Myers (former Clinton Press Secretary- remember when press secretary didn’t equal dancing clueless monkey assface?) on the Favreau nastiness

“I can’t stop thinking about this picture, and I confess I find it really upsetting. And, no, it’s not because I don’t have a sense of humor. I like to think I have a well-earned reputation for often irreverent, sometimes ill-advised humor. But I’m not laughing now”

And to Obama- how many of your lackeys are going to keep making sexism part of your schtick? Cause I’m bored to tears by it. Really, dudes. Bush was/is HORRIBLE for women, but at least he never treated his attempts to put us little ladies back in our barefoot and pregnant place as a humorous endeavor.

Some of you may have heard about Republic Windows & Doors. For those who haven’t, here’s the short version:

Republic Windows and Doors went out of business, giving their employees only 3 days notice instead of the federally required 60 days. Then it came out that Bank of America, the great socialist institution known recently for getting a piece of the cushy federal bailout, told the company that they wouldn’t extend their credit so they could pay the workers the 60 days of wages plus back vacation and sick pay that was owed to them.

So the workers took over the factory and refused to leave until they got their pay. Yay! Workers of the world unite!

But now the state of Illinois is refusing to do business with Bank of America until the extend the credit and pay the workers. From Il governor:

On the one hand, powerful special interest get the money to bail them out, the banks, and yet the purpose of that money was supposed to be to provide a line of credit to businesses like this to keep workers working and keep people employed, and yet the Bank of America has yet to step up and say they’re going to be helpful to this company

Hey BofA- you fuckers! Please eat shit and die. And to the Republic workers, I am right there with ya.

I had one of the most happy making phone conversations today with Ruth.

Ring!

Me: Hey sugar plumb! What’s up?

Ruth: Do you want leftover veggie stew for dinner?

Me: Oh hell yes!

Ruth: Ok, I’m going to pick up some rice. Oh you need rice for fried rice too, don’t ya?

Me: Oh yeah.

Ruth: Do you need anything else?

Me: A winning lottery ticket. Oh and soda. I will clean the nastiest thing in the world for you if you buy me soda.

Ruth: Sure thing.

Now this may sound like a simple conversation between roomies who happen to like each other, but for me this is the first time since I was little that the day to day responsibility of dinner isn’t always mine. And Ruth has an esp like sense for when dinner is just too much for me to deal with.

Dinner seems like a simple thing. People gotta eat. They like to eat. But feeding yourself (and a growing boy-man, and often a large hairy boyfriend) is not exactly simple. Especially when you are super poor. I probably spend an hour everyday just planning for meals.

First- there’s the money part. Ok so I have $40 bucks till the 15th, I also have $13 on a Safeway giftcard, but Safeway is an hour out of the way by bus, plus I need an extra $3.75 to get there and back (by bus). Let’s see, $40. I need 8 days worth of dinners plus breakfast and lunch for the weekend. That’s $5 a day. Not gonna make it on that. Fuck. So let’s see what I can do that will get us close.

Second- What have we already got? There’s a leftover ham bone in the freezer. $2 worth of split peas and you’ve got soup. That’s 2 dinners. There is the dregs of a pork roast (mainly fat with a bit of crackly bits in it). If Ruth buys rice then I just need a couple of bucks worth of veggies and we’ve got fried rice. That will only do one dinner. But we’ve got 3 down and I’m at about $10 bucks. Oh and there’s frozen chicken enchiladas in the freezer. That’s 4 dinners. And leftover veggie stew tonight. That’s 5.

And that is as far ahead as i can think right now. And I’m ignoring one big problem. I need lunch and caffeine. Ugh!!!!!!!!!

Now having money makes this problem only slightly better. You still have to spend way too much time thinking about, planning, and shopping for food. It is tedious. Yet it is a job that most women do everyday for their families without anyone giving a second thought to the time and effort that goes into it. I mean we eat every day. Something that you do everyday shouldn’t be that difficult. But I have been known to snap when the Kid asks me for the millionth time at 3pm “What’s for dinner?”

Sometimes, I just want to live in a world where food shoots magically out of a tube and no one ever has to do dishes or scrub pots. In lieu of that I would like credit reflected in my social security check when I am older for all the hours that I have spent ensuring that the next generation doesn’t die of malnutrition. Just cause it’s women’s work doesn’t mean it’s not real work.

Ouyang Dan asked me today if I ever imagine the voices of of bloggers while I read them. Sometimes I do, if they have a particularly strong and personal writing style, but not always.

It turns out OD does hear voices (hahahaha) and that my writing voice is very stern and serious.

HA!

In real life- I sound like Minnie Mouse on crack. Or at least I think so. I spent years as a wee girl in speech therapy because i was so nervous when speaking that my voice would squeak and they were afraid I’d break a vocal cord if I kept talking that high. I’m not, by any means, a nervous speaker now, but my voice still sounds like a little girl’s. Which is one of the reasons for the smoking and drinking, I’m trying to get a boozey, raspy, grown up sound to my voice.

So peeps- what about you would shock us on the internet?

But I love Alison Janey as a sodomizing prop 8 proponent! And The Kid looks like a miniature Jack Black.

A letter sent to Dan Savage at the Stranger (yes- Savage is a doochenozzle):

I was wondering if you or any of your readers could exaplin why so many women are so defensive with compliments.

I’ve on several occasions been at the store and have seen some very nice looking women of all size, shapes, color, age, I think you get what I’m so meaning, and I’ve said to them you have great hips, or other tastefully ways of complimenting them and it seems that a lot of them are offended by it. Now I’m a guy who really likes women, Period, I’m happily married 30 yrs. And my wife and I both flirt and expect it to go no further and if it is invited by the one flirted to we kindly decline as has happened only once to each of us and we flirt even when with each other. We mean no harm in this and we feel if someone is looking at the one your with they must be pretty good + you should be happy about it. We have often complimented the same sex as we are and see nothing wrong with it but it’s all the same.

If anyone can answer this it would be appreciated. Enjoy your work.

Roy

Here’s the thing Roy, women were not put on earth for you to oggle. Our sole reason for existence is not to be fucked. Actually, we spend a whole shitload of our lives doing other things.

So when you go out of your way to creepily leer at some woman and then get offended when she thinks you’re a misogynistic asswipe for “complimenting” her by letting her know exactly which part of her body you are going to use for wank fodder later, you’re the wrong one. Not the woman who is acting rationally to a strange dude turning her into body parts to rub one out to.

And this holds true to you fuckwads who think you are being friendly when you tell women you don’t know to “smile”. I have a very carefully crafted, stompy city girl walk and scowl that I do JUST so I don’t accidentally encourage unwanted attention from every shitface on the street who wants to comment on my tits or ass. I am not smiling because I don’t want you to think that I like you. It’s a conscious thing, my not smiling.

I have never, not even once, gone out with, flirted with, or given my number to, a random wankstain who thought that “complimenting” me as a stranger was the way to my heart. I don’t know any women who have. So let’s end that little fallacy now. “Complimenting” strange women is viewed by most of us as the threatening behavior of a dude who wants to wear our skin later. So stop it.

Is this parochialism, this timorousness and lack of imagination, inevitable in a period like our own, when the unknown looms menacingly and one natural reaction is certainly to draw back, to find refuge in the familiar? Here, the New Deal years can be instructive.

Neo anythings have not yet proven themselves to be good. NeoCons are simply old Cons who want even less responsibility for the messes they create. NeoLibs are no better, having been slapped silly by the invisible hand of the market into believing in it’s all powerful righteousness.

So why is Obama so keen on replaying old broken NeoLib records? If shock doctrine capitalism is really the most effective weapon of economic change, why can’t we use NOW to New Deal ourselves into more stable and just future? Why are we going to go back to methods that have gotten us into this problem to begin with? Why is a man so determined to be audacious so timid when it comes to real audacity?

We need a New Deal. We need the income inequality between the vast numbers of us and the tiny numbers of them (with money & power) to be fixed. We need jobs. And healthcare. And education. And to fix the environment and the banking system and so much more.

So what’s with the same old same old from the Obama camp? Why are we using some of the architects of the current crisis to fix the problems they created (and that many refuse to acknowledge were even problems to begin with).

Please inform your pharmacists that they cannot make up laws to keep women from trying to buy Plan B from your stores.

I have been a long time Walgreens cutsomer. It’s been at least 5 years since I’ve had a prescription filled anywhere else actually. And even though the asshole pharmacist was in Mississippi and I am in Washington (where, ftr, Hot Pharmacist has NEVER given me a hard time about picking up birth control, Plan B, or valium for that matter) I refuse to support companies that will not support my right to control my own body. Just ask Target how long it took for me to go back to shopping there after their own little birth control problems.

So Walgreens, you need to get on a writing up a national store policy on how to treat customers looking to buy Plan B (here’s a hint, treat em just like customers trying to buy anything else) and bring the smack down on moralizing pharmacists who try to make up their own laws on waiting periods. Or I am done. I don’t care how dark and luscious Hot Pharmacist is.

It’s that time of year again. Turkey time.

I am not one for most great American holidays. I’d rather spend the 4th of July in another country. And Thanksgiving, as a homage to the founders of this country pisses me off. Yeah you wanna celebrate the coming together of Natives and Europeans you fuckers, kiss my ass.

Except, every single holiday I had with my family as a child was horrible. My mother would turn what was supposed to be a happy gathering into a nightmare of pain for me. There was never a Christmas or Thanksgiving where I didn’t end up in tears, hiding in my bedroom and wishing I was dead. We won’t even go into how many years my birthday was either flat out forgotten or just plain ignored (I made myself a hot dog bun with grape jelly on it and a candle one year, just cause I knew I wasn’t getting cake).

When I became an adult, I tried to remedy that. First I started by hiding at a friend’s house. But a few years ago, right before I stopped speaking to my mother, I decided that I was going to make my own Thanksgiving. NO ONE was going to cry or feel the need to hide in their room. I have dinner late enough that friends who have family in town can eat their family meals at 2 or 3 or 5 and still make it to my civilized dinner time of 8. There would be booze and music and fabulous food and it would be a party. Because the one thing I am most thankful for in the world are the awesome friends I have that almost make up for my orphan status and I want them to have damn good time.

Then I met Ruth. We bonded over a college government class with THE MOST AWESOME INSTRUCTOR EVER! She has all these food allergies that make it impossible to cook for her (impossible- hah!) and at the time had a vegan hubby. So we have done Thanksgiving together for the last 4 years and I managed to learn how to make a giant dinner that the meat eaters, the vegans, the veggies, the celiacs, and anyone else who just can’t eat things because they will die can enjoy.

I love the challenge. I love that these people who spend so much of their lives trying to work around what everyone else is eating can just come into my house and know that they are safe. And then they can get to the real reason I cook, the ego stroking ohing and ahing and “Oh MY God this is the best thing I ever put in my mouth” sounds.

Carbfest (as Thanksgiving is called in my house) is a party. Someone once described it as the most beautiful, tasty food ever served by barefoot bohemians. I think that does it. I stress about the day. It’s expensive. It’s a lot of hard work. I worry every year that no one will show up (shhhh- I am not admitting to momentary bouts of self doubt). But no one has ever cried, or felt left out, or been treated unkindly during my holiday fete. That is miles away from my childhood.

So tomorrow I will be cooking up dinner for 15ish people, with more people coming for dessert and drinks after. Ruth and I are now roomies, so this is the first year that we will be cooking the whole thing together. She’s working the grill to make some damn fine roast veggies, Bernard is making oysters rockafeller, and I got a 22 pound turkey waiting to be soaked in a liter of wine.

No one will fight, no one will cry, no one will have to hide (unless they are just too drunk to deal with the barefoot bohemians). And when my kid grows up, family-ish holidays won’t be something to fear, but something fun and awesome to look forward to.

Cheers!

So I was sleeping last night with the puppy hogging the entire fucking bed. But wevs, I was asleep.

And then I wasn’t asleep. Because the power kept going on and of and on and off and every time it did either, my cell phone would beep at me (it was plugged into the wall and charging). So I am woken up by my phone beeping and the most bizarre scratching, rubbing, chewing, noisy movement coming from the attic space behind my closet.

So I laid there for many many hours. At first I was convinced that there is a squatter living in our attic. But the more I listened, the more I became sure of what the noise was.

My friends, there is a masturbating bear living in my attic, and every time he rubs one out he messes with the electrical lines. If you heard this noise, you would say “ahhh it does sound exactly like a masturbating bear”.

The Puppy and Bernardo both seem to think it’s either rats or raccoons. Rats are easy enough to deal with, raccoons are another matter. These are urban raccoons, they come packing heat. The Puppy (since he owes me big time for opening his mouth and saying some incredibly stupid shit yesterday) has agreed to go into the attic tonight and take on the bear/raccoon/rat problem.

Wish him luck. I think a masturbating bear would be alot easier to deal with than a ghetto raccoon with a handgun.