Fashion: Turn to the Left, Fashion: Right

Ah. There it is. The long-lost Republiardian Party's Sex Appeal.

Way to rock the naughty secretary look, Sarah.

Stick a Fork in Moi

I'm done.

So much so, my brain instantly shut down and I spent an hour watching Madonna catch flies while marveling at how the hummingbirds manage to stay completely out of the way of her web. Nature's so clev-ah.

This photo shows her stalking. (Clicky all photos for maximum effect. Come on, Wicked, you can do it.)



This one is her home in perspective. Can't see it too well, but there's a huge-ass web there in the corner. Actually, it's three webs, overlaying each other. She's obviously a Republitard spider because she can't remember how many homes she has.



These are the hummingbirds - black-chinned, Rufous, and broad-tailed. Each hates the other. Every day, hummingbird wars ensue. And I go broke filling the feeder.



At least the Rufous will be leaving for Oaxaca any day now and the broad-tailed and black-chinned will be left to duke it out amongst themselves for another 3-4 weeks. And I won't have to keep running to Sam's Club every 2.4 seconds for sugar.

Now, excuse ay Moi, I have to take a nap before the DNC tonight. Gubnor Bill Richardson speaks tonight and I want to see if Il Duce bothered to shave.

We're All Stars Now in the Dope Show

It's a ding dang good thing I'll be spending the next three days working 24 hours around the clock, fueled by caffeine, imaginary nicotine, and just enough low grade panic to melt a couple extra pounds off my happy ass or I would have something pretty darn deep and tragic to say about the Demochromatic National Convention. But if I play my cards right, I can la, la, la, la, la myself right on through without having to listen to all that blah, blah, blah. Well, except I will peek to see what Michelle La Belle is wearing.

I do so hope her handlers put her in something Oscar de la Renta-ey.

And I think she could totally pull off this Marni get up, too.

Aw, heck, while I'm hallucinating, let's go all out and imagine her in some Alexander McQueen.

See now, Hillary? That's a pantsuit.

The only thing preventing me from indulging in my own form of retail therapy is that I'm not allowed to leave the house until 9:00 a.m. Friday morning. But when I do, I think I'll have to make these mine, all mine. I know. I swore I'd never, never, never, never, never do the bootie thing. But, look, I figure if I smack myself silly beforehand and blame it all on my stress induced twilight zone, I'll be okay.

Mute Monday: Skool Daze

Dinner of Champions

Y'all know how when you're deep inside a project, working so furiously and with such intensity, you pay little if any attention to anything that's going on around you? Heck, UGGs could come back in fashion for fall and you'd barely bat a lash, so focused are you on your project at hand.

That's what it's been like for me these past couple days.

And when I get like that, when S.B. is out of town and I don't have an excuse to make a real, bona fide dinner that covers all the food groups, I just grab whatever's at hand for sustenance.

Sometimes, to disastrous results.

BECAUSE:

PLUS

Mitigated with:


=

TOTALLY BAD IDEA

So tell Moi:

What dumb ass combination of foods and/or drinks
have you put in your mouths lately?

Searching the Sky for Mankind's Friend

Oh dear. The presidential elections are only a few months off and I have done little campaigning. To plug myself. What with McCain flapping his mouth all over the airwaves calling us "my friends" every 5.67 seconds and Obama stumbling and bumbling like some codependent mother assuring us that no, we're not in fact lazy ass crybabies who should work harder and quit spending what we don't have, but victims, victims of a terrible mishandling of the big bad economy by the big bad Republitards, well. A girl just doesn't know how to dress for that shit. Much less open her mouth to once again, le sigh, tell them both they have it all wrong.

But, I have come up with a campaign theme song! Okay, so it's very Nineties Lite, but it was either Cracker or something by Ministry.



I know the posts these days are as thin as glaze on a Bundt cake, but I ain't got no gooberment loan and no one sends a check from home so guess what? I gotta work. My you-know-what off. I promise longer, more pithy observations on fascists and fall shoe fashions by the end of next week when my book's in the bag.

P.S. What the world also needs now is another folk singer like I need a hole in my head. But that's another song.

Mute Mondays: Song(birds)

(All regular visitors to Snow White's Freakin' Backyard Wilderness Camp)

For Your iPod Fridays: Blondie

I'm in a very Blondie-circa-Plastic-Letters mood these days. When I was in high school, I worshiped this band. I have all their albums. On vinyl. And imports and bootlegs worth the kind of dough that could fund a small South American putsch. It wasn't so much that I wanted to be Debbie Harry, although her pop cultural cool was unsurpassed. No, what I really wanted was to be was Clem Burke. Most underrated drummer ev-ah.

What I like about this song is that it illustrates perfectly Blondie's roots before achieving super duper mega stardom with Parallel Lines and its hit single, the tongue-in-disco's-cheek "Heart of Glass." Before all that, Blondie was a punk band. Still tongue-in-cheek, but definitely more rough edged.

This is for Mandy in Detroit, who I'm hoping can shed some light on the "442" part of this song:

All Summer in a Day

(Not Moi)

You know what mid August usually means to Moi? That summer is on the wane. Because it's when almost everyone I know goes back to school: my niece, in her first year as a high school freshman. Sniff. Very verklempt making moment. Wicked, in her umpteenth year as a teacher of, well, teacherly things. Sniff. No more meetings in high priced coffee shops to discuss the merits of Daniel Craig's bod versus head.

Mid August means S.B. goes back to work, too, doing whatever it is he does wearing that sexy ass hard hat of his. Sniff. Bye, bye, S.B.!

So where does that leave spouse-less, friendless, hapless lil' ol' Moi? Chained to my desk for the next three weeks writing a book. Just me, my iMac, a case of Fresca, and my head down, type, type, type, type, typing.

I'll check in here and there. In between sentences.

I Did Not Have Sex With That . . .Wait. What?

I knew it.

I mean, look at him.

Man's got cheating hair.

It's not so much that he looks like a human Ken doll. It's that he looks like a male Barbie. Glossy and kinda dumb. But, mitigated with enough aw shucks Southern Fried charm to save him from being a complete dolt. I blame much of it on the accent. As someone who was snagged by one herself, I'll tell ya, a couple of whiskey slurred vowels and dropped consonants and things can get out of focus real quick.

Still, this makes me wonder: why do the Demochromatics get all the sex pots? Huh? Where are the equivalent Republitards? If you know of any, let me know. In fact, I'm going to put y'all to the test: which current denizen(s) of the Republican party would make you chuck all common sense and go tripping through the tulips?

And don't say Andrew Sullivan.

Yes, he's a hunka, hunka burnin' hawtness.
But he's not actually IN politics.
And he pitches for the other team.

Mute Monday: West

Fork China

Who needs the Olympics when there's golf?

It's sexy . . .

Drama-filled . . .

Fabulously fashionable . . .

And Troll's cousin Boo Weekly is currently ahead of Phil Mickelson going in to today.

Go, Boo!

The Sound of One Hand Clapping

When I logged in this morning I discovered that over half of the comments you all left on yesterday's post are missing. Poof. Gone. Into thin air. Which makes me so, so sad 'cause y'all are so, so funny. I need that humor these days.

If this has happened to anyone else, let me know. Because I'd have an easier time convincing Ann Coulter to give Ted Kennedy a lap dance than I would getting hold of Blobber.

Thanks,
Moi

In Between the Lines Pack More Lines

Whenever S.B. and I travel anywhere, the first thing we do is scout out where we're going to eat. I’m not talking the local Olive Garden or Applebee’s, either. Those we can get at home when we’re in a rush, don’t feel like sushi, or have had enough carne adovada burritos that month to feed a small South American putsch. I’m talking a city, town, or region’s best locally owned and operated restaurants. We want to know where the fish are jumping and the is duck poaching. Whose got the fluffiest pancakes, the juiciest burger, the coldest martinis, and the best bar chatter. High brow or low brow, it doesn’t matter – we just want to see what the locals got in ‘em.

As a result, we've managed to find if not fabulous then at least highly interesting food in places as out of the way as Silver City, New Mexico, Spearfish, South Dakota, Columbia, Missouri, Just Off The Interstate South Louisiana, and Where the Fuck Are We Montana.

But traveling for work is another matter. Usually, mealtimes are all about expediency, which means I end up assaulting my arteries with a crap hotel buffet at breakfast, a crap chain restaurant burger at lunch, and a crap chain restaurant pasta at dinner. Not even the one glass of teeth-staining Merlot I allow myself to wash it all down with can kill the pain. Although, the cheese cake usually does. Sigh. It’s all so cheap and dirty.

Anyway, imagine my joy when on my second day last week, I spotted next door to the client’s plant a little eatery that looked for all the world like something locally owned and operated. Okay, so the name – Helga’s House of Sausage – should have clued me into something essential about the eating habits of those who live and work in the belly of our nation’s industrial parks. But. It didn’t.

Come 12:00 noon and left to my own devices, I headed on over to Helga’s. My next clue that I was unlikely to find anything edible that wouldn’t immediately send my cholesterol frolicking out of control in flip flops and a gypsy skirt? That came courtesy of the hostess, a woman of indeterminate Scandinavian genetics who looked like once upon a time around the year of the Munich Olympics she’d been capable of bench-pressing a cruise ship. I’m not sure even AB could have taken her. Anyway, she blasted me with an ice queen stare and then barked a question no restaurant hostess in a major American city has asked since Jesus roamed the earth: “Smoking or non-smoking?”

“Uh, non-smoking?”

One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand. “Table for one?”

“Yes, it’s just me.”

Instead of another barked question, a heavy sigh. As if I were not so much a customer, as yet another burden in her already heavily weighed-down day. As punishment, she ushered me off to a corner table in the back. At least I was out of range of the cigarette smoke.

As for the menu. Well. Although it is one of my firmest held culinary beliefs that I didn’t stagger my way up the food chain in these here high heels to spend my life eating only vegetables, neither do I find it a particularly good sign in a restaurant that the ENTIRE menu is dominated by meat. All of it served in exactly the same way: breaded, fried, gravy slathered, and accompanied by two slices of limp Wonder Bread and a side of iceberg lettuce between which a few quarters of anemic tomatoes are allowed to peak for one brief moment before being suffocated by an entire bottle of Ranch Dressing.

When my waitress finally managed to take my own order, such was her disdain you would have thought I'd asked for roast infant with a side of sauted toddler instead of a Club Sandwich, hold the mayo.

But one good thing did come out of the meal. I had an epiphany. One regarding our country's crisis of health. I don't think the problem lies with lack of gub'ment initiative. Nor with the insurance companies. Or even the drug lords. I think the problem lies with our great big mouths.

Mute Monday: Zip

The zippiest person I've ever known: my mother. Three weeks before this photo was taken, she'd given birth to Moi. Already she was back out in the mountains.