Important reading here, as Michael Yon reports from the front.

Thanks, Zelda!

In between cleaning jags, I flipped the idiot box on a couple times Saturday, and it was hard to get away from the "We are the Gored" stravaganza musicales. By that I mean it was on quite a few channels. Funny thing is how many (I'm guessing) invited rock acts were very vocal about their opposition to such an event, pointedly declining to appear onstage.

Anyway, when I flipped on the telly, Sundance channel was broadcasting the show, and there was some rap-critter running around on stage singing about a Gold-digga, and meanwhile, the half-full front seats of the place were populated by pasty middle-aged looking white guys, trying to look hip and clap along, like they'd ever heard that shit in their life, let alone WANTED to hear it then.

When I was in Jr. High band, our evil, sadistic director, Rico Belotti, would make us sell candy, the proceeds of which would in some way benefit the kids in high school, and not us. Anyway, the high school kids advised us to fluff the bag before we knocked on a door, and make it look like more candy. Well, I think concert organizers fluffed the bag and made folks spread out. Or maybe it was like when you're taking the red-eye from New York to London and you luck out and the 747 is not full *SCORE!* so you get to stretch out on a long row which you have to yourself. Or something like that.

Basically, it was the anti-Glastonbury/anti-Coachella. All the cool kids aren't doing it. I'll tell you what would have packed out those stadia, though - if they said they were auditioning for American/Canadian/Brazilian/Latvian/Botswanan Idol - they woulda been beating them back with sticks. And then some.

Well, actually, I won't bother digging around for details, but I'm waiting for the MSM to be as cruel and derisive to Al Gore's son as they were to Rush Limbaugh when his little drug issue was made public. Seems to me there's a lot more sympathy, this go-round.

I think Rush Limbaugh is a brilliant entertainer. I admit he occasionally says things that make me cringe, but I find him extremely like-able (if that's a word?). I thought the cruelty with which his prescription drug addiction was treated was immaculately bull-shitty. Especially considering all the sympathetic hand-wringing that accompanied the deaths of people like a couple drug addicts like Chris Farley, John Belushi, um, pretty much any old dirtbag can get a sympathetic nod from the MSM, but not Rush.

Double standard. And the MSM wonder why we dig around the web for our own news these days. They are so obviously biased and therefore not credible. Hypocrites.

Now, if Rush had been injecting meth into his eyeball, listening to audio books by Michael Moore while speeding in a Prius with a Donkey bumper sticker, he'd a been alright in their book.

Meh. Have a great weekend. I will.

From the "I'm not worthy!" files, I just found out today that I'm linked over on the site of one of my favorite bead makers, Aardvark Art Glass. They make some seriously wild beads that are unlike any others I've seen.

Here's a great example - this bead is "drunk sun" and the bead has a liquor bottle in his back pocket. You can buy this fabulous bead here at ebay. Good stuff.

You can also look on in astonishment at their other beads on auction at this link. Enjoy!

Boeing 777 landing in heavy crosswind at Kai Tek, Hong Kong.

Wait for it, it's really cool.

My dear friend Kim over at Something to Say tagged me for 7 random facts ...

1. I went to court reporting school briefly after high school.
2. I'm a night owl, and could happily sleep most of the day every day.
3. I have a green thumb but rarely have time for gardening, so my style with planting is sorta rev-it-up-and-go.
4. I've never seen an episode of Friends, and the very idea of that show makes my skin crawl.
5. No cavities - never had 'em, (hopefully) never will.
6. I don't like my sheets tucked in on the end of the bed, and I can't sleep with my feet covered, mostly.
7. I hate new country music, but I love classic country and Western Swing.

Hmmm, let's see... I'm sposta tag someone, but I generally hate tagging folks. Tell you what: if you want to answer this meme, consider yourself tagged!

LONG MAY SHE WAVE.

We bought our house late June '04, and immediately after, husband went to Virginia to visit close friends from college, and it's sort of turned into a tradition that he's always gone during this holiday. I noticed yesterday that every year since then, I've spent the evening of July 3 by myself in the pool, watching a nearby fireworks display. Well, not this year.

I called up Kelly and begged she & Big Dick to meet me at Texas de Brazil. They finally caved in to my pitiful plea and we arranged a time to meet.

Now let me chase a rabbit for a second: my hair is naturally curly, but I generally wear it straight. I figure if we can put a man on the moon, someone can make a product to give me straight hair, dammit. However, with all this rain, lately, I've been drying my hair straight, but it ends up just sucking up moisture and curling up, anyway. Yesterday, I decided to-heck-with-it and fixed it curly intentionally. Big mistake. Huge. I'm not one to spend much time looking in the mirror. My policy is I take a few minutes to be-cuten myself in the morning, and that shit should hold all day, right? because I'm just enhancing my natural beauty, right? SO... not having looked in a mirror all day, I was just about to leave my house to meet K&D and I did a quick look and my hair was ENORMOUS. Like it had exploded, seriously. I was mortified. It was like Carrottop huge. Roseanne Roseanna Danna huge. I called Kelly and asked her to tell Dick in advance that my hair is not normally that big. She laughed and passed along the info.

We had a blast. What happens at a Brazilian steak house is that first you hit the "salad" bar, which is in no way a typical salad bar. They have all kinds of nice cheeses, lobster bisque, hearts of palm, salmon, sushi, tabouli, roasted peppers - lots of good stuff. Then when you are ready for steak or whatever, Brazlian guys in gauchos bring giant skewers of meat to the table, and you ask for whatever you want. The meat pieces are smaller than serving size, so you can try a lot of different things.

Dick kept laughing about the whole thing, saying it was a great concept, that they figured out a way to charge so much for serving only so much food. When he was finished, the waiter came by and asked if he'd like a fresh plate. Dick said "no, I'm finished." The waiter seemed incredulous, and said surely he meant to eat more. Dick said "no, I can't eat that much. See, I used to weigh 400 pounds, but I had that surgery a couple years ago." Incredulous, the waiter sort of sputtered "but you look so, you don't look like..." Just getting into gear, Dick said "yeah, you wanna see the scar?" as he reached for the bottom of his shirt, and the waiter said "no! no! no! It's ok, I just-- it's just, you don't look like someone..." The poor guy seemed in a daze.

Let me tell you why that is SO funny. Dick is probably taller than the average guy, and he looks quite fit, and obviously always has been. He looks muscular and capable, and he has that easy, relaxed air of a man who knows pretty much no one can kick his ass. He's like my dad that way, someone with real presence. This is something other men notice and respect about a man, in the same way women notice what the others are wearing. So, obviously, Dick couldn't weigh 400 pounds if he tried.

I feel like I've touched the hem of the garment of greatness in leg-pulling.

Kelly is lovely and incredibly smart and witty, and she can keep apace with Dick in that department, I suspect, though I've not seen her in action. You can see a post about this very kind of whoppering on June 16 over at Kelly's blog. They were in Lowes and buying a washing machine. Dick said it was for their grown son and Kelly played along and the sales guy was gasping and freaking out, because Kelly looks like she couldn't have a grown son. Kelly has that adorable Philly accent, too, and kind of a soft voice, so it makes her seem even more incongruous with the very easy-to-hear Dick. Nutty business. If you ever get a chance to meet them, don't miss it!

Anyway, the whole thing was a hoot, and I had the best July 3 in yonks. Thanks, y'all!

For the distinguished gentleman who has almost everything, may we suggest a taxidermy flying monkey?:

You can see this and more delights at the wickedly delicious Custom Creature Taxidermy Arts site. Incredible stuff. I think I'm going to get a taxidermied squirrel head, actually. I just LUV decoratin'!

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Oh, snap! Cell phone calls failed to trigger car bombs - could this be the result of the dumbing down of terrorism? It's nice to think their leaders are as prone to hubris as the next bunch of elected asshattery/divine rulers/maroons.

Hopefully they'll outdo themselves with even greater feats of boobery and butter-fingered-ness. Or maybe we've managed to kill or nab a bunch of their real proficients at this. That's a hell of a learning curve on getting your suicide device to deploy.

Well, I'm all for tit-for-tat. I think anyone caught failing at a suicide bombing should be hastily helped on his way, and as Dick has suggested, I'd be ok with sending them out covered in pig blood. But that's just me.

Well, me and Dick.
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I don't know where it is now, but this weekend I saw a news story that there was a 600 yard tunnel from Mexico to the US across the border from one house to another. This reminds me of that scene from Absolutely Fabulous:

Edina: What you two don't seem to realize is that inside of me, inside of me, there is a thin person just screaming to get out.
Gran: Just the one, dear?

The only thing surprising to me about this is the idea that anyone is surprised. I mean, there must be many, many of these things, don't you think? Now, I'm not saying I think half of El Paso is going to collapse into a series of honeycombed sub-terranean chambers like a soufflé in a stampede, but, sheesh! It just seems so obvious to me.

But maybe I've just not been getting enough sleep.

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Have a safe trip, Holly & DB. Call me when you get back!

I've been planning to start going to see art house films more often, and Sunday night I finally managed to do so.

I saw La Vie en Rose which is a Cliff Notes sort of version of the life of Edith Piaf. Piaf was no great beauty, but she looked passably pretty when she was younger. Makeup for this film had rather a tough row to hoe with the surpassingly lovely Marion Cotillard as Piaf. Her facial expressions were spot-on, and it was heart-breaking how you could see in her eyes how desperately she clung to her rare and pitiful scraps of happiness, never fully believing her luck had changed.

Of course, as with any biopic, no doubt liberties were taken with the story. I certainly hope her life wasn't that tragic. I blubbered (ok, not boo-hooed, but streaming tears) in about 5 places in the film. After her final note of "Non, rien de rien" (I regret nothing) the film went black and silent, and a woman a couple rows back blew a kleenex with a honk that was remarkably kazoo-like. This broke the tension and everyone laughed. That was acutally quite nice, although I'm sure the woman will never overcome the shame of it all.

Stunning film.
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Yeah, I'm loving me some you-tube.

Oh, THAT's why we always thought Eva Gabor was classier than Zsa Zsa:

Yesterday I was in Waxahachie visiting my boss and her lovely parents. Waxahachie is about 20 or so miles south of Dallas, but it feels liked you've gotten more away from the city than that, in some ways. They live south of town. My boss rides dressage and has a couple horses on her land and I got to take some horsey photos, including a good naso-centric shot. I got nipped by a wiener dog. They're little tyrants, aren't they?


One of the coolest things about Waxahachie is an odd art gallery called Webb Gallery. They sometimes have art openings and they have lots of primitive and naive art, like prison art, folk art, and the like. They have lots of old authentic carnival sideshow banners, silk banners and hangings from Elks lodges and places like that. They will be having a big art opening on a Sunday afternoon in late July, with live music and whatnot. I'll let y'all know when that is coming up. Their openings are always fun, and you'd be amazed what a mixed crowd they get.


When I went in yesterday, I was greeted at the front door by this unfortunate two-headed calf. (calves? I dunno) They had at some point acquired and sold a collection of taxidermied two-headed critters. Alas, I was too late to purchase the two-headed baby chicken, as it had a hand-written "sold" note taped on the wall beside it. The baby chick stood, wings out, with an almost surprised look on its face. That is to say, if chickens can look surprised, well, this chick/chicks looked suprised.

$5325! I think I'll set up that personal pension plan tomorrow, then perhaps a little shopping...

$5325.00The Cadaver Calculator - Find out how much your body is worth

Mingle² - Online Dating

Goody.

I just finished an online course I have to complete before the r. e. officials will turn me loose on an unsuspecting public. They told me this online course would take about 30 minutes. I'm pretty fast at that sort of thing, and I clocked exactly 1.5 hours. Still, I'm glad it's done. Huzzah.

I checked into ordering my own custom floaty pen as a promotional thing to give to people who come to open houses, etc. I've got an incredible little design in mind, so I talked to the contacts for Eskesen, the Danish company that has been making floaties for the past 70 years. I collect floaties and I was pre-ordained from birth to have a series of my very own floaties. I'm ready to fulfill my floaty destiny.

You know how you pay about $3 for a floaty in a tourist-trap place? Well, not including the artwork, for me to have custom floaties done, I have to order 500 of them, and they'll come in at $3.15 each. I thought it was curious that buying in bulk didn't net me some kind of break, but oh well. I did order a small promotional item with another vendor, and he's going to try to contact Eskesen for me and see if he can't wrangle me a better deal. The bottom line is that I'll pay whatever I have to. Needs must.

Since I'm respectful of what my new office-mates might think, I did nix the idea of having a trailer home in the center of the foreground, and on the left side, a garden gnome would slide from far left to behind the trailer, and out the other side would emerge a strutting flock of flamingos. Alas. Maybe for my next floaty once I've already earned the respect of my colleagues. *sigh*

It would also be funny to have a hausfrau with a rolling pin - mid-run - slide behind the trailer and a running man sliding out the other side, him in boxer shorts, a wife-beater, dress socks and wrong shoes. *fun*

Oh, what? I'm supposed to be selling houses. Oops.