Interesting question

How come when it's Whitey it's "found" groceries, while the darker toned are accused of "looting"??

Makes ya say "Hmmmmmm", doesn't it?

HAPPY BIIIIIIIIIIIIRTHDAAAAAAAYYYY!!!

Happy birthday to SUSAN and RYAN!!!

Happy birthday!!

Not to be excessively crass, but don'tcha kinda wonder if these people were created on Thanksgiving? Right, right: best not to think about it.

ANYWAY, happy birthday to Will, Tom, Ryan and the Gatman, in D.C., CA, CA, and D.C. Nutty that you were all born today, and grew up to all know me but not each other. Maybe this means that I am the center of the universe, after all. OK, prolly not, but I had a nice moment there. Heh.

Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birrrrthday, dear Will, Tom, Steve & Ryannnnn, happy birthday to youuuuu!!!

(Please note that the only one who actually got sung to today was Steve, but Will got a 3-cd set of '70s and '80s tunes that may well alienate him from everyone in real life who sets butt in his car or foot in his office, so that's even better than hearing me sing. Boo yah!)

Mix "tapes," 2005: reflections

So here's a funny thing: remember back in high school and college (circa mid-1981 through mid-1989 for some) when you'd make mix tapes for friends, crushes, and bfs/gfs? Remember that process of laboriously writing down how long songs lasted (or how many numbers rolled by on the counter-thingy, music odometer, whatever it was), figuring out the right song order, putting a blank tape in one side of the double cassette deck, all the stopping and starting, forwarding, reversing, cuing, writing out the labels, on and on and on? It was like an out-and-out declaration of love, whether platonic or otherwise, and really showed how much you cared about someone?

Cut to 2005, and iTunes (or MusicMatch or whatever): you load up all your cds onto your pc or Mac (or laptop or iBook, yeah, yeah, spare me). Load them onto your mp3 player of choice (mine is the silver mini -- sleek!), and away you go. And meanwhile, you have this kick-ass dj booth sittin' right there on your pc, to drag and drop like a sumbitch, and making playlists and burning cds is literally a matter of perhaps 10 minutes' work, including the burning and exporting the song list to a Word file you can print for the jewel case. Which is not to say that the thought isn't still there, expressing affection and regard and thought, etc., but maaaaan oh man, these labor-saving devices are the shit, ain't they?!

All this is by way of sort of revelling in how I think WCB will reasct to the cds I've just made for his birthday. He used to work at a telecomm company and played this heinous game with his friends there whereby they would torture one another by calling someone's voicemail and speaking a line or two of a lyric from a pop song sure to get stuck in the person's head as soon as they heard the lyric. Poor Will (whom you may recognize from an earlier post) made the grievous mistake of telling me about this and now we play, although mainly by e-mail, which turns out to work just as well. So the music I've chosen for him falls into these categories (playlist names on my iTunes): '80s, Anyone? and Fromage I and Fromage II. Really, y'all, I am not a nice girl. ('Cept when I am, and then I'm really really nice. Don'tcha wish you knew me i.r.l.??)

Good thing he's not a feminist, huh?

Hugo Chavez has his own self-inflicted issues, what with being a not-so benevolent despot and a corrupt s.o.b. and all, but to have Pat Robertson on your ass? That right there is an unenviable position!

Update from the hilarious Andy Borowitz can be seen here for a giggle. When he's on, Andy is soooooo funny.

Swing out, Sister!!

Hmmm....

(Why this header isn't working, I do not know, but it should say "Swing Out, Sister!")


Didja see this? Unless the next snap was of her with her legs wrapped around him, I'm pretty sure God's okay with dancing nuns. On the other hand, since S/He doesn't speak to me directly, maybe I'm wrong. Guess I'll find out once I get smited.

You did WHAT?!

The nose that ate Tokyo... This was actually a self-portrait that I took & e-mailed to Bryan in the next room (I titled it "I see ALL" just to freak him out). It showcases not only my nose (red from a day spent watching USC football scrimmage) but my new mod specs, which I dorkily bought for goin' to Paris. And also, honest to G-d, my nose is really not the oversized snout it appears in these pictures. Really. Maybe I'm obsessing, but I'm not in denial!!!

Well, hey there!

Seriously, my nose is nowhere near as huge as it appears in this picture. Dude, how could I stand up straight?? Much less prevent the world from being sucked up into those ginormous nostrils?!

Tonight's entry...

...in the "too little, too late" category of ALL TIME is this story. Read it and weep. Seriously. And in the words of young Ryan, can I get a double U-Tee-Eff?!?!?

Not that there aren't times (as you've seen previously in this space) when I think the death penalty is A-OK and in fact the ONLY thing that's called for, but on the other hand, when this happens, or this, it's gotta make ya think, doesn't it?!?

David Sedaris is hilarious

He really is flat out laugh-out-loud funny. There's lots of proof out there on the Interweb (best source I've found so far is some Esquire archive, but you'll have to Google it to find it), but here's just something recent from the New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/printables/shouts/050613sh_shouts

Oh, p.s. Looks like the bastards at Esquire want you to pay for archived content, either by subscribing to Keep Media or their magazine.

p.p.s. I guess that's fair, after all, since they have to pay contributors. I take it back: everyone at Esquire is the offspring of married parents. I'm just cranky.

p.p.p.s. I'm hungry, that's why. I'm gonna go make risotto.

Smooches!

This won't come as a surprise to about .... hm.... a little over a dozen men out in the world somewhere (geez, only a dozen?! surely I'm forgetting someone! maaaan, I am lame!), but I am part "expert" kisser and part "flirty" kisser. Hey, the kissing test says so, people, and tests don't lie....

Rest in peace, Peter

Nearly 20 years ago, as the freshman editor-in-chief of my itty-bitty college newspaper, I got to have dinner with Peter Jennings and his then-wife, Kati Marton, who had attended Wells for a couple of years and was consequently claimed as an alumna for reasons I can't fathom (no, she didn't graduate from the college -- I wonder where she ended up -- maybe Barnard or somewhere with a bigger name). (GWU, as it turns out; interesting. Also interesting is that she's now married to Richard Holbrooke. Power must be an aphrodisiac. But I digress. What else is new?)

Peter had been the anchorman of choice in my house during high school, and I had a bit of a raving crush on him and his crazy Canadian accent. I admired him tremendously, not least because he was a self-made and self-educated man, like my father. At the time, toodling my way through freshman year, I thought I'd like to be a television reporter and eventual anchorwoman, myself. Back home, on local access cable, I'd done the news from our high school, and someone had made the mistake of telling me I have a good voice and excellent diction. Ah, the dreams of youth.

In any event, my position as editor of the newspaper got me an invitation to dinner at the college president's mansion in Aurora, with about 3 other students, all of whom were seniors and English majors with internships in journalism, where they wanted to end up, professionally. I got to sit next to Peter, somehow, and managed to mostly keep my mouth from hanging open in awe, concentrating on listening and asking not-too-unintelligent questions about his career and his experiences. He talked about being a foreign correspondent vs. anchorman, and about writing his own copy, and about regretting not having finished any formal education, and about his wife's books and how much he admired the human rights work she was doing. A truly nice guy, witty, kind, and warm; I was privileged to meet him, and I'm terribly sad that he has died so soon.
"Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince,

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!"

Rest in peace, Peter.

In the words of my mother....

...who may be a pain in my ass sometimes but is nevertheless very very smart and very funny: "Donne-moi une fucking break."

Didja see this nonsense??? Sending Al Sharpton anywhere to promote racial harmony is kinda like sending a megatonne of kerosene to put out a fire. Two words, friends, Tawanna Brawley. Google it. It's basically the repulsive and hateful story of how the "Reverend" (GAG ME) Sharpton put a teenaged girl up to a false story of rape and assault, and pursued it so far as to ruin the careers and possibly the lives of several innocent people. For which, mind you, Mr. Sharpton has never apologized or done any more to make amends than the courts in New York State have made him do. He is utterly without shame, scruple, or soul, and his ascent to the national stage of the DNC is almost enough to make me switch teams. (No, no, I'm not talking about that team, goofballs. Other side of the political fence.) (Note that I say almost. If his candidacy ever amounts to anything, I'm going to give a lot of money to whatever forces assemble to defeat him and air the specter of what he did.) He's so disgusting that the deliberate failure of some people in public life whom I otherwise respect and admire to completely disavow him poisons the whole Left, and moderates as well. Al Sharpton: Hypocrite. Anti-Semite. Inciter. Hater. Despicable toad. Odious pustule. Can you tell that I detest Al? I know sometimes it's hard to decipher my cagey metaphors and whatnot, but you're a good reader, so you'll give it a whirl. Thanks for the effort. Kiss, kiss.