Internet-ish

A few days ago, I shared this silly internet meme about how to find your British royal name. It was goofy and I mostly shared it because both my grandmothers were named Mary and that is a thing that Irish Americans probably all have in common so that's fun. Three separate people jumped on the comments thread to tell me how I was sharing a thing that gives people the answers to your various security questions (name of your first pet, street where you grew up, etc).

Tip: don't "actually" someone until you've read up the thread, guys! I can only be scolded for the same thing so many times before I get huffy!

Anyhoo, I told all these guys that I felt like those questions were easy enough to find out from anyone and besides, who the hell is asking for a grandparent's first name on a security question?

And then a couple of days later I was signing up for some dumb account and that was the security question they asked.

So, I felt dumb. And I felt dumb in the way that I really hate to feel dumb, because I like to think my Internet IQ is pretty high (unlike my Marvel IQ because I still don't know if Paul Bettany is a mutant or a person or a robot or what) and falling for some dumb phishing thing like that makes me feel old and stupid and out of touch.

I come from a generation that's not particular exercised about privacy. I still remember going full Navin Johnson when I got my first apartment in Chicago - excitedly cracking open the white pages and staring all starry-eyed at my name, address and phone number and feeling like a Real Girl Now! And now I live in a world where I alternately feel like I'm way too worried about privacy and not nearly worried enough and I can feel both of these things at the same time especially since it means I don't have to answer the phone if I don't know who's calling (Seriously! Remember when you had to pick up the phone to find out who was on the other end? That was the worst!)

I don't know. I have no answers. Do you? And, while I'm asking, did we know about those infinity stones the whole time and can't Dr. Strange just send us back in time or something? If you have any questions about rotary phones or dating in the 1990s, send them this way. I would like to feel expert on something again.

How's Your Rage?

I was on a conference call Friday, waiting for a customer to join, chatting with colleagues when I referred to the film Mean Girls as a classic. The guys on the other end of the call (really lovely guys, all of them) gently scoffed at this and referenced Citizen Kane and The Birds as real classics.

You guys, I am not proud of myself about this, but I let the simmering low-level rage that's been my constant companion these last two years get the better of me. I sputtered and fumed and then the customer joined and we started talking about less interesting things like technology and workflows.

For men (well, straight white men) a smart comedy, that remains culturally relevant fourteen years later, written by a woman and about girls doesn't deserve to be called a classic. But those hoary old films by a narcissist and a straight up monster will always, no matter what we learn about the people they were, rest undisturbed atop their pedestals.

I have a theory about why I get so mad these days so easily: I think for the first 45ish years of my life I lived in that go along to get along space; I just kind of went with it that the women will bear the responsibility for making the men feel good, that what the women do will never be taken as seriously as what the men do, and that men will just always be the ones in charge.

And then, of course, Donald J Trump happened and I think I, along with most of the American female population, and thought:

...unsealed the rage spigot, and let it loose. This has left me with a rather large surfeit of rage.

Another thing happened: Jake Tapper was interviewed by America's boyfriends on Pod Save America post SmokeyEyegate (tm me) and he said that while he hadn't seen The Handmaid's Tale, come on, it's obvious Michelle Wolfe was making a joke about Sarah Huckabee Sanders' looks. I'm still mad about that. I can't stop being mad about that. 

Ann Dowd is a brilliant character actress who is doing incredible work playing a character who is not just complicit in a deeply misogynist government, but also a true believer who is among its most effective enforcers. The analogy is clear to anyone with even a passing interest in the show. But to Jake Tapper, the only material fact about Ann Dowd is that he himself would not care to have sex with her. I am so offended on Ann Dowd's behalf!

You guys, this interview was a couple of weeks ago. I mean way too long and way too in passing for me to still be mad. But I'm still mad! I'm still so angry at how he pleased he was with himself, how confident he'd earned a brave boy cookie for his whole "I'm just being honest" shtick. And I'm angry that the Pod Save guys, who all knew it was crap, just let it pass without commenting.

And that may be who I'm maddest at, now that I think about it: the nice guys, the good guys, the guys who aren't horrible to women, and who even actually like women, are friends with women, but are also so deep in their own privilege (I'm sorry - I'm starting to hate that word too) that they fail to notice so much.

I'm sorry, I'm ranting.

I think I may start greeting my lady friends with "Hi! How's your rage these days?" I think I may start greeting my male friends with "Hi! You questioned any deep-seated assumptions yet today?" 

And I write all this knowing that as a white, straight, cisgendered, able-bodied, middle-class woman, I'm operating at a pretty low difficulty setting. But so long as Donald Fucking Trump, who is the Platonic ideal of the terrible American male, is our president, I can't stop being mad. 

Roseanne. Hard Pass

I consume a lot of pop culture - more so than the average bear. Some people are impressed with my pop culture consumption, others think I must get absolutely nothing done. Here's a quick bullet list to how I consume so much:

• There are only a few shows a week that I watch while not doing anything else. Currently, those shows are Atlanta, RuPaul's Drag Race, The Americans (starts tonight!), Superstore and The Middle. These are the only shows airing that demand full attention. Some due to their extreme quality (Atlanta and The Americans) others because I just have a real good time with them (RPDR and Superstore), and one purely for the nostalgia (The Middle). Due to the great advances of DVR-i-tude, this only adds up to about 2.5 hours of television a week
• The other TV things I consume happen while I'm doing other things - I may watch The Goldbergs while I'm doing the dishes. I'll check into AP Bio during a workout. 
• I waste no time on cable news. I've long held the position that cable news causes cancer. It's bad for you in a million ways. I like Chris and Joy and Rachel too! If there's something really good on one of their shows, it'll be on Facebook the next day. Cable news is a terrible way to stay informed and a blight on America. The Sunday shows are worse. I get my news from the Crooked Media guys, Wonkette, Charlie Pierce and Josh Marshall. All these sources are proudly liberal, but free of bullshit. Recommend. 
• I follow pop culture blogs and twitter that recommend the good stuff to watch. My all time favorite of these is Pajiba. I've turned many of you over to them. They are smart and funny, staunchly anti-racist and feminist, and they have great taste. 
• Also, I fucking hate it when everyone is talking about something and I don't know what it is. I have never understood the sense of superiority that some people seem to feel when they don't know something that everyone else is talking about. Like, why do people show up on a Facebook thread about Game of Thrones talking about how they don't watch that show? What's the point of that? No one thinks you're cool, buddy. 

All of this is lead up to the Hard Fucking Pass I'm going to give Roseanne. I watched about 10 minutes of it last night and then clicked off. Jackie was like the worst caricature of a Hillary voter and Roseanne was like the gentlest NYT profile of the misunderstood Trump voter. And you know? Fuck. That.

You don't get to say 'I'm not racist! Look at my cute black granddaughter" and support Mr. "Very Fine People on Both Sides," Mr. "Get Those Sons of Bitches off the Field." You don't get to say "I'm not homophobic! I support my genderqueer grandson" at the same time you support the man responsible for the pointless, cruel transgender ban in the military. 

Trump supporters do not get a pass just because they come around with witty writing and a thick sheen of nostalgia. None of it should be normalized. 

There are not two sides here that can reasonably disagree. This is not normal. Don't watch it. Watch The Middle.  

Tupperware or Rubbermaid. I Don't Have Room to Care.

I bought a set of Tupperware from Amazon. It wasn't Tuppeware - it was Rubbermaid. But I don't  know the word for the things that I call Tupperware but aren't tupperware and I can't be bothered to find out or even whether it should be capitalized when I'm using it as a generic descriptive noun. Anyway, it looks like this:

I opened my fridge tonight to put the leftover pasta away and there it sat in its clear plastic container with a red top, right next to 6 or 7 other fridge things in the same, albeit differently sized plastic containers with red tops. It was beautiful. The order and sensibleness of all my fridge things stored in tidy, dishwasher-safe containers that all look the same, albeit differently sized? I enjoyed a palpable, authentic frisson of pleasure.

(This is not my beautiful wife.)

I almost never write in this blog anymore. I haven't played my piano in months. I had this plan to finally turn my novel into a proper eBook and even realized how it should begin (that only took 10 years or so). But I haven't done any of it.

Instead, I spend all my free brainspace stuffing it full of information about L'il Duce and the chaos he's engendered.

I don't want to know who Andrew McCabe is. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, that liar and sociopath, doesn't deserve the space in my brain she takes up. Fuck Jefferson Davis Sessions, that racist old ferret.

God, I loved it when I only sort of knew who Eric Holder was.

I'm so angry at the people who live in that Fox News bubble (or, worse, just liked the cut of Trump's jib or something) who gleefully slouched us into this Bethlehem.

I had a Republican friend who really hates Trump tell me recently that she likes Paul Ryan. How could ANYONE LIKE PAUL RYAN!?!?!  Paul Ryan cares about nothing nothing nothing but increasing the wealth for the thinnest sliver of already wealthy Americans. He has no other policy position. No other guiding moral principle. He is a nice p90X body casing an absolutely depleted morality. There is nothing of substance about him at all.

But he says he hates abortion. He doesn't hate abortion. He doesn't care about abortion. But he knows he'll get votes from people who do and so people vote for him. The same people who, sorrynotsorry, can't be bothered to wrap their heads around the manifestly obvious truth that the only real way to reduce abortions is to increase access to birth control and sex ed.

See also the gun people, who just don't care that our children are being massacred at the altar of their gunny cult. They like it when Mitch McConnell fellates an AR-57 so much they don't care that he's the guy who keeps you desperately tethered to a corporate health care policy that couldn't give a shit about keeping you alive. Their concern begins and ends and how grossly they can profit off poor and middle-class people. The same people who keep fucking voting for them!

I don't want to know that Rex Tillerson laid waste to the state department that Hillary Clinton and John Kerry (but especially Hillary) spent eight years laying solid diplomatic ground on. HRC jetted around the world and worked her ass off to keep us safe. But to the folks who love Trump, she's Cruella DeVil meets Lady MacBeth meets an Ugly Stepsister, or some other bullshit sexist trope that the stupidest among us use to organize their lives.

I'm just so mad all the time. Aren't you? How does anyone have time to do anything but refresh Twitter and be mad (and be terrified and then mad again... mad is easier than terrified).

I soothe myself with bourbon, escapist tv and the calming, consoling, palliative joy of matching tupperware. Or Rubbermaid. I don't give a shit.

What has the American monster tweeted tonight?

By the way, don't give me any advice. Please. I am not soliciting advice. I'm venting. I'll give you advice instead: buy matching tupperware and fake orderliness in a terrifyingly chaotic world.

Still Banging This Drum

After every mass shooting, my Facebook lights up with arguments about guns on social media.

Let's not anymore, OK?

First, and you know this: you're never going to change their mind. If a person's first response to the murder of 17 people in a high school is to defend the weapon, to "well actually" your grief and anger, to make sure you know that their right to own a gun is more sacrosanct than the lives of your kids, then that person is either too stupid or too morally bankrupt to have a conversation with. I know David Brooks disagrees with me, but he's a person whose opinion I can no longer be bothered with.

Much like Ms. It's Not Guns, It's Mental Illness. Ignore her (it's ok, she doesn't really give a shit about mental health care). She's beyond help.

There's a little dopamine rush that comes from these arguments, though. I know. I've had a million of them. And I know this is pretty rich coming from Ms. Shouting Down a Well, but I'm pretty sure Wayne LaPierre is delighted to have you expend your energy trying to expose the myriad logical fallacies coming from Mr. We Need to Arm The Teachers. Every argument you have with Ms.We Just Need To Enforce the Laws We Have, is one less argument you're having with someone who can actually do something about this.

The NRA is not powerful because of the money. Thinking that it's just the money kind of liberates us from responsibility, right? How can we, with our little incomes, hope to do battle against the billions coming from Big Gun.

But it's not the money. Big Gun isn't Big Pharma or Big Wall Street. Big Gun is successful because they've corralled a large, intractable, single-issue voting bloc. But, remember, while it is large and it is loud, there are more of us than there are of Mr. What's Next? Outlawing Cars.

So stop arguing with people on Facebook or Twitter. Rather, spend that energy letting your congressperson (via CALLING) know that you will never again vote for anyone who has more than an F rating from the NRA. I'm going to do it, and my senators and congresspeople already DO have F ratings from the NRA.

I'm not here to lambaste social media. I love social media. Keep on sharing great pieces like this or this. Follow, post, and retweet those amazing kids like Emma Gonzales who are ready to fight. Keep talking about the racial disparities in reporting on these things. Social media is a powerful organizing force. But it is not a place where minds are changed.

Look, you don't think Mr. But Chicago isn't calling Ted Cruz when the devils at the NRA gin him up about losing his guns? He is. And, you guys, I haaaaaaaate Mr. But Chicago. You have no idea the force of will it takes for me not to argue with Mr. But Chicago. But, I'm not gonna. Instead, I'll let some poor staffer for Dick Durbin know that this is the issue I care about this the most.

Hey! Did you guys know that the NRA PAC website has voter registration and polling place info on its front damn page.

Call your congress member and senators and ignore Mr. Good Guy With a Gun. And if you want that dopamine rush, remember this, ignoring that guy is going to irritate and frustrate him way more than any response you can give him. And that's fun!

Also, give money to Everytown, if you've got some.

On Aziz Ansari (Y'all Were Dying to know My Take, Right?)

This is going to be a super quick one because it is 9:00 pm which is bourbon and The Crown time. But I find the various hot takes about Aziz Ansari are spinning around through my brain and I feel compelled to add my two cents (because that's just what this debate is missing: another middle-aged white lady's opinion!).

When I first read the Babe article, my first inclination was to go "oh, come on! We've all been there, honey." And that's how rape culture works - we're all bred in an environment where male desire is coddled and privileged while female comfort is left standing outside the window, in the snow, tentatively waving like "can I come in for a second? Or is that too much of a bother? I'll just stand here a while longer." We're all steeped in "oh, he just did what men do" and "she needs to learn to manage the situation and her reaction to it."

That's not right. Right?

And then later I read another hot take all about how we're RUINING AZIZ ANSARI'S CAREER! And I was, "um, it's been two days. Are we really sure we're ready to bury Aziz Ansari's career? After two days?"

I read a tweet today by a twitterer called Wikipedia Brown (come on! is that the best twitter handle ever, or what?) in which she used the word "unlearning." We all have a lot to unlearn about the way sex and sexual politics and gender relations go.

I'll start: there are degrees of #MeToo. There's rape, there's gross abuse of power, there's groping and masturbating at, there's unsolicited dick pics, and, yeah, there's privileging your own orgasm over her comfort. Men have to unlearn their right to behave this way and women have to unlearn their inclination to accept it. I'm pretty proud of Grace for telling him the next day how he made her feel. When I was 22, I'd just have been ashamed of myself for going to his apartment without the expectation of having sex in exactly the way he wanted to.

I have a lot to unlearn.

Next: I'm not gonna avoid season three of Master of None. I looooooove Master of None. I think Aziz Ansari is brilliant and hilarious and thoughtful and, basically, a decent person who needs to unlearn some shit. In other words, I'm not studying on exiling Aziz Ansari off to the island of misfit men.

But I'm also not mad at the idea that he's going to have to spend an uncomfortable few days thinking about his sexual expectation and his behavior. My fondest hope from #MeToo, is, well, that there will be a lot less rape. That's really number one on the list. But right up there too, I hope that the men of the world (many of whom, I'm sure, are guilty of exactly Ansari's behavior) will spend some time thinking about the times they may have made a woman feel unsafe and violated and learn to start doing what women do all the fucking time: pay attention to how the person they're with is reacting and feeling.

It's not that hard. Women really do it all the time.

Quick Lil Bloggity

I'm doing a little work as I watch the Letterman Obama interview on Netflix. Sigh.

I liked President Barack Obama. This is no hagiography; dude made big mistakes. But at the very least, you got the feeling that he cared. That he set his rather substantial intellect to every task and gave a shit about the effects of the decisions he made.

It's tragic to have gone from someone so clearly thoughtful as president to someone so clearly thoughtless; to have gone from someone with clear moral compass, to someone clearly amoral; to have gone from someone brilliant to someone so fucking stupid.

But an even more baseline tragedy of having gone from Obama to Trump is the vision. Obama's vision of American exceptionalism hews equally pragmatic and optimistic. The promise of America, in Obama's worldview, is to continually strive to be more perfect. Not perfect (because that's impossible) but more perfect. Obama thinks we as a nation can keep getting better.

And the way that happens is by opening America up to the people who've been historically excluded from it - people of color, LGBTQA people, disabled people, women, etc.

So we bounced from a leader with a worldview of pragmatic optimism, who believed in the generosity and expansiveness of American culture to a leader who recklessly longs for the day when he and people just exactly like him were the only people America was for.

But, you know what? Fuck that. Fuck Donald Trump and his ugly racist, misogynist worldview. In a word:

First things first, we're all gonna get on the phone on Monday and call our MoC and tell them DREAMers get to stay. If you're lucky enough to be repped by a Dem, tell them "no continuing budget resolution without protection for DREAMers." If you're repped by a Republican tell them that if the government shuts down because they couldn't come to an agreement on keeping the DREAMers here, you'll hold them responsible and not the dems.

Why? Because those 800,000 Americans make America better.

Next things next, we're gonna do everything we can to rid Congress of the blight of Republicanism. That is no longer a functioning party. They are all of them, every single one, enabling the Racist-in-Chief and his doddery, reckless path to recreate an America that was terrible for the majority of people who lived in it.

Every last one of us is gonna walk out of the voting booth in November just like this: