It’s big enough to be cosmopolitan but small enough to be neighborly. My whole family lives there, all within blocks of each other. My 32 years growing up there gave me an amazing education and showed me the value of community and exposed me to a broad spectrum of culture and gave me the opportunity to sing and dance and perform to my heart’s content in a community theater with budgets and sets and orchestras and costumes and talents you don’t find in a lot of professional theaters … and the city did it all with easy access to affordable parking.
I just spent a delightful holiday weekend there with my niece and nephew and the minor family members who were put on earth to provide them with shoes and scrambled eggs and expensive orthodontia. We had tickle fights and hugs and homemade Easter cookies shared on the sly so Mom wouldn’t see and we listened to Grandma’s favorite happy-song mix CD and we sang along at the tops of our lungs and danced around the living room like big goofy people whose only job in life is to make laughter.
We also sat for a good hour at the ophthalmologist (which is as fun to spell as it is to visit) while my dad got a holding-steady (which we choose to read as relatively good) prognosis on the macular degeneration that’s slowly robbing him of his sight. (Question: Why would an ophthalmologist decorate his office with dreadful art? If he’s working to preserve sight, shouldn’t he provide his patients with some kind of visual incentive worth looking at?)
I also accomplished in three hours the kinds of errands it would take three weekends to do in Chicago: I looked at furniture, bought stencil paint, traipsed through three Wal-Marts (the horror!) to get 33 matching T-shirts in various sizes for the upcoming chorus show, bought crap for the house, bought a little surprise for the boyfriend and even filled my tank for under $50.
And when the kids were distracted by their DVDs or their imaginations, the adults sat around and talked about Important Things over cheese and grapes and ice-cold sodas. And while I love Cedar Rapids and the people and the memories I have there, the fact remains that it is also home to people who would write the following editorial—and to a newspaper that would print it and leave me with little choice but to reprint it here without permission:
A simple surgery for massive phone books
Many phone users in Cedar Rapids have recently received new phone books. When we picked ours up from the porch, we just shook our heads. It appeared to be even larger than last year’s.
The book has become so large it’s impossible to pick it up and find a number without considerable effort. We have found a simple solution that a lot of you might appreciate. Open the book up to the division between the home numbers and the yellow pages. Spread the gap as far as you can, then using a box cutting knife carefully cut through the backing until the two are completely separated. Viola, now you have a home phone book and a yellow page book. The thickness has been reduced from 2 inches to less than 3/4 of an inch.
If you want to further downsize the home section, you can perform additional surgery by separating the coupon section. Now you’re down to about a half-inch. To further simplify things, file the yellow page section away in a drawer where you can find it for the five or 10 times a year you need it and place the traditional sized home phone book close to the phone. If enough of us perform this surgery, who knows, maybe next year we’ll pick up our books in two convenient volumes.
Monday, April 09, 2007
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Kathleen Turner Ruined Easter*
*Not really. But that headline provides a lot more drama and efficiency than Kathleen Turner got laryngitis so we decided not to see her understudy last night in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? which was supposed to be an early birthday present (April 18! Mark your calendars!) and instead we went to a fancy dinner that turned out to be pretty disappointing.
The day the boyfriend and I met, there were many, many many signs that we were Meant To Be—one of which was our mutual love of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and, quite frankly, all things Albee. So when Kathleen Turner’s acclaimed Broadway production of the show came to Chicago in the weeks before my birthday, getting tickets seemed like a slam-dunk birthday present. Except work has been so busy I have been making no weeknight plans (or even keeping the ones I tentatively make) for the last month. So I didn’t give the boyfriend the go-ahead to get the tickets until yesterday afternoon. And by the time we got to the theater to see the show last night, Kathleen was gone and we decided the hell with it and we went to a restaurant in Boystown I’d remembered being pretty good, except when we got there it smelled like mildew and the peppercorn steak (my all-time number-one better-than-kicking-Dick-Cheney-in-the-face favorite restaurant meal) I ordered was served with a plain little demi-glace instead and we got an apology for the bait-and-switch only after we brought it up, which is just bad form if you’re trying to be a fancy restaurant with cutely folded napkins.
Speaking of people who have a hard time translating the written word into reality (and stick with me here as I link these two stories with only the tiniest threads of transitional logic), I had a podiatrist appointment on Monday night (and I was actually able to get out of the office in time to keep it). After running three marathons, I’d begun to notice weird pains in the tops of my feet, and a marathon trainer had suggested I get fitted for orthotics. So I did my research and found a podiatrist who was 1) in my network, 2) near my office and 3) recommended by a runner I trust, namely my boyfriend. I had to run (HA! RUN!) through a bunch of hoops to coordinate insurance issues, but I got my appointment and I showed up at his 30 South Michigan office with plenty of time to fill out paperwork and start my appointment on time. I checked in with the doorperson, got on the elevator … and discovered that the podiatrist’s suite number didn’t exist when I got to his floor. I went back downstairs to see if he’d moved, and I discovered that instead of being at 30 South Michigan, I’d somehow entered the building labeled 80. So I trudged next door to 30 and started the going-to-the-podistrist’s-office process all over again … only to discover that his suite number didn’t exist in that building either. So I went back downstairs to see what important detail in the address I’d missed this time, and—sure enough—I was at 30 North Michigan Avenue. All of which is no I-can’t-tell-the-difference-between-peppercorn-sauce-and-demi-glace, but it is pretty immutable proof that I’ve begun the slow descent into my crazy-old-coot-who-yells-at-kids-out-the-window-in-his-pajamas dotage.
But! The podiatrist’s office was pretty interesting because I got to see my own bones! We (and by “we” I mean “the nurse”) took X-rays of my feet, and the doctor walked (HA! WALKED!) me through the X-rays in fascinating detail. It turns out I had a stress fracture in one of my feet without even knowing it (it’s all healed now, so there’s no need to send cards or flowers) and that pain in the tops of my feet has been caused by a cartilaginous (which is a fun word to say and spell) mass he kept describing as “spackle” that is preventing the bones in the tops of my inner metatarsals from squishing around each other correctly. He said some nice soft arch support would probably alleviate the pressure the spackle was causing, and he made casts of my feet that ended up looking like ballet slippers, except without the daintiness.
So in three weeks, I’ll start my marathon training in $95 shoes (paid for by me) filled with $510 orthotics (paid for by The Man since my insurance rocks and I’ve already met my deductible for the year) and maybe—just maybe—I’ll be able to cross a marathon finish line (or two!) this fall without limping like an old coot who yells at kids out the window in his pajamas.
The day the boyfriend and I met, there were many, many many signs that we were Meant To Be—one of which was our mutual love of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and, quite frankly, all things Albee. So when Kathleen Turner’s acclaimed Broadway production of the show came to Chicago in the weeks before my birthday, getting tickets seemed like a slam-dunk birthday present. Except work has been so busy I have been making no weeknight plans (or even keeping the ones I tentatively make) for the last month. So I didn’t give the boyfriend the go-ahead to get the tickets until yesterday afternoon. And by the time we got to the theater to see the show last night, Kathleen was gone and we decided the hell with it and we went to a restaurant in Boystown I’d remembered being pretty good, except when we got there it smelled like mildew and the peppercorn steak (my all-time number-one better-than-kicking-Dick-Cheney-in-the-face favorite restaurant meal) I ordered was served with a plain little demi-glace instead and we got an apology for the bait-and-switch only after we brought it up, which is just bad form if you’re trying to be a fancy restaurant with cutely folded napkins.
Speaking of people who have a hard time translating the written word into reality (and stick with me here as I link these two stories with only the tiniest threads of transitional logic), I had a podiatrist appointment on Monday night (and I was actually able to get out of the office in time to keep it). After running three marathons, I’d begun to notice weird pains in the tops of my feet, and a marathon trainer had suggested I get fitted for orthotics. So I did my research and found a podiatrist who was 1) in my network, 2) near my office and 3) recommended by a runner I trust, namely my boyfriend. I had to run (HA! RUN!) through a bunch of hoops to coordinate insurance issues, but I got my appointment and I showed up at his 30 South Michigan office with plenty of time to fill out paperwork and start my appointment on time. I checked in with the doorperson, got on the elevator … and discovered that the podiatrist’s suite number didn’t exist when I got to his floor. I went back downstairs to see if he’d moved, and I discovered that instead of being at 30 South Michigan, I’d somehow entered the building labeled 80. So I trudged next door to 30 and started the going-to-the-podistrist’s-office process all over again … only to discover that his suite number didn’t exist in that building either. So I went back downstairs to see what important detail in the address I’d missed this time, and—sure enough—I was at 30 North Michigan Avenue. All of which is no I-can’t-tell-the-difference-between-peppercorn-sauce-and-demi-glace, but it is pretty immutable proof that I’ve begun the slow descent into my crazy-old-coot-who-yells-at-kids-out-the-window-in-his-pajamas dotage.
But! The podiatrist’s office was pretty interesting because I got to see my own bones! We (and by “we” I mean “the nurse”) took X-rays of my feet, and the doctor walked (HA! WALKED!) me through the X-rays in fascinating detail. It turns out I had a stress fracture in one of my feet without even knowing it (it’s all healed now, so there’s no need to send cards or flowers) and that pain in the tops of my feet has been caused by a cartilaginous (which is a fun word to say and spell) mass he kept describing as “spackle” that is preventing the bones in the tops of my inner metatarsals from squishing around each other correctly. He said some nice soft arch support would probably alleviate the pressure the spackle was causing, and he made casts of my feet that ended up looking like ballet slippers, except without the daintiness.
So in three weeks, I’ll start my marathon training in $95 shoes (paid for by me) filled with $510 orthotics (paid for by The Man since my insurance rocks and I’ve already met my deductible for the year) and maybe—just maybe—I’ll be able to cross a marathon finish line (or two!) this fall without limping like an old coot who yells at kids out the window in his pajamas.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Things I have learned
Cops can pull you over for any reason they dream up. I was driving home Sunday night from our weekly post-rehearsal IHOP gorging when a cop behind me started flashing his lights. So I pulled over to let him pass, except he pulled over behind me … and then he took his sweet fucking time to waddle his self-righteous cop ass up to my window and yell at me as though he’d just caught me shitting in the pope’s mouth. It seems he’d decided I’d rolled through a stop sign, which I was about to tell him is physically impossible in a stick shift since you can’t get into first gear unless you’re at a complete stop and I always start from first gear, but then he asked me for my proof of insurance. And I suddenly had a sinking feeling that I hadn’t put my new insurance papers in my car. My new insurance papers come every October and April, and it was now April and I know I hadn’t even opened any mail that looked insurancey or moneyey for a couple weeks. Imagine my surprise, though, when the insurance papers I did find in my glove compartment were the ones that had expired in October. And while I completely admit to breaking the driving-without-proof-of-insurance law for six whole months, in my defense, October was the beginning of my long period of unemployment and homelessness, so I was a bit preoccupied.
A clean record doesn’t count for shit when your cop is an asshole. As I was waiting for Cap’n Angerpants to huff and puff his way to my car window, I did the math and realized I hadn’t gotten a speeding ticket since I was a sophomore in college, which was 20 years ago. I’d gotten pulled over once since then—in a small-town-Iowa speed trap about three years ago—but I gave the cop a withering look when he gravely informed me I was going four miles an hour over the speed limit, and when he ran my license and realized I was not a public threat, he wisely sent me on my way with only a verbal warning and his professional dignity relatively intact. But not with his phone number, and he was cute and I was single.
The cops can make you the problem even when you’re not the problem. My driving record is squeaky clean. My car is maintained and (I promise!) insured. There are no visible body parts and hardly any blood in the trunk. I’m educated, articulate and gainfully employed. I pay my taxes. I don’t do drugs. I don’t listen to Andrew Lloyd Webber. I loathe everything about the Dubya administration. And despite all this evidence supporting my honorable, upstanding citizenship, the cop took away my license. What’s more, there is such a backlog of what I can only imagine are other upstanding, Dubya-hating citizens waiting to get their licenses back from angry cops that I have to wait two months and then show up in court to get it back. And when that happens, I’m probably going to write all about it completely in italics.
I’d never called to change the address on my insurance when I moved. While he was lashing out irrationally at me on Sunday night, the cop also helped me remember that I’d never called my insurance company to update my address—and possibly my coverage—on my home and car policies. And when I called last night to take care of it, I found out that I’ll have to cancel my old policy and get a new one. And in the mean time, I have no insurance on my house. Ack!
Even an angry cop can have a silver lining. If there’s a happy ending to this story, it’s the discovery that my forgetfulness and inertia paid off—I’m entitled to a full refund of my insurance premiums from the day I sold my old condo in October. I’m just not going to light any sparklers in the house to celebrate.
A clean record doesn’t count for shit when your cop is an asshole. As I was waiting for Cap’n Angerpants to huff and puff his way to my car window, I did the math and realized I hadn’t gotten a speeding ticket since I was a sophomore in college, which was 20 years ago. I’d gotten pulled over once since then—in a small-town-Iowa speed trap about three years ago—but I gave the cop a withering look when he gravely informed me I was going four miles an hour over the speed limit, and when he ran my license and realized I was not a public threat, he wisely sent me on my way with only a verbal warning and his professional dignity relatively intact. But not with his phone number, and he was cute and I was single.
The cops can make you the problem even when you’re not the problem. My driving record is squeaky clean. My car is maintained and (I promise!) insured. There are no visible body parts and hardly any blood in the trunk. I’m educated, articulate and gainfully employed. I pay my taxes. I don’t do drugs. I don’t listen to Andrew Lloyd Webber. I loathe everything about the Dubya administration. And despite all this evidence supporting my honorable, upstanding citizenship, the cop took away my license. What’s more, there is such a backlog of what I can only imagine are other upstanding, Dubya-hating citizens waiting to get their licenses back from angry cops that I have to wait two months and then show up in court to get it back. And when that happens, I’m probably going to write all about it completely in italics.
I’d never called to change the address on my insurance when I moved. While he was lashing out irrationally at me on Sunday night, the cop also helped me remember that I’d never called my insurance company to update my address—and possibly my coverage—on my home and car policies. And when I called last night to take care of it, I found out that I’ll have to cancel my old policy and get a new one. And in the mean time, I have no insurance on my house. Ack!
Even an angry cop can have a silver lining. If there’s a happy ending to this story, it’s the discovery that my forgetfulness and inertia paid off—I’m entitled to a full refund of my insurance premiums from the day I sold my old condo in October. I’m just not going to light any sparklers in the house to celebrate.
Sunday, April 01, 2007
Got your tickets yet?
Broadway show tunes. Hollywood musicals. Chicago homosexuals.
It’s all about to converge on one stage in Sidetrack V: Sidetrack With a Twist.
For those of you not familiar with this Boystown institution, Sidetrack is a giant video bar that plays clips from movie musicals, Tony Awards broadcasts and every other possible source of high-kicking show tunes every Sunday and Monday night. The show tunes have a MASSIVE following—people even bring props and shout things together at the screens (“Oh my god! She’s wearing my hat!” “No Rep!” “She’s a lesbian!” I guess you have to be there to find these funny) … when they’re not singing along in 10-part harmony, that is.
Sidetrack V: Sidetrack With a Twist is the Chicago Gay Men's Chorus’ fifth tribute to the Sidetrack show-tune experience. We re-create the most popular videos live on stage as closely as possible—unless we totally rip the videos apart and interpret them our own twisted way.
Some of the numbers we’ll be tackling this year:
“And I am Telling You” from Dreamgirls
“Favorite Son” from The Will Rogers Follies
“My Body” from The Life
“Defying Gravity” from Wicked
“Brotherhood of Man” from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
And the two I’m kind of featured in:
“Forget About the Boy” from Thoroughly Modern Millie (I’m a background tapper)
“Cell Block Tango” from Chicago (I’m Velma Kelly, resplendent in bustier and wicked black heels)
Though the show will be packed with inside jokes for people who have seen the original clips, it’s still great entertainment for everyone. Even if you’ve never seen a show tune in your life (a thought I find relatively disturbing), you’ll have a blast at our show. I promise.
Tickets are already on sale, so order yours now to make sure you get the best view of me in my angry-prison-chick drag. And this is the last opportunity you'll have see me in the chorus for a while; I'm taking the next show (and maybe more) off so I can spend some time with my boyfriend and work on our condo. And the heels are going deep in storage after the final curtain.
Performances:
Friday, April 20, 8:00 pm
Saturday, April 21, 5:00 pm
Saturday, April 21, 8:30 pm
The Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport
My birthday:
Wednesday, April 18, all day
Tickets are available here:
Ticketbastard
312-902-1500
The Athenaeum Theater Box Office (call 773-935-6860 for hours)
Other headlines I wanted to use in this post:
Gay men. Show tunes. Repeat.
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred show tunes
It’s all about to converge on one stage in Sidetrack V: Sidetrack With a Twist.
For those of you not familiar with this Boystown institution, Sidetrack is a giant video bar that plays clips from movie musicals, Tony Awards broadcasts and every other possible source of high-kicking show tunes every Sunday and Monday night. The show tunes have a MASSIVE following—people even bring props and shout things together at the screens (“Oh my god! She’s wearing my hat!” “No Rep!” “She’s a lesbian!” I guess you have to be there to find these funny) … when they’re not singing along in 10-part harmony, that is.
Sidetrack V: Sidetrack With a Twist is the Chicago Gay Men's Chorus’ fifth tribute to the Sidetrack show-tune experience. We re-create the most popular videos live on stage as closely as possible—unless we totally rip the videos apart and interpret them our own twisted way.
Some of the numbers we’ll be tackling this year:
“And I am Telling You” from Dreamgirls
“Favorite Son” from The Will Rogers Follies
“My Body” from The Life
“Defying Gravity” from Wicked
“Brotherhood of Man” from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
And the two I’m kind of featured in:
“Forget About the Boy” from Thoroughly Modern Millie (I’m a background tapper)
“Cell Block Tango” from Chicago (I’m Velma Kelly, resplendent in bustier and wicked black heels)
Though the show will be packed with inside jokes for people who have seen the original clips, it’s still great entertainment for everyone. Even if you’ve never seen a show tune in your life (a thought I find relatively disturbing), you’ll have a blast at our show. I promise.
Tickets are already on sale, so order yours now to make sure you get the best view of me in my angry-prison-chick drag. And this is the last opportunity you'll have see me in the chorus for a while; I'm taking the next show (and maybe more) off so I can spend some time with my boyfriend and work on our condo. And the heels are going deep in storage after the final curtain.
Performances:
Friday, April 20, 8:00 pm
Saturday, April 21, 5:00 pm
Saturday, April 21, 8:30 pm
The Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport
My birthday:
Wednesday, April 18, all day
Tickets are available here:
Ticketbastard
312-902-1500
The Athenaeum Theater Box Office (call 773-935-6860 for hours)
Other headlines I wanted to use in this post:
Gay men. Show tunes. Repeat.
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred show tunes
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Holy units!
The simple folks at the American "Family" Association are still working tirelessly to combat the homosexual agenda. (Who says "homosexual agenda" anymore? Doesn't the AFA know that that empty bit of propaganda died out with the dinosaurs? Oh, wait. I guess I just answered my own question.)
Check out today's breathless AFA Action Alert, which will no doubt produce a fair and balanced (hey, I voted!) and totally useful representation of America's collective opinion. Then check out the randomly generated (or is it?) security code at the bottom:
Check out today's breathless AFA Action Alert, which will no doubt produce a fair and balanced (hey, I voted!) and totally useful representation of America's collective opinion. Then check out the randomly generated (or is it?) security code at the bottom:
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
I am the almighty consumer
Behold my opinions on your products and services!
American Laser Centers
I had my I-just-won-$300-worth-of-services-in-a-drawing-even-though-I’m-not-very-hairy consultation last night. Call me picky, but a high-end spa should be in a building with a fancy—or at the very least consumer-friendly—lobby. American Laser Centers told me over the phone they were in the 900 N. Michigan building (which they were sure to remind me was the Bloomingdale’s building) but I should use their entrance around the corner at 60 E. Delaware. Guess what? 60 E. Delaware is a fricking parking garage across a fricking alley behind the Bloomingdale’s building. Lying laser losers! The laser center offices are on the top floor of the parking garage, but to get there you have to wade through a rubber-clad lobby (for easy hosing down, I assume) past the machines where the teeming masses pay before they return to their cars, and you have to ride in what is basically a freight elevator to get there. Not the best way to make first impression. And you really have to dig to get the perky consultationist to cough up the fact that there’s no zero-sum procedure you can get on a $300 gift certificate. In fact, the minimum I’d have to pay for anything is a whopping $800—to kill about 50 stray hairs on my back. Bring on the tried-and-true boyfriend with the clippers! Total time finding the office: 15 minutes, once I realized the utilitarian parking elevators offered the only access to the high-end laser center. Total time before I abandoned my consultation: two minutes.
Minwax® Wood Finish™ Stain Marker
We spent the weekend finishing up the guest bedroom, which included taping off and painting all the baseboards and windowsills. But while we used the very same brands of tape and paint doing the very same work in the master bedroom—which turned out fabulous—when we peeled up the tape from the guest-room baseboards, we discovered to our horror that the paint had seeped under the tape both up the walls and onto the floors, which I remind you we just spent $2,000 refinishing. We can obviously retape and repaint the walls (another weekend shot in the ass) but we weren’t sure what to do about the floors … until I remembered that Minwax makes little stain-filled magic markers that have worked wonders on dinged-up furniture in my not-so-distant past. So after last night’s aborted adventure in laser hair removal, the boyfriend picked me up and we headed to Home Depot to buy this week’s collection of necessities: a stain pen, a 1/4” ceramic-tile drill bit for installing a curved shower rod, and custom-cut blinds for both freshly painted bedrooms so we can finally start walking around naked again. And the moment we got home—before we were even out of our coats—I was on my hands and knees, scribbling wood stain onto paint ooze and watching it magically look as though nothing had happened. Minwax saved my floors and my marriage!
Sonicare
The boyfriend’s ex bought us a his-and-his Sonicare electric toothbrush kit as a housewarming gift, a gesture that could be subject to a wide range of interpretations but we choose to believe it was meant in a here’s-to-a-lifetime-of-healthy-gums kind of way. My last three dentists have implored me to get a Sonicare, but I always balked at their freakishly high price. And now that I have one and use it religiously and spend my days in a reverie of pearly smooth teeth and cherub-pink gums, I vow that from this day forward I willalways date men with wealthy ex-boyfriends travel the world preaching the miracle of sonic tooth polishing. Not only does Sonicare give you a two-minute gum massage (which is strangely invigorating) but it keeps your teeth in such a state of smooth shininess that you wonder how non-Sonicare users ever get kissed. I mean seriously: non-Sonicared teeth are like angora sweaters after a windy day at the beach. Sonicared teeth are like dry-erase boards fresh out of the box: You can’t help but run your tongue over them all day. Get a Sonicare and get a little tongue!™*
*Proposed product tagline. Subject to copyright approval. All rights reserved.
American Laser Centers
I had my I-just-won-$300-worth-of-services-in-a-drawing-even-though-I’m-not-very-hairy consultation last night. Call me picky, but a high-end spa should be in a building with a fancy—or at the very least consumer-friendly—lobby. American Laser Centers told me over the phone they were in the 900 N. Michigan building (which they were sure to remind me was the Bloomingdale’s building) but I should use their entrance around the corner at 60 E. Delaware. Guess what? 60 E. Delaware is a fricking parking garage across a fricking alley behind the Bloomingdale’s building. Lying laser losers! The laser center offices are on the top floor of the parking garage, but to get there you have to wade through a rubber-clad lobby (for easy hosing down, I assume) past the machines where the teeming masses pay before they return to their cars, and you have to ride in what is basically a freight elevator to get there. Not the best way to make first impression. And you really have to dig to get the perky consultationist to cough up the fact that there’s no zero-sum procedure you can get on a $300 gift certificate. In fact, the minimum I’d have to pay for anything is a whopping $800—to kill about 50 stray hairs on my back. Bring on the tried-and-true boyfriend with the clippers! Total time finding the office: 15 minutes, once I realized the utilitarian parking elevators offered the only access to the high-end laser center. Total time before I abandoned my consultation: two minutes.
Minwax® Wood Finish™ Stain Marker
We spent the weekend finishing up the guest bedroom, which included taping off and painting all the baseboards and windowsills. But while we used the very same brands of tape and paint doing the very same work in the master bedroom—which turned out fabulous—when we peeled up the tape from the guest-room baseboards, we discovered to our horror that the paint had seeped under the tape both up the walls and onto the floors, which I remind you we just spent $2,000 refinishing. We can obviously retape and repaint the walls (another weekend shot in the ass) but we weren’t sure what to do about the floors … until I remembered that Minwax makes little stain-filled magic markers that have worked wonders on dinged-up furniture in my not-so-distant past. So after last night’s aborted adventure in laser hair removal, the boyfriend picked me up and we headed to Home Depot to buy this week’s collection of necessities: a stain pen, a 1/4” ceramic-tile drill bit for installing a curved shower rod, and custom-cut blinds for both freshly painted bedrooms so we can finally start walking around naked again. And the moment we got home—before we were even out of our coats—I was on my hands and knees, scribbling wood stain onto paint ooze and watching it magically look as though nothing had happened. Minwax saved my floors and my marriage!
Sonicare
The boyfriend’s ex bought us a his-and-his Sonicare electric toothbrush kit as a housewarming gift, a gesture that could be subject to a wide range of interpretations but we choose to believe it was meant in a here’s-to-a-lifetime-of-healthy-gums kind of way. My last three dentists have implored me to get a Sonicare, but I always balked at their freakishly high price. And now that I have one and use it religiously and spend my days in a reverie of pearly smooth teeth and cherub-pink gums, I vow that from this day forward I will
*Proposed product tagline. Subject to copyright approval. All rights reserved.
Monday, March 26, 2007
BEEEEEEEEP!
Hi, Jake. This is Becky with American Laser Centers. I’m calling about our drawing you entered online a month ago. I’m pleased to tell you that you’ve won third place, worth $300 in laser hair removal and skin-care services. Please call us at 1-800-000-0000 today to schedule your preliminary evaluation. Congratulations—we look forward to hearing from you.
BEEEEEEEEP!
I vaguely remember entering this drawing through some banner ad on some web site. And I’m going in tomorrow for my consultation. I imagine with my relative hairlessness (a few wisps on my back and some old-man growth on my shoulders that is seriously creeping me out) I’m gonna be able to get a lot done with $300. My appointment’s tomorrow!
BEEEEEEEEP!
I vaguely remember entering this drawing through some banner ad on some web site. And I’m going in tomorrow for my consultation. I imagine with my relative hairlessness (a few wisps on my back and some old-man growth on my shoulders that is seriously creeping me out) I’m gonna be able to get a lot done with $300. My appointment’s tomorrow!
Friday, March 23, 2007
Chicagoans on their cell phones
Girl standing on the bus a few people away from me:
“I have a modeling job tonight, and as soon as I’m done modeling I’m gonna have to walk home from my modeling job in the clothes I modeled in. DID EVERYONE HEAR THAT? I’M A MODEL.” (Words in caps may or may not be my own sarcastic addition.)
Salesperson of some sort at the bus stop:
“Yes, this one is 20 miles, which is a lot shorter than the other ones because the other ones are so long.”
Woman on the train:
“Donchoo GET in my face when I’m talking to you. Donchooo GET in my face!”
Stoner crammed on a train during evening rush hour:
“I gotta stop at my dealer’s and get a sack of herb before I come over. You need some too?” Then, looking around and realizing about 30 people just heard that: “No, I’m not buying you DRUGS, Dude. I stopped doing that shit. So STOP ASKING.”
Kid on a skateboard scraping along next to me as I run:
“Dude, I can’t hear you ’cause I’m on my skateboard. Dude. I’m skateboarding so I can’t hear you. Talk louder, Dude. I’m. On. My. Skateboard.”
“I have a modeling job tonight, and as soon as I’m done modeling I’m gonna have to walk home from my modeling job in the clothes I modeled in. DID EVERYONE HEAR THAT? I’M A MODEL.” (Words in caps may or may not be my own sarcastic addition.)
Salesperson of some sort at the bus stop:
“Yes, this one is 20 miles, which is a lot shorter than the other ones because the other ones are so long.”
Woman on the train:
“Donchoo GET in my face when I’m talking to you. Donchooo GET in my face!”
Stoner crammed on a train during evening rush hour:
“I gotta stop at my dealer’s and get a sack of herb before I come over. You need some too?” Then, looking around and realizing about 30 people just heard that: “No, I’m not buying you DRUGS, Dude. I stopped doing that shit. So STOP ASKING.”
Kid on a skateboard scraping along next to me as I run:
“Dude, I can’t hear you ’cause I’m on my skateboard. Dude. I’m skateboarding so I can’t hear you. Talk louder, Dude. I’m. On. My. Skateboard.”
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
The Hate Crimes Prevention Act
The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act is back on the docket in the U.S. House of Representatives, with language expanding the definition of hate crimes to protect the GLBT community. The Human Rights Campaign and the American “Family” Association both distributed emails this week urging people to contact their representatives about the bill. Here is a side-by-side comparison of the copy points in each side’s emails, in their own, unedited words. I’ve added my comments and clarifications in brackets, and I’ve highlighted the language that is sensationalistic, misleading or simply not true.
HRC: What’s at stake
This week the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act will be re-introduced in the House of Representatives. This crucial legislation seeks to give local law enforcement agencies extra tools and resources they need to prevent and combat hate violence.
AFA: What’s at stake
A new “hate crimes” bill further protecting homosexual activity [“homosexual activity” is irrelevant here; the proposed protections are against violent crimes] has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act would increase protection for the kind of activity [there's that word again] shown on [a link to a YouTube video—since made private by its owner]. The video was shot during an actual homosexual pride parade in Dallas. [Donald E. Wildmon, founder and chairman of the American “Family” Association, seems to be implying here that people engaging in the “homosexual activity” of marching in a parade should not be protected from physical violence.]
HRC: Why we should combat hate crimes
We’ve waited too long for comprehensive hate crimes legislation. It has been almost a decade since Matthew Shepard was brutally attacked and killed in Laramie, Wyoming for being gay.
Just weeks ago, Andrew Athos, a 72-year old Detroit resident, was riding home on a city bus when another male passenger asked him if he was gay. The man subsequently followed Andrew to his apartment, attacked him and beat him with a pipe so severely that his injuries left him paralyzed from the neck down and unable to speak above a whisper. Anthony ultimately passed away on February 25 as the result of this attack.
In New York City, a few months before Anthos’s murder, 29-year old Michael Sandy was also killed in an antigay assault where he was beaten, chased into traffic on a busy highway, hit by a car, and then dragged off the road and attacked a second time by his assailants.
AFA: Why we should not combat hate crimes
[The] video shows activity [again with the activity!] that would receive even more protection under new “hate crimes” law. The bill is the first step toward silencing any opposition to the homosexual lifestyle. If you protest the kind of public activity shown on this video, the proposed federal “hate crimes” law may be the first step toward limiting your freedom to speak out against open homosexual activity.
HRC: Emotional hook
Despite the progress that our community has made in combating anti-gay bigotry and discrimination, today one in six reported hate crimes are motivated by the victim’s sexual orientation. It’s even more startling to realize that today’s federal laws don’t include any protections for people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.
AFA: Emotional hook
Warning! The video is highly offensive, but it is real footage from the actual parade. [While “offensive” is relative, the video shows standard stuff you’d see in any pride parade in any city.]
HRC: How it affects you
After more than a decade of having updated hate crimes legislation derailed by the anti-gay leaders in Congress, we now have an unprecedented opportunity to put in place this and other key federal protections and rights for our community. Let’s work together to make this happen.
AFA: How it affects you
If this “hate crimes” bill is passed, and you publicly protest, complain or oppose the type of activity [activity!] in this video, your action could be eventually construed to be subject to prosecution for a criminal act. [The proposed legislation includes no restriction on protesting or complaining. If “opposing” involves physical violence, though, then prosecution would ensue. Donald E. Wildmon seems to be implying here that he opposes restrictions against physically violent opposition to pride parades.]
HRC: What’s at stake
This week the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act will be re-introduced in the House of Representatives. This crucial legislation seeks to give local law enforcement agencies extra tools and resources they need to prevent and combat hate violence.
AFA: What’s at stake
A new “hate crimes” bill further protecting homosexual activity [“homosexual activity” is irrelevant here; the proposed protections are against violent crimes] has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act would increase protection for the kind of activity [there's that word again] shown on [a link to a YouTube video—since made private by its owner]. The video was shot during an actual homosexual pride parade in Dallas. [Donald E. Wildmon, founder and chairman of the American “Family” Association, seems to be implying here that people engaging in the “homosexual activity” of marching in a parade should not be protected from physical violence.]
HRC: Why we should combat hate crimes
We’ve waited too long for comprehensive hate crimes legislation. It has been almost a decade since Matthew Shepard was brutally attacked and killed in Laramie, Wyoming for being gay.
Just weeks ago, Andrew Athos, a 72-year old Detroit resident, was riding home on a city bus when another male passenger asked him if he was gay. The man subsequently followed Andrew to his apartment, attacked him and beat him with a pipe so severely that his injuries left him paralyzed from the neck down and unable to speak above a whisper. Anthony ultimately passed away on February 25 as the result of this attack.
In New York City, a few months before Anthos’s murder, 29-year old Michael Sandy was also killed in an antigay assault where he was beaten, chased into traffic on a busy highway, hit by a car, and then dragged off the road and attacked a second time by his assailants.
AFA: Why we should not combat hate crimes
[The] video shows activity [again with the activity!] that would receive even more protection under new “hate crimes” law. The bill is the first step toward silencing any opposition to the homosexual lifestyle. If you protest the kind of public activity shown on this video, the proposed federal “hate crimes” law may be the first step toward limiting your freedom to speak out against open homosexual activity.
HRC: Emotional hook
Despite the progress that our community has made in combating anti-gay bigotry and discrimination, today one in six reported hate crimes are motivated by the victim’s sexual orientation. It’s even more startling to realize that today’s federal laws don’t include any protections for people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.
AFA: Emotional hook
Warning! The video is highly offensive, but it is real footage from the actual parade. [While “offensive” is relative, the video shows standard stuff you’d see in any pride parade in any city.]
HRC: How it affects you
After more than a decade of having updated hate crimes legislation derailed by the anti-gay leaders in Congress, we now have an unprecedented opportunity to put in place this and other key federal protections and rights for our community. Let’s work together to make this happen.
AFA: How it affects you
If this “hate crimes” bill is passed, and you publicly protest, complain or oppose the type of activity [activity!] in this video, your action could be eventually construed to be subject to prosecution for a criminal act. [The proposed legislation includes no restriction on protesting or complaining. If “opposing” involves physical violence, though, then prosecution would ensue. Donald E. Wildmon seems to be implying here that he opposes restrictions against physically violent opposition to pride parades.]
I’m in a show!
Broadway show tunes. Hollywood musicals. Chicago homosexuals.
It’s all about to converge on one stage in Sidetrack V: Sidetrack With a Twist.
For those of you not familiar with this Boystown institution, Sidetrack is a giant video bar that plays clips from movie musicals, Tony Awards broadcasts and every other possible source of high-kicking show tunes every Sunday and Monday night. The show tunes have a MASSIVE following—people even bring props and shout things together at the screens (“Oh my god! She’s wearing my hat!” “No Rep!” “She’s a lesbian!” I guess you have to be there to find these funny) … when they’re not singing along in 10-part harmony, that is.
Sidetrack V: Sidetrack With a Twist is the Chicago Gay Men's Chorus’ fifth tribute to the Sidetrack show-tune experience. We re-create the most popular videos live on stage as closely as possible—unless we totally rip the videos apart and interpret them our own twisted way.
Some of the numbers we’ll be tackling this year:
“And I am Telling You” from Dreamgirls
“Favorite Son” from The Will Rogers Follies
“My Body” from The Life
“Defying Gravity” from Wicked
“Brotherhood of Man” from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
And the two I’m kind of featured in:
“Forget About the Boy” from Thoroughly Modern Millie (I’m a background tapper)
“Cell Block Tango” from Chicago (I’m Velma Kelly, resplendent in black heels and bustier)
Though the show will be packed with inside jokes for people who have seen the original clips, it’s still great entertainment for everyone. Even if you’ve never seen a show tune in your life (a thought I find relatively disturbing), you’ll have a blast at our show. I promise.
Tickets are already on sale, so order yours now to make sure you get the best view of me in my angry-prison-chick drag.
Performances:
Friday, April 20, 8:00 pm
Saturday, April 21, 5:00 pm
Saturday, April 21, 8:30 pm
The Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport
My birthday:
Wednesday, April 18, all day
Tickets are available here:
Ticketbastard
312-902-1500
The Athenaeum Theater Box Office (call 773-935-6860 for hours)
Other headlines I wanted to use in this email:
Gay men. Show tunes. Repeat.
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred show tunes
It’s all about to converge on one stage in Sidetrack V: Sidetrack With a Twist.
For those of you not familiar with this Boystown institution, Sidetrack is a giant video bar that plays clips from movie musicals, Tony Awards broadcasts and every other possible source of high-kicking show tunes every Sunday and Monday night. The show tunes have a MASSIVE following—people even bring props and shout things together at the screens (“Oh my god! She’s wearing my hat!” “No Rep!” “She’s a lesbian!” I guess you have to be there to find these funny) … when they’re not singing along in 10-part harmony, that is.
Sidetrack V: Sidetrack With a Twist is the Chicago Gay Men's Chorus’ fifth tribute to the Sidetrack show-tune experience. We re-create the most popular videos live on stage as closely as possible—unless we totally rip the videos apart and interpret them our own twisted way.
Some of the numbers we’ll be tackling this year:
“And I am Telling You” from Dreamgirls
“Favorite Son” from The Will Rogers Follies
“My Body” from The Life
“Defying Gravity” from Wicked
“Brotherhood of Man” from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
And the two I’m kind of featured in:
“Forget About the Boy” from Thoroughly Modern Millie (I’m a background tapper)
“Cell Block Tango” from Chicago (I’m Velma Kelly, resplendent in black heels and bustier)
Though the show will be packed with inside jokes for people who have seen the original clips, it’s still great entertainment for everyone. Even if you’ve never seen a show tune in your life (a thought I find relatively disturbing), you’ll have a blast at our show. I promise.
Tickets are already on sale, so order yours now to make sure you get the best view of me in my angry-prison-chick drag.
Performances:
Friday, April 20, 8:00 pm
Saturday, April 21, 5:00 pm
Saturday, April 21, 8:30 pm
The Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport
My birthday:
Wednesday, April 18, all day
Tickets are available here:
Ticketbastard
312-902-1500
The Athenaeum Theater Box Office (call 773-935-6860 for hours)
Other headlines I wanted to use in this email:
Gay men. Show tunes. Repeat.
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred show tunes
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Would you get a blood transfusion from a monkey?
The boyfriend recently found himself in a conversation with a woman who told him she’s home-schooling her daughter. He wasn’t sure how to respond to her announcement, so he asked her what subjects she was teaching. She told him she was covering the basics: math, language arts, science and history … a subject on which she announced that she and her daughter were “up to Deuteronomy.”
While the boyfriend and I hold the Bible-as-the-primary-source-of-education set in the same regard we hold people who hear voices coming from their toasters, we don’t intentionally engage them in verbal combat until they trot out their factory-issue homophobic platitudes. And since this woman hadn’t flinched at the fact that the boyfriend has a boyfriend, he took the opportunity to ask her about her beliefs in a genuine spirit of trying to understand what she thinks, how she justifies it and how she lives in a world so at odds with her chosen mindset.
And it seems she’s put herself on the religious-conservative cafeteria plan:
• Gay people obviously don’t violate her moral code—not even gay people in relationships.
• She holds the Bible’s seven-day creation story as literal truth, though when the boyfriend asked her about it she couldn’t remember the order in which stuff was supposedly created … though she taught the subject to her daughter only four books ago.
• Her daughter loves dinosaurs, and the woman is so OK with this that she asked the boyfriend if he knew of any museums in Chicago with dinosaur bones.
• She absolutely doesn’t believe in evolution. When pressed, her only argument against it was the question in the title of this post. Seriously. And because apparently nobody has ever answered her question with a yes, she feels justified in maintaining her beliefs.
While this woman clearly doesn't represent the lockstep majority of the religious right, her justification for her evolutionary beliefs sums up pretty clearly the mindset we’re up against as we fight to give gay people equal rights and equal protections under the law. People with extreme religious convictions need no further justification and accept no challenges to their beliefs, and when backed logically into a corner, they lash out with insults, absurdisms and ridiculous generalizations: gay marriage would destroy straight marriage, homosexuality is a choice, homosexuality is a disease that can be cured, homosexuality is immoral, gay activists want to teach schoolchildren about buttsex, "faggot" is a harmless little schoolyard taunt, the things you see in gay pride parades represent the universal behaviors of the world’s gay population, if you work to deny gay people equal rights you are unfairly labeled a bigot … and if you believe in evolution you should stock up on monkey blood before your next surgery.
Larry Kramer has an op-ed piece in today’s LA Times that addresses this and a world of related issues in an eloquent mix of fact, interpretation and a justifiable amount of anger. Read it here.
While the boyfriend and I hold the Bible-as-the-primary-source-of-education set in the same regard we hold people who hear voices coming from their toasters, we don’t intentionally engage them in verbal combat until they trot out their factory-issue homophobic platitudes. And since this woman hadn’t flinched at the fact that the boyfriend has a boyfriend, he took the opportunity to ask her about her beliefs in a genuine spirit of trying to understand what she thinks, how she justifies it and how she lives in a world so at odds with her chosen mindset.
And it seems she’s put herself on the religious-conservative cafeteria plan:
• Gay people obviously don’t violate her moral code—not even gay people in relationships.
• She holds the Bible’s seven-day creation story as literal truth, though when the boyfriend asked her about it she couldn’t remember the order in which stuff was supposedly created … though she taught the subject to her daughter only four books ago.
• Her daughter loves dinosaurs, and the woman is so OK with this that she asked the boyfriend if he knew of any museums in Chicago with dinosaur bones.
• She absolutely doesn’t believe in evolution. When pressed, her only argument against it was the question in the title of this post. Seriously. And because apparently nobody has ever answered her question with a yes, she feels justified in maintaining her beliefs.
While this woman clearly doesn't represent the lockstep majority of the religious right, her justification for her evolutionary beliefs sums up pretty clearly the mindset we’re up against as we fight to give gay people equal rights and equal protections under the law. People with extreme religious convictions need no further justification and accept no challenges to their beliefs, and when backed logically into a corner, they lash out with insults, absurdisms and ridiculous generalizations: gay marriage would destroy straight marriage, homosexuality is a choice, homosexuality is a disease that can be cured, homosexuality is immoral, gay activists want to teach schoolchildren about buttsex, "faggot" is a harmless little schoolyard taunt, the things you see in gay pride parades represent the universal behaviors of the world’s gay population, if you work to deny gay people equal rights you are unfairly labeled a bigot … and if you believe in evolution you should stock up on monkey blood before your next surgery.
Larry Kramer has an op-ed piece in today’s LA Times that addresses this and a world of related issues in an eloquent mix of fact, interpretation and a justifiable amount of anger. Read it here.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Flying off the handle
As the boyfriend and I have been decorating and painting and upgrading some of the crappy-ass materials the developer used when our condo was rehabbed a couple years ago, I’ve discovered something weird: I have opinions about stuff I had barely even realized existed.
For instance, our condo is filled with totally cheap door hardware, probably procured at bulk discount because nobody else would buy it and the manufacturer needed the tax writeoff. It’s gold, which I’ve never been a fan of anyway, and it looks like it’s laminated to delay the gold finish’s inevitable tarnishing or flaking, because we can put a man on the moon but we still haven’t found an effective way to keep our fake gold from tarnishing or flaking back here on earth.
Where was I? Oh yes: I wonder why Newt Gingrich’s marriages keep failing. Is it because he’s morally and physically repulsive, or do you think once the sedatives wear off, his wives realize to their horror that they’ve been sleeping with Newt Gingrich and the evenings in the old Gingrich household become as awkward as the playgrounds where Ann Coulter keeps screaming “faggot” at the other 6-year-olds?
Oh, dear. I seem to have wandered again. Give me a second so I can backtrack: faggot, harpy, playground, divorce junkie, flake, tacky, cheap, knobs, stupid opinions … oh, yes! Door handles!
So the boyfriend and I have been discussing what we can do to upgrade our condo, and we’re both in agreement on replacing the door hardware. And we both like silvery finishes like burnished stainless steel. But I like simple round knobs and he likes those door handles that look like toilet flushers. Now, I’ve seen those toilet-flusher door handles in stores and in other people’s houses and I guess I’ve always just subconsciously preferred regular handles. I’ve never said to myself—on any level—Holy crap! Those door handles look like toilet flushers! Who would ever put such a silly thing on their doors? But when the boyfriend suggested we replace our door handles with toilet-flusher handles, my immediate thought was I’m not living in a house where you have to flush every door you open … unless we could somehow make the handle trigger flushing sounds every time you flushed it because that would be cool. It would also be Water Music, but that’s a joke for a different blog post.
In the real world, it doesn’t make a bit of difference what kind of handles we have on our doors. And once the handles are in place I bet I’d never notice them again. (Unless I tried to hang a coat on one and it kept falling to the floor amid mysterious flushing sounds.) I don’t think I can describe the door handles in any of the houses I’ve lived in … except now that I think about it, I believe the handles in my childhood home were glass-knobbed, and the plates behind the handles in my first home had a funky-cool Art Deco motif, but that could just be the paint fumes talking because I spent the weekend finishing our first bedroom (dark green trim) and starting our second bedroom (gray-purple walls) and I’m still a little woozy.
For instance, our condo is filled with totally cheap door hardware, probably procured at bulk discount because nobody else would buy it and the manufacturer needed the tax writeoff. It’s gold, which I’ve never been a fan of anyway, and it looks like it’s laminated to delay the gold finish’s inevitable tarnishing or flaking, because we can put a man on the moon but we still haven’t found an effective way to keep our fake gold from tarnishing or flaking back here on earth.
Where was I? Oh yes: I wonder why Newt Gingrich’s marriages keep failing. Is it because he’s morally and physically repulsive, or do you think once the sedatives wear off, his wives realize to their horror that they’ve been sleeping with Newt Gingrich and the evenings in the old Gingrich household become as awkward as the playgrounds where Ann Coulter keeps screaming “faggot” at the other 6-year-olds?
Oh, dear. I seem to have wandered again. Give me a second so I can backtrack: faggot, harpy, playground, divorce junkie, flake, tacky, cheap, knobs, stupid opinions … oh, yes! Door handles!
So the boyfriend and I have been discussing what we can do to upgrade our condo, and we’re both in agreement on replacing the door hardware. And we both like silvery finishes like burnished stainless steel. But I like simple round knobs and he likes those door handles that look like toilet flushers. Now, I’ve seen those toilet-flusher door handles in stores and in other people’s houses and I guess I’ve always just subconsciously preferred regular handles. I’ve never said to myself—on any level—Holy crap! Those door handles look like toilet flushers! Who would ever put such a silly thing on their doors? But when the boyfriend suggested we replace our door handles with toilet-flusher handles, my immediate thought was I’m not living in a house where you have to flush every door you open … unless we could somehow make the handle trigger flushing sounds every time you flushed it because that would be cool. It would also be Water Music, but that’s a joke for a different blog post.
In the real world, it doesn’t make a bit of difference what kind of handles we have on our doors. And once the handles are in place I bet I’d never notice them again. (Unless I tried to hang a coat on one and it kept falling to the floor amid mysterious flushing sounds.) I don’t think I can describe the door handles in any of the houses I’ve lived in … except now that I think about it, I believe the handles in my childhood home were glass-knobbed, and the plates behind the handles in my first home had a funky-cool Art Deco motif, but that could just be the paint fumes talking because I spent the weekend finishing our first bedroom (dark green trim) and starting our second bedroom (gray-purple walls) and I’m still a little woozy.
Friday, March 16, 2007
Ooh. Shiny things.
So I had to work late last night and the boyfriend picked me up from work ’cause he’s nice like that, and we decided to use the waning hours of the evening to buy a brushed stainless steel garbage receptacle to match the brushed stainless steel appliances in the kitchen ’cause our life is rich and full of purpose like that.
I had a gift card in my wallet from the inappropriately punctuated Linens ’n Things, though I had no recollection of where I got it. Some theories involve holiday and/or housewarming gifts. Some theories involve leftover store credit. Some theories involve rifling through an unattended purse on the train. In any case, I was tired of carrying that bulky gift card around like some sleek plastic albatross in my back pocket, and I wanted to exchange it for something useful, like a brushed stainless steel garbage receptacle where I could throw the card away if I didn’t have to cough it up to buy the brushed stainless steel garbage receptacle in the first place. Which is a conundrum I still struggle to wrap my brain around.
In any case, late on a Thursday night is the ideal (read: not crowded with consumers who have interesting things to do on a Thursday night in Chicago) time to shop at inappropriately punctuated retail outlets, and our quest for a brushed stainless steel garbage receptacle quickly became a mission to fill our entire kitchen with brushed stainless steel. By the time we staggered to the register, we were lugging enough metal to build a ship … or at least to melt into a weighty cudgel we could use to beat any divorced and/or philandering politician who doesn’t think we’re good enough for marriage. And I just went on a cruise, so what the hell do I need a ship for?
Here is a list of our final purchases, in order of size:
Paper towel dispenser. The plastic one that came attached to the kitchen cupboard was beneath our dignity, so we replaced it with one so sleek and smart it actually holds the stray end of the towels up against the roll so as not to make our kitchen look like a tenement.
Banana hanger. We’ve always been amused by these things, though they're not as fun as their trashy cousin the banana hammock, which looks tackier but has better iambic rhythm, internal alliteration and … um … other imagery. And though neither of us lets bananas sit around long enough that their mere weight against the countertop causes unappetizing bruises, we wanted a banana hanger of our very own. Besides, it’s a great way to showcase our exotic tastes in produce and thereby clarify for our neighbors which household is in fact the most culturally superior.
Plastic bag holder. After spending a lifetime storing plastic grocery bags inside each other, rendering their retrieval an exercise in frustration and a diminished quality of life, we decided it’s time to elevate our consumer status to the point where we can retrieve plastic bags with the effortless simplicity heretofore known only by the wealthy and the socially important. Like Paris Hilton.
Soap dispenser. There’s actually a perfectly good soap dispenser already built into the sink. But we like clutter on our countertop, and we wanted to reinforce the fact that brushed stainless steel is indisputably the dominant quasi-reflective accent theme in our kitchen. So now we can use one dispenser for dish detergent and one for hand soap. And our lives will be richer and more meaningful for it.
Garbage receptacle. It’s big. It’s round. It has one of those foot pedals to raise the lid and improve our quality of life. And its unmissable presence in our kitchen gives our garbage an air of authority and gravitas.
Two curved shower rods. Technically, these are for the bathrooms, but they’re still stainless steel, they’re still from Missing Apostrophes ’n Things, and they’re exactly what our elfin showers need to give the illusion of space. And they were on sale. ’Nuff said.
And the gift card? I’d clung to the theory it was a gift of some sort, and since our friends are as generous as they are wealthy, I’d clung to the subtheory that it was loaded with money. Like probably $25. Or maybe $28. And when it was swiped against our $210 merchandise total, we discovered that it had saved us a whopping … ten dollars.
Stupid theory. I banish you to our brushed stainless steel garbage receptacle.
I had a gift card in my wallet from the inappropriately punctuated Linens ’n Things, though I had no recollection of where I got it. Some theories involve holiday and/or housewarming gifts. Some theories involve leftover store credit. Some theories involve rifling through an unattended purse on the train. In any case, I was tired of carrying that bulky gift card around like some sleek plastic albatross in my back pocket, and I wanted to exchange it for something useful, like a brushed stainless steel garbage receptacle where I could throw the card away if I didn’t have to cough it up to buy the brushed stainless steel garbage receptacle in the first place. Which is a conundrum I still struggle to wrap my brain around.
In any case, late on a Thursday night is the ideal (read: not crowded with consumers who have interesting things to do on a Thursday night in Chicago) time to shop at inappropriately punctuated retail outlets, and our quest for a brushed stainless steel garbage receptacle quickly became a mission to fill our entire kitchen with brushed stainless steel. By the time we staggered to the register, we were lugging enough metal to build a ship … or at least to melt into a weighty cudgel we could use to beat any divorced and/or philandering politician who doesn’t think we’re good enough for marriage. And I just went on a cruise, so what the hell do I need a ship for?
Here is a list of our final purchases, in order of size:
Paper towel dispenser. The plastic one that came attached to the kitchen cupboard was beneath our dignity, so we replaced it with one so sleek and smart it actually holds the stray end of the towels up against the roll so as not to make our kitchen look like a tenement.
Banana hanger. We’ve always been amused by these things, though they're not as fun as their trashy cousin the banana hammock, which looks tackier but has better iambic rhythm, internal alliteration and … um … other imagery. And though neither of us lets bananas sit around long enough that their mere weight against the countertop causes unappetizing bruises, we wanted a banana hanger of our very own. Besides, it’s a great way to showcase our exotic tastes in produce and thereby clarify for our neighbors which household is in fact the most culturally superior.
Plastic bag holder. After spending a lifetime storing plastic grocery bags inside each other, rendering their retrieval an exercise in frustration and a diminished quality of life, we decided it’s time to elevate our consumer status to the point where we can retrieve plastic bags with the effortless simplicity heretofore known only by the wealthy and the socially important. Like Paris Hilton.
Soap dispenser. There’s actually a perfectly good soap dispenser already built into the sink. But we like clutter on our countertop, and we wanted to reinforce the fact that brushed stainless steel is indisputably the dominant quasi-reflective accent theme in our kitchen. So now we can use one dispenser for dish detergent and one for hand soap. And our lives will be richer and more meaningful for it.
Garbage receptacle. It’s big. It’s round. It has one of those foot pedals to raise the lid and improve our quality of life. And its unmissable presence in our kitchen gives our garbage an air of authority and gravitas.
Two curved shower rods. Technically, these are for the bathrooms, but they’re still stainless steel, they’re still from Missing Apostrophes ’n Things, and they’re exactly what our elfin showers need to give the illusion of space. And they were on sale. ’Nuff said.
And the gift card? I’d clung to the theory it was a gift of some sort, and since our friends are as generous as they are wealthy, I’d clung to the subtheory that it was loaded with money. Like probably $25. Or maybe $28. And when it was swiped against our $210 merchandise total, we discovered that it had saved us a whopping … ten dollars.
Stupid theory. I banish you to our brushed stainless steel garbage receptacle.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Public Service Announcement
You work in a small office. It has a small bathroom featuring two tiny stalls situated freakishly close to each other.
You head to the bathroom to visit one of the stalls. You find there’s already someone occupying the other stall.
Q: What do you do?
A: You LEAVE. You go sit uncomfortably at your desk for 10 minutes so the first guy can do his business in peace. Once he’s gone and the air has cleared, you head back to do your business. And should a third guy enter the bathroom while you’re in the stall, he should leave you alone and wait his turn as well.
I’m glad we had this little talk.
You head to the bathroom to visit one of the stalls. You find there’s already someone occupying the other stall.
Q: What do you do?
A: You LEAVE. You go sit uncomfortably at your desk for 10 minutes so the first guy can do his business in peace. Once he’s gone and the air has cleared, you head back to do your business. And should a third guy enter the bathroom while you’re in the stall, he should leave you alone and wait his turn as well.
I’m glad we had this little talk.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Negotiations and love songs
It’s been almost a month since the boyfriend and I have actually been living together. It’s my first experience living in immorality and his second, and as we periodically glimpse each other across a room, through a maze of boxes or cowering in emotional apoplexy under any number of sinks in our vast, multi-bathroomed mansion, we often have the same internal response:
Holy shit. I live with that guy.
But it’s a good kind of holy shit. And while I always expected to experience endless giddiness when I finally moved in with The Rest Of My Life, the dominant emotion I feel now that I’m here is just calm. Simple, things-are-as-they-should-be calm.
That’s not to say it’s all peaches and beans in our vast, multi-bathroomed household. Far from it, in fact.
For instance, he put those spongy shelf liners in the kitchen cupboard where we store the cereal. I say it makes it harder to slide the cereal in and out, the way coated paperstock and veneered particleboard were meant to slide against each other. He says he likes it that way. I say he’s being grotesquely unreasonable.
And we’re still doing the what-color-should-we-paint-everything dance. We both love the green-on-green effect we achieved in the master bedroom, and we’ve agreed the adjoining bathroom will be a lighter shade of the same green with a darker shade as the unifying trim.
But every other room has been the subject of endless debate.
For instance: the guest bathroom, which is as small as Newt Gingrich’s integrity. I’ve always looked at wee tiny rooms as an opportunity to do big theatrical themes. Since the tile and the sink and the vanity in this bathroom are blinding white, I thought it would be fun to paint the walls an intense Mediterranean blue and maybe stencil the Latin conjugations of to wash around the tub as though they were carved in Greek letters. But the boyfriend likes every room in the house to flow together in one huggy-squeezy holistic whole. And the bright blue paint chips I taped next to the door frame gave him a visible rash every time he brushes his teeth.
So after a good hour of back-and-forth last night with about every paint strip from the Sherwin-Williams store, we’ve settled on what we both think will be lovely colors that all go:
Living room/sunroom/hallway (all essentially one room): three shades of a milky hot-cocoa brown
Guest bedroom: a purple-y gray with some kind or stencil (fleur-de-lis? something gayer?) along the ceiling in creams and dark violets
Guest bathroom: a light gray base coat covered by a dark khaki painted so you can see the gray peeking through vertical brush strokes (I’m hoping this bamboo/grasscloth effect will give the room a Zen/spa feel, and we can charge people $80 an hour to use it)
Yet to be even discussed: the dining room and the kitchen, though I’m sure we both have polar-opposite ideas for them as well
Our first houseguests come the weekend of April 20 to see me in my upcoming chorus show, and I’ve set that weekend as a soft deadline to at least have both bedrooms painted.
I wonder what color they’ll be by then.
Holy shit. I live with that guy.
But it’s a good kind of holy shit. And while I always expected to experience endless giddiness when I finally moved in with The Rest Of My Life, the dominant emotion I feel now that I’m here is just calm. Simple, things-are-as-they-should-be calm.
That’s not to say it’s all peaches and beans in our vast, multi-bathroomed household. Far from it, in fact.
For instance, he put those spongy shelf liners in the kitchen cupboard where we store the cereal. I say it makes it harder to slide the cereal in and out, the way coated paperstock and veneered particleboard were meant to slide against each other. He says he likes it that way. I say he’s being grotesquely unreasonable.
And we’re still doing the what-color-should-we-paint-everything dance. We both love the green-on-green effect we achieved in the master bedroom, and we’ve agreed the adjoining bathroom will be a lighter shade of the same green with a darker shade as the unifying trim.
But every other room has been the subject of endless debate.
For instance: the guest bathroom, which is as small as Newt Gingrich’s integrity. I’ve always looked at wee tiny rooms as an opportunity to do big theatrical themes. Since the tile and the sink and the vanity in this bathroom are blinding white, I thought it would be fun to paint the walls an intense Mediterranean blue and maybe stencil the Latin conjugations of to wash around the tub as though they were carved in Greek letters. But the boyfriend likes every room in the house to flow together in one huggy-squeezy holistic whole. And the bright blue paint chips I taped next to the door frame gave him a visible rash every time he brushes his teeth.
So after a good hour of back-and-forth last night with about every paint strip from the Sherwin-Williams store, we’ve settled on what we both think will be lovely colors that all go:
Living room/sunroom/hallway (all essentially one room): three shades of a milky hot-cocoa brown
Guest bedroom: a purple-y gray with some kind or stencil (fleur-de-lis? something gayer?) along the ceiling in creams and dark violets
Guest bathroom: a light gray base coat covered by a dark khaki painted so you can see the gray peeking through vertical brush strokes (I’m hoping this bamboo/grasscloth effect will give the room a Zen/spa feel, and we can charge people $80 an hour to use it)
Yet to be even discussed: the dining room and the kitchen, though I’m sure we both have polar-opposite ideas for them as well
Our first houseguests come the weekend of April 20 to see me in my upcoming chorus show, and I’ve set that weekend as a soft deadline to at least have both bedrooms painted.
I wonder what color they’ll be by then.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Clarification
Some people have cringed over my use of the word “cunt” to describe philandering divorce junkie Newt Gingrich in the post below.
Let me provide a brief definition of the word “cunt” to clarify its appropriateness in this context: It’s a schoolyard word meaning “arrogant, solipsistic whore with the impulse control of a pubescent boy and the moral repugnance of a man who places more value in his cock than in his wives, mistresses and the people he was elected to serve.”
Now that that’s out of the way, let me tell you what I got crossed off my to-do list over the last few days:
I updated my address on my driver’s license. When rendered in seven words short enough that even Newt Gingrich could understand them, it doesn’t sound like much of an accomplishment. But since I live in Chicago, it involved Internet searches for locations (two near my office) and what kind of documentation I need to bring to change my address on a government-issued ID (no information found) and trips to both locations because the first one had a 45-minute wait behind the entire cast of Deliverance. The second location bills itself as “express,” though I got through half a New Yorker article on spiders before I got to the front of the line. And though I brought my checkbook, my first mortgage statement and a letter from my insurance company as proof of my new address, the woman behind the counter just typed in the address I said out loud to her: 1234 Nick Lachey Street
I finished painting the bedroom. And by “finished painting” I mean “got the worst of the project out of the way.” We painted the walls a rich, mossy gray-green and then measured and taped off foot-wide (more or less) vertical stripes that I (because by this time the boyfriend was on a four-day trip for work) painted a pearlescent version of that rich, mossy gray-green. The finished effect is quite stunning, and the pearlescence shifts from greens to golds to deep browns depending on the angle and the light. But with the dark walnut floors and the rich greens and browns on the walls, the white baseboards, trim and doors look like gym socks under a tuxedo. So now we have to decide if we want to find a neutral cream color for the trim or dive in and paint it all a darker version of the wall color. Decorating is hard.
I can’t find my camera (or my stash of New Yorker back issues to read on the train, but we still have about five unopened boxes to dig through), but I did snap some pictures with my low-quality camera phone so I could send them to the boyfriend in his non-stripe-taping-or-painting “work” reverie. But since you’re here, I’ll share them with you as well.
Taping stripes is a huge, ugly job involving measuring, math, plumb bobs, swearing, the dawning realization that no corners in your house are anywhere near 90 degrees, and a time commitment roughly equal to one of Newt Gingrich’s marriages:
Once all the tape is up, though, painting is a relative breeze. (The white rectangles on the wall are the post-it notes where we did our math. And our swearing.) I find that since each stripe is framed in its own little finite universe of low-tack blueness, my painting progress is more readily measurable than when I just slap paint willy-nilly on a huge wall:
Since my camera phone has a grasp on reality rivaling that of Newt Gingrich, the colors in these pictures seem more in the baby-poop family than their true olive-and-moss nature, but here’s a shot of the final product:
Here are the stripes in daylight. You can readily see what I mean about the sweat socks:
Let me provide a brief definition of the word “cunt” to clarify its appropriateness in this context: It’s a schoolyard word meaning “arrogant, solipsistic whore with the impulse control of a pubescent boy and the moral repugnance of a man who places more value in his cock than in his wives, mistresses and the people he was elected to serve.”
Now that that’s out of the way, let me tell you what I got crossed off my to-do list over the last few days:
I updated my address on my driver’s license. When rendered in seven words short enough that even Newt Gingrich could understand them, it doesn’t sound like much of an accomplishment. But since I live in Chicago, it involved Internet searches for locations (two near my office) and what kind of documentation I need to bring to change my address on a government-issued ID (no information found) and trips to both locations because the first one had a 45-minute wait behind the entire cast of Deliverance. The second location bills itself as “express,” though I got through half a New Yorker article on spiders before I got to the front of the line. And though I brought my checkbook, my first mortgage statement and a letter from my insurance company as proof of my new address, the woman behind the counter just typed in the address I said out loud to her: 1234 Nick Lachey Street
I finished painting the bedroom. And by “finished painting” I mean “got the worst of the project out of the way.” We painted the walls a rich, mossy gray-green and then measured and taped off foot-wide (more or less) vertical stripes that I (because by this time the boyfriend was on a four-day trip for work) painted a pearlescent version of that rich, mossy gray-green. The finished effect is quite stunning, and the pearlescence shifts from greens to golds to deep browns depending on the angle and the light. But with the dark walnut floors and the rich greens and browns on the walls, the white baseboards, trim and doors look like gym socks under a tuxedo. So now we have to decide if we want to find a neutral cream color for the trim or dive in and paint it all a darker version of the wall color. Decorating is hard.
I can’t find my camera (or my stash of New Yorker back issues to read on the train, but we still have about five unopened boxes to dig through), but I did snap some pictures with my low-quality camera phone so I could send them to the boyfriend in his non-stripe-taping-or-painting “work” reverie. But since you’re here, I’ll share them with you as well.
Taping stripes is a huge, ugly job involving measuring, math, plumb bobs, swearing, the dawning realization that no corners in your house are anywhere near 90 degrees, and a time commitment roughly equal to one of Newt Gingrich’s marriages:
Once all the tape is up, though, painting is a relative breeze. (The white rectangles on the wall are the post-it notes where we did our math. And our swearing.) I find that since each stripe is framed in its own little finite universe of low-tack blueness, my painting progress is more readily measurable than when I just slap paint willy-nilly on a huge wall:
Since my camera phone has a grasp on reality rivaling that of Newt Gingrich, the colors in these pictures seem more in the baby-poop family than their true olive-and-moss nature, but here’s a shot of the final product:
Here are the stripes in daylight. You can readily see what I mean about the sweat socks:
Friday, March 09, 2007
The extremely angry blogger
Newt Gingrich is a cunt.
The latest corroboration of his inextinguishable assholism involves the fact that this divorce-junkie champion of family values was cheating on his wife while he was wasting millions of taxpayer dollars trying to nail (ahem) Clinton to the wall over the Lewinsky scandal.
And what makes him a total and complete goat-fucker is his who-gives-a-goddamn-shit-about-the-wife rationale for his hypocrisy: “Even though I run the risk of being deeply embarrassed (no mention of the pain or embarrassment he caused the woman he pledged fidelity to), and even though at a purely personal level I am not (not!) rendering judgment on another human being, as a leader of the government trying to uphold the rule of law (with the explicit exception of moral law, though he does barely acknowledge responsibility for his actions by framing his cheating as “fall[ing] short of God’s standards”), I have no choice except to move forward and say that you cannot accept ... perjury (with the exception of any promises legally or morally made or implied with the pledge of “I do”) in your highest officials.”
Note to Newt and the legions of other cheating, divorcing family-values hypocrites working irrationally to “protect” marriage from the non-existent “threat” of homosexuality: Your actions are not victimless. Every appendage or hole you ride that is not biologically attached to your spouse and every “til death do us part” you pledge that you circumvent through divorce court or the mind-bogglingly imbecilic concept of annulment is a violent punch in the gut to every gay couple who wants their committed relationship recognized, respected and legally equal to the relationships you so casually discard.
If you don’t have the intelligence, impulse control and basic respect required to honor the fidelity you pledge in a contract that is both morally and legally binding, don’t get married. If you choose to hold America to a standard you’re not emotionally capable of meeting, don’t get married. If you’re an asshole (and Newt, you’re an asshole), don’t get married.
And don’t—under any circumstances—try to prevent the marriages of those of us who are capable of making its basic promises and actually keeping them. We are better people than you, and you have no moral standing to keep stealing from us.
(Instead of your criminally hateful campaign to vilify gay people and demean our relationships, maybe you and your right-wing ilk should do something to make sure other countries don’t feel the need to purify land that you violate just by walking on it. You’re seen internationally as a virus. And you’re the only ones who refuse to acknowledge it.)
The latest corroboration of his inextinguishable assholism involves the fact that this divorce-junkie champion of family values was cheating on his wife while he was wasting millions of taxpayer dollars trying to nail (ahem) Clinton to the wall over the Lewinsky scandal.
And what makes him a total and complete goat-fucker is his who-gives-a-goddamn-shit-about-the-wife rationale for his hypocrisy: “Even though I run the risk of being deeply embarrassed (no mention of the pain or embarrassment he caused the woman he pledged fidelity to), and even though at a purely personal level I am not (not!) rendering judgment on another human being, as a leader of the government trying to uphold the rule of law (with the explicit exception of moral law, though he does barely acknowledge responsibility for his actions by framing his cheating as “fall[ing] short of God’s standards”), I have no choice except to move forward and say that you cannot accept ... perjury (with the exception of any promises legally or morally made or implied with the pledge of “I do”) in your highest officials.”
Note to Newt and the legions of other cheating, divorcing family-values hypocrites working irrationally to “protect” marriage from the non-existent “threat” of homosexuality: Your actions are not victimless. Every appendage or hole you ride that is not biologically attached to your spouse and every “til death do us part” you pledge that you circumvent through divorce court or the mind-bogglingly imbecilic concept of annulment is a violent punch in the gut to every gay couple who wants their committed relationship recognized, respected and legally equal to the relationships you so casually discard.
If you don’t have the intelligence, impulse control and basic respect required to honor the fidelity you pledge in a contract that is both morally and legally binding, don’t get married. If you choose to hold America to a standard you’re not emotionally capable of meeting, don’t get married. If you’re an asshole (and Newt, you’re an asshole), don’t get married.
And don’t—under any circumstances—try to prevent the marriages of those of us who are capable of making its basic promises and actually keeping them. We are better people than you, and you have no moral standing to keep stealing from us.
(Instead of your criminally hateful campaign to vilify gay people and demean our relationships, maybe you and your right-wing ilk should do something to make sure other countries don’t feel the need to purify land that you violate just by walking on it. You’re seen internationally as a virus. And you’re the only ones who refuse to acknowledge it.)
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Faggot
I know I’m a day late and a dollar short by posting on this topic now, but the post I started writing about the boyfriend’s and my new get-up-at-freakin’-6:00 workout schedule wasn’t really crystallizing into anything interesting.
But Jake! you might say. Nothing you write ever crystallizes into anything interesting!
You MIGHT say that, but I’m going to pretend you never would. Besides, you’re in the third paragraph of this post, so you must think I’m going to get interesting eventually.
And now you’re in the fourth paragraph—the one where I finally get to my potentially interesting point: Ann Coulter, the vituperative bad-girl talking head of the Republicans’ well-oiled ugly machine.
For those of you not inclined to surf the gay blogosphere on a regular basis, Coulter referred to Democratic candidate John Edwards as a “faggot” on Friday in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference. Her choice of language in that context reveals everything we need to know about her thoughtfulness, intelligence and maturity. And the fact that her words were met with cheering and applause uncovers a lot of ugly truth about the Republican party and the effect its theocratic rhetoric has had on its followers.
Coulter has since dismissed her choice of language as a “schoolyard word,” insisting she didn’t mean to offend anyone. Coulter’s oeuvre proves, however, that offending people is the driving force behind her writing and speaking. It’s no stretch to say she’s made a career of it. And while “faggot” is very much a schoolyard word, it is also the very word people use when they attack and beat and kill gay people from the schoolyard to the sidewalk in front of the gay bar. It carries the same weight as “nigger,” and her use of it—especially in a context tied to the political management of this country—is inexcusable.
Fortunately, the Conservative Political Action Conference incident has prompted a growing number of papers to drop her syndicated column, and her web site has lost a number of advertisers as well.
The HRC has also launched a letter-writing campaign to persuade Universal Press Syndicate to drop Coulter as one of its writers.
I have sent various permutations of the following words to the papers who have dropped her and to Universal Press Syndicate. Feel free to do the same, in your own words or in blatant plagiarism of mine:
I’m all for the discussion of ideas and the respectful clash of ideologies, but Ann Coulter has proven time and time again that she’s incapable of high-minded discourse.
She’s constantly exposed for not doing her homework before she writes, she treats gross oversimplification as thoughtful interpretation, and she thinks words like “faggot” are acceptable to everyone and—apparently—unharmful to anyone.
In short, she’s a professional adolescent. She’s not only an embarrassment to any paper who carries her invectives, but her vapid writing gives a misguided sense of validation to anyone who equates meaningless sound bytes and faggot-bashing with intelligence.
But Jake! you might say. Nothing you write ever crystallizes into anything interesting!
You MIGHT say that, but I’m going to pretend you never would. Besides, you’re in the third paragraph of this post, so you must think I’m going to get interesting eventually.
And now you’re in the fourth paragraph—the one where I finally get to my potentially interesting point: Ann Coulter, the vituperative bad-girl talking head of the Republicans’ well-oiled ugly machine.
For those of you not inclined to surf the gay blogosphere on a regular basis, Coulter referred to Democratic candidate John Edwards as a “faggot” on Friday in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference. Her choice of language in that context reveals everything we need to know about her thoughtfulness, intelligence and maturity. And the fact that her words were met with cheering and applause uncovers a lot of ugly truth about the Republican party and the effect its theocratic rhetoric has had on its followers.
Coulter has since dismissed her choice of language as a “schoolyard word,” insisting she didn’t mean to offend anyone. Coulter’s oeuvre proves, however, that offending people is the driving force behind her writing and speaking. It’s no stretch to say she’s made a career of it. And while “faggot” is very much a schoolyard word, it is also the very word people use when they attack and beat and kill gay people from the schoolyard to the sidewalk in front of the gay bar. It carries the same weight as “nigger,” and her use of it—especially in a context tied to the political management of this country—is inexcusable.
Fortunately, the Conservative Political Action Conference incident has prompted a growing number of papers to drop her syndicated column, and her web site has lost a number of advertisers as well.
The HRC has also launched a letter-writing campaign to persuade Universal Press Syndicate to drop Coulter as one of its writers.
I have sent various permutations of the following words to the papers who have dropped her and to Universal Press Syndicate. Feel free to do the same, in your own words or in blatant plagiarism of mine:
I’m all for the discussion of ideas and the respectful clash of ideologies, but Ann Coulter has proven time and time again that she’s incapable of high-minded discourse.
She’s constantly exposed for not doing her homework before she writes, she treats gross oversimplification as thoughtful interpretation, and she thinks words like “faggot” are acceptable to everyone and—apparently—unharmful to anyone.
In short, she’s a professional adolescent. She’s not only an embarrassment to any paper who carries her invectives, but her vapid writing gives a misguided sense of validation to anyone who equates meaningless sound bytes and faggot-bashing with intelligence.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Why my boyfriend rocks:
He indulged me in one of my OCD projects without laughing. The first thing we did when we bought our new condo was rip out the closets. Then we patched the holes and painted everything white before we installed our Elfa closet systems. But we didn't paint the baseboards because we still had to get the floors refinished. Now that the floors are refinished and the Elfa systems are installed (and most of the clothes are stuffed in, awaiting organization), it still bothered me that we hadn't covered the OLD white paint on the baseboards with our NEW white paint. So Friday night instead of doing something productive, the boyfriend helped me pull out all the stuff along the floors of the closets, tape off the baseboards, scrub away any dust and finally get the closets COMPLETELY painted. And now I can sleep all the way through the night.
Obviously I didn't go home to Iowa this weekend for my nephew's birthday. The weather was iffy enough that I decided to wait until Saturday morning to make a decision, but that would have left me with only about 20 hours to visit the family, so I just didn't go. My sister reported that my nephew seemed OK with the idea of Uncle Jake and his mysterious new roommate coming some other weekend (when he learned I was moving in with someone, my nephew's immediate response was: "He's moving in with a BOY?") so I stayed in Chicago and did something even more exciting than getting hugs and eating cake: The boyfriend and I painted our first room—the master bedroom—together. And we didn't get divorced.
I splurged and got the top-line paint from Sherwin-Williams—the stuff that comes in the fabulous square cans—and I was all set to report that there is indeed—finally!—a paint that gives complete coverage in one coat, but when the stuff dried, it dried in about three shades of shiny. And not shiny shiny (we're not circus people) ... it just dried in a way that lots of roller strokes were extremely visible based on the way they reflected light. So yeah, I guess we're now circus people.
So today we'll do a second coat and hope for the best. Then we have to tape off and paint stripes in a subtly contrasting color. And then—of course—redo the baseboards. So we still have miles to go before we sleep … at least in that bedroom.
Obviously I didn't go home to Iowa this weekend for my nephew's birthday. The weather was iffy enough that I decided to wait until Saturday morning to make a decision, but that would have left me with only about 20 hours to visit the family, so I just didn't go. My sister reported that my nephew seemed OK with the idea of Uncle Jake and his mysterious new roommate coming some other weekend (when he learned I was moving in with someone, my nephew's immediate response was: "He's moving in with a BOY?") so I stayed in Chicago and did something even more exciting than getting hugs and eating cake: The boyfriend and I painted our first room—the master bedroom—together. And we didn't get divorced.
I splurged and got the top-line paint from Sherwin-Williams—the stuff that comes in the fabulous square cans—and I was all set to report that there is indeed—finally!—a paint that gives complete coverage in one coat, but when the stuff dried, it dried in about three shades of shiny. And not shiny shiny (we're not circus people) ... it just dried in a way that lots of roller strokes were extremely visible based on the way they reflected light. So yeah, I guess we're now circus people.
So today we'll do a second coat and hope for the best. Then we have to tape off and paint stripes in a subtly contrasting color. And then—of course—redo the baseboards. So we still have miles to go before we sleep … at least in that bedroom.
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Important account updates
My teeth. I got them cleaned and X-rayed yesterday. No cavities. No gum disease. No need for expensive orthodontia requiring headgear. My new job comes with a new dental insurance network that—hooray!—includes a dentist friend of mine I’d been hoping to switch to for a long time. His office is like a posh spa, albeit a posh spa where they stick sharp things in your gums. And in addition to my bag of toothbrushes, floss and Listerine samples, he also gave me a hug when I left.
Our kitchen floor. The second and final phase of our reflooring project began this morning. While we were in New York a couple weeks ago, we had our orange-juice-colored floors sanded and stained a gorgeous dark walnut color. But the kitchen floor had so much damage that the contractor recommended we rip it out and start over. He also gave us a respectable estimate for installing tile while we were gone as well, but we didn’t have time to pick out new tile before we left. Now our new tile is picked and purchased and sitting in boxes on our back porch, and at this writing our ugly old floor is gone, the subflooring is laid … and tomorrow morning our sexy black marble kitchen floor will become a reality. Our new condo is looking less and less like a tenement each day!
Our bathroom door. The guest bedroom has a door leading directly into the guest bathroom. Which sounds like it could provide a nice little private passageway for friends, family members and visiting dignitaries, but it was installed so it bangs directly into the hallway door leading into the guest bathroom. And since the bathroom is as tiny as the probability that Michael Savage is heterosexual, the bedroom-to-bathroom door occupies the only wall where you could put something useful. Like a place to hang towels. So the contractor ripped it out today, and he’ll commence making a nice flat wall in its place tomorrow. All for less than the cost of Ted Haggard’s weekly male-hooker-and-meth budget.
The weather. Apparently my hometown is getting buried under ice and snow and the debris of shattered telephone poles. I’m supposed to drive there tomorrow for my nephew’s eighth birthday. But I have a huge aversion to driving in bad weather. And a long history of skidding into things in bad weather. So I have to decide just how much I don’t want to disappoint him. Of course, if I do go, I’ll get to eat cake. So you can see my dilemma. Which is nowhere near as troublesome as this awkward little conundrum.
Our kitchen floor. The second and final phase of our reflooring project began this morning. While we were in New York a couple weeks ago, we had our orange-juice-colored floors sanded and stained a gorgeous dark walnut color. But the kitchen floor had so much damage that the contractor recommended we rip it out and start over. He also gave us a respectable estimate for installing tile while we were gone as well, but we didn’t have time to pick out new tile before we left. Now our new tile is picked and purchased and sitting in boxes on our back porch, and at this writing our ugly old floor is gone, the subflooring is laid … and tomorrow morning our sexy black marble kitchen floor will become a reality. Our new condo is looking less and less like a tenement each day!
Our bathroom door. The guest bedroom has a door leading directly into the guest bathroom. Which sounds like it could provide a nice little private passageway for friends, family members and visiting dignitaries, but it was installed so it bangs directly into the hallway door leading into the guest bathroom. And since the bathroom is as tiny as the probability that Michael Savage is heterosexual, the bedroom-to-bathroom door occupies the only wall where you could put something useful. Like a place to hang towels. So the contractor ripped it out today, and he’ll commence making a nice flat wall in its place tomorrow. All for less than the cost of Ted Haggard’s weekly male-hooker-and-meth budget.
The weather. Apparently my hometown is getting buried under ice and snow and the debris of shattered telephone poles. I’m supposed to drive there tomorrow for my nephew’s eighth birthday. But I have a huge aversion to driving in bad weather. And a long history of skidding into things in bad weather. So I have to decide just how much I don’t want to disappoint him. Of course, if I do go, I’ll get to eat cake. So you can see my dilemma. Which is nowhere near as troublesome as this awkward little conundrum.
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