Nice handbasket we’re in, isn’t it? September 24, 2008 ~ 8:12 pm
Posted by Julie in : Politically Incorrect , comments closedSo the country is edging down the bumpy road to hell (those good intentions are murder on the suspension) and we’re staring down a possible Great Depression that could start as soon as Monday, according to John McCain. Since my birthday is Tuesday, I think John is trying to get me a birthday present, but dude? I’d much rather have an iTunes gift card or a pair of Dansko Stapled Clogs. A Depression is just too much excitement for me. I’m gonna be 31, I don’t think I can take that kind of excitement.
Ooh, but one good present that John McCain and Sarah Palin are giving me? This whole flip-flopping thing! You guys, the fact that you can’t get your stories straight on anything, and you’re trying to cause a panic with my birthday present are making my boy Barack look like a rockstar! “We shouldn’t have a debate, we should work on getting this whole crisis figured out!” McCain squeals like a little girl. And then Barack comes in and says calmly “Oh, I think we can do that and still have a debate. Because I can walk and chew gum at the same time, and also solve the country’s problems,” like President Bartlett on West Wing. That’s what I’m talking about. Poll bounce, my real birthday present.
Speaking of, my mom got me a very nice birthday present. She got Steelers tickets for Monday night for us. That’s right, people, when you tune in for Monday Night Football, Steelers vs. Ravens, I will be there. This means we are leaving for Pittsburgh on Friday and blog posting may be sporadic. Much like it is now anyways because I am lazy and playing Molehill Empire instead of writing. Oh, wait, I meant because I am thinking deep thoughts about the upcoming Great Depression. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
ETA: This. Letterman’s rants about McCain suspending his campaign over the economy. I love Dave. (YouTube might pull it, not sure how the Late Show advances got out.)
It be International Talk Like a Pirate Day September 19, 2008 ~ 2:31 pm
Posted by Julie in : Random Insanity , comments closedAnd in honor of ITLAPD, I ask ye to wave yer cutlasses in the air and shout “Arrrrrrr!” or it be the cat o’nine for the likes of ye scurvy dogs. And no rum, neither.
ITLAPD is more popular than a hangin’ this year. On Plurk, me mateys be changin’ their user names to *pirate* names for the day. Me pirate name be Bootstrap Julz, because the damnable system wouldn’t let me use “Dread Pirate Evil Julie.” Too many characters or suchlike nonsense.
On Ravelry, our undead-codemonkey Casey made it so if you posted in a thread with “pirate” in the title, yer words would be instantly translated into pirate-speak. By Davy Jones’s locker, a good idea. And if ye had a Ravatar with “pirate” in the filename, ye got a parrot for it. Here be mine:
Parrots don’t taste like rum, mates. But when the rum is gone, ye get desperate.
I leave ye with the best responses I’ve gotten to ITLAPD via text:
Rick: “Arrr, gimme yer booty.”
Jordana: “The wee one and I are in Maryland, lookin’ ta storm the Kennedy Center.”
Mom: “Are you f’in kidding me?”
(I come by me ability to talk like a sailor naturally, if not me ability to talk like a pirate.) Drink up, me hearties, and to celebrate ITLAPD, might ye consider stoppin’ by Savvy Brooklyn and pickin’ up a bauble fer yerself or yer second-in-command?
Chrysalis September 11, 2008 ~ 8:02 am
Posted by Julie in : About a Julz, Deep Thoughts, In Da Hood , comments closedSeven is a mythical number in the world, and seven years is an almost mythical amount of time. In the Bible, Joseph forsaw seven years of bumper crops followed by seven years of famine for Egypt. There’s seven years bad luck if you break a mirror. You supposedly get a seven year itch after enough time with one person (hmmm…I’ll think about that next year).
Seven years ago today, I did a lot of growing up in a hurry. When I woke up, I was almost 24 and relatively carefree. My coursework for my MFA was over, I was about to give up my part-time job at Some College to be a temp in the city so I could focus on dramaturgy, and all I was thinking about on my commute in to work on September 11, 2001 was how blue the sky was and how good the music on my CD player sounded. The next hours changed my life forever. I tried desperately to find out where my friends were, since such a large number of them were in and around the WTC that day. Eventually I learned that they were all safe, a miracle that even today blows my mind. That we all made it through, with only varying amounts of mental scarring depending upon where we were and what we saw/heard/felt…we were very lucky although at times over the years it hasn’t always felt like that. I was emotionally numb for days, weeks, months. The temp jobs in the city dried up, and I took my current full-time job at Some College to pay the bills. I think my artistic career has been one of the casualties of 9/11 as surely as anything else: although I do get to work as a dramaturg in fits and starts, having a 9-5 job means that I don’t get to work on shows that rehearse during those hours. 9/11 did not kill my artistic life, but it stunted it and redirected it greatly, and it’s taking a lot of work, thought, and planning to get it back to where I feel it should be (not there yet).
September 11, 2001 also put my friends and I on the path to what I call our “wild year,” the year where five of us were out drinking almost every night of the week, curled up in one dive bar or another, and sleeping on each others’ couches before running off to work the next morning. There was so much hurt to get through, so many things that we wanted to say but discovered we weren’t ready to talk about, but kept trying to get out anyway…and we were no different from anyone else. Young New York had its very own Lost Generation that year, and as we looked at the tables around us we saw faces so similar to our own trying to find an escape or at the very least some peace through laughter, alcohol, and nicotine. Eleven months after 9/11, I started dating Rick and started to emerge from that hard shell I had put up to protect myself from the hurt. Seven years after 9/11, I think I’m down to the last few layers. And what have I turned into because of this? I still have no idea.
So today, for those of you in the rest of the country and the rest of the planet: know that the living victims of 9/11, which I believe includes everyone who had their hometown or place of work hit by a plane on that beautiful day seven years ago, even those who didn’t lose anyone in the blasts…just know that we’re making it through the other side. And thank you for all of your thoughts for us over the years.
We’ll keep her September 7, 2008 ~ 10:07 am
Posted by Julie in : Shorty, The Girls , comments closedSamang has become quite the little clean machine. Yesterday when she was at my house, she spilled juice down her front by accident, then went over to the tea towels hanging off the front of the oven, pulled one off, and mopped herself up! And when I jokingly said “What about your mouth?” she wiped her face with it as well. And then she started on the floor. If she is this much of a neat freak at 14 months, I’m figuring we can really put her to work by 2 1/2. I look forward to a time when we can just let her get her clean on and occasionally ask her to bring us beer from the fridge. That’s why people have kids, isn’t it? 
5 September September 5, 2008 ~ 10:38 am
Posted by Julie in : Deep Thoughts , comments closedWe all know I don’t let this date pass without some commemoration. Today would have been Freddie Mercury’s 62nd birthday - happy birthday, Freddie. Still miss you terribly, but I trust you’re throwing one hell of a party in the afterlife and that makes me smile.
Jon Stewart will save me from the blog tumbleweeds! September 4, 2008 ~ 2:02 pm
Posted by Julie in : Politically Incorrect , comments closedI have many thoughts on the whole Sarah Palin thing/debacle/trainwreck/whatever. But Jon Stewart just sums them up so nicely for me (thanks for the link, ESC):
