W-O-M-A-N!

Dream Girl

You scored 73% Estrogen, 89% Grace, 84% Sexiness, and 68% Intelligence!

You have a realistic sense of your femininity so that you can still hold rational conversations about things other than hair. Plus, you're sexy and kind to everyone you meet. When you walk into a room, people are sure to look and smile. You go, girl!

Judge Not...

You know, if you're going to start targeting activist judges... here's a good place to start.

I wonder how many Christian homeschoolers are agitating to reverse this decision?

I Love You, Christopher X. Brodeur

Christopher X. Brodeur is running for mayor. I am totally voting for him.

I bet even Kender would vote for Christopher X. Brodeur!

And then, I am going to ask him how I can spearhead the secession of New York City, creating the United Boroughs of New York. I will personally join the New York city militia.

All through my American history classes, I never understood on a visceral level why the American revolution was a big deal. Even when Gail Nolan, my 11th grade U.S. history teacher would smash her pointer over and over on the blackboard while we were learning about Patrick Henry, screaming like Joan Crawford campaigning against wire hangers, "GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH!" to a room of half-asleep, slightly embarrassed students, I didn't quite get it.

Now I think I do.

With every new and depressing news item, or every omission and even more depressing news item, my first reaction has been "Can we LEAVE?" and planning a happy quiet life in Amsterdam or Podensac.

But now I just feel outrage that my country is going down the toilet thanks to the unholy circle jerk of Focus on The Family, the neo-cons, and the general idiocy of most people. This is my land just as much as, if not more than theirs. I actually believe in the Constitution and I am not so deeply unformed a person that I need to concern myself with what my neighbors do in bed, or that everyone else should be forced to swallow the Gepetto-esque worldview on Invisible Eschatological Grandpa.

It's angering me enough that I'm ready to pick up a gun and scream "Get the hell off my land!"

You think I'm kidding.

Sickening

I can't believe people are as stupid as they are to support this lying monster.

It's one thing to be a fiscal conservative. It's another to be a pudding brained hypocrite swallowing doublespeak like you were the Japanese guy who wins the hot dog eating contest every year.

These are Bush's remarks during a press conference in Denmark:

Q What about the Saddam photo? Does that have any [affect on the growing anti-American sentiment/ protests in the Middle East]

THE PRESIDENT: Well, you asked me whether or not that would inspire people. You know, I don't think a photo inspires murderers. I think they're inspired by an ideology that is so barbaric and backwards that it's hard for many in the Western world to comprehend how they think. But I would just remind people, if you want to know how ideologically grim their vision of the world is, just remember the Taliban. They said, if you don't agree with our religious views you'll be prosecuted; if you're a woman who seeks freedom, you'll be beaten. So these people are motivated by a vision of the world that is backward and barbaric.

Look in the mirror, you fundamentalist neo-con asshole.

I could go on about the ten+ substantiated reports of Koran desecration recorded in major media going back to 2002. I could rant about the hypocrisy of the White House's denunciation of Newsweek's article when they have murdered over 100,000 people based on jerrymandered "intelligence."

But I'm just too tired. And I don't understand how ANYONE who calls themselves Christian can support this guy. If you are out there, please explain it to me.

Sad irony that given that all I want is to be a housewife and write and play music and homeschool my kids to be intelligent loving people that the world seems completely against me, against us.

Because at this point, you're either with us -- or you really are with the terrorists.

Lillet

God Breast America

Okay.

Check out this article in the New York Times about the DILEMMA breast-augmented women face, now that most high end designer clothes aren't cut for their new figures!

In a way, this embodies a particularly American "you-can-have-it-all!" variety of cognitive dissonance, not unlike the old Enjoli ads

in which our heroine brags how she can bring home the bacon AND fry it up in a pan AND never let you forget you're a man! In the glorious 21st century,

in the U.S. of A. why can't women be Pamela Anderson AND Audrey Hepburn? (Umm, because it's ontologically impossible???)

Does anyone else find the following quote as schizoid as I do?

THERE are worse fashion dilemmas than the one confronting Heidi Pollert, 30, a marketing executive in Houston, who can afford suits from Prada and MaxMara but must spend a small fortune on alterations because her bust is too big for the cut of most designer clothes.

"I like well-fitted clothing with straight lines, a real classic look," said Ms. Pollert, who works for a wealth management company and tends to dress more conservatively than one might expect of a woman who has had breast implants that increased her cup size to 34F. "I'm bigger around the top, but I'm small everywhere else," she said. "So I have to have everything tailored, especially jackets."

WAIT A MINUTE -- If you are so concerned about straight, "classic" lines, why are you A 34F ON PURPOSE?? especially if you are "small everywhere else?"

There is nothing wrong with being a 34F. But do you see what I'm getting at?

I have always been pretty rabidly anti-breast implants, more for aesthetics than anything else -- I tend to think that natural boobs of any size are prettier than 90% of most augmented poitrines. I think it is sad that my daughter (and/or my son, for that matter) may grow up in a culture where fake boobs are the rule rather than the exception.

No surprise, either, that the U.S. is all fixated on boobies, with more implants than any other country save, maybe Venezuela -- yet we see Janet Jackson's on TV for two seconds and the whole country has a grand mal seizure. Too bad America isn't more of, say, an ass man (and I don't mean like Dr. Hager! )

Ashbloem And Lillet Write A Sestina!

My friend Ashbloem and I wrote this over e-mail at work.

The sestina is my favorite poetic form, I think. [Trey's marriage proposal was a sestina. I keep it in my wallet. No one but me will ever read it, except maybe our children, someday.]

Speaking of children, Amanda Witt (who sent me a very nice e-mail in response to my post and is quite funny and nice) has a great interview with her son's superhero alter ego today, Komodo Man. Score one more for homeschooling! I love you, Komodo Man!

One Of The Fifty Things That Made Me Cry Today

From here:

"The four-chambered heart of the average humpback whale weighs about 430 pounds (195 kg) - about as much as three average adult human beings. "

So You've Got Green Eyes

Okay. I have downed a bit too much of my namesake (but what is the opposite of namesake? Not a clue.) But what else is new?

My advice to you, gentle reader, is: Do Not Get Stoned Before Going to the Gym.

This morning I woke up incredibly tense, and the apartment was totally freezing. I made coffee which made me dry-heave after I drank it. I put on my sweatpants and Trey's big sweatshirt with the zipper. Still freezing. I thought about taking a hot bath. I had promised myself I'd go to the gym, that I would go to Pilates before brunch with Miss B. I felt a big paranoia coming on, and wanted to get back in bed with Trey but the one thing I can't ever bear to do is wake him up. Ever. I am incredibly protective of his sleep, because his hours are so crazy. Last Sunday I locked myself out of the house at 10:30 a.m. and killed time wandering all over Brooklyn until almost 2 so he got enough sleep.

So I smoked some pot and took a hot bath. I knew it was the only thing that would relax me enough to get me to Pilates.

Except, when you are stoned, the walk to the gym is very complicated AND you are likely to a) forget your mat and b) forget that Pilates is at 2, not 12:30. But the treadmill was super fun!

I then met Miss B. for brunch, which was very nice indeed. And then on my way home I ran into Trey, out for a walk, and it was as happy a surprise as finding a winning Powerball ticket. We came home and had a nice afternoon and he cooked me this incredible dinner before going to work and I read him silly things off the web, in particular, the blog that Ashbloem turned me onto: www.dooce.com. I have been reading backwards, crying at all the baby parts.

I am the luckiest woman in the world, having my husband. Not only is he incredibly patient, he seems to really enjoy being so. For example -- he thought it was funny when I insisted that we order the "Orange Glo/KABOOM! Bathroom Cleaner Set" RIGHT THEN because the T.V. said so. (Which arrived TODAY! and the shower has never been so clean!) He built me a closet and never gets mad when I buy dresses on eBay.

And he pays attention. One way I know this is that he knew immediately the correct color of my eyes. I have very green eyes. Not mojito green or moss green, but an exact melange of algae, Jell-O, and paper money that many casual observers write off as blue. The worst being my own mother. When I was 14 and my military ID had to be renewed, she filled out the card as my being a blue-eyed blonde. Which, being a dead ringer for Shirley Manson, is plainly wrong.

I hope he is having an okay night at work. I miss my husband a lot when he works. I can't imagine what it must be like to have your husband or wife away for weeks or months. What it is like having your partner -- in Iraq or something, when you have no idea when or if they are coming back?? My grandmother's husband was in WWII and gone for two years. Unbelievable. He died in 1997 and she last summer. We looked alike, she and I. It is a very humbling thing to be caring for a 94 year-old woman, to be bathing and dressing her, and to be familiar with the most intimate parts of her body, to be staring right into the architecure of a 94-year-old woman's private parts and realizing not only "that's where my dad came from" but "oh my god, our pussies are built the EXACT SAME WAY and I am looking at myself 3 kids and 60 years later!" Every day she had pictures of my grrandfather next to her, and would wave goodnight to him before she went to sleep. One of her favorite stories she would tell me is how in love they were until the morning he never woke up. Just a few days before he had pretended to chase her into the garage but she made him stop -- she didn't want to be making out in front of the postman.

Man, I hope we all get to be as happy as my grandparents were! I hope everyone gets to be so happy. You know what? If it meant that everyone got to be happy with someone else -- if it meant that everyone who missed someone got to be with them all night -- I would pay a lot more in taxes. Wouldn't you?

arrgh.

L.

This Is The Fucking Greatest

[overwhelmed with youth maximalism and healthy ambitions]


http://www.borenius.lv/en/office/team/index.php?id=12

I hope one day someone can say this of me: "Good clothes, fast cars, smart books, exquisite red wine, hot and terribly black coffee and long evenings… she would build her life upon a quote of B. Russell's: 'This has been my life. I have found it worth living and would gladly live it again if a chance was offered to me.' “ !

Mind Your Own Beeswax

So, I guess everybody knows about that guy who got arrested for asking Tr[Ann]y Coulter what her thoughts were on heterosexual marriages where the husband and wife in question only have anal sex.

Now, aside from the fact that the guy had to go making obscene gestures, etc., and the issues of police brutality etc. (check out the eyewitness report on DailyKos): really, this is an excellent question.

More than outraged, I am simply embarrassed that I live in a country where THAT MANY people are freaked out about homosexuality, and human sexuality, period. Open Letter to America: If you are someone who thinks that what two guys or girls do with each other is a bigger concern than

a) A lying, impeachable President
b) Poverty
c) Global Warming
d) Corporate Criminality
e) Wal-Mart
f) Rampant Outsourcing and Job Loss
g) Rudeness

Well, you are an idiot and/ or a closet case. Really. WHO CARES? It's not like sodomy has some Bradburian butterfly effect, where an actor/waiter/whatever blows some guy in Chelsea and the next day a meteorite hits the earth! Please.

I was thinking about this on the subway today. I was watching everyone on my train and thinking that each person has some kind of sex life, and do I really need to know about it? and no matter how distasteful or exciting or lame I would find it, were I to know whatever they were doing or not doing or yearning to do -- it wouldn't affect me, as long as it was consensual. But sexually frustrated people are people who fuck shit up for other people!

I mean, do you guys out there really care about our sex life? Besides Mika, who just wants to know everything about everyone's sex life? ;) The only thing people should get upset about is things like public health issues, and sex ed and condom awareness takes care of that. That's better than the obfuscatory bullshit that the religious right is pushing, which has contributed heavily to the AIDS epidemic in Africa. The cognitive dissonance afoot these days is pathological. These are the same people braying about Terri Schiavo, but they'd rather let millions of people die from a terrible disease because condoms are somehow wrong? You know, I'd like to think that God isn't a fucking IDIOT, you know? If you think that that course of action is a good idea, well.... umm, you're an idiot or a closet case.

But here's one thing I will say. I have had sex with a fair number of women. And you know what? It really isn't that different. There isn't some rain of brimstone that falls from the sky when you go down on another girl, or red lights flashing on and off, or that Twin Peaks midget suddenly comes wandering through the room speaking backwards intoning "...lleh ot gniog era uoy ....". It's just what it is, depending on who it is. I swear, it's fundamentally not that different.

So America, before getting all bunched up about the splinter lodged in *my* ass, try removing the beam from your own.