I really hope that this doesn’t suck. Prarie Home Companion is one of my favorite things on the planet. I’ve seen them tape the show twice at The Greek Theatre and it was so much fun to see a show that you love to listen to on the radio.

If someone doesn’t like The Prairie Home Companion, I pretty much have a clue that there is a gaping hole in their soul. . .

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Jon Armstrong sent me a link to this article from the non-partisan political news siteCapitol Hill Blue.

I have a read a number of articles over the years about something called Dry Drunk Syndrome and if the alcoholic doesn’t deal with the reasons why they drink, they still continue a lot of the negative behaviors they exhibited when they drank.

Not sure if that is what is going on here or what. I do know that if this article is indeed true, it is not really a very Presidential or Christian way to behave. I don’t think saying, “I’m not meeting again with that goddamned bitch! She can go to hell as far as I’m concerned!” would score very high on the What Would Jesus Do poll.

Bush’s Obscene Tirades Rattle White House Aides
By DOUG THOMPSON
Aug 25, 2005, 06:19

While President George W. Bush travels around the country in a last-ditch effort to sell his Iraq war, White House aides scramble frantically behind the scenes to hide the dark mood of an increasingly angry leader who unleashes obscenity-filled outbursts at anyone who dares disagree with him.

“I’m not meeting again with that goddamned bitch,” Bush screamed at aides who suggested he meet again with Cindy Sheehan, the war-protesting mother whose son died in Iraq. “She can go to hell as far as I’m concerned!”

Bush flashes the bird, something aides say he does often and has been doing since his days as governor of Texas.
Bush, administration aides confide, frequently explodes into tirades over those who protest the war, calling them “motherfucking traitors.” He reportedly was so upset over Veterans of Foreign Wars members who wore “bullshit protectors” over their ears during his speech to their annual convention that he told aides to “tell those VFW assholes that I’ll never speak to them again is they can’t keep their members under control.”

White House insiders say Bush is growing increasingly bitter over mounting opposition to his war in Iraq. Polls show a vast majority of Americans now believe the war was a mistake and most doubt the President’s honesty.

“Who gives a flying fuck what the polls say,” he screamed at a recent strategy meeting. “I’m the President and I’ll do whatever I goddamned please. They don’t know shit.”

Bush, while setting up for a photo op for signing the recent CAFTA bill, flipped an extended middle finger to reporters. Aides say the President often “flips the bird” to show his displeasure and tells aides who disagree with him to “go to hell” or to “go fuck yourself.” His habit of giving people the finger goes back to his days as Texas governor, aides admit, and videos of him doing so before press conferences were widely circulated among TV stations during those days. A recent video showing him shooting the finger to reporters while walking also recently surfaced.

Bush’s behavior, according to prominent Washington psychiatrist, Dr. Justin Frank, author of “Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President,” is all too typical of an alcohol-abusing bully who is ruled by fear.

To see that fear emerges, Dr. Frank says, all one has to do is confront the President. “To actually directly confront him in a clear way, to bring him out, so you would really see the bully, and you would also see the fear,” he says.

Dr. Frank, in his book, speculates that Bush, an alcoholic who brags that he gave up booze without help from groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, may be drinking again.

“Two questions that the press seems particularly determined to ignore have hung silently in the air since before Bush took office,” Dr. Frank says. “Is he still drinking? And if not, is he impaired by all the years he did spend drinking? Both questions need to be addressed in any serious assessment of his psychological state.”

Last year, Capitol Hill Blue learned the White House physician prescribed anti-depressant drugs for the President to control what aides called “violent mood swings.” As Dr. Frank also notes: “In writing about Bush’s halting appearance in a press conference just before the start of the Iraq War, Washington Post media critic Tom Shales speculated that ‘the president may have been ever so slightly medicated.’”

Dr. Frank explains Bush’s behavior as all-to-typical of an alcoholic who is still in denial:

“The pattern of blame and denial, which recovering alcoholics work so hard to break, seems to be ingrained in the alcoholic personality; it’s rarely limited to his or her drinking,” he says. “The habit of placing blame and denying responsibility is so prevalent in George W. Bush’s personal history that it is apparently triggered by even the mildest threat.”

© Copyright 2005 Capitol Hill Blue

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Before I left for London this spring I went to my OB/GYN to do my yearly exam, which is always a blast. My pap came back with some “abnormalities” (which I know happens to everybody) and he wanted to do a Colposcopy. Problem is they weren’t able to fit me in before I left. I called and they said that it wouldn’t be a big deal to do it when I came back.

I come back and because so much time had passed, my doc suggested that we just do another pap and then see if the test was still recommended.

Guess who gets to have her you know what stuck under a microscope and biopsies taken of her cervix?

I should have just had the test a couple of weeks ago.

Now, I need to try and get in ASAP. I leave my job in a month (Jesus, it will be so nice to not have to stay at a job I hate just because there is good medical insurance) so this needs to be somewhat sorted before I leave.

I am sure it will be all fine. And if it isn’t fine. . . If it is not fine, they have doctors over there too.

What I am worried about actually isn’t cervical cancer. I’m scared I am presenting with something else.

A few years ago I had massive pain in my jaw. I was tired all the time and was taking 15-20 over the counter painkillers just to get through the day.

I thought I had the cavity from hell so I went to the dentist– but no cavity. My dentist sent me to an endodontist because she thought I might need a root canal.

The endodontist said I didn’t need a root canal. He sent me to an oral surgeon because he thought I might have TMJ.

The oral surgeon said that I didn’t have TMJ but that there was an odd blob mass thing coming up in my x-ray and he wanted to operate to remove and biopsy it.

Big fun. But I got a lot of vicadin out of the entire experience.

Turns out that it wasn’t cancer. . . Big Yeah!

Bad news was it was Langerhans cell histiocytosis a disease so rare my oncologist barely remembered it being discussed in Medical School. (If you want a lesson in fear, sit in the waiting room of people who are really ill then go talk to your doctor and realize you know more about your disease than she does. She wouldn’t even speak to a expert in LCH who offered to consult with her– Dr. Kenneth McClain). Fucking doctors and their fucking egos.

Anyway. Basically the disease is certain kinds of white blood cells go nutty. The cells multiply excessively and cause various not fun things.

But it isn’t cancer.

I had more tests than someone in their early 30’s wants to deal with and at the end of it we couldn’t find anything else so they said that it looked like a one time dealio and that I was in remission and sent me on my way.

Knowing that you might present again prickles in the back of your head. Not that I am that stressed about it. The disease is typically not fatal in adults- is more so with children.

I’m not really freaked out right now. Just mildly freaked out. I realized this reads like I am extremely freaked out. I would say on the freak-out scale I am at a good solid 4. I am concerned, but not insane.

It’s just between trying to find homes for the cats, trying to be a bit thinner so I don’t look like a gum ball in my dress, thinking about the move, being worried about cash, planning the wedding, just plain stress from leaving my life here. . . well this could push me into a bit of crying if I let it.

I know this will be nothing. And even if it is something it will be dealt with and if I have to deal with it in London I will.

I just really rather not deal with this bullshit. Can’t I just dump everything in the dumpster, quit my job, get hitched, hop on a plane and not have any fucking drama?

It seems like a reasonable goddamn request.

Just keep swimming. . . just keep swimming. . .

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Haribo Gummy Frogs

I just spent over $300.00 ordering candy for my wedding favors. I was going to do chocolate covered espresso beans which would have cost me only $50.00 but then I had to go and get creative with the bright idea of Pez.

So my guests will have Muppet Pez, Tropical Punch Pop Rocks,Bazooka gum, Tootsie Pops and Haribo Gummy Frogs.

Going to dump them in little red organza bags and tie them up with little personalized tags. Think that they are funny- candy from when I was a kid. As long as they aren’t candy from when I was a kid. . .

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The Vietnamization of Bush’s Vacation by Frank Rich

ANOTHER week in Iraq, another light at the end of the tunnel. On Monday President Bush saluted the Iraqis for “completing work on a democratic constitution” even as the process was breaking down yet again. But was anyone even listening to his latest premature celebration?

We have long since lost count of all the historic turning points and fast-evaporating victories hyped by this president. The toppling of Saddam’s statue, “Mission Accomplished,” the transfer of sovereignty and the purple fingers all blur into a hallucinatory loop of delusion. One such red-letter day, some may dimly recall, was the adoption of the previous, interim constitution in March 2004, also proclaimed a “historic milestone” by Mr. Bush. Within a month after that fabulous victory, the insurgency boiled over into the war we have today, taking, among many others, the life of Casey Sheehan.

It’s Casey Sheehan’s mother, not those haggling in Baghdad’s Green Zone, who really changed the landscape in the war this month. Not because of her bumper-sticker politics or the slick left-wing political operatives who have turned her into a circus, but because the original, stubborn fact of her grief brought back the dead the administration had tried for so long to lock out of sight. With a shove from Pat Robertson, her 15 minutes are now up, but even Mr. Robertson’s antics revealed buyer’s remorse about Iraq; his stated motivation for taking out Hugo Chávez by assassination was to avoid “another $200 billion war” to remove a dictator.

In the wake of Ms. Sheehan’s protest, the facts on the ground in America have changed almost everywhere. The president, for one, has been forced to make what for him is the ultimate sacrifice: jettisoning chunks of vacation to defend the war in any bunker he can find in Utah or Idaho. In the first speech of this offensive, he even felt compelled to take the uncharacteristic step of citing the number of American dead in public (though the number was already out of date by at least five casualties by day’s end). For the second, the White House recruited its own mom, Tammy Pruett, for the president to showcase as an antidote to Ms. Sheehan. But in a reversion to the president’s hide-the-fallen habit, the chosen mother was not one who had lost a child in Iraq.

It isn’t just Mr. Bush who is in a tight corner now. Ms. Sheehan’s protest was the catalyst for a new national argument about the war that managed to expose both the intellectual bankruptcy of its remaining supporters on the right and the utter bankruptcy of the Democrats who had rubber-stamped this misadventure in the first place.

When the war’s die-hard cheerleaders attacked the Middle East policy of a mother from Vacaville, Calif., instead of defending the president’s policy in Iraq, it was definitive proof that there is little cogent defense left to be made. When the Democrats offered no alternative to either Mr. Bush’s policy or Ms. Sheehan’s plea for an immediate withdrawal, it was proof that they have no standing in the debate.

Instead, two conservative Republicans - actually talking about Iraq instead of Ms. Sheehan, unlike the rest of their breed - stepped up to fill this enormous vacuum: Chuck Hagel and Henry Kissinger. Both pointedly invoked Vietnam, the war that forged their political careers. Their timing, like Ms. Sheehan’s, was impeccable. Last week Mr. Bush started saying that the best way to honor the dead would be to “finish the task they gave their lives for” - a dangerous rationale that, as David Halberstam points out, was heard as early as 1963 in Vietnam, when American casualties in that fiasco were still inching toward 100.

And what exactly is our task? Mr. Bush’s current definition - “as the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down” - could not be a better formula for quagmire. Twenty-eight months after the fall of Saddam, only “a small number” of Iraqi troops are capable of fighting without American assistance, according to the Pentagon - a figure that Joseph Biden puts at “fewer than 3,000.” At this rate, our 138,000 troops will be replaced by self-sufficient locals in roughly 100 years.

For his part, Mr. Hagel backed up his assertion that we are bogged down in a new Vietnam with an irrefutable litany of failure: “more dead, more wounded, less electricity in Iraq, less oil being pumped in Iraq, more insurgency attacks, more insurgents coming across the border, more corruption in the government.” Mr. Kissinger no doubt counts himself a firm supporter of Mr. Bush, but in Washington Post this month, he drew a damning lesson from Vietnam: “Military success is difficult to sustain unless buttressed by domestic support.” Anyone who can read a poll knows that support is gone and is not coming back. The president’s approval rating dropped to 36 percent in one survey last week.

What’s left is the option stated bluntly by Mr. Hagel: “We should start figuring out how we get out of there.”

He didn’t say how we might do that. John McCain has talked about sending more troops to rectify our disastrous failure to secure the country, but he’ll have to round them up himself door to door. As the retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey reported to the Senate, the National Guard is “in the stage of meltdown and in 24 months we’ll be coming apart.” At the Army, according to The Los Angeles Times, officials are now predicting an even worse shortfall of recruits in 2006 than in 2005. The Leo Burnett advertising agency has been handed $350 million for a recruitment campaign that avoids any mention of Iraq.

Among Washington’s Democrats, the only one with a clue seems to be Russell Feingold, the Wisconsin senator who this month proposed setting a “target date” (as opposed to a deadline) for getting out. Mr. Feingold also made the crucial observation that “the president has presented us with a false choice”: either “stay the course” or “cut and run.” That false choice, in which Mr. Bush pretends that the only alternative to his reckless conduct of the war is Ms. Sheehan’s equally apocalyptic retreat, is used to snuff out any legitimate debate. There are in fact plenty of other choices echoing about, from variations on Mr. Feingold’s timetable theme to buying off the Sunni insurgents.

But don’t expect any of Mr. Feingold’s peers to join him or Mr. Hagel in fashioning an exit strategy that might work. If there’s a moment that could stand for the Democrats’ irrelevance it came on July 14, the day Americans woke up to learn of the suicide bomber in Baghdad who killed as many as 27 people, nearly all of them children gathered around American troops. In Washington that day, the presumptive presidential candidate Hillary Clinton held a press conference vowing to protect American children from the fantasy violence of video games.

The Democrats are hoping that if they do nothing, they might inherit the earth as the Bush administration goes down the tubes. Whatever the dubious merits of this Kerryesque course as a political strategy, as a moral strategy it’s unpatriotic. The earth may not be worth inheriting if Iraq continues to sabotage America’s ability to take on Iran and North Korea, let alone Al Qaeda.

As another politician from the Vietnam era, Gary Hart, observed last week, the Democrats are too cowardly to admit they made a mistake three years ago, when fear of midterm elections drove them to surrender to the administration’s rushed and manipulative Iraq-war sales pitch. So now they are compounding the original error as the same hucksters frantically try to repackage the old damaged goods.

IN the new pitch there are no mushroom clouds. Instead we get McCarthyesque rhetoric accusing critics of being soft on the war on terrorism, which the Iraq adventure has itself undermined. Before anyone dare say Vietnam, the president, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld drag in the historian David McCullough and liken 2005 in Iraq to 1776 in America - and, by implication, the original George W. to ours. Before you know it, Ahmad Chalabi will be rehabilitated as Ben Franklin.

The marketing campaign will crescendo in two weeks, on the anniversary of 9/11, when a Defense Department “Freedom Walk” will trek from the site of the Pentagon attack through Arlington National Cemetery to a country music concert on the Mall. There the false linkage of Iraq to 9/11 will be hammered in once more, this time with a beat: Clint Black will sing “I Raq and Roll,” a ditty whose lyrics focus on Saddam, not the Islamic radicals who actually attacked America. Lest any propaganda opportunity be missed, Arlington’s gravestones are being branded with the Pentagon’s slogans for military campaigns, like Operation Iraqi Freedom, The Associated Press reported last week - a historic first. If only the administration had thought of doing the same on the fallen’s coffins, it might have allowed photographs.

Even though their own poll numbers are in a race to the bottom with the president’s, don’t expect the Democrats to make a peep. Republicans, their minds increasingly focused on November 2006, may well blink first. In yet another echo of Vietnam, it’s millions of voters beyond the capital who will force the timetable for our inexorable exit from Iraq.

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My being bad has caught me. 150. Surprised that it was high this week instead of last since I was actually good this week. Well, except for the coffee in the morning and drinking Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I need to cut out any drinking until the wedding I think.

Mom said that there is a fortune of booze stashed in the closet now and I ordered more than a few cases of vino from V. Sattui.

Stuart said, “All I need is some Rolling Rock and I will be happy.”

I told him that he will have as much crap beer as he would like.

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I feel terminally exhausted. Friday I saw a 9:45 show of 40-Year-Old Virgin (which is HYSTERICAL) but after staying up until 3:00 AM the day before I felt a bit a mess by the time I finally climbed in bed.

Saturday I drove down to Orange to see Nate and Darren. Nate is about to start the MFA Film program in directing at Chapman. It is a bit sucky that just as they move here I am leaving. We were up until wee hours of the morning talking and laughing.

Sunday I woke up early and had lunch with Janelle. We were supposed to go to Sunset Junction later, but it was so hot I really couldn’t be bothered. And I was feeling a bit blue. Missing Stuart.

He was missing me too. I had some messages waiting for me on my machine.

I will be so glad when the next three months are over.

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I saw the preview forGood Night, And Good Luck today and I am as excited about seeing this movie as I am for Harry Potter. I may need to buy the one sheet before I run away.

I love the fact that David Strathairn, such a talented actor is playing Edward R. Murrow . The entire cast rocks. I love that Clooney shot it in black and white. I love the subject matter. A film about McCarthyism is an excellent metaphor for our current times.

I may be all wet, but I have good feelings about this flick.

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My adorable fiancé just called me and said the sweetest things. Made me get teary. He said all these sweet things and then he needed to balance the chemistry equation. He said that I have a Pingu walk.

I didn’t know what Pingu was but after a quick bit of research, I see that he is right. I do have a Pingu walk. I do this bouncy thing and I walk really fast. It is problematic when I have a coffee because I usually splash it all over myself like I am in the throws of an epileptic fit. I try to avoid white clothing for this reason.

Thinking of white, I have been sucked into the wedding industrial complex and I am wearing a white dress. (Albeit with a red sash). I found a bridesmaid dress I like and they are going to make alterations for me to make it more Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face-ish.

I think we should have a pool to see how long I can go without spilling red wine on myself on my wedding day.

I remember when I was seven, I had one of those existential freak out moments- realizing I exist and the odds of me being me are far fewer than never being at all.

When I think through the dominos of my life or the triggers and heaps if I may use the term from Backwards and Forwards, it is amazing to see how I got here. All those little places that if I zigged instead of zagged and my life would have been wildly different. I wonder about those alternative lives sometimes. Is she happy?

Not that it matters because I am so happy in this moment. Pingu walk and all. . .

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I love to give gifts. Not just any gift. For me one of the joys of getting to know a person is discovering things they dig, then matching gifts to that person.

I’m really good at it. I will usually spend more than is reasonable to get the perfect present. It upsets my mother, but I didn’t see her complaining too hard the year she got earrings from Tiffany.

One year, my friend Mike mentioned that he was reading some short stories of his great –great-great something or other grandfather, the 1933 Nobel Prize in Literature winner Ivan Bunin. I found a English first edition of one of his books for Mike’s Christmas present.

Another year, Joe mentioned that he was looking for a bag- something that he could easily fit books and scripts into. I found the perfect one.

Dan loves Gabriel Garcia Marquez so I found an English 1st Edition of Love in the Time of Cholera. (I think the first line of Cholera is even more amazing than Solitude. “It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.” Ah, it kills me every time I read it.) Yes, we are book people.

Stuart likes to give gifts too and is also fantastic at it. This one day in London he told me to meet him in the stairwell at work and he gave me a lovely bracelet that sets off metal detectors when I fly. It makes a little tinkling sound when I move my wrist and it makes me think of him.

The problem is. . . he hates receiving gifts.

He had told me this before but I didn’t think he was serious. I figured when he witnessed my gift giving kung-fu, he would be fine.

Yesterday I was shopping online for Stuart’s wedding present. He likes antiquities and I found a great Web site that sells them www.medusa-art.com.

I found a Late Ptomaic Period 664-30 BC stone frog that represents the goddess Heket.

I thought, “perfecto!” I love frogs. He likes really really old shit. Wedding present that is both these things. Kismet.

I was up late last night and when he came on IM I first teased him by telling him that I was going to drag him to Disneyland when he flies here for the wedding. (I wouldn’t really do that to him.) That didn’t go over so well.

Then I teased him with the knowledge that I had bought his present.

Cut To:

He really doesn’t like getting gifts. Really. He hates gifts.

There must be a word for this. And there must also be a word for the frustration of the person that loves to give gifts that can’t because the object of their gift giving hates gifts.

We had a rather heated IM exchange—not helped by the fact that I had a bottle of wine for dinner. (I got home at 9:30 and had intended to have a steak, salad and a one glass of wine for dinner, but a friend called needing to chat and after being on the phone for over an hour it was too late to eat so it seemed a reasonable decision at the time to drink the entire bottle.)

I must say that Stu didn’t get angry with me, just frustrated.

I didn’t get to bed until after 3:00 AM. The alarm this morning at 6:30-7 came rather early. Condos could be built in the bags under my eyes. I look like a chubby Ileana Douglas.

I am going to keep the frog. But in my mind it is a wedding gift. He can call it what he wants.

I am going to try and respect his anti-gift wishes. Part of loving someone is putting up the things that make you want to murder them. I told him I am going to put, “We loved him even though he was a incredible pain in the ass” on his headstone.

And once in a while I am going to do it anyway. A gift will be purchased. It will be wrapped. It will be given with love. If he can’t handle that part of me that incites murderous thoughts? Well. . .He can murder me.

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