Welcome, Wilfrid!

My sister Annie and her husband Matt had a baby today at 12:34. My father described Wilfrid as "round and red with a hooked nose and light hair." His name is Wilfrid Auer Hamlin.

"His name is Wilfrid?" you ask. "Are you fucking serious?"

I am. He's named for our grandfather, WIlfrid Fisch, who, incidentally, was so embarrassed by his first name that he went by W.L. his whole life. Baby Wilfrid's parents plan to call him "Wil," but he'll always be Wilfrid to me.

Shout-out to his big sister Alexandra Elizabeth "Lilly" Hamlin. It's gonna be rough, princesa.

Fear and Loathing Earlier Today

Oh, Hunter S.
Surely it couldn't'a gotten any worse.
Couldn't you have stuck it out a while?

Nascent yoga material

Bad mantra: bovine spongiform encaphalopathy

Another Deleted Post About That Kid From New Jersey

So I'll replace this post with some song lyrics that are stuck in my head:

We don't need another heeeee-roo
We don't need to know the waaaayy hooome
All we want is life be-yooo-ond
the Thunderdome.

Poor Kid.

That kid from New Jersey with the Romanian-pop-song dancing clip is apparently very sad about his fame. So I took this post down. It wasn't a particularly interesting post anyway.

Yipe, Toe Socks

Y'all, look at these toe socks I spotted on eBay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=11526&item=5361564057&rd=1

Aaaagh! For some reason, It makes me feel just terrible to look at these toe socks. These raw silk toe socks fill me with dread.
I couldn't tell you why. But let me try.

The toe socks violate some boundary--it's perverse to see all the toes individually delineated. Who would wear these toe socks? I can't even fathom it. They don't show the rest of the person in the terrifying photos, but if they did, I bet he'd also be wearing a mankilt and a sequinned beanie. Maybe he plays the dreaded didgeridoo! And what if he tried to walk up and touch you with his horrible gloved toes?

These toe socked feet want me to do something and I don't want to do it, whatever it is. In my opinion the scariest picture is on the bottom right, with two toe-socked pairs of feet like some members of an obscure but dangerous tribe.

Doity Boids.

Fisch: T lives alone, unless you count the finches in his freezer.
Lori Mocha: Um, they are dead?
Fisch: Yes.
Lori Mocha: That is weird.
Fisch: And the murderer finch promptly died, maybe of loneliness.
Lori Mocha: T found them outside or what?
Fisch: Oh, no. They were his pets, in life.
Lori Mocha: Oh, but now they died and he keeps them...in his freezer. Okay.
Fisch: He liked them before they were dead, and he still likes them.
Lori Mocha: He could have them taxidermied.
Lori Mocha: About the same, 'cept less noise and poop.
Fisch: True!
Fisch: Originally he was given a cockatiel.
Lori Mocha: Oh, God.
Lori Mocha: Those would bug me.
Fisch: The cockatiel was too much bird for him, so he traded it in for five finches.
Lori Mocha: Yeah, that's A LOTTA bird... a bird worth five finches, wow.
Fisch: So the finches--Peewee, Fire Duck...um, and the other three…
Lori Mocha: LOL
Fisch: He had them a while, then one of them--Fire Duck, I think--went crazy and killed everybody.
Fisch: T was very sad, and he couldn't bear to bury them, so they're all carefully wrapped and frozen solid.
Fisch: Perhaps T thinks cryogenics can bring his birds back in the future.
Lori Mocha: Omigod.
Fisch: Like Walt Disney.
Lori Mocha: So, wait, one bird went crazy and killed them all?
Lori Mocha: That is so weird.
Fisch: Yeah.
Lori Mocha: What the fuck happened with those birds?
Fisch: Who knows? Birds are crazy!
Lori Mocha: Something went down.
Fisch: LOL
Fisch: Musta been a drug thing.
Lori Mocha: A deal gone bad.
Lori Mocha: Now, I want you to investigate those birds.
Lori Mocha: Find out if anybody knew them, if anybody heard anything…
Lori Mocha: You know, maybe there's a chickadee with some info.
Fisch: "Here's my number in case you remember anything, Polly"
Lori Mocha: I mean, I guess it doesn't really matter. Fire Duck is dead, with the rest of them.
Lori Mocha: Probably a Reservoir Dogs kinda incident.
Fisch: These were straight up thug birds.
Fisch: With pseudonyms and everything!
Fisch: Who knows what their real names were?
Lori Mocha: Yeah! No shit? Pee wee? What kinda name for a bird is that?
Lori Mocha: LOL
Fisch: His real name among the birds was Rrreeeeereeeetweetbrrt 37.
Lori Mocha: Steve Alfonso, aka Peewee.
Fisch: …and Lamont Livingston Copley Jr, aka Fire Duck, aka Burd Killah.
Lori Mocha: Lots of birds spent their last moments wit Burd Killah.
Fisch: Listening for that ominous whistle.
Lori Mocha: Oh no, it said, Burd Killah is a comin fer me!
Fisch: The Man tried to catch him, but Burd Killah wasn't goin' down like that, see.
Fisch: Burd Killah capped his own bird ass.
Lori Mocha: He was getting out, one way or another, and everyone was coming with him.
Fisch: Burd Killah was hard.
Fisch: I'LL MOURN YA TILL I JOIN YA, BURD KILLAH!
Lori Mocha: He said he would never go back to the pen, and he never will!
Lori Mocha: So, will you go in the freezer then?
Fisch: Perhaps. If I’m lucky.
Lori Mocha: Maybe just your head.

Kmonday Kmusings Korner

1. S. Epatha Merkerson was pretty brave to keep that name. I wonder what the "S" stands for. Maybe it's "Smokin'"!

2. Is there a place for manicurists in a workers' state?
Why the hell wouldn't there be?

3. I think there should be a superhero-type comic book about people who work for OSHA.

Thank you for your time.

Newman / Parton '08

Now that George Bush has lowered the bar for presidential qualifications, and Arnold Schwarzenegger has continued the popular trend of movie stars governing the populace, I think Paul Newman and Dolly Parton would be an exceptionally good Democratic ticket for 2008.

Paul Newman still looks great, has raised a shitload of money for charity, drives racecars and overall seems like an intelligent, capable celebrity. Plus with Paul you get Joanne Woodward, and Joanne can tear it up.

Dolly Parton wrote 9 to 5! She is familiar with poverty and the travails of the working people. She's knowledgeable about Jesus, she's hot, and she's Southern. She will be a hoot at foreign-dignitary funerals. I hear she might be a lesbian, but the fundamentalists probably don't know that.

I would've recommended a Parton/Newman ticket, but I'm trying to be pragmatic.

The Joke About the Chihuahua

A few years ago, somebody told me the following joke:

So these two men walk their dogs together every day. Javier Villareal-Villalobos walks his labrador, Zapata, and Herman "Bitsy" Skulwinski walks his chihuahua, Dr. Herring. And one summer day it's hella hot. Crazy, horribly hot. Beaming! Very hard work to go for a walk in such miserable heat. But walk they do. Until they pass by a bar called Nocturne, at which point Javier stops.

"Herman," Javier says. "Let's go into the Nocturne and have a daiquiri."
Herman sighs. "Well, we can't take the dogs into a bar. And I'd feel terribly guilty leaving them outside."
"Watch this!" Javier says.

And Javier puts on some sunglasses, walks Zapata inside and right up to the bar.
The bartender frowns at him. "Listen, Mary," he says. "we can't have that dog here in the Nocturne. Vamoose!"

Javier squares his shoulders. "This is a seeing-eye dog, actually."
"Oh no!" the bartender yelps. "I am so sorry! How insensitive of me! Here, let me get you a cocktail. On the house, of course." And with that, the bartender fires up the blender and presents Javier with a delicious beverage.

Herman watches from outside. Herman is impressed. Herman puts on his shades and walks tiny li'l Dr. Herring into the bar. "Barkeep!" he cries.

"Oh, no," the bartender groans. "Listen, I will NOT have that dog up in here."
"I will have you know, this is a specially-trained, highly skilled and absolutely necessary helper seeing-eye dog upon whom I depend for my very safety."
"Suuuuuuuuure," the bartender drawls. "and they gave you a chihuahua?"
Herman gasps theatrically and draws a fluttering hand to his chest. He shrieks, "They...they...they gave me a CHIHUAHUA??!!"

I enjoyed this joke, and I told it to my sister. She enjoyed it also.

Several weeks later, she complained to me that she'd tried telling the joke several times, but nobody got it. And that what kind of sister was I to tell her crummy jokes for her to pass on to her friends and look like an ass. So I asked her to tell me the joke just exactly how she was telling other people. So she did. She went into great detail about the heat, the dogs, the men, the bar, the bartender, etc. Then, when she got to the punchline, she screamed, "I HAVE A DOG!?!?!?!"

I really think it's a better punchline. More challenging somehow. More Zen.

State of the Minion

I know I haven't updated this in a while--I got something big brewing about jury duty. As in, I am writing something about jury duty, to post here. It's long-ish. I hope this will be better than it sounds.

So, in the meantime, I'm watching the State of the Union Address, thought I'd vent about that. Apparently I am not updating my blog often enough for a Miss Margaret Dodge.

So, Margaret, I'm pissed right now. Got home from yoga class, and I was feeling all relaxed and peaceful and shit, and I flick on the teevee and THERE HE IS. The flightsuit monkey. The political bugaboo of the last THIRTEEN YEARS OF MY LIFE. Perhaps if I move to Greenland he will follow me there and take it over, and I can leave him there. Overenunciating. Shifty-eyed. Smirkadocious. "Freedom" this and "freedom" that. It's a good thing I'm all yoga-ed out right now, or my head would blast right off my body with a shower of sparks and a FFFFFFTT sound.

I do not like you, sir. And Cheney! I see you there behind the dimwit, you bastard. I don't like you either. And you, third guy. I...don't know who you are. So we'll leave you out of it for now.

Dude, speaking of tension, Laura's had some face-work done--the woman's looking tight, and not the way they say it on The Wire. She's a cipher to me. She really does have an apparently deserved rep, back in TX, of being an intelligent, kind-hearted, reader-of-serious-fiction type lady. I mean, is she living in daily agony, then? How could she not be? But look at her grinning. Did somebody do something bad to her mind? It's like there's something decent there, but it was surgically removed. What goes on in her head, for real? Somebody please comment on this.

Woohoo! Some Democrats are actually groaning audibly as the Pres. talks about Social Security "reform." Take that, Mr. President! The democrats are GROANING. Ain't you escared? They'll GROAN til they can't GROAN NO MORE, and THEN you'll be sorry.

Oh great flaming Christ's ass, he said it. He's gonna protect marriage and promote a culture of life. Okay, I just actually, physically, literally screamed. I did. I screamed.

He just mentioned Pflugerville, Texas; I used to think Ann Enzminger was from there, but she isn't. She's from Austin. So don't y'all go around calling her "Pflugey" or any such thing. Not only will she not know what you're talking about, you'll be wrong.

He really does say "nucular," and every goddamned time he says it, it re-surprises me.

Aw shit, I keep missing who the guests stars are, he's now called 2 separate cute plus-sized ladies out while I've been typing. One was Middle-eastern and young, making a victory sign. The other one was older and resembled a honey bear with orange hair, and cried. What were they about?

I can't wait to read how many times this man used the word "freedom" and its variants. I swear to God that at one point he said something like "the attacks on freedom has strengthened our resolve that freedom is the answer to the fight for freedom."

Yeah!! That's...meaningless.
What about MY liberty of human freedom liberty freedom freedoms, Sir?
You hate them, don't you?
DON'T HATE ME FOR MY FREEDOM!

Now I'm gonna change over to VH1 and see if there's anybody I know on television.
Amen.