A Leap Year Treat

I don't have to post today, even though I'm a member of Blog365. We're supposed to blog every day, but we get February 29th off for good behavior.

Unfortunately, February 29th is a Friday--I don't know whether you've noticed--and Friday is my day to post to Mamarazzi. And I knew the other Mamas would think I was being extremely lazy, irresponsible, and sleazy if I blew off today due to some Blog365 loophole. And that means I've already posted today. Here.

I figure since I'm not getting the day off, I might as well post over here. The thing is, I don't have anything to say. (But when has that ever stopped me? she asked rhetorically.) So I thought I'd treat you to something I find indescribably funny. It's from The Good Housekeeping Housekeeping Book, which was published--no doubt to great acclaim--in 1947.

But first, another visual aid:


And now, from the lips of The Good Housekeeping Housekeeping Book itself, the low-down on that long-neglected art--that of ironing bras:

• To Iron Brassieres Set heat control according to the fabric. In ironing brassieres the cup-like fullness presents the only problem.¹ To avoid wrinkles in these areas,² iron toward the center of each cup turning the brassiere on the board until the entire area is smooth and dry. Then iron the flat sections and the brassiere straps.

Tip for the inexperienced: make sure you're not actually wearing the brassiere.

¹ See how lucky you flat-chested girls are?

² The fuller-breasted of us deal with bra cups wrinkling by stuffing our enormous mammaries into the cups. Ironing? Why bother? Frankly, our bra cups couldn't wrinkle if we got our bras sopping wet, twisted them like broomstick skirts, ran them through a wringer, and baked them dry.

We are too soon old. And too late smart.

You know, you'd think I'd have figured this out long before now. But no. No, every night it's meat, at least one fresh green vegetable, and starch, all cooked from scratch. And usually, there are two vegetables, and sometimes I cook something extra--salad, usually, but sometimes biscuits or corn bread or some such.

I realize this is not particularly impressive.

But once in a while I'll check out one of those weekly menus you see in women's magazines. And I'm always amazed at what slop some women will place upon a table and call "dinner."

Well, OK, tonight I decide to go lowest common denominator. Tonight the children's dinner was grilled cheese sandwiches, Campbell's soup, milk, and fresh fruit.

OH GOD I FEEL SO DIRTY.

So sad.

One of my crushes just passed away.

Yes, that's right. Right after I finished the first stage of my massive crush on John Lennon (Part 1: the Help!/Rubber Soul period) I fell head over heels in love with William F. Buckley, Jr. This was not because he was a big conservative pundit--it was because he had such a big vocabulary.

With--I discovered after watching Firing Line for a while--a brain to match.

I fell in love with him when I was nine. I used to lie on the floor and watch him on my parents' little black and white television and go all goose-pimply over his dexterous use of four syllable words.

William F. Buckley Jr., the erudite Ivy Leaguer and conservative herald who showered huge and scornful words on liberalism as he observed, abetted and cheered on the right's post-World War II rise from the fringes to the White House, died Wednesday. He was 82.

His assistant Linda Bridges said Buckley was found dead by his cook at his home in Stamford, Conn. The cause of death was unknown, but he had been ill with emphysema, she said.

Editor, columnist, novelist, debater, TV talk show star of Firing Line, harpsichordist, trans-oceanic sailor and even a good-natured loser in a New York mayor's race, Buckley worked at a daunting pace, taking as little as 20 minutes to write a column for his magazine, the National Review.

Yet on the platform he was all handsome, reptilian languor, flexing his imposing vocabulary ever so slowly, accenting each point with an arched brow or rolling tongue and savoring an opponent's discomfort with wide-eyed glee.

"I am, I fully grant, a phenomenon, but not because of any speed in composition," he wrote in The New York Times Book Review in 1986. "I asked myself the other day, 'Who else, on so many issues, has been so right so much of the time?' I couldn't think of anyone."

Buckley had for years been withdrawing from public life, starting in 1990 when he stepped down as top editor of the National Review. In December 1999, he closed down Firing Line after a 23-year run, when guests ranged from Richard Nixon to Allen Ginsberg. "You've got to end sometime and I'd just as soon not die onstage," he told the audience.

"For people of my generation, Bill Buckley was pretty much the first intelligent, witty, well-educated conservative one saw on television," fellow conservative William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, said at the time the show ended. "He legitimized conservatism as an intellectual movement and therefore as a political movement."

Requiescat in Pace.

We interrupt this laundry-doing frenzy to make the following announcements:

1. I have finally seen the wisdom of driving a Land Rover.

No, this isn't the Serengeti, but with all the potholes we've developed, it's a close second.

2. The problem with participating in a Bloggy Giveaway is that it leaves you a buttload of packages to mail out.

I managed to mail out a few before I was struck down by the mysterious back ailment. Now that my back is all better, thanks for asking, I thought it was time to get the accumulation of useless items lovely prizes out of my dining room, where they had apparently taken up permanent residence, along with a shitload well-edited selection of padded envelopes, old bubble wrap, and recycled cardboard boxes.

3. However. It's really hard to get packages ready to mail when I have to keep reenacting my starring role as "Poppy Buxom, Systems Administrator!"

Apparently no one can get her homework to print up without the kind of computer-user hand-holding I used to do for a living in the eighties, and thought I had left behind.

Along with plastic jewelry and the color fuschia.

But in her defense? My daughter is no whinier than the secretaries at MIT were back then.

4. Since I'm having such a Calgon, Take Me Away kind of day, I thought I'd get busy and book my flight to Tuvalu, where I will be visiting blackbird and hobnobbing with Susie Sunshine and I hope, at least one more internet weirdo.

Envy me, people, for $208 is taking me to the land of Anthropologie and Starbucks!

5. Jen Lancaster's new book is SO. FUCKING. AWESOME. If you are female and have ever been on a diet, you need to read it.

Three guesses what I've been doing lately

1. Fear paralyzes me.

The longer I wait, the worse it gets.

I need to go down there, but I'm afraid to confront it. It grew continually all last week, and now it's out of control. At any minute, it could burst out of the basement and flood the house.

It's like a big, baggy, cottony Godzilla. If I concentrate, I can almost hear it making that eerie screeching noise. You know the one.

The very idea of hearing that unearthly sound should make my blood run cold.

But let's face it; Godzilla was actually so feeble ... they should have waited for the technology to improve, but no, they had to go ahead and make all these dumb movies with obviously fake, cheesey monsters ... Right. I'll come in again.

2. It beckons to me, and I respond. Oh, how I respond! After a week of acting coy, of playing the game, of testing boundaries, I have met my match. I know my master, and he is downstairs in the basement. Waiting for me to turn him right side out and stuff him in the washing machine ... OK, that isn't working, either.

3. Haiku

Snow falls; ice slicks streets.
We never go out--Netflix!
So who is wearing these clothes?

Go ahead and watch the Oscars. I'm busy reading.

And if you wanted to get me to watch the Oscars, you'd have to rip this



out of my immaculately manicured hands.

It showed up on Saturday. An autographed copy sent to me by the author.

Envy me as I get first crack at it, because the rest of you proles won't be able to see it until May.

It cost me a Little Debbie Snack Cakes Barbie--but it was well worth it.

I mean, just for the part where Jen, on her first evening's dose of Ambien, ordered what appears to have been a bushel of Barbies from Amazon.com.

So far? I. am. loving. it.

I didn't have time to start reading until after rehearsal today, but I read non-stop waiting for my husband to pick me up, then all the way from Huron and Rush to a Whole Foods in Sauganash, and then whined about grocery shopping so much that he told me to stay in the car and read while he did it--anything not to listen to the whining*--and now I'm about to start again.

I've made it through Jen in denial, Jen on Atkins, and Jen thinking about South Beach. I can not WAIT for Jen to join Weight Watchers. It should be really good.

I'll keep you posted. Now go look at gowns or something.

* Jen--see what a quick study I am?

I'm not posting today

Stupid wireless modem.

Today's accomplishment(s)

After much grim-faced trial and error, I managed to find a program that will 1) re-size photographs and 2) run on my new laptop. Because the old one I used to use--Adobe Cave Painting for Macs--won't work anymore.

In my search, I checked out every photography-related application on my hard drive, which resulted in much frustration and quite a bit of swearity-swear-swearing. In fact, it's safe to say that there was a whole FUCKLOAD of it.

Because nothing did what I wanted it to do. Now that every idiot in the world is using a digital camera, they've had to dumb down the software. All I was looking for was a program that would resize photographs by pixels rather than print photography sizes. 

In other words, I was trying to avoid producing images that were 3.5 by 5 inches, or even worse, 4 by 6 inches.

Anyway, I found something that sounded promising. And clicked on it. 

And found myself looking at ... myself.

It was first thing in the morning. It was NOT pretty.

So I Pop-Art-ed the image.

And here you have it: Pop-Art Poppy. (I could have called myself a "Pop 

Tart" but it would have been wishful thinking. In fact, it would have 

been X-TREME Wishful Thinking, worthy of a mutant alien superhero 

Marvel Comics character.)



Anyway.  Here's the reason for the re-sizing frenzy--my latest 

Mamarazi entry, cleverly titled "Cruella de MILF." Frankly, the copy 

doesn't live up to the title, so please judge the book by the cover. 

Also, please note that the photographs have been resized to be no more than 375 pixels wide.

You're welcome.

And now, I'm ready to go back to bed.

Yesterday's accomplishment

It's been more than a week since I hurt my back, and I'm starting to move around much more normally now, thanks for asking.

And I'm starting to get things done.

You know the little doohickey on the bathtub faucet that goes up and down to switch from bath to shower?

Well, ours was stuck. So stuck that when I needed to take a bath, I banged it with a hammer. Then I pulled it back up with the claw end of the hammer so my husband could take a shower.

"WTF!" I thought to myself. "This faucet is only" (counts rapidly on fingers) "eight years old. How can it be broken?"

And then it struck me. It was probably rust.

So I went down to the basement and found the can of WD40. And sprayed the doohickey. And worked it up and down for a few minutes, adding a little spray from time to time. And all was well.

What does it say about me that the biggest accomplishment of my day involved an appliance, a supply of lubricant, and three minutes alone in the bathroom?

In which I tell you what's really important.

I'll be the first to admit that it would have blown right by me, if my husband hadn't mentioned it.

I mean, between the headlines about Obama grabbing Wisconsin and Lindsay Lohan's godawful so-called "homage" to the famous Bert Stern/Marilyn Monroe last session photographs and the government finally admitting that the economy is kind of tanking--who realized that there was a total lunar eclipse tonight?

Well, there was. And it was so cool.

I wanted to watch it from the comfort of my house, but the glass in our windows is so old and wavy that I was missing the details, so I went outside to watch--wrapped up in a fur coat because "it's COOOLD out there!"*

When the moon was in the earth's shadow, it had a weird, burnt-umber glow. You could still see the craters, though. And then watching the light get blotted out, and then reappear. What could be better? I can't believe I was thisclose to missing it.

* Note the completely-off-the-subject Groundhog Day quotation. This is as close as I got to being funny tonight. "Hey", as they used to say in the eighteenth century, "even Homer nods."

Come with me, my internet, to the stream, the stream of consciousness

OK, so I finally get around to checking out today's Mamarazzi.

And that means I have to head over to Youtube to see what Saturday Night Fever footage is to be found.

And that means I have to watch a montage of clips of Travolta dancing to the Bee Gees "Stayin' Alive."

And that means my son has to start rocking out with his bad self.

And that means we both get an ear worm.

And then my daughter starts coughing upstairs.

Poppy:

Oh God, I hope it's not pneumonia like last year September, 2006.

Young Master Buxom:

[cough]
[cough]
[cough]
[cough]

Staying alive! Staying alive!

If he were alive today, Keats would write an Ode to my MacBook

Guess what the UPS man brought today?




Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

I'm huge on the internet.

Really. I am.

Why, on eBay alone, I'm u-fucking-biquitous.

We're talking BIG ASS POPPIES everywhere I looked. I think it's because poppies are preppy

and colorful. LORD, are we colorful



We're also decadent, what with that whole opium thing


and our need for lots and lots of elaborate silver


with our monogram on it, either officially


or hidden in the hallmark


and don't forget the caviar spoons, for God's sake!



And yet, we're also a little bit funky. Remember, there's that California cultivar, which would probably explain this:


(Drugs definitely explain this sort of thing)


And so, I leave you with one final piece of advice: when in doubt, put a bunch of us ON YOUR HEAD.


(And now? Three guesses as to which of these fine items I actually bought.)

The Answer to an Age-Old Question

That being, "Can you really ever have enough of lying around in your pajamas surfing the internet?"

Well, people, the answer is yes, indeed you can.

I've compared the cornucopia of widgets available for dressing up this blog; I've added all kinds of idiotic applications to my FaceBook page; I've even gotten around to joining last.fm.

I've explored the limitless possibilities of iGoogle and played probably two full hours of Tetris on my brand-spanking-new iGoogle page.

I've bugged all of you to be my friends on every social networking site known to man.

I was switching over from Bloglines to Google Reader when it finally hit me; the internet was acting like virtual cold medicine, and I was acting the way I do when I'm high on pseudoephedrine and start alphabetizing the spice rack.

It is time for a full recovery. Before all of you come over here and virtually TP my house.

And internet, I love you, but when you get all those emails asking you to be my friend on Yet Another Social Networking site? Feel free to tell me to fuck off.

I'll always have the internet

When you spend the day pretty much flat on your back, the internet quickly becomes your best friend. Today I:

1. drank a bunch of tea
2. posted my weekly Mamarazzi entry
3. spent an embarrassingly long time playing Scramble
4. tweaked my links list
5. updated my Bloglines subscriptions
6. begged Kerflop to include me in her links, which she agreed to do, because she is amazingly nice. ("Poppy who?")
7. Ate an orange, my favorite substitute for mid-winter sunshine
8. More tea! Then Twittered my fingers to the bone.
9. Twitter-hopped from one home page to another, playing the Twitter version of six degrees of Poppy Buxom.
10. Checked on the delivery status of my new computer.
11. Commented on a bunch of blogs.
12. Ate another orange.
13. Took a long, very hot bath and read in the tub
14. Went outside! Drove to pick up my VW Passat wagon that was at the dealer's getting a new wheel and four new tires, damn those potholes.
15. Driving involves sitting, and sitting hurts. Back to bed, where I read various on-line news journals, becoming better-informed than I've been since I spent hours every day driving around listening to All Things Considered* and the BBC World News** (and I'm sure my husband misses those days.)
16. Edited my MySpace profile to get rid of the photograph of me giving you the finger. Because I just (out of BOREDOM and MISPLACED LOYALTY and being FLAT ON MY BACK) joined a MySpace forum of Episcopalians, and I thought I'd break them in gently.
17. Ate Valentine's Day chocolate, my mid-winter, fully-dressed substitute for sex.
18. Ordered books on Amazon.
19. Wished my back would get better faster.
20. Checked on the delivery status of my new computer.
21. Dinner! Pizza night! And ensalata caprese, my mid-winter substitute for a full-on Roman orgy. Started to drink Turkey Flat red wine, and boy is it yummy.
22. Continued to drink wine. FUCK YOU, IT'S A MUSCLE RELAXANT.

And I'm still on the internet. You want my back to get better, don't you? So I won't be so boring?

ME TOO.

* This gets really old, what with the sound effects and the stories about environmental degradation and endangered species of pygmy fruitbats in some country I've never heard of. Not to mention the accents. JEBUS! I can't understand these people!
** This is like a drinking game with no drinking until you get home and get out of the car. Here's how it works: listen to BBC World and see how many countries get mentioned before the U.S. Big points and extra chugging if it's more than three.

Twist and Shout and Compare and Contrast

I need to buy stock in the Advil company. I'm swallowing fistfuls of the stuff, and it's not working at all. Now, as medicine, Advil obviously sucks the long root. But as an investment? Think about it--I'm going through the stuff like water--what if everyone else is swallowing Advil four caplets at a time every three hours? That company must be choking on its own cash.

Yes, Advil--my former beloved drug of choice--isn't working. The only thing that made my back feel significantly better was a long, hot bath. I got in and soaked for a while, and I felt great. Then I got out and got dressed. I twisted as I bent down to put on my jeans. And stabby-stabby-pain-pain-pain! "Argh!" I shouted. I was right back where I started.

Then the school called. Daughter had a temperature and needed to be picked up.

When you can't bend over, you can't put on lace up boots. So guess who went to pick up her daughter wearing her husband's Merrills?

*****

Today we're home recuperating. I decided that what with the sick days and the upcoming President's Day four-day weekend, she was falling behind in her education. It's time to homeschool!

Hey, why not--we're not going anywhere.

Today's topic is compare and contrast, "The Lonely Goatherd" from The Sound of Music



with Gwen Stefani's "Wind it Up" video



I'd like an essay, please. Thirty words or less in the comments section. Warning: your comment will constitute one-third of your grade. And yes, this will be on the exam.

And now back to my bed of pain.

P.S. Yes, your teacher can be bribed. Vicodin, anyone?

How to cheer up from a big-ass case of the winter blues

OK, here's the deal:

1. I'm sick.
2. I'm in pain, having done something bad to my lower back muscles while shoveling snow yesterday.
3. Chicago has had over 40 inches of snow this winter
4. which seems endless.
5. My daughter has not said a cheerful word in the past four days, except when she's trying to get me to give her permission to get her ears pierced.
6. I had to dis-invite two couples for a dinner party I'd been planning to have on Saturday night because most people couldn't come
7. because I'm a numb-nuts who forgot all about Presidents' Day Weekend.
8. Valentine's Day is tomorrow and I have nothing for my children to bring to school
9. or to give to Mr. Buxom.

and most important of all:

10. My laptop was pronounced DOA yesterday.

And so, I decided that Mr. Buxom was going to buy me a new laptop for Valentine's Day.

And so, I went over to Amazon.

And bought this:

1 "Apple MacBook MB062LL/B 13.3" Laptop (2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor, 1 GB RAM, 120 GB Hard Drive, 8x SuperDrive) White"
Personal Computers; $1,299.00

1 "AppleCare Protection Plan for MacBook/iBook MA519LL/A 3 Years"
Software; $199.99


Which is his Valentine's Day gift for me.

And this part? Is my Valentine's gift to him:

Subtotal of Items: $1,498.99
Shipping & Handling: $21.86
Super Saver Discount -$21.86
------
Total: $1,498.99
Gift Certificates/Cards: - $1,025.00
------
Total for this Order: $473.99

I blame blackbird

It's her fault I went over to the Anne Geddes website.

Anne Geddes is one of those once-ubiquitous blights, like Laurel Burch, that come, blanket the earth with pestilence, and then, blessedly, depart. And then, like the rigors of childbirth, you forget all about them.

And OK, I admit I'm currently listening to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on CD, because I finally got around to cracking open the shrink wrap on my birthday present, now that my birthday is officially two months ago.

But this picture


really makes me think of the potted mandrakes from what--the Chamber of Secrets? As in, don't wake them up or their screeching will have your ears running blood?

And yet, people hang this sort of thing on their walls.

I just don't get it.

But if I have you remembering a time, not really all that long ago, when you couldn't walk into a department store without seeing Laurel Burch earrings and t-shirts and coffee mugs, and when every pediatrician's office was festooned with photographs of babies in watering cans or draped cunningly over fire extinguishers ... well, welcome to the HELL that is the SARGASSO SEA of my mind.

Where I am laughing at you. And wearing these earrings.



No wonder I drink.

S-A-TUR-DAY-NIGHT!

Saturday night was Chicago's 103rd annual Twelfth Night Masque. Lots of costumes, lots of skits mocking current events.

We went as judges. This is because we had already attained fame and fortune long ago--due to our touching reenactment of the William Kennedy Smith post-Au-Bar beach pas-de-deux. That's how long ago it was ... 1991.

So now we're judges. We're grown-ups. We get to decide who wins and who dies. Plus, in the Grand March, the smart people bribe the judges, so you get lots of loot. I got ten bucks. And an Obama sticker. And a pair of red plastic handcuffs.

Now I don't have to figure out what to give Mr. Buxom for Valentine's Day.

Then the skits started. There was one with Obama and Hillary doing the Time Warp and ending up with the original cast of Saturday Night Live--here are Steve Martin and Jane Curtin and her floor wax.


But because it was a time warp, Britney Spears showed up, too.

(He won Best Costume--Male.)

Then the other big skit. This also evoked a 1970s disco theme:


You have to love the Afro. And the guy dressed as a CHIPS outfit.


It was pointed out to me that this Elvis was a 1970s Elvis, and therefore was period-correct. Thank goodness for that, or I would have had to take points off. Here he's performing next to Monica Lewinsky.


Here Monica and Hillary smooch. Unfortunately my cell phone didn't capture the actual embrace. Honestly! How can I become a paparazzo without a decent camera??

Oh, and it was black tie. Want to see what I was wearing?

I also hate Apple

I probably wasted 45 minutes writing a hilarious--no, really--report on last night's party. Complete with pictures.

And then? Safari crashed. And kept crashing every time I tried to start it up again.

And Blogger? You also suck. Because where's that auto-save draft doohickey you've been bragging about?

I hate cookies

They piss me off. 

They're supposed to make your life better. Sweeter. More enjoyable. But then they turn on you and make you miserable.

By the way, I'm not talking about the kind you eat. I'm talking about the kind in your computer.

All you have to do is kill your first second third fourth oh for fuck's sake WHO'S COUNTING? laptop and resort to using another computer, and you'll discover that you can't remember any of your log-on IDs or passwords. They're all cookies.

So I have six or seven a few email accounts. Is that so wrong? So I use eBay and half.com and Amazon.com and twitter and flickr and MySpace and FaceBook and that other one ... Friendster? and Yahoo groups and Netflix and Moveable Type and Blogger 

and holy shit, no wonder I can't remember any of my log-on IDs.

Anyway.

I was going to upload the single finest example of Plumber's Butt I have ever seen in real life. Yes, I was going to freely share it with the internet. And yet, I can't log on to my flickr account, and anyway, my usual Photoshoppy shit is on the laptop. The dead one. 

Laptop? When you started to crash whenever I tried to watch a really big Youtube video on Firefox and I said you were dead to me? I didn't mean it. 

So here I sit, with an all-but-useless Hewlett Packard electric hot water bottle--useful for pretty much nothing, except getting the bed nice and toasty.

In which I fucking discover the fine art of fucking inviting myself some-fucking-where.

In case you aren't reading blackbird's blog (and you should be,) she just posted that Susie Sunshine (whose blog you should have been reading lo these many years back, but whoops, it's too late to read it now, because she has stopped blogging, you big bloggy-come-lately LOSER) is going to visit her this summer.

And I hereby invite myself to be there, too.

"How pushy," is what I'm sure you're thinking.

Well, you're wrong, you big fat judgmental asshole. Because I can't even begin to tell you how many internet visitors I have housed in Chicago.

BlogHer, not BlogHer, it doesn't matter--everyone ends up at Poppy's.

Well, it's payback time. GOD DAMN IT.

p.s. Guess who didn't give up swearing for Lent?

Guess what's going on around here?

1. Heavy snow followed by freezing rain followed by bitter cold.
   
2. A flat tire.
   
3. A dead laptop.
   
4. All of the above.
   

In which I demonstrate--for the umpteenth time--how lousy I am at photography.

Three things you can't see in the above:

1. Me. But trust me; I was there.

2. The HUGE cross on my forehead the priest put on me at our noontime Ash Wednesday service. She* might as well have used a can of spray paint, because she didn't so much mark me as tag me. 

You've heard of people playing chess using people as the players--like the moving statues in the first Harry Potter movie? Well, by the end of the service, the cathedral was like a huge game of tic-tac-toe (noughts and crosses, if you're anglophilic). We were all Crosses wondering when the Noughts were going to show up.

3. My newly-waxed eyebrows. See, in today's Gospel lesson we were enjoined to look happy when we fast, and put oil on our heads and other extremely unappealing Ancient World things like that. But I did have four hours to kill between services, so I went to a spa that takes walk ins and had a manicure, pedicure, and a brow wax. 

Not to brag or anything, but I was definitely the best-groomed penitent at the six o'clock service. 

It's true! My fingernails (a deep mulberry color) matched my choir robe exactly.

* I'm an Episcopalian, which means we can call our ministers priests.  Even though many of them are female. In this, as in many ways, we fuck with people's heads.

"Hi, my name is Joe Blow, and I'm calling to urge you to vote for my law school roommate, Dick Douchebag, who is running for Cook County dog catcher."

OK, maybe that's exaggerated.

But not by much.

Now I know why they call it "Super Tuesday."

It's because it takes super-human willpower to keep from ripping the fucking phone off the fucking wall and fucking flushing it down the fucking toilet.

Chick Lit Winner!

Now that I am a practiced random integer generator, what with all these drawings and all, you'd think I'd post the winners of my contests a bit more promptly, wouldn't you?

Well, no you wouldn't. I'm husbanding mah blogging resources, people. You see, as a proud member of Blog365, I'm stretching things out, posting one winner a day. Because you never know--there may come a day when I don't actually have anything to blog about. OK fine, it hasn't happened yet, but you never know. I might hit a dry patch come November.*

So I did my drawing--and then I held back. Until now!

The winner of the chick-lit-with-a-token-book-by-a-man contest is

Jenn

of

Jenn Cooks and Footprints on the Moon and a whole lot of other blogs. (Seriously, girl--when will you have time to read all these books?)

Congratulations, Jenn! Email me your snail mail address (to poppy2006 @ gmail.com) and I'll pack up those bad boys and send them out.

To everyone else, thanks for playing!

* Oh great. I just reminded my intestines that I'm planning to blog every day for a year. They appear to think that's a bad idea, and have sent me a shooting pain or two to communicate their displeasure.

Barbies Winner!

OK, I was really busy and there were a LOT of comments. And that is why it took me a while to do the drawing for the three new-in-box "Limited Edition" Barbies you were all so excited about.

Can I just say that I really enjoyed the comments? Especially the ones that used outrageous amounts of flattery? My other favorites were the ones that tried to evoke huge volcanic eruptions of hot molten guilt on my part. It didn't work, but I appreciate the effort.

You see, I am long past feeling guilt for anything other than my own stupidity in holding on to these Barbies for so long.

I mean, think of how many opportunities I've had to put those Barbies into a Toys for Tots bin. But no, I held out for Internet Stardom Whoredom!

----
For the drawing, I had 198 comments to deal with, so I headed over to random.org to work some random integer magic. But then I realized that not all 198 of the comments were actually people wanting to enter. Some of them were blackbird saying that while the Barbies were lovely, she thought she'd pass. Others were Joke, making fun of me (which seems extraneous when I write this blog, the one you're currently reading, to do exactly that.)

And then there were the people who entered more than once. I dumped the duplicate entries. I also snipped anyone who entered after the cut-off time of 5:00 p.m. Sorry, people, but I left you out of the running to make the odds better for the people who managed to enter on time. I'm cruel--but fair.

So that left me with 183 names. Then I added Jen Lancaster to make a total of 184.

So I plugged 184 into the random thingie. And the winning number was 169. And this left me using my left hand to count ... down ... 168 comments ... while ... I ... scrolled ... down ... the ... screen ... with ... my ... right ... hand. Which, not surprisingly, was easy to fuck up.

This resulted in much frustration and swearing as I started the whole ... long ... laborious ... process over again. And again.

And then, That Stuff Muffin I Married rescued me from my English-major stupidity.

Why not, he asked sagely, count up from the bottom?

So that's what I did.

(You know, he's just brilliant. And when I burst into grateful tears and hugged and kissed him, he looked at me calmly, pushed his glasses back up his nose, and said. "Well, dear--I am, after all, a computer scientist." Which is bullshit. He's an attorney. A smart one. Who doesn't stuff Barbies into every single one of our house's orifices.)

But I digress.

The winner is: Mandi. Who left this comment:

So I found you again through Jen's blog, originally heard of you from Susie Sunshine (I am sad she left her blog)... all that is beside the point, any who, I would love to be entered in the drawling for the Barbies because my "daughters" would love these, I have 2 daughters...one of them should like them right lol if not I have 3 nieces! Hey free barbies..I'll take anything free...they are free right? Haa haa

February 01, 2008 10:01 AM

(Just so you know, I've tried to accommodate Mandi in every way, including typing this description of the "drawling" with a really annoying affected version of Long Island Lockjaw. You can't hear it from where you're sitting, but I sound exactly like James Spader in Pretty in Pink.)

So anyway, Congratulations Mandi! Email me your address and the Barbies are yours.

To everyone else, thanks for playing! If I don't hear from Mandi in three days, I'll hold another random drawing, so keep the flattery and ass-kissing coming. A better woman would be above enjoying that sort of thing, but I LOVED IT.

You know what day it is, don't you?

Bloggy Giveaway Carnival--Hermes scarf--We have a winner!

I kept track of the responses so it would be strictly fair. Susie Sunshine only got one entry (even though she posted two comments) and Babelbabe wasn't entering, so I took hers out of the computation. I entered everyone else, even Kim, although she wanted to hold out for my eldest child.

I used random.org for the drawing. Here's what it said:

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

14

Timestamp: 2008-02-02 02:51:19 UTC

So the winner is:

Number 14

Miss Britt!!!

Bloggy Giveaway Carnival--Fragrance giveaway winners

The fragrance giveaway was the easiest for me to decide, because it wasn't a random drawing--not with nine different things to distribute. Basically, I planned to start with the first commenter, give away the fragrances until they were gone, and then stop.

(If only life were always that easy.)

OK, I know I said you could ask for more than one, but I wanted to disappoint the fewest number of people, so starting with the first commenter who specified something, each person is getting one fragrance.

However, as a consolation prize, I'll stuff a few samples or decants into the packages. If you're reading this, ahiltz, email me and we'll work something out. (Also, blackbird--I do believe I have another bottle of Ombre Rose. I'll bet you can guess where.)

Here we go:

Sara gets the Serendipitous
Jafarhie gets the Caleche
m.e. gets the Hiris
flutterby gets Jardins de Bagatelle
Hanna of Cultivating Home gets Ombre Rose
Smellyann gets the Eclat d'Arpege
Naomi gets the Madeleine Vionnet
reeva gets Joy
and Laura gets the Allure

I'll email the winners this weekend--or feel free to email me.