My Unfettered Thoughts on This Current Round of Stupidity
Current mood: enraged
Category: News and Politics

Ugh.  Ugh.  Glerf.  Blech.  If I have to hear one more Conservative try to bellow into my ear about what a great, fantastic, trailblazing, visionary pick for VP Sarah Palin is, I'm going to go throw myself tits-over-ass into my Hyperbolic Self-Delusion pool full of Jim Jones Groupthink Kool-Aid.  Just the very NOTION that they're complicit in their own animatronic brainwashing was enough to make me laugh for the first few days of this week during the RNC.  But tonight, I felt a bit more like…becoming really, really upset at about half of this country.

I had a conversation with a very, very, very talented and learned Conservative friend of mine tonight, and was amazed and horrified with the intellectual blumpkin she attempted to give me in regards to Palin.  And now I'm out-and-out terrified – if she can't (and doesn't want to) see through this charade, what are the chances any of the wooly sheep who simply walk in circles around the platform are going to come out of their coma and see this pick for what it is?

Because let's be honest, folks.  This pick isn't about Palin.  In this race for the Presidency, she's a footnote.  An anecdote.  A placebo.  So forget her.  She's not the issue.

It's what it says about McCain that's really evident, and if you're choosing to ignore or project apathy towards it, you're part of the problem in this country.

Point of argument first, so I can go ahead and separate myself from the people I'm about to verbally spank: I'm voting for Obama, but unlike my inexorably partisan Democrat and Republican friends, I'm no party-line apologizer or sympathizer.  I can think on my own too feet without the help of the local RNC or DNC whip.  I don't need to talk myself into my candidate.  I've got my issues with him.  His health care plan blows.  It BLOWS.  He's REALLY liberal.  I'm a pretty moderate liberal.  He likes big government.  I don't like big government.  At all.  He wants to go back to the moon.  I think that's fucking idiocy.  He really should have picked Hillary.  Biden is capable but the definition of smarmy old politics.  I have my qualms with Obama. 

But character and sincerity aren't two of them.  He's a real dude.  He fucking gets it.  When he speaks – charismatic or not, and I'm not of the mind that's always a bad thing – I feel like he means it.  He reminds me of the best parts of Clinton and Reagan.  I've spent my entire life being sold to by politicians who think they're convincing me they can distract me by promising me the sun and the moon…and I plumb won't notice that they're stealing the rest of the sky.  There's none of the fluff with Obama.  We might have different ideas of how to get there, but I know that he, out of just about anyone who was making their case this year, wants to get there for the right reasons and for the right people.  All of us.

When you get that kind of person, you get those kinds of people around him.  And let's be honest again: the President is only as important as his Cabinet and his Think Tank (a concept no less flopped onto a platter for us than the debacle of the last eight years).  I trust Obama to fill his political coffers with the best and the brightest, and in that, I think he'll have sound advisors in case his "inexperience" overwhelms him.  I think he's a person that will command the respect of the rest of the world, not just in his words but in his actions.  For me, this election isn't about a single issue or a group of issues or even about what I would do if it were up to me.  It's about changing the game, and if I have to suck in some of my better wishes to do that, I'll happily do that.  To get the ball rolling.  To move forward.  I see Barack Obama as able to move forward.

And though I wanted to believe differently for a long time, it's impossible to say that anymore about John McCain.

Talk about someone who's gone through a nearly retarded transformation over the past eight years from Straight-Talking Semi-Republican Maverick whom I was convinced would one day end up being our savior to Blathering Contrarian Fundy Douchebag that I'm convinced shouldn't be allowed to preside over a non-motorized can opener, much less our country.  The Palin fiasco is just the straw on the camel's broken back.

First of all, can I be repetitive and ask that we just be honest again?  Just for a second?  This woman has no experience in anything.  Anything.  She's a first-term governor of one of the most meaningless (sorry, it's true) states in the Union.  If you told me you were governor of Alaska, my brain would immediately equate that to being the owner of a vast, empty and mostly uneventful used car lot that was only significant because it was next door to a huge, important gas station.   Before that her entire body of political experience was as a mayor of a town of less than 9,000 people.  She didn't have a passport until six months ago.  What does that mean?  She's been to Canada.  Maybe.  Wow, what great notions she must have on foreign policy!

Oh, what's that you say?  She has GOVERNING experience, which is more than you can say for Obama, who's only spent most of his entire professional life in public service and/or office?  Yeah, I guess GOVERNING experience really is a great barometer for the Presidency.  I mean, George Bush ran not only an oil company, a baseball team, and a state into the muck before he was elected President, but after that, he created an administration that did the same exact thing to not only our entire country, but a few others!  Christ, maybe Obama's lack of governing experience is exactly what we need if your previous Nominee is any indication.  And we're supposed to trust you again?

But back to the main point – Palin embodies the same EXACT "flaws" that McCain and the Republicans have been positively hammering Obama on for the past six months.  You know it.  I know it.  So let's cut the bullshit, huh?  This woman is potentially next in line for the Presidency to a 72 year-old guy with a history of heart problems and skin cancer, and you want us to buy that she's qualified for that position because…she has the same terminal drawbacks you've been pointing out every day in your opponent?  Wow, John.  Good thinking there.  No one's going to call you out on that.

Wait, it doesn't stop there!

How many times had she and McCain met before he called her and asked her to be his VP Candidate?  In person?  That's right, once.  For less than five minutes.  But they have a wealthy, hearty professional relationship based on constant communication otherwise, yeah?  Well, if you could count one fifteen-minute phone call "wealthy" and "hearty" in regards to professional relationships, you'd be right on about that.  That is…impressive, John.  You let your pals pick your business partner for you.  Tell me something: in what other walk of life would you EVER even consider this a good option?  Ever?  Anywhere? 

How about this: if someone came to you on the street and said that he was throwing his life savings, his last shot, into opening up his dream business, and that he was going to let a bunch of his friends pick his second in command and that he'd only get to meet that person once for five minutes and have one fifteen-minute phone conversation with that person…would you invest your only money for the next four years in him?  This crazy guy with the worst business plan ever?  Would you even bother engaging him?

You wouldn't.  So why would you even consider the remote possibility that John McCain – who's doing the exact same thing with the Presidency – is a good investment in your future?

But wait, there's more!

Hang on.  Gotta stop you here again so we can scrap the metaphors and grammar words for that old honesty thing: do you REALLY think this pick is anything but a Big Top stunt designed to bring in currently disgruntled Hillary voters?  Do you?  Because you know what?  If you told me you did – if you told me that you believed that John McCain would have picked Sarah Palin as his VP Candidate had Hillary Clinton not been a part of this election process – you are fucking lying to me.  You could not pass a polygraph test.

Yet…this is what McCain and his cronies want us to believe.  That this is another "maverick" decision by the "out-of-the-box" thinker.  That it's a victory for women everywhere (my aforementioned friend actually made a laughable attempt to thank Hillary for paving the way for her; I stopped feeling laughable when it became apparent that she wanted me to think that she actually believed what she was saying).  That this selection was based on character and vetting instead of gimmickry and panic.

Give me a motherfucking break.

In case you didn't get my point earlier, here it is spelled out clearer: this is a fucking joke.  This is a desperate move by a desperate man who is desperately behind in the polls of the states he needs to win most desperately in November.  There is zero – ZERO – chance that he even remembers who Sarah Palin is if Hillary isn't a factor in this race.  And that, more than anything else, pisses me off to no fucking end.  Not just that John McCain is conceited enough to think that this is going to work, that people are going to buy his lame little dog and pony show.  And not just, to some degree, that it's working for the moment.

It's that John McCain sacrificed, in his very last chance, the opportunity to do right by America and select an APPROPRIATE AND QUALIFIED choice for his nominal VP.  There are dozens of Republican and Independent Conservatives – among them several WOMEN, no less – who are more qualified and prepared for the office of Vice President than Sarah Palin.  Why not any of them, John?  Why not Fred Thompson?  Why not Joe Lieberman?  Why not Mary Bono or Elizabeth Dole or Kay Bailey Hutchison?  Too accomplished?  Too respected by your party?  Not hot enough?  Not young enough?

You know what really fucking gets me?  That women across the nation aren't just downright insulted by this chicanery.  You've watched your gender toil for equality and advancement and you're finally reaching the top of the well-deserved and long-overdue heap.  You're not just taking a piece of the pie, but baking your own (and come on, you HAVE to love the grand little 50s housewife callback I threw in there for irony)…and now John McCain tries to tell you that he picked the 44 year-old first-term Governor of Alaska because she's the most qualified?  Because she's the most qualified to be Vice President not only out of all the female politicians in this country…but of ALL of them?  Jesus, folks – he picked her because people think she's hot and because people will talk about her.  You know it.  I know it.  Why doesn't it make the rest of you angry?  Why aren't you brazenly insulted by this?

If you're not angry or insulted, you're an idiot.  If this doesn't just fucking spite you, you don't deserve the right to vote.  Because you've lost all sense of logic and rationality and you're apparently unwise to the way scumbags work.  And that's sad.

This rant isn't about whether or not you like Sarah Palin.  Guess what?  I like Sarah Palin.  She's cool.  She doesn't stand for stuff I much care for, but I like a lot of people that stand for stuff I don't care for.  My dad is one of them.  One of my best friends is one of them.  Sarah Palin is one of them.  And to boot, she doesn't just do what she believes in – she fucking takes it by the throat.  You have to respect that.

But only to a point, at least for now.  Sarah Palin might be a hell of a political force in 10-15 years, once she's actually gone out and done something (though, after this shitshow…she might just go back to chasing moose down the street).  But she hasn't.  She's not the best person for the job.  And it's not even just that – she's not even remotely capable of the job or ready for the vast responsibilities it covers.  And it's not even just that – a large chunk of her own PARTY is disgusted over her selection.  Not because she's young or because she's a woman or because she looks hot in librarian glasses.  It's because she's the wrong person for the job right here and right now.  And there is NOTHING more simple or truthful that you can say about it.

But what does it say beyond that?  That John McCain is unqualified to be President.  Not because Sarah Palin sucks as a person, but because she sucks as a VP Candidate.  And if you can't get the single most important choice in your canon right BEFORE you become President, what the hell is supposed to make us think you're going to be able to make all of the important choices AFTER you get into office?  Seriously. 

Fuck you, McCain.

This is the point I tried to make to my friend, though more quickly and with less detail.  But the idea was unmuddled.  And that's when she informed me that she didn't care.  She didn't care WHY McCain picked her.  He only cared that he picked someone who believed what she believed in.  Someone who she liked.  Someone who she thought was tough and tenacious.

And that's where I sort of broke off.  It's one thing to disagree with someone on an issue or a personality.  But it's quite another when you begin to realize that even the sharpest minds and brightest stars are allowing themselves to dull and dim simply to hang onto a set of ever more irrelevant partisan standards.  And that they'll give up their higher reasoning just to be able to tell themselves that one thing that every human wants to believe so steadfastly: that they've been right all along.

Just like everything else these days, the Cost of Being Right seems to have gone way, way up.

8:08 AM - 4 Comments - 5 Kudos - Add Comment

An Annoucement of My Pure Awesomeness
Current mood: jubilant
Category: Dreams and the Supernatural

I'm a writer now.  Here's proof:

Variety

Fuck yes,

Geoff

Currently listening : Roll with It By Oasis Release date: 1995-01-01

1:47 AM - 14 Comments - 21 Kudos - Add Comment

Of Moving On and Having Been
Current mood: peaceful

There's this funny little routine you have to go through just to get in the room.  They make you put on this hypoallergenic gown that feels roughly like fiberglass and latex gloves that seem snug enough to have been made for children only (which is saying a lot, something you know if you've ever seen my small freak-hands).  If you leave the room, you have to trash them.  When you come back, you have to go through the process all over again.  I'm told it's to stop the spread of various viruses and bacteria that can easily be transmitted from patient to patient.  Though for some reason, they don't make you tie the gown.  I'm bothered by this, as it seems purpose-defeating.

But them's the rules at the rehab center that has become my grandfather's Last Big Stop.  Well, they call it a "rehab center", though taking a look around…egh.  Let's just say that most of the people here – strangely referred to as "patients", all in various stages of near-death – don't seem to be rehabbing so much as practicing to be corpses.  This is less a "rehab center" and more of a "morgue pre-party".

I wasn't here last time.  What my grandfather doesn't know is that this is the same exact rehab center where my grandmother died twelve years ago.  He doesn't know because he didn't visit her there.  We didn't know she'd be gone so quickly.  No one's telling him, either.  And that's a blessing – it would only make this worse.

Worse than this would be…pretty bad.  I find my grandfather hunched over in his wheelchair, hands folded in his lap, staring at the ground.  I can't decide if this is more or less heartbreaking than when I saw him two days prior, laying immobile in his bed.  I decide on "more heartbreaking" and fight the first of the many urges I have to cry that afternoon.  It's a struggle.  He's breathing hard, even with the oxygen tank he's become a Siamese twin to ratcheted up to 11 (please go ahead and laugh at that small joke – if he'd ever seen the movie, he'd have appreciated it).  His nose is running.  His old-person tracksuit is coated with a smattering of goldfish cracker crumbs.  Sadly, this is a good sign – it means he's eaten today.  In the cache of euphemisms that have become the Mailey family's manifesto over the past few weeks, this could aptly be categorized as just above A Piece of Encouraging News and just below The Best We Can Hope for At This Point.

It's not until I sit down on the bed and touch his hand that he knows I'm there.  I decide to blame this on his hearing (or lack thereof) rather than to congratulate myself on my ninja-like approach.  He does his best to smile, and even though that's a failing proposition these days, I know he's glad to see me.  I've brought him some Lotto scratch-off cards.  Every day, wasting down to nothing faster and faster, he's still scratching off these goddamned Lotto cards.  "Wouldn't it be something," he says dryly, "if I were to hit the big one at this point?  That would be a laugh."  Today it doesn't sound that funny.

He gets winded scratching off the first card and asks me for my help finishing it off.  I do; it's not a winner.  Best we go on to the second one, he says, and so I scratch that one too.  This one produces a veritable treasure chest: $20.  "Look Pa, you're a winner!"  He smiles again, then tells me to keep it.  I make some joke about him using it to tip the nurses, and he mumbles something to the effect of their heads being designated for assignment in their asses.  "Keep it.  Buy yourself a drink in the airport this evening.  What the hell am I going to do with it in here?"  The last sentence is said without a hint of humor, and immediately following it, his gaze goes back to the faux marbled tile.  It's clear there's not going to be a lot of conversation here today.  So I hold his hand.

A minute or two later, I remember something I had forgotten to ask him about during my previous visit: "Hey Pa?  I heard that (my cousin) Shawn came up to visit you the other day.  Did you have a nice visit?"

He raises his head, "Yes, it was very nice.  It was good to see him."

"I bet."

A few seconds pass, and before he puts his head down again: "Yeah, Shawn came to visit, your uncles are in here everyday, you came from California.…you'd think I was dying or somethin'."  This time it's definitely intended to be a joke.  I laugh, wonder how he even has the strength to bother, and fight the urge to cry once again.

**********

There are countless things I'd love to tell you about my grandfather, but most of them are personal stories that merely define him in my eyes and wouldn't necessarily in yours.  But if there's one seminal item, one character-cementing thing that my grandfather did that would measure him up against anyone, it's this: he built his own house.

To me, that is…that is something.  This man was not an architect.  He had exactly zero training as a builder – of ANYTHING, much less houses.  He was in the Navy.  He studied business.  He worked on the railroad.  And then one day, he wanted a house that he and his love, my Granny, could raise a family in.  So he went out, read a few books, bought enough lumber to deforest a good chunk of Central Pennsylvania, and he fucking built that house.

Seriously.  He had some help pouring the foundation and had friends in the trade help him with the plumbing and electric wiring.  Beyond that, he built his house with his own two hands.  Just him.  My grandfather.  Pa.  Now, really...how many of you know anyone who's done that?  How many of you know a man who wanted a house, read a book about building houses, built the house, and then proceeded to lord over the Great American Family within it for fifty years?

I know one.

My grandfather did what a man does – a fact that did not, I can tell you, go unnoticed by my grandmother.  Granny once told a story: "You know, the day your grandfather got home from the War, I was waxing the floor in the kitchen.  He opened the door, and I saw him standing there and nearly fainted.  We didn't even move for a couple of minutes.  We just stared at each other.  And he looked so sexy in his uniform…"  And just like that, she trailed off like an old woman does when she remembers fondly.  I was younger at the time this tale was told, and curious, I asked what happened.  Granny composed herself and said only, "Well, let's just say I had to wax the floor again."

Oddly enough, Pa's favorite thing to do in his house was contaminate it.  For decades the man smoked 8 – EIGHT! – cigars per day.  He remained adamant that it was not a bad habit because, much like even our finest Presidents, he "didn't inhale".  Perhaps it wasn't on his mind, but the rest of us who had the privilege of staying there for any amount of time existed in an atmosphere that could only be described as brownish.  The air in and around my grandparents' house was acrid, hefty and pervasive, coating everything from clothes to food to, perhaps, even a few souls.  My grandfather's solution to this problem?  He bought a ten-inch high air purifier and set it on his chairside table.  As you might guess, that functioned about as well as a band-aid on the Titanic.  Pa puffed away contently, undeterred, until one day, at a doctor's appointment, he was told that his smoking habit might be contributing to his heart disease.

Pa quit smoking that day and never had another pull off a cigar in his life.  This left Pa with a dearth of ways to torture his beloved family.  And that's about when he decided that if he couldn't ruin our lungs, he would ruin our vision.

One day, I walked into my grandparents' house to find that Pa had gone quite out of his head and had electric-blue carpet installed in his family room.  And when I say "electric-blue", I want to be frank about just how electric it was: I became the only middle-schooler in a fifty-mile radius to have acid flashbacks.  It was like sitting on top of an azure sun.  Just being around it made your body temperature spike by ten degrees.  It was garish.  It was uncalled for.  It was retina-searing.  And my grandfather LOVED it.  It was his favorite color.  No one else understood.  Chalk it up in the barrel full of things that Pa did that we didn't understand.  Another of note, just for posterity: the man watched upwards of 10 hours of television per day, yet never sprung for cable or even a TV that had a working antenna.  He traveled back and forth across his blue carpet dozens of times every day, manually changing the channel and then complaining when the reception sucked.  All of this in an effort to watch an episode of M*A*S*H* that he'd only seen sixty times before.

There are enough stories like this to fill books.  Maybe it would be a book you'd read, and maybe not.  Just in case you're here for the condensed version, I'll leave you with this:

When my grandmother died, my grandfather sold that house.  His house.  The one that he built, by himself, for her.  That house was iconic in my mind, a place of countless happy pastimes and life experiences.  I was flabbergasted that he could part with it.  Some of the family was outright angry.  But to Pa, his house was no longer a home.  Not without Granny.  Now, it was just a structure fixed in place over everything he'd lost.  Before he'd even moved out, it was a memory.  The reason he got down on his hands and knees and created it from nothing was gone, and as far as he was concerned, the house had served its purpose.  It was now obsolete, so he left it. 

Like I said, my grandfather did what a man does.

**********

I sat with Pa that day, the last day I would ever see him, for a good forty-five minutes.  Conversation, spotty and infrequent, took up a grand total of about thirty seconds of that visit.  He mostly bowed his head and looked down, squeezing my fingers tightly in his, and God, I wished that I could do anything to make this stop for him.  How is it that just at the point when the sum of your life's actions should be called upon to build your dignity to its highest level…it can be so unceremoniously and callously drained from you?  Frail, diapered, runny-nosed, struggling.  Miserable.  Watching it is pure and unadulterated agony.  I can't even imagine feeling it.

It was time to go.  It was time to go, and I felt like I'd offered him little.  I'd worried about this earlier, that there was nothing I could really do for him.  My mother told me that just having me there would be a tremendous lift.  He didn't look lifted.  He looked just like he looked when I came in: broken.  There was nothing I could fix.  But knowing that and accepting that are two wholly different animals.

I stood up, kissed him on the head, hugged him, and said goodbye.  Our last goodbye.  I told myself how lucky I was to have this moment, that most people don't ever get to say goodbye for real.  I didn't feel lucky.  He hugged back as best he could, told me to be good.  I walked to the trashcan, started to disavow myself of the gloves and gown.  "This is it," my frustrated, scared brain screamed at me.  "This is it!  Don't you realize that?  Tell him how much he means to you!  Say something!  Say something, you idiot!"

I turned and looked at him.  "I'll be back at the end of August," I barely creaked.  "It's my ten-year high school reunion.  Can you believe it's been ten years?"

"Isn't that somethin'," he replied, trying to look up.

"So you hang on until, then, OK?"

"OK Geoffrey," he lied.

"I'll see you then," I lied right back.  And I turned and walked for the door.  I almost made it out.

"Geoffrey?"

I know I must have turned around instantly, but standing there, I felt like it took me half a minute to rotate.

"Yeah?"

He offered a sickly wave…and yet made it seem as though it was the grandest of gestures.  "Thanks for coming all this way," he said.  "To say goodbye to your old Pa."

The words hit like a wave.  A Gibraltar-sized rock formed in my throat where my Adam's apple used to be and my knees all but buckled and gave out from under me.  Somehow, for the last time that day, I successfully fought the tears back.  It had nothing to do with projecting stoicism or feeling foolish or being a man.  My grandfather had only four days left on this planet at that moment, and I sure as hell wasn't going to let his last memory of me be one with wet eyes.  So I smiled.

"You got it." 

I'm 28 years old; it was the first time in my life that I've ever felt like an adult.  All I did was fly home, and that's the kind of man my grandfather was: when I could give him nothing, he turned it into everything.  The old bastard.

A prophet much wiser than I once theorized that a man stumbles around most of his life confused and in various stages of inebriation, his vision clouded to one degree or another, seeing clearly on only two occasions: when he finds himself, and when he faces death.  I've often thought that one can consider himself truly lucky if those events don't happen at the same time. 

If someone had walked into that room with us at that point, they wouldn't have known that something was off, something was discordant.  They would have just seen two men – one old, one young, one a grandfather, one a grandson – about to part one final time.  They would have gone about their day and never questioned the fact that they were both wearing glasses.  It shouldn't have seemed funny, shouldn't have seemed unnecessary, but it was.

Because…what did we need glasses for?  At that moment, we were just a couple of lucky fellas with 20/20 vision.

I will miss you, old man.  I will miss you.

Currently listening : Some Might Say By Oasis Release date: 1995-08-10

10:22 AM - 6 Comments - 12 Kudos - Add Comment

An Open Letter to the Universe
Current mood: worried
Category: Life

Dear Universe,

I've never come to this point with you.  I've felt like I have and hyperbolized like I have, but I've never actually been sure I was at the threshold.  Until now.  It's official: I'm at my breaking point.  There's only so much one person can take, and I'm a breath away from that standard.

At this point, you can take it all.  I've got nothing left that I'm that attached to.  Seriously.  You've bent my arm and twisted me backwards, schoolyard bullying me to the very end of my rope.  I'm a proverbial inch away from metaphorically drowning in every symbolic fluid ounce of my own misery.

I've got next to nothing left.  I've never been to the place where I felt a total and complete lack of positivity.  Well, the train headed there just picked me up.  Really.  So, as pathetically as I can, I will beg: please don't take Winston from me.  Most days...he's all I've got.  Heartbreak I can slog through.  The passing of family I can accept as part of life.  But losing that tiny little dog...that's just too much for me.  Not him.  Not now.

You've got me.  I submit.  Uncle.  Is that what you want to hear, Universe?  Uncle.  Uncle, uncle, uncle.

Please.

Failing to understand the plan,

Geoff

2:15 AM - 0 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

Sweet Christ in Heaven...the New 90210 Trailer
Current mood: enthralled
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

Um...I really don't even know how to express my full-blown girly excitement for this.  It's going to be trashy wonderfulness of a magnitude that I can't seem to calculate in my feeble brain.  After watching the trailer, however, there are some things that need to be addressed.

First, said trailer, in case you live under a rock or are an idiot:



And now my reaction:

1. Please, please fill the void in my life that has been left by the departure of THE OC.  I don't care how juvenile and absurd it was.  It was endlessly entertaining on several fictional levels and, even more, on accidental levels.  Plus it had Rachel Bilson, an affirmed goddess.  I'm holding out hope.  And I don't like holding out hope, but please, show creators, please don't f*ck this up for me.  My life is mostly pointless and devoid of positivity.  I need this.

2. On the heels of my Rachel Bilson comment...meh.  I'm hoping there's something about one of these chicks that really turns me on, but right now I think I'd be happier if I were a gay dude.  I realize the "It" girl is supposed to be AnnaLynne McCord, but to me she just looks like a boobless version of the sensational Kellie Garner.  Which begs the question...why not go out and get Kellie Garner?  Have you SEEN this girl?  What's wrong with you people?

You know, though...the hottest girl on the original cast, until Kelly Kapowski showed up, was Shannen Doherty.  Which isn't saying a ton.  Hmmmm.  Whatever, I care now.  Make sure there are hot satellite girls.

3. On a positive note, Lori Loughlin is part of the cast, and you can never go wrong with a woman who's become progressively more f*ckable over the years.  Did you know she's 44 this year?  FORTY-FOUR!!!!  Good gravy, she's something.  Lori Loughlin was hot back before my sperm even existed enough to give me cravings.  In fact, I can probably thank Lori Loughlin for prodding the development of my genitalia into semi-usefulness.  Lori Loughlin and Danica McKellar.  With any luck the former's participation in this series will bring my goods the rest of the way into that elusive utopia of "manhood".

4. Apparently these buffoons have no sense of history, because there's a black kid on the show.  I was angry about this...until I saw that he's a black kid adopted by a white family.  That makes much more sense in both an unintentionally funny and unfortunately realistic way.  Can you even imagine the amount of money Angelina Jolie and Madonna could make by licensing out the rights to someone every time they wanted to fictionalize or parody their propensity to adopt countless brown/brownish children?

On another note, I love the actor in this role trying to claim that he was "drawn to" a character that struggled through foster homes and hard knocks.  Yeah, I'm sure it had nothing to do with wanting to be on any possible TV show that would grant you a paycheck and the bare minimum of exposure.  You were drawn by the CHARACTER.  Gotcha.  I bet it was a tough decision between this and that Frederick Douglass biopic that doesn't exist.

5. How are you NOT bringing back Steve Sanders?  You're telling me there's NO way to work him into the story?  The man was forty years old when he was in high school!  Doesn't that count for something?

6. Wow, I just realized how truly insipid this little promo is.  Somehow, that makes me more excited than less.  And no, I don't get that either.

7. What will it take for them to put a show exactly like this on HBO or Showtime so that we can just get some f*cking nudity already?  Would anyone in their right mind object to this?  We already had that show - kind of - in ENTOURAGE, but they apparently have some kind of newfound vendetta against female nipples.  Come on.

I'm sorry, you guys, that I'm the one that has to make sense all the time.  It's getting tiring.

8. Seriously, you're going to bring back Donna Martin but not Steve Sanders?  F*ck you people.  I'm not watching.  F*ck you.

9. Baby, I'm so sorry that I got angry earlier.  It's just that...the exclusion of Steve Sanders makes me so crazy sometimes baby...I...I just can't control myself.  Don't listen to ol' Ike...er, Geoff, baby.  I'll watch your show.  Come on back, baby.  I'm so sorry.  Give Daddy another chance...

10. I was thinking it, you were thinking it, we're all thinking it: get Brian Austin Green involved in any capacity - cast, producer, production assistant, caterer - so that Megan Fox finds her way onto the show.  If that f*cking troglodyte is going to luck out/blow Satan to the point where she agrees to marry him, he had better g*ddamn share her with the rest of us in some fashion.  It's the right thing to do.

Usually I just want Summer to be over so football can start and my life can regain a tiny slice of meaning, but now I have another reason not to throw myself in front of a bus.  Yahtzee!

Currently listening : Mr Understanding Release date: 2008-02-12

4:10 PM - 5 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

And Now To Expose Awful Things About My Ex-Girlfriend
Current mood: jolly
Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes

OK, so that was pretty much a lie.  I won't be saying those kinds of things.  However, as I know most of you are shills and slaves to the muck, this will probably be my most-viewed blog ever based on title alone.  You should all be ashamed of yourselves.

In fact, what I want to talk about is light years away from that kind of inanity.  I would actually go as far as to say that one of my dreams has been realized.

Look...it doesn't take much to get me excited.  Not much at all.  I spend at least 47% of every day with an erection, because the smallest thing will trigger glee within my feeble, peon mind.  So when I get something I really, really want...it's a major, epic event.

This week, I finally got ice cube trays that make square ice cubes.  Well, they don't "make" them, but...you get it.

For years it has been a goal of mine to possess such an apparatus, such a mold, that would yield me box-shaped nuggets of frozen water rather than those boring trapezoidal drones that most of the lower humans cling to.  I wanted out of the old, misshapen ice cube game.  In fact, for years I've eschewed ice in any form simply because of its mongoloid aesthetic.  Who decided that it was a good idea for ice to look like clear little gold bricks?  Honestly.

But my quest was really spurred on - much like everything else that's important in my life - by the dirty, unscrupulous world of liquor advertising.  I know you know what I'm talking about.  In any commercial or print ad for any fine beverage - especially if it's single or double-malted - the amber liquid is poured salaciously over beautiful, mystical ice cubes that look like they've been carved by Michelangelo.  In the best ads, the cubes (how can you call any ice cube shaped like a g*ddamned EXCITEBIKE jump a "cube"????) were seen to have tiny imperfections - dimples, chips, etc. - that made them even more alluring, much like a girl with father issues.

You can imagine how fitfully pissed off I was when I found out that these square manifestations of otherwise generic cubes used in various media spots were often made of...glass.  F*ck me, what a travesty.  YOU HAD ME GOING YOU B*STARDS!!!!!!

Crushed, I continued to press on, thinking that there had to be someone out there like me, some poor, stupid jerkoff who needed square ice cubes in their life.  I think I'd have to officially clock my search at about three years, give or take a month.  Overall, the result was f*ck-all.  Pure frivolity.

Until last week.

God bless you, Target.  My search of the Internets turned up your Housewares page, and before my eyes I found the Holy Grail of home cryonic water manipulation.  Square ice cube trays.  Made of RUBBER, no less, so that the tray itself doesn't A) harden with the temperature like fantastically inferior plastic molds, making it a chore just to pop the ice out and B) break over time due to frailty, like fantastically inferior plastic molds.  We can put a man on the moon and a baboon's heart in a man's chest (for a few months, anyway), but it's not until 2008 that someone looked around a room of engineers and said before thinking, "Hey guys...do you know rubber doesn't freeze?"

I couldn't order them fast enough, and yesterday, they showed up at the door.  I nearly kissed the burly, aggravated UPS man who was (un)fortunate enough to be the one to have my route that day.  I immediately took to work, freezing up four trays worth of the glorious little bastards before dumping them in my ice tray.  I now have so many that I don't even know what to do with them.  Sadly, I lack even a cheap bottle of liquor and a sufficient tumbler to properly enjoy them with, but trust me, that sh*t is going to be rectified presently.

I've enclosed some pictures for your pleasure.  I hope they bring you a tenth of the enjoyment that his event has brought me.  I know some of you are concerned about me - a special thanks to those of you who have expressed that concern via oral sex* - but really...I don't think I'll ever be this excited even when I have a kid.  You might argue that such a statement proves that my life has little meaning, but I would counter-argue that your life has too much.











* - Denotes the official oral sex count is currently "0"

6:29 PM - 12 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

What Had Happened Was...
Current mood: curious

"And I dropped my paintbrush in the dirt.
Still remember just how much that hurt.
I cut my hand and wait for it to work.
But I just couldn't bring him back.
No, I just couldn't bring him back.

I just can't seem to get it right today.
Oh, I just can't seem to get it right today.
I just can't seem to get it right today.
I guess I'm gonna give up."

A little more than a month after my latest breakup – but really something like two months since the relationship was really over – I've learned myself some lessons.  Here they are:

1) When your girlfriend cheats on you, it hurts.  When your girlfriend cheats on you multiple times with the same person, it really hurts.  When you find out the guy is a douchebag who sent her pictures of himself in boxers and a trucker hat, it really really hurts.  But when you find out she cheated on you with a guy that voted for Mitt Romney…that, my friends, means that you have set a previously unchartable standard for the inability to make a woman happy.  Right now I'm apparently about as appealing as John Wayne Bobbitt with the triple herpes.

2) No amount of love or affection can change or help someone who doesn't have – and isn't interested in getting – their shit together.  No matter what you do, no matter what you say, it's never going to be enough.  A blistered psyche will always be the trump card.

3) If you're the FOURTH dude a girl decides she needs to shack up with in eight years…you're probably not going to be the last.  But if you only make domicile for six weeks, you're definitely of the least worth.

4) If you failed to realize Nos. 2 & 3 because you were head-over-heels in love, you can be forgiven.  Being in love is like having the windows painted shut and the blackout curtains drawn…which is doubly dangerous if you like the dark.

5) If you failed to trust your instincts on Nos. 2 & 3 even in the face of prior knowledge AND experience, then you're just a daft fucking plebe that had a lucky year.

6) Will Ferrell once said, "Grief is nature's most powerful aphrodisiac."  That is a lie – pity is by FAR more potent than grief.  If you're a single gentleman looking for some short-term affection, I highly suggest generating some.  Or, like in my case, having it generated for you.

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This has been a very weird, very unsettling process for me on many levels.  The beginning was just awful – I don't think I could cry again that much if I watched OLD YELLER and RUDY back-to-back every day for a year.  I suppose finding out that the person you love doesn't love you is bad enough, but not ever finding out why is worse.  At the same time, I feel a little bit gifted.  The way this all went down…it's made it very, very easy not to miss her.  I miss the contact, I miss the companionship, I miss what the relationship meant to me.  But I don't miss the person.  And this might sound like undeserved whining, but that's been pretty hard to reconcile within myself.  I feel bad for not feeling bad.  Hell, the hardest thing to deal with has been thinking about my rent doubling.

(EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm still happily taking donations.  And by "still happily taking donations" I of course mean "I'm waiting for one of you assholes to pony the fuck up.")

A big part of it is that I don't even know what to think because usually my relationships end thanks to my own patented brand of douchebaggery and idiocy.  But that's also why I can't feel too bad for myself this time: this is abject and unbiased karma.  I've screwed over a few people in some pretty reprehensible ways in my past and glided through more or less unscathed.  It's only right that I find my turn to be…um, I guess…scathed (sweet, it IS a word).  I'm reaping what I sowed.  I get it.

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2:43 PM - 8 Comments - 11 Kudos - Add Comment

Um...So, This is More Awkward for You Than for Me
Current mood: hopeful
Category: Romance and Relationships

Two things here to start:

1) I don’t really know what would be considered the "proper" way to approach this.

2) I rarely do anything "proper" anyway, so I think Point One is somewhat moot and I’ve just wasted your time.

The long and short of it is this: Christine is moving out.  We are breaking up.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Please go back and read that as if I were saying that as Peter Gallagher in AMERICAN BEAUTY.  Because that is EXACTLY my sentiment at the moment.  Thanks.  Proceed, please.)

The reason I’m writing this blog is mostly selfish - I don’t want to get a bunch of emails and phone calls about on the subject.  And in the next couple of days you would have heard about it or found out in some way, and if I didn’t say anything first, you’d assume that you’d be the only one who would think to call and say, "Well, if there’s anything I can do..."

Now don’t get me wrong - I totally appreciate the sentiment.  Seriously.  I know that you’d only be doing it because you care about me.  But, without giving too much away for the time being, this is something that’s been in the works for a few weeks and, even with all of that, I have no answers for you.  It would be an understatement to say that I’m surprised by a few recent events, but in that time I’ve figured that this was the road I was headed down.  I’m sad and I’m disappointed and I’m in a lot of ways curious as to how it all happened, but I’m also reconciled to the fact and feeling about as good about it as I could be.

For now the only relevant question is, "Hey...isn’t your rent going to double?"  Why yes, yes it is!  And the follow up to that would probably be, "But didn’t you just basically lose your job?  How the hell are you going to pay for the place?"  The answer to part one is a quick, "Pretty much," and the answer to the second part is, "If you’re reading this...hopefully you’re about to give me some money."

Here’s the most depressing notion for the moment: a girl lived with me for less than seven weeks...and that might end up being the all-time record.  I mean, come on, there’s not a one of you that knows me that won’t first go, "Aw, come on," and then immediately realize, "F*ck, he’s probably right."

Anyway, I’m here, it’s happened, and life goes on.  I can honestly say that I gave it my best this time, so I’ll take an E for Effort and carry on.

Currently listening : Fake Plastic Trees By Radiohead Release date: 25 September, 2000

7:18 PM - 0 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

An Open Letter to Consumers on This Merriest of Holidays
Current mood: catalyzed
Category: Music

In the spirit of the joyous season, I really, really want to get something out there, something that I feel passionately from the bottom of my heart.

I am a staunch believer in free will and the right of anyone to do whatever they want whenever they want as long as it doesn't infringe on anyone else. I would never dare to stop a soul from doing something that pleases them.

That said, if you're one of the eleventy billion jackoffs who's run out and bought the new Josh Groban album, I hope your Xmas is full of pain, suffering and many, many bitter levels of disappointment. I hope your car breaks down in the snow. I hope your Xmas Day turkey burns in the oven. I hope the wine you drink in the loving company of friends and family gives you such severe botulism that you're forced to flee to the confines of your nearest hospital, which will be a pain in the ass because your car has just broken down in the snow.

But most of all I hope you recognize what a tasteless, hopeless f*cking moron you are. Josh Groban sucks. He sucks uncontrollably, and your support of him - both financial and theoretical - is only going to encourage his blight upon the higher auditory senses.

This Letter will probably fall on deaf ears, because if you're one of the pigs who bought his Xmas album, you've clearly already given up on anything resembling a meaningful existence. Let this, then, be a merry warning to those of you who haven't thrown all hope away to NOT fall into the trap that so many troglodytic fools have fallen into before you.

Tidings of Comfort and Joy,

Geoff

Currently listening : Merry, Merry Christmas By New Kids on the Block Release date: 05 March, 1990

7:14 PM - 4 Comments - 5 Kudos - Add Comment

Hairy Holidays from the Bedford Street Mansion
Current mood: jolly
Category: Life

There's no blog.  There's no story.  Requests for explanations will go blissfully ignored.  Just go to my Pictures section and revel in the magic.  You owe me that much, and such loyalty will be rewarded with the Bedford Street Mansion East's and West's personal Xmas gift to you.



Hairy Holidays,

The Bedford Street Mansions East and West

Currently listening : Christmas with the Chipmunks By The Chipmunks Release date: 18 September, 2007

9:05 PM - 4 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment