She got spirit. Yes she do.

Spirit Week in high school makes sense. Over five days, a loathing for those punks at Blank High School and their non-popped collars is officially cultivated by the teachers and administration and nerds on the student government. Dude, we’re going to pwn those nameless jerks on the football field on Friday. They’re going to pay for being exactly like us except not living in our district. And if that doesn’t work, the parade float we unveil at halftime will certainly take them down a peg. Then we’re going to drink peppermint Schnapps out of travel size Scope bottle and dry hump our girlfriends after the homecoming dance. The rug burns will be our red, bumpy badges of hatred. That’s how we do it at Our High School!!! RRRAAAHH! HEAD BUTT!!!

But Spirit Week in middle school makes no sense. The kids at the rival school are people we already know from elementary school and will see again in high school. And soccer is the closest thing you’ll get to a homecoming game and it’s at 3 in the afternoon. The guys’ team probably stinks anyway and the players in the county are a little intimidating because they already have wispy mustaches and are Hispanic.

Or so it was at my middle school. To compensate for our pathetic sports teams the school planned a week’s worth spirit-lifting activities. They were generally things that would get you in trouble during the rest of the year but harmless enough to not allow distraction. For example –

SALAD DRESSING WEEK!!!?!

Monday - Thousand Island (Caribbean/Hawaiian)
Tuesday- Ranch (Cowboy)
Wednesday - Blue Cheese (Blue)
Thursday - French (Berets and/or fashionable clothes)
Friday - House Dressing (School Colors which included blue again)

Ha! Salad dressing. So fun and creamy!

This wasn’t actually what my middle school did, but I can’t recall all of them. The only day I can remember was Opposite Day. And I remember Opposite Day because Opposite Day became a MAJOR INTERNATIONAL INCIDENT.

The design was simple - boys dress up like girls and girls like boys. Get it? The opposite of how we would normally dress. Genius. Class starts, girls roll up wearing football jerseys and baseball caps. Boys come in pink shirts and head bands. We had so much spirit.

But someone had an uptight parent. And that parent employed their God-given American right to ruin it for everyone by calling a local radio show and declare that their child’s school was encouraging cross-dressing. It quickly got absurd with a bullet. By the end of the show, our fair academy was a den of perverts and transsexuals. News crews and reporters showed up during recess to get pictures of the 7th Grade Degenerates.*

Teachers suddenly ushered us inside. All gender-specific clothing had to be removed even if that meant sitting in our stinking gym uniforms for the rest of our classes. At the end of the day, parents hustled kids to their cars, with their jackets pulled over their heads like a common jailhouse perp-walk. It was a disaster. The rest of Spirit Week was canceled. I’m unsure if they ever hosted it again.

But that was at my middle school. It seems Spirit Week is still alive in well at some schools.



At least I hope so. It’d be a shame if she dresses like this every day. Or awesome.



*I bet you think that I’m going to say that this is a good band name. Wrong. It’s a crappy band name. I left an asterisk because a few years later, the Post ran article about kids at my old middle school were exchanging favors for blowjobs.

Bah to the bah

Tommy’s a bit off base here. Had he joined his friends at the theater, he would have know that the 3 Doors Down “Citizen Soldier” pre-trailer commercial has been abandoned by the National Guard. I imagine that a few months into the campaign some polling determined it to be ineffective and the whole thing was jettisoned.

Their findings…

1. The word “soldier” does not portray a strong enough image
2. 3 Doors Down is too alternative.
3. Where the fuck is NASCAR?

It was back the drawing board. So if Tom had made the trip to the multiplex to see Zack Snyder direct the exact same sex scene from 300 except it takes place in a flying owl skull he’d get a completely different National Guard pitch. “Soldier” has been replaced with more aggressive “Warrior.” 3 Doors Down and their complicated metaphors have been canned for the decidedly straightforward trashcan simplicity of Kid Rock. And since the NG is already paying to put their logo on Dale Jr’s car they might as well throw some CGI NASCAR in there too. Who cares if it has nothing to do with whatever story they’re trying to tell. It’s NASCAR, hon.

But I don’t want to sound critical of the new promotion. America needed a new promotion. The old one was so incredibly flawed that any self-respected theatre owner should have refused to play it. It attempted to link today’s National Guard with some of our military’s more successful and non-controversial campaigns. Hey high school kids? You know that kick-ass scene at the beginning Saving Private Ryan you watched on TNT this weekend? Dudes were all National Guard. And remember when a ragtag group of Americans beat the Confederate Red Coats during Revolutionary War in the mountains of California by running through the woods dodging mines and exploding cannon fire? Yeah baby, all National Guard.

Creative licenses are taken with 90% of the posts on this blog. But it’s always irked me that these stupid commercials show Revolutionary War soldiers dodging exploding cannonballs. Cannonballs don’t explode when they hit the ground. In fact, cannonballs don’t explode when they hit anything. They are solid metal balls. Shells, on the other hand, are hollow metal casing filled with an explosive powder that detonate when their fuses expire. But they weren’t used against the US until the War of 1812 and the still don’t explode on impact. And they weren’t fired form cannons.

So as convoluted as the new National Guard commercial is, at least it no longer contains wild historical inaccuracies. And this will no doubt be the only time the American education system will benefit from more Kid Rock.

who watches the watchmen? if it's a 3:00 matinee, the answer is: these guys

behind us in the theatre:

"you know who writes autobiographies? total douchebags, that's who. they're all like 'oooooh, we're sooooo interesting. our lives are sooooo awesome we're not even gonna wait for anyone to ask us about them, we're just gonna tell you whether you want to hear it or not!"


summary: first ten minutes/opening credits best part of the entire film, rorschach amazing, nite owl dan pretty good, silk spectre lame, adrian veidt pencil necked and annoying beyond belief. was that a lisp?????????????

Alcohol tolerance: 10

In response.



By the mid-80’s, the Marvel Universe was awash in mysticism. Below are a few of the more infamous examples...


1. A group of nine heroes and NPR Talk of the Nation host Neal Conan become trapped in a Dallas high-rise trying to prevent the Native American spiritual embodiment of mischief from destroying reality. The demon’s magical activities cause dinosaurs, cavemen, and a regiment of Vietnam-era soldiers to become displaced in time and many escaped into the city. After a prolonged battle, the heroes force the spirit into a collapsible extra-dimensional gateway by sacrificing their own lives but are magically resurrected moments later in Australia by Merlin’s immortal daughter. Conan survives and broadcasts the act of selflessness to the world.

2. When a mugger dons a magical amulet he is possessed by an ancient sorcerer who uses his powers to transform New York City into a medieval dystopia. Most of the city’s residents are unable to remember their former lives and those with super-powers are hunted and killed. A group of deformed outcasts emerge from underground tunnels and terrorize the population until their former leader and an African woman who controls the weather join forces with a 1000-year-old vampire to steal the amulet. A different sorcerer and a teenage Russian magically create a rift in time that allows an android from the future to kill the mugger and prevent the transformation from ever happening.

3. After a cosmic entity possesses a powerful telepath, her clone is distorted into a magical Goblin Queen who leads a demonic invasion of Manhattan. Many of the city’s heroes are tainted by evil spirits and, except for the few made of organic metal which is a naturally resistant to magic, do little to stop the assault. The tide is turned only after the same teenage Russian opens a portal into a parallel universe and casts the horde out of the city. As a consequence, she de-ages into a seven-year-old. The residents of New York awake from the onslaught and the ones who have not been devoured by demons assume they have experienced a mass hallucination.

4. In a moment of frustration, a crippled surgeon cracks his walking stick onto a boulder and is surprised to find himself transformed into the Norse God of Thunder. His adopted brother becomes jealous of his abilities and uses the enchantment afforded to him by his Ice Giant father to turn the surgeon into a giant, hammer-wielding frog.


Like much of the criticism directed at Dr. Strange, readers became dissatisfied with this Deus Ex Machina aspect of Marvel’s storytelling. By the early 90’s, most of the most of the villains employed magic where quietly cast aside in favor of those whose powers were based on some sort of scientific explanation, no matter how absurd. It’s why Dr. Doom, who often relied of mysticism, fell out favor after being the Marvel Universe’s primary antagonist for most of the 70’s. Conversely, characters like Venom, who powers originate via alien biology, or Apocalypse, who can mentally manipulate his body’s own atomic structure and preaches survival of the fittest, gained in popularity.

Of course there are several classic plotlines from the mid-80s, but most readers still roll their eyes or groan when these mystically based story arcs are referenced. Similarly, time will show that the charade of Iron Man’s exponentially growing powers should be treated the same way.

Marvel’s biggest mistake in this embarrassment was allowing the readers to submit a parallel ranking next to their own. During the short run of the trading cards, each character’s statistics would have been collected by the company’s expert unit of scholars and historians. While small variations in some categories could be expected as the technology in Iron Man’s suit improved or the story line evolved, any dramatic outliers in the accepted levels of his powers would be smoothed out in the evaluation process.

The voting public, on the other hand, are morons. The last ten years has seen Iron Man became central to the Marvel Universe and this prominence has evidently led to the swelling of abilities. He was appointed the director of S.H.I.E.L.D., played a major role in the Civil War, indirectly caused the death of Captain America and was accused of cowardice at best and treason at worst during the Skrull Invasion. And then there was the movie. The resulting attention meant Marvel was obligated to reconcile the wildly inflated scores submitted by the public with the system they had maintained for several decades. In other words, they were forced to round up.

So where does that leave us today? Iron Man is now as smart as Reed Richards, as strong as the Hulk, as fast as the Silver Surfer and can project energy as well as Galactus. He’s also more durable the physical manifestation of Death itself and will never lose in combat since only the universe itself has better fighting skills. Welcome to Marvel Comic’s steroids era.

And what happens in 20 years? The Civil War will be a classic story, the Skrull Invasion will be forgotten and this near-invincible Iron Man will be considered as laughable as a Thunder Frog.

Here lies Walter Fielding. He bought a house, and it killed him.

more house renovations to commence shortly. be prepared to hate this blog (again), if you don't already. given our track record in uh... life... this will be a stunning success if the bathtub doesn't come crashing through second floor all the way to the basement. I don't know what the odds on this are, but I'm headed to Vegas in a month (again) and seriously if there isn't some sort of betting system set up on "Pyggie Catastrophes" in that city by now, there should be. Remind me to look into this.

The obesity epidemic claims another victim

A few weeks ago, I got tricked into attending a bachelor party for a peripheral friend. None of the planners were feeling particularly creative, so we spent some of the night slumming it at the ESPN Zone. Yes, I know, the same ESPN Zone where the premier source of entertainment for 30-year-olds involves throwing under inflated footballs through plywood cutout and eventually each other’s groins.

The Zone also features a seizure inducing amount of other sports video games. But unlike the penny arcades I used go to, the machines don’t accept legal US tender. Here, you're required to purchase a flimsy plastic card filled with invisible game credits that quickly slip away into the shame-filled night.

I still have the card with a few credits left on it. And since today is a snow day and this thing is taking up room in my wallet, I thought I’d burn through the last of the credits by shooting beams of light with a tiny plastic shotgun at digital antelope. It makes me feel like a big man.

Or that was the plan.

Until I ran into this guy…



Apparently the Nationals have redesigned Screech. And, um, we need to talk about what’s clearly going on here.

1. Jacked and toned torso
2. Ill-proportionatd/scrawny legs
3. New, aggressive looking beak
4. Giant head
5. The rumors he spent the off-season in the DR with A-Rod’s cousin

OK. I’m not the type of guy who makes wild accusations. I mean, I was a college athlete. The pressure to legally or illegally push your body a little further than what can be naturally achieved in the weight room is promoted everywhere. And we are in a new area of baseball.

It’s only March 2nd but none of the news coming out of Nationals spring training is positive. Is it really the right time to cast off Screech’s Babe Ruth image in favor of one that’s a little more Miguel Tejada? Hell, that could be Nook Logan under all the fur. He’s got to get back to the big leagues somehow.





On the plus side, though, the new Screech isn't completely filthy.

Snnnkt

If a break-dancing giant in a featureless William Shatner mask can teach us anything, it’s that America still leads the world in the exportation of its only valuable resource – pregame player introductions. Ladies and gentlemen, Sport is War and in the 21st century we can’t have War without lasers, smoke, explosions and a hip-hop soundtrack. And blimps are back but they’re miniaturized and sponsored by Geico. And slam-dunking bears, also, if you live in Canada.

Of course, I have a problem with this. Pregame introductions are the opposite of what is needed at team sporting events. They inflate the individual and diminish the team. The players should run onto the field or court together (possibly through a giant, hand-painted paper sign, if the budget allows). The starters should head-butt a few times, the refs should blow the whistle, and then it’s game on.
But that’s not what this post is about. This post is about the only non-hip-hop/Metallica song they play during the pregame introductions. It’s the one that goes…

(A choir singing a foreign language, perhaps Latin)

DUN DUN DUN DUN
DUN DUN DUN DUN
DUN DUN DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNN DUUN DUN DN DN

(Repeat, louder and a pitch higher)

Or just listen to this.

Up until this weekend, I didn’t think this was a real song. Well, I knew it was a real song, but I was under the impression that hadn’t existed until Michael Bay needed a Gothic sounding trailer soundtrack. So somebody wrote it for him about 15 years ago. And even if the “melody” was some classical arrangement that I was too un-cultured to know about, at least the lyrics have to be fake. It works a little too perfectly for unimaginative editing. Set to this song, slow-motion alien gun fights with lots of diving look just as good as rapid-fire cuts of a robot disemboweling a coed’s system of mighty human organs.

Turns out I’m wrong on all counts. First of all, it’s a real song called O Fortuna. Second, the music was composed in the 1930’s. Finally, the lyrics are not only genuine Latin but they were written 800 years ago. And they’re kinda bad-ass:

Fate - monstrous
and empty,
you whirling wheel,
stand malevolent,
well-being is vain
and always fades to nothing,
shadowed
and veiled
you plague me too;
now through the game
I bring my bare back
to your villainy.

OK. The lyrics are officially the best part of this song. Any player or director wanting to introduce themselves or their movie should have the song re-recorded with the English translation. It displays the proper level of despair you intend to deliver upon your on-court/box office rival. But not for team sports. Only golf and maybe tennis

Or you can go the route that the makers of Wolverine movie. Make up some crappy sounding song and have a choir chant the name of the most popular man in the country, over and over. It’s about 35 seconds in.




O-BA-MA.

this is what I think about your stupid food blog for jerks.

Hope you all get raw oyster poisoning.

I even know what kerning means.

In college, I had one professor who was fanatic in his conviction that to understand any style of writing we had to accept that “THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE.” The result was two weeks of lectures on the importance of different typefaces. And it culminated with a final exam that required us to differentiate articles from the USA Today, LA Times, NT Times and Washington Post based on a single line of text. Not a single sentence, mind you, but one line from one column of text.

So, what was the message in the different typefaces? I have no frakking clue because that was over a decade ago. But to this day, I can identify newspapers based solely on their typefaces. If presented with a stack of 30 different papers, I can pull out the LA Times by looking at just the few lines that fall on an issue’s 1/8-inch fold. There is no productive use for this skill and I have only employed it for purpose of evil.

So it’s with great concern that I noticed an alteration in the Post today. The typeface for the columnists’ bylines has been changed.



A few years ago, the Post switched from the classic Century Old Style to something they call Postroman. I think it’s a font they invented themselves. The two are very similar except the latter looks like each letter was squeezed slightly from the sides. The result is a taller character with the serif either pushed closer toward the vertical or compressed into the empty space between the two letters. The old Op-Ed bylines were a larger, italicized and underlined version of the typeface they use for the normal articles.

The new typeface is Helvetica or some variation close to it. Boring old Helvetica. It’s squat and fat in the middle and there is a mile of white space between each letter. It’s also all in caps.

It’s not necessarily bad. But it looks like something cooked up at a Midwestern regional paper like the Des Moines Register in an effort to bring the look of the paper into the 1990’s. We live in a major metropolitan Capital city. The design of our newspaper should look forward into the future and not backwards. It should develop upwards toward the heavens and not forward into the future.

You know what's a good shovel ready project? Your grave.

Have you been listening to WTOP this week? I know you have because NPR is doing their pledge drive, and you don’t seem to be the type of girl who listens to Elliott or the Junkies. You're a lady and you pinch your cheeks if you want color. Only trollops use make-up. Have you heard on WTOP about these 300 houses in Virginia that need to boil their water because an 8 inch water main broke?

It’s not 300 households. It’s one household. It’s us. We have to boil our water before we can drink it because we live in the 15th century, and our water main was already made from lead and asbestos before it ruptured and got filled with cholera. We can’t wash our dishes in it. We can’t open our mouths when we shower. The dog can’t even drink out of the toilet so the dog is drinking bottle water. I have to keep the dog from eating old, random poop when we go for walks, but he’s drinking water out of a bottle like he’s some sort of burnt-up koala.

We had no water on Sunday, so neighbors were borrowing each other’s IDs and showering at the gym where they weren’t members. And showers are a really big deal in our neighborhood. Last October, when another pipe burst and it only effected one street, one of our neighbors allowed another to shower at her house. But later in November, after the shower-provider found out the shower-taker had voted for McCain, she went over to her house with itemized water bills and asked for a few dollars to cover the difference between the last two months.

Living several days without clean water would not be a big deal for us except 1) sacks of potatoes need water make their food and to be alive and 2) this same water main has BROKEN FOUR TIMES SINCE NEW YEARS! It’s surprising if we wake up and our car hasn’t collapsed into an eroding sinkhole.

So now our kitchen and fridge are filled with jugs of water which we will drink and gargle with until the pipes are clean again. We will bury whatever we have left in the back yard like good survivalists because this will surely happen again in the next few days. The supervisor of our giant street hole tries to keep our spirits up whenever anyone comes over to chat by joking that our pipes put the Ye Olde in Ye Olde Town Alexandria and that they were scheduled to be replaced this year but the city ran out of money. It seems they couldn’t get a proper loan that they could later default on like regular Americans.

our next kid's gonna be named "Waddy"

return of the World's Stupidest Morning Commute Conversations!



The N: (Points at the Department of Interior building*) That building is in the Art Deco style, you know.

Me: (Half asleep.) What? No. No it's not. Shut up. Let me sleep.

The N: IT IS. It is Art Deco.

Me: (Rubs eyes, squints.) No it's not.

The N: (Frantically attempting to search the web on his Blackberry while simultaneously driving, a practice that makes me murderous/enraged) It is. I can prove it. .... How do you spell "architecture?"





*(perhaps he really was thinking of "the Huff n'Puff's lobby" when he said Art Deco. Unrelated, some googling led me to learn the Interior building was one of the first to have a central vacuum cleaning system. Um, okay.)

halp

I am in such dire need for music, I can't even adequately explain the direness and neediness. Please, someone, for the love of humanity, give me some suggestions. If I listen to decades-old Mike Doughty in my car one more time I'm gonna chop my head off. Gah.

To illustrate: I'm wearing a blazer my mom gave me today, and it's probably a hand me down. Any ounce of with-it-ness that was once left in this decaying shell of a woman is rapidly vanishing. Go forth, music lovers! Make me cool!

This only works on one level, actually.

Happy Presidents' Day.

This works on so many levels

Happy Valentimes Day.

and for our next trick us assholes will hold a bake sale to raise money & awareness

No, really, how can you even stand it? How many times can I type "ZOMG" in a single mornings worth of IMs to Capps?

"Sam is probably aged between two to four going by her teeth and Bob is about four so they have a muchness with each other."

"They've really taken a shine to each other as they are both burnt and share the same burnt smell," he said.

No seriously you guys, I can't even take it at all. They have a "MUCHNESS" with each other? Usually I'm not into this much twee baby animal crap but oh hey look what motherhood can do to a fucking sucker. I'm probably dying? Let's go be Australian together.

file under crotchety old people

Oh Michael Beirut, it makes me weepy, too, to realize 19 yr olds no longer know the joy of surreptitious Beast shotgunning using dull exacto blades during marathon late-night studio sessions. Kids these days.

Ruh Roh

Listen. I know you’re gay. So does most everyone else. So you don’t need to act all weird around me just because we ran into each last Friday night on U street. You were clearly on a date. With a guy. I don’t see how it’s any of my business anyway. I’m more concerned with the $20 you still owe for the Super Bowl pool than I am gossiping about your personal life.

Besides, that attractive woman you saw me with? The one I was walking to my car with the intention of taking back to her place? That wasn’t my wife.

Dang.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRmkosOzQH8

Besides IM'ing the husband to question the feasibility of digging our own basement in houses we can't afford to purchase, and eating chicken and playing online Scrabble, I'm still spending copious amounts of time thinking about learning (re-learning???) how to play the trumpet. If you have a trumpet i can borrow and/or you are/know someone willing to give cheap lessons, please to be contacting me.

In other news, I had a fifteen minute phone conversation with my mother this morning re: the definition of the word "chagrin."

Who wants to go to Mount Vernon this weekend and hit on the reenactors?

Hmmm.



I have no doubt that Martha Custis was a stone cold fox. But this “portrait” based on some crazy formula that de-ages her 40 years has to be a little generous. Especially since there are several contemporary painting of her already available that demonstrate that she was a plenty attractive woman. She’s even got a little Selma Hayek thing going on at her wedding, which I’m totally on board with. There’s no need to truss her up with computers or algorithms or whatever they used.

Anyway, it’s commonly accepted that the hottest pre-Lucretia Garfield First Lady was Dolley Madison. Every school child knows that she was the first Presidential wife to serve ice cream in the White House. What’s less known is that all those calories went straight to her giant rack.

he was the perfect weapon, until he became the target

me: okay. so you have seen all the Bourne movies, right?

Amanda: of course

me: but i cant tell any of them apart ever really

Amanda: yeah

me: they are all good but all seem the same, so

Amanda: just pre- and post- the lady dying

me: im taking a poll. The N had never noticed this apparently.
there's one way to immediately tell its a Bourne movie without even seeing the characters or anything. do you know what that thing is? say yr flipping through TV channels...

Amanda: well they use that crazy type of photography, and the colors are very distinct

me: I can immediately say: THATS A BOURNE MOVIE...okay, sure that's true. but no

Amanda: although, now being employed in every action movie

me: right

Amanda: what is it?

me: miniblinds. or venetian blinds.
there are more window blinds per sq inch
in those movies
than in any other movie
i am currently collecting screenshots to prove this to the N
BLINDS BLINDS BLINDS
people peeking out of them
people peeking into them
people being thrown into them. etc

Amanda: you know... there really are
wow

me: yes whoever directed those movies loves window treatments

Amanda: haaaahahahhahahahha

update: title probably unnecessary

meat bloat.

fyi

Amazon free MP3s (via kottke.) Spotted Gaslight Anthem, Bob Mould, The Streets, Raveonettes, Dr. Dog, Apples in Stereo, Sloan, Rev Horton Heat, and.... Sepultura!

the Curious Case of why I'm going to murder the dog

A story I promised my friend D. Also, hi. This is the G. I am too stupid to figure out how to repost this under my account. Oh well.

So! A few Sunday mornings ago, my spouse heads out early in the morning. jonesing to grill (yes, grill, in winter) himself some meat. He buys a massive thing of pork and sets upon his weird little project.

EDIT – wrong. I bought a pork shoulder with the full intention of smoking in the Carolina fashion. The Cook’s Illustrated cookbook we got for Christmas had what appeared to be a great recipe. But I ran out of time so I saved it for a week. [EDIT EDIT: A WEEK? Eww?] While I have used charcoal in the past with much success, Cooks claimed to have developed a way to use a gas grill.

We are out of propane for the grill. All Home Depots in the area are also out of propane, which seems odd, right? Who's doing massive amounts of gas grilling in the winter, besides morons like us?

EDIT – According to customer service, the area's Home Depots receive their propane shipments on Mondays. It seems that Lowes is on the same schedule. And many men prefer grilling in the winter since it involves being outside of the house and away from their Queen of the Harpies wives.

After hours of searching and calling retailers, The N finally, oddly, stumbles upon a gas station selling propane.

EDIT – This was odd. And it was the only fortunate thing that happened all day.

After grilling said roast he then puts it in the oven Sunday evening to finish. BUT HE NEGLECTS TO TURN THE OVEN ON.

EDIT – This is so monstrously wrong it approaches libel. First, I smoked the shoulder for several hours outside. Then I moved it inside to finish in the stove, AS DEMANDED BY THE RECIPE. At some point, the stove turned off on its own. Under no circumstance was this my fault. Secondly, our stove’s functioning has been faulty since day one and is perhaps haunted.

So the roast SHOULD be finished by the time we go to bed Sunday night, but it's still raw. Genius decides that since we get up with our partying child every few hours anyway, he'll just stick the roast in the oven and check on it throughout the night. Basically: sleep-cooking. There's no way that plan could go wrong. But whatever, it gets the semi-raw slab of meat (which I haven't even seen yet because I refuse to cook for my family) out of the fridge.

Upside: our house smells like bacon.

EDIT – Anyone familiar with slow cooking pork knows that it takes several hours. It had already been cooking outdoors and absorbing a delicious smoky flavor for all of the Eagles’ game and part of the Ravens’ before it was moved. It was not raw.

And I don’t see a flaw in my logic. We have not reached REM sleep in 4 months. When was the last time you had an actually dream? Why not use nature’s most enraged biological sleep disruptor as a cooking aid?

The house does smell like bacon. That is not a problem. It adds at least $10,000 in resale value.

The roast is still not done at, let's say, 6 AM, because even though our stove is digital, apparently it's a challenge to set. Spouse puts the stupid 6 pound hunk of pig back in, cranks up the heat, and hog-fluid promptly splatters over the side of whatever vessel he was cooking this thing in and burns onto the oven, filling the entire house with billowing smoke and setting off the smoke alarm.

EDIT - Um. I don’t think the smoke alarm actually went off. The whole system’s been on a hair trigger lately so I pulled the battery before it got tripped and anyone woke up crying. By anyone, I mean you. Also, don’t expect to be woken up by the dog if a goat kicks over a lantern and sets the house on fire. He saw the first puff of smoke and took off for the hills.

(Note - my Jewish boss: "This story is part of the reason we don't eat pork.")

So, we get ready for work and leave for the day, drop spawn off at daycare, etc. As we're driving down Rt 50, miles from our house and a good 45 minutes into our morning commute, the N casually mentions the pork was too hot to put in the fridge. So he left it in a paper bag in the sink.

EDIT – AGAIN, I was following the recipe. I wasn’t going to put a steaming hott pork shoulder into the fridge. I don’t care how good your crisper is, everything is going to wilt. And I left it in the tray, which I put in a paper bag (as directed), put the whole thing on a cutting board and placed it in the sink. I don’t see an issue here, your worshipfulness. As for leaving it exposed to the elements– IT’S A SMOKED HAM – it’s how meat was preserved for thousands of years before Nikola Tesla stole Freon from Prometheus and invented your precious refrigerator. It’s how George Washington Carver did it. It’s how Emily Brontë did it. It’s how the Nabob does it.

. . .


If you will, please imagine the look I gave him at this point. I think you can imagine it since it’s the look he deservedly receives 3 times daily.

A discussion EDIT – lecture follows about his poor judgment, seeing as we have a dog who is brain damaged (probably) and ill-trained (definitely) and yet more cunning then we give him credit for and will obviously consume the entire fucking roast. The N insists there is no way he will get into the sink. I bet him money and tell him, if he you know, has time during the day, maybe he should swing home for a few minutes to make sure I am always right.

EDIT – There is no way the dog can get into the sink. The counter top is too high and the sink is too deep. The only way he could possibly reach it is if pushes a chair over from the dining room and stands on it. That takes dog wits the likes of Ruff or Beethoven or Air Bud. Our dog does not have those wits. There is no reason to go home early. When we arrive tonight, there will be nothing waiting for us other than a sleeping dog and tasty dinner.

I arrive home Monday PM, arms full of my work bag and two diaper bags and a car seat and etc and the dog goes apeshit when I walk in the door. Greasy meat marks all over the floor. Tinfoil flecks and paper bag oddments in every room. ALSO THE DOG WAS ON THE COUCH, which makes me irate. And he was bloated as shit. I have to leave the potato sack locked in his law-abiding car seat (one he is in no way getting too big for already, CPS, and I do not bend his legs to get him into it in the mornings, no m'am) while I search entire house looking for vomit and poo and porcine carcass. The only remnant was a fist-sized chunk of hog in the basement. On the new carpet.

I call the N and tell him the dog ate the roast. He thinks I'm kidding and hangs up because he’s a jerk. Then I get worried about the dog (do dogs die of meat poisoning? I mean, I shouldn't be that worried since he recently consumed an entire bag of trash, including WHOLE PLASTIC PACKETS OF KETCHUP), but still I try to call him back several times and he won't answer the phone. The phone finally rings back, and rather than say hellos I scream "SERIOUSLY HOW BIG IS THIS EFFING PIECE OF MEAT I NEED TO KNOW WHAT I'M DEALNG WITH HERE." Of course, it's my mother calling.

EDIT – I was busy. Also, the dog could not have gotten the pork on his own. Someone gave it to him. Probably ghosts. And since most dogs eat meat FOR A LIVING I don’t even see how this is that big of a deal. And even though he is dumb, he will not eat the whole thing. If you look around the house you will surely find most of it.

I get the kitchen cleaned up, child settled, I change into ripped flannel pants and a teeshirt and I take the dog outside. If I’m reading this right, he’s about to have a bowel movement so violent he’ll be lucky he has any bones left. But he seems semi-fine. Suddenly, the new neighbor’s puppy gets loose in front of our house, causing general havoc and messing with another mean dog on a leash, and almost getting hit by several cars as people return home from work. I wrestle Brown Dog inside as our panicky flamboyant neighbor is screaming LEXXXXXXYYYYYYY SSTOOOPPPP ITTT BADDDD GIIIRRRLLLL and the entire community association is chasing his border collie up and down the street. It’s like a Benny Hill skit except no one’s nurses uniform got ripped off by accident.

Eventually the puppy gets caught but the commotion outside has pushed our dog into meltdown. Anything left unmolested during the day has now been destroyed by teeth and claw. It takes about 20 minutes to calm everyone down. But pig-dinner is ruined. The dog’s stomach is about to come out both ends. And of course, there is crying. Fortunately my mother doesn’t trust me to take care of her grand-potato and brought over some sort of redneck casserole over the night before.

EXCEPT I FORGOT ABOUT THE WHOLE SMOKE THING FROM THE MORNING.! The N hadn't cleaned the oven out yet. GREASE FIRE! SMOKE EVERYPLACE! The alarm goes off, again. TEARS! BARKING! FIRE! CHAOS!

EDIT – I can’t be blamed for any of the above. We had a long conversation about how there was still grease in the stove. You are a sixty year old women. You should know that bringing a flame to grease will cause it smoke. I’ve seen you move your hairdryer out of the sink before you turn the water on hundreds of times. This is the same thing. None of this is my fault.

With smoke billowing from my oven, I start throwing open doors and windows because tiny lungs are being filled with poisonous meat cloud vapors. And then it’s freezing. And then the fire department shows up.

Momentarily, I wonder how they got there so fast and how I'm going to keep my dog from killing the firemen as they break down my front door. I won’t be able to. The dog is so ‘roided out on pork and chaos and fire trucks that he’ll murder someone. Or bite through the hose and attack the fire hydrant. The house is as good as gone. I start gathering photo albums and the dog and the potato and prepare myself for at least a calendar year of homelessness. But the firetrucks fly right by our house - turns out our crazy neighbors thought they smelled a gas leak. It’s like the fifth time the fire department has come to their house, and its only actually been on fire once.

So, I go get the child, who is making small pathetic coughing noises, dress him in a snow suit, pull a sweatshirt over my pajamas, and take him outside to see the lights and commotion while my house de-smokes. Brown Dog howls for the entirety, I can hear him down the block. All this before 7:30 PM.

EDIT - I am the only victim here. The house did not burn down. No one went to the hospital. You had, what, 30 total seconds of excitement? I lost my pork BBQ, nine man hours in cooking and hours of sleep because the dog hap to crap his brains out 4 times that night.

I guess this story would have been whatever and ended there, but two nights later, as we sat in the basement calmly enjoying picking the M&Ms out of trail mix and kind-of "House" reruns on USA and playing with our cooing child's toys, the N looks over and asks the dog what he has in his mouth.

A giant piece of pork the fucktard had buried in the couch to save for later.

Fail. The End.

EDIT – The End. But I’m not a big fan of you picking out the M&Ms from the trail mix, leaving only peanuts and raisins.

mmmm, incapacitating

In 2005, back when blogs were still called newspaper columns, I was walking around the District and I was approached by a roving band of thugs. There was a parade that day and it seemed that this group of young men was upset because the authorities had denied them entrance to the pageant. They hollered and gnashed their teeth and rattled the fences that separated them from the festivities. But it was to no avail. They gathered their belongings and stormed off.

I too hoped to watch the parade. But I was dressed in a respectable fashion and my behavior toward the authorities was civil. They deemed that I was not a threat to the sanctity of the parade and were willing to allow me access if I merely allowed a physical search of my person. I paused a moment to consider my options.

Suddenly, the ruffians returned. They had retreated to a nearby construction site and collected the various implements of destruction that the builders had left behind. Their intention was to use this paraphernalia to attack the authorities and gain a passage of entry to the parade. They dashed toward the fence, bellowing their frustration. But the authorities were not to be perturbed. They stepped behind the blockade, reached for their belts and unleashed torrents of pepper spray on the crowd. Right into their faces. And mine.

It was terrible. My face and eyes burned. Every breath felt like a firestorm in my chest. It was hours before I could draw a deep breath.

However, that wasn’t the worst thing that has happened to me at an inauguration.

This is:



I’ve started my own terrorist watch list. This guy is currently the only one on it.

My Name is Jonah

As required by my Clown College University, I took a single music appreciation class in an effort round out my Virginian liberal arts clown education. It was a 101, 8am mass of freshmen that was abided only because it wasn’t History 101. It was the professor’s claim that the early morning start time was to maximize our fresh, unmolested morning ears. He maintained while we slept, our ears had reset to a common baseline and our brains were purged of drunken bar revelry and Reel Big Fish concerts. Basically, our heads could hear and process sound better in the morning.

That may be true. It could be monster bullshit. But most of us were suffering at various levels of detoxification so our ears were already operating in the red. The professor also suffered from mild hearing loss and whenever he played music in class, it was at a volume much louder than necessary. And the treble was always too high for some reason. All these ingredients made it physically uncomfortable to sit through the songs that he played in class as genre examples.

One morning, it was a lesson about orchestra music and we were told to listen for some particular movement from the string section. Specifically, the violins. The loud, screechy violins. He put in the CD, pressed play and watched as almost everyone in the class started convulsing. Someone had turned the volume on the mixer to its peak and resulting onslaught was the most violently unpleasant thing I have ever heard.

Until Monday night.

On Monday night, the RB artist who calls himself Usher introduced a pop group calls themselves the Jonah Brothers at the Verizon Center. The resulting response from 10,000 twelve-year-old girls was the most brutal assault ever delivered upon my head. It felt like two master fly-fisherman landed two hooks directly into my ear drums, wrenched their poles back violently and allowed the piercing and unfiltered shrieks land directly on my brain. Five days later, thinking about it still causes winces.



There is clearly a cute Jonas brother since he was on the jumbotron most of the time. And there is clearly a Danny Wood Jonas brother since he wasn't shown at all.

I’m also old and out of touch. My date was trying to remember the name of the Miley Cyrus movie and I jokingly suggested Crossroads. She told me she too young to remember when Britney was doing movies.

BRING ON THE LYCONS!!

Mind the gap

So, yes. I was on the Metro train that ran over the 68-year-old woman yesterday. About 2½ of the train’s packed cars had reached the platform when it came to stop that was abrupt enough to cause some inexperienced riders to topple over. We waited quietly for a few minutes before they turned the train and track’s power off. Standing next to the door and without the engines running I could hear people screaming for help. Even though our car was still pretty deep into the tunnel, it was clear something was wrong.

It was probably because I was so close to the door but it seemed that I was the only person in my car that something was amiss. The other passengers’ cheerful spirit resisted any developing concern. Even after the air circulation had been turned off for ten minutes, none of the chatter was about when we were going to start moving or what the problem was or how come no one in charge was talking to us. Everyone was upbeat and very obliging. It wasn’t until a metro official worked his way back to our car and told us to evacuate through the front of the train that a current of unease started to increase.

On the platform, we saw this.



It was clear that someone was or had been under the train. But while the police, uniformed Secret Service and Metro personal were still operating in a hurried manner there was no sense that this was a life or death situation. We were ushered off the platform with little explanation until the system-wide PA system announced (incorrectly, it turns out) that someone had been hit by a train.

The DCist reports on the quick-minded Houston transit cop saved her by sending under the platform’s lip. And Houston doesn’t even have a subway.

This morning, I tried to explain to the G how to drive through a road block if she’s being chased by the police. She had no interest in my lesson. But had I been a Houston transit cop, she would have been all ears.

eleventybillion violins

i'd write more, but functioning on 4 or so (maybe) hours of sleep these days has left me pretty useless in things as basic as putting on my pants correctly, let alone typing. also, i have a cold.

remind me to tell you about the pot roast later.

also, if you're going to spill an entire large burning coffee on yourself, may i suggest doing so while wearing tan/brown corduroy. Absorbtive (absorbative? absorbing-y?) and a coffee-friendly color. Hot mess today folks, literally.

albums in 08

So, I've tried with both Cut Copy and Hot Chip, but I just can't help but thinking sometimes I'm actually listening to the Ross Gellar Experience.

late on this but

Bissell covers “It Ends with a Fall” from “Down the River of Golden Dreams;" Sheff & co. cover “Ex-Girl Collection” from The Meadowlands.

the tale of the cursed pot roast will be told tomorrow

In other news, I just won a $100 bet with my spouse. That Kaplan University commercial DOES star Uncle Phil from "Fresh Prince."

pain don't hurt; i had four hours of sleep last night; why does my husband sleep cook, etc.

It was super exciting to leave my house for three hours this weekend to go celebrate CatAn's birthday, you know, the blonde skinny internet one resplendent in plastic tiara. I drank someone else's beer! I talked about public transportation! IT WAS AWESOME.

Not as awesome: how shabbily I expressed my excitement at Roadhouse being shown that afternoon on A&E. And also, the blank stares I got from certain ladies as I tried to discuss Roadhouse. I did not do my own emotions justice.



Until Saturday I forgot how much I love Roadhouse. For the five people in the world who have not seen this film:

Roadhouse is a cinematic tour de force from the mid 1980's directed by a guy named Rowdy. This small tidbit of info should tell you a lot right off the bat. It stars Patrick Swayze's pants, which are the craziest high waisted pants I have ever seen, potentially back in fashion now if it weren't for the elaborate system of front-pleats. The movie's tagline: "The dancing's over. Now it gets dirty."

Patrick Swayze and his pants are named Dalton. Dalton's the best bar bouncer in the US of A. His nights are filled with fast action, hot music and beautiful women. It's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it. Also IMDB reports "Dalton lives like a loner, fights like a professional. And loves like there's no tomorrow."

! ! ! THIS IS WHERE LOTS OF EXCLAMATION POINTS GO ! ! !

Dalton also lives in a really cool barn he rents from a guy who is the B-version of Uncle Jesse (Dukes not Full House) and does Tai Chi. In one of my favorite scenes, we learn he has a degree in philosophy from NYU. The chick he "loves like there is no tomorrow" is played by Kelly Lynch's stringy hair and whack white lace outfit (no bra.)

Really 92% of the movie is fighting (lots of broken glass and beer bottles, lots of inexplicably angry drunk rednecks, one guy has a shiv stuck in the toe of his cowboy boot), and the other few percentages are split between being shirtless and staring wistfully at the Bad Rich Guy's (named Brad, as all 80's bad guys are named; played by the same guy who was a lawyer on SVU a few times, holla; and who is a small town mobster or something and apparently his big claim to fame other than taking money from the townsfolk is "bringing a JC Penney to town" (?)) house across the river, giving himself stitches, and bro-hugging Sam Elliott.

Also in one scene a monster truck takes out a Ford dealership.

Anyway the end is really sad because the Bad Rich Guy ends up having Sam Elliott killed which is terrible because I love me some Sam Elliott. Sam in Fatal Beauty? Sam in Mask, one-half of the greatest cinematic couple ever, Rusty & Gar? Yes please. Yes please to Sam.

Jeff Healey played the wise blind bar singer. Wikipedia just told me that sadly Healey died this year but that also Healey was CANADIAN which I didn't know and somehow makes Roadhouse even more Roadhousey.

I have spent the past 15 minutes on the IMDB thread "Things I Learned Watching Roadhouse." Which might be the greatest internet forum ever.

So that about sums up my weekend, I just wanted to talk about Roadhouse and Sam Elliott on Saturday night and no one knew what I was talking about. The rest of the Sunday was spent wondering why my spouse woke up at 3 AM to cook a pot roast (true.)

Unrelated to movies from the 1980s and comforting dinner food: baby ape. Q: Who wants to go see that ugly shit? (A: I do.)

Now I will go do work.

Come on feel the 'Nois

There is no condition that turns affection into hatred faster than the casual loss of a glove. This pair of gloves were the best – soft and fleecy, not to puffy, professional looking yet rugged with extra grippy palms that could catch a football and cab equally well. Now I hates them. Or it.

One of them is in a blood-filled gutter or a bird’s nest or wherever lost gloves end up when they disappear in the city. The other one will sit in my drawer for the next two winters while I hope to accidently take a ride in the same taxi that I took on Tuesday. Fuck you lost glove for getting lost. And fuck you other glove for not getting lost and being an asshole loner. No one likes you. Enjoy those mustard packets and dried out Bic pens for the next few years. They’re your new family.

On the plus side, though, that taxi ride ended with a delicious sausage, deep-dish Chicago pizza and this poster.

If I only knew someone with a baby we could put this in their nursery.



Yea! Illinois! You’re in the news all the time now because you’re great and birth corndogs!

EAP

awesome.

i used to work in a frame shop, when i left the owner gave me a set of the 1993-issued elvis stamps she had framed in a hideous gold gilt thing and matted in purple velvet. now that i have remembered this, i must find it. let's hope it's still in my parents attic.

guess who's back to work? That's right! You lose, Internet!

Amanda: http://iusedtobeinmiddledistancerunnerblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/shamwow-guy-vince.html

me: OH GOD VINCE THE SHAMWOW GUY. wait
this brings me to another story about my mother

Amanda: hit me.

me: mom, staring rapt at the TV watching vince:
"Do you ever really really really think you need to buy one of these? Cause I do. Olympic swimmers use it."

Amanda: HAHAHAHAH

me: "mom, no I don't. You want to know why? Because this guy claims I use 20 dollars in paper toweles a month. WHO USES $20 WORTH OF PAPER TOWELS A MONTH? That's insane."

Amanda: i've never thought about my paper towel consumption rate
i do use a lot of paper towels though
how much does one of those big target size packages cost?
cause those last about a month, maybe a month and a half
in our three-person household
probably not $20

me: hmm, okay. our giant assload from costco lasts a long time
but i bet its not 20 bucks

Amanda: yeah
twenty dollars on PT a month is ludicrous
screw you, shamwow guy

me: i hate him and his stupid headset.
why does he need a headset on TV?
its so fucking aggravating

Amanda: for the record: i do not want to do it with vince the shamwow guy

me: ugh
that accent
worst experience ever?

Amanda: yeah. he is neither dancing and singing like janet jackson to a sold out japanese stadium, nor is he on blogging heads. there are overhead mics, i'm sure of it.

me: i bet he cleans himself afterwards with a shamwow
i said it

Amanda: HAHA

me: you were thinking it but i said it

Amanda: hahahahaha
hahahahhahaa

me: eww

Amanda: yup.

hangover vs brain freeze

The only thing more pathetic and used up than a Toy’s R Us parking lot on Christmas morning is the scattered remains of an ice luge on New Year's Day. Melt in peace, the District sleeps.

this shit's bananagrams

So hey, new year.

Last night a few of us played bananagrams and ate delicious snack foods and misc. dips and missed the ball drop completely, i was asleep by 12:40 probably. Which, as K noted, is later than I made it last year for New Years, so, way to go me.

In keeping with my grand personal tradition of even years being awesome/odd years being cocksuckers, 2008 was pretty grand. I went to fort reno a few times, the beach a few times, was reasonably successful at work even though I was only around for 3/4 the year, and I had an excuse to go to bed early and watch lame reality tv and be fat with no one thinking too much the worse of me. I saw Dragon Wars (that might have been 07), won my first attempt at a fantasy football league, and met Ronnie Mervis.

Not-as-great things include a miserable trip to Las Vegas (which seems kind of comical now) and owning a cell phone that is the worst piece of technology I've ever encountered (thanks, Motorola!) but if those are the nastiest things that happened to me, well, great.

I'm getting less sleep than i did even back in 02/03 when i went out drinking every single afternoon/night of my life, but this time it's way more okay and even though it's still hard to get out of bed in the morning, it's just sheer exhaustion, not because the room is spinning. Well well, look who's an adult.

In other news, the dog threw up all over the basement this morning, and I go back to work on Monday.

HAPPY 09 INTERNET. Let's break the cycle of odd years being so odd.

They also play that Army CSI show sometimes too

Hi.

We don’t go out anymore. Or do things. If you want to see us you have to come look through the basement window because we’re down there with the geckos and poison mold spores watching TV with the volume off and the vacuum turned on. But we aren’t vacuuming. It’s just running.

So all we know anything about is television shows and things that happen between television shows. And then we complain about them to each other.

For instance, American Express is a fine company that screws small businesses but their rewards program has resulted in free airline tickets to London and a new camera. But their recent batch of commercials is especially deceitful. In one, Tina Turner talks about her successes, her talent and her Amex card. Specifically, “Everything was there, I just needed my freedom. And I got it.” Then a graphic hardens over concert video indicating that Tina’s been a member since 1977.

The implication here is that Tina’s ability to postpone paying for goods and services by procuring a short term loans that can be paid off monthly with varying degrees of interest set her free. Specifically, in 1977. I assume the part of the interview where she discussed fleeing from a highly physically and emotionally abusive husband in 1976 before going into hiding for several months ended up getting cut from the ad. Fortunately, she received her card in the mail and it finally gained her freedom.

More importantly, though, is the part of the commercial that features Dave Matthews. One of the rewards/punishments of being trapped in the basement is the constant airing of House on USA. Have you seen the one where DM plays and idiot savant piano player and CIA Director Kurtwood Smith is his dad? I’ve seen in twice in 3 days because my life has reached its apex. In the end, House forces Dave to get the brain surgery that takes away his Shiney McShine piano abilities but he can now button shirt like a real live boy. It’s the classic feel good story of 2008 and proves once again that everything relating to Charlottesville is mentally retarded.

We drove into the drive-in and she didn't have to pay because we dressed her up to look just like a Chevrolet

Recent testing has determined that two out of the three members of the Pyggy household find "Your Mama So Fat..." jokes incredibly funny. One member likes telling them. One smiles and giggles hysterically at hearing them.

The third member, however, does not see the humor. The others feel she is too sensitive.

I Got The Teeth of Teh Hydra Upon Me

(Usually, when I ask someone if they’ve seen an article in from the Post they ask to be sent the URL address. A “hyperlink” if you will. This makes me curse because I’m 900 years old and still read the analogue newspaper. Plus, the Post’s search page has been complete rubbish as of late and I couldn’t even find the page if I wanted to. It will tell that your query has resulted in X number of hits but it won’t show what they are. It’s pretty worthless. It’s also why this post is almost two weeks old.)

The paper’s Kid’s Post section often pits their intended readers with the parents of those readers. That leaves me somewhere in the middle, since I don’t play Lego based video games and my 401k is doing pretty well considering I’m too young to really have that much money in it, anyways. The article form December 10th was no different.

In it, the authors attempt to mediate the daily car-trip argument between the front and back seats about what to listen to on the radio. This came as a surprise for I assumed that today’s child travled with entertainment systems built into the back of their parent’s seats and heads. But this article was aimed at those poor hobo children who are forced to listen to cassettes of Alabama’s greatest hits. Like me. Also, who the fuck is Paramore?

Check out the crappy picture I had to take because the Post is garbage and doesn’t put their most obviously internet friendly section online.



See. A good Kids Post section would have links to the songs. Hell, a good Kids Post section would even have the article online.

1. Miley Cyrus’ “See you Again” versus The Pretenders’ “Message of Love”
2. Maroon 5, “Make Me Wonder” versus Steve Miller, ”Abracadabra”
3. Kate Perry, “I Kissed a Girl” versus Blondie “One Way or Another”
4. Jonas Brothers, “Burnin’ Up” versus T. Rex, “Bang a Gong”
5. Paramore, “Misery Business” versus The Clash, “Should I Stay or Should I Go”
6. Fall Out Boy, “This Ain’t No Arms Race…” versus The Ramones “Rockaway Beach”

Before I heard any of these new songs, I would have assumed this whole list was blasphemous. But I listened to the Miley song. You know what? It does a little sound like “Message of Love.” A little. We can give it a pass. And I can accept the idea that crappy old Maroon 5 is a younger generation’s version of crappy old Steve Miller from my babysitter’s generation. But then my senses returned.

Actually…

You probably know what I’m trying to say here better than I can ever say it.

Outside a few similar chord progressions, all the comparisons are terribly off base. And other than Steve Miller, the older bands aren’t the mainstream pop of Wham or Toto or the like. The Pretenders, the Clash, Blondie and the Ramones all broke new ground. And T. Rex just plain rocked. The fact that something like this couldn’t even exist if it were trying to compare the grown-up’s music with their parent’s favorite tunes just shows how many RPMs recording industry has wasted spinning its wheels over the last 30 years.

*full disclosure - the g's favorite band and song is Steve Miller's Abracadabra. Also, I kinda sorta like Fall Out Boy.

red-crowned crane: straight con

All I do anymore is read "Fuck You, Penguin" while eating popsicles and listening to my husband cuss out Mario Kart. Seriously, it took me 15 minutes to remember this stupid blog's password.

and becks, too

happy birthday, ancient husband.

“A cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing” - Samuel Johnson

The most telling thing about this article is not the picture about that shows how pissed off that one dog is or that animals can demonstrate an emotion that can be interrupted as envy. It’s this…

When asked to return rocks to their keepers in exchange for a treat, for example, monkeys that got cucumbers essentially went on strike and started throwing the rocks and cucumbers at researchers if they saw other animals getting grapes instead.

See, even in the animal kingdom, cucumbers are considered punishment. They cause riots.

Cucumbers are gross. They are the brussel sprouts of the vegetable world.

Crooked Fingers

My fingers nails grow at an above average rate. I know, it’s gross. And fascinating. It’s also about the only thing I do that’s above average.

Ever since I hurt my hand, though, the nail on that finger has been growing absurdly fast. I’ve had to trim it every two days. Prior to the damage, I would have assumed the opposite.

I did a little ‘tubes research and it turns out the rehab for my finger is also great for nail growth stimulation. Anything that encourages blood the fingers stimulates thicker, stronger and more luxurious claws. Ironically, it’s why people who chew their nails have faster growing ones.

So if you have weak and brittle fingernails and fall below gypsum on the mohs scale, I have a simple solution. Violently dislocate each knuckle from its joint, have a medical professional painfully wrench it back into place and then grimace through several weeks of painful rehab. Instant talons. Horrible disfigured talons.

You can tell by the way I roll shorty that I’m a ladies man

Although I wasn’t in a fraternity, I somehow managed to get myself invited to many, many sorority formals. And semi-formals. And sorority keggers, hootenannies, mixers and sorority box socials. It was a secret shame since I generally I disliked everything about the sorority girls at the clown college I attended except for their loose moral standards and access to free liquor.

Around the same time, Wyclef Jean felt it necessary to remake/cover the song Stayin' Alive. This song became a favorite at those ridiculous dances because the melody and beat were familiar enough to dry hump to yet the lyrics referenced such modern themes as dry humping. As it happens, one particular line from that song became extremely popular at these to-dos and was yelled in unison at the highest volume – “So mista funkmaster pump the bee-gees, And all you college students bring your Ouijas.” It’s 0:54 into the song.

Like all trickster women, sorority girls keep evil secrets designed to control men. I first assumed the passion for this line was limited to an individual sorority and I wasn’t in on the reference. But it turned out to be a Greek-wide phenomenon. All it takes for a song to endear itself to an “academic” audience is a mention of college and a vague allusion to the occult. And it helps if Ouijas rhymes with BeeGees.

I kept this knowledge secret from my friends from the radio station, ultimate Frisbee team, and such. They didn’t need to know about the soft spot in my heart and my head for dancing and wearing off-the-rack suits and my dad’s old ties. Strangely, however, this same song started to creep into my life via these avenues as well. Mostly it was because at the time we all enjoyed the irony of anything disco related and, let’s be real, the song's catchy as hell. But like the other Grecian-half of the school, they too became infatuated with one set of lyrics.

It’s at 1:20 into the video…

In case you misheard that, it was, “Every step tangoed, your beat don’t concern me, I’m eatin mangos in Trinidad with attorneys.” I’m not exactly how it came to pass, but we became fascinated with that mangos/Trinidad/attorneys bit. It became a catch all for any situation.

• “What are we doing Thursday night?” - “ Man, we’ll be eating mangos in Trinidad with attorneys.”
• “You worried about that Asian history mid-term?” - “Naw, that’ll be easy like eating mangos in Trinidad…“
• “Uh, your roommate said you went to a sorority formal on Saturday. What’s that about?” - “Say what!?! That dude is straight up eating mangos…”

See, it fits any and all situations.

Unfortunately, John Forte, the rapper/producer who uttered those genius lines, was arrested 2000 on what I can only assume were trumped cocaine possession charges. As a music listening public, we were suddenly denied his brilliance. Who knows what would have happened to Wyclef, Pras and Lauryn Hill if they had been guided back to the studio by the steady hand of Forte? Certainly Hill wouldn’t have had to eat her children after I bought her solo album. Like everything else good from college, it faded from my memory. There's nothing left other than the liver cirrhosis.

Anyway, I’m not sure how this slipped my attention, but John Forte’s sentence was commuted a few days before Thanksgiving, for some reason. And it wasn’t like the conviction was thrown out on a technicality. Nor was he pardoned by a corrupt Illinois governor looking for an ambassadorship to Trinidad. The sentence was commuted by a guy named the President of the United States of America George Bush.

Carly Simon was involved somehow too. And Orrin Hatch also.

Congratulations , John Forte, for having a strange group of supporters and getting out of the clink. I don’t really understand how you manage to pull something like that off. But enjoy your freedom mangos, nonetheless. They taste so much better on the outside

Help Me Scrape the Mucus off My Brain

The G: yr spawn was just not-bounced to sleep for his morning nap
there was screaming. said screamfest lasted much shorter than last night's, but he was not happy and voiced his opinion. i told him his concerns were noted

The N: he went to sleep as soon as I stood up last night
I think he just needs some movement. it may be easier to ween him

The G: wean. not Ween

The N: no. ween

The G: japanese cowboy him

The N: like a japanese cowboy

The G: oh

The N: snap

The G: hive mind

No, I do not know why I went to Tysons Corner mall with a 3 month old this morning. Good question.

Hey, did you know that the ice of the 9th circle of hell is kept frozen by Lucifer's six flapping wings?

sigh

As predicted, we haven’t seen a movie as a couple since the blessed event. The G took advantage of my boundless generosity to escape to the district Monday night and partake in some sexy teen vampire time for girls and their moms and their weird neighbors. The G played the role of weird neighbor.

Relief is on the way. Grandmas are going to be aplenty this weekend and the question is not which movies to we want to see but how many? Actually, that’s not right, since my bride only wanted to see Twilight and that itch has been scratched. I’ve been watching commercial extra closely to see what are options are. They seem limited. And I don’t even know if these are even in the theaters anymore. Or if they’ve even opened. As far as I can tell, these are our choices:


1. The one where Paul Rudd beats children

2. James Bond. I’ve read one review and it said it was good. But when I tried to argue another point of the reviewer’s blog post it was rejected. In other words, TOM LEE IS A CENSOR.

3. Keanu Reeves remakes one of my favorite movies and probably ruins it. I was intrigued by the ads but they raise a question: when did it become standard science fiction policy that aliens/robots are incapable of using contractions? Data couldn’t do it. It appears that Keanu can’t do it in this movie. Why would an off-worlder bother to learn only 99% of our language?

4. This. There’s no way. Unless…



Looks like we're seeing Twilight again. What a waste of a grandma.

Ruiner of weddings: part II

I was an actual member of an actual wedding party last weekend although my only responsibility was to escort old ladies to their seats. I pwned those grandmas too and not a single one wandered off or sat in the wrong seat. And when one casually teased my sister, I put her in her place with the gentle ease of a down comforter.

OK. It wasn’t really an insult. The D walked by in heals and grandma said -

“You sure couldn’t eat soup off that girls head.”

You sure can’t, grandma. Because I’m not really sure what you’re talking about.

But before any of that went down, we in the groom’s party did our damndest to force the wedding planner into a psychotic meltdown. We arrived two hours early for several rounds of photos but only managed to get in the way of the caterers, staff and other hangers-on. We were ushered from room to room in an effort to keep form being under foot and ended up in the library of the mansion where the wedding was being staged. It was also where the beer was being hidden.

So we started to get drunk.

The library was of high shelves made of dark wood. The room was very dark. One of groomsmen turned to me and asked “What does the room remind you of?” I spent a few seconds scrolling through my memory banks, looking for an instance when we’d been in a similar library. Coming up blank, he bellowed “Atonement!” Without warning he pushed another groomsman up against the wall and began dry humping him furiously.

The windows started shaking. Books began to fall off the shelves. The molested groomsman (unfamiliar with the movie) rolled with it. The wedding planner walked in and all hell broke loose. I’ve never seen an angrier woman.

They took our beer away and banished us to the basement until moments before the wedding started. But the jokes on her, because she was so angry she didn’t cue the groom to approach the alter until the bride had already gotten down the aisle. I almost ruined the whole day!

Anyway, Charles from the City Veins was there also.

My New Sunshine Policy

The list of places I’ll never go keeps getting longer…

- Wedding on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border
- Overcrowded Indonesian/Philippine ferry
- Hindu pilgrimage near steep cliffs
- Haitian elementary schools
- Hot Topics

I’m actively going out of my way to know and learn nothing about the Twilight. I refuse to participate in any public discussion on the matter. There are probably reasons to like it. There are probably more reasons to mock it. It seems that most people like to hate on it. I know that the G read one of the books. And she told me some of the basics about it.

She’s like “So there’s this pale girl and some more pale vampire and a werewolf maybe and they have some forbidden love. And then one the vampires…” But I stopped her before she could add further details.

I must remind the world that I was aggressively mocked for taking the day off to see both Underworld and Underworld 2: The Werewolf KooKajoo. In fact, the abuse was so intense the G had to use up a sick day from her job as a Sotheby’s auctioneer because her voice was raspy and dry. And yet, the plots between these two films (and the Kate Beckinsale-less Underworld prequel coming out soon) and Twilight sound exactly the same.

You can all go to hell.

Anyway, the commercials make the movie look like a huge sack of crap. And I ought to know since my exposure to huge sacks of crap has increased 100 fold over the last 2 months. And I don’t also don’t understand how NPR allowed it to be the underwriter of some of their segments. But I'm not paying attention to any of that.

So have fun this weekend, jerks, seeing your teenage vampire movie that I don't know anything about except Kate Beckinsale is not having sex in it.

hello world.

reasons you haven't heard from me lately:

- our internet has been massively fucked and was finally fixed yesterday by, I swear to god, Rodney King. Rodney King now works for Comcast, fyi.

- I'm not at work nor do I leave the house often/at all. Seriously, can we briefly touch on mommyblogging, which is a bigger mystery to me now than ever ever ever before? As much as I love my offspring with all my soul, shit be boring. I am fairly certain you do not want to hear about TLC's daytime television programming (mind-numbingly terrible) or trips to Target (brief) or on average what time the mailman shows up at my house (later than you'd imagine!) or who the Spawn takes after (me, most definitely. He is blond, pretty curmudgeonly, has already outgrown clothing meant for humans months and months older than him, and only my husband can make him smile. It's like a goddamn mirror.) Also: I have rewatched all seasons of Veronica Mars. Man, those first two were good. Oh but look, I just told you all about that stuff anyway!

misc:

- food! FOOD!!!!

- happy birthday to the 5-8 friends birthdays I have forgotten about in the past week.

- we're going to a wedding this weekend. drinking.

- so hey, did you hear Obama won?

This post is "not safe for lunch"

Do you ever stop and consider how much you have in common with Henry Paulson? For instance, the Treasury Secretary and I are both Eagle Scouts. We attended Ivy League colleges as undergrads, were both members of Phi Beta Kappa and got our Master’s degree at Harvard business school. I’m also rich, completely bald and became the CEO of an international bank holding company in my 40s. And I put my signature on every dollar bill in my wallet.

But we are also very different. He’s a Christian Scientist. I’m Presbyterian. When he dislocates a finger he doesn’t go to the hospital to have it put back.

I do.



Amazingly, I should be back playing in a week.

This post = lame

We are not really comfortable touching on politics around here. We both get annoyed when the robots call during dinner and we both voted toady. But I seemed to be the only one who got upset when they let that pregnant lady cut in line at the polls. Bah! I waited an hour and 20 minutes! It’s not like she’s voting for two.

But we are comfortable talking about sci-fi around here, though. And there’ve been some intersections of late.

----------

I won’t embed someone else’s video but I did watch the “Vote Lando for President” bit on Funny or Die. Verdict: meh. But who knew Calrissian loved himself so much turquoise jewelery and giant rings? And I understand why these fake campaign ads would place him outside Cloud City or that one planet from the first one. But why is he in the Metro for the second one?



I guess Federal Triangle does have that lived-in retrofuturism look that Lucas craves. And the thought of a giant fireball shooting down the tunnel isn’t that hard to imagine. Especially if there are wet leaves on the tracks, which is apparently the most deadly thing that can befall the entire Metro system.

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

Whenever someone is questioned about the effect race will have on the election they will either a) tell the truth or b) cover up their anxiety by giving a gradually absurd list of skin colors that don’t bother them. It usually goes “I don’t care if they are black, white, yellow, purple, whatever. I’m not racist.”

I have a problem with this. Purple skinned people are the worst. And Purple Man was just about the most awful President we’ll ever have. He had Peter Parker and Matt Murdoch executed. Then he shot Captain America in the head before sending him 400 years into the past. And then he did worse things.

Bottom line – purples are the only group it’s okay to be racist against.

----------

Oh, Liddy. What did you do your face in fours years since we last heard from you?



What did I do to your face? Someone's seriously needs to take photoshop off this computer.

boom

Last week, Amanda dreamt that a hundred internet weirdoes descended on a small turkey farm in rural Maryland and wreaked havoc with impractical shoes and fruit cannons.


A sign indicated there were 15,000 turkeys in there. 15,000 filthy, disgusting turkeys.

On Saturday, we tried to make her hallucination a reality. Unfortunately for her, our car showed up an hour early, didn’t get lost and made all the farmers sigh with our adorableness. The people who did end up making to Thurmont showed up hours later and missed all my inspiring feats. It wasn’t what she had in mind, exactly, but it did sate her appetite for mayhem for at least a week or two.



Winter Brook Farm has two things going for it. First, there’s the corn maze. Corn mazes are cloyingly sentimental holdovers from a bygone time when the thought of getting lost in a field was terrifying for your parents. And I have to admit that when you’re a few hundred yards in and there’s nothing but silence and cornstalk rustling it can be a bit spooky. But then you remember you can just Kool-Aid Man your way out of there because it’s only a field of corn. Sort fun, I guess.

The real draws to Winter Brook Farm are the two modified tractor/bulldozer/howitzers that shoot pumpkins and apples hundreds of yards with unpredictably explosive results. I’ve shot belt fed M60s at old Jeep carcasses doused in gasoline that caused giant scorching fire balls after a single round. This was better.



The double barreled apple cannon blew stuff up real good, especially if knocking over bleach bottles is your thing. But for my money, I wanted to inflict more damage than your average middle school bully with a sack of rotten produce.



You could actually feel the pumpkins impact when they exploded on the boat or car or lawnmower. It was even impressive when Amanda missed the target 20 feet high and her pumpkin came to rest a quarter mile later. I think she got and extra 30 yards off a cart bounce but it was a remarkable shot none the less.



I’m not saying that I’m the greatest pumpkin cannon shot ever but I did take out 55 gallon drum from 75 yards away. If only there was a way to use these powers for good.

He's really showing us what a man with a cannon in his chest can do!

One costume down, two to go.

If your costume is going to have a message, it might as well be to the point. Especially if your only 23 inches tall.

Peter Peter Pumpkin Destroyer

Certain members our quiet Alexandria parish go out of their way each year to destroy Halloween. Some are well-intentioned busy bodies who leave sacks of candy on your doorsteps weeks before the 31st with notes that instruct you to pay it forward forward until everyone in the neighborhood has sacks of candy. (We did not comply because we are shallow and hate forced social interaction) Others are ill-intentioned adult grifters who carry their own adult-sized pillowcases and demand their own candy after their poorly-costumed child have gotten theirs. (An Insane Clown Posse t-shirt is not a costume.)

And then there are the squirrels.

Last year, I mentioned that I was unaware that squirrels craved pumpkin flesh the way Bunnicula craves carrot juice. For a week now, out entire neighborhood has been ruined by the carcasses of jack-o-lanterns. They rot on the sidewalk and are later run over by lawn mowers leaving an orange, pulpy mess on everything. It’s gross.

But it’s also the way things are. Squirrels are going to eat pumpkins because squirrels like tasty things and pumpkins are tasty as shit.* We don’t leave other food stuffs on our front steps and then expect them not to get eaten. In fact, our insane neighbor message board is rife with people complaining about rats and crows and, I swear to God, buzzards getting into peoples trashcans. Why is everyone surprised that our delicious gourds are slowly being gnawed to death after leaving them outside for 3 weeks?

Not me.

Once I came to accept this fact, I realized there is no reason why someone couldn’t exploit this situation. Why couldn’t man and squirrel work together to create Halloween excitement instead of destroying it? Accordingly, this year I have decided to embrace our furry demolitionist friends. Halloween should be about interspecies teamwork.**

So, without further ado, I present Project Squirrel-o-lantern.

Start with a standard $4.99 Safeway pumpkin.



My contribution was very simple. All we need is your basic eyes, nose, and mouth. I stuck with rectangles because it’s well documented that squirrels hate right angles. My fuzzy associate will do all he can to remedy the sharpness of my design.



Then I just re-introduced the pumpkin into the wild. (I tossed in a few bread crumbs to tempt my partner away from the dozens of other cucurbitaceous temptations around the neighborhood.)

Sure enough, I awoke the next morning to find my Squirrel-o-lantern collaborator hard at work.



Well done squirrel! But I was a little concerned about the oral fixation. The eyes and mouth needed some work too. So I stuffed a gag into the Squirrel-o-lanterns mouth in an effort to encourage other parts of the project to be explored.

Again, success!



Humans find symmetry attractive. They find asymmetry disconcerting. With the obvious effort extended toward making the eyes uneven and unnaturally large, it’s clear that the squirrels in our neighborhood have at least a basic understanding of human psychology. The layering is a nice touch too.

But the real test is to see how it looks when illuminated.



Honestly, I don’t think this could have worked out any better. I think I can safely say that this is the best looking Squirrel-o-lantern ever presented to the trick-or-treating public.

In conclusion, I want to thank my squirrel friend for helping out this year. I know we’ve had a strained relationship in the past. And if the dog ever does manage to catch you or one of your relatives, I will still allow him to violently shake your body until your neck snaps. But until then, know that I respect your talents and look forward to working with you again next year.




*Why is the idea of homemade roasted pumpkin seeds so much better than the reality of homemade roasted pumpkin seeds?

**You ring the doorbell, I’ll light the bag of poo on fire.

It's kinda like when I fell asleep driving and almost crashed into one of those stores at the beach that sells towels and and shot glasses and fudge

The driving unpleasantness from Saturday was the result of a trip to see the G’s parents in Faraway, VA. But it wasn’t the most uncomfortable thing that happened that night.

Narcoleptic is how I’d best describe our functioning condition. And we haven’t had much time to ourselves. So when I came of from her parent’s basement after a beer or two and saw her standing with her back to me, I thought I’d be cute and flirtatious.

Remember, we are both very sleepy.

But that’s still no excuse FOR PINCHING MY MOTHER-IN-LAW’S ASS!!!!!


AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!