Happy Evil Day!

I didn't realize this was supposed to be the most evil day of the year until I turned my radio on this morning while driving to work. For a while when the misogynist morning crew on the cock rock station was blathering on and on about this being Evil Day, I was puzzled. The weather was gorgeous and sunny, traffic was manageable, and the Jet City seemed to be doing well at the moment. Then, I got it. It is June 6 of 2006 or 666.

Since I'm not a Christian, and observe a much older calendar, this date really doesn't affect me. However, in my efforts to be supportive of other religions, people, and cultures, I will take part in the celebrating of Evil Day.

Tonight, whatever I eat for dinner, I'll make sure to cook it over an open flame. If there's one thing I've learned about the mythical place called Hell, it's that there is a lot of fire going on down there. Charbroiling my family's evening meal over a pit is quite appropriate, as is adding my favorite spicy sauce to whatever I choose to eat, since the bottle does boast that the sauce in question is "hot as Hell."

During my workout, I will choose the correct Evil Day music to sweat to. Sorry Rancid, The Stooges, and any of my other punk ear candy, tonight it's all about the metal. I'll begin with a tapestry of Iron Maiden, add a touch of Slayer, and end it with at least a half hour of straight up Danzig. One thing I love about the whole evil movement is the kick ass music it seems to inspire.

Finally, I'll finish the holiday by doing the most evil thing I can possibly imagine...I'll watch the entire entertainment news special about the birth of Brad and Angelina's love child. They sold their baby's first pictures to tabloids for charity, and now Entertainment Tonight, E! News Live, or some other worthless form of shit media wants to take mindless celebrity worshippers from the start of the affair on the set of Mr. & Mrs. Smith to the cutting of the umbilical chord in a tiny African village. Come to think about it, maybe it would be less painful to sacrifice a goat or some other small farm animal.

To all my pagan, devil worshipping, and lost soul friends, Happy Evil Day!

By the way, if the world is supposed to end tonight, should I wait until tomorrow to mail off my Visa payment?

Do as I Say, Because the Law is on My Side

Recently, the Washington State Board of Pharmacy ruled that pharmacists who practice in the Evergreen State can refuse to fill a woman's prescription for Plan B (the morning after pill) if it doesn't jive with their religious beliefs.

Some people see this as a bad thing, but in my effort to turn that frown upside down, I will don my glittery wings, play the Happiness Fairy, and point out all of the good that can come from projecting your own views, no matter how myopic, onto others. Just think of all the changes we could see in this state if we uphold the standards set by the Board of Pharmacy for other types of jobs.

“Not so quick, Fat Ass!” you can scream from behind the counter of your fast food establishment employer. The 400 lb. guy wearing the ‘No Fat Chicks’ t-shirt may want to clog his arteries and blow his cholesterol to the moon with your greasy fare, but you don’t want to violate the Ten Commandments by letting him Double Whopper with Cheese himself to death, so using the standards set by the Board of Pharmacy, you can refuse to sell the double bacon cheeseburger with extra mayo to anyone over 250 lbs.

With a divorce rate nearing 50% in the U.S., you can be on the front lines while working the front desk. Your posh or sleazy hotel, depending on how south of Seattle you happen to work, welcomes people of all backgrounds, but for any couples who want to enjoy the thinness of your walls and the schmutziness of your ugly print bedspread, they will need to produce a marriage license for your approval. If some fuck around tom and his slut du jour think they are going to get in a one-nighter, then as a minimum wage worker who upholds the church's ban on adultery, you will have the opportunity to put a kibosh on their evening of ecstasy. Sure, they may be two people who have been together for years, traveled for miles and just want to sleep, but they are beholden to your rules if you apply the reasoning of the Board of Pharmacy.

You’re not just that chick working at Macy’s anymore! You are now in a position to tell women what they can and can't wear. Since you are a steward of the modesty standards imposed on women by more radical religious factions, then despite your employment status as part-timer in the Juniors department, you have the ability to deny the sale of a slightly low-cut blouse to a busy lady shopping in the spare few minutes of her lunch break. We can't have Washington women dressing like whores, and with the Board of Pharmacy's blessing, more righteous and judgmental women can show their slutty sisters the light.

See how ridiculous it is when you apply the same standards in similar situations! In a country that boasts the separation of church and state, no woman should ever have to be sent packing to G-d knows how many pharmacies to fill a prescription for medication given to her after consulting with an educated medical doctor.

I also find it ironic that a Board of Pharmacy would object to access to Plan B, yet was fine with letting shit drugs like Vioxx and Celebrex kill people off in droves. They have also been leery of pulling Viagra off the market despite increasing evidence that it causes heart problems and, in extreme cases, blindness. Women can’t rescue themselves from a potential unwanted pregnancy, but old guys can still get their dicks hard, and the members of the Board of Pharmacy can look at themselves in the mirror every morning?

Why is this issue of letting women make their own choices in life of any concern to a so-called "Christian" pharmacist when the bigger issue they should be getting behind is more affordable prescription pricing for the elderly. When my grandmother is worried about getting arrested for purchasing her prescriptions from Canada in order to make her retirement pension stretch, yet some bible-banger can get legal right to discriminate then something is really fucked up with the system. I moved to Washington State from Idaho, because I wanted to reside in an area where the majority of the population were progressive thinkers. This action is extremely disappointing, and makes me wonder if we are losing our wonderful Blue State status. Regime change anyone?

If You're Missing a Toe, Don't Wear Sandals

I’m no rocket scientist, but I’m very perceptive. This is a good quality, but it lends you to a life of observing the asinine tendencies in others, while existing in a constant conundrum of whether to let the chips fall where they may, or stating the obvious, which makes you look like a judgmental asshole. Since I’ve made a vow of trying to live my truth, let the asshole games begin.

My dwindling respect for CNN has hit its final low with a new analysis they plan on doing in honor of the birth of Brad and Angelina’s daughter. It’s called Hunting Angelina. Yeah, the title makes me sick, too. It’s supposed to be a show about the forces behind celebrity worship, and how the powers that be get regular people to care about “glamorous strangers.” I’ve never understood the whole celebrity worship thing, and since I was a scholar of media studies in my college years, I might actually make an effort to watch this. However, the fact that this show is made by the same producers who kept the play-by-play report of Brad and Angelina’s lives in our head on a daily basis via the running news ticker at the bottom of the CNN screen makes me skeptical regarding the analysis’ integrity.

Let’s put this Brad and Angelina situation in a different, non-celebrity light. Take a guy who is married, leaves on a business trip and has a fling, impregnates the business trip fling, and then returns back home to give his wife divorce papers. To make matters worse, he doesn’t even have the decency to marry his fling, he just shacks up with her. She’s no prize herself given her tendency for homewrecking. She also happens to be a single mother with two kids. They move in together quite quickly and she, somewhat irresponsibly, lets him bond with her kids while they wait for the birth of their child. When the baby is finally born, it’s born into a household where there is no guarantee if the parents will be together next month. Not too glamorous when you take away the whole “celebrity actor” thing, in fact, it seems like something you’d see on Jerry Springer.

We expect this extreme bullshit from the world of entertainment, but we should demand slightly more from the elected officials that big pharmaceutical lobbies purchase for millions of dollars. They passed, what’s been termed as, “sweeping immigration reform”. It’s the type of legislation that will help nothing and doesn’t have an ounce of practicality, but could be used in November to get either the incumbent or challenger elected, depending on the strength of the candidate’s spin doctor.

In this new legislation, they require everything federal to be in English, and essentially list English as the national language. Of course, they don’t bother to fund or expand English as a Second Language programs, and they are aiming this squarely at Hispanics forgetting that in my little neck of the world known as the Pacific Northwest, there are over 50 languages spoken in most of the local schools. The assholes in Washington D.C. are also requiring illegals who are now referred to as “guest workers” (cause it might be a little nicer) to pay about $2,000 in fines in order to receive citizenship. These are people who work for less than minimum wage, which, I believe, is at the heart of the original problem, so my guess is that they don’t have a spare two grand lying around.

Finally, since I’m on a roll in terms of stating the obvious, if you happen to have some sort of slightly peculiar deformity, please be courteous and try to cover it up if it’s a little icky. There is nothing more annoying than being forced to sit through a meeting, while having to stare at something slightly deformed. This happened to me last week. I was trying to participate in important conversations, brainstorming ideas about raising awareness and money for The Facility, but each time I looked across the square of six foot long tables all I saw was a pair of sandals and only half of a big toe on one of the feet. I’m not a big fan of feet in general, they are unattractive, and a little gross to look at, no matter how well groomed. Missing or partial digits doesn’t make them anymore attractive, and having to stare at one during a lunch meeting, of all things, is just a bit ooky. I don’t go out of the house and parade around in a string bikini, post pregnancy, and the person with a half of a big toe should at least consider a comfy pair of socks. I’m not trying to be a heartless bitch, because I know bad shit happens to good people, and sometimes they are left with scars that don’t heal, and that’s okay, but feet are another story. Maybe it’s just my own deal, and if so, feel free to ignore me on this.

That’s all for now, but I’m sure I’ll come across other interesting observations, until then, I’ll be in my room covering up my lightly roadmapped tummy, and gearing up my pessimistic, critical eye for that CNN special.

Let's Define a "Threat"

All I’ve heard for the past month now is that illegal immigration is the biggest threat facing the United States today. On some level, I can’t let this immigration issue go, mainly because I’m listening to it every time I try to catch the news headlines on the radio, television, or internet. Apparently, the GOP scheme is working to a certain degree, and the media is doing their usual job by laying down like little bitches and playing directly into the neo-cons’ greasy hands.

They are calling illegal immigrants a “threat.” First off, let’s define “threat.” A “threat” is a Saudi Arabian jihadist named Mohammed with a hard-on for plastic explosives, an expired student visa, and a plane ticket for LAX. Contrary to what the media and Karl Rove would like you to believe, a “threat” is not a guy named Jose who wants to tile your bathroom floor for half the price of the guy in the phone book.

I realize that sometimes crime and bad shit happens, and sometimes it’s a Mexican guy who does it, but my experience growing up in a small, hick town where the prevalent minority was Mexican gives me vivid memories of school administrators telling each other not to bother with the Mexican kids, because they were going to drop out at age 16 anyways. Again, like most Americans, my wish would be that everyone wanting to enter our country would go through the proper legal channels. Even those ultra-liberal folks who want to grant amnesty to all illegals currently working in this country are on board with the idea of filing proper paperwork, but for those who don’t, and are smuggled into this country to work shitty jobs for horrid pay, they can hardly be called a threat.

The Bush Regime has created real threats by doing a fantastic job of pissing off everyone in the world. From Middle Easterners to Europeans to the portion of Africa that isn’t currently being slaughtered in genocidal massacre, people across the globe hate our red, white, and blue guts. Everyone was pulling for us after we were attacked in 2001, now most of the world wishes those al-Queda bastards would have used more planes. This to me is a very legitimate threat. If enough of the people on the island hate you, then they vote you off, and if enough of the world hates you, then you wind up divided into smaller countries. Unfortunately, our Resident-in-Chief doesn’t read past the first page of the newspaper (by his own admission), let alone, historical records known as books, so he might not be aware that when the rest of the world decides to take you out, they do, and that’s a very big threat.

Gas prices going over $3 per gallon is a threat, not because of foreign interests controlling our economy, but because people like me are doing the slow burn every time we watch that digital number go higher and higher. The other day, I shelled out $46 to fill an average, boring vehicle that three short years ago cost me under $20 to fill. I’m not whipping together a stash of Molotov cocktails just yet, but I am thinking about dusting off my copy of the Anarchist Cookbook if that gas price begins walking into the $4-per-gallon neighborhood. Americans like being comfortable, and when we have to give up going out to see a shitty, summer, blockbuster movie starring Tom Cruise or Tom Hanks or some other Tom, because the fuel that we use to sit in rush hour traffic is more expensive, and then Mr. President; you have yourself a very legitimate threat.

Other threats that seem more threatening than Maria’s army of reasonably priced housekeepers include white guys from places like Northern Idaho who work as janitors and garbage men during the day and train in their armed militia groups on the weekends. These assholes are as uneducated as they are obsessed with conspiracy theories, yet they are able to purchase semi-automatics at gun shows. If Cletus is armed, you must be alarmed!

The Chinese military build up should be seen as a bit of a threat, especially since they are using the money that our American corporations give them through cheap labor contracts to do it. Maybe someone should call all of the corporate robber barons who run the financial end of our world and play Nine Inch Nails’ “The Hand that Feeds” really, really loud.

Even the creepy-ass bird flu is way more of a threat than the guy who is willing to mow my lawn for $10 a week. Either way, the only threat that illegal immigrants pose is the one created by the neo-cons to make you forget about the real threats that are looming and ready to take us out at any moment. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to rummage through my garage for an old cookbook.

Funny, I Thought I Knew Her

Lately, my life has felt like one of those cheesy-assed chick flicks on the Lifetime Network where the main character lives with a spouse, sibling or family member all their life, then a series of events take place and the main character finds out about all this shit they never knew. Welcome to my world.

Growing up I always knew my mother had a bit of a wild past. I’m pretty savvy and catch on quickly, so with a little math it didn’t take me long to figure out that my mom raised quite a bit of hell as a teenage, since she was only 17 when I was born. From there my young memory is a little spotty, then again, how much can one possibly retain before the age of five. We moved from a small town in Connecticut to a smaller town in Idaho, and my mom told me that the move was because my father slacked on his regular visitation and that she couldn’t stand watching me cry when he didn’t show up.

This was bullshit, but very effective, because it kept me from having a somewhat decent relationship with him during my younger years. When it came to family or our past in Connecticut, my mother was elusive at best, and didn’t really give a whole lot of detail. We never went back for a visit, and when I was finally given a blessing to venture East at age 20, my mother was nervous. I should have suspected something, but after a lifetime of hearing one side of the story, you adopt it as truth. Besides, your mom wouldn’t lie to you, right?

Fast forward to 2004. My mother has a recurrence of a brain tumor and passes away quite quickly. We buried her exactly two weeks after celebrating her 49th birthday, and three weeks before Thanksgiving. After mourning for a few months, I decide to begin the New Year by reconnecting with my father and that side of the family that I had been held back from knowing. This is where it all begins.

I found out that my mom had worked for some unscrupulous characters, like the kind you’d find in the movie Goodfellas or the show The Sopranos. There was some trouble, and she picked up and moved us one night without warning, which answered my lifelong question of “why the hell would anyone in their right mind move to Buckfuck, Idaho?”

In the past couple of years I’ve discovered that my sister’s dad, who was believed to be a nice man who owned a construction company and lost his life in a car accident, might actually be the mob guy that my mom was hooked up with. My mother’s controlling nature, particularly over me, was not due to her lifelong worry that I might turn out like my dad, but her deeper fear that I would be like her, and that this woman/stranger also suffered from eating disorders, depression, anxiety, and a plethora of other shit that happens to be hereditary.

Recently, I have battled with a suspected thyroid disorder. I’ve been through thyroid blood testing on and off since I was 19, and this time, thanks to a little internet research, I dug deeper after they told me my levels were normal, and asked for a full thyroid blood panel. In a casual conversation, I asked my stepdad if he knew whether my mother had ever had her thyroid tested, and his response was “yes, she had a severe thyroid disorder, and was on medication for about seven or eight years.” What the fuck!

A lifetime of useless information like “you always wanted your name to be Elizabeth” or “Must Avoid Unnecessary Talking was always marked on your elementary school report cards” yet she never once thought that, “by the way, you’re thyroid might be severely screwed up” would be something I might actually want to know.

At this point, I feel like I could write a screenplay for the Lifetime Network or Women’s Entertainment Television. I’m venturing out East again next year with my sister in tow. I’m determined to find out more about this woman who I lived with for most of my life and called “mother”. My husband says I should drop it, but what I’ve discovered so far about my past has been so essential to my current mental well-being that I’m not willing to throw in the towel just yet.

Besides, maybe I’ll find out more interesting things about my mother and who she really was. Maybe she ratted on the mob, and all while I was growing up we lived under assumed identities, and who knows, maybe my name really is Elizabeth.

Immigration: Harnessing the Inner Racist

Immigration seems to be the word of the day lately in my dear, sweet, fucked up country. At first when this issue came to light, I thought it was funny, because of who was bringing it up. Rich, white, Republicans, you know, the kind that hires the maids, nannies, and groundskeepers with questionable documentation.

Now that immigration seems to be the distracting issue of the moment (this election year's gay marriage if you will) it's just got me pissed off. How can this party, that claims to represent the more righteous of our country, keep pedaling hate without someone calling bullshit on them? They love Jesus, unless he happens to be a migrant worker who snuck across the border to find low-level, curbside work to feed his family.

Right now, the neo-cons are basically looking to flare up the latent racism in their base, which is usually made up of lower income white people living in a bible-belty area (like Idaho) or rich, white folks who fancy themselves as too good to be bothered with immigration laws in the first place, especially when hiring the house staff. This is going to play out the same way that it did in 2004 with gay marriage, where the Right wanted you to believe that Rosie O'Donnell and Elton John were going to knock your door down, steal your children, and make *gasp* gay. Now in 2006, they want you to believe that a brown man with a thick mustache with the last name of Jimenez, Rodriguez, or Garcia is going to take your job and move his large, illegal family in next door and crap up your neighborhood with his Mexicaness.

By the way, this immigration thing is aimed squarely at Mexicans, because I haven't heard shit about the Chinese or Indians coming in from Canada, the European or Middle Eastern students who purposely overstay their visas (like the ones who took out the Towers), or even the Africans who might not have filled out their amnesty paperwork correctly. Nope, this is all about how well the cocksuckers in the White House can build on the fear of a Mexican invasion all to get stupid people who live paycheck-to-paycheck to elect them into office again without focusing on the fact that they live paycheck-to-paycheck.

Of course the Right would call bullshit on my logic about them trying to exploit latent racism for their own political gain, but it takes exactly five minutes for any talk show about immigration to turn from candid political issue discussion into full on Mexican bashing. They may start with the line about how illegal immigration is a drain on the economy, but it will end with the clear message that Mexicans equal crime.

Of course the Bush Regime continues to talk out of both sides of their ass on this issue. One minute the Resident-in-Chief is over-extending the military once again and sending the National Guard to the Mexican border, then a little while later, he’s talking about granting citizenship to immigrants who have been here for a certain amount of time. I guess he realizes that without cheap Mexican labor there might not be anyone to work the several hundred acres of land that make up his Texas ranch.

As a third generation American I have a bit of a soft spot for immigrants. I know the ideal is come over here and become a legal citizen, but when the country you happened to be from is so fucked up that they won’t let you have the proper paperwork without a hefty bribe, what’s a starving person to do. How quickly my fellow Americans seem to forget that if they look back far enough in the family tree they are bound to find an immigrant or two hanging out. I guess the immigrants of yesterday in their pageboy hats and wool knickers or their long skirts and babushka headscarves are far quainter than the ones they show on television in the dirty t-shirts and jeans hopping over chain-link fences.

I guess we will all have to hear the Right do their non-stop rambling and over exaggeration of the immigration issue for the next few months, then much like gay marriage, once the election is over, it will go away. Do you think the Right Wing voters will ever realize that they just keep being used by the neo-cons in power like pathetic bitches? Judging from the callers on the fascist talk station that comes on when my clock radio wakes me up at 7:00 am, not only are the Bush faithful concerned about immigration, they are willing to go to the polls in November, and vote their inner racist.

To My Fellow Mamas on Mother's Day

Mothering is not for the meek, weak of stomach, or those with a fearful heart. It takes a lot of guts to be a mama, and if you want to be a good mama, it takes even more than that. As I sit here on my second Mother’s Day, I yearn to give a few shout-outs to my fellow mamas. The biggest joke that I’ve learned in motherhood is that the world still insists on referring to women as the “weaker sex”. I’ve seen my husband care for our daughter, and if women are the weaker sex, society as a whole is completely fucked.

Here’s to all the mamas out there who got that rude awakening once they became mothers, when they realized that none of those helpful parenting books covered topics such as: So You Want to Sleep and Shower All in One Day, Free Time, What the Hell is That?, or How to Keep Your Spouse from Running Like a Coward at the First Sign of Poop. Remember that terrifying moment when you were lying there looking at your baby and the reality hit that the baby was YOUR baby, and was going to be your baby for the rest of your life? I spent that whole night with the words, “Oh shit, what do I do now!” running through my head.

Here’s to all the mamas out there who got used to gross things very quickly. The first piece of advice I gave all of my expecting friends was; when you change the diaper, breathe through your mouth. Our society has us so used to watching death and dismemberment that looking at a whole batch of new baby poop isn’t that gross, but the smell is what churns your stomach. I would tell my friends to cut their nostrils out of the scenario at the first rip of the diaper Velcro, and get that tiny bottom cleaned as quickly as possible.

Amongst the things I never thought I’d get used to was being vomited on, holding someone while they vomited, bicycling tiny legs during the crapping process, boogers, boogers, and more boogers, and Five Alarm diapers. A Five Alarm diaper is one that’s so bad that you just want to take the kid and hose them off in the yard. Every mama (and even some papas) have been there, done that, and for the record, we never quite got used to it.

Here’s to all my mamas out there who have managed to keep marriages or relationships alive with their significant other even after they realized that they did the bulk of the work. Sure, these modern guys promised it would be a 50/50 workload split, but that didn’t happen, and it didn’t happen really quickly. When the kid has a Five Alarm, or is disagreeable, or later in the toddler years when they take off their clothes and refuse to put them back on again, does your spouse try and work through the problem? No, they yell for you. Remember the good ol’ days when you looked at this person you loved and thought; this is the most accomplished, capable person I’ve ever met. Yea, me too.

Here’s to all my mamas out there who have taken the kids on a trip and managed to get through airport security with a stroller, pull suitcase, diaperbag, and an infant, quicker than the schmuck businessman with the expensive laptop in front of you. We mommies are resourceful, yet we constantly get the bad rap. We are directed to a certain security line at the airport, and like clockwork, you can see collective rolling eyes from everyone directed to the same line standing behind us. However, what the impatient bastards following us don’t know is that we have it all down to a smooth move science, and have the amazing ability to load multiple bags, while collapsing a stroller, taking off our shoes and keeping a toddler in jammies from running through the metal detector all in a two-minute timeframe. Yet, we get no credit for our multi-tasking abilities, and continually get blamed for the one parent who takes forever at airport security.

Lastly, here’s to all my mamas out there who manage, on a daily basis, to be fantastic moms, while keeping a shred of their own identity. It is so easy to settle into the role of being your kid’s mom, and nothing else. The world makes us feel guilty for wanting some free time or needing “mommy’s day off” or basically, about anything we do that isn’t waiting on our child hand and foot, but we see through this guilt and realize that it’s just a means of manipulation to keep us from the identity we deserve. We can be our kids’ mommies, but we can also be wonderful, passionate, creative, intelligent women that make the world go around, and keep everything together through this shit storm we call a culture. And to think, they still refer to us as the weaker sex.

Annoying Stuff

Lately, there seems to be a lot of annoying crap out there, not the usual, run-of-the-mill annoying crap, but a new crop of crap. There is the usual bout of standard annoying shit such as pop music, infotainment media that attempts to pass itself off as legitimate and anything that claims to be helpful, but is just a big ploy to get you to buy something. I'm looking at you Dr. Phil! However, beyond the usual, I've made a few keen observations regarding the latest batch of annoyance.

David Blaine is extremely annoying, because he’s not a magician. A magician is someone who can do something cool and make you go "Wow" or leave you completely fascinated. Harry Houdini was a magician. David Copperfield is a magician. Even that over the edge, seems-like-he's-on-drugs comic, the Amazing Jonathan, is a magician. There is nothing magic about starving yourself while hanging out in a see-through box and foregoing showers for a few weeks. Models put hunger and emaciation on display all the time, and they don't carry around business cards that say "Magician". David, Sweetie, if you want to call yourself a magician then make something disappear or escape from a straight-jacket, but no more pissing in a cup for public display. A magician is supposed to make you go "oooohhh" not "eeewww".

Brittney Spears' Second Pregnancy. She's an easy target, and I'm lazy, so it's a good fit. This bitch has completely failed at the half-assed attempt to parent her first kid, so why is she having another one? Because she can. In any other situation, like if the parents were poor, or the mom was single and working constantly to keep the family afloat, and there were disasters such as the kid cracking its head open from a falling highchair, DSHS would be all over it. Brittney drives with her kid in her lap and doesn't even get ticketed. I'm no brilliant mommy, nor do I claim to be, but even in my complete inexperience I knew carseats were mandatory. Double standards drive me completely crazy, and in this particular situation expose a really annoying flaw in our society.

Iranian Outreach Letters. The insane son of a bitch that holds the presidency of Iran has been shooting his mouth off about wanting to blow Israel off the face of the Earth, encouraging Al Qaeda to annihilate the U.S., and telling women in his country that it will be a cold day in hell before they get anything that remotely resembles rights, now he pens a "let's be friends" letter and thinks everything is cool. I’m no foreign policy expert, but I know a crazy fuck when I see one, and linen-lined stationary aside, I wouldn’t trust this guy as far as I could kick him.

Failure of the Palestinian Government. When the Palestinian people elected a terrorist organization and got the Gaza Strip back, I knew it was going to be one hell of train wreck. Had they got the Strip back and elected a reasonable group of people, they would have had half a chance, but why choose prosperity when you can fuck your world up by electing hate incarnate. Now they are diving into poverty at record speed, the government is inept, they got one lone guy trying to make it all work, and who do they choose to blame…Israel and the West. How fucking annoying! Take some personal responsibility for once in your pathetic lives. If you have money, and you spend all that money to buy guns and explosives to attack Israel, and you leave nothing to pay for an infrastructure, then don’t bitch when there’s no running water.

Tom Cruise Mania. We all know he’s a bit of a kook, which makes him a little annoying, but I’m so sick of people trying to make him into more than he is. He is an actor that has had a pretty good career, made some decent movies, made some tremendous stinkers, might be gay, might be bi, but is very much a Scientologist. He knocked his young girlfriend up and they had a kid, now he’s out promoting yet another sequel, but that’s it. Aside from the good films, he’s really not worth mentioning, so why is it that I have to see his fucking face every time I turn around. He’s cute, but cute wears off after passing by two magazine covers. Enough Tom Cruise already!

I’m pretty sure I’ve covered everything for now. I could go off on an anti-Bush tangent, but I’ll let the opposing party do that around election time this fall. Hopefully, they actually will, and the fact that I have to hope that they will, is the most annoying thing I can think of at the moment.

Celebrity Baby Boom

I am so fucking sick of this celebrity baby boom. Apparently when two or more celebrities give birth, the tabloids, and mainstream media (shame on them) label it a boom, which means that until the celebrity or wife of celebrity spits the kid out, I’ve got to hear about it when I’m trying to catch the real news, or see the overdramatic updates every time I venture out to the store to purchase pesticide-free veggies.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for anybody who welcomes a child into their home, but our society seems to give a status to celebrity parents that they don’t deserve. When I had Rachael, I spent the first month sleepless trying to figure out how to be a mother. If I was lucky, I managed a two-hour stretch of sleep, and if it was a fantastic day, that sleep would be accompanied by a shower. Call it a hunch, but I don’t think Katie Holmes will be relating to my scenario.

Everyone is raving over the fact that Angelina Jolie adopts children, yet they forget that she probably has one nanny per child, a housekeeper, a chef, and a personal assistant. If I had an army of people to take care of everything for me, and all I had to do was appear in public wearing designer duds and holding the kid every once in a blue moon, I’d have my own Josephine Baker-style rainbow family, too.

There are a couple of celebrities who have been very public about the fact that they don’t use help and are “hands on” parents, but this shouldn’t be something that’s wildly applauded. You had the kid, you raise the kid, and that’s the way it is. I don’t fault any celebrity mom for having a nanny on the set, it’s the same as daycare, and I think it’s cool that their kids get the opportunity to travel. However, I’m not willing to applaud their parenting skills until the kid turns into a decent adult who makes an honest contribution to society.

I’m sure Kathy Hilton thinks she did a fantastic job hiring great nannies to raise her kids, but look at the way those spoiled bastards turned out. One thing I have to give Donald Trump credit for, despite his many deplorable traits, is that he must be doing something right on the parenting front. His kids are getting graduate degrees and working hard at his company. Ivanka has said that she looks at the New York skyline and dreams about what she can add to it. Sure, most of us will never be able to relate to the opulent lifestyle that Miss Trump has, but at least she has a dream and wants to make a contribution to society. Hopefully, when she does become a success in her own right, she will mentor young women and empower them to follow in her tracks.

All bullshit aside, it will be interesting to see these celebrity babies grow up. I know that in the mid-90s smutmeister Larry Flynt announced some contest with readers to guess who would get into whoring first, Francis Bean Cobain or Lourdes Ciccone (Madonna’s kid). My vote is for Lourdes, because Francis has seen first hand what selling your soul for fame and drugs looks like, and probably wants to settle down to a normal life and career after penning the tell-all book about growing up with Courtney, of course. Madonna is quite strict with her children, so she is basically priming Lourdes to go on one hell of a rebellious outburst.

The risk in watching celebrity spawn grow into adulthood is that they will believe they can accomplish what their parents did by birthright alone. Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell are decent actors, but the verdict is still out on Kate Hudson. To date the most significant role she’s done is her portrayal of a groupie with a heart of gold in Almost Famous, not a big stretch considering the fact that she’s married to the stoner from the Black Crows. Martin Sheen managed to produce something good with Emilio Estevez, but then Charlie came along and took the family value down several notches.

Sometimes you get real gems like Laura Dern, Kiefer Sutherland, Mariska Hargitay, and Lenny Kravitz. Much like with normal people and their children, it’s all a crap shoot. If you raise your kids with a sense of purpose and let them know from the beginning that they have to make their own destinies, then they will be okay. It might be decades before we will know if Suri Cruise, Apple and Moses (Paltrow) Martin, or Baby ??? Jolie Pitt will be people who make valuable contributions to society, but the one thing we can count is the fact that their faces will be cluttering magazines, the internet and infotainment news shows for at least the next ten years…G-d help us!

House Cleaning (and Senate, too)!

Millions take to the streets marching for rights, everyone who drives a car is feeling a harsh pinch as gas prices go through the roof, and April was the bloodiest month in Iraq thus far. Thankfully, our trusted elected leaders are hard at work on our behalf in Washington D.C. They put their collective minds together, and faced with all of these mounting problems managed to introduce a resolution to make the English version of the National Anthem the official version, while deciding to give all American families a shitty little $100 tax credit to help with the cost of gas. Is it any wonder why mild-mannered punks like me hate the government?

The world seems to be crashing down and all these mental eunuchs in D.C. offer is a ridiculous, half-assed, somewhat racist attempt to rally American citizens around a baseless cause hoping to spark the asinine patriotism that got Resident Bush elected. Did the Senate convene to try to work towards a solution to this hot-button immigration issue? Did the House meet to try to pressure the Justice Department into beginning a REAL investigation into price gouging by the oil companies? Did the Pentagon get their shit together and consider a military coup? No! The only thing that our so-called leaders did this week was come up with some scapegoat National Anthem bullshit, while avoiding the 800 lb. gorilla in the room.

These assholes make six figures a year, get health benefits that your average Joe or Jane could only dream of, and regardless of how long they serve, get a pension for life. They owe us a decent amount of good work, but instead have given us hundreds (sometimes thousands) of days of garbage. Fortunately, I have a few good ideas that would reduce the number of corporate whores and absolute fuck-ups elected to office.

First of all, we need term limits; not just state-to-state, but nationally. I’m somewhat optimistic in my belief that most of the people who run for office for the first time go to D.C. wanting to make a change. I’m even willing to bet that the first time they are re-elected, they still have that hunger to do good, but by the time they’ve been around the bend the third time, they’ve become too engrained in the pissing contest. The lobbyists have moved in with the money, and the do-good politico becomes obsessed with their own power. The biggest argument I’ve heard against term limits is that nothing will ever get done. Well, nothing’s getting done right now, unless you consider having to sing the National Anthem in English or a puny, lame-assed tax credit, a step towards progress. If someone knew they only had a few years to get changes made, then maybe they’d get off their asses and do the job they were elected to do rather than sit there for years sucking off the corporate tit.

Second, cut those fucking bennies. No one should get a pension for life for two to four years worth of work. The benefits elected officials receive are so sweet, that I might actually consider running for office, and I hate the government! If spending two terms as a public servant was less financially rewarding then maybe there would an infusion of honor back into the idea of serving the public. Wouldn’t it be great if we could think of government officials with the same affection we have for good teachers, instead of realizing that they are all a big group of crooks who are interested in cashing in.

Third, no more corporate cash. I don’t like to think about any hard working person jobless, but I could make an exception for lobbyists. Not only should they be unemployed, they should get a good kick in the ass as they leave the lairs of their dirtbag, corporate employers.

Politicians and punks are natural enemies, mainly because politicians refuse to come down to the level of the working person. They might be there when they go to D.C., but the moment they make that mental leap where they believe they are above playing by the same rules that apply to everyone else, then they are like rotten fruit, and need to be put in the dumpster. As long as I nearly have to mortgage my house to pay for gas, while watching low-income kids fresh out of high school give their lives for an illegal war for oil, then someone in D.C. has some explaining to do.

Enough with the fake, bullshit rallying cries like this National Anthem business, or the measly $100, or anything else that’s spewed out of the ass of the neo-con Right the past six years, let’s look at what needs to be done, and get people into positions where they can do it. We may only have two parties (two very shitty parties), but right now we need a few good men, and a lot of good women to get this country back on track, and if we’re lucky some of them might even be a little punk.

My Little Id

Reputations aside, I’ve always been quite skeptical when it comes to famed historians or theorists of any kind. Sigmund Freud is no exception, but lately I’m beginning to think the old goat was onto something with his “structure of the mind” principle.

As I was cleaning up, yet another mess left my destructive little munchkin, it hit me that my toddler is definitely an Id. The Id as defined by Freud is “the irrational and emotional part of the mind.” He also says that the Id is all about “want, want, want” regardless of consequence, and cares for nothing more than their own gratification, hence toddlers.

When it comes to weaving a tapestry of senseless destruction and devastation, my toddler takes first place, and earns extra marks for creativity. About a month ago Jeff and I decided to take the 2.5 hour daytrip to Vancouver, British Columbia. We were listening to the Curious George soundtrack for the millionth time (by the way, remind me to beat the fuck out of Jack Johnson if I ever see him), and enjoying the plush scenery and sunshine. Jeff had brought along some Cheetos for road munchies and Rachael became very interested in the bright, orange treats. I gave her a few anticipating messy Cheetos fingers. A few minutes later from the backseat I heard a muffled grinding. I looked back to see a smiling Rachael returning my stare. We played this back and forth exchange for at least a half dozen times, then I caught her orange-handed. Rachael was grinding a Cheeto across one of the fabric panels on the inside car door leaving ultra-fine Cheeto shavings everywhere.

Only a fucking toddler would do this! Who else, in their right mind, would look at a Cheeto and think, now is the time to create a colossal mess and I can do this by rubbing a snack food against course fabric. One of my co-workers keeps reassuring me that if I can just harness all of that creativity and energy into something positive, I’ll have a future genius or world leader in my family. The challenge, of course, is to get her from Id-dome to college without giving in to my urge to kill her as I scrub crayon murals off my family room walls at 10:00 at night.

The good news is that Rachael is making some progress. She has learned to say “please” and “thank you” and she’s not too bad when it comes to sharing thanks to daycare. I’ve also adapted to life with an Id. Now when I stroll through Toys ‘R’ Us or any other place with objects of desire for my little Id (which means every place we ever go), my thoughts of “oh this might be cute for her to play with” have been replaced with “how is she going to use this to make a mess or destroy something.” This is another thing they never tell you about in all of those pansy-assed parenting books!

Her ability to take any object, turn it around, and use it as some sort of weapon or victimize it with an existing weapon has me worried that in her two and a half year lifespan she has been exposed to too much violence. However a steady diet of Dora the Explorer and PBS’s Sprout channel shouldn’t be responsible for this level of aggression, should it? Rachael has more of an urge to attack something helpless than the current regime running our country, the difference, of course, is that she is only 2 ½ and can be taught passivity over time, those bastards, however, are too far gone. I suspect she’s also smarter than they are which is horrifying when you think about it.

I’m sure the violent behavior is as signature with an Id as the tendency to strip off her clothing and run around bare-assed naked no matter whom is present. Rachael and I went to a Passover seder a couple of weeks ago, and as with most Jewish things, it started late and ran late. Being the conscientious mom, I brought her jammies, so I could change her before the 30-minute car ride that would lull her to sleep. In one hot minute, she broke away from me and proceeded to run around my friend’s house in nothing but her diapey. Everyone got a kick out of it, including my childfree friends who were hosting the gathering, which only encouraged my little streaker to continue her show. Thankfully, I was able to wrestle her down rodeo-style and stop her from going completely buff.

In the end, we will survive the Id phase, just barely, but we will survive. True I may have more wrinkles, my husband will be completely gray, the dog will have a nervous twitch, and the solid wood table we took so much pride in buying will forever bear the marks of multiple whackings with the business end of the Dora the Explorer spoon, but we will come through this okay, far more unstable and exhausted, but okay…I hope.

Things that Were Way More Fun When I Was Younger

I’m not one of those uptight broads who spends all her time complaining about getting older. I learned at 19 that age is more about attitude rather than a calculation of the number of years you’ve spent in this world. However, I’ve noticed there are some things I used to do that were way more fun then than they seem to be now.

Hair dying. It was a great form of self-expression, and it took me all of one semester of college before I got into this little habit. It was the golden age of the riotgrrl movement, and the dark brown hair I had just wouldn’t do; I needed blonde streaks. The cool thing was that with blonde streaks, I could buy shampoo that would leave color in my hair through several washes, so one month I’d be brown with blue, another month I’d be brown with pink, and for October, I did brown with green.

I spent one of this year’s first sunny Saturdays in the salon this past weekend trying to get my color back to dark brown, because about two months ago I got a wild hair up my ass and decided to streak my hair like in the old days. Ten years ago, the blonde streaks looked cool. Two months ago, they looked brassy and cheap. My husband summed it up best that night when he looked at me and said “that’s what my mom did to her hair when she started going gray.” For the next two days, “gray” seemed to accompany every hair comment I got, whether it was a friend asking me “did you find a gray hair and go nuts or something” or my co-worker telling me that I should have skipped the Cruella De Vil thing on the front of my hair.

Unfortunately, the woman at the salon on Saturday didn’t speak such good English, so I came out with a light brown instead of a dark brown, which means another round of hair dying two months from now when my head has recovered. Then I’m done. I’m swearing off hair dying until that G-d forsaken day that I find a shitload of gray in my hair, which knowing my luck will happen by the end of the year.

Something else that used to be a blast was staying up all night. I remember spending a weekend at my friend Kori’s house. We watched the Headbanger’s Ball on Saturday night hoping to see Guns ‘N’ Roses, then on Sunday we pulled another red-eye and watched 120 Minutes praying that they would play Husker Du. To top it off, we styled our hair on Sunday night and it turned out so well that we came up with the brilliant idea of staying up all night and going to school the next morning with really great looking hair. This is why 16-year-olds should never be allowed to make any kind of important decision!

We made to about 4:00 am, and then slept in chemistry class the next day. Now when I think about 4:00 am it’s usually, because the toddler had a nightmare and wants me to rock her or she needs a refill on her bottle. Occasionally, I’ll have a bad bought of insomnia that will have me cursing the fact that I am wide awake when I should be sleeping sounder than my child.

Driving used to be a cool thing to do, until I had to start commuting regularly. I used to like it when I would get a phone call from a guy, but now that the guy happens to be my husband, who calls me to talk about things like taking the garbage out or asks me what I’m cooking for dinner the shine has fallen off that diamond for damn sure. Working used to be a blast, even though it was a small time, shitty fast food job, because I was there with my peers and the early 20-somethings were the only ones who had any responsibility. Now that I’m the one in charge, and my work provides the household healthcare and mortgage payment, it just doesn’t seem so fun.

There are a few things that are just as enjoyable now as they were back then, like finding new and creative music to listen to, which is no small task given the media buyouts and diva making that the corporate whores force on us every time we turn on a radio or television set. Sex is still great even though work schedules and the kid have greatly reduced the frequency. At least when those few passionate moments each month do roll around, they tend to be worthwhile. Drinking is still enjoyable from time to time, especially since I’m able to afford better tasting alcohol. The days of Budweiser and cheap vodka ended at that last raging frat party I went to, and now I’m thoroughly enjoying the era of Captain & Cola.

Thankfully, some of the stuff that used to be fun to do has been replaced by things that I now find way more satisfying. I can’t talk on the phone with my friends for hours, but I can email jokes at work. Making $20 babysitting for the evening is far less fun than spending $20 taking my munchkin to the Family Fun Center and watching her ride the carousel.

Oddly enough I still worry about getting caught while having sex, but instead of repercussions that involve getting grounded or being sent away to an all-girls school, I have the fear that my daughter will end up walking in on us and relaying the story to everyone during a family get together. Then again, unleashing family trauma at a holiday gathering is something timeless that is just as fun now as it used to be, and will, most likely, continue to be fun for years to come.

Time for Another Gratuitous Media Circus

Since the Scott Pedersen trial ended, our poor media has been latching onto arrogant celebrities in an attempt to avoid the job they are supposed to be doing as the watchdog over unscrupulous elected public officials. Oddly enough, having been a member of the media, I understand their avoidance given the fact that our current political state seems to be overrun with elected officials who are interested in enhancing their own wallets rather than serving the public interest. However, it was only a matter of time before the next big wife murdering, school shooting, mysterious disappearance, inappropriate behavior case would open the floodgates for a bonafide media circus resulting in months of boring news analysis, at least a half dozen book deals, and endless diatribes from Nancy Grace and Gloria Allred.

Welcome to Duke University, one of the most elitist schools in the United States where old money and a family pedigree can get you in way quicker than stellar grades and an uber-high SAT score. A few weeks ago, the snotty-assed lacrosse team held a wild party, paid a couple of strippers to come in and perform for them, then a few hours later, rape allegations surfaced. You could almost see media whores salivating at this one, because early on it had the makings for a perfect circus: power, privilege, money, sex, and the two strippers were black, so the race thing was an added bonus.

We are a good, solid month into this story, and everything is going along as predicted: the lacrosse players who were identified by the young woman hired top-notch, expensive legal representation, the other stripper who didn’t get raped has already put herself front and center into the mess in an attempt to cash in, the lefties on the Duke University campus have gone ape shit holding “solidarity vigils” and “non-denominational group prayers”, and the upper crust spin doctors are looking for any reason to prove that a rape never took place in order to save Duke’s long-standing reputation as a haven for future Wall Street robber barons.

The circus went into a full three-ring affair this past week when Jesse Jackson got involved, and Rush Limbaugh referred to the rape victim as a “ho”. I think we should make these two opportunists fight to the death Thunderdome style for our viewing pleasure, because that’s one reality TV program I would actually watch.

If you take away all of the hoopla and freakshow that the media is trying to make of this situation, this scenario is unsettling for one main reason: the elite of this country are born internalizing the separation of themselves from those they consider “lower class”, and based on that separation, believe they have the right to do whatever they want. When the media interviewed students at the other, more reasonably priced, campus near Duke University, they were resolved that even if a rape trial did happen and there was evidence against these preppy fuck lacrosse players, they would get off with no more than a slap on the wrist, if that. Although this may be a defeatist attitude, I understand where it’s coming from.

We live in a country where money and influence can buy you anything, even the presidency, so it’s no surprise that a bunch of Little Lord Fauntleroys got horny watching some sisters get their groove on, and decided to fuck them whether consent was granted or not. Apparently, even though lacrosse looks like kind of a faggy sport, it is the shiznit with the blue bloods (i.e. the earth-bound version of rowing, if you will). Ivy League lacrosse players are the big guys on campus and the desire of every white bred, future high society, Prozac addicted wife, so they’ve got tons of women offering themselves as potential pussy all of the time. When no one in your life places a barometer of what is acceptable behavior and what is deviant, and then you top that off with money, bad shit is going to happen, and it will likely happen to a woman, and that woman will likely be poor, and to this particular set, poor people don’t matter.

There are so many established, respectable people already rushing to the defense of these snot-nosed bastards talking about what fine students they are, and what good, upstanding young men they are with bright futures ahead of them. I wouldn’t be surprised if their socialite mothers were more upset at the fact their boys stuck their dicks in a black woman, rather than being pissed about the idea that they raised men with the mindset that they have the right over everything they want any time they want it.

What is bound to get lost in all of the media hype is the fact that there is a woman who was raped. She is 27 years old, and a single mother of two trying to make money stripping in order to support her kids and pay her way through college. She is an honor student who went to work one night to do a simple two-hour job and was violently beaten and forced to the ground in a bathroom while three guys did whatever they wanted to her.

Now she has to go home every night wondering whether she and her kids will be safe from the media or members of the general public who want to call her a whore and vindicate their beloved lacrosse players. She will have to try and come up with a way to explain to her kids what happened to her without scaring the shit out of them, and spend the next year or so wondering if someone is trustworthy or just wants to sell her out to make a quick buck.

There were several college students and community members holding prayer vigils after this story broke claiming that those prayers were for the victim. Although I’m well aware that a lot of it was politically motivated and staged for the media, I can only hope that at least a few of those prayers were sincere, because mine were.

Tell Me Something I Don't Know

For the past two weeks, I have been out of the news loop. Between trying to catch up after recovering from an upper respiratory virus that had my head in a groggy haze and making a half-assed attempt to spend more time doing something productive other than vegging out in front of the tube, I have let my nightly viewing of the CNN headlines go by the wayside. Thankfully, I had some time this week to peruse the current events, and learned…absolutely nothing I didn’t already know.

At the beginning of the week the Bush Regime got caught in, yet another, gross injustice when it was revealed that Defensemeister/Dark Overlord Donald Rumsfeld green-lighted the torture that many of our service people have gone to prison for carrying out. The newsroom non-shock and little awe continued when Resident Bush announced today that he wouldn’t ask Rumsfeld to step down or be held accountable in any way, shape or form.

I think, at this point, the Regime should change their slogan from “Spreading Democracy Across the World” to “I Didn’t Do It, And Even If I Did, You Can’t Do Anything About It!” How is it that people in this country stand behind the Asshole-in-Chief when he talks about the evils of Saddam’s rape rooms, yet they become complacent when we all learn that Rummy thinks it’s okay to make a group of detainees (you know, guys who aren’t convicted of anything) strip down to their skin suits and do a cheerleader-like pyramid? If something tickles your nose a little weird, remember, it’s the smell of hypocrisy, and it’s making everyone in this country look like a bunch of serious, two-faced assholes. I don’t mind people thinking I’m an asshole, but the two-faced thing doesn’t set right with me.

I learned that those nut jobs in Iran have gone off the deep end, developed nukes, and are threatening to wipe Israel off the map. No Shit!?! Their leader is a complete fuckwad who wouldn’t know diplomacy if it came up and bit him in his Allah-loving ass. When Iran went on and on about developing nuclear energy two years ago as a cheaper means for powering factories claiming that they would never want to use it for the development of weapons, I knew they were completely full of shit. Every country in the Middle East has it out for Israel. Thankfully, Israel has nuclear weapons, even though that’s completely unofficial, and my other homeland doesn’t give two shits about what the UN says, so my attitude is “Fire away Moshe!” If Israel is getting threats from Iran, they better not wait for the U.S. to do some military solution, because we can’t even finish our illegal war in Iraq.

I’m just wondering; since Israel can hold their own, and the U.S. is stretched too thin militarily to be effective, do you think the Bush Regime is blowing this out of proportion to get everyone to look past the fact that gas is nearly $3.00 a gallon? When I have to think twice about making a two hour road trip, because I don’t want to have to take a second mortgage on my house to fill my gas tank, we have a problem.

The mainstream news wasn’t the only media that told me zilch, even the entertainment news didn’t have anything new. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes aren’t going to have their kid baptized. Ya Think! They are Scientologists, not Christians. Only Christians have their kids baptized. Jeff and I didn’t have Rachael baptized, because Jewish baby girls go through a naming, and Jewish baby boys get their foreskin lopped off in a ceremony called a bris, but neither one is a baptism, because we aren’t Christians. Now, I’m not defending Scientology, because what I know from it, it’s a pretty fucked up religion, but these two vacuous and mediocre actors shouldn’t be labeled as pariahs, because they didn’t chose a Christian belief system.

Besides, who says the Scientology method of welcoming a new child isn’t fun. They probably throw a big party with colorful and warped people, perhaps some balloons for decorations, and maybe an L. Ron Hubbard book on tape playing in the background. Who knows, they might dip the kid in a vat of goat’s blood, but the point is that we live in a country where you can do that, and as long as the kid doesn’t drown and there’s a potential for a book deal when she hits 19 years old, then all is well.

Now that I’m back to checking the headlines regularly, I’m sure that they will still continue to not tell me anything I didn’t already know. Thank goodness for foreign newspapers and the internet, that way I can find out what’s really going on in my country, because I don’t give one dog fart about Brad and Angelina’s bastard child.

Matzah Anyone?

Before Passover starts, I tell myself the same lies every year: I’m not going to overeat at the first or second night seder, I’m going to check every food item carefully to make sure that I’m not eating anything forbidden, and I’m going to throw away all of the boxes of unfinished matzah after the holiday week is over. I don’t even make it to Day Three without violating at least two of these delusions.

I always liked Passover, not because you get to have two huge meals, gather with friends, and share whispers about who in your social circle has gained the most weight this year, it’s more than that. Passover is cool, because it is the only holiday that commemorates keeping a 2,000 year old grudge. Jews could, as a people, put it behind us and move on, but we prefer to grimace about Egyptians while trying to chomp down parsley dipped in salt water. Why parsley in salt water; to remind us of the bitterness that we suffered during our years of slavery. See, what I mean! A 2,000 year old grudge, and what could be more of a “fuck you” than that.

There’s a popular joke amongst us who practice this type of faith that says something like “here’s a synopsis of every Jewish holiday: they tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat.” Funny, thoughtful, and true. We re-tell the story of release from oppression, celebrate the fact that we are prosperous now, and strap on the feedbag stuffing our faces like the one mammal we are forbidden to eat. I always end up eating way too much at the seders on both nights, and on the third day try to figure out a way I can workout like a fiend for the rest of the week to minimize the damage. However, I knew this would happen despite the lie that I told myself before baking up that first kugel, and dishing more than three ounces of brisket onto my plate.

The first and second night seders are always a lot of fun, but the rest of Passover week tends to be a bit of a bitch to deal with, which is why my second lie never works either. On Friday afternoon, I decided to forego my usual salad, because it was rainy and miserable, and I wanted something more substantial than the McDonalds California Cobb with grilled chicken. My first thought was to stop at Subway. Although their sandwiches are far from deli delicious, they are very conducive to my diet regime. I stopped in my tracks realizing that, because of Passover, bread was off limits, and I didn’t feel like wolfing down a few puny coldcuts and calling it a meal. All of the sudden, tacos came to mind, but again, the tortillas are forbidden until Thursday at sundown. I had to run errands by the mall, so I thought the Food Court would be the best place for me to find something in compliance.

I had forgotten it was Spring Break, which meant that I had to weed through a sea of teenage guys with their baseball caps on backwards and pants hanging down around their asses (when the hell is that trend going to die). Just as one of them asked me for the time, and called me “ma’am”, I looked around at all of the fine dining options, and settled with one of the staples of the mainstream Jewish diet: Chinese food. Conversely, Jeff went out for fish and chips that day, and gave me some bullshit line about how he forgot that the breading on the fish wasn’t Passover-friendly. Neither was the rice I had with my Chinese food, but again, I knew this was going to happen.
Then there’s the matzah. There’s nothing like biting into a crunchy board of the tasteless, cracker-like food known as matzah. Matzah, made of wheat flour, water, and absolutely nothing else, is supposed to replicate the food that G-d gave Jews while they wandered in the desert for 40 years. Once a year, Jews are commanded to go on an Atkins-esque diet and give up any sort of bread for Passover.

I set the box of matzah out at every meal that I prepare that week, because it doesn’t taste that bad if you top it with jam or butter or both, and because I can only hope that this year we actually finish the entire box instead of stuffing it in the back of the pantry until next Passover when I ask myself why I bothered keeping it. Every year we go through the same ordeal. I want to throw the remainder of the matzah out, and Jeff convinces me that we will eat it at some point in the year. We never do, it just sits there like that food dehydrator we were going to use to make our own beef jerky, and the breadmaker that we used for the first three months we owned it until we both gained five pounds from carb overdose.

Since Passover ends the day after tomorrow at sundown, I guess I’ll have to wait until next year to actually make an attempt at keeping the holiday commandments a little better. I never do any major violations, but I’m not exactly the most observant either. However, I give up my Tuesday night pizza, and don’t think twice about it, so that should count for something, damn it!

A Warm Reception at the Neighborhood Egg Hunt...NOT!

Over a year ago, when Jeff and I moved into our Wisteria Lake-like neighborhood, we discovered that they held an annual Easter Egg Hunt. We made the executive parental decision that since colored, plastic eggs and pastel foil-wrapped candy had nothing to do with the whole Jesus legend, we would let Rachael participate. Besides, I know that if I hold her out of this, much like myself, she will rebel by becoming completely absorbed with everything that I define as taboo. For the record, we are telling her now that medical school is some weird, cult-like place where they make magic and voodoo happen, and we are keeping our fingers crossed.

Naturally, on the morning that I rely on my destructive little munchkin to wake us up at the usual time of 7:30/8:00ish, we ending up prodding her out of bed around 9:30 am. We hurried to the children’s park at the end of our street only to be greeted with a disgusted glance from the woman who was bestest buddies with the woman who used to own this house. I returned the glare, and walked right past her trying to avoid the small talk in which she tells me what good friends she used to be with the former owners of my house, and that she’s so sorry they moved. I think the bitch took the hint, because she left soon thereafter.

Jeff helped Rachael gather all of her eggs, while I tried to control Fozzy on the thin leash that kept him from sniffing the butts of everyone searching the park for plastic eggs. My dog might be a short guy, but he is very fat, and has the girth necessary to pull me off my feet. Jeff and I tried to smile and hoped to strike up small talk with some of the other neighbors present at the egg hunt, but they were having none of it.

The only ones who talked to us were an elderly couple that resided on the other side of the neighborhood. Everyone else ignored us like the plague. Since I’m used to not fitting in, and it doesn’t bug me that much, I focused most of my attention on helping Rachael find her plastic eggs. The best thing about hanging around the perimeter was the opportunity to be privy to some interesting conversation like the three, blonde-haired, WASPy people who were talking about one of the neighborhoods that resides adjacent to ours.

Last year, they finished construction on a new tract of about 50 homes. These homes happened to be built by a company that has the reputation for building large houses out of cheap materials. These houses are kind of plain, are a bit low on the quality meter, and usually attract buyers who are the newest citizens to our fine country. They aren’t bad people, and definitely work harder than the plethora of pampered stay-at-home moms that reside in our tract, they are the kind of people who look at their kids every night and tell them how bad they had it in their country, therefore the kids need to study hard and get good grades so that they can get a computer science degree in college.

Apparently, one of the cliques here in Wisteria Lane doesn’t like the fact that this other neighborhood exists next to our pristine tract, because I overheard a woman telling her snooty counterparts that it was like having a trailer park next to us. What a miserable cunt! The houses may not be stellar quality, but those folks have the same mortgage as the rest of us. At that point, I told Rachael it was time to cash in her plastic eggs for a prize. I had had enough of the cold shoulders and shit attitudes, and I had no desire to let my daughter socialize with the children of such shallow parents. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned in life is that the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree, and if these parents were elitist snobs, then their kids are probably going to be a little on the asshole side.

Jeff and I sat there eating our breakfast wondering why we had received such a cold reception. Maybe they didn’t like the fact that Jews were participating in their holiday, which is a completely ridiculous notion, since not even the most devout Christian can tell me how Jesus and bunnies are related. Perhaps they didn’t care for our lack of participation in the prominent social circle that seems to dominate the neighborhood activities. Jeff and I usually go to everything, but neither one of us are fake people, so if we don’t like something, we say so. Maybe they are still mad that we purchased the house that their friends used to live in, and despite the fact that those people only lived here for 4 ½ months, and that they moved nearly two years ago, some people still aren’t over it.

In the end, Rachael got her little present, and a handful of candy, Fozzy got a nice walk and managed to pick a fight with a Corgi, I got to return the glare of that freaky bitch, and Jeff came to the conclusion that I was no longer going to waste any of my time planning events for the neighborhood committee.

Bad Fashion at its Finest

To say I’m sick of the latest fashion trends is an understatement. Normally I don’t give a shit about the newest thing the Olson twins are wearing, but when it begins intruding on my personal clothes shopping experience, then I have to make a stink about it.

My goal was simple: I wanted a black tank top. No special silk material or beaded emblems or decorative lace appliqués, just a plain, black, wash ‘n’ wear tank top that would go with any pair of pants, skirt, shorts, jacket, sweater, hoody, or article of clothing I owned. This wasn’t a colossal wardrobe request, so on the spare 30 minutes that ended my lunch break; I went over to the mall, walked right into the women’s section of the closest store and found…absolutely everything in brown.

Boho, which is supposed to be some sort of earthy, gypsy, bohemian revival in clothing has taken over even the simplest of wardrobe staples. From the big, floppy skirts to the tacky, plastic, chunky jewelry, if it looks like a hippy smoked up in it 30 years ago, most stores want to sell it to you for top dollar. The boring colors, lifeless patterns, and bizarre designs are eye sores.

The other big problem that this particular fashion trend poses for me is that I’m a punk, and for those of you who have little exposure to the punk movement, punks and hippies don’t exactly mix. Therefore, the idea of dressing in the kind of bra burning, peace and love, Earth Day attire that has become quite mainstream, is not only annoying, but out of the question for me.

Lest I appear to be a negative bitch, the only redeeming quality that this whole Boho trend seems to have going for it is that the clothing is getting a little less whorish. Girls who wear Boho duds aren’t going to be showing as much skin as they did back in the golden days of ultra-low, ass crack bearing jeans, or Brittney Spears bra tops.

I did eventually find my plain, black, tank top, but not before visiting at least ten (yes ten) stores, and paying $22. While I was out searching for my simple wardrobe piece, I noticed another ridiculous fashion trend that seems to have taken a bizarre hold with both women and men; the rubber, comfort clogs.

These fucking things come in all sorts of colors, some come with holes, while others look more suede-ish, but one thing is abundantly clear to me; somewhere there is a family member of an obese, geriatric, mental patient raking in a lot of cash. I’m not kidding, prior to this weird fashion trend, the only people I know who ever wore these rubber clogs were the type of mentally unstable folks who happened to be people of size. The most popular accessory to these clogs used to be one of those open-back hospital gowns and that powder blue robe made of the thinnest material known to man. However, now these clogs are all the shit, and I see guys and gals sporting them in public. One thing hasn’t changed, though; I rarely see them on anyone weighing less than 200 lbs. Note to Mario Batali: wearing shoes the same color as your sun-dried tomato pesto isn’t as cool as you think it is.

Now that I think of it, this must be a bad era for shoes, because there’s been a revival of the stiletto heel, and I am really, fucking unhappy about that! I couldn’t maneuver these damn things 15 years ago when I was younger, thinner, and more coordinated, so why the hell is it that every pair of shoes I look at have nail-like heels where a one-inch thick stack should be? Despite my short stature, I’ve never been much of a high heel wearer, so I’m not asking for much. I just want a reasonable pair of shoes that I can wear with an occasional business suit, while doing my straight-laced day job. I don’t want to have to worry about busting out both of my ankles while walking on uneven tile flooring, because I’m trying to balance my entire frame on a surface that is essentially 1/3 of an inch in diameter.

I’m not a fashionista, and I don’t pretend to be. I wear bland, run-of-the-mill, professional woman’s wear to work, jeans and average, mostly cotton-based shirts on the weekends, something a bit sassy on those rare nights that I get out of the house without the kid, and I’m happy with that. However, when Boho, rubber comfy clogs, and needly stiletto heels get in the way of me finding a simple, black tank top during my lunch break, then it’s my duty to speak out, get others on board, and begin the complaining that will hopefully lead to a boycott of this ridiculous shit. In the meantime, thank goodness for eBay, because they have tons of tank tops all under $22, and as long as you’re willing to pay for Ground shipping, you don’t have to see those lemon yellow clogs.

Viva Las Vegas!

Since my husband believes that the musical sun rises and sets to Billy Joel, I decided to sweep him away to Sin City to see the Piano Man in concert during my hubby’s birthday weekend. One heads for Las Vegas with so much hope. You can imagine yourself tapping the button to that magical slot machine that will start dinging, and with lights flashing wildly announce that you’ve won $10,000. As you’re on that flight from the drab Pacific Northwest to the warm, sunny dessert, you close your eyes as if to save all of your vision to drink up the spectacular neon signs.

We arrived in Vegas on a Saturday evening just in time to watch the sunset and ogle the illumination of the enormous casino hotels. Jeff and I had ventured to Vegas while I was still pregnant with Rachael nearly three years ago, and we were surprised to see that the Strip had expanded at least a mile each way. The Stratosphere used to be located way at the end of the Strip away from everything, but now the hotels and construction had made its way to the base of the spire.

The Strip had also gotten wider. We stayed at the Hilton, Elvis’ former stomping ground, at least two streets away from the busy boulevard, but the traffic there was just as bad as the actual Strip. Despite the expansion, Vegas was still Vegas, and this was made crystal clear as we inched our way, transported in our rented Jeep Wrangler, up to the Bally’s hotel sign. There in front of us was an enormous ass; a thonged, female, shapely ass that stood at least ten stories tall and belonged to one of the bejeweled, feathered performers in their house burlesque shows.

We got to the sold out Billy Joel show in the nick of time taking our seats as the lights went out and the music began. He played a thorough repertoire of songs, most of which I knew by heart, because my mom had been a huge Billy Joel fan and played his albums while I was growing up. Jeff was sitting beside me having the time of his life, while the annoying hand clapping lady sat a few people away from me on the right.

If you have ever been to a concert, or any public event for that matter, there are people in the crowd who should be shot or thrown from the building, and one of them is the annoying hand clapping lady. She does a monotone clap through the entire performance, no matter what the pace of the music is, and seems to be completely unaware that she’s irritating the hell out of everyone around her. She, along with the girls in front of you who think it’s cute to make everyone in their row get up like 100 times during the show, can really make a simple concert goer pro-nuclear.

Jeff and I decided to avoid the crowd at the parking garage and went into the casino to gamble; unfortunately, everyone else had the same idea, so we waited an hour to get a drink that never came and departed the MGM Grand for a smaller establishment with better odds.

Another thing about Vegas that never seems to change is the whole Sin City thing. Back in the mid-90s they tried in vain to make Las Vegas into a family place, and failed miserably. I remember thinking back then that there should be a few vacation destinations where kids are not allowed, and now that I’m a parent, I know Vegas is definitely one of those places. Thankfully, they’ve gotten back into the business of appealing to an older demographic, but the bad thing is that they are now targeting the college student/frat brother market, and they have the sexism to prove it.

I know Vegas has never been politically correct, nor do I expect it to be. However, while I’m rolling down the street in my boxy toaster on wheels enjoying the lights, I don’t know if I can appreciate a billboard advertising a supposedly trendy new nightclub that simply reads, “Saline or Silicone.” The waitresses are still scantily clad; while the pit bosses get to wear suits and tuxes, and tits are, well, everywhere. Even the sign for the country ‘n’ western hangout, Gilly’s, had a cowgirl with the nastiest set of inflata-boobs I’ve seen in quite awhile.

Women love sin too, so how come the only thing that Vegas uses to appeal to us is a few measly cabtop signs that advertise the “Thunder from Down Under” male review show? All us gals know that anything that young, buffed, and good looking is most likely gay, and not many of us are going to pay $50 to see some guy in a thong wiggle his ass on stage, no matter how much tanning oil he has dripping off of it.

As you might have guessed, neither of us won the $10,000 we had dreamed of, but since we are a couple of cheap-assed Jews, we didn’t lose that much either. In fact, much to the amusement of our Asian friends, who have admitted to us that those of that particular ethnicity are notorious gamblers, Jeff and I took $100 each and managed to return home with 40% of it minus our meals and a gift for Rachael.

It’s nice to know that a place nicknamed Sin City is just a three hour plane ride away, and I like the fact that I can go about every four years for a couple of days and not feel the need to return any sooner. I would like to eventually win that $10,000, but I also know that the fabulous, new Wynn casino wasn’t built on average people winning fortunes, just the idiots dreaming of having a shot in hell at winning them.

Suburban Thaw

Seattle begins to brighten around the time we lose an hour of sleep. The days get longer, and something bright that other places call “sun” begins to appear. During the first bright weekend, hints of the suburban thaw begin to show. Suburb dwellers peek out from their garages like gophers coming out of their holes. Suburbanites look around, scouting their neighbors’ houses, and sizing them up all in preparation for the magic that is the second bright weekend.

On the second bright weekend, the suburbs are all about business. Men emerge from their picture perfect homes with lawnmower and gardening tools in hand, ordering their children around like farm hands. Then begins the great front lawn pissing contest, where suburbanites believe that their lawn has to look Martha Stewart perfect, so that when this perfection is achieved, they can send nasty neighborhood association notices to their fellow suburbanites who choose not to participate in the yearly “my lawn is greener than your lawn” charade.

As you may have guessed, I’m not a participant, in fact, I usually opt to save my money during the winter to pay for a lawn service company to come out and get my yard ready for summer. I don’t like dirt or bugs or wasting a day digging in the dirt surrounded by bugs. This probably makes me a bad suburban dweller, but I could give a fuck.

During the suburban thaw you also begin to see the moms who take it upon themselves to monitor the safety of the neighborhood by letting you via a variety of hand signals that the 15 miles per hour you are traveling is way too fast for the delicate roads in this suburb tract. They seem to come in pairs staring at you beneath designer sunglasses with a baby strapped to the front of them and a heaping amount of judgment on their backs. These suburb moms are the kind who rudely tell you to do something, like you are one of their future spoiled asshole kids, and then end the sentence with a snide “thank you.”

As you may have guessed, I don’t fit in with this particular group either. You shouldn’t haul ass through a populated subdivision full of kids, but if you can’t come to a halt in two seconds while you are putting along at 15 mph, then you’re either on drugs or over the age of 70, which means that you should have restricted driving privileges anyways.

These moms also get very militant about the assortment of flowers that adorn their front lawn façade. They decorate themselves in the latest, most expensive gardening wear, and complete with the little foam pad to protect their knees, they huff, puff, dig and plant their blooms exchanging tips with fellow neighborhood flower mavens. They stroll along after they have completed their gardens and critique the front yards of those who live next to them. It’s quite a bitchy and petty task, but they are eager to do it.

As you may have guessed, I’m not one of these people, because I really don’t care what’s planted in my front yard, as long as I don’t have to do anything except cut it three times a year. I don’t care what color the flowers are in my yard as long as they don’t attract too many bees (again, it’s a bug thing). As long as my front yard looks half way decent, I’m a happy woman, who by the way, is perfectly within compliance with the Covenants, Codes, and Restrictions of the Neighborhood Association.

Along with lawn pissing contest dads and neighborhood safety monitor moms, I find a variety of sporting balls and poop from animals that don’t belong to me in my front yard, and the neighbor’s grass clippings near my curb. When I leave in the morning, I see the women of the Neighborhood Exercise Squad walking briskly dressed in their designer workout wear behind their exer-strollers with their small, poofy dogs following behind them. It’s at this moment that I wonder why I’m in such a bizarre area where there seems to exist a code of conduct that I didn’t get the rule book for. I smile and wave, but most of the time, they don’t return the disingenuous greeting. They have obviously figured out that I’m not one of them, unlike the broad who owned the house before I did; she fit in perfectly.

For now I exist in Suburbia, because if I told my husband I was seriously looking at moving, he would kill me, and my hope is that this will be a great neighborhood for Rachael to grow up in. If nothing else, living in this strange universe where everything appears normal, and people like me aren’t exactly welcome, provides me with the kind of daily friction I need to observe American suburb life and rip it to shreds. Viva la Suburbs!

Explaining Roadkill

“Wook Mommy, kitty sleeping!” my toddler exclaimed from her carseat as she pointed to the bloody-headed river rat lying dead in the road.

It was the perfect opportunity for me to begin introducing the vast concept of life and death, a topic that would inevitably have to be dealt with. Using something as innocent as roadkill would enable me to bring up the subject in a way that wouldn’t be detrimental or instill a sense of fear. It was the chance for me to help start the development of her analytical mind, and introduce the idea that there was a world beyond herself, but in the end, I pussed out with a pansy-assed reply that went something like, “yep, kitty sleeping.”

When you have a kid you become aware really quickly that everything they know for the first five years of life will come from you, and once you actually internalize that, it’s disturbing as hell. I watch my daughter mimicking me. When I brush my teeth, she stands next to me with her toothbrush, when I buy something at the store and get a shopping bag, she wants one as well, and when I’m cooking, she has to be perched on a stepladder completing a menial task right next to me. All of this is very sweet, because I know it won’t last. It’s only a matter of time before she’ll call me “lame” or “totally lame” or “really, fucking lame.” I know the day will come where she’ll run into the house without even as much as a “hello” and haul ass to her room to IM her friends (or whatever means of instant communication they will have around ten years from now).

In the interim, however, I have the enormous task of trying to explain difficult subjects in ways that she will find palatable without defaulting to the chicken-shit behavior I displayed while passing the furry lump of rodent guts festering in the road.

Some of the subjects I know I’ll come across in the next few years will be things like sex, particularly the first time she walks in on her parents having sex. We all did it, and no matter what your age, background, or how much you fancy yourself an open-minded person, the idea of your parents fucking is the most disgusting thought that could ever cross your mind. When that Pam Anderson/Tommy Lee sex tape was all the rage, my mother made a remark that not everyone could be okay with it, and while most of us found it amusing, I guarantee that their two sons will get nauseous whenever one of their smartass friends bring it up. I don’t care if your parents look as good as Tommy and Pam, there is no way to burn that image out of your mind once you see it, and therapy won’t help a damn bit.

Homosexuality is another topic that my daughter will undoubtedly have questions about, and that one could be a little sticky. We aren’t homophobic, right-wingers or anything like that, but it’s one of the subjects that my husband and I don’t really see eye-to-eye on. My position is that there’s nothing wrong with being gay, you are born that way, and that’s all there is to it. If you want to get married, fine by me, you have every right to spend the day pissed off because your sloppy spouse left the cap off the toothpaste, or deposited their socks on the floor instead of in the hamper. However, my husband has a more conservative view, so I guess that’s something we will have to work on the first time the little one comes home and ask why her friend has two mommies or daddies.

Bratz dolls; I fucking hate them. In fact, I would rather buy my daughter a dozen Barbies than one of those bastard Bratz. Rachael has pointed them out in the store and I’ve already started with my own version of anti-Bratz rhetoric. I tell her that those are bad dollies, and that she is too good to play with something stupid like those bad dollies. Any dolls that are supposed to replicate toddlers and include makeup, belly shirts, and big, pouty, “come hither” lips are nothing that my kid will own. Pedophiles everywhere might be jerking off with glee holding a variety of Bratz dolls in their free hand, but my hard earned dollars aren’t going to advance the cause of sexualizing little girls.

I’m sure these few things are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to topics that I’ll have to come up with a reasonable explanation for. I won’t take any of these subject matters lightly, because I know that my impressionable child will carry this opinion with her well into her 20s and possibly longer. Hopefully, I’ll do a good job and raise an independent-minded woman with the ability to think for herself, use her high esteem to make her dreams come true, and be quick to respond to those who are close-minded and oppressive with their beliefs. If not, then I’ll have to use my early retirement account to pay for her therapy, but either way, she’s covered.