Tuesday, July 19, 2005

I Failed The Recipe

Oh my. I just baked what has to be the world's ugliest cake. See for yourself. It's so butt-ugly that I can't stop laughing. I mean Spinal Tap-funny laughing! If you can top this, I dare you to try. It was supposed to be a surprise for my niece Emma's Sweet Sixteen birthday. Fortunately, Emma has a highly developed sense of humor. Sorry Emma. Just concentrated proof of my downward mobility.



And yes, Ava thought it was pretty awful too. She said, "Hey Mom, you just made a real mud pie." She loved the fact that most of the actual cake, which tasted delicious, was left hanging precariously along the bottom of the pans though, and wasted no time in scooping up about 60% to cram in her mouth. Another 10% fell on the floor which made Zelma very happy too. NEVER grease cake pans with vegetable oil and powdered cocoa.



Back to Barbie.com karoke for me.

Friday, July 15, 2005

Palmetto State Blues

I'm ashamed to be a native South Carolinian right now. All Rightist Republican smear campaign roads lead straight back to my home state, the backwater swamp that spawned Lee Atwater. The SC idiot-ridden populace aided and abetted the trashing of John McCain's good name and image at time when he, McCain, was getting ready to wipe the floor with W's smirky, frat boy face.

Most South Carolina retards were merrily led via their bovine-like natures, which are quite easily herded into any racist or homophobic frenzy, by Atwater's hideous Toad Man, that devil-spawn He Who Must Not Be Named - Lord Voldemort Rove. Like taking candy from a baby it was so easy, so backwoods is this place.

South Carolina was where Rove honed his power-crazed, mad wizzardry that ultimately led him smugly right on into the Oval Office, where he now sits on the right hand of Smirking Frat Boy and oversees this ultimate wipe-out of anything remotely associated with political truth in America.

I wish I could articulate my anger better over this hideous fleecing we've been hounded into by Republican operatives and conformist, grinning, little truth-eating creatures such as Rove and Robertson and Delay, and every mega-church "disciple" following their retards-only, talking-points road to some tacky-as-shit Judgemental Mall of The Americas. Fortunately, Paul Krugman, in his column today titled Karl Rove's America, is here to tell the story with a little more clarity than I can muster right now.

Sorry-ass, piss-ant state filled with the stupidest, most stubborn, un-evolved Muggles on the planet, excepting some of my immediate family members of course and assorted blogger-psychiatrists. I'm never going back. So there. I know they're all crying in their grits at the thought.

Thursday, July 14, 2005

I Heart The Internet - For This Alone

Are you ready to live the bullshit-free life? Toss the pointless relationships that mean absolutely nothing to the whole story you vaguely associate with your Big Quest For Inner Fabulousness? Stand up, be a Real Girl (remember them Catherine? circa '84 I believe!) and start being the hottie of your own dreams. And if you STILL need help on figuring out how to do it, then send these gals a line for some serious real-time advice - if you dare!

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Meow Mix

Women! Whatcha gonna do with 'em besides f-'em? They're just too catty and too liberal. Silly us. Here's an excellent column on women opinionists, or lack thereof in the mainstream media.

Lemme just let anyone who reads this in on a little secret: I've contributed "guest" op-eds to the local papers here for about seven years now. I've long lost count of the actual number, but it's up there with total wackos like Susan Estrich fer sure. And I'm just a little bit over being dumbed-down to chronic "guest" status. (Oops. Is my "cattiness" showing? Oh let me apologize immediately. I'm sooooo sorry.)

So if anyone who gives a flying "f" has 3 seconds outta their non-political, busy schedules to give me, please shoot the Op/Ed editor, David Beasley, at the AJC an e-mail asking that they consider running my work on a regular basis. He's at: dbeasley@ajc.com. Call me totally insane for wanting to be a regular, liberal opinionist at a major daily, but hey, what do I know? I'm just a girl.

Blogging Priests

While I eat Cheetos and read the National Enquirer by the Cross Creek pool, all the while ignoring Ava's many "watch me Mommys," our rector from All Saints' here in Atlanta, "Sir" Geoffrey Hoare, is on this amazing, head-inflating tour of Europe and blogging busily away as he merrily expands his horizons. His blog really is something to take a look at.

Here's an interesting tidbit-exerpt from it:

"The classical, the modern, the post modern and so on all need each other, but life is found in and flows from that which is new, creative, sometimes considered ugly at first (Remember how Rodin and the Impressionists were never really acceptable to the academy or in Rodin’s case many who commissioned his work.) The new is dependent on the old yet does not supersede it. I am reminded of how John A. T. Robinson, author of Honest to God (1963) used to talk of how a true radical must be thoroughly ‘rooted’ in the tradition."

(NOTE: To be honest, I don't remember anything about Rodin not finding acceptance by the "academy." But I can tell you all about Gram Parsons having been rejected by the mainstream Nashville scene. I think that's kinda what Geoffery's gettin' at here. Although I doubt Sir Geoffrey's been thinking a whole lot about country music lately.)

Hey Hey Ho Ho, Karl Rove's Gotta Go


Jon Stewart on the White House Press Corps' recent performance:
"We have secretly replaced the White House press corps with actual reporters."

Can you believe it? The White House press corps has finally emerged from whatever stupor it's been under since 9/11. About freakin' time. It's got a heap of catching up to do, and let's hope "it" is not returned to its previous pathetic state-o-mind when the Supreme Court nomination(s) arises soon.

Read for yourself the absolute nothingness of a Bush Administration in deep doo-doo, rivaled only by the nothingness you will find on this blog.


"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it." Edmund R. Murrow

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Shame and Hope

From today's NYT...

Here's the world created by racism, violence, hatred, greed, war, terrorism and utter senselessness. Anyone who supports any act of cruelty towards a fellow human being, or who watches passively and allows it to go on, or supports it politically, is simply a stinking evil coward, perpetuating a culture of horror and grief and suffering on the entire world.

And here's the face of hope, also from today's NYT.

We are not afraid of:

  • terrorists
  • politically-motivated perpetuators of war
  • consumeristic greed
  • manufactued "values"
  • attempts to create a mass culture of fear
  • their intolerance and exclusion and false piety
  • an evil adminsitration that has tried to manipulate the entire world.

Get it folks... WE ARE NOT AFRAID!

Please, let's all do what whatever we can to stop this idiotic "War On Terrorism." This is not a war on terrorism (the above photo is the real war on terrorism), but a war machine we were ALL misled into launching by blood-thirsty, riotousness liars, fear-mongers, scam-artists and power-crazed hawks.

This talking-points, PR-ridden, manipulative, evil adminsitration does not share MY values. (And mine are DAMN GOOD ones, thank you very much!)

Let's work hard to stop this war now. Bullet-point THAT.

"It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead." Joseph Heller , Catch-22

Monday, July 11, 2005

Say Yes To Wow

Is your sex life just not the WOW you always dreamed of? Well, who's isn't, but don't freak out - help is on the way! My friend and brilliant writer and just really damn good person on this planet, Michael Alvear, is coming to HBO to save us all. Michael has been living his fabulous life in London on British TV this summer, as co-host of a Channel 4 reality show called Sex Inspectors. And now HBO has bought the show, a serious WOW for Michael and all those who know him and are just thrilled to see him "take off" so.

The British version of the show will begin weekly air on HBO, starting September 1 at 11pm. So subscribe now and sit back and watch Michael become a star. And believe me, I wouldn't even brag about having a friend in TV, but if anyone has worked so hard at his craft for so long, and if there's anyone out there who deserves to have good, successful things in his life, then it's Michael. He's just a really cool, decent, kind person who manages to take time out from his insanely busy schedule to encourage me to keep writing. Simply put, he helps me keep hope in my life.

When I first started writing and trying to publish little things here and there, Michael was the first person I turned to for advice and help. He extended a hand of kindness and encouragement to me at a time in my life when I thought such things were impossible. He didn't have to do this.

Michael was a successful gay man who, on the surface, I had virtually nothing in common with. He could have brushed me aside like a gnat, but he didn't do that. He took the time to meet with me and talk with me and email me notes of encouragement and invite me to parties, and things like that. I doubt he knows what an influence he's been on me, as he likely thought nothing of being such a genuinely kind, good person. But I was suffering from serious "I'm A Nobody" syndrome at the time I first sought out his guidance. And I may still be a big nobody, but you know, I can deal with that now! And that's in no small part due to Michael's friendship.

So wish him well, invite your friends over, raise a glass to love and hope and sex and dreams, and tune in on Sept. 1st to see the face of deserving success. And oh boy is it a beautiful one - in every sense of the word.

Saturday, July 09, 2005

Things You Find Along The Path, If Not Yourself

Whew...

Also, here's a poem from way back when, off of my old website, WaySouth. Seems right again now that it's summer.

Woman Working In Summertime
Summer was here. Same things returned with it, no matter where the company sent its people. Dash from the city heat into the dark, dank air-conditioning of a liquor store. More gin for the tonic. Back out into the glare.

Sunglasses get slammed down from the top of the head. Back at the room-bar, the medicinal lime fizzes the tip of the businesswoman's nose while she takes a sip back to salted porch furniture and the incomprehensible buzz of grownups talking: to the house on The Island for an agitating two weeks. Aunt Bunny's bathing costume is as faded as her Labrador's muzzle.

Everyone never fails to mention how athletic Aunt Bunny was in her day. A beautiful tennis player. Right. Right. Credibility lost long ago on the woman. Bunny had never bothered her Dior lips to boast a confirmation. She was athletic after all. Not a teller of stories.

Aunties and cousins are shrugged off as simply as brushing off sand from the underside of your thighs. The meeting speaker talks about 'cultivating your people-base.' The businesswoman believes she is more a cutter than a cultivator.

She thinks about the gardenia bush behind the beach house -- the house before Hurricane Hugo. The woman thinks pre-hurricane when she remembers her summer times. She was already a professional by the time the big storm came through and caused another house.

The speaker is now saying there are actually four categories of people. Hurricanes have more than that notes the businesswoman. The secret to success in the business world is knowing what kind of people you have working for you, what category they fit into. None of the literature pertains to gardenias. They will be tested for their category nonetheless.

The woman wonders if smelling gardenia blossoms can be addictive. The scent is probably too funereal for that. Too much like church with its heaviness. The business lady is sleepy. Her eyes wander out the windows. "Probably" is not a power word. She uses it all the time. I have bad habits - she supposes.

The speaker does not use the word "funereal" at any time. The people-base in the room is busy at listening well, but she suspects the men of contemplating the airing of their pop-up camper when they get home.

The woman thinks -- inside the pop-up camper box. She knows a couple who bought one recently. They are the only people in their thirties she knows who have purchased anything remotely like that. For some reason, she was surprised to see that pop-up campers were still being manufactured.

The couple had shown the woman a brochure of their pop-up model. It looked cumbersome and over-ripe. That must be why the listening people-base is thinking of airing them out. They have their own summertime to return to.

She doesn't hear a sound of ice cubes clinking in pop-up campers. There are sticky, plastic cups of leftover baby juice baking in the pop-up sink. She hears nothing but that the group is now informed and adjourned.

Her people-base awaits her arrival at the Crown Room. Gin and tonic please. Summer is here. Business lady would like to get to it before they call her flight.

Friday, July 08, 2005

Re-Educate This

The Motherhood has worked me over good this time. It must take me up to the mothership every night and drain my brain something fierce, then set me right back down in la-la land. Everything's confusing me lately. I can't for the life of me figure out if Lil' Kim is now headed to the pokey for refusing to reveal that Karl Rove was seen with WMDs, the wife of a CIA agent and assorted rap stars outside of a nightclub in Mombasa on the night Warren Zevon died.

The whole Judith Miller thing is troubling, because I must confess that for a while there I wasn't really sure if she should be rotting in jail alongside Lil' Kim. And, gulp, I actually subscribe to the NYT. Now if I only would read the thing the way I always intend to every morning at breakfast, I'd have long ago figured out that she, Miller, (hell, Lil' Kim too for not asking if her dates came with guns) should stay there for a good long while, as the rumor is that Karl Rove is The Source. Big shocker there. Judith Miller, essentially, helped furnish the whole WMD house for chrissake. She was practically the freakin' PR agent for the whole Talking Points Administration! Oh my.

I had no idea. I've been pretty busy lately with watching Ava's ongoing reenactment, typically in the front yard of the condo complex, of that critical scene in Racing Stripes where the heroine, Channing, overcomes all the social obstacles in her teenage life by hurling herself on to a speeding zebra and thereby winning the Kentucky Derby-like event and thereby unfreezing her grief-stricken, but also quite yummy, dad's previously-frozen/widowed heart.

My childless, mostly single neighbors have long ago gotten over the sight of a five-year old zooming around the parking circle area while beating herself with an imaginary whip and yelling out such memorable bits of dialog as "Get to the rail, Stripes. There's nothing stopping us now from achieving our foals in life. You've got to watch it bad enough. Sir Trenton's stall needs mucking out. We did it!!! MOMMY! Remember you're NOT Mommy now; you're supposed to be Max."

Only the most child-savvy observer would ever understand that Max is actually on loan from another medium altogether - TV. Max is, of course, the also-quite-yummy riding instructor from The Saddle Club series. Believe me, if there were no Yummy Widowed-While-Tragically-Young Dads in tight jeans sauntering by in all these kiddy shows, I wouldn't be watching them in the first place. I'd be reading the Times since way back when all those WMD were being unearthed right and left in Iraq. And I'd have stood up and hollered about it too, just like all those reporters at all those press conferences W was giving before we set the war machine, excuse me, The War On Terror, in motion.

Of course I don't have a clue as to how the press corps is supposed to be doing its job these days. The Motherhood erased the motherboard for the professional side of my brain long ago. But then again, I would do just fine without one if I ever went back to work in news.