Your Tax Dollars at Work

I have bad news for everybody.

I got a job.

In precisely double the time in which I was told I’d receive definitive word on whether or not I’d sufficiently blown the interview on a position I don’t want but fear turning down, he U.S. government has made a tentative offer to pour a bunch of tax dollars straight down the incompetence hole.

There’s one ray of hope for us all:  The offer is pending a background check.  Maybe a big ol’ bit of domestic terrorist association will do the trick.  LOOK AT ME, FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, HANGING AROUND WITH PEOPLE WHO WEAR CHE T-SHIRTS!

commuter at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com

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Congratulations to the People of Detroit

You’re all going to be out of a job soon, it’s really freakin’ cold up there, you’re dodging machine gun fire on your way to the mailbox… but at least you make the rest of the nation feel better about ourselves.  Thanks, Detroit!

0-16 at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com

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On This Holy Holiday Eve

All right, you tell me which of the following is the most disturbing:

1)  The fact that one of the colleges I teach for called me with an HR-related question this afternoon

2) The fact that I took the call

3)  The fact that I celebrated the Solemnity of the Natvity of our Lord by leaving a late Lutheran service ravenously hungry, and in the space between that and the start of Midnight Mass, asking Josh The Pilot if we might find a place where we could find something to eat.  We then proceeded to drive from strip mall to strip mall wondering why nothing was open at 10:48 PM on Christmas Eve.  7-11, however, was doing a brisk business, and we sat in the parking lot eating Fritos and Slurpees, watching an endless parade of dressed-up humanity make for the Rotating Hot Dogs machine.

In any case… a very merry Christmas to my beloved, much-appreciated The Readers.

Christmas a day away at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com

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Evergreen

Right on the cusp of it all, I’ve finally figured it out, this year’s Mighty Christmas Malaise:  It’s the realization that no matter what I do, Christmas will come anyway.  It’s going to arrive, and it’s going to go, whether I’ve encased the toilet tank in flashing lights or failed to produce a single wrapped package.  We’re not expecting any guests until a party of one on New Year’s Eve:  Who was going to care?

So I told myself that I would fill a bowl with water and plop four star-shaped candles within, because floating fire = AWESOME, but I would not send a Christmas card to my ex-boyfriend’s sister-in-law’s cousin, because I just wasn’t Feeling It this year.  Releasing myself from such self-imposed Christmas regulations freed me right up to bake cookies for my sister’s family.

This, then, was The True Meaning Of Christmas.  Will The Small Child Nephew, when asked what he wanted from Santa Claus this year, responded:  “Cookie.”  (His brother, older and wiser, requested a horse, but as when St. Nick visited earlier this month, it is only acceptable for Santa to enter the house as long as he doesn’t come upstairs where Jim is.  His instructions are to arrive via the fake gas-powered fireplace, deposit the free stuff, and depart immediately.)

As it happens, Will is a fan of my pissed-off green tree cookies.  He requested one specifically, bypassing the pantry and reaching for the counter where the container was kept.  Then he sat in his big-boy seat, ate his tree very carefully, and wandered adult to adult, beseeching more.  But the cookies were gone, so he later announced his dissatisfaction by filling his diaper.

Its contents were green.

the gift that keeps on giving at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com

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Signs You’re In a Bad Subway

The sandwich shop, not the hurtling underground bad sex metaphor waiting to happen.  Although, as we’ve seen, both can totally kill you:

-Entire sandwich bar is encased in bulletproof glass

-Customer in front of you is engaged with Sandwich Artist in some sort of altercation involving “bread with a hole in it.”

-Access to the bathroom is gained only after clerk shoves fear-coated key attached to world endingly huge keychain through some sort of time and space bending spinny device

please do not ask how I know this at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com

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The Scene of the Crime

Well, this should be interesting:  As I mentioned, I’ve been invited to read/speak on/answer questions about/discuss/hurl at an innocent public Drink to the Lasses at Saint Mary’s College’s 2009 campus reunion.  And some of the ladies mentioned the book will also be on hand.  For self-defense, I’m thinking.

The pending riot is scheduled for Saturday, June 6, but I’m not sure exactly where on campus.  Or what time.  Or whether there’ll be an open bar.  Guess which aspect I’m pushing the most to hear about.

alma mater at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com

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Dekas

Julie The Nephews Mama attended her eighth grade reunion last week.  That’s what we do Cincinnati, on the West Side; since nobody ever goes anywhere– or if they do, they’re soon to return– not only do you reunite with your grade school classmates, you’re probably a five-minute drive from the parish in which you grew up.  My grandfather, who lived to see his nineties, attended yearly eighth grade reunions right up to the end, when it became an annual chicken game of Who’s Not Dead.  Attending your eighth grade reunion in a rented undercroft while a full set of grandparents watches your children in the house you were born into:  It’s pretty much the most West Side thing which ever West Sided, and I include in this calculation a bowling league heading to a parish festival for a few beers and rounds of Split the Pot before adjourning to a Skyline Chili for the evening.

Next year, I have a reunion, too.  Not eighth grade, though.

Not high school, either.

College.

The ten-year one. The ten-year college one.  A decade since the Era of Regina North; that I can buy.  Ten years since I left?  Ohhellno.

When the first postcard about it arrived, I freaked out and tore it up and threw it away, because if the bulk mail doesn’t exist, neither does the time span.  But now it looks like I’ll be giving a reading and a signing on campus during the reunion, and… this exists, now.

This part of the year is always about time; counting down to Christmas, counting down to the new year.  We lift squashed masses of faux evergreens out of dusty boxes:  What’s this?  What did we do with this last year?  Where’s the ornament we put on that side of the tree every year?

Now I’m forced to measure what I’ve accomplished in the past decade.  Did I do what my professors thought I would?  Probably not; I’m not incarcerated yet.  I guess the question to ask is if I’m the person I hoped I would be ten years from the day I graduated.  That answer is no– and that, really, is why that reminder postcard wound angrily up in the trash, not because people are failing to card me with disturbing frequency.

But a pocketful of nephew pictures, a husband, and “I’ve got a little website” ain’t too shabby.

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class of ‘99 at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com

Still Kickin’

Not heavin’. Just so you know, and many thanks for your concern.  At first I was terrified it was the Return of the Dreaded Both-Ends Norovirus, but everything mostly stayed put, so I’ll take the achy and run.

Last week I made a usual half-cheeked attempt to Christmasize.  Cookies were made.  The floor, however, remains unswept.

I made Christmas tree cookies, the recipe for which instantly attracted me because the cookies are green, and therefore far more exciting.  It’s not a vegetable… it’s not horribly fungified bread… it’s sugar!  The instructions included an admonishment to brush the cookies with an egg white to make them shiny, but instead the cookies wound up just looking mottled and pissed.  Now I’m looking for something else to make.  Something with liquor.  Only, not a lot of liquor.  The bulk of it will be required elsewhere.

In the meantime, Freelance Switch plays another new one.

heating element at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com

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It’s Not That I Don’t Love You And Totally WANT to Write a 7000-Word Post, It’s That I’m Sick

What the headline said.  All achy and dry-heavey and stuff, and, of course, on the docket to teach tonight.  Maybe if I radiate sickness waves at everybody, we’ll all dry heave together, and get to go home.

Jello for dinner at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com

Mediocre? Mele Kalikimaka!

Couple housekeeping things here:

-Yes, I’ve heard about the Star Wars musical.  No, I’m not lining up for the April debut in London.  Please stop emailing me about it, good The Readers.  It’s enough to know it’s going to involve Jar-Jar.

-I want to offer my sincere thanks for your very generous donations throughout the year via the Amazon Honor System.  However, the Honor System, because, apparently, it actually worked for people, is being shut down.  That means I need to move to PayPal, and that means I’m screwed as far as including a button on WordPress is concerned.  But if you’d like to tip the bartender (and I ain’t stoppin’ ya) the ability to do so is now over at the Morning Works Media site.

There, housekeeping done.  As Jim The Small Child Nephew once said as a two-year-old as he caught sight of me emerging from the bathroom in a robe and wet hair, “Beth clean!”

The last time my brother school was invited to a bowl game of true note, I was in high school and oranges were involved.  Now follow the program tumbling down the ladder with me:  Independence, Fiesta, Gator, Insight Bowl.  You have to go back to the first Clinton term to find a win in any of them.  Now behold the… Hawaii Bowl.

Notre Dame, for those of you who have been following and suffering, turned in a 6-6 effort this year.  Which is better than last year. Which isn’t saying much.  For a team of Notre Dame’s resources and pretty helmetness, 6-6 is still fairly crappy.  And I say this as a Bengals fan.

But since when does batting .500 equal Christmas on Honolulu?  And how is that even remotely fair to the teams who, I don’t know, posted a winning season?  How badly do you have to suck to not get invited to a bowl at this point?  How is “My team made a bowl this year!” going to mean anything anymore?  Crap, I’ll mark off the back yard and invite in ITT and the University of Phoenix to square off in the Federally Regulated Antidepressants Ring-A-Pin Off.

The standing bowl joke in Cincinnati (we have to find our fun somewhere) is the University of Cincinnati’s 1997 appearance in the Humanitarian Bowl, played on a field with the most charming shade of blue on the Astroturf.  This triumphant invitation capped appearances in the Sun Bowl and Glass Bowl.  And now, with UC’s invitiation to the Orange Bowl as Notre Dame punts away amidst the macadamias robs me of even that little moment of mockation.  THE TROPHY IS A BRONZED FOOTBALL WITH PINEAPPLE LEAVES GROWING OUT OF IT.

Oh, shut up, Andrews Sisters.

the Sheraton Hawaii Bowl at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com