From the Archives. (September 2006) I loaned Dorothy Allison’s Trash to Danishgrrrl a few weeks ago and found myself flipping through this book about class, geography, and gender issues last night.
Allison articulates things about my childhood and shame and adult anxieties that I never even acknowledged out loud to myself before reading this book.
She also goes a long way toward explaining my anxiety about taking Danishgrrrl to SC to meet my family of origin.
Meanwhile, I have been shaking my head at the fact that Andrew Fastow is going to the slammer for a mere six years. I mean, think about what this guy did and its repercussions (not to mention the fact that he already received a great plea bargain agreement that reduced his sentence to just 10 years behind bars).
My question is, why not punish this man the way his crimes punished others and take away his retirement accounts and benefits and compensation and job, then force him to spend the rest of his days living on a fixed minimum-wage income?
The judge defended Fastow’s light sentence by saying that he had been persecuted and portrayed as a symbol of corporate greed after Enron’s collapse.
Aw.
(Excuse me but wasn’t his choice to perform criminal activities that led to Enron’s collapse the very thing that earned him this reputation in the first place?)
Maybe I am naive, but my impression is that most law-abiding citizens frown upon criminal activity, especially when the criminals rake in millions while leaving tax payers to bail out the people he bilked.
My understanding is also that justice is theoretically blind, but this articulate white sociopath with a is getting off way too fricking easy.
Question: does anyone believe for a moment that this judge would extend a comparable rationale to, say, a child molester?
Oh you poor man, your neighbors shunned and persecuted you and crossed the street when you approached and made you suffer so. Oh you poor, poor man. You have paid such a steep price already, So I tell ya what I’m gonna do. I'll sentence you to four years less than your plea bargain agreement because of your awful, awful suffering.
And inquiring minds want to know what exactly this guy’s “extraordinary steps toward rehabilitation” were.
Did he donate one of his MacMansions to the thousands of Enron employees whose savings he bilked?
Nope. Near as I can tell, the judge was referring to the fact that the poor man had to raise his two kids alone for one year while his criminal wife served her similarly minimal sentence.
Guess the judge doesn’t recognize that members of the law-abiding population struggle to raise their kids with limited resources and in single-parent homes too—and will have an even harder time of it now that we have to bail out these corporate crooks.
Unbelieveable.
Meanwhile, the Georgia branch of the Christian Coalition voted to leave this organization because it is just not conservative enough for them anymore.
Their stance is that the organization ought to be focusing solely on the core issues: criminalizing abortion and legalizing homophobia
(coz the Bible tells them so).
I suggest that they realign themselves with Fred Phelps so that everyone knows exactly what kinds of bigots we are dealing with.
No time right now, but I also made a mental note to research Republinazi pollster Frank Luntz’s materials. He’s the guy who provides speaking tips to the GOP and, apparently, his 160-page memo “The New American Lexicon” is the source of GOP members’ current insistence on using Democrat Party instead of Democratic Party.
LISTENING TO: George Winston’s “Summer”
READING: A fascinating article on fused participles (yawn). Last night, I also flipped through Great Lies for Adults to Tell Kids. (My personal favorite is “Wine makes mommy clever.”) Also Dorothy Allison’s Trash, which I will excerpt later.
SANG IN SHOWER: do your chain hang low? Do it rattle to the flo? (I curse Danishgrrrl’s teenagers for getting this stuck in my head!)
BEST-OF SPAM: Did you know that statistics say that sex makes you look 12 years younger?
Sunday, March 9, 2008
254. WHAT'S IN A NAME?
From the Archives. (September 2006) There’s nothing like sitting in the surgical oncology waiting room of a major medical center to remind yourself of just how inconsequential a little burgundy Civic puttering along in front of you in the left lane really is.
It’s 10:48 AM and my dear friend and mentor Louisville and her partner and I have been at the hospital since 7:55 AM. We're here for Louisville‘s biannual breast cancer follow-up exams.
Have spent the morning thinking about the importance of naming things—perhaps because I’ve been catching up with my former undergraduate advisor/English professor/mentor, who introduced me to Adrienne Rich's Diving into the Wreck.
Or maybe it’s because I just read that Safia Amajan, a women’s rights leader in Afghanistan, was gunned down in front of her house yesterday.
Or maybe it’s because it's so hard to ignore the fact that our discriminatory marriage laws look at one kind of couple and say you are legitimate, then look at another and insist that they see nothing.
Or maybe it's because this White House administration is so clearly manipulating the names of things.
Bush, for example, interrupted a reporter who began On both the eavesdropping program and the detainee issues ... to say We call it the terrorist surveillance program, Hutch, with his customary Richy Rich sneer.
To quote the ever-intelligent Molly Ivins
It’s 10:48 AM and my dear friend and mentor Louisville and her partner and I have been at the hospital since 7:55 AM. We're here for Louisville‘s biannual breast cancer follow-up exams.
Have spent the morning thinking about the importance of naming things—perhaps because I’ve been catching up with my former undergraduate advisor/English professor/mentor, who introduced me to Adrienne Rich's Diving into the Wreck.
Or maybe it’s because I just read that Safia Amajan, a women’s rights leader in Afghanistan, was gunned down in front of her house yesterday.
Or maybe it’s because it's so hard to ignore the fact that our discriminatory marriage laws look at one kind of couple and say you are legitimate, then look at another and insist that they see nothing.
Or maybe it's because this White House administration is so clearly manipulating the names of things.
Bush, for example, interrupted a reporter who began On both the eavesdropping program and the detainee issues ... to say We call it the terrorist surveillance program, Hutch, with his customary Richy Rich sneer.
To quote the ever-intelligent Molly Ivins
If we stop calling it eavesdropping plus torture with kangaroo trials, will it stop being eavesdropping, torture and kangaroo trials, and become “anti-terrorist activity”? Who gets to name things?
Maybe Sidney Blumenthal does, at least when he’s astute enough to refer to our petulant president as a Mayberry Machiavelli.
•
And let's all give a big hooray for those plane-spotters. Who knew that geek hobbyists fascinated with planes would corroborate the detainees’ stories?
Their amateur photographs and tracking skills were what first alerted journalists to the fact that the CIA was using commercial planes to transport prisoners to black houses, after all. And those commercials planes led journalists to identify the shell companies the CIA created to hide their apparent criminal activity. And the plane-spotters’ details, along with Google Earth, allowed journalists to identify the actual black house buildings where the detainees were held.
No wonder Big Brother want to put controls on the web.
And what has become of our democracy when our president follows the lead of Pinochet and gets himself and his goons retroactive amnesty for their crimes against humanity?
I am ashamed to be an American right now, ashamed to live in a land where people are too busy reading layering instructions for their fall wardrobes to register what we are condoning...
...yet I am complicit too.
For example, let me ask you a question: If women with big breasts work at Hooters, where do women with one leg work?
The answer? I-Hop, of course.
I learned that joke from watching a TV show called Two and a Half Men with Louisville and her partner last night because, after a long day of driving and worrying about whether or not her breast cancer has returned, we needed to veg.
And, before that, we watched Antique Roadshow.
That’s more TV than I’ve watched in the last several months (unless you count those L Word rentals), but my guests are TV watchers so, hey, when in my living room do as the paintings do, right?
LISTENING TO: Etta Baker, since she died at the age of 93 yesterday. Amazing that she didn't start performing until she was 60.
253. PICTURES OF MATCHSTICK MEN AND ME
From the Archives. (September 2006) Back in my architectural design days, I designed a building, then built a miniature version of it out of matchsticks just to see if I could.
I’ve been thinking about all those matchsticks after reading the UN report that a whopping 5,106 people in Baghdad died violent deaths in this past June and July alone.
So here’s what I want to do. I want to place Dick Cheney and George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld in a dark room with a camera on them and a sepia-toned shots of children’s faces playing behind them, and have them light and then extinguish, one at a time, 5,106 wooden matchsticks and toss them into a pile (or maybe a pit would be more appropriate).
Then I would like to show this footage to every American and ask him or her to think about what they did in June and July of this year as 5,106 people were exterminated.
Our president apparently believes that calling torture an “alternative set of interrogation procedures” will fool the people and, sadly, it just might since because, let’s face it, we’re awfully busy holding on to our jobs these days ... and those Republinazis who protested when Clinton said he didn’t inhale don’t seem to be standing up now to object to this ridiculous terminology.
I’ve been thinking about all those matchsticks after reading the UN report that a whopping 5,106 people in Baghdad died violent deaths in this past June and July alone.
So here’s what I want to do. I want to place Dick Cheney and George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld in a dark room with a camera on them and a sepia-toned shots of children’s faces playing behind them, and have them light and then extinguish, one at a time, 5,106 wooden matchsticks and toss them into a pile (or maybe a pit would be more appropriate).
Then I would like to show this footage to every American and ask him or her to think about what they did in June and July of this year as 5,106 people were exterminated.
Our president apparently believes that calling torture an “alternative set of interrogation procedures” will fool the people and, sadly, it just might since because, let’s face it, we’re awfully busy holding on to our jobs these days ... and those Republinazis who protested when Clinton said he didn’t inhale don’t seem to be standing up now to object to this ridiculous terminology.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
252. METAPUT*, OR, DRINKING A BITTER ROOT FROM A COMMON CUP
From the Archives. (September 2006) Police discovered 30 new bodies with clear signs of torture in Baghdad today, including a civilian whose dismembered parts washed up on the beach, and the Times reports that the average number of weekly attacks in Iraq has risen 15 percent in the past 3 months.
The number of civilian casualties? Fifty-one percent higher.
We refer to the deceased as bodies, I guess because the essence of what makes a person a person is so obviously gone and their slab of flesh is all that remains.
Reducing real people to their form also allows us to distance ourselves from the brutal way their lives ended, enables us to—at least for the moment—mask the knowledge that these were actual people who dreamed and cried and fucked and loved and held their kids on their laps in the morning before their screams melded with the sound of their torturer’s power drill.
Is this supposed to send a message to the world that Rumsfeld et al. will never control their region ot were they brutalized because they worship differently?
And has anyone mentioned the reality that religious groups in Iraq actually got along and shared positions of power before the US invasion?
Yes, Bush&Co are certainly liberating those poor downtrodden people who greeted us with flowers.
I was already feeling pessimistic about this violent world before I read about those newest torture victims, but this line in the Times made it even worse: “The Lord’s Resistance Army [of Uganda], a messianic rebel group, was exploring a new dimension of violence by building an army of abducted children and forcing them to burn down huts, slice off lips and pound newborn babies to death in wooden mortars, as though they were grinding grain. ‘I killed and killed and killed,’ said Christopher Oyet, an 18-year-old former rebel who was kidnapped at age 9. ‘Now, I am scared of myself.’”
Turns out the leader of that brutal messianic group, an apparently paranoid schizophrenic man given to religious delusion, now has 60 kidnapped child brides with him in the jungle and chances are good that he will be given amnesty in exchange for a fragile peace.
*a Ugandan ceremony
The number of civilian casualties? Fifty-one percent higher.
We refer to the deceased as bodies, I guess because the essence of what makes a person a person is so obviously gone and their slab of flesh is all that remains.
Reducing real people to their form also allows us to distance ourselves from the brutal way their lives ended, enables us to—at least for the moment—mask the knowledge that these were actual people who dreamed and cried and fucked and loved and held their kids on their laps in the morning before their screams melded with the sound of their torturer’s power drill.
Is this supposed to send a message to the world that Rumsfeld et al. will never control their region ot were they brutalized because they worship differently?
And has anyone mentioned the reality that religious groups in Iraq actually got along and shared positions of power before the US invasion?
Yes, Bush&Co are certainly liberating those poor downtrodden people who greeted us with flowers.
I was already feeling pessimistic about this violent world before I read about those newest torture victims, but this line in the Times made it even worse: “The Lord’s Resistance Army [of Uganda], a messianic rebel group, was exploring a new dimension of violence by building an army of abducted children and forcing them to burn down huts, slice off lips and pound newborn babies to death in wooden mortars, as though they were grinding grain. ‘I killed and killed and killed,’ said Christopher Oyet, an 18-year-old former rebel who was kidnapped at age 9. ‘Now, I am scared of myself.’”
Turns out the leader of that brutal messianic group, an apparently paranoid schizophrenic man given to religious delusion, now has 60 kidnapped child brides with him in the jungle and chances are good that he will be given amnesty in exchange for a fragile peace.
*a Ugandan ceremony
251. HUDOOD YOU LOVE?
From the Archives (September 2006) The UN reports that Iraqi civilians died at the rate of 100 a day in June and the New York Times reports that, in Baghdad alone, 90 tortured and executed bodies were found scattered around the city yesterday—just as Bush made his impassioned plea for the right to wiretap innocent-until-proven-guilty (in theory) people.
That’s one giant step backwards for basic human rights—I guess because he’s the decider.
What have we created? And why are people so goddamn complacent about having their rights stripped away before their very eyes?
... And yes, bomb supporters, I DO know that Saddam and his henchmen are charged with killing at least 50,000 Kurds before our soldiers ever stepped foot in Iraq.
So what’s your point? That the population was already decimated before we showed up expecting to be greeted with flowers anyway, so it’s okay to rape and blow away the rest of them to suit our imperial dreams?
Lordie lordie lordie. I keep thinking about the Iraqi brothers who ran my favorite lunch spot until shortly after 9/11 (when they had to close because sales dropped to almost zero). One of them was severely burned and I didn’t understand the significance of being Kurdish back then, so didn't think much about it, but now I wonder if he got burned in one of Saddam’s chemical-weapon strikes before he fled to the US?
Meanwhile, Karl Rove, the architect behind Bush&Co’s efforts to turn us into a police state, is apparently the son of Big Gay Al.
Yep, he was apparently quite close to his fag dad, but this didn't stop him from bashing gays in order to help Bush win the election. Of course, this self-professed agnostic had no trouble puckering his lips around Pat Robertson's flabby white ass either.
The hypocrite.
And how’s this for a compromise on the restructuring of Pakistan’s Hudood Ordinance? Rape victims will now be subject to the same punishment as women found guilty of adultery.
One real giant step into modernity, guys.
•
And finally, farewell Ann Richards. You were my rock star.
BEST-OF SPAM: Nothing could be prettier in pink. (Um. You obviously do not know me AT ALL.)
That’s one giant step backwards for basic human rights—I guess because he’s the decider.
What have we created? And why are people so goddamn complacent about having their rights stripped away before their very eyes?
... And yes, bomb supporters, I DO know that Saddam and his henchmen are charged with killing at least 50,000 Kurds before our soldiers ever stepped foot in Iraq.
So what’s your point? That the population was already decimated before we showed up expecting to be greeted with flowers anyway, so it’s okay to rape and blow away the rest of them to suit our imperial dreams?
Lordie lordie lordie. I keep thinking about the Iraqi brothers who ran my favorite lunch spot until shortly after 9/11 (when they had to close because sales dropped to almost zero). One of them was severely burned and I didn’t understand the significance of being Kurdish back then, so didn't think much about it, but now I wonder if he got burned in one of Saddam’s chemical-weapon strikes before he fled to the US?
Meanwhile, Karl Rove, the architect behind Bush&Co’s efforts to turn us into a police state, is apparently the son of Big Gay Al.
Yep, he was apparently quite close to his fag dad, but this didn't stop him from bashing gays in order to help Bush win the election. Of course, this self-professed agnostic had no trouble puckering his lips around Pat Robertson's flabby white ass either.
The hypocrite.
And how’s this for a compromise on the restructuring of Pakistan’s Hudood Ordinance? Rape victims will now be subject to the same punishment as women found guilty of adultery.
One real giant step into modernity, guys.
•
And finally, farewell Ann Richards. You were my rock star.
BEST-OF SPAM: Nothing could be prettier in pink. (Um. You obviously do not know me AT ALL.)
250. THE SPOILS OF WAR AND PEACE
From the Archives (September 2006) The papers are reporting the discovery of the bodies of 65 Iraqis who were beaten and/or tortured with power drills (!!!) before being executed with a bullet to the head.
Question: Does anyone suppose that Bush&Co’s torturers have anything to do with these victims’ demise and the upsurge in violence?
Let me offer a suggestion to ABC:
Why don’t you ask Katie Couric to read Charles Martin’s poetry about the disappeared and other victims of torture online?
Or choose your own poem. There are plenty of first-hand accounts of such violence in Carolyn Forché’s Against Forgetting.
And read it during prime time as penance for that misinformed Republinazi propaganda about how liberals are to blame for 9/11. Pronto.
LISTENING TO: Space Ghost, Coast to Coast
BEST OF SPAM: beware, fatigue can kill you. (I know. I know.)
Question: Does anyone suppose that Bush&Co’s torturers have anything to do with these victims’ demise and the upsurge in violence?
Let me offer a suggestion to ABC:
Why don’t you ask Katie Couric to read Charles Martin’s poetry about the disappeared and other victims of torture online?
Or choose your own poem. There are plenty of first-hand accounts of such violence in Carolyn Forché’s Against Forgetting.
And read it during prime time as penance for that misinformed Republinazi propaganda about how liberals are to blame for 9/11. Pronto.
LISTENING TO: Space Ghost, Coast to Coast
BEST OF SPAM: beware, fatigue can kill you. (I know. I know.)
249. FINAL MOMENTS
From the Archives (11 September 2006) I was going to include a poem to commemorate the five-year anniversary of the day when 2,749 people evaporated in a haze of collapsing beams and staircases and ceilings and falling bodies, but Garrison Keillor read a better one on NPR this morning, so I’ll post it at the end of this entry.
It’s Monday morning, September 11, and I am half awake. Punched the snooze bar for a solid 35 minutes this morning—a typical morning activity of mine that Danishgrrrl finds endlessly amusing—then finally crawled my ass out of bed and drove to work, thinking about what my bestgrrrl Lars said on 9/11: it’s a good thing that the terrorists didn’t realize that most New Yorkers don’t even make it into work before 10, because otherwise a whole lot of people who were waiting in line at Starbucks would have died too.
Thought about all those missing persons posters that covered the city too, and about the grandmother with pink rhinestone-studded sunglasses and a gold lame raincoat who died in the twin towers whose obituary Garrison Keillor described on the air.
And this all led to bad images of my little brother doing search and rescue in unbelievably hot, pitch-black blazing buildings where he crawls around on his hands and knees, searching for survivors.
There are so many awful ways that our lives could end, and so many awful ways that our country has ended Iraqi lives since the twin towers were attacked and I am feeling jaded and overwhelmed by the news right now.
All right. The poem:
It’s Monday morning, September 11, and I am half awake. Punched the snooze bar for a solid 35 minutes this morning—a typical morning activity of mine that Danishgrrrl finds endlessly amusing—then finally crawled my ass out of bed and drove to work, thinking about what my bestgrrrl Lars said on 9/11: it’s a good thing that the terrorists didn’t realize that most New Yorkers don’t even make it into work before 10, because otherwise a whole lot of people who were waiting in line at Starbucks would have died too.
Thought about all those missing persons posters that covered the city too, and about the grandmother with pink rhinestone-studded sunglasses and a gold lame raincoat who died in the twin towers whose obituary Garrison Keillor described on the air.
And this all led to bad images of my little brother doing search and rescue in unbelievably hot, pitch-black blazing buildings where he crawls around on his hands and knees, searching for survivors.
There are so many awful ways that our lives could end, and so many awful ways that our country has ended Iraqi lives since the twin towers were attacked and I am feeling jaded and overwhelmed by the news right now.
All right. The poem:
FOR THE FALLING MAN
by Annie Farnsworth
from Bodies of Water, Bodies of Light
I see you again and again
tumbling out of the sky,
in your slate-grey suit and pressed white shirt.
At first I thought you were debris
from the explosion, maybe gray plaster wall
or fuselage but then I realized
that people were leaping.
I know who you are, I know
there's more to you than just this image
on the news, this ragdoll plummeting—
I know you were someone's lover, husband,
daddy. Last night you read stories
to your children, tucked them in, then curled into sleep
next to your wife. Perhaps there was small
sleepy talk of the future. Then,
before your morning coffee had cooled
you'd come to this; a choice between fire
or falling.
How feeble these words, billowing
in this aftermath, how ineffectual
this utterance of sorrow. We can see plainly
it's hopeless, even as the words trail from our mouths
—but we can't help ourselves
how I wish
we could trade them for something
that could really have caught you.
248. TORTUROUS BROADCASTS
From the Archives. (September 2006) Well the boy emperor is no longer even denying the existence of the secret CIA prisons abroad.
How many years has it been now that he’s been holding these people without trial? Five? And now he’s moving 14 who are purported to be the “world’s most wanted Islamic extremists.”
(Um, except for bin Laden, whom you cannot seem to catch?)
Consider, for a moment, what is not said in this sentence: “Most of the detainees have been interviewed extensively and are believed to have little remaining intelligence value.”
Despite evidence of water-boarding, the boy emperor said “I want to be absolutely clear with our people, and the world. The United States does not torture. It’s against our laws, and it’s against our values. I have not authorized it and I will not authorize it.”
Nope. You just send your prisoners to offshore torture houses and avert your eyes while other people do it.
Interesting timing to announce the existence of 14 detainees purported to have orchestrated 9/11 just days before this somber anniversary and weeks after losing a case in which the government insisted that it is authorized to hold prisoners without trial for as long as they damn well feel like it.
(Oh and just 2 months before the midterm elections in which Republicans are floundering.)
Meanwhile Blair refuses to set a date when he will leave office.
Time to re-read Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians, folks.
How many years has it been now that he’s been holding these people without trial? Five? And now he’s moving 14 who are purported to be the “world’s most wanted Islamic extremists.”
(Um, except for bin Laden, whom you cannot seem to catch?)
Consider, for a moment, what is not said in this sentence: “Most of the detainees have been interviewed extensively and are believed to have little remaining intelligence value.”
Despite evidence of water-boarding, the boy emperor said “I want to be absolutely clear with our people, and the world. The United States does not torture. It’s against our laws, and it’s against our values. I have not authorized it and I will not authorize it.”
Nope. You just send your prisoners to offshore torture houses and avert your eyes while other people do it.
Interesting timing to announce the existence of 14 detainees purported to have orchestrated 9/11 just days before this somber anniversary and weeks after losing a case in which the government insisted that it is authorized to hold prisoners without trial for as long as they damn well feel like it.
(Oh and just 2 months before the midterm elections in which Republicans are floundering.)
Meanwhile Blair refuses to set a date when he will leave office.
Time to re-read Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians, folks.
247. ESPIONAGE
From the Archives. (September 2006) Have been catching up on Alternet stories and just read that investigators are following leads on two suspicious deaths in Europe.
Seems both deaths involve an informant who exposed illegal wiretapping that almost certainly involved the US.
The Italian informant revealed how the CIA and Italy’s CIA equivalent used information obtained from wiretapping to abduct an Egyptian cleric and fly him to Cairo to be tortured.
Surprise! The informant wound up dead of apparent suicide beside his car.
Then there’s the Greek software engineer who discovered an eavesdropping bug in his company’s system that allowed them to, among other things, listen in on the prime minister’s and other top officials’ cell phone calls.
Funny how this man who was looking forward to his upcoming marriage also died of an apparent suicide and what a big coincidence that his death coincided with the phone company’s destruction of evidence just before they reported to the prime minister that “unknown outsiders” had illegally tapped into top government officials calls.
READING: The Spirit Catches You Then You Fall Down
BEST-OF SPAM: hide peanut butter
Seems both deaths involve an informant who exposed illegal wiretapping that almost certainly involved the US.
The Italian informant revealed how the CIA and Italy’s CIA equivalent used information obtained from wiretapping to abduct an Egyptian cleric and fly him to Cairo to be tortured.
Surprise! The informant wound up dead of apparent suicide beside his car.
Then there’s the Greek software engineer who discovered an eavesdropping bug in his company’s system that allowed them to, among other things, listen in on the prime minister’s and other top officials’ cell phone calls.
Funny how this man who was looking forward to his upcoming marriage also died of an apparent suicide and what a big coincidence that his death coincided with the phone company’s destruction of evidence just before they reported to the prime minister that “unknown outsiders” had illegally tapped into top government officials calls.
READING: The Spirit Catches You Then You Fall Down
BEST-OF SPAM: hide peanut butter
246. CANCER NATION
From the Archives (September 2006) I figured out today that 18 people in my family or immediate circle of friends or work peers have been diagnosed with cancer in the last 8 years.
Can somebody tell me what in the hell is going on?
I mean, I appreciate the medical research that (sometimes) gets my loved ones to the other side of chemo and all the medical breakthroughs and all that, but what is going on? Is our environment poisoning us because we’ve filled it so full of chemicals? Are the hormones they've put in our food to blame? Or what?
And what’s the connection with obesity (if there is one), because I’m sorry, but I don’t buy the argument that larger portions at restaurants explains these statistics adequately.
Then there are those studies no one talks about that say that most people who are fat do not actually overeat and that some people who are fat are far healthier than thin people.
So what’s really making us grow?
And speaking of size, sales of wasteful SUVs are down 45 percent and sales of small cars are up 70 percent, thanks to the increasing gas prices.
Meanwhile, today’s Yahoo! headline is “GDP growth increases slightly in spring.”
I read that line and immediately thought about these 18 people who have been diagnosed with cancer.
Does anyone else consider it troubling that every time a person is diagnosed with cancer our GDP goes up?
Can somebody tell me what in the hell is going on?
I mean, I appreciate the medical research that (sometimes) gets my loved ones to the other side of chemo and all the medical breakthroughs and all that, but what is going on? Is our environment poisoning us because we’ve filled it so full of chemicals? Are the hormones they've put in our food to blame? Or what?
And what’s the connection with obesity (if there is one), because I’m sorry, but I don’t buy the argument that larger portions at restaurants explains these statistics adequately.
Then there are those studies no one talks about that say that most people who are fat do not actually overeat and that some people who are fat are far healthier than thin people.
So what’s really making us grow?
And speaking of size, sales of wasteful SUVs are down 45 percent and sales of small cars are up 70 percent, thanks to the increasing gas prices.
Meanwhile, today’s Yahoo! headline is “GDP growth increases slightly in spring.”
I read that line and immediately thought about these 18 people who have been diagnosed with cancer.
Does anyone else consider it troubling that every time a person is diagnosed with cancer our GDP goes up?
245. PRESIDENTIAL CHOREOGRAPHY
Since 9/11, military contractors like United Technologies, which makes Black Hawk helicopters, have seen their profits explode and their executives and top shareholders rake in windfall salaries. And as the rest of us shell out record prices for gas, oil executives claim that “we’re all in this together.” (Alternet)
From the Archives. (31 August 2006) And what about Haliburton and those $40 Cokes?
Spent the day trying not to barf from viewing all the carefully choreographed footage of GWB kissing up to shell-shocked NOLA residents in an obvious attempt to cast his abysmal leadership failures in a more favorable light.
I guess his advisors are finally worried that his pathetic approval ratings might adversely affect the GOP come election time.
Let’s think big picture though boys: this guy and his administration are adversely affecting history—at least until someone manages to add up all the subterfuge and Constitution-be-damned under-the-radar actions they’ve undertaken since 2000.
So what’s the administration’s spin on the 1,700 people who died and the hundreds of thousands of families that lost their homes as Shrub strummed his guitar?
Well, let’s see. This was an opportunity for Amurrrrricans to learn how to respond better to our public image er catastrophes because, damn it, you people actually documented the atrocities that this administration can no longer pretend didn’t happen.
That’s right. An opportunity. Just like getting booted out of the welfare system is an opportunity to find minimum-wage work as a toilet cleaner.
(Now forget what you saw on your TV sets, citizens, and get back to shopping.)
This administration has illustrated to the world what the politics of greed looks like and wouldn’t know what to do with Melvin McLeod’s observation that “the real substance in politics is in the heart, not the head” if it slapped them in their privileged faces.
Thich Nhat Hanh, profound Vietnamese priest, founder of the Engaged Buddhism movement, and prominent author, says that we must learn to see others’ suffering as our own, that this alone is how we can save our world in the twenty-first century.
•
So yeah. Today marks one year from the date when our boy emperor observed the destruction of Hurricane Katrina from the safety of Air Force One while the inhabitants drowned.
Meanwhile, Susie Sexpert has posted a blog entry entitled God Is My Sex Toy Co-Pilot.
Her message: zealots must stay in bed with Jesus/ Allah /Krishna as they copulate—which is, she observes, “a threeway you can’t ever quit.”
244. ALL WET
From the Archives. (August 2006). The following is a partial list of people who have expressed interest in purchasing my used car:
1.
A student named Zirui who has only driven cars in Asia and who sent an e-mail instructing me to drive to his house and show my car to him because he does not have a car and so cannot meet me.
(Uh. No.)
2.
An annoying Nextel sales guy named Alan who asked me to meet him in front of the Brookstone store at the mall at 3 PM. So, instead of going to the water park with Danishgrrrl and her kids to cool off on one of the hottest days of the year, I stood in the blistering sun for 20 fucking minutes before deciding that Alan was a no show.
Then the guy actually had the audacity to e-mail me to ask why I didn’t show up. I replied that I waited 20 minutes for him and he wrote back to say “I assumed u would call me when u got to the mall so never left the kiosk where I was waiting inside. Is car still 4 sale?”
I didn’t reply because I don’t want this stupid ass driving my car.
3.
The freshman who offered me $3,000 less than asking price because “It’s all I have,” assuming, I guess that I am running a charity for students with all of my riches.
4.
And, finally there’s the smart-ass MBA student who offered $1,500 less than asking price sight unseen. When I told him I am not interested in selling my car for $1,500 under Blue Book value, he replied “but I have an advantage. I can make a decision quickly.”
Oh I bet you can, Sugarpants. And let me guess: your biz-school prof told you to always state your so-called advantage in negotiating. But get this: MOST people can make a decision quickly if someone agrees to sell them a cute little car for $1,500 under Blue Book value.
My reply? “Enjoy driving a used Yugo, slick, since that’s all you’ll be able get for that piddling amount.”
•
And now, for something entirely different:
If I forget, for a moment, that unfortunate angel dust episode or all those joys of being a juvenile delinquent on probation or that time I got my backside shot full of rock salt because a gardener caught me trespassing on private property or that time I hit my Algebra teacher full in the chest with a trash can after she was an ass to me or that time the cops set up a road block to stop my speeding Camaro but, instead of stopping, I put the car into a skid and slid right around them and kept on going or that time I outran a highway patrol car on a red clay road in the same blue Camaro, tossing out beer cans frantically, or any number of other episodes from my misspent youth, then I could say that Annie Proulx is wilder than me based on this summary from today’s Writer’s Digest:
1.
A student named Zirui who has only driven cars in Asia and who sent an e-mail instructing me to drive to his house and show my car to him because he does not have a car and so cannot meet me.
(Uh. No.)
2.
An annoying Nextel sales guy named Alan who asked me to meet him in front of the Brookstone store at the mall at 3 PM. So, instead of going to the water park with Danishgrrrl and her kids to cool off on one of the hottest days of the year, I stood in the blistering sun for 20 fucking minutes before deciding that Alan was a no show.
Then the guy actually had the audacity to e-mail me to ask why I didn’t show up. I replied that I waited 20 minutes for him and he wrote back to say “I assumed u would call me when u got to the mall so never left the kiosk where I was waiting inside. Is car still 4 sale?”
I didn’t reply because I don’t want this stupid ass driving my car.
3.
The freshman who offered me $3,000 less than asking price because “It’s all I have,” assuming, I guess that I am running a charity for students with all of my riches.
4.
And, finally there’s the smart-ass MBA student who offered $1,500 less than asking price sight unseen. When I told him I am not interested in selling my car for $1,500 under Blue Book value, he replied “but I have an advantage. I can make a decision quickly.”
Oh I bet you can, Sugarpants. And let me guess: your biz-school prof told you to always state your so-called advantage in negotiating. But get this: MOST people can make a decision quickly if someone agrees to sell them a cute little car for $1,500 under Blue Book value.
My reply? “Enjoy driving a used Yugo, slick, since that’s all you’ll be able get for that piddling amount.”
•
And now, for something entirely different:
If I forget, for a moment, that unfortunate angel dust episode or all those joys of being a juvenile delinquent on probation or that time I got my backside shot full of rock salt because a gardener caught me trespassing on private property or that time I hit my Algebra teacher full in the chest with a trash can after she was an ass to me or that time the cops set up a road block to stop my speeding Camaro but, instead of stopping, I put the car into a skid and slid right around them and kept on going or that time I outran a highway patrol car on a red clay road in the same blue Camaro, tossing out beer cans frantically, or any number of other episodes from my misspent youth, then I could say that Annie Proulx is wilder than me based on this summary from today’s Writer’s Digest:
She had a reckless past: She tried to leap over a barbed-wire fence and didn’t make it; she ran away through the rain on the eve of her wedding and found herself lying on a railroad bridge in front of an oncoming train; she got caught in a thunderstorm on her third flying lesson; she threw a knife at someone she thought she hated; she swam across a lake while she was eight months pregnant; she was speeding and rolled a car late one night.
Brokeback Mountain ain’t so bad either.
And, finally, it’s 45 minutes since I started this entry, which means that, in the time I've spent typing, our country has spent another $8,388,333.50 on the war in Iraq.
BEST-OF SPAM SUBJECT LINES: kill the pain or it will kill you
243. ROLLOVER AND PLAY DEAD
From the Archives. (August 2006) Yahoo! headlines are bizarre today. Besides the never-ending updates about the arrest of a skinny teacher who confesses to raping and killing JonBenet Ramsey—and could someone tell me how anyone can rape a six year old yet claim to love her?—there’s Breast implants linked to suicide, not cancer.
I could have told them that augmenting your body to suit cultural whims doesn’t buy happiness.
Then there’s the pathetic How much Paris Hilton is too much? (which, incidentally, manages to give us even more Paris Hilton).
The good news, of course, is that a judge called a halt to Bush&Co’s illegal wiretapping program.
But an even bigger headline, if you’re LGBT—and one that will never make Yahoo!’s headlines—is that Bush signed the Pension Protection Act into law today.
One special right that this country has long extended exclusively to heterosexual couples is the right to rollover retirement plans when a partner dies. Before today though, surviving LGBT partners were forced to withdraw the lump sum and then pay major penalties.
Now the non-spousal rollover provision extends the same right to “spousal equivalents.”
Another special right that has long been extended exclusively to heterosexual couples is the right to withdraw funds from your partner’s retirement fund if you’re faced with medical or financial emergencies.
Example: say my partner, Homo Schiavo, has 300 thousand dollars in a 401(k) and is in a horrible accident that has left her in a coma and she remains in a coma for years while I am left to pay the mortgage plus all those medical bills alone.
Well, now I can withdraw these funds from her retirement account to help cover her medical expenses.
That one is covered in the Hardship Distribution provision.
Not much else to report, but that’s good enough news for now.
I could have told them that augmenting your body to suit cultural whims doesn’t buy happiness.
Then there’s the pathetic How much Paris Hilton is too much? (which, incidentally, manages to give us even more Paris Hilton).
The good news, of course, is that a judge called a halt to Bush&Co’s illegal wiretapping program.
But an even bigger headline, if you’re LGBT—and one that will never make Yahoo!’s headlines—is that Bush signed the Pension Protection Act into law today.
One special right that this country has long extended exclusively to heterosexual couples is the right to rollover retirement plans when a partner dies. Before today though, surviving LGBT partners were forced to withdraw the lump sum and then pay major penalties.
Now the non-spousal rollover provision extends the same right to “spousal equivalents.”
Another special right that has long been extended exclusively to heterosexual couples is the right to withdraw funds from your partner’s retirement fund if you’re faced with medical or financial emergencies.
Example: say my partner, Homo Schiavo, has 300 thousand dollars in a 401(k) and is in a horrible accident that has left her in a coma and she remains in a coma for years while I am left to pay the mortgage plus all those medical bills alone.
Well, now I can withdraw these funds from her retirement account to help cover her medical expenses.
That one is covered in the Hardship Distribution provision.
Not much else to report, but that’s good enough news for now.
242. STATES RIGHTS, HUMAN RIGHTS, THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT, & LEMON LAWS
From the Archives. (August 2006) Just finished reading Tracy Kidder’s Mountains beyond Mountains, which my reading group will discuss tomorrow night.
Kidder writes about Dr. Paul Farmer, a Harvard-trained physician who has devoted his life to curing infectious diseases in the poorest part of Haiti and other vulnerable areas. A prescient insightful enlightening book about a man with a self-described “hermeneutic of generosity.”
Farmer, an admirer of liberation theology (although he ultimately rejects all ologys), observes that “We should all be criticizing the excesses of the powerful, if we can demonstrate so readily that these excesses hurt the poor and vulnerable.”
He asks
Kidder writes about Dr. Paul Farmer, a Harvard-trained physician who has devoted his life to curing infectious diseases in the poorest part of Haiti and other vulnerable areas. A prescient insightful enlightening book about a man with a self-described “hermeneutic of generosity.”
Farmer, an admirer of liberation theology (although he ultimately rejects all ologys), observes that “We should all be criticizing the excesses of the powerful, if we can demonstrate so readily that these excesses hurt the poor and vulnerable.”
He asks
What happens when the destitute in Guatemala, El Salvador, Haiti, wherever, are moved by a rereading of the Gospels to stand up for what is theirs, to reclaim what was theirs and was taken away, to ask only that they enjoy decent poverty rather than the misery we see here every day in Haiti? We know the answer to that question, because we are digging up their bodies in Guatemala.
He also notes that “All the great religious traditions of the world say, Love thy neighbor as thyself. My answer is, I’m sorry, I can’t, but I’m gonna keep on trying.”
I didn’t realize until reading this book that human-rights abuses of previous American prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay were deemed unconstitutional way back in 1993, after US soldiers quarantined and abused HIV-positive Haitians there.
•
Meanwhile, I’ve been thinking about how state’s rights rears its ugly head whenever bigots object to being told that the law will no longer sanction their bigotry.
Take 1868, for instance. This is when the federal government required all states to eliminate slavery and swear allegiance to an American Union.
Now some southerners will argue till the bacon grease and turnip juice seep out of their very pores that the Civil War was a “war of Northern aggression” that was never about slavery at all, but the obvious truth of the matter is that racists reacted to this ruling by asserting state’s rights and insisting that they did not have to abide by objectionable federal laws.
They did the same during integration, arguing that Brown should not be forced on states that oppose integration.
Today, like-minded South Dakotans assert that they can declare abortion illegal even though federal law recognizes the legality of this clinical procedure.
And I can’t even keep track anymore of how many states are scrambling to pass so-called marriage protection legislation that sanctions the withholding of benefits to a minority of our population.
(And then there are the states that fund stem-cell research and living wages.)
I listened to Schoolhouse Rock as a kid and so know that the preamble to our constitution states that it exists to form a more perfect union, establish justice and insure domestic tranquility.
No mention of God in there, but article 1, section 9 makes it clear that no bill of attainders may be passed.
Tech. Law Journal defines this as “a legislative act that singles out an individual or group for punishment without a trial.”
Now, I know this is my own unusual take on this definition and I know I am not a lawyer but, um, if those anti-inclusive-marriage laws don’t single out individuals or groups for selective punishment/denial of benefits, then I don’t know what does.
James Madison (Federalist No. 44, 1788) wrote that
Bills of attainder ... are contrary to the principles of the social compact, and to every principle of sound legislation ... The sober people of America are weary of fluctuating policy ... They have seen with regret and indignation that sudden changes and legislative interferences, in cases affecting personal rights, become jobs in the hands of enterprising and influential [um, Christianists?] and snares to the more-industrious and less-informed part of the community.
Anyway, I was curious and checked out my state’s preamble. Yes I know I am smack dab in the Bible Belt, but was still surprised by how often the thing endorses Christianity.
So here you go:
We, the people, grateful to Almighty God, the Sovereign Ruler of Nations, for the preservation of the American Union and the existence of our civil, political and religious liberties, and acknowledging our dependence upon Him for the continuance of those blessings to us and our posterity, do, for the more certain security thereof and for the better government of this State, ordain and establish this Constitution.
I am, frankly, appalled.
LISTENING TO: Me’shell N’Degéocello covering Dolly’s Two Doors Down
SANG IN SHOWER: Gillian Welch’s Wind and Rain
BEST-OF SPAM SUBJECT LINE: For Carders, Spammers, Hackers, PPC cheaters, Child Porn webmasters, Doorway makers, Botnet owners.
Um, are these the virtual seven dwarfs?
241. STANDOFF AT THE TV STATION
From the Archives. (August 2006) As Mel Gibson begs forgiveness from the Jews he has insulted yet again and Rumsfeld continues to demonstrate just how clueless he really is, 500 women have taken control of a state-run TV station in Oaxaca, Mexico, and are broadcasting a video showing cops kicking protesters out of the town’s main square.
The women are banging spoons against pots and pans to draw attention to their belief that Gov. Ulises Ruiz rigged the election and uses violence to repress his opposition.
Over a thousand supporters are gathered outside the station to show their support for these women so, as Alternet notes, maybe the revolution will be televised after all.
Meanwhile, Kansas school board results suggest that the Christianist plan to infiltrate our government in order to rewrite the laws may only be successful as a short-term strategy, since 5 of the 10 anti-evolutionists who passed the jaw-dropping Kansas Standards have now gone the way of the dinosaur, even as our theocratic White House continues to align itself with the Zionists who want the US and Israel to attack Iran in order to “fulfill God’s plan for both Israel and the West.”
This will, they believe, bring about the second coming of their mythic Christ child.
Oh fucking please.
And it sure doesn’t help that some freak minister has written a bestseller on this topic that over 700,000 Americans have already purchased.
My question is, why are these religious centers of indoctrination even enjoying tax-free status?
Meanwhile, Rumsfeld testified that, if we leave Iraq prematurely, “the enemy would tell us to leave Afghanistan and then withdraw from the Middle East. And if we left the Middle East, they’d order us and all those who don’t share their militant ideology to leave what they call the occupied Muslim lands from Spain to the Philippines” and then, according to this outdated line of reasoning, our country would be forced “to make a stand nearer home.”
As the NYT editors point out,
The women are banging spoons against pots and pans to draw attention to their belief that Gov. Ulises Ruiz rigged the election and uses violence to repress his opposition.
Over a thousand supporters are gathered outside the station to show their support for these women so, as Alternet notes, maybe the revolution will be televised after all.
Meanwhile, Kansas school board results suggest that the Christianist plan to infiltrate our government in order to rewrite the laws may only be successful as a short-term strategy, since 5 of the 10 anti-evolutionists who passed the jaw-dropping Kansas Standards have now gone the way of the dinosaur, even as our theocratic White House continues to align itself with the Zionists who want the US and Israel to attack Iran in order to “fulfill God’s plan for both Israel and the West.”
This will, they believe, bring about the second coming of their mythic Christ child.
Oh fucking please.
And it sure doesn’t help that some freak minister has written a bestseller on this topic that over 700,000 Americans have already purchased.
My question is, why are these religious centers of indoctrination even enjoying tax-free status?
Meanwhile, Rumsfeld testified that, if we leave Iraq prematurely, “the enemy would tell us to leave Afghanistan and then withdraw from the Middle East. And if we left the Middle East, they’d order us and all those who don’t share their militant ideology to leave what they call the occupied Muslim lands from Spain to the Philippines” and then, according to this outdated line of reasoning, our country would be forced “to make a stand nearer home.”
As the NYT editors point out,
no one in charge of American foreign affairs has talked like that in decades. After Vietnam, of course, the communist empire did not swarm all over Asia as predicted; it tottered and collapsed. And the new "enemy" that Mr. Rumsfeld is worried about is not a worldwide conspiracy but a collection of disparate political and religious groups, now united mainly by American action in Iraq.
I swear, it really is the Crusades all over again.
They want to send our poverty-stricken eighteen-year-olds to die in their Christianist crusades.
LISTENING TO: Dolly’s gorgeous cover of “Seven Bridges Road” from her Little Sparrow CD
240. ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS
From the Archives (1 August 2006) “End of life issues are very sensitive, especially if you are the person whose end of life we are talking about.” So said Charles Foti Jr., New Orleans attorney general and obvious opponent of the Schiavo decision.
Foti had a doctor and two nurses arrested on murder charges this week for allegedly euthanizing several elderly and acutely ill patients who were enduring their third day of 100+° post-hurricane conditions in a hospital with no electricity and little remaining food or medical supplies.
These women stayed on duty when the hospital administrators and medical personnel evacuated to higher ground and put themselves in harm’s way for their patients (which is more than anyone can say for our president who strummed his guitar as the ciy drowned).
Foti aparently believes that the doctor should have let those patients die a slow overheated death instead of allegedly putting them out of their misery (which sounds oh so humane to me).
I know. I know. Some of you will say that the good doctor could have called on Bill Frist to cure those patients via video. Or asked Pat Robertson to pray for their rescue. Or called a few legislators in for photo ops. But, hey, seems to me they did what they could in obscene circumstances.
My question is, why isn’t Foti charging Bush&Co with murder?
After all, they are the ones whose incompetence and blatant disregard for survivors resulted in these people having no choice but to fend for themselves and make such hard choices.
And come on. This ain’t like those nursing home owners who left those 34 patients to drown. These women stayed at the hospital after the calls to evacuate because they cared about their patients.
Foti accuses these women of “acting like God,” which I guess tells us just how much his Christianist beliefs color his misuse of power.
•
Meanwhile, Danishgrrrl just called from her ex-mother-in-law’s place in Tacoma to say a mentally ill Muslim man shot five Jewish people at a synogogue because he’s “angry at Jews and the United States.”
Religion kills, man.
•
Visited Jamie last night after her hysterectomy. She’s uncomfortable and wants to be at her own place (which is, unfortunately, up 3 flights of stairs) instead of at her cranky ex’s house, but is stuck there till at least this weekend. She’s got staples in her stomach and is tired of waiting for more detailed biopsy results.
Right now, the oncologist says she may only need radiation treatments though.
I guess, if there’s any good news in all this, it’s that she will be away from her stinky work place for at least 6 weeks.
LISTENING TO: Gossip’s “Listen Up,” (the iTunes music store free download of the week). Before that, I was listening to Neil Young’s “Bird” When you see me fly away without you. ... feathers fall around you and show you the way to go. It’s ooooooover.....
Foti had a doctor and two nurses arrested on murder charges this week for allegedly euthanizing several elderly and acutely ill patients who were enduring their third day of 100+° post-hurricane conditions in a hospital with no electricity and little remaining food or medical supplies.
These women stayed on duty when the hospital administrators and medical personnel evacuated to higher ground and put themselves in harm’s way for their patients (which is more than anyone can say for our president who strummed his guitar as the ciy drowned).
Foti aparently believes that the doctor should have let those patients die a slow overheated death instead of allegedly putting them out of their misery (which sounds oh so humane to me).
I know. I know. Some of you will say that the good doctor could have called on Bill Frist to cure those patients via video. Or asked Pat Robertson to pray for their rescue. Or called a few legislators in for photo ops. But, hey, seems to me they did what they could in obscene circumstances.
My question is, why isn’t Foti charging Bush&Co with murder?
After all, they are the ones whose incompetence and blatant disregard for survivors resulted in these people having no choice but to fend for themselves and make such hard choices.
And come on. This ain’t like those nursing home owners who left those 34 patients to drown. These women stayed at the hospital after the calls to evacuate because they cared about their patients.
Foti accuses these women of “acting like God,” which I guess tells us just how much his Christianist beliefs color his misuse of power.
•
Meanwhile, Danishgrrrl just called from her ex-mother-in-law’s place in Tacoma to say a mentally ill Muslim man shot five Jewish people at a synogogue because he’s “angry at Jews and the United States.”
Religion kills, man.
•
Visited Jamie last night after her hysterectomy. She’s uncomfortable and wants to be at her own place (which is, unfortunately, up 3 flights of stairs) instead of at her cranky ex’s house, but is stuck there till at least this weekend. She’s got staples in her stomach and is tired of waiting for more detailed biopsy results.
Right now, the oncologist says she may only need radiation treatments though.
I guess, if there’s any good news in all this, it’s that she will be away from her stinky work place for at least 6 weeks.
LISTENING TO: Gossip’s “Listen Up,” (the iTunes music store free download of the week). Before that, I was listening to Neil Young’s “Bird” When you see me fly away without you. ... feathers fall around you and show you the way to go. It’s ooooooover.....
239. NOTHING BUT A BUNCH OF AMISH BUGGIES HERE, FOLKS
We are nothing but a bunch of Amish buggies and tractors out here. No one would care. (Brian Lehman, whose business, Amish City Popcorn, is on a government list of potential terror targets, as quoted in the New York Times)
From the Archives. (31 July 2006) Hmm. Wonder if his business is located beside a secret missile silo?
It’s Monday, 24 July 2006, and I am in the oh so progressive state of South Carolina, home of confederate flags and mustard-based barbecue and “100% Redneck” T-shirts and “Save the Males” bumperstickers and fundamentalist Baptist schools that place razor-wire atop their fences in an effort to keep the wicked out.
Or maybe it’s there to keep the Baptists’ rebellious children in; otherwise they might be smart like me and make a fast escape from this hell hole.
The place feels so hopeless and Faulknerian and sad to me but, at the same time, I’m hyperaware of how many of “God’s good people” here are eager to pass Bible-based laws that would see me stoned.
(Monday) And now I’m in the small Missouri town of St. Robert with my niece, hanging out in a nearly empty cinderblock Budget Inn behind a Waffle House and gas station where my sister reserved a room. We are currently the only occupied room on the back wing and our door faces an abandoned carwash and Electra’s, a seedy topless bar that is frequented by soldiers.
Great.
I’ll write more later but, right now we have to go pick my little sister up at her Army base.
(Tuesday night) Spent last night at Ft. Leonard Wood, where my niece was reunited with her soldier mother, who let her eat four helpings of frosted yellow cake as she listened to her mother explain that she joined the Army because she couldn’t find another way for the two of them to have a better future.
Hope it’s not at too high a price ...
... and yes I did manage to hold my tongue during the prayer invoking God’s favoritism of US troops because, frankly, if there is a god, then I hope she is powerful enough to keep my little sister out of harm’s way (this harm including the all-American soldiers who are raping their female peers with alarming regularity over in Iraq).
My biggest impression of the graduation banquet was that these rows and rows of newly minted soldiers are far too young to be heading off to war. And no big surprise that they are mostly from the poorest states in our union (and mostly from the deep south).
We watched jingoistic slide shows in which the soldiers demonstrated how to use an overstuffed Q-Tip-looking thing to fight another soldier; how to throw a rope over a wall and climb up the knots; how to slide on your stomach through a mud puddle; how to shout “Yes drill sergeant!” on queue and do whatever your drill sergeant tells you to do just because he says to do it.
Hard to see how this prepares anyone for real-time battle, much less for the sight of the dismembered arms and legs that are supposed to prove our country’s superpower status.
I managed to hold my tongue during these slide shows, even though they might as well have been campaign footage for the president.
I didn’t barf when they played a country song about the Statue of Liberty turning her welcoming hand into a fist after 9/11 so she could kick some Iraqi ass either.
Nor did I point out that the suicide bombers were not even Iraqi and that those weapons of mass destruction are still missing.
Then, finally, all the flag-waving was over and my sister was officially on leave for 10 days, so we piled her duffel bags into the rental car and went swimming at the seedy cinderblock hotel.
Tomorrow we rise at 5 AM and drive 3 hours to St. Louis—a city that is experiencing power outages—on our trek back to South Carolina.
And then I high-tail it out of there as fast as my lesbian “life style” legs will carry me.
BEST-OF SPAM: We never repent of having eaten too little.
238. WILL THE REAL JESUS CHRONICLERS PLEASE STAND UP?
From the Archives (July 2006) I just read that Dan Brown of Da Vinci Code fame claims that 80 gospels vied for inclusion in the New Testament canon.
Theologians say that only a few dozen gospels didn’t make it in (including The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which features a five-year-old boytoy Jesus making likenesses of sparrows from mud and bringing them to life).
Brown claims that thousands of Jesus fans recorded these neglected events about Jesus's life, but that’d be hard to believe, considering the low literacy rate among his followers.
SANG IN SHOWER: Tracy Droch’s “Did Jesus Have a Baby Sister?”
Theologians say that only a few dozen gospels didn’t make it in (including The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which features a five-year-old boytoy Jesus making likenesses of sparrows from mud and bringing them to life).
Brown claims that thousands of Jesus fans recorded these neglected events about Jesus's life, but that’d be hard to believe, considering the low literacy rate among his followers.
SANG IN SHOWER: Tracy Droch’s “Did Jesus Have a Baby Sister?”
237. WHAT STATE INTERESTS?
No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. (Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution)
From the Archives (21 July 2006) Last month Georgia courts ruled that the peach state can continue to discriminate against a small portion of our citizenry by extending over one thousand special rights to the majority while denying these same rights to minority homosexuals who wish to declare their love publicly and enjoy the same responsibilities and benefits of wedded um bliss that hetero citizens purport to enjoy.
New York courts basically ruled the same, only their reasoning goes that het marriages are so fragile that the state must use special rights to protect the hets from the spooky homos who so threaten their conjugal bliss.
This is akin to the tactic bishops use to downplay the fact that the priests are raping children. You know, just shift the blame to the homosexuals (even though pedophilia is not the same thing).
Which leads me to ask, if breeders’ marriages are so freaking fragile, then why doesn’t the state require them to attend remedial marriage classes instead of legalizing discrimination? Aren’t their children worth this expenditure of public funds or are children only valuable to the state before they’re born?
And lookie! Tennessee and Nebraska courts have legalized discriminatory and punitive bans on gay marriage now too, and even the snow-loving Easterners are declining to block a vote to ban queer marriage in the only state where gay marriage is currently legal.
So let’s examine the facts.
A full 70 percent of Nebraskans saw fit to deny their homosexual neighbors the equal rights guaranteed them by the laws of this land. AND they voted to deny state employees domestic-partner benefits and visitation rights too.
Is this equal protection?
Federal District Court Judge Joseph Bataillon states the obvious when he says that Nebraska’s amendment goes
far beyond merely defining marriage as between a man and a woman…. It imposes significant burdens on both the expressive and intimate associational rights [of gay men and lesbians] and creates a significant barrier to the plaintiffs’ right to petition or to participate in the political process.
He also states the obvious when he suggests that the amendment “was motivated, to some extent, by either irrational fear of or animus toward gays and lesbians.”
Seems this Court of Appeals is comprised not of public officials who uphold the law but instead by bigots willing to rule unanimously that “laws limiting the state-recognized institution of marriage to heterosexual couples are rationally related to legitimate state interests and therefore do not violate the Constitution of the United States.”
Uh would that be the state’s interest in upholding bigotry and propping up failed marriages to maintain the illusion of the happy suburban family that most American families don’t match in the first place?
Define these interests, you gentle um men in judicial dresses.
The New York Times says that Nebraska’s drastic ban is most likely headed to the Supreme Court. Does this inspire anyone to believe that nondiscrimination will be upheld in the land of the free and the home of the cappuccinoed?
*
Meanwhile, I have a question: Do the good folks at Alternet really believe that they come off as anything other than a bunch of privileged self-congratulatory East Coast smartasses when they post two headlines in one week as profound as "Is Israel Dumb?" and "Is Bush an Imbecile?"
Howzabout "Does Name-Calling Create Democracy?" or "Name-Calling: The Lazy Journalist’s Friend,” guys?
You might consider the impression you’re creating in between snickering at your frat-boy cleverness.
*
Meanwhile I packed Danishgrrrl and her 3 kids into a Seattle-bound plane bright and early this morning and won’t see them for 2 long weeks. The kids will visit with various relatives while Danishgrrl and her sister on Mercer Island move their father into an assistant living facility.
It sucks to get old and feeble.
236. YOUR PERSONAL STORAGE STORY
From the Archives (12 July 2006) Ponder, if you will, the reality that Crate and Barrel paid a copy writer buttloads of money to pen the headline Customize your own personal storage story.
Yes folks, your life’s narrative will be defined not by your deeds or by whom you love but by the woodlike objects that you purchase to put your shit in.
Maybe you’re more jaded than I am and have already retorted, Well, writergrrrl, why does this surprise you? After all, we live in a culture in which the phrase “the clothes make the man” is commonplace and cosmetic surgery abounds.
And the reality is that, today, even writergrrrl is focusing on consumer produces as the torture scandal unfolds.
Remember how my German lemon of a car developed a gas leak and had to be towed to the garage way back on 30 June? Well, I finally got my car back on 11 July and am now $820 poorer (and that’s without paying the additional $1,300 to repair my busted AC).
And that, my friends, is why I am currently car shopping.
Yes folks, your life’s narrative will be defined not by your deeds or by whom you love but by the woodlike objects that you purchase to put your shit in.
Maybe you’re more jaded than I am and have already retorted, Well, writergrrrl, why does this surprise you? After all, we live in a culture in which the phrase “the clothes make the man” is commonplace and cosmetic surgery abounds.
And the reality is that, today, even writergrrrl is focusing on consumer produces as the torture scandal unfolds.
Remember how my German lemon of a car developed a gas leak and had to be towed to the garage way back on 30 June? Well, I finally got my car back on 11 July and am now $820 poorer (and that’s without paying the additional $1,300 to repair my busted AC).
And that, my friends, is why I am currently car shopping.
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