the most wonderful time of the year

So, let me tell you a little something about Durham, NC: it's nearly impossible to grow up there and not be obsessed with college basketball. Not that this is a problem, because if you did grow up there, you probably know that college basketball is pretty much the greatest sport on the face of the planet.

Really, the only problem with college hoops is that you have to spend an entire half of the year going without it. Oh, believe you me, early April to late October are grim months. Especially April, when I go through withdrawal from not just college hoops, but first conference and then tournament play. It's rough. T.S. Eliot wasn't kidding about April being the cruelest month, although he may have had a slightly different reason for thinking so.

On occasion, I wonder if the reason they take such a loooooong break (I mean, seriously, doesn't school start in, like, August?! Time's a-wastin', kids!!) is so that the die-hard fans will pay attention at the beginning of the season, when teams of unsurpassed greatness like the Carolina Tar Heels play opponents like... Belmont Abbey? Heh? Who? Woh-kay, then. But really, by the time early November rolls around, I'm just so ready to hear the squeak of sneakers on the court and watch the point guard take it coast-to-coast, they could be playing the intramural team from a local nursing home and I'd probably watch.

For many years, I've chosen my cable provider based on who offered ESPN Full Court. That's because I moved halfway across the country, and sadly, people out here seem to think their own teams matter more than my Heels. Tchah! Ha! Forsooth! And so on. But since we got rid of our cable a few months ago, I've now discovered that we might have to switch internet providers, so we can subscribe to watch the games online. I personally think it's absolute bullshit that only certain purveyors of the interwebs are licensed to offer the subscription service, but whatever. The hassle of switching seems like a small price to pay to get to watch my boys in blue.

At this point, we're a mere two weeks and two days from the first watchable game. I feel like I'm waiting for Christmas. Let's go, Tar Heels!!!

Always look on the bright side of life...

Not to wax too poetic or anything, but it's funny how life has a way of smacking you upside the head when you least expect it. This can, as we all know, sting quite a bit. But if you think about it, you may find yourself feeling lucky that life used the back of its hand instead of the side of a lead pipe.

Yesterday, for example, I got to work and had to leave shortly thereafter for a live media spot. It was flurrying snow, but happily the roads weren't frozen, and of course I had my trusty four-wheel-drive Jeep. Until I went out to the parking lot to the aforementioned trusty Jeep, and it wouldn't start. At all. Engine wouldn't even turn over. Heater came on, NPR came on, as if the car were mocking me by only half-working; but no engine, which is really the key component when it comes to functioning cars, if you ask me.

But the work station wagon was there, and it was the work of an instant to go back in, grab the keys and get on the road. I still made it on time to my live media spot, thankful that the roads didn't suck, or I would've been a bit terrified to drive the distinctly non-four-wheel-drive station wagon.

Later in the day, I called AAA, which I've had ever since I was a teenager, largely because my mom's always had it. Apparently I'd let my membership lapse last year. And apparently in order to get same-day service to be towed to our mechanic, it was more than twice as much as just signing up for the regular annual membership fee. Like almost $150 extra, just to get the same-day service. Wow. My husband drew his finger across his neck and I hung up the phone. He informed me that getting towed would probably cost $40-$60, prompting me to wonder if our local mechanic could recommend a towing service.

Bear in mind that the undercurrent to this entire situation is that, like a lot of people these days, we are right on the verge of being Absolutely Flat Broke. The wolves aren't quite at the door yet, but they're prowling around the mailbox, where the bills arrive.

So he calls the mechanic, who offers to meet him at my car (something I didn't even know mechanics did, and three cheers for locally owned businesses), and they manage to push-start it - amazing!! They get it to the shop and when the mechanic calls later, as I'd rather feared and expected, there are about 8,000 things wrong with my car. Well, it does have nearly 145,000 miles on it, and I may or may not be about 11 months overdue for an oil change. Ahem.

But, the bright side again refusing to be ignored, only about half of the things wrong needed to be fixed immediately (Or Risk Sudden Death and/or Car Breakdown). And the mechanic gave us a 10 percent discount. And while the list of 8,000 things sounded like it would cost somewhere around $2,000 or more, the immediate fixes with the discount were only $400. Hell, for the state my car was in, that's practically free.

So I'm just going to go ahead and consider myself lucky, and not stress about the other things I could be doing with that $400 - like, say, get the garbage disposal fixed or replaced. I mean, really, who needs a garbage disposal? We can just throw the food scraps to the wolves by the mailbox! So convenient.

The moral of the story, children, is that the same shit is going to happen to you regardless of how you react to it. So you can either freak out and be upset about it, or you can try to see it in the best light and get on with life. The choice is yours, every day.

...Now if you can just find the bright side of having that Monty Python chorus stuck in your head all day...

Wiping away my bibliophilic tears...

I just heard that today is the last day of Reading Rainbow. My response, in a word, is, "Nooooooooo!!!" My further response, in several more words, is this tribute blog post.

As a nerdy young child, and an unabashed bookworm, I loved Reading Rainbow. It was one of my favorite shows, although its premise was to teach kids to love reading, so there was a strong element of preaching to the choir. But do you have any idea how nice it is, as a nerdy young child, to have your love of reading affirmed and hear about new, good books to read? Trust me, it was wonderful.

According to the NPR article, the show's getting canned because no one's willing to pony up the several hundred thousand dollars to keep it going. Never before have I so fervently wished I had several hundred thousand dollars lying around, so that I could fund the show myself. I actually have long wanted to start a children's literacy foundation, if I ever did strike it rich, so this would be in keeping with my prior pipe dreams.

Supposedly, market research has shown that what PBS needs to be doing is teaching kids how to read, not why read. Nobody's paying me thousands of dollars for my totally non-researched opinion, but I still call bullshit. It seems to me that kids will learn how to do anything they damn well want to, so long as they actually want to. The problem, in my opinion, is not so much mechanics as it is motivation. But hey, what do I know. (Side note: you can still pay me thousands of dollars for that opinion, if you want. I have a PayPal account and everything.)

I was rather gratified to find, when I tweeted my distress, that others were as sad as I to see the show go. It's been on the air for 26 years, which means in all likelihood that I was watching it when it first started airing, as I have been a PBS fan since I was still in diapers. Granted, it's been many years since I watched it, but my fondness for the show is still firmly rooted in my heart.

This is a cool YouTube tribute that another tweep posted: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApLTDoJea2Q

So, thanks, Reading Rainbow, for brightening a young bookworm's days, and thanks, LeVar Burton, for doing such a great job all these years and getting kids interested in good books. You will be missed. One can only hope PBS might release some episodes on DVD so I can share the love with the kids I plan to have someday.

full of win & awesome

I do a lot of ranting on here, so it's time for some things to make you (okay, me) laugh. Here's a collection of links I find hilarious.

I am inspired by this super-awesome post by Mediaite.com comparing the media world to the world of Harry Potter, which I saw today and is just too funny: http://www.mediaite.com/online/media-muggles-harry-potter/

Cracked.com has some similarly hilarious articles. These are a couple of recent favorites. (If you're offended by crude language - well, you probably wouldn't be reading this site, but you definitely should not read Cracked. Or, well, any of my other recommendations, except the Mediaite article, which is family-friendly.)

6 Animals That Can Get You High: http://www.cracked.com/article/81_6-animals-that-can-get-you-high/

One of my favorite posts of all time - 7 Classic Star Wars Characters Who Totally Dropped the Ball: http://www.cracked.com/article_17546_7-classic-star-wars-characters-who-totally-dropped-ball.html (Sheer genius.)

And possibly one of the funniest things I have ever seen, the literal video version of 'Total Eclipse of the Heart': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj-x9ygQEGA&feature=PlayList&p=A095CDB461A1FEED&index=29

Okay, enough with the post links, on to my favorite smartass websites.

Texts from Last Night http://www.textsfromlastnight.com/ Occasionally scary, more often hysterically funny. Makes you glad college is over more often than it makes you nostalgic for the good old days.

STFU Parents http://stfuparents.tumblr.com/ Taking toilet humor to a whole new level. Makes me feel extremely lucky that my friends with babies have way, way better taste and self-editing skills than the people featured on this site.

Awkward Family Photos http://www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com/ Look on the right-hand side for most popular posts & read the Thanksgiving letter - you will cry with laughter, I promise.

Passive-Aggressive Notes http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/ People are amazing. Truly. Not always in a good way.

There, I Fixed It. http://thereifixedit.com/ See PAN comment, above.

Stuff White People Like http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/ It's funny, and true.

I Can Has Cheezburger http://icanhascheezburger.com/ Because cats are endlessly entertaining.... probably due to taking themselves so very seriously.

Cakewrecks http://www.cakewrecks.com/ Needs no explanation.

And last, but most definitely not least...

It's My World, Ur Just A Squirrel http://www.thesabs.com/ Written by one of my favorite tweeps, @SnarkySabs, she culls the interwebs for bizarre news articles and adds her own fabulously acerbic take on them.

grrrr...

I'll admit it: I've developed a Pavlovian response to hearing or reading the name "Michael Vick". It brings out a side of me I don't really like - that evil little part of me that likes to dream up extremely inhumane punishments for him. As much as I'm horrified and sickened by what he did, I'd like to think my belief that no one should be treated brutally could stand up to this situation. But I'm sorely tested.

There are several issues involved for me. First, by default I root for Philadelphia sports teams. So the fact that he's going to play for the Eagles makes me extremely unhappy - like to the point of nausea. I've never been a big football fan anyway, so it's not that hard for me to walk away from them. Thank GOD he's not a baseball player, because I am a lifelong, die-hard Phillies fan and would've been subjected to a massive crisis of faith over that one.

Second, I would like to think of myself as a fair person. I believe strongly in justice. And while there's justice and then there's justice, he did go bankrupt and spend 18 months in prison (but I'll bet you nobody tried to make him their bitch - now THAT would be justice. See? There's that evil ugly side of me I don't like. Rape is never deserved, but then I kind of think in this situation, it might have made him realize just how heinous his actions were. Argh.)

It raises real questions for me about what justice is - the whole "eye for an eye" thing versus our more "civilized" modern justice system. I think the animal lovers like me really want to see him suffer physically and helplessly, like the treatment to which he subjected (or condoned the subjection of) those poor dogs. But on the other hand, I didn't think the terrorists in Guantanamo Bay should've been tortured, and that's not necessarily all that different from this; terrorists also subject the innocent to fear, pain and suffering without any choice on the victims' part.

I was discussing this with my brother last weekend, and his point was that Vick served his time and is fulfilling the rest of his court-mandated punishment, and it's not fair to keep punishing him for the rest of his life; plus, since the guy apparently has no other skills than playing football, he can't really earn a living unless he's allowed to play.

In theory, from a legal standpoint, I can understand that this is generally a reasonable position. But emotionally, I still want to have Vick covered in honey and set fire-ants on him.

Someone - I forget who - once said something like, 'We never know the strength of our principles until we have to apply them to the treatment of our enemies.' So, while I don't really joke about wanting Vick to be painfully punished for his wrongdoing, I'm forced to admit ...ugh, I can't believe I'm even saying this... please don't hate me... that he probably should be given the chance to a) earn a living and b) make up for the horrible, despicable, evil, evil, evil things he did.

I feel like vomiting and then scrubbing my mouth out with soap. But I feel like I have to stand by my belief in justice, no matter how much I detest the situation to which it applies.

I think it would be easier if 'earning a living' for him didn't involve a six-figure salary, but again, I keep coming back to the underlying principles involved. It's like that story about Winston Churchill, where he (jokingly, we assume) asked a woman if she'd sleep with him for five million pounds. "My goodness, Mr. Churchill... Well, I suppose... We would have to discuss terms, of course..." she replied. Then he asked her if she'd sleep with him for five pounds. "Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!" she exclaimed. "Madam, we have already established that," he answered. "Now we are just haggling over the price." In Vick's case, his only real skill-set happens to involve stupidly high salaries and national celebrity. Dammit. Couldn't he be taught to flip burgers at Mickey-D's or some other minimum-wage occupation?

I just read an article in which Vick says he's grateful for a second chance and is going to use his community service to "help more animals than he's hurt". If he really means that, then he ought to be given the chance to do it. And if he doesn't do it, THEN can we poke him with sharp sticks and set parts of his body on fire temporarily? Because that would feel a lot more like justice to me.

Calling all smartasses...

The world needs more laughter, don't you think? I myself like to bring a little levity to the situation whenever I can, largely through my smartass sense of humor.

(Fortunately, I find myself rampantly hilarious, so that makes it easier on me (though not necessarily the poor sods who have to listen to me all the time). Of course, I am also notoriously easily entertained.)

But I have these recurring wishes for more smartassedness in the world. For example, I don't even know how many times I've been typing in 'hotmail.com' and snickered over the thought that someone should really offer 'homail.com'. (Yeah, like I said: easily entertained.)

But how is it that in a world where every moronic & useless product on the planet has its own website, an email site like 'homail' doesn't exist? I guess that's not really one of those demographics people self-label much. Maybe you could set up fake accounts for annoying bitches in your life, sort of like my idea of 'twatter.com'.

Bear in mind, these would not be porn sites, just venting-about-people-that-need-to-be-smacked-upside-the-head sites.

I swear, I'm not as vengeful as I sound. I just amuse myself by verbally or mentally lacerating sucky people with the worst insults I can think of, then move on.

Anyway, I can't be the only one who has ideas for sites that enable the smartass in you. Anybody have other suggestions?

The Female MacGyver Strikes Again

Tonight we were down at our local bar, listening to Grant Sabin (who is a fantastic blues musician). Only a few minutes had passed since we sat down at the bar, and I was chatting with some friends when I suddenly felt an ominous give in the right strap of my tank top.

Sure enough, the stupid strap had detached¹ from the back of my shirt². Unfortunately, I had my summer purse, which is an extremely pared-down version of my normal purse and thus contained no safety pins. And while I have safety pins on both my old red hoodie and my grey hoodie, I was wearing my new red hoodie: no pins. There were three women sitting on the couch behind me, who saw it happen, and in a superb demonstration of The Sisterhood all checked their purses for safety pins; nada. My friend who was tending bar likewise checked at the cash register; all she had was a large paper clip.

When I saw said paper clip, my eyes (which had so recently widened in horror at feeling my cami strap give way) lit up with joy. I shooed off my husband, who was attempting to tie the broken strap to the other strap, and hightailed it to the bathroom.

Naturally, since I had entered the bathroom with the intent of performing emergency surgery on my clothing, I almost immediately heard two girls queue up outside the door.

I stuck the straight end of the paper clip through the cami strap, then through my shirt, and turned the paper clip so the hooking mechanism was on the opposite curve. That way it couldn't easily come undone. A quick check in the mirror showed that yes, it pretty much looked like my damn shirt was being held together by a paper clip, but yes, that bitch was sturdy and I didn't have to worry about accidentally flashing anyone tonight.

When I returned to my seat, my husband, who felt that his idea would have worked just fine (though looked even worse than the paper clip fix) asked, "Did it work?"

"Hell yeah it did," I replied, sliding onto my barstool, "'cause I'm the motherfuckin' female MacGyver." '

My friend the bartender came over a moment later and made me turn around so she could see. "You are totally the female MacGyver," she said.

"Damn straight," I grinned, and took a celebratory swig of a delightfully tasty IPA.

¹ I would prefer to think that this happened because the shirt was poorly made to begin with and had been washed too many times, rather than because I am a fatass. However, the cause of the sudden detachment is irrelevant to our story, which focuses instead on its effects. Let's not lose focus, here, people, come on.
² Thank god it detached from the back of the shirt, and not the front, because while I could've handled inadvertently flashing total strangers in a crowded bar, my 20-year-old brother-in-law is visiting, and was there with us. Had he seen my boob, I probably would have died of sheer mortification right there on the spot.

Adventures in Purse-Diving: Behold the Female MacGyver!

I'm one of those people that practically lives out of my purse, which is huge whether huge purses are in fashion or not. It allows me to carry all sorts of useful things about; as a writer, I always have a journal, at least one pen, at least one copy of the magazine 'Poetry' and at least one book. Then you have all the assorted crap that I manage to attract like some sort of bizarre magnet.

For example, last night I was at a networking event, having a smoke outside with a friend. A smallish, fluffy, black and white dog comes trotting over from the parking lot, totally unattended. He says hi to us and starts to walk up the road, towards one of the busiest streets downtown. I work for a humane society, but I'd like to think anyone would've done what I did: call the dog back and get hold of its collar. Then I started digging in my bag.

"What are you looking for?" my friend asked.

"A leash, I always have one in here," I muttered, trying to dig through all the random shit in there one-handed.

"You have a leash in your purse?"

"Well, yeah, I work for the Humane Society, you never know when you'll need one. Dammit!" I get frustrated with looking for the leash, grab a nylon rope I also happen to have in my bag, and start tying it to the dog's collar.

"What's that?" asked my friend.

"Just some nylon rope, from camping last weekend," I answered.

"You have nylon rope in your purse?"

I looked up at her. "I hope you realize, I AM the female MacGyver." (Side note: this could be why my husband married me. He has every single MacGyver episode memorized, and can tell you which one it is within three seconds or less of watching it. But let's not explore that now.) "In fact, if MacGyver had had a purse, he would've been ten times more badass," I proclaimed.

It reminded me vividly of the time I was trying to find something in my purse and eventually shut the door to my office so I could dump the entire contents out on my desk. I sent my best friend an email listing everything, just because it was so remarkably eclectic. She wrote back that she was crying with laughter.

And so, gentle reader, it is time for another adventure in purse-diving. I'm just going to list things as I pull them out, no particular order. ("Order" is not a word one could apply easily to my purse.) Enjoy the window into my weird & random life. :)

- Set of keys #1 (cars & hubby's office, with bottle opener)
- today's paystub
- 2 pens (a Sharpie & a Pilot - cannot live without Pilot pens!)
- empty pouch of rolling tobacco
- reimbursement check from 3 weeks ago that I still haven't deposited - d'oh!
- 5' length of nylon rope
- deck of cards
- Set of keys #2 (house, with small squishy monkey)
- teriyaki-flavored seaweed snacks
- another (inferior) pen (for desperate times only)
- smallish jar of comfrey salve
- empty pack of rolling papers, related to aforementioned empty tobacco pouch
- Burt's Bees lip shimmer
- box o' matches
- eyeglasses repair kit, despite the fact that my glasses have been broken beyond my repair for months & I've been wearing contacts
- more seaweed snacks? really? huh.
- unshelled, roasted & salted peanut. just one.
- tiny hair clip I will never use
- wooden golf tee
- ponytail holder
- the other tiny hair clip, which I will also never use
- half-full pack of American Spirit blues
- the damn leash I couldn't find last night
- lots more nylon rope, one end of which has somehow gotten wrapped around the wrist of one of my winter gloves (MacGyver would already have a plan for how to use this. I felt like I'd caught a fish when I pulled it out of my purse.)
- the other glove
- note to self: "Get Howl-oween shit together!" (Howl-oween's an event we're planning for October, for the animal rescue for which I volunteer, http://www.safeplacepets.org/.)
- random crumpled artwork made by my friend's pre-school Montessori students
- another empty pouch of rolling tobacco. I've gotta quit smoking. Again.
- ooh, batteries! score! pack of 4 AAs.
- crumpled ball of tinfoil. no idea why. could be used to reflect the sun and temporarily blind one's enemy, allowing one to sneak inside the compound and rescue whoever needed rescuing, though.
- liability waiver from our visit to the wolf sanctuary
- another ponytail holder
- phone memory card adapter
- champagne cork
- medicine bag with wolf fur & a few fetishes
- pack of rolling papers that actually hasn't run out. sweet.
- excerpt of a poem by Seamus Heaney
- program from the volunteer appreciation brunch we had a few weeks ago
- May 2009 issue of 'Poetry'
- Portishead CD (Dummy)
- paystub from two weeks ago
- 25' measuring tape
- journal #1
- coaster with a couple friends' birthdates & places, for casting astrology charts at some undetermined point in the future
- spare tampon
- hey, there are my other keys! set #3: house, with another bottle opener
- tiny jar of largely innocuous plantlife
- more keys (for one of the work vehicles)
- another wooden golf tee? weird.
- wallet
- checkbook
- tons of receipts
- unidentifiable CD scratched all to hell
- journal #2
- The Celtic Fiddle Festival CD
- address book
- Buddy Guy CD (Sweet Tea)
- ticket stub from Slumdog Millionaire <3
- tracking sheet from a game of Simpsons Clue that I am fairly sure took place in late January.
- notepad & pen
- camera
- business cards
- envelope with a lock of my daughter's hair
- button for The Tank, my friend's awesome experimental art & music space in Manhattan (check it out, New Yorkers!)

P.S. Yes, we located the dog's owner. No, they didn't seem even remotely concerned that their dog had been wandering around downtown at rush hour.
P.P.S. I'm tempted to go back and find the list I made a few months ago, just for comparison's sake, but this post is already really long.

Return of the Shoulder Pads: Scariest Trend Ever.

I will just start this post off with a HUGE Sideshow Bob-style shudder.

{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{so wrong}}}}}}}}}}}}}}

I'm talking, of course, about shoulder pads. In a word, BLEAH. The last time shoulder pads were in style, I was a young tyke, but even then my shoulders were well and broadly formed. One never realizes how much one can be insecure about one's body until one is forced by evil-minded peers into succumbing to a trend that looks truly horrible on one. ...Or words to that effect.

I could be overreacting, of course; I just saw a tweet that shoulder pads are coming back into style this year and was instantly transported back to looking like a fifth-grade female football player. Trauma! Thank goodness I now have the self-confidence to say, "Fuck you, hideous trend! Begone with you! Keep your absurd fashion laws off my body!"

Of course, I did that when capris first came out, and that didn't work at all. But I'm now convinced that shoulder pads pretty much look goofy on everyone, so hopefully the trend will be short-lived. We can but hope.

Okay, seriously now, who loved 'Designing Women'? Because I used to love 'Designing Women'. It's true.

Mayhem! Insanity! Writing!

Okay, it's not quite as dramatic as all that, really. I'm working on another writing project; my goal is to spend May revising the novel that I wrote in November.

Well, actually, my goal WAS to finish revising the novel in this month. But considering that it's now May 7th and I've just finished chapter two, plus won't be able to do much writing this weekend, that goal's starting to look just a leetle more difficult.

Still, it's not out of reach. It should work out fine, or at least I am going to keep believing that until proved otherwise.

If you want to check it out, the revised version of Mississippi starts here, and the original starts here. Feedback is appreciated...