riding on into the new year...

Sigh. I am riding (with Meg) to a family get-together for New Year's.
I had started a post, but it got way too long, so I will have to post
it later. Basically, we are all meeting, only Mummers did not want to
ride because she said that riding with Meg makes her nervous.

It just makes me bored.

I am working on what all I will be resolving for 2009, and debating
whether I want to even address the possibility of putting my family
name back into use (this is an explanation contained in the larger
post I just surrendered to Draftland). Generally, I am largely
satisfied. One thing I can offer to give up are these damned Belgian
chocolate-dipped cookies with which mom has sent us off. Bwaah.

This is distressing -- I am not READY for the Holiday Season to be
over. I know that I hav declared that it continues until 13 February,
but the sad fact is that no one ever joins me in continuing to
celebrate. In between my upheavals at work, losing my lovely
Siameasle, Mummers' health issues, and finally getting my head screwed
on straight with respect to my program issues, frankly, 2008 has
sucked ass. I want my money back.

Every year, I mumble something about how I should make a list of the
best Christmas movies of all time. Well, here is my first attempt at a
Top Twelve Best Christmas Movies:

12. Silent Night, Deadly Night and Black Christmas. No Christmas
viewing would be complete without them...watch them both. At the same
time. Punish!! w00t!

11. Last Action Hero. I am really pretty sure this takes place at
Christmas because Shane Black wrote it before he lost his damn mind.
If not, pretend that it does; it is a wonderful movie!

10. Single Santa Seeks Mrs. Claus. What a fucking creepfest! Ho, ho,
ho! Steve Guttenberg acts so frickin creepy in this that it is amazing
he hasn't been put up on any state-maintained sex offender sites just
ON PRINCIPLE. He manages to be even creepier than Gus in the Psych
episode where they're checking out nannies at the playground, and Dule
Hill was TRYING to act creepy. Out-creeped by Guttenberg! Man...creepy
crown DENIED!! You will agree, too; bring a festive blanky with you to
hide under during those 'omfg, I am so embarrassed for you' moments
that seem to work their way into most Lifetime movies.

9. Meet the Santas. Shouldn't that be 'Meet the Clauses'? Maybe the
Mr and Mrs couldn't agree on who gets to be the predicate. Anyhoo, I
am including this one because I just know you are on the edge of your
seat in suspense over the disposition of number ten. So watch it, and
you'll know.

8. Fred Claus. Because I would go down on Vince Vaughn in a New York
minute. And What's His Name, too -- you know -- the gay one who is a
really good actor? I don't know why I think Vaughn is so cute, but I
cannot help it -- I do. And I am using Fred Claus instead of Four
Christmases because, frankly, FC sucked. Not because it was not funny
-- it was hilarious in places -- but because it seemed like halfway
through the film everyone just got tired of making it, so they ended
it. So we're going with Fred Claus. Oh, and also 'cos Pig Vomit is
Santa, and that is awesome. I cannot remember his name, but Pig Vomit
rocks.

7. Die Hard. Yippee kai-yay, motherfucker. Need I say more? Well, I'm
gonna. Bloodshed, loud ka-booms, and debating which New York minute
would be faster, given a choice between Vaughn and Rickman; that's
what xmas is all about. And bonus points for including Run-D.M.C.'s
Christmas in Hollis, one of the best holiday songs ever (list to
come). Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho. Best line in the history of
cinema...EVVAH.

6. Die Hard 2. The best Die Hard by far, with the exception of there
being no Alan Rickman, or any real hottie that I can recall, in it.
And there is the guy who could not act to save his life...oh, wait --
that's what makes this film great. And the Terminator guy. and John
Leguziamo. And snow. And icicle-fu. Makes me want to celebrate the
birth of jesus by jumping on a snowmobile and capping terrorists with
a machine gun, and that's a good, American, Christmassy-kind of
feeling. Yippee kai-yay, motherfucker!

We're here, and I am going to check in and have a hot bath...bbiaf,
not that you'd notice...

k, back; now on with our countdown:

5. True Lies. Yes, it is set at Christmas. And not only is it
chock-full of amazingly-quotable lines, but it is about family values.
And killing terrorists. And nuclear war heads. And breaking people's
necks with your bare hands, and throwing scalpels into their eyeballs.
Oh -- and limo-fu; god only knows there is not enough chick-on-chick
limo-fu in this world, though I *personally* would have been happier
if it had been, say, Joan Jett and Anna Nicole Smith -- now *that*
would have been a merry fucking Christmas. Makes me want to punch out
a used car salesman...hell, yeah!

4. The Long Kiss Goodnight. We are closing in on the essence of the
holiday spirit here with this Shane 'I Just Need Four Million More To
Pay My House Off' Black gem, clearly one of the corniest movies of all
time. This is a movie about finding oneself, being true to who you are
(even if it does involve bleaching one's hair and blowing things up),
and choosing family -- and a briefcase full of money -- over killing
people just because your government wants you to, and isn't that nice?
We all need to learn that lesson -- that we shouldn't want to kill
Craig Bierko because the government wants us to, we should kill Craig
Bierko because *WE* want to. Plus, the little daughter, Cathead (I
have sworn that, if I ever have a daugter, I will name my daughter
Cathead in honour of this film), looks so cute in her little
tinsel-haloed costume. This film also has some of the best lines EVER!
This is one of the hokiest films out there...I cannot fathom how NO
ONE mentions how farkakteh hokey this film is. Plus, after you watch
it, you can see tons of other movies and play Spot Daedalus, like I
do. It's good to have a dart gun by the sofa whilst playing Spot
Daedalus -- my cats love that part. So...you *will* watch The Long
Kiss Goodnight, princess, and you will watch it through to the end! Am
I understood? Bwahaha...chefs do that! Hee...deflowering virgins!
omfg...this is one of the greatest films ever. It just has SO MUCH to
offer!

3. Last Holiday. Okay, like, first off, *I* want to go to Kalovy Vary
-- the place is GORGEOUS. Like even-more-beautiful-than-Tahoe
Gorgeous! So right there, we have the fantastic Christmassy scenery.
Plus, Queen Latifah is perfect for this role. Plus Dr Gupta reminds me
of a guy I don't currently work with but have in the past and will
again; if I have mentioned him here, I probably named him Pancakes.
It's hard to not want to kill Pancakes. But back to Last Holiday: This
is almost THE perfect Christmas movie -- it even has food, food, food!
And it has a good moral, a happy ending, and...the only reason this
film is not number one is that it was beaten out by a smidgeon. Or
smidgeons.

2. It's a Wonderful Life. No serious list of Christmas movies could
leave off It's a Wonderful Life; true, no one gets killed and nothing
gets blown up, but we can overlook that. I will never forget the one
holiday season that I was working at an answering service (overnights
because I was the evening supervisor and our night girl quit) and I
held a contest with myself to see how many times I could watch it
because it seemed like it was on every damned station. Funny thing
was, it did not occur to me to *count* because, well, it was JUST ME.
This makes perfect sense to me. So even though I can quote dialogue
like that one creepy scene in I Am Legend, I cannot tell you how many
times I have seen it. Most of you have no idea how boring it gets at
an answering service. Probably about as boring as it's gonna get when
we're hiding out after we get overrun by vampires or zombies.
Seriously.

And now...::drum roll::...the one, the only, the celluloid embodiment
of all that is Christmas -- the good, the bad, and the ugly, it's...

...I am dying to know *your* guess..

1. Jingle All The Way. There is nothing I could possibly say that
could explain how much I love this movie. Sure, it could have been
better, but it is HILARIOUS. It has everything the holiday season
could possibly contain -- love, greed, superheroes, and psychotic
postal service workers. Oh, and mall shots. And cookies ('Mmmmmm!
These COOKIES!'). And a not-dead Phil Hartman getting eggnog-fu'd. And
Balthazar. Balthazar!

Wow...I cannot believe it took me this long to make a list...or how
tired I am. I am going to sleep for a few hours and then go play.

weirdness

i am cleaning house, and had something very weird happen -- i found
one purse and an outfit stuffed in my closet that i did not think were
mine, but they are. i think that i am under more stress than i
realise. i wrote a whole post about it, then shelved it because it is
just too strange, but i needed to discuss it with someone, and i
cannot just ring a friend and go getting weird on them. i am fine,
just a little spooked.

everything else is good. meg asked me if i thought mom was 'normal'
cognitively since her most recent hospitalisation, and i do not think
she is 'normal', she seems nicer and less belligerent, but slower to
grasp some things. it is not pronounced, but it is there. meg thinks
mom might have had an undiscovered stroke, but i doubt that; they
tested the bejeezus out of her, even more so once i got her cc changed
from syncope. she had a neuro workup, and they said no stroke. i think
it is blood sugar related; i think she might have pickled her brain a
tich with her blood sugars of 500+. i do not know if that can actually
kill off brain cells, but that is kind of an irrelevant issue at this
point, because if it can, then we work with what is; if it cannot, by
working with what is, she gets better en route. she's not
incapacitated, and i know that high glucose makes her nasty, so maybe
she just *seems* so much nicer in comparison. :-)

Merry Christmas, from your favourite atheist :-*

It's not a cheese bear, but in my opinion a penguin is far better anyway.

cheese bear regrets

today i accomplished only a little; i got the last of my work-friends
(streching across four jobs at this point) gifted. tomorrow i meet
betty, we'll hang out at the mall, kvetch, drink coffee, and play in
the sink at bath and body works. meg is taking mom tomorrow (we have
been pressed into babysitting service until her blood sugar stabilises
and she 'exhibits competence' with routine maintenance -- in other
words, considering mommy, perpetuity -- per her doctor, who has her
scheduled with a different endocrinologist in a few weeks).

i met meg and mom for dinner after i'd run my errands at the
cheesecake factory (oh, no; mommy is out of luck,
cheesecake-eating-wise, fear not), and they were having a promotion
where if one were to buy a stuffed bear for twenty-five dollars, then
you'd get a 'free' twenty-five dollar gift card. put another way, one
is buying the stuffed bear for the amount of tax on the gift card. i
told meg that i was going to get a cheese bear (meg hates it when i
call squooshable 'squibbly-cakes', so i enjoy annoying her by leaving
off 'cake' from words, under the guise of humouring her preference to
not hear the word 'cake', when in reality she says that i 'sound gay'
when i talk to squooshable like that. she actually thinks that most of
my cats' nicknames are 'gay', though i personally like 'the vicar of
squibbly'; how is that gay?), and i sent multiple texts to meg about
getting a cheese bear (none of which clarified what a 'cheese bear'
was; i am obnoxious like that) as we were waiting to be seated and she
was taking mummers on a walk around the plaza to get some exercise.
meg does things like that, where i expect mom to be largely
self-maintenancing (foolish me); with meg babysitting, mummers' blood
sugar stays around 100...with me in charge, it sneaks up to 220-ish
before i realise she's turned back into the irritable old witch i know
and love, and make her drink water and take walkies.

sigh. yes, i am actually talking about my own mother as if she were a
springer spaniel; what of it?

butsoanyway.

so when i was buzzed for all of us to get sat, i paged meg and showed
her the cheese bears, then she just got flat-out irritated, saying
that she has nothing against the word 'cake(s)', which confused the
hell out of mom, and i was just dying laughing, leaving meg to explain
to mom what was going on...bwahaha. oh, i crack me up.

ok, so finally i decide to get a cheese bear, 'cos it's like, two
dollars. meg said that if i ever buy another stuffed animal for her,
she's donating it. i told her that if she so much as *looks* like she
is going to donate the Mumble i had to scrap and fight to get for her
when Happy Feet came out, i was going to kill her where she stood.

oh, come on -- those things were selling for $250 on eBay towards the
end, and i paid TWENTY DOLLARS EACH for them, and i had to fight
through a horde of psychotic women to get them!

i am not *ever* a psychotic woman. i heard that.

anyway, so i go up to the front to buy my cheese bear before we pay
(so that i can use the gift card), and can you believe -- in that
short period of time, the cheese bear i wanted had been sold out! they
only had the white cheese bears with the blue cheese bear baseball
caps on, where i'd had my heart set on the brown cheese bear with the
red cheese bear sweater. bastards.

it is like a conspiracy. srsly.

so i sulked back to the table and made up words to fit the piped-in
carols just to annoy meg...my improvised lyrics being all to the point
of not having a cheese bear. like, 'it's the most wonderful time of
the year...if you have a cheese bear that is, which i do not, and so i
am quite sad...here at the most wonderful season of all...for those
owning cheese bears, of which i don't number, things must seem so
swell...like the most wonderful time of the year'.

well, mummers was laughing. i am actually pretty good at making up my
own lyrics extemporaneously. really -- it's a talent, one of my few.

and for the record, as i explaned to meg, i think donating a cheese
bear is not a very good donation, unless the gift card were included;
i mean, it is branded all over with 'the cheesecake factory', so
without the gift card, that is like an after-thought pseudo-gift,
which strikes *me* as being a tad tacky. but that is just my humble
opinion, and meg disagrees, feeling instead that anything one gives
(in new condition) is a good donation.

so then i rode with meg and mom to a nearby subdivision that'd been
shown on the news because of the decorations, and now i am home. whee.

we did (finally) get word that my brother's application for a
sabbatical-like leave from the army has been approved, so he will be
moving next june-ish to this research/teaching appointment. this came
as a big relief to us, because as far as pushing his career forward,
this is a boost, and he deserves it. not that i am biased, or
anything. :-)

Happy Wikipedia-ed Holidays

Ok...this is funny, even though he introduces it as Wikipedia's entry on Pesach (put the mouse down...it isn't), I am sure that by now some well-meaning soul has copied it over to the entry to every Jewish holiday. ;-) Ok, ok...it's What I Like About Jew's song (Sean Altman of this Jewmongous was in WILAJ) They Tried To Kill Us, We Survived (Let's Eat).

Love it. :-D Now, I have to go honour my saviour, Jeezy Creezy.

omfg, I crack me up. Sean cracks me up. Hee.

Diagnosis: Stoopid.

Mummers is out of the hospital, and we have an actual, real,
official diagnosis.

Yes, other than she is a clumsy old lady, the favoured dx of Yolanda, the
Bitch Idiot Hospitalist, who had her prescription for a walker forwarded on
to The Powers That Be after we got mom out of there. There is no joy in
Mudville right now, I assure you.

She went into some seizure from diabetic ketoacidosis, and then went into
cardiac arrest because of the strain on her heart from the ventricle
problem, the low K, high WBC, and so on.

This all occurred when my mommy decided to TAKE HERSELF OFF HER
DIABETES MEDS two months ago. Why? Because she does not have diabetes,
of course; her life was *so* much easier without worrying about the
diabetes she didn't have.

Sigh. Just shoot me.

I am better. Mom is on Lantis (I think that's the name) for the time
being, and I am nursing a week-long migraine and twitching asshole.
Bwaah.

Now I just have to get my holiday ass in gear...happy Channukah!

Stop, or I'll Sing Christmas Shoes!

Talked with a 'Patient Advocate' at the hospital near me...I think I was successful; we will see.  

In other Sick-Assed Person News, Harry is doing really well on the Topomax, and has an appointment for sometime soon with this new neuro.

I am online right now, buying Meg's present(s), not like I wait forever, or anything.  This year, it's a lomo outfit.  I only have four more people to buy for, not counting short beastie-type relatives who are spoilt rotten by my brother, and I can get nothing for except gift cards to We Be Toys.  Oh, and three office admins.  

I am certain that I am forgetting someone.  Sigh.

Mommy continues to be well-ish.