My resume won't be in the mail

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090105/us_nm/us_usa_fbi

Forget it, Feebs. I hate to crush your hopes in this brutal fashion, but I'm just not going to apply. So quit giving me the puppy dog eyes. Not gonna happen.

Yes, I know I'd look all hot and Sculliesque in a non-descript suit with a Glock .50 strapped to my hip. And put me in the windbreaker with the big "FBI" in yellow on the back, and I'd look cuter than J. Edgar Hoover in a prom gown.

But we both know how it would go. You'd see my mad psych skills and want me to be a profiler. But I'm still in recovery from seeing Silence of the Lambs. I get this image of Buffalo Bill doing the tuck and cover, and I just . . . eeewww. Just eeewww. And even though I'd probably make the best hostage negotiator of all time ["Send in the Wendy's fries - extra salt. But no soda. If they want a Coke they're going to have to give me a hostage. How ya like them salty apples, bad boy? And turn up the volume on the Beyonce CD. No, it's not to torture them. I just like "Put a Ring On It". If ya liked then ya shoulda . . ."], but I just can't see spending my time sitting outside a fundamentalist compound. Do you know where those people always live? Waco my ass.

I'm sorry, FBI. It's just not meant to be.

Drink a cup of kindness

In all the rush of the New Year, I forgot my annual "grateful" post. So here it is:

Thanks to everybody who has wandered in to read the ramblings of a semi-sane babbler. Or babblings of a semi-insane rambler. Especially "thank you" to Washington Gardener, Angela J., Mo and Des for your comments, and making sure to call me on it when I wander off the "semi" path. I appreciate ya.

Thanks to the Dallas theater community for giving me lots to talk about in 2008. I'm always in debt to people who work to keep me amused. Not that keeping me amused is that hard. Any shiny object will do. But you went above and beyond the call.

On the literary front: Thanks to Neil Gaiman for the Graveyard Book. You know I'm just hanging around waiting for the next big book. But tasty little tidbits like this make the wait bearable. And thanks to Emma Bull for the best book I read all year (Tombstone) - I want MOOOORRRRREEEE! Please.

Muchas gracias to Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers for all the good music, and the great road trip. And also thank you to any friend I strong armed into going to a show - especially you, Mo. You're a trooper.

And thanks to the great state of Texas. If you were half as nuts, I would have nothing to blog about. And ditto that for the entire Presidential election, Wall Street and anything else I sit and watch on AC360 feeling a nice cleansing outrage over. If it weren't for doinks like you, I'd never get to feel superior.

And, of course, as always - thanks to Hugh Jackman. Just for being you. Kisses.

It was a rough year. And the next one isn't looking any smoother. But that's okay. We're just going to grab hands and kick on. Life is what we make it. And y'all make it fun. Thank you.

Back from the big swampy.

After New Years, a couple of friends and I decided to jump in the car and head to Nakadish, LA for the weekend. M had been there last year, and said the holiday light display was really nice, and the town was fun to visit, with lot of history in the area. Don’t bother looking for Nakadish on the map. After many funny looks from the locals, and at the locals as we said, “could you say that again?”, we finally put together that it’s how Natchitoches is pronounced. Seriously. I’m so thankful to have found a state where they are even more screwed up than Texas about pronouncing things. The entire state needs to get together and buy a Hooked on Phonics tape. I understand that’s how it’s pronounced. But that’s not what you wrote down, folks. There is no way you can get Nakadish from those letters.

Anyhoo. Great area. We just jumped in the car and drove around, alternating historical sites with fried food restaurants. There is nothing a Louisianan won’t dip in batter and throw in hot oil. I was actually trying to complete out that Hank Williams song “On the Bayou”. You know, I had crawfish pie (pictured with some kick ass beans and rice at Lasyone's) and filet gumbo. I just needed some jambalaya. But when I finally found it at a restaurant called Crawdaddy’s in Shreveport, my jeans were about to pop and I didn’t think I could do justice to it. (Crawdaddy’s, by the way, is excellent – y’all stop in.) I didn’t actually drink anything out of a Mason jar either, so I guess I’ll have to make another trip to gator country and have another go at a perfect bayou experience. Poor me. (I did eat blackened gator at Papa's, by the way. Eh, it’s okay. Tastes more like pork than chicken. Whatevs.)

We hit Fort Jean Baptiste while we were there. Why they haven’t made a movie about Louis Jucherau de St. Denis, the guy who founded the garrison there is beyond me. He came to Louisiana in the early 1700s as a French marine. Made friends with the Indians, learned their language, got tribal tattoos, wrangled with the Spanish, then married the Spanish commandant’s granddaughter, got knighted and started a dynasty that would control that part of Louisiana for decades. As the guide who took us through the fort said, "You can't make this stuff up." The tatts alone say indie film to me. Like with a young Harvey Keitel type playing St. Denis. They have the entire fort recreated in Natchitoches, so they could probably make the movie cheap. Ah, Hollywood. Why do you never listen to me?

So, great food, and lots of it, and great history, and lots of it. Good way to start the new year.

Senora Frog

As promised, here's a pic of one of the frogs I'm doing for my nieces. Her green sister is still in progress, and only has about half of one arm at the moment. I'm a really basic crocheter. Nothing fancy. But luckily this pattern from Lion Brand just cruises the edges of my abilities. And of course, I had to put my own stank on it. I doubled the size, and did knitted i-cord arms and legs. The single crochet limbs on the original pattern looked to wimpy. A frog's gotta have some jumping power, ya know? If I can get done with the green frog in time, I think I'm going to go back and put blue lips on this one. The red lips just aren't enough of a contrast.

Technically, my nieces are probably too old for stuffies. But it's still kind of fun to get one on Christmas.

Wheez the People

On Saturday, I made myself lay down and just stop. All afternoon. I’d sleep, drink orange juice, sleep, have a cookie, sleep, watch tv, sleep. Punctuated by a lot of couching, hacking, sneezing and hauking. Such a pretty image. I’d been dragging butt for a week and a half with a raunchy cold, and I thought if I just slept it off, I might finally kick the crud. Then I did much the same on Sunday morning, adding in crocheting frogs for my nieces (fantastically cute – I’ll post pics). But it was really just a re-group and get over this damned cold once and for all thing.

Being out of commission has its advantages. I missed the entire start of this round of trouble in Gaza. I hate trouble in that area. Freaks me out no end (I think it’s a hangover from my Baptist school days; nothing says Armageddon like trouble in the Holy Land). But I also felt like I accomplished nothing. You know how in the roll up to the holidays, you’re just a machine. Your whole weekend is nothing but checking items off your list – bought this, cleaned that, mailed this, baked that. After all that, it’s kind of hard to see laying on the couch, filling tissue after tissue and shotgunning Robitussin straight from the bottle as a real achievement. Woo-hoo kicked snot’s ass! Yeah!