Oh, Bill, Would You Buy That From Your Kids?

“Yeah, Dad, I did hit him, but not that hard.”

In February, after we at the Tennessee GOP released a light-hearted YouTube video gently mocking Barack Obama’s wife Michelle Obama for her statement that she hadn’t always been proud of her country (until her husband started doing well in the polls, coincidentally), the national media and Democrats went bonkers, claiming we’d “attacked” Mrs. Obama, and even accusing the ad of being racist.

Light-hearted?  Gently mocking?

Bwah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Come on.

Listen, I know you don’t give two shits about what I think, but Bill, if you’re going to do something, own it.  Don’t do it and then spend the next six months trying to spin it as being something other than what it was.  It makes you look weak and, if a person can be both petulant and contrite, you sound petulant and contrite, like you’re not sorry that you did it, you’re just sorry you got caught and that it got out of hand.

No.

Come on.

I think very little good about Campfield, but in this regard, you could take a lesson from him.  Own your actions and either apologize like a grown up or don’t apologize at all.  This “no, really, I was just misunderstood and look, they did the same thing, too” crap doesn’t cut it.

I’m more and more convinced you’re off your game.  This is just another piece of evidence to that end.

So, come on, you can tell us.  Who’s trying to reign you in?

Let’s Just Make Up Medical Facts!

So, the Republicans continue on their quest to define a pregnancy as beginning when a sperm fertilizes an egg, thus making any woman who’s every had sex a potential baby killer, since fertilized eggs get flushed out of our systems unnoticed all the time.

Will they collect all our used tampons and examine each of them for evidence?

Will they start shouting and carrying signs outside of churches protesting the fact that, if pregnancy begins when an egg is fertilized, then the biggest abortionist in the land is God?

I can’t wait.

Hurray!

I just got word from the Butcher that our overly-tattooed friend is coming to visit!  Next week.

This should make for exciting blogging.  Just to recap, the overly-tattooed friend does not speak or read Chinese, but has a tattoo on the back of his neck that says, he believes, pain.  And yet, it is made up of two characters.

I’m pretty sure that pain is one of those concepts that you try to capture in writing early on, back when all the one character concepts are being outlined, but I could be wrong.  I suspect it says “Dumb ass.”

This is the guy who dated a woman with five children, who tried to kill him.  Who dated a woman who was the only person in her immediate family who hadn’t killed someone.  Who went to Amsterdam on a lark to meet a girl who was as in to ICP as he was and then was startled when she turned out to have crazily assumed he would marry her.  Who once made our waitress at Hooters so mad she threatened to stab him.

But, really, he’s very sweet.  If you don’t mind obnoxiousness.

I, myself, cannot wait to see him.  And I for sure cannot wait to recount tales of his recounting tales of his exploits.

Why I Love the NAACP

I have been meaning to blog about this all week, but forgot.

Let’s recap.

–We have a school district.  Until recently, it was headed up by Pedro Garcia, whose goal in superintending seemed to be to throw everything against a wall and see what stuck.  He kind of really sucked.

–But he’s claiming now that he was run out of town because he opposed the resegregation of the school district and the Board would not stand for that.

–We have a school board heavily influenced by the chamber of commerce.

–The chamber of commerce would like to have a school system that would attract people to Nashville.

–Most everyone who can pull their kids out of the public school system does.

–Busing sucks.

–But I can walk to Pearl Cohn High School from where I’m sitting right now and the kids who live around here will be going down to Hillsboro.  Mysteriously.  And by bus.

–The Board knew that the rezoning would create one school–Pearl Cohn–which would hold mostly poor black kids.

–In order to smooth feathers in the community, the Board promised to put $6 million dollars annually towards making Pearl Cohn a non-shitty school.

–BTW, the State has taken over the Davidson County Schools, so it remains undetermined how much the Board can actually act on any of its promises.

Okay, so here’s why I love the NAACP.

In a scene that seemed straight out of the civil rights era, the NAACP has just demanded that the school board reconsider its rezoning plan and, in the meantime, take $6 million from its reserve funds and spend it immediately to begin improving Pearl-Cohn schools.

I am not a poker player, but I believe this is called “calling one’s bluff.”

Oh, Rachel

It cannot happen soon enough.  Maddow is totally my tv girlfriend.

Why Stacey Campfield May Have an Easier Time Winning Reelection than I Though

Someone got to Tiny Cat Pants by searching for “Stacey Campfield orgy soiree” and at first I thought to myself, “Well, Self, if there was any blog in the universe that was going to contain those words together, it would be this one.”

But then I got to thinking–could this be a fundraiser?  Campfield throwing some kind of orgy soiree to flesh out, so to speak, his campaign coffers and this person has just misplaces their invitation and needs to check on, maybe, a starting time?

And, I have to admit, I was a little jealous.  Who exactly would be attending an orgy soiree thrown by Campfield?  What does a person wear to such an event?  Is this just how they swing over there in East Tennessee?

I have so many questions and never in the whole history of blogging have I wanted more for a searcher to come back and explain him or her self.

I Have Become Prejudice Against Stupid People

Or maybe I always was, but just lately I’ve noticed it taking a really ugly turn, like where I’ll be sitting some place listening to someone give directions and I’ll think “I can’t believe I have to sit here wasting my time listening to this stupid person.” or I’ll have to do something for work and I’ll be talking to a vendor and all of a sudden it’ll just pop into my head, “Oh, well, this person is stupid,” and I…

I mean, I know in the grand scheme of things, this is a–funnily enough–stupid thing to be concerned about, but the second I become assured that someone is stupid, I feel like they’re wasting my time.  And, if I feel like they refuse to understand that they are stupidly wasting my time, I get angry that they’re imposing their stupidity on me.

It’s obnoxious.

Especially because I am not the smartest person in the room (unless I’m the only person in the room, and then the opposite is true, too).  I don’t have the most book-learning of anyone and I was pretty much raised in a hermetically sealed tube, so I don’t have much life experience, really.

I have nothing upon which to base this belief that there are stupid people, of which I am not one, whose interactions with me are an insult to me.

And yet it’s there, insidious, this little voice, that I’m not sure how to squash.

I wouldn’t even bring it up, except that it’s kind of escalated into real stupidity.  Yesterday, I had to do something that was at the far end of my ability to do it.  It was, in face, almost too hard for me to do.  And I caught myself, like some petulant sixteen year old, thinking “This is stupid, and fuck them for making me do it.”

You see what I’m saying?  How this went from an annoying personality quirk to a means of self-delusion?

I don’t know.  It took me a back a little bit.

I’m just sitting here thinking about this.  I think all of us have dumbass shit we carry around with us, so I’m not that surprised by the fact that when I draw my “us” and “them” line, it’s between us smart people and those stupid people.  I’m annoyed by how, even though I believe that making those kinds of distinctions is a waste of energy, I still make them–I still want to drop people into slots and treat them on the basis of the slot they drop into and not on the basis of who they are as a person.

But I’m pissed at myself and grossed out to realize that I’m using those distinctions to excuse my own shortcomings.  I cannot do this because stupid people gave me the task to do and therefore it makes no sense.

I don’t like it.  It’s obnoxious and mean and petty.j

And I’m embarrassed to even admit it to you.

Mrs. Wigglebottom Cares Nothing for Social Niceties

We’re walking along and she spots the neighbor, which is nothing new.  She’s spotted the neighbor every day we’ve lived here pretty much. 

But today is the day protocol goes out the window and she sits down, right on the dude’s sidewalk.  I’m all “Come on.  Let’s go.” but have you ever tried budging a 60 lb pitbull anywhere?  I assure you, if that were an Olympic sport, I might actually watch the Olympics, because you’d have to be some kind of cross between the world’s strongest man and the dog whisperer to make that happen.

So, she’s just sitting there; I’m trying to walk down the street.

And then she did just like she does when she wants little kids to approach her, and she laid down.

So, of course dude came over, and she flipped right over for a belly rub.

I’ve never seen her do that with a grown-up she didn’t know.

But maybe walking by him every day, she felt like she did know him.

Still, it warmed my heart.