12 posts tagged “i am going to bed now”

I need to get a few things off my chest, without going into whole big long spiels about any of them.

1.  I'm sick of hearing people under the guise of environmentalism claim that no one "needs" to have children or "needs" to have more than one or two children.  There are a lot of things wrong with this, but the most glaring is that we do and own a lot of shit that we don't "need."  Ninety percent of people who own and use a cell phone have no actual need for it, yet they expend great deals of energy charging them and replacing them when new, cooler models come out.  We don't "need" golf courses, yet we expend great amounts of water and energy maintaining them, including in the Sonoran desert.  We don't "need" clothes dryers, or at least most of us do not.  We don't "need" makeup or beauty salons or 10 pairs of shoes.  We have all those things, none of them contribute measurably to the health and well-being of society, yet we have them and more.  So, fuck off about whether or not we "need" children, eh.

2.  Bourdain, you fucker.  I used to like you, but your hypocritical anti-hunting stance is getting to be too much.  On the one hand, you eat meat, which means you have no principled anti-killing belief.  You also regularly chide vegetarians, vegans, raw foodies, and other people for being ungracious and elitist as regards other cultures and their culinary heritages.  I believe you gave it to Woody Harrelson pretty good for refusing a meal in Thailand, right?  So, you support the killing of animals for food and respect for cultural heritage as it appears at the dinner table.  Great.  But then you think hunting is immoral?  Um.  It's OK to depend on the death of animals for sustenance, as long as the blood is literally on someone else's hands, is that it?  Is hunting acceptable to you when it's done by the Bushmen of the Kalahari but not when it's done by an American, because you have some notion that the Bushmen need to hunt but Americans don't, since we can get nice, sanitized and irradiated, shrink-wrapped shit at the grocery store 24/7?  Is that your thinking?  You don't think that maybe for some Americans, the inhumanely raised, antibiotic laced freakshow meat that we could get at the supermarket is unacceptable?  You don't think maybe hunting is part of the cultural heritage of some Americans (distantly, it is the cultural heritage of nearly every people on earth; more distantly, it is everyone's cultural heritage, but for some of us, the ties to that culture still exist, yes, even in fucking America) and therefore is as worthy of respect as Thai food?  What the fuck are you thinking?  I can understand when vegans and vegetarians are anti-hunting because, although I disagree with them, they have a consistent and principled stand against the use of animals for food.  But not this, Bourdain.  No, this I cannot abide.

3.  Dude, no.  For one thing, this whole "Europeans are so much more evolved than Americans are..." shit is getting old.  YOU think Europeans are "more evolved" because whatever it is that they do is what you want to do, but that does not provide anything substantial.  So, Europeans are more tolerant of adultery?  Why is that morally superior to not tolerating adultery?  I think if you really took a hard look at some of what you're talking about, you would find that actually a lot of women in cultures that "tolerate" cheating are not that happy about it; they just tolerate it, no more.  I think you would also find that more Americans tolerate it than you currently think. 

Also, just because you have a poorly controlled desire to sleep around on your wife, that does not itself invalidate the principles of monogamous marriage.  That men, overall, have a more polyamorous libido than women has become a sort of stock reason why men should be forgiven their inability or unwillingness to remain faithful.  However, most men do, in fact, remain faithful, as do most women.  Most marriages do not end in divorce, and most married people would prefer to maintain their marriage even at the cost of unfettered sex.  In other words, while there may well be problems with monogamy and marriage, in this case, the problem is YOU, not the system.

4.  I have also become very tired of people talking about marriage, either hetero or homo, as being primarily about "love."  Love is nice, of course.  Who doesn't like love?  But the government doesn't give you tax breaks because you're in love.  The reason we sanction marriage--not just America, but human societies in general, across time and space, although certainly the forms marriage takes are not uniform across cultures and history--has nothing to do with being in love.  The way we think about the love aspect of marriage is new-ish and culturally bound.  The reasons human societies have usually sanctioned some type of marriage (and not others) is because of the good those relationships are thought to bring to society.  Marriage exists because more than one person sharing a single household conserves resources.  It exists because a stable two- or multiple-parent home is safer, more economically secure and viable, and more emotionally secure for the raising of children.  It exists because of the very human emotion of jealousy.  It is notable in the piece mentioned in #3, when his wife finally says, "OK, we'll have an open marriage.  And I will be spending the night elsewhere on Wednesday," he's all "nooooo!."  (The general distaste for adultery and polyamory also probably stems from the fact that, let's face it, even men who think they are only after casual sex sometimes end up getting emotionally attached to the sex partner, and those emotions can destabilize the marriage and home.)  Listen, it's fine, it's great, it's wonderful that you love your spouse, but if you don't couple with a sense of duty and commitment, it's not worth much.  We sanction marriage as a matter of public policy because of the duty and commitment part.  This is why I think liberals' standard arguments about gay marriage are stupid and less than compelling.  Conservatives are not won over by the appeal to love.  On the other hand, there is no compelling evidence that TEH GAYZ are unsuitable as parents or more likely to dissolve their marriages than heterosexuals (the evidence currently suggests that gay marriages are more likely to last than straight ones, but my suspicion is that this is because of the small sample pool; I am going to guess that once gay marriage is legal in all 54 states and gays start marrying at similar rates as heterosexuals and start making the fool mistakes heteros make by marrying at 19 or whatever, the divorce rates will be similar).  Since homosexual marriage can provide a stable and secure home for children, can conserve resources by joining two people under one roof, and so forth, I see no compelling reason to limit it.  I just want to make it clear to homos and heteros alike:  No one cares about the love part.  That's between you and the spouse, and not really a matter for the government to intervene in.

5.  Yes, 54 states.  I am ready for Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and the Virgin Islands to become states.  I don't understand the current arrangement.  It vexes me.  So, make them states.

6.  The humidity in our house was 2% today.  That's not a typo.  I am shriveling up like a raising as I write this.  What the fucking fuck, weather?  Weather:  You are on notice.

7.  John--I would gladly trade one of my unnecessary organs to have had the pleasure of speaking with you today.  Would you prefer a spleen or an appendix?  As I understand you no longer have an appendix of your own, perhaps the appendix?  Goddamn.  I am so sorry I missed your call.

That is all.  Thanks for listening.  Good night.

Sorry, people.  I haven't had much to say lately.  I'm exhausted (new job, garden, super crap weather, son's been sick, etc.)  I used to be able to come online and get myself worked up about something and spout off--you know, back in the good old days of Gin and roses.  But I can't even do that anymore.  If there is indeed nothing new under the sun, then there is also no new illogic, no new stupidity, no new crap.  So it just doesn't bother me anymore.  I guess it does on some level, but not enough to make me want to tear open someone's jugular with my teeth, the way it used to. 

We did go to Texas over Memorial Day weekend, or at least the kid and I did (T stayed home and did manly things).  We went to Sea World and now our house has become a minor shrine to Shamu.  We spent time with the extended family.  For me, actually, the best part of the whole trip was watching my son totally hit it off with his cousins whom he hadn't seen in a couple of years.  He played basketball with Cousin Hunter, who is 14 and way too cool to be playing basketball with overexcited 3-year-olds.  He jumped on the trampoline with Cousin Conner--and that is nearly unbelievable considering Conner has fragile X syndrome and until recently had very limited social skills.  He cuddled with Cousin Lance who is also 14.  He let Uncle Pat take him to the potty, and yes this is a big deal, because he has a very well-defined potty ritual that he doesn't trust just anyone to execute properly (specifically, he is very concerned about the types of toilets, types of flushers, brands of soap, and whether or not the faucet and paper towels are automatic.  He likes Kohler and Crane toilets; he dislikes American Standard toilets because their flushes are too loud.  He likes when the flusher is present, not automatic, and shaped like a whale.  Seriously.  You can't just take him potty.  You have to remark on all these details.  It's odd).  Other than the extraordinary heat (I do so love it when the temperature and the humidity have the same numbers--90 and 90?  100 and 100?  How did I used to stand that shit?), it was a very good trip. 

I have to say, though, that I suffered without my T.  I have come to realize over the years that I need him.  His work schedule, as has probably been mentioned, is difficult, and we go for a couple of weeks with almost no family time, and by the end of that when he gets his 4 days off, I need the family time to bring me back to balance.  I get so out of whack without T around.  Anyway, it happened that we were in Texas and he was home during his 4 days off, so I never got that time with him to sort myself out, and I went off to Texas in a sour mood--a sour mood that existed mostly as a substrate.  That is to say, I had fun and was so glad to see my uncles and cousins, but at some deeper level, the mood never really improved.  Now T and I have made a pact that we're going to make better use of his limited days off so that I don't get so bent to start with.  Most of the married people I know are all about doing their own thing as individuals, getting their "me" time, getting time away from their spouses when they can.  We're not like that.  In our off time, we want to be together, we need to be together for what each of us gives to the other.  We're trying to get to a place, actually, where we'll both be working at home so that we'll be together even more.  It feels so strange to admit this, like we're the complete antimoderns.

Then again, I probably am the complete antimodern.  To hell with modernity.

I've also been thinking about Hegel.  And JS Mill a little.  It has always bugged me that Americans (and possibly people on other continents as well, but I'm not sure) get some kind of filter-down from philosophy (and lit theory to an extent) but don't actually know the source behind it and certainly don't understand it well enough to analyze and critique the ideas.  So, some half-assed version of Derrida-inspired postmodernism has filtered out into society and infected it like drug-resistant TB.  But much more insidious, to my mind, is the unquestioned Hegelian notion of progress.  Americans believe in progress.  It is a notion we have wholeheartedly bought into.  We tend to believe that the history of humanity is a progression toward something, a kind of ultimate, final humanity in which everything is (I guess) perfect.  Hegel posited the thesis-antithesis-synthesis paradigm, and while most people likely don't know what those three words mean, they mostly agree with the sentiment, and that is why anyone could take Francis Fukuyama seriously.  It has come to be--and Mill comes in here a bit--that a large segment of America thinks that any idea that is new and supported by a minority is a good idea and will constitute progress once accepted by everyone.  While I am sure hardly any Americans recognize the link between the American notion of progress and Hegel, I think that even fewer would want to know that one of the most important Hegelians is Karl Marx.  I keep asking people what they think is waiting at the end of history, the end of the rainbow, but the fact is that I reject the very idea of "progress."  I reject the idea that humanity is moving forward or even can move forward.  I was laughing at that QotD about how we can stop violence in the world, and while on some level Soup got it right when he suggested we could stop violence by just ceasing to be violent, on another level, humanity probably always will be violent.  We're animals.  That's what it comes down to.  We're animals, and animals are brutal.  I don't think that we can or should change that very fundamental fact of nature.  We don't make progress.  We go from one bad idea to another, not that anyone notices anymore now that everyone's on psychotropics of one kind or another.  We have no way at all to measure this "progress," except for money, and we take it for granted (despite all contrary evidence) that getting every people in the world on a monetary economy and getting them all into public education will be significant progress.  I guess then we can get them on Prozac, too, and the world will be supersweet.

So, I reject the idea of progress and I see no evidence that we are, as a species, making progress.  What I do see is that in the striving and the fighting to find the end of the rainbow, we're making life measurably worse on a microlevel.  Cultures and languages are dying at such a pace that it's laughable to even argue that they're worth saving.  People refuse to associate with neighbors and even family members because they hold differing political views or practice different religions or non-religions.  People are offended and angry all the damn time, about everything, even sometimes about kids who have the gall to, say, cry in public.  How has the world become better?  What is this progress? 

But of course our historical memory is so short now that we have no real way to measure what progress would be.  My husband and I think we are probably going to homeschool our son.  Most people's instant reaction is to express their concern that he won't receive proper socialization.  OK.  First, as recently as 100 years ago, hardly any kids went to public schools, and they mostly learned social skills anyway.  We seem to have forgotten that public education as the great socializing force is a new invention.  Second, and this is a big issue for me, do kids really need to be socialized to kids their own age?  Isn't the goal of education and child-rearing to teach them how to act like and someday become grown-ups?  Isn't the idea that someday they're supposed to not bicker and hit and throw sand and interrupt conversations but act the way grown-ups once acted?  How do they learn that from being around kids all day?  I'm at a loss as to how this works, even theoretically, because kids are going to mimic the behavior they see the most, and if that is childish behavior, they're going to act more childish and less mature.  I think back to when my grandma was a teenager and had her first kid when she was 15, and she was married then and for all intents and purposes, she was a grown-up.  She learned her social skills primarily from working with various generations together on farms; there were kids around, of course, but they were expected to be learning how to act like adults, and I'd say she did.  How does public school accomplish this?  I can't see, honestly, that it does.  I want my son to get a good education, one that challenges him and keeps him interested and on his toes, and I want him to learn how to be an adult.  And, really?  I'm supposed to think that somehow being around kids all day in a group where the focus is on the average is going to accomplish either of those goals?  Christ. 

I wonder if humans will ever get past the idea that we can do better than nature can and has for these millions of years.  We keep thinking that, whatever our knowledge of human and animal evolution teaches us, we can ignore that and do it the opposite way and it will be so much better.  If you're on the right, then you probably think big business can figure out better ways to subvert and control nature; if you're on the left, you think some combination of science and the government can.  This hubris is a kind of sickness, but that's alright because I'm sure Pfizer is working on a drug for it. 

Also, I want to say a few words about Libertarians because Colbert had Bob Barr on tonight.  I'm a libertarian (small 'l'--I'm not a party joiner), and we get a lot of flack for wanting to do away with the FDA or whatever and people are all, "But that's to protect our safety!"  To me, this is looking at the issue from the wrong starting point.  Why do we need the FDA to protect us?  Because we've allowed our lives to become ruled by centralized, unknowable corporations.  If we begin from a place where such centralization and lack of local control is a given, then the argument that we need bureaucracies like the FDA is persuasive.  But if we begin from a point where we get back to local control over education, land use, food sources and so forth, then we don't need big federal bureaucracies.  If you know the farmer who raised your food and slaughtered your chickens, do you really need a government inspector coming in to tell you it's safe?  Just go check out the operation, talk to people who eat the food from that farm, and figure it out for yourself. 

I'm always trying to teach my son that for every decision you make, whether it was the right one or the wrong one, you have to take responsibility for it.  You have to gather the information to make a decision, and then you make it, and you take what consequences come.  At his age, his decisions are mostly simple:  We can play for 10 more minutes, but then we won't have time to go to the library.  If you want to go to the library, we have to go now.  What do you want to do?  But he considers the information, and he has to live with the consequences, and that's what we want to teach him.  What we do not want to teach him is to just leave everything up to some faceless committee in Iowa and surely everything will be alright. 

Feh.  I hereby withdraw from society.  Does that mean I have to give back the economic stimulus check?

I just wrote several paragraphs flaying some idiotic bitch that I randomly saw on TV today, but then I lost interest.  Yes, she was an idiot.  She was an idiot of a variety that I have met very commonly, namely the idiot who thinks that having friends who are gay and/or Hispanic wins her the Tolerance Merit Badge, despite the fact that said friends grew up in similar conditions, were similarly educated, read the same books, and hold entirely the same political opinions as she does.  Because diversity is all about the skin color or sexual orientation.  Right.  Idiot. 

But then, as I said, I just lost interest.  Idiots are a dime a dozen.  She was certainly not an exceptional idiot--half the college students in Missoula think exactly the same way (and the other half are too drunk to notice such a subtlety as someone's race).  So.  Let's pass her over for more interesting and non-idiotic topics.

Namely!  The asparagus!  It hath risen!  So, fuck you, Californian asparagus!  It's nothing against California or its asparagus, but I'm so excited that the asparagus I tediously planted and laboriously tended last year is coming up this year.  As yet, the stalks are barely peeking above ground, but we will actually be able to harvest and eat some of this year's crop.  Sweet mother Mary!

Oh, and the radicchio overwintered very nicely, and we harvested our first radicchio today!  Hurrah for fresh greens (or reds, as the case may be).  They are calling out to me for some bacon and cream, because nothing enhances healthful greens like a giant dose of heart attack.  Yum.

I don't know if I told you, but I developed an elaborate garden plan this year to milk as many nutrients out of our backyard as possible.  First, there are the cool-weather, spring things like peas and fava beans and spinach.  We basically turned our entire garden space over to these things with the understanding that they will be mostly kaput by the time we need to begin insertion of nightshades (tomato, pepper, eggplant).  In other words, we expect to have approximately one gazillion peas.  The first couple of weeks after planting, we had terrible weather with snow and lots of freezing, and the peas refused to sprout, and I had begun to despair that, as so often in the past, all my plans had come to nought.  But they sure the hell are sprouting now.  We have rows and rows of peas (only two rows of favas, because we do love favas, but last year they failed miserably, and we couldn't see giving a lot of space to something that failed so completely).  We have Alaska bush peas, Green Arrow, Blue Pod Capucijner, and god knows what else--name a variety of pea, and we likely have it sprouting out there.  Some will get frozen.  Some will get dried.  Many will be eaten right there in the garden.  Yum.

The spinach is going nuts!  The kale!  The daikon!  I am so pleased.  Despite the batty weather, things are going according to plan. 

We did also get some tomatoes this year that are supposed to have some cold hardiness.  Specifically, we have Beaverlodge, Oregon Spring, and Stupice tomatoes.  All of those do need protection from frost but should otherwise be OK in the cold.  I'm a little skeptical.  I learned to garden primarily in Arkansas, and the heat and humidity down there just make this a much different ballgame.  We did bite the bullet and go ahead and plant the Oregon Spring seedlings, though, and so far they look fine.  We're also putting in the potatoes.  Ack!  The potatoes!  What a fiasco!

See, my parents have recently purchased 5 acres where they are building a new house, and I had received permission to plant my potatoes on their land, so I ordered....ohhhh...about 27 pounds of seed potatoes.  That's actually 27 different varieties, one pound each.  I got them from Ronniger's, a source I highly recommend.  I have every color of potato known to man, I'm fairly sure, and I believe we have three different varieties of purple potato (my favorite!).  As it turns out, the water is a long, long way from being hooked up at my parents' new house (the city is dragging their feet--long story), so if I planted the potatoes there, I'd have no way to water them and so would have to just pray for rain everyday.  So, we planted them here.  It's going to be tight to get everything in this year.

I thought earlier that I should list all the varieties of veggies that we're growing to give you a sense of the scale of the enterprise here, but I realized that that was a bad idea.  We have more than 20 varieties of tomatoes alone.  Hell, we probably have more than 40 varieties of tomato, and then there's the peppers and the eggplant and the potatoes and the brassicas!  The brassicas! 

Perhaps I can give you a sense of the stupid overreaching of my plan by telling you we have two different kinds of sesame (kin, which is tan, and kuro, which is black).  Four kinds of scallions, in addition to the chives, shallots, leeks, and onions.  Three types of kale.  Two types of salsify.  Salsify, for chrissakes! 

Lord, I cannot wait.  It's all so delicious. 

OH!  OH!  I have to tell you about this new book I got.  Obviously, since I do the home canning, I am always on the lookout for good cookbooks for that activity.  Canning is not a subject that gets a lot of play in contemporary cookbooks, as you can imagine.  I suppose it is out of style, but it's really something you need a good cookbook for since it is really one of the most scientific and potentially hazardous of all kitchen tasks.  You can't half-ass it when you're dealing with pH and pressure--it's serious business.  Anyway, so I happened upon this book called Pickles to Relish.  It was written by a scientist/home canner who apparently is inhabited by a semi-fictitious alter ego known as "Jamlady."  And both of them are serious.  The first part is a rant about the failures of modern education, the failures of modern society, and a call for a return to the art and science of home pickling.  It gave me goosebumps.  I mean, she is preaching to the converted, but I was so pleased to know that someone (anyone!  even a questionably mentally ill woman!) else thinks this way.  I have no named alter ego, yet I have long felt crazy and isolated by my pickle-making.  It isn't just a hobby, dammit.  It's a way of life!  God, I love crazy pickle-making ladies.  Maybe later this summer I'll have another contest to give away some pickles. 

Also, later this summer, I'm going to start getting with some recipes and processing and storage information for all the vegetables. 

I read, a little while ago, a post from Jack Yan about the new Vogue cover featuring LeBron James and the sort of irritating (to me) Gisele Bundchen (umlaut purposefully omitted).  I have seen the cover in the supermarkets and stuff and thought it was, whatever, LeBron looks kind of hot, Gisele looks like Gisele, but whatever.

I never once thought of King Kong or the threat white women face from big, bad, burly black men.  Not once.  At least, not until I read Jack Yan's post.  And see, that is why I am a racist I guess, because I am completely oblivious to the racist stereotypes being perpetrated at my local supermarket.  The blogosphere is apparently alive! with all kinds of people being offended by the presentation of LeBron as scary and gorilla-like.  They have taken umbrage!  I had no idea until I read Jack Yan's post, and then I dismissed it as another case of people who have an ideology that they then go around seeking evidence for--as the Great Tony Mattina used to say, let the data drive the theory, not the other way around.  If you want to find evidence of racism, you'll certainly find it, but the actual data would suggest a much more complex picture--complex and nuanced like Obama's speech (a speech, by the way, that I thought was fucking excellent.  Obama, I will vote for you.  Unless you do something really stupid, like have sex with rabbits on camera with that blind guy from New York.)

Then, because my job is totally sucking tonight (grrrrr--pulmonary function tests suck ass!), I perused some of the links Jack provides and even read what my old friends at Jezebel had to say*.  And now I have to add this:

If you look at that picture of LeBron and the G-bund and see King Kong and a scary black man--maybe even a criminal!  get out the chastity belts!--that says way more about you than it does about the rest of us who just looked at it and thought, "oh, wow, rich, famous people on the cover of a magazine.  fancy that.  maybe i'll get some altoids..."

I'm not going to say I'm colorblind--I can't, since about a year after I moved to Montana (by far the whitest place I ever lived, since I divided my childhood between Hispanic-majority New Mexico and a black-majority part of Arkansas) I caught myself thinking, as I saw a black man walking down the street, "Ooh, black dude.  Damn, I'll bet he's conscious of that all the time living here.  Or maybe not.  Maybe all the white people just pretend they don't notice, like I'm pretending not to notice.  I'm way overthinking this.  He's just a dude, walking down the street.  But why is he carrying a squeegee?  Eh, what the hell?  Why not carry a squeegee?"

But, honestly, when I looked at that Vogue cover I didn't see a "black man" let alone a "scary black man" and certainly not a gorilla-like black man.  I saw LeBron James, with a basketball and a Brazilian (model).  No umbrage necessary. 

Also, offense is regularly taken at the fact that Vogue so rarely features anything but white (assuming we count the Latins as white.  Yeah, I said "the Latins.") on its covers...so...I'm not sure exactly what the offended multitudes want. 

Days like this, and especially since the speech, I really think we need Obama at this point.  We have got to start getting past this shit, people.  In general, certain segments of the population are getting way too offended all the time (I have no idea how you even live that way--what is it like to be offended all the time?  It must particularly suck since you do not, in fact, have a right not to be offended). 

Or should we just keep fighting over the actions of our ancestors?  Mine, before coming to America, were sitting around in Ireland wondering if they should try to hold out during the Great Potato Famine (fortunately, we're stout people) or get on a boat to come to the promised land to be...wage slaves and sharecroppers.  By the time they got here, slavery was near its end in this country (though wage slavery continues unabated), and anyway they were far too freakin poor to own anyone.  And the Osage ancestors were, you know, chilling on the res after walking the Trail of Tears and all that (but they weren't slaves, right?  so that makes it all OK.  except that some of them were slaves, and anyway, like 95% of them died).  So, those are my oppressive white ancestors*.  How about yours?

Also, why don't African-American people in America seem more concerned, as a whole, about slavery that is still going on in Africa?  You'd think there would be a sympathy thing.  Feh.  (moderately related side note:  The entire reason I cannot stomach Chris Rock is that I once saw him doing stand-up and he was saying that white people are always complaining about everything, "Oh, I'm lactose intolerant" but you don't see starving Africans complaining about being lactose intolerant because they're just happy to get milk.  This left me speechless.  I'm just a cracker, but even I know that most Africans are in fact lactose intolerant, and so if they are being given milk, they aren't complaining about lactose intolerance mainly because they're too sick to do so.  As Public Enemy once said, "Read a book or something.  Learn about yourself, learn your culture."  WORD.  But, hey, with a bit of luck, the people who are in charge of sending Africans relief packages are also crackers who know about the racial and geographic lines of lactose intolerance.  Hmm, but now I'm reading through this collection of quotes and finding him kind of awesome.  Maybe I gave up on him too soon.  He should have just gone with the peanut allergy instead of lactose intolerance.) 

But that's just me.  I am white, and so that per force makes me a racist in the irrefutable logic of the offended.

*But on one of their many sister sites, Guanabee, I found this interesting tidbit:  "There’s been a long tradition of a “fight for white,” meaning that various ethnic groups over the years have had to struggle for the chance to be seen as normal and neutral. Irish-Americans, for example, who are today almost synonymous with the concept of what it means to be white (fevered dancing without the use of hips or shoulders, the consumption of potatoes), were very much “the other” for a very, very long time in America. Jewish and Italian Americans were also not always considered white folks here in the old U.S. of A. " 

**I also have Quapaw Indian ancestry.  And no, you cannot tell by just looking at me.  I pretty much look like a potato-eatin honky.

I've had the Mormons* over a few times now--you know, the earnest young men in suits who come around trying to convert you, like the Jehovah's Witnesses, only Mormon instead.  T thought I should have shooed them off a long time ago, but I like having company.  They've been putting my lack of faith to the test, and it's been interesting.

No, no, I'm not converting, not at all, but it was interesting trying to explain to people who clearly have a lot of faith in God what it means to have none at all and how you could come to be like that (to be honest, I don't know how I came to be like this--I just am and always have been, though certainly living with an archaeologist and a physical anthropologist has not helped). 

Anyway, it got me to thinking about atheism.  I've been an atheist as long as I can remember, but for me it means exactly what it says--a lack of belief.  Nothing more, nothing less.  It has never meant to me that I'm absolutely dead certain that no god exists or has ever existed.  It does not profess some alternate belief.  It does not define me or anything about me.  It only means I don't believe in God or any other god (and, OK, it also means that when confronted by that heinous song, "Our God is an Awesome God" I am prompted, unlike Christians, to ponder whether any of the other gods implied by the phrasing are more awesome or at least equally awesome--the song does not rule out such a possibility, which I think would really piss the Old Testament God off a lot.  Ahem.)

The point is that I was always somewhat confounded by the accusations occasionally hurled by Christians that atheism is a religion, too.  But looking around at other atheists, including but by no means limited to the Atheist group on Vox, I can kind of see their point.

Atheists, let me ask you this:  Whence the fucking moral superiority?  I understand you think people who believe are stupid and intellectually inferior because they have just not seen the light understood the wonders of science as deeply as you have.  Also, you think "religion kills" which is akin to saying "guns kill" or "silver hammers kill"--the point is that none of those things kill in the absence of people (and specifically, people named Maxwell). 

Let's start there.  The first point is obviously falsifiable.  Stupidity has plenty to go around and it does not spare those who do not believe in God.  Some of the smartest people I've ever known have been religious.  The rest of the smartest people I've ever known haven't been.  There has been no discernible difference in quantity or quality of intelligence between the two groups.  It seems to be true that more educated populations tend to be less religious, but that doesn't say anything about the intelligence of any given individuals, and even in less religious societies you will find intellectuals who believe in God. 

As to the second point, "religion" does not kill and cannot, being a concept rather than a concrete thing.  Certainly, all manner of craziness and slaughter has been perpetrated in the name of religion.  On the other hand, there has been all kinds of craziness and slaughter perpetrated by humans that had nothing to do with religion or had to do with religion in name only.  The current quagmire in Iraq would be a case in point, I believe.

Furthermore, just as we insist that you cannot prove the existence of God (and you can't--if St. Thomas Aquinas failed, if Descartes failed, then so, surely, will you), neither can we prove the nonexistence of God.  It is generally held to be logically impossible to prove nonexistence, but even if this were not the case--if nonexistence of a thing can be proven--and even if we thought we had proved that the Judeo-Christian God does not exist, this does not demonstrate that no other god or gods exist, and so the work of disproving "god" is not ever really going to be done, even if it were theoretically possible (with an infinite number of monkeys and an infinite number of typewriters...). 

There are good arguments that gods generally and God specifically are inventions of the human mind.  Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, and Julian Jaynes put forth a whole slew of direct and indirect arguments that this is so, enough that I find their logic compelling.  It is worth noting two things about that, though.  The first is that I was already a person lacking faith.  The second is that the fact that we invented god/God does not mean God didn't or doesn't exist.  Hear me out.

If the notion of "god" is a product of human imagination, this would have to mean that no god exists independently of humans, that the gods we usually think of, and certainly God as written in the Bible, do not exist in the absence of human consciousness.  But to say that something cannot exist if it is the mere product of our minds is, again, patently false.  We would have to say, then, that music does not exist, that language is not real, that consciousness itself is nothing.  It's true that there are differences between language and God or music and God, yes, but there are also similarities (not the way Christians think of God, as a being who created us and exists completely independently of us, no, but in the way that I think gods came to be).

To me, faith is a beautiful thing and belief in God is not essentially less worthwhile than sincere appreciation of music or linguistic art.  That's not to say that I believe in God or any god.  I don't.  While I do appreciate music and especially linguistic art, my faith component is missing.  I look to other sources to explain the same things that people who believe explain via gods (or I just don't explain them and let things be all cool and mysterious), but I don't think this makes me a better or smarter person than someone who has the faith that I don't.

Back in the grad school days, when I was taking a lit seminar called The Literature of American Imperialism (one of the best classes I ever took, by the way), I wrote for my seminar paper an essay about otherness.  Obviously, the class was permeated with opportunities to curse Privileged Dead White Men--it was an excellent survey of the peculiar sorts of horror that colonialism and even just the imperialist attitude can perpetrate.  "Other" was a term that got tossed around a lot, too, and in the wrong hands even such a simple word takes on an air of jargon, but generally speaking, it means someone who is not like you, but particularly someone who is oppressed in some way by you and people of your ilk.  The idea in such seminars is that the Other who was once objectified and silenced is now given space and respect and individuality and Thou-ness (to borrow somewhat obnoxiously from Buber). 

But apparently that meant that the former objectifier--the aforementioned Privileged Dead White Man--became the objectified, the vilified, the silenced.  Now I am not so silly as to have tried to argue that the Dead White Man was right in his opinions and actions--certainly not--but I was naive enough to venture the argument, just occasionally, that these Dead White Guys were Other to us now.  Even though we're white (we all were in that seminar, go figure) and think we are therefore similar, we are actually not.  Not only has the elapsed time made us think much differently than they did, the changes in religion vs secularism, changes in science and education about the world, et cetera, have made us so different from those guys (OK, sure, not the guys who perpetrated the Vietnam War, but from Columbus and Cortez?  Uh, yes) as to make them unknown and Other to us.  We think, because of our skin color, that we know them, but we don't and if we silence them, we never will--and that means not understanding our own history as well as the histories of the Others (because those histories are intertwined, see?).

It was a long essay, and I'm oversimplifying here (the actual essay was apparently so complicated, and so infused with Heidegger, that when I presented it at a conference, some of the audience confessed to me that they hadn't understood it at all--okayyyyyyyy), but the point is that it's become commonplace for atheists to denounce Christians as stupid bigots, and maybe you think that since they are the majority there can be no serious bigotry against them (which would mean you don't believe in "reverse racism" and so forth either, probably).  But I say that that is wrong--wrong and immoral.  The fact is that since everyone is Other to you in some way, everyone deserves identical respect as an individual and an equal, fair hearing.  Bigotry is bigotry, no matter what college it went to.  And I'm having no more of it.

Obviously, my general contempt for humans remains.  Sure, I can think we all suck equally and still provide everyone, no matter their race or creed, an equal opportunity to suck.  We suck as a species, and the general self-righteous bigotry from all sides just kind of supports that thesis.  A few days ago I was sad about William Buckley's death because I had a lot of respect and admiration for him, even though we obviously disagreed about many, many things.  Doesn't matter, see?  It isn't only the people who are like you already who are worth listening to.

*By the by, is anyone else surprised to hear that Mormons and Jews each constitute approximately 1.6 percent of the US population?  I would have thought there were many more Jews than that and certainly more than Mormons, but apparently it is the case. 

**A lot of this post probably needs further development to make it really coherent and sound.  But it's very late, and I'm getting tired, so it will have to wait.  No doubt my brilliant commenters will have things to add, too, that I never even thought of.  I hope so.  The era of my moderation is still in its infancy, and it could use some help growing up.

I'm sorry people.  I know I haven't been here lately.  I haven't read any of your blogs, and I haven't written anything. 

You know why?

Because I'm having an increasingly difficult time wanting to come down here and be on this stupid computer.  I hate it.  Every time I do, I end up being down here for several hours, much more than I was planning to, and it makes me feel like hell.  It's so sedentary.  It's so headache-inducing.  It's so ooogy in every way.  I hate it.  I could have been sleeping right now, and should have been.  Instead I came down here to look up one thing and here I am, three hours later, feeling shitty and tired and like my ass will never come unglued from this chair.

Also.  I'm going through one of the extreme misanthropic cycles which has made me not want to communicate with other humans outside my own little nuclear family.  I'm tired of people.  I'm tired of people who hate the South, even though they know nothing about it.  I'm tired of hearing about gun owners' phallic obsessions.  I'm tired of the creeping malaise of half-assed "anything goes" moral relativism that's going around; I am yet more tired of hearing it from people who in the next breath get all judgy and preachy about someone else's life (I am not a moral relativist in this sense, so it is my right and duty to get all judgy and preachy about other people's lives, so suck it).  I'm tired of people who get all exercised about "global warming" (note the quotes--I'm as concerned about actual global warming as anyone else, but the people I'm talking about are people who spend so much fucking time in air conditioned buildings they have no idea at all what the temperature is outside anyway) and then don't give a crap at all about, say, the effects their birth-control pills are having on fish (who are, yo, a part of the ecoSYSTEM--see the 'system' there?  DO YOU KNOW WHAT SYSTEM MEANS, YOU IGNORANT FUCK?).  I'm sick of Obama and Hillary and their ridiculous health-care "plans" and I frankly couldn't give two shits whether McCain had a mistress.  The man was a POW, for pity's sake, he's entitled a bimbo or two.

I'm sick to death of people who preach the results of every damned scientific study as new prescriptions for life, no matter how new the science is or seemingly contradictory to past reports.  I am YET more sick of the fact that these same people will one and all COMPLETELY IGNORE scientific findings, no matter how many other reports back it up, if they don't agree with their precious little world views.  I am tired of people who put themselves first in all things and then "refuse to feel guilty" about it.  I am tired of people who think their taste in music is the only defensible taste.  I have lost all patience for people who think that every privilege that they enjoy is actually a "right," and I am finding people who believe that they have a right not to be offended (irritated, outraged, irked, etc.) utterly intolerable.  (And hmm is it just me or are these the people who seem to be constantly offended by shit?)  I am tired of people who move to Phoenix and expect to play golf on greens that look as if they belong in merry old Scotland (isn't Scotland merry?  I had assumed, since they put whisky on their oatmeal, that they would be, yet I once knew a Scottish guy who insisted that the lyrics to the Sesame Street theme song went, "Sunny days, wishing my life away" which seems perversely dark for a kids' show.  The land of Burns and haggis is surely merry.  And rainy, and the rain is really the key thing there, in terms of the golf courses.)  I do not want to hear another story, either, about how all the old people in Sun City are getting STDs.  Apparently, the older generation needs sex ed, even as they like to lecture my generation about our fallen morals. 

I can't talk about it anymore.  I have artichoke seedlings to tend to.  This year's garden is going to be EPIC.  Oh, and I recently got a new digital camera, a tiny Sony camera, so there will be pictures this year, and I will start doing a separate Vox about the garden and the food.  Ninja keeps getting after me to show pictures of food, so I will.  Presumably, it will make me feel happy and good to talk about the plants and the food, and I'm just totally going to cover my ears and shout "LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU" whenever politics or air conditioning or gun control comes up, ok?  Otherwise, I am sooooo going to burst an artery.  Food is nice.  Plants are excellent.  Compost delights me. 

I am my father's daughter, I guess.  Actually on both sides of my family, we're farmers from way back.  Why fight it?

Oh, man, so I mentioned recently that when I took that quiz, the candidate I came up most matching with was Mike Gravel, right?  Then today I read this, and OH YEH, GRAVEL FTW!

Not that that will happen of course.  But imagine a world in which the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and the COMMANDER IN CHIEF of our big freakin armed forces thinks that war is never the answer!  Can you imagine?  It makes me all giddy just thinking about it.

I mean, seriously.  America is all about war.  And here he thinks that maybe we could find better things to do with ourselves than kill people?  It's...it's unimaginable.  It's also a strategy that will not get you put on any ballots anywhere in the country.  Super.

And another thing.  Since it looks like McCain is the likely Republican nominee, I've been thinking about the matchup, and I don't think Hillary can beat him.  Certainly she knows more about domestic policy, but the American people don't vote for someone based on what that person knows.  There is the war thing, of course, where Hillary claims to want to end it and McCain apparently doesn't care if it just sort of goes on forever. 

But.  McCain tends to attract right-ish Democrats and independents, whereas Clinton tends not to.  It is my humble opinion that McCain generally appeals to rural and Southern voters more, too.  And finally, and I think this may be a biggie--she's been running all this time as the "experienced" candidate, right?  I realize she doesn't have to keep a consistent message from the primaries to the general election, but a) she can't win the "experience" thing against McCain, no way, b) she can't become a "change" candidate because HELLO OLIGARCHY and anyway she represents politics as usual, and c) she will get hammered by the voters who already are inclined to dislike her for changing her message--wishy-washy liberals and the politician in her saying whatever it takes to get elected instead of what she really believes, etc.; we've heard this all before about many a Democrat candidate, no?  She could win on domestic policy because, again, she certainly knows a lot about the economy and health care that McCain does not.  But she can't win on foreign policy against him (she could have won on domestic and foreign policy against Romney, I think, and handily).

Now, Obama, I think, could beat McCain.  In Barack and John, I think there are two such completely different people--in temperament, in experience, in beliefs--that it wouldn't be a fight over who knows more or who has more experience.  Instead it would be more of a debate about what we believe and what kind of person we want up there, and I think Barack could win that.  Change!  Youth!  Handsomeness!  Diplomacy!  Heckuva wife!  Unity!  Hope!  Did I mention the handsome thing?

So, does that mean I'm voting Obama?  No way.  GO GO GADGET GRAVEL!  GRAVEL/EDWARDS '08!  With Richardson as Secretary of State.  There's your change.  Suddenly we're a nation of leftish libertarians who decides to use the money freed up by ending the war on drugs to implement real sex education and make sure all people can get their hands on (and know how to use) contraception.  Suddenly we're taking real steps to fight poverty.  Suddenly we have an experienced diplomat--someone who fundamentally believes in diplomacy and knows how to do it--as Sec. of State.  What a different world it would be.

And what about Barack, whom I have grown to like?  Make him Secretary of Unity and Hope and Smooth Talking.  Make him Secretary of Positive Thinking.  Make him Secretary of How to Keep Your Integrity by Not Voting for Senseless Wars (of course, we won't have senseless wars if we have Gravel--wooooo, Gravel!).  Make him Secretary of Handsomeness. 

I guess Hillary could be Secretary of Pantsuits and Overanalyzed Crying.  She could also be Secretary of Takin' Care of Business (workin' overtime!).

I've completely lost my head.  I need this election to be over.

P.S.  How the fuck has it come to be that someone can win the popular vote but not win the majority of delegates?  The results from some states are showing Barack with a popular win but Hillary with more delegates?  Did we not learn anything at all from the Gore v. Bush debacle, people?  THIS IS ALLEGEDLY A REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY, RIGHT?  COME ON, PEOPLE.  I believe we are supposed to be nominating the person the most people actually voted for. 

This is slightly belated, but whatever.  Happy New Year everyone.

The Best Mainstream Country Songs of 2007 (not necessarily in order--I never can decide what was "the very top best") [the links are all to YouTube videos, though not all of them are the original videos, as I couldn't find all of them.  I could post mp3s if anyone gives a damn.]:

1.  Craig Morgan, "International Harvester"

2.  Brad Paisley, "Ticks"

3.  Miranda Lambert, "Famous in a Small Town"

4.  Blake Shelton, "Nobody But Me"

5.  Tim McGraw & Faith Hill (and I never thought I'd put them on my list, but damn--hate the video though), "I Need You"

6.  Tim McGraw, "If You're Reading This"

7.  Josh Turner, "Firecracker"

8.  Trisha Yearwood, "Heaven, Heartache, and the Power of Love"

9.  LeAnn Rimes, "Nothin' Better to Do"

10.  Sugarland, "Stay"

11.  Jason Aldean, "Johnny Cash"

12.  Alan Jackson, "A Woman's Love"

13.  George Strait (or Kelly Willis--both versions are great, I think), "Wrapped"

14.  Tracy Lawrence, "Find Out Who Your Friends Are"

15.  George Strait, "It Just Comes Natural"

16.  Little Big Town, "Good as Gone"--or, wait, was that 2006?  Whatever, it's a cool song.

17.  Dierks Bentley, "Long Trip Alone"  (If "Every Mile a Memory" was in 2007, then that should be on here, too.  I love that song incredibly much.)

18.  Jack Ingram, "Measure of a Man"

19.  Jake Owen, "Starting with Me"

20.  Blake Shelton, "Don't Make Me"

Brad Paisley put out a bunch of awesome songs this year, as usual.  The man's a nonstop awesome machine (I'm starting to think Josh Turner and Dierks Bentley fall into that category as well).  Among them were the above-mentioned "Ticks" plus "Online" which I've posted before (for Kimura) and "Letter to Me."

I also thought Montgomery Gentry's "Lucky Man" and "What do you Think About That?" were pretty good songs as well, but damn that man can't sing and their videos nearly always creep me out.  Crossing Dixon's "Guitar Slinger" interests me, although it reminds me in places of Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead or Alive."  At least it doesn't remind me of "Bad Medicine"--I guess they're saving that for their second single.  I know nothing about this Crossing Dixon group.  Maybe they're like really old, and I just never heard of them before this.

Hmm, I think "As If" by Sara Evans should get an honorable mention, because I sure did enjoy it even if I am not sure it has long-term staying power.  But lines like, "I love the way you wear those worn-out blue jeans, walking all around in the big sunshine, baby let me believe that you're perfect, at least for a little while.  You don't have to tell me what you're thinking; you can keep all that to yourself."  Ah, objectify the male, Sara--I love it.

Also, Garth Brooks appears to be back.  The song was alright--not my favorite he's ever done, but not bad.  It ain't no "Rodeo."  We'll see where it goes.  Oh, wait, wait--was "Good Ride, Cowboy" this year?  If it was, it should be on the list. 

I always wonder if y'all who don't listen to country music know what some of this stuff even means.  Like when he mentions Chris LeDoux's Copenhagen smile or when Brad Paisley mentions a Skoal ring, do you know what they're talking about?  Wait--do you even know who Chris LeDoux was?  Hmmmm.  I wonder if there's a culture gap here.

Continuing:

Some Things I Learned in 2007

• The sex life of corn is very intricate.
• Some people have an irrational hatred of country music. 
• Most of them have never really listened to it.
• I am never going to be a city person.
• T can only tolerate so many visits from the Mormons.
• My son loves me.
• Brandywine tomatoes are indeed the most delicious thing ever created.  I'd live off of them if I could.
• Having health insurance in no way suggests you can actually afford health care.
• However, our dental cleanings are now free, twice a year.  I'm big on dental hygiene. 
• The immigration people are occasionally reasonable (T got his permanent residency card this year, yay!).
• The people who most need birth control don't use it.
• Eventually, even I need to sleep.  And that eventuality is right now.

Right now, I am not up to the task of turning this into a coherent post.  There are just a variety of related things that have been rattling around in my confused, oxygen-starved brain for a few days, and I need to lay them out here. 

• I've read several articles, in print and online, lately that suggest that "guilt" is something unnecessary and that judging others for their decisions is always (or at least usually) wrong (nevermind the judgment inherent in that).  Guilt is a way that we recognize that we've done something wrong.  There exist people who feel guilty all the time over every single little thing, I know, and those people may need therapy.  But I don't think that is most of us.  If you're feeling guilty, it is possible that your conscience is attempting to communicate to you that you have done something wrong, harmed someone, violated the moral code.  As for being judgmental, why is it wrong to have standards that you expect yourself and others to live up to?  Since when did we decide that any choice is equally OK, as long as that choice does not involve spanking your children, an act which is clearly the worst thing any human could possibly do?  Charles Taylor gives a very good accounting of why all choices are not equally valid or good, at least not in a society that wants to maintain some sense of morality.  Unfortunately, it's not the kind of thing people will generally listen to.  Hmmm, I think there's an essay in this month's Harper's that also touches on this, how we are now meant to respect any idiotic belief, so long as it is sincerely held.  *Note to self:  Reread that essay and also Charles Taylor and make little Invader Zim-like hand gestures of frustration because you are the only person alive who still cares about this.  (I know, that last is an exaggeration.  I know.  I've had pneumonia, and I'm feeling bloody sorry for myself.)
• Stay-at-home dads are kind of awesome.  But what's even more awesome is when people, like Kimura and some hippie dude commenting on this essay, recognize that the supremacy of WORK is fucking bogus.  I've said before that one of my problems with most mainstream types of feminism is that it completely buys into the capitalist hegemony, the superiority of paid work and conspicuous success.  Some of us say fuck all of that, I am SOOOO not giving my life over to some asswipe who gets to decide what my time is worth, I am SOOOOO sick of all the time you people fucking waste in committee meetings that accomplish nothing.  I guess if you like doing all that, well, someone needs to keep the stock markets open, so go for it.  But don't sit around and tell me how much meaningless work I do in a day because I actually change my son's diapers by myself (or used to when he wore them) and wash dishes and such.  You do at least as much meaningless work in a day as I do.  A lot of the work of life is tedious and crappy, whether it's paid work or unpaid work.  Just because you get paid for your time (in units of currency that are gradually decreasing in value, too, you human slave) doesn't mean what you do is inherently more valuable in moral terms than what I do is.  Conclusion:  Fuck the corporate hegemony!  I could totally make a rap song out of this.
• On a related note, I am disturbed by something I have seen on several feminist sites lately--I'm calling them feminist, incidentally, because they call themselves that.  I have no idea if this represents any kind of majority of feminists or not--I hope not.  There is a set of work, mostly that work associated with the house and raising children, that many people find tedious, frustrating, and not important enough to do for themselves.  Their careers are more challenging, interesting, exciting, important, satisfying, etc.  And yet if you suggest, even a little, that middle class, American white women only have the "freedom" to choose the career over the housework because they step on the backs of the colored and the poor, those white women will cry out in rage at you.  The general thrust of their cries will run, "That work isn't inherently demeaning."  Ummmmm...am I the only one who thinks maybe someone is contradicting herself here?  If it's too tedious in comparison to your thrilling career, if you find it mind-numbing and stultifying, do you mean seriously to suggest that it's only that way to you and to no one else?  Do you mean to actually try and tell me that all those impoverished women, some of whom have left their own children and families in their home countries to come here and take care of yours, have done so because nothing thrills and satisfies them more than raising someone else's children?  Are you the most disingenuous bitch ever put on the face of the earth?  The point of noting that white American feminism steps all over the colored and the poor is not to say that white women should all, therefore, go back to being housewives.  The point is--well, there are several.  A)  As in Western Europe, families (including single-parent households, of course) should receive more support in general, including universal health care and all of that, so that all women and men have more choices and better options.  B)  The implication in the economics of these nanny and daycare situations that we currently have is that raising children is not valuable work.  We Americans, as a society, do not value it.  C)  Uh, well, personally, I think it's quite classist and a tad bit racist to say that work that is too tedious and demeaning for you to do is perfectly fine for the underclasses.  Because, um, they don't have the same high-powered mind that you have?  Or...I'm struggling here to find a way to make it better...because you have some kind of rich-white ADD and can't tolerate the mundane tasks of existence that the poor cannot escape, but because the poor are not subject to the rich-white syndrome, they don't get bored the way you do?  WTF?  Grrrrrrrrrrrr. 
• Pneumonia sucks. 
• I really, really hate it when people automatically assume that most people can't "afford" to choose to be stay-at-home parents.  For one thing, the expenses of holding a job if you have children often make the job next to worthless.  Daycare is expensive (and often, let's face it, shitty) and nannies even more so.  Commuting is increasingly expensive.  The extra meals out of the house, the more expensive wardrobe (yes, I am assuming that work clothing generally costs more than at-home clothing--however, unless you wear your work clothes all the time, even cheap work clothes cost more because they entail having a work wardrobe and an at-home wardrobe, in addition to the fancy clothes for dates or whatever--also, work clothing often seems to entail the extra irritating expense of dry cleaning)--all this crap adds up.  After taxes and all this crap, working can be expensive.  I actually can't afford to work outside the home; I can't afford not to work, either, so I work part-time at home, although I resolutely maintain my self-identification as a stay-at-home mom because that's how I mostly think of myself.  Anyway, for another thing, some of us have made the decision that there are any number of expenses we will just forego so that we can afford to stay home and raise our kids.  We don't have satellite TV, for example, which basically means we get only ABC.  Yay, ABC!  We don't have cell phones, iPods, or any other gadgets at all.  We keep our housing costs in check by living in a tiny, old house in the boondocks.  In other words, if staying home with your kids is the most important goal to you (and, it should go without saying, I am NOT talking about single-parent households where there is no choice), you find ways to cut back on what you spend so that you don't need as much income.  In our case, we never realized how much we would have to cut back when we made this decision, because we naively assumed that America's economy was just and sane, but we both agreed that children should be raised by their parents, not by (under)paid help.  And so we make do.  I know I bitch about our poverty mightily on this blog, but most of the time, it's alright.  I bitch here because this is my space to bitch.  In real life, we're OK--at least, thank God, we never ever fight about money.  We made our choices, we take our lumps.  Alls I'm sayin is there are a lot of other people who could easily "afford" to stay home if that was their priority.  That it is not says more about them than they apparently like to think it does.
• That being said, we cannot afford to have another one.  Sad.  That makes me sad.  The last time I was pregnant, I lived in an idyllic land where health care was affordable (pregnancy is oddly not covered by the Japanese national health insurance, but the prenatal visits were still affordable).  I also lived at that time in a land where the assumption is that families will live off of only one income, and most jobs seem to pay accordingly.  Here in America--and this is partially related to the success of '60s feminism and also related to our misguided economic policies more generally--we assume families will need two incomes, and jobs pay accordingly.  This system forces the choice either not to have kids or to come up with ways to manage kids and careers--except for those of us who say "fuck off" to capitalism and consumerism and instead stay home and garden with our kids.

I'm purdy sure y'all are getting tired of me writing (read: bitching) about things like this, but damn!  Damn it all to hell!  I'm angrrrry.

I had thought that maybe I could read Jezebel if I stopped giving the comments too much attention.  But nooooo!

Today there was this nonsense.

First, this beauty pageant winner (Kate Michael) is accused of complaining that she's oppressed because she's white.  The quote that is based on is this, that she wrote on a friend's Facebook page:  "I got 2nd runner up, which is incredible, since they were never going to pick a girl as 'pale' as me anyway."  When the Washington Post (?  WTF?  Are Facebook posts considered hard journalism these days?  fuckin a, man) questioned the racial implications in the comment, she denied them and said it had to do with her not having a good tan.  From the wording of the comment, that could be what she meant, if we're going to give her some benefit of the doubt here instead of just looking for evil racists lurking in our pudding.

So, then Jezebel researches the matter further and finds that she has "opaquely referenced her oppressed-minority status" before.  To wit, they find this quote:

"[Kate] Michael says the win was thrilling. She says it surprised her, considering all the talk she heard about the importance of diversity in the district."Because D.C. has a more diverse population, people hoped for a more diverse winner, but when you look at diversity, it is a diversity of experience, a diversity of thought," she says. "I thought they might choose an African-American Miss D.C."

Um, yeah...so the reference to race is more explicit but any references to her "oppressed-minority status" would seem pretty fucking opaque to me.  Let's see.  The gist of this quote is that she is happy and surprised that she won because she expected, in keeping with the city's racial makeup, that they would choose an African-American to represent.  She figures that that would be diversity.  Then again, maybe "diversity" includes "diversity of experience and thought" and so maybe that's why they chose her over an African-American.  Am I missing something?  Where does she mention being oppressed?  Where does she mention thinking that (outside of her own personal motivation to win, obviously) an African-American shouldn't have won? 

There might be some implied racism in this if it weren't for that "Because D.C. has a more diverse population" bit.  She thought an African-American probably would win because they constitute a majority of the population and the judges would choose someone to reflect that.  Um.  That's racist? 

However.  Excoriating her for being racist isn't enough.  No, why stop there?  This is the Internet--loosen up and just let hellfire blow.  So, the post then calls her stupid (when, actually, both quotes are pretty articulate, I think).  Then they make fun of her for studying in the Johns Hopkins University's graduate program in international relations and planning a career in that field.

So, what the hell am I missing here?  She is in graduate school at Johns Hopkins, so I'm thinking maybe she isn't so stupid.  But, Jezebel has the answer! 

"Or did she just bone one of the deans."  [Hey, Jez, note the improper punctuation.  Maybe you're the one who's stupid.]  Jez thinks she boned the dean.

Gee, I'm glad they figured that out for me.  Of course, she is white, and she is in beauty pageants, so that must be it, right?  A woman who is pretty (I guess--she isn't really my type) and parades around in absurd swimsuit configurations is obviously too stupid to study in a graduate school or have a career.  I'm thinking the only reasonable thing for a woman like that to do is get all barefoot and pregnant and ...yeah.  Great job, Jezebel.

The comments just get worse obviously.  The woman is stupid beyond belief, apparently, not to mention totally ugly, a bad dresser, screwing her way to the top, and, of course, a white supremacist jerkwad.  Alright, I think they don't use "white supremacist," opting for "fascist" instead.  Because she's just like Mussolini, only with boobs. 

So, I dunno.  I don't buy that this lady is a racist or stupid (or fascist, for that matter).  I don't really care about her looks.  And I *seriously* doubt that her studies at Johns Hopkins amount to boning the dean.  And, you know, I just can't really get behind this, "Oh, she's successful so she must be fucking someone!" thing.  Dudes, I think that's one of the attitudes that feminism--at least in most of its incarnations--is trying to move past.  Like, maybe, this chick kicks major international relations ass.  How would I know?  Why would I care? 

You know, people.  If you have a theory that you believe in strongly enough, you can go and find evidence to support it.  You can dredge up "opaque" references that seem to support your theory all over the place.  That don't make it so.  It might be better, or at least more reasonable, to start by reading with an open mind, without a theory in place.  Let the evidence drive the theory, not vice versa. 

Alright, now someone slap me if I ever go read Jezebel again.  A few more posts like that, and I'm going to herniate my carotid.  Or something.

UPDATE:  Waaaiiiit.  I found the indisputable proof of her racism.  Look at these pictures and tell me she isn't the second coming of Hitler himself.  Look at the way she is hugging these kids and reading to them.  It's sickening.  Actually reading her blog a bit convinced that she might be a bit banal, but she is not stupid.