home economics

It just occurred to me that middle school Home Ec taught me nothing about household budgeting. Why the name?

When I walk down the street, I often wonder what passers-by think of when they give me the once-over. I bet its not "there's a girl who folds her underwear."

My intern project, which was to create a 22' high x 6' wide bookcase that appeared to have no visible means of support (just rows of floating books) was canceled due to a miscommunication between the director and the designer. I kinda wish they'd told me before I hacked into those Bibles.

Murphy's scene shop

If you want a cable to slide, it will catch. If you want it to catch, it will slide. Same goes for hoses, casters, keys, and soft goods.

If you cut all your lumber perfectly, it will warp. If you miss a cut it will always be too short. If it does neither, the piece will be cut from the show. so there.

Routers have the most suicidal power cables of any hand tool. Every five seconds they dive in front of the spinning bit, just begging to be torn in two.

You will only find raised nail heads and staples by kneeling...on them.

Homosote will never be square.

If it fits together in the shop, it will find a way not to onstage.

The faster you try to go, the more screws will have malformed heads.

The moment you find yourself proud of what you've made, you'll manage to hurt yourself on it.

drugs

The other day i saw a television advertisement for a new medication targeted at people with "Restless Leg Syndrome"--folks who wiggle so much in bed that they have a hard time sleeping.

Um. Wow. Screw searching for treatments for legitimate diseases, lets patent and sell a drug for folks who don't get enough exercise during the day so they have pent-up energy at night. I have a funny feeling pharmaceutical companies have taken to inventing medical conditions so they can invent treatments for them. Restless legs? Take a walk. Go out, buy a dog, buy a leash, and walk it.

Now I recognize that profits are falling for one of the bigger drug companies after a cholesterol-lowering medication, made available to the public, turned out to have some nasty side effects that got it recalled. It came as a biting hit as they were really counting on the patent revenue from this drug (i think its called Lipitor?) to keep them afloat for the next few years. So i can only assume, now that this product has generated a loss, that they're going to be promoting their less-interesting drugs a bit more vehemently to make up for it. Unfortunately, an unwanted side-effect of this marketing campaign is that they make themselves look like dorks.

And i can only hope that this RLS drug occurred completely by accident. I envision a tired chemist mixing, pouring, looking cross-eyed at a sheet of ingredients, filling an eye dropper with a cloudy pink solution and feeding it to one of his twitchier lab rats through the grating on a sterile aluminium cage. After a few minutes the rodent falls asleep and he checks his vitals, takes some blood, pokes and/or prods the animal and records "day 312: Mopsy's tumor is no smaller, but interestingly, though his resting vitals are all normal, he's less wiggly in his sleep."

If anyone actually funded a project to develop a drug to reduce nighttime twitchy-ness...i think the entire medical community should hang its collective head in shame. That's a waste of money, time, resources, and above all, intellect. I would be so embarrassed to go through twenty years of schooling and get four PhDs, only to get a job heading that product team.

ig·nor·ance

The conscious choice to ignore or refuse truth. see Faith.

ROTFLOL

It occurred to me today, after babbling at someone about the hyper-education of the subordinate classes until his ears started to bleed, that the American general masses have gone from being overwhelmingly illiterate to taking literacy completely for granted in the space of about 150 years. (give or take--some middle class families may be able to claim their ancestors could read from the day they made their first cave drawings, but i'm pretty sure my grandparents' grandparents were lucky if they could scratch their names in the dust.) Throughout the backlog of human history the ability to read was a skill reserved for monks and the wealthy elite. It was a huge dividing factor between the empowered and the disenfranchised castes (other divisions being footwear, suntans, and the right to not grovel.) It has only been within the past few generations that anyone thought public education might be a fun idea, and only very recently (in terms of the history of modern homo sapiens) that women and minorities have gotten the opportunity as well.
And now, in spite of the novelty of these things called words, we've already gotten lazy with them. It started simply, with little acronyms such as "TTFN" and "RSVP" jotted at the ends of friendly letters and informal invitations. Sentence truncation remained infrequent, really, until the 1930's, when the Great Depression settled in. Roosevelt's numerous attempts at tackling industrial health and safety, agricultural production, unemployment, trade, social security, and sustainable energy sources after the 1929 financial collapse led to the mind-bending alphabet soup that dominates the pages of US history textbooks today. From the AAA, NIRA, TVA, and PWA all the way down to the WPA, CWA, and the CCC that hired shoeless farm boys to plant trees in the forest, FDR's nation-rebuilding projects initiated what would soon become a trend of commerical, industrial, and political initialism throughout the twentieth century. From the first broadcast of CBS news, the first sheet of MDF, the first use of SWF ISO SBM in a personal ad, to the swearing in of W, we just can't seem to be arsed anymore to make use of whole words.
The development of text messaging, however, has taken what was once merely a mild grammatical confusion into a whole new dictionary of conjoined consonants. what began innocently enough in replacing "that's funny" with "LOL" has spurned communicative code that would leave Sam Morse scratching his head. Entire paragraphs are now reduced to meaningless jumbles of letters, all punctuated with multiple exclamation points and parentheses-based facial expressions. Written communication as we know it has been reduced to the typing of pithy phrases using as few characters as possible. Maybe its just me, but i feel linguistic development has taken a step back in this regard. Indeed, perhaps several steps back. The text conversation "RUOK?" "SSDD." "OIC." has the same depth of meaning as the exchange "Grunt?" "Snort." "Humph." (as communicated by our pre-cave-dwelling ancestors the month before Urg really worked out fire.) There's only so many phrases you can spit out using sentence acronyms before your friend has to turn off the caps lock to ask "huh?" so perhaps it is an attempt to simplify mundane conversation topics down to nothing so as to leave space in the text block to actually type out more worthwhile, personal, or at the very least situation-specific information. But if we're using acronyms to take the place of social niceties and small talk...doesn't that defeat their purpose? Might as well omit them altogether. I've never gotten the hang of writing in text-message speak and don't think i want to. If something's not worth saying fully, its probably not worth saying at all.

...perhaps, given the average word count of my blog entries and the actual amount of substance I tend to mix into them, i should rethink this stance.

games and recreation

When I was a kid I hated gym class. From first through twelfth grades, I was the Anti-PE. And in retrospect, its no wonder.

The thing is, when it comes to physical exertion, there are several activities I dread: running, hauling, and team sports. Running and hauling hurt, and as any archive-reader will know, I'm of the opinion that pain is your body's way of saying No. I carried a 4'x8' (1.2m x 2.4m) sheet of half-inch MDF about a city block today. These sheets generally weigh about 80 lbs (36kg) and catch the wind like a sail (which, naturally, pushed me backwards). By the time I put the damn thing down my hands were blistered and raw and my arm was tingling. Hauling just isn't fun. I don't understand the appeal of the "world's strongest man" competitions because frankly, all they're doing is heavy labor that nobody in their right mind would do for fun--and only the winner gets paid!

Anyway. Team sports. I despise team sports. I just do not have the enthusiasm for any activity that involves running after or hitting or trying to gain possession of...a ball. Maybe if it involved swords or oranges or something, but certainly nothing so pointless as a ball. What always made it worse in school was the teachers' constant attempts to get you "into the game"--to get you to look like you gave a damn. Yes, i was one of those girls in softball--standing in the outfield, chatting with the other apathetic outfielders about how cute the batter looked in his little gym shorts, and occasionally glancing up as a ball sailed three inches over my head and over the fence. They always told us we were graded on participation, but as there were about 80 students in each class, we figured out pretty early on that "participation" meant "attendance."

Thing is, though, I enjoy a lot of physical activities, but I always hated gym class because they never offered us the option of doing any of them. We always had to line up with tennis rackets and whack a ball over a net or line up with basketballs and try to make a lay-up shot or simply run around in circles for an hour and a half every day. When I was in school, I was a dancer. I have the knees to prove it. I also spent about four hours a day, five days a week practicing (okay, i was in the school color guard. I didn't go to Julliard or anything.) It always struck me as funny when my gym coach would accuse me of being lazy because i couldn't be arsed to chase other children around the football field until i was winded. I always wished they would offer you the option of taking ballet or gymnastics or yoga or something. We got the choice of jock- PE or Marine Corps ROTC, and i figured the former was slightly less likely to get me shot.

When I was really little, PE frequently involved group games that involved a lot of squealing and giggling. Back in the day we played Red Rover (i've heard it was recently banned in schools as too many children were getting broken arms and concussions from it), London Bridge is Falling Down, and one i never quite got on with, Mother May I. For anyone who's never heard of it, Mother May I is played by a medium-sized group of children who all know each other's names. One caller (the "Mother") is at the front, and the other children face him or her from a line a specific distance away. One by one, the Mother orders each child to take a specific number of steps toward or away from him/herself, frequently in a forceful or threatening voice. At which point the called-upon child must remember to ask, "Mother, may I?" and wait for a response before proceeding. The Mother may then choose to respond by saying "Yes you may" or "No you may not" and the child must behave accordingly. If the child fails to ask if he may move, or if he moves too few or many steps, he is thrown out of the game. The first child to reach the Mother wins, and becomes the Mother for the next round.
As an adult, it occurred to me that this game is based upon the notion that all mothers are, in fact, senile. Did your mother ever holler at you to clean your room, even threaten you with punishment if you didn't, then show up in your partly-cleaned room ten minutes later and ask why you weren't downstairs doing your homework? That's kinda the premise of this game. You are given a direct order, made to ask if you are permitted, and then are frequently told you may not do as you were told. Huh?! Its like the conversation, "Go do your laundry." "Do I have to?" "Not a bit. You stay right there and play your video game." I just don't get it. Is the game intended to encourage obedience or sass? If a kid ever responded to an instruction with "mother may i?" to her own mother, she'd be smacked for givin' her attitude. Yet this game has been around for probably centuries in one form or another. It resembles Simon Says in that you're supposed to wait for a specific word or phrase before complying, but i never liked that one either on account of the fact that the teacher usually played Simon or Mother and they barked orders at you like a friggin' drill sergeant. After a while I really wanted to miss a command and wait for them to say "You didn't ask 'mother may i', you're out!" just so i could look incredulous and say "So, what, you're encouraging me to question authority now? Well I'll be damned. And in public school."

Command + P

I'm convinced that color printers are a scam. Everything about them is infuriatingly designed to be as counter-productive and expensive as possible. I'm convinced its a conspiracy on the part of Kinko's and Kodak photo centers in drugstores everywhere to keep themselves in business during the heaviest battle of the D.I.Y. Revolution. These companies and others are relying on the consumer becoming so frustrated with their HP MoneyPit 3000 or their Epson Print-n-Shred that they'll actually cave and come to their stores to have their photos developed the old fashioned way--inside the belly of a giant, whirring contraption that keeps customers and employees alike baffled as to how it works.

To support this claim I provide the classic examples of printer frustration: the persistent paper-jam. the $30 ink cartridges which contain exactly enough ink to print one beautiful, automatic test-page. The refusal of full black cartridges to work until the color one has been replaced. Until now everyone merely assumed it was companies such as Hewlett-Packard keeping themselves contentedly in business, even to the extent that they started giving away printers for free provided you bought a set of inks. But this system doesn't exactly add up.

Think about it. When a product doesn't work, and consistently fails to work, people stop buying it. When a computer OS, for example, is riddled with bugs and virus loopholes and a bizarre tic that freezes your cursor in a corner but still allows you to move around and click things, consumers stop buying it and eventually the manufacturer stops making it. It is no longer a wise business decision to continue making products that people don't want. Thus, the only reason why these shitty rip-off printers keep being manufactured is because people keep buying them. Which is stupid, but somehow--either through advertising, subliminal messaging, or outright ignorance--people keep thinking that its better to put up with this piece of crap than to take their film rolls to the drugstore (which, like hybrid cars, has turned out to Not be cheaper in the long run.)

So long as we idiots keep being swindled by these obviously contrived highway robbery systems, the printer manufacturers are not going to improve their products. They don't have to, and moreover they don't want to. They're benefiting from our continued purchasing of inefficient, jammy, shoddy printers--ink sales are up, replacement printers are up, home repairs are impossible. Then Krishna Copy and print labs are there to catch the rest of the people who've gotten fed up enough to toss their personal printers in the bin. No matter what, unless you can employ a personal scribe, you have to use these people's services in order to run business and maintain personal affairs. The modern world has not yet reached a point at which we can function without the ability to put words on paper, so we are essentially these people's pawns. Me, i'm just going straight digital from here on out.

ooh me back

General inquiry directed toward any and all who may casually read this blog--my back is killing me. every morning i wake up kinked all to hell and it lingers all day. I've tried putting a sheet of plywood under the mattress to give it some back support, i've tried it with egg crates and memory foam and without, i've changed out pillows, i've even tried sleeping on the floor. i still hurt!
i exercise regularly and sleep just about 8 hours a night. i'm a theatre carpenter and spend my working hours lifting, hauling, and using high-torque power tools, but i've been doing this for years without adverse effects and i'm still young. So--question time: does anyone know a way to improve a shitty bed (note: the bed provided in my temporary housing is sized to comfortably fit a ten-year-old pygmy...but my bedroom is also appropriately sized for such a being) without caving and buying a new bed that i'll only use for the next three months?

in other news, i think i have found the evil "left wing liberal media" that the white house made such a stink about a few years ago. its called MAD magazine. they've completely given up on subtly criticizing the president and are even today warping our nation's youth with blatant statements of dissent concerning our nation's foreign and domestic policy. And to think, i was about to let my 12-year subscription lapse.

Why are we jaded?

I am a member of a generation that has gotten a pretty impressive amount of attention for its lack of enthusiasm, sarcasm, frustration, and crossed-arm stance toward pretty much everything that crosses its path. I was pondering the reason behind this on the way to work, and after a short walk had accumulated a pretty hefty list of causes for an entire age group to be overwhelmingly more jaded than the previous one.

I should start off by mentioning that i didn't start the morning with the question "why do I have a chip on my shoulder about the world?" but rather the question "Is there any way I could get a job at Google?" (the answer is no.) I like Google as a corporation, and I realized it's because their image promotion is directed squarely at people like me. Google is popular among recent college grads who are broke, can't find entry-level employment, can't afford housing, and honestly can't afford anything even resembling a luxury item. They're grumpy that there's heaps of new technology and gadgets and shiny objects in the world that they can't have.

Google, of course, offers the bulk of its products and services to the public free of charge. The only snag is that they post an unobtrusive list of ads everywhere you go, which most people have learned to ignore. Most of the time ads piss us off--the pop-ups that resist every blocker, the flashy obnoxious ones that induce seizures, the "you're the ten-millionth visitor" banners that mislead children and the elderly--indeed, internet-based advertising has done nothing to improve anyone's sales since its inception. But Google's ads are polite. Discrete. Apologetic, even, as though they begrudgingly post them as a means of paying the bills so they can offer you, the impoverished techno-geek, their cool programs for free. As though they want you to believe that they're philanthropists slaving for the public good and wanting nothing in return.

Which explains, of course, why Google is a massive, multi-billion dollar company. The whole image is a complete sham, but it works wonders on the jaded mind. See, poor people like folks who give away things for free. Unfortunately, though, the new generation of educated poor people expect there to be a catch, so we're reluctant to take that which is given to us. We expect the ads, the sermons, the viruses, the pickpockets, and the fine print that go along with free things. People don't give things away for free unless they expect a mighty return on the investment.

So what Google does, then, is put up the ads and plainly say "we know you're expecting a catch, and that's it. right there. Money doesn't grow on trees." They give you the illusion of showing all their cards. But oho! Turns out the last card in their hand is the one they've convinced us we don't want to see. That, of course, being that Google is an advertising company. They turn a very sweet profit off of their discrete advertisements. And they do it through trust. A Gmail user understands the agreement of ads for free products, and assumes Google is out there for them. They logically can conclude, then, that any company Google would be willing to do business with is staffed with nice people too, and, just as a favor to the generous free-stuff provider, folks click the ads occasionally. To show their support for what's going on. Well, naturally, those clicks add up and Google's clients pay up. Everybody gets what they want, especially Google.

Similar arrangements can be seen on any Comedy Central webpage, where the words "Payin' the bills" are scrawled over the ad banners. Its an apology. It makes the company look humble so you don't grumble when faced with them. So Comedy Central turns some cash for hosting ads and you keep coming to the site. Brilliant. (It goes without mention that comedy central and Google are frequented by the same sort of patronage.) Serious advertisers will pay a lot of money now to have their commercial not only seen, but given attention. Most will agree that any company that advertises via false offers, flashing lights, and flying pigs is going to go down on every viewer's "no" list. As in "No way in hell do i want whatever you're trying to sell."

So, as I was saying, I'm a member of an increasing number of startlingly jaded young adults. And i came up with some reasons why. It's really quite rational, given the context of our lives.

We're jaded because we've just spent between four and six years and between ten and fifty thousand dollars to get a piece of paper that clearly states we're just as dumb as everyone else.
Moreover, we've got proof that we're a dozen times more intellectually capable than the person the majority of our countrymen elected to be our executive leader and we're getting turned down by temp agencies.
We're jaded because we live in a diverse, multicultural, international country that is in the process of erecting walls to keep out foreigners.
We're jaded because, although we live in an age in which every magazine cover screams that a good sex life is vital to physical and mental health, our Puritanical society consistently tells us to keep our bits to ourselves.
We're jaded because big corporations have replaced edible food with corn syrup and petroleum derivatives. These same corporations keep their employees locked up throughout all daylight hours, seated, squinting at computer monitors, breathing canned hi-rise air. These same corporations fund research into the American obesity problem, which points to poor diet and lack of exercise. These Same corporations air ads stressing the importance of an active lifestyle, plenty of sunshine, and healthy food, and blame the individual's poor nutrition choices for their newfound Type II diabetes. These SAME corporations...are the only people hiring.
We're jaded because the will of the masses is repeatedly consulted and ignored by the government.
We're jaded because we're smarter than everyone ever and we're still considered members of "the masses."
We're jaded because television has been reduced to cameras following boring people around through their boring daily lives, but we still squirm through the commercial break to find out what happens next.
We're jaded because we pay a lot of money for curbside recycling pickup but we hear homeless people pick the bottles out of the bin and take them to the center for their own profit.
We're jaded because even the church has conceded that there's no meaning to life, but we'd feel silly to just end it.
We're jaded because we're capable of realizing all of this, and yet helpless to do anything about it.

Feel free to add your own!

unemployable

So i was lookin' on Craig's List today at housing in theatre-friendly cities. Y'know, big, overpopulated cities with high crime rates, few available jobs, and insanely expensive rent. The kinds of towns in or near which I would have to live in order to do the job I'm most qualified for. The kinds of towns I, along with every other claustrophobic person in the world, despise.

And y'know what? The career I've chosen to pursue directly prevents me from being able to afford housing within a four-hour commute from any of these cities. The only way I'd be able to do it and contribute a fair part to payment is to share a one-bedroom flat with four or five other people. Which, frankly...no. Sharing a room with one rarely-present girl in uni was unpleasant enough (as anyone who's heard the "Chinese food made into the bed for a week" story can vouch for) and i think i've outgrown the stage of life in which i'd be content to climb into a bunk at sleepaway camp. The only adults i've ever known of to do that are soldiers, prisoners, and the occasional renaissance faire performer.

In the Bay area its $500/month to rent a trailer park space. Not even a trailer. Just an open spot on the ground that someone says its okay for you to park in. Pay half a thousand dollars monthly for 32x10 feet of...space. Just enough room for you to back in your wheeled house and be able to hear your neighbors whispering with the windows closed.

My question is this--who the hell thought cities would be a good idea? "I have a brilliant plan--lets cram millions of people into the tiniest amount of space possible--make 'em crawl into each other's laps if we have to--where all other flora and fauna (excepting mildew and cockroaches) asphyxiate and die and the human inhabitants are choked on the stench of their own compacted bodies. Let's then make it so expensive to have a home here that everyone must work two full-time jobs to afford the luxury of crawling into someone else's lap to sleep. Then, let's make it so expensive to run a business here that employers will have to make do on the smallest number of employees possible, creating rampant job scarcity! Tada! A recipe for producing the highest per-capita rates of homelessness, anxiety disorders, drug abuse, and overall failure in the country. So why do people move here in the first place? Why on earth would anyone subject themselves to this sort of torture? Why, because its the promised land of opportunity!

And if you don't live in or around a city you probably live in Nowheresville, South Carolina and don't have all of your teeth. Which is fine, if you didn't want them anyway. Because there really aren't opportunities outside of cities. Its just unfortunate that there really aren't opportunities in them either.

little notes

I love the feeling of having just learned something new. For a few elated moments it's as though I'm the only person in the world who knows, and I feel empowered. Like when i was 8 and learned that "s/h" stood for "shipping and handling."

Berkeley consistently has gorgeous sunsets. The locals barely notice them, they're so frequent, but i secretly wonder if they're what the tolls pay for.

I recently made a Myspace friend. I was so stunned that an actual person wanted to talk to me on account of common interests, without wanting me to buy anything, attend an overpriced concert, or put any component of herself on or in any component of me, that I very nearly clicked "disapprove." Any time it looks like someone is using Myspace for the use it was intended it must be a hoax.

"We want the finest wines available to humanity. We want them here, and we want them now." -Withnail, Withnail and I

Subconscious Sadism

Over the past few months I've had a series of dreams in which I've lost body parts. Most recently my sleeping mind decided it'd be funny to lop off my left pinkie toe, but before that I had my tongue cut out with kitchen shears and lost a leg up to the hip. I Googled "amputation dream" and found a series of dictionary/advisory/astrological sites which all suggested I felt "trapped in an unpleasant situation" or "silenced by an oppressive home or job." i.e. I'd lost the parts of me used for moving around or speaking. Others mentioned castration anxiety (. . .) or amusingly vague and multi-purpose responses such as "you're worried about a difficult situation that you're going to have to address." and "you have a lot of stress in your relationship."

As cute as that is, I honestly think I'm just scared of losing bits of myself in the power tools at work. Knock on wood.

Open A Window

I am the anti-smell. Scented candles make me nauseated. Bathroom fresheners cause my temples to throb. Odor-eliminating sprays are my #1 migraine trigger. It Baffles me that people spray nasty chemicals into the air in their stuffy houses to "freshen" them, and then they proceed to stay in the room and Breathe that shit. Ever read the side of a bottle of Febreze? "odor eliminator" is considered an ingredient. I consider that a massive unpronounceable compound that someone figured they'd simplify. Some sort of noxious, plastic, cinnamon-inspired completely-artificial vein-inflaming horror has been reduced to "odor eliminator" on a brightly decorated spray container. Frequently these have warning labels that say "may be harmful to children or pets." but not harmful to you, you grown-up purchaser of pressurized stench. It may kill Fido but you'll come out with little more than a nagging head cold and a depleted immune system. Because This stuff is good for the air and your brain cells. That's why Corporate America encourages you to spray it directly into your nose--so you'll unlearn the dangers of huffing vaporized industrial particles and BUY MORE.

...someone put one of those stink-cones in my house. Two hours after I removed it my head still hurts and I'm dizzy.

on sports and sugar

I gotta say, I am so proud of myself for not dating a sports fan. I don't know how golf widows do it. So frequently I hear my friends' young men babbling excitedly about whatever sport is in season--how the player slammed the puck straight out of the court with the bases loaded with ten seconds left to score the winning touchdown. I see them running around, using furniture and pillows to re-enact the momentous scene, even going so far as to mimic the player's particular end-zone dance, to prove to their dearest loves that this is only the awesomest thing to happen in the history of the universe. I see my friends' eyes glaze over as soon as the word "basketball" is uttered, and I watch their default game-faces set in like a dose of Botox. You know the ones--the smile that doesn't quite reach the eyes, the frequent nod of understanding, the occasional "ooh, wow!", and the gradual development of a twitch in the right side of the face that worsens as time draws closer to the Superbowl. I listen as these patient ladies comfort their distraught mates when their teams lose in spite of everything--blame the refs, blame the weather, blame anything to keep the boy from crying. They hum the school's fight song like some grim travesty of a lullaby and stroke their greasy heads that reek of so much cheap beer.
I do not envy these women. I have no patience for sports and even less for the people who enjoy them. I do not understand people who's evenings are made or ruined according to the behaviors of people they do not know who get paid whether or not they win. I don't understand the joy or the grief of game watching. The last time I watched a football game the only thing I recall feeling was my ass going numb on the aluminium bleachers. It was not a joyous experience.

In other news, since I moved to California I've decided to eliminate corn syrup from my diet. It has gone well and i feel that i am eating more healthily than ever before. Moreover, it is very easy to avoid chemical foods out here--in fact, there are chains of grocery stores here that exist on the very premise that food should be healthful and inexpensive. What a concept. Unfortunately, when i went to the east coast this winter I was reminded that this is not the case for everyone. Entire areas of the country know nothing about the contents of their food, and have no other option for sustenance than the preservative-riddled, corn-sweetened, petroleum-based offal sold by Wal-Mart. WHEN DID AMERICA DECIDE PLASTIC COULD BE SOLD AS FOOD?

You wanna know why American children are overweight? Even the ones who don't have playstation threes? You're feeding them bright pink corn-syrupy garbage. Just because the advertisers can get away with calling Lucky Charms "part of a complete breakfast" doesn't mean its okay to feed to toddlers.

What's that? You say you don't feed your toddlers bright pink food but they're still fat, ADD, lethargic morons? READ THE INGREDIENTS. Most "whole wheat yes this is good for you" bread is full of high fructose corn syrup, maltodextrin, hard-to-pronounce sweeteners and bizarre chemical combinations that are not good for you. They sell it as "healthy" because its brown and the first ingredient is unbleached wheat flour. But read the rest of them. Yeah, all the rest of them. Get out your periodic table and figure out which lab-developed molecule you're eating today because Post or General Mills wanted to cut corners on raw ingredients.

General rule of thumb: If it ain't found in nature, its not food. That's not to say rocks and arsenic Are food, but let's be reasonable. Scientists invented trans fats because they thought they'd be better for you. Now they're killing people. Oops. Chances are, 20,000 years of species development has figured out a lot more about what's edible than 50 years of molecular science. I'm waiting to hear that Omega 3 fatty acids are a carcinogen or the inevitable "okay, we lied, there's no such thing as good or bad cholesterol." The country only started having pandemic obesity and obesity-related disease problems since we moved our jobs inside and started eating silicone. Somebody please pass a law. We must make healthy, chemical-free food readily available to the general masses if we don't want to watch our national IQ plummet even lower.

observations from a window seat

Flying over the American west today I noticed that terraced hills look exactly like topographical maps when covered in snow.

You want your two year old to stop whining. We want your two year old to stop whining. If speaking gently to them is ineffectual at reaching this goal, why not try your parents' method? You can't make a child feel emotions he's yet incapable of feeling (guilt) and you can't use explanations he's yet incapable of understanding. Children are simple creatures--telling a spoiled toddler to be quiet "because its nice" is like telling my three-legged cat to stay inside tonight "Because its safe." Actions speak louder than words.

There are some seriously isolated people farming in northern Utah. I wonder if they're paranoids.

The Midwest is so square its scary. Not only is the ground divided up into big regular squares, but the roads between them are straight lines, the houses on the roads are of similar shape and evenly spaced, and the streetlights could have been placed with a ruler.

Today i got two sunrises--one from the air, which is always a treat, and another on the ground about an hour later and a time zone westward. Breathtaking. All westward-headed flights should leave at six am.

If you get to your gate two hours early, don't go to sleep. Your flight might move to another end of the airport without you noticing. That said, it is a good idea to travel in running shoes.

Nebraska+Snow=sliced birthday cake

In-flight movies these days are followed by reality tv shows and advertisements. Added to the "Snackbox" program (wherein, after having your healthy, inexpensive lunch confiscated at security, you're expected to fork over cash for a box full of junk food on the plane), the sheer number of McDonald's restaurants in every terminal, and one's ability to buy a la-z-boy recliner from the Skymall and I can't help but notice that airlines are taking advantage of the fat, brainless American in all of us.

jack-o-tree

i gotta say, whenever i have my own house, i'm gonna set up my holiday decorations special. in the spirit of oddball pagan rituals, i'd like to grow a fir tree in my back yard and periodically decorate it--with candles, berries, wooden carvings, and (best of all) top it with a large, grinning, glowing jack-o-lantern. just to make the odd person stop, think, and call me a jackass.

I Don't Brake for Jaywalkers

Berkeley residents, if you feel the need to dart into and through traffic, you better know--you're doing it at your own damn risk. I am sick to the teeth of my groceries spilling everywhere because I have to slam on my brakes for some asshole who has decided to run out in front of me against my green light. SORRY, but this is the only country in which that is endorsed by traffic enforcement. Everywhere else in the universe knows that traffic laws pertain to EVERYONE--motorists, pedestrians, bikers--hell, even trains and light aircraft. ("no, this is a Freeway, not a Runway. see the difference?") Why is it that foot-traffic gets to break the rules and we have to friggin' tiptoe around them like they're special? And don't fucking flip me the bird when you hear my brakes a-squealin'--you should get down on the fucking asphalt and THANK ME FOR NOT MAKING YOU PEDESTRIAN PURÉE.

Cyclists, this applies to you too. No, Members of Critical Mass, You Do Not Have The Right To Direct Traffic. Don't hold up your fucking hand to "stop" me while all eight hundred of you BLATANTLY VIOLATE traffic LAW and turn left in the middle of a red light. There's a REASON traffic laws exist. For your and my safety. I don't want to see you get killed, but you have to recognize that you're pissing off Everyone whom you're inconveniencing. You're not proving a point--you're being arrogant.

I really want one of you to tell me that this is for the sake of the "revolution"--that Berkeley still has what it takes to come together and fight for the common good. That doesn't exist anymore. Berkeley has become a fancy-pants exclusivist genius resort that bizarrely plays host to an inordinate population of delirious beggars and drug-addicted transients. the once-proactive hippies are now a sad lot of confused elderly folks who wander the streets during their lucid hours and spend the rest of their time watching the ants in People's Park. Berkeley is little more now than a rusting hull of a revolution, a modern Roman ruin, attracting tourists curious about how it used to be. We live in a world in which people need their cars. Motor vehicles in America are not a luxury--they are vital to business and family. We live in a very big country which is incapable of providing reliable public transportation outside of major urban areas, and nobody has figured out how to transport anything larger than a backpack using any method of transit outside of a car. The fact that you have time to get stoned and ride around the streets with your little friends is not an indicator that other people aren't on the clock, hauling stacks of lumber in the back of a pickup truck. Some people have to work for a living and aren't going to appreciate your roadblocks which stink of privelege and frivolity. You're not sticking it to the Man, man. You're sticking it to me--a young, poor, liberal, pro-choice, pro-gay, atheistic, Berkeley Bowl-shopping, recycling, artistic, theatre employee.

Listen to your mothers. Stop playing in the road. You'll get hit by a car.

on heavy metal...

I've never understood why the word "metal" signifies a type of screechy, screamy, incomprehensible noise that some people refer to as "music." metal is only loud when you cut it. true, welding produces bright light and grinding throws sparks everywhere, so perhaps some of the onstage pyrotechnics used in metal concerts would be reminiscent of this, but i don't think that's what the gist is. as a welder, it is my principal responsibility to make structures that are sound and safe to be on and around. i grind down sharp edges and everyone knows not to touch a weld until it has cooled.

more to the point, "heavy" metal is just that. it weighs a lot. thick steel plating, iron pigs, and lead sinkers are...heavy. Aluminium, conversely, is not, and makes for light, sturdy ladders and trusswork.

If the name "metal" is in reference to the painful noise, heat, and sparks given off when one cuts steel box with an abrasive saw...that's hardly a good association to make with a sound that you'd like for people to listen to. Indeed, OSHA requires we wear eye and ear protection when we make those sorts of noises.

There's nothing offensive, edgy, or spectacular about metal. I don't get it. Maybe I'm just trapped in the mundane.

Frankenstein

Well, it was a long and arduous task, but my battle with Mary Shelley's life-defining work has come to a close. It was quite possibly the most overwritten book I have ever had the misfortune to borrow, recorded onto nine impeccably-maintained cds. Had it been my burden to endure this monster in its written form never would I have gotten past the first page. Yet with the same fervor with which the titular character was espoused so did I perservere to pursue this hideous wretch of a literary endeavor to its acrid end. The redundancy with which I was met on every track of this wretch was infinitely intolerable and i met with this calamity repeatedly and over again. I met each repetition with sadness and despondency, but as it grew into anger time and again i found it quelled by the slightest intimation of a potential development, only to be delayed in discovering it by the repetitions of still more declarations of intent and lamentations on the infinite desolation and accursed soul of the speaker.
The author herself would have benefitted greatly from the acquisition of a tube of wite-out and the purchase of a thesaurus. Indeed, entire verbose and i'm sure laboriously created chapters could have been omitted to the benefit of the story and its listener. Months worth of story and thousands of fevered hours spent in illness and insanity on the part of the speaker could have been left on the table and the agony of the scientist and his creation would not have been overlooked. Pages of exclamations upon Elizabeth's cherished beauty and caricature-like flatness and simplicity of goodness could have been omitted--indeed, she needn't have spoken or been referred to at all--and the horror of her demise could have driven Victor to his fervent desire for revenge. The entire narrative could have been reduced to a four-page short story and the tale would not have gone unappreciated. But in the style of those authors paid by the word did Shelley produce her action-bereft, character-undeveloped, overstated, overdeclaimed, overdwelt-upon piece of fiction, and only the gentle touch of hollywood's scalpel could reclaim this harrowing tale from an eternity of obscurity and isolation.
Oh Mary. Your marriage to a self-absorbed, condescending, chauvanistic upper class twit did you no benefit. His tendency to wax lyrical on the gloom brought by the west wind and his insistence that poetry be viewed as a legitimate career must have caused great damage to your frail, insecure, feminine sensibilities. What began as a harrowing tale befitting fireside disclosure became a heap of meaningless platitudes coupled with redundancy and an increasing number of utterances of words such as those viewed here. Oh that you had edited! Oh that your tale were legible! Oh miserable wretch!

clawback hammers and existentialism

There is a vortex in the doorway to the toolroom. I'm not sure why or how, but the moment you pass through the frame all knowledge of what you went in there for magically escapes you. Its not just me, either--frequently I enter the room to find my coworkers with furrowed brows, concentrating hard on a shelf of pneumatic tools, trying to remember if they came in for a framing nailer or earplugs.

The taste of spiced apple cider reminds me of being ten and participating in a winter play at the James K. Polk birthplace. I was clad in 19th century backwoods garb my mother had made and I recall running around with similarly-dressed children while tourists and history buffs watched us with amusement. I took a sip of steaming cider and was astonished to discover that it didn't burn my tongue. It was only years later that i learned the principles of steam and realized it was really just that cold outside. In that same sip i swallowed a clove and thought i'd poisoned myself.

a foot has twelve inches. not ten. NOT TEN. Sheez i'm bad at math.

The play "All Wear Bowlers," which runs now through the 23rd at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, is an example of some of the finest humor since the invention of the sight gag. I love it. Everyone in the Bay area should see it. Be sure to sit in the front row.

I realized recently that I don't have trouble hearing, I'm just really lousy when it comes to listening comprehension. I'm listening--i swear. And i heard you. But my brain registered "Your mom's a lesbian spider" when you said "This is some delicious cider."

I had a dream recently that a doorframe I was building was out of square by 1/16." While this sounds like a pretty lame, mundane form of subconscious amusement, i'll have you know I burst forth from that reverie in a cold sweat. The following morning I checked said doorframe, found it to be square, and was so relieved that i did a little dance.

I have a love/hate relationship with the color red. I love to wear it, and in return it looks awful on me.

I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but the other day I was listening to the radio and an economist was explaining with excitement that the estimated number of miles driven by Americans had dropped by one percentage point since last year. He went on to say that his firm had believed the $2.00/gal price of petrol would have caused the reduction, but it actually took prices closer to $3.00 to actually make an impact. Now... the statement "guesstimated number of miles dropping one percentage point" aside, it gives one cause to wonder if there's not some team of mole-people out there watching a bank of computer monitors day in and out and tweaking the prices of things just to watch our reactions. Either that or they're carefully figuring out the magical price to set on petrol that will simultaneously keep up demand, reduce emissions, maintain fear and loathing of the middle east, and keep the masses from rising up and demanding that the government improve and reduce the cost of public transit.

When you don't have homework, you don't get to procrastinate. I'm writing this, honestly, because i don't have anything better to be doing.

darlin

if you're reading this rather than working on your essay, I think that means you should be updating your own blog. its been a month.

Kristen's helpful dish-washing tips

Because most college graduates don't know.

Handwashing

1. All dishes must be washed in hot water. Not cold, not warm, not even tolerable on the hands. The water should scald. You ain't a princess--get used to it.

2. It's the new millennium. All dishes should be washed one by one in RUNNING WATER. DO NOT plug the sink and allow the water to stagnate. Sitting water collects gunk from other plates and swills around bacteria and grossness (read: i wash my hands in the kitchen sink after work. Do you really want sawdust and tool oil on your spoon?).

3. All dishes should be washed with a degreasing detergent.

4. Stuck-on food bits must not make it into the dish drainer. If its stuck, guess what. Its your job to scrape it off. For metal, the best tool for this is steel wool. For plastic and wood you're best off with the scrubby side of a sponge. For Teflon, congratulations: you've succeeded in doing exactly what it tried to prevent. Rub hard with the soft side of a sponge. Do not scrape at Teflon. For glass i use a razor blade or matte knife.

5. Your hands are grosser than your mouth. Be sure to always scrub handles.

6. Wash the backs of frying pans every time you use them, even if they don't look dirty. There are few things grosser in the cabinet than sticky frying pans. If ick collects on them anyway, take an afternoon and scrub them with comet or a shiny-pan powder.

7. Do not put dirty dishes in the cabinets. That's just rude.

8. If you share your kitchen facilities with others, wash your dishes within 24 hours of using them. You ain't a princess.

9. Do not wash other people's dishes unless you are compensated for it. If you grudgingly wash your lazy flatmates' dishes you are a PATSY.

10. Always RINSE all soap from dishes before draining.

DISHWASHER

1. Home dishwashers do not scrub dishes, contrary to what the ads say. Do not put food with stuck-on chunks or dried smears of sauce in personal dishwashers. The only time this will actually work is if you have one of those massive industrial dish-smashers.

2. Never put wood, Teflon, or cut crystal in the dishwasher. wood will warp, teflon will wear away, and cut crystal will grow cloudy. (glass gradually grows cloudy too but its cheaper to replace.)

3. Lightweight, small dishes go in the top rack with at least 1cm of space between all dishes. Try to start at the back and fill forward to make the best use of space.

4. All dishes should have their reservoir end facing down. I.e. turn your bowl over so it don't get full of pondwater.

5. Be sure all dishes are securely placed between pegs so they don't fly around and damage other dishes.

6. Be sure no dish is likely to fall to the bottom of the washer. This especially goes for plastics, which will melt to the heating element (ruining the dish and stinking up the house.)

7. Never put stainless steel and silver in the same load. It will cause the silver to tarnish. I don't know why.

8. Liquid dish detergent usually works better than powder. Unless you want to spend a Saturday cleaning chunks of congealed powder out of your drain.

9. Spoons like to spoon. be sure to have them separated and, as much as possible, alternating up and down in the cutlery section. Dirty little spoons.

10. If the dishwasher has been run but not emptied, either wash your dirty dish by hand or put the clean dishes away. Don't leave it in the fucking sink.

voting rights

I divorce you, South Carolina. I stuck through for the good times and plenty of the bad, but you've publicly embarrassed me three times in one week and honestly i think you're doing it on purpose.

First it was the frat boys in Borat, saying nasty things about women and minorities. Then, though, they actually sued the movie studios for displaying just how prejudiced and idiotic they are. Way to go. Way to put my alma mater on the map. Way to reinforce the rest of the world's already-pathetic opinion of us.

But you went too far on Tuesday by voting--6 to 1, no less--to amend the SC constitution to include the most blatant prejudice on record since the civil rights movement.

I know that marriage is already defined by SC law as one woman and one man, but this doesn't just say that. It is worded to indicate that gay couples and any other pairings considered civil unions have no rights at all--as parents, homeowners, will executors, or anything else that people sign for together. It will force homosexual couples to pretend to be single, roommates, or merely "good friends" if they want to live together, raise children, and entrust one another with their health and safety. It also encourages employers to not offer insurance coverage for their employees' non-traditional spouses, prevents family hospital visitation rights, and, in essence, forces overtly gay people back into their quiet little closets, thank-you-very-much.

While I doubt this legislation will be used to take people's children away, it will wrap parenthood up in a lot of red tape and may change the names around on adoption documents and mortgages. What a big stinking waste of people's time and energy, just so the godbotherers can feel good about themselves for ridding themselves of the pesky eyesore that is anyone who isn't them.

Naturally, the ACLU filed the discrimination lawsuit the second the votes were tallied. Hopefully the courts will overturn this in the next few years, though it will take a lot of unnecessary work and money to do so. Seems its always more costly for the government to dig itself out of its actions than for it to just leave things alone.

The unfortunate thing about this is, though, for once its not the government just speaking on the part of the people without consulting them. Hundreds of thousands of SC residents voted yes for this. For many people this was the one reason they came out to vote at all. To vote yes for prejudice and have their own tax dollars wasted on preventing it from becoming law. Way to go.

This has gotten me thinking, grumpily as usual, and I believe its time the right to vote was reevaluated. No more of this "anyone can do it so long as they're 18" rubbish. Since when did age indicate a capacity for rational thought? Moreover, since when did the government actually trust the common man to make decisions? The Electoral College was established for a reason. Fact of the matter is, if you allow idiots to vote for what they want, you land society back in the dark ages of civil liberty.

Morons vote for religion, arrogance, and hatred.
Smart people vote for what they believe will benefit everyone, regardless of who they are or how they live.

What this country needs is not an AGE limit to vote, but an EDUCATION limit. Nobody who hasn't at least gotten accepted to an accredited 4-year university should be allowed to punch a ballot card. I don't care if you graduate or even if you go, but your base intellect needs to be evaluated by a legitimate college admissions board before the state accepts you as a qualified voter. Some religious fanatics and assholes will manage to get through this screen, but I think this would tip the scales significantly toward reason when it comes to public referendum. And, as an added bonus, it may encourage your more vehemently ignorant jerks to go to college and become enlightened. What a way to benefit the commonwealth! Force them to do something good for themselves in order to get what they want! Get South Carolina out of the sty and into the parlor with the civilized folk.

minnie

I have four different copies of Cab Calloway's career-defining "Minnie The Moocher"--three of which were recorded by Calloway himself. Odd.

I saw Borat tonight. wow am I embarrassed. Any longtime reader may know I graduated from the University of South Carolina. As if my theatre degree wasn't useless enough...now my school has been publicly shamed in huge blockbuster film that makes SC students out to be racist, misogynist, pro-slavery, ignorant...

Oh wait. We already knew that.

I applaud your efforts, Mr. Cohen, but unfortunately as a born-n-bred southerner i have to say...brilliant film. Hilarious film. Acutely accurate and revealing film. But you've done nothing to enlighten the greater mass of Americans. The people who resemble the caricatures you've drawn aren't going to get that you're pointing out how ridiculous they are. I know hundreds of people who will laugh at the body humor, agree with Borat's views on human rights, and nod self-righteously at the church politicians. Those who take offense to it are just going to become even more xenophobic and isolationist and support the terror war and W even more.

I can just hear the ladies in my neighborhood commenting around the bus stop next week about it..."well its good to hear that dirty-mouthed man found the way of the lord, at the very least."

Its sad to acknowledge, but the only people who are going to find the intelligent humor in this film are the people who can't stand the genre of folk in it anyway. The people who most need to understand the message of this film have no idea what you're saying.

Bootsie-Tootsie

Thanks Josh.

on the subject of taboo

all right you Freuds out there, whip out your pencils, 'cos i've been thinking about sex lately. unfortunately...not really in a fun way, but with the self-righteous disdain i usually reserve for politics and ex-boyfriends.

To state the obvious, many Americans want young people to be taught that sex before marriage is a really, really bad idea. Many laws have been passed to make sure that not only are children and teens taught the government-edited version of human reproduction, but that they understand it is wrong, dangerous, and frightfully uncool until a judge and a preacher permit it between you and only one other person of the opposite gender. Parents, educators, clergy members, and police officers alike are unified in their desire to see young people remain face-twitchingly horny until they've jumped through the appropriate hoops and signed the dotted line indicating that they're now permitted to fulfil a need their entire physiology has required for a decade or more.

I have touched on this topic before, but it never really occured to me to consider the history of what is now called "abstinence-only sex education." I remember all too well shuffling uneasily into the gym bleachers and observing fuzzy line drawings of my reproductive anatomy while a coach droned on about the dangers of STDs. I recall feeling horror and revulsion when a dry, flaccid condom was passed to me by the twelve year old to my left and hearing sob-stories about infections and childhood pregnancies. But until this week i never really thought to wonder Why all this emphasis was placed on deterring the young and unwed from getting jiggy. Is it to curb the spread of infection? No--in this country little tax money is spent on medicine so its not really hitting people in the pocketbook. Most people don't care if others have disesases, so long as they don't, and anyway the government doesn't give a rat's ass about young people's health or well-being. (They recruit young people to go get shot at, for chrissakes.) Is it to prevent unwanted pregnancy? Again no--the fact that someone is married is not an indicator that they want children, and thanks to hormone technology babies can be prevented until they're wanted regardless of marital status. Okay, then, it must be because Jesus said so. ...Still no. Though the Bible does speak out against adultery, it says nothing about premarital or unmarital sex.

What is it, then, that makes Americans so insistent that their children not only endure sexual frustrations to the point that they torture small animals, but actually pretend to not have these impulses? Today's parents like to imagine that their teens are asexual and only date with the mindset of finding someone who's nice to talk to. Though I'd be hard-pressed to find a rational adult who actually believes in this fancy, people nevertheless hope that their children aren't out using their reproductive organs, even after taking reasonable precautions.

I can only assume that they think in this way because they've been conditioned to by their parents and preachers, and those before them--even back to people who didn't know about sexually transmittable infections and didn't care if poor people got knocked up.

Nothing that is taught in schools legitimately adds up to a longstanding will among humans to prevent extramarital relations. The church states only that sex is an act to be enjoyed only by married couples, as though its a reward for putting up with the rest of their BS.

And then it hit me. The most logical reason why anyone would want their partner to not have experienced sex before they tied the knot is because they don't want them to know how it's supposed to feel.

Kristen's Axiom #1: Men are insecure about their penises.

Everything comes clear! Men want to marry virgins because virgins have never been pleased or displeased in bed before. They have no idea if their husband is doing a good job because they have no basis of comparison. They're terrified that they're lousy at pleasing their parter, but as long as the wife has never had better she's not likely to leave him on account of it. she's just less likely to want it much, or maybe she'll even believe that sex is supposed to feel that bad. Thus their marriage is not dependent upon their wife's appraisal of their ability.

which, of course, sucks for the woman. Many women go through life thinking that they don't have the ability to orgasm, or that sex is simply something to be endured as infrequently as possible in order to keep the family name going. They don't have a clue that there are men out there who are not only good at it, but enjoy going out of their way to make their partners happy. It is on account of the average man's fear of failure, paired with his unwillingness to put effort toward pleasing his wife, that for centuries humans have tried to keep sex from being an orgasm contest.

I believe that sexual failure is reasonable grounds for divorce.

Moreover, i believe unwed people should be encouraged to engage in protected, disease-tested sexual behavior. Girls and boys alike should go on dates with a stern warning to do it as safely as possible. Not just a reluctant "well i know you're going to do it anyway" but a serious encouragement to get out there and learn. So that if the young person decides to get hitched, they're more likely to have a good, low-stress adult life with someone they love. 'Cos face it, if you know what you're doing, you're very unlikely to glue yourself to someone who's incompatable with you in bed. That's masochism.

Human behavior is regulated by the body to serve its needs through a fairly simple system of rewards and punishments. Whenever you do things that your body likes, different glands secrete happy hormones into your bloodstream. One of these hormones is Oxytocin. It is released when people hug, when mothers breastfeed, and in significant amounts during orgasm. Oxytocin is also instrumental in the development of trust and friendship in the brain, as it associates the positive feelings induced by Oxytocin with the hugger, baby, or partner in question. Your brain, as smart as it is, very easily becomes addicted to things that make it feel good. Oxytocin is generated by the body and is not carcinogenic so its okay to be addicted to it, and more to the point its release rewards healthy behavior. The "mother-baby bonding" that happens during breastfeeding is not just a sweet idea--its actually chemically conditioning the mother to want to nurture the baby and the baby to trust its mother. Similarly, the happy stupid feeling people have after a good round in the bed is chemically induced and imprinted on the brain in the file marked "partner." Couples who have good orgasms are much more likely to start loving each other, and stay in love thanks to the brain's will to do anything to get more Oxytocin. If your brain was a junkie, and you were its dealer, this stuff would be your crack.

The key to a successful relationship is happiness, and the key to happiness is positive hormone reinforcement. And that means good relationships and good sex. The fact that we're uncomfortable saying this aloud and keep it behind closed doors indicates that a lot of people aren't having good sex, and may not be very happy. I believe it is time we encouraged the unwed to begin to practice and learn with their friends how to make each other feel good. It is about damn time we as a society grew up and had a healthy, mature attitude toward sex.

Religion or politics

As I'm sure everyone is already aware, the USA has one political party with two names.

Democrats and Republicans are both notorious for wasting taxpayers money, falling short on campaign promises, lying outrightly to everyone within earshot, and basically proving time and again that the last people you should put in charge are the ones who ask to be put there. But today I came to the realization that the two sides of the coin have decided to lump into one big ugly, distorted one.

NPR ran a bit today during All Things Considered which followed the attempts of several democratic candidates to reach out to "Persons of Faith"--i.e. the Christian Coalition, to try and get some more blue asses in chairs next month. They realized in 2004 that they were losing votes to Jesus W. Bush et al and it was time to try and steal back some punch cards. The message is clear: "Two can play at this game."

Yeah, Democrats, real smooth. two can play at social intolerance, prejudice, and using bible verses to justify just about anything we put our minds to.

What will it take to convince the general populace that Religion has no place in Politics?

I still find it funny that there are millions of people out there who continue to encourage the Government, that pillar of good intentions, to regulate morality. They try time and again to entrust this laughingstock, the usual gang of idiots, with the task of deciding what is right and wrong for every single American. Moreover, they expect them to base this decision on the pages of the Bible, a book which is notorious for its tendency to be out of date, jarringly inaccurate, full of loopholes, auto-contradictory, glaringly prejudiced, and, much unlike the Geneva Convention, open to interpretation.

Yeah, W's in trouble with the UN (again) for signing the fun new law which suspends habeas corpus for suspected terrorists, allowing pretty much anybody W and his cronies dislike to be sentenced without anything resembling a fair trial, be tortured, or simply held indefinitely without being charged with anything. The Supreme Court said no to this two years ago, but what does W care? he's king of the world. The international community referred to this action as "interpreting the Geneva Convention" (i.e. picking and choosing which articles to abide by or disregard.) and, in due fashion, are scheduled to start squabbling, bitching, and accomplishing nothing on the topic shortly.

If I may, I'd like to take a moment here to mention something that has become more obvious and funny the older I've gotten. Mind you, I'm the ripe old age of 22 and i'm taking my time to explore the world and figure out where I fit in it, which I expect will take the rest of my life. I'm not in any hurry to settle down and stop learning, and I feel that I'm currently among friends in this. But I took a glance through the ol' Facebook yesterday and realized that this is not the case for everyone. A huge chunk of the kids i knew in high school have stayed in south carolina, put down roots, gotten hitched, and in four short years have nurtured their xenophobia into full flower. I'd like to mention a few of the more prominent issues which I noticed in my search.

I thought the whole idea of erecting a wall along the US/Mexico border was a joke. I didn't realize people--educated people--had actually established Facebook groups lauding this effort and encouraging it to grow.

There are several groups, established in highly defensive terms, which support the Iraq war as the best thing we could be doing with our time, money, and lives. The group's name is actually "Support the War in Iraq--if you don't support the war, you don't support our troops!" in brave defiance of all evidence to the contrary. Even as these people's representatives acknowledge that this isn't a good idea and its about time we apologised, the sincerely gung-ho keep praying their friends and relations stay in the line of fire.

There are people who will vote for any candidate who wants to make homosexuality a felony, even if its the same candidate who believes we should make it harder for African countries to get medicine for AIDS, establish sanctions against Venezuela because Chavez is outspoken in his dislike for Bush, embezzle massive amounts of money, and call everyone who isn't white a terrorist. Oh wait, those ARE the candidates who want to ban visible homosexuality!

Many people who join the campaign group "Pro-Life" also join the campaign group "Pro Death Penalty." I get it--you think the government should decide who gets to live. You know, those cool guys who've killed hundreds of innocent women and children in Iraq this MONTH.

Some of these people have also joined groups for "Pro Gun Rights" and this is where it gets really funny. You want the government to force women to have unwanted children, who'll spend their lives in poverty, in foster care, and/or hated by the people who have to raise them. You will then allow these abused, neglected people to own and use firearms at their convenience, and then you will demand that the government kill them when they use them against you! Cheeky!

There is a Facebook group called "Anti Hillary Clinton 2008." Funny seeing as she hasn't said she's going to run for it. Equally as funny, there's other groups entitled "Jon Stewart for President 2008."

Looks like I'm voting for Alfred E. Neuman again.


The best encouragement I can offer anyone in how they vote is this. Before you choose your deciding issues, ask yourself: "Am I voting for what I think is best for Everyone in this country, or am I voting for what I enforce upon myself already? Will this policy benefit or harm good people--sane, taxpaying, well-behaved citizens--who don't live the same way I do?" At no point is it appropriate to think "is this the way Jesus would vote?" or anything along those lines. There are too many religions in this country--indeed, in each state, for anyone to vote so arrogantly as to think that its appropriate to inflict their religious lifestyle upon anyone else. The fact that you live that way does not mean it is necessary for anyone else to.

So in November, vote with your brain, not with your soul. Do your research, and figure out just how many times our incumbent God-tastic government has lied to us and screwed us over. If you can vote without considering what the candidate did or did not say about Jesus, your vote will go a long way toward helping our country and preventing terrorism.

Deuce-Deuce

Today is my birthday (Pacific Time.) I am twenty-two.

Super Bad

Today I realized that, of all the music in all the world that i've ever heard, the one song i will claim I absolutely detest is James Brown's "I got Soul (And I'm Super Bad.)" This may in fact be the worst song in existence. It has a good bass line and is sufficiently funky to get the ear jamming, but it turns a complete 180 several times in the recording when Brown...shrieks.

He does not shriek in a good way, or even in a way that could be percieved as an expression of excitement. At least three times in this song Brown makes a noise I didn't know human beings could make.

Someone who keeps a predatory animal as a pet (Boots is recovering nicely) may have heard this sound once or twice in their yard--the sound of a bunny losing its life. This high pitched squeal is at once horrifying and pathetic--the sound is loud, sudden, and unearthly, eerie enough to give you goosebumps--but at the same time you know it is the last, terrified utterance of a small, harmless animal who didn't do a thing wrong except look tasty to a hungry cat. One well-placed chomp and its over, often without much of a fight.

James Brown mastered this spine-tingling, eardrum-shattering noise and chose to demonstrate it in this otherwise inoffensive song. Every time I hear it i reflexively grimace, as though fifty seventh-grade teachers are scratching a chalkboard simultaneously with their long, horrible nails. Eeeeeurgh.

goals

I have decided to start a list of goals that I have set for my life, in order that I'd like to achieve them.

1. Get job that pays enough for:

shared rent nearby OR shared rent further away and transit fees
food
internet
soap


2. Work way up to job that pays enough for:

List 1
repayment of student loans
gin

3. Retire.

pad thai

I'm a really lousy cook.

life's little pleasures

I really like books that have a piece of ribbon sewn into the binding to serve as a permanent book-mark. I consistently lose the loose variety.

tiptoe through the terrorists

Today it was announced that a Berlin opera cancelled its controversial modified "Idomeneo"--a piece in which Greek sea god Poseidon commands the mortal king of Crete, Idomeneo, to murder his own son. The king gets out of it when his son's girlfriend, in an act of altruism, rushes up to be beheaded in his stead and some how it works out that Poseidon's command is overruled and they all live happily ever after. In the modified Berlin opera Idomeneo appears onstage accompanied by the heads of Poseidon, Jesus, Buddha, and the prophet Mohammed, in a visual representation of Mankind's victory over the gods.

The piece was cancelled due to the producers' concern that showing Mohammed's severed head on a chair may offend some Muslims and it could put theatre employees and patrons at risk for car bombings.

May I make a small request, please, of all religious radicals?

Could y'all kindly get down off your damn high horse?

First you got your panties in a wad because people included Mohammed in cartoons. Then your wedgies further shimmied between your cheeks when the Pope mentioned that the Big M was a douchebag. Now you've got the european theatre circuit scared out of their boots to say anything that might irk you in the slightest because its very bad PR to have your theatre blow up on opening night.

Dammit... KNOCK IT OFF ALREADY!

Most people--all religions alike--can take a joke. "So Jesus and Satan walk into a bar..." and "So Buddha is in a candy store..." are not uncommon openers for them. If the joke is good enough, everyone gets a charge out of it, and even the really religous people smile and hope their diety of choice enjoyed it too. Very rarely there's some uptight turd at the next table who scuttles over and expresses just how offensive they found that, you faithless heathen, and i'd appreciate it very much if you went and blew yourself, but that's typically the extent of it. Everyone gets a good laugh at the twit's expense and nothing ever comes of it. This is what we call "not letting one's religion get in the way of living." Because lets' face it--if we all lived the way it says we should in those ancient texts, life would really, really suck.

Now, however, it is not so easy to kid. Now we know that there's some Muslims out there who have a real chip on their shoulder about their religion, and they want to make sure everyone knows it. Mohammed is like every fanatic's little brother--you say anything mean about him, they're gonna fight you. En masse.

what makes you so goddamned special that you feel you have the right to take offense when people who Disagree with your beliefs express them? "We're the only right religion, all the rest of you are going to hell--in fact, i'm going to kill you now so you can be Hellward bound even sooner."--GUESS WHAT.

ALL RELIGIOUS PEOPLE THINK THEIR OWN RELIGION IS THE RIGHT ONE.

Otherwise they wouldn't buy into it.

a=b. the statements are synonymous. I believe it because I believe it.

The planet Earth is rapidly spinning out of the time of gods. We don't need them anymore--we've figured out that the gods we invented in our sacred texts don't actually encompass--or even shed light on--the true enormity of the universe. The incomprehensibility of infinity. Where babies come from.

The staggering number of wacko religious people is getting to be a good indicator that its time for change. These people are terrified that the world no longer has room for them. That their outdated ideas are rapidly fading from quaint to backwards, like when you realize that grandpa's war stories are actually the unintelligable babblings of a syphilis-rotted brain. The religious fanatic chooses to reject the truth of progress and resents all who have happily passed him by. Rather than fade quietly away or join the movement ahead, however, he gets angry at everyone and reacts violently. The zealot would rather have negative attention than no attention at all.

This does not mean, however, that we should be patient with them--try and coddle them into behaving and quietly going about their lives like everyone else. No--just like the child who has learned that throwing a temper tantrum in the grocery store gets him candy, the only way to break the vicious cycle of violence and appeasement is to ignore it entirely. Eventually they'll have to cry themselves out, get up off the floor, and come along quietly.

I may have mentioned this before, but I find religion offensive and would rather not have easily-recognizable houses of worship in my town. Same goes for the Golden Arches of McDonald's joints. Both establishments convince people that the most staggeringly outlandish lies are true in spite of heaps of evidence to the contrary (for organized religions, its that the Earth is the focal point of the universe; for McDonalds, its that their chicken sandwiches are now somehow good for you.) They do it with the cunning use of crayons. Yes, Big Church and Big Business have figured out that if you lure in children with promises of fun, colorful baubles and unconditional love, they'll stick with you for life.

Congratulations, Deutsche Oper, you caved. You did exactly what the terrorists would want you to do--you compromised your artistic integrity, you let down your patrons, and you fuelled the zealots' fire by going out of your way to not offend them. You censored yourselves because you were afraid--terrified--that the big bad Muslims would spank you for saying something mean about their idol.

A more mature way of handling this situation would have been to identify that a threat was possible, tighten security at the entrance, and go on with the show. Tighten it around the block if you'd like. Anyone who's flown in the past five years is used to queueing in security lines. Its a necessary evil these days that we all hate and all blame on W...but its either that or change who we are to appease the men with bombs.

I WILL FIND YOU

whatever psychotic IDIOT it is who shot my cat, I will find you. I will hunt you down. I will give you the beating of a lifetime. If you're lucky, you'll only wind up committed to a lunatic asylum for the rest of your life for expressing very clear sociopathic tendencies (i.e. deliberate, unfeeling cruelty to animals). If the rest of the world is lucky, I'll kill you. If you think its funny to hurt a cat, you probably think its funny to hurt a person, too.

At the very least, the police are involved. You fired a deadly weapon in a highly populated residential area--an area in which dozens of school-aged and younger children live--in the middle of the day at an animal that was minding its own business. This is not the kind of thing that neighborhood folk like to hear.

MY CAT IS 16 YEARS OLD. If you DARE to tell me that she attacked someone, got into your garbage, or even so much as left my yard...frankly, you're lying.

YOU DID IT ON PURPOSE. YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE. YOU ARE A DANGEROUS CRIMINAL.

To say the least, I take it personally. My cat has lived in this neighborhood longer than you--this i can guarantee. To say you didn't know what Boots looked like is to say you didn't know you had a left hand. She wasn't some random stray making trouble. She doesn't wander further than thirty yards from my house.

Moreover, I guarantee you that our neighbors like my cat better than they like you.

YOU ARE A HORRIBLE PERSON. YOU ARE INSANE. I HATE YOU.

My cat is in critical condition. If she dies, or has to be put down because to keep her alive would be torture, I will fly home and crack skulls together until I find you. Boots has been a better friend to me than you will ever be to anyone, and the least anyone could offer her was the chance to die with dignity on her own terms.

You should be in prison, or at the very least an asylum. You're a sick individual and you should not be allowed in the presence of children. I hope there is such a thing as Karma and your leg is shattered when you're hit by a bus in the near future.

If I never do have proof of who you are, know this for the rest of your life: at the best of times, there are a dozen people who hate you. I'm one.

not on drugs

Say you have a car that's in bad shape. In tinkering with it, over the course of decades, you manage to replace every single component of it. Not a single washer, wire, or drop of oil was actually part of this car when it left the factory.

...is it legal to not change the licensing, taxation, and insurance information on it? Could you conceivably pass it off as the same car you bought? I mean I know every car has a VIN visible through the windscreen, printed on that inaccessable part of the dashboard, but if you replace even the frame of the car...but it takes so long that each little fix and change would be minute and barely noticeable, if at all. I mean is it the same car? Perhaps, if you took into account the amount of time each replacement part spent among components of the original vehicle you could claim that the spirit of the original was carried, by varying degrees, in the replacements. But then it gets all blurry and metaphysical.

If you replaced the odometer I think it would make it ineligeable for legal resale.

I'm trying to figure out at what point it becomes a different car. To use another example, when I was a kid my dad bought a computer. Over the years we replaced the memory, the disk drives, the motherboard, all the wiring, the OS, all the software, the keyboard, the mouse, the printer...even the Monitor, before we scrapped the tower and its components and replaced them. But the keyboard, the mouse, and the monitor are all the original replacements which worked with the old tower--under the old regime, if you will. But when the tower changed, it was a new computer.

What do you have to replace to make it a new car?

Or in a person. Your cells refresh constantly. Over the course of a decade all the cells in your body will have died and been replaced. Except maybe the brain cells--nobody's ever really given me a straight answer about that. (The brain grows with the head when the body grows, and it is constantly being fed with blood, and you continue learning and making neurological connections every day, and yet people will tell you that when you kill brain cells, they're gone. That your brain is constantly boiling away whenever you take drugs or smoke cigarettes (though interestingly nobody ever mentions pollution in this equation.) I have a hard time buying that. If that were the case then how could adults get brain tumors (and how could carcinogens be to blame for this?) And moreover, people do recover from head injuries. The concussed are not always doomed. Folks can have their ability to read knocked out of them, but it can come back. People can forget and re-learn. To imply that the brain reaches a levelling point and then just dies off from there is folly. Or a bold-faced lie.) But if every component of you is replaced, does that make you a new person?

I think so. I think people's personalities, habits, and appearances change at about the same rate as their overall cellular refreshment. Some people call this "maturing" but i've known many people who have "matured" into assholes. I think once a person's entire self has renewed, they should get a new name. New social security number, new driver's license--everything. Because they've changed. Calling someone by the same name after they've transformed like that is the equivalent of showing up on Manhattan Island and wondering why nobody is wearing wooden shoes and speaking Dutch. (er, well, why nobody who isn't talking to themselves in gibberish is wearing wooden shoes.) The city has changed. The name has changed. It is no longer the same thing.

Going Places

I find it interesting--here I am, a new resident of a land previously only thought of as Far Far Away. I remember the drive, I watched as the entire landmass of the United States rolled away beneath my tires, I took pictures in every state and spent the early evenings of each day's drive dazzled by the setting sun. I know I have to look at the other side of the map now, but somehow...I don't believe it. My sense of "here" hasn't caught up with me yet. You'd think I'd get used to this by now--I've lived in four drastically different places in the past two years.

In other news, my old roommate lives in Seoul, South Korea now. I'm in California. My parents are in South Carolina. My boyfriend is in London. I live simultaneously in 4 different time zones, which encompass two days. The sun sets in the west, so you'd think the further west from California you got the sunset would get earlier, but it gets so much earlier that somehow it gets to being tomorrow. It hurts my brain to think of. All I can do to keep from getting a headache is to remind myself that time is not just relative--it is non-existant. An abstract, subjective concept that mankind has invented to try and make sense of a completely incomprehensible universe, like peace, justice, beauty, utility, right, and wrong. I'm all for eliminating abstraction completely. It would make life much less stressful--not only would ageing be moot, but you could never be too ugly or too lazy!

...and it occurs to me that my opinions, voiced here, would be rendered somehow more moot than they already are by the elimination of abstraction. Can there be varying degrees of moot-itude? maybe if something gets too moot it implodes and creates a little rift in the space-time continuum (which is also abstract and therefore moot) and disturbs no-one in particular.

"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." -Ford Prefect

yeowza!

well, to put it simply, i now live in California.

to go into a bit more detail...i drove 4,000 miles to get here.

to trace out my route, you need a big map of the entire USA. Then, using a pencil, two pins, and a piece of string 1.25x the width of the country, draw a boolean curve between East Hampton and San Francisco. Then turn your pencil over to its trusty eraser side and rub out any curve between mid Arkansas and eastern California, and grab a ruler. Draw a straight line from Conway, AK to Barstow, CA and step back. What you've got there is a fairly accurate model of my trip across country. WHAM.

The collective presidential purchases of Thomas Jefferson and James K Polk amounted to the acquisition of a helluva lot of land--more land than we really knew what to do with. Much of Jefferson's purchase (what was then known as Louisiana) was useful farmland in the heart of the continent. A good chunk of Polk's, however, was arid, empty desert, that would turn out to be completely unuseable except for a little sliver along the coast in modern-day California. These huge landmasses, at the time largely uninhabited, were marked out on a map in giant squares. These squares were divided into smaller squares, and then smaller, and frontier-bound families were offered these stakes free of charge provided they just got out there.

Not that many people bothered.

So roads were built along the original map divisions. If you look at a close-up of Oklahoma, what you see there are not "generalizations" or roads that have been somewhat smoothed out. What you see is exactly what you get. And no, they haven't left out some of the smaller towns. If I moved there and built a shack on a quarter-acre of land, sat on my front porch with a shotgun and declared it "Kristenton, Population 1" chances are it'd make it onto the full-page map of the state with a dot indicating "medium-sized town."

Little has changed in New Mexico since Polk decided to fulfil the US's Manifest Destiny except for the addition of a 4-lane interstate and a few thousand miles of power cables, which make a side-by-side beeline for southern California and disturb little of the vast emptiness which passes for scenery around here. This hypnosis-inducing stretch is known as I-40 and is the best route from the East to the West, provided you're comfortable with never making contact with inhabited human settlements, trees, water, or temperatures below 110F. Posted speed limits have been replaced with signs reading "Go Faster." Wide, smooth curves in the road, visible for hundreds of miles before you reach them, are heavily signposted with "CURVE AHEAD: STAY ALERT." In place of county lines or city limits, you will see big outlines of the state with a dot to indicate "you are here."

In the Mojave Desert I had the pleasure of encountering a large yellow sign emblazoned with "WELCOME TO NOWHERE! Center: 250 miles" and an arrow pointing ahead.

I may be making that up.

The car did fine, and my navigator, on loan from London, had the difficult task of tracing the way across Texas. "I think, at this next mile marker...you should continue straight ahead for 2,000 miles."

We would have done well to set the cruise control, lock The Club on the steering wheel, and climb in the back to make out.

We traversed (in order):
New York (2 days, if you omit the 3 months i lived there--I picked up my foreigner from JFK and visited my sister in Harlem)

New Jersey (8 minutes to look at the map)

Pennsylvania (10 minutes to get gas)

Maryland (no stops)

West Virginia (no stops, and kept an eye out for yokels)

Virginia (stayed the night just outside of DC)

Washington DC (1 afternoon, toured the monuments and got the hell out)

North Carolina (no stops--it smelled entirely too bad. I think it must have been official Wildlife Road Crossing Day, but motorists didn't get the memo)

South Carolina (3 days to visit the folks, have free food, tour my university, pick up a shirt i made for a class, and hang out with my neighbors)

Tennessee (a few stops for lunch, gas, and dinner. Might i recommend, to anyone crossing that years-long state, a little restaurant on the Pigeon River called The Beantree. Picturesque, good service, good food, and inexpensive. We really liked it.)

Arkansas (with a one-night stopover at Grandma's where the Brit got an unexpected cultural awareness credit involving firearms. My vegetarian uncle cooked us some fabulous steaks and my Panamanian aunt made this wonderful beet-and-potato salad that kept us full till Albuquerque. And it wouldn't be a trip to Grandma's if she didn't send us off with a cooler full of food for the road. Cheapest gas on the trip was found here--$2.58 about 60 miles west of Conway)

Oklahoma (did we stop? i set the cruise control to 85 and mentally checked out.)

Texas (two stops--one in Shamrock at a very overpriced Best Western, and at a neat rest station with a beautiful view of a cragged, ravaged landscape.)

New Mexico (one stop in Albuquerque's historic Old Town, where we had a lovely mid-afternoon lunch at a neat Mexican place called La Placita. It had a big ol tree growing through the roof. another stop for gas in Tucumcari, the epicentre of nowhere, which has a gift shop full of junk)

Arizona (slept two nights in this state. First Holbrook, where we passed out in the middle of the night after I bypassed trashy Gallup, NM earlier in the evening. It was only after we crossed the AZ border that I realized the next motel was nearly 100 miles away. Then, after a fabulous day at the Grand Canyon (the most awe-inspiring ditch you'll ever lay eyes on. seriously, the depth and breadth of this thing are entirely too much for the human mind to comprehend in one try.) and a fortuitous wrong turn into the Navajo Nation and the equally beautiful Painted Desert (an area where you just have to stop the car every 500 feet, get out, walk a few feet, and gaze) we found a motel in Kingman in the middle of the night. Kingman is one of those odd western oases that is only a few decades old--the town was born during the construction of the Hoover Dam and just stuck around. There's not a whole lot there but we did find a Mobil station.)

California (yay! we made it! now on through the Mojave Desert, a land that gives clout to conspiracy theorists' claims that the Mars landings were staged. Interestingly, when whe hit the CA border the speed limit dropped but the average auto speed doubled. You'd swear these drivers were on fire. It was around here that my TD called to check up on my progress and suggested that I turn north at my earliest convenience, drive straight to Vegas, and put all my money on Red. or Black. Barstow was a wide space in the road, and Bakersfield was so industrial and inhospitable that i started driving faster, too. Interstate 5 wasn't particularly interesting but the clerk at the Los Banos Econo Lodge was fun. The drive into Berkeley was creative, as I'd failed to consult anyone on just how to get to the theatre until then, but to say the least I found my job and friendly faces who were happy to welcome me.)

I've been working for a little over a week now and I'm really enjoying myself. My coworkers are great, the weather is beautiful, and I'm starting to learn my way around. My better half has returned to his native land, which was a bit of a thunderstorm on my parade, but i'm keeping busy and hopefully i'll have a functional bike in the next few days.

Whew. that's been my last two weeks, in a nutshell.

happy labor day.

When you think you're all alone...

One of my roommates has absolutely horrible taste in music. What makes it funny, though, is that he has no idea that i'm in the next room and he's singing along with it at the top of his lungs. To be polite, lets just say--he's no Frank Sinatra. Hell, he's no Shakira either. He wouldn't even do well in Milli Vanilli.

Adventures in Arkansas

I've just returned from a four-day sojurn in the depths of the American heartland, accompanied by the greater majority of my paternal extended family. The purpose was simple--to welcome my uncle's new wife into the family. The execution thereof was somewhat more difficult, as Tia Olivia is Panamanian and does not speak English. (its okay, my uncle speaks Spanish--its not like he just shanghaied her. No really! he was in the Peace Corps down there and they met in an internet cafe.) (damn i miss my Mac--i don't remember the numerical code for making an accent acute over the final e in "cafe")

Arkansas is one of those lost, pathetic places that started off poor and lost money from there. Travel magazines may refer to its "untouched, rugged beauty" but all it really means is "none of these toothless hill people have the know-how, much less the funding, necessity, or will, to build a skyscraper." Main routes throughout the Ozarks are dotted with failed townships and empty, collapsing aluminium buildings--"welcome to Shirley, population 64." 64 inbred, illiterate, God-fearing, Bush-loving fourth grade dropout voters who work hard in the field every day only to find that the soybean yield is low again this year and Tyson chicken farms are driving a hard bargain for their land. Arkansas is a state that is trapped in 1934--they never really pulled clear of the Depression and as a result education, art, and haute cuisine have suffered crushing blows.

My grandma's town--a vast Ozark metropolis with a population of just over 2,000--has three main hangouts for kids of all ages: church, the retirement center, and the world's cultural mecca, Wal-Mart. You simply can't go a day without braving the scorching asphalt of the Wally World parking lot to enter upon a trove of flimsy plastic furniture and dye-injected, guest-worker picked vegetables.

At the village Wal-Mart you are apt to encounter absolutely everyone who isn't comatose in the entire county. And a few of the comatose ones too. The teenage, morbidly obese, makeup-caked moms of three tend to congregate in the lingerie department. You'll find the young, lean, tanned, slack-jawed farm boys near the back in the firearm department, but don't linger--they all turn a glassy stare on any woman who dares venture back there (much like cattle when a car turns down their stretch of road.) The pasty, duck-footed, dangerously obese (and dangerously emaciated) middle-aged men can be found in the automotive department, mindlessly comparing prices on plastic hubcaps in their "git-r-done" printed tee shirts and hunter orange ballcaps. Everyone else wanders around the store in dumb-struck amazement at the sheer quantities of corn syrup and trans-fat available on the shelves, with which they can stuff their quivering cheeks the moment they get home.

Speaking of Wal-Mart: MACINTOSH! SHAME ON YOU! they've sold out to the corporate demons and now allow their white-earplugged mini status symbols to be peddled by the very Man their initial tree-hugging customer base so vehemently rejected. I'm disappointed.

Yes, Arkansas. The land that time forgot. The unpolluted breadbasket that may be the only place left standing after the rest of the world finishes shooting itself in the face with overpopulation and consumption of fossil fuels. But until that time, it will continue to be a beautiful state inhabited by a bunch of mindless, bigoted jerks who don't deserve it.