I’m just gonna come out and say it…

… John McCain was fucking hot back in the day. Ooh baby.

How Cool!!

Explorers find 1780 British warship in Lake Ontario

SYRACUSE, N.Y. – A 22-gun British warship that sank during the American Revolution and has long been regarded as one of the “Holy Grail” shipwrecks in the Great Lakes has been discovered at the bottom of Lake Ontario, astonishingly well-preserved in the cold, deep water, explorers announced Friday.

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Shipwreck enthusiasts Jim Kennard and Dan Scoville used side-scanning sonar and an unmanned submersible to locate the HMS Ontario, which was lost with barely a trace and as many as 130 people aboard during a gale in 1780.

The 80-foot sloop of war is the oldest shipwreck and the only fully intact British warship ever found in the Great Lakes, Scoville and Kennard said.

“To have a Revolutionary War vessel that’s practically intact is unbelievable. It’s an archaeological miracle,” said Canadian author Arthur Britton Smith, who chronicled the history of the HMS Ontario in a 1997 book, “The Legend of the Lake.”

What a cool piece of history! It’s not every day that such significant evidence of the most important era of our nation’s history surfaces like this. Even though the ship was never used in battle, it ferried supplies to British soldiers fighting during the war. What a neat reminder of the magnitude of the American Revolution, what it means for us, and what had to happen to get us where we are today.

Aaaand, while we’re at it. . .

The Un-Epidemic

I’ve been cleaning and putting away laundry all morning. Whilst putting away some clothes, I decided to try on some of the stuff I haven’t been able to wear in quite a while due to fatness, and to my surprise, everything except one jacket fits. I was damn pleased. But then I started thinking about things.

I read a lot of Kate Harding’s stuff over at Shapely Prose, and I agree with a lot of what she has to say. I haven’t experienced a large degree of fat hate projected towards me, but I have seen and heard it projected towards others, and I like Harding’s take on “fat acceptance,” which is a concept that I never knew existed until this past January. Her site encourages people to accept their bodies as they are, fat or not. It’s a good concept, and I agree with it wholeheartedly, but people often stumble over the health implications of it. Strange as it may seem, there are people who eat right for the most part, or at least, not any worse than skinny people eat, and are active and get plenty of exercise, who are still chubby. And really, it’s okay to accept that. Their heart rate, blood sugar, cholesterol, blood pressure, etc. may be perfectly fine (such as mine), but they just don’t seem to shrink.

Now me, I used to eat way worse than most people do. And I thought I was just fat, and that’s the way I was supposed to be. But since I’ve been working with my doctor and eating normally, I’ve dropped some weight. This is good, and I’m happy about it, but the point is to get healthy, not skinny. No desire to be one of those plastic-looking praying mantis/human hybrids.

Which brings me to the point of this entry. Where is this obesity epidemic that’s sweeping our nation? Because everywhere I look, I see people getting skinnier and skinnier. Of course, every so often you’ll meet someone who is obviously at a huge health risk due to their weight, but honestly, I’m the biggest person in most every room that I enter. So where are all these fat people who are driving up our healthcare costs?

Then I realize that the problem is the BMI, which I’ve begun to refer to as the Bullshit Medical Instrument. Shapely Prose has a whole section devoted to this. See, the BMI is currently THE tool that the medical community uses to determine if a person is normal, overweight, obese, or morbidly obese, whatever the hell those mean. Even worse, it’s a tool that those in the medical community even ADMIT is outdated, imprecise, outdated, incomplete, and outdated. See some examples, courtesy of Shapely Prose, below.

Shauna, Laurie, and Pippa are overweight:

Mindy is normal:

Fillyjonk is obese:

Robin is morbidly obese:

So is Moxie:

So, we’re all supposed to look like Mindy.

It’s bullshit. None of the girls in the pictures above are obese, or a health threat, but they’re included in the whole “1 in 4 Americans are obese and our country is a huge steaming pile of fat people that are costing us healthy people our healthcare dollars OH NOES THESE FAT BASTARDS MUST BE STOPPED!!” bullshit that is so often spat out by those outside of the supposed epidemic. I highly doubt Robin is at a huge risk for a heart attack or pigs out on pizza and donuts every night. I doubt that Shauna, Laurie, Pippa, or Fillyjonk are a huge strain on our healthcare economy. You know who DOES drive up the cost of healthcare? People who believe, because they’re skinny or otherwise, that they are “healthy,” (and therefore invincible) and do not even HAVE health insurance. Then they get hit by a bus or find out they have cancer, or break a leg or collapse a lung, and all of a sudden there they stand at the ER, wondering who’s going to pay for all of this. You know who pays for it? I do. I pay for it because the hospital has to cover the costs somehow, and a small portion of that is offloaded onto the patient, a large portion is eaten by the hospital which means they drive up their costs which drives up what they bill the insurance companies, which drives up the premiums that people who actually have health insurance pay.

So, this is my official declaration that I refuse to monitor, care about, know, or try to lower my BMI from this day forward. If I continue to lose weight in my new lifestyle, that’s just grand, but where I end up is where I’ll stay. I hope to god that I never live in an America where everyone weighs the same, looks the same, and thinks the same.

End fat rant.

This is Why I Loathe Dating

More About Why I Despise Mike Huckabee

Happened upon this little happy article today. I’ll summarize for you: Mike Huckabee was one of the Southern Baptist church leaders who signed a full-page ad in 1998 declaring and affirming the newly-imposed Southern Baptist tenet that wives should “submit graciously to the servant leadership of her husband.”

The article follows with a bunch of trumped-up BS trying to twist and explain the language in a way that makes Huckabee NOT look like the complete misogynistic bastard that he is. Here’s one of my favorite passages:

But ideally the Ephesians V family is a family in which there is mutual submission to one another in the fear of the Lord. Therefore, when there are matters of discussion, both husband and wife converse with each other, seeking to find consensus. In those rare instances where consensus is not reached, the wife says, “Okay, you have the responsibility and accountability to stand before God one day and give an account of the decision you’re going to make. But I–voluntarily–submit to your leadership is this instance.”

I don’t care what particular diety one prays to, the notion that a man should have the final authority in ANY household just because he has a penis is BULLSHIT. As I recall, in the Bible, which Southern Baptists and all Christian religions call The Word of God, and from what I learned in sermon after sermon in my more docile days, that particular God made woman from Adam’s rib to be at his side. Not his head to rule over him, nor his feet to be trampled under him.

It’s our differences and variations that make this country unique and exceptional. Different religions, races, creeds, languages, whether they irritate us or enthuse us, are the very basis on which this country was built. But let’s look at the main goal of any established religion: to convert others, to bring them in, to “save” them. And I guarantee you that if we continue to elect men like George Bush and Mike Huckabee to the Oval Office, this country will slowly but steadily cease to exist as a democracy and emerge as a theocracy while these men continue to turn their apologetics into national policy.

Future Presidents: surely, adhere to your faith. Keep it, treasure it, and practice it without shame. But do not will it to be universal law. And by the way, running your campaign based on your faith is just tasteless and cheapens and demeans the very meaning of it. Pitiful.

Huckabee denounces Romney attack ads

I read that headline and immediately screamed in agony at the hypocrisy and stupidity of it. OH MY GOD! This is coming from the guy who has constantly beaten up on Romney because of his Mormon faith, and the minute Romney finally stands up for himself, this jackass pounces. What a joke. I hope Huckabee crashes and burns to the point that not only will he never set foot in the Oval Office, his political credibility in the future will rank somewhere below the Save the Forest Mole lobby.

In Today’s News

Shocking: TIME names a suspected murderer as Person of the Year.

Not Shocking in Any Way, Shape, or Form: Britney Spears’ 16-year-old sister is pregnant.

Romney vs. Huckabee

I’m only going to say this once: Voting for someone because they subscribe to a particular religion is just as stupid as NOT voting for them because they subscribe to a particular religion. I really thought we had come farther than this as a country. Two hundred and thirty-one years of progress, and we still have this debate?

This is amateur politics. I don’t give a rat’s ass what God you pray to as long as you can run this country effectively and don’t force me to pray to the same one.

The Golden Compass

Personally, I have not read any of Pullman’s books, but I’m seriously considering it after seeing the movie. I’m stoked that kids are into these books, which from what I’ve heard, seem to be the best follow-up to the Harry Potter craze to date.

So why the big controversy? Well, it seems that authoritative groups get a little prickly about their authority being challenged. Where’s the best place to start when trying to affect widespread change? At the bottom. In this case, with the children. What the chur. . . er, I mean, Magisterium is trying to accomplish in this case is to detach children from that which gives them knowledge of the world; in other words, that which gives them the ability to think for themselves and question convention. The goal of the Magisterium is, after all, not only to rule their world, but to rule all worlds outside their own as well. Does any of this sound familiar? And perhaps just a tad biting? At one point near the beginning of the movie, a member of the Magisterium even says “… if we don’t stop this, there will always be freethinkers challenging our authority.”

Which, besides the need to fix that kid’s teeth, is pretty much the only thing that bothered me about the movie. The religious and socio-political overtones are *so* obvious that it almost feels like an insult to the over-twenty crowd. However, that’s not the crowd to which the books or movie were marketed. Which means that the kids in the theater today will someday watch this movie again as (hopefully freethinking) adults and say “Ooooh, I get it now.”

So, there’s a church-like organization in the film which represents the “bad guys.” This is why right-wing groups are in hysterics. The “don’t say anything bad about my religion/political party/pagan cult and don’t say anything good about anyone else’s” mentality is getting a little old. And if we’re being honest, the only reason these people are so upset by the depiction of the church in this film is because it’s so damn accurate.

What’s the goal of any religion? To spread it. To convert others. To take that religion and make it accepted and taught everywhere, not just in our own backyards, but every country, every continent, everywhere in the world. (Hmm, circular reference, much?) What Pullman does is expose to his audience – in this case, a very specific audience with the potential to affect real change in the world – some of the reasons why this might not always be the best thing to do.  And I, for one, applaud him for it.

I was never taught to question authority, but as I grew older I realized that those in charge were rarely the ones who cared about those being ruled over. At our most basic level, humans exist for one purpose: to promote our individual survival. Those with power have always, and will always, do whatever they can to prevent those without it from challenging the status quo. This will continue, until we learn to question, to challenge, and to demand the best for ourselves. We have become a species of sheep, content to follow and obey.

I only hope that a generation of shepherded parents don’t belittle their children into dismissing the message of these books & films. I hope that, armed with the knowledge that such a choice exists, future generations affect real change in the world around us. And what will happen if parents endeavor to raise freethinking children? True, a good proportion of those children will ultimately decide to adhere to commonly held statutes and conventions. And some will not. But guess what? They will all have made that decision on their own. And that is what will take us from sheep to shepherds.

Nothing is Mundane

How strange, she thought, that the sky is blue.

She lived for moments like this, few and far between, when she found herself surprised by the seemingly mundane. Her work forgotten, the spaghetti Bolognese growing cold on her desk, she sat, turned defiantly toward the tall window and considered the view from the third floor. An ugly, crumbling brick building with a rusted fire escape stood in stark comparison to the flawlessly cerulean winter sky.

Often, she marveled at the surplus of hatred, evil, and ugliness in the world. She belabored the injustice that permeated her life and the lives of everyone she loved. She looked upon those more fortunate than herself with contempt and those less fortunate with a confusing concoction of pity and disdain. Even as she was compelled to help those she could with what little she had, she found herself often expecting much in return despite her altruistic intentions.

Yet, on occasion she found herself in moments similar to this, rediscovering a part of life constantly overlooked and taken for granted. When it happened, she found that a calm comfort settled over her. The monsters and pressures that surrounded her, threatening suffocation with their deafening demands, faded away and she observed the world in all its staggering clarity.

How strange, indeed, that the sky should wind up blue. Of all the hues in all the world, blue. Intellectually, she knew that the combination of myriad atmospheric conditions and gases were responsible for the brilliance before her. Yet, she understood, inherently, that it is right; the sky could never have inspired so much love and poetry in green or orange. It had to be blue, from the very beginning. It was the same innate sense of place and precision that still dumbfounded her, that the world seemed to know that she needed to be reminded of another fact: that everything is unfolding exactly as it should. Everywhere. Even when she had forgotten, or simply couldn’t see.

On Respect

Now, I’m not saying, nor have I ever said, that Hillary Clinton will or should be elected to the office of El Presidente. I have, however, always acknowledged that it is damn refreshing to see a woman running for the office, and you have to admit, it’s been an interesting campaign so far, and we have a whole year to go before it’s over. Think of all the fun things that could happen in that year.

I just read an article about the most recent Democratic debate in Vegas. My respect for Clinton has grown a wee bit. I’m STILL NOT SAYING I think she’s the next President. I’m just sayin’ she’s probably got a bigger set on her than most of her opponents. The following quotes for your perusal:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton accused her closest rivals Thursday night of slinging mud “right out of the Republican playbook”. . .

In a word: Ouch!

“People are not attacking me because I’m a woman, they’re attacking me because I’m ahead,” Clinton said.

This is true.

Asked whether she was guilty of playing the “gender card” in her drive to become the first female president, she said she had not.  “I’m not playing the gender card here in Las Vegas,” a magnet for gamblers. “I’m trying to play the winning card,” she said.

Oooh-ha! Wow.

Okay, if she gets in, she’s going to destroy our healthcare system and tax the shit out of us to pay for it, but damn, that’s a strong woman. I must say I admire her for the way she has stood up to the men in this campaign. Women in a boy’s club have to work a hundred times harder to compete and she has done so with aplomb.

I’m still not voting, but I admire her.

Brain Dump

It occurs to me that I have not made any posts of any substantial value (not that any of them really are to begin with) in a very long while. So I decided to do a brain dump about some things that have been on my mind lately.

<brain dump>

First: If I read, see, or hear one more thing entitled “Oprah Admits Crying Over Abuse in Her South Africa School,” I’m going to vomit. Projectile vomit, with large chunks of half-chewed burrito. So she cried. Big. Fucking. Deal. I cry when I see a Snuggle Bear commercial on television, but I don’t go typing up press releases about it. I’m so glad she can eke out a few tears for South African kids half a world away when there are plenty of poverty-stricken, starving, abused, homeless crack babies here in America. You’re a real frickin’ philanthropist there, O.

Second: I’ve been reading an interesting book, purely for recreational reading, with no relevance at all to my actual, real, personal life, called Having an Affair?: A Handbook for the “Other Woman.” It’s written by a British author whom I swear has got to be the thickest most confused woman on the planet. And she doesn’t even live in America, if that tells you anything. Some things she has really, really right. My main complaint is her incessant insistence as to the reason men cheat on their wives: because the wives don’t work at making their men happy, because wives get fat and stop wearing makeup, and because wives let them get away with it. So basically, wives of the world, your man is required to do nothing to keep you happy for the rest of your life, but you are expected – nay, *required* – to maintain your slender physique, even post-children, smear on the war paint even if you’re staying home watching the kids, and to do whatever it takes, whenever it takes it, to make sure that your man is satisfied sexually, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and physically. Seriously. Read the book. But get it from the library; don’t spend money on it. A man’s happiness is everyone’s responsibility except his own. A woman’s is no one’s responsibility, not even her own. I shall now quote an actual passage from the book: “If you’re reading this and you’re a wife who suspects that her husband may be having an affair, your time would be better spent if you put this book down and started making your husband happy.” *blinkblink* BULLSHIT!

My other complaint about the book is that the author implicates that even with the aforementioned safeguards, that all married men will cheat on their wives. Without exception. Now, part of me actually believes this is probably true, but contrary to that overgeneralization, there *have* been married men I’ve known who absolutely would never cheat on their wives, regardless of circumstance. So why butcher that hope for us women? Seriously, reading this book makes me more and more depressed every time I open it. Hence why it’s taken me three weeks to read three chapters. I wouldn’t call myself a feminist, but holy shit, this woman is the most anti-feminist author I’ve ever read. Anyway. . . enough on that topic. I feel my blood pressure rising with every letter I type.

Next: I have gotten to a point where the very concept of dating turns my stomach. I actually had a date a couple of nights ago. Not a bad guy, in fact I actually like him a little, but the thought of calling, or emailing, or arranging a second date, or getting dressed up, leaving the house to see him again, absolutely repulses me. It’s not him. I just don’t want to be bothered. I simply enjoy my solitude more than I enjoy the company of someone I barely know. And I do not have the stamina for this; I do not want to spend hours upon hours “dating,” getting to know someone, only to find out that, once again, I’m not interested, or he’s not interested, or he’s interested but only if I’ll lose weight, or he’s interested but only in sex, or I’m interested only to find out he has an abnormal fixation with dead things or explosives or he’s interested but wants to take me to a porn theater on our second date or I’m interested but then he sends me text photos of himself naked. You laugh, but every single one of those scenarios has happened to me. In. Real. Life.t

Also: I’m ready to start exercising again. I ditched my diet during my vacation in July and haven’t had any luck starting up again since. Luckily, I’ve only gained three pounds back. I’m eager to start swimming again, but I think Panda and I both are getting bored with it. So I’m hoping this one-mile swim goal will motivate me a little, but I’m also looking for some new stuff to throw into the mix, especially since winter is coming on and wet hair = cold walk to the car after a swim. So, I’m thinking kickboxing looks fun, and also thinking of signing up for Weight Watcher’s meetings. Never been to the meetings before. I always just tracked everything myself. I figure I might meet some new people and it might motivate me.

Speaking loosely of vacation: only two weeks until my Thanksgiving vacation! Woot! I desperately need some time to myself. I intend to spend the entire week (except Turkey Day) in my pajamas, watching old movies and petting my cat. I don’t even intend to shower from Friday, November 16th until Thursday, November 22nd. Try me. I’ll so do it.

Random thought: I wore makeup for the SECOND day in a row today. This has got to be a record. I can’t remember the last time I wore makeup twice straight like that.

I bit a fingernail today for the first time in five weeks. It was the pinkie nail. Now my left pinkie looks so short and stubby.

</brain dump>

Questioning Convention

Since I was a little girl, I’ve been fed the idea that women need to get married to be happy. Even still, in today’s more open-minded and slightly more liberated world, people sometimes look at me funny or scoff or slowly shake their heads when they learn that I am 25 years old and unmarried.

Let me break this gently:

I don’t fucking want to get married.

Everything I learn, observe, read, and hear about marriage and relationships repulses me. More and more, I hear my married friends (Jenn and Panda excepted) talk about how much they hate being married, hate their children (which is another story) and how much they wish they could leave, but they “just can’t.”

Then there are sites like True Mom Confessions that just make me lose all faith in humanity, not only the institutions of marriage and motherhood. Some excerpts:

• we only say “I love you” when there are other people around to hear it. I’ve given up
• Some days I’m so lonely I can’t even keep my head up.
• I dont want to wake up one day and wonder why I stayed in this miserable shell of a marriage. But I’m to afraid to leave. So I stay, its safer and easier.

• I hate my lazy, selfish pig of a husband. The only reason I am still here is because I have 4 kids and I don’t have a job. But, how can I get a job if all I am doing is raising his kids while he sits on the sidelines and enjoys it. The lottery is my only way out!!

• I love my kids. Really, I do. But still, I can’t wait until they move out. And they’re only 4 and 5…

• i hate my husband more and more everyday… dont know how much longer i can take it =(

• I let my husband talk me into having kids, assuring me that I would love a baby of ours once it was here. Well, it’s been eight years. Still hasn’t happened. I have been calling suicide hotlines because I can’t take the hell my life has become. I hate my kid, I hate my life, and I hate my husband for getting me into this mess.

• sometime i really hate my kids…as bad as that sounds i do…im sick of hearing them scream, im sick of the whining, im sick of cleaning up after everyone else….and worse of all my bc failed….i DONT want this baby, but i cant get rid of it either. i hate the freakin dr, my husband and everything right now

That’s just part of the  fun stuff there. But that’s nothing compared to True Dad Confessions, which actually makes me sick when I read it:

• I wish she would leave. Then I could be the victim, not the bad guy. Everybody would take my side. Nobody would blame me for protecting my financial interests, as she brought the whole thing on herself. In the meantime, I plan to make her so miserable she will have no choice.

• As amazing as any woman can be, in every possible way, your man will grow tired of you, and want to have sex with others. Many of whom will not be nearly as perfect, in any way, with you.
• You can be the BEST woman in the world. You can have a beautiful face and a smokin’ hot bod. You can be smart and funny and wise beyond your years. You can cook like a gourmet and keep a spotless house. You can bear beautiful children and raise them like a pro. And none of that matters if your man feels he doesn’t get enough sex. Many women seem to think that other things can make up for a lack of sex. Those women are wrong. If your man wants it, and you’re not giving it to him, don’t be surprised when he gets it elsewhere.
• Go ahead, withhold sex when you are mad. I’ll just go down the street and take the workout instructor from behind.

• My wife is a fatty. I love her and would never tell her this…but she’s getting huge! She outweighs me by 40 pounds, if not more!

• I am no longer attracted to my wife’s body now that she is pregnant. I think the bloated belly and all the swelling looks pathetic and just plain stupid. I’d rather have sex with a plain fat chick than preggo.

• My wife still gets up on the weekend, puts on her makeup (after the gym) and makes herself look good for me. I feel bad for guys whose wives only figure this out AFTER the divorce.

No desire to enter into any kind of arrangement that leads to this. And, let’s face it: more often than not (alarmingly often, in fact), this is how marriages end up. No fucking thank you.

So excuse me if I don’t seem eager to lock down a husband. I’m young, self-sufficient, intelligent, and living life exactly how I want to live it. As it stands now, I will never have to say “I want to leave him, but I just can’t,” and no one will ever say about me “I will make her so miserable, she will have no choice but to leave.”

I have no trouble finding companionship when I desire it. So the next person who even hesitates when I say I’m unmarried will get a swift kick in the ass.  Strange as it may seem, I’M HAPPY! I’m probably happier than any married people you know.  And besides, how I live my life is only one person’s business: mine.

Things we never forget

A beautiful September Tuesday. I needn’t mention the day or the year.

 I’m surprised sometimes to re-discover how it affected me. And when I saw “United 93″ on the gallery rack during Free Movie Thursday at the local Movie Gallery, I thought I was ready to watch it. Surely six years of war and embittered distrust of a government that failed to protect its people would have desensitized me enough.

But the truth is, even just last month, I stumbled across a picture online. A tower of smoke, stark against a perfect blue sky. My heart skipped a beat. Time slowed and flashes played in my head. Three thousand people I did not know, whom I had never met, nor loved. Yet I had cried. But that image isn’t the most vivid one burned into my memory from that day.

My mother, in her white robe with pink flowers at the lapel, standing in front of the kitchen sink, staring out the window with a cup of coffee in her hand, her hair disheveled from interrupted sleep. She turns instinctively towards my father as he enters from the living room. He stops at the table. “The tower fell.”

Mom sets her coffe cup on the counter. “But they got everyone out, didn’t they?” she asks with a hint of panic in her voice.

“No, honey, they didn’t.”

And she cries. And he hugs her. And I? I just stand in the living room and stare. At them, at the television. Feeling completely alone. Fifteen minutes ago, life had been one way. Now, it would never be that way again. From that moment on, those images would invoke the same feelings in me that I felt at that moment. I would never see a plane fly over Louisville again without involuntarily considering a possibility that, fifteen minutes ago, did not exist.

But I didn’t think at the time that there would be a night, six years later when I would sob uncontrollably about these events. Nor did I think that, until that time, similar nights would be scattered here and there, after happening upon an anecdote or an image to trigger the replay of that day. I didn’t think that the image of my father holding my mother would, for the rest of my life, make me remember anything except how much they love each other. But now, when he does, I turn away.

How could I have gone about my day? How could I have gone to class, gone to work, when I should have been there with them? How could I have cried for three thousand strangers but not my own mother’s grief? The girl I was then seems so much older than the memories themselves; she has faded while they have not. They’re more real than she is. Why is that? Maybe that’s what ages us; the things we can’t forget.

Wherein I will probably be fired

My company is on a huge diversity kick right now. Our diversity (which they define as women and “people of color”) numbers are on a downslide, so we need to improve them. Yet, somehow, someway, we continue to turn a profit. A paradox, for sure.

So, women and people of color. Including them in the organization will help give different points of view to finding solutions to the challenges of the company, foster a more comfortable and friendly work environment, and increase that ever-important bottom line.

Source: Them. They. The people who tell everyone stuff so they don’t have to think for themselves.

Which brings me to the rub.

It’s no secret, so I’m not going to pretend like it’s taboo, that there is a vast chasm in income and standard of living between whites, blacks, Asians, Abu-Dhabians, Native Americans, and people from Delaware. I don’t believe this gap has anything to do with one’s background, family tree, education, or personal hygiene. Well, maybe personal hygiene. I believe it has to do with attitude. I was a farmer/factory worker’s daughter with very few friends and virtually no interaction with the world outside our little 81 acres. But I decided I was going to college. And I did. Now, people argue that the black boy in the ghetto or the white kid on welfare don’t have the same opportunities as I did. They are wrong. There are programs, there are grants, there are loans, there are a vast many ways they could do exactly what I did, and we all had people telling us it couldn’t be done. The difference? I made it happen. I worked for it. They could have done, also. They chose not to. There’s a reason that no CEOs walk into a boardroom in pants hanging down to his knees, a seven-sizes-too-large t-shirt and chains hanging around his neck. That’s not what gets hired. If that’s a choice you’ve made, those are the consquences you get to live with.

It’s not a racial thing. It’s a personality thing.

So here’s the deal. The small percentage of minorities who comprise the higher end of the income bracket – gasp! – got an education. Big shock. So surely, they should be included in staffing decisions. I’m all for it. If they’re qualified, if they’re the best person for the job, bring ‘em in!

However, I’m not a fan of diversity for the sake of diversity. Here’s why: we go to high school, where they teach us all the same stuff and test us all the same way and these days, make us all dress the same way. Then we go to college, where they teach us to view the world all in the same way. Then we get hired into corporations like the one for which I work, and there, they push and shove and squeeze us all into one mold and make us all think the same way. And what way is that? The Good of the Company. So, in high school, we’re taught to focus on the ways we are all alike. In college we’re taught to view the world in the ways we’re all alike. In our careers we’re taught to do everything alike, and for one purpose: the company.

Now, I have a problem with a society that spends the better half of our lives making us dress, think, talk, perceive, and perform the same way, then telling me that our differences will help us acheive our goals. And let’s face it, the minorities who get hired into corporations like this get here because they dress, think, talk, perceive, and perform the exact same way as this little white girl. So how does diversity contribute ANYTHING to this company? Having people with differently colored skin is going to improve what? Because that’s all it is. Oh sure, we won’t get sued or fined by the government for not meeting our Affirmative Action quotas. And that saves us money. I guess that’s a start.

My point, I’ll finally come it, is this: there is no reason to enforce any kind of strategy to increase diversity in corporate America. The color of one’s skin does not determine their contribution to the company. It does not foster a safe and happy work environment, nor does it hinder it. When society starts teaching us all to think, act, and speak with respect for and regards to our differences instead of our similarities, then we might be onto something. But until then, let’s drop the PC facade, shall we?

How to Succeed in Life

Today I stumbled across this post on a blog that is not only quite funny, but quite provocative. I will say that the reasons of which he speaks in this post are the same reasons I did not become a teacher as well. But there were more things that vexed me about education, and how we as Americans view it that pushed me away from the profession.

I won’t rehash the entire post. Suffice to say, I agree with pretty much everything he says.  But let’s talk a bit about No Child Left Behind, shall we?

Standardized testing to ensure academic excellence is like using the prison to deter crime: it doesn’t work. The threat is not immediate. There’s a chance you can slip by. You can cheat, you can guess, you can manage, somehow, to pass.  And, if you don’t pass the first time, you get more chances. So they say, “Having a diploma does not mean you have a brain.” Or something like that. 

Now let’s do something that NCLB doesn’t do: let’s find a solution to this problem. How about higher pay for teachers? How about longer school days? How about less emphasis on extracirricular athletic activities as a measure of success and more emphasis on preparing students for college? How about college simulators and more supplemental tutoring programs? How about teaching teachers how to teach every student in the way he/she learns, rather than forcing them to conform to their individual teaching styles and preferences? How about rewarding excellence? No Child Left Behind means No Child Gets Ahead (NCGA).

Let’s go deeper: let’s start at home. I excelled in school and in college because at home I was taught to read at an early age and was made to understand how important it was to get a good education. Dad would say “It comes down to survival. To survive, you have to work. To work, you have to know how to read.” True, I wasn’t encouraged to attend college, but that love of learning drove me to attend anyway.

See, the biggest problem that I identified in my experiences as an education major revolved around the responsibility of learning. We seem to have this idea that it’s the teacher’s job to make us learn and the government’s job to pay them to do that. Wrong. It is *YOUR* responsibility to learn. You’re given the resources. It’s up to *YOU* to take the responsibility to pay attention to what you’re being taught, to study on your own, to do what *YOU* need to do to prepare *YOURSELF* to survive in the world.  You want to program computers for a living? No one is going to come up and make you learn it. And you are not *entitled* to have them teach it to you. It’s your job to go get those skills.

And before we start the arguments about “Boo hoo, I went to an inner-city school, I didn’t get the same education that you got, waaah waaah!,” let me just say this: Bullshit. See, I observed and taught at an inner-city school for six weeks. I can tell you that the cirriculum, the material, the content, everything was exactly the same as what I received at my all-white public school in Podunk, USA. The difference? I was taught to pay attention and take responsibility. I was taught the importance of why I was there. I was given ownership of my own education. These teachers want to teach. And sometimes a few kids want to learn. But when the kids who don’t want to learn occupy 90% of a teacher’s time with disciplinary problems, it drags down the kids who have the potential and determination to excel as well. I’m not saying it’s just as *easy* in that environment to learn; in fact, it’s harder because students would have to make a huge effort to learn the material on their own. Again, NCLB = NCGA.

This is why baby boomers who complain about minimum wage being too low really chap my ass. Minimum wage is intended to be utilized by teenagers living at home with no bills to pay who need lunch and gas money. If you’re 45 years old and still making minumum wage, you screwed up not once, not twice, but several times along the way, and you didn’t learn from it. Your problem. Not mine. I took responsibility.

Dem’s Fightin’ Words

Speaker Nancy Pelosi just earned a lot of respect from me, on one level:

“The American people have lost faith in the president’s conduct of this war,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif. “The American people see the reality of the war, the president does not.”

Retract your claws, Elephants! She’s merely saying publicly what everyone else in the House is thinking. Give her some credit for having bigger balls than most Representatives.

 This is, of course, in reference to a new proposal passed by the House to have pulled out all our troops from Iraq by September 2008. I have conflicted feelings about this. Feelings that I’ll keep to myself to avoid a huge political mele here.

Oh, really?

Headline I just read on Yahoo:

 Rice Says Mideast Violence Should Not Postpone Peace Talks

 By all means, don’t let a little violence distract you from your peace talks.  Wouldn’t that somehow – I don’t know – defeat the purpose?

Meth-heads don’t make it easy to be sick

Having been getting very poor gas mileage lately and needing to pick up a few incidentals, I dropped my car off at the tire & lube express at Wal-Mart for an oil change today and took off into the store with three things on my mind: toilet paper, toothpaste, and enough pseudoephedrine to take down a horse.  I could hear my heart beating in my ears, the sinus pressure was so strong.  Turns out, Wal-Mart carries the single most *limited* selection of pseudoephedrine products in the developed world.  They have shelf after shelf of phenylephrine, which does *nothing* for anyone over the age of twelve, so after arguing with the pharmacy technician over why they don’t have a decongestant + pain reliever that contains pseudoephedrine, I gave up and trudged back to where my car waited.  So on the way home I swung by CVS.  I selected the card that would serve as my ticket to freedom from mouth-breathing from the shelf and handed it to the pharmacist to retrieve the product, a generic brand, from behind the counter.  Lo and behold, they’re out of the generic, but would love to sell me the name-brand equivalent, which they only have in a 48-pack, for about $15.  I told them to lump it.  I’ll suffer.Finally, in a fit of desperation, I drove to the nearest Walgreens.  Walked directly up to the pharmacy counter, asked for what I wanted, and without a hitch, signed the form, and got the drugs.  For $4.99, no less.  Of course, pharmacists now look you up, down, over, under, and sideways when you ask specifically for psuedoephedrine.  I could understand if I walked up there reeking of chemicals with bloodshot eyes and a slight twitch.  But sauntering up, sniffling and sounding like I’ve just been held underwater for about twelve hours unable to articulate any compound consonant sounds, you’d think they’d give you a little leeway.So, on behalf of all the good, sick people out there who have had to fight this fight just to get some relief, I want to sincerely thank any meth-heads who might be reading this.  Thank you for stealing the product that offers our salvation just to melt it down and get high while, should we fall ill after the pharmacy closes, we have to suffer through until the morning.  And thanks for driving the cost of that product up so high that we can barely afford it when we do need it.  Most of all, thanks for contributing so much to the welfare of our society, providing jobs for our policemen and merchandise stockpeople.  Keep up the good work.

Defining Moments in Time

I took an inordinate amount of time today at work to think about and reflect on the significance of this day. I suppose that’s rather cheesy, but why should it be? It burdens me that only five years later, with the devastation still so fresh in our minds, people have regressed to the mirthless cynicism with which we viewed our world, lives, and country before the attacks on the World Trade Center. Yet, true, I have been party to that cynicism myself.

I was a patriot long before September 11, 2001. A very dear friend of mine had taught me the importance of understanding and appreciating our country and how lucky we are to be a part of it. She taught me to love the flag and everything it stood for. She taught me what it meant to be a good citizen. So when I arrived at work on this day five years ago, she and I grieved together.

I thought about her today, though I haven’t spoken to her in several months. I spent some time reading about my company’s response to the attacks, even though I was not an associate at that time. I was impressed by their reaction and compassion, and moved to tears by the stories of members of our executive committee who were in New York that day, only a few blocks from the WTC. I have always had a very strong sense of empathy, and just to imagine what they and others had gone through that day burdened my heart with an immutable heaviness.

How does a country grieve? As a whole, does it engage the same five steps as the individual? Strange it is to think that 9/11 won’t have the same significance to the children of my generation that it does to us. They will experience it as we experienced Pearl Harbor; through textbooks, through interviews on TV and stories from their parents. And over time the stories will fade and become distorted and lost in memory. By the time our children’s children have children, the last survivors will be close to death. And with them will die the magnitude of that day. Legends last only as long as the last person who remembers them.

Having a photographic memory is a double-edged sword. Sometimes I wish I remembered sounds more than pictures. But I remember this:

Standing, toweling off my hair after my shower, in my parent’s living room, eyes fixed on the television. Watching the dual smoke plumes rise and fly away from the scarred, invincible towers. Thinking it was horrible, a tragedy, but seemingly. . . manageable. It would be okay. It always was. Loss of life would be large, but tragic, not statistic. My ears vaguely registered my mother shuffling into the kitchen for coffee, murmuring about how horrible it was. I looked at her, in her pink fleece robe, and smiled. On the inside, not the outside. She and I had no kind of relationship at that time and what we did have was laden with acrimony. Still, I knew she had the same heart I did, and I knew she felt this as I was. I looked back just in time to see the first tower begin to crumble to the ground so far below. My jaw dropped. It was then that I, and I think the country, realized the enormity of the situation. Numbers began to run through my head. How many? Thousands. It had to be. Thousands of people had to be in that tower. I heard my father walking into the kitchen where my mother still stood at the window, unable to watch the tragedy unfold any longer.

“The tower fell,” he said simply, and put his hand on her back.
“What?!” my mother shrieked incredulously. “But everyone got out, right? They all got out!”
“No, honey, they didn’t.”

I stood in the living room and watched my mother burst into tears and my father take her into his arms and rub her back. I stood there wanting to burst into tears, too, to go to them and hold them and be held. I wanted to feel safe, and the only place I’d ever felt that was in my father’s arms. I wanted to. But I didn’t. I set my jaw, squared my shoulders, and finished getting ready for class.

Why did I go to class that day? Why did I go to work? Why didn’t I run to my parents and tell them that I loved them? I was heartless then. I got into my car and drove to school, listening to the news on the radio. Howard Stern had the best coverage that day. As I was passing through Borden, he announced that the second tower fell. Up until then, I had expected that the first was a simple fluke; surely both of them couldn’t fall. My hand flew to my mouth as tears blinded me. I cried. I wailed. I sobbed.

And I felt like I was the only person in the country that day crying alone.

I wish I could say that after 9/11 I softened up, had a better relationship with my parents, took less for granted. But I didn’t. It would be a full four years after that until I had a relationship with them. But I think that day was a turning point. For me and for many thousands others.

I don’t remember what I felt for the rest of that day. A numbness, I suppose. But I remember how nice it was to feel *really* united with the rest of the country. For all our citizens to rally around the flag. To put the United back in United States. I thought that’s what it must have felt like before the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War. United.

Now five years later, my only wish is to have that back.