It's entry-palooza this week, isn't it??

I was watching Family Guy last night and I saw something that reminded me so much of my fabulous roommate Natalie. For anyone who doesn't know Natalie, she's this great person I met in California. She's been such a great friend these last few months and we've had a great time tearing it up in Visalia, Fresno and recently Sacramento.

She moved in this last October and, if you read the blog, her entrance corresponds with my sudden drop-off in writing in this silly thing. I mean, two of the entries I have done in the last 24 hours were done in her absense and I was only able to tweak out my President Ford tribute while she was sleeping on the couch.

Anyways, I'm really glad to have a friend like her and I look forward to spending even more time with her next year. We'll be swimming in men next year, I just know it! More on Natalie later if I am able to push out this year-in-review thing I've been throwing around in my head...

Another Christmas is over and, sadly, this was the second Christmas I spent alone. I know, doesn't that sound depressing? It's really not. it's kind of understandable even. When I moved to Visalia in 2005, Christmas was less than two months away and I had three months until I could take any vacation. Spending Christmas at work was a pretty easy conclusion to come to. I didn't resent it. It sucked, but it was life. In exchange, I got to move to a fabulous new place and get the escape I had so desired.

At the same time I was grabbling with the fact that I couldn't see my family then, I was jotting down a vacation for this very week. I wanted the few odd days I had left of vacation for the year to pile up here so I could spend at least 2006 with my family. Unfortunately, a senior coworker put all his chips down and won out (but not before quitting a week before taking the vacation, effectively preventing me from spending the holiday with my family when I very well could have). Since that avenue was blocked, I looked to New Year's and on Friday I'm gone.

It's only four days off coupled with a weekend, but I think it will be enough. I'm flying home to Ohio to be with my mother for a few days. Just like my Georgia trip earlier this year, I am so excited about this trip. The one thing I almost can't stand about living here is the lack of familiarity. Everyone here seems to have some place to call home. They have some enclave to which they can return to. For me, all of that is no less than 2,000 miles over the Sierra. It's very seldom that I feel fulfilled by the familiar.

Having the opportunity to go back is like a breath of fresh air. I am looking forward to throwing Joey's tennis ball around my mother's backyard and harassing that little dog in the fresh layer of snow. I got my mother some thoughtful gifts and I look forward to seeing what she thinks of them. I can't wait to see my grandma and wish her a Merry Christmas in person and thank her again for all she did for me last year.

Dayton represents to me this mysterious, marginal place. I was born there but I have never had a real connection there. Answering the question, "Where are you from?" has always presented a problem for me. Looking down the runway now, setting aside any other plans I would have for New Year's (and they range from a fabulous wedding to imploding of a Showgirls landmark), I realize Ohio has become something new for me. Now, I am just happy I am going home.

And in three months, I just get to do it again...

It's not every day that, while working on tomorrow's front page, you have to scrap the whole thing to accommodate the death of a president. But tonight was such a night:

Gerald R. Ford, 38th U.S. President, Dies
By James M. Naughton and Adam Clymer
New York Times

Former President Gerald R. Ford, who was thrust into the presidency in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal but who lost his own bid for election after pardoning President Richard M. Nixon, has died, according to a statement issued late last night by his wife, Betty Ford.

He was 93, making him the longest living former president, surpassing Ronald Reagan, who died in 2004, by just over a month.

The statement did not give a cause, place or time of death, but Mr. Ford, the 38th president, had been in and out of the hospital since January 2006 when he suffered pneumonia, most recently in October at the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif., for medical tests. He returned to his home in Rancho Mirage after five days of hospitalization.

... Mr. Ford, who was the only person to lead the country without having been elected as president or vice president, occupied the White House for just 896 days — starting from a hastily arranged ceremony on Aug. 9, 1974, and ending after his defeat by Jimmy Carter in the 1976 election. But they were pivotal days of national introspection, involving America’s first definitive failure in a war and the first resignation of a president.

After a decade of division over Vietnam and two years of trauma over the Watergate scandals, Jerry Ford, as he called himself, radiated a soothing familiarity. He might have been the nice guy down the street suddenly put in charge of the nation, and if he seemed a bit predictable, he was also safe, reliable and reassuring. He placed no intolerable intellectual or psychological burdens on a weary land, and he lived out a modest philosophy. "The harder you work, the luckier you are," he said once in summarizing his career. "I worked like hell."

Of course, I learned in the newsroom tonight that the former president was horrible at walking. Just like the current President Bush will go down in history for his various "Bushisms," Ford had a stride that people will never forget. Remember that time he fell down the steps of Air Force One?

It's always sad when president dies. We actually had a discussion today over how much front page space should be devoted to former President Ford. Is he a strip lede? Is he a centerpiece? Is he a photo sell or tease to an inside story? Well, the centerpiece won out.

I personally think that the former President Homer Simpson story clearly passes the dead president test: If he's dead, 1A centerpiece lede. William Henry Harrison, the ninth president who died in office from pneumonia after only 30 days because he insisted on delivering his inauguration address in the rain, is probably the only exception. He deserves a downpage 2-inch story that contains.

He might have not been as mounumental as Nixon. He wasn't as charismatic as Carter. He didn't stand up as a Republican to Reagan. Bush 41 could beat him at a keg stand and Bush 43 could at least walk straight. And he probably wasn't as hung as Clinton. But we'll still remember Ford, the man who fell ass-backwards into the most powerful position in the world.

On the heels of my entry discussing the revelation that soy makes men gay, I am not surprised to see this coming:

Kids with high IQs grow up to be vegetarians
HealthDay

As a child's IQ rises, his taste for meat in adulthood declines, a new study suggests.

British researchers have found that children's IQ predicts their likelihood of becoming vegetarians as young adults -- lowering their risk for cardiovascular disease in the process. The finding could explain the link between smarts and better health, the investigators say.

"Brighter people tend to have healthier dietary habits," concluded lead author Catharine Gale, a senior research fellow at the MRC Epidemiology Resource Centre of the University of Southampton and Southampton General Hospital.

Recent studies suggest that vegetarianism may be associated with lower cholesterol, reduced risk of obesity and heart disease. This might explain why children with high IQs tend to have a lower risk of heart disease in later life.

It's really funny how the story caught a lot of buzz in the newsroom. I am, shocker, the only vegetarian in the building to speak of (as far as I know). There are plenty of ex-vegetarians, and they are always asking me what's going to push me back to the dark side. I have no idea, honestly, I think when my boyfriend cooks me a big turkey for Thanksgiving or someone sends me a Chick-fil-A chicken biscuit express mail that I'll cave.

Being a vegetarian is positively fabulous. For one, it's always fun to take the moral high ground. I personally do it for nutritional reasons, but I have not shuttered at the idea of wagging my finger when it's funny or convenient. I mean, I cringed running in Yokohl Valley passing all the beef cattle. It's sad to think of all the delicious hamburgers that came from those doe-eyed fatlings.

Next Friday, for our newspaper's holiday party, I am bringing in plenty of fake chicken for everyone. It's going to be delicious, I'll be sure to convert someone or at least get some pompous brat taste the nugget and complain all party on how it tasted like tree bark or something. Oh well, those carnivores are too stupid to understand anyways.

Well, this clinches it. They've got my number with this one:

A devil food is turning our kids into homosexuals

There's a slow poison out there that's severely damaging our children and threatening to tear apart our culture. The ironic part is, it's a "health food," one of our most popular. ...

The dangerous food I'm speaking of is soy. Soybean products are feminizing, and they're all over the place. You can hardly escape them anymore. ...

Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That's why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today's rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. (Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because "I can't remember a time when I wasn't homosexual." No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can't remember a time when excess estrogen wasn't influencing them.

I always wondered why I insisted on the tofu and fake chicken. It seems I need the stuff to sustain the change, huh. Wow, and to think that I only need to give up soy to get into women. I don't know if I can give up a delicious baked tofu sandwich from Watson's Veggie Garden. I mean, the one I had today was positively blissful.

I would certainly qualify my attitude toward music lately to be kind of standoffish. It's been a while since I've bought an album that has just wowed me. I don't buy music that often and there are very few albums a year that make it on my must-have list. The two albums I have recently purchased, The Killer's Sam's Town and the Scissor Sister's Ta-dah were very good, but nothing has blown me away like Nada Surf's 2003 album Let Go.

Sadly, this is not one I have bought yet, though I am only a glance at the music store away from snatching this us. My friend Ali (who I am so happy to say I'm going to see this weekend in Sac-of-tomatoes) sent the mp3's to me via AIM. At first, it was just to supplement my Nada Surf collection, which included a few stray songs, "Popular" and "Bacardi", as well as their 2005 album The Weight Is A Gift, which I liked a lot.

The album came out amid very little promotion and would fit most accurately in the indie scene. I don't remember hearing any song from the album back in '03, but from what I understand, the track "Inside of Love" got moderate airplay overseas, but obviously not enough to overcome to oft-spoken phase, "Nada Surf? Those guys that did 'Popular?'" They are so much more than "Popular."

Let Go

1. Blizzard of '77
2. Happy Kid
3. Inside of Love
4. Fruit Fly
5. Blonde on Blonde
6. Hi-Speed Soul
7. Killian's Red
8. Way You Wear Your Head
9. Neither Heaven nor Space
10. Là Pour Ça
11. Treading Water
12. Paper Boats

Let Go is a classic indie-rock album. Every track on the album is inspired and absolutely unique. In the past year, I have had many experience, and it seems with every one of them I accompanied it with a track from this album. In my eternal running effort, "Inside of Love" was just one of a myriad of songs that brought me outside to train weekly for the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon last June. "Neither Heaven nor Space" and "Treading Water" are songs I picked up shortly before my hikes up Alta Peak and Mt. Whitney respectively. I can't help but listen to those songs and think about the heights I reached. Palling around with Natalie, my fabulous roommate, I have partied out to "Blizzard of '77," "Hi-Speed Soul" and even the slow-paced "Blonde on Blonde," which is featured in our favorite Queerstrokes movie Summer Storm.

But I think it was "Fruit Fly" that put me over the edge. Ok, this song is written exactly about what you think it is. The guy leaves a bag of fruit on the table way too long, and when he throws it away, he laments on the fate of the wayward fruit flies that remain. Of course, the flies chime in with buzzing guitars and great enthusiasm:

Geometric patterns
Smearing out of control
Only have enough gas left
For the beer can to the bowl
What can you do but go on?

"Fruit Fly"
Nada Surf

This album is just so freaking original and it gives me so much joy. Currently rocking out to the slow jam "Killian's Red," just because it's a great song.

I don't know why I get such a rush from albums everyone else has long forgot. Like last night, on my way to go out after work I pop in New Order's Power, Corruption & Lies, their breakthrough album from 1983. I can't think of anyone else who might have the slightest interest in "Age of Consent" (but maybe the track "Blue Monday"), but still, shouldn't I be rocking out to Beck or something? My taste in music is so strange, I just thought I'd share.

Anyways, pick up Let Go if you haven't already. If you are into Nada Surf, you won't regret it.

I'm so bad. I have neglected my blog for two straight weeks now. And it's not like I don't have things to write. I totally have plans. Three entries have been percolating — one on The Color Purple, the second movie that made me cry; one beginning a series of entries about my training for second marathon; and another one on this album I've been listening to the past year, Nada Surf's Let Go, which is just flippin' awesome.

Anyways, for now, I'm going to chime in with a beautiful photo of Marilyn Monroe. I added Gentleman Prefer Blondes recently and I can't wait to see it. Of course, I must first sift through the latest season of my favorite lesbian show and throw back another disk of the Golden Girls. But for now I can bask in beauty of Norma Jean.