Hank Learns the Bad News

"I just told Hank about the words 'Speaker of the House John Boehner.'"

via Slog

The Reason I Have A Blog

Is so I can broadcast all of your family secrets to the six people who read this blog.

Thank you and goodnight.

Don't Believe Anything This Man Says

The cat is also full of lies.

Overheard Re: In and Around During the Sick

Jesse: Your blog post is wrong.

Lisa: Yeah?

Jesse: I only get sick once every few years.

R.I.P., Seattle Post-Intelligencer

From today's edition, the last-ever Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

image via Slog

Today in Traditional Marriage

The Smoking Gun:

A Florida man wearing an "I [heart] My Marriage" t-shirt was arrested last night for allegedly choking his wife during an argument in their Tampa-area home. Bradley Gellert, a 32-year-old financial consultant, was busted by Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office deputies and booked into jail on a felony domestic battery by strangulation charge.... The "I [heart] My Marriage" shirt was a promotional item tied to the 2008 movie "Fireproof," a Christian-themed film starring Kirk Cameron. The movie, a hit in evangelical circles, centers on a fireman's religious awakening and his simultaneous effort to save a failing marriage.

Says Dan Savage, "Bradley hearts his marriage - it's his wife he can't stand."

via Slog
image via The Smoking Gun

Overheard in the J and L House

Lisa to Jesse: I haven't tried to kick you at all tonight!

Is Regular Clean Clean Enough for Your Family?

from the Coen brothers



via Slog

Its True. My Horoscope is True and So is Erika's.

My horoscope (and Rachel@Canada's horoscope, too), via The Onion:

You'll spend your remaining years hooked up to a machine, which is sad, as it's the kind that checks e-mail and sends out texts.

And since I'm doing mine, here is Erika!'s, also via The Onion. I bet I know which whirlwind romance this horoscope refers to. Do you*?

A whirlwind romance will sweep you off your feet this week, before destroying your home, smashing your valuables, and dropping you off three states away.

*You know who you are.

Rotten!

This "jumbo" pomegranate that came from Wegmans, my primary fresh produce purveyor, is rotten! And disgusting.

That was a poor use of $4.00.

So Long!

image via Slog

Today is a Great Day

Here is one of the many things that truly delighted me today.



screen grab via Slog

Christmas Trip to Wisconsin: The First Day

Jesse and I are in Wisconsin for Christmas this year. Because we're away, we didn't decorate at home. I think this is contributing to my minimal holiday cheer. Also contributing: being away from my family and the lack of any real "traditional" Christmas day. For the Godell's, traditional Christmas entails "Christmas dinner" and presents the day before Christmas Eve. The morning of Christmas Eve is a 3-ish hour drive to northern Michigan for a few days: a gathering with the Maki family (Barb is nee Maki) and a gathering with the Godells and shmoozing with a wide assortment of people I don't know. I have scheduled a massage for December 26. We'll spend the balance of the day in MI before returning to WI on Saturday morning. I know I'm being a Mastroberti/Edmondson elitist and that I am, in part, now a Godell/Maki. I know I'm being a princess and that J has willingly and without complaint spent at least two Christmases with my family and, therefore, away from his. ::huff:: As Tovah said to me when I was fussing to her, "Maybe its time for the princess to be dethroned." Classic Toves, if you ask me. HA!

So, on to the trip thus far.

Day One:
We left Endicott at 6 and drove to Syracuse in the heavy snow. We had a 9:04 a.m. flight to Detroit. Although the drive was slow and slippery, the Subaru successfully got us to the airport with a smidge of time to spare. Check bags ($15 bucks!), security, board almost immediately. The flight still is supposedly on time. So we get all situated and wait. We get in line for deicing which takes, ready? 70 minutes. The deicing, of course, didn't take 70 minutes but the combination of waiting for our turn to deice, the emptying and refilling the deicing truck a few times, and our actual deicing after a heavy snow took 70 minutes.

The flight was uneventful and we still thought it might be possible to catch our connection.

......

We didn't. We missed it by, perhaps, only a few minutes. Boo.

We got rebooked onto a flight 5 hours later, for which we are lucky. Many people were getting rebooked onto flights the next day or who knows what other nightmares people experienced. So we ate lunch and we poked around. I got mad upon hearing that Barb insinuated that I wasn't fast enough and that's why we missed the flight. Although iring, the delay was fine. Our rebooked flight was delayed again but it wasn't too long. 40 or 50 minutes, maybe.

The balance of our travel day was smooth, thankfully. Aside from being totally exhausted and our of sorts, I was happy to be in Wisconsin.

Then I exited the airport and felt the -5 degree weather. Brr. Still happy? Okay, I guess so.

Our flight landed in Appleton which is about 90 minutes or so from the Godell homestead. We had dinner and stopped at a grocery store so we could further stretch our legs before getting packed into another small space and heading to Antigo, where the Godells live.

More to follow.


Princess Hyacinth image via AllPosters

Today in Heterosexual News: At Least He's Not Marrying a Man

From ABC:

Drew Peterson, the former Chicago police sergeant who is a suspect in the disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy, and the homicide of his third wife, Kathleen Savio, is engaged again.

Drew Peterson, 54, recently proposed to his 23-year-old girlfriend of four months, his publicist confirmed to ABCNews.com, but he will not reveal her identity in an attempt to shield her from the media.

Congratulations to the happy couple!

via SLOG

Tim Mollen and I Talked

and we agree that you should replace your antiperspirant with a nice, aluminum-free deodorant. I like the Crystal Rock but that's no secret. Read Mollen's take on the pits of dealing with your pits (with permission) and tell your friends:

The Lost Journal

Tim Mollen

Journal Entry: September 23, 2008 (age 39)

Sweating the Details Can Be Good For Your Health

Once in a great while, a marketing campaign can actually make you stop using a product that you’ve used for years. Recently, I’ve started seeing ads for “clinical strength antiperspirant.” So far, so good. I think I fit into the sizable demographic that doesn’t like to be involuntarily wet and smelly, or at least not during business meetings or family functions. And like most people, I usually reach for the product that says “extra strength,” rather than the one that says “regular strength.” Regular strength is for common people, not exceptional people like you and me. We have atypical needs that require extraordinary solutions. Let the peasantry get by with half-measures; we power-users must be fully satisfied!

But the next ad I saw went on to say that clinical strength antiperspirant achieves its improved results by increasing the aluminum compound content. Aluminum? Increasing the aluminum? Huh? I went to my medicine cabinet and got out my regular strength, sweat-battling stick. Sure enough, the label listed the active ingredient as aluminum zirconium tetrachlorohydrex. Just the aluminum part sounded bad enough. With the added negative connotations of zirconium (cheap diamonds?) and tetrachlorohydrex (bleached fish?), I became truly concerned.

After some online research, I realized that for the past 30 years, I have been plugging the pores under my arms with…metal?! “That oughta do it,” I imagined the product development engineers saying. But is cutting off a natural process of the body by filling openings in our skin with metal really the best option? From what I gather, the science on possible health problems resulting from this approach is unsettled. Nonetheless, the idea just sounds wrong.

That didn’t stop me from toying with the idea of stitching Reynolds Wrap into all of my shirts. Sure, I’d make crinkly sounds whenever I moved, but I could also get a little closer (and not be shy). I began to rationalize this iron-clad method of preventing B.O. The electrolytic reduction of aluminum is referred to as “smelting.” Therefore, I reasoned, he who smelts it will not smell it.

Following that kind of unassailable logic, what other innovations in personal hygiene could be achieved by getting past such outdated concepts as “safety” or “health?” We could make toothpaste that’s 50 percent bleach. Or an eye drop that actually kills blood vessels. Or skin-toned spackle to fill in laugh lines. The possibilities are endless! Cement styling gel. Lip em-balm. Flesh/odor-eaters. Q-tip drill bits. Perhaps one day, nature’s most poisonous protein could be injected into people’s faces to get rid of wrinkles. Oh wait – that one is already being used. (It’s not just toxic – it’s bo-toxic!)

On third thought, I think I’ll just try a deodorant without antiperspirant. If Mennen Old Spice can’t be Sure of the Degree to which Secret methods are being used to make their underarms Arrid, Soft & Dri, there should be a Ban.

Tim Mollen is funny and he is aluminum-free, right, buddy?

Anti-Gay, Anti-Family

Dan Savage's 11.11.8 NYT OpEd:

Countless Americans, gay and otherwise, are still mourning — and social conservatives are still celebrating — the approval last Tuesday of anti-gay-marriage amendments in Florida, Arizona and, most heartbreaking, California, where Proposition 8 stripped same-sex couples of their right to wed. Eighteen thousand same-sex couples were legally married in California this past summer and fall; their marriages are now in limbo.

But while Californians march and gay activists contemplate a national boycott of Utah — the Mormon Church largely bankrolled Proposition 8 — an even more ominous new law in Arkansas has drawn little notice.

That state’s Proposed Initiative Act No. 1, approved by nearly 57 percent of voters last week, bans people who are “cohabitating outside a valid marriage” from serving as foster parents or adopting children. While the measure bans both gay and straight members of cohabitating couples as foster or adoptive parents, the Arkansas Family Council wrote it expressly to thwart “the gay agenda.” Right now, there are 3,700 other children across Arkansas in state custody; 1,000 of them are available for adoption. The overwhelming majority of these children have been abused, neglected or abandoned by their heterosexual parents.

Even before the law passed, the state estimated that it had only about a quarter of the foster parents it needed. Beginning on Jan. 1, a grandmother in Arkansas cohabitating with her opposite-sex partner because marrying might reduce their pension benefits is barred from taking in her own grandchild; a gay man living with his male partner cannot adopt his deceased sister’s children.

Social conservatives are threatening to roll out Arkansas-style adoption bans in other states. And the timing couldn’t be worse: in tough economic times, the numbers of abused and neglected children in need of foster care rises. But good times or bad, no movement that would turn away qualified parents and condemn children to a broken foster care system should be considered “pro-family.”

Most ominous, once “pro-family” groups start arguing that gay couples are unfit to raise children we might adopt, how long before they argue that we’re unfit to raise those we’ve already adopted? If lesbian couples are unfit to care for foster children, are they fit to care for their own biological children?

The loss in California last week was heartbreaking. But what may be coming next is terrifying.

90-Year-Old Living with Dead Sibings

From The Seatte Times:

EVANSTON, Ill. — A 90-year-old woman apparently has been living in a house with the bodies of her three siblings, one of whom may have been dead since the early 1980s, police in suburban Chicago said.

The bodies were found Friday morning after an advocate called police, said Evanston police Cmdr. Tom Guenther.

The woman was taken to a hospital for observation. The Cook County Medical Examiner's Office said Saturday that the siblings had died of natural causes, but it would not say how long they had been dead.

The office has identified the dead as Anita Bernstorff, who was born in 1910, Elaine Bernstorff, born in 1916, and Frank Bernstorff, born in 1920. Anita Bernstorff was last seen alive in May 2008, Frank Bernstorff in 2003 and Elaine Bernstorff in the early 1980s....

Day One

via TruthDig

Overheard in the Bagel Shop

a man missing an eye and wearing an eye patch comes into the bagel shop. he is a regular customer and, even though i've worked there only a couple of months, i know he wears the eye patch to cover his empty eye hole.

my co-worker, a bagel shop employee for 4 years, to eye patch man: So, is this your Halloween costume?

Sheesh.

The Republican Ticket

McCain, via Slog:
Palin, via The Huffington Post


From the Campaign Log:
October 15, 2008

We both managed to do something crazy and/or ridiculous and/or idiotic today. Ony a couple weeks left. Go Team!