To Alcohol!

Thanks to the joyousness of the Holiday Season, I've been drinking a lot more. And getting free food. And doing even less science than usual. Turns out, slacking off and drinking to excess is what makes me happy. That and spending recovery days knitting and watching Six Feet Under.

I had my annual Hanukkah party over the weekend, turns out I really really need to buy more chairs. And how is it that having people over somehow totally makes one's floors filthy? Ugh. Anyway, it was fun, there were more people than in previous years, and I even got kitchen help from Rachel and Juan Ramon. All three previous parties I made ExMatt peel stuff and I always had him grate the onions, luckily I had the foresight not to wear liquid eyeliner and I made it through the onions myself. Pictures can be found on flickr, as always. I wore a pretty dress as it was my damn party and I have all sorts of fun clothes and shoes and rarely occasion to wear them.

In other news, Tim had Condi over the weekend. Really, the more I am exposed to that woman the more I dislike her. Apparently it is totally Constitutional to wiretap US citizens without a warrant...just don't make them point to the specific statutory language that authorizes it. Gwen Iffil was on the roundtable and while she isn't my much-missed BBC chick, she still rocks. This Sunday is apparently Christmas, so there is a Holiday Edition of MTP that includes footage of Robert Frost. Which I suppose may be more interesting than more admin shills/officials talking about how Iraq is totally not as bad as it looks to be on my TV.

Timwatch 12/11 and I Really Wish Jasper Johns Hadn't Stolen my Boat

Tim had Madeline Albright and Sen. Lindsey Graham, who looked rather orange. Clearly, MTP needs a better makeup artist with more varied shades of "generic white politician" in the makeup box. Anyway. Graham is one of a few Republicans who, while I totally disagree with the overwhelming majority of his politics, I can actually respect. This is because Graham, unlike the leaders of his party, doesn't seem to think torturing prisoners is okay. And while it is really, really sad that something as obvious as "torturing people isn't cool" is enough to get me to not totally loathe a Republican politician these days, I'll take what I can get. He really stood up to Rumsfeld back in the Abu Gharib hearings and is always pointing out that he's a JAG, which despite my general disdain for the military I always thought would be an interesting profession. And Madeline Albright...well sure she was fine as Secretary of State and all but what I really like her for is this. So the actual issues/discussion? Apparently things aren't going well in Iraq and oops, mistakes have been made. I watch this show (aside from the Tim obsession part) because I want actual analysis and actual interesting questioning that I'm not already getting from my mass consumption of NPR and the NYT. And I have to say, I haven't been feeling it lately. Maybe because the focus has been mostly on Iraq for awhile and I've always been way more interested in domestic than international policy, but I'm getting sick of the same thing every week said by different people. And the roundtable had David Brooks, who also needs a better makeup artist as he looked sort of greyish, which considering I already don't like him isn't getting him up in my esteem. The only thing really different about this week's MTP in contrast to last week's was the tribute to Sen. Eugene McCarthy.

In other news, I had a totally flat tire. And I don't actually know how to change a tire so I tried to get Kathy's bf John to do it, except this was last night when it was freezing and we'd been to Drinking Liberally and were a little beer-y. And I don't actually have the manual for my car so we didn't have instructions. But when I moved the car away from the curb a bit, I discovered the reason for said flat tire:



That's right, somebody threw a knife into the street right in front of my apartment and I drove over it while parking. So now I have the knife and I'm wondering what to do with it. There don't seem to be any bloodstains, but I didn't look all that closely either. Is this the sort of thing one turns over to the cops? I;d do that but I think the Philly police will laugh at me. They're not very nice. Plus, now my prints are on it. Anyway, I called AAA this morning to have them put the donut on so I could at least take the stupid car to the tire place, and it took them three and a half hours to arrive. This is in marked contrast to the time I called them from Bryn Mawr and they came in 20 minutes. Hmmm, what's the difference between my neighborhood and the Main Line? Not that I'd ever insinuate that AAA services nice white upper-class suburbs faster than they do my, um, transitional neighborhood. Nope, I totally don't believe in stirring up class issues.

I also played Simpsons Trivia Monday. We didn't win (sigh) but we did pretty well. It was really, really fun. And hard. But guess who totally got the Jasper Johns question? Awww yeah.

I Smell Winter

Yeah, Juan makes fun of me for liking the Housemartins, but what does he know? Anyway, it is all cold here and has snowed twice, though not much either time. Of course, one inch is enough to send stupid Philly drivers skidding into all sorts of things, so there have already been fatalities. Don't they know you have to practice spinning out?

I went to a baby shower in the burbs Saturday...it was very domestic and traditional. No boys and I only had one glass of wine as it seemed inappropriate to get drunk at this baby shower. I made two baby hats and Kate made two blankets that coordinated. Alas, no pictures of the hats and blankets together, but here are the hats:






Got Pakistani food last night with ExMatt and finally saw his place. It is in a really, really not gentrifying neighborhood. The good part was I got to see the kitty again, I think he's even bigger than when I moved out. I think he might remember me as he came over to me and didn't even claw my face off when I picked him up.



Tim over the weekend: John McCain. And while Tim obviously likes him (journalists do), he didn't go too soft with the questions like he sometimes does. And McCain was actually doing crazy shit like admitting to mistakes. And saying we should be in Darfur. I could never vote for McCain - first off, he's super antichoice - but I can respect him. More than the rest of his party, at least. Which isn't saying much. Then, the two heads of the 9/11 commission were on. Apparently we haven't been doing anything they said to do. Like giving antiterrorism funds to the actual places that are at risk (cities on the coasts that are really, really Democratic - no coincidence that they're not being funded, right? Shit, I get more cynical every day) and instead giving money to fucking Wyoming. And my home county - it has gotten loads of cash, to protect what? Welch's? This won't change at all, as the fundamental nature of the Senate is totally antidemocratic and the Republicans that control the House and the purse strings don't represent NYC and DC (fuck, that poor rep can't even vote) and Chicago and SF...you know, the fun places.

Though I have zero fear of a terrorist attack here. Come on, foreigners don't know we exist - despite our being the 5th-largest city in the nation. Plus, what are they going to bomb? Thanks to the William Penn thing there aren't a lot of major skyscrapers, and the ones we do have are hideous and not very landmark-y. They could, I suppose, bomb City Hall, but aside from the loss of Billy it wouldn't be that grand a scale of devastation. Even in Center City, the population just isn't as dense as it is in, say, Manhattan. The two other symbolic targets are, of course, the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. But those aren't very internationally famous. Plus, again we have the issue of not being densely populated. And any attack there would only take out those damn Midwestern tourists: nobody who lives here goes to those places unless they're entertaining out-of-towners. What's left? Liberty Place? The damn hideous Wharton building on campus? Yeah, didn't think so.

See, kids? Nothing to worry about. Unless you live in NYC. Then you're screwed, but you knew that.

Belated Timwatch for 11/27

In the mayhem of the past month or so, I missed Tim over and over. Luckily, I caught him Sunday, woo! But more importantly, when I was home my father and I wound up going to a Sabres game. On the way there (we took a rather roundabout way as we had to pick up the tickets in a weird part of Hamburg) we went all the way up Rt 62 and drove by...Tim Russert's Children's Garden! Alas, I hadn't brought my camera and it was snowing pretty hard so my father probably wouldn't have stopped and let me out to take a picture, but still. I had no idea it even existed.

Anyway, Tim had John Warner, who totally creeps me out, and Joe Biden. Who is, in fact, trying to run for President. I like him and all, and he is really entertaining, but the man has some serious delusions about his (lack of) electability. But Biden came super-prepared, with pages of quotes both from himself and from others, and was really going right after Tim and his whole "I'll trap you with your own words" schtick. Warner totally reminds me of Death. He's very corpse-like. Anyway, Biden and Warner got into a brief pissing contest about who supported the troops more based on how many times/how recently they'd actually been to Iraq, which proves absolutely nothing about one's patriotism but whatever. The journalistic roundtable sucked. They need to bring back Nina Totenberg and that fun BBC chick and put David Broder out of his misery. He can go pretend to be Death with Sen Warner.

In campus news, there is a major scandal because some kid took pictures of two people having sex up against their Highrise window, emailed them to people and posted them online, and is now facing really big disciplinary trouble for sexual harassment(!). Of course, no action is being taken against the morons/exhibitionists who had what amounts to public sex and subjected the campus to their bare-assed frolicking. So the DP, in its ever-brilliant journalism, posts one of the pictures on the front page. See for yourself. Personally, I think if you don't want to be naked on the internet, you should close your blinds. And not do bondage porn, like a certain non-Jessy ex roommate of mine. But then, as far as I know I'm not naked on the internet. Yet.