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.

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.

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."

form

What do you do when you're going to (voluntarily) visit your primary abuser?
The person who shaped the things you hate about yourself and the fact that you hate yourself (though of course you're supposed to be over this because you are an adult and you've had oodles of therapy). How do you prepare? Maybe you'll spend the plane ride sniffling back tears and repeating your mantra "it's not your fault." You might feel nothing, as you've prepared for this in therapy for weeks ahead...you're nothing if not a good student, a good study, and you've been through this countless times before. And experience should count for something, right? You should have grown layers and layers of tough overskin, an exoskeleton and force field, but you never did--some missing gene, perhaps--and you're secretly glad of this because at least you still have your feelings, roller coaster often, sad and depressed, certainly, but joy, and love and love of color and depth--song and rhythm--he couldn't take that away, could he and there is comfort in that. Maybe you think of the recent conversations where you've had the strength to stave off the harshest barbs, to parry them, to say "I'm not going to discuss that with you," or 'NO!" without having to shout or curse. Progress. Baby steps. The best progress is that you don't really, deep down, believe that he could ever change, even though age and pain and loneliness have softened his rhetoric somewhat.

But the real kicker is, now that he is old, alone and sick, perhaps preparing to die, he EXPECTS your compassion, is desperate for any little drop of attention though he would never ever admit it. Once in a blue moon, he's rueful. It'd be easier, of course, if he was just hard, hard, hard all the time, but he's a master abuser so he has a sense of when to pull back from the edge, at least with you. For some reason, maybe because you are female, maybe because he recognizes your efforts to connect, or maybe because he's terrified that you'll cut him off completely, but you are the one person he doesn't cut off altogether. Or maybe he enjoys seeing your pain because it's almost impossible for you to hide it for long, especially the pain of him having abused others you love and feel protective of. They don't really need your protection, because they don't engage with the abuser anymore and have grown the exoskeleton that you lack. You can see the scars in their hearts, but they are close to healing and that is a thrilling thought. And you suspect that you'll only fully heal when he's dead because then maybe he'll be at peace. And you hate and love that part of you that wishes him peace.

You've been educated, so you plan as little time with him as possible, and set up an agenda of what to discuss in your mind. It's important this time, because he is slowly failing, and you want to scrupulously follow his wishes as to his care, you want to let him know that you care, and can be trusted to do what he wants. You also want to see beneath the drama and lies he creates because he's been dying for 35 years though maybe it's getting closer to being the truth. Above all, you want to be the person you know you should be, no matter what he says or does or lies about. You don't want to ever hurt anyone or anything the way you've been hurt, you don't want to lie to the people you love or push them away, you don't want to abuse anyone, and you value the time and effort it has taken to teach yourself how to live a healthy life. You try not to think about the family you could have built or the career you could have had, or the impact you could have made in some way if you hadn't had to work so hard to get to normal. You try to turn the bitterness and anger into fuel for the creative fire and you let the tears fall when and where they may.


What you really really really really hate is that in some ways, still, you are his victim. You want to stab him in his soul for this, but he doesn't have one.

hope

some folks say this country is too racist to elect a black president
someone told me that the reason I support Obama is because he's black and so am I
someone opined that he doesn't have enough foreign policy experience, not enough governing experience period
the Clintons even had to get nasty about it, but that's no surprise
I realized today looking at the convention coverage
that the reason I support Obama
is the same reason I support Ted Kennedy
and the same reason I support Barney Frank
and the same reason I get up in the morning
it's hope

something brighter, something better
treating people with dignity and respect even if you disagree with them
and believing in the American dream
the real dream
where everybody gets ahead

We are products of this dream
our parents, or grandparents, or great great greats got here
and found a way out of no way
in a place where that is possible
not easy
but possible

Jesse Jackson, Jr. said that we can see Dr. King's mountaintop tonight.
We need vision to make things possible, to make change happen.

a marriage

so there was this dude that I dated for about three minutes back in the late '80's I think...doomed form the start because a.) he lived in a state other than Massachusetts b.) I was an emotional horror show c.) he wore moon boots, danced like Michael Jackson and had the laugh of a hunting hyena d.) I thought sex could solve everything e.) he thought meatloaf was a gourmet meal f.) I thought his meatloaf would serve better as a door stop, etc. So we kept in touch via Christmas cards and other things you do with people you feel vaguely uncomfortable about losing touch with or people who keep sending you fucking christmas cards so you feel compelled to respond. So acres of time go by and he tells me that he is getting married. Wonderful! I am so happy for you, say I, hoping she digs meatloaf. Tell me about your bride. Here, a poignant pause from him over the email. And then he asks if I'm upset that he's getting married. No, I say, what in the world would make him think that? And then silence. No more cards, no more emails. in it goes to my oddity pile--but, given family history, and having a modicum more sense than i used to, why would I be upset about someone I had a brief fling with back when Clinton was president, where we couldn't be more ill-suited? And why would he want me to be upset? And why would I begrudge anyone who still wears moon boots the chance to be happy with a woman who digs that kind of footwear.

Another one for the WTF page...

$14 million for a picture of some white babies. And they aren't past that plucked chicken stage where all babies look exactly the same. What is the fascination? They ain't my babies and they ain't yours. They belong to a crazy, rich couple who think that dragging a pack of kids around the world along with bodyguards and the kind of attention accorded to royalty and sports stars will result in emotionally healthy adults. Lets instead pay $14 million to the couple in the midwest who have raised 14 disabled foster children. Let's put it up against the national debt. Better still it might go in a fund for the therapy of the adult children of this union for when they have to come to terms with their very ordinariness.

This dichotomy--I speak with some of the wealthiest humans on earth in the course of my job and often can't afford fresh produce. Yet I can afford a lot more, like the ability to live alone, which my neighbors can't as they come from places where only the wealthiest people live alone, and they are better off than the folks they left behind because they got to come here. And there are those kids in that neighborhood close to work who could change their lives for the better with just 1/10th of 1 percent of $14 million by being given the hope of higher education.


WTF--screamin' in a vacuum.

Shhhh

The quiet
between the storms
barometric pressure headaches
and paternal ass-pains
thunder without lightening
bellowing without substance or truth
stress and fear of roofless existence
in a never ending field where low lying angry clouds unleash wrath against unprotected skin
[the rhythm and drama so beautiful through the windows of a warm hearth]
senseless hail stone bruises
I don't need the rain.