Zuviel Punkte

I have struggled with Weight Watchers off and on. That's in addition to struggling with my weight. Weight Watchers itself is a fire-breathing dragon one must conquer in order to bend it to your will. There are umpteen and eleventy-one rules and edicts to follow, and you have to religiously keep track of everything you put in your mouth.

Sunday I went to Germanfest in Milwaukee. Es war spass! Ich habe Milwaukee gern! The festival area has Real Toilets every 50 yards, which rates highly with me. I got my German on--rocked out to the oompah brass bands (which provide employment for tuba players everywhere), drank delicious beer and ate lovely pretzels and potato pancakes. I also bought a flower wreath for my head, which you can see in this unfortunately accurate photo of me.

So this is the problem: German food is zuviel Punkte! Practically every single morsel of German food is over 10 points! You can't get away with under 30 points per meal! It's all pork and potatoes, pork rolled up and fried up and fried again and slathered with pork and some more pork. Would you like pork with that? I had the vegetarian special--beer, pretzels, and potato pancakes. Beer and pretzels go together to form a complete carbohydrate, I believe. Actually, the lowest point item and probably the most nutritious offering at Germanfest was the beer. I calculated I ate 11,314 points on Sunday. I wonder what German Weight Watchers meetings are like...poor miserable souls trapped in a land of fried starch. Oh well, these are my people and I love them.

Now if the Dominicans can ever get their act together and throw a festival, I can satisfy the other side of my family tree...

I would like a Vodka Sting...

...but I'm here to report on vodcasting and podcasting instead, via Gail Borden Learns, which I've slacked off on. So here goes:

I listened to a scintillating podcast on Uncontrolled Vocabulary about Sandy Berman. What I would like to do with podcasting at the library is offer book reviews. I do the occasional You Tube book review clip, because here at GBPL we already do vodcasting, but I'd much rather go audio instead of visual, as I feel I'm not especially photogenetic (not a typo or malaprop--nobody in my family is photogenic and hasn't been for generations--it's an inherited disability and there should be a foundation for people with photogenetic disorders. ;-) ) I could handle pods instead of vods, unless it's vodka. ;-)

Loserville proclamation

Attention: Residents of Loserville

Expecting your date to be attired in a sports bra, bike shorts, and stilletos (a.k.a. FMPs) is unreasonable. Especially on a first date. There is no way any sane woman would want to don on that sort of apparel, especially for your sorry non-Armani-affording ass.

However, we will don on said apparel for Girls' Night Out....only my nearest and dearest friends, who understand every cell of my trembling, poetic soul, will see me in a sports bra/bike shorts/Fuck Me Pumps. It all goes back to Emily Dickenson.

If for any reason you're starting to do some math: yes, most of us are only 4% heterosexual. The 96% that's "unspoken" will wear sports bra/bike shorts/absolutely killer orgasmic shiny pump pump pumps with knife-sharp 4" heels for our girlfriends. Because they appreciate absolutely killer orgasmic shiny pump pump pumps with knife-sharp 4" heels. And wild rice. A real girlfriend buys you wild rice when she's on vacation up north.

City streets

The streets of Loserville are paved with no intentions...

Loserville dress code

The residents of Loserville often approach me with a request for a mandatory dress code. This dress code would pertain to women only. Women should be attired in either jeans and a t-shirt, baseball cap optional (but only if you have a sexy little ponytail to pull through the opening in the back of the cap--otherwise, most Losers just assume you're a softball-playing dyke, so don't bother) OR the little black dress (LBD.) You see, the citizens of that sleepy burg of Loserville think that women can go from jeans/t-shirt to LBD in 30 seconds or less.... Never mind that the typical Loser, as the natives of Loservilles are known (Loserpudlians is the more archaic term) is not going to squire a woman to either a baseball game, where jeans/t-shirt/baseball cap would be appropriate--he's a Loser--how the fuck is he going to get Sox tix?--or a wedding/other gala event where the LBD would be the thing to wear. The typical Loser is garbed in bad shorts and a sloppy shirt, but somehow feels he has the right to command women to don on the fantasy-inducing garment of his choice. Ladies, eschew the jeans/t-shirt/baseball cap combo AND the LBD (which you can wear on Girls' Night Out and receive compliments from your ever-loving, trustworthy, back-you-to-the-end girlfriends) and instead wear your plaid flannel pajama bottoms and ratty Fightin' Illini sweatshirt* should you encounter a Loser. All you're going to do is watch The Bourne Supremacy for like the 5th time in a row, so you really don't need to dress up. And you'll be sitting on the couch, so you don't really need a baseball cap, and jeans aren't flexible enough for you when you need to scrunch up your legs.

Until the good citizens of Loserville agree to array themselves in Armani suits (formal) or James Dean white t-shirts and jeans (and only if you look like James Dean), then the request for a mandatory dress code for females will be tabled. But don't despair, precious little Losers--your City Manager will tell you that most everyone is at their happiest attired in their pajamas.

*Goes without saying--sweatshirt must have image of banned Chief Iliniwek emblazoned upon it...

Liquid brain

Without coffee, I have no personality.

New city manager of Loserville

I'm proud to announce that I have formally accepted the position of City Manager for Loserville. It formalizes a job I have already been doing for the past couple of months. There's little compensation and no benefits, but it is a great public service. Like most city managers from whichever burg or metropolis, I'm not actually from there or even live there; I just have to deal with its citizens on a daily basis.

I think I found the Grand Marshall for the big Loserville parade! This guy truly exemplifies the citizenry of Loserville...he is stunning. I didn't even have to seek him out; he came to me and right away I knew he could lead the Loserville parade.

Drink my Kool-Aid!

My friend Sara and I were talking about lame headlines we've seen on Yahoo profiles. Lines such as, "Part teddy bear, part social butterfly." That line is one of the examples given in the oh-so-helpful advice article "Punch Up Your Profile."(That's the article which encourages people to lie.) So if you're so non-creative that you have to appropriate a line from the Yahoo help pages, you're pretty much a sorry mutha.

So then out of the blue Sara says, "I just want someone who will drink my Kool-Aid."

I immediately seized upon that and exclaimed, "Oh my God! You have to use that for your own online profile! Drink my Kool-Aid! You want a man that when the chips are down and you're wondering if you have control over him, will drink your Kool-Aid!"

We howled with laughter over that one. But I still think that would make a great online dating profile headline: Drink my Kool-Aid!

Fun Tour de France fact

The average cyclist in the Tour is 6'2" and weighs 147 lbs. I am a foot shorter and outweigh them by a good 20 lbs.

Those boys are like sleek gazelles on bikes...and maybe for the sake of my self-esteem, I need to start following sumo wrestling. Or women's pro softball.

Weather or not

For the best-looking weather radar, you have to check out the National Weather Service's Weather Underground website--animate it for even more fun! The NWS is using a new digital forecasting database these days, and Weather Underground is a taste of that for us weather laypersons.

6 degrees of 50

He's not Footloose anymore--he's 50! Kevin Bacon is 50! 6 Degrees of AARP! Unbelievable...

Oh wait. I'm 40 now...tempus fuckit!

Happy Holidays?

The 4th of July is a federal holiday. You don't have to say "Happy Holidays," you can call it what it is. It's ok to say "Happy 4th of July" or "Have a great 4th." You're not going to offend anyone, unless there are some people out there who find ordinal numbers offensive.

A Pair of Haiku by Oskee

I meow in order
to comprehend the chaos
that humans create.

To commune with the
Realm of the Unseen, one must
stare blankly at walls.

--Oskee Wow Wow Calhamer