another 20-something in a 20-something century

( You are about to view content that may only be appropriate for adults. )

It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation.

Yes we can.

It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail toward freedom.

Yes we can.

It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness.

Yes we can.

It was the call of workers who organized; women who reached for the ballots; a President who chose the moon as our new frontier; and a King who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the Promised Land.

Yes we can to justice and equality.

Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity.

Yes we can heal this nation.

Yes we can repair this world.

Yes we can.

We know the battle ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.

We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics...they will only grow louder and more dissonant ........... We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope.

But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.

Now the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of LA; we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people; we are one nation; and together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast; from sea to shining sea --

Yes. We. Can.

So I watched Le Divorce tonight with the 'rents and got to thinking about Goldie Hawn and Kate Hudson, and trying to find the family resemblance (other then their blonde hair). This led me on a romp through cyberspace, where I learned way too much information about their ancestry (Goldie and Kate are Hungarian Jewish through the maternal line), and that they both have an affinity for marrying and having babies with rock stars and then moving on to actors while the babies are still young. Sick.

Finally, I tracked down similar looking photos. I'm pretty impressed. With the resemblance, that is, not myself (well, not too much).



Goldie, on the left was 27 in this photo, while Kate, on the right, was 23. That is a 4-year age difference, for those of you non-counters in the crowd.

I'm going to go fill my head with garbage that is less celebrity-related now.

My 19-year-old sister was killed in a car accident May 16, 2007. She was driving my car to high school and it hydroplaned, causing her and her passenger to lose control, cross the median, and hit a semi truck's double-trailer. She died instantly. Her passenger, a friend and neighbor, survived with only a few minor injuries to his hand. 

Rachel was a senior who was graduating in 10 days, and was going to Otterbein University in the fall to study equine studies in the hopes of becoming a veterinary technican.

Since then, my life has been pretty overwhelming. I've been at home these past few months anyways, looking for a job and finishing up the leftover credit or two from my graduate school. 
School is done, but the job hunt is on hold as my parents and I try to grasp this completely devastating loss.

For those who have sent cards, emails, and other messages, I thank you. They have brought comfort and we have appreciated them.

To try to explain to those of you who didn't know her, Rachel was very much like me. Of course, the two of us saw all of our differences, but to outsiders we had similar tastes and expressions, and the same wry humor (Though Rachel had a better handle on the comic relief angle, as she got older). I loved her desperately.

If you would like to help in some way, you can contribute to her high school, Wheeling Central Catholic, 75 14th Street, Wheeling, WV 26003-3425, where we will be forming a scholarship in her name.

So I love my cat. He's just adorable. So so very adorable. To prove to all of you how very adorable my cat is, I am sharing two photos I recently took of him. Aren't you lucky?

In the first, Mittens is sleeping on my sister's polka-dot blanket, which he has taken over. He only likes to sleep on dark-colored blankets (ironic, since my family's dark cat only like to sleep on white or off-white sheets). Anyways, I think it's just an awesome close-up of him.

In the second, he is dragging around "his lion," as we call it. I bought this tiny lion a few years ago in the baby department at Kaufmann's because a.) it was on clearance and b.) it was really cute. I thought maybe I'd give it to someone as a baby shower gift for their newborn baby to drool on. Instead, Mittens found and and promptly covered it with cat saliva, thereby making it his. Every once in a while we'll find it somewhere in the house and try to move it, and when our hands touch it the involuntary reaction is to go "Ugh," because it's all crusty.

Click on the photos to enlarge them.

So the computer desk broke the other day, thereby sending me to Craiglist and Ebay in search of another one. Ah Craiglist, that deep cesspit of crap. Seriously, giving people an unlimited amount of space to post photos and talk about trash they want to sell can be a wonderful and horrible experience all at the same time.

Anyways, I was browsing through computer desks and I got distracted by some amusing posts I saw. Like, jammed in between "Cordless Phone - $15" and "Three Computer Monitors - $30" is the entry - "Pasture for Horses - $200." Yes, my friends, you can lease land on Craigslist, apparently.

Then, of course, there are the requisite community entries that sometimes sound like personal ads and sometimes just sound out there, like this one: "High Magickal Arts: Seeking a partner who is well versed in the Mysteries and who is ready to begin the path of the Adept. Would like to work together and share experiences in order to help each other."

Right.

The entry about an ill-fated wedding dress, however, was my favorite. In fact, it was so great I think I'll just post it in its entirety here:

Amazing Wedding dress size 12 - $100
Reply to: sale-288871632@craigslist.org
Posting Date: 2007-03-05, 3:24PM EST

I have used this wedding dress a total of 5 times now. After the fifth marriage, I think it's time to get a new dress. I bought it back in '92 for my first wedding. We had a great ceremony. His great attention to detail and a love of Barbra Streisand should have clued me in but it didn’t; 2 years later you can promptly guess what happened next.
The next wedding happened in '95. He was a great guy; bought me presents and gifts all the time. I was so happy, 'til I found out he was a sex offender (thanks Megan’s Law). Never would have guessed it, but I am sure other people wouldn’t have guessed it either.
In '99 I married, of all people, my divorce attorney. We had a great time together; a honeymoon in Hawaii, which was really pretty. The land, the water, the people... Well, definitely the people; my husband got a little too cozy with a hula girl. Lucky or unlucky, I caught it all on video tape. There was no getting out of that one, no matter how good of an attorney he was.
In 2002 I though I found the love of my life. He was incredible, knew everything about me, and attended to all my needs. He showed great concern, especially for all my money. He tried to swindle me out of it after. Also, I found he had another wife in Jersey. Grrrr.
My last wedding was in 2006. It ended promptly after I found him looking at my dress while in my dress.
So this dress is really pretty. I fell in love with it and still love it. Even though my marriages has not turned out too well, I have got to say this is a fantastic dress. Maybe you’ll have better luck then me.

By the way, if you are interested in the dress at all, this winner's located in Squirrel Hill in the Pittsburgh area.

It would be hard to get more Suzie Homemaker right about now. I just made a stew in a crockpot. Well, granted, I started the slow cooker at 1:30 in the morning, which means it will be done by lunch tomorrow, which certainly isn't a Suzie Homemaker timeframe to work in, but hey, what can I say, I'm a nightowl.

Truthfully, I'd be a horrible homemaker, because I'd sleep all day and not clean the home and only get inspired to cook meat-and-potatoes meals for my family every once in a while. But really, this is a superfluous monologue to even have, for various and obvious reasons.

Man, I'm not sure why I'm even leaving this entry, except I was deluded into thinking that a lamb version of soupe d'épeautre would be fun to make. But then at the store I decided to not buy leeks and just use the cabbage we have at home instead, and now I suspect those two vegetables are a far cry from each other. Ooh, and I just used a turnip for the first time, and it was really cool. You peel them like potatoes! Well, at least, you did for my recipe.

Ok, I'm going to bed.

So in, oh, maybe 2002, I took a media college course where I had to write a final paper about an up-and-coming media product or concept. I went on the Internet and browsed aimlessly for a while, and my paper ended up being about satellite radio, which was in its infancy at the time. The two companies competing in the industry had suffered some setbacks due in part to the failing market at 9/11, so they were still being regarded with some skepticism. But I saw a clear comparison between satellite radio and satellite television. Anyways, I got really caught up in the concept of satellite radio and, realizing that Sirius and XM were both publicly traded companies, decided that buying some stock would be a fabulous Christmas present for my Dad.

And it definitely was. I got my dad's best friend (and a lawyer) in on the secret and we ended up purchasing 2 or 3 shares of XM (more expensive at about $2 a pop) and 100(!) shares of Sirius for a mere $.50 each. Now XM is worth $14 a share and Sirius is worth $4. Dad says that's very good. I'm not clear on what kind of percentage increase that is, though I'm sure someone more math-savvy will be quick to tell me.

More recently, the two companies have just decided to merge into one satellite radio company, which excited Dad so he woke me at dawn last week to tell me. To which I blearily mustered a "great" and immediately sunk back into the darkness of sleep. I'm glad I hedged my bets and invested in both.

Now we'll just have to see where the product goes - could become more popular, could be thrown by the wayside in favor of things like podcasts. Who knows?

Mmm ... I like finding fun stuff to invest in. Which reminds me, the way the market fell today means that it probably won't be rebounding quickly tomorrow. Maybe by the end of the week things'll be looking up, though Greenspan was interviewed and he made dire comments about recessions and whatnot, as usual. Anyways, if I had a job (a.k.a. disposable income) and a broker I'd look into buying into a company's stock on the cheap.

Ok, this WashingtonPost.com blog on Aqua Teen Hunger Force's melodramatic bomb scare in Boston has a link to the press conference the two 20-something men arrested in the incident gave this morning, where instead of fielding questions about the scare, they talked about the importance of 1970s hairstyles on history. I think my favorite moment was when one reporter played along and asked one guy about his dreads!

God, I love my peer group.

Google is actually DOWN. As in, I can't access its main page. Check it out:



Aw, and in the five minutes it took me to write this journal entry they've already fixed the problem. Still, it was shocking, and practically impossible, I thought, before this evening.

So ...

I really haven't been writing lately. I mean, on here. Other people (friends of mine, I believe), write gobs and gobs, or even if they only write every once in a while, always seem to have something important to say about themselves. Me? I leave random little tidbits here and there (which reminds me, have I got a story for you), but the point is that I never do major overviews of my life.

Naturally, forcing myself to sit at a computer and do work that has no "real" deadline means that I'm now suddenly feeling inspired to talk to the void.

...

Shit. I just got distracted by trying to email Andrew Waldman something about journalism that I'd written about in my journal and then I filled out some Wooster survey instead on my Woo email account and realized that I could probably email him through Gmail but I never got around to it because I checked my IU email account again which reminded me that I needed to look up this kid on Facebook and I couldn't find him so I went through the photos of some kid I don't know instead and then talked to the other person here in the newsroom before realizing I was neglecting my entry.

Anyways ... where was I?

Right. This is why I don't do journal entries. They take too much effort.

MY LIFE:

- I am graduating from IU Saturday.
- I am moving back to Pennsylvania Sunday.
- I am sleeping until after Christmas.
- I am visiting Hester in Cleveland for the last five days of December.
- I am hitting my mid-20s on Jan. 1.
- I am going jobhunting.
- I am petrified.
- Writing that sentence petrifies me, actually.
- Oh, and I think I may be starting to appreciate Ernest Hemingway.
- Finally.
- Shit.

So I just found this blog by one of the hilarious people who recaps for Television Without Pity, and she's pretty damn funny in real life as well. Take this latest entry, about seeing the new Bond movie:

When Bond appears in the Bahamas wearing a thin white short-sleeved shirt and rather, erm, tight gray pants:

MARY: Did you…
ERIN: Is it just me or is his…
MARY: ASS UNBELIEVABLE.
[Several guys in front of us at this point, most likely all straight, start shooting evil looks at us.]
MARY: Oh, WHAT? Like YOU don’t think his ass is unbelievable?
ERIN: Mary, I think they’re straight.
MARY: Who cares? Straight men probably think his ass is unbelievable too.
ERIN: It is…well, it is rather a work of art, isn’t it?
MARY: I’d really like to bounce a roll of quarters off it.
ERIN: Wait — what just happened? How’d he get that house? Where–
MARY: I have no idea. I don’t care. CRAIG’S ASS IS THE STAR OF THE MOVIE.

Giggle. Ok, now go read the whole thing.

So I just wrote the conclusion to a 3,000-word literary journalism piece and I'm pretty proud of my 86-words of beauty. I feel accomplished, successful, exuberant and finished.

The problem is that this is the only thing I've actually written out of my 3,000-word lit. piece. Hm.

So this is really what I spend my time doing - bitching about the news organizations I secretly would love having on my resume. But for real, check this out (and please try not to drool on the Netflix ad):



If you haven't figured out what's wrong with this screenshot yet, I'm not telling you.

So this weekend I dressed up as my editor-in-chief in an attempt to destroy him. Er, I mean, make fun of him. And it was quite a success, naturally. Except for the part where I was pretending to clip my cell phone on my belt (like he does), but I just did it by leaving the phone open a bit. And it fell into a deadly vat of Tang and vodka. Oh, oh yes, yes it did.

The best part was that I didn't even notice at first, since I had just randomly been walking by the bucket at the time. It was the EIC who drunkenly pulled it out (he was deep in his cups at the time) when he went for another cupful, and set it down on the counter, where I recovered it 15 minutes later.

I immediately separated the battery from the rest of the device, and mentally filed all of the alcohol-infused suggestions  from friends (which included letting it dry for a week and using a hairdryer on it). Two days later, I heroically snapped them back together and ...

it worked!

Well, not quite. Some of my buttons were having trouble all week, and tonight my * and 0 buttons failed completely on me. Which means that I can no longer check my voicemail. I think tomorrow I'll go to the Verizon store and concoct some drama to make them give me a new phone. Said drama, naturally, will be me looking blankly at the sales representative and declaring that I had no idea why they had stopped working, but that they had become harder and harder to punch for quite a while.

Hm.

Wish me luck!

P.S. - Everyone in the backshop just booed our EIC for not liking Conan O'Brien, and then when he left and walked into the newsroom and told them the same thing, they booed as well. It was hysterical. Now you kind of understand why I would dress up as him for Halloween.

This week has worn me out, and it's only the beginning of Wednesday. I am trying to do too many things with too little time, and then wasting what precious little of it that I have writing about how little time I have. Hell, that's been my motto this fall.

So with all the excessive stress about trying to graduate and find a job an find and internship and get enough clips and do some important freelance work, it's nice to get compliments every once in a while.

I enjoy the respect I get here, working for the IDS. Today, two female reporters came up to me (at separate times) and told me that not only did they like my article from the murder trial, but they thought that the way it was written showed how smart I was as a person and as a reporter - there was a sort of awe in their voices, which I have to say creeps me out slightly. Especially because I think that everyone, in their own mind, thinks they are never doing enough or being good enough at what they are doing, so when someone else is looking up to you as a role model, it is a puzzling experience. It gives me hope that I'm doing something right.

Anyways, I'm trying to treasure moments like these because I know that I won't get that when I leap into my first job as a lowly stringer somewhere. At least right now, I'm on top of the world.

I got to cover a murder trial this fall, and it just wrapped up tonight. As I stood in the courtroom afterward, watching "the media" get shuffled off to another location for more press conferences, I was inordinately pleased that I am a print journalist. Because the state police made personal statements to the family and didn't even notice me standing there taking notes. It's really hard to be a fly on the wall when you are carrying a massive white elephant of equipment around with you. Or black. Either way, the family was really nice and everyone talked with me and I got a way better story (and, not surprisingly, more accurate story than the IndyStar).

So yeah, just Google News me if you want to read some of the articles.

I accidently paid off my credit card way too much, giving me an excess of several hundred dollars to spend. Technically, it is the same exact amount of money that is in my bank account, chilling, but somehow because it is suddenly on the credit card, I feel like I have tons of free money to spend. Dear lord.

Anyways, the point of this is that I have recently bought some random things I don't quite need because I feel like this is my opportunity to spend money while I have it. I don't know; sometimes it's just nice not to have to scrimp and save, and look at each purchase and wonder if I really need that particular item (like a bra - for real!) and then feel guilty for buying it when it's only 25 percent off, and not 60 or more.

So numero uno on that list of brand-new items is a fabulous fine cotton pajama shift bought at Target this weekend for about 30 percent off. It's black and simple, with a little bow at the breastbone, and I am in love with it.

Right now, all I want to do is go home, shimmy into my soft-as-silk nightie and curl up in my jersey sheets. And die. At least until Friday.

In my latest article for the paper I talk about fellatio in my opening paragraph. God, I'm so inappropriate. I love it. I also love writing a&e crap every once in a while, just so I get a chance to be inappropriate like that.

Oh, just google me and you'll find the article.

You know what's funny? Asking your editor if you should start an article with titty-fucking and having the editor-in-chief, who just happened to be walking by, give you a look of confusion, some horror, and mostly panic.