Monthly Archives: September 2008

September 10, 2008 · 9:38 pm

Current Events from Hell

Animals wearing lipstick – pigs and pitbulls. And tonight on David Letterman some great quotes from Obama: “It is a common expression in Illinois. I don’t know what you put lipstick on here in NY.” and this fave: “If That’s What I’d Meant, Palin Would Be the Lipstick, ‘McCain’s Failed Policies’ the Pig.” Gotta love it.

Good ol’ Boys: Sex, Drugs & Rock ‘n Roll and Big Oil in the Interior Department.

Hurricanes G, H and I. The sky is just falling.

Big Bang Experiment?!!! Holy crap this one just plain scares me. What if that little pesky gopher from Caddyshack shows up and botches the whole shaBANG?

Is Kim Jong-il alive? Ok, here is a great sound bite from this story. “According to professional Pyongyang watchers, the answer is … probably. Most of the experts believe he is ill, some think seriously, while a maverick few suggest that North Korea’s “Dear Leader” is just playing dead, to mess with our minds.”  You can read the full Guardian article here.

Lucy in the Skys with Salvia? Ok kids, this is your brain. This is your brain on salvia. This is the end of your friggin’ opportunity of ever having a career after you actually smoked this shit on camera and let your ‘friends’ put it on youtube!  Just to give you an idea how MANY of you were that stupid, tonight’s search yielded about 5,600 videos. You all new this was coming…

ARE YOU FRIGGIN’ KIDDING ME?!

Documentation will be the downfall of this generation (no Dave, I am not an old lady, just a keen social observer). Anybody miss the 60’s and 70’s yet? Ahh, a generation that could experiment and mess up to their heart’s content and never worry about being tagged in a photo.

Kind of an odd day in the news, no?

Hmmm… some would say this was a click whore’s move to tag this post with as many top news stories as possible in order to beef up her stats.

Who me? Don’t be silly!

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September 9, 2008 · 10:07 pm

Would you rather…

Just a quick note that Time to Cry Tuesdays are proving to very popular. Proof again, that we really need to make the time. Today, however, I will try to make you laugh.

This is one of our favorite games. It started about 15 years ago. I had the most wonderful assistant who would pose a question like this to us everyday. My favorite?

Would you rather have a hoof or a paw?

Think about it. All the practical types wanted the hoof. “I could use it as a hammer, it would be great for self defense, yadayadayada”. While the gentler types wanted the paw. “It would be nice to have something soft, people love pets….”

I always thought we should have marketed this. So of course when I found Zobmondo I was quite furious at not having done this. I went out and bought the game, but my heart was never in it. I guess I was still furious that I had not developed it.

Which leads me to another favorite question that we have had with very close friends (who will go nameless until they claim it in the comments…hint hint):

Now, Jana, if you are reading I already know your response: “EW, MOM!” (sorry baby, it is not always easy to have me as your mom). And since both my parents and my in-laws are regular readers, perhaps you don’t want to continue with this one.

So, here goes:

“Would you rather be good looking with a small dick or ugly with a big one?”

We love this one. You would be surprised how people answer.

So, let’s hear from you out there. Show me the love on this one and humor me with an outpouring of comments. If you are shy, anonymous comments are fine. Men, let’s hear your answers and your reasoning. Women, ask the guys in your life for their responses.

Unless of course you would like to have your penis envy give your own answer.

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September 8, 2008 · 8:16 pm

Time to Cry Tuesday

 

This story has so touched my heart I felt the need to share this with my readers.

As many of you know, I am new to the blogging community. I have come here, yes to tell some stories and make people laugh, but also to learn more about the community at large.

For those who do not know me, I am an over-volunteer (x10 actually). I am passionate about the causes that I support and spend more time in grassroots fundraising efforts than my spouse (aka, mr. is that billable?) would like. (Just kidding Gary is very supportive of my volunteer jones).

I am a regular reader of a wonderful blog called Design Mom, written by one of the more energetic individuals I have witnessed in a long time. Gabrielle Blair is the mother of 5 (OMG, I am such a slouch), a graphic designer and an entreprenuer.

Cut to the real story here. Through her blog I found out about a tragic plane crash involving another beloved mom of the blogosphere, Stephanie Aurora Clark Nielson. Her blog is Nie Nie Dialogues.

On Saturday, August 16, 2008, Stephanie was in a plane crash with her husband, Christian Nielson, and his flight instructor, Doug Kinnear, near St. Johns, Arizona. Doug Kinnear passed away soon after arriving at the Maricopa County Hospital.

Christian & Stephanie remain in critical condition at Maricopa Burn Center. Christian has sustained burns on over 30% of his body. His wife Stephanie’s body was burned over 80%. This wonderful couple has four young children.

I know, talk about Time to Cry Tuesday!

But here is the lemons to lemonade piece. This is what has reinforced the power of the blogosphere and more specifically, the mommy bloggers, for me. This is no group of passive women. These women rock. They rock so loud and so clear you can’t believe it.

Gabrielle from Design Mom had a brainstorm for bloggers to host online charity auctions to raise money for the Nielson’s recovery. Cjanerun, written by Stephanie’s sister has worked with others to create a donation site (which you can link to here, in my sidebar and on the graphic in this post – I want to make this easy!).

Yesterday, the NYT ran this amazing article about the fundraising efforts. After following this story for the past few weeks I felt it was time to bring this to you.

Talk about community!

So, my friends, never underestimate the power of community. Those of us who are fortunate enough to live in a zip code with this kind of support (which I am) know the result of this kind of support. These people pull us through, pick us up, dust us off and keep us going. How beautiful that we can apply this model globally through the power of blogging.

I urge you to donate whatever you can to this brave family.

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September 6, 2008 · 11:18 pm

Bloganoia (vol.2)

I will be shamelessly self-promoting my new photo blog, leaving the zip code, here from now on. You won’t be disappointed, I promise. Let’s see if some of you will take the ‘submit’ challenge.

I have written about this phenomenon before but the topic keeps coming up.

Now that I have been posting for a while, my readership is growing (or perhaps I am delusional and just think that it is). Certainly here in the zip code.

Twice in the last 24 hours people have said something and then asked, “oh no, are you going to blog about this?”

So, to reduce any fears about being outed here in bloganoialand, let me assure you that if I am going to use your name I will ask you first. (oh, except for Dr. Jimmy but he loved it and moving forward he will be my best commenter).

Most often, if I blog something about you I will not mention who you are. Or give your distinguishing characteristics like, “that certain someone with the ______ (fill in the blank with your most defining characteristic).

My kids, on the other hand, seem to be blogobitionists, as they get a kick out of it when I write about them. I ask first and try not to embarrass. (Frightening that Danny was actually proud of the great dryer incident).

In closing, you can feel free to be absolutely absurd in front of me, just like you have always been. And I promise to try to contain myself.

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September 5, 2008 · 5:46 pm

Hair. 40 years later.

I will be shamelessly self-promoting my new photo blog, leaving the zip code, here from now on. You won’t be disappointed, I promise. Let’s see if some of you will take the ‘submit’ challenge.

Last night, thanks to Dr. Jimmy the quintessential NY connection man, I was fortunate to see a performance of Hair in Central Park. (I love that they call it “The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical”)

A truly magical New York moment. The weather was perfect, the crowd was thrilled to be there and the performers were spectacular. We appreciated it all the more as we had been rained out a few weeks ago. Kind of like getting a cool hair(re)do.

40 years later we are struggling with many of the same issues:

• A senseless war (thank goodness without a draft)

• Generational misunderstandings (if I read one more friggin’ blog post where parents complain about their teenagers I will scream. Get a grip out there for G-d sakes. You sound worse than you thought your parents did.)

• Dissatisfaction with ‘the man’ (whoever he/she is at the moment)

• Young people trying to find themselves. (baby boomers, hippies, punkers, gen x, y and z – no joke, they had to stop naming them because they hit the end of the alphabet. how about gen AA – like theatre seats)

Now here are some interesting observations that ran through my very noisy head during the show:

1. Hippies begat capitalists

2. Better yet, hippies BECAME capitalists!

3. Clothing: for young women – almost the same! Walk into Urban Outfitters, you can see my entire 9th grade wardrobe. Moms, fyi, if you wore it the first time around chances are you should leave it on the racks for your daughters. Go classic, much more becoming.

4. I am pretty sure I must have owned the soundtrack to this show because somehow I knew the words to almost every song, even the obscure ones! (…I met a boy named Frank Mills, on September the 12th right here, in front of the Waverly, but unfortunately, I lost his address…)

5. And last, but not least, I rekindled my undying love for the City of New York, where you can walk into Central Park on a Thursday night at the tail end of the summer and be reminded about how good it is to be alive. (ok, so maybe I drank the NY Cool-aid last night, give me a break. I had a hard week).

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September 5, 2008 · 12:13 am

Why Pay that Pesky Tuition?

OMG, I love this so much. I have been saving all sorts of scam emails for awhile. (to date I think I am eligible to receive somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 billion dollars from South Africa – if only I had the time to respond).

Let’s dissect this one, shall we? “Now you can Buy Bacheelor, Degree, MasteerMBA, PhDD at LOW Price!!”

The key takeaway here is the low price (note the two exclamation points). Degrees guaranteed. Spelling is not.

“100% No Pre-school Qualification required!”

Great, a Ph.D. and I don’t have to worry about having gone to pre-school. That is a good thing because in my generation we did not.

And of course my favorite: “…available in the Field of your choice so you can even become a Doctor and Receive all the benefits that Comes with it!”

Let’s forget the content for a moment and try to figure out the rule of capitalization they used here. So let’s see, I can become a doc, have all the benefits (nice house, nice car, nice office, free band-aids) and never even go to pre-school. Not bad. I think I need to find the follow-up program on where to buy my malpractice insurance.

I particularly like that I can see the BCC list and that one of the recipients is thetrojans@gmail.com.

Perhaps this is a subliminal message about the horse they are coming in on.

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September 3, 2008 · 9:50 pm

Yesternight

I will be shamelessly self-promoting my new photo blog, leaving the zip code, here from now on. You won’t be disappointed, I promise. Let’s see if some of you will take the ‘submit’ challenge.

I have always felt that there were words that should be in the english language but were not. Early in my blogging days (way back 3 or 4 months ago) I did a post called Bloganoia. I think that one needs to be revisited, so go vistit. Or re(visit). It is kind of a cool post.

Anyway, we have always had an ongoing list of words in this family that should have been in the dictionary. One of our favorites was yesternight. The little boy across the street (who is now 13!) said it and we loved it. I believe he is also the author of whobody. (very Suessian). I think that one was in the context of “Whobody farted?”

Tonight, I was battling all sorts of technology (more on that tomorrow) when Jana IM’d me and told me she was going to send me a picture message on my phone. Hmmm, when I was in college calling my parents only once a week – if that – I don’t remember picture messages and IMing being on the menu.

I digress. Imagine my delight when that picture came through. There in the text of good ole’ Frankenstein (a light read) is the word yesternight.

Not gonna lie, I feel kind of sad that it is no longer just ‘our word’.

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September 2, 2008 · 9:16 pm

Was this just about putting any skirt in the seat?

I will be shamelessly self-promoting my new photo blog, leaving the zip code, here from now on. You won’t be disappointed, I promise. Let’s see if some of you will take the ‘submit’ challenge. And today you can read me at Mid-Century Modern Moms as well.

Perhaps this is an appropriate Time to Cry Tuesday post (late and confused from the holiday weekend).

Not one to get into the political fray all that often, I could not help but do a short post about the Sarah Palin choice. I am saddened by what I think is an insult not only to the women of this country, but the people of this country. I started this post hours after the announcement was made but was hesitant to continue. Now that the theatre of the absurd has unfolded it just can’t go unmentioned here. (with my sarcastic twist, of course). This does not contain any new, groundbreaking commentary, but it may make you laugh (a little) while you cry.

I am not claiming to know much about her (scary detail #1) but I certainly do not feel all warm and fuzzy about her being one heartbeat away from the presidency (scary detail #2). What really freaks me out is that McCain would think he could capture 18 million Hillary supporters with a pro-lifer (scary detail # 3,4 and 5).

Another great quality I want in my VP: card carrying member of the NRA.

Oh, and now the pregnant teenage daughter. His people KNEW about this and were still ok?!! Wow, talk about securing those family values votes. This is like a bad Saturday Night Live sketch! What next…Yeh, well we knew she killed a man, but she is still under investigation so we thought it was cool.

Of course you knew this was coming:

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

So, my brother and I were talking the other day and I told him I had a very strange feeling that perhaps Sarah Palin was, in fact, Dick Cheney with a sex change. His answer? Can’t be, she has not shot anyone in the face yet.

To sum it all, this quote says it all for me:

A woman voting for John McCain is a like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.

– Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood

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