Yummo!

This is pretty amazing.

To summarize: Jesus is lord, I believe in him for no logical reason, He came here as a wee little baby and then died for us, trust in Him make me omnipotent.

We’ve all read a these things a million times. The writing is flat and trite. You can almost imagine the author – eyes glazed over, that fervent conviction draining the humanity out of her voice.

No big deal, right? We’ve heard it all before.

Except for the name on the article. Anne Rice. Yes, THE Anne Rice. She of the ambiguously sexual vampires and immortal murderous children, the baroque, beautiful language that blooms from the page like a putrid flower, dripping with blood and sex. That Anne Rice. It turns out that decades after Lestat drank his last maiden, years after Tom Cruise gazed lustfully into Brad Pitt’s dead eyes, their creator found her Creator. That’s right, Anne Rice found God. That marked the end of the Vampire Chronicles, and she decided to dedicate all her writing to Him. Anne Rice turned into The Church Lady.

Whether Church Lady or Vampire Lady, I have a feeling that Anne Rice is not a very nice lady at all. Maybe it’s the Anna Wintour haircut. And yet, I can’t help but be a little envious. Can you imagine a life so full of passion and contradiction, letting every whim, every idea fully consume you and define your identity? Consider me a sane person wondering – is insanity the truest form of freedom?

Beep Beep

Today, I am nursing a rather severe case of the ragies, that minor condition that sometimes afflicts the gentler sex whereby they want to rip everything around them into shreds. I was going to amuse you today with a list of all the things that are pissing me off (noise, computers, people, animals, sunshine, abstract concepts), but realized it was just making me more mad. So instead, here are some bumper stickers.

My pit bull ate your honor student

Daddy's Little Slut

I Y Dick Cheney

I'd rather be f#*%ing Matt Damon

It doesn't take a war to run over a bicyclist

Save the Earth – Eat the Cows!

I'd rather be doing my taxes

Save a tree – eat Ralph Nader

I'd rather be drinking – oh wait, I am!

Chew cud. Because an appendix is a terrible thing to waste.

Urban Angst

When living in the city, the illusion of privacy is precarious indeed. I am used to waking up to the sounds of garbage trucks rattling the walls of my apartment. I look forward to opening the windows and smelling garlic frying at the Thai restaurant next door. This morning, I groaned when I heard the distant chanting of a protest in front of the Scientology building. But in spite of the constant reminders of the proximity of others, I always felt like this space was my own, a private sanctuary. I never see my neighbors, I have my TV on at ungodly hours of the night, and I still can’t get used to pulling the blinds closed when I change.

Alas, all dreams must end sometime. We got a knock on the door at midnight last night from the downstairs neighbor asking us to “not walk so loudly.” For historical record, we were not rehearsing our Riverdance routine. Just the kind of normal occasional walking two very sedentary people do. Barefoot. And yet, there she was, at our door, asking us to not “walk on our heels.”

It was a rude awakening. We spent the next hour tiptoeing around gingerly and whispering to each other, wondering what else our neighbors can hear.

I need a vacation.

Fire bad, tree pretty

Yesterday, I was dragged to see 10,000 BC. I went under the condition that I could write a scathing review afterwards. The condition was agreed to under the second condition that I don’t mock the movie while watching it. After spitting and shaking on it, we entered the theater.

Unlike the movie, the review will be brief. I will just say that I did not uphold condition number 2. Fortunately, neither did anyone else in the theater. As for the scathing, I will just say that the movie would be 80% improved by eliminating all dialog. I want my cavemen to grunt, not speak vague accented English. And, honestly, the plot is not that complicated. Guy likes girl, girl gets kidnapped, guy gets girl back. Do we really need painfully stilted dialog, narration, AND subtitles? I was half expecting to see blinking neon signs. As boy stares longingly at girl – HE LIKE HER! As girl runs in slow motion, breasts bouncing rhythmically – SHE PRETTY! Now that I think about it, that was basically the narration. So I have to give it points for clarity. Maybe 2 points (out of a hundred). 4 more points for the herd of mammoths stampeding down the side of a pyramid. Ridiculous, but pretty freaking sweet. That brings it up to 6 points. If you choose to watch, for the love of God wait for the DVD to come out. Then watch on mute.

Oh Captain, My Captain

Check out this article on the cesspool of crazy that is the Hillary Clinton campaign. I don’t want to say I told you so (mom), but, really, I told you so. Now, I don’t want to fall into the trap of voting for a president I would want to have a beer with. Realistically, I will never have a beer with the president (I don’t like beer). My subconscious president test is – would I want to work for them? What kind of boss would they make? Here is my completely uninformed and subjective analysis. The candidates better pay attention, because the uninformed and subjective masses are going to be deciding the election. Here’s hoping the primaries will be over by then.

From his demeanor alone, I would have guessed ol' GDub is the incompetent boss that needs to be managed. For example:

GWB: Uh, we need to take care of the situation in, uh, whaddayacallit…

Lux: Iraq, sir?

GWB: Yeah, right, Iraq. We’re need to do that surge thing.

Lux: Actually, sir, we decided to pull out.

GWB: Oh yeah? Ok. Great. Great job. Uh, hey, wanna get a beer?

Ah, a girl can dream. Alas, we all know Bushie did not turn out to be the incompetent doofus who lets smarter people do his job. No, he’s the incompetent doofus who lets evil people do his job and is always right because Jeebus tells him so. Fortunately, we have burned that bridge already. Let’s move on and see what the future might hold for us.

The Maverick. This is just not a good nickname. Would your want to work for Tom “I’m Crazy” Cruise in Top Gun? This is the man who will walk into your office at the end of the day wanting to talk policy. You will present well researched ideas and he will listen intelligently, nodding and staring at the floor. He will ask intelligent questions. You will talk for hours. At the end, he’ll thank you for your thoughts and advice and pat you on the back with a smirk. The next day, you’ll read in the paper that he did the exact opposite what you advised. Oh, and that you’re fired.

Oh Hillary. I want to like her, I really do. And yet I see her as the woman who, as the boss 3 times removed from you, storms indignantly into your office with three flustered lackeys rushing behind her, demands that you take out your latest report, and berates you for using the wrong font. In the meantime, the company goes bankrupt.

He listens to you, respects you, and brings you donuts. In return, you have to be ready to do the dirty work, because he stays above it. He’ll make you feel like there’s a bigger purpose to the mind-numbing work you have to do. Every once in a while, a halo of white light will seem to shimmer around him as he speaks.

I swear I’m not an Obamabot. I don’t love any candidate unconditionally. I don’t even love myself unconditionally. But be honest - who would you want to work for?

Easy, breezy, beautiful

Recently, I’ve been fascinated with the idea of people who love their jobs. Now, I don’t know any of these people personally, but I see them on TV all the time. You know who I’m talking about. The middle aged woman who teach art class after curing her arthritis. The 22 year old fashion magazine executive slash supermodel whose lipstick lasts all day. The handsome chef advertising knives in a busy kitchen while serving seared scallops in white wine sauce. All those happy, attractive people surrounded by bustling activity and warm colors and just loving the hell out of their lives. I do hate them, but the advertising is working. I want their lives. But does such a perfect workplace exist?

A little closer to home, I wonder about those overenthusiastic folks at my own mind-numbing job. The ones sending out mass emails peppered with exclamation points. Ten thousand users! 200 simultaneous logins! Five million dollars saved! Seriously, I wonder? Do they really give a crap? Or are they pretending like I am? I would prefer to believe the former. Maybe every person has a destiny, and some people just love business process management more than a fat kid love cake. However, the pessimist in me tends to believe the latter. Which is rather dismal. We are all shuffling through life, pretending to care in order to get our daily bread. It all seems a bit eerie, like a group of toddlers behaving well while the teacher is out. Who are we trying to impress, exactly? Sure, there’s the person who hands out the paychecks – but what if he also doesn’t care?

Obviously, there’s a bit of a morale problem at my workplace. I have to believe that something better is out there. But I don’t think I’ve ever been there. And I don’t know anyone who has. Someone, please tell me that there is happiness outside of TV commercials.