Another Disturbing Ripple in My Universe

My mother and I are planning a trip to Warsaw in mid-June. We will visit the Jewish cemetery and try to find my great-grandfather's grave. (He died before the war, so he probably is lucky enough to have a burial place unlike my grandfather's sisters and mother.) We will see the few remnants of the wall of the Warsaw ghetto. We will visit the Jewish Historical Institute. We will do a records search. We will pass by the address where my grandfather's family owned a butcher shop and/or lived.

We will also go to Treblinka.

I always assumed that my grandfather's family died in Auschwitz, if they even lived to be deported from the ghetto. But, one of the dangers of Holocaust hagiography is that the fame of Auschwitz dwarfs reality. Deportations began in 1942, and when Warsaw's ghetto was liquidated in the spring of 1943, everyone left was sent to Treblinka, 2 hours outside of Warsaw in an isolated forest. There was no work at Treblinka. People died within an hour of their arrival.

Husband has a friend who lives in Warsaw who is very kindly helping me arrange my trip. He sent me a link to the Treblinka Museum. One of the things that fascinated me when I first learned about the Treblinka site is how noncommercial it is. Auschwitz, to me, is tourist attraction at this point. Tour groups go, people gape at the convent built on site, they exclaim over the signs proclaiming how much the Poles suffered* because it was initially built for Polish political prisoners. Treblinka was completely destroyed by the Nazis, so there's nothing "fun" to see. It is a sober monument to the 800,000 Jews and thousands of Gypsies and Romani murdered there.

Anyway, as I read the museum's website, I was taken aback by this statement:

The memorial should be visited with due seriousness and respect.
Within the area of the museum it is forbidden to bring dogs, smoke or eat ice cream.

Damn, I can't eat ice cream there? Well, I guess I'll have to pack ham and cheese pierogies and chocolate kolacky.

I hope that this was a translation error and in Polish it says, "no eating." Otherwise, WHAT THE FUCK? How weird is the focus on ice cream? Even weirder, it reminds me of a fucked up Hasidic monument I visited in Israel:


I mean, they are not the same thing, but the utter randomness of what is forbidden strikes me as similar. (In case the photo does not appear, it is a sign that says that it is forbidden for women to dance at this site.)

Anyway, it is going to be an intense trip. I believe we will also take a trip to Krakow, as Husband's friend recommended.

*Oh yeah, and some Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals died there, too. But whatever. (This is written in the vein of signage at Auschwitz, so pardon my bitter glibness.)

Heaping Piles of Seething Rage of Steaming Anger

Two years ago, my friend Sara and I were interviewed for documentary on abortion. I even put on make up and shit so that I would not look like a fetus-eating zombie on film, hence making the pro-choice side of what we were assured was a "balanced" look at the abortion debate look bad. Nope. I wanted to represent!

I never heard back from the motherfuckers. Not even, "Thanks Suzanne. It was nice of you to take time out to help us make a shitty documentary that no one will see." So when I discovered that the filmmakers actually did come up with something - and it is a scripted "dramamentary" about abortion in which the pretty blond white girl is treated like shit by nasty nurses in an abortion clinic and thus of course have her baby and all is good and - deep breath; this is an angry run on sentence/rant, sorry - the black girl who is raped and comes to NYC to have her abortion is saved by the nice white woman who hosts her through the Haven Coalition (which I was, at the time I was interviewed, the co-head of), I was mad fucking pissed. These douches could at least have had the courtesy to email me and let me know their shitty "unbiased" film (featuring a really cuddly 22 week old fetus in utero) that I helped them with was coming out. Or at least a "Lifetime"-esque trailer that befits a solid piece of filmmaking such as this was online for my viewing pleasure.

Oh. And I did I mention that this "balanced" film is executive produced by the guy who made that other even-keeled movie, Passion of the Christ, and the awesome Ben Stein movie about how "science" teachers who want to teach that evolution is all a lie are persecuted by baby- and Christ-killing Jews like me? Right. (CORRECTION: "The Passion of the Christ" guy is the one marketing this balanced film, although the exec producer is a right winger, too - "Hollywood's Most Powerful Christian," according to Christianity Today magazine. My bad.)

Of course, some of the documentary footage that these tools shot is in the film. (Hence the "-umentary" part.) The pro-choice people, according to the "LA Times," all get to say things like how fetuses are nothing more than parasites (which, sorta, is true, but unlike digestive parasites which make women thin, fetus ones make them fat - ewwwwww). I'm assuming (hoping and praying) that I didn't make the cut, but since this doesn't appear to be available to pro-choice audiences, I may never know. I think it's unlikely that I'm in it, since I said that people who supposedly are "pro-life" have killed a lot of actual people, and that they really scare me. Seems like something that a "balanced" film would not want to highlight.

Things I Do Not Understand, Part 794A

1. The YIVO Institute has the records of American Displaced Persons Camps in Austria, Germany in Italy from 1945-1952. Since my grandparents and father lived in camps in Austria during that time period, I am eager to see what is in the archive. YIVO is conveniently open Monday-Thursday from 9:30 am to 5 pm. However, the reading room is open until 7:30 on Mondays. I called and asked until what time the library was open today and was told 7:30. After work, I rushed down to get as much time as possible with the records.

After passing through the metal detector and sending my bag through the x-ray machine, using the mandatory coat check, and providing photo ID, I took the freezing elevator to the library and reading room on the 3rd floor. The woman at the information desk informed me that since YIVO closed at 5:00, I could not get the records I wanted. I am extremely confused as to why a reading room is open when the records that one is supposed to read in that room are unavailable, but there were people in there using computers and looking over books from somewhere, so what do I know.

2. On the subway home from my failed trip to YIVO, a woman rushed onto the train with a stroller and four or five year old girl in tow. After mowing people down to get the stroller in the middle of the car, she wedged herself in the small space between me and the extremely large man on the other side. She struggled to pull her daughter onto her lap.

"Excuse me," I said. "Would your little girl like to sit down?" I gestured at my seat and moved slightly to get up.

"I HAVE TWO KIDS WITH ME AND I NEED TO SIT," she yelled in my face. That is when I realized that she had earphones on. They were blasting music. Not only could she not hear me, but if her kids needed something, they were shit out of luck.

Resisting the urge to slap her, I tried again. "Yes, I see that you should sit. Would your daughter like to sit also?"

"DIDN'T YOU HEAR ME? I SAID I GOTTA SIT DOWN BECAUSE I GOT TWO KIDS WITH ME!" One of the earphones slid out of her ear slightly when she pulled her daughter up higher.

"Yes, I heard you," I sneered. "But I am asking if your girl would like my seat." At that, I stood up and tried to wiggle around the stroller to get away from this cuntface.

"Oh, naw. She'll just sit on my lap."

Since there was really no standing room, I sat back down. The woman standing in front of me who witnessed the whole scene sighed. "Yeah, no good deed goes unpunished," I said.

"She's probably just used to people being rude," the stranger replied. The woman, of course, could not hear a word anyone was saying. The stranger was very kind, and chatted up the little girl about Valentine's Day. For all the mother knew, she was soliciting the kid. When she got off the train, the little girl kept waving and saying, "Bye bye. Have a good night."

It broke my heart. I know that there are times when parents don't want to hear their kids, but the girl kept trying to talk to her mom, who just nodded, unhearing. So awful.

Bye Bayh Repro Rights

Many of the bad things that are happening in the Senate today take me back to my earliest years in public policy. In the summer of 1995, the country was hotly debating welfare reform. I interned with the child care division of the Department of Public Aid in Illinois, and I followed the discussion closely.

By the time I returned the next summer, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) had passed Congress and was signed into law by President Clinton. States wrangled with how they could meet the welfare for work requirements and move people off of public assistance programs as soon as possible. Next door, the governor of Indiana, Evan Bayh, embraced welfare-to-work so wholeheartedly that I was certain that he was a Republican. I'm fairly certain that I even had an argument with Husband about it. I was wrong.

These days, over thirteen years after I first cut my teeth on public policy work, Bayh is still causing me to scratch my head. Evan Bayh is now a pro-choice Democrat in the Senate. Yet he voted for the Nelson/Hatch amendment that would have essentially forbid health insurance plans to cover abortion services. On the flip side, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is anti-choice, but voted against the amendment. What the fuck?

Sen. Reid showed great initiative in explaining his position, finding common ground and recognizing the need for health care reform to be passed. I commend him for taking the time to do the right thing for more people than himself. Sen. Bayh offered no explanation for voting against the women that he has courted for votes. It’s baffling. OK, it's more than baffling; Sen. Bayh's lack of courage on this issue is pathetic.

I learned in 1995-1996 that I really couldn't count on Evan Bayh to make sound decisions when it comes to the health and welfare of women and children. A lot of time has passed since then. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Sigh.

It's No Accident that "Stupak" Looks a Lot Like "Stupid"

Two of my favorite organizations, the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and Planned Parenthood are holding a National Day of Action today to lobby the Senate for health care reform that ensures women’s access to reproductive health care. Right now, things are not looking good.

Basically, the House passed a horrible amendment sponsored by Rep. Bart Stupak, an anti-choice douche bag. The amendment would prevent women who currently have health insurance plans that cover abortion from obtaining the same coverage if they buy it through an insurance exchange. This is a problem for me, but even worse is that private plans will likely drop abortion coverage in order to participate in the exchange. People who like imposing their religious beliefs on others are proposing the same thing in the Senate.

Planned Parenthood explains the situation (it's a long one):

The Bottom Line

• Under the Stupak amendment, millions of women would lose benefits that they currently have and millions more would be prohibited from getting the kind of private sector health care coverage that most women have today.


• Millions of women would lose private coverage for abortion services and millions more would be prohibited from buying it even with their own money.

The New Health Insurance Exchange

• The new health insurance exchange is intended to provide a new source of affordable, quality coverage for the roughly 46 million uninsured Americans and the millions more whose current coverage is unaffordable or inadequate.


• The House bill is expected to cover 96 percent of all uninsured Americans by offering subsidies for private coverage or the choice of a public plan. Depending on their income level and the final package approved by Congress, individuals would receive subsidies on a sliding scale to purchase private insurance through the exchange.


• Not everyone in the exchange would have subsidized coverage — a significant portion of people (for instance, those currently purchasing in the individual market and those working for small businesses) who would buy insurance in the exchange would not receive any subsidies, also known as affordability credits.

The Stupak Amendment

• The Stupak amendment prohibits any coverage of abortion in the public option and prohibits anyone receiving a federal subsidy from purchasing a health insurance plan that includes abortion. It also prohibits private health insurance plans from offering through the exchange a plan that includes abortion coverage to both subsidized and unsubsidized individuals.


• The Stupak amendment purports to allow women to purchase a separate, single-service “abortion rider,” but abortion riders don’t exist.


• Women are unlikely to think ahead to choose a plan that includes abortion coverage, since they do not plan for unplanned pregnancy.


• Realistically, the actual effect of the Stupak amendment is to ban abortion coverage across the entire exchange, for women with both subsidized and unsubsidized coverage.


• Example: Currently, a self-employed graphic designer or writer, buying coverage from Kaiser Permanente in the individual market, likely has abortion coverage. Under the health reform plan amended by Stupak, she would purchase that same plan from Kaiser Permanente in the exchange, but it would not include abortion coverage because it would be barred. This ban would be in effect even if she were paying the full premium. Similarly, a woman working for a small graphic design firm, who currently has abortion coverage through her company’s plan, would lose it under reform if the company decides to seek more affordable coverage in the exchange.

For more information on health care reform and the Stupak amendment, visit us at http://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/healthreform.

End of Planned Parenthood info, and back to my ranting... If this pisses you off as much as it does me, call your Senator today. (Or email him or her, as I suspect the lines will be busy.) Perhaps yelling, "Stop the stupid Stupak amendment bullshit," is not the thing to say, but it does have alliteration, which is a good literary technique.

In all seriousness, something like this is NOT going to stop women from having abortions. Instead, it will force more women to wait longer for their procedure while they figure out how the hell to pay for it. If we want more late term abortions in this country, then by all means, support Stupak. But that would be stupid.

Brilliant Analysis of "Socialized" Medicine

I met Laurie Penny earlier this year while she was visiting New York City. She is just as brilliant in person as in print. I fell over laughing when I read her take on British health care at The Huffington Post:

My partner suffers from a joint disorder which requires regular operations, paid for by the British NHS. His most recent procedure was performed without anaesthetic by a drunken surgeon wielding a rusty hacksaw. As I forced a mouldy rag between his teeth to stop him screaming, an official wearing Nazi insignia burst in and informed us that limbs were not considered an NHS spending priority, so dirty chisels were employed to remove both his legs and one of his arms. My partner is now a triple amputee, and I am forced to prostitute myself for heroin to numb the pain of living in an Orwellian super-state. God save the Queen.

This decidedly made-up story is hardly more ridiculous than the lies that Republicans have been peddling about the NHS all week.

The rest is very serious and wise and required reading. (I would only add that if she were to fall pregnant tomorrow, NHS would offer her support for bringing the pregnancy to term, as she notes, or for terminating it.) Great job!

Publishers Weekly Best Ten Books of 2009 - 100% Male

The problem with feminism is that it makes women crazy. We seem to believe that our words and our stories matter, and that we are not only capable of telling stories, but that we can excel at it. Our voices and our story telling techniques may differ from what has traditionally been viewed as great literature, but we think that doesn't mean that they are not equally good.

Of course, these beliefs are silly, and Publishers Weekly took great pains to remind people that women's work is just not up to par with that of (white) men. Their list of the ten best books of 2009 includes ten dudes, nine of whom are white. Some people bristled at this. Kamy Wicoff at She Write - an online community of women writers that is free and you should join - wrote:

Try to imagine if they had come out with a list of the Best Books of 2009 and it had included ZERO MEN. Try to imagine if Amazon had released its Best Books of 2009 and it had included only TWO men. I know it's hard. But just try.

Wicoff asked the She Writes community to take action. To protest this ridiculous list, we should all buy a book published by a woman in 2009, take a photo of ourselves with it, and explain why we bought it.



Here I am with the 2009 paperback edition of American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld. When the hardcover came out in 2008, it received glowing reviews. My friend Alex Elliot read it for her bookclub, and said that I would really like it. Sittenfeld and I are the same age, and I wish that I had an ounce of her talent.

I don't have pictures of myself with another two books that came out in 2009, but last night I attended a reading of A Friend of the Family by Lauren Grodstein. I thought it was great. Deborah Copaken Cogan also read From Here to April, which came out in hardcover in 2008 and paperback this month. It was also excellent. Both works were funny and thought-provoking, as were their creators.

If you are also pissed about the Publishers Weekly list, join the She Writes community's protest. Once you post a picture of yourself on your blog holding a book you bought by a female writer that came out in 2009 (the deadline is Friday), send Kamy the link at kamy@shewrites.com. She Writes will send these links to the entire community (5000+) on Saturday. While the emphasis is on women writers protesting, I think anyone who cares about sexism should feel free to participate.

Move On

When the liberal advocacy organization MoveOn.org was founded a few years ago, I was psyched. Approximately 900,000 emails from them later, not so much. Every day in the last few weeks, I received three emails from them. I blew my gasket today.

My motivating MoveOn email today noted that the Senate could really screw up the health care bill. My presence was requested at a rally to support the legislation that was out there. There was a little line thrown in about how anti-choice advocates muscled their religious beliefs into health care, denying women access to abortions, but whatever.

No, not whatever. I am sick of sacrificing my rights for the "greater good" when no one else seems to think they should ever do so. In yet another mass email I received (this time from Media Matters for America; I swear every progressive organization on the planet emails me daily), I learned that media coverage of the legislation is - surprise, surprise - completely misleading:

Media figures continue to falsely claim that a proposed anti-abortion amendment to the House health care reform bill would only have the effect of prohibiting government money from being used to pay for abortions, echoing a myth previously advanced about a proposed amendment to a prior version of that legislation. In fact, language in the current House bill already segregates federal money so it cannot be used directly to fund abortions, and the proposed amendment would effectively ban abortion coverage for some who have it now.

(Emphasis mine.)

Ellen Malcolm explains at The Huffington Post:

The Amendment effectively bans private insurance companies that participate in insurance exchanges from providing coverage of abortion. It tries to camouflage the impact by providing an "abortion rider" that women could choose to pay extra for to cover costs if they have an abortion.

I'm tired of being thrown under the bus so that others can roll forward over me. When the Catholic bishops (who launched "a forceful lobbying effort" that is credited "with the success of the provision") and other religious fundamentalists next want to forbid insurance plans from covering contraceptives or protect "pharmacists" who decline to fill prescriptions that they find morally objectionable, am I again supposed to step aside for the greater good? No. Instead, I shall Move On.

No Justice. Again.

The House of Representatives passed a shitty excuse for a health care plan. It includes no public option. (Sorry, I misunderstood the newspaper this morning.) It also gave in to fundamentalist religious groups and barred abortion coverage for anyone obtaining health insurance with government subsidies.

Some might argue that it is wrong to use taxpayers' money for things that certain taxpayers might object to. But we do that every day, anyway. I object to the death penalty, but every execution that happens in my state (which fortunately has been none) would be partly subsidized with my tax money. I object to Halliburton receiving no bid contracts to do nothing in Iraq. I object to hiring private "security" (paramilitary) firms being paid to "guard" stuff in Iraq. I object to the ludicrous idea that companies that are contracted by the US to work in Iraq are not subject to following US laws, so that women are raped by their co-workers and fired, the company has no responsibility. I object to using taxpayer money to build sports stadiums. The list goes on and on.

The problem with democracy is that sometimes you are stuck monetarily supporting things that you find morally reprehensible. If a person doesn't like it, too fucking bad. He doesn't have the right to impose his religious beliefs on me or other people.

Of course, not all religious groups are obnoxious fucking hypocritical assholes who insist on religious freedom for themselves but them force their beliefs down the throats of others. I know this. That's why, even though I don't believe in a Judeo-Christian God, I support the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. I think they do important work reminding people that religion does not have to oppress other people. I suppose it will be hard to continue supporting them when I live in my cave, hanging out with bats and shunning humanity, but as I said, there's no justice. I don't even know why I expect it every once in a while.

The Gonifs* Win

A few years ago, Rudy Giuliani, a mega Yankee fan and dictatorial mayor, put together a deal offering the Yankees a new stadium. This ballpark would be financed in part by New York City taxpayers. It would also require taking one of the few public parks in the South Bronx** and handing it over to the Yankees for the new structure. Boo! Hiss!

Then, thank to term limits (a concept I generally disagree with as it is not compatible with democratic elections, but that's another story), Giuliani could not run for mayor again. Whew! The new mayor, Michael Bloomberg, announced that the public was not in the business of building new stadiums for sports teams. Hurray! Rah rah rah!

Fast forward a few years, and Mayor Bloomberg inks a deal turning Macombs Dam Park over to the Yankees for their new stadium. There is lots of taxpayers supported financing, and a secret deal for a fancy luxury box for high ranking city officials, which somehow is called a public benefit. The Yankees also get a new MetroNorth stop, so that rich Republican assholes from Westchester need not set a foot in the surrounding neighborhood. In exchange, the Yankees agree to create a series of new little parks for the impoverished people of the South Bronx. Very generous of them, right? Boo! Hiss! Rotten tomatoes!!!

Now that the Yankees won the World Series, are the people who live in the shadows of the new stadium gathering in the newly built parks to celebrate? No, because there are no new parks. At best, there might be a park in 2011. But one of the lots promised to be a park is now actually going to be a parking lot. Sure, I understand that "parking" has the word "park" in it, but my dear Yankees, they are not one and the same.

So, go Yankees. Nice work. Taking from the poor and giving to the rich is considered an admirable American trait. You are exactly the American champions you set out to be.

*Gonif: Thief in Yiddish
**The Bronx, incidentally, is the poorest urban county in the US. The South Bronx is the poorest neighborhood in the Bronx. Clearly, these people have a lot to spare for a struggling sports team that has little revenue...

Elections: Good and Bad News

For the second morning in a row, the day began with promise. I woke up early and with big plans. Then I picked up The New York Times.

At first I didn't understand what I saw. Why was that fucking anti-choice, social conservative idiot with no plans at all for how to govern New Jersey on the front cover of the paper? No paper puts a big picture of the loser, and as my friend said on Monday, a good sign that he is not intelligent is that his first and last names are more or less the same. (Maybe this would work in Scandinavia, but it is silly here, I agreed.) But no. The stupid fuck his his right-wing agenda and won. People in New Jersey chose a moron with no ideas other than attacking his opponent's plans to save their state from recession.* Good luck with that.

I was relieved, however, to learn that the Democratic candidate in a district in upstate New York won. For 150 years, this community was represented only by Republicans. (Of course, that meant something different 150 years ago when it was the party of Lincoln, but that's another story.) Crazy conservatives around the country banded together to smear the moderate Republican candidate because she had the audacity to support gay marriage and keeping abortion legal. She was supported by all the local Republican leadership. But it seems that what people want is not good enough for the fringe elements that control the Republican party, who know much better than everyone else what they want, and if you don't agree with them, you will be punished. After months of verbal assaults from the likes of Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh, who supporting a crazy right-wing third party candidate, the Republican dropped out right before the election and endorsed the Democrat. He won narrowly.

My interpretation of all this insanity is that people still do not want to elect hatemongers. Christie won in part because he hid his conservative agenda, and this is also true of the Republican who just won Virginia. They emphasized the economy, not hating gay people or women's reproductive rights. In upstate New York, when the candidate foisted onto the voters emphasized his intolerance of people not like him, he lost. See, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh and the crazy bitch in the Times who praised the national coalition who imposed their will on a small area of New York, people do not embrace your so-called values. If you want to win and continue to oppress people with your evilness, you have to hide your agenda.

There may be hope yet.

*This reminded me why a story that we read in class that same night made me laugh. My classmate submitted a story about playing guitar in high school, and described his magnet school as offering an education to "the best and brightest of New Jersey." I thought he was making a joke about New Jersey's image as people with big bangs and a love of shopping malls, but it turned out he was serious.

Dearest Room and Board

Dear Room and Board,

Remember me? I came to your store in SoHo with my husband on Aug. 8. After several salespeople ignored us, one woman finally deigned to take our order for a fancy new couch. This was only because she was incompetent and unable to properly enter it into the system. When I pointed out that the receipt did not reflect what we attempted to purchase, she consulted with the manager, who suggested that she add a note modifying the purchase order.

We were then informed that our fancy new couch would arrive at the Minneapolis warehouse in late September, and we would receive it by the end of October. I found this a bit odd, since the manufacturer is in North Carolina and Minneapolis seems a bit out of the way for a couch going to New York, but I accepted the verdict. At the time, I did not realize that there was also a warehouse in New Jersey.

The oddity of it all made me nervous, so in mid-September, I decided that I didn't care if I acted like a crazy paranoid lady, and called you to check on my order. Surprise, surprise. It was wrong. Adjustments were made, and you promised that the proper couch would arrive. An even bigger surprise was when your New Jersey warehouse called me two weeks later to schedule the delivery of said wrong item.

After much confusion, your staff told me that you would hold the couch in your warehouse until the proper sofa bed arrived and would be swapped for the wrong one. Since I was originally told that I would not have the couch until late October, this did not phase me much. I could wait.

However, when your warehouse again called to deliver the sofa this week, no one seemed sure what exactly I would get. One rep said a memory foam mattress would arrive sans sofa on Thursday (bad), and that a sofa with an air mattress would be delivered on Friday (bad). Another rep said I would get a sofa with an memory foam bed (good). A third said I would only get a sofa with an air mattress (bad.) Today your incompetent sales rep called to inform me that I would receive a sofa with an air mattress and that the mattress I actually ordered was on back order. One day in the future, that would be delivered to my home and the sofa bed swapping would ensue. She said you didn't want to delay my enjoyment of the couch.

I really wanted to ask WHAT THE FUCK THE COUCH WAS DOING IN YOUR WAREHOUSE FOR FOUR FUCKING WEEKS IF THE MATTRESS WAS ON BACK ORDER WITH NO DELIVERY DATE IN SIGHT, but I instead said OK and hung up the phone. Then I called my husband and suggested that he deal with you while I go to a job interview. We concluded that we don't really want your stupid fucking couch at this point.

Thank you,
Suzanne Reisman

PDA

No one gave me the memo, but based on graphic anecdotes, yesterday was PDA Day. By PDA, I sadly am not referring to Personal Digital Assistants, like my BlackBerry. Every day in New York City is that PDA Day. It's impossible to go anywhere without someone walking into you because he or she is texting while walking down the street. (Guilty!)

Rather, yesterday seemed to be Public Displays of Affection Day. But really it was EGPDA (Extremely Graphic/Gross Personal Displays of Affection) Day. I have only two examples, but I am certain they were part of a wider trend that I missed by staying home all day and watching Top Chef re-runs to recover from whatever stomach bug had me in bed and on the toilet all day on Tuesday. (As an aside, I do not recommend watching "Top Chef" or other food-oriented shows while you are eating toast, bananas, and Jell-O and starting to recover your appetite. Just saying.)

I ventured out at 7 pm to go to class. Still a little weak from lack of food over the last 36 hours, I took the only seat available when I got on the subway. Unfortunately, this was directly across from a couple sucking face. Literally. I might have been part of some horror movie scene in which it seems like a couple is making out, but really the girl is some sort of face eating monster-bot. They did not stop for air once between 72nd Street and 42nd St. The groaning and swaying were over the top. Of course, this happened to be the time I had nothing with me to read, so I had no idea where to look. I tried staring at the bag on my lap, but that didn't stop the pleasure noises from invading my ears. At any moment, I thought the girl was going to unzip the guy and give him a blow job.

Then, as I walked home from my subway stop after school, I encountered another couple going at it. They stood right in front of the Jewish Community Center, vacuum suctioned onto one another's mouths. The man was feeling the woman up right on the corner!!! Unlike on the subway, I noticed two other people pointing at the lovers and laughing.

People, have you no sense of decorum? How bad is it when I, a person who writes about throwing brown acidic stomach contents through my nose, am the arbiter of good taste? Yeesh. New Yorkers, go back to your BlackBerries and clueless and antisocial wandering!

"Those People"

After days of cold rain, the sun is out today. Yay!

I went to the gym and had a good weightlifting session. Yay! (Or at least yay until I can't move my arms tomorrow.)

Two interviews that I went to last week yielded follow up interviews. Yay!

The shocking - shocking! -climax of Always is near. I should finish by the end of tomorrow. Yay!

So I was in a pretty good mood when I sat down to eat lunch. I read an article in the New York Times about Giuliani's stumping for Bloomberg in the mayoral election. He said:

“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” Mr. Giuliani said at a breakfast sponsored by the Jewish Community Council in Borough Park, Brooklyn. “This city could very easily be taken back in a very different direction — it could very easily be taken back to the way it was with the wrong political leadership.”

Not that I am surprised at all that he would say such a thing. His tactics led to enormous civil rights abuses and lawsuits against the city that cost taxpayers tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars, with no conclusive link to a drop in crime in the city. (Crime was down in large cities across the country, something Giuliani probably tries to take credit for, too.)

I've always hated Giuliani. He's always done his best to exploit fear and act as petty as possible in any given situation. The first thing I thought of after I threw the paper down and stomped around swearing was a recent post on BlogHer, Top Ten Reasons I Am Not a Racist by Nordette Adams. (The actual, brilliant top 10 list appears in Part 2.) I have no doubt that Giuliani would be offended at the mere suggestion that his tactics are racist. Sigh. You know how "those people" are.

Congratulations to Chicago!

This weekend, Chicago was not awarded the "privilege" of hosting the 2016 Olympics. For many reasons, this brings me great joy.

Economists have long demonstrated that events like the Olympics does not bring economic benefits to the host city. The cost of building the necessary infrastructure is not remotely covered by the event itself. Once the Olympics are over, the host city is stuck with specialized buildings that require maintenance but are essentially useless. This is all paid for by the taxpayers, taking important revenue away from services that actually meet the needs of the citizens. Chicagoans should be celebrating now - the burden of paying for all this is lifted from their hefty shoulders and transferred squarely unto the slender ones of Rio de Janierans. What a relief!

I am also pleased that the Olympics were not awarded to Chicago because I loathe Mayor Dailey. This was not always the case. Twenty years ago, he was a fresh-faced mayor who did some great things for the city. Today, he's a dictator and a bully. His decision to green the city is great, but he did so at the cost of services to thousands of low income residents. (Budgets are not infinite, and a lot of services - like bus transportation in poor neighborhoods - got cut as the city prettified itself. When he decided that he wanted to turn a small airport into a nature preserve, he dug up the runway in the middle of the night, leaving planes and passengers stranded the next morning. It may be a more laudable goal to have a lakefront nature preserve, but the way to create is not through sneaky force. He pledged that Chicagoans could have more public transportation if they got the Olympics, but that is fucked up. People should be able to get around their cities whether or not there is a big event. It is, in fact, essential to a city's health. I wanted a big, fat, public failure on this man's record, and it pleases me to no end that it happened.

When NYC was denied our Olympic bid for 2012, I was similarly overjoyed. We have enough problems as it is. Rio, a city plagued by extreme poverty, has a big challenge ahead of them. I wish them luck, and I send my condolences to their citizens.

New Mottoes

During class on Tuesday night, I reflected on my inability to write things that are descriptive. I decided that it is because I do not think in images, but in concepts. Por ejemplo, when I think about the tree that grew in front of my parents' house, here is my thought process:

It was taller than our humble abode and a conifer. The pine needles fell all over the driveway and any car that was parked near or under its branches. One day, Dana and I came from home school and found our neighbor chopping branches off our tree. We freaked the fuck out, but my parents were glad that he took matters into his own hands because it had become overgrown and blocked part of the driveway. My sister and I, however, felt that the tree was rendered bald and ugly by the indignity visited upon it. Years after that, my mom noticed that the branches at the crown of the tree looked lame. She asked my dad to call a tree doctor. By the time one of them finally put the call in seven years later, the tree was ridden with some sort of tree disease and past saving. It was chopped down. Now no one can find my house, as my friends used to look for the ginormous evergreen tree as a landmark.

While this is a very nice story, it is not terribly descriptive. Anyway, once I realized that I do not think in images, and images are central to writing that is "literary," I realized that "I am about as literary as a potato sprouting eyes." (Actually, I love that image. Potatoes with "eyes" gross me out and fascinate me.) Without writing images, it is hard to include metaphors in my stories. Seriously, I would not think to include a metaphor if one walked up to me at a cocktail party, introduced itself politely, and then punched me in the face when I did not recognize it. If I was to write a metaphor about the tree, it would be something cheesy like, "The tree was an angel that guarded our house against the darkness of the night that wasn't really all that dark because we faced a busy highway that was brightly illuminated by street lights." No good.

Despite my lack of "literary" credentials, I think I can write well in a few styles. Hence my other new motto is, "This cubic zirconium has many facets." Bwa ha ha ha. Fuck being literary.

Notes on the Economic "Recovery"

Several times in recent weeks, I read blurbs in newspapers about how the economy is recovering. It's not like economists are all gung-ho about it, but there are supposedly glimmers of a happy smiley sun peeking through the rain clouds of economic woe. Let's take a moment to sing:

Hey la, hey la Wall Street's back!
It's been gone for such a long time
Hey la, hey la Wall Street's back!
Now it's back and things'll be fine
Hey la, hey la Wall Street's back!

Didn't that feel good? No? Well, there's good reason for that. As the 99.9% of the time right on NY Times columnist Bob Herbert wrote last week, Wall Street may be be on the rise again, but so is unemployment.

When I resigned from my job at a nonprofit organization in May, I joined the ranks of jobseekers. I knew that the economy was bad when I decided to leave, but there were other considerations that were stronger. It was a scary and tough decision, but I noticed that the various places that advertised jobs in my field offered lots of interesting opportunities.

I saw many positions that interested me, and I cast my net far and wide. I went to interviews. I took consulting jobs. I worked on my thesis for my master's degree. It was difficult, but busy. Then mid-August hit. No one ever advertises on mid-August, so I only worried a little bit. Things did not pick up after Labor Day. I worried a lot. Classes started again, so I went to school and continued writing. I worried more.

I'm far luckier than most unemployed people - Husband works and we can live comfortably on his income. Still, I thought I'd contribute my anecdotal evidence that the overall economic situation is getting worse in some parts, not better.

Hey na, hey na - bring the job market back.

The Squirrelly and the Acorn

It's been a bad morning. I overslept, then while eating breakfast, read several depressing stories in the New York Times. The one that upset me most was about a "sting" operation enacted by two ultraconservatives who decided that they would bring about the right-wing wet dream of destroying the community organizing group Acorn.

Acorn is not perfect. It has had a series of scandals involving its officers over the last few years. But it also has done legitimate work to empower and engage disenfranchised, low income Americans in politics and economic growth. In New York City, Acorn has helped families frozen out of the housing market obtain places to live through shrewd credit counseling, homeownership classes, and technical assistance. People who participated in Acorn's programs here are not losing their homes to foreclosure.

Conservatives hate nothing more than when low income people ask for their fair (or I should say, fare) share of the heaping American apple pie. Actually, forget the "fair share" - they loathe when people who have been locked out of the mainstream systems that benefit white, middle- and upper-classes as for even a crumb or two of what they deserve. These groups and people, many of which have engaged in questionable activities themselves (remember Rush Limbaugh's illegal prescription addition and how he blamed his maid?), thus must bring down organizations like Acorn that are successful.

Today's New York Times article explains that two squirelly right-wingers dressed up as a prostitute and pimp, then went to Acorn offices and asked for help acquiring a home that they could use a brothel for under-age El Salvadorean girls. Two Acorn workers didn't blink an eye, explaining not only how to obtain the property, but also how to hide their illegal activity from the government.

There is nothing excusable or OK about what these Acorn employees did, and they have been fired. As a result of disgusting actions, Acorn is losing federal housing funds. But here's the problem with these incidents: they were isolated. And we don't find that out until deep in the article. See, the Times notes that the filmmakers "spent months visiting numerous Acorn offices, including those in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami and Philadelphia, before getting the responses they were looking for."

Why is no one demanding the rest of the tape? The evidence where almost everyone they came into contact to at Acorn did the right thing? It's like shutting down an entire hospital because of one awful doctor and a shitty nurse. Investigative journalism is NOT when you go out and do undercover investigations, find one thing that confirms wrongdoing, and then portray it as rampant corruption. YouTube may have made this video popular, but it certainly did not help tell the truth.

Between these squirrelly, unethical "truth seekers" and the fucking lunatics who protested in DC on Sept. 12, I really give up. Americans are not, as far as I can tell, interested in truth or justice. The sad part is this is what the real American way might be.

I'm Quiet and Unassuming, Too

An article in today's New York Times about a guy killed while protesting abortion outside a high school* (um, because high schools are places where abortions run rampant, I guess? WTF?) gave me pause. The author referred to the protester as "anti-abortion." When it quoted people who oppose legal abortion, it used the phrase "pro-life" (after all, it was a quote), but it did not use that language when reporting. This is a HUGE step in the right direction.

I'm sorry the dude is dead, as no one deserves to be shot in a drive-by, but I admit that I laughed when I read the following description of him, as provided by an anti-choice nutter:

He was just a quiet, unassuming, very committed pro-life activist...

People who stand outside high schools, Planned Parenthood offices, and abortion clinics with ginormous, misleading photos of bloody "fetuses" are neither quiet nor unassuming, unless my understanding of those words is wrong. Let's see... Merriam-Webster defines quiet as:

1 a : marked by little or no motion or activity : calm (a quiet sea) b : gentle, easygoing (a quiet temperament) c : not interfered with (quiet reading) d : enjoyed in peace and relaxation (a quiet cup of tea)
2 a : free from noise or uproar : still b : unobtrusive, conservative (quiet clothes)
3 : secluded (a quiet nook)

I suppose he could have been sitting with his loud, disruptive signs amongst a throngs of students and school staff without moving. That would qualify as quiet, then.

How about unassuming? Merriam-Webster defines that as: "not assuming : modest." If imposing one's moral values and beliefs on others is not assuming or modest, then I guess that is an accurate description of the protester, too. Otherwise, not so much.

*Incidentally, there is no evidence that the protester was killed for his opposition to abortion. The killer also shot another person who has nothing to do with abortion, and planned to murder a third but was caught first. I just want to make it clear that there is still no killing on record, ever, of an anti-choice person for his or her views. I wish I could say the same for how the supposedly "pro-life" side treats us. In 2008, over 230 physical acts of violence have been committed by individuals espousing to love and respect life.

Burned

For the second time in three weeks, I felt the sun bore down on the back of neck and forgot that I had sunscreen in my backpack. My fried neck was a small price to pay for such a gorgeous wedding, though:


I know I am biased, but I love (liberal) Jewish weddings. The chupa (wedding canopy) is so beautiful, and since I've never been to Orthodox wedding in which strict gender segregation is practiced, I always am extra-touched by the equality demonstrated in the ceremonies. Other than the sunburn, the only downside of the wedding was the number of bees flitting about the lush landscape. Bees scare me shitless. Another guest assured me that these bees were friendly, though, and I will say that it was certainly friendlier than the one that chased me around the parking lot of an ice cream shack at a beach town in New Jersey. (I offered that bee my ice cream and wallet to make it go away.)

Other things that I saw on my trip that uplifted my spirit, were these murals in the Mission District of San Francisco:



OK, so the birthing mural freaks me out a little (but I overall think it is cool) and the sidewalk graffiti is not technically a mural, but whatever. It reminded me that I like humanity. However, discussions that I had with friends and Bob Herbert's column in today's NY Times brought me back to reality.

I am burning with indignation at the lunatics who live in this nation. Protesting Obama's speech to school kids about studying hard and respecting teachers as socialist brainwashing? Calling him a Nazi? What the fuck is wrong with people? Of course, these are the same assholes who insisted that I had no right to dislike Bush since he was our president and as president, I needed to respect him. Gah!!!!! I give up.

Home Unimprovement

The renovations are officially done. With the exception of the washer-dryer, which is maybe the greatest thing ever introduced to my living quarters, I would not consider the work done to be a home improvement. Sure, things look nicer (except for our furniture, which looks worse than ever due to the move to storage and back). Rather than improving my life, however, the renovation created enormous new messes for me to clean.

Anyone needing a laugh should check out my friend's new blog, Awkward Ice Cream Social. It's "Satire with hot fudge and extra sprinkles." Yum.

For the rest of the day, I shall mentally curl up in the fetal position and rock back and forth. Tomorrow hopefully will be an exciting day. Jeffrey Zaslow's Wall Street Journal article following up on my classmates and I and our attitudes about body image and dieting will be out. A photographer came yesterday to take my picture. (I asked him not to use any that made me look like a douche. None of his other WSJ subjects have ever made such a request.) The paper is running then and now shots, so my nerdy 4th grade visage will be run next to my nerdy current image. The whole thing almost makes me giddy enough to forget all the white paint flakes that are trailing from the bathroom into the rest of the apartment.

American as Apple Pie

Until this morning, I struggled to understand why so many (white) Americans are seething about the plan to offer health care benefits to all Americans. I thought about a photo, showing an older white man screaming at Sen. Arlen Specter (who looked like he just ate something that left a very bad taste in his mouth, which cracked me up, but that's another point) that ran last week on the cover of The New York Times. The enraged man shouted, "One day, God is going to stand before you and he's going to judge you!"

This morning, however, when I looked at a NYT headline that announced that the public option would likely be dropped from whatever plan passes, Maurice (the hamster who runs on the wheel that powers my brain), dropped the seed he was eating and jumped on his wheel. Really, is not America founded on the idea that some people have rights, and they will protect those rights and do everything they can to prevent others from obtaining them? Those self-righteous colonists, shouting at King George, were essentially the same angry white men who then turned around and made sure that women, people of color, and white men without property could not vote or hold public office. In addition, a good portion of the public could not go to school, work in certain fields, marry who they pleased, observe their religion without being harassed, or in the most extreme cases, be considered human beings. They said Jews could not serve in the Continental Army (although they were happy to get Jewish money to pay for it, while insisting that Jews were unpatriotic for not serving in the army). Etc, etc.

The real problem with America is that it is utterly un-American to believe that all people are equal. When people fight to preserve a system that benefits only a few at the expense of others, they are upholding the true American way. There may be better opportunity here for people than in many other places in the world, but really, that's just saying how truly awful many places in the world are. And how wonderful it is that there are so many un-American Americans who want to extend rights and freedoms to all.

Where Can I Get a Pair of Michael Pollan's Rose-Colored Glasses?

I agree with the basic tenet of Michael Pollan's writing about food: what is mass consumed in Western culture is full of chemicals, leads to unsustainable farming practices, and is bad for everyone's (and I include the earth as everyone) health in the long run. My (organic, grass-fed) beef is with his analysis of how people ate in the past, and what we can do today.

Over at BlogHer, I address the gender absurdity he ignores. (In a sustainable, farm-raised nutshell, he says that people spend less time cooking wholesome foods at home because women have jobs, and does not ask the pivotal question: why don't men pitch in now that women have less time? Instead, it is the fault of feminism for rushing women out of the kitchen. Sigh. I suppose you can say feminism also failed in convincing men to do "women's work," like cooking, so the lack of time spent cooking is therefore also the fault of feminism.)

The other problem with Pollan is how he looks at the past. I read In Defense of Food for my book club, and we all thought it was condescending bunk. He claims that we should go back to cooking and shopping the way that our great-grandmothers did. This idealized notion of home cooking assumes that our great-grandmothers didn't work 14 hour days at shirt-waist factories, were not bent over fields doing sharecropping, or otherwise occupied in a struggle to earn some sort of income for their families. Further, it assumes that people had access to fresh fruits and vegetables. Photos that I have seen of cities from a century ago tend to depict vendors standing in the street with raw sewage at their feet. Of course, that assumes that my great-grandmother even had the money to buy fresh items - the reason that the Federal Poverty Level is based on the cost of a basket of food is because food was the biggest expense in a family budget in Ye Goode Olde Dayes.*

My guess is that my great-grandmother did not spend hours cooking after she arrived home from the sweatshop as a young woman; she was just glad when people in her household had anything to eat. In fact, back in Pollan's Ye Goode Olde Dayes, the infant mortality rate was much higher and people died (for a lot of reasons) younger than our diabetes-infested society members do today. One of these reasons is that poor people (who make up a lot of the population) had limited access to nutritious foods.

Pollan wants to return to a past that never existed for many people. Without acknowledging why affordable, fresh food and nutritious has always been a problem in some way or another, he prescribes solutions that are ridiculous. Spending more time preparing healthy, delicious food at home is a good goal, but how can we achieve it when fresh food remains unaffordable to so many, as it always has? (Seriously, when I was at McDonald's last week, I got a small meal for less than $4 - I can't eat for even close to that at my local farmers' market.) How can we change the industrial farming practices that Pollan so rightly abhors as stripping plants, animals, and the earth of its nutrients, and make sure that people can afford to buy what is produced? How can we re-direct farm subsidies that go toward harmful practices to get better, affordable food? How do we help people find the time to cook, and make sure it is an enjoyable way to spend time so people will choose to cook?

Blaming feminism and ignoring the realities of the past is easy. But it won't solve anything.

*Today, the cost of housing is by far the largest line item.

Tragedy and Bad Public Policy

While at a picnic with friends and their toddlers at Hudson River Park this afternoon, I heard a big bang. The park is wedged between the West Side Highway and the Hudson River, so I just assumed that it was a truck or some other large vehicle on the highway. I was paid little attention when a number of my fellow picnickers ran toward the river. When emergency boats began circling the area a few minutes later, I realized that the big bang was not what I thought it was.

It turns out that the big bang was a private plane crashing into a helicopter. The plane's wings clipped the blades of the helicopter, and both aircraft plunged into the river. Tragically, all three people on the plane and seven people in the helicopter died.

Husband is actually surprised that these horrible instances don't happen more often, as the lower altitudes above the Hudson River are unregulated. Today Mayor Bloomberg said that while he was sorry that this happened and extended his condolences to the families of those lost, he opposed regulating the airspace as it would be bad for tourism. I'm not sure that the families of the six Italian tourists who died in the helicopter would agree. I certainly don't.

So Burn Me at the Stake Already, You Fascists

During the last presidential election, Husband regularly received mailings from the McCain campaign requesting donations. (He regularly gives to Democratic candidates around the country.) After the election, issues of The National Review mysteriously appeared every month in our mailbox. On Friday, when I retrieved our mail, I discovered the scariest sacrilege yet: an envelope depicting black cloaked priests lying face down in the aisle of a crowded church, next to a picture of priests holding a "Dominicans Friars for Life" banner at a march. In the upper left corner, the envelope read, "God is calling new men to the battle. And the Dominicans are answering - again. (Battle plan enclosed.)"

Inside, a six page letter read:

Dear fellow Catholic:

About 800 years ago, a poisonous heresy arose in southern France. Left unchecked, it could have threatened the very existence of the human race.

Its adherents saw the human body as a prison for the soul, and thus adopted an anti-life philosophy. They forbade procreation, applauded divorce, and openly encouraged suicide.

The Church called these beliefs Albigensianism.

Seeking good men to fight the Albigensian heresy, Pope Honorious III approved the founding of the Order of Preachers, better known as the Dominicans.

St. Dominic and his preachers rose to the Pope's challenge, using Truth to blot out heresy. They did their job so well that, nowadays, you'll never meet an Albigensian.

I interrupt this letter for a moment to point out that we would never meet an Albigensian regardless of the Dominicans because they all would have killed themselves or died through lack of reproduction. Also, Husband is not a "fellow Catholic," so "God" is apparently not very good at dictating "Truth" in mailing lists. But back to the scariness:

Today, the Dominicans are rising again - to defend Christian morality against an attack that is even more widespread, vicious, and uncompromising.

Yeah, that first part of the sentence scares the fucking shit out of me.

What is this latest, most ferocious attack on Christian truth and morality? Pope Benedict XVI calls it the Dictatorship of Relativism. Relativism is the "universal heresy" because it dissolves all truth and eliminates all categories of good and evil. This deranges the mind and morals of modern man to a dangerous - indeed frightening - degree.

Fore example, relativism not only dictates that abortion is merely a personal choice, but also dictates that the government muse guarantee the "right" to this choice... Relativism can also cause people to take a good thing - such as holy matrimony - and tamper with its very definition to fulfill their own selfish purposes.

Right. I forgot that love is selfish. Of course, I also think that abortion is "merely a personal choice," and my people killed Jesus according to this institution's "Truth," so what do I know? I'll cite one more line:

Relativism is profoundly irrational - anything that denies objective truth denies reason.

Am I the only one whose eyes are bleeding? That is the most fucked up twisted "logic" I've read since Husband's free issues of The New Republic stopped arriving last month.

But on a serious note, the remaining four pages of this toilet paper screed boast about the increase in enrollments at their vocational school, and how their latest crop of 54 trainees are going to stamp out my irrational belief in religious freedom and my vile heresy against the One Truest True Truth. It is pretty damn terrifying to think about these people and what they would do to me in order to "save" me. Shudder.

Ironically, I also pulled out a receipt for a donation I made in late May (right before Dr. Tiller was killed by a psychopath who believed he had to stop abortion) to the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. I very well might send them more money. Because now I've seen the enemy's battle plan - the Truth - and it is chilling.

Can You Tell the Difference?

So, now conservatives are really angry because liberals paid more attention to the assassination of Dr. Tiller than the murder of Pvt. William Andrew Long outside a recruiting office in Arkansas. (Another soldier was wounded in the attack.) I know that my stupid liberal brain is slow, but I am not sure that I get it.

First, no liberals are expressing joy or relief or thanking God that Pvt. Long is dead. This is unlike the extremist groups that encouraged violence against Dr. Tiller for, oh, like two decades.

Which reminds me: was Pvt. Tiller stalked and harassed before he was killed? No? Did he have to hire security guards because of the repeated threats against his life or the vandalism of his office, which happened repeatedly for almost 20 years? No? Then how are the two murders equivalent?

The killing of Pvt. Long is heinous and vile. But there is pretty much no support among liberal organizations for these aggressive actions against people we disagree with. We do not threaten to kill their children because we think that their actions are morally wrong. We do not bomb their offices. We do not give veiled condemnations of murderous actions that really celebrate those actions.

No one could have predicted that Pvt. Long would be killed. His death is horrible. But it is not part of a long term harassment campaign, and that is why I paid more attention to Dr. Tiller than Pvt. Long. Then again, I don't know why I expect people who equate a fetus to a person who is born, breathing, and feeling to be able to distinguish these types of nuances.

Take Out the T-C-P

I read the newspaper as I ate my breakfast sausage, as I do every morning. As happens almost every morning, one of the articles made me stop chewing. Usually, I temporarily discontinue eating because I am so outraged by whatever absurdity presented itself, but today I halted to parse language.

The front page of the New York Times proffered a story about one Republican's struggle with his party over the Sotomayor nomination. It said:

He quickly challenged the standing of the judge’s critics, like former Speaker Newt Gingrich, noting that they were not Republican officeholders and held no real responsibility for passing judgment on President Obama’s choice for the court.

“We are going to treat this nominee with the respect that she is entitled to,” Mr. Cornyn said in an interview this week.

There is important nuance in this sentence. To say that they will treat Sotomayor with "the respect that she is entitled to" is a lot different from saying that they will treat her with respect, period. It means that if they decide that they don't like her or her views, she is not entitled, as a human being, to respect. Respect is absolutely not the default, and they have the right to revoke it at any time.

Some time ago, I wrote about the phrase, "with all due respect," because I noticed that any time someone (including me) used it, it meant that the speaker accorded the person she addressed no respect because none was merited as due. However, whatever is said is somehow considered less rude since the speaker threw in the meaningless clause, "with all due respect." Cornyn's comment is a lot like that because he can credit for being civil, while not actually committing to do so. Very clever.

Tell it to them, Aretha!

Barring Common Sense

All ground floor apartments in Manhattan have bars over the windows. Some of the bars are built into the window frame on the inside of the apartment, like this:

Others are built into the facade of the building, like the two apartments in this photo:

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I happen to live in a ground floor apartment with outdoor bars, which always makes me wonder what would happen if there was a fire in my building and I couldn't use my door to get out, but that's another story. Today's story is not about a potential fiery death in an inferno, but about stupidity.

Back in January, a leak developed in my building that required the super to rip up my bathroom to fix the plumbing. The damage was poorly repaired, prompting Husband and I to consider a bigger bathroom renovation project. We decided to replace the wall tile and the floor tile, as well as put in a new toilet and sink and spruce up the shower. As long as we were ripping open the wall again, we thought we'd see if we could install a washer and dryer in the hallway closet which has plumbing hook ups in the wall between the closet and bathroom.

We hired a contractor, who drew up a scope of work and submitted the plans for approval to the building management, which first ran it by an architect, who made some suggestions that we agreed to, and then submitted the architect's suggestions to the Board. The Board approved the plans on Monday (yay!), with the following condition: we remove the trash through our window.

Yes, the windows which have bars soldered into the facade. Yes, it is literally 16 steps from my apartment door to the front door of the building. No, it makes no sense that there is less potential to damage the building by ripping cast iron bars out of the facade than walking 16 small steps from my apartment outside.

Excuse me while I curl up in the fetal position and rock back and forth while I await my appeal of this insanity.

It's My Party and I'll Cry If I Want To

I remember very clearly in 1984 worrying about Reagan being re-elected. Although the Gipper managed to fool a large number of working-class families into thinking he was helping them when in reality he was a reverse Robin Hood, my seven year old self knew that bad shit was going down. I was a Democrat through and through.

I survived the past eight years. I was excited to see things change in federal policy. And I am more disappointed than ever. First, the Democrats proved that they like being treated like shit. Lieberman can campaign for fucking McCain, and when his candidate loses, all he has to do is say that he was just kidding and everyone is like, that's cool. Now Arlen Specter changes parties to continue to work against progressive policies, and the Democrats are like, you said you want that conservative psychopath Norm Coleman to win and you joined other shithead Democrats and all the Republicans in voting down fair change in bankruptcy laws so that people with one house get treated the same as people with vacation homes and yachts? That's cool. Welcome to the party.

I am tired of this bullshit. If the Democrats are going to continue to suck the shit out of Republicans assholes and leave me with brown stains on my teeth, I am done. Forget it - that's not cool. I don't think I've ever been so disheartened by the possibilities or lack thereof.

To the caves!!!

Three Cheers for Maurice

Frankly, I'm in deep shit. I think that working full-time, attending a full-time master's program in creative writing, drafting two posts a week for BlogHer, serving on the Board of a nonprofit child care center that has real estate issues, attempting healthy-ish lifestyle through exercise, and continuing to have relationships with friends and family (which I am failing at miserably in some cases) is maybe more than I can handle. For the last two weeks, I've been exhausted constantly.

It's not just me who needs a break. Maurice, the hamster who runs on the wheel that powers my brain, is on strike. At first I was mad at his furry ass for not keeping up, thus resulting in me making big mistakes like handing in the same story twice (written in two different ways, since I didn't remember writing it in the first place) or smaller errors like when I called Oedipus Odysseus in yesterday's blog post. Now I realize that the little dude is just overworked.

Maurice and I used to take breaks to read friends' blogs or watch mindless TV. These days, I need to think for more hours, whether to learn about the nuances of Obama's foreclosure prevention plan or to answer questions about a book I read for class, and poor little Maurice runs nonstop from when I wake up until I go to sleep. That's a lot for any brain hamster, let alone a 33 year old one. So I want to thank him publicly for hanging in there. (Thanks Maurice!)

I need to take a hard look at everything that's on my plate. I know what I want to cut, but Husband is not on board with that plan. If only I could write a book and sell it for six-figures, like, say fucking Meghan McCain,* that would solve everything. Uh, right....

*Love Jossip's suggested title about Ann Coulter, as does Maurice.

An Unintended Consequence of Brazilian Waxing

Last week, I had dinner with a friend, who told me about a picture that he saw on Facebook.

"You are probably the only person in the world that I can mention this to," he said. "It showed a guy with his face between a naked woman's legs. Her shaved 'landing strip' was positioned on his face so that it hit under his nose, making it look like Hitler's mustache."

"Shit, that is fucked up," I replied articulately.

Later that night, he emailed me the picture. He hadn't mentioned that the guy also arranged his hair in a way that also looked like Hitler.

"That is so incredibly evil. Wow. I am both disgusted and impressed," I wrote back. "I'm impressed that someone could be that offensive."

"It is that rare combination, indeed. Can't believe no one has flagged it as offensive."

I think someone did finally mark it for banishment, as I couldn't find it on Facebook. The whole incident just added another reason for my personal dislike of Brazilian waxing. I can't imagine how distressing it would be to look down and find that my pubes made my partner look like the perpetrator of the largest genocide of the 20th century. Better to see Bluebeard or a Hasidic man.

The March of Time

How is it that there are still two more days left in this blasted month of March? This has been the longest month ever. Days seem to go by, and then a week is over, and then another week, and yet it is still fucking March!!!

Assuming that April will be a fresh start, I am so looking forward to Wednesday. Husband is returning from his business trip to Europe, and even more exciting, my mom is coming to visit! I took two days off work, and she will be here until Sunday. I have not seen my mom since mid-December, so I gleefully anticipate her arrival. I'm sure that, just as long as I waited for her to arrive, her trip will somehow be over in no time. At least after that, I have something else to look forward to. In mid-April, I am heading to DC for a conference, and hanging out with some friends over the weekend. It will be nice to see my ladies.

Time is a vicious tease. (Ooh, a metaphor!)

Adding Insult to Injury

Picture it: New York City, 2009. A young girl (OK, not so young or a girl - a 33 year old) stands in her dining room, holding an unsigned letter from her co-op apartment's management company, eyes wide in disbelief, sputtering "I can't believe this!" over and over again. The paper explains that her share of the "work" done in her apartment in January is $500.

One might remember this "work:" over the holidays, the super knocked on her door. The occupants were out of town, but their cousin was keeping an eye on the rabbit and fort. Said cousin contacted owners of said apartment and explained that the super told her that there was a leak in the basement and that he wanted to hire a plumber to tear open her bathroom wall and possibly floor to locate and fix the leak. The not-so-young-girl agreed, and the work commenced. The leak was repaired, new pipes were installed, and everyone was happy.

However, when she got home, she discovered that there was a big fucking gap in her wall, as the super took it upon himself to re-tile and fucked it up. A battle then commenced over how this would be fixed. The management company acknowledged that it was their responsibility to put things back to their prior semi-shitty condition. More negotiations took place. No work was done.

So when the not-so-young-girl received a bill for work which not only was not her responsibility, but also fucked up her apartment, she blew a gasket.

The More You Know

Back in the days when Saved by the Bell starred a young Mark-Paul Gosselaar, a fresh faced innocent girl by the name of Elizabeth Berkely, and a pre-Dancing with the Stars Mario Whateverhislastnameis,I'mtoolazytolookituprightnow, NBC ran public service announcements with featuring a celebrity who imparted wisdom about things like the evils of letting friends drive drunk, which concluded with the graphic of a star and the words, "The More You Know." I got the impression that "The More You Know" is a good thing. This was a bald faced lie.

See, The More I Know, the more I realize what scumbags people are. Take two cover stories from yesterday's New York Times. The first one was about how the guy who ushered in exploding loans during his tenure at Countrywide now is making bazillions of dollars by buying those exact same loans for pennies now that they have gone bad. His new company, nicknamed "PennyMac" (seriously, is it possible to more directly spit in people's faces?), is reaching out to borrowers to modify the loans. What seemed very possible is that he is giving people temporary modifications that will explode again in a few years, so he can duck out and find new ways to profit. Fists clenching, fists unclenching...

Story #2 was about a debt collection agency that uses grief counseling to trick grieving family members into paying off their dead relatives' debts, even though they are not legally liable for them. The company has the balls to say that they are helping people through their grief by giving them the opportunity to rectify their loved ones' debits. FUCK YOU. Am I the only person who has the urge to kill someone close to the executives of the company, then start calling them and asking them to heal their wounds by paying for their sister's credit card bill?

The More I Know about the world, the more I like my imaginary cave hermit life.

Satan Comes In Many Guises

Just as I prepared to hit the sheets last night, I noticed a message in a Facebook thread mentioning that so-and-so was not planning to hang out after class on Wednesday night because her class was canceled. Incidentally, her class is my class (let's sing it together, "This class was made for you and me..."), and I didn't know bupkes* about class being canceled. I spent the next hour or so clenching and unclenching my fists while inhaling and exhaling deeply. Long story short, this is the second class (out of two classes) where the administrators of the program don't have me on the list.

My tuition is $22,000 and change. I take a whopping two classes per week, and attend some literature readings and weekend seminars. For all that money, I expect that people could make some fucking effort to figure out who is in what classes. Since this is obviously not the case, I decided to attempt to transfer to another school in city that shall remain nameless but costs 1/4 of the price. Last week, a woman who blogs about how God dictated her stories to her and she writes for the glory of Jesus received a phone call admitting her to the program that my tax dollars support. I did not. (Fists clenching and unclenching, deep breath in, deep breath out...) No, I'm not bitter at all.

Once again, I had a restless night and on my way to the subway this morning I passed by a group of people tempting me with forbidden apples, if it is possible that the plaza in front of the 72nd St. subway station is Eden. Yes, that's right: they were giving out granola bars. Along with propaganda about the seven deadly sins. (Motto: "They may be deadly... but they sure are fun.") My cravings for granola bars are somewhat less this week than last, but still bad. Fucking religious nuts, screwing with me everywhere, I swear!!!

I took a granola bar. I decided that I would not eat it, but save it in my desk at work just in case I ever got snowed in or something and needed sustenance. (I also have a large bar of Jacques Torres milk chocolate, distributed by the landlord of the building for Valentine's Day, stashed in my drawer. And an insulated container of 2% milk, the kind from Horzion that doesn't require refrigeration. It's almost enough to make me hope I get snowed in so I can chow down, but I digress.) Really, I took it because it was free, and I hate turning away free things. Also, I wanted to waste the crazy church's money. However, I am not so evil that I took two. God didn't give me that story to write.

Sigh.

*Yiddish: shit

The Zodiac is Sort of Wrong

As a Capricorn, my best mates are Cancers. The goat and the crab - a natural pairing if there ever was one. (Incidentally, Husband is a Cancer.) I'm not one who puts much stock in astrology, but I do have many of the personality traits ascribed to my sign. In a way, I'm conservative (not politically of course, but I've never been the type to drink or do drugs or party or have one night stands, etc., not that I care if other people do, but I digress). Stubborn and tenacious, I'll plod along the rocky mountain path eating tin cans until I wind up somewhere with a tasty patch of grass.

Still, it's funny that Cancer is a crab, because I am one of the crabbiest bitches on the planet. At my Saturday research seminar, I wanted to slap some wench who waddled in 30 minutes late for the second week in a row, disrupting the class as she took off her coat, unzipped a back back to take out a notebook, then zipped it back up and unzipped a second backpack and fished around for a pen before zipping that bag up, then shifted around in her chair for a few minutes. Once she was settled, she raised her hand and asked, "Maybe this was covered already, but how do you cite a website as a source?"

"Get a fucking style manual!" I restrained myself from screaming. What the fuck? People, try to show up to class on time (she was the fourth person to waltz in late), and if you can't get your shit together to do so, at least don't open your fucking trap and when you have no idea what we discussed before you deigned to show up. Wait until the damn break or after class and ask then.

I fucking hate people. Cleaning bat guano will be a small price to pay for the refuge of my future cave home. Grrrr...

Beware of VD and Important "Marxist Feminist Dialectic" T-Shirt Info

As an early Valentine's Day gift, the landlord of the office building in which I work gave every employee a full size bar of Jacques Torres milk chocolate on Thursday. This is a South Beach Diet eye poke if there ever was one. Does anyone ever dole out free, expensive chocolate when I can eat it? Of course not. I wanted to cry while everyone savored their chocolate, but I insisted that my cottage cheese and cherry tomatoes were delicious. (They were, but not as delicious as I am sure the chocolate was.)

It's not just this year that I feel like Charlie Brown as Lucy pulled the football away as he lifted his foot to kick it. I've always hated Valentine's Day. Like the other types of VD, I find it's treacly ookiness just infects everything. My freshman year of high school I griped about it so much that when sweet but decidedly odd Mark Weinberg (not Mark Weingarten, for those of you who know either of them and get confused, as my friends did when I later had a crush on Weingarten and had to clarify that Mark Weinberg was "the Wrong One" and Weingarten was "Not the Wrong One," but I digress) gave me what was probably the kindest card anyone has ever given me on VD, saying that he knew that I hated the holiday but he hoped I would have a good day, that I missed that he was interested in me. I don't know if I would have been interested in him, but man, did I waste that opportunity to thank someone for doing something really nice for me. (Fast forward to next VD when I was grounded and Mr. X [name removed at his request, 11/17/09] showed up at my house while I was doing laundry to give me a rose and I basically slammed the door in his face because I was a stupid insensitive fucking bitch and I will forever feel guilty about that because even if I didn't like him, I should have been nicer. But I digress again.)

The point is, VD annoys me and causes me to grouse and be even crabbier and more crotchety than usual. However, I hope that you are all having a lovely day.

More important, for those of you who like the t-shirt I got earlier this week - "My Marxist Feminist Dialectic Brings All the Boys to the Yard," it is still possible to order one at T-Shirt Hell, but only until Monday, Feb. 16. I am thinking of ordering another one just in case the one I got shrinks, as it is stretched to the max as it is. (For the record, the ringer t-shirts are a size smaller than the chart says.) This has been a public service announcement.

Infallible, But Only Human

This is what I hate about people with God complexes (and yes, I was cracking up as I wrote that, which led to a bit of a coughing jag - divine punishment, perhaps?) - they tell us commoners that we need to do what they say because they are infallible, but then when they are wrong, we are supposed to look the other way because they are only human. Hey buddies - you can't have it both ways.

Personally, I think that this is why doctors are sued for malpractice so often. Many fine upstanding members of the medical community exist and are perfectly delightful people whose company I enjoy, but their colleagues tend to be fucking assholes. They act as though they know everything, are enraged when you question something they told you, and then when they fuck up, they don't understand why people get upset. "I'm only human." Fine. Then get off your pedestal and don't pretend you are all-knowing and all powerful in the first place and I'll accept your all too human mistakes. Otherwise, suck my dick.

The medical profession aside, what provoked my rant today is an article I saw in The New York Times about Pope Benedict XVI and the scandal with accepting a bishop who denies the Holocaust back into the Vatican bosom. Infallible means you are never wrong. Ever. But according to the article, "The Vatican says that Benedict had been unaware of a cleric's offensive comments." Really? Well, shit, if the Pope can't figure out who is an anti-Semetic crazy despite numerous public statements from said crazy, I sure as fuck don't believe he's receiving the proper messages about birth control and other issues that the Pope supposedly has more authority on than mere mortals like me. If you are going to claim infallibility, you better never, ever get caught claiming that you don't know what you are doing. I wish I could sue him for faith malpractice.

Sorry, you can't have it both ways.

Better than Horrific

So the super never showed up last night, nor did he call us to let us know that something else came up. This morning he told Husband he'd be by at 8:15. When I called him at 9:00 to see what was going on, he seemed irritated that I interrupted him. However, he did show up at my door within two minutes.

He is truly, honestly wounded that Husband and I don't find the repair job acceptable. He said he's just trying to save the building some money, and a professional tiler would not do a better job. Since I beg to differ, I'll provide some evidence.

This is the original "repair" job that the super was surprised that we found unacceptable:


My favorite part is the "new" tile with a big fucking crack in it. Granted, after we complained, he did fix it. That cracked tile is still there, albeit smeared over with grout:

Oh look! The big chip is still missing from the side. The crack is still ther, just hidden from our cheap camera under all the grout. Speaking of grout, many of the tiles are smeared up with the rough substance. Such pickiness!

He also argued with me about whether water went into the little hole in tile that I pointed out in yesterday's blog post. First, he said that water from the shower couldn't possibly reach that area, which is stupid. Then, when I pointed out the mildew stain from the leaky faucet directly above the hole, he denied there was a leak. We turned the shower on, and I watched a trickle of water flow down into the hole. "See?" my super said. "No leak." When I insisted that there was water seeping into the hole in front of my eyes, he touched the wall. "Oh yeah," he marveled. "It is leaking." I gnashed my teeth. He then put grout directly into the wet hole, sealing in the moisture behind the tiles.

If I paid someone who left me with my current tile situation, I would sue them. And that's the difference between the earnest effort my super made, and the result I expect. I'm sorry to hurt his feelings, and I do think he genuinely believes he is trying to help us, but this leaky faucet is getting plugged by someone else. Harumph.

The Great Bathroom Wall of Tile

The bathroom wall saga continues. Quick recap: while Husband and I were away at the end of the year, the super of our building asked permission to enter our apartment and tear up the bathroom wall to repair a pipe that was leaking. We were promised that the wall would be returned to the condition in which it was found. Uh huh...

For reasons I cannot possibly fathom, the super refused to allow the management company to hire a professional tiler to fix the enormous holes that were ripped in the wall. (The management company was perfectly willing to do this.) Instead, he had his handyman do it, but the tiles were cut to the wrong size, pasted in so that the insulation was still exposed, and fell out when I looked at it closely. The next day, Husband asked the super to stop the work until a professional could come in. When we arrived home that night, the outrageously crappy tiling job was ripped out, and a new job was done. It was not as horrifying as the first job, but did contain problems like this:



Yes, that is a small hole next to the faucet into which water drips, probably causing a mold problem to fester. This is in addition to all the old tiles that were cracked or chipped during the work and not replaced, but left there to look like shit. And the corner, which was originally a curved tile, that is now two glued together at a 90 degree angle with exposed ceramic. Not to mention that the new tiles are a different shade of white than the old ones. Furious, Husband called the management company, which agreed to order appropriate tiles and have them professionally installed.

Today the super told Husband that he refuses to accept that his work is not as good as a professional. When he arrives here at 7:00, I would like to ask him to return the $130 holiday gift we gave him in December, as he obviously enjoys shitting in my bathroom and telling me I should be grateful it isn't diarrhea and that he left me a mop. I would also like to break into his apartment and shatter all the tiles in his shower and tell him that it is perfectly fine. And really, why is he fighting this? The repairs are not fucking coming out of his personal pocket. I trusted him to come into my home when I wasn't there and do what needed to be done to save the building from extensive damage. His repayment is to take my old shower, which was rather ugly, and make it worse.

We all know where this leads: he better hope that he doesn't need access to make repairs ever again if no one is home, as I will now let the whole fucking building collapse before he ever touches a fucking thing in here. Hey, I have homeowner's insurance.

Update: The super did not show up or call us to cancel.

Blog for Choice Day

Hey kids! What time is it?

Howdy Doody time!

No, sorry! It is Blog for Choice Day! This year's topic: What is your top pro-choice hope for President Obama and/or the new Congress?

I don't really know where to begin. I'm just glad that the Bush administration, which re-defined birth control pills and IUDs as "abortions" are gone, and that logical people are in charge. If I could have it all, I'd love it if Congress would overturn the Hyde Amendment, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Shit, we've got people protesting the words"freedom of choice" in a fucking doughnut ad, so I really don't think that allowing Medicaid to pay for abortions is a realistic goal. I think it is fair - and the argument that we shouldn't use taxpayer money for something that is morally objectionable to some doesn't apply because then I could say that I object to using my taxpayer money for Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, and other murderous Bush policies, and you could say you object to using it for nuclear power plants and so forth, and no one would pay for anything - but the shit storm would potentially fuck us over, so to speak. Yeah, happy 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, assuming you have a clinic that is in your community and a way to pay for what I consider to be health care.

Anyway, I will aim for something more achievable. I can't wait for the overreaching new "morality clause" to be revoked, for the global gag rule to get yanked, and maybe even for restored funding to family planning clinics to make birth control affordable for uninsured women. Also, I like the acknowledgment that people of faith are pro-choice, too, not just "nonbelievers"* like me. Any of those (and all of them) would rock.

*Sorry, but what the fuck was with that? I love that those of us who profess no faith in god got a shout out as a worthwhile humans who contribute to society, but I do believe in things. "Nonbelievers" sounds sociopathic, or like we're cynical assholes just sitting around criticizing shit, which may be true in my case, but whatever. Why not call us secularists or something flattering? Yeesh.