Saturday, October 18, 2008

The STFU awards

and the nominees are...

Tavis Smiley, who's participated in such homeboy discussions as "Is Obama Black enough?" The way you fawned all over Diahann Carroll last night made me throw up in my mouth a little.


Warren Buffett. So he's still investing in the stock market. Whoopdie doo! He's a freakin' bazillionaire. He could bail out an overextended mortgage company each month and still have enough investment interest to buy an atoll in the South Pacific. Or 30 acres of prime lunar landscape.

Condoleeeza. Trampin' all over the world trying to drum up some credibility, to get a good job review at the last minute. The only time I want to hear her deceptively melodious voice again is when she says "Goodbye." Silly bitch.

P Diddy, Jay-Z, Angelina Jolie or any other celebrity's political opinion. Just fundraise, damnit, and donate money to Jimmy Carter so he can make sure the voting machines work.

Suze Orman, Dr. Oz, and, by extension, Oprah. What do I care what the liver of a 70 year old alcoholic looks like when I don't have money for health care? Why do I give a toss what kind of retirement plan I should be investing in when most brands of bread are out of my budget?

The women of the View. Seeing Whoopi on a daily basis is nice, and Joy is pretty funny, but the rest of them, what a bunch of screech owls. Barbara Walters is so botoxed she can barely speak (though this seems to correct itself whenever she hawks her new autobiography), Sherri is dumb as a sack of hair, and Elizabeth is smug, ill-informed, and condescending (and therefore a perfect correspondent for the Fox News Channel).

Urine soaked wheelchair woman on the number 1 bus. You know who you are. Conning people into wheeling you into the liquor store when I've seen you walk many times. Stop it.

Lewis Fahrakan. Shhhhhhhhhh. Shush.

Fidel Castro. Stick a cigar in it.

My next door neighbor who has a voice like a high pitched machine tool, punctuated by cigarette induced coughing so violent I expect to see a lung in the garbage the next day.

Shut.
Your.
Piehole.

Friday, October 17, 2008

DUM-ness

A TIME magazine reader writes in response to an article on Sarah Palin asks if he can help it if she reminds him of a simpler, more gentile era?

Oh yeah, dumbass? You must be a white man (no offense to the white men who read this blog). A simpler time. Hmmmm. When bikini-clad women brandished rifles and shot moose from helicopters while their husbands attended secessionist meetings as their teenage children learn about sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies the hard way (from a redneck!) and all the neighbors know that anyone any browner than Oprah is a terrorist at most and a welfare cheat at the least. Yeee Haw! That more gentile era when being dumb as a pig's butt didn't keep you from being thought qualified for public office (well we have our Bushie to thank for that), that wonderful, bucolic time when you could have your homophobic attitudes confirmed by a bellicose preacher and 100 of your closest moose-huntin' buddies at the Church of the Tiny Mind.

Oy.

Here's another one, from a Huffington Post blog: an Ohio man says that he won't vote for Obama or any Black man because once a Black man becomes president, he and his chocolate chronies will create a "Whitey Revenge" bureau to get vengence for past wrongs and the minorities will rule the White folks. Bahahahahaaaaw! So fie on you, Walgreens security guard who followed me thinking I'd shoplifted something, and you gonna get yours, mother of my would be prom date who wouldn't let her son go with me at the last minute when she found out I was a denizen of a darker hue, and wait for that cap in your ass, small town suburban cops who stopped my mom in the town where we lived because someone with an afro had been accused of shoplifting at the local mall, and watch out David Duke, cuz Al Sharpton is your personal vengence agent, and whooooaaaa nelly, Bill O'Reilly, we're gonna sic Dennis Rodman on you!

Let's not stop there...let's have a "Left Handed Vengence Administration" and a "Kinky Hair Reparations Agency".


Ever heard of Martin Luther the King? And Ghandi? And learning from the past? I realized I'm doing something similar to what you are doing, judging you by one extremely stupid statement you made, but day-um, homey, are you really that ignay?

Someone help us. Pleeeeze.

Saturday, October 4, 2008

she she

we are an adventurous family.

we're going away together for two weeks to a mixed feelings place. A place of ancient and noble history and shocking uncivil rights. A place both eminently civilized and barbaric. I am thrilled and a little terrified, but it's mostly the fear of wearing an adult diaper at the great wall, or having to spit up while on public transport--the ignoble and oh so human in the face of the divine or at least breathtaking. Will there be Jo-butt sized toilets in the Emperors palace? Will I be able to get the large plastic cylinder that attaches to my inhaler through customs? And what about my foot spray? It's aerosol. I'll check it. It's essential--that funk could cause an international incident. Phew.

Remember the days when you'd throw on a backpack and stride, ultimately confident, through airports and unknown places and across foreign roads, washing your drawers in woolite when appropriate, not needing a lipstick or Extra-Strength Tylenol or zit cream or probiotics or yoga poses, or industrial strength moisturizer for alligator skin, or pills for your sugar and sugar for your blood, or orthodics, or a medic alert bracelet? And you'd willingly swim in strange new waters, talk to handsome and not so handsome strangers, listen animatedly to the woman next to you's story about how she was in the Outback and saw a dingo carry off one of her Doc Martens, explore trails knotty with brambles and lavender, stomp up to the top of the mountain ahead of the tour group to drink in the unblemished air and gaze over the landscape of castles or waterfalls or clear Azure water, to absorb the otherness through your oh so open pores and mind and spirit.

No them. Only us, as Bono says.

I'll look for the similarities, the humanity. I'll seek the connections. That's what we all do. That's why we go. To learn, to see, to see ourselves in other histories, other stories. It will be like going to the moon. It will be like going next door. And I'll wink at anyone I see who I suspect is also wearing an adult diaper.

I told the lady at the Chinese restaurant who makes me won ton broth when I'm sick. "Reeeeeeeaaaaaalllly?" She trilled. "You go? I wish I come with you."