The Twin Cities' Gay Men's Chorus answered the phones during TPT's (Twin Cities Public Television) latest flog-a-thon and one of Frater's readers, one Ross from Burnsville, wants to know who knew what and when did they know it:

{...}Here are some questions: Did TPT disclose to its audience during the Andy Williams special that their phones were being answered by the Twin Cities Gay Men's Chorus? It seems inappropriate that such a group would be answering the phones during this kind of programming. What exactly is the relationship between TPT and the Twin Cities Gay Men's Chorus? Is TPT funding this group? If so, how much is TPT giving them? Would these men really be volunteers if TPT is funding them?

Well, far be it from me to point this out, Ross, but maybe, just maybe, the Twin Cities Gay Men's Chorus likes to have Andy Williams programming on TPT, and they would like to show their support for such choice programming by answering phones no one else wants to answer. Perhaps they like Andy Williams just as much as your average, Burnsville residing, straight guy and his wife and that's why they were answering the phones during TPT's flog-a-thon.

The chorus' alleged love of the stylings of Andy Williams aside, I suppose they could have also been doing it for the PR, too. Because they do have products to sell and concert halls to fill. And, as we all know, things just don't sell themselves, so if the chorus had to go over to St. Paul and answer phones for a crummy two second endorsement of their products, they'll do that. Because that's usually what being a "media partner" of TPT entails---TPT gets free labor and money and everyone else gets bupkiss.

Ya think either one of those answers could possibly be right, or do we need an independent prosecutor to convene a grand jury to really get to the bottom of things?

Posted by: Kathy at 03:41 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Lindsay Lohan's getting all, like cathartic and shit with her second album.

{...}It's not the kind of material that helped her sell more than a million copies of her first album, "Speak." But at 19, Lohan is eager to show a more adult side — and she hopes the public is ready to see it, too.

"I do still have the younger fan base and I want them to be able to relate to some lighter songs, but I want to grow with my fans, and I've been trying to do that for so long," says Lohan. "I've just grown up really fast, and I'm thankful for that."

She's not thankful, however, for some of the things that have caused her to grow up at warp speed, especially over the past few months. Chief among them were the troubles of her father, Michael Lohan. Estranged from Lindsay, her mother, Dina, and Lindsay's three younger siblings, Michael Lohan was frequently in trouble with the law over the past year, including an arrest for driving while impaired. He was sentenced in May to up to four years in prison, and the Lohans divorced.

"When I think about it, it kind of just registers to me that it was in the papers that my father's going to jail. I think about that and I'm like, wow, that's really hard," says Lohan. "People usually don't deal with that in the public eye, for whoever it may be to see."

Lohan generally stayed mum about her father in the press, but their relationship is one of the focal points of the new record. The first single, "Confessions of a Broken Heart (Daughter to Father)," is about a daughter's abandonment by her dad, and the video, which she directed, depicts an abusive husband.

"It was really to let girls, boys, anyone that's in an abusive relationship, anyone who is going through things like that ... to put it out there that it's OK to express how you feel," says Lohan. "If I'm in the position where I can take a stand and say something important, then I'd like to do that."{...}

Lohan hopes that listeners will get as much out of listening to her record as she did making it.

"I hope people take me seriously and respect what I'm willing to put out there. People don't have to rave about it," she says. But, she adds, "I want it to touch people whatever way it will touch the people individually."

{my emphasis}

Because, like, it really sucks to have your dad thrown in jail. And I didn't talk about it because it was embarrassing and like, shit, and it seemed cooler to just, you know, keep it under wraps, until I needed a PR boost. Then it was, like, cool, to get it all out there.

And I, like, can't speak English, like, very well, either.

Posted by: Kathy at 10:13 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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It's supposed to get up to 17 degrees today, and if it chooses to do so, well, I might actually leave the house for the first time since Sunday.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

UPDATE: Because, after sub-zero temperatures, 17 degrees is quite balmy. I know this because I live in Minnesota, where you, too, can gain the experience to tell the difference between ten below zero and twenty below zero without looking at a thermometer.

Posted by: Kathy at 09:47 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Let me repeat this for the umpteenth time: yes, I live in Cake Eater Land; no, I am NOT a cake eater. Look to the left on this here blog, there will be a little link in the upper left hand sidebar that rather impudently asks, "What is a Cake Eater?" Click on it and learn, children.

I am most certainly not "well-to-do." Crikeys. If I qualified for membership in the Cake Eater club, I would not have done what I did yesterday, which was to scrub the walls in my home office with Clorox Clean-Up. Why, you ask, did I scrub the walls with a bleachy cleaner? Well, I quit smoking a few months back (Do "well-to-do" people smoke nowadays? Nope. Because, supposedly, with more wealth comes the intelligence to know when you're killing yourself in the name of stress relief. They only fire up when they're stinking drunk and because, Gawd, they need something to make themselves feel alive, and smoking reminds them of when they were particularly naughty in college tha one time...) and it's been slowly dawning on me how yellow my supposedly white walls were.

If I were "well-to-do," rather than slapping on a pair of rubber gloves and hoisting a bottle of Clorox Clean-up, I would have simply wired the house with explosives and blown it up whilst watching from the other side of the street, swaddled in mink, an ice cold martini in my hand raised in honor of that master manipulator of nitroglycerin, Alfred Nobel.

But we is po', so I scrubbed the walls myself. That disqualifies me from Cake Eater Membership. I looked it up to be sure, too.

Oh, and while I'm at the correction business, Lileks lives in Minneapolis, not Edina.

Posted by: Kathy at 09:00 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Doug wants to know what I consider to be the worst, most embarrassing episode in American history.

Okedokey. Here we go.

It's this.

If America had tried harder to get through to this man, and Eisenhower had pulled in the reins on this dude and his covert op wet dreams, the Shah's son would likely be on the throne in Teheran; people would be saying "Ayatollah Who?"; fifty-three American hostages would never have been taken from an American Embassy that had never been overrun by religious zealots; America would still have an embassy in Teheran; and, most importantly, Iran would now not be threatening us all with their enriched uranium whimsies.

We, America, who pride ourselves on our democracy, overthrew a democratically elected government to keep the oil flowing for the Brits and to set up a more strategic Cold War position for ourselves, with a friendly Shah, who we'd, quite kindly, restored to power. As a result of this interference in Iranian domestic affairs, that same Shah, who was never really the sharpest tool in the shed to begin with, became quite paranoid and went on to become a repressive ruler who used his security forces to terrorize his subjects into submission. It's no wonder the Iranians turned to radical Islam for answers, because they certainly weren't getting any from us.

If that's not bad or embarrassing, I don't know what is.

It's also an instructive episode for it, really and truly, shows you what the CIA is capable of when it wants to get down to brass tacks. Of course this was the pre-Church Committee CIA, but still... In other words, thou moonbattiest of moonbats, when it comes to the War Against Terror, you ain't seen nothing yet.

Posted by: Kathy at 11:46 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The electricity went out in much of Zimbabwe, just as dictator/asshole for life, Robert Mugabe was about to address the nation regarding power shortages.

When it comes to Mugabe, you couldn't make some of this stuff up if you tried.

Posted by: Kathy at 10:58 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Book lovers who worry about what digitization and Google Book Search mean for the future of their beloved tomes should read this.

Posted by: Kathy at 10:45 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Just ask Kathleen Blanco.

She can tell you how much more important it is to look good, rather than it is to do good.

Because looking good is what really matters in this world.

Posted by: Kathy at 10:37 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Have you ever wanted to take panoramic photographs, but you didn't want to buy a Kodak Advantix (can you even do that anymore?) or a 70mm camera that cost thousands of dollars?

You have?

Well, it's your lucky day, my devoted Cake Eater Readers, because I have a tool for you! It's called AutoStitch and if you load a bunch of photos into it, it will stitch them into a panoramic shot.

Take a look at their gallery page to see what you can do with it.

Posted by: Kathy at 10:11 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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...is two days away, but it's not too early to read these fascinating accounts of where certain people were when they heard the news that Pearl Harbor had been attacked.

{hat tip: The Worldwide Standard}

Posted by: Kathy at 01:13 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The husband made a funny on Saturday afternoon. It's somewhat obscene, so take the jump if you're interested.

Mom, you should not take the jump. more...

Posted by: Kathy at 12:38 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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"Unce...Tice...Twee Times a Wady..."

Update: Brought to you by Texxon. Life goes on. And Texxon is there. Because Buckwheat would have wanted it that way.

Update 2: Yeah, I'm still on cold medication. Why do you ask?

Posted by: Kathy at 11:54 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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1 Waiter? I'll have what she's having. Make mine a double.

Posted by: Margi at December 05, 2005 12:37 PM (nwEQH)

2 Margi darling, I hate to do this to you, dear, but you're---ahem---knocked up. You can't have what I'm having. It wouldn't be good for the baby.

Posted by: Kathy at December 05, 2005 12:48 PM (wN32K)

3 I thought it was Fee Pimes a Mady.... Oh, well, the memory is the first thing to go.

Posted by: Brian B at December 05, 2005 01:29 PM (rGfpg)

4 "Memory"? You mean, I had a memory, and now it's gone....? Gee, I wondered about that... (Hope you're feeling better, Kathy!) -- R'cat CatHouse Chat

Posted by: Romeocat at December 05, 2005 03:00 PM (yxeCz)

5 Damn! Well, Kathy. . . 1) I hope you're feeling bettah, honey; 2) Will you visit me in the hospital?; and, 3) Will you bring a short or two with you? LOLLL Hugs,

Posted by: Margi at December 06, 2005 02:54 PM (nwEQH)

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Grow the fuck up and enter the real world, why don't you?

Posted by: Kathy at 10:13 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Why does NyQuil give me funky dreams which ensures that I won't sleep well, hence negating the "nighttime-sniffling-sneezing-coughing-aching-stuffy head-fever-so-you-can-rest-medicine" bit of advertising, while the daytime cold medicine that advertises itself as "non-drowsy" knocks me on my ass and makes me want to do nothing but join the Minnesota Chapter of the Association of Righteous Nap Takers of the World?

Explain that one to me, would ya?

Posted by: Kathy at 01:42 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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take the WHAT BAD BOOK ARE YOU test.


and go to mewing.net. not as good as reading a good book, but way better than a bad one.

Who, moi?

Hat Tip: {Texas Best Grok}

Posted by: Kathy at 09:17 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Since it's Thursday and there might be a few of you who are here looking for my Demystifying Divas essay, I should inform you that I have officially left that group for good.

It was lovely while it lasted, but it's now time to move on to other things. I wish all my compadres luck, happiness and loads of fun in their future endeavors.

You can find today's Divas essays at Villains Vanquished, Just Breathe, and Who Moved My Truth. For the Men's Club experience head on over to Jamesyboy, the Naked Villains, Puffy, and The Wizard's.

Posted by: Kathy at 11:21 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Chad is just so wrong about me. Yet, somehow, I'll manage to show up and drink a few with him and the rest of the gang.

Because I'm a lush that way and I need to get out more often anyways and this is as good an excuse as any other.

If you're in the Twin Cities, mark your calendar accordingly. However, you'll want to mark it on the 17th, not the 18th, because the 18th is a Sunday and I'm pretty sure Chad goofed up with the dates and I feel like pointing it out since he said I might bite.

Posted by: Kathy at 09:01 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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