Jesus isn't amused...

Overheard:

Mother: Garrett, stop being silly.

Garrett: why?

Mother: It's rude and when we're rude, Jesus doesn't smile.

Your "WTF?!" Moment of the Day

"Stop The Free-Riders. Use some of the money currently spent on providing expensive "free care" for the uninsured at emergency rooms to instead help the truly needy buy private insurance."
--Mitt Romney.com


Could someone please explain this to me?? Because, I honestly don't have a clue who exactly are the "truly needy" if they're not the uninsured in emergency rooms.

Whaaa???

It's like they want me to leave:

Today the New York Times reported that -
President Bush said today that a new intelligence finding that Iran halted its nuclear weapons work in 2003 had not altered his sense that Iran remained a danger.

Ok- so basically, they have no weapons. They haven't been actually been trying to obtain or develop weapons for 4 years. And they're still a threat?? How, exactly is that??

“I have said Iran is dangerous,” Bush said a day after the release of the National Intelligence Estimate, representing the consensus of all 16 American spy agencies, “and the N.I.E. doesn’t do anything to change my opinion about the danger Iran poses to the world — quite the contrary.”

Because now we have no reason to bomb them?? How are they even more dangerous now that we know they don't have a nuclear program?? What are they going to do, drop some delicious Khoresht Fesenjaan on us and put Mickey D's out of business??

My God, this administration needs to pull its head out of its proverbial posterior before they kill anyone else.

Losing Faith

I often wonder about humanity-- especially how it is that we've managed to make it this long. I like to believe that people are mostly good, but often, I have my doubts. In the last week I've encountered multiple reasons to lose faith-

• I finally got to see Sicko-- It's absolutely heartbreaking and infuriating that people in the "greatest" nation in the world have to choose which finger to reattach or have to watch their husband die, not because there isn't a cure, but because the insurance company won't pay for it. Sickening. Absolutely sickening that our $*@& politicians are so deep in the pockets of the medical insurance lobby that they can't revolutionize our system the way that EVERY OTHER INDUSTRIALIZED NATION ON THE GLOBE has revolutionalized theirs. But it wasn't only the whole insurance racket that made me sick--it was the supposedly "good" people. In one of the first stories, you meet a middle-class couple who have lost everything because of medical bills, and so they are forced to move in with their daughter and her family. Get this-- the daughter makes them sleep in their extra rec room--refuses even to move the desk and computer out. Says something about getting them bunk beds. WTF?!?! The mother's still suffering from her illness and her daughter (who she put through college) doesn't even have the decency to give her a proper guest room??
  
• We were discussing different types of discrimination in my writing class and, because we were talking about homophobia, the issue of the bible came up, which brought up the issue of how the bible wasn't literally written by God (like he has time for that) which made one of my students exclaim, "Why would he sit up there and let people write things that weren't exactly what he wanted?" To which I (stupidly) replied, "I dunno, why would he let genocide continue to happen in Rwanda?" to which another student quipped, "He has a plan." Whaa??!! really? Because if he does have a plan that includes the rape and murder of innocent women, children, and men, then I am certainly not at all interested.
• I was flipping through the channels on Sunday night. We don't have many of them, so I settled on CSpan. Maybe it was CSpan 2, who knows. But Ann Coulter was on. (who, in addition to being a spawn of satan also has an enormous Adam's apple) I usually can't watch her-- she makes me twitch and feel like I need a good shower. But there wasn't anything else as interesting. Now I know that Coulter, herself, is absolutely off her rocker. Anyone who can, with a straight face and absolutely no irony, casually promote the killing of countless people in middle eastern nations is not really sane-- or so I thought. Because when she advocated bombing Iran (it would be fun, she said, to bomb them into admitting that the Holocaust happened), people laughed and clapped. And when she further advocating bombing them to the point that they couldn't even build a transistor radio, people applauded even more. And these people looked normal-- they were young, they didn't seem to have cloven hoofs or horns-- but they thought it was a jaunty little joke, and more than just a little bit of a good idea, to wipe a country off the face of the earth just because they don't agree with us.

I swear, if anyone out there can tell me how to find a nice academic job in Britain, or some other country that will unconditionally treat my husband's Crohn's, I'm ready to pack up and go. Not that I think things are magically better other places, but it sure seems like the level of humanity in this particular country is growing fainter each and every day.

Everyone's a Critic

Today I let J take the first shower and I got Little Man dressed. I put on his little blue sweatpants and a brown shirt that says, "Define good" with little candy canes on it. I thought he looked just fine.

Enter J-
J-"Is that what you want him to wear?"
Me- Yeah, why?
J- "Where's his football shirt that matches the pants?"
Me- "I dunno, so I went with this one. I think it's just fine."
J- "Well obviously, it's not. I will go and find the correct shirt and rectify this fashion Faux Pas."*

J leaves and returns with blue and white "touchdown!" shirt, takes off the brown shirt and replaces it with the blue shirt.

Me- You've gotta be kidding me.


***ok, so he didn't really say this. But he did change his shirt

Hoochies Unite!

Tomorrow is Halloween. Little Man will be unveiled as Elvis, we will have our first real Halloween part, and women everywhere will put on the bare minimum amount of clothing.

I don't really get it, to be honest. Sexy is one thing. Slutty is quite another.

Apparently, if you happen to be a female, Halloween provides ample opportunity to whore it up a bit. For instance-

You can be a witch-




Apparently, the only thing that you need to be a witch is a pointy hat.









Or, if the macabre isn't for you... sail the high seas as a pirate!

The sword is really what gives the costume that certain something, don'tyou think?




And how can you not want to take a walk down a yellow brick road when you're stepping out as Dorothy? She's not from Kansas any more boys and girls...


I'm not even sure I understand this one-- and
gangster bunny. Since when do bunnies even
run liquor?







And just in case Dorothy was too tame-- why not dress up as
the kind of nun all little catholic school boys fantasize about?







Maybe I'm just jealous that this raunchy little trend wasn't around when my body might have possibly made one of those costumes work. But, really, how many people out there can make those silly costumes work? From the looks of the fairly average college girls trying them on at the local Halloween shop, not very many. You just kind of want to pull them aside and say, "Sweetie, no matter how you work it, that little bitty thing you think is a nurse outfit doesn't make you look sexy, it makes your completely normal and fairly average body look just exactly that."

But what I really want to know is when did Halloween become just a holiday for the guys? Sure, there's something exhilarating about dressing like the slut you (secretly) wish you could be. Inhibitions, be damned! But for what?

A student of mine said today that Halloween is the day girls can dress up and not be judged. Then what's the point of hoochin' it up? Don't they want to be judged? Isn't that the point?

Anyway- we'll be having a nice, tame little Halloween party. No body shots with toddlers running around. But I think it's better that way. After all, what hoochie out there is taking home both the King and the Wolfman home with them when it's all over? And I'm not even breaking out the garter belt.

Really?!?? (my appologizes to SNL)

Is this really news?

There aren't more important things happening in the world--you know, like the problems in Burma, the genocide in Sudan, the fact that Hillary just voted to call Iran and terrorist state and thus open a possible door to declaring war on them.

When I turn to the NY Times each morning for my daily dose of important headlines, I don't really except to see an eloquent, elegiac account of the death of Flower.

Yes. I understand that Meerkats are adorable. Even Nazi Meerkats are adorable:


I even understand that the massive response to Flower's death might constitute some sort of cultural event that scholars twenty years from now will evoke as some sort of postmodern existential phenomenon.

I maybe heartless and unfeeling for saying this, but WTF? This is what the NY Times calls news?

Really.

What will they think of next??

This handy little product wins for my new favorite, least necessary invention.

The P-Mate now gives women the opportunity to filly evolve by allowing us to pee upright.

Yup. The final frontier of gender inequality has been obliterated by the fine folks at Go Your Way Industries.

Seriously folks. I couldn't make this up.