Sarah Palin's grades and SAT scores

How challenging could Wasilla High possibly be? Assuming this is legitimate, aren't her mediocre-to-shitty grades and scores just as you'd expect? Not that we have to worry about her being in office ever again, now that it's been proven she is as corrupt as the day is long. But it's still pretty funny to look at.

Click image to enlarge. And thank you to Gawker for sharing this tidbit.

McCain to idiot supporters: "Obama is not an Arab!"

"[Senator Obama] is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared about as President of the United States."
~ John McCain

He's back! Yay!

Now this is the John McCain I used to admire before his evil (read Karl Rove) Republican handlers turned him into an conscience-lacking automaton. Although he's thrown in the towel, yesterday he took his first big step on Redemption Road.

678.91

Funny blue balls story here.


We are in serious shit. The Dow went below 9,000 for the first time in five years. It has fallen 5,000 points in the last year. That's 8.3 trillion bucks. It fell 678.91 points this afternoon. That is quite scary. I don't even open my monthly investment statements anymore. Why bother? It's just going to depress me, and there's nothing I can do anyway. So in the trash they go.

As depressing as the economy is for us normal people, can you imagine being a trader? Ack.

Here is a photo montage at Gawker worth checking out. It's called "The Best of the Sad Floor Traders."

Lehman Bros. CEO punched in the face on the treadmill

(Reuters)

If you caught Lehman Brothers C.E.O. Richard Fuld testifying before the House Oversight Committee this afternoon on C-SPAN, you probably got the same impression that I did -- that he's a big pompous jackass. While Fuld was blaming everyone else, CNBC simultaneously was reporting that a Lehman employee at the company's gym punched him in the face while Fuld was on the treadmill. Ha! I love these little moments of schadenfreude, don't you? CNBC Analyst Vicki Ward reports:

“From two very senior sources – one incredibly senior source – that he went to the gym after … Lehman was announced as going under. He was on a treadmill with a heart monitor on. Someone was in the corner, pumping iron and he walked over and he knocked him out cold. And frankly after having watched [his testimony at the congressional hearings], I’d have done the same too.”

Too many Y chromosomes on this boat

It's been two months of being the only woman on a ship full of men. I have five sisters. I understand women well. I love my female friends. I miss excessive chatting, spritzing new perfumes at Saks, seeing chick flicks, talking about guys, all that girlie stuff, I miss it more than I thought I would.

I'm not a prissy Barbie or anything. I can hang with the guys just as easily. My male co-workers on the boat were surprised at my skills as a wingman -- or should I say wingwoman -- in helping them pick up chicks at the bars. I like these guys and hang out with them even when we're not co-habitating and working together in tight quarters on the boat. They're cool.

However, lately I'm feeling oh-so-lonely for female comraderie. I have no one to girltalk with. All the yachts with female crew members have left for the season. My token non work-related friend here in the Hamptons is gay, which is kind of like haveing a girlfriend, but not quite.

Every time I'm watching one of my shows and leave the room, I come back to find the channel changed to sports. They burp. They fart when they think I'm not around, but it's such small quarters that I'm always around, and I will come down to the crew area and be like, "What the fuck is that revolting smell?" When I got an air freshener for the bathroom, which improves our living conditions one hundred percent, they complained that it's too "girlie smelling." Which it is not.



The guys grunt in monosyllabic man talk. But when I talk in what I consider a normal fashion, with descriptive adjectives and stories, they think I'm chatty. Don't they understand that women like to talk? It's in our XX chromosomal makeup. I have to always edit my thoughts now so I don't annoy them with "excessive information," which annoys me.

I threw away the shitty generic ugly green 99-cent Walgreens hand soap in the bathroom and replaced it with a nice fig-scented upscale brand, much to the chagrin of the guy I share the bathroom with. He was like, "Where's my antibacterial soap? I don't want to smell like a fig, woman!" So I set forth on a mission get him replacement soap, hopefully a manly one that smelled like rocks or sticks or dirt or horseshit.

And our shared stateroom is always a mess. Some of it's mine, but not that much!


Another thing I can't understand is how men can hold so much liquor. I cannot keep up with them, nor do I try. I always end up leaving the bar by midnight or one, having had quite enough in order to get up for work the next morning. Yet these guys will pound drinks until two, three, sometimes four in the morning.

The other night my roommate comes stumbling back to the boat in the dead of morning, trips on something on the bedroom floor, and in panic grabs the privacy curtain that encloses me in my coccoon of a bunkbed. Like a curtain is going to support his two hundred-plus drunken, falling-down pounds. I'm dead asleep, and all of a sudden there's this big CRASH as he faceplants onto the floor and the tension rod rips out of the wall! Startled awake -- and being a girl -- I scream like a little girl. Then I realize it's my roommate, who's like, "Sshhh, sorry! It's just me!" I see he is totally wasted, and I laugh at how funny this is. Then he proceeds to prop his elbows onto my bed and strike up what I can tell is going to be an animated, long-winded, detail-driven drunken conversation, his booze breath wafting in my direction. After a minute or two I was like, "Jesus and you guys give me shit for being talkative? Would you let me sleep? It's almost four in the morning!" And all of this, well he had no recollection of the next day.

Sometimes this stuff is funny. Sometimes I feel sorry for myself. I like perfumes and powder puffs and scented exfoliating body scrubs -- so what? I want someone to notice that my freshly pedicured toenails have teeny little Swarovski crystal accents. I want someone to compliment me on my new earrings. I want someone to discuss in depth with me the romantic nuances taking place between Sookie and Bill the vampire on my current favorite show, True Blood.



I realize I will never get this kind of thing with three male co-worker/roommates/drinking buddies. Guess I gotta just get used to it. But will I ever want to watch sports on TV for hours and hours? Hell no.

Harry Shearer's "Bridge to Nowhere" video

You know Harry Shearer -- Derek Smalls of Spinal Tap fame, as well as the voices of Mr. Burns, Smithers, Ned Flanders and Reverand Lovejoy on The Simpsons -- well he made this very funny music video called "Bridge to Nowhere" along with his wife who plays Sarah Palin.

While laughing, try not to drive a rusty railroad spike into your skull upon remembering that this woman is actually running for the second most important governmental position in the United States.

Sarah Palin is almost as funny as Tina Fey!

"John McCain has already tapped me . . ."


You betcha! She really said that. Last night's debate provided the comedy for which I was hoping and praying. She reminds me of Frances McDormand's police chief Marge Gunderson from Fargo, with half the brains. My friend Bob cracked me up when he wrote this morning,

P.S. Did Palin miss the weeks of Sesame Street when they were sponsored by the letter, “G”? Growin’, cravin’, knowin’ and all the other words ending with G were broken-hearted last night.

Palin's other gaffes included:

• Winking into the camera. Twice.
• "Rigger" (as a verb)
• "Senator O-Biden"
• Addressing Biden with, "Say it ain't so, Joe!"
• "So there hasn't been a whole lot that I've promised, except to do what is right for the American people, put government back on the side of the American people, stop the greed and corruption on Wall Street" (good luck).
• "And [Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-] Malaki and Talabani also in working with us are knowing again that we are getting closer and closer to that point, that victory that's within sight."

Yes, it's hard to believe. It's all right here in transcript form, courtesy of CNN. Are we any safer from a McCain-Gunderson team in the White House? Probably not. Look at what happened when Dan Quayle made an ass out of himself during the 1988 V.P. debate by having the hubris to compare himself to John F. Kennedy. Sigh.

"Re-born" dolls: creepfest extraordinaire

Fairy "Re-born" about to be devoured by famished furry woodland creature.

A couple of years ago I wrote a blog about freakishly realistic baby dolls and how utterly creeped out they make me. I also pondered what purpose, exactly, they are supposed to serve.

Well, the BBC answered that question last night in a documentary called My Fake Baby, and Matt Lauer interviewed women who propagate this disturbing trend. See the excerpts from the Today Show here and below.




And I laughed about lonely girlfriendless men spending $6,000 on Real Dolls? Pfffft! Hell, lonely childless women spend $4,000 on these "Re-Borns," as they're called. Here's the official website in case you're morbidly curious, and here are two of the weirdest offerings from their online orphanage.


My mommy just injected me with heroin, which explains why my pupils are as big as basketballs! And my sister below? Mommy experimented a bit too liberally with the Rogaine. Oopsie!

Dinosaurs and humans coexisted, Sarah? You don't say!

And this woman could be the leader of the free world when McCain kicks the bucket?

Palin treads carefully between fundamentalist beliefs and public policy

By Stephen Braun
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

September 28, 2008

ANCHORAGE — Soon after Sarah Palin was elected mayor of the foothill town of Wasilla, Alaska, she startled a local music teacher by insisting in casual conversation that men and dinosaurs coexisted on an Earth created 6,000 years ago -- about 65 million years after scientists say most dinosaurs became extinct -- the teacher said.

After conducting a college band and watching Palin deliver a commencement address to a small group of home-schooled students in June 1997, Wasilla resident Philip Munger said, he asked the young mayor about her religious beliefs.

Palin told him that "dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time," Munger said. When he asked her about prehistoric fossils and tracks dating back millions of years, Palin said "she had seen pictures of human footprints inside the tracks," recalled Munger, who teaches music at the University of Alaska in Anchorage and has regularly criticized Palin in recent years on his liberal political blog, called Progressive Alaska.

The idea of a "young Earth" -- that God created the Earth about 6,000 years ago, and dinosaurs and humans coexisted early on -- is a popular strain of creationism.

Where I blog

Now that summer season is quieting down and guest visits are less numerous, I actually have the ability to blog again. Since town is super mellow without much going on, I've certainly been making up for lost blogging time lately. Thought I'd post a pic of my (well actually, the captain's) sanctuary, formally called the wheel house, to where I escape for great light, a sweet view, and a little quiet time to commune with the Internet.

Stewart & Colbert: New Yorker Fistbump, Take Two!

I loved July's infamous New Yorker cover in all its Swiftian, satirical glory. A few days after its publication, The Daily Show did a great bit called "Satire on the Street" mocking the backlash against the "controversial" illustration by Barry Blitt. But Entertainment Weekly does one better this week. Not only is the cover sublime, its corresponding chat with the simultaneously modest-yet-genius team of Stewart and Colbert is well worth reading if you're at all interested in the current (sad) state of affairs.

The entire Mock the Vote Q & A interview with both of Comedy Central's Emmy-winning funnymen (Colbert for Best Writing, Stewart for Best Late Night Overall) is online and includes the below excerpt, my favorite analogies from the entire piece.

E.W.: There are a lot of issues in this election. The biggest one right now is the economy.
STEWART: We were in this huge credit crisis, out of money. Then the Fed goes, We'll give you a trillion dollars, and all of a sudden Wall Street is like, ''I can't believe we got away with it!'' Can you imagine if someone said, ''I shouldn't have bought that sports car because it means I can't have my house,'' and the bank just said, ''All right, you can have your house. And you know what? Keep the car.'' [He throws up his arms joyfully and shouts] ''Yeaaaaah, I get to keep the car! Wait, do I have to give the money back?'' ''No, it doesn't matter.'' ''Yeah, I'm gonna get another car! I'm gonna do the same thing the same way, except twice as f---ed up!''
COLBERT: The idea that Lehman Brothers doesn't get any money and AIG does reminds me very much of ''Iran is a mortal enemy because they have not achieved a nuclear weapon. But North Korea is a country we can work with, because they have a nuclear weapon.'' The idea is, Get big or go home. How big can you f--- up? Can you f--- up so bad that you would ruin the world economy? If it's just 15,000 who are out of jobs, no. You have to actually be a global f---up to get any help.

2008 Emmys

The $7,000,000,000 Apocalypse is Now

"Hank Paulson has become kind of like a Colonel Kurtz character. He's gone insane, nobody can stop him, and they need to send like a Martin Sheen guy up the river to find him and take him out because he's taking the entire U.S. economy into oblivion!"

~ Max Keiser

The most brilliant analogy yet regarding the whole Wall Street fiasco is this clip below featuring Max Keiser, financial expert, Prediction Markets analyst, inventor, and Huffington Post blogger. He co-hosts "The Truth About Markets" on Resonance FM 104.4 in London and also produces documentaries covering markets and finance for Al Jazeera's "People & Power" series.

You've gotta see this video. It would be even funnier if I didn't get paid in dollars.

McCain said "horseshit!" during the debate! Twice!

What a crazy old coot. The cooler Obama is, the more pissed off McCain gets. Listen for yourself at 4:33. Angry Man needs to go BUH-bye.

I miss this dog so much!

At auntie Susan's house

Underdog

November beach trip

When I was a personal assistant to a wealthy woman in Manhattan last year, her dog Jake sort of adopted me as his owner because I fed him, bathed him, walked him at least three times a day, scooped the poop, made sure to visit the dog park every day so he'd have doggie friends, brushed him, threw the ball, threw the stick, bought him a raincoat for torrential downpour walks, bought him a red sweater for blustery bitter-cold winter days, dressed him up as Underdog for the annual Tompkins Square Park Halloween doggie parade, let him sleep on my bed, covered him up with his own doggie blanket on chilly nights when he slept on the bed, bought him squeaky toys, took him to the vet when he was sick, and kept a jar filled with dog cookies and Snausages at all times, which I gave to him many, many times a day. Woof.

But the best reason why this dog should, in my opinion, belong to me is the fact that I even took care of him during my Christmas vacation. Yes, her dog came home to my parents house on Cape Cod with me for the holidays. My sister Amy just found this pic of Jakie and emailed it to me.
Christmas vacation!

I miss "my" doggie. Sniff sniff.

Walking to the dog park

Nappy time

"That's what she said."

The fifth season of "The Office" starts Thursday night. Woo! In the meantime, check out this compilation video containing every utterance of "That's what she said." Even Stanley gets in on the action. Genius.

SNL's John McCain skit

Conceived by Al Franken. Enjoy.

Travis Barker (and DJ AM), get well soon

DJ AM and Travis

In 2004, I got the opportunity to see Blink-182 perform live under the stars at the Maui Arts and Cultural Center. The concert, which was amazing, left me in awe of Travis Barker. Not only is he one of the best drummers ever, right up there with Neil Peart of Rush, Ginger Baker from Cream, and Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann of the Dead, but Travis Barker did the unbelievable. The guy played with a broken foot. I had brought binoculars (much to the embarrassment of my then teenaged-nephew Andrew who is also quite the fine drummer himself), and I watched him bang away, mesmerized by how damn good he was, cast and all. Once Andrew decided that it wasn't too dorky to check out the show through the binoculars, he was pretty amazed himself that Travis had learned to play the bass drum with his left foot due to the cast. You'd never have guessed. He was smoking good.

Today on the news it was just announced that Travis is in critical condition at a burn unit in Augusta, Georgia after the Learjet he was on crashed and burned on takeoff last night in South Carolina. Of the six on board, he and DJ AM with whom he'd played a show last night were the only survivors. Perry Farrell also played the show, I just hope he wasn't on the plane too.

Get well soon Travis, so we can continue to enjoy you banging on those skins again soon. Here's a clip of him and DJ AM doing a show recently in Chicago. Good stuff.

Greasy Rider: Two Dudes, One Fry-Oil-Powered Car, and a Cross-Country Search for a Greener Future

My college buddy Jonathan writes,

Greg is basically my younger brother. He's a great writer - well published (NYT, Outdoor, Conde Nast Traveler...) and this is his latest book about his "cooking oil powered car."

Curious to learn more, I clicked on the Facebook link Jonathan provided and from there I hopped over to Greg's Greasy Rider blog, and from there found this review of the book at AudubonMagazine.com. Sounds interesting. You can buy the book as of October 7th for only twelve bucks on Amazon.

Greasy Rider: Two Dudes, One Fry-Oil-Powered Car, and a Cross-Country Search for a Greener Future
By Greg Melville
Algonquin Books, 266 pages, $15.95

Journalist Greg Melville and his college buddy Iggy are just a couple of regular (if quirky) guys on a cross-country road trip. Their goal: to drive Melville’s 1985 Mercedes, reconfigured to run on used fryer oil, from Vermont to California without stopping at the gas pump. It’s a mechanical challenge—breakdowns, while frequent, always manage to be just this side of catastrophic—and also a hilariously social one. Reluctantly, the pair begs (or, failing that, steals) waste oil from a string of fast-food restaurants, struggling to explain to observers and burrito-joint managers that their grease-stained clothes and French fry-scented vehicle are the wave of the future. Melville, who has written for Outside and Men’s Journal, has a breezy, unpretentious style as well as the ability to work in the occasional edifying digression—a brief history of wind power, for instance, or a discussion with a professor about cellulosic ethanol—without disrupting the book’s brisk, novelistic pace. At trip’s end, Melville explains to his pal that they have proven something important: “If two goobers like us can actually get in a car and drive across the country without fossil fuels or putting a lot of carbon into the air, the answers for sustainability are easier than people think.”—Alexa Schirtzinger

Jack and Sally on the dock

I like taking photos of the marina at dusk. In the photo below, I shot the reflection of the dock, and then rotated the picture 180 degrees.



Then using Photoshop, I went to Filters>Artistic>Dark Strokes.



I liked the results. I call it Jack and Sally. Doesn't it look like them hanging out on the dock? It's kind of fitting, seeing how fall is in the air and this place is like a ghost town lately. If Jack and Sally are missing from your pop culture lexicon, rent Tim Burton's "Nightmare Before Christmas."



We can live like Jack and Sally if we want
Where you can always find me
We'll have Halloween on Christmas
And in the night we'll wish this never ends
~I Miss You lyrics by blink-182

Hoots from Hooterville

Last night we got back from being out at anchor, and lo and behold this was the new boat in the slip next to ours. There goes the neighborhood. You can charter this thing complete with full crew for a mere $42,000+ a week, as I found on its website.

The guys on the boat were not disappointed, especially when Hooters-type chicks emerged this morning on the top deck to pose for each other's snaphots.



The plethora of perky silicone and blonde hair extensions blowing in the breeze was enough to send Cheffie into smiley happyland as he gazed longingly out the galley window. I hope he doesn't jump ship and apply for a job on Hooter Patrol IV. I doubt he will, though, because he'd surely miss my very own impersonation of a Hooter Girl . . .



. . . behold the all-natural mushroom Hooters!