Friday Afternoon Music Jam: Lady Gaga

This song simultaneously lifts me up and makes me want to cry.

Wednesday One-Liner

I have reached a lamentable stage in my life where, with an eye towards my caloric intake, I forgo eating raw cookie dough or cake batter in order to indulge in the final product.

Irony

I went to jump through yet another set of security hoops at work yesterday and while I was waiting, I overheard two African-American employees on the other side of the partition discussing the pitfalls of Disney princesses.

“You see how Tiana has to live in New Orleans? And how she falls in love with a light skinned man?”

“Mmmm hmm.  And you see how the “magic ingredient” is hot sauce?  I mean, for real, HOT SAUCE?! How is it nobody has picked up on that? Talk about stereotypes!”

“I know! So bad. What, did they think we wouldn’t notice?”

Later:

“My cousin’s daughter wanted to dress up like Jasmine for Halloween.  I mean, that’s not even the right race!  What race is she anyway?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think she’s Indian.”

“But I thought it took place in Arabia.  You know, they had that swoopy castle or whatever.  And that magic carpet?”

“Isn’t India in Arabia?”

Monday Morning Comedy Jam: Alana

Move over, Mackenzie.  The competition is here.

Welcome to Splitsville. Population You.

Dear Reading Lolita in Tehran,

I don’t know how to break this to you.  We’ve had such a long run together with you topping my list of most hated books.  You were the one who truly taught me how to let go of reading once I had reached the tipping point.  You were the one who raised in me such passion that I finally understood the sentiment behind Dorothy Parker’s “This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”

It pains me to say this, but you are no longer number one.  Another book has come into my life and made it worse for its existence.  Who knew that excrement could so neatly be bound between two covers and be granted an ISBN?  Bad enough that I fell for the title thinking I might glimpse some familiar and nostalgic terrain. Once I started it, I could not put it down …  fast enough.  The only redeeming value this “bunch of rednecks committing savage and unpoetic violence upon each other with some redneck speak thrown in for flavor” book has to offer that is one character’s name is Darnell.  As one reviewer put it: “needlessly gory to the point of boredom.”  Neologism alert!  GOREDOM!  It’s time to step aside, Lolita. Welcome to the top spot, Crimes in Southern Indiana: Stories by Frank Bill.

Yours in hate,

Baji

Borgasmord

TP and I spent an unreasonable amount of time scouring the interwebs for a video of the famous (but apparently not famous enough) Mason Reese commercial for Underwood Ham’s Deviled Ham in which he “adorably” mispronounces the word “smorgasbord”.  Guess we have to wait until the hipsters decide to unearth that gem and post it online before we can relive/revile it.

CAKE

Cake cake.
Who’s there?
Cake.

(This post brought to you by Baji, who left so much cake at my house this weekend that even though all I have done since she departed is eat cake, there seems to be more cake now than when I started.)

Context

Yesterday, I had to get photographed, fingerprinted, and probed for my new ID badge. A few hours later, I received a confirmation email that my badge was ready for pick up. At the bottom of the signature block was this rather ominous quote:

“We never touch people so lightly, that we do not leave a trace.”

Now, the story behind the quote is very poetic and thoughtful but when that line is delivered by governmental security personnel, it takes on a completely different vibe.  Tell my family I love them!

They Gave Mercedes a Fat Boyfriend?

So you give the fat black girl a fat black boyfriend?

No.

(Baji, are we still watching this show? Please advise.)

Dr. No

I think I’ve read enough, possibly too many, books about the practice of medicine, something I realized two pages into the first of two new medically related acquisitions. Even the retrieval of a battery and a wood screw from the bowels of a Rikers inmate doesn’t do it for me anymore. Where’s a good ptomaine poisoning when you need one? (Technically ptomaine poisoning doesn’t exist, but botulism is lame.)

The problem is that I started, many years ago, with Oliver Sacks, when clearly I should have ended with him. You cannot beat people regaining their sight and then having to close their eyes to go up and down steps, or people having to rotate their plates in order not to die of starvation, or people seeing the Grateful Dead in the ’80s and nearly having a nervous breakdown because the grapefruit-size tumor in their head has rendered them unable to remember anything past 1966 and something is terribly wrong with Jerry Garcia. Go back to prison with your battery; it wasn’t even a D. (It was an AA. Pathetic.)