It’s been a while since I checked in with her, and I don’t do well with change, so it’s a relief to know that our friend Michele Bachmann is still as crazy as ever. This time, she temporarily blocked voting on the resolution that celebrated Hawai’i’s 50th year as a state, and, (oh!) also named it as the birthplace of our 44th president. Controversial stuff, there, right? Thankfully, her nuttiness didn’t impede the resolution from being passed 378 – 0 (not that it was unanimously approved; over 50 cowardly jackholes just abstained from the vote).
I love words and language, which is why I never say one word where three would do. Still, I reserve the right to hate some words, because they’re just stupid.
Webinar
Widget
As in: I am currently mired in a webinar where the leader won’t stop saying the word “widget.” Save me!
Update: The phone system just stopped working and there has been a (temporary?) break in the torture. Thank you, universe!
I told Satanski that I’m a little grossed out by Spongebob Squarepants (due to that gross episode where he has the Suds), so of course he decided that all he wanted to do for the rest of the night was draw me various Spongebob-esque pictures. This only stopped when I told him that he couldn’t use any more sheets of paper until he’d used the backs of the sheets he’d already used. This is always the point at which he stops.
The real reason that I hate to receive email forwards is that the sentiments expressed therein are usually mawkish, wrong, obnoxious, or just not true. Forwards that fall in the first three categories are quickly archived, but for emails whose veracity is not immediately determined, I’m forced to do actual research. Don’t get me wrong; I enjoy research. It’s my job, after all. I just hate spending any more time thinking about the crap that people email me about. Today’s example was the Bristol Zoo Parking Attendant email. It’s such a good story, I couldn’t pass up the chance to find out whether it was true. And…it’s not.
The tiny part of my heart that is not shriveled up and black loves this wedding entrance so much. Makes me feel like I’m not such a freak for wanting to march out of the church to Jason Mraz’s “Butterfly,” which ends with joyous repetitions of the phrase “You’ve got it all, you’ve got it all, you’ve got it all.” Anyway, I know that I would love to attend a wedding like this, and as much as I might play it cool, I’d probably have a blast if I could be one of the dancers.
I understand that we’re in a recession, and people are cutting back on paying others to do what they can really do for themselves. Some have learned to cut their own hair; others have done their own nails or forgone artificial tans. Still, I think we can all agree that there are some things that you shouldn’t try to do for yourself; at some point you just have to admit that if you can’t afford it, it’s better just to wait. And tops on that list would have to be plastic surgery.
Let’s face it, no matter how much better you want to look, elective plastic surgery is not a necessity. It’s expensive, and requires many years of intensive training on cadavers and cadaverous trophy wives before one can really be said to master it. Why, then, did this woman try to perform her own plastic surgery? And then seem surprised when she effed up her face? How could this outcome not have seemed the likeliest to her? Of course, she then had to have an actual doctor perform several corrective surgeries to remove the liquid silicone that she’d injected into her face. Heckuva job, lady.
Of course, it would be remiss of me to rag on West Bend, Wisconsin and not even mention the big news in New Jersey today. A boatload of politicians and religious leaderswere arrested today on charges of corruption. One of those people is Hoboken’s mayor, Peter Cammarano. I’m not surprised that a mayor would get caught up in this; this is New Jersey, after all, and Secaucus mayor Dennis Elwell and Ridgefield mayor Anthony Suarez were also arrested (I linked to the Google caches, in case industrious city workers remember to yank these). No, what surprises me is that Cammarano has only been on the job since July 1. And he’s being accused of taking$25,000 in that time. So this man, if the charges are to be believed, has taken over $1,000 in bribes for every day that he’s been on the job. He should be happy the feds arrested him; how could he have possibly kept up that pace? Also, it might be good for him that this happened so quickly, before he could make more incredibly boneheaded statements. All in all, I’m pretty sure that this is not what Cammarano had in mind last night (his 32nd birthday!) as he poured beer for the opening night of Hoboken’s St. Ann’s festival.
I never tire of asking what is wrong with people, and as usual, the dawning of a new day just brings me new people to despise and pity. The culprits this time? Some stupid yahoos in West Bend, Wisconsin, who think that censorship, law suits, and book-burning (literally) are perfectly cromulent responses to books in the Young Adult section that they find inappropriate. No rational person is going to argue that every book in a library is appropriate for every person who who may walk into that library. And I’m all for parents having a say over what media their children consume (until those kids are over 18 or paying their own way in life). But instead of these people just telling their own children not to read certain books, which would be well within their rights as parents, they want to label and move books and prevent other people’s children from having access to them, too.
Instead of being ashamed of themselves for being so fearful and hiding their intolerance from the world, such people wear it proudly like a badge and want to get more people to join their crusade. Ginny Maziarka is one of the spokespeople for the efforts to censor the library’s materials and amend its policies for labeling young adult material. She seems to be the leader of those in West Bend who are trying to prevent other people’s children from reading things that their own parents may not find objectionable, and runs the West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries web site.
This is what I don’t get about so many issues that people object to; if you don’t like it, don’t do it/watch it/listen to it/eat it, etc. Why should I have to live according to what you believe? And who gets to say what is appropriate anyway? I mean, I find those Purity Ball things highly suspect, but I would never force grown men to stop encouraging their daughters to wear prom dresses, don pseudo-wedding bands, and pledge their virginity to their fathers. Because that’s not creepy at all.
Thankfully, Ms. Maziarka does not speak for the entire town, and there is a reasonable response to that site, in the form of Sleepless in West Bend. The library is for everybody (even weirdos)! There are a lot of things in the library that I kind of give people the side-eye for even wanting to look at, but that doesn’t lessen my support for those items to stay in the library. I’m not sure how I missed out on hearing about this sooner, since Gawker covered it over a month ago.
Note: In order to forestall any claims of Pepsi Blue-ness in this post, I will not link to anything.
I’m a sucker for marketing. I understand what advertising and commercials are for, and I actually try to limit my exposure to them, because they’re often so insidious, and I prefer to be completely aware of what I’m absorbing. Still, when I saw the ads for Pepsi Throwback, I was intrigued. Not because the low-budget kitschiness of the commercials, but because I’ve always wanted to drink soda that was sweetened with real sugar, instead of corn syrup. I have friends who can’t wait until Passover, because then they stock up on the Kosher for Passover Coke products that are sweetened with real sugar, and their descriptions of their joyful sodagasms have always made me a little jealous.
That being said, I just don’t get it. This Pepsi tastes to me almost exactly like regular corn-syrup Pepsi. If I hadn’t bought it myself, I wouldn’t even be convinced that this is a different product. It’s not bad, but it’s not amazing. I was kind of giving up soda before this, and this hasn’t really made me rethink my plan. What is good about this stuff, though, is that it is seemingly impossible to spill. I have a bad habit of upsetting my soda cans, and I’ve already knocked over two cans of this stuff, and even though both cans were at least a third full, only drops of soda spilled. Drops!!!! If for no reason other than this, this stuff should stick around forever, so that klutzes like me can enjoy soda like the normal people do.
Thursday was a friend’s birthday, and so last night I treated him to dinner and a movie. I told him that he could pick whatever movie he wanted to see, and I wouldn’t make any sort of jokes about it or be a bad sport at all, but despite having been given carte blanche, his first choice, 500 Days of Summer, was something that I would really have enjoyed seeing. Unfortunately, it isn’t playing anywhere in NJ, so he had to pick another movie. He said he wanted to see I Love You Beth Cooper, but that he couldn’t do that to me. Since I still don’t really have any idea what that is, I was sort of like, “Whatever, thanks,” but it really can’t be worse than some of the other movies he’s gotten me to see, such as Hot Rod. Two years later, and I still shudder when I think of that horrible excuse for a film.
He decided that he wanted to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I’ve never read the books, but I have seen the whole or parts of the previous movies in this series, and have have never really minded the experience. I wasn’t expecting much, but I quite enjoyed the movie. I haven’t seen the previous movies recently, but this was much, much better. The was believable teen-romance angst, and a level of violence that I had not anticipated at all. The only thing that kept bugging me was how easily Harry & Co. gave up searching for the identity of the Half-Blood Prince or the meaning of his name. I think that I am eventually going to read the books, so I’ll check to see if this part of the story plays out the same way in the novels. To revive an old tradition of mine, here’s an excerpt from a couple of reviews that most closely mirror my thoughts on this film.
The strangest thing about the new Harry Potter movie is not that it’s unusually good, which it is, but that it unequivocally illustrates just how poorly we’ve been served by the previous five instalments in the franchise. — Kevin Maher, The Times Online
Harry Potter is getting darker, angrier, distinctly more wicked. It has an edge. Scary Potter? — Gary Wolcott, Tri-City Herald
Amusing, Barack Obama, Government/Law, Horrible horrible people, Politics, United States Congress | Nicole | 
July 29, 2009 8:25 am | 
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