Taking it personally

Wow, there seems to be a fair amount of vitriol out there for the characters from Sex and the City, as well as the women who play them. Apparently, they’re too shallow, they’re too obsessed with sex, they’re too old to be sexy, and they spend a lot of money on accessories.

Who do they think they are? James Bond?

Come to think of it, I’ve never heard any of those criticisms leveled at him. Hm.

When the show first started on HBO, the reviewers and self-appointed social commentators criticized the show because they said that the female characters were really gay male characters. Why? Because they talked about, and enjoyed, sex a little too much? I remember thinking at the time that whoever says that women don’t talk or act like those characters, does not know many women.

Look, I and my girlfriends cannot be the only women on earth who openly discuss the merits of ass fucking. I just don’t believe that we are. We can’t be the only ones who compare bikini wax horror stories. We can’t be the only ones who covet each other’s shoes, or sit around the pool and read trashy magazines and gossip.

Was the show completely unrealistic in its depictions of the standard of living available to women in NYC? OF COURSE IT WAS. IT WAS A COMEDY ON TELEVISION. Television comedies are not realistic. Rednecks are not really that adept at irony. Ugly fat girls with no style don’t really work for fashion magazines. Network executives are not fascinating characters. And nobody really likes Charlie Sheen.

What’s worse about the release of the film, is that now that the SATC characters are in their (ew!) forties, a whole lotta people are apparently grossed out that the women are still not only having sex, but talking about it, for crying out loud. It’s been made plain by the reactions of more than a few reviewers that they find it fucking unseemly or something.

Also, apparently, they’re cougars. Yes, they’re all in their forties and lusty. Therefore, cougars.

To which I say, if they are, then so am I.

Okay, I have a boyfriend, but if I didn’t, I’d be out there on the scene too, people. And without the benefit of a hair and makeup stylist and an award-winning costume designer. I’d be a 47-year-old woman living in the big city, looking for love in a cut-rate wardrobe. So what would that make me, then? Sub-cougar? If my life were to be written about by someone at the New York Press, would I be similarly pathetic and shallow for pursuing sex and talking a lot about men? Would my life be dismissed as too closely resembling a gay man’s to be authentically female? Would someone put me on the cover of a magazine with tape over my mouth and tell me to shut the fuck up, already?

Or, in the manner of Carrie Bradshaw, when is the world going to lose their fear of middle-aged pussy?

Because the whole cougar thing? Really fucking tiresome, guys. My sexuality is ridiculous to you. I get it, already.

Here's an idea. Fuck off. Let me have my fun little movie, and you can go and see whatever poignant expression of the art of filmmaking that Judd Apatow is up to these days, okay?

NoHo to BoCo

Sorry for the lack of posts, readers, but I have been holed up in my little crackerbox in the Valley, recovering from the altitude and clean air in Boulder, CO, birthplace of evangelical loonies, tea revolutionaries, and the ugliest footwear known to man.

Above you see of course my sister, and her beau, SV. Having just recently finished the remodel of their beautiful home, even more beautifully situated against the Flatirons, they have a right to look kinda blissed out.

In fact, a lot of people in Boulder look kinda blissed out. I have a theory that it might have something to do with tie-dye poisoning. People use the word "bliss" a lot as well, as in "follow your bliss." Living in LA, you don't see a lot of bliss. I mean, outside of the porn industry.

Here's something else you don't see in LA:



Frankly, I'm shocked that the city of Boulder just allows kayaks to be locked against street signs like this. I mean, where are the kayak racks? When, oh when are they going to fund a committee to study the feasibility of kayak racks on every street corner already? It's a quality of life issue, people.


Hm, on second thought, I might enjoy living in Boulder. Here, at a local street fair, we see atheists right out in the open, and they're not being stoned or pelted with garbage or anything.


We had breakfast at a great cafe where the kitchen was 100% wind-powered. Apparently there's little point in doing things like that in Boulder unless you tell everyone about it.

Yeah, well, my local Mexican restaurant produces its own wind, so there.




I insisted that my sister take me back to a little place where they serve really awesome cucumber vodka martinis. The atmosphere there, like so many places in Boulder, is definitely relaxed and groovy.


But lest you think that Boulder is entirely tool-free, I include the above picture of some guy in the bar employing the heinous collar-up double Polo. Notice the pained expression on the woman's face. Hey, at least she managed to find a date sans white-boy dreadlocks. That isn't easy in Boulder.



Later, we did a bit of hiking. My sister is pointing to, off in the distance, the one 14er in her home range that she has not yet climbed: Mount Evans. Unfortunately, because the mountain is currently snow-capped, you can't really see it too well in this pic. Too bad, because it would have been a really cool picture otherwise.


Um, yeah. It's beautiful. This view is like, ten minutes from sis & SV's house. That sure doesn't suck.

Shhh! I managed to capture the elusive Rocky Mountain mullet on film.

And then, there was the rafting.

First of all, I think the air temp that day was in the 40s up in the mountains. And there was also the added bonus of freezing rain, so if you didn't bring your own neoprene wet suit (I did not), they issued you one. I don't normally do things that call for neoprene, so it was my first experience squeezing into a giant rented Spanx that smelled like assfeet.

Photographic evidence of my adventure is included below. That's me seated in front of the guide, grimacing. The cold and the rowing was troubling my carpal tunnel something fierce, people, hence the facial expresh. Spooney's doing his water spray-induced pirate squint right in front of me. The two fools on the other side of the boat who look like they're actually enjoying themselves are of course sis and SV.

Look at them. It's like they totally don't view nature as some vicious, temperamental she-beast who, if she must be approached at all, then is best approached with extreme caution and an AK-47. What's up with that?

The creek, she was angry that day, my friends. Many went into the water, but few came out again.

Just kidding. We all came out again. In fact, our raft was the only one in the expedition that didn't expel a one of us. Big whew! I was NOT ready to go in that water, people.

Afterwards, I washed off the rented neoprene stank and got all toasty dry and into some comfy oversized sweats (yes! and I wore them in public, too!) and we drank to our achievement at some prospector-themed pub in nearby Idaho Springs.

Ale and garlic fries never tasted so good before in my entire life. They tasted like...victory.

And home again

So, Spooney and I are off this weekend to the Goretex Vortex.

Yes, we are visiting GKL and SV in the land of Boulder, where fleece is considered appropriate attire for fine dining, as long as it's pretty clean.

My forays into the land of comfortable footwear are always made exciting by the fact that sis inevitably arranges for me to climb a mountain or trek through puma country or some other such outdoorsy nonsense. During the latter adventure, I learned what granola bars taste like! Unfortunately, they do not taste good. I wonder why so many people buy them? Although their "flavor," reminiscent of cardboard rolled in rabbit pellets, may explain why there are like fifteen billion kinds of granola bars in Trader Joe's. I think they're just trying every variation they can think of, hoping one of them will accidentally approach "palatable."

Anyhoo, this time, we are white-water rafting, which I am excited about. I am. Much in the same way I am excited about surviving the 101/405 interchange on the Friday before a 3-day weekend, but still. As long as I do not become the subject of some Jon Krakauer article for Outside magazine entitled "What Was She Thinking?" I'll consider the weekend a success.

Spooney is, I believe, "stoked" about the rafting thing. He has been rafting many more times than I have. I have been once. I was 25. I went in the water. I do not want to go in the water again. That will be my goal.

Meanwhile, I have posted the above picture of my kitchen window as ju-ju to bring both Spooney and me home safely. Let's all have fun this weekend, and let's all get home safely, okay?

See you next week.

Wanted: protein-starved snitches

The FBI is looking for young people who can act as moles to infiltrate “vegan potluck” terrorist groups that might disrupt the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis this fall.

They won’t say how much the position pays, but it only pays if their work results in an arrest, which I’m sure won’t give rise to any cases wherein the mole is the actual instigator of violence, because that’s never happened in the past.

Ah, who am I kidding? What’s the worst they could do?

The Worst They Could Do: a list of Vegan Potluck Terrorist ideas to disrupt the 2008 Republican National Convention

• Replace creamer in RNC break room with SoyMoo.
• Use shoeshine ruse to switch conventioneers’ leather dress shoes with Teva sandals.
• Engage PETA operatives to find and liberate elephant mascot.
• Hijack sidewalk hot dog carts, serve Smart Dogs on whole-grain spelt buns instead.
• Douse the dead animal pelt on Chuck Norris’s head with red paint.
• Free carton of Ener-G Egg Replacer in every gift bag!
• Deploy specially-designed hacky sacks that release soothing lavender scent that suppresses urge to disenfranchise minority voters.
• Threaten to tell Midwestern delegates what’s really in Jell-O.
• Override big screen programming with commercial for “Tofu: the other white stuff.”
• Insist that convention performers The Four Tops alter song lyrics to “Sugar Pie, Cruelty-Free Honey Substitute Bunch.”

Readers, feel free to add any ideas that you may have come across during your various forays into vegan strongholds such as the Whole Foods soy sausage section, or the organic carrot queue at your local farmer’s market, in the comments section of this post.

Hey, hey, you, you, I don't like your aesthetic!

So Sunday night I’m sitting in Molly Malone’s, waiting for the band to start*, and because Spooney and Randy are ignoring me and talking about gear, I’m in a curmudgeonly mood. I knew I was being childish even as my funk descended, but seriously, how much more is there to say about a Marshall stack that hasn’t been said already?

Also, there are certain bars in LA that I loathe, and Molly Malone’s is one of them. I hate it almost as much as I loathe the Troubadour, which, despite its history as one of the most venerable rock and roll clubs in the world, has the most jackassy bouncers this side of the 405. Molly Malone’s, however, I hate because their bartenders have attitude. Not the more common LA bartender attitude, which seems to be based on a feeling that after spending 10 grand on a boob job, they really shouldn’t have to know how to make a gimlet. No, the attitude of the bartenders at Molly Malone’s is all about the entitlement of being a smelly Irish hole-in-the-wall in a town where most of the taverns boast oxygen pipes and ironic jukeboxes.

And, so, there’s this chick sitting next to me who’s taking pictures of the band, and although she’s clearly in her thirties, she’s dressed like a cross between Avril Lavigne and Ashley Simpson. And as I stare at her skull-and-crossbones-patterned tank top, I think to myself that maybe some design motifs should just be outlawed.

Stay with me.

Because if they were outlawed, then chicks like annoying camera girl would not be able to leave her house, and the world would be spared yet another avenue of sartorial boringness. I figure we could crush camera girl and her pop-punk-post-goth-rockabilly ilk merely by making illegal the following patterns:

1. skulls, bones, and skeletons
2. crosses and/or ankhs
3. spiders
4. snakes
5. hearts with daggers, broken hearts, bleeding hearts, etc.

Also, just as Los Angeles has driven out its smokers, I propose that a ban on shoes that look as though they might have been worn to flee from pitchfork- and torch-carrying Bavarian peasants might make everyone feel a little healthier and happier.

We could make the penalty for wearing any of the above something really repulsive to them, like being forced to sit through an Emerson Lake & Palmer reunion concert.

Prog rock is their nemesis, right?

Look, I know I’m hating. I just find the whole milieu so fucking hypocritical. How can you scream about how fucking punk you are when you’re wearing the same $90 Paul Frank hoodie as everyone else? It’s like hip-hop clothing. The rules of adornment are so rigidly enforced, it’s ridiculous. I mean, I understand that clothes are an expression of where you feel you belong, but goddamn, what if giant-sized manpris are just not your thing?

What if you feel like you do NOT belong in a circus?

What’s the alternative? Ostracism?

It has been my experience that ostracism is severely underrated.

*They were, in spite of my bitching about the wait, really good.

So I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you

The Republicans want Clinton to be the nominee.

They want it bad.

They’ve even sent Karl Rove, Fox News commentator and advisor to the McCain campaign, out on tv to talk about his jacked-up maps of the U.S. that supposedly show that Clinton would beat McCain, but Obama would not. Check them out, they’re sort of unintentionally hilarious:

So, for one thing, against Obama, McCain would win Wisconsin, but Nebraska’s too close to call??? Is he seriously saying that Obama has a better chance of winning Nebraska in the general, than Wisconsin?

Have they ever BEEN to Nebraska? There really aren’t any black people there. And they kinda like it that way. Wisconsin, on the other hand, has gone Dem in the last 5 presidential elections.

Also, this map shows Clinton beating McCain in Arkansas. Look, Rove, we all know that Arkansas’s education system is pretty bad. In fact, it’s almost as bad as Arizona’s, but nobody in Arkansas is dumb enough to think that Hillary Clinton is from Arkansas.

But the larger point here is, why do the Republicans want Clinton to win?

Is it because she can’t do this?

That’s 75 THOUSAND people, people. At a political rally. For Obama.

And it scares the shit out of them.

And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth and the hens lay soft boiled eggs

I saw my first McCain bumper sticker today. It said “McCain 08: Appeasement is Not the Answer,” and it made me so angry that I very nearly rear-ended the cranky old white dude (what else?) behind the wheel. It wasn’t just that the driver was a McCain supporter, it was that of all the moronic ideas that the Republicans have ever sold to cranky old white dudes everywhere, that whole “appeasement” thing is just about the stupidest. No wonder the likes of Limbaugh and Hannity are constantly harping on it.

Man, if any of you readers out there remember when the Vietnam War was on tv every night, then you know that it’s the same shit warmed over. Getting out is an act of cowardice, blah, blah, blah. McCain in particular seems to have a problem with the resolution of the Vietnam War, I think because he resents spending all those years in the POW camp from hell just to watch us skedaddle out of country so fast that the door most definitely did not hit us on the ass on the way out.

In other words, McCain has issues.

You know what would be interesting? To have someone in the audience at one of his events call him a coward. Just to see the boiling mad, vein-popping, fist-clenching, lobster-faced meltdown that would result.

So, well, little Johnny made a speech today in which he offers us some modest predictions for the end of his first term as President of the United States:

By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom.

See? He’s getting off on the wrong foot right away. What in the sam hell does Iraq have to do with our freedom? Now, if he wanted to make a “we broke it, we bought it” argument about Iraq, I’d listen to him. I wouldn’t agree, but I’d listen. But if he wants me to consider the premise that meddling in the affairs of Muslim countries makes us, in spite of the vows of every Muslim extremist on earth, more safe, he’d have to do more than just say it. He’d have to EXPLAIN EXACTLY HOW THAT WORKS. And I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that he can’t.

The Iraq War has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced.

Hey, Mr. Maverick, why so modest? As long as you’re dreaming, dream big!

Civil war has been prevented; militias disbanded; the Iraqi Security Force is professional and competent; al Qaeda in Iraq has been defeated; and the Government of Iraq is capable of imposing its authority in every province of Iraq and defending the integrity of its borders.

There ya go. That’s more like it. But he forgot to say that the Sunni and the Shia are, like, totally BFF now. Oh, wait. I forgot that he’s not really sure who those people are. On second thought, best not to mention it at all. I mean, unless Lieberman were there, in which case he would let McCain crib from his notes.

The United States maintains a military presence there, but a much smaller one, and it does not play a direct combat role.

Wait a sec. That one must be a mistake. Because if our current president is to be believed, this has already happened.

The threat from a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan has been greatly reduced but not eliminated. U.S. and NATO forces remain there to help finish the job, and continue operations against the remnants of al Qaeda. The Government of Pakistan has cooperated with the U.S. in successfully adapting the counterinsurgency tactics that worked so well in Iraq and Afghanistan to its lawless tribal areas where al Qaeda fighters are based.

This is my favorite one. As if…hold on…I have to stop laughing for a minute so I can type…AS IF ALL that’s holding back the Government of Pakistan from getting rid of al Qaeda is knowledge of the awesome tactics we employed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Oh my god, I can’t help it readers, that just cracks me the fuck up.

The increase in actionable intelligence that the counterinsurgency produced led to the capture or death of Osama bin Laden, and his chief lieutenants.

Yeah, because it’s worked so well so far.

There is no longer any place in the world al Qaeda can consider a safe haven. Increased cooperation between the United States and its allies in the concerted use of military, diplomatic, and economic power and reforms in the intelligence capabilities of the United States has disrupted terrorist networks and exposed plots around the world.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think we already have cooperation with our allies, right? I mean, isn’t that why they’re allies? What we really need is some cooperation from our enemies. Because…they’re the ones that are screwing us…I’m pretty sure.

Oh, but see, there’s that nasty appeasement bugaboo again. Never mind. Let’s just keep asking our allies for more and more cooperation. I’m sure that will work eventually.

There still has not been a major terrorist attack in the United States since September 11, 2001.

Remember readers, he PROMISED!

You may feel some discomfort

So, I’m calling my gynie’s office because I’m overdue for an annual on my cooch, and as I finished my business and was about to hang up, the receptionist says “Please be aware that the doctor no longer prescribes birth control pills.”

The phone was halfway to the cradle. I pull it back. “What?”

“The doctor no longer prescribes birth control pills.”

“Okaaaay,” I say. I am not concerned because I need a prescription; I no longer take birth control pills, partly because I am too old but also because they may (or may not, depending on which we-don’t-really-give-a-shit-about-women’s-icky-health-problems half-assed theory you subscribe to) exacerbate the symptoms of my uterine fibroid tumors.

I know. Ew. Tumors. I guess I should have given you guys some warning that I was about to drop the misshapen lady parts bomb. So sorry.

“So, we’ll see you 3 weeks from Tuesday,” the nurse says, trying to end the call.

“Wait a minute. What kind of birth control method does she recommend, then?”

“The doctor counsels her patients on the rhythm method.”

I had to quickly check my watch to see what year it was. Had the retrograde policies of the Bush administration caused time to literally run backward, I wondered?

“I see,” I said. It occurred to me that my Latina doctor was a likely Catholic. “And this decision…is it…well, is it based on the doctor’s own personal morality?”

“Yes.”

I was expecting her to sound defensive, but it was actually more like weariness.

“I understand,” I said, and hung up. But readers, I did not understand.

I do not understand.

To tell the truth, my disillusionment with this doctor had begun several years ago. I'd had a myomectomy to remove aforementioned fibroids ten years previously, and they had returned again. Upon learning this, my doctor advised me to get rid of my uterus. Wait, I protested, I’m not ready to give up on the old gal just yet. She’s got a few more years on her.

“You’re what? 42? You don’t really need it anymore,” she said.

Gulp.

“I need it,” I offered, weakly. “I might need it.”

She just looked at me.

“Wait, isn’t there a good chance that my sex drive will disappear if you just yank it?”

“It’s possible, yes.”

“I NEED my sex drive.”

She shrugged and made some marks on my chart that no doubt were doctor speak for “delusional old slut,” and left.

The encounter stung. It was bad enough that she considered me past my prime and no longer in need of a good shag, but to deliver the news while I was sitting on that table in that goddamn fucking unflattering neurosis-enabling paper gown, well, let’s just say that that doctor ain’t no kind of sister.

After that, I only saw the nurse practitioner. And the great part is that the nurse was definitely a sister. At every check-up, she would ask me about my fibroids, and I would tell her about my research, and the changes I had made to my diet and how well it was controlling my symptoms, and she would confide a tip from another patient who was also doing what I was doing, and for a while that was fine with me. It felt subversive to be sneaking around the doctor’s back, just me and my uterus hanging around, thumbing our noses at her so-called medical expertise.

But now this. The rhythm method, for fuck’s sake.

I called the office back and cancelled the appointment. Because I remembered, what’s the principal precept of the medical arts?

First, do no harm.

Unless you’re a Catholic, of course, in which case feel free to do all the harm you want while upholding your own personal medieval beliefs about sex not being for pleasure but only to create other Catholics. Feel free to enforce a method that all but guarantees a woman will have more children, no matter what her own personal will may be, or to what extent her own health may necessitate the opposite. And while you’re at it, why not just tell her to put the lime in the coconut, and call you in the morning.

What a piece of shit excuse for a doctor, man. I mean, really. They ought to pull that bitch’s license, or transfer it to some country where women are lucky to even escape puberty with their clitoris still attached.

Yeah, she’d be a radical feminist in the Sudan.

Then, on top of all this, I heard today that the Vatican has suggested that there might be life on other planets. Life made by the one true Catholic God, you understand, but still.

Say what? Aliens from outer space? That’s funny, because I don’t remember that being mentioned in the Bible. Did I skip that part, the part about “Blessed are those from another world, for their proclivity for anal probes shall convey the homosexual fears of delusional rednecks throughout the rural Southern United States”?

So, the Pope is willing to admit that the Bible might have omitted the mention of an entire universe filled with other non-human beings, but women…still not allowed to fuck for fun, eh? Still better to get AIDS than to use a condom, huh? Gals still not worthy to serve in the priesthood, right? And god still hates fags, of course.

Well, fuck that nonsense, and pass the yellow pages. I needs to find me another cooch doc.

Eat of this lemon raspberry cake with buttercream frosting, for it be my body. Drink of this Mumm's champagne, for it be my blood.

You know, I’m kinda feeling for Jenna Bush. She tries so hard, y’all! First of all, she overcame her party girl image and let the world know that she does, you know, think about poor people and stuff.

Then, she chose a nice Republican boy to marry. One that, since he started out as an intern to Karl Rove, should know how to keep it mum about her daddy’s secret drinking.

And what does she get in return? A cheap-ass Texas wedding on her family’s pretend ranch.

Not only that, but her daddy builds his own permanent, giant monument to his love for Jesus, and makes her get married right in front of it.

Yeah, how would you like to spend your entire wedding ceremony being reminded that Jesus died for your registry?

He died for your Cuisinart, and he died for your Lalique crystal, and he most especially died for your 800 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets, which are to die for.

And HBO still owes me one for Arliss

Ooooh, is the Miami Herald getting its panties in a bunch over the upcoming HBO movie about the 2000 Florida recount?

In a story called “Hollywood puts a spin on 2000 recount,” the MH says that those politicos who were actually involved in that clusterfuck to end all clusterfucks are “expecting as much Hollywood spin as political fact.”

Wow, the MH likes the word “spin.” Perhaps they really haven’t let go of the 90s.

They go on to quote Mac Stipanovich, a former advisor to Katherine “Clownface” Harris, as saying “They won't be able to resist overdoing it because of Katherine Harris and because the way it usually happens is not the way it usually looks in the movies.”

Nice quote, Mac. You know, usually you have to go to a lawn jockey clearance sale for such keen political and cultural insight.

But where’s the MH’s evidence that Hollywood is, in fact, spinning?

This is, I’m afraid, as much as they could muster:

A good example of the Hollywood-ization: Actress Laura Dern, playing Harris, appeared in pancake makeup and what appeared to be an over-stuffed bra while riding a horse, in a replay of Harris' famed rodeo appearance when she ran for Congress -- two years after the recount.

Oh, dear. Miami Herald, this is, as my mom used to say, going to hurt me as much as it does you.

First of all, here is a photo of Laura Dern playing Katherine Harris:

And here’s the real deal:

Now, exactly how is Dern’s bra overstuffed? How exactly is her makeup too heavy? If anything, Harris should be overjoyed that she's being played by someone, um, attractive. Don't get me wrong, Harris has got a body like the proverbial brick shithouse, but she's one of those gals that my college roommates used to joke was a better fuck with a bag over her head.

C'mon. I am not being that mean. Take another look:

I have two words: blue eyeshadow. Blue motherfucking eyeshadow, readers. Do not even try to defend the heinousness of lid-to-brow pastel blue eyeshadow. Do. Not.

But more importantly, since the MH means to call out HBO on a historical point, the banner on Dern’s horse clearly indicates that the scene is taking place not during the recount, but during Harris’s subsequent congressional campaign/term.

I don’t know about you, but I think the Miami Herald owes HBO an apology.

Hey, is that Viki Buchanan Crip Walking down the 405?

Hold on to your seven signs of the apocalypse, folks.

We got us a Snoop Dogg cameo on One Life to Live:





And yes, he did re-record the theme as well.

Lazy-ass no-account porch monkeys for Obama

Hillary Clinton in an interview with USA Today (emphasis mine):

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on.”…As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

Oh, Hillary. I’m just not sure what you’re about anymore, except maybe making everyone kind of hate you. You made a big deal of your squeaker in Indiana, but you don’t really think you can justify staying in the race by winning a state that has voted for a Democrat exactly ONCE (Johnson over Goldwater in ’64) since 1936, do you?

Look, even in 1996, when every other non-retard-ruled state said hell to the no to Dole, Indiana stood out like an idiotic Republican dot surrounded by a sea of sensible Democratude.

Don't have a heart attack. This map is pre-2000 political affiliation color assignment.

Just look at that shit. People ask what’s the matter with Kansas, but I say what the fuck is in the fucking corn in Indiana, dude, that they so stubbornly refused to face the facts that their Midwestern neighbors already knew: the 90s are going well. Don’t fuck it up.

Now, Hillary has become the last guest at the party. The one that won’t take a hint, even when we put on our pajamas and start turning out the lights. But not only is she rummaging through our CD collection and wondering aloud why there’s no more beer left, she’s doing it while also making boorish, racially-charged comments designed to make one host wonder whether the other might get out of bed and shiv him in the middle of night.

I understand that if there is even the slightest chance remaining in Hillary’s mind that she and Bill might be able to pull a delegate coup, she will stay in the race. To her, it is worth it. What she has not considered, I think, is that to the majority of us, it is not worth it. In fact, it hurts. It hurts a lot. And if she were truly the woman she says she is, she would start thinking about that.

Bells On Recommends

EVEREST

Saw these guys do a show at Amoeba Records last night in Hollywood. So, so, so fucking good. Okay, I happen to know them as well, but I'm not kidding, they are going to be huge.

Their first CD, Ghost Notes, is just out on Vapor Records, and it's only $10.99 on Amazon. You know what you could do? Stick it in your shopping cart, and then the next time you need, like, 10 bucks more on your order so that you can get the free shipping - there you are!

Digging the future

Oh, lord, people.

I think Bush is like officially now the least popular president EVAH, and yet I can barely muster up an “I told you so, you fucking stupid wankers.”

Sometimes I find myself wondering why I don’t get more upset over horrible news like, oh…the millions of girls that will never be born in India. So, couples are using ultrasound to find out the sex of their baby, and then aborting the girls. Fine. Because you know why? Eventually, girls will become just rare enough that they will finally be valuable. Maybe even to the point where families will no longer have to pay grooms huge dowries to take the poor useless females off their hands. Ugh. I’m sorry, dear memory of my favorite Beatle, but Indian culture sucks ass. It seems like if they’re not immolating brides, they’re pushing untouchables into fires. Plus, they really overreacted to the whole Richard Gere thing.

And thankfully, LA made it through our annual May Day rallies without our municipal marine corps, AKA the LAPD, getting all medieval on the participants. Yeah, cops are found of saying that when you throw perps up against the wall and go through their pockets, you don’t find a lot of MENSA cards, but let me tell you, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that you shouldn’t wail on reporters right in front of their camera crews.

My city has quite the vested interest, as you might imagine, in the whole immigration issue. And I guess, after much turmoil, I have come to the conclusion that the only way it will ever get fixed is to first get it really really good and broken.

I am therefore all in favor of enforcing current immigration policy. We’ll never enact any meaningful change to the existing laws until we first see exactly how ridiculous they are. Because tolerance of illegal workers allows businesses to avoid the paying the kind of wages that U.S. citizens quite rightfully demand. And illegal workers cannot complain about hazardous or unhealthy conditions, either, and the consequences of that is the creation of a corrupt, dangerous, immoral third world-type sub-economy right in the middle of our own country. If you don’t believe me, visit the place where your meat comes from.

Go on, I dare you.

So what am I saying? I guess that it’s hard sometimes to believe in change happening in a healthy way, when it only seems to come about after we get ourselves into a serious “oh, shit” situation. Like where we finally are now with 43’s administration. Finally, 71% of us are deeply into “oh, shit” mode. What do alcoholics call it? Rock bottom. Or, as one ex-husband used to say, what’s the first thing you do when you’re trying to get yourself out of hole?

Stop digging.

Sure, it sounds simple enough, and yet, according to Gallup, McCain is currently running at 48%.

(Credit, or, I'm sorry, blame for prompting this post goes to my sweet Joshua, formerly of LA. Come back, ya wicked sorry-ass bastard. Hating on W ain't the same without ya.)