GGGOOOAAAALLLLL! Urging American soccer haters to reconsider their position
It’s a slippery slope being a fan of The Beautiful Game. One day, you’re minding your own business, blowing the blood vessels in your eyeballs by blowing your much-maligned vuvuzela. There you are, rooting for France, throwing back mojitos at Vagabond during lunch in South Park on a Thursday, alongside the business set, who’ve sneaked away from their jobs because 90 minutes of footie and a cocktail will bring them a sliver of joy in the drudgery of an otherwise craperrific day in a whole endless string of them. Soon, you find yourself so charmed by the exuberant fans of the other team that you bid adieu to Handball Henri to jump up and down and shout “Viva Mexico!” with everyone else in the place.
You’re caught up in the thrill, and your little world is cracked open wide by the immediate connection between you and human beings of every culture on the planet. You’re excited for Mexico, sure, but now you really can’t wait to root, root, root for the home team the following morning. And the next thing you know, you find out you’re a traitor to America. Huh?
Certain right-wing fundies have been studying their talking points again and collectively smearing the World Cup, the U.S. men’s soccer team and, presumably, the ubiquitous soccer mom. In recent weeks, these vocal, elitist xenophobes have called soccer “a poor man’s or poor woman’s sport,” one that liberals “jam… down our throat” as part of the “browning of America.” Because baseball is stacked with freckle-faced redheads.
“It doesn’t matter how you try to sell it to us,” said Glenn Beck in one of his tirades. “It doesn’t matter how many celebrities you get. It doesn’t matter how many bars open early. It doesn’t matter how many beer commercials they run: We don’t want the World Cup. We don’t like the World Cup. We don’t like soccer. We want nothing to do with it.” Beck the Troglodyte went on to mention the hooliganism perpetrated by hooligans before offering proof of our more civilized society: “I haven’t seen the baseball riots.” Apparently, the ever-present bench brawl doesn’t factor into Beck’s we’re-superior equation of sports-etiquette.
Oh, Glenn, you cotton-headed ninny muggins! You make me want to get all Zizou on your ass.
Have you never heard of the Cleveland Indians’ Ten-Cent Beer Night riot of 1974? What about Disco Demolition Night of 1979? Or does your selective comprehension of history exclude the events of history?
I would think you, of all people, would be incensed that fans rioted against an honest-to-God homegrown genre of music at Comiskey Park. What’s more American than disco? Thanks to disco, “YMCA” is played at stadiums (and weddings and bat-mitzvahs) all across your favorite country. And Gary Glitter may have been disco in costume only (and British, to boot), but he gave the American fans you hold up as examples of refined behavior the never-ending opportunity to drunkenly chant duhn-duhn-duuuunh-duh-HAY!-duhn-duhn-duhn-duhn-duhn-duuuuhn-duhn-HAY!
Frankly, that and the apathetic wave are more annoying than one honking vuvuzela blown into your ear at close range.
Also, news flash: America’s favorite pastime wasn’t even invented by Americans. The English invented it. Football? English blokes. Basketball? Wave to Canada, Glenn. You can probably see the socialists from your porch. OK, how about golf? you might ask. Well, other than not being invented in America, there’s little agreement as to its origins. I’d put my money on China since the Chinese make all our shit.
With a need for stop-start-stop action as desperate as the tea baggers’ need for spell check on protest signs, the Glenn Beckians don’t have the attention span for a sport with no commercial breaks. A Wall Street Journal study of four NFL games from last season found the average amount of play time was 11 minutes. In essence, an American football game is a three-hour block of beer-gulping, ball-scratching, slow-it-down-so-I-can-grasp-it time for Neanderthals who only understand domination and a playbook.
And fútbol? With one 15-minute half separating 90 minutes of non-stop running, this difficult sport has more intensity, agility, athleticism, power, control, finesse, creativity, innovation, nuance, grace and true teamwork than any other sport I can think of. Ours is definitely not the best team on Earth, but the U.S. men’s soccer team is the best of us, and any bloviating ethnocentrist in a Brooks Brothers suit should be able to get behind that team, which last Friday played a match complete with America’s favorite dramatic elements:
After an excruciating first half, the U.S. came back (overcoming hardship) from a debilitating 0-2 deficit to Slovenia, the smallest country competing (David and Goliath). Landon Donovan (the boy next door) patiently crafted the first goal just minutes into the second half, and the way the ball left his toe, soared across the field and into the corner of the net was nearly lyrical (the hero comes through).
Michael Bradley, the coach’s son (hello, Lifetime Television for women) tied things up with a second goal. Our goalkeeper, Tim Howard (one of the best in the world), dove and leapt to stop several dangerous attacks. And what should have been the third and winning goal (defying the odds) was taken away as quickly as it had happened (heartbreak) by a call so egregious (disbelief) that the announcers apologized and the rookie ref may be expelled from all future matches (vindication). Now the question remains: Can the U.S. overcome such a psychological test and advance to the next round? If we didn’t adore this kind of drama, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition wouldn’t exist.
The U.S. finishes the first round the day this issue hits the street. Whatever happens, the tournament continues until July 11. C’mon. Blow that vuvuzela. Even if it’s just to annoy your dogmatic neighbors.
(As published on June 23, 2010 in San Diego CityBeat.)
One giant pile-on
The radio squawks at me on my ride to work each day about the economic upturn. Our melliflous but not-well-rehearsed local NPR guy offers median home prices, retail sales and unemployment numbers as evidence. See! He seems to be saying. The sun is shining! Things are getting better!
James Altucher wrote an article about this for the Wall Street Journal on June 4th and it was packed full of impressive charts and bar graphs and data points. The man loves himself some data. Of course, data comes as a result of very specific questions and those questions can be—and, in fact, generally are—framed to elicit the desired outcome. No, I’m not cynical. I’m experienced. Okay, and maybe a little cynical, too.
Speaking of jobs, Altucher described the obvious signs of our Improving! Economy!:
“…in the most recent employment data (out just this morning), it looks like hours worked are up, the unemployment rate is down, and nonfarm payrolls improved over April. In particular, hourly pay is up, implying overtime, and always a precursor to fulltime employment.”
Things are definitely rosy for Altucher. Unlike the 35 journalists at the San Diego Union Tribune who lost their jobs last Thursday, who still has a job.
Well, memo to Altucher: Where I work, people are being laid off every week. Those who are not laid off are picking up the workload of those who have been and are working more hours to get the job done. At the same time the workload has increased, there’s been a mandatory reduction in pay, one off-set (to a small degree) by mandatory furlough days. At least there’s that extra day off each month-ish to help the bitter pill go down. But rumor has it, the furlough program will be ending in the coming months while the reduced pay will be made permanent.
I know two groups of nurses, several of them 20-plus year employees, who were laid off in recent weeks. They were graciously invited to re-apply for their positions, jobs now listed at demoted titles and—big surprise—lower pay scales. An entire department of web content editors was let go last month, several of them being notified by phone while they were on maternity leave. Their work has been distributed directly to the departments being serviced, departments who’s staff has been similarly decimated. I know one woman who works 10-hours of unpaid overtime every single week because she can’t get her work done in a 40-hour week. But she doesn’t dare speak up because she needs this job, one of three she holds down. She hasn’t had a day off in 3 years. And the title I currently hold has been re-defined to add more responsibility, require less credentialing and offering lower pay (the salary has been slashed by thousands of dollars). And I’m not any where near a high income earner. I cannot move up, ever, because I’m already above the new “up,” and while there are no raises in the future for most employees, if there were, there would be none in mine.
So, in a way, Altucher has it partly right: People are working. Some people. And those who are working, are working: We need our paychecks. And holy shit do we need our health benefits. But the-hourly-pay-is-up thing is not something I’m witnessing at my place of employment, nor is it something I’m hearing from friends in other fields and at other organizations. I’m highly skeptical about this “improving economy” and think that for most of us, it’s going to be getting harder and more stressful.
How about you, readers? Are you experiencing the relief the pundits like to yammer about? Do you feel safe and secure and bright and sunny about your future? Or do you think that Altucher should find some place to stick his bar graphs?
Divine Intervention or An OCD Problem
I was working this morning on a Very Important Post about the economy and whether it’s getting better, when I stopped to take a phone call. Thanks to the convergence of the oil crisis, my midlife crisis and my crisis of confidence, the conversation with my friend ran right over the start time of the Mexico/France World Cup match, which I was supposed to be watching with a bunch of hooligans down at Vagabond. When I finally hung up, I dashed to the bedroom where I stripped out of my pajamas and put on a bra, a grey tank top and a pair of jeans sans undies. Who had time for such frivolity? I had a soccer match to watch and I couldn’t be bothered to find a pair of undergarments that weren’t aerodynamically purposeful.
In the bathroom, I threw on a military cap to cover the disaster zone known as hair-slept-on-when-wet, and frantically scrubbed my teeth with my finger and a little water. It was as I swept some blusher over my face that I noticed a dark red, asymmetrical blotch on my left cheek. I froze. Oh, my God, I thought. Is that another skin cancer?
I’m still adjusting to the battle wound left by the removal of the one on my chest three weeks ago.
I rubbed my face and realized with great relief that it wasn’t a basal cell carcinoma, but a dab of St. Dalfour’s Pomegranate-Raspberry preserves. Good thing I’m not a catastrophizer, because I might have already envisioned myself on my deathbed, telling my husband to marry a nicer, less complicated, more petite woman and whispering to my daughter to be happy, all through barely moveable lips, what with the giant chunk of my face sliced away and all. Imagine what a waste of energy that would have been.
With the near-death experience avoided, I swung my bag across my body, grabbed my camera and headed out the door. I left my beloved vuvuzelas at home. Vivre la France!, I planned to scream, instead.
But before I could settle in and cheer for the team that was not the favorite of the crowd, I took a few pictures. And then, while scratching an itch on the back of my left thigh, I felt a lump. Not a small lump, mind you. But a very big, angry, lumpy lump. Like, the mother of all varicose veins kind of lump. It was a lump the size of a giant oil spill, and for a split second, my heart was again in my throat. But before I passed out right there in Vagabond, spilling my mojito down the front of my pants giving the appearance of having lost all bladder control, I quietly excused myself from the conversation I was now engaged in, and bee-lined for the bathroom.
I shut the door behind me and pushed the button on the handle to lock myself in. Then faster than you can say Viva Mexico!, I unzipped my jeans and thrust my left hand down my pants leg where I found not a boil or a tumor, but a pair of bunched up underwear.
I watched my (mortified) reflection in the mirror as I held them up in the dim light. For a second or so, I fretted about how I was going to subtly transfer them to my purse, which I’d left on a chair at the bar, when it occurred to me—again, thanks to the mirror mocking me from across the room—that I could wear them. And what could be more subtle than that? Sure they were gently worn. But they were black and matched my bra: A message from God, if I’ve ever had one.
I hurried to wiggle out of my jeans, draped them over a shoulder and balanced, naked, on top of my tan, Rocket Dog flip-flops, smushing the sandal part beneath my feet. I fumbled to unfurl the little ball of silky fabric—which turned out to be navy blue, not black, evidence that there is no God and that this was all just the embarrassing fluke of a lazy woman who doesn’t put her clothes in the hamper when she should—turning them around and over to find the front, hoping like hell nobody would walk in.
Did I lock the door? Oh my God, did I lock the door? I don’t remember if I locked the door. I stopped what I was doing and stared at the handle. The handle stared at me. It was a showdown. The button was pushed in. But you never know. Sometimes the button is pushed in but it doesn’t work and the door isn’t really locked at all and then anyone could come in and see me standing naked in a restaurant during the lunch hour and holy crap am I neurotic or what? I decided to trust it, hustled into my clothes and made a mental note to get a Xanax prescription when I visit my internist next month.
And voila. I rejoined the cheering masses and transferred my allegiance to the winning team.
Tomorrow, I’ll be watching the US play Slovenia from Café Calabria. And I’ll be wearing clean underwear at the outset.
Book Review Alert: Tinkers
At 191-pages, not-quite 5 x 7 inches in size, and with a lone person tromping through snow on the cover, “Tinkers” by Paul Harding is so darling, I couldn’t wait to read it.
The title is terribly sweet—sweet enough that a friend mentioned it would be the perfect name for a puppy. And the hype didn’t hurt, either: this year’s Pulitzer winner was picked up by a very small and very young publishing house, the Bellevue Literary Press, after the author received enough rejection letters to make a lesser writer want to throw her laptop onto a bonfire.
(Continue reading on Culture Lust.)
What She Wore
I love fashion. It’s not a secret. But I’m not very good at putting things together in a creative or original way. I actually suck at it. Quite magnificently. When I go shopping, which I don’t care for at all, I tend to buy the same thing over and over and over again. I don’t mean to do it, I just gravitate to what’s safe: I have thing for jeans—though a reasonable argument can be made for never having too many pairs of jeans—which pile up higher than my stack of unread New Yorkers. And frequently heard comments from my husband include the back-tracking winner, “Oh, you bought another sleeveless, solid-color jersey t-shirt with ruching. It’s super cute!”
Thankfully, I’ve found a few websites to help me think “outside the box,” a phrase I dislike almost as much as “ah-ha! moment” and more than dressing room lighting, which is saying something.
Anyway, last Friday, I found and fell in love with a new-to-me website and subsequently gave over hours of valuable writing time to perusing What I Wore. The hostess, Jessica Schroeder is darling and very, very good at what she does; I would urge any woman who is looking for ideas to visit her site. I want to be her when I grow up, except that she’s probably 15 years younger than I am. There is no turning back the clock, but I can covet and borrow, which is the whole point of her website.
By Friday afternoon, I was inspired enough to dig out the only scarf I own. If I do say so myself, I think I looked just a little bit more fashionable this weekend as I cheered on the US men’s soccer team from my couch. Look at me, breaking out of my normal norms and trying some thing dangerous and new:
Okay, so maybe I look a little silly with a scarf tied in my hair. But I tried it! And the influence stretched beyond me.
He puts rabid soccer fans to shame.
Alright, if Sam and I can’t successfully translate Jessica’s ideas, then perhaps we should look closer to home for someone who can…
When:
June 13, 2010
What:
Dress: Target
Yoga Top: Target
Leg Warmers: Hannah Andersson
Socks: The Children’s Place (one purple, one pink)
Shoes: Target
Flower in hair: A stranger’s garden (she only took one!)
Where:
Breakfast at Brian’s and the Hillcrest Farmer’s Market
Why:
Because she can’t not. It’s in her DNA, which obviously is not mine. I have much to learn. The question is, can it be taught?
In a ‘State of Distraction’: Oh, Internet. You’re bad for me but I just can’t quit you
Can you imagine life without the web? If not, pay a visit to Slate and read the last four-months’ worth of articles by writer/illustrator James Sturm, who, like the CEO of BP, wanted his life back, and who, unlike the CEO of BP, had a right to feel so inclined. With the support of his wife and editor and I’m sure many other people, including one friend who changed all the passwords on his computers so he couldn’t give into the temptation to cheat, Sturm systematically, methodically unplugged.
Gadzoinks! He what??? He quit the what?! I was awed and stupefied. But, later, when I came across a story about Internet use and attention span, I heard the familiar if faint “pssst” whispered into my ear by the universe.
I’d been procrastinating several projects by scanning the day’s headlines with one eye and skimming the shortest posts in my Google Reader with the other, saving the longer ones (those that required scrolling and didn’t have pictures) for later when I’d have more time—which, I’ll be honest, is so 2004. And then, there it was, the link to a piece that I both clicked on and read. As in, the whole thing, from beginning to end.
I’d tell you the headline now and the name of the author, but it’s been bumped off the main page of the site on which I’m pretty sure I’d read it, and since I didn’t bookmark the link, it’s little more than a shortcut removed from the dock of my mind, a momentary cartoony dust ball of pouf! Repeated searches with every related keyword imaginable have been fruitless—if by “fruitless” one means “used up 45 minutes of valuable time that could have been better spent doing 17 other things at once,” none of them particularly well.
The fact that the article was there and now it is not, and that it had been buried in the cyber heap of constantly changing, need-to-know headlines, highlights the point of the article itself, which was, if I remember correctly, this: The Internet is dumbing us down. Not only do we opt for the take-away message of a newsy blip versus a whole concept, but we have also nurtured an inability to focus for a period of time long enough to get past a teaser. The upshot is that we know a teensy little smidgen about every single topic. Go on: Ask me what I know about welding.
In his July 2008 Atlantic piece (which he’s since expanded into the aptly named book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains), Nicholas Carr asked, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” To which I say—with nothing more than my verifiable and repeatable inability focus on a single New Yorker article from start to finish without taking headline- and e-mail-checking breaks as evidence—yes, yes it is.
“I’d sit down with a book, or a long article,” Carr said in a recent NPR interview, when asked what prompted him to write the book. “And after a couple of pages, my brain wanted to do what it does when I’m online: check e-mail, click on links, do some Googling, hop from page to page.” And here I thought I was the only one.
It’s very nearly a form of ADHD, something about which the unknown author of the non-existent piece to which I referred earlier, mentioned. Indeed, his list of warning signs included things like failing to pay close attention to details, an inability to sustain and complete tasks, reluctance to engage in tasks that require sustained mental effort, a lack of follow-through, being easily distracted, procrastinating, forgetfulness—. Where was I going with this again? Oh, yeah! The petrifaction of our brains.
Carr shoves the knife in even further by pointing out how the human brain is adaptable and that our “chronic state of distraction” leads to a decrease in creativity, an inability to engage in complex thinking and a lack of introspective, contemplative thought. In other words, too much Internet is turning us all into Sarah Palin. It’s a horrific thought, but I take solace that at least I don’t look like a tranny.
Sure, I can multi-task with the best of them. But I’m eerily cognizant, as I meander the web for information, that there is no positive benefit to my existence in knowing that Belinda Carlisle had a 30-year coke habit, that Tipper and Al didn’t have affairs, that World Cup refs can outrun the players (yeah, right) and that a baseball coach lost his World Series ring while drunk.
I experience no spiritual growth by knowing that housewives upgrading their wedding rings for bigger, shinier models and that models of the super kind committing suicide are the latest trends. And I can’t tell you how much I’d like to un-see the photos of the matador impaled through his throat and mouth last month by an 1,100-pound bull. I tried not to look, but in my support for the bull, I couldn’t resist. I’m pretty sure lack of self-control should have ranked high on that symptoms list.
The jobs report for May was dismal; oil may gush ’til Christmas and—wait! Rue McLanahan died? And Dennis Hopper, too? I gotta share / mourn / celebrate that on Facebook! I mean, besides trying to be the first person to let everyone know that Michael Jackson died, what, exactly is the currency in knowing that Kate Hudson got a new rack or that six New Jersey women recently got butt implants made of caulking and cement (oops)? Answer: There isn’t any.
It’s all about self-monitoring, and I need to do more of it, starting last Friday. A part of me is really impressed with Sturm’s ability to go cold turkey and I’m tempted to try it. But I’m not that strong. I’m just going to dip my toe in, sign off for the weekend and see how goes the cold sweats. Guaranteed, I’m not changing any of my passwords.
(As published on 6/08/10 in San Diego CityBeat.)
I feel dirty
Tonight, for the first time since I was legally able to vote, I blew off an election. With a reported 35% voter turn out in today’s California primary election, I am THAT person: The one who doesn’t bother to show up, the one I always disdain, the one the other side counts on. Today, I joined the 65% of California citizens in apathetic solidarity.
I wish I could say it was apathy that led me to hurl my yellow absentee ballot along with the voter guide into the recycling bin more than a week ago, which at the time, felt really good, I’ll admit. Indifference would be so much more preferable to the real reasons I shrugged as I pitched the material into the square straw bin beneath my office desk and then walked to the kitchen to pour myself a whisky. Why does it matter? I thought to myself in the days before I made my decision.
My voting materials sat for three days, untouched, on my dining room table where I’d neatly stacked them. I’d eyeball the sealed booklet and envelope—the window of which displayed my name with an extraneous initial I’ve attempted to correct with the registrar’s office multiple times—on every pass through the room, contemplating whether I could actually go through with it. On the fourth day, I picked them up and moved them to the office. I sat down on the chair, pressed my toes against the floor and launched myself into a slow spin while I wrestled my thumb into the corner of the envelope with the yellow ballot. I yanked at the paper, making a jagged, uneven tear, immediately giving myself a paper cut.
“Shit!” I said, tossing the half-opened envelope away from me, sucking the blood from my thumb. Clearly, I was supposed to sit this election out.
“MAH-ahm! You owe a quarter,” Ruby said to me from the other room.
And thinking about that quarter got me thinking about all of the many quarters I’ve paid for my potty mouth, which got me thinking about my daughter’s college education, which got me thinking about the state of public education in California, which got me thinking about our fiscal nightmare, which got me thinking about the self-interested, re-election-happy representatives too paralyzed to do anything productive, which got me thinking about how our public offices and initiatives are really just for sale to the highest bidder, which led me to the conclusion (again) about how this is all a big dog and pony show.
I’ve always operated under the philosophy that it’s my obligation to vote. That by doing so, I’m at the very least staking out my right to complain. But I’ve started to think that if I participate in a broken system, then I am part of the problem. So I decided to skip it.
And all day, I felt nothing. Until I began watching the returns and realized that I didn’t know a single local initiative. Certainly, there is a peacefulness in having no investment and I am definitely a happier person by not following politics as closely as I did way back when I was more hopeful and less cynical. Still. I started to feel sorta bad when I couldn’t have an intelligible conversation with friends.
Maybe I should have voted…not that my voice would have mattered. But what if even half of the other 65% of us had voted. Would my voice have mattered then?
BP obviously began by consulting pre-schoolers
“Aw, shit,” I said to the car radio today, forgetting all about my impressionable roommate in the back seat.
“What, mama?” Ruby asked. So I explained to her that there was a big accident that had caused oil to pour out from a broken pipe deep in the sea and that it’s hurting a lot of animals and grasslands and sanctuaries and people. I told her that nobody knows how to stop the gushing and that I’m really, really sad about it.
Then the child who offered to loan me gas money from her piggy bank on Wednesday said to me, “Why don’t the sea divers go way, way, very deep down and put a bucket on it?”
(My point to) Counterpoint: An open letter and a plea to a restaurateur
Dear Cameron,
These are trying times, as I’m sure you’re aware, and a girl needs a place where she can forget about what troubles her for a spell. An urban place where she can sit on a tall stool in a corner by a window, chin on her palm and one leg crossed over the other, her feet falling asleep for all the dangling and legs clad in skinny jeans and the fabulously stylish red shoes that are—after a long day of circumnavigating Republicans in the workplace—just a little too tight.
She needs a place where she can feel like she’s part of a hip trend but is simultaneously indulging in one of the city’s best-kept secrets, a place where she can flirt mercilessly with a cute waiter but still be more discreet than the 20-something set. In short, she needs a place where she is transported to the Amalfi Coast by sipping citrus-infused Prosecco while feeding her inner Parisian with a ham and butter sandwich.
It takes a special person to recognize the complex pleasures and healing properties of such a simple combination; it takes an enlightened individual to put a ham and butter sandwich on his menu. No offense, Cam, but I have it on good account that there’s a woman behind that decision.
Counterpoint is my go-to spot du jour when things become dire. And after last week, I had my face set on devouring one—possibly two—of your little Euro cholesterol bombs to assuage my ever-sinking faith in humanity. I was ravenous when I arrived on Wednesday night. So you can imagine my dismay when nowhere among your eight sandwiches did I see the specialty on which I’d set my face.
“Sorry, but we took it off the menu,” said your muscular bar boy Ryan with the dangerous, laser-beam eyes and tight gray T-shirt. I nearly started to cry, I was in such agony. “But the fried bologna is really great!” He was trying to fix things. “We could share it,” he said.
Maybe you should give him a raise.
“Could we feed it to each other?” I asked. I may have twisted a strand of hair around my finger just then. OK, so I wasn’t more respectable than your younger patrons. But I wanted Ryan to be so enraptured that his only choice was to present me with a ham and butter sandwich! This is comfort food, and I was despondent. Have you, by any chance, had time between changing the beer on your taps to read the news lately? It’s ugly, Cam. U-G-L-Y.
This will probably come as a shock to you, but BP has been low-balling / disguising / hiding / lying about (choose your descriptor) the estimated number of gallons of oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico. Steve Wereley, a mechanical engineer at Purdue University, told Congress on May 19 that, actually, no, there is no way in the deep, deep pockets of greedy oil companies promising to pay for “legitimate and objectively verifiable” damages that 5,000 barrels of oil are pouring out each day. The real number is somewhere around 20 times that much. Did you watch the video of the oil gushing, Cam? It’s breathtaking. NPR correspondent Richard Harris encouraged listeners to imagine seven fire hoses on full blast all the time to get an idea of the oil currently “mushrooming” into our ecosystems. It took the images of an oil-drenched soft-shell crab and an iridescent blue dragonfly with brown sludge dripping from its delicate wing before I removed The Huffington Post as my homepage.
May 19 also marked the anniversary of Anne Boleyn’s death. The poor woman had her head chopped off because her husband didn’t quite grasp the concept of who, exactly, was responsible for the X- and Y-chromosomes in the family. (Something tells me it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.) On the same day 474 years later came the story of the excommunication of a nun in Arizona—and don’t even get me started on Arizona—revealing once and for all where the Catholic Church draws its line. Sister of Mercy Margaret McBride signed off on the abortion of an 11-week old fetus in order to save the life of a patient, a mother of four who was in heart failure. Never mind all those priests who diddle little children and get the wink-and-nod as they’re quietly shipped off to other parishes with whole new gaggles of wide-eyed, impressionable children at their disposal. Approve the removal a clump of cells from a uterus and it’s a lifetime of You Do Not Have A Place With Us. As it was in Boleyn’s day, so it is in McBride’s: This is a man’s world.
If you don’t believe me, Cam, look at what’s going on down under in the down under. According to the Australian news program The Hungry Beast, womanly parts are too unseemly for print and have thusly been photoshopped right out of existence. All the naked lovelies in their glossy magazines have ethics-board-mandated little-girl vag, which may please the aforementioned and very ill priests, but which has also convinced grown women that their “pendulous” labia minora are an aberration requiring removal. Some call this self-mutilation. Others call it “neat and tidy.”
Kentucky is running a racist named after Ayn Rand as a possible candidate for the U.S. Senate, Texas is re-writing its history books, and here in California, a billionaire is buying the governor’s seat with promises of tax breaks for the wealthy and massive job-purging amongst the state rolls. And for God’s sake, Bret Michaels just will not die!
Do you see where I’m going with all of this, Cam? Directly to your pub. To drink. And eat a sandwich. The fried bologna is pretty good. But it’s not the same. So please. Cam. Cameron. Do the right thing. Be a hero. Listen to your wife and put the ham-and-sweet-butter sandwich back on the menu.
Oink,
~aaryn
(As published in last week’s issue of San Diego CityBeat. Sorry for the delayed posting.)