Bring on 2009

We (and by "we," I mean "I") here at You Forgot Poland! wish you the best in the coming year.

Happy Holidays!

Everyone here at You Forgot Poland! wishes you a very merry holiday season. To those of you who still come by my humble corner of the blogosphere---including those of you who still come by for that bikini wax video---thank you very much for your presence.

I turn 36 today. It's not really hitting me yet; I have tons of stuff on my mind, both on a personal and professional level, and it's making me feel a little overwhelmed.

Needless to say, I'll have plenty of time during the the coming year to revel in the joys of being 36.

There are joys to being 36 ... right?

Aretha Does Mariah

Here's a clip (from my long-lost blog love, Crunk and Disorderly) of Aretha Franklin doing a cover of Mariah Carey's "Touch My Body."



And here's another clip (courtesy of FourFour) in which the Queen of Soul offers a little commentary on the subject:

Last-Minute Holiday Shopping

Looking for a unique gift to give that extra-special someone on your Xmas list?

How about meat perfume?

The Whopper sandwich is America's favorite burger. FLAME (TM) by BK(r) captures the essence of that love and gives it to you. Behold the scent of seduction, with a hint of flame-broiled meat.

Props to the fine folks at EaterSF for the heads up.

Home Alone: The Otter Edition

From my new favorite blog.

Props to Tony for the heads up.

If I ever get married ...

... we MUST play this game at my bridal shower:



I'm just saying.


Props to Alisa for the link!

Get well soon, Bettie

This is a bummer:

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Bettie Page, a 1950s pinup known for her raven-haired bangs and saucy come-hither looks, was hospitalized in intensive care after suffering a heart attack, her agent said Friday.

"She's critically ill," Mark Roesler of the Curtis Management Group told The Associated Press.

He said the 85-year-old had the heart attack Tuesday and was hospitalized Friday in the Los Angeles area.

A family friend, Todd Mueller, said Page was in a coma. When asked to confirm, Roesler said, "I would not deny that," but he would not comment further on her condition.

Getting old sucks.

UPDATE, 12/11: Bettie Page passed away tonight at age 85.

(Image courtesy of Stencilry.org.)

Shop Joe

I thought we'd heard the last from Samuel J. Wurzelbacher. But I was wrong.

Make of it what you will, but later this month a book [Joe the Plumber] co-wrote with relatively unknown author and publisher Thomas N. Tabback, "Fighting for the American Dream," will come out. Thousands of copies have already been pre-ordered at $24.95 each via a star-spangled website (theme: "It's about we the people, not we the government") that also offers Joe-approved merchandise and the ability, for a price, to post to its blog and forum.

[...]

"Fighting for the American Dream" is part biography and part current events, Mr. Tabback said, adding that it gives a behind-the scenes account of Mr. Wurzelbacher's encounter with Mr. Obama and what happened in the weeks that followed. It will also dip into Mr. Wurzelbacher's personal history and his take on American values.

Mr. Tabback said that the site is Mr. Wurzelbacher's new platform to give voice to those that may not have one. "[It] will help galvanize an effort for regular folks in the country to be heard on Capitol Hill and local and state governments," he said.

Joining Joe, for a fee But that will come at a cost. For $19.95, Mr. Wurzelbacher fans can become "Freedom Members" with posting rights on his blog and forum. With membership they also get a monthly newsletter from Mr. Wurzelbacher and 10% off "Shop Joe" merchandise. For that price, they also become "an integral part of an American movement to preserve our American Dream," the site claims, but what that means remains unclear.

Please, Jah. Make it stop.

Reflections on McCain's Failed Campaign

I just finished reading the Rolling Stone article, "Requiem for a Maverick" by Matt Taibbi, which provides his perspective on how McCain's 2008 presidential campaign got so fucked up. Here's just a sample:

In short, McCain entered this election season being the worst thing that anyone can be, in the eyes of the Rove-school Republicans: Different. Independent. His own man. He exited the campaign on his knees, all his dignity gone, having handed the White House to the hated liberals after spending the last months of the race with numb-nuts Sarah Palin on his arm and Karl Rove's cock in his mouth. Even if you wanted to vote for him, you didn't know who you were voting for. The old McCain? The new McCain? Neither? Both?

I could have done without the Karl "Doughboy" Rove fellatio image. But interestingly --- or maybe not so interestingly, now that I think about it --- Taibbi also lays blame on the media and the rest of us for buying into all of this bullshit back when Not My President was up for election in the first place:

In short, it was an utterly degrading bourgeois/ruling-class media deception that "ordinary Americans," if they had any brains at all, ought to have been disgusted by to the point of rebellion. But ordinary Americans, alas, would have been perfectly happy to spend the rest of eternity mesmerized by the endless and endlessly condescending I'd Like to Have a Beer With You sideshow, leaving the boring policy stuff to the people who actually pay for the campaigns. Things could have just kept getting dumber and dumber, and no one would have been surprised. There was certainly no trend that suggested our presidential elections were bound to return to being great, sweepingly important contests of ideas. But that's what happened.

But it's not all entirely depressing. Taibbi ends the article, thusly:

When Obama took the stage in Grant Park as president-elect, that question was answered. We pulled off an amazing thing here, delivering on our society's most ancient promises, in front of a world that still largely thought of us as the home of Bull Connor's fire hose. This dumbed-down, degraded election process of ours has, in spite of itself and to my own extreme astonishment, brilliantly re-energized the American experiment and restored legitimacy to our status as the world's living symbol of individual freedom. We feel like ourselves again, and the floundering economy and our two stagnating wars now seem like mere logistical problems that will be overcome sooner or later, instead of horrifying symptoms of inevitable empire-decline.

For this to happen, absolutely everything had to break right. And for that we will someday owe sincere thanks to John McCain, and Sarah Palin, and George W. Bush. They not only screwed it up, they screwed it up just right.

Obviously, I'm really happy that Obama, not McCain, won the presidency. I just worry about the eight-year-old clusterfuck Obama just inherited. I don't doubt that Obama will be a successful president; I just worry about how long righting the wrongs of eight years of Bush will take. People I care about are losing their jobs; people I care about are on the verge of bankruptcy due to adjustable rate mortages; people I care about are being forced to take unpaid vacations; people I care about are unable to afford any kind of healthcare whatsoever. I remain optimistic about Obama's presidency, because I have to be; to think otherwise would leave me hopeless, jaded, cynical and completely disengaged.


Anyway, read the article in its entirety here.


Props to Otto Man at Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Nachos for the link.

Adventures in Bacon

I'm simultaneously enthralled and repulsed by this:

See it in all its glory here. Props to Kenneth for the link.

Fortune Cookie Wisdom

I suspect bloggers create regular features (e.g., "Random Friday _____blogging") to help prevent long periods of writer's block. It is in that spirit that I offer to you, dear reader(s), my new regular feature, Fortune Cookie Wisdom. Here's today's profound offering:

Be yourself, and you will always be in fashion.

Photo lifted from here. Inspiration from this post. Writer's block coming from who knows where.