maybe i am the faggot america; or, how irony and perversion seems to be taking over my life

ok, so i'm about six months behind the times, i realize, bc i should have made these comments when this album first came out, but i have to just let you all know what an amazing album greenday's 'american idiot' is. genius, pure genius.

and just bc this song is so amazing, i'll put the lyrics to 'american idiot' here:

dont want to be an american idiot
dont want a nation under the new mania
can you hear the sound of hysteria?
the subliminal mind fuck america
welcome to a new kind of tension
all across the alienation
where everything isnt meant to be ok
television dreams of tomorrow
we're not the ones meant to follow
for that's enough to argue
maybe i am the faggot america
i'm not a part of the redneck agenda
now everybody do the propaganda
and sing along to the age of paranoia
dont want to be an american idiot
one nation controlled by the media
information age of hysteria
calling out to idiot america

the one line that really resonated with me recently was the 'maybe i am the faggot america' (obviously - since i stole it for my title). i actually thought a bit of this line while i was on a rental car shuttlebus in the midst of the hell that was my return trip to cincinnati last week (more on that later).

i noticed the youngish, biggish guy sitting across from me was reading a book. the way he was holding the book was such that i could see the title page. it was 'imperial hubris' by michael scheurer (the senior cia analyst who retired after publishing this book this year).

BUT....

he had another cover over the hardback. the cover was for a book called 'finland: the land and the people.'

which got me to thinking -- if this guy is covering up the actual title of the book he's reading, it's pretty clear he doesn't want others to know what he's reading. but why? as i said, he was a large guy, so he probably could easily take care of himself if he ever needed to (and i doubt seriously that most airport discussions end in fisticuffs). but so it made me deduce he just felt: uninterested in engaging in a debate with someone who had an opinion on the book and its criticism of the bush policies on terrorism; intimidated to engage in a debate on this subject; ashamed to be reading something critical of bush; or uncomfortable reading something so overtly political and critical that it was a better option to hide the title and prefer to let everyone think he was brushing up on all things finnish.

this little experience really unsettled me. i nearly asked the guy about what he'd done (and anyone who knows me knows how very out of character it would be to talk to someone i dont know - especially on a car rental shuttle bus - when i am usually most interested in ignoring all other elements of humanity). but i didnt. clearly he had done what he'd done bc he did not want to have that very conversation. so i respected his decision not to have that conversation, even if i found his tactics quite squarely in the camp of the cowardly people.

but it's made me really wonder if there isnt quite a chilling and quieting effect falling over most people these days. i mean, except in very close friend or family settings, i just do not hear political discussion anymore...and by 'anymore' i mean since the election. are people so resigned to being unhappy or dissatisfied that they wont even engage in the political discourse? or maybe people are so blissfully happy that there's nothing to talk about it? i doubt it.

i got to thinking that there are just so few people to talk to about politics anymore. people are either burned out or turned out. and the effect is people seem utterly disengaged. hell - i even signed up on the day after the election to be a volunteer for the democratic party of kentucky. and you know what -- they still havent bothered to contact me. how's that for disaffected? how's that for discouragement?

the democrats had the perfect opportunity to capitalize on voter frustration and passion right after the election. and as usual, they squandered it. this party doesnt need to worry about being beaten in elections. it's utterly self destructing. and with terry mcauliffe's term as the party chairman coming to an end this weekend, i fear that the party will continue its serious downward spiral. unless, perhaps, howard dean gets the chairmanship. but he still seems such a polarizing figure, that i'm not sure he'll be any more effective than was mcauliffe (whom i thought was brilliant but frustratingly ineffective as the chairman).

enough politics for now. i fear i'm talking into a vaccuum anyhow. but please feel free to prove me wrong on this.

life is ironic.

due to the hideousness of the weather here in the cincinnati area, i was stuck in philadelphia last week. stuck at the airport. on wednesday. the storm kept brewing until well into thursday afternoon. so in my infinite wisdom, i decided to screw any attempt to get into cincinnati by plane and instead i rented a car and drove straight into the storm. and it wasnt so bad. aside from some pretty wicked rain along the pennsylvania turnpike, the weather was much better than expected. so i made it back to the old homestead in covington in my sleek little silver chevy malibu. no problems. none whatsoever. the car weighed about 5 lbs and had no weather-specific attributes i could discern, but it got me back to kentucky in one piece. so i felt i'd have no problems whatsoever once i got my big, bad SUV from the airport.

i got stuck in the snow right in front of my house.

but the weekend of the irony that is my life got better.

i was celebrating a belated christmas with my nephews last night. noah and i were upstairs watching tv. they called him down to open his presents, and he and i took off like lightning down the stairs. i slid on something, and down i went. taking poor little noah with me down about 10 steps. hardwood steps. no carpeting steps. HARD steps. needless to say, noah and i were both in quite a bit of pain. he openly cried from his pain. i tried my damnedest to stifle mine. i heard myself scream out 'fuck that hurts!' really loudly...fortunately later in the evening, i asked my mom what i'd said when i fell. she said i didnt say anything. so i guess my little outburst was entirely in my head. and today i have some nice, nasty, ginormous bruises up my leg and arm. but the best part of this story is that when noah and i were in the kitchen, he just looked at me said he had no idea that i'd wanted to get down the stairs so fast. hahahaha! i love that kid.

and i was not in the slightest bit tipsy, toasty, or even remotely inebriated. or in heels. how many thousands of times have i charged down those stairs in either or both states and never once fallen. but yesterday, stone cold sober and in flat shoes with plastic bottoms, i went flying.

needless to say, i'm spending the rest of my christmas vacation holed up in my house.

is this blog billable?

ok, ok, so yes, i am technically 'working' right now. as in i am actually sitting in malvern, pennsylvania, ostensibly serving my clients as their project manager while stationed at my corporate headquarters. somehow, though, it is slower than slow here today, and because all of my clients are schools, they're all fleeing fast and furiously on their holiday breaks. those lucky stiffs get off next week too since most colleges close for the week between christmas and new years. i would whine about that a little more but when i stop to think that most staff who have administrative positions at colleges make about $.50/hour and work tirelessly - at least most of them - i feel a little less inclined to grouse about their extra week of vacation.

so instead, i took a little mental vacation and perused salon.com - one of my perennial fav websites.

and on it, i saw a most horrifying statistic: TWO THIRDS of americans surveyed could not name a single supreme court justice. TWO THIRDS! TWO THIRDS! TWO THIRDS! i was not aware that TWO THIRDS of americans lived under rocks. anyhoo...the blurb went on to say that the Center for American Progress (clearly a somewhat left-leaning group....heheh) wanted to let all of the unwashed and uninformed masses of americans living under rocks know what they might expect in terms of bush's likely appointments to the court in the upcoming years given that there will be, without a doubt, 2-3 replacements made in bush's next term. since bush has heralded both antonin scalia and clarence thomas as the two justices who best represent all that is right in gwb's world, the CAP wanted to highlight some of the major accomplishment in the careers of these two judicial supahstars.

below is that list --

Ten Things President Bush Doesn't Want You To Know About Scalia and Thomas
December 20, 2004

SCALIA OPPOSES EFFORTS TO EFFORTS TO DESEGREGATE SCHOOLS: In his concurrence on Freeman v. Pitts, Scalia indicated he would favor stripping the authority of Federal courts to regulate school desegregation, "even for those schools that remain significantly segregated." [Freeman v Pitts 1992]

(shoegal: ok, ok. i'm not sure i have anything to say to this one. i mean, what can you say, really?)

THOMAS FAVORS STATE-SPONSORED RELIGION: Thomas has "advanced the position" that constitutionally mandated church/state separation applies "to the federal government, but not to individual states – a position that would allow Virginia, for example, to declare a state religion." He would allow individual states to "adopt particular religions and use tax money to proselytize for them." [Elk Grove v. Newdow, 2004]

(shoegal: is this taken out of context? is he really saying it's ok for states to adopt a state religion, or is he clearly delineating between federal vs. states' rights?)

SCALIA SUPPORTS SEX DISCRIMINATION: Scalia dissented from the Court's 7-to-1 decision that rejected the Virginia Military Institute's male-only admissions policy. He called the male-only admissions standard at the school a "well-rooted" tradition. [U.S. v. Virginia, 1996]

(shoegal: ok. he's a jerk.)

THOMAS WOULD ALLOW THE PRESIDENT TO EFFECTIVELY WAIVE DUE PROCESS RIGHTS: In last term's confrontation over detainees in the war on terror, eight of the nine Justices squarely rejected the Bush administration's sweeping claim that it could detain citizens indefinitely as enemy combatants based merely on the executive branch's assertion of enemy combatant status. "Only Thomas supported the Bush administration's position." He claimed "due process requires nothing more than a good-faith executive determination." [Rasul v. Bush, 2004]

(shoegal: ok, he's a jerk too.)

SCALIA AND THOMAS OPPOSE FAMILY AND MEDICAL LEAVE: The Family and Medical Leave Act "guarantees most workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a loved one." Last year, the Court upheld the law, but Scalia and Thomas voted to strike it down, arguing that Congress exceeded its power in passing the law. [Nevada v. Hibbs, 2003]

(shoegal: again, is this a federal vs. states' rights issue? seems to me that they are distinguishing between disagreeing with the issue and law in and of itself but instead are coming down on a decision (or decision-making body) that had clearly overstepped its bounds.)

SCALIA AND THOMAS SUPPORT EXECUTING THE MENTALLY RETARDED: Scalia and Thomas dissented from the Court's 6-3 ruling that executing mentally retarded convicts constituted "cruel and unusual punishment." [Atkins v. Virginia, 2002]

(shoegal: ok, so they're both jerks.)

SCALIA AND THOMAS SUPPORT BRUTALITY AGAINST PRISONERS: A recent case considered a Louisiana inmate who "was shackled and then punched and kicked by two prison guards while a supervisor looked on." The beating left the inmate "with a swollen face, loosened teeth and a cracked dental plate." The Court ruled the inmate's treatment violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, but Scalia and Thomas dissented, arguing "the Eighth Amendment was not violated by the 'insignificant' harm the inmate suffered." In another case last year, Scalia and Thomas dissented from a 6-3 decision to ban the Alabama practice of chaining prisoners to outdoor ''hitching posts'' and abandoning them for hours without food, water, or a chance to use the bathroom. [Hudson v. McMillan, 1992; Hope v. Pelzer, 2002]

(shoegal: hmmm...this is a tough one. in my (admittedly feeble and weak-on-the-logic front) mind, it is to be expected that in prison life, there will be a certain amount of brutality. and so to some extent, the notion that a prisoner might suffer a 'swollen face, loosened teeth and a cracked dental plate' does not strike me as being horrific torture or gratuitous violence. i would have to understand the context of this situation - for example, did the prison guard just single out this prisoner and start beating on his head and teeth? did the prisoner attack the prison guard, and the guard only reacted in self-defense? while i, under most all imaginable circumstances, would not condone or approve of unwarranted violence against any individual, i cannot say that i can imagine prison life. i imagine that if it's anything like the hell i think it is, it is probably a situation in which very base and very unsavory elements of the human psyche and character emerge in order to survive. yes, i realize this is a bit of a cop out. but this is not an issue for which there is a simple rebuttal.)

SCALIA AND THOMAS SUPPORT CRIMINALIZING CONSENSUAL SEX: Scalia and Thomas dissented from the Court's 6-3 decision to strike down a Texas state "sodomy" law, "banning private consensual sex between adults of the same sex" and approvingly cited the execution of homosexuals during colonial times. Scalia lashed into the decision for pandering to the "so-called homosexual agenda." [Lawrence v. Texas, 2003]

(shoegal: ok, so they're both really jerks.)

SCALIA AND THOMAS OPPOSE FEDERAL ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATION OF POLLUTERS: Scalia and Thomas voted to strip the EPA "of the authority to prevent damaging air pollution by industries when state agencies improperly fail to do so." They dissented from the Court's decision that the EPA could make polluting companies use the "best available control technology" to limit pollution when they built new facilities. [Alaska v. EPA, 2004]

(shoegal: i'm leaning towards this being a state vs. federal issue too.)

SCALIA AND THOMAS WOULD ALLOW STATES TO DISCRIMINATE AGAINST THE DISABLED: After a Tennessee man was arrested for failure to appear in court because he was unwilling to crawl or be carried up the stairs to his second-story courtroom, Scalia and Thomas argued the state was right to arrest him because the Americans with Disabilities Act could only be enforced at the federal level. [Tennessee v. Lane, 2004]

(shoegal: this seems like a backwards state vs. federal issue. i'm confused by this. but i am not confused enough to say that if my ass were called into court, i'd be carried, crawl, or lick my way up the stairs to the second floor if it meant keeping my same ass out of jail.)

clearly i am not well informed on these cases. but the point i'm making is not so much the particular cases or judgements about these cases were right or wrong, and i am in no way, shape, or form trying to act as an apologist for either scalia or thomas. i find them both repugnant in many ways.

but if the democrats or democratic-leaning organizations (such as CAP) feel they must distort, embellish, or misrepresent the stands and positions that people take in order to either scare people away from or to turn people's opinions against the republican candidates or viewpoint, then the democrats are no better than the republicans were with their tactics in the last election (surely we havent already forgotten the swift boat ads, the gay marriage issue, or oh, i dont know, a word here or there bandied about regarding national security, terrorist attacks, and a faraway land called iraq).

and yes, i realize the republican strategy of solidifying their base and playing into everyone else's fears and anxieties won them the election.

that does not mean this is the strategy that will also work for democrats.

and even if - even IF - it did, would the win be worth it? becoming that which you despise in order to defeat it seems a bit self-defeating as well...does it not?

the top ten reasons to join a convent: or, internet dating gone awry

per beejybone's brilliant suggestion, we're compiling a list of internet dating horror stories. post away, friends.

i'll get us started:

1) muslims beware of psychotic psychiatrists!

having emailed back and forth with a man who seemed exceptionally intelligent, insightful, and kind, i agreed to meet him.

we met in a rather crowded, very urban, and therefore very diverse, metropolitan grocery. customers can get coffee, drinks, and food and eat right in the grocery. and it's a happenin' scene - especially on weekends. being both young professionals who felt we had a good handle on current events, we were discussing something about the middle east.

the conversation invariably turned to september 11.

and this professional, polished, articulate mental health professional (he really was a psychiatrist!) started to go on a very animated, very loud diatribe about how all muslims should be exterminated. with raised, high-pitched voice, with arms flailing, the comments flew fast and furious: 'the world will be better without them!' and 'they're all responsible for killing 3000 americans!' and 'i'd be happy to see them all die - i'd even kill some myself if i could!'

i was not only completely offended at his ridiculous and racist comments, i was worried about how loudly he was making these comments. after all, i am more than sure there were very likely some muslims within earshot of this guy. so i was angry, horrified, and afraid.

shortly after this, i scooted us out of this downtown location asap - and i thought it was a good way to bring the night to an end. unfortunately, he didnt get the hint and kept wanting to do something else. needless to say, i wanted to cut the night as short as i could.

and as if this wasnt enough, he actually seemed surprised that i declined any further outings or contact of any kind. whatsoever. ick.

anyone else? come on, i'm sure there are even better stories still to come.

the cheese stands alone

ok, perusing cnn.com (which i spend probably about 1/4 of any given day doing), i stumbled across this little gem:

THE TOP CHEESY MOMENTS IN FILM!

but this is not some list voted on by some raging film snobs. this was voted on by the people. the people who eat bread. in england.

yeah, warburtons, a british baker launched this survey and asked the breadivores to vote on their top three cheese picks from the film industry.

before i get to the joy that is that list, i am stopped short by the obvious question:

which is not, 'why in the world would a baker conduct such a survey?'

but rather, 'why in the world don't american bakers do something so very clevah?' i mean, i dont see wonder bread or peppridge farm asking us to form opinions on pressing phenomena of popular culture. why not? why is that everything cool is british (baking industries)?

about once a day i think just how very much better life would be if i lived in london. now here is tangible proof of just how very better it would be. indeed!

without any further ado, here is the list (as stolen from cnn.com) with my oh-so-very-witty commentary to follow:

The list of big cheese moments:

"Titanic": Leonardo DiCaprio's "I'm the king of the world!"

(shoegal: i take great pride in saying i have never, ever seen titanic. never. ever. i must be one of the three people left on the planet who have not. but me and the other two are pleased as punch that we didnt lose 3 hours of our lives like the rest of you saps. and this scene from the movie just makes me all the gladder (i know it's not a word, but i havent seen titanic and you have, so i am allowed to make up words.))

"Dirty Dancing": Patrick Swayze's "Nobody puts Baby in the corner."

(shoegal: sends shivers down the spine. literally. patrick swayze AND a line this gross just deserve no comment.)

"Four Weddings And A Funeral": Andie McDowell's "Is it still raining? I hadn't noticed."

(shoegal: YES! YES! YES! this line almost but not quite ruins the movie. it gives me the squicks each and every single time i watch this film. i mean, andie mcdowell has to be one of the worst actresses on the planet. and her wooden, utter lack of feeling or emotion of any kind in the delivery of this line confirms that. plus anyone who is about to be alone with hugh grant would surely say, 'yes floppy, i am standing in the rain. and my hair is getting all frizzy. do let me into the flat now so you can towel dry me.' right?)

"Ghost": Demi Moore's "Ditto," to Patrick Swayze's "I love you."

(shoegal: patrick swayze and cheesy line again. note the pattern. no more comment necessary.)

"Top Gun": Val Kilmer to Tom Cruise: "You can be my wingman anytime."

(shoegal: yes, totally lame. but there are so very few instances when a guy will express emotion to another guy in a film that i'm willing to let this slide.)

"Notting Hill": Julia Roberts' "I'm just a girl ... standing in front of a boy ... asking him to love her."

(shoegal: anglophile that i am, my brits have let me down here. i adore this scene, this film, julia roberts, the whole nine. i will, inevitably, without a doubt, set-your-clock-by-it-consistent tear up in this scene. when i watch the dvd. which i own. enough said.)

"Independence Day": Bill Pullman's "Today we celebrate our Independence Day!"

(shoegal: have not seen and probably will never see because i hate big action-thriller movies where the earth gets blown up and some smart-mouthed punk has to come in to save our day.)

"Braveheart": Mel Gibson's "They may take our lives, but they will not take our freedom!"

(shoegal: am ashamed to say i havent seen this either. plus i think from what i have seen/heard about it, i'd be caught up in the passion of the patriotism and might let this comment slide. plus it was back in the day before mel gibson became a jesus freak, so even more latitude would be afforded him.)

"Jerry Maguire": Renee Zellweger to Tom Cruise: "You had me at hello."

(shoegal: adore this scene too, even though in my rational state, i will argue till the cows come home that anyone who claims they need someone else to 'complete' them deserves to end up with a toad. plus you gotta love RZ in this movie. too cute!)

"The Postman": A blind woman says to Kevin Costner: "You're a godsend, a savior." He replies: "No, I'm a postman."

(shoegal: i'm going to go out on a limb and assume that's a joke. surely that line is not really from a real movie. a movie that got made. a movie that a studio paid for. please and spare me are the only words that come to mind. though i think i had brain rot by just reading such drivel.)

since this list was fun and i'm all about the countdown shows that now pervade E! and VH-1, let's come up with our own list of something - suggestions welcome.