Smarticus's Xanga

Sarah Palin

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 16:10:45 GMT

What a great choice for McCain! The choice of Palin (young, attractive, outdoorsy, and vibrant) makes McCain look...youthful and more maverick-ish? Not so old and fuddy-duddy and stuck in the misty distant past, at least. Given the ads McCain ran this last week which took Obama to task for not choosing Hillary, a Republican woman as VP looks almost feminist. If you squint and look sideways and the light is just so, anyway.

I also suspect that Palin will prove tricky for Biden to deal with in debates. We've come a long way, baby, but I don't think we've come so far that Biden's style of verbal evisceration would look well when directed at a woman (purely a gut feeling, there).

Palin has good conservative creds--she's impeccably pro-life, and as far as I can tell given her short resume, she's a pretty typical western-state Republican (a Republican with a a creamy Libertarian-flavored center). Palin isn't as rabidly anti-gay as old school GOP types are comfortable with, but that's really not an issue here, as Obama won't run any ads taking Palin to task for liking the homos too much.

Now, for myself alone, I'm not particularly impressed with her. I think she's really inexperienced, for one. And as mentioned above, she's not at all pro-choice. She's no Hillary, and if I were a P.U.M.A. (god forbid), I'd find McCain's choice to be pretty condescending. Vaginas are not interchangeable.

Also Palin is an Alaskan politician, and right now their whole state seems to be awash in corruption. Palin is facing an investigation as to whether she pressured an official to fire her ne'er do well brother-in-law from his state trooper position. I imagine that McCain's people vetted her and found the charge to be untrue, or to at least have no real legs. But still, kiiiind of sketchy.

All in all, a very interesting choice. It's pretty cool to think we've turned a corner this election year, and that finally, regardless of race or gender or situation in life, parents can say "you can grow up to be President someday!" and actually mean it.

house tour!

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 05:41:48 GMT

it's a pink(ish) house!

+ about a billion more

Bringin' It

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 04:22:28 GMT

Hillary Clinton's speech tonight at the DNC totally KILLED. I hope that it earned her a spot on the Supreme Court, at the least!

A Very Bougie Lifestyle

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 19:48:21 GMT

Hello, all--we are all moved in to the new house! Everyone loves it. The girls are really enjoying the back yard. The lot is about 1/3 of an acre, which is enormous for this area. The kids eat breakfast and then go run around out there, getting filthy and catching bugs and screeching a lot. This has freed me up to drink steadily all day. Not to worry, I do take a break in the afternoon so that I'm sober before Chuck gets home. KIDDING! In reality I am still sloshed when he walks through the door! OK, really I don't really drink except at dinner (and maybe a pre-dinner cocktail and a nightcap. Tsk, such a lush).

The kitchen here has granite countertops and travertine floors. These things are a bitch to care for! If anybody has some tips on keeping a (stupid) marble (KITCHEN! WHO FLOORS THE KITCHEN IN WHITE MARBLE?!) floor clean, do let me know.

I have many rose bushes! They are the cutting kind, not the smelling kind. But they are still very pretty and I have vases full all over the house. Also there are gardenia bushes and some kind of small lily. Oh, and blackberries! I am going to go play bocce in the yard later, and then lounge in the sun like a lizard.

We are living it up, y'all! Do drop in for a visit.

JAC HAD HER BABY!

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 00:16:40 GMT

this is an update from frostbeard, (jac's husband), who posted the following:

Éowyn Catherine was born last night at 2:38am. She's 7lbs 5oz, 20-1/2" long, and absolutely gorgeous. Jac didn't have any painkillers at all during the labour, which lasted about three hours. She's badass, yo.

so YAY jac, and YAY jac's family! go send some love!

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 20:51:43 GMT

OMFG isaac hayes died! they found him dead on his treadmill. suckage.

in other news i am purging and packing in anticipation of moving day 2008. an actual house awaits! not a dinky townhome, but an actual house with a huge backyard. and happily the move will be over before school starts up again.

i walked TEN MILES yesterday. all you athletic types are sneering, i know. but i have a BMI of like, cheeze whiz (actual number: 28), so for me to go ten miles is a pretty big deal. i have been getting 10K steps per day minimum since the fourth of july. it has been surprisingly easy to do that. i walk about six miles/ day usually.

this blog is a bunch of random crap. my apologies.

huh?

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:32:35 GMT

this morning ada had zoo camp (FUN! FUR! FEATHERS! and also really! expensive!). i have to sign her in and out of zoo camp, so i parked the car, walked her to the gate, and signed her in. THE RUB: i left julia (6) and delia (16 mos.) in the car. the motor was off, the brake was set, the car was locked. i was gone less than a minute. i could see the car the entire time.

another mother told me that i shouldn't have left the kids in the car because it was really unsafe. and illegal, she added.

i was too surprised to say anything. when i was little, my mother left me in the car for entire errands--twenty to thirty minutes, sometimes. i would read a book. obviously, i lived through the horror.

google tells me that in california, i cannot leave a child under six in a car if the motor is running, or if there are conditions (temperature, i assume?) that put the child significantly at risk. i confess that i leave the kids in the car to walk to the ATM machine and the like. same parameters as above--i've got to be able to see them at all times, they have to be comfortable, and i never leave them with the keys. the car must be locked, in park, and have the parking brake set.

your response:

A) i am calling CPS right now--that other mom was right to chastise you!

B) i'd never ever leave my kids alone in the car, but no harm, no foul.

C) i don't see the problem with leaving them, given the circumstances you describe.

D) i've done this myself.

E) hell, i leave the little darlings in the car when i go gambling at indian casinos. i just throw them some mixed nuts and a red bull every few hours.

POT V. LIQUOR

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 19:26:40 GMT

good pot: expensive

good liquor: expensive

TIE

pot: dorky paraphernalia sold in head shops run by dreadlocked hacky sack players

liquor: classy accoutrements available in upscale retailers nationwide

LIQUOR

pot: bong water spilling on carpet

liquor: puking in a chip bowl

TIE

pot: the glamour of emphysema

liquor: sexy cirrhosis

TIE

pot: soporific; occasional pontification re: libertarianism, 9/11 conspiracy theories

liquor: maudlin confessions; transient belligerence

POT (marginally)

pot: relaxed sexual encounters

liquor: flaccidity

POT (landslide)

pot: passed out on couch

liquor: passed out in alleyway

POT

pot: requires connection, cash

liquor: requires trip to corner store, ID

LIQUOR

pot: mild paranoia; gullibility

liquor: DT's; regrettable one-night stands

POT

pot: wake and bake

liquor: hair of the dog

LIQUOR (bloody mary w/ absolut citron, crunchy celery stick, tobasco)

pot: indulgence after motherhood frowned upon in most circles

liquor: tippling in front of offspring considered traditional adult behavior

LIQUOR

winner: TIE

everybody panic

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 22:13:08 GMT

hey! i got to thinking the other day, and i can't remember the economy being so shaky since i was girl WAY BACK IN THE 1970's. that was a long damn time ago! grocery prices were rising, the price of gas was rocketing up, and my parents couldn't go fifteen minutes without screaming at each other about money.

things my mother did to slash our household budget:

made us all walk everywhere, all the damn time. did you know that if your grocery store is a mile away it is not a good idea to buy a half-gallon block of ice cream and walk home? well now you do!
never turned on our air conditioning. summer nights felt like you were trying to sleep in a compost heap.
gardened! very poorly! flavorless zucchini the size of baseball bats and an abundance of weird-looking buggy green bell peppers--it's what's for dinner.
made all my clothes for school. my mother is an excellent, excellent seamstress. she can make wedding dresses that are almost as gorgeous inside out as they are on the right side. however, since she actively rejected every social movement occurring after the kennedy assassination, she had ideas about what constituted appropriate school attire for young girls. no pants, for one. no loud colors or prints. my dresses had to have sleeves. and collars. collars that buttoned all the way up. at the time, i just thought i looked like laura ingalls. in reality i looked like a doofus. an FLDS doofus.

oh, nostalgia. i remember gas lines and the double nickel speed limit and setting the furnace to 68 degrees and carter installing solar panels on the white house. and yay! it looks more and more likely that i will get to live through it all again!

here's what i suggest: make a nice taco dinner with the cheapest ground beef you can get your hands on and that salty seasoning that comes in the little foil pouch. iceberg lettuce, snowball tomatoes, and mild cheddar cheese make authentic toppings. drink a can of hamm's (since oly is no longer available). watch some youtube footage of iranians hating on us. and for dessert, have a pudding poke cake!

Bake a box yellow cake according to package directions in a 9x13 pan
on removing the cake from the oven, immediately poke holes into it at 1" intervals, using the butt end of a wooden spoon.
make two packages of instant chocolate pudding. add a cup of powdered sugar to the pudding, because box pudding is just not sweet enough to kill you already.
pour the pudding over the top of the cake. the pudding will fill the holes, and when you cut the cake it will look stripey!
cool the cake completely. the pudding will set up like frosting. kind of.
sit back and taste the malaise!

no shit sherlock

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:47:07 GMT

as i was scraping poached egg off the table (and the baby) this morning, i had an epiphany of sorts: there is no god-damn way i'd be able to handle three kids if it weren't for prescription antidepressants.