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Saturday, November 29, 2003
Thanksgiving worked out fine. Jonno's gumbo kicked ass. Elizabeth brought the best pate I've ever had. Despite the crowd, our house is still remarkably clean. And apart from venturing out last night to catch Varla's latest show, I've done little the last two days but catch up on sleep and make my way through a stack of unwatched dvds.
Not everyone's holiday, however, has gone so smoothly.
"She got pushed down, and they walked over her like a herd of elephants," said VanLester's sister, Linda Ellzey. "I told them, 'Stop stepping on my sister! She's on the ground!"'
"All they cared about was a stupid DVD player," she said Saturday.
Ellzey said Wal-Mart officials called later Friday to ask about her sister, and the store apologized and offered to put a DVD player on hold for her [emphasis totally mine].
Wal-Mart Stores spokeswoman Karen Burk said she had never heard of a such a melee during a sale.
"We are very disappointed this happened," Burk said. "We want her to come back as a shopper [mine again]."
--CNN
That, Ms. Morisette, is irony. Or farce. Or something.
Thursday, November 27, 2003
Our house is a wreck.
The dogs are filthy.
We're expecting 30 people for dinner.
And we're under a tornado watch.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Monday, November 24, 2003
 
Thursday, November 20, 2003
Am I dreaming? For God's sake, shake me! Shake me like a British nanny!
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
 For the 1,347th time: I don't give a flying fig profiterole about having a frilly, overpriced marriage ceremony in a church or a chapel or a cathedral or a synagogue or a mosque or a carcass-strewn clearing outside Salem, Massachusetts. All I want is the peace of mind that comes with knowing that were I ever to be run down by a cell phone-wielding, SUV-driving Minnesotan tourist while crossing the godforsaken intersection of Canal Street and St. Charles Avenue, my boyfriend would have the right--nay, the duty--to unplug my ass from the wall. So all you self-appointed protectors of the US Constitution go right ahead and pass your "Federal Marriage Amendment" or your "Marriage Protection Act" or your "Adultery is for Breeders Resolution." The gays are a peaceful but crafty people: no matter how much spiteful, hateful legislation you throw our way, we'll find a way to institute a system of civil unions that allows us to accumulate and perpetuate family wealth just as you and your round-peg-round-hole friends do.
Tuesday, November 18, 2003
 Twenty-five years ago, a young woman in central Mississippi who was either extremely sadistic or extremely dim purchased a copy of Newsweek at the Piggly Wiggly checkout stand on her way to work. She tucked the magazine into her wooden purse and drove eight blocks to the elementary school where she was employed as a teacher. After the 11:00 bell, when her 20 or so fifth-grade students--none of whom had travelled outside the country and few of whom had even ventured beyond the Mississippi border--had seated themselves and stowed their belongings in the proper cubbyholes, the woman perched herself on the edge of her desk and proceeded to read aloud the magazine's cover story about incomprehensibly gruesome events that had transpired thousands of miles away in a country none of the children could have identified on a map. Before long, most of the woman's students had placed their heads on their desks. Some had quite clearly broken out in cold sweats. None were particularly hungry when the lunch bell rang at noon. All were terrified by thoughts of Kool-Aid and death and parents feeding poison to their children. One boy in particular was haunted for years by dreams in which a series of faceless tyrants attempted to murder his three brothers; he alone was able to save them, and as often as not, he failed. These dreams were eventually supplanted in late junior high by an equally disturbing series of nuclear holocaust nightmares, but to this day, the former remain vivid in his memory. And that's how I remember Jim Jones and the Jonestown massacre.
Monday, November 17, 2003
I just had a dream about Madonna. We lived together in a fabulously chic apartment somewhere in Chinatown. (No, I've never seen anything fabulously chic there either, but it was a dream, dearie.) She was my best friend. We went shopping together. We bought matching t-shirts.
And we had sex.
I guess that means I'm officially gay. Or, more likely, it means that I undercooked my steak last night. E coli can do the darndest things....
Saturday, November 15, 2003
Do you think that the differences between Judeo-Christians and Muslims are reconcilable?
I have a real problem with that because of my love for Christians and Jews. Can we ever all get along when there are terrorists out there? It is doubtful.
What do you think American foreign policy should aim for in Iraq?
In the new country, under the new democracy, why should the official religion be Muslim? I think as Iraq becomes a democracy, there are going to be a lot of churches springing up.
--New York Times
So Muslims=terrorists and democracy=Christianity? There's so much going on in this interview with Roberta Combs, the new head of the Christian Coalition of America, I don't know where to begin. I give her credit, though, for at least being forthright about [the many insidious assumptions and plans behind] today's very creepy, evangelical, right-wing rhetoric.
Friday, November 14, 2003
Was I hallucinating, or did I really wake up at 2:00 in the morning to see a holiday ad for Target featuring the song "New Toy" by Slavic-milkmaid-with-a-big-scary-voice Lene Lovich?
Oh, well. I guess she's gotta make rent somehow these days.
It was not until the 1960s that the school lifted the rule prohibiting students from going to movies. For generations, students were barred from dancing -- on campus or off -- unless it was with members of the same sex or a square dance.
--CNN.com
Conservative Christians and same-sex dancing? It just goes to prove my point that there are two reasons that homos-in-denial hurl themselves headlong into the church or the military:
1. On a semi-conscious level, queers-to-be realize that in the church/military, there are rules that prohibit homosexual activity. So, as the thinking goes, "Because I'm prohibited from getting it on with my roommate, I won't get it on with my roommate."
2. On a not-so-conscious level, queers-to-be realize that the church/military are designed as same-sex environments, imbuing them with an undeniably attractive, erotic charge.
I wasn't exactly the most self-loving teenage homo myself, but luckily I had the good sense to recognize the inevitable. Otherwise, I could have made my college years very, very miserable indeed.
Thursday, November 13, 2003
Last week, several of us schlepped Uptown to a small-ish indie-ish bookstore to hear Dan Savage read from his latest book. Honestly, I'm not much of a fan--his work is nice and forthright, though it doesn't really do much for me--but everyone else wanted to go, and I was the only one with a car, so we went.
In person, Mr. Savage was, of course, charming and cute and well-versed in his subject matter. He was also clever--in the mildly deprecating, vaguely envious British sense of the word--and occasionally glib. In fact, although he was discussing topics of wider import than his usual sex column fare, his tone remained the same.
Which led me to wonder: is this why the anti-intellectual Right doesn't take liberal logic seriously? Can Lefty, iconoclastic authors like Mr. Savage ever compete in the national dialogue with vehement adherents of conservative values like Ann Coulter? Is this why we're always fighting an uphill battle--because it's so much harder to "think outside the box" (a phrase I despise) and develop new paradigms than it is to stick to the status quo?
Not that I want to lay blame for the failure of liberal ideology squarely on Mr. Savage's shoulders. I mean, the Louisiana governor's race demonstrates all too clearly the inability of Democrats (i.e. today's liberals) to articulate new political and social strategies--all while conservatives simply trot out the same old chestnuts they've been harping on for the past 20 years.
Clinton represented a great middle ground: a thoughtful intellectual and an affable good ol' boy. Who's next?
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
 Reasons to Celebrate1. Wendy Cope is alive and well, which means she can continue to pen verses that get stuck in my head for weeks on end--verses like the following, which the boyfriend used to recite to me when we was a-courtin' (I should have known something was up):
Higgledy-piggledy
Emily Dickinson
Liked to use dashes
Instead of full stops.
Nowadays, faced with such
Idiosyncrasy,
Critics and editors
Send for the cops.
2. It's the feast day of St. Josaphat of Polotsk, who suffered a visually interesting martyrdom but was otherwise a dullard of a saint, brought down by nothing more sinister than bureaucracy--despite the intervention of some very noble Jews.
Monday, November 10, 2003
Woo-hoo! My boyfriend becomes even more famous this week with the launch of Mr. Denton's beautiful, sexy, and so totally not work-safe FLESHBOT!
I'm sure someone in the media is going to laud it as "porn for the thinking man and woman" or--even worse--as "hyper-erotic hypertext" (which sounds, like, really lesbianesque). In point of fact, though, it's just reviews of and links to really interesting masturbatory material. As Mayor Quimby's buxom spokesmistress once said, "Gentlemen, start your whacking!"
Sunday, November 09, 2003
To paraphrase Jerri Blank: If Aguilera and [Vanilla] Ice were Rumsy and Rice, Saddam would have been a non-issue.
Yeah, I admit it's a little weak--is there anyone else from the MTV set whose name rhymes with "Rice"?--but as this article explains, the point is valid: infiltrating countries via music and culture may be slower and less predictable than sending in the troops, but it's a great way to effect significant, long-term change. In fact, a couple of years ago, I toyed with the notion of taking a position with the Department of State as a cultural diplomacy officer, where my job would have been to lead such covert operations. Unfortunately, I had to decline the offer once I learned that Colin Powell goes positively nelly for Rogers and Hammerstein and would likely have me pushing Oklahoma in drought-stricken communities where the thought of corn as high as an elephant's eye would bring not applause, but salivation.
Still, I've said it before (but I'm not browsing my archives to find it): if we'd thrown Brittney in a burka in the late 1990s and sent her on a tour of Afghanistan, the world might be a very different place.
Thursday, November 06, 2003
In the past week, I have...
- lost two pounds and gained one.
- endured no end of phlegm thanks to some sinus mishegas.
- decided I'm finally going to read Jane Eyre.
- rewritten and begun rehearsals for our annual holiday extravaganza.
- succumbed to peer pressure and done that whole tribe thing.
- remembered how much I like Bartlett pears.
- been passed over for the position of spokesmodel for Chanel No. 5.
- decided I really, really need an honest-to-yahweh vacation.
Which, I guess, is another way of saying, "what else is new?"
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