Why we're *awesome*

Headline on Rich's A1 story today:
Schools targeting violence with guns

Personally, I think it ranks right up there with "Motorcycle breaks leg."

Born to hand jive, baby

Becky and I were wearing giant sparkly blue shirts doing the hand jive in the back corner of a swanky Manhattan restaurant when the extent of our coolness became very, very clear Saturday night.

We decided to go the non-traditional route for Halloween (rather than returning to our roots -- the Infamous Devil and Cat Fiasco of 2002 in which I ended up throwing up on myself on the cab ride home and she went home with a hairless, eyelashless freak... and that wasn't a costume). So we found these giant sequined blue shirts at a thrift shop, sprayed our hair blue and decided to be toothpaste. Think about it... think... think... yes. Crest.

So we traipsed through the city in our big sparkly blue shirts and made our way into the restaurant where someone we kind of know was having a birthday/Halloween party. She had rented out a room in a posh restaurant on 57th Street and we figured it couldn't be all that bad.

We walked in, being toothpaste, and found everyone else in traditional Halloween attire (sexy cat, sexy tiger, sexy Alice in Wonderland, sexy fill-in-the-blank, etc., etc., etc.). So we figured the drunker we were, the better -- but after the first gin and tonic set me back $11 plus tip we realized we probably should have pregamed.

After talking to a few different people (one of whom asked Becky why she didn't just find a big strong man to support her financially), it happened.

We were toothpaste sitting in the back corner of the room, eating cake and doing the hand jive. And the answer to your inevitable follow-up questions is no. No, the hand jive song wasn't playing. And no, no one else was doing the hand jive. We just suddenly started doing the hand jive for no apparent reason. We're not sure why ourselves.

We left soon afterwards, changed out of our toothpaste and finished off the night at a sports bar with the final innings of Game 3.

The impending Pimp and Ho Adventure of 2008's gonna have nothin' on last Saturday...

I'm not a reporter -- I just play one on TV

You know those people who like to ask themselves questions and then answer them ("Am I happy about being a schmuck? No. But have I come to accept it as a part of life? Sure.")? Apparently FEMA gave a whole new meaning to that...

FEMA held a press conference Tuesday in its southwest D.C. offices (nowhere near downtown or Capitol Hill, where the reporters are) with Deputy Director Harvey E. Johnson to discuss the California fires. Unfortunately, reporters only received 15 minutes notice about the press conference and no one was able to make it to the office on such short notice. So the reporters who weren't able to make it were given a call-in number on a "listen-only" line, meaning they could hear the press conference but wouldn't be able to ask any of their own questions -- much like Joe Blow watching it on Fox News.

Well the questions asked were like softballs in a senior citizens slow-pitch league. (What "commodities" are being shipped to Southern California? Are you happy with FEMA's response so far? Does the quick response to the fires show that you've learned lessons from Katrina?)

This from the Washington Post:

He was apparently quite familiar with the reporters -- in one case, he appears to say "Mike" and points to a reporter -- and was asked an oddly in-house question about "what it means to have an emergency declaration as opposed to a major disaster declaration" signed by the president. He once again explained smoothly.

Turns out, there was a good explanation for the smooth-as-a-baby's-butt press conference. Because of the impossibly short notice, no reporters could make it. Turns out, the "reporters" who showed up were actually FEMA's deputy director of external affairs, FEMA's deputy director of public affairs. FEMA's director of external affairs and one of FEMA's press aides, according to the Washington Post.

Al Kamen broke the story in his Washington Post column (from which I pilfered) here.

After standing by their decision through the week, FEMA apologized today. They also acknowledged that no actual reporter attended the press conference.

Reuters story on apology here.

What to do if you're attacked by monkeys

The best monkey story (and, OK, most morbid) I've ever heard involved monkey spluge in the eye leading to death. A young biologist had the noble job of holding a fake monkey vagina up to a male monkey's cage and letting him do his business so the biologists could collect the splugey specimen. But said biologist forgot to wear protective goggles, some spluge squirted up into his eye and the guy died a few days later from a resulting infection.

But monkey-related deaths and injuries occur more often as a result of a monkey attack. Most recently, The deputy mayor of New Delhi fell off his balcony and died Sunday after being attacked by wild monkeys.

According to Slate, monkeys generally attack because they think you have food. So if you're ever attacked by monkeys, you should either fork over the food (sorry, Fatty), or hold out your open palms to show them you don't have any food. If that doesn't work, you can try to chase them off with a stick. (because who doesn't carry a stick in their back pocket?)

Here's Slate's Explainer's take on How to Fight Monkeys.

On watching the ALCS with cats

I tried to put the Red Sox hat on A.M.'s head but it didn't fit so well and that made her very unhappy.
So she violently squirreled her way out of the hat and wanted to run away. But luckily, she's a very lazy cat and instead decided to just roll a little to the side and yell at me for a minute.

She remained unhappy about the hat being on top of her (she's kind of a control freak), so we compromised by having her cuddle with the hat instead.

The End. (hooray!)

It's "called underwear for a reason"

The Port Allen, La. city council has joined a bunch of other towns throughout the country banning baggy pants. It's the eighth Louisiana municipality to pass such an ordinance.

The council passed the ordinance on Monday, creating a $25 to $250 fine for a first offense and a $250 to $500 fine for subsequent offenses.

From the AP:
Councilmember Hugh Riviere said he didn't want to view other people's
undergarments, saying it "is called underwear for a reason.''

Another councilmember said she voted for the ordinance because many of her constituents believe baggy pants are a fashion faux pas.

AP story here
Local newspaper story here

So Piscataway's the new Crenshaw...

(It has, incidentally, occurred to me that my L.A. readers won't get the Piscataway reference; the Jersey readers won't get the Crenshaw reference; and the North Carolina readers won't get any references at all. So I apologize for that. And I double-apologize to Brian and Eric, who have no idea what any of these places are.)

That said...

My coworker Dave had had a bad week, and since I'm such a nice guy I decided I'd be the DD for once and drive to and fro the bars Friday night. After a long night of much drinking and an hour at Nuebies sobering up enough to drive home, we got into the car and I started driving him back to Piscataway.

Well the street he lives off of is essentially invisible and very easy to miss while driving 45 mph at 3:30 a.m., so I was driving a little under the speed limit and I noticed a car following close behind. I hate when people follow me close behind so I continued to watch from the rearview mirror.

Then I turned onto the street he lives off of -- which is not, incidentally, a major thoroughfare -- and the car turned also. I made the next turn onto his street, and the car turned again.

I locked the doors and pulled to the side of the road, hoping the car would continue past and everything was just a giant coincidence. The car pulled over, too.

I turned off my headlights. The car behind turned off its headlights.

At this point I was convinced we were about to be stabbed.

While Dave was calling the cops I was able to get a very fuzzy glance of the person driving the car and it appeared to be a blond chick. This made me feel less scared because apparently I'm a racist sexist asshole who assumes that blond girls can't be murderers.

So after a couple of minutes the dispatcher told us to drive forward and then make a left at the next block. I did. So did the car behind us.

At that point, two cop cars intercepted it at the corner and I pulled over half a block up.

The girl told the cops she was trying to follow someone else and must have gotten confused. It all seems very suspicious to me. The cop seemed to think that maybe she was a confused and/or bad private investigator.

So now I'm waiting for Dave's psychotic girlfriend to stab me in the head because she gets insanely jealous of any female in the same room as Dave and often refers to me as "the little bitch," even though I was disgustingly nice to her the one time we met. I don't trust that one...

Wow. That wasn't a good story at all.

Neither is this:
A.M. had a *giant* dingleberry this morning and was so terrified of it that she sprinted all over the apartment in a panicked -- and futile -- attempt to run away from her poo.

Like, OMG, totally!

So I generally try to sit quietly during haircuts, allowing the people at the hair salon to have their hair-salon-type conversations without me. Since they generally talk about pop culture, hair, fashion and other things I know nothing about, I've found that this strategy is best.

But on Saturday, they tried to include me in the conversation. Said conversation dealt with reality television, and the only time I've watched reality TV in the last three or four years was when Sparkley made me watch "America's Next Top Model" the other weekend.

Which is what I should have said.

Instead, I started ranting about how "Kid Nation" is a serious disappointment given the lack of a Lord-of-the-Flies, heads-on-stakes, ganging-up-on-fatties-named-Piggy atmosphere. I continued to ramble about how great that show would be if there were wars and a gang of kids trying to kill a fatty with broken glasses. I heard they cut the head off a chicken in one episode, I continued, but wouldn't it be better if they cut the head off a kid instead?

Apparently no one agreed. The salon was eerily quiet and I had to say something along the lines of, "J/K! You know what show's awesome? America's Next Top Model! Like, OMG, awesome!" just to get them to stop staring at me in horror.

The conversation eventually shifted to Halloween costumes and I limited my participation to periodic, "That's soooo cuuuute!" comments, which went over much better with the apparently-anti-child-killing crowd...

Still on the politeness rant...

I spent two hours in the doctor's office waiting room today, it turns out, because the nurses had "accidentally" recorded me as a "no show."

This comes on the heels of flipping out on a nurse who refused to refill my prescription (but told me she already had, thus sending me on a pointless trip to the pharmacy to pick it up), and writing a detailed e-mail to the doctor about the negligence of his staff. When I was finally called in today, I saw that the e-mail had been printed out and placed in my file.

I asked the doctor to explain his staff's negligence, and he hinted around the fact that the nurses dislike me. At first I tried to explain that I'd been very polite to his nurses for the first three phone calls, but I quickly realized this was a pointless explanation, because the doctor dislikes me as well. He was less concerned with my problems and more concerned with how I'd gotten his e-mail address. (Me: "I looked it up." Him: *looks at chart* "Ohhhh. You're a journalist. Maybe we should be nicer.")

Maybe I'll move back to Boston where I had a doctor who wasn't a douchebag... Anyone want to give me a job at the Globe? Anyone?

Done being polite.

You heard me. I'm done with it. It gets you nowhere. Cases in point:

1. The waitress spilled half a pitcher of ice water on me Sunday. The manager saw it happen and apologized profusely. I told them everything was fine and calmly blotted at my clothes with the damp towel they gave me. In the end, they gave us the check -- and comped *nothing.*

2. I spent last week politely calling the doctor's office to renew a prescription for a pain medication. They spent the week dicking me around. The long weekend came, I ran out of the pain medication and they still hadn't called the refill into the pharmacy. So I had to go through the weekend in serious pain and couldn't do shit about it. Then I called again today and politely reminded them that they were dicking me around. The woman tried to tell me that my other medication (an anti-inflammatory that does jack shit for pain) is "the same thing" as the pain medication. This is when I flipped out. She apologized and said she'd call the prescription in immediately.

But then, flipping out didn't work either. I went to the pharmacy to pick it up and they said nothing had been called in.

3. Last week I politely told my editors that my circa-1990 computer blows. They said I was next on the list for a new one and that I'd get said new one last week. A week later, I still have the same circa-1990 computer and when I came in today it refused to start up. So now instead of having a barely-working, no-memory piece of crap, I have no computer.

After sitting at my desk, reading the New York Times, waiting for the "help desk" to call from Neptune (the town, not the planet... I'm told) for hours, I said fuck it and told my editor she could call me at home if she needs anything.

So yeah. I'm done with politeness. I'm done with everything. Maybe I'll move to Thailand and open my own brothel...

Woo-hoo!

I just signed up to coach youth basketball again! My team's gonna be, like, *so* awesome. Maybe they'll even beat my first-ever team's 2-10 record. Because my coaching is Just That Good. Huzzah!