You wanna see my talent?

Apparently noting the lack of non-fictional hottie girl superheroes in the world, Miss Americas are trying to fill the void. Let's make like it's a pageant and score them.

Miss Making the Internet Safe for Children: The current Miss America helped nab a bunch of would-be kiddie touchers by acting as the "bait" in an internet-pedophilia sting. They posted pictures of her when she was 13 online, then detectives posed as a 14-year-old girl, engaged in sexually explicit chats with some dudes, and they busted a bunch of them. Miss America was also involved in the actual sting: she waved some guys into a house, where they got arrested. She told reporters: "I got to chat online with the predators and made phone calls, too. The Suffolk County Police Department was there the whole time."

I'm the judge: Saucy! But also random and seemingly quite unnecessary; did the cops think the baby-rapists would not be interested enough if they posted pictures of someone less glam than Miss America? And why did she have to chat online with the "predators," or be there for the arrests? Presumably the real winners here are the cops who dreamed up a way to make Miss America hang out with them.

Miss Screw You, Gun Control Advocates: Also today, the 84-year-old Miss America of 1944 shot the tires of two trespasser/intruders and held them at gunpoint until the police arrived. The article says she had to "balance on her walker as she pulled out her snub-nosed 38-caliber revolver and aimed at the tires on the men's SUV, but she didn't think twice about shooting twice." About the incident, she said: "If they'd even dared come close to me, they'd be 6 feet under by now."

I'm the Judge: I am totally terrified of Miss America 1944, and thus declare her the winner. Congratulations!!!

Russell Simmons takes out his relationship problems on hip-hop

Russell Simmons called on the recording industry to bleep "ho," "bitch," and the n-bomb out of hip-hop songs, because they're as obscene as "extreme curse words" (ooh, what are those?). That seems more Tipper Gore-y than you'd expect from the founder of Def Jam, but arguably the whole Imus thing made him realize just how bad those words really are.

Or maybe he actually had this realization at some point during the 8 years he was married to Kimora Lee Simmons? Kimora, the model/designer/talk show host/whatever who's the momma of his 2 daughters, gave a uniquely bizarre interview to Vanity Fair in 2005 in which every other sentence out of her mouth was, "I will beat a bitch's ass." I'm going from memory here, but I'm pretty sure she said it multiple times in a row in a syncopated fashion, like: "I will beat a bitch's ass. I will BEAT a bitch's ASS! I WILL beat a bitch's ass."*

So, Russell Simmons: Paul on the road to an obscene musical Damascus, or just a dude with a grudge against his ex-honey and her pottymouth ways?

*Ahh, Kimora. Thinking about that interview is plunging me into a confusing nostalgia spiral of giggles and moral approbation. If you missed it, or have since devoted the Kimora Lee Simmons portion of your brain to something else, like who Paul Wolfowitz is, shame on you! Luckily, the internets will refresh your memory: here's an awesome Top 10 Kimora Lee Simmons quotes list from PopSugar.

Carrie Nation 'n me

In response to my last post on the topic of my turning-30 freakout, and my mom's joke? confirmation? that I will end up looking like the toothless babushka I found on Google Images, my dad sent me the following picture in an attempt to give me a more accurate image of what I should expect to look like when I'm old:

This is Carrie Nation, 1846-1911, known to history as a temperance movement activist who expressed her antipathy to alcohol by smashing up bars with a hatchet. Lore has it that we are related to Carrie Nation on my dad's side of the family. In the interests of being fully informed, I have done a bit of research on my possible ancestor (by which I mean I read the Wikipedia entry).

It turns out I disagree with Carrie on a couple of her major life decisions, namely: her belief that God told her to smash up bars, her dislike of alcohol, her scowl, her lady-necktie, and her dislike of alcohol.

But! All in all I am finding my possible Carrie Nation-ish fate a fairly inspiring development. Say what you will about the crazy religiousness and the liquor-smashing, the lady did her own thing, and was ahead of her times in many ways. To wit: after God told her to smash up bars, a tornado hit eastern Kansas, and she took it as . . . divine confirmation that she was doing the right thing. Confident! And: she paid the fines that resulted from her law-breakin' by selling souvenir hatchets. Clever! Post-modern, even!

One could say that I am absolutely nothing like Carrie, what with the godlessness, the beer, and the fairly conventional life choices (see earlier post re: married lawyer with mortgage). But I am going with the more positive interpretation, that I, like her, am doing pretty much what I want to do.

And more to the point, she didn't even become Carrie Nation until she was 31.* :)

*That's when she married David Nation. The vision from God came when she was 32. I've got plenty of time!

Taxation without representation blows

Today is both DC Emancipation Day and the big Voting Rights March.  It's cold and rainy with predicted wind gusts up to 60 mph, which seems appropriate given what a ridiculously uphill battle it continues to be to get voting representation in Congress for the 600,000 people who live in DC.

Here's why I'm gonna be there despite the tornado-like conditions:  I wanna be able to do those "email your Senator" things without getting an error message or putting in a fake zip code!  I want my city to have someone to speak for it the next time some Congressman from Texas decides to name all our streets after Ronald Reagan, or to get rid of our gun-control laws! 

If you live in DC, you should come to the march too.  If you don't, take advantage of your lucky represented-ness and email your Senators to tell them they should support voting rights for DC. 

Voter Fraud is the New Global Warming

Or rather, "voter fraud exists" is the new "global warming doesn't exist." This article in the NYT is about how this federal panel, the Election Assistance Commission, "revised" a report on voter fraud and voter intimidation, like so:

• Out: "There is widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling place fraud."
• In: "There is a great deal of debate on the pervasiveness of fraud."

• Out: Found "evidence of some continued outright intimidation and suppression" of voters by local officials, especially in some American Indian communities.
• In: "Intimidation is also a topic of some debate because there is little agreement concerning what constitutes actionable voter intimidation."

It would be amusingly meta if it weren't so straight-up undemocratic.

Turning 30: Top 10 Freakout Topics

Sometime this year I will turn 30. In preparation for this event, I have started to freak out. Here is a highlight reel:

1. I have a mortgage.
2. I am reading Gardening for Dummies.
3. My cat, who I adopted the same day I got my wisdom teeth out, is 58 in cat years.
4. I am married.
5. It's too late to become a gymnast or a wunderkind of any type.
6. I am closer to too old to have kids than to too young to have kids.
7. I have started to receive Lands End catalogs.
8. I'm a lawyer, and I no longer feel like an imposter when I say "I'm a lawyer."
9. If I were a character in Logan's Run I would [SPOILER] be killed soon.
10. What do I want to be when I grow up?

Just thought I'd share.

Fred Thompson is skinny grey jeans

I went shopping the other weekend and found myself inexplicably drawn to skinny grey jeans. This was surprising because I clearly remember myself thinking a year or so ago that the skinny-jeans trend was something that I was way too smart to fall for, and also that grey jeans were an annoying fake-ironic 80s throwback look for girls who were not actually born until the late mid- to late-80s.

What changed my mind? Why, looking at lots of pictures of people looking awesome in skinny grey jeans, of course. Here, try it:









Starting to grow on you, aren't they? One could get freaked out that it's so easy to get brainwashed by pretty pictures, but that's what fashion is about--a kind of group addiction that makes you want things mainly because other people want them. As group addictions go, it's much healthier than, say, religion.

Except it seems that the same logic has made Fred Thompson the skinny grey jeans of the Republican presidential candidate world. He's totally gonna be the next candidate, entirely because people have seen a lot of (relatively) pretty pictures (talkies, even!) of him as a tough prosecutor on Law & Order. He didn't even play the President! (I would definitely vote for President Bartlett, btw, if you're looking for work, Mr. Sheen.)

I submit that this is something people should be too smart to fall for, as it is an annoying should-be-ironic throwback idea for people who think they miss Ronald Reagan and the '80s, but don't really know why. I'm boycotting Law & Order (and possibly grey jeans, just to be safe.)

I wanna be like Lorne Michaels when I'm old

I was surprised to read about the large number of people Lorne Michaels has banned from Saturday Night Live. I knew about Sinead O'Connor being banned for ripping up the picture of the Pope, but I kind of figured that was just evidence that the Vatican controls the world (in cahoots with the Trilateral commission, the United Nations, Jewish bankers, the Illuminati, and Satan, of course). But it appears that Lorne himself is a banning machine, and most of the offenders haven't challenged the powers that be, they've just been drunk (The Replacements), difficult (Steven Seagal, Robert Blake, Chevy Case), or guilty of "mugging for the cameras" (Frank Zappa, Milton Berle).

The thing is, I totally want to be like Lorne Michaels someday. Not when I'm a regular adult, because acting like a huge diva is just annoying unless you're Naomi Campbell, but when I'm reaalllly old--I want to look like Miss Havisham and act like a petty, melodramatic despot. So watch out--if you get on my bad side now, in 60 years I will totally ban you from my nursing home!!

Ryan Phillipe and Ashlee Simpson are the poor man's TomKat

Best Week Ever Blog reports that Ryan Phillipe may have recently gotten "dishevelled" with Ashlee Simpson.  I think it's fair to call this the weirdest celebrity couple that has come along for awhile (Mandy Moore and DJ A.M. was inexplicable, but short-lived).  In addition to the age difference (10 years, by my calculations) they seem to be attempting to move in opposite directions on the Celebrity Quality Continuum--Ryan is a Justin Timberlake look-alike who wishes he was Leonardo DiCaprio, while Ashlee is a Jessica Simpson lookalike who wishes she was, um, Jessica Simpson. 

But, and I never thought I would say this:  I miss the early days of TomKat.  Ryshlee might be odd, but they inspire only a short head-scratching, whereas TomKat provoked an intense, multi-stage response:  disbelief, intense Googling, indignation, more disbelief, horror, amusement at the misfortune of others, obsession, attempted burning of Dawson's Creek DVDs, opening windows to air out smell of singed metal, disillusionment, forgetting about it most of the time.  It was a feast of relationship train-wreckage, with a side of Scientology! 

Was TomKat a once-in-a-lifetime event, like a comet?  Maybe not:  that same Best Week Ever entry suggests a future couple that could--is it possible?--blow the socks off TomKat:  Ryan Phillipe and Dakota Fanning. 

Turn out the lights if you like the the planet and/or weekends

When I work late, as tragically sometimes happens even at Ye Olde Do-Gooder Law Firm, I notice that almost everybody in my office leaves their office lights on when they leave. Seeing An Inconvenient Truth and Children of Men within a short period of time made me feel slightly environmental, so this strikes me as a waste of electricity (and a sign of humanity’s impending doom).

I think I know the reason: people want to create the illusion that they might still be at work, even after they have left. But all this does it push Leaving Work farther and farther into the closet. Going Home For the Night becomes the Love the Dare Not Speak its Name.

So this is a call to arms. Stop covering the fact that you have a life outside of work! Bonus: while you're at it, you might also delay humanity's inevitable self-destruction! Turn out the lights!*

*The quasi-anonymity of my blog means that nobody at work reads it, which may somewhat dampen the effectiveness of this particular call to arms. Ah, the conundrums.

Alberto Gonzales: Live by the not very plausible deniability, die by the arguably slightly more plausible deniability

Ah, time, how you do fly. It seems like only yesterday that I was writing about how the new Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, had twisted himself into a tasty pretzel of nonsensical post-hoc justification to explain why he had dissed Priscilla Owen when they were on the Texas Supreme Court together.

(Review: He said that when he labelled her dissenting opinion "judicial activism" for essentially imposing a Just Make The Dumb Slut Have the Kid Already rule in abortion judicial-bypass cases, he wasn't saying she was an judicial activist, but that if he had written the same thing it would be activism for him. For reals, read it and weep.)

Flash-forward today, when that same kind of preposterous non-explanation is a maybe-firing offense! Gonzales' explanation for the role he was playing while his chief of staff masterminded the firings of a bunch of U.S. Attorneys was a classic:

"I was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on . . . That's basically what I knew as the attorney general."

Really, I think the first one was worse.

NCAA whaa?

I'm not gonna join any NCAA pools this year. This is clearly at least antisocial and possibly misanthropic behavior--St. Scobie's pool is its First! Ever! Community! Event!, and the emails about my office pool are the only cheerful, non-work-related "To Everybody" emails that are sent all year.

But despite all the good cheer, taking part in these things just serves to emphasize what a moron I am about basketball, and, you know, I don't like feeling like a moron. I know so little about basketball that I just had to google to confirm that it is, in fact, the sport to which the NCAA pools relate.*

You could say that I might feel less like a moron if I learned a teeny bit about basketball. But no! I'm at that point in my life (almost 30!) when I no longer feel the need to attempt to correct my ignorance. Instead, I'm going to celebrate it as an eccentricity, like those old guys who refuse to learn how to use email and instead have their secretaries print it out for them.

*I realize you can do the pools without knowing anything about the sport, but in the past I've picked teams on the basis of personal affection for certain schools or states, and have thus been personally hurt when, say, Wisconsin (which I love! because people from Wisconsin are so nice!) has done poorly, and Texas Tech (which I hate! for reasons that are a whole nother story which I can tell you another day!) has done well.

Scooter Libby goes to the hoosegow for chauvinist beliefs

One of the more disturbing things about the whole Scooter Libby/Valerie Wilson thing is that it apparently seemed reasonable to the Bush administration to attack Joe Wilson by suggesting that his wife was the person who suggested he should go to Africa.

There are a bunch of reasonable ways you could think of to discredit a political adversary who's said something you don't like: Did he benefit financially from the trip? Was he unqualified to look into Nigerian uranium sales to Iraq? Did he have a book deal, and was just trying to make controversial statements to increase the buzz about it? Did he have an unseemly affection for teenage girls?

Fine, fine. But the information that his wife gave him the assignment? It could be a charge of nepotism, IF it weren't coming from a President whose main qualification for office is that he has the same name as his daddy.

Logically, it only works as "rebuttal" of Wilson's findings claims if you believe:

1. That any man who has to get job references from his wife is a big wuss.
2. That big wusses cannot be trusted to accurately investigate purchases of uranium.

If only Scooter had had the foresight to say, Dudes, this strategy is stoopit and sexist to boot, and I'm not going to be part of it. Alas, poor Scooter!

First non-chart of 2007!

The non-chart is baaaack! Last year I got into kind of a thing about "In/Five Minutes Ago/Out" charts, which idea I ripped off from Entertainment Weekly. Despite its various new upgrades, Blogger will still not let me make an actual chart, so use your imagination to put this into a 3x3 spreadsheet format:

In: Hilarious Alec Baldwin
Five Minutes Ago: Washed-up Alec Baldwin
Out: Hot Alec Baldwin

In: Decrying real-life torture
Five Minutes Ago: Enjoying TV torture
Out: Torturing bugs

In: Discretion
Five Minutes Ago: Confession
Out: Repression

Ode to Lauren Graham

I wish that Lauren Graham could play every role in every TV show and movie that is ever made, like Eddie Murphy in Norbit except good. In the meantime, I will always have Gilmore Girls.

Despite having a name that reminds you of teacozies, Gilmore Girls is one of the best shows on TV. It's about a 30-something woman, Lorelei Gilmore (Graham) who got pregnant when she was 16, moved to an eccentric-packed small town to get away from her rich, judgmental parents, and raised her daughter Rory into an adorable, fast-talking overachiever who is also her best friend. She's also got major romantic angst--the classic dilemma of Luke the gruff diner owner who's been her friend for years obvious soulmate versus Christopher, her unreliable first love and babydaddy big mistake.

At the end of last season SPOILER ALERT, IF YOU LIVE 6 MONTHS IN THE PAST Lorelei broke off her engagement to Luke due to his closing her out of his life after he found out he had a 12-year-old daughter named I'm A Shark, Please Jump Over Me. Lorelei went to Christopher for comfort and, in a Katie Holmesish move, ran away to Paris and married him, but then blessedly experienced a belated realization that it wasn't meant to be, and now is single again.

Which leads us to the moment in this week's episode ("Will You Be My Lorelei Gilmore?") that made me melt into a puddle of Lauren Graham love and write "LG + TA" all over my folders. Luke showed up at the baby shower Lorelei was throwing for Rory's childhood friend, and told Lorelei that he had finally sold the boat his dead father left to him, after keeping it in an emotional storage facility for 20 years. Lorelei said she'd thought he'd never get rid of the boat. "Well," Luke said, "Things change."

Lorelei didn't even answer, just looked at Luke with a slightly wistful, nostalgic, but not unhappy look which exactly distilled the essence of what it means to be 39 and to watch your daughter's friend become a mother and to talk to your ex-fiance and realize that that part of your life might be gone forever but to also know that your life would still change in ways you couldn't predict, but knew you would be pretty great, although not the same as what came before. Which, who even knew that such a thing needed to be distilled, or could be? Lauren Graham did, is who.

So, anyway, watch Gilmore Girls. If you absolutely can't bring yourself to watch something that sounds like Golden Girls but is missing Bea Arthur, you can start your Lauren Graham education with Bad Santa, where she plays Mrs. Santa's Sister as exactly the strumpety-barmaid-with-a-fetish-for-Santa that you never knew you needed as a mother figure. Thank me later.

Oscars: TomKat rehab?

I had various thoughts while I was watching the Oscars, but I can't liveblog because our laptop was stolen in the Great Home Burglary of 2006, and then over the last four days my thoughts have melted together into a big shiny ball of gold and taupe goddess dresses studded with penguin-shaped interpretive dancers and Jack Nicholson's bald head.

All except this one: I have an ominous premonition that Tom Cruise's fairly innocuous appearance as the presenter of a humanitarian award will, in retrospect, be the beginning of an image rehabilitation. In 5 years we'll think of TomKat as just another Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, and the whole couch-jumping, Brooke Shields-bashing, Stepford Katie reality we all recognize now will be swept under a plush rug of talented publicists and charitable work. Terrifying. Eternal vigilance, people!

Planet of the Bloodthirsty Chimps

Chimps have been observed making spears out of sticks and then using them to kill bushbabies.

Let me repeat that: CHIMPS! MAKING! SPEARS! KILLING! BUSHBABIES!

Wait, and let me explain in more detail. First, a female chimpanzee (apparently the females are more "innovative") finds a deep hollow of a tree of the type where bush babies--"small, monkeylike mammals"--sleep during the day. Then she finds a long, straight stick, and uses her hands and teeth to tear off the side branches. She peels off the bark, and makes one end into a point. Then, holding the spear in a "power grip," she jabs the spear into the hollow repeatedly "at a rate of about one or two jabs per second." After every few jabs she "sniffs or licks" the end of the stick to see if she's jabbing a bush baby or not. Then she smashes the hollow tree branch, exposing the dead (or possibly just horribly injured) bush baby, and eats it.

One of the researchers who observed this said that it reminded her of the shower scene in "Psycho."

So, OK, we're doomed. The chimpanzees are going to organize, surprise us with the ferocity of their spear-jabbing warmongering, and take over the world. We'll become the subjugated species, kept around as pets, zoo exhibits, or pack animals for the ruling ape class, and by the time Charleton Heston comes from the future to find the Statute of Liberty crumbling in the ocean, we will have become mute and forgotten the time before the chimps ruled.

Looking on the bright side, though, maybe that's not such a bad way to go, given the other options. A year ago I thought the world was going to end in a dramatic firey apocalyptic nightmare initiated by TomKat and its army of Scientologist alien minions. A few months ago I was thinking more along the lines of drowning or slow dehydration caused by global warming. Planet of the Apes is actually fairly fun and campy, and the loincloths are more flattering than you might suspect.

OK, I'm in! Chimps, if you need me, I'll be under my desk.

I curse thee, o poet blouse

I know from poet blouses. I owned one in 1993. It was teal, and made of very shiny silk, and I got it at the Limited. Because it was silk, it was my fancy shirt--I wore it to important events such as varsity basketball games. Many other girls in my high school had the same shirt (albeit in other colors, like hot pink, eggplant, or forest green), so sometimes when I wore it I would feel slightly disappointed because I was predictable, although also somewhat reassured, for the same reason.

But eventually I realized: the poet blouse is a blight on all human clothing. Something called a "poet blouse" should be romantic and lovely, but in fact it is large and baggy and made to be tucked in, creating the look of a muumuu crammed into bike shorts. The rest of the world must have come to a similar realization at around the same time, because the poet blouse disappeared from civilized life (or at least from malls).

Apparently everybody except Banana Republic, because this is currently featured on their website:


Apparently 14 years is long enough for us to forget what history has taught us. Based on this, I'm calling it now: by 2009 we will see the return of the kilt-with-long-wool-vest combo that I wore to my senior high school Homecoming.

Democratic Rule: Bennett Barrington III slums it at Potbelly's

I went to Potbelly's for lunch today. If you haven't been there, Potbelly's is this chain sandwich place that has the type of "quirkly" atmosphere that is signified by mass-produced kitschy decor and enforced by uniform corporate policies, like Chotchkie’s in Office Space. Instead of a 19-pieces-of-flair requirement, though, Potbelly's has musicians sitting on platforms above your heads singing Dylan songs. (See image at left.) The musicians are always slightly grungy-looking dudes, generally with white-person dreadlocks, which all seems in keeping with the natural order of things.

Today, though, the Potbelly's musician was an extremely preppy-looking guy in blue-and-white-striped button-down shirt, khaki pants, and--I kid you not--a braided brown leather belt.

Could it be that this guy was my first real live sighting of that rumored species, the umemployed former Republican staffer? I read about this phenomenon in this article, which contained this priceless quote from a 23-year-old about why he didn't want to take a job at the Department of Labor, even though it paid more than his erstwhile phone-answering gig on the Hill:

"It's simply that I don't want to have labor issues stamped on my resume."

Awesome. I may go again tomorrow.

Sickness on a plane

Hello, chickadees! I apologize for my long absence, and offer the following excuses: First, I was in Brazil for a friend's wedding, which was awesome and which I highly recommend.

Then, I had a stomach virus, which I do not recommend, especially the kind that starts at the beginning of an 11-hour flight back from Brazil. Try as I did to convince myself that being sick at that particular moment was good timing--after all, I wasn't missing my vacation time, and what else was I going to do on the plane?--the reality is that, as my friend Iron Seth recently noted, there are few worse places to get sick. In addition to the regular sickness unpleasantries experienced in a teeny, airless, non-stationary bathroom, you have the embarrassment/shame of walking by the same people multiple times an hour on the way to said bathroom; the anxiety about the possibility that there could be a line and you could thus did not make it to the bathroom at the necessary time, which anxiety is only partly assuaged by carrying around those little vomit baggies (especially given that the airlines seem to have shrunk the baggies along with the seats and the meals); the guilty suspicion that you may be making hundreds of other fellow air-travellers sick; and, during the night rendered sleepless due to your having ralphed your Lunesta, the acute malaise/misanthropy caused by watching the hideous Zach Braff vehicle The Last Kiss, whose point seemed to be either that all relationships are miserable or that awkward 30-something men are understandably prone to freaking out when their lovely, kind, funny girlfriends get pregnant, because men need their freedom, dude, and that the best cure for this poignant situation is a fling with a 20-year-old stereotype of perky, innocent femininity.

But I'm all better now! Thanks for asking. :)

America: Freaks to Freakazoids

I was on a plane the other day and these two guys across the aisle from me started talking to the guy behind them about how the Illuminati and the world bankers want to enslave us all, which you can tell because currency is not backed by gold anymore. Then they started telling the flight attendant about how those in the know don't pay income taxes, and this is legally fine because there isn't actually any law requiring individuals to pay taxes.

The only explanation for what happened next is that I lived in D.C. for too long and have become one of those annoying wide-eyed East Coasters who can't really believe that there really, really crazy right-wingers out there, and vaguely believes that such people will see the error of their ways if presented with rational arguments. What happened is, I started talking to them. I told them that they could do whatever they wanted themselves, but it's really irresponsible of them to go around telling innocent strangers that they don't have to pay taxes, since people go to jail for tax evasion.

Oh good God. I spent the next 10 minutes trying to figure out whether it would be easier to jump out the window or hide under the little toy airplane seat, as these two guys tripped over themselves to tell me how the 16th amendment, which gives Congress the power to collect taxes, isn't really part of the Constitution because it wasn't ratified by the right number of states, and there are laws that say they require the payment of income taxes but they aren't really laws, or they only apply to corporations and not individual income, and did I know anything about horses? because they are farriers, which means they put horseshoes on horses. In fact, what they're doing now is going to Cincinnati for a farriers' conference, which is part practical applications and part theory and business. Also, I should really see a documentary called America: Freedom to Fascism, which is about the history of the Federal Reserve and how it's a big plot by corporate interests and lawyers to control the world, and they'd be happy to write it down for me, in case I might not remember the title.

I eventually told them I didn't really want to talk about politics and anyway, I had work to do, but I hoped they enjoyed their farriers' conference. Was this my inner polite Midwesterner taking over, or was it just a rational instinct for self-preservation? I don't know, but I came away with a strong impulse to spend some quality time with TurboTax.

Meet my fella

As previously mentioned, I'm happy to be married, but I think I may start boycotting the word "husband." At first I thought I just wasn't used to it yet, but the other day I realized that the real issue is that when you use it, you sound like a Republican "values" voter, or an unreasonably demanding dissatisfied customer in a restaurant. (Which, if you drew a Venn diagram of those two groups, the overlap would be quite significant.)

I had a revelation about this recently because I purposefully evoked the Husband connotation in an angry letter to Verizon demanding that they give me money back. I was totally justified in asking (Verizon DSL is the Iraq War of the internet-service world--they got you into it by telling huge lies about how fast and easy it will be, and once you're in there it doesn't work at all, and it takes years and billions of dollars to extricate yourself), but in order to strengthen my position, I dropped several mentions of how inconvenienced "my husband and I" had been by their crappy service.

Was that really relevant to the point of the letter? No, but it carried the implication that I had really important Married People business to be attending to, and thus that my time was not to be trifled with like that of some slutty, tragic, unlovable single girl who probably doesn't own property or vote, and has nothing better to do with her evenings than eat ice cream and chug vodka while waiting for 15 minutes for Television Without Pity to load. I was portraying myself as a self-righteous suburbanite who expects to be catered to by customer service representatives just as she is by politicians.

Ick. So now I need to find a new title for Mr. T&A. Boyfriend, partner, and spouse are all out--inaccurate, confusing, and clinical, respectively--so for now I think I'm gonna go for "Fella," or, you know, "Mr. T&A." Let me know if you have any better suggestions.

Pick a dynasty!

Some might say it's scary that Hilary Clinton might be the next president, because then the U.S. will have been run by one or the other of a set of dueling dynasties for over 20 years.

Yeah, it's true that dynastic leadership is fundamentally incompatible with democracy, and all. BUT. If Clinton doesn't win, we will not have dueling dynasties; we will have only one. That would be depressing as a comment on our present choices, but more importantly it would seal the fate of humanity for generations. This election is not just about the next 4 or 8 years, it's about who you would rather have as President in 2028: George P. "Yeah, There's a Third One; You May Remember Me For Such Things as Nearly Getting Arrested for Breaking Into My Ex-Girlfriend's House" Bush, or Chelsea "I Endured Rush Limbaugh Calling Me a Dog When I Was 13 And Yet I Grew Up To Be a Smart and Classy Woman" Clinton? You decide, America.

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

I didn't really make any New Year's resolutions. OK, I made them, but they're already broken, so let's not speak of that again.

But today I'm feeling inspired (or shamed, or something) by Martin Luther King, Jr. day, so I'm making one and putting it on the internets so as to hold myself to it: This year I will volunteer, both for political causes and local needs. That's it! Shouldn't be so hard, right? I am not saying I'll stop talking the cynical talk, but that doesn't mean I have to walk the apathetic walk. That was not a good slogan, but it's what I mean.

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!

Follow-up haiku for car

Old Geo lives still
With nice new struts and hoses
Cheaper than ZipCar

Haiku to my car in the shop

'95 Geo
Is repair cost-effective?
Or is your time up?

WP claims Bush twins dress like crap

Reliable Source, the Washington Post's gossip column (yes! such a thing does exist) has this scoop on the Bush twins' recent visit to DC:

[B]oth twins [were] at Town Hall on Saturday night with a well-heeled entourage-- crushed-velvet sport coats for the men, trendy leggings, silk dresses and platform heels for the women.

Brain . . hurts . . . outfits . . . do . . . not . . . compute. Just try it: visualize a group of people whose attire involves crushed-velvet sport coats--COATS, plural!--, "trendy" leggings, silk dresses, AND platform heels all at the same time. Your brain is turning into neon-pink goo and dripping out your ears onto your computer, causing it to let off confused, fashion-challenged sparks, no?

The only image I am able to muster is Prince hanging out with early Stevie Nicks and some early-90s high schooler whose Friday Night Outfit involves shiny silk items from the Limited and huge, plasticky platform Mary Janes from Payless, combining to create a 90210-wannabe vibe:













(As it turns out, Prince and Stevie Nicks hung out in 1983, until, in Stevie's recounting, they were torn apart by "all the drugs," but as far as Google knows, neither of them ever appeared on 90210, and they definitely didn't come to my high school.)

One must assume that Jenna and Barbara did not, in fact, go out looking like the video for a Purple Rain/Rumours/Peach Pit mash-up. Are the Reliable Source writers just reporting the news as they hear it from people who hang out in obscure neighborhood bars in Glover Park (where's Glover Park?) and write to the WP when they see famous-for-DC people (instead of Wonkette, like a normal person)? Or, as I would prefer to think, are they actively frakking with us and seeing if anybody notices? If so, ladies, well played, but consider yourselves called out.

End times and Commies

Yesterday--January 6--it was in the mid-70s in D.C., so Mr. T&A and I went for a bike ride around the mall. Here is a picture we took of a cherry tree at the Tidal Basin:

Needless to say, cherry blossoms should not be blooming in January. It's obvious that Al Gore was totally right and the end is nigh, but it was all very lovely.

Later in our excursion, we saw the following poster in front of the National Gallery of Art:

It says "Prayers and Portraits: Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych." Very tricky use of words that nobody knows, but I see through the ruse: clearly the Netherlandish Diptych is the international world leader who will appear to be the world's savior but will then institute the one world government that will clear the way for Satan's rule. However, as eschatological signs go, it was not unpleasant (certainly better than an earthquake); I might even go see the exhibit.

Since it was shaping up to be an apocryphal kind of day, and I suspected that we should prepare ourselves for the future, less enjoyable aspects of the apocalypse, we decided to go see Children of Men last night. Alas, when we got to Gallery Place, both parking lots were full, and street parking was nowhere to be found. I was crestfallen, but realized that it was kind of poetic justice: here we were, driving to see a movie to educate ourselves about how the earth will destroy itself. Chastened, we came home and watched Talladega Nights, which is not nearly as good as most Will Ferrell movies. (Another sign, perhaps?)

In order to bolster our spirits, we made ourselves festive beverages: White Russians, in a liquid homage to The Big Lebowski. However, because of my lactose intolerance we have switched to soy milk, so it didn't really seem right to call them White Russians. What do you call a soy-milk drinking hippie who wishes he were a Russian? A Commie*! We've got ourselves a delicious new signature drink.

So, altogether, I am feeling pretty good about the beginning of the end. Welcome, 2007!

*An after-the-fact Google revealed that others have already named the White Russian made with soy milk a "White Vegan," but I would rather accept the mark of the beast and condemn myself to an eternity of hellfire than throw in my lot with vegans, so I am going to make like an oil executive at a climate change conference and willfully ignore this new information.

Who's going to be the primary source of archaic assumptions?

I read the NYT article "Questions Couples Should Ask (Or Wish They Had) Before Marrying" to reassure myself that it was OK that Mr. T&A and I got hitched after only making it about 1/3 of the way through our "1001 Questions to Answer Before You Get Married" book. The article only has 15 questions, which is a much more reasonable number than 1001, for which I give them props.

However, the questions drove me absolutely batshit, and have been bugging me for weeks now because of the article's seemingly permanent spot on the list of Most Emailed Articles, which is normally a nice source of work-avoidance for me. Check out #1:

Have we discussed whether or not to have children, and if the answer is yes, who is going to be the primary care giver?

You may say I'm a dreamer, but isn't it possible for two people to share caregiving responsibilities? Even if not, why do you have to decide years in advance who the main baby-raiser is going to be? Wouldn't it be reasonable to decide that, for instance, the person for whom it makes the most sense to take time off from work given their job situation at the time the aforementioned children arrive will do it?

And then we have # 3:

Have we discussed our expectations for how the household will be maintained, and are we in agreement on who will manage the chores?

"Manage the chores"? Unless they mean "who will berate the gardener if he trims the shrubbery in a less than symmetrical fashion," I can only think this means "Who will end up doing the huge majority of the chores and will end up thanking the other partner for 'helping' if he sometimes does the dishes?"

In the interest of winnowing the number of questions yet farther, I propose they could replace these two with the following:

Woman, have you discarded your starry-eyed college-feminist visions of an equal partnership and accepted your inescapable fate as the primary caregiver and chore-doer?

And, end rant. Tune in next week when I explain why the Pussycat Dolls are not good role models for little girls.

2006 Best and Worst!

I like year-end lists, so here's mine.

Worst

Worst actress about whose life direction to care: Katie Holmes. I held out hope there for longer than was even vaguely reasonable, grasping at the breakup rumors and conspiracy theories like so many promises to train the Iraqi police, but it was all in vain.

Worst Media Trend: YouTube. I realize I'm in a tiny, cave-dwelling minority here, but when I'm reading a blog entry discussing how, say, Clay Aiken put his hand over Kelly Ripa's mouth and then Rosie O'Donnell called Kelly homophobic, I don't wanna have to watch a dozen (OK, one) YouTube videos to see what happened. Those things are MINUTES long! Since when does the MTV generation attention span accommodate that? I want SCREEN CLIPS, people! (Plus, the sound tends to blow one's cover at work.)

Worst fashion trend: Obvs, no underpants. Britney, whatev, but Linds, you're breaking my heart.

Worst speech trend: Unnecessary shortening of words. This one is even more pernicious than the vortex that was "izzle," because it actually saves time and thus could accidentally become perm. Anent.

Worst Presidential Candidate Launch: It pains me to say this, being from Iowa and all, but Governor Vilsack's appearance on The Daily Show. His takeaway line: We're creating a "culture of dependency" in Iraq. Are we giving them excessively generous welfare benefits? And shouldn't you be criticizing, oh, say, the President whose deeply unpopular policies you are presumably running against rather than the victims of his geopolitical folly?

Worst switcheroo in Blogland: Above the Law replaces Underneath Their Robes. Probably AtL is more lucrative and David Lat doesn't have time to do both, but wahhhhh. Where UtR was so snarky and bitchy that I was able to nearly ignore its raging Federalist Society undertones, Above the Law has a fairly boring, lawyery voice and is all about how big the bonuses are going to be at various big firms. Bring back Article III Groupie!

Worst movie: X-Men 3. OK, possibly not the absolute worst--I didn't see Lady in the Water--but the most disappointing. It didn't even know what its overarching metaphor was: is the cure for mutation the Holocaust, abortion, or the ex-gay movement? Because, nooooot the same things. Also, SPOILER ALERT the ending is a blatant rip-off of the Buffy-has-to-kill-Angel-even-though-she-loves-him-in-order-to-save-the-world thing, except not touching and with a thick overlay of misogyny.



Best

Best Top 10 Lists of 2006: Best Week Ever's lists o' Movie Cliches, Reasons to Hate Singing and Dancing, and, most of all, Celebrity Body Parts. 100% awesome.
Best movie: The Departed. This surprises me, because Cops, Gangsters, Boston, and Father Issues are not normally my movie topics of choice, but it approached The Godfather (Part 1) levels of greatness. I haven't been as impressed with Leonardo DiCaprio since he was a child, and Matt Damon convinced me he's really an actor. Also, Martin Sheen just broke my heart. Also, Marky Mark. Mmmmmm.

Best sign for the future of mankind: The election. :) :) :) :)

Best new (to me) blog: ApartmentTherapy. It inspires me to want to paint! wallpaper! un-clutter! entertain! Not to say that I have actually done any of those things, but hope springs eternal, and looks very attractive in the meantime.

Now I will cop a tactic from Scrubs, and swerve disjointedly into Very Sincere Mode. Cue the strings.

Best personal development: Getting married! Awwww. Not that I've become a big booster for heterosexual hegemony! But it was just unparalleledly great to have so many of our friends and family all in the same place being happy for us. So, thanks, guys. :) Also, married life is pretty much the same as living in sin life, which is as I had hoped, EXCEPT! It seems to have turned our BoyKitty into . . . a lapcat! At first when Mr. T&A advanced the hypothesis that BoyKitty felt more secure knowing he was in a stable home, I told him he was batshit crazy. But. The cat who previously spent most of his time skulking, sneaking, lurking, and glowering has, since October, become an actual cuddler. Of course I know that correlation is not the same as causation, thank you very much. But. He sits in your lap! Awwwww.