Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Dream On


No you are not dreaming, this is a picture of the Point State Park fountain. And yes, it is pink. My friend Elaine is, among other things a breast cancer survivor. Tomorrow she is honored to be one of the survivors who will be putting pink dye into the fountain at the Point of kick off Breast Cancer awareness month. I could write blog post after blog post about what she has overcome in her life. So far she has beat her latest obstacle,just like everything else. You go girl!

Speaking of dreams, my God last night I had the weirdest dream. I'm talking weird, weird, weird. I dreamt Cyril Wecht tried to pick me up and my boss told me I had to post it on my blog.
See, I told you it was weird.
Wonder where THAT came from.
Funny thing is, Cyril Wecht got on my nerves even in my dream!
I was going to put every big word I know into one sentence for this post just like he does, but I don't have enough energy this morning.
Sorry.

On to other things.
Common Sense.
How about this!
Two things come to mind.
1. Who turned this lady in? Talk about creeps.
2. If I were the parents of those children, I would find out who sent the letter and come Monday morning, I would drop the kids off at their office.
Jesus, that is why government is given a bad name!

The Anger Management Girls are headed on a field trip this Thursday. We are going to the new Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh.
THAT should provide me with all kind of new stories to write on this here blog!

Wish me luck and pleasant dreams!

Cyril Wecht????????Where the hell did that come from?

Monday, September 28, 2009

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Calm Before The Storm


This is Walnut Street today. Three blocks from my home. Hard to believe isn't it? On any day of the week, this street would be busting at the seam with activity.
Not today.
I feel like my city is under siege. Yesterday there were military transport helicopters circling overhead. Right now all I hear is police sirens. Lots of them.

There's not a person on the street. ANYWHERE!

Having lived in DC and working on Pennsylvania Avenue, I'm no stranger to protests. One time I was late for work(surprise, surprise)running to get there last minute. Marlon Brando and company had my whole building surrounded to protest the FBI's involvement in Wounded Knee. Let me tell you, I was pissed. I wanted to tell Marlon I really had nothing to do with it, plus I was late for a meeting, and my boss is going to be pissed enough as it is, so couldn't he just let me by this one little old time?

Anyway, you know what it feels like here this week, does anyone remember the scene at the end of The Untouchables when the Feds are at the train station waiting for Al Capone? The clock is ticking, the guns are aimed. Tick, tick tick, nervous perspiration is dripping from their foreheads. They are well prepared. Waiting. Then some woman starts walking up the steps with a baby carriage and screws everything up.
It feels like the city is the train station. All the guns are aimed, just waiting for a protesters to step out of line.

Hopefully I won't be the lady with the baby carriage!

Welcome G-20 Summit.

Now please go home so that my street can return to this:

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Make Love Not War N'at

So for those of you who don't read my favorite blogger of all time Ginny (formerly Pittgirl) over at That's Church Get your butt's over there and visit. You will not be sorry.

Today she writes about the Greenpeace Mensa's who dropped the sign off the West End Bridge to protest carbon dioxide emissions. The event snarled up traffic for miles. Soooo, cars backed up........engines idling.........yeah,you get the picture.


Reader Magus Patris provided us with this picture:


With the following comment:
"Greenpeace just put up a new banner on the West End Bridge. Spokesman says they feel for long suffering Pittsburghers"

Knowing first hand a Pirate fan's agony,THAT is some funny shit!

We shall overcome......Someday????

Thursday, September 17, 2009


Oh great, like I'm not already pissed off. I get this.

September 24, will feature a People's Uprising, a mass march to disrupt the G-20 summit. We'll be starting at Arsenal Park at 2:30 pm in Lawrenceville, a vibrant working class community in the city, and marching to the G-20 summit downtown. Our theme is "Power from Below, Not Impositions from Above." Our only permit is our feet and voices. The G-20 is in the house, throwing a party. Let's crash

Damn I hate party crashers. I wish my college roommates lived in Pittsburgh. Cheerio and Keto would take care of all them there protesting commie mf'ers. They would go running back to their mom's faster than that girl Mary something who tried to live with us for five minutes junior year. I guarantee it!

Seriously though folks, I have dear friends and family across the street from Arsenal Park. Jaggoff's better not mess with my town. Esp Lawrenceville. We all know how protective I am of Lawrenveville. Just ask Lisa!

So in the word's of Lawrenceville's own Mark Lewandowski of SPUD fame, HEY YOU, GET THE HELL OUTTA MY YARD!!

Or better yet,how about Charlie Daniels Just go and lay your hand on a Pittsburgh Steelers fan!

I dare you.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

My Two Cents


I know, I know. I've been strangely silent the past few weeks. A bunch of different reasons for that. Mostly I still don't have a home machine. So the only way I can write these things is to stay after work hours.......yeah, right!
Alot of crazy stuff has been in the news lately hasn't it? I'm sure you all are sitting on the edge of your seats waiting for my commentary.
So here goes. Some of it is old news. I'll try to be brief.

First off a few words of warning for G-20 protesters. Don't mess with my city Jagg Off's! I mean it. Take a bath. Get a good haircut. Get a job. The word will suddenly be a better place for which you to live.
Now don't you all go all crazy on me here. I'm not talking about the peaceful, lawful protesters. We all have that right. I'm talking about the anarchist nut cases. The ones who are pissed because they aren't going to be able to camp out in Point State Park and burn down buildings. Usually, when you visit ones city, you either stay in a hotel or with friends or make arrangements with a friend of a friend of a friend. It's really not up to us to provide a place for you to sleep. We didn't invite you here. Don't like it? Stay home!
My favorite thing about these nuts? They go on and on about big bad corporate America. You know, the companies that employee their parents so that they can spoil these jerks into thinking they can do whatever they damn well please. Yeah, so they protest everything/anything just to be cool. Then they go have their coffee at Starbucks!
Breaking that Gap window? Woo, that's telling them. I'm sure the Prime Minister of Italy is going to be sitting in the Convention Center thinking "oh wait, we better change that policy because some kid is breaking a window three miles away."
Yeah, break things. That's telling them. Real mature way of thinking.

Sorry, that took up more space than I wanted it to.
Next on my list, Kayne.
He's been all over the place saying he was going to apologise to that poor little Taylor Swift.
Hello Kayne, what's taking you so long? Actions speak louder than words.
I watched an interview with her yesterday and heard her sing for the first time. Loved her. Would never have heard of her if it wasn't for this incident. I'm thinking there are tons more people like me who are going to buy her CD. So she gets the last laugh.
(Besides, Beoynce is married to my boyfriend Jay Z. (Can you believe I have a crush on him?)So there's a little but of jealously there!
Oh and one more thing Kanye. This wasn't the freaking' Academy Awards for cryin out loud.
(Another one who was raised to think he is all important and can do whatever he wants to whomever he wants.
I'm beginning to think my generation has raised a bunch of first class jerks. What where we thinking? Some of these kids think the world revolves around them.

Next. Jim Wilson.
Someone should have dragged that man out of there by his ears.
By far my favorite was written as a comment over at my old fav Margaret and Helen.

”Rep Joe Wilson is a Col in the US Army reserves.
Please contact his Commanding Officer and remind him of his duty to maintain discipline in the ranks.
Article 88: Contempt Toward Officials: Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.”


Next, the Presidents big bad school speech.
Those of you who kept your kids home from school so as not to hear the President need to go back to school themselves. He is one of the most inspirational speakers of our time. His life lessons should be an something any parent would want their kid to duplicate.
I looked up the school districts in the Pittsburgh area that wouldn't let the speech be aired. Typical. I could have named them without reading the article. One surprise. Shaler-ville let the kids listen to it. I'm impressed.

I guess it's no accident these kids today are so fucked up with parents like this. (myself included)

Enough said.

Thursday, September 03, 2009

Apples Don't Fall Far From The Tree

September 3, 1901 Marie (JesusMaryandJosephCorkywheresmyteeth) Jeffries was brought into this world kicking and screaming and probably son-of-a-bitching everyone around her.

She was my grandmother. What a woman.

I think about her all the time. She was quite the character. I like to think I got all the good qualities of my DNA from her. Any bad qualities all of us kids had, my mother naturally blamed on the Polish in us.(which is very, very little Ski!)

All who knew my gram, my mom and me tell me that they will never be dead as long as I'm alive. I consider that a great compliment.

I stayed overnight at my gram's house every Friday night for most of my life until she died. She was the only one who would let me. My other Grandmother couldn't handle me. She could handle 32 other grandchildren at one time as long as I wasn't there. Go figure.

Anyway, those Friday nights were fun. They always started with a trip to the bakery. I would run down Butler Street to Gunther's to get cream puffs for company. Yeah, right. My great-Uncle George who lived next door would come over and sit on the porch with us (He never ate the cream puffs). They would talk for hours about people who had been dead for decades. I wish I would have taped them. When I was 10, I didn't care who these ancient people were. Now it do.

What I didn't realize until much, much later..long after she had died was what an extraordinarily strong woman she must have been. Even after her legs were amputated,as the result of her diabetes, her spirit was never broken.

She was married twice. The first marriage ended in a divorce. She had three young children. Caught him cheating and got the hell out of there. This was in 1925. Imagine being a single mother of three.....in 1925.

She then met my mother's father. Big Pete. His parents were straight off the boat from Poland. Imagine how well that went over. Nice Polish policeman takes a crazy Irish divorcee with three kids home to meet the family, none of whom spoke English! PLUS she smoked like a fiend and enjoyed a few bottles of Iron City.
I'm thinking they weren't really all that nice to her. Which would account for my mother telling us every bad habit we had in life we acquired from the Polish. My mother spoke of going there as a kid and hating it because they were all speaking in Polish and my mother sort of got the vibe that there were talking about them.

They loved my Aunt Babe because when asked, she would tell them she was Polish. My mom, she would tell them she wasn't Polish, she was a Democrat. Are we all getting who I take after?

She had to bury a son and daughter-in-law. He survived Pearl Harbor only to die of carbon monoxide poisoning after being home from the war a short time. My mother said she was never the same person.

While trying to cope with that, Big Pete dropped dead at age 53. My gram lived off his pension until her death. The big pension? $21.00 a month.

I mention these things because she did not let any of these tragedies defeat her. She loved life. You only had to be in her presence for a few minutes before she had you in stitches with a joke or singing an Irish tune.

She smoked like crazy. Towards the end of her life, she had Parkinson's disease. She never flicked her cigarette. The ash was as long as the whole cigarette. But it never dropped. Amazing.

The thing that I remember most about her, while sitting on her porch, I never knew who was going to stroll by. She treated every one around her with the dignity that they deserved. She never once rolled her eyes. Not even when Henny Nichols would stop by for the Popsicle sticks that she saved for him.

She was fiercely protective of her children and grandchildren. Just ask my cousin George. Poor thing cried once while watching fireworks when he was probably a year or two old. For the next fifteen years she locked herself in the bathroom with him during Forth of July fireworks just in case they scared him.

When we went to Parades downtown, which was often, every time a horse came down the street, she would yell at my mother and aunt to watch us even MORE carefully than they already were. In 1919 someone got kicked by a horse in a parade...... so you just never can be too careful.

Once, when I was about five or six, someone was picking on me. I ran home crying. While my mother just gave me a hug and told me to ignore them, my grandmother became furious. She told me in no uncertain terms DO NOT take shit from anyone. EVER.

My mother said that was worse thing anyone could have told me. My whole personality changed after that. Thank God, can you imagine me being a sissy-la-la?

I've been sticking up for myself for a good 53 years now.
Thanks Gram.
I'm thinking of you.

Wednesday, September 02, 2009

What's Your Coverage Baby?

Found this on Pittsburgh Woman's Blogging Society Blog.

object width="560" height="340">
It would be funny if it weren't true! How many people do you know who cannot get divorced because they do not want to lose their husband's health benefits? A lot!

That should be the new pick-up line. Hey Baby, want to check out my insurance? or My insurance has no co-pays, want to dance?