Sheep may safely graze

Oh, you do NOT want to know my beliefs, you pussy-grabbing, puerile, belligerent, lying, corrupt, treasonous, arrogant, half-wit dotard. That I can tell you.

Asses, asses and more asses

Read all about these asses and their asses here

I find myself having a difficult time caring about these two self-absorbed asses and what they're about to face, but I am worried that the evangelical American Taliban will blow this story into a rallying cry around this "proof" that all gay people are perverted degenerates who brazenly commit "religious insults" (because -- for the purposes of this one specific news-cycle outrage -- the American Taliban will suddenly become VERY concerned about the cultural sensitivities of foreign religions) and then dotard will opportunistically climb on board to get points for hating gays AND punishing them -- though, as always, he'll have zero influence on anything to do with their punishment or anything else in the world for that matter -- and his shit-drooling minions will be emboldened to exhibit even more hate toward even more people in this pervasively toxic political environment he and his mouth-breathing orbit continue to breed, grope and propagate.

Happy pawlidays!

Bitch Kitty is holding fort in the storage boxes (red is for Christmas!) as we fill the house with holiday crap. I mean magic. As we fill the house with holiday magic.

People who take advantage of awesome Black Friday deals to order stuff for themselves are selfish

They also have super-cute new shoes.

I was so cute! What the hell happened?

It’s so weird that Grandma put a '74 on this ornament when she painted it because I’m 32 years old now so I wasn’t even born until sometime after 2000. Or something. But it’s too late to fix it because she already glazed and kiln-fired it. And now it’s going to confuse my descendants for all eternity.

Steve King: Iowa’s Super-Awesomest Politician!

(*applause* *chants of “Go, Steve!”*)

You can tell by the way he uses numbers instead of two- and three-letter words that he always has his fingers (ew) on the pulse of the way we all talk in the national dialogue, yo. Plus it saves his valuable time so he can focus on representing us all with racist hate stuff! Plus it saves on pixels so it’s good for the Internet’s bottom line! End net neutrality! End AA!

(*applause* *chants of “Go, Steve!”*)

PROBABLY

ZAP!

My super-duper-hero ZAP! sign is probably an epic distraction from the palette I’m trying to isolate — you should see the coordinating BANG! sign! — but I’m still trying to find a deep-bluish-grayish-maybe-brownish-but-still-leaning-toward-bluish-or-maybe-even-slateish wall color that works with the sunny-gay yellow trim that frames the entire room (and covers the ceiling) and with the pinky-orangey-undertoned hideous faux pine that frames (and is) the door. Because I have NO intention of repainting/painting all that trim (plus the ceiling! plus the door). But I still want to tie it all together with a rich, dark man-cave color that truly reflects my durable, rugged, embarrassingly conspicuous masculinity. ZAP!

Moo!

Mom just re-read the box for the scalloped potatoes that are currently baking in the oven and noticed that she’d slightly misread the directions to add one tablespoon of butter to the sauce and she instead added one stick of butter to the sauce. Which is understandable; both options have the words “of butter” in them. In the meantime, my casual pre-dinner Chips Ahoy! nosh has escalated into a feral Chips Ahoy! genocide. But there’s still most of a row of Chips Ahoy! left and there’s still a 20-minute wait for the scalloped potatoes to stop mooing (oops ... BAKING) if anyone wants to come over and join us in our mass heart attack.

On a side note: Check out our new sleek, chic, simple, versatile, non-Revolutionary-War-era dishes!

#HolidayHorrors

Decorating the Christmas tree: the annual convergence of the totally cool garland of Norwegian flags and the totally creepy pantyhose-head elf with a daringly short poncho, yellow mittens and no discernible pants. Because nothing personifies the joy and wonder of Christmas like a freeballin' elf with pantyhose obscuring his features and unfettered access to the kitchen knives while we sleep.

Zoom, a deer

So you know how on CSI (if it’s even still on) seven perfectly suspicious suspects just happened to have met up with the murder victim in rapid but orderly succession — without ever accidentally running into each other, of course — right before the victim gets murdered by the last suspect the CSI team is able to find and interview? Well that’s actually not the reason I’m posting this photo; I just wanted to point out the coincidence.

So you know how on CSI (if it’s even still on) an entire crackerjack team of highly-trained-highly-experienced CSI scientists exhaustively combs through every microshred of evidence in a case and just when everyone’s about to give up and go home to get some well-deserved rest the CSI Chief (or whatever the position — and its attendant convivial nickname — is called) just happens to walk by, spot something fascinatingly suspicious in the background of a photo that’s up to that moment been too overlookably blurry to warrant any measurable attention from any of the highly-trained-highly-experienced CSI scientists, ask the lone highly-trained-highly-experienced-but-at-this-point-understandably-beleaguered token-minority CSI scientists to — and I quote — “zoom in and clean it up” — a strategy for which neither the concept nor the technology has existed until that very second (except for when variations on this revelatory plot twist have played out verbatim in every other episode ever) — which suddenly reveals a crystal-clear image of the murder itself, the murderer’s face, the murderer’s telephone number, the murderer’s license plate and the all-important position of the sun reflected in the moistly shimmering pupil of a random passer-by’s eye? Because that’s actually the reason I’m posting this photo; if you can get that token-minority CSI scientist to zoom in and clean it up, you’ll see the three gorgeous, almost regal deer I just tried to photograph in my sister’s yard:

And if you aren’t able to get that token-minority CSI scientist to zoom in and clean it up, please just enjoy this artfully darkened photograph of the dramatic uplighting on my sister’s neighbor’s tree.

Goddam ungodly immigrants!

Our long family nightmare is over

Finally confident that the Revolutionary War has ended and that busybody Paul Revere isn’t going to one-if-by-land unannounced at our door to double-check how we’re serving our tea, we’ve packed up (most of, save for a few stubborn souvenirs) our Ye Olde Enormouse Collectione of Pfaltzgraff Yorktowne dishes and sent them off to an undisclosed Louisiana Purchase location. So goodbye, hard-to-stack-and-remarkably-heavy faux stoneware! And hello, lightweight, stackable, versatile, chic, plain-white and easily-replaceable-in-a-pinch Crate & Barrel Aspen dinnerware! Also: Hello, extra cupboard space! Also: Larger Aspen serving pieces make a lovely gift!

Remember dotard’s national #CharacterCountsWeek in October?

What an example he set! What a commitment to follow-through! What a difference he made! Good times!

Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho!

I’m finally going through the crates and crates of Christmas decorations that I amassed over my 15 years in Chicago so I can send the stuff back to my ex that he wants, keep the stuff that I want and give the rest to Goodwill in a seasonally timely manner. And I’m both amazed and appalled that I/we (but mostly I because I was the one with the decorating addiction) managed to collect SEVEN Santa hats. Aside from doing Boystown’s annual Santa Speedo Run a couple times, we had no other earthly reason to own more than two Santa hats. And why is our irresponsible surplus of Santa hats an odd number? What does this say about us as holiday consumers?

This will haunt me way longer than my childhood fear of enormously heavy reindeer crashing through our roof.

#WeirdStuffICollectOnMyPhone

I've never really liked "Turkey Lurkey Time"

... mostly because of its toddler-creativity title and Hal David's criminally mind-numbing lyrics. But the gloriously jerky melody and never-gonna-be-boxed-in phrasing are Burt Bacharach at his finest, and I think Michael Bennett defined an encyclopedic choreography vocabulary for the next half-century of show choir competitions in this song alone. Plus I've had a gay-dancer crush on Donna McKechnie -- she of the endless legs and beguiling self-awareness and almost poetic extensions -- since probably before I was born. Plus HOW THE HELL DO THEY ALL DANCE THIS NUMBER WITHOUT IMPLODING IN CATASTROPHIC EXHAUSTION?

Anyway, it's Black Friday, which means it's Turkey Lurkey Time somewhere. So please shout the lyrics to anything -- ANYTHING! -- else to drown out these linguistic burps as you marvel at Donna McKechnie (in red, who first captured my heart as Cassie in A Chorus Line), Baayork Lee (in green, who kinda got shafted when all her great Connie recitative got cut from the original A Chorus Line cast album) and Margo Sappington (in blue, who went on to a life of fame and fortune as the choreographer for the Doonesbury musical) powering through their tipsy steno-pool production number that has absolutely no relevance to the already convoluted, dirty-sexy, nothing-to-do-with-the-holidays story of Promises, Promises:

#BlackFridayDemands

I shall name them Aryan and Nightmare. Or Butter and Face. Or Donald and Uglier Donald. Or WhatTheHell and AreYouWearing.

In any case, I WANT THIS.

At first glance this looks all Christmasy

But it’s really NOT!

It’s predominately blue and snowy with only minor accents of it-looks-like-Christmas-but-it’s-not red. You could wear it fesively ALL WINTER. Unfortunately, I found the picture on a meme site and I have no idea where to buy the sweater. There really IS a War on Christmas.

Flashback Friday: Every Boy Fondly Remembers His First Seersucker Shirt Edition

The Muppets called. They want their floofy hair back. And their crooked-head smile. And their oversize nose. And their little stick arms.

As I all but literally transfer my afternoon nap in front of the fire directly to my evening sleep in my bed ...

I want to take a moment to say how thankful I am that painstakingly photoshopping Julie Andrews into posters for musicals she hasn’t done is apparently a thing.

One of these is a picture of the cozy Thanksgiving fire I’m about to take a nap in front of

Happy Thanksgiving

from Bridget, trump’s chin and my greenish jeans that I’m slowly coming to accept are never going to go with anything

Norwegian food x Thanksgiving food

= relentlessly beige eatin’, except for the Jell-O

One day until the carnage!

My name’s Jake

And I regret the impulse purchase of this shirt.

Rats. I mean Hats.

My one obligation on my calendar tonight got canceled at the last minute and I was suddenly freed to accomplish a million things all over the house. So of course I promptly fell asleep on the couch at 6:30 and just woke up having accomplished nothing. But I did take the time to find a seasonally timely cartoon and post it on here before transferring my unproductive sleeping to my bed. So there’s that.

Two days until the carnage!

Three days until the carnage!

First Immutable Rule of the Copy Desk:

Never -- NEVER! -- enter copy into the system that you don't want accidentally overlooked and sent to press.

I! Am! Home! Officed!

Thanks to the helpfulness and humbling generosity of a friendly benefactor — along with his last-minute tech support to correct a tear in the space-time continuum that resulted in a ludicrously backward-scrolling track pad — I now have a techie-cool PC laptop complete with brothel-red backlighting on the keys. (I’m positively SCANDALIZED by the brazenness of it all!)

Thanks to the chronic shitpile black hole of knowledge, competence and customer service of Best Lie, I also have a fancy second monitor that I was guaranteed — after asking repeatedly AND after the salesidiot literally opened the box and looked at everything it contained before he sold it to me — included all the cords I’d need to connect it to my new laptop ... WHICH OF COURSE IT DIDN’T BECAUSE WHY WOULD ANYTHING BE DIFFERENT FROM THE LAST TIME I WAS MISLED AND PISSED OFF BY BEST LIE? But I found an HDMI cable from who knows where in a jumble of cords in the back of a cabinet at home and I put myself back in business. I can sometimes accidentally look like I know what I’m doing like that.

Plus! I dug out a gay-ass shattered-mirror lamp and a handsomely upholstered leather chair from my storage locker and I am now a member of the computer generation! The jet set! The projector sector! The laptop hipchat! The trackpad smackdown! The mouse house! The cable cabal! The monitor speedometer!

I’ll stop now.

You do realize that putting random, pointless quotes around stuff makes you look illiterate, right?

Of course you don’t.

Fun fact:

The distractingly tan, scruffy, handsome man in the Raiders coat who keeps conspicuously circling past you (seven times once you notice and start counting!) as you wait for your Hy-Vee brunch party is not even a little bit flirting with or stalking or even noticing you. This will become devastatingly apparent when his equally stunning wife joins him after getting what was apparently a highly complicated beverage from Starbucks.

Stupid Raiders.

#WeirdStuffICollectOnMyPhone

Dah ditditdit!

I fell asleep listening to 91.7 on the couch earlier and woke up in the middle of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, and now I’m climbing into bed as Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 blares through our speakers. No matter how cold and rainy and dreary your day may be, there’s really no better remedy in the known world than a fuzzy blanket and an evening of bombastic Romantics. Good night!

Driving around with a burned-out headlight is as embarrassing as walking around with a dribble of pee on your pants

You just hope that if you look straight ahead and keep your eyes only on the road everyone else will do the same and nobody will notice.

29 years ago today

I'm so thankful our family comes from hearty stock. I still have vivid memories of the night Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, the moment 29 years ago today that she came out of her anesthesia after her mastectomy, sitting with her as she got her chemo, watching her take off her wig and remove her prosthetic breast after her chemo so she could get the sleep she needed to keep up the fight. But more importantly, I remember how she wouldn't let breast cancer control her life. I have even fonder memories of her traveling to DC -- one of her favorite cities -- with us, and of her smiling in all our pictures with the slight orange tint of a chemo patient. Of her volunteering for Reach to Recovery, a program that paired breast cancer survivors with new breast cancer patients to answer questions and act as survivor role models and give hope where often there is none. And most importantly, I remember how we all chose to laugh instead of cry over the entire situation. It turns out that a prosthetic breast can be very funny, especially when it's used as a giant nose on a drawing of a face, when it makes uncontrollable farting sounds against sweaty skin on a hot day, and most especially -- and this is one of our family's favorite stories -- when it's put away for the night on a stack of hotel towels, only to fly across the room and SPLAT! against the far wall when the top towel is unknowingly pulled off the pile in semi-darkness. 

We're lucky as a family to have all of this -- and while we celebrate that my mom is still with us, we will always mourn the loss of the people who aren't.

The outsides of my shoes match my socks and my shaker bottle

The insides of my shoes match my stalwart heterosexuality.

Flashback Friday: I Wonder What Happened To That Shirt Edition

Remember when I didn't even pretend to be subtle about taking flexy selfies?

Me neither.

When you’re in a basket in a basket IN A BASKET

... and it’s the most exponentially cat place you could be on the planet so you’re concatually obligated to stay where you are even though that asshole paparazzo Jake won’t get out of your face with his damn iPhone so you refuse to even flash him your trademark Bitch Kitty ScowlTM just to spite him.

I. Am. Four.

The recent discovery of this meme has left me laughing way too long and way too hard for someone of my age, maturity and comportment:

Earning interest

I just had my annual review with my financial advisor, and he’s mapped out a number of highly plausible scenarios where as long as I meet certain milestones regarding retirement and Social Security I’ll be able to live comfortably until I’m 92, which is awesome because 92 WHAT THE HELL 92 I DON’T WANT TO LIVE TO BE 92 ACK KILL ME NOW INSTEAD NOW NOW NOW!

Then I came home to Bitch Kitty shifting her feline wiles into ovpurrdrive trying to get me to come close to her and let my guard down under the pretense of getting to rub her irresistibly furry tummy and finally be her friend only so she could shatter my illusions of mammal-kingdom self-worth by abruptly hissing at me and ripping my veins out. Which would at least save me from living to be 92.

*Chosen by morons to go golfing

Let it OW!

When you fall asleep sitting upright on the couch and you wake up an hour later with your head still upright but a whole body width to your right and your spine angled like a wickedly curving stretch of highway that would be ominously nicknamed The Widowmaker in a TCM Film Noir best-of weekend marathon, you can really feel like a Disney princess.

I’ve got a taste for livin! I’m thinkin’ cold Blue Ribbon!

Because a befeatherhaired Patrick Swayze rockin’ mad disco chaînés in a long white scarf, that’s why.

Sweet 16!

Happy 16th birthday to my delightful niece, who has grown from being a squirmy toddler who refused to be snuggled to an adorable little girl who charmed everyone into giving her cookies and hosted clown- and cheerleader-themed birthday parties to an inquisitive student who’s rocked at basketball and tennis and cello and show choir and debate to a kind, talented, brilliant young woman whose passions for academics and social justice (and I suppose I should mention the Dodgers) inspire all of us to be better people.

How embarrassing!

donald put the question mark INSIDE the quotations! And just when he was finally acting presidential. Sad.