I Heart DC

Big Purse, Potentially Big Belly

2005-05-25T13:34:00.000-05:00

On any given day, my purse weighs as much as a small human. I am convinced there is a reason for this. And the reason can’t possibly be that I actually think I might, on any given day, need in my possession, just in case: hand lotion, extra bandages, a spare set of keys, underwear, planner, every membership/discount card I own, my wallet, my phone, my makeup and 9 packs of gum. Oh and 3 different lip glosses and Advil.

No. It is just silly to think that I truly believe that I might need these things on my person at all times. There has to be something bigger at play when I frantically tear apart my purse, wondering why it’s always SO heavy and what am I keeping in there that I can take out and not miss and then not end up taking out ANYTHING b/c I “need” it all.

I’ll tell you what’s at play. It’s my goddamn biological clock. Yeah, that’s right. My instinct to never pare down my purse to the bare minimum has nothing to do with needing what’s in it and everything to do with my body getting ready to have a baby. My heavy, overloaded purse is a direct result of my subconscious wanting me to carry shit around so I get used to heaving a load (ie child on my hip) and being responsible for a million things (ie motherhood).

I mean, what the hell other theory can you think of? Women are high maintenance, but we are not so high maintenance that we need to fill our small-human sized purses to capacity. No, sir. We don’t need all the junk we carry. We’re just getting ready to carry your kid.

I’ll stick with my purse for now, though, thank you.

Just a thought…

2005-05-23T16:05:00.000-05:00

About how many times a day would you say that you ask someone “how are you?” and instead of answering you, they say the same thing back? Doesn’t happen every single time, but I’m beginning to notice I have a lot of open-ended hi-how-are-you’s floating around out there…

Now THIS Is Public Art

2005-05-19T12:55:00.000-05:00

No CPAs here

I Love This Article...

2005-05-18T13:20:00.000-05:00

Men, read up and take note. Women, don't let the orgasm become extinct!

May 17, 2005
A Critic Takes On the Logic of Female Orgasm
By DINITIA SMITH
Evolutionary scientists have never had difficulty explaining the male orgasm, closely tied as it is to reproduction.

But the Darwinian logic behind the female orgasm has remained elusive. Women can have sexual intercourse and even become pregnant - doing their part for the perpetuation of the species - without experiencing orgasm. So what is its evolutionary purpose?

Over the last four decades, scientists have come up with a variety of theories, arguing, for example, that orgasm encourages women to have sex and, therefore, reproduce or that it leads women to favor stronger and healthier men, maximizing their offspring's chances of survival.

But in a new book, Dr. Elisabeth A. Lloyd, a philosopher of science and professor of biology at Indiana University, takes on 20 leading theories and finds them wanting. The female orgasm, she argues in the book, "The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution," has no evolutionary function at all.

Rather, Dr. Lloyd says the most convincing theory is one put forward in 1979 by Dr. Donald Symons, an anthropologist.

That theory holds that female orgasms are simply artifacts - a byproduct of the parallel development of male and female embryos in the first eight or nine weeks of life.

In that early period, the nerve and tissue pathways are laid down for various reflexes, including the orgasm, Dr. Lloyd said. As development progresses, male hormones saturate the embryo, and sexuality is defined.

In boys, the penis develops, along with the potential to have orgasms and ejaculate, while "females get the nerve pathways for orgasm by initially having the same body plan."

Nipples in men are similarly vestigial, Dr. Lloyd pointed out.

While nipples in woman serve a purpose, male nipples appear to be simply left over from the initial stage of embryonic development.

The female orgasm, she said, "is for fun."

Dr. Lloyd said scientists had insisted on finding an evolutionary function for female orgasm in humans either because they were invested in believing that women's sexuality must exactly parallel that of men or because they were convinced that all traits had to be "adaptations," that is, serve an evolutionary function.

Theories of female orgasm are significant, she added, because "men's expectations about women's normal sexuality, about how women should perform, are built around these notions."

"And men are the ones who reflect back immediately to the woman whether or not she is adequate sexually," Dr. Lloyd continued.

Central to her thesis is the fact that women do not routinely have orgasms during sexual intercourse.

She analyzed 32 studies, conducted over 74 years, of the frequency of female orgasm during intercourse.

When intercourse was "unassisted," that is not accompanied by stimulation of the clitoris, just a quarter of the women studied experienced orgasms often or very often during intercourse, she found.

Five to 10 percent never had orgasms. Yet many of the women became pregnant.

Dr. Lloyd's figures are lower than those of Dr. Alfred A. Kinsey, who in his 1953 book "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female" found that 39 to 47 percent of women reported that they always, or almost always, had orgasm during intercourse.

But Kinsey, Dr. Lloyd said, included orgasms assisted by clitoral stimulation.

Dr. Lloyd said there was no doubt in her mind that the clitoris was an evolutionary adaptation, selected to create excitement, leading to sexual intercourse and then reproduction.

But, "without a link to fertility or reproduction," Dr. Lloyd said, "orgasm cannot be an adaptation."

Not everyone agrees. For example, Dr. John Alcock, a professor of biology at Arizona State University, criticized an earlier version of Dr. Lloyd's thesis, discussed in in a 1987 article by Stephen Jay Gould in the magazine Natural History.

In a phone interview, Dr. Alcock said that he had not read her new book, but that he still maintained the hypothesis that the fact that "orgasm doesn't occur every time a woman has intercourse is not evidence that it's not adaptive."

"I'm flabbergasted by the notion that orgasm has to happen every time to be adaptive," he added.

Dr. Alcock theorized that a woman might use orgasm "as an unconscious way to evaluate the quality of the male," his genetic fitness and, thus, how suitable he would be as a father for her offspring.

"Under those circumstances, you wouldn't expect her to have it every time," Dr. Alcock said.

Among the theories that Dr. Lloyd addresses in her book is one proposed in 1993, by Dr. R. Robin Baker and Dr. Mark A. Bellis, at Manchester University in England. In two papers published in the journal Animal Behaviour, they argued that female orgasm was a way of manipulating the retention of sperm by creating suction in the uterus. When a woman has an orgasm from one minute before the man ejaculates to 45 minutes after, she retains more sperm, they said.

Furthermore, they asserted, when a woman has intercourse with a man other than her regular sexual partner, she is more likely to have an orgasm in that prime time span and thus retain more sperm, presumably making conception more likely. They postulated that women seek other partners in an effort to obtain better genes for their offspring.

Dr. Lloyd said the Baker-Bellis argument was "fatally flawed because their sample size is too small."

"In one table," she said, "73 percent of the data is based on the experience of one person."

In an e-mail message recently, Dr. Baker wrote that his and Dr. Bellis's manuscript had "received intense peer review appraisal" before publication. Statisticians were among the reviewers, he said, and they noted that some sample sizes were small, "but considered that none of these were fatal to our paper."

Dr. Lloyd said that studies called into question the logic of such theories. Research by Dr. Ludwig Wildt and his colleagues at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany in 1998, for example, found that in a healthy woman the uterus undergoes peristaltic contractions throughout the day in the absence of sexual intercourse or orgasm. This casts doubt, Dr. Lloyd argues, on the idea that the contractions of orgasm somehow affect sperm retention.

Another hypothesis, proposed in 1995 by Dr. Randy Thornhill, a professor of biology at the University of New Mexico and two colleagues, held that women were more likely to have orgasms during intercourse with men with symmetrical physical features. On the basis of earlier studies of physical attraction, Dr. Thornhill argued that symmetry might be an indicator of genetic fitness.

Dr. Lloyd, however, said those conclusions were not viable because "they only cover a minority of women, 45 percent, who say they sometimes do, and sometimes don't, have orgasm during intercourse."

"It excludes women on either end of the spectrum," she said. "The 25 percent who say they almost always have orgasm in intercourse and the 30 percent who say they rarely or never do. And that last 30 percent includes the 10 percent who say they never have orgasm under any circumstances."

In a phone interview, Dr. Thornhill said that he had not read Dr. Lloyd's book but the fact that not all women have orgasms during intercourse supports his theory.

"There will be patterns in orgasm with preferred and not preferred men," he said.

Dr. Lloyd also criticized work by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, an emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of California, Davis, who studies primate behavior and female reproductive strategies.

Scientists have documented that orgasm occurs in some female primates; for other mammals, whether orgasm occurs remains an open question.

In the 1981 book "The Woman That Never Evolved" and in her other work, Dr. Hrdy argues that orgasm evolved in nonhuman primates as a way for the female to protect her offspring from the depredation of males.

She points out that langur monkeys have a high infant mortality rate, with 30 percent of deaths a result of babies' being killed by males who are not the fathers. Male langurs, she says, will not kill the babies of females they have mated with.

In macaques and chimpanzees, she said, females are conditioned by the pleasurable sensations of clitoral stimulation to keep copulating with multiple partners until they have an orgasm. Thus, males do not know which infants are theirs and which are not and do not attack them.

Dr. Hrdy also argues against the idea that female orgasm is an artifact of the early parallel development of male and female embryos.

"I'm convinced," she said, "that the selection of the clitoris is quite separate from that of the penis in males."

In critiquing Dr. Hrdy's view, Dr. Lloyd disputes the idea that longer periods of sexual intercourse lead to a higher incidence of orgasm, something that if it is true, may provide an evolutionary rationale for female orgasm.

But Dr. Hrdy said her work did not speak one way or another to the issue of female orgasm in humans. "My hypothesis is silent," she said.

One possibility, Dr. Hrdy said, is that orgasm in women may have been an adaptive trait in our prehuman ancestors.

"But we separated from our common primate ancestors about seven million years ago," she said.

"Perhaps the reason orgasm is so erratic is that it's phasing out," Dr. Hrdy said. "Our descendants on the starships may well wonder what all the fuss was about."

Western culture is suffused with images of women's sexuality, of women in the throes of orgasm during intercourse and seeming to reach heights of pleasure that are rare, if not impossible, for most women in everyday life.

"Accounts of our evolutionary past tell us how the various parts of our body should function," Dr. Lloyd said.

If women, she said, are told that it is "natural" to have orgasms every time they have intercourse and that orgasms will help make them pregnant, then they feel inadequate or inferior or abnormal when they do not achieve it.

"Getting the evolutionary story straight has potentially very large social and personal consequences for all women," Dr. Lloyd said. "And indirectly for men, as well."

Chew on This

2005-05-12T12:40:00.000-05:00

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things . Among them are ... a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid ."

–President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954

Top Ten Identical Crappy Public Art Molds Painted By the Less-Than-Talented That I’d Actually Like To See Sprinkled Throughout DC

2005-05-12T09:41:00.000-05:00

As promised…

#10. Hanging chads with big, yellow Wal-Martesque “Roll Back Guy” smiley faces
#9. Chickens wearing “I Heart DC” shirts giving some semblance of a thumbs-up
#8. Small, errant planes flying through restricted Capitol airspace
#7. Replicas of frantic, screaming staffers running away from the small, errant planes
#6. A seated Dick Cheney, whom at least one artist will hopefully paint to resemble Santa Claus so we can call him “Jolly Old St. Dick”
#5. Likenesses of George W. Bush in his Yale cheerleading days. He’ll be holding blank signs that the artists can paint cheers on, such as “Let Them Eat Cake!” and “Rove is a Genius!”
#4. Unicorns. What? They make as much sense as the flippin’ piggybanks!
#3. Underpaid, under-stimulated, yet overworked Congressional staffer molds
#2. Republican interns wearing bow-ties. But these wouldn’t be ceramic molds, they’d be real people. We’re gonna round ‘em up and tie ‘em down to the street corners, rip off their bow-ties and paint their faces Democrat-blue. That ought to teach them.
#1. None.

Lunchtime Evacuation Bonanza

2005-05-11T12:07:00.000-05:00

I’ve been through lots of fire drills, fake evacuations and the whatnot. Part of my daily life here at the Capitol. And I joke about how they’re dumb and a waste of my time, and I especially bitch when the weather isn’t nice.

I must say, though, today’s little exercise was a bit scary. Errant plane flew through our air space (um, HIGHLY illegal), close enough that I heard it fly right over our office building and, without a second thought or even so much as a “sigh-not-another-evacuation”, I grabbed my purse and ran for my life right as the “get out of the friggin’ building” announcement came on.

Well, maybe I wasn’t THAT scared, but lemme tell you, I was a bit freaked out. I’ve never seen so many people evacuate so many buildings in so little time. And so once we got out, we all moved as a swarm as far south away from the Capitol complex as we could…and we then became what I thought was a fantastic, big, friggin’ moving target. Man, if you were a rouge plane setting out to target buildings, why the fuck not target the shit out of the crowds of thousands of people below you instead? Just a thought. Not that I want it to happen that way, but seriously, isn’t that a scary possibility?

To the pilots of all small, stupid personal planes…STOP FLYING THROUGH OUR AIRSPACE YOU’RE FUCKING UP MY WORKDAY AND GIVING MY MOM A HEART ATTACK.

P.S. My number one concern, once sufficiently far from the Capitol, was to find a public restroom. Man, did I have to pee.

In a city full of ackronyms, I call this CPA for "Crappy Public Art"

2005-05-10T09:42:00.000-05:00

Say it isn’t fucking so.

When Washington DC commissioned “Party Animals” a couple years ago, it was *cute*. Lots of donkeys and elephants cropped up all over DC and, again, it was *cute*. Cute because they spoke fairly well to the city, that is to say, they fit in and made sense. DC revolves around politics (a statement from the “no shit” files) so if DC had to plop non-controversial art intended for both the art and the not-art inclined all around town, the donkeys and elephants weren’t a terrible idea.

Then came last year’s pandas. The pandas were, at best, a stretch. A stretch to both symbolize the city and an even bigger stretch to qualify even as cute public art. Mostly, the pandas were devoid of both symbolism and artistic value. You see, we have this zoo here in DC. It’s the National Zoo, the taxpayer’s zoo, and boy let me tell you, does it ever look like a taxpayer-funded zoo. Think of scrawny, dying animals in small patches of grass that struggle to even come close to resembling what a natural habitat might look like. That’s our zoo. And in this zoo, we have a couple pandas, which from what I hear are more in need of hormone therapy than they are publicity seeing as how their keepers are usually trying to make them have sex and produce babies and have only recently succeeded after just a whole lot of hubabalub.

In any case, not too long ago, someone had the bright idea that a good idea for public art that would be both universally palatable and symbolic of the city would be PANDAS. Right. Even some of us in DC had to take a few moments to figure out why the fuck our democratic city was suddenly riddled with an animal most well-know for inhabiting communist nations. Oh right, the zoo. We forgot.

So DC became infested with Pandamania last summer. Pandas here, pandas there, pandas fucking everywhere. My favorite was “Pandragon”, a little guy I liked to call “Puff the Magic Panda who lives by the underpass”. He had scales, dragon details and looked like he was painted by color-blind third graders armed with buckets of fuchsia and hot green paint. He was *crappy* at best, as were the rest of his minions that littered my beautiful city.

And, alas, DC did not learn its lesson in its last go-round with meaningless public panda art. The city is at it again this summer and this third-part, in what I can only hope is a three-part series, is…if this is even possible…worse than the pandas.

Ready for this? Piggybanks.

I’ll say it again. Piggybanks.

Remind me again of when piggybanks ever made for good public art? Maybe if there was one, larger than life, symbolically painted piggybank in the world, that might be cool. You could even place it somewhere like Wall Street, ya know, somewhere that’s considered a financial institution? But how about dozens of piggybanks all over the streets of a city that exists for the sole purpose of doing anything BUT saving money.

And get this. This time these things actually ARE painted by grade schoolers. No joke. Maybe, in light of this fact, I should be a little more sympathetic. They’re supposedly part of a Stash Your Cash campaign. And I quote…

Stash Your Cash teaches Middle School students hands on lessons in money management through their schools. The piggybanks will promote awareness of the campaign and will create public art throughout Washington, DC.

Well, fucking great. Stash your cash all you want, but keep your piggybanks in your classrooms! Who are they kidding? Subjecting the residents and tourists of DC to shitty public art is somehow going to remind students to save money? How about a class on what it’s like to go bankrupt instead? Or a crash course in what it means to sell your first-born to MBNA?

Please, I beg of you, if anyone on the city council is reading this blog, for the love of all that is Holy, if we MUST do public art again in the future can we PLEASE commission actual artists and give them a theme to run with instead of handing out ceramic molds of cutesy fucking animals and packages of Crayola crayons?

OR. If we must hand out identical ceramic molds, can we at least make it something that speaks more to the city than piggybanks, kind of along the lines of the former display of “party animals”? Hold that thought. We’ll blog it tomorrow…

Let's Not Forget I Subjected Myself To This

2005-05-09T13:30:00.000-05:00

Ack. That’s pretty much how I feel everyday when I wake up. Ack.

In 12 days, I’m going to be taking the GMAT (ack), that lovely standardized test I’ve been sporadically complaining about in this blog since about freakin’ January. You know, the Diet Zing test (ack)?

And wouldn’t you know it, motherf---er, I am STILL struggling to do (forget “do well”) the math on this test??!! Where is my Math Is Hard Barbie when I need her? I’m going to bring her along on my business school interviews and let her do the talking when they ask me why I can’t perform simple addition, subtraction and DATA SUFFICIENY PERMUTATION EQUATIONS. Ack.

Seriously, how can one keep up a proper blog when one is consumed by geometry formulas that dance in one’s head like an evil, jitterbug nightmare from which you can’t wake up?

I’m going to go douse myself in cold water and come back and write something entertaining. Maybe.

Lower Living Standards, Everyday

2005-05-04T11:14:00.000-05:00

Lovely article about Wal-Mart’s race to the bottom today. The company that rakes in about $10 billion in profit on about $288 billion in revenue that barely pays its employees enough to make it over the poverty line…

“Wal-Mart says its full-time workers average $9.68 an hour, and with many of them working 35 hours a week, their annual pay comes to around $17,600. That is below the $19,157 poverty line for a family of four, but above the $15,219 line for a family of three.”

The big shots at Wal-Mart think everything is peachy, though. Said one of the big guys, “if Wal-Mart were as greedy as its detractors say, it would never have attracted 8,000 job applicants for 525 places at a new store in Glendale, Ariz., or 3,000 applicants for 300 jobs in outlying Los Angeles.”

RIGHT! Um, hey buddy. Have you looked at unemployment figures and economic indicators lately? No one has JOBS. Of course they’re going to line up to get one of your crappy jobs. Sure as hell beats sitting at home with NO job, but that STILL doesn’t make it cool for you to pay these “lucky” employed souls like they’re a flippin’ bunch of Oliver Twists.

One more quote from the article…referencing the fact that in the heydays of Ford and GM (ie when they were our nation’s largest employers), they engaged in a race to the top…

"Henry Ford made sure he paid his workers enough so that they could afford to buy his cars," said William McDonough, executive vice president of the United Food and Commercial Workers union. "Wal-Mart is doing the polar opposite of Henry Ford. Wal-Mart brags about how its low prices help poor Americans, but its low wages are helping increase the number of Americans in poverty."

Think Anyone Was Waiting With Handguns and Ropes When Great Grandma McBride Came Over??

2005-05-03T11:26:00.000-05:00

http://www.minuteman-project.com/

In case you haven’t heard, there is a “Minute Man Project” going on along our border and has been for about a month or so now. Essentially, a bunch of angry, ignorant white men have gathered to do the job of our border patrol, except in reality, they’re just being annoying and hateful and hindering the job that actual trained and salaried law enforcement officers are there to do.

You have to really hate Mexicans to sit in the burning Arizona desert with binoculars waiting to catch people who are coming over to try and find work because their families are starving to death on the other side of the border because our country’s fucked up trade and economic policies are fucking up their country’s ability to provide stable, living wages for its citizens. Are they trying to come across undocumented? Yes they are. Is that technically illegal? Yes it is. But does this country tend to overlook a lot of this “illegality” because we depend on the undocumenteds’ sweat equity because we’re too lazy and self-righteous to mow lawns and wash dishes ourselves? Yes we do.

Good luck to you all. Wear SPF 30 and a hat.

Top Ten Reasons I’ve Been Absent From This Blog

2005-05-02T13:26:00.000-05:00

10. Too busy trying to become a pinch-juror in the Micheal Jackson trial

9. Got cold feet, said ‘fuck this blog’, and ran away to Vegas

8. Tried to fight the trite-ness of having a “BLOG” by starting a “GOLB” but it failed miserably because BLOGs are posted on the Internet, which means GOLBs would have to be posted on the Tenretni, of which there is none

7. Spent too much time over the past few weeks trying to figure out how to spell “Internet” backwards

6. Spent countless hours scratching my head and wondering if this headline “For Blair, Iraq Issue Just Won't Go Away” could have been re-written as “When You Participate in an Arbitrary War, You Might Make Some People Mad For Quite Some Time”

5. Spent weeks leading up to the Pope’s death preparing to become the next Holy-See, only to have my dreams shot the first day of the conclave when they told me I lacked the essential components of 1). Being Catholic and 2). Having a penis

4. Got cold feet, said ‘fuck this blog’, and ran away to the Barbados, which I hear is much nicer than Vegas

3. Ran for Congress, lost, and then remembered I worked for Congress, making it a double-loss

2. Busy running statistical analysis as to who would still be reading this post by Reason Number 2

1. Got cold feet, said ‘fuck this blog’, and started work on my own Chicken Calendar

And Then There's This...

2005-04-29T14:43:00.000-05:00

If it was a taco, would it have been as scary?

"We've trained for incidents just like this" -- Clovis, NM, Police Sgt. Jim Schoeffel on locking down a junior high because of a suspciously-wrapped 30-inch burrito (Clovis News Journal).

You Really Did Learn Everything You need to Know in Kindergarten

2005-04-29T14:36:00.000-05:00

Well, I'll be damned. Someone finally came up with a sane-fucking-way of doing business.

Rock, paper, scissors

Busy Bee

2005-04-28T14:51:00.000-05:00

Too busy to post, ie too busy for you!

But not too busy to pass this along...
http://www.blackpeopleloveus.com

How Cute, They Went on a Man-Date

2005-04-26T12:04:00.000-05:00

I wanna hold your hand...

Nothing to wake you up out of a blogging slump like a little man on man action. Like I could resist commenting on the fact that Bush and the Saudi Crown prince were photographed walking hand-in-hand around the President’s Texas ranch yesterday.

What is this? Just another day in paradise? A stroll through Oz? A dare? A double-dare?

I, for one, sincerely hope that this egregious display of “I heart you” served a big, freakin’ purpose…like the lowering of gas prices by about $1.50. I’m all about seeing those prices at the pump drop back down to the $0.89 point that it was at back in the day when I got my license. Free my wallet!

I Can't Seem To Locate My Rosary Beads

2005-04-19T15:36:00.000-05:00

Congrats to the new Pope Eggs Benedict.

Now let’s get down to business and find out what is going to be added to the list of sins.

Glance at this for a moment:
“On Monday, Ratzinger, who was the powerful dean of the College of Cardinals, used his homily at the Mass dedicated to electing the next pope to warn the faithful about tendencies that he considered dangers to the faith: sects, ideologies like Marxism, liberalism, atheism, agnosticism and relativism - the ideology that there are no absolute truths.”

Whoa! Liberalism is on par with atheism and agnosticism?? I mean, we all knew it was a bit Marxist, so that comes as no surprise, but hot damn, did you know it was as bad as not believing in God??? Somebody get me some Holy water because I’m already on fire!

Hmm. Question for you Eggs Benedict:

Is being a liberal as bad as being a compulsory Nazi? I mean, I know you “had” to join and all seeing as it was “mandated” on consequence of death by your government, but for a future Holy See, I would have expected better. Perhaps, you could have been a conscientious objector? Ok, ok, I know it was the Third Reich and, thus, the excuse probably wouldn’t have flown, but perhaps a man destined to be Pope shouldn’t be Pope if he wasn’t willing to die for what he knew was the righteous path. Oh wait. I forgot. You hate Jews. My bad.

Alas, I leave you with this. Pope Benedict XVI spent more time in the Hitler Youth than Bush spent in the National Guard.

Excuse Me While I Have Your Child

2005-04-19T09:29:00.000-05:00

Have you heard the latest in the fight to send women back to the kitchen? Well, it’s not really breaking news, it’s actually been going on for quite a while, it’s just only now making the front page.

So, here’s the scoop. Around the country, legislators are pushing laws that would explicitly grant pharmacists the right to refuse to dispense drugs related to contraception or abortion on moral grounds.

In plain English, reactionary old white men in the state capitals are looking to make it legal for pharmacists to deny women the morning-after pill if the pharmacist is morally opposed to it.

Huh?

Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t this essentially the basic equivalent of allowing McDonald’s workers who don’t eat meat the ability to deny you a Big Mac if you order it from them at the register? I mean, both are based on the principle that one said person does not believe in your right to end the life of one mammal or another.

This is all so stupid that I can’t muster any sarcastic energy to comment anymore than I already have.

Why don't you try being pregnant, homeboy?

What Has Microsoft Done For Me Lately??

2005-04-15T11:53:00.000-05:00

There are a lot of reasons to love Ipods. I have my own.

Have you noticed that now that Ipods have become so mainstream that it also has become mainstream for adults to walk around with headphones on? I mean, I’m the type of person who can’t go anywhere without music. I just get too freakin' bored walking around. So I’ve always been one to strap on the headphones, formerly attached to my clunky discman, and before that, my walkman (remember cassette tapes?????).

Anyway, back in the day before Ipods, my headphones-in-the-ears-in-public look wasn’t taken to all that well. Essentially, it put me in the ranks of one of those damn kids and their music. God forbid I walked into a store before removing the headphones. I was immediately thrown to the wolves. Clearly, I was a chick too young to actually buy anything in the store and should probably be watched so I wouldn’t shoplift.

But thanks to the brilliant nerds at Apple, it’s not so uncouth anymore for me to bounce around town listening to music. Over the past few months since Christmas, I have noticed more and more adults, business people, elderly people, etc with their ears attached to their Ipods. Christ, even President Bush has one. Finally, it’s become socially acceptable for people over the age of 17 to listen to music on the go.

So, thank you, Apple Computers, for making my little habit an acceptable norm. But more so, thank you, Apple Computers, for enabling us all to shut each other out just a little bit more. Now, I don’t have to be flat out rude when I’m standing in an elevator or a line and the guy next to me is lookin’ like he wants to engage me in some small talk. I no longer have to grunt and act uninterested, I just have to make sure he sees that I can’t hear him by flashing my little pod. And, best of all, I no longer have to help those damn tourists with directions. No one’s asking the girl with the Ipod blaring how to get the the metro. Yes, Apple, I love you for your genius portable music playing device. But I love you more for helping me shut out and shut up annoying strangers.

It's Not Easy Being Green

2005-04-14T11:42:00.000-05:00

And by green, I mean that I’m not a girl, but not yet a woman (PS, Brit is preggers).

Today I had a somewhat important, but certainly uber-professional event to attend for work at 8am in the House of Reps. So I got all dolled up in my “I’m a big girl now” suit, threw on the pearls, the conservative heels and the obligatory panty hose. I looked like a real businesswoman. Well, ok. I looked like a 23 year old in a room full of 35 and over year olds, but you get the point. I looked like I kind of had the right to be there.

Until I turned around and saw a run in my stockings that went from my heel to the back of my knee and was, in some spots, an inch wide. I went from business-like to playing-dress-up-in-mom’s-clothes in 2 seconds flat.

Ya know, everyone has their own ways of defining the moment at which they’ve finally grown up. For some people, it’s getting their first job with benefits. For some, it’s buying a home, a car, a cat, whatever. Some people don’t feel all grown up til they get married and some take it even further and don’t feel they’ve hit the milestone til they have a kid.

Me? I’ve decided I can’t call myself an adult until I wear a pair of stockings without putting a hole or a run in them. Every fucking time I slap on a pair of those old-fashioned, putty-looking repressive devices, I wind up with either a hole in the toe or a run up my leg or snags every-fucking-where. What gives? Who knows. At any rate, according to the pantyhose barometer of life, I’m stuck at age 12.

How To Pull The Wool Over

2005-04-13T15:28:00.000-05:00

Step one: Make lots of money. LOTS of it. Do anything you can to make this money. Lie, cheat, steal, pay your workers shit, violate labor laws, exploit small children in factories overseas and drive every small business in your sight into the ground.

Step two: Take your money and do “nice stuff” with it. Run commercials with elderly people running around with big grins, chasing a little yellow face that just LOVES to roll-back prices. And sponsor shit. Little League teams, town fairs, community gatherings, it all works. And when it stops working so well, pull out the big guns. When people who other people actually listen to start criticizing you in a big and public way, shut them the hell up with your MONEY. It’s so fucking brilliant because it makes you look like our hero. Like you really care.

From the NYTimes

April 13, 2005

Wal-Mart Donates $35 Million for Conservation and Will Be Partner With Wildlife Group
By STEPHANIE STROM

Barely a week after environmentalists forged a broad alliance with organized labor and community groups to attack Wal-Mart and its business practices, the company announced Tuesday that it would donate $35 million over the next decade to an ambitious new conservation effort by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

The gift will be used to buy land or secure conservation easements, legal agreements limiting development on a piece of property to protect its ecological value. The land will consolidate existing nature preserves to protect larger areas from development and encroachment.

For instance, the purchase of two ranches spanning 1,200 acres will pull together 850,000 acres of protected lands from the Grand Canyon National Park in northern Arizona to Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah, home to one of the largest remaining stands of old-growth ponderosa pine and a sanctuary for California condors.

Some $6 million of the money will be spent on an agreement to protect 312,000 acres of contiguous land between 600,000 acres of protected land in New Brunswick, Canada, and 200,000 acres protected by the State of Maine. The purchase will create an area of roughly 1 million acres of protected land, with more than 50 lakes, 1,500 miles of rivers and streams and 54,000 acres of wetlands, home to 10 percent of Maine's famous loon population.

"I cannot overstate the importance of this," John Berry, the executive director of the foundation, said of the Maine agreement. "This is like a Noah's Ark for Eastern wildlife species, everything from big stuff like moose to frogs and salamanders."
The program created by Wal-Mart and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, called Acres for America, intends to acquire 138,000 acres eventually using Wal-Mart's gift, as much land as the company projects that its American stores, parking lots and supply centers will occupy in 10 years.

"It helps demonstrate that economic growth and development can go hand in hand with conservation," said Sarah Clark, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart, the nation's largest company.

Ms. Clark said the gift was probably the company's largest single grant to a nonprofit group. It will come directly from the company's coffers, unlike most of Wal-Mart's philanthropy, which is administered by its foundation.

The foundation distributed $170 million last year, Ms. Clark said.
She said that the foundation first proposed the grant a year ago and that the final agreement was signed in December, predating the formation of the coalition of Wal-Mart's opponents. The foundation is not part of the coalition.

Ms. Clark also said it was not Wal-Mart's only effort to improve the environment. In October, the company enrolled its transportation fleet in the Smartway Transport Partnership, a government program to increase energy efficiency and lower air pollution, and it is active in a program to improve the national parks.

"Last year, we recycled over 2.8 million tons of cardboard, 9,416 tons of plastic and 49 million disposable cameras," Ms. Clark said. Critics of Wal-Mart said they regarded the grant as a publicity stunt to burnish the company's image.

"Certainly, we welcome any contributions toward conservation," said Eric Olson, a representative for the Sierra Club's Challenge to Sprawl Campaign, which works on sprawl and transportation issues. "But we need to look at the totality of Wal-Mart's environmental record, and we can see over the last several years there have been millions of dollars in violations and penalties."

Mr. Olson said the company spent $8.6 million in civil penalties and settlement costs, including $3.1 million it paid in civil penalties within the last year to settle charges that it had violated the Clean Water Act in nine states.
Mr. Berry said Wal-Mart's contribution was by far the biggest the foundation, a nonprofit organization created by Congress 21 years ago to funnel federal grants to environmental groups, had ever received.

It is distributing Wal-Mart's money to three nonprofit groups - the Conservation Fund, the Deschutes Basin Land Trust and the Arkansas chapter of the Nature Conservancy - that have agreed to match Wal-Mart's donation with money they raise.

And You Thought Creed Sucked...

2005-04-12T12:41:00.000-05:00

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS? See HERE

I thought it was a joke, but it’s not. I thought the guy’s hair was bad, but then thought his jersey was worse. I thought the singing was terrible, but the lyrics trumped that. I thought the whole thing was cheesy at best, but two minutes into it when the USA wave came splashing onto the shore, I just didn’t know what the fuck to call it anymore.

Maybe I’ll call it George Bush’s America. Maybe Bush has this song on his ipod?

Dinner and a Movie

2005-04-11T10:34:00.000-05:00

Man Date

Honestly, what a funny article. It's the year 2005 and straight men still don't want to be seen together in public for fear of being labeled gay!

Slow News Day

2005-04-07T10:20:00.000-05:00

Jenna, you slut, you.

Butt Dance

Pope-apalooza

2005-04-05T14:03:00.000-05:00

Pope Fest. aka, the Pope’s funeral.

Be there. Everyone is doing it. Pope Fest is going to be like the freakin’ Oscars. A who’s who of the globe. Except we won’t give a crap what anyone will be wearing so long as Condi Rice doesn’t show up in her bitch boots (see here http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51640-2005Feb24.html).

Oh, the poor Pope. I would love to go on and on about what a decent man he is except I just can’t seem to separate him from misogyny. Yes, you heard me. The Pope hates women. Maybe he doesn’t hate them, but he sure doesn’t want their help running the Church and that’s just a nice way of saying “get back in the kitchen, honey pie”. Allowing priests to marry or letting women in the clergy? Oh dear. They might encourage “unholy sexual feelings” among the old boys club. Not good at all.

Um, like the Catholic clergy needs women to encourage unholy sexual feelings? Last I checked all they needed were choir boys.

Again, no hard feelings towards John Paul 2. If I said it once, I said it a million times: rest in peace, big guy. Please, just shine your heavenly light and all-but-in-the-bag sainthood on your successor and tell him it’s ok not to hate women. Oh and to cut the crap with that scary Opus Dei shit.

This Post Is Full Of Inappropriateness

2005-04-01T14:29:00.000-05:00

Raise your hand if you heard yesterday about the Pope’s urinary tract infection. Raise your hand if you heard that and thought to yourself that, really, it was just too much information. Raise your hand if you felt the pain of the likes of Wolf Blitzer who had to repeat over and over again that the Pope had a urinary tract infection.

I know that we live in the information age. I’m well aware that we can find out anything and everything that’s going on anywhere in the world at the drop of a hat. And I understand that through electronic communication, we can transmit vast amounts of data. But my god, people. I think we’re going a little too far with it all when we are telling the world that the Pope has a urinary tract infection. It’s like we all got diarrhea of the mouth when we got 24 hour news channels. Aren’t some things sacred??? I mean, and if anything was sacred, wouldn’t it be the Pope’s urinary tract?

And now, he’s dying for real. Poor guy. Sarcasm will cease for a moment out of respect. Rest in peace, big guy.

Oh and by the way, did anyone see the report yesterday that declared the WMD accusation “dead wrong”? Dead wrong. They used those actual words. Dead wrong.

I ask you: how often do you read government, scientific, academic, or any type of report that was not done by your 3rd grade brother in which someone declares something “dead wrong”? For the most part, I think for the sake of being professional, we tend to use phrases like “wholly inaccurate” or “completely unfounded” instead of using the colloquial “dead wrong”. So from this observation, I can only surmise this:

Bush and his cronies were so FUCKING wrong that this report wanted everyone to know just HOW FUCKING wrong they were and since “FUCKING wrong” contains an offensive swear word, they went with “dead wrong” and hoped you’d all be able to pick up the subtle message that what they meant was FUCKING wrong.

Lovely.

"Holy Crap" and "Holy Shit" Take on a Whole New Meaning

2005-03-30T14:09:00.000-05:00

I’m going to stop asking people what religion they practice and just start asking who they voted for in 2004.

Seriously, people, how and when did the extreme wing of the Christian faith seize power over politicians, politics and government in general...and who let them?????

Ya know, I used to have a problem with the Catholic Church. I thought it was a big, monstrous institution that truly was the opiate of its masses while its clergy were busy bucking any and all of their own preachings. Don’t have sex before marriage, but excuse me while I sodomize your son. Give to the poor, and while you’re at it, line our pockets, too. Be good to thy neighbor, and please step aside while we conquer and kill your heathen-istic people. And don’t get me started on saints and confessionals.

But I’ve come to realize that the Catholic Church is child’s play compared to the nutcase arm of the Protestant Church. It’s fine to be a nutcase, really it is. But it’s another thing when you’re nutcasing yourself into everyone else’s life, particularly those who don’t share your views. At all.

But, alas, I guess therein lies the problem. Isn’t the whole point of religion to shove your beliefs down everyone else’s throats? I think some might argue that the point is to worship God and lead a holy life, but to that, I say, you’re obviously just one of the suckers spreading the word while the other guy is reaping the rewards of your work.

Could I Have Said It Better?

2005-03-30T09:43:00.000-05:00

Well, I might not have been as mean. This is a tasty treat for your reading delight...

Man, Working on the Hill Is Lame Sometimes

Playing The Odds

2005-03-27T17:57:00.000-05:00

Happy Easter. I do believe today is Jesus's birthday. Just kidding. It's his Bar Mitzvah.

I'm home in Albany for this joyous holiday. I haven't really done much of anything aside from eat, sleep and shop. I was oh-so-excited to leave DC for these few days and escape all the political bullshit, but son of a gun, wouldn't you know it followed me up here? I really and sincerely wanted to leave Schiavo-maddness for just a little bit. But that's asking too much, I guess. My mother, god bless her, just asked me to create a LIVING WILL. And I quote, "Don't you want to decide if you want to be a vegetable or not??"

For the love of Christ (happy coming of age, by the way, big guy!), I have to say that I really don't give two hoots about weighing in on my potential vegetableness. I care so little, in fact, that when my mom gives me the paperwork, here's what I'm going to dictate:

INSTRUCTIONS ON REMOVING OR NOT REMOVING MY FEEDING TUBE

1. Everyone gather round my bed
2. Breakout a shiny new penny
3. Flip it
4. Heads I win, tails you lose

I hope these directives are specific enough for you all.

This Guy Is Dead On

2005-03-24T11:48:00.000-05:00

Had enough of Schiavo yet? Here's a good take on the real issue at stake, which is not this woman's feeding tube, but rather the force feeding of religion to the American public all in the name of getting what you want politically. Gah.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/27/arts/27Rich.html?8hpib

Vegetative State of Mind

2005-03-23T14:59:00.000-05:00

By show of hands, is Terri Schiavo not the most brilliant way to eclipse the war in Iraq that the Republicans have come up with so far?

I mean, I think they even succeeded in relegating news from Iraq to the ticker at the bottom of the screen. You know, the little bar born of September 11th that has since become a great way for us all to keep up to date on important things like Woody Allen’s birthday and on-this-date-in-1884-the–United-States-invented-NASCAR? Seriously, I think it’s been a week since I heard a member of the news media say the “I” word out loud.

Ya know, I wish Congress would legislate on my behalf once in a while. Fuck, Terri Schiavo doesn’t even work here and they’re pulling strings for her. What about me? I toil day in and day out for these assholes and they can’t throw me a bone in the form of a Public Law??

I Could Have Used Some of These Simple Men While I Was Moving

2005-03-22T11:39:00.000-05:00

I moved this past weekend. What a bitch. I have bruises on my legs worthy of battered woman status. I pulled muscles I didn't even know I had. It was fantastic, I can't wait to do it again.

So the NYTimes reported on a scientific study today that proves that women actually are just that much cooler than men. We women have, of course, known this for quite some time, but as usual, we will let you men feel cool for having "discovered" it.

X-celling Over Men
By MAUREEN DOWD

Men are always telling me not to generalize about them.

But a startling new study shows that science is backing me up here.

Research published last week in the journal Nature reveals that women are genetically more complex than scientists ever imagined, while men remain the simple creatures they appear.

"Alas," said one of the authors of the study, the Duke University genome expert Huntington Willard, "genetically speaking, if you've met one man, you've met them all. We are, I hate to say it, predictable. You can't say that about women. Men and women are farther apart than we ever knew. It's not Mars or Venus. It's Mars or Venus, Pluto, Jupiter and who knows what other planets."

Women are not only more different from men than we knew. Women are more different from each other than we knew - creatures of "infinite variety," as Shakespeare wrote.

"We poor men only have 45 chromosomes to do our work with because our 46th is the pathetic Y that has only a few genes which operate below the waist and above the knees," Dr. Willard observed. "In contrast, we now know that women have the full 46 chromosomes that they're getting work from and the 46th is a second X that is working at levels greater than we knew."

Dr. Willard and his co-author, Laura Carrel, a molecular biologist at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, think that their discovery may help explain why the behavior and traits of men and women are so different; they may be hard-wired in the brain, in addition to being hormonal or cultural.

So is Lawrence Summers right after all? "Only time will tell," Dr. Willard laughs.

The researchers learned that a whopping 15 percent - 200 to 300 - of the genes on the second X chromosome in women, thought to be submissive and inert, lolling about on an evolutionary Victorian fainting couch, are active, giving women a significant increase in gene expression over men.

As the Times science reporter Nicholas Wade, who is writing a book about human evolution and genetics, explained it to me: "Women are mosaics, one could even say chimeras, in the sense that they are made up of two different kinds of cell. Whereas men are pure and uncomplicated, being made of just a single kind of cell throughout."

This means men's generalizations about women are correct, too. Women are inscrutable, changeable, crafty, idiosyncratic, a different species.

"Women's chromosomes have more complexity, which men view as unpredictability," said David Page, a molecular biologist and expert on sex evolution at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass.

Known as Mr. Y, Dr. P calls himself "the defender of the rotting Y chromosome." He's referring to studies showing that the Y chromosome has been shedding genes willy-nilly for millions of years and is now a fraction of the size of its partner, the X chromosome. "The Y married up," he notes. "The X married down."

Size matters, so some experts have suggested that in 10 million years or even much sooner - 100,000 years - men could disappear, taking Maxim magazine, March Madness and cold pizza in the morning with them.

Dr. Page drolly conjures up a picture of the Y chromosome as "a slovenly beast," sitting in his favorite armchair, surrounded by the litter of old fast food takeout boxes.

"The Y wants to maintain himself but doesn't know how," he said. "He's falling apart, like the guy who can't manage to get a doctor's appointment or can't clean up the house or apartment unless his wife does it.

"I prefer to think of the Y as persevering and noble, not as the Rodney Dangerfield of the human genome."

Dr. Page says the Y - a refuge throughout evolution for any gene that is good for males and/or bad for females - has become "a mirror, a metaphor, a blank slate on which you can write anything you want to think about males." It has inspired cartoon gene maps that show the belching gene, the inability-to-remember-birthdays-and-anniversaries gene, the fascination-with-spiders-and-reptiles gene, the selective-hearing-loss-"Huh" gene, the inability-to-express-affection-on-the-phone gene.

The discovery about women's superior gene expression may answer the age-old question about why men have trouble expressing themselves: because their genes do

Even If I Don't Go To Church, This Makes Sense

2005-03-11T16:10:00.000-05:00

Immorality of the Bush Budget

By Jim Wallis, AlterNet
Posted on March 9, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/21426/

The biblical prophets frequently spoke to kings and rulers. They spoke to "the nations," and the powerful were most often their target audience; those in charge were the ones called to greatest accountability. The Hebrew prophets usually spoke for the dispossessed, widows and orphans (read poor single moms), the hungry, the homeless, the helpless, the least, last, and lost. They spoke to a nation's priorities.

Budgets are moral documents. They reflect the values and priorities of a family, church, organization, city, state, or nation. They tell us what is most valued to those making the budget. It’s time to do a “values audit” of this budget, and a “moral audit” of our priorities. Who benefits in this budget and who suffers, who wins and who loses, what things are revealed as most important and what things are less important? America’s religious communities are required to ask of any budget, what happens to the poor and most vulnerable, especially the nation’s poorest children.

President Bush says that his 2006 budget "is a budget that sets priorities." Examining those priorities is a moral and religious concern. Just as we have "environmental impact studies," it’s time for a "poverty impact statement", which would ask the fundamental question of how policy proposals affect low-income people. Such a moral audit might reveal unacceptable priorities for many of us, including in the religious community where the president finds much of his political base. In a recent letter to the president, nearly 80 prominent evangelical leaders warned: “We know there will be powerful pressures, from some places, as you and the Congress work to reduce deficit spending, to cut even effective programs for poor people. We pray that you will not allow this to happen.”

But it is happening. In this budget, the cost of deficit reduction is mostly borne by those least able to bear the burden—the lowest-income families in America, rather than by those most able to afford it—the wealthiest Americans who benefit from the largest tax cuts. The budget projects a record $427 billion deficit, along with a promise to make tax cuts permanent. Does that make fiscal or moral sense?

Religious leaders have spoken clearly in past years about the perils of a domestic policy based primarily on tax cuts for the rich, deep program cuts for low-income people, and an expectation of faith-based charity to make up the huge gap. This budget runs directly counter to that religious wisdom. Billions of dollars are cut from programs that most directly impact America’s poorest families—in education, nutrition, child care, health care, affordable housing, job training, heating and cooling assistance, and in community and rural development. At the same time, mere millions of dollars are added as increases to a number of faith-based programs focusing on marriage, fatherhood, and abstinence. On the street, that would be called “chump change.” The warning that faith-based initiatives should provide a partnership with effective government anti-poverty programs—and not a substitute—has not been heeded. And the added tax cuts for the rich merely compound the moral and biblical offense.

Worst of all is the politicization of the faith-based initiative, with the bulk of support going to the most conservative evangelical groups that politically support the administration rather than to the most effective faith-based initiatives regardless of political affiliation. And the drastic cuts in community block grants, education, and housing programs that go to support the efforts of faith-based organizations may ultimately result in a net loss for religious charities.

Low-income people should not be punished for decisions that placed us in financial straits. Rather than moving toward a "living family income" this budget stifles opportunities for low-income families, which are vital for national economic security. Our future is in serious jeopardy when one in three proposed program cuts are to education initiatives (after a highly touted "No Child Left Behind" program); when fewer children in working poor families will be included in Medicaid; when the food stamps that supplement families’ grocery budgets are threatened; and when affordable housing is put out of reach. Cutting pro-work and pro-family supports for the less fortunate jeopardizes the common good. And all this while defense spending rises to $419 billion (not even including any additional spending for the war in Iraq), with an overall increase of 41 percent in military expenditures during the Bush years.

It is time to speak clearly about a budget lacking moral vision. A budget that scapegoats the poor, fattens the rich, and asks for sacrifice mostly from those who can least afford it, is a moral outrage. These budget priorities would cause the prophets to rise up in righteous indignation, as should we. Our nation deserves better vision. Morally-inspired voices must provide vision for the people when none comes from its leaders.

The president said this budget represents his priorities. But are these the priorities of the American people? It’s time for a national “moral values” debate about the president’s budget.

© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/21426/

Ask a Dumb Question, Get a Dumb Answer

2005-03-10T14:29:00.000-05:00

Between my lovely job, my tedious GMAT prep class and my newly begun apartment hunt, I am just at a loss when it comes to this blog. So freakin sorry.

Today's blog will be a tidbit designed to make you feel SMART.

As I am salaried as a Scheduler, today I was doing my usual scheduling thang and I responded to a woman and informed her that I had received her request and I'd like to mark her down for a 1pm meeting with the congressman on the 17th.

Here's what she wrote back: "Great! Where should I go? I'm assuming you're on Capitol Hill?"

Here's what I wanted to say: "No, we're in the White House. Are you fucking kidding me? You wrote to a member of congress and asked for a meeting in his office and now you're asking me if his office is on the Hill? If I had a stupid-ass quote of the day board, your question would be up there for a week because I'm sure it'd triumph as the reigning dumb-shit thing to say for that long. Actually, your question is valid. I know that there's been a rumor going around that The House of Representatives has been relocated. After 200+ years, we're fucking sick of being on the Hill. All 435 members of congress and their staffs of up to 22 people are moving downtown. We thought about K Street but we didn't like the fact that HBO named a failed-TV show after it. We thought about building an office on the White House lawn, but then we remembered the whole separation of branches thing. God, it took forever and we almost signed a lease across the river in Virginia, but in the final hour we called up our friends in the Senate and we got Hillary Clinton to put in a good word for us and we are now working out of the attic of a bar on 18th Street. It's a little crowded and the congressmen are now even more drunk than they usually are at work, but we're making do and we are really enjoying having Miller Lite on tap at all times."

But here's what I really said: "Yes. Our office is on the Hill".

Craigslist Is Funny

2005-03-08T16:12:00.000-05:00

3:00 is the Infinite Hour. It Must Die!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reply to: anon-58115777@craigslist.org
Date: Wed Feb 02 10:26:44 2005

Three o'clock is the worst hour of the workday. Think about it:

9: Coming into the office, I'm jazzed. I log in, check my email, read the news, check a bunch of blogs where people who aren't as smart as I think I am rant on and on about how Bush stole Ohio and Social Security is going to cause everyone to die at fifty and think that anyone actually cares about Dean v. Rosenberg.

10: Coffee! Go out, walk down the street, get a cup, and by the time I get back, it's almost 11, which means...

11: Plan for lunch! Get out the menus I've got in my desk and fantasize about the food I can have at the many reasonably priced, easily-walkable lunch establishments in downtown San Francisco! After a bit of that, I'm ready for

12: Lunch "hour." An "hour" gives you fifteen minutes of leeway on either side. The Lunch Choice Of The Day will probably involve Moo Goo Gai Pan or a 2/3 LB Monster Bacon Butter Cheese Human Lard Plus Thickburger, Topped With Whipped Cream and Deep Fried or (if I'm really unlucky), Subway sandwiches that suck so much even that alien cyborg Jared Fogle couldn't eat them and lost weight. I go to Subway; it's close.

1: Still at lunch "hour." Done with eating, spending time at the table at Subway watching all of the really hot advertising chicks who would only talk to me if I threatened their mothers with a garrotte, and only then if they'd get a new handbag out of the deal.

1:20: Back to the office, time to check on the news in case anything happened in the late morning (Hey, Rudy T is quitting the Lakers!). Then it's food coma. Sit at my desk clicking the mouse every few seconds to shift between programs, trying to make the windows somehow make a pattern as interesting as the screen saver I used to get stoned to back in college when I were supposed to be doing term papers. All that education is getting a workout now!

2: Still food coma. It's about now that I should probably get some actual "work" done. Nothing like some cover sheet composition and printer paper jams to pass the time.

2:30: Ah, a post-lunch dump with a couple of printouts from ESPN.com. Bliss.

2:45 Oh no.

2:50 Christ, no.

2:55: It's almost here, shit. Finally, I get off the toilet just in time for...

3:00 THE INFINITE HOUR. Time grinds to a halt. It's too early to think about leaving, the food is gone from your stomach, you can't leave for a coffee break because you spent so much time on the can earlier and someone would notice.

3:05: Are you kidding? Frantically scan the best-of-craigslist for something entertaining, only to find that Craig only updates the damned thing every few weeks.

3:09: Homestar Runner hasn't updated either, Shit.

3:10:25 Check email. The send/receive button seems to be broken.

3:15-3:20 Fantasize about what the world would be like if 3:00 could just be skipped.

3:20:38: Check email. Apparently my penis is too small, and these guys want to help!

3:25: Start revenge fantasies. If 3:00 were a person. Shit, it *is* a person. 3:00 is that little pimply-faced fuck who *everybody* hated in elementary school; not because he was a nerd (the nerds kicked him out), but because he was a little bastard. That fuckhead tattled on everyone, made fun of the geeks for their subpar transformers collection, insulted the big guys for having too much earwax, tried to make girls touch his private regions during square dancing, and (to top it off), sucked at kickball. He'd be standing there insulting everyone while teams were chosen, and both captains would look at 3:00 for five long minutes and eventually embark on a best-of-11 rock-paper-scissors match to see who would have to take the little fucker. Then he'd kick into double plays, drop the bouncy red balls, pick his nose and wipe it on other people, and once he even pooed his pants. At age ten! What an ass.

3:30: That rant only lasted five minutes? 3:00 must die.

3:32:41 Check email. Nothing.

3:35: Think about ambushing 3:00 before the work day tomorrow and kicking the shit out of it. I can see the headline in the Chronicle: "Anthropomorphized time period assaulted. Suspect busted out of the pen by cheering crowd of cubicle slaves."

3:38:12: Write email, realize I have nothing to say. I swear, hit send/receive, and watch the blue Outlook bar cross the screen.

3:38:18: Hey, that was fun! I do that five more times.

3:40: Drank three straight cups of water--going back and forth to the cooler is fun!

3:45: Watching the clock on my desktop. Resetting it to atomic time over and over doesn't make it go any faster.

3:48:19: Check email. I qualify for a home loan! Even though my name is misspelled!

3:50: Cutting fingernails down to the quick and using the clippings to write things into my arm. I end up with marks that make me look like a heroin addict who can't get his shit together.

3:52: Oh, dear God, end this hell now. Somebody post a funny blog entry or let a natural disaster strike somewhere or let George Bush say something stupid or anything at all. I hate my computer and I hate my co-workers and if that stupid fuck from Siebel calls again to help me maximize my sales potential I will hunt down his children and turn them into a poorly done, first-try-is-just-for practice taxidermy project.

3:53:01: Check email. That's it, I'm hiring mercenaries, invading Nigeria, and stringing every banker in the place together by the balls, coating them in honey, and dropping them naked into a polar bear refuge in Siberia.

3:53:09: Check email. Nothing. I hate all of my friends.

3:54: The phone rings. It's the guy from Siebel, wanting to "follow up" on a couple of "action items." I'll "action" his "items" right back up his smirking, job-security-having ass, until he has to sit backward to attempt to impregnate his wife. I won't even try to explain that one. Figure it out.

3:56: I'm a puddle. I resolve to get hit by a car every day at 2:57 to avoid the 3:00 hour.

3:56:01.8: Check email. My dick just gets smaller, apparently.

3:57: I don't even bother praying to God any more. It's obvious He hates me, and invented the human race for his sick sport. Otherwise He would have made the day 23 hours, instead of 24. I pray to Satan instead, offering to become a serial killer and harvest souls for His Dark Majesty if He'll only make the next three minutes go by at any semblance of normal speed.

3:58: Satan doesn't answer. That cheap fuck.

3:59: Attempt to pass out. Fail.

3:59:21: Check email. Nothing

3:59:29: Check email. Nothing

3:59:31: Open up the clock icon in Windows and watch the second hand go by. I swear the programmers made it like those clocks in elementary school that tick *back* before they tick forward. I hate Microsoft. They'd be the first souls I'd harvest for Satan if the Prince of Darkness wasn't such a cheap fuck.

4:00: I slump to my desk, exhausted, wrung out from the weeklong hour that just passed. In celebration, coffee!

4:15: The guy at the coffee place has huge dark circles under his eyes. I wonder what the Infinite Hour did to him?

4:30: Ah, coffee buzz. Peeing all the time because of all the water I drank earlier.

5:00: What? What happened? I've got a few things to do before...

5:30: Quitting time! Off to MUNI and then home. 22 hours until the next Infinite Hour.

Girls Just Want to Sell Aprons, Kitchen Utensils and Their Souls

2005-03-04T20:58:00.000-05:00

Friday night with Miller Lite...

Anyone watch the 24 hour news channels today, as I am forced to do every weekday of my life?

Ok, so if you weren't watching CNN, MSNBC, or FOX News, let me fill you in on today's top story (might as well have been the only story)--MARTHA STEWART'S RELEASE FROM JAIL.

Let me repeat this for you, since you missed it on the news all day:

MARTHA STEWART GOT OUT OF JAIL. SHE IS NOT IN JAIL. SHE IS IN CONNECTICUT. SHE IS UNDER HOUSE ARREST. SHE IS WEARING SOME SORT OF TRACKING DEVICE ON HER ANKLE. MARTHA STEWART HAS BEEN FREED FROM JAIL, LET MY PEOPLE GO, LET MY PEOPLE GO. I THINK SHE IS CURRENTLY WEAVING BASKETS WHICH WILL BE TURNED INTO CENTERPIECES TOMORROW. SHE IS NOT IN JAIL, NO SIR.

God damnit, people! You've got to be fucking kidding me that this is the only thing we cared about today. I hate you, 24 hour news! What's worse is the fact that this woman went to jail to begin with and the fact that the media had a fucking field day with it.

For the record, I purchased a pair of rain boots from marthastewart.com AFTER she went to jail. They're pink, they keep the wet out and the profits went to her, her, her. SO THERE. Free Martha! Oh wait, she is free (see the above in caps lock).

Please, for the love of God. Turn off the news when the Martha shit comes on. If we're not gonna analyze how many cafe lattes Kenneth Lay orders when he gets out of jail, why don't we just leave poor Martha alone. Get a life. Or better yet, get a new spin on life. Call Wolf Blitzer and tell him you want to hear more about the 1500 troops who've died in Iraq as of today, or maybe the Italian journalist held captive by the Iraqis who got freed today who the American troops then SHOT AT and subsequently killed her military escort. Jesus Christ. Or you could just go make cupcakes with pink frosting and red ribbons and call it a day. I give up. It's the weekend, so that's cool.

Answer To World Peace: Let Women Take Over the World

2005-03-04T12:33:00.000-05:00

What a great article from the Harvard Magazine. Check out this excerpt:

“Wrangham's theory is that human civilization would be more civilized if women seized more political power through elections and used it to counterbalance the male instinct to constantly define "enemies" and attack them. To make this advance, however, women must first abandon a tendency they share with female chimpanzees: to reward and select aggressive males as their mates.”

Wow. That's nice and all but I guess we can sit back and give up because we know women will never stop choosing aggressive males as partners. Isn't that in our nature? Like a habit we never kicked from way back in the day? Hasn't natural selection always dictated we'd look for the fittest, strongest males, and those who can defend us (the aggressive ones)?

Um and I don't know what to make of the bit at the end of the article that says this:

"Although bonobo males are occasionally aggressive, they are usually discouraged from killing or raping by tight-knit bands of females that gang up on and attack aggressive males. The glue for these closely bonded groups of females is regular female-to-female, missionary-position sex, Wrangham writes. Such female-to-female sexual bonding is thought to be unique in the nonhuman animal world. "

Ok, let me get this straight. In order to finally achieve world peace, we women have to start marrying wimpy guys and become lesbians. Wow. I'm going have to think about this one.

http://www.harvardmagazine.com/issues/jf97/right.chimp.html

Large Lobsters Need Anxiety Drugs, Too

2005-03-03T16:17:00.000-05:00

Been busy saving the world this week, sorry for lack of original posts. Forwarded news articles will have to suffice until congressional recess, I fear! Oh no! So lame! Must make time for a post...

Here's a gem of an article. And it'll teach you to bring things to the zoo! I love being a human for the specific fact that I'll never end up in a zoo. Shit dies there! Poor Bubba.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05062/465527.stm

"He spent decades dodging lobster pots, but in the end, Bubba was done in by a trip to the zoo.
The 22-pound lobster died yesterday at the Pittsburgh Zoo, about a day after he was moved there from a fish market...Experts will examine Bubba to try to figure out why he died, but the owner of the fish market thinks it had to do with the stress of the move. Bob Wholey says lobsters are 'very finicky'.”

From The "Seriously? No Shit!" Files

2005-03-03T15:21:00.000-05:00

New Poll Finds Bush Priorities Are Out of Step With Americans

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/03/politics/03poll.html?hp&ex=1109912400&en=1b7c8514d044e85b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Think You Have It Rough?

2005-03-01T13:59:00.000-05:00

Holy wow! Someone tell the Federal Government to wake up or have some sympathy or something. Below are the incomes that qualify you and your family as being at or below the poverty line. For one moment, imagine feeding, clothing and housing 4 people on about $19,000 a year. I know a lot of my loyal blog readers have yet to enter the real world and are still all cushy in college, but I think even you guys can look at these numbers and know that they're just a BIT LOW. I mean, I think poverty for a family of 4 happens well before you hit $19,000. I'd wager that if you're raising 4 people on even $25,000 a year you are NOT having an easy time doing it. I mean, seriously. Check out what qualifies you as poor for just yourself...$9,000! $9,000 a year??? IMAGINE living off $9,000 a year. You wouldn't have the luxury of reading a blog, that's for sure.

But why adjust the numbers to refelct reality? That would make us look like we had a lot of poor people and the government would be forced to help them out. Jeez. Let them eat cake.

2005 HHS Poverty Guidelines
Persons inFamily Unit

1
$ 9,570

2
12,830

3
16,090

4
19,350

5
22,610

6
25,870

7
29,130

8
32,390

For each additional person, add
3,260
4,080
3,750

SOURCE: Federal Register, Vol. 70, No. 33, February 18, 2005, pp. 8373-8375.

It's Like Manna From Heaven

2005-02-28T10:05:00.000-05:00

This is one of those things in life that is too good to be true. I couldn’t have paid for something as good as this.

Sean Hannity, that awesome, conservative radio talk show host who we might label as the next Rush Limbaugh, has decided to fill his conservative listeners lives with more than just bullshit lies…he’s going to help them find love.

Through his website, you can post personal ads on a section called “Hannidate”.

I’m not lying.

The personal ads posted are something you have to see to believe. Each one is a gem in itself, and each one gets more and more pathetic. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll beg for more and you’ll remember why you don’t listen to right-wing radio. Because if you did, you’d be in the likes of these losers.

I read these personal ads for quite a while. I had a very hard time picking just one to post as a teaser for you. It was a tough decision, but I think I found a good one.

So enjoy the entry I’m going to post for you and be sure to do some of your own browsing. Why not make it a drinking game? Here’s an idea, take a drink every time you read an entry in which the person:
-is white
-is divorced
-is from the Bible Belt
-is a Born Again Christian
-is over 40
-has submitted a glamour shot (chug your beer if you find someone with a fake nature background, like trees or beach, see here)
-mentions he or she hates liberals
-mentions he or she loves Bush

And now for the best of the best, with some highlights from me. It gets better as it goes on:
http://www.hannity.com/gallery/Hannidate2005/bodyshop_004

I live close to Dayton, Ohio. I am a 32 single white male. I am a smoker. I weigh in at 170 and stand at 5'-11" Dayton has a lot of liberal women which I am tired of dating. Help me find a republican woman. Below is what kind of describes myself in a nutshell I am a mature, responsible, stable, independent adult. I live on my own. I have a job.

I enjoy going to movies, walks in the park, camping, NASCAR, cuddling and intellectual conversations. I am a funny person and enjoy making people laugh. I am a smoker. I can be sweet and thoughtful. I am weight proportionate to height. Some find me hot, some not. You decide.

I have good morals and values and I am of a conservative nature. I like the outdoors and nice weather. I would like to see the USA in my truck and camper and would like someone who would enjoy doing that too. I make good decisions or try to. In my spare time I enjoy working on the restoration of my truck. I have all my teeth and brush them.

I have been told that I am a nice guy; you will have to decide for yourself. I am not looking for “just friends”. If I was, I would go to my buddy’s house and hang out there and drink beer. What I am looking for: I am looking for these types of qualities in a woman. A mature, responsible, stable, independent adult. This person must have a strong heart, mind and soul. This person must have a level head on their shoulders and can make good decisions. Must be a good communicator. I enjoy conversation. A person with good morals and values. Someone who has goals and dreams in life. Someone with a good job, no fast food workers, pizza deliver drivers, cashiers.

I am not into high maintenance women. Someone who is simple, but has class. Someone who is of a conservative nature, especially fiscally conservative. Someone with good credit and low debt. I am not paying off someone’s charge card debt where they bought some fly lookin rims and stereo for pimpin out her ex-boyfriends ride. Someone who isn’t a control freak. Good personal hygiene and has all their teeth and no rotten black teeth. I see this way too much and I find it a turn off. Must live on their own and must keep their place clean. I don’t care for drama queens or people with hidden agendas. If you do, I will find them.

I do not wish to meet people who have mental or depression problems. Must have decent transportation. I am not a mechanic nor am I buying this person a car. I am not funding someone’s education either. I would prefer this person to have a college degree. I would prefer someone who is a smoker, since I am on too. That way I don’t have to be asked to quit or I taste like an ashtray. Then too who really knows what an ashtray tastes like. I don’t know too many people who lick ashtrays…lol.

Must be weight proportionate to height. Someone who is not a nagging person, but who is a happy upbeat person and likes to laugh. Someone who is sweet with a warm heart. Someone who is energetic and not lazy. Someone who likes to go out and do things. I’m not into women who get into sports. I don’t care for sports except NASCAR.

I Knew There Were Books in Hell!

2005-02-25T14:10:00.000-05:00

Today I was thrown into one of the seven circles Hell. It’s called the Library of Congress.

For those of you who are unaware, yes, the Library of Congress is an actual place, not just a very odd concept that puts weird strings of letters and numbers on the spines of your local library’s books.

The LoC, as we savvy Hill staffers call it, is comprised of three buildings and they sit right next to the House office buildings. These buildings are huge and I don’t recommend trying to find your way around one without a GPS navigational tool attached to your belt. A very long rope, rock climbing shoes and some trail mix wouldn’t hurt either.

Anyway, aside from being the home to A LOT of books, the LoC houses hundreds, maybe even thousands, of staffers who exist solely for the purpose of being Congress’s bitch. You heard me right. The Congressional Research Service, heretoforth known as CRS, eats, sleeps and breathes our demands. Got a question? Call CRS. Need to write a thesis and don’t feel like doing the research? Call CRS. You get the point.

Today CRS held one of its many institutes in which it antes up its most boring experts and makes them come teach Hill staff about, well, stuff we do on the Hill. The class I attended today was an introduction to the legislative process designed to help confused people like me understand the archaic rules that govern Congress.

As I sat and listened to an expert who has been studying House and Senate procedure for THIRTY ONE YEARS, I couldn’t help but want to cry. The emotions I was feeling went beyond boredom to sheer disbelief. How can someone devote their life to Congressional procedure? Does this person not want to bang his head with the Speaker’s gavel and rip his eyeballs out and repeatedly toss US Code books on top of them?

Not really, I guess. The guy was smiling the whole time. And he took sheer pleasure out of taking a question and then subsequently stomping every breath of self-worth out of the person who asked it. His answers usually started, and I’m paraphrasing here, a little something like this: “Well, I know you’re fucking retarded and it’s a wonder your boss can even make it to the floor to vote with you handling his legislation…”

Yes, sir. I was stuck all morning listening to this Library Veteran preach about floor procedure like it was a Sunday morning sermon in a room tucked so far inside the LoC that I am convinced I stumbled upon a layer of Hell. It might have been the second circle, it might have been the fifth, I may never know, but one thing is for sure, I was deep in the heart of nerd. All I could do was pray for it to end and wonder why the fuck the guy next to me was taking detailed notes and why the hell the LoC didn’t order enough bottles of Tropicana juices for everyone to have one. Jesus.

Might Want to Bookmark This One

2005-02-24T15:30:00.000-05:00

As if making it through the day isn't enough of an excuse in itself...

Get Drunk. All the Time. For Many Reasons.

What Happens If She Marries Someone Whose Last Name is Arse?

2005-02-23T09:32:00.000-05:00

Ok. I said I wasn’t going to do this. I said, “Hey, you’ve got better things to do. Don’t waste your breath. Go pick on someone your own size (mentally, physically…you’ll see what I mean)”.

I REALLY wasn’t gonna post about this, but it’s just begging. Haunting me in my sleep. Clogging my brain with evil thoughts and giving me the shakes (or is that the drugs? hmmm).

Oh God, here I go…

PUH-LEASE click on this link and read this article. Then come back to me.
http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/accent/61908.php

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Can you stand it? Are you vomiting? I really apologize if you’re reading this blog while snacking. I’m sure it’s not easy to throw up at your computer and avoid getting barf all over the mouse.

Ok, first off, note the oxymoron right at the start: “Republican cool”. Yeah, I’m confused, too.

Next, please note the name of the girl interviewed extensively about just how cool Smith Point really is. Caroline BUTTS. Butts! Oh man. I, for one, hope that what the article says about these idiots using this bar to meet people that they’ll eventually marry is true. This girl needs a new last name and FAST. How can she stand always being quoted with lead-ins like “Butts says” or “Said Butt” or “According to Butt”?

And, yes, I implied that she’s “always” being quoted because…are you ready for this…this is only one of quite a few articles in which Ms. Butts is the Republican DC Scene Go-To. Again, can you stand it? People have actually wasted newsprint more than once on this shit.

See here before we continue
http://www.hillnews.com/living/072104_madison.aspx

Caroline Butts is President of The Madison, an exclusive social club for trophy wives in training! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Such fodder for my blog! OMG now you’re REALLY vomiting! Dude, pull yourself together, wipe off the screen and clean out the keyboard because we have more ripping on young and exclusive Republicans to do.

Ya know, most of us here in Adult World know when to let things die. Like when we left third grade, we left secret clubs with secret passwords behind. And when we left college, we left frat party bars and sororities behind (see here http://iheartdc.blogspot.com/2005/02/how-to-save-yourself-almost-4000.html).

After reading the past two articles, I’m gonna have to say that these kids have not yet joined us here in Adult World. They go to bars they proudly describe as frat parties and they form sorority-esque exclusive social clubs. Lovely! If they’re not living in Adult World, where are they living? Ohhhhh. That’s right. They live in BUSH WORLD where everyone is White, wears pink pants and bow ties, hates minorities, wants to kill the gays, and loves a Free Iraq.

Ya know what? Good. Let them have clubs and special gathering points. At least it keeps them secluded and away from the rest of us. I take comfort in knowing that the biggest assholes of the bunch are no where near the night spots that I frequent.

Furthermore, Imma gonna tell it like it is right now. And this is so mean, and I would not post it had every human being with a penis not said it first, but here goes: Since when did fat chicks start qualifying as trophy wives? OMG SO AWFUL, I know, but honestly, are you looking at the chick in the middle? She’s…oh no, I can’t believe I’m going to make this joke again, can’t stop myself, here goes…she’s BUTT! Hahahahahaha. She said “butt”! Again!

God.

Brightening Cubicles One Web Link at a Time

2005-02-21T11:22:00.000-05:00

Mmmm. Matt and Trey are so yummy. Here's their theme song from Team America set to a very funny video. Fair warning: not appropriate for work, so keep the volume low and shut the door to your office or hang a curtain across your cubicle. I bet your boss wouldn't like this. All the more reason to watch.

http://www.big-boys.com/articles/americafy.html

How You're Getting Screwed

2005-02-17T15:31:00.000-05:00

http://democrats.senate.gov/ss/calc.html

Will You Have the Lamb or the Duck?

2005-02-16T16:15:00.000-05:00

Lamb or Duck? Wild field greens with toasted hazelnuts or Caesar salad with shrimp? Do you prefer white or red? Heineken or Amstel?

Yes, please start sending in your preferences for food at my wedding reception. Also, I’m taking a poll. Shall we celebrate my vows pond-side in a grand tent or should we move the whole ordeal inside to the conservatory? Everyone loves a good outdoor wedding, but what’s not to love about a vaulted glass ceiling that keeps the splendor in and the bugs out?

Ok, so once we get all that cleared up, I’ll go find a fiancée. I’ve got it on the running To-Do list. Why the early planning you ask? Am I one of those crazed yuppie twenty-somethings who subscribes to Washington Bride, regularly orders fabric swatches to compare and contrast them against the skin color of my bridesmaids-to-be, debates the merits of emerald vs. princess cut ,and keeps a Word document on my computer with an ever-expanding list of shit I’m going to put on my bridal registry (to be registered at Tiffany’s and Bergdorf-Goodman, of course)?

Absolutely fucking not.

I couldn’t give any less of a fuck at this point in my life about the details of my wedding. At this point, I’m gunning for it not to rain and for a few of my relatives to have died by that time so I don’t have to invite them.

What I DO care a lot about, though, is the fact that my best friend forever just became a wedding planner. Talk about the perfect job for her. And talk about being jealous. Here I sit, slaving away for the taxpayers and she’s gonna be living it up planning the happiest day of peoples’ lives for them. For more cash than I’ll see anytime soon (taxpayers don’t like chipping in as much for government workers as they do for weddings).

Anyway, what started out as an as-per-usual sarcastic post is now going to take a sharp departure from that route and end as a sincere and heartfelt congratulations to the girl I’ve known since we were six years old. I knew by the third grade you’d do well in a job in which you’d be responsible for making things beautiful when you started using my hair to teach yourself how to French braid (don’t worry, all of the strands you pulled out in the process grew back). I knew by the time we hit junior high you’d be a master menu planner as you knew damn well enough to turn your nose up at the nasty cafeteria hamburgers in favor of the oh-so-tasty chicken nuggets. And I knew by the time we graduated that you’d be able to pull off classy events as you thought our school dance decorations always sucked, and I agreed. Balloon arches are so turn-of-the-century town fair-ish.

Ok, so the sarcasm snuck back in. But the underlying congrats still stands. I’m happy, proud and excited for you, Jeannette. Love ya.

How To Save Yourself Almost $4,000

2005-02-14T08:38:00.000-05:00

It’s easy. Don’t join a sorority.

For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of paying dues to a sorority, let me tell you that while you’re an undergrad, you’re going to ante up almost $2000 when you factor in all the mandatory fees and all the stupid extra social crap, which includes showering your “Little” with gifts, throwing in extra money for date parties because your social dues won’t cover the whole shebang (why? who is managing the funds here?), buying shit to wear to parties like devil ears, cute PJs or slut-wear for hooker-themed parties, and just being part of the clique and keeping up with the Joneses in general.

Ok, that’s all fine and dandy. I’m not going to complain since I did sign myself up for all that knowing what I’d get myself into.

What no one told me is that the sorority would KEEP asking me for money after I left college. Every year. In every way.

Since I left school, I’ve been hit up repeatedly for cash that I don’t technically owe my sorority. Recently, my alumnae club asked me to kick in for dumb-ass parties they are throwing throughout the year. Riveting events like cookie exchanges and pumpkin picking. Hmm. Well. Maybe if they were offering water torture sessions I’d be happy to throw in for the cause.

But worse than the alumnae club is the actual sorority HQ sending me letters telling me to pay my “lifetime” dues. $20 a year or so. If I live to be 100, I’m gonna throw my sorority another $1540 bones? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Oh man, what happens if you just ignore these requests for money? Do I get excommunicated from the sorority? I can see it all now. Somewhere, probably in Texas because that’s where all worthless organizations are headquartered, the Grand Wizard of Sorority X is sitting on her throne reading over the list of the “non-dues-paying sisters” whilst the song Glory Days plays on repeat in the background. Anger swells in her little Pilates-toned, mystic-tanned body and she raises her staff with her French-manicured hands and slams it three times into the ground, which signals her crew of blond haired, blue eyed minions wearing black pants to run to her side and drop to their knees awaiting instruction from their Grand Master. “Off with their heads!” she cries and quickly, but quietly, the minions run out of the room and hop on planes to go find and capture every non-dues-paying sister across the country.

Minion #32 arrives in DC and arranges for my capture while I’m on my walk to work. I am accosted by the minion, who is wielding a rope and a very large can of hairspray, and am dragged, kicking and screaming, all the way back to Texas. I arrive at Sorority X’s HQ and am thrust into a dark room along with many other bewildered women who have a million better things to care about than whether or not their sorority needs money. A voice booms from behind a curtain. It’s all very Wizard of Oz.

We are told that we have one last chance to pay our $20 or else it’s off with our heads. Some of the weaker detainees cave and break out their checkbooks. Those with a backbone, like myself, give the finger to the voice behind the curtain. The voice immediately orders our heads to be cut off. The minions surround us ready for the kill, but we fend them off with large bottles of brown hair dye and last season’s shade of lipstick. The minions run screaming for their lives, afraid of becoming brunettes with bad makeup. The rebels have won. Sorority HQ stops sending tacky letters begging for money disguised as “lifetime” dues, world peace is achieved, global warming is halted and Iraq becomes an actual democracy. The end.

"Did I Tell You I Talked to the Fireman Outside?"---Drunk Boyfriend

2005-02-10T23:29:00.000-05:00

Tonight I crashed a pretty good party. Unbeknownst to me, my boyfriend signed us up to sneak into the farewell party for DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe. Is that how you spell his name?

Anyway, good party. Complete with about 3 huge open bars, great music, every Democrat I know in DC and, God bless his heart, Bill Clinton. Sure, Kerry was there, too. Funny how 24 hours in DC can change your life. Kerry was SO HOT like, what, two or three months ago? Tonight, in his usual Frankenstein way, he gave his typical 20+ minute speech but this time, no one gave a flying fuck or even pretended to give a flying fuck. Is he still talking? When's Bill coming on stage?

Anyway, far more amusing than stories about Kerry are stories about my drunk boyfriend who drank God knows how much and finished the night off with the largest vodka tonic in America. Right now he's "talking" to the cats and meowing at them as they meow at him. At least he stopped harassing the firemen trying to do their job across the street. He's been telling me for about an hour now that he's going to start a PAC. And he's going to call it PACski since he's Polish and just like every other Polish person on the face of the earth, his last name ends in "ski". So PACski, apparently, is going to be quite the fundraising machine. He's planning to start calling all his friends to ask for $25. Before you know it, by the end of June, I'll bet he could raise $200! All the politicians will be hot on his trail. Ack, I'm just teasing him since I know he'll read this blog tomorrow. Honey--you can start a PAC. I believe in you. You'll raise millions and help put the Democrats back in the Majority. PS it's your turn to do the dishes and while you're at it, the kitchen floor needs mopping. And PPS you're toe wouldn't be bleeding right now if you didn't leave piles of shit everywhere. Love you!

The Government Should Invade Sweden For The Sake of Destroying All Their WMDs and Taking Over IKEA

2005-02-10T09:02:00.000-05:00

Have you ever bought a desk? Or, if you’re still mooching off your parents, did your parents ever buy a desk? What happened? You probably said to yourself, “I need a desk and pronto!”. So you took off for the Furniture Warehouse and meandered your way through the aisles trying to avoid all the caffeine-cracked-out salesmen on commission until you found a nice shiny desk to which you then said, “I’ll take it!”. And it was yours. For your sake, I hope you didn’t buy it from IKEA like I did because it fucking SUCKS to put together desks from IKEA. I believe assembly of IKEA desks requires a degree in engineering and command of the Swedish language, but I digress.

Anyway, I mention desk buying to you because it’s, well, a pretty fucking simplistic task. Want desk. Find desk. Buy desk.

Apparently, though, desk buying within the Federal government is not so simple. Just like every other red-taped task that the government engages in, desk buying is a clusterfuck. We’ve all heard that the government is inefficient due to its bureaucratic nature. But it’s not til you run across gems like this that you realize HOW pathetic the system really is.

Here, my friends, for your reading pleasure, straight from a government document, is how an agency of the Federal government buys a desk. Italics can be attributed to me:

“If, for example, a Federal agency has a requirement for a desk, it must first check to see if the desk is available from that agency’s internal listing of excess property (ie go to the closet and see if you have extra desks in there). If the desk is not found there, the agency must then check listings of excess property for all other agencies (so in other words, the gang at EPA has to call their friends at USDA and say, “hey, we need a desk!”). Once these two steps are completed, the agency must check to see if the desk is available for purchase from the Federal Prison Industries (aw, that’s nice. We let them rot away AND make desks). If the desk is not available from FPI, or if the price FPI is offering is too high or the time of delivery is too long, the agency must then check sheltered workshops for the blind and severely disabled (which probably produce high quality desk, cough). Then, after checking with agency stock programs, GSA’s Federal Supply Schedule, and other agency contracts (um, I forgot what we were trying to buy here), the agency may then purchase the desk from commercial sources including private small businesses.”

HOW LONG DO YOU THINK THIS ALL TAKES? Shit, who knows? I’d guess like a month? How’d you like to be the sucker waiting around for a desk while your boss calls around trying to find one? I wonder if Federal agencies have designated “deskless” areas where all the employees awaiting desks hang out and do their work on the floor. I bet it’s like a Doctor’s waiting room, too. Like everyone gets this swelling of hope when the boss walks in the door and everyone is just HOPING with all their might that it’s their turn for a desk and then the boss calls out “Joe?” and Joe jumps up like he won the lotto and everyone else slumps back down and some people use their morning paper as a handkerchief to sob into. Government. I heart it.

I Wish My Diet Zing Was a Beer

2005-02-09T08:14:00.000-05:00

Last night I went to my second GMAT review class. Princeton Review. Sometimes it amazes me that I’m paying $1250 to practice for a $250 test so I can send in $200 applications to schools that will then in turn charge me $35,000 per year for the privilege of teaching me all I need to know to get an MBA. I’m already around $72,000 in the hole and I haven’t even begun.

PS before I go on, let me say this and end the age old test prep debate: Princeton Review is better than Kaplan. Trust me on this one. My apologies to anyone currently in a Kaplan class. Sucks for you.

Ok, so quick comment on class last night. Have you ever stopped yourself in the middle of studying for these standardized tests to reflect on their sheer ridiculousness? Last night we spent like ten minutes on a problem involving how many consumers drink Zing, Diet Zing or Caffeine Free Diet Zing. Oh yeah. This Zing crap is made by the “Awesome Soft Drink Company”. Here I am in a room of adults discussing math related to Zing. And everyone keeps saying “zing”. What fraction of consumers prefer Diet Zing to Zing and which of those drink it caffeine free style??? In the end, I think we solved the problem algebraically. We never did address the issue, though, that we were all forced to say “zing” more times in ten minutes than we’ve said it in our entire life.

You Are Getting VERY Sleepy

2005-02-07T10:52:00.000-05:00

Today I had the distinct pleasure of participating in an academic survey about blogs. Blogs are so hot right now. So hot that the spell checker on Microsoft word still underlines “blog” with a red, squiggly line every time I write it.

Anyway, this survey was quite hilarious. I love eeking the fun and novelty out of everything by prematurely over-analyzing it. Blogs have been around for how long now and we’re already writing extensive thesis papers on them?

The survey started out with the following definition:
A “blog”, or “weblog”, is defined as a web page of periodic, usually informal, reverse-chronologically ordered posts of commentary, photographs, news, and/or web links.

I Heart DC seems to fit the bill. Note to self: add photographs to ensure I meet the rigorous academic blogging standards.

Ok, so after the survey defined a blog for me, it went on to ask all kinds of inane questions. Such as “Fill in the blank. What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think about what you enjoy most about blogs?”

Um…endless joy? Pure rapture? Small dogs? The Olsen twins? What the hell kind of research is this?

After responding to that question, I took a deep breath and asked myself why I was still responding to the survey, but decided to continue for the sake of seeing how much life-blood this student could suck out of blogs. Next up:

“What other words describe what you enjoy about interacting with the blogosphere (the entirety of blogs on the Internet)?”

THE BLOGOSHPERE. I love it when people who don’t read blogs comment on them. And then further define their lingo for everyone else who also does not read blogs.

Hmm. So I would answer what to this question? Endless, awesome joy? Pure, unadulterated rapture? REALLY small dogs? The Olsen twins, the Full House years???

Ack. The best part of the survey, though, was when you had to rate the degree to which you agreed with statements such as these:

I visit blogs...
To follow current events. (Note to my readers—I sincerely hope you aren’t reading my blog to get your daily dose of current events. Allow me to point you elsewhere if that’s the case. Note to self: add column of links to OTHER blogs once I become web-saavy enough to do so).

I visit blogs...
Because it's exciting and cutting-edge.
YES! Now you’re speaking my language! This falls right in line with my feelings of endless joy and pure rapture! God I love being cutting-edge. And talking about it. Because that ensures that everyone will know how super cool I am.

Finally, the last statement we survey-takers were asked to evaluate was “I visit blogs for relaxation”.

I Heart DCers…take a moment to light some candles. Deep breaths now. In with the good, out with the bad. Go grab some peppermint lotion and begin to smear it all over your body. Close your eyes. Drink some lavender tea. You are now able to take this survey and answer honestly that, yes, you visit blogs for relaxation. Mmmm.

Super Bowl XXXXXCCCIVVVXIIIIMMMM

2005-02-06T21:34:00.000-05:00

I don't hate football. Really, I don't. I was a cheerleader for ELEVEN YEARS. 5th grade straight through senior year of college. How could I hate football?

Well, actually, there is a brand of football that I hate. Pro football on TV. Oh man, nothing sucks the life out of a fairly entertaining sport more than watching millionaire athletes play each other ON TV. Boring boring boring. The players look like little video game images on the screen and the networks are always sticking in that stupid, fake yellow line since we're all too retarded to figure out the game without it. Dumb. And then there's the announcers. Blowhards. And you can't escape them unless you put the whole thing on mute. Gah.

My boyfriend wanted me to watch the Super Bowl with him this year. If you haven't figured out by this point in the post that my answer was NO, you're as dumb as the fake yellow line. Anyway, since he's my boyfriend and all, I couldn't very well just say 'no'. I had to couch it. Here are the top ten reasons I came up with to get out of watching the Pooper Bowl:

10. Too busy scrubbing the grout in the corners of the bathroom floor with an old toothbrush.
9. Decided Sunday night was the perfect time to start learning that quantum physics I've been meaning to master.
8. Too busy organizing my underwear by color, alphabetically, from left to right. Blue, Coral, Green, White, Zebra Striped...
7. Working on my Halloween costume.
6. Auditioning for American Idol. In Texas.
5. Plucking my eyelashes out one by one, dying them hot orange, and then gluing them back on.
4. Building a fort in the bedroom using only bath towels and kitchen utensils.
3. Writing poetry about George W. Bush and working on Donald Rumsfeld's letter of recommendation for the Nobel Peace Prize.
2. Skinning my cat Sammy and sewing his striped, orange hide into a flag to hang outside the apartment door.
1. Washing my hair.

Three Men Walk Into a Bar: an Asian, a Blind Man, and an Idiot Wearing a Bowtie

2005-02-04T13:45:00.000-05:00

Major drama at work today. Decided to clean my desk and rid it of the inch-thick layer of black dust that has slowly taken over and is holding everything from my stapler to my paperclips hostage. I knew it was time to act, and quick, when the dust bunnies sent me a ransom note which read “Send in the 409 or you’ll never see your paperweight again!”

Didn’t have any 409, but the office supply cabinet did have some nice little “screen wipes”, which I later learned are meant solely for cleaning your computer screen and not for wiping off every square inch of your desk. Not a big deal, except for the fact that these things probably cost a handful and I used half the box. Ah well, nothing but the best for my cage, I mean, my desk.

I suppose your waiting for me to get to the part of this desk cleaning story where the “major drama” comes in. Surprise! Cleaning the desk WAS the drama! Oh man, too exciting. Someone find me a new job before I hurt myself from all this excitement. Things are so hyped up here I feel like I have whiplash! Yeah!

As I reflect on today’s excitement, I thought it might be nice to bring you other highlights from the week so you can see just how mind-numbing, I mean cool, it is to work on the Hill. In fact, let’s make this a semi-weekly feature. We’ll call it “The Department of Fun”.

Department of Fun for the week of January 31st to February 4th, 2005

Fun with Small Asian Men—Lots of special groups like to visit Capitol Hill and show up in droves to Members’ offices to lobby and make one point or another. It’s never enough to just send two people (Why? I don’t know). These groups like to dump hundreds of their people on the Hill and they like to roam the buildings in packs. PACKS, I tell you. I mean talk about clogging the fucking hallways. On any given day, I have to navigate and push my way around a million people wearing name tags or matching outfits (note to the Future Farmers of America: blue corduroy jackets are lame), most of whom are lost or are so drunk with glee that they’re on Capitol Hill (wheeee! So cool!) that they’re walking around in a dazed stupor, stopping, staring, talking, searching, and just being a waste of space or roadblock in general. You can imagine my combined fascination and horror, then, on Tuesday when I encountered a giant flock of small Asian men, none of whom I’m able to say came up any higher than my shoulder (I’m 5’6”). They weren’t small enough to be midgets, but they were unusually small men for sure. It was like a sea of little tiny suits topped off by heads of shiny black hair. AND THEY ALL LOOKED THE SAME. Quite the sight to see. And I enjoyed myself immensely as I easily toppled them all over with my elbows as I pushed my way through their vertically-challenged crowd. Definitely worth mention on the Department of Fun list.

Not So Much Fun With Blind People—Ok, I may be sarcastic and biting, and maybe the above entry about small Asian men is a bit un-PC, but I’m not about to start making fun of blind people, so if that’s what you’re hoping for, go find another blog. I will mention, for your reading pleasure, though, that this week was the National Federation of the Blind’s Hill lobbying week. Yes, just like the small Asians, they came in droves. Canes, guide dogs, guide people, you name it, not only were there lots of blind people, they also had a lot of stuff accompanying them. You can imagine navigating hundreds of blind people in already crowded hallways all week, can’t you? All of us were walking on eggshells trying to stay out of their way. It’s like blind people come and we all start freaking out not wanting to look like insensitive jerks. I saw staffers jumping up on ledges with cat-like form in order to let a few blind people with widely-swinging canes get by. I saw staffers fetching trays in the cafeteria to go give to the blind people who were unlucky enough to have lost their guide-whatevers and were aimlessly wandering around running into salad bar stations and walking up to the soda fountain and asking for a slice of pizza. Man, it was nuts. Not so fun, but makes the list for sure in light of the fact that only on Capitol Hill do those with sight have to dodge those without sight for a week straight.

Hmm. One more highlight from my exciting week. Let’s see… Oh! How about when I sat eating some fro-yo (frozen yogurt for those of you who aren’t down with the lingo) in the cafeteria and counted Republican interns wearing bow ties. BOW TIES. Why why why why? Guys, it wasn’t cool last year when Tucker Carlson was all the rage and it STILL isn’t cool this year. Why do you have the right to get pissed at gay people for “displaying their gay-ness” when they put up that rainbow flag, but it’s totally cool for you to display your narrow-mindedness, I mean, Republicanism by wearing dumb-ass bow ties. “Look at me! I’m White and I voted for Bush”. Gah. No more complaining. See HERE if you want to hear some REAL commentary on bow ties and men on the Hill in general.

Peace.

The Chicken Calendar On My Wall Gets Me Through Tough Times Like These

2005-02-03T11:59:00.000-05:00

Time I arrived at the bar: 7pm

Number of beers I drank prior to the start of the speech: plenty

Number of French fries I inhaled which subsequently put me in a food coma: too many

Number of times Bush smiled when the Republican half of Congress clapped for him similar to the kind of smiling done by 5th graders in talent shows when they receive positive reinforcement from their parents clapping in the front row: I don’t know, like 1500 or so?

Number of times I thought the lady sitting next to Laura Bush that the camera kept panning to was Hispanic: every time until Bush announced she was an Iraqi

Number of fishnet stockings caught on camera: one pair (Did you guys see those? Tacky! Who could they have belonged to? Jenna Bush?)

Number of jobs Bush claimed to create: 2.3 million

Number of jobs Bush actually created: 2.3 million…in China

Number of countries we’ve already invaded that begin with the letter “I”: one

Number of countries we are on the brink of invading that begin with the letter “I”: one

Name of that country: Iceland. Just kidding. Iran, dumb ass.

Number of times I saw my future Social Security pension go up in flames: oh God, at least 100

Number of times I thought it’d be funny if John Kerry stood up and started debating Bush: three

Number of times I thought it’d be even funnier if John Kerry stood up and said “Let’s take this outside!”: one

Told You

2005-02-02T15:42:00.000-05:00

http://www.drinkinggame.us/

Blogger sucks today

2005-02-02T15:22:00.000-05:00

It keeps posting my posts twice. I don't have time for this crap. I'm busy finding somewhere to go drinking for SOTU tonight. Yeah, you heard me. People in DC go to bars to get drunk and watch the SOTU on HUGE freakin' TVs. And we all fall silent. And then we get MAD and scream partisan insults at people from the other party. It's all kind of like what normal people do when they watch the Super Bowl.

Take Me To Your Leader

2005-02-02T15:20:00.000-05:00

Tonight, my friends, is the State of the Union address, or as we here on the Hill call it---SOTU. Yes, that's right. We even made that an acronym. We LOVE acronyms on the Hill. Love them. DOT, POTUS, SCOTUS, DOE, YOURMOMSUCKS...and the list goes on. Ten points to anyone who doesn’t live in the Washington Metropolitan Area that can guess what SCOTUS stands for. C’mon, I dare you.

Ever had a convo with a Washingtonian? Full of acronyms and self-importance. Goes a little something like this:

“Hi my name is Billy. I live in DC and I work at AEI and my focus is mainly on DOJ stuff. My girlfriend works for the FCC, but she’s gonna take the LSAT real soon so she can go to GW law school because she really wants to work at the SEC. Sometimes on Thursday nights after WAKA games, I watch the OC, but I’m not much into TV. I have a gym membership at WSC, it kicks ass. I always make time for reading HOH while I’m on the elliptical because Roll Call is so cool. Hey—if you ever want to grab a drink sometime, email me. I have a blackberry.”

FREE NEPAL!!!!

2005-02-01T09:32:00.000-05:00

I'm going to stop bitching about the US government for the rest of the day in honor of the fact that we are, at least, not as fucked up as Nepal.

KATMANDU, Nepal — King Gyanendra dismissed Nepal's government and imposed a state of emergency on Tuesday, cutting off his Himalayan nation from the rest of the world as telephone and Internet lines were severed, flights diverted and civil liberties severely curtailed.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wire/ats-ap_top13feb01,0,1366214.story

Whoa! How much of a power hungry maniac do you have to be to have your minions go out and CUT Internet lines? Shit. Now they can't read my blog. God! People of Nepal...I feel your pain. I Heart DC stands with you and starting today, I will print out my blog entries, affix them with rubber glue to postcards, and mail them off to your government-run radio stations, where they will most likely arrive and be thrown out the window, along with the rest of your civil liberties. Sigh.

In Other News...

2005-02-01T09:18:00.000-05:00

"In what may be a formal acknowledgment of the obvious, the CIA has issued a classified report revising its prewar assessments on Iraq and concluding that Baghdad abandoned its chemical weapons programs in 1991" (Los Angeles Times).

1991, kids. 1991. I was about 10 yrs old when Iraq stopped being a real threat to the world. Funny how a little over 10 yrs later we've made them, and all the neighboring Arab countries around them, not just a real threat to world stability, but a BIG threat. Uh, can you say IRAN??

I'd like to think the Bush Administration was just a little slow on the uptake. But really, they're just a bunch of liars.

If You Think This Is Impressive, Remind Me To Tell You About The Time I Ate My Way Out Of A Sand Dune

2005-01-31T11:29:00.000-05:00

Man peed way out of avalanche

A Slovak man trapped in his car under an avalanche freed himself by drinking 60 bottles of beer and urinating on the snow to melt it.

Rescue teams found Richard Kral drunk and staggering along a mountain path four days after his Audi car was buried in the Slovak Tatra mountains. He told them that after the avalanche, he had opened his car window and tried to dig his way out. But as he dug with his hands, he realised the snow would fill his car before he managed to break through. He had 60 half-litre bottles of beer in his car as he was going on holiday, and after cracking one open to think about the problem he realised he could urinate on the snow to melt it, local media reported.

He said: "I was scooping the snow from above me and packing it down below the window, and then I peed on it to melt it. It was hard and now my kidneys and liver hurt. But I'm glad the beer I took on holiday turned out to be useful and I managed to get out of there."

Parts of Europe have this week been hit by the heaviest snowfalls since 1941, with some places registering more than ten feet of snow in 24 hours.

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1261997.html?menu

Cheney Makes a Fashion Statement

2005-01-28T11:33:00.000-05:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43247-2005Jan27.html

Cheney is tacky. As my co-worker said: "He looks like he's dressed for a low scoring Packers game".

It's Warm In My House So I'm Not Leaving And Boy Do I Wish I Had Some Japanimation To Watch

2005-01-27T13:46:00.000-05:00

Ah, yes. I'm home sick today. I came down with a bad case of jello shots and Miller Lite last night. Whoo whee. I woke up this morning and there was no makeup on my face...yet I never washed it before bed, which means I was so drunk that I was sleepwalking. Sleepwalking isn't such a bad thing if you're doing productive things like washing your face, I guess. What's that you say? How do I know that the face washing happened in my sleep and not in my druken stupor when I came home? Easy. There are digital pictures of me lying in a mound of dirty laundry on the floor that my loving boyfriend took of me last night. Apparently, I came home and thought the heap of clothes on the bedroom floor would be a good spot to go to sleep. In the pictures, I'm wearing my down, knee length jacket and Ugg slippers. Now that's classy. FYI--your boyfriend's jeans make a decent blanket.

Last night I had a conversation about politics which, as you know, is a requirement in DC. There's actually a law here in the District that stipulates how many times a day you must mention the President, the state of international affairs and gay marriage. Anyone who fails to meet the quota is forced to wear a large, scarlet "T", which stands for "tourist". And boy do tourists ever suck. You never want to be mistaken for a fanny-pack-wearing-hick on a bus tour who buys pink sweatshirts that say "FBI--You Don't Know Me" on them.

Back to the story. Last night I had a discussion about the USofA's status as a hegemon. Don't you love that word? Hegemon? If you don't know what a hegemon is, look it up, or rather, google it since I'm pretty sure anyone who reads a blog doesn't actually feel the need to own a reference book since the Internet has the answer to EVERYTHING. Anyway, if you want the long and short of it, hegemon means "ruler of the world" or "he who has made everyone else his bitch". Which, like it or lump it, is exactly what the USofA is. I mean, come on, our currency starts falling and people line up to go to bat for us and eat our financial losses. Anyone else's currency starts to tank and we all sit around like hawks until it hits rock bottom so we can send in the IMF and then book a flight so we can go spend our Mighty Dollar in their financially depressed market and come home with dirt cheap wine and jewelry.

Soooo. Hegemon. I'm not writing a thesis about why we are a hegemon, that's not the point of today's blog. The point of today's discussion about the word "hegemon" is that it looks eerily similar to "pokemon". Hegemon. Pokemon. Hegemon. Pokemon. Now, let me be the first to say that I've never actually watched an episode of pokemon. I'm lost as to whether or not "pokemon" is a concept or if he's one of the characters. Is he the little yellow thing? No wait, I'm pretty sure he's Pikachu, or however you spell that freakish yellow creature's name.

Anyway, if pokemon can be portrayed as a cartoon character, can we portray hegemon in an animated form? Would someone like to get out some crayons and sketch me some ideas? Since hegemon has a lot to do with the world, maybe you should use green and blue for your drawing and make the little guy look kind of globe-ish. Or maybe since the USofA is the hegemon, you should break out the red, white and blue for your doodle. Whatever you do, please, no violet, magenta or sea foam green. We wouldn't want anyone accusing our cartoon of being GAY. Let's all learn from Sponge Bob's mistakes. Happy sketching.

It's Like Running A Marathon In Place

2005-01-25T09:19:00.000-05:00

Congressmen and women of the United States of America!!!! HOW DO YOU DO IT????

OMG I am SO tired just looking at your grueling schedule for the day. You haven't voted since about last year, save for the symbolic electoral college crap earlier this month, and now you're gonna come back and spend the day doing all this? You're going to hurt yourself! This is the legislative equivalent of sitting on a couch for two years and just getting up one day and running 10 miles!!!

Take a gander at today's very important and highly stressful voting schedule. This is some pretty hard hitting stuff. I imagine we'll have some Members passing out right on the freakin' floor!

FLOOR SCHEDULE AND BILL SUMMARY
Votes will be postponed until 6:30 p.m.

Suspensions (2 bills):
1) H.Con.Res. 16 – Congratulating the people of Ukraine for conducting a democratic, transparent, and fair runoff presidential election on December 26, 2004, and congratulating Viktor Yushchenko on his election as President of Ukraine and his commitment to democracy and reform (Rep. Hyde – International Relations)

2) H.Res.___ – Commending countries and organizations for marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and urging a strengthening of the fight against racism, intolerance, bigotry, prejudice, discrimination, and anti-Semitism (Rep. Lantos – International Relations)

Munchkin of Mendacity

2005-01-21T14:56:00.000-05:00

OAF OF OFFICE
Thursday, January 20, 2005
by Greg Palast

Watching John Kerry lip-synch the oath of office, I couldn't help wondering, 'what if.'

Here on stage in Washington was the winner-class warmed and protected by cashmere and tax cuts against the strange, nipple-chilling cold. Hell had frozen over.

Our President said, "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation." Well, no, it isn't.

Our President said, "We will widen retirement savings and health insurance." No, he won't.

Our President said, "America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains." Yes, he will.

Our President said, "And our country must abandon all the habits of racism." Oh, sure.

He doesn't believe a single word he's saying. And all over America, everyone knows he's lying and America is truly relieved.

America doesn't want to give up the habit of racism. Karl Rove doesn't. Jeb Bush doesn't. If not for challenging hundreds of thousands of voters in Black precincts of Ohio and other swing states, if not for purging thousands more from voter rolls for the crime of voting while Black, you wouldn't be president now, would you, Mr. President?

You won't "pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains," unless they are chained by your buck-buddies in Saudi Arabia.

You'll "support democratic movements" so long as the citizens of Venezuela don't get carried away and decide that democracy means they can choose a leader you don't like.

And you'll "widen Social Security and health insurance"? Who are you kidding? I just got a doctor bill for $5,200 . should I send it to you at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

You said, "You have seen that life is fragile, and evil is real, and courage triumphs." What you meant was, "Courage is fragile and real evil triumphs." Indeed your entire campaign was about American cowardice: "they" are coming to get us. Americans, scared for their lives, soiled their underpants and waddled to the polls crying, "Georgie, save us!"

Franklin Roosevelt said in his inaugural, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." But he didn't have Dick Cheney creating from his bunker a government which is little more than a Wal-Mart of Fear: midnight snatchings of citizens for uncharged crimes, wars to hunt for imaginary weapons aimed at Los Angeles, DNA data banks of kids and grandmas, the Chicken Little sky-is-falling social security spook-show, and shoe-searches in airports. Fear is your only product.

In another world, in which all votes are counted, J.F. Kerry would have gathered most of those arcane chits called "electoral votes" and would have taken that oath today.

But, dear Reader, there's one cold statistic Kerry voters must face. The fact that Republicans monkeyed with the votes in swing states doesn't wash away that big red stain: 59 million Americans marched to the polls and voted for George W. Bush.

If bin Laden doesn't scare you, THAT should.

Because if 59 million Americans agreed with George Bush that every millionaire's son, like him, shouldn't have to pay inheritance taxes; that sucking up to Saudi petrocrats constitutes a foreign policy; that killing Muslims in Mesopotamia will make them less inclined to kill us in Manhattan; that turning over social security to the casino operators that gave us Enron, WorldCom and world depression is smart economics; then, fine, Mr. Bush deserves the job. But mostAmericans, bless'm, don't actually believe any of that hokum. YET MOST STILL VOTED FOR HIM!

What we witnessed on November 2, 2004 was a 59-million strong army of pinheads on parade ready to gamble away their social security so long as George Bush makes sure that boys kill each other, not kiss each other; who feel right proud that our uniformed services can kick some scrawny brown people in the ass in some far off place when we're mad and can't find Osama; who can't bring themselves to vote for a guy with a snooty Boston accent who's never been to a
NASCAR tractor pull and who certainly thinks anyone who does is a low-Q beer-burping blockhead. And they are.

Today we witnessed more than the coronation of some privileged little munchkin of mendacity. It is the triumphal re-occupation of our nation by nitwits who think Ollie North's a hero not a conman, who can't name their congressman, who believe that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were going steady, who can't tell Afghanistan from Souvlaki-stan. Bloated with lies and super-size fries, they clomped to the polls 59 million strong to vent their small-minded little
hatreds on us all.

When I looked today at the oaf of office, I could not shake the feeling that this election was an intelligence test that America flunked.

Catch Greg Palast's film, "Bush Family Fortunes," at the Freedom Film
Festival at Sundance, Thursday, January 27. For more information or to sign up for
Palast's writings, go to www.GregPalast.com Palast is the author of the New York
Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.

I Thought I Had the 24 Hour Flu, But Really It Was Just An Adverse Reaction To The Inauguration

2005-01-20T19:38:00.000-05:00

Did you watch the coronation today? He said "freedom" 27 times in less than 20 minutes. That takes effort. And arguably, talent. Because anyone aside from GWB who said freedom that many times in one speech might be accused of repeating himself too much...or not really having anything to say aside from vague platitudes and references to grandiose ideals. In other words, all talk, no substance. Kudos to you, George W Bush. You're the world's foremost idiot. And 50% of America worships you. I love it.

On to other things. Today I was looking my buddy list up and down, seeing if there was anyone of worth to talk to. There wasn't. So I started reading away messages to cure boredom. Look what I found. I had to laugh because I read it on the away message of a kid who I haven't spoken to since high school. It raises a good debate. Why is he still on my buddy list? But then again, why would you delete people? Isn't that the beauty of the age of the Internet? We can stay connected to people we probably never would have seen or heard from again once they were no longer physically in our lives. Even if we don't talk to them, don't you kind of like being able to know you could find out what they were up to if you really cared? Or rather, were really bored? Gah. I don't know. Here's your assignment: go IM someone you haven't talked to in years. Pretend you accidentally hit their name instead of someone else's. See what happens. Report back.

Bud Light Presents: Real Men of Genius. Today we salute you, Mr. Compulsive Stalker Away Message Checker. While most people are out actually having a good time, you are at home reading about it on your computer screen. Right mouse click, get buddy info, or the little info box at the bottom of the Buddy List. You have people on that list you haven't talked to in years, but you still loyally read their away messages everyday to see what they are up to. So crack open an ice cold Bud Light, you deserve it!

It's Grim Here in DC. Snow AND Bush.

2005-01-19T16:10:00.000-05:00

Long time, no blog. I know. You hate me. What can I say? I actually had WORK to do this week. You should be happy for me. I didn’t have to stare at the fucking wall and surf the net.

A few thoughts before I leave for basically the rest of the week in honor of the Coronation of GWB. Yes, that’s right. I have MORE paid holidays coming up. And I’m not even going to the Inauguration.

Have you seen the new jibjab? Pretty funny. www.jibjab.com

Have you cried lately about the Inauguration, by the way?

Does anyone think Condi Rice has good hair?

Is one inch of snow really that big of a deal? DC closed its offices early today so everyone could DEAL WITH THE SNOW. God, people! It’s an INCH. Of fluffy, white shit. Y’all should try growing up in Upstate New York. We get three feet of snow and still go to school and have BBQs in the backyard. All you need are high boots. The grill still works. It’s just snow!

Gah. Time to go home. I’m on liberal leave in honor of the snow. Peace.

Apocalypse Now

2005-01-14T14:45:00.000-05:00

Um. What’s up with the weather? This week in DC, we got fog, floods, 68 degree temperatures and now we’re plunging into the weekend with 30 degree temps. There are tsunamis in SE Asia, mudslides and tons of precipitation in the West…I think the Apocalypse is coming.

Ya know, the only thing that would actually suck about the world ending is the fact that we’re probably not going to know when it’s happening. I mean, yeah, if the world ends, that sucks in general, but if it’s ending, it’s ending so it’s a moot point to argue the pros and cons of the Apocalypse. The main issue we are dealing with here is the fact that we won’t know it’s coming. So all the sudden the world is gonna end and you’re gonna be sitting at your desk job, or working your ass off on a treadmill, or wasting your money getting a haircut or something. Now THAT sucks.

If the Apocalypse didn’t have to be a surprise, think how much fun it would be. For instance, let’s say the world is going to end Thursday, January 20th, 2005. This may not be as far fetched as you think seeing as how Bush is being inaugurated that day, but I digress. So if you knew that next Thursday was your last day on Earth and there was no get out of jail free card that you could whip out to escape the wrath of God, wouldn’t you just go freakin’ nuts?

My Lord, think of the possibilities! I’d hop me on a plane straight to Miami Beach and take over a room in the Ritz and just run around like a drunken buffoon stealing food, designer handbags and going skydiving. Um, maybe not, but you get the point.

Think about it. What would you do if you knew the world was ending?

Blah

2005-01-13T17:55:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I get tired of posting solely sarcastic and biting commentary. Today I was gonna do something "heart-warming" or at least something positive. I looked for anything in the news that I could discuss that would meet this criteria. Um, I came up with...not much. I'll try again tomorrow. I promise. Gah. Bad mood today.

Read Me

2005-01-12T09:54:00.000-05:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2304-2005Jan11.html

When I Have Kids, I'm Going To Turn Them Into Avocados

2005-01-12T08:14:00.000-05:00

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse than the fact that Anne Geddes has made her mark on history, not based on artistic merit, but rather for the fact that millions of people who shop for their home décor at Hallmark and female college freshmen looking to decorate their dorms have made her shitty artwork into a best-seller…it gets much worse.

Yes. As if photographing newborns dressed up as vegetables wasn’t disturbing enough in its own right, Anne Geddes has taken her artistically bunk work to the next level. Now, not only are the newborns crafted into weirdo flower petals, but they have formed a union with none other than CELINE DION.

http://miracle.annegeddes.com/

Um. Right.

Celine Dion, whether you like her songs or not, is universally regarded as the ultimate symbol of cheesy. I guess it makes perfect sense, then, to team her up with the world’s cheesiest “art”, huh?

I say “art” because it’s not art. I mean, I’ve been looking at this woman’s shit for years and IT ALL LOOKS THE SAME. There is ZERO progression throughout her career. Can you imagine an Anne Geddes retrospective?

I’m sorry, but Anne Geddes is a marketer, not an artist. Waking up and saying “Today I will put a sleeping newborn on a zucchini” and then going to bed, and getting up the next day and saying, “For my next piece, I will photograph a sleeping newborn inside a tangerine peel” indicates that you are not an artist. You simply learned what sells (why does it sell? why, why, why?). Had she stopped with the first go-round, she could have had art. At this point, she’s a fucking Wal-Mart poster-section special. Gah.

Can evil be normal?

2005-01-10T11:40:00.000-05:00

It’s official. Today we bring to court one of the soldiers from the infamous Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

“Opening statements are set to start Monday in the court-martial of Spc. Charles Graner Jr., the alleged ringleader of the scandal. Graner, 36, is charged with conspiracy to maltreat Iraqi detainees, assault, dereliction of duty and committing indecent acts.”—NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Prisoner-Abuse-Graner.html?oref=login

Ever hear of the banality of evil? Hannah Arendt wrote a book called Eichmann in Jerusalem in which she argued that the Nazi soldiers and officers weren’t evil, bad people, nor were they necessarily the ones ultimately in need of punishing.

Said she: “The deeds were monstrous, but the doer ... was quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither demonic nor monstrous.”

Essentially, and this is way over-simplifying it, she argued that this guy Eichmann, who had been the man in charge of organizing the deportation of millions of Jews to concentration camps, was not a malicious, sick-o, but rather a thoughtless, rule-follower. Through the normal (banal) medium of bureaucracy, Eichmann committed horrible crimes against humanity.

But was he at fault? Or was it the larger mechanism surrounding and controlling him? In the context of Nazi Germany, was ordinary-citizen Eichmann unable to choose right from wrong? Did he have a choice?

I leave you with these thoughts as this Abu Ghraib trial begins. It sure is easy to pick a scapegoat and focus your anger on him. It’s harder to place blame on the larger entity that cultivated the behavior which you are faulting. It’s even harder when that entity is the US Army and it has had more experience covering its ass than you care to know.

Chicken-Head

2005-01-08T22:30:00.000-05:00

This week's assignment: go out and buy something really f-ing weird and hang it in your personal space where everyone can see it.

This year is the first year in twenty-something years that no one gave me a calendar for Xmas.
Ok, fine. So I went out and bought my own. I've really out done myself this time. It's called "EXTRAORDINARY CHICKENS". No joke. It's 12 months of really fucked up looking chickens. These chickens look like they smoke a lot of crack. Some look like they have afros. Some appear to have been electrocuted. Some look like your mom. And for those of you who have seen Napoleon Dynamite, yes, some of them do have large talons.

Ok, so the plan is to hang this calendar above my desk, right in plain view for all who enter the Congressman's office to see. Oh, this is gonna be great. All kinds of "VIPs" are going to be forced to stare at my extraordinary chickens for the entirety of 2005. Usually, anyone who comes to see my boss is in total kiss-ass mode. They want to introduce themselves to everyone in the office and of course, they can't avoid me since my desk is stationed right next to his office. They usually have some dumb comment about one of the many random things on my wall, as if I care if they can make a personal connection with my decorations. So, I expect that a good deal of visitors this year are going to have something nice to say about my chickens.

"Oh my. What an extraordinary looking chicken you have on your wall there. Are you a fan of chickens?"

Possible responses:

--Yes, I am a fan of chickens, but only the extraordinary variety.
--No, I hate chickens. I have 12 months worth of visuals of chickens to remind me just how much I hate them.
--Well, they taste pretty good, so yeah, I guess I'm a fan. Mostly, I just think they make a good conversation piece.
--I am deathly afraid of chickens and my shrink says staring at pictures of them will resolve the problem.
--Chickens, indeed, are extraordinary. Look at the plumage. Look at the talons. My, what a fine bird the chicken is.
--Am I a fan of chickens? Hey, Boss, did you hear that? Am I a fan of chickens? Well, shit! I've only got 10 of them at home, God bless their hearts.

Back to your assignment. Go find something as odd as a chicken calendar and proudly display it. If you work in an office, hang it over your desk. If you are a student, hang it over your bed. If you are a huge ninny, and you can't stand the fact that people think your weird focus-piece is "weird", you can always say something totally wimpy like--"Oh! That's my Karl Rove Chia Pet! See? It made you smile! That's the point!" And if you are not a loser and actually have some sense of self, you can say, "Yeah. That's my life-size Kenny G poster. Of course I'm a fan!". Or, "The fuzzy dice hanging over my bed? They're the new mistletoe, baby."

Go have some fun.

That Heartland, It's a Riot

2005-01-05T08:00:00.000-05:00

Some states are more forgettable than others. Try and remember the last time you thought about Kansas. For that matter, try and remember the last time you had a conversation about Kansas that didn’t involve chuckling.

Kansas has really outdone itself now, though. Today’s paper reports that Kansas has come up with a new tourism slogan. Ready?

“KANSAS. As big as you think.”

Jeez, does United have any direct flights from DC to Topeka? I need to hop me on a plane and go see just how big Kansas really is because the fact of the matter is that I really don’t think about Kansas, at all, so I never even stopped to think that it might be BIG.

Question: Even if Kansas is big, does that make you want to visit?

The state spent $700,000 in lotto revenue on this image campaign. I know of a lot of children who are probably being left behind that could have used a few hundred thousand…

Said Kansas Commerce Secretary Howard Fricke, "Our wide open spaces do create big thinking,"

Yes, Howard, big thinking indeed. Thinking so big that your slogan includes the words “big” and “think”.

http://www.ljworld.com/section/stateregional/story/192295

Still Writing 04 On My Checks

2005-01-03T17:00:00.000-05:00

Finally had to go back to work today. Am pleased to report that the Members of the 109th Congress will be making an appearance in DC tomorrow so they can all be sworn in and then take off again for home. God, do I ever work?

I went to Home Depot yesterday. Not many women enjoy Home Depot. I certainly don't. It's full of all kinds of large, scary objects and tools that look like they require a lot of effort to work and will probably make your hands dirty. Ew. Anyway, I was amused by a sign I saw in Home Depot's ladies' room. It was a friendly little placard that said something like "Patrons, for your security and safety, we monitor these premises."

Number one: The sign should read-- "Patrons, because we don't trust you as far as we can throw you, we're watching you."

Number two: They monitor the bathrooms? How? If they've got cameras in there, that's sick and probably illegal. And if they don't have cameras, who's the sucker who got hired to watch people pee and where is this person hiding? Forget it. I don't want to know.

Let's All Make 2005 Tolerable For Those Around Us

2004-12-30T18:53:00.000-05:00

I don't make New Years resolutions because I am perfect, so this year I've come up with a list of suggested resolutions for some of the not-so-perfect people out there.

SUGGESTED NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS FOR CERTAIN SUCKERS

In the year 2005, I will not make fortune cookies that don't tell fortunes.
--WHAT ever did happen to ordering Chinese food and cracking open the cookie and getting your fortune told? Somewhere over the last decade, the sucker who sits around and stuffs the cookies stopped inserting psychic knowledge and started just sticking in statements like "Happiness is a virtue" or "Wise men eat cereal" or how about "Life is worth living". GOD! If I'm going to subject my arteries to pork fried rice, I want a fortune in my fortune cookie. Listen, buddy, whoever you are, either start telling my fortune or rename the damn things After Dinner Desserts With Stupid Shit I Thought You Should Know In Them.

In the year 2005, I will not kill pregnant women.
--Killing women and their unborn children was the new black this year. Sure, it's a good way to express your anger and it'll give you your fifteen minutes of fame, but the bottom line is that it's just creepy. Let's nip this trend in the bud.

In the year 2005, I will lose my mullet/perm/teased hair/roll of bangs that look like a sausage across my forehead.
--Do you ever wonder if these people are blind? I mean, I feel like they get up every morning, put on blinders and go out into the world and just TOTALLY miss the memo that NO ONE else wears their hair this way, nor have they worn it this way since the early 90s. C'mon.

In the year 2005, I will not buy or carry a fake designer bag.
--Who do these suckers think they're kidding? First of all, I can spot your fake from down the block. Newsflash: Gucci does NOT make a bag with little Gs all over it. Coach makes that bag and it is covered in Cs. So when you walk around with a bag covered in the 7th letter of the alphabet, it's not TOO obvious that it is a big, fat, fake. Why are you advertising the fact that you can't afford a real designer bag and that you're SUCH an unoriginal lemming that you're gonna go buy an imitation bag so you can think you look like all the "cool" people with real bags??
And now for the real issue...anything that is overdone instantly sucks. Thus, when we all have a Louis Vuitton bag, it is no longer unique and cool, it becomes old and tired. I hate you for making me never want a Kate Spade bag (SO hopelessly out of fashion, thanks to fakes). But I'm not that mad about the Burberry thing. That pattern is kinda lame anyway.

In the year 2005, if my name is John Mayer, I will quit my day job.
--Whoowee. I totally HEARTED Mr. Mayer when he first came out with that Your Body is a Wonderland song. But good Lord, 10 songs targeted to chicks later and I've had it. John, your latest song about fathers being good to their daughters is the last straw. Your music is the equivalent of chick lit. If I want Bridget Jones or Shopaholic, I'll open a book, not turn on the radio, thank you. I don't have a crush on you anymore. I just think you're a pussy.

In the year 2005, I will finally realize that Fox news is a bunch of one-sided, right wing, sensationalist, crap.
--If you get your news from Fox, you've got some issues that even I can't help you with.

In the year 2005, if I decide to tour Washington DC, I will not stand on the left side of the elevators.
--Yes, that's right. DC is the only city in the world where EVERYONE is so important that we absolutely MUST walk up the escalators. We even have specific lanes: stand to the right, walk to the left. I've given you fair warning. If I catch you standing on the left in '05, Im'a gonna' whack you upside yo head with my Coach bag. And it's real. And the real ones hurt more than the fake ones.

And finally, in the year 2005, if I am the occupant of the White House, I will kill myself and spare the entire universe from 4 more years of my complete and utter bullshit.

When You Drink Miller Lite in the Morning...

2004-12-25T13:05:00.000-05:00

Xmas is fun when you get older. You stop getting gifts you have to pretend to like and you start getting MONEY. Cold, hard, cash. Not unlike your cold and hard Grandmother, except it's much more useful and you actually like having it around.

This morning, in my stocking, I got a bunch of shiny, new fifty dollar bills. Wow they sure were spiffy. The US Treasury has really out done itself this time. Have you seen them? Yeah, you probably have, and you probably think I'm retarded because I haven't yet, but let's not forget that I am a Congressional Staffer and thus I never really see any money. The only people in Congress who see money are the Republicans. But I digress.

So, yeah, these nifty fifties. First off, we finally queer-eyed our bank notes and injected some color into them. Puke green and off-white are SO the past 200-some years. And you'll never guess which colors made it onto the bill---yes! Red and Blue! Those colors are so hot right now. And in a moment of teenage weakness, the Treasury workers even decorated one of the number "50"s with GOLD GLITTER! Ooooh, it looks so cool and it really makes a statement that says "We are the most powerful country in the history of the Universe and we let Polly Pocket help design our cash".

Mmmm. And then there's Grant. A big, fat, bloated picture of the most amazing and influential President in the history of our great nation. As we all know, President Grant became famous for such acts as...as...um...for such acts as being on the fifty dollar bill. Please, if anyone out there remembers why President Grant was cool enough to get on the fifty dollar bill, let me know. Otherwise, I'm going to have to propose something drastic...

Yes, as sweet as I think the new fifty dollar bills are, I would like to propose that we make them EVEN SWEETER. First, we are going to remove Grant, the guy who no one except current 11th grade US History students knows what he did, and replace him with---yes, you knew this was coming---RONALD REAGAN. And you thought I was gonna say Bill Clinton, ha! No, no. I propose we put Reagan on the fifty for one very important reason: we need a visual, everyday reminder of exactly when this great nation of ours started falling apart. Let us never forget when we started the trend of cutting taxes for the rich and spending billions of dollars on arbitrary defense initiatives. Remember when Ronnie spent billions of dollars on "star wars" type defense systems and thus created the largest deficit this nation had seen up until that point all in the name of defending ourselves from the evil evil evil empire of the Soviet Union? Good God, thank heavens for that little bout of deficit defense spending. We might surely all be speaking Russian today. I'm sure that the Soviet Empire NEVER would have collapsed on its own from the extreme poverty and inefficiency that its communist government was perpetuating and that it most SURELY crumbled at the thought of our kick ass missiles named after a movie starring Yoda (scared the Russians, they be). And we must never forget the compassion that the Reagan revolution brought to our homeland. Yes, ketchup IS a vegetable and Nancy Reagan only had the best of intentions for all the suckers who can't afford to go to private school when she used that famous line to defend the fact that her husband thought it was totally cool to help finance his conservative revolution by making sure that the children of the poor and the middle class will never ever be able to eat a healthy meal in a public school ever again. So here's to the Gipper. I'm going to put you on the fifty.

Now that our fifty is graced with the Father of Modern All That is Wrong Today, let's really add a kick ass finishing touch. We can leave all the decoration and all the coloring of the current bills as is (we don't want these bills to clash too much with our other bills, that would look so tacky). All that's left to do is to make the bills scratch-and-sniff. The fifty dollar bill will now come in 5 different scents, each of which will represent the unique regions of our nation.

Bills representative of the Northeast will be scratched to reveal a nice pine-clambake-Starbucks scent. The pine is an ode to the fine trees of this region and they will evoke woodsy-wintery feelings and help remind us that this region is perpetually covered in snow. Clambakes are a tribute to all the stuffy, collars-up, old monied folks that grace the region everywhere from the Hamptons, to Nantucket, to Connecticut to the shores of Maine. God bless all of you, you've made pink pants and ties with cartoonish pictures of whales on them all the rage. And the Starbucks scent is a nasal reminder of the uptight, high strung competitive, winner-take-all, work all day, work all night and make-sure-your-kids-go-to-an-Ivy-league-school-and-become-just-as-driven-as-you-are nature that is so characteristic of every single person living in the great Northeast. Except those weirdos in Vermont. But we already got their backs with the pine scent.

Fifty dollar scratch and sniff bills from the South will emit lovely wafts of Pabst Blue Ribbon and Jack Daniels. We tried to infuse the bills with smells of incest, blind-faith-born-againsim and illiteracy, but it wasn't working out.

In honor of the Midwest, fifty dollar scratch and sniff bills representative of this region will smell like--nothing. Because, um, that's what's out there. Nothing. I guess they've got some cornfields and cows but who the hell wants to smell that anyway?

We now arrive at scratch and sniff bills made especially for the Southwest. Mmm. These will be yummy. Full of the scents of fresh baked tortillas and refried beans. These bills will not only smell yummy, but they will yip and yap and scream "ayiyiyiyiyi, arriba!" whenever you take them out of your wallet.

Finally, scratch and sniff West Coast bills. Infused with avocados, botox and highway fumes. These bills are, perhaps, the most specialist of them all...they will not have pictures of Ronnie and instead will be collectors items graced with the faces of the OC. Collect them all. Marisa, Ryan, Seth, Summer, the guy with the big eyebrows, the slut (oh wait, there's more than one)...they can all be yours.

Designing money is fun. I'm going to request a transfer from Congress to the Treasury in the New Year. Merry Xmas. I hope you got some cash in your stocking, too.

A Report From the Trenches

2004-12-24T17:06:00.000-05:00

Greetings from Upstate New York. I Heart DC has packed up and left our nation's capital for the Holidays and has safely arrived home in Albany, which as many of you might know, is also a capital city. So here I sit in the cozy home I grew up in, Miller Lite in one hand, high speed internet in the other. I heart coming home.

And boy, isn't it great how some things never change? The capital region here in New York is one of those things. I was pleased to come home and see that the greater Albany area still is the whitest place on earth. And, no, I'm not talking about the snow. I was also happy to see that Upstate New York is still the coldest place on the planet. And, of course, seeing as the climate here is about as hospitable as the Antarctic, it was no surprise for me that Albany is still the reigning world champ of SUVs. Here, there, everywhere...SUVs. Fords, Chevys, Land Rovers, Jeeps, Benzes, Toyotas, you name it, we got 'em and we got A LOT of them.

But lo and behold, something new has sprung up here in good old Albany. All of the SUVs, and every other car for that matter, are adorned with those fantastic "Support the Troops" yellow ribbon stickers. They even have red, white and blue ones that say "Freedom Isn't Free!!" (No joke! It costs a buck-o-five, I hear).

Anyway, back to the ribbon orgy...Hell yeah! Albany hates terrorism and we're gonna stick it to those dirty towel heads with our car ribbons! Fuck yeah! What's up now, bitches? What are you gonna do when you come to Albany and see a sea of patriotism slapped on the backs of our SUVs? What are you gonna do when you're in the Wal-Mart parking lot and your head is spinning from all the America lovin' that our cars are putting out? What are you gonna do when I've got a yellow AND a red white and blue ribbon on my tailgate door and my Dodge Ram pickup is just OOZING anything and everything that is the US of A and the country music is wailin' and I've got an "I hate the Middle East" air freshener hanging from my rear view mirror and my tailpipes emit tear gas whenever my headlights detect brown skin and I've got my shotgun in the backseat fully loaded and ready to rip shit up and exercise it's God-given-Second-Amendment-rights? Yeah, you're gonna shit your pants and run the other way, aren't you?

Actually, I bet you're gonna sit back and have a good chuckle as you calculate how much gas each SUV in your line of vision is guzzling and what that translates to in profits for your country.

Edits

2004-12-24T01:14:00.000-05:00

So I took a moment to glance at some of the crap I write and realized that I should probably comment on my earlier fetus ripped out of the womb posting. Oops. I spoke too soon on that one. I'm sure we are all more than well aware by now that it turns out it was not the woman's husband (as originally hypothesized), but rather some other crazy psycho bitch who took the baby and ran. So I apologize for the misinformation. But I stand by the fact that people are way too fucked up nowadays.

Mildly Amusing

2004-12-21T14:23:00.000-05:00

My brain is on holiday. Please accept this silly forward that I received on email this afternoon as today's post. Again, I did not write this. I only pass on the humor, though somehow, the whole topic makes me a little sad.

Dear President Bush,

Congratulations on your victory over all of us non-evangelicals. Actually, we're a bit ticked off here in California, so we're leaving. And while we are at it, we are taking all of the "Blue States" with us and we will be forming a new country called the United States of Azure.

In case you are not aware, the "Blue States" include Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, all of the Northeastern states, and the urban half of Ohio.

We spoke to God, and She agrees that this split will be beneficial to almost everybody, and especially to us in the United States of Azure. In fact, God is so excited about it that She is going to shift the whole country at 4:30 P.M. this Friday. Therefore, please let everyone know that they need to be back in their states by then.

God is going to give us the Pacific Ocean, Hollywood, the Green Bay Packers, and the Mall of America. In addition, we're getting San Diego. (Sorry, that's just how it goes). But God is letting you have the KKK, the Miami Dolphins, and country music.

Just so we're clear, the United States of Azure will be pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, and anti-war. Speaking of war, we're going to need all "Blue State" citizens back from Iraq. If you need people to fight in Fallujah, just ask your evangelical voters. They have tons of kids they are willing to send to their deaths for absolutely no useful purpose. And they don't care if you don't show pictures of their kids' caskets coming home.

So, you get Texas and all of the former slave states, and we get the Governator and stem cell research. (We would love for you to take Britney Spears off our hands, though. She IS from the South, right?) Since we get New York, you'll have to come up with your own late night TV shows because we get Letterman, The Daily Show, and Conan O'Brien. You get... well, why don't you ask your people at Fox News to come up with something entertaining?

We wish you all the best in the next four years and we hope, we really hope, that you find those missing weapons of mass destruction. Seriously. Soon.
Sincerely,
California

Issues

2004-12-20T14:04:00.000-05:00

Issue #1:
Time magazine named Bush "Person of the Year". I'm going to start my own magazine and issue the same award to Hitler because apparently, criteria for person of the year includes arbitrarily invading other countries, telling outright lies to your countrymen that cause them harm in the end, perpetuating racial hatred, and being resposible for the deaths of thousands of innocent men and women.

Issue #2:
Rumsfled doesn't sign condolence letters. Apparently, soldiers' families are upset because they are getting condolence letters with a Rumsfeld STAMP on them. Rumsfeld cites something about wanting to get the letters out in a timely matter as the reason for the stamp, hence implying he doesn't have time to sit down and actually sign some letters to dead soldiers' families for 5 minutes a day. Well, Rummy, maybe we don't have time for you and your bullshit either. I, myself, think the war is a big waste of my time and my money so maybe I should just decide not to have the time or money to pay my taxes this year. I'll send in all my forms blank with a big "AMY" stamp on all the signature lines. God.

You guys, please. Can't we be not crazy just for a little while? At least until the New Year?

2004-12-17T13:14:00.000-05:00

Ok so there is a man out there in Missouri who is on the loose with a fetus. Apparently, he cut it out of his wife's womb (uh, duh, she's dead in case you're wondering) and now he is at-large with an 8 month-old fetus. The police believe this fetus just might be alive so they have issued an "Amber Alert" so that everyone will be aware that they should be on the lookout for this fetus, which apparently must be the baby Jesus or something because it is able to live outside its mother's womb. The bright folks in Missouri must be assuming that the father has hooked his unborn-but-now-kind-of-born child's umbilical cord up to some life giving liquid. There aren't many liquids in Missouri aside from beer, so maybe the kid is enjoying a Bud Light as we speak.

No, really though. I apologize for making light of the situation. But good Lord. Why are people in this country so fucked up?
Seriously Disturbed

We All Deserve Our Own Personal Human Transport Systems

2004-12-17T13:07:00.000-05:00

Am I the only person who gets annoyed when the elevator stops for other people? I know it's the most irrational thing to get annoyed about, but really though, it just bugs me.

Like when you’re on floor 5 going down to floor 1 and the car stops at floor 3 to let other people on and instead of just not even really thinking much of it because, well, it’s an elevator and it’s meant for public transport of people on all floors of the building, you get this uber sense of annoyance and you want to roll your eyes and be like, “Ugh. Yes, you can get on even though you’ve now added 30 seconds to my trip.”

Oh and then there’s the one-floorers. You know. People who get on at floor 2 to go up to floor 3 and you want to hit them b/c there’s a staircase right next to the elevator doors.

And then there’s those joyous times when the elevator stops at every floor. Like it’s 8:58am and work starts at 9am and you get on at the ground floor with 6 other people and lo and behold, all freakin 6 people work on 6 different floors and YOU work on floor 6, fuck! So annoying.

I hate it the most when people get on and hit the wrong floor. And they go, “Whoops! Meant to hit floor 5!” And so now, you and the jackass get to spend extra time in the car with each other as you stop at floor 3 and the door opens and you’re rolling your eyes and he’s frantically hitting the ‘close door’ button as if somehow that’s gonna make you feel better about the fact that you had to stop at an extra floor for no reason.

God, I’m taking the stairs.

If The Wall Was Still Up, Would Anybody Really Care?

2004-12-16T13:33:00.000-05:00

Anyone following the election in the Ukraine? The one where someone won, and then they said the election was bunk, and I think maybe they voted again…or maybe they were trying to vote again?...and thousands of opposition supporters have been standing outside the government buildings in sub zero temperatures for weeks demanding that the wrongs be righted and it’s a whole big mess and the Russian Kremlin wants the guy named Viktor Yanukovych to win and the opposition is a guy named Viktor Yushchenko and it is quite possible, I think, that maybe there is NO fraud after all, and the problem really lies in the fact that it is a near impossibility to tell the difference between these two guys’ names and everyone got to the polls and drew a blank and forgot which Viktor Y. they liked??

Or maybe, just maybe, that whole former Soviet Bloc place is just as big of a mess now as it was before, during and after the Cold War. I mean, when’s the last time you heard the word “Russia” and you thought of peace and prosperity? I hear words like “Uzbekistan” and I think of millions of miserable babushkas draped in all black from head to toe, wandering down dirt roads in the freezing cold and the sun is never shining and everyone is hungry and 30 year olds have the wrinkles of 80 year olds and the only sound you can hear in the whole town is a beautiful rendition of “Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match, find me a find, catch me a catch”, and everyone is pissed at Chava because she won’t let Yentl pick out her husband and, oh God, it’s all so Fiddler on the Roof that I just can’t stand it.

So yeah, it’s a fucked up part of the world. The big news this week is that Viktor Y of the opposition has been poisoned by the people who work for Viktor Y who hearts the Kremlin.

Says the AP…
“Viktor Y fell ill after having dinner with Ukrainian Security Service chief Ihor Smeshko and his deputy, Volodymyr Satsyuk, on Sept. 5.”

Yeah, I know! Wow! I can’t pronounce those names either!

Oh man, it’s no longer just Fiddler on the Roofish, it’s Shakespearean! Viktor Y’s face has become all pockmarked and disfigured even! A curse on both your houses! And apparently, tests are revealing that Viktor Y’s blood contains the second-highest level of dioxin poisoning ever recorded in a human – more than 6,000 times the normal concentration! It’s all so dramatic.

Why can’t we be this dramatic? What if during the election, Kerry had just invited Bush to dinner and poisoned him? OMG it would have been so easy. You know Teresa probably keeps a bottle of arsenic handy…

Deeper Than You Know

2004-12-16T10:44:00.000-05:00

Remember "Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy"? Here's a gem...

Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis.

Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

2004-12-15T09:57:00.000-05:00

Does anyone else see a big red flag when they read about the fact that former 2000 VP candidate on the Democratic ticket Joe Lieberman has twice said no in recent days when approached about the possibility of a major job in the Bush Administration?

Bush = extreme right wing Republican
Lieberman = centrist Democrat (or so we thought???)

I mean, what kind of Democrat gets asked to be a major player in the Bush Administration? Rumor has it he's been approached with a Cabinet position (Sec of Homeland Security) and also a job as Ambassador to the UN.

Um. We ran this guy for VP on the Dem ticket? I'm so confused right now. There are a lot of reasons that Gore and Lieberman were an awful ticket. This just adds to that list. Perhaps we wouldn't have had the 2000 election debacle if we had picked a ticket that could have trounced Bush. Then it really wouldn't have mattered that Floridians are too retarded to punch their fucking ballots. What? Is the average age of a Floridian like 80? Just like you shouldn't drive drunk, you shouldn't vote with cataracts.

Bring back Bill.

Giving someone 6 different kinds of birds in 12 days is really rather odd

2004-12-14T08:05:00.000-05:00

I read the most ridiculous statistic the other day. Some nerds at a bank did some Christmas-song-specific research which, apparently, they do every year. The fact that this is an on-going project makes these guys even bigger nerds, but more so, it says to me that this particular bank (PNC) is way overstaffed if it has got the time and the inclination to do this kind of study every year, and its customers should start banking elsewhere to protest their contribution in bank fees toward these guys’ salaries. But alas, since the mind-cluttering data is out there, why not talk about it.

Here’s the deal. According to cnn.com, every year since 1984, the bozos at PNC have done an estimated Christmas Price Index for all the items in the 12 days of Christmas song. This year's index put the cost of all 364 items mentioned in the song, along with all the repetitions, at $66,334, up 1.6 percent from last year.

Wow. Stop the presses and tell your friends. Eleven pipers piping ($1,650) are clearly pretty profit-oriented and those nine ladies dancing ($6,600) are tap-dancing all the way to the bank. Five golden rings. Sheesh. They’ll only set you back $240! That’s child’s play when you consider that four calling birds alone will plop a big old $429 debt on your Visa.

The fact of the matter is, though, that no matter how much the stupid 12 days ofChristmas gifts cost, they are for the most part rather DUMB. Um...ten lords a leapin’ for (and this is the most pricy item on the list) $10,629?

Imagine its 10 days before Xmas (I’m tired of writing out Christ-mas) and your boyfriend decides to send your gift to the office today. You now have TEN highly-paid men, TEN of them!!!, leaping all over the place. I mean, your boss is PISSED. One of the freak shows is showcasing his signature kick-ball-change on top of the copier and three of them are taking turns doing their leaping over the cubicles sending post-it notes and staplers flying and breaking keyboards left and right. The other six have found the break room and they’re drinking all the damn diet cokes you were trying to hide in the back of the fridge so no one would steal them. What a dumb gift. I’d for sure break up with the idiot who sent me ten lords a leapin’ because he clearly has no taste, no sense of financial responsibility and certainly no respect for the workplace.

And I don’t even really want to get into the $600 six geese a layin’. Who wants geese? Maybe I could be amused by the sight of ONE goose hanging out on my porch on day six with a big red ribbon around his neck, but six geese laying eggs is so not cool. I’m guessing they’d do more shitting than laying because really, what are the odds of six geese laying multiple eggs all on the same day, six days before Xmas? And we all know how much bird shit sucks. I hope every single one of those filthy birds showed up with a red ribbon because I’d rip it right off their necks and wrap it around their beaks to quiet down what would most likely be the loudest and most annoying quacking session ever held on my front porch.

OK. I can complain no more. All I can do is hope that if some sucker ever tries to give me gifts everyday for 12 days before Xmas (what is this anyway, Hanukah?) that he comes to his senses and spends the $66K on a BMW. I’d heart him for that.

As You Know, If You Tell Yourself Enough Lies, You Can Sleep Quite Well At Night

2004-12-09T17:39:00.000-05:00

I'm sure that unless you live under a rock, you've by now heard that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld went to the Middle East yesterday and took questions from a camp of soldiers who proceeded to roast him and the US government for failing to even provide body armor for the troops. One brave soul got up and asked Rummy how he justifies the fact that US soldiers have to make their own goddamn armor from scrap metal they find on the side of the road.

Said Rummy:
"As you know, you go to war with the Army you have."
--Donald Rumsfeld 12/8/04

Thanks, Rummy. I guess I did know that. Heres what else we know.

As, you know, the sky is blue.

As you know, GWB has the IQ of a chimp.

As you know, Donald Rumsfeld was never in the military.

As you know, your mom is the woman who gave birth to you.

As you know, Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11.

As you know, over 1000 US soldiers have died in this war, 130 in the month of November 2004 alone.

As you know, your kids are going to have grandkids before we ever leave the middle east.

As you know, pancakes taste good when you put syrup on them.

As you know, this blog leans to the left.

And...

As you know, it's only fair to properly arm and protect the 19 year-olds you send into the desert with no clue why they're fighting a war in order to put them up against people who DO know why they're fighting, who are fighting tooth and nail for their God and their country and who are willing to fight to their death to kill the American infidels who have turned their worlds upside down (and whether you think their previous world sucked or not is irrelevant due to the fact that their previous world posed no threat to us until we attacked them) and who have killed ten thousand-plus of their fellow countrymen and innocent women and children in their hunt for WMDs that don't exist. Gah.

OK this one is good too

2004-12-09T14:03:00.000-05:00

More fun gifts to give

I Like

2004-12-09T13:59:00.000-05:00

I found this web site. I think their stuff is pretty unique and cute. If you haven't gotten me a Xmas gift yet, please browse...

Nice jewelry

Sesame Street Comes Full Circle Into Your Adult Life

2004-12-08T15:56:00.000-05:00

President Bush was spotted today with his bestest friends from childhood. Recently, in light of his whole Cabinet shake up, he's been calling them to see if they might be looking for a new gig.

Bush and His Buddies

Suggested Cabinet Positions for Bush's Bestest Friends:

Elmo-- Secretary of Education. On a daily basis, Elmo will be brought to the United States by the letter "E". Since "E" stands for both Elmo AND Education, we couldn't even think of putting him in charge of anything else. Children all over the nation will thank me later. Clearly, anything's better than No Child Left Behind.

Big Bird-- Secretary of State. It's about time the United States sent someone lovable out into the world. Who can be mad at a big yellow bird? Surely everyone will forget about the Iraq war and all of our silly nation-building-plots-for-oil once they get a load of Big Bird. President Chirac of France will invite him for tea and, perhaps, together with Snuffalafagus, we will work out a plan for world peace and will finally be able to rename the "Freedom" Fries in the House of Representatives cafeteria "French" Fries once again. "French" Toast, too.

Cookie Monster-- Secretary of Agriculture. It's the only position that has to do with food so wouldn't good old CM be best suited for this slot? We will replace nutritious school lunches with the fatty cookies and processed foods that the big CM enjoys so much. Oh wait, we already did that. Chicken nuggets and Pepsi, anyone?

Oscar the Grouch-- Secretary of Homeland Security. Oscar don't take no shit from nobody. I pity the terrorist who catches Oscar when he's in a mood. Oscar will be a pillar in the war on terror. He hates everything, including colors, so he'll get rid of that stupid-ass rainbow colored alert system on day one and this will be looked upon in the history books as one of the crowning achievements of mankind. Also, Oscar will be able to use the trash can lid that he normally wears as a hat to deflect incoming missiles.

Bert and Ernie-- Secretaries of the Interior. Let's face it. Bert and Ernie are gay. They are going to queer eye the Department of the Interior like it's no one's business. Under their rule, Interior will focus less on National Parks, rivers and coastlines and more on, well, interiors. Like the White House dining room. I foresee our next big White House dinner reception being held in a big, purple room with rotating tables covered in lime-green, faux rabbit fur tablecloths with disco balls that play YMCA whenever their laser sensors discern that a guest has finished his glass of wine. The Village People start playing and cue the waiters--nine very large men in nothing but tights and bow ties will swoop into the room and descend upon the guest's table, swooshing his empty glass up off the table and into the hands of waiter number one who will balance the glass on his naked chest whilst waiter number 2 uncorks a bottle and fills it up and then proceeds to douse waiters 3 through 9 with whatever is left in the bottle and everyone will freeze like you do in musical chairs when the YMCA stops playing and they will remain frozen, mostly-naked and dripping in Merlot until the next guest empties a glass. Ambassadors round the world will tell great tales of the Land With the Fruity Wine Drenched Waiters.

The Spirit of Xmas

2004-12-06T15:47:00.000-05:00

The spirit of Xmas swept through me this past weekend. Note that I said Xmas, not Christmas. If the spirit of Christmas had swept through me, I would have gone to church and sung carols, or perhaps I would have grabbed a bell and sat outside in the cold with the Salvation Army. When the spirit of Christmas swells up inside of you, you want to reach out and touch humanity. You want to sing the praises of the Lord and wish for Peace on Earth.

But no, it wasn’t Christmas. It was Xmas. And when Xmas takes hold of your soul, you pretty much just want to go shopping.

So that’s what me and my Xmas filled innards did. We made sure the Visa was all juiced up and we hit the streets. There’s nothing like a good Xmas shopping spree. It’s like, if you were out there dropping cash on yourself all day, you’d go home with shopper’s remorse and then come home and try and drown your sorrows in alcohol and use whatever you couldn’t drink to pour on the Visa bill to make it go up in flames more easily.

But, no. You don’t have to worry about that when it’s Xmas time because you spent the day putting yourself in financial debt for the good of others. God, it’s like volunteering or something. Screw soup kitchens. Why get yourself all covered in Sloppy Joes feeding people who hate life when you can go to Crate and Barrel and buy matching candle sticks and napkin holders in shades of “holly-be-golly-sparkly-red-as-a-robin”?? Shit, I nearly felt like St. McSpender when I found a clock shaped like a dog with a tail that wags for my puppy-loving friend from home. She’ll love me! Put it on the Visa!

Yes, the spirit of Xmas. It will brighten your whole day. It’s funny, too, how the spirit that allows you to buy remorselessly for others can help you make amends with everything else you do for yourself this month!

I mean, first off, there’s lunch on your big shopping day. Who DOESN’T need a big fancy lunch complete with a slice of pie for dessert and a mocha latte to top it all off after they’ve been hunting for the perfect gift all morning. Jeez Louise, you NEEDED that pie because, damn it, just thinking about what to get your boyfriend’s mom made you burn at least 100 calories. And then after lunch, when you were all high on Xmas AND sugar, the spirit really started to move you. All you had left on your list was your Dad and your Uncle, but you and Xmas just kept drifting into Arden B and the Express and the DSW shoe warehouse. 4 new pairs of shoes, a blouse and a kick ass brooch? Of course you can afford it all! It’s Xmas!

I knew Xmas had become an intrinsic part of my soul this past Saturday when I realized that my Discman was giving me a headache, not because the volume was turned up to some unholy level trying to drown out Bell Ringers (aka suckers who haven’t found Xmas in their hearts), but because it was playing top 40 tunes instead of Xmas music. Thank the Lord I had my Visa because I knew I could only cure my migraine by marching straight into FYE and buying the American Idol Xmas CD. OMG Ruben Studdard was having himself a Merry Little Xmas all over my eardrums for the rest of the afternoon and I couldn’t thank him enough. It was him and Clay Aiken who got me through my 2:30pm pedicure where the spirit of Xmas helped me pick out the perfect shade of Xmas Red for my toes and it was the strong vocals of none other than Kelly Clarkson who took me and the spirit of Xmas through our third mall of the day from which we emerged with more Xmas pick-me ups for myself (mmm…new bathrobe and slippers) and $5 gift boxes for all the stuff I don’t have the time or energy to wrap due to the fact that the spirit of Xmas and I were going out to dinner and drinks to celebrate the day’s success and no way was I wielding sharp objects and tape after a big old lobster dinner and a bottle of wine.

Xmas. I heart it.

Born in the USA

2004-12-01T09:35:00.000-05:00

I'm back.

A big thank you to United Airlines who gave me 2 extra days in Buenos Aires by canceling and kicking me off 2 flights. They put me up in a kick-ass hotel and paid for my meals and thus I was able to escape reality (for free) for yet another 48 hours.

But alas, now I am back in the rat race and am missing Argentina very much. The food, the drink, the weather, the culture, the laughably low price of any and all merchandise (thank you, devaluation)...I hearted it all while I was there. Chile---well, I don't miss it so much but it sure was cool to go see. They can keep their dirty, pay-for-use bathrooms and third-world merchandise, though.

Apparently a lot happened while I was gone. Seems as though President Bush decided to make some new friends and he ditched his old cabinet like a bad habit. Did I mention I was in Santiago, Chile the day he arrived there as well? I was trying to get away from you, asshole!!!

I'm going to have to digest all the current events and think of some clever stories to tell from my trip. Until then, ciao and check back in a couple days for some witty commentary.

Maybe I am a Communist

2004-11-13T22:21:00.000-05:00

Day 3 in Argentina. Still cant access the apostrophe key on stupid foreign keyboard. Am hoping this blog will post, as thi computer has been booting for 11 minutes now and is still grunting.

So heres what we already knew:
I dont like cheese. Period. Its like munching on rubber. Cheese cubes make me want to run and hide.

Heres what I learned tonight:
I dont like steak. For the first time since I was 7, I tried steak. Apparently, Argentinian steak is some of the best in the world. I dont care for it. Its got that weird texture problem just like cheese.

Heres what I have finally admitted to myself:
I dont like wine. Sorry. I dont. Not red, not white, not Italys or Frances or Argentinas or Californias best. Feels like Im sipping on acid. Ill pass.

So what struck me as funny is that all 3 of these foods are supposed to be the ultimate compliments to each other. Steak, wine and cheese. Oh well, not for me.

So then I got to thinking...what do I like if I dont like those foods?

What meat do I like if I wont eat steak?
Answer: Chicken. Cock-a-doodle-do. Oh wait, thats a rooster.

What alcoholic beverage do I like if I think wine is nasty?
Answer: Beer. A lot. Its tasty, carbonated and it comes in big glasses that I can gulp. Yummy.

And finally, what dairy product do I choose over cheese?
Answer: Yogurt. Especially vanilla flavored. Bring it on.

Chicken, beer and yogurt do NOT compliment each other. Too bad.

Americans Are So Very Entitled To Comment On Other Cultures

2004-11-11T19:09:00.000-05:00

Argentina Observations Thus Far

--I am a rich Americana, apparently.

--People hate my sneakers and North Face jacket, just as they always do in any foreign country Ive ever visited. Get over it.

--It impresses people when I say "Yo odio President Bush". (Hint: odio is the opposite of love).

--Coffee comes in a 4 oz size. And its NEVER to go. I just want 12 more ounces in a styrofoam cup, please. Is that so hard? Didnt Starbucks move in yet? Even flippin Prague has Dunkin Donuts. Are you telling me you cant catch up to the Old Soviet Bloc?

--Everyone loves Bill Clinton. Still.

--This country, like EVERY other country, has a phallic symbol (think Washington Monument) which it thinks is its own unique thing. News Flash. The reality is that men just universally love their dicks.

--Women here are genetically perfect. They bred thin and petite Europeans with curvy Latinos and got impossibly skinny chicks with huge boobs and round butts. Brilliant. I hate them.

--When entering a McDonalds or Burger King, I expect to be treated like a celebrity. It doesnt happen. I guess they are going to thank me later for disgusting, culture-crushing fast food.

--Sarcasm gets lost in translation.

--Devalued currency is a God-send.

--I dont miss America. Except for the coffee. BIG coffees. To go. With fake sugar. And skim milk.

I Havent Posted b/c My Life Is SOOO Cool

2004-11-11T19:00:00.000-05:00

Yeah. Starting a blog and not posting for a while is lame, I know. But...

IM IN ARGENTINA.

And thats why youll see NO apostrophes in this blog b/c I have no idea HOW THE HELL you get this damn foreign keyboard to write one. The apostrophe key and the "at" sign are a lost cause when you are visiting countries that did not invent the Internet.

Ok, God Bless the USA and all, but I might never leave Argentina. Do you realize I ate a 3 course meal (room service, no less) for about $10 USD just now? How about the $8.50, five course lunch in a fancy Victorian restaurant that my boyfriend and I ate around noon. Hmm. If that isnt impressive to you, maybe youll crap your pants over the fact that I am being lodged in the Governors Suite for $100 USD a night, which is bigger than my condo in DC and has flippin columns holding up the shower curtain in my whirlpool tub.
Goddamn.

He Left the Seat Up, Too

2004-11-08T14:39:00.000-05:00

There is a strange man in my house. I don't really know what to do. I'm scared to go home because when he came in last night, he just started dumping shit all over my floors. I couldn't walk anywhere without tripping on his crap. I wonder if he's a migrant? All he brought in were clothes and books and CDs. And they're strewn EVERYWHERE! Oh and get this. He slept in my bed. Yup. Can you believe the nerve? Said something this morning about re-arranging furniture and putting stuff in my closet. I'm like, whatever, buddy. Why don't you just take over the place? At least he gave me a ride to work today. That was nice. I wonder if he makes good pancakes...

Ok. I'm kidding. He's not a stranger. He's my long-lost boyfriend back from Campaignapalooza 2004. He was doing something for someone somewhere in the Midwest. I think there were a lot of corn fields involved, quite possibly tractors and NASCAR too. It was very hard work and there were many cows to be milked each morning, but he made it out alive and came back to DC with a farmer's tan and a piece of straw in his mouth. Since he's so accustomed to the grueling chores that one must perform in the middle of nowhere, he got to work right away in my house scooping cat poo, changing light bulbs and killing bugs.

I heart him.

I’m Hoping It’s Because You Never Learned To Read

2004-11-04T22:03:00.000-05:00

I've always had this thing against Evangelical and Born-Again Christians.

I mean, sure, Catholicism pisses me off too, but only the Clergy. Its followers are, for the most part, fine and dandy. I heart the fact that they go to evening masses so they can get piss drunk that night and not have to get up for an early morning mass the next day.

Unfortunately, the branch of Protestantism I was baptized into doesn't provide this luxury. We Dutch Reformed worshippers, along with other uneventful Protestants, are rather boring in our church-going habits and we can't let go of that love for self-inflicted punishment that sits at the root of our Protestant-Pilgrims-on-Plymouth Rock beginnings. We go to church on Sunday mornings regardless of blood alcohol content. But, of course, we can always opt out of going to church and it's no biggie. After all, unlike Catholics, we don't need Priests to talk to God for us and we think Saints are totally whack (Our Lady of the Highway? Really, I've seen that). Listen, God very well might be under my desk as we speak. I'll talk to him now, not next Sunday, thank you very much.

But back to the crazies, I mean the devoted Christians (we'll call the Xtians from here on out just to piss them off that we took the Christ out of Christian) who live and die for a good fired-up sermon and their weekly edition of the Traditional Values Coalition Blacklist, which warns us all against the horrific dangers of seedy movies like Shrek 2 and all the new plagues and epidemics that homosexuals brew in their kitchens at night and then dump into God-fearing, straight men and women's coffees the next morning.

SIDE NOTE: The aforementioned TVC is quite the organization. Check them out if you'd like. My favorite observation this week is Does Arafat Have AIDS? And, no, this is not a spoof online paper. It's a for real, tax-exempt entity that preaches on behalf of the Bush Administration, I mean, God. Separation of Church and State is alive and well. Kidding.
http://www.traditionalvalues.org/

So anyway, like I was saying before I got sidetracked ten times, I've always had a thing against these extremist Xtians. And my beef is that I always felt like they were such hypocrites in spite of the fact that they claim to be the Holiest of Them All.

And I don't think that this election could have made it any more clear that that]s exactly what they are: big, mean, psycho hypocrites. Republicans saw an opportunity to prey on them for votes, they evangelized their retarded pseudo-moral agenda to them, and it worked. They just fed them their religious values bullshit left and right. And the oh-golly-I'm-so-holy Xtians ate it up. They never stopped to realize that the so-called traditional values agenda was just a bait and switch trick. Karl Rove must have thanked God every night for providing him with such a large constituency of people who don't think for themselves.

It was SO easy. Bait stupid, blind believers for their vote based on religion and then switch it up when you get into office and proceed to wage class warfare guaranteed to fuck over every single faithful Xtian who voted for you! Republicans in Washington don't actually care about God. You've got to be shitting me if you believe that. They care about MONEY. You voted for God and in return you got nothing and Corporate America, oil companies, HMOs and Big Tobacco got everything. BRILLIANT!

And here's where it gets good. Aside from feeding these people a hidden agenda that only really works to the benefit of upper-class Republicans, the GOP straight-up and out-loud fed them this secret fiscal agenda in the form a cultural agenda of hate! And the Xtians loved it! That's what they voted for! The moral agenda of hate! And that's what makes them HYPOCRITES.

For real. The ONLY reason I can justify why these people engage in that exact opposite (hate and oppression) of what the Bible preaches (love and tolerance) is that they just can't read. I mean, how could they be literate and interpret the Bible the way they do? The only way that would be possible is if they were HYPOCRITES. Which they are.

Let's examine a section of the Bible against the conservative agenda that all these fucking idiots voted for. We'll take a look at the Ten Commandments for now.

Number 1: Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Beside Me
-Ummm. That means you can't worship Bush

Number 2: Thou Shalt Not Worship Any Graven Images
-So take the Bush-Cheney '04 signs out of the window.

Number 3: Thou Shalt Not Take the Name of the Lord Thy God in Vain
-I promise you that by 2006, you are going to be cussing like you have Tourette's once you lose all your overtime and benefits and can't send your kid to college.

Number 4: Remember the Sabbath Day to Rest and Keep it Holy
-Well, then! You're screwed, huh? You voted the God ticket and now you have to work double shifts at Wal-Mart 7 days a week so you can afford to live!

Number 5: Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother
-Yes. Do this by not ripping their Social Security right out of their cold, wrinkly hands.

Number 6: Thou Shalt Not Kill
-Tell me. What does the word "Iraq" mean to you? Also, please explain to me your feelings on the death penalty. And finally, please justify your need to own a gun.

Number 7: Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery
-OMG. This isn't much of a problem for you since you usually sleep with your cousins and then marry them. Screw other people's wives. You've got Cuzin Mary Jo and that's all you need in life.

Number 8: Thou Shalt Not Steal
-This includes symbolic stealing. For instance, don't steal civil rights from women, Blacks, immigrants, gays, whoever. Don't snatch away government support from the poor. And don't steal impoverished young men who have about zero job prospects (because you STOLE money away from their public schooling) in order to send them to Iraq.

Number 9: Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness
-This means don't lie. And I'm sorry, but making shit up about gays and lesbians and foreigners is lying. Gays aren't trying to break up your marriage, everyone who wears a Turban does not wage jihads and the Brits and the French aren't jealous, they simply think you suck and they're right.

Number 10: Thou Shalt Not Covet Anything That is Thy Neighbor's
-You sure set yourself up for this one. Everyone BUT you and the rest of the middle and underclass is going to own SUVs, plasma TVs and take their summers in Nantucket. The upper class thanks you for their ever expanding purchasing power at your expense. Enjoy the late shift at McDonald's and say hi to the Hamburglar for them.

Finally though, and this isn't a Commandment but it might be more important than any of those rules and it is DEFINITELY the main reason why you are hypocritical:

You're supposed to love thy neighbor.

Yes. It's about kindness and tolerance. How you treat others reflects on your own moral character. You aren't supposed to legislate away the quality of life of gay people. You aren't supposed to judge people who have abortions. Even if abortion turns out to be ungodly, it's not your place to say. It's God's place. He can figure it out; he doesn't need you to set fire to Planned Parenthood clinics. You aren't supposed to cheer when we bomb Baghdad. You aren't supposed to laugh at Abu Gahrib prisoners. You aren't supposed to try and hunt down and kill or deport immigrants. You aren't supposed to advance an agenda of hate, period. But you do. And you're making life miserable for the rest of us and you've made us look like fools in the eyes of the rest of the world.

So go light a fucking candle and pray for God to forgive you for your sins because God has a special place in Hell for you as of right now. I know this. I just asked him. He's sitting on my couch watching Court TV and drinking all my diet soda. Because we're buds. Because even though I don't go to church and I happen to think organized group worship is weird, I still wind up doing what he'd want me to do. Effortlessly. Because I think for myself and I don't hate other people as a way to show my faith or morality. You should try it sometime.

BREAKING NEWS!

2004-11-04T15:16:00.000-05:00

Lower IQ is connected with voting for Bush AND living in the Bible Belt. Check it out:
http://chrisevans3d.com/files/iq.htm

They Say Canada Has Lovely Weather

2004-11-03T13:23:00.000-05:00

This sucks. The Democratic Party got dealt about umpteen-thousand blows to the head yesterday.

11 states have already banned gay marriage?

How long before I'm barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen with no health insurance and a husband drafted to go overseas to continue the quest to take over the world?

I don't know what to say. Maybe I should close out this post with a big THANK YOU to all the bumpkins who voted for Bush and thus are essentially shooting themselves in the foot. Who needs health care and good public schools when you can line the pockets of drug companies and parochial schools?