That Picture

I posted this picture on Facebook today:

But I agonized over it a little. See, the thing is, I didn't want to be one of those straight people who shores up her tolerance bona fides but smiling down benevolently on gay people. It's hella patronizing, n'est-ce pas ?

On the other hand, it's a nice picture. It's nice to see people coming home from military deployments to people they love, isn't it?

But if this had been a picture of a straight couple, would I still have felt moved to throw it up on Facebook? Or did I want to post it to make sure that everyone knows I approve, when my approval (as we used to say back home) is not hardly the point.

I went for it and posted it alongside an anecdote from, I think, Andrew Sullivan about all the good wishes gay people have bestowed on straight people and how it's nice to see that going the other way now. And that is nice. But maybe still not the best reason for posting pictures like this.

In the end, I think the best reason to share pictures like this is that it's good to be happily complicit in the normalization of images like this. The more we look at pictures of gay couples kissing, the more quotidian and unremarkable it becomes. And that's good. I'd like to live in that world. I'd like to live in a world where a picture like this gets a few "awwwws" and likes from people who just know these guys and not 50,000 people who feel compelled (like me) to pronounce upon their kiss.

I'd also like to live in a world where nice young fellows like this didn't have to go and spend a few years getting shot at in Afghanistan. But I guess that's for another post.

In Which I Suppress a Profound Urge to Punch Someone in the Neck

I've been leading this Girl Scout troop for about 5 years now. And, it's a lot of work and the cookie stuff stresses me out to no end. But, you know, I love those girls. All of them. Even though now they're getting to that age where some of them are kind of stinky and they yell a whole lot and are generally wild. But, I am firmly in the camp of these girls and I want wonderful things for all of them - no matter how loud or stinky they are.

And I'm really going to miss them upon my retirement at the end of the year. I love each and every one of those girls. But it's time for a break.

And then I read this, and was simultaneously seized with the urge to punch this asshat in the neck and re-up for another year. Here's the quote:

Nonetheless, abundant evidence proves that the agenda of Planned Parenthood includes sexualizing young girls through the Girl Scouts, which is quickly becoming a tactical arm of Planned Parenthood.

There are no words for how angry this makes me. Sexualizing girls through the Girl Scouts! What, in the name of decency, is WRONG with this man? What kind of a sick, twisted mind thinks of the Girl Scouts as a place where girls are sexualized? The Girl Scouts, for crying out loud! The Girl Scouts whose primary mission is empowering girls. To quote, "building girls of courage, confidence and character, who make the world a better place." An organization, not to put too fine a point on it, made up of LITTLE GIRLS! Who can see these girls and see them as sexualized? Who?

I'm glad you asked. I'll tell you exactly what kind of a sick twisted mind comes up with this: the kind of damaged, simple, and weird mind that is terrified of an acceptance of any sexuality beyond the most "traditional" (and I hope those scare quotes indicate just how ridiculous that word is... as if gay people sprang whole from a disco in 1975. It's just SO FUCKING STUPID). Accepting that two women might want to be in a relationship or that a child with a Y chromosome might feel more comfortable wearing pink is the same, to a mind like this, as actually having sex.

How sick is that?

And scoff and guffaw all you want at the notion of a Republican led war on women. But it's real and the front line is right at Planned Parenthood, an organization which Republican leadership would dearly love to see as Acorn Redux. Well, too fucking bad. You're not going to beat Planned Parenthood because there are too many women in America who have a real relationship with that place. And we'll fight for it.

But, for the love of decency, leave our little girls out of it!

I'm not re-upping for the Girl Scouts next year, because I just don't have the bandwidth for it, no matter how much I love all those little girls. But I am upping my monthly donation to Planned Parenthood. And I'm doing it in honor of State Representative Douchebag from Indiana.

In closing, here is a picture of my daughter who is a Girl Scout, who is aware that people are gay and that babies aren't picked in a cabbage patch and who is, absolutely and unequivocably an innocent:

Moonlight Sonata

When my mother was here for Christmas she told me a story about her father. Now, I never knew either of my grandfathers, but my father's father lived enough in hilarious anecdotes and offhand remarks that I thought of him as the man I would have called "grandaddy," if I'd known him. He had something of a posthumous personality. But my mother's father remained a stranger. I've always thought of him only as "my mother's father." Frankly, I never thought much about him at all until well into adulthood. He just never came up. I don't think he was much of a father to my mother.

But, my mother told me when she was up here that he played piano. And that when she was lying in bed as a girl, he'd be sitting at the piano trying again and again to get one piece of music right. Over and over he'd play the same run, the same few measures, and she would lie in bed and pray that he'd just get through it. I imagine the repetition was maddening for her.

As it probably is for Laney.

I've been working my way through Moonlight Sonata for a few months now. And we have a small house. So I imagine that Laney lies in bed and prays I could just get that one run with the double f sharp right (aside: why not just call it a G, Ludwig, I mean, Jesus Christ, a double f sharp is a G. For fuck's sake. Makes me crazy, even if there's probably a good goddamn reason why it's called a double f sharp and if I'd boned up on my music theory a little I'd know what that was. But I didn't and it's a goddamn G). Anyway, I'll hit that part and miss it a bit and move back a few measures and try it again. And again. And again.

Must be maddening for Laney. She's cool, though. She hasn't come downstairs yet and slammed the lid down on my fingers. Although I suspect the thought has crossed her mind a time or two.

It's not really the notes, though. I mean, you can miss a few notes and still get it right. But even if I got all the notes right (which I never do) I still wouldn't have it right. I might as well just get adjusted to the fact that I can't do it. I just can't get the feeling of it right. I just don't have whatever it is that you need to have to play Beethoven right.

I wonder if my mother's father did. I think it's sad that I probably won't ever really know.

Ah, well. I still love my piano. I love my clumsy attempts at Beethoven. I plan on taking on Pathetique soon (poor Laney). And I can do a standard pretty good. I should give the whole house a break and just work my way through the Cole Porter songbook. I can do those tunes.

But I wish I could play Beethoven for reals. I wish I could play like the lady below. It must be so wonderful.

Community... I Get It

I love this show. Love it madly. And no one watches it. And it's on hiatus. And it might get canceled.* But you know I don't think this is a simple as a Americans like dumb TV. Stupid dumb Americans. That's a facile response and TV these days is just too good to bear that out.

But, I have a theory.

I've often noticed that my husband doesn't like this show the way I do. I mean, he thinks it's funny. And thanks to the miracle of the DVR, he probably hasn't missed an episode, but he has nowhere near the passion for it I do. After last year's Christmas episode (Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas) when I said to him that that might have become my favorite Christmas episode of anything ever**, he looked at me... well, he looked at me the way I look at him when he exhaustively explains to me, play by play, how the Bears game finished. You know, a befuddlement that is equal parts affectionate and annoyed.

And then I heard this story about how one of the actresses on the show put a black goatee over her Twitter picture and a bunch of her followers asked her what that meant, which I thought was weird. So, I asked Don, "Do you know what it means when a character on a comedy shows up with a sudden black goatee?

He didn't.

And that's Community. Community is a TV show for people who understand, on an almost molecular level, what the black goatee means***. If you don't, you'll still really like the show because it's first and foremost really funny, and yet also has that nice gooey core of a lovable, lovely heart. And, man, is it sharp. I mean, the writing is so clever and smart. But if you don't know what the black goatee means... you probably won't enjoy it to the level that nerds like me do.

If you are, however, a nerd like me, I bet you enjoy Big Bang Theory intermittently (although, probably mostly for Mayim Bialik). I also bet, though, that the runaway success of that show pisses you off. And, probably, don't even get you started on the vomitous pile of excrement that is the most popular American sitcom.

Stupid dumb Americans.

*I think it will come back. I think it was probably more a show for a cable channel than a network, but I think it's got enough of passionate fan base that they'll keep it around for syndication rights, which is, I think, four seasons.

**I'm going to watch last week's Christmas episode again. I'll see if, on second viewing, that can unseat Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas. Because it was pretty great too.

***Seriously, with the black goatee. I mean, I get not being well-versed on Trekology, but South Park riffed on it like a million years ago. How can people not know this?

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Bad Spelling and Poor Grammar

This title is slightly misleading. I don't love bad spelling and poor grammar. At least, not entirely. But something happened to me after a few years of Facebooking: namely every time I saw the word "its" or "it's", I assumed it was spelled wrong. I mean, I know the difference between "its" and "it's" pretty organically. But, every time I saw the word, my first instinct was to roll my eyes at the utter failure of the internet to police the it's/its divide properly. "Honestly," I'd think. "They'll let just anyone on the internet."

And six times out of ten? The word was spelled right. But I am very attached to the notion of my own spelling and grammatical superiority. And this is a shitty way to be.

Think of manners. In their right and proper form, good manners serve to make other people feel more comfortable. When people start to use them to underscore their own social superiority, they're doing it wrong, as demonstrated in countless rom-coms where our plucky heroine gets her man after the snooty bitch he's currently dating concocts some scenario with the purpose of outing the plucky heroine as some low-class tramp.*

Grammar, in its right and proper form, serves to clarify communication. When it becomes a tool for dividing one class of people from another, you're doing it wrong.

And English grammar? The rules there are way sillier than fingerbowls and understanding the proper designation for married vs. unmarried women. Like etiquette, much of good grammar relies on having been educated on antiquated mores.

This is not to say that I don't think there's a place for making sure you're crossing the it's/its divide properly. But that place is not Facebook. That place is not casual communication. From this point forward, I vow to no longer care whether you're using "less" when you should use "fewer"; I promise to no longer smugly groan when someone slips up on their/they're/there on a status update.

One day, we'll look at a lot of correct English spelling and grammar the same way we look at the words "thee" and "thou." As current grammar mores become anachronistic, our method of communication will become more democratic. And I think that's good. Don't u?

* Oddly, the ne plus ultra of RomComs (Bridget Jones Diary) did not feature a scene where the snooty bitch tries to show up Bridget via proper etiquette. Instead, there's this skinny naked American lady who sneers, "You said she was thin," which remains the single most random moment I've ever seen in a movie. I mean, I get how the skinny naked bitch might make you feel... but she'd never say that. That was just weird.

A Sexual Harassment Primer (It's Really Not that Complicated)

Let me start by phrasing it in geek:

Sexual harassment != Telling a dirty joke

Sexual harassment != Complimenting a colleague

Sexual harassment != Flirting

Any of these things can = generally unprofessional behavior. But, to each workplace its own. And what's unprofessional behavior in one office, might well be the status quo in another.

Sexual harassment, on the other hand, is just one of the many established, crystal-clear, and obvious-to-everyone-involved-in-it-no-matter-how-much-they-pretend-its-not forms of bullying that take places every day (but less so, on a positive note, much less so) in America.

Sexual harassment is something you do *at* someone, not *with* someone. If the person on the other end is not enjoying it, is uncomfortable with it and, especially, if their discomfort is the reason you're doing it, that's sexual harassment. Is the reason you're hurling the comments and behavior around because you want to underscore which side of the power dynamic you stand on? That's sexual harassment.

To wit, during the halcyon days when I was a newbie cocktail waitress at the bar, I remember being on the wrong end of sexual comments and behavior that made me really uncomfortable a lot. And the reason the fellows in question enjoyed hurling the comments and behavior my way was because they thought it was hilarious that it made me uncomfortable. If it didn't bother me, they wouldn't do it. Thus, to the Herman Cain defenders of the world, it was my fault they did it because if it didn't bother me, they wouldn't do it. Which is kind of like saying it was my fault I got the broken rib because if I'd been wearing suitable body armor they wouldn't have felt like punching me. Does that seem hyperbolic? Is a little hyperbole really worse than entrenched, cultural victim-blaming (hint: it's not).

How about another example: if you're out with your buddies and you compliment the waitress on her nice ass, you're not doing it to pay her a compliment. You're doing it because it makes you feel like a bug guy in front of your friends at the expense of the waitress.

And, you know that's why you're doing it. You know what sexual harassment is. Stop acting so dumb. I know that decades of lazy sitcom stereotypes and beer commercials have tried topawn off the notion that men only act like assholes because they're too dimwitted to know how to behave like civilized people, but, come on, you're not. You know you're not. You know what sexual harassment is. Grow up.

Illegals!

It always surprises me when people don't understand why they shouldn't use the expression "illegals." It reminds me of arguments I used to have with my grandmother when she'd talk about "that colored fella." I start off gobsmacked and then recognize that I'm only being asked to explain the offense because the other party is defensive and looking to project their guilt the other way (which is pretty much the ne plus ultra when it comes to right-wing propaganda).

That said, I'm happy to explain. It's why I blog!

The phrase "illegals" is designed to evoke a certain people. It is not meant to describe anyone walking around in a state of illegal activity. We didn't refer to Jack Abramoff or Ken Lay as "illegals," despite the deep, damaging quagmire of illegality they subjected the whole fucking country to. Nor do we refer to people who fail to pay taxes as "illegals," (mostly, we call them 'Republican Donors'). Shoot, I bet when you heard Rick Perry and Mitt Romney trying to out "illegal" each other, no one even pictured that cute Australian guy you used to know with the expired student visa.

No, the phrase "illegals" is meant to evoke a very particular kind of person. I'm actually surprised that Herman Cain didn't bust out a phrase like "Senor Illegal," since his since of humor is just that sophisticated.

The phrase "illegal" is artful and does exactly what it's meant to do: strip the humanity away from the person it's ascribed to so that we* can feel OK about sending them back to Mexico, away from their homes. This way, we can ignore the fact that deportation rips husbands away from their wives, and mothers away from their children. It's not a real person who's lived here for twenty years, it's not a part of a community. It's not some American teenager's Mom. It's an "illegal," not an actual person that we are sending back to a kind of poverty that we don't understand in this country (yet...).

And, while we're at it with these goddamn illegals (who are also called "parasites" because the most important thing is that this is not a person), let's talk about those anchor babies who've lived here for 17 and a half of their 18 years. You know, there was a plan to let them join the military for a couple of years in exchange for legal status. Well, fuck those guys! No matter how much service you give to our country, you're still an illegal parasite. Go back to that place I'll call your home even though you've never fucking lived there.

And, as a special added bonus, we can hurl about the invective "illegals" as an easy peasy way for the rest of us to feel smug about our own legal status. After all, our ancestors followed the proper channels to get here! It doesn't matter that what constituted a "proper channel" back in the old days was to jump on a boat and get herded through Ellis Island, after which you could look forward to spending a great deal of time getting shit on by the nativist, xenophobic assholes who'd been here longer. Nativist, xenophobic bullshit is our birthright, motherfucker! My grandfather didn't stare down a "No Irish Need Apply" sign just so some illegal Mexican could wash dishes at the Denny's.

I got ranty. Sorry. This phrase "illegals" makes me very angry. But let me try to appeal to the better angels of the nativist, xenophobic right-wingers out there: you know who you sound like when you get all snobby and paranoid about the extant culture of the country? You sound like the fucking French is who you sound like. Enjoy your freedom fries.

*I say "we" here purposefully. As a supporter of the president, I count too on the wrong side of this rant. Obama's record on deportation is shameful. And cruel. And stupid. He broke up all those families and sent all those people away from their homes so he could look tough on immigration to a bunch of nitwits who don't even believe he's a real American. I hope he gets better on this in his second term.