I bought a Toshiba Satellite about 4 years ago. I've put it through hell. It has gone to sea with me on terrible little long-line vessels from Hawaii and on crab boats in Alaska. That little piece of electronics has been dragged around in a backpack back and forth across the country and functioned in sub-optimal conditions. Salt spray and shitty, unreliable power sources: it keeps on ticking. I've had to replace the power cord twice, but that seems to be par for the course talking to other friends who work on boats and deal with engine-supplied electricity that is prone to surge and dip unexpectedly. The computer still functions and the battery works decently. The compaq I had before it died ingloriously overheating one New York summer and was threatening to die long before that. My little Toshiba has been a trooper.
I am not writing this on my laptop. I am writing this on our home Power Mac. I don't want to get all gushy about Macs, but at the end of the day, they work. And so does their software. The hardware on my Toshiba is holding up just fine so far, but the software SUCKS. When I got it, it had vista on it. vista was a terrible product which never should have seen the market. If microsoft had any pride they would have recalled it instead of launching their stupid ad campaign trying to pretend like it was anything other than a blight. I now have windows 7, which compared to vista is un-terrible, but still no gem. And occasionally, it has stupid quirks that drive me insane. Like right now. It periodically decides to not let me have internet access through networks I've connected to a million times and fixing it takes a near miracle. I'm no hacker, but I'm not completely computer illiterate and I've been using windows since they had their first consumer releases. XP was the last decent release and since then things have gotten more nonsensical and unusable. At this point, price is the ONLY reason that I have a machine that runs on microsoft software and Ubuntu is looking better every day. I bought a cheap machine because I knew my laptop was going to be dragged through hell with me and might end up at the bottom of the ocean, but the irritation of dealing with the crap products that microsoft is pooping into the market these days is getting to be too much. The only way I'd ever spend money on a computer that runs on their software again is if it cost $200 and had every bell and whistle imaginable. I'd rather pay for my next computer in cash instead of headaches.
Toshiba, thanks for a tough little computer. Now if you could just get an operating system that wasn't terrible...
Showing posts with label irritants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label irritants. Show all posts
Monday, December 13, 2010
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
about Muslims as our latest national boogey man...
The last couple of years, I've been working on boats and traveling quite a bit, so I've pulled back on some of my political fire and brimstone that marked my musings on this blog for the first few years (how long have I been doing this now?!?). I've liked backing off and not staying quite so fired up all the time, but I'm not really conditioned to stay too demure for too long. One thing that is sure to get me fired up is getting ridiculous stuff from family members. I don't expect better from the world in general; I do expect it from my family. They like getting me riled up, though, so I try not to take the bait when they pass things along to me that one of our more conservative extended family members has sent them.
Which is what I tried to do when my Dad sent me a chain-letter version of this: Why the Peaceful Majority is Irrelevant. In its chain-letter version, it has been changed to begin like this:
After that, it pretty much continues like the blog post through the link, though the layout has been changed a little, emphasizing the end paragraph with bullet points for each sentence and italicizing those sentences. It is worth noting that the forward I was sent did not include any link to the original piece, and changed the name of the person sending it, making the new originator someone with a title of authority ("Dr."), and made it a point to laud him as way of introduction ("...a well-know and well-respected psychiatrist."). I don't like these ridiculous forwards, and I hate they way they are tweaked to make them more effective as propaganda. Needless to say, this set me off. Gently at first, but I got it the same day the guy asked the cabbie in New York if he was Muslim and proceeded to stab him and it was in the middle of all this mess about the Cordoba House.
A little gentle prodding by my father elicited a promise for a detailed explanation of my strong reaction to this forward and to the anti-Muslim sentiment being slung around the media lately, and that is what follows. Thankfully, I've got very forgiving family members who are generally pretty forgiving when they are the ones having to listen to my tirades about politics and society.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ok, Dad. Here goes nothing.
This started as a rebuttal to the forward that you sent, comparing Islam to Nazism in the context of the current debate surrounding the building of the mosque in Lower Manhattan. This diatribe wasn’t specifically referencing that, but this debate is the reason for it being sent around at the moment. The debate about the mosque itself is just being used as a rallying issue to stir up anti-Muslim sentiment for political gain. I’ll head towards the larger political issues later on, but let’s start specifically with this forward that you sent me.
The speaker talks about prewar Germany, pointing out that most Germans weren’t Nazis, but that “many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care.” This apathy on the part of the majority allowed a small group to take control and lead their country down a dark road. We are all well aware of where they ended up, but we are given a personal peek at this history through the regretful eyes of our speaker.
Then comes the discussion of modern Islam. The comparison is made that although it is asserted that the majority of the Islamic world are peace-loving people, the fanatics are taking over and inaction on the parts of this supposedly peaceful majority make the entire religion an enemy to the West.
In a global context, fundamentalist Muslim groups do present some very real threats. Most of this threat is within other countries and towards other Muslims. People getting stoned and hung and beheaded in Iran and Afghanistan and Egypt are Muslims dying at the hands of Muslim religious extremists. Fundamentalists are dangerous threats to every country when they organize and gain enough momentum to wield power and enforce their vision on others. Fundamentalism is an abuse of religious authority to organize and exert political and military force to stay in control and subjugate others. It is the same thing in Islam that it has been in Christianity or Judaism or any other religion. Muslim fundamentalists are enemies, but not just of America. They are first and foremost the enemies of their own people.
I’ll agree that we should be doing more to counter the growth of militarized fundamentalist around the world wherever we can, but I’m disgusted by the suggestion that the people suffering at their hands are also our enemies or the suggestion that we should condemn 1 billion people based on the actions of a few thousand who happen to follow the same religion. The crazies aren’t trying to subjugate and kill other people because God tells them to; they are doing it for other much more simple, human reasons and dragging God in as an excuse to justify their actions. People everywhere do that.
I’m speaking in generalities because I don’t like the way language has become coded in this public debate to separate and emphasize otherness to make it easier to view Muslim people as less-than and ‘different’ so they can be dehumanized. Instead of ‘mosque’ we could just as easily call their places of worship ‘church’ and instead of ‘Allah’ we can just say ‘God’. It is worth remembering that Muslims worship the same God as Jews and Christians; “Allah” isn’t a name for God, it literally means “God” in Arabic. But the debate is set up to avoid empathy and common ground because it is intended to emphasize difference so a dangerous other can be pointed at and the angry mob can have a direction to point their wrath.
Which gets us back to our metaphor of the pre-war Germans and Jews. Let’s scale down our scope from a global on to a national one, since this was seemingly written for an American audience in the context of the discussion of the actions of American Muslims. There is perhaps a larger population of Muslim people in this country than there ever has been before, but even so they are still a tiny minority of the whole, mostly spread thinly throughout our communities other than a few larger population centers where people have gathered like Detroit or New York. We’ve got an organized smear campaign by the extremist branch of a major political party citing them as a threat and painting them as a dangerous insidious other, and using national pride as a rallying cry. I’ll agree that pre-war Germans and Jews are an apt metaphor for what is going on in America today, but it takes some serious mental gymnastics and fabrication to begin to suggest that in this metaphor we aren’t the Germans who are going to pay dearly for what the fanatics do to our country if we don’t speak up.
The people who are asking for people to oppose this community center are asking us to change our nation in dark ways. We are supposed to be a nation of laws, not a nation of emotions. Sure it might be sore for some people to see a mosque built in downtown Manhattan so close to the location of ground zero, but only if they conflate Islam in general with the fanatics who carried out the attacks. The people attacked the towers not because they were Islamic, but because they had a list of grievances against the West. They weren’t targeting Christians; they were targeting the US as representative of Western encroachment into the East in general. Their gripes weren’t with our beliefs, but with our international politics and with whom we’ve backed up and supported in foreign governments. Those crazy Saudis that keep getting mentioned are the ones we’ve backed for years now. That we’ve helped keep their repressive regime in power was one of the complaints specifically cited as reason for attacking America. Our support of the Shah of Iran for so long is what led to the Islamic revolution in that country and the rise of militarized fundamentalist Islam there.
This isn’t just a diatribe about what we’ve done wrong in the world. We’ve done lot’s right, and in general, around the globe people who might hate our foreign policies still want to come here. People want to live in the US because we are better. Our system of keeping religion separate from state and protecting civil liberties has been a shining example throughout the world. I write and say and wear things daily that could get me arrested and killed in dozens of countries around the world; I don’t take that liberty lightly. Our democracy is a sticky crazy mess, as any system trying to balance so many different groups and beliefs should be, but when we scrape away as much emotion as we can and get back to the objective rule of law, we mostly stay on a pretty admirable path. This is why people want to come here. Even Europe doesn’t come close to the freedoms and protections we have.
Religions aren’t the causes of wars, they are the cover smoke for skirmishes over resources. And they are convenient ways to draw lines around Us and Them. The politically religious fundamentalists in our country fueling this debate would like to redraw who belongs in the in-group we’ll call “real Americans”. The resources at stake at the moment are political capital and votes. By targeting Muslims in general at the moment, they not only get to feed the lingering anger over 9/11 but also provide an outlet for the racial resentment that simmers beneath the surface here in America, but because they offer a group whose boundaries are described culturally rather than specifically racially, people can pretend this isn’t stoking racist fires. All the more convenient if the group chosen is largely brown skinned. This isn’t to say that it is specifically about color, simply that it synchs nicely with historic prejudices and has an easy visual recognition of the people spoken about as Other. This has been the Republican playbook for years. Pick an ambiguous but recognizable Other, spread dramatic tales of how they are destroying the real America and their secret powers and insidious connections, call on the real Americans to stop them before it is too late. This year they are surprisingly leaving the gays out of it for the most part, but it brings me no joy to see where all the vitriolic energy has gone.
Sure, if people who had caused the 9/11 attacks were trying to build a mosque as a monument to their crime at ground zero, we’d all be up in arms. Actually, I wouldn’t be because I know that it would be shot down in an instant and wouldn’t get past any kind of review board in New York. They can’t agree on how to build a parking garage at ground zero without the public shrieking, much less approve a terrorist shrine. No one would touch it with a ten-foot pole. But wait, if that is the case, how did this get so far along? Why didn’t someone stop this sooner?
Because it is a non-issue. The only reason it is an issue is because as a nation we are largely credulous enough to swallow the plausible lies that we are fed that let us feel threatened and brave. So, when some folks start organizing a large Muslim community center patterned off the 92st Y (which is Jewish and with whom they discussed the practicalities of this project) in an old Burlington Coat Factory, no one in New York gave a rat’s ass about the project. Because it isn’t interesting or controversial outside of normal neighborhood practicalities. I’m sure some of the neighbors didn’t want something going up that would drag more foot traffic there, but otherwise this wasn’t anything controversial.
But if you point out that it was going to have a prayer room, which we can call a mosque since it would be a prayer room for Muslims, I suppose you could call the entire project a mosque since we normally think of the local Y as a church or a synagogue depending on whether it is a YMCA or a YMHA (I am, of course, being sarcastic). And if we want to call everything downtown ground zero, we can say it is being erected at ground zero. It is a large project with lots of fundraisers, so it might be worth noting that a wealthy Saudi man who has given money to various Middle Eastern political groups is giving lots of money to this project and then we can say it is funded by terrorists. It helps if you don’t point out that this Saudi guy also spends his money on other terrorist organizations like Fox News as he is the largest NewsCorps shareholder outside of the Murdock family, but if you just don’t say his name or put his picture up when you describe how scary he is, most people aren’t going to dig and double-check. A terrorist mosque at ground zero makes a jazzy little boogey man amplifier. Most non-Muslim Americans have never been in a mosque, so you can easily equate that term with terrorist meeting place instead of it simply being a Muslim place of worship. If we called it a Muslim church, it would conjure an easily recognizable and relatable image, but common ground isn’t the goal, so the word ‘mosque’ is said repeatedly and in accompaniment with sinister speculation, so that the distinction between whether or not it is a mosque becomes important. It shouldn’t be; it could be planned as primarily a big religious meeting place and my objections to the opposition of its construction wouldn’t be any different, but how it has been painted and the importance of language in the construction of the idea of this building as symbolic of Muslim Otherness makes looking at this manipulation informative.
Muslims as a boogey man are particularly useful to republicans this year not only because 9/11 happened, but because the popular Democratic president has a Muslim sounding middle name. Along with the mosque howling, we’ve got people suggesting that we don’t know where he was born or if he is or isn’t Muslim. Insinuating that he might or might not be Muslim is meant to insinuate that he might or might not be a real American or at worst that he is an explicit threat to America. There is something interesting in painting the elected official leader of a democratic nation as emblematic of the dangerous Other.
In the end, this debate isn’t about Christians vs. Muslims. This is about manipulating emotions to rally and control political momentum. The Nazis did this masterfully. I’d like to think that our country is more self-correcting and difficult to lead down dark paths so I’m resistant to the analogy, but I appreciate the reminder that when faced with an organized segment of the population spreading half-truths and lies to denigrate and dehumanize a minority as a threat to rally and channel rage for political gain that if I don’t speak against these people as a member of the majority that I’ll be culpable for anything my silence enables them to do. Consider your spitfire son revitalized and ready to rage against this stuff anew.
Thanks, Dad.
Love,
Daniel
(ed. note: I want to make clear that this wasn't written as a smack down of anything my father had written, he just got to be the audience as all this coalesced and finally came to a head enough to keep me writing long enough to put some thoughts together. On rereading it, I felt the ending might come across as too snarky to an outside audience not privy to the rest of our correspondence. No disrespect meant to my dad, whose opinions and wisdom I'm lucky to be able to solicit, and whom is a saint for calmly discussing this stuff with a son prone to hyperbole and brimstone.)
Which is what I tried to do when my Dad sent me a chain-letter version of this: Why the Peaceful Majority is Irrelevant. In its chain-letter version, it has been changed to begin like this:
Subject: German View of Islam
This is by far the best explanation of the Muslim terrorist situation I have ever read.
His references to past history are accurate and clear.
Not long, easy to understand, and well worth the read.
The author of this email is said to be Dr. Emanuel Tanay, a well-known and well-respected psychiatrist.
A German's View on Islam
A man, whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II, owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism...
After that, it pretty much continues like the blog post through the link, though the layout has been changed a little, emphasizing the end paragraph with bullet points for each sentence and italicizing those sentences. It is worth noting that the forward I was sent did not include any link to the original piece, and changed the name of the person sending it, making the new originator someone with a title of authority ("Dr."), and made it a point to laud him as way of introduction ("...a well-know and well-respected psychiatrist."). I don't like these ridiculous forwards, and I hate they way they are tweaked to make them more effective as propaganda. Needless to say, this set me off. Gently at first, but I got it the same day the guy asked the cabbie in New York if he was Muslim and proceeded to stab him and it was in the middle of all this mess about the Cordoba House.
A little gentle prodding by my father elicited a promise for a detailed explanation of my strong reaction to this forward and to the anti-Muslim sentiment being slung around the media lately, and that is what follows. Thankfully, I've got very forgiving family members who are generally pretty forgiving when they are the ones having to listen to my tirades about politics and society.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ok, Dad. Here goes nothing.
This started as a rebuttal to the forward that you sent, comparing Islam to Nazism in the context of the current debate surrounding the building of the mosque in Lower Manhattan. This diatribe wasn’t specifically referencing that, but this debate is the reason for it being sent around at the moment. The debate about the mosque itself is just being used as a rallying issue to stir up anti-Muslim sentiment for political gain. I’ll head towards the larger political issues later on, but let’s start specifically with this forward that you sent me.
The speaker talks about prewar Germany, pointing out that most Germans weren’t Nazis, but that “many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care.” This apathy on the part of the majority allowed a small group to take control and lead their country down a dark road. We are all well aware of where they ended up, but we are given a personal peek at this history through the regretful eyes of our speaker.
Then comes the discussion of modern Islam. The comparison is made that although it is asserted that the majority of the Islamic world are peace-loving people, the fanatics are taking over and inaction on the parts of this supposedly peaceful majority make the entire religion an enemy to the West.
In a global context, fundamentalist Muslim groups do present some very real threats. Most of this threat is within other countries and towards other Muslims. People getting stoned and hung and beheaded in Iran and Afghanistan and Egypt are Muslims dying at the hands of Muslim religious extremists. Fundamentalists are dangerous threats to every country when they organize and gain enough momentum to wield power and enforce their vision on others. Fundamentalism is an abuse of religious authority to organize and exert political and military force to stay in control and subjugate others. It is the same thing in Islam that it has been in Christianity or Judaism or any other religion. Muslim fundamentalists are enemies, but not just of America. They are first and foremost the enemies of their own people.
I’ll agree that we should be doing more to counter the growth of militarized fundamentalist around the world wherever we can, but I’m disgusted by the suggestion that the people suffering at their hands are also our enemies or the suggestion that we should condemn 1 billion people based on the actions of a few thousand who happen to follow the same religion. The crazies aren’t trying to subjugate and kill other people because God tells them to; they are doing it for other much more simple, human reasons and dragging God in as an excuse to justify their actions. People everywhere do that.
I’m speaking in generalities because I don’t like the way language has become coded in this public debate to separate and emphasize otherness to make it easier to view Muslim people as less-than and ‘different’ so they can be dehumanized. Instead of ‘mosque’ we could just as easily call their places of worship ‘church’ and instead of ‘Allah’ we can just say ‘God’. It is worth remembering that Muslims worship the same God as Jews and Christians; “Allah” isn’t a name for God, it literally means “God” in Arabic. But the debate is set up to avoid empathy and common ground because it is intended to emphasize difference so a dangerous other can be pointed at and the angry mob can have a direction to point their wrath.
Which gets us back to our metaphor of the pre-war Germans and Jews. Let’s scale down our scope from a global on to a national one, since this was seemingly written for an American audience in the context of the discussion of the actions of American Muslims. There is perhaps a larger population of Muslim people in this country than there ever has been before, but even so they are still a tiny minority of the whole, mostly spread thinly throughout our communities other than a few larger population centers where people have gathered like Detroit or New York. We’ve got an organized smear campaign by the extremist branch of a major political party citing them as a threat and painting them as a dangerous insidious other, and using national pride as a rallying cry. I’ll agree that pre-war Germans and Jews are an apt metaphor for what is going on in America today, but it takes some serious mental gymnastics and fabrication to begin to suggest that in this metaphor we aren’t the Germans who are going to pay dearly for what the fanatics do to our country if we don’t speak up.
The people who are asking for people to oppose this community center are asking us to change our nation in dark ways. We are supposed to be a nation of laws, not a nation of emotions. Sure it might be sore for some people to see a mosque built in downtown Manhattan so close to the location of ground zero, but only if they conflate Islam in general with the fanatics who carried out the attacks. The people attacked the towers not because they were Islamic, but because they had a list of grievances against the West. They weren’t targeting Christians; they were targeting the US as representative of Western encroachment into the East in general. Their gripes weren’t with our beliefs, but with our international politics and with whom we’ve backed up and supported in foreign governments. Those crazy Saudis that keep getting mentioned are the ones we’ve backed for years now. That we’ve helped keep their repressive regime in power was one of the complaints specifically cited as reason for attacking America. Our support of the Shah of Iran for so long is what led to the Islamic revolution in that country and the rise of militarized fundamentalist Islam there.
This isn’t just a diatribe about what we’ve done wrong in the world. We’ve done lot’s right, and in general, around the globe people who might hate our foreign policies still want to come here. People want to live in the US because we are better. Our system of keeping religion separate from state and protecting civil liberties has been a shining example throughout the world. I write and say and wear things daily that could get me arrested and killed in dozens of countries around the world; I don’t take that liberty lightly. Our democracy is a sticky crazy mess, as any system trying to balance so many different groups and beliefs should be, but when we scrape away as much emotion as we can and get back to the objective rule of law, we mostly stay on a pretty admirable path. This is why people want to come here. Even Europe doesn’t come close to the freedoms and protections we have.
Religions aren’t the causes of wars, they are the cover smoke for skirmishes over resources. And they are convenient ways to draw lines around Us and Them. The politically religious fundamentalists in our country fueling this debate would like to redraw who belongs in the in-group we’ll call “real Americans”. The resources at stake at the moment are political capital and votes. By targeting Muslims in general at the moment, they not only get to feed the lingering anger over 9/11 but also provide an outlet for the racial resentment that simmers beneath the surface here in America, but because they offer a group whose boundaries are described culturally rather than specifically racially, people can pretend this isn’t stoking racist fires. All the more convenient if the group chosen is largely brown skinned. This isn’t to say that it is specifically about color, simply that it synchs nicely with historic prejudices and has an easy visual recognition of the people spoken about as Other. This has been the Republican playbook for years. Pick an ambiguous but recognizable Other, spread dramatic tales of how they are destroying the real America and their secret powers and insidious connections, call on the real Americans to stop them before it is too late. This year they are surprisingly leaving the gays out of it for the most part, but it brings me no joy to see where all the vitriolic energy has gone.
Sure, if people who had caused the 9/11 attacks were trying to build a mosque as a monument to their crime at ground zero, we’d all be up in arms. Actually, I wouldn’t be because I know that it would be shot down in an instant and wouldn’t get past any kind of review board in New York. They can’t agree on how to build a parking garage at ground zero without the public shrieking, much less approve a terrorist shrine. No one would touch it with a ten-foot pole. But wait, if that is the case, how did this get so far along? Why didn’t someone stop this sooner?
Because it is a non-issue. The only reason it is an issue is because as a nation we are largely credulous enough to swallow the plausible lies that we are fed that let us feel threatened and brave. So, when some folks start organizing a large Muslim community center patterned off the 92st Y (which is Jewish and with whom they discussed the practicalities of this project) in an old Burlington Coat Factory, no one in New York gave a rat’s ass about the project. Because it isn’t interesting or controversial outside of normal neighborhood practicalities. I’m sure some of the neighbors didn’t want something going up that would drag more foot traffic there, but otherwise this wasn’t anything controversial.
But if you point out that it was going to have a prayer room, which we can call a mosque since it would be a prayer room for Muslims, I suppose you could call the entire project a mosque since we normally think of the local Y as a church or a synagogue depending on whether it is a YMCA or a YMHA (I am, of course, being sarcastic). And if we want to call everything downtown ground zero, we can say it is being erected at ground zero. It is a large project with lots of fundraisers, so it might be worth noting that a wealthy Saudi man who has given money to various Middle Eastern political groups is giving lots of money to this project and then we can say it is funded by terrorists. It helps if you don’t point out that this Saudi guy also spends his money on other terrorist organizations like Fox News as he is the largest NewsCorps shareholder outside of the Murdock family, but if you just don’t say his name or put his picture up when you describe how scary he is, most people aren’t going to dig and double-check. A terrorist mosque at ground zero makes a jazzy little boogey man amplifier. Most non-Muslim Americans have never been in a mosque, so you can easily equate that term with terrorist meeting place instead of it simply being a Muslim place of worship. If we called it a Muslim church, it would conjure an easily recognizable and relatable image, but common ground isn’t the goal, so the word ‘mosque’ is said repeatedly and in accompaniment with sinister speculation, so that the distinction between whether or not it is a mosque becomes important. It shouldn’t be; it could be planned as primarily a big religious meeting place and my objections to the opposition of its construction wouldn’t be any different, but how it has been painted and the importance of language in the construction of the idea of this building as symbolic of Muslim Otherness makes looking at this manipulation informative.
Muslims as a boogey man are particularly useful to republicans this year not only because 9/11 happened, but because the popular Democratic president has a Muslim sounding middle name. Along with the mosque howling, we’ve got people suggesting that we don’t know where he was born or if he is or isn’t Muslim. Insinuating that he might or might not be Muslim is meant to insinuate that he might or might not be a real American or at worst that he is an explicit threat to America. There is something interesting in painting the elected official leader of a democratic nation as emblematic of the dangerous Other.
In the end, this debate isn’t about Christians vs. Muslims. This is about manipulating emotions to rally and control political momentum. The Nazis did this masterfully. I’d like to think that our country is more self-correcting and difficult to lead down dark paths so I’m resistant to the analogy, but I appreciate the reminder that when faced with an organized segment of the population spreading half-truths and lies to denigrate and dehumanize a minority as a threat to rally and channel rage for political gain that if I don’t speak against these people as a member of the majority that I’ll be culpable for anything my silence enables them to do. Consider your spitfire son revitalized and ready to rage against this stuff anew.
Thanks, Dad.
Love,
Daniel
(ed. note: I want to make clear that this wasn't written as a smack down of anything my father had written, he just got to be the audience as all this coalesced and finally came to a head enough to keep me writing long enough to put some thoughts together. On rereading it, I felt the ending might come across as too snarky to an outside audience not privy to the rest of our correspondence. No disrespect meant to my dad, whose opinions and wisdom I'm lucky to be able to solicit, and whom is a saint for calmly discussing this stuff with a son prone to hyperbole and brimstone.)
Friday, January 15, 2010
Gays vs.Ourselves
Earlier this week, I got on the computer to find that Ben had left open an article from the Advocate.com, "Gays vs Democrats". Reading the article, I got a sinking feeling. I've been complaining that the gay community has been ill served by the myopic focus on specifically "gay" issues while neglecting to build alliances with potential allies. I'm certainly not the only person who has commented along these lines, but by and large, most of what I see in terms of political coverage from the major gay organizations is disappointing.
Reading this article, one word kept screaming into my head again and again: "crybabies".
After 8 years of bush, which started with him jimmying his way into the Whitehouse with a super-legal crowbar, then passed through idiotic tax breaks for richie-riches, bungled handling of terrorist attacks, wars against brown people for control of resources, demonizing of gay people for political gain, finally leaving us with a downward facing economy and all kinds of other crap to clean up; we elect an inspiring but long-shot candidate who doesn't embarrass us every time he opens his mouth. I don't think the election was so far back that there is any reason any of us should have forgotten already how arduous this campaign was. It wasn't easy beating Hillary, and it wasn't easy winning, even if john mccain did more to help himself lose than he did to win. Obama won because we got out there and pushed and pulled and raised funds and rallied and kept momentum and energy pumping into the campaign.
Part of why he won was that he didn't try to do everything at once and didn't play into his critics' hands by reacting to every little complaint. He had a long game. I don't think he is perfect and can find plenty to complain about, but I don't think that he has any less of a long view now that he is in office.
He made it pretty clear during the campaign and early in office that healthcare was his number one priority. It was/is at the top of the list. He's made good on that. He went in and has pushed and prodded congress to force some kind of healthcare reform through. He's faced a complete stonewall by the republicans, who are simply trying to derail his reform as a way of neutering his administration. This is his big gambit; this is our big battle. If he passes a good healthcare reform bill, he has political capital to spare; if he fails, it is going to be a long, hard slog on every other issue. We all know this.
We all also know he can't do this without us. All of us who wrote friends and family during the campaign or donated or volunteered, where are we now? Did we only have the energy because we thought we'd get exactly what we wanted as soon as he was in office? Did the battle end on election day? Where have we been now that he really needed us? And when I say he really needs us, I mean we really need us because he's got great health coverage: we're the ones this fight is for in the end. He does need to win this battle to have the wiggle room to take on trickier challenges, like DOMA or ENDA or DODT, but you've got to be crazy to think he can touch any of those with a ten-foot pole if healthcare reform fails.
I've tried to keep my energy up and comment where I could and push my support for healthcare reform as much as I can. I've got my small sphere of influence and can only do so much, but I've been looking over the last year for similar energy from people with wider voices. I'd been waiting for the articles in the Advocate or Out rallying gay people around healthcare reform. I've been waiting for the HRC to throw some of its clout at the issue. Partly this all just seemed obvious to me: healthcare is a gay issue. The catalyzing event which fomented our community into a cohesive political entity was the AIDS crisis, a large-scale public health crisis. One of the major disparities between married couples and un-married partners is access to health insurance through a partner's coverage. How is healthcare reform not an issue of specific and urgent concern to the gay community?
More than just being important to our community, it is important to everyone else. It is something each of us needs and it is a natural place to build allegiances with other communities. If we want support on our pet issues, we've got to put our weight behind issues that we can find real common ground with other constituencies. Part of the reason Harvey Milk was able to get elected was because he rallied to get dog shit cleaned up. The reason the Briggs initiative was deep-sixed was because of that political capital that Milk and others in the gay community built through working on other battles of interest to more than just the gay community. Working with unions in their battle with Coors helped build our political clout. That battle wasn't won because we were right; it was won because we campaigned harder and smarter.
We aren't going to get gay marriage because Obama likes us or because it is right. We'll get it when we out-game the other side. Some of our strength comes from our weakness, from our otherness. We can go and scream bloody-murder and say things that anyone else wouldn't dare say. We should have been point people, out there in the streets or on tv demanding the farthest extreme of socialized medicine, pushing and tugging things as far left as we could. We should have been the voices asking for more than could ever possibly pass so that when the compromising started, they could come back from how far we pushed and hopefully compromise somewhere in the middle. We aren't the largest constituency, but we can be pretty damn loud when we want to be. We are well connected and are quick to organize. Instead, we were quiet. We didn't give any political cover on this most central fight. We didn't help out in the biggest battle for control and upper-hand in Washington today. What did we do?
We whined. We complained that we didn't get enough; that our specific issues weren't being taken care of fast enough. The exception to this is John Aravosis, who, incidentally, is quoted in this article. He screamed at the top of his lungs about healthcare reform at least as much if not more than he's gone on about gay marriage and ENDA and DOMA. But even from him, I never heard a clear rallying cry connecting our ability to push more specifically gay issues with our ability to mobilize behind this bigger battle. By and large, most of what I've read from the gay press has simply complained that we aren't getting what we want fast enough. Really, people?
Again, healthcare is Obama's biggest battle. It has already taken twice as long to get close to any progress on it and it still isn't there and looks like it is only going to get shoved through as a butchered version. With what political capital was he supposed to be repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell? He's having this much of a fight with something that benefits almost everyone, and we expected him to do what exactly about making gay marriage legal? bush was an obvious idiot and he got elected twice largely campaigning as protecting America from gays and brown people and we suddenly think now that a brown man is in the Whitehouse that all that resistance has magically disappeared and he just has to wave a wand?
This isn't Obama's battle to win or lose; it is ours. His success or failure is ultimately going to be to our credit or our fault. And we can't just fight one little part of the game without getting in and laying the groundwork necessary for the politicians on our side to have the wiggle room to attack these issues. Where is the cover story calling for us to do what we can do so our leaders can do what we need them to do? There have been enough cover stories for crybabies. I'm tired of reading whines; I want growls.
Reading this article, one word kept screaming into my head again and again: "crybabies".
After 8 years of bush, which started with him jimmying his way into the Whitehouse with a super-legal crowbar, then passed through idiotic tax breaks for richie-riches, bungled handling of terrorist attacks, wars against brown people for control of resources, demonizing of gay people for political gain, finally leaving us with a downward facing economy and all kinds of other crap to clean up; we elect an inspiring but long-shot candidate who doesn't embarrass us every time he opens his mouth. I don't think the election was so far back that there is any reason any of us should have forgotten already how arduous this campaign was. It wasn't easy beating Hillary, and it wasn't easy winning, even if john mccain did more to help himself lose than he did to win. Obama won because we got out there and pushed and pulled and raised funds and rallied and kept momentum and energy pumping into the campaign.
Part of why he won was that he didn't try to do everything at once and didn't play into his critics' hands by reacting to every little complaint. He had a long game. I don't think he is perfect and can find plenty to complain about, but I don't think that he has any less of a long view now that he is in office.
He made it pretty clear during the campaign and early in office that healthcare was his number one priority. It was/is at the top of the list. He's made good on that. He went in and has pushed and prodded congress to force some kind of healthcare reform through. He's faced a complete stonewall by the republicans, who are simply trying to derail his reform as a way of neutering his administration. This is his big gambit; this is our big battle. If he passes a good healthcare reform bill, he has political capital to spare; if he fails, it is going to be a long, hard slog on every other issue. We all know this.
We all also know he can't do this without us. All of us who wrote friends and family during the campaign or donated or volunteered, where are we now? Did we only have the energy because we thought we'd get exactly what we wanted as soon as he was in office? Did the battle end on election day? Where have we been now that he really needed us? And when I say he really needs us, I mean we really need us because he's got great health coverage: we're the ones this fight is for in the end. He does need to win this battle to have the wiggle room to take on trickier challenges, like DOMA or ENDA or DODT, but you've got to be crazy to think he can touch any of those with a ten-foot pole if healthcare reform fails.
I've tried to keep my energy up and comment where I could and push my support for healthcare reform as much as I can. I've got my small sphere of influence and can only do so much, but I've been looking over the last year for similar energy from people with wider voices. I'd been waiting for the articles in the Advocate or Out rallying gay people around healthcare reform. I've been waiting for the HRC to throw some of its clout at the issue. Partly this all just seemed obvious to me: healthcare is a gay issue. The catalyzing event which fomented our community into a cohesive political entity was the AIDS crisis, a large-scale public health crisis. One of the major disparities between married couples and un-married partners is access to health insurance through a partner's coverage. How is healthcare reform not an issue of specific and urgent concern to the gay community?
More than just being important to our community, it is important to everyone else. It is something each of us needs and it is a natural place to build allegiances with other communities. If we want support on our pet issues, we've got to put our weight behind issues that we can find real common ground with other constituencies. Part of the reason Harvey Milk was able to get elected was because he rallied to get dog shit cleaned up. The reason the Briggs initiative was deep-sixed was because of that political capital that Milk and others in the gay community built through working on other battles of interest to more than just the gay community. Working with unions in their battle with Coors helped build our political clout. That battle wasn't won because we were right; it was won because we campaigned harder and smarter.
We aren't going to get gay marriage because Obama likes us or because it is right. We'll get it when we out-game the other side. Some of our strength comes from our weakness, from our otherness. We can go and scream bloody-murder and say things that anyone else wouldn't dare say. We should have been point people, out there in the streets or on tv demanding the farthest extreme of socialized medicine, pushing and tugging things as far left as we could. We should have been the voices asking for more than could ever possibly pass so that when the compromising started, they could come back from how far we pushed and hopefully compromise somewhere in the middle. We aren't the largest constituency, but we can be pretty damn loud when we want to be. We are well connected and are quick to organize. Instead, we were quiet. We didn't give any political cover on this most central fight. We didn't help out in the biggest battle for control and upper-hand in Washington today. What did we do?
We whined. We complained that we didn't get enough; that our specific issues weren't being taken care of fast enough. The exception to this is John Aravosis, who, incidentally, is quoted in this article. He screamed at the top of his lungs about healthcare reform at least as much if not more than he's gone on about gay marriage and ENDA and DOMA. But even from him, I never heard a clear rallying cry connecting our ability to push more specifically gay issues with our ability to mobilize behind this bigger battle. By and large, most of what I've read from the gay press has simply complained that we aren't getting what we want fast enough. Really, people?
Again, healthcare is Obama's biggest battle. It has already taken twice as long to get close to any progress on it and it still isn't there and looks like it is only going to get shoved through as a butchered version. With what political capital was he supposed to be repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell? He's having this much of a fight with something that benefits almost everyone, and we expected him to do what exactly about making gay marriage legal? bush was an obvious idiot and he got elected twice largely campaigning as protecting America from gays and brown people and we suddenly think now that a brown man is in the Whitehouse that all that resistance has magically disappeared and he just has to wave a wand?
This isn't Obama's battle to win or lose; it is ours. His success or failure is ultimately going to be to our credit or our fault. And we can't just fight one little part of the game without getting in and laying the groundwork necessary for the politicians on our side to have the wiggle room to attack these issues. Where is the cover story calling for us to do what we can do so our leaders can do what we need them to do? There have been enough cover stories for crybabies. I'm tired of reading whines; I want growls.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Priorities, people!
(written a few weeks ago; I've been slow to publish these days, but I've been thinking and arguing along similar lines in the run up to the big gay march in D.C. so maybe I should put this stuff out there finally.)
I just when to advocate.com to see what kind of political coverage we are getting from them. I've been doing this a lot lately. My eye was caught by the headline "Clinton Blames the Gays for DADT?" Read the article for the whole story, but the statement by Clinton which inspired this headline was this:
"And all most of you did was attack me instead of getting some support in the Congress." I'm afraid that we are setting ourselves up to hear that rebuke from another ex-president down the road. People in the gay community are screaming bloody murder about how Obama hasn't repealed Don't Ask Don't Tell yet or about how enough isn't being done about gay marriage. Really? Is this really at the top of our list right now? I'm not asking anyone to roll over and play dead and forget about issues which are of particular importance to our community, but we've got a new president who inherited a shit pile from the last schmuck and years of a republican congress. Right now, he needs to get a firm hold in Washington and honestly, if people are losing their homes and losing their jobs and instead of focusing on the economy he was focusing on issues of specific interest to gay people, he wouldn't be doing us any favors.
So we want the right to get married or to serve in the military openly? Then we should be out there screaming bloody murder about the need for healthcare reform and give him some political cover. This is his big fight. If it passes in any recognizable form, he is going to have political capital to spend. If it fails, he is going to be in a hole. The republicans recognize this and are trying to sink this as a way to neuter him. He won the election talking about this issue, keeping out front and selling it. And we voted for him and through him, for healthcare reform. If we want him to stick his neck out for us, we've got to get in there and push in this fight. If we can't help deliver support for healthcare in Congress, then we aren't going to be able to deliver the support he is going to need to overturn DADT or DOMA. And he isn't this lone figure that should just do all the fun stuff he talked about during the campaign because we voted for him; we've still got to get in there and do groundwork and push and shove.
I just when to advocate.com to see what kind of political coverage we are getting from them. I've been doing this a lot lately. My eye was caught by the headline "Clinton Blames the Gays for DADT?" Read the article for the whole story, but the statement by Clinton which inspired this headline was this:
"You wanna talk about 'don't ask, don't tell,' I'll tell you exactly what happened," Clinton said. "You couldn't deliver me any support in the Congress and they voted by a veto-proof majority in both houses against my attempt to let gays serve in the military and the media supported them. They raised all kinds of devilment. And all most of you did was to attack me instead of getting some support in the Congress. Now, that's the truth," he said to significant applause.
"And all most of you did was attack me instead of getting some support in the Congress." I'm afraid that we are setting ourselves up to hear that rebuke from another ex-president down the road. People in the gay community are screaming bloody murder about how Obama hasn't repealed Don't Ask Don't Tell yet or about how enough isn't being done about gay marriage. Really? Is this really at the top of our list right now? I'm not asking anyone to roll over and play dead and forget about issues which are of particular importance to our community, but we've got a new president who inherited a shit pile from the last schmuck and years of a republican congress. Right now, he needs to get a firm hold in Washington and honestly, if people are losing their homes and losing their jobs and instead of focusing on the economy he was focusing on issues of specific interest to gay people, he wouldn't be doing us any favors.
So we want the right to get married or to serve in the military openly? Then we should be out there screaming bloody murder about the need for healthcare reform and give him some political cover. This is his big fight. If it passes in any recognizable form, he is going to have political capital to spend. If it fails, he is going to be in a hole. The republicans recognize this and are trying to sink this as a way to neuter him. He won the election talking about this issue, keeping out front and selling it. And we voted for him and through him, for healthcare reform. If we want him to stick his neck out for us, we've got to get in there and push in this fight. If we can't help deliver support for healthcare in Congress, then we aren't going to be able to deliver the support he is going to need to overturn DADT or DOMA. And he isn't this lone figure that should just do all the fun stuff he talked about during the campaign because we voted for him; we've still got to get in there and do groundwork and push and shove.
Monday, March 09, 2009
What's so scary about a little kiss?
So I finally watched Y Tu Mama Tambien. People always assume I've seen it and when it came out, all my friends saw it. But I've put off seeing it. I didn't intentionally avoid it in the theater, but I miss most things in the theater unless Ben drags me there. Not that I don't like going to see movies, I do; but it just usually isn't what I'll chose to do unless someone else tips the decision that direction.
I have intentionally avoided it on video, however. Not that I haven't wanted to see it and on multiple occasions would have rented it except that I had read how most rental copies of it are edited and what is the point of seeing a movie that is famous for being a love story fantasy if it has been edited? Of course they will cut the best bits! Actually, who in hell wants to watch any edited movie? It is like reading an abridged book. Not that there are no stories out their which might benefit from well placed pruning, but books are abridged to make them shorter and easier to digest and movies are edited to make them tamer (and, if it is for tv, to make room for commercials). I knew that this cut was to make it less offensive and if I wanted a less offensive movie, I'd have picked one. So anyway, I've refused to watch this movie multiple times because I couldn't be sure to get the unedited version.
I remember now that I had refused to watch Ben's copy because a little questioning revealed it to be one of the chop shop versions, but I forgot this. I suppose I am glad I did forget, because I enjoyed watching it and otherwise would have continued my silent protest.
I was worried at the beginning of the movie when the quick disclaimer flashed by that it had been "edited for content and language". Yuck. And even with my poor language skills I was able to tell some of the language had been blurred, but it seemed more just for simplicity than prudishness. The cuss words were generalized or not completely literally translated (of course the cuss words are always the most familiar vocabulary for one like myself who only knows a little of a language), but who cares? They didn't blur the message and didn't really sanitize the story in that area. And at first I supposed they hadn't really edited the content that much. The movie opens with two naked people in bed and before the scene changes you see -soft, of course- a pecker, which is usually the first thing edited out of a movie. Male genitals are so terribly distressing to the idiots who rate movies. This isn't the last of the nudity either, male or female, and sexual acts are also shown, though rather as a side note that anything titillating.
Actually, the only way that I know this is a chopped version, even if it isn't a fully block-bustered bastard, is that the one thing which got so many panties in a wad and made the movie such an intriguing success was the one thing they cut out! The whole damn movie builds up to this love scene with both the boys and the woman. It builds and builds and then we get there, the crucial moment, during which the two guys kiss... except they don't. Here, they get back to the room, the chick begins making out with one of them... and cut! The morning after! The boys wake up looking at each other, but other than that we are left to just guess what has made them so awkward towards each other.
When this movie came out, the shared affair with the older woman wasn't the scandal but that the two male leads' friendship tipped over into the romantic at the climax with her. Every stupid interview with the actors asked them moronic questions about how awkward it must have been to kiss the other guy, which to their credit, they generally just brushed off. Two guys kissing shouldn't be a big fucking deal, but apparently it was and it got this movie tons of publicity and, truth be told, peaked my interest too. When it comes time to trim the movie down, for whatever fucking stupid reason they have, the kiss is the first thing to go. So we see the three leads naked, we see them urinate, we see at least partial sexual acts, but the two guys kissing is a shade too far. It is so fucking irritating.
Dean always complained that even in gay themed movies directed at gay audiences that you are more likely to see two men having sex than see them kiss. He got completely flustered and angry when we watched... damn, I can't remember the name of the movie. It is from Argentina and featured two bank robber lovers in their violent and sexual downward spiral. Completely out of character, I had suggested the movie when we went to pick something to watch. I can't remember the movie, but I remember the night because it was (at least before the movie) one of the most fun and silly nights ever with my friends. I was back in Charleston and rambling about with Dean, Michael, and Preot. We've all been friends for years but hadn't really all been together like that in a long time and all sort of queened out when we found a potted plant that someone had thrown out. It was actually pretty healthy, a very tall Diffenbachia with a few ratty leaves in a gallon pot and descending upon it, we started pruning leaves and propping it up and talking to it and about it like we were giving a make-over and as we walked away (carrying our new plant, I can't remember what we named it, Sheena maybe?) suddenly realized we had never been gayer in our whole lives. So we decided to keep the ball rolling and go pick out a gay movie and pop some gay popcorn and have a slumber party.
Burnt Money, that was the name of the movie. I had read something about it and I think it was the only gay movie that none of us had seen and it had gotten good reviews. I think Y Tu Mama Tambien had been suggested even though it wasn't a gay movie because of the dudes kissing, but also passed over because we had heard that scene was edited out in lots of rental copies. I totally loved Burnt Money, which was surprising because I am usually the one who complains that movies are too gorey or violent and this one was violent. Something about it I really liked, but it killed the fun mood for everyone else and at some point Dean pointed out how much sex there had been but no kissing. I think that the guys finally got their kiss towards the end of the movie and I think I argued just to be contrary, but he had a point. Tonight at least, he is right. More than sex between men, affection terrifies.
I have intentionally avoided it on video, however. Not that I haven't wanted to see it and on multiple occasions would have rented it except that I had read how most rental copies of it are edited and what is the point of seeing a movie that is famous for being a love story fantasy if it has been edited? Of course they will cut the best bits! Actually, who in hell wants to watch any edited movie? It is like reading an abridged book. Not that there are no stories out their which might benefit from well placed pruning, but books are abridged to make them shorter and easier to digest and movies are edited to make them tamer (and, if it is for tv, to make room for commercials). I knew that this cut was to make it less offensive and if I wanted a less offensive movie, I'd have picked one. So anyway, I've refused to watch this movie multiple times because I couldn't be sure to get the unedited version.
I remember now that I had refused to watch Ben's copy because a little questioning revealed it to be one of the chop shop versions, but I forgot this. I suppose I am glad I did forget, because I enjoyed watching it and otherwise would have continued my silent protest.
I was worried at the beginning of the movie when the quick disclaimer flashed by that it had been "edited for content and language". Yuck. And even with my poor language skills I was able to tell some of the language had been blurred, but it seemed more just for simplicity than prudishness. The cuss words were generalized or not completely literally translated (of course the cuss words are always the most familiar vocabulary for one like myself who only knows a little of a language), but who cares? They didn't blur the message and didn't really sanitize the story in that area. And at first I supposed they hadn't really edited the content that much. The movie opens with two naked people in bed and before the scene changes you see -soft, of course- a pecker, which is usually the first thing edited out of a movie. Male genitals are so terribly distressing to the idiots who rate movies. This isn't the last of the nudity either, male or female, and sexual acts are also shown, though rather as a side note that anything titillating.
Actually, the only way that I know this is a chopped version, even if it isn't a fully block-bustered bastard, is that the one thing which got so many panties in a wad and made the movie such an intriguing success was the one thing they cut out! The whole damn movie builds up to this love scene with both the boys and the woman. It builds and builds and then we get there, the crucial moment, during which the two guys kiss... except they don't. Here, they get back to the room, the chick begins making out with one of them... and cut! The morning after! The boys wake up looking at each other, but other than that we are left to just guess what has made them so awkward towards each other.
When this movie came out, the shared affair with the older woman wasn't the scandal but that the two male leads' friendship tipped over into the romantic at the climax with her. Every stupid interview with the actors asked them moronic questions about how awkward it must have been to kiss the other guy, which to their credit, they generally just brushed off. Two guys kissing shouldn't be a big fucking deal, but apparently it was and it got this movie tons of publicity and, truth be told, peaked my interest too. When it comes time to trim the movie down, for whatever fucking stupid reason they have, the kiss is the first thing to go. So we see the three leads naked, we see them urinate, we see at least partial sexual acts, but the two guys kissing is a shade too far. It is so fucking irritating.
Dean always complained that even in gay themed movies directed at gay audiences that you are more likely to see two men having sex than see them kiss. He got completely flustered and angry when we watched... damn, I can't remember the name of the movie. It is from Argentina and featured two bank robber lovers in their violent and sexual downward spiral. Completely out of character, I had suggested the movie when we went to pick something to watch. I can't remember the movie, but I remember the night because it was (at least before the movie) one of the most fun and silly nights ever with my friends. I was back in Charleston and rambling about with Dean, Michael, and Preot. We've all been friends for years but hadn't really all been together like that in a long time and all sort of queened out when we found a potted plant that someone had thrown out. It was actually pretty healthy, a very tall Diffenbachia with a few ratty leaves in a gallon pot and descending upon it, we started pruning leaves and propping it up and talking to it and about it like we were giving a make-over and as we walked away (carrying our new plant, I can't remember what we named it, Sheena maybe?) suddenly realized we had never been gayer in our whole lives. So we decided to keep the ball rolling and go pick out a gay movie and pop some gay popcorn and have a slumber party.
Burnt Money, that was the name of the movie. I had read something about it and I think it was the only gay movie that none of us had seen and it had gotten good reviews. I think Y Tu Mama Tambien had been suggested even though it wasn't a gay movie because of the dudes kissing, but also passed over because we had heard that scene was edited out in lots of rental copies. I totally loved Burnt Money, which was surprising because I am usually the one who complains that movies are too gorey or violent and this one was violent. Something about it I really liked, but it killed the fun mood for everyone else and at some point Dean pointed out how much sex there had been but no kissing. I think that the guys finally got their kiss towards the end of the movie and I think I argued just to be contrary, but he had a point. Tonight at least, he is right. More than sex between men, affection terrifies.
Friday, January 16, 2009
it is cold
My feet are slowly beginning to thaw. I know chucks aren't the right footgear for winter cold, but so far this season they hadn't been so bad and I put on thick wool socks this morning. This was not enough.
Our apartment is generally way too cool but today I just couldn't get warm in there. Our heat never really warms things up much, but with the extra cold outside it really isn't doing the job. But after sending off some emails this morning I didn't really have a good reason to stay in and the lack of food in my stomach was mirrored by a lack of food in the fridge so I did have a compelling reason to leave. Carefully bundled, I weighed my options. I just wanted to go sit somewhere and have some lunch and sit with my computer and type. This is New York; there are a thousand places for this to be accomplished. There are two places right beside my house perfect for this, Cafe Nijasol and Boulevard, but I had it in my head that I haven't been venturing out far enough and that I wanted to go feel the energy somewhere else.
Just going into Williamsburg seemed like copping out and it was too cold to deal with how retarded public transportation is for getting around Greenpoint. The West Village was briefly considered, but I wasn't sure of where to go and wandering in the cold looking for a pleasant place seemed daunting particularly since anything over there was also likely to be packed with college kids or tourists. Chelsea was also quickly panned, though not without briefly pausing to miss Big Cup. I never really spent much time there (not a big coffee drinker), but still it was good for what it was.
Since I wasn't in the mood for more than one train, that left the East Village. It is where I am most comfortable here, but familiarity can be decieving. Once I headed that direction it became apparent I don't know the cafes and coffee shops like I know the bars. And it was too early to go to the bar. I never actually liked AltCafe, but it was good for what it was: a place to plop down with your computer and get online. Like Big Cup, it ain't there no more. So I went with Cafe Pick Me Up as a default. I like it fine for sitting with a friend chatting, but I've never particularly warmed up to the place. This is odd because I've always ended up finding it really pleasant once I sit down and get settled in, so I remind myself that I like it and head there.
Feet already frozen, just walking the few block from the train, it seems perfect when I step inside. Nothing on the menu jumps out at me, but it is warmish inside and I don't care to search out somewhere new so I order. Before sitting down, I ask the lady at the counter if there is a password for the wifi. She looks at me like I am a crazy person and starts rattling off prices for using the internet. I look at her like she is a crazy person, which she is if she expects someone who just gave her 7 bucks for a sandwich to fork out more money for wifi access. She comments that they never had free wifi, and I suppose reading my skeptical expression clarifies that it has been at least 5 years since they did. Which is also not true, since I went there several times this summer and used it. Whatever. So I couldn't relax and write, I'd just sit and read. I do remember why I don't like the place though: the staff. I always get the feeling from them that they would rather not be bothered. The sandwich was bland (meat, cheese, bread) and not very big with a pleasant enough side salad which became the condiment for the sandwich since it had no other. Reading Terry Prachett while eating was punctuated by a fat drama student talking at her gay bff who didn't get a word in edgewise.
Taking leave of this delightful lunch (it was more pleasant than I'm making it sound), my feet, which never really thawed, are already refrozen by the end of the block. My Swedish longjohns are sort of doing their job, but most of my cold weather layers are in Anchorage waiting for me to return and really need them, so I'm looking again for somewhere warm to thaw out and type. My apartment is not warm. It is 3, so bars should be opening but the stools are still on the bar when I walk past Section 218 (and I don't know if they have wifi anyway). I start to go to Nowhere but I remember that the last few times I've had my computer there, the wifi has been screwed. Metro definitely has functional, if slow, wifi AND fireplaces. Propping up my feet in front of a fireplace becomes the most appealing thought in the world.
On the sidewalk and subway I remember that even worse than the glut of commuters pouring out of work into every form of public transportation at 5 is the glut of kids pouring out of school, though I have to say that despite popular opinion that the next generation are a bunch of rotten little bastards, lately the crowds of kids I've found myself sandwich amongst have been suprisingly polite even if boisterous. Of course when I get metro, I see the bartender leaving the bar and locking it behind him and walking off on some errand. Despite wanting desperately to toast my little piggies in front of a fire, it is too cold to wait and even if I am one of those people who shows up at the bar far earlier in the shift than any happy hour bartender likes, I am not going to be that guy who is waiting at the door when they walk up. So back to my neighborhood and my two originaly options.
I chose Cafe Nijasol. I haven't been there since it got cold, but it is small which in my cold-numbed mind equals cozy which = warm. Which is by then my number one requirement. It is a little further, but a block and a half isn't so far if I can warm up then. I can't. It is closed, according to the apologetic sign on the front just for today, but closed none the less. So back to Boulevard, which I am mainly skeptical of because it is a larger space with a big front window and where I have sat in there before is right by the door. I know I can sit in a different place, but I am that kind of creature of habit; if I like the place I sit one time, I want to sit in that same place again and irrationally assume that I won't like sitting somewhere else. I each of the places I have mentioned today I planned out where I would want to sit as I considered it. I know, kinda crazy.
It isn't closed. The guy behind the counter is friendly and doesn't look look like it is annoying for a business to have customers. There is a spot at the counter far enough from the door that I can take my coat off but not so far in the back that I feel quarentined. Most importantly, it is warm! For the first time today, I'm not cold. The coffee tastes fine to me (but I don't drink it very often so I won't pretend to have a useful opinion on this); the carrot artichoke soup is perfect.
Our apartment is generally way too cool but today I just couldn't get warm in there. Our heat never really warms things up much, but with the extra cold outside it really isn't doing the job. But after sending off some emails this morning I didn't really have a good reason to stay in and the lack of food in my stomach was mirrored by a lack of food in the fridge so I did have a compelling reason to leave. Carefully bundled, I weighed my options. I just wanted to go sit somewhere and have some lunch and sit with my computer and type. This is New York; there are a thousand places for this to be accomplished. There are two places right beside my house perfect for this, Cafe Nijasol and Boulevard, but I had it in my head that I haven't been venturing out far enough and that I wanted to go feel the energy somewhere else.
Just going into Williamsburg seemed like copping out and it was too cold to deal with how retarded public transportation is for getting around Greenpoint. The West Village was briefly considered, but I wasn't sure of where to go and wandering in the cold looking for a pleasant place seemed daunting particularly since anything over there was also likely to be packed with college kids or tourists. Chelsea was also quickly panned, though not without briefly pausing to miss Big Cup. I never really spent much time there (not a big coffee drinker), but still it was good for what it was.
Since I wasn't in the mood for more than one train, that left the East Village. It is where I am most comfortable here, but familiarity can be decieving. Once I headed that direction it became apparent I don't know the cafes and coffee shops like I know the bars. And it was too early to go to the bar. I never actually liked AltCafe, but it was good for what it was: a place to plop down with your computer and get online. Like Big Cup, it ain't there no more. So I went with Cafe Pick Me Up as a default. I like it fine for sitting with a friend chatting, but I've never particularly warmed up to the place. This is odd because I've always ended up finding it really pleasant once I sit down and get settled in, so I remind myself that I like it and head there.
Feet already frozen, just walking the few block from the train, it seems perfect when I step inside. Nothing on the menu jumps out at me, but it is warmish inside and I don't care to search out somewhere new so I order. Before sitting down, I ask the lady at the counter if there is a password for the wifi. She looks at me like I am a crazy person and starts rattling off prices for using the internet. I look at her like she is a crazy person, which she is if she expects someone who just gave her 7 bucks for a sandwich to fork out more money for wifi access. She comments that they never had free wifi, and I suppose reading my skeptical expression clarifies that it has been at least 5 years since they did. Which is also not true, since I went there several times this summer and used it. Whatever. So I couldn't relax and write, I'd just sit and read. I do remember why I don't like the place though: the staff. I always get the feeling from them that they would rather not be bothered. The sandwich was bland (meat, cheese, bread) and not very big with a pleasant enough side salad which became the condiment for the sandwich since it had no other. Reading Terry Prachett while eating was punctuated by a fat drama student talking at her gay bff who didn't get a word in edgewise.
Taking leave of this delightful lunch (it was more pleasant than I'm making it sound), my feet, which never really thawed, are already refrozen by the end of the block. My Swedish longjohns are sort of doing their job, but most of my cold weather layers are in Anchorage waiting for me to return and really need them, so I'm looking again for somewhere warm to thaw out and type. My apartment is not warm. It is 3, so bars should be opening but the stools are still on the bar when I walk past Section 218 (and I don't know if they have wifi anyway). I start to go to Nowhere but I remember that the last few times I've had my computer there, the wifi has been screwed. Metro definitely has functional, if slow, wifi AND fireplaces. Propping up my feet in front of a fireplace becomes the most appealing thought in the world.
On the sidewalk and subway I remember that even worse than the glut of commuters pouring out of work into every form of public transportation at 5 is the glut of kids pouring out of school, though I have to say that despite popular opinion that the next generation are a bunch of rotten little bastards, lately the crowds of kids I've found myself sandwich amongst have been suprisingly polite even if boisterous. Of course when I get metro, I see the bartender leaving the bar and locking it behind him and walking off on some errand. Despite wanting desperately to toast my little piggies in front of a fire, it is too cold to wait and even if I am one of those people who shows up at the bar far earlier in the shift than any happy hour bartender likes, I am not going to be that guy who is waiting at the door when they walk up. So back to my neighborhood and my two originaly options.
I chose Cafe Nijasol. I haven't been there since it got cold, but it is small which in my cold-numbed mind equals cozy which = warm. Which is by then my number one requirement. It is a little further, but a block and a half isn't so far if I can warm up then. I can't. It is closed, according to the apologetic sign on the front just for today, but closed none the less. So back to Boulevard, which I am mainly skeptical of because it is a larger space with a big front window and where I have sat in there before is right by the door. I know I can sit in a different place, but I am that kind of creature of habit; if I like the place I sit one time, I want to sit in that same place again and irrationally assume that I won't like sitting somewhere else. I each of the places I have mentioned today I planned out where I would want to sit as I considered it. I know, kinda crazy.
It isn't closed. The guy behind the counter is friendly and doesn't look look like it is annoying for a business to have customers. There is a spot at the counter far enough from the door that I can take my coat off but not so far in the back that I feel quarentined. Most importantly, it is warm! For the first time today, I'm not cold. The coffee tastes fine to me (but I don't drink it very often so I won't pretend to have a useful opinion on this); the carrot artichoke soup is perfect.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
It's the little things...
I'm always blabbing about how the movie selection at sea is completely nonsensical. Which, of course, is not a complaint. Today one of the crew was letting me look through a collection of dvd's that he had with him and he explained that he had watched most of his dvd's a thousand times so he had borrowed his kids' collection. I thought this was great, since I'm a total sucker for kid's movies and can't wait to watch Chicken Little and Open Season sometime, but today I settled on Zoom: Academy for Superheroes.
Why not? I really didn't know anything about it except that it was big budget, so it should have good special effects and it has Tim Allen in it, so it shouldn't take itself too seriously. And I like super hero flicks and kids-kicking-ass movies are always the best. If you don't expect too much and just want to be entertained, this kind of thing can be perfect.
And really, based on the criteria that I just laid out, it was perfect. Special effects were spot on, the visual presentation was great, the story silly but you could roll with it, the movie made fun of itself and was slap-stick goofy. I really wanted to just like it, just enjoy the schlocky comic-ness of it, but a couple of things stuck in my craw and just ruined the whole damn thing (ok, didn't ruin it all, I still enjoyed it, but pissed me off enough that I'm sitting here tapping away about it).
It is always the little details that fuck things up. Just a couple of slightly different changes and it wouldn't have left any bad taste in my mouth. The one that was the tipping point is a stupid one; I'll concede that right here at the beginning. The whole schtick of the movie is there are these sort of weirdo outcast kids who have special powers who are brought together by the military to turn into this super team. One of the team members is the requisite hot redhead with psychic powers. You'd think I'm getting in a huff because this is such a blatant Jean Grey rip-off, but no, I just let that go. Cheesy "let's throw together a super team" movies are always ripping off classic comic heroes. It happens. But to introduce her to us, they show a scene in high school where the cheerleaders are treating her like shit and she makes the cafeteria food attack them, so all in all a completely satisfying scene. For the record, I don't hate cheerleaders, kind of actually love that they exist and plan on watching the Bring It On sequel that is in this same movie collection, but we all knew some cheerleaders who were straight-up bitches and who deserved more than anything to have cafeteria food explode all over them. So anyway, I like this girl from the start. The actress playing her is so unbelievably beautiful, but in a quiet kind of way and she plays the character well.
So everything goes great and they win (suprise!) and they have a stupid back to their daily life sequence. This was painful and idiotic enough as these things inherently are, but, aside from the little princess girl's bit which was kind of cute and didn't make you hate the director, the rest of them were nothing except cringe-inducing. Part of what made them so obnoxious is how they were obviously supposed to show how these outcast kids were now socialized and included and celebrated by their families and peers. Don't they get that we liked the kids because they were outcasts and weirdos? Show that they've learned to deal with their differences, but don't put the fat kid on a soccer team and DON'T DON'T DON'T turn the hot redheaded outcast into a fucking cheerleader!!!! Again, I have nothing against cheerleaders as a whole though I will concede that as a rule teenage girls who become cheerleaders tend towards the dark side. But high school is a dark time, we all tended towards the dark side in our own little ways back then. I just don't want my cheesy fun movies to feed up evil cheerleader nightmare bitches as the foil to the cool outcast that they treat like dirt and then after showing me how likable and fun she is and giving her super powers to show me an after-the-adventure sequence about how she is now using her superpowers as a cheerleader!!!! Let her and her hot super boyfriend be all cute and obnoxious teen-lovebirdy but don't turn her into the evil thing you started out pitting her as different from. Look, she'll show those bitches; oh look, now she is one. Good job, geniuses.
So I warned you that this was something stupid to get pissed off about, but I'm blogging about it. Blogging is all about petty rages over things that are too stupid to actually discuss in real life (though had I watched this movie with my friends instead of here in solitary confinement, I'd be having this conversation in realtime, but we can pretend like I am socially savvy enough to not waste actual quality time on such petty complaints). The second major complaint is perhaps a little more cogent.
So they assembled this super team and they bring them in and decide to have this stupid try-out bit. The whole try-out thing was dumb to start with since they had already shown us little a-day-in-the-life sequences for each of the ones who would be picked so it wasn't like we didn't already know who the super heroes were going to be. Still, it was kind of funny so I can't really hate on it being in the movie. I can hate on their casting for it. I'm not Mr. Super-PC. I get exhausted by political correctness as much as the next guy, but you can pull your head out of your ass and show a little bit of sense when you cast for shit like this. I don't care that the whole team was white kids. Big fucking deal, not the only superhero movie and every silly film doesn't have to be an equal opportunity event, but if you are going to have a team of lily white kids, do you have to have the casting sequence where every person not picked for the team isn't white and has lame-ass super powers? I mean, come on. So you want to have a little American Idol moment so Tim Allen can play Simon to Courtney Cox's Paula (and Chevy Chase's Randy Jackson), fine. Ha ha, get some laughs with it. And you want to have a team that is all white kids, again, I don't care. Fine, do it, I liked the kids they cast for the parts. Just make all the lame kids white too. Or most of the lame kids white... or even one of them! Because when you make all the lame kids black/hispanic/asian/mixed and all the super kids white, I can't just enjoy my cheesy damn movie and instead have to think about racial politics and if that is really what I wanted to be doing I'd have been watching The Color Purple (ok, so if they had The Color Purple on this boat, I would so be watching it instead but you know what I mean). This isn't a real super hero movie, leave the racial metaphors for the X-Men, just make your Tim Allen feel-good family fun flick. Having lot's of people of color for extras doesn't make the movie racially sensitive, it makes it racially distracting. It doesn't make me furious or troubled, it just makes me think whoever did the casting for the extras is an idiot.
So anyway, should you watch the movie? If you are stuck on a boat in the middle of the pacific ocean, completely cut off from society and facing a limited number of movie options like moi, then I heartily recommend it. You'll love it and it will be a nice break from Steven Segal flicks. If you are in a movie store and could pick anything you want? You could do worse and if you have the stomach for kid action movies, you'll probably enjoy it. It is worth watching just for the little blonde girl with super strength's outfits and temper tantrums.
Why not? I really didn't know anything about it except that it was big budget, so it should have good special effects and it has Tim Allen in it, so it shouldn't take itself too seriously. And I like super hero flicks and kids-kicking-ass movies are always the best. If you don't expect too much and just want to be entertained, this kind of thing can be perfect.
And really, based on the criteria that I just laid out, it was perfect. Special effects were spot on, the visual presentation was great, the story silly but you could roll with it, the movie made fun of itself and was slap-stick goofy. I really wanted to just like it, just enjoy the schlocky comic-ness of it, but a couple of things stuck in my craw and just ruined the whole damn thing (ok, didn't ruin it all, I still enjoyed it, but pissed me off enough that I'm sitting here tapping away about it).
It is always the little details that fuck things up. Just a couple of slightly different changes and it wouldn't have left any bad taste in my mouth. The one that was the tipping point is a stupid one; I'll concede that right here at the beginning. The whole schtick of the movie is there are these sort of weirdo outcast kids who have special powers who are brought together by the military to turn into this super team. One of the team members is the requisite hot redhead with psychic powers. You'd think I'm getting in a huff because this is such a blatant Jean Grey rip-off, but no, I just let that go. Cheesy "let's throw together a super team" movies are always ripping off classic comic heroes. It happens. But to introduce her to us, they show a scene in high school where the cheerleaders are treating her like shit and she makes the cafeteria food attack them, so all in all a completely satisfying scene. For the record, I don't hate cheerleaders, kind of actually love that they exist and plan on watching the Bring It On sequel that is in this same movie collection, but we all knew some cheerleaders who were straight-up bitches and who deserved more than anything to have cafeteria food explode all over them. So anyway, I like this girl from the start. The actress playing her is so unbelievably beautiful, but in a quiet kind of way and she plays the character well.
So everything goes great and they win (suprise!) and they have a stupid back to their daily life sequence. This was painful and idiotic enough as these things inherently are, but, aside from the little princess girl's bit which was kind of cute and didn't make you hate the director, the rest of them were nothing except cringe-inducing. Part of what made them so obnoxious is how they were obviously supposed to show how these outcast kids were now socialized and included and celebrated by their families and peers. Don't they get that we liked the kids because they were outcasts and weirdos? Show that they've learned to deal with their differences, but don't put the fat kid on a soccer team and DON'T DON'T DON'T turn the hot redheaded outcast into a fucking cheerleader!!!! Again, I have nothing against cheerleaders as a whole though I will concede that as a rule teenage girls who become cheerleaders tend towards the dark side. But high school is a dark time, we all tended towards the dark side in our own little ways back then. I just don't want my cheesy fun movies to feed up evil cheerleader nightmare bitches as the foil to the cool outcast that they treat like dirt and then after showing me how likable and fun she is and giving her super powers to show me an after-the-adventure sequence about how she is now using her superpowers as a cheerleader!!!! Let her and her hot super boyfriend be all cute and obnoxious teen-lovebirdy but don't turn her into the evil thing you started out pitting her as different from. Look, she'll show those bitches; oh look, now she is one. Good job, geniuses.
So I warned you that this was something stupid to get pissed off about, but I'm blogging about it. Blogging is all about petty rages over things that are too stupid to actually discuss in real life (though had I watched this movie with my friends instead of here in solitary confinement, I'd be having this conversation in realtime, but we can pretend like I am socially savvy enough to not waste actual quality time on such petty complaints). The second major complaint is perhaps a little more cogent.
So they assembled this super team and they bring them in and decide to have this stupid try-out bit. The whole try-out thing was dumb to start with since they had already shown us little a-day-in-the-life sequences for each of the ones who would be picked so it wasn't like we didn't already know who the super heroes were going to be. Still, it was kind of funny so I can't really hate on it being in the movie. I can hate on their casting for it. I'm not Mr. Super-PC. I get exhausted by political correctness as much as the next guy, but you can pull your head out of your ass and show a little bit of sense when you cast for shit like this. I don't care that the whole team was white kids. Big fucking deal, not the only superhero movie and every silly film doesn't have to be an equal opportunity event, but if you are going to have a team of lily white kids, do you have to have the casting sequence where every person not picked for the team isn't white and has lame-ass super powers? I mean, come on. So you want to have a little American Idol moment so Tim Allen can play Simon to Courtney Cox's Paula (and Chevy Chase's Randy Jackson), fine. Ha ha, get some laughs with it. And you want to have a team that is all white kids, again, I don't care. Fine, do it, I liked the kids they cast for the parts. Just make all the lame kids white too. Or most of the lame kids white... or even one of them! Because when you make all the lame kids black/hispanic/asian/mixed and all the super kids white, I can't just enjoy my cheesy damn movie and instead have to think about racial politics and if that is really what I wanted to be doing I'd have been watching The Color Purple (ok, so if they had The Color Purple on this boat, I would so be watching it instead but you know what I mean). This isn't a real super hero movie, leave the racial metaphors for the X-Men, just make your Tim Allen feel-good family fun flick. Having lot's of people of color for extras doesn't make the movie racially sensitive, it makes it racially distracting. It doesn't make me furious or troubled, it just makes me think whoever did the casting for the extras is an idiot.
So anyway, should you watch the movie? If you are stuck on a boat in the middle of the pacific ocean, completely cut off from society and facing a limited number of movie options like moi, then I heartily recommend it. You'll love it and it will be a nice break from Steven Segal flicks. If you are in a movie store and could pick anything you want? You could do worse and if you have the stomach for kid action movies, you'll probably enjoy it. It is worth watching just for the little blonde girl with super strength's outfits and temper tantrums.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
I hate the andy griffith show.
Sure it is a great show. Funny enough, silly characters, whatever. But my entire life it has come on at least twice a day at my parents house on the only channel that consistantly comes in clearly, and something about it's cheerful homey joviality makes my hair stand on end.
Maybe I could stand the hokey sweetness of the show if... no, never mind. I can't take it. I can't watch it.
Maybe I could stand the hokey sweetness of the show if... no, never mind. I can't take it. I can't watch it.
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