now taking orders, sizes xs to xl

baby blue fine jersey with this lovely design by motto (i.e. andy and steph)

everyone loves a tranny

went to the fenway community health center's annual men's event last weekend. "arwin", featured in these photos, looked terrific. i just want you to realize that essie is about 6'2" and i'm a hair taller at 6'3". arwin is fucking ginormous.

i know that europe still has its tag team

madge, madge, MADGE! you're scary old-lady yoga arms are making you look like, well, a scary old lady! can you please get some fat injections into your extremeties? i mean, your body is rock solid but you're not 25 anymore. please put on a sweater.

speaking of the abba sampling post-modern disco queen, i've been singing the wrong lyrics to "hung up" for about 5 months now. during the bridge of the song she sings:

i can't keep on waiting for you
i know that you're still hesitating

i thought it was:

i can't keep on waiting for you
i know that europe still has its tag team

an OBVIOUS mistake, by anyone's standards.

is this a pun?

"Brokeback Mountain a shoo-in for this year's best-picture award at the Oscars? Not so fast, says Kim Masters, who points out that Crash has a decent shot at a come-from-behind victory." -NPR.org

the comeback

i haven't blogged in AGES! rio was amazing, you can check out all the pictures if you click on the flicker icon to the right. my job has been insanely busy and i haven't checked the capital markets or anything in the past week and a half. oy.

back to reality...

there's this woman who calls in everyday, i mean EVERY DAY, about some stupid bullshit invesmtnet management question and she's always like, "hi! it's colleen." i'm always like, "colleen who?". she gets so pissed off at me evertime she has to say her full name. i love it. it makes me happy all over. it makes my inner child giddy and my inner black woman chortle.

boo boo is alive!

ARKADELPHIA, Arkansas (AP) -- This chicken had lips, just not her own.

A retired nurse saved her brother's chicken, Boo Boo, by administering mouth-to-beak resuscitation last week after the fowl was found floating face down in the family's pond.

Marian Morris said she hadn't had any practice with CPR in years, but she was interested to see if she "still had it."

"I breathed into its beak, and its dadgum eyes popped open," Morris said. "I breathed into its beak again, and its eyes popped open again. I said, 'I think this chicken's alive now. Keep it warm."'

She said she did not know how to find a pulse on a chicken.

Boo Boo's owners, Jackie and Becky Calhoun, put her in a large cardboard box containing a grain feeder and water. They also placed a heater nearby.

The chicken is called Boo Boo because she is easily frightened. The Calhouns thought Boo Boo was startled and flopped into the pond.

------

in my first grade reading group, mrs. orloski asked us all what type of animal we would be if we could choose to be any animal at all. matt k. said he'd like to be a bear. chris said he'd be dog. pretty predictable responses for first graders. i of course said dolphin, the freaking gayest response EVER. poor little emily lorenzo chose a chicken. mrs. orloski burst into condescending laughter and ridiculed emily for making such a "stupid" choice. "what if someone wanted to EAT you!??", she cackled. i always felt bad for not standing up for emily's chicken morphing fantasy. a little piece of her spirit died that day in reading group. i hope that somehow, emily hears of boo boo's inspiring story and breathes the life back into her proverbial beak.

i keep hearing samba everywhere i go

*two more days till departure!

**my cubicle will not define me.

***an organic way to build your fanbase and pay for the production of your album? it's a record company's nightmare.

brasilia

essie and i are leaving for brazil on friday for about 10 days. here's everything i'm packing:

live, from punxsutawney pennsylvania...

...at the groundhog rally "The American Physiological Society was offering experts to discuss "What Punxsutawney Phil can teach us about surviving massive blood loss, preventing muscle atrophy, and more." -AP

WTF?

state of disparity

W, you can't have an aggressive middle-east PR program without making an aggressive change in energy protocol at home. 25% alternative energy by 2025 is not enough. we need a gasoline tax and incentives for american car companies to produce---en masse---hybrid vehicles. if there is no demand, we will not get off the sauce.

our kids have been falling behind other developed nations in math and science for years now. we're kicking out our foreign students as soon as they finish their dissertations. when they go back to india or bejing they contribute to the 12% GDP overseas. why not give them visas to help US develop new technologies HERE and give them jobs HERE, maybe give foreign masters students visas to stay and teach math/science/technology in our public schools. we are drowning in our consumerism and our kids don't know any better.

plain ignunt

"The S&P had a measly return of 4.9 percent. Securities firms gave out a record $21.5 billion in year-end bonuses. That's fair." -Fortune Magazine

um, last time i checked, wall street professionals were in the forefront of the global finanical markets. they are trading complex derivatives, making currency plays, conducting M&A deals, etc. they get paid for the amount of risk they take. in a mediocre market, traders and bankers have to take on additional risk to inflate returns for their big institutional clients, god forbid they get bonuses for being good at their respectives roles. so no, you ignorant masses, it's not fair that i-bankers made more than you this year. it's not fair that YOU dumped all your money into a big ass house that you can't afford and now you can't sell because the real estate market is leveling so you're bitter and jealous. i get my year end bonus next week and i'm going to laugh all the way to the bank!

don't go chasing waterfalls

i have that song in my head, you know, the one by TLC. seems appropriate in the current state of bearish forecasts for the market this year. remember lisa "left eye" lopez? isn't it kind of ironic that she died in a MUDSLIDE in honduras or some shit? NEWSFLASH: IN AN STRANGE TWIST OF FATE, LISA "LEFT EYE" LOPEZ DIES WHILE CHASING WATERFALL. RIP, left-eye.

i love diet coke!

put another 70 cents in the vending maching baby!

theo's back!?

ok, theo epstein, former GM of the red sox will definitely be back in 2006. although the press release didn't describe the capacity in which he'll return, he'll probably end up being a co-manager of some sort. i've always liked him. he's a local, he's young, self-made, cute...



until 2006...


theo! get yourself TOGETHER. girl, you are looking like a haggard old troll. you need to take a couple of months to detox, get your job back in check, and get a freaking chemical peel or something. do you even exfoliate anymore? at 32 you look like 48. you're turning over a new leaf in your career, please put a little effort into preserving that boyish face that we have come to love so dearly. i have some lancome spf 15 eye cream that i'll drop in a fedex for you...you'll thank me for it later.

face up and sing

today i just want someone to entertain me
i'm tired of being so fierce
i'm tired of being so friendly
you don't have to be a supermodel
to do the animal thing
you don't have to be a supergenius
to open your face up and sing

-ani difranco

what's the deal with celebrities not admitting that they like to party? i mean all this kate moss/lindsay lohan snorting coke on school nights, pole dancing in manhattan, etc. c'mon girls, who do you think you're kidding? we know you're strung out and we don't care! colin farrell--we know you're addicted to pain killers, hell, who doesn't like to pop a few percicet every once in a while? ...and when is dakota fanning going to admit that she just got out of rehab?

how about a little honesty, people. i'll start: i smoke dope on occasion, i tried mushrooms once, i snorted ritalin before my SATs, i've danced topless in bars on more than one occasion, i listen to gloria estefan, and i take a hit of valium every time i go to ikea.

see? was that so hard? trust me, i know the paparazzi can be cruel, but people still like me regardless of what i do. take a lesson. you heard it here first, kids.

another down session in the market, i was hoping investors' irrational exuberance would carry over into this week. i'm following the bidding war for guidant, i hope boston scientific counters j&j in a big way.

get out the way!

i'm getting annoyed at all the 350lb women who are hogging the treadmills at the gym after work. i realize that it's your new years resolution and all but some of us need to actually JOG on the freaking treadmill. there's nothing more irritating that snorting a couple lines of speed, stretching out and having no where to run because kirstie alley wants to WALK for 45 minutes while reading an US weekly that you know she's already read on the toilet at home while stuffing her fat face with krispy kremes over the weekend. beautiful people need to exercise too!

the dow hit 11,000 yesterday, first time since 2001. looks like there will be a sell-off today. i'm really excited about prospects for ABT.

rhythm is gonna getcha

from the tender age of five, i had an obsession with pop singers. long before the "latin explosion" of the 90's, gloria estefan shimmied her way into my heart. i remember my first experience with her quite vividly. it was the summer of '87. i was 6. grandma just bought me let it loose, the new gloria estefan & miami sound machine tape. i sat out in the front yard with my boom box and listened to every song 3 times while following along with the lyrics in the liner. the boom box only had play, fast forward, and stop so if i wanted to listen to a song on side A again, i had to flip the tape over and fast forward side B for just long enough to find the beginning of the desired track side A. tedious? yes, but a small price to pay for "1-2-3-4 c'mon baby say you love me", which i listened to "5-6-7 times" a day.

in the 5th grade, after tireless begging, dad took me to see gloria live in concert. the year was 1991, it was the into the light tour. gloria had just comeback from a year long rehab from the bus accident that broke her back and threatened her life. the show brought tears to my eyes. nothing short of inspiring.

i never told any of my classmates that i was a gloria estefan fan. i was forced into the closet with my morracas, to conga with no one but myself--too fearful of what the other 11 year-old boys would think of my love for gloria. as i entered junior high school, i put gloria to rest and hid the salsa-infused pop sensation deep into the cavernous hollow of loves that dare not speak their name.

a decade passed. last night, i knew i couldn't control myself any longer. i could feel the rythm of the music getting stronger. i couldn't fight it till i tried it. i did the conga beat. i downloaded gloria estefan's greatest hits on i-tunes. my boyfriend closed and locked the door to his office as i sang along to every note while loading the dishwasher. it was like an old friend came back into my life. like that child you gave up for adoption suddenly knocks on your door and calls you "mommy". she's right when she says, "you can fight it everyday//but no matter what you say//you know it//the rhythm is gonna getcha". i'd still do anything for you, gloria.

i have now used up all of my butch points.

stupid ass ho

r.e. idiot girl at work aka "gobletta" 'cuz she talks like a turkey...

it's thursday afternoon. gobletta is making proactive sales calls to brokers in her territory, trying to drum up new business in our fee-based wrap account. fee-based accounts are brokerage products where the client pays an annual fee on assets under management instead of paying a commission or transaction fee whenever they buy or sell a security.

gobletta: so, like, do you do freebase with us?
broker: isn't freebasing when you smoke/ingest a drug in it's purest form? no, i don't freebase. but i do use your fee-based platform for my client's investment allocations.

in other news, a few days ago she had to call the help desk because her headset wasn't working. she could hear people on the other end, but they couldn't hear her. the tech guy came over to her desk and looked at her headset for about 5 seconds before noticing that her mouthpiece was clogged with pink lipstick.

dude, i can't make this shit up.

your name is big brother

you say that you got me all in your notebook,
writing it down everyday,
your name is i'll see ya,
i'll change if you vote me in as the pres,
the president of your soul
-stevie wonder

i find it hard to believe that we can spend $231 billion on a war that we started out of our own selfish interests but we can't get 13 west virginia miners out of the ground within 2 days? are we that strapped for resources? what if haliburton's board of trustees were trapped in a coal mine?


"they caught the last poor man
flying away in a shiny red cape
and they brought him down to the station
and they said 'boy you should know better
than to try and escape'
and i ran away with the circus
'cause there's still some honest work left for bearded ladies
but it's not the same goin' town to town
since they put everyone in jail 'cept
the cleavers and the bradys

and my country tis of thee
to take swings at each other on talk show tv
why don't you just go ahead and turn off the sun
'cause we'll never live long enough to
undo everything they've done to you"

-ani difranco