Le Chaim

It’s time to get ready for Hanukkah. Only two more weeks until the Festival of Lights begins. At this time of year, I find myself embracing my place as a child of Israel. I am intrigued by the Jewish faith and culture, but Hanukkah time is when it captures me the most. I sing about the dreidel, I light the candles on the menorah, or I would had a found a cool one when I was in Prague last year. I celebrate in my own special way. This way includes one gentile and two half Jews, a decorated plunger, latkes, and a revamped dreidel song that gets new and improved stanzas every year. It is the most wonderful celebration and I do not think the tradition will ever die. In fact, this year should be the fifth anniversary of what we call Hanumas.

And yes, we started this long before TV land got the idea, which only feeds into my notion that some Hollywood writer has been having me followed as many of my ideas seem to find their way into the lives of our favorite television characters. I mean come on! I have told you this before, but I am going to repeat it. It’s important. Family Guy had Chris get a pimple which was called Doug. My ex had a huge-normous pimple on his chin that was so big I named it… Doug… and greeted it before I greeted him, every time I saw them. I can’t figure out why he dumped me. Doug emerged on Ex-guy’s chin a good two years before the show reintroduced him as a character. Hmm, I got totally off topic here. That never happens.

Apparently, I can’t just decide to be Jewish. Even if it is only at Hanukkah time. The most brilliant comic genius of our time, Michael Richards, stated that he is Jewish and that is why no one can be mad at him for what he said the other night at the Laugh factory in LA. He was “playing a role”. So he must have Jewish parents right? Nope. Well, then he obviously converted, correct? Huh uh.

What the heck, Michael Richards? You spout off racist remarks against all sorts of groups and then instead of accepting the responsibility for being an ass, you try to make up all sorts of excuses as to why? I would love to say man up and apologize for being such a complete and utter jackass, but honestly, you’ve fallen ever so far. The thing is people are pretty forgiving towards someone who is truly repentant. But you don’t want to deal with it, do you? "He wants to rest," the publicist said. "He's been talking to his psychiatrist."

Yeah, it’s pretty exhausting offending everyone.

Baby Spice is all growed up!

And what has she done? She turned Petula Clark into Petula Tart! The song my brother sang so preciously non-stop at age three has now become an anthem for what kids don't think is real sex these days. (Yeah, I am hedging my words a bit because well, hey! I think if you can't figure out what I am talking about, then you really don't need to know.)
In the video for her version of "Downtown", Emma Bunton gives plenty of direction to her many suitors. (Well, in the beginning of the video which is all I watched until someone told me it was not completely offensive. The rest is all random hotel shenanigans. Still.)

These innocent lyrics have a whole new meaning, and it's all Baby Spice's fault.

"...And you may find somebody kind to help and understand you. Someone who is just like you and needs a gentle hand to guide them along".

PSA: Stop the madness that was the Spice Girls. If Posh Spice's nostrils get any bigger, she will suck Beckham's 9 year old boy chest in and choke. Seriously, how does he not have any pectoral muscles? He is an athlete!?! Though the rest is nice if you can get past that... But, it freaks me out.

Victim of unbelievable crime!

I just got home from a delightful Thanksgiving get-together at my church and ran inside to grab a recipe for bourbon sweet mashed potatoes. I was going to leave right away to run to the store to buy the ingredients, so I was only in my house for a couple of minutes. I opened the door, wallet and recipe in hand, and looked at the lock. The keys I had purposely left in the lock because I was only going to be inside for 3.2 seconds were GONE! I had heard some jingling outside while I was getting the recipe, but I did not think anything of it. That's a lie. I thought, my goodness. What if someone is absconding with my keys? And they did! My keys were stolen right out of my lock and now what am I going to do!?! I looked to see if my car had been taken, because the key to that was on that ring. But the car was still there. I came back inside, reeling from my latest bought of cruelly unfair life dealings. Then I put my hand in my pocket and found my stolen keys. Oops.

Side note: I accidentally left my keys in the lock all night the other night and no one took them, or me.

This is how I WOULD have stolen

the five dollars that were stolen from my sister's coat jacket back in 1983, had I stolen those five dollars. I would have waited until no one was around and then quietly gone to the coat closet. Slyly, I would have slid the door open, casting cautious looks about me and listening for tell-tale feet. Rehearsing in my mind the story that I was just looking for my lucky rabbit's foot, in case I were to get caught, I would slide my hand into the pocket of my sister's blue and white jacket and have it triumphantly emerge with a five dollar bill. Had I have stolen this money, which I did not, I would have gone to Springfield Mall and watched Jaws 3D twice and even treated myself to candy and soda. I would have jumped both times the frog jumped off of the screen onto my face. But I did not steal those five dollars. That is merely how I WOULD have done it, had I done. Which I did not.

It's been a banner week already.

Yesterday I walked into a wall, right in front of the person I am certain will be running our company before too long. I walked solidly into the wall, not so that I could play it off in any way and she asked me if I was okay.

Today, walking down the stairs behind my co-worker, I stumbled and had to grab the railing to keep from falling into him, knocking him down, and forcing him to spill Coke Zero all over his very expensive suit. All this witnessed gleefully by what seemed like half the company who could not refrain from helpfully guiding me to maybe take the elevator next time.

I was just talking to my boss; my new boss, but not my not-my-boss (who is not the most pleasant thing in my life but also not as horrendous as previously-but all this most of you don't know about and don't really probably want to know and so therefore should just disregard. Can anyone tell that I have been forced to read Gertrude Stein lately? I think I write like her. See for yourself.). We were talking about Christmas gifts. I have been trying to get some Playmobil for my nephew, but have been having a hard time picking something out. So I asked my boss if he knew anything about Playboy.

What's up?

Hey Blogger, quit messing with me.

Five things I really like today:

1. Cap’n Crunch Peanut Butter Crunch. Okay, I love this all the time, but today it is special as it scratches my itchy throat on its way down. Yay!
   
2. The weather. Hot damn, it is a beautiful day. Great for those of you with the day off. (Happy Veteran’s Day. Since when is it on a Friday?) What about the morons who lay in bed until getting up to come to work and now getting ready to go back to bed? Can someone help me bring my bed outside?
   
3. Sephora Customer Service. I called because a promo code expired before I got to use it and she totally hooked me up! Free samples! Free polka dotted bag!
   
4. Available Kleenex. Because I am going through tissues like the unpopular kid at camp goes through underpants after the other kids tricked him into eating chocolate that’s really Ex-Lax.
   
5. Sneezing. Today is special because my cold is at the stage where it is leading me up to a sneeze and then Psych! No sneeze. I like sneezing in general. It feels good and is socially acceptable in public. I remember an episode of Third Rock from the Sun where they had all caught colds. Sally sneezed so hard she fell back against the wall. The others asked what had just happened and she replied, “I don’t know. But I want another.” Amen sister.

Bring on the chicken soup! (Groucho Marx will do.)

I have a cold. A sore throat, runny nose, sneezing all the time kind of cold. My nose is chapped from the incessant Kleenex violations and is thus a vibrant red. When the violators are not violating, I make sniffy sounds followed up by a sad sigh. My sneezes stem from a place deep inside of me, ripping forth with such volatility that my throat explodes and sometimes I fall down.
At night, while trying to sleep, my nose emits a high pitched whistle that wakes me up in a terror about who is standing over my bed wielding the baseball bat I keep next to my nightstand for such cases where I might need to defend myself from the bandits as the one perceived to be standing over my bed, whistling a high pitched whistley death call, and wielding my very own weapon. It turns out to be Century Bob, and he does not even have arms, so he ain’t wielding nothing. The whistle is being produced by me. Having a cold forces on me some really bizarre dreams, and I wake up in a panic at 2:13 am every night.
I can’t breathe very well, and despite the constant flow of snot, my nasal passages are excruciatingly dry. (Sniff). I say a lot of things to myself while laden with a cold like, “sigh”, and “Poor me”, and “I am soooo sick!”.
My chest is on fire. I try to douse the flames by drinking a lot of water, but they are reignited by the vicious and violent sneezes that contort me into shapes Cirque du Soleil would be impressed by.
I have a cold. I think I may be dying. I am sicker than anyone else in the whole world has ever been. And I am not just saying that because I am feeling so sorry for myself. (Sniff).

John Kerry! Don't make me like you.

"Attacking Patrick Murphy for his [military] service is a little bit like Jessica Simpson attacking Albert Einstein's IQ," Kerry told an audience in Philly in defense of a Democratic House candidate there.

(Now that's funny. But he did not even need to go as high in intellect as Einstein. He could have picked a guy with a kind of high IQ and it would still have been the same.)

He'll have a "New Life" now.

Ted Haggard is awesome. He opposes gay marriage, yet if the allegations against him are true, he has paid a guy to have sex with him every month for the past three years. Additionally, under his gay pseudonym of Art, he snorts meth to heighten the sexual thrill. His (paid) male sexual partner saw him on television and outed him because he was upset about “Art’s” hypocrisy. "It made me angry that here's someone preaching about gay marriage and going behind the scenes having gay sex," he said.
Haggard chose to quit the New Life Church despite his claims of innocence. He admits to buying the methamphetamine, but denies the gay sex. (So, drugs are more acceptable to his god than gay sex?) He bought meth, but “never used it”. He also admits to having accepted a massage from a gay male prostitute. (Hmm, what kind of massage?)

Why quit your job if you are not guilty of the charges against you?

The part of this story that riles me up the most is the sheer hypocrisy of it all. He is a father of five who claims to be true to his wife and to his God. He has influence over the spiritual development of this country as he converses with President Bush and/or his advisors every Monday.

It’s heartbreaking. If you can’t trust a pastor who is a married father of five to be honest, who can you trust?