Blog Day 2005 Reviews! (Well, two of them, anyway) August 31, 2005

Before I begin, let me say that I chose these blogs in a bit of a random way. I’ve seen a couple of them before, but hadn’t stopped to read much, or at all, and thought I’d give them a chance. One, I hadn’t ever seen before.

If you are the reviewee, please don’t feel obligated to start reading my blog religiously just because I reviewed you, nor should you stick me in your blogroll just to be nice. Only do so if you want to (and who wouldn’t, really?;) And of course, if I say anything about your blog or your writing that you feel the need to disagree with, please feel free to do so.

I’m starting with a blog I had never seen before today, which I came across while on Blog Soldiers (I think, it could have been one of the other ones, I was doing a multi-tab surfing thing this morning while looking for blogs to review). I was struck by the bright orange colors of A Woman of Many Parts. Then, I was struck by her inclusion under her name (Minerva, I hope that’s her real name, cuz that’s a kick-ass name) of a quote that I love dearly:

Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write. Elie Wiesel

I’ve built a sort of false sense of my writerly self around that quote. True, there’s lots of days when I can live without writing, and on those days, I don’t. But this isn’t about me. This is about Minerva, A Woman of Many Parts.

Anyway, the post I’m about to quote was not there this morning when I first picked this blog for review, but it’s there now, and she’s talking about our friend GW and his upcoming visit to “tour” the hardest-hit areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina:

Bush is coming back from his holiday a full 2 DAYS early to help command the relief effort. Well, whoopy, dooby, do… I am sure that is thrilling both the Governers of Louisiana and Mississippi and the Mayor who have been amazing in their communication and obvious dedication to their citizens. So Bush is coming back and guess what? He is going to tour the most stricken areas on Friday. I am sure that this has nothing to do with sinking ratings due to what is going on in Iraq but here is a personal message for you George W. STAY AWAY! Yes, that is right..stay away.. Think about it folks, who would you vote for? Someone who comes in and tours the area and then will talk more about it and tell everyone how awful it is? Or someone who shows some sensitivity to the actual gravity of the situation and rather than using up resources guarding the president, flying the president, will just release the money, the resources and the effort for those people who can help to do their jobs. If I was president, I would be saying that if people can’t return to their only home on this planet, then what right do I have to enter their city as a tourist?

Stay in Washington, George, and do everything YOU can to expediate the aid effort…

See what a smart chick she is? And she’s absolutely hit the nail on the head here, however I don’t want to get all sidetracked in talking about this one particular post. My goal is to talk about her blog as a whole, but here I am doing my babbling thing again. When I have an editor, she/he is going to hate me.

Another reason I really like her: she uses the word whilst. I love the word whilst. In my opinion, it is a vastly underused facet of the English language.

All in all, Minerva’s writing is witty and intelligent, full of poetry (and poems), sharp observations not only on her own life but on society as well. I’m adding her to my blogroll right this damn minute, and you should go read her blog and agree with me about what a great writer she is. She’s got a harrowing story about surviving Hurricane Andrew, so be sure to read that.

She’s also just begun writing a book, and if she finishes hers before I finish mine, I’m going to be really pissed off.

Okay, so on to the next blog. If I write ten paragraphs on everybody, I’ll never finish before the kids get home from school, and once that happens, I probably won’t be finishing this post until MUCH later tonight, when I get home from seeing the White Stripes.

First of all, I’m a sucker for a cool tattoo on a strong shoulder, and Rich at Championable has got a really cool picture of what I assume is his tattoo of what I think is a dove on his upper arm/shoulder. Then, right underneath this great tattoo, he says, about himself, “Married to a tremendously cute and intelligent woman.” Already, I know he’s smart, throwing out the goods to his woman like that.

My favorite part about Rich’s posts is that he ends most of them with the words “Love to all, even you…” and changes the you every time. As in, “even you, the lady who probably should buy a slightly fuller suit.” or “even you, the lady who blew a snot rocket on my foot today.” Such a nice way to say, you may completely suck, but I’m putting out some love to you anyway. How refreshing and enlightened, although it does serve to remind me that I don’t really ever think that way. I mean, I’m unfortunately of the “Love to all, except you, the shithead employee of the grocery store who for some reason was buying groceries, for four other people, with separate ring-ups, who was in front of me in line today when there was only two lines open.” I’m not usually an “even you” kind of person. But thanks to Rich, I’m going to try to be. Maybe.

Rich has a nice balance of talking about himself and what’s going on in his life and what he thinks of it all, with political bits here and there. He has a knack for saying something, and then pushing it just a little further. This is just a small example of what I mean:

So I’m taking the family to Disney World tomorrow. I’m really excited… not as much about the trip, but about PROVIDING the trip. I’m trying to be a Conduit of Pleasant Transportation… instead of irritable and nervous, which I can sometimes be during travel.

He also gets such joy from his kids, and it’s nice to know there’s someone out there who does (well, besides me of course! Duh!) I loved this: “It’s like this: When my daughter kisses me, it’s like being injected with pure sunlight.” Isn’t that the sweetest thing you’ve ever heard in your life?

Rich also talks about running (he does marathons, god bless him) and trying to live a cleaner life, and it’s truly inspiring, even though I’m not tempted to bother to do the same myself.

He’s got a great sense of humor, so go visit him. You won’t be disappointed.

It’s 3:10, and my kids are going to be home soon, so I’ve got to go shower and get dinner started. I’ll finish the rest of my reviews either tonight when I get home, or else tomorrow morning, and I will pretend that I did them tonight, and I’ll change the posting time and date and everything so that no one will know I did it.

My Name is Viki, and I’m an Asshole August 31, 2005

So, I’m sitting here, actually I was sitting outside having a cigarette, and I was thinking about why I haven’t really been all that touched by the disaster wreaked by Katrina. Part of it is that I don’t watch TV anymore, so I’m not assaulted with constant news stories. But I’ve actually entertained thoughts in the last few days along the lines of “There was a mandatory evacuation, now those people who stayed are risking the lives of their rescuers. Selfish bastards.” Really. I did think that. You know why? Because I’m an asshole.

So I’m sitting there, smoking, wondering what room to pick up next, thinking about writing my Blog Day 2005 post, staring off into space, trying to make myself remember to pay the mortgage today, when my doorbell rings, and standing there is a woman who lives down the street from me. She’s kind of a shy, reserved person, and we don’t know each other well, although our kids go to the same schools and we live on the same block. She’s got an envelope in her hand with a big Red Cross symbol on it, and I (I really am ashamed, I swear it) immediately thought, “Oh, hell, now I’ve got to shell out money I don’t have.” See? I told you I was an asshole.

She says, “I’m collecting for the relief effort.” Like I said, she’s a little on the quiet side. Of course, not wanting her to know what an asshole I am, I rifle around on my desk for my checkbook while I try to figure out quickly how much money I can spare without overdrawing the checking account (mortgage due and all), and when I turn around, she has tears in her eyes, actually they start dripping down her cheeks and she sputters out, “I’ve got family down there, friends. They’ve lost everything. They have nothing. Nowhere to go. And I was just sitting there, crying, not knowing what to do, and this is all I could think of right now.”

And that’s when it hit me what a selfish, crabby asshole I am.

I gave her $50 because that’s all I can spare this week. But now I’m going to do my blogging best to convince you to donate some money, some blood, some supplies, whatever you can. Just go ahead and do it. Call it my Selfish Assholes United for Hurricane Katrina Relief.

Here’s the Red Cross Katrina Fund Donation page.

The McCormick Tribune Foundation (Chicago Tribune) is matching 50 cents on the dollar up to $1,000,000, click HERE to go to their donation page (probably a better idea, maximize your dollar, yadda yadda).

Okay, that’s it for my public service announcement.

Love,

Still a selfish asshole but feeling a little less guilty,

Viki

Blog Day 2005! August 31, 2005

First of all, I’m going about this by blog surfing on the various traffic sites. I ask you, why would someone feature their parked domain name, as in that GoDaddy page where it tells you a web page is parked there, and it’s full of advertisements and isn’t a blog at all. You’re wasting your credits, person who will remain nameless because I don’t want to be mean.

Second of all, I realize, quite frankly, why I’m so constantly just clicking past blogs. That’s because 85% of them do not appeal to me in the slightest! They are either loudly proclaiming their Conservative values (I sometimes don’t wait the whole 20/30 seconds to get past those), their Christian values (likewise, sorry, no not sorry), or they are an interminable tech blog, which I should probably check out in order to find someone who will tell me how to easily post photos in word press without using Flickr.

Wait, what the hell am I supposed to be talking about?

Oh, I know. Blog Day. I’ve found four blogs so far that appealed to me for one reason or another, and I’m going to at least do those. I got tired of clicking past the same damn blogs, so I moved on to doing the Blogger Next Blog, but most of them appeared to be in chinese or spanish, so that was a huge fucking waste of time. Goddamn it.

I’m going to notify these four bloggers that I’m going to talk about them behind their backs, but I’m going to have to wait until later to do the post. I have to get some housework done. Pronto. My feet are dirty from walking around my own house. Okay, it’s not that bad. Okay, it is. And I have a babysitter coming tonight, and for some reason I can’t bear to have a babysitter see my house all nasty. This really sucks timing-wise, because my cleaning lady is coming tomorrow.

Okay, people. I’ll be back later this afternoon.

It’s Blog Day! August 31, 2005

It’s blog day, folks, and as I am going to see the White Stripes tonight at the Auditorium Theatre, I must get my Blog Day reviews done early, rather than waiting until the last damn minute like I usually do. Yes, I could have done all this work yesterday, or the day before, but I didn’t so there.

My kids just took off for school, riding their bikes. Alone. I’m freaking out a little. If they don’t make it for some reason, I won’t know until after 9 a.m., when the school secretary gets the attendance sheets and they call me up. I’m having a hard time with this, and it’s taking everything I’ve got not to hop in the car and drive over to school to spy if they are in their lines or not. If they saw me, they would kill me. I know they’ll be fine, but they’re my babies. What can I do?

As far as Blog Day is concerned, I’ve decided that I will do a little blog clicking and surfing, as I haven’t done it in a few days, and I will somewhat randomly pick blogs that take my attention for some reason. I’m also doing that because I’m lazy. But I’m going to try to pick blogs that I’ve seen before, but haven’t spent too much time reading.

We’ll see what transpires.

Oh, and I had the most fucked up dreams last night. They were super-scary and I’m not sure where that came from, as I don’t usually have super-scary dreams. In part of one, I was on my bike in my bathroom, and as I went to wash my hands, my bike wheel ran over my cat’s neck and severed her head. I can still see her little eyes looking up at me all WTF? She started to decompose almost immediately, but after I washed my hands, I looked over in the corner, and she was sitting on a stack of towels, her head attached to her back, facing backwards so that her tail kept smacking her in her face. That was fucked up. Then I did the same to a dog, which was apparently one of my dogs, at least in my dream. That one didn’t come back to life with it’s body parts on in the wrong order, and I left the bathroom and went outside in the alley, where I saw a guy I knew. I asked him for help, and as he thought about it, he turned into The Teenage Werewolf, you know, Michael J. Fox. And then, so fast I didn’t see it happen, he was over there, standing beneath a fire escape ladder, talking to a woman who’s face I couldn’t see because it was obscured by the ladder.

I really don’t want to know what any of that meant, to be honest with you.

Okay, on to the blog day thing. I’ve got a pile of crap to do today, so I need to get this done pronto.

Peace Takes Courage August 30, 2005

Someone’s

I’m wondering: Will this war become real for us only after Oliver Stone makes a fucking movie about it twenty years from now?

While I don’t truly believe that George Bush should stop what he’s doing (and that is…?) and have a cup of coffee with Cindy Sheehan, I do agree with the emotion and need that feeds her demand.

We should all be demanding to have the answers. Notions of “national security” aside, we, as the citizens of this great fucking nation, deserve some answers. Some truth. Somebody needs to be held accountable.

I have friends who believe wholly that our government can’t tell us the truth about why our young men and women are dying because it would compromise national security. That we’re not good enough to understand the “real” reasons, and some of these friends believe, really they do, that we’ll find out these “real” reasons after it’s all over.

Uh huh. Yeah. Okay. Whatever you say.

Don’t you think it would have made more sense if GW had stood up at a podium and said, “Look, I know that Saddam Hussein might not have had anything directly to do with 9/11. However, we think he’s an asshole. He treats the residents of his country like crap. He could potentially be a threat, so we’re going to go over there and make sure he doesn’t bury anymore villages in mass graves. Capice? Capice. Oh, and I promise, we’re still looking for Osama, honest.”

If he had said, from the get go, that his objective was to rid the world of this man, well, I probably wouldn’t have liked it, but at least I’d be admiring his honesty. But as it stands, I think to myself, this guy is a lying motherfucker from daybreak to dusk and beyond. He made up a bunch of shit, thinking the citizens of the country he leads, the citizens, mind you, who apparently voted him into office, would buy it. He used this shitty lie as an excuse to wage war for his own reasons, reasons we are not privy to and most likely never will be.

Ah, hell. I hate this shit. I just meant to post the link to the little movie that’ll get you all teary-eyed and move on to lighter subjects.

I hate this stupid war. I hate feeling lied to by my President. I’m even starting to hate loving my country as much as I do, because I’m starting to feel that everything we’ve held dear for 200 odd years is being mocked.

69 (the year, you perv) August 30, 2005

Clearly, 1969 was an extremely important year. Not only was I born, but all of these really cool things happened:

In 1969 (the year you were born)

Richard Nixon becomes president of the US Senator Edward Kennedy escapes injury when the car he is driving veers off a narrow bridge on Chappaquiddick Island US astronaut Neil Armstrong becomes the first person to set foot on the moon while commanding the Apollo 11 mission Breathtaking pictures of Mars are transmitted to earth from NASA’s Mariner 7 as it passes within 2,200 miles of the Red Planet Woodstock music festival begins in upstate NY, featuring performances by Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, and many more artists 250,000 Vietnam War protestors gather in Washington for the largest anti-war rally in US history The first draft lottery since WWII is held in New York City The Beatles’ performance in public for the last time, on the roof of Apple Records The Stonewall riots mark the start of the modern gay rights movement in the US Marilyn Manson, Jennifer Aniston, Ren�e Zellweger, Edward Norton, Christian Slater, and Linus Torvalds are born New York Mets win the World Series New York Jets win Superbowl III Montreal Canadiens win the Stanley Cup Sesame Street premieres Midnight Cowboy wins the Oscar for best picture David Bowie’s debut single, “Space Oddity”, becomes a huge hit – in part to the US landing on the moon Sharon Tate & the LaBiancas are found murdered by Charles Manson & “family”

What Happened the Year You Were Born?

More cool things for your blog at
Blogthings

Bunco Party Post August 30, 2005

Okay, the Bunco Party Post has been written. Actually, it’s more like Posts, because I’m too retarded to figure out how to put more than one picture in my word press posts. Perhaps some of you more enlightened and intelligent people can point me in the right direction?

Anyway, for those of you who have been waiting with baited (bated? I’m having all kind of word problems today. No, not word problems like stupid 3rd grade math problems, problems with words, as in I can’t figure out how to spell anything and everything looks wrong, but anyway…) breath for this post, you’ll probably have to make sure you click on “Next Page” at the bottom of this page to go to the next page, where there are more pictures and words that describe them, all about our fantastic fun night at R’s house.

We did have a really nice time. I got to meet two new friends-G and S, and they are just as R has been telling me for a few years now-great people who are easy and fun to be around, and great to talk to. We drank, maybe a little too much, maybe not enough, you know sometimes it’s hard to tell. R’s house, which she has been referring to as a “little beach house” is actually a beautiful home that she has busted her buns remodeling and redecorating since April, and she’s done a great job-it’s beautiful and comfortable all at once, so really, the perfect beach house. It was handy to have a nice big shower in the basement so that MoMo could wash the sand off her body/sober up several times during the night.

I got to sleep in R’s 15 year old son’s bed, and I thought about leaving him a little note, but that would turn me into Mary Kay LeTourneau, and I prefer to wait until he’s 18 to confuse him sexually by subjecting him to the advances of an old woman (this kid is CUTE!) Okay, off the subject, snap out of it Mary Kay.

The next day, after quiche and mimosas, we relaxed playing this fun card game taught to us by JuJu (yes, we have some really silly and unimaginative nicknames in our group, but we like them), and I can’t for the life of me remember the name of it (Juj, help me out here), but it involves teams of two, getting four of a kind, and secret passwords and signals and it’s a lot of fun. No, we never got around to playing bunco, but there weren’t enough of us anyway. Plus, we were having way too much fun skinny dipping and pouring lighter fluid on the fire on the beach.

We all had a wonderful time. Thanks, R! You really know how to entertain/feed us/get us drunk/dare us to make asses out of ourselves by stripping naked on the beach. We all love you!

M, otherwise known as MoMo August 30, 2005

R’s bunco 10

Originally uploaded by vikibabbles.

What a great picture of MoMo, don’t you think?

It was a gloriously beautiful day, and once we finally got to the beach and sat down, cocktails in hand, we said, “Why in the hell didn’t we get here earlier?”

Okay, a couple more photos August 30, 2005

R’s bunco 9

Originally uploaded by vikibabbles.

This one is too cute not to include, plus it features G, otherwise known as Lake Girl X (way before she took her bra off and tied it to her head), double fisting it. Which maybe explains the whole bra on the head thing.

And M, before she decided to make it a wet-t-shirt night.

My husband can be funny August 30, 2005

You know what he said to me last night, or maybe it was this morning, I don’t know.

He said, “Why hasn’t any of the news people caught on to the whole ‘Katrina and the waves’ connection with the hurricane. Wouldn’t that be funny?”

Yes, honey, it would be funny. If hurricanes and people being homeless and dying and New Orleans sinking under the gulf of mexico and the mississippi river before I ever visit it was funny.

And now I’m left to wonder: why is it that my husband, fan of Primus and the Stones and the Dead, etc., remembers the silly one-hit-wonder Katrina and the Waves?