Monday, September 29, 2008

In case you haven't had the joy yet...

I'm doing a little experiment, called "why do girls do all this stuff?"

HaHa, whatever, experiment my ass. In fact, I'm just bored and looking to feel a little different.

So I've been going tanning, something I am patently against. Just want to see what I would look like as something other than an albino. The answer is...a burned albino. Or rather, a burned girl with albino legs. But I like the feeling of burned skin, all slick and oily with lotion. I think I like tanning just for the masochistic angle, standing there chanting "kill kill kill" to my cells while they burn away into charred little microscopic bits. And I like the way my face looks, as if I do something other than sit in front of a computer all day. It makes my lips look super pink and cute. I bought lip gloss. But not flavored lip gloss. I couldn't go that far.

Then this morning I went and got a pedicure and manicure. My toenails are dipped in blood, and I have french tips on my fingernails. I'm gonna be honest, I like the fingernails. They're shiny and smooth, and my hands no longer look like the chubby grubby baby hands they are.

All week I've been dosing my skin with regenerative creams, acne creams, bleach for dark spots. No real noticeable difference there yet, except in certain spots where I should have been doing it a while ago. But the face creams are nice. I'm obsessed with the skin on my face, I cringe at every little wrinkle that appears. I have nice skin, and nice eyes, and not much else, so you know. I honestly don't care if the rest of my body goes to pot, but my face should never change. I firmly believe I can control this. If the acids stop working, its on to the baby blood.

Finally, bleaching the teeth. A lost cause, since sitting around doing all this other stuff just makes me want to smoke more.

Conclusion: all of this costs way too much money, and I think I've got it out of my system. I should have bought weed instead.

But it was a wonderful distraction from politics, an area of my life that has reached the saturation point. I've started exhibiting the signs of an addict for whom the regular dose is no longer enough. I seek out republicans to argue with, then flirt with. I debate the debate formats. I actually read my Move On emails. I need to check myself into rehab, folks. December needs to fucking get here.

Sunday, September 28, 2008


Saturday, September 27, 2008

Excerpts from my Fantasy Debate

MCCAIN: As president of the United States, people are going to be held accountable in my administration. And I promise you that that will happen.

LEHRER: Do you have something directly to say, Senator Obama, to Senator McCain about what he just said?

FANTASY OBAMA: Well, I think Senator McCain's absolutely right that we need more responsibility, but we need it not just when there's a crisis, asshole. I mean, we've had years in which the reigning economic ideology has been what's good for Wall Street, but not what's good for Main Street.
And there are folks out there who've been struggling before this crisis took place. And that's why it's so important, as we solve this short-term problem, that we look at some of the underlying issues that have led to wages and incomes for ordinary Americans to go down, the -- a health care system that is broken, energy policies that are not working, because, you know, 10 days ago, John said that the fundamentals of the economy are sound. John is a lying piece of senile shit, who is so completely cocooned in his gilded cage, his eyes have gone white like a cavefish. No seriously, those are contacts.

LEHRER: Say it directly to him.

F. OBAMA: He knows they’re contacts, that’s one of the many reasons he won’t release his medical records to the public. Also he’s a mummy. Every other word that comes out of his ancient Egyptian wunder-dentures is a fucking lie.

LEHRER: Say it directly to him.

F. OBAMA: Well, the -- John, 10 days ago, you said that the fundamentals of the economy are sound. And I think you should are either a) psychotically delusional, or b) a fucking liar and a real piece of work.

MCCAIN: Are you afraid I couldn't hear him?

AUDIENCE: (LAUGHTER)

LEHRER
: I'm just determined to get you all to talk to each other. I'm going to try.

A few hours later....

MCCAIN: No one from Arizona is against solar. And Senator Obama says he's for nuclear, but he's against reprocessing and he's against storing. So...

F. OBAMA: That's just not true, John. John, I'm sorry, but that's not true.

MCCAIN: ... it's hard to get there from here. And off-shore drilling is also something that is very important and it is a bridge.
And we know that, if we drill off-shore and exploit a lot of these reserves, it will help, at temporarily, relieve our energy requirements. And it will have, I think, an important effect on the price of a barrel of oil.

F. OBAMA: How’s it going to affect it when the oil companies have been raping us for years? Is giving them more oil suddenly going to make them say “Hey, RAPING the American people is kind of mean, and look at all this crude we’ve got now, I think we should give it away for Christmas”?

MCCAIN: So I want to say that, with the Nunn-Lugar thing...

LEHRER: Excuse me, Senator.

F. OBAMA: Hey, old man, I was talking to you.

MCCAIN: ... I supported Nunn-Lugar back in the early 1990s when a lot of my colleagues didn't. That was the key legislation at the time and put us on the road to eliminating this issue of nuclear waste and the nuclear fuel that has to be taken care of.

F. OBAMA: Will you look at this old white guy, just ignoring me like I’m the elevator boy?
And, Senator McCain, he talks about Arizona. Everyone knows Arizona is full of meth-heads and cactus. They’ve been sucking this country’s water supplies for decades, all cause those hippies think its spiritually uplifting to live in the desert! The desert! It’s like asking for hurricane insurance when you live on a sand dune off the coast of Louisiana.

LEHRER: All right.

F. OBAMA: I've got to make this point, Jim. I think people should live where there are resources for them, so they don’t have to steal other peoples, like John has been sucking dry the fresh water of the Great Lakes, risking the futures of all the Midwest in the coming age of droughts and warming, an age that he has been actively working for. With all the effort he has put forth to bringing our country right to the brink of destruction, is it any wonder that the only words out of this troll’s mouth are “nuclear energy”? Yeah, 143 new nuclear power plants will be awesome!

LEHRER: OK.

F. OBAMA: That was sarcasm.

MCCAIN: I have voted for alternate fuel all of my time...

F. OBAMA: What the fuck.

(CROSSTALK)

LEHRER: One at a time, please.

F. OBAMA: He objected...

LEHRER: One at a time.

MCCAIN: No one can be opposed to alternate energy.

F. OBAMA: All right, fair enough. Even though you have been feeding the petro-monsters for years on nice juicy tax breaks you steal from the peasants, you’re right. No one with any kind of heart or actual Terra born DNA can be opposed to alternative energy. Next question please.

(MCCAIN HAS STROKE, PALIN TRIES TO DISTRACT AUDIENCE BY TAKING OFF HER SHIRT)

Friday, September 26, 2008

The Debate

Thank you PBS. Thank you Jim Lehrer.

You know, I watched the whole debate on PBS, and then most of the analysis. Then I decided to switch around the channels a minute. I said "I bet when I turn to MSNBC, they will be talking about Obama. And I bet when I turn to FoxNews, they will be hating on Obama." And then I turned to NBC, CBS, ABC, and they were all commercials. For drugs.

So my overall impression I come away with here is: Anyone who wants to cut PBS and NPR funding is a fucking idiot.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Happy Bedtime Thoughts

1. You win. I finally believe all Americans should have guns in their home. This is why. I also sort of feel we should stop protesting physically places.

2. Here is a reason that I personally should own a gun, cause everybody is crazy. *

3. I'm appalled that we are bailing these snarky bastards out without a WALL of REGULATION going up. APPALLED. Where's my WALL!?! To paraphrase Rhett Butler, there's as much money to be made from the destruction of a civilization as the construction.

4. KENLEY. . .





*I came to the conclusion long ago that if I owned a gun, I would end up getting shot for it.

Monday, September 22, 2008

I am desperately sick, my punishment for drinking 4 days straight in the Rustbelt, and now I'm laying myself down in worship to whatever free form god created Kleenex with Vicks. My 401k is mostly okay because I made as much of it foreign as possible, I invest in the future of the world not this piddling empire builder's wet dream, and speaking of foreign and wet dreams and empire builders, go read this Harper's article about mail order brides and farmers from Texas going on "bride hunting trips" to Kiev. I tore off a toenail today, and I like to examine my toe and finernails, I marvel at the thickness, the rigidity, the sheer plastic boneness of it. What is my body up to, producing these weird organic building materials without my control or knowledge of it? What is my body manufacturing while I sleep at night? When racked with viruses like now, it's all out warfare, I know that. Are there prisoners in my toenail? Banished to the barren prison of keratin, never to see their friends and family again?

As to the imminent collapse of the American economy, I have only this to quote:

"Tell him the liberator who destroyed my property has realigned my perception."

Friday, September 19, 2008

The most depressing thing about Sarah Palin's emails is that secretly I guess I wanted her to be a better adversary. But really she's just the office queen, which we have all met, despised, and avoided. I'm disappointed the villianess in this plotline is so fucking vanilla.

The second most depressing thing is that her password was "popcorn".

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

So I’m in Chicago, and there will eventually be a long post with explanations and itineraries and photos. But this isn’t it. This is my not quite ready to go to bed and look at me having internet access for the first time in 4 days post.


First, it’s easy to forget there are any regular people in Chicago when you take the Blue Line everywhere. The Blue Line seems to only go through incredibly hot young people land. They immediately steal your attention away from the normal people who are also on the train, and also the weird ones and the homeless ones. I was taking the train back to Carrie’s today, and I was looking out the window at all the skinny jeans and ironic sock combinations and tiny hips waiting on the platform, passing by like a H&M mosaic. all of a sudden the train is pulling away and I see this skinny old guy with wild desperate crazy eyes and I was like HEY WAIT A MINUTE I HAVE SEEN THOSE EYES BEFORE. Cleveland came flooding back to me like coming up for air. Which was good for me, because I was starting to feel incredibly dowdy and inadequate, since none of those butterflies was likely to have sex with me.


I did see one guy on the train today that was so gorgeous, it was literally like watching a really good movie. I actually don’t know if he was really all that good looking, but I instantly wanted to fuck him, like, without even a second glance. He was wearing really normal clothes, and looked like you imagine Holden Caulfield would look if transplanted to the subway, and reading a book. He had a old battered backpack instead of a messenger bag. He even had a twitch in his cheek while he read, like he was really nervous. It was unbelievable. Chicago will mess with you like that. It’s stressful taking the train.

Also, it’s Obama land here. Posters everywhere. Everyone wearing way cool buttons. Hot guys who want to talk politics. Everyone biking everywhere. There is no indecision here. It's like Oz.

I will talk about Milwaukee later, since it was perfect and deserves more than just this story, but I was really just jolted by this. Because I stereotype like a mofo. If you’re wearing a hoodie and a plaid shirt and have messy unkempt indie boy hair, I assume things about you. A boy matching that description came in to a bar we were at with his friends also matching that description, and I overheard him saying something about Palin. So I’m thinking I can find someone I want to talk to in this pseudo Irish sports bar, and I go over with a flimsy excuse and say something like “did I hear you bashing Palin earlier?” and this dead ringer for half the drum players that have ever been mentioned in Pitchfork ever says quite sincerely “No, I LOVE Palin. She’s amazing.”

So, you know, that put me in my place.

Speaking of Palin…

I know you have all posted this already probably, but hey AWESOME. I say we break out the big guns and Fey starts doing real commercials for the Dems re-enacting faux pas.





Also, Les Misbarack? Well worth watching. No really, go watch it.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Has there ever been an uglier group of people assembled on TV than the cast of Sunset Tan?



In a way, it's encouraging that you can be that hideously worn and still get a reality show. Maybe it signals a shift in our society's acceptance of ugliness, that we have learned to not require beauty as the one factor that makes ugly person's entertainment value valid? Now instead of just being okay with stupid and pretty, we're okay with stupid and possible a C.H.U.D.*



Just to clarify, that's not a still from C.H.U.D., those are the owners of Sunset Tan. In all their "I will spend my whole life trying to make women like me" glory. It's easy to make the mistake.

I wish I could find closeups of all their faces, so you can see the true damage. However, I am tired and also merciful.












*(Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller, which is a movie, for those of you born before 1984. Of which there are probably many, particularly if you found this blog while googling Sunset Tan, in which case, go do your homework)

I am writing this from the center of a black hole

THIS CRAP
makes me as mad as Palin when she caught Bristol reading Harry Potter. If you've had the misfortune of either a)making a dumb financial decision or b)being taken in by a predatory lending scheme or c)both, GUESS WHAT? You're not an actual citizen anymore. Only people who own houses, and get new ID cards every time they move,(and especially most importantly have places to live and aren't crashing with their family while they try to keep their kids in school) are citizens in Michigan and worthy of hassle free voting. Oh, and they're "thinking" of doing it in Ohio too.*

In envious news, Carrie's going to Obama Camp. It sounds like a magical candyland, where the water comes in biodegradable bottles, and everyone looks like an American Apparel ad.



On Jezebel.com recently, they had an interview with Curtis Sittenfeld, that girl who's in love with Laura Bush and wrote a fictional book about her that everyone's giving her crap for. When asked about Sarah Palin, she had this totally awesome response....

"I wish she were a fictional construct."

Inspiring thousands of readers to take out their sharpies and make t-shirts.




*Thanks to Ergotism, who is my daily reminder of why I'm angry

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Oh, But Lest I Forget

Wednesday September 10th is

LARGE HADRON COLLIDER DAY!
Okay, I'm not going to wax on about this, those of you who know how I feel will understand the deep psychological reach of this situation, in all its multi-colored dimensions.

I took November 4th and 5th off from work this year. Today I learned that I'm being sent on a business trip to Texas that week to represent my business unit to the new branch the company is just starting. It's a really nice way for the site manager to acknowledge my hard work, and it's a great opportunity for me to network. I fly to Texas Tuesday, November 4th, early in the morning.

I'm sorry, I realize that last sentence may have been too subtle for some of you.
I fly to TEXAS on NOVEMBER 4TH. Where I will be for the WHOLE DAY. And the NEXT DAY.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Finally, something else besides politics! Unless Crop Bistro is secretly a west coast den of secession?

I went to dinner last at Crop Bistro on W.6th. I can't believe I hadn't heard of this place before. If you go to the website, it looks like they certainly got enough reviews, I guess I just missed the ball here. So kudos to Sean for finding it.

The atmosphere is definitely sports jacket oriented, with these large sheaves of wheat chandeliers and a lot of blown-up prints of various plant matter. Up by the dark wood island of a bar, there were groups of those kind of girls who look up the products in the back of Cosmo and buy them, sort of Sex in the City in training, but my age? Girls like that have this curious quality of looking extremely uncomfortable wherever they are, even when dressed to the nines. The guys were all the slightly older, graying, navy v neck sweater/really nice shoes type. It was a little loud, but it was Saturday night.

The service was really friendly, and the drinks were well thought out. I had their PB&B; peaches, basil, peach stoli, and rose champagne. Sean had the Bloody Crop martini, which was just a dressed down Bloody Mary; pepper vodka, cilantro, sea salt, tomato. They started us with a little basket of cornbread fingers, which were good, but had to be eaten right away while warm or they tasted a little too thick. For appetizers we had the foie gras with stone fruit, and the stuffed figs with gorgonzola, prosciutto, and walnuts. I ate just a bit of the foie gras, it was of course rich but without a lot of flavor. I haven't spent my life munching on the stuff, so I don't know if that's what it supposed to taste like, but he liked it. The figs were sweet and moist, I probably should have mixed the two of them together. Figs and foie gras? I think it would work.

The menu is pretty simple. He had the chicken fried duck with cheddar grits and black bean sauce. It tasted like the princess of country fried steak. I had hangar steak with a tomato and bleu cheese salad that was juicy, sweet, and tart. It also came with something called a "home fry pie" which was mehh. It was a little too crunchy on the outside, I had to attack it with my fork and try not to scatter the shards, which is not what you necessarily want to do while sipping an eleven dollar drink. The steak was great, tender and satisfyingly salty. But the real star of the evening was discovered when we took just a quick look at the dessert menu.

First of all, I didn't really want dessert, so I just scanned the thing and barely read it. However four words jumped right out at me...mentholated habanero ice cream.
I had to have it. I didn't even care for the rest of the plate it came with (flourless chocolate cake, mango lime coulis), but asked the waiter if we could please just have a scoop of that. I think next time I'll try the whole thing. Or maybe I'll get a bunch of you together and we can order the whole dessert menu, I read it in detail on the website. It sounds amazing.

But going back to this ice cream: it was fantastic. The menthol feeling hit you as soon as the coldness disappeared, and reached as far down your throat as it could. Just when you were starting to relax, the heat came rushing in its path, as if the menthol was just the small advance guard, and here was the real point, that you were going to need to sip some water so help it you were.

We raved about it so enthusiastically, the waiter (who seemed a little in love with it himself) actually sent the pastry chef up to say hi. Olena Gudz, she's the super cute little dark haired girl who seriously knows her ice cream. I guess she started at Lola's, and then here, and also maybe runs triathlons? I couldn't really think of anything to say to her, other than "oh my god, so good", and she probably was a little pinked at the waiter for wasting her time, but I don't know what you're supposed to say to chefs other than "you're incredible" and make googly eyes. Olena should start up her own sweets shop, and then I should move next door to it.

So in conclusion, great food, but also lets start going there for just dessert and drinks. They have a late night menu till 12:45am on Fridays and Saturdays, and a lunch menu which looks perfect as a stop in an all day bender (lamb sliders? Cubans?). And look for the server with the emo hair and glasses, cause he'll get you excited about what you're ordering, which is absolutely the cherry on top.

Saturday, September 6, 2008

I keep telling myself to start thinking about other things but......

From the Washington Post

By Shailagh Murray (Thank you Shailagh Murray for making my day a little happier)

YORK, Penn. -- Sen. Barack Obama addressed reporters just now and had feisty words for Gov. Sarah Palin, Sen. John McCain, and all the other Republicans who have been railing against him in St. Paul this week. Some highlights follow below:

Summing up the Republican National Convention so far: "I understand they don't have much of an agenda to run on. But I think the American people deserve better than to get the same old vitriol and slash-and-burn politics that we've been seeing over the last couple of days. We are going to tell the American people exactly what I and Joe Biden and an Obama administration intend to do to make their lives better. And I hope at some point the Republicans decide to engage in that debate."

On being ridiculed during primetime by Palin and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani for his work as a community organizer: "They're talking about the three years of work that I did right out of college, as if I'm making the leap from two or three years out of college into the presidency. I would argue that doing work in the community, to try to create jobs, to bring people together, to rejuvenate communities that have fallen on hard times, to set up job training programs in areas that have been hard hit when the steel plants closed, that that's relevant only in understanding where I'm coming from. Who I believe in. Who I'm fighting for. And why I'm in this race. And the question I have for them is, why would that kind of work be ridiculous? Who are they fighting for? What are they advocating for? They think the lives of those folks who are struggling each and every day, that working with them to try to improve their lives, is somehow not relevant to the presidency? Maybe that's the problem."

On whether the Palin coverage has been sexist: "If they want to work the refs they are free to do so. And I think the public can make their judgments about this. The notion that any questions about her work in Alaska is somehow not relevant to her potentially being vice president of the United States, doesn't make too much sense to me. I think she's got a compelling story. But I assume she wants to be treated the same way that guys want to be treated, which means that their records are under scrutiny. I've been through this for nineteen months. She's been through it what, four days so far?"

Why not criticize Palin more directly, in light of the shots she's fired at him? "John McCain's running for president. I'm running against John McCain....That speech that she delivered was on behalf of John McCain. The central question in this campaign is, who's got a better plan, a better agenda, to move this country forward and fundamentally change it from the economic and foreign policy failures that we've seen over the last eight year? I believe that the American people need change, they want change, and I'm in the best position to bring it."

Is he surprised by Republican attacks? "What did you guys expect? I anticipated this last Thursday in my acceptance speech. This is what they do. They don't have an agenda to run on. They haven't offered a single concrete idea so far in two nights. They spent the entire two nights attacking me and extolling John McCain's biography, which is fine -- they can use their convention time any way they want. But you can't expect that I'd be surprised by attacks from Republicans. And by the way, I've been called worse on the basketball court."




Also, here are my favorite anti-Palin videos from the week...




Thursday, September 4, 2008

All day long I've been getting texts from people who were absolutely terrified by the sight of the Republican Convention in force shouting "drill baby drill!".

So here, let's do this. The Republicans can drill in ANWR, as long as they all go live there. I really wanted to see Alaska before it was spoiled, but hey, I'll make that sacrifice, as long as it means they stay the hell out of Ohio. They can have the 3% of oil reserves there, but they have to use them there. And they're not allowed to drill anywhere else, ever. When they're out, they're out.

Why don't we make a law that says all people who use gas must live within 50 miles of where the gas is being produced? No importing. I bet a lot of people would learn to ride a bike if the alternative was living in dirty carbon coated slums and working in the refinery. And think of what a relief that would be to the foreign policy mudpie.

Oh geez, why don't we just arrest all of them and throw them in work prisons, for not giving two shits about humanity's future? The Federation would never have allowed a faction this ignorant and selfish to flourish. They would have shipped them off to another world and washed their hands of them.

Yes! Send the Republicans to start another world! Man, seriously, inter-galactic colonization, after years of books and movies, just took on a whole new level of meaning to me. Get those fuckers out of here. Give them some planet of their own, where they can live however they want to, and we won't have to constantly fight to have any sort of reasonable government. Maybe our species has just gotten too big to live together? It's time to start thinking outside Terra, towards the future. We can appeal to their sense of missionary duty, they have to go sow the word of god among the cosmos! Remove themselves from worldly temptation! The angels told them to leave Sodom and Gomorrah, not stay and shit on the place! "But wait Bridget, won't that mean that at some point centuries from now, our two planets will become locked in a holy war spanning galaxies, thereby dooming their offspring to a gruesome genetic enmity for all foreseeable time?" Well, I've got greater confidence in the gene pool that would be left here, dude.

We decided at work today that Obama is not actually the anti-christ, Palin is. Sarah C. got into a fight last night with some girl on Facebook who said "I heart Sarah Palin". What better sign do you need that the end is nigh?

Monday, September 1, 2008

I know, you've had enough of my snarky Palin bashing, and obsessive off the cuff juvenile political commentary....so lets move on....

I'm glad that Gustav died down and really was just a normal hurricane in the end (ha! normal! hurricane!) BUT, what's the long term solution here, guys? The storms are gonna get worse and worse, and much more frequent. I think we can all foresee that*. Are they really suggesting that we can evacuate 2 million people 3 times a year? Are we really going to continue to flock to the coasts when we have all this fucking land right in the middle? Seriously, has the human race ever been capable of planning more than two years in the future? It's like we're in high school and we need some serious time with the guidance counselor. Except we graduated high school in the 50s, took a year off to "find" ourselves in the 70s, and now we're desperately trying to pay off our school loans and go drinking every night while trying to find our first grownup job.

Yes, that's right, I just condensed the entire evolution of our civilization down to the last sixty years. It's the republican convention! It's time for broad completely unsubstantiated claims! And weird investigative segments involving revolutionary war clerical robes? Did anyone else see that? Silly Lutherans. Like *they're* a real religion.

Speaking of high school, Chuck? Blair? HOT. I vote we all get together and proclaim Gossip Girl the new Dallas



I realized one of the reasons I love Blair so much is that she reminds me of someone...someone from my youth....












*You know, like we foresaw and prepared for the energy crisis? Or the ice caps melting? Or the long term occupation of Iraq? Or the collapse of the dollar, the subprime crash, and the rise of China?

Really, this family is even more dumbfounding than we could have hoped for...

So Sarah Palin's 17 yr old daughter is actually pregnant, and supposedly the McCain campaign knew about it before they chose her for VP, but they had to tell everyone today because of the rumour making the blog rounds that Palin's recent baby was her daughter's. The rumour that's been going around for a week now.

Of course, choosing today for the announcement had NOTHING to do with Gustav making landfall today.

Oh, and Bristol and her boyfriend are getting married, because of course when your teenage daughter gets pregnant by having extramarital sex without birth control (because you never taught her how to use a condom), the only reasonable thing is to marry her off and make sure you look like you did the right thing. No matter that now Bristol will have a baby AND a 17 yr old husband. I wonder if the First Dude got out his shotgun on this one?