The trypto-coma...

I woke up today with that post-turkey, tryptophan hangover. Dinner was weird, but normal for us. My mother and I cooked-- the whole nine. We made the bird, because you know, it's not a holiday unless we have to fondle dead poultry. It turned out really good, which is nice, because I'll be eating the leftovers for a week. On with the turkey and vegetable soup, turkey sandwiches, stuffing for breakfast, etc...

The bowl of untouched brussel's sprouts in butter sauce that my aunt wanted remains untouched in the fridge. I'm not sure the hungry kids in Somalia would eat those.

I did manage not to burn, cut or generally mangle myself in any way but family holidays are just insanity. What is it about family that just brings out everyone's crazy qualities? My friend was telling me about how his family dinners with his little cousins bring out his inner 10 year-old. Mine tend to resurrect my inner 14 year-old, complete with the urge to slam doors, not speak, and write emo poetry.

At least nothing serious needs to get done today, so I can relax and watch the hours of tv that I recorded yesterday.

...now for the mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie for lunch.

No Cool Points

I just realized that it is impossible for me to ever be cool again.

Never.

I downloaded several Bryan Adams songs, and not only am I playing them, but I know every word.

I got my sense of humor back in time for me to laugh at myself. Spiffy. Oh well, at least it wasn't Lindsay Lohan or something. Even I have standards.



I was woken up around 1 by bangings downstairs that were loud enough to get me to put my pants on and go check it out. I know, I've seen that movie, but I wanted to know why the fuck there were crazy noises coming from the living room. I got down there, all the lights are on and my aunt is nowhere in sight, and the front door is unlocked. My sleep-addled mind started processing my horror movie trivia and then I realized she was just down in the basement, looking at our books and the noises were her banging up and down the basement steps. Jason was not swinging his machete in my dining room, decapitating our candles. Nor was Leatherface defacing our couches with his trusty chainsaw.

Oops. Overreaction. My bad.

Ok, I need to fall asleep again, the AM is going to come fast, and my day is going to chock full of spending too much time in a hot kitchen, eating too much cheese and crackers and probably burning myself at least twice on two different hot surfaces.

'Tis the Season

Tomorrow is the Holiday of The Great Bird. When families come together, eat, drink, and argue in grand tradition.

I'm cooking with mom, and my aunt is coming. I'll be honest, and I know everyone has felt this at some point or another about a family member, but my aunt just bothers me sometimes. I feel awful about it, because she's family but damn it... she's a chronic apologizer and that drives me insane. "I'm sorry I can't afford more," "I'm sorry I'm not in a better mood," etc. She's family! We don't care if she even comes to Christmas with gifts at all! We just want her to be comfortable and happy. Outside of the incessant apologies for nothing, she's constantly late, and lost. My birthday was messed up because she was late getting here. Granted, everything went to shit after that, but I was just feeling let down.

The biggest thing that bothers me is that she's in a bad relationship with a spineless shit that's sponging off her and making her feel awful about herself. Not a month goes by that my mom and I don't get a crying phone call from her about her asswipe fiance telling her she's fat or about how unhappy she is with him. We tell her she would be ok without him and her response is invariably, "But I love him." ARG. She feels like she needs a man to survive, despite the fact that she pays all the bills and she's not happy.

She's got a history of pretty serious depression, so I worry about her. I can't stand that dipshit she's engaged to, but there's nothing my mother and I can do but be there for her. And because of that, I feel twice as awful that I get irritated with her.

Ahhh. Family.

(And yes. My aunt just called to say that she lost the first page of her directions. Never fails. When she gets here I'll make her a pot of coffee, which she will drink in it's entirety. She will then raid our fridge for leftovers, which she will eat cold, and often mixed together [think goulash, and cold chicken soup.] She will apologize at least 6 times for getting lost, and then will ask me if I like her hair. I will lie, because I don't want to hurt her feelings. Then when mom gets home all the apologizing and self-degrading jokes will start over again.)

Sigh. I always have to be the happy one, trying to cheer my mom up when she gets irritated with her sister (never in front of her,) and being cheerful with my aunt. It gets tiring.

Ahhh. Family. You can't pick your family, but you can pick your battles.

Big Girls *Do* Cry. A Lot.

*geek* I went to go see Harry Potter today, and being the overexcited geek that I am...I couldn't wait. And that's right, I'm going again after Thanksgiving.

I absolutely loved it. I did end up crying in a few places though (I am the biggest softie, I cry too easily when I watch sad tv or movies.) I even got misty-eyed when one of the previews was a commercial for St. Jude's Children's Hospital. Little crying bald-headed sick kids just set me off. I teared-up some twice while watching the movie itself. Yeah, I'm that bad. So what! It was sad.

I won't be too uber-nerd about it, but I think they did a great job condensing a 700+ page book into a two and a half hour long movie. I was so caught up in it that I really didn't realize it was so long. They left out some cool stuff, but it's better to read it all in the book, it didn't bug me since I already knew the story. I don't mind being a geek about it, it's just entertainment and it's a fantastic story.

The theater was packed, and we were so lucky as to get to sit in the second row at the extreme left :-/ My neck protested. We should have gotten there sooner. The odd thing is, this one was PG-13, and while it's a tad silly that I haven't had to worry about that for some 11 years now-- there were a ton of small kids there. And for a movie of that genre, it was fairly violent and scary. I hope those parents were ready for questions about death afterwards. Then again, kids are probably more immune to all that now, and I don't know if that's irritating or just sad.

Dragons are cool.*/geek*


On a less nerdtastic note... I've discovered that buying a new cell phone simply serves to remind me that hardly anyone calls. So I am content to screw around with the camera and take pictures of anything that catches my eye.

...Thank you R. Kelly

I don't know how it happened, but like reality slips away from a celebrity, my sense of humor left me for no reason over the last week.

It drained away as I got massive paper cuts handling the letters from all the government agencies that have my name now because of the civil service exam. Hey government people-- less letters-- more job offers!

It has frozen in the NY wind, and dried up like dead leaves. Damn, dead leaves... I have to rake the lawn again.

I woke up, and POOF! It left me, like Paris Hilton's sense of self-respect-- or the integrity of her Bentley's front bumper.

But something magical happened when I watched TV on Friday. I tuned into Best Week Ever partway through, just in time to see R. Kelly emote and gesticulate his way through what I think was the latest chapter of "Trapped in the Closet." My worries melted away. As much as it sucks to be unemployed in what will soon be a frozen wasteland-- at least I'm not R. Kelly.

You know, though-- if R. Kelly can't have a pointless and self-aggrandizing, never-ending series of videos that star a midget that shits himself at gunpoint-- the terrorists will have won.

Party on R. Kelly. Celebrate with your urinating-on-teenagers self. Thank you, for giving me back my sense of humor.

Thinking about a friend...

Perhaps it's my lack of sleep and or my tendency for introspection lately, but I've been thinking about my friends. Specifically how I don't get to see them often enough. There's one male friend of mine that I hope that I never lose contact with. For the sake of anonymity I'll call him Mike. For some reason, he's been on my mind a lot lately.

I met him my junior year of college at a meeting for a certain extracurricular club I was up to my eyeballs in. Whatever made him join my table, I'm glad for it. It seemed like immediately we were just good friends. I got very close with Mike and his roommates, to the point where I actually more or less lived with them. I never brought a bag over, or left anything of mine there but somehow I ended up staying there at least 4 nights a week. My roommate pretty much got a free single that semester.

Mike found out that I am terrified of gory movies. I have no stomach for them, so he decided that he'd be the one to help me get used to the violence. Those guys sat with me and watched tons of slasher flicks and horror movies-- and rarely even laughed as I hid behind a pillow, shouting at the idiot bimbos onscreen (I maintain, if you are blonde and have sex in a horror movie-- you may as well just run AT the machete/gun/chainsaw.) We ate tons of pizza and I never felt more comfortable than when I was there. Mike and his roommates saw me right when I woke up, at 4 am, dressed up and in my busted up sweats. In fact, it was such a comfortable environment that I slept in Mike's bed (he was in an extra bed, there was no hanky-panky,) but I wore less to sleep in his bed than I did in my own room-- since I can't sleep in jeans. I could have just kept a bag there, but I didn't want to be a pain (although they told me every time to do it anyway.) Oh well, his t-shirts were comfortable.

We joked around that we would write a movie together. It would be a horror spoof of chick flicks. We wanted to make a major hollywood guy get leprosy in a movie, and the title would be "I Love You To Pieces." I call intellectual property rights on that, since we still plan to write it. We were up very, very late one night and he made some crack about how we were half-assed. I pointed out that if we were both half-assed, together we made a whole ass. We still laugh about that now.

Then it got a bit weird. I started to kind of like Mike. It was strange because I knew that it was stupid. He was my best friend and that Never works out. Soon it was like everyone and their cousin knew, but we were still friends. To this day I am SO grateful that he never called me out on that. We've since joked about it a little, but it's mostly just part of the past.

Despite all that dramatic bullshit, I still look back on that year with the rose-colored glasses. I even managed to get a 3.33 gpa then somehow. I don't know how-- I never studied and I may has well could have been majoring in weed and pizza, with a minor in B-movies.

He graduated a semester ahead of me, due to my piss poor academic planning that caused me to need a 9th semester. I missed him like an amputated leg.

Last year I ended up in a situation that left me feeling totally SOL and alone. I called Mike and he talked me out of my hysteria. I'll always be grateful he listened to me and calmed me down.

Then, all of a sudden he seemed to drop off the face of the planet. He lives several hours away, so we kept in contact via email and phone. He wasn't returning my calls and I didn't hear from him for over 3 months. I was worried that he had been mugged and was lying undiscovered in a ditch somewhere (so sue me, I watch too much CSI.) Then one night I got an email from him out of the blue. It was really long and it started with an apology and he admitted he'd been avoiding me. Then he told me why-- he'd come out. He didn't know how to tell me that he was gay. I had no clue, and I was just blown away. But I didn't give a damn about his preferences, I was just glad to see he was ok. I know it's probably lame, but I kept his email. I read it when I feel low.

I have no clue why he's been in the forefront of my thoughts lately, but I know he's been going through a tough time right now, so I want to give him a call tomorrow. I just want to make sure he's ok.

Darwin says..."Almost...Almost...Damn!"

Must be nice to be a uber-rich brat child: Paris Hilton has survived a minor car crash caused by her idiot boyfriend driving her Bentley with his coat over his head to foil the paparazzi-- by doing so he drove into the back of a truck twice and nearly took out a pedestrian. No tickets were given, no sobriety tests were taken (despite another passenger saying "I'm the only sober one!") and we can all say it together... DAMN IT.

I swear after the apocalypse, all that will be left are cockroaches, twinkies, Keith Richards and Paris Hilton. The fate of the human population will have to rest on the Human Drug Raisin and the Drunken Ho-bag.

"Apoco..Apoka-whatever, the end of the world is hot."

If it were anyone else, of the non-super-wealthy set, their asses would be cooling on a jail bench as we speak. They'd be waiting for their public defender to show up, and booked on DWI and public intoxication charges. They'd have the case covered on some "World's Worst Drivers" clip show on SpikeTV, instead of walking away freely and not having a single worry about such silly things as personal responsibility.

And in other news, Enrique Iglesias said he wants to endorse a line of extra-small condoms. I think this is likely a joke. But hey, who knows? I don't care, he's still pretty.

This blows.

Damn it.

It's 4:30 in the morning and I can't sleep.

This is getting rediculous.

"I am the great Cornholio!"

Comedy Central has been bringing me back a decade every night lately.

They've been playing old episodes of Beavis and Butthead. Everyone either loved or hated that show. Back when they were huge my mother was dating a man with two sons my age, so I had to love it or I'd have gone insane. I'm not sure why those two cartoon idiots grew on me so much. I suppose for one, they reminded me of so many guys I knew. Secondly, I was 13 years old and stuck in a small town where so many of the people seemed like caricatures in my angsty-pissy teenage mind. Also, it spawned a nickname for me that stuck for years.

Those two morons made me laugh, and they still do. I don't think that makes me immature. There's just something stupidly funny about Butthead turning "Worker's Compensation" into "Worker's Constipation." I still think they're funny-- just not necessarily to the point I did at 13, when everything was a possible sexual innuendo-- especially hanging out with boys most of the time.

So I point to today's cartoons and the uproar over "Family Values." I find it amusing. I'm proof that a kid can grow up steeped in relatively stupid, violent cartoons and be fine. I watched Beavis and Butthead play frog baseball, start fires, accidentally poison themselves with bug spray, play with chainsaws and beat on each other-- but I never got into any trouble. Every kid is different, but with some attention paid to what they are consuming off of the Great Glass Babysitter it conceivably should be ok. I'd also like to note that educational or historical shows shouldn't be ignored. Not only because they are interesting, but because they can prepare you to be unstoppable at Trivial Pursuit later in life.

Obviously I'm not saying all kids should have unlimited, unsupervised access to television... I just don't think it should be a scapegoat. If people must protest something for their children (younger and older,) might I suggest they give SpongeBob and South Park a break and try unfair school funding in urban areas, gender stereotyping in grade school, low pay for teachers or restricted access to honest sex education?

Speaking of tv controversies, may I never hear of the Superbowl Nipplegate Crisis ever again. I can't believe that still comes up. I still blame MTV for that overwhelming shitstorm.





(Once in a while I miss the late nights of gorging on MTV, though. Excuse me while I shed a tear over the downfall of oldschool Music TeleVision...I used to love you! Now... I can't bear to watch.)

Myspace Venting.

I have to vent about Myspace. I'm on there to keep in touch with friends, and to a certain point it's pretty cool. Not always, though. The beauty and ugly of it is that any idiot with computer access can build a profile. As much as I like the pros of the system, there are a few things that really rank high up on my pet peeves list.

1) People that use the word "gay" as an insult, or as a general description. As in "Here's another gay ass survey," or "Stop being so gay." It makes me grind my teeth when I see that.

2) A complete lack of decent spelling, a nasty fear of punctuation and TOTALLY UnNeCeSsArY CAPS OR EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!111!!! I make my share of typos, but I try and catch them before I mail them out to a hundred or more people. Perhaps it's my ego, but I don't like to be seen as stupid. I guess that's just not an issue for them.

3) Sending out 8 or more surveys at a time (they're silly lists of random questions-- they can be fun. They're like booze, probably wiser to use in moderation, but few do.) Most of them have very similiar, if not exactly the same questions. I like reading them, but not seeing them clog my bulletin box.

4) With Myspace there is the capability to post up to 12 pictures on each profile. What bugs me is that when some people post new pictures they send out a bulletin demanding comments. It's annoying. Sometimes I can't think of anything interesting to say, so I'd rather not say anything. I don't enjoy having someone being pushy about wanting tons of people to see their photos.

5) There's a big problem on Myspace with people playing collector and trying to collect as many "Friends" as possible. I think it's insane for someone to have thousands of friends if they have no intention of even speaking to any of them. It's lame to add huge bunches of people. It does not make them look cool, and I just wish it would sink in.

6) There are sites to create a background for your profile, and it seems that bright obnoxious pink and lime green are the new colors in vogue. Shiny colors with blinking, flashing, twinkling graphics that would send the nearest epilectic into a seizure the likes of those caused by anime. For some reason, people seem to think that 945 pictures are necessary to create the perfect look and it slows down my computer to the point where I think it's creaking.

7) The age limit is 14. I once recieved an email from a guy named "Mike," that said "What's up?" I mistakenly assumed that it was a different Mike. I replied, and then took a quick look at his profile-- he was 15. Why in the world would a 15 year-old kid be writing to me? I have dishes in my kitchen that are older than him. I like the chance to keep in touch with my old friends easily, but I'm not really hot on the prospect of becoming a casualty in the hormonal overtaking of the Myspace service.

8) I listed my high school because it seemed harmless. Imagine my shock when I am contacted by people I haven't spoken to in 7 or more years that all of a sudden want to be BFF. I don't remember a lot of the people listed in the high school listing, and I don't appreciate the people that didn't give a rat's ass about me almost a decade ago suddenly having an interest in my personal life. Maybe it makes me rude, but I quite honestly don't care

9)There are the music or videos that play on a lot of the profiles. Usually I have music of my own playing and I do not need to have the newest 50 Cent song blaring out over the top. I don't get how people can have 3 or more videos going at once. Maybe it's just me and I don't have the concentration to handle it, but I don't think so.

10) Another issue I have with the bulletins is the chance I have of finding some moral lesson in my inbox. Haven't those glurge forwards died yet? I understand that drunk driving is a horrible thing, but I do not need a set of graphic burn victim photos to prove it to myself-- yet they ended up in my inbox. That poem about teenage binge drinkers that crash and die has shown up numerous times. Another frequent email I get is the "If you're not ashamed of your love for Jesus-- send this out." What? I've never been real tight with Jesus, so what's with trying to make me feel guilty? And there are those awful idiotic forwards that have things like "Send this out in 7 minutes or you'll never have sex ever again!" or "Mail this to all your friends or Satan and Celine Dion will crash through your bedroom window tonight!" at the end. If it sounds stupid, it probably is and it shouldn't be mailed out en masse, or at least don't send it to me.


Ahh... I feel better now.