...and the Witchita lineman, is still on the liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine...

I can hardly think straight today. My new co-worker, sitting behind me, talks all day on her cell phone, in Spanish, and in between talking listens to some retarded radio station whose playlist includes both “Witchita Lineman” AND “Hello Dolly”.

More encouragement in the “taking-back-moral-values” front, today from NYT columnist Frank Rich.

Oh good. Now they’re playing Judy Garland.

My other co-worker just returned from being stuck in the elevator, and so now I’m afraid to leave, which I have to do early, because I have to go to the National Cathedral and record a CD of patriotic and spiritual tunes. Recording. Three hours. With children. Don’t envy me. Plus, the Cathedral Choir Men Yahoo Group has been having a running argument all morning about whether or not its ungrateful to point out that the Cathedral provides us with food, but no time to eat it, and why they don’t provide low fat options for those with “special dietary needs”. Frankly, I think those girls need something else to think about.

I’ve been listening to conservative talk radio all morning, and the conservatives are up in arms that ABC is planning to show Saving Private Ryan tonight, unedited. From the uproar, you’d think they were showing Shaving Ryan’s Privates. Apparently, the problem is not the unrelenting blood and gore of the first twenty minutes, but the eighty-seven instances of the word “fuck”.

Hey, morons: TURN OFF YOUR FUCKING TV. If you’re afraid your children might accidentally hear a dirty word, then pay some fucking attention to what your children are doing and make them do something else for three hours. Or pick up a fucking book. Or go watch your fucking FOX News Channel (though I hasten to add, FOX is responsible for such highbrow, moral fare as “The Simple Life” and “Trading Spouses”. Enjoy.)

Jeez, you’d think people didn’t have a brain at all.

“You Light Up My Life” now. Help me!

I feel like I’m surrounded by crazy people all the day, because it's not just at work that I'm beset, but at home in the hood as well. Our neighbor, whom shall remain nameless (suffice it to say she’s at least fifty, lives with her parents, and is never seen outside unless she’s wearing a man’s t-shirt and sweat shorts), puts cat food in the sewers. FOR THE RACCOONS. We can hear her late at night calling out names like “Cletus” and “Mumaw”, and we’re not entirely sure if she’s calling cats or raccoons. In the morning, if she happens to spy Jet walking Dino, she will talk baby talk (not to Jet, apparently, or to Dino…perhaps to the ‘coons?) until Jet manages to get around the corner and out of her sight. I’m CERTAIN her house is filled with years’ and years’ worth of newspapers.

Speaking of crazy old women with cats, LSBB is desperate for me to write about Aunty, a relative of ours who is not REALLY our Aunt, but is Mother Rubble’s second cousin once removed, or something. Lifelong spinster, lived with the same woman for forty years…but that’s never spoken of. You get the picture. Mother Rubble has the biggest heart in the world, apparently, and still sees Aunty with some regularity, even though Aunty lives in the same town and didn’t speak to or call Mother Rubble for THREE YEARS, while Big Ray was passing from the earth and she really could have used the help and support, and has never offered ANY explanation for her odd behavior. This, after she decided one day to stop acknowledging Jet’s existence, which she demonstrated by bringing a friend to Thanksgiving Dinner and pointedly introducing her friend to every one in the room EXCEPT Jet.

No one, perhaps, has faced Aunty’s wrath more than LSBB, who at the tender age of six, when she was as precious as any angel, was sitting in an easy chair with her dainty child feet curled up around her, and Aunty screamed “Get your GODDAMMED FEET off the furniture”. I will re-emphasize, she was SIX. This was around Christmas time, and was the first time any of us had ever laid eyes on her. That was followed by Big Sister BB getting in an argument with Aunty and throwing a hairbrush at Aunty, hopefully with all her might, and Aunty setting about changing her airline tickets so she could leave right away. LSBB, bless her little heart, overheard the call to the airlines and went to tattle, so that Aunty could be talked out of leaving and Christmas wouldn’t be ruined.

Oh, she was talked out of it, all right. Whereupon Aunty cornered LSBB and hissed “Next time mind your own GODDAMNED Business”. SIX.