Don't dress as a Buzzkill for Halloween

It's Halloween time again. Time to dress up, trick or treat, torch cars, get white Pan-cake makeup smeared all over you from drunkenly making out with someone dressed as Dead Michael Jackson, or whatever creams your Twinkie. (I DON'T JUDGE.)



For us parents, it means watching our kids go out into the snow (yes, SNOW) as, say, Captain Kirk and the cutest little ladybug princess EVAR and come home with a queen-sized pillow case full of sugary goodness. Before the night arrives, I would like to make a proclamation:



If you are a parent who lets your child have one piece of candy and then makes them throw the rest of it out/give it to the homeless/sell it to the dentist for a buck a pound/burn it in a Christian bonfire--

YOU ARE LAME.

(And don't try to deny it. I saw that dentist on Channel 2 this morning. She cleared like 500 pounds of candy from kids turning in hard-won goods last year. That's at least a couple hundred really bummed out little Spider Men, by my count.)

Just because you're a parent doesn't mean you have to be an asshole, too. Yes, the bag of candy weighs more than your children do. Yeah, it's more candy than they need to eat in a year by a factor of four. Yes, it'll rot out the inside of their head IF THEY EAT IT ALL. But they won't. Unless, of course, you tell them they can't have it. Then they'll eat it all and then snort all the granulated sugar in your house as a chaser. Have fun with that.

Here's how we rock Halloween, Polito-style. On Halloween night, I tell the kids: For this night only, it's a free-for-all. That's right, take that bag and stuff as much candy into your piehole as will possibly fit. And they try, oh yes they do. But you know what? They usually can't eat more than 10 "fun-size" pieces of candy anyway before they start to ache.

On November 1 and thereafter, they get one piece of candy a day. That lasts a week, maybe 10 days. And then you know what they do? They FORGET ABOUT IT. That's right. They get all caught up in time off for Thanksgiving and the tidal wave of booty they're going to get in December and they say, "Halloween candy, wha?" And then it's done. And you toss the candy. And they don't spend the rest of the year thinking about what a dick you were about the Halloween candy because you had to go all Alice Waters on their asses.

Try it. Trust me. And there are plenty of other opportunities in parenting to be the Buzzkill. Don't make it your permanent Halloween costume. Embrace the candy, and make it a fun-size evening for everyone. Thank you and good night.

Ahnold the Ahsshole

Every once in awhile, someone acts like an asshole. But they are so brilliant in their assholishness that you just have to genuflect in their direction and say, "You sir, are the king of all assholes. Let the wild rumpus begin."

Today, Arnold Schwarzenegger wears that crown. Soon after being told by Tom Ammiano at a Democratic fundraiser that he could, and I quote, "Kiss my gay ass," the Governator issued this very pointed veto of Ammiano-sponsored legislature that was clearly meant to be read vertically:

http://www.boingboing.com/

(Thankfully, it was a fairly low level bill--something about creating financing districts in SF. Bill 1176 did not advocate same-sex marriage or puppy rescue or organic food for poor babies or anything like that.)

On boingboing, they're arguing the likelihood of this being intentional, versus just a happy accident of nature. Oh come on. How much more intentional could this be? Someone clearly worked painstakingly to create this masterpiece. It's not THAT hard to carefully choose words to make things line up in just such a way. It's a skill most of us learn in junior high, right after we learn to spell BOOBLESS on the calculator.

Yes it's immature. And no, I really don't want to give props to some smartass little fucker in the governor's office who was probably laughing his ass off while writing this letter and is probably the toast of all his little entitled white boy buddies now. But admit it, it's kind of awesome. In fact, it's something I would probably do if I were bored and pissed off enough. I always assumed that's why I am not governor or some other fancy job, but obviously that's not a dealbreaker!

Tune in next week, when Governor Schwarzenegger puts a whoopie cushion on Mark Leno's seat in the state senate session.

Hooray for journalism.

David Rohde's series in the Times about being held hostage in Afghanistan by the Taliban for seven months is truly outstanding. It gives me chills. I'm impressed with his ability to take his memories and the translations from his Afghani counterpart and synthesize them into such a riveting account of not only his experience, but the state of things over there as he observed it. Bravo.

Oh, and the Times is cutting 100 newsroom jobs.

What's wrong with this picture? And is there anything we can do to make it right?

Really people? Really?

Thank you, Cindy, for keeping this blog alive.

I have been blogging for, oh, two years now. Oh wait, NEARLY FOUR? Holy crap. I don't check in as much as I used to, admittedly, to the disappointment of my VERY large fan club (hi mom). In that two (er, four) years, I've managed to write about a lot of stuff. I blog about my kids. About the weird shit I see from day to day. If you read this, you've been through my ups and downs, fights, life changes, kid trouble, knee trouble, and lots of talk about poop. I occasionally write about current events, most recently about our President. I have thoughts. Deep thoughts.

So when I check my analytics, what is the most common entry page for my blog? What are the keywords that bring people here every week?

Four words.

Cindy Crawford. Stretch marks.

Yes! It's true! Ages ago I wrote a blog post about my outrage at bitchy bitches snarking about Cindy Crawford's poor stretched out tummy, something that even we hottest babes have to deal with after popping out a few babes of our own. Little did I know that would be the post that brings 99 percent of the eyeballs that feast on this blog. It gets searched on EVERY. DAY. (in fact, I just went there myself! DAMMIT, tricked again.) Seriously. Of all the things I have poured out to you people, you just gotta have my opinion on supermodel stretch marks.

So tell me--I have to know. Why? Are you perverts? Stomach fetishists? Are you just dying to know who gets stretch marks? Are you Cindy Crawford? WHAT? I just don't get it.

Maybe someone can enlighten me. In the meantime, please realize this whole post is just an elaborate ploy to get my hit count up. Thank you for obliging. If there's anything else I can write about Cindy Crawford and her abdomen, just let me know.

The Difference Between Noble and Nobel

There is no one on this planet who is a bigger fan of Barack Obama than I am. I love him soooooo much. Its kind of embarrassing, really. Every time I see him, or hear him or think about him, I feel all happy and hopeful inside. Not in a stalker-y way (back off, Secret Service.) He inspires me.

But I don't think that merits a Nobel Peace Prize. Apparently, the Nobel Prize Committee disagrees with me.

My first reaction when I heard the news this morning was, "Huuuuh?" My second reaction was, "Omigod, give it BACK." I hate that that reaction puts me in the company of teabaggers and Joe Wilson and other assorted troglodytes. But I have my reasons why I think that Obama, as much as I luuurv him, should respectfully decline this honor, at this time.

About a year ago, I wrote a post about a box of donuts and low standards.

In a nutshell, I talked about how sad it was that our standards were so low that people at my office treated a gift box of donuts like it was a million-dollar check. And how, similarly, we were so starved for truly exceptional leadership that Sarah Palin's not acting outright retarded in a debate counted as a stellar performance in the eyes of the media. Mud certainly fills a vacuum.

Well, Obama is a damn sight better than mediocre, but it's the same thing today. Our president isn't doing anything phenomenal for the peace process--he's doing his fucking JOB. Just because George Bush failed to do his for 8 years doesn't mean the next president gets a medal for being something more than a total shitweasel.

Again, that is not to detract AT ALL from Obama's overall awesomeness. But come on, when the wrong thing has been spelled out in capital letters in blinking neon and shouted from the rooftops for so long, it's pretty fucking easy to do the right thing. I don't think anyone deserves a prize for not being George Bush. If that's the case, we're all winners. Buy something purty with your .08 cents.

And really? There's not someone out there doing something truly exceptional to promote peace in 2009? There's not some relief agency head down in Sub-Saharan Africa keeping thousands of kids from being slaughtered? There's not someone on the ground in Afghanistan sticking it to the Taliban? There's not someone somewhere putting Glenn Beck through a four-mile spanking machine? SOMETHING? I think it would be quite noble for Obama to say, "C'mon, this is silly" and give the prize back, some worthy cause out there could surely use the dough.

But aside from that, this whole prize plays right into the other thing about the Obama juggernaut that scares the crap out of me. He is a superior human being. He is wonderful. He has potential for greatness. That's right, POTENTIAL. He is doing his job--let's let the man DO HIS JOB. We as a world have such an inclination to pile so many accolades on Obama, we put so much pressure on him he can't POSSIBLY succeed in the end. We are lifting him to such a lofty perch, and there's no oxygen up there. As with, yes, again, the donuts, we are so desperate for something, anything, that we are pouring all of our hopes into one man. And one man can't detangle this cluster. Hope is no substitute for hard, hard work, for action, for the time you need to allow to let things work.

I hope the Nobel Committee is right about Obama. I hope this award is prescient. But we are so not there yet. And I don't want to see the flip side of feverish adoration and high expectations--the irrational anger and the defeated man who's only human. Because Obama of all people doesn't deserve that. That's when nobody wins.

Q: Brilliant or Stupid? A: Microsoft

I feel dirty.

I work at an agency. I should know better. You think by now I wouldn't be another sucker, falling prey to a viral campaign. But I was tricked again. D'oh. And worst of all? It was by Microsoft. Fuckers.

In anticipation of the launch of Windows 7, Microsoft posted a series of videos on YouTube about how to host your own Windows 7 launch party. I feel like I shouldn't even post them here, because I'd just be spreading the Microsoft viral marketing taint. Oh, what the hell, here's the brutally crappy one that I watched:



It's horrific. And embarrassing. And insults our intelligence. All things commonly associated with Microsoft. And I, like most people, spent the afternoon posting it to various social networking sites and going, "EW EW EW EW."

After the third or fourth response I got, and the third or fourth time I saw it picked up and posted by someone else, it dawned on me: SHIT. It's gone viral. Which is precisely the intention.

See, it doesn't matter that Microsoft looks fucking stupid and we all think they're jackasses. Because we already think that. They're not trying to influence public opinion. They're trying to get the word out that Windows 7 is coming and get us talking about them. And by leveraging our hatred, our love of irony, our cottage industry of mocking anything horrible and putrid, and by throwing a couple of really bad "device" double entendres in for good measure, they've got us hooked. Microsoft doesn't care about our number, but their agency sure has it.

Still, it's not positive press. Which begs the debate, is any viral good viral? Is it better to get people talking about your product and brand at any cost? And was that REALLY the intention here, or am I seeing brilliance where there is really just a bad campaign and a total lack of self-awareness? Is this Chauncey Gardner, or just a retarded guy that's good with plants? It's an interesting discussion. I'm sure we'll be talking about it at my Windows 7 launch party. When we're not playing with our devices.

Just Kill the Lobster and Shut Up

Kill me. Please. I can't read another page.

I'm reading Julie and Julia right now. I needed something to read on my recent flight and at the airport bookstore had a choice between nine million Dean Koontz novels, ten million Nora Roberts novels, and Julie and Julia. I had heard it was vaguely good, wanted to read the book before I saw the movie, and was intrigued by the idea that someone would attempt to cook all of the recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. God knows I couldn't do it. So it narrowly won out over Chicken Soup for Your Cat's Soul.

Halfway through the book, I'm now thinking I made the wrong choice. The precious cat stories might have made me puke, I might have at least had some admiration for the protagonists while I was heaving.

To me, reading Julie and Julia is the literary equivalent of watching a Jerry Lewis movie. For the first two minutes that you see Jerry Lewis on the screen being a bumbling retard, you think, heh-heh, kinda funny. After 20 minutes, you don't know who you want to shoot in the head first, him or yourself. It's the same with J and J. At first, you're like, woman like me, trying to boil a calf's foot, freaking out, ha ha ha. But a few chapters later, you're like, "Lady, it's just a goddamned lobster. Kill it and shut the fuck up."

Which pretty much sums up my hate for the book. I have to sit there for a chapter and listen to you whine about the horror of killing a live lobster. It's a LOBSTER. It doesn't care. (Hi PETA). Boil it and enjoy. Don't like being a secretary? Be something else. Love Austin and hate New York? MOVE. What would Julia do? She'd tell you to grow a pair.

Don't get me wrong, I'm intimately familiar with neurosis and whining and first-world problems. Oh yes. But I think this blog would be a little boring if all I did was wring my hands and say "Hey! Look at the stupid thing I did today! Ever notice how nice and round my navel is? The end!" (Look how I'm assuming that a. this blog isn't boring and b. I have readers. How CUTE!) I mean crap, if I knew there was such a market for books about white-lady passive aggressive dissatisfaction and ineptitude, I'd be on volume 12.

It's also a waste of talent. Jerry Lewis (stay with me here) didn't get where he is because he sucks. You watch his movies, and there IS genius hiding somewhere behind the idiocy. Every once in a while, it comes out. Same with this book. There are lines, paragraphs, passages, where good writing comes through, where you can really feel the angst or the awakening bubbling under the surface. But then it's gone, buried under tears about lobsters and tantrums about dinner guests. And I don't have the time or inclination to wade through the dreck to find the diamonds.

I'm not an across-the-board fan of Eat Pray Love, but I give props to Elizabeth Gilbert--she's a helluva writer and storyteller and she makes you love to read about her crazy. This book, not so much.

But it makes me look forward to the movie--I think this is one case where the movie will take the book one step further and round out the characters, give life to the Julie/Julia comparison, make me give a shit. Because now, after the 150th pre-dinner-party meltdown, with approximately 150 more to go, Julie and Julia are about to find a spot in my Goodwill book pile. And that's just not fair to Julia.

I WANT to get an iPhone. Really!

Apple, take note: if you hadn't signed a partnership agreement with AT and T and left it all wide open, I'd be on my second or third iPhone by now. So would a lot of people. That's a lot of iPhone change that you ain't getting.

I'm still contemplating a switch. In fact, I would like to have an iPhone more than anything because I'm sorry, they're just cool. But after spending a day fighting with AT and T over a billing error from two years ago that I want to fix but CAN'T, I feel more than ever that AT and T is like that asshole person who, despite the fact that he is a complete dick, still has friends and romantic relationships.

Apple, what do you SEE in AT and T? What are you DOING with them? Why must I be torn between wanting something so totally bitchin' and being righteous and withholding my money from proven assmonkeys? No fair.

And AT and T? Wait a few years. When this dream relationship comes to an end and the iPhone and other, cooler gadgets to be named later are fair game for all providers, you are going to lose subscribers so fast your CRM system will melt into a pile on the floor. Unless you decide to Get It and realize--in telecom, customer service is all you got. Cool shiny phones and iron-clad partner contracts can only protect you for so long.

In the meantime, we got choices. We got Twitter. I'm not afraid to use either one. 20 million people are waiting to hear what I think of your lame ass. So figure it out.

Ahead of the curve

I'm so rarely ahead of anyone on reading any book, but I have to say I'm proud of myself for committing to Infinite Jest last winter before the cool kids decided it was worth reading in a finite amount of time. Now I can say, as all of my friends pick it up for the summer and take the challenge, "eh. I read it in three months. And I was lazy." Of course, I was also escaping reality in a big way (successfully), but I persevered, and now I can watch Three Stooges cartoons while everyone else tries to make sense of Eschaton and the Quebecois movement. I love seeing all of my friends read over that first paragraph and thinking, ah, just you wait. It'll all make sense.

For the record, I highly recommend taking up the challenge. It's not for everyone, that's for sure, but I really enjoyed reading it. Not in the linear, yarn-spinning sense, but just because the writing was so damned fun to read. Give it a whirl. And don't forget to start over from the beginning when you finish. Trust me.

Not a peep

Whither?

It's just not Easter without certain things. Baskets. Chocolate. Awkward uncomfortable gatherings at Grandma's house (oh, wait, that's just me). And Peeps. Sweet, sweet peeps.

Well, we're just going to have to cancel Easter because Peeps are AWOL in Boulder.

Because we have, you know, lives, we haven't been able to get our Easter shopping done early this year. We thought we'd be safe running into the giant Target near our house and stocking up on various traditional Easter goodies and Michael Graves springtime design items. I mean, who runs out of candy before Easter?

Target, that's who. By the time we got there today the shelves were picked clean of all but the nastiest jelly beans and some kind of weird circus peanut type thing that I can't even talk about. It was like Soviet Russia, except with more pastels. And worst of all? NO PEEPS. Anywhere.

I mean, who runs out of Peeps? Usually there are enough left over the day after Easter to build a new room onto your house. The checkers are slipping them into your bag, free with every purchase. You see those fuckers hardening on the shelves well into June. But this year, we went to three different places and they were all Peepless. I wonder if they've tightened the supply chain at the Peep factory, to reduce costs and more accurately target inventory during the recession? Another reason to hate AIG.

Now what are we supposed to do? What are we going to use to play Attack of the 50ft. Pink Chicken in the microwave? And what are we going to use to craft our artist's rendition of Christ on the cross? (c'mon, it's not like we EAT them, how crazy do you think we are?)

We've learned our lesson. In these trying economic times, shop early and often for Peeps. Next year, we'll buy a gross as soon as they hit the stores. That should give us enough for our microwave fun and our religious art. We'll have enough to sell on the Peeps black market. After a few months, we can even soundproof the basement.

Come ON already

When my computer chugs along, trying to perform a momentous task like, oh, saving a document, it makes a sound like the engine of a plane when its in a holding pattern over the runway.

Circling over
and over
and over
again.

I don't like that sound.

Time for a new skirt

When you see a skirt that you own on a mannequin in the window of the gift shop of the Walt Disney World Hilton, it's time to rethink your wardrobe. And by you I mean me.

Just sayin'.

News Flash: I am not on fire

Once I moved out of California, I thought I'd never get the disaster-check call again (or its cousin, the disaster-check email). If you live anyplace where the ground shakes, burns, slides or suddenly becomes a lake, you KNOW what I mean. It's bad enough living in San Francisco and worrying about an earthquake--it's inevitable that someone, somewhere who is related to you will call if the seismograph quivers within 1000 MILES of the Bay Area and asking, "Are you okay?" or, "Did you feel that?". I mean, I appreciate the concern, but a 3.5 quake north of Eureka is not going to register really on a bedrock hill in Cole Valley.

We haven't had to deal with that as much in Boulder. Sure, there are little brushfires here and there, but it's not like someone is going to call and say, "Hey, we saw on the news that there were some clouds spotted over Aurora. Did you experience shade?"

But a few days ago, we had a big fire in the Boulder hills. Not a SoCal inferno, but enough of a blaze to cover a swath of the hillside above Olde Stage Road. Friends were evacuated. Critters got rescued. Houses burned. I came over the crest of Highway 36 on my way home from work and suddenly I was on a Costco run in 1991, rounding a corner on I-80 to see ALL OF THE OAKLAND HILLS turned into the center of hell.

When I started getting calls and emails inquiring about our safety, it dawned on me that unlike the Bay Area or the state of California, Boulder is actually kind of compact. It's entirely possible that if there's a fire in the hills we could be in it. I actually felt kind of bad that I didn't call the folks and let them know that we were safe and sound. So for those of you who haven't already called, I'm not on fire. I'm not even smoldering. We are here in the middle of town respectively playing Wii Fit, sacked out on the couch, reading Fudge-o-Mania with no pants on, and pretending to work. I'll leave it to you to guess who's doing what. But we're just fine. Thanks for asking.

This too shall pass

There's nothing like being on page 1 of a 1,079 page book. I've decided to read Infinite Jest. I need a distraction, and I always liked ol' Dave. No one has ever captured the horrors of being on a cruise vacation better. And we sort of lived parallel lives, growing up in university towns in the middle of hick states. Except that he went on to be a brilliant writer and then killed himself, and I became, uh, me.

I remember when this book came out, back in the day. I was a young thing who thought, "Who the hell has time to sit and read that?" Not knowing, of course, that that precise moment was the most time I would ever, ever have in my adult life. Hindsight rocks.

I decided to reconsider the Infinite Book on the advice of my friend Hollie. First of all, I try to do everything Hollie says. And second of all, she said it took her three months to finish it.

Three months. That's a nice amount of time. Perfect for a fugue state.

See, I'm hoping to get so involved in this book that I sink into a literary fugue state that Sibyl would be proud of. A fugue state like the ones I often experience at Target, when I walk in to get a tube of toothpaste and walk out three hours later with three new outfits, a battery charger, a few throw pillows and a lawn game set.

And when I come out this time, I'll once again have the gift of hindsight.

There are certain points in time--like, say, 9/11--when you're in the middle of the shit and you think, I wish I could just fast forward 6 months. To a point when this tragedy is more of a memory. When life has indeed gone on. Frankly, I could use a good fast-forward button about now.

I'd like to close the binding on this book in April and realize that this too has passed. Knees are healed. Messes cleaned up. Avocations found. People who are extremely pissed at me, well.....less so. Hell, maybe I'll have forgiven myself.

I'll think, I've made it through the book and so much more. Then I'll pick up the next book, hopefully something really trashy (preferably bad science fiction) and keep moving forward. It's not that I want to escape. I just want it to be later. And I am happy to have this monstrous, wordy, gargantuan wank of a book to keep me company while later happens.

So if you'll excuse me, I have 1,078 pages to finish. Should be interesting. I'll let you know how it ends.

Election Day: play-by-play

You may have heard that it's Election Day. I figure you don't need me to tell you to vote. (By the way: VOTE). Or to remind you that this is a historic day that will bring a historic end to a historic two-year run for office. I mean, duh.

What you do need me to do is chronicle the day from MY perspective. I'm taking the day off because a. I'm a total freakshow today and no good to anyone at work and b. what's happening today is more important than collaboration software or global business services. Sorry. It just is.

So I hereby devote this blog post to letting you know EXACTLY how I'm spending this momentous day. Because you care.

7:56 am: Pacing like a cat. And typing! I multitask.

8:45 am: Dropped Tea off at school. She voted. All I can say is, if the amendment to provide two tape stories before naptime doesn't pass, we're gonna break shit up.

Yeah, she voted. And she goes to the ACORN school. What about it?

10:30 am: Ninety minutes until volunteer time. What to do? Go to Starbucks and get my free cup of coffee (aka the LAST thing I need)? Or stand 101 feet outside the Whittier polling place and heckle? Decisions, decisions.

11:35 am: Off to 16th and Pearl to get out that vote! Contemplated taking Vito with me (Vote Obama or the dog gets it!) but he would rather stay here and snooze. Wondering what I'll do if they have me knocking on doors. Sample conversation:

"Did you vote?"

"Yes"

"Okay then!"

We'll see. Back soon with a full report.

I voted early. Piss off.

12: 15 pm: At the Obama staging area on Pearl, trying to figure out what the hell to do. There are a lot of people talking on cell phones. And there are a LOT of volunteers. Enough to canvass my neighborhood about 10 times over. This is good! Except, we're all in Boulder, which is a sure thing. This is bad!

I go up to Organizing Dude and say, is there anywhere we can go where they actually NEED us? Next thing I know, I'm driving me and a really nice lady named Amina to Arvada. Be careful what you wish for.

1-4 pm: Knocking on doors in the burbs, la la la. Once again I'm struck by how much canvassing reminds me of trick-or-treating. Except the payoff comes later, and it's uncertain. Whee. I get a lot of not-home voters (working class people who are....working! Surprise.)

And people who are home? See sample conversation above. I talk to one woman who is just getting in her car to go vote (we do the Obama club fist-bump) and a 12-year-old latchkey girl who says her mom is not home, but "She's voting for Obama today, so no worries."

Word at Obama headquarters is, there are more than a million people volunteering today to get out the vote. Awesome.

5:37 pm: Hey look! The Medill alumni magazine is here! This should be a fascinating diversion to keep my mind off the election! zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

6:38 pm:

Will it be a champagne night, or a Boone's Farm night?

9:55 pm: Four years ago, I was sitting at my friend Kevin Cobb's house at the Worst. Party Ever. Apologies to poor Kevin, it was like a fucking morgue. I was almost 3 months pregnant with Tea. In the haze, I just remember sitting there thinking: I'm depressed. I'm pregnant. And I'm SOBER. It was a horrible way to spend a Tuesday night.

I just left a party with a dozen people cheering, a whole lot of them crying. Waking up their friends and relatives to share the celebration. I'm still stunned. Tomorrow, I'll wake up and I'll go back to my impossible deadlines and the demands of parenting and, well, a lot of shit. But tonight? I'm floating. As I wait for Obama to take the stage with my sleeping kid beside me, I can finally, totally, absolutely let myself have Hope.

Thank you, America. Onward.

That's it. Right there.

Low standards: friend or foe?

This fixes EVERYTHING.

Things have been pretty bleak around the office. Oh, we're doing fine. But we've lost a few really cool and talented people, and there's a whole lotta uncertainty about whether our fine clients will continue to spend money given the economic climate. Morale is down.

Last week, my co-worker Cat and I decided that we couldn't take it any more. We needed to inject a little good cheer into the mix. We brought in Peet's coffee and a box of 3 dozen donuts. We put them on the little kitchen cart and wheeled them around the office, serving donuts to our peers. Why? Just because. Everyone needs donuts.

We didn't realize how MUCH everyone needs donuts. Oh my god. As we rolled our cart from department to department, it was like we were the liberators marching into Paris during WWII. People were over the moon. Like, WAY over. It was like we were handing out $50 bills instead of donuts. They were grabbing two, three at a time.

Over and over they asked: "What's the occasion?" "It's Wednesday." And then their heads would explode.

It was a box of fuckin' donuts. Granted, LaMar's makes a tasty donut, but wow. I knew morale was bad, but I had no idea how starved people were for some kind of happy surprise, anything, to remind them that they rock.

People: You deserve donuts. And so much more. We ALL do.

The next day I watched the vice-presidential debate. Sarah Palin ignored the questions. She stuck to lame talking points. She WINKED. She basically sucked, BUT. She didn't say that she could see Russia from Alaska, and she stayed away from the Bush Doctrine, and she didn't suffer any sort of wardrobe malfunction.

So the media and the conservatives declared the debate: A TIE!

Now I know that Sarah Palin probably looks a whole lot like a box of donuts after 8 years of Bush/Cheney (who, to me, are the equivalent of a box of shit sandwiches.) But do you really declare satisfaction, even triumph, because the potential second-in-command didn't do something outright retarded? Is that really what we think we're worthy of?

I love low standards as much as the next person. They've allowed me to enjoy several really stupid movies, and they've gotten me through countless family gatherings. But they can't be the ONLY standards. Just because Tommy Boy totally cracked my shit up, should that be the gold standard for all movies? No no NO!!! (Okay, yes. But NO!) We should continue to demand the best. We want Lawrence of Arabia, dammit.

I'm sure that in the coming year, with this sucktastic economy, low standards will come in handy. They will get us through. But Cat and I upped the ante to waffles for everyone this week. Maybe next week we'll pass out the good beer. It's okay to accept the little triumphs, but we still need to always, always remember. We. Deserve. Better.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go pop some champagne because my daughter pooped in the potty. Low standards, indeed.

Too scary, even for Halloween

Now that it's officially October, I need to address a very important issue.

Last week, I made a comment about going as Sarah Palin for Halloween, and about dressing up my 3-year-old daughter as an impregnated Bristol Palin.

I'm not here to apologize for that statement. Because I still think it would be freakin' hilarious. I want to talk about something that's bigger than one tasteless Halloween costume. I'm talking about the fact that every single woman in the United States is planning to dress up as Sarah Palin for Halloween. (And in the case of the Castro, every single man AND woman.)

Ladies. I can understand the impulse. It's timely. It's cheap. It involves virtually no work at all except putting on glasses and looking disturbingly vacant. It's a great idea. I'm glad you thought of it, and I know that you thought of it first. You're really funny.

No.

But think of the implications. Halloween is about diversity (okay, it's about candy but let's pretend it's about diversity). You can't have every party, every street overflowing with Sarah Palins. The sameness would be heartbreaking. It would be like a cross between the Republican National Convention and Where's Waldo.

Oh HELL no. But you get the idea.

Dare to be different. Go as a ghost. The slutty cat costume is always a good standby. Or how about that costume where you dress up as a salt shaker, and your husband goes as pepper? That one's really cute.

If you must be Sarah, I guess the only acceptable solution is for all of us to coordinate, band together, and go out for an old-fashioned night of ultra-violence. So if you want to throw on that padded blazer and join the crowd to burn up cars Detroit-style, call me! I have glasses!

At least something's going up!

The good news is, something reached an all-time high today.

The bad news is, it was the water level in our basement.

Today, before the looooong client meetings, before the Dow took a giant crap all over the retirement plans of America, our sump pump decided to kick off the day in style...and kick the bucket. Rick came downstairs to find that our lower level was very slowly being reclaimed by the creek that runs under our house. Not good. Not good at all.

THIS is PRECISELY why we decided that a stained concrete floor would be Just Fine down there. Although being right is no consolation when water is slowly seeping through the cracks of said concrete on the floor of your kid's room.

Fortunately, we caught it early, so Rick was able to call many plumbers, get a new pump, evaluate why the old pump went bust, and discuss long-term solutions with our new plumbing friends. He worked hard, which is why I found him basically curled up in a ball in the corner of the basement when I got home, obsessively timing the intervals between sump pump activity while it pumped the excess water away (27 seconds, for those of you playing at home.)

Now I'm sitting here listening to the sump working. It is a little unnerving. I don't like it. I don't like that I can look down the hole in our basement and say hi to the water, taunting me, about a foot away from flooding our basement floor. I don't like that we have to keep the cover off the sump pump hole until the plumbers come back tomorrow, which means that Gianni's room is temporarily the Radon Suite at the Hotel Polito.

All I can say is, it's a good thing we decided not to stuff all our money in Gianni's mattress. There's a bright side to everything.

Quien es mas macho?

A huge chunk of my conversation at a party tonight centered around one crucial question:

Who would win in a fight, Rock'em Sock'em Robots, or Hungry Hungry Hippos?

That is a tough one. I mean, if it were regular hippos, there would be no contest. Hippos are bad motherfuckers. They would take the robots down. But those are the big gray hippos that weigh a ton and wait quietly in the river for an opportunity to ambush. But the little pink and yellow hippos that swallow white balls? Let's analyze.

Hungry hungry hippos: small, plastic, smiling. But still hippos. They have impressive reach and quick reflexes. And did I mention: HUNGRY?

Rock'em sock'ems: Taller, pretty tough in their own right. But their range of motion is for shit. And they waste half of their punches swinging at air.

I give it to the hippos, in 12 rounds, decision.



No, we weren't stoned, why do you ask?

The dog ate my talking points

John McCain! Did you seriously say that you want to cancel the presidential debate because we need to focus on the economy? Did you really say that you plan to take a break from campaigning for the next few days, one of those days being the day of the first debate? And was it really suggested that we reschedule your debate for October 2, the date of the vice presidential debate, in turn postponing that one?

Because even I didn't think you were that big of a pussy. But way to prove me wrong!

Guess what I'm doing on Friday, John? I'm going to Omaha. For one day. I don't want to go to Omaha, even for one day. (No offense, Omaha.) I want to stay here. I want to do Other Stuff. I want to help my husband prepare for our son's birthday party instead of leaving him holding the bag. (A metaphor for our current economic situation? Perhaps.) But you know what? I'm going to Omaha. Why? Because IT'S MY JOB. I'm going to be interviewing a bank executive. That's right, a bank executive. He's not taking the day off to mourn the financial crisis, and he WORKS IN A BANK.

Some may argue that your job is being a senator, and as such you should be in Washington helping to give Henry Paulsen absolute power over everything in the known universe. I say: bullshit. Your job right now is to run for president. Your job is to prove that you can multitask like a motherfucker. There are lots of very smart people working very hard on getting the economy under control right now. And you know, I think they can manage without you. In fact, I really think you've done enough, my friend.

The place you need to be right now is onstage, with a microphone, telling me exactly why I should let you anywhere near a major financial crisis. I think it's going to take a lot of convincing, so I'm going to stop ranting so you have enough time to study up and find a pair of balls before the big debate. Good luck with that. See you Friday!