At least, that’s what I think was going on, but I was all lightheaded for a good portion of the morning, and trying to cover an RDA meeting while lightheaded = not enjoyable. Not that an RDA meeting is a party, but there WAS lunch, and then I wasn’t lightheaded anymore. I’m probably diabetic now, on top of all my other maladies, real and/or imagined though they may be.

-- So back to this little nugget from last week: You know, I get the whole feeling like you’ve been betrayed when someone in whom you believed turns out to suck; I would say it happens at least once a quarter that either someone I know and love or cover disappoints me in a major way, and I always take it really personally. Why is it, then, that I kinda want to punch that girl in the face? She’s all “I hurt those that I talked about in my article, ...” in her blog post (I’m not linking it, but you can find it via the Gawker post if you’re interested), but I’m like, “Oh, Sweetie. You really think those people give a fuck about you and your feelings. How cute!” Yes, she’s only 20 and this is the first of many disappointments she’s going to experience, but the disingenuousness of being all “I didn’t WANT to name names, but my super-honesty prevents me from being anything BUT honest! HONEST! And now I have to FLEE to Fronce to escape the hypocrisy, even though I was scheduled to go there for school anyway!” does her in for me. “I will do everything possible to avoid that world: not the media world as a whole, but the specific elitist circle that I so decried in my article.” I’m sure she will—until she gets her own huge following and book deal, and then it won’t be so elitist anymore because it’s her. I will give her credit for being honest about not passing up an opportunity to write for NY Mag, though. 

Next time some jackasswell-meaning soul tells me I need to get off my meds, I shall direct them to this: Lookit. I encourage all y’all with the same to do the same.

[Courtesy of Liz Spikol, the modern day patron saint of hopeless causes]

So, have y’all heard about Private First Class LaVena Johnson? The Army claims Johnson, an African-American woman, killed herself in Iraq 3 years ago, even in the face of the following:

Wow. If killing herself was the goal, that’s an awful lot of self infliction to go through when there are a lot more efficient ways to get the job done, one would think.

What the Army didn’t take under consideration is that Pvt. Johnson’s dad is A DOCTOR and therefore wasn’t fooled by the whole “It was self-inflicted” horseshitpronouncement the Army gave his wife and him, and he of course has been trying to get the investigation reopened. Unfortunately, it’s taken THREE YEARS so far. Let’s hope with all the publicity it’s now going to be getting, our Congressional monkeys will do something about it. After all, they did finally straighten out the Pat Tillman debacle, right? Fair’s fair.



[*Yeah yeah yeah, I know what I said about talking politics; as far as I’m concerned, this has more to do with psychopaths running the nut hut than who put them there. Nevertheless, one word about which party’s responsible or that this an attention ploy by the family, and your comment gets deleted. In fact, I came thisclose to closing comments on this post altogether, so if I have to do it early, I will.]

From our ol’ pal and self-proclaimed BBW Kaffy:

Naturally, this resulted in great laughter between us.

No, no no, I did NOT disappear in a fit of pique or anything quite as dramatic—just a quiet week with nothing to bitch aboutshare with the neenerbunny. (Well, there’s ONE thing, but my sister would disown me if I did, and anyway it’s not really my story to share. It’s a good’un, though, holy shit.) This weekend has some potential for ridiculousness, however: The ladies and I have a couple engagements this evening that could either shake out as muy fun or absolute disasters, which in turn will make for excellent sharing, so stay tuned. As for my leetle outburst Monday, I get really angry when my integrity or how I “do business” or whatever is questioned by people who I count among my core crew. I mean, if you gotta question it after this long, that says more about you than it does me.

The edict on politics still stands, though.

yeah, I would admit that I’m wrong. But if you think so little of me that you have to ask? I’ll be damned if I’m going to do it now.

On another note, hear ye, hear ye: Until I decide otherwise, there will be no political talk here in Chez Broad by anyone; the past few times I’ve veered into social comment, there have been unwanted turns that have really pissed me off, and despite what anyone thinks about me or my demeanor, I don’t enjoy being pissed off. I also don’t give a shit about who you want as president, about the a-hole conservatives or the limp-dicked liberals, about what party wrote the laws and who’s administering them, NONE OF IT. And I sure as hell don’t want to hear how I SHOULD care, so unless you want me to rip off an arm and shit in the socket, NO POLITICS.

How have this woman’s innards just NOT fallen out her body, is what I want to know.

[Courtesy (or not) of Jez]

Um, Hoosiers from the South? Yeah, hi. Would you mind keeping your stupid, uninformed pieholes shut about Lake County, a place you’ve no doubt never spent any time in because you still think Al Capone rules the roost from the grave!?? Appreciate it much!

Kisses!

Broad

Or maybe it was the too-much-beer-and-tuna-Subway combo, because I felt like shit on toast all day, exacerbated by the fact that I had to be in court at 9 a.m. for a story. It’s not like I was even out that late, but I NEVER sleep well after I’ve had more than I should, so it wouldn’t have mattered. Not even a mid-afternoon nap snapped me out of it. Gross.

So, Wad’s and my visit was engrossing as always: We drank, we shared, we discussed at length my compulsion to always be right, I may have cried a little—you know, the usual. All right, well, not the USUAL usual, but it’s a discussion we’ve had before and one that’s sort of pertinent for me right now. As someone who’s been on the ass-end of that compulsion so many times we’ve lost count, Wad has a valid take. Where we disagree is on the point of compromise and how it should factor into the equation—he maintains that even if you know you’re so right, a 90-degree angle ain’t got nothing on you, suck it up for the good of the friendship/relationship and apologize from the bottom of your heart, because being right isn’t worth the loss, just let the shit go already, etc. I, on the other hand, think that if two people are wrong, they both need to acknowledge their individual wrongness and if it can be worked on, work on it from there.

I don’t think he’s wrong at all, and I admit that I do probably need to pick my dealbreakers more thoughtfully than I do sometimes. But see, when you start taking it for the team no matter what in a relationship or friendship, one of two things is bound to happen, if not both—1) the person will eventually lose all respect for you, and 2) you’re going to start resenting the ever-loving hell out of them. I know this because I’ve done it time and time again, and it never turns out any different. Not once. As such, my knowing when to hold and fold IS skewed because of it. Still, if I’m ever going to rid of my “I’m Responsible for Global Warming"(TM) complex, I have to relearn to stand my ground; it’s not something I do easily anymore, and I miss that about myself.

It’s now time for me to die, so no poignant ending. But I’m glad he and I talked.

-- Girlie, swearing up and down that my tatters kept causing a commotion during the reception. I remember nothing of the sort.

Word of advice to your mothers: If y’all ever get the hankering to send someone a racy text message, I am NOT the person to ask help in crafting it. Also, I’m really wondering exactly when it was that I turned into such a huge dork.*

Nutjob: Legitimate description, or term used to describe someone who either doesn’t see eye-to-eye with you or doesn’t let you have your way? Discuss.

[I do have a post swimming around in my head about this, but no time to write it this second since I now have the best of both worlds because I? will be sitting amongst my awesome peeps watching a world premiere while some other poor suckeranother correspondent will be at the meeting. And because I’m doing the background reporting, I’m sharing the byline. AND I came up with this solution all by myself. My genius knows no boundaries sometimes.]

And I totally have the recipe to make them Serbian stylee, too, so I should, because GoshDAMN they’re good. Y’all can have your mac n’ cheese as comfort food; give me them green beans and some sausage and kraut (or even better, stuffed cabbage), and I’m good to go. Of course, all I want right this very minute is a phospho cocktail, because I ate entirely too much today and kind of feel like I need to purge*, especially after preliminary dress shopping with Girlie earlier this afternoon. God, it’s already as big a suckfest as I imagined.

and it’s all Karl Rove’s fault.

Once again, the cleanup has begun at Chez Broad for the impending arrival of the Snidge; this time, she's bringing along her baby brudder, and we're going to see this massive hunk o' musical genius at Park West Saturday night, to which I've never been. Save for Roger Clyne this summer, it's my first real concert in a long time, so I'm pumped. And thankfully, the crib still is in pretty good shape from when she was up here for the races in September. Could it be that I'm becoming less of a human pig?

(snicker)

In the meantime, I'm taking a break from picking up, and I check the competition's Web site to see what they've got going; it's something I do to a) see if we've been scooped and b) compare stories with the reporter I covered something with. So I scroll down to the columnist section, and I see this one columnist has a new one up about an incident that happened last Wednesday near East Chicago where this pigfucker named George Soltis made a couple homeade bombs and took his soon-to-be ex-wife Dora on the ride of her almost-death. By the grace of God, Dora was able to jump out of the moving vehicle, but not before pigfucker beat the will to live out of her with the ass-end of a .357. As well, pigfucker called Dora's son to tell him his plan to blow the two of them to kingdom come, and the boy was able to call police, who then found the two, arrested pigfucker and detonated the explosive devices.

[A side note: This all happened not more than five minutes from Chez Broad, and I DIDN'T HEAR A DAMN THING. I was home all night, too. And not drunk.]

Naturally, the event was front-page news with the requisite photos of a badly beaten Dora, so the columnist wrote about it and how yeah, it was great that Dora escaped from the pigfucker alive, but you know, she saw the signs that the guy was bad news. Why didn't she get out sooner!?? Or why did she go out for that one last dinner with him!?? And I thought to myself, "You know, [name redacted for not wanting to pimp out the competition, plus this guy's a jerk], methinks that you're spending too much time in the casinos observing people's behavior -- to which you devoted a whole column -- or you've forgotten the time you spent over in the Balkans covering the war, or you're just not getting a whole lot of real-life assignments, because you really don't have a clue, do you?"