This is the kind of night the Oxygen channel was made for. You mean I can take Vicodin and watch When Harry Met Sally all night?

It seems that neither of the Farris girls have managed to rally from their respective illnesses. So, we will both have to sit out the esteemed activities going on in the downtown A.

Alas. Hence is the tradition of New Year's Eve. You win some, you lose some.

And some you just spend with your cat.

Happy New Year everybody. All the best for 2007.

I was ambushed this evening by a *certain* Dunndee and 1/2, who evidently have checked into the La Quinta by my apartments for the remainder of the weekend. Despite the fact that I am still unable to speak, due to symptoms that closely resemble TMJ from hell, I am feeling a little bit better. My constant ear pain is beginning to subside.

M also came home right around the same time as the two grim dudes were here, and we quickly realized that this was a captive audience upon which to dump our alcohol remnants so we won't have to truck the bottles to our new residence.

So we poured the remaining ounce of our bottle of tequila into Guadalajara shot glasses and the grim dudes shot the liquor and chased it with their Natty Lights -- which they had carried over from the La Quinta.

I imagine right now they are somewhere on 6th Street, enjoying the sights and sounds of Joe the Drummer and hopefully awarding me lots of points in absentia.

The head honch over at Burnt Orange Report took a page from the MeanRachel blog and used my video with Bush's idiot-isms for his entry today.

How do I know this? Well, inside sources (i.e. his roommate and my cousin, Man Chac) told me that after seeing the incredibleness of my blog, Karl-Thomas knew what he had to do.

That's right, UT Poli-Sci majors: MeanRachel brings you the news you need...first.

This just in: my ear still really sucks. Literally. That's as much as you really need to know.

Looks like it'll be another hard candy New Years.

Oh well. This excruciatingly painful ailment is giving me time to check up on cable TV. Has anyone seen the show Man vs. Wild? Craziness. This guy makes catching a trout with his bare hands in a stream and then squeezing it's gills until it dies look incredibly sexy.

Maybe that's just the Vicodin talking.

Today, W sat down with his various calamities of U.S. leaders (including Condy, Gates & President Cheney) and for three whole hours they discussed "the new way forward" in Iraq.
As I think about the span of three hours, it's hard for me to conjure up how three hours can be productive when planning the fate of nations.

What can I do in three hours? Well, I can make some phone calls at work, sometimes make a sale, send a few emails, and check HuffingtonPost.com. I once ran 13 miles in 2 hours and 15 minutes. Now it'd probably take me at least three hours, if not more. I can go to the movie theater, buy a ticket to The Holiday, buy some Sour Patch Kids, and escape reality for three hours. I can take a nap if the three hours fall between 2 PM and 6PM.

No matter how hard I try, I cannot think of anything monumental I have done in the period of three hours. In high school I wouldn't even bother to study for three hours. I remember writing a research papers before school in 20 minutes, turning it in and getting it back with a big red 95 on the front, with a comment about "-5 for improper MLA format in 3rd paragraph." I feel fairly certain that even if I'd spent three hours on that paper, or the entire grading period as I was supposed to have been doing, the results would have been the same: a shoddy, poorly written amount of double-spaced drivel that would still hover on the cusp of a high "A."
Last week, Bush held a press conference regarding the usual issues in which the media hoped to garner some more information about the new plan for Iraq. During the speech, in reference to the economy, Bush gave us a few words of advice:


I have this image in my mind of the Bush family walking through a huge mall at Christmastime. Bush is wearing a sport coat and jeans, while Laura trails behind in some turquoise variation of acceptable First Lady attire. Their daughters are strolling along as well, decked to the nines in pencil skirts with large belts around their waists, their arms laden with shopping bags. Christmas lights twinkle all around them as they do their part to support the economy.
How long is a usual day of shopping? One hour? Six hours?

I only watch Bush's speeches and news conferences because I have to. I am compelled to see what words will come out of his mouth, hoping against hope that perhaps today is the day he will have a sudden change of heart and come to his senses. My relationship with the Bush image is similar to that of a kidnapped child experiencing Stockholm syndrome. I watch with baited breath as he repeatedly snubs out every last shred of hope, until I am left with only disappointment. This disappointment turns into bitter hate as soon as the TV is turned off, an insidious infection of hatred toward him.

And yet there I am, the very next day, waiting to see what he has to say to me, to all of us. To four year-old sons and newborn daughters who are just pictures to their parents overseas. To the parents who bury their children and to the children who must bury their parents. "I encourage you all to go shopping more." How do you say that to someone? How can this be the only answer? Marie Antoinette allegedly once said to thousands of starving peasants, "Let them eat cake." She has the benefit of time and the inaccuracy of history to perhaps redeem her name. Bush will forever have a video, careful digitalized footage, of his remark. We are starving for our loved ones to return. We are hungry for resolution and progress. We are his peasants, his unheard people who he chooses to ignore, parents and children and siblings of a massive famine of peace. Give us more than three hours of consideration. Give us hope instead of feeding us rhetoric. Instead he gives us that which means nothing. "I encourage you all to go shopping more."

Let that be his legacy.

My ear really hurts. I left work this morning after sending some emails and trying to talk on the phone (which alternated between me yelling because I can't hear myself or people saying "What?" because I can't tell how loud I'm talking). I know. I cannot be a rockstar if I can't make a daecent phone call. Kevin was finally like "Get out of here!"

Prepare yourselves, everyone. This could put a major cramp on MeanRachel's New Year's Eve festivities.

Champagne for one?

Why, thank you.

Some of you may remember when I wrote about one of my mentors in Dallas, Kevin Cleveland.

Well, I got a really nice comment from his family last night on my entry about Kevin's passing back in September.

My heart goes out to them and for what it's worth, I appreciate them taking the time to say some kind words about what it meant to them.

Mean rating = 8.3 out of 10.

I’m still fuming from this apartment nonsense. Why is the man trying to get me down? Packing, moving, etc. is just so grim. I can’t stand it. And no, I’m not going to start waxing poetic about the contents of my closet again, because I received so much heat about this previous post. I will try to tow the line and not bore my readership with my clothing-based nostalgia.

However, my Meanness is somewhat alleviated by this news: today is a banner day for www.MeanRachel.com! If you google “tony snow is an idiot” my blog comes up on the first page! I am so close to accomplishing one of my New Year’s Resolutions! You can see I had made this a goal of mine back here. It is my duty to make sure everyone realizes how idiotic this buffoon is.

As an added bonus: Google “tony snow sucks” and look who’s second from the bottom!

Xmas was daecent. I had to veer slightly from my all-florets diet for dinner (1/2 will appreciate that) but I’m back on track now. I also managed to somehow avoid coming in last in our traditional post-Xmas dinner Scrabble game. I consider this a moral victory.

Mission accomplished?

2007 is quickly approaching, and with it, the arrival of a *certain* 1/2 of Two Grim Dudes down here in Awesome, TX. It seems like it was just yesterday that I was hanging out with His Grimness at his holiday party up in Boston during my AUS-PVD-BOS-PVD-AUS extravaganza. I have undertaken hostess duties for the weekend, including planning out some activities for his trip down here. I compiled a list of Austin hot spots that anyone visiting the ATX for a few days has to see. I just cannot trust a *certain* Dunndee to be as good a host as a true Texan. They’ll probably spend all their time playing beer pong and video games down in Harker Heights unless I step in and take control of the situation.

In closing, because I can’t help myself, Tony Snow is an idiot:

(And yes, I am a YouTube addict.)

Other than my mom biting into a stale cracker and then immediately spitting it out during our post-Christmas dinner Scrabble game.

If you're not drunk yet, you better either be in Iraq or in the Pacific Northwest and operating 2 hours behind the rest of the contiguous United States.

Cheers.

...that you're not a celebrity and you don't have to push steamers on the Letterman show.

My parents and I went and got Grace (Goldie) from the airport tonight, braving the rain and cold that we have on special-order for her.

We tried to go to El Chile (cousin to El Chilito) but failed when we got inside and they told us the kitchen was closed. We did see, ironically enough, The Artist and her friend Alisa and another unidentified Austin hipster.

Instead we went to Ztejas on West 6th Street. The bad weather + the holidays + the time (9:00 PM) = no wait! We were immediately seated, which was great because I always associate Ztejas with long, long waits on the patio in 100 degree weather.

Near the end of the dinner, my mom spied Karen Hughes sitting at a table behind me. After my mom did a fake-out trip to the bathroom to confirm that it was in fact her, I decided the only thing left to do was to approach her for a photo op. Ed. Note: It is not that I'm brave and/or brash in approaching minor celebrities for photos. However, do know that I have a strong dedication to this blog and also -- I'd gulped down a mango margarita in about 10 minutes flat prior to me approaching "Hurricane Karen."

"Hi Ms. Hughes, I'm sorry to bother you, can I get a picture with you?"
"Oh, certainly!"
"I really admire you...you know, women's strength and all that." (I was grasping at straws here.)
"Oh, great...I'm Karen."
"Rachel, nice to meet you." We shook hands.
My sister took the picture and then we exchanged a few words and a PC "Happy Holidays!"

PAPERCLIP!

He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them one by one before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in a many-colored disarray. While we admired he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher--shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple green and lavender and faint orange and monograms of Indian blue. Suddenly with a strained sound Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily. 'They’re such beautiful shirts,' she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. ‘It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such—beautiful shirts before...'

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Packing is such a...such a shackle!

Among other things.

I haven't even started packing yet and I already am repulsed by the thought. There is something inherently awful about facing head-on the amount of crap one collects. There could be no worse time to be taking inventory on my consumerist ways than right now, during the Christmas season. Presents? No thanks, unless they're in the form of cardboard boxes.

I've spent the entire day tackling something that has been haunting me for quite a while: my closet. Between shirts that I pull out and say to myself, "What was I thinking?" and the eight trillion pairs of shoes in the back corner, collecting dust, I only come to one conclusion: I disgust myself!

Everything in my closet is more or less organized. Well, organized in the way that a schizophrenic organizes their Mickey Mouse salt and pepper shakers. I guess I'm saying, my stuff seems organized to me. I know where I can locate my 2001 team t-shirt for track, in between a shirt that someone brought me back from the Bahamas in 2002 and next to the four hangers that I forgot I had. But my closet, despite it's somewhat organized chaos, is a den of indulgence and acts as a Downy-scented time capsule of years gone by. There are a few shirts I hung on to from high school -- I remember the shirts like hazy pictures of my former schoolmates from a yearbook. I can apply a date and a time and an event to each of them: there's the one that says "Save the rainforest!" across the chest that I wore on the school retreat back during my vegetarian/environmentalist days; there's the red one that has the motto, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger...so don't die!" plastered across the back that I used to wear on Friday's before track meets, and then of course the familiar burgundy logo of Switch Willo Stables on a t-shirt that I haven't worn since 2002. In another part of my closet, twenty-odd t-shirts acquired from horse shows and associations are packed together, chronicling my entire life's dream from start to finish. Some of these shirts still smell like Mrs. B's special laundry detergent, from the days before I moved to Gaines Ranch when we had our co-op. Every Monday I would carry my laundry up to her house and she and I would trade the chores we hated: She would wash, fold, and hang my week's worth of dirty clothes while I wrote checks, paid bills and stamped envelopes for her week's worth of bills. In between loads, we would chat about horses, her daughter's equestrian pursuits, gossip about the barn, and the boys I would date. It was a perfect arrangement, up until I moved. I counted at least 12 polo shirts and button-down striped shirts that I wore daily during 2005, after I decided t-shirts were too casual for the appearance I was trying to give when I was at the barn. I don't even want to admit how many pairs of jeans were in my closet -- on hangers, tucked into my dresser, folded on the shelves. And then the clothes suddenly change, as fast as my life changed over the last two years. "Going-out" shirts as they are often called mixed with the shirts I bought to wear to Las Vegas the first time, then the shirts I bought to wear the second time. The shirts I wear to work now seem so clean and crisp compared to the collection I created over a five-year period since high school.

I spent all day sifting through what now seems like a distant past, the barn as far away from me as high school has become. A few shirts caused me to stop and consider them momentarily. I had to make concessions based on my own laziness and it's conflict of interest with my sentimentality. I finally decided to ditch the "Save the rainforest!" shirt and keep my track shirt, a case of inspirational sayings winning out over idealistic impossibilities. I bagged up all of my t-shirts but kept a few token ones: My Pony Finals shirt and the polo shirt from the Winter Equestrian Festival that I got when I worked in Dallas. Both remind me of the pinnacle of my equestrian pursuits, the world that I had most dreamed about and aspired to be a part of.
The jeans all went to Goodwill. I only need a couple of pairs of jeans now, not the arsenal once required to ride 6 horses a day. I saved my favorite pair of jeans that I used to ride in, the pair that folded neatly into my half chaps and had just enough give not to pull when I would swing my leg over the horse's back. Maybe when I ride again, it'll all come flooding back, those comfortable jeans contouring my leg exactly how it is supposed to sit on the horse's side. I don't know. Maybe the jeans just remind me of what I enjoyed about horses -- the discipline, the education and the innate comfort I always had being around them.

Moving isn't just an inconvenience but also a reckoning with oneself about where they've been and where they now are going. It requires you to make decisions based on happiness and quality of life, but also how your new life will add up to what you once had. This move will be a letting-go, of sorts, of a small decision that impacted my life in an incredible way.

But first...I've gotta pack.

Out like trout.

Yay for four day weekends!

Yay for getting to leave early!

And yay for having a job that lets me leave early to take four day weekends!

Merry Whateveryoucelebrate Everyone! Have a great one.

"When tragedy stalks the house once in ten years, Araminty, I can stay up for it."
- Mr. Brown, National Velvet (1944)

This is the sort of night Flexeril and vodka were made for.

I thought everything was fairly, flat-line okay. Then I was at the gym and watched Scarborough Country, which got me enraged/upset/paranoid. You know when Scarborough is repeatedly denouncing Bush (whom he voted for twice) that something is going terribly, terribly wrong.

So that was strike number one.

Strike number two was when I went to my mailbox on the way back from the gym and got today's mail. Remember all that lovey-dovey stuff I wrote about my apartment complex? Well I forgot to say that the management sucks. They are raising our rent (after raising it only $25 last year) almost 30 percent! Higher than Bush's approval ratings (that'd be funny if I weren't so damn pissed off)! What the hell. This comes after we went in on Saturday to find out how much they were going to raise it because we suddenly realized that our lease was about to be up. Well, she couldn't tell us on Saturday but she did give us the amount that the unit currently is leasing at and said "It will be below that because you've lived here for 2 years."

We went and looked at apartments anyway and then decided that the small amount that they might raise it (hell, even if they raised it to the number she gave us) was not worth moving for.

So you can imagine my shock when I got the letter and it said that our renewal price would be $145 more than the number she told us on Saturday. What?! All in all, they want to raise our rent $270!

Outrageous. We are not happy. So I am having to go in late to work tomorrow so I can go battle with the management in the leasing office first thing tomorrow morning. That's going to be a nice pick-me-up.

Strike number three: Wars.

Can the doctor-in-training tell me if it's okay to mix hydrocodene with Flexeril with Lyrica with vodka?

Something tells me "no."

I got my passport in the mail last night, along with my old passport which I had to send in for verification. I never expected to see it again. I'm kind of glad, just for historical purposes, that they don't destroy the old ones.
I was a little surprised it came so soon. I went and filled out the paperwork the day before Thanksgiving -- there was a sign on the wall saying "Passports will not be available until after: January 16, 2007." It really only took a month to process.
Granted, I do look like a man in the picture. Note to self: When it comes time to renew the passport in 2016, do not go get your picture taken when you have a head-cold.

I'm embarrassed to say that I actually have some shopping left to do. I know, I know. Christmas really has gotten away from me this year.

Chuy called me last night at 12:34 AM. He muttered his greeting ("Hola Raquel, como te estrano...") and then said "Listen to this song." I suddenly hear in the background a familiar voice (is that my mom?) and the familiar lyric, "there's twenty five acres in Bolivar County, to be dusted by day's end..."

I haven't laughed that hard in a while. A long time ago, I gave Chuy my mom's demo CD from when she was doing her songwriting stint. This was at least a year ago. Chuy loved the CD -- mainly because there's a song about immigrants crossing the Rio Grande with the help of a coyote. Somehow Chuy still has the CD and at 12:34 AM in the middle of December, he's rocking out to "Delta Flyer."

Is this weekend already over?

Is next weekend really "Christmas?"

Yikes.

Two things I've learned this weekend:
1) I don't want to move. There is a reason I've lived here for 2 years. I love my apartment. There isn't anything I would change except for maybe free rent.
2) Amy will have a wardrobe malfunction no matter what she's wearing. It's like death & taxes.

M and I spent all of Saturday (well, "all" in this case meaning the amount of the day we were actually awake and not getting ready to go out) looking for apartments. Well, not really looking for apartments, since we have one, but more like checking out the market. There is some talk of some serious rent hikes going on and since we will have to give our 30 day notice for next year as of the end of this month, we decided (read: M decided) we should go look at some others.

Really, all of the others were no good for one reason or another. I'll spare you the details but mainly a lot of the things I love about my apartment now are lacking in the others and the compromise we would have to make would not be offset enough by the cost. I love the location of the apartment I have now, the surroundings, the floor plan, my room, my bathroom, the balcony, the outside, the fact that the parking lot doesn't have speed bumps, the pool is like a pool party just about every day during the summer (except on UT game day as IS2 and I discovered), the gym is succinct and utilitarian in its machines (and they're brand new), everyone I know gets lost every time they try to find my apartment once they're inside the complex, the guys who live upstairs and will lend us (permanently) their blender, vacuum cleaner and rides home from downtown, etc. I could go on and on about why I love this apartment. On the other hand, I didn't like any of the apartments we looked at that much. They were a mile or so down the road and most of them were smaller and seemed older. One of the places had indoor racquetball and basket ball courts but when the hell would I ever play either of those? Never. So for now I think M and I have decided that the end doesn't justify the means and we'll stay put, come hell or high rent.

Now, on to more exciting things like me getting my ears pierced. That's right. I can endure many types of pain but I have never been able to get up my nerve to getting my ears pierced. M and I got ready to go out and I drank a rum & diet pepsi and then we headed to the mall. She marched us straight into Claire's (0f all places!) and there I was, sitting in what appeared to be the exact place where I'd once tried to get my ears pierced when I was 5. At the time, I was with my dad and my childhood friend Mariel. They drew the dots and then held what looked to be a large glue gun up to my left lobe and WHAM! Pierced the sucker. I ended up screaming and crying and wouldn't let them come near me and my dad got so flustered that he said "It's okay, Rachel, don't cry, let's go get some ice cream," and told the Claire's employees (or whatever it was called back then -- whatever the trendy late seventies, early eighties female name was) we'd be back later to get the other one pierced. I knew I'd never, ever go back and sported my one ear piercing with pride at kindergarten the next day. I kept that up for a while until I finally grew tired of trying to find single earrings since they only made them for men and I couldn't get the little pony earrings I wanted.

I suppose I have matured a bit since then (I'd like to think so). I noticed that the girl who pierced my ears, probably all of 17 years old, was eating chips at the ear-piercing station. This to me seemed absolutely disgusting. Finger-lickin' potato chip eating! Really. Luckily all that grease made her latex gloves easier to put on. Then she sidled up to me while I squeezed M's hands. She said a lady had come in the week before who was eighty nine and was getting her eras pierced for the first time and that it took 30 minutes. I wanted desperately to revert back to my 5 year old ways and start screaming and then go get ice cream, but I held back. They have upgraded from the glue-gun apparatus to a little box that has the stud in it. I found this much more appealing and maybe even would consider putting a point in the "Why the world is getting better" column for the fact that they no longer hold a gun to your head when you get your ears pierced.

Talk about anticlimactic. It felt like...nothing. I had kept saying to M, "Pinch me on my arm as hard as it will feel." She kept barely pinching me and I'd be like "Oh for chrissake." But honestly, I think the pinching was worse than what it felt like. No wonder people do all sorts of crazy stuff to their ears. I felt like someone could have ripped it off and I'd probably be okay. As long as no one ever injects 20 cc of Torodol in my bicep again, I can do anything.

So from there we went and met up with Amy and some other girls at Guerro's on South Congress. Um...not much to say about that except for that M was probably really bored because all of us rode horses and the conversation quickly turned to horse talk/gossip.

We all met at the Blind Pig after that. The Blind Pig is normally not my favorite place to go to early in the night. However we went up on the top story outside and it was actually not so bad. A *certain* Dunndee was there. This night also happened to be the 1 year anniversary of his accident (regular readers will remember Dunndee getting hit by a drunk driver last year; newbies can check out Tlak About Scary for more details). It was good to see him, since I hadn't seen him in...wow, since earlier in the day on the night IS2 left and we ran into him on post. That was a really strange day. So I was able to catch up with him for a while on the state of affairs at 1819, where Dunndee filled me in on the status of the "arms room" (the spare bedroom) and the "storage room" (poor IS2's bedroom). We are all glad Dunndee managed to make it through the year and if a year can go by that fast, then another one can too, right? Right? Also in attendance were Mark & Steve (Archie!), Jose, Amy's spanish tutor whom I was able to habla en espanol, Amy's roommate Cathy and a girl who rides with them Nicole.

From there we headed to Cheers where Amy did her favorite shot (click on any of these to enlarge them).
We then made our way to Friends so that Amy could get her dance on and hopefully have another wardrobe malfunction (we weren't disappointed).

The rest of the night, in pictures...

I wrote this for Amy G., who always brings out the poet in me. I thought I ought to post it on here as my 2nd commemorative poem about her.

It seems like not so long ago
Amy was twenty-one and loved it so
But since another year has passed
Now AmyGangsta' is kicking ass
At twenty-two, it seems so old
But this birthday night is not as cold
As the one last year when we went out
Scantily-clad and without a doubt
The silliest group of young carefree girls
With flat-ironed hair and hot-roller curls
AmyGangsta' donned a tube-like dress
To wear downtown and look her best
Strapless and tight, she asked me to
Watch out for her top so it didn’t move
Well I got drunk, what can I say?
I like to drink when I don't have to pay
We danced and laughed and made a scene
In our strappy shoes and "diamond" rings
While Amy got down, she danced away
With various boys that I gotta say
Must have been pleased to dance that night
With a just-twenty-one five-foot sight
Of little Amy G. in her hot dress
And her friend Mean Rachel who failed the test
And forgot to watch the tube top bust
Despite Amy's pleas of "You've got to, you must,
Don't let me flash men or talk to anyone named Victor."
And it was all well and good until later in pictures
We noticed AmyGangsta, dancing with a man
And her half-exposed boob from behind his hand.
Amy I love you and I want you to know
You should've worn straps -- I told you so!

I'll be honest with you, I love his music, I do, I'm a Michael Bolton fan. For my money, I don't know if it gets any better than when he sings "When a Man Loves a Woman".
-Office Space

Today for lunch we went to Chili's. Not exactly something I get too excited about but it was 2 PM and I knew we'd be able to take a leisurely lunch and then come back, finish up some work, and then leave so I could, oh I don't know, do some Christmas shopping that I'm seriously behind on.

Our waiter came and took our order and then a few moments later another waiter came out and said "Did he get your orders?" We said "Yes" and he said "Good because he's known to mess up orders. My name's Michael Bolton if you need anything."

I started laughing mainly because it almost seems cliche now to say your name's Michael Bolton. I asked the guy if he was trying to be like the guy in Office Space. Before I could interrogate him any further, he pulled his wallet out and showed me his Texas driver's license. Michael Bolton, indeed!

At this point our original waiter had reappeared and confirmed that yes, this was Michael Bolton. I said, "Hey can I take a picture of you for my blog?" Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me (one of the seven deadly sins of blogging) so my Sidekick had to suffice as back up.

Evidently Chili's is not set up for a professional photo shoot -- the back lighting didn't help my phone's picture taking skills. However, it turned out well enough. That's Michael Bolton on the left and Nameless Waiter on the right.

Both were quite interested about MeanRachel, the blog. I told them to check it out. So they'll have to leave a comment if they actually stop by. When Michael Bolton came back over later, I said "So why is your name Michael Bolton?" and he goes "Oh, I don't know, because Jesus hates me?" Awesome. He did say that he was 3 years ahead of the more well-known Michael Bolton.

Anyway, I couldn't help but feel like it was a full-circle moment. There we were, in Chili's being served by Michael Bolton, in the same city that Office Space was filmed in.

I just feel like the best I can do is step up to the microphone, sing something I can get my vocal teeth into. That must be how Lennox Lewis feels when he gets into the ring. That's my domain. And you can't make everybody love what you do, but you can know how great you feel doing it.
- Michael Bolton (the singer)

My family has a running joke about my father, coincidentally whose name is George, and the double-standards that he upholds.

As an example, my dad was a smoker for many years but quit before my sister and I were born. He now ridicules and hates all smokers. "It's such a disgusting habit." Another thing is that he doesn't hesitate to spend extravagant amounts of money on trips to various places, however he will question your own vacation. "Why would you go to New York City in the winter?"

Now it seems that George W. Bush has his own pattern of double-standards. Here's an excerpt from a recent AP article regarding Mary Cheney's pregnancy announcement and Bush's thoughts:

President Bush says he is happy for Mary Cheney, the openly gay daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, who revealed earlier this month that she is pregnant.

"I think Mary is going to be a loving soul to her child," Bush said in an interview with People magazine. "And I'm happy for her."

Bush was asked about Mary Cheney's pregnancy in light of his previous statements that a child ideally should be raised by in a family headed by a married father and mother.

Some of you may be wondering how Dubya can justify his previous statements. Well, the thing is, he can't.

But go ahead and let Tony Snow take a crack at it:

White House press secretary Tony Snow said on Friday that Bush has not changed his mind. "But he also believes that every human life is sacred and that every child who comes into this world deserves love," Snow said. "And he believes that Mary Cheney's child will, in fact, have loving parents."

Asked if Bush believes that children who are raised by gay and lesbian parents are at a disadvantage, Snow said, "He does not make comments on that and nor will I."

Rather unconvincing, Snowbird. And that, folks, is today's "Why Tony Snow is an Idiot."

So today has been one of those days. I'm not sure what type of one of those days it has been but I know it's something.

I successfully drank 3/4 a bottle of wine on Tuesday night. It was a really nice red called Beauzeaux, pronounced "Bo-zo." It wasn't too bitter or acidic and I was surprised by the fact that it actually didn't make me tipsy (or hung over!).

Well. I learned my lesson last night when I had two glasses of a different Argentine wine called "Oops." And Oops it was, because I felt tipsy after only two glasses and woke up this morning with a splitting headache. This should not have been so surprising after the Argentine wine tasting I went to a while back with one of my old clients. We all got hammered and then practiced the tango -- it was held at the Austin City Limits building and they were giving tango lessons on the ACL stage. We then made our way downtown, myself and two fifty year-olds, to Antone's where Schrodinger's Cat was playing. Somehow after drinking wine all night and then chasing it with vodka tonics (which I'm sure were made with Grey Goose), the Mrs. and I ended up dancing on the Antone's stage with the band.

So I decided to do the right thing and stop at Starbucks on my way to work because a wise person once told me (Haylee) that after a night of drinking you need to show up with "a frown on your face and Starbucks in hand."

My boss, being that he is awesome, usually buys us Starbucks 1-2 times a week. I figured since he brought us coffee yesterday he wouldn't today.

I arrived at the Bucks, which was packed. It reminded me of the Scrubs episode last night (if anyone other than 1/2 watched it, although I'm sure my sister did too...right?) where the line is so long it leads to another Starbucks. Ha! I even saw one of my old clients there.

The Starbucks by my work is filled with men in suits on their way downtown from their lake houses and women in work out clothes but they don't actually look like they've broken a sweat at all. They all wear their big rocks with their tennis shoes and sit drinking tall soy lattes talking about how they're headed to the tennis club or how "Present and Carter are so excited for winter break!" It's somewhat nauseating to be in there for more than 10 minutes. And typically, with the exception of running into former clients and asking "How are Caitlyn and her pony doing?" and hearing all about the last horse show they went to, I don't talk to anyone or even make eye contact with anyone.

Anyway, I'm in the Bucks and I ended up waiting forever. But that was okay because it was really damn foggy out today and there was a dense fog advisory so I was hoping some of it would burn off. When I finally got my coffees, I was walking toward the side door, which I have mastered the art of pushing open with my hip/ass while carrying my tray of overpriced lattes.

Well. As I made my way toward the door, I noticed one of the men in suits standing a good 5 paces from the door. If you ride horses he was at least 1 to 2 strides away from the door. He happened to be looking at me and then -- to my amazement -- he actually walked the two strides to the door and pushed it open and held it open for me!

It wasn't like he was right there, you know, with his back to the door and only opening it so that I wouldn't be forced to push my way past him. No, this man was well clear of the door and I could have easily walked straight up to the door and done my ass-push out and have been on my way.

I was so impressed with Mr. Armani-Door-Opener. I looked him in the eye and said "Thank you" with just enough friendliness in my voice to make it sound like I was clearly surprised and flattered. He wasn't really old either, probably early 30s, which gave me hope for the younger generation of men.

My headache still hasn't gone away. I got to work and my boss had already hit up the Starbucks so we were all double-fisting it this morning. Maybe it is one of those days.

But nevertheless, it is also one of those days when you remember that despite the waspy Starbucks-goers, sometimes you can get more than just a cup of joe at these places.

Being the cynic that I am, and well trained by my mother to put a damper on the world, as soon as I walked out the door that was held open for me, I thought "That guy probably voted for Bush." And you know what? I forgive him. Because sometimes all a hung-over girl needs is a little reminder that chivalry isn't dead.

Caffeine doesn't hold a candle to that.

I have been looking for this clip from The Colbert Report ever since I saw it air. Personally, it's my favorite one he's ever done. Strangely I can't find it on YouTube -- it's only on Google Videos. Since the Google tycoons won't let me embed a video with my own HTML, you guys will just have to click on this link.

Someone is out to get me. Who decided to have a double-header on AMC tonight of Casualties of War and then Marines Let's Go?

This is like the time I said "Let's watch The Deer Hunter!"

Texas Democrat Ciro Rodriguez won his run-off election for Congress last week, beating out Republican incumbent Henry Bonilla. Rodriguez is a supporter of gay rights, environmental controls and raising the minimum wage.
It seems that aside from having an unfortunate last name, Bonilla was also unable to pull off an eighth-term in Congress representing the state's largest, and previously gerrymandered, District 23. This seems to be yet another reflection of the new state of affairs in here in Texas--that we're not all bird-hunting dunces--and also further proves that Tony Snow is an idiot.
Kudos go to my cousin and fellow block-walker, Man Chac, who went down to San Antonio last week while I was flitting about in Rhode Island to do some last-minute campaigning for him.
To read more about the run-off, check out this article (CNN.com).
It's uncommon for me to feel pride in in my state's politics, especially when you live in Texas and ran down the stirrup in which Dubya put his foot, allowing him to saddle the United States with his awful presidency.
However, Rodriguez's win is like looking in the fridge two weeks after Thanksgiving and seeing that one forgotten slice of pumpkin pie, reminding me again of the sweet taste of victory back in November.

Even despite Tony Snow still being an idiot.

I'm going to preface this blog with: I am drinking red wine. Party for one? Yes. Unless you count Chubby Charles.

Wait.

What's that C-Lo?

Nevermind. She just told me she is too cool for school and is not a part of this party.

Damn.

So that leaves me, myself and Mean. Rachel, that is.

General Absurdities of the Day:

Cha-Ching!
I quoted someone $68,000.00 for a move today. That's right. IS2 was jubilant. So I owe him a dinner if it happens.

Tony Snow is still an idiot.
My quote for Winner of Today's "Tell Me Something I Don't Know That You As Press Secretary Should Know, Snowy" comes from this article:

"It's a complicated business and there are a lot of things to take into account," the spokesman added.

Things! Things! What is the number one thing they teach you from like, 6th grade English foward? Don't use the word "thing!"
I mean -- isn't one of the highest honors of a speech writer considered becoming the press secretary? Or am I just imagining things? How on earth could he break the residing law over "How To Write Your College Entrance Essay" and use such lazy, unintelligent vocabulary.
Please, Snowbird. Don't patronize me by telling me something I already know and also use the word "thing" in the same breath.
What an idiot. In case you don't already know, I am trying to turn my blog into the number one Google search when you Google the words "Tony Snow" and "idiot."

Heil-Bush!
I tried running my beliefs that the religious right is the modern equivalent of early Nazi Germany by 1/2 last night. He wasn't having any of it, despite my compelling argument.
The difference between last night and tonight is that tonight I am drinking and last night I had just been traveling all day with plenty of time to stew.

O'Christmas Tree
I almost knocked over our tree tonight when I tossed a pillow over my shoulder. That would've been a little disappointing, mainly because I don't think I would have bothered to pick it back up.

News to Me...and all of my ex-boyfriends...and their parents...and their ex-girlfriends
They just announced on the local news that "By just knowing someone's name, you can find out information on where they live, their birthday, their phone number." No! NO! I'm shocked. Literally shocked and awed. Surely you cannot find that much information about someone by Googling someone. NO! Wow. Talk about breaking news, people! I bring the news to you first, here on my blog, don't I?
Shred all everything that has your name and address. Wow. Hadn't thought about that. Oh! A paper shredder. And I thought you just were supposed to burn it all in a bucket in your back yard.
Is it legal to call something like that story "news?"

Twelve Calendar Months
AmyGangsta's birthday is on Friday. Which means that on Saturday, it will have been a year since Dunndee got hit by a drunk driver. Which means that in less than a month, M and I will have lived together for a full year and I will have lived in this apartment for two.
It is funny what a year can seem like and what a year actually is. I suppose with enough time our bodies can heal or herniate, our roommates can move in and also move out, and our loved ones can come and then go. It is an overwhelming thought. There is so much a year can bring and also take from us. I suppose that, despite the losses and perhaps only because of the gains, we carry on in hope of what the next year merely promises, like presents in an unwrapped box under the tree.
The new year waits to be opened.

That's right, I'm back from my whirlwind tour of the twin cities...Providence and Boston, that is.
After my windfall on Thursday night and a graceful, delay-less flight on Southwest (which is yet another reason why American Airlines is going bankrupt and Southwest is not), I arrived in PVD to see my sister waiting expectantly at the baggage claim. After getting my bag and donning winter caps, scarves and gloves I decided to do what I do the worst: brave the cold weather.

And brave the cold weather I did. Not without complaint. I finally decided just to wrap the scarf over my face and hold on to my sister's elbow. It was that cold. When we arrived at Tenth & Top, the location of my sister & her boyfriend's residence (just staying along the lines of their 1950s relationship), I was still freezing. Apparently Tenth & Top is not the place to be if you are cold since they choose not to use the heater. They're in the 1950s, so just run with it.

Arthur, Grace and I went to Bravo, a very 1950ish restaurant/bar in downtown PVD that reminded me of a transatlantic ocean-liner on the inside. They apparently specialize in strange white ceramic table settings and featured a waiter that I called "Kuwait," because he walked up to our table and immediately said "Canyouwait?" but I thought he said Kuwait.

We then walked back to the ProJo parking lot during which time I seriously doubted how long I would make it. This is when I made a very key decision that went down something like this (between chattering teeth and me cursing randomly):

Me: This only puts any desire I ever had to live in a cold climate to rest.
Grace: But you never had a desire to live in a cold climate.
M: Exactly. This only reinforces my decision not to live somewhere where it's f$*%ing cold.
G: It is really cold, isn't it...
M: #$*(! There is no way I'm taking the T all over the place tomorrow night. #($)#*$#! I know. I'm just going to go take like $600 out of the ATM and take a cab all over the place. I'm going to say to the cabbie, "If I pay you an extra $20 will you drive this cab straight up the stairs to my friend's apartment?"

That night was the coldest I have ever been. This is pathetic for many reasons because it's not like I was camping out on the coast of Greenland or something. However, Arthur (who came home late after going to see that stupid Apocolypto movie or whatever it's called) had turned off the heater before going to sleep. This means that I was sleeping on the couch, using a wool blanket as my sheet! As a sheet, people. Then I had a comforter folded in half over me. I was also ridiculously clothed for sleeping -- pants, a shirt, a fleece hoodie and socks. Seriously...it had to have been 12 degrees in the house since that was the temperature outside. I was so cold.

We didn't realize the heater had been turned off until we woke up in the morning and I told my sister it had to be warmer outside. "Oh," Gracie said, "Arthur must have turned off the heat."

Riiigghhhtt...

At this point I was super-psyched to get out of the house and to go somewhere else. Where, you ask? I'll tell you where. Some place warm. A place where the beer flows like wine. Where beautiful women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano. I'm talking about a little place called...Boston.

Sorry. That was just the obligatory Dumb & Dumber quote since this post is dealing with Rhode Island.

Since no trip up to Boston can be complete with out a stop at the Providence Train Station (and a subsequent train getting canceled and then me almost missing my next train), my sister took me to the station. This was an upgrade from the last time I went to the train station -- a few years ago when my sister pointed at the Capitol state house across the river and said "Okay, just walk toward that and it's right across the street." She then drove off to class and I started a very long, very lost walk toward the state house and train station.

The train ride up was nice -- who knew that I could travel by train while also talking to IS2 on the phone? The weather had warmed up a little bit. But not by much. When the train arrived at South Station, I then navigated the maze of doors and gates and found (somehow) the Red Line.

This is where I got a touch confused. For those of you scoffing at my ignorance, please understand that in Texas we don't really have mass transportation. Jennie had told me to take the Red Line Outbound to Adelwife and get off at Porter Square.

Well, I'm standing in the subway area and all of a sudden a train (is that what they're called?) pulled up and I saw it was red and said "Ashmont/Alewife." So I hopped on, thinking "I guess this is it."

Seconds later, the announcer said "Next stop: Broadway." I looked up at the map and realized I was going in the opposite direction of Alewife and Porter Square. Hm. My brain worked overtime, trying to make sure I wasn't over thinking it. Well, I quickly realized that the best clue of all was all around me. Instead of the pea-coat-clad Asian girls that usually are on the subway with me to Harvard Square, I saw various hoodlums and...for lack of a better way of explaining it, people who didn't look like they went to MIT or Harvard. At Andrews, I decided to get off the train I was on. There are too many metaphors for riding in the wrong direction on an outbound train from Boston, but I'll go ahead and move on.

I managed to weave my way around and get on the correct outbound train to Alewife. Ah! Here were my friends in their Uggs and cashmere sweaters. Much better.

When I arrived in Porter Square, Jennie was ready and waiting for me. We had a nice lunch -- albeit a bit distracted since Jennie was dealing with a personal crisis. Then we walked through the bitter early-afternoon cold back to her apartment and spent some time chatting. A funny part of the evening was when her phone rang and she was talking on her cell phone while I was getting dressed. She apparently was also getting dressed at the same time.

I came around the corner wearing a black dress at the same time she came around the corner in jeans and a sweater. We both burst into laughter because of the difference in our outfits. I explained to her that it was a semi-formal event, which somehow she'd missed. So she didn't get to wear her casual-chic outfit and cute new boots. Instead she found an appropriate holiday skirt and shirt to wear.

As promised, we arranged a cab to take us directly from the door of her apartment to 1/2's place in the North End. This was another funny moment because as I ran down the stairs to catch the cab, I cursed under my breath at the bitter cold that hit me and said quietly to myself "I'm so glad we're taking a cab." I then hear Jennie, a few steps behind me say, "I'm so glad we're taking a cab!"

We had a great cabbie, well worth the $25 cab fare, who gave us a driving tour of Boston at night. He'd lived in Boston all his life and knew random little details about the city -- I thought he reminded me of myself and how I tell people silly trivia about Austin when I drive them around here. At one point he said "And now we're headed into the area of The Big Dig, where we'll take the tunnel." To which I suddenly said "Tunnel? Nobody said anything about a tunnel." He was nice enough to offer to go a non-tunnel route but I told him I'd survive. Plus I think we only took the tunnel that went under the city.

We arrived at Chez 1/2 and immediately we were surprised by how many people were already there. Actually we were mainly just surprised by how many people were there at all! Not that 1/2 doesn't throw a great party. Truth is, I didn't really know what kind of party to expect since I've only actually met 1/2 twice. But hey. Small details.

We entered to find 1/2 near the "bar." I knew it was the "bar" because it had the word "BAR" written over head in white Christmas lights. However, I think even without the lighting I probably could have figured it out judging by the amount of booze surrounding the area and the crowd of people surrounding the booze.

1/2 got swept away by other party goers so I decided we just needed to introduce ourselves to random Bostonites until something interesting happened. Who would have thought that out of the crowd I'd pick Scottoway, the often-ridiculed commenter on 1/2's blog. After Jennie and I introduced ourselves to him and his girlfriend, I said something about being from Austin and Scotto said "Are you Mean Rachel?" This will probably be a high point in my life. Like when a musician hears their song on the radio for the first time or something. I felt quite proud.

Suddenly I realized that a great excuse as to why I was trying to party in Boston and Providence all in the same night was by telling people I was on a press junket for my blog, trying to promote my New England readership. This worked quite well and gave me a chance to shamelessly tell people about my blog.

Later in the night, I got to meet Hueby, Amanda and Laurie! It was all rather exciting -- I mean, how often do you get to convene with like-minded bloggers? It was fun to meet them all -- and they were all quite nice. I forced everyone to stop and take pictures, since I'm a picture-taker according to some. To the left you'll see Hueby, Amanda, and 1/2, respectively. Where was Laurie in this? I don't know...

I didn't get to spend as much time at the 1/2 Party, mainly because I was on a very tight timeline. I had to get a cab back to South Station and catch the 11 PM train down to Providence to get to my sister's house for her party. So off I went to South Station after saying my goodbyes to everyone. I got to South Station at around 10:45 PM and found myself looking for someone who would let me buy a ticket for the train. When I couldn't find anyone, I asked a man waiting for the train "Excuse me, sir, how should I buy my ticket for the train?" He looked at me like I was every bit the Texan I am and said "Well, you can just get on the train and pay the conductor when he comes through."

Thirty minutes later, I was on my way to Providence, listening as the Rosie O'Donnell look & sound-alike announced the stops as they went by. I kept waiting for her to come through and check for tickets, but she never did. So that was another one of those moments when I felt like I was scamming and it felt nice.

I arrived at the Red Nose party at Tenth & Top at nearly 1 AM. The festivities were still going on there, with lots of Arthur's journalist friends still drinking and eating. Apparently medical school students are early to bed and do not a good holiday party make. My sister was still carrying on. I stopped for a photo op with the sis.
And while M may not like my Chubby Charles hat, I was approached (while waiting for a cab on the street outside 1/2's apartment) by a bum who simply said "Your hat is really pretty." That was a nice moment. That bum must be one of those A-side bums I've heard about from 1/2.

After all of the holiday revelries, yesterday Grace and I were able to head out to the coast and go see Blithewold. If anything should ever possess you to go there in the future, just let me know and I will actually tell you about it. Otherwise, it is late and I've got to go to sleep. So I leave you with my sister and I in our holiday photo taken at Blithewold. If we had parents who actually sent out holiday cards with our picture in them, this would be what we'd send out.

So I stopped at the mail box when I came home tonight since it was technically my Friday and I knew my roommate won't. I retrieved the week's worth of statements and bills and lugged them home with me. I noticed I had an explanation of benefits from my health insurance. I get tons of them, telling me different random amounts of money I owe different random doctors that I don't even remember going to.

I hate getting them. They litter my space with pieces of paper with the same thing on them and rarely do I find anything good on them. Usually I just get frustrated with what they will/will not pay for.

However, I force myself to open every one and look at it with crushing disappointment and frustration with my crappy spine. Tonight I reluctantly ripped the envelope open, pulled out two pieces of paper, and gazed across them.

Suddenly, I realized that page two, usually a redundant recap of "the glossary of medical insurance" was instead a check! Issued to me! For $43.95! What?

I went back to page one and saw it had itemized "Drug Expense" and that I had paid $43.95 for some drug (of course it did not say when, where or what the transaction was for) and that they owed me that amount.

Score! Now, forty bucks may not seem like a big deal to most people. However, I like to think of this as a little kickback from the insurance company for being such a great customer -- that is, injuring myself repeatedly and paying out the nose.

This little happy moment means that there has got to be a great weekend in store! Forty bucks buys me all sorts of wonderful things, like train fare back and forth from Providence to Boston. If I haven't mentioned it lately, I am obsessed with trains and would travel only by train everywhere if possible. My least favorite thing about Austin is its lack of a light rail system.

So I have filled my iPod with some good train songs sent to me, and also some various other tunes. I am excited to do some serious partying in the PVD and the BOS.

Even if it's freezing cold and I have to wear all 7 sweaters I'm bringing with me at once.

JHann, like I said. The Frenchman stalker better not show up on your doorstep or I will go Relson Gracie Jiu Jitsu on his ass. Then he will have more problems than being French on his hands.
1/2, you've been warned. I expect to have a pause in the activity and a moment where I am awarded my trophy for "Person Who Traveled The Furthest To Get To This Party." I have prepared a short statement. You do have an orchestra who can play as I wrap it up, right?
Goldie, I am looking forward to whatever nervous breakdown/temper tantrum/screaming public argument we engage in this visit. Let's pick a good venue with lots of people around. Mall? Done. Ferry? Overrated. How about in a restaurant?
Art, I hope we don't get stuck in an elevator again although the last time it actually all worked out for the best. But I won't be going in any elevators with you because I have since endured many MRIs and have gained a new phobia beginning in "claustro."

Plane ticket to Providence: Zero dollars with Southwest Rapid Rewards
Turtleneck purchased since I live in Texas and don't own one: Sixteen dollars.
Grande Starbucks cappuccino with one Splenda brewed in that I'll be purchasing tomorrow at ABIA at 0900: Six dollars

Entire trip financed by my health insurance refund: Priceless.

One early December night, two years ago, Shirikins and I concocted the plan that we should live together.

And our lives were never the same again.

I miss you!

Tony Snow is more bull-headed than W. While his delivery is not as whiney as Bush's, his words are just as immature. His rhetoric totally sucks. It's like watching a suit dance around a maypole -- he just twists himself up in pronouns and buzz words. And why does Bush always sound so damn inconvenienced by people asking him questions. Jesus. If I relocate someone's dog to Houston, I get the 3rd degree from some oil executive. At least I can come up with knowledgeable answers with a comforting, confident tone. You are the damn president of what was once the greatest country in the world -- perhaps you should take a customer service class on how to explain to people that you have relocated their loved ones to a war zone and why.

But back to Snow. What the hell kind of press secretary argues about stuff that people aren't buying anymore? Talk about state of denial.
And John Kerry needs to get off the stump about his 1971 Senate testimony about Vietnam. Keep your mouth shut and let Obama do the talking. I love a combat vet as much as the next person but seriously...we know what you did. We got it.

Oh my gosh, I have to stop thinking about this.

However, speaking of customer service, I have a great example. As I announced yesterday, I bought MeanRachel.com off of GoDaddy.com. Today I received a phone call from Joe, with GoDaddy, asking me how things were going with my new domain and if I had any questions about it. I mentioned that I was working on getting my blog switched over and Joe was nice enough to follow up with an email explaining how to redirect MeanRachel.com to this blog address for now. So if you're feeling adventurous or just feel like not having to type in rtruairf anymore, you can just go to www.MeanRachel.com and it'll send you here! More exciting changes are soon to come.

Unless by soon you mean really soon because it'll be a little while.

A certain fellow D referred me to his friend's blog today. You advertising/marketing girls...that includes you, 1/2...will like this: BrandSpankin'. A creative blog for sure. Imagine that. Certainly far and away better than the dull droning noise than this blog exudes day in and out.

Rosie is leaving The View?!? How disappointing. Too bad I don't have a schedule which has ever allowed me to watch The View.

Which brings me to today's poll. I was talking with 1/2 last night and we segued from MBTA schedules to him saying "Random question." I of course am the queen of Random Answers. So I said "Okay..."
1/2 then said (and when I say "said" I mean typed, as this was all via IM so you can imagine the disconnect): "There's this song...sounds kind of like U2...it goes 'nah-nuah-nah-deck the halls..."
MR: Do you mean 'Deck the Halls?'
1/2: Fer fahks sake! No!
MR: Are there any other words other than "nah-nuh-nah?"
1/2: YES there are words...I just don't remember them!
MR: I just don't know how much I can help you with "nah-huh-nah deck the halls."
1/2: Nevermind...it was really good. Really rockin'.
MR: Oh!!!! Now you tell me. Did it sound like "They're singing 'Deck the Halls' but it's not like Christmas at all...?"
1/2: That could be it...
MR: BAAAAAAAAAABY please come home!!!
1/2: Yes, that's it!

We then had a disagreement over whether the Death Cab version or U2 version was better. It took me 10 minutes to talk him into even considering downloading the "suspect" DCFC file.

So. I want to know what you think. That's right. And please don't pull an American Idol on me and vote like 10 times for your favorite and sway the vote, or suffer the consequences. You've been warned.

My impending trip to Rhode Island has reminded me of my brief evening spent at Telephone. Telephone was the name given to the residence of one of my sister's former schoolmates, Max. It is a sort of PeeWee Herman-like time capsule that since, I have heard, has gone out of existence.

This was written several years ago, the night after the Red Soxs won the World Series. I had gone to Telephone with a few others and we had watched the Red Soxs win the playoffs while sitting in the depths of Max's fantasy world. I thought it would be a good trip down Nostalgia Lane to post my OpEd about having gone to Telephone here on my blog.

There are so many connotations to the word telephone, the foremost in people’s mind being the device which we sit by, baited breath and waiting; the kind we slam down in anger after a “courtesy call” from a business or after a squabble with a friend. Telephone has really become an outdated word, since the phone has become even more popular. But there are still telephones around, they’re not archaic, they exist in homes and offices and bed rooms and kitchens. A telephone will never become extinct.

Which brings us to Telephone. A den of organized chaos, literally, a fireman’s nightmare of plywood mazes, layered with shag carpeting and littered with discarded travel Scrabble letters and bordered with a menagerie of pillows. Telephone exists to rebuff conservatism and parody excess and even, it appears, define a man.

I don’t know Max Kuller well, which is an understatement in the least. There is something I relate to in him, in his smoke-filled space that is so paradoxically different from mine. I’ve only seen Max at night, which is to say I’ve seen him twice and both times it has been well into the night. When I first met him, at a graduation party, I couldn’t imagine this character in the light of day. My mind wandered as I danced to Outkast in a room full of sweaty graduates, trying to picture him brushing his teeth in the morning or going to the grocery store on a Sunday afternoon. These were activities reserved for the rest of society, not men who dressed in oversized-diapers and pink and black striped tights.

But like I said, there was something to him that I related with. An intrigue that men wearing tights no doubt often create, but my curiosity went beyond that. And when Max whispered “Telephone” in my ear, I wanted to know even more.
People always say that you never know what goes on behind closed doors. If you walked by Telephone, you would never know it. From the outside, the house looks like any other colonial-style building that lines the streets of Providence. There are no flashing neon signs, the lawn doesn’t have plastic elves poking out of it -- the house blends in with all of its neighbors, unassuming and quiet.

In the foyer of the house, call buttons with the residents' names on them for each floor are lined up. The first button has a hastily written “TELEPHONE” next to it, over where the owner’s name had once been. The first step into the apartment is disorienting as you realize you are embedded in a room that serves only as a staging ground to the rest of the apartment. A pinball machine takes up most of the space in the room, but it is piled with so much clutter that it obviously is temporarily out of commission. Squeezing through the front room feels similar to moving through a dark attic.

The primary colors that fill the next room are so bright that lighting is hardly necessary. Nevertheless, on this night at Telephone, various strands of lights are intertwined throughout the apartment—green wires with pineapple bulbs hanging off and regular twinkling Christmas lights—guiding my way through the glare of hot pink throw pillows and neon green shag carpeting.

The “no shoes” rule in Telephone is not surprising, and actually is an aide to the visitor, since the funhouse atmosphere encourages a casual mood and a sense of adventure. The main TV and living room have, as of late, been turned into a “hardware shop.” This is a very minimalist description that is due to the fact that Max has attached peg board to the open walls. The boards are covered with various shrink-wrapped items that Max has purchased in bulk from dollar stores and gas stations—the kind of crappy toys that young kids don’t even yearn for, choosing candy bars over plastic farm animals. And yet Max has bought tons of these toys and trinkets in bulk, and then arranged them in the way that someone must have arranged the solar system. There seems to be some kind of pattern or theme in certain areas, but you can’t exactly grasp just what it is.

I could admire the large collection of nearly vintage baubles all day. There are “Medic Kits,” filled with miniature stethoscopes and Band-Aids; Tie-Downs, small metal clips to hold down your tie on a windy day; even Ace bandages in bulk hanging from the peg board. I feel the sense of security in these possessions that surround me, despite their trivialness, as if multiples of inexpensive novelties and miniature Band-Aids could fix any emotional wound.

The stockpiles continue throughout the house—cleaning supplies are lined neatly in rows along roomy shelves. Bottles of Mop-Glo overwhelm one corner of the room, where a TV has been placed up high, angled towards a small, tattered sofa. Boxes of videos teeter in towers like intricate houses of cards, and I am reminded that Telephone is just that—a house of cards, carefully and deliberately placed, waiting to collapse, and yet created with so much care that there is no possible way to knock it down. There is a spirit in this house of cards that does not waver under stress.

A bedraggled kitchen is the half-way point between the TV room and Max’s living quarters, and you could almost overlook it since your eyes have to adjust to the sudden lack in color. The kitchen seems like an afterthought, a room that couldn’t exactly be taken over by obsession and excess due to it’s important part in day to day operations. A narrow hallway, made even narrower because it stores building supplies, leads to the other half of the apartment. There is a definite difficulty in moving from the kitchen through the hallway, and I wonder about the fact that the two entry points into Max’s world are not only cluttered but difficult to get through. The near claustrophobia that I feel walking through the hallway alienates me momentarily and maybe that is what Max wants to create. You have to be willing to get through a little discomfort and a giant mess to get to the core of what Max is about.

Blue shag carpet lines a rather toned-down room with a low ceiling that barely allows you to stand up straight. A TV stands in one corner and the rest of the room is packed full of Max’s current project, creating a “day dungeon” in one corner of the room. He tells me it involves a fake palm tree and some Astroturf. “Oh, like an oasis?” I ask, feeling kind of naïve, since everyone knows that “oasis” and “dungeon” are not synonymous. Max nods kind of halfheartedly but now looking back on it, I don’t think that I was that far off. He finds solace in the collection of things that mean nothing, while the rest of the world is out looking for substance that means something. The day dungeon represents the kind of world I think Max has convinced himself he must live in—a sort of bright darkness, a painful high, a fortune invested in plastic.

There is a platform almost four feet high that leads up to Max’s bedroom. Once again, I am struggling to climb into Max’s world, telling him he should build a ladder or a step to make his room more accessible. Another giant step up leads to a leveling out of plywood, where Max has put his mattress up against a wall. The next level is surrounded with boxes of board games, built up into walls, leaving only a small opening to crawl through. I ask him about the board games, and he says simply “I really like games, so sometimes I’ll just get one down.” He invites me into what he calls his “nook,” but I decline. I am staring at a full-grown man hunched over in a nook that is about three feet high, holding a heart-shaped pillow, surrounded by board games. Once again I am hit by the same pang of what I’d like to think is sympathy, but I know it’s not. The feeling is more like empathy, that pit of your stomach twinge when you see someone who seems so different from yourself, but really is not. I have walls that are just as confusing, mazes into the depths of my mind that are just as disconcerting. Telephone is a physical landmark of how I feel in life, about my life. I feel like my hardware store of trinkets and momentos add up to very little, shrink-wrapped trifles that lack meaning or depth. My job, my career path, is as carefully planned as his job, his creation of Telephone, and yet both threaten to fall apart at any moment. I see him in his nook, as he explains his appreciation of sleeping in high places and moving around his bed, and feel that empathy because his walls are the most telling and meaningful thing about him. Just like mine.

When I first asked my sister what the significance of “Telephone” was, she told me it had something to do with the fact that Max had wanted the reputation of his fantasy world to spread by word of mouth, as if by telephone. I think of the game Telephone now, since games so define Max’s world. The idea that you tell someone something but the eventual truth is distorted when it finally comes out. The conveyance of a message that is confusing and disorienting is the game of Telephone, just like the mixed signals that Max’s world puts out. His world is a system of wealth and possession that is stained by excess and obsession, and the idea of space that does not exist. Even solitude can be suffocated by layers of plywood and mountains of pillows to soften the harsh edges of reality.

I think back to the call buttons I saw when we entered the building: TELEPHONE. The word had replaced what should have been Max’s name; not stealing his identity but defining his soul. We all define ourselves by our worlds—our expensive schools, our high-paying jobs, our driven friends, our moral ideology. Max has created a piece of art that demands attention because it is who he appears and hides who he aspires to be. My understanding of Max stems from not an outward observation, but an inward acknowledgement that my life, seemingly neat and orderly, is as cluttered and oppressive as Max’s Telephone.

Your son's actions cause me to cry as well.

Today I stopped at the gas station on my way home from work. It's a really small (read: cheap) gas station with only 4 pumps, two on one side and two on the other. As I pulled up, I noticed a small blue Volkswagen bug with a heavyset woman sitting inside. By the time I'd turned off my car and gotten out to pump the gas, she was standing, with her phone to her ear, hand on the pump. I did a double take, contemplated briefly of getting back in my car and driving away at 75 miles and hour, but then decided just to stick it out, explosions be damned.
There was also a red Jeep Cherokee at the station behind me and I watched in disbelief as a woman came walking out from the gas station, talking on her cell phone! I felt like lightening -- or a "freak gasoline fight accident" -- might strike twice.

What is going on with the world?

Since when did talking on your cell phone at a gas station become okay? The heavier lady with the Volkswagon had hair that hit at the back of her knees -- so I suppose I'll pardon her, since she's obviously missed the "social acceptabilities" bus. Beep-beep! All aboard! You don't talk on your phone when operating a gas pump because otherwise your 4.5 foot-long hair might go up in flames!

Among other cursory items:

I now own www.MeanRachel.com. Now I just have to decide what to do with it and how.

The product FloMax has now surpassed Viagra and Levitra on my "Commercials That Make You Go ....Ew" list. I just saw this commercial on TV. I'm so glad they have it on their website -- I had planned on just giving you a quick description, but this is way better.

My boss sent this to me and it's hilarious. Safe for work. I haven't laughed this hard in a few months. Reminds me of our Paperclip! game.

If I had a dollar for every time someone said "East Riverside -- isn't that the ghetto?" I'd be able to play a lot of Streetfighter.
It so happens that East Riverside was where M, AmyGangsta' (how appropriate) and I went last night to go to a party that was like a WHS Class of 2000 high school reunion-- those who could brave crossing over I-35 showed up. I'm not afraid of East Riverside -- I pointed out to M where my dad's 13-year place of business was, his famed Games Galaxy arcade. I never realized as a child that the patrons of my dad's operation were largely 18-25 year old black males and hispanics. If I did realize, it didn't seem to bother me as I perched my Cabbage Patch Kids inside Cruisin' USA with my sister at the wheel.
Dr. Connzo was having a party and through the powers of Facebook and Myspace I was invited and I also managed to rope Amy & M into going. So we headed over and I was reminded of the last time I went to one of his parties, with Shirikins. It felt like a very, very long time ago in the history of my life. And yet it was only June 2005.
This party ended up with a much larger turnout than the one in 06-05. I don't know if everyone was in the holiday spirit or what. Steve Eliot was there so I was once again able to remind him of how my sister and I used to call him Archie when we'd drive behind him on our way to school, between our raging fights over whether to listen to Lisa Loeb for the one hundred billionth time or the JB & Sandy Show.
Also there was the big brother, Ben, of my former friend-turned-not-friend Heddy Herndon. He was as much of a putz as I remember him being and at 6'7", made even M look short.
There was also some serious news broken (accidentally, I think) about the status of a former WHS couple that got married. If you are not one of the people that I mass text messaged this news to last night, and are interested, let me know and I'll fill you in.

I'm going to Providence and Boston this weekend! I even got Friday and Monday off and am turning it into my own little 4 day planes, trains and automobiles event. I'm going to attempt to see JHann, attend 1/2's holiday party as well as my sister's all in the same night, and ride on trains all at once. Break out the good stuff!