10/31/12

Lucy wanted a Lucy-from-Charlie-Brown pumpkin, so I gave it my best try

and the next day in class, Lucy herself became “Lucy”

on stage with some classroom pals during the parade, her hair brown for the day

and thus we were Pig Pen, Lucy and Sally, in a Halloween of primarily secondary characters – yes, my clouds of dust are real

when she looked inside her pumpkin, it reminded me of six years ago:

10/29/12

1 Now the LORD looked down upon the United States and saw two men who clamored to be chiefs of that tribe.

2 The first was kind and justly, but the other was a Beguiler in the eyes of the LORD God. Though this charlatan was but pharisaical of mouth, he was black of heart.

3 So that all Mankind could see the Beguiler doth shrink by comparison, the LORD called forth winds from the tropics:

4 And these winds began to swirl, and the LORD God said, I call your name Sandy, and ye shall head north into tribal lands:

5 Whereupon many will suffer, yet many more will awake.

6 And when they doth countenance the two men, they will see one chief who worked so that others may be fruitful:

7 And they will also see the Beguiler, who spake of shutting down FEMA and handing it to the private sector.

8 Indeed, sayeth the LORD, this Dissembler is in sore surfeit of the one blessing Adam took from the Garden – empathy.

9 If it cannot be counted in shekels and silver, the Oily Prevaricator doth lack all understanding. He lieth with a smile; he concealeth a wolf’s cruelty with sheepish concern.

10 ‘Twas never nature’s intention to let the meek disinherit the earth, spake the LORD God at last, and mankind only gets nearer to Me when the least of them feels not alone:

11 I may help those who help themselves, but this Mitt Romney character is a sad, ridiculous embarrassment.

10/28/12

just so we’re all prepared

10/25/12

I had so much to regale you with today – o! the stories I could have told! – but again, I find myself felled by the same screechingly-awful, excruciating, ligament-wretching sore throat that has plagued me since that surgery I got in May.

But I’ll say this: those were some pretty great answers to the last entry, and not as altogether devastating as the comments on that infamous blog lo these many years ago. Again, it must be said… men, talk to women. Women, make your needs known.

The ZzzQuil is kicking in (seriously, have you guys tried that stuff? WALLOP) so I’m going to ask all of you a question that the engineers at Google like to ask their prospective employees:

Name one odd thing that you’re exceptionally good at, and why you have passion for it.

I have a few I could pull out if I were in the hotseat at Google, but I’ll go with an archaic and arcane one: I was unbeatable at the video game “Track and Field” at any arcade during its heyday. Decades of practicing trills on the piano made me exceptionally fast at making the character “run” and do hurdles, throw the javelin, long jump, etc.

And though I grew up with a name nobody could pronounce in eastern Iowa (or Tidewater, for that matter), having only three letters in my first name meant I could put my whole name in the #1 All-Time Scorers column. And guess what? That was passion and victory enough for me, some days.

10/23/12

A very good friend of mine has been involved in research covering THE SEX LIVES OF MARRIED PEOPLE – and since this is a work in progress, I can’t say who it is. But she did give me some details, some juicy, some demoralizing, that came from the extensive panels, questionnaires, and polls she helped administer over the last five years.

The one thing she said, something that has always stuck with me, is the absolute mind-numbing drudgery many of the wives felt about having sex with their husbands. To drive the point home, one scenario kept coming up again and again:

“I’m tired after a long day, finally lying in bed to rest, and then I feel his erection against the small of my back, and all I can think is ‘GO AWAY’.”

This exact same image and description was repeated by many different women over the length of the study, often enough to be more than a statistical fluke. Apparently guys are doing this across the board.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with a little non-verbal communication, and god knows nothing says “I crave your Netherlands” better than a stiff braunschweiger in the small of your consort’s back, but en masse? It really does give the impression that we might talk a good game, but deep down, guys are still one hand axe away from Homo heidelbergensis.

ancestor to us AND the Neanderthals

This is so not my wheelhouse, but after hearing about this study, I might buy bunkbeds just to show my heart’s in the right place. But I simply must ask: does any of this ring true to you, faithful readers?

Either gender can answer, but ladies, have you been the recipient of such a calling card? And how often do you find yourself sighing, lying back and thinking of England?

(please be anonymous animals to ensure candor!)

10/22/12

Don’t you ever go through people’s blogs and websites and eventually just wonder aloud, “fuck this – I just want to see what this person looks like”? As though it informs the way they’re meant to be read? And so then you can gauge their status, and whether or not they’re to be taken seriously?

Let me remove all doubt with this iPhone self-portrait from the boys’ room at St. Paul’s church while Lucy was in chorus rehearsal:

10/22/12

I had largely stopped writing about politics on the blog – mostly because it was so demoralizing – but hell, we’re only a couple of weeks away from the election, so why not?

Two things:

1. Whomever wins this election will be the beneficiary of an economy that will get better. Historically speaking, barring a worldwide crisis, the recovery will happen over the next four years, and the sitting President will get credit for it.

So if we win this election, I think we’ve got a good shot at winning the next… the amazing Kirsten Gillibrand perhaps?

If Romney somehow pulls a fast one, he’ll inherit the recovery, which means re-election, and possibly giving the GOP a good shot in 2020 as well (a la Reagan/GHW Bush). In that time, can you imagine the environmental and societal damage those people could do until the year 2024? Staggering. That’s one of those wrong turns that Theoretical Historians write papers about.

2. My brother Kent mentioned something I’d been wondering for a while… we grew up with Mormons, and Mitt Romney is unlike any Mormon I’ve ever known. It’s almost incontrovertible: if you want your car fixed, take it to someone in the Church, and they will do an excellent job, and not charge one penny more than they know is right.

Same with pretty much every profession: Mormons, in my experience, are almost pathologically honest. I trust my family utterly and implicitly. I may have gargantuan differences of opinion on how the Earth was created, and find their stances on most social issues to be cruel and insane – but they will not lie to me.

They do not change opinion by obfuscation or some kind of Machiavellian monkey business: they do it by sheer force of will and volume. They don’t believe the end justifies the means, they believe the means will manifest as obvious, in and of itself. They will show you the parts; they are like those transparent telephones teenagers used to have.

Mitt Romney, however, is a liar of the highest order. He dissembles so quickly, and with such oily consistency, it’s impossible to keep up. His statements on clean energy, Obama’s job record, health care, and taxes are lies. His quotes on oil, gas, the deficit, Obama’s so-called “apology tour” and his birth certificate are damned lies. Even his “binders full of women” was a complete and total falsehood.

Frankly, I don’t know how he squares it with the Church. I don’t know why his Bishop doesn’t call him in and say, “Mitt, just tell them the actual ideas you have, and if they’re good by the Heavenly Father, then He’ll take care of the rest.” But Romney just keeps plugging. I’ve expressed chagrin at a Mormon winning the Presidency, but a Bad Mormon may even be too much for my family.

10/18/12

Can I just say something about Mitt Romney’s “binders full of women” thing? Maybe it’s my own buried sexism, or not sweating the details of conversation, but if 45 of my friends on various social media outlets hadn’t freaked out, I WOULD NEVER HAVE THOUGHT HE SAID SOMETHING WRONG.

Honestly, didn’t we all know what he was talking about? Hell, when I was Senior Fellow in various dot-com companies, I looked at binders full of prospective employees all the time. Whenever we cast for theater, film or TV, we get a binder for each role, full of headshots and resumés. In the case of a female lead, we most definitely have “binders full of women”.

Of course I’ve been enjoying the fallout of the “binder” meme, because anything that gets in the way of Mitt Romney being president is sauce for the gander, but in my heart of hearts, doesn’t anybody wish this was actually about sexism rather than semantics?

For a powerful body-blow in this very genre, check out Virginia’s excellently indignant take of the real problem. Point is, if all you got from the debate was a tumblr meme, then fucking social media isn’t doing its job.

To me, the very essence of Romney – and indeed, this 1% we hear so much about – was crystalized in this debate. The truly rich and truly entitled in this country believe that the rules don’t really apply to them. I mean, they “apply”… (wink, nudge, shit-eating smirk)… but at the very least, the side door will be left open, the tickets will be in a special envelope at Will Call, and this last one is on the house.

Romney steamrolled, interrupted, and broke the main rule of the debate (“no direct questions to the other debater”) within 5 minutes of the opening klaxon. He had no respect for either moderator or opponent. And one of his sons, all of whom had the murderous rage-filled faces of missionaries playing violent hoops with me on their P-days, actively thought about taking a swing at the President.

You only contemplate that if a) you’re an asshole, and b) if you fundamentally believe yourself to be above the rules, and harbor a resentment that is about twelve synapses away from using the word “uppity” and another that starts with “n”.

So if you’re going for debate decorum and true ugliness masquerading as a blunder, you can do a lot better than “binders full of women”. The Romneys just make it all so easy.

[UPDATE: tried to fix Virginia’s column link. Honestly, why would Yahoo put quote marks in a URL, meaning it couldn’t be pasted into another outlet for sharing? – ed.]

10/16/12

I’d like to turn the comments section over to y’all who may have gotten lost in the deluge of FB and Twitter posts last night, or those who want to have a little more real estate to express how you think the debate went last night.

I shall mostly remain from saying anything, because you know what I think: that Obama should have yelled “GOODNIGHT CLEVELAND” and dropped the mike on the floor. But there’s one thing I need to get off my tits…

Mitt Romney, I speak for a growing number of agnostics and atheists when I say: fuck you and your invocation of God in a debate on governmental policy. I walked that walk; to quote Suicidal Tendencies, “I went to YOUR schools, I went to YOUR churches, I went to YOUR institutional learning facilities-”

You looked around the room and said we were all “children of God”. Let’s get this straight right now: I am a child of these two folks:

who, in turn, are children of these four folks:

who were previously children of these nice ladies and gents:

who had been children of some of the following:

It’s not that I don’t care you went on a mission for your church; it’s that it should be irrelevant and bringing it up is creepy. Not everybody knows what you truly believe, Mitt, but I know more than most. And that’s fine when it’s my beloved aunts, uncles and cousins, but it’s not fine when you’re carrying the nuclear football.

Calling us children of your God is the ultimate in patriarchy, hegemony, and rude presumption. Sure, it’s probably offensive to all the other religions in America, but I don’t really care about them either. I just care about keeping faith, magical stories, dark fantasies and 4,000-year-old boogeymen OUT OF MY GOVERNMENT.

Atheism guarantees a night of dreary conversation. When I walk into the room and the conversation turns asecular, why don’t my peers roll their eyes and groan “oh no, here we go again”?

Because there is a way to believe in magic, to have your arms wide open to accept the mysteries of the universe, to revel in the unending effervescence of existence without going to motherfucking church. I know that seems impossible for you to believe; such is the overwhelming liquor of faith.

You’re convinced that we would all LOVE YOUR FAVORITE BAND if only we would listen. You’ll never accept that many of us did listen, for a long time, and we just can’t stand that song anymore.

10/15/12

Whilst surfing around the internetz toobs this weekend, I came across my brother Sean’s Facebook page, and of course, saw this as his profile picture:

Instantly I snorted apple juice out of my nose, and collapsed on the floor laughing, oh god, laughing that unquenchable guilt-ridden laugh that comes from the depths of despair and horror, but still unable to stop. And of course Lucy was right there and said “Oh what a cute kitty!”

And then, “Why are you laughing?”

I mean, where do you even start? Let’s suppose you were to take that question at face value, and actually formulate a response. First you’d have to have a quick lesson on the history of cute animals being forwarded all over the internet in the late ’90s.

Then you’d have to introduce the idea of memes, with emphasis on the original I Can Has Cheezburger lolcats, and the years of ensuing animal-advice based macro memes, including (but not limited to) Successful Black Man and PTSD Clarinet Boy.

Then you’d have to explain Gen X’s particular brand of scorched-earth gallows humor, where the worst things in the world would toss our salad into paroxysms of shit-laden joy.

Now let us turn to the subject of feline leukemia.

I’m sorry, I can’t keep typing.