Gasp

Sniper-crawling into the holiday season this year. Face-down in the dirt, bogged down by the gravitational forces of work compounded with not nearly enough sleep, too many cookies, and the constant anxiety that, somehow, I have forgotten to do 47 things.

I have a feeling I'm going to sleep through Christmas this year. If I make it through this week.

In other news- 3rd Annual Book Club Holiday Party this evening. I look forward to this every year. The food is always fantastic, the board games are competitive, and the wine never stops. I love these girls/Joel-The-Only-Guy-In-Book-Club. Highlight of the evening: the annual White Elephant Gift Exchange. I still have not forgiven Catalano for prying out of my desperate hands a copy of Twilight: The DVD.

In other news- I have some pretty fantastic pictures of gingerbread house construction and a hilarious narrative to post. Maybe I'll get around to it....oohhh...sometime in 2011.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz................................I wish.

Best. Present. Ever.

Sometimes, people do things that are stupid.

Or, if I'm feeling particularly insensitive, I might quote Jaunt and express that someone has "little success at life."

When people do stupid things that snare my own personal agenda, be it at work or at play, I have little patience for such idiocy. Overly sensitive though I may be, I do not suffer fools gladly and I am not one of those "graciously patient" individuals who taps into endless pools of kindness and understanding when stupidity rears its insidious head.

I am far more likely to reach for the more convenient reaction: "FAIL."

"I need something like a....a fail stamp," I said to my friend VBC one day. "A stamp that I can just use whenever someone has failed to be successful at life and therefore made my life more difficult."

You missed your exit and are now backing down the freeway with your hazard lights on? FAIL STAMP, right on your forehead.

You are in line in front of me and cashing out at the grocery store when you suddenly remember that you need just one more item from an aisle on the other side of the western hemisphere? FAIL STAMP.

You are going to feed me some lame-ass excuse about why you've been a terrible human being that has unnecessarily complicated my life and caused a disruption in my day? FAIL STAMP.

And then, VBC gave me a Christmas present:



My Fail Stamp's first mission: when I got out tonight, losers who attempt to talk to me in a way I find offensive, annoying, or simply boring are going to get Fail Stamped right on the forehead. Really, it's perfect.

I can automatically think of a thousand uses for my new Fail Stamp. I don't feel like paying this bill- so I'm going to Fail Stamp the memo line of the check. I dislike your attitude. FAIL STAMPED ON THE HAND AS A WARNING. I find your general presence to be a downer. FAIL STAMP ON YOUR PSYCHE.

The possibilities are endless.

Lee has a lot of competition for Best Christmas Present Ever this year.

Smells Like Snow

NPR kindly informed me that snow will most likely disrupt my afternoon commute.

I'm ok with this. I have on my new boots (thanks, Zappos, for mailing them so very promptly!) and a jaunty hat. Snow away!

Tonight: my friend Josh had expressed some anxiety about gift-giving, and so we agreed to forego (after all, it is next to impossible to follow in Lee's footsteps in terms of ultimate gift-giving) and instead throw ourselves a little holiday Fete. For us this means take-out sushi and Mystery Science Theater. (Nerd alert!) Quite frankly, I think Lee's going to have a hard time topping that. Really, it's my ultimate evening.

Christmas is next week, by the way. In case you weren't aware. I prepared very well this year, buying all of the gifts ahead of time. What I neglected to do, however, was allot time for a giant trip to the post office to mail said gifts. Maybe some year I'll get it all together.

Besos.

Tweet This

For as media-savvy as I pretend to be, I pretty much never update my Twitter. Primarily because my phone is circa 1995 (OK, 2008, but seriously...) and I can't update on some new-fangled smart phone.

UNTIL! Nickle taught me how to text in my Tweets. So here we go. My third attempt at Twitter.

Follow me @NewGlitterati. I will try to keep up the hilarity.

Holiday Weekend

I think it's a pretty good sign if you're rolling into work Monday morning covered in bruises from ice skating, and still full of cookies from all the baking you did over the weekend.

Oh, and I spent all of Friday evening shaking cocktails for my friends at a very nice holiday party. Bartending skills do so come in handy, especially around the holidays.

More to come.

Check out ice skating at Patterson Park Ice Rink. Tremendous fun, and duly cheap. ($4 to skate, $2 for rentals. Where else can you have two hours of fun for six bucks?)

Give Peace a Chance

Ten years ago, when I was eighteen and stupid, I sat on a bus for eight hours from Salisbury to New York City just to go to the Imagine Circle and commemorate the twentieth anniversary of John Lennon's death with my hippy boyfriend at the time.

I should mention that I am stupid mostly because I had mono at the time.

Regardless, we stood around the Imagine Circle in Central Park late at night, absolutely freezing, with hundreds of people who had also made the trek to stand in a giant circle and wave lighters in the air. It's cliche, really, but certainly there is something powerful that compels people to participate in these things. I was young and feverishly sick, but somehow I knew that it was something I wanted to be- and should have been- a part of. Ten years later, I'm glad we made the trip.

Mostly because I still believe in John's mission and now I'm lucky enough to incorporate his values of social justice, art, and aesthetics in my everyday personal and professional life. There is no one on the pop culture radar these days doing what John and Yoko did (which I've talked about before.) The silencing of his voice was the silencing of a lot of voices, although Yoko has further pursued their shared vision in her work with Amnesty International and other world justice organizations.



Lighting a candle for you today, John. I would have jumped on a bus to go wave my lighter around at the Imagine Circle but, well...in my old age I prefer to remember you in the warmth of my home. I should stage a bed-in. Comfy.

A'Far

On NPR this morning:
"And a fire broke out in Baltimore's Cultural District last night causing multiple street closures...."

I thought this was in reference to the fire on East Baltimore street last night. "Hmm. Is that what we're calling The Block these days? The 'Cultural District?' How interesting. Mount Vernon is going to be pissed."

Imagine my surprise when, as I made my way up Charles to work this morning, I discover that Mount Vernon is, in fact, "a'far."

What is going on? Why is everything on fire? And why is this now routinely messing up my commute? (Is that self-centric?)

Even worse- Fox News's coverage of last night's fire on East Baltimore street. Why do they routinely look for "Man on the Street" interviews with the most unarticulate people? Do they purposefully seek out the pedestrian who's going to drawl, "Weeeeellllll, there wuz alla this smoooke and then the garls ran out buck-nayked in the streets." Congratulations, Baltimore. A fire has flushed out the "buck-nayked garls."

Can you imagine a throng of disoriented, anxious people being evacuated from their buildings and this sudden post-apolcolyptic mesh of bankers and lawyers in their suits alongside "buck-nayked garls" in the middle of downtown Baltimore? Did anyone politely offer their coat to a "buck-nayked garl?"

I just hope My Thai and Donna's didn't burn.

Happy Holidays, Baltimore!

Longest. Documentary. Ever.

The documentary last night was fantastic: creative, artistic, enthralling, poignant, pithy, and lllllloooooooooonnnnnnggg.

I don't know what possessed me to think this thing was going to be brief, or why it would be a good idea to go to dinner AFTER the event. I got so hungry halfway through that I had to dig some gum out of my purse and chew it to keep my stomach from protesting too loudly.

It's hard to get really into art and politics when you're hungry. I think that goes without saying. I can be sophisticated, mature, and articulate most of the time, but when I'm hungry and it's late I am reduced to an antsy four-year-old whose only focus is blood-sugar maintenance. I should probably keep snacks in my bag for such occasions.

Four of us piled into Donna's in Charles Village immediately after, ordered more food then was probably necessary, and polished off a bottle of wine far too quickly for four people who had had nothing to eat prior. Still, it was a lovely evening and even though I couldn't seem to properly pin the red ribbon to my sweater (it kept turning itself sideways and looked more like a small snarl of discarded fluff) I do think that I adequately supported HIV/AIDS education and prevention.

Tonight: the lighting of the Washington Monument in Mt. Vernon. Every single year, I say that I am going to this event. Every single year, something "comes up." THIS YEAR, I AM GOING. HOLIDAY CHEER, DAMMIT.

World Aids Day

World Aids Day today, and in commemoration tonight I will be attending the BMA-Planned Parenthood's screening of the Keith Haring documentary.

The year I turned sixteen was the year AIDS first appeared on my radar. Initially, it was due to the very kind and still-appreciated gift my grandparents gave me for my birthday: tickets to see RENT on Broadway. At the time, it was still the original cast. I was addicted to the soundtrack that year, and played it over and over on my portable Disc man. I was all about gunmetal gray nail polish and gay men that year. (Really, what has changed? Except now I'm on an endless quest for matte gray nail polish. Which is next to impossible to find. Honestly.) It was also the year that I saw the AIDS quilt on display at my mother's college when we went to an alumni event. I think it was the first time in my life that I felt connected to some cause. I didn't know anyone with AIDS, but I was old enough to start parsing out the social implications of a disease that brought stigma. And it was 1998, nearly ten years after AIDS was incorporated into the mainstream and was no longer relegated to being the "gay disease" sequestered away to certain pockets of New York City and San Francisco.

AIDS has become so...well, widely-accepted isn't the appropriate wording, but...I suppose a better way to put it would be to mention that medical breakthroughs have made it a much more manageable disease which has, in turn, somewhat reduced the stigma of it. I've even heard through various interviews that diabetes can be a far more crippling disease in terms of lifestyle and symptoms. Regardless, AIDS might no longer be the "gay disease" but neither should it be written off as some third-world country affliction like cholera that feels too distant to connect. It's still a huge threat, it's still rampant, and it's still debilitating. The stigma is not- and possibly will never be- wholly gone, and even in third-world countries the best defense is still education.

Looking forward to the documentary tonight. Keith Haring's artwork is ubiquitous- even if you don't know his name, I can guarantee you're familiar with his work, which dominated the 1980's and 90's pop art world.

And, of course, let's not forget the focus of today: act aware, reduce prejudice, and practice protection.