No, seriously, please, someone call 911 and get the cops down here to save these kids.
Oh, wait, I guess the police are already there. I suppose that means this falls under the heading of freedom to raise your children to be pinheaded assholes. 99% of the time, I believe pretty strongly in that kind of freedom, because I'm sure there were a lot of people who felt the way my family raised me was a terrible mistake. People who thought I should have had the Devil beat out of me. So, when I think about that, I'm grateful that generally speaking, parents are free to raise their children however they see fit. Every once in a while, though, something tweaks me, makes me wonder how it can be legal for children to be the absolute property of their parents. How it can be okay for children to be held captive by their parents, denied exposure to the rest of the world? Isn't that one of the reasons we developed public school--to expose all kids to a basic level of culture and civilization. Because you know these poor little bastards are home schooled and otherwise protected from the rest of life.
I try to take solace in the fact that there are some lines drawn in that parental freedom. We do seem to hesitate when parents deny basic medical to their children and instead treat lethal ailments with prayer. The family in Wisconsin who tried to pray the diabetes out of their daughter has temporarily lost custody of their other children, at least.
The worst part seems to be how often stupidity masquerades as religious freedom. If your basic negligent parent doesn't take his/her very sick kid to the doctor, we call it negligence, if your basic religiously fruity parent doesn't take his/her very sick kid to the doctor, we call it a tragedy and a matter religious freedom. So, word to the wise, if you ever screw up and your kid dies from negligence, tell the cops you were busy praying.
As for saving some children, if you'd like to, consider sending a message to your senators in support of a bill that would deny US military aid to any country that uses child soldiers. Currently, our country continues to support the military infrastructure of countries where children as young as 7 are used as soldiers.
Thanks for the link, Jaypo. Two words that describe me perfectly today.
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Sometimes you get a rejection that makes you erase the play board and start over.
I drank too much coffee yesterday and was awake too late, thereby putting myself at risk of the dreaded unexpected late-night e-mail rejection. It was one of those rejections that's hard to set aside, because it was personalized and it came from a place I'm already familiar with: obvious writing talent and not a commercially viable project.
I know this about the book I've been querying. It's too big, too convoluted, a bit too smart to be straight genre, but I love the book. I want people to read the book, but I'm not without a certain amount of pragmatism. After eleven rejections, knowing what I know, I'm putting this one on indefinite hiatus. It's time to move on.
The next book I'm querying is distinctly more commercial, so at least I don't have that hurdle, but that whole issue is weighing on me pretty heavily as I try to decide what project to work on next. I always have about half a dozen things waiting in the wings, but as I work on a decision, I thought I'd ask my Voxy neighbors what kind of things you're interested in reading these days. What sorts of stories, issues, people are you interested in?
Okay, the renovations of the basement of Brain Tumor Hall have on occasion been annoying and amusing.
Annoying = listening to someone jackhammer directly under your feet for an hour.
Amusing = listening to someone jackhammer directly under your feet for half an hour while a Dean is talking to the faculty committee about how the renovations aren't going to disturb the department. The look on his face was priceless.
Today, though, is really pushing me. Right now, as I type, there is a massive cement truck parked below my office window and it is pumping concrete into the basement of BT Hall through a large hole that has been punched in the side of the building, directly below my office. (Oh and the lights are flickering every ten seconds or so.) This is no longer annoying or amusing. This is fucked up. They start work every day at 4:00 pm. Why? Because most classes are over by then? News flash, Provost Asshat: all the secretaries in BT Hall are required to work from 8-5. Why can't the construction work start at 5?
This shit keeps up and I'm going to start praying for Provost Asshat to get colon cancer.
I'm an overly cautious driver, or so I'm told. By "overly cautious," most people mean "overly law-abiding." I don't run stop signs or red lights. I always signal my intentions to turn or change lanes. I don't tailgate and I never ever speed. My dad was a driver's ed teacher for many years and he's the one who taught me to drive, so maybe the blame lies there. I learned to drive exactly as it was printed in the driver's ed textbook, and I still drive that way.
Boring, consistent, and safe, thank you very much.
Over the years I've preached against speeding and been ignored and mocked. It used to be that I preached against speeding because of the gamble inherent in it. Anytime you speed, you're betting that the cops won't catch you. You're betting $80, $120, $180 that you won't get caught, and you're bound to lose some time. (Or several times *cough*)
Some of the recipients of my lectures at least lowered their speeding threshold, choosing to go only 5 or 6 miles over the speed limit. Most of the time, the police won't even stop you if you're only going 5 miles over on the highway. The problem is, you're still speeding, and it's still bad.
To tackle that lingering urge to speed, a few years ago I added a new element to my diatribe against speeding: gas prices. As gas prices go up, it makes sense to slow down, because the faster you go, the more gas you burn per mile. People didn't believe me. My own husband didn't believe me until I showed him the numbers. Finally, CNN agrees with me--slow down and save gas. Save money and lower your contribution to greenhouse gas accumulation.
So, now that CNN says it's true, will you believe me?
I thought I'd feel better when people who supported the Iraq war began slowly to come to their senses and admit they'd been wrong. I don't. I don't feel even a little bit better, because when I read their excuses for why they were wrong it's just a litany of ignorance. That's the excuse at heart--a failure to understand the implications of war, deep-seated cultural divides, all things that could have been fixed with a little research.
So Andrew Sullivan can claim he committed "four cardinal sins," but he didn't. He committed one: willful ignorance. He believed what he wanted to believe, based on the data that he chose to consider. In his little confession on Slate.com, he writes, "What I failed to grasp is that war is also a monster." Come on, Andy! What? You haven't seen any of the hundreds of war films that have been made in the last 70 years? You missed Full Metal Jacket? Saving Private Ryan? The news footage coming out of every war zone in the last twenty years?
General William Tecumseh Sherman spelled it out at his speech to the cadets of the Michigan Military Academy over a hundred years ago: Cadets of the graduating class--boys--I’ve been where you are now and I know just how you feel. It’s entirely natural that there should beat in the breast of every one of you a hope and desire that some day you can use the skill you have acquired here. Suppress it! You don’t know the horrible aspects of war. I’ve been through two wars and I know. I’ve seen cities and homes in ashes. I’ve seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. I tell you, war is hell!
It's no secret. You don't have to go very far to find out how monstrous war is, but that didn't serve Andy's purpose. Doing research might have made him wobbly in his early support of the war. Knowledge might have undermined his faith in Bush's morality. That's the other thing Sullivan writes in his admission of wrong-doing: that he made a "fatal misjudgment of Bush's sense of morality. I had no idea he was so complacent—even glib—about the evil that good intentions can enable."
No, asshole. You made a fatal misjudgment of your own intelligence, because with access to all the information necessary to take up an anti-war position, you chose to place your faith in someone who had repeatedly shown a complete lack of real morality. You got it wrong because you were willing to take form over content. You were willing to believe someone who claimed he was a Christian with moral values, instead of looking to see what his actions proved. And how could anyone not know how glib Bush was? That's a man who mocked a fellow Christian on the eve of her execution. Can you get more glib?
So, officially, I'm no longer interested in hearing the confessions of guilt and complicity of those who wanted to invade Iraq. They don't do anything for me, because they all come from the same place: an awkward, self-effacing moment that does no one any good. Andy Sullivan may be struggling to forgive himself for following an amoral leader, but I doubt he's learned anything from the experience, because he hasn't figured out that willful ignorance was his real mistake.
Full text of Sullivan's column: How Did I Get Iraq Wrong? I seriously misjudged Bush's sense of morality
Show us a tattoo.
Let's see, I've already shown you my toe-too:
You've seen the sperm donor's tattoos:
Do you ever hear a song that reminds you so specifically of a time in your life that the hair on the back of your neck stands up? Happened to me last night, when through random chance this song came up on my playlist. I owned the vinyl new and at some point in the CD shift, I had the album burned to CD. I haven't listened to it in probably ten years. Listened to it five times last night, thinking about our five-year Fiasco in Iraq anniversary. Sure, when Faith No More released this song, we weren't in the first Gulf War yet, but in the spring of 1991, I was volunteering as a DJ on the college radio station and whenever we ran news about the Desert Storm invasion, I used to play this song. Said something to me about a whole gamut of problems. 17 years later it still does. Some of the cultural references are dated, but we've still got the same batch of crap going on: war in Iraq, chaos and death in Darfur, shuttle disasters, New Orleans, HIV, drugs and guns. (And wasn't Faith No More kick ass when Chuck Mosely was their singer?)
We care a lot
about disasters, fires, floods and killer bees
about the NASA shuttle falling in the sea
We care a lot
about starvation and the food that Live Aid bought
We care a lot
about disease, baby, Rock Hudson, rock
Yeah!
Well it's a dirty job but someone's got to do it
We care a lot
about the gamblers and the pushers and the geeks
We care a lot
about the smack and crack and whack that hits the streets
We care a lot
about the welfare of all you boys and girls
We care a lot
about you people 'cause we're out to save the world
Yeah!
Well it's a dirty job but someone's got to do it
We care a lot
about the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines
We care a lot
about the NY, SF, and LA PD
We care a lot
about you people
We care a lot
about your guns
We care a lot
about the wars we're fighting,
gee, that looks like fun
We care a lot
about the Garbage Pail Kids, they never lie
We care a lot
about Transformers 'cause there's more than meets the eye
We care a lot
about the little things, the bigger things we top
We care a lot
about you people, yeah, you bet we care a lot
Well it's a dirty job but someone's gotta do it
Well it's a dirty song but someone's gotta sing it
That's what watching Lost feels like sometimes, especially when I find myself rewatching an episode to make sure I understand what happened. With a month reprieve until the next episode, I decided to follow Cranky's lead, rewatch some episodes and take notes. That way I don't forget stuff before April 24 gets here. Like studying over summer vacation.
Here's my favorite bit from last week's episode. I'm posting it, because watching it the second time I laughed my ass off. The dynamics of the scene are perfect. From Michael's "D'oh" moment when he seems to realize for the first time that the "search and rescue mission" maybe isn't the main priority of his crew mates. (Really, Michael, it wasn't a give away when Miles said, "80% of all the people on this boat are lying about something"?) To Keamy's helpful remedial tough guy explanation: "What does it look like we're doing? We're shooting things."
Of course, I've got more time to do my "homework" now that Jericho, the only other TV show I was watching, has been canceled. It certainly adds more evidence to the theory that any show I like is doomed. Lost has only survived because I didn't like it that much when it first came on. (There was way too much ensemble cast stuff going on, and way too much Jack, who was quite the ass in the beginning. He's still an ass, but he's been taken down a few rungs.) I just watched it because Hubbicula watched it. If I had really liked it, it would already be canceled. Just like Firefly, Futurama, and Arrested Development. No wonder I don't watch much television. The lowest common denominator insures that 99% of all the shows on will be utterly loathsome but relatively popular.
I know that many of my Vox neighbors are fans of things like Dancing with the Stars and American Idol, but fuct if I get it. I don't get it. I've watched these shows and aside from the initial horror of the rejected American Idol contestants, I don't get the appeal of either. (And the initial horror is a small dose thing--I can't even take a whole episode of that shit.) And when will we finally get our gullets full of medical and police shows? Enough with the CSI and the FBI and serial killers and emergency rooms. Christ on a crutch.
Is this a class issue? Do richer people get to watch a lot better shows on cable, while poor people have to watch crap? Or is the stuff on cable just a higher quality of crap?
Okay, I'll quit whining about a form of entertainment I hardly partake of and go do some work. (Although which came first--my hatred of television or television's totally hate-able, craptastic-ness?)
As a non-Christian, I always view Good Friday as something of a challenge. Leaves me thinking, "Oh yeah? I'll show you a Good Friday."
Since I had today off, I decided to do it up right.
I slept in, as much as I'm able now that I'm heading toward 40. (That's not fair how you stop being able to sleep in as you get older. Not ruttin' fair.) I had an apple and two cups of coffee for breakfast. Delish.
I went to lunch with my very best friend, Spucko, at our favorite lunch spot, where I drank three cups of coffee.
I splurged on enough gas to drive to Kansas City, where I went to my favorite Kansas movie theater, the Glenwood Arts, which on a Friday afternoon was full of single middle-aged women and elderly couples. I saw a matinee of Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day and then because I was there and the gas was already burned, I followed it up with a showing of In Bruges. In between movies, I had a big, delicious, frothy latte and chatted with Troy, the adorable little assistant manager of the Glenwood Arts. We talked about movies in general and my Spoilt t-shirt in particular. (It illustrates the spoilers for about a dozen movies and it's still on sale--only $9, my people.)
Since In Bruges was the last showing of the night, I asked the assistant manager if he liked sushi and he said, "I don't know. Maybe." Now, I wear a wedding ring and Troy looked like he was a good 15 years younger than me, so there wasn't any misunderstanding. We went to my favorite sushi place in KC--sometimes life is so beautiful--which is just about a mile from the Glenwood Arts. Delicious delicious sushi. Don't think Troy enjoyed the fishing bait so much, but at least he had fun listening to me speed-rap about movies for an hour.
Because I don't drink six cups of coffee day. Hell, I don't usually drink one cup of coffee a day. I am still flying, like I snorted a couple lines of coke.
As for the movies--I recommend them both, maybe even one right after the other. Since Frances McDormand is my absolute favorite actress, I'd see her anything, but Miss Pettigrew was delightful and surprisingly substantial for what it appears to be in the trailer. In Bruges is an oddity. It's doing so many different things--comedy, tragedy, romance, action--and it's doing them really well in interesting ways. Also, a reminder of what an amazing actor Ralph Fiennes is. A lot of actors, even good ones, you can see how they work, how they get into a character. Colin Farrell, for instance, is in the movie and he's a decent actor, but you can see through what he's doing. Fiennes plays what could be a one-dimensional character, but inhabits it so completely that you can't even tell how he does it. Good stuff.
Okay, time to go find some downers. Or go wash and wax the truck at midnight.
