Practically Harmless

On Super Commando and the Funky Bunch

2012-01-27T07:59:00.002-06:00

Dooouche...

Mark "Invincible" "Entourage" "Date Night" Wahlberg has a message for all the families of passengers on Flight 93: Your loved ones died because they were pussies and didn't have the balls to judo-chop one of the terrorists and punch another one in the sternum so hard he flew all the way back into coach and blast another one with his eyeball-rays and choke the fourth one to death with the sheer force of his steely glare, then singlehandedly land the plane like Marky Mark totally would have if he'd been on board.

"If I was on that plane with my kids, it wouldn't have went down like it did," Wahlberg says. "There would have been a lot of blood in that first-class cabin and then me saying, 'OK, we're going to land somewhere safely, don't worry.'"

Douche.

Super Commando did issue an apology ("apology") via People saying that his statement was "irresponsible" and he's sorry that it "came off as insensitive." (Yeah, "came off as insensitive." It totally wasn't insensitive, but I can see how it might have sounded like it was.) Then, while his publicist was in the bathroom, he sneaked onto a radio show to keep digging a deeper hole. Radar has the transcript, but Celebitchy offers a more concise summary.

First, he would NEVER disrespect 9/11 families. Then he only disrespected the families because he's not really an actor, he's a tough dude from the streets and he just wasn't thinking. Then he just said that stuff because no one ever wants to talk to him about all of the charity work he does! Then he only said it because he was asked about it and he is forced to go wherever the interviewer wants to go. And finally, he only said that stuff because it's just the interviewer's interpretation.

"I'm really sorry." Say it with me, now, Super Commando: "I'm really sorry. I was shooting my mouth off, and it was completely wrong and insensitive." Got it?

"It was completely wrong and insensitive, but all I was trying to say was that--"

No, Super Commando! No!

"I'm really sorry."

There you go. Jesus, someone find his handlers. I think they're tied up in a closet somewhere.

On the Good, the Bad, and the Friday Not-Even-Random Ten: Enough With the Bad Already edition

2011-12-30T22:11:00.002-06:00

Okay, so so 2011 is drawing to a close, and it's been… a good one? There are twelve months to look back on and decide, and just listing things out, it comes out pretty even. But just in terms of it being a landing you can walk away from, then yeah, I'll say it was a good year, warts and all. And for this TGTBATFRT--just this one--we're going to look past the warts, the failures, the exhibitions of cruelty, and the general stupidity that arises from time to time and makes one wonder about the fate of humanity, and focus on the good things that give the world hope.

I don't want to give any indication that the low points of 2011 aren't worthy of notice. But just for a moment, I want to fill the glass halfway. The good parts number far more than I have room for here, and I'm sure I've forgotten many more and will have to add them in comments as they come up. My mom has a superstition, passed down from her dad, who probably got it from someone crotchety and Slovak, that whatever you're doing on New Year's Day is what you'll be doing all year long. I like to think I'll spend 2012 thinking happily about good times. (And eating Chick-fil-A, and I have plans for making that happen.)

So in the interest of following through with that plan, I give you:

What's good (for the year ending December 31, 2011):

- Readers who've stuck with me. I've been so unforgivably lax about keeping up with this blog, even after crafting myself multiple ways of making it just as laziable as possible. The fact that when I do post, I still get comments, is a real thrill.

- Subway veggie subs, 6", on wheat, with spinach, tomato, cucumbers, green peppers, black olives, a little bit of salt and pepper, and a little bit of mustard. They're a delicious and fresh and crispy lunch for those of us who don't insist that something die for every meal.

- People making good, smart, compassionate choices in Mississippi

- The last episode of The Walking Dead before the break

- Lanacane Anti-Chafing Gel. It turns out the stuff that athletes put on to keep from getting all chafed in their chafey parts--I know, right?--has basically the same ingredients as foundation primers from big makeup brands like Smashbox at one-sixth the price. I started wearing primer when it became evident that my skin isn't, for some reason, the same as it was when I was 20, and this is some good stuff.

- The new gig at Feministe. This one has its good and its bad aspects, the worst being that yeah, I've been really bad about neglecting the readers I have back home. And being beholden to a community that big and that… vehement can be kind of stressful. But it's also pretty fulfilling.

- My family. They're good every year, but they were good this year, so they go on the list. Also good is that not only is it expanding, it's expanding with good people, among them Big Bro's girlfriend whom I dig like the sister I didn't know about until my early thirties. Also, Skipdog.

- Skipdog. Yes, okay, fine, he's a good boy. He got over the peeing-on-stuff thing, and he only ate the one shoe, and he's like a little hot-water bottle on a cold night. The trying-to-lick-the-inside-of-your-nostrils thing is a bit much, though.

- Hyphens

- Davedog. Always.

- Dog sweaters. The problem here is that I hate dog sweaters, but then we got Skip a couple of sweatshirts for winter, and he looks so adorably pathetic in them. Really, he hates them, and it's so cute.

- Freelancing. Much like with blogging, it's nice to know that people appreciate the work you do and don't just throw it your way because you're already on salary. And it's nice to be able to do the work you want to do and enjoy, not just the work that's thrown your way because you're already on salary. Also, paychecks? Very nice.

- eBay

- A leather jacket. Everyone should own one. After extensive testing, I've discovered there's no way not to feel like a badass wearing a leather jacket. (Price prohibitive? That's one reason eBay is on the Good list.)

- Adafruit. If you wanted to make, say, a Tron: Legacy-inspired motorcycle jacket that actually lights up, you might find yourself looking for EL wire and accompanying materials, and this is a good place for it.

- Tron: Legacy. Technically, this is a Good from 2010, but I don't think I saw it until 2011, so it still counts. Also, technically, it's not all that fantastic a movie, and the CGI'd Young Jeff Bridges is deeply creepy, but it's really entertaining, and Olivia Wilde is hot enough to make me change sides.

- Thor

- Getting together again with friends for the first time in years and discovering that yeah, you still know how to have fun together

- Carmex lip balm

- Feather earrings

- Sequined dresses. Hellooo, New Year's Eve.

- Walkies. Oh, how a quick jaunt out during the workday can preserve me from stabbing people in the neck with a ballpoint pen in a fog of impotent rage.

- KnitPicks. It's got the best selection of nice yarns at good prices I've yet found.

- Penguin sweaters

- Stereo bluetooth headsets

- Jukefox

- Warm winter gloves with fake-fur cuffs

- Having someone available to give you a ride to work when it's cold and wet

- Having someone to kiss at midnight

- The Boy. There aren't words.

The Ten, plus two, as usual with the assumption that said random sampling will give me clues about what to expect in the coming year.

1. Maroon 5, "This Love"
2. Korn, "Chi"
3. Harry Manx, "Dog My Cat"
4. Pet Shop Boys, "Being Boring"
5. Chevelle, "Until You're Reformed"
6. Jay-Z and Danger Mouse, "What More Can I Say"
7. Sting, "Stolen Car (Take Me Dancing)"
8. The Donnas, "It Takes One to Know One"
9. Letters to Cleo, "Cruel to Be Kind"
10. Guster, "Grin"
11. Nena, "Leuchtturn (Neue Versions)"
12. The Darkness, "Givin' Up"

Sounds… kind of promising, actually. Happy new year to you all, stick with me, stay safe, take care, and I'll see you next year.

On Emma Sullivan vs. Sam Brownback: A marketing case study

2011-12-05T01:32:00.000-06:00

This post has been cross-posted at Feministe, which is a good place to go for more about Emma Sullivan and her shameful tweet.

Okay, so the biggest screwup out of Kansas Governor Sam Brownback's office of late is easy: tattling on an 18-year-old to her high school for some juvenile comment she made on Twitter during a Youth in Government field trip to the capitol. I mean, seriously: Emma Sullivan says, to her mob of 60 whole Twitter followers, "Governor Brownback sucks." Brownback's staff runs to YinG and Sullivan's school to say, "Waah! Your student is being mean!" And supposedly Sullivan is the immature one.

One thing Brownback's office didn't do wrong, although they're taking some flak for it, was monitoring Twitter for mention of Governor Brownback. This isn't creepy or paranoid--it's actually marketing best practice. Online social media offers people, businesses, and organizations unprecedented access to the feelings and opinions of their target audiences. If you hear that people are criticizing you about a certain issue, you're now able to reconsider your stance on it, make a note to address it publicly in the future, or even communicate with aggrieved individuals directly. Or if you see that some high-school student has tweeted that you suck, you can roll your eyes and say, "Nice. Really mature" and move on. (Or show some respect to a constituent and reply, "I'm sorry you feel that way. Why do you think the governor sucks?" Or be silly and reply, "No, YOU #blowalot… for tweeting about the governor when you could just ask him yourself. What can we do for you?" There are a hundred ways to handle it before you get to tattling.)

But there's one comment from Brownback's director of communication, Sherriene Jones-Sontag, that makes me think she's completely ignorant of the functions of her own job:

That wasn't respectful," responded Sherriene Jones-Sontag. "In order to really have a constructive dialogue, there has to be mutual respect."

1. When someone tells you you suck on Twitter, she's probably not attempting to start a constructive dialogue--she's probably just venting. And/or goofing around with her friends.

2. If you see it as something that could start a dialogue, that's your job--not hers. She's an aggrieved constituent; she's not required to use a particular tone or demonstrate a certain degree of deference to get her voice heard. You are the director of communication, for sobbing out loud. Your educated knowledge of the art of communication should tell you that if you want a dialogue started, you have to start it, and if you want to be addressed respectfully, you have to show respect. Jones-Sontag's response makes it sound like His Highness will only speak with if you bow to him first, and that just isn't how elected officials work.

(And although it's easy to paint Governor Brownback as the baddie here, I am willing to accept that he had no knowledge of all this before the shit hit the fan, if only because I've never worked with anyone above a managerial level who could pick Twitter out of a police lineup.)

The reason this entire exchange went to hell was that Jones-Sontag didn't see Emma Sullivan as a constituent. Despite the fact that Sullivan is of voting age and a concerned, informed citizen of Kansas, Jones-Sontag saw her as a little girl who needed scolding for sassing her elders and treated her as such.

If the governor's office had looked past the crude-ish language and contacted Sullivan directly, they might have learned that, for instance, she was frustrated by Brownback's recent veto of public arts funding for the entire state, and that she wanted to bring it up while she had the chance to talk with him but was afraid that Youth in Government would punish her for asking a controversial question while everyone else was asking more superficial ones. I mean, holy crap. Those are significant issues, worthy of discussion--if you're willing to see someone as an adult human being, "#heblowsalot" notwithstanding, and engage her thusly.

Taking Sullivan seriously would have been a great opportunity to address those issues, not to mention great publicity for handling the situation well and being respectful of a young constituent. Instead, they treated her like a stupid teenager and drew more attention to all of it than would have come if they'd just let it slide. Well fielded.

Oh, and 3. You tattled to her school. That is the one action you took. Seriously. Seriously? This is what they teach you in PR school? Or did you sleep through the section on recognizing and communicating with your publics? Man, kids these days, amiright?

On homophonia

2011-11-30T01:15:00.003-06:00

Okay, so I'm a word Nazi. (I know, I know--take a moment to clutch your pearls… Moment's over.) I work in writing. I come by it honestly. And there are a few mistakes I've seen from people who otherwise tend to have their stuff grammatically and semantically together. George Orwell called the phenomenon "dead metaphors": when a common phrase loses all context and becomes just words arranged in a pattern, so it's easy to sub in a wrong word for a right one and end up with a both virulent and self-sustaining case of incorrectness.

Read on to learn about a few common mistakes. (I'd say you should read on if you suspect you're making mistakes, but you probably don't even know you're making them, or else you'd stop doing it.)

You don't reign someone in. It doesn't have anything to do with royalty or reigning over anyone. (Besides, that would be "reigning over," not "reigning in.") it's reining someone in, like they're a horse and you're pulling back on the reins to restrain them.

The horse was getting kind of crazy, so I reined him in.
Congress needs to rein in its out-of-control spending habits.

Similarly, you don't give someone free reign. This one's a more understandable mistake--someone could, theoretically, be free to reign--but it's still wrong. It's about horses again.

I gave the horse free rein so he could jump the fence unhindered.
Atkins doesn't allow you to eat dessert, but you do get free rein to attack the carving station.

You don't tow the line. You aren't a ski boat. (Or maybe you are a ski boat. I don't know your life.) You toe the line: Someone has drawn a line that you're meant to line up on, as in the military, and by putting your toes on it, you're doing as directed or performing as is expected of you.

If you don't toe the line, I'm going to make you peel potatoes.
The boss has laid down her expectations for you--you'd better start toeing the line, or you're going to get fired.

You don't pawn things off on people. You're not trying to sell them your belongings. (Unless you are trying to sell them your belongings, in which case… pawn away.) You're palming, like a magician does: hiding something in the palm of your hand that you're going to hand off to a knowing or unknowing subject.

The crooked dealer palmed the ace off to the cheating player.
The editor tried to palm off her work on her assistant.

You don't hone in on anything. Although sometimes you do, depending on which grammar book you're looking at. Regardless, if you're going for accuracy, you're homing in on something--approaching a target, in the manner of a homing pigeon flying determinedly home. To hone something means to make it sharper, like a knife (which could be dangerous to a pigeon) or an argument (which you're certain to lose, because those pigeons are sharp [much like a knife (that has been honed)]).

The pigeon knew where it was going and homed in on its destination.
After lengthy investigation, the engineers are beginning to home in on the source of the problem.

You don't have vocal chords. This is another tricky one, because when you think voice you think singing, and when you think singing you think music, and when you think music you think chords. Well, it doesn't really matter what you think, because "chords" is wrong. The vocal cords are two pieces of tissue stretched across the windpipe that vibrate to make sound. That sound might be part of a chord, but it isn't itself likely to be a chord unless you're a polyphonic Buddhist monk. And if you are, that's awesome. Thanks for reading.

The polyphonic Buddhist monks could make their vocal cords sing several notes at once, which is full-on awesome, and they're also nice to hang out with.

You aren't phased by anything. Now, maybe you phase, after which you will have had phased, but you'll never be phased. And phasing suddenly might faze you, in the sense of being surprising or disconcerted.

The schmuck acted like he wasn't fazed by the monks' polyphony, but he was totally faking.

Problems for me? Helath, cacner, and uniservity. Not misspelling, per se--just fat-fingering. But not great if you work at a uniservity helath system with a nationally ranked cacner center. Sometimes, when I type too fast, my job is hard. What trips you up?

On Mashup Monday: Graveyard Smash edition

2011-10-31T21:18:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I was kind of worried about this Halloween. Thanks to the new "papers, please" immigration law in Alabama, the apartment complex down the hill from me practically cleared out, and I was convinced we weren't going to get any trick-or-treaters this year. Not to get all serious or whatever.

We did get a few, though, and they were actually in costume, which was nice, and in non-shitty costumes, which was extra nice, and they all actually said, "Trick or treat!" instead of just mumbling and shoving their bags at us (with the exception of two really little kids who appeared too intimidated by The Boy to speak up). Also, a puppy dressed as a pirate (OMG, y'all). Also, lots of leftover candy. Also-also, Fanta Zero and Bacardi Coco. So a good night, all told.

Also-also-also:

VV Brown/Bobby "Boris" Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers - The Monster Mashup

Happy Halloween, y'all. And since I know at least one of you was wondering: Amy Pond.

On TV shows that aren't meant to be watched as marathons: Glee

2011-10-13T23:35:00.000-05:00

Okay, so the problem with Netflix is that when you find a show that's available in full seasons, the temptation exists to watch them, well, in full seasons. You tell yourself you're going to watch two episodes, and then it's late but there's time for one more, but that one was a two-parter and now you have to watch the second part, and before you know it you're asleep in front of the TV, dreaming that you're sitting at a piano and Lea Michele is circling you like a shark, and you wake up screaming.

And as you watch, little things start to jump out at you: Rachel says something obnoxious in three... two... one... There. Mr. Schue hands out an awkwardly conceived theme assignment in three... two... one... There. Accompanist(s) appear without warning in three... two... one... There. After-school-special moral in three... two... All things that would seem quasi-natural (natural for a musical-comedy TV show) one episode at a time become annoyingly predictable in sequence.

So no, Glee isn't meant to be watched as a marathon. There are just too many tropes that are hard to ignore when they're stacked on top of each other.

1. Finn and the drums. For some reason, Finn Hudson always ends up on the drums. Always. He's on the drums. He's singing and on the drums. He's singing and on the drums and then… walking away from the drums. That other guy is on the drums, and somehow Finn is back there playing too. And Finn knows all of two rhythms. Finn, just give John back his drumsticks and go back to singing in a tenor that's kind of disconcerting from a man of your size. Give him--Finn, give him the sti--Drop it. Drop it.

2. Poop notes. Lea Michele/Rachel Berry is passionate about her music. So passionate, in fact, that each high note has to be laid like an egg. Watch the way she squats down, squints her eyes, and wails out that note--it's equal parts "feeling the music" and "needing more roughage." (Now that Blaine has transferred to McKinley, we see more of Darren Criss's approach, which involves squinting his eyes, wrinkling his nose, and turning his head in the classic, "Jesus, God, who beefed?")

3. Asian kids are Asian. Things that Mike Chang and Tina Cohen-Chang (unrelated; dating; because all Asians are named "Chang," right?) talk about: Asian food, Asian couple's counseling, "Asian kiss[es]," getting an "Asian F," and Asian Santa Claus. And something about tea made from panda hair. Because they're Asian!

3a. Mercedes is big and black. And sassy! Had you noticed? She sings about weaves and tater-tots and says "hell to the no" a lot. (Also: Kurt is gay and wears designer clothes and sings songs written for girls!)

4. The Grand Piano Derby. Put Rachel, Finn--frankly, put any of the kids up next to the grand piano and they'll end up circling it over and over and over as they sing like they're looking for an opening to pounce. I'm just waiting for the day poor Brad finally gets uncontrollably queasy and barfs on Rachel's penny loafers.

5. Nude erections. Say it. "And now, some song weakly shoehorned into the theme of the week, performed by the Nude Erections." Say it out loud.

Glee remains fun--just in measured doses. Keep at least a week between episodes, and you might not notice the constant barrage of "Lauren Zizes is fat, but she thinks she's super hot!" jokes and find the character kind of cool and entertaining. And we have to give Sue Sylvester credit for her Tupperware-esque shelf life: Even an episode that's stale as vending-machine crackers can be perked up with a cheerleader cannon and a reference to her time in Special Forces.

On Mashup Monday: Just Wanna Tell You How I'm Feeling edition

2011-10-10T23:59:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I don't suppose it's actually a Rickroll if you know he's coming. Otherwise, I'd have to save this for April Fool's Day. But this is no prank--no, the sweet, dulcet tones of Rick Astley telling what he is and is not going to do can be considered nothing but a gift. So you're welcome.

Rick Astley/Nirvana

Gotta make you understand...

On the Good, the Bad, and the Friday Not-Even-Random Ten: Bueller? Bueller? edition

2011-10-07T19:16:00.001-05:00

Okay, so it was just a quick break. Making sure you'd miss me while I was gone. Did it work? [cricket sounds… cricket sounds…]

What's good (for the indeterminate period ending 10/7):

- The Nobel Peace Prize, this year awarded to three women: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee, and Tawakkul Karman. These leaders and activists demonstrate that women's issues aren't just some niche concern and that world peace can't exist without addressing the needs of fifty percent of the world population.

- See that last link? That's me, yo! Having a fancy-schmancy big-time blogging job is good.

- Nuts.

- Whatever lipstick Amy Pond has been wearing throughout her tenure on Doctor Who. I've taken to calling it Amy Pond Red, and I want it. If anyone can find a color match for Amy Pond Red, please let me know.

- Sally Hansen Tough as Nail Xtreme Wear nail polish in Gunmetal.

What's bad:

- Alabama's new immigration law. Listen, I recognize that illegal immigration is a problem. It's not like I'm completely ignorant of that and Pollyana-ish that it's problematic. But profiling drivers and demanding immigration papers at traffic stops, requiring schools to determine the immigration status of their students, and forbidding anyone to give an illegal immigrant a sandwich or an afternoon's work or a ride to the hospital is sick. As a nation, we're supposed to be better than that.

- Not having a parade to sing in when you're skipping work in celebration of the 25th anniversary of Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

The Ten:

1. Big Audio Dynamite, "Bad"
2. The Dream Academy, "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want"
3. The Beatles, "Twist and Shout"
4. John Williams, "Star Wars (Main Title)"
5. Zapp, "Radio People"
6. The (English) Beat, "March of the Swivelheads"
7. Yello, "Oh Yeah"
8. Blue Room, "I'm Afraid"
9. The Flowerpot Men, "Beat City"
10. Wayne Newton, "Danke Schoen"

Your Ten, your favorite Ferris Bueller quotes, and your--Okay, screw it, find that lipstick for me and put the name of it in comments. Find it. NOW.

On a squirrel trying to get a--wait, no, he seems to be okay

2011-10-06T22:08:00.001-05:00

Okay, so there's nothing more shocking than public nudity, but some folks are just shameless. They just don't care. They don't care whose moments they're spoiling, or which impressionable eyes might be watching.

Shameful brazenness hidden behind the jump for the sake of the innocent.

Shameful.

(h/t Feministe)

On Mashup Monday: Back (I'm pretty sure) and better(ish) than ever edition

2011-10-03T22:41:00.000-05:00

Or, We Apologize for Interrupting This Interruption

Okay, so I know I promised that my new blogging gig wouldn't come between us, and it now seems time to come to terms with something: I'm full of shit. Just haven't been trying hard enough. Really sorry about that. I'ma fix that. See? I'm posting right now! Does that count?

What if made an apology? What about a gift? What about a mashup gift? What about Notorious B.I.G. and Tom Petty?

Notorious B.I.G./Tom Petty - Mo' Free, Mo' Fallin'

Pair those overly-familiar guitars and that damn “can’t-eject-from-brain” hook with the radio-glossed truth-isms of Kelly Price and “Shiny Suit Era”-heyday tag-team of Ma$e and Biggie (sans The Artist Then Known As Puff Daddy) rapping about their rich man problems though, as those master mash-uppers The White Panda have done in their latest creation, and you’re talking something we could blast on repeat for days.

Marrying Biggie with White folks’ music will never lose it’s novelty awesomeness.

More to come, I promise. Thanks for hanging around.

On the science of, like, science

2011-08-06T13:30:00.000-05:00

Okay, so sometimes I feel like I spend a lot of time poking at religion--particularly Christianity--on this blog, which initially doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I don't hate Christianity. I don't hate Christians. I actually enjoy my faith and my faith community and take a lot of comfort in it. But honestly, some Christians--some Christians--if I'm honest, way too many Christians--throw a spark in it because they make me look bad. They take the name of a perfectly good theology and do stupid things with it. If I'm having a discussion with a non-Christian wherein my beliefs come up, and it's revealed that I am, in fact, feminist, pro-choice, pro-gay rights, and pro-evolution, someone always ends up saying, "Well, then, you aren't exactly a Christian, now, are you?" and then I say, "Shuh up!" and then there's a discussion of a Biblical defense for homophobia and the epistles of Paul and it ends in blood or cupcakes.

That said: A conversation I had over the weekend with a dear friend--and an otherwise very smart, reasonable friend--made me feel that this kind of post might be necessary. And "necessary" might be the wrong word for it, since in my experience, my reader(s) tend to be the kind of smart, reasonable people who get this kind of thing already. But sometimes (e.g., this weekend), people surprise you. Thus, with a sincere effort at not even bringing religious justification into it:

Why You Can't Teach Creationism In Science Class

Because it isn't science.

This has been Why You Can't Te--What? … Nuh-uh. … It is, too, valid.

Evolution is science because it's science-y. There's a certain science-ness to it. I find it hard to really define it, because to me, it self-defines. In terms of other definitions, Merriam-Webster have a pretty good and thorough one, and I have a bit of one myself: Science is the satisfaction of curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge using systematic methods and relying on testable evidence.

The theory of evolution is those things. (Sidebar: In science, a theory is a model for explaining phenomena based on--among other things--empirical evidence, consistency, and zebra/horse simplicity. It's not a theory like our standard "I have a theory as to why Bella was such a pathetic little whiner"; that's more in the direction of a hypothesis, which is something you test in order to formulate a theory. Now back to our show.)

We (meaning human scientists way smarter and more determined than I) have followed evidence through the fossil record, watching one critter make tiny changes over the course of billions of years until it turns into a different critter entirely. We've both observed in nature and experimented with microevolution. We've observed unexpected biological similarities between seemingly unrelated species. We've fallen off the jungle gym and wondered why we have tailbones, since we obviously don't have tails.

And sure, there are holes here and there, but there always will be, and scientists are working to fill them in--that's how science works. New knowledge brings new questions, and as more information comes along that contradicts current theory, science changes to incorporate the new knowledge into our understanding of the world around us. With extensive study, evolution remains the simplest model that takes into account all of the current evidence without leaving anything behind, and that makes the minimum baseless assumptions.

Creation… isn't that. It's not science. At the very center of it is the existence of a higher power, for which there exists no empirical evidence. It's not testable--you can't experiment with divine creation or try to reproduce micro-creation in a lab. You can't apply the scientific method to it. It depends largely on discarding significant chunks of current evidence and claiming that God put it there. It relies on faith, belief without evidence (or in the face of contradictory evidence). And it doesn't have the minimum assumptions--it has the biggest imaginable assumption, which is that there is a god.

I'm not even going to try to tell you whether divine creation, as written in the Bible or elsewhere, exists. I have my own feelings on the subject, but my feelings--and anyone else's feelings--on the subject don't matter in this context. What matters is what you teach in science class, and that's science. It's not religion, it's not controversy, it's science. And when someone finds a science-y approach to addressing the subject of divine creation, you can jump on in, and I can't wait to hear what you have to say. Until then, you can find room for creation in humanities and literature and even world history, if you have the time. But science class is for teaching science, and divine creation isn't that. Not even a little bit.

On confessions of infidelity

2011-07-28T07:25:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I know you've been wondering where I've been and where my head has been lately. (I know this because I've been getting e-mails from absolutely none of you asking if I'm okay. Thanks, y'all. Feeling the love.) And it's true, I've been negligent. But for once, there's a good reason: I've been cheating on you.

Wait, that doesn't sound good.

There's a good reason: I've been cheating on you with four women.

That's better.

So I'm the new staff blogger at Feministe, a blog you will recognize from all of the post topics I've blatantly stolen from them when I've been too lazy to come up with my own. I think they just got tired of me ganking their content and decided it was time for me to give back once in a while. I'll be posting regularly over there under the name Caperton (she has a name! My gift to you), but I'll also keep posting here, so wipe that delicate, crystalline tear from your eye. You'll be getting the same fun and snark and meaningful commentary and vicious take-downs and language that makes my parents ashamed of me, with the added bonus of extra fun and snark and meaningful commentary and vicious take-downs and language that makes my parents even more ashamed of me because it's in front of a larger audience, at an ad-supported blog, using my actual name. It'll be fun.

Seriously, though, I don't intend to let this affect my blogging here. If anything, it might improve it. I have the best reader(s) in the world over here, and the choicest morsels are for you. Remember: You were my firstborn, and thus I will always love you more.

On a happy honeymoon

2011-07-27T00:13:00.000-05:00

Okay, so Sunday was a big day for a lot of brides and grooms--particularly in New York, where for the first time ever brides were able to marry brides and grooms to marry grooms. Among them were Jonathan Mintz and John Feinblatt, one of the first gay couples to marry under New York's new law. The linked NYT article isn't just about them, though. It's about the entire family: Mintz, Feinblatt, and their daughters Maeve and Georgia, all of whom are about to become a family in a way the state of New York has never recognized before.

It's a really, really great and touching article, and I'm happy for all of them. But I'm always the type to miss the point entirely and get hung up on stuff I find touching. (Do not sit down to watch TV commercials with me.) For instance:

Feinblatt, 60, who is Bloomberg’s chief policy adviser, and Mintz, 47, the city’s commissioner of consumer affairs, have lived together for more than 13 years, the last eight in a West Village townhouse.

To go that distance, adjustments were necessary. Feinblatt, the less orderly one, learned to accept that no matter where he dropped his suitcase, it would “be moved to a ‘better’ place,” he said.

“A much better place,” Mintz added.

You know why? Because there's a right place to put your suitcase, My--er, John.

And this is a big deal:

Both girls are Feinblatts. Mintz says he "horse-traded" his surname in return for getting "Daddy." Feinblatt took "Dad."

It might not be a huge deal for y'all, but to me, nailing down "Daddy" is pretty significant. Daddies are important. (I love you, Daddy.)

As for this:

They have three dogs, one a recent surprise birthday gift for Georgia. Maeve says she predicted it. She mischievously maintains she sees portents in the sky.

“We’re trying to dissuade her,” Mintz said. “We’re concerned there’s no scholarship in psychic cloud reading.”

That's just discriminatory.

It's a family, y'all--maybe not the kind you're used to seeing, but all of the important ingredients are right there. There are kids who pray to be a part of a stable, caring family like that. Seriously, anyone who doesn't get why this is a good thing doesn't have a heart. Congratulations and best wishes to the Feinblatt-Mintzes.

On finding work

2011-07-26T20:42:00.000-05:00

Okay, so this one is a short one, and it goes out to Big Bro, who is now blissfully employed after more than a year of being-laid-offness: Jobs listing say the unemployed need not apply.

Think it's just a misleading headline? Oh, if only.

Hundreds of job opening listings posted on Monster.com and other jobs sites explicitly state that people who are unemployed would be less attractive applicants, with some telling the long-term unemployed to not even bother with applying.

The New York Times' Catherine Rampell said she found preferences for the already employed or only recently laid off in listings for "hotel concierges, restaurant managers, teachers, I.T. specialists, business analysts, sales directors, account executives, orthopedics device salesmen, auditors and air-conditioning technicians." Even the massive University of Phoenix stated that preference, but removed the listings when the Times started asking questions.

So there it is. All of you unemployed folk who are still unemployed, know that your ongoing unemployment is just a result of you being... unemployed. If it makes you feel any better... Nah, I got nothin'.

On religion, skepticism, and being a dick

2011-07-20T18:06:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I'm going to warn you right up front that this is going to be a rather serious, sincerely personal (and unexpectedly lengthy) post. It feels strange to throw up an "intimate personal sharing" trigger warning, but that's kind of what it is: If you'd like to stick with the lighthearted, there'll be another BSC chapter coming up shortly. Or kittens or something.

Now, then.

Part I: Faith

'Roundabout two years ago, I left the Catholic church. It was an intensely hard decision. I'd been struggling with my religion for some time--not my faith, mind you, but my religion. My faith in God was, for the most part, as strong as ever. It was my relationship with what purported to be His personal church of choice that was such a struggle for me.

My problem was simply that the more I learned about myself and the more I pursued a personal relationship with God on top of the more professional one I had with Him through church, the less my beliefs about religion and life and even myself fit with what I was being taught. It brewed for a long time: reproductive rights, the church's treatment of women, the church's treatment of gays, the handling of the pedophile priests--all the things that the church had one lesson about while my heart told me something entirely different.

It's one of the worst kinds of cognitive dissonance, when you're at odds not just with a trusted friend but with an institution that's been at or near the center of your life since a priest poured water on your little baby head. It's an institution that has literally heard you confess your deepest secrets and is supposed to help guide you through a good, moral life to a kickin' afterlife. For that matter, it's something you've shared with your family for an hour each week, plus holidays and every time you've said grace before a meal. It was meant to be with me from birth through six of the sacraments and to death and beyond, and I was so conflicted and pained I could barely look it in the eye.

If you ask, some priests will tell you that it's not a sin to question the church. It's actually a good thing, they'll say, to examine your beliefs and the history and tenets given to you, because it leads to a deeper and more meaningful understanding of your faith. These priests are very nice and generally fun to talk to, but they don't represent the prevailing attitude of the church as a whole, which tends toward "blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

When you're going through such things, the advice you get is to pray. You don't change God--you ask God to change you. (I've heard similar things about Vera Wang.) My job was to pray, hard and sincerely and often, for God to turn me around to His way of thinking. I had to ask Him to make me want and need and feel what He wanted me to want and need and feel, and if it wasn't happening, I was meant to keep begging until my beliefs matched those of the church. And I tried. As much as it hurt--and it did, physically--and as disgusting as it felt to beg God to make me believe things I knew in my heart were wrong, I prayed for Him to change my heart.

And of course it didn't work. But I was following the steps--step, really--as instructed. So something had to be wrong with me. (Theme, here?) "Have you been praying?" Yes. Frequently. "Have you been opening yourself up to God?" As much as I can. "Do you truly want Him to change your heart?" Of course not; everything I'm being told to believe is what I consider to be in diametrical opposition to what we're given as God's nature. I think it's terrible. "Well, that's your problem. You have to open yourself to Him and beg Him to fill you with His grace." Open. Begging. Filling. Grace. Got it.

And the more I prayed, the more it didn't work, and the more I was told that I'm just not doing it right, I just don't want it enough, and if I were doing it right and wanted it enough I would be in harmony with God already. I didn't even bother telling them that the more I prayed and meditated, the more strongly I felt that God really was the compassionate and loving deity the Catholic church no longer talked about and that He wanted us to be that way, too. As I prayed, I started to develop the personal relationship with God that I get the feeling you're not really supposed to have, because it confirmed and reinforced the same beliefs I was supposed to pray to eradicate.

But I kept praying. I talked to the kindest, holiest people I knew. I talked to a nun. I talked to my mom. And I made the mistake of continuing to talk to the people who had been giving me such swell advice all along--pray more. Open yourself. Ask God to change your heart. Want it more. Really want it.

The answer finally came one Sunday in the middle of church. The priest--old to the priesthood but new to our church, brought in when our regular priest was promoted to the cathedral--had just introduced a homily talking about people who profess Catholicism but whose actions seem to contradict the teachings of the church. "Nancy Pelosi says she's a Catholic," he began.

And that was all it took for me. I belonged to a church which, even if just through the words of one priest, publicly called a woman out from the pulpit for exactly what I was feeling. "Nancy Pelosi says she's a Catholic" but is feminist and outspoken and pro-choice and pro-equality--like me. I never heard the rest of the homily; I got up--quietly, unobtrusively, and without drama--and walked out.

If being at odds with the church had been painful, being without the church was misery. I began trying to attend an Episcopal church, but it was hard; everything was so similar to what I'd grown up with but just different enough to remind me that it wasn't the same, that it wasn't what I'd grown up with, that I couldn't have that anymore, and that right now my mom wasn't sitting in the same Mass 200 miles away like she always was before. It was more than a month before I could make it through an entire service without crying. Even after I found a new church that was welcoming and friendly (thanks to a dear friend who used to work for Planned Parenthood and who is married to an Episcopal priest), it was a good long while before I got over the loss of that part of my life and my anger at the church for that loss.

So that's how I left the faith of my mother and my religious home of more than a quarter of a century.

Part II: Logic

An ex-Catholic is, in some communities, a bit of a coup. An ex-Catholic is someone who has dug through so much of the crap the church provides, seen it for what it is, and moved beyond it. For the movement skeptic and/or atheist crowds (and they aren't necessarily the same), it's a first step, the beginning of a path to the eventual realization that not just religion but the very existence of a higher power is bunk and completely unsupported by falsifiable evidence.

Allow me to state for the record (not that you could stop me, because this is my blog): I believe that the existence of a higher power is completely unsupported by falsifiable evidence. There's no evidence that there is a god, and there are no tests that can be performed to demonstrate the existence of God. Science and faith are completely at odds: While science depends on the discovery of new evidence to develop and progress knowledge, faith is--by definition--the belief in something completely lacking in evidence. Religion depends on adherents believing in God without evidence, and anyone who claims to have evidence of the existence of God is missing the point. Blessed are those who have not seen…

That said, I still believe. I recognize that there's no logical reason to continue believing in a higher power. It's nothing new--I knew back before I left the Catholic church that my belief in God wasn't based on logic or evidence. It's why I've never tried evangelizing: I can't provide anyone with a logical, reasonable argument in support of a supernatural god. But I believe just the same. Maybe God is speaking to me, or maybe I've been so brainwashed since infancy that my mind can't conceive of a world without a benevolent higher power in it, but the faith is there.

But spend enough time around skeptics and atheists, and you're going to start hearing the argument. "There's no evidence to support a higher power." Correct. "Believing in something even when you know full well there's no evidence is a form of mental illness." Arguably, yeah. "Anyone who believes in a god is either crazy or stupid." Rather harsh, that, but I see where you're coming from.

Being in the direct fire of that kind of rhetoric is particularly bracing. "Why do you believe in God?" I just do. "You don't have any logical reason to believe." I never said I did. "If you'll examine things critically, you'll understand how ridiculous it is." I have done, and I do. "How can you know all of that and still believe in God?" I just do. "How can you shun superstition and pseudoscience and still believe in God?" I just do. "Have you tried to not believe? Don't you want to not believe?" No,

Granted, the skeptics have logic, reason, and the scientific method on their side, which gives them infinitely more points than their theist adversaries. But the message I get is chillingly similar--"Do you understand? So why do you still believe? How can you still believe, in the face of all you know? Have you reviewed the information? Read the history? Are you trying to follow the evidence and abandon your favorite sky fairy?" Yes, I understand, I know the facts, and I embrace logic, reason, skepticism, and evidence. I understand and accept that such belief in the face of fact and reason is tantamount to a mental illness, and that there's willful stupidity attached. I know these things. They don't not shake my faith because you'll be hard-pressed to reason me out of something I wasn't reasoned into in the first place.

In a speech at TAM 8 (The Amazing Meeting, an annual conference that's like Woodstock for movement skeptics), Bad Astronomer and all-around solid guy Phil Plait addressed that very phenomenon.

How many of you no longer believe in [the supernatural and assorted woo], and you became a skeptic, because somebody got in your face, screaming, and called you an idiot, brain-damaged, and a retard? … Skepticism is hard. Skepticism is, in many ways, a self-annihilating message. How do you convince someone they're not thinking clearly when they're not thinking clearly?

"Our brain is not wired for skeptical thinking," he says, "it's wired for faith." Letting go of one belief doesn't leave a vacuum waiting to be filled with logic--we look for something else to put our faith in. And no, it's not the logical or reasonable thing to do, and it's even less so when you recognize that it's not logical or reasonable and continue to believe anyway. But it's not uncommon, and it's a hard thing to let go. It's a hard thing to want to let go. And I'm not sure I do. (Scratch that--if I'm honest, I'm pretty sure I don't.) And even though logic and evidence are a lot more productive to ruminate on than prayer, simply knowing the truth and wanting it hard isn't enough. Think about the logic. Process it. Want it more. Really want it.

So I'll stand up next to you on astrology and psychics. I'll stand up next to you on homeopathy and pseudoscience. I'll stand up next to you on myth, superstition, and conventional wisdom that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. I'll stand up next to you on evolution and science and the creation of the universe. And when you're talking about religion and ask if there's any evidence or reason to support belief in a higher power, you can point to me, and I'll say no. But if you then turn to me and start speaking in terms of ignorance, stupidity, and mental illness, you're not telling me anything I haven't been over in my mind. Your ineffable logic and repetition of facts aren't going to turn my heart and shake my faith--they're just going to make me not like you that much.

For the record, your attitude isn't going to change mine. If you're a complete douche, I'm not going to spin around and defiantly shun medical science, invest in homeopathy, and go find a psychic to talk to my dead relatives. For that matter, even if you're a complete douche, I'm not going to stop standing up and speaking out against pseudoscience and woo. Skeptical inquiry is bigger than one douchebag. But for your own sake and the sake of everyone who isn't at least open to facts and logic and evidence and reason, for the sake of anyone who can still can be brought around, just try not to be a dick.

On Baby-Sitters Club Super Mystery #last: Chapter 7

2011-07-17T22:00:00.002-05:00

Okay, so first, a note: The characters, places, and situations created for the Baby-Sitters Club series are the property of Ann M. Martin and Scholastic. (If they were mine, you know Mallory would have at least had a keratin treatment by now, poor girl.) Everything that isn't real life and isn't Ann M.'s is mine, and if you violate my copyright, I will cut you. On with the show.

In our last episode, the girls did some more shopping... and got more than they bargained for. (Duh-duh-duhhh...)

Chapter 7.
Kristy.

After I got Mary Anne's message, I was tapping my foot for the rest of the day. The group had been apart for more than ten years, and now it had taken less than two days for us to get back to our old adventures. It almost made me feel like a teenager again—except this time, we were older, smarter, and better equipped to solve this mystery.

I always tried to really interact with my students, stay engaged, and not just assign a chapter to outline for the entire class period. But for my last two periods of the day, that was what they did. As hard as I tried, I just couldn't focus. Thoughts and action items kept popping up that I had to write down right away, and in the end, I had to put together a whole binder to organize my theories on suspects, witnesses, motives, and evidence.

When the bell rang at the end of the day, I was just as ready to get out the door as my students were. I felt like a running back, rushing down the hall and dodging questions.

"Ms. Thomas, Morgan said practice was moved to Wednesday next week."

"Yes." Twenty yards from the door.

"Because I have an orthodontist appointment on Tuesday—"

"Yes. Wednesday." The ten.

"Okay. Thanks!"

"Bye, Kaci." The five.

"Kristy, can you cover detention for me this afternoon? My kid—"

"Sorry, Alan. Not today." The two.

"Okay… Bye."

"Bye!" Touchdown.

I drove to the Spiers's house a little bit faster than I probably should have, and the entire time I kept my eyes peeled for the white Camry that had tried to run us down in the parking lot. I saw three of them between the high school and the house, one actually turning off of Mary Anne's street, and I was so tempted to turn around and chase them down. But I knew I had a job to do and people waiting for me to do it.

I was already talking to myself, running through scenarios and evidence, by the time I was in the driveway and out of the car. I almost grabbed my Stoneybrook High visor out of the back seat, but I settled instead on just my binder and headed inside.

The whole gang was there, and by the tension in the room I could tell they were all as worried about the situation as I was. "You're all here," I said. "Excellent. I thought we'd all head over to my place to get started."

"We've been talking it over," Jessi said. She was sitting on the floor and leaning against the couch, looking like she was ready to watch a movie at a slumber party. She didn't look terribly focused on the dead-serious matter at hand—and neither did talking it over, like they were trying to decide on a flavor of popcorn. "We're trying to work out potential motives for our mystery stalker."

I bit my lip. "You started without me?"

"We haven't gotten too far into it," Claudia said. "Here—take my chair, and you can crack open your binder and take over."

"Take over? Who's been running the meeting?'

"I have."

"Oh." I guessed my presence wasn't really required, since the vice president was presiding. I tapped my binder against my leg. "Okay. Well, I'll let you get on with it, then."

"Kristy—" Claudia said.

"I made some notes while I was at work. You might be able to use them." I put my binder on the side table next to Claudia and looked around for a seat. Mallory was next to Jessi on the floor. Stacey had the wing chair nearest to the door, and Mary Anne and Dawn were sitting on either end of the couch, with just enough room for a person to squeeze between them.

"No, you should be in charge," Claudia said, getting up and moving to the couch. I halfway protested, but I sat down quickly, mentally putting on my visor and calling the meeting to order. Looking around the room at my friends, I felt a surge of pride—with this group together, there was no way this stalker was going to get away with it.

I took a deep breath. "Let's review the facts of the case. Mary Anne, you take notes." She blinked a few times but obediently got up and disappeared down the hall. I couldn't help drumming my fingers until she returned with a legal pad and a pen. "Okay," I said as she settled back on the couch. "The suspect is driving a white Toyota Camry. Our first encounter was Wednesday at eleven o'clock p.m. in the parking lot of Los Sombreros. Present were myself, Mary Anne—"

"We were all there," Stacey interrupted. "Present were all of us. And drunk as hell, if it matters."

"All seven members were present," I said. "The suspect was speeding and driving erratically, and he nearly struck us. The second encounter…" I didn't know anything important about the second encounter. Nobody had filled me in.

Dawn spoke up. "The second encounter was this morning around ten," she said. "The guys had left to take my girls to the zoo, Mary Anne and I were hanging out, and Stacey showed up to take us shopping. Mary Anne saw the car parked in front of Stacey's house—"

"He was parked in front of my this house," Stacey put in.

"He was parked between the houses, but it was obvious that he was watching this one," Dawn said darkly. "When Stacey opened the door, he drove off fast."

"Mary Anne, are you getting all this?" She raised an eyebrow at me. "Any of these details could be the clue that cracks the case."

"Yeah. I'm getting all this."

Touchy. "It's just that this is really important. One of us is in danger."

"Yeah, about that," Mary Anne said. "Has anyone considered calling the police?"

No one said anything "Why?" I asked finally.

She shifted slightly in her seat. "Well, if one of us really is in danger from a stalker, they'd be able to handle it better. They do this kind of thing all the time."

"What do you mean if?" Dawn demanded.

"We can handle this," Mallory insisted. It was the first time she'd lifted her eyes from the floor since I'd gotten there. "We're closest to… whomever it is who's being stalked, because obviously it's one of us. And seven heads are better than one."

"I'm pretty sure Stoneybrook P.D. has more than one head in it," Claudia said.

"We can do this!" Dawn said.

"Does anyone else remember Shea Rodowsky?" Jessi said. The room fell silent, and she nodded. "Oh, good, so it's not just me. Does anyone else remember looking his mother in the eye?" Right then, we weren't even looking each other in the eye. My heart and my stomach both clenched at the memory. "Do you remember what Special Agent Gardner said? Three families, guys. Three. Because we thought we could handle it."

"That was ten years ago," I protested.

"What, you've gotten your P.I. license in the past decade?" Claudia said.

"No! It's just we're… older. And we have more resources." Jessi stared at me. I wanted to go down the list of everything we had, everything we'd been able to do fourteen years ago and everything we'd gained since then, but she didn't seem terribly open-minded at the moment. "Fine. As soon as we have enough evidence, we'll take it to the police and let them handle it."

"I'm still lodging my complaint with the assembled members right now," Jessi said. "This is a bad idea. But I'll do what I can to help."

I nodded resolutely. "Good, we're all on board. Mary Anne, where were we?"

"This morning," she said, not even checking her notes. "Dawn and I were here, Dad and Sharon were at work, Stacey came later."

"So we have three possible targets," I said.

"Whose cars were here?"

I frowned. "What?"

"Whose cars were here?" Claudia repeated. "In the driveway. Maybe the stalker thought the… stalkee was here because her car was in the driveway."

My brain turned it over. "Wow, that's actually a good idea."

"Will people please stop sounding so surprised when they say that?"

"My mom's car was here," Dawn said. "The guys drove our rental to the zoo, and Richard gave Mom a ride to work. We took Mom's car when we went downtown."

"So now we have more potential suspects," I said. "You three, and possibly Dawn's mom. Mary Anne—"

"Yeah, I'm getting it."

"And we saw him again when we were shopping," Dawn said.

"The third encounter," I supplied.

"Yeah, that. We were at Shannon's, and Claud came in with the note."

"And what time was that?"

"We called you pretty much right away," Mary Anne said.

"What time?"

She sighed. "Around one."

"Write that down." She opened her mouth, but then she closed it again and wrote.

"Claudia, you found the note?"

"Yes," she said. "Jessi and I were going into the store—"

"Boutique," I corrected.

"Yes, Kristy, it was a boutique. We were going into the boutique, and the note was under the windshield of Dawn's car."

"Sharon's car," Mary Anne said.

"Right."

"Was the Camry around?"

"Not that I could see."

"So we're looking at—"

"Dawn, Mary Anne, and me," Stacey said. "And maybe Dawn's mom, but whatever. Like we've been saying from the beginning."

"But which one?" I mused. "We need to start exploring some possible motives—"

"I need to pee," Jessi said, standing up. "That's what I need to do."

I couldn't help staring. "Can it wait? We're kind of in the middle of something."

"Actually, this isn't a bad stopping place," Mary Anne said. "Why don't we take a quick break, then reconvene in fifteen minutes?" There were pleased sounds as the girls started moving around—Claudia and Dawn to the kitchen, Mary Anne down the hallway, Jessi toward the bathroom and moving fast. Mallory glanced at Stacey, then headed out onto the back porch. Stacey was already buried in her iPhone and didn't notice.

I sat frozen. When had a Baby-Sitters Club meeting ever broken up for snacks halfway through? My high school students knew better than that. Hell, my pee-wee softball players knew better than that, and they averaged nine years old. "Uh, sure," I said. "Fifteen minutes, everybody."

We just needed to get back to our good habits, was all, I thought. We'd been apart for so long, it was no wonder we'd gotten a little rusty. We'd be focused and disciplined and cracking this case in no time, just like old times. I was probably the only one here who'd had any real structure in her life since we split up. I'd gone from Stoneybrook High straight to a double major at Stoneybrook University, then straight back to Stoneybrook High to start teaching. I juggled a full schedule of health classes, two softball practices a week, and another practice a week with my pee-wee kids. And on top of that, I have to maintain a social life, shuttle Emily Michelle around until she stopped failing her driver's test, and keep an eye on Watson's type 2 diabetes. None of that could happen without structure, discipline, and strict scheduling.

Honestly, sometimes it felt like the only people I saw anymore outside of school were Mom and Watson, Emily Michelle, and Shannon. Even Sam and Charlie and David Michael spent more time away than home, leaving me to look after everything and everyone.

None of that mattered, though, when we had a stalker to catch. Mary Anne had left her legal pad on the couch, and I started flipping through it to review our notes. "Hey, with the car this morning—do you remember whether it was facing north or south on the street?" I asked Stacey.

"Nope." She tossed her phone into her purse and headed to the kitchen.

With Stacey's attitude, I couldn't imagine that there wasn't someone out there who wanted to kill her, but I didn't know who might be after Dawn or Mary Anne. And Dawn's mom was one of the nicest people I knew. Mary Anne seemed to agree—she'd written Motive - ? after Sharon's name. Stacey had gotten Take your pick.

And somehow, I'd made the list. Kristy - student, colleague, or friend who got sick of being bossed around and finally snapped.

Wow. Okay.

I laid the legal pad back on the couch where I found it and picked up my binder. As tempted as I was to just take off, I didn't want to let on that anything was bothering me.

I started in the kitchen. "Hey, something came up with the team. I've got to run," I said. Stacey and Dawn were facing off and didn't even notice my entrance.

"You know, it's none of your business, and it has nothing to do with this case," Dawn was saying.

Stacey laughed. "You're such a lousy liar. Something's bugging you, and it's about this, and even I can see it. And I'm about as shallow as they come."

"And you don't know anything about my life," Dawn shot back. "So there's no point in having this discussion."

I knocked on the doorframe. "Anything I can help with?"

"No," Dawn said, glaring at Stacey. "We're good. Thanks."

"Really? Because I—"

"We're good," Stacey said. "When you can maintain a meaningful relationship with someone who isn't a chick, you might be able to contribute."

My breath caught in my chest, and I couldn't move. All I could do was stand there, eyes burning, hoping my face wasn't as hot and red as it felt, hoping that I could overcome this paralysis before the tears started to break loose. Stacey and Dawn had already gone back to their conversation, though, and they didn't notice me leaving.

Shannon was already home and cooking when I got there. The apartment smelled kind of citrusy, with a hint of pineapple. "That smells great," I said, leaning over the bar into the kitchen. "You're home early."

"I'm trying something new with chicken," she said. "And I closed up early. Things sounded kind of intense there, and I thought you might need someone to talk to."

That was all it took. The tears broke loose, and suddenly I was blubbering in a really unattractive way. "I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing," I sobbed, slumping onto one of the bar stools. "This is so huge, it's so important, and I need help—"

"Oh, honey. Come here," Shannon said, rounding the counter and pulling me into a hug. "It's okay. You don't have to do this yourself."

I shook my head and sniffed wetly. "Nobody else is contributing. I try and try to get them organized and get them engaged, and they don't—and then—" I tried to stifle another sob. "And Mary Anne thinks I'm a bitch, and Stacey thinks I'm… I don't know. And now I'm a grown woman who's crying her eyes out because some girls she hasn't talked to in forever are being mean to her."

"It's okay." Shannon rocked me from side to side like a crying toddler, but it actually did make me feel a little bit better. "It's been a long time since you all really functioned as a group. It's not going to fall into place right away."

"But—"

"Just ease back a little. Take some of the pressure off. You're having to get to know each other again at the same time you're investigating, and that's a lot to do at once."

"You don't even think I should be doing this."

She laughed. "No, I don't, but I know you're determined, and I just want it all to work out for you. So give it some time."

I sniffed again and pulled away. "Yeah. I'll do that." I half smiled. "Your shirt is disgusting."

Shannon looked at the wet, slightly snotty patch on her shoulder and laughed. "It was a free gift anyway. I don't even carry the line anymore." She kissed me on the forehead. "Now go wash your face. You look disgusting."

Coming up: Dawn has a few ideas.

On elevator etiquette. Seriously. Just that.

2011-07-11T21:12:00.000-05:00

Okay, so it started two weeks ago. That’s not a whole lot in earth time, but in Internet time, where conversations--and accusations, and examinations, and defamations--can fly around at electron speed, it’s like months. It started with a post by well-known skeptic Rebecca Watson about her recent travels and a conference she spoke at in Dublin.

In the course of her eight-minute video (around 4:30), Watson made passing mention of an experience she had in an elevator. She’d been talking with folks in a bar, and around four in the morning, she got onto an elevator, followed by one of the dudes from the bar. Dude said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I find you very interesting, and I would like to talk more. Would you like to come to my hotel room for coffee?” and Watson said, “Uhhh, no thanks.” Her point in recounting this was to inform guys that inviting strange women on an empty elevator back to their hotel room at four in the morning can be perceived as creepy, and that they maybe should not do it. What she said was that.

This is good advice, by the way. Even if you sincerely want to talk and not scrog, even if you really are interested in her brain and not her body, propositioning a strange woman on an empty elevator at four in the morning will probably skeeve her out some.

So that’s the end of the story.

Except it isn’t. It was the beginning of another, far lengthier story that involved folks accusing her of being hypersensitive and then something went down at another conference, and then well-known atheist and firestarter Richard Dawkins was all, like, “Blah, he didn’t even touch her, and what’s the big deal, and privilege, and blah, and at least you’ve never had your genitals mutilated, so whatever” (paraphrased), and then he was all, like, “I don’t know when it’s time to just shut up about something” (paraphrased again). And then more discussion and other stuff.

Y’all. Asking a strange chick on an empty elevator back to your hotel room at four in the morning is creepy. That’s the alpha and the omega of the story. It’s not, on its face, all that debatable. This isn’t to say that the current debate isn’t valuable, because the fact that there’s been debate at all would indicate that there’s a breakdown in communication within the community (and a lot of other communities, frankly) on the subject of privilege (and on the subject of creepiness, apparently, which seems rather straightforward to me). That is a much longer post for a much slower day, and while I like to think I’m intellectually up to the challenge, I make no warrants.

But your opinion on that subject aside, don’t ask a strange chick on an empty elevator back to your hotel room at four in the morning. Even if you aren’t personally a creeper, even if you don’t have ulterior motives, know that some men are and do and that some women’s experiences with them are different than ones you’ve had yourself and that the sensitive thing would be to find a different way of soliciting her company. You don’t have to understand--just accept. And should it ever come to a debate, know when to quit while you're only behind a little.

On Mashup Monday: Hale and farewell edition

2011-07-11T20:17:00.000-05:00

Okay, so Friday was a sad, sad day. It was the final launch of the space shuttle Atlantis, and with it the final launch of the space shuttle program. It was also the final launch of manned NASA space flight for the foreseeable future, as (due to financial and program mismanagement and general stupidity) our next shot will likely be at a few nearby asteroids about a decade from now. Frankly, it bites. More on that tomorrow.

Today, though, a tribute to belivin' and not stopping and, I'm assuming, getting motion sick.

U2/Journey - Don’t Stop Vertigo

It's been awesome, Atlantis. Don't be a stranger.

On Baby-Sitters Club Super Mystery #last: Chapter 6

2011-07-08T00:01:00.000-05:00

Okay, so first, a note: The characters, places, and situations created for the Baby-Sitters Club series are the property of Ann M. Martin and Scholastic. (If they were mine, you know Dawn would have come to the bacony Dark Side by now.) Everything that isn't real life and isn't Ann M.'s is mine, and if you violate my copyright, I will cut you. On with the show.

In our last episode, Dawn and Mary Anne had it out, and they had an unannounced guest.

Chapter 6.
Stacey.

“Seriously, Dawn, it’s possible to do the hippy-dippy-unshaven-earthchild thing without looking like Joan Baez.” I yanked the ankle-length skirt out of her hand and replaced it on the rack. “I don't even know why Shannon has that thing.”

“Anna Sui showed long skirts for spring,” Shannon called from the back of the shop.

“She also showed puffed sleeves and socks with sandals, but I’m not sending Dawn down the aisle looking like Little Retirement Villa on the Prairie.” I dug further into the rack. “Now here’s what I'm talking about.” The fabric was light and crinkly and vaguely paisley, but tiny pleats and a fitted waist made the look a little more modern. “Throw on a long, beaded necklace, and no one will ever know you wear deodorant. Mary Anne, stop looking at clothes. Just stand over there by the shoes until I’m ready for you.”

“I want to shop with Claudia. She’s not as mean,” Mary Anne said, but she obediently went to the shoe wall to watch Shannon set out a new shipment of towering wedges. I was going to have to do some shopping for myself before we left.

To be completely honest, I probably didn’t need more shoes. Thomas and I didn’t socialize a whole lot, outside of cocktail parties with his colleagues that weren’t really the place to break out the sky-high zippered peep-toes I was eyeing. Still, I was bound to make it out with a few girls from work, and those shoes plus an indecently short dress were certain to get our bar tab paid.

Focus, Stace. “Shannon, I’m thinking box pleats and an apron front for Mary Anne,” I said.

“Apron? I—”

“Let the grownups talk, Mary Anne. Shannon?”

“There are some really nice structured dresses on that rack near the front window.”

“Awesome.” Before I could make my move, though, the bell on the front door chimed and Claudia and Jessi walked in, each with a handful of shopping bags. “Fancy meeting you here,” I said. “Burning the magnetic strip off your credit cards?”

“Just checking out downtown,” Claudia said. “It’s a lot more developed than it used to be. Hey, Dawn, this was on your car.” Claudia handed Dawn a folded note.

Dawn unfolded it. I could see the big, bold Sharpie letters through the paper, and it didn’t take her long to read them. “This is fucked up,” she said. “What does this mean? What is this?”

Claudia took the note back and read it. “That’s wrong. That's so wrong.” She showed the note to Jessi, who cringed, and then handed it to me.

I will find you. Holy shit. “I told you there was something fucked up about that car,” I said, handing the note back to Claud. “I told you.”

“What car?” Claudia asked.

“There was a car parked in front of Dawn's house this morning, but they said it probably wasn’t anything,” I said, jerking my chin at Mary Anne and Dawn, who were still speechless. “But it was the same one that nearly killed us in the parking lot last night, and now they’ve left some fucked up note on Dawn’s car.”

“Well, we don’t know if—”

“Shut up, Mary Anne,” Dawn said. Her hand was shaking a bit as she took the note back from me. “I don’t know what the note means, but I think it’s safe to assume that the person who was staring at my house all morning is the one who left a note on my car. I mean, let’s not be dumb here.”

Mary Anne’s lower lip trembled in a way I recognized from middle school, back when she’d lose it every time someone so much as raised their voice. She took a deep breath, though, and her voice was steady. “We don’t know who, exactly the note is for,” she said. “Last night, we were all at the restaurant. This morning, the car was parked in front of Sharon’s and Dad's house, but Dawn, Stacey, and I were all there. And now the note was on Sharon’s car. There’s definitely someone stalking us—one of us—but right now, we don’t know who.”

“What does that mean?” Jessi asked.

“It means one of us is in danger,” Mary Anne said. “And right now, we all need to be worried. Shannon, what's Kristy’s phone number?”

“Why are you calling Kristy?” Dawn asked.

“Here, use mine.” Shannon came around the counter and handed her phone to Mary Anne.

“Thanks. I’m calling Kristy because she’s…”

We all stared at each other for a minute.

“We call Kristy because she’s the one we call,” Jessi said finally.

“Hey, Kristy,” Mary Anne said into the phone. “We—It’s Mary Anne.” She frowned at us. Baby? she mouthed. “We’re at the shop. Listen, Claud just found a threatening note on Dawn’s car, and it’s starting to look like—we just thought we should all get together and talk about it.” She listened. “Exactly, yeah. We were going to go back to—Uh-huh. Sure.” Listened. “Yeah, I guess. We’ll see you then.” She hung up and handed the phone back to Shannon. “She wants to meet at her place, because she has a whiteboard,” she told us.

“I’m shocked,” I said.

“She can’t make it until after school, which is”—Mary Anne checked her watch—“in two hours. I say—”

“I say we go back to the house,” Dawn interrupted. “Everything’s weird, and I want to see my kids.”

“I was going to say we go back to the house,” Mary Anne said. “Whatever the hell is going on, we need to stick together.”

By the time we got back to Dawn’s house, she was practically bouncing in her seat. As soon as we pulled into the driveway next to her rental car, she was out of the car and into the house. By the time we made it inside, she was sitting on the floor with Brent and her two kids, surrounded by drawing paper and markers. Brent was wearing what probably passes for makeup when you're six and only have access to magic markers.

It was interesting to see a man really fathering. I didn’t get to see Thomas with his kid much—he only got Tanner every other weekend, and they usually went to some kind of sporting event or something. Our place wasn’t really all that entertaining for a kid. The only really kid-friendly thing we had was the Xbox, which Thomas had gotten specifically for Tanner along with every video game a fifteen-year-old could want. Sometimes, I’d wander in to see Tanner on the floor, blasting giant alien cockroaches, while Thomas half-read the paper and half-watched the game.

I was also impressed with how well Brent and the girls got along. I knew their dad wasn’t really involved that much, and it was probably easier for them since they met Brent when they were pretty young, but still, I was… kind of jealous, honestly. Thomas always said I was paranoid, but I was pretty sure Tanner didn’t like me all that much. I thought he probably blamed me for his parents splitting up, but it wasn’t my fault. Thomas made the first move. I was the one holding off this smoking hot guy in a gray suit and a corner office all through my internship, and when I got hired as a research analyst, he was the one who asked me out for drinks.

He said his marriage was on the rocks and he and his wife were getting separated. I was able to understand him in a way his wife didn’t. Laine told me he'd never leave his wife for me, that they always say that and never mean it, but that December, he did. My Christmas present was our loft in Manhattan, and our wedding was in June.

But I wasn’t about to tell Tanner any of that.

Dawn’s youngest daughter—I think her name was Teal—was showing Dawn something what she'd drawn. Honestly, I had no idea what the hell it was supposed to be, but I knew from my baby-sitting days that the only thing you ever say is, “What a nice picture! Tell me about it.”

“Wow, what a great picture!” Dawn said, holding the drawing at arm’s length and gazing at it like it was Picasso's first foray into magic marker. “Tell me about it.” But she actually seemed interested in what the kid was saying, and she and Brent were both nodding like they were paying attention. Good job, them. I didn’t know if I could pull the same thing off with my own kids, when I had them. Thomas and I were planning on having our own kids—something for both of us, with our stellar combination of brains and good looks—and but we weren't going to get started until I was done with my master’s degree in a few years.

Over on the couch, Mary Anne was sitting with her husband, who looked a little shell-shocked from his morning with the kids. I had to admit, he was a good-looking man, particularly for an academic type—that kind of rumpled look that made you want to take him home for further rumpling. The way he was looking at Mary Anne, though, made me think he wasn't the type who’d be open to rumpling by anyone but her. Mallory, who'd come over by cutting through the backyard like an eleven-year-old, was bending his ear about writing and getting published, but the whole time he had one hand on Mary Anne's knee. It was kind of gross, actually. Over on the dining room table, Claudia and Jessi were digging through the bags they’d brought back from their shopping trip downtown, and of course half of the accessories Claud had bought were dead hideous. She and I were always supposed to be the super-fashionable ones growing up, but she had no idea how much of that weight I was carrying on my own.

I sighed loudly. “Are we here for a reason? I thought we were going to talk about this stalker or something.”

“What’s a stalker?” Teal asked from the floor.

Dawn glared at me. “Don’t worry about it. Hey, you know what? Uncle Stephen writes books. I bet if you ask really nicely, he’ll help you write about your trip to the zoo.” I snorted out loud as Stephen’s eyes got huge and his hand clamped down on Mary Anne’s knee.

Brent saw it, too, and laughed. “Come on, Uncle Stephen. Let’s get some Grownup Juice and write a book about the zoo.”

“Would that be juice of hops?”

“It would.”

“Excellent.” Brent stuffed the markers and works of art into a tote bag and ushered the girls toward the back of the house and Richard’s office. Stephen trailed behind them. “Calantha, that drawing you made of the leopard—”

“Giraffe.”

“Giraffe, of course…”

Dawn slowly stood up and made a big show of brushing off her skirt. “So, this stalker thing—” she began.

“I think Claudia should be leading the meeting,” Mallory interrupted.

Dawn stared. “What? What meeting?”

Mallory blushed. “This—this. Us.” She waved her hand around the group. “I mean, she’s the vice president, and Kristy isn't here…”

“How old are you?” I couldn't help but ask. She just looked down at her feet.

“Yeah, okay,” Claudia said abruptly, shoving her hideous accessories back into the bag. “Okay. I guess I call… this… emergency meeting to order.” Everyone laughed stiffly. “So, um, we need to discuss the matter of this weirdo who's been following us around and leaving threatening notes on Dawn's car.”

“Or someone’s,” Jessi put in.

“What are you talking about?” Dawn said. “Of course that was my car.”

“It was your mom’s car,” Claudia corrected her. “You and Mary Anne and Stacey were in your mom’s car, the car was parked in front of your mom’s house while you all were there, and the car that nearly ran us over was when we were all outside of Los Sombreros. That’s a pretty wide range of targets.”

“That’s… actually a good point,” I said.

Claudia shot me a look. “Thanks for sounding so shocked. The point is, we don’t know exactly who’s being stalked and who’s doing the stalking. We need to talk about which of us has a reason we might be stalkworthy. If we can come up with a motive, we can start narrowing down a list of suspects and work from there.”

“‘Motive’? ‘Suspects’? It’s a nasty note; it’s not CSI.”

This time, it was a full-on glare. “You know, Stacey, if your only contribution is going to be bitchery, your presence really isn’t required.”

“God, fine.” I threw up my hands. “Okay, let’s talk about motive. Dawn has an ex-husband, Jessi probably has some scorned ballerinas in her past, I’m sure I have any number of guys who find me irresistible, Mallory has… Okay, probably no one wants to stalk Mallory.” She looked down at her shoes again.

Before I could finish my objective rundown, the door opened, and Kristy came in without knocking. She was wearing khakis and a Stoneybrook High School polo shirt, and she was carrying a big binder that she’d probably put together just for this occasion. “You’re all here,” she said. “Excellent. I thought we’d all head over to my place to get started.”

“We’ve been talking it over,” Jessi said. “We’re trying to work out potential motives for our mystery stalker.”

Kristy’s face fell. “You started without me?” she asked, and just for a minute, she looked like thirteen-year-old Kristy.

“We haven’t gotten too far into it,” Claudia said. “If you want to grab that armchair over there, you can crack open your binder and take over.”

“Take over? Who’s been running the meeting?”

“I have.”

“Oh.”

Coming up: The girls start getting to the heart of the mystery.

On the stuff women write and the women who read it

2011-07-07T22:58:00.001-05:00

Okay, so I’ll admit that the Daily Mail’s “Femail” section is both harmful to women and a guilty pleasure of mine. It’s a place to go to see what hideousness Kim Kardashian wore to a party and what Shia LaBoeuf said Megan Fox said about Michael Bay. Outside of not-entirely-accurate celebrity gossip, though, it’s a wasteland of woman-hate. Margaret Wheeler Johnson has the rundown: “brilliant women” turning into “slummy mummies”; the “truth” that women are responsible for any “glass ceilings”; getting skinny to gain the approval of other women. It delivers 24/7 analysis of how shitty you are, couched in advice on how a woman could, if she wanted to, become less shitty. The worst offender there is Liz Jones, and Johnson pulls a quote from a comment Jones made about the movie Bridesmaids.

The reality of the modern woman in Milwaukee or Birmingham hasn't changed much since Pride And Prejudice's Lizzie Bennet had to walk to visit her sister because she couldn't afford a carriage. Female companionship. Dreary, endless chores. Poverty and a pensionless, uncertain future.

Here’s why I’m a bad feminist. First, I’ll let you guess what you think my first thought was upon reading that quote. Got it? Okay.

My first thought upon reading that quote: The Bennet family had a carriage. Jesus Christ. They had a cook and a maid. They were hardly poor--they were landed gentry. Jane didn’t take the carriage to visit the Bingleys because her mother was scheming to get her stranded by the rain so she could spend more time with Mr. Bingley. Lizzie didn’t take the carriage to visit Jane because Lizzie was a free spirit and whatever who liked walking places. The Bennets’ only problem was that they had tons of daughters and no son, meaning all of their property would go to Mr. Bennet’s male cousin upon Mr. Bennet’s death, which is why they were trying to marry their daughters off as quickly as possible. It wasn’t because the family couldn’t afford to support them; it was because they wanted to ensure a good life for their daughters when the family assets became unavailable.

God.

If you’re going to throw in literary allusions to try and lend some air of intellect and respectability to your self-loathing essays that center exclusively around how much women suck, make sure to read the source material first. And you might want to avoid pulling from Austen to support your anti-feminist screeds--she’s got layers.

And that’s why I’m a bad feminist: because no matter how hard Ball-Busting Man-Hating Feminist charges for the lead, English Geek will always get there before her.

On Calvin and Hobbes and me

2011-07-06T17:47:00.002-05:00

Okay, so all of the "grownup Calvin and Hobbes" cartoons depress me. The sad ones, where Calvin outgrows Hobbes and/or grows into a degenerate and/or turns into a boring, conventional, grown-up banker-looking kind of guy? Devastating. The sweet ones, where Calvin outgrows Hobbes, but Hobbes eventually finds happiness and fulfillment as the imaginary best friend of Calvin's precocious handful of a kid? Depressing--Hobbes is for Calvin, and Calvin is for Hobbes, and I don't care if Calvin and Susie reproduced or not. The bittersweet ones, where Calvin and Hobbes grow old together? I don't want to see Calvin and Hobbes old. Calvin and Hobbes do not grow old. Calvin managed to stay an eight-year-old for a full decade of publication, and there's no reason to assume he spontaneously started aging just because the cartoon went out of print.

Besides, the fact that Bill Watterson isn't making any new Calvin and Hobbes cartoons doesn't mean that Calvin has disappeared. I can crack open my dusty copy of Scientific Progress Goes "Boink," and Calvin remains eight years old (and Hobbes remains whatever age he was). A hyperintelligent, philosophizing eight-year-old, sure, but a second-grader nonetheless.

There have been debates over which of Calvin's two realities was really real--his interactions with his parents and Susie and Moe and the crew, symbolized by stuffed-Hobbes vacantly staring into the middle distance, or his adventures with real-live-tiger-Hobbes. It's a dumb debate. They're both real. Hobbes's antics frequently leave Calvin bruised and dirty and/or tied up, to be discovered by his mystified parents. Obviously, his world is the real world. That Calvin's parents don't recognize Hobbes for the living, talking tiger that he is is really more unfortunate than anything else.

Which means we have no reason to believe that the rest of the strip wasn't real, too. Calvin's Spaceman Spiff adventures could generally be chalked up to his imagination and his favorite comic books, but his transmogrifier? Do we know it wasn't real? Do we know that he never traveled back in time? Do we know that Calvin didn't have a flying carpet? It's not his fault his dad was too busy working to notice a flying kid (and tiger) outside his window, and obviously the condition of the rug afterward would indicate something beyond normal foot traffic.

AJ Aronstein published an essay--not the reason for this post, but possibly the impetus--talking about the comics in terms of nostalgia: the way we observe and appreciate things differently through the lens of age and life experience; whether we love it now because of its inherent, enduring awesomeness or because it recalls a simpler time when we were more innocent and uninhibited. It's a good question. And it's easy to say, "Well, my experience is different, and I'm special, and I can see how your thesis might apply to everyone else, but I'm the exception." So easy, in fact, that I think I'm going to say it right now.

Kicking back to my childhood, I can remember being so desperately jealous of Calvin. His life was awesome. In a time when I was feeling particularly lonely, he was never lonely--he had a constant and enthusiastic companion. In a time where the somewhat nontraditional workings of my mind made me feel isolated, his took him to other planets and duplicated him and made him an owl. My "playing pretend" was seldom--if ever--as vivid and engrossing. (A note to Allie: Do not think this makes our Calvinball games any less precious to me.) As great as my childhood was--and it really was--I wanted to borrow Calvin's so badly.

As great as my life is now--and it really is--I still want to borrow Calvin's. I still, on occasion, feel lonely; I still sometimes feel isolated; I still wish my friends were more open to playing pretend. I need a childhood like Calvin's to borrow, and that really only works if he stays eight.

Some of you may be tempted to attribute all of this to my tragic and ongoing tendency for anthropomorphization of my own stuffed animals. (Hold on, did someone just say ongoing? Ridiculous.) Of course I can neither confirm nor deny that I still have the favored stuffed dog of my early childhood tucked away in my closet, nor can I confirm or deny that I apologize to it if I'm ever forced to crowd it at all to accommodate more shoes. If Calvin can grow up, if he and Hobbes can be separated or be exposed to the harsh reality of adulthood--and I don't really know which would be worse--that would mean that maybe I can't be eight years old anymore. And that would be devastating and depressing.

On more anniversaries

2011-07-06T17:46:00.002-05:00

Or, Happy fugging birthday.

Okay, so Practically Harmless isn't the only blog to celebrate its seventh birthday this year. July 1 marked the seventh blogiversary of exceptional (and personal favorite) blog Go Fug Yourself, which combines two of my passions--fashion and snark--for a wholly entertaining and time-sucking blogging experience.

GFY, I celebrate your awesomeness and wish you all the success in the world. To the rest of blogdom: HOW COME I AIN'T MAKING ANY MONEY OFF OF THIS, BLOGDOM, HUH? THIS AIN'T WORTH A LITTLE SCRATCH? JUST BECAUSE I HAVEN'T TAKEN THE TIME TO TRY TO SELL ADS? OR BECAUSE MY POSTING RECORD HAS BEEN SPOTTY OVER THE PAST FEW MONTHS? Not feeling the love, blogosphere. And now my first-grader of a blog is crying. Nice job.

On girlhood

2011-06-30T00:31:00.001-05:00

Okay, so I'm a girl. This may come as a shock to those of you who are convinced that I'm actually a 63-year-old man from Little Rock trying to fulfill his need for adulation and sexual affirmation via an assumed identity. (But seriously, folks, if I were a dude trying to adopt a sexy female alter ego, do you think i'd go for 30-year-old underpaid marketing writer writer with a steady boyfriend and an addiction to Dr. Who? It's kind of niche.)

Ask me, though, and I'll self-identify as a girl. Sometimes a lady, under certain circumstances. I was called a dame once and found it most entertaining. But generally, it's "girl"--and almost never "woman."

I don't know what it is about "woman" that doesn't sit right with me. It's not that I'm not a female of the species who presents as such. It's not even that I don't consider myself an adult, although my standards for real adulthood tend to differ from those of people who usually don't wear feather earrings to the office. And it's not that I cling to girly-girlness--I do love a brand-new hairdo, but I despise pink, ruffles, "princess," "diva," French provincial, and non-ironic marabou. So maybe I'm not exactly a girl. But I feel I'm not yet a woman.

Karen Duffy would take issue with that--"girl" is a pet peeve of hers. She writes,

I cringe when I hear the women from "The Real Housewives" accuse their cast mates of acting like "mean girls." Sure, the dames on reality television are cruel, narcissistic and self-absorbed (and I love every minute of it), but girls? For these women, girlhood was more than 30 years ago.

A not-unreasonable observation. There's definitely a disconnect between "girl" and "housewife," and it's odd to think of someone as a "girl" when she herself has given birth to several of them. But the real concern seems to be not that they're identifying as girls but that they're acting like them. I can't say I've actually seen any of the "Real Housewives" shows myself (and I'm okay with that), but they, like pretty much all other reality TV these days, seem to be heavy on the gossiping, plotting, snubbing, sniping, and backstabbing that we all should have gotten over in high school.

So "girl" doesn't really fit someone of my age and stage of life, much less theirs. But the generally provided alternative--"woman"--doesn't feel like it does either. I'm hardly a representative sample, but "woman," to me, calls to mind motherhood, domesticity, earthiness, walks on the beach to discuss that not-so-fresh feeling, seven signs of aging, and the patronizing way your female relatives act when you get your first period even though you know that menstruating now doesn't make you any less of a teenager than you were before you started.

It implies a setting aside of childish things, and the fact is, I like my childish things. My love of Legos, zombie movies, and orange nail polish doesn't prevent me from functioning in life, fulfilling my adult responsibilities, or making profound emotional connections--so why should I hand them over at an arbitrary developmental checkpoint? By that standard, Wonder Woman, the Bionic Woman, and the Invisible Woman should all be too mature to read their own comic books.

Somewhere between Juicy Couture sweatpants and Eileen Fisher pantsuits, Fruit Loops and Jamie Lee Curtis-endorsed yogurt for constipation, there is a place that's not-quite middle age but where no one is checking your ID to get into a bar.

That's it. I'm there. I tend to stick with "girl" because I don't feel like "woman" and I'm not provided with a middle option. I need a word that's moved past the trappings of childhood but stops short of the arbitrary societal standards for grown-up-ness. I don't "envy or imitate" the young--I still am young, or youthful, at least, which it's possible to be without being emotionally stunted or immature. There needs to be a word that embraces that. (Also, Count Chocula is hardly an every-day food, but there's no harm in having a fun treat once in a while. Unbend.)

I'm thinking that maybe it's just a reclamation issue--while I'd be offended by an employer referring to me as anything but a woman, I'd have no problem being addressed by most female-type-people as, depending on context, a lady, a girl, a chick, or a dame. Right now, I'm going back and forth between "broad" and "skirt." It depends on my circumstances, my mood, and my outfit. But if I'm honest--and honesty with oneself is a real sign of maturity--I'm kind of leaning toward "supreme-empress-for-life."

On the hidden enemy lurking within 49.3 percent of the U.S. population

2011-06-28T22:33:00.001-05:00

Okay, so The Boy and I got into a lengthy discussion recently over a blog post by Dilbert cartoonist and all-around dickweed Scott Adams asserting that recent "tweeting, raping, cheating, and being offensive" by some "powerful men" is really just them giving in to their manly urges, urges that are "shameful and criminal" in a world that values only the natural instincts of women.

The Scott Adams part of this post

In Scott's words,

The current view of such things is that the men are to blame for their own bad behavior. That seems right. Obviously we shouldn’t blame the victims. I think we all agree on that point. Blame and shame are society’s tools for keeping things under control.

The part that interests me is that society is organized in such a way that the natural instincts of men are shameful and criminal while the natural instincts of women are mostly legal and acceptable. In other words, men are born as round pegs in a society full of square holes. Whose fault is that? Do you blame the baby who didn’t ask to be born male? Or do you blame the society that brought him into the world, all round-pegged and turgid, and said, “Here’s your square hole”?

By all means, correct me if I'm drawing weird connections here, but I'm digging through my limited and dusty knowledge of propositional calculus to make sense of whatever the hell he's saying. If someone could please, in comments or via e-mail, characterize it some other way than "raping and cheating are only bad because society caters to women," I'll give you a nickel. The whole lion-and-zebra thing really reads like "Some dummy put rapey men and rapeable women in the same habitat! Man, whatcha gonna do, right?"

Anyway, the discussion with The Boy centered around whether men are, in fact, inherently rapey-cheaty. And here's the upshot:

ME. So you've got Woman 1, who's gagging for it, and Woman 2, who absolutely isn't interested. You're uncivilized man, lacking in any social contract to influence your behavior and thus going entirely on instinct. Which one do you go for?
HIM. Woman 1. It's easier.
ME. Okay.
HIM. And then maybe Woman 2.
ME. Seriously?
HIM. Well, maybe I'm not done yet.
ME. That makes me uncomfortable.
HIM. It shouldn't. The social contract is what makes us look past what we want to behave in a way that's best for the good of the overall group. Without that, we have no reason to think of anything but our own desires. If our desire is to fuck, we fuck until we don't want to anymore. People want what they want. As part of a society, we are required to belay our impulses to fit in with the norm--so I confine my fucking to only those women who are willing.
ME. That actually makes some kind of sense.
HIM. See?
ME. That also makes me uncomfortable.

And it's true--without the influence of society, left to nothing but instinct, we're serious assholes. All of us are. Society is what makes us (or some of us, anyway) consider the wants and needs of others alongside our own. It's not a matter of instinct--it's a matter of adhering to the social contract, and we're all confined by the same societal norms, and it's left up to us to game society to get as much of what we want as we can within those norms. While Scott Adams claims that the system is stacked against men, what he's basically arguing is that men just aren't as good at gaming the system and thus should be excused from it, and that just don't hold water.

That was weeks ago, though, and the only reason I thought of it was that today, I read something that made it seem comparatively reasonable. Shudder.

The Dan Rottenberg part of this post

Holy fucking fuckety-fuck.

But in practice, rape and the notion of sexual conquest persist for the same reason that warfare persists: because the human animal--especially the male animal--craves drama as much as food, shelter and clothing. Conquering an unwilling sex partner is about as much drama as a man can find without shooting a gun--and, of course, guns haven’t disappeared either. [emphasis mine]

So it's not just a matter of wanting what you want and wanting to take what you want to have--men want to take what they want specifically from an unwilling sex partner because they crave… drama. Lara Logan was raped in Egypt because of a gown she wore on a red carpet in Hollywood, and Rottenberg's neighbor got her daughter molested by wearing a halter top while she cleaned the living room, and they both should have known better, because they both should have known that men want to commit rape as much as they want food and shelter. Congratulations, Dan Rottenberg, for making Scott Adams's characterization of men look like schoolboys in propeller beanies. You're an asset to your gender.

(A note to Scott: Hugh Hefner is probably not the best illustration of your thesis statement. Yes, he's gone between single and married several times without making either of them stick for any substantial period of time. He's also spent the past five decades surrounded by the hottest, nakedest, in many cases willingest women God and science ever created, which one would think you'd consider a lion-bad-boy-manly-man's round-peg dream. At the risk of sounding crass, though Hef may well have his own problems to deal with, finding a round hole is definitely not one of them.)

(A note from The Boy to Scott: You should stick to trying to be funny and not making social commentary.)

On being this many (redux)

2011-06-27T18:34:00.004-05:00

NB: As I was preparing this post, I was all, "Man, it's been so damn long since that last post, and that whole no-power thing really blew, and I'm so glad to be finally getting back to posting." I put my laptop aside to go run some errands, and… CAME HOME TO NO MOTHERFUCKING POWER. AGAIN. I wish I were shitting you. So now we've officially spent more time this week without power than with it, and we've had to throw out food, and do you know what it smells like in a house that doesn't have air conditioning but does have a storm-phobic rat terrier? YES, IT SMELLS LIKE THAT. So I'm glad to be returning to posting, not just because I miss my reader(s) but also because it means I have lights and AC and access to a coffeemaker or blow drier or circular saw or whatever else I want that runs on electricity. So… moving on.

Okay, so I actually have a decent excuse for not posting for most of the week--our power was out for the better part of three days following a 15-minute thunderstorm. And it sucks, because I actually had stuff to post, or at least that I would have gotten ready to post had I not been forced into the Luddite hell of pen and paper by candlelight.

One thing that I missed out on? My own seventh blogiversary. (The seventh is supposed to be wool or copper, or possibly big metal chickens, so make your gift purchases accordingly.) Seriously, I've been doing this for seven years. If this blog were a kid, it would be in first grade. So really, it could be writing itself, albeit laboriously on that special paper with dotted lines.

Looking back over the past seven years, I see more than 900 posts--three and a half bazillion words--of stuff that's important to me, some of it societally significant, some of it even world-changing, and some of it so trivial that it's probably not even interesting to my reader(s). There's one thing about me when I get passionate, though: Sometimes, my word choice becomes… less than optimal. My dear aunt says swearing is unattractive, my grandmother said it's a sign of a weak mind, and my mother cringes when she hears verbal naughtiness (despite having a potty mouth of her own, on occasion, due to my own horrible influence), and they're all right. However, as they say, behind the mouth of a sailor lies the heart of a poet,* and I generally let such words fly in moments of passion and fervor. One can guess that they appear in important places. Thus my seven-year review follows them like something you follow to see where it's going.

Seven Years of Practically Harmless, in Words My Mother Disapproves Of

Fuck (and derived words): 60, which seems seriously light, but I did count twice. That particular bomb was dropped in the context of Christian extremists, the Baby-Sitters Club, rape, President Bush (surprisingly rarely, actually) and friends, the Iraq war (and accompanying bullshit), three Friday Random Tens, the act itself, and former Alabama State Representative Artur Davis (a lot).

Shit (and derived words): 76, in the context of Republican hysterics, domestic violence, Michelle Obama (in a good way), Jesus (also in a good way), racism, fear, Good Christian Values, sexism, Georgia football (in good and bad ways), and me.

Hell: 99, in the context of the actual place, parts of my childhood, love, reproductive rights, Thriller, goodness, advertising, feminism, teh gays, the Bush administration, war, and Transformers.

Damn (and derived words): 83, in the context of Alabama politics, sex, evangelical Christian exceptionalism, Jump Little Children, oppression, feminism, Lindsay Lohan, literal damnation, immigration reform, and media responsibility.

Things that have impassioned me over the years: Religious oppression, coming from any religion. Religion itself. The Bush administration and everything they've done to screw up the country. (Fuck up the country? No, we'll leave that one alone.) Football. Feminism. Gay rights. Movies. Discrimination. Sex. Music. Compassion. Love.

Not a bad seven years. Here's to the past seven GD years of this shizz, and here's to the next em-effing seven. And here's to the ones who made it worthwhile--thanks for sticking with me, reader(s), potty-mouth or not.

*Please start saying this so I can legitimately say that "they" say it.

On Mashup Monday: Happy blogiversary to me edition

2011-06-27T18:22:00.003-05:00

Okay, so it's late--my blog actually turned seven last Tuesday. But I do have a reasonable excuse for holding off the celebration. Until now. And that celebration begins... now.

In honor of me, I give me the gift of five great tastes that taste great together.

The Beatles/Joan Jett/Cypress Hill/House of Pain/Rage Against the Machine - Mash Together

Thanks for sticking with me. Regular posting to recommence in three... two... one...

On outing and hypocrisy*

2011-06-14T23:41:00.002-05:00

*In which we expose our own hypocrisy by outing others

Okay, so it's so common it's not even a funny cliche anymore: a legislator who uses his virulently anti-gay leanings to mask his own homosexual proclivities. Most recently, it's New York State Senator Carl Kruger, who railed against gay marriage during the day and entertained a male lover by night (and who has since changed his vote on gay marriage). Previous offenders have included Larry "Wide Stance" Craig, Ted "Sexual Immorality" Haggard, and Mark "Pageboy" Foley.

Now, in the wake of Kruger's outing, Salon ponders whether "outing" someone is okay as long as it's a conservative, closeted politician--"… reporting on a politician's sexual orientation serves the public interest," says column author Alex Pareene. I couldn't agree less.

I'm unequivocally opposed to outing anyone--even schmuck bastard bigoted closeted politicians. Sexual orientation is something personal and private, not something you do but something you are, and the exposure or concealment of said orientation is no one else's business. We talk about homosexuality as being natural and nothing to be afraid or ashamed of, but we're frequently comfortable using it as a weapon against political opponents--when we say we're trying to "expose their hypocrisy," usually what we mean is we're trying to punish them, using the secret shame that any other day we'd insist shouldn't be secretive or shameful.

Note to us: Either homosexuality is shameful or it isn't. If it isn't, we shouldn't be using it as a weapon. We'd never justify the outing of a gay teenager or adult to settle a score, so it doesn't make sense to arbitrarily justify it for a closeted congressman--even an anti-gay hypocrite--who's obviously keeping his sexual orientation secret for a reason.

It's not even a matter of a politician's right to a private life. It's well established that the things a public figure does in his or her private life--taking money from private interests, hiding secret second families, covering up children's youthful crimes--do have some relevance in the public sphere. An elected official whose personal interests conflict with the best interests of their constituency, or who tries to place him or herself above the law, is of questionable character. But if we're going to insist that homosexuality isn't a deviance on par with those other things, we can't then pull it out to score political points.

While the aforementioned public figures could stop doing what they're doing--come clean about their interactions with lobbyists, confess to their hidden families and stay faithful to their marriage vows, step back and allow justice to run its course--our rhetorical Senator Gay can't just stop being gay. And while it would be nice if he would, like Carl Kruger or Ted Haggard, eventually find peace with it and stop advocating for hurtful and hateful legislation, that's a lot to overcome for someone steeped so deeply in evangelical Christian dogma.

Does that make it okay for such people to continue their anti-gay crusades? Of course not. That can't continue. But it does lead us to question his motivations: What would make one gay man push legislation and social policy that directly persecute all gay people?

Let's say our Senator Gay isn't just wide-stance gay, he's the worst kind of gay--the kind who actually falls in love and has a deep emotional connection with another man. Why would he try to limit the rights of other people like him? Well, we can guess he doesn't expect to ever be revealed and that he isn't planning to ever come out of the closet himself--otherwise, he wouldn't be salting the earth of a community he hoped to someday join. His rabidity in pursuing an anti-gay agenda could be a way of taking out his personal shame and self-hatred on the people he sees who share his "sin"; an effort to assure people of his purported straightness by gay-bashing; or other; or both and other.

What does he have to lose if he lets go of the guilt and the shame and the lies to open himself up to his constituency? His job, for one--if he's not convincingly straight, his constituents will turn on him and he'll lose the lifestyle to which he's become accustomed. And then fuck him, right? I mean that sincerely--if he's putting his leased Mercedes M-Class above the very lives of more than a million gay Americans, fuck him directly in the ear.

But it could be more than that. (For most people, it would be at least a little more than just that.) He's probably got a wife--maybe someone he loves, even if he doesn't love her that way--and kids. An extended family, a church community. Religious conservatives tend to cocoon themselves with other religious conservatives, so chances are good that his outside connections don't extend much further than his secret boyfriend, leaving him with pretty much no support system if his people abandon him--which is likely to happen if he doesn't convince everyone around him that he's straight.

I'm not saying that Senator Gay has more to lose than any other closeted gay person--obviously, he doesn't. And I'm not saying he deserves even as much sympathy as any other closeted gay person, because most closeted gay people manage to deal with their feelings without fomenting persecution of an entire section of society. And I'm not saying that the loss he faces is anything compared to the loss he's trying to impose on so many other people. I'm just saying that when I see that kind of thing happening with a conservative lawmaker, I think about how I would feel if it were happening to a friend of mine, and then I wonder why it's supposed to be okay when it happens to this guy.

If using a person's sexual orientation to punish them is okay, then it's okay, and if it isn't, then it isn't. We can't allow ourselves to start denying basic human dignities to people based on who we think deserves punishment, and we can't use them to make a statement to the public without their consent. The only way to send the message that homosexuality really isn't shameful is to stop using it to shame people.

On Baby-Sitters Club Super Mystery #last: Chapter 5

2011-06-10T01:08:00.001-05:00

Okay, so first, a note: The characters, places, and situations created for the Baby-Sitters Club series are the property of Ann M. Martin and Scholastic. (If they were mine, you know Janine would have gone all A Beautiful Mind by now.) Everything that isn't real life and isn't Ann M.'s is mine, and if you violate my copyright, I will cut you. On with the show.

In our last episode, Mallory had herself a little sleepover.

Chapter 5.
Dawn.

“Does everyone have sunscreen?” I couldn’t believe what a mother I’d turned into. I’d always prided myself on being so laid back, even when I was a baby-sitter. But now that I had two of my own, I had to hold myself back from hovering.

Calantha rolled her eyes. “Yes, Mom,” she said.

“Yes, Mom,” Teal echoed, doing a decent four-year-old attempt at Calantha’s all-pro eye-roll. I had to keep an eye on that one.

“You put it on them yourself, Mom,” Brent said, eyes all sparkly in that way that kept me from hitting him, and he kissed me on the cheek. He pulled into Sharon’s—Sharon’s and Richard’s—driveway. “And I have an extra bottle of it. We’ll all be fine.”

I grabbed his face and kissed him on the lips. “I know. You take good care of my girls.”

We piled out of the rental car, and Calantha raced to the front door, opening it without knocking. We followed a little more slowly, Teal carefully assembling her backpack to go inside even though she’d be back out in the car in less than twenty minutes.

“And we’re going to see the giraffes,” Calantha was chattering to Mary Anne when we caught up with her. “They have the same number of bones in their necks as we do, but theirs are really long. And we’re going to see the elephants, and there are two kinds of elephants, African and Indian. Elephants gestate for twenty-two months. That means how long they’re pregnant.” Brent and Mary Anne’s husband Stephen had bravely volunteered to take the girls to the zoo while Mary Anne and I caught up and did some last-minute planning. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

“I have to go to the bathroom, too!” Teal ran off after her big sister.

Stephen stood silent in the hallway, wide-eyed, looked exactly like a man who’d never had to look after two little girls before—much like Brent had early in our relationship, staring at a two-year-old and a four-year-old like they were alien creatures. Brent caught the look and laughed. “You ready to go, buddy?”

“Stephen has snacks for you,” Mary Anne said. “Carrots and celery and peanut butter. It’s all organic. And flax crackers—I don’t think they’re cooked.”

My heart melted a little. “It’s okay. We don’t do raw anymore,” I said. “That’s so thoughtful. Thank you.” She shrugged.

The girls returned from the bathroom. “Teal did number two,” Calantha announced. Stephen blanched.

Brent laughed again. “Are we ready to get this show on the road?” The girls cheered and charged out of the house toward the car, leaving Teal’s pink backpack and a shell-shocked Stephen by the door.

Mary Anne leaned up to kiss him. “You’re going to do fine,” she said, leaning up to kiss him. “They’re Dawn’s. They’re good kids.” More heart-melting. He kissed her back, shouldered Teal’s backpack resolutely, and marched out the door after the crowd.

“He is so completely lost,” Mary Anne said, watching them go. “I really shouldn’t find it as funny as I do.”

“No, it’s definitely funny,” I said. “Brent has four younger brothers, and he still didn’t know what to do with the girls in the beginning.”

“Stephen has an older sister,” Mary Anne said. “She has a son and a daughter, but he hasn’t gotten much exposure to them. This is going to be an experience for him.”

We watched the car pull away and stood silently for a moment, enjoying the peace and quiet. I moved first, in the direction of the kitchen. “Do we have food?”

“Tomatoes and cucumbers from Mrs. Ramirez next door,” Mary Anne said. “And now that I know you eat food that isn’t raw, you can enjoy them as part of a sandwich.”

“Such luxury.” She pushed past me to dig through the fridge. As promised, tomatoes and cucumbers, even with a little bit of dirt still on them, and avocado sandwich spread. “What, did you buy out Whole Foods?” I asked.

“There’s a little hippie grocery around the corner from our house. Reeks of pachouli, but they have a good selection of vegan stuff.” I kicked her ankle. She kicked me back.

“Got plans for the day?” I asked when our sandwiches were assembled and we were sitting at the dining room table.

“Oh, I have a very important shopping trip lined up with Stacey.”

I laughed. “Of course. Seriously, though.”

“No, I’m serious,” Mary Anne said. “Last night, I told Stacey what I was wearing, and she flipped out. Just lost it, like I’d told her I was wearing a dress made of meat. And then for some reason I agreed to let her take me shopping.”

“You ever going to drink margaritas again?”

“Absolutely not.”

“And that’s why I don’t drink.”

“So you don’t have to go shopping with Stacey?”

“That, and the carbs,” I said. Mary Anne snorted. “I have to wonder how she’s doing after the night she had last night. Her car’s parked practically in the middle of the street.”

Mary Anne frowned. “I don’t think she drove here. And I know Claudia wouldn’t have let her drive home after she drank so much.”

“I guess it’s someone else. Water?” Mary Anne nodded, and I jumped up and headed into the kitchen. When I reached into the fridge for the water pitcher I found… an extra surprise. “Um, Mary Anne?” I walked back into the dining room dangling the striped bikini top from one finger. “Did you lose this?”

She burst out laughing. “It’s your mom’s. She bought it for the honeymoon. There’s probably a zucchini tucked away in her suitcase right now.”

“Remind me to check on that.” I looped it over the back of my chair. “That’s a bit sassy for Hilton Head, don’t you think?”

She shrugged. “Probably. But they’re only going to be there for three days, so I guess she wanted to make the most of it.”

“Three days? Seriously?”

“Well, yeah,” she said. “It’s their second honeymoon—third each, really, total—and they didn’t want to do anything huge. Plus, my dad can’t be out of town for too long right now. He’s working on a big case.”

I had to sit silent for a few seconds to gather my thoughts. “So she gets an extra-short honeymoon because Richard can’t drag himself away from the office?”

Mary Anne stared. “And because it’s not a great time right now, and because it’s expensive, and because of a dozen other good reasons,” she said. “Not just because of my dad.”

“I’m just saying it’s not a good start,” I said. “They started having problems in the first place because your dad was spending so much time at work, and—”

“They started having problems because your mom didn’t understand my dad’s commitment to his clients,” she interrupted. “Which she knew about before she married him. And which really worked to her benefit when your dad was suing her.”

“There’s such a thing as balance,” I said.

“And there’s such a thing as not sleeping with your cooking instructor,” she shot back. “Sharon kept pressuring Dad to give up the job he loves—and is really, really good at—and he just tried to make her happy—”

“Make her happy? All she wanted was time—”

“—up to the point of taking those classes with her, and do you know he doesn’t even like vegetarian food?” she said. She jumped up from her chair and started stacking plates and cups from lunch. “Their entire marriage, he’s been eating tofu-ginger salad and bean sprouts and hating it. But he did that for her. And how much did she appreciate it?”

“She needed someone to pay attention to her, and she found someone,” I said, following her into the kitchen. “No, I can’t defend what she did, but one cooking class a week isn’t the same as coming home in the evening and having a conversation with your wife.”

“Your mom wasn’t spending all that private time with a hot young grad student for the conversation.”

“I told you I can’t defend what she did,” I gritted out. “But can’t you understand wanting to spend time with someone who wants to spend time with you? Someone you have something in common with? Richard should have been grateful someone was picking up his slack.”

“This is funny to you?”

“No. This is very, very not funny to me.” I leaned against the fridge and sighed. “Why are we doing this? Why are we fighting? You’re my best friend. You’re my sister.”

Mary Anne put down the plate she was holding. “Yeah, but they’re our parents,” she said. “There’s DNA there. We have to defend them.”

“And when we think they’re making a mistake?”

Her eyes jumped to mine. “You think this is a mistake?”

“Maybe,” I admitted. “If your dad isn’t going to ease up on work—and if my mom isn’t going to start being more understanding,” I said, heading off her incoming objection, “maybe they need to take some time before they recommit.”

“Maybe they do.” Mary Anne leaned back against the counter, and we just looked at each other for a minute. She looked about as tired as I felt. “But they’re adults, and they get to make their own decisions. And it’s our job to support them.”

“You’re right.” I sighed. She sighed. “We have to be here for them and for each other. They're old enough to work it out.” I sighed again. “But Mary Anne?"

“Yeah?”

“Can we get that bikini top out of the dining room? I can’t stand thinking about what it’s going to be doing while they’re at the beach.”

“Oh, my God, yes.” She disappeared, and a moment later the bikini top slingshotted into the kitchen and hit me in the chest. “Put that back in the fridge, or else she’ll never find it.”

“I can’t believe I’m actually doing this,” I said, folding it neatly and tucking it away in the crisper drawer.

The front door opened, and Stacey sailed through without knocking, looking fresh and bright and completely un-hung over. Her short dress, tights, and booties were a bit much for shopping in Stoneybrook on a Thursday, but she looked great in them. “Morning, ladies. Mary Anne, you ready to go out and find something halfway acceptable?”

“I had something halfway acceptable.”

“Those sleeves—”

“There’s nothing wrong with sleeves!” she said. “Sleeves in April in Connecticut—”

“Don’t have to look like my grandmother,” Stacey supplied. “Pack it up. You’re driving.”

“So that isn’t your car, then,” I said.

“Where?”

“Parked in front of your mom’s house.”

Her eyebrows snapped together. “I took the train. I always take the train.” She hurried to the front window. “That’s not mom’s house, that’s your house.”

Mary Anne looked out. “No, that’s your house. Or maybe the Ramirezes’.”

“Well, it’s not mine,” Stacey said. “Obviously. And obviously it’s not yours, so they must be waiting for the Ramirezes or the Bowmans.”

“They?”

“Yeah, there’s someone sitting in the car.”

“Just sitting there?” I joined them at the window and peeked through the blinds—there was definitely a person in the front seat of the white Camry. “They really are just sitting there. That’s kind of creepy.”

“I know, right?”

“Hey, doesn’t that look like the car that practically mowed us down in the parking lot last night?”

“How do you even remember that?” Stacey said.

“We weren’t all completely loaded,” I said. “I think it was that car.”

Mary Anne rolled her eyes and sat back down at the table. “Yeah, they followed us here to yell at us for loitering in the parking lot.”

“It was a white Camry, though,” I said.

“Camrys are, like, the third most popular car in the country,” she said. “Chances are, there’s more than one white Camry in Stoneybrook.”

“But what if it’s the same car?” Stacey said. “There could be someone sitting out there, lying in wait for you or my mom or the Ramirezes or the Bowmans—”

“Lying in wait?” Mary Anne laughed, and I couldn’t help but laugh along. “You make it sound so ominous, like Mr. Bowman is actually an international super-spy and his presence puts us all at risk.”

“You never know.” Stacey was moving toward the front door.

“Where are you going?”

“To find out who’s sitting in front of your damn house.”

“What are you doing?” Mary Anne said. “That’s so dangerous!”

Stacey spun around. “Aha! So you do think it’s dangerous!”

“Going up to some complete stranger’s car just sitting there and knocking on the window?” Mary Anne said. “Yeah, actually, I think that’s dangerous. Didn’t you pay attention to those ‘stranger danger’ videos we had to watch in school?”

“I grew up in New York City,” Stacey said. “We got ‘stranger danger’ for bedtime stories. And that’s why I’m going out to talk to that stranger”—she pointed out the window—”to see if he’s dangerous.” She threw the door open and stepped out onto the porch. I watched through the blinds as she took one step toward the street—and the white car peeled away and roared off. Stacey watched it disappear around the corner, then came back inside.

“See?” she said. “That’s fucked up.”

“They were sitting there, and then they left,” Mary Anne said. “People do that.” But she didn’t sound convinced.

Stacey wasn’t convinced at all. “Let’s get going,” she said, leaning against the door frame. “That shit’s just weird. That, and Mary Anne’s dress.”

“My dress is fine.”

“Says my grandma.”

Coming up: We learn more about what Stacey's been up to since she bailed on the BSC.

On Baby-Sitters Club Super Mystery #last: Chapter NOTHIN'

2011-06-02T23:38:00.002-05:00

Okay, so we regret to inform our reader that this week's installment of our ongoing unauthorized epic Baby-Sitters Club sequel quasicollaboration will be... not here, due to a trip that kept me literally in the wilderness for five days. By way of apology: two baby chinchillas in wine glasses.

Regular totallynotfanfictioningIswear will resume next Thursday night.

On personal safety: Are you rape-proof enough?

2011-06-02T02:12:00.008-05:00

Holy mother of God!

Okay, so I had to borrow the title of this post from jfwlucy on a recent post at The Frisky, because it's both pertinent and sounds like an OK Cupid quiz that would come with little check boxes. But the subject matter is a little more serious: It's the author's assertion that being drunk is a feminist issue. (Via Feministe.)

Why does Kate Torgovnik believe that being drunk is a feminist issue? It's because sometimes, drunk women get raped. Women + rape must make it about feminism, so drunk = feminist issue it is. She's not blaming the victim, BUT (ding!) if women drank less, they wouldn't get raped so much. She even has statistics--sobering statistics (ding!)--to prove it.

O sweet Raccoon God, we're talking about this again. As if it had never come up before, we're presented with the realization that rapists prey on vulnerable women and drunk women are more vulnerable. Shocking and new and certainly worthy of the same rehashing and analysis it's been getting for decades now! Certainly something that hasn't been discussed on this very blog once or twice or thrice or whatever comes after thrice.

And there's certainly argument for drinking responsibly--it's good for the soul, it's good for the skin, and it's always better to be more in-control than less in-control. Of course, Torgovnik points out, in an ideal world, rape wouldn't exist, BUT (ding! Yahtzee!) we don't live in an ideal world. This is true. The question is how far we should be expected to go to offset that un-idealness. In an ideal world, priests wouldn't fondle little kids, but this isn't an ideal world--yet parents still take their kids to church. In an ideal world, terrorists wouldn't hijack planes, but this isn't an ideal world--yet people still fly. In an ideal world, rapists wouldn't attack runners in the park, but this isn't an ideal world--so what are we expected to do, get a treadmill and live in fear?

I'm not going to go into the whole argument a thrice-plus-one-plus-another-one time, because my view is simple: Life is a calculated risk, and everyone--man or woman--makes choices that someone else will disagree with. There is no choice that anyone--man or woman--can make that excuses the actions of the one who victimizes them. We love to harp on a rape victim's dress/sexual history/blood alcohol content/choice of parking spaces because it gives us a false sense of security that rape can be avoided by following a few simple rules. And "I'm not blaming the victim, but" is the clarion call of the person who's actually blaming the victim.

But how about that quiz, huh? How rape-proof are you? Ten quick questions, and you'll know for sure!

1. Do you run?
1a. Do you run outside?
1b. Do you carry a whistle?
1c. Do you carry Mace?
1d. Do you know how to use Mace without getting it back in your face, because ew?
1e. Do you carry a gun?
1f. Do you know how to use it and not get it taken away by a rapist who is now an armed rapist?
1g. Do you run outside during the morning?
1h. Do you run outside during the day?
1i. Do you run outside during the evening?
1j. Does your running route just circle the local police station over and over and over again?
1k. Are any of the police officers inside rapists?
1l. Have you asked?
1m. When you asked, are you sure they told you the truth?
1n. If you run inside, do you lock your front door?
1o. If you run inside, do you lock your back door?
1p. Are you sure you remembered to lock them? Do you want to go check? We'll wait.
1q. Do only trustworthy people have keys to your house?
1r. Have you ever lost or dropped your keys somewhere someone else could find them?
1s. Are you sure? Do you want to go check?

2. Do you drink?
2a. Do you drink with friends?
2b. Are your friends trustworthy? Do they have your back?
2c. Seriously, though, how well do you know these people?
2d. Are any of them men?
2e. Do they have penises?
2f. Are they rapists?
2g. Have you asked?
2h. When you asked, are you sure they told you the truth?
2i. Do you let your friends into your house to drink?
2j. Do they know where your bedroom is?

3. Have you ever had sex?
3a. Are you single?
3b. Have you had sex with more than zero people?
3c. Do you enjoy sex?
3d. Have you ever had a one-night stand?
3e. Did you get a police background check first?
3f. Was he hot?
3g. Seriously, was it awesome?
3h Have you ever been in a long-term relationship?
3i. Did you get a police background check first?
3j. Was he a rapist?
3k. Did you ask?
3l. When you asked, are you sure he told you the truth?

4. Are you attractive?
4a. Are you conventionally hot?
4b. Are you quirky, niche-market hot?
4c. Do you wear clothing that reveals any vague outline of your form?
4d. Do you wear skirts above the knee, like a slut?
4e. Do you wear skirts at the knee, like a Catholic schoolgirl?
4f. Do you wear skirts down to your feet that make it harder to run away from rapists?
4g. Do you wear tight tops that show your boobs?
4h. Do you wear loose tops that are easy to become tangled in during a fight?
4i. Do you wear pants that show how you have two legs and space in between?
4j. Do you wear shorts when it's 80 degrees?
4e. Do you wear short shorts when it's 90 degrees?
4f. Do you have the legs to pull it off?
4g. Really?
4h. Do you wear high heels, like a slut?
4i. Do you wear low heels, like a Catholic schoolgirl?
4j. Do you own a burqa? Don't you think you should?

5. Do you live in a safe area?
5a. Do you live in a convent?
5b. Are any of your sister nuns rapists?
5c. Have you asked?
5d. When you asked, are you sure they told you the truth?
5e. Do you wear a wimple?
5f. Do you wear a short habit, like a slut?
5g. Do you live in a retirement home?
5h. Are any of your fellow retirees rapists?
5i. Have you asked?
5j. When you asked, are you sure they told you the truth?
5k. Do you wear caftans, like that cougar Dorothy Zbornak?
5l. Do you live in a girls' school with high walls and a spiky gate?
5m Are any of your fellow students rapists?
9n. Are any of your teachers rapists?
9o. Have you asked?
9p. When you asked, are you sure they told you the truth?
9q. Do you wear a school uniform?
9r. Do you wear a shapeless sweatsuit?
9s. Do you wear footie pajamas?
9t. Can you tell me where to find adult-sized footie pajamas?

6. Do you go out at night?
6a. What, are you stupid?
6b. Have you taken self-defense classes?
6c. Do you know enough self-defense to keep you safe?
6d. Do you know just enough self-defense to make you a danger to yourself and others?
6e. Do you carry Mace?
6f. Do you know how to use Mace without getting it back in your face, because ew?
6g. Do you carry a gun?
6h. Do you know how to use it and not get it taken away by a rapist who is now an armed rapist?
6i. Do you go out accompanied by friends?
6j. Are your friends trustworthy? Do they have your back?
6k. Seriously, though, how well do you know these people?
6l. Are any of them men?
6m. Do they have penises?
6m. Are they rapists?
6o. Have you asked?
6p. When you asked, are you sure they told you the truth?
6q. Do you have a cell phone?
6r. Do you talk on it, so potential rapists will know you have a witness?
6s. Do you not talk on it, so you'll be alert to everything around you?
6t. Do you have the twitchy reflexes of a Vietnam vet?

7. Do you drink in bars?
7a. Do you drink alcohol?
7b. Do you allow bartenders to mix your drinks?
7c. Do you know your bartender?
7d. Do you know his middle name?
7e. Do you drink exclusively out of sippy cups or McDonald's cups with plastic lids?
7f. Do you keep an eye on your drink?
7g. Do you ever take your eye off your drink?
7h. Did you just make eye contact just there, instead of looking at your drink?
7i. Do you drink enough to get tipsy?
7j. Do you drink enough to get drunk?
7k Do you know how much you can drink and remain in control?
7l. Can you stand on one foot and touch your fingertip to your nose?
7m. Can you do that sober?
7n. Do you have a ride home?
7o. Is it a taxi?
7p. Do you know if the taxi company does background checks?
7q. Could your taxi driver be a rapist who doesn't have a criminal record?
71. Is it a friend?
72. Is your friend trustworthy?
73. Is your friend a rapist?
74. Have you asked?
75. When you asked, are you sure they told the truth?

8. Do you stay inside your house all the time and never leave?
8a. Do you lock your front door?
8b. Do you lock your back door?
8c. Are you sure you remembered to lock them? Do you want to go check? We'll wait.
8d. Do only trustworthy people have keys to your house?
8e. Do they only spend time around trustworthy people who wouldn't steal your key from them?
8f. Have you asked?
8g. When you asked, are you sure they told you the truth?
8h. Do you ever order takeout?
8i. Do you know your delivery guy?
8j. Do you know his middle name?
8k. Do you take your deliveries outside on the porch, where you're vulnerable?
8l Do you take your deliveries inside the house, where he could easily attack you?
8j. Do you test your food for roofies, just in case the delivery guy has drugged your food and is waiting for you to pass out so he can break in and rape you?
8k. Do you answer the door for repairmen?
8l. Do you check their IDs before letting them in?
8m. Do you call their companies when you see their IDs to make sure the IDs aren't fake?
8n. Do you know if your utility companies do police background checks?
8o. Do you know if your repairman has no criminal record but is a rapist anyway?

9. Do you have home security?
9a. Do you have a dog?
9b. Is your dog friendly to strangers?
9c. Do you have extra security doors outside your external doors?
9d. Do you have bars on your windows?
9e. All of them?
9f. Can you still get out of those windows in case of fire?
9g. Do you have alarms on your doors?
9h. Do you have glass-break alarms?
9i. Do you have motion-detector alarms?
9j. Do you have heat-sensing alarms?
9k. Do you keep them armed?
9l. Even when you're home?
9m. Are your alarms monitored?
9n. Is your alarm company trustworthy?
9o. Do they do background checks on all their employees?
9p. Do you have a panic room?
9q. Can you really afford one?
9r. Can you afford not to have one?
9s. Did you see that movie with Jodie Foster?
9t. Isn't she great?

10. Do you have personal security?
10a. Are they reliable?
10b. Have you done background checks on them?
10c. Are you sure they aren't rapists who don't have criminal records?
10d. Do they have backups?
10e. Have you done background checks on the backups?
10f. Are you sure the backups aren't rapists who don't have criminal records?
10g. Do the backups have backups?
10h. Have you done background checks on the backups of the backups?
10i. Are you sure the backups of the backups aren't rapists who don't have criminal records?
10j. Are they combat trained?
10k. Were they combat-trained by rapists?
10l. Do they ever get sick?
10m. Do they ever go to the bathroom?
10n. Are they eunuchs?
10o. Are you sure?
10p. Have you asked?
10q. Did you check?
10r. Isn't that sexual harassment?
10s. Do you wear a chastity belt at all times, just in case?

If you answered "yes" to one or more of those questions, YOU ARE GOING TO GET RAPED. FOR CERTAIN. PROBABLY TOMORROW. And if you cease that behavior immediately, you'll definitely not get raped, because women only get raped who are doing something wrong.

If you didn't answer "yes" to any of those questions, you're a liar.

On Baby-Sitters Club Super Mystery #last: Chapter 4

2011-05-26T23:54:00.000-05:00

“Drinks! We need after-dinner drinks!” Stacey announced to the four square blocks surrounding Los Sombreros. Somewhere in the distance, someone cheered.

I knew it was her fault.

“I need to write. I promised myself I’d write,” I said.

Stacey threw an arm around my shoulder. “You’re coming out, sister. How about you?” Jessi. Please, Jessi, say no.

“Why not? Where are we going?”

Where did we go?

Claudia at the bar. “Shots. Tequila. Four of them.”

Screw you, too, Claudia.

“You want more?” I shook my head. “Another round!”

Screw you extra, Claudia.

“You have to get a Chi flat iron. It straightens with ionic technology.”

“Aren’t those expensive?”

“Ionic technology, Mallory!”

Okay.

“Doesn’t she look nice? Doesn’t she have nice hair? Mark! Mark, isn’t her hair nice?”

Mark chuckled. “Yeah, it’s great.”

“Mark, this is Mallory. She has nice hair. You should buy her a drink.”

He chuckled again. “Nice to meet you, Mallory. What are you drinking tonight?”

No idea. I looked to Stacey.

“Long Island iced tea.”

Which doesn’t actually taste all that much like iced tea.

“Dancing!” A bar is like a dance floor, except tall!

Jessi was holding me onto my stool. “That’s right. That’s… kind of like dancing.”

“We should go dancing! You’re a dancer. You can teach me to dance.”

Nooo.

“The music is really loud!”

“It makes you dance without thinking about it!” Stacey yelled.

“I don’t know how to dance!”

“You danced at the bar.”

“But that was... Did I dance at the bar?”

“You need a drink,” Stacey yelled. “It’ll make you a better dancer. Hey, look after my friend while I get her a drink, okay?”

Um…

“Here you go.”

“Stacey, this is Mark!”

“Michael.”

“Stacey, this is Michael!”

“Nice to meet you, Michael. Here’s your drink.”

“What is it?”

“Doesn’t matter. Aren’t you hot in that turtleneck?”

“I’m hot! Whoo!”

“Do you have anything underneath? Let me take that.”

Michael’s hair was blond, not brown.

And that was it.

I shoved through the door into my parents’ kitchen, my head nearly exploding in the bright fluorescent light and the twin howls of startled babies. “Mallory! Jesus!” my sister Claire hissed at me, bouncing one of the squalling bundles in her arms, but I ignored her.

Jessi was in my parents’ kitchen. I didn’t know why. “Let’s go upstairs,” she said, and I thought it was a splendid idea. I followed her up to my apartment, not turning on the light as we went inside. I immediately kicked off my shoes, grabbed some kind of clothing from my stack of clean laundry, and headed for the bathroom.

“I like your outfit, by the way,” Jessi called after me.

Her voice echoed in my head. “Your voice is really loud.” And you’re kind of a bitch. I stripped down, flinging the offending camisole across the bathroom and turning the shower on as hot as it would go. My toe made hard contact with the side of the tub. “Ow.” Dammit.

The water felt good. It was too hot, actually, but it soothed my muscles and my pounding head, and my mood lightened marginally. I should be nicer to Jessi. None of this is her fault. She wasn’t the one who drank herself into a walking unconsciousness and then slutted it up in some strange man’s hotel room. A really hot strange man, my subconscious reminded me.

Doesn’t matter, I countered.

I emerged from the shower feeling somewhat better. PJ pants and a t-shirt helped even more, and two Advil held the promise of a brighter future. Back out into the world.

“You look kind of rough,” Jessi said. “Where did you spend the night?”

Good question. “Nowhere,” I said quickly. “So... that was a good time last night, right? Going out to the bar, and then we went...” Come on, Jessi.

“Dancing?”

Helpful. “Well, yes, dancing. Of course. I was just trying to remember the name of the club.”

“I don’t remember it,” she said.

“Doesn’t matter. I was having a great time. All the things I did at the club,” I fished.

Jessi snorted with laughter. “I’m sure you did. You and Stacey hit the floor as soon as we got there, and I have no idea what you did after that.”

“No idea,” I echoed with a sigh. “Well... we had a lot of fun.”

“Me, too,” she said. “It was the first time I’ve danced in a while that I wasn’t worried about something the entire time. Not that it’s the same kind of dancing, but still.”

I stared at her. This is her gratitude? She was realizing her dream every day, living the fruit of decades of hard work, and instead of reveling in it she was griping about how much better life was on a sweat-stinking dance floor in some small-town club? I threw myself on my back on the bed and shielded my eyes with my arm. “Trouble in paradise?” I snarked.

“Huh?”

I grunted. “Is the pressure of fulfilling your lifelong dream getting to you?”

“Okay, Mal, what’s with the attitude?” Jessi’s voice was sharp. “Bad hookup last night? Did he turn out to be ugly?”

My breath caught in my throat. “No!” I snapped, more loudly than I needed to. “I’m just... I...” I didn’t know what I was. I should be nicer to Jessi. None of this is her fault. I rolled over and looked at her. “Talk to me about your life.”

“No, seriously, what’s up?” Her voice was softer this time, and her eyes were, too. “Is everything okay? Do you need to talk?”

“Nah, I’m good,” I said. “Tell me about dancing.”

Jessi lay down next to me on the bed. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep doing it,” she said. “I keep getting hurt. Like, over the past year, I’ve had all these ligament problems, hurting myself and then having to do rehab. Last spring, I actually had to give up a part because I tore two ligaments in my ankle and I couldn’t dance. The girl who took over for me was nineteen.”

I laughed. “Jess, you’re twenty-five. It’s not like you’re over the hill.”

“In dance, I kind of am, just a little. A lot of the girls I’m dancing with in the chorus will be able to make it to their mid-thirties and keep dancing, but a lot of them will break down in the next few years. Next year, I might be onstage, or I might be watching from home with my feet on ice.” She lifted her legs gracefully, straight up in the air. “I’ve been doing this for almost twenty years, Mal. Can you believe it? What person our age can say that? Our bodies really aren’t designed for that, are they.”

Our bodies aren’t designed to leap and twirl and balance on one toe and look like swans, I thought. Doing it at all is a miracle. I sighed. “You’re not going to want to hear this.”

“What?”

“So, I know this is your dream, and that’s great,” I said, shifting next to her. “But maybe at this point you’ve had your dream. Maybe that’s the deal—you get your twenty years, and then you do something else.”

“I don’t want to do something else.”

I should be nicer to Jessi. None of this is her fault. “You always said you wanted to be a ballerina, and now you’ve done it.” I had to move. I stood abruptly and headed across the room to my small kitchen in pursuit of water. “You’ve had your dream job, the one you wanted when you were a kid. Now it’s just time for you to pursue some other interests.”

“I don’t have any other interests, Mal,” Jessi said. “You remember growing up: I was dancing, I was baby-sitting, or I was hanging out with you. Those were my interests. What am I supposed to do? Say, ‘Yay, I got to dance! Now I’ll spend the rest of my life watching toddlers and reading books about ponies’?”

I grabbed a cup out of the cabinet and closed the door harder than I intended. Yeah, Jessi, sometimes you end up watching goddamned toddlers. “Sometimes things don’t work out, okay?” I spat. I couldn’t keep my voice from rising. “Sometimes you spend years and years trying to follow your dreams and then realize it’s never going to happen, and then you know what? You find new dreams. You accept that you can’t have everything you want, and you move on.” I spun on her, and her eyes widened.

“What is wrong with you?” she asked. My face grew hot. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Talk to me, Mal. Where is this coming from?”

I closed my eyes. Please go away, Jessi. “Nowhere. It’s nothing. I just didn’t get a lot of sleep last night. I could use a nap.” Please go away.

“Yeah,” she said. The bed creaked, fabric rustled, and her footsteps moved toward the door. “Give me a call when you wake up, okay?” she said softly. “I want to hang out.”

“Sure.”

I slumped onto the couch. What did she possibly have to complain about? How greedy can you get—you’re given a miracle, you’re given your lifelong dream, and then you moan when the miracle doesn’t last forever?

They all had their dreams. Jessi was dancing for a major company in a big city. Kristy was coaching softball, now for money and the glory of back-to-back regional championships. Claudia—who was more or less the club’s designated simpleton (I’m sorry, it’s true)—had managed to get into a top art school, had discovered a love of fashion, and would be going into business for herself any time now.

And Mary Anne. Mary Anne was living in New York City, married to her hot lit professor from Sarah Lawrence, and getting published in the New Yorker. Mary Anne, who’d never shown any interest in writing at all. Mary Anne, whose talent had popped up effortlessly and showed no sign of slacking.

Me? After shopping my first book to agents for a year and a half, I finally spent the balance of my college fund to publish it myself. It sold 136 copies, twelve of them to my mother to send out as Christmas gifts. She slipped Target gift cards inside the front cover before wrapping them up. She doesn’t know I saw.

Now I lived above my parents’ garage and spent my days changing lots of diapers and struggling to finish a book I’d been toiling over for five years. The most exciting things in my life were a fancy new MacBook and a fancier, newer one-night stand with a man who remains a total stranger. I’m living the dream.

I stared at my knees. Next to me sat Misty of Chincoteague, lying right where Jessi had left it. Nice respect for other people’s stuff, I grumbled to myself, even as I realized how ridiculous it was, and flounced over to the bookcase.

Next to the empty spot where Misty should have been was a small, very familiar book. I remembered getting it as a gift to myself when I left for Riverbend—a journal to record my thoughts on this new and exciting adventure—attracted to it by the bookishness of it and the way the burgundy fabric cover resembled some of my favorite hardback books under the dust covers.

I left Misty sideways on the shelf and took my journal instead, lying carefully across the bed with it like it was a fragile and ancient tome that would crumble with rough handling. As I flipped through, skimming pages full of cramped handwriting, it did seem kind of ancient—the Mallory Pike of this historical text had big and very specific plans, and while circumstances at school ranged from awkward to awesome, the future was universally bright. I had no urge to go back and warn 15-year-old me of what she’d be doing in a decade; I thought I’d let her enjoy life for a while.

The journal ended in my junior year, the last entry dated February 9. There was no official ending, just a trickling off—that was the year I started my honors creative writing course at Riverbend, and all the opportunities for self-expression and outside affirmation meant that my deepest thoughts really didn’t need to hide away in my journal anymore.

The next blank page caught my eye, and I stared it down for nearly a minute. Hey, why not? But as I grabbed a pen off my desk, I paused. That book wasn’t the place for the dull ramblings of a disappointed, dispirited woman. It wasn’t my place to kill the buzz.

Instead, I opened up my laptop. There on the screen was my magnum opus, my wrist-cuttingly obnoxious work in progress. I closed it without saving, pulled up a glowingly blank page, and frowned at it.

I’m 25, I live with my parents, I’m a failure as a writer, my teeth hurt, and last night was the first sexual contact I’d had in three years and I don’t even remember it.

A comedy, then.

Coming up: We get to the bottom of whatever happened with Richard and Sharon.

On Baby-Sitters Club Super Mystery #last: Chapter 3

2011-05-19T23:30:00.004-05:00

“Drinks! We need after-dinner drinks!” Stacey shouted as we stumbled into the parking lot of Los Sombreros.

“I’m still working on my during-dinner drink,” Mary Anne said.

“Unlike some of you, I have work tomorrow morning,” Kristy said. “But you all have a great time.”

“Eh, you’re no fun anyway,” Stacey said. “You either, Joni Mitchell.” That was Dawn, but she didn’t seem offended. “Claud? You in?”

“I’m in!” Claudia said.

“I’m not,” Mallory said. “I promised myself I’d get two chapters written by the weekend, and I haven’t even started.”

Stacey threw an arm around her shoulder. “You are even inner. You’re coming out, sister. How about you, Slim?” That was me. Slim.

“Jessi, please,” Mallory mouthed to me.

It was a terrible idea. I’d been working so hard in staying in shape, I’d already blown my diet that night, I had this horrible image of me getting drunk and falling off my shoes… “Why not?” I said. “Where are we going?”

Everybody just looked at each other. Then we all cracked up. “I have no idea,” Stacey said. “I’ve never even been to a bar in Stoneybrook. I was never old enough.”

“Oh, but that didn’t stop you at that concert, did it?” Kristy asked. “What was it? U4Me?”

“Okay, that was Stamford, not Stoneybrook.” We cracked up even more.

“Car!” Dawn yelled. We stumbled apart to let an SUV pass, then bunched back together to fall all over each other again.

“Try Dave’s,” Kristy said, catching her breath. “They have live music on Tuesdays. And sometimes they have drink specials.”

Claudia hooted. “Drink specials for special drinkers!”

“‘Special’ seems appropriate,” Dawn murmured to Mary Anne, who snorted. “Car!”

We all shrieked when a white Camry squealed across the parking lot and nearly mowed us down. “Hey, I’m walking here!” Stacey yelled, flipping the car off with both hands. We were laughing so hard we were practically falling down.

“Okay, it’s getting dangerous out here,” Mary Anne laughed. “It’s bedtime.”

Dawn threw an arm around her shoulders. “Come on, I’ll give you a ride.” They waved and headed off in the direction of Dawn’s rental car. Kristy waved and headed to her car in the other direction.

“Dave’s!” Stacey said, grabbing my shoulder and dragging on me.

It turned out Dave’s was just down the street, so we didn’t even have to move the cars, not that any of us could have driven anyway. When we got inside, I was surprised at how crowded it was on a Tuesday night, but I guess Stoneybrook really didn’t have that many bars.

Claudia immediately squeezed through to the bar. “Shots. Tequila. Four of them.”

“I don’t know…” Mallory said.

“You do too know,” Claudia insisted. “We’ve been drinking margaritas, and so we have to keep drinking tequila, or the alcohol won’t mix right.”

“That doesn’t sound right,” I said.

She rolled her eyes. “Of course it’s right. It’s science, Jessi.” The bartender lined up four shots out of a bottle I didn’t even recognize, and we slammed them back. The tequila burned like fire all the way down to my stomach and made my nose run.

“Dude!” Claudia was wiping her eyes. “Was that the cheap stuff?” The bartender nodded. “Okay. Just checking. You want more? Anybody? Mal?” Mal shook her head. “Another round!”

Then some stuff happened for a while that I don’t remember. At some point, Claudia was playing quarters with a bunch of college age-looking guys and Stacey was giving Mallory advice on hair straightening. And then Stacey was actually doing Mal’s hair right there at the bar and Claudia was teaching me to play quarters. And then at some point Claudia and I were holding onto Mal while she tried to climb onto the bar.

“Dancing!” Mallory waved her drink around and busted a half-move.

“That’s right,” I said, holding her elbow to keep her on her bar stool. “That’s kind of like dancing.”

“We should go dancing,” she insisted. “You’re a dancer, you can teach me to dance.”

“I—”

“Awesome,” Claudia said.

“Dancing it is,” Stacey said. She leaned over the bar, pushing her boobs together and over the top of her dress. “Barkeep! I’d like to close my tab.”

When the bartender turned around, his eyes went straight down to her cleavage and stayed there. “Your what?”

“My taaab,” she said, swaying from side to side.

“This one’s on the house,” he told her boobs.

Stacey bounced up and down on her toes a bit. This could get ugly. “Really? Thanks!” She pulled a folded bill from somewhere deep down in her bra and slipped it in his tip jar. “You’re awesome.” She shot him a wink and shoved away from the bar.

“Dancing!” Mallory said again.

“That was awesome,” I told Stacey.

She shrugged. “I know. Come on, girl, let’s find a club.”

“In Stoneybrook?”

“Eh. You never know.”

Stoneybrook had a club. It wasn’t much of a club, pretty much just a big room in a storefront downtown, but the deejay was good and the floor was packed. Stacey immediately grabbed Mal and dragged her out on the floor, where they disappeared completely in the crowd.

“I need more alcohol before I try to dance,” Claudia said, heading toward the bar. “What do you want? It’s on me.”

“I don’t know,” I hedged. “I’ve been—”

“You’ve been a little weenie all night,” she interrupted, laughing. “You’ve been doing your best to not have any fun. You’re a dancer, and I’m going to have to get you drunk enough to go out and dance.”

“But—”

“Go dance.”

“I—”

“You’re going to drink what I order for you, and then you’re going. To go. Dance.”

I laughed finally. “Nothing with rum.”

Girl can put it down. I have no idea where she was putting it.

“How ya doin’?” she asked brightly, and my eardrums rumbled like a semi.

“Yelling,” was all I could groan.

“What?” She was totally doing it on purpose.

I cleared my throat. “Your voice is kind of loud.”

“Yeah? I didn’t know that.” At least she’d lowered her voice a little. “What are your plans for the day?”

I squinted. “I know I have something, but I forget what.”

From the way Claudia was moving around, you’d have no idea she’d spent the night doing… whatever it was that we did. She was already dressed and had her makeup on. “Stacey and I are having lunch, if you want to tag along.”

“I was going to drop by the Pikes’,” I said. “After I get cleaned up.”

“Where are you staying? Can I give you a ride?”

I rolled off the couch onto the floor and lay there for a minute, stretching out my muscles. “I’m staying with my parents. You can drop me off there.” My left boot was under the couch, and my right boot was under the bed. I managed to get them on the right feet and everything. My jacket was on the desk chair. But…

“Claud, have you seen my bra?”

She snorted. “Have I ever!”

I paused. “Is it… here?”

She snorted again.

Ohhh shit.

The Pikes’ house felt almost as familiar to me as my own parents’ house—when we were growing up, if I wasn’t at my own house with my sister and brother, I was at Mal’s house with hers. When I got there, I almost walked right on in, but I managed to stop myself in time and knocked instead.

Mal’s mom answered carrying a tiny, tiny baby. She smiled hugely when she saw me. “Jessi! It’s so good to see you! When did you get into town?”

“I just flew in last—Is that Lily?” Mallory’s youngest brother and sister caught everyone by surprise. My guess was that Brandon was the baby in a blue romper sleeping in the bouncy seat on the table, and Lily was the adorable little pink butterball in Mrs. Pike’s arms.

“It sure is.” Lily stretched and drooled. “Mallory’s actually—”

“Whatever. Baby!” Mrs. Pike laughed and handed Lily over. I cuddled her close and sniffed her head. I know it sounds gross, but I love the soap-and-baby-powder scent of a clean baby. I gave Lily a little squeeze, and she gurgled contentedly against my chest. “How are you and Mr. Pike?” I asked Mrs. Pike.

“We’re good. Readjusting,” she said, and we both laughed. She stroked Lily’s head. “It’s kind of nice to have kids in the house again, actually. It’s been quiet.”

“Well, going from eight—”

The back door slammed open, and a tall girl with long brown hair charged through. “You know, David, if I didn’t know better, I’d think—” Brandon jumped in his chair and immediately started wailing.

“Claire!” Mrs. Pike said sharply.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” The girl, who was apparently Mal’s youngest sister Claire, swooped him up and started bouncing him gently. “Shh. I’m sorry.” She smiled at me. “Hey, Jessi!”

“Claire? Holy crap.”

“Yeah, it’s been a while—”

The door slammed open again, and this time it was a tall blond guy. “You’re acting ridiculous. I never even said—” Brandon jumped again.

“David Michael!”

“David Michael?”

“Sorry, Mrs. Pike. Hey, Jessi.” Kristy’s little brother—not little anymore, though—took Brandon from Claire and kept with the bouncing. “It’s been a while. Are you in town for the wedding?”

“Yeah,” I said. “You’re in college, right?”

He nodded. “Boston College. I’m just home for spring break.”

“And are you two…?”

“Yeah.”

“No.” He glanced at Claire, and she rolled her eyes. “Okay, maybe,” she grumbled. “I guess it depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“It depends on you two getting along until I get back from work,” Mrs. Pike interrupted. She gave both babies, Claire, David Michael, and me a kiss each on the cheek and grabbed her purse from the kitchen counter. “Jessi, honey, I’m sure I’ll see you soon. Claire, David Michael, I expect the house to be standing when I get back.” And she was out the door.

“Is your mom working?” I asked Claire.

She carefully took Lily from me and laid her in the bouncy seat. The baby was fast asleep. “Yeah,” Claire said. “She didn’t really want to, but it turns out it’s expensive to put eight kids through college. She just works part-time at the library.”

“And does your dad still—”

The door slammed open one more time, and Mallory stumbled through, squinting in the light of the kitchen. Both babies started wailing, and Claire and David Michael were back to bouncing. “Mallory! Jesus,” Claire hissed.

“Let’s go upstairs,” I suggested. Mallory just swayed on her feet and followed me outside and up to her apartment above the garage. “I like your outfit, by the way,” I said, flopping down on her couch. “It looks a lot like the one you wore yesterday.”

“Your voice is really loud.” Mallory stumbled out of her shoes, blindly grabbed some clothes off the top of the dresser, and stumbled into the bathroom. Something thudded into the side of the bathtub. “Ow.” The shower started.

As Mallory cleaned up, I wandered around her apartment. It was really a studio, one large room with a bathroom and a small kitchen to one side, and it looked a lot like her old bedroom inside the house. A couple of the horse posters were even the same, even though they were matted and framed now, and a loaded bookcase at one end had an entire shelf full of her old books from when we were kids. I was flipping through Misty of Chincoteague when she came out of the bathroom, looking only slightly less rough than she did before.

“You look kind of rough,” I said. “Where did you spend the night?”

“Nowhere,” she said quickly. “So that was a good time last night, right? Going out to the bar, and then we went…”

The sentence hung in the air. “Dancing?” I supplied finally.

“Well, yes, dancing. Of course. I was just trying to remember the name of the club.”

“I don’t remember it.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “I was having a great time. All the things I did at the club.”

I laughed. “I’m sure you did. You and Stacey hit the floor as soon as we got there, and I have no idea what you did after that.”

“No idea.” She sounded weirdly disappointed about that. “Well, we had a lot of fun.”

“Me, too,” I said. “It was the first time I’ve danced in a while that I wasn’t worried about something the entire time. Not that it’s the same kind of dancing, but still.”

Mal lay down on her back on the bed, her arm over her eyes, and groaned. “Trouble in paradise?”

“Huh?”

“Is the pressure of fulfilling your lifelong dream getting to you?”

“Okay, Mal, what’s with the attitude?” She’s tired and cranky, I told myself. She had a long night. “Bad hookup last night? Did he turn out to be ugly?” Okay, not terribly sympathetic.

Mallory stiffened. “No! I’m just… I…” She sighed and rolled over, finally opening her bloodshot eyes to look at me. “Talk to me about your life.”

“No, seriously, what’s up?” I was a little softer this time, now legitimately worried. “Is everything okay? Do you need to talk?”

“Nah, I’m good,” she said. “Tell me about dancing.”

This time I was the one on my back with my eyes covered. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep doing it,” I said. “I keep getting hurt. Like, over the past year, I’ve had all these ligament problems, hurting myself and then having to do rehab. Last spring, I actually had to give up a part because I tore two ligaments in my ankle and I couldn’t dance. The girl who took over for me was nineteen.”

Mal laughed. “Jess, you’re twenty-five. It’s not like you’re over the hill.”

“In dance, I kind of am, just a little. I mean, Quint’s a guy, and he’ll probably be able to keep going into his thirties, and some of the girls I’m dancing with in the chorus will, too. But a lot of them will break down in the next few years. Next year, I might be onstage, or I might be watching from home with my feet on ice.” I lifted my legs straight up, glaring at my feet as I rolled my ankles. “I’ve been doing this for almost twenty years, Mal. Can you believe it? What person our age can say that? Our bodies really aren’t designed for that, are they.”

The room was quiet, and then Mallory sighed. “You’re not going to want to hear this.”

“What?”

“So, I know this is your dream, and that’s great,” she said, scooting over to lie next to me. “But maybe at this point you’ve had your dream. Maybe that’s the deal—you get your twenty years, and then you do something else.”

“I don’t want to do something else.”

“You always said you wanted to be a ballerina, and now you’ve done it.” The bed creaked as she stood suddenly, and I heard her feet thudding across the floor to the kitchen. “You’ve had your dream job, the one you wanted when you were a kid. Now it’s just time for you to pursue some other interests.”

I sat up and stared at her. “I don’t have any other interests, Mal. You remember growing up: I was dancing, I was baby-sitting, or I was hanging out with you. Those were my interests. What am I supposed to do? Say, ‘Yay, I got to dance! Now I’ll spend the rest of my life watching toddlers and reading books about ponies’?”

Mal didn’t look at me, just knocked around the kitchen, grabbing a plastic cup from a cabinet and filling it at the sink. “Sometimes things don’t work out, okay?” she said tightly. “Sometimes you spend years and years trying to follow your dreams and then realize it’s never going to happen, and then you know what? You find new dreams. You accept that you can’t have everything you want, and you move on.”

She spun around, and her face was so dark it knocked me backward a bit. “What is wrong with you?” I asked without thinking, which definitely didn’t help her mood. “What’s going on? Talk to me, Mal. Where is this coming from?”

“Nowhere,” she said finally, her eyes dropping. “It’s nothing. I just didn’t get a lot of sleep last night. I could use a nap.”

“Yeah,” I said, not convinced. I stood, grabbed my jacket off the back of the couch, and headed to the door. “Give me a call when you wake up, okay?” I said as gently as I could. “I want to hang out.”

“Sure.” She was already walking away.

Coming up: Mallory Pike comes to understand the consequences of the choices she makes.

On the Fourth Amendment (we hardly knew ye)

2011-05-17T22:27:00.001-05:00

Okay, so the police get to come into your home whenever they want, for whatever reason. If you got up to go to the bathroom or make a sandwich and missed that, I'll repeat it: The police get to come into your home whenever they want, for whatever reason. This new and exciting twist to our Fourth Amendment comes as a gift from our very own U.S. Supreme Court, who decided in an 8-to-1 ruling that the suspicion that evidence is being destroyed inside is sufficient cause for the police to enter without a search warrant.

Before I continue: At no point during the discussion of this development will I accept or even debate the argument "If you're not doing anything illegal, you don't have to worry." I do have to worry, and I get to worry. My constitutional protection from unreasonable search and seizure doesn't come with the condition that I not be doing anything naughty inside--it's absolute, and the only acceptable exception involves the serious consideration of a judge followed by a search warrant. I may be doing something legal but private inside--crafting a politically controversial manifesto, writing deeply disturbing fiction with terrorist fantasies and deviant sexual themes, dressing up in a rubber suit and touching myself in front of Mythbusters. If cops knock on my door and yell "Police, police, police," hear scuffling inside, and charge in to find me sumo wrestling naked in my living room with a grown man dressed like a baby, that's not okay. Adult baby sumo isn't illegal, but it's a rather private activity and not something that anyone gets to see if I don't want them to.*

(NB: Top search terms for this blog are fixing to get bizarre.)

Moving on: The Supreme Court ruling is based on the concept of exigent circumstance, wherein police can enter without a warrant

if all of the circumstances known to the officer at the time, would cause a reasonable person to believe that entry or search was necessary to prevent physical harm to the officer or other persons/the destruction or concealment of evidence/the escape of a suspect, and if there was insufficient time to get a search warrant.

(This definition isn't word-for-word from any specific decision, but we'll go with it as an accurate summary of the concept unless one of my surprisingly numerous lawyer commenters says otherwise.) Exigent circumstances provide an exception to the "knock and announce" statue, requiring officers to, well, knock, announce their presence, and be refused entry before busting in.

The question with this ruling is whether or not the police are actually creating the exigency by knocking and announcing. If they suspect evidence is being destroyed inside, that's one thing; if the suspects start destroying evidence only because the police arrived--if the evidence otherwise wouldn't have been destroyed in the time it took for the officer to acquire a warrant--that's another, and the Kentucky Supreme Court reversed the initial ruling on Kentucky v. King on that basis.

In King’s case, the Kentucky Supreme Court said, the warrantless search of the apartment was improper because it was reasonably foreseeable by the police that the occupants of the apartment would start destroying evidence once officials banged on the door, and announced: “Police-police-police.”

That action would then create an emergency that would be used to justify breaking down the door and conducting the search without a warrant, the Kentucky high court said.

Obviously, the U.S. Supreme Court disagreed.

And that's where the threat to our Fourth Amendment rights comes in. This ruling creates a situation wherein the police can enter any house under any circumstances with the excuse, "I knocked, and it sounded like something shifty was going on inside." Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the lone dissenting voice, tends to agree:

“In lieu of presenting their evidence to a neutral magistrate, police officers may now knock, listen, then break the door down,” she said. “Never mind that they had ample time to obtain a warrant.”.

The Constitution and hundreds of years of legal precedent have established a series of standards of treatment for every person--we're meant to be innocent until proven guilty, and that means that my rights as a not-suspected-of-a-crime individual don't change once I become a suspect. That those standards can now be set aside on the basis of, "Well, I did knock first!" is disturbing, and while I'd love to close here with some kind of a call to action, I have no idea what any of us can do about it.

*Update: I've just been informed that in the state of Alabama, anything outside of missionary-position sex between a married couple actually is illegal. Regardless, the cops don't get to see that custom-made size 7 7/8 baby bonnet without a warrant.

On Mashup Monday: True romance edition

2011-05-16T11:19:00.001-05:00

Okay, so I'm a romantic at heart. All you need is love. Love is all you need. I don't believe that there's any particular "one" for everyone, but my feeling is that out of 6,775,235,700 people (and counting) on the planet, pure statistics say there's probably at least one person out there who'll be prove entertaining, fulfilling, and tolerable. Which raises the obvious question: Why have Debbie Harry and John Mayer never recorded a duet together?

Norwegian Recycling/Take That/Usher/John Mayer/a bunch of folks - Recycled Romance

Those crazy kids. You know, The Boy and I are together because of a pair of skilled and knowledgeable matchmakers. Maybe some people just need a good nudge. (And John, maybe a little less frank and racially-tinged discussion of your nethers with national nudie mags--good advice for us all, really.)

On Baby-Sitters Club Super Mystery #last: Chapter 2

2011-05-13T12:10:00.002-05:00

Okay, so first, a note: The characters, places, and situations created for the Baby-Sitters Club series are the property of Ann M. Martin and Scholastic. (If they were mine, you know someone would have told Mr. and Mrs. Pike where babies come from by now.) Everything that isn't real life and isn't Ann M.'s is mine, and if you violate my copyright, I will cut you. On with the show.

In our last episode, Mary Anne and Dawn had a rather awkward reunion.

Chapter 2.
Mary Anne.

Los Sombreros hadn’t changed even a little bit. It was comforting. We even managed to track down our old table—still all the way in the back, to the right—and do our best to cram ourselves around it. It seemed to work better when we were teenagers, either because we were smaller then or because we had no problem piling into each other’s laps. I think our record might have been eleven, including boyfriends and one visiting cousin, which involved a lot of squeezing and stacking.

Of course, it had all started with just the four of us—Kristy, Claudia, Stacey, and me—brought together by what Kristy still insists on calling her Big Idea (capital B, capital I): a club of baby-sitters. A baby-sitters club, if you will. From an entrepreneurial standpoint, it was brilliant: Call one phone number and quadruple your chances of finding an available baby-sitter, if you weren’t squeamish about leaving your kids under the supervision of a thirteen-year-old. Over time—and in response to increasing demand—we expanded: Dawn came in when she moved to town, and Mallory and Jessi joined as junior members for parents who didn’t mind leaving their kids under the supervision of eleven-year-olds. More came and went over time, but this group, these seven girls, was the real thing.

At the head of our table sat, not unexpectedly, Kristy Thomas, who was staring down the length of the table as if assessing the chip-basket-to-diner ratio and finding it lacking. She had been the president of the club, if for no other reason than her own insistence, and I can’t say she didn’t carry the role well. No one I’ve met has had a better sense of organization, a stronger drive, or a louder voice. Or her own bullhorn. The third of four children and the only girl, Kristy was left to more or less fend for herself after her father bailed and her mother had to go back to work, and I think it left her with a bit of a chip on her shoulder, even after her mother remarried and Kristy suddenly acquired a larger and more complexly blended family.

From around age ten, Kristy’s style hadn’t deviated from what we called The Uniform: jeans, turtleneck, sweatshirt (sometimes an actual sweater, if she was feeling fancy), tennis shoes, and a ponytail. For club meetings, she’d add a visor to appear more official (or more like a blackjack dealer—no telling). For softball games, it would be a baseball cap. Sometimes it had a dog on it. Claudia and Stacey used to get onto her about her style. Eventually they stopped bothering.

Tonight, though, she looked like she’d made some effort: She was wearing a cowl-neck sweater, dark jeans, and a really cute pair of suede heels that I’m almost certain came from Shannon’s boutique—“Shannon” being Shannon Kilbourne, Kristy’s “roommate” (uh-huh) of three years. They sure as hell didn’t come from Kristy’s closet, anyway. Her hair was in a ponytail. The woman was a high-school health teacher and softball coach; I guess some habits die hard.

Next to Kristy, digging into the queso, sat Claudia Kishi. She had always been the artsy type—more freestyle than academic in just about every aspect of her life, and a really spectacular painter and sculptor. She grew up in a fairly strict Japanese-American family with a banker for a father, a librarian for a mother, and a certified genius for an older sister. She herself struggled with school and was eventually diagnosed with dyslexia, which didn’t stop her family and even her friends from treating her like she was practically developmentally delayed. Her creative talents, however, were undeniable, and I’d been happy to hear through the grapevine that she’d taken them south to an art school in Georgia and put them to good use.

In our club days, Claudia had been known for her out-there fashion choices—it wasn’t uncommon to see her in big, baggy pants with suspenders over a polka-dot bodysuit, with sequined red tennis shoes and mismatched earrings (a candy bar in one ear and a soda can in the other) that she’d made herself, and she’d tell us it was her Andy Warhol theme, and we all thought she was totally cool and edgy. She was the stuff. She was dibbly fresh. Claudia also was known for her voracious appetite for sweets, with candy and snacks squirreled away around her room that she’d pull out from a shoebox under the bed or from under a hat in the closet and pass around. Despite this, her figure was great and her skin was flawless. She was gorgeous, and at the time we thought she looked terribly exotic, although later we realized she just looked Asian.

With all of that in mind, I’d been kind of shocked to hear that she was working quite successfully in Chicago as a stylist and accessories buyer. But sitting at dinner, it was obvious she had recovered from the style choices of her youth—she was wearing a loose, short dress in a green and blue Pucci print and towering blue suede pumps. Her still-spectacular figure and still-perfect skin belied the sheer volume of tortilla chips and top-shelf margaritas she was putting away. (My outfit that night, a bright-blue shift dress and cropped beige blazer over beige heels, had been selected after a phone consultation with Claudia.)

Across from Claudia sat Stacey McGill (now Stacey Hoffman, after the investment banker she met on her first job out of college and married six months later). She and Claudia had been inseparable best friends, back before Stacey moved back to New York in high school and seemed to lose interest in friends back home. Claudia had made a few trips to visit her but ultimately came back saying that Stacey’s new life “wasn’t really her scene,” although she never went into more specifics than that. Stacey grew up in New York City and moved to Stoneybrook because of her diabetes, for some reason I was never able to discern. (And she does have diabetes. I’m sure it’s important, because it keeps coming up.) She’d been back and forth to the city several times following her parents’ divorce, but her move our junior year of high school ended up sticking, and contact dwindled after that. News trickled in by way of her mother—studying economics at Skidmore, working as a research analyst, married—but it was sparse and, frankly, our collective interest in Stacey had dwindled.

We’d always identified Stacey’s look as “New York sophisticated.” (In our defense, most of had at that point never actually been to New York.) That usually meant something black—black leggings, a black sweater, a black oversized whatever. It would also sometimes include such sophisticated accents as sequined sweatshirts, plastic shoes, rainbow-colored jewelry, and headbands. Her long, blonde hair was always permed, usually as a gift from her mother to assuage her guilt over the divorce.

That evening, she’d breezed in looking just as gorgeous as she had at every meeting—this time with her cloud of hair tamed into a sleek golden blowout and her earrings looking nothing like zoo animals. And while her navy blue bandage dress might have been a bit fancier than Los Sombreros normally called for, it flattered her slim figure like it was made for her (which it may well have been). She kept fiddling with the silver cuff bracelet on her left wrist and glancing at Claudia as if hoping to make eye contact, but Claudia was intent either on the bottom of her margarita glass or on anything but Stacey.

Mallory Pike sat next to Stacey, gazing longingly at her smooth hair. Mallory had always been a bit of a bookish and awkward kid, the oldest of eight children, usually struggling for attention among a houseful of louder, more dynamic kids. She’d split her time largely between the club, her responsibilities as caretaker to her younger siblings, and her own considerable talents and dreams of writing children’s books. Now she seemed rather like a taller version of the eleven-year-old she had been, still living in her parents’ garage apartment and looking after their newest surprise set of twins while she worked on her second novel. (Her first, an unexpectedly racy young-adult romance thriller, was self-published and sold 113 copies.)

Poor Mallory had never really been the fashion plate. Her outfits—because she had more important things to concentrate on, she would sometimes say—tended toward various cuts and washes of jeans topped with the kind of t-shirt you get for free for applying to college or donating to NPR. I half-expected her to show up tonight in same, but she surprised me with a knee-length corduroy skirt and turtleneck. She still hadn’t managed to find a flattering cut for her wildly curly hair, but she’d traded the retirement-villa glasses for a more naughty-librarian style, which worked for her. She seemed to be avoiding the chips and salsa, but whenever she opened her mouth to speak or sip her drink, I thought I caught a flash of Invisalign.

Part of her problem may have been that she was sitting next to Jessi. Back in our club days, Jessi Ramsey had been a promising ballerina, devoting much of her time to the dance studio, but she and Mallory had come together over a love of baby-sitting, an affection for their younger siblings—for Jessi, a sister named Becca and a baby brother named Squirt—and a bit of awe of us older girls. Because we always caught Jessi on the way to or from a dance class, we usually saw her in a leotard with a long sweatshirt and leggings and ballet flats, or a leotard with drawstring pants and a t-shirt and ballet flats, or a leotard with a short skirt and a sweater and ballet flats, with her hair up in a tight bun.

None of us, with the occasional exception of Dawn, had seen Jessi since she moved out to San Francisco with her boyfriend Quint to dance with Alonzo King. Working off of my old memories, I nearly looked right past the Jessi who walked into Los Sombreros that night. She seemed entirely self-possessed and at ease, comfortable with the people around her. If it weren’t for her lanky frame and tall dancer’s posture, we might not have recognized her walking in wearing skinny jeans, tall boots, and a long, clingy sweater. Her hair was down around her shoulders and curly—I didn’t even know she had curly hair. Poor Mallory had looked like she’d lost her best friend, her confidant and partner in prepubescent awkwardness.

Dawn sat across from Mallory, in her same old familiar seat next to my old familiar seat. I almost expected her to order her old familiar veggie quesadilla (not likely now, of course) with extra pico or something equally Californian. Back in the day, everything about Dawn had seemed cool and Californian—her tan, her hair, her vegetarian diet. We’d dubbed her style “California casual.” (Once again, none of us had actually been to California.) She was always a fan of those Californian staples of Laura Ashley florals, oversized shirts, and jeans and sweatshirts—sometimes with a very Californian straw hat

Questionable style inclinations notwithstanding, Dawn had been what I needed in my life—someone new, different, foreign, crunchy, vegetarian, an island of (what I perceived as) coolness within easier reach than Claudia or Stacey. More than anyone else, she’d been the one to help me come out of my shell, speak honestly with my father, and ultimately move past the kilts and pigtails (not realizing that “schoolgirl” was just a short step away from “naughty schoolgirl,” which would have raised my stock considerably). Living with her as sisters had come naturally, even after she moved back to California to live with her father.

Now things were far less comfortable, and Dawn seemed unfamiliar next to me, pushing food around on a plate of lettuce and guacamole. She looked good—tan and blonde as ever. Stick thin, though, angular and bony, probably from the lack of anything even marginally delicious in her life. I thought the bean sprouts and millet were bad enough without going fully raw-food vegan. Her outfit—crocheted dress, long vest, headband, Jerusalem cruisers—looked almost self-consciously hippie, but it was a decidedly more California look than the florals of yore. And it fit well with her new life, with her kids, her natural-foods store, and her husband she’d met at an ashram during the summer solstice. More important, she’d seemed really happy when she walked in, hugging the friends of her childhood.

At the far end of the table, Kristy cleared her throat and tapped the bottom of her water glass gingerly on the table. “Should I call this reunion of the Baby-Sitters Club to order?”

The laughter that rippled through us was an icebreaker. “I’d like to propose a toast,” Kristy continued. “To Sharon and Richard, back together again.”

“To Sharon and Richard,” we chorused, raising our glasses. I glanced sideways at Dawn, and while she seemed to be glancing sideways at me, neither of us could get up the nerve to actually turn her head and pursue full eye contact.

“So let’s hear about the ceremony,” Stacey called down to us. “What kind of party do you throw for a renewal of vows?”

“We’re trying—” Dawn began.

“It’s like a—” I began. We paused, glanced at each other, chuckled nervously.

“We’re trying to give it a wedding-y feel without trying to throw another wedding,” Dawn said, “since they’ve each had, you know, two of those. But we wanted to make a big deal. Mom’s wearing a dress, not a gown, and it isn’t white, because, you know, who’d buy that?” Chuckles all around.

“Dad’s wearing a suit, probably because that’s the only thing he owns anyway,” I added. More chuckles. “We’ve got flowers and a really pretty little chapel. And cake and dancing at the reception.”

“I think the reception is going to be the best part,” Dawn said.

“Definitely.” I chanced another look, and we exchanged tight smiles.

“I think the cake is going to be the best part,” Claudia said to a roll of laughter. She was looking at Dawn and me with brows knitted curiously, and I suspected that we hadn’t been able to hide our tension from her. She never missed much. We hadn’t exactly advertised the circumstances under which Sharon and my father ended up needing to renew their vows, and we would have to work harder to hide the fact that there was anything worth advertising.

“Maybe two cakes,” I suggested, turning my attention back to the table. “A not-bride’s cake and a not-groom’s cake.”

“As long as at least one of them is chocolate,” Claudia put in. “I’ve never understood the appeal of wedding cake. What kind of flavor is ‘almond’?”

“Isn’t there some story about putting a piece of wedding cake under your pillow and dreaming about the man you’ll marry?” Mallory said. “Maybe that’s why it tastes so lousy—so you won’t feel bad about not eating it.”

The joke wasn’t close to worthy of the uproarious laugh it got, but we all needed it. We needed to laugh away the time apart and the changes that come with age and the experiences we’d had without any of the other girls around to share with. If a reasonably funny joke about wedding cake was what it took to make Claudia smile at Stacey and Jessi compliment Mallory on her glasses, and to make Dawn whisper to me, “Guess we need to cancel the almond cake,” I’d take a dozen of them.

Coming up: Jessi Ramsey comes to understand the consequences of the choices she makes.

On Baby-Sitters Club Super Mystery #last: Chapter 1

2011-05-05T23:54:00.003-05:00

On the new, improved dogs of war

2011-05-05T23:09:00.000-05:00

Okay, so cry “Havoc,” and what is let slip will fuck your shit directly up. Meet the Navy SEAL dogs, every bit as badass as their human counterparts and twice as anerable. These fuzzy sonsabitches can sniff out bombs and baddies, parachute from high altitudes, take out targets with their armor-piercing titanium teeth (a bit much, I admit), and warm the ever-living fuck out of your feet on a cold night.

Yes, part of me is of the opinion that a dog’s job should, if at all possible, involve no more stress or danger than rug burn from all the rolling around and tummy rubs—then again, I feel that way about people, too. But as highly trained military teammates go, you can’t do a lot better than an armored, night-vision German Shepherd. And the image of a SEAL pup strapped to a dude’s chest as he rappels into Osama bin Laden’s compound and sniffs the bastard out makes me both awed and tickled, particularly when it’s followed by the image of that same dog wallering around in the yard and then getting a cookie.

The United States War Dogs Association is working to get war medals for these cuddly commandos, which is cool since they take just as much risk as two-legged soldiers and the humans don’t have to attack bad guys using just their teeth. And you can even send the dogs care packages, since warrior dogs like Kongs, too. (No, really, apparently they do.) Now you’ll have to excuse me, because I feel it’s time to cuddle the hell out of Dave, who would make an excellent war dog except that he’s never shown any kind of aggression at all, he has a tendency to lick strangers, he’s solely food-motivated, he hates water, and his huge Tina Turner tail would immediately give away his location. Otherwise, though, he’s an animal.

On a world west of the Chattahoochee

2011-05-03T20:54:00.004-05:00

Okay, so I hate to dwell—what am I talking about? I love to dwell—but that Gawker post got my back up, and I found myself doing something I wouldn’t have thought I’d be doing five years ago: defending Alabama.

When my brother started doing some freelancing for a newspaper in Phenix City and eventually moved to Birmingham to work for UAB, he got the crap teased out of him, because Alabama was this kind of backward, redneck, cousin-kissing cultural black hole that thanked God for Mississippi for protecting them from the bottom of every list except obesity. Then I moved here in 2006. And it’s actually kind of awesome.

Now I get just as frustrated as Doug did when I get the hick jokes from people who have never actually been here. My personal policy is that whenever I hear someone making a generalization about a region, I think back to whether I’ve ever seen that same generalization in a movie. If I have, I take the sentiment with a grain of salt. (Example: Sweet Home Alabama is not a wholly accurate depiction of Alabama. Does it get some things right? Oh, hell yes. But it’s a comedy, not a travelogue. Also: not filmed in Alabama.) Another example: Defending your derision of people trying to help disaster victims with healthy food by insinuating that these hick rubes are too dumb to appreciate it or know what to do with it anyway.

So to the Gawkerites who believe what they see in Talladega Nights: Tuscaloosa is a college town with a top-50 public university. Birmingham is the financial center of the state with one of the top-ranked research and clinical health systems in the country. Huntsville is home to the space program. And all of those little flattened communities between? The ones you’d probably never heard of before but seem to know so much about now? Though rural, they really did have indoor plumbing, internal combustion engines, Super Wal-Mart, books, TV, and schools that go past sixth grade. So if you want an excuse to push off some Soviet-era dreck in an unmarked can on desperate people, you’re going to need something better than “let on their own, people in rural Alabama wouldn’t know what to do with a can of salmon.”

Alabama is not a stupid state. Conservative, frequently. Often stubborn. Sometimes prone to listening to dumb things and ignoring smart ones. But this dogmatic, intellectually incurious, ignorant hicksville that people—non-Southern people, non-Alabamians who need something to look down on—are creating for themselves is bullshit, and screw you for making me point that out.

NB: Feel like being part of the solution? Show Uncle Dad, Larry Wayne, and all the other slack-jawed yokels you care by donating food and other crucial material goods.

On nonperishable food snobs

2011-05-03T20:48:00.007-05:00

Okay, so if I know one thing about the hundreds upon hundreds of victims left without any form of shelter or source of food by the mile-wide tornado that scored a 200-mile path across the Southeast, it’s that they deserve the absolute shittiest shit you can give them in donated food. Three-year-old Chef Boyardee? Bam. Whatever’s in that can with the label off? Go for it. Beans? More beans? Who doesn’t love more beans?!

And how do I know it’s wrong to offer healthy food to people standing next to the rubble of their own lives? Because the awesome folks at Gawker let me know.

Sure, you’ve lost everything and your entire town has been obliterated by one of the most devastating series of tornadoes in history. Doesn’t mean you can’t still eat smart, local and organic!

Magic City Post, a lifestyles website from Birmingham, offers “25 ideas for non-perishable items that will provide high-quality proteins, good carbs and health fats.” It’s just something to consider when you’re loading up that box of canned food to bring to the shelter.

Gawker’s Seth Abramovitch, who I’m sure came all the way down to ‘Bama to take those disaster pictures himself, because he’s obviously just busting out with concern, offers a mockable short list of items in his post. A few others that he seemed to miss:

1. Canned or pouched tuna
2. Canned salmon
3. Canned chicken
4. Canned black beans
5. Canned chickpeas or lentils
...
8. Smart Balance or natural peanut butter
...
13. Shelf-stable milk
14. Oatmeal and grits
...
17. Herbs, spices and spice blends
18. Canola, olive, flax seed (linseed) or peanut oil
19. Lundberg’s Rice Chips and Chip’ins Popcorn Chips
20. Minute white rice
21. Raisins and other dried fruit
22. Olive oil, mayonnaise and other condiments
23. Wheat crackers

Look at those stupid, pretentious foodies, trying to give people... healthy proteins. And milk. And dried fruit. And rice. And oil and seasonings and condiments to make their nourishment a little less bland. Those... bastards?

I’ll be the first to mock the self-satisfied tone of some of the organic/local/whatever food evangelists who seem entirely ignorant of the fact that the majority of the country doesn’t get to eat that way. But when we’re talking about people who have access to good, healthy food and want to put it in the hands of people who are desperate for any food at all, I can’t really find anything critical to say (outside of the suggestion that we donate microwave popcorn to people whose microwaves are currently being picked out of trees).

However I could--and probably should--just mock the hell out of them. I could see Jen begging for help for all of these tornado-ravaged people and just say, "Ha ha! Southerners are stupid! They don't know how to follow package instructions and open jars! Look at the stupid Alabamians who want to donate healthy nonperishable food instead of Easy Mac and shit in a can!"

I could say stuff like this:

Now, they can not only feel good about "giving selflessly," they can also feel doubly proud that they're donating $4 cans of Amy's organics shit to people who have lost everything they own in the world, many of whom could have never afforded Amy's stuff prior to the tornado. This takes self-satisfaction and smugness to a whole new, shitty plane.

See? It’s good because everyone in Alabama is too poor to buy Amy’s soup and because we shouldn’t bother buying good food for them! It’s a double whammy! (As opposed to a Double Whopper, which is apparently what these folks should be eating.)
Or this:

I do, in fact, think that a lot of the rural and lower-income individuals WILL have a problem understanding the foods involved. I grew up in a rural area in Oklahoma, and I understand that many people in those areas do not have access to this type of food, and will consequently not understand what to do with these items. That has also been reiterated by other posters here. It doesn't make them dumb, uncultured or "trashy," as someone eloquently stated above. It means that we need to take into account the culture of this particular area of the country.

I understand poor, rural culture, and am annoyed by the way that wealthy urban individuals seem to think that somehow the shit they live with on a daily basis is commonplace every across this country.

...

I don't understand why it is so hard for people like you to grasp that there is a different culture out there.

See? Because everyone from Tuscaloosa eastward is an ignorant hick who’s too dumb to read the package and boil pasta for three minutes. They don’t understand this bizarre food we offer. If this dude hadn’t been taught to cook fancy-schmancy food, he wouldn’t know what to do with an... olive. We (meaning, apparently, those of us in the community) just don’t understand the different culture of... our own community. We should have more respect for Unfrozen Caveman Tornado Victim and give him nothing but a spoon and a can of chili.

So that’s the takeaway, folks: These people are miserable and homeless and would appreciate anything you can give them. Which means that you should be giving them the cheapest, nastiest shit you can find at the back of the store shelf. When those people lucky enough to have tents and camp stoves are sitting in front of their tents and cooking on their camp stoves, the simple pleasure of a little Mrs. fucking Dash is more than you should bother with. Given the opportunity to help, it’s more important that we mock the self-satisfied foodies, and then if we have time we can throw the tornado victims the bare minimum of Cold War canned dreck and tell them they should be grateful for it.

Other things you might want to donate, as long as you buy the absolute cheapest shit you can find and then feel superior about it:

- Money (natch)
- Bottled water
- Baby stuff: diapers, formula, baby food
- Living-outdoors stuff: tents, sleeping bags, pillows, blankets, Ziploc bags and sealable containers, eating utensils, camp stoves, stove gas, flashlights, batteries, generators (some people are actually donating those, which are kind of awesome), gas, gas cards
- Cleanup stuff: work gloves, shovels, axes, chainsaws, hand saws, pry bars, wheelbarrows, garbage bags
- Comfort stuff: clean socks and underwear (all sizes), simple toys/stuffed animals/comfort items for children (if you don’t think it’s too good for them), prepaid cell phones and top-up cards (ditto)
- Self-care stuff: shampoo, soap, toothbrushes/toothpaste, deodorant, feminine items, bug spray, sunscreen, toilet paper, towels, moist towelettes, bandages, basic OTC medications
- Pet stuff (if you think they should be allowed to keep their pets): pet food, leashes, collars, crates, cages, litter, litter boxes, Dogloos, toys, treats
- Tarps
- Boxes and packing tape

Jen gives a list of drop-off locations and contact information in her snooty post, and self-righteous bastard Wade condescends to provide us with more ways to help in a constantly updated list.

These people have been through so much. Won’t you care enough to not care?

On Mashup Monday: Hope edition

2011-05-02T21:37:00.000-05:00

Okay, so news gets worse, not better. There's a point where miraculous discoveries are made and every crumbled house is a potential gift. Then there's a point where that's not realistic and every house contains either nothing or worse. It sounds fatalistic and depressing, I know, particularly coming from someone who didn't have as much as a broken window from the weather, but the death toll topped 300 today and it's just a lot.

K'naan/Matisyahu/Akon/Michael Jackson/The Fugees - Songs of Hope

God bless the families and friends who've lost loved ones, the ones still working for loved ones, and the volunteers trying to help make it better.

On Baby-Sitters Club Super Mystery #last: Prologue

2011-04-29T00:05:00.009-05:00

On a shameful new project

2011-04-28T23:48:00.004-05:00

Okay, so if you've been noticing the recent dearth of posts and thought, "I bet she has a big project coming up that she's going to announce any day now," you're right! Yay you! (If you've been thinking, "I bet she's totally slacking off": also correct.)

Blame Facebook. (Blame it for everything anyway.) A friend linked to a story about the recently released sequel to the Sweet Valley series, revisiting the beloved characters ten years later. (General consensus: It's nice to see the girls again, but Francine Pascal seems to Try a bit much to turn them into spicy adults.) That led to the inevitable discussion of what the Baby-Sitters Club girls would be up to a decade later. That led to the following conversation:

FOLKS. Oh, my God, you're so funny! This is so good.
ME. Wow, that's really flattering. Thanks.
FOLKS. No, I mean, this is really good.
ME. Thanks.
FOLKS. No, I mean really, really good. Better than the real thing, probably.
ME. I--
FOLKS. I would totally read that book, if you wrote it.
ME. Well, I--
FOLKS. WRITE THE BOOK. I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE.
ME. No, you don't.
FOLKS. WRIIIIITE.
ME. Jesus, okay, okay!

Word for word, I swear.

Anyway, the upshot is that I'm venturing into the realm of what I will deny to my dying day is fan fiction: You're getting the Baby-Sitters Club, fourteen years down the road, one chapter a week. I'm going to try to post chapters Thursday evenings, and if I don't, someone e-mail me or something. Or e-mail Erin. This is her damn fault anyway.

Coming up: Mary Anne should know by now what she's getting into.

On the tragedy next door

2011-04-27T22:57:00.004-05:00

Okay, so while I was writing that last, lighthearted post, north Alabama was being demolished by more than 100 tornadoes. I literally had no idea it was going on--our home is completely untouched, and all evening we barely felt a stiff wind, while video shows a tornado tearing through town just north of us. Debris from Tuscaloosa has been found in Birmingham. Fifty-three people--at current count--have died. Entire towns--Hackleburg, Point Pleasant--no longer exist.

I have absolutely no idea what to do. (I'm kind of worthless in the face of natural disaster, it would seem.) But the Magic City post does, thank God, and I encourage you all to follow Wade's suggestions for donating money and, if you're local, time and in-kind items. Those of us lucky--and let's stay with "lucky" and not "blessed"--to avoid that kind of injury need to step up and do whatever we can to ease the way of those who weren't so lucky.

On elaborate millinery and gin o'clock

2011-04-27T21:58:00.002-05:00

Okay, so monarchy doesn't do much for me. Weddings I can take or leave. And I haven't really paid that much attention to the British royal family since Prince Harry took over as The Hot One. But what do I love? Pageantry. And hats. And this Friday is going to be the unofficial inaugural International Pageantry and Hats Day as the once-hot Prince William marries the patient and enviably lanky Kate Middleton.

Now, I'm not going to actually be watching the proceedings--ain't no way I'm getting up at 3:00 a.m. to watch news coverage of the not-wedding part of a wedding, and I won't be able to watch the blessed event itself from my desk at work. But I will be enjoying a scone and a cup of tea in the couple's honor, and I will be assembling every available household item into a fascinator that can be seen from space and wearing it to all of my Friday meetings.

In the meantime, here's what will entertain one:

- News coverage of the wedding day by the BBC

- Kate Middleton for the Win. (Why is my champagne hand empty?)

- The honest-to-God, absolutely for-real Queen of England's Twitter feed.

- The Go Fug Yourself recap of Lifetime's original romance, Mother, May I Sleep With Royalty: William & Kate: The William & Kate Story: Inspired by True Events.

- My plans for my own eventual wedding, including a dancing archbishop, a leapfrogging groom, and the now-hot Prince Harry.

And now one must retire to pour oneself a drink and find curling ribbon and feathery cat toys to adorn one's hatband.

On birtherism, misogyny, and… math

2011-04-27T21:09:00.004-05:00

Okay, so I'm not sure where it comes from. A few things, probably: a little blowback from all of the attention to Obama's birthplace (note: It's Hawaii. Let it go), a desire to discredit Sarah Palin any way possible, a love for absolutely anything salacious and conspiratorial. But the idea that Trig Palin is not Sarah's son but her grandson is for some reason picking up volume that seems impervious to logic.

An overview: Trig Palin (the one Sarah allegedly made) was born, as far as available evidence shows, on April 18. Tripp Palin (the one Bristol allegedly made) was born December 27 of that same year. Unless Bristol celebrated pushing out a six-pound baby by immediately getting' down and getting pregnant on the first try, and then promptly delivered a 36-week baby who weighed in at more than seven pounds, Trig can't be her kid. Math + biology. If you want evidence even solider than Obama's certificate of live birth, math + biology should do it.

There are two things that bug me about this controversy. One is the aforementioned math + biology issue. I love biology, and I particularly love math--if you want to discard math to support some wacky conspiracy theory, I'll be bugged. And the other is that I'm now forced to defend Sarah Palin. Do you know what that's like for me? Don't you like me? Why would you want me to do that?

Using Palin's pregnancy against her is misogynistic. It's climbing up inside her uterus in a way that I wouldn't defend for any liberal woman and can't defend for her. Photos show her not looking pregnant? A fit, athletic woman in a bulky coat and a scarf? Show me a flat-stomached Sarah in a tailored suit and we'll talk. She got on a plane and flew to Alaska after her water had broken? She had a little bit of experience being pregnant (four kids' worth) and was under the care of an obstetrician. Show me a report from her obstetrician--and not just an obstetrician, but the obstetrician who knew the details of her particular situation--and we'll talk.

Either we're calling her a devastatingly huge liar, or we're questioning her medical choices and dictate her life as a pregnant woman. Pushing either of those theories without good, solid evidence is dirty, irresponsible, and even slanderous.

There are so many reasons to slam Sarah Palin. Her campaign largely centered around being a female candidate, counting on the unconsidered vote of women just because she's a woman too. She hunted wolves from a helicopter. She's willfully ignorant about world affairs and not inclined to resolve that. She seems to think that being cute makes up for all of her other failings. Whether she's Trig's biological mother or not, she dragged that kid around like a Cabbage Patch doll to bolster her maternal image. She considers her minor (and somewhat blemished) experience as small-town mayor and half-term governor as a qualifier for the vice presidency. She calls herself a feminist while opposing reproductive rights and comprehensive sex ed. She campaigns on meaningless catchphrases like "drill, baby, drill!" and "don't retreat, reload!" She questions the existence of global warming, supports drilling in the ANWR, opposes the endangered species list, and has pushed against measures that would help preserve wildlife and clean water and clean air. She bailed on Alaska two years into her term as governor because she had more interesting things to do. Listening to her trying to compose a coherent sentence makes me tired.

Pushing a baseless conspiracy theory about Palin's son takes energy and focus away from all of the other defensible reasons she's politically and professionally deplorable. The misogyny and the cracked theories are unfair, unfounded, antifeminist, and societally harmful. There are plenty of reasons to disagree with Sarah Palin, oppose her potential presidential candidacy, and boycott her TV show without venturing into her uterus.

On Mashup Monday: Hair-whipping edition

2011-04-25T22:16:00.003-05:00

Okay, so for some reason, folks are hating on Willow Smith, probably because of her connection to the rather wacky Will Smith family. Maybe because of her interesting sartorial choices. Maybe because her debut single centers around the incisive lyrics, "I whip my hair back and forth/I whip my hair back and forth/I whip my hair back and forth/I whip my hair back and forth/I whip my hair back and forth/I whip my hair back and forth." It hardly seems fair--she's just a kid. But still, if we're looking purely at the "I whip my hair back and forth"-to-other lyrics ratio...

Thom Yorke? Thoughts?

Thom Yorks/Willow Smith - Whip My Hair

I knew you'd take her side.

On Friday on Fallon on Friday (on Sunday)

2011-04-03T21:29:00.006-05:00

Okay, so here's the backstory: Rebecca Black is a 14-year-old girl in California who's into music. A friend of hers told her about this vanity record label in LA, Rebecca thought it sounded cool, and her mom coughed up $4,000 to produce a music video. The song, "Friday," has since gotten millions of views on YouTube, and charming critiques have gotten thrown around using words like "the worst song ever."

First of all: Not the worst song ever. Hardly. Not in a world where "Yummy Yummy Yummy" went gold.

Second: It really is bad.

Third: The Jimmy Fallon video above is really funny, mostly because they brought in Stephen Colbert, Taylor Hicks, the Roots, and the New York Knicks dancers for their own (let's admitted, pretty crappy) performance to... mock a 14-year-old girl.

At the risk of outing myself as someone completely lacking in any sense of humor: Y'all, chick is 14. I don't know that she's even legally old enough to choose the front seat. (Are there laws about that kind of thing?) She was making the video for fun. When she was filming, I bet she was having the awesomest time ever--I mean, hell, I'd think it was awesome, and I'm 23. And now, she's getting bashed and parodied, and there are comments and tweets and Facebook pages telling her she should die, and seriously? Mocking dumb things is fun, don't get me wrong, but two grown men with nightly TV shows and millions of viewers getting together with dancers, pyros, and a guy who appeared to be dressed like a beekeeper for the purpose of making fun of a teenage girl? In this crazy day and age, you couldn't find any higher-hanging fruit? Fuck, y'all. (And I get to say "fuck," 'cause it's Sunday. Sunday, Sunday...)

Despite saying that some of the things people have said have made her CRY, YOU BIG ASSHOLES, Rebecca seems to be keeping a pretty good attitude about things. Her song is on iTunes, and she's donating the proceeds to disaster relief in Japan. And she's also reached out with a very important message about safe driving. Rock on, Rebecca. And if you don't think I'm gonna go straight to iTunes and buy her single... you're right, I'm not, because it's seriously kind of dumb. But I think it's cool that she made it, and I hope she had fun.

Which Seat Should I Take? w/ Rebecca Black from Rebecca Black

On the Good, the Bad, and the Friday Not-Even-Random Ten: now with double The Good Stuff

2011-03-25T12:22:00.001-05:00

Okay, so this newest triumphant re-re-return of TGTBATF(NE)RT is due almost entirely to the kindness of the doctors (and damned if I can remember which ones) who stole my wisdom teeth from me yesterday morning. I think it was yesterday. Anyhoo, they're the reason I'm sitting on my couch instead of my desk chair at lunchtime on a Friday, and the reason I'm eating blueberry yogurt here instead of proper lunch. But there's a silver lining to even the yickiest of dental clouds.

The Good (for 3/25):

- a day off. It's not everything, but it helps.
- post-anesthetic comedy--in this case, "I see rhinoceroses. And when I close my eyes, there's a couch over there."
- Burn Notice, my TV marathon of choice for my convalescence. Deadpan voiceovers, improvised gadgetry, unconventional advice for living, and Bruce Campbell: a universal good.
- blueberry yogurt
- a loved one willing to pour Muscle Milk milkshakes down your face until you're in a condition to chew

The Bad:

- the pain
- the yick

The Ten:

1. God Lives Underwater, "From Your Mouth"
2. Garbage, "Shut Your Mouth"
3. Johnny Cash, "Hurt"
4. Jimmy Eat World, "Pain"
5. Lauryn Hill, "When It Hurts So Bad"
6. The Police, "King of Pain"
7. Lenny Kravitz, "Let's Get High"
8. U2, "Miracle Drug"
9. Mono, "The High Life"
10. Sade, "Feel No Pain"

Your Ten, your most entertaining anesthesia stories, and your favorite tasty, no-chew snack recipes go in comments.

On laying off the law

2011-03-22T22:23:00.002-05:00

Okay, so realizing that the Scopes Monkey Trial and Intro to Intelligent Design 101 are beginning to wane in impact, the Tennessee State Legislature has taken a fresh stab at the top of the Whack Pack with a stab at the scourge of Sharia law.

A proposed Tennessee law would make following the Islamic code known as Shariah law a felony, punishable by 15 years in jail.

State Sen. Bill Ketron, R-Murfreesboro, and state Rep. Judd Matheny, R-Tullahoma, introduced the same bill in the Senate and House last week. It calls Shariah law a danger to homeland security and gives the attorney general authority to investigate complaints and decide who's practicing it.

It exempts peaceful practice of Islam but labels any adherence to Shariah law — which includes religious practices such as feet washing and prayers — as treasonous. It claims Shariah adherents want to replace the Constitution with their religious law.

The people of Tennessee should be proud that their legislature is taking the time and resources to illegalize something that is already illegal. (Read the full text of the bill.)

Let's remember how the law works, shall we? The First Amendment guarantees our right to freely practice our religion of choice (or lack thereof). The Supremacy Clause establishes federal law as the supreme law of the land. This means that Mormons can wear all the awkward undergarments they want, but they can't marry polygamously; fundamentalist Christians can revive in tents for as long as they want and in as many angel languages as they want, but they can't flog their kids for impertinence; and Muslims can avoid pork to their hearts' content but not behead anyone for any reason, ever.

This legislative attempt is coming from two places: one, that anything that Muslims ever do is wrong, wrong, wrong--including dietary restrictions (like those observed by Jews) and foot-washing ceremonies (like the ones that will be performed by Catholics not quite a month from now on Holy Thursday). But if you want to call it Sharia and not kosher, it becomes evil and wicked and should be forbidden (which ostensibly would include, as noted by imam Mohamed Ahmed in the above-linked article, not-robbing banks).

The other reason comes from a place much closer to home: They're assuming that American Muslims want to establish Sharia as the law of the land, because that's what they themselves want to do with their own Christian law. They want to be not even the exception but the rule, so they can't conceive that observers of a religion (in this case, an EVIL HEATHEN religion) might be uninterested in ruling the country--that they might just be interested in praying in peace--and thus all Muslimity must be forbidden at all cost.

So to lay it all out: Punitive beheading or amputation, still illegal. Polygamy, still illegal. Stoning, still illegal. Murder, rape, assault, terrorism, and stealing, all still illegal (but then, they're illegal under sharia anyway). Foot-washing, praying, hair-covering, and no-pork-eating, still legal, and still not hurting anyone. Certainly not as much as depriving children of vital, urgent health care because the Great Physician supposedly has five on it.

And a personal note to Tennessee: Vol State, I spent many formative years in your warm embrace. My brother's awesome girlfriend calls you home, when compelled to do so under threat of violence. Virginia is trying to push women back into back alleys, Georgia has illegal miscarriages and frustrated legislators, and Alabama has outlawed vibrators except when used by cops--you're all I have left, TN, and you have a spotty record yourself. Set a good example for my assorted other home states and step cautiously into the 21st century.

On Japan

2011-03-22T22:21:00.000-05:00

Okay, so part of me has been wanting to comment on the situation in Japan (and I use "situation" to represent my complete inability to process and/or summarize events since March 11). I feel it's worthy of note, not just because of the tragedy but also because of the reactions inside and outside of Japan. But at the same time, I don't know if I'm up to making that note, because I live in Alabama and drive a blog full of snark and the mere fact that I'm observing this right now seems kind of bigger than and beyond me.

I think I can handle good news, though, so I'll try to deal in some of that.

- As of one week ago, 91 countries and nine international organizations have offered support in the form of money, emergency materials, and hands-on assistance for rescue and relief.

- Two days after the devastating earthquake and tsunami, a 60-year-old man was rescued from his rooftop 10 miles off the coastline. The next day, a four-month-old baby thought lost was found. The day after that, a 70-year-old woman was rescued from her home. Small miracles, yes, but they mean the world.

- In Arahama, a dog stayed by its injured companion until both were rescued. (And they were both rescued and treated, and now they are recovering and being cared for.)

- And if nothing else, we can take comfort in the fact that efforts are being made to keep the Fukishima reactor from pooping.

Donate, specifically to relief efforts in Japan or to general relief funds to be distributed as needed:

American Red Cross
Save the Children
Doctors Without Borders
Global Giving

(Screen any charity to which you're considering a donation with the Better Business Bureau.)

On Mashup Monday: Four chords edition

2011-03-21T08:36:00.002-05:00

Okay, so I'm an unapologetic fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (show and movie).

Oz: Well, other bands know more than three chords. Your professional bands can play up to six, sometimes seven completely different chords.

Devon: That's just, like, fruity jazz bands.

Oh, Dingoes Ate My Baby. Your problem is that you don't know four chords.

Axis of Awesome/Journey/James Blunt/Alphaville/Jazon Mraz/come on, people

I, V, vi, IV. There's your career; don't forget to thank me in your liner notes. (You too, Johann Pachelbel).

On a "victory" for "life"

2011-02-22T22:22:00.001-06:00

Okay, so on Friday, your House of Representatives voted to, in the interest of protecting life, completely defund women's preventive health services. in the name of protecting life. In eliminating federal funding to Planned Parenthood, the House eliminates $330 million for services that have nothing to do with abortion and everything to do with providing essential health care to millions of women--many of whom wouldn't be able to afford any care at all otherwise.

To underscore the extent to which Planned Parenthood directs no federal funds to abortion services, allow me to note that Planned Parenthood directs no federal funds to abortion services. Regardless of your personal feelings about the Hyde Amendment and abortion funding in general, one unavoidable fact is that Planned Parenthood directs no federal funds to abortion services. So if your goal is to ensure that no federal money goes to fund abortions at Planned Parenthood, yay! You win.

But abortions account for a whopping three percent of Planned Parenthood's services. And that's one thing that bugs me about the ABC story linked above--in the first sentence, it identifies Planned Parenthood as an "abortion provider," which is like identifying McDonald's as a salad bar. It would be more accurate to identify Planned Parenthood as a provider of preventive care, cancer screenings, tests and treatments for STIs, contraception, and well-woman services, not to mention educational programs that help prevent unplanned pregnancies and promote health and wellness. But that's fairly wordy, and it lacks the dramatic punch implying an office full of white-coated Dr. Orloffs just itching to kill a baby.

It's time to come out and acknowledge that "pro-life" is seldom actually pro-life. Pro-life would mean funding breast exams and Pap smears that can catch cancer early and give women a better chance at surviving. Pro-life would mean giving women the information and medication to prevent unplanned pregnancy. Pro-life would mean providing the treatment and primary care that can help preserve a woman's fertility and see her through pregnancy to birth for a healthy mother and baby. Which makes it so amusing that amendment sponsor Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), who first unsuccessfully introduced this measure in 2009 and has been pushing ever since, calls the vote "a victory for life."

Show me where this amendment is about life. Show me the life in undiagnosed cancer and untreated illness.

This amendment has nothing to do with saving lives. This amendment is a vendetta against Planned Parenthood. It's a middle finger to reproductive health and all who support it, and the fact that millions of women--and men--will be left without crucial health care pales in the face of that righteous mission. It's a reminder that women often get to take a back seat to a zealous cause. And it is a wicked betrayal by elected officials who are called upon to represent our interests and have, instead, thrown us completely and uncaringly and unconscionably under the bus.

The overall spending bill is still waiting on a vote, and if (God forbid) it passes it should make it in front of the Senate before the end of the month. Start now contacting your Senators to make sure they understand the importance of blocking this amendment. Remind them that the time to take ideological stabs is not the time to play politics with women's lives. And remind them that they have mothers and wives and daughters whose lives could depend on the care that Planned Parenthood provides, and that this funding is about life in its truest sense.

On the apocalypse, nowish: 2011

2011-02-22T22:20:00.003-06:00

Okay, so the recent unrest in Egypt has raised questions among some complete kooks about whether the End Times could be upon us. And that's always a reasonable question, which is why it's time to bring back… the Practically Harmless Apocalyptic Index! (wild applause)

Of course, as we've established in previous editions, it takes more than just civil unrest to portend the apocalypse. The book of Revelation lays down a clear…ish account of the signs that will appear to us before the battle of Christ and Antichrist and the eventual thousand-year peace. And we certainly haven't--

--oh, holy fuck, what's that?!

The explicit appearance of the Lamb's own pale horse notwithstanding, however, really we're still okay--we checked off pestilence and disease back in March of '05, so this doesn't actually move us any close to the end. We still need to account for:

- Counterfeit baptisms, bibles, Messiahs, and holy days--false prophets who possess miracle-working powers will proclaim the name of Jesus but not follow His commandments.
- The sky will roll back like a curtain.
- One-third of the sea will turn to blood, fish will die, ships will sink, and rivers will turn bitter.
- The Holy City (Jerusalem) will be trampled for 42 months.
- The Beast (the Antichrist) will emerge from the Abyss.
- Jesus will come back and throw the Antichrist a righteous beating.
- Peace will reign for a thousand years.

Sure, the Gulf of Mexico has turned to oil and the Church of Scientology is performing miracles of modern vitamin. But we're still lacking those few necessary ingredients to make a truly memorable apocalypse. Thus, despite an unannounced appearance by Death himself and his pallid pony, our Apocalyptic Index stands at 60.

On dangerous places and bad things

2011-02-17T20:39:00.001-06:00

Okay, so I debated over posting about the attack on Lara Logan, if only because she's asked for privacy and even mentioning her on a blog kind of feels like violating that. But a strange and awful phenomenon has arisen that I want to address before letting it go.

Journalism is important. Sometimes it's done better than others, and sometimes things waving the Journalism flag are really closer to commentary or outright shilling. But journalism, at its best, shines that disinfecting light in places that need it. The first thing Mubarak did when the protests broke out was to cut off phone and Internet access, and why? Because it's easier to do horrible things to people if there's no one there to watch, and it's easier to pull one over on the rest of the world if they don't know what you've done. Whoever controls the flow of information controls the situation. Anyone from a citizen with a cell phone to a journalist with a camera crew can have a part in reopening that communication.

Was this a very dangerous assignment? Absolutely. But so was Logan's time in Afghanistan, and so was her time embedded with the U.S. military. She's a war correspondent--CBS's chief foreign affairs correspondent, in fact, so the idea that they'd rather send in an intern rather than a seasoned reporter who happens to be blonde and attractive is laughable. She wasn't walking down a dark alley with money taped to her back--she was on the job, a job that happens to be a lot more dangerous than most. That generally attracts admiration, although I suppose when you're an attractive blonde who's just been gang-raped it's easier to criticize.

Logan and her team knew how dangerous the situation was when she went in that night. She'd recently returned to Egypt after being detained and harassed by the police; she said she felt she hadn't done her job because the story hadn't been told, and she was going back in. She informed the embassy that she was coming back in. She had a crew with several men and a trained security detail. She was well aware of the culture and the current atmosphere in Egypt--she's been reporting from the front lines in the Middle East for much of the past decade. She was dressed modestly. That she was blonde and attractive, she couldn't really do anything about. Like a soldier or a firefighter, she saw a dangerous situation, and she prepared herself as best she could and waded in, because she felt it was important.

What was done to her was horrible because it was horrible. It's horrible that situations like this frequently turn into mobs. It's horrible that people are targeted in the course of doing important work. It's particularly horrible that women are more frequently subject to that particular kind of violation--whether in Cairo or in New York--ostensibly for a variety of reasons but ultimately Because They Can. And it's horrible that Logan is now under attack again, by media and commentators and everyday schmucks I won't link to, for whatever perceived sins she's committed--for being attractive, for entering a dangerous situation, for knowing the culture better from the ground than we can from our sofas.

Even if she'd been attacked in D.C. for nothing more than looking pretty and going to a bar at night, she would deserve nothing but our sympathy and prayers. But she was attacked in the process of doing something brave and important. And she deserves our sympathy, our prayers, our respect, and our gratitude. And her privacy, which is why I'm going to leave off now with only hopes for her full recovery.

On dickitude

2011-02-14T22:04:00.004-06:00

Okay, so currently, The Boy is celebrating the day with his fourth uninterrupted hour of WoW. My celebration was going to involve a considerable amount of fried chicken and not sharing, but some unexpected dental work this morning has left me unchewing; I might have to go the too-much-ice-cream-and-farting-under-the-covers-all-night route instead.

However you choose to observe it, Practically Harmless wishes you a very merry, very obnoxious Be a Dick Day.

On Mashup Monday: Global harmony edition

2011-02-07T23:55:00.003-06:00

Okay, so I can't think of a time that could better use a dose of the world playing beautifully together. And nobody says it like lolcheerio33 in the comments for this video: "It's not a Youtube Symphony without a toy piano, a saw, a beat-boxer, and a storm trooper."

The whole world / Internet Symphony No. 1: Eroica

I can't decide if my favorite is the little-ittle girl behind the timpani or the en masse harp glissando at 2:50. No idea when the next open auditions are, but I figure I should start getting Abbey in shape now.

On the Good, the Bad, and the Friday Random Ten

2011-02-04T20:33:00.005-06:00

Okay, so this week has been kind of a serious one: The posts of note were about the State of the Union and the opposition response, we faced down dumbassery from Bill O'Reilly and no fewer than 173 Representatives, and The Boy had a birthday that we'll just wasn't 29. So I invite you to take a minute and revisit this post.

See? Wasn't that nice?

What's good (for the two-week period ending 2/4):

- self-righteous unintentional hilarity. "Where do the tides come from, huh? Answer me that. See, you can't! That's bec--Oh, really? Huh. Uh… well… Where did the moon come from, Mr. Smartypants?" When you screw up, your two options are to own up to it and look humble or keep digging and look like a bigger douche with every shovelful. Quit digging. Well, not you, Mr. O'Reilly.

- home warranties

- Roger Ebert vs. a Nicholas Sparks movie starring Miley Cyrus. He's actually pretty gentle with Ms. Cyrus; the last three paragraphs are the winners.

- the source of Ebert's Cormac McCarthy comment (at the link previous). It's one of those you-laugh-or-you-cry things, and I choose to laugh, and the reason why is "'A Farewell to Arms, by Hemingway. Good stuff. That's what I write." That is the reason why.

- Bach's Toccata and Fugue on a giant foot piano

- the state of the salmon. Okay, funny/sad.

- Baby Monkey (Going Backwards On A Pig). Oh, hell, here's the embed:

- someone else who doesn't get Bieber's 'Bama Bangs. The money quote: "At my age, I have to wonder: Who the heck is this kid, and why can't he get a haircut?"

- a template for every awful Facebook discussion you've ever witnessed. I'm always The Thoughtful One, I swear.

- the Big Top Cupcake cake mold. It is (God willing) going to turn out a huge, enormous cupcake for The Boy's birthday tonight. I haven't even used it yet, but I'm calling it a Good, because even if I screw things up and the cake is horrible it's still a huge, enormous cupcake, and that's awesome.

What's bad:

- stuff in Egypt. It seems unfair to just give is a passing mention in a Friday post, but I don't even know where to start.

- willful ignorance. No need to click--it's the same O'Reilly link as above. But there's a really sad component to it, and that's that not only does he not know this stuff, he's happy to not-know it. He's proud of it. To him, God exists wholly in the stuff that he doesn't understand, and so making him understand things chips away at God. He would rather be wrong than be forced to change his mind. This is awful. This is an awful way to be, and what's worse is that he has people who worship him and hang on his every word and will want to be just as willfully ignorant as he is. Awful.

- The Amber Spyglass. (Wow, this TGTBATFRT has gotten kind of religion-y.) And it's not for the reasons you think--Episcopapist though I am, I don't feel threatened by an anti-religion author, even one who explicitly declares his intention to kill God in his book. What offends me is that the third book in his His Dark Materials trilogy just sucked. The plot lagged and meandered, the characters became weak and pale, he buried the climax, and he penned two rather uncomfortable pages of two thirteen-year-olds making out in a forest. What disappointed me so was that The Golden Compass was stellar, The Subtle Knife was kind of disappointing, and by the end of The Amber Spyglass I was just ready for it all to be over with. (There's a lot to say here; I think I might just post an actual review at a later date. Spoiler alert: I'm going to pan it.)

- defining down "rape." What entirely the fuck. As if the Hyde Amendment wasn't bad enough, House Republicans feel it needs editing to further define precisely what rape is acceptably horrible to earn an abortion. If you're claiming rape, it'd better be trigger-warning, hold-you-down, Whoopi-Goldberg "rape rape," or else you're having that kid--getting drugged or coerced just means you were probably asking for it. (Paging Bill Napoli…) The good news: They're backing off of it. The bad: Their next one is worse.

Oh, I do so love to end on a cheery note.

The Ten:

1. Nanci Griffith, "The Wing and the Wheel"
2. Hank Jones (feat. Abbey Lincoln), "Can't Help Singing"
3. Orbital, "Last Thing"
4. Passengers, "Miss Sarajevo"
5. Heather Nova, "Avalanche"
6. Will Smith, "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It"
7. OMD, "Tesla Girls"
8. The Smiths, "Sheila Take a Bow"
9. Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Under the Bridge"
10. Sade, "Like a Tattoo"

Your Good? Your Bad? Your favorite cupcake recipes? Your personal theories on what makes the tides go? Those, and your Ten, go in comments.

On responding to the response

2011-02-04T19:22:00.004-06:00

Okay, so I promised a note on the opposition response to the State of the Union address, but there isn't much to say. What's frustrating to me about the opposition response is that it isn't really a response--it's a pre-recorded speech that only addresses the issues raised in the SOTU if the issues raised in the SOTU are the ones predicted by the opposition in the preparation of their response. And while that's a bit annoying when the speech is predictable and/or lacking in substance, it's particularly frustrating when there's stuff I'd like to hear them actually respond to.

What we got instead was basically your standard political speech, recorded and played after the president was done speaking. And because this year's SOTU took so many rather unexpected paths, Paul Ryan's for-real response made him sound like he'd been sleeping through the speech, and Michele Bachmann's me-too speech made her sound… very much like herself.

The For-Real Response: Paul Ryan

OMG OUR ECONOMY IS SHIT AND IT'S GOING TO MORE SHIT AND WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE AND WE'RE GOING TO BE GREECE AND OUR DAY OF RECKONING IS AROUND THE CORNER OH MY HOLY FUCK!!!

The Style: Okay, some parts of it were going to sound wacky either way. There was a certain quasi-apocalyptic tone to his comments, as if complete economic collapse is right around the corner and we're all going to be living in surprisingly technologically equipped squats selling our blood for food money. Yes, we're in tough economic times--just ask the guy who was out of work for more than a year. But we're on our way back, thanks in part to those deeply hated (even by me) government bailouts and in large part to the tenacity of the American people. We're not on the brink of collapse. As long as we start right away to make reasoned and reasonable changes, we're not going to crumble under the weight of our debts and have to train our children as pickpockets.

The Substance: The content of his speech really underscored the extent to which we're getting nothing important from the response, because he's not responding to anything said in the SOTU (which I'd really be interested to hear). Calling for careful spending cuts, investment in education and innovation, and responsible taxations; identifying the role of government in promoting entrepreneurship, upward mobility, and personal responsibility--I would like to hear what he'd say after hearing Obama promote those very same values.

Me, Too! The Tea Party Wants to Talk Too!: Michele Bachmann

The Style: I realize that it's completely sexist to kick of my analysis of her speech by criticizing her appearance, but: Girlfriend looks creepy. But it's not just the face paint and the crack eyes. It's her stiff demeanor and out-of-shot gaze, like a flight attendant demonstrating how to inflate your flotation vest. And she had visual aids.

The Substance: It's a bad idea to slip in mentions to Obama promises "just like the ones we heard him make this evening" when we know your speech was prepared before "this evening" and you're about to bitch about what you were absolutely sure he was going to emptily promise. Reducing our dependence on foreign oil? Rolling back taxes and regulations that make it hard for small businesses and job creators? Medical malpractice reform? It's in there. And by getting so royally pissed off about something you don't even know he said makes you sound irrational and reactionary and… well-played, Michele.

I don't know the solution to this. To give the opposition time to prepare a response to the actual content of the SOTU, you'd have to air that response the next day--at which point no one will be watching anymore. The alternative would be to put them on immediately after the SOTU, and as someone who's had to deliver speeches with fifteen minutes' notice and three hand-scribbled notecards, I know it's hard to work on that kind of a deadline and still have a cohesive message that doesn't leave out any pertinent ideas. (Of course, I won awards for it, but that's neither here nor there.)

I know this will be a wholly despised suggestion, but I'd be willing to give another half-hour of primetime air--across the networks--the evening following the SOTU to hear a good response from the opposition. Wednesday night at 8:30: "The Middle," "Live to Dance," "American Idol," "Minute to Win It." Want to know what J.Lo is wearing this week? Big hair, big boobs, nude lip, heavy eye. Sparkles. Now someone give Paul Ryan a beer and Michele Bachmann a good scrubbing, and let's talk about some progress.

On the state of the state of the union

2011-02-03T18:05:00.002-06:00

Okay, so I watched this year's SOTU the day after the event itself. We don't have standard television (and not in a snooty, Jesse Eisenberg, "I don't even have a TV" way--we watch an assload of TV, but we stream most of it), so I ended up watching it later on YouTube. That gave me the opportunity to read a lot of commentary on it beforehand, which I probably shouldn't have done but did anyway (so there), and that had me looking for undesirable things in Obama's speech: extreme socialism, extreme kowtowing, a sense of giving in and giving up.

I didn't see any of it.

Now, you all know me. You know my politics and views. You know that Barack Obama has been my pretend boyfriend since the 2004 DNC. But you also know that I tend to be (I think) fairly reasonable and discerning. And with this speech, I discerned… a pretty good speech. It was an appropriate balance of optimism (dare I even say hope?) and realism, it made solid proposals that were backed up by ways to make them happen, and it really, really showed a lot of respect for our country.

A few things that jumped out at me, briefly:

(Okay, a whole bunch of stuff that jumped out at me, at length:)

America the Beautimous

- There's an emphasis on the "American family" over party--working together tomorrow, facing governing challenges that are bigger than party politics. Oh, Barack. So innocent and full of light. Never change.

- The "first nation to be founded for the sake of a dream"--ooh, shivers.

- I like that he pointed out how each generation has made sacrifices to make the American dream progress, and now it's our turn. It's been so long that we've been filling our Hummers because we can and going shopping or else the terrorists have won; we'd do well to remember what our grandparents did and gave up in the name of keeping our country strong.

Ideas and Innovations

- I like that he's officially coming out behind innovators and inventors. That's the way to go. I just hate that he used the phrase "Sputnik moment"--I get what he was getting at, but there are so many people who are going to go so many stupid places with it.

- When he makes proposals, he also proposes things we can reasonably cut to make room for the new stuff. Clean energy can be developed at the expense of subsidies to oil companies--as he points out, they're doing quite well on their own, and of course they can always jump back in with clean-energy proposals of their own. Make college more affordable at the expense of bank subsidies. Propose something, then tell us how you're going to pay for it. Good stuff.

- "Race to the Top" over "No Child Left Behind"--thank freaking God.

- High-speed rail and nationwide wireless broadband--I like the idea. I also like the idea of unicorns. But I like the idea of those things, too.

There Are No Small Businessmen, Just Small Businesses

- Taxes! Simplify the corporate tax system so that smaller businesses can keep more money to grow with and large corporations can't wiggle out of paying taxes entirely. Is this the first time this has ever been proposed in an SOTU, or have I just not been listening?

- Regulations! Review regulations that overburden small-businesspersons.

- I'd like to hear more about these trade agreements he's pursuing. He's a little vague there--he throws them out there and says they'll support jobs, but he never really says how. I like to know how. (See above, in re: "how.")

No, Honey, to Our Health

- He admits that every law has its flaws--and even identifies one right there, live, in the form of excessive bookkeeping burdens on small businesses. And he invites everyone to make their reasoned suggestions on how to fix it. You bastard!

- "Instead of re-fighting the battles of the last two years, let's fix what needs fixing and move forward." How 'bout it, Republicans Who Ran on a Platform of Nothing But a Promise to Roll Back Health Care Reform? You up for that, or you still want to get your way?

Daffy Duck Reception! Taffy for Consumption!

- "Every day, families sacrifice to live within their means. They deserve a government that does the same."

- He frames debt and deficit reduction as a matter of responsibility, which makes it sound like our government really could be financially responsible if it tried. Nifty!

- Freezing domestic spending sounds great, and it's kind of nice to hear that he'll be making sacrifices in the form of some of his pet community action programs, but… if you can acknowledge that federal salaries have already been frozen for two years, you need to acknowledge that there are people who are struggling because their salary isn't keeping up with the cost of living. I'm sure they'd love a domestic spending plan that didn't involve perpetuating that.

- Cut excess military and social spending yes, cut education and innovation no; extend tax cuts for richest two percent no, simplify tax code yes.

- Medical malpractice reform: While I love the thought of my dad being protected from spurious lawsuits, I also recognize that "medical malpractice reform" is often a shortcut to the land of "don't bother suing, Man Who Got the Wrong Leg Amputated, because it's not going to go anywhere." Any specifics there, Mr. President?

- Social Security: Again, Mr. President, specifics? Even just pertinent generalities?

At Home…

- Reorganizing government to be more competent and efficient: Once again, Barack, never change. (Did you know about the salmon thing? Wow! That is wild.)

- "If a bill comes to my desk with earmarks inside, I will veto it."

… and Abroad

- I like the emphasis on taking the fight to Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. One of my big frustrations with the Iraq war was that it was so obviously secret agendas and bullshit reasoning--we were going into Iraq because Iraq was sexy, while the men who were actually responsible for the 9/11 attacks were doing budget small-space makeovers in their caves. Now that we can ease out of the Iraq war a bit, it's time to focus on the real threats.

= "America's moral example." We need to remember to be one. I know that has actually been de-emphasized in the past--we're in dangerous, trying times and we have to do what we have to do. I like this reminder that what we have to do is what's right.

- Hell yes, supporting our troops. Hell yes, give them the care and equipment they need. Hell yes, get them involved and productive instead of shoving them off to the side.

- Hell yes, opening doors to recruiters and ROTC on college campuses. I absolutely did not see that one coming, but I love that Obama brought that up as a result of the repeal of DADT.

And the Crowd Goes Wild

- Were those boos for health insurance reform? (And he chuckles and says, "Now, I have heard rumors that a few of you still have concerns about our new health care law.")

- Also, Messrs. Grumpypants sitting there looking all grumpypants during the standing O for reducing bookkeeping costs on small businesses. He just cannot do anything to please you, can he?

- Every time they cut to the Joint Chiefs, they look like they're all holding back farts. (Military spending cuts and DADT.)

- I thought that John Boehner was affectedly unimpressed throughout--I mean, come on, that line about smoked salmon was a hoot--but then I realized that's just how his face looks. He should hang out with the Joint Chiefs.

- Madame First Lady, please drink coffee. I'm sure you've heard this speech 20 times while he's brushing his teeth, but you're not supposed to look grumpy when he's orating. (You're still a classy broad. Love the dress.)

Breakdown

I see what some people on the left might be pissed off about: It was so reasonable. There was nothing inflammatory. No middle fingers. No pointed jabs. No ridiculous claims. In a country that's off of eight years of the most backward administration ever to go backward, we feel like it's time for one that's mad-crazy left and intentionally pissing of the right and then lighting up a bong and passing it around Congress while he talks. We're owed that. And so when we got someone who was reasonable, we were disappointed and kind of scared--is the pendulum ever going to swing back our way?

Well, maybe it's not supposed to. Dead-center is where the pendulum is supposed to end up. Granted, it's carrying the momentum of a government that's been getting right-er every minute, but its rightful place is in the middle, where most Americans are. And that's where Obama went. He didn't go centrist-as-defined-by-the-conservatives, wherein "center" is actually farther right than anything else. And he didn't even go centrist-as-defined-by-the-liberals, which actually the same definition as the conservatives because "centrist" is, to the left, a dirty word.

But if you want to find a new definition for "centrist," maybe one around the area of "92 percent approval by the SOTU-watching public," it's a place that Obama can plant his flag. He made proposals that would please the conservatives--corporate tax reform, spending cuts, reorganized government--but they weren't pandering. They were what is good for America. Obama didn't define "centrist" or "moderate" or "reasonable" relative to today's politics--he determined what needed to be done and what was right for the country, and he planted a flag in it and said, "This is the middle. Now let's get some shit done." Which is a good place to start if getting shit done is your goal.

Coming up: I respond to the responses to the State of the Union.

On more cuteness--because there will always be more cuteness

2011-01-31T21:49:00.002-06:00

Okay, so commenter B says: “But now you have used up all your saved cutesy links. What will you post tomorrow?”

Bazinga.

On the state of our union

2011-01-31T21:49:00.001-06:00

Okay, so I have a breakdown and/or analysis of Tuesday's State of the Union on the way, but one thing already sticks in my mind: That speech is so much less fun when you know there won't be any references to human-animal hybrids.

Thom Yorke/Talib Kweli - The State of the Union

And as a note--just because our current president isn't a babbling numbskull in the style of our last president doesn't make the Wounded Warrior Project any less in need of support. Any suggestions for a Barack Obama-themed SOTU drinking game are very much welcomed.

On rhetoric and romanticised revolution

2011-01-26T22:53:00.004-06:00

Or, But Words Can Never Hurt Me

Okay, so I'm sure you know that Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot, along with 18 other people, at a neighborhood meeting in Tucson. The shooter was a scattered, rambling, unsettling anti-government type; the victims included a nine-year-old girl and a federal judge who died while shielding a man with his own body.

When a tragedy like that takes place, the immediate instinct is to figure out why, God, why it happened--and it's a reasonable one. This tragedy had an easy focus: Sarah Palin's PAC had posted a map online pointing out Democrats who had supported Obama's health care reform bill. Each was marked with crosshairs; Palin introduced the map by saying, "Don't retreat, instead--RELOAD!"

That a woman targeted with crosshairs should end up shot is horrible but more ironic than suspicious; we have no reason to believe that Jared Lee Loughner was trying to follow Palin's instructions when he went after Giffords. But at the same time, it's significant--while Palin's map may not have been the instigator of this act, it definitely contributed to a growing culture of violent imagery and threatening political rhetoric.

Regardless of the Tea Partiers' own culpability for such rhetoric, it's easy to start with them. They're the ones who adopted the imagery of the American Revolution, which was a violent protest that went far beyond the dumping of tea into a harbor to actual and extensive bloodshed. In a time when objections to things like taxes are generally bloodless and handled by men in suits, Tea Partiers play the role of oppressed colonials who can only accomplish their goals at the business end of a rifle. In the hands of a Revolutionary War re-enactor, that's quaint; in the hands of an unorganized and impassioned crowd scattered across the nation, feeding each other's fervor and whipping themselves into a self-righteous frenzy, it's dangerous.

But it's not just them. Politicians stand in front of cameras to casually throw out incendiary words: Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle suggests "Second Amendment remedies." RedState's Erick Erickson ponders (rhetorically, of course) constituents marching down to their legislator's house to "beat him to a bloody pulp for being an idiot." "If ballots don't work, bullets will." "You're going to have to shoot them in the head." "Armed and dangerous."

We live, thank God, in peaceful and protected times. Fears of homeland terrorism notwithstanding, the greatest threats to the safety of Americans are overseas; we're not conscripted to war; having your voice heard in government comes not by waving a gun but by buying a Congressman. Just like it's easy to trumpet war when you're not going to be the one fighting it, it's easy to throw around violent rhetoric--guns, bullets, watering trees, bloody beatdowns--when you've never had to deliver on it and likely never will. For the vast majority of Americans, dramatic things just don't happen, and it becomes easy to fantasize about wearing the hat of a righteous and triumphant revolutionary standing up for liberty at all costs.

Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the face. Six people died. Violence has consequences. Revolution isn't romantic. Bloodshed isn't romantic. Death isn't romantic. Death is bloody and tragic and permanent, and it's easy to ignore that when you're holding a "tree of liberty" placard at a Tea Party rally, but it's a fact and it's always there.

It's not about being passionate or even angry--God knows I have more than one pissed-off post up here, certainly ones where I would have done well to wait half an hour before clicking "post." Passion is what has made our country great--it was passion and determination, not violence, that sustained the American Revolution. Be fervent, vehement, angry, irate, even.

But there's a line between anger and incitement. Before you cross that line, take a moment to consider what a "Second Amendment solution" would look like, and who it would hurt. Consider how you'd feel if the "tree of liberty" were "watered" by someone you love. Consider what would happen if you really did "march down to [your] state legislator's house" and his teenage daughter answered the door. Consider what your next step would be after you "reloaded."

Giffords herself commented on the impact of violent rhetoric in early 2010 when, shortly after Palin's map went up, her office was struck by brick-wielding vandals.

"We're on Sarah Palin's targeted list," she said, "but the thing is that the way she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they've got to realize there's consequences to that action."

…

"The reality is that we've got to focus on the policy, focus on the process, but leaders--community leaders, not just political leaders--have to stand back when things get too fired up and say, 'Whoa, let's take a step back here.'"

The First Amendment guarantees us freedom of speech--up to certain limits--and I'll always stand by that. But we have to recognize the impact of our words, even before we get to the stage of "inciting imminent lawless action." Things that are legal to say aren't always right to say. What is now for you a sunlit Nathan Hale daydream was, at one time, an unavoidable and tragic consequence of change. And it could be, now, a rallying cry for more violence and bloodshed and death and tragedy.

Be angry. Speak passionately. But for the love of God, understand what you're saying before you say at be willing to say, "Whoa, let's take a step back here."

On a visit to the warehouse: Aww, Munchkin edition

2011-01-24T20:48:00.005-06:00

Okay, so I want you to know that even during my unintentional and oh-so-brief blogging hiatus, I was still thinking of y'all every day. I have all these links that I've filed away as something that I need to blog about, and now I have… a whole bunch of outdated links. (Wah-waaah.)

But they're still awesome! So here's your first link dump, featuring every cute thing that's happened in forever.

Gawker: Black Bear Feasts Inside Home, Rescues Stuffed Bear On Way Out

A black bear on Tuesday walked into a New Hampshire home, ate two pears, some grapes, took a sip from a fishbowl and grabbed a stuffed bear on the way out of the house. The stuffed bear was later recovered.

"Don't fear, my glossy-eyed compatriot! We're making it out of here together!"

Jezebel: Adorable Marines Rescue Adorable Kittens In Afghanistan; Cuddling Ensues

Brian Chambers, Chris Berry and Aaron Shaw have adopted kittens they found while on duty - and sent them back to the States to wait for them with the marines' families (with the aid of these groups.) Says Chambers, "At only 3 weeks old, their mother had disappeared and they were left alone to live rough and fend for themselves like the other cats in this area. We looked after them both and they lived in a box in the office, after a week they were allowed to roam around during the day and sleep with us in the hooch at night."

PFC Fluffy McCuddlepants, reporting for duty! (Kitteny salute)

BBC News: Bionic feet for amputee cat

A cat that had its back feet severed by a combine harvester has been given two prosthetic limbs in a pioneering operation by a UK vet.

Okay, yes, there's something not-terribly-cuddly about "severed by a combine harvester," but watch the video and shed a little tear as Oscar trots around on his brand-new feet. And enjoy a cute moment with Oscar's surgeon.

"Of course, the key to all great technology is tape. Because Oscar is black, and I'm not going to put brown feet on a black cat."

Lioness shows trust in man with her newborn cubs

Itty bitty kitty cuddles! And little fearsome little lion cubs (who have already figured out what Mom's tail is for).

The Daily Show: Road to the Doghouse - Puppedential Debate

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Road to the Doghouse - Puppedential Debate

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog</a>

The Daily Show on Facebook

This is a classic, of course, since the Obamas have already selected a fluffy little fluffypants, But it remains adorable, and it's proof that it really is possible for Anderson Cooper to not be the cutest thing on screen.

Twin Rabbit in the cup
(h/t Snarkastic)

Two wiggly-nosed rabbits wiggling their noses from their cups. Watch the whole thing--otherwise, you'll miss a closeup of two wiggly-nosed rabbits wiggling their noses from their cups.

This has been your Practically Harmless cute link roundup. (Like it? Maybe consider donating to Nowzad to keep the cute kitty pictures coming from Iraq.)

On Mashup Monday: Miracles edition

2011-01-24T18:40:00.005-06:00

No, not that kind. Actual miracles.

Okay, so this is so cool to me that I feel like I should save it for a special occasion, but it's also so cool to me that I couldn't not share it. So here's something inspirational for the ultimate Mashup Monday.

Norwegian Recycling/Everyone ever - Miracles

On the Good, the Bad, and the Friday Random Ten

2011-01-21T08:18:00.003-06:00

Okay, so I've been trying to come up with something witty, topical, and timely to head up this week's TGTBATFRT, and I've come to the conclusion that I got nothin'. I did try, though. Like, hard.

Sooo... how 'bout those Trekkies, or whatever? Right?

What's good (for the week ending 1/21):

- memories of a Mexican beach vacation to stave off the cold. And if you were my friend on Facebook, you'd know all about it. And if you knew all about it, you'd hate me forever, so it's probably best that things are as they are.

- new hotness. I'm cranking this baby out on a new MacBook Pro, and I gotta tell you, it's a thing of beauty. It's so shiny. And it's got a bomb-ass processor and a beefy hard drive. And it's shiny.

- new glasses. It might not seem like a huge thing, but when you've been wearing the same pair of glasses you've had since college, getting a pair that has the proper prescription and fits your face is a lovely thing. (I have been getting my contacts taken care of regularly, kthx.) They're a little bit naughty-librarian and a little bit put-my-hair-in-a-ponytail-and-wait-for-the-captain-of-the-football-team-to-ask-me-to-prom-on-a-bet. I'm calling it a good thing.

- being back on the job. It's nice to get back to the blog, even if I'm still not doing it at the rate I've been meaning to. Thanks to all of my reader who's nagged me about it.

- Clairol Perfect 10 Hair Color in Auburn Flash

What's bad:

- the Tea Partiers. I know, it's a really awful thing for me to say as a liberal and a more-or-less-moderate, and I'm supposed to… do something, I don't know, but I'm tired of them. In the beginning, it was kind of cool, at least in concept--I've never really followed them on their politics, but I liked their spunk. Now, it's completely misguided, and suddenly a bunch of old white guys are running around waving Obama signs with Hitler mustaches and blurting out idiotic Glenn Beck talking points every time a camera points at them. The whole thing in Tennessee is only the most recent example--guys, if you're going to name yourselves after a vehement and dramatic protest against unfair taxation, you need to try to stay at least a little bit on-message to not sound like some wandering kook with a committee. Or if you're going to back this particular horse, call yourselves the Revisionist Historians or something.

- My. Big. Redneck. Wedding. Great. Because our fumbling governor and ban on sex toys and bingo haven't made us look dumb enough already.

The Ten:

1. Ramsey Lewis, "Do What You Wanna (Mr. Scruff's Soul Party Mix)"
2. Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, "Andante" (from Violin Concerto in D major)
3. Dean Fields, "Irish Bars"
4. Heather Nova, "Paper Cup"
5. Chicane, "No Ordinary Morning"
6. Giuseppe Verdi, "Libiamo" (from La Traviata)
7. Dirty Vegas, "7 AM"
8. Billy Idol, "Hot in the City"
9. Linkin Park, "Figure.09"
10. Frank Sinatra, "The Lady is a Tramp" (with Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr.)

Your opinions on stuff, and things, and your Tens go in comments.

On Mom's basement: the final frontier

2011-01-21T08:16:00.002-06:00

Okay, so a little bit of week-wrapping-up levity comes in the form of a deeply offensive news article that requires a tremendously sincere apology. Because if there's one thing you absolutely don't want to do, it's piss off Trekkies.

It's the owners' manual that any self-respecting starship engineer in the year 2151 wouldn't be seen without.

…

Haynes, whose iconic range of automobile user manuals help teens and devotees alike keep their cars on the road 10 year after it is sensible to do so, have published a DIY guide to the most famous space voyager of them all.

The 160-page guide covers the entire range of USS Enterprise models, from Captain Jonathan Archer's original NX-01 from the most recent series through to the NCC-1701 under the control of Captain Kirk and her replacement, the NCC-1701-E.

Think Trekkers out there would welcome such a clever and topical Trek treat? FUCK YOU, YOU'RE WRONG.

Your Mom's Lunch
OMG, could this article be any more wrong. The Enterprise-E did not replace Kirks enterprise. The excelsior class Enterprise-B replaced kirks ship after Kirks ship was lost at the Genesis plant at the hands of the klingons. Upon their return to McKinley station after traveling back in time to get some whales… [tl;dr -Ed.] …This ship was lost at the aforementioned viridian star system. Then….came the enterprise-E. This article wreaks of failure.

I KNOW, RIGHT? JESUS EFFING SPOCK. WHAT DO YOU SAY, TREKKER OF MELBOURNE?

Please don't write about StarTrek when you have never watched the show/movies. You got stuff so wrong in this article that you may have hurt the sales of the book. eg; there is no hyperspace in star trek!

HOLY FUCK. HOW DID YOU DUMBFUCKS NOT KNOW THIS? PEOPLE WHO WERE GOING TO BUY THIS BOOK ARE GOING TO BE ALL, "WOW, FUCK THAT, THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW THERE'S NO HYPERSPACE IN STAR TREK. I'M GETTING ANOTHER COPY OF BREAKING DAWN INSTEAD."

Wow, that's exhausting.*

Luckily for our impassioned Trekkers and their moms, the news offered an apology.

We're sorry for claiming Captain Kirk was in command of Captain Picard's starship.

YESTERDAY a news.com.au article incorrectly stated that the Star Trek starship USS Enterprise-E, otherwise known as model NCC-1701-E, was the successor to Captain Kirk's original USS Enterprise.

It has since been brought to our attention that the NCC-1701-E in fact came two models after Captain Kirk retired and was under the command of Captain Jean Luc Picard.

…

News.com.au apologizes unreservedly for the error.

Fuckin' A, you do. (And yes, Patrick Stewart is a painfully handsome man.)

*The winner of the entire article? Ltnt Cmdr Montgomery Scott of Main Engineering, USS Enterprise: "And it's about time, too! It always gave me such a headache every time that crybaby Kirk would call down to engineering and say, 'Scotty, I need more warp power,' Can he not understand? I'm not a miracle worker! Now with this handy guide, all of my engineering problems are solved!"

Close second: ship of Moo'bah, who just wants to see the schematics of 7 of 9.

On the brotherhood (and sisterhood) of man (and woman)

2011-01-21T08:15:00.001-06:00

Okay, so some people take weeks to screw things up at their job. New Alabama governor Robert Bentley managed to do it in about four minutes. In a speech at Dexter Avenue King Memorial Church, on Martin Luther King Day, he let all non-Christian Alabamians know exactly where they can get off.

"There may be some people here today who do not have living within them the Holy Spirit," Bentley said. "But if you have been adopted in God's family like I have, and like you have if you're a Christian and if you're saved, and the Holy Spirit lives within you just like the Holy Spirit lives within me, then you know what that makes? It makes you and me brothers. And it makes you and me brother and sister."

Bentley added, "Now I will have to say that, if we don't have the same daddy, we're not brothers and sisters. So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother."

What the fuck? (Sorry, Jesus.)

Practically Harmless regular B has made a valid point: "Like I want to be his sister…" And I recognize that in the Deep South, winning souls for Christ is practically a contact sport and Bentley sincerely is concerned for our salvation. But I can't not take a little bit of umbrage here, not because I'm worried about my own soul or my own treatment at the hands of the administration but because he's the governor. He was just after pledging to be the "governor of all the people" and "color blind," and then he had to delineate who is and who is not his brother.

Now, I don't think we're suddenly going to see a rash of executive decisions that overtly, or even covertly, or even subconsciously, favor Christians over non-Christians. But it's tough to see an elected official stand up in front of a crowd--even if it is a church crowd--and tell non-Christians, in so many words, "You're not my brother and you're not my sister." It makes you wonder what he's thinking when he shakes the hand of a Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist or, hell, atheist Alabamian.

I think that to this day, the best approach to religion in office was stated by John F. Kennedy during his 1960 presidential bid: "I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party candidate for president who also happens to be Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak for me." A person who holds public office has every right to practice his religion and practice it fervently, if that's his way. But that person must not ever stand up before a crowd and deny anyone his brotherhood, even if most people in attendance know to mentally tack on "in Christ" at the end. He is, as he said, governor of all the people, and any intimation that he's governing some people who are his brothers and sisters and some who aren't is a bad, bad thing.

I'm going to let Bentley off somewhat lightly on this one if only because there's nothing to gain by pounding on him. He has apologized, and it seems sincere, and I do believe it was a foolish gaffe rather than a revelation of deep-seated prejudices. But I will say this: Bob, you've had eight years in the state legislature to learn what is and is not appropriate behavior for a public figure. Remember at all times that your responsibility is to the citizens of Alabama, not to your flock; and your job is to improve our lives, not save our souls.

I mean, thanks for caring, and all. But don't do it again.

On obscuring the truth about history

2011-01-20T19:15:00.001-06:00

Okay, so the state of Tennessee has had a rather rough relationship with the educational system going way back. (History buffs may remember a certain trial about a certain teacher and intimations about a certain primate.) Well, they're back, and this time it's social studies they're after.

A coalition of Tennessee Tea Party groups has formulated a list of "demands" focused on the state's educational curriculum and political agenda that they want the state's legislature to heed this session.

…

Hal Rounds, spokesman for the group, recently claimed at a news conference that there was "an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the Founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another."

Now, I'm not sure exactly what Hal is getting at here. If it's his contention that it's the criticism that's made up, well, there's plenty of very real criticism out there on those subjects. And if it's those specific claims that he says are made up--the displacement of Native Americans, slavery--there's pretty good evidence for those things, too.

I'm not saying that the Founding Fathers were all bad. Our very country exists because of their role in our independence from Great Britain. Our system of government (humanly flawed though it may be) is due to their hard work (and some strategic borrowing of ideas, which is how these things get made). Said Fathers even made significant contributions to concepts of human rights and liberties that we still reference today--think about Thomas Jefferson's writings on the separation of church and state and James Madison's on immigration. On the whole, they were stand-up guys who made a lot of hard decisions during a hard time, and much of it has turned out well.

But does the fact that they did a lot of good things completely eclipse the bad things they did? Yes, making an omelet involves the breaking of eggs, but the deliciousness of the omelet doesn't mean the eggs didn't get broken. American expansion happened at the expense of Native Americans who were here first. The country was built on the back of slave labor, and many of the aforementioned Fathers had slaves. Whatever slant we want to take with our teaching, we have to be honest with ourselves about those things, or else we're just plain wrong.

As a result, the Tea Party organizations argue, there should be "no portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership."

Or we can just go the full-on "willful ignorance" route. We can sweep the "experience" of the "minority"--the Native Americans who lost their homes, the slaves who lost their freedom--under the rug because it casts a different light on the wealthy men in "positions of leadership." If we can't hold two ideas--the good and the bad of the founding of our country--in our heads at once, we'll choose the more flattering one.

The thing we need to focus on about the Founders is that, given the social structure of their time, they were revolutionaries who brought liberty into a world where it hadn't existed, to everybody--not all equally instantly--and it was their progress that we need to look at," Rounds explained of his interpretation of the legacy of the Founding Fathers.

Yes! Absolutely! Do that! The work they did with the materials they had at hand was, and continues to be, awesome. Teach the hell out of it (although if you're going to say that they "brought liberty into a world where it hadn't existed," you have to be willing to concede that the natives who were here first already had liberty). But you aren't just the history of America--it's the history of Americans, and there are Americans whose ancestors walked the Trail of Tears, and there are Americans whose ancestors were "triangularly traded" to build the quite literal foundations on which our democracy was built. To trim their stories out of our history curricula just because they're not entirely flattering to our founders is to tell those Americans that their history doesn't matter, that it has to be soft-pedaled or hidden away because it puts a bit of tarnish on the edges of your otherwise golden ancestors in Boston Harbor.

On Mashup Monday; Quasi-Triumphant Return edition

2011-01-17T22:13:00.003-06:00

Okay, so I just got back--just got back--from an open-mic night at a really fun new-ish venue here in town, and the only thing that still sticks in my mind is that during one song, a friend of a friend leaned over and started singing "Smooth Operator" into my ear. And it was. It totally was. For the rest of the song, I kept expecting the guy to bust out with, "Coast to coast, L.A. to Chicago..." Later, said FoF noted that that's one of the worst things that can happen to a songwriter--you're up on stage, and halfway through the song you realize you're actually singing someone else's song. At that point, all you can really do is segue into the other song, pretend it's an homage, and then go back to what you were singing. I don't think this guy realized he'd borrowed from Sade, but I'll never forget it.

Anyway, that's why Sade (via Señor Coconut) is sharing screen time with Vanilla Ice. And God bless them both.

Vanilla Ice/Sade - Smooth Operator

My contention is that, in the end, the common musical denominator is "Smells Like Teen Spirit," but that will take further research.

On the Good, the Bad, and the Friday Random Ten

2011-01-14T21:16:00.000-06:00

Okay, so this past weekend was beautifully icy. I know a lot of people don't feel that way--say, homeless people, first-responders, and that dickwipe who kept bitching because his charter flight out to Arizona for the game (ooh, dude, you've impressed me…) might not take off--but I always love to put on my blue, fleecy comfy pants, pull a dog over my feet, and drink a cup of cocoa whilst being glad I don't have anywhere to be. So that's one of the things falling under the category of

What's good (for the week ending 1/14):

- Snow. Or "snice," at least (which makes me think of smizing, which I suppose I was doing at the sight of all the snice). Even though it wasn't the fluffy awesomeness of real snow, it still made for snow falling from the sky and cold, white stuff all over the ground. Not really good for sledding (which is a shame, because we live at the top of one hell of a hill), but Dave seemed to find it acceptable.

- Getting a day off. Being so far south, Birmingham happens to be completely unprepared for things like snice, and so the city shut down most of Sunday and all of Monday. We were prepared, of course, with propane for the grill and ingredients for French toast (which is, I assume, why people always snap up bread and milk in preparation for a storm). Stew was made (not from the bread or milk). And as I remained snicebound on Tuesday (see below), I got another day working from home.

- A sense of satisfaction in a job well done. Whether it's seeing something I wrote go through editing unchanged or shaking hands with a client as she gushes about the work you've done, that is the ultimate and undeniable shit, and I will clutch this feeling to my bosom and nurture it like a baby bird.

- French toast by the fire while the dog sleeps, the cat snores, the flurries flurry, and idiot drivers slide up and down the hill outside our window.

- Maybelline Color Sensational Lipgloss in Sugared Honey

What's bad:

- Getting stuck at home. One of the problems with icy roads is that those which can be traversed by a four-wheel-drive truck (which we happen to have) are unmanageable on two wheels. As mentioned, this got me a free day of working at home on Tuesday, but it's also left me dependent on The Boy for transportation until all the ice is melted (which will probably be by this weekend, thankfully).

- Being a freaking Ophiucus. What the eff is an Ophiucus? Can someone tell me the personality traits of an Ophiucus? 'Cause if they include wondering what the eff an Ophiucus is, they're right on.

(Wait, it's the "snake bearer"? Okay, that's kind of cool.)

The Ten:

1. Queen, "I Want to Break Free"
2. John Coltrane Quartet, "Acknowledgement"
3. Paul Oakenfold, "Ready Steady Go"
4. Michael Bublé, "Dream A Little Dream Of Me"
5. Sarah Vaughan, "Misty"
6. Darren Hayes, "Unlovable"
7. Hector Berlioz, "Au cimetière" (from Les nuits d'été)
8. Dave Matthews Band, "Rhyme & Reason"
9. Johnny Cash, "I Walk the Line"
10. Glasvegas, "Geraldine"

How about you? Where's the worst place you've ever been trapped by weather? (Easy: Toronto, 2008, and I still haven't gotten the smell of the arrivals lounge out of my nose.) That and your Ten, go in comments.

On a little bit of hope

2011-01-14T21:15:00.000-06:00

Okay, so I was trying to figure out some kind of context or commentary for this, and I couldn't, so… this.

Giffords Eye Opens as Pelosi, Dem Colleagues Look On (VIDEO)

On the dawning of the Age of Capricorn

2011-01-13T23:33:00.002-06:00

Okay, so what's funny about this? I'll give you a hint: It's not the fact that ostensibly reasonable people are freaking out at the mere mention of a change in Zodiac signs.

The popular astrologer Susan Miller called the news "ridiculous." In an interview with ABC News, she said, "We've known about this for ages. The constellations don't suggest what's coming up, it's the planets! The constellations are a measuring device."

Jesus Christ, people! They're a measuring device! God, why am I the only person in this whole damn article who understands the science of astrology?

I need my own show.

On the end of civility

2011-01-13T22:37:00.003-06:00

Okay, so it's not huge, but it's kind of depressing in an emblematic way--the Civility Project has folded after two years and three responses out of 585 letters.

Mark DeMoss (Republican, evangelical Christian) and Lanny Davis (Democrat, Jewish, former Clinton lobbyist) sent out 585 letters, one each to every sitting governor and member of Congress. The 585 were asked to sign the following hideous, spiteful, degrading pledge:

I will be civil in my public discourse and behavior.

I will be respectful of others whether or not I agree with them.

I will stand against incivility when I see it.

Scandalous.

The three complete bastards--out of 585--who dared put their names to such a travesty were Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Rep. Frank Wolfe (R-VA), and Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC).

DeMoss and Davis didn’t get any responses from any other governors or Congresspeople, but they did get a few e-mails from the common man.

The gutless republicans do not need more gutless wonders like you in the rhino party. You remind me of someone that would bring a rock or knife to a gun fight. The thugs, communists, racists, bigots, liars, nazis, and America hating sons of b------ in the democrat party are scum of the Earth and will do anything to win. I believe you have been watching to many old movies where the good guy always win. Vince Lombardi put it best. Winning is not everything, it is the only thing.

And:

Grow up - this is real life and when the socialist want to take over a free country, people like me are not civil and if the Obama socialists aren’t stopped soon by elections, the next step is violent revolution - it’s how our free country was born. You people are morons.

At the risk of sounding uncivil, what the freaking fuck?!

How did we get to the point where civility equals gutlessness and violent revolution is the only reasonable response to disagreement? How did we become so attached to revolution and trees watered with the blood of patriots that any suggestion that in the interest of actually accomplishing things we might be polite to each other is some sort of affront, worthy of nasty language? (“And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change…”)

We're just too flipping lazy. Being civil is hard, y'all--first you have to take a deep breath and flatten down whatever uncivil remark was about to spring unbidden from your trap, then you have to really consider what the other person just said, and then you have to craft a reasonable response to what they just said, hopefully in a tone that will encourage consideration and a reasonable response from the other person. On the other hand, calling someone a poopy-head and spitting chaw on their shoes takes little thought or effort at all. The people packing heat and wishing a motherfucker would are doing it for one reason: Rambo looked cool, and thoughtless aggression is easy (although I suspect that the number of chaw-spitters who would be able to follow through if the motherfuckers really did is small to nothing). Considering the impact and possible repercussions of that aggression puts you back in the area of civility, and that's hard, y'all.

Ugh.

Be better. Everyone, be better. Be better than 582 lawmakers and a bunch of dipwads with e-mail accounts and poor spelling skills. Me, too. Be better, ACG. Make the country better.

Anyway, even though the Civility Project has come to an end, the message is still an important one and one in desperate need of spreading. You can still sign the petition for yourself online. I did it, and while the chances of me actually being successfully civil on this blog are shaky, at least it might remind me to actually try. And maybe, as DeMoss and Davis are shutting the project down (which in my mind would involve unplugging the computers and watching them power down, walking to the door, giving the empty room one last look, sighing, flipping the light switch, and then leaving the office without a backward look as the overhead lights flick off one by one, although I’m fairly sure it won’t happen that way), they’ll run across your signatures and e-mails and say, “Hey, look, it’s eight supportive e-mails from people who aren’t calling us worthless, moronic, un-American dickwhistles. That kind of makes my day.” And then the unplugging and the thing with the lights.

On a weird kind of pharmacist power

2011-01-13T17:40:00.002-06:00

Okay, so I've brought up the issue of conscience clauses a couple of times before, and the answer has always come out the same: a big, fat chunk of I Don't Know. I'd hate to personally be forced to do something to which I had serious moral objections, but at the same time, isn't there a point at which you have to stop judging and do your job? Particularly when you're in a medical field--your choice to go with your conscience may actually result in someone's death. Whether you're a pharmacist refusing to fill a birth control prescription or a hospital willing to let a woman die rather than provide a treatment that violates their Catholic charter, you're putting your own moral reservations up against a woman's physical well-being and a physician's educated and deeply considered orders.

That's a lot of power, particularly for someone whose white coat spends most of its time behind the pharmacy counter at Walgreens. And it's a lot of responsibility. A pharmacist in Idaho, for instance, had the responsibility of filling a prescription for Methergine, a drug used to prevent or control bleeding of the uterus following childbirth or abortion. She decided not to, because the NP calling it in wouldn't tell her if the patient had had an abortion.

Now, let's be clear: The medicine in question could potentially save a woman from bleeding until she died--but the pharmacist wouldn't dispense it unless she knew the woman was moral enough to be worth saving.

The NP was, of course, prevented by HIPAA to tell a Walgreens pharmacist what had happened behind the closed doors of a doctor's office, and so the prescription was refused. And when the NP asked for a referral to a pharmacy that would fill it, the pharmacist hung up on her.

This is the discussion. This is the bright-line test for conscience clauses. If we are going to decide that a person's right to their own conscience should be honored above all things, how far are we willing to go with it? Is a medical professional required to help someone who will die? What about someone who will probably die? What about someone who will at the very least end up in the hospital if they aren't given the appropriate treatment?

And if the pharmacist is being asked to dispense medicine after the objectionable act has already taken place, isn't she just using her power to punish the patient? What conscience clause allows that?

On the triumphant return (again) of the Good, the Bad, and the Friday Random Ten

2011-01-07T22:11:00.001-06:00

Okay, so we’re just on the far end of Christmas, and I both a) had a fantastic holiday, and b) was oddly glad to see the back end of it. Not whew-I’m-back-at-the-office glad, but at least whew-I’m-glad-to-be-back-in-pajama-pants-on-the-couch glad. In general, I try to keep my vacations short enough that I’m not ready to leave when it’s time to go, but I think I’m at the point in life where the winter holidays don’t really qualify as a vacation anymore. Sigh. Being a grownup sucks. I think I’ll stop doing it.

Things that don’t suck, though, in the form of a very special post-holiday

What’s good (for the whatever period of time ending 1/7):

- The Nook Color. This was one of my favorite Birthmas presents. Now that I have a single device to read a thousand books, listen to music, do crossword puzzles, and dick around on the Internet, I have no reason to leave my living room. (And as soon as they come out with a word processing app for it, I probably won’t leave the couch.)

- GoGo Gear. Not gear for go-go dancing, alas, but still cool. It’s protective scootering gear that looks like (really cute) regular clothes. This was another Birthmas gift. (Check out the site for a video of the founder throwing herself down a hill to demonstrate the effectiveness of the gear.)

- My 30th birthday. No, I’m totally lying; it sucked. I always said I wouldn’t be one to freak out about a number--and I almost wasn’t--but it was six months to the day before the event itself that I did, in fact, start freaking out. (Who knew?) I was teased for clinging to 29 like a piece of driftwood from the Titanic until the very last moment, although I like to think I accepted 30 gracefully when it became unavoidable. Still, it’s odd to think that my 20s are closed. (See below for the story of my 20s driving out of my front yard with a stranger behind the wheel.)

- A bangin’ ride. Through luck, friend-pricing, and machinations I still don’t entirely understand, The Boy managed to pick up a brand-new Toyota Tundra while we were down in Mobile. Normally I’m not a pickup person, but even I have to admit it’s pretty pimp: It’s the dealership’s show model, so it’s got a lift kit and fender flares and big tires and shiny wheels and flex fuel and Bluetooth everything and it’s about eleven feet tall and I need a spiraling library staircase to get in. It’s pretty okay.

- Being surrounded by friends on New Year’s Eve, and having someone worth kissing. And swilling lots of excellent champagne.

What’s bad:

- A white Christmas. Normally something I dream of, this white Christmas sucked ass because I wasn’t there to see it. The snow started in Birmingham on Christmas Day while we were waking up in Columbus, it continued in Birmingham while we were driving through passive-aggressive drizzles to The Boy’s family in Mobile, and it disappeared completely in Birmingham while we were driving home on Monday. My snow experience took place entirely from the wrong end of the Weather Channel. Fuck you, white Christmas.

- The end of an era. The aforementioned monster truck came at the expense of my darling 2001 Cabrio, Bonnie Blue. She’d been sitting in front of the house for too long, rarely getting driven, particularly in the zippy, borderline-dangerous way she deserves. So it made sense to trade her in toward a vehicle that would actually get driven, at the same giving her to a new driver who can appreciate her the way I did.

Bonnie Blue has been my constant companion for a decade now. I got her for my 20th birthday (my uncle tells the story of how I jumped this high), and she was with me through the rest of college, an engagement and un-engagement, eight moves, two jobs, a dog, a house, the happiest relationship imaginable, and numerous bad and good decisions and haircuts. It seems poetic that she now has left me around the time of my 30th birthday. It was comforting to me that the grandfatherly type from the dealership who picked her up expressed interest in buying her himself. Whether he pretties her up for his own use or hands her off to a granddaughter, it’s nice to know that she’ll have a good home. And maybe she’ll give some other young woman another ten meaningful years.

And yeah, I cried when she left.

The end-of-holiday Ten:

1. Londonderry Boys Choir, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”
2. Frank Sinatra, “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear”
3. Mormon Tabernacle Choir, “Carol of the Birds”
4. Otis Redding, “White Christmas” (Oh, screw you, Otis.)*
5. St. Thomas Choir of Men and Boys, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”
6. Darlene Love, “All Alone on Christmas”
7. Dean Martin, “Winter Wonderland”
8. Diana Krall, “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve”
9. Nat “King” Cole, “The Christmas Song”
10. Mormon Tabernacle Choir, “O Little Town of Bethlehem”

Who’s your life-changing car? Or other life-changing inanimate object, for that matter (not that Bonnie Blue was inanimate, because she was obviously sentient, or else I wouldn’t have developed such an emotional relationship with her). Your stories, and your Tens, go in comments.

*Oh, Otis, I can’t stay mad at you.

On a very sad man

2011-01-07T21:15:00.003-06:00

Okay, so I mentioned on Tuesday (although you almost certainly knew about it long before I got around to posting that post) that Congress has finally gotten around to repealing that confounding piece of legislation known as Don't Ask, Don't Tell. I also, in that post, expressed my opinion that this is one of the best signs we've gotten in a long time that the country is starting to really discover its values.

Who disagrees with me? John McCain does.

"Today is a very sad day."

A very sad day? We're supposed to be very sad? Maybe you're concerned about it. Maybe you're worried. Maybe you're disappointed. But very sad? This isn't a tragedy. Sad days are when deeply held values are abandoned. Sad days are when people are hurt. But your argument was never about values or the morality of homosexuality. Your argument was about effectiveness. You said your "opinion is shaped by the leaders of the military."

Well, guess what, Mr. Senator: The leaders of the military have spoken, they've expressed their feelings that our troops can serve effectively side-by-side with openly gay compatriots, and your colleagues have listened to them and repealed an unfair law. But something about that makes you sad.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff supports repeal. The service chiefs say the military can do it, even Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Amos, who has been the most averse of all the joint chiefs to the repeal. If you're concerned about its effect on unit cohesion--that it will be "distracting"--that's something to worry about, not weep over. But maybe you've got other thoughts you haven't brought up in this debate, thoughts that make it a tragedy instead of merely a cause for concern. I'd be interested in knowing what makes you so very sad about this day.

President Obama seems to have more faith in our troops to handle this properly.

The president said, moments after the vote, "As commander in chief, I am absolutely convinced that making this change will only underscore the professionalism of our troops as the best led and best trained fighting force the world has ever known."

Remember the times you've said our troops are some of the best trained and most professional we've ever had. Remember the military leaders, pro- and anti-repeal, who've said that they can make it work. Remember the troops themselves, who've said that it's not a problem. And with those things in mind, if you still think this is a very sad day, ask yourself why. And then tell us.

On working on Christmas (from the warehouse)

2011-01-04T17:38:00.004-06:00

Periodically, a post is written that's timely and brilliant but for whatever reason doesn't get published and ends up tucked away, Ark of the Covenant-like, and forgotten about. (Periodically, this also happens to crappy posts.) Periodically, I choose to bring such posts out into the light for the pleasure of my adoring reader. This is one of those times.

Okay, so apparently, if there's one thing we can't expect our legislators to do, it's legislate when they'd rather be doing something else.

"You can't jam a major arms control treaty right before Christmas," [Senator Jim DeMint] told POLITICO. "What's going on here is just wrong. This is the most sacred holiday for Christians. They did the same thing last year--they kept everybody here until (Christmas Eve) to force something down everybody's throat. I think Americans are sick of this."

Let's break it down.

You can't jam a major arms control treaty right before Christmas.

Well, for one, obviously you can jam it in there, because they just did. But Amanda at Pandagon points out that "they," in this case, could arguably be the Republicans--they're the ones stalling and filibustering every piece of legislation that passes their desks, forcing everyone to work late into the season to get the important stuff accomplished. That's just poor planning, from where I'm sitting.

This is the most sacred holiday for Christians.

Actually, that's Easter. (I wonder if anyone's asked Eric Cantor how he feels about working on Yom Kippur.)

I think Americans are sick of this.

I don't actually know how many Americans are sick of you working on Christmas Eve. I know that when my dad, a doctor, has to take call Christmas Eve, I get pretty sick of it; I also know that his patients would be pretty sick of him not being available to do his job when needed. I also know that, judging from the fact that my house has electricity and I got milk from that convenience store and firetrucks responded to that chimney fire that time, other Americans also are working on Christmas Eve, although maybe they're not as important as you because they're not… as important, I guess. Or whatever.*

I also know that a lot of Americans are sick of our elected officials finding any excuse available to avoid doing the one job we hire them to do.

The angel said, "On earth peace, good will toward men." Like a nuclear arms treaty. Less with the whining, more with the legislating. Then 'nog.

*Other people who have worked on Christmas: George Washington, Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Apollo 8 crew, priests, soup kitchens, my great-grandmother, Santa. Not working Christmas Day: German and British troops during the Christmas Truce of 1914. Peace on earth.