Friday, November 26, 2010

my teeth are itching

our quitted gubner of gaffes and spinner of saucy word salad was at it again this week:

yesterday on her pal glenn beck's show:

"This speaks to a bigger picture here that certainly scares me in terms of our national security policy," the former vice presidential candidate said on Wednesday. "But obviously we've gotta stand with our North Korean allies."


confusing north and south korea, was a mistake. fair enough we all make 'em and most of us aren't on tv having to talk about stuff we don't know anything about, and few of us feel the same visceral imperative to stay in the spotlight. she fled to the safety of her fans and facebook page and retaliated by posting links of obama's verbal gaffes. instead of just laughing it off, "oops!" kinda thing, she then wadded her panties all up in a sissy bunch and whined how whenever she makes a mistake (c'mon ms. palin it's often enough that my google alert would 'spolde, ok?)the lamestream media jumps on it and runs and blows it up and i was tired and it's not fair cuz why do you people still like barry? huh, huh, why?

earlier in the week she gave up this little bit of gobbledy-gook:


"I want to help clean up the state that is so sorry today of journalism. And I have a communications degree. I studied journalism, who, what, where, when, and why of reporting"

the first bit of syntax made my head pound the desk and the fact that she forgot the "how" as to the 6th question that should be answered in any solid bit of reporting can likely be attributed to... um... not paying attention in school? or never reading newspapers?

someone with A LOT of time on their hands created this compendium and wasilla
greatest hits which is brilliant and scary at the same time:

her high school gpa was 2.2 (maybe bristol is just too dumb after all for them to bother forking out dough for college)

she dropped out of 4 never-heard-of-bumfuck colleges before finally matricu
lating

compared legal abortions to the tuskegee experiments

like a tiny-town version of #43, she took over a government that had no debt and left it in the hole for $19 millz.

authorized an increase in the sales tax

increased salaries and bennies by 67%

spending on office furniture and supplies went up 117%

her staff of 50 cost the town an average of $140,000 each -- $7 million

she raised property taxes and supported an increase in the sales tax to pay for a sports arena

supported allowing parents to opt their children out of curricula offensive to their privacy, religion or conscience. (which worked brilliantly for not allowing bristol to take sex ed and is working great for the new, and ever-growing, breed of amuricans --including palin- who take the bible literally)

she also admits to having smoked pot. how on earth did i not hear about that when she and her slutty stewardess hairdo were EVERYWHERE in '08? huh? c'mon, lamestream media? how unfair are you?

lots more there, but i want to give myself head-space for something less, um, noisome, tyvm.



Wednesday, November 24, 2010

abstinence in amurica

the story that inspired my previous post was an awful read on thanksgiving eve.

so just as another side of the coin option, let's remember what might happen to other girls who are supposed to be abstinent. they get knocked up too.

but their mom is white and purty and famous (and famously polarizing) so they get to galoomph their cankles and notorious uterus all over tv. "dancing with the who-the-fuck-is-that-anyway," has brought the palins weeks and weeks of free publicity, tens of thousands of dollars into bristol's bank account, and all sorts of bizarro tea-bagger shenanigans against the "liberal elite." (newsflash to baggers: we are not watching dwts, ok? having even to hear about it is retarded. oh, wait, that's hate-speech. sorry babay trig.)

anybody else wonder why there is no plan for bristol for college? not like they can't afford it. is she too stoopid? bah. even her momz finally found a school where she could graduate but they've proven smart enough to milk the fame machine so she doesn't have to go to school or really work. by the weight she gained on this show (where everybody else drops to bones from the work-outs), i'm athinking lazeeeeee factors hard-core in there too.

white and rich sure does beat black and poor, huh?


this is america?

last january, in allegheny pennsylvania, a pregnant woman died from pneumonia that she contracted while in prison. she complained for weeks to the guards that she was having trouble breathing and was coughing up mucous. they refused to allow her to see a doctor. a sick pregnant woman. IN JAIL. by the time she was sent to the hospital it had become a bacterial infection so severe it could not be cured and she died 12 days later.

she was in prison because she got pregnant on her work-release and it was a violation of her probation. her probation was for shoplifting. food. she also had a previous conviction for prostitution. without it being stated in any of the linked articles i found, i suspect this woman came from a dire economic stance. she was black and from a very depressed area of the country and her petty crimes are those borne of desperation, aren't they?

i'm flabbergasted enough that the state forbade her from getting knocked up (my body, my rights, and all that), especially since her crime had nothing to do with being a mom, fit or not. but if that is a stipulation, shouldn't they have provided her with birth control? was she in fact sentenced to abstinence?

but then, even putting aside this astounding patriarchal hysteria, how on the planet earth can putting a pregnant woman in the slammer be thought prudent and judicious? is that not cruel and unusual? and then for guards to play some sort of petty bullshit power game and deny her medical care? this noodle knows there are plenty of prisoners capable of gaming the system and just as many guards who can only function thinking their wards are pieces of shit to be scraped from the hell of their boots. but for the love of mary.

she was 18 weeks pregnant and now she's dead.

21st century amurrica.



Saturday, October 23, 2010

who are we fighting for?

garbled syntax aside, this was in today's ny times, in an article re: the wikileaks, re: civilian deaths in iraq since we invaded:

Civilians have borne the brunt of modern warfare, with 10 civilians dying for every soldier in wars fought since the mid-20th century, compared with 9 soldiers killed for every civilian in World War I, according to a 2001 study by the International Committee of the Red Cross.


eta, and who's fighting whom?

The war in Iraq spawned a reliance on private contractors on a scale not well recognized at the time and previously unknown in American wars. The documents describe an outsourcing of combat and other duties once performed by soldiers that grew and spread to Afghanistan to the point that there are more contractors there than soldiers.



Wednesday, October 13, 2010

old home week

more like 18 hours, but this past weekend i attended my high school reunion. over the years have remained semi- in-touch with the girls who were my closest friends, but as they had children and moved to places that i have a totally selfish lack of desire to ever visit, i don't see them much. they worried about me (probably still do) because i never married nor had kids and just don't fit the mold.

after maddening adventures with public transport and finally getting to our god-forsaken little burg i was greeted by bursts of lady-squealing and lots of hugs. my friends looked great. totally great. thin, fit, good haircuts, happy.

my window was so small though, there wasn't much time for really catching up except on the very superficial surface of life. "how old are your kids?" college? fucking christ on a stick. the status of everybody's parents. they all knew about the condition of my mother, younger than all of theirs, and that elicited much sympathy. i didn't want to bring a pall so we all easily slid elsewhere with the talk.

the reunion itself was more fun than i had hoped, but full of people of whom i had no memory, even after seeing their yearbook pic. yikes.

a handful of the guys still looked good, but most looked awful. awful. fat, bald, toting mousy wives. one guy with hair-plugs, another husband with a fierce mullet. about half the women looked terribly middle-aged with atrocious suburban haircuts, and frumpy fat-lady clothes.

one transgendered person who does not make a pretty woman.

beyond the surface though? few divorces, many in long-term marriages. 2,3,4, even 5 kids. many men self-employed and the rest in finance or tech. quite a few with summer homes. those struggling or bereft are far less likely to turn up at a shindig like this, but i can only hope it was a representative sampling.

for perspective, i had two conversations that nearly had me in tears. one man who was part of our regular crew had a son in a bicycle accident a few years back. for whatever reason the saga was profiled on their local station and i had seen the video. the boy was in a coma for a few weeks, but came out and is up and about. he will never be "normal", but he is alive. it was amazing to see how changed d. is as a man and listen to how his wife and other children rallied and coped. the vision of wonder on his face, his gratitude at being given back his son, made me glad to be human and know this man.

a second man, (i remember him as funny, but gentle, and he helped me out of a few scrapes with less than upstanding guys) who was not in "our" circle, but, say, the next ring out, had married a dancer when in his 30s. in hindsight he knows that her moody artistic temperament was a veil for something far more damaged. she failed to commit suicide and now rests in a vegetative state in a home. his grief and sadness were so close to the surface as to be pouring out of him. as if his wounded heart was held there, beating in his hands, each in and out a pulse of despair. his pain overwhelmed me.

in between such high and low, the rest of us are cosseted by "normal" life, i guess. even me?

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

no woman, no cry

sadly, it was a weekend of lots of women, crying a lot.

friday was a fundraiser for a guy who had surgery awhile back and then countless setbacks and complications causing him to be bedridden. his wife has recently changed jobs so can't just up and go before 5:00, has been caring for their two young girls and her incapacitated husband now for months. i'd met her only once in passing and had many absoluts in my system at the time, so the meet didn't stick. the story streamed out of her. her struggle, her exhaustion, her loneliness, her sense of helplessness with not being able to make her man better. yet those weren't the "words." that was all stiff upper lip and gratitude to those who were lending even a finger of a hand to help. i ached for her. people fall in love and yeah, that whole for better, for worse thing... your husband can't even wash himself at 35? mother of god... at 80, mebbe, ya know?

sunday was a wake. a man we knew, in queue for a lung transplant, could no longer wait. up/down, up/down, all signs went south and he died last wednesday. he was sick, but not old. contrary to all the silver hair he sported, both head and face, turns out he was only 58. same age as the owner's oldest brother. reaching distance of the owner, really. he'd been sickly for months, trailing an oxygen tank, not well enough to play the guitar out, but sometimes well enough to join us when others played, and never anything but happy to be out and about. he was one of those rare specimens for whom nobody could find an unkind word. there was a peace and wholeness to him, as a man and a person, that radiated outward and made you feel happy to be with him and know him. i count myself as terribly lucky to ever get those people in my life, even if they have to leave before i want them to.

i had never before met his "lady-friend". i rustled my nerves and said what i could and she started hugging me. hard. this need of people to be touched, held, connected to others always takes me aback. i would never hug somebody i didn't know. yet she wanted human contact, could feel my empathy and grabbed on. did i help her hurt even a wee bit less for even a second? i hope so. there has to be something soul-affirming when strangers tell you that you loved a wonderful man.

his sister, his nieces, his mother all were there with balled up kleenexes and red-rimmed eyes. this is the second son the mother has lost, the 1st to colon cancer 5 years ago. she looked small and tired and alone in her chair at the end of the receiving line and i could only wonder how long ago the mr. had died and how long would this woman live without any of her men?

what struck me was how many 30-somethings were there. musicians, and friends of, (like moi-self) with whom he'd played or saw him play in that little bit of shangri-la on the merrimack. a small stone in a pond rippling out and out and out. we all were terribly sad, but i think there remained for everybody that clarity of thought how blessed we'd been to get him.

there are some who see a a man like this and only see their own shortcomings. i prefer to think i am living my life in such a way that i do allow this kind of goodness in, and that as i get better at that, only more good will come.

i cry still from all the pain i saw and feel. i don't know why a death pall is over life lately. i do know it has to lift.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

empty


just about this time last week, the cat died. you might quibble about "the cat". however, i never liked his given name and it also to me implied a supremacy, a singularity. there was no "other" cat, k?

he was old. i think 19. he'd been more and more tired, eating less and less. that was wonderfully balanced by zero upchucking these last months, but hey. he still jumped off the bed or couch and came wobbling over whenever i came home. he pestered to be fed and wanted to be petted, brushed and held.

til last monday. he whinged for food when i came home mid-afternoon, but only ate a bite. his breathing was shallow but i had to go to work. when i got home, he still came loping, but i could see the effort in his ribcage. i knew, but i didn't know how long it would take? so i followed him from carpet to couch, chair to floor. his breath rasping more each moment, and his bony frame so small under my hands.

i lost it and started to bawl. he was dying, i knew there wasn't much time left. his eyes surged, he began to struggle and stand. my sobbing... selfish owner. for many years and more than a few men he couldn't tolerate my tears. he'd come running, wind himself in and out of me, rub my hands and face. i have never known an animal with more empathy. i couldn't do that in his last moments. suck it up.

his eyes were empty, his jaw slack. then... nothing. he was so small and fragile, yet warm and soft, on the floor. it was hours before the clinic would be open.

i went the night without sleep.

i went to work.

i owned him about 18 years. that is the longest relationship i have ever had with a mammal. including my family. including my family. including my family. including my mother and/or father.

five years ago, when i had to put my dog down, after a night of agony of him in seizure, i went to work also.

in either case, if my kid or spouse had been sick/dying and i'd been up all night in hysterics, i could have called in, right? i guess?

why is it that beings so devoted to us get less credence? my dog and cat brought me far more love and security than my parents ever managed, yet calling out over their loss seemed namby and unprofessional.

can i tell you?

a week later, i am home in a very clean, but empty, loft. i cannot believe how much i miss him. them.

Monday, September 06, 2010

weep for humanity


this blog has countless lines and laments about the public. i'm forced to work with huge sections of it and pretend to care about their allergies and birthdays, travel woes and what-not. as i've gotten older it's gotten easier, but it takes its toll nonetheless.

over the last weeks i've had a couple too-close encounters with kids between the ages of 10-16 who behaved like savages. all were with their families and in groups of about 6. what children that age were doing in a place that costs $100 per person for dinner is another point entirely, but what they were all doing in a place in which they had no idea, nor enforcement, of how to act was truly shocking. yelling, hitting each other, cross-talking to the point of shouting, poking other staff members to get attention and whims met... exhausting and appalling. parents, aunts, uncles all blithely carrying on like the cherubs were charming little victorian models of seen and not heard.

you also know much of my teeth-gnashing finds fault in the modern ubiquity of reality tv. hours and hours of programming that must be filled with an ever lowering levee of stoopidness. as a kid, i howled with laughter at the gong show and match game, but the unkown comic was in on the joke, ya know? now it's people fiercely fat, ignorant, with a sense of entitlement simply busting at the seams. watching even little snips makes me uncomfortable and weirdly sad.

as if i needed more evidence, the internet offered me this today. this clip must be watched all the way through. it's another simon cowell project and the brit version of american idol, i suppose. the moon-faced obese girls, folds of fat flopping over their belts and spandex and uggs, unable to stitch together a coherent sentence, never mind explain why they'd like to be on the show. their "singing" is shockingly bad -- like william hung she-bangs-bad -- but unlike hung, who rode his 15 minutes pretty well, they are rude to the audience and boorishly insolent to the panel of judges. they go from bff's to fist-throwing enemies within 6 minutes, in view of millions on tv and their parents backstage.

i weep anew for everything that this video proves to be true.


Saturday, August 14, 2010

one-way highway

one of bestest my friends is long-time single and gay. he too is an industry lifer and makes a good living in not too many hours. his condo payment is relatively small for the market so it affords him a pretty broad spectrum to spend leisure dollars how he chooses. he is not a shopper or collector (except of music and recently apple products, lol), so most of his fun money is spent on museums, movies and "reasonable" restaurants.

the last few years he has indulged himself with autumn trips to europe and i was so happy for him when he booked the first one because he's always scoffed at that sort of thing as an indulgence. then 2 years in a row he picked the same city and was about to rebook a third trip there. knowing he likes paris i poked and prodded for him to change his mind unless he wanted to be that old man who went to the same hotel every year for the next 30. he finally relented and is thrilled about leaving in a few weeks.

my idle internet noodles for possible vacations for myself came up with about $1000 for air and hotel for dublin, lisbon, paris, savannah and montreal, which really seemed like a good value. (although strange that such disparate destinations all cost the same?) he's yankee reticent about money but i asked how much he paid. he hemmed and hawed, then i realized he'd booked his trip a year ahead. over $3000 for the flight and a room. yikes. he said he'd rather pay more and have all the details in advance! holy moley! then, even though he is traveling to one of the world's best dining cities where reasonable and heavenly bistro meals are easily had with a mouse click, he refuses to plan for that because he can have "good food at home," and will "just eat whatever." and he truly enjoys dining out!

he will stroll the streets and prowl museums and i'm sure he will have a wonderful time, so i am not disrespecting his choices. it's his trip, lol. i am just a little surprised by the reasoning, i guess, and the willfulness to deprive one's self of all the best a city has to offer.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

fat & skinny through time


sorting through some old photo albums the other night, i was really struck by the body shapes. in high school and college we had a "friend" we openly called "fat sweaty adam". there were plenty of pix of another friend and roommate who frequently referred to herself as "roley-poley." and still another woman who constantly fretted about being lumpy and overweight. her genetic lottery would never have allowed her a pleasing shape, but the extra pounds really did NOT help her already low self-esteem. these were all pix from the early to mid-80s. compared to people now, just 30 years later? they do not even look fat.

we had the flip side friend. who was "skinny-non-perspirant adam" and a few others who were VERY skinny, including one of my college boyfriends. they look like wraiths, and i don't think that i now know anybody THAT skinny. even the skinny kids.

as for me? i'd forgotten how truly skinny i was at certain points, especially the high-ana days. jutting collar bones and such. my face all angles. not sure how i feel about that. oy.

Sunday, August 08, 2010

gone fishin'


the owner is away for a week with his sons, roughing it at some holy-but-not unitarian church camp. they went last year and he enjoyed it enough for a repeat visit. no shirt, no shoes kinda thing and sleeping in a tent.

a friend is prepping for his annual vacation, this year to paris after spending the last two in london. he goes alone and spends about a week doing whatever he damn well pleases, which is mostly haunting museums and pubs. a scant few weeks after he comes home, he'll be going to malibu for 5 days for a friend's wedding.

this morning i realized it has been over a decade sine i took a real vacation. the owner took me away last summer, an excuse to jet around in his then-new convertible. it was mad-fun, but only a few days. the final day we drove the entire way from halifax to home, in and out of rain, and it was an exhausting end to a whirlwind of lobster eating and fucking.

i've taken a few vino boondoggles to napa and oregon, but those too were only 4 days or so, and getting to and from the willamette valley is a biyatch.

my financial situation since i moved here has been consistently precarious, and the resources haven't been available to be hopping anything besides the subway, so a very real reason for staying home.

BUT...

today i got called off work being too perilously close to the overtime bugaboo. everybody i like is elsewhere so i had free time and suddenly nowhere i needed to be and nothing i had to do. a lovely day and i was showered and prepared to face the public. after the phone call, i had some lunch. i read some. i sat on my deck watching brown men play soccer and white ones play softball. little kids were flying kites and dogs were scampering.

i drank iced tea.

i read some more.

now it's dark and i realize i basically did nothing all day and it was fine.

memories of past trips floated through my mind and i ached recalling how much i love to travel. i am no fan of 14 cities in 10 days kinds of trips. i like to share drinks with the locals, eat their food and stroll their streets. wake up early, then plan my day, or not, not to travel with a jammed agenda. to lose track of what day it is and not care what time it is.

my last vacation like that was to london and paris for 10 days. as beautiful as london is, its chilly citizens and damp climate simply don't sing to me like those where the romance languages are spoken. i prowled museums, had amazing dinners at nobu and vong, the best mackerel of my life in a tiny bistro, and walked and walked and walked. although i was with my fiancee, my memory of the trip is that i spent much of my time alone because he was too drunk and/or passed out to be conversant or mobile. when he was awares, he made me cry a lot. that part sucked. hard. however, it made me know i'd be perfectly fine traveling on my own when means permit. as an only child i suppose that's not surprising, but i felt very peaceful having a glass of wine at a sidewalk cafe and watching just everything, with no particular place to be and nobody making me be... anything, except a woman on vacation.

there is nothing like that decompression, immersion and anonymity of away from home and, more importantly, work.

my money puzzle has one piece yet to be fitted. it drives me often to distraction and sometimes to drink. i am on the wrong end of a rube goldberg contraption waiting for the shoe of unknown size to drop. once it falls, and the stress narrative that is a constant loop in my head can be shut the hell off, i will allow myself thoughts of going someplace. away. on vacation. i deserve it. don't i?



Tuesday, August 03, 2010

dumb and dumber

one of my issues with "reality tv", from its inception, is that i have zero interest in spending my tube time watching people dumber than i am. that also eliminates most sit-coms as well, but whatevs.

as the genre infests more and more programming time and proliferating channels have more hours that must be cheaply filled, it's just everywhere. and the gossip about the house-witches and the hills who have eyes and the biggest giant losers starving in tv boot camp is nearly unavoidable -- unless i never turn on my internet, or stand in a check-out line.

the corollary to this is a topic i've mentioned before and that is the astounding bottom-of-the-deck intellect of some of my co-workers. really... just... staggering. as the owner tries to maker me a nicer person, i nearly bloody my lips many days biting back the most obvious of remarks and simple observations.

k. sooooo.

there is some show about spoiled brats all chucked in a house with no staff, no money, blah-di-blah. "cut off". my co-worker, a., goes to great lengths explaining this premise. emmm, ok. her eyes fill with wonder when she retells that the girls "didn't know what a broom was and one started to sweep the couch with it."

me: "these girls had servants at home, right?"

a.: "well, yeah, that's why they didn't know what a broom is, or what you use it for."

my mind snaps thinking a. has no idea what servants do and secondly these brats have assuredly seen cinderella and what-not, k?

me: "you don't think the maid ever used a broom in their house?"

a.: "well, how could she if the girl thought you swept the couch with it?"

me: "cuz they script the show?"

her face crumpled, her eyes spun in confusion. other people walked away to not laugh in her face. i did drop it, because i couldn't believe how genuine her bewilderment was!

so, there are people dumb enough to pretend, for 15 minutes of fame, they don't know what a broom does, but there are living, breathing, employed human beings dumb enough to be believe it's true. i weep for humanity.

Monday, July 19, 2010

boggles the mind

the washington post this week published the results of its 2-year investigation into the post 9-11 security apparatus that has grown up in the last 9 years. it's a fucking tome, but the paper will be running it as a series. all the info had to be gleaned from public records and sifted out of the dizzying complexity of overlay, redundancy and confidentiality. there is NO WAY to accurately ballpark what this is costing. even the guys in the thick of it, who wear pounds of medals and ribbons everyday on their uniforms, are disgusted by the inefficiency and buried by the sheer amount of data. there are head honchos with 6 or more computers in their offices because there is no compatibility standard of hardware/software between supposedly communicating divisions. never mind the guys who won't play in the sandbox.


this is just a snip:

*some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

*an estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in washington, dc., hold top-secret security clearances.

* in washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since september 2001. together they occupy the equivalent of almost three pentagons or 22 us capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.

* many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. for example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.

let's just for a second remind that the last remotely close call, the underpants bomber at christmas? was foiled by a seat-mate who saw smoking trousers. the nigerian and yemeni chatter being monitored by all the best and brightest had no proper filter and there were literally thousands of communications just souped in with everything else, everyday.

lore of $300 hammers and $1000 toilet seats have inured us to expecting government efficiency, but this is one of the most aggressive cancers i have ever seen and nobody is talking about it.

george bush was right. be afraid.

all hope is not lost


abstinence icon and mommy accessory, bristol palin, and her dumb hunky baby-daddy splashed themselves and their bastard son on the cover of some rag as a wedding announcement. hooray. another magazine has paid levi to NOT show his junk.

conspiracy theorists proffer that the timing is to deflect any glam from chelsea clinton's upcoming nuptials, but we couldn't have a more roadkill-to-pineapples comparison here, could we? the clinton camp is so mum on chelsea's deets nobody is even sure where it's being held and it's 2 weeks away. while the two star-crossed tundra teens are now shopping a reality show about their sure-to-be klassy wedding and lives as newlyweds. (she really wants levi to wear hunting camo as part of his wedding suit.)

but network honchos are kinda-not-so-fast. "don't think we should do it. neither of them have personalities," said one cable honcho. possibly one of the most refreshing quotes i've ever seen from a tv suit, lmao.

one other thing? how the hell did those two brown-eyed brunettes get a tow-head as a kid?

Sunday, July 18, 2010

my head hurts



this is from a rally in arizona, and the suit-clad chubster is named j.t. ready. an ex-marine (actually twice court-martialed and drummed out of the corps), he is active in local republican party antics, pals around with elected officials and self-identifies as both an aryan and a "national socialist". he declines to call himself a nazi, but um, hey, i'm thinking he might not have done so well in school. he posted this to a forum called new saxon:

The truth is that negroids screw monkeys and rape babies in afreaka [sic]. Then stupid white man who licks kosher jew rear lets negroids in. … Stop Negroid immigration and integration now!!! Nature will take care of the rest."


charming, huh?

hot on the heels of arizona's racial profiling law, he and a group of other loons have assembled mountains of ammo and declared border war against "narco-trafficers". they have spent nights out in the desert with their semi-automatic rifles prowling for brown people hopefully loaded down with ponchos of blow. he brought some reporters out there and when asked what he'd do if they actually ran into a running little juan, bleated, "we'll him him! we'll kill him!" unless the u.s. builds a minefield across the entire mexican border, it's not doing its duty and so these guys are just going down there to help. awesome.

drugs are flowing over the border. lots of americans have monkeys they feed and it's all about supply and demand. the cartels are powerful, violent and have utterly corrupted the mexican military and police. people get shot. a lot. in mexico. violent crime rates in arizona have been flat for a decade. there is no crisis of brown guys killing white guys. or anybody. according to tucson border patrol, from october to july, 170,000 people have been apprehended trying to sneak in. only 1100 of those have included prosecution for drugs.

i'm sorry, mr. ready, but those guys you're hunting are coming here to clean pools and mow lawns -- not get your daughters all hopped up on meth and pregnant with baby pedros to infect your master blood-line. but why let pesky facts get in the way of a good old-fashioned witch hunt? even the insane governor of the state is claiming headless torsos have been uncovered in the desert sands. which is an absolute lie. a lie. a lie that she has repeated to the media to keep the fear in a hot froth.

mr. ready's ownership of an arsenal is protected by the constitution. there is no law stopping him and a bunch of other wing-nuts from being in the desert with their shotguns, night-vision goggles and smoke bombs. his hate speech is protected by the first amendment.

this is a snip from his party's mission statement:

Just like African Americans have the NACCP – an African-American rights
advocate – the National Socialist Movement is a Euroepan-Ameican rights
advocate that promotes the interests of White people and works to make sure
European-Americans continue to have a voice in government affairs.

first off, why can't ANY of these idjits spell, and second, has he seen a picture of congress lately? it's a goddamn ocean of white guys, so i am always flummoxed by the lament that it somehow needs to be taken back. from whom?

so i'll just spend the day humming the little ditty from "springtime for hitler":

"Don't be stupid, be a smarty, come and join the Nazi party!"

Thursday, July 15, 2010

be afraid


this guy was in a dispute with his landlord and tried running him over with his windstar minivan. i always knew minivans were evil, but ya know, guns don't kill people, etc.

the adam's apple as devil nose, the snaps on his forehead (was he towing boats with his cranium?) and the bolts on top of his skull all made me nearly lose my lunch. and laugh in a nervous kind of way.

unless his landlord also looks like this, i can't imagine a tulsa property owner welcoming this guy to an apartment.

he's out on bond, btw, and ladies, i'm guessin' he's single.


i are officially an old


at yesterday's pre-shift meeting, we did our usual run-down of what to expect from the day and night. blah-blah-blah, but part of the info was the concert nearby that would start at 7:00. the bigger shows there trend toward a certain demographic which shoe-horns nicely with that of our regular dining base: over 35, with money to burn. shows there this summer include the doobie brothers, donna summer, a styx/journey double bill. get the drift?

last night's show was squeeze and cheap trick. in a meeting with 8 people, several of whom are over 30, not one had heard of squeeze. not one. a few knew the name of cheap trick, but couldn't drag a song from their memory bank.

"live at budokan" went triple platinum. that's 3 million albums and you could not turn on the radio and NOT hear "surrender" or "i want you to want to me". they were partying anthems and the band sold out arenas all over the world.

squeeze? for god's sake, some of the most infectious pop tunes that rode over on the 80's new wave. early albums were produced by john cale and then elvis costello -- neither of whom can be considered an industry slacker. songs like "black coffee in bed" and "pulling mussels from the shell" are ear worms of the best sort. that catchy hook gets in your head and won't let go. i saw them a bunch of times live, including in jamaica, and they were kick-ass fun. the jamaicans LOVED them too.

"argybargy" was released in england in 1980. we had some very progressive radio stations where i grew up and i could not get my hands on it fast enough. i had the lp and the tape, so i could play the latter in my car. the summer between high school and college, i wore out the tape. my friends had no end of fun that "tempted" was my theme song, since i spent most of those firefly months dashing from party to party and juggling 3 boyfriends, lol.

music i loved as a young woman, that played part of the soundtrack of my life, brought a roomful of blank stares.

i am an old.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

what men want


today's ny times mag had a short q & a with hugh hefner. he of the silk pyjamas and still, at 84, banging the blondie bunnies in his big bed in his big house. proof that living your life the way you want is best, but that's not where i'm a-going here.

he was interviewed by deborah solomon and this is just a snip:


In the meantime, Playboy’s ideal of feminine beauty has become passé. Contemporary models don’t go for that old voluptuous hourglass shape.

Obviously women are taller, healthier, more athletic today than they were before. That certainly is a slimming down, but I don’t think there’s been a great deal of change in terms of perception of beauty.

The look now is more androgynous, flatter.

I question that seriously. When has the notion of flat-chested come in since the 1920s?

You’re referring to flappers?

That was the last time that small breasts were popular.

we've all seen pix from old playboys, including the iconic marilyn monroe "red velvet" shot, that was hef's first centerfold and his jackpot. the women were slim, certainly, but there was s a softness, a plushness, as the owner might say, that was very feminine. women like jane russell and sophia loren put the danger in the curves.

over the decades, both miss america and miss july have gotten thinner. waist measurements of title winners of the former went from just under 26 inches (1920) to around 24 inches (1980s). from 1979 to 1988, 69% of playboy models and 60% of miss america contestants weighed 15% or more below the expected weight for their age and height category.

i don't know that i've seen an actual playboy mag since i was a teen, but the pop-up porn site pix that pester net-browsing all seem to feature the same cartoon girl: big blonde hair, miles of eye-liner, puffed-up trout-pouts and lean bodies with bolted on-basketballs for breasts. pageant girls look less whorishly-exaggerated, yes, but still with the fake tans, fake boobs and extra white veneers.

contrast these images with the female reporter's conjecture of the feminine ideal. are men fapping to the bags of bones that faint or die during fashion week? methinks not so much. those girls succumb to the tyranny of mostly gay male designers who favor androgynous types as strutting clothes hangers to showcase the drape and hang of the outfit.

yet in solomon's head, it's the jutting hips and i'll-cut-you clavicles of the daughters of heroin chic-sters like kate moss (seen her lately? from cover-girl to crone. jeebus.) that haunt men's dreams. solomon, btw, looks just as you imagine a middle-aged manhattan writer would/should. you can just as easily hear her beating the horse of women as oppressed victims of an unrealistic ideal. an argument not without merit, but i see it as the opposite side of her coin. (not to mention the reality of over 60% of women being overweight. how many are truly starving themselves to waif-land and not wallowing in dorito-ville?)

hef made a life and fortune reading and feeding men's fantasies. if somebody knows what men want, i should think it's him. not her.

Thursday, July 08, 2010

hot, hot, hot


it's been pizza-oven hot the last few days. excruciating in an urban environment, with concrete everywhere mocking you and tossing hotter heat in your face. hair and clothes just melted from the shortest walk from point a to point b during daylight hours.

we always get hot muggy snaps in summer and i always bitch. we also now are subject to the tired "it's global warming." "no, it isn't," debate. call it "climate change", like sex-pervert/nobel laureate al gore, or "anthropogenic climate change" for an even bigger mouthful for a simple concept: it's gettin' hot in here.

the last few days in my wine class discussing champagne vines in england and potentially delicious reds from the rheingau within my lifetime, (latitudes too northerly to be considered even 10 years ago for such plantings) i was reminded of conversations with winemakers and vineyard owners. some of whom have been farming their land for over 400 years and some for several decades. whether it's many volumes from an alsatian, or a few books from a guy on spring mountain, they all say the same thing. it's gettin' hot in here. an unmistakable, inexorable, upward climb. but just like the "intelligent design" proponents ignoring science and the glorious serendipity of evolution, we have just as many, if not more, loons running around sayin' it just ain't so. jeebus.

if only those wine-guys would get together and publish their data. they have no agenda, just truth. and the personal worry that future generations may not share their culture of the grape because it's just too damn hot in ribeauville to grow riesling anymore.


child-like pride


when was the last time you got a badge and a certificate for an achievement? i did yesterday, lol. it was a minor accomplishment in the scheme of life and the goal for which it is just the first baby step, but still.

my name was called by a "master" -- one of only 170 in the entire world. he handed both tokens to me and a room full of people were applauding. it felt like winning a spelling bee. my last certification from wset took 6 weeks to arrive via post and just was a form letter congratulating me on passing and asking when i would send my check for the next phase. cold, uh?

there was a squirmy moment at the end, when all the names of those passing had been called and my two co-workers, who also took the exam, were still hanging back, having failed. ouch. however, i am off today, so can avoid the awkwardness and already did some delving about what i will need to know for the next level. it feels good to finally be moving forward, and doing something so few do. good and... dorky, because so few really want to do this. ;)

Sunday, June 27, 2010

this, not that

last summer at this time i was making myself nutz exercising, starving but not losing any weight. i was frustrated, upset, depressed, humiliated. i felt awful physically and mentally. the owner was berating me weekly about what i was doing wrong and what i wasn't doing right, and that's why i wasn't losing.

fruit was coming into season locally and i started about everyday with a nice big heap of berries in a bowl of fresh no-fat yogurt. healthy, right? diet food, right? each friday i went to haymarket and stocked up on cartons and cartons of berries, grapes, kiwis, pineapples and what-not.

scroll forward to late summer, when i began to learn and accept that it's not just how much you eat, but what you eat. more importantly that the "what" i'd been advised to eat all my life was wrong, and that it was making me fat and unhealthy. the pounds and inches have fallen away, i look and feel better than i have in ages.

yesterday i went shopping, both for myself and an impromptu dinner. faced once again with dirt-cheap berries, shiny red cherries and luscious figs, i fought myself about it all. i decided to follow my nose to the golden raspberries, bought some reds too, but only enough of them for that night's dinner. they go bad so quickly, i knew i would rationalize eating too many too soon.

there is broccoli, cauliflower and bright red peppers waiting for me back home. i know i made the good choice, and am happy i allowed myself the treat last night.

it will be more of a gauntlet down there later in the summer when both native corn and local blueberries are both in season! (noodle shakes fist at sky!! damn you, new england summer!)

Saturday, June 12, 2010

USA!!!!!!!!

it's world cup time and i am already late to the party. every 4 years the world glues its ears and eyes to the drama, the victories and the tragedies. (remember escobar? who was killed after the '94 world cup?)

the us DOES NOT CARE ABOUT SOCCER. call it "football" like everybody else in teh world, and fans here just get confused. little kids play it now, unlike in my day, because it's easier to have more kids running the field without harming the play. i think. who knows. what do i know? 'rents will go see and even coach their kids' teams, but they could give a rat's ass for fifa.

i work with lots of guys and most of them are sports nuts. the ins and outs of football-baseball-basketball, minored with hockey, dominate conversation and EVERYBODY is smarter than theo, doc and bill, ffs.

i also work with lots of south americans who grew up living and breathing soccer. futbal. this is the most exciting time evah for them. i get that.

so the world cup started yesterday morning. all the tvs ran it. south africa vs. mexico. nobody working had a nationality stake, but, ya know, it's the 1st match. ok. cool.

why are you exercised, noodle? because guys i have worked with for 7 months and have never once heard them mention soccer, now cannot unglue their eyes from the tube. for the next month, only the barest minimum of work will get done and that will only be by force. this happens every goddamn time the world cup comes up.

it's bad enough that the brown kids somehow feel like they are still in brazil/peru/ecuador/whatevs/ and so excused from normal duties and can spend most of the day glazed over at the screen, but the americans make me wanna kill them. the long island hockey fanatic, the connecticut football expert and the masshole baseball know-it-all somehow magically transform into soccer knowledge phenoms who cannot be budged from viewing the match-after-match-after-match.

it has happened every place i have ever worked. wtf? bonding must be part of it, but really? who among these guys cares about korea or uruguay? can they find them on a map? pro soccer gets played all over, many months of the year. my ears bleed hearing these guys. and my wallet moans cuz they simply do as little as possible.

today nationalism (jingoism?) got a boost since we tied the brits. quite sure most of the uk was suicidal over it, while most of the us remains blissfully unaware. 'cept for the restaurant poseurs with whom i must deal. grrrrrrrrrrr.

28 more days.






Sunday, June 06, 2010

white trash


am gonna try to make sure to squeeze in all the deets here.

one of the ed hardy women at my work was going OFF tonight about some now-former best friend who was catty-trash-talking about her (my co-worker) being a slut. my co-worker can manage to look slutty in sweat pants and a sweat shirt. what she does in her off-hours i'm mostly fine not knowing, but she claims to not have had sex in 4 months. ahem.

anyway...

my jerry springer recap:

  • this woman is 26
  • has 2 babies with 2 different baby daddies
  • she got preggers within the 1st month of fucking these guys
  • neither of which has ever held a real job, both of them have lengthy records
  • one is 33 and has never had a driver's license
  • when not in jail, both guys live with their ma
  • this woman is now pregnant with baby #3, from a new daddy
  • she has been seeing this guy less than 2 months and is already knocked up
  • this daddy was the b/f of her "best" friend for 15 years
  • the ex-g/f just had an abortion of this guy's kid 2 weeks ago, before she knew these 2 had hooked up
  • this guy has no job, no car and a lengthy record
  • like the others, he deals drugs
  • the woman has herpes and hepatitis c, both of which she knew she had before fucking this guy and getting knocked up



her trash-talking of the woman i know, took place in a local, after the mom-to-be had several jager-bombs and was calling her out on being a slut and a back-stabbah and a cratah-face, who'd fuck any guy with a nice cah. all of which was relayed 2nd-hand! jeebus!! this happens with adults?

who are these people? i always thought their stories on springer/maury/jenny/sally were exaggerated. um, not. these just have townie accents instead of hillbilly drawls and live in the projects instead of a single-wide.


Saturday, June 05, 2010

women running at the mouth


previous posts have ranted about wives trash-talking their husbands when out with "the girls". it makes all the cosmo-sippers giggle and guffaw and they go home tipsy and vindicated, i guess, having proven to the coven what utter clods the spouses are. how does he manage to get his shoes on in the proper left-right combo and get a paycheck each week? will wonders never cease?

my staff at work includes two couples, both of whom are engaged. (there was a third, but they now are in the throes of a divorce due to brazilian vacation shenanigans on his end, i hear.) recently, and more than once from each the women, there has been soapboxing about what idiots the guys are. planning a big house party, why is c. cleaning the junk room before the bathroom? how dumb is that? why is b. playing the tv so loud and giving the niece crackers when she cries? how dumb is that?

other females, both single and with somebody's, circle around and laff and laff. oh, those impossible menz!

the tirades are all too full of triteness for further repeat and i am sure you get the drift. here's what gets me. we KNOW these guys. see and interact with them several times a week and have informed opinions about dumb or smart they might actually be. your future wife thinks you are an idiot because you are not doing anything "her way". i won't know any of you in a few years, but would like to, only to see how long it truly takes to have your souls completely crushed.
good luck to you, hubs.


numbers don't lie


well, yeah, they do and we all can cite various surveys (like how many married people cheat on their spouses) and massaged statistics (like how the feds count unemployed peeps, but this is not a political rant, lol) to prove this point.

but the land of women's clothing has become an absolute mine-field. men buy their threads by the inch. neck and arm make the shirt and waist and inseam make the pant. now, gents, imagine if you will, that all your jeans are getting a little threadbare and you decide to treat yourself to some new levi's. you're the same weight you were 5 years ago, last time you went shopping, so you go to the mall and pick up 5 new pairs of 32's or whatever. no need to try 'em on, they've always fit. when you get home, all of a sudden you're having a goldilocks denim experience. one pair is too big and one is too small, and of the 5 only 1 fits just right. would it make you crazy?

happily smaller than i have been in a long time, i have dared to shop over the last couple weeks. not quite "there" yet, i have been bargain hunting and set random price ceilings on certain objects, hoping to donate them as too big by the end of summer. size anarchy ensues. how could 5 different pairs of ralph lauren capri, all size 6, fit differently? they ranged from just too baggy, to swimming on me. there was only one pair of size 4's, which were a little too tight for an old white lady. those more booty-prone (yeah, all you sistahs and chicas out there, i mean you) would have happily greased 'em on i guess, but not me.

as for bras, it is one of the few items women purchase with actual measurements. the holy grail of getting some decent ones that fit has brought the owner no end of hilarity. to the point where he likes to mock me in front of men i have never even met about the search. (sometimes i wonder why i tell him stuff, ya know?)

you measure in a certain spot, add 2 inches, and that is the backstrap measurement of the bra that should fit you perfectly. in a normal universe, every 36, 38, 32, whatevs, would fit the woman poking through the racks and drawers for her "size". rubbish. over the last few months, i guesstimate i have tried on over 50 bras. a lot more than that i am thinking. all kinds of brands and price-points. some of them are falling off and some of them are like boa constrictors. some cups so small they wouldn't cover an oyster and some big enough for an official nba ball with kobe's hand palming it in there.

who the fuck are these women who love to shop? it's become torture and a horrible mind-fuck. it's frustrating, humiliating and a massive effort for the end achieved.

of course, men run most fashion houses and retail companies, so i guess we know the root of the issue. huh?

Thursday, May 20, 2010

big brass balls


last night in paris, a guy snipped a padlock, broke a window and stole a bunch of very famous paintings out of the museum of modern art. he swiped a picasso, a braque, a matisse, a modigliani and a leger. estimated value between $300 and 600 million euros.

the THREE overnight guards on duty "saw nothing". video shows a single masked man, before the surveillance system was disabled.

the frames were disassembled rather than shattered, so there remains hope the canvases were not damaged.

while i admire the audacity, this kind of theft is so staggeringly selfish it makes me very sad at the same time. a collector, with both more money than croesus and some serious pathologies, no doubt arranged this heist. the paintings will sit in his mansion evermore (am i the only one imagining a secret room behind a revolving faux bookcase kinda set-up?), where no one but the kleptocrat will ever see them again. he cannot even share them with friends, nor boast of his accomplishment.

but the stoopid starts here:

the director of the neighboring modern art museum palais de tokyo, pierre cornette de saint-cyr, called the thief or thieves "fools."

"you cannot do anything with these paintings. all countries in the world are aware, and no collector is stupid enough to buy a painting that, one, he can't show to other collectors, and two, risks sending him to prison," he said on television.

"in general, you find these paintings," he said. "these five paintings are un-sellable, so thieves, sirs, you are imbeciles, now return them."

i realize to a parisian there are no other cities on the planet, but i should like to remind this fellow of the gardner museum theft of 20 years ago. 13 paintings, including a rembrandt, a degas and a vermeer (his "the concert" is thought to be the most valuable missing artwork in the world), plus a few other objets, were hauled off into the night and effectively disappeared. two guys simply bluffed their way into mrs. jack gardner's manse, handcuffed the guards and smashed and sliced their way into anonymous notoriety. no credible leads in two decades, and the frames hang empty on the walls, as if in mourning. despite a $5 million reward offered by the museum and an expired statute of limitations, all those pretty things remain just gone.

Thursday, May 06, 2010

the state of things

out the other afternoon, i was meeting a friend in a place that's kind of new, but in a neighborhood sorely in need of exactly what it wants to be. it was towards the end of the workday and a wine rep i knew was in there peddling some summer juice. he works for one of my favorite suppliers and is a good egg. he tasted with the manager (?) and left her bottles to share with the staff, one of which was a barbera.

now, i can only guess this woman is in charge of the small wine list, which is why she was tasting, right? the bartender asked which was her favorite, and she answered the barbera, but she mispronounced it, the accents in all the wrong spots. now, i can only guess her rep had called the wine by its name at least once, right? so she'd heard the word only a few minutes prior. even IF she'd never heard of it prior to that day. um, the 3rd most widely planted varietal in italy, not one of the hundreds of krazee obscure grapes that are commercially not viable yet still trail all over the country.

the bartender held it up to his nose. "is it like barolo?" which to me meant he'd never had a barolo, which is fine, because they can be expensive, he's young and works in a neighborhood joint. to which she replied, "um kinda."

GAAAAAHHHHH. NONONONONONO!!

just for starters, barolo is from the nebbiolo grape, while barbera IS the grape. stylistically, barolos are like giant ultimate fighters, muscular, powerful, overpowering when young but lithe with moves that matter with some age, while barberas are mostly easy-drinking fruit-forward jesters, not built to last.

this chick had no idea what she was talking about, drinking or buying. and she has a job doing it. awesome.

Monday, May 03, 2010

fakin' it


i do not:

  • have nail tips, acrylics, stencils, decals or shiny dots, french, or reverse french, manicures on my hands or feet
  • wear a toe or thumb ring
  • have a pierced lip or nose (so don't need that plastic spacer in the hole when i work that everybody can totally see anyway)
  • have hair or eyelash extensions (omg! like they totally last like 2 weeks and only cost like, $50, which is like awesome cuz it's one less thing to do everyday!!)
  • go tannin', so i'm not the color of an oompa-loompa
  • buy moisturizer that has newborn baby- or horse-by-products as an ingredient
  • get my brows or beaver waxed (especially by a russian)
  • dye my hair la brea tar-pit black
  • iron my hair flat with japanese enzymes for $275
  • have my girlfriend come over, listen to rhianna and do my hair for fun
  • have silicone, botox or collagen in me anywhere
  • think lite cool-whip or lean-cuisine pizzas are good diet foods
  • own anything by ed hahdee, pink or juicy
  • have a white handbag
  • mistake knock-off gucci, prada, rolex, coach or movado for the real stuff, which, um, i know a waitress cannot afford and also know your townie thug-friends get you the fakes for cheaps off the truck
  • confuse cubic zirconium with diamonds
  • have covers for my cellphone that match my fake donny-bourke bag or are studded- rhinestone-glittery
  • wear colored contacts on dates
  • wear sweat-pants shopping (or anywhere, really)
  • own sweat-sets
  • own spanxx (two x's cuz they're extra-strong?)
  • own uggs or even moreso, fake-uggs
  • put clothes on my pets (not even a special celtics sweater during the play-offs)
  • watch the hills, gossip girl, man vs. food, dr. phil, dr. oz or oprah
  • read twilight books or cosmo
  • believe that book "the secret"
  • see chick flix
  • go to strip-clubs on dates, or with a posse of my bff's for lap-dances from the pole-girlz, cuz it's (not) a fuckin' riot
  • go to foxwoods, mohegan or vegas for the weekend
  • see mariah or beyoncé in concert
  • think julia roberts is awesome
  • call oddballs "gay", unless they are, cuz weird or strange is something else and the geh's should get to keep their own word
  • do oxy, percs, vicodin, valiums or coke for a night out (or in or whatevs)
  • have a bebeh with a guy who was unemployed when i got knocked up and remains such, nor do i have another bebeh with his friend
  • have any ex-bf's in jail
  • have a bookie, astrologer, psychic or shady accountant as part of my personal care squad
  • have face-book fights or frenemies
  • have fist-fights at the bar with girls from my high school
  • think slapping your bf is ok, and is, in fact, the proper course of action, "when he deserves it"
  • cheat on my boyfriend (then cry to my bff's that i "done something fuckin awful" and i hope he doesn't find out cuz he'll fuckin' kill me...)


guess i'm not a real girl?

Sunday, April 25, 2010

uncle sam does not want you


a group of 130 retired military brass has organized and calls themselves "mission: readiness". they released last week's figures (in the post below, but before) about all the kids who are too fat to enlist. they got that data from the cdc. in 1987, 6 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds, or about 1 out of 20, were obese. In 2008, 22 years later, 23 percent of that age group — almost 1 out of 4 — was considered to be obese. from a footnote to a quarter of the population in a generation.

the military rejects the obese because there is no "safe" way for them to drop enough weight during basic training, if they could even get through it. a generation of kids who played on x-boxes instead of outside, they can't do push-ups, pull-ups or run.

using additional pentagon info, mission: readiness, led by general wesley clark, issued a document claiming that 75% of americans eligible for duty are unfit to serve.


the ineligible population breaks down this way:
  • medical/physical problems, 35 percent.
  • illegal drug use, 18 percent.
  • mental category V (the lowest 10 percent of the population), 9 percent.
  • too many dependents under age 18, 6 percent.
  • criminal record, 5 percent.

put another way, only 4.7 million of the 31.2 million 17- to 24-year-olds in our country are fit to serve. of the larger number, only 12% are inclined to do so. my brain explodes trying to extrapolate that number then for realz.

2009 saw every branch of the military exceed its recruitment targets. it's the economy, stoopid, ya know?
but when the job market improves and there are more openings at home depot, how many kids will still be lining up for desert camo togs? some of that also came from waivers. these may be issued for a guy with asthma who has translation skills or a petty drug offender who's good with a gun, like sarah palin's son. (ya know, the one ya don't hear about?)

the guys at mission: readiness foresee a crisis by 2030, much of it driven by the obesity epidemic.

the horny chinese soldiers dying as virgins (for lack of females in their demographic) and the angry muslim soldiers dying for virgins may not have much to fear in the near future. our kids are too fat to climb the rope ladder and too stoned or dumb to read the instructions on the parachute.

full-cricle waistlines


in 1946, president truman instituted the federal school lunch program when he learned that many teenagers showing up for service were malnourished. too skinny to swarm the normandy beaches and too weak to haul big guns and ammo through german forests. it was a matter of national security to fatten these kids up, and no surprise that many of them came from rural and inner city areas. too poor to dodge the draft and just not enough pennies in the cabin or tenement for 3 squares a day.

this past week, daniel ruf died trying to make weight and join the marines. he was at the gym in a plastic bag, worn over a scuba suit, working out in a 100 degree room. he had also been taking diuretics and diet pills.

an autopsy determined multi-organ system failure due to hyperthermia, dehydration, and "exercise with occlusive gear" as his cause of death. the coroner's report also said ruf was "moderately obese;" his bmi was 34.3 and he weighed 226 pounds—45 pounds over the military cut-off for a 5-foot-8 male. the marines will accept you if are 10% overweight . they'll burn and shame that excess off you in boot camp.

at this point, 2 out 10 young men and 4 out 10 young women are too fat to join the service.

childhood obesity has tripled since 1980.

talking to a mom the other day, she is required to pack 2 snacks for her child for the school day, and this is in addition to whatever she eats at lunch. so that is eating 3 times between 8:00 and 2:00. my friend is slim and so are her kids. she's hoping they stay that way.

on the train last week, i saw two very fat moms (sisters, by the look) and their roly-poly kids, who were bouncing off the walls, seats and doors. this was to be a 45-minute trip that began at 11:15 in the morning. safe to assume the kids had already had breakfast and lunch wouldn't be too long in the future, right? both mothers had "snack" backpacks. one bulbous little boy was eating a cupcake and doritos at the same time, pausing only to guzzle gatorade. another of the tubby tykes had fistfuls of twizzlers and there were tiny ritz sandwich cookies being gnawed. i'm no candy nazi and there was plenty of junk food in my house growing up, but do these moms ever put a cover on the feed trough? if the kids are all overweight now, which was unquestionable, all that's left is to develop even poorer eating habits and get fatter. and sicker.

over the last few decades the idea has come about to "graze" and eat all day. small meals. i have my low-carb arguments about why this is a terrible idea, but even adhering to conventional wisdom, it's clear nobody knows what a small meal is anymore. a cheeseburger, small fries and small coke at mickey d's is 810 calories. a big mac, large fries and large coke is 1350. which do we think more people order for lunch? have you seen the size of apples in your local market lately? except for the macs in bags, i stopped buying them a few years back because they were too damned big to finish. those green and red monsters are close to 200 calories. that's a "snack"?

even on the subway, when i see infants and toddlers, more often than not, they are eating something -- something carby. cookies, crackers, cheeze-its, those nutri-grain bars, raisins, and/or drinking something fruity. lots of times i see very small kids with sports drinks! is sitting in a stroller really plowing through that kid's electrolyte stores? really, momz?

the mother of the boy who sweated to death is suing the marines, even though her boy was not yet one. it remains unclear if this kid died due to his own irrational desperation to make weight, which if this is the case he's about as a sharp as a sponge and we're all better off he was never issued deadly weapons. if, however, it was the result of a recruiter desperate to make quota, it's a whole other enchilada.

in the sugar-and-salt-dusted face of that little fat boy on the train, i see the wide and bloated visage of the now dead young man only about 10 years older whose mother likely fed him all day long too. these kids don't just blow up from american chop suey and tuna melts from the lunch lady. it's the parents who need the learnin', 'cept nobody done gone talkin' 'bout dat.

school lunches have been a popular punching bag for years now, and i know michelle obama has her finger in that pie to make cafeteria fare more healthy. but that's only 1 thirty minute period of each kid's day.

there are people who are too fat to fit in roller coaster and ferris wheel cars and too wide for baseball seats. how long before we have to
butter kids' hips to squeeze 'em into the tank?

Sunday, March 28, 2010

talkin' 'bout jesus, everyday

jesus in the tree bark and in the grilled cheese samich. if i recall, there recently was a potato jesus someplace too.

well, happy easter to all you catholic faithful, because our nazi pope has decided to unfurl the shroud of turin, for only the 5th time in 100 years. it was last seen in 2002 after its extensive restoration. its next appearance was scheduled for 2025, but that has been hastened way upwards.

oh, noes, it is most certainly NOT "religious tourism", but an "opportunity for the faithful to meditate, pray and contemplate on the mystery and extraordinary suffering of christ."

last time this rag was out, over 1 million came to gawk.

in 1988, 3 independent labs carbon-dated separate pieces of the cloth and placed its origin between 1260 and 1390, offering it was simply a brilliant medieval fakery. pt barnum must roll in his grave about this hoax successfully baiting the sheeple for 5 centuries! "egress this way," indeed.

the nuns indoctrinated me to the pope's infallibility, that he is the mind and voice of god here on earth, so i am quite sure that ratzi does not mean this as any kind of icon smoke and mirrors to distract from all the euro-pedo's now flaming up all over the continent. including his personal approval of the transfer of rev. peter hullerman, from within his own district. he directly received a memo advising the priest not be allowed to work with children, had to give up drinking and attend private therapy. none of this happened. the pervert was quietly moved to a different parish, a chess piece in a frock, and eventually convicted of further molestations.

there is not enough red silk papal cloak cloth to smother these fires. we thought it was bad here in boston. now it is in ratzi's own house.

oh! lookee over here, i found a piece of the true cross!

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

would jesus be fat too?

so a professor and a minister walk into a museum...

the minister is also a professor and the guys are brothers. they did a study of paintings of the "last supper" done over the last 1000 years. to my frustration, this is a large swath of time and they don't break it down into different eras, like the advent of safe canning, the industrial revolution, the assembly line, modern health codes for food safety (thank you, upton sinclair), mr birdseye and his flash-freezing, the post ww II pesticide era of farming, which dramatically increased agricultural yields, or our modern era of biggie fries and all-u-can-eat buffets.

but anyway...

using special enhancement software, they found that, over the past 1,000 years, the size of the main meal has progressively grown 69 percent; plate size has increased 66 percent and bread size by about 23 percent.

so, if, instead of a few sheets of dry matzoh, he'd had unlimited breadsticks and mountains of butter, would jesus have been too fat to walk on water? cuz he is always krazee skinny in all pix. with his not so secret flings with whores like mary magdalene, and the whole water into wine thing, i never took jesus as an ascetic.

would jesus super-size?

Thursday, March 18, 2010

eye bleach, i beg you

what a dirty week. just... ew.

john edwards' mistress rielle hunter has a spread in esquire. ahem. yes, i said spread. the pix are mostly of her in a man's shirt, a pearl necklace (uh-huh) and no pants. come hither stare and such. including the just totally icky one of her on the blackmail baby's bed with stuffed barney (is he still a thing?) and dora the explorer dolls. she still with no pants. who does this? who poses on their infant's bed with a fuck-me face in a national magazine? to rehab their reputation, no less?

i have no idea what the interview has to say cuz i don't care. i find it staggering that this woman wants to be in the public eye after what she has done and with whom. nary a care for the little who that once grown will click a mouse and see all this garbage, nor the much bigger who's living with their dying mother who see this garbage now.

another of the tiger woods harem has come forward this week with tawdry bits.
4 months after the elin beat-down a porn star with balloon boobs named joslyn james published over 100 dirty tiger sexts. we'll cruise on the fact that by profession a porn actress has no shame and at best a fluid sense of boundaries. other people's dirty talk is always just kinda sad -sounding, i guess, but he wants to slap her, call her dirty names, admits he'd have stage fright for a golden shower (giving, not receiving; tiger has a shy bladder? c'mon, right? his father never made him pee in the bushes rather than lose course time?) and order a turkey club. not all at the same time.

weirdly, the transcript is all just him. she has a way better cell-plan than i do since mine only saves about 20 texts, clean or dirty. much like the blue lewinksy dress it will bring her 15 seconds of mainstream media attention, but then what? again, his kids will get to click and get sick in just a few years. regardless of how nice or not-nice is tiger's wife, she is freshly humiliated. james' family must be thrilled how all those ballet lessons panned out.

then lastly, a nice girl indeed finishes, if not last, than in the mud. sandra bullock, 8 days after her oscar win, got faced with front page frontals of the tattoo model named
"bombshell" mcgee, who claims to have been having a year-long affair with bullock's husband, jesse james. james has been married 3 times, and is a cult reality tv guy, who pimps out hogs or some such. i'd read his name, that he essentially pretended to be a descendant of the outlaw, but this whole story makes me yearn for that "coward robert ford" to rise from the dead and come a slingin' with a six-shooter.

somehow bullock went from a joke (miss congeniality) to an oscar winner/powah-playah, with staggeringly profitable movies under her belt. a broad who won a razzie AND an oscar within weeks of each other and showed up to accept each award graciously has become america's real sweetheart. in her oscar speech, and other interviews, she thanked james for "always having her back." that it was the first time in her life she'd had that, and how profound and wonderful it was. she'd used her money and muscle to help james get custody of his kids.

tits mcgee got $30k from a rag for lots of dirty j.j texts. sexts from james for the year they were banging, and including some just days after the oscars. she calls him "vanilla gorilla" saying he has a ginormous dick. (even though gorillas typically have small penises relative to other hominids, but i think she skipped that class in bio.) other stuff has piddled out about her supposed neo-nazi sympathies (and tangentially that james' 2nd wife, a porn star, is married to a felonious neo-nazi), and generally unsavory associates and demeanor.

like tiger's porn actress, mcgee has different boundaries (and they both have sex-cam websites!) than your average jane. all that's swell and i'm not here to throw stones at mistresses, nor the husbands who keep them. my glass shatters too easily. what does make me sick is the lack of regard for collateral damage. the kids. the families, the wives.

just like the man keeping a mistress, there used to be a code of conduct for the girlie. first rule? shut up. be discreet. it blows my mind that these women out themselves. that botoxed conga line of chicks who sucked tiger off? they came out for what ? a chance to be on howard stern? is that the highlight? an asterisk in tiger's wiki about being no.6, no. 16, or no. 696?

jiz-bum james and inky mcgee already dwelled on the seamy side as far as careers and associates.

hunter (her third known name) ran with dark shadows chasing her for all her adult life. she came from money in florida and was a competitive equestrian. her lawyer-father died of cancer while under fbi covert investigation for very likely culpability in a show-horse-electrocution-for-insurance-money-scam.

she then ran hard and fast with that nyc brat pack crowd and was the basis for a jay mcinerny character in his 1988 novel, "my so-called life". "allison poole" was pathologically sexual, riddled with std's and conned her b/f for money for an abortion she never had/needed. by most accounts, hunter was not embarrassed, but rather relished being the source for allison.

she met edwards in a bar.

i have had sex with married men. i have had affairs with married men. i always justified it in my head putting it all on the guy. *I* wasn't doing anything to the wife or the kids. it was all his choice. i just happened to be available and attracted. if the guy made noises about leaving the wife he got dropped like a hot rock. that was never gonna be on me.

i kept myself sufficiently removed that it never went beyond a fling with those guys.

except when it did.

and she found out.

she wrote to me.

she demanded to see my correspondence with him.

trumped, destroyed, by my own hubris, there was no way i would pour gasoline on the flames. to what end? it would only feed her self-flagellation and in no way could help him or salve any of my pain.

i felt ashamed.

i cannot, cannot, cannot, comprehend these women all falling over themselves, pushing their push-up bras in the faces of the paparazzi, to publish sexts and tapes and voice-mails and stuff about socks (eliot spitzer's ashley dupree... oh, so long ago, in a more innocent time).

"hell hath no fury blah-blah" goes back to zeus and hera. (although she frequently lashed out by punishing his bastard offspring, like driving hercules mad so that he'd kill his own wife and children.) yet no matter how many times i witness the scorched earth policy of somebody like mcgee or james, i am dumbfounded. they become emotional agent orange. why intentionally hurt the wife? the fucking kids? what have they done to be a party in your greek tragedy?

they don't get the guy back. they don't look smart or powerful or sexy. they look like cheap discarded toys. they don't even get rich! snaggle-crotch mcgee got like minimum wage for her junk. how does any of this make them feel better? most of america writes them off as money-grubbing whores.

as for hunter, she is a whole other vile species. trying to become some sort of media celebrity while appearing as nothing more than a circling vulture.

they all make me embarrassed by women.