LaBlonde's Weekend TV Recap

With the untimely death of my laptop, I've been forced to more traditional methods of entertaining myself. Basically, I spent all day Sunday rotting in front of the TV. Even with my crappy cable, I was in complete boob-tube nirvana for about 8 hours.

CSPAN: Even before my cable situation turned to shite, I loved me some CSPAN. This weekend was mainly reruns of the Bolton confirmation hearings, and they were riveting. My favorite part was when the distinguished Sen. John Kerry was doing the questioning, and he was all, like, "how are you gonna negotiate with North Korea if Russia and China won't agree to the plan?" and Bolton was all, like, "Oh yeah they did agree to the plan" and Kerry was like "WTF, dude, I've got the papers in front of me, and they totally didn't!" and Bolton was like, "well, they showed up to the meeting, and that's pretty much like signing on to the plan". After a while, Kerry just stopped asking questions and just sighed heavily and rolled his eyes whenever Bolton said anything. Except when Bolton equated North Korea's walking out of the talks as equivalent to the imposition of sanctions, and you could see Kerry wishing that he had superpowers so he could be all, like "Kerry SMASH", and kill Bolton, and then it's like, hey - problem solved. The second most entertaining moment was when Sen. Dick Lugar (from the Hoosier state!) was directing the proceedings, and they kept getting interrupted by protestors. Apparently, someone is an even bigger geek than me, because it's on YouTube. Big time fun, I promise.

Click here for protest madness!

SOME ALL-INFOMERICAL CHANNEL: Did you know that the average person is carrying 20-40 pounds of unpassed feces in their gut? I didn't, until some dude on this infomercial told me! Jesus H. Christ! I try to be rational about these things, but this guy was saying that you should have 3 bowel movements a day, and if you don't, all that unpassed crap just sits in your colon and turns to cement. PLUS he had pictures of all these nasty black tube things that people had passed after their colon cleansing. I admit it - I ran to my bathroom mirror and looked at my stomach, trying to figure out exactly how many pounds of poo were keeping me from perfect health and vitality. This morning, I went to the Straight Dope, hoping that Uncle Cecil would protect me from from the charlatans and snake-oil salesmen, if, in fact, I was being lied to. BUT, while he doesn't say that colon cleansing is a good thing, he doesn't exactly say it hurts, either. Needless to say, I will be carefully monitoring this situation.

DISCOVERY CHANNEL:I really like Mike Rowe, the host of 'Dirty Jobs'. This is "Shark Week", and he was hanging out with a couple of South African grad students. This is a pretty good depiction of what science is like - messy, often discouraging, but fun, too. This is not what science is like. Apparently, Mr. Santorum feels that all scientists go to work in the morning hoping to have crafted their own evil army of the undead and/or laser death ray by the end of the day. Yeah - if only.

Anthony Bourdain is on tonight!! If you love this show as much as I do, check out the article he wrote for Salon.com. Evidently, he and his crew got trapped in Lebanon. I've been assiduously avoiding expressing a public opinion on this issue, and this is as close as I'm going to come to it.

What Candy Are You?

And yes, I'm having focus problems.

Candy Cigarettes

You're a total badass, but you don't taste very good.

What Kind of Candy Are You?

Have you ever noticed

...how vending machines don't take nickels any more? Not taking pennies - that I understand. You need to protect yourself against the legions of homeless assholes* who would sit and pump your machine full of their low-value currency. But nickles? Even the middle class, America's heart and soul, have nickles, and occasionally want to spend them in a vending machine! Why did the US treasury go to all the trouble of cranking out those special commemorative nickels with pictures of native americans and, um... trees and shit** if I can't trade it in for a cool, frosty diet coke? For shame, vending maching makers of America. Why do you hate freedom?


* Just for the record, I do not actually think that the homeless are assholes.

** I actually have a nickel sitting in front of me right this very second that has two pine trees next to some water and says "Ocean in view! O! The joy!". I shit you not. I suspect that this was the result of the Treasury Department's last party with the ATF.


UPDATE:By harnessing the power of the internets, I was able to find a campus vending machine that took nickels. AND they had Mr. Pibb, which is awesome. Also, they had an ice cream vending machine that had Choco Tacos. Have I ever mentioned that in college I briefly dated the heir to the Choco Taco fortune? Because I did.

Friday Random 10

Something in the Air - David Bowie
Love Street - The Doors
Play Dead - H.I.M.
Waltz #1 - Elliot Smith
Frankly, Mr. Shankly - The Smiths
Dirty Old Man - The Sonics
Hot Child in the City - Nick Gilder
Paradise Flat - The Status Quo
Love Like Blood - Icehouses
Angie - The Rolling Stones

Dispatches from Bizarro World

The New York Times gives the new 'Miami Vice' movie an orgasmically positive review

Mr. Mann transforms what is essentially a long, fairly predictable cop-show episode into a dazzling (and sometimes daft) Wagnerian spectacle...Some of the most captivating sequences have an abstract quality, as if Mr. Mann were paying homage to the avant-garde, anti-narrative cinema of Stan Brakhage

Slashdot actually answers an engineering grad student who wants to find a place where he can work

without the pressure of money and immediate results

...The answer may be as close as his local Burger King. I hear they're hiring.

And finally, NewScientist casts doubt on the existence of black holes. Take that, Stephen Hawking! Mister 'I-had-a-guest-spot-on-'The Simpsons'-and-you-didn't'. Not so awesome now, are we?

I wish I could ask my Astrophysicist friend about this, but I just got him to stop sending me sexually suggestive text messages, and I don't want to get him all riled up again.

Now, with even more stuff that sucks!

As if getting poisoned at work wasn't enough, the hard drive in my laptop just failed. You read me correctly - right in the middle of a video chat with Mom and Dad LaBlonde, it started making this horrible grinding noise.

How am I blogging, you ask? Well, I'm in my office, where I ran in panic after I realized I'd been backing up all my stuff on a flash drive. Luckily, the boss extraordinaire (I'm not even being sarcastic - this guy is great.) bought me a new Intel Mac Mini when I started the job. And I don't think I lost any data besides all the Jack Johnson Albums I downloaded. So I've got that going for me.

However, I'm inclined to ask: what karmic law did I violate?

A new post! Oh joy!

A semi-comprehensive list of things that have happened since last we spoke:

1. As you already knew, I was on a semi-working holiday in NYC. Although they had been experiencing a horrible heatwave prior to my arrival, that broke with a series of thunderstorms, and I had beautiful weather (mid-80's) for the majority of my visit. Meanwhile, California's central valley experienced record heat and humidity. (I'm doing the full on evil laugh while I write this, but I can't really figure out how to express it as text. You'll have to use your imagination.)

2. The trip was amazing, but a total social whirlwind. I was staying with S-i-R (more on this later), and he had warned me that he was going to be too busy at work to hang out alot. That was OK - I just made plans. LOTS of plans. I still didn't get to see everybody. This is a semi-public appology to people who I had to shaft: I miss you SOOOO much, and I'll be back soon! Even so, there were two Brazen Hussy and Prairie Oyster-shaped holes in my heart. The city just isn't the same without you guys.

3. Friday was a combination of science-type meeings and social gatherings. I met GreekBoy for coffee. I had been dreading this, because we hadn't really spoke since our falling-out over his new girlfriend. It was Ok. We didn't really talk about personal stuff, because it's still a pretty raw topic. The plus side is that I realized that he hadn't changed at all - he's still all talk, no action, and will always abandon people when something flashier comes along. I finally reconciled myself with the fact that he's always going to be this way.


3. On Saturday, I had an invite to a party, so I did the town in the company of the vivacious lissa, who also occasionally comments on this very blog. Ate dinner at Kitchen22 (the companion to my very favorite and now closed Kitchen82) and had some delicious cucumber-mint martinis. We went to the party, which I don't mind admitting was lame. However, we did have a small group of gentlemen competing for our attention, one even going so far as to demonstrate his hula hooping talents in a misguided attempt to distinguish himself. We left shortly thereafter for a bar in SoHo (I'm not sure it has a name), where I was recognized by the waitress (WTF?). We partook of more delicious cocktails, including the 'cherry blossom', which is very similar to the Brazen Hussy, with the addition of cherry flavored vodka and sour mix for the lemon juice. Its very deliciousness induced in me such a fit of nostalgia that I was forced to drunk-text Dr. BH just to tell her how very missed she was. Around 3 am, we met with Mr. Extremely Tall (more on this later) at Hell's Kitchen hell-hole Rudy's. Here, I was telling anyone who would listen how much I hated NorCal until one guy asked me if I had received my PhD in bitching, because I was really good at it. Oh yeah, if you're that guy, fuck you. You don't know me, and you don't know my pain.

4. Spent all day on Sunday in the company of S-i-R, and it was nice, considering that we had some serious shit to hash out. See, I have (or rather, had) a theory: no problem, ever, in the history of humanity, has ever been solved by talking about it. When I left NYC, I had some entanglements, but rather than find out how these guys actually felt, I just left. I thought it didn't matter how they felt because they were disposable, and ultimately, replaceable. I'll skip most of the details, because frankly, that's not why people read this blog. We finally came to this: life is very long (if you're lucky) and you never know how things are going to work out. But walking away from people who care about you doesn't prove that you're free.

(Ok, Phil Collin's 'Against All Odds' is on the radio. I'm going to have to change topics before I start crying.)

5. Oh yeah, Mr. Extremely Tall is going to be moving to NorCal for a while. We'll see how that works out (more evil laughter). Most of my friends (being much smarter than I) have cautioned me to just leave him alone, but until you start seeing Booty farms in the Central Valley that's just not going to happen.

6. I was going to post all of this yesterday, but when I arrived back at the lab, they were doing construction in the lab next door. There's an open doorway that connects the two rooms, but the guys failed to recognize that the heavy-duty industrial adhesive fumes were actually capable of traveling through that doorway even if you prop a sheet of drywall up in front of it. Long story short, we all got sick from the fumes and had to go home. Welcome Back!!

Overheard in NYC

Guy in suit: I had a performance review at the firm today. They said the good news was that I saved a client 30 million dollars. The bad news was that a room full of corporate lawyers all thought I was an asshole.

The sound of sleeping on a leather couch in an un-air-conditoned apartment

(lift arm) fzzzzt..slap!
(lift leg) fzzzt...slap!

(turn over)

(sorely miss all the skin you just left behind)

(awaken to sledgehammer)

(repeat) fzzzzt...slap!



Still beats California and those God-damned birds.

Corporate Query

To the makers of KY Personal Lubricant -

Is it really necessary to manufacture eleventy billion different kinds of 'intimate moisture'? For example, under what circumstances would someone use a spray-on lubricant? Do people get cross-threaded?

I'm not in the market for lube or anything. I'm just sayin'.

Fish in a barrel? Don't mind if I do!

I was reading the Ladies Against Feminism site again. So sue me - I'm waiting for Anthony Bourdain to come on. Plus, I like their advice to single ladies, especially the part where technically I should be living with my parents, but as an older lady, it's OK as long as I don't let unaccompained men into my home. I love that despite the fact that I am a relentless heathen, my lifestyle in Cali fits pretty much all of the drug-free, booze-free, man-free, modestly-dressed requirements set forth by the Christian ladies (except that I occasionally wear pants, and - oh yeah - the Jesus part, but that only makes it more hilarious).

So I'm reading this article about chivalry and feminism , and bla bla bla, it's nothing you haven't read a million times, but the part that I love most is this:

No truly romantic film involves the woman heroically saving the man. No work of great literature, from The Odyssey to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, has the women saving the men, or even fighting alongside the men.

Um, hello...Eowyn? I hope they read the bible a little more carefully than they read Return of the King.

And mom? Don't worry. You and Dad are safe...for now.

Did I mention I hate California? Because I do.

Some dipshit redneck decided to shoot a bee bee gun at the windshield of my car. I just bought that car, and now I have to get the windshield fixed. I have neither the time nor the money to get it fixed, because I'm leaving for NYC on Wednesday morning.

I wish I didn't have to come back.


UPDATE: My brother believes that the hippies are to blame for this vandalism. I didn't go to the farmer's market, and now they're sending me a little message - they take this shit personally.

Breaking News!

This just in: the lab manager's cat threw up on the carpet last night. More details as we receive them.


Sorry about the sparse posting - the boss is on vacation, we just got a huge addition to our grant, bla bla bla boring science crap. Hopefully, I'll be able to resume posing soon.

Stuff I thought about while driving home from Wal-Mart

So that's what opression feels like. Huh. Most of those people were really old, too. That makes me twice as evil.

Actually, some of the clothes weren't too bad, especially if you were going to work like, a Keira Knightly young London boho-type look.

I didn't really see anyone there working like, a Keira Knightly young London boho-type look.

Hmmm... hungry. Ice cream....

The lyrics to Rod Stewart's "Tonight's the Night" are really dirty! How did I miss that?

Huh, this road is straight. And flat. And I'm the only one on it. Got the cruise control on... I wonder how long I could go if I took my hands off the wheel?

Did Rod Stewart just say "Spread your wings my virgin child, and let me come inside"? Oh shit!! Hands back on the wheel!

Like, one of those malted chocolate milk shakes from Jack in the Box. That would kick all kinds of ass.

I hope that didn't max out my debit card. That would really would be the final act in this dark carnival. I would have to go sleep with the meth dude on the corner. You know, the one that tried to sell me a broken lamp shaped like a large-mouth bass. For $10. Because evidently, that's how much meth costs.

Speaking of, I hope I locked the front door.

Ice cream. Yeeeeah - no, No, NO!

Wow, it's a good thing TV was invented, because if I had to rely on my internal monologue for entertainment, I would probably die of boredom.

A brief request

Dear Kos and Atrios,

I don't want to read about the Connecticut Senate race any more. Please only tell me when something really, really important happens.

Hugs and Kisses,

LBP

My New Favorite Site

I've become obsessed with The Skinny Website, where viewers argue over whether celebrities are disgustingly obsese, or just skanky and nasty. I can't decide if it makes me feel better about myself, or much, much worse. Here's a preview:



Here's Actress X at the Beach.
Everybody thinks she's lost
too much weight, but I think
she looks fine.

COMMENTS

1. OMG!!! How can she even go out in public like that?
I'll bet that huge belly flys up and hits her in the
face when she runs!
Comment superskinny @ 2:25

2. Ewwwwwww. Just, eeeeww.
Comment by PoleSmokR @ 3:10

3. She's got cellulite! That's nasty! She should
toootally kill herself. I would if I looked like
that.
Comment by anna_rexia @ 3:00

4. You guys are crazy! She only needs to lose, like,
5 more pounds - 10, tops.
Comment by reelgurl @3:10

5. Losing 10 pounds won't help that floppy flat ass!
Comment by Back2Cali @ 4:20

6. Slut. Slut, slut, slutty slut. Also,
flat ass.
Comment by CanYouBelieveThisShit @ 7:15

Character assassination or just another dirtbag with herpes?

I wrote about the Don't Date Him Girl website in this very space. Now, they're being sued by a guy (described on the website as a "chocolate dream") who has "hookups in every zipcode", and who "gave [some girl] herpes."

In other, non-herpes having news, the NYT has an interesting article on rum as a historic American beverage. It also mentions the Pegu Club, which is one of my favorite places in NYC.

And as Dr. Brazen Hussy knows, rum is the new vodka.

Sofia is the new Prague

Brown was the new black, but now black is the new black.

That's Comedy!

"Ghostbusters" was playing at the retro movie review last night. Did you know that "Ghostbusters was retro? It is. And Guns and Roses is classic rock. Excuse me, but I'm going to get some tennis balls for the bottom of my walker. While I'm gone, check out Something Awful's re-imagining of the Inferno with Ken Lay as your guide.

Guys who like internet porn are forced to watch paint dry and grass grow for all eternity. Now that's comedy!

That's Rick, with a silent P

Or: California Finally Gets to Me

Usually, I'm a freakin' spam findin' machine. Granted, it's not to hard to hit 'delete' when you get a message from xkwsuek waterspout regarding "For to be good deal now!". But tonight, while transacting some personal biz-nass online, I got a message from one Rick, with the subject line "Hey baby, might want to check this out".

Aww yeeeah. Once upon a time, this was not an uncommon sentiment in my inbox, and I spent a couple of seconds trying to figure out where I may have met this 'Rick'.

Goddamn it! All he really wanted to do was sell me some pheromones.

Dude, I need a life. Or perhaps some pheromones - apparently, they will help to "make a fantastic, memorable, compelling impression , every time AND increase your self-confidence and masculinity BIG-time"

I gots to get me some of that masculinity.

Post-holiday malaise

(I spelled 'malaise' correctly on the first try! Yay me!)

Went to kick-ass party in Napa yesterday. So sunburned. So tired.


A huge thanks to Claire for including my post on the objectification of men in the Carnival of Feminists. It's an honor!

More fun news from the Hoosier State!

Dateline: Angola Indiana. The Fun Spot amusement park. A roller coaster gets stuck upside down. What's strange about that? Check out this quote from the above-linked article:

A report from the Indiana Homeland Security Web site showed Fun Spot in compliance with inspection requirements.

Is Indiana so lacking in viable terrorist targets that they've put DHS in charge of roller coaster inspection? Oh, wait... never mind.

Monday Morning reading list

Read these. Be more erudite.

- MetaFilter introduces a music posting site for homemade mixes, podcasts, etc.

- Mainichi Daily News now has Manglish, the English translation of their Manga section. Roll your mouse over the Japanese!

- The AP provides a confusing description of a complicated computer simulation suggesting that all humans have a common ancestor 2,000 to 5,000 years ago. I'll give you a hint on how to jive this with what you know about human evolution - this is a geneological ancestor and not a genetic ancestor. Regardless, you will probably see this linked on a lot of creationist websites. Also, the original paper was published in 2004. I wonder why the AP is just picking up on this now? (Here's a link to the original paper, but you'll need to be on a university network in order to read it.)

- The LA times reviews the economics of happiness, including the old chestnut that regular sex is equivalent to an extra $50,000 a year. It's either a pretty cogent discussion of whether happiness economics is a crap field, or, failing that, if we should all move to Bhutan.

Finally...

- You're gonna see it discussed on all the other blogs, so read the review first. What am I talking about? Why, Ana Marie Cox's NYT review of "Virginity or Death!", of course.

By request - pictures

But first, a little tale of idyllic California-

I needed quarters for laundry, so I walked down to the convenience store. On the corner across from the store was a group of guys dressed nattily in white tank tops (ok, some were shirtless) taking turns domestic abusing a woman. I didn't want to attract any attention, so I duck inside the store to call the cops. Once I'm inside, though, I immediately encounter a guy who is obviously meth-d to the gills, yet is still buying a gigantic bottle of malt liquor and two bottles of Cisco (for those of you not familiar with the finer points of bum wine, it's also known as 'liquid crack'). He's talking the ear off the poor guy behind the counter, but when he notices me standing there, he tears into how "lucky your boyfriend must be - or girlfriend, because you can't tell these days". He's just repeating it over and over. Well, nobody ever said meth heads were engaging conversationalists. Bored and freaked out, I left the store, but my new friend felt that I obviously didn't yet understand how lucky my hypothetical boyfriend -or girlfriend, because you can't tell these days- is. He follows me out.

Crap- now it's a fucking tough choice. I've got domestic abusers on my left, meth heads on my right, I'm stuck in the middle with you and I STILL don't have any quarters. As luck would have it, I didn't have to decide because the meth-head was actually buying the Cisco for the domestic abusers, and when they moved in to collect the goods, I made a run for it. All I could think, though, as I walked away is, "dude, the convenience store has Cisco! I was wondering where I could get that!"

Lest you think I was hanging out in a bad neighborhood, I was only a block from the university campus and right around the corner from the quaint bed-and-breakfast district.

I hate this town so very, very much.

Anyway, here are the pictures:

This is my plant, which, like 99% of my belongings, I picked up off the curb. I've named the garden gnome "Gnomey McGnomerton". He's my only friend in this stupid town, and is also eerily phallic.


This is my backyard. It's ok, but I think it would be better if I had some Cisco.

But really, who is he?

I was running some errands this afternoon, and got stuck behind an old, beat-up car with a sign in the rear window that said "Who is John Galt?" I've seen, like, six of these signs since moving to NorCal, and it's really starting to annoy me. I'm going to start selling a sign that says:

THIS CAR CONTAINS A PRETENTIOUS ASSHOLE WHO, BECAUSE HE READ ONE BOOK, ONCE, WILL ALWAYS FEEL SUPERIOR TO YOU.

I'll make a million dollars.