1. I betrayed my vow of No Fast Food while at lunch today and went to Jack �n the Box. However, since I got a salad and since I don�t eat their nasty, high-caloric salad dressing anyway, I hardly think you should wrap my knuckles with a ruler or anything, so get off my back already.

Really, I just went so I could buy one of their reindeer-horned antennae balls.

2. While out at lunch (I also went to the bank), I discovered that the zipper on my pants has broken. Not just any pants, either. My FAVORITE, black, Lindsey-cut pants from Banana Republic (God bless Banana Republic and their vanity sizing!). I mean, Lordy! I know I need new clothes, but I didn�t think I was so far gone that they were going to start falling off of me in tatters while I�m walking around in public.

So, aside from having to try and cleverly disguise the fact that my zipper is busted for the rest of the day (thank God I wore black panties today), I�m debating asking Linda to fix them for me. She is the only one who can really sew, in my family. But getting her to do anything for you in a timely manner is excruciatingly painful. She always says �yes� (I don�t think the word no is in her vocabulary) and always tries to be helpful�but then it ends up taking her so long to complete whatever task you asked her to help you with, that you end up getting irritated, which is never good when someone is doing you a favor. But, you know�like it took her about 18 months to reupholster those two chairs of mine. And the last time I asked her to alter some clothes for me, it took about three months and I never did get my black skirt back. It�s apparently lost somewhere in her house.

She�s also very scatter-brained and so does things like volunteers to place an ad in the paper about our yard sale, then �forgets� that Thursday (which is the paper�s deadline) is Thanksgiving and so doesn�t get the ad placed because of course she put it off until the last minute. That was very typical of Linda.

**

And more things, which I wrote this morning and, Lord Willing, will have time to post today.

My back hurts. Incredibly so. It hurts to breath. It especially hurts to sit at my desk.

My first official financial analysis went well yesterday, but in truth this was really a softball one. I no longer have any doubt, though, that I will be able to do this well. Give me about a month to get on top of things.

Right now, I am frustrated because I am putting together some month-end reports and our system is moving at a snail�s pace. Plus, my hands are about to freeze solid and my digits begin to fall off.

Makes typing a challenge, to be sure.

So what do you think? Am I suffering from PMS?

Last night, I watched again that lovely film called Love, Actually.

And I cried for two hours, pert-near nonstop.

I cried at the sad parts. I cried at the sweet parts. I cried at the touching parts. I cried at the sappy parts. I cried at the happy parts. I cried, I cried and then I cried some more.

I was crazy beans.

And the movie didn�t end until 12:15 in the am, so I was left with a stuffed up nose and teary eyes when I rightfully should have been going to sleep. I can�t sleep with a stuffed up nose and I hate sleeping with teary-eyes because I wake up with little chapped areas around my eyes. I had to wait until the sinuses cleared up a bit before calling it a night, so I ended up staying up too late. And then I woke up at 5:30am. Which is about an hour earlier than I usually wake up.

Oddly, though, I don�t feel tired today. I only feel like screaming every time I move, because my back is FUCKED UP!

I forgot to relate a little story which illuminates my apparent desire to end up shot in the street, due to road rage.

The other night, a stranger said �Fuck You� to me.

I was driving home from work, down Redondo in my beloved Long Beach. Redondo is a very busy street � it is one of the main North-South thoroughfares on the east side of the city. It was about 7-ish as I drove, and so already very dark out. All of a sudden, I see what turned out to be a man in the middle of the street. Holding his hand out in front of himself, motioning for me to stop.

He had what was obviously a beer in his hand, although he had cleverly disguised it by wrapping it in a brown paper bag. Apparently, he was on his way from the liquor store on my right, to the apartment complex on my left.

And he wanted to cross through four lanes of rush hour traffic to do it. And he didn�t care if cars were coming.

Get me? I�m on my way home from work, probably driving 40-45 mph on a busy street and this dude is standing. In the middle of the street. During rush hour. Telling ME (and the various other cars in every lane) to stop so that his precious and inebriated hiney could cross the street.

What pissed me off the most is that we were a mere 15 feet from the next intersection, where he could have crossed at the light, using a crosswalk. You know, like NORMAL PEOPLE.

Have we discussed the fact that I despise people who think they are somehow above the rules that the rest of us live by?

Anyway�I stopped, of course. What was I gonna do, run the guy down (I know�believe me, I was tempted)? But�of course, I couldn�t just let this pass.

I rolled down my window and said, �What? You couldn�t walk the extra fifteen feet to the intersection, ya idiot?�

�Fuck you,� was his response.

And now I have to get ready to go have lunch with my friend D. We are going to a restaurant which is new to me and as soon as I write a review of it, I will have made another dent in The Mission.

And so now I leave you with the following (pandi, this one's for you). Have a most lovely weekend, kids.

Can Howard Dean Save the Democrats?

The Vermont firebrand is essentially a centrist�with conviction and passion. He's an obvious choice to lead the fractured party

By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek

Nov. 26 - The struggle to be Democratic National Committee chair is round one of the battle for the soul of the party. The obvious choice is Howard Dean, who has the clarity of conviction and the passion that voters hunger for even if they don�t always agree with him.

Party activists around the country are furious at the Washington Democrats for blowing the election. Wresting control away from the entrenched establishment is their goal. Dean would spark a Red State rebellion within the party, but the Heartland�s leading contender, Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, withdrew his name from contention after being shown numbers suggesting Dean would win.

Dean is talking to a lot of people, and what he�s telling them is that if a consensus African-American or minority candidate emerged, he would not seek the job. Clinton Labor Secretary Alexis Herman�s name surfaced, but she said she wasn�t interested, and so far nobody else has assumed the mantle. A DraftHoward.com Web site has sprung up, and a Democratic source says Dean is planning a series of speeches �to position himself as a centrist.� A campaign aide with close ties to the governor protests that he �wouldn�t be positioning himself. Remember in Iowa, the nicks came from the left.� Rival campaigns attacked Dean for once agreeing with Newt Gingrich that Social Security�s growth rate should be slowed, and for winning the endorsement of the National Rifle Association as Vermont�s governor.

Dean is essentially a New Democrat who happened to be against the war. Signing legislation legalizing civil unions is the only outsized liberal thing he did, and he did it reluctantly in a compromise forced by court action. Only a few staffers were present at the signing ceremony, and photographers were banned. In the heyday of his campaign, when Internet contributions were rolling in and he was the front runner, he talked about broadening the party�s base and talking to voters with Confederate decals on their pickup trucks. He should have said gun racks because his message got lost in a debate over whether a politician invoking Confederate symbols is making a racist appeal.

Democrats who have spoken with Dean say he is moving toward a decision about the DNC post. But they caution that it could go either way. Anybody who has run for president doesn�t get it out of their system fast, particularly anybody who came as close as Dean thinks he came. Deciding to lead the party would probably take Dean out of the running for the �08 nomination. Maybe that�s why the Clintons are quietly pulling for Dean. He would be one less party favorite for Hillary to dispose of. It�s not just his own ambition that Dean is weighing. The DNC job is no nirvana. It�s a place where he could make a difference, but it�s like any other Washington bureaucracy, says a Democratic operative. �There is a huge institutional pull in the same direction��We do it that way because we�ve always done it that way'.�

Dean gave hope to Democrats around the country with his maverick campaign. It was shock therapy, and Democrats need more of it. Every four years, one or the other party is written off. But stuff happens. President Bush is not immune to the second-term woes that have afflicted other presidents. He�s got a war that isn�t going well and a borrowing binge that could spiral into a recession if our allies decide to cash in the U.S. bonds they�re holding. For all the bravado, the Bush mandate is fragile. If 70,000 votes in Ohio had gone the other way, we�d be talking about the Republican enclave in the Old Confederacy and the Rocky Mountain states, and the resurgence of Blue America.

John Kerry�s biggest problem is that he never stood for anything that was big and bold. A headline in the satirical newspaper The Onion captured the emptiness of his campaign perfectly: KERRY�S ONE-POINT PLAN FOR AMERICA: GET RID OF GEORGE BUSH.

Thomas Frank, the author of �What�s the Matter with Kansas,� says the moment he knew Kerry was going to lose was when he read an article about socialites raising money for Kerry by encouraging their friends to forego buying expensive shoes and give the money to Kerry. �I tell my girls I�m investing their inheritance,� said one.

�It�s like rattling their jewelry for Kerry,� says Frank, whose book confronts the cultural landscape that allowed conservatives to win the heart of America. Frank was in Washington this week at a panel on how to revive progressive politics. Democrats have to give �values voters� some reason to come back. In the absence of a compelling economic message from Democrats, working-class Americans, once the core of the Democratic Party, are voting Republican. �Jesus� message wasn�t them that has gets,� he says, arguing that economic populism is the only comparative advantage the Democrats have in winning over these voters.

� 2004 Newsweek, Inc.

~~~

Word of the Day for Friday December 3, 2004

malversation mal-vur-SAY-shun, noun:
Misconduct, corruption, or extortion in public office.

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