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2007 Archives




1/4/2007: I want it duly noted and acknowledged...

As of 4 pm Eastern time January 4, we officially have a Muslim member of Congress, who was sworn in with the Koran no less.

The world did not end.

There are no horses, much less horseman, of the Apocalypse galloping up 12th Street. I see no locusts, no frogs and no more blood than normal on the streets of DC.

So Virgil Goode and his ilk are just morons, but of course we knew that already.


1/5/2007: Life goes on...

The first lesson of the New Year: Life doesn't end when you lose your wallet. It just feels like it for about 12 hours.

I lost my wallet on Montgomery County's Ride-On Bus system within the first 30 minutes of the New Year. Now, for those who believe the first occurrence of the New Year is what will happen all year, not everything has been disappearing from my person.

Really.

Just some things, making 2007 just like any other year so far.

Sometimes I lose things and sometimes I hide things so well that I'm unable to find them myself. These things happen.

If anyone is salivating over a not-yet-recovered wallet, save it. Everything of import has been canceled. I wouldn't be writing this if there was still even a remote possibility that someone could gain from my missing personal effects. I'm a Scorpio from the ghetto, after all. I don't trust my family—much less complete strangers on a bus—further than I'm able to throw them.

But the loss of my wallet has been oddly liberating. There's one less thing I have to check on every 15 minutes—there's no wallet, so there's no need to check. Not having a check card or credit card also has cut into my spending, if only for a week or so. I now feel completely free.

And people are very understanding when you lose your wallet. I've been offered money from several people, although I have declined all offers. I have money, I just can't easily access it. There's a big difference. But if you have a picture ID (e.g. your job's access pass), a birth certificate and something with your address (e.g. a bill, a cancelled check), you still can access your bank account relatively easily, particularly if it's a branch you frequently visit.

Starting Saturday, however, I will return to the land of the visible. I will first suffer through long lines at the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration to get a duplicate ID, which is $20. I'm almost lamenting it. First the license, then the cards, then another wallet...pretty soon the weight of the world will return to my shoulders.

Until then, I will enjoy the few hours of complete identity freedom I have remaining.


1/12/2007 A quickie

According to CNN, the "goal" of the troop "surge" in Iraq is for Iraqi forces to take over in September—of this year, no less.

CNN, however, did not state whether pigs are going to fly or monkeys will fly out of my butt prior to this occurrence.


1/18/2007: On presidential candidates speaking for me

Let me save all of you a lot of idiotic banter for the next year and a half: Barack Obama does not speak for me. I don't speak for him, either. I like him just fine, but our backgrounds are not the same.

Jesse Jackson never spoke for me. Spike Lee doesn't speak for me, nor did James Brown, nor does any gangsta rapper encountered on BET.

Does Joe Biden speak for all privileged white males? Does Hillary Clinton speak for all Seven-Sister-educated white females? No, and I don't think it is even expected, because it is assumed that whites are as different as fingers on a hand.

Well, so are we.

And so are Latinos, Asians, Southeast Asians, Arab-Americans, Persian-Americans and Native Americans. While we may share a minority status, we're not minorities in the same way and while each group shares cultural traits, no two individuals of each group are the same. Crash should have taught us that, if we were paying attention.

Barack Obama is not Condoleeza Rice, who isn't even her cousin Connie Rice, a liberal firebrand attorney in California. None of them are Colin Powell.

And none of them are me.

And while I may sometimes feel I have more in common with Condi Rice that I'm comfortable admitting, she is still not me and I am not her. Although we would both be considered black female overachievers from the South, I don't know what it's like to achieve at her level, because expectations for me were much lower than for her—although I'm sure even the highest expectations for Condi never included Secretary of State.

If I had even attempted her levels of achievement, I would have had a nervous breakdown in high school!

But I left a toxic ghetto environment to finish college. I got to play at my dream of being a disc jockey and became a radio news director for a spell. I had my own newspaper column for another brief spell. Today, I continue to work competently as a journalist and have a small vehicle for self-expression—what you are reading now. This is overachievement by a million, since I would have made my parents happy by just staying drug-free and not derailing my dreams by becoming another teenage-pregnancy statistic. They were happy I went to college, like I said I would at the tender age of 10.

But I don't know what it's like to grow up a black girl in Civil-Rights-era Alabama who could excel in things—piano and figure skating—that few whites at the time could, and still had to be humble because acting like the superior person she was could endanger her and her family. I can't imagine what that is like. I've never been chided for "being uppity." I know I am, but when I was coming up in the 1980s, it was accepted that you could be an articulate, well-read black person and not have to be strung from a tree. Trust me, very few people born after 1964 are as astounded as Biden that an educated black man is articulate. Enough younger people have encountered intelligent people of other races to not mouth that sort of drivel.

So who speaks for me? Well, I just finished Kurt Vonnegut's Man Without A Country and I felt I easily could have written it, verbatim. He's my father's age and his ancestors are German, but he speaks for me more than Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou and Nikki Giovanni ever have.

And while you may not like that, I think they're all OK with that, because they are aware they are only one black voice each and would be disappointed if I limited myself to just their voices solely because we're all black women. Just like music is music, words are words—it doesn't matter who wrote the words, it matters only what you get from them.

So don't presume you know who speaks for me because I'm black. I'll let you know.


2/20/2007: Seasonal affective disordezzzzzzz

Ladies, having a mild form of seasonal affective disorder, or SAD, is like having premenstrual syndrome—without the cramps—for about three or four months. For the men in the house...the best way to describe it is...it's like having something that feels like flu, but never quite turns into flu—it still kicks your ass, but you never really get full-blown sick. And you wish you would, because at least you know you're sick.

To be more specific: You can't get enough sleep. You can't concentrate worth a damn. Appetite goes into extremes: Either you're always munching but have no energy to work it off in the gym and you gain weight or you have no appetite because you just want to sleep 20 hours a day and you drop a lot of weight. Doing anything extra—like ranting on this thing after eight hours of work—is a non-starter. You can cry at the drop of a hat if you allowed yourself. You can barely finish a book because you always fall asleep mid-sentence.

You can function, but barely. Don't ask for 110% before April, because it isn't going to happen.

One of the books I've tried to read this winter is about SAD and how to overcome it. It involves a lot of light therapy, however, which I'm no more interested in than I am in treating my symptoms with antidepressants, which has also been suggested.

Here is my take: It is winter and cold. I, naturally, want to hibernate, particularly when it is 20 degrees outside with a zero-degree wind chill factor. I'm not interested in tricking my body into doing what it doesn't want to do with more light so I can be more productive. I'm going to ride it out until spring, knowing full well that I will be less productive and more of a space cadet. I can live with that and other people have to learn to live with it, too.

Of course, I'm lucky to have that option. My symptoms are mild and I'm a reasonably functional SAD sufferer. I am able to meet expectations and I'm not suicidal, but suffice to say that ranting will be sporadic—maybe even nonexistent—until the days are longer and warmer.


3/17/2006: Why I've been so quiet…

Well, I'm kind of tired of sounding like a scratched CD and even more tired of the continuing dearth of news in recent “news” stories.

The prosecutor-firing story, for instance: Each day brings a new revelation I could have phoned in from my couch before even learning that anyone had been fired!

Yes, Gonzales was involved; yes, Rove was involved; yes, they've been cooking up this scheme for a very long time and yes, they've mainly punished people who were doing things that they were supposed to do, but the White House just didn't like, e.g. prosecuting Republican cronies of the president who just happen to break the law. If you haven't been under a rock for seven years, you know all this. Stop pretending it is new just because Congress finally found a b.s. detector.

As for the shoddy state of Veterans' Administration/military hospital health care: As a daughter of a veteran—in this case, a World War II veteran—it sucks. It has sucked for a while! The news stories only scratch the surface on how much it really blows, but it's comforting to know most people generally acknowledge that people who risk their lives overseas "for our freedom" deserve better treatment, because I can tell you from experiencing the system firsthand that most of the vets themselves don’t think they deserve better—they’re getting “free” care and that’s great!

Unless they misdiagnose you, treat you like a guinea pig or kill you through neglect or incompetence—then it isn’t so great, but for some reason you can’t tell them that.

So yes, Virginia, this administration is up to its neck in liars and bullies, as it has been for seven years! Yes soldiers are being screwed every which way but loose, but they have been for years! And no one is going to do a thing about it because people are just starting to catch a clue. At this rate, by the time the American people figure out what to do about it, we’ll be well into the next administration.

I'm just bone tired of watching News for Dummies, even if I really have little choice in the office and at the gym.

I guess I just need to get the 24-hour news channels out of my life—out of the office and out of the gym. At this point, if I can watch basketball all day and Monty Python DVDs all night, I'm good. And I’ll bet, even with my head in the sand, I’d still know more about what’s going on than what CNN is telling me, much less Fox News.


3/21/2007: The Bitch in the House

I'm reading it right now when I'm not watching Monty Python, college men’s and women’s basketball, plodding through James Joyce's Ulysses or giving myself preemptive depression over Metro DC condominium prices.

Halfway through the book, I have to ask: Why is it we're so focused on getting men to love us, live with us, marry us and provide us with sperm to spawn that we never stick up for ourselves? And afterward, why do we feel we have every right to blow up and play martyr when dishes pile up in the sink or people don’t do our bidding? Why do we keep listening to what other people think we should do and feel that what we really want is not a worthy goal?

This is a running theme of the book, which is how these women become the bitches in their respective houses—or seem to think they are, but any member of Heartless Bitches International would lose their lunches over this behavior and rename the book The Martyr in the House. It's quite depressing that in the turn of a new century women still feel they must live everyone else's life and pursue everyone else’s dream but their own.

And as if there weren't enough examples in the book, this morning someone started grousing about her selfish, ingrate, narcissistic daughter and husband and how they could possibly have become that way after she's tried so hard to break it out of them.

My answer, which I'm sure she didn't like, was "because you let them."

People only behave the way you allow them to. This is why you should never, EVER lose who you are in the breathless pursuit of a relationship—it is always far better in the long run that your prospective "soul mate" knows what he's getting into and comes in with open eyes. It beats the hell out of both of you wondering way too late in the relationship whether or not you truly know each other.

Yes, you have to consider the other person, but they must also return the favor and consider you and what you think is important. There are always two people in a relationship and while you may be narcissistic enough to seek someone just like you, there is no one just like you.

The most important thing: You were born alone, you can survive alone and you will, likely, die alone. Don't just get used to that, learn to embrace it!

There's nothing worse than being so desperate for companionship that you suffer through a succession of really bad relationships, which seems to be the preferred alternative although I will never understand why. There's also nothing worse than feeling you can never live without someone and then having to do it anyway because chances are pretty damned good that you'll have to. So what will you do with that solitude when it happens? Sit around waiting for death to pay you a visit because you have nothing more to live for?

I've spent more of my life alone than in a relationship and I have yet to die from being alone. I’ve also never really grown tired enough of my own company to give up my solitude completely. I know there are things to do in a relationship and things to do between them. I’ve never had an issue of going somewhere alone if I really want to go. I relish the time I spend with others when those opportunities occur, but I also cherish the time I spend by myself.

Independence has been a recurring theme in my family. We all value it so much that we're not willing to give it up for just anyone and we're certainly not going to sacrifice it merely for sex and affection. There's nothing wrong with that. It beats being the bitch in the house.


4/10/2007: Thoughts on an ignoramus

If the woman-made woman is never good enough, the man-made woman is no better than a toy, built to be played with, knocked about and ultimately thrown away.

Germaine Greer, The Whole Woman, 1999

A number of things bother me about the Don Imus/Rutgers women’s basketball controversy of the last couple weeks and, oddly enough, they don’t really have much to do with the Rutgers women basketball players—whom I adore—or Don Imus, an idiot I refuse to take seriously.

I didn't actually know what Imus said until yesterday. My initial reaction to Don Imus making any statement regarding women's basketball is that it's a subject—like most subjects—he doesn't know squat about. So I know it's going to be a waste of time to figure out what he actually said because I already know it will be stupid.

You see, as a longtime near-rabid women's basketball fan, I know that men like Imus believe they have the God-given right to render off-base opinions about women's basketball, women athletes and women's sport in general. If I listened to them, I'd go nuts. I don't even listen to ESPN commentators talk about women's basketball and when I watch a game, I mute it. My eyes inform me better than any commentator.

So, back to what really bothers me about this particular issue.

First of all, it wasn't so much a racist comment as a sexist one, but everyone is too busy fixating on the "nappy-headed" and the botched, off-base references to Spike Lee’s School Daze that they forgot that he used “ho” and “hardcore ho” more often.

What he said—which offends me more than anything—is that these women, who have accomplished more in their young lives than Imus ever has or ever will, were "masculine," "scary," "unattractive" and thus unworthy of his sympathy for their loss or for any appreciation for the accomplishment of getting to the championship in the first place. Since they didn't fit in with his ideal, their humanity was negated and the show felt they could be ridiculed for being themselves and not porcelain, straight-haired, clean-armed "ladies."

Which brings me to the second thing that bothers me: While Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson were harping on the "nappy-headed" part, where were the feminists to say "Where do you get off?" The silence from feminists is deafening and downright embarrassing.

Imus shouldn't have been kissing Sharpton's behind—he should have at least been kissing Oprah's. Better yet, someone like Gloria Steinem or Germaine Greer should have ripped him a new one in a public forum, but, alas, they were nowhere to be found.

Third: The same people who support, promote or, worst of all, silently endorse, hip-hop culture and its hypermasculinity, where "ho" is thrown around with reckless abandon, are the first ones up in arms about this. I'm sorry, but hip-hop culture helps breed this kind of disrespect. Today, you're a “ho” when you’re really just a threat to masculinity—and that includes being the object of some man's affection, because that's the greatest threat of all, you understand—and you're a bitch when you stand up for yourself.

Sharpton and Jackson felt the need to get involved in this controversy, but yet I don't recall them ever stating publicly that the degradation of women in hip-hop culture is unacceptable.

Not to justify Imus' abysmal behavior in any way, but you really can't blame him for thinking that such a thing can be said on the airwaves in a world where "bitch" and "ho" is synonymous with "woman" and the N-word is used, even in mixed company, by black teenagers. And because this has become so common, it has become accepted behavior for the most part. Well, it's not OK—if Sharpton and Jackson can't use their clout to insist that black men and hip-hop culture be more respectful toward women, they have no business harping on Imus about disrespecting black women. People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

And my fourth, but probably not final, problem with the controversy and how it has shaken out is that making this racial effectively makes what Imus said OK even while castigating him for saying it. Whether he gets fired or not at the end of his two-week "cooling off" period, he's still got the free pass—he may never use "nappy headed" or "jigaboo" again, but he's going to feel free to call another woman ugly, fat, or scary, as if he's some kind of official arbiter of femininity. That's hardly what I call a victory.

***

After seeing this in the April 12 Village Voice, I don't know why I even bother to open my mouth or why anyone is wasting their time on Imus, but I think I now know why the lesbian community hasn't piped in.

Why, in Sappho's name, would a woman who loves women want to adopt such a misogynistic persona? It doesn't make a bit of sense to me. I mean, if you hate yourself this much, why not just end it all?

And poor, poor Wonkette again has proven to me the perils of having your web site easily accessible via Google. She is no more a fan of Imus than I am, yet she has had to suffer the outrage of one of Imus' rabid listeners and I don't because I'm off their radar screen.

This is part of the reason why Don Imus shouldn't lose his job. His absence on the airwaves will give these idiots more time to bother the rest of us who don't give a crap. I'd rather keep them sated and quiet.


4/12/2007: "Counterculture's Novelist" silenced

With the death of Kurt Vonnegut, a little bit of me has been silenced. May you rest in peace, fellow Scorpio. And don't worry, you leave behind a legacy that makes all of us remaining on earth feel a little more sane.


4/13/2007: Why can't you just say it's all about the bottom line, Les?

I must make a few comments on CBS Chairman Les Moonves' statement on firing Don Imus. I just find some of what Moonves said pretty disingenuous.

From the outset, I believe all of us have been deeply upset and revulsed by the statements that were made on our air about the young women who represented Rutgers University in the NCAA Women's Basketball Championship with such class, energy and talent. While we have already made our disappointment and outrage clear, I would like to take the opportunity to offer my personal apologies to the Rutgers team, its impressive Coach, and the entire Athletic Department and Administration of Rutgers University. CBS has nothing but the highest regard for that establishment and its students, and we are sorry that offense was given in such a brutal and insensitive manner.

For the record, CBS took about a couple weeks to fire Don Imus, so I'm having a hard time believing they were that deeply upset and revulsed. I'm guessing they really didn't have that much of a problem with it and the subsequent publicity until advertisers pulled out. When the impact of what Imus said reached their bottom line, it was suddenly a problem.

In our meetings with concerned groups, there has been much discussion of the effect language like this has on our young people, particularly young women of color trying to make their way in this society. That consideration has weighed most heavily on our minds as we made our decision....At the same time, we wanted to take the time necessary to listen to the many diverse voices that were raised on this issue. In so doing, we have been trying, as best as is possible in such a complex and emotional environment, to determine what is, indeed, the right thing to do.

If CBS had a staff that mirrored the population in general—and after 17 years in media, I suspect with a great deal of confidence that, like all its peers, it doesn't—the network wouldn't need to listen to concerned groups and diverse voices, because they would need to look no further than the newsroom or the entertainment division.

This is why workplace diversity is important, particularly in the media. At the end of the day, it can keep you out of a lot of hot water, because you have staffers who believe in the organization enough to tell you when something isn't kosher.

If you're really serious about this, Moonves, I'd start recruiting—more seriously—for qualified minorities to bring into your news and entertainment divisions. Promote some of the few you already have to positions where they can make a difference in what CBS does. Do the same for the women.

Our nation is becoming more diverse and the rest of the world is a close neighbor. It's about time media outlets start to reflect it.

At the end of the day, the integrity of our Company and the respect that you feel for CBS becomes the most important consideration.

This isn’t the first time Don Imus said something stupid enough to give CBS a black eye. No one at CBS was that concerned about the station’s integrity or respect those other times. Why start now?

In taking him off the air, I believe we take an important and necessary step not just in solving a unique problem, but in changing that culture, which extends far beyond the walls of our Company.

I've got a better idea: Get parent Viacom to look at the gangsta rap videos that wind up on its MTV and VH1 stations and reconsider showing images that result in the degradation of women, and particularly black women. Maybe if “bitch” and “ho” weren’t so ubiquitous there, it would send a message to the shock jocks of the world—and everyone else—that misogynistic language and behavior is unacceptable.


7/9/2007: Losing my religion, if I had any to start with
....To some God is the light that leads them to believe that they see and know everything... but if one is to truly be born again, you'll have to gouge out your eyes, cut out your tongue and grieve. And cry like a baby that's been snatched away...

MeShell NdegeOcello, "Akel Dama (Field of Blood)," 2002


If I ever completely fall off the agnosticism fence into full-blown atheism, it won't be for reading Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris.

I've finished Hitchens' God is not Great, Dawkins' The God Delusion and Harris' The End of Faith and I don't find them particularly convincing, which disappoints me. The evidence is in their favor, but they believe the evidence is all, well, self-evident! If it is, why waste your time and tons of perfectly good trees?

A few years ago, PBS aired a series called The Blues, with Martin Scorsese as executive producer. As a big fan of music, I was willing to give it a go, even though I really don't appreciate the blues. I watched only one show, and had no desire to watch the rest.

The reason is relevant to this post: I was turned off by The Blues because it acted as if you either got the blues or you didn't and, well, if you didn't, there's just no hope for you.

That's the approach these books take to the question of whether God exists—the non-existence of God is self-evident: If you don't see that, well, you're stupid and not worth our time. Let us now face our choir.

Dismissal is not, and has never been, persuasion.

No one knows if there is or isn't a God. This is the only fact, which is why it was so irritating to read Richard Dawkins' diatribe painting agnostics as "fence sitters" who are just too cowardly to admit there is no God. I've been agnostic for a pretty long time and I don't think it's cowardly to admit that I have no earthly idea if a higher deity exists! I think it's an honest assessment.

Just because I no longer care whether a higher deity exists doesn't make me a full-blown atheist. I don't know, you don't either and no one has returned from the "other side" to make a credible case that God exists or doesn't.

What was more convincing? Well, reading The Bible for one. One thing on which Dawkins and I agree is that there really is something seriously wrong with anyone who considers the "good book" a moral guideline, particularly if it is taken literally.

I know Bible stories from years of Catholic school, a few more years of Baptist Sunday school and by having a family mainly comprising evangelicals and Pentecostals. I also attempted to follow my (secular humanist) mother's example and read The Bible cover to cover. I'd lost a good bit of faith by the time I reached Numbers and subsequently quit short of completing the Pentateuch.

I didn't have to get far before realizing that, according to this book—which many people take literally—I wasn't a viable candidate for Heaven despite my baptism, even if I believed in Heaven and even if I were good. And I wouldn't go to Heaven because of circumstances of which I have no control—circumstances that God, if he exists, created, but subsequently held against me.

In other words, I am a black. I am gentile and I am a woman. For such "offenses," I am banished from Heaven, that is, if I happened to take the Bible literally. I don't know about you, but that's not a God I choose to revere.

I mean, read Revelation and note who gets a pass to heaven. It likely won't be you! If you "know" a woman, it won't be you. I'm guessing that would also eliminate women.

And, hey, that's fine. If Jesus returns, he'll waste the AntiChrist (whom I imagine would be Dick Cheney) and bring seven years of peace upon earth. If that's what happens to the heathens, well, I think I can live with being a heathen.

Besides, some of the nicest, most moral and compassionate people I know either don't believe in God outright or don't frequent a church. They're good not because they fear God's wrath or yearn for eternal life—they're good for its own sake. I, however, can't say the same for most of the religious people I know.

* * *


Steer clear of Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens—if you must read them, Hitchens is the best of the lot—and read instead Stephen Prothero's Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know and Doesn't.

I have to state this because some of the Amazon.com reviews are considerably off-base: Prothero's goal is not to make you religiously literate in 256 pages. That's impossible. It argues, however, whether you're religious, agnostic or atheist, it behooves you to become religiously literate, because it gives you a deeper understanding of history, politics and literature.

It isn't really God or religion that ruins everything, as the atheist authors claim, it's that, although we are one of the most religious societies in the world, we really don't know squat about religion and it's extremely dangerous to be loud, wrong, steadfast and unyielding. Discerning the difference between Shia, Sunni, Sufi and Sikh; fundamentalists and evangelicals and Buddhists and Hindis helps you scratch the surface of this nutty world and the nutty things people insist on doing in it.

Take it from a woman who grew up Catholic, was baptized Baptist, spent most of her life obsessed with Islam, read more than enough Church history, as well as the Koran, Bhagavad Gita and much of the Pentateuch (I will get to Deuteronomy one day!) and still, after all that, considers herself agnostic: knowing even a little of this stuff helps things make sense and you don't have to believe a single word of it—in fact, it's probably best if you don't.


7/13/2007: The best 55 minutes of television, EVAH

Watch this and be inspired!

Nancy Pelosi is wrong, ba-bee!


8/28/2007: Help wanted

For the love of God, could someone with half a brain please offer your services as chief of staff or spokesman/spokeswoman or counsel to Senator Larry Craig? Please, before he has another press conference!

Seriously, what WAS that? If I thought he had a sense of humor, I'd give him some credit for the opening line—"thank you for coming out today." That was funny.

But I know the irony is completely lost on him.

And why, oh why, would you hire counsel to mull your legal options AFTER you have entered a guilty plea? What's the point? And what is the world coming to if you're a prominent right-wing senator, but you can't find a lawyer between your June arrest and your August guilty plea to advise you not to plead guilty for something if it was all just one big misunderstanding?

What are you, stupid?

* * *


OK, this answers my question. He really is stupid. Not only that, but his modified Scooby-Doo defense—"I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for that meddling Idaho Statesman" rings hollow in light of two facts. One, they didn't break the story. Two, if the paper was really out to get him, as he claims, they wouldn't have sat on this story for four months.


8/29/2007: So...incredibly...sad

OK, while I love a juicy Republican gay sex scandal as much as the next person, this Larry Craig thing has quickly become undeniably pathetic. I'm really starting to feel bad for the little closeted creep!

The GOP chorus chimed in today with "resign, resign." For what? The worst we can say about Larry Craig at this point is that he's monumentally stupid, a hypocrite, a closet case, an abysmally bad liar and is kind of creepy in an airport bathroom. He hasn't hurt anyone but himself—and if he stops giving press conferences, that will end, too—but the GOP leadership is acting like police have found bodies rotting in his basement.

This is Larry Craig, not Jeffrey Dahmer!

I mean, no wonder Larry Craig continues to shoot himself in the behind just to avoid his foot. These people are so bloody homophobic that if Larry Craig was found to bankroll an illegal dogfighting ring, or beat his wife, or embezzle funds, the GOP would defend him, but no, he's a despicable human being because he might be gay.

So?

He'd be just another closet case flagellating himself for the GOP. They've never minded that before, so why start now?


10/23/2007: Strange wildfire interludes

As I watch the wildfires rage in California—which, you'll soon realize, is not among my favorite states—I'm reminded of a line from comedian Marc Maron: "New York may be the target of terrorists, but [California] is the target of God!"

He's since moved to California from New York. Traitor.

My work neighbor, who also is a Mennonite, said watching wildfires on CNN is like watching "the end times, except it happens all the time!"

It makes one wonder about why Arnie Schwarzenegger was tapped to govern the state. Maybe it's because in his movies he would have singlehandedly fought the fire with enough time to seduce a girl or two. I guess the past couple days are a hard lesson for the state that life does not imitate the movies.

I sit near not only a Mennonite, but an Adventist, so the "end-times" conversation comes up about as often as CNN footage of the wildfires.

Today I assured my Mennonite neighbor that if God were bringing forth the end times, he would NEVER start in California because with all the weirdness that constantly goes on there, no one would ever notice. Locusts? We had that last Thursday between the earthquake, the firestorms and some strange mutant virus that hit Sacramento!

We both decided then that God would start the end times in Colorado Springs. If no one in the town goes up in the Rapture, it would provide further proof that God is, indeed, great, no matter what Christopher Hitchens says.

My boss and I agreed that a big break in the San Andreas fault is just what the state needs right now: big quake either sends California out to sea or starts a large tsunami. Either way, the fires would be quenched!

* * *


FEMA on CNN: I paraphrase, but not by much: The California wildfires are NOT Katrina.

I don't know about you, but I'm certainly comforted that FEMA knows the difference between fire and water!

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