My dear friend, the esteemed Liquor Fairy, recently blogged in response to the Retread Administration assertion that they have deleted—and cannot find—four years of e-mail that Karl Rove sent from his GOP account, including documents relating to the firing of federal prosecutors.
First of all, damn. Can you imagine what a wretched burden it would have to be to slog through four years of e-mail written by Karl Rove to other Republicans? The thought of it is giving me palpitations. Four years worth of “We should just EAT the poor. And brown people.”
Second of all, and more importantly, Mandy suggests that this “We deleted these e-mails and can no longer recover them,” is President Retread’s latest way of telling Congress to get bent. Instead of claiming executive privilege or screaming “I’m invisible! You can’t see me!” the president’s latest let-them-eat-cake move is just to say “We lost’em.” Worked for Nixon. Okay, not really, but whatever.
Her argument is that the Feds can certainly locate the deleted files on the hard drive in question, or at some servers down at AT&T, or something. And under normal circumstances, I would agree with her. But then? Then I actually take a look a this administration.
This is the person who brought us the war in Iraq. “Bring them on.” Who declared the "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq, back in 2003. President Retread brought us Hurricanegedon Katrina and its shocking, horrific, “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job” aftermath.
We couldn’t get potable water to American citizens. In America. They might NOT be able to get those e-mails back. Hell, I’m half surprised they managed to turn the little laptop fucker on.
I say we let Otto try.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Woogums Is A Shitter
“Hi, my name is Imogene Kerfuffle, and this is Woogums.”
“Hi, Woogums.”
“My Woogums is . . . he’s a . . . I’m so embarrassed. Woogums is a shitter.”
Yesterday afternoon, as I used Windex to clean dog poop out of the upholstery of my car, I pictured myself at a 12-step meeting with the imaginary Mrs. Kerfuffle. I imagined a 12-step meeting for owners of pets who are, at their core, fucking disgusting.
My Bennet, little Miss Vector, does not like car rides. She never has. She gets nervous—there is panting and drooling. And, sadly, pooping. Lots of pooping.
The last couple of car rides were okay. She clearly didn’t enjoy it, but it passed without, um, incident. We even went all the way down to Soulard for the Dog Parade in February, and she was awesome.
Then, yesterday. The horror. THE HORROR.
It was a lovely day, a beautiful and sunny return of spring. Looking for something else to do, Jason and I decided to take Bennet and his roommate’s dog to the park. I load my beastie into the car, and head off for the South Side.
Everything started off okay, it really did. Then Bennet became a little anxious. She stood up. She sat down. She panted. She panted more. She pooped, but just a little. I thought we would make it.
As god as my witness, I thought. I. Would. Make. It.
*sob*
By the time I arrived at Jason’s, my car reeked. Bennet? Covered in shit. The sheet upon which she was sitting? Covered in shit.
I pull up to the house, and Jason comes over to greet me. “Stand back! There is nothing good here.”
Do you know how hard it is to look remotely cool when trying to steer around a beshitted dog? Fucking impossible. I never felt so moronic in my whole life. “Hey! Know what will be a fun date? Lemme bring my shit-covered dog to your house! It’ll be neat!”
I had to wash Bennet with the hose in the back yard. It was repulsive. And cold, the day was not nearly nice enough to play around in the goddamned hose. Then I got to clean my car, and the swinging bachelor pad is not known for its wide variety of cleaning products, especially given its lack of carpeting.
Fortunately, I’m a grownup, which means I do that which needs to be done. And that includes cleaning stinky dog poop out of my upholstery with Windex. Fucking right.
When all was said and done, the evening ended as so many do, at Mangia. With booze.
Her name is Legion, for her ickiness is many.
“Hi, Woogums.”
“My Woogums is . . . he’s a . . . I’m so embarrassed. Woogums is a shitter.”
Yesterday afternoon, as I used Windex to clean dog poop out of the upholstery of my car, I pictured myself at a 12-step meeting with the imaginary Mrs. Kerfuffle. I imagined a 12-step meeting for owners of pets who are, at their core, fucking disgusting.
My Bennet, little Miss Vector, does not like car rides. She never has. She gets nervous—there is panting and drooling. And, sadly, pooping. Lots of pooping.
The last couple of car rides were okay. She clearly didn’t enjoy it, but it passed without, um, incident. We even went all the way down to Soulard for the Dog Parade in February, and she was awesome.
Then, yesterday. The horror. THE HORROR.
It was a lovely day, a beautiful and sunny return of spring. Looking for something else to do, Jason and I decided to take Bennet and his roommate’s dog to the park. I load my beastie into the car, and head off for the South Side.
Everything started off okay, it really did. Then Bennet became a little anxious. She stood up. She sat down. She panted. She panted more. She pooped, but just a little. I thought we would make it.
As god as my witness, I thought. I. Would. Make. It.
*sob*
By the time I arrived at Jason’s, my car reeked. Bennet? Covered in shit. The sheet upon which she was sitting? Covered in shit.
I pull up to the house, and Jason comes over to greet me. “Stand back! There is nothing good here.”
Do you know how hard it is to look remotely cool when trying to steer around a beshitted dog? Fucking impossible. I never felt so moronic in my whole life. “Hey! Know what will be a fun date? Lemme bring my shit-covered dog to your house! It’ll be neat!”
I had to wash Bennet with the hose in the back yard. It was repulsive. And cold, the day was not nearly nice enough to play around in the goddamned hose. Then I got to clean my car, and the swinging bachelor pad is not known for its wide variety of cleaning products, especially given its lack of carpeting.
Fortunately, I’m a grownup, which means I do that which needs to be done. And that includes cleaning stinky dog poop out of my upholstery with Windex. Fucking right.
When all was said and done, the evening ended as so many do, at Mangia. With booze.
Her name is Legion, for her ickiness is many.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Dead Like Dead, Dead
Wow. I mean, WOW.
St. Louis and its mercurial springtimes are, by now, familiar to me. I am more or less used to Aprils where the tulips are bent under the weight of a slushy, wet snowfall. That said, though, I don’t ever recall a year as bizarre as this. For while this started as perhaps the earliest and warmest spring I can remember, not only has it gotten colder, but we seem to have effectively returned to the end of February.
A series of hard freezes have effectively killed the little baby leaves on all the trees. Whereas 10 days ago everything was exquisite and perfect and green, now it’s all dead. Dead. Dead. Very dead. Dead like hope, dead. Bleh.
St. Louis and its mercurial springtimes are, by now, familiar to me. I am more or less used to Aprils where the tulips are bent under the weight of a slushy, wet snowfall. That said, though, I don’t ever recall a year as bizarre as this. For while this started as perhaps the earliest and warmest spring I can remember, not only has it gotten colder, but we seem to have effectively returned to the end of February.
A series of hard freezes have effectively killed the little baby leaves on all the trees. Whereas 10 days ago everything was exquisite and perfect and green, now it’s all dead. Dead. Dead. Very dead. Dead like hope, dead. Bleh.
Monday, April 9, 2007
Confession
I am not proud of what I’m about to say. I am not pleased, or happy. No, rather, I feel a sort of quiet, secret shame.
Tonight was only the second time I’ve ever used a lawnmower.
I am 30 years old, and have only cut grass twice in my life. Once. Twice. That’s all.
In my childhood, my parents nurtured my nascent laziness on the whole lawn care front. God bless’em both. When the husband and I moved from an apartment to a rental house, my undisguised abhorrence for lawn cutting left no doubt that I would not be doing it. After we bought our first house, the husband’s inner Old Italian Guy began to surface, the one fortunate result of which being his anal obsession with grass care (I was less pleased his compulsive criticism of my housekeeping and his irresistible urge to hide money from me).
In fact, one of the final nails in the coffin that was my marriage involved an uncut lawn. The husband went away on a business trip and left behind a huge, tall, Florida Forest of uncut yard. I had offered to hire someone, but he insisted he wanted to do so—then he left. Embarrassed by the frolicking antelope in the front yard, I finally broke down and cut the grass on my own, and then went inside to cook a heavy meal, get drunk, and bitch to my best friend on the phone.
That was a Monday; I decided to get divorced on Wednesday.
Last summer, my ex-boyfriend was generous enough to hire someone to cut my grass for me all summer long. For awhile I felt sort of guilty about that, but now? Now I just see he was paying for my parting gift up front.
Which leads to tonight, and me and the Barbie Lawnmower I borrowed from my mother. I hope the neighbors weren’t watching, because I looked more than a little retarded. It is painfully obvious that I have no fucking business operating any sort of machinery that involves rapidly whirling blades.
Did you know that when you run over maple tree gumballs with a lawnmower it kind of sounds like popcorn popping, or perhaps exploding hamsters? I didn’t know that, either, but it totally does.
I need condo. I’ll explain later how my exterior wall came to be um, for lack of a better word, bleeding.
Tonight was only the second time I’ve ever used a lawnmower.
I am 30 years old, and have only cut grass twice in my life. Once. Twice. That’s all.
In my childhood, my parents nurtured my nascent laziness on the whole lawn care front. God bless’em both. When the husband and I moved from an apartment to a rental house, my undisguised abhorrence for lawn cutting left no doubt that I would not be doing it. After we bought our first house, the husband’s inner Old Italian Guy began to surface, the one fortunate result of which being his anal obsession with grass care (I was less pleased his compulsive criticism of my housekeeping and his irresistible urge to hide money from me).
In fact, one of the final nails in the coffin that was my marriage involved an uncut lawn. The husband went away on a business trip and left behind a huge, tall, Florida Forest of uncut yard. I had offered to hire someone, but he insisted he wanted to do so—then he left. Embarrassed by the frolicking antelope in the front yard, I finally broke down and cut the grass on my own, and then went inside to cook a heavy meal, get drunk, and bitch to my best friend on the phone.
That was a Monday; I decided to get divorced on Wednesday.
Last summer, my ex-boyfriend was generous enough to hire someone to cut my grass for me all summer long. For awhile I felt sort of guilty about that, but now? Now I just see he was paying for my parting gift up front.
Which leads to tonight, and me and the Barbie Lawnmower I borrowed from my mother. I hope the neighbors weren’t watching, because I looked more than a little retarded. It is painfully obvious that I have no fucking business operating any sort of machinery that involves rapidly whirling blades.
Did you know that when you run over maple tree gumballs with a lawnmower it kind of sounds like popcorn popping, or perhaps exploding hamsters? I didn’t know that, either, but it totally does.
I need condo. I’ll explain later how my exterior wall came to be um, for lack of a better word, bleeding.
Saturday, April 7, 2007
Corporate Super Happy Fun Trip
So. Wednesday night was one of my co-worker’s birthdays. To celebrate, she, I, and another girlfriend from work decided to go out for happy hour—the celebratory choice for pink-collar wage slaves the world over.
Of course, happy hour is generally conceived of as a cocktail party of limited duration, consisting of a few composed cocktails and a snacky, to be followed by a wholesome dinner in the privacy and comfort of one’s own home. The guy who joined us for a bit followed that basic outline, returning home before dark like a good little soldier. The women, though, starved for intelligent conversation and relationship moral support, not to mention gossip, stayed out for hours. HOURS. As I was leaving I looked down and saw it was 11 p.m. Happy hour had become a long evening spent splashing about in a bottle of tequila.
I went home, where I proceeded to raid my kitchen for anything that didn’t move as fast as I. I could have skeletonized a tofu cow in under 3 minutes, like a school of hippie piranha. Then, instead of using the sense god gave me and going to bed, I wound up in a conversation with a friend of mine about the vagaries of romance in this, our modern world, that went on far into the night.
The next morning, despite my shower before bed, I woke to find that I smelled like a key lime pie that was off-gassing grain alcohol. Ordinarily, going into work under such circumstances would be less than appealing. Yesterday, however, I was scheduled for a company field trip to our corporate headquarters. Three hours coming and going in a car with five co-workers to whom I am not close. With a hangover. Yea.
Having gotten out of bed an hour before my usual time, I did what I could to masquerade as a normal employee with out an incipient drinking problem. I arrived at work and climbed into the mini-van, where I promptly attached my iPod to my head and went to sleep.
We stopped in Litchfield, Illinois for breakfast. Considering the hypoglycemia brought about from the previous evening’s excesses, breakfast was certainly a welcome thought. As we’re climbing out of the mini-van in McDonald’s parking lot, I look across the way and see a group of church kids pouring out of their own van like so many clowns hopping out of a car.
Like clowns, these kids were simultaneously amusing and frightening in almost equal measure. It was clearly one of those sects where all the women wear skirts and most of them don’t cut their hair, instead sculpting it into ridiculous poufs and curls and buns. And the skirts, oh god, the skirts . . . I wish these women would just embrace their decisions to dress like dowdy schoolmarms, instead of bastardizing fashion. Please. I mean it, just swath yourself in yards of calico and call it done.
And, let me just say, Jesus might do a lot of things, but he’s not going to do suntan pantyhose and open-toed slides. If you believe that he loves you, please believe that he wouldn’t want that for you either.
Although I was a bit worried that the church-clown-kids might try to throw a sack over the head of my gay co-worker and hustle him off for re-education, we escaped McDonald’s without incident and continued our drive/nap to corporate headquarters.
The visit itself? It was fine. Whatever. Blah blah blah happy drink the corporate Kool-Aid bullshit. I don’t care. I like my job okay, it is what it is and I’ve certainly worked at far more wretched places. It was neat enough to see the joint, and now I must try to formulate a plan for how I can get them to transfer some of the money the spend on rented plant upkeep to my paycheck.
We get in the van to come home; I promptly go back to sleep because—well because I don’t really want to talk to anyone in the van. Does that make me a bad person? Probably. Fine. I slept.
So, on the way home we stop for dinner at RubyAppleFriday’sGarden. Whatever, it didn’t absolutely suck. It was food. What killed me, though, was how all my co-workers kept going on and on about how good it was.
No. No it isn’t. It doesn’t have enough salt or pepper. It’s not interesting, or special, or anything. I think most of it came out of a bag. It’s just some decorative crap on the wall casual chain shithole, so by definition it can’t be that good. It’s not trying to be. It’s trying to be mediocre enough so that rubes will eat there.
Clearly, the business model is working like a charm.
After dinner, for some stupid reason, I chose not to go back to sleep. I listened to my iPod, looked out the windows. I can’t read in the car, which is sucks, but I listened to Neil Gaiman read “Chivalry” and it was almost better. Everything was fine until my dumb ass decided to turn off my headphones for a minute to see what was going on in the car.
What was going on is that someone had turned the radio on to some worship at the feet of Jesus shit. I don’t want to hear that, ever, much less trapped in a fucking mini van with six co-workers. I was tempted to insist they pull over and let me try to hitchhike back to the Lou. Instead I just listened to Cyndi Lauper sing about masturbation, and tried to forget where I was.
Finally, I arrived safely home. Jason came over. We put on pajamas. We watched The Giant Gila Monster. And all was right with the world.
Of course, happy hour is generally conceived of as a cocktail party of limited duration, consisting of a few composed cocktails and a snacky, to be followed by a wholesome dinner in the privacy and comfort of one’s own home. The guy who joined us for a bit followed that basic outline, returning home before dark like a good little soldier. The women, though, starved for intelligent conversation and relationship moral support, not to mention gossip, stayed out for hours. HOURS. As I was leaving I looked down and saw it was 11 p.m. Happy hour had become a long evening spent splashing about in a bottle of tequila.
I went home, where I proceeded to raid my kitchen for anything that didn’t move as fast as I. I could have skeletonized a tofu cow in under 3 minutes, like a school of hippie piranha. Then, instead of using the sense god gave me and going to bed, I wound up in a conversation with a friend of mine about the vagaries of romance in this, our modern world, that went on far into the night.
The next morning, despite my shower before bed, I woke to find that I smelled like a key lime pie that was off-gassing grain alcohol. Ordinarily, going into work under such circumstances would be less than appealing. Yesterday, however, I was scheduled for a company field trip to our corporate headquarters. Three hours coming and going in a car with five co-workers to whom I am not close. With a hangover. Yea.
Having gotten out of bed an hour before my usual time, I did what I could to masquerade as a normal employee with out an incipient drinking problem. I arrived at work and climbed into the mini-van, where I promptly attached my iPod to my head and went to sleep.
We stopped in Litchfield, Illinois for breakfast. Considering the hypoglycemia brought about from the previous evening’s excesses, breakfast was certainly a welcome thought. As we’re climbing out of the mini-van in McDonald’s parking lot, I look across the way and see a group of church kids pouring out of their own van like so many clowns hopping out of a car.
Like clowns, these kids were simultaneously amusing and frightening in almost equal measure. It was clearly one of those sects where all the women wear skirts and most of them don’t cut their hair, instead sculpting it into ridiculous poufs and curls and buns. And the skirts, oh god, the skirts . . . I wish these women would just embrace their decisions to dress like dowdy schoolmarms, instead of bastardizing fashion. Please. I mean it, just swath yourself in yards of calico and call it done.
And, let me just say, Jesus might do a lot of things, but he’s not going to do suntan pantyhose and open-toed slides. If you believe that he loves you, please believe that he wouldn’t want that for you either.
Although I was a bit worried that the church-clown-kids might try to throw a sack over the head of my gay co-worker and hustle him off for re-education, we escaped McDonald’s without incident and continued our drive/nap to corporate headquarters.
The visit itself? It was fine. Whatever. Blah blah blah happy drink the corporate Kool-Aid bullshit. I don’t care. I like my job okay, it is what it is and I’ve certainly worked at far more wretched places. It was neat enough to see the joint, and now I must try to formulate a plan for how I can get them to transfer some of the money the spend on rented plant upkeep to my paycheck.
We get in the van to come home; I promptly go back to sleep because—well because I don’t really want to talk to anyone in the van. Does that make me a bad person? Probably. Fine. I slept.
So, on the way home we stop for dinner at RubyAppleFriday’sGarden. Whatever, it didn’t absolutely suck. It was food. What killed me, though, was how all my co-workers kept going on and on about how good it was.
No. No it isn’t. It doesn’t have enough salt or pepper. It’s not interesting, or special, or anything. I think most of it came out of a bag. It’s just some decorative crap on the wall casual chain shithole, so by definition it can’t be that good. It’s not trying to be. It’s trying to be mediocre enough so that rubes will eat there.
Clearly, the business model is working like a charm.
After dinner, for some stupid reason, I chose not to go back to sleep. I listened to my iPod, looked out the windows. I can’t read in the car, which is sucks, but I listened to Neil Gaiman read “Chivalry” and it was almost better. Everything was fine until my dumb ass decided to turn off my headphones for a minute to see what was going on in the car.
What was going on is that someone had turned the radio on to some worship at the feet of Jesus shit. I don’t want to hear that, ever, much less trapped in a fucking mini van with six co-workers. I was tempted to insist they pull over and let me try to hitchhike back to the Lou. Instead I just listened to Cyndi Lauper sing about masturbation, and tried to forget where I was.
Finally, I arrived safely home. Jason came over. We put on pajamas. We watched The Giant Gila Monster. And all was right with the world.
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
Obligatory Posting
I think they’re putting something in my water, either that or my meds have finally kicked in and started working again. I haven’t even properly felt the need to call anyone a “motherfucker” in the past couple of days.
Strangely enough, I find myself without much to say. I suppose some of this springs from the fact that the current events at hand have been so unremittingly bad that at this point I’m simply inured to all of the death, destruction, and Constitutional raping. It’s not really news anymore, is it?
St. Louis had been enjoying unseasonably warm weather. For the first time I can remember, the dogwoods bloomed before the end of March. The flowers that traditionally bloom prior have not all finished their yearly showing, meaning that there has been an absolute riot of flowers and colors and happy springtime fluffiness.
Because this is the Lou, however, it was clearly not going to last. Looking around itself, the weather realized that it hadn’t given the residents of this part of the Midwest a proper pimp-slap in a good long while, so this week it decided to give us the early March that we missed. A cold front caused an incredible day of thunderstorms, followed by the patented St. Louis 20 degree temperature plunge. They’re predicting lows in the 30s for later this week.
Take that, Happy Mr. Dogwood Tree.
Strangely enough, I find myself without much to say. I suppose some of this springs from the fact that the current events at hand have been so unremittingly bad that at this point I’m simply inured to all of the death, destruction, and Constitutional raping. It’s not really news anymore, is it?
St. Louis had been enjoying unseasonably warm weather. For the first time I can remember, the dogwoods bloomed before the end of March. The flowers that traditionally bloom prior have not all finished their yearly showing, meaning that there has been an absolute riot of flowers and colors and happy springtime fluffiness.
Because this is the Lou, however, it was clearly not going to last. Looking around itself, the weather realized that it hadn’t given the residents of this part of the Midwest a proper pimp-slap in a good long while, so this week it decided to give us the early March that we missed. A cold front caused an incredible day of thunderstorms, followed by the patented St. Louis 20 degree temperature plunge. They’re predicting lows in the 30s for later this week.
Take that, Happy Mr. Dogwood Tree.
Sunday, April 1, 2007
Doing It Right
So, I am pleased that I managed the kind of weekend one is supposed to have. The kind where, at the end, you are significantly less troubled than you were at the outset.
After Friday’s cocktails with The Boy and friends, I woke to a nice, peaceful Saturday. I joined him for lunch at Mangia, and then left him to the writer’s circle and debate about his new play idea. I came home where, for the first time since before vacation, I finally managed to accomplish something around the hovel, vacuuming several puppies worth of fur and grit out of my carpet and finally, FINALLY, leading Mr. Mop on a dance around my kitchen.
I don’t know that I would have the Queen over, but I would totally allow my mother in my house again. Mission fucking accomplished.
Saturday night we went to Mai Lee, which is rapidly becoming one of my favorite restaurants around town. From there, the theater, to see Stop Kiss, a good play well acted, even if I had some issues with some directorial choices. Afterwards more drinks with more friends. You know, my informal resolution to drink more this year seems to be coming together nicely.
This morning, I worked for a few hours, and I could tell my weekend had worked because the completely asinine fucking conversation I had with one of my myriad bosses only mildly irritated me rather than sending me, as usual, into blinding rage.
And as soon as I finish this I’m going to eat cheese dip for dinner while watching Sense and Sensibility. Again. Why? Because I can. Because I am a woman, and I live alone, and I can do those things. Which is purely fucking brilliant, I think.
I just need to get rid of my second job so that I can do it more often.
After Friday’s cocktails with The Boy and friends, I woke to a nice, peaceful Saturday. I joined him for lunch at Mangia, and then left him to the writer’s circle and debate about his new play idea. I came home where, for the first time since before vacation, I finally managed to accomplish something around the hovel, vacuuming several puppies worth of fur and grit out of my carpet and finally, FINALLY, leading Mr. Mop on a dance around my kitchen.
I don’t know that I would have the Queen over, but I would totally allow my mother in my house again. Mission fucking accomplished.
Saturday night we went to Mai Lee, which is rapidly becoming one of my favorite restaurants around town. From there, the theater, to see Stop Kiss, a good play well acted, even if I had some issues with some directorial choices. Afterwards more drinks with more friends. You know, my informal resolution to drink more this year seems to be coming together nicely.
This morning, I worked for a few hours, and I could tell my weekend had worked because the completely asinine fucking conversation I had with one of my myriad bosses only mildly irritated me rather than sending me, as usual, into blinding rage.
And as soon as I finish this I’m going to eat cheese dip for dinner while watching Sense and Sensibility. Again. Why? Because I can. Because I am a woman, and I live alone, and I can do those things. Which is purely fucking brilliant, I think.
I just need to get rid of my second job so that I can do it more often.
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