If you haven't been reading Forksplit, you should, if for nothing else than her post on relationships: Lookit.

Now, I'm not going to say that my life in any way mirrors hers, because it doesn't; my childhood isn't nearly as nightmarish, not even close. But I know people whose are, and just the way she touches on the isolation I think we feel at various times or even all the time is the kind of stuff I wish I was emotionally capable of conveying. Just brilliant.

about the 1 million blog project? For a buck (or more, depending on how much you feel like chipping in), Dude'll make a button to your blog and put it on this giant grid. Then, when he reaches 1 million blogs (and, presumably, 1 million bones, but he'll likely have more than that), he's going to pay it forward and give the money back in advertising to a bunch of the blogs who signed up. And dude even makes you a little button (seen over on the sidebar) with your grid number on it for you.

I already chipped in a buck, so I think y'all should, too.

Whooooooooooa ooooo-oooo/whoooooaaa-ooo-ooooo!

Your earworm for today. Y'all can thank me later.

Nicole Kidman: Loved her look, even with the blonde hair and the massive forehead.
Jon Stewart was entirely too hip and smart for the Oscars. Bring back Steve Martin.
Charlize: Whose idea was it to take the big-ass bow off the butt of her dress and put it on her shoulder? Seriously.
Jessica Alba: Needs a sandwich.
Rachel Weisz: Why did she have velcro straps around her arms?
Jennifer Garner: Hasn't weaned Violet off the boob yet, in case you couldn't tell.
Keira Knightley: Eh. She looked all right. She's got a big ol' moon face.
Three-six: Holla!
Naomi Watts: Couldn't find a seamstress to fix her dress after she got part of it caught in a paper shredder.
Michelle Williams: Is my new Emmy Rossum. And nice red lipstick with the canary yellow dress.
Rachel McAdams: Putting a '40s 'do with a '60s frock doesn't work.
Jennifer Lopez: Usually I hate some aspect of the looks she goes for, but she was dead-on this time. Loved her dress, loved her hair, everything.
Felicity Huffman: Looked like used the double-sided tape for more than just keeping her dress in place.
Reese: Fine, but too conservative for my taste. Also, I didn't take her "real women" comment as a slam against Felicity playing a transsexual, but apparently others have. Who knew?
Dolly: There are no words for glammed-up trailer trash. It just kind of speaks for itself.
Ziyi Zhang: Gor-JUS.
Uma: I think she looked all right. Better than that other crap she wore a year or two ago.

Your turn.

Ok, so where are all the Oscar fashion entries? I'm dyin' over here.

So yeah, dinner with my little (alleged) sister was a pretty damn good time. She's cute, funny and definitely has a mind of her own, so we got that in common. Plus, she's loud just like me, and if there were anything in this world that would serve as an identifier, it would be that. (Ok, not really. But still ...)

She also has a past that would make the toughest survivor cringe in sympathy/horror, and that unfortunately has left her very closed up while opened like a festering sore to the rest of the world all at the same time. If I in my two-parent white-bread childhood world thought my other sibs had it bad when they were growing up, I can at least take comfort in the fact that they didn't have it nearly as bad as Baby Girl did. Think, among other things, a multitude of stepdads (and a mother who isn't quite over the whole married thing yet after all this time), a sperm donor who gave up his parental rights so she could be adopted by one of the stepdads, drugs, a real live mohawk and multiple piercings, a failed marriage and her own daughter's death before the age of 20 (!), then a complete life turnaround by the age of 25 and you have the REAL A Million Little Pieces right there. In fact, a great story about the sperm donor: She was 17 and after having last seen him when she was 12, she gets shipped out west to visit him for what was supposed to be a three-week trip, right? Can't remember what day into the trip it was, but he takes her to Old Country Buffet for dinner, which is fine until he starts putting nine, 10 little bowls of condiments on the table and six glasses of milk, then proceeds to eat seven or eight plates of food BY HIMSELF and yells at her in the restaurant that her eating two plates of food "isn't getting his money's worth." And then there was the crackhead that showed up at his door at 3 a.m. and him being all like, "Uh, I TOLD you he doesn't live here anymore (wink, wink)," and the pot smell wafting from his room that really wasn't pot, according to him. Yeah, it took her four days of that before she was like, "I'm out."

No, she has not gotten herself into therapy toot sweet after all this, and that worries me, because underneath the bravado, her terror is palpable. But she seems to dig me; she says we have to be the same because we're both extreme smartasses.

Got a call from Tara this morning: Her dad's colon cancer came back after 11 years. No word on how advanced it is yet, because the doctors still need to do all the tests and shit.

Good thoughts, por favor; prayers are good, too, if you're so inclined.

My (possible) baby sister and I are meeting for Mexican tonight at 5-ish, 5:30-ish.

Details at 11, or something.

Remember how I was all excited about my new bag? Yeah. All of a sudden, I'm kinda sorta bugged out, because it's a bag that was a new style for Fall 2004. I mean, I still love it and all, but dude, Fall 2004.

Is that shallow?

So, in all the rest of the family stuff lately, did I mention that BFKAS got Crazy Aunt a job at her place of employ? Yeah, two women who have a history of going for long periods of time cursing each other's names working in the same office. I didn't have high hopes for it then, and I certainly don't now after the call I just got from CA.

Cousin Nancy, who I haven't talked about in awhile, and her boyfriend are renting his mom's crib while she's out of state, and they've gotten their shit together from over the summer; the boyfriend's got a decent job, and it's all good, except Cousin Nancy hasn't gone back to school yet. (She's technically a junior, and she left about this time last year because of some nonsense or another.) Well, when BFKAS and I were talking a couple weeks ago, we talked about how she thought Nancy was avoiding her, because Nancy knows that BFKAS would give her a talking-to about not being in school. Then I, like a dumbass, mentioned to Nancy in passing when we were chatting about how BFKAS and I have been getting along so well that BFKAS thinks she's been avoiding her for that reason. And of course Nancy gets her "Well, she doesn't want to hear what I would say to that, because she doesn't run my life, blah blah blah" bravado up like any 19 year-old would. Long story short, BFKAS has allegedly said something to Nancy's little brother that he repeated to her, and now, CA is all up in arms because Nancy's depressed and she thinks BFKAS is trying to butt in to her business, etc. etc., and yoy! Here we go.

See, having been raised as an only child, this is the kind of stuff for which I'm not wired -- well, Ok I guess I shouldn't say that, because I do get how families work with all the talking behind each other's backs and what have you. But the experience I've had has always been between relatives with at least a little distance so you're not up in their grill all the time, usually. This sibling thing I just do.not.get, and that's why I'm so reluctant to mend fences with my sister: I'm really afraid that we're not going to be able to get along like grown-ups, only instead of fighting in the family, it extends to outside people, and not that they particularly give a shit, but still, it gets uncomfortable and weird for everyone else when you have a couple people fighting, right? I just don't want to do it.

That's why retail therapy helps. Behold, the new bag:

For those of you who aren't quite clear on the concept of how blogging works, let me explain something to you: I pay money each month to maintain this site. I also pay money to have it designed, and I pay for the domain name. Therefore, since I'm putting all this money into it, I get to talk about whatever I want. This is the way it is, and it's not changing.

She gave him her heart, and he talked about a boil on his ass -- specifically the crack.

No, no back story here. But this seriously happened to someone I know, and really, do you need to hear more than that to form an opinion!?? Didn't think so. But let that serve as another lesson as to what not to discuss with your woman unless you've been married for a zillion years.

So, where to start, where to start ... oh yeah. I met my other half sister the other day, and guess what I discovered!?? I discovered that there's probably not an apporopriate time or place on God's green earth to drop on someone that you may be their half sibling. My inappropriate place? A labor rally at my alma mater -- I was covering it, and two young ladies from our local congressman's office showed up to offer support. I asked them their names, and when the little girl with the dark hair and groovy glasses told me what it was, my stomach dropped, because it was the exact same name of the alleged sperm donor's other daughter. So, I pulled her aside and said, "Your dad wouldn't happen to be (Alleged Sperm Donor), would it?" And she scowled and said, "Yeah. Why?" And I said, "Well ... rumor has it that he may be my dad, too." Poor girl turned white as a sheet and got tears in her eyes, and at some point she said, "My God, you look just like him." Anyway, we talked a few moments, and then we exchanged info and said we'd keep in touch. That was Tuesday, and I haven't heard from her -- at least, not yet, anyway, which is perfectly cool. In fact, as I thought about it, I realized that I owed her an apology for springing it on her as I did. It went like this:

If she doesn't get a hold of me, I'm totally cool with that, which is huge because I thought I'd be like all, "Waaaaah, I'm cool! Doesn't she want a cool big sister like me?" But it seriously isn't about all that. From what I know, she's an only child, too, and it really is hard to be a sibling when you've never been one before (hell, I STILL don't know how to do it) and she may not want to learn. She's also quite a bit younger than I am -- 25 to my 36 -- so at this point, what would we really have in common besides a sperm donor we don't know and respect even less? I will say that aside from working in our esteemed congressman's office, she's also working toward her master's in something or other, which I'm like, "Excellent!"

You know who also was really excited about it for me? BFKAS. I KNOW, right!?? She was like, "Good for HER!" because all she's heard about her from the Fighting Macedonians is that she was trash and has already been married several times and all kinds of other crap.

Prior to all this, got an e-mail from SC. (I'm telling you, it's been a week over here in Chez Broad.) See, I'd e-mailed BFKAS and asked about my nephew and niece and the kind of stuff they like, and when she replied, she addressed only one part of the e-mail that wasn't about the kids, so immediately I was like, "Ok, I'll be hearing from her in 3, 2, 1 ..." Sure enough, the e-mail showed up later that evening. It was fairly pleasant, actually. She said that she has reservations about talking to me, as she suspects I do about her, and that we'll need to take it slow and I'll have to understand if she's guarded, but she'll try to keep an "open mind," and then she launched into the stuff I asked about the kidlets. So after I let my rancor bubble for a moment (open mind? seriously?), I responded that I was down with the slow thing and that I was glad to see the kidlets are happy and healthy and smart.

Open mind, my ass.

English 100% Journalism 100% Psychology 83% Linguistics 75% Theater 75% Anthropology 75% Sociology 67% Dance 67% Biology 67% Mathematics 50% Engineering 42% Philosophy 33% Art 33% Chemistry 17% What is your Perfect Major? (PLEASE RATE ME!!<3) created with QuizFarm.com

[Fonded at Frankie's]

Broad -- [noun]: A real life muppet 'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

[From the Headcase, yo!]

-- The one guy on his sick, sick love for Marg Helgenberger