No, it's still fun

Apparently "top Republicans" are shitting their pants as the Vice-Pres debate nears, and some are loosing that ol' honeymoon feeling as Palin continues to blunder, oh, just about every time she opens her mouth. I read one rather hilarious quote by a conservative columnist that read, "It was fun while it lasted."

There are many, many, many things to laugh about (not least that Planned Parenthood has recently raised over three-quarters of a million dollars by encouraging people to donate money in Palin's name in an email campaign), but one of my favorites continues to be her famous line about her proximity to Russia equaling foreign policy experience. I suppose if that were true, every citizen of northern Wisconsin, or, say, San Diego would have at least as much foreign policy experience as Palin, who just got her first passport last year. Of course, this might all be essentially meaningless to a large majority of Americans, who voted for Bush not once (oh, no!) but twice. Bush, of course, made his first overseas trip only after making office, and, as everyone knows, he's just done a hell of a job managing foreign policy.

But one thing that does not amuse me about the whole Palin debacle is how often I hear people say, "Now, the feminists are going to get mad at me for this..." or "Now, I'm a feminist, but she's an idiot..." As if all feminists (or women in general) are required to support each member of our sex, regardless of how idiotic she may be. Discussing Palin's inexperience (or, ridiculing it, as the case may be) doesn't mark you as a woman-hater, any more than my saying that President Bush has been the worst president this country has ever known makes this feminist a man-hater. In the end, she is a person, just like any other, who happens to be ridiculously under-qualified for a position for which she is applying. It's unfortunate, that, as a woman, she is not and would not be a champion for women's rights (I encourage you to read that as human rights), but will continue to erode them just like the Republican party has done for the past 8 years.

Burn after Reading

Saw the new Coen Bros movie over the weekend. So, you know how No Country for Old Men made you feel like life was not worth living and humanity was a worthless pile of fashiz? Burn After Reading is kind of like that, only funnier, and with less people getting killed. Although people get killed. Oh yes, they do.

I have to wonder if we shouldn't all have an intervention with the brothers Coen. Just a check-in. A little head tilt. How you guys doing? Everything ok?

Burn After Reading is about a couple of kind of dim-witted exercise trainers (Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand) who think they've found some top-secret information. Other players are John Malkovich, George Clooney, and Tilda Swinton. Talented actors, all, but I was a bit disappointed by the characterization. They seemed less rounded and more of a series of (extremely well done) ticks. All the characters were either deceitful, hateful, or complete idiots. Pitt, in a horrible dye job, seems like he might be going through another 12-Monkeys-I'm-more-than-a-pretty-face phase, but I do have to admit he was hilarious, "staying hydrated" by suckling on an ever-present water bottle like a teat.

In other entertainment news (though less timely), I recently finished up the second season of Big Love, which I love to hate. It's a well-crafted show, but it just makes me insane. Will Barb leave the marriage soon? I hope so! (Don't tell me!) I thought Rhonda singing Happiest Girl in the USA was about one of the top singing-on-tv moments I'd ever seen. I can't get it out of my head.

Does anyone watch Monk? I thought this season blew. Big disappointment.

Other than that, I'm crazy hooked on Mad Men and have a bizarre, non-feminist crush on Donald Draper that leaves me both confused, and... with another feeling.

smug married

This weekend was our 10 year anniversary - we didn't really celebrate in style (we'll do that later on our Anniversary, Observed, in Florence), but we certainly did acknowledge it as much as possible, despite a lot of untimely weekend work obligations.

It's funny, when I think back to our wedding day, I don't think I had any conception of what it would be like to spend this much time with another person, and I'm a totally different person now than I was then. I'm just really grateful that as M and I have grown and changed, we've grown and changed with each other, and we still happen to love the people we've become. I'm pretty excited to see where we'll be in 10 more years.

Houston...

What a weekend we had! Friday night had an incredibly fun and drunken yet intellectual book club over at D&C's fantastic new pad, then, it started raining... and raining... Sat. morning M & I were running around the house doing a Mad Clean, when I rushed downstairs to do a load of laundry and stepped in a puddle. Uh oh. A few hours and a couple of bucket-fuls of water later, my parents arrived. We had a fun time with them despite being fairly wigged out about the watery basement situation. It's nothing compared to what some other folks in Chicago suffered, but, it was a big drag for this young couple who worries about McCain winning the election, the economy going further down the tubes, and not being able to sell this thing and move to Canada when the shit really hits the fan.

I believe it was in reference to our worrying over the leak that my dad said, "What's that saying? Houston? Houston... we're in trouble." Oh, we had quite a few laughs.

We all went to the Renegade Craft Fair, in the pouring rain, and I saw some of my favorite Etsy sellers. Got to see a lot of stuff in person that I usually just droll over on my fave design blogs.

Finally booked our hotel in Florence - they sent us an email that said:

WE CONFIRM YOUR RESERVATION FOR 1 DOUBLE SUPERIOR (with frescoes).
WE WAIT FOR YOU.

Awesome.

Things I love

You know what I love even more than a Lost Cat Reunited with Owners After 9 Years story?

When my husband starts up his own blog!

land o plenty

A couple of pics from our Labor Day bbq: Here's the new D baby, if you haven't seen her yet
J & E in the pool...

We've had a great summer for our little garden - didn't buy a single tomato and were able to share quite a lot! Farmer M liked taking pictures of particularly bountiful harvests:

But this big guy is special - I'm quite sure it would have made the front page of my hometown newspaper, which specialized in large vegetables. We're going to raise him as our own and make sure he gets into a good college...

Here's M playing GTA with him...

In other news, has anyone heard John Mayer singing Free Fallin'? OMG, so beautiful. I've listened to it like 400 times since I first heard it. Yesterday.

Smackdown!

Could barely control my boiling rage as I watched Sarah Palin yesterday evening. I suppose what I found most infuriating, aside from the outright lies, the claims that we're "near victory" in the war, and her trotting out every member of her family after tsk-tsking everyone to stay out of their biznatch, is that the Republican's don't really have a plan for anything. They're all, boo-hoo, we're so beleaguered, everyone's against us, democrats are going to raise taxes, they're going to make you ride your bike to work, wah! It's like their whole platform is complaining and insulting the Dems. I don't think she said one actionable thing. Oh, sure, maybe that we should love special needs children a little more. You know, I'm pretty familiar with the lives of special needs persons, and it would have been interesting, for example, to hear one goddamn real plan to improve their lives.

Well, the whole thing makes me insanely crazy, mainly because I have absolutely no faith in humanity. I mean, McCain and Palin could easily win this thing. I don't want to believe it, but people out there, they really intend to vote for them.



Speaking of morons, I recently discovered this hilarious website called SongMeanings.net, where people interpret just about any song you can think of, with little to no insight or knowledge of any kind. You could waste a serious amount of time perusing that site.

And speaking of wasting time - head on over to Top Five to list the websites where you waste time!

She can ruin your faith with her casual lies

Had a lovely Labor Day weekend that ended today with an outdoor bbq - a group of friends and my trusty old blow-up pool (which people innocently believed we had put up just for the kids. Ha! Ha! No, it is mine.) One home project that I thought would take 15 minutes took well over two days (installing a new door lock and handle? Jay-sus!) And, aside from that I spent a lot of time feeling grouchy about McCain's VP choice.

I just KNEW that sonuvabitch was going to pick a woman for his VP, but I never dreamed they'd find somebody that's practically (to paraphrase a certain husband) Dick Cheney in lady's clothing. Because the republican party is so anti-woman, I feel that the choice of Palin is little more than pandering. But it's just a joke that any Clinton supporter would say, "Oh, a woman? I guess I'll vote for her then." As if one person's the same as another.

It was with something like the joy I felt on learning that Cheney had a gay daughter that Palin's 17 (or is it 16?) year old daughter is pregnant - because as Chris Rock says, "Whoever you hate will end up in your family" and I love watching them squirm when they have to justify their Politics of Hate (as I like to call it) vis-a-vis the old flesh and blood. Doesn't look good for the party of "family values" when their own go and have premarital sex, or - worse yet - same sex sex. Oh, if only she'd had good sex-ed in school instead of abstinence ed and creationism... Imagine the family dinners! "So... about that legislation you passed that screwed me over big time..." There's an interesting article about the hypocrisy of the Republicans over on Feministing - check it out for yourself, but it essentially says that they're conveniently exempt from the very invasive rules that they wish to set for the rest of us.

Anyway, Palin's a joke. Even though I don't know that much about her (who does? Apparently not even McCain, who supposedly just met her one time before extending the offer) but I do know that in Alaska it seems to be business as usual to take bribes, destroy their own eco-systems and wander around shooting wolf cubs in the head.

Meanwhile those jackholes are busy canceling their convention so they're not caught with their pants down eating cake while another Katrina whips through the south. Ha! We'll see.