Today I made chex mix. This could be the most boring post ever, and honestly, I’m kind of posting out of obligation rather than out of having anything to say. I have nothing left to say.
Do you think it’s cheating when cake decorators use fondant covered rice krispy treats for those cake off contests?
Freaking adorable.
The new addition to my desk. Undoubtedly, it’s cut down on productivity, but it’s worth the cost. Rats make wonderful pets. The first rat I received second-hand from one of the first most awesome people I know. He had cancer, which is apparently what rats do. A very supportive person helped me bury him in the backyard, the same day that the next door neighbors were moving in to their new house. I had to go over to the fence with a shovel in my hands and snot all over my face, I introduced myself between sobs. We didn’t really talk again.
The short lifespan is the only downside I can think of. Seriously, look at that face.
You, marginalized person*. Have your feelings about Health Care/the Environment/the future of this country not been reflected by the mainstream media outlets you read? You probably think you’ve been doing the right thing, reading the local paper, checking out CNN.com because you want to remain informed about the world around you. It’s probably pretty depressing. You could assume from reading that trash that those crazy ass teabaggers are going to take over this country and make sure that the only government branch that gets any funding is the military. You could assume from reading that trash that citizenship and discussion is in the shitter, losing ground daily to the right wing nutjobs who seriously think it is cool to torture people and protect the rights of corporate power as if “under Haliburton” was a line in the Pledge of Allegiance.
It’s pretty scary.
But the good news is that the day those fuckers win is the day the United States is no longer the United States. So, while I know it feels overwhelming at times, the good news is that if they have their way this country and the citizens herein will be so royally screwed that this place won’t even be a country anymore, it’ll be a shithole with big guns.
Normally, I don’t toss around the parables of the Bible like some bad leader who just cheated on his wife and walked out on his job, but I’d like to remind the readers of this blog of the parable of King Soloman. You know, the one with the two mothers fighting over a baby, and Soloman decides he’s going to determine who the true mother is by threatening to cut the baby in half? Well, there you go, you need a country ruined by zealots like you need a half a baby.
Disgusting. Possibly the only thing grosser than a whole baby.
*Not the marginalized crazy
Even though this post is only five minutes later than the last, I thought it might send mixed messages if I included my Laura Bush compliments in the same post that I noted this news article:
Seriously. Despite the obvious political leanings of this blog, it should be noted that Laura Bush (whose outfits have been the target of the aforementioned blog), does have some class. The uproar over Obama addressing students has been the sort of insane talk the media has been magnifying. I hope that it doesn’t represent a large percentage of the population, but when it’s on the front page of every media outlet known to man it’s hard to determine just how many people there are who share this viewpoint. Thank you, Laura Bush.
As part of my recent animation obsession, I came across this film by Caroline Leaf. Amazing.
It’s a follow-up to the more performance-art oriented work, youtube, man.
There is absolutely no chance I’ll be able to sleep for awhile.
Fair warning, it’s probably going to be light on the blogging for awhile. I plan on taking a break for awhile, at which point it will be determined whether or not the situation needs to be upgraded to a breakdown.
Really, though, it could be worse.
It’s still the morning of this anniversary of the day when some white, sweaty guys got together and declared their independence from other white, sweaty guys. That being said, some of them were visionaries enough, but most of them were foolish enough to just leave it as “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” It’s a little open-ended, and kind of a long shot, but there you go.
I’ve heard a handful of stories describing the moment that children rebel against violent or oppressive parenting. My mother, who had received a “C” on her report card, was told to go out into the yard and pick a switch for a beating. Furious, she pulled the peach tree that my grandfather had just planted almost completely out of the ground, pulled it in the house and proudly said, “Go ahead, whip me.” This was one of the more brazen independence day stories I’ve heard, but most adults who grew up in houses where child abuse was used as a form of character development began laughing at spankings, or using sarcasm as a weapon, at some point in the process. One acquaintance stopped her mom in her tracks by telling her that she was “meaner than a junkyard dog”, the classic Jim Croce defense. These children then usually grow into obstinate, if angry, productive adults.
Some years later, most of us in the United States are more complacent than anything, but in addition to celebrating fire as both a cooking implement and entertainment source, let’s take a moment to remember the celebration of rights that came from back across the pond in 1982 because, folks, the vision hasn’t been realized quite yet.
At a recent job interview, the interviewer rambled on for about ten minutes about World of Warcraft. What is up with this? Also, thanks to M— for recommending this video which has ruined some kid’s life:
Although I can identify more with the second video.
Speaking of moms, mine has spent all of the waking hours of the last 36 impersonating how I used to close my eyes and stand in place and sing “Billie Jean” when I was a little kid. Remarkably, my stage presence hasn’t changed a lot since then.
What a bizarre song for kids to sing, especially when they’re four.
And no amount of non-stop news coverage can cheapen the fact that “Thriller” was the first album anyone born in my generation can remember. One of my first memories is of playing that cassette at the lake while I was camping with my (still married) parents and my older brother. They’d left me near the shore, probably a total distance of about fifteen feet from where they were making dinner, when the title track came on. I was completely frozen, thinking about how incredibly scared I was of Vincent Price. I distinctly remember the internal debate over whether I was going to run away from the cassette player and risk being made fun of by my dad and older brother, or whether I was going to tough it out. I ran like hell.
Apart from the first completely visceral reactions to music I ever felt, there is no way that my parents would have bought me a black Barbie. The only chance my doll collection had of having any diversity was the Michael Jackson doll. That Christmas I received three from three different relatives. They were the only three African-Americans in my toy box.
My name is Jordan, and I love music and think that racism is wrong. Thank you, Michael Jackson.
