In Which I Ask a Question that Ruins Any Street Cred I Had

Was Aaliyah really nice or something?  Because I swear, based solely on her ability to whisper her way through whole albums of material, I don’t understand why she was famous.

Do We Have a Feminist Equivalent of the Bat Signal?

If we don’t, perhaps we should consider one.  Then I could signal all y’all Nashville feminists to run to the grocery store and pick up some food for my favorite lil’ feminist indoctrination camp.

For, as it stands now, sixteen girls between the ages of 12 and 17 are about to start camp and no one is quite sure where the huge bowl of M&Ms they usually snack on is going to come from.

I know things are tough all over, but if you can help, drop me an email (appropriateaunt at yahoo dot com) and I’ll put you in touch with the folks who could use some sustenance in the coming month.

Other Places

—The Recovering Baptist is in love, and who can blame her?  We Midwesterners are hard to resist.

—Bridgett‘s talking bad covers.

–Speaking of bad covers, Coble‘s got some brilliant publishing industry ideas.

Meanwhile, here’s what I’m mulling over (which you Midwesterners will also find HILARIOUS [yes, so hilarious that I have to shout]): Mack is taking his family to the Dells on vacation!

Doesn’t that just make you want to give the whole family a squeeze and hand them a casserole?

But oh, the moaning and wailing and weeping about having to drive through Illinois.  Good lord, you’d think people had never been in a car in a flat state before.

So, I have this idea of putting together a little quiz for the kids to work on in the car in between bouts of making fun of my homeland.  But the thing is, these kids are smart, so I want it to be something interesting for them and pertaining to Illinois AND, here’s the tricky thing, something they can do while sitting in the car and just looking out the window or at a road map on occasion.

Here’s what I’ve got so far:

1.  Much of the reason Illinois is so “boring” and flat is because glaciers extended far into the state during the last ice age.  Generally, the flat parts were under ice; the rolling hilly parts were not.  Just looking at the landscape as you head north, how far south do you think those glaciers came?

2.  Look out your window.  What are Illinois’ two biggest cash crops*?

3.  Based on the city and town names you see, what country would you guess the first European settlers came from?

4.  Name me five towns in Illinois you think may have been Native American villages at one time.

5.  Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O.  He sent his daughter to Charleston to college.  What school did she attend?

6.  Right now you’re driving over one of the largest coal basins in the nation.  Just by looking on the road map, can you guess where you might find mines?

Okay, that’s what I’ve got so far.  I’m throwing it open to y’all if you have any ideas.

*Not counting that illegal cash crop.

I Love My Car

Y’all, I owe Mack literally one point three trillion dollars.  If I’d had to buy this car without him, well, I just couldn’t have done it and I would have been crying.  His help was invaluable.

He was all making the salesman drive him around town and sitting in his chair and eating his popcorn and just basically intimidating the shit out of everyone.

I, on the other hand, was saying smooth things like, “Gosh, that Yaris is so small that a good Baptist boy like you would have to marry me after the test drive” to the salesman.

Seriously, y’all.  I seriously said that to the salesman.  This right there is the main reason I cannot be let out into the world unescorted.

Mack is using Jedi mindtricks on these guys and I’m acting like I just got let out of the nunnery.

Also, in a move of swiftness, I was put in charge of selling some items for work over the weekend and today the business manager calls me into her office and says, “What are all these dimes?”

I ask, “Wasn’t I supposed to charge them tax?  I just rounded up.”

She says, “Yeah, we don’t sell anything that costs just a dollar.”

“Okay…” 

“Ten percent of a dollar is a dime.  Ten percent of ten dollars is a dollar.”

Oooohhhh!

Oops.

New Car!

Hey, Cool!

Mark, if you and Ron are looking for someone to review music everyone else heard about forty years ago, you know where to find me!

The Down Side of Fretting

So, I laid in bed fretting about all this car shit, even though I’ve tried my damnedest to delegate the fretting to others, trying to decide if I was going to sleep or just throw up or make a list of all the shit I had to check to see if the Butcher did.

For the record, he did clean out most of the car.  He didn’t vacuum it.  He didn’t empty the console, but that meant the silver dollar my dad put in the car to keep me safe was still there, and he did get all of the glass out of the trunk and find all my Tarot cards, which I’m glad about.

I need to remember to bring both sets of keys with me.

Anyway, since I was up all night fretting, I slept through my alarm, which meant the dog did not get walked, though she got to hang out with me while I emptied out the stuff he forgot to empty.

Also, tragically, the redheaded kid’s dog has run away.  I hope he finds it.  I hate when he comes over to our house looking all depressed and scared.  On the other hand, I love that when he’s thinking, he taps his fingers together like he’s trying to catch good ideas in the cage of his hands.

The 2002 Dodge Stratus

Tonight may be the last night I spend with my car.  Tomorrow might be the last morning I drive it.

You’d think that, after this month, I’d be glad to be done with it.

And… and I am.

But I also feel a little sad.

Okay, well, here’s hoping the next car is better.

Now is the Time, Terry Frank!

I admit, I often don’t understand what gets conservatives all up in arms.  Today, for instance, they’re riding Kleinheider’s butt because he called our troops “pawns” and also said that they have honorable professions.

Somehow, to the conservatives, “pawns” is such a grave insult that it outweighs the compliments he paid our armed forces and Terry Frankis falling all over herself to distance herself from Kleinheider’s comments (Why?  I have no idea.  Maybe the Army has nothing better to do than to sit around and retaliate against bloggers for imagined slights.  If so, let me be the first to say how terrible it would be if four hot half-naked soldiers came over and gave me massages and cleaned my house in order to teach me to have more respect for our soldiers. [Ooo, there’s the slight!  It’s Soldiers now.]).

Anyway, Frank says:

There is no greater love nor charity than for one man to lay down his life for another. I hope that if the time ever arises, I may do so for my family or my fellow man. I believe such risk, such sacrifice is truly loving your neighbor as yourself. [emphasis mine]

I would just point out that now is the time.  Our Army needs dedicated soldiers who believe in the cause they’re fighting for and they’ll take anyone up to forty years old.

I have it on good authority from Stacey Campfield, the Right’s favorite blogging legislator, that Terry Frank is, at most, thirty-six.  So, if she really believes in the cause our soldiers are fighting for, believes that what they’re doing is for a greater purpose and makes good sense, the Army needs her and would be willing to take her.

She’s anxious to have the opportunity to serve and the Army’s anxious to have her.

I anxiously await her enlistment.

Good fun.

(Not to let Kleinheider off the hook.  Once again he’s whining that us “First-World-ers” are not doing enough to have more white babies.  And yet, how many white babies has Kleinheider squirted into the wombs of women?  Can we ever put a moratorium on encouraging others to do dangerous things we ourselves can’t bother to get around to?)

Take Me to the Water

I can remember when I first heard “Down to the River to Pray.”  I’d just gotten that year’s Oxford American music issue and I was driving home from work, back when we lived way far south, and it came on–I think it was the last song on the CD–and I had to pull the car over and wait for the song to finish, because I just wasn’t sure I could drive safely and listen to it at the same time.

There’s not much to say about this song that hasn’t been said before, how Krauss comes in alone and then how the choir comes in behind her and it seems to get fuller and richer until the song ends.

The song, in retrospect, is very, very similar to Nina Simone’s “Take Me to the Water,” another hymn about baptism.  Simone’s starts with the piano, then she comes in with “Take me to the water” and is immediately backed by a smaller gospel sounding back-up group.  Both are concerned with “who shall wear the robe and crown?”.  (“None but the righteous shall be saved,” Simone tells us.)

Both are asking folks to join them.  Krauss goes through a litany of family members she’d like to come with her.  Simone is asking for someone to take her.

It’s just curious to me that they’re so similar.  And I think it provides an interesting contrast to listen to them back to back like that.  Krauss sounds like she’s getting a large crowd together, following her down to the river.  Simone sounds like she’s begging someone to help her get there.  Krauss seems hopeful, but with Simone, she sounds suspiciously like she might be singing the blues.

Frank Cooter Talk

In general, I don’t have a problem with porn.  Porn stars, to me, seem like the equivalent of gymnasts.  Yes, they’re women.  Yes, I have those basic body parts, but if you think I’m going to be able to bend and stretch and balance mine like that, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, on you.

Do some folks get weird expectations about what are common and generally acceptable sexual practices and body types from porn?

I suppose they do.

And do I think that porn reinforces the notion that women are available for men’s pleasure whenever the men should need it?  Yes, I do.

I guess I kind of see pornography as saying explicitly what so much of society says implicitly.

So, I’ve never viewed pornography and felt pressured to look like a porn star any more than I look at a gymnast and feel pressured to look like a gymnast.  Maybe that’s because I think it takes a lot of care and training I’d rather not do to be able to have your body consistently perform that way.  Maybe it’s because there’s just no way anyone would look at me and expect my body to miraculously transform into a porn star body upon the removal of my clothes.

In other words, I’ve just never viewed porn and felt bad about myself as a woman (even though I’ve seen some stuff that made me feel pretty damn bad about men).  I especially have never looked at those cooters and thought, even for a second, that that’s what my cooter should look like.

So, I’m a little weirded out by a link I found in this thread over at Pandagon.  I will just say up front that the link I am about to give you is for serious not for safe for work unless you happen to work at a gynecologist.  But, since I want you all to get an idea of what I’m talking about, when you click over there, you will see many vaginal openings that have been “fixed” from something like this–0–to something like this–I.

Okay, here’s the link.

Y’all, there’s not a cooter on this page that looks like mine.  Not in the before pictures, certainly not in the after pictures.  But those before pictures!

Seriously, those to me look like porn cooters already all shaved and… okay, I’m just going to say it… small.  Where are their labia majora?

Fuck me, maybe we need to just have naked normal cooter day because I look at those cooters and see nothing that resembles mine.

My cooter, for those of you who’ve not seen it, is covered first by my labia majora.  If I’m not aroused, everything stays pretty much tucked up in behind them.  If I am aroused, they kind of open up and pull back and everything that’s normally kind of tucked away is covered in at least a thin layer of slick secretions.

My clitoris is tucked away under its hood and between my clitoris and my vaginal opening is some really slick and soft tissue that is normally kind of covered by my labia minora

I had thought that that’s how cooters, in general, worked.

But then I look at these cooters, cooters that are so “abnormal” that they’re being hacked away at by folks who’ve sworn to first do no harm, and I’ve got to tell you, it’s make me feel a little weird about my cooter.

Do I have an abnormally large cooter?  Are folks getting lost up there and are just too polite to tell me?  Am I one cold snap away from someone wearing my cooter as a hat, using my labia majora for ear flaps?

You know what I mean?  If these are the cooters that need surgery, where does that leave mine?

I don’t know.  I’m going to assume that, since I’ve never had anyone down there scream and run away in horror that everything’s okay.  Shoot, a gynecologist would say something if you had a cooter so large that folks could use it as housing, right?

I mean, my cooter feels good to me.  Isn’t that the point?  If they work and they feel good, why are we hacking on them?

And those afters.  The afters break my heart.  They seem so tame and safe, like little coin slots, not decadent pleasure-filled gateways to the mysteries of the universe.

Something about them looks like an apology–“I’m sorry for being a woman; let me tuck as much of that gross girly stuff away as I can.”

So, yeah, I’m momentarily weirded out, but I think I’d rather have an untamed unapologetic weird cooter than a perfectly fine cooter I felt so bad about that I paid someone thousands of dollars to hack away at it.

Rosemary

I know I’ve said this before but I can’t even begin to tell you how much I love the smell of rosemary.  I would be unable to remove myself from a man who smelled like that.

I was looking in my Materia Magica this morning, as I had planned to go out and collect clover, since it’s free and all in my neighbor’s yard, and I looked up “rosemary” and this is what it says:

Rosemary is widely thought to be a powerful guardian and to give power to women; therefore it is used by many people to ward off evil in the home and to bring good luck in family matters.

Instead, the Butcher and I went to look at cars and then the Professor and I went to look at cars.  I have now looked at cars inside and out.  I have looked at trunks and engines and leg room and arm room and listened to quiet and tried to listen for noise.  I have lied and told truths and danced around when exactly I was going to settle down and decide to buy a car.

My hair smells like new car.  I would rather my hair smell like rosemary.  I would rather feel scratchy whisker burns all on my face.

I would rather sit around and share long slow kisses with a scruffy man who smelled like rosemary than buy a new car, or even a used one.

Here we live in a perfectly good capitalist society, or so the conservatives keep telling me, and yet, try as I might, I can find no service in the Yellow Pages like this.

I suppose it would have to be a two-man team.  The older gentleman would go out and negotiate me a good deal while the younger gentleman and I sat on the couch making out.

I’m not even asking for cunnilingus, here folks.  Just some slow, sweet smooches while someone else frets about the car.

Is that too much to ask?

(Don’t feel left out, gentlewomen.  As soon as my lavender blooms, you and I will have a talk all about that.  Hee hee.)

A Thousand Words

Chris Wage took this picture of John H., which I am so madly in love with I had to steal it and post it here.

Don’t you look at this and immediately want to know him?  Know about him?  Doesn’t he look holy?  I love this picture.

I hate looking at pictures of myself.  I’m getting better about it, just because, well, that’s what I look like and a.) what can you do? and b.) that’s what a lot of women I love look like and I love them so I ought to learn to extend that to myself.

It’s weird to really look and try to see myself objectively.  I’m big and fat like my dad’s people.  My eyes look a lot like my Grandma Doris.  I hold myself a lot like her, too.  But I think I look a lot like my cousins on my dad’s side, too.

And then just a little bit like only me.

I would love to look at photos of myself and see someone I thought was worth looking at.  I hope that happens some day.

The Butcher is Back!

Hurray!  He’s going to go to Carmax with me tomorrow. 

I Have Damn Fine Readers

Not only are y’all some of the cutest people I’ve ever hung out in a bar with, you’re so damn sweet and have such big hearts.

It’s funny, you know, that in my spiritual life, I try to understand myself as a part of a community, something larger and more holy than me, and I try to understand myself as also being a benefit to that community–that being connected to others and allowing them to be connected to you is good luck to everyone.

And I think the thing that really shook me, in a great way, to my core last night was that here was my community–not all of it, of course, but enough to make me feel like the luckiest girl on the planet.

I don’t know. That’s kind of hokey and woo woo, but I just wanted to acknowledge that, as it seems to work, the “transcendent” understanding I was seeking came last night in terrific, but mundane ways. Unless my whole life has a vibe of woo woo, in which case… well, shoot, I bet y’all want to hear about boobs, and kissing, and butt tickling and dancing and singing and who managed to single-handedly flirt with the whole fire department, so you know, we can come back to the deep philosophical discussions later.

So, in no particular order are the things I want to not forget to tell you about.

–Coble was not drunk and yet woman still got up in front of a whole bar of people who sang like they’d just left the cast of a Broadway musical and slammed out the most awesome version of “Werewolves of London.” Like me, she was also there five minutes early.

–Speaking of singing like Broadway, Ginger was ridiculous! She’d get up on that platform, knock out some beautiful song that had half the bar in tears and the other half wanting to call their mommas just to tell them they loved them and she’d finish up, there’d be dead silence while people tried to collect their emotions, then this incredible roar would break out of clapping and cheering, the two Mexican guys in the place are chanting “Viva la Ginger! Viva la Ginger!” and she comes over and is just shaking her head all “God, I sucked so bad on that.” and I’m like “Woman, a riot is about to break out! I’d hate to see you when you think you’re good.”

–Slartibartfast kept knocking out these awesome soul tunes. I didn’t hear if his wife told any risque jokes, but I was encouraging folks to buy her drinks for that purpose.

–I rubbed my butt on Chris Wage and my boobs and I tried to start the rumor that rubbing your boobs on Chris Wage would bring you luck, but as far as I could tell, only Ivy thought she needed luck of that sort.

–Brittney and I were very excited to sing along with “Miss New Bootie” and I was more than happy to sing it in honor of her dog, “I found you, Miss New Tootie.”

–And then! And then, this was so awesome. Mary Mancini brought her own version of Beyonce’s “To the Left” to sing and it kicked ass. It was all about how everyone was crossing the aisle to vote to the left and how Georgie better not get to thinking he’s irreplaceable*. Brittney and I sang back-up. I’m embarrassed to admit, though, that I kept going to the right when I was dancing. I assume that’s just the draw of that pesky second amendment.

–At some point, I was talking to KateO’, her husband, and Jon from Mushin No Shin about how there seems to be a split in folks not along political lines but along a line I wanted to draw as pleasure-seekers and busy-bodies. Kate’s husband has a similar sense of that kind of split, but he calls it something different. But it was an interesting discussion that popped up so randomly that it kind of cemented my love for the whole evening.

–Mack was holding court out on the patio. I’d stumble out there and sometimes he’d be talking to Jon (who I totally tried to impress with my limited knowledge of the Beats, but he had no idea who I was talking about, so I was all embarrassed) and John Lamb (who is hotter than I remember him being) and whoever else.

–Plimco, Dr. J., the Queen and her boy toy came, too, and they were awesome. Plimco’s songs all involved acting out the words and Dr. J. sang me this awesome rendition of “Walking After Midnight” and the Queen did a kick butt version, appropriately enough, of Queen’s “Fat Bottom Girls.” And when they went to the bathroom together, they came by and tickled my butt, which, you know, tickled, because it was a butt tickling.

–Jag and Shauna were there too, just sitting at a booth like they ran the joint. Jag tried to help me twitter Smiley, but I was so drunk I don’t think it worked.

–John H and his lovely wife were there, too. They seemed to be at the tables that had the food, whenever it was that there was food to be had. I’ll say this, I’m growing suspicious that it might be very useful to have John H on a road trip with you because he does seem to find good food.

–NM was there to give us the inside skinny on the whole “Seemingly Alternative Newspaper Picks Fight with Magazine Devoted to Alt. whatever, whatever that means” bruhaha, which was awesome.

–And a commenter and lurker showed up and I’m completely spacing on the commenter’s fake name (though if your names rhyme with Smicole and Smamy, clearly this shout out is for you!) but they were so sweet and nice and cool. Hurray!

–The Professor came and then a few minutes later, her friend showed up. Every straight girl there pulled me aside to ask who he was. I tried to encourage him to just randomly start making out with women, but he didn’t seem too excited by that. It did make me think that, in a perfect world, I would live within walking distance of both the Professor and Dr. J and we would alternate which porch we sat on and got drunk every Friday afternoon while we thought deep thoughts and hashed out how to save the world.

–I could write you a whole post about Ivy. I will not. I just want to say that a little part of me wants to be as brave as Ivy some day.

–And Mack. What can I say? I want to be gracious about your big heart, but I feel incredibly unworthy of it. Next time I see you, we’ll just slice open our palms and squish our hands together and make ourselves blood brothers like a couple of over-zealous twelve-year-old boys and then I can just be all “Well, he’s good to me because we share blood.”

Anyway, I think I’ve gotten everyone, but if I haven’t, I’ll add you on as the fog that is my brain begins to clear.

I’ll be thanking you all personally in the coming days, but I just want to say thanks publicly, too. This is by far the craziest, coolest thing to ever happen to me. Thanks to Plimco for encouraging me to send my play and thanks to y’all for your generosity in helping me get there. Thanks to Mack for seeming to pull everything together and to Ginger for really doing it (tee hee). I really am so grateful and overwhelmed by that I about don’t know what to say.

Just thanks and I’ll take lots of pictures and tell y’all all about it. I leave July 6th and will be back July 9th.

Again, thanks everybody.

*Let us all pause now for a moment while Exador storms around the desk and begins to compose a comment about how all my good times seem to involve making fun of conservatives.

Why You Should Buy Me a Drink Tonight

1.  I’m running late to my own party and am about to have a heart attack because of it.

2.  The building where my car was parked was not unlocked after the thing today you fucking liar, liar, pants on fire and I had to haul all my boxes around the side of the building and my back hurts.

3.  Because nobody bought me a drink on my birthday.

4.  Because I have twelve dollars and I might need that for gas.

5.  Because I asked him for water and he gave me gasoline.  Ha, no not really.  That, obviously, would have solved number 4.

The Recalcitrant Brother Saves Me From Making a Fool of Myself

Too bad for Springfield, Illinois.  I was just getting ready to get on here and apologize to you for regularly making fun of the fact that you were terrorized by a pack of feral pigs in the 1800s.

Seriously, my thinking has been, you didn’t have fifty guys with guns in your town who could shoot at the pigs all at once?  You might not kill them all, but you’d kill a lot and scare the other ones off to, hell, I don’t know Taylorville.  You don’t every hear about Taylorville’s feral pig problem, do you?

But then I saw this story and this photo and was like, damn, well, if you’re talking fifty to a hundred feral pigs some of which are <i>this</i> size?

Who could blame you for letting those fuckers roam free unchallenged through the streets of your town?

But then I called the recalcitrant brother, who has been working over in that part of Alabama recently, who informed me that no one in West Georgia/East Alabama is taking this seriously as a story and certainly no one thinks this is some serious competition to Hogzilla.

Why?

Well, gather ’round folks, and listen to what the recalcitrant brother told me.

1.  These folks didn’t find that pig out in the wild.  Unlike Hogzilla, this pig was raised on a private game preserve.  The same game preserve the kid’s dad paid to get him the right to shoot at said giant pig.  In other words, they knew the pig was there and it didn’t have any place to go.  That’s where it was raised and fed and taken care of and there are high fences all around the place so the pig couldn’t leave if it wanted to.

2.  The kid shot the pig with a revolver only in the literal sense of the word.  Yes, it was a revolver.  No, it wasn’t a revolver like most of us non-gun nuts think of a revolver.  Again, he didn’t wander into the woods armed only with his trusty revolver and happen upon a wild hog.  He knew what he was going to shoot, approximately where it would be, what boundaries it could not leave, and what equipment to bring to kill it.  Hell, he even had trackers armed with high powered rifles if anything went wrong.  In other words, this was a controlled hunt in every sense of the word.

Shoot, I’ll say it.  This wasn’t a “hunt” this was a “go find.”  How is this not cheating in every sense of the word?

Explain this to me, hunters.

The Surprise Gun Nut

Fifty-aught.  Twenty-two.  Shotgun.  Shotgun.  The surprise gun nut rattles off makes and models like the Universe is refreshed by the recitation of facts in an orderly fashion.

Who knows?

Maybe it is.

I say, “What do you need so many for?”

And you claim that each gun serves a different purpose.  One for deer.  One for small game.  One for coyotes.  One for intruders.

The verb conveniently left out; that verb that unites all your disparate firearms under one commonality.

I wish, more than anything, that I were talented enough to write you a poem.  Something with long, mouthful lines like Walt Whitman.  Words so full they burst against my tongue like ripe grapes.

If I could write you a poem about your secret gun-nuttiness, I would sidle up next to you when you were least expecting it, and I would lean over, put my head on your shoulder, and begin reciting the poem, which, in a perfect world would be both beautiful and hilarious.

I would say a line and then wait and, even if I was the only one, after a second, I would throw my head back and laugh and laugh long and hard.

I would say, by god, you could join the Republican party.  I would say, what?  No tank?

Instead, when I catch you arguing with the conservative gun nuts, I will just call you on the phone and sing you this song:

If you mess ’round with my shit, I will shoot you.

If you mess ’round with my shit, I will shoot you.

I’ll have lots of liberal guilt, oh I promise.

But if you mess ’round with my shit, I will shoot you.

The Most Glorious Nap Ever

The green couch continues to be the perfect place to take naps.  It’s deep and soft and practically demands you just let your eyes shut.

And so I came home, settled into the green couch, shut my eyes and damn.

Sadly, I woke up to R. Kelly talking about how he’s a flirt.  As usual, all the women in his video seem to be pushing thirty.

Sadly for him, no one buys it. 

Happily for him, when he owns up to his issues, I think he can easily change “I’m a flirt” to “I’m a pervert.”

Famous Spouses

So, I’m standing at this table of books this morning and this man comes up and says two things:

1. I’m NM’s husband.

2.  This book right behind you contains the story of how we met.

I don’t know.  It was just kind of weird and cool and crazy.

Come Home, Butcher!

Okay, the fact is that I’m terribly lonely without the Butcher and wish he would come home this very instant.

Yes, his idea of keeping the house clean is to keep a walkable path from the couch to the television.  Yes, there’s a pile of laundry on the couch that looks like someone might have been pulling all of the clothes on and off just for fun.

Yes, it looks like someone died in my downstairs toilet.

And yes, he does occassionally wreck my car.

But last night I came home from having a wonderful time and everything was how I left it.  No one had taken the dog out.  No one had picked up my pop cans.  No one was sitting on the couch watching TV wondering how things went or complaining because I didn’t tell him about it soon enough for him to get a ticket and come.

The Butcher is my brother, of course, and so our relationship is more complicated than a friendship, but in some ways, he’s really my oldest closest friend.

When he’s not around, I just feel like I can’t quite get my day finished.  I don’t know how to explain it better than that.  It just feels like something’s open-ended and I don’t like it.

So, there.  I complain about him, but damn, I miss him.

I wonder what time his plane comes in on Sunday?

Ha, you know, that would be nice information to have just in general.

An Evening with the Sisters I Love

So, Plimco, Dr. J. and the Queen (and her man) and I went to The Sounds game.  They beat Memphis, for those of you who give a shit.

God, I love that family.  Plimco and I talked all about all y’all.  One of you was voted most amazingly and surprisingly good looking.  One of you was voted easiest to like.  And the rest of you were rated on a scale of one to ten for your fuckability at an orgy.  I’m pleased to say that the whole lot of you averaged a 7.35.

Dr. J. showed us her bruise and we talked about sustainable housing and I told her about my secret dream to be able to live off the grid in a little house that looks like somewhere a hobbit or a kindly old witch should live that’s built out of tires.

We also began our campaign for naked man week, which would also require see-through cups so that we could come to better understand where all your junk is and what all it is doing at any given moment and how you keep from having terrible accidents with it where everything gets pinched.

Feel free to explain, send photos, or make elaborate drawings.

I think that was everything.  Except I laughed a lot about the play and just how strange and wonderful the whole thing is and how I can’t believe it’s only basically a month away.

Hurray!

In Which I Remake The Defiant Ones

Instead of Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis, I was thinking Magniloquence and Stacey Campfield.  I hate to do that to Mag, but dang, Campfield needs to be handcuffed to someone who is willing to slap him upside the head every now and again.

Today, Campfield is, I guess, pretending to protect us from The Black Panthers.

The Tennessee General Assembly passed The Rosa Parks act yesterday that would allow folks who had participated in the Civil Rights Movement and been charged with crimes in connection with those activities to have those crimes expunged from their records.

Campfield and five others voted against it.

Campfield’s reasoning?

A lot of talk has been going around about the Rosa Parks act and why I voted against it. Long and short of it is I did not like the expunging of felonies part of it. Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King and many others advocated for non violent resistance to end the discrimination problem in their time. I support that system as well.

Felony charges in that arena were seldom non violent charges. Half of Memphis was burned when MLK was shot. Homes and businesses of innocent people were robbed and burned. Violent resistance was advocated by some groups like the black panthers. I feel expunging those type crimes and others like it need closer scrutiny then was given in the bill. I had an amendment to remove that part of the bill but it was killed. If the felony part was not in the bill I would have supported it.

But let’s take a look at the wording of the bill, shall we?

All public records of a person who has been charged and convicted with a misdemeanor or felony while protesting or challenging a state law or municipal ordinance whose purpose was to maintain or enforce racial segregation or racial discrimination shall, upon petition by that person to the court having jurisdiction in the previous action, be removed and destroyed without cost to the person.

So, his example of what happened in Memphis when King was assassinated doesn’t even make sense.   People who burnt down buildings and rioted weren’t “protesting or challenging a state law or municipal ordinance whose purpose was to maintain or enforce racial segregation or racial discrimination.”  They would be ineligible to have their records cleared under this law.  So, if Campfield is sincerely not racist, why the hell can’t he find a plausible and applicable scenario under which to object to this law?

But he goes on (warning, may trigger people who have common sense and a knowledge of history):

Yes, I knew how it would look when I voted against this bill. The classic cries of racist would go out. But I know who and what I am (and what I am not). These false attacks do not bother me but they do bother many who fear the impending attacks. I figured all along that was part of the plan of this bill, Some legislators use this type of tactic to pass questionable legislation, to stir up race hatred, to divide us. But I have long believe that a nation divided against itself will not stand. This type of tactic on this issue is one of the worst that is used in politics.

A. Let’s talk about this notion of “stirring up race hatred.”  Some white people seem to believe that black and brown people are just contentedly lounging their days away in a bliss of unawareness of injustice until someone shouts out “Hey, that’s racist” and then the heads go up and the herd starts to stampede.

Black and brown people, on the other hand, will gladly tell you that as much as they might not want to think about race and racial inequality all the damn time, it is virtually inescapable for them.  Mag again: “If you doubt that the nature of abuse and harassment people of color suffer, online or off, differs from that white people experience, then you don’t know what you’re talking about. Oddly, the Internets offer a way for you to verify this fact for yourself.”  And as Mag so brilliantly notes, when you claim that you are being dispassionate, you rarely are–“It is, in fact, taking a side. And the people on the side you’re taking, incidentally, include the bigots, the minutemen, and the invective-slinging racist fuckers.”

In other words, accusing “folks” (i.e. liberal whites and black leaders) of stirring up racial hatred is itself based on the racist premise that, if there weren’t outside smart folks telling black people they were being oppressed, most black people would be too stupid to notice.

Which leads us to B., Campfield’s implication that this legislation is not about healing the wounds of the past, but about fraudulently causing some state legislators to have to vote in a way that would make them seem racist.  Y’all, just dwell on that.  Campfield seems to be saying–“I figured all along that was part of the plan of this bill, Some legislators use this type of tactic to pass questionable legislation, to stir up race hatred, to divide us.”–that part of the plan of this bill is to make him look racist if he opposes it.  Boy howdy, talk about your conspiracy theories.

And C., it doesn’t matter how “But I know who and what I am (and what I am not).” you believe yourself to be, if you keep hearing from folks that you’re racist, guess what? You’re racist.  It doesn’t really matter what’s in your heart, if you go around living your life in such a way as to continually make life difficult for people of color, you are a racist.

Perhaps we don’t need to handcuff Mag to Campfield.  Maybe putting her in a room with him and just letting her laugh at him long and hard would be enough.

In Which I Complete Another Meme

1. Add a direct link to your post below the name of the person who tagged you. Include the city/state and country you’re in.

Nicole (Sydney, Australia)
velverse (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
LB (San Giovanni in Marignano, Italy)
Selba (Jakarta, Indonesia)
Olivia (London, England)
ML (Utah, USA)
Lotus (Toronto, Canada)
tanabata (Saitama, Japan)
Andi (Dallas [ish], Texas, United States)
Todd (Louisville, Kentucky, United States)
miss kendra (los angeles, california, u.s.a)
Jiggs Casey (Berkeley, CA, USA! USA! USA!)
Tits McGee (New England, USA)
Joe (NE Tennessee, USA)
10K Monkeys (Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA)
Big Stupid Tommy (Athens, Tennessee, USA)
Newscoma (Weakley County, Tennessee, USA)
Russ McBee (Knoxville, Tennessee, USA)

Atomictumor (Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA)

CitizenNetmom (Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA)

Tiny Cat Pants (Nashville, TN, USA)

2. List out your top 5 favorite places to eat at your location.

Mothership, of course.

The Tin Roof

Qdoba

Jack in the Box

Wendy’s

Listen, folks, I thought about lying to you, pretending like I’ve got goodtaste and am just running around all the time eating asparagus at Nick & Rudy’s like there’s no tomorrow, sipping on my lemonade and green tea concoction at Starbuck’s, but these places are where I eat, all the time, so I must like them a hell of a lot.

I hang my head in shame.

3. Tag five others.

Whoever wants to join me in my shame.

The Infamous Skirt

We finished most of the work on Supermousey’s skirt on my birthday.  Her mom had to help her with some of the final detailing, but she was a good sport about it.  Thanks, Supermousey’s mom!

One unfortunate side-effect of said skirt making is that they’ve apparently gone ahead and taught Supermousey to iron.  While this is a useful skill to have when sewing, it is a terrible skill to have when doing laundry, I think everyone would agree.

Anyway, Mack took a picture of the final skirt and sent it to me.  I share it with you now so that you may ooo and ahhh over Supermousey’s great work.

I hope Mack will send word about whether she’s wearing it to school.