Hurricane I

Okay, so all you med school people, do me a favor: find the people studying to be gynocologists and tell them not to take that seminar about the necessity of insulting their patients. Apparently, it is not enough that when women go to the gyno we have to put on the paper dress and assume that awful position, since several different gynos in several different cities feel the need to insult their patients.

Example: The first time I went to the gyno, it was basically for shits and giggles, since I wasn't having sex. The Dr. says "Are you sexually active?" I say, "No." This seemed like a reasonable answer to me, but not only did he ask me a second time, I also got a lecture on all the reasons that being sexually active is bad. (Interestingly enough, the next time, I responded to the same question with a decisive "Yes" and skipped the lecture.) Other mildly tramatic things happen that we're skipping due to politeness, and then I fell off the examining table, but that was really my fault, I suppose. But it wouldn't have happened had I not been traumatized.

There's a much better story with the same basic message, but it isn't really mine, so I suppose I shouldn't tell it. And she didn't fall off the table.

So today, I go back to the gyno to request birth control that doesn't make me want to vomit (though I did find that the pills that make me want to vomit are extremely effective for preventing any thought of anything that might lead to babies). For a while I thought this was going to be a breeze, since the nurse told me that I didn't have to wear the paper dress. Yay! Apperently, if you've already had your yearly Pap Smear and all you want is drugs, you don't have to get naked. But all that was ruined. First, the doctor acts all offended that I'm not wearing the paper dress.I asked for the Ass-Patch of Birth Control. He suggested that I take pills that are also good for acne. Right. I would not have been offended, except for the fact that my skin has not looked as good as it did today since way before I went through puberty. No thanks. Give me the Ass Patch, fucker.

Am I over reacting? Probably. All I can say is that I'm glad that at least I was fully clothed. And thanks to my HMO, I'm on a nice cocktail of perscription drugs that should turn Canadia green. Including a patch on my ass.

Clearly, it didn't work, though last night it appeared that it did. So we're trying a new approach. Huzzah!

I got a digital camera for Christmas, and so I'm trying to re-figure out how to post pictures to the blog. If I take a picture of something worth posting, I'd like to be able to do it without wanting to throw all machines into the wall.

So, if it works, here's a picture of where I live. I didn't take this one. Apparently, if I figure out how to do it, there's a way I can take panoramic pictures, which I think is the only way to get the 7/11 in the shot with the house.

Kwane Doster, you'll be missed. God be with your family.

(Hat Tip: Joel)

Why? Why would you post this as a personal?

Some days, I think that I would like to take up internet dating, just to see what kind of people I would meet.

UPDATE: He posts early and often. Desperation is almost as unsexy as stupidity.

An article after my heart. I feel like it's TNR's Christmas present to me - a story about liberals from Alabama. A sampling, since I think registering is required ( I'll try to find it for free later):

Such debacles [like voting to leave racist language in the State Constitution] highlight the plight of the white Southern liberal. On the one hand, you love your region in a way that other Americans can't understand. But you are also deeply shamed by its unwillingness to move forward on social issues. Such shame is a big reason why I don't move back and why thousands of other Southern liberals decamp annually for more enlightened locales. But my disaffection is different from the disdain for the South felt by, say, New York liberals. As the journalist W.J. Cash wrote in 1941, it is "the exasperated hate of a lover who cannot persuade the object of his affections to his desire."

I totally understand. God Bless The Southern Liberals, Everyone.

There is a popular country song out right now by Gretchen Wilson called "Redneck Woman,"which I have thought about several times this past week. You see, I have recently returned from the Alabama Christmas Tour, aka visiting my extended family in their native dwellings. I love these yearly visits, because my relations are good people and I enjoy them, not least because they make watching Blue Collar Comedy more fun.

We spent most of our time with my family in the country, and when I say "in the country", I mean po-dunk, rural, backwoods country. When I am a politician, I will not talk about my daddy from the mill, I will talk about my daddy running barefoot through the back woods of Alabama. (Reference for the Dixie Bitches: this spot is located on 231 between Montgomery and Troy. Yeah.) Caveat: My family members are very smart. Thus, while they embody much of the classic redneck stereotype, they are not white trash by any stretch of the imagination. This is an imporant difference.

Gretchen tells us that (among other things) she prefers beer over champagne because she's just a product of her raising. We didn't drink much beer this year, as "hooch" was more preferable. Sometimes, we have to pour our whiskey out of old anti-freeze bottles because that's how my trucker uncle smuggles it in from Mexico. But this year, we had our choice of Crown Royal and JD from the original bottles, as well as a gallon of Bacardi Rum. We darn near finished all three bottles, but I think the reason we didn't is that there were too many people in the kitchen when you needed a refill. Also, the yearly Scrabble game was approaching, and it's bad to be too drunk to make proper words. Don't mess with the Scrabble game.

At the Dirty Santa game (when your family starts to number above 30, it's time to stop buying individual presents), no fewer than 3 knife sets were unwrapped. I myself ended up with a 44 piece kitchen set that included a variety of knives, but my 8 year old first-cousin-once-removed was delighted to open a hunting knife set. Sadly, she would not end up with it because her brother, 6, was determined to steal it from her (he was later disuaded from this by being instructed to open a bio-dome science kit). Their mother, my cousin (it's important to keep these relationships straight) ended up stealing it, as no one wanted to make an 8 year old girl cry by stealing her knives.

Last year, one of my cousins brought his new wife into the fray. He is 8 days older than I am, and he decided that working in the Fruit-of-the-Loom factory was more fun that more book-learning. Thus, as he is technically older and he skipped college, so I didn't feel weird that he married before I did. Nor did I begrudge him his 11 month old son this year. But when my cousin who is a Junior at U of Florida brought his girlfriend of a year to the family, that did make me feel funny. This might have also been because I tend to date Yankee boys, and mentally sticking any one of them in that mix makes me giggle. The first time I bring someone home, I might have to pay someone to follow him around with a video camera.

All in all, it was a great trip.

Merry Christmas.

I would like to take a moment and bless the wonderful creation of antibiodics. I feel so much better today, I can hardly believe it. So, between the massive drugs, being awake maybe a grand total of 10 hours in the past two days, as well as eating my fruits and veggies, I feel like I've returned to the land of the living.

So Bless you, magic drugs, and thank you, thank you, thank you, random doctor at the NIH. I would send you a Christmas Ham if I didn't think the NIH would frown on that. So instead I will be sending you a very nice thank you note, stopping just short of promising you my first born child for use as a medical monkey.

I am very happy today.

This week, Wonkette is featuring a guest blogger named Joe Klein. I was all excited, even in the blobish state I was in yesterday, since Joe Klein is on the Top Five Journalists I Drool Over List. (Others include Joel Stein, Andrew Sullivan, Michael Kingsley, and recent addition, Ryan Liza. I might have spelled Ryan's name wrong, but that's because he's new to the list.)

But NOW they're trying to tell me that this isn't the real Joe Klein, but some fictious "Joe Klein". I don't buy it. And I would totally read a sequel to Primary Colors.

Maybe because he's new at this, but he updates a LOT more than Wonkette does. I love it. She's been slacking off lately. Maybe she's pregnant with Wonkette Jr.

The Holiday Throw-Down at the Mansion was indeed awesome. To all of you that attended, I enjoyed seeing you there. For those of you that didn't, clearly you should have been there.

So, at the end of the night, sort of around 4:30, I noticed that my throat was sort of sore. I figured this was no big thing, since it's been getting colder which means the post-nasal drip thing kicks in, and that can lead to a temporary sore throat. That, and we had been singing Tenacious D at the top of our lungs. (As I said, it was an awesome party.) So I figure, no big deal.

Sunday rolls around, and I felt awful. My throat hurt even worse, and all of my body was aching. WTF, I thought. This feels way more like when I had tonsilitis than a hangover. But I didn't think I had a fever - I was far too cold for a fever - and my lymph nodes at my throat were normal still, though the tonsils themselves were slightly larger. Oh well, I thought, Sunday is the Day of Rest, I'll just chill on the couch, and I'll be all better by tomorrow. One of my housemates and I discovered that all three Indiana Jones movies were playing on the SciFi channel, and we definitely watched all three (but we had both fallen asleep before the end of the third one, so we cut ourselves off and went to bed.)

I live in a big drafty house, and so I was sleeping with no fewer than four blankets and one of those things you heat up in the microwave to keep you warm. However, every now and again I would wake up freezing cold, and other times I'd wake up sweating, which would promtly turn back into freezing cold. I get up to go to the bathroom, and I notice that it's really, really hard to swallow. So I check the status of my tonsils - Ah, yes, we've hit Petri Dish.

There's nothing I can do about it at this point, since I'm not an M.D. and I can't call in the drugs that I know that I need at this point, so I go to bed. But here lies the tricky part - where do I go to get the drugs? I know what I need, since not only have I had this disease before, and I'm a textbook case, but my throat looks like a well-cultivated Petri Dish. Knowing and getting are not the same thing at all, so when I get up the next morning, I start looking up doctors in the Yellow-Pages. I can't call my mom and ask her what to do, since a) it's 5am her time, and b) I'm not so good with the talking right now. I do email her, and hope she responds soon, but that was over 12 hours ago, and I have yet to hear from her. So I don't know what's going on.

I find someone who will agree to see me, for me the mere price of $300. And I have to fill out 16 pages of paperwork before I go, so that they can "start my chart" and give me a physical. I was not 100% this morning, or I would have told them where they could put their physical. All I wanted was someone who can look at my poor, swollen, painful tonsils and give me anti-biodics. Fortunately, later, one of my housemates (who woke up late also because we partied very hard this weekend), suggests that rather than wander around town looking for an M.D., I should come talk to a physician in her office. She does work at the NIH, after all, so this plan works way better than the other one. Plus, this guy won't charge me $300 to talk to him. So I go, and I get a lecture on how it could easily be a virus, where anti-biodics won't do any good, as well as a bacterial infection. Yes, yes, I did the research the last time I got this awful disease. Then he looks at my throat. Right, he says. Where do you want me to call that in to?

The guy also tells me that apparently my California HMO also has a branch in DC that I could have gone to. (I also could have gotten my drugs there, paying $10 rather than $60.) However, at this point, I did not care. I hurt so badly, I just want the drugs like yesterday.

Moral of the Story: Eat your Veggies, Don't Party Too Hard, and Look Up Where To Go When Disease Hits Before You Need To Know. Because when you Need To Know, your brain stops working.

It was brought to my attention today that I should post more so that those intent on procrastination could have something to read. Apparently, cleaning isn't good enough procrastination for some people.

In my defense, I would like to point out that my lack of blogging is a direct result of my lack of much to do that is interesting. And I wouldn't want to committ the sin of the "Diaryahh" Post. That, and I don't want legitimately busy people to hate me for having free time, or not getting up at the ass-crack of dawn, or whatever. Don't get me wrong, looking for a job is a lot of work, and I spend a lot of time writing and printing and sending and calling and emailing and networking (and I'm so ready to be done with it)... problem is, except for the networking part, I can do it in my pj's and at my leisure. And it doesn't make for good blog. Full Disclosure: I've also spent much of the last week pouting about that shitty marketing interview.

So I'm sorry, massive procrastinators. I promise to work on having more interesting thoughts. Meanwhile, go clean the kitchen. Make me a pie while you're in there. Bitch.

Not satisfied to merely retire from the Senate, everyone's favorite Knight in Shinning Armor, Zell Miller, is taking a job as a lobbist. I would not want to be lobbied by Zell Miller, I'd be too afraid he'd shoot me. But I suppose that's good for the firm Zell is lobbing for.

In a related note, why on Earth would you name your child "Zell". No wonder he's an angry man. I'd be angry too. And I share a name with a subcontinent/ third world country with nukes/ a bitchy blonde wench in Gone With The Wind.

T'was the night before jail, and all through the mansion
Not a person was sober, they all were still dancin'...

The mystery shot sat on the table with care,
Waiting to ruin the people who dared.

The neighbors were sleeping all snug in their beds
While the young professionals took shots that went straight to their heads.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the couch see what was the matter...

Away to the keg I ran like a flash,
Only one more keg stand and, "Boy, I'll be trashed!".

When what to my wasted eyes should appear
But Santa and some F#$%&* up Reindeer.

He slurred and stumbled and called them by name...
"Now Bourbon, now Whiskey, Tequilla, and Gin,
On Scotch, on Jager, So-Co, and Beer..."

(We're a jug of Carlo Rossi in...did that rhyme?)

Dressed in festive attire, I heard him exclaim as he passed out of sight,
"Feliz Navidad to all...and damn! that was a great night at
[address deleted], Washington DC, 20016 on December 11th, at 8 PM."

-composed by the collective residents of The Mansion

Someone buy me this shirt.

It's awesome because it's true.

I have been reducing to cleaning.

This happened sometimes at Vandy where there was aaaaaaaaalllll this work I had to do, and I didn't really want to do it, so I'd go clean the kitchen, or my closet, or something. Well, again, I have plenty of stuff to do (write cover letters, go to the Hill, shower, call the landlord because there is an interesting liquid substance under the burners on the stove upstairs that starts to smoke when you turn them on) and I don't really want to get started. I blame it on the rain, and yesterday was overcast, so I haven't really made forward progress since...before the Marketing Incident. And that was a while ago. I really should get on that.

The problem is that at Vandy, while the kitchen did need to be cleaned, it was nothing compared to the occasional state of The Mansion. Six or seven people officially live here, and at least that many wander in and out on a daily basis. That's a lot of people, and things just get messed up very easily. And unlike Mayfield 5, which had at least as many people, there are no Dish Nazis (or Naken Men - I miss them), no signs, and worst of all, no one to come clean the toilet. So I've nominated myself to do these things. Don't tell my mother, she'll make me do more chores when I go home to visit.

So while part of the cleaning is procrastination, part of it is a desire to rid the downstairs kitchen of whatever muck makes my socks stick to the floor. So I swept the kitchen and mopped it, and while that was drying, I attempted to rid the stairs of some fine collections of spider webs in the corners. I decided to give up when I started picking up the dust bunnies and forceaby stuffing them into the vacuum cleaner because it wasn't sucking up the dust bunnies properly. It reminded me of the J Crew Rocket Pack Vacuum Cleaner that "Really Sucks" according to my boss ... because it doesn't suck well. And she wasn't being funny, she just didn't see the oh-so-obvious pun. I wish I had kept that originial email. It was one of my finer pieces of work.

I'm definitely perfecting my housekeeping skills, but I wonder if this is a good thing or a bad thing. In a related story, before Thanksgiving, I did Chad's laundry for $30. Again, good thing or bad thing? I was fully shod while doing the laundry, and I got paid. Forward progress for my personal feminism or backwards?

I'm debating buying a mu-mu and sponge rollers.

As I try to imagine what life would be like if Jerry Falwell was an influential gay man instead of an influential religious nutjob, I'll have to agree with Wonkette on this one. I mean, really. Life in the status quo is much more predictable.

This morning, the Washington Post has a shocking, shocking revelation that federally funded absitenece only sex-ed programs fed misinformation to the students involved. Shocking. Among the misinformation spread by these groups:

• A 43-day-old fetus is a "thinking person."

• HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, can be spread via sweat and tears.

• Condoms fail to prevent HIV transmission as often as 31 percent of the time in heterosexual intercourse.

My favorite is the sweat and tears part, because you know that when the groups actually presented this to teenagers, the phrase "Blood, Sweat and Tears" was used. Also:

Some course materials cited in Waxman's report [the Congressman who discovered this and who is more than a little pissed about it] present as scientific fact notions about a man's need for "admiration" and "sexual fulfillment" compared with a woman's need for "financial support." One book in the "Choosing Best" series tells the story of a knight who married a village maiden instead of the princess because the princess offered so many tips on slaying the local dragon. "Moral of the story," notes the popular text: "Occasional suggestions and assistance may be alright, but too much of it will lessen a man's confidence or even turn him away from his princess."

Paging Marabel Morgan?

It was a dark and stormy morning. The room was cold, but I have finally borrowed enough blankets to make my bed/futon-on-the-floor all warm and cozy. I should have stayed there. Instead, I got all dressed up to sell pizza door-to-door. But I didn't know that yet.

I finally roused myself, and went out into the pouring rain to fetch my newly dry-cleaned suit. I had put it in to be cleaned right before Thanksgiving, so that it would be all fresh for my second round interview at CRC Advertising today. I was really excited, rain be damned, because I thought I liked this job. The "interview" was supposed to take all day, and it would basically be a day-in-the-life-of kind of thing. If I did well, I'd end up with a job interview at the end of the day. Piece of cake, right? Especially with a newly dry-cleaned suit.

I get there, sign the piece of paper that says that even though I'll be working with them all day long, they aren't paying me. Duh. I get introduced to my interviewer, and oddly, I thought, we leave the building. But the building was small, so perhaps we were going to one of the many nearby buildings. As we are leaving the building, Heather (the interview, I think this is her name) asks if my shoes are comfortable. I think this is also odd, but whatever. She's wearing pointy toed heels, so I didn't read any extra importance into that question. We get into a car, which befuddles me further, and as we are getting on to the interstate heading south, the sense of unease begins to take over. We're already in southmost DC, top of Virginia. Why are we going AWAY from all the people?

After arriving in BFE, VA, Heather and I get out of the car in some residential neighborhood. She goes to the trunk and exhanges her pointy-toed shoes for sneakers, and pulls on a heavy sweater. Do you have comfortable shoes, she asks. What? I say, very much concerned. Didn't Jack/Jake/Dude-on-the-phone tell you to bring comfortable shoes? Didn't he tell you we'd be outdoors all day? Um, no. He didn't. She makes a "damn, sucks to be you" face and slams the trunk shut.

Dude-on-the-phone told me to be dressed professionally, as I would be spending the day watching what I would be doing at the job. It was also extremely important that I bring a notebook to take notes. There is nothing in those two sentences that would make me think we'd be going outdoors all day, or that I'd need to wear comfortable shoes. So I was wearing my interview uniform: black wool skirt suit, hose and black pumps of the functional but not comfortable variety. So, no, I was not wearing comfortable shoes, and I was not dressed to be outdoors. It was slightly cold, very windy, and I was wearing a skirt and heels. At least it was no longer raining.

So I put my cell phone and my wallet in my pocket. Heather instructs me to bring my notebook. Then we start going door to door. Selling pizza. Seriously. My second round interview was going door to door as Heather tried to convince all the stay-at-home people to buy her fabulous pizza deal. In between times, she'd ask me questions, as she was "evaluating" me, and she'd give a report back to her boss, which would then determine if I got a third round interview and a job. I want to give her the finger and walk away, but recall that we're in BFE Virginia. (Or maybe Guam, but I think of Guam as being hot) So I resolve to keep smiling, and hey, door-to-door skills might work out to my favor in a political career, right? And then maybe we'll do something different. Nope. After lunch, we'll be back on the streets, until about 8:30 or so, THEN we get to go to the office, if I'm a lucky little trouper. It's time to abort this mission, but how does one return sans car?

We go to lunch at a Subway in a posh little shopping center. Heather tells me to wait until after lunch to bail, because at lunch, I'll get to see her favorite part of the job. Apparently, it's her co-workers, which she sees for all of twenty minutes a day, because the rest of her time is spent wandering around outside selling shit. No dice. Send me home. But that's easier said that done in BFE, and they refused to drive me anywhere. So I get left in the posh shopping center. Fine. I'll find me to a bus, I'll ride all over creation to get back to the District.

Oh, but we forget how the bus hates me. Buses don't run in posh suburbs in Virginia. So after much wandering around the shopping plaza looking like a well dressed bum desiring public transit, I call a cab to drive me to the Metro. Thirty minutes and $50 later, I'm back on my beloved trains.

So, all told, I had a shitty day. I feel had, snookered, taken advantage of, led on, scammed, etc. Though these are feelings I've had before, they're not feelings I relish. It's like I should have clued in that something wasn't right, but I tend to assume that when people tell me something, they tell me all the relevant details. Apparently, some people, when they want you to do something that they know you would be less likely to do with all the relevant information, will leave out vastly important details. Like wearing comfortable shoes because you're going door-to-door selling pizza. (I'm boycotting Papa John's for at least 6 months.) And by the time I figured it out, it was too late to do anything about it. Except take a cab to the Metro and pout for a while afterwards.

I've spent close to $70 on these two interviews, all told. This irks me, as I specifically told the first first interviewer that I was not interested in anything sales related. Telemarketing, bad. Sales, bad. I've done them both (thank you, Girl Scout cookies and marching band Christmas trees) and I dislike them. No no, this isn't sales, he says, it's marketing. Fuckers, all of them.

I'd really like to send them a bill for my time and transportation costs. Or at least an irate letter. I'll sleep on that one and see if it's a good idea tomorrow. I'll probably write one (and post it), and then read it after a grace period to see if it's kosher. I've already called my mother and cried, but I don't think I'm done pouting about this yet. Had I wanted to go door-to-door, I'd have not gone to college. My favorite part of the interview was when she asked me a question that I responded to with Communication Theory, when she wanted a much less complicated answer. Oh.

Oh Job Karma, why doest thou torment me so? I completed my entire year at Rand. I did not quit the Calling Center job. I Brought It Hard to the Administrative Shit Job this summer. Yes, I bitched about all of them, but that did not stop me from doing a good job with the work I was given. I realize that I perhaps should have gotten the message after the Bus Trip That Did Not End that this was not the job for me, but I thought it was a test as to the strength of my character. Whatever other personality failings I might have, it is not strength of character. No more of these awful jobs, please, and no more tests. Southern California Edison was awesome, but we're long overdue for another awesome one.

My mother told me that someday soon this whole thing would be another good story to tell. It might be that I'm still pretty upset about the whole thing (and my feet still hurt), but I don't think so.

UPDATE: I forgot to metion that even though I faithfully carried around my little notebook, I did not take notes. Perhaps this was obvious, as selling pizza coupons door-to-door is not that complicated.

America, FUCK YEAH!!

(Hat Tip: Andrew Sullivan)

I had a really shitty day today, and I'll post about it later, but right now, I need to go drink until it's funny. Otherwise, I'll just wallow around in self pity. And that'd be bad.