Points to ponder December 6, 2007 ~ 11:59 am
Posted by Julie in : Random Insanity , comments closedWhat the hell is this, exactly?
Is it a monkey? Is it a hedgehog? Is it a gnome? These are the things that keep me awake at night.
Christmas proposal November 15, 2007 ~ 10:58 am
Posted by Julie in : Random Insanity, Story Time , comments closedI love Christmas as much as the next person. I love decorating for it, buying gifts for other people (I get a real rush from finding the perfect gift for someone), making things for people…I’m still a big kid about it. Especially this year, which will be Samang’s first Christmas. (I went out and bought her a “Baby’s First Christmas” Winnie the Pooh ornament Monday night. She likes it very much and wishes she could eat it.) I can hardly wait to see the look on her face when she sees the Christmas decorations and lights.
However, like I said yesterday, this whole “put the decorations up the day after Halloween” thing is a bit much. Seeing the runners stream under the garlands on the streets during the NYC marathon? Just wrong. I like Christmas decorations, I enjoy how they brighten up gloomy winter days and give us something beautiful to break up the long dark nights. But I would like to propose something: how about next year we put up the lights the day after Thanksgiving, like we have always done up until now, but we leave them up an extra month to make up for not having them in November? I dunno about you, but January depresses me. No festive holidays to look forward to, just cold and darkness. I think January needs brightening up a whole lot more than November does. Because really, November has Thanksgiving. You might not go all out decorating for it unless you live in my neighborhood (we’re Irish, we decorate for everything), but you’ve got it to look forward to. I do not look forward to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in the same way. Perhaps because there’s no pumpkin pie.
Note: this late taking down of decorations has worked before. When I had a roommate and liked to annoy her in retaliation for all the shit she pulled on me, I left the decorations up until March one year. I simply told her that in my family we didn’t take the decorations down until Little Christmas. I then told her Little Christmas was in March. And she fell for it. Her gullibility led to a much brighter and happier winter for me, and her obsessive compulsive self had fits every time she walked into the house and saw our fake tree still up and lit. (I was going to say “everyone wins,” but really it was just me who was the winner. I’m okay with that.)
Coincidence? I think not. November 5, 2007 ~ 12:07 pm
Posted by Julie in : Da Cats, Random Insanity, Shorty , comments closedGame plan for today: relentlessly stalk the Blue Moon website to see when the new Raven series is launched, make a big hookin’ order with my 10% discount and the gift certificate Jordana’s mom got me for my birthday. This may or may not happen before I leave for the day, since I’m leaving early for Joe’s monthly bloodwork appointment at the vet’s. When we get home from that, there will be time enough to take a shower, change into my Polamalu jersey, and grab a beer before settling in front of the TV with my knitting to watch the Steelers-Ravens game. Hmmm…Raven series launched the day we play the Ravens. Coincidence? Probably about as much as there is between me taking the kitty to the doctor today and going to my own kitty doctor tomorrow. 
Bananas are HOT. October 23, 2007 ~ 10:45 am
Posted by Julie in : Coupledom, Random Insanity, Rick , comments closedThere are no pictures of Rhinebeck here today because…well, Rick and I went to our favorite Mexican place in the city and our friend Sergio is now head of waitstaff and made sure our margaritas were strong. And then he got us free shots of pineapple tequila. We love Sergio.
Conversation with Rick this morning about my matching yellow bra and unders (I never ever have matching undies. I basically make sure the that bra isn’t going to show through the shirt I’m wearing and grab whatever unders my hand meets first in the drawer.):
Rick: Wow, that’s nice! You look kinda like a banana. (Realizes that this is not, in fact, a compliment, and tries to rectify it.) You know…in my imagination.
Julie: That is so not sexy. That is perhaps the least sexy comparison I’ve ever heard. Bananas are not sexy.
Rick: Well, you look like a hot banana!
Yes, because that made it all better. I only wish I could blog the earnest look on his face as he said this, trying to make amends.
On bad lyrics October 4, 2007 ~ 10:21 am
Posted by Julie in : Random Insanity , comments closedI have many pet peeves, as you have no doubt noticed if you’ve been reading this blog for longer than say, five minutes. One of my big pet peeves pops up every day since I listen to the radio at work: crap lyrics. If you are going to write a song, I think you should make sure it has good lyrics. It’s the least you can do, because your fellow man is going to be singing these lyrics when the song makes the Top 40, and then the entire country will be subject to your stupidity. Unless you just wanted to see if you could get the entire country to sing along to a rubbish song you wrote in five minutes while seated on the toilet, scratching your ass. In that case, more power to you because you have just made the entire nation and possibly more than one nation (depending on the size of your hit) look like morons and that, my friends, is funny. (May I remind you that snark is my super power? It is.)
If, however, you really poured your heart into those lyrics and you still came up with crap, the kind of crap that would have gone nowhere if you didn’t have a kickass publicist and a huge record company backing you and you weren’t sleeping with someone from A&R? I hate you. I hate your song. I will curse you every time I am forced to listen to it. Even if I previously liked your band, I will shake my head ruefully every time I listen to the crap song and say something disparaging like “Oh, Journey.”
First example of piss-poor lyrics, Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page”: “Most times you can’t hear ‘em talk, other times you can.” Well, yes, Bob, those are the two options you have, hearing or not hearing. And when I first heard this song and was drunk off my ass, that was deep. But every time since, when I’ve been sober? I think “What the fuck, Bob? What the fuck were you on?” I now cannot stand this song as a direct result of this lyric.
Second example (and a fine example of me shaking my head and saying “Oh, Jon”), Bon Jovi’s “Bed of Roses”: “I wanna be just as close as the Holy Ghost is.” Do you know what that is? That’s called “reaching.” The Bob Seger Honorable Mention also goes to this song for the lyric “With an ironclad fist, I wake up and french kiss the morning.” WTF?
Third example, Def Leppard’s “Animal.” It pains me to mention this one, because I love this song. But at the same time, I always stumble over the lyrics because they make no sense. “And like the drivin’ rain, yeah, like the restless rust, I never sleep.” To that I reply, “Oh, Joe. The start of a good simile gone horribly, horribly wrong.”
I could go on and include every single song ever made by Britney Spears and any boy band ever (you know I’m right), but I’ll spare you. But if you feel so inclined, leave examples in the comments of lyrics that irk your taters.
Really? September 27, 2007 ~ 3:39 pm
Posted by Julie in : Random Insanity, Reviews , comments closedI just heard a promo for ER on the radio.
1.) ER is still on?
2.) How is that even possible?
3.) Didn’t everyone stop watching when George Clooney left, like I did?
4.) What the fuck season are they on? 80?
5.) Okay, who the hell let John Stamos be on this show? (Yeah, look at the very last entry under “Current” in the Main Cast section.)
Perhaps someone needs to play the role of Dr. Kevorkian and put this show out of its misery.
It’s not on the wrapper, but still… September 14, 2007 ~ 9:46 am
Posted by Julie in : Random Insanity , comments closedFun-sized candies are the DEVIL, people. I caved yesterday when I was in Rite-Aid and bought some, ostensibly for my office. (Well, the huge bag of fun-sized Swedish Fish and Sour Patch Kids were for them. The smaller bags of fun-sized Skittles and Twix are residing in my desk, because we all know my workmates are scavengers and would eat them in five seconds flat and then I would have no Skittles or Twix for me, and heads would roll.)
Fun-sized candies seem like a good idea when you pick them up. “Ooh, they’re small, I can have just a taste of the candy that I like and not totally blow my diet.” (We’re Americans. We’re all watching our weight, even if we say we’re not. Except for the people who don’t care and have gone over to the dark side with Ronald McDonald.) And then you have your taste of the candy you haven’t allowed yourself in a really long time, and all hell breaks loose. You might as well just tie the whole bag of fun-sized candies to your gaping maw, feedbag-style, because you can’t stop. Or maybe it’s just me. I mean, why else would I have eaten a bag of Skittles, one of Swedish Fish, one of Sour Patch Kids, and a Twix yesterday on top of the nuggets I had from Wendy’s for lunch, felt like utter crap last night because of it, and still be eating a fun-sized bag of Skittles as I type this. At 10:42 AM?
I think a key ingredient in fun-sized candies might be crack. Or at the very least? Weed.
A threat to national security. Or your sanity. September 13, 2007 ~ 9:40 am
Posted by Julie in : Random Insanity , comments closedLast night someone at my server decided my home PC was a threat, or malicious, or some such shit, and wouldn’t let me log in to blog. It also made me download some Google anti-spyware shit, since it seemed to feel that the free anti-spyware shit I already have let some stuff through and that I was virus-ridden or something. And then it kept telling me that it couldn’t update, although it clearly told me that it had, and that it wouldn’t run a scan until I had updated. And while I was willing to play along for a while, it was when the whole situation had eliminated my wine buzz and I was ready to throw the PC out the window that I turned the fucking thing off and walked away, post-less.
Which is a shame, because all I really wanted to say was that YouTube and merlot don’t mix, because then you end up watching this, or this, or this, or even this, shouting out the lyrics and wondering why hair bands went the way of the dinosaurs. And then you start jonesing for another episode of Rock of Love, and that’s when you realize you probably shouldn’t still know all the lyrics to Winger’s “Seventeen.” So you stop drinking and move along to watch normal shows on TiVo. Like How Clean Is Your House. *ahem*
Drunk YouTubing. I might actually have discovered something worse than drunk dialing.
Happy birthday, Freddie (not the cat)! September 5, 2007 ~ 9:34 am
Posted by Julie in : Random Insanity , comments closedHappy birthday to the first love of my life, a man that I named a cat after (and if you know anything about him, you know that would have pleased him to no end): Freddie Mercury. He would have been 61 today.
Check out today’s entry on Brian’s blog. I think that says it all.
And for a bit of fun, “Bohemian Rhapsody” with Legos. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll crave salsa.
Horrible TV watching habits August 21, 2007 ~ 12:01 pm
Posted by Julie in : Random Insanity , comments closedSomeday when Samang is old enough to work the TiVo when she comes to visit Auntie Julie, I am going to be in very big trouble. Yes, there are wholesome things on my TiVo. The Waltons, for example (ha, Retro! I outed myself! You have nothing to hold over my head!). Quite a few episodes of Little House on the Prairie. I enjoy those old family values shows. It’s nice to see good people doing alright, even without a lot of money, and bad people getting theirs. And hell, I can knit better than Laura Ingalls, from what I’ve seen. I am embarrassed to admit that I like these shows because they’re not “cool,” but what the hell.
Then there are the shows that are good, but not so good for kids. Like Rescue Me. I mean, my cousins and I were all listening to No Cure For Cancer when we were in middle school, and our parents were laughing right along with “I’m an Asshole,” but that doesn’t mean Samang’s parents would like their child exposed to Denis Leary humor. But I think I can put a block on that if I have to. And it’s got an innocuous enough name that I can dodge the bullet if she reads it.
The question that I’m dreading is when Samang is old enough to read through the TiVo List and ask “Auntie Julie? What’s Gene Simmons’ Family Jewels? And America’s Next Top Model? And Rock of Love?” Especially that last one. Because if I have to explain why I am so into watching sluts compete over the lead singer of Poison, I’m screwed. I have no idea why it’s so entertaining to watch women have to change into slut clothes in a portapotty to win a date with Bret. It just is. And yes, it is demeaning to women, but those women put themselves in that position. And that would lead us down a whole ‘nother path.
Maybe we should just make TiVo watching off-limits at Auntie Julie’s house. We’ll watch videos instead.
