I am my own Grinch.

If you can guess what this is, I will give it to you. (A hint: it is not a poo on a stick. But it is something on a stick.)

***

I am trying to figure out what happened to me today.

My mood has gone from zero to 60. Zero as in this morning I was going to walk up to the Carmelite Monastery of Cristo Rey at the corner of Fulton and Parker and sit in the pews. No joke. I was. It was misty and grey this morning but I wanted to walk there to smell the incense. I know you must think I've lost my mind. But I like churches, as places. I can't even explain it right now. (I could perhaps trace it back to watching Audrey Hepburn in The Nun's Story, but that would mostly be making it up.)

In the meantime, between wanting to be a pretend nun and sit in a pew, I have come down with the cold (again, WTF?!!) that I had last week and now I hate the holidays. I don't celebrate them, but I'm so over them.

And zooming to 60, as in now I feel like writing terribly sarcastic letters to tangential people I know that annoy me and am feeling very badly that I don't own a typewriter. All of a sudden, I really really want a typewriter. I want to smell the typewriter ribbons and the dust that gets inside the keys. I want onion skin paper to type on and those crappy eraser thingys with the little fan to brush the eraser crumbs off at one end. And I want a real phone. A phone with a twisty cord and a heavy receiver, the kind of receiver where you could screw off the end of it and see all the wires and shit inside of it. The kind of phone you can slam down in the cradle. I also want a Texas Instruments calculator, like the kind I had in 6th grade, where the keys made these clicky sounds and the numbers lit up in little red LEDS. I want a transistor radio so I can take off the back and look at the circuitry that looks like itsy-bitsy buildings and roads.

I'm tired of iPhones with their slick, smarmy screens.

I want buttons I can PUSH.

I think what I'm trying to say is that I want things to be real. Like they used to be.

The Banana Brick

Truly, and I share this tip with you from the bottom of my heart:

Do NOT just willy-nilly decide to change your blog's template. It WILL fuck you up.

***

That is my tip for you for today.

***

Also, I have another tip for you, now that I think about it:

If a recipe calls for baking powder, and you don't have any baking powder, go and GET SOME.

***

After I pouted in my bed for a while about my self-inflicted template tragedy, I decided to make a banana bread because a) pretty much all we have to eat in the house is a bunch of 4-5 very ripe bananas, and b) making banana bread does not involve a computer or blog template.

It does, however, involve some sort of leavening agent (of which I have none).

I guess after all of those family Passovers and cautionary stories about wandering about in the desert for 40 depressing years, yada yada yada, I'd be really up on the whole leavening thing, but no, here is one instance where listening to a bible story might have helped me.

I now have a piece of what I could call Banana Matzoh, but it is a bit thicker than that so technically it's more of a Banana Brick.

It smells good, though, so I'm still going to eat some of it when I can hack off a chunk.

***

ps.: Feel free to tell me the blog looks better. I am working on it. Perhaps this will cause me to be more of a minimalist since I can't seem to remember what else I had up here before the tragedy.

I totally effed up my blog!

If you came over here and wondered what the hell happened, so did I about two minutes ago.

Actually, last night (around 11:45pm-- bad time to start a project, in retrospect), I thought I'd finesse my template.

Suffice to say, I pressed a button I shouldn't have but then was quite relieved when Blogger choked up and didn't make that change... or so I thought.

I guess I know what I'll be doing today. I can't even blame Blogger and I only had one cosmo last night, so obviously this is all due to my spectacular way of jumping into things without trying them out first. Fabulous.

I don't even have a picture to go with this insanity. I have to go find my widgets.

xoxo

ps.: Thank goodness I didn't screw with i live here:SF. Go check out Mary while I deal with my mess over here.

Moving towards the afterlife.

In Montgomery Station.

***

At first I thought it was my eyes going funny, but I think I'm going to have to look into getting a new blogger template. Lately, my photos look fuzzy. It's totally possible that I'm fucking something up when I export my images, but this time, I don't think it's me. It even looks better on flickr, so I don't know what's up.

This looks so much better on my computer. You should come over and see it.

UPDATE 9:41pm: Thanks, Meligrosa! This does look a bit better.

What's the Word for This?

I know I'm not supposed to call people retarded.

Sarah Palin was crank called by a Canadian radio station, the caller pretending to be Nicolas Sarkozy. But the fact that Palin NEVER figured out that she wasn't talking to French President Sarkozy after about 10 seconds is pretty amazing. Clueless? Hopeless? Incredibly naive/stupid?

I'm sure this story won't be found anywhere on the MSM, but it's all over the European news. Quel surprise.

***

A few gems excerpted:

Sarkozy: "I just love killing those animals. Mmm, mmm, take away life, that is so fun." He proposes they go hunting together by helicopter, something he says he has never done.

Palin: "Well, I think we could have a lot of fun together while we're getting work done. We can kill two birds with one stone that way."

Sarkozy: "You know we have a lot in common also, because ... from my house (he pronounces it ass) I can see Belgium."

Palin: "Well, see, we're right next door to different countries that we all need to be working with, yes."

The Sarkozy impersonator tells Palin his wife is "so hot in bed" and then informs her that Bruni has written a song for her about Joe the Plumber entitled "Du rouge a levres sur une cochonne," which translates as "Lipstick on a Pig."

The caller asks Palin if Joe the Plumber is her husband and adds: "We have the equivalent of Joe the Plumber in France. It's called Marcel, the guy with bread under his armpit."

He also tells the Alaska governor that he loved the "documentary" made about her and referred to a pornographic film with a Palin look-alike made by Hustler founder Larry Flynt.

She answers tentatively, "Ohh, good, thank you, yes."

***

Here's a BBC page that has the actual call and an interview with the pranksters, the Canadian version of the Jerky Boys. That brought back memories. Ahhhh, the Jerky Boys. Where are they now? This was my sister's and mine ALL-TIME favorite Jerky Boys routine. We almost peed our pants laughing. I told you I am immature.

ps. If you listen to the entire call on HuffPo, I don't know about you, but I get the distinct impression that Palin's aide is in some serious shit.

So Much for My Friday Night

Wow.

And here I was all set to go to a debate-watching party after work, ready to skewer this guy with my elitist San Francisco wit and smartypants-ness and eat hot dogs with other like-minded souls who have not yet succumbed to the fantasy that this election is already over.

So, I ask you...in what space-time dimension am I living these days?

I thought the debate was tonight.

Apparently I missed it.

Did John McCain fix the economy and win the debate while I was sleeping? My god, he's fast! I'm sure I'll wake up tomorrow and we'll already be invading Iraq AND Russia under President Palin.

***

If the Federal Government had its shit together, they would just start spiking our water supply with lithium. It would just make things so much easier for all of us.

Makeup Artists Should Unite to Help John McCain Help Himself and the Economy

I really don't know how I missed this story, truly. I'm starting to feel like The Onion is somehow getting its joke news stories leaked to the AP and then they're getting printed as somewhat actual news.

According to an article in US Weekly (not a place where I usually look to for news of note, but it works while in the nail salon):

"The 72-year-old was recently made TV-ready by makeup artist Tifanie White who's worked on So You Think You Can Dance and American Idol.

McCain paid the 2002 beauty-school grad $5,583.43 for her services, according to the Federal Election Commission."

***

Okay, I'm a beauty school grad, too (really, I am not making this up), and I would not have charged him five grand for a makeover. Hell, he's not even a bride! Although I wonder why he did not hire someone from Stan Winston Studios because doing makeup on someone who is almost dead requires a completely different type of artistry than bridal makeup.

(Actually, I just decided that I would have charged him five thousand dollars plus!!!, and then would have donated the money to something useful, like this or this or this--look, Obama's doing it.)

On second thought, maybe this gal is an Obama supporter and she's giving McCain the shaft since he has 8 homes--you must watch this awesome video of his houses!--, 13 cars and can obviously afford a $5K makeover. She must be really talented because I'm sure she had to do some special effects makeup on this guy to wipe that frozen creepy grimace off his face.

Unretouched skin under bright lights is unappealing and cameras do distort the features and add weight (look at what happened to Nixon in his debate with Kennedy...oh wait! We're reliving that now! Maybe McCain hasn't found makeup that will stand up to the intense facial sweating he might undergo if he actually has to proceed in a debate with Obama and try to put two sentences together in a row that aren't vengeful or blameful or basically false). Or maybe it's because McCain has a habit of canceling debates, like he did in another election year?

John Edward's haircut is looking like quite a bargain now, isn't it? (Funny thing though. I guess assorted GOP operatives labeling Edwards the "Breck girl"; Ann Coulter calling him a "faggot"; and Rush Limbaugh asking whether Edwards might be our "first female President"--those comments only apply when the Republicans are talking about the Democrats! Oh, I get it. It's okay to get your makeup done if you're a War Hero.)

Because I know that the Republican candidate isn't too savvy with computers by his own admission (or the economy either, but I can't help him with that one), I invite John McCain's future makeup artists to read a post I wrote that is great for people looking for cosmetics but happen to be on a budget. (Or Cindy, maybe you can print this out for your husband so he can read it on the No Talk Express bus.)

Perhaps he can save that $5K and spend it on something more useful, like universal healthcare. We're socializing Wall Street, so why not get some yearly checkups thrown into the bargain?

***

The only miracle makeup artists cannot perform is painting a brain on Sarah Palin.

I am relishing this transcript of her interview with Katie Couric. I was on the debate team in 8th grade and even I could have done a better job as a 12-year-old in the interview (here I go again, being an elitist).

Let's face it: if you're going to make sh*t up and speak it as the truth in front of the whole world, you'd damn well better practice your story to perfection so you've got it down pat when someone calls you on it.

COURIC: You've cited Alaska's proximity to Russia as part of your foreign policy experience. What did you mean by that?

PALIN: That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land-- boundary that we have with-- Canada. It-- it's funny that a comment like that was-- kind of made to-- cari-- I don't know, you know? Reporters--

COURIC: Mock?

PALIN: Yeah, mocked, I guess that's the word, yeah.

COURIC: Explain to me why that enhances your foreign policy credentials.

PALIN: Well, it certainly does because our-- our next door neighbors are foreign countries. They're in the state that I am the executive of. And there in Russia--

COURIC: Have you ever been involved with any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?

PALIN: We have trade missions back and forth. We-- we do-- it's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where-- where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is-- from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to-- to our state.

UPDATE: HOLY SH*T! Please tell me you watched the Palin interview. Here's the link again if you have not. I can't say too much more without my head exploding. Please watch this so I am not alone in my utter disbelief that this is not a SNL skit.

Home Sweet Tiny Box

Do you remember when you were a kid how much fun it was to make forts and play inside refrigerator boxes?

I remember using a serrated steak knife to cut doors and windows (did my mom know about this?!) in a windfall of cartons from a new washing machine and dryer when I was a kid. After that, it was merely a matter of decorating our new house with colored markers. We got a lot of mileage out of our big box houses. Their only downfall was that they had quite a slant to their foundations (being set upon the driveway) and that the cardboard did not survive too much hard living.

Indoors there was a constant building and rebuilding of Fort Family Room by using all available sofa cushions in the house.

And then the famous sleeping tent constructed of all of our kitchen chairs draped with velour blankets. My sister and I would sleep in our gypsy caravan tent, filled with books and pillows and sleeping bags, our blanket ceiling illuminated by a small desk lamp. In the mornings, we would awaken to being smothered in our collapsed tent, as our dog would invariably try to get into our hideout by jumping from the sofa on to the roof of our tent (she never could tell where the door was).

It's nice to know that even when you grow up, you can still have your own cardboard box or fort, if you live in San Francisco. But now they make you pay for them.

***

I don't know about you, but I couldn't even get my shoes into 250 square feet of living space. THERE IS NO CLOSET.

I know lots of people think that San Franciscans are crazy. I would go so far to say that someone who pays $279,000 for something you can get for free by joining a monastic order and relinquishing all of your worldly goods is getting close. The headline reads: "New condo development targets young first-time buyers without too much stuff."

This will also give you an idea of real estate prices in our neck of the woods. San Francisco is not New York, so I really wonder if these little tree houses will fly.

***

Photo gratefully stolen from Julochka and her lovely daughter. Other photo from SF Gate article above.

One of My Better Work-Related Emails

Mom strikes again (and NO, it's not my job. Supposedly we have someone employed here called an office manager).

***

8/22, 2:22 PM

Hi guys,

The refrigerator has undergone a massively overdue cleaning and restocking.

I am guessing that most questionable/possible Bio-Hazard items have been destroyed, including the hairy carrots (you know who you are).

The ancient yogurts (dated April), emaciated blueberries, Ming Dynasty-era Chinese food and very odd-looking shriveled Camembert (that was what the label said it was) have gone to the giant landfill in the sky.

Let’s start things anew and keep our little refrigerator pretty.

Thanks!

ps. If I did throw out your lunch accidentally, I apologize.

***

pps. I accidentally did throw out someone's lunch, but he did agree that it was stinky and gross.

A Question for All You Moms Out There

Honestly, how long do you have to have a fever before you call the cops? Raise the alarum? Punch someone?

It's 2am (well, you could have figured that out for yourself, I guess) and my fever came back again and woke me up. That is so. freaking. rude.

WTF?!!

So not happy about this at all. But I have decided this is a swear-free zone on tangobaby today so I'll leave the cussing out.

It's a good thing I haven't read The Stand in a long time or I'd be totally paranoid right now.

I'm in such a bad mood. Just ignore me.

***

ps. The only thing that is making me smile right now is reading this post on mackin ink. Karey m., kiss those girls for me.

pss. Oh, there is another thing that made me smile and that was remembering when my dad took his temperature with the thermometer that my mom used to stick in our cat's derrière when she got sick. But that's my dad. He just does things like that.

***

UPDATE, 2:54am: This is actually a very good time of the day for catching up on your blog reading. And eating Ben & Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk, which I find to be a fantastic fever reducer, and even if it's not, I feel cooler.

But we are almost out of this ice cream medicine. Must send The Boy out to restock when he wakes up. I think I will mix it up this time and have him throw in a pint of Cherry Garcia.

Finally, a photo I did not take: february 4. [fever in the morning, fever all through the night.]
Originally uploaded by misscaro

Luck Be a Lady

Good news! My luck is changing!

I just got a gigantic bird shit dropping on my favorite sweater while I was minding my own goddamn business and going for a little walk to get some fresh air.

I am convinced that this is the giantest bird poo ever, but since this is the first time a bird has pooped on me, of course it is going to color my opinion of how large a poop it is.

Not to be totally shallow (but what the hell), but I looked really cute today. I was very stylish in peep-toed lizard pumps, a denim pencil skirt, a crisp white blouse and then my favorite sweater. And Kat just did my hair yesterday so I am still basking in the glow of my hair's sleekdom fabulousness.

Thank god it didn't crap in my hair or I would have really lost it.

So right after the poop, these two young touristy guys standing next to me smiled and laughed (but not meanly, they were sympathetic) as I scrambled to the nearby hot dog cart to grab a bunch of napkins. I was picturing the poop oozing through my sweater and then possibly touching my skin, like when the acid alien blood eats through the metal in the spaceship in the movie Alien.

The happy couple laughing and eating their hot dogs were totally oblivious to my desperate need for napkins and they were in my freaking way and blocking the napkin dispenser. I wanted to howl at them.

Meanwhile, the nice touristy guys slightly ogled me while I took off my sweater, and they were very kind to check my hair while I tried not to freak out and act like a girl. One of the guys was drinking Coffee-Mate out of a little plastic bottle (he must have thought it was some sort of smoothie), and the other one told me in heavily accented English that today is my lucky day.

In his country, when a bird craps on you, it's considered good luck.

I told him Well, I'm not in your country and I prefer to receive my good luck in different ways. We laughed together while I held my poopy sweater rolled in a ball and his companion glanced at my cleavage again.

Unfortunately, the sweater had been covering the button that routinely pulls and gaps where my bra is.

Tell me, dear ones, what kind of good luck should I expect to receive? It better be damn good because I almost feel like I need therapy right now, and I'm too grossed out to eat Junior Mints to get over it.

***

Photo is Everyones Lucky number , originally uploaded by DxB★SecreT

You should have seen the photo I almost posted, but then I decided to spare you.

California Dreamin'

So, can you afford an 18% salary cut? I sure as hell can't.

I'm not a math wizard but I'm pretty sure that if I was making $8.00 an hour and then my pay was going to be reduced to $6.55 an hour, I'd be very upset and would have a very hard time making ends meet. Especially when a gallon of gas costs almost half of that hourly rate now.

This morning, however, there's an article in SF Gate about the Governator's plan to help solve the state budget crisis by doing that very thing: by cutting the hourly wages of state workers. (I am going to take a leap of faith in assuming that even the C-student journalism standards of SF Gate got the reporting on this story correct.)

According to his website, Arnold Schwarzenegger is known as "The People's Governor." I've known that the man's held this office for some years now, but like most "breaking" news, world events, and things lumped into the category of I'll-Never-Understand-This and I-Can't-Do-Anything-About-It-Anyway, I just haven't troubled myself much to have an opinion on the matter of his governorship. I'm of the mindset generally that there's really one political party, the object of which is to maintain the status quo for those in power. So I'll just go about my business and live my life and keep reading George Orwell from time to time to sharpen my skepticism. Unless things change in November.

(It's also very hard for me to visualize this person as our governor because I know what he looks like naked. I will admit to seeing all three Terminator films, but those movies did not inspire me to vote for the guy.)

I don't know about you, but this proposed policy just sounds horribly unfair and that it will hurt the people who need that $1.45 an hour extra the most. I just wrote this post about democracy and got all hopeful again, and then I read things like this and figure nothing will really change.

What do you think? Is California more deluded than other places? How did we get to all of this?

Faw Down, Go Boom

So, I'm just curious... what word do you blurt out loud without any self-control when something unexpectedly unpleasant happens?

Apparently my free-association word of choice is the f-word. And I say it really loud, too.

***

Goodness gracious. I haven't done that in a long time.

Wipe out, bite the dust, take a spill.

I totally killed myself at the bakery on the way home from work today. I thought it would be fun to have a little chocolate chip cookie to eat on the train.

Fate was against me.

Upon collecting my cookie, I took maybe one or two steps before my entire self was falling to the floor as predicted by Newton's law of universal gravitation. I don't even know what I did.

Well, I do know what I did. I fell on every part of my body that was sticking out to keep me from falling: knee, left hip (ow, that one's gonna have a big bruise), elbows, heel of one hand, and even my iPhone (it still works!). But the most exciting part was smacking the left side of my head against a cement column. Don't do that. It makes a really bad sound.

While I was doing all of this stunt double stuff, I was saying the f-word at volume. And just to punctuate the moment, my hot little chocolate chip cookie flew out of my hand and landed on the sidewalk about two feet away from my head. Pathetic.

Everyone in the bakery was stunned, including me. Instantly I wanted my mom, a natural reflex, even at my age (but I would have had to lie there for an hour or two if I wanted her to drive up to the city to kiss my boo-boos). I did not cry, but the lady gave me another cookie and an extra one, as a bonus. I felt like I was five years old.

The point of all of this mini-drama made me wonder what it is in our brains in times of crisis that makes us choose to say one word over another? I mean, I could have said "Shoot!" or "Blueberry!" but instead I happen to choose another word.

I'm sure Oliver Sacks could explain this to me, but right now I'm just going to watch my step.

You people be careful out there, okay?

***

Another reason for this post is that in keeping with my continued unintentional penchant for associating little tidbits of my life to movies, I wanted to mention a Laurel and Hardy 1928 silent called We Faw Down. I haven't seen it in a long time, but I remember it fondly. This film was the precursor to one of my very favorite films of the boys, Sons of the Desert.

There, just thinking about Laurel and Hardy is making me feel a little better.

Who Made Me Mom?

This is how I feel today. Cleaning up messes.

Some people (who will never see this post) need to get their shit together.

I am NOT your mom!

If you persist with your alternatively frantic/whining behavior and general lack of appreciation, then I will have no other resort than to send you to your room.

And that may adversely affect my yearly review and possible raise.