What Do You Get The Person With Everything?

Pete's delicious Schweddy Balls, of course! 

It's Christmas Eve. Enjoy this SNL classic. I never get tired of this! (Sorry about the advert at the top.)

Last Minute Christmas Goodies 

or ummmm...thanks? 

Okay so, Netscape.aol is our default home page on Safari. The other day they had a list of the wierdest gifts to give this holiday season. I must admit...I agree. Here are some of my favorites. Remember, these are all actual products available for purchase. Really. I kid you not.

Anti-Monkey Butt Powder. I thought we humans were evolved far enough not to smell of monkey butt, but hey. Whatever. This powder claims to "keep a certain region dry and smelling fresh". Wait there's more, it claims to take care of that dicey dilemma "whether you ride motorcycles or horses, play sports or just sit on your big, fat buttocks all day". It's long lasting, too. Sold!

Not for you, well maybe this will suit your fancy.

Subtle-Butt, another derriere directive is a disposable deodorizer which eliminates gas smells with the latest space-aged antimicrobial carbon technology. Don't you just love technology. You simply attach Subtle-Butt to your underwear and..Voila! you are free to pass gas until your heart's content and no one will be the wiser. "It's great for use in crowds or after a particularly gassy meal." Now that's a claim we all might want test. It comes in packs of five saving graces...and two Hail Marys.

But I think my favorite is this gem.

That's right. Chicken Poop Lip Balm, because nothing says "Kiss Me!!" more than a set of luscious lips lined with fecal matter. Not just any fecal matter...eco-friendly, free range fecal matter. Available at Walgreens.

Happy shopping.

"This Is What Christmas Is All About, Charlie Brown"

or how I spent my week trying to get my Christmas spirit back

Okay, so I've been in a real funk the last couple of weeks. Totally devoid of any sort of Christmas cheer. Normally I'm the kind of person who really gets into the whole spirit of the season. You know, like obnoxiously upbeat and in your face with all the happiness and good cheer...baking and decorating and buying lots o' stuff for others and generally overly enthusiastic.

But this year for some reason, the Christmas crunch season pissed me off. I really didn't give a shit. I did everything half-assed. Seriously. The decorations were half up...the empty space where the tree should be, mocked me...Geo hadn't finished painting this year's card...I hadn't even wrapped anything even though I had three soirees in one week to attend requiring wrapped packages. And yet I really, REALLY didn't care if any of it was finished. Not like me AT ALL.

I couldn't even stand to be near myself.

My recovery effort began on Thursday. Our hip, local public radio station, WYEP (the very best station in the whole-wide-world I might add--now downstreaming on the web, check it out) held its first ever Holiday Hootenanny Members Appreciation party. They had cookies, cocktails and a band named "Silver and Gold" comprised of members from about eight or nine local bands to play Christmas music.

It was great fun. They covered all sorts of festive songs...from classics like Silver Bells and Sleigh Ride to less traditional fare like the Kinks' Father Christmas and Bruce's Santa Claus is Coming to Town. They even had a couple (she about two hours from giving birth, swilling a pseudo Cosmo and "smoking" a cig, him wielding a martini shaker) sing the boozy duet Baby It's Cold Outside. The evening ended with a rousing rendition of Do They Know It's Christmas replete with audience participation.

The place was jammed. My sister and I were in the middle of this mixed-age pack, singing, dancing and clapping our hands even though hardly anyone else was joining in. That's one of the things I love about being my age...I get to ignore the dominant practices of public decorum. If I feel like singing along and dancing down the aisle to what's playing in the grocery store, I do it. It's all about lightening the hell up and having fun.

On the ride home, I actually started to feel a little bit better.

Friday was all about doing the Christmas lunch/presents thing with my dear KD Twisted Sisters. We convened at Beets' house, ate tons of tasty chow and polished off a huge bottle of champagne in our Mimosas. The tunes were festive, the gossip juicy, the liquor flowing. I was definitely starting to come around, but not quite there yet.

Saturday was a two-fer. Lunch and holiday shenanigans with my Card Club pals (for the record, we don't play cards--we eat, drink and go on vacation. we don't need no stinking cards). We do this crazy Yankee swap where you find the most hideous thing in your house, wrap it up all purty-like and then fight over them. It's great fun. Mood feeling lighter, but still a ways to go.

Part deux was a Caroling party with the neighbors. We've done this for the last several years now. We drink a little, parade around the neighborhood singing tidings of comfort and joy (to the discomfort of most folks) then return for some noshing and more liquid lubrication.

As an ex-Catholic, we rarely ever sang more than one verse of any song. I don't know..maybe it's some kind of concerted effort to get the folks out of church ASAP, but we just never sang other verses. So anyway, we're at a house singing Hark the Herald Angels Sing, when we get to the second verse:

Late in time behold him come

Offspring of the Virgin womb

Veiled in flesh the Godhead...WHAT?!?

What the?! What are we singing? Is this for real? These are really the lyrics? No wonder we only sang the first verse. That's somewhat disturbing. Let's never speak of it again.

As we were pondering what the heck that all meant, I heard someone behind me. There was a young man sneaking out of a dark car and running as though he was being chased by wolves into an equally dark house where upon he slammed the door with such force it shook the picture window. I swear he thought we were zombies come to munch on his brains, that's how much he did NOT want us to sing in front of his house.

Naturally we sang in front of his house.

We launched into Deck the Halls, in tune I might add. The door opened wide. A different, larger shadowy figure stood in the doorway.  

"Deck the Halls with Bows of Holly.. Fa La La La La  La La La--"

SLAM!!

He actually slammed the door on us. Seriously. What's up with that?

So we kept singing.

The door opened about six inches...

SLAM!!

I laughed so hard, I tinkled a little in my pants. Still we kept singing. We finished one song, sang another then bid Capt'n Curmudgeon a Merry freakin' Christmas.

And that my friends, is what restored the sparkle to my tarnished Holiday spirit.

Sure the friends, carols and liquor consumption certainly helped...a lot. But it was the outrageousness of that singular slamming door that put the bounce back in my step, the life in my lagging elan. I'm back, BABY!

So a tip of the hat to you, my cantankerous neighbor. For you have shown me the true meaning of Christmas. Humor.

Friday Photo #6 

recession? what recession?

There is this little house tucked away between two commercial buildings in the South Side whose owners feel compelled to completely cover it from top to bottom for each holiday. Christmas is kinda their High Holy Season. I'm not kidding. As you can see every inch of this puppy is draped in lights, Santas and blow-up crap. You can actually see it glowing when you drive by. It's a spectacle. Yes, but it is also my "guilty pleasure" spectacle. Every year I'm amazed by how much more is added. When I walked by last night, I swear I could hear the electric meter whirring like a chopper. 

To the owners, I salute you and your balls to flip the super finger at the crippled economy. Eat this recession. 

The big mystery is...where the hell do they store this sh*t?

The Funniest Blog EVER!! 

or damn! why didn't i think of that? 

So Geo subscribes to this newsletter called Very Short List. It's a one pager that seeks out and shares some of the hottest and hippest stuff on the internet. Last week they featured the absolutely funniest blog EVER. 

It's called Fuck You, Penguin. He (I'm assuming it's written by a guy) finds a picture of an animal and just goes off on it. It's brilliant! So brilliant I wish I'd have thought of it first, but I could never be as clever and snarky to do these wild critters justice. 

I have become a devout follower. The verve with which he skewers these animals makes me laugh out loud daily. There is a direct link in the sidebar to join this dark side. Submit. Submit.

FU Penguin, whoever you are, I bow to your creative genius. Bravo, sir. Bravo.

"The Horrors...The Horrors..." 

or Christmas in the Suburbs ain't what it used to be (a dark tale)

Okay, so usually people move from the city limits to the suburbs for a sense of safety. Sure they'll tell you it's because the schools are better or there's more lawn space or the air is cleaner, but in reality it's because the burbs are perceived as gun-free safety zone. That and basically a lot of white people are afraid of folks of ACBW...any color but white. 

We live in the suburbs because we both grew up in boroughs outside the city line. It's what we know. And for the most part it's a quiet, peaceful existence. Okay so the burbs are not immune to the occasional whack-job, hillbilly-like neighbor who insists on storing every broken appliance on his porch because "he'll get to it later" or some random act of teenage mischief. But for the most part it's safe enough to not have forty locks on the front door. Or so I thought...

Today I was driving a mere street away from my humble domicile when I stumbled upon this most horrible crime scene. 

The carnage was so vast Law and Order could use it for one of their "ripped from the headlines" episodes if they could stop retching at the sight of such senseless devastation. What could possess someone to slaughter so many innocent seasonal icons? 

Have they no soul? 

To stab Frosty in the back and leave him to aspirate in a plot of soggy grass. That's just cold, Dawg! 

He's just trying to make the young folk smile, is all. He's made of snow, not blow. And how about his two little buddies...using Stewie Griffin to crack their skulls, and then just toss him on the heap like an old discarded shoe. He may be diabolical, but Stewie's just a baby! What the ef?

And what about Cool Yule Santa? He delivers hopes and dreams to all the tiny boys and girls. What could he have been doing to warrant such an attack? 

Look at his smile. He was obviously enjoying himself when he got whacked...hey, wait a minute. What's that pink thing spread out over "Santa's trap door"? Is that... Is that a--HOOKER? Was CY Santa sampling the Hos? 

Holy Crap!?! 

What the hell? Did my sleepy little hamlet suddenly turn into freaking Blue Velvet?! Eww Eww..is that a severed ear in the grassy knoll? Could these beloved characters have been involved in some unspeakable explicit activities? Here?

Maybe I was all wrong. Maybe I didn't stumble on to a deathly tableau of innocent bystanders. Maybe what I discovered was forced penance from the shimmering blade of justice wielded by a most unlikely source...

Don't mess with Rigid Righteous Santa. That Dude is tough. Ho Ho Ho, mother plucker.

(maybe we should consider moving to the city)

Dude, Where The Ef Are My Videos?!?

or stupid stupid technology 

Okay, so I've returned from vacation with a small problem...well a couple small problems actually. 

For some reason I have not been able to sleep (fall asleep, stay asleep, go back to sleep) for like...four days now. 

What the ef is that about? 

It's not like I've been hammered every night, my alcohol-soaked brain unable to ascertain the need for a nocturnal sleep pattern. Nor have I been having night sweats or some other such "transition years" hideous side effect, no doubt created by the Man to continue the long-suffering of us gals. (I'm not bitter.) My brain just.. will.. not.. SHUT UP!! I'm at the end of my sad, flacid, dangling rope. (which is not to be confused with the much maligned dangling participle, or equally maligned dingly dangs of prior posting) If either case were true, at least there would be a place to start looking for a remedy to my current malady. As it stands, I'm left pleading for sweet release from my higher power. Perhaps I need to wear sexier PJs to attract said deity's attention. 

Moving on...

My other Issue Du Jour is technology related. Namely, iPhoto is toying with me. Mocking my misfortune of being hatched in an era when black and white TVs were all the rage, phones had rotary dials and communications were written on papyrus, sent via slave-driven river barges. Okay...we actually had ponies. 

Anyhoo, last Friday night Geo and I caught the King-Of-All-My-Thangs, Rhett Miller at Maxwell's in Hoboken. Fabulous concert! You sure get your money's worth from this charming fellow. He ripped through 21 songs in a little under 90 minutes. Standing on my perch a mere six feet away, I recorded about four songs in their entirety and a handful of smaller bits of fun banter. I didn't tape more because quite honestly I just wanted to enjoy the show and sing--LOUDLY, which frankly should not be preserved on any tape unless you need to scare away dingos or something.

 I jumped on the computer, my friend (HA!) to upload the photos (including this one of me and the blue-eyed wonder) and the videos ranging from :24 to 4:18. 

tic toc tic toc tic toc 

Ah, done. But wait a minute... Where are the longer videos? What the? 

I tried to load again. Surely there was some sort of disturbance in the matrix during the transfer or something.

tic toc tic toc tic toc  ...infinity

Still no longer videos have imported. They're still on the card. I can see and hear them play through the camera! What the ef?! 

Stupid Stupid Computer!!!!!

*Sigh*  Of course there is no "help" section in iPhoto. I've spent hours caught, knee deep, in the quagmire of Apple "support" and YouTube tutorials. All to no avail. 

In the words of Charlie Brown, "AAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!?!" 

I think I've aged 10 years this afternoon alone. Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi! You're the only one who can save me now. 

Ideas, anyone?