Shouting Down the Well

Moonlight Sonata

2012-01-06T18:58:00.001-08:00

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

2011-12-12T19:03:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-29T18:56:00.000-08:00

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)

2011-11-02T18:23:00.000-07:00

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!

2011-10-19T17:43:00.000-07:00

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.

Teach Your Children (all of them.. both genders) Well

2011-10-17T19:52:00.000-07:00

I was watching TV as I put together some packets for my Girl Scout meeting tomorrow (I still find it so surprising that I run a Girl Scout troop) when the innocuous sit com I was watching faded into the execrable Two and a Half Men. As has been stated on many occasions, I am an optimistic woman by nature, but the fact that that show is so overwhelmingly popular makes me almost as nervous for the future of humanity as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch does. That's not true... nothing scares me as much as that garbage patch and that's the truth, so let's focus on somewhat less terrifying piles of garbage.

The cold open joke was one about how men have the money and women reciprocate for money with sex because hahahahaha. I turned the TV off.

As a girl and as young woman, I totally accepted as gospel that boys want sex more so girls are responsible for saying no to the boys who are too overwhelmed by lust to be trusted to have good judgement. Girls are taught that... not necessarily by their parents, but by American culture at large. It's endemic. Or it was.

Fortunately, feminism has made great strides and there are lots of good feminists out there (male and female) raising good feminist kids.

So here's what you tell your kids (full disclosure: I read this on Jezebel and it struck me like a bolt out of the blue how simple it is... but I couldn't find the link because I didn't look very hard): no one should feel coerced into sex. Period. That's it in a nutshell. No one should have sex because they feel like they ought to. No one should feel like sex is something they're doing for someone else. No, please, baby, please, Imgonnadieifyoudon't. No, justforasecondbabyplease. No, ifyoulovedmeyouwould. All of that is coercive and it is rapey as hell.

To be very serious here, protecting your children against the rape culture (it's a real fucking thing, get over your defensiveness about it) does not mean teaching your daughters how to avoid rape; it does not mean lecturing your daughters about how they need to be careful about how they dress and where they go. It means educating your children (both genders) about the toxicity of coercion, in all its forms. It's about putting the responsibility for rape onto rapists - not victims of rape.

And, as a special bonus, you can tell your nephews or little brothers (honestly, this is not something anyone really wants to hear from Mom or Dad) that the great grand secret of the no-coercion rule is that they will not only get laid more, they will have much better (and more) sex. Because that old cliche about sex and pizza? Not true: there is bad sex and there is bad pizza.

So, remember this: our goal for our children's sexual education should not be to teach boys to respect and girls to protect female virtue; it should be to teach all our kids to respect the autonomy of their partners and their right to make their own decisions.

Sex isn't something girls give to boys, it's something girls and boys (and boys and boys and girls and girls) do with each other.

That is all.

My Hero!

2011-10-14T19:23:00.000-07:00

Good googly moogly, you guys! Have I really not blogged for THIS long? I blame Laney - she's been going to bed later these days and by the time she finally hits the hay, I'm usually about done for. Plus Dr. Who is streaming on Netflix, and I just got to the David Tennant seasons. I love him.

But I've started many blogposts in my head during my long days, and through the various hazes of my various fatigues. But I wanted to write tonight to talk about my heroes.

It's long been my Middlemarch inspired philosophy that it's the small the simple expressions of humanity that make for real heroes. Like my neighbor, Jonathan, who came into my house in order to dispose of a tiny, almost dead baby mouse. Because not only did he dispose of the wee thing for me, he also went well out of his way to make me not feel stupid for being afraid of dealing with it myself. And then he had the kindness to express some regret for the death of this tiny thing. Little things like that count for a lot, I think. I am lucky to have such nice neighbors. And I will always believe that people who will just be kind when they don't have to are the real heroes of this world.

But sometimes the big gestures count too. And I cannot help but be overwhelmed by those people who've camped out overnight for a month and led marches and made their voices heard and who are, I really think, forcing us away from what I'd thought was a depressingly inexorable drift to the meannest right-wing ethos of America, to an eventual complete capitulation to the fucking plutocrats. These people have stood up, sacrificed convenience and ease, to say, "This isn't fair, this isn't the American dream, and I think the American Dream is something worth fighting for."

Because, you know, it seemed like for about ten years now, we lefties had sat back, wryly commenting on how incredibly fucked up the country had gotten. And, I enjoy a little wry commentary. But it doesn't really do anything except remind you that you're smarter than the poor saps who were willingly embracing it.

So, Christ on a cracker, I am fucking THRILLED to see the left move away from sarcasm and wryness and on into almost embarrassing earnestness. When I saw an amazing, idealistic, passionate crowd unabashedly singing along to This Land Is Our Land (god, I love that song) with Tom Morello, I got a little weepy and thought, well, the sarcastic, ineffective, smug worm has finally turned.

So, here's my cry to the heavens: the American Dream isn't that anyone can be president, anyone can be a millionaire. That's a stupid misinterpretation. The American Dream is that anyone can make it here. You don't have to be born into wealth to have a nice life. We are all supposed to be able to do better than just get by. The American Dream is that you can work, have a home, and go to a doctor when you're sick. The American Dream is that you can raise a family, which means getting to spend some time with that family too. The middle-class IS the American Dream. And those hippies in Zucccotti Park, that's what they're fighting for.

And I, goddammit, I salute them. Their earnestness is worth more than all the sarcastic commentary in the world.

(but let's keep the sarcastic commentary coming to... I mean, I like that too).

In Which I Quote Wholesale from Douglas Adams

2011-08-16T19:35:00.001-07:00

I read this paragraph tonight and just really enjoyed it, so I thought I'd pass it onto you all:

"He had discovered that the reason for the carnival atmosphere on Saquo-Pilia Hensha was that the local people were celebrating the annual feast of the Assumption of St. Antwelm. St. Antwelm had been, during his lifetime, a great and popular king who had made a great and popular assumption. What King Antwelm had assumed was that what everybody wanted, all other things being equal, was to be happy and enjoy themselves and have the best possible time together. On his death, he had willed his entire personal fortune to financing an annual festival to remind everyone of this, with lots of good food and dancing and very silly games like Hunt the Wocket. His Assumption had been such a brilliantly good one that he was made into a saint for it. Not only that, but all the people who had previously been made saints for doing things like being stoned to death in a thoroughly miserable way or living upside down in barrels of dung were instantly demoted and were now thought to be rather embarrassing."

From "Mostly Harmless," by the late, lamented, wonderful and hilarious Douglas Adams. Everyone got their towels?

Some Pig, Indeed

2011-08-13T15:49:00.000-07:00

This morning I was driving Laney to her tennis lesson and from the back seat, apropos of nothing, she says to me "The doctor in the book said it was the web that was the miracle not the words."

As those of you with chillun know, parenting is all highs and lows, valleys and troughs, one coming hard after the next. Count this one as a high. Big time*.

Last night was a Saturday night in the heart of the summer. After I read a chapter of "Otherwise Known as Shelia the Great" to Laney she grabbed a book from her bookshelf to read for a while before falling asleep. She chose "Charlotte's Web." I then wandered downstairs, poured myself a bourbon and sat down at the piano where, over a period of two or three hours, I'm pretty sure I came close to reanimating the corpse of George Gershwin so he could head into my living room, slam the piano lid down and say, "Look. Just... no. Stop."

I was deeply invested in playing Gerswhin terribly and it was a Saturday night in the middle of summer, so I was content to let Laney read for as long as she wanted. Turns out, she read the whole book.

We'd read it together before. The last time it was a purely collaborative experience because I was crying so hard by the end that Laney exhorted me, "Get it together, Mom!" and then took over the reading of it.

But then, last night, reading on her own she came across a passage that articulates the poetically rational philosophy that I've tried to impart to her for her whole life. The supernatural makes for great stories, but it's not real. Nature, however, is pretty fucking amazing. There are miracles all around you. Things grow and are beautiful and people are kind to one another and food tastes so good. So, rather than setting up worship of water turning into wine, enjoy water and, one day, enjoy wine. Appreciate the great art of nature.

Sigh. As usual, I'm not saying it well. That Chuck Darwin could turn a phrase:

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

Or, the miracle is not the words, it's the web.

* Ain't I lucky to have such a smart, book-loving kid? She's also great in that she keeps me from getting all cocky about it. For example, as I write this, Laney is sitting on the other end of the couch, legs in the air in that way that only kids and yoga masters are comfortable in, reading a book. She looked up from and said, "Do you mind? I just farted at you." I kinda did.

Look, Just Don't Do that

2011-08-02T18:47:00.000-07:00

Today after I parked my car, I read my email on my phone in the garage elevator. Terrible habit! I really need to stop that. One of the mails I read practically guaranteed a shit morning, navigating the murky waters of someone else's IT department. I hate dealing with other people's IT departments. So much. Don't you? Do you ever have to? It's the worst!

So, I left the garage kind of of lost in thought, trying to think of a good way to handle the situation. I crossed the street and headed into the CVS to buy my morning Diet Coke.

As I was about to walk through the door, a guy on a bicycle zoomed up right next to me, super close, and said, "Good morning," real chirpy right into my face. I was startled, under-caffeinated, and still mostly thinking about how to respond to the customer and so I didn't return his aggressive "good morning" in a timely enough manner. He wheeled away and said, real shitty-like, "I guess it's not then!"

God, that annoys me. And, you know what, it annoys every woman I know. It's more common corollary is the guy who demands of some girl he doesn't know that she smile. If he's older and southern, he'll probably also tell you that you're prettier when you smile. I hate that. Because the thing is, it's not flirting, it's not charming. It's aggressive and demanding. It's not a double-x chromosomal imperative to smile and be cheerful and make the world a pleasant place. Sometimes, we've got shit on our minds.

So a PSA, fellows, don't order strange women to smile. Don't get all up in their faces and demand pleasantries. It's onerous and obnoxious. Imagine how you'd feel if some strange guy felt welcome to complain about your insufficient cheer.

You'd hate that. So don't do it. Just, dont.

Nostalgia

2011-07-27T18:15:00.000-07:00

I tend to reflexively shut down when people start getting all dewy-eyed and nostalgic. I distrust and dislike nostalgia. It really bugs me when people talk about the "good old days" without acknowledging that those days weren't so good for a good chunk of people. The past is complicated. And we as a people actually keep getting better, not worse. Mayberry makes for a nice rhetorical turn, until you remember that the real Mayberry was most likely a place where Jim Crow laws were the rule of the land. But, hey, people were more polite or something!

At another level, I think people rarely recognize that the happy times of the past might have been so happy because they were children when they experienced them. Good parents make the world their kids live in a safe and wholesome place. But that doesn't mean that the grown up people around them weren't sweating the bills and the changing cultural norms. I'm freaked out almost all the time, but I'm hoping Laney looks back at these parlous times as comforting and safe.

That said, lately, there seems to be so much hysterical concern about demographic winters - fear that America is in danger because there aren't enough white babies being born. And I can't help but remember the halcyon days of my own youth when we talked about melting pots and how Freddie Prinze was as much an American as the old white dude he worked for (ask your parents). It seemed like when I was growing up, the idea that Being American=Being White was being challenged and well on its way out the door.

And I miss that. I despair when Pat Buchanon shows up on the purportedly "liberal" MSNBC and waxes paranoid about the looming threat of more brown babies being born than white babies.

So, I confess, I'm nostalgic for the 70s. I miss the melting pot. I mourn the notion of American diversity as the greatest American strength. I hate seeing the notion that the only real American is a white American getting any kind of traction. It's so toxic and retrograde.

And that's all the nostalgia you'll get from me.

Almost...

Tears, Idle Tears

2011-07-18T19:00:00.000-07:00

We raced home after Laney's birthday party to catch the end of the Women's World Cup and, oh, it was a heartbreaker, wasn't it? I mean, since I'm not generally invested in women's soccer, it wasn't too much of a stretch for me to feel happy for Japan because there's a country that could use some spirit lifting. And no matter how you feel about sports, moments like these do lift the spirits of a nation.

And how awesome was it to see all these men so invested in women's sports? At the bowling alley (where we held the birthday party), I commented about all these men so riveted by those women playing soccer and this guy turned and said to me, "This is great!"

U.S.A. lost. But I still found some stuff to cheer for.

Still, my heart broke for those players. Imagine being THAT close and falling short so close to the end? Crushing. Devastating. I know it's only a game, but, damn, they worked so HARD, didn't they?

I watched the postgame interview with Abby Wambach answering those ridiculous questions, and she answered them with so much grace and aplomb and spine. She kept her upper lip stiff, answered the questions, and walked off the field with her head high.

Me? I break into tears during the cuts episodes of So You Think You Can Dance.

I would love to be as self-possessed and graceful as that Abby Wambach, who can actually answer questions like "Did you mean to not win?" (which is about the level of questions they ask) without crying or rolling her eyes or punching the reporter in the neck.

I wonder if you can learn that? Because, honestly, the older I get the more prone I am to irritating displays of emotion.

Maybe I should take up soccer.

The Problem with Reversing the Ism

2011-07-11T19:12:00.000-07:00

A quick list of things I don't believe in: ghosts, rational libertarianism, that the Cubs will ever win a World Series, and reverse racism/sexism. Let's talk about that last one.

Racism and sexism aren't a series of individual acts. They are systemic problems in American culture. In other words, racism isn't something that happens to a black person. It's the experience of Black People (and Muslims and Latinos) Sexism isn't something that happens to a woman. It's the experience of Women.

So, while an individual black person might act like an asshole to an individual white person because that individual black person doesn't like white people, white people in America are not victims of racism. And while a woman might be an asshole to a man because she doesn't like men, men in America are not victims of sexism.

When you start using those words to label isolated experiences, you cheapen them.

We don't live in a bias-free America. There are a different set of rules for women than for men and there are a different set of rule for races other than Caucasian. It's not cool for people who have no experience living under these differing sets of rules to appropriate those fights.

There are times when I'd love to get a giant megaphone and just announce loudly to the world, "STOP ACTING LIKE ASSHOLES AND START BEING NICE TO EACH OTHER." And while that is certainly a valid wish and one, I'm sure, we all share. We can't get there by just being nice to each other. We have to start with genuinely trying to recognize and remedy systemic unfairness. And the quickest #epicfail on the road to recognition is appropriation.

In short: Shut it, Fox News: there's no war on Christians. No one's gunning for whitey. And feminists don't hate men. Be aware of your privilege.

(Also stop acting like assholes and be nice to people)

Something Else I Wanted to Say

2011-07-09T19:52:00.000-07:00

I go a couple of weeks without blogging and then I get two BAM BAM. But I was thinking this evening that I'm starting to understand why people go ultra-conservative and fall in political love with the likes of Michelle Bachmann.

Being a member of the reality-based community is really scary, you guys. The things that make your average liberal struggle to fall asleep at night (climate change, pending economic catastrophes, pending economic catastrophes that could make the current president so unpopular that Michelle Bachmann actually BECOMES president, shit like that), are all plausible and genuinely terrifying.

But if you're one of those conservatives who love Michelle Bachmann you're terrified of things like creeping Shari'a law and gay marriage; where the latter is fundamentally unscary, and the former is just an incredibly stupid fucking thing to be afraid of.

I get it. I think I'm going to start focusing my fear on creeping Shari'a law and gay marriage. It's way better than being afraid of pending economic catastrophe. Anyone want to join me? Look! Over there! A couple of gay guys are holding hands! AUGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

I'm going to sleep so much better.

The Value of Work

2011-07-09T19:38:00.000-07:00

It's been a spell since I checked in here at this old blog. Miss me? What? You didn't notice I was gone? God, you guys are total assholes! I could have been DEAD IN A DITCH... Oh, you saw me on Facebook. Never mind.

I'm a busy lady, as are you all (except, of course, those of you who are gentle fellows). What with my job and my kid and my panicky freakouts about the economy and how that will impact my job and how that would impact my kid, I barely have time to have my nightly bourbon. I make time for that, but some nights it's after 10:00 when time is made.

So, you know I wrote this book, right? Took me a couple of years of scrabbling together 30 minutes here and an hour there, but I wrote the fucker and then rewrote it and then decided to put it out there. I got a couple of bites from literary agents but nothing panned out.

And after listening hard to the polite opinions of people who'd read it, and trying to dredge out what what they were avoiding to spare my feelings, I decided I needed to go back in. And so, as a particular exercise, I made myself sit down and read the thing, cover to cover, without taking notes, without making edits, without losing myself in this scene or that line of dialog. And what did I did I discover? This motherfucker needs WORK, you guys. And I mean that as literally as I can.

No one will ever tell you writing is easy, unless you're Bristol Palin or Octomom or someone else with a ghost writer... But the ghost writer would tell you that writing is hard. And the reason that it's hard is because it's not just finding the right words or really knowing your character. It's hard because you have to be willing to go back into it, again and again, and fix the things that are wrong. You have to do the work. You have to do the part that doesn't feel creative and doesn't come easily. You have to do the work.

Such is the lesson for life. There's always work to be done. But everything that is worth doing, is worth doing well. Cliche, sure. But things don't generally achieve cliche status without being true.

So, I'll meet you back here around Christmas and will hopefully have fixed the many, many things that are wrong with my beloved book. The plot points that come off as contrived, the character that drops out and then reappears in a manner that makes the reader (shit, made the WRITER) go "wait... who's that again?", the points when my voice completely drops away. A million things that are just a little bit wrong with it.

I'm doing the fucking work.

I Feel Fat

2011-06-24T19:27:00.000-07:00

I write this as I'm watching New York make gay marriage legal. So, first a note on that: you're so gay, New York. So wonderfully, awesomely gay. It brings a smile to my heart to see us one step closer to the future I imagine for my daughter where sexual orientation is no impediment to status as a full and free American. Good on you, New York. People in the chambers are chanting "USA USA!" It's awesome.

I still hate the fucking Yankees.

But I wanted to blog on something else.

I feel fat all the time. Whenever I feel any moment of insecurity (professional, creative, social), I feel certain that I would NOT feel this way if I weighed 20 or 3o pounds less. I find myself often wishing that I could muster up enough self-loathing to just go fucking hungry. To just stop eating. I could pretend that what I'd really like is to eat healthy foods and exercise. But I am a pretty healthy eater and I do exercise. What I really want is to find my way to hating the way I look enough to stop eating. To be hungry. Virtuously, blithely, skinnily hungry.

That is fucked up. And it's a level of fucked up that I think a whole lot of women share.

But, there is one area where I think I'm doing right. I made a vow about four years ago to never, ever, never, ever, never, ever nevernevernevernever say "I feel fat" in front of Laney. To NEVER stare obsessively at my body and make gross out statements about my belly or thighs. As godtupus is my witness, I will do whatever I can to not pass on the self-loathing, body obsessed bullshit that so many American women mistake humility for.

I don't kid myself that I can keep Laney safe from the body-hating thing that American women do. It's rife in the culture. But it starts with me. And I'm not rearing the kid in the cult of self-loathing that seems to be de rigeur for women. Am. Not.

And, here's what I'm saying to you: if you're raising girls, join me. Don't hate yourself in front of your kid. Don't disparage your body or bemoan flaws. Eat. Enjoy your food. Celebrate your strength.

And stop thinking that being ashamed of your body is a virtue. Because we pass that onto our girls. And don't we want our girls growing up to love their bodies?

I do.

About that Memphis Racist

2011-06-16T17:10:00.000-07:00

My Facebook status from a few days ago:

Standing on a rooftop watching the Cubs. Meet a fellow from Memphis. Within four sentences he says something racist. Every time. Ugh.

My cousin, Sammy, was right. I did paint too broad a stroke. But it's Facebook. That happens. The commonality was not that all white people from Memphis are racist - the commonality was that both he and I were white and from Memphis. So this dude figured I was part of his tribe and was perfectly comfortable airing his racist bullshit.

The other thing: as soon as this guy opened his mouth, I knew it was imminent. I knew when he wanted to talk about Memphis it wouldn't take long before he would complain about how all Memphis' problems are down to too many "blacks." He telegraphed it the second he found out I was from there too. I've met the exact same guy a few dozen times in my life.

And I'm sure that white people from Detroit, for example, or the south side or any place in America where black people and white people live side by side in an area of some economic distress, have had the exact same experience.

I think it's all really weird. But I'm afraid to tell people I don't like those Housewife shows for fear of offending them. So I really don't get someone just feeling completely at home airing their racist bullshit. They must live in the smallest worlds!

My friend, Susan, tells me she likes to know off the bat if someone is a racist ignoramous or not. And while I can see the benefit of that - if it's just some casual small talk conversation with a person I will never see again, can't they just do me the simple courtesy of putting a fucking cork in their own bullshit? Is that really too much to ask?

The Great Battle of BoA 2011

2011-06-07T19:19:00.000-07:00

In a nutshell: I expected a mortgage payment to come out that didn't. I called BoA and a representative named William told me that it wasn't coming and if I didn't make that payment then I would most likely be beset with a plague of frogs or murdered in my sleep or something. So I made the payment with him.

Two mortgage payments came out the next day and thus began the great BoA Battle of 2011.

Let me explain. No, there's not enough time. Let me summarize. BoA would not return the second payment until they were absolutely sure that my bank would not return the funds since the second mortgage payment put us into overdraft. A copy of a statement showing clearly that the funds had posted and cleared was not adequate. After three days of conversation with various BoA representatives, it became clear that they were not going to give that money back until I managed to dredge up the corpse of John Pierpont Morgan himself, reanimate his long dead flesh and recorded a youtube of him in which he assured BoA that he done spent that money already and couldn't give it back.

Old dead JP's bank, it's worth mentioning, did me a solid and returned the money pretty quick once I got a hold of someone there.

That positive experience notwithstanding, the whole thing was scary and frustrating. At some point in my various conversations with Melody and Elizabeth at BoA, it became crystal clear that I was completely powerless in this situation. BoA has processes, by gum, and these processes are designed to make sure that BoA keeps as much of your money as possible. And more, these processes are set up so that it is impossible to do anything but rigorously adhere to them. To wit: I could talk to someone in the claims department. But I couldn't talk to someone in the return-the-money department. No one could. The person who'd actually do the wire transfer cannot be spoken to because there's a chance that some odious weakness like compassion might rear up thus separating BoA from some of my money.

A few people have sent me this story about a couple who was foreclosed upon by BoA despite having paid cash for their home. On the funny tip, some awesome judge and lawyer got together and allowed the couple to foreclose on BoA. On the less funny tip, BoA initiated foreclosure proceeding on a home they didn't hold a mortgage on. In a sensible world, the only thing you'd call that is attempted theft. Of someone's fucking HOUSE!

These banks are too big. And we are completely powerless against them. It'd be nice if some intrepid young congressman would start doing something about it, but they're too busy calling Elizabeth Warren a socialist.

Weiners

2011-06-06T18:22:00.000-07:00

That was disappointing, wasn't it? Anthony Weiner was my favorite! I loved his fight and his politics. I loved how smart and funny and cool he came off. But sending unsolicited pictures of his cock to random women? That's just so creepy!

And so STUPID! Tweeting pictures of his junk to a woman he'd never met? Was he drunk? He must have been drunk.

That said, why would anyone send an unsolicited picture of their cock to a woman? Is it possible to get drunk enough to think that's a good idea? I ask you, be-penised Americans, does there come a time when you glance down and think, "Hey! Here's my penis! Isn't it pretty? I'd quick better share its magnificence, photographically, with a woman."

Because if you do, I think it's behest upon me to inform you that women are far less impressed with your junk than you are. Frankly, and I think I speak for the sisterhood-at-large, taken out of context, penises are kind of ridiculous. I think it was Elaine Benes who wisely said, "I don't know how you walk around with those things."

Context is everything. And just to be perfectly clear, Twitter is not the right context. Nor is texting. Seriously: put it away and wait for an appropriate moment.

And the right moment will NEVER arise over Twitter.

Oh, Anthony Weiner. Sigh.

Coming out of Retirement - Plus a Post on the Moral Case for Atheism

2011-06-03T19:07:00.000-07:00

I retired this blog peremptorily. It was a mistake. I'm going to keep my baby steps blog and use it for writing posts, but I think I need a brain dump one. Especially when there's something I've been noodling on for a few days. Like my own atheism.

Atheist is a loaded, scary word isn't it? I confess that when I hear it, I still feel threatened. For a girl raised in a good, Catholic home like mine, "atheist" still feels a little like something hanging out under your bed, ready to getcha as soon as you let your guard down.

But I'm an atheist. And I've been noodling for a while on the moral case for it. Because morality is the reason why I finally gave up cowardly agnoticism and embraced (as Dan Savage calls it) principled atheism.

Here's the skinny: I didn't reject God (although god makes less and less sense to me as I go on). I rejected moral absolutism. I embraced getting along with other people. If God's out there telling you the right thing to do, there's always the chance that the right thing to do becomes the thing God says is the right thing to do. Stop. Period. I'm not a bigot: God says it's a sin to be gay. I don't hate women: God's the one who says she's a whore.

There are, of course, a whole honking lot of people who interpret the will of God thoughtfully and with an eye to getting along with the rest of us earth-walkers. I'd wager a healthy majority of the church going people of the world are tolerant, respectful people. But I'm not talking about religion. I'm talking about God.

The very notion of Divinity means that there is an absolute right, and absolute right leads to absolute authority. I'm a godless democrat and a wannabe socialist. I want to live in a world where the will of the majority and the rights of the minority are privileged equally and above all. There's no room for absolute authority there.

My philosophy in a nutshell: If you let go of God, all you're left with is people. And that's the point when people, including people outside your tribe, start to matter more.

I wish that John Lennon song hadn't gotten somehow to be so hokey. Because it's a radical notion. Imagine (ugh...still hokey... I wish I knew who to blame for that. Is it OK if I blame Sharon Stone?)

Blog Retirement

2011-04-25T18:07:00.001-07:00

I'm retiring this here blog. You've been a swell 7 readers. Please join me over at the new spot.

The problem with democrats is....

2011-04-17T07:52:00.000-07:00

I went out to dinner on my birthday with some good friends to my favorite restaurant. As we scooped up various delicious comestibles with oddly spongy read the talk turned, as it will, to politics.

Midway through the conversation, a couple of the people I was dining with were explaining to me why Barack Obama was sure to lose the 2012 election.

We live in an America where the G.O.P led House just passed a budget killing Medicare. We live in an America where the Republican senator from New York held actual hearings because of his racist perception of some nebulous threat of Islam in America. Speaking of Islam, Republicans from Oklahoma recently passed a law banning Shari'a law because Oklahoma was thisclose to electing an Imam as governor and mandating burquas. We live in an America where women's reproductive freedom is under attack. We live in an America where Republican fiscal responsibility means taking money away from poor and middle-class people and giving it over to corporations.

And all my progressive friends ever want to talk about is why Barack Obama, who has had the most legislatively successful first two years in modern presidential history, who has advanced a genuinely progressive agenda, is such a disappointment.

I'm willing to throw some good money down that Barack Obama not only wins in 2012, but wins easily. The only legitimate candidate that the GOP can seem to find is Mitt Romney and he seems shockingly willing to run against his own record in order to pander to the loud and reactionary Tea Party wing of this party.

But, in the meantime, it would be nice if we on the left could invest some real energy exposing the madness of the modern GOP - their rank and file commitment to racist and sexist politicking while reaching their hands into the back pocket of every American who isn't G.E. or Viacom instead of whining about how disappointed we are in the president who actually PASSED healthcare reform and is willing to use the word "abortion" as something women have a right to.

Laney Gets Her History a Little Confused... But, Unlike Glenn Beck She Accepts Corrections

2011-03-30T20:32:00.000-07:00

In the car on the way home after dinner, out of the clear blue sky, Laney says... no, she pronounces as though she's speechifying in front of a classroom:

Martin Luther King, back in slave times, told black people to stop riding the bus.

Don't worry - I clarified and explained where she'd gotten her facts a little mixed up. We talked about how Martin Luther King didn't live in slave times and what Jim Crow laws were and how deeply messed up the rules were back then. It was, as the Prez would say, a teachable moment.

Still, I thought the way she strung those words together was kind of hilarious.

Statues and Marriage

2011-03-20T10:57:00.001-07:00

I love statues. I wish we still lived in a world where people built statues of great leaders. The problem is that we seem to have lost our ability to see leadership since we can't look without the lens of politics. But that's depressing and not really what I wanted to write about.

This here is a statue I love. I pass it every morning, and Laney and I say "Good morning, General Grant."

One morning recently, Don was driving in with us. And it was winter and snowy and when we passed (and greeted) General Grant, I remarked to Don how lonely and sad I thought he looked up there. I told him that I thought that statues of great men like that underscore how lonely it must have been to be General Grant.

Don replied that he didn't see anything sad at all; that, instead, he thought it looked like General Grant was up there protecting us and looking out for us. He finds statues like that really comforting.

You know, I think that might sum up a lot about how we work as a married couple. We have a lot in common. We agree a lot about how we want to raise our daughter. We have remarkably similar political proclivities (y'all, if anything, Don is even more liberal than me... I swear). We like baseball but not as much as we used to. And we both find ourselves re-developing a passion for the Bulls. But we often see the world in strikingly different ways.

I think this works well for us, because we each help the other one to see the world in a slightly different way. It keeps us on our toes. And, you know, one of our vows was to stay interested in each other. It helps that we see things differently.

Other times, though, it's annoying. Like when we get into bed at night and decide we want to watch TV. Don likes to put horrifying war documentaries from the military channel on because he finds the boring voices of the people talking about whatever atrocity is being discussed soothing. I, on other hand, prefer mindless TV shows about vampires or forensic anthropologists. It all comes down to tone vs. content for late night TV for us.

We should probably just read books before bed instead.

Idiot

2011-03-03T19:56:00.000-08:00

I just watched a clip on Rachel Maddow where the new Ohio governor (a Fox News Tea Party darling) kept referring to a trooper who pulled him over as an "idiot." And he did it with this voice just dripping with contempt.

I've been pulled over a lot for speeding. And every time I was pissed. But you know what else? I was speeding.

I've often wondered how I'd feel being married to a cop. And I think I'd be scared and nervous a lot. And I think one of the scariest thing that this cop would be doing would be walking up to cars on the side of a highway.

I've seen some cops do some shitty things in my life. But when you break a law and get pulled over? Even if you didn't see the emergency vehicle? Hell, I didn't know I was speeding at least twice when I got speeding tickets. But, irritated and annoyed as I might be, silly as I might find a 65 MPH speed limit to be, the cop is just doing his job.

And cops have a hard, dangerous and vitally important job to do.

I suspect if the same trooper pulled someone over on suspicion of something (like being Mexican in Arizona or paying dues to a teacher's union or something), Kasich probably wouldn't have been so quick to cry "idiots!"

I'm starting to kind of enjoy America getting a glimpse of what a Tea Party GOP really means. I'm starting to smell a hippie pinko feminazi homo juggernaut.

Tribalism

2011-03-01T19:00:00.000-08:00

A while back I was following some of the happenings at CPAC, which is this big event where conservatives get together and lay out their plans. One of the things I noted with some happiness was the presence of libertarians. Now, I'm of the school of thought that thinks libertarianism is hopelessly naive and, as such, a pretty dangerous political proposal.

To wit: if it weren't for a USDA, I'm pretty confident mad cow steaks would be on sale for .49 cents a pound at Dominicks right now; I'd be willing to wager that unless I lived in a posher zip code, my water would come flavored with sewage; I'd bet that cars with glass that shatters and front ends that crumple would be the purview of folks who could afford them

The purpose of business is profit. And there's not a damn thing wrong with that. Contra the unfairly earned reputation of liberals, I'm all for businesses running a profit. I love rich people. I'd really love to be one.

But, libertarians believe that civil rights would happen eventually because they would. They believe that cars would meet basic safety standards because more people would want to buy them. But there's a large swath of people that'd be happy to keep black folks out of the restaurants they frequent. And car manufacturers would be happy to sell deathtrap cars on the cheap.

And so government, which does not function to run a profit and which can withstand debt far more easily than any family or business can, has a worthwhile and valuable role in civilized society.

So why am I happy to see the libertarians with a voice at CPAC? Because they're not the tribalistic motherfuckers who've taken over modern politics. I say tribalistic, because it's a real us vs. them thing out there. Hatfield vs. McCoy. Capulet vs. Montague. Sharks vs. Jets. And no unholy alliances like the one between Lizardman Carville and Mary Matalan will put an end to it.

Libertarians actually have a platform, silly as I might think it is.

Which brings me to the George Will column that was so roundly mocked today. The quote:

...the real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.

There are layers and layers of why this is dumb. The main one, of course, is that most of us have a hard-on for trains so we can stop taking airplanes and what, sweet Oprah, makes you feel more like chained up chattel than modern air travel?

But George Will is probably not actually a dumb guy. But he's happily laying aside the libertarian banner to reach out to the tribe. He's making shit up, yanking rationales out of his fevered imagination, because he wants to feed into the desperate dimwittedness of tribalism - these other folks want trains because they want to strip you of your freedoms! Ignore that implementing high speed rail infrastructure would create a lot of jobs, would make travel far easier, and would just, again I cry out to Dear Oprah, be so cool! Ignore it all, because it makes for a convenient way to reach out to the tribe.

Sadly, Libertarians won't get the liberal back on high speed rail because that'd be government spending and all government is bad (another glass of poop-flavored water please! Can I get mine with a soupcon of arsenic?).

I wonder if ask the Libertarian brethren to consult their bible and they rediscover about how Atlas Shrugged was totes about railroad barons, maybe they'd jump on board...

Politics Bubble

2011-02-24T16:59:00.000-08:00

An Ezra Klein tweet directed me to this blogpost today, ordering me to read the last two paragraphs. And I was glad he did, because I found it very edifying:

I've said this before...to get a sense of what politics is like for many Americans, I suggest thinking of something that you do encounter in some way all the time, but that you just have zero interest in. Perhaps sports in general -- or, for sports fans, a major sport that you don't pay any attention to. Perhaps it's current pop music, or HBO shows, or celebrities. Me? NASCAR, the NBA, and any games made since Missile Command and Stargate Defender. The idea is that I actually do encounter and, in a way, retain a fair amount of information about those things in the nature of headlines that I see but skip the stories, or references made in other things I do read or watch, or conversations I've had that veer off in that direction. It's not as if I know absolutely nothing. It's just that the stuff I've heard is not organized at all, and I'm sure I've picked up misinformation along the way, since I don't scrutinize any of it.

Anyway, when you're involved in what's happening in Wisconsin, or Libya, or the budget negotiations in Washington, just keep in mind that most people aren't paying any attention at all.

Doesn't that just clarify things for those of us who live inside the political bubble (AKA, those of us who feel an obligation for understanding what's happening in the world around us).

Then I read on TPM today, that barely half of Americans even KNOW that the HCR law that Obama signed into law last year is, you know, still the law.

A good chunk of the country is walking around thinking that that orange, weepy guy managed to get rid of death panels. Wow.

I hate what I'm about to say (I normally get so irritated when other people say things like this), but I'm saying it anyway: it breaks my heart to think of the people in Libya today who are literally dying for the right to representative government, and we live in a country so spoiled that most of us cannot even be bothered to understand even vaguely the things happening around us.

I have the flu, so I'm kind of bummed in general. But this is the kind of thing that just makes my normally unflagging optimism wane.

Planned Parenthood

2011-02-16T17:11:00.000-08:00

So, I've never been pregnant and never had an STD. But I have a Planned Parenthood story. But while I am foul-mouthed and brazen, I'm kind of shy about biological type stuff, so I'm going to try and tell this story as euphemistically as possible.

You know how women have periods, right? And we use tampons? Well, sometimes, when you're younger and maybe a little more careless about things than you would be when you get older, you can, um, forget about things, and convenient removal strings might go missing, and things can get a little, um, awkward.

Stuff can also go wrong with condoms. Not like "we'd better buy a test," but more, um, "where'd it go," you know?

Most women reading this probably know exactly what I'm talking about. It's gross. And I would wager it's a large chunk of the kind of thing Planned Parenthood helps with. That and pap smears for uninsured and handing out condoms and treating STDs and all sorts of valuable health services for women.

But women's health, especially young women's health, stops and starts at abortion for a certain wing of American society. They don't care about the many valuable services Planned Parenthood perform. They only care about abortion.

As Atrios often points out, the anti-abortion movement (and this does not necessarily apply to pro-life people) is first and foremost misogynist. This attack on Planned Parenthood is proof positive of that. When I was in my late teens and early 20s, almost all of my friends went to Planned Parenthood for basic health needs. But, Mike Pence and the rest of the rabid, anti-choice movement couldn't possibly care less about the health needs of young women.

And they don't much care about the health needs of babies once they get born.

Which only serves to underscore my theory that the anti-choice movement (again, this is not necessarily true of pro-life people) doesn't care about the alleged babies. They just hate women.

And, dammit, abortion is a legal procedure in America, as it should be.

Sometimes the Things We Document are Not Atrocities

2011-02-11T18:50:00.000-08:00

This morning when I came into the office I put Al Jazeera TV on my second monitor. This has been my wont this week.

But, you know, I have a job, and I wasn't really paying attention to what they were saying. I didn't notice Sulieman coming on TV but he was there, made a short statement and then we was gone. I didn't notice. But then I heard the news reader (Adrian something) say "Mubarek has stepped down." I stopped writing the email I was on and looked to the second monitor. And it was... I don't have the words.

No one was talking or analyzing what had happened. Instead, it was just the sound of people in Tahrir Square. Never heard anything like it in my life. From thousands of miles away, without having even known that Mubarek was a dictator until earlier this week (for fucking shame, Rhem. For shame), you could feel it. It was incredible.

All day today Adrian The Al Jazeera news reader asked the reporters who were there, most of whom were Egyptian, to take their reporter hats off and tell him how they felt. I was pretty familiar with them. There was a cute reporter guy name Aymon. And a kind of tough, war correspondent type named Hoda. They'd done their dispassionate reporter thing and let us know what was happening, clued us into the important details and done it like reporters do, from a distance even though they're right in the middle. But when they were invited to take off their reporter hats each and every one said the same thing, "There are no words. It's indescribable." But you could feel it coming out of them.

Behind me, I just heard Rachel Maddow say that this is one of those days that reminds us that we're alive and that we're lucky to be here. And I'm so glad that I had my second monitor and that I decided to go to Arab TV for the story.

I know it could be scary and I know it could be Iran. But, I'm choosing (go figure) optimism. Those people in Tahrir Square today are not going to let themselves be conscripted by another tyrant. It'll be a slog and a battle, but I'm going to be paying attention.

I hope you got to hear it when it happened. It was pretty amazing.

I'll Protect You, My Child Bride

2011-02-04T20:07:00.000-08:00

Two posts tonight! But I had such a moment of clarity about this ad that I had to share. Have you guys seen this:

I told Don when we were watching it that I think this commercial offends or outright pisses off every woman I know. And he said, "Really? Well, it's weird." Or something like that.

But I was wondering why Kay Jewelry keeps running this ad when clearly it gives almost every woman who sees it the heebie jeebies. As I said in my last post, that necklace comes off more as threat than anything else.

And then it hit me! This isn't a commercial for the ladies! It's a commercial for the men. And specifically, that kind of man who has this weird fantasy that every woman walks the earth in a state of near constant fear and that his role will be Protector. Probably he's a guy who notices that when he approaches ladies at the bar, he finds them backing slowly away and looking for their friends and asking nervously if he's the starting QB for the Steelers in the Superbowl.

I wasn't aware that this was such a big market. But I'm pretty sure this commercial has been running for a couple of years.

Next time I'm the mall, I'm steering clear of the Kay Jewelry. I bet it's just chock-a-block with really creepy guys.

Poetry

2011-02-04T19:28:00.000-08:00

There were a few things I was going to write about. First I was going to write a piece about When Facebook Attacks which was all about how weird Facebook can get (I might still write that one). And then I was going to write about how I finally understood that horrible Kay Jewelry commercial (you know... the one with the thunderstorm and the guy who's real creepy with his whole "I'll always be there to protect you against your irrational, childish fears. Here's a pretty necklace that I almost definitely won't strangle you with"). I might still write that one too. But I had an experience tonight...

So my (gak) great niece is spending the night in advance of a trip to Iowa tomorrow. She's a total peach, just this curly headed little moppet with a near constant smile and the brightest little shoe button eyes you've ever seen. But, you know, when you're four and you're spending the night away, sometimes you miss your Mommy and it's a little hard to drift away into sleep. I totally get it, I'm 41 and still miss my Mommy sometimes too. Fortunately, it's OK for me to take a Tylenol PM.

In lieu of drugging the children, I have a much healthier sleep inducement: I bore the shit out of them by reading poetry until they just drift off in lieu of anything better to do. This totally works for all parties because I quite like poetry and can read it in dulcet, sonorous tones. I think. My actual reading voice might be dreadful. (It's hard and disconcerting to listen to yourself, which is the main reason answering machines were phased out in favor of voicemail.)

I started off with Prufrock. This is a good one to start with because it is very rhythmic and even if you don't know what the hell is going on (I know what's going on and have the student loans to prove it), it still sounds really pretty. I then segued into Innisfree, which is a lovely, peaceful poem. At this point both girls were out. But I was enjoying myself so I carried on with Terence, This is Stupid Stuff.

This poem is special to me since both my father and I ended up memorizing it at different stages of our lives and completely independent of the knowledge of the other one's memorization. Just all of the sudden, we both seemed to know it by heart and would perform it despite the groans and pained expressions of everyone else in the room (cretins! philistines!).

So, I was reading it aloud and remembering Dad fondly when I got to the point where Houseman says "Oh, I have been to Ludlow Fair/ And left my necktie god knows where." Suddenly, the memory of my father saying those lines sprang up so vivid. He found that part hilarious and wonderful and pronounced those lines with all sorts of zeal and humor. I could see his eyes crinkle and twinkle and Dad's killer grin.

So, of course, I burst into tears.

Fortunately, I didn't wake the children.

I still feel really fortunate, even after all these years, that a memory of my father can spring up so immediate and vivid. He was always so alive when he was alive, you know?

It's painful, but such a great gift. And it's also so sad. It's so sad that people we love die and we don't get to hear them talk about Terence's damn drunken revelries. It's less sad than not ever having HAD someone who enjoyed Houseman so much. But somehow more sad too. And it puts me to mind of more Houseman. Which I will share below. It's short.

With rue my heart is laden
For many a friend I had
For many a rose-lipt maiden
For many a lightfoot lad

By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where roses fade

That shift from maiden/lad to girls/ boys just kills me.

Good night everyone. I hope that somewhere there's someone in your life with a twinkle in their eye who gets a real kick out of good poetry.

From Fart Stories to Middlemarch - I am Nothing if not Narrowly Focused

2011-01-25T17:56:00.000-08:00

My good friend, the wise and wonderful JD Love, is reading Middlemarch after having listened to me rave over it a billion times. And while I'll acknowledge that most of the people who've tried to follow me into Middlemarch fandom have given up a few hundred pages in, I will not tolerate broad besmirchments of my beloved book. And over at JD Love's FB page, folks have hurled invective in the direction of my Middlemarch in a manner that simply Can. Not. Stand.

So, listen up, my brothers and sisters, and I will tell you precisely what it is about Middlemarch that I love so much.

Dorothea, our main character, is introduced to us as, undoubtedly, a total asshole. She is smug, self-righteous and given to preachy, mean judginess (shut up, it's a word). But we're also told, from the get go, that Dorothea's primary attribute is fierce, passionate intellectualism and an idealistic faith in her own responsibility to use that to make the world a better place. What happens to a woman like that when she's stuck in a world that not only doesn't allow passionate intellectualism from women, but doesn't even believe it can exist?

If you're Dorothea, you marry the dreadful Edward Casaubon, because he's some kind of intellectual giant of the time and who is also old and icky (I love it when Celia talks about how he looks when he eats). His winter's age foray into marriage is brought to us by his introduction to a young, beautiful, fawning acolyte. He's excited by the prospect parading around his extensive (and dry, boring, smug) intellectualism as she she gazes up adoringly. In the meantime, Dorothea dreams that in her marriage she can be like "one of Milton's daughters, copying Greek, and even Hebrew, without understanding it." Can you imagine having to live like that? To only be able to hope for such meager dregs of the thing that you're most passionate about? You'd be a total asshole too.

And Casaubon won't even give her that much! Instead he just gets disappointed that his child bride doesn't remain forever fawningly worshipful and instead a grows into an adult woman and wife. Dorothea is a faithful, attentive, loving wife, but Casaubon wanted her to stay the kid.

Every character in Middlemarch is flawed, but flawed in understandable ways; flawed mostly because of the claustrophobic society they inhabit, and are interchangeably victims of and culpable in. And, good googly moogly, does George Eliot make this claustrophobic society come alive. It's drawn so artfully, and wittily and expansively.

But it's the end I love the most. In the end, all our characters (except Casaubon, who left the book after managing to be a dickhead from beyond the grave) are redeemed by Dorothea. But not through some grand act. Instead, Dorothea redeems them all through a simple act of decency; by believing Lydgate for no other reason than that there's no reason NOT to believe him. Because she is too good to descend into the petty, village gossip, Dorothea and Lydgate and Rosamund and Ladislaw and Fred (Mary was already OK) are all made better.

But Middlemarch remains the same toxic, claustrophobic place it always was. In the end, people are still talking shit about Dorothea and no one gets their comeuppance. Because that's the way the world works. Dorothea and Will get to be happy, but they are not happy in a vacuum.

Eliot ends her book with this:

...the effects of her life were incalculably diffusive [I love those two words together more than I love anything else I've ever read]. For the growing good of the world is partly dependent upon unhistoric acts and that things are not so ill with you or I as they might have been is half-owing to the number who lived, faithfully, a quiet life and rest in unvisited graves.

In other words, somewhere in the past, someone did the right thing, was a good person, and we don't celebrate then and there are no statues built to honor them, but your life, goddammit, is better for them having been there. Having read that and having read what led up to it and made those last words resonate, I shit you not and I care even less how grandiloquent I might sound, has enriched my life in a very real, very profound fucking way.

And if you haven't gotten that, than that's OK. But, your loss, motherfucker. Don't put it on Middlemarch. Otherwise, I'll blog again about how wonderful Middlemarch is. And, honestly, haven't I done that enough?

You Are Not, I Gather, the Pride and Joy of Wisconsin

2011-01-19T18:52:00.001-08:00

So, many moons ago, I was working the Sunday day shift at Streeter's. It was a very quiet point in the day, which was odd as it was football season. Normally there'd have been quite a few regulars in watching the game. But on this Sunday, I think it was just me, a doorman and a couple of folks.

In walked a group of people wearing either acid-washed jeans that sagged down over their ample bottoms, or Bottafuoco pants. On top, they had on Packer colors. They were tourists in town to watch the Pack amongst a bunch of FIBs. But despite this impish plan, they were a sullen bunch. Not a smile among them. They sat at one of the big round tables in the middle of the room, and surveyed the joint, sourly.

One of them approached the bar and ordered a pitcher from me. He tipped me the change. I believe it was a quarter. He then returned to his table where he and his posse desultorily poured beer into their mugs. They sat quietly for a few minutes until they noticed the chili bar.

We had a chili bar.

It was disgusting.

The group, made up of men and women, made repeated trips to the chili bar and enjoyed their free chili. I believe there was another pitcher of beer. And another quarter tip. They chatted sporadically, between sips of beer and bites of chili.

After a while, the beer and chili began acting aggressively on what I would have assumed was a stalwart Wisconsin gastrointestinal system. But the chili was disgusting. And would out.

And so this group, men and women, began farting. Not embarrassed "oops that slipped out" farting. But buttcheek lifted off the stool, trumpeting farts. And they didn't even laugh. It was like they were farting for poor profit. Assembly line farting.

After a while, they left me to clean up the old chili and spilt beer from the table.

Now, I'm not saying that ALL Packer fans are rude, poorly-dressed, shamelessly flatulent, bad tippers. But when then Bears roll over the Packers on Sunday, I'll remember that table.

And smile.

Go bears!

Hopeful than Hopeless than Hopeful Again

2011-01-17T19:42:00.001-08:00

So, my pal Paul is running this series on his blog called Hopelessness Watch. I'm going all big word here, and saying that hopelessness is anathema to me. I am like pathologically hopeful. I am always surprised when I don't win the lottery.

So, I was thinking about countering with a "hopefulness watch." The idea struck me while I was watching the first season of Soap on Netflix. If you are not as old as me, you might not be aware that Billy Crystal played a character named Jody, who was openly gay. That show began airing in 1977. It was something, 30 odd years ago, to have a gay character on TV, and the show should be lauded for its historical significance in not only having a gay character but a gay character who had some depth. In my life, it was the first time I'd ever seen a gay character represented pop culturally beyond just bullshit broad stereotype. And the last I'd see for a really long time.

But there was this one plot development: Jody's boyfriend is a pro football player, who is unwilling to go public with their relationship. Jody offers a solution: he'll get a sex change operation. Because in that show, progressive as it was, wanting to have sex with a man meant you might as well be a woman.

So, I thought "look how far we've come!" I was filled with hope in seeing that even a wildly progressive show like Soap could get simple human sexuality so completely wrong. Seeing the errors of our past makes me feel hopeful about our present. There on my tiny computer screen, I could see real evidence of our progress as a nation.

But then, tonight, I watched this show called Rules of Engagement. And, lo and behold, we meet a lesbian character who we know is a lesbian because she's just like a guy. She likes sports and beer and not communicating and being emotionally retarded. Because she likes to have sex with women, every bullshit, hateful, nasty stereotype about men is extrapolated onto her just like it's 1977 all over again.

And, thus, my hopefulness took a kick to the nuts.

And as I mired in the resulting hopelessness, it suddenly occurred to me that no one watches that show. In all my ample facebooking, I've never seen anyone post "OMG, did you see RoE? David Spade LOLOLOLOL" Why? Probably because it traffics in lazy stereotypes like "men are stupid and emotionally retarded as are lesbians since wanting to have sex with women is all that it takes to make you a man."

American TV is not the cesspool it once was, and we've grown to like a little complexity from our characters, a little depth, a little richness.

And just like that, hopefulness reengaged. Schadenfraudingly.

Incivility is Not the Point

2011-01-12T11:01:00.000-08:00

I'm pretty much done with mealy-mouthed cries for a return to civility. I'm not sure our political discourse has ever been civil, and I'm not all that excited that it be so. Let's climb into our way back machine: Remember when George Bush was caught on mic calling a NY Times reporter an asshole? I was with old G. Dubya that there was no need to apologize for that. As may be clear from this bloggity, I'm a big fan of calling people assholes. And while I'm not sure that Adam Clymer IS an asshole, I am sure that Bush was perfectly sincere in his assessment.

The problem is not with a lack of civility. The problem is with ginning up anti-government paranoia. Dog whistle at the barely sane with language that lets them know that all their fevered paranoia is RIGHT! Democrats ARE going to take their guns and once those guns are gone, America will become socialist, but not socialist like Sweden but like that movie you saw on TV that one time about how Russia still is and also China, I think.

I don't care how uncivil our political dialog is. But I do care when so many hugely successful political figures have no issue with increasing their fame and fortune by insisting that democratically elected figures are illegitimate and should be "taken out." I care when they speechify about "real Americans," defined as people who share your political views; the tacit follow-through to this being that people who have different political views are NOT real Americans, but pretenders and interlopers. It's not rude to do that, it's dangerous. If we're going to live in this crazy country where any maniac can buy an assault rifle, it seems only sensible that the people insisting that there's a Constitutional right to these assault weapons should take some care to avoid language inspiring their base to strap them on.

I'm Back, Baby

2011-01-06T19:17:00.000-08:00

A quick politics bloggity.

So, I was at the gym today and reading the news on closed captioning. John Boehner was being interviewed by Brian Williams. Williams asks him a question like, "What do you hope to accomplish as speaker," or something like that. And Boehner says "I want to get the America I grew up in back."

Look, I know it's too much to ask of our modern American punditocracy, but wouldn't you just give your eyeteeth if some intrepid young journalist could ask John Boehner what the fuck that means?

I know, I know. When a Republican spouts off vapid, meaningless platitudes it's like they fart rainbows and the eggheads in the press ooh and ahh while their lizard brains return to Mayberry where they sipped chocolate malteds with both Betty and Veronica and it almost never rained.

But, I for one am pretty sure I don't want to live in the America John Boehner grew up in. Admittedly, this is probably because I get my history from reality (which clearly has a liberal bias). And I like living in an America that's slowly divorcing itself from the bullshit good old boys club where uppity bitches like me got shoved into whatever tiny box glorious America wanted to shove them in.

In short, I am a fan of genuine liberty and not the utterly vapid, facile fake liberty that the TP GOP waxes rhapsodic over.

If nothing else, I'm leery of living in the America John Boehner grew up in because it clearly turned him into a raging asshole. But a raging asshole with a really big gavel, motherfuckers!

Can't wait until Johnny B's giant gavel runs into Barack Obama's veto pen.

The Politics Hiatus Continues

2010-12-13T18:48:00.000-08:00

I've cheated, sure. A couple of times. I've hovered over an RSS feed to get the scoop, I've perked my ear up as my husband watched Rachel. But, for the past week, I've not obsessed over politics. And it's been very illuminating and liberating.

My pal, Paul, from over at Near Earth Object (an excellent blog, by the way), is considering taking a hiatus as well. Regarding my last post, he writes:

"However, where Meg is wrong is in her implication that our politics might not actually result in everyone she loves dying or the planet exploding. Those things really could happen, thanks to our political system! I mean, we can’t get START ratified!"

And, of course, he's right that these things really could happen. But where I think he's wrong is: same is it ever was. If Mrs. Weasley could leave the Potterverse, her clock would always be pointing at "in mortal danger" for everyone. The Sword of Damocles is never not hanging over our heads. The world literally could end at any minute. Economic devastation is always right around the corner. And it's always been that way. Security is an illusion. But a nice one. It's why I think people believe in God and Sarah Palin (oh, I'm sure I pissed off a lot of people there.... I kid, I kid!)

Paul and I are of like minds in so many ways, but we have, I think, one difference: he thinks things are worse now than ever. I think they're just about the same but we know a lot more. Who's to say who's right? But I think we live in unique times that are also entirely like every time ever before. Unique in that we have so many channels for information. We no longer rely on the stentorian tones of Walter Cronkite to tell us what to think. We now have voices upon voices interpreting every event. Not unique, in that it's about the same scary shit that's almost always happening.

One of the things that Jon Stewart said during his rally that really resonated with me was "when everything is amplified, you can't hear anything." I'm taking this break because I found myself at a point where I felt assailed by the information and opinionating and the goddamn wearisome snark.

Politics matter. As the late, lamented Molly Ivins said, they are part of the warp and woof of our lives, and we have an obligation to understand what's happening in our world. But we are assailed with information, from all sources, with interpretations upon interpretation of that information until it gets to the point where it's almost impossible to find any perspective. And so, I walked away. After the New Year, I'll come back. But, until then, it's going to be all mystery novels and Christmas specials and Star Trek recaps. And I think that's OK. For a while.

On Hiatus

2010-12-09T10:42:00.000-08:00

So, I've now been 1.5 days into my politics hiatus. I get scarily obsessed with it from time to time and start to believe that every thing that happens has enormous consequences that will result in everyone I love dying and the planet exploding. I wake up in the middle of the night worried over things I cannot control. The 24 hour news cycle is bad for all of us. Really bad.

Additionally, I've grown weary of the snark. I used to love snark. But the internet is festooned with snark of the worst kind; artificial, trite and overdone. 99% of the political snark on the internet is to genuine satire what Precious Moments or "Love Is" are to genuine sentiment.

I'll come back to politics. I think it's important to know what's going on and what with the hysterical partisanship of the country these days, it's easier to get the whole story from the intertoobz than it is from the "impartiality is reporting what each side says and not bothering with analysis or fact checking" traditional media. Also, I love it. But, for a week or so I'm steering clear. I need a break. I'm sick of politics and I'm sick of snark.

But I could NEVER be sick of the internet.

So what to do? If I'm avoiding my political blogs, what do I read while I'm eating my lunch? And this happy afternoon, I have made the awesomest discovery. There's this fellow named Zach Handlen who is recapping Star Trek: TNG over at The Onion's AV Club. And he's doing it in a way that's thoughtful and entertaining, but not particularly snarky. And if anything invites snark, it's Star Trek. But I, like so many, unabashedly love it. And this Zach Handlen guy is writing to those of us who love that show. So this lunchtime, instead of growing increasingly irritated by a preponderance of "cave" puns made by people who know they swiped that pun from somewhere but are still devoted to the idea of their own cleverness, I sipped my Diet Coke, ate some soup and revisited the question of Wesley Crusher, who was such a problematic character. Didn't you just hate him? Except for those times he was awesome? Or when you felt really fond of him?

Lunchtimes have gotten so much better, it didn't really matter that my soup was kind of gross.

I Suppose I Could be Missing Something...

2010-12-06T19:50:00.000-08:00

But between DailyKos reccing 10 diaries a day that include the word "cave" in their title and a 10 minute jaunt into The Ed Show, where he seemed desperate to get Alan Grayson to say Obama "capitulated," I find myself both frustrated and flummoxed.

I get fighting the good fight. I really do. But I have little doubt had Obama refused to give into the GOP demands to keep throwing our tax money at rich people, the end result would not be Senate GOP-ers deciding to go ahead ahead with Obama's tax plan. Rather, it seems far more likely to me that they'd be perfectly contented to let taxes go up on everyone, let unemployment benefits expire for millions of Americans, and watch the economy and jobless rates go down and up, respectively. In then, in two years, they'd be rid of Obama. Which is, after all, their admitted end game.

Obama may have a messaging problem, but if you really think that just a little bravado would get us what we want with the senate as fucked up as it is, and with a GOP willing to filibuster literally every piece of legislation that Obama wants (even the stuff they suggest), then I think you're nuts. Noble, maybe. But nuts. Probably just nuts.

Much like health care, this is a shitty deal. But it's better than nothing. And nothing is exactly what you get when you go all "my dick is bigger than yours" with the nutbars running the Grand Old Party. Because they just don't fucking care. They have one goal and one goal only.

To that end, if Jesus Christ himself were sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office, and had a D after his name, Jim Demint (who's really running the party) and his cronies at Fox would find a way to make him out to be a godless gay socialist nazi. The government branch that gives cover to Demint and his ilk are where you need to focus your rage. In the meantime, the 5 million people who'll get an unemployment check next month are probably grateful as a motherfucker that Obama dealt.

As am I.

Teaching Our Girls

2010-12-03T20:08:00.001-08:00

I blog about this topic kind of a lot, since it's near and dear to me. But, just to catch you up, when they asked if we wanted to select a gender before getting our adoption referral, I knew I wanted a girl. I felt like I had so many things to teach a girl and that I really wanted a daughter. I'd feel guilty about specifying this except I don't. Fortunately, Don didn't care either way and was happy to agree to this.

Of course, your confident passion on what to teach your daughter gets a little shaky when you've actually got one, when all your philosophies and theories have to meet practical application. But it's a topic nearly always on my feminist mind.

First of all, enough enough enough with the "standing on the front porch with a shotgun" thing. I've already ripped on the whole notion of the overprotective father as some kind of adorable metaphor. It's worth saying again, though, have some confidence in your daughter's judgement and afford her some agency. And never think it's cute to accept a rape culture as just the way men are wired. They aren't. Have some respect for your gender, dudes. Honestly, it kills me that feminists have the reputation of man-haters. Clearly, the biggest man-haters out there are the people who market beer. We feminists like men, and demonstrate that by not expecting them to act like addlepated fuckwits.

Here's another one, though, that's been quite on my mind: teach your daughter that it's not her job to be sexually appealing. It's nice to look nice. It's nice when other people think you look nice. But it's time to rid our girls of the notion that their primary obligation is to look good. Yesterday, I read comments on THREE separate blogs about how old-looking or poorly dressed Hillary Clinton is (one of which charmingly referred to her as "fatarse."). Sarah Jessica Parker will have to address "aging in Hollywood" in every fucking interview she does. But her husband, former teen heartthrob, will never be asked that. That Beer in Hell movie, for the love of the FSM, got made!

Praise your daughter for being smart, for being funny, let her be weird and don't obsess about her hair (I'm having SUCH a hard time with that one). Don't raise her in an environment where you mock and marginalize women who don't fit a heteronormative (and increasingly impossible) idea of what a woman should look like. Raise your girls so that if someone makes fun of how she looks, she'll feel confident enough to let it roll off her back.

You know that mean girl thing that we hear about so often, the slam books and the blithe tossing about of "bitch" and "whore"? They learn that shit somewhere. Probably not from their parents (except for maybe really awful parents). But it's rife in our culture and when we take on the responsibility for raising girls, we take on the responsibility for teaching them that it's not right and they don't have to accept it. It's a hard ass lesson to teach, when so much in the culture acts against us. But I suspect it's not such a hard one to learn.

Don't Panic

2010-11-03T18:18:00.000-07:00

Back when Don and I were off to Russia to get Laney and the whole thing never stopped seeming tenuous and every 15 minutes something happened that made it seem like the whole thing was bound to go completely tits up and we'd end up Laney-less, we took to quoting Douglas Adams and reminding each other often, "Don't panic." It's such good advice! If that desperate, worried look crossed my face, Don would look me right in the eye and say "You got your towel?" And I always remembered that I did have my metaphorical towel. Plus there were Russian Pan-Galactic Gargleblasters on the really bad days.

After last night's shellacking, I'm remembering that. And not panicking. I'm remembering that even though it sucked balls that the bad guys picked up 60 seats, there were also some pretty great things that happened. I'm particularly pleased that Sharron Angle's despicable, racist campaign didn't work. Not by a long shot. Lexington, Kentucky elected an openly gay mayor. We held onto the senate where crackpot tea party legislation will go to die. And I also know a certain Kenyan Muslim Anti-Colonialist Pinko Commie Hitler who has a veto pen. And, y'all, come on! It's going to be kind of fun watching John Boehner's legislative acrobats. He has to find a way to keep the tea party (who keeps on telling us they don't belong to any political party) happy. I'm sure they'll hold him to the same lofty standards they held Nancy Pelosi.

Speaking of whom, that one does hurt. She was an awesome speaker. The last two years we lefties complained about how little was getting done, how frustrated we were with the progress. And then, a week before the mid-terms we started talking about how legislatively successful the last two years have been. And they were. We got a lot of shit done, and it was shit that was worthwhile if it wasn't politically expedient. It was some motherfucking governing. Nancy Pelosi did good work and I am grateful for her. And I got no regrets about the guy I helped put in the White House.

So, here's what you do: Hug your loved ones, cry into your bourbon (beer, wine, whatever your poison is) and then suck it up, grab your towel, and know your enemy. And most importantly, recognize that it is impossible to understand the historical context of a moment you're living in.

The 24 hour news cycle + the internet is like Halloween candy. I keep grabbing it, even though I know that too much is bad for me. I think post Jon Stewart's rally and two years into the most legislatively successful presidency in my lifetime, I'm going to make a concerted effort to stay involved, but not panic. And not think end times every time something on the Internet freaks me out.

Gays

2010-10-29T20:00:00.000-07:00

Many years ago, my roommate Maura came home from a waitressing shift having made a revelation. She'd learned that if you call a guy a pussy you can get him to do anything. She described a conversation kind of like this:

Her: Pick up my last table, would you?
Him: No, I'm ready to go home
Her: Pussy
Him: OK

This is writ large, there was more to it than that. But about 15 years ago, she and I started this campaign of calling guys "pussies" and then delighting in how clearly uncomfortable it made them.

The proud feminist I am now kind of regrets this. And then I started seeing how all these new women Republicans picked up on it and started really regretting it. Christine O'Donnell with the whole "man pants" things. Sharron Angle and Sarah Palin tossing around frequent exhortations to "man up."

It seems clear that they must believe that women are capable of elected office (at least for half a term or so). When they call a guy a "pussy," I'm pretty sure what they're calling him is a fag.

Which just underscores my old theory that the quickest way to become a star of the Republican Party is to channel your inner 6th grade bully. And it's not really a problem that Harry Reid and Chris Coons don't care if you call them "fag" (grown ups aren't insulted by childish nonsense like that).

These ladies are dog whistling at their base. And they think their base is made up of a bunch of assholes. Which it probably is.

Guns

2010-10-29T19:56:00.000-07:00

This is an extended clip from The Rachel Maddow Show of her talking to Joe Miller supporters. I'd be willing to bet, dollars to donuts, that all three of the people she talks to have spent a lot of time in front of their TVs watching Fox News. Just a few years ago, we might have been surprised that people who clearly spend a lot of time engaging in political activities and watching cable TV news could be this shockingly ignorant. Nowadays, though, it's so expected, it's banal.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

God

2010-10-29T19:26:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot about these freedoms the Tea Party keeps telling us that Obama is going to take away. And I think it's mostly got something to do with religion. Bill O'Reilly is always on about this non-existent War on Christmas. And Christine O'Donnell seems to really believe that the idea of separation of church and state is some radical liberal plot dreamed up by Bill Maher or something. Apparently, to the Tea Party, being Muslim or atheist is sufficient to make you unfit for office. Glenn Beck foams at the mouth at radical secular progressivism.

And all this is confusing since what are they so paranoid about? There is literally no impediment, social, civil or otherwise, to being Christian in America. But somehow a whole swath of people have been convinced, against all logic and despite clear evidence to the contrary, that the only way they'll get to continue being Christian is to deny everyone else the right to not adhere to Christian rules.

The end result of this is theocracy: government based on biblical law as interpreted by the most conservative practitioners of that faith. Which may sound familiar.

It's a profound sickness we have in this nation and we have the good folks at Fox to thank for it. Glenn Beck and his Fox cronies have made their Faustian bargains. They don't give a rat's ass about god. They don't care about church or have any interest in Jesus beyond how they can use him to fatten their bank accounts.

And you know? It's just gross.

Racism

2010-10-25T18:57:00.000-07:00

A simple explanation of what racism is:

It is racist to blame an entire race for the actions of individual members of that race. It is racist to be afraid of people because of the way they worship god. It is really racist to decide you know what's in a person's heart because of the way they look. It is fantastically, extraordinarily racist to believe that people should not be allowed to hold elected office because they are Muslim.

It is racist to blame members of a race for your own prejudice against that race.

It is worse to be racist than it is to point out racism.

The only defense against racism is awareness of it.

I got preachy there. Things are getting ugly. Stop being racist.

Adventures in Slow Cooking from a Terrible Cook, Part 2

2010-10-24T17:44:00.000-07:00

So, after the last post on slow cooking, my neighbor passed on his slow-cooker recipe (see comments at the last link for recipe) which I adapted based on what I had in the pantry and what I like. This is a curry recipe, which I used hot curry for and which made me sweat. But, I have to say, it was pretty good.

- 5 small potatoes, washed and cut into 1" chunks (the recipe called for peeled, but as a vegetarian I like to get my iron where I can and potato skins have loads of it)
- Most of a bag of frozen lima beans (I like lima beans. Shut up)
- 1 can vegetable broth
- 1 can rotel
- 2 Tbsp peanut butter (this was my own idea and the very first time I've gone off recipe this radically and it ended up good!)
- 2 Tsp hot curry powder
- 2 Tsp paprika
- 1 Tsp turmeric
- 1 Tsp ground ginger
- 1/2 Tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 Tsp ground mustard
- 1/2 Tsp ground nutmeg
- 1/2 Tsp red pepper flakes
- 1/2 Tsp allspice

Note - Every measuring spoon I have has been lost to the garbage disposal, so above were just estimates. This is how I roll and probably quite a key to why I'm such a terrible cook)

Throw all that in the crock pot on high for 5 hours or so.

Mix 2 Tblsp water with 4 tsp corn starch (estimated) and stir it into the crock pot for 30 minutes.

I made brown rice (since I didn't have any basmati) and threw it in there.

Score - Tasty. The peanut butter was a good idea. I think if I try again, I'll throw some raw cashews and a can of coconut milk in there and go full on Mussaman.

Thanks for the recipe, Michael!

Do-Overs

2010-10-22T18:32:00.000-07:00

I should warn you from the get go, sap is imminent. Lots of it.

I was going to blog tonight about this restaurant Leona's which I'm convinced is waging some incredibly complex and long-standing practical joke against me. No restaurant can be that consistently terrible and flourish. But something else happened and I decided I wanted to write about that.

Laney and I left Leona's at about 7:30, came home, brushed teeth, read stories got all snuggly and almost asleep when Laney said to me, "Can you go downstairs and get Fluffy." And then a cold feeling of dread descended over me. We left Fluffy at the restaurant. Fluffy was still in Leona's playroom.

Fluffy is the Build-A-Bear which is actually a dog that we got for Laney at the start of the school year. She loves this toy to distraction. Fluffy is her constant companion. She rides with us to school and waits in the car (because Laney feels that the car is safer for Fluffy than school) until it's time to go home. She sleeps with Laney every night. And we'd left Fluffy at the damn restaurant.

Tears sprang to Laney's eyes and I was just about to start my "You left your toy at the restaurant and now are going to have to deal with the consequences. I'll call and hopefully she'll still be there tomorrow but you need to take better care of your toys." But before a single word left my mouth, some primal feeling overtook me and instead I said, "Come on, let's go get her."

This is REALLY not like me. I was still working through the resentment that I'd given $40 to this terrible restaurant and I still have to make Laney's Halloween costume since she's got a party tomorrow. Besides, Laney would be asleep in 10 minutes even without Fluffy and then I'd be on Meg-time. And yet there was no question. We were going to get Fluffy.

As we were driving to the restaurant, I started to tell Laney about Peppy who was my favorite stuffed animal when I was about her age. I hadn't thought about Peppy in years. It was somewhere in the mid-70s, and I was visiting my cousin in Texas. My uncle had taken us to a carnival or state fair or something and had won or bought the doll for me. And I named her Peppy. And I loved her. Peppy was one of those cheap carnival prizes and was meant to look just enough not like Snoopy to avoid copyright infringement. I'd put blue eye shadow and pink blush on her and loved her to distraction. She looked like Snoopy if Snoopy were a particularly down-on-her-luck hooker. And she was my constant companion.

One year, I reckon I was about nine, we were on a trip to Florida and we stopped midway in a hotel. My friend, Beth, and I were sharing a room with my big brother and his friend, Joe. My parents were in the room adjacent. Nolan and Joe were playing wrestling with the dog and poor Peppy's head got ripped halfway off. In my eagerness to prove how grown up I was, I said "Oh, just throw her away."

Beth, always so much wiser than me, said "Are you sure?" I can conjure up her look of friendly, concerned admonition as if it were yesterday. But I had a little pre-pubescent crush on Joe and wanted to show him that I was NOT a baby.

About 10 miles on our way to Florida the next morning, I started to regret the decision. I crawled in the back of our Rambler and cried quietly. I felt so guilty and stupid. Beth understood. She was always such a good friend! "Poor Pepsi," she said (Beth called her Pepsi), and patted my head.

And now 30-odd years later, I had my chance to Make It Right. I told Laney all about my Peppy on the drive to the restaurant and when we got there (Leona's primary virtue is being close), there was Fluffy, sitting quietly in the playroom... waiting for us.

On the way home, Laney hugged her doll close to her and asked me if I would be happy if she could get Peppy for me. She's such a sweet kid and was so relieved to have her doll back and wanted me to feel like she did. I thought about it for a second and said "No, Peppy was for me as a little girl and I'm not a little girl anymore." And then she asked if I wished I could be a little girl again. And I said, "Well, you grow up and get to be all sorts of things. I got to be a nine and now I get to be 41, and get to have my own little girl and that's pretty great."

But (and I am honestly embarrassed to be this sappy), I think that little girl crying in the back of the Rambler is still with me and now, 30-odd years later, I feel OK about poor Peppy.

Laney is sound asleep now with her arms wrapped around Fluffy. And that's pretty great.

Freedom of Speech

2010-10-21T18:40:00.000-07:00

First a tweet from Sarah Palin:

This is just an exhausting wingnut meme. They love the Constitution. They luuuuurrrve the Constitution. They are totally hot for the Constitution. They want to marry the Constitution and have like a million of its babies. But they can't be bothered to read the damn thing.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

You'll note that it doesn't say "There shall be no consequences for what you say provided your wingnut bona fides are in order." Juan Williams didn't get arrested. He got fired. Sheesh. If Eugene Robinson started spouting off on MSNBC about how all the tea party people were inbred rednecks whose parents are first cousins, you can damn well bet Sarah Palin would be leading the tweet charge for his dismissal from The Washington Post. And the Washington Post SHOULD fire him if he did that. But Eugene Robinson doesn't say racist shit on the TV and Sarah Palin agrees that it's the Muslims own stupid fault that Juan Williams is scared of them. And anyway the Constitution is totally hot for Sarah Palin and will say whatever she wants it to just like Todd and Sean Hannity. And this is how the entire Fox nation ends up believing the Juan Williams has been constitutionally abused instead of verbal diarrhea-ing his way into a 2 million dollar contract with Fox.

I think I have a pretty good handle on what the first amendment is all about. And I think it's pretty much at the heart of why we work as a country, even when the country seems filled with people saying profoundly stupid things (same as it ever was, but now with its own basic cable network!). We do have the first amendment to thank for those Westboro Baptist nitwits who spew their hate at the funerals of fallen soldiers. But we can also thank the first amendment for this, which (at the risk of going all grandiloquent) is everything that's great about America:

Adventures in Slow Cooking from a Terrible Cook

2010-10-18T10:45:00.000-07:00

A while ago, I decided to bust out the crock pot. This blog is my inspiration and I consult it constantly even though I know that the best thing I make in it will be worse than the worst thing she does.

This is not false modesty. I am a terrible fucking cook. Seriously. I lack focus, patience, will and desire. I cling to the desperate hope that Laney will end up a prodigy and start spending her afternoons making wholesome delicious vegetarian meals for us to share.

This is, as we used to say in the south, not hardly likely. The kid will eat nothing but pasta and broccoli and would eat it them both raw if I weren't around to throw them in boiling water.

But I like to eat. And I try to eat healthy things. And we are broke like a joke. So about a while ago, I started Crock Pot Sundays.

This Sunday was my third or fourth venture on the slow cooker, and I think I'm getting a little better. I started with this recipe and then, since I didn't have the right ingredients and no inclination to go to the store, I just pretty much emptied stuff from my pantry into it. As follows:

1 can chickpeas
1 can black beans
1 can kidney beans
1 can corn
1 bigass can tomato puree (why did I have tomato puree? My pantry is very mysterious. I think cans of things just kind of appear in it)
1 tablespoon brown sugar
Turmeric
Pepper
Salt
Chili Powder
Fake Beef Crumbles
Can of Water

Tossed it in the crockpot, cooked it for about 6 hours and, you know what? not bad! It's pretty flavorful and definitely filling. I reckon a cup of it is about 150 calories and chock-a-block with fiber. And it's lunch for the week for about $6.

Thumbs up.

Crock pots make things taste good. They give the food a chance to really soak up the flavors. I think this one turned out well thanks to the turmeric, which is a lovely spice and should be in everything. Even Halloween candy.

Oh, New York... Carl Paladino? REALLY?

2010-10-11T18:01:00.000-07:00

Carl Paladino, the GOP candidate for governor in New York, recently said:

"I don't want [children] to be brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option. It isn't." Gay people, he thinks, "would be much better off and much more successful getting married and raising a family than being gay".

This reminded me of a dinner table conversation I had what must have been going on 20 years ago with my mother. My cousin, who'd come up with me and my brother in this area somewhere between sibling and cousin, had recently come out as a lesbian and my mother was upset about it. She didn't think my cousin was a sinner or a going to hell or anything really stupid like that. But she was worried that life would be so hard for her. She felt like she could have done more to protect her from this painful homosexual existence. It reminded me a lot of the same worries folks espoused about interracial relationships: "I'm not upset about their relationship, but how miserable the lives of their children!" I actually think this came from an honest place for a lot of people who just couldn't grasp that biracial kids weren't going to be living in perpetual 1955. Shoot, they might even end up doing pretty well. They didn't understand that these fears were more a propagation of a prejudice than a reaction to it. In their world, the blended children and the gays were shunned and mocked. And they had little faith that the world could ever be different.

But it was. My cousin now has a great job, a great life and, most importantly, a partner who is made of awesome, who loves her completely and who fits into our family like a hand into a glove. No one is surprised by this. If you are a wonderful and smart and kind person, it stands to reason that if all goes as it should with the universe, you end up with someone who deserves you.

My mother would be surprised if I reminded her of this ancient conversation. She loves my cousin and her partner and understands easily that gay people are no happier or unhappier in their relationships than straight people (which is to say: happy, unhappy, really depends on the time of day and if you've gotten enough sleep). Gay people just are. They exist. Being gay isn't a rebellion or a political stance. It's no more radical or exotic than being left-handed. If we want to go large and look at this in the grander cultural environment, it's clear that not only are gay lives happier with the liberty to live honestly, but life is easier and more peaceful for us straight folks who accept this simply.

It's surprising to me that in 2010 there are still people who think like Carl Paladino. Keeping up all that machismo must be exhausting; this miasma of denial like creating an imaginary kaleidoscope, and insisting to the rest of the world what you see through it is real-er than what's really real. All of us, surely, know gay people who are living rich, full, happy lives. Don't all of us, at least tangentially, know gay people who are enjoying successful relationships (should be marriage, but will be soon); gay people who are raising happy kids by following the simple algorithm that good parenting is achieved not by neglecting your own needs but by putting your kids' needs first? Isn't life just easier for all of us when we stop freaking out and creating drama where there just is none?

It really is. Trust me on this. If not, ask my Mom. She'd totally agree.

Also, Carl Paladino is a colossal asshole. Really, New York? Are you just trying to make us feel better about the whole Blagevich fiasco?

eReader

2010-10-08T18:14:00.001-07:00

I got an eReader! I got the Sony one, which is the best one you can get when money is no object (money is no object because we don't have any and we got this one for free). I like it. It takes some getting used to, but I'm getting there. I like the idea of being able to have a whole bunch of books in one handy container that I can carry around in my purse. It's slim and light and my only problem with it is that you can't flip back through pages like you can a regular book. There's a way to. I just don't know what it is yet. But I will. My favorite thing about them is that I can read truly shlocky stuff in public and no one will know! I have a feeling I'll be checking out those Twilight books real soon.

Printed books won't go away. If you want to get a printed book, you'll be able to. But I suspect eBooks will be the norm within the next 10 years. After all, they're cheaper, more environmentally friendly and they're cheaper (did I mention cheaper?).

(While I'm talking about cheaper, they're not cheap enough yet. But they will be. They're like CDs. Publishers can get away with charging $10 for a novel now. But eventually, they'll have to admit that an electronic novel costs a fraction to publish what a printed one does. And the cost will reflect that. This may democratize casual reading in a way that libraries should but somehow don't.)

People will worry though about what this portends. Millions of words will be written on the subject (ironically, most of these will be read on computer screens). Old school types will pine and worry that the next generation is missing out on a fundamental feature of life because they aren't reading books the way older people like to read books.

Here's what I think: back in 1440 when Gutenberg invented the printing press a bunch of people at a dinner party sat around mourning its advent; agreeing with each other that if it's not handwritten, it's so impersonal.

Such is the hallmark of any new technology. Let's all roll our eyes at it. I bet Gutenberg did.

One final note: if I were to just hear the word "Gutenberg" completely out of context, I'd totally think Steve not Johannes. Would you? I suspect that if American culture is really in demise, this is the symptom. Not eReaders.

Mrs. Catt

2010-10-07T17:59:00.001-07:00

On August 18, 1920 the Tennessee state legislature met to vote on women's suffrage. 35 states had already ratified it and once it passed in Tennessee, it'd be a done deal. Carrie Chapman Catt, the head of the National Women's Suffrage Association, thought she had the votes. But when the vote ended at a 48-48 tie, the speaker, who was sympathetic to women's suffrage, voted no. Rat bastard. Can you believe it?

Fortunately, a 24 year old representative named Harry Burn, known as solidly anti-suffrage, had gotten a letter from his mother that morning. She'd written, "Be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt out." And so Harry Burn changed his vote. The bill passed and thus it came down to a note from Mom that women finally got the right to cast their vote.

I love this story. It's a delightful story. But the stone cold bummer of it is that by 1920, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were dead.

No good progressive act has ever happened in America without a long hard slog against an entrenched conservative power base that Does. Not. Want. Change.

But we fight the fight and remember that the fight is worth fighting even if you don't live to see victory. Because, in the end, progress will out. But not on its own.

The America we live in now is better than it has ever been before. We're a better country for women voting. We're better for our growing acceptance of the LGBT community. For god's sake, you'd think you wouldn't even have to say this out loud: but we're a better America than the one in which people could own other people.

American culture, for all its weird celebrity obsession and 24 hour news cycles, is more open and accepting than it has ever been before. And for that, we owe a debt of gratitude to the lion-hearted few who would not give up and to the Moms who knew when to write a timely note.

Whineypants Flea Post

2010-10-04T18:34:00.000-07:00

There are fleas in our house. This is the most demoralizing, disgusting experience of my life and I am including the Bush years. I'm not saying I would trade a flea-free house for another few years of Bush, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit I'd think about it. I'd attend tea party rallies and keep my mouth shut to get rid of them. I'd watch Two and a Half Men for 24 straight hours to get rid of them. I'd give up wine to get rid of them. Bourbon. Cheese.

They're in my car, in my clothes. I've been on a continual loop of laundry for a week now. My bedding (all of it) has been washed no fewer than FIVE times in like eight days. We've vacuumed and steamed and washed washed washed. My commitment to a chemical free house has vanished. The dog is flea-free, but only because she's been doused in a flea and tick mist that she hates. My bedroom carpet is covered in Borax and my mattress is damp from the steamer. There's not a comfortable spot in the house, except Laney's room. Which SOMEHOW, small mercies, has stayed flea-free (I've probably jinxed it).

All the windows are open and I'm praying for a cold, cold night. Maybe that'll do it.

I feel dirty, despite having showered about 8 billion times over the last few days. Feeling dirty, coincidentally, also makes me feel fat. Which is just fucking great.

And the worst of it? It's my own fault! If I'd remembered to frontline the dog monthly as I was warned to, repeatedly, we wouldn't be dealing with this now.

So, look, the moral of this whineypants post: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure (George, if you're reading this: THAT'S a platitude). But platitudes become platitudes because they're generally fucking true. Save for retirement. Don't drink or smoke too much. Eat healthy. Vote. And, for god's sake, put the damn frontline on the damn dog EVERY fucking month.

thefacebook

2010-10-02T07:35:00.000-07:00

I had a few interesting Facebook experiences yesterday. First, I read a review of The Social Network in the paper that made me REALLY want to see it. Later on, in the office, a friend was telling me about the lunch conversation during his last training jaunt. He was the only one amidst the sandwiches and cans of soda in the conference room who used Facebook. The conversation went something like:

Them: I don't need to tell people I just had toast
Him: That's not really what it's about
Them: I don't want to hook up with old boyfriends
Him: That's not what it's about
Them: Oh yes it is.

And then, over my own lunch, I checked in with Stephen Colbert who was interviewing Aaron Sorkin, writer of The Social Network. Aaron Sorkin is not on Facebook. He tells us why: "Social networking is to socializing what reality television is to television." The audience responded with a bemused silence. He asked Colbert to clarify what the audience thought about his statement. Dutifully, they applauded.

I wish I could have been there to explain to him that they were silent because what he said made no fucking sense. There's not a person out there who confuses hanging out on Facebook with hanging out with real people. People who use Facebook understand that it is something new, not a replacement for established social conventions. No Saturday night barfly has ever said, "Huzzah! Facebook! I'm going to stop hitting the bars and never leave my house." People use Facebook as an easy way to invite people to birthday parties... not as a place to throw a birthday parties.

But this is familiar territory for the Sorkin. His weird loathing of reality TV paired with his blithe willingness to make all reality television into "Naked Conscience-Free Who Want to Marry a Millionaire and then Eat Bugs" was the weakest of many weak links of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. It was clear that Aaron Sorkin didn't know what reality television was but felt free to comment on how terrible it was.

Sound familiar?

Here's my thing: I'm a mom whose husband works nights and have a job in which I spend most of my day sequestered in front of a computer screen. Facebook (and Twitter) is just an awesome way for me to connect with other people out there. People who say funny and sweet things. People who have parenting advice and can suggest movies to see. People I can complain about Newt Gingrich too. People I can gab about Project Runway with (I think Mondo has this thing locked up) and argue (still) over the finale of Lost (grrrrrrr). It's great fun and a great way to keep from feeling lonely when real life forces force you to be alone.

And if you've never used it, stop telling those of us who do what it's about. It's not what you think it is and you sound like one of those Luddite nerds from 2002 bitching about cell phones. A half a billion people across the world have decided this is a valid way to talk to each other. Get with the program or shut up about.

GrumpyPants McBloggyHead

2010-09-23T17:49:00.000-07:00

I am GrumpyPants McBloggyHead. I may have reached critical mass with American political culture and so I'm gonna blog it out and become TightPants McSleepyHead instead.

Here's how it seems to work for me. The government is Republican-led. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and government coffers are exhausted in the process. A democrat takes over. Suddenly the whole world cares about the deficit. The democrat is thwarted in attempts to make legislation when the the cynical, corrupted punditry goes full barrel into the culture wars. Republicans come back. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. Rinse. Repeat.

Obviously we all wish Obama's leadership had been bolder. But dude has accomplished quite a bit. And yet, of course, we all know it could be more.

And this is how it is for us in the reality-based community. We want to celebrate his accomplishments and hold his feet to the fire on his failures. But it is exhausting to talk about Obama in any reasonable terms in America these days because the Republican chatter machine has gone Completely Batshit Crazy. I mean, I expected the culture wars, but this stuff out there makes "Clinton murdered Vince Foster" look almost reasonable. Well, that's not true, but, you know what I mean!

Out there in the ether, Obama is a Kenyan nationalist. He's a Muslim. He's a Communist. He's a Nazi. And, for fuck's sake, dude isn't even particularly LIBERAL!

There are too many stupid things being taken seriously in this country. So, in the interest of alleviating my grumpypants and the sheer exhaustion of modern political discourse, I've decided to make a list of the stupid things out there. The culture wars make us all stupid (I'm actually just being polite there, the culture wars tend to make the righties much stupider than the lefties):

- It is stupid believe that your right to be Christian is in any way threatened
- Is it stupid to believe that you have to deny people the right to practice their religion in order to ensure your right to practice yours
- It is stupid to believe that the Barack Obama is Kenyan, Muslim, Communist, Socialist or a Nazi
- It is stupid to believe that the 1.4 billion Muslims are all terrorists
- Is it spectacularly stupid to believe that Congress should take a vote banning Shari'a law in America.
- It is stupid to believe that Obama is responsible for the deficit
- It is stupider when you didn't care about the deficit from 2001-2008, but think it's a REALLY BIG FUCKING DEAL now
- It is stupid to believe that the only way to protect the sanctity of your marriage is to deny the right to other people to marry
- It is stupid to believe that all (or any) of our economic woes could be alleviated if we kicked out all the undocumented workers and their US citizen children
- It is stupid to blame the problems in America on the powerless
- Racism is stupid
- Homophobia is stupid
- Sexism is stupid

Dear America, stop being stupid.

\grumpypants

The American Theocrat

2010-09-13T17:59:00.000-07:00

I'm an atheist. This means I'm pretty sure there's not a god. Note that I say I'm pretty sure. These are things that can't be known, you know? What I do know is that my life is more rich, more complete and more satisfying if I live it believing that we're in it for each other. I am an optimistic woman and believe that virtue is its own reward. I'm a connoisseur of kindness. I seek it out like your more crackpot Christians look for Jesus in the burnt toast (but find it a lot more often). It breaks my heart a little that the old John Lennon song has now been crusted over with an uncrackable veneer of schmaltz, since what he was imagining was, in fact, pretty fucking radical. I think, in short, (and I'm pretty sure I'm right) that the world would be a better place if we'd all just give up on god.

That said, all that no-god stuff understood, I can't count on two hands the number of people I love who are Christian. I love so so so many people for whom the teachings of Jesus are profoundly important and provide the foundation for their whole system of living.

And what's not at all surprising? These people love me too. We get along gangbusters.

It should be fairly obvious to any adult person with a couple of brain cells knocking around side by side that we can share the world in a rewarding, fulsome way with people whose system of theology differs from our own. Shit, some of my best conversations are with my Christian cousin (and dear, dear friend) just chewing over how we see the world.

This isn't hard.

This is, in fact, the way most of us live.

Which brings me, laboriously, to the new American Islamophobia. And how the people ginning it up are nothing more than bullies. And I can't stand a fucking bully.

These newly emboldened American theocrats have defined American in this narrow, retrograde way. It's not enough to say America is Christian. America is a very particular kind of Christian. And if you disagree, well then, you faggots, you ragheads, you n*****s and dykes - get the hell out, because you're not really American.

I've had the narrow eye of the Newt Palins in the world staring at me because I believe that women should have agency over their own bodies, because I don't believe that professing faith in Jesus automatically makes you a good person. And I've usually been pretty good with a tacit "go fuck yourself" and moving on with my life. But. This. Is. Different.

Now they've extended their mean, narrow worldview out into places that can't get it. They're spewing their poison in places that don't understand freedom and are painting this whole country (which I love) in broad, bloody strokes as a place that hates anyone who isn't Christian (by narrow definition).

And, it pisses me off. I am sick to death of the bullies. I'm sick of the way they've turned the entire media into a high school cafeteria where they flip the trays over anyone who doesn't kowtow to the notion the head Christian cheerleader and the Christian Quarterback count more. And I'm sick of them speaking lies of my country, lies about who we are, lies about what freedom is.

It's time to start talking louder than the theocrat bullies.

I'm an atheist and a feminist and a vegetarian and a better American than anyone who thinks that makes me less of one.

Holy War, Batman!

2010-09-10T17:44:00.000-07:00

My friend, Paul, has asked me to clarify a bit on my repeated claims that Islam is not radical. There are, of course, radical Muslims, radical sects of Islam, etc. But, when I speak of Islam, I'm speaking in the same general terms as if I were speaking of Christianity, Judaism, Hindu, Atheism, etc. In these here United States when we see someone walking out of Sunday services, we don't tend to think "I bet they're on their way to murder an abortion doctor" or "I wonder if their 'God Hates Fags' signs are spelled correctly." We tend to assume they're just average workaday normal people.

On the other hand, when we see someone exiting a Mosque, we are evidently supposed to think, "That guy hates me and would happily kill my children in front of me just prior to chopping off my hands and head."

This is a spectacularly shitty injustice. As the president said today, Muslims in America are our neighbors and co-workers. They work in the hospitals where we go when we're sick. They're tellers at the banks where their CEO bosses are otherwise occupied with robbing us blind (another post... another post). I cannot imagine how it must feel to have your way of life so loathed and mistrusted.

Of course, these notions don't spring up whole unto themselves. They get ginned up by people seeking power and attention. For the latter, we have the Palins and the Becks of the world who bear a striking resemblance to Florida Pastor Batshit in that they are willing to shout "terrorist" and "traitor" at anyone, so long as it gets the cameras pointed in their direction.

But, when you're talking about the power-seekers, you need to go full on Holy War. Which brings us to Mr. Newt Gingrich. Newtie, of course, reached biblical levels of hypocrisy and sleaziness in the 90s when he shut down Congress and led the impeachment fight purportedly because the president got a hummer but really, you know, because he could.

Those kinds of shenanigans are almost adorable when compared to his latest foray into the dirtiest sleaze that ever sleazed. This trailer actually makes me physically recoil. The link is to a story in TPM, I don't recommend watching the trailer itself, but it's there if you want to.

At the risk of coming off as a Blame America First liberal (which, for the record, I'm not and which is, furthermore, about as big a group as Florida Pastor Batshit's flock). But it takes a special kind of shameless to claim that we're (this allegedly Christian nation of America) under attack by theocratic Muslims when we're the one dropping bombs on them.

Lookit: I'm going to say this again and again. Newt Gingrich claims he's a Christian. I will do all Christian people the simple courtesy of not assuming that he speaks for them. Contrariwise, we all ought to extend the same courtesy to the Muslims of the world.

The Point of All This

2010-09-07T18:32:00.000-07:00

Oh, you guys, I've done something to my whole spine. I slept funny a couple of nights ago, but thought I'd walked it off. Then I worked out this afternoon and now I hurt in a straight line from below my left ear, down my back and on past my left butt cheek (what the hell kind of spinal twinge manifests itself in the butt cheek area?). I have to talk myself into moving from any seated or supine position. I think this is what being old must feel like. Shit. I might be old. I'll try some yoga to see if that takes some years off.

But let's leave the butt cheek and move onto the heart of this post: I've been tweeting regularly lately with various attempted witticisms as to how Barack Obama is not a Muslim and that there's also nothing wrong with being Muslim. I thought I'd break free of the 140 character limit and talk about why I'm doing this (and to complain about my sore neck, back and butt cheek).

I'm not kidding myself that I'll change any minds. I don't reckon that some poor simple-minded sap will randomly glance up at his Tweetdeck and suddenly recognize that his pastor is telling him lies and retweet with, "Crp! Btr skp Koran burning!" I don't think that some tea party disciple is going to read my sucky tweets and decide that it's not the Muslims and the Mexicans that are responsible for his economic woes (hint: it's corporate interests and congresspeople who collude with them). I don't imagine that some Ayn Rand devotee will friend-of-a-friend their way to my Facebook status and say "Wait! Maybe if Atlas Shrugged we'd all be better off!"

I do it because it makes me feel better. It's all less scary when I manage to access the underlying hilarity of it all. And, I hope, maybe those of you who inbox me with supportive messages and comment on how you're enjoying my sucky tweets will post some of your own. I don't think it's rude to remind people that the anti-Muslim fervor sweeping this country is poisonous. And, goddammit, fundamentally anti-American. I understand how you might not want to get all up in it with crazy Aunt Lulamae and her 2nd Amendment remedy for them damn raghead terrorists, but maybe if it's fun enough you will. And maybe Aunt Lulamae will wise up and get the idea that maybe (just maybe) she's the pot calling the kettle black.

Lookit: I'm 41 years old and this is the most racist I've ever seen this country. And, folks, I grew up in Memphis, Tn where, back in the 70s, it seemed every third pickup truck had a rebel flag embossed across its back window. But this is worse. And, if possible, stupider. Radio talk show hosts that play to enormous audiences think it's a legitimate grievance that Jay Z can use the n-word and they can't. The former speaker of the house and almost certain GOP candidate for president thinks Saudi Motherfucking Arabia should be setting baseline standards for religious liberty in America. Mainstream Christian pastors speak out in front of their huge congregations and declare Islam an evil religion. These are crazy, racist times.

Still, I'm an unabashed optimist and have little doubt that we'll make our way through this. We have before. But, in the meantime, I have to do what I have to do to keep myself from going crazy. And this is my cure:

My sore neck has somehow traveled to my left butt cheek. Which is weird. Less weird: Islam. Also, Barack Obama is not a Muslim.

Incalcuably Diffusive

2010-08-24T20:46:00.000-07:00

I'm nearing the end of this vacation and am writing this in a state of profound exhaustion. Honestly, this has been the most tiring vacation! We walk and walk and walk. And there's just SO much to see. But, despite the fatigue and sore feet and kidly whines, I think every American should come to DC. The things you see here are inspiriting and powerful. They point out how everything good in America (and I think these things are manifold) have all come through hard fought fights. Through wearisome, soul-crushing forays in bureaucracy and politics. People have sacrificed their lives and seen their fondest dreams go unrealized. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabth Cady Stanton were both dead before women got the right to vote. But, they had abiding faith in America and Americans, and it paid off, even if they didn't live to see it. I get all teary and moved when I see memorials to their activism. I get teary and moved when I see a lot of the memorials here. Basically, all of them.

But amidst all these glorious stories, I may remember this most from this vacation: I was walking down Constitution Avenue with Laney and (let's call her*) my niece, Lexi, in desperate pursuit of a McDonald's. I had two hungry girls who were both picky about what they'd eat and would happily go hungry and be cranky if not presented with food that fit their narrow dietary preferences. Courtesy GoogleMaps on my iPhone, I'd found a McDonalds and we were on our way. But navigating DC was proving taxing, so I stopped and asked three on-break sanitation workers if I was on the right way to 7th Street. Here's the conversation:

Them: Yeah, it's that way. What are you looking for? [See 7th Street was farther than I thought]
Me [wry smile]; McDonalds
Them: Is there one there? Yeah. But, wait...

And then they had this confab and, after some discussion, directed me to a much closer McDonalds. It would have been nice enough to let me know I was on the right path. But, instead, they took some time and really helped me out.

Today, Laney and I were walking through the Museum of Natural History and I was marveling at the delicate balance animals and earth manage and how much we human folks have fucked it up and I got to wondering what is it about us that's superior to animals. Would the world just be better without people? But then I realized that there is one thing we're capable of that animals aren't and that is kindness. Decency. Concern for other people. McDonalds might be one of the great evils of the world, but the willingness of those three garbage men to spend two minutes helping me out is, not to get too grandiloquent, everything great about people and is what makes us worthwhile.

There are very few people who've walked the earth who are capable of the grand acts that have thrust us forward in huge steps (even while they're also painfully incremental). We can't all be Elizabeth Cady Stanton or Abraham Lincoln. But we can all be decent people. We can all take a second to just be nice to someone for no other reason than because we can. I think this is manageable. And I also think it's beautiful.

A couple of quotes:

We're born, we live a little, we die... By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift my own life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that
- E.B. White from Charlotte's Web

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
- George Eliot from Middlemarch

Here in the middle of my life I figure I pretty much have two choices: give up because we can't fix it and no one seems to be able to or just try to be a decent person and have a little faith that kindness not only matters but is the thing that matter most. I'm pretty sure the latter is true.

* Lexi is my cousin's daughter, But, you know, small families. She's a niece.

The Nostalgia Paradox

2010-08-12T06:41:00.001-07:00

It's scary out there. A whole school of fish seem to have committed suicide in Delaware. No one has a job. The weather keeps getting more and more extreme. A loud, fringe element in America is noisily racist, paranoid and proudly ignorant.

It's hard not to hearken back to my youth, when the air was probably cleaner, everything didn't come wrapped in 8000 layers of non-biodegradable plastic, and we were all free to be you and me.

The problem with that is that this is clearly the best time in history to be a woman. We enjoy more liberty, more freedom, more respect than we have at any other point in history. This is true for most minorities and gay people too.

Knowing this, it's hard to be entirely hopeless.

The good old days were really only good for folks like Rush and Glenn, who are comfortable as bullshit lord of the manor types. But I like living in a world that's getting more and more open. Which is, of course, the same thing that freaks out the retrograde right.

Things may be really scary out there, our government might be broken, planet earth may be getting rid to kick us all off; but, I have to be glad that my opinion on these matters is afforded the respect it's due (which might not be much, but that's not down to my silly, girly brain). Also: I can freak out over it in MUCH more comfortable underwear.

Wedgies

2010-08-10T14:40:00.000-07:00

I've lost my passion for online political argument. It used to be my life blood, but the internet sucked it out of me. Arguing on the internet is the most pointless, enervating, frustrating thing out there. And, I've gotten to the point where I find it honestly upsetting.

I was recently engaged in a discussion on the internet with a person I don't know. He said he thought Mike Huckabee was OK. I said that I think Mike Huckabee is a colossal asshole. He told me that gay marriage is a wedge issue and he resents being tossed around like a football.

Fortunately, I was on my way out the door and didn't have time to put together a response. Instead, I thought about what he said. Kind of a lot. At first I was really pissed about it. And then I'd kind of get his point. And then I'd get mad again. And then I'd think that this would be an interesting conversation. Then my dander would go back up. After a while, I hit on what made me so angry and it was that he seemed to be accusing me of using gay marriage as a weapon in some larger battle of playing "j'accuse" with the right.

But, I don't think is a fair estimation of my position at all; which is, in short, that gay marriage (or, more to the point of why Mike Huckabee is such a colossal asshole, gay parenting) is a civil right. I think those of us, both homo and hetero alike, who feel strongly about this, do so because we want it to happen NOT because it's a convenient way to separate us from the right. I think we come at this genuinely. Mike Huckabee, on the other hand, may honestly believe that gay people adopt children because they couldn't find a puppy that matched their drapes. But it's far, far more likely that he's trying to appeal to people who think gay people are immoral and that the children must be protected from them.

Shutting up about gay marriage isn't going to make Mike Huckabee stop campaigning on how icky and scary the homos are.

But, I didn't write that down. Because, I just didn't think I could take another one of those shitty facebook exchanges. Honestly, they make my stomach hurt.

So, instead, I wrote it down here. And now, hopefully both of you have enjoyed my musings on Gay Marriage: Not My Wedge Issue."

Great Moments in Parenting

2010-07-22T18:16:00.000-07:00

About three months ago or so, Laney and I took Ginger to get her nails trimmed. On the way home from the walk, Laney asked me to carry this little box she'd brought with her because she wanted to hold the leash. I happily traded. It's cute to watch a kid walk a little dog. We got ice cream on the way. A little kid with a dog and an ice cream cone? Like nuclear cute. It was all Norman Rockwell up in Rogers Park.

But then we got home, and Norman Rockwell transmogrified into Edvard Munch. Laney reclaimed her box, looked inside and burst into angry tears. "Where, Mommy," she demanded through her sobs. "Where's the rubber duckie that was in here!"

Shit.

I told her that I guessed it had fallen out of the box and suggested that we forget about the duck and move on with our lives. That went over about as well as you'd expect (thud, sob). So, we walked around and tried to find the duck.

We didn't find the duck.

This was back in April. Over three months ago. Countless cheap, plastic toys have come in and out of favor since then. I recall in particular an incident where Laney's favorite "My Pretty Pony" (a toy roughly the size of your thumb) was lost on a beach outing but then, like a godly favor from Poseidon, emerged unschathed from a roiling Lake Michigan. The toy gods (whom, evidently, I've confused with the Greek gods) have been smiling on us. The lost duckie was in our past.

And then tonight, some three months after the dog walking lost duckie incident, Laney came out of the bathtb and stood naked in front of me, tears streaming down her pretty face, "It was my faaaaaaavorite duckie! I miiiiissssss my duckie! And YOU LOST IT! WAAAAAAAHHHHHH"

And, folks, we were off.

I gathered up my meager sympathies and consoled her (with some gentle scolding about personal responsibility and grudge-holding). I got her dressed and helped her brush her hair and teeth. She cried through it all. I spun a charming yarn, liberally borrowed from The Velveteen Rabbit, about the wonderful place that lost, loved toys go. I cuddled and snuggled. I tried to distract with Junie B Jones. I employed reason and logic. I toyed with the idea of spiking her water with a double dose of Benedryl (I didn't). I offered to let her fall asleep in our bed. Nothing worked.

She cried, she wailed, she keened. She sang baleful Irish dirges about the uniqueness and beauty of the long, lost duckie. I went downstairs and dug up another rubber duckie. Foiled! This rubber duckie's beak was OPEN! The lost duckie's beak was CLOSED! Her lost duckie was one of a kind. She refused to believe my (now irritated) assertion that the lost duckie was, in fact, one of about 8 million made by cheap labor in some environmental nightmare of a Chinese factory

After an hour, I gave up. I kissed her, told her I loved her, and left her to her misery.

I sat down here at my computer listening to the sounds of passionate, kidly mourning a floor up.

She's quiet now. I think she's finally asleep now.

Here's my advice: have kids. Kids are great. But, try to make sure they only like playing with really big things. Nothing smaller than say a dachshund. And, for the love of all that's holy, make sure you keep booze in the house. After a night like this, you're gonna need it.

Just, Really, The Stupidest Man in Journalism

2010-07-15T19:42:00.000-07:00

Jonah Goldberg was syndicated in the Tribune. He might still be, but I gave up reading the Tribune editorial page a while ago. Anyway, back when I read him in the Tribune I was continually struck by how stupid he was. I mean, I know that it's not nice to call people names, but it boggles my mind that this guy makes money as a political thinker. Because, seriously, he's really really really dumb. As evidence of that, I'd like to point you to this incredibly stupid article:

If only the Founding Fathers had included an annual “Tyranny Day” in the Constitution. Every 364 days America could debate and scheme, pitting faction against faction, and on the 365th day the Supreme Soviet of the U.S. could simply “do things that are tough” and shove 10 pounds of policy awesomeness into democracy’s 5-pound bag.

You know what he's talking about? Tom Friedman admires how China banned those damn plastic bags. In other words, give me cheap, shitty plastic bags that will be in landfills when our grandchildren are dead, or give me death!

At first, I thought it was stupid because the American government, in lots of different political environments, bans things all the time. Child labor, for example, or arsenic in drinking water. The government banning things is how they get to be illegal.

But, I am a dirty fucking hippie who hates those bags, so in the interest of fairness, I'll try to delve more closely into Goldberg's arguments.

Tom Friedman (whom I mostly know as the guy who told the Iraqi people to "suck on this" and predicted the successul consummation of the Iraq war would happen in six months... and made that prediction every six months for about five years) put forth a clearly liberal argument. See? Liberal argument? See? It's liberal, so this is definitely also Barack Obama's position and any moment Fuhror Obama will be issuing an edict banning plastic bags because he said that investing in a green economy would create jobs, without a single thought to the people who make all those plastic bags who are probably Chinese. There's no point in looking too closely at the minutia of our legislative process (e.g., how it's Congress who make and pass law, not presidents). Barack Obama, you see, is arrogant because Tom Friedman thinks banning plastic bags would be a good idea which is the same thing as thinking that investing in green economy creates jobs. See?

God. Do you really not get this? Barack Obama is a tyrant because banning plastic bags is tyrannical and they didn't even really do that in China but Tom Friedman wants to do that, which means he's way more tyrannical than the Chinese government and this also means that Barack Obama will do that and then we won't have any plastic bags and Jonah Goldberg totally read somewhere that there was increased bacteria on reusable bags (if you didn't read the article, it's worth noting that I did not make up this compelling argument for the continued use of cheap, shitty plastic bags).

Lookit: Jonah Goldberg is a dumb guy. And he's a guy taken seriously by Washington insiders, I think, because his mother used to write stuff. I'm pretty sure he constructs his arguments in crayon. But, he still makes a healthy living espousing his stupid, stupid arguments.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, only got to be Head Tyrant In Charge because he had the good fortune to be a black guy.

See?

Charlotte's Web

2010-07-09T19:05:00.000-07:00

Laney and I just wrapped up Charlotte's Web. I cried so hard during the penultimate chapter that Laney had to take over reading for me. To her credit, Laney finds it more annoying than upsetting when I have these emotional breakdowns. It irritates me too. My dad was also prone to them. And also annoyed by them. Being a teary motherfucker is no fun for anyone, I tell you.

Anyway, I hadn't read Charlotte's Web since I was a kid. I suspect most people haven't. I suspect that most people who read it as adults are reading it with their kids. But this is a shame. It's a charming book for children. But, if you're reading it, and someone you've loved has died, it's powerful. It knocked me over reading it tonight. This isn't just being a teary motherfucker. It's just... well, listen:

"Why did you do all this for me?" he asked. "I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you."

"You have been my friend," replied Charlotte. "That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift my own life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that."

Seriously: "we're born,we live a little, we die." What a beautiful, sad, true assessment of the whole damn thing. There's no god, no reward, no special purpose. Instead, the best we can do it try to life up our own life a little because mostly, it's something of a mess.

I love that. I really do.

And the end! Do you guys know the last line?

It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.

Laney had to read that line to me too.

Hey, Guys - Been a While, Huh?

2010-07-01T19:15:00.000-07:00

I haven't blogged in so long. Which is not to say I haven't had things I wanted to blog about, I just haven't been able to string together the paltry amount of time I typically use to write this stuff. But, my VM is out of disk space and the kid's asleep and I worked through a thorny problem with my book and the dishes are done. So, I figured I'd check in.

Shit. The dishes AREN'T done. Oh well. Three quick things I've been thinking about, which just about cover the sphere of things I write about here:

Kid

I don't sing Laney too many lullabies anymore. She's kind of like me in that she needs a zero-stimulus environment to fall asleep. I need a dark, quiet room (people who can fall asleep with the TV on blow my mind). Laney needs for there to be no other living people besides her. But tonight we were very snuggly and so I decided to sing her the old lullaby. This is based on a standard, but was adapted and expanded as she grew. Now, it's total habit to me. But, dude, it's weird. And I thought I'd better write them down. This is Laney's Lullaby:

Hush little baby, don't say a word
Mommy's gonna buy you a mockingbird
If that mockingbird don't sing
Mommy's gonna buy you a diamond ring
If that diamond ring turns brass
Mommy's gonna buy you a looking glass
If that looking glass gets broke
Mommy's gonna buy you a billy goat
If that billy goat runs away [here's where we go off book]
Mommy's gonna buy you a record to play
If that record gets a scratch
Mommy's gonna bake you some cookies in a batch
If those cookie's don't taste good
Mommy's gonna buy you a bat made of wood
If that bat makes you strike out
Mommy's gonna buy you an old man with gout (wha?)
If that old man walks real funny
Mommy's gonna buy you a big pile of money
If you spend that money too quick
Mommy's gonna buy you a candle with a wick
If that candle burns too bright
Mommy's gonna sing to you another night.

One day, Laney will be singing that to her own child and will, in the middle, stop and think "old man with what?"

Cultural Things

So you know how people say that swearing is the sign of a poor vocabulary? Bullshit (see what I did there?). I read in a Tom Robbins book many moons ago (a book I'll never read again because I lurved Tom Robbins as a youth and am pretty sure that 40 year old me would hate him and some of my youthful passions just need to be sacrosanct, no matter how much crabby middle-aged me disapproves) that there's no such thing as a synonym. A flood, says Wigs Dannyboy, is not the same thing as a deluge. I think this is true.

It is also true, of course, that people can use swear words as a crutch, but let's not paint with too broad a brush. Some kid walking through the mall saying "And I'm all like fuck that shit and she's all like bitch bitch bitch and I'm all like no fuckin' way and she's all like fuckin' shit" should not be the standard bearer of swears. A blogger I like coined (I believe) the phrase "metric fuckton." In doing so, she's created an evocative, sensible term. When she says it, you know just what she means. In other words, she's being the exact opposite of inarticulate. The exact opposite of "inarticulate," not for nothing, is probably not "articulate." Maybe it's eloquent? Pithy? Comprehensible?

English is so awesome.

Politics

Finally, just a quick question: doesn't everyone know now that deficit hawks only care about the deficit when a democrat is in office? It's trite to the point of cliche by now, but people keep taking them seriously. I don't get that. A Republican president can light trillion dollar bills on fire and George Will would be all "la la la let me see how much life I can suck out of baseball with my obnoxious erudition deedly dee dee." But stick a D on the back of the title and suddenly we're bartering away the future of our children.

Feels like such an obvious sucker's game to me. I guess that's politics!

Guess I'd better do the dishes now.

Hilarious Things My Kid Says: Part 8 Billion in an Ongoing Series

2010-06-11T09:09:00.000-07:00

When Laney is seeking therapy as an adult for the various ways I screwed up her childhood, number one on the list will be how I was always rushing her. The thing I say the most to her is probably "I love you." But running a close second is "Come ON, Laney, we're LATE!!!!"

So, yesterday, we had to do this meeting at her summer camp which didn't get out until a little after 8:00. And then there was the long drive home. And Laney's feet were filthy, which meant she'd have to take a bath. And the dog needed to get out. In short, there were a series of chores to accomplish before Laney could go to bed, all of which I wanted done apace. So, from the moment we got home I was nagging at Laney to hurry up and get out of the car and NO you don't need to take all your toys and stop lying on the dog it's time to get upstairs and get ready for bed and no of course you can't play on the computer it's 8:30.

All of which culminated in this exchange:

Me [standing in the bathroom over the tub]: Laney, if you don't get in here and get in this tub, I'm going to snap.
Laney: [silence]
Me: [striding forcefully down the hall towards her room]: Laney... WHAT are you doing?
Laney: [standing in her bedroom with her pants off and her shirt half over her head] Come on, Woman. Are you really going to scold me for taking my clothes off?

BWAAAAAHAHAHAHA

She's so got my number.

Family Day, Part Three

2010-05-26T19:25:00.000-07:00

When we left the orphanage the last time, I felt pretty good. "Two weeks," we kept saying to each other. "That's nothing."

When we flew back, we told our Dutch flight attendant what we were doing. As it turns out, she was adopted too and she told us this great story about how when she first came to her family's home, she kept secreting away pieces of bread into her pockets and her mother smiled at her and said, "No matter how much bread you take, I'll always give you more." I loved that story so much. And I loved how happy our flight attendant was for us. It gave us so much hope for the future. Here was this happy young woman who told us these stories that were beyond her memory, but which nevertheless exemplified her relationship to her own adoption. We saw how good it could be.

We got to Chicago and got ready.

Our friends threw us this wonderful shower. We had so many things for Laney! This little girl who'd never had anything of her own.

So we waited. And waited and waited and waited. There was nothing anyone could say to us that would sound good. More to the point: there was nothing anyone could say to us that wouldn't piss us off. It was impossible for anyone to understand what we were going through and that (understandably, if not reasonably) pissed us off.

We waited and waited and waited. And waited and waited some more. And heard nothing.

It took 10 weeks. Two and a half months. Not two weeks. With no word, no acknowledgment that anything was in the works. Nothing.

I survived on a steady diet of nicotine, alcohol and spite. I'm not sure how Don survived. I was just barely getting by on my own.

But then, one day, I got an email from Larina. "When are you coming?" she said. "We've got a really good judge."

So I called the agency and told them about the email. They concurred and told us we were going back to Russia.

When we got back to Blagoveshensck it was spring. When we were there in February, the whole city looked like his kind of dystopic Narnia, all white frozen sidewalks, with bullet-like puncture wounds from the stiletto heels that the Russian ladies wore all the time. When we got there in May, it was green and beautiful.

This time when we visited the orphanage, they let us take her outside. And they didn't time our visits. We could hang out with her as much as we wanted. And so we took her outside and walked her around and played. The other kids in the orphanage got to go out with the aides. You know how there's that warning on strollers to not put kids in the basket? They'd have two kids in the seat, one in the basket and, sometimes, one on the top. Once, Don was walking Laney around and found himself surrounded by about 15 three year olds. They all pointed at him and said "Dadya! Dadya!" which we think is Russian for Uncle. They all wanted him to play with them, pay attention to them, pick them up. It would have broken your heart into a million pieces, if you'd been there. It might be breaking it now to hear that.

A quick aside about the people who work at the orphanage. These were wonderful women. These were women who cared deeply about these kids. But they were operating under such a tremendous load. There were 500 kids in Laney's orphanage, and not nearly enough resources for them. We knew Laney was hungry, but we also knew that the people there were looking out for her. Most of those kids would languish away there, but that the doctor (remember her? from the green room?) was doing everything in her power to get this sickly little girl adopted. I believe that the doctor at the orphanage thought that Laney would die if she weren't adopted. This is a hard thing for me to write down. But I'm pretty sure I'm right. The kids in the orphanage who were healthier? Ironically, they weren't so lucky.

On Thursday, May 26, 2005 we had our court date. We found out that the day before officials had gone to Laney's birth mother and asked "Are you sure you want to to this?"

I have nothing but good feelings about Laney's birth mother. When I talk about her to Laney, I always describe her as the beautiful Russian lady who was very sad. She gave us this enormous gift. She gave us our life. But it pisses me off that the government officials did that. They had almost two years to establish her certainty. They didn't approach her when Laney was sick and hungry in that orphanage. They waited until she was going to leave Russia. In the end. it didn't matter. She was sure. And I love her (really, love her) for being sure.

At court, the representative from the Ministry of Education (they're in charge of adoption in Russia) did her damnedest to block our adoption. She insisted in court that we wouldn't be able to afford to raise Laney. She did everything she could to convince the judge to stop the adoption. Not for the faint of heart, remember? We had her nonsense translated into our ears as she spoke and didn't have the words or the opportunity to object. Luckily, Sveta, our lawyer, did.

I stood up to speak. And, me being who I am, said most of what I wanted to say through tears. "Please, your honor," I said. "We are so in love with Lena. We promise to take such good care of her."

And then the judge said "I see no reason to interfere with this adoption."

And that was it! Larina told us through this massive grin. Don and I hugged each other and everyone else.

We went to file the last paperwork in the region. It was giddy and exciting. Sveta and Slava and Larina were so happy for us. They encouraged us to stop and buy flowers for the women in the orphanage. We could have lit up Blagoveshensk with our smiles. Don bought a huge bouquet.

As we were driving up to the orphanage in the rickety old van, driven by the wonderfully sweet Slava who'd picked flowers with Laney earlier in the week, I thought "This is it. This is the last time we'll have to come to this place." I'd say it was bittersweet, but I don't want to lie. It was just sweet.

We walked in and had to wait for a long while. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to say goodbye to Laney. I don't know what happened while we waited, but I imagine tiny little Lena was showered with kisses and tears.

When a kid leaves an orphanage, they leave with nothing from it. The clothes they're wearing are necessary. She was our daughter now. We'd have to dress her. They gave us exactly one diaper. I'd bought this blue plaid dress with a little hat and a blue coat. Don and I were such rookies. You should have seen us try to diaper her and get her tights on. It was a joyful comedy of errors. She looked so sweet in her little dress and her giant hat.

Larina was very proud to tell us that in Russia, children can't sit in the front seat. Laney sat on my lap in the back of the van. We'd brought a can of those toddler puffs, and she sat on my lap, just looking around popping puffs into her mouth. She was so chill. It was awesome.

We spent the weekend in the hotel in Blagoveschensk. We'd take walks along the Amur River and play in the room. The room had a couch and a double bed. At night, we'd pull the couch up to the bed to make a secure place for her to sleep. She'd fall asleep and Don and I watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer on my laptop.

Laney never cried when we visited her in the orphanage. She'd always been very even tempered. But when we pulled out the food in the hotel room, she went just about feral. She'd eat and eat and eat. And if she saw food, she had to have it. And if we didn't give it to her, she'd throw herself on the ground and scream. We worried she'd get sick, she ate so much. So we hid food from her. But we remembered the flight attendant's story and let her have as much as she could eat.

The diapers were epic.

Flying from Blagoveshensk to Moscow was ... well, you know the worst flight you've ever had? This was worse. This was like Oceanic 815 bad. Without the crashing. It started off OK. But then the food cart came around. She ate all of her dinner, all of mine and the lion's share of Don's. Laney weighed 19 pounds at this point. But when our three meals were gone and she realized that she wasn't going to get any of the food from the other 200 people on the plane? Well, that pissed her off. And she cried. And then she pooped. I changed her ginormous diaper in the bathroom, while she wailed in anger.

She cried for seven straight hours. It never waned into whimpers. She wailed the wail of righteous fury. It was so bad that Don divided the trip up into 15 minute intervals. There were 28 fifteen minute intervals. Don counted them down. 22 intervals to go, he'd say. 17 intervals to go. It helped.

So, here's what we learned on that flight: Failure to thrive, my ass. That kid was thriving right in front of our faces. She was thriving with extreme prejudice. All she needed was enough to eat, and someone to love her best of all, and that kid was mighty.

She still is. She's a mighty girl. She's our mighty girl.

Family Day, Part Two (gettin' schmoopy)

2010-05-26T14:39:00.001-07:00

Go here for part one)

On Feb. 11, 2005 (which was Don's 39th birthday, not for nothing), a FedEx was delivered to my office with pictures of Laney. She was clearly not nine months old. She was nineteen months old. And so beautiful.

I took the pictures to Don at One North and we began planning the trip almost immediately.

It was a thrilling, overwhelming day. Our consultant at EAC was not an adoptive parent. I still have an email from her in which she said "Calm down. Take a pill. Lol." She was a dumbass. I didn't care. We were adopting little Elena. We were at the end!

We traveled just a few days later. First to London, then to Moscow. We stayed in Moscow for a few days where we met the family who'd be traveling with us. They were not like us. They didn't like us. Who cares. We were getting our baby girl!

It takes 7 hours to fly from Moscow to Blagoveschensk and you do this flight in a post-Soviet airplane. Which is a lot like a bus. American air travel is hardly glamorous anymore. But we're talking about a whole 'nothing level of not-glamorous. Also, it was roughly 8 million degrees on the plane. It was the second most miserable flight of my life. You'll hear about the most miserable a bit later.

When we landed, I was so pleased to get out of that plane and into the negative 8 million degree air. Blagovechensck, dear readers, was hella cold. But, Russian ladies (if I dare to stereotype) will not let you be in the cold. They are very insistent that you button your coat and get out of the cold! So while Don waited for our luggage, I sat in the van with the heat on full blast. I felt like I was falling apart. I was so tired and so hot and so scared and so excited.

We rode the rickety old van to the hotel with the couple who weren't like us (and didn't like us). We checked in. I put on a little makeup and brushed my hair. Larina, our translator, looked at me and said "You look wonderful!" I found this very bracing, even though she probably meant "thank god you don't look as terrible as you did a few minutes ago. And then we went to the orphanage. The utilitarian, bleak, barren orphanage, down at the end of a sparse gravel road, where you always heard dogs barking like they were really hungry.

After a bit of a wait, we were taken into this big green room where we waited for them to bring us Laney. Oh, lordy, were we nervous! There was a woman at a desk in the middle of the room, in a white nurse's uniform. Turns out she was the doctor and was there to observe us. We perched on a couch. An orphanage attendant brought Laney in and we sprang up. Laney (or as we called her then, Lena) was all done up in the same fancy red dress from the pictures. The nurse put her in my arms.

This is the important part:

I was wearing a zippered jacket. I was feeling the weight of Laney in my arms for the first time and felt so happy and so in love. She was tiny and delicate and pale to the point of translucence. She reached to the zipper pull on my jacket, touched it, tugged it a little and looked at me. It was the sweetest moment of my life.I can still feel it if I think about it for just a second.

And then she sneezed. This enormous, productive sneeze! It was like half her body weight in snot! Larina swept over and just grabbed the snot off her nose with her bare hands. Because that's what Moms do, right?

Don held her and taught her to make funny faces and cuddled and hugged her.

Oh, we were such smitten kittens, the two of us!

We went to the orphanage twice a day to visit her. We played and played with her. Laney loved to put the charm on my necklace in my mouth. She loved to make fishfaces with Don. She was so wee and so hungry and so sweet. And sick. She had this lump on the back of her head. We emailed a doctor back home about it. He wrote back:

Thank you for your note. I am very concerned because of this child's extreme failure to thrive and the "lymph nodes" you described that were "drained." In fact, I think the "lump" on the back of her head may be another lymph node. This raises a number of concerns, especially if she might have some kind of chronic infection such as tuberculosis. There were no pictures attached so I can't give you feedback on that. But her medical history is very disconcerting for me

Do you see what I mean about adoption not being for the faint of heart? That email scared the shit out of us. But it was too late. That little girl was OURS!

At the end of the week, we pulled up in the rickety old van to the orphanage. We had to leave. We had to leave and wait for them to tell us when we could come back. I cried and cried and cried. I'm crying a little right now remembering it.

As we walked up to the door, Don stopped me and said "Let's leave her with a smile." And I did my best. But, oh, it was so hard to walk out that door and not know when we were coming back.

"Two weeks," said Don. "We'll be back in two weeks."

Next post: we weren't back in two weeks.

Family Day, Part One

2010-05-25T18:50:00.001-07:00

Five years ago tomorrow (or, if you're keeping up with the crazy time difference between Chicago and Blagoveschensk, Russia: today) we officially adopted Helena Marjorie Westhoff. Laney Bon Westhoff.

In honor of this momentous occasion, I thought I'd write a couple of blogposts. Today, I'm putting up one for the grown ups. A bunch of unfettered, unadulterated, unromanticized shit. Tomorrow night, I'll pour myself a glass of red wine and write up the schmoopy one. I prefer the schmoopy one because, as you may know, I think my daughter is made of awesome and she makes me feel all schmoopy. But there's merit in the warts-and-all stuff. And, I shall do my best to present it in a way that's reasonably entertaining and shall furthermore try to keep my f-bombs to a minimum.

First of all, it was worth it. It was all worth it in spades. If I had to go through it again; the agonizing waits, the mind-numbing bureaucracy, and (worst of all), the crushing expense, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

Adoption is not for the faint of heart. It's hard. It's really really hard. And it costs a lot of money. Laney's adoption has put us in a financial hole from which we can barely make out the light at the top. I kid when I say we'll have done paying for this adoption just about the time when Laney's ready to head off to college. And that, dear readers, is what we call "kidding on the square."

And it was worth it all. And I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Secondly, and I cannot overstate this: adoption is NOT about rescue. It's about desperately wanting a child. If anything, it's an act of pure selfishness. If you ever wonder why your average adopted parent adopted, understand this: they did it for the same reason you had your children. Unless your pregnancy was unintentional. In that case, pretty much the exact opposite. But when we adoptive parents think about the orphanages we took our children from, we don't feel a swell of pride that we've rescued them from these hard places. We feel the same way you'd feel imagining your own child in a place where they didn't get enough food, much less enough love. It feels awful to remember those places.

I got married in May of 2000. Two weeks later (after a charming Mexican honeymoon) we pulled the goalie. So to speak. We spent the next two years trying to conceive. It sucked. Nothing will take the romance out of sex faster than trying, month after month, to make a baby and failing. Every month, when I got my period, I felt like my greatest and fondest wish had died. Every month, I felt like someone I loved had died. It was hard for Don. It was hard for him to want a baby so bad but not get a chance to grieve because he had to be strong for me. It was hard for us to be happy for friends who were having babies. It was really hard to be happy for my brother and his wife who got married a year after us and had their baby barely a year later. But, you suck it up and try not to force your damage onto the people you love. You try, in a word, not to pee in other people's cornflakes. I like to think we did a pretty good job. But, it was hard.

Finally, at some point during these two years, we determined that there was no biological reason for our failure to conceive and we considered, briefly, alternate paths to pregnancy.

But I'm a planner. And a problem solver. If you know me, this is probably something that drives you crazy. I like to find a way to attack a problem and I couldn't stand the not-knowing of clomid or IVF. Besides, my heart had been too broken by all those months of trying. And we didn't trip on the biological tip so much, anyway. So, we decided to go the adoption route.

We'd had friends who'd adopted from Russia. And they had the gold standard experience. Nine months after they filled out their first forms, they were home with their daughter.

Our experience was roundly different.

You do a lot of paperwork when you're adopting. You have to get your fingerprints taken. And you have to have things notarized and then you have to notarize the notarization. Seriously. There's a word for this, but I've forgotten it. It takes a long time to gather all this paperwork together. And it costs a lot of money. All that notarization comes at a cost. Plus you had to pay whichever governmental apparatchik was managing the form. We did it all. Got it all turned in. And then it took so fucking long to get a referral, we had to do it all over again.

And then one day we got a call. You think this is going to go well, don't you? Well, this wasn't the call you're thinking of. This was the call where they told us that there just weren't any kids coming out of Russia. I think this was about 18 months into the process. They told us it wasn't happening and that we should start all over again and that Ukraine was probably a good place to go.

I called in sick to work. So did Don. We went to see a movie. I don't think we talked all the way to the movie. Finally, at the bar after the movie, Don said to me "I haven't felt like this since your father died." And I nodded. Because, it felt almost that bad. Almost.

Eighteen months of focusing our energy and hope and money in one direction and then one phone call and... sorry, not happening.

But, we are made of steely stuff, me and Don. So, after a day or so (maybe a few weeks... Don remembers this stuff better) of wallowing. We jumped back up on the horse and got cracking. A few weeks? months? after that call I was exercising in my bedroom when we got another call. I answered the phone and the caller identified herself as our liaison at the adoption agency.

"Oh good," I said. "I'm glad you called. Listen, we've got our paperwork for the Ukraine adoption and..."

"Hold on," she said (and I could hear the smile in her voice). "I'm calling because we have a referral for you."

Two(ish) years after we got our first packet from the adoption agency, and we'd finally gotten our referral. She told me she was nine months old and her name was Elena.

I had to sit down.

Tomorrow at lunch, I'll tell you about the trips. It's time for me to make Laney's lunch and watch Glee now. But, I feel just filled with happiness remembering that phone call. Best. Phone Call. Ever.

Edited to add links to the next part of the story. Here for Part Two. Here for Part Three.

My Own Lost Post-Mortem

2010-05-24T10:51:00.000-07:00

Let me start off with this: I do not regret watching Lost. And the finale did not suck. Much like the whole series, it was in turn touching and fun and exciting and hilarious. There was good acting, compelling stories, big questions, challenging narrative. It was good goddamn TV.

That said, I'm sticking with my feelings that the end (I can't call it a resolution) was unbelievably cheap.

There seems to be some debate about whether the show was plot- or character-driven. Here's my contention: it was both plot- and character-driven. Until the last 15 minutes of the series when the show patted us all on the head and said "shhh, honey, it's ok. The plot's not important."

I'm all for a macguffin or two, a cool unanswered question that you can ponder for the ages (I think it was Marcellus' soul in the briefcase). But it's just not cool to take all that awesome sci-fi PLOT stuff and toss it out the window with a "this doesn't matter."

The numbers, the island's glowing vagina of electromagnetic power, the super specialness of Walt and Aaron and Desmond, THE NUMBERS, the temple, the fertility stuff, the dharma initiative, the donkey wheel, have I mentioned the numbers?... in the end, none of that mattered? Not cool, Lost. Not cool.

Because you know what, bitches? It mattered to me. I'll give you some unanswered questions - but not all of them. Only The Sopranos can do that.

I believed the writers that they'd had it all mapped out and knew what it all meant. And instead, it was all just tricks and manipulation.

They were fun tricks and manipulation. I enjoyed the hell out of the tricks and the manipulation. But the next scifi/mysticism show that I watch had BETTER pay some expository, resolution-oriented attention to the sci-fucking-fi part of it. Or else, by golly, I'll be writing an angry letter or something.

I will miss those characters. And I'm glad they're up in their inter-religious heaven having been led there by someone named Christian Shepard (sheesh - I mean, why not Desmond leading them? Was it because it didn't matter that he wasn't super special after all? God.). I'll miss all of them. Even Waaaaalt. Who doesn't get to go. Why? It doesn't matter. And Penny, who was never on the island. Why? It doesn't matter. Shhh. It was a character-driven show. Plot doesn't matter.

Actually, I won't miss Shannon. I never bought her backstory anyway.

*Edited - My friend, Shanon (not to be confused with Shannon of the unbelievable backstory who was also most definitely NOT Sayid's great love because, duh, that was Nadia. God), pointed out that the Lost finale was a very effective finale for the last season of Lost. But not the full six seasons. I think that's hitting the nail right on the head.

Excommunication

2010-05-19T18:11:00.000-07:00

I was going to leave this alone. I really was. I thought I'd made my peace with the Catholic church long ago. More to the point, I realized there was no place in it for me, so I left. My own atheism is obviously at the heart of this. But, even if I were a believer I couldn't in good conscience be a member of an organization where women are disqualified for leadership positions solely because they are women. You can cover that pig in as much lipstick as you got,* but that's how it is.

That said, I'm a big time believer in the first amendment. The Catholic church has a right to its own orthodoxy and I have a right not to be a part of it anymore.

But driving home today, I listened to the story of the Phoenix nun who was recently excommunicated. She was serving on the ethics boards of a Catholic hospital, where abortions are strictly verboten. A woman, 11 weeks pregnant, was brought in with pulmonary hypertension. Without an abortion, this condition carried a mortality threat of nearly 100%. That is to say, without an abortion, this 27 year old mother of four ex-utero children, would die. At 11 weeks, it's fair to assume that the fetus wasn't making it either.

The ethics panel on which the nun served, decided that the abortion was necessary and should be performed.

The nun was then excommunicated and removed from the ethics panel.

In the meantime, that priest who molested upwards of 200 deaf boys? Not excommunicated. Not even defrocked.

So, here's the thing. The problem isn't this priest or that bishop or this newish pope. The problem is institutional. I understood that as I listened to the medical ethics director of the Phoenix diocese on the radio. This joker couldn't even be bothered to explain why this nun needed to be excommunicated, but the punishment for child-rape seems to be relocation and shhhhh. Who seemed, even, to find the question a little wearisome and kind of silly. And I found myself seething over the Catholic church the same way I seethe when I hear about those asshole mullahs telling us how god doesn't want girls to go to school.

If men could get pregnant, they'd be selling take home abortion kits at the Vatican Gift Shop. The Catholic church traffics in obscene patriarchy, where women's lives are only valuable as vessels for fetal pre-Catholics. No doubt, individual churches and priests and nuns do good works. But they do them from an organization that is more committed to hating women than it is to loving god.

*I asterisked that because whenever I talk about how women are disqualified from positions of power in the Catholic church, I'm reminded of the argument I had with a friend's dad. He told me that I was wrong about all this. He's been in positions were women had power of him. Where? Grade school. Seriously. Grade school. This fellow honestly thought he was proving me Q.E. motherfucking D. wrong because a nun was authorized to give his be-penised self a B- when he was 11. One wonders, of course, what would have happened if the resident priest told her she'd better bump that up to a B+.

On and on..

2010-05-14T07:13:00.000-07:00

[I originally posted this earlier this week on the day my grandmother actually died and then I decided to take it down, and marinate on it little before re-posting. Anyway, here it is again, a little edited]

All day today I'd find myself doing something... answering a support call or laughing at a joke or wondering why Lost thought it was a good idea to waste one of their last five hours... and then I'd remember that my grandmother died this morning.

She died from being old which is really the best that any of us can hope for in this life. And I went down to Memphis a couple of weeks ago to say goodbye to her. But, this morning when my mother called and told me that she'd died, I found myself feeling like "well, Grandma died." Two weeks ago when she told me that Grandma didn't have a lot of time, I spent the whole day crying. But when she actually died, I was surprised at how at peace I felt about the whole thing.

I've told this story to so many people in my family, I'm sure it's tedious. But, I'll tell you guys anyway. Years and years and years ago, it was the Fourth of July and we were at Grandma's house. The guy across the street was setting off fireworks and we were sitting in the yard to watch. Grandma ran her hands through the grass and said to my mother or an aunt or someone "This Bermuda grass feels so good, doesn't it?" It means something, I think, that this is one of the only moments I can remember her seeming happy.

Or maybe it doesn't mean that much. It would be easy, I think to shove her into a box of "she was an unhappy woman." But that's not fair. I can't say I knew who Grandma was, all of her, because it just doesn't work that way. No matter how many anecdotes or incidents we put together, there will always be large swaths of her that will remain obscured to the generations that follow, sometimes on purpose, other times incidentally.

But, still, the whole of who she was informed who my mother is, who all my aunts and uncles are, and they in turn passed onto their children and we pass it onto ours. We go on and on this way, I think. Laney never knew my father, but, adopted as she is, he's in her. So is Grandma and her sisters, who are all dead now.

All that said, here's a little bit about her:

My mother calls her mother an institution. And she was. She was formidable. She could scare the shit out of you. As I traveled into adulthood, I stayed on her good side, for three reasons: I left Memphis, I liked baseball and I thought Republicans were bullshit. You may take note here that I come by my tendencies towards lefty political stridency honestly.

Don was in with her on his first trip to Memphis when, during a game of charades where the "book" in question was the Starr Report and he nudged her and said "they didn't say fiction." Oh, she liked that!

When we were kids and spent the night, she had us brush our teeth with baking soda and if we acted up, she would spank us with a wooden spoon (I don't think I ever got the wooden spoon treatment, but I know my cousin, Jason did). She lived in this tiny house on an expansive lawn and had one of those clothes lines that you can rotate. She mowed her own lawn up into her 80s, I think. She was mighty.

One Christmas, my aunt gave her crocheted "titty warmers" for Christmas and Grandma thought it was hilarious. She'd probably have had a few scotches to think that was hilarious. It was hilarious, but Grandma was normally not a woman who'd be amused by the word "titty."

She read all the time. Books and books and books. And I think she read the New York Times every day.

And I know she loved us all a whole lot.

I think that one day, off in the future, I'll be with my mother when she's dying. And maybe then, Laney will be in her 40s, with young children who will barely know my mother at all.

But, she'll be in them, and so will Grandma. We raise our children and pass things on, and they just keep going on and going on.

The last thing I said to my grandmother was "I'll see you soon." I expect, in a way, this is true. Someone in my family will say or do something and I'll think, "There's Grandma."

SCOTUS Blog

2010-05-10T17:30:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama has made his pick and pissed of people on the left and the right. I suppose there may be some merit to the thought that if you're pissing off both sides, you're probably doing something right. I don't buy that. Frankly, I think the most ideological suspect position in the world is centrist.

That said, I don't have any real strong position on Elena Kagan. I don't know fuck all about her. Over at Firedoglake that seems to mean she's an empty vessel. Rush Limbaugh evidently agrees because he can fill up that empty vessel with some crazy shit and pretend that Elena Kagan believes it.

That said, who knows? Barack Obama knows her and evidently thinks real highly of her. I like him. He's a smart guy. I think she'll probably be fine. But, let us never forget that the justice she's replacing, the liberalest liberal that every liberaled, was appointed by one Richard Milhouse Nixon. These are lifetime appointments. By 2040, Elena Kagan may be prepared to gay marry the shit out of everyone. Or she may end up jailing reporters for being insuffiently American.

You know what I do know? There are probably a good 100 people in the US qualified to sit on the Supreme Court. And, I'm low-balling that number. The idea that there's one person who can do it, and putting a priority on seating women and minorities is somehow robbing a more qualified man, is pernicious, narrow-minded, and just flat out stupid.

I don't know what kind of justice Elena Kagan will be. But I'm happy to see another proud vagina-American sitting on the court. And any boo-hooing over the Ballad of the Poor, White Man should be met with ridicule. Or, if you're Jon Stewart, a full on Go Fuck Yourself gospel choir.

Roger Ebert

2010-05-03T10:49:00.000-07:00

If you'd have told me 20 years ago that in my (way) early 40s I would not only love Roger Ebert, but I would LOVE Roger Ebert, I'd have said "Is he the bald one or the other?" But I love him now. So so so much.

Here, go read this. Read it all. I'll wait.

You didn't read it did you? Fine. Read this - it made me swoon a little.

What the internet is creating is a class of literate, gifted amateur writers, in an old tradition. Like Trollope, who was a British Post official all his working life, they write for love and because they must. Like Rohinton Mistry, a banking executive, or Wallace Stevens, an insurance executive, or Edmund Wilson, who spent his most productive years sitting in his big stone house in upstate New York and writing about what he damned well pleased. Samuel Pepys, who wrote the greatest diary in the language, was a high officials in the British Admiralty. Many people can write well and yearn to, but they are not content, like Pepys, for their work to go unread. A blog on the internet gives them a place to publish. Maybe they don't get a lot of visits, but it's out there.

This too:

I tell young students: Take film courses, certainly. But cover the liberal arts. Take English literature, drama, art, music, and the areas Bordwell lists. Learn something about science and math. A physical anthropology course was my introduction to the theory of evolution, which is an opening to all of modern science. Don't train for a career--train for a life. The career will take care of itself, and give you more satisfaction than a surrender to corporate or professional bureaucracy. If you make careers in that world, you will be more successful because your education was not narrow.

I'd say the same to every young person I know (and I got two nieces on their way to college in the fall). Learn, learn, learn. Don't wonder why you're learning, what material affect it will have on your life. Learn to learn. Learn because it makes your world richer and bigger. Learn because it makes you kinder and easier to be around. Learn because that's how you stay in the world.

And, while you're learning, think. Think hard and deep. Have late nights and tussle with truths, and if you're of a mind to, write it all down and write it down without caring who or how many people will read it

Roger Ebert cannot even eat food anymore. He can't talk. But he is still living the SHIT out of his life. He's officially on the hero list (note to self: start a heroes list).

This is Just Something I Suspect

2010-04-30T11:06:00.001-07:00

You know, evidently everyone agrees that immigration is a problem and that there's a significant strain on resources due to the amount of undocumented aliens in America and something must be done blah blah blah. I might be paranoid, but I suspect if you lined up all the things that were an enormous strain on our resources, undocumented aliens would be pretty far down the list. I bet I can think of five things off the top of my head that are bigger fish to fry:

1. Climate change. We're talking a threat of biblical proportion from climate change and we're now living in a country where like a third of us don't believe it's even happening. The? Fuck?
2. War. We're in one. In Afghanistan. Wars are really expensive, plus lots of people die in them.
3. People still hate us. They might hate us less, but it would probably be good to do more to restore our standing in the rest of the world and do a little bit to convince the folks living in the middle east that normal, sane Americans don't really believe that our god is bigger than theirs.
4. Healthcare. I know we passed a bill already, but it's kind of a wimpy one. I'm not sure the likelihood of being bankrupted by a severe medical issue has actually dropped away.
5. Jobbity jobs jobs. We need to start making stuff here again. A good way to do that would be to stop rewarding people for making stuff in other places.
6. Here's an extra - we're also living in a country where a state law says you can reasonably suspect someone's an illegal alien without providing one single solitary example of how you reasonably suspect someone's legal status without f**king reasonably suspecting every Mexican person you see in Arizona. And that is super shitty.
7. Here's one more - people in Alabama think it's better for a kid to leave them in foster care in perpetuity than it is to let a gay couple raise them. Because Mike Huckabee says kids aren't puppies. Or something. And that is SUPER shitty.
8. One more - a woman in Oklahoma who wants to undergo a LEGAL MEDICAL PROCEDURE can't do it until she lets someone else shove an ultrasound wand up her vagina FOR NO MEDICAL REASON.
9. Oh, let's keep on going, how about the fact that there's an oil spill the size of freaking DELAWARE in the Gulf of Mexico? And our president seems to be cool with Drill, baby, drill (the stupidest fucking idea since the Zune)
10. Finally, Sarah Palin made 12 million dollars last year. Sarah Palin. Sarah Fucking Palin. I know I wasn't going to write about her, but that pisses me off.

I got carried away. Makes me furious. Here's what I'm saying: with all the super scary stuff out there, I have a hard time getting all fired up about whether or not the guy working the kitchen at my neighborhood diner has a legit social security number.

And I suspect that the Lou Dobbs' out there are all pissed off about "the illegals" because people like to think that they'd have everything, they'd be Sarah Fucking Palin if only it weren't for that damn minority taking it away.

Yeah, I said it.

God Blog

2010-04-29T19:20:00.000-07:00

For most of my life I not only believed in God, I believed in a very specific, kind of embarrassing God. I believed that there was this beneficent old man (ack!) who looked upon the things I did either approvingly or with rueful, mute recrimination. I believed in a very paternalistic God, since I was raised Catholic and that's how we roll.

So, there's that.

And then there's this: when I look back at my life, I am overwhelmed by the largesse. I was raised by two people who loved me and took good care of me. I've been educated. I'm healthy. I'm married to a good man and have a daughter who is made of awesome. I have a home and a job and an adorable dog and a cat for whom the rules of longevity do not seem to apply. I live exactly where I want to live and have some awesome friends.

There are some who'd say I've been blessed.

But, there has to be a corollary. Why would I have all this and this other person dies of dysentary at 4 and this other person loses a child to cancer and this other person is swallowed up in a tsunami?

My beneficent God, it seems, is just horrible to other people. He's like a father that buys me pretty dresses and ice cream and a canopy bed while he locks his other kid , naked, in the attic and feeds her every fourth day or something. It just doesn't make sense.

And if it sounds like I'm railing against God, I'm not. Because I don't believe in God. It offends my sense of logic too profoundly. Not the part about there being some cosmic architect. The part about him being so arbitrary. It makes no sense to me. And, so I don't believe in God.

For a lot of people of faith, as I believe they're called nowadays, the concept of atheism is anathema. It seems like an absence of something, like something is missing. But, I don't see it that way at all. I don't need God. I don't miss God. Because, I'm not alone. As my boyfriend Eddie Vedder says, I can count on two hands the ones I love. And I live in this world with a billion other people, all of whom are in this with me.

My life is as rich as ever, having evicted the beneficent old man from his perch in my brain. I'm too busy trying to live a life that I approve of, too busy scolding myself when I'm mean or small or greedy or impatient, too busy with the business of being alive to worry about what happens when I'm dead.

Fangirl Post

2010-04-24T08:54:00.000-07:00

When Air America Radio launched in 2004, I listened to it about all day. But, after a spell, I limited my listening to The Al Franken Show and Rachel Maddow. I have an abiding love for Al Franken who I think sits up in the senate and attacks our cynicism about government. But, Rachel Maddow blew me away.

I remember once Chuck D, who was one of her co-hosts, was talking to her and said something to the effect of "The thing that really kills me about you is how you get up at 5:00 and read until we do the show and then you're reading again until you go to bed. You study this stuff so hard." This embodied what I loved about her. She is a liberal, she has an ideological bent, but she backs it all up through rigorous study.

Plus she has this way about her - she's respectful to her guests, she's funny, she's unapologetically goofy and weird.

By 2005, I was asking anyone who'd listen, why doesn't Rachel Maddow have her own show? I'd watch it every night.

And now she has a show, and is one of the most respected names in cable news. And, if only you'd listened to me in 2004, you could say to your friends, "Oh, I've been listening to her for years!"

Well, it's not too late to be an early adopter. I'm sending you to someone else: Ta-Nehisi Coates. I would happily re-post everything this guy writes. He's a constant student and a lovely writer and a real thoughtful guy.

Over the past month, he's been running a series called "Honoring Confederate History Month" where he talks about various aspects of slavery. Let me give you an example of what I mean about his commitment to deep thought, prefaced to say I think you'd probably really enjoy the whole post:

Subbing in myth for history is a false armor to guard against the hurt--and yet somewhere inside the hurt still throbs. Some of us fear admitting what the Confederacy was about, because we don't want to cede the moral high ground to a bunch of Northern elitists. But why? Was the North really more moral than the South? Did the South embrace a slave society because there's something intrinsically evil about living below the Mason-Dixon line? I don't think any people should fear their history, so much as they should fear their ignorance of history. Don't fear the past that led to the assassination of Lincoln, fear the present that leads you to fly the flag embraced by his killers. True the hurt is in what happened, but the shame is in the pretense that it didn't.

I don't just read Ta-Nehisi Coates. I re-read him. A lot. Bookmark TNC. You won't regret it.

\end fangirl

I Hope I Die Before I Get Old

2010-04-16T18:58:00.000-07:00

One of the cultural benchmarks of one generation giving way to the next is when the old folks start bitching about these kids today and how much better they got it when they were young. When I was young, the Boomers loved to tell us how they stopped a war and discovered rock and roll and did kind drugs that led to peace, love, and understanding. We, on the other hand, were exactly like Andrew McCarthy and Robert Downey Jr in Less Than Zero and the world was going to hell because everyone was going to be Charlie Sheen in Wall Street.

(Currently, it seems as though the youth of America has been or is on their way to being ruined by the hook-up culture, Twitter, Facebook and the entitlement developed by giving everyone in Little League a trophy. Or something. Maybe just the internet and cheap Chinese crap.)

I remember when MTV came out and the Boomers were appalled. When they were young, they'd tell anyone who'd listen (so mostly, their kids, who kind of had to) they associated music with a moment or with a person. When they heard a song, they remember something they did. We would associate music with some slick, soulless video (like the videos were slick in the 80s... have you see I Ran? Watch it... it's hilarious. The hair! The liberally pleated pants! The trash bags!)

Earlier today, I fell into an early 90s nostalgia-induced stupor. And I watched a couple of videos.

I don't remember the first time I heard Smells Like Teen Spirit. But I do remember the first time I saw the video. Same for Jeremy.

Those videos took those songs, which really did change music, and underscored the angst and disaffection so ham-handedly handled by the artless, anvilicious Less Than Zero. Those two songs, along with their accompanying videos, defined the angst and disaffection that I think a lot of us really did feel. They increased the power of those songs. And I bet just about every 40 year old out there would agree.

I try really hard not to say "Kids today are so fucked up because they blah blah blah instead of blah blah blah. I really do believe that's how you get old. I think if you try to stop thinking that the world for young people should be exactly the way it was for you, no matter how hinky your knees get or how much EVERYTHING makes you fat, you stay a little bit young.

With that note, I leave you with the two songs that will always make me feel 21 and the two videos that still make me catch my breath when I watch them.

Enjoy! Be young. And, Jesus, what did you kids do to MTV? It's RUINED. Get off my lawn.

Morning Commute Conversations, Part Eleventy Seven

2010-04-16T06:43:00.000-07:00

I took Laney to see the Harlem Globetrotters last night, and while we only made it through the first quarter, we still didn't get home until close to 8:30, which meant Laney wasn't asleep until 9:00. Then she woke up super early this morning. She was tired.

For most of us, fatigue leads to crabbiness, foginess, sleepiness. For Laney, it leads to pointlessly inquisitive. So here is a rough summation of our drive:

Laney: What was your favorite part?
Me: When the Generals player was running around in his underwear
Laney: Why did the main guy give the referee the helium filled basketball
Me: Because it was funny
Laney: Why?
Me: Because it floated up to the ceiling
Laney: Why?
Me: Because it was filled with helium
Laney: Why is that funny?
Me: Because it was unexpected.
Laney: What was your favorite part?
Me: I just told you: when the Generals players was running around in his underwear
Laney: Why?
Me: It was funny [in all honesty, that might not be the whole reason why that was my favorite part]
Laney: Why did he hypnotize Scooter?
Me: To cheat
Laney: But how could an umbrella hypnotize you?
Me: It couldn't really - it was just to be funny
Laney: Why?
Me: Ummmm....
Laney: What was your favorite part.

Let me tell you something: trying to explain comedy to a six year old while navigating traffic on Lake Shore Drive is no easy trick. But as ridiculous and circuitous as this conversation was, it came nowhere near approaching the level of inane, balmy, cockeyed REDONKULOUSNESS of what I heard on the radio after dropping Laney off.

See, yesterday, Obama extended hospital visitation rights to partners in same sex couples. This is clearly the decent right thing to do, even if it doesn't go far enough in recognizing the civil rights of gay people. But, whatever. This is a positive step and I'm really glad he did it.

And then I hear the reaction quote from the Family Research Council spokesperson: "In its current political context, President Obama's memorandum clearly constitutes pandering to a radical special-interest group."

What? How? Wha?

And what lesson can we take from this? That even in the deepest stages of sleep deprivation and Globetrotter-inspired flummoxation, my six year old kid makes more sense than the guy who writes the talking points for the Family Research Council.

Mike Huckabee is SUCH a Colossal Asshole

2010-04-13T20:01:00.001-07:00

So, here's Mike Huckabee on his support for an Arkansas ban on gay adoption:

I think this is not about trying to create statements for people who want to change the basic fundamental definitions of family...Children are not puppies. This is not a time to see if we can experiment and find out, how does this work?

I'm just going to say this plainly: that statement is stupid and nasty.

Gay parenting is not experimental. Boatloads of happy, healthy children have been raised by gay parents. Boatloads of happy, healthy children have been raised by single mothers and single fathers. And boatloads of messed up, neglected and abused children have been raised by a mother and a father.

There is no recipe for a happy family, no simple algorithm to apply to child rearing. Outside this one: people who put the needs of their children above their own (including, not for nothing, bowing down at the altar of their own retrograde, bigoted positions on homosexuality) tend to do a pretty good job parenting.

And, Mike Huckabee, I don't care how much folksy charm you have, statements like this betray you for the mean, shallow, narrow little man you are. And I will give you the same wish I give all people like you: I hope your kids are gay and happy.

Asshole.

In Case You were Curious...

2010-04-12T18:20:00.001-07:00

Following is the letter I'm posting to the Russian Embassy tomorrow:

To whom it may concern:

I was horrified by the story of the woman who sent her seven year old son, adopted from Russia, back to Moscow via a one-way flight and with only a note to alert people what was going on. What gross negligence and cruelty! I hope that she is prosecuted for this to the fullest extent of the law.

But despite (or perhaps because of) my anger at this craven behavior, I wanted to take a moment to tell you about my daughter, whom we adopted from Russia in May of 2005. My heart is breaking for all the families who are waiting to bring their children home and for those children who are waiting for a home. It’s important to me that you know our story.

Here’s a family picture.

Our daughter is named Helena Marjorie Westhoff and we call her Laney. We adopted her on May 26, 2005 from Blagoveschensk. She was a little on the small side when we brought her home, but now is very tall and very strong. And, as you can see, very beautiful.

Laney will be 7 this July. She’s in first grade, but can read at a 3rd grade level and is doing math at a 2nd grade level. She is very smart and exceptionally articulate.

She’s also an incredibly kind child. Her teacher tells us that whenever another student is feeling bad, or sad, Laney is the first child to comfort him or her. She’s never mean to other children and has a lot of friends.

She’s honest. When she tells me something, I know she’s telling the truth. This is such a wonderful and unusual quality in a kid.

She’s so strong and healthy! She’s 4’2” tall and 51 pounds. She’s all arms and legs, with boundless energy. She loves to play! She taking tennis lessons and is good at it. My husband is trying to teach her to throw and catch a baseball. It took him months to find a left-handed, pink baseball mitt, but he found one! And now they play catch in the yard. Laney has a big appetite, and eats broccoli without any complaints.

We have a dog and a cat that Laney loves to cuddle and snuggle with. Here’s a picture of her with her pets (and her Mom):

She loves animals of every kind!

Her favorite television show is SpongeBob SquarePants and her favorite books are the Eloise books. She loves to color and draw. She creates incredible worlds with her dolls and toys and makes up the most wonderful stories.

But, most importantly, she’s very happy. She smiles and laughs all the time. She’s such a wonderful child. Here’s a picture of her fresh from the bath, after she lost her first baby tooth. Isn’t that a wonderful smile?

Laney knows her whole story. She can find Blagoveschensk on a globe and has told her classmates the story of her adoption. Every year on May 26th, we tell her a story that begins: “Once upon a time, there was a beautiful Russian lady who was very sad because she was growing a baby in her tummy and knew she could not keep her. In the meantime, there were a man and a woman in Chicago who were very sad because they wanted a baby daughter very badly and couldn’t have one. Then one day a very wonderful person in Russia sent the man and woman a letter and asked if they wanted to adopt this little girl And, of course, we did!”

We are so incredibly grateful to the Russian people and their government for allowing this to happen. Our daughter is the light of our lives. She is the greatest gift we could imagine and we take our responsibility to her very seriously. There are times when misguided people will congratulate us for “rescuing” her. We always make sure that they understand that what Laney has given us (and what you’ve given us by allowing this adoption) is far greater and more important than anything we could give her.

In conclusion, I hope you will reconsider closing adoptions to American families. It is impossible to imagine our lives without her. Thank you for our daughter.

Abandoning You Child

2010-04-10T08:49:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a quick 10 minutes to write about this:

Russia threatened to suspend all child adoptions by U.S. families Friday after a 7-year-old boy adopted by a woman from Tennessee was sent alone on a one-way flight back to Moscow with a note saying he was violent and had severe psychological problems.

It would take a writer with a lot more skill than me to really convey the agony of waiting for a Russia adoption to come to fruition. We waited over two years for a referral. When we got our referral, we made our first trip to the Russian Far East. We had an American doctor tell us we shouldn't adopt Laney. We flew home and waited 10 weeks before we could go back to get her. Every point of that journey was agonizing, but the worst were those 10 weeks between trips.

Everything in our lives stopped. We went to work and out with friends and read books and watched TV during those 10 weeks, but none of it mattered. Everything that was actually happening was only happening behind a prevailing, agonizing wait. The only thing that was really happening was that we were waiting, consumed with anxiety, for a call to tell us we could get our daughter.

My heart is breaking for that little boy. It's hard to fathom how he ended up placed with people so criminally fucking stupid that they put a seven year old child on a plane with a note and returned him like he was a stereo that didn't work like they expected it to. Like they think there should be a return policy on a child! Monsters.

Hearing this story takes me right back to those horrible 10 weeks between our trips to Russia. If this had happened then, I don't know what I'd have done. And right now there are people in that situation because of this family's criminal negligence, stupidity and cruelty.

I'm going to write to the Russian Embassy today. I'm going to send pictures of Laney and talk about how happy she is and how grateful we are. And this family in middle Tennessee... well, if I believed in God I'd say I hoped he'd have mercy on their souls, because I sure don't.

Finding a New Game

2010-04-09T18:27:00.000-07:00

It's no secret I'm a fan of the Current Occupant. There's a lot I like about Barack Obama, but one of my favorites is his determination to remain "No Drama Obama." With that in mind, let's talk about the crazy out there these days.

Over the past several months, the right wing lunacy out there has really ballooned and it's freaked me out. It freaks me out when Rush Limbaugh tells his audience that HCR is just Obama's way of mainstreaming reparations. Or when Glenn Beck accuses the president of practicing eugenics. Or when she who shall not be named and her congressional sidekick imply that Barack Obama is going to get us all nuked into oblivion.

It's scary because it has a tangible effect on the suggestible crowds who listen to this kind of stuff.

Also, no matter how hard you try, you cannot find an equivalent level of left-wing mainstream craziness. This is not to say there are no crazy liberals. There are truthers and PETA and Code Pink. But these people aren't our liberal TV hosts and they are not our elected democratic officials. We keep our crazies on the fringe, where they belong. The right, on the other hand, seems hellbent on mainstreaming the shit out of them.

That said, and I doubt I'm going to say this well, I'm abidingly troubled by the reaction to the right-wing crazy because it's starting to feel like some of the outrage is more in service to feeding the dialectic (us vs them) than it is because we really want it to stop. Sometimes we get all up in Fight Club just because we want to fight.

Maybe we should adopt a little more No Drama Obama and just refuse to engage in the crazy.

People aren't going to stop believing that Nancy Pelosi wants to eat their babies just because we stop getting so outraged by Rush Limbaugh telling his audience that she's no different than those mullahs who convince people to put bombs on their kids. But if we stopped paying so much attention to that kind of nonsense, we might be able to focus our energy more positively.

For example, if we'd spent less time being mad about the crazy shit the right made up about ACORN and more time talking about all the important, good things ACORN did, maybe there'd still be an ACORN.

If we keep playing this game, the game keeps going on. And personally, I've been too invested in playing it. I'd really like to find a new way to engage.

Rednecks

2010-04-07T19:49:00.000-07:00

Sometime in the mid-90s, I grew to really hate Jeff Foxworthy. I'd tell some guy (always some guy) that I was from Memphis and he'd look real delighted and say "Memphis! Hey did you know you might be a redneck if..." And this poor sap always thought he was the first person to assail me with that played out witticism (currently, this guy is the same guy who finds out I'm a vegetarian and says "if God didn't intend us to eat animals, he wouldn't have made them of tasty meat." Siiiiiigh).

Dammit, Jeff Foxworthy (I'd think). You've just handed entitled yankee elitist another tool with which to paint my home in broad, condescending strokes. Stupid.

But, in retrospect, I wasn't being fair to Jeff Foxworthy. It's not his fault that your average New Yorker thinks that everyone from the south is exactly the same (I pick on poor New York, but, honestly, I think it's just the most provincial place in the world. This may be more due to my Chicago-ness, than my southern-ness).

When I was growing up in Memphis, the word "redneck" meant something. And it meant something pretty serious. It didn't mean someone who didn't have a lot of money and wasn't fancy (we'd probably call that guy a 'good old boy'). We saved "redneck" for people who were stupid and lazy who nevertheless believed like gospel that the reason they didn't have anything was because someone took it from them. And that someone was probably black. We never called someone a redneck affectionately. It was a word with a very specific invective that we reserved for people that were dangerously stupid.

And the clearest nonverbal indicator of a redneck was the goddamn confederate flag. If someone had a confederate flag painted on the back window of their truck, it meant something really specific - and everyone knew exactly what that was.

As a quick aside, take this lyric from Sweet Home Alabama: "In Alabama we love our governor." This didn't mean "step off, yankee, from our politics." It meant we love George "Segregation Now, Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever" Wallace. In Alabama, the song was saying, we love our white supremacist, segregationist governor.

Not to put to fine a point on it, but this isn't something to be proud of.

I love the south. I love southern accents in all their various forms. I love the literature and that particular, friendly warmth that southern people enjoy. I especially love that accent. Honestly, a good Tennessee accent sounds like honey on my ears and is especially refreshing after all these years amongst that godawful flat Chicago one.

But from my vantage point of internal southern-ness, I know that there ain't enough lipstick in the world for the confederate pig. In other words, Governor McDonnell, knock it off with Confederate Month nonsense. Unlike Jeff Foxworthy, people aren't condescendingly misunderstanding the redneckitude of what you mean. On the contrary, we know exactly what you mean.

*Edited to note, an old buddy tells me I've got it wrong on Sweet Home Alabame. Check out comments.

Mervyn the Moon Man

2010-03-26T20:10:00.000-07:00

Some time ago, Laney and I went on a moon vacation. This is something you do on a summer night when you don't have to get up for school in the morning. You put on your pajamas and walk to the beach and play there for a while in the moonlight. If we lived in some balmy community where you could take moon vacations in the winter when the moon was out at more reasonable hour, we'd take them all the time. But the combination of cold Chicago winters and the communist plot known as Daylight Savings Time (I believe I've made my feelings on that subject abundantly clear) moon vacations are a rare and special occasion in the Bon household.

After our first moon vacation, I began telling Laney stories about a fellow name Mervyn the Moon Man who would, from time to time, send his moonscalator down to Princess Laney of Sheridan Road and she and her dog Ginger and her cat Scrapper and whichever doll was in favor at the moment would sit on the moonscalator and ride it up to visit Mervyn. As time progressed, we started to meet Mervyn's friends: Suzie the Sunstress and Windoor Wildwave (not to brag on my child too much, but she came up with that name all on her on).

Suzie lives on the sun When Princess Laney visits her, she sungee jumps up for her visits. She rides a bubble to the bottom of Lake Michigan to visit Windoor Wildwave (seriously, how great is that name).

Tonight, Princess Laney and I had a rather extended trip to Leona's for dinner. Her friend Princess Brooklyn was there, and I sat a the table chewing the fat with Princess Brooklyn's delightful and regal parents.

So, it was about 9:30 when we left Leona's. By this point, Mervyn was putting on a pretty good show.

In the car, Laney said to me "I believe in Mervyn. I don't hear him with my ears, but I hear him with my heart."

And I thought that was such a lovely thing to say that I was inspired to tell Laney the story of how Mervyn, Suzie and Windoor came to do what they did. And I thought I'd share it with you all:

A long, long, long time ago, long before there was a Princess Laney or even the Realm of Sheridan Road, or even people or light, there was a flat stretch of dry, cold land and there were three little monkeys sitting together. The three little monkeys looked at each other and were sad and they each shook themselves very hard. And all of the sudden, instead of three little monkeys, there were two little girls and one little boy.

And they were all sad. One little girl was sad because it was so dark. One little girl was sad because it was so dry. And the little boy was sad because there was nothing beautiful to see.

The first little girl closed her eyes and concentrated very hard. And then she stretched out her right hand and all the fingers on it. And suddenly, light came pouring out of each finger. And then she stretched out her left hand, and all her fingers, and light came out of each of those fingers. She did the same with her feet, and light came out of all her toes. And she started throwing and kicking and the light came together and made a ball of light. And it got bigger and bigger. And the girl pushed the ball and she kept pushing and pushing until she left the flat dry land and went into the sky and out into space and she made the sun and built her kingdom there.

The next little girl pursed her lips together and closed her eyes and concentrated very hard and water began to stream from her mouth. And she grabbed the water and threw it. And the first place she threw it became Lake Michigan. And then she threw some more water and it became Lake Superior. And then she threw some water to make Lake Erie. And then the other two that i couldn't remember the names of (I am creative... my geography skills are lacking). Then she got up and started running and threw water to make more lakes and rivers. Suddenly she tripped. And it hurt, so she started crying. And she grabbed the water from her tears and made the great oceans of the world. And then, when she was done, she dove back down to the bottom of Lake Michigan and built her great underwater kingdom (we Chicagoans do not lack in our civic pride, do we?).

The little boy sat by himself and saw things happen. The sun and the water came together and made plants and they were OK. But not quite beautiful like he wanted. So he was still pretty sad.

Suzie got tired. She fell asleep and the little boy knew what to do. When Suzie woke up, he rolled himself up into a ball and started sucking in all the light he could. And the more he sucked in, the bigger her grew. And he rolled and rolled up into the sky and waited.

And then, when Suzie fell asleep again, he drifted the light, gently back to the land.

Windoor, from the depths of her gorgeous watery kingdom saw the gentle moonlight and she reached her hand up from the water and trailed her fingers across her watery ceiling. The water mixed with Mervyn's gentle light.

And that's when the world was ready for Princess Laney.

Now, consider yourself virtually tucked in. I'll bring you a virtual glass of water. Virtually kiss you three times on the forehead and once on each cheek and tell you that I love you more than milk or meat or money. And you can have the same sweet dreams I left my little girl with.

Me? I'm going to have a drink, watch a little Lost, root for the Panthers and be happy that I have a little girl who hears things in her heart that she can't hear with her ears.

Good night!

The Eternal Optimism of SpongeBob Squarepants

2010-03-20T18:53:00.000-07:00

We watch a lot of SpongeBob in this household. Laney is a big fan. On any given weekend morning, Don or I will catch an extra hour or so of sleep while Laney watches Spongebob. The odd effect of this is that Spongebob has a soporific effect on me and Don. We hear SpongeBob and immediately begin to drift off. At this point, it's kind of like a double dose of Tylenol PM.

Another thing you should know about SpongeBob is that it is the most ubiquitous thing on TV. I'm pretty sure that there isn't a moment of any day that you can't find SpongeBob. 3:23 am on a Sunday morning, I'm betting SpongeBob is on. Recently, I wrested myself free from a SpongeBob induced torpor and started paying attention to the show.

(You should know that I am the best mother ever and did just start paying attention to a show my kid has been watching for a couple of years now. But, I'm not one to beat myself up, so I'm just gonna move on)

SpongeBob is gross and loud and obnoxious. But, isn't that the M.O. of every kids cartoon since there've been kids cartoons? What makes SpongeBob stand apart is that on every single episode SpongeBob comes out on top almost exclusively by being indefatigable, optimistic and kind. SpongeBob is a guy who appreciates the little things, who is fiercely loyal to his friends. He's brave and good natured.

I love SpongeBob.

SpongeBob's primary foils is Squidward Tentacles. Squidward is a lot like Ethan Hawke's character in Reality Bites. Always with the wry, sardonic response, obnoxiously superior about artistic matters, confident of his own intellectual supremacy, lazy, and just fucking exhausting to be around.

I survived the 90s and all that slacker bullshit. So it's awfully nice to see slacker uselessness exposed in the face of square yellow optimism and all around nice guy-ness 7,000 or so times a day.

I also kind of like that the show's resident tough guy is a southern squirrel who's a girl.

Quick Lost Bloggity

2010-03-19T20:10:00.000-07:00

[EDITED: SORRY, ROGER, SPOILER ALERT]

Here's what makes me INSANE about this show.

Sayid: For nine months I lived with my wife. The happiest nine months of my life.
Locke: Where is she now?
Sayid: She was murdered.
ANY NORMAL PERSON IN THE WORLD WHO DOES NOT EXIST IN THE LOST WORLD: My god! What happened? Who killed her?
Locke: I'm so sorry. If you need to find me, I'll be at this hotel in L.A.
Megbon: DAMMITOHELL!!!! IF JUST ONE OF THESE LOSTAWAYS WOULD LEARN TO ASK A FUCKING QUESTION THIS SHOW COULD BE WRAPPED UP IN TWO SEASONS!!!!

I May Get in Trouble for This

2010-03-19T18:17:00.000-07:00

[Jesus] also preached ''teach them how to fish, don't give them a fish. You don't work you don't eat."
-Mary Matalin on The Colbert Report

I think it's just good form for secular me to avoid in general telling Christians what they should believe about the Bible. For example, I think the hypocrisy of using Leviticus to preach against homosexuality if they eat shellfish is self-evident. But if I don't accept the Bible as an authority, then I don't think I get to use it to prove my own points.

That said, I have a little biblical game. I did, after all, attend Catholic schools from the age of 8 to the age of 27. OK, so we weren't doing a whole lot of mandatory religion classes in college and graduate school. But I know that not only did Jesus never say anything close to that (her sources are Lao Tze and the evil sheriff in Cool Hand Luke), but it's pretty much antithetical to everything that Jesus DID say. He said, instead: "whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me."

I don't believe in God, and I don't accept Christ as an authority. But I do believe that we have a responsibility to the least among us. And I believe that society structured with that in mind has the happy result of being not only ethical and easy to live in, but also strong and self-sustaining.

I think this is all strategy for the most corrupted wing of the conservative movement: give cover to a primary goal of restructuring wealth in a way that favors the super richity rich. And they do this by saying over and over again that if you are rich, it's because God favors you and if you're poor, it's because you're lazy and have pissed off Cool Hand Luke Prison Guard Jesus. And this seems to be working on a whole host of people who won't benefit at all from this wealth restructuring. Mary Matalin is no dope. She knows Jesus didn't say "poor people can starve." She does knows that if she can get people all pissed off about welfare queens and Acorn, then they won't notice when the banksters siphon all their money away to already fabulously wealthy people.

I remember well when Islamic fundamentalists first started calling for Jihad against that Dutch cartoonist. A boatload of self-professed Christians demanded to know why moderate Muslim leadership hadn't spoken up to decry this perversion of their faith. They had a point and then they ruined it by almost immediately citing the failure of Muslim moderate leadership to speak out against jihad as proof that Islam was invested in a religious war against Christianity. Sigh.

Still and all, it seems to me like the modern Christian leadership has an obligation to speak to their followers in just the same way. I might not be a Christian, but I think I still get to say that.

Random Thoughts on My Girl

2010-03-10T19:55:00.001-08:00

Laney got straight A's on her report card today. I'd love to be the kind of person who doesn't get excited about things like that, but I confess I'm a total Lisa Simpson when it comes to that kind of thing. I was talking with a friend a while back about how we'd both love to have the money to be professional students and a big part of that is grading. I wish I could be graded now. I'd love to get a Mommy report card and a writer report card and a software support report card where some knowledgeable and impartial third party grades me based on a set of previously determined standards. But life isn't like that and so, I guess I'll have to live vicariously through Laney's grades.

I'm an accidental Montessori parent but have over the last four years become quite the evangelist for it. In Laney's homework packet for the week, part of her reading comprehension was to write "thick" and "thin" questions about a story. I'm going to quote directly from the packet:

"A thick question is one that addresses large, universal concepts and often begins with why? how come? I wonder? The answers to these questions are often long and involved. Thin questions are asked to clarify confusion or to understand words. They can usually be answered with yes or no.

Laney is in first grade. This is a quality, thoughtful education she's getting. And for free! Well, as free as things are in this world. As a DFH, I don't beef too much about paying taxes.

But beyond the learnin', Montessori just really seems great for kids who march to the beat of a different drummer. There's a great deal of focus on individuality and respect. And my girl is kind of a goofball. She's a hilarious, smart, lovely, kind goofball. But she is a goofball. She would describe herself as a Knucklehead McSantaClaus (this goofball moniker brought to you courtesy the good people at SpongeBob Squarepants - and I personally find it oddly evocative). She will not pose adorably when you point a camera at her. When she's got your attention she's going to use it to waggle her tongue and cross her eyes and break out into some contortive dance.

The Knucklehead McSantaClaus's are the ones, I am convinced, who end up setting the world afire. But in a primary school world, kids can be jerks to each other. Laney's been called weird and a baby and ugly. But, she's in an environment where that kind of stuff is dealt with. Where there's the bandwidth and will from the staff to deal with it. And so, she's a happy girl when I pick her up. A grinning goofball ready to regale me with stories from her day and to ask me a "thick" question or tell me that 158 rounds to 160. Brainiac.

She calls me Mrs. Bighead. Which tickles me, because when I was in first grade the kids called me "bighead" and it was not a compliment. It's not a compliment from Laney, but it is a direct statement about the size of my head vis a vis hers. And, as such, that's cool.

Oh, you guys, she's such a great kid. My little Goofy Goober.

Homeless People and Catholicism

2010-03-09T19:50:00.000-08:00

(it's late and I don't know if this makes sense)

A while back my friend Jessica (who, by the way, is the number one example of people I know named Jessica who are awesome - I have never met a Jessica who wasn't awesome. If you're thinking of baby names for a girl, I suggest you bear this in mind) asked me a question. She was wondering if Laney had ever had an uncomfortable run in with a homeless person. I was chewing that over for a while and remembered one.

When Laney was about three or so, we were in the Wicker Park post office doing something. Don and I were at the counter and Laney was kind of wandering around, being three. It was around Christmastime. This crazy old bag lady came up to her and asked her if she knew that Christmas was about Jesus and not Santa. I sort of steered her away and when the woman approached me I just said "no" and shook my head. Then she followed us around telling Laney that if she couldn't get away from us, she'd go to hell. She kept telling me that I was damning my baby to hell.

I was filled with a mix of pity and rage. Laney wanted to play with the stamp machine.

And then I remembered something that If I live to be a million I'll never forget. Way back in December of 1977 or 78, Fr. Stritch told a church full of kids that we were all going to go to hell if we didn't settle down and listen to the service instead of getting all excited about the promisingly heavy snow outside. In Memphis! On a school day! That mean old fart actually told eight year olds they were going to hell. Almost ruined our snow day. Asshole.

I still remember that mean old priest. I don't think Laney will remember the crazy old homeless lady. I was older, sure. But I think it's important to note that unlike the crazy old post office lady, Fr. Stritch was in a position of unquestionable authority.

I'm not sure that one has anything to do with the other. And I also seriously doubt there are any priests left who roll that way. I imagine that if you wandered into any Catholic church and told the pastor that story, he'd be appropriately appalled and would talk to you about Jesus' love for children. I also think there are few (if any) parents left who'd be at all leery of questioning the authority of a priest who said such a horrible thing to their kids. And questioning it with choice words, no less.

People will say shitty things to kids and from our position as adults, we'll have a hard time discerning how much that will scare the kid in question. But, we hope that we can raise our kids so that they know they can come to us with their fears and that we will do everything in our power to make sure they know they're safe. My own personal opinion is that I think it helps when you run your household with Mom and Dad as unquestionable authorities instead of the near-retirement priest at the failing grade school. But I'm sure there are people out there who disagree.

More to the point, and in keeping with my last post, I'm hoping that when moments happen with crazy homeless people, I can use that as (and I'm so sorry for using this hackneyed phrase) a teachable moment. To tell her that people on the streets are often people who are sick in their mind, either from disease or addiction, and that they deserve our kindness and not our judgement. I often remember this thing I heard about Jane Addams: she'd never judge a person for what they'd become because she knew what life could do to people.

And, you know as I ponder it from my vantage point all these years later, I think I could afford some posthumous kindness for Fr. Stritch too. In his own way, he was a victim of what his life did to him. Although, the word "asshole" still echoes through my brain.

It's a process, I guess.

Commute Conversations

2010-03-03T17:49:00.000-08:00

I picked Laney up at around 6:00. We chat a little through the first half of the commute, but by the second half of Lake Shore Drive onto Sheridan Road, we've fallen into a companionable silence, listening to Chicago Day on WXRT, when Laney breaks the silence:

Laney: Good job, Mom
Me: What?
Laney: I've said enough.

Ah, the deep abiding mysteries of mothering a kid like Laney.

Living in the City

2010-03-02T18:23:00.000-08:00

I love living in the city. I still, even after all these years, get such a gas out of the skyline, the bustle, the people, and extreme civic pride we have in Chicago. I might disparage American Exceptionalism, but I have no doubt that Chicago is, indeed, the Greatest City in the World.

But it ain't easy raising a kid in the city. And you miss some pretty great stuff. Laney won't know the singular, kidly joy of riding her bike to a friend's house, hanging out in the back yard, playing with her friends outside until it's dark on a summer night. It's not safe for her to do that here. And this makes me sad, because I have such fond memories from my own childhood of that.

But, she does have something I didn't have, and it is priceless and wonderful: Laney has immediate, every day experience rubbing elbows with people who aren't like her. She is surrounded by different races, different religions, different socioeconomic classes, different sexual orientation. I tell her all the time that the world is a big place and there's room for all kinds of different people, and my great hope is that by raising her in this little townhouse on the far north side of Chicago and by sending her to public school on the west side of Chicago, that she'll get that at a molecular level.

Lately, we seem to be very eager to define America with a series of Us vs. Them. We are Democrats, They are Republicans. We are Christians, They are Muslims. We are Good. They are Terrorists. We are "Real Americans." They are Dirty Fucking Hippies. I don't think I'm wrong about this; slowly America seems to be dividing itself up on a vast, Manichean fault line, and it scares me a little.

My hope for Laney's childhood is that she'll end up finding this Us and Themism alien and disgusting.

*Note - this isn't a city vs. suburbs polemic. There are plenty of places outside the city limits that offer the kind of rich diversity that we get in Chicago. But the buildings aren't as awesome.

What? But... why? Really?

2010-03-01T19:17:00.000-08:00

Have you guys seen this ad?

It's for a no touch handsoap dispenser. Because people with gross, germy hands are putting them all over the handsoap pump. Ew.

Then again, presumably, the action that immediately follows the handsoap pump is, you know, a handwash. It's hard to fathom another reason why you'd be pumping handsoap.

This is the thing you buy right before you wrap all your furniture in plastic, right? This is like something that Howard Hughes would have installed in his private suite on the Spruce Goose? Are we really living in a time when people are worried about getting their hands dirty immediately prior to washing them?

This baffles me as much as those bathtub Cialis ads. I just ... what?

Rush, Racism and the Really Toxic Stuff

2010-02-26T18:26:00.000-08:00

Another day, another glaring example of the shameless racism of Rush Limbaugh. I had a whole blogpost in mind when I read this. I was going to write about how Rush and the other glorious leaders of the right have these narrow definitions of how black people are supposed to behave and they are happy to point out where black people disappoint and when you object to their arrogance and privilege then it's YOU who's race baiting. There are, not for nothing, similar rules for women. I was going to bloviate a bit on how it doesn't seem like there's a single elected Republican official out there with the stones to call Rush out on it (the dems my have earned their reputation as pussies, but at least they don't bow done before the alter of someone as vile as Rush Limbaugh).

But then today I was driving home from work and listening to EJ Dionne and David Brooks talking about Health Care Summit 2010! The Musical! At the end of their discussion, the moderator asks David Brooks to sort of sum up his thoughts and he says that he thinks it's going to end up well for the Republicans since blah blah blah they'll probably take the house back in 2012. And it hit me that Rush's retarded racism isn't what really matters. The only people who take his race baiting nonsense seriously are other racist retards and they'd rally around a dirty sock if it validated their own racism. So, who cares?

What's really the problem is that the "serious" journalists out there are only interested in the horse race. David Brooks feels no compunction to talk about the policy proposals, the truths and lies of the opposing sides. He takes no responsibility to weigh in honestly on what's been said. To him, ALL that matters is who wins.

And so here we are, Us vs, Them. Which leaves Representative Tanny Boehner and Senator McConnell free to spew their lies about nuclear options and tyranny and socialism because to David Brooks, et al, "Hey! Who are We to Argue with a Winning Strategy."

There's stuff to complain about with Barack Obama. But, sheesh, at least he's got the smarts to swat down their nonsense since we can't expect a pundit to.

By the way, guess who's going to be on Meet the Press on Sunday? All by himself? For the whole show? President John McCain!

Filled With Rage

2010-02-23T18:44:00.001-08:00

Look, I know that rage is overrated and counterproductive. But I can't help it. This ACORN thing has filled me with rage and if I don't write it down, I might quite possible explode.

Driving home tonight, listening to NPR, I heard a story about how ACORN was disbanding after "controversial videos that showed ACORN workers advising a couple who were posing as a pimp and a prostitute." I suppose it is too much to ask that NPR note that the videos were doctored, that that ruthless little cuss James O'Keefe NEVER entered an ACORN office in that ridiculous outfit and that the makers of that little wingnut porno weren't even above dubbing in voice-overs.

And now, ACORN, an organization whose mission was to organize low-to-moderate income people because they shockingly believe that those people are the best advocates for their own communities, has been run out of business. And now, thanks to that rotten liar Andrew Breitbart and his nasty little minion James O'Keefe, ACORN now stands for "shiftless negroes who are taking your stuff away;" a toxic little pot that people have been stirring in this country since 1865.

And how did this happen? How did a video so obviously amateurishly doctored, so ludicrous and nonsensical make it onto CNN and the New York Times without a single responsible journalist saying "hmmmm, this looks fishy, perhaps we should engage in that quaint thing we used to do... whaddya call it? Reporting?" It happened because of all the scores of successful dishonest branding coups of the right wing, the most insidious, pervasive and flat out dangerous is that of the "liberal media." And yet, no matter how obviously false the branding is, this doesn't stop the media sources that should know better from flailing their arms and screaming, "Hey, Rush! Glen! Lookit! I PINKY SWEAR PROMISE we're not liberal. Watch! Watch me punch a hippie!"

And what happens? The silly, stupid purveyors of this right-wing crap sit their lately unemployed asses back and decide that the reason they don't have a job and healthcare costs eat up what little money they have and they're scared and worried about the future is because of ACORN. And while they're whining about czars and socialism and tyranny (tyranny, for god's sake), the banks and the health insurance companies suck the last pennies out of their pockets.

And ACORN, an organization that may have been poorly managed but which, nevertheless, did good and important work folds.

So, yeah, I'm filled with rage.

If you have a mind, and aren't worried about how filled with rage you'll be, I suggest you read this which outlines exactly how just shitty the behavior of James O'Keefe was. Alternatively, this is a somewhat less rage-inducing (but still depressing) overview of what happened.

Public Option Pitch

2010-02-19T17:26:00.000-08:00

Do you guys know what the term "public option" means? It's not exactly the kind of labeling that'll set the world on fire. If Republicans were for it, they'd call it the "Freedom Option." I'm not even kidding about that. In a year or so I bet the RNC tries to trademark the word.

If you want to watch 2 minute video, here's a nice explanation:

If you're like me and you'd rather read something, I googled around and I think this guy explains it pretty well:

[It's] a government-run health insurance plan, like Medicare, that would compete along side private insurers in a new Health Insurance Exchange that the bill would set up. The exchange is basically a place where people who aren’t on Medicare or Medicaid and don’t have insurance through their employers would go to comparison shop for a health plan. One of the plans available on the exchange would be the public option. Like all plans on the exchange, the public plan would have to meet certain minimum standards for care – minimum services that must be covered, mental health benefits parity, a fair grievance and appeals mechanism, etc.

So, the public option was dead. Killed by politicking. And somehow it's come roaring back to life. And, at the risk of going all liberal blogger on you, you have a choice: get involved or bitch about do nothing democrats over cocktails. But the thing is, if healthcare reform goes tits up, and you couldn't even be bothered to pick up a phone and make a call (and this is coming from a woman who HATES the telephone) you don't get to pin the blame on Barack Obama or Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi. We all share the blame.

So, sack up, join the Million Voices Virtual March on Feb 24th. Call your goddamn senator and when the staffer picks up the phone say "I'm one of Senator Fartypants constituents and I'm calling to strongly urge him to fix healthcare reform through reconciliation. I am in full support of the public option." Senator Fartypants staffer may go so far as to ask for your zip code, but will probably just say "I'll let him know."

This. Shit. Works. It's a lot of fun to sit around over cocktails and bitch about ineffective government. And it's a lot of fun to write blogposts about it that four people read. But all four of you can spare 3 minutes out of your busy day on Feb. 24th to make the call.

And if you don't, well, you deserve Senator Fartypants, don't you?

Why It's Not Pitiful To Spend Your Whole Day Looking Forward to Watching Lost on Hulu

2010-02-18T19:09:00.000-08:00

Oh, you guys, it's getting to the point where I'm spending most of my days looking forward to the last waking hour and a half of the day because that's when I have a drink and watch Lost. This makes it sound like I have a really miserable life. Like, I'm walking around, groaning, thinking "8 hours to bourbon and Lost!" Which, well, sometimes, I am. But, that doesn't mean I'm not a generally cheery person. Like, at work, I'm getting BEAT UP with support requests. Every hour something else pops into my in box. But one of the benefits of doing the same job for ten years is that I can handle almost all of them, and the ones I can't I know who to ask. Besides almost all my customers know how much I hate the phone now so it almost never rings anymore. (me and Patrick Stewart both hate the phone - we should be best friends).

And, sure, my Wii Fit Plus still claims I'm old and fat, but on two different occasions on two different days two different men said to me "Girl, you're pretty" and it was only creepy once.

And, yeah, I did hit a bad patch this afternoon while working on my book (which is set in 1991) because I realized that 1991 is to 1965 what 2010 is to 1984 and that did more to make me feel old than any bullshit Wii Fit Plus body test because in 1991, 1965 was a loooooong time ago. But 1984 was just a few years back. That said, the book is still coming along nicely.

Of course, f I do have this wretched horrible commute. But it gives me time to have deep conversations with Laney like the one we had on the way home tonight. We'd just got done singing that Shel Silverstein song about Noah and the Unicorn (green alligators and long necked geese...) and...

She said: What's that song about?
And I said: Noah. Have I never told you about Noah?
And she said: No
[so I told her]
And she said: is that true?
And I said: No, it's like a folk story
And she said: Oh, you're just saying that because you don't believe in God.
And I said: Nuh uh!
And she said: Uh huh!
And I said: Look, tons of people who DO believe in God don't think the story of Noah really happened.
And she said: Really?
And I said: Yes, they accept it as something that has meaning outside literal truth
And she said: Well, how do you know it's not true?
And I said: Well, one boat couldn't hold two of all the animals in the world. I mean, think of the dogs alone! You've got beagles and labradors and chihuahuas and great danes
And she said: I like beagles and labradors and chihuahuas
And I said: What about the great danes?
And she said: What if there was more than one boat?
And I said: Like an armada of arks?
And she said: What's an armada?

But I didn't answer because i was too busy thinking that Ark Armada is the GREATEST BAND NAME EVER.

Anyway, Laney's asleep dreaming of an Ark Armada and I'm regretting that I never got the band together and should be watching Lost and having a drink, but instead I'm having a drink and writing on this little bloggity. And I'm going to stop that now. And watch Lost. And, dammit, I'm not going to forget about the four toed collapsed statue. Or the damn polar bears.

ARK ARMADA ROCKS!!!!!!

Namaste and good luck.

Signs You Are Watching Too Much Lost, 1

2010-02-13T08:44:00.000-08:00

On Saturdays, I drop Laney off at her Mandarin class and then head over to Panera Bread where I work on my book. I love this time, since it's about the most uninterrupted I can expect to be throughout the week and get most of my quality writing done here.

This morning, I went to the bathroom before ordering and into the stall with the baby changing station. This is the one I usually use, because I can pull the changing table down and set my laptop on it, which strikes me as a better alternative than the floor. So, I pulled the table down and rested my purse and laptop on it and commenced the process of peeing. I looked up at the changing table. Someone had written "The information you requested..." on the side of the changing station in a position that only someone using the toilet would be able to see it.

This struck me as WILDLY portentous.

And then I went to buy my bagel and diet coke and the guy who waited on me was named... (dun dun duuuuuun)... Sayid!

Because I have watched at least two episodes of Lost a night, almost every night, for the past two weeks, I'm now pretty sure that this either means something significant or I am a player in Hurley's twisted catatonic dreams.

Or that I'm watching too much Lost.

Morning Commute Conversations

2010-02-05T07:22:00.000-08:00

Me: Laney, have you ever noticed how women in commercials always marry really dumb men?
Laney: Uhhhhhhhhh.... I think they're really stupid men.
Me: But I don't get that. Daddy's not stupid.
Laney: Well, he's not in a commercial

And thus the student passes the master.

Bullies

2010-02-02T19:27:00.000-08:00

I've had this on my mind a lot lately. Some time ago, I read this book by a writer named Jen Lancaster called Such a Pretty Fat in which she details her struggle with losing weight, not losing weight and getting healthy despite not losing weight. It's a good lesson - skinny does not equal healthy. But she ended the book with a story about a confrontation she had on the street with a homeless junkie who'd been buttering her up to try and get money. In short, Lancaster shits all over the homeless person and then uses that anecdote to express the liberty and achievement of her newfound unskinny fitness.

Then a couple of days ago, I read about this Paul Shirley fellow who writes this of Haiti:

I haven’t donated to the Haitian relief effort for the same reason that I don’t give money to homeless men on the street. Based on past experiences, I don’t think the guy with the sign that reads “Need You’re Help” is going to do anything constructive with the dollar I might give him. If I use history as my guide, I don’t think the people of Haiti will do much with my money either.

These are just two examples of a trend I've noticed where somehow flouting perceived political correctness equals being all mavericky braveness. But it's not courageous to shit all over someone who has nothing. It's just being a bully. And if I could channel Seth Bullock in all his clenchy awesomeness, if there's anything I can't fucking stand it's a bully.

A few weeks ago, I went to Subway to have a diet coke and a cookie and write a little. As I stood in line to pay, a homeless man wandered past asking for someone to buy him a sandwich. Since I had some extra cash (I almost never have cash), when I got my change I gave him five dollars. He said "thanks" without looking at the bill. I was filling my cup up with the sweet, sweet diet coke when he came over and said "I'm going over to McDonalds instead because I can get..." and he proceeded to explain how he could buy more with his five dollars at McDonalds than he could at Subway. Now, I have this policy: if I give you money, I gave you money It's your money. It's no longer my place to tell you how to spend it (this policy does not apply to my child). So, I just kind of gave him a "that's OK." And then he looked me right in the eye, and it felt like all the guile and self-defense went out of him and he said, "Things have been hard for me lately." I touched his arm and said "I bet they have." And then he said, "I got raped last night in the shelter." And, here's where I get to feel super proud of myself, I said, "I'm sorry but I have to do some work."

So he just nodded, gave me a "god bless you" and went away.

Now, you guys, this isn't my first time at the rodeo. I know he wasn't taking that five dollars to McDonalds and I couldn't possibly care less about that. But I also know that he wasn't giving me some story to try and convince me to give him more money. We had a moment and then I got scared, accessed urban self defense mode and retreated. But before I did, I got a glimmer of how crushingly lonely that man's life must be. How totally isolated and afraid he must feel all the time. And I wish I could go back in time and not be so quick to get away from his sad story.

And I feel so grateful for all the people in my life that lighten my load.

Look, here's what I'm trying to say: if you think that the only thing that separates us folks who enjoy home and hearth from the homeless is that we made good decisions and they didn't, then you're nuts. And if you think the only thing that separates us as a nation from a place like Haiti is what? Protestant work ethic? Yankee know how? Sticktutiveness? Then you're delusional to the point of wacakadoodle.

Pity is free. Charity is cheap. And if you think you're a tough guy because you don't mind acting like an asshole to a person (or a country) that has nothing then, not to beat this horse too much, you're a bully which is a thing I cannot fucking stand.

A brave person would have let that man tell his story. I might not have been brave, but at least I wasn't a fucking bully.