It’s been a long, hot summer — the longest, hottest summer I can remember. Thankfully, it is coming to an end. One of the few memories I have of this summer is reading a relentless stream of Facebook status updates telling me how much fun my friends are having. Am I the only one who isn’t having an amazing summer, or am I the only one who isn’t lying? [Read more →]
“Sarah Palin, the smartest woman in America? With all due respect, I must refudiate.”
Refudiate away. Name her countless verbal transgressions, cite her taunting vacuum of legitimate political and legal knowledge, snort at her so-called feminist identity. I won’t deny you. I’m right there with you. Sarah Palin has never struck me as a genius. In fact, I’ve always gotten the impression she’s the type who’s unable to read without moving her lips. [Read more →]
GE has terrible customer service.
In April, less than three months ago, we bought a new washing machine, one of those new ones that don’t require an agitator. The clothes get clean through some magical process of water shooting really hard or pixie dust. It’s a top-loading machine with lights and a computerized control panel. Not top of the line or crazy expensive, but not cheap by any means, and only three months old. [Read more →]
There’s one man who possesses all the skills and experience to get the BP spill under control. Love him or hate him, Dick Cheney is the man. He’s steered an oil services company (Halliburton). He’s been Secretary of Defense, proving he knows how to manage huge endeavors such as Operation Desert Storm. And he takes a heart attack the way the rest of us knock back a shot of Jack Daniel’s, with a wince and a smile.
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“He was supposed to be competent,” declared no lesser a luminary than Peggy Noonan last week. Welcome to the party, sister.
More appropriately, a brief overview of the current Oval Office occupant’s record reveals a staggering inability to rise to the level of presidential performance. [Read more →]
Abby Sunderland, the sixteen year old who was feared lost at sea, is safe. Sunderland had been attempting to become the youngest person to sail solo around the world when her boat went missing on Thursday. After an agonizing stretch of twenty hours with no contact from the teen, a search plane spotted her boat and confirmed her safety. Sunderland will abandon her voyage and return home to California. This is truly wonderful news. And now that we’ve all breathed a huge sigh of relief, I have one question: Why the hell was a child allowed to sail around the world by herself? [Read more →]
There are two trees — one on my front lawn and one in my backyard — that insist on dropping spiked gumballs all over the place. The spiked balls start out green in the summer and after dropping turn brown and hard. Many of them stay in the trees through the fall and turn brown there, and then, in the winter when it snows or rains hard, they start to fall. In the spring as new leaves grow in, some of the spiked balls fall and the trees wait until the older spiked balls have been cleaned up before letting others fall. The trees are mean like that. [Read more →]
Another Earth Day has come and gone. As I sit here reflecting on this day, the fortieth anniversary of the first Earth day in 1970, I think about my carbon footprint. My windows are closed and my ceiling fans are on full blast. My clothes are tossing in the dryer. I just took out the trash, full of my child’s disposable diapers and maybe some plastic bottles that I “accidentally” dropped in the can. I used paper towels to wipe off the kitchen counters. And now I am watching television as I type this, which is to say that I am not watching television, but have it on as energy-wasting background noise. [Read more →]
Driving to Philadelphia isn’t particularly difficult. I’ve done it before with little trouble, receiving only a handful of horns and expletives for my efforts. Why I chose to opt for Greyhound last weekend is still unclear. Maybe I felt lazy. Maybe I thought I’d save gas money. Maybe I just lost my damn mind.
Yeah. The last one. [Read more →]
Today, kids, we’re going to talk about the pregnant clusterfuck that is the Internet.
It used to be that buying concert tickets was part of a larger experience that began with the release of a new album and ended in the parking lot of a smoke-filled arena.
The experience, for all intents and purposes, began and ended in a parking lot. [Read more →]
A transgender student has been suspended from school in Fulton, Mississippi. I grew up in Queens, a big part of an even bigger city, and if a transgender teen came into my public high school in the late ’80s, people would have definitely turned to stare. Some would have wondered what that freaky kid was doing. Some would have made fun of him. Some might have threatened him (but more likely, they would have just been threatened by him). But certainly someone in the school would have accepted him. It probably wouldn’t have been the guys on the football team — but no one went to their games anyway. [Read more →]
It’s been a while since I’ve had time to write. I finally got a new job and being busy is a welcomed burden. When thinking about what I wanted to share with my friends who read WFTC, the unfolding of spring flowers and budding trees quickly lured me. I penned some flowery — all pun intended — prose about time change and season change and blah, blah, blah. I almost sounded bright-eyed and dreamy.
Thank God for cousins, co-workers, ice skates, and babies. I want to talk about parenting. [Read more →]
Dear Friend … I am writing to you as a reliable and trustworthy person who has received many, MANY pleas to secure million-of-dollars in found money, at the e-mail request of someone in a foreign land, and unusual circumstances.
Two of my favorite things in the world are fine food and game shows. There is nothing I enjoy more than curling up on the Victorian settee to watch the latest episodes of “Jeopardy!” and “The Price is Right” while eating foie gras-stuffed quail with asparagus and drinking port wine. The extreme pleasure of consuming great food combined with the excitement of a thrilling game show causes the cares of the world to just drift away.
Given my love of food and of game shows, the appearance of the NBC program, Minute to Win it, should be cause for celebration. After all, it is a game show, and it is hosted by a popular figure from the Food Network.
You might think that one such as I would enjoy the Food Network. You might think that, but do not say it out loud, because if I hear you, I will remove my gauntlet and slap you across the face. [Read more →]
The president’s health care initiative has been stalled by politics as usual and partisan rancor. This is a great tragedy, not only because people are literally dying in the streets from lack of access to government-run health care, but because it also gives the impression that Americans are “ungovernable.” Despite what you might have read in Newsweek, it’s only some Americans that are “ungovernable.” I, for one, want to be governed in the worst way; which is why I have so much faith in our current leaders. To that end, I’ve come up with a plan to help the president jump-start what is becoming a stalled presidency: appointing a bunch of new czars. Czars are great, since they don’t require congressional approval and can therefore get started doing the people’s work right away. They can also do pretty much whatever they want, because they don’t have to worry about being accountable to those “ungovernable” American citizens, like my neighbor who shall remain nameless. The president hasn’t yet taken full advantage of his power to appoint czars, so below is just a small sample of the czars I’d like to see him appoint, to bypass all the partisan gamesmanship and really get to work helping us:
Hollywood is not fair. Anyone who tells you that Hollywood is like a giant engine and the fuel is ideas, and the best ideas are like premium gasoline and if you have a great idea you can charge $3.45 a gallon is lying to you. I know he’s lying to you on account of I’ve seen Hollywood’s dark, rotting underbelly. I’ve seen it, and it’s just revolting.
Maybe you’ve heard about that scandalous Republican PowerPoint presentation delivered by Finance Director Rob Bickhart. According to Politico, the presentation breaks donors into two categories:
The small donors who are the targets of direct marketing are described under the heading “Visceral Giving.” Their motivations are listed as “fear;” “Extreme negative feelings toward existing Administration;” and “Reactionary.”
Major donors, by contrast, are treated in a column headed “Calculated Giving.” Their motivations include: “Peer to Peer Pressure”; “access”; and “Ego-Driven.”
The PowerPoint includes caricatures of Democratic leaders as the Joker and Scoobie-Doo. Of course, cable news has gone bananas, and Republican Chairman Michael Steele has repudiated the material.
But should he? I rise in Bickhart’s defense.
In a fortnight I move to an undistinguished town in the middle of Germany, to bring enlightenment and English to the uncouth. I’ve been looking at accommodation websites, sifting through the weirdness for acceptable digs. The real difficulty isn’t the flat, it’s the people. Terrible flatmates are an affliction and a curse. I particularly detest slobs. [Read more →]
God help me, I love figure skating, especially the men’s competition. You can keep the girls — if I wanted to watch a bunch of under-fed 14 year olds twirl around to Tchaikovsky, I’d crash a suburban ballet recital. The men have…well, they have balls. Know what else I love? My country, so I was thrilled to death last week that the gold medal in men’s figure skating went to America’s own Evan Lysacek, a.k.a. the new Love of my Life (suck it, Michael Phelps). I felt ecstatic, emotional, elated…and then absolutely infuriated when Evgeny Plushenko, who won the silver, started shooting off his mouth and claiming that the gold is rightfully his. Are we going to stand for this, America? [Read more →]
To anyone who stumbles self-consciously through voice messaging: relax, voicemail is dying along with the home landline. To everyone else: let’s not prolong its suffering. [Read more →]
Is George Orwell’s1984 the most influential novel ever written? That’s what Geoffrey Wheatcroft says in a recent essay in the New York Times:
No other [novel] can have so enriched the language. Try a Web search for countless contemporary uses of Newspeak, the thought police or doublethink - the expressions, that is: a glance at the political pages or op-ed columns provides plenty of examples of what those brilliant coinings describe.
My, with all this “coining” and “enrichment,” Orwell is practically the Royal Mint. Maybe Orwell’s words are still in circulation but are his ideas really in good condition?
Recently my part of the world experienced something rare — two blizzards within a week that added up to a lot of damn snow. Lest I get mocked by those living in Minnesota or upstate New York, understand this: I live in the city, where a lot of people share a small amount of coveted space. We normally have a fair amount of tolerance for one another, having learned to peacefully coexist and respect the unwritten rules of the neighborhood. Following the snow, however, all social conventions got lost in a snowdrift. The first blizzard brought out the ugly side, and the second blizzard invoked a new level of lunacy among my neighbors. I started to ask myself “Just who are these people in my neighborhood? And do I really want to meet them each day?” [Read more →]
Kids should be shot. Measles/mumps/rubella (MMR) vaccine does not cause a reaction in children’s bowels that causes autism. What? Bowels? Somebody believed that? Somewhere Jenny McCarthy stamps her little foot and tosses her blond hair, and yet is still not a doctor.
Feel like a chump nowadays? Mark Morford’s disappointment is better than yours:
My God, did you hear that pathetic State of the Union? That guy, that President Obama? Disappointing times a thousand, am I right? What the hell happened to him? Why is he so weak and ineffectual? Why the hell can’t he step up and fix the entire planet in under 400 days like he promised he would, in my dreams and fantasies and impossible liberal grass-fed organic tofu greengasms? Doesn’t he know I put a goddamn bumper sticker on my Subaru for him? I’ve never done that for anyone. Bastard.
Heartbreaking.
I usually try to stay away from populism. Having lived around cows for much of my life, I know, vividly, exactly what herd behavior is, and how much we don’t want it in human society. But the Speaker of the House, Ms. Nancy Pelosi (D), has earned a good dose of populist rage, and I think we should give it to her.
Recently, President Obama signed an Executive Order immunizing the five-person Interpol office in New York City from a handful of federal laws.
Gadzooks!
I’ve been waiting months for Public Enemies to come out on DVD.
Reason number one: I love Johnny Depp.
Reason number 2: I love guns.
The movie was just OK, as I expected from the mixed reviews I’d read. The plot was a little anticlimactic, and the love story lacked the romance novel passion I had hoped for. But the guns, both Johnny Depp’s flesh ones, and the black, shiny, metallic ones, were all I could have hoped for and more.
And it got me thinking about parallel circumstances. [Read more →]
(N.B.: Tongue is firmly planted in cheek throughout. Expect offense in response to one of the more offensive decades in recent memory.)
It’s that time of the decade again. The toll of tonight’s midnight church bells or the image of that big-ass crystal ball slowly descending into the madness of Times Square will signal that we’ve let another decade slip away. The…um…“naughts” have been a decade like no other, so I’d like to take an opportunity to honor this decade in what seems the only way possible: with an egocentric list.
It’s nearly the end of the year, and you know what that means: lists. And ferret-wrestling matches, though I don’t want to get into that now. No, the end of the year is a time when we look back, and compile lists of things. And happenings. And celebrity deaths. Usually ordered backwards, though in the case of the famous the lists are usually ordered by cultural importance or the number of original teeth the celebrity had at their death.
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The following 10 words and phrases can be added to the previous list of 10. Both lists can be printed out, kept in wallets and purses, taped to the bathroom mirror, and given away as gifts. I like all of my friends and family and would hate to lose anyone. [Read more →]
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