Last month at the 25th anniversary celebration of NARAL,* I was asked to give a speech as the representative of the Teen Advisory Council. The speech went well, which is exciting, but to add to the exhilaration I felt, was the fact that I gave a damn great speech in front of so many important political figures. Among the people who heard me speak were Rep. Mary Flowers, John Cullerton, Dick Simpson, Richard Phelan, Dawn Clark Netsch, Maria Pappas, etc. etc. The best thing about it all was it gave me a chance to find out how to get involved in some campaigns. Maria Pappas even gave me her beeper number!

At any rate, today I followed up on one of my leads and went downtown to work on the Dawn Clark Netsch campaign.** I helped prepare a mailing of 10,000 invitations to a $1000 per plate benefit. I stuffed, sealed, and addressed envelopes. While I was doing this, I talked to other volunteers. They were of all ages and both sexes, and were very friendly. We shared our excitement over the latest “Tribune” poll results: Burris had 30%, Netsch 28%, and Phelan 13%. We were doing it! We were helping to close the gap and push our candidate to victory!

I personally liked doing the work because it allowed me to do several things: a) witness and observe first hand how a campaign works and b) make lots of connections for when I run for office in the future. Most important, though, is the feeling I got that I am partially responsible for helping my candidate; that I do and can make a difference!

Anyway, I’m very excited about this whole thing and can’t wait to go back! My first chance at voting will be coming up soon, and when I punch my vote for Netsch, I’ll feel part of it all!

*National Abortion Rights Action League.
**She was running for governor, and pretty much rocked, but lost by a landslide, which crushed me.

Feb. 9, 1994

I saw on the news yesterday that the Conservative Party in Britain is once again suffering from a sex scandal. All these cabinet guys are being caught with mistresses and prostitutes. Another big honcho was found dead, wearing only a garter belt and tied to the bed posts with nylon stockings.

For some strange reason, I find this very amusing. I guess you can see the slow change from the tradition in this whole sex thing. It used to be that kings, aristocrats, and other noblemen had mistresses. It was common knowledge. They had “illegitimate” children and had houses built to house their mistresses and children. How times have changed! Now, it is NOT acceptable to fool around. A person could get in pretty hot water – no pun intended – politically. This is a pretty good illustration of how Britain has changed over time.

Truthfully, the whole thing just annoys me to no end. Historically, if a man had an affair, all he got was a slap on the wrist. But god forbid a woman should, well, she was forced to wear a scarlet “A” (in America, at least) or put to death in some societies. Now, the whole thing is pretty much a joke. Clinton had an affair, but that doesn’t mean he’s a bad politician. Prince Charles has an affair – who cares? I certainly don’t. Sure, they’re fun to read about, but what someone does in his/her sex life really doesn’t concern me. I have better things to worry about.

On an unrelated topic, today is the BEATLES’ 30th ANNIVERSARY! I just love the Beatles! They certainly impacted American culture! They are my favorite band! Hurrah!

Instead, I found a notebook that I had to keep for a few months as part of my AP Political Science class. The first entry is Jan. 31, 1994, and it runs through April 22. Everything I wrote almost 18 years ago is a topic that I subsequently wrote about on my blog (minus the unshaved snatch stuff, but I would have if it was an issue back then, I bet): abortion rights, income inequality, my hatred of Republican shenanigans, education, Jewishness, genocide, the pressure for women to be thin, etc. I swore a lot. I made little jokes.

On one hand, it is cool to see that I was so passionate and sort of advanced at a young age. On the other, I realized that I have not changed much in 18 years. That’s disturbing. Here’s a good sample:

America: Land of the Free or the Hypocrites?

March 31

I tell you, the more I learn about this country, the more I hate it. All we are is a bunch of hypocrites. “Equal opportunities for all!” “Land of the free!” “With liberty and justice for all.” BULLSHIT! I watch the news, I read, I observe. Very rarely do I find these notions of “democracy” actually in operation. Usually, I see the oligarchy that really runs this country paying lip-service to it.

I was talking to my mom about how disillusioned I am and how I can’t stand living here, and she said that compared to other countries, the US is a heaven. I said that I know that, but I can’t stand living in the Land of the Hypocrites. Whenever I see some patriotic themed thing, I feel sick to my stomach. It is just a lie.

My mom said that no place is perfect. She said she was worried because of how bitter I already am at such a young age. She told me that I was searching for a utopia and asked me if I was too idealistic. I suppose I am. She told me that idealism is good, and it’s how good change is brought about, but when it makes you bitter, it can be very bad. I have that bad mixture in me of idealism and realism. I know how I want it to be (how it should be), but I also know that the powers that be will never, ever let it happen. Hence, I am bitter.

The way America is moving today, with such a gap between the wealthy and poor ever widening, I hope that the discontented masses will rise up and end our past injustices. Oppression must end, in one way or another, and I’m curious to see how it will happen.

Seriously. I wrote this about one month after my 18th birthday, but I will bet that there are at least five posts on this same theme on CUSS. In fact, these are so freakin’ topical that I will be posting them up on CUSS over the next few weeks (months?).

I almost didn’t recognize the place, it was so shiny. My gratitude swelled. Then I went into the bedroom. When I saw what happened there, I was surprised that she was willing to return.

Over the years, I have accumulated many items. Some of these items may have been sitting on my nightstand, gathering dust, forgotten. Not only did the cleaning person uncover two boxes of contact lenses (one box per eyeball), but she also cleaned up the ginormous dildo I won in a Planned Parenthood fundraising raffle in March 2006 (see below).

This dildo is so ridiculously enormous that I don’t know how a person could fit it in any orifice. It provided me with much amusement for a while. Husband once accused it of staring at him with one eye, so he taped two googly eyes on it to make it more normal. When the eyes fell off, I moved it from the living room to the bedroom, where it lay abandoned on my nightstand amidst the clutter.

The nice cleaning woman dusted off the dildo. I wondered what she thought of me, and fell into giggles of mortification. Then I buried it back under a pile of things. I hope next time she is cleaning, she does not think I hid it from her. Although, of course, I sort of did. So embarrassing!

Since my preferred method of travel, subway and/or bus, would have taken us about 2 hours, we decided to drive.  The park website had car directions, but when we arrived, we learned there was no parking without a permit in the summer.  Then, after ditching Augustus Gloop (our car) at the parking lot for neighboring Jacob Riis and walking along the concrete boardwalk back to Ft. Tilden park, we learned you cannot have a picnic there without a permit halfway through our picnic.  (The ranger let us finish, though.)

As came back from the trash after cleaning up, I passed by a woman sitting under a tree to my right.

“Hey hipster!  Go to the beach,” she hissed.

I looked behind me to see who she was talking to.  There was no one there.  I looked to my left.  Also no one there.  I looked back at her.  She had a straw hat pulled over her face so I could not see who she was looking at.

“Hey hipster!” She hissed again.  “Go to the beach!”

I realized that she was directing her comment to me.  This made me want to laugh, as I am about as close to a hipster as Snooki to a Greek scholar.  I wondered if she thought of all white people as hipsters, although I thought she was white, too.  She hissed at me a third time.  Then I felt awkward and weirded out.

The day was not a total bust, though.  After having our picnic rushed, not being able to use the hiking trail with the cool wood stairs, and being called a hipster, we headed over to the nearby Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge.  It was gorgeous and not even the osprey circling the air seemed to mind our presence.  Or maybe birds of prey like fake hipsters.

When I saw the dark greenish blue bottles and plastic soap case, I was excited. “Ooooh,” I thought, “This is going to be so lux!”. I could not wait to try them.

My first shower at the house, though, was by the pool in a little wooden bath house. For some reason, the landlords stocked it with body washes, shampoo, and conditioner that smelled like various flowers and other dainty scents. It was nice.

The next day, I used the regular shower. My hands practically trembled with anticipation as I unscrewed the lid of the shampoo bottle. I lifted it to my nostril and took a deep breath. Then I nearly passed out.

It was the strongest cologne I have smelled outside the section of department stores in which sales people assault shoppers with test sprays of cologne. I smeared the shampoo on my head and immediately felt my balls tingle. Except I don’t have balls. That’s how manly this cologne shampoo smelled.

When I washed my body, I was certain that the soap bubbles cleansed my thick mat of chest hair extra thoroughly even though my chest is one of the few places that I don’t seem to have hair. My voice deepened. I wondered why I didn’t have a pair of silk boxers and a matching smoking jacket.

In short, I’ll not miss the Hermes body cologne cleaning products after my last shower here tomorrow morning. I only hope that it will not have a long lasting effect on my testosterone levels, as my chin hairs don’t need any more encouragement.

Marcus said yes, so Dana pulled out the baggie and handed him a cookie. An older woman sitting near them on the bus gasped.

“Excuse but how can you give dog biscuits to your son?” she asked.

“Um, these are graham crackers,” Dana told her.

“Oh,” the woman said and blushed. Then she started laughing out of embarrassment.

Later, a they recounted the tale, Ryan said that they should have asked her what the problem was, as kids in Iowa eat dog biscuits all the time. We all laughed.

Then, hours later, on the bus on the way home from dinner, Marcus looked at Dana and asked her if he could eat a doggie bone.

My stomach hurt when I finished laughing.

The instructor began by telling us that we needed to know our audience. “A is for audience” he said, and I rolled my eyes. “U is for understanding,” he continued. “Who is in the audience? You should understand what they expect.” Clearly, he did not know his audience because as he went down the list (“D is for…”), we all tuned out and pondered what a class about giving good head would have been like.

However, the lesson of knowing one’s audience is actually important. I was struck recently by two ludicrous pieces of junk mail that I received. The first, and most pernicious, was from a crazy-town anti-choice group called Live Action. It was some nutso rant against Planned Parenthood and their abortion mills and blah blah blah. They sent me their ravings because they wanted me to write about them, their “victories” for the dead babies or whatever the fuck they think they are doing rather than harming the world. Their leader, Lila Rose, is a cuntface moron with her fake “sting operations” and heavily edited “undercover exposes.”

In a way, they did know their audience: here I am writing about them. I am pretty sure they did not intend for me to write something that calls their leader a cuntface moron, so in that sense, they probably should not have sent me anything demonstrating that she is, in fact, a cuntface moron. If there is anyone I hate in this universe, it is cuntface morons and their minions.

The sillier junk mail arrived via the postal service. It was an ad from Bank of America for a new Cubs credit card. “We know you are one of the Cubs’ biggest fans,” it said, or something like that. (I threw it out, so I’m paraphrasing here.) My first thought is that if I am one of the Cubs biggest fans, than the Cubs must have some extremely pathetic people rooting them on. Now, in 1984, I was a huge Cubs fan, and I followed them closely through the 1980s. But that was a long time ago, and I probably should not have had a credit card when I was eight. I seriously wonder what database the brains at B of A were using for that campaign.

Anyway, know your audience. I am pretty sure that the readers of CUSS will not mind me calling Lila Rose a cuntface moron or mocking B of A. If you do, tough shit – you are probably the wrong audience.