Blue Maine

What is the Deal with Vampires, Anyway?

I admit, this all is completely beyond me...the only thing more overexposed these days is Sarah.

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I saw the original "Twilight" almost by inertia, when a friend with far too many HBO channels called and asked me if I wanted to come over and watch a movie. We chose this one because my friend's daughter told her she liked it, but about halfway through we looked at each other and, almost in unison, said, "This is terrible." (Of course, this is the same daughter who told us we would enjoy the insipid "Autumn in New York", too, so we should have taken this new recommendation with a grain of salt). The pasty Edward character almost made me laugh out loud-this is an immortal guy, supposedly, who spends his entire sulky, endless life going to high school. I mean, holy mother of God, what is the point of living forever if you are going to spend it eating cafeteria food, dealing with jocks and goths and memorizing "The Red Badge of Courage'' and "The Catcher in the Rye"? That seems a far worse immortal fate to me than even the one of the poor Knight in The Last Crusade.  Bella herself is just a stereotypical high school drama queen, whiny and mopey, no different than any of the terminally self-absorbed chicks you remember sitting in the back of the class and staring at their navels in your own high school. You would think that in a dozen lifetimes Edward would have found someone a little more lively and fun to spend eternity with, but evidently even amongst the immortals there is no accounting for taste.  And anyway, Edward is as big a brooder as Bella, and he has no hope of ever growing out of it.  Yikes...the two of them together are the biggest downers since Heathcliff and Catherine. Watching their terminal, self-perpetuating despondency makes you wish you had bought a hammer instead of popcorn, because repeatedly banging yourself in the head with it would be endlessly preferable to watching these two stew and sulk for eternity.  Nope. If I want to watch lifeless teenagers brood and mope and make bad choices, I can just go a couple miles down the road to South Portland High School and see exactly the same thing...without paying ten bucks for it.

And hell, since it's hunting season...I might even get the added bonus of seeing someone suck on the blood of a deer for food.

Truth Teller or Liar?

First one to get ten right wins...well, nothing. These are so easy, you should get them right!!!

Sarah Palin: Truth Teller or Liar? » Quiz Question Maker

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for his (well, his staff's) hard work in compiling these!

The 3/50 Project

It is probably obvious that I am not a big fan of big box stores, although for convenience sake I do occasionally patronize them, and hey-they are a major employer, even if they do treat the majority of their employees like pre-prince Cinderellas. But, I would of course prefer to keep my money in local circulation.

So, today I found this, the 3/50 project, and decided to try and incorporate that into philosophy my buying
habits. The idea is simple: Pick three local businesses you already patronize and spend $50 every month at those stores (that’s $50 altogether, not at each individual outlet.) According to the founder Cindy Baxter,  “If even half of the employed population spend a mere $50 per month in locally owned retail stores, those purchases would generate more that $42.6 billion in revenue.”  Additionally,  for every $100 spent in locally owned independent stores, $68 remains in a community’s economy, versus $43 spent at national chains and $0 spent on online purchases.

So, I pledge that I will spend at least $50 each month at Nonesuch Books, Drillen Hardware, and The Buttered Biscuit. Hope you will join! 

Haiku Prompt

I got this prompt from the Maine Writer's Alliance a while ago, and forgot to do anything with it:

Today's writing prompt: Haiku is, very loosely defined, a 3-line poem with 5 syllables in the first line, 7 in the next, and 5 in the last line.

Write your morning in Haiku.

So, here goes...

Kittens everywhere!

Purring, playing with the dog

Furry balls of cute. 

So Sarah Stiffed You?

Tough shit. Now you idiots know how the residents of Alaska feel. Man, there are two types of people in the world, folks-those who are reasonably attractive and intelligent, and those who would wait hours in a line to plotz at the feet of the Dragon Lady. And you all know who you are out there.

Best line here?

We gave up our entire workday, stayed in the cold, my kids were crying. They went home with my wife. She was out here in the freezing cold all day. I feel like I don't want support Sarah.

In other words-I was a-OK with the sub-Mendoza line intelligence, the blatant racism, the endless lies, and the narcissism...but stiff me out of an autograph, and you are dead to me.

What morons. Hey, do us all a favor and protest by renouncing your citizenship and moving to Somalia, k? 

Joy of Discovery

Baby Sawyer and baby kitteh find each other, but kitteh is not sure she wants to be so close...

 

I Am a Mother Once More

A foster mother, that is...of the feline persuasion. Got a call from theAnimal Refuge League a couple fo days ago, asking if I could take a litter of kittens seized from a home in Windham a couple of weeks ago (People! Bob Barker was RIGHT! Neuter and spay your animals, and this doesn't happen!) Often the kittens I foster are much younger and there is a mom with them, but given the circumstances, these nine-or-ten week old babies (three boys and two girls) were probably nearly on their own as their mother prepared to get pregnant again. They are really ready to go, just waiting to get "fixed" and find their forever homes.

It is a tough time to be a cat in these financially stressed times, even an adorable kitten. Keeping fingers crossed for some loving homes!

Sorry about the quality, my first time using the movie function of my camera. But you get the idea, they are absolutely adorable, and so friendly! Can't you *hear* the purring?

Patriotism by Birthday

At least, that is true by the logic of Lady Rogue. Now, I would not crack a page of her book on a bet-it would probably blind me for life-but others evidently have. According to NYT snark extraordinaire Maureen Dowd...

Of course, the subtitle of Sarah Palin’s book is “An American Life.”

Because she is the lovely avatar of real Americans — ordinary, hard-working, God-fearing, common-sense, good, ordinary, real Americans.

If you are not living an American life, you are, to use a Palin coinage, living “bass-ackwards.”

Palin is so determinedly American that, when she went into labor with Willow on the Fourth of July while kayaking on Memory Lake in Wasilla, she writes, “I so wanted a patriotic baby that I paddled as hard as I could to speed up the contractions, but she held out until the next day.”

MoDo unfortunately fails to connect some obvious dots here. The implication in the statement is that Willow Palin-and by extension, her family-is decidedly unpatriotc (or, at least, less so) due to the curse of her birth, and anybody Born on the Fourth of July would be a Real Patriot. Hmmmm, I wonder...who in current life would have such a fantastic birthday, thus imbibing herself and her family with such an honored status? I wonder-using Sarah's own logic...who are the real patriots here?

Think, think, think...who could it be?

Oh, yeah! 

It is the family of MALIA OBAMA, born July 4th, 1998.

Wonder how that made it by the so-called editor?

After the Game

This is exactly how I feel:



If this season goes down, it is because of THAT PLAY. Too freakin' smart for your own good sometimes, Billy. What a fucking stupid play.

You got lucky this time, Manning, you fuckwad,because our coach is a M-O-R-O-N. But you can't count on that every time, Commercial Boy.

Fuck. I am so pissed off right now, I feel as if I just watched a month's worth of Liz Cheney interviews by Neil Cavuto. Fuck.

It Can't Be a Bad Day...

...when both the Jets and the Steelers lose, can it?

What a beautiful sight...

What happens in Indianapolis tonight will dictate what kind of day it is in total, however.

Oh, and by the way, what the hell was Frank Luntz doing on the CBS pregame show? And now can I ever enjoy that show again?