Define "Special" Again For Me

Special has become a rather hard to define word lately. I looked it up online and found many different wordings of definitions that would be hard to understand if you didn't just know what "special" means. It means somehow different, not the norm, not the same as everything else. A special day, a special friend, a special price, a 'special-needs child'. Special is a way to say that something stands out from the rest.

So why do the far right always seem to say that gays want special rights and privileges? To be able to meet, date, fall in love, and then marry is not special. It is a privilege already granted to (statistically) 90% of Americans. If it is already the norm, already accepted and practiced by the majority then how does it stand out as different? Marriage is nothing new in this country so it can't be that wanting to legally bind possessions and earnings through means of a government recognized contract is some new idea that the homosexuals cooked up amongst themselves. And since secular marriages not blessed by any church and performed by approved government employees (judges, justices of the peace, etc) have been recognized for years then it can't be that the ability to enter into a marriage opposed by churches is the new-fangled gay concept. So what is so "special" about wanting equal marriage rights?

Maybe it's not the marriage thing. Maybe it's the more restrictive bills that keep popping up. So let's take a look at them.
1: Adding sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of categories of discrimination already banned by anti-discrimination laws. Well, since anti-discrimination laws already exist it can't be the idea of telling people why or why not to fire their employees or evict their tenants or refuse their services to that's special. And since churches and church-run businesses are already exempt from most such laws it can't even be that refusing to allow gay- or tranny-bashing infringes on their expression of religion. And let's face it, if someone wants to fire you or evict you or refuse you service, they can. They can always come up with one night you played your music too loud or one day you were two minutes late from lunch and hang it on that. The only thing these laws would deprive employers and landlords and anyone else of is the bigoted joy of telling someone why they're being fired / evicted / turned away. After all, how much fun can it be to cite late rent or poor attendance when what you really want to do is call them a flaming fag or rug-muncher and tell them how gross they are?
2: Adding sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of minority statuses recognized by hate-crime laws. Like with the discrimination laws, the fact that we're discussing adding anything already proves that such laws are an accepted norm. I suppose that since hate-crimes carry with them harsher punishments than regular non-discriminatory crimes there is a bit of "specialness" inherent in them. But is it special just for gays and TGs? Hate-crime legislation already applies to race and religion among other things so no, it's not really a just-for-the-homos kind of thing. There are those who claim that giving gays and TGs status as protected species, so to speak, will only serve to harshen punishments where there is no hate. In other words, I kill you because you cut me off on the freeway and then find out you're gay and now I'm screwed, or I beat you up for being a bitch but because you're a bitch with a penis I get a longer sentence. See how it would make all of the glbt untouchable? After all, there's no burden of proof in a courtroom. It's not like anyone would have to actually present evidence showing beyond, say, a reasonable doubt that the motive for the crime were generalized hatred based on the victims sexuality or gender identity. In fact, the law may be used willy-nilly by liberal prosecutors. I mean, the victim was wearing a pink shirt when he broke into that house so obviously the killing was a hate crime, not self-defense! Get real! The burden of proof to prosecute someone for violating a hate crime is already higher than to just prosecute them for the physical offense. Murder one is easier to punish than race-motivated murder one, because not only do you have to prove guilt but also motive. Proving that the person actually stabbed, cut up, burned, and then buried the victim may be easy compared to proving why they did it. So the theory that the gay and transgendered communities are trying to make themselves unaccountable, to remove the consequences to their own actions and remove the risk from life, is ridiculous. You can kill them, just not for being queer. Nope, the only thing this law deprives people of is the unbridled joy in harassing, threatening, beating, raping, or killing people for BLATANTLY homophobic reasons. It also kills the ultra-preposterous "gay-panic" defense. On a more emotional note, click these links.

Maybe it's the adoption laws? Maybe it's that in states that don't allow unmarried heterosexuals to adopt there should be no reason to allow unmarried homosexuals to adopt. And why are the homosexuals unmarried? Okay, I'll leave that one alone for now. But still it comes down to this: would it be a special law for gays? Again, as long as it would apply to straight people it can't be. And there is no bill proposed anywhere that I know of that says single people can only adopt children if they're gay. No one is suggesting that in order for a man to become a single parent he should suck anyone's dick. No one wants the day to come where a single woman must go down on a pregnant lady to receive custody of her baby. No, these laws would apply to heterosexuals too. And there are instances where they would benefit straight people. If, for instance, a woman wants to adopt her dead sister's orphaned children, she would not have to be married to do so. If a foster parent were suddenly widowed, it would not cost him the possibility of adopting the foster child. So see, a law enabling unmarried people to marry is NOT special for gays. But what about the bills which specifically seek to allow homosexuals and/or transgendered people to adopt children? Those are geared toward gays and trannies only so they must be special. Well, adoption is already legal, already a privilege enjoyed by many people, so raising another person's baby as their own, not really a just-for-gays thing. The bills and laws allowing gays specifically to adopt are just responses to laws denying the ability to adopt specifically to gays. It's more of an amendment rather than a free-standing law. Rather than re-write an existing law to remove the existing restrictions, sometimes it's just easier to pass a whole new law over-riding it. Special wording, but not special rights. As for how damaging it may be for kids to be raised by gay parents, I don't see it. From Kate & Allie to My Two Dads and Full House America has, with the help of Nielson boxes, celebrated children being raised by adults of the same gender. Why is it different now? Oh, because with gay parents the parents actually have sex? Yes well, you will find it very hard to convince me that any household where the children are made aware of what precisely happens between the parents in the bedroom is less than damaging. I know I walked in on my parents once and I don't feel that I was any less damaged by the situation because they were straight. And I can tell you that, within the confines of my own heterosexual marriage, my child would probably have to go straight in the loony bin if she knew just half of what her dad and I do. Kink is not reserved for the queers. That's a special right we all can share.

I am left to draw only one conclusion. I am forced to believe that the far-right, fundies, high ranking current government officials, feel that they must be special. All of these rights reserved for only straight people born with the right parts, actually are special rights. And if we extended them to every drag queen and leather-daddy who walked in off the street they would lose their "special" status. If everyone, regardless of who they loved or how, were capable of living without fear of personal attack, loss of employment or housing, or of never being allowed the joy of changing diapers, then what would make the far-right special? How would the gay-basher stand out from the crowd if not for his inherent superiority granted by the courts?

All of these laws are special. They are not the norm, and they are not the same for everyone. Gays do not demand rights special to them; they demand to share the special rights granted only to the rest of the country. And that's just a little too uppity for some. Too bad the only thing that makes some marriages, some careers, some parenting special is that someone else isn't allowed to do it.

Chanitx Update Two

This is hard, yet easy. I realize that makes no sense but follow along. It's like looking at a newborn baby. The baby is so unbelievably small, until you think about where it came from; at that point it's Godzilla. Quitting smoking is difficult and requires the infinite patience of all those around you, as well as 150 Tootsie pops. (Anyone want 25 orange Tootsie Pops?) But the usual symptoms of nicotine withdrawal aren't here. The tightness in my chest, the willingness to face imprisonment by killing someone for a cigarette, the tears and begging usually associated with horror movie victims aware of their fate. It's not here.

What is here is a subconscious, almost casual, habit of reaching. I wake up and my hand slaps the nightstand, reaching for the cigarettes. I'm at the computer and my hand smacks the desk, reaching again. I leave the house and I just know I'm forgetting something. Keys, phone, wallet . . . oh yeah. Until the reaching started, I wasn't even aware that I always set my cigarettes on the same spot on the desk before, or that I ritually lit a smoke before heading in to take a shower. Reaching isn't that bad, not even really all that irritating.

Reaching does have it's drawbacks though. When you're talking to someone and you suddenly grab your own tit, they never look quite like they believe you were going for the cigarettes that aren't in your shirt pocket. And as for the Tootsie Pops, I have come to firmly believe that I have passed the age where suckers look sexy and am now in the age where I just look stupid. Walking down the street sucking on a lollipop and randomly fondling myself. Thank gods for Chantix.

Chantix Update One

One of the side effects of Chantix is reported to be "unusual or vivid dreams". I've always been real big on dreams. I like dreaming. With dreams I can get away with stuff I could never do in real life, go places I'll never go, meet people I'll never meet, and never be bound by the laws of physics. Pesky gravity. So imagine my joy when I woke up one day and realized that I was one of the lucky few to experience unusual or vivid dreams!

Oh, it's magical. I can dream all sorts of interesting stories, wake up to write them down, and only later, when fully conscious, realize that they make no sense and may in some cases actually be disturbing. I blame the medicine rather than my own psyche. My brain would never think of such whacked out shit on its own. Nahhh, must be the meds.

So far I haven't actually tried to quit smoking yet. The information packet that came with the pills says to quit on the eighth day but my doctor said to quit after two weeks. Guess which one I'm going to listen to. I want to make sure my drug level is really high before I try not to light up. I'm nervous. Wish me luck!

Political Bullshit

For the past two days the nation has, quite appropriately, been shocked by the Virginia Tech shooting, and has been looking for answers. Now, since I live nowhere near Virginia, and know no one who lives anywhere near Virginia, I am less interested in the shooting. It's not that I don't care; it's just that I simply don't have the time to get panicked about every school or workplace shooting in the country. But the news outlets, television, radio, print AND internet, are full of updates and recaps and theories on the student who decided that the one college experience he simply could not skip was of course, mass murder. Today, while skimming through all of these headlines, I found this.

The third paragraph grabbed my attention instantly. The president is expected to make a statement of apology at an event in Seoul Wednesday afternoon. My question is, why?

Why is the president of South Korea apologizing for the actions of one former resident, who hasn't lived in the country for fifteen years? And why does America seem to collectively think that this apology is appropriate? I mean, this is the same country which has repeatedly refused to apologize to its own citizens for slavery, a legal and government-endorsed practice of mass oppression and abuse spanning much of the nation's history.

So, we can't apologize for what our forefathers might have done, but we can certainly expect a foreign leader to apologize for what someone he has never met and is in no way linked to, other than a common birthplace, did without his knowledge. This is just one more example of the national ego which makes certain parts of the world hate America. Combine that ego with the current president, a man who should have a short yellow school bus heading his motorcade in the interest of truth in advertising laws, and it's not surprising that we are resented by people all the world over.

But All The Cool Kids Were Doing It

My parents divorced the summer I turned eleven years old. It was hard on me, losing my father (he never really came by after the divorce, not really a visitation' kind of guy) and I felt pretty alone in the world for a while. Anyway, my mother acted in much the same way as many recently divorced women. She lost weight, had her hair done, and went out with friends determined to cheer her up. And she left my little brother and I in the care of a local high-school girl. For two dollars an hour Lori would come over, watch television, and basically ignore us. But she was cool. She had long dark hair, a car, and a boyfriend. There was a constant stream of beautiful people coming through my house, especially when Lori started babysitting all day during the summers.

I wanted to be Lori. I wanted to be five nine and thin with a huge 80s perm and a fake-bake tan so dark it could change my race. I wanted the cute jock boyfriend and the prom queen best friend. I wanted to drive and buy my own Debbie Gibson tapes and smoke long menthol cigarettes. But I was only eleven and I couldn't drive yet, or buy much of anything with my tiny allowance. I burnt if I stayed in the sun for more than half an hour and I would never reach five nine in my life. But I could smoke, and I did.

Fast forward almost twenty years and I am now just a cool as I dreamed. Yellowed teeth, a hacking cough, thirty dollars poorer every week. Yep, nothing says "Cool" better than a dirt-poor nicotine-stained walking ball of phlegm. If I keep it up I can accomplish the single sexiest aspect of smoking: excessive aging. I can hardly wait.

So I'm going to quit. I have heard nothing but good about the latest prescription-only quitting aid and I have made an appointment for five days from today to request a prescription. I think I am finally ready to quit. They always say that if you don't really want to quit you won't be able to, and I believe them. I don't know who "they" are, but I believe them on this one. I have been on the patch before which, depending on the strength, made me either nauseous or had absolutely no noticeable effect. I have tried tapering down, an endeavor which took two months just to convince me that I was more willing to endure the possibility of far-away cancer than the reality of right-then misery. And I have tried quitting cold-turkey, which lasted twenty-three full hours, ten of which were spent sleeping. I've even put rubber bands around my wrist and snapped them until I had a welt that looked like a suicide attempt. But all of these attempts to quit had one thing in common; I was doing it for reasons other than truly wanting to quit. I was dating a non-smoker, or I was having trouble affording the cigarettes, or I had a new job that didn't hand out smoke breaks. Even when I was pregnant I was doing it for the baby, not for myself. I wanted to smoke; I just didn't want the baby to smoke. A small distinction, but a very large obstacle. But now I want to quit smoking. I don't want Ryan to grow up believing that cigarettes are like coffee, nasty-tasting but part of adulthood, like I did. I don't want to be a pregnant smoker again. And I would really like to get in shape, but I seem to run out of breath too quickly to accomplish any real exercise. So I am counting down the days to my appointment (four days, nineteen hours, thirty minutes) and I am looking forward to the day when I wake up in the morning and don't feel every cell in my body screaming for a cigarette. Wish me luck.

An Ancient Evil Claims Another Victim

Today I realized that my mother is becoming my grandmother. I don't know why I didn't see it until today; it can't have been an overnight kind of thing. It didn't occur to me when she got the $25,000 a year raise and still insisted on shopping at Aldi's with the food-stamp crowd. It didn't even dawn on me that she may be turning into her own mother when I arrived at her house to find a giant box of bulk dog-training pads taking up permanent residence on her living room sofa. No, it wasn't until today's phone call that I realized that no matter how different they seemed, my mother was in fact transforming into my psychotic grandmother. Diaper pins and carpeted stairs can only be so far away now.

It was early afternoon and Ryan had spent the night up at Doan's house (she calls my mother Doan, long story), as she does just about every weekend. The phone rang, I answered, and it was Ryan. I could hear Mom feeding her lines in the background. Was I awake? Was I dressed? I asked if she was ready to come home and she said no, Doan had told her to call. I asked to speak to Doan and when she came on the line I asked, like I do just about every Saturday when I get this call, why she felt the need to wake me up for nothing. I mean, I'm thirty years old; shouldn't I be able to sleep all day if I want to? Ryan's having fun up there and I have nothing I need to get done today so why do I have to get up before noon if I don't want to? PLUS, I've been sick all week! If being far too old to be woken up by my mother on a Saturday isn't a good enough reason for her not to make Ryan call me, aren't sick people generally granted a little more freedom to sleep than most? Isn't rest what you're supposed to get when you're sick? Her reply? A very huffy "Well I thought you might want to talk to your daughter!"

Great, the guilt angle. But I wasn't falling for it. Because if that were a plausible reason then I should be able to have Ryan call her at 2 a.m. after a nightmare under the assumption that I thought she might want to talk to her grand-daughter. Of course, this argument in my favor didn't go over too well. Now, keep in mind that I said all of this light-heartedly, not confrontationally. I did want her to see that it was ridiculous to call me to wake me up for no reason on the only day of the week I have to sleep in, but I didn't want to start a fight over it. But the next thing I heard was "Well fine. I'll never call you again, okay? Goodbye." Click. She hung up on me.

This is Grandma Dorie behavior. The absolute over-reaction to anything conflicting with what she wants to do at the time, with no reasoning behind it. No reasoning behind making Ryan call to wake me up, and no reasoning behind acting as though I just told her I hated her and was going to put out a mob contract on her. This is disturbingly reminiscent of the time my grandmother confused her pill timer with the telephone ringer and *69'ed me angry that I was prank calling her every day at 3:15. She knows she's right despite any evidence to the contrary and is upset because I refuse to recognize it. Now I have to wonder, when did Mom become Grandma?

When did my braless, hairy-legged, feminist mother turn into the woman who wouldn't pull the alarm cord in her retirement home bathroom after a heart attack because the EMTs would have seen her with her pants down? When did the lady who refused to buy us any cereal in a box decorated with cartoon characters, the promise of a prize, or even primary colors become the same woman who believes that twinkie is a food group? At what time did the woman who kept condoms in the house just so I would have them, at age 14, mutate into the same woman who called me a whore for taking birth control pills? And what does this say for me? If my mother, who has historically been so polar-opposite to her mother, can evolve into her, what hope do I have? My mom's adopted; there isn't even a genetic reason for her to become the woman who raised her. I don't have that hope to cling to since my mother actually gave birth to me. Am I going to start taking notes on cooking shows, refuse to wax my post-menopausal beard, drink three day old black coffee I forgot was in the microwave? What's next for me?

But even more frightening than becoming my own mother is the possibility that if my mother is her mother, then I may become HER. I may become the semi-suicidal shut-in watching Anna Nicole updates and Montel reruns all day. I may someday find myself screaming at the kids in the playroom at McDonald's to keep it down, oblivious to their parents' hostile stares. I could someday find myself, during the family Christmas celebration, yelling at my nineteen year old grandson to keep it in his pants, with NO provocation. I don't want that. I don't want to be that. Hell, I don't even want to be around that, which is why I avoid my grandmother at all costs.

Please, somebody tell me there is hope. Tell me that we are not predestined to become our mothers. Tell me that the evil that is my racist homophobic grandmother will not attempt to live on through me. And if it ever does, tell me that you will kill me then to stop it. This deep ancient dark force, this slave to bodily functions, must be stopped by someone. Promise that if you ever find me, ten years past menopause and five years past a hysterectomy, buying panty-liners just because "they're free after rebate", that you will put the good of the world first and sprinkle cyanide in my sugar bowl.

So It Goes

Perhaps the phrase has become too cliche in the past few days, but that is only because it is the most, if not the only, fitting statement to be made. It's fatalism is only offensive in that it serves to remind us that in matters of death we have no power. We can kill, end life at will, but we can not perpetuate life beyond it's time. And that is why I feel so depressed today, because if such a great mind as Kurt Vonnegut's cannot be made to stay then what hope is there for the rest of us?

I mourn Vonnegut as I mourn myself. He has died and so will I, and there's nothing I can do to stop it. So it goes.
November 11, 1922 - April 11, 2007

Why I Vote Sanjaya

Because I hate American Idol, that's why. I don't watch the show but I do watch a lot of what comes on after it and lately I've been trying to catch the last couple minutes of the show to get the call-in number for Sanjaya so I can flash / redial twenty or so times. Why would I vote on a show I hate for a guy everyone hates? Because it is funny to piss off the Idol fans and because maybe getting stuck contracting this guy will convince the backers to cancel the show. Then House won't get preempted for weeks at a time, msnbc won't devote an entire section of their site to the show, my news sites will stop headlining Idol news over actually pertinent world events, and Simon Cowell will stop making news for being such an asshole.

I don't care if Ryan Seacrest is gay or not. I don't care if Paula cries. I don't care who slept with whom or whose naked pics got posted where or who showed up last night to mentor the contestants. And if the show didn't monopolize the collective consciousness so much I wouldn't care if it ran for next 50 years. But it does garnish way more attention than it warrants and I'm sick of hearing about it and seeing clips every time I turn on the computer or TV.

Randy Jackson punctuating every sentence with the word Dawg, Paula telling legions of tone-deaf hopefuls that they deserve to go to Hollywood when even they seem to know they don't, Simon being needlessly cruel to people just for trying, and Ryan making fun of Simon's breast tissue. Why is this taking the market's share four or five or however many nights a week? And why do people still show up to audition?!

I have seen enough of the auditions while channel surfing to know that the most horrific singers try out. I'm not talking about people who are pitchy (what the hell does THAT mean?) but the truly bad. The kind of people who are asked to keep it down during hymn-time at church. The sort of people who make Roseanne's version of the national anthem sound good. Why do they go? Even good singers get torn into by Simon, so what would motivate anyone to put themself into the firing line?

I'll tell you who: idiot attention-whores. The same people who jump up and down with banners trying to get Al Roker's attention in sub-freezing temperatures at 6 AM. The people who press their face to the glass behind the network morning show hosts hoping to get their squashed features on television for 15 seconds. So now we put them on the air. It's not the attention whores willing to jump over a gorge or eat a giant cockroach anymore; now all they have to do is butcher a Whitney Houston song. No, I can't sing. I sound like a dying alley-cat when I do. But I have more dignity than to try out for a televised talent show. And I have more self-respect than to basically walk up to Simon Cowell and ask to be ripped to shreds. Why are we rewarding people with no dignity or self-respect, and preempting House to do it?

So, if the American Idol fans are going to monopolize the media, monopolize conversations every day all over the US, and monopolize time slots that could be better served by almost any other television show, I am going to do my best to make sure they get Sanjaya every week. Sanjaya in all of his wild-haired tone-deaf glory. Sanjaya, dream-twink to millions, winning the recording contract. What could be better than that?

I Really Miss Dana

If I were to find out I was dying, I would call Dana.
Scratch that.
I would go to Dana, and make him talk to me. I would tell him that I know who he is and I don't forget, and I would ask him not to visit the sins of the father upon the daughter. I would tell him I never meant to complicate his life and I never wanted to add any trauma or stress to it. All I want for him is a simple happy life with no anger or sadness. I would ask him to see that I am a victim too, although not as much as he is. And I would ask forgiveness for the hurt I have brought him, no matter how unintentional it was.

Why do we have to pay for our parents' mistakes? We may be past the days of outcasted bastards but we still pay, be it with our reputations or just with our peace of mind. I have known so many people in my life, but there's one I would so love to know and probably never will. He has three children now, or at least that's what his email address implies, and I only know two of their names. I could find out from his brother, but I don't want to ask around about him. I don't think he'd want me to, and his are wishes I will respect until I die, although that kind of goes against my opening sentence, doesn't it. Well it's a complicated situation, full of conflict, so I suppose it's no surprise that I'm full of conflict too.

Chatlog 1

Jordan: Do you want to see your grand kids

Charlie: I have grandkids?

Jordan: You do?

Charlie: You're the one who asked if I wanted to see them.

Charlie: I'm 30 fucking years old. What grandkids would i have?

Jordan: No I meant in the future

Jordan: Do you want to live long enough to see your grandkids

Charlie: No! I shall ignore them.

Charlie: Of course I want to see them. You ask weird questions, you know that?

Jordan: Well I dunno. Do you look forward to being Grandma Chuck?

Charlie: I like being Auntie Chuck. Grandma Chuck will be just as nice.

Charlie: But I will make them call me Nana and I will always carry hard candies in my purse and let them drink coffee.

Jordan: and alcohol?

Charlie: Nope. That'll be just for Nana Chuck.

Charlie: I will pour creme de menthe in my coffee and let them melt ande's candies in their's and it will all taste the same.

Charlie: I better make sure my mug looks different though, so they can't fool my cataract-ridden eyes and take my hooch!

Jordan: eww cataracts

Jordan: Do you smoke?

Charlie: I do smoke. I will endeavor to quit though, when I can afford quit-pills.

Jordan: You should just quit cold turkey

Charlie: Cold turkey would end with murders, lots and lots of murders.

Death Pisses Me Off

I am obsessed with death. Not in a gothic Marilyn Manson sort of way, just in a running theme kind of way. I've known a few people who died, including my own father, and none of them has spoken to me since. That upsets me.

I am a product of my generation. I watch too much TV and read too many books. I escape reality at nearly every opportunity and I have learned something from those escapes. Dead people are supposed to talk to you afterward. They either become vampires or grim reapers or they just stick around invisibly and leave little signs to let you know they are okay. Sometimes, they appear in dreams, uttering the sort of sentimental crap they never said in life, because ghosts are inherently sentimental creatures, being dead and all. And if they can't get ahold of you that way, like if perhaps you don't dream or maybe have such nasty erotic dreams that they don't want to be anywhere near you in your sleep, they will find Whoopi Goldberg or Patricia Arquette or Jennifer Love Hewitt and have them relay a message. But so far no one has called me on behalf of my father, no mysterious attorney has handed me one last letter, entrusted to him to be delivered only upon my dad's death, telling me how much he loved me and how proud he was of me. And what few dreams I have had of my father have fallen into two basic categories: dreams where he faked his death and dreams where he hadn't died yet so I didn't know to ask or say the things I now feel the need to ask and say.

This world, or at least my little corner of it, has no permanence. It's full of second chances. Marriage has the option of divorce, pregnancy has the option of abortion, criminal records can be sealed or expunged, classes and work days can be made up if missed, everything has an escape clause or a do-over. But death, that's the one thing that has no second chance. When someone dies they are just gone. And most of the time there's no prophetic and meaningful last sentence to carve into a tombstone, no final reconciliation of petty disputes; people don't even put personal messages in their wills anymore, if they ever did. Maybe that's just something they made up for the movies. You know, "And to Susan, my loving wife. I leave you the summer home where I proposed."

I want to talk to Smokey. I want to tell him that whatever small milestone in his life was footnoted with my name, he played a larger part in mine. Even without the tragic and untimely death part, I would never have forgotten him. I wonder if he knew that a girl he hadn't spoken to in eleven years still thought of him fondly. But I can't ask him, although if the Catholics are right I will see him again someday.

I want to talk to my dad. I want to yell at him for fucking me so badly when he died. I want to ask him if he liked me. Parents love their kids but they don't always like them. Was I a person my father liked, independent of blood? Although, in the same vein, I'm not sure I want the answer. After all, his last words to me were lies, deliberate lies which served only to put me in therapy for a year, hopped up on so many anti-seizure mood-stabilizers that I couldn't have convulsed if I'd tongue-kissed a 220 plug.

I wish I'd known they were going to die. Two perfect examples of people who knew when their time was, two pivotal people in my life whom I would have dropped everything to talk to, and it never occurred to me to call them regardless of life expectancy. I should make a list of people I would regret not calling if they were to die tomorrow and I should call them. But I won't, because that's the curse of the living. We don't open up until it's too late. Maybe having the warning, the diagnosis or death threat or execution date, is the greatest mercy there is.

May God someday have that mercy on me.

Six Months Left

I got an interesting text message last night from my friend Anne. It was a plea for help with a psych paper and it posed an interesting question. If you found out you only had six months left to live, how would you spend that time?

I called her, rather than try to type out a decent answer with my thumbs, and gave what I thought was a pretty standard answer. After the initial nervous breakdown upon hearing of my own eminent demise, I would travel to all the places I think I'll have time to see, like Ireland and an ocean. I would make videos for my daughter including some for special occasions like graduations, her wedding day, the birth of her first child, etc. I would call people who had an impact on my life and thank them and write letters to the few teachers I remember fondly, something I should do now but don't. After giving my answer, I emailed Anne the Tim McGraw song Live Like You Were Dying. I thought it appropriate and was surprised she'd never heard it.

At some point in the conversation we drifted off topic. (I know, hard to imagine two old friends, both women, could possibly drift off topic, but it happened.) I gave her my theory on what should happen after I die and told her I want my friends to laugh at me. She seemed surprised so I explained.

I have done tons of stupid things in my life. There are a lot of stories that could be told about me after my funeral. People always tell stories about the dead, but they rarely do so with the expressed intent of laughing. The people who mourn me will have their crying time and will no doubt feel compelled to share their "she was a good person" stories all by themselves. I want them to know that gathering together to have a few drinks and laugh at the many times I made an ass of myself would be a way of honoring the dead that, in this case, would be endorsed by the dead. Tell my kid all the idiotic things I've done now that it can't ruin my credibility. I figure, between Tom, Jame, and Anne, they could pretty much compile complete list of my stupidities from age 13 to my death. Like the time I bought a new pillow, and the cover had some pattern printed on it. The first night I used it I drooled in my sleep and the dye from the pattern got pulled through the pillowcase and I woke up convinced I was bleeding out of my ears. And when I got into a very heated argument with Tom about whether or not New England was a state, and he had to pull up a map of the continental US to prove me wrong. Ahhh, good times. Too many people feel guilty laughing and smiling after someone dies. I want my friends and family to laugh and smile. I want everyone to gather together at my home, pitch in to buy a weekend's worth of food and beer and wine, and relate all the memories they have the decency not to remind me of while I'm here. If, gods forbid, I die before my children are old enough to know me as an equal, I want them to learn to see me that way when I'm gone.

I probably should call the people I'd call if I were dying, but how exactly do you express gratitude to people who may not even remember you? Anne told me that one of the people on my "In case of impending death, call" list is back in town. I want to look him up, but what would I say if I did? In my mind he's still 19 years old with long blond hair and a notebook of prophetic sayings. Would meeting him now, after life has gotten a chance to turn him jaded and cynical, ruin my nostalgia? I suppose there's a certain freedom granted to those who can make the call and explain that they're dying. Dying people have nothing to lose, and an instinctive exemption from societal rules such as "Don't call the leader of a long-dead Mountain Dew cult to say thanks for making my sophomore year fun."

But in case he ever reads this, Thank you Jeremy. No doubt you are one of the few people from my life I will remember even after the Alzheimer's sets in.

Another Boring Sunday

Sundays are so boring. My kid is playing outside, my husband is watching televised golf is some homo-erotic Tiger Woods trance, and I have just spent twenty mindless minutes skimming through the somethingawful archives. Two more loads of laundry and I'll have nothing to do until Ryan takes her shower and I assume my duty of reminding her of what she's supposed to be doing every five minutes so she doesn't zone out and forget that hot water has a shelf life. Basically my job during this time is to scream "Shampoo!" and "Soap up!" at appropriate intervals while resetting the dryer to make sure her towel stays hot. I'm such a nice mommy aren't I, warming her towel like that?

Sunday mornings always remind me of my grandmother. Not in a nostalgic home-baked cookies kind of way but rather in an insane octogenarian hopped up on sugar and Jesus kind of way. While other people may have fond memories of their dearly departed grandmothers I have none, for two reasons. One: she doesn't have the decency to dearly depart, and Two: she has never done anything in my presence which could form a fond memory. The reason Sunday mornings remind me of her are because she would always be the overnight babysitter on the rare occasion my parents went out. (Looking back, and knowing my parents from a more mature standpoint than I did then, I realize that their romantic getaways probably consisted entirely of stays in cheap hotels with piped in porn. My father was NOT a romantic.) Anyway, my grandmother, after a night of Lawrence Welk and Knots Landing, would forcibly wake me and my brother up and make us watch The Hour Of Power in an attempt to save our souls. All I really remember of the show was that it was outside and the guy, some preacher dressed like a gay choir singer, stood in front of a giant triangle, which seems even more gay, now doesn't it? I never listened to the words, mainly because my grandmother liked it and she was insane.

Here, to illustrate why I hate my grandmother, is a list of memorable things she has done or said during the years I have been unfortunate enough to know her, along with my age at the time:

1) Told me I would go to Hell if I didn't read Guideposts magazine every time I went to her house. I was 5.

2) Bent over, grabbed my foot, hiked it up farther than it ever wanted to be, and sniffed for dog poo before letting me in her door. This happened almost continuously throughout my childhood.

3) Tried to toss my elderly declawed decidedly INDOORS cat out the back door because she was convinced it was trying to watch her use the toilet. I was 7.

4) Flashed me her boobs in an attempt to convince me to be happy with a small chest, apparently using the argument that hers were huge and hurt her back. I'm still not sure how exposing herself in any way expressed back pain. I was 16.

5) Told me my boyfriend had "the pot eyes" while he stood only four feet away. I was 24.

6) Called me a whore on the street in front of my house. I was 15.

7) Told me, in a restaurant during lunch rush, that my infant daughter would starve if I didn't bottle feed her because my "boobies" were "too small to hold enough milk." I was 22.

8) Called me a slut in front of my daughter. I was 23.

9) Threatened to report me to authorities for bad parenting when she found out that two of Ryan's babysitters were lesbians. I was 24.

10) Told me it was unnatural for my white child to play with black dolls. I was 25.

11) Bought me underwear at a garage sale. Who wears used underwear? Who sells it? I was 12.

12) Accused me of robbing my nine year old cousin of her childhood by asking her discreetly where her mother kept the tampons. Apparently children have no need to know what "the time" is and by mentioning mine to her, I stole the girl's innocence. Funny thing is, I just asked which bathroom was her mom's; the kid was the one who asked if I needed a tampon. I was 15.

13) Accused me of introducing my daughter to witchcraft by buying her Harry Potter books, two years after she saw my pentagram tattoo. I was 30.

14) Told me I'd catch crabs if I didn't wear underwear. I was 29.

15) Kicked me out of her house for responding that you can't catch crabs if you shave your crotch. Hee hee; still 29.

16) Tried to be cool by buying me a grasshopper at the local VFW. I was 22 and nursing.

17) Attempted suicide to get attention, by sliding on her but down half a flight of carpeted stairs with a suicide not pinned to her chest with one of those oversized diaper pins with the pink plastic clasp. I was 18.

18) Accused me of being the black sheep of the family, while my cousin was in Leavenworth on federal drug manufacturing charges. I was 28.

19) Told me how nice my new friend was and that she seemed like she might be the good influence I so needed to have, then called her a horrible person when she found out we were sleeping together. I was 19.

20) Took my picture off the "grandkids table" and replaced it with a photo of Tom and Ryan. I was 29.

21) Faked a series of strokes to get attention. I was 28.

22) Refused to talk to the shrink when her neurologist, in response to her stroke-like attacks, wrote a letter to her family doctor asking him to cancel her Zoloft refills and let a psychiatrist prescribe all psychotropic drugs. "What does it matter what I did when I was a kid? Why won't they just give me my pills?!" I was still 28.

23) Introduced Ryan to frosted Cheerios when she had been perfectly happy with the plainer, healthier ones. I was 22; Ryan was 1.

24) Held it over my head that my cousin was so important at work that she wasn't even able to make it home for Spring Break when the rest of the family knew she was in rehab but wouldn't let me tell her. I was 25.

25) Tried to get me to listen to the tapes of family members' funerals that she sits and listens to at night. I was 26.

27) Convinced my aunt and uncle not to let me babysit their kids because I liked girls and would no doubt molest them while changing their diapers. I was 16.

28) Upon learning of my unplanned pregnancy, suggested that perhaps my uncle might want the baby. I was 21.

29) Called my father a drunk in front of me. I was, ummmm, birth to present.

30) Called my five young cousins together for an important talk and then explained that their parents were getting a divorce when they weren't. When confronted she explained by saying "Well if they aren't, they should!" I was 22; the cousins ranged in age from 8 to 16.

31) Fed my daughter baby food when she was past it because it was easier than cleaning up crumbs. I was 23, my daughter was almost 2.

32) Swaddled my infant daughter in a fleece blanket in July because "babies need to stay warm" despite all of the literature I had shown her saying exactly the opposite. I was 22.


I will no doubt add to this list in the future, but 32 things is all I can think of off the top of my head. Check back later for more.

Why Doesn't Anyone Leave Me Comments?

That's all; just why won't anyone leave me any comments? I don't require constant praise, but a little validation would be nice. Am I wasting webspace talking to myself?

My Computer Has Gone Insane

My computer has gone insane.

I don't know much about computers. Mine runs really slow and I have no idea how to fix it. I run ad-ware and spy-ware programs daily and I defrag weekly, but it doesn't seem to help. Someone told me once to reformat, but I found out that I would have to burn every single file I have to disc and that's just way too much work, and a lot of discs, so I pretty much just deal with stuff on my own at a dos-meets-dial-up pace and ask people how to do things as I run into them. Or I google walk-throughs and take whatever bad advice I find on complaint forums, because I have no way of knowing what is bad advice and what is the good and effective advice I seek. Finally, fed up with such incompetence, my computer has mutinied. It randomly pops up alerts to announce that scheduled updates have failed, I occasionally get an extra empty beige stripe between my address bar and title bar, and lately it has started changing its own wallpaper whenever I close or minimize Sims Pets. That's the worst.

I know I don't have a virus, because I run updated anti-virus software daily, as well as several free products (AVG, trend micro, etc) and because I have never heard of the G. Gordon Liddy computer virus. Yes, I know it's ironic since I recently had my daughter write a paper on Watergate, a paper in which I took a hit for screwing up Mr. Liddy's very name, and then published it to this tiny corner of the web. I think perhaps I am the victim of a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. (I like Hill, but it sounds a bit grassy-knollish even to me.)

I think perhaps high ranking Republican officials are angry at me for my Liddy faux pas and are insidiously hacking my personal computer and placing a very disturbing photo of G. Gordon Liddy, some out of shape older women in unflattering underwear, and high powered assault rifles on my desktop screen. To be honest, it's not a photo I am entirely unfamiliar with, as I recently came upon the frightening image at somethingawful mere hours before this first happened. How frightening is it? Check for yourself:



Yes, it is that horrible. It is apparently the cover of some disturbing calendar from 2001. Two thousand one! Where G. Gordon Liddy managed to find 1970s porn stars in 2001 is beyond me. Personally, I thought vanity and ego were such ingrained American traits that women who looked like this tried to avoid being seen publicly in only their Sears catalog granny panties. Although, disturbing as the photo is, I do appreciate the humor in any photo of Liddy breaking into a locked room.

I wonder, did they have scantily clad women with assault weapons at the Watergate break in? Because it would go a little way toward explaining the photo if the point were to use authentic period costumes.

Either way, I don't very much enjoy having my Sims-buzz ruined by this freak-show and his lazy-eyed girlfriends. Is the one on the floor supposed to be winking or does she have an ill-fitting glass eye, perhaps from being poked in the face by one of the guns? Oh my God, maybe she had a Grafenberg- stroke! Is that what I'll look like someday? And if so, please tell me there's a better term for it, because Grafenberg-stroke sounds a lot more like what caused it than the actual damage itself. Now that I think of it though, Grafenberg-stroke would be a great name for a band. Or a Marilyn Manson CD. But I'd hate to see the cover image.

Somehow I need to find a way to get this horrific government conspiracy / computer virus / practical joke by a secretly sentient computer with a bad sense of humor to end. And oddly enough I can't find any advice, good or bad, on any complaint forums.

On Proselytizing Teachers

Check out this blogger's recent post. I don't want to re-write or summarize her post so I'll just direct you all to it and ask you to read it before the rest of this post.

Go on. I'll wait.

Done? Alright then. Here I go.

WHY is it so hard for people to separate their religious faith from the rest of their life? Why can't people realize that if they work in the public domain that it is just plain common sense to keep their religion to themselves? Wear a cross if you must, put a nativity on your lawn in the winter, but don't "God bless !" me when I pay for my gas. Wal*Mart took a lot of heat for saying Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas; apparently inclusion is anti-Christian now. But Wal*Mart should say Happy Holidays because very few of their Jewish, Muslim, Atheist, etc customers are going to have a Christmas anyway. I don't run around wishing people a Happy Barmitzvah unless I know they are both Jewish and also turning thirteen soon, because it makes no sense. I don't wish random people a Happy Solstice or Merry Samhain either, although I do say it to those I know it applies to. And since the ninety year old man in the scooter handing me a shopping cart with one stuck wheel doesn't know my religion it is presumptuous of him to assume that I'm Christian. The assumption seems to be that everyone either is or should be Christian and therefore the Merry Christmas greeting can be either a heartfelt pleasantry or a subtle way of saying that the other religions (or none at all) don't warrant any notice. And don't even get me started on the trend of the funny-yet-poignant signs on church lawns. I guess it's free expression but if I put a lit up letter-board on my lawn proclaiming that if you are "Finding Life A Little Dark? The Goddess Illuminates." I would definitely hear about it. But replace The Goddess with Jesus and you've got the sign in front of my local church this week. Last week it was "Jesus, Rarely Early But Never Late."

As for government employees, well they take on an extra responsibility, to not only keep
their beliefs silent but also any feelings they may have regarding other religions. And in schools, teachers have a greater responsibility because of the impressionable nature of their students and the captivity of their audience, and the authority they wield enabling them to censor students. So what it boils down to, in my opinion is this. The teacher can decide who to call on and how long to let them speak, an ability that can in effect censor any student who dares speak up against the teacher. Students are forced by law, unless their families can afford private schools or the time home needed to home-school, to attend public school and take classes taught by whomever the district chose to hire. Young children are placed daily in the care of teachers whom parents have to blindly trust. And we tell our children to believe, and in some cases to memorize, what the teacher tells them as fact. After all, a young kid doesn't know the difference between "2+2=4" and "Jesus is the only true god".

I attended public school for more than twelve years (nobody but me seems to count kindergarten) and looking back, there have been a few things I thought sounded preachy but didn't have the nerve to speak up about. For instance, my home-ec teacher went on an anti-abortion rant one day. I happen to be anti-abortion (for the most part, I do believe in moral gray areas), but I thought spouting of terms like "infanticide" and "babies torn to shreds in the womb" to be a bit much for a classroom full of fourteen year old girls.

I can also remember the sex-ed chapter of my freshman health class, taught by the boys wrestling coach. We were taught that STDs were (I am not kidding here) punishment from God for promiscuity and that if you only had sex with someone you loved you were somehow immune from the burning lesions of God's wrath. I agree, if all people saved themselves for marriage and went their entire lives with only one partner, the STD rate would go down. But here's the problem: catching diseases doesn't just hinge on your morality. You may love and trust your mate , but what if, when he was a young man full of urges and desperation, some hot little slut had gotten a hold of him? No matter who he is now, at some point he was a teenage boys with a box of tissues on his nightstand and boobs were hypnotic to him. So although you may love him dearly and trust him with all your heart, he may not have always been the same moral upstanding guy. He may not have been someone you'd trust at all. And what about cold sores? Little kids get cold sores; they aren't all sexually transmitted. But if you rub your lips and then touch your, uh, bits and pieces, you can give yourself herpes. Any cold sore below the belt is going to be recurrent and transmittable through sex. What did that little kid so to piss off God?

Now, to be fair, this particular teacher overstepped on more than just religion. I wish I had a daughter in his class now so that I could say things on her behalf I never had the guts to say on my own at that young age. He was, in addition to being the boys wrestling coach and the freshman health teacher, the sophomore girls PE teacher and one chapter in gym class was swimming. Now, for obvious medical reasons, there might be a week or so when girls don't feel like swimming. But he was having none of that; he just told us to wear tampons or flunk the class. I can remember fifteen year old girls who were completely freaked out because they found tampons to be a bit, shall we say, invasive for their tastes. But the grade for the quarter depended on it, so what choice did they have? Back then I just thought it was a little off, but now I wonder where the hell that guy thought he had any right at all to tell fifteen year old girls that their grades depended on putting anything in their vaginas. I wish I knew a girl in his class now. I would march down to that school and cause such a loud screaming scene that the police would have to remove me, and then I'd demand his immediate termination.

Can you tell that this guy still pisses me off?

Oh well, there's my two cents on teachers basically being dicks imposing their wills on students who have no choice but to hear it. And as always, I welcome comments.

When Did Committing A Crime Stop Being Illegal?

When did the word illegal stop meaning bad? I mean, illegal possession or illegal distribution or illegal production are all terms which imply crime, and with it the possibility of prosecution. But somehow it has become racist to argue that illegal immigration is bad. Why?

Very few people I know, although there are some out there, are against immigration. After all, this nation was built on immigration. Well, that and the genocidal destruction of the Native Americans but that's a bit off-topic. But this country also has laws, like other countries do, about how to go about immigrating. Maybe the laws are ridiculous and overly restrictive, but they are the law. And breaking a law USED to mean committing a crime, and committing a crime USED to mean becoming a criminal. But these days you get into a lot of trouble for calling an illegal immigrant a criminal. There are huge demonstrations protesting the prosecution of illegal immigrants and people who try to point out that breaking the law = criminal activity = being a criminal are called racists. But, aren't illegal immigrants from Europe, though not as common, also criminals? Aren't they all, regardless of race, breaking the law? And wouldn't they be prosecuted as well?

Illegal immigration isn't just about Mexicans running through the desert. It's also Asians arriving in California on cargo ships and Haitians sneaking into Florida and countless others from all over the world. And the one thing they all have in common is that they want to be here and don't want to follow the laws to do it. Now why should any country welcome people who demonstrate from the very beginning that they have no intention of following the laws? If I were a landlord and my new renter refused to pay his deposit, why would I let him stay? How would I be expected to assume that he would pay the rent after that?

I read about this town and I wonder why they are in trouble? As far as I can tell, they're just trying to pass local laws to enforce federal ones. People aren't supposed to employ illegal immigrants anyway; why not have a business license depend on it? Why not make it harder for the criminals to get away with the crime? If it's illegal for them to live here, why not make it harder for them to find a place to live? As for making English the official language, I don't know if they can actually do that, but I can see why they'd want to. It would at least make it easier for people to communicate, English being what most of the country has historically spoken.

See, what people often don't understand is that the U.S. doesn't have an official language. Canada has two, in some places anyway, but we have none. There is no policy stating that America is an English speaking country; it just tends to be one. And it used to be that immigrants came her to become Americans, to live the American Dream as they saw it. No one waved a flag as proudly as an immigrant on the Fourth of July. Sure, people talked about the old country and taught their children to cook the food from back home. But they came to be Americans and they devoted a lot of energy to speaking the language of their new home. But now it is possible for a child to be born in the U.S. and live a long life never learning English and face very little inconvenience. There's a division now between Americans who want to BE American and people who just want to live here but not claim the country as their own.

The funny thing is, other countries don't see us this way. No matter what language you speak or where your family came from to get here, if you travel to another country they will call you an American. Over here you may be Irish, but in Ireland you're an American and by definition NOT Irish. The rest of the world can see us in a way we can't seem to see ourselves anymore, as one unified group.

We should be one unified group. We should be one nation together and regardless of ancestry or origin we should identify as Americans regardless of what country our last name came from. For a lot of us, our ancestors traveled to this country from Europe in terrible conditions, on crowded boats with few belongings just for the chance to become Americans. What would they think if they could see what immigration is like now? Refusing to even enter the country by the law, stealing social security numbers, self-segregating into communities like tiny foreign countries where only the native language and customs are followed.

Now I (admittedly) can't speak for blacks. Those crowded boats were a whole different story. But after all of the sacrifice and determination it took over so many years to be recognized as full American citizens, I would imagine it to be difficult not to resent a little the migrant worker bitching about being treated like a criminal for trying to circumvent any immigration processes at all. Paperwork? Red tape? Waiting? I can only assume that to see someone complaining about those hardships would sting a bit to someone whose family was, only a few generations back, fighting to make the jump, to be ALLOWED to make the jump, from American property to American citizen.

I don't believe we should wall off our country and never let another immigrant in. Like I said, this country was built on immigration. But let's start calling it what it is when people break the laws: a crime.

Why Protect The Guilty

I've noticed a lot of news blurbs about sex offender registry lists, and the websites they're posted on, being unfair to the offenders, even violating their civil rights.

Do you know any sex offenders? I've gone through the state site here and found a few acquaintances and most of them didn't, in my mind, do much wrong. See, according to Illinois law, if a guy is seventeen and his girlfriend is fifteen they can have all the sex they want because they are presumed to be at about the same maturity level. In other words, they're both teens so neither one is really taking advantage of the other's naivete. But once the guy turns eighteen then the sex they've already been having becomes a criminal act, punishable by jail time and lifelong registration. The problem is that the legal terms listed on the offender lists don't make much sense to the average person. What is the difference between Criminal Sexual Abuse and Criminal Sexual Assault? And even if a person is able to decipher that the "abuse" charge is the current wording of what used to be called Statutory Rape, the registry often doesn't list the victim's age, or only lists it in a vague categorical sense (Victim between the ages of 13 and 17). Well if you're nineteen there's a bit of a difference between sex with a thirteen year old and sex with a seventeen year old. So I have my problems with the list as it stands; I think it should somehow differentiate between predatory offenders and college kids who kept their high school girlfriends. But I understand why we have the online registry lists, while apparently some people don't.

We have the list so that parents, like myself, can check every once in a while to see if maybe there's a pedophile living down the block, or to make sure that this weekend's sleep-over party isn't being held at the home of a rapist. Yeah, I know; the registry only shows the ones who've been caught so the chance is still there regardless. But it gives me a chance to at least keep my daughter away from a portion of the perverts out there and it bothers me when people get upset that it exists. I'm sure that it must be difficult to be a registered sex offender, to have your name and crime on a website anyone can look up at will. I'm sure it comes with some pretty extreme prejudice and even the threat of violence. But although I'm sure many pedophiles and rapists are fine upstanding people I also believe that all people are judged by their past behavior and actions and no one will ever convince me that sex offenders are the one group who should be exempt from that universal truth. And does the threat facing registered offenders from the general public even come close to the threat these people may POSE to the general public? My daughter is young; she can't help but look young and it is readily apparent to anyone who sets eyes on her that she is young. What is not readily apparent to anyone is whether or not the guy on the bench at the park wants to violate her. See, the predators want a level of anonymity their victims don't have, and I don't buy that.

It must be a bitch to have the cops at your door every time a kid goes missing or a woman is raped. It must be a hassle when your kids' friends aren't allowed to come over and play. And getting dirty looks at the grocery store when all you want to do it buy your food and leave must be pretty humiliating. But that's the price you pay for your sins. Having the urges is not a crime, and no matter how offensive those urges may be to the rest of society it shouldn't be a crime. Thoughts are not criminal acts; actions are. And once a person chooses to act on the urge to grope a kid or force someone into having sex with them, they take on the risk of getting caught and paying the price. All the dirty looks and restrictions are part of that price. And if it's hard to see your kids being told that their friends can't come over then do the right thing and move out of the family home. It's probably best that the children not live with a sex offender anyway.

Why The Little Guy Should Quit, And Other Thoughts

I'm a democrat, but even more so, I'm a Bush-hater. I laugh at anti-Bush bumper stickers, I felt the suffocating weight of despair after the 2004 elections, and I seriously wonder who besides the theocrats could possibly believe that the man is anything but dangerous to the future of this nation. He has proclaimed himself to be the voice of God, has proposed a constitutional amendment not only legalizing but forcing discrimination against law-abiding tax-paying U.S. citizens because his interpretation of his religion endorses it (Doesn't that same bible say that unmarried sexually active women should be stoned to death? I wonder then, about the fate of his own daughters.), has picked apart the meaning and intent of the Geneva Convention more than Clinton ever did with the word sex, and has managed to start not one but two wars (and then effectively abandoned the one against the people who actually attacked us). So yes, I'm a Bush-hater. And if anyone can tell me one thing he has done that may actually benefit this country, without throwing religious beliefs at me, I welcome and encourage your comments. And for the record, the war in Iraq doesn't count. Yes Saddam was a bad man and we got him. But the world is full of bad men and it's not worth, in my opinion, 2000+ American lives per villain to run around and dig them all out of holes. Kill Saddam, kill 2000+ American troops, kill Saddam, kill 2000+ American troops. The scales aren't even close on that one, sorry.

So imagine my joy when the Democratic party shows promise with not one but two promising presidential hopefuls. Yes, there are going to be people who will vote against them rather than for the name beside the hole they do punch, but for the most part it's Obama vs. Clinton in the primary. I know it; everybody knows it. But now the other democratic hopefuls are running around pouting that they're being left out of the spotlight. Hey! We finally have the spotlight! As far as I'm concerned the rest of the dems should take a cue from Vilsack and drop out and leave the primary to the main two. Then whoever wins should put the other on their ticket. Obama Clinton 08 or Clinton Obama 08. Either way it's the best chance we have of keeping this country out of the Bush followers' hands.

This country is fighting theocracies around the world, yet the conservative Christian right wants to make us one as well. When we fought the "Godless Communists" we didn't denounce religion, so why should we live by a centuries-old book while fighting injustices which are clear evidence of what happens when a nation lives by a centuries-old book? Islamic law or Christian law. They both boil down to interpretations of words translated over and over again and then twisted to mean whatever people want them to mean or think they should mean. Yes, there are passages in the bible warning of the evils of homosexual sex. But there are warnings just as stern against premarital sex and against adultery whether or not you're the one cheating (coveting ring a bell?), yet no one tries to push constitutional bans on single people having sex, or against allowing people to marry their former mistresses or male equivalent. And why? Because even though the bible mentions a lot of places you should not stick a penis, as well as times when not to stick it there, unless it grosses out the straight white male elite it gets kind of downplayed. According to the bible it's a sin to even jerk off about another man's wife. And yet, most of the sex symbols today are married and no congressman rallies against that. We all know that when you put Halle Berry in a catsuit and tell her to crawl around and purr with her back arched, very few male audience member are going to go home raving about how well she mimicked a siamese. No, those men are going to go home, pre-order the DVD, and stock up on tissues, even though she was married at the time of the filming. Well BAM, you're going to hell. You just coveted another man's wife; that's a commandment you're breaking and even the fags didn't make it into the top ten. But the Republicans want to jerk off about married women, and even the single ones want to get laid. But for the most part, they don't want to suck dick or take it in the bum so they pounce all over that as being an Abomination.

It bothers me that these people may once again choose the president. And it bothers me even more that the little guys, the Chris Dodds and Bill Richardsons, might actually take some votes away from the Big Two. Sure, it's just the primary now. But what if one of them decides to go Lieberman and run anyway? Independents don't win the presidency. This country may be ready to elect a woman or a black man president, but not an independent. Perot, Nader, they just took votes away from the other candidates. And the Democrats can't afford to lose any votes; didn't 2000 teach us that already?

Of course, the biggest fear would be that somehow one of these guys could actually win the primary. Hillary (although I still question her electability) has the closest thing to presidential experience a person can get without having been President or VP, and Obama has some sort of other-worldly charisma that fills stadiums and generates Beatlemania screams. Those two might be able to win over some swing voters, but an unknown senator from Delaware? I don't think so. My money is on an Obama - Clinton ticket.

And as for the whole "Obama isn't black because he's not a slave's descendant" thing that seems to have gripped the media lately: WTF does black mean anyway? I don't seem to recall too many black Americans arguing whenever Nelson Mandella was referred to as being black. And thirty years ago the black community was wearing African inspired clothing and Afros and naming their daughters Shaniqua. Why is an African man (second generation notwithstanding) suddenly not black? If you want to argue that he's not black, argue that his mother's white. That at least makes sense.

The Sweet Smell Of Nostalgia

Okay, so I live in the middle of nowhere. Imagine the town from Footloose and you're pretty close. Fifteen miles of US highway to the closest McDonald's, three bars and six churches, and not a single store or gas station stays open past midnight on weekends. Not a lot of opportunity for a kid around here to do much but dream of more exciting places, places not surrounded by corn and soybean fields. Places where the newest songs on the radio haven't been played out already everywhere else. So at nineteen, instead of hanging around with other equally bored kids getting drunk or high, I listened to the radio: syndicated radio.

Z-Rock was a nationally syndicated radio station out of Dallas and it actually played music from the current calendar year. I'm sure plenty of people out in internet-land remember Z-Rock and its famous DJs: Wipeout in the evening, Jim Coda overnight, and of course Loud Debbie Dowd the token news-chick. (Piece of inside news: not many of the jocks liked her much). Anyway, being syndicated they had a toll-free line (but of course THAT was always busy and I've always been impatient) but they also had a direct line: the warp line. So I started calling the warp line late at night and talking to Jim Coda. Maybe I was bright and articulate and had a sparkling personality at the time or maybe, and much more likely, it was a pretty boring shift and I didn't ask him to screw up his play list with requests all the time. Either way, we talked. He was a decent guy, kind of a WKRP Johnny Fever type of guy, and we chatted for months about music and news and his kids, stuff like that. But with my looks and sense of humor, I fell in love with the idea of radio INSTANTLY. After all, if Debbie could do it...

Anyway, after talking to Coda for a while, I started calling Wipeout and talking to him. By then, of course, I'd already mailed my photo off to Jim and gotten his promo shot back in return, and apparently he'd left it on the deck or something because Wipeout knew who I was by name. Seems I looked just like some girl who broke his watch in a bar one night. My doppelganger just hates timepieces. So now I had two friends at the station, plus Debbie but she didn't count because I had her convinced I was a militant New York lesbian with a crush on her and that I was planning a vacation to visit her at the station. I was mean.

My job at the time was in retail, all sorts of screwed up hours, and after a week of early bedtimes I finally got the chance to call Jim for a late-night chat. I dialed, got the familiar burst of static followed by a curt "Z-Rock" but alas, it was not Jim. Turns out the new guy had gotten let go from a station upstairs (ABC Radio, lots of stations in one huge building) but had worked for Z-Rock years ago. And (follow closely here) Jim was looking for a change of scenery so they'd traded. But despite giving me all this info, the new guy wouldn't give me the number to the booth upstairs! So he called Jim and then I called him back and he, with Jim's okay, finally gave me the number. And that is how I made friend number three at Z-Rock. But then Jim got fired a month later and took his old job back and Bladerunner, as he was known on-air, was out on the street after all. But I had his home number so we kept chatting and when he planned a cross-country road-trip I offered him a break from hotel fare and roadside rest stops if he needed it. Plans were made and I was excited.

Why was I excited? (Get your mind out of the gutter; I didn't even know the guy!) Because here was a nationwide celebrity, albeit a midnight radio host for only a month, and he would be visiting me. Keep in mind I live in an area where police scanners are used as entertainment and the mall sighting of a local TV news anchor is considered paparazzi-worthy. Oh well, the day came and it was cool. He said my hometown looked like the town out of Needful Things, said that if he lived here he would open a store by that name and sell exotic fruit and import CDs. Basically, he showed up, took a shower, cleaned his contacts, took a nap, and we went out for KFC fifteen miles away. He was going to get a good night's sleep but he called his next stop and plans had been made sooner than he'd thought so he had to leave. I never heard from him again. My brief brush with minor-league fame was over. But my brief brush with notoriety was coming.

While he was at my place, he called his old friends at the station in Dallas. He told them he was visiting his fans one by one like the Snapple van (remember that dumb promotion?). Sadly, he never called them back. Half the guys thought I'd slept with him and the other half thought I'd killed him! (As if I weren't talented enough to do both.) So suddenly I went from being Chuck, the girl who'll keep you company during a boring shift, to being Chuck, the girl who may have killed one of our own. Things were never the same after that, and I could never reach him at home to tell him of this damage to my good name. I finally left a message on his machine and I guess he did stop by the booth and let himself be seen alive, but the station got shut down, replaced by Radio Disney, that New Year's Eve and I lost touch with all of my DJs.

Fast forward a decade or so later. I am no longer nineteen, no longer able to stay up all night or afford phone bills like that, and going through some physical aging issues. To be fair, I pine for my youth. (Insert wistful sigh here.) And it wasn't so long ago that I wrote up a big long post wherein I mentioned being a radio groupie back in the day. So imagine my surprise when I find this on imdb. What does this mean, you ask? Well if you click on the actor who plays Evan enough, you get this! My Bladerunner! Okay, not exactly mine, but I did eat chicken with him once and he used my shower. So I google his real name and his on-air name and a whole lot of false leads later I find his myspace page! I set up an account (Tom is my only friend :( ) and sent him a message.

He remembered me and said very polite things and that was that. I'm not delusional enough to think I was ever anything more than a groupie to a DJ naive enough to give out his home number but it's always nice to be remembered by someone who has no doubt had many many groupies since me. I guess it's the same reason my husband, in Al Bundy fashion, feels the need to relate high school football stories, and also the entire premise of Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion. We all like to relive our youth now and then. And we all miss our youth sometimes too, no matter how happy we are in the present. I miss late night calls to Z-Rock, and being subtly referred to on the air, and scaring that uppity news chick, and it's a huge ego boost to know that the days I so fondly remember are also remembered by someone who has probably had a lot more exciting times since then than I have.

Now I just hope that movie is stocked in these hick little video shops so i don't have to drive fifteen miles to rent it.

Women Have Pores Too

Ever watch a TV show or a movie and notice that when they close in on a man's face, he has pores and whiskers and laugh-lines, all the little imperfections that make him real and human? But when they close in on a woman's face, there better not be a pore or stray unplucked eyebrow to be seen! No way, women must be perfect poreless creatures at all times; how else will the rest of us feel inadequate?

I'm serious. Watch any drama or romance, anything that shows close-ups of people. Women can't have pores on-screen. Unless, of course, it's porn. In porn, women can have all sorts of pores and cellulite and stretch marks, as long as they have no boundaries and no dignity. Apparently, in the world of showbiz, it's pores or dignity, but never both.

But what about those of us who have pores, or even the occasional clogged pore, and yet still have dignity? What about the women out there with real teeth and skin and maybe even boobs that wander uninvited into our armpits, searching I assume, for warmth in a cold cruel world? There are men out there, real semi-intelligent men, who believe what they see on television. Men who have never seen the photos of celebrities without make-up, and who feel that women should be hairless, and poreless, and flawless, at all times. These are men who actively try to find meaningful relationships, but don't understand why women don't have permanent make-up, or might go a day or two without shaving, even during the flu! These are also, coincidentally, men who don't shave their own faces daily; go figure.

Why has the media set such an unattainable standard for women? I have watched two Diane Keaton films in the past week and in both, she actually looks her age. Sure she's trim and muscular and that's almost too perfect. But she has teeth that aren't bonded together permanently, and she has wrinkles. She shows her age! She shows it well, but the 50+ actresses all botoxed and lifted are sickening and she's not one of them. But does she have pores? Nope. Jack Nicholson can have pores, Keanu Reeves can have pores, even the dad from Seventh Heaven can have pores. But not Diane Keaton. She is female so she must have a plasticized poreless face, even with the laugh-lines and crow's feet.

Still, whatever calcified wrinkle cream it is she sells; I want it. I want to look like her when I get older. I know I won't, but I want to. Like her, but with pores. I am human, after all.

I Am The Meanest Mom Alive

It's the general consensus; I am the meanest mom alive. My kid thinks so, the neighborhood kids agree, other parents say "Ooooh," with evil glee when they hear how I punish my kid. Even her teacher reacted with shock upon learning my misbehaving daughter's fate. I am mean, and inventive.

I don't spank. I ground my kid when she messes up, but I ground her with no finite sentence. And I ground her from everything. No TV, no toys, no playing with friends, no leaving the house. She's stuck, either in bed or at school or planted firmly in the computer chair researching her paper. Yep, I assign papers. Sometimes they're on random subjects (biographies of the Mythbusters, anyone?), and sometimes they're topical. Nine days ago I got a call from the teacher to inform me that my lovely daughter had gotten caught lying in class. It's a common enough offense, but one I have to teach her not to do. So she was promptly assigned a paper on Richard Nixon, with emphasis on Watergate. I only asked for one page, but that's a lot to a kid who doesn't seem to believe in adjectives.

So now, making its debut on the world wide web, I present Richard Nixon from an eight year old's point of view:

Richard Nixon by XXXX XXXXXXX

Richard Nixon was born on January 9, 1913 in Yorba Linda, California. He died on April 22, 1994 in Park Ridge, New Jersey from a stroke. His great-grandfather was killed in The Battle of Gettysburg in the Civil War. Nixon was a republican. Nixon was vice-president for Eisenhower. His nickname was “tricky dick”. Nixon was president from 1969-1974. He married Thelma Catherine Ryan, but she went by Pat and her grave says Patricia. They had two daughters, Tricia and Julie. Nixon’s religion was Quaker. He was the thirty-seventh president of the United States. He resigned because he didn’t want to be impeached. Watergate was the name of a hotel where the democrats’ office was. Gerald Ford took over when Nixon resigned, in 1974. He took over because he was vice-president when Spiro Agnew resigned, and took over vice-president then president. Nixon is the only president to have resigned. President Ford pardoned him, so he wasn’t put in prison. G. Gordon Liddy isn’t Gordon Gordon Liddy, as my dumb mom said. His real name is George Gordon Liddy. G. Gordon Liddy went to prison for what he did at Watergate. The Watergate scandal happened in 1972. Watergate was a break-in on June 17. They broke in to fix the phone-bugs of the chairman Larry O’Brien that they had put there on May 27 and 28. The plan originated on February 4, 1972. G. Gordon Liddy was the one who made the plan. It was called the GEMSTONE plan. The movie about it was called “All The President’s Men.” Frank Wills discovered the Watergate scandal. There were many people, including John Sirica. There was a group called “the plumbers unit” to “plug leaks”. There was also another group called CREEP: the committee to re-elect the president, also called CRP. Nixon ran for president twice. Two reporters who broke the story were Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Watergate made his approval rating even lower than George W. Bush’s is. Nixon got in trouble for lying to Congress. They discovered tapes of conversations between Nixon and his advisors, so that was how they discovered that he lied. I do not want to do a report like this again, so I will not lie!


By the way, I'm sure plenty of people get G. Gordon Liddy's name wrong, and I swear I read that somewhere when E. Howard Hunt died a while back.

Update On Thirty

Longtime readers of this blog, if any exist, will remember that I had a hard time turning thirty last summer. It wasn't that I thought it would be the end of my youth, or the beginning of old age, just that I thought that thirty would mean putting aside that search for identity I had been on for twenty-nine years and I wasn't sure what to replace it with. I have never really known who I was, or what, or where I fit in.

See, from sexuality (lesbian, hetero, bi, pan) to religion (Buddhist, Wiccan, Pantheist) I have never really worn labels well. I have rejected labels, denounced labels, and loudly protested people's need for labels, but I have never had one that really stuck. I am human, female, and Caucasian, and that's as far as my concrete knowledge goes. I don't cling to any of those with any sense of pride, and I don't consider any to be a source of personal identity per se, but I acknowledge that they're accurate when asked. (Why is it that spell-check capitalizes Caucasian? Is it really important enough to denounce lower-case?)

I have hung out with ( and keep in mind that these titles were all embraced by the individuals they were describing at the time) stoners, art-fags, white trash, jocks, gear-heads, garage bands, bar bands, D.J.s, metal heads, rednecks, and many more I can't compartmentalize right off the top of my head, and I somehow managed to fit in, for a time, with all of them. I learned quickly, for instance, that all it took to fit in with the art-fags, was a great disdain for anything industrial, the ability to quote (and spell) Nietzsche, and a heavy dose of Kerouac worship. The white trash taught me the importance of driving an American vehicle (even if it is twelve years older than you are and covered in rust) and that the greatest social skill a woman can ever acquire is the ability to sing, from memory, anything Sandy sang in Grease.

Each group had it's own vital knowledge, which any group member was expected to know, and which I was always able to easily figure out. I was somehow able to be "one of the guys" to just about any group of guys. For the gear-heads it was the difference between pearl and metal-flake; for the garage band guys it was how to tighten a snare and never to laugh at the term "plastic wood block". However, for the bar band guys, it was more important to be able to accurately critique the lights and to be able to decipher the screamed lyrics of any popular song.

These were talents I cultivated, bits of knowledge I amassed to be appreciated. I can tell you what churban means and also explain why that DJ at the oldies station got fired (yes, "He sounded too AC" is a valid reason). I can recite amazingly anti-establishment poetry, insincerely, off the top of my head, and tell you how Kerouac met Burroughs (after college, but at the dorm). I have lived for months on just beer and pizza, or cheese and wine and apples, or microwave macaroni and cheese (Michelina's is the best). But I have never been without some outside influence telling me who to be. It's not that I have chosen to spend time with people who demand I be like them. Quite the contrary, I have always been myself with them all. I simply have over-played certain aspects of my psyche to reflect their interests. I suppose that's why I find my marriage so intriguing; I don't have to repress any interests or personality quirks around Tom. I have the opportunity, now, to discover myself, to find out in what ratios these aspects of myself exist. Thirty was a milestone that scared me because I thought it meant the end of that time of self-discovery.

But it doesn't. Tom may be a blue-collar Republican jock farm-boy but I don't have to be, and he will still buy me copies of Dorian Gray and biographies of the beat poets. And I'm free to express an interest in history, or politics, or anything else I enjoy, without fear of judgment. I now see that thirty means not caring if I fit in, not worrying about what others expect from me. I have the next fifty years to find out who I am, and if I'm lucky my tombstone will read, "She finally knew herself." Thirty is good. Thirty is comfortable. Thirty is not to be feared anymore.

Wrinkles, on the other hand, are to be feared and respected in the same way one both fears and respects nuclear weapons. They possess the ability to destroy life as I know it and therefor must be eradicated from the planet, or at least from my face.

Only Respect Intelligence Where You Find It

I have seen headlines all over the net lately about the Boston Bomb Scare. Here's one if you want to read it. I think the lesson to be learned by this is that people in Seattle are far far more intelligent than people in Boston.

This reminds me of the 2000 Florida voting snafu, where a bunch of people accidentally voted for Pat Buchanan because they were too stupid to see his name a half inch from the hole. I can only assume that the large population of retirees in Florida all had cataracts blocking that area of their vision.

Of course, Ted Turner has apologized for the threatening Lite-Brites in Boston, and we now get to vote on electronic machines (great for the retirees, because the elderly are so adept at mastering electronics), but my question is why. Why does Ted Turner have to apologize? Why do we all need to vote with a child's LeapPad? Is there nothing to be said for simply allowing life to punish the stupid the way it always has?

Of course, if Ted Turner had released a statement which read, "After hearing of the fear and panic our advertisers' actions have caused in Boston, I would like to personally apologize for having grossly overestimated the average intelligence of that city's population. You can rest assured that from now on all advertising to be done in the city of Boston by Turner Broadcasting Systems or its affiliates will be in bold printed billboards using only monosyllabic words," the public would be outraged and the ratings for Friends re-runs on TBS would have declined sharply. But come on, it's about time we stop catering to the lowest common denominator. Do we really need to arrest advertisers for trying to catch viewers' attention with bright and shiny signs? This country is filled with people who, like seagulls, become enthralled by anything bright and shiny. That is the Cartoon Network target audience. Who else watches cartoons at ten p.m.?

The people worthy of the least respect in this country seem to be the ones demanding it the loudest. Can't make the Florida voters feel stupid for poking the wrong holes; no, we have to revamp the entire system because stabbing a circle with an arrow a millimeter away telling them what it signifies is far too complex. Well why can't we make the Florida voters feel stupid? The arrow practically touches the dot they punched, and it leads directly to the prominently displayed names of the candidates it represents. If they are too dumb to see that then they probably shouldn't be deciding who runs the country anyway. Maybe if we stopped assuring them that it was in fact a reasonable mistake that could have been made by anyone, they would attempt to become more intelligent. Stupidity should have consequences.

Maybe if we stopped acting like anyone could mistake a sign advertising cartoons for a terrorist act and asked these people out loud why they shut down half of Boston, they would be forced to at least admit that they overreacted. But no, any illuminated sign that doesn't advertise beer or gasoline must be explosive. And they really truly believe that anyone else would have made the same mistake, despite the fact that other cities with the same ad campaign in place hadn't.

Stupid people are demanding not to be condescended to, to be respected for their lacking intelligence and to be catered to specifically for that lack. I believe everyone should be treated with respect, and I'm also all in favor of making public policies as accommodating to people as possible, including making cash easier for the blind to use and making alarms in public buildings recognizable to the deaf. But when some idiot calls up city hall and requests a bomb squad shut down a major highway because a sign has "batteries and wires", I believe that the idiots should be inconvenienced before those possessing common sense.