Is there any song that is less Goth than The Cure's "Why Can't I Be You?" I think Artie Shaw and his Orchestra recorded darker melodies than that peppy little show tune. Great song to get the morning started though, if not in a moodily poetic fashion.

One of my coworkers brings various guide dogs in training to our office to help acclimate them to the workplace. It's a rotating group and I only really have eyes for one of them: a tiny black Lab (seriously, the smallest fully grown Lab I've ever seen, maybe 35 lbs.) with the most serene manner. His name is Faraja and I love him. My love is not requited though. When I come by to say "Hi! Hi! Who's a good boy? Who is? That's right, it's you!" Faraja just stares at me patiently. It is painfully obvious that I am a demented fangirl and he is Joe Jonas. If I was younger, this would end with a later-regretted tattoo of his name on my ankle.

Worst/best drinking game: Every time someone on "Big Brother" incorrectly uses "myself." Please have 911 ready on speed dial in advance of playing.

In conclusion, I am pretty sure my instructor, Guru Steve, is attempting to weaponize Beginning Yoga. Pretty sure. Ow.

Being on hold with music has reminded me of this question: what DID Billy Joe McAllister throw off the Tallahatchee bridge the week before himself?

Wanna see some mindblowingly awful advertising? Yes, you do! I actually am a jaded jackass who has spent a lot of time looking at a lot of hee hee-titties advertising on the television and in the magazine, plus I get eyeroll-y about lowballing the term "misogyny" to cover garden variety asshattedness, but this is something really unique. It was intended for the Israeli market not the American, but Bacardi ought to know that regional advertising don't stay where it's placed no more, and shame on them for placing it anywhere anyway. And here we go:

ZOMG SO MUCH MISOGYNYSSS!!!!1! For real.

So this time of year, the pigeons hop around on my building's balconies. This has caused great excitement with Guapo, who spends many the morning running between the window in the office and the door leading out to the balcony to, essentially, bark at the pigeons. He considers this a joint enterprise when I am at the computer - it is my responsibility to keep lookout while he is snoozing on the floor and to alert him of avian invaders by hissing "Pidgies! PIDGIES!" (By the way, other than his name and "turkey," this is the only other word he understands, and he learned it instantly. He's smart when motivated, which is almost never.) At which point he runs and jumps on the ledge to chatter and stare and then tell me all about it once the birds fly away again.

Well, just now I came into the office to find Guapo hanging halfway out the cracked office window and looking to ooze out the rest of the way. Came closer and discovered that a pigeon couple had ensconced themselves in one of our crappy folding chairs and was having a nice nap. Guapo actually had his paw on one of their tails, was yapping his head off at me to stay back and the pigeons were still all "eh." They reluctantly hopped off the chair, but not off the balcony, as I hauled Guapo back in the office. I felt I owed them an apology for the disturbance.

Now I am being yelled for from the kitchen since I apparently owe Guapo turkey for disturbing his pigeon blind. The circle of life.

Film fanning around: If you are in proximity to me for an extended amount of time, I will probably make you watch "A Matter of Life and Death" with me. I just made my husband watch it with me last night. It is as enthralling, strange and visually sumptuous as the Powell/Pressburger films are wont to be, with a great deal more humor than, say, "The Red Shoes" or "Black Narcissus." You know, those laugh riots. I have linked to a synopsis of it, but it doesn't lend itself to description. Bonus: most awesome escalator ever and a scene involving over 5,000 extras.

Anyway, you should watch that film and you should also see the little shown, hardly available, fabulous Christmas movie (script by Preston Sturges!) "Remember the Night." It's more mushy than Sturges' later writer-director efforts, but that's really a matter of degree. You will never mistake Sturges for Capra. Inexplicably, this film is not available for rent and is only screened sporadically by Turner Classic Movies, and not even in the Christmas season. Strange little orphan of a movie it is.

I received an email today from my apartment building's management informing me that the crepe restaurant directly across the street (not down the block, not catty-corner, not more than ten paces door to door) is offering free delivery to our address. Well, my goodness.

Also, I don't care for the winner of Eurovision. No sir, can't say as I do. Not that I had a pirate vampyre in the race this year. Still, boo.

The high intensity discharge lights washed the steel vault in an antiseptic glow. Cold gray walls as thick as the armor of a battleship. Each man had his own reason for being there, that night. Yet they all shared one common interest. When the last seal on the door had been cracked, their treasure was revealed. The Slanket, in Castlerock Grey.

"What happened to Francois?", I asked. "Francois, he, eh, crash into zee conifer.", said the French-Canadian. Straight out of the northern woods of Maine; rally cars and black flies.

The smell of coffee and double apple tobacco fill the market. At the end of the street, beyond the sand worn crenellations of the ancient buildings, the desert swirls. The camels loaded with gear blend with the color of the land, their outlines barely visible. It gets cold at night in the desert, praise be Allah that you brought your Slanket in beige. All of the soft color of the desert with none of the chaffing, stinking camels, sunburns, or dehydration.

http://www.theslanket.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=1

That's how you sell me, boys and girls. You don't even want to know how lame those competing Snuggie copywriters are. Suffice it to say they repeat "blanket with sleeves!" as though that was enough.

ADAM LAMBERT BITCHES.

It was incredibly strange. It was incredibly uncommercial (unless you are Europe, in which case WOO HOO, we need a German techno beat for gold and then watch out). It was a giant fuck you to the AI meatgrinder. I'm pretty sure Brian May was on line 2 wanting Adam for the latest sad lineup of Queen v.2 because this was what exactly would have happened if Freddie Mercury had turned up on Grand Ole Opry week of American Idol. Sure, his performance and the arrangement may have not been to taste (and it wasn't to mine), but the guy nailed every fucking note of what he did. Screech? NO. Like Mr. Mercury (or Antony of Antony and the Johnsons), he has an upper range that is rarely given to the male of the species. And he can't, not won't, can't, fit into the cookie cutter. RECOGNIZE.

He is so doomed on this little program though, where Danny Gokey is the dreamiest. But he will be around doing his weird, unique, perfectly sculpted, gay as hell, watchable as hell, thing for a long time.

P.S. RECOGNIZE.

Who ordered the season of American Idol with extra Jesus? Are there small towns, a la the one Kevin Bacon shook up in Footloose, where music and hip gyrations are forbidden? Only there's a loophole if you're willing to reconfigure your performance of 70's lite rock as praise ministry or worshipful pastorism? And those are the only places that AI held auditions? I'm saying, a ridiculous percentage of these contestants are whitey-white Christers who have all the fun and flair that description entails.

So that's why I'm rooting for the flamboyant anime-gay, Adam. Oh yeah, don't try and stop me. Sure, he's like something a peyote-addled Jim Steinman ecstatically conjured up at a Black Mass and yes, he's deceptively practicing bombastic musical theater by pretending it's guyliner power pop. BUT. And it's a big but. After he wins, I won't see him on the MTV Awards primly trying to make John Legend feel bad about not being a virgin. And that's change I can believe in.

Plus I hate our lord and savior and like to make his baby self cry. Duh.

I really need to give a How to Riot Primer. For starters, use the Halloween protocol: go to the rich neighborhood. Just as they give better candy, they have better shit to fuck up to make your point. Also that is where The Man and The Man's friends are likely to reside. Not in your sad, pissed-off broke-ass neighborhood where your neighbors and their things are. Not sure where to draw the boundary of where to start kicking in car windows? Here's how it works in Oakland: Keep marching uphill with your "Justice for Oscar Grant" signs until you encounter someone who inquires "Oscar who?" THERE YOU GO.

I'm sorry I have to keep explaining this to people.

I have deleted the long rant I just wrote about how I hate cops because it is a thing I have and oh I do go on and you really need to see it live to get its full Huey Newton-ness, which is cognitively dissonantly hilarious. Kinda spitty though.

Here's a good Christmas cry right here:

Please don't divorce us.

Seriously, how bad a hate-on do you have to have to be indifferent to making 32,000 people miserable for no reason other than spite and your own personal (weird) Jesus? Only Kenneth Starr and the leading scions of the Mormon faith have the answer.

Flights in and out of Seattle cancelled, at least as far as Alaska Airlines is concerned. Can't reach anyone at the 800 number -- it's a constant busy signal. I hear tell it is like the Siege of Leningrad at Seatac, if the warring forces had been customer service personnel and bedraggled luggage jockeys. I am taking refuge back in my San Francisco hotel room (the rate nicely jacked from the sweet three day rate I had previously booked), so I can't complain. Oh wait, yes I can, look at my fingers fly! Well. It's a fine place to be stranded as a traveler, and I saw my folks and friends and looks like I will have time for one more lunch if not more. I do miss my husband and my entitled cat much, but I couldn't be in less dire straits here. Sorry though to miss the Snowpocalypse and its attendant pageantry of people sledding into parked vehicles and having snowball fights into the wee hours in my neighborhood. Who will shake their fists at these hooligans if not me? I ask you.

It is projected to be 20 degrees tomorrow, dropping to 18 degrees on Wednesday here in Seattle. Bah, I am flying to SF for a long weekend on Thursday. That "highs in the low 50s" is going to feel like a tropical island breeze.

In other Seattle news, I have never before worked in a law firm where regularly I can hear people discussing how they care for their chickens. Their actual chickens. That live in their actual backyards. Don't worry, I only yell "hayseeds!" in my head. Oh well, it beats those LA attorneys I worked with who only ever discussed body fat percentage and real estate values.

Also, in stuff white people like news, I am having fun with my fellow improv nerdlings. In a shock to everybody everywhere who does improv who is not Wayne Brady, my new posse appears to be twenty four year old men of color, each being one foot shorter than me. I look like Liza up on stage with the gang. Jazz hands! If I don't have a rabid gay coterie by St. Patrick's Day, I'm going to have to question the existence of God.

In closing, how you holding up, Dainty Kate? Cuz I ain't even from the desert and I'm all DAMN.

If I was in California right now, I'd protest Prop. 8 by standing in front of the Oakland LDS Temple with my face in a hat. And then I'd go up the temple, knock at the door and yell "Wait! New orders, guys."

The hat trick worked once on these people. I'm thinking go for twice.

Yeah, in my head Obama is already the winner and I'm already enjoying a nice hot cup of watching the fallout in the rightward sky.

I'm thinking the social conservative wing is going to predominate. Therefore I anticipate with great relish the 2012 Palin/Southie on the couch from 'Gone Baby Gone' ticket doing extremely well in certain regions. Because, you know. They don't think they're better than you.

That was a concession speech in small dribbles, my friend. Someone wants to go back to the Senate, shrug his shoulders and say "what could I do? That crazy lady was crazy."

1. I was just talking with my husband about what was wrong with Fred Armissen's Obama impression. I posited that he had the intonations down, but didn't have the baritone and a reasonable imitation of Obama's big smile and charm. He said "I think Armissen is doing Obama-Burt." And he's right! Now if only Darryl Hammond would do McCain as Ernie.

2. Bill Ayers. He's like this big scary goblin that Ms. Palin keeps invoking. I was thinking that maybe it would help if Bill Ayers just manifested himself on the television to rebut the claims that he and Obama were besties. But then I realized that no, the Obama campaign is playing it just right by keeping him quiet. Right now, he doesn't have a flesh presence, so he is only a notion without substance. If he showed up and even if he was entirely reasonable, he would have a greater reality. And despite the nonsense of the "pallin' around" narrative, it would somehow strengthen it.

3. I called Obama as our next president in 2004, not at all facetiously or wishfully. I knew it. As I would like bragging rights, please everyone work to make it so. Thanks in advance for your assistance.

4. Doesn't it feel like the early 90's again, with the fearmongering of civil war, the call to stockpile arms, the idea that the new president fully intended to sign, seal and deliver the U.S. to a World Government and put dissidents in reeducation camps? Are they back on black helicopters and the Queen of Thug Life, Janet Reno, yet? "Red Dawn," while enjoyable, has much to answer for regarding its influence on bored Midwestern suburbanites. And that's all it is, the fearmongering and terror-masturbation. Regular life when you're pretty much guaranteed three hots and a cot daily is kind of dull. It makes it more interesting if you posit that all around you, scary cabals plot your demise. As famous insane mathematician John Nash said of his long bout with psychosis (paraphrasing from dim memory of an interview I saw with him), it's pretty exciting to be the star of your own spy thriller in your head.

5. In conclusion, let's get rid of most of the DC political structure, keep our representatives local and make them do business through teleconferences and occasional regional meetings, all the while nearby and accountable. That's my next big idea for transparency and plus, it will save taxpayer money and starve lobbyists, who will be forced to hit the road rather than host a prayer breakfast in the Sheraton or whatever they do now. Plus it makes us safer by defusing The Terrorists' ability to wipe out the seat of power with one blow. Why not, motherfuckers?

Doesn't it seem like the McCain campaign has turned into the Lear/Goneril campaign? That tundra tootsie is just waiting to step over his cold dead body and institute her reign of chirpy Dominion.

And as to Obama suspending campaigning to go visit his ailing grandmother: the cynics in my household (Guapo! You furry bastard) are thinking, sad, family tragedy...gonna poll through the roof.

From a friend of mine who is a muckety at a financial guarantor/investment bank/I'm not really sure, it's math+money:

If mortgages were the only issue here would have been free of this mess about 1 trillion dollars ago. It is a nice desperate attempt by the Repubs to cast the CRA and FNMA as the problems. It is like dropping a million at a casino and saying that it would have never happened if you hadn’t overpaid for valet parking.

Here are the videos we saw in heavy rotation in Europe. I know, travel is so broadening. I have excluded the horrid Katy Perry "I Kissed a Girl" because we get enough of that here, but it is dishearteningly popular in...well, countries that like to see scantily clad 20 year olds have pillow fights. Which is to say, all of them.

This guy won the equivalent of French Idol. This song is kind of insanely catchy. There's four or five variants of this video; this is the clip we saw the most. That's the singer, Julien Dore, doing the silly dance in the back. Can I just say, why can't America, the greatest nation in the history of greatness, have a suave little freak like this win? Instead we get David Cook, who is great if you find Daughtry just too exciting.

This techno atrocity was ubiquitous in Belgium. Mercifully, it was apparently embargoed at the border and we saw it no further once we left Belgian airwaves. It does answer the question "if you put Blaine from Project Runway together with a vat clone made of the DNA of every Eurovision chick ever, what kind of electronica would they make?" There's a reason nobody ever asked that question.

This Kid Rock tune is HUGE in Europe. I predict this will cross over to the U.S. soon enough because it is made of two really popular songs and bikinis. I hope the Zevon and Skynyrd estates got the lion's share of the dinero - it couldn't be more derivative if it were insured by AIG. I miss Kid Rock's dwarf buddy Joe C. He would want you to watch this video.

This chick totally reminds me of when Alicia Keys tries to flaunt her non-existent street cred. I don't know, maybe Kenza Farah is the baddest ass in the banlieue, but she smells like the conservatory to me.

Rihanna's "Disturbia" was on constantly too, but I'm not linking to it because then it will run through my head for seven days, like it did the last time I heard it.

And finally, my fave, Un Rayon de Soleil. HEY WRITEBRAIN I THOUGHT OF YOU AND YOUR LOVE OF CAJUN MUSIC CLICK HERE WHY NOT.

There's quite a few American artists' videos being test driven over there. Lady Gaga, Kat DeLuna and Kardinal Offishall are the names I remember. I didn't go get them offa the Youtubes though because I am lazy and I didn't much care for their songs. The only enjoyable part of any of them is Kat DeLuna's videographer clearly paid for and got the Friends of Busta Rhymes package where he shows up for the shoot and gives you a quality 30 seconds before he goes out with his real friends. OK, here's that, I love Busta even when he's clearly on the clock. Conveniently, he shows up at exactly the two minute mark.