26 posts tagged “rant”

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.

I need to vent for a moment.

See, my son is 2.  Well, 2-and-a-half.  Lately he has taken to wearing hair ornaments, necklaces, and the occasional bit of lip gloss.  I think this is a perfectly normal phase, and he actually looks pretty good with a little barrette in his hair.

And I don't want anyone else asking me if this doesn't worry me that maybe my son is going to be homosexual.

First and foremost, I sincerely doubt that there is any connection between wearing hair ornaments in your toddler years and homosexuality.  I find the fact that some people do believe there is a connection utterly confounding.  I know a whole covey of grown men who wear strange hair ornaments, necklaces, earrings--and even a few who paint their nails sometimes--and most of them are a) healthy and b) heterosexual (and also kind of hot). 

Second, if he's gay, he's gay.  I cannot see that banning him from wearing necklaces and lip gloss is going to change that.

Third, if he is homosexual, I DON'T FUCKING CARE. 

That's not quite true.  I guess I do care.  I care that he would trust us, his parents and grandparents, enough to tell us even if he's not ready to come out to the rest of the world.  I care in that I would hope he not be the subject of discrimination and harassment because of whom he wants to sleep with, and I would care about helping him get through it all in whatever ways I could. 

But, otherwise, I don't care.  He's my son.  I care that he is happy.  I care that he is healthy.  I care that he feels loved.  I care that he challenges himself and cares about the world around him.  I care that he remain curious and imaginative.

I also care that, whatever his sexual orientation, he learns the value of a well-placed condom.

I don't care if he's a homosexual.  I don't care if he wears lip gloss.  If I banned him from doing those things and lectured him about how men don't do those things and he's going to be a sissyboy if he keeps painting his lips, I'm pretty sure he would stop trusting me, and I would much rather that he trusts me (and his father and grandparents, none of whom would be upset if he's gay) than that he fits your idea of what men are supposed to do.  Fuck you and your gender roles. 

Also, he's 2. 

So, yeah, I know I've hit this topic before.  But over on Jezebel, there has been a raging and entirely tiresome discussion about the so-called "Asian fetish" (in this case, apparently, the usage is being solely restricted to white guys who fetishize Asian women).  The comments are tiring me because unquestioned, implicit assumptions are being thrown around like candy at a parade, and also, importantly, there is a general failure to make a distinction between white guys who actually fetishize Asian women and those who just happen to have one (or even more) Asian girlfriends or just happen to live and teach in an Asian nation.  Not all guys who ever date a Japanese chick is doing it because he thinks she will totally be just like the girls in the tentacle rape comics. 

Anyway, so anytime a topic that remotely touches on racism comes up, there is a segment of the Jezzie commenter squad who goes apeshit about institutionalized racism and white privilege.  I don't think they have fully recovered from their grad school lit seminars.  One of them was kind enough recently to give an answer (finally!) as to what this "white privilege" is supposed to be. 

She says that "as white people in the US, we benefit from white privilege whether we personally discriminate or not."  And I'm thinking, "Hmm, I'm white, or mostly white, and so...when?  When do these benefits come to me?"

She says that the media display more images of white people and more types of white people than people of any other race.  My first response to that is, ummmm, maybe because whites are the majority?  And by quite a long shot, apparently, if you look at the racial makeup of the US as a whole.  My second response is so fucking what?  I have never felt that any of the white people portrayed on TV or in movies have anything at all to do with me personally, except possibly the cast of Roseanne.  Those were getting close to my kind of people.  Now, this is a class issue we're talking about and also a geographic one--the white people portrayed in the media tend to be coastal types (even those who allegedly live inland still seem to be written by coastal types) and overwhelmingly affluent.  So, who cares that their skin is similar to mine--I have nothing in common and no aspiration to have anything in common with those characters.

She says that our political leaders are also overwhelmingly white, and at the national level they certainly are and have always been.  It is a bit silly to point out that they always have been since women and non-white people have only had the vote for the latter portion of the nation's history, so, duh, they didn't hold office when they couldn't vote.  But whatever.  The more salient point is that, again, due to the class issues and geographic issues, our politicians have nothing in common with me or anyone I know either.  Not true, I suppose.  Bill Clinton received oral sex in his office, and I know other men (not all of whom are white) who have done so as well.  And Jimmy Carter was a farmer, and my people are agricultural as well, so I guess there's that.  But what exactly does the color of Ronald Reagan's skin have to do with anything?  I have always been one of the poor people he fucked over so badly, so I really can't see how his pallor privileged me.  I'd like to pull some voodoo economics on his grave, man.

She says teachers assume that we'll be "perform well and go to college."  Yeah, well, maybe some places, but not where I came from.  My first high school was approximately half-chicano and half-not-chicano.  It was a really small town in the middle of the forest in the ass-end of New Mexico.  I'm not sure anyone assumed we'd perform well or go to college.  When I went to the bigger high school my senior year, a pretty high-achieving high school as far as I could tell, it was assumed that anyone who wasn't in that loser group who always ate lunch on their pickup truck tailgates would go to college, regardless of color or creed.  Because not going to college = heating your lunch up on your idling truck engine for the rest of your life in the thinking of the penny loafer wearing, Benetton-ad yips at my second high school.

Anyway, it is probably true in some high schools, but maybe it's also because whites are more likely to go to college.  For one thing, they are more likely to have the family support for doing so.  For another thing, they are more likely to have a tradition in their families and/or great pressure from their families to do so.  Or, wait, let's back up, because we're not talking about all minorities anymore, although we were in the media and politics points, right?  Here, we're only talking about blacks and possibly Hispanics, but mainly blacks.  I mean, seriously, I have never heard anyone, anywhere suggest that Asians are being channeled out of the college-prep track.  If anything, that bias is quite opposite.  See an Asian around?  Automatically assume that he/she will both want to become and be capable of becoming a doctor, engineer, computer programmer, etc.  Everyone knows that Asians are both smarter than whites and have a better work ethic.  Also, I hear they like tentacle rape.

"White is thought of as the default race."  We whites have the great luxury of being the default.  We are not "other."  My first reaction to this is, again, so fucking what?  What great benefit is this?  But then, upon reflection, I think it's actually wrong.  These days we are the great other.  Look on a census form and you've got every possible racial and ethnic identification down there:  "Hawaiian or Pacific Islander," "Asian," "Hispanic," etc.  And then you've got "white."  We're the default, I guess, in that if you're not anything else, then you're white.  But that makes us the other.  You can be one of those specific things or you can be "None of the above" essentially.  And what is that if not alterity?  The default category is "other."  Further, in every grad lit seminar in the land, we are the ones whose voices do not deserve distinction.  It is true, absolutely, that English programs still feature more white writers than "other" writers, but it is also true that every fucking lit major in the country can tell you in pseudo-Derridean jargon how white people are a great lumpen mass, speaking with one hegemonic voice, while every writer of color (and especially ones from former colonies) has an individual, distinct voice that deserves respect, no matter how shitty their writing.  Sorry, I know.  Colored people and women are never shitty writers, I know.  I took enough lit classes to hang my head in shame at my opinion that The Awakening is a stupid novel and that woman in it is really and truly not oppressed.

Also, it seems like a mild contradiction to say that we gain benefit and privilege by skin-color association with people in power and also that we gain benefit and privilege from not even thinking about our skin color and seeing ourselves as a unified race.  If it's going to make a difference to me that all these lily-white fuckwads are running big corporations then I need to identify with them in some way, but the combination of class differences, my contrarian belief that "white" does not constitute a homogenous race, and my belief that the political and corporate worlds are immoral and counter to everything that I aspire to be and do.  Also, I grew up real fucking poor, so economic class means more to me than skin color, in case you hadn't noticed.

Finally, two things:  First, she asserts that we are not judged as a race when one of us does something illegal or immoral.  While it is generally true now that white people are not assumed to be always committing crimes just because most of us are, this was not always true of some types of whites (Italians were often thought to be outrageous criminals back in the day, and some people still feel that way about Russians).  And of course, it seems silly to point this out but, in fact, there are many people who blame all whites for, as they say, the sins of our fathers.  It doesn't matter that you've never held slaves, never colonized a dark land--you're still white, so it's guilt by association.  I don't know.  I don't think that's the approved thinking, but whatever.

And then she says whites have the definite advantage in the justice system, and to that I can only say: WORD.

OK, OK, people. I'm working for pay again--soon, I will be working for pay full time and still taking care of my son full time!  I don't know how I'm going to do this and still sleep, either, but...it has to be done.  So, my Voxing may be sporadic--I'll do my best, but if I fail to comment on your posts, rest assured, I still love you (if I ever loved you, and you all know who you are, I hope).

Anyway, I have some male friends who like to label themselves "feminists."  That's fine with me--the more people we have on board with the notion that women are, like, people, the merrier.  But sometimes it startles me how incapable they are of understanding what it's like to be a woman. 

Oh, it's not the periods, the pregnancy, the childbirth.  I mean, those are all important parts of womanhood for most women, but that's not really the part I'm talking about.  Let me tell you a somewhat embarassing story to illustrate.

Back in my senior year of high school, my English teacher had the chairs arranged so that there were two halves of the room with an aisle in between, and the students on each half faced each other, rather than facing the teacher.  It happened that my best friend Linda and I (a drama fag and a debate nerd, respectively--not cool, popular types at all, but also not outcasts or ugly girls) sat directly opposite this hottie named Bret.  Have I told you guys about this before?  Anyway, Bret was handsome and popular but still kind of smart and nice--an all-around good guy, really.  He also had a predilection for wearing those damn Hypercolor T-shirts (for those of you too young to remember, they were T-shirts that changed colors when the wearer was hot or exposed to heat, so you could make cool handprints on your friends' shirts and stuff).

In that class, among other senior-English sorts of literature, we read The Handmaid's Tale.  It's a fantastic book, and this teacher really asked us good questions about it and got everyone to thinking about gender roles and all that crap.  Now, Linda and I had joked about Bret and his Hypercolor shirts for a while, but the line was crossed when our teacher asked the class, "Well, how would you feel about it if men were the sex slaves?"  The boys could hardly even take it seriously, really.  Linda, god love her, piped up with, "I wouldn't mind at all, as long as I could have Bret."

The teacher laughed hysterically.  I think she had noticed the Hypercolor, too.  The whole class laughed, except for Bret, who was, unfortunately, wearing a Hypercolor shirt right at that time, a shirt that turned hot pink to match his flustered, hot pink face.  Linda and I winked at him, in unison.

After that, the sexual harassment of Bret never stopped.  The teacher never stopped us.  We made loud comments about his clothes.  We wondered aloud about his virginity or lack thereof.  We openly debated the likelihood of his being good in bed.  We winked.  We made slightly lewd gestures.  We touched him inappropriately.  He did eventually get the idea and stop wearing those damn T-shirts, but it didn't really help. 

The poor guy.  You could see it got to him.  He had no idea what he had done to provoke this, and honestly, he hadn't done anything except sit directly across from us.  His friends teased him.  Everyone, including the teacher, laughed at him and the teasing. 

At the end of the school year, we actually did sort of apologize, and Bret was man enough to accept our apology.  We also pointed out that girls kind of get this shit all the time.

I dunno.  Maybe all girls don't get personally harassed, although I suspect it happens to most of us.  It doesn't really have to.  The jokes, the open discussion of our bodies, the gestures, the inappropriate touching--none of these things are welcome, but they're just part of the deal.  Every single day, from the time they are born, girls are seeing women posed in sexually suggestive positions, naked, vulnerable, used to sell anything and everything.  Breasts are everywhere--so everywhere as to suggest that they are public property when, in fact, they are not.  American Apparel puts up billboards showing faceless chicks wearing nothing but tights, bent over, with their crotches thrust in every passerby's face.  Show your thong, show some ass cleavage, wear your clothes shorter, tighter, blah blah blah.

It doesn't end there.  It gets more invasive--you need to remove every hair on your body (except your head, of course).  You don't look your best without makeup.  Everyone can be perfected with plastic surgery or Botox or collagen injections or...hell, now plastic surgeons are offering package deals so you can perfect yourself all at once.  I especially love the ladies who are getting toes removed so they can fit in Manolo Blahnik shoes.  Because, yeah, that's reasonable.

So, no, fellas--even my most intelligent and beloved male friends--you have no idea.  You have no idea at all what it's like to have your body be so public.  Try to imagine walking down the street and seeing ad after ad showing you how you could look better, be better, have less unwanted hair, be more pleasing in general to the female eye.  I realize these days you guys do get the erectile dysfunction ads (which show no penises at all, which is such a shame!  nothing I love more than a flaccid penis!) and of course the spam folders FULL of penis enlargement ads (but, hey, we get those, too, and sadly there are no before and after pics in those emails either).  Try to imagine if every freaking movie you saw felt obligated to offer up young hunky guys, naked, sometimes for no reason whatsoever except to sell tickets.  Try to imagine if you were Bret.

Every guy I try to paint this picture for says, "Oh, no big deal," but that's only because they can't really imagine.  You think it'd be so great to have your dick turned into a billboard?  Let's try it.  I'll gladly come to wherever you live and sexually harass you for a while like I did to poor old Bret and see if it doesn't start to grate on your nerves, especially after I start demanding you get your groin waxed.

Two more small anecdotes:  When Pulp Fiction came out, men had very strong negative reactions to the all-male rape scene...you know, with "The Gimp."  The Gimp was some kind of disturbing, but the actual rape scene was pretty mild considering the frequency, intensity, and (sometimes) documentary-style veracity of rape scenes in movies where the victim is a woman.  I mean, hell, we have to sit through that horror show pretty often, thanks.  You guys get one guy-rape scene and freak the hell out.  Shutup already.  Also, a few weeks ago, I was reading some blog (maybe One D at a Time) that had a forum of female sex bloggers rating and commenting on penises--sent in (er, pictures of penises sent in...not the penises themselves, which would be really creepy) by male readers, apparently.  I happened to be chatting with a male friend at the time, and I linked him to it because the writing was truly hilarious.  He couldn't even read it.  I suppose it was the pictures, like it would make him gay or something to look at pictures of other guys' dicks and consider their size, shape, heft, erecticity, and so forth.   Erecticity?  Erectitude?  I think we need both of those words to convey specific information about tumescence, because wtf?  We should, as a nation, talk a lot more about penises and their erectitude.

Also, there are fellas who like to tell me that because I shave my underarms (and legs, etc) and have come to prefer them shaved, that must indicate that I'm doing this without society's influence, entirely of my own imagination and free will.  This is the biggest load of horseshit I've ever heard.  If I lived in a place where no one cared if women have hair on their legs, I seriously doubt it would have occurred to me spontaneously to take a razor to them.  Indeed, back in sixth grade, when I scarcely had hair anywhere except my head--and what I had was baby soft and white-blond--all the other girls started shaving their underarms and legs.  Boys and girls alike then felt compelled to laugh at the nerds like me who hadn't started yet--we were so gross, dirty, etc.  *sigh*  So, I started rather against my better judgment.  Yeah, all that awesome free will.  Now, of course it feels better (and looks better, to my thoroughly indoctrinated eye) to keep them shaved--the hair gets coarser and the skin gets rougher once you've started, and you have to keep it up or risk having goat legs.  I know--I've tried it. 

I'm not a prude--far from it.  I like to rock the sexy lingerie.  I like a mini-kilt with fishnet stockings--stockings held up with a garter belt, mind you.  I'm not against women looking sexy or men enjoying it when we do (oh, my life would be so much less enjoyable were my husband immune to lacy underpants).  What I'm against, and what men don't seem to ever understand, is that it doesn't end.  Once we've made the female body public--a sales device, a topic of public discourse, an obligatory movie scene, the eternal hilarious joke because when aren't titties funny?--it's difficult to make your body private again and keep control over access to it, difficult to get away from the idea that you have to work at it to make yourself appealing to men.

Sorry, guys, I know you are all about girl power and all that, but I don't really think you get it.  I don't blame you--women are just as much to blame for this situation as men, or nearly so, but you also have no real way to understand it.  Feel free to argue with me.

There has been a running theme to my intense irritation and weariness with people lately.  It has come up obliquely in some of my posts (or rants, whatever) about feminism.  It again reared its head covertly in my disgust with that post about racism that I discussed earlier.  Now, it once again comes sneaking round the corner, only this time the proximal issue is religion and atheism. 

The silent beast that so fatigues me is this:  YOU (whoever you are) ARE NOT SUPERIOR TO ANYONE BASED ON THE COLOR OF YOUR SKIN, YOUR GENITALIA, THE COUNTRY YOU LIVE IN/WERE BORN IN, YOUR FAITH OR LACK THEREOF, YOUR SEXUAL ORIENTATION, OR THE LEVEL OF EDUCATION AND/OR WEALTH YOU HAVE OR HAVE NOT ATTAINED.  FULL MOTHERFUCKING STOP. 

Sorry to shout, but this really rankles.

I know a lot of you probably assume, and it's a fair assumption based on my constant ranting, that I think I am superior to a lot of other people.  But I don't.  I am better educated than most people.  I am far better read than the average person.  I am more intelligent than most people--indeed, if the various standardized tests and grades and all that are an indication, I am more intelligent than 99% of Americans.  I have other strengths, and I know them and use them. 

However, I will be the first to admit that I am lacking in other areas.  I am not forgiving.  I am not gentle or kind, and I lack empathy.  I am moody and temperamental.  I can be utterly asinine.  I know this.

The point is, of course, that this means that no matter how smart and well read I know myself to be, I also know that other people have strengths and goodness-es that I lack.  I admire people who are genuinely kind and forgiving.  I admire people with the spatial intelligence that I sorely lack.  I admire people who exhibit more control over their temper.  My husband is one such person, and I admire him greatly.  We are different, but we both see each other as equal.  EQUAL.

On the racism post I ranted about earlier, I was bothered deeply by the fact that she posited that the experience--both historical and contemporaneous--of "POCs" is more important than that of "whites" whom she indiscriminately lumps together.  This struck me as a simple reversal of the old paradigm, i.e., previously "whites" thought their stories mattered and those of POCs didn't, and that was a form of asserting their superiority.  It dehumanizes the other.  That a black woman would sanction such an assertion in reverse, i.e., sanction an attitude that one group deserves dehumanization, wearied me greatly. 

With feminism, it has long bothered me that there is a strain of vocal feminism that takes as its goal (mostly covertly--most of them would not say this outright, but then neither would the racist discussed above) the repositioning of women as superior with respect to men.  Interestingly, Doris Lessing just commented on this and was dissed by Broadsheet as being in line with the views of the rancid reactionary, Ann Coulter.  Doris Lessing as Ann Coulter...just...no. 

Anyway, there is evidence that this repositioning is happening in certain areas.  For one thing, men are being demonized as likely rapists and pederasts.  Police officers advise children to, if lost, find a woman to help them--not a man.  Nevermind that it is actually a tiny fraction of men who abuse children in any way.  Nevermind that child abuse (though not sexual abuse) happens as often at the hands of a woman as a man and that most children who are killed through abuse or neglect are killed by a woman.  No--kids, find a woman!  And fathers are reporting being subjected to questioning from the police for merely taking their daughters out for lunch.  Young boys are being punished for sexual harassment for touching girls in nearly any way--pinching and hugging are apparently sexual now among the kindergarten set, but only if the pincher or hugger is male.  Men who complain about this obviously want to return to a day when they had the legal right to beat and rape women.

Another strain of feminism asserts that working women (mothers or otherwise) are superior to women whose only work is taking care of their households and children.  But you've all heard me gripe about this enough, I think.

And then just yesterday, this came to my attention.  So, some "freethinkers" in Wisconsin gave a talk called "Religion Kills" and put up a billboard that had an anti-religious message.  That leads this Christian (oh, so Christian!) blogger to broadcast her ressentiment thusly: 

This freedom from religion group pompously struts around, asserting that christians all believe blindly and unscientifically, which is laughable, especially if you've ever debated or listened to a christian / athiest debate. They make a point to prey on human pride that drives us to reject conformity, they are full of charming sarcasm and wit and they are like the cool kid at the party - they exude confidence and intelligence, but inside they are just scared little boys (and girls) who desperately do not want anyone to find out that they can't look themselves in the eyes in the mirror.

This is the voice of a person who thinks she is superior to them because of her faith. (If you plow through the comments thread, you will later find her asserting that you cannot have any morality outside of the Judeo-Christian tradition, among other things).  True, there are atheists who feel superior to her because of her faith in Christ, but as with the racists and the feminists, NO GOOD comes of reversing the hierarchy. 

It's so classic, really.  Let's take a little refresher course in ressentiment. 

Ressentiment is a sense of resentment and hostility directed at that which one identifies as the cause of one's frustration, an assignation of blame for one's frustration. The sense of weakness or inferiority and perhaps jealousy in the face of the "cause" generates a rejecting/justifying value system, or morality, which attacks or denies the perceived source of one's frustration. The ego creates an enemy, to insulate itself from culpability.

I'd say asserting that atheists are by definition immoral (or possibly amoral--she isn't clear) and incapable of looking themselves in the mirror is a very classic case of ressentiment, and it masks a fear and also an inability to admit what the real fear is.  A person who knows herself to be strong has no need of ressentiment or this kind of deep hatred against a group.  It has always amazed me when Christians assert the profound strength and truth of their faith in one breath and then show great delectation in how nonbelievers will be punished in the Last Judgment in the next.  That is a revenge fantasy, and in some of the early American Christian sermons (Cotton Mather and that ilk), the excitement at imagining this revenge is palpable.  If your faith is strong and you honestly believe Christ is your savior, you ought have no special desire or need to hate others or delight in their damnation.

Anyway, the connecting thread here is a consuming need and desire not for equality but for a mere reversal of the traditional paradigm.  Being a person of color becomes superior to (in moral terms) being white.  Being female becomes superior to being male.  Being Christian becomes superior to being "freethinking."  (Actually this last one is exceptional because that already is the dominant paradigm in North American society...so...whence the ressentiment?) To me, that's just a different side of the same oppressive coin. 

In contrast to these positions that I find reprehensible, I am for equality.  Legally, there should be absolute equality, although this is often easier to postulate than to achieve (what does it mean for men and women to have equal reproductive rights, for example?).  In personal terms, I try to see each individual as an individual rather than thinking, "Oh, he's a (member of X group)."  I try to live by the ethical positions elaborated by Heidegger, Buber, Borgmann, and Charles Taylor with a healthy dose of Camus, Aristotle, and Nietzsche thrown in (incidentally, many of them didn't specifically write works of ethics--but I believe that ethical principles are derivable from the ontological frameworks, i.e., knowing our relationships with one another and the world implies an ethics.  Of course, I also believe ethics are implied by such diverse sources as the poetry of Rilke and contemplation of the night sky, so....I could be a little crazey).

But, you say, but!  You, GinBaby, are a known misanthropist!  Yes, this is true.  I dislike nearly all people and think that we probably are, in fact, a virus with shoes.  Mostly I dislike people because I find most of their little weaknesses and insecurities and petty competitiveness to be tiresome.  I don't mean weaknesses of the sort that, say, Gabriel Garcia Marquez characters have, which are charming, or the general sort in which we are not all equally good at all things.  By "weaknesses" here, I mean the incapacity or unwillingness to know oneself completely, to stand strong in the face of opposition, to question received wisdom and authority, to be free for rather than merely free from, to face uncomfortable truths.  These things--jealousy, ressentiment, envy, petty bickering, ego stroking--I just do not have the energy for--or rather I don't have the will to give energy to these things. 

We would be a better society--both nationally and globally--if we all were strong enough to give up our little prejudices and hatreds and insecurities because then we might stop feeling such a pressing need to treat other people like shit.

I apologize for the length of this post. But your brevity does not make you superior.  Wink. 

I've been pondering this for a while, wondering if I should bother responding to it.  So far I haven't been very satisfied with any of the responses I've seen, so I decided to go ahead--not that it matters a bit, I know, but just for my own satisfaction.

Some woman in Belgium, a mother of two!, wrote a book about why you shouldn't have kids.  Apparently it's raising some ruckus over in France, a nation that maintains a high birthrate.  I don't see why it has to raise quite so much fury, except that the French are somewhat excitable, but I also, obviously, don't agree with her that kids aren't worth having.  I thought I would take some of her "arguments" and just respond directly to them, instead of giving you my warm, fuzzy reasons why I'm glad I'm a mother.  The article I'm quoting from is here.

"Let's start at the beginning with my first reason for being anti-children: labour is torture."  Well, let's not kid ourselves--labor isn't fun.  It's uncomfortable and painful and somewhat humiliating, what with all the random people peeking and poking at your vagina whenever they want to.  For some women, especially those who do deliver vaginally and have tearing or other problems, it can be super painful, I'm aware.  For me, the labor pains were not the worst pain I have ever experienced (cluster headaches beat labor pains by a fucking mile, man), but I didn't deliver vaginally, so I don't know what that feels like.  I do know that many otherwise reasonable women (including the author) go on to do it more than once, so apparently it isn't quite so tortuous as to outweigh the desire for multiple children.  Judging by the fact that, say, survivors of actual torture in POW camps and so forth frequently never forget their pain and would never voluntarily subject themselves to it again, I think saying "labor is torture" is literally false and a bit overwrought.

"Get over these early hurdles and you hit the big one: how to keep your child amused and happy.  This will fast become one of your most hated jobs. The moment you give birth you can forget leisurely lie-ins, last-minute trips or a spontaneous roll in the hay with your partner. Instead, your weekends revolve around being woken at the crack of dawn to traipse around the zoo or watch minimum wage actors cavort in cartoon costumes at Disneyland; sitting through stupid kids' films and eating in "child friendly" restaurants. In my opinion this alone is reason enough not to have a child."  Taking it from the top:  In our house, we think that it's our job to show our son how to amuse himself.  I drag his toys out and let him play by himself while I read a book, for example.  Not all the time, of course--I do play with him, but I also think it's important that he realizes that mommy needs time to herself and that he is fully capable of entertaining himself.  And, perhaps surprisingly, he's getting good at doing so.  Mostly he builds Lego robots and hammers things.  As for the lie-ins, my husband and I take turns letting the other sleep in, which isn't as nice as sleeping in with your hot husband, but it's not unbearable, either.  My husband and I, defying the conventional wisdom, also continue to have spontaneous sex.  Occasionally it gets awkwardly interrupted, sure, but this is also not unbearable; in fact, we sometimes get a laugh out of it.  Especially when we're interrupted by my son yelling something like, "Papa, drive safe!" while we are having our spontaneous sex.  That's funny, man.  Anyway, as for the rest of that nonsense, those sound to me like choices you make about how to entertain your child.  We spend much more time hiking in the forest or playing in the garden than we do traipsing him around anywhere, but those are the things that we want to be doing, and he enjoys them as well.  In other words, lady, those are your problem, not a problem with having kids per se.

"I stayed for years in a job that bored me - as an economist - just so I could get out early to pick my children up. I worked all day, and then came home to shopping, cooking, cleaning and hours of homework, and all so my kids could treat me like a maid. It was so boring."  Essentially I think these amount to your problems again, lady.  Why did you let your kids treat you like a maid?  Does your male partner treat you that way, so that your children think it is acceptable?  And, more importantly, when you were a working childless person, did you not have to shop, cook, and clean?  Did you only learn to resent doing those things once you were doing them for someone else?  Sure, there is more cleaning to be done (and more cooking) once you have little demon spawn running around, but you still had to do it.  It's life.  It is the work that has to be done to get our dirty human selves through life.  I'm getting the idea, from this and from what you said about how difficult it is to entertain your children, that you yourself are a very boring person.  In my experience, only boring people get bored this much and have such excruciating difficulty playing with their children.  Admittedly, though, there is a bitter truth in that first sentence--women do often have a hard time finding a job that lets them have the family time they need and also a fulfilling career.  It's not a death sentence, though; it's more a call to be creative.  Women are finding all kinds of ways to handle it, from starting their own businesses to job sharing.  It's not easy, and we do need to structure it so that men can and do take the same time off for family matters, but it's not really a reason to avoid having children.  It's more a reason to work for societal change.  But, again, perhaps since you are a boring person, you cannot imagine either a more creative work situation or creative social solutions.  Get yourself an imagination, lady.

"I found the hardest thing to give up when I had my children was my personal freedom.  There is no time left to be you any more."  This is, of course, a common enough complaint from parents.  I would think that it gets better as your children grow up, but even now I'm the mother of a toddler, and I still have time for myself.  Not as much as I used to, and I can't blow all my money on handbags, beer, and trips to Taiwan, sure.  And that fails to convince me.  I was never under the impression that my complete irresponsibility (er, freedom) could or would last forever.  I still come down here and shiver in my basement and write and chat with friends and maintain a life.  I also, as noted above, let my son see that at times, mama has her own thing to do, and at those times he needs to scarper and let me do them, and he's pretty good about it now.  So, I'm still me.  Only I'm me who has a savings account, fewer cute handbags, and a toddler nipping at my be-sneakered heels.  But I hate this persistent myth that becoming a mom makes you no longer a person or no longer a woman--oh, now you're just someone's mom.  Becoming a mom does change you, sometimes in unpredictable ways, but it doesn't negate you (or, at least, it doesn't have to--I guess some moms do seem to lose themselves, but that's not a necessary condition of child-rearing). 

"Once you have children, there is no space for spontaneity any more. We tried to go to an art exhibition last weekend which we'd been looking forward to for ages, but we had to take the kids along and they hate art.  They whined so much that we gave up and left without seeing anything."  Huh.  Your kids sure sound like nasty little buggers.  Wonder where they get that from?  Perhaps your example of whining when you have to do something "boring" has rubbed off on them.  Perhaps you should have got a babysitter or something and gone without them.  Perhaps you should have just laid down the law, as was done in my family, told them to deal with it, and dragged them through the exhibit with you.  I don't know.  I can imagine a lot of solutions here, none of which involve not having kids at all.

"What hope is there of a fulfilling sex life when a woman is forced to turn into a fat, deformed animal decked out in sack-like dresses?"  Dude.  Maybe that happened to you, although you don't look fat.  Deformed?  Good heavens.  I sense some serious self-loathing here.  Sack-like dresses?  Not in my closet.  And, actually, our sex life is good. Better than good, but we don't need to go into a lot of details here.  I suppose it's just because I'm so preternaturally gorgeous, but still.  Again, this doesn't make a good argument against child-bearing; it only makes the case that you are ugly, have no libido or fashion sense, and a partner who is probably homosexual.

Then she starts talking about how kids are savages--I'm not going to quote this part, because it's long--and how these days you can't do anything to control them because smacking them around is socially frowned upon, and so you can do nothing to discourage their savagery.  Well, sure--everyone knows kids are savages.  There's a reason why the words 'feral,' 'uncouth,' and 'barbarian' are all in my son's vocabulary.  The idea is that you teach them how to not be savages.  The idea here is that they learn, both from your word and, ideally, your deed.  You actually can teach them this without smacking them around at all; my parents never smacked me, not even just to get my attention, and I am no longer a barbarian.  There are a lot of things besides not being able to hit your children lest someone call Child Protective Services that can cause your children to be spoiled, whiny brats.  Being a spoiled, whiny brat yourself is problem number one.  Being inconsistent with discipline, giving into all of their demands or alternately giving in and denying without any sense of reason or order to your decisions, or smacking them around without explaining why what they're doing is bad can all lead to these discipline problems--and obviously every kid has their own temperament, too.  I was a moody teenager, though not overly prone to bad behavior, and I know it caused my parents no end of frustration.  Somehow, they survived.

And the last bit is about how expensive they are.  They can be.  I find that a lot of the expenses that parents like her are bitching about, though, are not expenses that are inherent in raising a child.  Rather, they are expenses that the parents incur because of their lifestyle choices.  We don't haul our kid around to expensive activities; we don't live in a high-rent area.  We use cloth diapers and hang them out to dry.  We don't drive a fancy new SUV.  Some of this is of necessity.  When we decided that we believe children should be raised primarily by their parents and thus one of us would not work until the kids get into school, we made a decision to be poor.  Being poor means we have cut back on our expenses.  Yet, still, we manage to raise the child.  He is clothed and fed; he has toys.  He is, indeed, completely ignorant of our poverty.  This "kids are expensive" argument always seems silly to me because the poor of the world, and even the poor in developed nations, reproduce at higher rates than the rich.  If the poor can afford a kid, lady, then so could the rich.

Listen, I don't want to make it seem that I think every single person on earth needs to go out and start churning out babies.  Every person and every couple has to decide that for themselves.  It's a big commitment, and there are many unpleasant aspects to it.  You can't really have kids and do right by them and still live the life of a 20-year-old party girl.  And you will end up spending some of your money and time on things you do not especially like.  So, I can completely understand why some people decide not to have children, and I think that's great.

On the other hand, none of her arguments are really very persuasive.  These points she lists seem to apply mainly to her and her situation.  It's too late to convince me to forgo having children, of course, but her arguments don't even persuade me to forgo having a second child.  Apparently I'm getting something out of it if I want to put myself through all this again.

If y'all don't know who Toby Keith is and/or you haven't heard this new song of his, this post might not make sense to you.  Just so you know.

Listen, Toby, you ass.  I've complained before about how much of an ass you are, but this time you've crossed the line.  This song is insupportable--I simply will not tolerate it, not a second longer.  You should have titled it, "I'm a Self-Righteous, Hypocritical Ass."  Then at least there would be some honesty about the thing.

You believe in free speech so much, eh?  You didn't seem to believe in it so strongly when it was the Dixie Chicks doing the talking.  As I recall, Natalie Maines really got under your skin with her freedom of speech, and an ugly exchange between you and the Chicks ensued.  I guess you believe she's free to say anything she wants as long as it doesn't upset you?  That's some radical freedom there.  I already know what you would say--you'd say that you support her right to say it, and then you support your own right to respond with off-topic, mean-spirited ad hominem attacks.  Yeah, you're just like Tom Paine, man.  Just like him.

Hang on a second.  I continue to have difficulty believing that the man who wrote and recorded such songs as "I Wanna Talk About Me" attacked the artistic credibility of Natalie Maines.  The mind simply boggles.  Gee, Natalie Maines wrote "Sin Wagon" while you wrote "Who's Your Daddy?"  This isn't even a hard decision, Toby.  "Sin Wagon" is fucking awesome.  It is true that the Chicks don't write all their own music (until this last album anyway), but still...no way, man.  No way.

And "hate me if you want to, love me if you can?"  Are you even for real with that shit?  Because you see what you've done there, right?  You see the implication?  You don't seem to be illiterate, so I'm assuming you wrote that knowing full well what the implications were.  I have to admit, hating you after the Dixie Chicks feud and the absolutely enraging "boot in your ass" song is the easy route.  But love you if I can?  As if it were the noble thing to do, to love you in spite of the fact that you are an ass.  No, thanks.  I guess I fail your moral test here, but I'd rather give my love to people who do not sing ignorant songs that make those of us who listen to country music seem like jingoistic asswipes.

In fact, I think that you, Toby, need to go back and listen to some old country music.  Try Waylon Jennings' "America" for starters.  You clearly enjoy the music of Waylon Jennings, seein how you totally ripped it off for "Honkytonk U."  See how it is positive about America, while also offering criticism of America, and still manages not to be offensively jingoistic?  Do you see how Waylon even mentions Vietnam-era draft dodgers without implying that they were cowards or immoral?  Indeed, to my ears, it sounds like he's implying quite the opposite.  Do you see?  You could try that--try expressing your affection for your homeland without pissing off everyone else in the entire goddamn world and giving the world the impression that Americans are still a bunch of backward, redneck sadists out looking for a fight. 

And then you cannot even be serious about this comparing yourself to Jesus thing.  I'm not even Christian, and that makes me so angry I can barely go on typing.  Dude, you are not Jesus.  You aren't even David Koresh, you fuck.  No, no--it's outrageous, it's unbelievable, it is so mind-boggling it makes me want to curse in French.

Every time this song comes on the radio lately, I want to hurl my beer bottle with ferocity at the damn thing.  Oh, my God.  You and Reba McEntire--both of y'all just need to go straight to hell, or at the very least get off my damn radio before the whole thing comes crashing down in a puddle of glass shards and Fat Tire.

But, see, Toby.  I don't have to hate you anymore.  Because from now on YOU ARE DEAD TO ME.

Now, how about we listen to some Chicks:

01 Long Time Gone

So, for some damn reason, my husband was watching the evening news tonight, and there was a SPECIAL REPORT about TERRORISM ON OUR SOIL. 

It seems there is a new WARNING that there are SLEEPER CELLS and TERRORISTS and TERRORISTS IN TRAINING right here in AMERICA.  They are planning to ATTACK at any minute. 

Huh.  Terrorists?  Like Timothy McVeigh?  Or the Unabomber?  Or Alberto motherfucking Gonzales?  Or perhaps you mean the "pro-life" bombers? 

Sleeper cells?  You mean, like the Militia of Montana?  Or maybe like the KKK?  Or maybe like the Jehovah's Witnesses?

Terrorists in training?  I assume this is a reference to the School of the Americas? 

I'm so glad I watched the news.  Now I know to be very AFRAID.  Now I am grateful that the last time I flew on an airplane, the surly "security" guard confiscated my toothpaste.  I am so glad Bush has had the foresight to go with the wiretapping and the Gitmo.  I am so very grateful, you see, because clearly Americans are NO LONGER SAFE IN THEIR OWN HOMES.  It all makes perfect sense now.

Dammit.  If it weren't for my generally sedate nature, I'd be really worked up about all this. 

So, after I wrote that post that starts out with the charming tale of that Australian fella who hates American women because we have GOALS!, I got to thinking.  Maybe it's just me, but I think this happens to a lot of Americans abroad, and I think it bears griping about.  This is a post dedicated to nearly every non-American expat I met while living in Japan and traveling in other Asian countries but mainly the ones who violated me with their loud and hypocritical America hating.

Let me say at the outset that I don't really consider myself much of a patriot.  I was born in America; obviously, I have lived the great majority of my life in America.  I think American music is the best music.  I like blue jeans and hamburgers and basketball.  I love the Rocky Mountains and the Sonoran Desert and the soft, rolling Ozarks in deep, uncontrollable ways.  I am American.

I am not one of these people, of course, who rides around with an "America:  Love it or Leave it!" bumper sticker on my big pickup truck (sadly, I do not even have a big pickup truck, but if I did, it would more likely be covered in bumper stickers that say things like "Support Conscious Evolution" and "The Owl Cafe, San Antonio, New Mexico" because that's how I roll).  I do not hesitate to refer to our Vice-President as the second coming of Satan.  America has, of course, done terrible things and is doing terrible things, both here at home and abroad, and I know about them. 

My quibble--and there are those who are going to think that this is just whining, and so be it--is that I do not want to hear about how terrible America is from every freaking non-American I meet when I am overseas.  Particularly not in a bar, where I only went to water myself down in a nice beer and sort of bubble away to the epiphanic stream or at least to linguistic play.  And really especially not from a know-it-all wearing blue jeans, eating a hamburger, listening to Green Day on his iPod and likely as not having just come from watching Ocean's 13.  Mmm, American culture is terrible and/or nonexistent, isn't it?  And yet you are completely saturated with it.  You don't seem to be really resisting the hegemony in any meaningful way, so just get out of my face with it, eh?

It would seem to be an unfortunate fact that some particularly insipid aspects of American culture are shipped to all other countries on Earth, and the residents in those countries come to believe that they know what America is all about via Hollywood films and McDonald's.  Those same people who are alternately consuming Big Macs and cursing them then blame me, personally, while I'm just strolling down the street minding my own business, for the fast food restaurants and the Tom Hanks movies and Internet Explorer and the use of nuclear weapons in Japan at the end of World War II and all of it. 

If you are one of these people who are thinking of approaching me and blaming me for the downfall of civilization as we know it, let's be clear about a few things.  The first is that you probably don't know shit about America, and I do.  You may know about our popular television programs and movies and music; you may also know something about our foreign policy, and you probably like to think that you know about our domestic politics as well, although you can't believe everything you see on CNN, and they don't exactly tell all there is to tell to begin with.  However, no country deserves to be judged entirely by its television and its politics.  You do not despise France for the existence of the National Front; you do not denigrate the citizens of Tokyo for the presence of Ishihara.  You know, of course, that there is much more to Japanese and French culture than their worst politicians.  You would also never claim to understand Japanese culture, for example, just because you eat sushi and watch Pokemon, would you?  Yet that is what you think of America, and here we sit with me becoming increasingly bewildered by your incredible idiocy. 

It is very likely that I know more about American history than you do, and I certainly know more about American culture than you do.  I have always especially loved the foreigners whose understanding of regional differences in America is limited to the old "red state-blue state" lines.  Feh.  If you don't already have an idea of how different the South is or the Rocky Mountain West is from the LA/NYC culture that is largely what gets exported, then I cannot explain some things to you because the starting point is way too far back, and I only have so much patience.

America has problems.  America has done terrible things.  [And by the by and not to get all self-righteous back at you, but we've also done some nice things, at home and abroad.]  I know.  I know already, probably better than you do, so just leave me be.  Pretend I'm Canadian or something.   

Man, I've been away a while, and this isn't how I planned my big return to GinBaby, but...fuck!!  I'm enraged!!  I think that needs more exclamation points--!!!!!!!!!!!!! RAGE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

See, it's another article on Salon, right?  This bitch is talking about how she wants to be under the "trendy tent" [sic] and offset her carbon footprint by buying those credits--credits that allegedly support alternative sources of energy, saving Amazon forests, and so forth.  She points out, smugly, that she mostly telecommutes (which presumably uses electricity?), and her husband drives a Prius.  Swell. 

Or it might be swell, except she mentions a rechargeable latte frother.  Is that for real?  She's pretending to be concerned about the electricity used by her latte frother?  IT'S A FUCKING LATTE FROTHER, YOU BITCH. 

She notes that there are changes her family is simply not willing to make to reduce carbon emissions in the United States.  Everyone knows that we are the #1 nation for almost everything that is not good, including carbon emissions and usage of fossil fuels.  Excellent--so happy we excel.

BUT IT'S A FUCKING LATTE FROTHER.  You cannot live with unfrothed milk?  I mean...YOU CANNOT LIVE WITH UNFROTHED FUCKING MILK IN YOUR FUCKING COFFEE, YOU BOURGEOIS NINNY? 

She also notes that on rainy days she drives her son to school (she fails to note whether she uses the Prius or the latte frother for transport)--and his school is a very far 4 blocks away from home.  FOUR MOTHERFUCKING BLOCKS????  This can't even be for real.  THEY ARE CALLED "UMBRELLAS", LADY--FIND ONE AND USE IT AND TEACH YOUR SON HOW TO USE IT, TOO. 

I could get all, "Why in my day, I had to walk 5 miles uphill both ways..." and all that, but I won't.  The truth is that it was only half a mile, but the truth is also that my parents did not drive me, no matter the weather.  And I managed--I pulled through.  Times were tough, but we coped.

And then, OK, then, in the end, she decides not to purchase the carbon credits at all (because all the outfits offering them are dubious, she thinks).  Instead, she tells us, all smug and chipper, that she's going to take the $4 or so she would have spent on those credits and contribute it instead to federal electoral reform to beat the petro-lobby on its own turf.  (Have I mentioned the smugness?)

Yeah, fat fucking lot of good that will do, bitch.  You think your piddly little $4 a month (wooooo--that's a whole $48 a year, stop the fucking presses!) is going to defeat the petroleum lobby?  I THINK THE LATTE FROTHER HAS FROTHED YOUR FUCKING BRAIN, MA'AM.

Just let's stop pretending, OK?  If you don't give a fat fuck about climate change and carbon emissions, own up to it.  You're in good company, of course, since the vast majority of people in this country share your view.  It's your right as an American, just like it's your right as an American to eat nothing but Pringles or drive an SUV even though you never, ever leave pavement.  Sure--go ahead, but be honest about it.  Your $4 a month would be much better spent buying bumper stickers that read, "If you care about climate change, call 1-800-EAT-SHIT."

So, what am I doing about climate change, you might ask?  Well, I sure as hell don't have a latte frother. 

I have even taken the drastic step of DRINKING MY COFFEE BLACK.  That's right.  It's radical, I know, and someday my children will be impressed with my moxie, but dammit someone has to do something.

Goddamned fucking spoiled bourgeois fuckers. 

Now I'm about to go upstairs and mix up a gin and tonic the old-fashioned, low carbon way--WITH MY MIDDLE FINGER.