Horked from the rockin' Rebel, here's how you do it: Go to musicoutfitters and enter the year you graduated high school into the search box to get your top 100 song list. Then bold the songs you like, underline your favorites and strike out the ones you hate. If you don't remember or don't care about a particular song, leave it alone.

Got the verdict from the IRS yesterday. The good news? I don't owe them the $700+ they figured I would if I didn't provide them with the other stuff they needed.

The bad news is that after providing them the stuff they needed, I owe them $395, or approximately half.

Sigh.

No, it's not a ton of money, and it's not $700+, so I should be relieved, of course. Except right now, I don't have money for my plates which are now past due, I've got creditors calling me 15, 20 times a day for these little niggling bills that I haven't had the money to pay off, and I need to scrape up the $25 I owe my doctor's office so I won't feel like a total dick asking him for free Cipro because I've been pissing fire for the past two weeks (yeah, Ok, too much info, and no, I have NOT contracted anything creepy; it's a run-of-the-mill UTI, is all, but it still hurts like a whore). And yeah, I'm acutely aware that my shit could be eleventy billion times worse like the people down south, so don't go there with me. I'm just frustrated.

Speaking of the hurricane, I started writing a post about it Friday night, but then I scratched it because it was a lot of blowhard ranting. Truth is, as much as I would love to blame Shrub and will still do out of principle, after talking with a Red Cross coordinator for the story I worked on yesterday, I'm not sure he can be blamed entirely. Yeah, Katrina is considered a Category 6 disaster, which I'm told requires the Fed to get involved from the get-go. And yeah, FEMA has been dismantled terribly, etc. etc. But the thing is, until the water receded, no one was getting in there at all. For example, the Astrodome wasn't flooded, but everything around it was. Also, why didn't Nagin force those people out? Well, he can't force anyone to do anything, naturally, but the coordinator was telling me that there was talk that they were going to go around and have people sign waivers saying that if they weren't going to leave, then the waiver would be used to identify their bodies. That never happened, so whether it would've done any good, I don't know. I do know that we should probably wait to play the blame game until after things are reasonably calm, though.

After the day I had and then reading this? In total tears.

Lookit.

Be sure to read the whole thing, and then feel free to carry on the conversation in the comments if you like.

Just got off the phone with Tara, who just underwent one of these: Lookit. I guess she had four teeny-weeny little polyps, but none of them were doing anything funny; nevertheless, he took 'em out anyway so they couldn't. Feel free to congratulate her on her nonmalignant colon in the comments.

I'm off to Rensseltucky today to cover the groundbreaking for an ethanol plant, but when I get back, I'll try to sit down and chronicle the latest. Because what good is utter frustration if you can't get everyone else to beat their heads on the desk, too, I always say.

Lee R. Quinn, June 30, 1934 - Aug. 30, 2001

It occurred to me that, in light of my finally getting my rocks offsome sweet, sweet lurve, you might be wondering what TOG said in defense of his retarded behavior the last time I saw him.

The answer likely will confound those who aren't fluent in TOGese. He said -- without provocation by me, mind you, as I was more concerned about him not driving buzzed up during a torrential downpour:
[*Sorta a la him, TOG tends to refer to himself in the third person sometimes. Not in a fancy-boy way, mind you; you just kinda have to be there.]

I can see y'all are like, "Wait ... what!?? That says nothing," and on the surface, you're right. Truth is, I could've called him on it and probably should've. At the same time, it's kinda like, you know, picking your battles.

Besides, I got mine, right?

In other news, here I was freaking out about moving my vanity site to Wiredhub from my old host when it turns out that they'll be able to do it with the greatest of ease! Love it when THAT happens. Now, I just hope I can keep a hold on the domain.

She and I have been talking about injecting new blood in the 'rolls, so I was perusing and I came across this: Lookit.

I can think of several people off the top of my head who won't appreciate a word this woman has to say, but I say "Read it, anyway," and then try real hard. She done put a fine point on it that even the biggest blockhead can understand.

Well, WE just had some excitement up here in Chez Broad: I got back from a wedding shower for the second next-door neighbor girl (ohmigod I'm old) where the take-home treat was these fantastic cookies in a plastic box tied with burlap and raffia, right? So I untie the raffia and let the Rube play with it, dropping it on the ground for a split second when it occurs to me that shit! You're not supposed to put any kind of string on the ground for cats because of this. Fuck!

So first thing I do after yanking* the offending raffia string out of Rube's mouth is call the 24-hour vet, where the perfectly lovely nurse tells me that I need to get him to ingest a teaspoon of hydrogen peroxide to make him barf. Oh, and that it'd probably be better if I brought him in so they can inject him with it, but it costs $75 for the office visit and whatever the treatment is, and you have to pay it up front. Well, hell, I was just excited to have $45 bucks to last me through payday, so that's not going to work, what else you got? She tells me -- nicely -- that I'd need to administer it myself. Ok, but I didn't have a dropper, so I call Poppy, who's a regular St. Francis of Assisi has many animals of her own.

Now, you know that e-mail that's gone around about what happens when you give a cat a pill? Eeeeeeyeah. Rube screamed, hissed, spit and growled as if we were eviscerating him without benefit of anesthesia, and it didn't help that he HATES Poppy as it is. Haaaaates her. Always has. Anyway, after about 20 minutes of chasing him to where we could shut doors and get him cornered, Poppy, cornering him in front of my bedroom door with a towel, finally got in him a full dose, after which he took off for under the kitchen sink, where I'm assuming he barfed, but I'm not sure because there was still an awful lot of indignant growling.

Poppy took off, so I thought then would be a good time to call the bride-to-be's mother to find out just exactly how long the raffia string was. (Of COURSE you'd think that calling her beforehand would be the first logical step. Shutup.) Long story short, the raffia was used to tie the burlap in place, and the string I yanked from his mouth? Was likely the whole thing intact.

I just felt a little lick on my foot from under the desk, so I'm assuming we're all good again. But I'm telling you, NEVER underestimate the power of a 15-pound cat, because that little fucker even swatted the dropper right out of my hand. And his brother eventually came out from under the bed, but not without looking around like he'd just survived the battle of My Lai.

It has come to my attention that I've been, ahem, slacking in the original content department. So while I'm thinking about things with which to regale y'all, lemme tell you about my friend Sammy, who's done lost her mind again.

See, Sammy is a perfectly lovely lady; she led my first expedition to the great mecca, in fact. We've been to Vegas together, spent many nights drunk and lamenting the state of the new biz, talked about stupid boys -- you know, everything that good girlfriends do.

But a couple years ago, Sammy made a pact with a devil, that devil being her friend Andy, who talked her into running the Chicago Marathon. From January to race time, Sammy trained, eschewing the levels of beer and crap-food consumption we'd all come to enjoy in those days while she was here. And oh! The running! There were talks of running 2, 8, 12 miles at a stretch! I thought she was nuts and told her so each time we hung out. I mean, there was no question that she WOULD complete the marathon -- which she did, and in the time she was supposed to -- but WHY? When there's beer to drink and pizzas with extra meat to consume!?!

Well, long story short, despite any protest by me, Sammy's running the damn marathon again -- only this time, it's personal.

See, her extended family has been beaten by the cancer stick, so she's decided to raise funds for research. Now, I personally think there has to be an easier way to do this -- bake sale? candy bars? -- but she clearly doesn't share my view. So, since she's so adamant about running this damn thing, I'm putting a button over there on my side bar so you can slip her a few bills if you got 'em.

I mean, at the very least, perhaps we can raise enough money to convince her to stop making the rest of us look like chubby slobs.

What is it about good sex that makes the world seem a little less brutal?

(sighs contentedly)

I am, however, a little bit sleepy. Still. So I bid you adieu and hot wet dreams until tomorrow.

It's his fucking birthday today. Go wish him one.

[Card image from here.]

Doncha just want to eat him?



He was dead asleep in this picture, too.

Got word the other day that a friend of mine's close relative with cancer has relapsed. Not identifying the friend because they don't want identifiers put out on the Interbunny, so don't ask -- just send good thoughts out into the ether.

Of course, I'm now deeper into that time, especially since Mother and I got into a YOOGE fight tonight that made me want to throw her out of the damn car. (I didn't. But I wanted to, even more than mostother times. Trust me.)

-- Him discussing my panties during dinner at a Mexican restaurant.