Friday afternoon, I had all but dick on a 2008 biz outlook centerpiece that’s running NYD. Today? Am done, and on a holiday when all the brass with whom I need to talk is out on vaykay. God, I love it when I rock.

Now, time to hit the shower before heading off to another assignment and then possibly maybe drinking my face off for the New Year. Wishing y’all the best and safest. 

especially when you’re unfamiliar with the music; I’ve been sitting here for the last hour or two trying to figure out which songs are which on M.I.A.’s “Kala” album, because the CD JB made me didn’t pick up the titles. It’s a lot harder to do after you’ve had a few. Can’t wait to see how close I came in the morning.

The Peapod before opening her scads of presents Christmas day:

[DELETED PER POPPY’S REQUEST]

(Cat: Couldn’t you just DIE over the shoes?)

and then after:

[ALSO DELETED PER POPPY’S REQUEST]

About a minute later, Peapod started howling in utter despair, and her cousin had to be woken up so she could finish her nap. Note the noodle-like spine that allows her to throw herself forward. I haven’t been able to do that since at least high school. Can’t quite figure out how the hell I was sitting in that picture, though. Whatever I was doing, it looks painful.

So my holiday didn’t suck nearly as bad as I was expecting. Mother wasn’t quite as obnoxious as she could’ve been (she saved that for today), and I got pretty much everything I wanted: A pair of bigger gold hoops, a heavier winter coat, a crock pot, decorative pillows for the couch (I didn’t even think about those) and a Webkinz kitten and slippers from the niece and nefew. Oh, and eye makeup, of which I now have more than I’ll ever use in my lifetime. My brother still owes me something; I hope it wasn’t crushed in the big train derailment over the weekend. (As an aside, check out that story lede—God, JB is a stud. Also a total stud is Scott Bort, our new photog. The shots he took of the wreckage were unbelievable. Wish they would’ve posted them online.)

And with that, I’ve run out of steam.

These are a few of my favorite things:

-- getting a Christmas card from one of my oldest and dearest friends in the universe that says only this:


and remembering every single time we’ve been together and I how I’ve nearly peed with laughter from his torturing (and he packs a mean torture, though no one outside of him and me would get it.)

-- subversive hair color that freaks out my family:



Hope y’all are enjoying the holiday!

a) why the Circuit City on 41 smells like BO?
b) why my downstairs neighbor won’t stop bleaching her own hair? Shit’s going to really start falling out at this point.

Stopped at Poppy’s this morning, and she tells me that she bought the Peapod—get this—an mp3 player in the shape of a rattle that plays when you shake it for Christmas. Cool and progressive for a 1 year-old, right? Pop, however, doesn’t live in the world of mp3s, so since she digs my taste in music, she asked if I would come up with a playlist or two to load on to this thing. Even better? She wants REAL music, not kid-friendly pablum.


Boing!

Thing is, she wants music of ALL genres, not just the mostly alterna-rock-hip-hop-electronica-bang-your-head-kill-your-mother stuff that rocks my world, so I’d like to enlist the musically inclined for help. What I’m thinking so far is that any selection should make you want wiggle in your chair if not get up and dance outright; for example, I’ve had Arrested Development’s “People Everyday” on a loop for the past half-hour. But it can be jazz, country, classical, really anything as long as it won’t scare a 1 year-old. As for language? Well, the extent of Peapod’s lexicon right now consists of high-pitched shrieks, zherberts and laughing like Horshack, and Pop hasn’t told me to knock off my sewer-mouth yet, so I don’t think that’s a requirement.

Hit it, y’all.

[UPDATE: I’m reopening the comments to continue the conversation, spammers be damned. Also, told Pop that we’re doing this, and she did issue a language advisory, though she also pointed out that the Peapod is a big fan of Rob Zombie (just like her momma and Auntie Broad) and that her current favorite ringtone is “Fergalicious,” of all things, so take that with a grain of salt.]

from scintillating and fun to absolute crap in the span of six, seven, maybe 10 minutes? For me, it’s picking up the phone when Mother calls for the second or third time and then reading this afterward: Lookit.

Jon articulates so, so well the minefield that is loving someone with chronic mental illness that that alone was enough to reduce me to tears. What he doesn’t cover, though, is the tremendous guilt that comes with needing that person to fulfill your needs as well. Not because he hasn’t felt it, because you can’t not feel like a total asshole for needing at least some of the time and be human. (You know, even if it’s just the whole “All the starving/war-ravaged/homeless/abused people in the world, and I’m fucked up over an unreturned gesture” kind of thing.) But Jon is with someone who recognizes that her illness can be all-consuming and therefore works just as hard as he does to give back. What do you do when the person can’t even fathom that you even have needs outside of food or money? Tell the person you need XYZ? You’ve already done that a thousand times. Set boundaries? You’ve tried that, too—it works until things are tolerable before it reverts back, usually worse than it was before. Cut the person off completely? You’ve done it with other people, achingly hard though it was. But with this person, others already beat you to it, so if you joined them, the person would be left with no one and, because they’re ill and can’t take care of themselves, their “hitting bottom” would in all likelihood be death.

What do you do? And how do you get through the day knowing full well that compromise such as Heather’s and Jon’s can happen because, as someone who’s sick yourself, you for the most part keep yourself from falling down the k-hole of self-absorption and despair for that very reason?

If you’re me, you shut down, becoming incredibly nasty toward someone who loves you and wincing every time the phone rings because you know that whatever she’s going to say is going to be ridiculous, but there’s also the remote possibility it won’t be, so you can’t completely ignore it even though you’d rather just hide under the bed. I suspect that’s not the best way to go, since the guilt is staggering.

but it won’t let me re-upload the following after I played around with it in Photoshop. It’s one of the shots my sister the budding photographer was thinking about using for her Christmas cards this year—and she may have, but she hasn’t sent them out yet, proving once again that apples don’t fall far from trees. Behold:

So Girlie sent over the pic of Brian Vander Ark and me, and ... well, EE has been bitchy the last couple days, so let’s see if I can get it up ...

(also: “Sober up, bitches! Don’t embarrass me.")

Last night, Girlie dragged her sister and me to Duffy’s True Music Tuesdays to catch Brian Vander Ark, lead singer of the Verve Pipe. (Yeah, remember them?) Over the summer, Girlie hosted BvA in her backyard because he does house tours in the summer, and that was the first time I saw him, though I didn’t get to enjoy the full effect because I was working while he was singing, and I was never a big fan of the Verve Pipe anyway. But last night, he was on FIRE. Seriously, really, really good. So now, when Girlie hosts him again this summer, we’re going to do a much better job of pimping the gig to get more people out.

Funny moment of the night: The place was packed and we were looking for a place to sit, so Girlie goes up to this guy who was standing alone at a table and asks him if we could join him. He agrees, so we do, but it becomes clear why the guy is sitting by himself: He’s HAM. MERED. Like, speaking-in-tongues hammered, right? Anyway, so of course Girlie leaves me with the guy to use the facilities, and he starts with the small talk. He asks where we’re from, and I tell him, and his eyes get all wide.

“No way! You guys came all the way from [redacted]!??” (Feel free to imagine the slurring if it helps with the visual.)

I said yeah, [redacted] really isn’t that far from here, about a 1/2 hour, and then he said that he lives here, too. At first I didn’t understand him—you know, the whole speaking-in-tongues thing—but then I was like, “Wait, did you say you live in [redacted]?” and he’s all “YEAAAAH!” So I make him take out his driver’s license, and sure enough, he lives in [redacted], or lived since he works for a consulting firm and lives out of his suitcase these days. He just never changed his license. So Girlie gets back and I tell her what’s going on, and she’s all “What a teeny tiny world.” The guy even knows Girlie’s family’s restaurant and was all excited. You’d think with all this NWI camaraderie he’d buy us a round, but no such luck. I just hope he didn’t die on the way back home, because with all the alcohol he drank, his life was going to SUCK today.

At some point tonight, I may or may not post a picture of me with BvA, depending on a) when Girlie sends me the photo and b) if I don’t hate it when I see it in Photoshop. I didn’t hate it in the camera, so we’ll see.

An e-mail I just got from one of my pals on the desk:

I LOVED “Longer” when I was in 4th grade:

Singer Dan Fogelberg dies

I promise not to drink up all the Hennessy you got on your shelf.

Whoever put it in my head that I really wanted to have lots and lots of family needs to go screw themselves, because with all the planning and this person can’t be around that person so we have to have separate celebrations and FUUUUUUUUUCK THAAAAAAAAT. Jesus. And I don’t even have kids, so I can’t even imagine how much of a suckfest THAT is. Seriously, I’m about ready to scrape whatever pennies I have and just get the hell out of dodge.

In other business, yes, we were pounded hard with snow, and some asshole gave me some sort of upper respiratory crap, so I’m drowning in my own sputum. How you like me now?

Just the other day I was telling someone that if Ruth Ann ever wanted to give up her court beat, I’d love to take it over because even though court can be deadly dull, the cases are generally pretty meaty. And then I read this story today:

By Ruth Ann Krause
Post-Tribune correspondent

Lake Superior Court Judge Diane Ross Boswell rejected a request on behalf of Joseph C. Buchko, a former Merrillville school teacher convicted of sexual battery who wanted to avoid having to register as a sex offender.

Buchko, 38, of Griffith, who admitted he improperly touched an 11-year-old girl on school property on a Saturday between September and October 2004, said having to register would hurt his chances at landing a job with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, defense attorney Sam Cappas said. Cappas argued the law shouldn’t apply to Buchko.

Deputy prosecutor Judy Massa said Buchko already had received a favorable plea agreement and sentence. Originally charged with child molesting, which carries a maximum eight-year sentence, Buchko pleaded guilty in 2005 to sexual battery and received 18 months’ probation. His probation was extended to allow him to comply with the requirements, and his felony conviction was reduced to a misdemeanor.

I’m still trying to figure out how in the holy hell these vermin burst her implant. Good Christ, y’all.

Victim: Gang-Rape Cover-Up by U.S., Halliburton/KBR

Found over at Jezebel, where you’ll also find links to contact your m’erf’in Congressmen about stopping this abomination of a company in the comments. Not that that will do anything, but it might keep you from plying yourself full of whiskey at just past noon.