This weekend was just tits, man.*

It started on Friday, with the RLA and I meeting up with my friend, The Coolest Person In the World TM, who has been in the area for a while.

After seeing the two of us slam back the (first) vodka, the RLA decided not to even try to keep up with us. It was wise. It would have been wiser for me to remember that I can't keep up with her. Nevertheless, I gave it my best shot, and didn't get sick. I'm pretty sure that the end of the night saw me promising to meet her and her husband in New Orleans for Mardi Gras, as the spouse will be riding with one of the big Krewes this year, and so would entail hanging around with a much higher caliber of riff raff than would other wise be available to the likes of me.
I did sleep for half the night in the bathtub, but I never puked. The RLA says that when he went in to check on me, I was lying in the tub with a shit-eating grin on my face, and the hot water trickling over my toes, and he figured that it was some kind of sauna cure, and I was fine.

I was. And had only the teensiest of hangovers. But he still made me pay the next day by dragging my sorry ass all over Miami to grocery stores, shoe stores, book stores... oh, it was an ordeal, I'll tell you.

There was some heavy lifting in the kitchen on Saturday, as I prepped for a Fourth of July party. Tabouli, fruit salad, my mom's cole slaw (the recipe for which she stole from the Pink Pony circa 1948) and which is just to die for, a mango upside down cake. Burgers. Chips. Beer. Mango daquiris. More beer.

Our guests were two couples, one from San Francisco in town for a visit, and the other newly-made friends from across town. All six of us are artists of one stripe or another, and aside from hanging in the pool drinking, the major activity of the day was doing a jam painting on the wall around the koi pond. It isn't finished, but it is way cool. There's a fish, a mer-man, leaves, and swirls, and bubbles, and color. Photos will follow.

We also indulged in fire works (shhhhhh). The noble dog Nails proved his worth by attacking the tanks. This caused much consternation among the adults who had to tackle him, pry the still sparking fireworks out of his mouth and toss them away before the actual fire crackers exploded. What a dog. Not afraid of anything, and he should be.

Yesterday was a day of cleaning, resting and recuperation. And painting and swimming. Tonight there are vague rumors of getting together with The Coolest Person In the World TM again. I only hope my liver will one day forgive me.

* for reasons I cannot remember, back in college, this was the highest accolade my buddy Andy could bestow on something.

Marlon Brando. R.I.P.

Damn. He was fine in his youth. He was tortured and brilliant throughout his career. He was the size of a small village at the end, but he'll always be Terry, from On The Waterfront to me.

Or the mincing, lisping Fletcher Christian.

Ah, well, another icon, down. Think I'll watch Guys and Dolls this weekend.

This is what was driving through the hospital campus today while I was at lunch.



You can't see the writing on the side, so I'll include the literature they were handing out of the head pig.
"The largest pig shows the financial cost ($200 billion)1 of America's attack on Iraq, including the projected minimum cost of reconstruction.

The smaller pig illustrates the annual federal spending on K-12 education ($34 billion)2.

The wee little pig shows annual federal spending on reducing world hunger and poverty ($10 billion).3

For the same amount of money that we're spending on the war in Iraq, we could:

provide Head Start for all elibible kids,

provide Healthcare for all uninsured kids,

build 2,500 new elementary schools, and

reduce grades 1-3 class size to 15 students

for the next 5 years.

1) Eric Schmitt and Robert Pear, New York Times, Feb. 3, 2004. Also see Congressional Budget Office, "Estimated Costs of a Potential Conflict with Iraq," September 2002.
2) U.S. Budget, FY 2004
3) U.S. Budget, FY 2004

For more information, visit www.TrueMajority.org/pigs"

And just think, this was going to be a post about the lousy customer service offered up by Circuit City.

I am so loving the little pink i-pod. I have new regard for the a-holes I see everywhere with headphones on. I am now one of them, and I couldn't be happier.

Today I was listening to the greatest song in the world, ever. Period. End of discussion.
Layla. The original recording, by Derek and the Dominos. Eric Clapton and Duane Alman exchanging licks. Both at the height of their youth, not that Duane ever got past it. First one, then the other, delivers up these wailing guitar solos of the pain that comes with love. With headphones on, and cranked up so loud that the entire train could hear the music leaking out of my head, it was a wonderful way to start the morning.

It put a rhythm to my step. It put a smile on my face. I didn't care that the PHB accosted me before the last notes died to ask a typically stupid question.

I was one with the greatest song ever. Until tomorrow, when it may be a bootleg cut of Bruce Springsteen from 1978, doing the extended version of Rosalita.

I'll see your emergency project and raise you a crisis.

Please drop the extremely urgent project you are working like a dog on, to do a quick graphic link for another urgent project that someone else has been assigned to complete, at the expense of their previously most urgent and emergent crisis project.
Because I'm the boss, and I committed all of you to do it, that's why.

We are all rats on a sinking ship, and my boss's new management mantra is the same as my old boss's:

It doesn't have to be done right, it only has to be done.

My mantra is: This isn't my ship. I don't care if it hits the reef, as long as I survive the shipwreck.

That pretty much sums it all up. I'm back, and my PHB did, in fact, manage to screw things up during my absence. Shocking. Just shocking.
The hospital continued to lose money. The Herald continued to report it. The PR department continued to not communicate about change to the employees. The hospital's president sent out a memo to upper management complaining about the Herald's reporting of our dirty laundry.

Yep. It's a bitch being a government entity having to do your business in the sunshine. It justs sucks, don't it?

The only thing that amazes me about all of this is that no disgruntled employees have forwarded that memo to the Herald. Or maybe they did, and the Herald chose not to run it. But that is so far removed from the realm of possibility that I must discount the premise.

Ah, well, it's been fun, but I must go off and update the most important page on the entire hospital site: our cafeteria menus.

Sad, isn't it? My life: creating electronic ephemera.