Cream Cheesey Victory Is Mine!!!

I may not be able to end a war quickly, but after six years of searching for "Hello Kitty Alarm Clock' at varying intervals in search of the best alarm clock EVER, I was wandering through Best Buy tonight with Mike and FOUND IT!!

Stupid hiding type alarm clock. And to think, i'd have found them in SPADES if i thought to insert "Tea Cup"

Hello Kitty - making getting up more pleasent, one adorable clock at a time. Plus, dude, the lemon lights up.

The 4 Day War

I don't know how many of you were ever kids but, if you were, you probably played more than one game of WAR. A little bit like Bullshit, WAR involves a single deck of cards - no jokers. The deck is divided evenly between the players - if you have more than four, it's wise to get a second deck. Then, each player throws the top card from their pile and throws it into the center. The person who turned in the highest card takes them all. The game can end two ways. One, when one of the players have all of the cards or two, when you run out of time and you count the number of cards in each players hand and the person with the highest number wins. (There is a small variable there - when I was a kid, we used to - on occasion - actually count the point value of each card and the person with the highest number of points won.)

Well, you all also know that I am a terrible multi-tasker and that I have an almost pathological need to be entertained by several sources at all times so, since Mike and I haven't been particularly chatty lately, when I'm saving a .psd or a commercial is on, I've taken to playing cards all by my lonesome and one of the few games it's not totally weird to play alone is WAR. Divide the deck in two and there you have it.

Oh my god for the four day long game of WAR.

But, it's over now :) And that makes me happy so...ya know, yes, i'm still alive.

Sacreligious!

I don't know how many of you are familliar with this statue, but it's a Piccasso and it lives in Chicago, Illinois outside of the .

Of late, it has a big fat Chicago Bears headband on. I'm annoyed. Very very very annoyed.

State of the Union

It should be said that I watched the State of the Union last night, a practice in which I don't usually engage.

Yes, that's right - I, who watch C-SPAN like it's a Saturday morning religious broadcast and I'm a slightly sullied soul, trying to wiggle out from under last nights companions arm, do not customarily watch one fo the largest political broadcasts of any given year. I don't like the State of the Union. It's politically irrelevant. Other than getting a pulse on how desperate the President is, there's little other reason to watch it. The Congressmen and women who appear - the dignitaries and, on occasion, the pop-culture heroes - are all carefully greased for the event and the speech is prepared word for word.

True, there's not a lot of honesty in a House or Senate session, but there are facial expressions, twitchy movements and intonations that even the most accomplished of liars can't hide. At least it's a little closer to the truth.

Anyway, last night I watched and, for those of you who didn't - the highlight reel.

John McCain, as it appeared at several points in the broadcast - eyes shut, head drooped, hands folded limply at is lap - was having a happy nap. He's had a run in with melanoma, it's true, but you'd think even if he were a current chemo patient, he could take some iron suppliments and kick that anemia for a few hours. The best part? He took part in the "on the steps response" covered by ABC's Charlie Gibson. Can you respond to something you slept through?

Charlie may be a more decent human being than I am, because he didn't point it out.

Ted Kennedy spent most of the evening looking like he was suffering from an even worse case of tongue biting syndrome than Hilary Clinton if the migraine-head-clutch was any indication. The notes were a little creepy too. Though, maybe he was losing at tic-tac-toe. Presidential hang-man? No, that was last month...

Because the most common camera angle was that of the Vice President and Speaker of the House sitting (or standing, or drinking, as it were) behind the President, I have to say that I think one of my favorite aspects of the evening (other than Redemption By Association Hour) was watching Cheney's tie...or maybe it was watching Pelosi purse her lips and look awkwardly in any direction but straight ahead or at our Commander in Chief.

If you didn't get a chance to watch, this installment of the SOU Address was far more amusing than most and you can watch it, straight from the U.S. Government here.

The Cute! Oh, The Cute!

Because who can resist putting a tie on their dog? No one?

By popular demand and request - more pictures of one of the adorable puppies.

...and i'm getting a little closer to the thing that intrigues me most

I once had a friend.

I know. Shocking. But no, that wasn't the end of the thought.

I once had a friend who got angry with me over my least favorite word – potential. More specifically, he was angry because, at 17, I was spending my afternoons with him and my evenings with Mike, taking 200 level courses at the local four-year community college when, in his eyes, I could've been curing cancer, making a bid for office or winning the Nobel Peace Prize. No lie – these are his words, not mine.

At the time, I was furious. How dare someone tell me that instead of being a teenager, I needed to solve world hunger or prove the existence of a higher power or get involved in some new physical study? I was seventeen and a senior in high school already working hard on my second semester in college with a six credit overload – what more could he possibly want from me? {The part of me that feels a need to insert a joke in the middle of all this sincerity would like you to know that I found out exactly what more he could possibly want from me about a year and a half later and I really don't think Mike was happy with the exchange. God knows I wasn't.)

The friendship has since ended and it went up in a fiery mess that could hold most people in awe but, when quorum was last called, we'd found some sort of peaceful coexistence and, frankly, I think that's the most anyone ever could have asked of us.

Until this afternoon, I hadn't thought about that argument in three years and, for the first time since it happened – and, hey, I'm 21, so there's some air in between the issues – I realized that there are very few people on this earth who will ever have the fortune of meeting someone who believes in them that hard. How often do we meet people who believe that not only could we achieve something grand, but that we will simply as a matter of inevitable course?

My life, of late, has given rise to a lot of flogging and a few epiphanies, but I certainly didn't see this particular realization coming.

I won't say I miss him, because what I miss was someone who was never really real and I won't say I'm sorry for everything, because I'm not. What happened rests equally on the shoulders between us but what I can say for it is this – I should have taken better care of one of the people who used to believe in me most.

Luckily, and if I can keep my head on straight, there are still a few out there – a few bridges I haven't burned and I swear to god, I'm trying to put the matches down.

Incan Matrimonial Headmasks?

I am about to blog.

Why am I telling you that I'm about to blog? Well, it's because, though I've finally thought of something to say, I feel a need to explain my recent absence but I feel no need to tie the two posts together.

My life has been…complicated…of late. Which isn't to say that my life isn't always complicated, it's just reached a new plane of complicated.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there.

I don't blog to update people on my life, save the occasions when I've recently disappeared or the times when there really is news to pass on and I'd like to impart it without going to through the painful and difficult ordeal of actually having to talk to people. I blog either because I'm hoping someone will read it and it will change their mind, like posting about someone doing something stupid, or I blog because there is something going on that I really hope people know about, like when I update the latest PEEJ arrest scores. I blog when something amusing happens and I just feel like talking about it, like when a funny news story comes off the wire and, lastly, I blog when I feel the need to talk but there's no one to listen.

With that having been said, it's not that I don't have anything to say or that nothing is going on, it's that too much is going on and I can't get a grip on it. I feel like James fucking Joyce.

King would be proud.

I Told You Fuckers

[The Number 23]

As most of you who are reading this know, most people I am aquaineted with have a deep seated phobia about the number 23 and, unhappily, it didn't originate with this movie.

Well, anyway. We all fucking told you so, and now movie producers know it too.

I should get myself a trend spotting gig.

C-SPAN is on Fire

So I didn't watch C-SPAN yesterday, mostly because there was some boring shit going on. Big shit, but not as much fun sparring as I enjoy.

Today, however, today it has been a non-stop pissing match between the Republican's and Democrats and it's high quality entertainment.

[C-SPAN: Watch C-SPAN Live]