Irony is...

Uri Geller talking to someone from the BBC saying that he had absolutely no idea on whether or not Michael Jackson was still alive.

Maybe his specialty is just spoon bending...

The people I truly feel bad for in this is his kids and his mother.  That, and whoever is going to be responsible for sorting out his affairs (read **ginormous** personal debt).  

I have the feeling that it is going to come out that MJ had more users leeching off of him than Elvis did towards the end of his life.

I guess the only thing that surprises me is how many folks are shocked by this.  In and out of rehab for Rx drug addiction, and very likely anorexic?  Him falling over dead shocks people? Really?

Still the coverage is starting to head to Princess Di levels of glurge.  If anything good comes out of that, it is that Farrah Fawcett's family gets some breathing room... 

So, while watching the endless swine flu updates on Saturday puffing away on the exercise bike, news broke that Bea Arthur had passed away.  I gasped out loud.

Maybe I'm bummed because she played characters that remind me a lot of Aunt V.  I swear, Aunt V is the real life Maude... If Maude were a Lutheran minister stuck out on the plains of North Dakota.

Between her passing, and those of Ann Richards and Molly Ivins, America seems to be on the verge of a Mouthy Awesome Broad shortage!  Kathy Griffin can't do it all by herself, people!

For reals!  Below is Maurice LaMarche declaring the first annual Int'l Talk Like WIlliam Shatner Day.  With any luck, making videos of themselves imitating the Shatner will be the next "25 Random Things" thing on Facebook.  Only way funnier, and less pretentious.

This is just ri-goddam-diculous...

As seen on Yahoo! News

NEW YORK – When toy maker Mattel, working with Nickelodeon, announced earlier this month that a "tween" version of Nick's beloved "Dora the Explorer" cartoon character would be unveiled in the fall, the response was overwhelming ... overwhelmingly negative.

Dora the streetwalker. A sexed-up version of a children's icon. A poor example for kids.

Those were just some of the terms tossed around the blogosphere after Mattel released a silhouette of the "new" Dora, whose image was drastically changed from the endearing tomboy look Dora fans grew to love, with her bowl-cut hairdo, T-shirt and red shorts. This new Dora appeared to have long flowing hair, and was wearing what seemed a scanty skirt, emphasizing her long, shapely legs.

"Did Mattel turn Dora the Explorer into a Tramp?" read one headline from The Huffington Post.


Behold Dora 2.0 in all all sluttiness below:


She's been aged up to tweendom, and apparently leggings, a tunic that goes down below the waist, a cute necklace, an OMG! LONG HAIR! is a sign that Dora is about to do something regrettable.  She even has earrings, the whore...

Which is amusing, given that J got her ears pierced at around the age that Dora is supposed to be now.  I tagged along and get my ears pierced as well.  J got hers done first, and man, she was like a freakin' Marine! Didn't flinch at all!  I managed to retain some dignity and not go into full Jerry Lewis mode.  But I digress...

I am not a guy, so I admit that the puberty experience through XY eyes is unknown to me.  However, I got the feeling growing up and watching popular culture now that folks bear a resentment towards girls hitting puberty (and do a lot of freaking out) that I don't seem to see towards guys.  Granted, I might be missing it; a great many parents are probably ticked at seeing their car insurance rates go up when Junior gets his driver's license.  But there seems to be a hyperventilating about girls that goes beyond fears that Princess is going to get pregnant; they react as if puberty in girls is something monstruous.  Time was, squeezing into a miniskirt got you accused of "asking for it", now it is reaching the age of 13 with a functioning pituitary gland!

What really tears it for me, besides blaming girls for something that is beyond their control it is the tremendously naive belief that modesty to full-on shlumpiness acts like Creep Kryptonite.  Believe me, it doesn't work, or at least the boys at the schools I was stuck in never got the memo in Health class that the were only allowed to bug the girls dressed like early vintage Madonna (can you remember when folks had a hard time teling Madonna and Cyndi Lauper apart? Does that make us old now?) 

I went out of my way to look as unattractive as possible at that age, with mixed results.  Boys I was interested in wanted nothing to do with me, and I could tell that the adults I tried to talk about my problems couldn't reconcile my appearance with what I was saying...

And Dora 2.0 isn't even supposed to be teenaged, and folks are still freaking out!  What are these parents going to do when their own daughters hit their teens?  Disown them? Bristle with resentment, leaving their girls to wonder why everyone is so mad at them? 

 

Two quick pieces of great news:

1) Dad was able to get in to a program of inpatient PT and OT in January, and as a result, has been able to begin to wean himself off of wearing the cervical collar, and just finished 2 mi walking on a treadmill in PT!

2) This afternoon, my sister successfully defended her dissertation, and is now My Little Sister, PhD! Or Dr. J, as she will now be known by the rest of the family. Or, "The Dr. J Who Didn't Invent The 'No Look' Pass"...

I snagged this idea off of bstewart's blog, if only to see what the girl version of The Hero Factorywould look like. I totally love the fact that I could find my eyeglasses style on the website, and check out my rack! Given the fact that some of my readers actually have the martial arts skills that make Super Heroism a possible career field, they should give the website a try!

I remember when I was a little kid (and had a 1 hour long bus ride to school) the bus would always pass by a fence alongside one particular suburban development that had "WHO WATCHES THE WATCHMEN?" spray painted on it. Since this was pre-interwebz, I though it was a band, or something Watergate related.


Yes, I did eventually get the comic book reference, but it points out how long ago Alan Moore's graphic novel came out. I mean, *Reagan* was president!


Anyway, I saw this clip posted at The Onion AV Club. It is a news broadcast set in the Watchmen-verse, set in 1970 about the 10th "birthday" of Dr. Manhattan. In addition to wanting to see the movie even more, I'm fascinated by the care taken in re-creating how TV videotape broadcasts looked back then. The rear projected backgrounds, the sightly cruddy picture quality... I can *just* remember seeing TV news like this; the first big news event I can remember was the 1979 Iran Hostage mess, back when Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather still had black hair.

Enjoy!

So, everyone who was at work today camped out in the boss' office watching the Inauguration.  Even the two lone Republicans in the office were somewhat impressed.  Me, I was just relieved.  Disaster Monkey was able to leave without inflicting a last minute clusterfuck on the nation at large, and Cheney didn't try to Force-Choke anyone (that or he missed and goosed Judge Roberts instead).

Well, no one is laid up with cancer, or from a horrible car accident, or is being shipped off to The SandBox...

For a guy who had his neck filleted, a whole bunch of cervical vertebrae fused, and had everything stitched back together, Dad was in fairly good shape.  The tingling and loss of sensation has gone away, and his dexterity has returned.  The big problem was waiting for his insurance to make up their damn minds about paying for inpatient OT and PT (they eventually didn't, the fuckers) and taking care of Dad when he got out of the 36 hours after surgery when the hard core pain meds have worn off and there is no comfortable position to be found.

Aunt T and Uncle D were Beyond Helpful; they live 1/2 an hour from the hospital where Dad was at, and took us in with great food, fun company, lots of booze, and help in getting Dad back home.  Uncle D had the same procedure done, and he's in great shape now healthwise, and was a lot of help in telling us what to expect in terms of discomfort and the nature of the recovery process.

Still, I'm tired; me and J were focused on helping Mom; she was really, really, stressed, and that is when she gets rushed.  So  the two of us were busy getting snacks, moving all of Dad's stuff into the car, making sure ALL of Dad's stuff was in the car, keeping Dad entertained as his two Helper Monkeys Who Talk, remembering the route from T and D's house to the hospital and back... 

We're home now.  With any luck, the bottle of tequila I sent little bro for Xmas will have arrived w/o the US Postal Service being any wiser, and I'll dig out the little Southwestern tchotchkes I got everyone for Xmas, and I will eventually be back in Santa Fe relaxing by dealing with high strung artists and sales staff!

Well, I ran the numbers, and I can keep my head above water in 2009.  Still looking for a part time job to give me some breathing room, but am now glad I chose registration over curating as a specialty.  Galleries and museum just plain don't run w/o us...

Dad had his surgery on Monday.  The weekend before, he had a stiff cervical collar put on, and just wearing that relieved a lot of the pinched nerve issues he was having.  Since the surgery, his mobility has improved a lot.

It is now snowing in Albuquerque, and I managed to drive down here from Santa Fe at 6:30 and get here in one piece, despite spinning out at one point on I-25.  Coffee is unneeded when you are in HOLY SHIT! WHY CAN"T I STOP! mode.  All those years in Pennsylvania paid off...

Not the dysentery (thank Ceiling Cat), but like countless numbers of my countrymen before me, I have gone West to seek my fortune, and my plans have hit a snag.  That's why I haven't posted in a long while, even though I wanted to have something up other that my drunken Election night squeeing, for which I apologize.  God, in meatspace, I can front way much easier, what with the fear of the disdain of others in real time, the facelessness of the interwebs got to me, what can I say...

Anyway, this is the story.  I still have a job, but as of the new year, my hours will be cut 20%.  My renter's lease is set to end in January, so I can get cheaper digs (as much as one can in Santa Fe) w/o getting hit for breaking the contract.  Given that I was planning on spending the new year paying off my credit card expenses that I racked up both moving and flying home for the holidays, with this turn of developments I am amazed at my ability to sleep at night.  

I WILL say that one of the sales staff members gave me some good advice,  to leverage the fact that I am a beyond-essential staff member for some help, and at the meeting where we got the bad news, we were told to come to the head cheeses to talk if needed.  I was going to ask my folks for advice and some $$$, but as always, my crises intersect with larger family problems; Dad is set to have surgery on his neck in the next few weeks, and when I called this AM, he sounded like hammered shit. 

LJ right now is my only outlet, even though quite frankly, I hate the fact that this is bothering me.  I've always been such a fucking wuss, and have never had the magical ability that every other woman on the planet has to make a few tears make everyone else back off.  In fact it ususally makes it worse.  Not even men get as much shit for crying as I have. 

I'm pinching myself, I'm crying...  I can't believe I'm seeing what I am seeing...  America now finally means what it says on the box!

Or should that be SAD CEILING CAT... IS SAD???

What is most unsettling about Sarah Palin is the fact that her willingness to put in the work to get ahead is dwarfed her ambition.  Not only does *she* think she's too good for fancy-pants book learning, she thinks the same for the rest of the country.

Here's this little nugget from this past Friday, in the 'Burgh of all places:

“You’ve heard about some of these pet projects they really don’t make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.”

Yeah! Who needs lousy, stinkin' fruit flies! and French ones at that?  Sitting at their teeny-tiny, bistro tables, smoking their itty-bitty high tar cigarettes, wearing their eensy-weensy berets...

First off, why do American conservatives still think that it is May 1968 over in France?  You'd think they'd admire a nation that built Devil's Island, blew up the Rainbow Warrior, and until recently, had a really scarily relaxed attitude towards drunk driving.  But I digress...

Has anyone told this silly bint that the fact we know what CHROMOSOMES are is due to the study of fruit flies?  Granted, the study that she mentions was not focused on Drosophila melanogaster, the six-legged darling of genetic researchers the world over, but the olive fruit fly which poses a threat to the growing olive industry in Califronia. 

Well, that is a bit of a puzzle, now isn't it?  I mean these olive farmers are "Real Americans", yet they live in pinko-commie California, but have Arnold Scwartzenegger (R) as governor.  Kind of like how Palin's crowd blow off Northern Virgina as not "Real Virginia" yet it was the part of the state where... oh WHAT was that building?  Oh yes, the friggin' Pentagon is located?

You know it's getting bad when the right can't keep their culture war smears straight.  Apparently I'm an elitist b/c I got my first passport when I was 20 months old.  Granted, it was because Uncle Sam figured that my Dad had spent enough time freezing his ass off in North Dakota and wanted to ship him off to Guam, but apparently being the offspring of folks who have served their country puts me out of touch with regular Americans. 

But when you add the above rant about fruit flies to Palin's seeking of a benediction from a minister who's big claim to fame was accusing a little old lady of witchcraft and running her out of town (which is a shame, they could have built a Bridge to Nowhere out of her) and her church's "when I think about the End Times, I touch myself" outlook, and the right-wing fanboys she attracts to herself, I begin to understand why folks think the Moon Landing was faked. 

If folks like her and George the Younger can get a following, I can see why people outside the US come to the conclusion that no-one in the US is smart enough to have pulled off such a feat with only slide rules and long nights of calculations fueled on coffee and chain smoking. 

I can't help but shake the feeling that if certain trends continue in this country, fifty years from now, China will have outposts on Mars, and we'll all be illiterate meth-mouthed hordes roving across the countryside like something out of Road Warrior.

Actually, it is really hard not to read stuff like this and not think the US will be hit by a Redneck version of Khmer Rouge, killing all the "elitists" wearing glasses...

Because a superpower that prizes ignorance isn't going to be a superpower much longer...

It's official, Gen. Colin Powell has endorsed Obama!

Powell always seem like a steady minded guy; and is probably still steamed at this Bush and Co.for gutting his own credibility over WMD in Iraq.  The fact that Powell was not made Secy. or Defense, or even Veep is one of many signs that that these were a band of idiots that had no idea what they were doing.

Now, the question is this: when will the Swift Boating start against Powell, and how demented will it get?

Snagged this off of Boing Boing...

I loved this video when I was a kid; it was one of first videos I can remember that actually told a story instead of just a whole lot of performance footage.

Now, and awesome video just got more awesome, and hilarious!

An aunt and uncle of mine are in town for a visit, which means when drop by at their hotel room, I can watch cable TV (yay)!  Anyway, Auntie V is as big a Keith Olbermann fangirl as I am, so I was able to catch the beginning of McCain's headless chicken run WRT to "suspending" his campaign and single-handedly righting the bailout mess, despite not being on any of the relevant committees and openly admitting that he doesn't know much about economics.

As part of his nationwide flailing, McCain cancelled his appearance on Letterman  saying he was needed down in DC.(and thus KO came over to chat in is place),  But not before taping an interview with Katie Couric, and putzing around in NYC for nearly a day.



I've only watched Letterman sporadically, but enough to see that he comes across as the usual easygoing Midwestern guy with the added flair for the ironic and the absurd for which he is famous.  But he is PISSED in that clip.  Really ticked off!  It was glorious to behold!  I've suspected that the reason that the RNC was held in St. Paul was because the GOP was counting on Minnesotans being too polite to call them out on the several days of bullshit they inflicted on the nation.

When someone as even-keeled as Letterman is PO'd, something serious is going down.

I can't really get my mind around the fact that it has been seven years since 9/11. 

Here's a link to Sarah "Sars" Bunting's account of finding herself in the middle of it all on that day, from her blog, Tomato Nation.

Since moving here this past spring, I must say that Santa Fe, NM is a beautiful town.  It is actually rather small, population-wise about the same size as Altoona, PA, but with a totally different vibe.  I have joked with folks back home how a stroll down the street in downtown Santa Fe can be described as "Restaurant, Gallery, Spa, Restaurant, Gallery, Spa"

Why am I bringing this up?  Because I think I need to have my neck worked over due to the gender role culture war whiplash that had taken place this past week.  Am I the only one scratching my head over the sight of the party that slagged on Murphy Brown back in 1992 speaking of Bristol Palin in such glowing terms?  Or the sight of folks accusing Hilary Clinton of everything short of having a vagina dentata gushing over the pitbull in drag / overgrown high school Queen Bee / pending GMILF who kills stuff that McCain has picked for his running mate?

As a side note, having lived in rural PA for 15 years, hunting just doesn't sound that exotic to me.  If anything, aerial wolf hunting sounds more like hunting for people to damn lazy to learn how to track game, or too ADD to sit in a tree stand all day waiting for an eight pointer to come into range.  If you aren't willing to douse yourself in doe urine, IMO you are just a poser. 

Besides which, I killed a coyote with a 1994 Ford Esort a few years ago, where's my cookie?

Earlier this week, I read the following article in the Oprah.com section of the CNN website about the whole habit that women (yours truly included) can get into of dropping hints and making eliptical requests rather than cutting to the chase about what they want, for all of the usual reasons; fear of being seen as a nag or diva, losing face, disappointing people, etc. 

I knew I had a serious problem with this when I found myself stuck in a major I hated, with a raging case of mono, clinical depression, and TMJ problems and still felt that I couldn't tell people that I wanted to leave architecture, and seriously needed to see a shrink and camp out at massage therapist's office.

Anyway, as I went through the readers' comments to the above article, I came across the standard guy's lament about being unable to "read her mind", and crying out to the women of Internet Land to cut to the chase.

But I look at guys' reactions to Hilary Clinton and Sarah Palin and I doubt it.  Granted, I will admit I wasn't a Hilary supporter either; at this point I really don't trust political dynasties, and I had the naive hope that Obama, by being Late Baby Boomer / Post-Boomer, the US would be spared yet another conservative piss-and-moan session about the Big Mean Radicals that ruined the country in the late 1960s and early 1970s (while at the same time benefiting from the changes said "radicals" have wrought). 

Hilary cuts to the chase, gets called a castrating nag.  Sarah Palin plays the hot mama churchgoer angle, and gets away with trying to get the librarian fired in a town that was rapidly turning into a meth-infested craphole, and apparently now has the votes of the large number of guys who apparently want to feel her stilettos digging into their backs.  She's sassy, she's into "boy stuff", she isn't "too smart" and therefore keeps guys from feeling bad about themselves...

Then again, given the popularity of meth in rural America, maybe she didn't want to alienate her base...

Gah, all of the doubletalk makes me glad I am single, and finally have a place, a car, and my own health insurance.  I can now get what I need when I need it, and don't have to go through endless rounds of "guess the magic words" beforehand.  However, this could change in the event Grampy McSame cacks it in office, and President Palin turns America into something out of the Handmaid's Tale...

Time to grab my credit card, I feel the urge to go to obamaforamerica.com again...

This has been floating around the internet, esp. in the "Intervention" discussion group over at Television Without Pity.  I've seen Kristen Chenoweth in "Pushing Daises" and she is great as Olive. She's got a Broadway background, and it really shows here.  She is 4 feet and 11 inches of win!

Video is hilarious, but not quite SFW: