For whatever reason, I've been reading a bit today about the Duggar family, that family of religious nuts in Arkansas (natch) who so believe that Jesus told people to go forth and multiply that they have done so to the tune of 18 kids. If that wasn't freaky enough, the girls are not allowed to wear pants and wear some sort of cloth dress instead and all the kids name starts with the letter "J". And, yes, they are all home schooled.

So I'm imagining something like this as the conversation that happens when Mrs and/or Mrs. Duggar finally goes to the celestial beyond and meets the Big Guy Himself

Duggar: OMG, it's JESUS!!!!!!
Jesus: Yes it is me
Duggar: I know! I'm one of your biggest fans
Jesus: Thank you.
Duggar: In fact, just because of you, my husband and I had 21 kids
Jesus: You did what now?
Duggar: Because you told us to go forth and multiply and because you called children as blessings, we had 21 kids
Jesus: I said that?
Duggar: Uh-uh. And because of you, we had them all start with the letter J!
Jesus: Really?
Duggar: And we wouldn't let the girls wear pants and we home schooled them and made them vow not even to kiss anybody until they got married.
Jesus: Really? No, really?
Duggar: Uh-huh
Jesus: Jesus, you're a fucking idiot.

Oh, and yes, total Idiocracy.

I can't really say this is scientific, but I think cold weather makes people just as lazy, if not more, than the heat. Why do I think this way? Because ever since I've been off from work for Christmas, I have yet to pretty much do much of anything. I can barely make it off the couch these days. Now here's where the temperature comes in. The problem, I think, is that is that I finally get comfortable in one spot and then decide that I'm warm in this spot but if I were to move maybe just an inch or two out of that spot, I'll be back in the cold. So why move?

And I haven't.

I am once again watching a History Channel special on the Apocalypse and Satan and all that and I can't help but wonder about the ending of the End of Days. Supposedly, the whole thing has been foretold and everything will come as depicted which makes me wonder if so, why would Satan then go ahead and do everything he's supposed to do if he knows at the end it won't work and that Jesus eventually defeats him in the end? Wouldn't that be kind of stupid? You could argue, then, that the plot of the Apocalypse could be seen as Satan knowing how his fate is foretold yet can't do anything to stop it. Which, if you think about it, means that Satan is more of a tragic hero than the villain.

There's been a lot of hand-wringing lately over the state of the newspaper business caused by the announced bankruptcy of the Chicago Tribune and the reported loan taken out by the NY Times to stay afloat. This has led to an ever-increasing discussion of how to save the newspaper business these days as economic issues and the internet have taken away a huge, huge slice of their business. While there are plenty of people out there with ideas on how to fix the business and even if it is worth fixing, I think I have the solution on how to save the newspaper business, mainly to follow the lead of the British Tabloids and throw in pictures of topless women.

It's just that easy.

Journalistic integrity, schmournalistic integrity. There ain't no problem that can be solved in the newspaper biz like a little Lucy Pinder or Keeley Hazell. The Chronicle could hire every award winning reporters, break the biggest story in the world, and create the greatest news related web site in the country and it won't do nearly as much to help circulation as naked chicks would.

During my many unemployments, when I was down and running out of money, people would tell me that, well, there's always Starbucks. But a man has his limits and one of mine is that I didn't want to wear some sort of outfit. Then there's the fear I'd have that it makes you look like that much of a loser if you're serving lates with some kind right out of college in your 30's.

The good thing about a depression, though, is that since nobody has a job, there is no dignity to lose because nobody has any dignity anymore. We're all in the same boat. So who cares if I have to work at the 'Bucks this time around because I know I won't be the only 40 year old wearing Starbucks' outfit and making frappucinos. In fact, I'm willing to bet that at this time next year, a large percentage of people working at Target, Starbucks, and/or McDonald's are going to be people who a year before were all in middle management.

And speaking of jobs, I'm all in favor of Obama's stimulus plan and I'm eagerly awaiting to start my future career in highway construction. Which brings up the point that the stimulus' plan doesn't seem quite fair as it doesn't include anything for us ex-liberal arts majors, people who I might add or some of the most under-employed types in the country. Couldn't part of that stimulus package include us? New highways aren't going to market themselves, ya know. Or maybe they could create some sort of program where all you'd have to do is sit at a desk and surf the web all day. In fact, if you know your Depression History, FDR actually created a whole bunch of jobs for the artists out there. So, if you're reading this, Barack Hussein, couldn't there be some sort of nationalized blogger force?

Don't ask how or why, but over the weekend, a video of "We are the World" was watched. Again, don't even begin to ask how it happened. Which brings up the interesting thing about the song, that despite the intended purpose of the song and the whole bigness of the thing-- the earnestness, the chorus, the star power, the song is actually pretty crap. Between the overly produced '80's production and the overly earnestness, the song fits more in the category of "Hit From Hell" than classic pop. It is, in fact, pretty much looked over as a pop cultural moment despite it's star power. This is a bit different from it's inspiration, "Do They Know It's Christmas" which is still played on the radio and talked about despite the fact most of the singers who perform are currently in the "Where Are they Know" file (the video is actually fun to watch for this reason-- the whole thing becomes a trivia contest over who can recognize which star). Of course, it helps that "Do They Know It's Christmas" is actually a half-way decent song.

But what makes the song so awesome is it's star power, a motley and totally random mix of musical icons and 80's .

Here's what I mean-- here's the artist who sings a lyric of the song, in order of when they sing:

Lionel Richie (now known as Nicole Richie's dad)
Lionel Richie & Stevie Wonder
Stevie Wonder
Paul Simon
Paul Simon/Kenny Rogers (?)

Kenny Rogers (now known mainly as a victim of a really bad botox accident
James Ingram (who?)
Tina Turner (with that awesome wig)
Billy Joel (he looks a little pissed that he's here)
Tina Turner/Billy Joel

( CHORUS )
Michael Jackson (in his Thriller, you thought I was weird then look)
Diana Ross
Michael Jackson/Diana Ross (proof that they have been in the same room together)

Dionne Warwick (now doing informercials for a psychic hotline)
Dionne Warwick/Willie Nelson (??)
Willie Nelson (how stoned do you think he is at this point?)
Al Jurreau (yawn)

( REPEAT CHORUS )
We are the world, we are the children (Bruce Springsteen)
Kenny Logins (why?)
Steve Perry(!)
Daryl Hal (Oates is there but surprisingly never sings)

When you're down and out there seems no hope at all (Michael Jackson)
But if you just believe there's no way we can fall (Huey Lewis)
Well, well, well, let's realize that a change can only come (Cyndi Lauper)
When we (Kim Carnes)
Kim Carnes/Cyndi Lauper/Huey Lewis (?????????????????????????????)

(REPEAT CHORUS AND FADE )

(additional ad-lib vox by Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, James Ingram)

Alright, I guess it's time to post a new NY Times Wedding Announcement. This one isn't so easy to do as it's like a short story about the couple, who they are, how they met, how they courted, and eventually how they got married. Which raises the question who the fuck would care? It's a bit presumptuous to think anyone would really want to know who two random, completely uninteresting people are and how they're relationship would develop.

Anyways, meet Stacia Zukroff and Wyatt Biel. Since the announcement is way to long for anybody to read (including me), here are the highlights:

These are the actual opening paragraphs:

STACIA ZUKROFF treasures a photo of herself taken on the summit of the storied ruins of Machu Picchu, in which she is wearing jeans, an embroidered Peruvian blouse, her waist-length hair tied in a ponytail. She was all of 4 years old.

It is but one image from an eight-month sojourn with her parents through South America that her father, Carl Zukroff, described as a “posthippie spiritual quest.” But for Ms. Zukroff it marked the beginning of her own quest for travel and adventure, which has taken her to more than 50 countries so far.

As a youth, she traveled in the West and took flying lessons.....

After graduating from Bates in 1991, “She came home from college, did all her laundry, and then, that was basically it,” said her father, who is the director of marketing communications for the Museum of Science in Boston. She set out on the road again, this time for Barcelona, Spain

....Enter Wyatt Biel, whose own travels, until he and Ms. Zukroff met in 2001, had been limited to hunting and fishing expeditions in his native Wisconsin...

As a way of trying to expand his social circle in his new hometown, he attended a leadership training workshop and hike organized by the Appalachian Mountain Club. Ms. Zukroff was assigned as his mentor.

She liked him well enough to invite him, some months later, to a holiday party at her house. Mr. Biel, however, had a better offer, and headed to Great Britain — his first trip abroad — to visit a friend.

That might have been the end of the road for Mr. Biel and Ms. Zukroff, as she began a romantic relationship with another man who did attend her party. But months later Ms. Zukroff was single again and thought of Mr. Biel, eight years her junior, when his name came up as a possible co-leader for a club ski outing in New Hampshire.

On the weekend trip, he “flirted outrageously” with her, Ms. Zukroff remembered. “He was extremely attentive and touchy.” After the trip she sent him an e-mail message that read: “Are you really interested in me, or were you just flattering an older woman?

On the weekend trip, he “flirted outrageously” with her, Ms. Zukroff remembered. “He was extremely attentive and touchy.” After the trip she sent him an e-mail message that read: “Are you really interested in me, or were you just flattering an older woman?”

It took Mr. Biel, who did not have e-mail service in his apartment, three days to check his messages on a public library computer. He wrote back: “I’m just being me.”

Ms. Zukroff was perplexed. “I had no idea what that meant,” she said. Yet she found him to be so “cute, persistent and adorable,” she said, that she kept thinking about him.

Shortly thereafter, Ms. Zukroff and Mr. Biel were thrown together again at a first-aid course. When an after-hours group outing to a movie fizzled as members of the group begged off, she invited him to her apartment to watch a movie on cable. They settled on “Autumn in New York,” in which Richard Gere falls for a terminally ill Winona Ryder “A really awful movie,” she said. “But as I watched, I could feel him watching me. When I looked over, he was just grinning ear to ear. And then he kissed me.”

Their romantic adventure had begun....


In 2005, when Ms. Zukroff organized a hike to the 19,341-foot summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Mr. Biel was impressed, but disappointed that his classes prevented him from joining her.


At 15,700 feet, Ms. Zukroff said, “I called him on a satellite phone to tell him how much I loved him.”


Later in the day, 80 family members and friends gathered for the wedding in a small room at the lodge that is hung with enormous black-and-white photos of mountains taken by the late Bradford Washburn, an explorer. The couple stood before Kevin M. Kozin, a Universal Life minister who had hiked Mount Kilimanjaro with the bride, and exchanged vows that spoke about how marriage can and should be an adventure, too.

She recited: “I want to travel to the center of your perception of me.

“The place where you and I meet.

“Which, for lack of a better word, we call love.”

About a year ago, I lost my health insurance-- the perils of being a contractor in today's economy (actually, yesterday's economy as this all happened before everything went to hell in a hand basket). For awhile I was paying COBRA which was about $400 a month. Sucky, yes, but it's better than no health insurance which is what I would have had without it because apparently I am not eligible for individual plan health insurance because while I'm healthy, I'm not healthy enough.

Luckily, I was able to get on Harlan's health insurance as a "domestic partner" and now not only have health insurance, but really great health insurance. Today we discovered that, unfortunately, the federal government doesn't consider "domestic partner" health insurance but as extra income and so a huge bite was taken out of her paycheck. This despite the fact you'd think it would be in the best interest's of the country to have me, or anybody for that matter, insured.

Apparently not.

And, as Harlan pointed out, the one's who get really screwed are gay people because unless people stop being idjits, they can get registered as domestic partners and domestic partners only. That is if they're lucky.

Lately, I read "Deerhunting with Jesus," a book that I thought would be really funny, being all about life in White Trash Land and all. Unfortunately, it was depressing as hell. The so-called working class hasn't just been screwed, hasn't just been fucked, but more like gang-raped over and over again by the Powers That Be. It's awful what's happened to them and by them I also mean us. Now these people are the people who supposedly would never vote for Democrats, Obama least of all, as the people in the book all hail from that place Sarah Palin oh so eloquently referred to as the "Real America." This fact brings all sorts of hand-wringing/mocking from us Blue Staters because the people who probably need progressive politics the most are the very same people who vote against them because of things like guns and Jesus (the book, in fact, was the inspiration behind Obama's bitter comment). The thing about the book, though, is that that these people are either too stupid to realize just how fucked they are and/or so fucked that they don't have time to realize just how fucked they are.

What's the point of all this? Because now that the glow has faded from the election, what's left is the cold hard fact that this country is now a burnt-out shell of a wreckage. I know it's a little out of context, but at this point, the only way to feel is exactly like Charlton Heston felt when he came upon the Statue of Liberty at the end of "Planet of the Apes".

"You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"

Or, as Ricky Gervais said in his HBO Special, "how does it feel to be a third world country?"

At work a few days ago, they held Volunteer Day. The company signed up to do that Project Homeless Connect thing, where volunteers get together and for one day a month help homeless people (all snark aside, it's a pretty cool thing). A lot of people I work with volunteered to help out. I did not. As a contractor, I was left out of the email chain. Also, homeless people smell.

This, however, makes things a little awkward when asked if I was going to volunteer, or, as somebody said, "go help the Homeless." Because there's no way of saying that you're not without sounding like a selfish dick.

I'm still contracting where I was contracting before which means that now I have to deal with one of the best things contractors have to deal with-- Holiday Parties.

On Monday, I get into work to discover that the VP has scheduled the Holiday Party for that morning. At 9. At an ice skating rink. I know, right? So when I get in, those employees who didn't use the party as an excuse to extend their holiday for at least another morning were all standing near my cubicle as my cubicle is in the front row of cubicles in front of a little break area where everyone was gathered for breakfast and to hear the details about ice skating.

Now I didn't want to go. At all. But deciding what to do isn't as easy as it sounds. First up is that everybody around me and everyone in my department, even those who I wouldn't expect to, decided to go, and all made that decision right in front of me. And because there's a great big huge group of people standing in front of me all geeked up on OJ and Costco muffins getting in a holiday spirit, it's hard not to get sucked into the "well, everybody's doing it" vibe. Who wants to look like a loser?

OK, so what the hell, I'll go. Except, technically I can't because I'm a contractor and contractors can't go. To get clarification, I even asked the Creative Director (my boss's boss) and he said no I couldn't. He then also said I should go anyways only to ask on the way there if he'll get me in trouble for allowing me to go. On the one hand, it's a compliment that people who I work with want me to go even though they all know I can't. On the other hand, it's a little awkward when very-higher ups walk by you at the rink and give what to you looks like a "what the hell are they doing here?" look. Oh, and they handed out company tchotcke's to all the employers there and when I walked into the rink, I didn't know whether I should ask for one. The only reason I did was because the Creative Director, again, told me to go for it.

But still, why did I go if I really didn't want to and wasn't allowed to? Was it just one more example of me giving into peer pressure? Or was it because I talked to my boss a few minutes before all this happened and when I mentioned I wasn't going, she off-handedly mentioned that there was going to be nobody around and as she was busy signing time sheets at that particular moment, I wasn't sure she meant that just as a statement of fact or as a subtle way of letting me know that she knows that there's nobody around and if I don't go, I'm about to bill the company for several hours of time in which I won't do any work. Instead of, say, getting paid to ice skate.

How was it? About what you'd expect-- it was 9 in the morning, everyone had just come back from a four day weekend, and they made those who were able to skate do the hokey pokey. Oh, yes, they did. As for me, I wished I didn't go about the moment I showed up and not just because of the aforementioned reasons. Mainly because I got there and realized that I hated Christmas Parties for the most part because of forced interaction with people whose only relationship to you is a working one and as I had been only there for four months and was not really an employee there anyways, I didn't have that much of a relationship to anyone anyways.

Then there was today. My little group, the three other people who also do my job and my boss, went out for what looked like a departmental Christmas lunch. I'm not sure whether it was or not because nobody told me and I wasn't invited. I just know that at around 11:45, they all got up, put on their jackets, and walked out together talking about how they were going to miss something. Of course it makes sense that I wasn't invited to the lunch-- I'm a contractor, a temp. But still, I had been there long enough to have that awkward feeling of knowing that I wasn't invited something to which everybody else was.

And, yes, I do realize that there is a seeming contradiction here, of wanting to go to something for which I couldn't go but then wanting to go to something for which I couldn't go. Well, one involved ice skating at 9 in the morning, the other one lunch-- easy choice there. But mainly it's just that it's the subtle reminder that when it comes down to it, you do not actually belong. In one case, an effort was made to include me. The other one not.