Holy Buck, Fatman!

Ah! Tagged back. This is interesting as I have just recieved an E mail with “four things” from another friend. So, to satisfy both, I’ll answer here.

What were you doing five years ago?

On May 14, 2005, My husband and I closed on our first condo together.

What are five things on your to-do list for today (not in any particular order):

Work shit (too boring to type here)

Send out my resume

Call to renew a perscription for Short Round

Try not to be snarky to unsolicted calls for business (FAIL)

Listen to old episodes of “This American Life”

What are five snacks you enjoy?

Ice cream

Cheese fries

Flourless chocolate Cloud Cake

Carnitas Nachos

Fried Chicken/Chicken Wings

What five things would you do if you were a billionaire?

Lobby Congress for universal healthcare

Lobby to reverse every single policy put in place by the Bush Administration

Set up a foundation to further Stem Cell research for Blood Born Cancers (screw fed funding, I’d fund it)

Go on long trips taking photos and making Art

Own a comic book shop and sneer at people who buy stuff I don’t like.

What are five of your bad habits?

Procrastination. On just about everything.

Nagging my husband for stupid shit

not putting my stuff away

telling stories over and over again

being depressing at stupid, inopportune moments

What are five places where you have lived?

Redbank, NJ

Miami, Fla

Chelmsford, MA

Greensboro, NC

Baltimore, MD

*in that order

What are five jobs you have had?

Bartender

Check out girl

Bagel shop cream cheese maker

waitress

accountant

Now I’m not going to tag anyone, cuz…well…I already tagged people with the book thing. You wanna do it? Do it.

Did I ever mention that I heart Radiohead sooooo much that I even went as far to tattoo their logo on my back?

Well, I do. When they play a live show, it’ freaking  amazing, I try never to miss it. Except when acts of God seem to figure in. For any Radiohead fan in the DC metro area, Bull Run comes to mind. We all know this sad sad sad story.

When they announced their DC area show was going to be at the Nissan Pavillion in Bristow VA, Both Mister Fatman and I (who Met HERE, BTW) decided, Fuuuck No. We weren’t going to drive to NoVA, no matter HOW much we love Radiohead. Screw that.

The venue is not very close to DC. In fact, it’s about an hour away, in the middle of a few civil war battle fields and some Exurb neighborhoods.  There is only one road that leads to it–simply a wonder in high volume civil engineering. It’s no wonder that a freakish monsoon like rainstorm came barreling in and pretty much fucked every single fan coming to see the show.

The band hasn’t had very much luck with the DC area. Each time hey play here, for some reason, an act of god occurs just fucking shit up.  The band has even acknowledged this.  I did have friends attending the show as well. They never made it.

What is probably the most infuriating part about the situation is the band’s pledge to make their shows more “green”. They announced before this tour had started they intended on playing venues that were accessible by mass transit.

So, after hearing this—WTF?!?!?!!?!? If Radiohead has made quite a name for themselves by producing and distributing their own album, why can’t they make better decisions on the venues they’re playing at? Do they NOT make the final decisions on the tour stops? if Thom boasted about this decision, why didn’t they play IN DC PROPER where the mass transit is more then adequate to handle thousands of people for an event. if they like the outdoor venues, then SHIIIIT—play Pier Six Concert Pavilion in FUCKING BALTIMORE. Same size—in a metro area, accessible by mass transit.

I love the band. I do–but this, playing in this SHIT venue in the middle of the exurbs of DC is a  major faux pas given the decision to “be more green”. I think the band needs to say something about this, especially if enough people actually start squawking about it. People paid to see them—and they never made it because of the location of the venue.

Only accessible by vehicle.

Just so you’re aware.

Love,

The Holy Fatman

Go see it.

and Stay until after the credits.

While I’m not a meme type, I did see one on Evil Bender that I can actually get into. “106 Books of Pretension,” which is really “the top 106 books most often marked as ‘unread’ by LibraryThing’s users.” So…lets see how pretentious I am. What I have finished is in Italics, what I started and DIDN’T finish is struck through.

* Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrel
* Anna Karenina
* Crime and Punishment
* Catch-22
* One Hundred Years of Solitude
* Wuthering Heights
* The Silmarillion
* Life of Pi : a novel
* The Name of the Rose
* Don Quixote
* Moby Dick (Don’t worry, bender—I CHOKED through this one. It’s a real downer.)
* Ulysses
* Madame Bovary
* The Odyssey
* Pride and Prejudice
* Jane Eyre
* The Tale of Two Cities
* The Brothers Karamazov
* Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
* War and Peace
* Vanity Fair
* The Time Traveler’s Wife
* The Iliad
* Emma
* The Blind Assassin
* The Kite Runner
* Mrs. Dalloway
* Great Expectations
* American Gods
* A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
* Atlas Shrugged (what a piece of shit book!)
* Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
* Memoirs of a Geisha
* Middlesex
* Quicksilver
* Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
* The Canterbury tales
* The Historian : a novel
* A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
* Love in the Time of Cholera
* Brave New world
* The Fountainhead
* Foucault’s Pendulum
* Middlemarch
* Frankenstein
* The Count of Monte Cristo
* Dracula
* A Clockwork Orange
* Anansi Boys
* The Once and Future King
* The Grapes of Wrath
* The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
* 1984
* Angels & Demons
* The Inferno
* The Satanic Verses
* Sense and Sensibility
* The Picture of Dorian Gray
* Mansfield Park
* One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
* To the Lighthouse
* Tess of the D’Urbervilles
* Oliver Twist
* Gulliver’s Travels
* Les Misérables
* The Corrections
* The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
* The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
* Dune
* The Prince
* The Sound and the Fury
* Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
* The God of Small Things
* A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
* Cryptonomicon
* Neverwhere
* A Confederacy of Dunces
* A Short History of Nearly Everything
* Dubliners
* The Unbearable Lightness of Being
* Beloved
* Slaughterhouse-five
* The Scarlet Letter
* Eats, Shoots & Leaves
* The Mists of Avalon
* Oryx and Crake : a novel
* Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
* Cloud Atlas
* The Confusion
* Lolita
* Persuasion
* Northanger Abbey
* The Catcher in the Rye
* On the Road
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame
* Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
* Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
* The Aeneid
* Watership Down
* Gravity’s Rainbow
* The Hobbit
* In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
* White Teeth
* Treasure Island
* David Copperfield
* The Three Musketeers

I should state that I took an entire class dedicated to Jane Austin’s work, so that explains that one. Also, I spent nearly two years in electives surrounding either American or English Literature. I also commute 2 hours daily, so I read. A LOT.  I love the classics, too.

Tagged:

Morgy

Neighborhood Librarian

Snay

I haven’t ever really liked Federal Hill. Maybe it was the types that frequented the bars. I didn’t know—It never really appealed to me.  It’s cool to visit sometimes, but I just love Fells so much better. When we refer to the neighborhoods, We sometimes say, “Oh yeah, that’s across the pond”. I don’t think I’ve been to Federal Hill in ages.

Well, Now I have a reason to avoid it all together. However, I can’t help but think that the chick might come to our side of the pond to shop at Whole Foods. Dammit. And fucking hell—her fiancee will be here.

Just stay on your side of the pond, chicky. The good people of Fells Point don’t like yer Kind.

Yesterday, while I drove back home from the train station, I was listening to all things considered while enjoying the good weather we’d be having. Normally, the snippets are short but informing and hardly ever infuriate me. However, listening to this over privileged southern white woman mask her racism by justifying a shitty ad against Obama because of what a former preacher in his church had said. “He’s just to extreme for North Carolina” The Ad states. The ad ties Obama with two NC democratic governors who are endorsing Obama. What? Why? What is the reason for this ad?

Huh?

Listening to the woman talk in her demure southern voice just kept getting under my skin. She spoke slowly, choosing her words rather carefully as she didn’t really want people to know what the ad really was about. Of Course, there were a few dog whistles in her carefully chosen words. “Freedom of Speech”, “A State Issue” “About the People of North Carolina”

Having once been a resident of a State I haven’t set foot in since 1996, I knew EXACTLY why she was running this ad. Back in 1996, Jesse “Don’t let THAT Boy Win” Helms was in a tight race for Senate against Harvey Gantt, Former Mayor of Charlotte, NC, successful business owner and a black man. While it was NO SECRET that Helms is one of those Strom Thurmond like southern Good “Ole Boys, he was quite challenged by Gantt and pulled all punches to make sure his base remained in perpetual fear of a black man being charge. During the election, residents of NC were subjected to perpetual ads using multiple racist dog whistles that appealed to Helm’s steady base of rich white people.

Listening to this Linda Davies speak in her slow, calculated way conjured up images of the country club community I once lived in while in High School. People would be cordial, welcoming and rather warm. When they heard my mother was Puerto Rican, well….that was it. We never saw them again. The same thing happened while I attended school there. All the kids were generally nice–except after the project on our genealogy came up. It was reveled that I was half Hispanic and although I’m fair skinned, I was also seen as less of a human in certain circles. I was called “Poodle head Spic” by the boys. There were no other Hispanic people in my school. There were only 5 black kids and they had developed a rather thick skin. Hardly anyone spoke to them and they had a tight nit group. The One black teacher was fired for teaching Black History during February after some parents complained. he was fired because of “alledged abuse of Alchohol.” He was a teacher of mine and I never thought he was ever drunk. In fact, I thought him to be quite interesting as he was involved in the Greensboro Woolworth’s sit in.

I felt like I needed to keep my background a secret, so I did. I identified as Polish from that point on and never spoke of my mothers family. Woman who met my parents would say, ” You know, those people” and my parents knew what they were speaking about. It was an ever present attitude that seemed to drape the State like the Ghost of Jim Crowe. I never understood what that ghost was until some years later.

It’s clear the ghost hasn’t been exercised.

Apparently, this guy, who is running for a congressional seat for the great State of Indiana (I should point out, on the GOP side of the fence) is a bit of an Idiot….

He also told WIMS radio in Michigan City that he didn’t believe the event he attended included people necessarily of the Nazi mindset, pointing out the name isn’t Nazi, but Nationalist Socialist Workers Party.

I think this idiot needs to review his history. The “national socialist workers party” is, indeed, the Nazi party.

The stupid, It burns.

h/t shakesville

To make *MY* life easier.

I may upgrade the theme soon. I’m thinking about it.

Biofuels, a celebrated alternative to energy, are creating a bit of a supply and demand problem. There is a lot of supply needed for Ethanol and while the biofuel companies are gobbling the grain up, the rest of the world is demanding lower food prices. Would it seem that this is EXACTLY what oil companies want so in conjunction with Oil being over 117 bucks a barrel and inflation rising faster then expected, the will of the cash strapped ‘murkin will cry loudly for a few things: Call for drilling in Alaska, invade Iran and Venezuela?

I think so, too.