An Open Letter to H.K. Edgerton

Dear Mr. Edgerton,

I, too, think that Dave Chappelle’s “Clayton Bigsby” skit is one of the most brilliant things I’ve ever seen. And I, too, still feel bummed that Chappelle has moved on from The Chappelle Show.

But I just have to believe that turning that skit into a piece of performance art is going to go right over the heads of most of your audience.  I mean, when they hear you say stuff like, “The most discriminated against person in America is the Christian Southern white man,” I’m not sure they’re going to get that you’re an artist.

You are a performance artist, right?

All Due Respect,

Aunt B.

High Water Everywhere

A dear friend’s grandma died this weekend.  Another dear friend lost her mom. A gal I know in Memphis is only barely scraping by. And I was looking to be distracted tonight, but couldn’t find anything to distract me.

I feel out of touch and like I am spending most of my time living the same day over and over.

And I miss feeling connected to my dead people, and yet I know it’s cyclical, like this melencholy is cyclical, and we all just have to ride it out the best we can, for as long as we can.

There is so much suffering in the world and so much beauty and neither seems to outweigh the other.

I Like American Music

I have to second Southern Beale here.  Wasn’t it just the other day when country music was trying to shed it’s “the music of racist white people” image? And now CMT is inviting Bill O’Reilly to town?

If I were a Unitarian Universalist in this state, I would take that as a spit in the face.

Listen, anybody is free in this country to say what he wants. And, if he can find a platform, anyone is free to listen.  But when people walk into churches and start shooting people and say it was because they were inspired by the work of Bill O’Reilly and you are a music industry that hemmed and hawed and got your panties all in a twist when Martina McBride and the Dixie Chicks wrote songs about killing abusers and someone might have gotten the wrong idea, you look like giant hypocritic assholes.

Two Questions About Commercials You May Have Seen

1. When a facial cream helps prevent sun spots, are they talking about freckles?!

2. I have seen, only once, this commercial that is trying to get money for some kind of childhood leukemia and the whole thing goes something like this:

[Ominous voice] Fifty years ago, if a hundred children contracted this kind of childhood leukemia, only 95 of them would recover. Now, if a hundred children contract this kind of childhood leukemia, five of them will die! That’s still five too many.

Like I said, I’ve only seen it once, but I’m pretty damn sure that they’re trying to use the ominous voice to mislead you into thinking that the death rate for this type of leukemia has gone down dramatically, but really, it’s stayed the same.  Has anyone else seen this?

Does Tim Pawlenty Not Know Who Eminem Is?

I’ve been laughing about this all morning, this idea that young Republicans should be like Eminem, and, when accosted by seemingly-gay, seemingly-unfriendly forces, fight back.

I mean, good god damn, where does one even start in on how hilarious this is?

1. I wouldn’t call Eminem a Democrat, but he was for sure one of the only mainstream artists to get a protest song out against Bush before the 2004 elections.

2. Young Republicans should turn misogyny into an artform so catchy that even arch-feminists like me sing along? Um, yes, let’s not have any more of that, please.

3. Young Republicans should do massive amounts of drugs?

4. Young Republicans should befriend Elton John?

5. Young Republicans should be in on the joke?

Does Tim Pawlenty even know anything about Eminem?

I’m reminded of the research that showed that many Republicans believe that Stephen Colbert is only pretending to be joking, but really, he means every word he says.

Okay, Now. There’s Gun-nuttiness and then there’s ‘Lost Your Damn Mind.’

I tend to be agnostic on the whole “argh, guns everywhere! We’re all going to die!” argument, which I know makes me a bad liberal, but there it is. I am not worried about y’all having guns in restaurants or parks.  Maybe the gun nuts have worn me down or just convinced me, I don’t know.  But that’s the truth.  I do not care.  Go forth, be careful, and for gods’ sake, don’t shoot any innocent people.

And my mother is a teacher and I have many cousins who are teachers and, well, that’s my mom.  Of course I believe she can do no wrong.  And that she would always act appropriately and rationally.  I want to say what I’m going to say without offending the teachers among us.  Please, bear with me.

But I have been to public schools, exclusively, growing up.

And I have to report that this idea of letting adults who work in schools carry guns is quite possibly the stupidest idea in the history of stupid ideas I have heard Republican legislators float this year.  Other than the police who work at the school, the only people I would even remotely consider arming would be the school nurse and the school secretary.  In any school I’ve attended, these seem to be the most level-headed un-involved in the drama people in the school.  In other words, they are the folks you might count on to not use a weapon to make their lives easier.

But other folks? I had an English teacher who, in order to establish what a bully she was, taped the Man from GM into his desk and then taped his mouth shut. Granted, he was annoying, but damn.  I have no doubt she would have pulled out her gun in class to make sure we all knew she had it. There were coaches in my schools who pressured kids to have sex with them, who I’m sure would have backed up their threats of “Everyone will think you’re a slut” with “It’d be a terrible shame if there was an accident.” I can imagine one teacher who spent a whole semester pissing and moaning about giant government conspiracies against him and I don’t think he would have had any problem pulling out his gun and showing us all how to “protect ourselves” from the Feds.

And I know about guns at school.  I grew up at a time when kids came late to school because it was hunting season and had their rifles sitting in their gun racks in their trucks right out in the parking lot. And no one ever was afraid. But I would have been afraid to know that some of the lunatics who had power over me and were unsupervised with me most of the day had weapons.

Really, what a terrible idea.

And let’s not even consider how easy it would be for a determined nutjob student to get his hands on a gun in the classroom.