GOP Vixen

Mired in dental hell

As I noted at the beginning of this week, I was set to have my impacted wisdom teeth yanked on Monday. I was all ready to go and get knocked out, having gladly paid extra for full sedation. However, my itty bitty veins came back to haunt me, and after a full hour of bruising tourniquets, getting whacked on my hands and arms, getting jabbed in my arm and my foot (yep, as bad as it sounds) only to have the veins close after a teeny bit of sedative seeped in, it's official: GOP Vixen must be a zombie. Actually, they were forced to proceed with a novocaine-only bony extraction, which I partly felt, and was particularly evil considering the bad local-anesthesia surgery I had last year where I felt the knife. Recovery has been slow and painful going (mucho, mucho thanks to Scott and Crabtree for their greating posting!!, but I wanted to post a bit before konking out from the drugs.

Using my illusion

I'll be AWOL for a couple o' days as I go under the knife to get impacted wisdom teeth yanked. But afterward, while recuperating at Chez Bridget, I plan to read Slash's autobiography -- and, as a colleague pointed out, it will probably be that much more interesting since I'll simultaneously be taking Vicodin.

I promise to return with a full book report! That which I remember, that is...

Just say no to happy-family letters!

In Friday's paper, L.A. Daily News staff writer Dana Bartholomew wrote about the holiday family form letter: that annoying piece of paper tucked into greeting cards that hints at major dysfunctionality by painting one's family with an impossibly perfect brush. Nowadays, it's also known as the thing I don't read. In fact, the weight of a card can often indicate if there is a stiff, 8 1/2x11 sheet folded into fourths lurking within, thus giving the recipient adequate warning.

Really, when did a holiday greeting turn into an attempt to gloat mightily about all the attributes that make you and your kin so much better than the recipient? I don't buy the excuse that this is an opportunity to catch up on the year in review, considering that e-mail has made keeping in touch year-round so much easier. Why not just say Merry Christmas/Happy Hanukkah, let the recipient know that you're grateful to have him/her in your life, and sign the card? How about using the time that would have been spent crafting the family letter trotting the clan down to volunteer at a homeless shelter, and then resisting the urge to gloat about your charity later to everyone on your Christmas card list?

Rebel chic

Rebel style at its finest -- not only are the reflective Oakleys a mean touch, but we're digging the wrap that actually looks like it's a pair of camouflage pants wrapped around this dude's head. Rage Boy in Pakistan could take a cue from his style -- though it does look as if this stood up, he'd tip over from the sheer weight on his noggin.

Role reversal in the dating game

Had an interesting conversation with other single, thirtysomething women at the wedding I went to this weekend (which was wonderfully "anti-wedding" -- five-minute vows, no poufy Cool Whip dress, no tiaras, no bouquet or garter toss, and fudgy cake instead of a tasteless white confection with plastic bride/groom topper). You know that stereotype that, after crossing the age 28 or so threshold, women become desperate for marriage and kids and embark on the husband hunt? Anecdotal evidence I've heard and witnessed over the past few years seems to indicate that's reversed, and instead single women intent on waiting for nothing less than love keep meeting men who are desperate to get married and have kids. And the women with whom I was speaking at the wedding related similar experiences: Men bringing up marriage on a first date. Men complaining they're just "tired of dating," as if the women they're telling this to are actually going to rejoice in this statement, rather than thinking they're the last resort of a man with a ticking biological clock of some sort. One 37-year-old woman at the wedding told me that one man she was dating asked if she would just have a baby for him, then he would take care of it.

It's like the dating "Twilight Zone." Every woman who ever pressured a man or acted desperate is to blame, because now all women are getting it back tenfold! Eeeeek!!

FIRST comes love, THEN comes marriage -- know what I'm sayin'?

Bridget's hot Caribbean travel tip!

Go between hurricanes.

That's it!

Public service announcement

If you're a dwarf, beware the dangerous combination of a vacuum cleaner, super glue, and male genetalia. Really.

Props to Notre Dame High

I enjoyed visiting the Sherman Oaks journalism students this afternoon and discussing the finer points of writing commentary, how to build a network of sources and (shocking!) the secret life of newsrooms. Thanks for inviting me, and enjoy the rest of those innocent years before you turn into twisted (delightfully so, of course) journalists!

You better work... supermodel!

Yes, that's Gorbachev as the new face of Louis Vuitton's ad campaign! Ain't capitalism grand, Gorby?

'Sex and the City' was right!

The University of Texas at Austin study that was released earlier this week was no surprise -- men's and women's motivations for having sex are pretty much the same. Men aren't a bunch of wicked lusty creatures -- women are just as horny. Will someone burn all the Mars-Venus malarky books now, please? On the finding that we're basically all the same, it made me think of an episode of "Hannity & Colmes" (I know, not the first thing to turn someone on) about a year ago, when Laura Schlessinger was on, spinning some half-baked theory about wives needing to be more submissive to their husbands, when Sean Hannity asked if she meant that a woman should be giving it up whenever the husband wanted. "Well, is he good?" Schlessinger responded.

I now return to lusting after the Royal Bank of Scotland commercial guy...