Hot Off The Presses!

Things are finally starting to look up.

Why you ask? Well, I’m in NYC, probably the most fascinating city in the US if not the whole darn world, AAAAAAND I got one of the first copies of the eagerly awaited tome LAME ADVENTURES: UNGLAMOROUS TALES FROM MANHATTAN by my newest pal, Virginia Antonelli. Now, I haven’t had the chance to read it yet, but I will when I finish the current book I’m reading.

I cannot wait.

You wanna know the best part?

I got to hang with the author last night in the city. I had a lovely time. She showed me some cool places, and we had a great time hanging out, laughing, boozing it up and chatting.

I am so happy to have a new friend.

So, my three readers, I highly recommend you check this book out.

I apologize for the bad quality of the pic, but I’m using my iPad to post this, and well, let’s just say the marriage between WordPress and the iPad tis a rocky one.

NONETHELESS, read this book! You can get it from Amazon.com

You’re welcome!

Love,
Julia

30 Things I’m Dumping in 2013

Here’s a long-ass list of stuff I’m dumping from my life in 2013:

1) Unemployment

2) Ambien

3) Trying to please people who don’t give a shit about me.

4) Not taking care of myself emotionally.

5) Not taking care of myself physically.

6) Chicago

7) This overwhelming sense that I’m a complete failure.

8) Forgetting friends’ important life events.

9) Swearing

10) Unsightly pit stains.

11) Body hair that’s long enough to braid

12) The body in the trunk of my car.

13) Bread–the food, not the band.

14) People named Poindexter, Mitt, Karl Rove, and Cheney.

15) The gangsta lifestyle. I don’t have the ass for it.

16) Gene Hackman’s knickers

17) Cheap liquor

18) Cheap hookers

19) Leo Sayer –he’s been hogging my couch for too damn long.

20) Expectations of any sort.

21) Sarcasm

22) My bad attitude toward stupid people who are more successful than I am.

23) My bad attitude toward asshole people who are more successful than I am.

24) Clutter

25) Self doubt.

26) Fear of success

27) Stuff

28) That chaise on the sun porch. It’s a chaise of pain.

29) That weird item in my glove box. It’s starting to creep me out.

30) Threeve.

 

 

You KNOW you wanna go

And, the best part is when you gotta go, gotta go, gotta go right now, you’ll be in the best place for it.

The South Korean city of Suwon has opened “the world’s first toilet theme park.” About an hour outside of Seoul, one can go to this Labyrinth of the Loo and learn all sorts of fecal fun facts, how the toilet came to be and feast their eyes upon a dazzling display of bedpans.

The park itself was built around the home of the former mayor, Sim Jae-duck and has had a flush of visitors since opening this past July. Affectionately known as “Mr. Toilet”, Sim founded the World Toilet Association and started a movement about how important it is to the world to have clean, safe sanitation. He even wrote a ripping good yarn named “Happy to Be With You, Toilet.”

Sim’s love affair with all things commode when he was born into shit-filled poverty. Perhaps that had something to do with it–being born into poverty in Korea during, well, any time come to think of it. Sim died of prostate cancer in 2009.

“He was a man whose life literally began in a toilet and ended at a commode-shaped house,” said Lee Yeun-sook, manager of planning at the Mr. Toilet Sim Jae-duck Foundation.

Now, there’s a job that would be a gas to have.

 

 

So that happened.

My uterus is safe for four more years, as are all the uteruses of this country!

Congrats Barack Obama!

Now go kick some ass!

Time for the GOP clowncar to get a major overhaul.

Why not Eau de Daley?

Earlier today, during a break in my coverage of the Anthony Abbate Jr. civil trial, I learned that Chicago now has its own perfume. As I sat in the cold courtroom and felt my ass flatten out on the hard, wooden bench, I pondered this idea of a perfume inspired by Chicago.

Imagine the smell.

If you’re like me, the first smell that popped into your mind was the lingering, gut-wrenching stench of the Chicago stockyards circa 1920. Ahh..yes. The aroma of rotting meat, with shit and sweat as a top note and blood and the sweat of child laborers as a bottom note. I imagine there would be several versions of this particular Chicago scent: The summer choice smells like meat spoiling in the sun with vulture shit as the winning top note, and for winter it’s hooves, tails, innerds and ears all mixed together with a top note of figgy pudding and coal.

 

The other obvious Chicago scent possibilities are some sort of parfum replicating what it’s like to catch a whiff of a whore house at low-tide, or a Corruption Cologne which is a combo platter of Blago’s hair gel, Rahm’s dance belt after two matinees of “Pippin” at Peoria’s finest dinner theater, and Gov. Dan Walker’s socks AND toe jam after walking the length of Illinois during the 1971 gubernatorial campaign.

Turns out this new perfume is festooned with flowers and whatnot. Yawn. I guess they realized they wouldn’t sell as many units had they gone with any of my grand ideas. Harumph. Back to journalism for me.

The Daily Asshole

Gotcha! You thought I was referring to him, didn’t you? (Warning: if you click on the previous link, your computer might grow horns, a tail, cloven hooves and a forked tongue & kill Max Von Sydow.)

Well, no. I was referring to one of Mr. Romney’s GOP brethren, Arkansas State Rep. Jon Hubbard (R-Jonesboro).

(courtesy Arkansas Statehouse)

Somehow in his lifetime, Rep. Hubbard honed his hate, got scared & educated and wrote a book using the blood of non-Christians.

Mr. Hubbard believes that slavery was a good thing for African Americans, and that African Americans have ruined public education for us white folks because of their supposed “lack of discipline and ambition.”

That’s it, you say?

C’mon Jules, he’s just spewing the same shit some of his fellow politicians from both parties have been saying aloud for the, oh, last few decades. Tell me something I don’t already know.

Ok, well, this isn’t in the book but, Mr. Hubbard is all for people showing birth certificates when they show up in hospitals for non-emergency care to make sure them damn illegals don’t use up any medicine that’s supposed to go to ‘muricans. He’s also allll about defending Christianity in America — whatever the hell that means. Fucking over people of color is a Christian value, see. That’s what I gleaned from his proclamation. Lord help those who could benefit from the committees he sits on.

This particular tome is a doozy too — it’s chock-full of fun statements like:

“… the institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may actually have been a blessing in disguise. The blacks who could endure those conditions and circumstances would someday be rewarded with citizenship in the greatest nation ever established upon the face of the Earth.” (Pgs 183-89)

And, since he’s got his knickers in a twist about immigrants, he wrote this:

… the immigration issue, both legal and illegal … will lead to planned wars or extermination. Although now this seems to be barbaric and uncivilized, it will at some point become as necessary as eating and breathing.” (Pg 9)

Hmm … this sounds familiar. Mighty familiar. Where oh where have I seen this before? <scrunches forehead, frowns and rubs chin with thumb and forefinger–my sarcastic thinking pose>

Thanks a lot, Arkansas. I hope this choad doesn’t run for national office.

 

Revenge Roman Style

History is one of my favorite subjects and since I was raised in the public school system, my knowledge of US history is strong while my knowledge of world history ain’t that great. Fortunately, studying history is in my blood — my father is a history buff and I am now embracing that “inheritance” full-on.

Then there’s my pal, Tom Sito. I worked with him at Disney Feature animation years ago, and we got along right away because of our quick wits and fondness for trivia and history. Sito sends out a daily history email, which I’ve been getting for about 15 years now and not only is it informative, it’s a HOOT.

One of the today’s entries is no exception.

96 A.D. ROMAN EMPEROR DOMITIAN ASSASSINATED.

Domitian was a crazy tyrant in the mold of Nero and Caligula. He once ordered all the fortunetellers, sorcerers, swamis and such driven out of Rome. Their guild got together and retaliated by doing a group prediction of Domitian’s assassination: Sept. 18th on the eleventh hour.

Domitian pretended not to care but on the day spent all day locked indoors with a sword under his pillow. He didn’t come out until his slaves and butlers assured him the eleventh hour had passed. Domitian came out and was promptly murdered by his slaves and butlers. They lied. It was the eleventh hour. 

BUT WAIT! IT GETS WEIRDER … A Roman mob drags Domitian’s body through the streets on a hook and chain. They tried to stuff him into the sewer but he was too fat, so they tore the body to pieces and threw the chunks into the Tiber.

BUT WAIT! IT GETS EVEN WEIRDER!! The Roman Senate told his wife the Empress Valeria no hard feelings, if she needed anything…. She requested to be allowed to keep one statue of her husband in the Forum. The Senate approved. Unbeknown to them fishermen had fished out the pieces of Domitian. Valeria took the fish-knawed chunks to an Egyptian doctor and had him sew them back into something resembling a man. Then she told her artists to make a statue of the cadaver. This horrid statue she put in the forum to remind Roman’s of ‘their ingratitude’.

See? I fucking love this stuff. He was chopped up, tossed into the Tiber, then scooped out again by a grieving but pissed off Empress, and sewn together then put on display for all of Rome to feast their eyes upon. Back then, it seems the Romans had it all over the rest of civilization when it came to enacting revenge on those who have wronged them. Today, folks do shit like make films that they know will incite riots and the rest of the world watches in horror as revenge is delivered fast and harsh. Quite cowardly, in my humble opinion.

Kinda makes me wonder what living during the time of the Roman Empire was really like.