Of Turkey, Windex and Hottie Potter

Happy post-Thanksgiving, people! I must say that I am thankful for you fine people, as you generously stroke my ego and tell me to post more often, which I shall attempt to do. But I'm warning you -- they can't all be gold ;)

Here's the three-step holiday wrap up:

1. Cook Thanksgiving dinner with Mother. Agree with Mother that the addition of four more people at dinner this year necessitates the preparation of four times more food, (ah, math). Food breakdown = 2 types of meat the combination of which roughly equals the weight of the dog, 2 types of potato, 4 types of vegetable, assorted bread products including stuffing, 2 varieties of cranberry sauce, EIGHT FREAKING DESSERTS, unlimited quantities of Maalox. Re-confirm source of personal obesity.

2. Assist Mother with OCD holiday cleanup. Realize that the air doesn't smell quite right until it's tinged with Pine Sol. Stop cleaning occasionally to make a turkey-and-carrot-cake sandwich. Really.

3a. Go see the new Harry Potter with Emily and Chris, one or both of whom you have seen each HP movie with so far. Fully expect that seeing a kids movie on Black Friday will be a full-fledged nightmare. Become pleasantly surprised at both the relative silence of the theater, (not counting Emily), and the disturbing increased hotness of the underage star of the movie. Although, to be fair to your non-pedophile self, realize that the director filmed the manchild in a bathtub for a reason, and at this rate we'll be seeing his wand by the end of the series. Be totally enchanted (yeah, I said it) by the movie in general, declare it the best of the HPs so far, and resolve to kick the ass of anyone who disagrees.

3b. Also, for a radical change of pace, go see Good Night and Good Luck on Saturday night with Father. Observe that old people talk waaaaaaay more than kids do in the theater. Especially when the movie is about actual events that happened in their lifetimes. For instance (spoiler alert), Movie Character expresses sadness; Father Time, who is sitting two seats down from me, says to his wife in a stage whisper "I THINK HE KILLS HIMSELF"; then, when Movie Character does indeed commit suicide, Father Time triumphantly exclaims, "SEE, I TOLD YOU!" But in all seriousness, a very good movie which makes a very good point about the the potential for the media to call politicians on their nation-damaging bullshit. And the fact that in the 50's, even babies smoked.

So now I am back at work on this Monday, and still feeling the gastro-hangover. Honestly, if I never eat stuffing again...who the hell am I kidding? I love stuffing. And turkey. And mashed potatoes. And carrot cake. And Maalox. Definitely Maalox. Deliciously creamy Maalox.

Dag!

I finally got my bloated butt back into Curves this week after a bit of an absence, which was due partly to having the flu and mostly to a fundamental distrust of movement, which itself stems directly from years under the "guidance" of the brides of Satan who taught me in elementary school gym class, (but that's a whole other story, and besides, the lawsuits are still pending so I'm not really at liberty to discuss it).

At any rate, I was richly rewarded upon my return to Curves with the opportunity to overhear what is quite possibly the best conversation yet carried out in my presence: Heather and Mary Pat discussing strippers.

See, Heather went to a bachelorette party last weekend which was co-ed, (yeah, I don't get it either), and they went to a strip club. A female strip club. You know, the kind with boobies? Why? Well, I suppose that, even though the bachelorette party is supposed to be for the ladies, the guys in the group just couldn't deal with seeing male strippers. Because, you know, seeing other men naked in anything other than a totally hetero locker-room situation might make them feel funny and then they'd be forced to confront certain feelings...but more on that in a moment.

By the way, and just so you know where I stand on the whole stripper topic, I have absolutely no problem with it. I think male strippers are hilarious, (the outfits! the shaved chests!), and as for the women....well, when I was 14 and all "I'm so serious about saving the world that you're gonna want to smack my self-righteous ass within 5 minutes of meeting it" I would have sung a different song, all about the shameful exploitation of women who are trapped in a cycle of self-abuse and blah blah blah. The older I get, though, the more I abide by a live-and-let-live policy. I truly believe that life is tough and most people are doing the best they can to get by in this cruel world, and if "getting by" involves running your ass crack up and down a pole for wadded-up dollar bills from greasy strangers, well, at least you're paying your own rent, sister.

Anyway, true to form, Mary Pat's fountain of opinions was not running dry on the topic of the strip club. But what was truly, fantastically, there-is-justice-in-this-world wonderful was when Heather started talking about this one stripper who attempted to give her a lap dance, (I say 'attempted' because Heather apparently hasn't tapped into that end of her Kinsey Scale yet and didn't accept the offer), and upon hearing this, Mary Pat's eyes widened and she wanted details, people! What was Heather wearing that night? Was she showing a lot of skin? What was the stripper wearing? What was her name? How, precisely, did she try to initiate the lap dance? What did Heather do? Did they have a conversation? What did they say? Why did the stripper single-out Heather? Oh, the stripper said Heather was sexy? Really?

And then Mary Pat ended the conversation by exclaiming "Dag! My life sure is boring!"

So, are you thinking what I'm thinking? Because I'm thinking that I've finally figured out why Mary Pat is such a negative, agitated bitch: The poor woman is nothing more than an unrealized, frustrated lesbian. No wonder she's so judgmental -- it's just a subconscious defense against others reading into her bland and outdated hairstyle and discovering the truth about her -- that she's not just some suburban mom who knows a thing or two about a thing or two, she's as queer as a two-headed goat, (which is also the name of a very popular lesbian sex toy).

Wow.

I've got to tell you, this realization has kind of rocked my world. It turns everything I've been thinking about Mary Pat on its head, and I think there's a lesson in this for us all, and that is: Don't be so quick to dislike opinionated, hateful, racist, Republican busybodies -- they're probably just gay.

Now if we could all take that into our hearts, imagine what a beautiful place our world would be.

The Miseducation of Nina

As a few of you know, I have recently made the decision to leave my job at the end of the year and return to school in order to finish my undergraduate degree. Again.

Here is the nutshell version of my higher education, in list form.

• Drop of out of high school and get a G.E.D.
• Apply to the University of Delaware for shits and giggles. Swallow foot when accepted.
• Spend 5 years at UD cycling through a variety of majors from Political Science to Psychology, eventually settling on Marijuana.
• Quit school disillusioned and really, really fat.
• Work as a clerical peon. See your life unfold before your eyes.
• Apply to the University of Pennsylvania. Through the gross incompetence of an employee in the admissions office, get accepted.
• Attend classes at Penn. Move to Philly. Pretend you are just like everyone else, except that they're younger and far better dressed. Act like you enjoy living in the city and befriending spoiled assholes. Forget everything you've learned about yourself and life in general.
• Have your 67th nervous breakdown.
• Drop your classes, move back to the suburbs and eat large quantities of dairy products.
• Return to work.
• Get everything you can possibly get out of your job, which is a great one that actually pays you to write and gives you more credit and responsibility than any dropout deserves, but can only be taken so far.
• Have 68th nervous breakdown and consider your options.
• Realize that no one's going to hand anything to you.
• Grow up. (Just a little.)

So, yeah, the end result is that I need to get this college thing done already. I am not happy about it. I hate school. I really, very much, sincerely, for very legitimate and hard to explain reasons, hate school. I know it's difficult for many people to understand that. Most people tend to say "Oh I wish I could go back to college! College was the best time of my life!" Well, those people can bite my ass. Hating school is just part of the fabric of me.

While I may hate school, I do like earning money. And, based on the tingle that goes up and down my spine when I get to ask an intern to do something at work, I really, really want some employees one day. And a cleaning service. Oh, and a Beemer. A sweet ass Beemer. But I need some degrees to accomplish this, and they won't let me into grad school on charm alone, so I have to get the B.A. first.

So that's where things stand now -- I am returning to school for entirely capitalist reasons. This has very little to do with bettering myself in the Oprah sense. I think the blogging will be pretty good when I return to school, though, since -- although I'll ironically have less free time than I do at work -- I'll have a hell of a lot more to be annoyed about which is, you know, funny.

I'll leave you for now with something I've recently learned. A little nugget of hard-earned wisdom passed from me to you...

Let's say you have to take a Spanish placement test to determine if your skill level meets your university's requirement for the degree and, if not, how much Spanish you need to take in order to accomplish that requirement. Let's say that you're a little cavalier about this placement test, based on the fact that you won an award in 8th grade for your proficiency, and that you already met the first university you attended's language requirement. Let's also say that, because of meeting that requirement and having been out of school for a couple of years, (and the fact that you haven't spoken to your friend Jimena in a really, really long time), you haven't uttered a word of Spanish in mucho tiempo. Let's say all of that is true...You might want to crack open a book before you take the placement test. At least watch a few hours of Telemundo. Order a burrito in the language of its origin. Do something. Do not, under any circumstances, just sit down on your couch, put the TV on in the background, and breeze through the fucker like there's no possibility that you'll score so low your ass will get bumped down to ELEMENTARY MOTHERFUCKING SPANISH and that you'll have to take three courses to reach the requirement. Seriously, write this down. Es muy importante.

But do I care? Yes. Yes I do.

This is the third time I'm writing this post. The first two attempts were, of course, brilliantly hilarious, (hilariously brilliant?), but I've been having some router issues and keep losing my internet connection, resulting in those posts being lost forever to the cyber graveyard. It's a shame, really, because it was some of my best work. Ah, delusion.

At any rate, I just got off the phone with another one of my Verizon boyfriends, and hopefully, everything's hunky dory now.

Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I feel I should tell you that my brain isn't really functioning right now due to excessive consumption of refined sugar. This is due to two factors:

1. A gross miscalculation in the number of trick-or-treaters I'd get last night for Halloween and the resulting mountain of leftover candy it is now my duty as an American to eat by myself
2. I have a mild case of the flu, and my doctor told me it's dehydrating my intestines (yum!) and that I need to drink nothing but Gatorade for the next 48 hours in order to restore the delicate balance of electrolytes and bile to my system

Okay, so this post was originally about But Can They Sing?, a personal favor to me by VH1. See, some executive over at the network crawled inside my dreams and found out that I would very much welcome a show where a group of "celebrities" so obscure that even a pop-culture junkie such as myself hadn't heard of half of them would be given microphones and instructed to sing and compete with each other for the votes of the television audience, (kind of like American Idol with more cosmetic surgery, not counting Paula Abdul).

The first episode aired on Sunday, and I was very much looking forward to it. See, being sick, I have been watching far more than the recommended daily allowance of shitty television. (For instance, while I am normally a fierce Judge Judy loyalist, I have lately been faced with so few daytime viewing options that I have been forced to sit in the courtrooms of the obnoxious Judge Mathis, the affable Judge Larry Joe, the shrill Judge Mayblean and the sassy Judge Milian). Anyway, VH1 has also been playing its latest installment of their I Love the 80's series on a loop, and while I do love me some Hal Sparks, enough is enough. So I was excited when But Can They Sing? came along.

But I was faced with a dilemma. At 10pm on Sunday, at the same time that BCTS? was airing, a new episode of Intervention was up over on A & E. Now, I love that show for a very different reason than I love shows like BCTS? I love Intervention because it is actually good television. It's the best of reality TV, I think, because instead of trying to create artificial drama, (by, say, putting a bunch of stupid and attractive twentysomethings in a house and liquoring them up), it merely observes the inherent drama of substance abuse and its repercussions, which are quite moving and truly can't-look-away compelling. So, I flipped back and forth between Intervention and BCTS? and definitely spent more time watching the former.

I was really only interested in two of the "singers," though. The first was Bai Ling. Now, those of us who read the Fug know La Ling as an alleged "actress" who wears the most hideously comical, occasionally genital-revealing outfits to every red carpet event her agent manages to get her invited to. I must say that Bai didn't disappoint, in that she was both a phenomenally bad singer, (her voice is freakishly low which only furthers my theory that she's a Chinese trannie), and her outfit was glorious. She sang "Like a Virgin" in a huge poufy red dress, writhing around on the floor and revealing at the end of her performance that the skirt was detachable! And, truly, what could be more redundant than Bai Ling in a detachable skirt?

The other person on the show I was interested in was Carmine Gotti...excuse me, Carmine Gotti Agnello. I don't know why he now wants to be associated with his less-famously-named father, (who is barely mentioned on Growing Up Gotti), especially since Carmine's bio on the VH1 site sees fit to tell us that his father is "a made member of the Gambino crime family who is currently doing time for arson and racketeering." HOT!! Anyway, I love to hate the Gotti boys, with their plastic hair and unintelligible diction. They're like all those asshole kids who hang out at the mall except, you know, connected. Anyway, I'm sorry to say that I only caught the last few seconds of Carmine's rendition of "Ride With Me," but it was enough to reaffirm my faith in humanity in that he sucked. Believe me, if that kid wound up having some sort of discernible talent, I'd have to reevaluate my entire worldview.

At the VH1 site, you can vote for your favorite. I'm voting for Bai, because I need to see her clothes every week. I hope this Sunday she does "I Believe I Can Fly" in a pair of breakaway pants. I don't know why that makes sense, but it does.