Friday Fishwrap

Laughter

Is the secret to a successful marriage. Last night we were laying in bed drifting off and the missus started complaining about my twitching leg...

Me: "You mean my Jimmy leg?"
The Missus: "Jimmy leg?"
Me: "Yeah, my Jimmy leg..."

long pause

The Missus: "Where the hell does that come from... 'Jimmy' leg?"
Me: "The Irish."
The Missus: "The Irish?"
Me:"Yeah, the Irish... 'I'm drunk. I've lost my keys. My name is Jimmy.'"

Adios 2003

Don't let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya!

And HELLO 2004. You're looking mighty fine... mighty fine...

Have fun. Eat. Drink. Be merry.

But remember - it's amature night out there. Play it smart and plan ahead. Don't get behind the wheel if you've been drinking, or I'll have to come over there and knock you upside your itty bitty head.

Cheers! - MJ

I am what I am

Well, Solly said he wanted to hear me sing so here ya go.

I'll set the stage for you... My basement apartment is SF... Me and Cyndi (who sings harmony on this track)... half a bottle of whisky... clouds of smoke (legal and otherwise) and a 4 track Fostex deck. Cyndi? Sugar? ::cringe:: I know you're gonna kick my ASS for this, but I had to do it. So in the spirit of 2NiceGirls...

"I Am What I (h)Am" (or "Mother, Your Daughter Can Really Drink Beer")

Disclaimer: Having never put original music on the World Wide Wow, I'm a bit reticent to do so. If any schmuck out there thinks they can steal this song - you're wrong asshole. I have 45 BullDykes (capital B, capital D) in San Francisco who will attest to my authorship of this song over 15 years ago and we'll have to come kick your ass - don't fear the lawyers - fear us.

Did I mention this is how I came out to my mother? Ha!

update: While I am at it... here are two more (all of my own doing). These are sans Cyndi's most excellent harmonies (why didn't we get these on tape?!) and I literally cringe when I hear them - but what the fuck... I know, don't give up my day job. "Oh, yeah, I've been drinking..."

Southern Skies

Let Me In

again, the bulldyke copyright is in effect. Don't fuck with me...

House Log

I've tinkered enough for the time being. There has to be an easier way, but damned if I can figure it out.

At any rate: Here's the new house blog. No new pictures, but I've added some back ground information: Meiselman Primer for those of you unfamiliar with mid-century tract homes.

Last chance! Everything must go!

I'm dumping all of the Holiday mp3's today.

Report!

Weekend Update
Friday night was spent at home. Still recovering from the whorrore of Christmas day. Saturday we went over to our friend Schpindlonfür's (yes, it's a pseudonym, with umlaut even!) for a couple of drinks and some gift swapping. Schpindlonfür is a great guy - I have such a blast with him. Also a graphic designer, he and I love sharing cool stuff. Look at this radio he gave me... Oh yeah, that's cool daddy!)! Also, he has a similar twisted sense of humor that enables us to go on nonsensical riffs for 15 minutes straight. Love him. Love that. You're the best - See you at skating practice? 5:00am sharp - don't forget to ask your mom about regionals! (inside joke)...

Sunday, I hung out most of the day getting prepared for the arrival of my iMic. This little $40 piece of equipment (coupled with some software I already own) will allow me to convert my collection of cassettes to mp3's. When I say "collection" I mean boxes. Really - I have thousands of tapes. I spent most of yesterday getting through the first box trying to decide what to keep and what to pitch. Of course I pitched everything I already have on CD but still there was some old shit in there that I don't care about anymore... Not to mention all the "OMG - I'm so in love with you, I'm going to make you a tape" tapes (think High Fidelity). I had that shit down to a science. In fact I admired my creations so, I always made a copy for myself...

I'm halfway through the first box... And that's just the sorting. Then comes the ripping and burning. I'm sure you're all fascinated...

In other house buying news...
We (and I can officially say "we" now - thanks baby!) are set to close after the new year, but we currently have some folks over there repairing the worst of the dry rot as part of an escrow credit. The pool has been drained and it looks like we will need to replaster. Oh goody. I enjoyed it so much last year... I'll put up some more pics this afternoon.

The Low Down

I've gotten a number of requests lately for an "about page" and we here at the Friday Fishwrap listen to our readers. You can now find A Brief History of MJ located exactly where you would think it should be.
hint: it might have something to do with my picture on the right...

Posts Removed

I don't normally do this, but in the name of preserving harmony in my family I've removed the two posts that referred to Christmas dinner.

WOO HOO!

igotanipod ... igotanipod ... igotanipod

Yup - I totally did the iPod dance without even thinking about it. Loaded my iTunes up, put on the headphones, and danced around like a fool! WOO HOO!

TGImp3F Holiday Edition

Yes, I know it's Tuesday, but here's the final installment of the TGImp3 Holiday Edition...

Collect them all! Feel the Fishwrap love and a very very Happy Happy Holiday to you and yours from this little fruitcake!

The Chanukah Song - Adam Sandler
delinked!

The NEW Chanukah Song - Adam Sandler
delinked!

Baby, It's Cold Outside - Louis Armstrong/Velma Middleton (Mulato Beat Remix)
delinked!

and finally, there can be no Holiday without a little Blue Eyes:

Mistletoe and Holly - Frank Sinatra

Stirred not Shaken

We're fine. In fact, I'm a tad disappointed... I didn't even know it was an earthquake when I felt it, I thought I was dizzy for a sec. - actually I probably was just dizzy and didn't feel a thing.

Hope everyone else is okay!

From Shit Hole to Chic

You want pictures? I'll be working up a whole progress site for the project when I get the chance, but in the mean time, here's a bit of what I took the other day (I'll save you from the bathroom photo's). And no, the floor plan is not to scale. What do I look like ... An engineer er sumptin'?

From Shit Hole to Chic

TGImp3F Holiday Edition

Hey! It's Friday - Cue music!

Green Christmas - Barenaked Ladies

This time of the Year - Etta James

The Merriest - June Christy

Note to Self

Always keep large amounts of extra cat food laying around.

Cats Try to Eat Incapacitated Owner

A heavily edited version of this wire report appeared in my paper this morning. Being the sick fuck that I am, I totally laughed out loud because we were out of kibble and the cats were looking at me funny, circling and mmrrowling. When I found the full version online I felt kinda bad for laughing - but I did go right out to the store and buy them PLENTY of food...

36 Hours

The New York Times today has a nice article on my little town:
36 Hours: Palm Springs, Calif.

There's a hooker in Takrit

And she wants her spider hole back!

This one's been making the rounds - thanks to eveyone who sent it to me! And yes, I am working on pictures. They might have to wait for the weekend though. I'm busy as buck right now.

Oh. My. God.

We finally got access to the house across the street yesterday. While not quite as bad as I feared it could have been, it's pretty fucking nasty. Truck loads of garbage (some unidentifiable objects that will require the use of respirators and haz-mat suits - I'm only half kidding), plenty of cosmetic fluffing, and a bit of structural modifications, new floors, new kitchen, and two baths - but all in all very doable.

But dear god almighty, the filth. I have no idea how people can live in such nasty, dilapidated conditions. Really, just a hint of pride can make a huge difference, but these people didn't give a shit. Not about themselves, their home, their neighbors, the neighborhood. And the smell. It's enough to make you gag.

Did I mention the train room? Yes, the old man was quite the hobbiest. An entire 18x18 room with villages, mountains, trestles, rivers, teeny tiny trees and people... Amazing. Simply amazing. I don't know a thing about trains. I guess there are different scales or something, but I don't know how to tell.

The room has a separate entrance from the rest of the house so I'm betting that the renters did not have access to this room, otherwise they would have stripped it and sold it. I have no idea what to do with it. We'd have to cut it up into small sections to even get it out of the room. I don't know... I don't even know if it's worth anything. Any train people out there? I know some people go gaga over that shit. Any ideas? I don't want to do eBay - there's no way to ship it. Pennywise maybe?

We've got a slew of inspections today, and oh yeah, I have some work to do, so I'll be sure to get some pictures up by tomorrow.

Purr-anda Rights

How stoned is too stoned? Dude - put down the bong.
via exploding cigar

Weekend Report

Or... My so-called fabulous life.

I haven't done a weekend report in a while.

Friday Night Report: Having been pumped full of antibiotics, I felt well enough to venture out into the world. We went to a tree trimming party at A and D's place. Gorgeous huge house in Las Palmas. It gave me a serious case of house envy. Apparently they bought the place 6 years ago for a fucking SONG. The late 80's and 90's were some pretty hard times for Palm Springs. You could get property at laughable prices. Let's just say a house that sells for $750K today was available for around $75-100K 5-10 years ago. Twitch.

When we arrived, it was a good sized crowd of mostly older folks (and I mean older... Metamucil much?) that I'd never met before. But slowly the usual mod-com suspects pulled in and before I knew it, there were 40-50 people I knew there.

It was great to see everyone. For some reason, this year the mod-com social circuit has fallen off from the whirlwind booze cruises of years past. Perhaps the cost of vodka has made it impractical to regularly entertain this crowd anymore.

The buffet was amazing - Lamb chops, pork tenderloin, grapefruit souffle (who knew?). The only downside to the evening was the host's 9 year old monster beast child. As a barren lesbian I have no place to criticize anyones child rearing methods, but good lord, if I had ever behaved so badly, my mother would have grabbed me by the ear and sent me away to school. Wait, she actually did that ... never mind.

Anyway, at one point in the evening, this kid was flat out tearing around the party with her buddy waving a 3 foot rubber snake playing tag or something, running into people and spilling drinks when THE ACCIDENT happened.

In their ADD sugar induced frenzy, the two kids knocked over a 4 foot holiday planter (that appeared to be hand made by our hostess), sending it crashing down into the sunken living room. Thankfully, there were no injuries, only minor breakage. But as the stunned crowd gaped in silent horror, the beast child let out a blood curdling scream that I swear you could hear 4 blocks away and made my ears bleed.

"MOMMMMMMMM! ... MOMMMMMMMM! ... I DIDUNT DO IT!"

Which of course she did, but we were all in shock and completely frozen in place. Mom came a-running and quickly locked the beast child in a closet or something because she was conspicuously absent the rest of the evening. And slowly my hearing came back.

Saturday Night Report: We'd made plans to meet Rich and MJS (and possibly Erb) at Wang's, a great new rest/bar that recently opened, around 8:00. There was an ADC lecture at the museum that a lot of people we knew were attending but that we opted out of because, well... yawn. I didn't want to sit through it.

Upon entering the restaurant, we discovered that everyone who went to the lecture had decided to also join us for dinner. I hadn't planned on dinner, it was just going to be a couple of drinks, I thought, but there we were - 15 people looking for a table at 8:00 on Saturday night at the new hotspot with no reservation. Ooops. They said the wait would be 45 mins to an hour and as we got into a few rounds of cocktails the crowd slowly thinned until by the time we were to be seated, I think there were maybe six people left. Ooops2. We skipped out and went home. Ooops3. Restaurants hate that. That's a good way to get on their shit list.

Sunday Report: As noted below, I was greeted by the beautiful sight of a 20' U-Haul across the street. Spent most of the day watching football, spying on the neighbors and hanging more xmas lights. Then we ordered pizza and watched Survivor. Go Sandra! Woot! Lill - you're a fucking idiot. But that's nothing we didn't already know.

Now... Hmmm. Where did I put that sledgehammer? I can't wait! I think I'll set up a little sub domain to track our renovation progress.

I'm Going to Hell

Moving!

They're moving in the right direction. Far, far away from here. Finally!

The drug dealers in (the soon to be) our house across the street have run out of time. The sheriff is scheduled to show up tomorrow AM to evict them and change the locks. Nothing like waiting til the last minute eh?

I tell ya, a fucking U-Haul never looked so good! We expect a quick closure now and gutting to begin shortly.

TGImp3F Holiday Edition

Hey it's Friday. And it's that time of year folks. Yes, that's right, it's time for the second installment of the Holiday Edition TGImp3Friday. Enjoy!

Donde Esta Santa Claus - Guster
delinked!

Winter Wonderland - Johnny Mercer (Rise Ashen's Brazilian Beach Mix)
delinked!

The Dog Song - Nellie McKay (not a Christmas Song per se, but very holiday-ish!)
delinked!

Better Lay Off the Hooch Frosty

Frighten the children! Make your own psycho snowman!
via A Welsh View

Or there's a simpler version here.

via g-spot

"Drink Papa, Drink! Nobody likes a Sober Santa" Watch out for the rails!
via presurfer

Moments ago I heard the Missus howling with laughter in the other room. Turns out she had just seen this Fed Ex commercial for the first time.

Oh, to be 18 again

With a John Cougar mullet and flawless skin. While cleaning out some old files, I stumbled upon this.

But now I'm a 37, married, decent haircut, home owning, expert christmas light hanger... And I'm okay with that.

She shoots! She scores!

Damn! Am I good or am I good? I not only scratched 2 things off that list down there, I managed to dink around, wallow in my misery AND fix the broken patio heater (while not on the list, a clever avoidance tactic for the whole palm tree light stringing nightmare). It's not even 3:00 yet! The day is young!

As the Missus just said..

"Wow! You're just like MacGyver!"

To Do List

"The Holiday" is fast approaching and I have thus far successfully hidden my head in the sand, pretending it wasn't happening. LA LA LA! I can't hear you Christmas carols! You have no power here!

But guess what? It's here. And I have to face up the fact that even though I am dying of some horrible flu related staph infection in my lungs (I heard it on Good Morning America - it has to be true!) and it's likely I won't live to see the 25th of this month, there are things I must do, because it's tradition! More importantly, I want my loved ones to remember that I cared enough to at least make the effort before I went on to my great reward.

Here then is my list for today:
1) Dig out the goddamn lights for the palm trees out front from the bowels of the garage
1A) Actually put them up. Go buy NEW ones.
2) Find the shiny sparkly blue ball thingy and hang it up.
3) Figure out where to hang wicked cool antique Christmas lights (a gift from the engineer) where they won't start a fire and burn the house down.
4) Buy at least one present for someone other than myself.
6) Swap out flood lights in front with appropriate holiday colors.
7) Confirm the Knob-Nog™ recipe is still valid.
9) Call Notary, arrange for house call to validate last minute NyQuil induced changes to my will.

Or there's the short list:
10) Do absolutely nothing but wallow in my misery and dink around online all day. Yeah, that's the ticket. LA LA LA!

Run for the Roses

This was too funny not to share...

Welcome to the third race at The Honeymoon is Over Downs! 1.3MB

thanks keith!

Shop Talk

Ya know what I hate? I hate it when my rep at the service bureau tells me on Thursday "Yeah, we use Adobe InDesign - no problem!" But then he calls back on Monday after I'm 8 production hours into the project to tell me "Uh - no I was wrong. We don't use it, but I hear it's great! Everybody's talking about it! ... Uh, no we're not getting it anytime soon."

Bite me, Ludite. I want my day back! And no, I won't bill it back to the client. Damn ethics.

Palm Springs Festival of Lights

There was a HUGE crowd this year. Bigger than I've ever seen before and this was my fourth F.O.L. parade. Just trying to get downtown was a challenge. Following the stellar directions from one of my dining companions, I ended up parking over 6 blocks away from our destination. He made up for it though by scoring the best table front and center on the street. We all enjoyed a sumptuous dinner while watching the parade go by.

I recently bought a new digital camera, the Olympus Stylus 400 which totally rocks except I haven't figured out how to adjust exposure times. I guess there is a preset night scene mode that I should have tried out. Simply turning off the flash made for some interesting effects, though. I wish more of these had come out. But you'll get the idea. My favorite float this year was Finding Nemo (towards the end of the slide show)

Here are my pics from Parade.

I'm totally bummed but I think we're going to skip the Tamale Festival today. I feel like total crap and the missus is not much better. Last night wore me out even though I was in bed by 11:30. I hate being sick. Ha-ha-ha-hate it (geshunteit). Football in bed looks like the prescription of the day.

Big Weekend

Even though I still feel like crap, nothin's gonna keep me from enjoying this weekend. Tomorrow night is the fantastic Festival of Lights parade. I love this town! It'll be 55 degrees and eveyone will be wearing parkas and mittens.

And Sunday will be spent out in Indio at the Tamale Festival sampling some of the worlds best tamales. But you can bet we won't be trying the Strawberry Tamales again. Fruit and Masa were never meant for eachother.

I'm With Stupid -->

Take the Not All Americans Are Stupid Quiz. I scored 17 out of 20 (which I thought was pretty damn good considering that the average score for Americans AND other countries is currently running around 13-14) but I was still insulted at the end. Bah.

Since we're all so dumb, let's play Slingshot Santa! Click once to get the catapult rolling, then click and hold to launch the poor bastard. Watch out for the cliff. You'll figure it out. My high score so far: 246.10 (I picked up a lot on the slide) Oh, and you'll want to kill the yodelers after about 45 seconds.
via statia

TGImp3F Holiday Edition

Hey it's Friday. And it's that time of year folks. Yes, that's right, it's time for the holiday editions of TGImp3Fridays.

Winter Weather - Squirrel Nut Zippers
Even though it's 78º and sunny here ... I do love the winter weather.
delinked!

Merry Christmas from the Family - Robert Earl Keen
My favorite christmas song ever. Sums up what family and the holidays are all about.
delinked!

Cha Cha All the Way - Capital Studio Orchestra
Tell me you listened to this and didn't shake your butt at the "cha cha cha" ... I won't believe you.
delinked!

And don't miss Dragnet: The Christmas Story (expires 12/7)

Shiny! Sparkly!

I've been thinking about a little facelift around here. As a professional graphic designer, I am always looking for inspiration. What do you think about this? It's got pizzazz! I feel dizzy now...

This is just wrong: Weenies: The Adult Plush Toy

Midget Tossing. Now that's good clean fun.

Turn this guys Christmas lights on and off. Man I'd hate to be his neighbor.

Speaking of Christmas and wrapping paper.. We weren't? Oh, well anyway.. Here's some special wrapping paper. I want the Biohazard/Caution.

In other news:
I've gained 10lbs. It's all in my sinuses. I'm seriously in the hurt locker. Even my eyeballs ache. And I know it's going to get worse before it gets better. I feel so bad for the Missus. I was wheezing, coughing, moaning and hacking all night. When I did sleep, I snored like a MoFo, I even woke myself up. At 4:00 I found the bed empty and assume she went to catch a few winks in the guest room. She came back in around 6:00 so I got up to let her sleep. I fear she is just a few days behind me. We might have to go into a quarantine lock-down.

Rut Roh

I never should have quoted that Zero Files thing yesterday. My logs this morning showed several hits coming from IPs that end in "usdoj.gov" - man that was quick.

A Pugs Life

The following little number goes out to my good bud Mopsa, who has demonstrated her propensity for publicly embarassing her dogs. I'm sure she'll rise to her own defense by saying "they like it" or some such nonsense.

Don't Sniff My Butt... I'm A Pumpkin

Tuesday Timewasters!

DYI - (not safe for work)
Looking for that perfect gift? Girls: Match Your Snatch. Guys: Clone Your Bone. Oh and guys? Size does matter, so you might want to augment before you clone...

First sign of the apocalypse: The Future is...
via outoutblogspot

A few funnies from Yuk Yuk. Fun for a minute: Cat and Mouse. Fun for more than a minute, but not by much: Suburban Cat Herder

In other news:
I've got that goddamn cold. I know it. Sore scratchy throat, runny nose... Fuck.

The Zero Files

"I had a visit yesterday from two gentlemen who said they were from the SECRET SERVICE! They were looking for the HAMBURGLAR who said the PRESIDENT might choke on a CHEESEBURGER on AIR FORCE ONE! No wonder they can't balance a TRILLION DOLLAR BUDGET in DC, they have to check out all the MCDONALDS in AMERICA for the DEADLY CHEESEBURGER that might KILL the PRESIDENT! This is not a JOKE."

From the FBI's Zero Files.

Dear Dykewrite

If you are not a member of Dykewrite.com - this post will mean zip, zero, nada to you. If you are a member, perhaps I'm not alone in my opinions...

It's time for me to go girls.

I've been meaning to do this for a while now, but kept waiting for something to really kick me in the ass. I hope no one takes this personally - as it is not written to single anyone out.

I tried posting this on the new discussion board but after registering, confirming, validating, logging in, jumping up and down and sideways through the flaming hoops, I was unable to create an appropriate topic for it, nor was I able to post a reply on the Dykewrite News board, which totally reinforces my point :/

From a visual standpoint, kudos to Jenna for the redesign.

From a community standpoint, I just don't get it.

Since I joined the group in May of 2002, I've watched Dykewrite drift further and further away from what drew me to it in the first place.

Dykewrite (the .com site, not the ring sites) has gone from insightful, member driven, interactive, fun, witty, serious and thought provoking to no new posts for weeks/months at a time, to the same two or three people occasionally posting.

And now with the redesign, all I see is a portal-like shell used to promote of a select group of authors and has very little to do with the people that actually make up the Dykewrite rings.

Personally, I see nothing there that improves or promotes community and interaction, but that's me. It feels less and less like a diverse collection of interesting women bloggers/writers.

I understand you're trying to steer member interaction over to the discussion boards, however I doubt that it's going to create much of a community, if that is in fact what you want. Maybe it's not. Maybe you're actually trying to create a portal and not a community site.

Perhaps it's that I have never been a good fit for Dykewrite.

It would seem now that the only reason for me to remain a member is to drive traffic to my site. Driving traffic is not why I joined. That said, I'm thinking it would be best for me to withdraw my membership.

I hope nothing but the best for Dykewrite and I appreciate everyone's efforts to improve the site, it's really just not for me anymore. I'm sure I'll continue to surf the rings. There are some awesome women out there!

Cheers - MJ

I'll Back You Up

So the Engineer arrived with a hard drive containing thousands of mp3's that she said I could have needed someone to "back up" for her. Just for safe keeping, simple data storage that's all. Every once in a while I need to just "check them" you know to make sure there's been no data loss. In a pay it forward gesture, you can help me with quality assurance.

Here's a list of some of the kick ass groovy tunes data files that I'm currently "backing up" for the Engineer.

6.0MB - The Cult: She Sells Sanctuary

4.8MB - Ry Cooder & Manuel Galban: Patricia (can you tell me what TV show uses this as its theme song? Googling is cheating)

3.7MB - The Who: I'm One (I got the whole Quadrophenia soundtrack - booyah)

3.9MB - David Gray: L's Song

3.3MB - Violent Femmes: Prove My Love (Live)

5.7MB - Vince Guaraldi Trio: O Nosso Amor

update: I totally forgot to mention that today is the last day to snag the Ding Dong Dandy Christmas album from Basic Hip Digital Oddio! Links expire at 6pm Pacific.
via scrubbles