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In 2007 I will:
That's it. Nothing earth-shattering or reality-shaking, but everything I need to be doing right now for sure.
Where do you stand with the resolution thing? Are you making any this year?
[photo by Kelly]
So as part of my whole beach house vacation experience I'm reading two books simultaneously, both of which rock in their own unique and very different way: Chuck Klosterman IV and Bitter Is The New Black. The former has me stymied this morning, as I've just finished reading this piece on Nemeses Vs. Archenemies, and am unable to determine who/what merits either of those roles in my life. Which is not to say that I'm lacking either, but rather that the complexity of my interactions with peoples potentially befitting these titles are such that the lines between trusted confidant and nemesis seem hazy and imprecise to me. I mean, think about it: aren't the people in your life who you love and admire most also quite often the people you measure you own successes and failures against (as your closest confidants are almost always variations of your self, how you see yourself, or who you want to be), thus becoming nemesis-like?
Or maybe I'm just overthinking this whole thing.
Anyway, while I'm busy deconstructing every single fucking relationship I have in life, seeking the location of my dread archenemy, I ask you: who is your nemesis and who is your archenemy (names may be altered to protect their top secret identities, if desired)?
PS: Stop being pussies, people. TELL ME.
PPS: You can make something up, dorks. Okay, like, *my* archenemy? Janice Dickenson. It was between her, Paris Hilton, and New York of Flavor Of Love. But I've decided Janice Dickenson makes me the most uncomfortable, so she's dead meat. You?
Big-ass holidaze photo dump ahoy!
I have had quite enough of all this merry-making.
Now give me my damn presents.
In case I don't see you (in the virtual way) between now and xmas, happiest of holidays to you and yours, my dears.
AARRGGGH! MY EYES!
PS: Heh. Jingle sharks. Heh.
Since I'm now for all intents and purposes a prisoner in my own home, trapped inside four walls with a child whose voice appears to be stuck on the setting Incessant Whine, who refuses all food (even an offering of the cherished Chocolate Sprinkle Donut) and seems dead set on the idea of spending the rest of eternity lodged firmly between the cushions of our couch, I thought it might do me some good to remember the good times, way back in the long ago of earlier this week when my daughter resembled a happy, healthy preschool-age child:
Hi, I'm a not-yet-pukey Gingerbread person!
An odd bit of serendipity yesterday: I happened upon an interview in which Stephen Colbert mentions having recently returned from a family car trip during which his son caught some sort of digestive bug: “You think, when you get married, that marriage will be like making love on a mountain top in a thunderstorm -- all romantic and dramatic all the time. But what its really about is having your son throw up on you for 15 hours.”
That pretty much describes the essence of my day yesterday.
Continue reading "Puke-a-thon 2006, Part Deux (Plus Some News)" »
Umm, guys? Does Jon Stewart here profess himself to be a “downtown libertarian” (within the first 20 seconds of the video)?
Just, you know, checkin'.
EDIT: From wikipedia: “when asked about his own political affiliations, Stewart typically responds that he is a Whig.” Har. Doing some digging, I've found that libertarians like him. Oh, and he does live in downtown NYC. gulp.
- Woke up this morning to retching sounds heralding the beginning of PukeFest 2006, hosted by M_'s digestive tract (or what remains of it).
+ Wooted me a Roomba before 9am, thus ensuring that, come what may, I will be filled with a warm, self-satisfied feeling of peace for the remainder of the day, secure in the knowledge that soon I will be able to happily abdicate my Queen Of Sweetney Household Vacuuming throne (which I imagine as crafted from gigantic ribbed tubes, with a seat coated in matted cat hair).
- I have since had to cart several bowls o' puke away from M_'s couch-embedded position for bathroom disposal... bleech. Why don't they make a iRobot for that (Pukeba?), huh?
+ I am not the one puking. YET.
- I am going to be subjected to an endless barrage of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse episodes today (M_ is newly entralled with Mickey Mouse, and will now watch nothing else).
+ At least its not The Wiggles.
ZORG SMASH RUDOLPH AND GAY ELF! GRRR!
Nothing says Festive quite like a shiny new glass robot ornament for the tree (courtesy of Jamie, because he's a fuckin' nut).
Say, did I mention to you guys that I'm the Time Magazine Person Of The Year?
(I'm the dude with the mohawk.)
(Or the white kid with a fro. Maybe.)
(I AM SO DEFINITELY NOT THE AFGHAN GRANDMA. SHUT UP.)
Jamie is not only the birthday boy today -- having succeeded in reaching the ripe old age of Jesus Christ at his death -- but he also happens to have uttered one of the Top Ten Quotes Of The Year according to this week's Baltimore Citypaper. I'm hardly surprised, to be perfectly honest, as every year my husband continues to amaze and astound me with his humor and wit and general awesome smartypantsness.
I'm one lucky broad, people. Happy birthday, Jamie!
(click)
Oh, I'm not afraid. You can't scare me. And I'll fuckin' prove it.
Ready? OK!
1. SJ of I, Asshole. I recently told her -- exact quote here -- that she makes me feel gutless. And yes, that's a compliment. Of some sort.
2. Patrick of Bad News Hughes. Totally my homeboy. Some day I want to get drunk with him and watch him set stuff on fire. (Or, you know, whatever.)
3. The Sweet Juniper! Team. I like to think that if we lived near each other, we'd be the best of friends. I like to think that.
4. Steven Berlin Johnson. Dude can write about a Cholera epidemic in the mid 19th Century and make it fucking enrapturing. Seriously.
And yoooou?
This week's installment: Our friend Adam tells us about his brush with fame:
Well, I *did* say totally random.
Friends, today I am the luckiest human alive, for I have been selected to be the 49th inductee into the Utter Wonder Hall Of Fame. Are you jelus? Man, if you aren't, you should be. And not just because I've been enshrined in the most awesome blog hall of fame of all-time (at least according to the proprietor C. Monks), but also because the honor comes with a signed letter to Star Jones:
[click for enlarge-o view]
I couldn't be happier or feel more speshal. Thank you, Utter Wonder, for making my dream come true!
EDIT: UW appears to be fixed now, fyi.
Dearest Interweb,
Fellow Baltimoreans and Real Life friends of Team Sweetney J. Robbins and Janet Morgan need your help:
On January 27, 2006, our great friends and Channels members J. Robbins and Janet Morgan welcomed their first child, a son named Callum. He was 8-odd pounds and 20-odd inches of wriggling, squirming, screaming joy, and the apple of his parents' eye.
...Sometime around Cal's 8-month birthday in September, J. and Janet took him to his pediatrician for his regular appointment. They knew from the doctor's grave tone that something was terribly wrong. Any parent — any human — reading this can understand the shock, horror, and pain that J. and Janet felt when they learned through subsequent visits with specialists that Cal was born with a genetic motor neuron disease called Type 1 SMA, or Spinal Muscular Atrophy.
J. & Cal, September 2006
Continue reading "This Is Callum Robbins. He Needs Your Help." »
Or at least some song told me she did.
Anyway, hmm... I don't know what to say. M_'s having some, well, problems. And I don't feel at liberty to discuss the specifics, for the sake of her privacy, but have no fear, its nothing life-threatening or grandly disastrous. I mention this only because in the past 24 hours I've realized that I'm going to need to refocus my energies with her, away from the internet, at least for a little while. So I may be posting less, or seem at touch distracted or scattered (well, more so than usual), and I wanted you to know why.
Its been a rough 24 hours here in the land of Sweetney, so I've decided to spend all my free time today watching Mr. Show, like so:
Somehow Mr. Show makes it all okay.
More soon. I owe ya'll some xmas shopping countdown booty, I know. Sorry for the delay.
Sorry, sorry.
But I just wanted to point you to this song by Beirut, “Postcards From Italy”, that is currently haunting me.
Listen. Enjoy.
Bye.
Homeboys and girls, I am not handling this holiday season well. I feel stuck on a low-level simmering plateau of vaguely-to-substantially-overwhelmed, though in reality there is little to actually be overwhelmed about. And though I am, intellectually-speaking, quite aware of that fact, my rational mind seems to have little influence on the gnomes of disquietude that lord over the contents of my skull. You know those people who can breed ulcer-producing stress from situations others would shrug off, make light of, or simply deal with -- all adult-like (oooh!) -- and then move on from unphased? Yeah, I'm one of those. I'm fairly convinced that upon death my body will be refused for organ donation disassembly because by then all my various and sundry insides will have dissolved in the frothing, acidic stress-stew continually brewing within my body cavity.
I guess this is a long-winded way of saying I'm kind of a pussy.
This isn't how you planned it. You were supposed to be done with holiday shopping by now, a mere two weeks before xmas. But you aren't. And, more than that, you're tired and out of gift ideas and on a kind of zombified autopilot, counting down the last days of work before your vacation. The thought of searching around for still more gift items fills you with despair and dread. I feel you, holmes. So I'm here to help.
For the next fourteen days I'll be posting here at least one holiday shopping recommendation per day -- things I covet myself and/or have personally enjoyed recently, and in any case heartily endorse as fine gift selections this or any year. To put it another way: here's some cool shit I like that you should totally buy, yo.
And to be perfectly fair, who could blame him?
The quizzical head tilt that says: WHY? WHY DO
YOU DO THIS TO ME, CRUEL OWNER-HUMAN?
Continue reading "And So Now He Begins Plotting How Best To Kill Us In Our Sleep" »
Someone smart(ish) needs to explain to me why I find this video/song so compelling.
And how to turn that mental fixation off and remove it from my head for even just a short while.
WARNING: Potentially lethal levels of cute ahead:
Hi, Internet. Its me. Writing. Content.
Hi. Hi Hi Hi!
Today's weather here in Baltimore lamely threatens: Chance of snow, 20%. Which is unremarkable but for being the first time I've seen the word snow in a forecast since last winter. And yes, it frightens me a little.
(Carol Anne say: Its baaaack.)
(Well, its a kind of snow)
From: Me
To: A Dear Friend Who Asked Me To Do Something For Her
Subject: DO I SOUND FRANTIC ENOUGH?
Let me go on record as saying that nothing is getting done between now and 1/2/07. And that's the day I start a new job*, so look at about a week out from that date before you can expect anything from me. And, come to think of it, someone will probably need to remind me to do something in early January.
I'm FUCKED. AND I HAVEN'T SENT OUT MY XMAS CARDS YET.
I am quite clearly in desperate need of a foot massage and a hot toddy STAT, people.
....................
*Details on that forthcoming. All in good time, my friends, all in good time...
A small token of love from me to you: culled from the very best (free, legal) holiday mp3s I've gathered online over the years, I give you the Sweetney Holiday Mix (via the free big-ass file host site PutStuff, so as not to chew up my personal bandwith, yo). Guaranteed to put even the Scroogiest among you into a merry-type mood, or my name isn't Yukon Cornelius.
Oh, wait.
Anyway, it clocks in at somewhere between 5-10 minutes to download, but well worth it, I promise! Let me know if you experience any technical difficulties.... Otherwise, ENJOY!
With love and best wishes and mistletoe kisses,
xo sweetney
Look at me, going all 21st Century on your ass!
I hope to make videos a regular feature, since I finally found the long lost firewire DV cord used for transferring videos from our video camera to my computer (it had mysterious disappeared a long while back, kidnapped by mischievous A/V gnomes).
PS: I will never stop hating the sound of my own voice.
I speak, of course, of the ongoing festival of L-U-V in full-effect here at Chez Gaughran-Perez betwixt preschooler and cat:
[insert cooing noises here]
(NSFW language.)
Believe me when I say that I'm more surprised than anyone to be uttering these words, but for reals, this video may serve to lift Christina Aguliera out of skanky trampdom forever:
Melodramatic? Sure thing. But tell me you didn't tear up.
There's nothing quite like having to take your car in to the dealer for servicing to make you lose your will to live.
My car, a 1998 Camry, was a gift from my incredibly generous Aunt Elaine. She gave it to me only a year or two after she got it, and it was in almost mint condition when I received it. But of course, being almost clinically incapable of spending the money necessary to take care of such a fine automobile -- because cheapskate is my middle name, and also because I have an uncanny ability to ignore symptoms of automotive distress until something dramatic happens like, oh, an engine fire or violent explosion of some sort -- I've let the car run into the ground for the six-or-so years its been in my possession. When I brought it in to the dealer this morning (and I should note here that the only reason I did so was because the engine light had been glaring at me from the dashboard for about three months non-stop), the mechanic asked when I'd last had it serviced. Umm.... never? Oh sure, I'd gotten oil changes, and replaced the battery when it died. But what is this “regularly scheduled servicing” you speak of?
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I'm an imperfect Gen-X Parental Unit from Baltimore. I believe in early afternoon cocktails, the greatness of Jon Stewart, and that being a smartass is a virtue. More about me...
