Who knew."

--The other night as the Giants secured their spot in the playoffs on the very last day of the regular season, the reporter chick asked him "Are you ready for your champagne shower?", and he said -- on camera, on live TV and over the PA system in the still-full stadium -- "FUCK YEAH!!!"

--He puts one very strongly in mind of Mitch Kramer, who -- unfortunately for Mitch -- had the misfortune to be the pitcher the night of the last day of school, meaning the seniors knew exactly where to find him.

--This means, of course, that I have a great deal of affection for both and that I'm compelled -- COMPELLED -- to pepper his appearances with "Mitchy Mitchy Mitchy … hope you got more than a jock strap on under there, ya little rat!" and "You're eighteen, right?" etc.

We're ten hours from the fucking fun park and you want to bail out?

2010-10-04T05:57:00.000-07:00

A Random Selection of Things I Remember About Going to Six Flags Over Texas as a Yute

--It would be hot as fuck, no matter what -- you were going to sweat, and you'd try to get cooled off by going in that creepy Spelunker's Cave thing or the Log Flume ride; the former would work for ten minutes, but then by contrast from the air-conditioned dark (with elves) you'd be extra super hot when you got back out into the blasting furnace of the Texass summer, while the latter only netted you a wet T-shirt & shorts and a smell of green water swamp-ass funk for the rest of the day.

--Once I went with CN's family, and they totally did it wrong; instead of the kids running off and meeting back up at regular intervals, we all had to stick together the whole day. Instead of paying too much for lunch at, say, the "Mexico" area, we had to go out to BFE* to some shadeless miserable picnic table off the grounds and eat lousy French's-mustard bologna sandwiches and stuff they brought in a cooler. And we did not get to stay till the place closed. LAAAME.

--From the ages of about eleven to ... probably fifteen, one of my primary must-do's on the list was to get my picture taken in the Olde Tymie Photoe Boothe thing, where you'd pull on a Southern Belle costume that tied in the back and get yer pitcher took, done up all olde-tymie. I had this thing about Gone With the Wind, remember -- yet another of my regrettable obsessions. Oi. And it cost like fifteen dollars, which is a lot of babysitting time, Internets.

--I spent at least one trip fully locked into Fake British Accent mode. I think I was fourteen. It was the only way I could talk to cute boys, and cute must = stupid, because I am pretty sure they bought it.

--I went there on a double date once, with SR and his friend and one of my friends I can't remember who it was. It was fun, but the main thing I remember was that "Should I Stay or Should I Go" (I want to say Big Audio Dynamite?) was apparently on endless repeat on the park sound system.

--When we were about twelve, my friend CD's dad took several of us on Kroger Nite, when the company had rented out the whole damn park, which meant there were like 200 people in the place total, so we packed so many rides into three hours that it felt like we were there for days, we OWNED the place, it was AWESOME.

--The Shockwave was the biggest, baddest ride on the lot. A double-loop roller coaster, blue-painted metal rising up beside the highway, the better to entice young Gleemonex anytime we went anywhere near Arlington. It took me years to work up the courage (and the height), but once I did, there might just as well have been no other structure in the joint. Just thinking about it gives me goosebumps -- I want to go to there. Now.

--Probably the most epic trip was when my mom took a gaggle of us (me & CD, my bro and like four of his giant gangly teenage friends) one explosively hot Labor Day weekend (theme: How Many Overheated Un-Sunscreened Human Bodies Can This Park Theoretically Hold? Let Us Find Out!), and despite the fact that we got there when the place opened, the lines were so long we had only actually ridden like three rides by 2:00 p.m., at which point the skies bruised up and then dumped Noah's Fictional Ark-style buckets of thunderous lightning-pocked rain for HOURS. Then we were wet and cold and miserable and Mexico ran out of food and most of the rides were closed for inspection/towel-drying and my bro and his friends disappeared to go to the Night Ranger show in the amphitheater (which had been the point of coming on this day & not another one).

--No matter what, a trip to Six Flags was always, always the absolute single-day highlight of the summer.

------------------------------------------------

*Beyond Fucking Egypt, or, later, Bum-Fuck Egypt. Even churchy kids curse! Sort of!

Do you prefer "fashion victim" or "ensembly challenged"?

2010-09-28T10:26:00.000-07:00

Internets: Once upon a tyme, as I believe I have done told you more than once, I was quite the ... well, not snappy, but more like interesting dresser. I put thought into it -- a LOT. And time and money. And then I went to college and between the sudden disappearance of curfew, getting palsy with my good buddy Andy Alcohol, and my discovery of the East Coast College Aesthetic (early 1990s version, grunge years), there was no more of that for the next, oh, decade and a half.

But now I am a Mid-Career Professional, and I find myself in the annoying position of having to dress better to be taken seriously at the Day Job.

Which is where these wonderful humans come in -- the geniuses who operate Looks Good From The Back, a bubbling spring of fashion inspiration for real people who want to dress more gooder. Adrien and Marianne are both cute as hell, and have a great sense of fun to go along with the whole dressing-like-a-grownup thing -- and I am seriously dorking out about the fact that they chose me as their project for September! They're fixing me!!!

You guys -- go check it out. And then, start reading them every day!

Love,
Gleemonex

-------------------------------------
Thanks once again to BlabberMouse (aka She From Whom All Good Things Must Flow), who introduced me to She's Still Got It, who in turn put me on to my new pals Marianne & Adrien. And of course: THANKS, MARIANNE & ADRIEN! You guys are awesome.

If you have a problem / yo I'll solve it

2010-09-23T18:23:00.000-07:00

A few things that make me feel stabby:

--This list from a blog off of sfgate, allegedly the 15 "magic words" that help get you hired in today's wintry job climate:

1 Leadership

2 Interpersonal

3 Problem solving

4 Motivated

5 Efficient

6 Detail oriented

7 Prioritize

8 Teamwork

9 Reliable

10 Multi-task

11 Time management

12 Passionate

13 Listening

14 Outgoing

15 Honesty

--The news item that that little pinhead twit Zuckerberg is allegedly "worth more" than Steve Jobs. That is so ridiculous, it actually OFFENDS me. "Worth?" What the fuck does that guy make? He tripped and fell ass-backward into something and it blew up and rained thousand-dollar bills all over him, and for what? So I can know that my husband's high school girlfriend is ovulating, and that some guy I worked with three jobs ago is Heavy Into The Jesus now? Fuck you.

--The "younger" tribe on Survivor. Goddammit, you pack of pretty morons, do you realize how fucking stupid it is to be PROUD of the simple biological fact that you are YOUNGER than someone else?

And one that makes me laaaaaaaaaugh and laugh to myself like a lunatic, probably tap-dancing on everyone else's last fucking nerve:

--If the walls of that one empty office could talk, they'd tell an extremely baroque tale of HR catastrophies-in-situ, desperate backstabbings, rug-pullings and under-bus-throwings, and clandestine use of company space to seek new employment elsewhere ...

Oh boy. They have sequins.

2010-09-21T06:58:00.000-07:00

So I'm watching actual, live/real-time network TV on Friday night in the Emergency Room,* and something terrible called "Wife Swap" comes on.

And I can't decide which is worse:

--The self-described "all-American Texas football family," with the laughably self-described "trophy wife" (I think you bought it at the wrong trophy store, dude), the members of which prided themselves on being "hard-working" Republican Christians (with that ugly & disgusting assumption such people have, that anyone who isn't at least upper middle-class just doesn't like to work and is a lazy commie welfare cheat) who love football above all else, and having a mom/wife who literally does nothing but cook meat-based meals, clean the tract house, and attend various football-related activities for the two hulking porcine teenage date-rape suspects they called sons.

--The "hippie" family from Georgia, the members of which (especially the dad) do drum circles and "clowning" (not "clowning around," as in, goofing off -- I mean "dressing up like fucking MIMES and putting on little mime shows and shit, unironically, for spectators' presumed wonderment and delight"), have no actual jobs, and have a mom/wife who hasn't shaved her armpits in 20 years (because she doesn't believe in gender roles).

--The very concept of the show, designed to exploit everyone's worst preconceptions and prejudices for trainwreck-style entertainment under the guise of busting those very notions down. BULLLLLLLLLLLSHIT.

-------------------------

*The kid had what turned out to be croup, fixable with a few 'roids, some ibuprofen, and boatloads of Yo Gabba Gabba. But it was after-hours, so off to the ER we went, on the alarmed say-so of the advice nurse after we held the phone up so she could hear the kid breathing her horrible terrifying rattly wheezy breaths. Good times!

Our glasses / were empty / but now they're full / with Dazzleberry Lemonade the glass is full

2010-09-19T15:38:00.000-07:00

News & notes from what passes for my brain these days

--At this point, there is not a contiguous half hour of my waking life that isn't internally soundtracked by one or more songs from Yo Gabba Gabba. A girl could do worse.

--Consecutive number of Sunday New York Timeses that are on my desk, waiting to be read, including today's: Three

--Amount, on a scale of one to ten (with one being "not at all, fuck 'em anyway" and ten being "GODMOTHERFUCKINGDAMMIT"), that I resent that fact: 10

--Have y'all seen The Hurt Locker? It's real good stuff. Srsly.

--Are you aware of the existence of this bugfuck insane cunt Christine O'Donnell? I wish I weren't, but she keeps intruding on my life, sort of like the infernal she-beast Meg Whitman, only even fucking stupider. And possibly even more dangerous.

--Proving that the Internets are worth something after all: What the Fuck Should I Make For Dinner?

I like my coffee black. Like my men.

2010-09-13T12:14:00.000-07:00

Monday Awesomeness Roundup

--Beyond the Lighted Stage: Rush documentary. Y'all, it would be hard to find a band whose music connects less with me ... but I loved this! That's the measure of a good documentary, y'all. Thanks to Our Lebowski for bringing it to the party.

--Black coffee. I took yet another cue from BlabberMouse (from whom I take most of my cues, to the point of if she lived any closer than on the opposite side of the entire country like she does, it might cross the line into some sort of stalkerazzi-impersonation type of thing so maybe this is for the best) and have been trying to lessen the grip of the Demon Sugar on my life. First up: the creamy delicious sugarbomb beverage I have known all my days as "coffee." I have slowly crept up, over the years, to about three tablespoons of raw sugar in a regular cup of joe (plus a generous dash of half-and-half). Not teaspoons, TABLESPOONS. It had to stop, and stop it did. Cold. I'm not saying never again, but: Not now.

--Mad Men. Again, yes. Always.

The clocks turned from green to red

2010-09-10T00:07:00.000-07:00

So, OK, you know how I like to write about shit that doesn't mean anything, like teevee and whatnot.

But there was this horrific fire a couple of miles from our house tonight, which my husband and our kid drove by AS IT HAPPENED -- they saw the initial fireball (she said tonight as we were settling in to read a few more pages of Little House on the Prairie, "I saw de little bit of fire, and den de BIG fire!!") and Mr. Gleemonex, like many others, thought it was a plane crash (we're more or less directly in the path of trans-pacific flights taking off from SFO, and he and I are kind of permanently weirded out by the fact that we came back from our trip to Maui, our first legitimate non-family non-work [as in, 100% our choice to use commercial aviation] Vacation together, on Sept. 9, 2001). As I'm writing this, nearly 60 homes are burned completely to the ground, at least one person is dead and dozens of others are critically injured, the fire is still burning … it's fucking HORRIBLE.

And the thing is, we can't know, about this stuff, which is what makes it so fucking terrifying to think about. After 9/11, I developed a crushing, twisting fear of airplanes, airports, and flying (yay Xanax, eh? cures what ails ya) -- but eventually I realized, fuck it -- every fucking DAY is fraught with danger. Why get so torqued about THIS kind of one in a million danger? I've always been a fear-riddled person -- there is a thing I will tell you about someday, a near-death experience which I remember in sickeningly lucid detail that sends me into fantods today, thirty years after the fact, which undoubtedly marked my psyche -- but my fears are always worse in the realm of "normal person, going about his/her normal day, when DEATH COMES SCREAMING OUT OF THE BLUE AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH" type of thing.

Say you got home earlier than usual from work Thursday. Six-fifteen to your usual 6:45. You thought you'd start dinner cause damn, you all are eating late these days, or maybe since nobody's home yet, you might play hooky for ten minutes from your feeding-and-provisioning duties and read ONE GODDAMN SECTION of your still-unread Sunday NYT. You sit down in the chair by the window, catching the last of the September light, and

Dr. Lyle Evans

2010-09-09T10:46:00.000-07:00

Internets, I have to tell you this: Mad Men is the reason there's no reason to go to the movies anymore.

This season is ON FIRE. I have become as vehement and unstoppable an evangelist for it as I am for The Wire, which is to say, people who consider themselves filled with the LORD (and who always all-caps the word LORD) will recognize a similar unhingement in me as that which they find in themselves.

Which is to say: Holy Drunken Out-Of-Control SHATNER, is Mad Men awesome.

It's not about the clothes (which are wonderful) or the envious nostalgia for drinkin' & smokin' like it weren't bad for ya (although, well ...) or the thing where when guys you know drink to excess and skirt-chase, it sucks, but when Don Draper does it while being handsome in a suit it's awesome. None of those things. It's about some of the best-written, nuanced, complex, real, honest human life ever captured on film. You forget you're watching fiction, you forget you're watching period drama -- you just live in that world, fully immersed, until it's over, and then it stays with you and you find yourself thinking about it days, weeks, months, years later.

It really is that good. I wouldn't steer y'all wrong.

Champale

2010-09-09T01:10:00.000-07:00

You guys, can I ask you, what is the deal with me not being able to produce any kind of non-work writing during daylight hours? I don't kick it into gear till after midnight, even when I am this tired, just ass-broken, walking-into-walls tired, and I have to get up in like five fucking hours and WHY AM I STILL UP? I'm not Hunter Goddamned Thompson, goddammit. Fuuuuuuuck.

Aloha, Mr. Hand

2010-09-06T15:08:00.000-07:00

Sorry for going AWOL on you good folks, but it was for an excellent reason -- the Gleemonex fam up and went to Hawaii for a week! Total last-minute thing (seriously, booked five days before departure) -- we haven't been on a vacation since the Molokai trip while I was pregnant, in 2007, so between the kid's school's annual closure week, a tendency on my part to case airfares in idle moments, some luxe condo-owners' willingness to rilly DEAL at the last minute, and a very large amount of job-related FUCK THIS SHIT on my part, we were off to the Big Island for a week of sun, sand, extremely calm surf, crazy-fresh fish, tropical drinkz, and largely internetless, TV-free early-to-bed/early-to-rise days of heaven.

Despite all the shit going on in the world, I can't muster a lot of ire right now -- none, actually, cause I'm still vacation-hiiiiiiiiiigh from the awesomeness -- but here are a couple of things for ya:

--I CANNOT GET THE CEE-LO GREEN SONG OUT OF MY HEAD. You know, the unbelievably catchy, curse-riddled one you can't sing in front of your toddler? You get as far as "I see you ridin round town with the girl I love" and that's as far as you can go without risking an awkward phone call from the school director concerning your child's "inappropriate use of language"? Yeah. That song. It fucking rules.

--It is seriously about three decades past Upgrade Time for the Honolulu airport. Holy 1974 Time Capsule!

--I think the writers of Psych have narrowed down their demographic focus to an incredibly granular level (as we say at my Day Job): Their target audience is, specifically, me and Mr. Gleemonex. The rest of y'all are just incidental -- but I, and they, do hope you enjoy the show!

HOOOOO-EEEE! DUCKS ON A POND!

2010-08-25T15:46:00.000-07:00

Punishments That Were Considered Completely Routine and Utterly Unremarkable In My Hometown School System, Back When I Was In It, From Sixth Grade Onward

--D-hall, aka detention. Required you to sit in some off-season coach's classroom for I think 30 mins after school. You weren't supposed to do homework or read, just meditate upon your crime.

--Sentences. Assigned in increments of fifty. You'd go to the office, get a slip of paper with the week's sentence on it (usually some sort of moral), and write that on a sheet of looseleaf the required number of times and turn it in at the office.

--Wall sits. The week's group of miscreants (or an ad hoc group, in the moment) would have to put their backs against a wall and scooch down till their thighs were parallel to the floor -- sitting without a chair, basically -- and stay there till whatever insane meathead was in charge told them they could stop. Usually 1-5 minutes in total.

--Licks, aka getting your ass beat with a paddle by some kinky-minded sociopath with rage issues. The number of "licks" depended on the severity of your offense and was stipulated by the teacher or official who sentenced you. The ones who enjoyed performing this duty -- all men, grown-ass adult men, whaling away on teen and preteen boys and girls -- had their own special paddles, with stuff carved into and written on them, and would lovingly caress them in class, name them, use them as pointers, hold them above your head mock-(real)-threateningly, etc.

Dunno if they still do any of this -- for the record, I only ever did sentences or D-hall, although there were plenty of kids who'd choose the licks to get out of writing, say, 200 sentences. Also you could sign a paddle if you got beaten enough times with it. People are crazy.

Apropos of nothing ...

2010-08-22T20:59:00.000-07:00

... you guys know what a great movie is? I'll tell you: Midnight Madness.

Made in 1980, one of the dozens and dozens of movies I've seen dozens of times* because my family had HBO** in the early going, but y'all -- OK, so I haven't seen it since at least 1988, but it was good! Remember Michael J. Fox, all misunderstood & whiny? And how all the teams wore color-coordinated sweatshirts in that bulky 80s polyester cut? And FAGABEEFE? And "SomeWHERE ... in the Bonaventure Hotel!"?

Awesome.

-----------------------------------

*Including but not limited to: Looker, Just One of the Guys, Class, Turk 182, Twilight Zone: The Movie, April Fool's Day, Valley Girl, Savannah Smiles, How I Got Into College, Beastmaster, Secret of NIMH, Eddie and the Cruisers, Superman III, Arthur, and V (a ... soccer movie? ... starring Sylvester Stallone? I think?).

**Horrible Body Odor! HA ha! O that never gets old!!!!

Thoughts in the company cafe this morning

2010-08-18T11:44:00.000-07:00

So here's the thing: A "breakfast strata" with roast mushrooms, heirloom tomatoes, artichokes and herbed goat cheese is a fine thing, and quite enjoyable. But when it is bought and eaten instead of the "breakfast crepes," with choice of a dozen savory and sweet fillings, which you thought would be on offer but ARE NOT, for UNKNOWN REASONS -- the strata loses. It just does.

The awesome and the puketastic

2010-08-13T09:39:00.000-07:00

Internets, I have but two things to say to you today:

1)This man is a true American hero. I want him to be the mayor of Queens, the governor of California, and the Grand Marshal of the Macy Day Parade -- and henceforth, whenever I quit anything, it shall be with Master Steven Slater in mind: Some form of curse-riddled public address, a showy exit, and a coupla beers for the road (followed by hot sex till the cops get there). Fuck yeah!

2) Whereas this -- THIS -- makes me want to puke. Puke puke puke. Gaudy ribbons of lunch-flecked slurry, waves and eddies and snarls of it filling the corners and spattering the ceilings of all the rooms in all the world. Puuuuuuuuuuuke. I got it from one of my favorite sites on the Internets -- STFU Believers -- and am as yet unsure what part of it makes me puke most violently: the writing, or the point of the story.

--The writing: Like a ghostwriter for Stephenie Meyer, this shit. I've found that all these modern-day Xtian parables (which are 100% complete dingo diarrhea, btw) sound the same; there are people who "give" "slow chuckles," they're always smiling and saying things "gently" (general abuse of adverbs is a habit with this crowd), and the tone -- oh the tone. Perky, earnest, clean, full of overwrought symbolism -- it makes me want to go on a tri-state ARSON SPREE.

--The point of the story: Mens are bad (except Jesus and Daddy). Your un-poked vaginer = the entirety of your value on earth and in heaven forever and ever amen. Your father gets to know when you have all your "firsts" with guys. (NB: Of course it's guys -- you're not a homo faggot lesbo, are you?) If you "give a man your pearl," wink-wink, and you're not married to him, then you're a cheap slut who disrespects herself, God, and her parents and deserves to be banged and dismissed by anyone and everyone and GOOD DAY TO YOU, we don't love you anymore and neither does Jesus and never will any man, you little whore.

I've already goddamn told you what you need to do to protect and aid your daughter, you sick creepy fucks! Now go do it.

Love,

Gleemonex

Also, Mary preferred to sit inside and sew on her nine-patch colorblock quilt because she's a goody two-shoes kiss-ass little twit.

2010-08-09T11:13:00.000-07:00

Or: Further Adventures in Children's Lit
Sparked by a comment I was going to leave over at Sarah Brown's joint, which comment became overlong and moved itself over here instead:

1) I have started reading Little House on the Prairie to my almost-three-year-old. It is pretty awesome, and she likes the sound of it, and follows the story remarkably well. But I'm glad she can't actually read yet, because I have had to do some on-the-fly editing-out of this and that -- such as the Ingallses basically being HOME-INVADED by some Indians while Pa was away (it is really a terrifying chapter, no kidding), and how Ma is constantly mouthing off all racist about Indians in general (even before the home invasion).

2) Speaking of home invasions (Cat in the Hat, GOD), I never knew how much a person could grow to hate Dr. Seuss. Now, a bunch of y'all just went "Noooooooooo!" and started composing defenses of the man and his work, but y'all -- Y'ALL -- have never had to read "Blue Fish Blue Fish" for the eighth god damn night in a row, all that "Ish Wish Dish" and "Zans cans" and "seven-hump Wump" shit.

3) And speaking of editing, I don't edit the ending of Henny Penny, where HP, Cocky Locky, Goosey Loosey, Ducky Lucky, and Turkey Lurkey stupidly follow Foxy Loxey into his lair and he and his wife and kids EAT THEM ALL UP. Because DAMN, y'all, get some brains and don't follow a fucking FOX into its LAIR.

"Right then. Happy Christmas!"

2010-08-09T08:52:00.001-07:00

Can we all please agree that last night's Mad Men was the best episode in the history of ever? I do not spoil, because I love, but y'all -- Don and Lane's Excellent Adventure -- holy Scotch-swilling SHATNER was that fucking awesome.

Go watch it, you.

It's almost not fair ...

2010-08-06T11:27:00.000-07:00

... how breathtakingly beautiful Emma Watson is. But I can't even be envious, because it's just ... a level above. You can't be jealous of a goddess, you know? And why I mention this now is, it's RIDICULOUS how pretty she looks with her new pixie cut -- major religons could be founded on the basis of this young woman's photo alone.

Yes, that's COUNTING the fact that I don't have to wear a girdle to work.

2010-08-02T11:35:00.000-07:00

FM(W)L: Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce vs. My Day Job

--I have never gotten groped in any of my personal regions by anyone at my office.

Point: Day Job

--No one drinks while at my office.

Point: SCDP

--No one need be a closeted LGBT person at my office.

Point: Day Job

--No one calls me "girl," and a penis is not a requirement for supervisory positions.

Point: Day Job

--No one smokes while at my office.

Point: Day Job

--If my boss were to make a pass at me, A) No, B) Hell to the fuck no, and C) one hundred dollars cash American would merely be Exhibit A in the prosecution's evidence file in the mega-tsunami of a lawsuit that would immediately follow.

Point: Day Job

--I am required to spend an entire day this week cloistered with my "team," during which we will "learn more about our personal communications styles, find[ing] ways to be dynamic and influential with our clients, colleagues, bosses, employees and the media;" there will be "behaviorally based techniques, an individual workbook, and role-playing exercises," as well as "some of us" doing "a few minutes in front of the camera" so that we "can receive video feedback."

Game, set and match: SCDP

Someday my eyes gon' roll right out my head.

2010-07-30T15:31:00.000-07:00

Among the things I think that gigantic stupid over-bearded fuck on the BART train last night should not have said to the seven-year-old girl whose mom he appeared to be squiring around: "You have to sit here [indicating a spot between him and the mom] so nobody can reach in and snatch you off the train and run off with you."

Because: What the fuck? What kind of thing is that to say? And no, he wasn't kidding, at all. He was deadly serious. And to my knowledge, there hasn't been a rash of BART child-snatchings lately or anything. Why would you put an idea like that in a kid's head? Why is it in YOUR head, Mister "Can't Be Bothered Wearing A Clean T-Shirt"?

And because also, Mom: Where's your brain? You're a reasonably attractive lady -- who is this assclown, and why are you allowing him to talk to your daughter like that?

And furthermore, you have other evidence of his idiocy: At Embarcadero, he insisted you all get on the Daly City-bound train, which he explained that you all would take three stops, then get off at Powell, cross the platform, and take the train going the other way.

Now, not all of you DK readers know about BART, so I'll tell you why that is the stupidest fucking thing I heard all day yesterday (and this is a day that included someone asking me to "leverage [my] learnings from the [X] meeting and put together a one-pager reporting out on the top-line goals [speaker] articulated going forward"): BART branches off a little once it gets to the East Bay, but for the journey through the city, it's a near-goddamn-useless single track -- no branches, no other lines, no alternative routes -- all trains make all stops in the one single path it takes. It's not like NYC, Paris, London, etc., where you sometimes have to travel the wrong direction to meet up with the train that takes you crosstown or wherever you want to go -- THEY ALL STOP THERE, NO MATTER WHAT THE ENDPOINT IS. You stand in Embarcadero station long enough, the train you want will stop right in front of your face eventually. So all this bearded fuckdongle did was make them spend an extra twenty minutes belowdecks getting Homeless Schmutz on their pants for no goddamn reason.

Well, that and plant nightmare seeds in a little kid's brain.

Ucccch, people -- people are the worst.

I mean -- not you guys. You guys're awesome. :-)

Rollin in my 5.0 with my ragtop down so my hair can blow

2010-07-27T10:29:00.000-07:00

What is it with me and ice trays? Why do I so loathe emptying and refilling them? I do it -- I am not a goddamn BARN ANIMAL -- but I hate it sofa king bad.

Crack them (flecks of ice explode all over & stick to your shirt), dump them out, carry the tray to the sink, refill (either using too much water so the force keeps spraying the water out of the tray instead of staying the fuck in there dammit, or filling so slow you feel like empires are rising and falling while you stand there), walk them (spilling all the way) back to the freezer (which your husband has CLOSED because he is COMPULSIVE about that even though it's clear what you are doing five feet away for like thirty frickin seconds, so now you have to put one down to free a hand, or try with tray-filled hands, thus spilling it all, or get him to do it -- but probably he's already left the room to go back to his guitars, like he came out of there specifically and only to close the freezer and then bail on you, which is particularly annoying since you yourself have no quirks or annoying habits AT ALL, not even the bench in the bedroom piled three feet high [you wish that were a joke but it's true] with your clothes, which drives him bugfuck, heavens no, that's not annoying!), then put the depleted trays back in the freezer.

At least with cleaning a bathroom or whatever, you have the reward of shiny surfaces, neat organization and a peaceful, accomplished feeling of a job well done. But ice trays ... ugh. Just sittin in there, freezing, for to make you have to do it all over again.

Which I guess is why I like to take a cube out, on special occasions such as almost every evening, and pour vodka over it, right in front of its peers, and then drink it as it melts, so they understand what's what and who's who around here.

FM(W)L, vol. 2

2010-07-23T15:38:00.000-07:00

True Tales of the Office: A Few More Things Either Spoken in My Presence or Emailed to Me Recently By Actual College Graduates For Whom English Is Allegedly Their First Language

"We are no longer resourced to that task."

"As noted in the deliverables grid here are the current timings (these dates will likely be adjusted and pushed out as we have been delayed in landing on the stylesetter designs)."

"I wanted to share some insights I culled from a session I attended at [company X] after work yesterday – where [they] provided their learnings of reaching and connecting with their users and customers as well as the media to influence their story externally. I think it’s good food for thought as we think about how we want to position our [work]."

"From what I recall, that was a call-out from [bigboss] to have a couple people report out on [that matter]. And because you’d been tapped, there’s probably an expectation for you to continue."

"Hello [people], thank you for your partnership and contributions-to-date on [project]. I am appreciative of the guidance and expertise which you have shared with our team. As you know, we recently went down two headcount on my team and therefore, available 'people' resources, which were slated against our {x} strategies, have been impacted forcing me to make some tough decisions."

"I’d itemize an action line around your being pro-active in reaching out to business partners. Otherwise, this document could be interpreted as [reacting] rather than taking ownership and driving."

"[Gleemonex], I’d suggest, in the future, not sending out thoughts like that to everyone here."

Two brothers who cruise and swing successfully

2010-07-21T17:05:00.000-07:00

So I’m picking up coffee at the fabulous and wonderful Nas (that stands for “natural and superior,” which it is, but I call it “everything that’s right with America”). They got my drink started before I even asked, which is yet another reason I go to this place – they rule.

The guy behind me in line orders a “quadruple espresso,” and the counter lady shoots back, with a laugh, “There’s a penalty for changing your regular order!”

And the guy, completely flat and not at all joking, goes “I’ll TELL you what the penalty is. I’m not PAYING for it.”

The counter lady and I exchange a brief, mild “WTF?” look over the cup she’s handing me, and I go on my merry way.

And, seriously, WTF? You don’t have to say something knock-them-off-their-chairs funny, just something that indicates that you, a human, recognize that another humanoid life form has offered you a low-stakes social interaction, and you respond in kind. Why not say:

“Oh shit – back of the line for me, huh?”

“I have to shotgun a black cherry mocha with four vanilla syrups?”

“No coffee for you!” [Coffee Nazi]

Or just, “Ha!”

Why this aggro bullshit with the not getting of the joke? That guy, ucch. I bet he dates a Janice.

Martha Dumptruck

2010-07-20T09:24:00.000-07:00

So what does it say about me that I felt oddly threatened and defensive when a little group of four absolutely lovely 13-year-old girls boarded the train home yesterday? They weren't all done up and hookery like most kids today -- they were dressed in an age-appropriate, cute way; their hair was simple and clean and unfussy; they weren't wearing makeup. And they were all so pretty, and none of them was doing a mean-girl thing, and they all looked like they were just kids livin' life.

So why the instant defensiveness on my part? I thought about it as soon as I realized it was happening, and I was like -- OMS, junior-high flashback whoooooa.

Amazing what shitty baggage we carry around, eh? Those girls are not the popular crowd at Cowburg Junior High in 1987, and I'm not the torqued-up Methodist Youth dorkess of the same time and place -- but every once in awhile a good cold hard flashback works wonders to make you appreciate adulthood (mortgages, grey hair and all).

FUCK YEAH, BEING A GROWNUP!

You Are A Target Market

2010-07-19T11:37:00.000-07:00

Y'all, Trader Joe's -- they know who they're fucking dealing with at 8:00 a.m. on a Sunday.

Specifically: Me (36-year-old Prius-driving advanced-degree-holding white married mom) and my kid (toddler who wears a Beatles T-shirt and sings a mashup of "I Love Rock 'n Roll" and "Rockaway Beach" while dancing around the banana tree near the entrance).

They put out those little shopping carts for the kids. They have stickers and sometimes balloons. They play a never-ceasing mix of good shit from the 80s-90s (with the occasional 60s, 70s or 00s tune thrown in for variety) -- basically my first 50 or so CDs on rotation (demographic targeting, WHOA). There's a sample bar, with something breakfasty for the kid and GOD JESUS SHATNER AND ALL THE SAINTS! coffee for me. The people who work there (at that shift, at least) either really do dig kids, or they are all super-high, and I do not even a little bit care which. Everything's organic, the fruit is so pretty it looks like candy, there's plenty of stuff at a kid's eye level that is actually OK TO GIVE TO A KID!

So weird to find myself -- an X-er who sneers at being marketed to -- pretty much the living embodiment of a marketing/merchandising sketch ... but the shit WORKS. I ain't spending my early-a.m. weekly hundy-and-a-half at Safeway, you know? It's like they're reading my goddamn mind.

Internet Fun Happy Question Time With Your Host, Gleemonex

2010-07-14T10:24:00.000-07:00

In which I ask the unaskable, and answer the unanswerable.

Q.: How many times can you say “Rufus Wainwright” before it becomes “Wufus Wehnwiiigh,” like it’s Baba Booey instroducin de myftery gueft on Stern?

A.: Sober, twice. When vodka is involved, none.

Q.: Will there ever come a day when you are able to see or even think of this without springing instant tears of strangled, semi-hysterical laughter, and feeling like you might hyperventilate from the hilarity?

A.: I certainly hope not, and I’m kind of offended that you asked. For when a person is tired of Men Who Look Like Zach Braff, a person is tired of life.

Q.: How many times per day do you find yourself saying “Really?” in the “Really?!? With Seth & Amy” manner, either in your head or out loud?

A.: A minimum of once, and up to eight times. Some days I am more incredulous than others, but incredulity and bogglement do tend to find me at least every 24 hours.

Q.: Does it ever, ever stop being funny to say stuff about how this guy wants to watch the opposing pitcher weave and breathe his story lines, or how he plays like he’d never surrender?

A.: No. No it does not. At least, not if it’s me or Mr. Gleemonex making the jokes. If it’s the FOX commentators, it’s worth a spontaneous stabbing at least.

Q.: Of the six women on the elevator up this morning, including yourself, how many were wearing an outfit of which the top half was composed of a tank or cap-sleeve shirt with a cardigan over it?

A.: Six.

Q.: No, I said, including yourself.

A.: Six.

Q.: Really?!?

A.: Oh, shut up.

"Just ... shake it around until it shoots ... puffs of dust."

2010-07-13T12:40:00.000-07:00

Enough Bitchin – Time For “Fun Shit, Lately!”

Party Down: You won me over with your casting of the comic genius that is Martin “Bill” Starr. Then you added Ken Marino (one of the gay demons from the late, lamented Reaper), Jane Lynch (well, until she left for Glee), Lizzy Caplan, and that idiotic blond guy whose name I can’t recall, add in some of the tightest, funniest writing in modern television, and goddamn, you got a near-perfect half-hour show that takes about an hour to watch because I have to keep pausing it because I’m laughing my fucking FACE off – how in the hell did Starz produce something this awesome?

Fridays off: My department is taking Fridays off for July. This is FANTASTIC and I highly recommend you do the same.

Tempera paint: Pretty much the funnest art/craft item ever (so tactile! so vibrant! so efficient an olfactory wayback machine to elementary school!), and it’s washable! Even off of toddler faces and linoleum kitchen floors!

Driving to Trader Joe’s at 7:50 in the a.m. on a Sunday, kid in the backseat, both singing along at top volume to George Harrison’s What Is My Life on the “Breakfast with the Beatles” show on Sirius.

FM(W)L: Assaulted by email

2010-07-08T14:22:00.000-07:00

I did not write this. It actually happened to me just now:

Definitely agree, [BigBoss] -- do we know who the right people to tap are within the [divisions] who we can connect with to find out the process so that we can be looped in?

Hang on a sec while I die of death.

You yell “shark,” and we’ve got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July.

2010-07-06T11:01:00.000-07:00

So we’re in more or less standstill traffic on the way home from the mountains this weekend, and edging by inches alongside us is a large manly black-and-silver pickup with a muscular forearm sticking out of the driver’s side window, hand clutching a lit cigarette. A sticker on the back window said “POWERED BY JESUS.”

Thing the first: Mr. Gleemonex, out of nowhere, made a joke about the sticker that I can’t repeat here for fear you’d all get the wrong impression about us Gleemonexes – I laughed for like ten gridlocked miles, even after he said “It wasn’t that funny!” Because yes it was.

Thing the second: I hate stickers (and other similar pronouncements) like that. Come on. The automobile you’re driving is powered by FOSSIL FUEL, sir. If you refer instead to your soul, perhaps you could show, not tell, yes?

And on a completely unrelated note:

Apropos of a conversation Mr. Gleemonex and I had this weekend, this one’s for all you baseball fans out there: Dusty Baker manages pitching like a guy who blows every paycheck he gets at the dogtrack, working on his gut-based “surefire system” that he believes in his soul will someday win back all that lost cash and millions more. He ignores streaks, has no sense of a pitcher’s rhythm, manages short when time is long and long when there’s two outs left, blows out an arm that’s obviously failing and retires a guy that looks to the rest of the world like he’s got seventeen innings left in him that night. He does all these hunchy moves and double moves and countermoves, shuffling and dealing and trying to psych his way through – the net result is a big old steaming sack of pelican crap, and that is why he’s destined to disappoint every team he ever gets to be in charge of. The end.

Stuck in my craw. (As it were. Heh.)

2010-07-01T14:52:00.000-07:00

Look out – Sandy-Vadged Old Lady ramblings ahoy!

1) Listen up, young people: When you are at table with me, put the GOD DAMN PHONE IN YOUR GOD DAMN BAG. My colleague and I were lunching with the new intern yesterday, and the girl kept her phone on the table the whole time, texting while talking, flipping through screens, the whole nine. I was like, why are we even here? This is supposed to be a business lunch, and she might as well have been at her little four-roommate pansexual-house-party/reality-show apartment or wherever it is you kids live these days. I mean, the girl is great, very accomplished and presentable and does good work, but holy app-downloading SHATNER is that rude.

2) My friend, the lovely and truthful J., told a story recently about a very large meeting at the Very Large Global Bank where she works, a meeting which has come to be known around the company as “The Basic Instinct Meeting.” What happened was: A senior-level woman in her late 30s/early 40s (i.e. old enough to know better) was one of the people seated on a dais on chairs that were hidden by no podium or table. The woman was wearing a skirt. There was a Basic Instinct moment. My question is: WHO DOESN’T WEAR UNDERPANTS TO WORK? WHO? WHO DOES THAT? I need to have confidence that the people with whom I work are WEARING UNDERPANTS. I don’t ever want to think about it – I just want it done. UNDERPANTS.