I feel as much enthusiasm for the 4th of July as I feel for Mother’s day. If I had my wish, I would spend every Independence day in another country, but alas, my financial situation leaves me here today.

July 4th is a day where people who spend the rest of the year not doing a damn thing to improve our country whip out flags and declare their American exceptionalism for all the world to see. It’s embarrassing and misleading. It’s a groundswell of sentimentality and false pride. It’s a day when I see the worst of American attitudes shot through the air like the firecrackers that will blast tonight.

Patriotism is not a flag decal on your car, or a barbeque with your friends. It is not a well-timed fireworks display set to pro-American music. It is not supporting a criminal who happens to be your president no matter what. It is not ignoring the lowest of our citizenry, those who have the American dream but no way to access it, or spewing hate about those who are not citizens but want to be. But that’s what we celebrate as patriotism today.

Real patriotism, the kind that Jefferson, my favorite of the founding fathers, knew about means struggle. It means holding your government accountable. It means striving for those inalienable rights that all men people are endowed with, regardless of what their citizenship is.

Patriotism means supporting our troops by bringing them home. I had this discussion with a marine a few weeks ago. He gave the standard line about how his job is to fight to the death to defend my rights to freedom. I told him that since our troops job is to fight the wars we send them on without question, it is my duty to make sure that those wars are only fought for a justifiable and unavoidable reason.

We, the people of the United States, have a duty to make sure that any wars fought on our behalf are just. We have the responsibility of ensuring that the leaders who declare war, who send troops into harms way are doing it for the right reason with a solid plan. That is the pact we have with every single soldier. We know that they will risk their lives for us without question, so we need to ask the questions for them.

We like to think about the things that our country gives us, like freedom of speech or the right to bear arms. We rarely think about what our obligations as part of this country are. We may think they are limited to things like voting or paying taxes. The least of us can do those things, but we are supposed to do more than that. I don’t think a fireworks display fulfills those obligations.

I love the idea of this country. I love the potential our country has for greatness. I believe with every idealistic inch of my soul that we can create a society based on fairness and equality and I am willing to do the hard work to get there. That is patriotism. What we have instead is nationalism masquerading as patriotism, blind obedience to authority, big showy displays of national feeling, and unquestioning belief that America is great without opening our eyes to the very not great reality around us.

I spent last night at the Comet, a place where I always end up making out with inappropriate boys and talking porn (last night was no exception- hi Andy, hi F., hi Swedish guy whose name I never caught).

Last night, in addition to the make out sessions, I enjoyed something completely out of character for me- a hard thrashing hair metal band called Skeletor. I knew it was going to be good when the lead singer, dressed in tight black jeans and a leather & fleece viking vest, pulled out a sword and held it over his head in triumphant excaliber style. Upon seeing the sword, someone joked about it being a Lord of the Rings

Via Pandagon is a story about a girl who got a serious infection in her naughty bits because of waxing and shaving, not once but twice! (Click through links at Pandagon to see the most horrific picture- not for the faint hearted.)

She presented to the ER with not only “grossly swollen” external genitalia, and pain so extreme that she had to be put under general anesthetic just so her physician could perform a gynecologic exam. She was so swollen that, according to the legend to Figure 1 (which you can find online, as the article is freely available), “she was unable to pass urine, and the vaginal space was obliterated by edema.”

Whenever removal of body hair (or most beauty rituals performed by women for that matter) comes up in feminist discussion, there is always a good portion that involves women explaining that they conform to those standards but only because it is their choice, not because they want to live up to the patriarchal ideal. Maybe that’s true, but I doubt it. We are all victims of the patriarchy and even the most strident of us feminists have issues that aren’t quite resolved.

For example, I shave the legs and pits. I will tell people that I do it because I love how my legs feel right after I shave them, and that is true. But if that was the whole truth, then I wouldn’t have a problem wearing skirts when I haven’t shaved them. I wear skirts almost everyday, but not if there is stubble on my legs. That has nothing to do with how it feels to me physically, but it is because the ideal has been ingrained into my brain and I haven’t been able to break that bit of social programming.

As for shaving the girly bits, about once a year or so I forget how much pain it causes me and I go bald. It feels really nice for about 12 hours, and then I remember why it is that I don’t do this. For weeks after there is itchy regrowth, ingrown hairs that become infected, and without it’s protective covering, the bits become prone to yeast infections (I know- oversharing, deal with it). The women I know who do this all the time don’t deny these problems, but they see it as a “cleanliness” issue. For some reason it has gotten into people’s heads that pubic hair= dirty, smelly pussy. I wonder if these people have ever heard of water and it’s magic cleansing powers. They also claim that you get used to it after a while. but I’ve been shaving my legs since I was 12 and they still get itchy with ingrown hairs. How long would I have to endure the much worse discomfort of shaving the bits? 20 years of shaving the legs hasn’t made me used to it.

And that brings us to circumcision (on males, that is).

The guys in my family aren’t circumcised, and that includes my son. Maybe because of my paternal grandmother’s Eastern European heritage they missed the whole 1950’s push towards circumcision as a hygiene practice. But they aren’t. And when the Kid was born 12 years ago, and still sometimes today, I get no end of grief about how wrong I was not to circumcise him. Here’s an example of a conversation I once had with a guy about this:

Guy: That is so wrong.

Me: Why? We’re not Jewish. Why should I have had him snipped?

Guy: Because it’s dirty. Think of all the crud that gets stuck in there.

Me: Oh my god, your totally right! Think of all the crud that gets stuck under your fingernails. You should cut off your hands instead of, you know, grabbing some soap and water!

This is how nearly every argument I’ve had with people over the circumcision thing has gone. This whole conversation could apply to waxing the bits for hygiene purposes too (though for washing girly bits, if you must use soap it should a be mild, glycerin- free version. Consider that your sex parts tip for the day).

The girl in the original story, the one whose “vaginal space was obliterated”, after the first infection could not possibly have been doing it because it felt good. She was willing to risk her life a second time for a pornified ideal. Not just discomfort, but toxic shock, possibly lethal. We might not all have reactions that bad, and none of us are completely free from behaviors that are socially programmed and we all have to examine those behaviors to at least understand why we have those behaviors and decide if it might be healthier to change them.

(note: I know there are studies that say circumcision may lower the transmission rates of HIV in males. But so do condoms. I think I’ll teach the Kid about safe sex practices and if he decides he wants to get circumcised as an adult to lower his HIV risk- I’ll smack him on the head once with a box of trogans and then let him do what he wants. )

From the story I wrote about here

I match up with Leonardo da Vinci and Rudolph Valentino

Da Vinci- not so much on the physical hotness, but I would have done naughty bad things to his brain. Oh and just think about the kind of devices I could have inspired him to invent. Hubba hubba.

Now Rudolph, there’s a hottie I could totally get behind (or under or on top of). Yummy yummy.

Screaming banshee Ann Coulter appeared on on Hardball with Chris Matthews and Elizabeth Edwards called in to ask Ann to stop the personal attacks on her family. Elizabeth was way more polite than I would have been (see my NC17 rating). After all, Coulter has called her husband a “faggot” and accused him of driving around with a bumper sticker that read “Ask me about my son’s death in a horrific car accident.” I would have torn Ann to pieces with my bare hands, but Elizabeth is way more classy than I am.

Here’s my favorite bit from Elizabeth:

I haven’t talked to John about this call. I’m making the call as a mother. I’m the mother of that boy who died. My children participate — these young people behind you are the age of my children. You’re asking them to participate in a dialogue that is based on hatefulness and ugliness instead of on the issues, and I don’t think that’s serving them or this country very well.

Video and a full transcript here

And just a few other reasons to love her:

Marriage Equality

Putting up with the awful interview style of Katie Couric when being grilled about breast cancer (funny thing is- Katie didn’t give up her job when her husband had colon cancer. Was she putting family first or her ambition?)

And rumor has it that she is way more on the ball with the internet stuff than her hubby (who says girls don’t like technology- puh-lease!)

The neighborhood I grew up in is on fire. Rumors are that the high school I went to burned down. The pond area where we used to sneak off to drink beer has been burned, so has the place where I once had a picnic and got more than a little frisky with my high school boyfriend, until we got chased off by a bear. I wonder if the bear escaped the fire. I wonder how long bears live, it’s been 15 years.

I remember one summer when I was a kid where we had fires burning all around the basin. The sky was pink and gray from smoke and everything smelled like a fireplace in winter because of all the burning pine. There was only one road out of the basin that wasn’t consumed by fire. This fire is worse.

People are being evacuated to the Rec Center. It’s weird to think that the place where I took swimming and ballet lessons is now housing a bunch of families whose houses have been turned to ash and cinder. It’s also weird to read about people running towards the Y, a shopping center at the south end of town where I worked for an entire two weeks as a waitress and realized I never wanted to be paid minimum wage to deal with other people’s food again. I thought that particular place was hell, the idea of people running towards it seems wrong in so many ways.

I hope the fire gets controlled soon, for the sake of the people and the bear.

Kid: Mom! I need scissors!

Me: Why?

Kid: Someone covered our dumpster in fliers to get people to join the military. I want to cut them down.

Me: Do you want scissors- or do you want a Sharpi so you can graffiti them?

Kid: Oh, I totally want the Sharpis.

Me: That’s my little agitprop-er!