...And Happy New Year, 2010.

(With all the hope and blind optimism that statement entails...)

Merry Christmas....

Happy Birthday, Mom

Today would have been the BIG SEVEN-SIX.  I have a tough time wrapping my brain around that.

But this is how you should be remembered.

Many happy returns of the day, wherever - and whoever - you are now.

Dear Congress...

Since we now have photographic evidence that hell has frozen over....

... can we have an effective, affordable plan to reform health care in America? 

Kindest regards,

~C~

P.S. God called -- he said to tell you karma's a bitch.

"It's Complicated."

You never know what Hollywood will find as inspiration for a movie, so I guess it was only a matter of time before they decided that a Facebook relationship status was as good a place as any.  I haven't seen the movie yet, and only know a little bit about it based on the teaser trailers running on television.  Therefore, this isn't a review of the movie.

It's actually a review of the Facebook relationship status.  Two words: "thumbs down."

I hate that status, and when I see it, I can only think one thing. "Drama queen."  Man or woman, boy or girl, chimp or muscrat.  If you've put "It's complicated" as your relationship status, you're either dating someone who's married, living with someone else, crazy or in prison.  My advice is only this.  Stop.  Stop it now.  If you're even tempted to change your relationship status to "It's complicated," that ought to be an indicator right then that you are on the precipice of making an utterly disastrous mistake.

Why?

Because love -- real, dyed-in-the-wool love that is born in the heart with no reservations -- is simply not complicated.  It just isn't.  Loving someone is the most basic thing in the world.  Either you do or you don't.  There's nothing "complicated" about that.  It only gets complicated if you are schtupping someone else's spouse or partner, or there is some kind of exigent circumstance (such as the aforementioned insanity or incarceration) that makes love not only difficult, but completely ill-advised and possibly dangerous as well.

I have a friend, and she has a Facebook page.  She and her husband are on the brink of divorce, with only the legal details to be worked out and the papers signed.  Furthermore, she has recently relocated from one state to another.  At the beginning of the summer, she met a man she believes is the love of her life (from what we've all heard about him, he absolutely is).  He lives in her former state, about 800 miles from her new locale.  He has children.  She has children.  Her divorce and custody arrangements have yet to be determined.  Now, that sounds pretty fucking complicated, if you ask me.

But my friend is not a spineless, wishy-washy jellyfish, and neither is her new man.  No "It's complicated" for either of them.  Their Facebook pages lists each as "in a relationship" with the other. Why? Because, while other parts of their lives are very, very logistically complicated, their love is not.  Their love is simple.  It's basic.  It's true.  Their love is perhaps the only thing in their shared life that is not complicated.  As long as that's the case, they (and I, and perhaps all who love them) know that the rest of it is just logistics. And there isn't a single logistical problem that can't be solved, given enough time and determination.

If "it's complicated," end it. If "it's complicated," I can pretty much promise you that it's so broken, it will never be right.  Because by the time it's reached "complicated," other things have become way more important than the love itself, and the love is now on life support.  Pull the damn plug already, my steadfast little drama queens.

I have spent the better part of my life believing that love was always complicated, and painful, and ugly and infested with character flaws and psychological problems. I finally got it.  Love isn't like that.  The people who love make it that way.  And, let's face it, we all know folks who are addicted to "it's complicated."  For them, if it's not complicated -- if someone's not screaming or pitching a fit or demanding their own way or indulging an addiction, a whim or an obsession, if they haven't picked the most wounded, bruised, damaged, troubled article off the shelf -- then life's just not worth living.  God, have I had my fill of "complicated."  And I've definitely had my fill of men who need "complicated," just so they can feel like they're alive in the world.

I need uncomplicated.  I need simple.  Do you love me?  Please answer with a simple "yes" or "no".  "Maybe" won't cut it.  "It's too soon to tell" might buy you an extra week or so, but don't count on much more.  And "It's complicated" will get you shown straight to the door, suitcases in hand, and a request to lose my phone number.  Because if love is complicated for you, then one of us is in need of some psychological counseling, and I've already had mine, thanks.  "It's complicated" is for pussies.

I'm not sure what the movie is about.  I gather that there's a rekindled affair between a divorced couple who are now remarried to other people. Yep. That is complicated. Didn't have to be. They could have just not gotten involved again, and it would have simplified life considerably.  Of course, the movie would have been about twelve minutes long, so there ya go.  We'll leave that kind of silliness to the movies.

Here, on this plane of reality, love isn't complicated. It just is. Or it isn't. Either way, the solutions are as simple as they can be.

Giving Thanks.

It's been a rough year for most folks.  Sometimes, when it's been a rough year, it's difficult to find stuff to be thankful for.  No one knows that better than I, who is coming out of a fairly rough two year cycle, emotionally, and now, financially.

But here's what I'm thankful for.

I'm thankful that my family is healthy and happy.  I'm thankful that I'm going to be a grandmother next summer. I'm thankful I'll have a new job starting next week.  I'm thankful for my friends who love me and have been so supportive of me over the past several months.  I'm thankful that, for all the difficulties my government and my country are having right now, I can go to sleep at night and know that the bus isn't being driven any longer by a man who hears voices in his head telling him he's the Anointed One.

I'm thankful I have this new PhD program at Pacifica in my life, and I'm grateful for the army of fellow zanies and lunatics who come with it.

I'm thankful I have a roof over my head.  I'm thankful I have food to eat.  I'm thankful I share that roof and food with my daughter, who for reasons only she can explain, chose to want to live with her mother again.  I'm thankful for her darling friends, who've been around so long, they feel like family.  I'm thankful for her new boyfriend, who is already family as well.

I'm thankful my friends are well and happy, and that they never cease to amaze me with the generosity of spirit and their raging humor and good will.

I'm thankful I'm healthy.  I'm thankful I'm here.  I'm thankful for you, the people out there -- some of whom, I know personally, some, I don't -- who read these pages and choose to check in on my life from time to time.  I'm just thankful.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.  May you be blessed to spend it with people you love and cherish.

XO

~C~

The LAPD Wants You To Think About That.

The Los Angeles Police Department is encouraging the use of an iPhone app called iWatch, which it's marketing as a "neighborhood watch for the whole city."  Supposedly, good, upstanding citizens like you and me are being asked to get on iWatch and report any terrorist activity that might be happening in the city, so the LAPD can jump on that and get those dirty terrorist bastards, and we can all sleep safer in our beds at night.

The PSA it has put together to woo you into using iWatch is one of the sickest, most horrifying things I've seen in a while -- and I just saw an interview with Dick Cheney a couple of weeks ago:

"Think about that."

And while you're thinking about that, think about this. In 1934, Heinrich Himmler was charged with the responsibility of creating a department that handled all of the Third Reich's security issues. The domestic arm of that department was called the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (loosely translated as "Reich Main Security Office"). The enforcement of the department's policies was left to a militia called the Geheime Staatspolizei. But Himmler had a better idea. One of his first policies was to use propaganda and fear to encourage good, upstanding citizens - like you and me - to do it's spying for them. By sowing seeds of fear and doubt, by invoking the memories of their families, their country and their way of life, the citizens of Germany were coaxed to report any "suspicious activity" to the Reichssicherheitshauptamt. The department would take it from there, using their enforcement muscle to apprehend, question, often torture and falsely imprison people it deemed as "enemies" of the Reich.  And all because some disgruntled neighbor made a report about activity deemed to be "suspicous". We've come to know the enforcement militia of Himmler's security department by the abbreviation of their name -- the Gestapo.

So think about that.  And while you're at it, think about this: Hitler's Germany didn't thrive because a bunch losers were able to use the memory of a disastrous war, together with a woefully badly drafted piece of legislation to take political and military control of Germany.  The Third Reich thrived because good, upstanding people, like you and  me, didn't see that they were being manipulated and undermined by a government that would stop at nothing to dominate and control them, any way it could.

And, just as an "aside" -- given the LAPD's history of corruption, brutality and racism, I'm not sure it ought to be so anxious to have ordinary folks being mindful of illegal activity in their vicinity.

Just saying....

~C~

YooHoooo... Mr. CIA Spyman... Over Here! Pick Me!

No need to be coy, fellas. If you're interested in what I'm typing on my blog, then just follow me on Twitter, and I'll let you know when I update.


CIA Invests in Software Firm Monitoring Blogs, Twitter

So shy, these Black Ops guys.  I find it a little alluring.

~C~

Senator Harry Reid, Are You Listening?

Your state, your constituents and your country are telling you that they want a strong public insurance option. Not later, but now. The clock is ticking, Senator Reid. You have to decide whether you want to continue representing people who are telling you what they want.



2010 is just around the corner. Back a strong public option in the Senate health care reform legislation.

~Amanda~

Schoolhouse Rock

It is the blog for the BEST kid's chorus on the planet.  And I say that with absolutely no equivocation.

Staten Island's PS22 Chorus consists of 60 or so fifth-graders who, under the direction of music teacher Gregg Breinberg, have jumped to prominence, thanks to their videos on YouTube, and mentions by Perez Hilton on his blog, and Ashton Kutcher, on Twitter. 

Most of the kids in this chorus are not growing up with music lessons or even much art at all in their house.  They're from underprivileged working class households in tough neighborhoods. Breinberg (whom the kids lovingly call "Mr. B.") has taken these kids and brought them out of their world and shown them that they can shine.  And they do. Much is made of their covers of Tori Amos' hits (Breinberg is a huge fan of Amos), but my favorite so far (and there are many, many videos left to see) is their joyous, unrestrained cover of Lady Gaga's JUST DANCE.



This article gives a little more in-depth story of Breinberg and the kids.

I Am Studying Mythology, So I Can Honestly Tell You That....

... there is NO such thing as the "FREE MARKET".  It's a construct.  A myth.  A fable.  A fairytale.

Let it go, my brain-damaged little conservatives....

Much like Santa and the Toothfairy, people who claimed to love you, that won your trust and undying belief, have wooed you into believing something that is, essentially, a lie.

No free market.  All market properties are tampered with, hampered, manipulated and spun.  All of them.

Deal with it.

Out of Commission For a Bit

I'll be away from The Chron for a bit -- off to immerse myself in Greek Mythology and Hindu Tradition and Dream Interpretation (all with a wild, Jungian backbeat).

I'll be back in town on Wednesday night, and capable of semi-rational thought by Thursday sometime.

Try not to get into any trouble while I'm gone.  I don't want to have to come back and bail anyone out of jail.

Clear? Clear. 

Vote For Meg Whitman for California Governor, 2010

Because what California really needs is another fat-ass, white billionaire who insults state employees (you know them, the ones who've been recently given unpaid furloughs, had their salaries reduced by 14%, are receiving IOUs and vouchers instead of paychecks, and are threatened already with massive lay-offs), calls them "bureacrats", then scapegoats them for all the mistakes made by boot-kissing legislators and bankers over the last ten years.

Not only has this unfeeling imbecile never served in any lower-level elected office, but she didn't even register to vote until she was 46 years old.  She's 53 now.  How is that possible?  I registered to vote the very first day I was eligible, six months before my 18th birthday.  And I've voted ever since. Where the hell has she been?  Oh, wait... the country club, maybe?  Elizabeth Arden's, getting that well-earned facial? (Because business is hard on a girl's complexion, after all.)

Whitman's sole claim to fame is having once served as the CEO of eBay.  Yeah, that's right -- eBay.  She didn't invent it, mind you.  She just ran the company for several years, and managed to do so without running it into the ground. Bravo to her.  Her corporate strategy was probably similar to her gubernatorial outline -- when eBay's profits dipped, she probably fired the receptionist and the mailroom clerk, after accusing them of dragging the company down with their greedy demands for minimum wage salaries and enforced lunch breaks. 

Go ahead, California. Vote for Meg Whitman.  You voted for Arnold Schwarzenegger in two successive elections, because you thought it was cute and charming to be able to use the term "Governator".  Whitman ought to be right up your simple-minded, GOP-lovin' alley.

Here's my proposed campaign slogan for her:

"Meg Whitman. Not only unqualified, but cruel and really ignorant, too."

That ought to make her a shoe-in, extending California's fine tradition of choosing the least qualified, most incompetent governors we can find.

The Missing Apologist

This is, either regrettably or thankfully, depending on one's stance on the issue and one's ability to tolerate my ranting, the last post I'll be making on this topic, at least until there are new developments.  I'm not getting caught up in an argument over whether or not it's right or wrong for a forty-four year old man to give a thirteen year old girl a Quaalude and some champagne, then turn her around and anally sodomize her.  I know that's wrong.  I'm 100% sure of it. I do not need you to agree or disagree with me.  If you agree with me, fine. If you disagree, please excuse yourself at once, then run -- don't walk -- to the nearest mental health facility, because you are a danger to society. This is one of those moments in life where there is no moral ambiguity.  Sex with children is just wrong.

This whole Roman Polanski situation came at a pretty interesting time in my life.  I was mulling over going back into entertainment legal, because for sixteen years, that's how I paid the bills.  Nothing wrong with that.  I worked in movie studios, helping to draft and administer contracts for actors, writers, producers and directors.  I collected paperwork, I got signatures, I sent out and got back employment documents.  Nothing sneaky or underhanded about that.  Not really.  The people that worked with were -- and are, in many cases -- my friends.  Good, hard-working, decent folks, who, like me, are in it for the dental plan.

But on more than one occasion, that job requires you to brush up against people who have no moral compass.  It requires you often to work with people who have no moral compass.  One or two of them might even be running the company you work for.  One of them might be directing the movie you're working on.  Like the director who made an independent film based on an actual event, and managed to secure nearly every release for her film by lying without compunction to the individual parties involved, all of whom hated each other, and blamed each other for the deaths that were the central focus of the film.  To this young, ambitious director, this was a story... her story... and she wasn't going to let facts, or the actual humans who experienced her story, get in the way of her telling of it.  Unfortunately, those actual humans had lost people -- real people -- that they loved and grieved over.  They'd lost a daughter or a son.  They'd lost a sibling.  They'd lost a lover or a best friend.  One of them lost a mother. This wasn't a story to these people.  This was their lives, shattered, brutalized, full of the blame and rage, the regret and self-recrimination that go along with too-young lives lost in foolish, senseless acts of violent brutality.

It was after I'd spent two weeks arranging a screening of this film for one of the people on whom a main character was based, then spent several minutes on the phone listening to the real mother of another main character (who was one of the murder victims) rage that she'd had enough of her child's death being exploited for the benefit of others, that I began to realize that what I did for a living, while not actively evil or bad, was morally questionable.

Did I do anything wrong?  Not by any legal standards.  People who felt their first release was a lie got to sign new ones, and were paid accordingly (though minimally).  Nothing and no one could bring back the real young people who were killed, or take any of the pain away for the other real-life people who lived through the experience.  The movie was released, it did well, actors were acclaimed, the director was praised, though she hasn't really had any true success since. A little karmic taint she has to work off, perhaps?  But what about me? I didn't lie to anybody. I didn't take anything from anybody.  But I was in cahoots with those people. I was the one who made it possible for them to pretend that they had done absolutely nothing wrong.

I was, for all intents and purposes, one of their chief apologists, in my role as facilitator, screening-arranger, first telephone responder.  I am a mother who sat and listened to another raging mother curse through bitter tears that she'd been deceived by the director, that she'd been told one story by the eyewitnesses and police, and was getting another story from rumors of the movie's plot (the director rewrote the ending to make it more "dramatically exciting" with little regard to factual accuracy).  Did I not understand, she asked me, that her child was a real person, with a mother and a sister and friends who were still, after more than six years, grief-sick over this tragic loss?  Could I not comprehend that?  I could and did understand.  But I was too busy making excuses -- for the director, for the studio, for the entertainment industry -- to be able to say so.  That was my job, and I did it well.

I was a professional apologist.  "Sorry, but that's the way we do business here." "Sorry, but sometimes we're forced to change certain key dramatic elements for the sake of the film."  Sorry... I'm sorry.... Though I can't tell you out loud, I truly am so, so sorry...  for your loss.... for your grief... for your pain, that still lingers and paralyzes, six years later... but we're just too busy making scads of money at your expense really to give too much of a flying fuck in hell about your suffering.  Sorry....

I keep a one-sheet of that movie in my house, and always will, to remind myself of when -- of the exact moment -- when my job stopped being fun and started being something that made me a little bit uneasy and queasy and anxious.

When this Polanski thing happened, I was just on the verge of going back.  I was all signed up at the temp agency, ready to call in for work.  And then people started speaking out on behalf of a man who likes to have sex with very, very young girls.  "It wasn't so bad."  "She knew how to give a blowjob, so she wasn't a virgin." "In France, people have sex with twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls all the time, and no one says thing."  "He's a genius, after all, and geniuses are different from other folks."

And then came the public pronouncements from Hollywood big-names.  The trouble that I have is, I did work for sixteen years in the industry, with lawyers, law firms, agents and press folks. Nothing is more beloved in Hollywood than the love of good gossip, and it's tough to not hear the rumors of frequent trips to Bangkok for the tasty young morsels.  Rumors? Sure. Proovable? No. But do I believe them? Yeah, I do.  Because I know these people.  And I know that for many of them, morality is something that shifts and rocks and adjusts, based on the last urge, the latest whim.  The reason they apologize and try to dismiss Polanski's bad behavior is that they're trying to dismiss and negate their own. 

The truth is, Polanski probably did receive a less than fair trial, in terms of prosecutorial and judicial malfeasance.  Does that mean he should get off the hook?  Nope.  He needs a new trial, perhaps.  A fresh start.  Sad for his victim, who could have been allowed to put all this away years ago, except that Polanski -- in perhaps his most ultimate and unforgivable act of evil -- has left the wound gaping and open for thirty-three years. I cannot go back to work in this business again.  I'd never leave with my soul intact.

Still, I have ask.  In all of this, where is Polanski?  Of all the apologists, where is Polanski's apology?  Where is his mea culpa?  Where is his "I was drunk and stoned myself, and I'd give anything to take it back and give that girl back her dignity and innocence if I could"?  Anywhere?  No where?  All these years... all these years, he could have rethought his choices and chosen to see things from her point of view.  Instead he chose to hold on to his own position -- that his sexual and personal gratification with very young girls (because don't forget that his next girlfriend was Nastassia Kinski, age 15) -- was the most important thing.

The late Randy Pausch said in his "Last Lecture" that a good apology has three parts:

• 1) I'm sorry.
• 2) It was my fault.
• 3) What, if anything, can I do to make it better?

Note: If 1 and 2 are satisfied fully, it has been my experience that, unless there is a possibility for full rectification, 3 is usually not needed.

I don't know what will happen with Polanski. Since I have no control, I'm letting it go.  He might get a new trial.  The prosecution may decide to drop charges if the original verdict is set aside.  I don't care, really.  But I'd like it -- as a member of a reasonably orderly society where we have chosen (unlike the French, apparently) not to have sex with children -- if Polanski apologized, sincerely and with conviction, for what he did to that girl thirty-three years ago. I'd like to hear him say that he knows what he did was wrong, and that he promises not to do it again.

Then -- after he apologizes and we've accepted his apology -- I'd like him to go to France and stay there. Because, from what I've heard, we need another pedophile in Hollywood like we need a hole in the head.

Further to my "Welcome to Dystopia" post...

This article appeared in The Guardian (that's a UK paper, people) regarding speculation that California's economy and unemployment rates are so dire, it could be the first failed state in history.  Here's to hoping we can last another year with this wing-nut at the wheel. 

~C~

Woman Goes Blind to Save Daughters' Eyesight

A mother suffering from a genetic disorder that is destroying her eyesight has chosen to forego treatment in order to reserve insurance funds for her daughters, who also suffer from the condition.



I'm pretty sure this is all her fault. After all... if she has a genetic condition that causes blindness, should she have even had children? I mean, seriously... wasn't that kind of financially irresponsible of her? I think Rahm Emanuel is right... let's wait on the public option until some kind of serious crisis in the current state of healthcare occurs to "trigger" a public option. Something life-altering... I don't know... like... maybe... SOMEONE GOING BLIND!!!!!

Someday, Rahm Emanuel is going to have a nice, cozy little seat in Hell, right beside Eric Cantor.  Gee, I hope they get along.

~C~

Roman Polanski Might Have to Actually Face The Music

The "music" in this case, of course, being the parade that Hollywood will throw him when he gets back. Because in Hollywood, drugging and having anal sex with 13-year-olds is actually a prestige-builder.  I'm beginning to wonder if the arrest wasn't a staged thing -- an opportunity to get Polanski back in the US, so whatever deal has been worked out in secret (and, yes, they've been trying to work one out for a couple of years now) can be put into play.

This is why I left The Business.  It was things like this -- a million little soul-killers that eat away at a human heart -- that made me realize that when you lie down with dogs, you absolutely get up with fleas.

That's an insulting metaphor, I realize.  I'll apologize personally to the dogs -- and the fleas -- later.

~C~

Welcome to Dystopia

There's an episode of The Twilight Zone where a young, beautiful painter, played by Lois Nettleton in her prime (if Lois actually had a prime, but for the purposes of this post, we'll say she did) and her apartment building neighbors are trapped in a kind of literal hell, as some cosmologic calamity propels the Earth closer and closer to the Sun. Progressively, the temperatures rise, Lois becomes all sweaty and shiny, then sheds her clothing (down to her silky full dress slip, bra and girdle -- what were women thinking?), while food and drink become scarce, and the streets of New York become a (no pun intended) "hot-bed" of savagery and primal desperation.

That's happening here in LA. Okay, presumably not the "Earth closer to the Sun" thing -- although that's not too difficult to believe, given the Gobi-like temperatures we've been experiencing. It's been well over 100 degrees every day for the past week. But it isn't just the heat. There is something unhealthy about this heat. The air smells vaguely of animal feces and rotting meat. Did I say, "vaguely"? I lied. Nothing vague about it at all. I walk out my door and I'm hit with the overpowering smell of disintegrating cat and raccoon feces, left by the army of rogue and feral critters that inhabit the vacant lot behind our house.

But it isn't just my front walk. The whole city is smelling like something crawled underneath it and died. I'm not sure if it’s the watering ban, or the fact that it is so hot no one is cleaning out their street gutters, but LA is turning into 1884 Paris, with the open sewer system and the constant, unabated flow of waste and decay. I don't feel like working. I don't feel like working out. I just feel like staying home in the air-conditioning and laying about. But today I had to run two errands. One was a trip to the library at CSUN, and the other was a trip to my mailbox to pick up my book delivery.

CSUN was practically deserted, though there were two parking enforcement cops on duty. When I asked one of them where I was allowed to park on a Saturday, his response came in a blathering, incoherent jibberjabber that didn't match up at all with the question I asked him. I'm going to chalk that up to the heat, but I have a feeling that's just how he talks on any given day. I went to return my books that were due today, and renew one of them. I was supposed to check two more out, but I left the print-outs of the catalog registry on the car seat next to me, and was not going to go back to retrieve them. Screw it. I'll buy the books if I have to. (And I do, because they're for school.)

At the UPS Store, I collected my mail and package, and stopped into the sushi restaurant in the shopping center there (sorry, Jim -- I ate sushi again without you). On the way to the shopping center, I was nearly side-swiped once and T-boned once by two drivers talking on cell phones while driving (you guys DO know that's illegal now, right?), and nearly hit head-on by a soccer mom in her brand-new, no-plates-yet Range Rover, as she hightailed it into the El Pollo Loco drive-thru.

By the time I got home, I honestly felt like stripping down to my full dress slip, bra and girdle.

I'm not sure what's happening to my hometown. I was born here, raised here. To people who move here, it's a city full of iconic landmarks they grew up watching on television. Grauman's Chinese, the Hollywood Bowl, the Watts Towers, Venice Beach.... None of that means anything to me. To me, I turn a corner and... this is where my best friend in fifth grade, Tracey Taylor, used to live. Over there is where I learned how to ride a bike without training wheels. That shopping center used to have an ice rink where I learned how to skate, and then, years later, my daughter learned how to skate (and once skated her way into Tai Babylonia's heart, as a matter of fact).

Now, it's a gigantic, festering, decaying garbage heap/cat litter box. People don't curb their pets, lawns are dead, arsonists are burning the hillsides, people are colliding with you head-on, just to beat you to the tastiest morsel of lime-marinated, grilled chicken breast.


And it's hot.

No... Wait... I take that back... Let me rephrase that. It's FUCKING hot!!! It's so fucking hot, I want to sit down and just cry and cry and cry. I want to cry like Lois Nettleton cried, in her white, silky slip. But no one would be able to tell if we were crying, Lois and I, because we'd be all sweaty (but in a sexy, Hollywood kinda way), and they'd all be left to wonder.

I always imagined I'd live my whole life in this town and never question it. Now, I question it. I go to school in a place with a marine climate, where the weather sits between 65 and 85 degrees -- rarely hotter or colder. I have friends who live even further north, in Santa Barbara, who rarely turn on their air-conditioner, and that's mostly to control humidity.

Sadly, I think my city is dying. The part of the city that doesn't live like a parasitic sucker-fish of the back of the show business shark is dying. Industries are leaving. Unemployment is high. People who emigrated here are moving back to their home states, or to other states that offer more promise, without the arm-and-leg cost of living. It's one thing to watch a city slowly languishing when you've come here, hoping to make your dreams come true. But to watch a city die, when that city is the only town in your dreams when you dream -- not because of the celebs or the famous eateries or Melrose Avenue -- but because it is the only one you've ever known intimately -- that's pretty disheartening. You want to give your child and any children she has down the road the kind of magical, temperate, genial childhood that you knew. And you realize now that that hometown -- the one you grew up in, that the émigrés treat like a doormat place to wipe they dirty, excrement crusted shoes before they roll up to Montana, to similarly pollute that state -- that hometown you knew is gone. Maybe it died in the '92 riots. Maybe it only developed a bad cough then, and then rolled over and began the stove-pipe breathing when the state elected (twice, mind you) a bodybuilder to the governorship.

I'm not really sure, and I'm too busy sweating and lighting incense to keep out the stench from the sidewalk below. I am left here to plot my exit strategy. To where, I'm not sure. Neither do I know how or when. Only that someday in the foreseeable future, I will take my leave of here, say good-bye to my childhood memories and the places of my heart, and find another town to call home.

Preferably one that doesn't smell like cat poop.

~C~

Poor Pitiful Little Comma C.

How sad your little life must be if you are still proofreading my posts from over a month ago for missing/extra commas and typos! And all the while, totally missing the point. But then, if I were left to wallow in the middle-class mediocrity of suburban Detroit, as you are, I might look for any distraction I could, just to survive the day.

Then again, maybe you didn't miss the point of the original blog post. Maybe you've gotten the point all too clearly. Perhaps that's why you're so bitter and petty. Maybe no institute of higher learning will have you. Unless, of course, they have an M.A. in Proofreading. They probably do somewhere. You should hit the search engines. I'd start with the University of Phoenix. That sounds just about right for you.

"Dearie...."

~C~

P.S. As long as you're too chicken-shit to post with a real e-mail or URL, you're never getting a comment posted on my blog. Did I remember all the commas in that post, sweetie? Huh, honey-pie? Did I, darling? Here, let me run spell check again, sugar, just to make sure I haven't misspelled anything, you craven, simpering little coward. Wait, I can't recall. Is there supposed to be a comma between "craven" and "simpering"? Oh, golly, punkin, it's all so confusing to me. Even with my MFA.

On the Origin of My Last Freakin' Nerve

Oh, Kirk Cameron... how cute you were as America's favorite ne'er-do-well, Mike Seaver, in the sit-com, Growing Pains.  I liked Mike Seaver.  He was a smart, sassy, clever underachiever, who used all of his mental and psychological abilities to outwit his long-suffering parents and siblings.  He had cute 80s clothes, an adorable, mullety haircut and fabulous lines. Mike Seaver was destined to be a success in the world, because though his sister Carol's diligence and hard work paid off in school, in real life, it's generally charm and the ability to think fast on your feet that puts you in the winner's circle. Mike Seaver had those in spades.

Unfortunately, Kirk Cameron is not Mike Seaver.  Since GP closed up shop in 1992, Cameron has been kept busy being a Christian.  Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you.  Some of my best friends are Christian.  But the difference between my best friends' kind of Christianity, and Kirk's Christianity, is that my best friends are okay with me not being a Christian.  And you not being a Christian.  In fact, my friends -- all learned, well-read, educated people, many of whom are actually in or have graduated from seminaries -- get the fact that there are a whole lotta folks out there who aren't Christian and aren't hungering to be made Christian.  They get that some of us gave Christianity the old college try, and found it lacking, and they can live with that.  They love me -- and you, regardless of your belief system -- for who you are, not which deity you worship or don't worship, whichever the case may be.

Kirk, I'm afraid, isn't quite so tolerant.  Kirk believes in a Christian God.  But more to the point, Kirk believes that you should believe in a Christian God, too.  And that if you don't believe in a Christian God and don't force your children to believe in a Christian God, then the world is doomed.  It's not enough that he's slathered the airwaves and Blockbuster's shelves with his DVD adaptation of those whacked out crazy guys, Tim LaHaye & Jerry Jenkins' Left Behind books.  Now, he wants to start messing with our books -- namely, On the Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin.  November marks the sesquicentennial for the publication of Darwin's original edition of the book, and Kirk and Christian minister Ray Comfort (he of the "banana as evidence of God" theory) are planning on distributing a "special edition" of OtOotS to the top fifty universities that Cameron and Comfort feel are hotbeds of atheistic reason and education.

What makes this edition special?  A fifty-page "special introduction" which attempts to paint Darwin as a racist woman-hating atheist with ties to Adolph Hitler.  I'm not kidding.  (Just in case you haven't looked lately, by the way, Darwin died in 1882, seven years before Hitler's birth).  Without even debating any of the specious allegations that Cameron and Comfort make in the new edition of the book (because why bother to debate one guy who is outright insane and the other who is one of the dimmest individuals that ever sashayed out of sit-com history), I think it's important that people challenge this "new edition" for the very fact of its "specialness."  I do think it's great that we live in a country where Comfort and Cameron have the freedom to express themselves.  I just wish they wouldn't lie so much while doing it.

One of the things I'm most fed up with about evangelicals is this constant drumbeat of how Christians in America are so downtrodden and stripped of their rights. Really? Seriously?  This kind of complaint only underlines the lack of education and the barely passing acquaintance that evangelicals have with non-Biblical texts, like history books and political science texts.  It's not enough that they keep themselves ignorant of science and biology, they have to stay stupid about all the other subjects now, too?

I don't know what to say, except a big, hearty hello and shout out to all atheists and agnostics everywhere (some of my other best friends are atheists and agnostics, by the way), and keep up the good work promoting logic and reason, rather than hoodoo and hooey.

For a slightly different take on this whole affair, Romanian vlogger ZOMGitsCriss has recorded her slant on the whole thing, complete with her utterly charming accent ("BOOL-sheet" is my new favorite word, I've decided) and her darkly Eastern European sarcasm. 



I'm all in favor of her idea that college students on those fifty campuses to take as many copies as they can get their hands on, rip out the fifty "special" pages, and pass the books on, so that as many people as possible can read what Darwin actually wrote, without being misled by the crazy evangelicals.

Criss also has a couple of good ideas for some "special editions" of the Bible, with an introduction that would connect Christianity and its evangelical followers to some of the most heinous and shameful moments in history, like the Crusades, the Inquisition, the witch trials and -- ironically -- Adolph Hitler (who was raised a Catholic, by the way).  Criss is pretty sure the Kirk & Ray Show wouldn't be so thrilled with this, but I like the idea a lot.

One thing I am grateful for is that Darwin's book -- his actual, original book -- which you can read online here, unencumbered by quasi-Christian drivel -- has been brought to the foreground again. It's a fascinating look at the launching of a theory that shot man into Twentieth Century science with a bullet. Darwin's theory was the ground spring from which all evolutionary and genetic sciences -- including the discovery of the human genome -- has come. I am certain that he never would have guessed how scientiests would extrapolate on his original theory of natural selection in order to branch off into completely diverse and almost unrelated areas of science. It wasn't his purpose.  His purpose was to tell the story of life -- of its brilliance, its resourcefulness and its unconquerable will to survive. His book -- a book that truly needs no introduction at all -- does just that.

"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians.
Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

~Mohandas Ghandi~

~C~

(art credit: original photo in artwork by cazkhel on deviantART.  Altered in PSCS with Virtual Painter 5 filters)

A Week of Good-byes.

Patrick Swayze.

Henry Gibson.

Mary Travers.

One made me want to dance, one made me want to be funny, and one taught me how to sing harmony.

We said good-bye to all of them this week.  What a sad, melancholy week!  Someone told me today that, according the Tibetan Book of the Dead, they have 49 days to decide come back to another life here.  While I suppose I should be hoping they move on to the next plane or level, for purely selfish reasons, I'm hoping they all choose to come back here.

Peace and love, y'all.

~C~

Al Franken Explains It All For You

Senator Al Franken has an impromptu town hall meeting at the Minnesota State Fair, where he was accosted by tea party Republicans who had staked out his booth, demanding he vote their way on health care.   In moments, Franken used his likability and sensibility to calm the crowd and actually engage in a productive, sane, reasonable discussion about health care.  Even when the tea partyers wanted to make the problem about immigrants or an insufficient amount of doctors, Franken kept his cool, listened to their questions and explained his position and how he intends to vote.




THIS is a town hall meeting, people.  Nobody screaming, or biting, or shrieking or yelling racist invectives against the President, or blaming Mexicans for higher health care costs.

Thank God this man finally made it to the Senate.  May he stay a long, long time.  Long enough to fill the gap left by Ted Kennedy.

~C~

Dear Ms. Adkins:

Please try and understand. We simply must deny your request for compassionate release, although we realize you are suffering from a terminal illness.

You held Sharon Tate and her unborn child down and stabbed them both to death. You effectively made Sharon Tate terminally wounded. And you laughed about it. When you make someone else terminal, with no end-of-life care, other than stab wound after stab wound, when you stab her stomach where her unborn child is dying, when you drink her blood and wipe it on your face, as if you're a bullfighter whose made her first kill, then you must face the end of your life in an institution of our choosing. We are society, and we must protect ourselves, not only from you, but from anyone who watches you and thinks that their life mirrors yours. It was a long time ago, we realize. But Sharon Tate and her son remain dead today. Soon, you will know what that feels like, although I dare say, we will do everything in our power to make your death more peaceful and less painful.

We will see to it that you have round-the-clock medical care, hospice services, comfort care, including any pain medication you might need to see you through. Your care will be paid for by us, we will minister to your needs, tend to your requirements. We will see to it that no one stabs you, or drinks your blood. We will make sure that, if you plead for mercy, to be spared the agony of your wretched circumstance, that every consideration for your comfort and peaceful end will be met to the best of our abilities. When we, the People of the State of California, incarcerated you, that was our part of the deal.

But you may not leave. You may live until you are no longer living. But you simply may not leave. It is the one thing we cannot permit. Permanent, unrelenting, unabated imprisonment. This was your part of the deal, when you accepted the commutation of your sentence from death to life in prison. And you simply must fulfill it. The "life" part, I mean. Given the viciousness of the crimes you committed in your youth, "life" must mean "life," in your case and in the cases of your co-defendants.

I would hope that, all these years later, you would know why this is the case. But if you do not, I feel deeply sorry for you.

May your passing be as painless and peaceful as humanly possible, and that the end of this life be the passage to a better, more abundant and fruitful one to come. And may you learn between now and the time of your passing all of the lessons this life has left to teach you, so you do not have to continue them into the next. A fresh start. A new, enlightened beginning. This intention is the most precious gift I have to offer you.

Peace, Ms. Adkins.

~C~

The Year of No Small Amount of Magical Thinking

When Senator Ted Kennedy was diagnosed with malignant glioma last year, somewhere inside, you knew he was going to die from it, and sooner rather than later. But this is Ted Kennedy we're talking here. The guy with nine freakin' lives. Politically and personally. Hadn't he survived a plane crash that killed two people? Hadn't he survived Chappaquiddick? The car wreck and the scandal that followed? Hadn't he survived the loss of every one of his brothers and most of his sisters as well?

Surely, somehow, I thought, if anyone can talk or negotiate or legislate his way out of malignant glioma, it would be Ted Kennedy.

I was wrong.

He passed away last night, surrounded by his loved ones, a relatively peaceful passing for one who lived such a tumultuous life.

For all his scandalous ways and his penchant for finding trouble (or for it finding him), for all the public dismissals of him as the least powerful, least potent of the Kennedy brothers, it was Ted Kennedy who left the most lasting imprint on American domestic policy. He has, as Time Magazine noted in April 2006, upon naming him one of America's 10 Best Senators, "amassed a titanic record of legislation affecting the lives of virtually every man, woman and child in the country". He so endeared himself to Democrats in Massachusetts that he was a dead-lock as Democratic senatorial candidate in every election since 1964. He weathered every storm, showed up for every battle, and didn't back down from a fight. When America was French kissing George W. Bush up one side and down the other (and don't look away, you assholes -- you know who you are!), Ted Kennedy openly stood up to the President on the topic of an invasion of Iraq, and took no small amount of flack for it. He was a Democrat and a progressive (not necessarily synonymous these days), and proud of both labels.

As late as last week, when he clearly saw that his end was near, he was on the phone, encouraging Massachusetts lawmakers to allow the governor the power to appoint his temporary replacement, so that the business of the Senate -- including his darling, health care reform -- would proceed unaffected.

The storm of malignant glioma, in spite of all our magical thinking, even Ted Kennedy could not weather. In his passing, a huge gaping hole of leadership has been created. I pray with all my heart that someone with the same kind of tenacity and dedication to public service steps up to fill it.

Rest in peace, Senator. Thank you for making me proud to be a Democrat.

~C~

Our System vs. Theirs, Or You're Bitching About Waiting In Line? Seriously?

A friend referred me to this article which originally appeared in the Guardian. Ex-pat American Bee Lavender spent a large part of her childhood very ill, in and out of hospitals, being poked and prodded and tested to determine what her life-threatening illness was. She writes in shocking detail of the financial difficulties her sickness caused her parents (both of whom had health insurance through their places of employment), and her unique understanding, even as a child, that she was responsible for driving her family to the brink of bankruptcy more than once.

As a now-healthy adult, Lavender eventually relocated to the UK to escape the worry over her future health care and the fear of being denied later coverage and treatments based on illnesses she'd suffered 20 years earlier. She speaks honestly about her experiences with NHS (not perfect, just better).

This is the first perspective I've seen published of an American who has experience with both the United States and the United Kingdom health care plans. What I have seen a lot of are malcontented Brits, bitching because they had to wait on waiting lists to get surgeries for things like knee or hip replacements, surgeries deemed "elective" or non-life-threatening. Many of them later had their procedures, for which they paid nothing, but, for them, like Tom Petty, the waiting seemed to be the hardest part.

As I read Ms. Lavender's account of her experiences with our health system and theirs, it suddenly occurred to me what such whinging was akin to. Brits simpering to us that they have to wait in line to get free health care is like Americans whining to starving North Africans that they shouldn't want our system of food distribution and abundance because we have to wait in long lines at Albertsons.

Unless you've lived for years in this country with no health insurance, struggling to figure out how you're going to get your annual check-ups (because you're at that age for breast/uterine/colon cancer), or how you're going to find a way to pay for your daughter's referral to an out-of-plan specialist, because none of the physicians in the HMO can figure out what's wrong with her, then you need to sit on a broomstick and spin. You don't know what you're talking about. You had to wait four months to get that knee replacement? Really? And how much did it cost you once you'd had it?

I only ask because here in the US, of the 1.5 million families who will declare bankruptcy this year, around 750,000 to 800,000 will do it because of out-sized, impossible medical bills. In 2001, that number would have been below a half-million (still too high). How many people in the UK will be declaring bankruptcy due to medical bills? Look it up in a search engine. You can't find it. I can only assume that means that the number of medical-bill-induced bankruptcies is either zero, or close to it.

So my new rule is that whiny-ass Brits who've never lived in the US and had to fight to get insurance to cover standard, basic procedures, who've never thought twice of taking their children to the emergency room after a fall because you can't help but consider how you're going to come up with the cash to pay for it, who've never had to choose between a treatment or diagnostic test and house payments or groceries, have to just sit down and shut up. They aren't smart enough or informed enough to weigh in on this tender topic. Besides, they need to rest up for all those long lines they have to wait in to get their government-provided medical care, poor dears.

~C~

Today's Favorite Inspiring Quote

"The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire." ~Pierre Teilhard de Chardin*~

~C~


Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a Jesuit priest and French philosopher who ran afoul of the establishment by putting his own twist on long-held beliefs -- namely, reinterpreting the Book of Genesis and downplayed original sin as the focus of church doctrine. He might be considered one of the forerunners of New Age philosophy. He was also a trained and gifted paleontologist who believed that the study of man's most ancient history could unlock the mysteries of our most spiritual cores.

No Public Option Is No Public Option

Writer Linda Hansen (Huffington Post, The Progressive Journal) chronicles her husband's and her six-year struggle with corporate HR bimbos and insurance goons after his massive stroke in 2003. As people who were employed, and had health insurance Denny and Linda made the comfortable assumption that a lot of us make -- if we get sick, we're covered. After all, haven't we been paying into our insurance plans for just such an eventuality. Unfortunately, until confronted by that eventuality, the Hansens had underestimated the average insurance company's bulldogged tenacity in doing whatever it takes to deny benefits and pump up their bottom line.

Linda's story, chronicled originally on the blog, The Politics of Jamie Sanderson, then picked up by Daily Kos and several other blogs and social networking sites, like Facebook (thanks to Tananarive Due), records her attempts to convey her experience with the current for-profit driven health care system we have now to her senator, Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina). Graham's responses, as you will see, prove a little less than responsive.

Linda's conclusion at the end of the piece -- that her husband "got comprehensive, affordable, easy access health care with no 'delays or denials' only twice in his adult lifetime: While he was in the U.S. Army and while he was a Medicare recipient. Both of them 'government takeover' systems..." -- is one of the most cogent, cohesive arguments that, if our government really wanted us to have affordable health care, we'd have it. Since we don't, we can only conclude that members of Congress stand too much to gain with the status quo to bother changing it.

This debate about private health care vs. publicly funded blanket insurance is so ridiculous as to be insane. The idea that "the greatest country on earth" can't seem to put together a system that logically combines both a public and private option without their tiny, overtaxed heads exploding is a sign that more than our health care system is failing. We are failing -- as rational, compassionate humans. If we were breaking new ground, that would be one thing. But with over a dozen countries' models to choose from as a basis for establishing our own system, there is little excuse for this floundering half-assedness.

It's broken, people. Let's make our Congress fix it. And if they can't, let's fire them and get folks in there who can. And let's start with the so called "Blue Dog Democrats" -- or, as I like to call them, Republicans.

~C~

It's A Family Affair!

(Or is that a "family of hair.")

I have this little addiction. Tiny, really. Annoying, but fairly harmless. It's genealogy. Look, no one is more surprised than I am. I don't care so much for my living family (immediate family, that is -- uncles and cousins notwithstanding). And yet, I have to carefully monitor my time on Ancestry.com, lest I look up at the clock and find I've spent the entire day on the damn thing.

Why? Who knows? Maybe I'm looking for answers. Why is my father's family so freakin' crazy? Why is it so hard to find details on my mother's side of the family, almost as if they never existed? There is a dark secret on my mother's side, one that I'd heard of as a child, but was so undisclosed and tab00 that I thought later I'd imagined it. An uncle brought it up later, so I realized I hadn't. Whether it was true or false, it was something nice families didn't talk about, so was buried, apparently along with any census records of my grandfather as a child. I consider this odd, since, if you can find folks in the middle of a muddy field in Johnson, Kentucky, where my father's family hails from, it seems to me that the Carolinas can't be that difficult. They were part of the original thirteen colonies after all.

But I digress. This blog post is not about family secrets. I'd crash the internet if I revealed all of them now. As frustrating as the search is for old birth and death records, ancient marriage certificates and old census reports, every once and a while, someone from the other side sends you a miracle.

No, not that other side. The other side of the family tree. And tonight, this happened. I found a photo of my great-great great-great-grandfather, James Moses Sowards, born in Louisa, Kentucky, in 1814. Because Moses Sowards was born in a rural area, so very long ago, and under less than above-board circumstances*, I had to do a fairly in-depth search for his records. But, lo and behold, thanks to another branch of the family tree (God love the Mormons and their tradition of pedigree), I found this photo of James Moses Sowards.

A rather stern looking gentleman -- kind of gruff and set in his ways. I'd be willing to bet he was given to a certain amount of cantankerousness and curmudgeonly behavior. Let's see.... who does that remind me of? Hmmmm...

DNA is a mofo beyotch, isn't it? Lord ahmighty, as Moses might have said (if he was given to swear, that is, and only outside of earshot of his wife, Louisa).

Anyway, I'm posting this, then shutting off the computer and getting back to work on my housework before I become too engrossed again. May you never have to be confronted with your nuclear (paternal) or mitochondrial (maternal) DNA with the same "kah-THUNK" as I've experienced tonight.

By the way, I'm related to both of those old geezers. Thank God, I look like my mother.

~C~

* It's an open secret that his mother, Letisha Hall Sowards, was already widowed by 1810, and took up with Peter Ford, the local constable in Louisa, eventually giving birth to two sons, Moses and Lewis, who went off and propagated most of the Sowards you'll find in Utah, Kentucky, Tennessee and Texas.

No Luck in My Efforts at a Proper Eulogy.

The words just haven't been there. What with the sad, exploitative display everyone's made of Michael Jackson's childhood career, his polished-like-a-new-penny, reconstructed family life, his early childhood history, and, in the end, even his own, innocent children, paraded in their grief and confusion across the stage at the Staple Center in what I found to be the most horrifying way, it's been hard to hear my own self think above the din of revisionist history. Even in death, people seem unable to let this guy be who he actually was.

Fortunately, former A&R exec John Niven went and wrote it for me, and beautifully, in this final, no-holds-barred stroll down the Memory Lane that actually was Michael Jackson. The article was originally published in The Independence, on Independence Day.

I couldn't have said it better myself. R.I.P., Michael. Now, can we move on to another topic of conversation and never discuss this tragic, dangerous, damaged and damaging man again, please?

Thank you.

~C~

Would That Quitting Would Be Political Suicide

I'd like to think that Sarah Palin, after her very public "turn-tail-and-run" expedition last Friday, would henceforth be about as politically relevant as H. Ross Perot*. Unfortunately, I have very little faith in conservative America's ability to remember past last week. Re-electing George W. Bush in 2004 solidified my theory that the average Republican has the memory span of a Mayfly.

Also, because of the sheer lack of depth in their political dugout, the Republicans lack the star power to replace her. This was my secret fear. It was the nagging little voice that whispered somewhere behind my left mastoid region as I watched liberals and conservatives alike say that Palin was done in politics forever.

"Yeah," I told myself. "She's so over."

As I'm often fond of saying, "It's the little lies we tell ourselves that are the most tragic."

Roger Simon at Politico confirmed my silent, unspoken fears with this opinion piece on why Palin can't be through in Republican politics. Until there's someone to eclipse her epic (though inane) status, she remains the only "A-lister" they have. Not that I wouldn't like to see her go up against Barack Obama in 2012. His numbers, though dipping due to the slogging economy, are still fairly high, and people continue to express faith in his ability to eventually turn things around. If anyone is upset with the Obama Administration, in fact, it's us, the liberals, who've watched Rahm Emanuel water down every piece of legislation to pander to MOR and Conservo-Dems in order to avoid being killed in Congress. (I say, let Democratic senators vote down health care legislation that doesn't include a public option. Speaking of career death knells....) And I guarantee you, no matter how pissed off Dems are with this current administration, they ain't votin' for Sarah Palin. Ever.

But that's hardly fair to the roughly forty-something percent of the population that still identify themselves as Republican. Shouldn't the party be working hard to find their own personal Obama, rather trying to pump some kind of life into Palin, a professional victim, or Newt Gingrich, a washed-up windbag?

So, no, dear ones. For the moment, our little Sarah will go on crying in her beer because someone's been mean to her in order to appear to be the little princess in the castle who needs to be rescued. I'm just hoping for the day when someone can come along and pull up the drawbridge and board up the windows once and for all.

~C~

So, Just to Clarify, Soon-to-be-Ex-Governor Palin...

You are failing to complete a designated term in office which you actively sought, campaigned for, convinced backers and fundraisers to help you finance, won, and have been supposedly occupying, so that you can "campaign for other candidates"? That's what you apparently told Nick Ayers of the Republican Governors Association.

According to Ayers, you want to expand your role in the Republican Party. So you figured the best way to do that was to quit doing the job you convinced voters to elect you to, leaving them kind of in the lurch. Good thinking, sister. Quitting midstream is usually the most effective way to show people you're a hard-working and innovative leader.

Ma'am, either you are one shallow, parsimonious paper tiger, or you're a liar. I guess we'll find out which in the next few days. But let me tell you this: if you aren't a liar, and the Republican Party chooses you as the leading voice of their party, it deserves every bad thing that happens to it. Much like your checkered academic career, your checkered pre-gubernatorial employment history and your checkered resume with regard to telling any form of the truth, this move is just another side-step in the career of someone who just can't be bothered to finish what she starts. If ever there were a poster girl for failing upward, you have proven to be that.

Until now. I hope and pray that this moment will be your political Waterloo, and you will stay out of the public eye forever, turning into the pop culture joke you deserve to be, like Anna Nichol Smith and that Shamwow pitch guy who beat up the hooker. Please... on behalf of all of us... do not let the screen door handle hit you on your way out.

~C~

What's a Master's Degree Worth?

The New York Times, in it's Room for Debate section, focuses on how much a master's degree is worth to prospective job-seekers in today's market. Based on the cost of a post-graduate degree and the time expended acquiring it, not surprisingly, the verdict isn't good. Like everything else in today's economy, a master's degree has lost a bit of it's sheen in terms of salary boost and hiring benefit.

I'm not worried. It's an argument I've heard before. People incur heinous amounts of student loan debt (yours truly included) to get a master's, then find it wasn't the ticket to wealth and success they expected. To which I have only one thing to say.

Boo-fucking-hoo for you.

If you're going to grad school solely to earn the big bucks, you deserve to be left in the cold. Let me explain to you the purpose of education -- all education, lower, higher and otherwise. Education isn't so that you can have something calligraphied and pretty to hang on your wall. Education isn't something you can write down on a resume so that the guy in the $1200 suit will be impressed with you. Education isn't so that you can say that you did something smart once.

Education is supposed to change you. It's supposed to open your mind and broaden your spirit and show you the possibilities of the world. It's designed to take you some place you might never have thought to go, to push you and goad you and entice you to be better and grander than you ever hoped you could be. If you're doing it properly, you're not picking a grad school simply because you want a set of letters after your name. Granted, the letters are pretty bitchin'. I have checks that have my full legal name, followed by a stately (and expensively obtained) "M.F.A." Because I earned it. But I didn't earn the degree just to have it. I spent two years, writing, rewriting, reading, re-reading, workshopping and listening to other learned people speak on the topics I was trying to learn. I wanted to be a better writer. If I managed a teaching gig out of it, fine. If I didn't, if I never used that degree to get a job ever, those two years will never leave me.

As I apply for a spot in Pacifica's MA/PhD program in Mythology,, I would never think of spending the money on that degree simply so I could put a "Dr." in front of my name. When it all seems too daunting, too overwhelming, too difficult, I go back and look at the course curriculum, and I realize that's where I'm supposed to be. Not because of what having a PhD will earn me financially. But because of how the topics touch me spiritually, how the subject matters makes my imagination explode and sparkle, like a fireworks display.

The object of education is not to simply get education. It is to learn how to learn and go on learning until the end of your life. If you've toiled to get a master's that's proving worthless in the area of garnering employment, then you've wasted your time, the professors' time and the time of every student who matriculated with you. You've wasted your money and the government's money. You should have just learned how to weld instead.

In the words of the teen whore in Risky Business, "Go read a book, Joel. Go learn something."

~C~

Let the Al Franken Decade Begin!

At long last, it is official. We can now begin referring to him as Senator Al Franken. Minnesota's Supreme Court ruled today that Franken was the winner of the November 5th election against Republican incumbent Norm Coleman. Coleman conceded later in the day, saying he will not contest the ruling.

Ya know, when he was on Saturday Night Live all those years ago, talking about the Al Franken Decade, I personally thought he was just kidding around.

Who knew?

~C~

Are Republican Representatives to Congress REQUIRED To Be Stupid?

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N. Carolina) decides to rewrite the story of the Matthew Shepherd case -- one of the most well-documented trials in American judicial history -- to establish that robbery, not homophobia, was the motive. Even though the perpetrators have admitted that homophobia was the reason. She calls the case, which led to some of the first serious hate crime legislation in the country, "a hoax." (Does that mean Matthew can get up now, and stop being dead?)



No wonder Arlen Specter defected. The Republican party is now officially gushing blood from every proverbial orifice.

~C~

Michele Bachmann: History Maven

If Rep. Michele Bachmann (R - Minn) were any dumber, she'd be on life support.



For the record, the swine flu last broke out in 1976.

Gerald Ford was President.

He was a Republican.

~C~

When Idiots Try to Be Funny

Browsing the latest Young Turks clips, I came across this clip from Fox News' pathetic imitation of The Daily Show, which they've called Red Eye. Unlike The Daily Show, though, the ignorant idiots that they have on the panel as guests make little effort to be informed on... well, just about anything.

This clip that Young Turk Cenk Uygur introduces shows show host Greg Gutfeld and panelists Last Comic Standing loser Doug Benson, McLaughlin Group's favorite little Republican Monica Crowley and some guy I couldn't identify in a police line-up mocking Canada's participation in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. When the Canadian military announced that would take at least a year for the military to rebuild from it's efforts in Afghanistan, due to wear and tear on its tank brigades, Gutfeld ranted about how the entire Canadian military was taking a vacation. Then he turned to his list of little-known panelists and asked for their comments.

"I didn't even know Canada was in the war," guffaws Benson. "I thought that's where you go when you don't want to fight. Go chill in Canada." Uhhh... yeah. Doug? The Canadian death toll in the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan is 116. That's as of last Friday, when four Canadian soldiers lost their lives in two separate IED explosions. Canada has the third highest number of lost soldiers behind the US and the UK. So... how do I say this nicely?... fuck off.*

Then Unrecognizable Idiot Guy Who Can Only Get Booked On Shows In A 3AM Timeslot mocks the Canadian mounties for their attire and their perceived mode of transportation. First off, jerk-wad, the Mounties only wear the red coats for formal and ceremonial occasions. Their daily uniform pretty much consists of what you'd see on any officer in the UK, and many in the US -- white shirt, dark slacks, ugly-ass black shoes. As for the whole "riding horses" thing, it might interest the high-school dropouts at Fox to learn that the Mounties have discovered a new form of transport, though one might argue that it's equally as outdated -- American-built automobiles. The RCMP motor vehicle fleet consists of Ford Crown Victorias, Expeditions, Escapes and Super Duty pick-ups, as well several Chevy SUVs. So, since Canada has shown an abundant willingness to do something risky and dangerous that even Americans won't do these days -- invest in cars built by Ford and Chevy -- maybe you guys ought to help yourselves to a nice, steamy-hot mug of a some "Shut the hell up ahready!!"

Which is pretty much what Canadian Defence Minister Peter Mackay told the US the day after the Red Eye episode aired, calling the comments "crass and insensitive." Somebody made a phone call to somebody else, because, before you know it, there was the moronic Greg Gutfeld, backtracking like crazy and "apologizing" (as only a Fox News employee can). Said Gutfeld, "I realize that my words may have been misunderstood. It was not my intent to disrespect the brave men, women and families of the Canadian military, and for that I apologize."

Really, Greg? You mean you didn't mean it when you implied that the entire Canadian military was gay? And it was just a joke when you postulated that it was time to "invade this ridiculous country?" Seriously? And it never occurred to you that the families of dead Canadian soldiers fighting a war that didn't even belong to them might be just a little bit hurtful and offensive? Your words weren't misunderstood. You called them pussies. It's hard to misunderstand that, Greg. Even for someone with such a limited lexicon as yourself.

Every day, every aspect of conservative punditry becomes more and more cruel and out of touch. When Meghan McCain is the most cogent, coherent, rational, intelligent representative for the Republican party, the party is in trouble. And Ms. McCain would be the first person agree with me on this. (And she has, on her blog McCain Bloggette.) Not because she's very young and very blonde, mind you. But because she has made it clear she's not going run for public office... ever. This party is circling the drain rapidly, with no apparent hope of redemption. I keep trying to equate this to when the Democrats were in the same predicament. I think it was Howard Dean that finally turned it around for us. The Republicans need their Howard Dean, and soon, or they're not going to make it.

The claim that this show was an attempt at comedy, and their attempts to compare it to The Daily Show fail to take into account two things. One, the writers at The Daily Show take great pains to be not just funny, but also factually accurate.

And, two, that real humor is a sign of intelligence.

~C~

*Note: A quick check of Benson's My Space indicates that people had a thing or two to say to him directly. His quote section reads, "I didn't mean to offend anyone. Sorry." Further update: Turns out that Benson's flippant insensitivity has cost him more than an apology. According to this article in the Edmonton Journal, Benson's gig at The Comic Strip, originally scheduled for April 2 through 5 has been cancelled. The Comic Strip's press release explains the cancellation thus: "For the safety and security of The Comic Strip's patrons and staff, Doug Benson's shows have subsequently been cancelled." "Safety and security?" He's gotten death threats? From Canadians? Wow....