Little in the middle but she pack much back

This post has nothing to do with the title -- "Baby Got Back" just happened to come on the car radio today, and my kids think "I like big butts and I cannot lie" is the funniest fucking thing in the history of the world. 

Bumper Stickers and/or Car Decals That Bum Me Out: A Selection of Recent Sightings

MITT

NRA Member Since 2012

Got Twins +1?

My Pugs Are Smarter Than Your Honor Student!

[Calvin, down on his knees, praying before a large cross]

JAGERMEISTER

Nader 2000

[license plate] 4WRKGOT

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

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.)

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

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

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

Tofutti Klein

Shit that has GOT to STOP:

So J. Lo thinks she can remake Overboard.

J. Lo is an asshole.

So are the people who have remade Clash of the Titans, and anyone involved in the remakes of Top Gun [oh dear], Weird Science, et fucking cetera.

But not because the originals are so awesome that they shouldn’t be tampered with – just the opposite. Well, some of them are (Red Dawn*, 9 to 5, Footloose, Karate Kid shut up and get your damn hands off it WILL SMITH). But most of them, it’s precisely because they are sofa king bad that they are beyond perfect. People of my generation have seen these flicks hundreds of times – they’re so lightweight, so stupid, so D-U-M dumb – that they complete the full circle around and become GENIUS.

Holy Played-Out Shit-Licking Bug-Eyed Anti-Shatner, Hollywood: GET A NEW GODDAMNED IDEA. Just one. New. Fucking. Idea. Don’t the kids of today deserve a couple dozen dumbshit movies they can watch a million times over the summer and still quote when they’re 36? GOD.

*cracked.com says “The original Red Dawn populated its cast with all the big teen celebrities of its day, which means there's at least a half chance we'll get a Red Dawn featuring some High School Musical bastards and at least two Jonas brothers.” Stand back, protect your shoes, Internets – I’m gonna hurl.

I am not going to put $280 worth of clothes on a 14-month-old and nothing you can say will change that.

Internets, this week I received via the USPS the first issue of a free subscription to Cookie, a magazine targeted with laserlike precision directly at persons of my age, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, education level, household income, and marital and procreative status.

So I read it, because hey, free magazine! And with a toddler around, I can always use some reading material that I can pick up and put down whenever -- the meaty stuff has to wait for my bus commute or after she goes to bed.

But you guys, this magazine? It's obnoxious. For reals.

They don't just do the "veggies" and "let's face it" cutesiness that riddles my other free-subscription magazine nemesis, Parents. They compound that kind of verbal ass-chappery with editorial gushing over $120 skinny jeans for 8-year-olds (who are almost always named Ava or Tallulah) and $725 blazers for mom -- actual blurb: "The slinky double-breaster* gets a modern makeover (read: no shoulder pads) from a designer known for clean but edgy lines" -- and relentless, relentless use of certain phrasings and constructions** that I know are meant to convey a breezy, confident, harmlessly wry girlfriend-to-girlfriend air of intimacy and zazz. I can just hear the editors talking about wanting a punchier feel, making this or that sentence "pop," adding in stuff that's "young" and "fun." Hooorrraaaaaaaaaaaaauuugh.

It kills me because it's so cheap and facile and lazy, this way of writing -- it's like how, at my previous employer, we bought a few stock images to accompany stories, and used and reused and re-re-re-reused them year after year ... *** And these fucking tics are just annoying, repeated so often -- why "get" when you can "grab," or "put" when you can "toss"? Ha ha, isn't motherhood chaotic! But fun! O yes. Especially when you are in your mid-thirties and sassy and have money and are white and probably have heard most of these expressions and phrasings before but have no idea what their root meaning is! Attitude! Style! Channel your inner _____! Hang stuff on your four-year-old's wall with Blu-Tack, you awesome quirky design-maven motherfuckers, "until the next bout of artistic inspiration strikes!"

Ugh, seriously. Makes me want to BURN BUILDINGS DOWN.

---------------------------------
*Heh.
**e.g.: "read: xxxxxx," which maybe once was smartassery but is now beyond boring cliche.
***I was there five years, and they're still using some of the same goddamned thumbnails on the website TODAY, five years after I left.

No rocks thrown.

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

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

Classic case of Shut the Fuck Up (STFU)

Hey, everybody, John "The Bush Administration's Bitch, and Don't You Ever Get a Notion Otherwise No Matter How 'Straight' He Talks" McCain would prefer a Christian President!

This crazy fucktard -- for whom, even before this, I had absolutely nil respect -- thinks a professed belief in Christianity is "an important part of our qualifications to lead." Goddamn, if it ain't just like a Baptist, saying something like that. And I know he's not alone, not by a looooong long shot.

People in this country who haven't darkened a church doorway in decades still have "Christian" as one of the many unexamined items on their mental "President" checklist. It's like they think that no matter what they themselves do or say or believe, no matter how righteous and moral a life they themselves may in fact lead, regardless of church attendance or Bible Study group participay or whateverthefuck, we've for some reason got to have a Christian in the White House -- like an atheist or a Muslim or a Jew could have no moral compass, would be weak at the knees in some fundamental way, would necessarily endanger us somehow, without the Holy Bible close to hand (never mind whether the professed Christian President had ever actually read a SINGLE FLIPPIN WORD of the bible, or lived a single day in a Christlike way, or had any idea what any of it meant -- see: Current Occupant, who constantly runs his miserable cake-hole about his alleged "faith" but is about as far from Christlike as any person in human history).

So you know what? Shut the fuck up, John McCain. Just shut the fuck up. You're embarrassing yourself, AGAIN, and you're making the rest of us as crazy as you are.

Sinking ship loses one more rat

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

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

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

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

Dry this one out, you could fertilize the lawn

What.

The.

Cocksmoking Shatner.

Is today's strip about?

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

One-legged man wins ass-kickin contest

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

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

So — where else have I been?

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

Back to work, you!

Missing the point, by a fairly wide margin

Saw a bumper sticker on a truck the other day that said "MY KID'S FIGHTING IN IRAQ SO YOURS CAN PARTY IN COLLEGE!"

Yeahhhh ... that's kind of ... not how it is, at all.

Your kid's fighting in Iraq because the murderous imbecile you voted for -- twice, if the "W" emblems in your back window are any indication -- SENT HIM OR HER THERE for no good fucking reason, you deluded, self-righteous prick. Not quite as snappy on a bumper sticker, is it?

Come Armageddon, come Armageddon, come

Oh for FUCK'S SAKE.

What next, the captain of the hockey team asks Sha ... non to the prom? Canada's equivalent of the head cheerleader invites her to a sleepover, where all the other cheerleaders listen, enthralled, to ten straight hours of her trying to get through three paragraphs of a story about Special People's Camp?

Meanwhile, offscreen, Granthony is carefully tucking his tiny bait-n-tackle up into his undercarriage so they won't ruin the line of his panties, slicking on some Dippity-Do, and shuffling over to the elder Pattersons' place to ask John for his lovely daughter's hand in holy matrimony. And he'll say it like that, too -- just you wait.

This is GARBAGE. September cannot come soon enough.

Well, suck me sideways.

Like my homeslice bgirl, I try to keep the politics off my blog, mostly because all I can do is sputter deranged-sounding diatribes that, while true, and honestly felt, do my side no credit at all — for nuanced analysis, y’all should read the rather brilliant offerings of my other homeslice, the Hip Hop Lawyer.

But sometimes the molten lava just breaks through the solid crust, and I have to leave off talking about, say, comic strips I hate but which hold me in thrall, or desperate social maladjusts, or bands that totally rule. Like today (and yesterday) when I’m reading about Il Douche's veto — again — of the embryonic stem cell research bill.

This semi-retarded pisswad loves, loves, LOVES to talk about his famous “respect for life,” ignoring — as he expects us to — the lives of the already-born, particularly if they are female or dark-hued of skin or didn’t get into and cruise through Yale instead of Viet Nam because their daddy was the director of the C.I. Motherfuckin A. The utter hilarity of hearing him say that "Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical” almost makes up for how FUCKING OUTRAGEOUS that statement is, coming from the Salesman-In-Chief of the hopeless bloody boondoggle that is Operation Kill All The Brown Ones And Take Their Oil, No Matter How Many Of Our Soldiers Get Cut Up And Used As Chum.

So: Let me put it to you slowly and clearly, shitheel:

1.) The embryos you’re talking about are the embryos that will go unused by the fertility patients for whom they were created.
2.) These embryos that will go unused are going to be DESTROYED — no babies will be grown from them under any circumstances ever.
3.) Therefore, unless they are donated for stem cell research, they can be of no use to anyone.
4.) If they are allowed to be used for stem cell research, they can potentially be of great help to humanity, both the already-born and the yet-to-be-born variety.

THAT’S respecting life, you fucking halfwit.

Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?

Sopranos finale, folks. I can’t even talk about the stuff I thought was great (e.g. A.J.’s insane glee when he recounts the SUV fire to his shrink — it was as hilarious as Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes talking about burning down Andre Rison’s house, man). I’m too pissed off about this colossal bullshit.

Since 1999, we’ve been getting our chains yanked every which way by these people, but in the best way — never simple, never easy, never the usual or the expected. They had us rooting for a bunch of murderous thugs — really no better than the other murderous thugs — even when they showed all the collateral damage “this thing of ours” causes (both human and property-wise) — like when you unconsciously root for the car holding the murdered woman to sink all the way into the bog in Psycho, you know what I mean?

And last night, they just — fucking left our cheese in the wind. I didn’t need every end tied up with a sparkly pink bow, but jesus, I feel like I’ve been taken in a really spectacularly well-done long con. There’s going to be all kinds of talk about how “brilliant” and “genius” it was to leave us hanging like that, as if making me wonder for a solid totally enraged minute whether it was the satellite feed or the TiVo that had cut out at this crucial juncture and which bitch I should cut first was just the very tops in narrative construction. Listen, sophomore, the fact that you ran out of time writing this shit before class and had to hit “print” on what you’d done so far? DOESN’T MAKE IT GOOD.

And this a-hole Chase has done it before — I bet you ten dollars cash American that someone, somewhere on the Internets (a series of tubes) has already photoshopped Tony Soprano walking out of the Pine Barrens into Manhattan.

Don't let the door hit you in the vagina on the way out

So I knew I get pretty good maternity leave and benefits — I work for 1) a California company, with 2) a big investment in making itself a “family friendly” employer, which company is 3) over 70% female and 4) in a female-dominated industry in 5) a city chock-full of employment choices for well-educated, qualified employees, both male and female, so there’s a good deal of concern with making sure people want to work here, and keep working here.

But I didn’t realize HOW good until my friend, who works for a national banking company which rhymes with “Mells Margo,” told me what SHE gets (she’s about 3 weeks behind me, gestationally speaking):

You have to take 1 week PTO before it can kick in, then 3 weeks fully paid and then 2-4weeks at 65% (2 weeks for a vaginal delivery and 4 weeks with C-Section). Then it looks like you are on your own!

People who work at convenience stores get better leave than that. I guess Mells Margo doesn’t care about having women work there, at all, huh?

Mister April

I am on record, many times over, with my hatred for the man, the myth, the sucktacular legend Alex “Choke Specialist 1st Class” Rodriguez, aka Suck-Rod, aka A-Hole. I hated him from way back when he was on the Mariners, showboating and grandstanding in an OK team in a cruddy division, getting lauded for being the Greatest Player Ever in the History of Organized Sport; I hated him when the Rangers fell for his snowjob and paid the most ridiculous salary ever; I’ve hated him more with every passing day that he has been a Yankee, fucking up the team’s chemistry, sucking up money, booting play after play after motherscratching play when it counts most — I never wanted him, I hate that we have him, and I’d gladly kill him with my own bare hands to keep him from playing another day in my beloved pinstripes.

So it is with mixed feelings that I see his performance so far this season. He’s homering like they’re gonna outlaw it tomorrow, which, yay for him and I don’t mind the Ws adding up. But I also hate hate hate it, because soon enough — mark my words — he’ll go so cold he’ll reverse global warming all by himself, and this is likely to happen DURING THE PLAYOFFS. Like always. Jesus H.

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book ...

Oh jeez, Saint Michael's book just got bought. He gets a $25K (Canadian) advance, and this adjective-and-adverb-riddled piece of smeg's going to be added to "the fall lineup" with "only minor edits."

AS. IF.

I don't even know where to start, with the total ridiculousness of this scenario. For one thing, even pretending it IS the Great Canadian Novel, WHERE IS HIS AGENT IN ALL OF THIS? They wouldn't send any kind of contract directly to him -- that shit all goes through your AGENT, which this purple-prose-scribblin' twit appears not to have.

This is seriously like some 12-year-old -- naive about such matters as agents and contracts and edits and politics and money and the whole lurching grinding apparatus of the publishing world -- some 12-year-old thinking that if they just have the moxie to send their MS directly to the President of their Bestest Most Favorite Publishing House, he or she will read it, love it, and make you the richest and famousest young writer in the whole wide world!

And as stupid as this would be in any case, it's absolutely inexcusable coming from someone who's been in the publishing world for 25 frickin years. Lynn, have you had a rough blow to the head recently? Are you letting your 6th-grade neighbor write for you these days? WTF?

How is it possible to have your head this far up your own ass?

I read my hometown newspaper online every weekday -- gotta keep up with the Wreck of the Day, the Stupid Jackass Crime of the Week, the Local Political Brouhaha of the Month, and the regular features like the Heartwarming Heartlanders Pulling Your Heartstrings In A Simultaneously Patriotic and Aww-Shucks Way, doncha know.

The Letters to the Editor are among my must-reads, of course -- I occasionally even write one, usually in response to some jacktard's ignorant scribbled nonsense, and most of the time I even use my real name (albeit my married name, because my mother, who still lives in that town and decidedly does not share my political leanings, doesn't need a Molotov through her window).

But sometimes I can't even formulate a response, because the letter in question is such a mind-blowing bizarro-world screed that it foils utterly my capacity for rational, ordered thought. Today's awesomeness, from a Jim Norman of Alvord, is one of those. He's pissed off at Bush and the Repuglican Party -- but get this, it's not about the maladministration's countless crimes against humanity, its bumblings and fumblings and obfuscations and highway fucking robbery of the American people, allowed to rage virtually unchecked for six years -- no, it's for "cowering in fear of the Democratic Party and the media." Oh my. Continues Mr. Norman:

I’m upset that the president and his advisors have utterly failed in challenging the Democratic propaganda and media hypocrisy that America has been subjected to for the past six years. Because the president took a passive stance to the daily garbage, innuendo and outright lies that have been spread about him and his policies, those same lies and distortions have been elevated to the level of truth and fact in the minds of many Americans.

Woweee. Where should I start? I can't. You get me? I ... have no response to this. If you're this willfully ignorant of reality, there's nothing I can do to help you.

There's more, too -- read the whole thing, and then join me in banging your head against the nearest brick wall ...

Not much Macho in that Taco

Did y'all hear who's allegedly going to be in the Magnum, P.I. movie?

McConaughey as Magnum. William H. Macy as Higgins. Steve Zahn as Rick. Fucking Tyrese as TC.

Jesus H. W. Christ in a sidecar drinking tequila. Why does Hollywood have its head so damn far up its own ass?

I'm telling you right now, "the kids" aren't going to go see this movie, no matter who's in it. People like me -- early 30s to mid-40s, who watched the show in prime time and have since TiVoed and DVD'd the shit out of all 8 years of it -- WE'RE the ones you want to aim at. And WE want the original cast, no exceptions. Even Manetti, the little bastard, because Rick's a friggin doofus and we like it that way.

So Selleck's over 60 and the power alleys are lookin more like power highways these days -- he looks plenty younger than that (I'd believe 50), he's a lot more with-it mentally than some other people who are reprising decades-old roles at present (yeah, I'm talkin about you, Harrison "Indiana Jones and the Walker of Doom" Ford), and even more to the point, no one else can be Thomas Sullivan Magnum IV.

As for John Hillerman -- he's listed by IMDB as "retired," but I can't stand the idea of anyone else as Higgins. Goddammit, pay him enough dough to do a couple of days' worth of shoots, have him be happily retired on the estate -- which, in Higgins' case, would be still in uniform, directing a younger staff whose service is, naturally, Not Up To Snuff. Just as long as he gets to say "Oh. My. God." at least once ...

HILLERMAN NO?
WE WON'T GO!

NO SELLECK
NO PEACE

The truthiness hurts

I see they've chosen Rich Little to host the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner this year. Colbert cut too close to the bone there, did he?

Oh yes, we can't be exposed to anything like:

I stand by this man. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message: that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound -- with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.

And the press certainly shouldn't be expected to hear of themselves:

But the rest of you, what are you thinking, reporting on NSA wiretapping or secret prisons in eastern Europe? Those things are secret for a very important reason: they're super-depressing. And if that's your goal, well, misery accomplished. Over the last five years you people were so good -- over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn't want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out. Those were good times, as far as we knew.

Let's stick instead to some lame "impersonations" of 20-years-out-of-date celebrities nobody fucking gave a shit about even when they were current. Nobody's gonna YouTube that shit. Nobody's gonna blog about it. Dumb bitches like Ana Marie Cox won't need to wag their manicured fingers at this happy asshole. The laughter will be the type elicited by the "cool" visiting pastor at the First Baptist Church -- nobody will be forced to think about anything or confront the truth at all. So that's real nice. Ugh.