When I Finally Find a Job March 5, 2009

As soon as I find a new job, I’m getting that expensive face wash.
Well, as soon as I get my first paycheck.
But I’ll feel so much better when I find my new job.

When I get a job, I can finally have my wisdom teeth pulled.
If I can land a job with dental care, that is.
Wait. I could be fired if I take off work for surgery. Scratch the teeth– scratch looking forward to something miserable!

When I finally land a good job, I can stop stressing out.
“Bills” is far too innocuous a word for that malicious stack threatening my credit score.
Realistically, Paycheck One? That belongs to Bills.

But when I finally land a good job, I won’t have one toe out the door.
I want to dedicate myself to it just enough to succeed;
Yet I will keep sending out other resumes. Just in case the company collapses. Again.

Slowly but surely, when I land a good job,
I will acquire new shoes and bras and better-fitting trousers.
I’ll have to, unless I want to imagine watercooler snickering about my not-so-stealthily re-worn slacks.

Just in case the economy continues its lazy spiral–
Because every crop of newly degreed, hungry graduates threatens my tenuous hold on a job–
I sometimes flat-out pray that I find a new job.

And as soon as I find a new job, I tell myself,
I’ll donate to charity, smile more easily, stock my pantry with rare herbs, hit the gym. But I won’t.
I’ll sit around, once-fluid confidence boiled to smears in an old pot,
Conjuring recreational procrastinations,
Obsessing over mailing one more resume so I can stay on my toes–
Just in case that job slithers from beneath my feet
And I am tossed back into the statistics.

Blog for choice 09 January 22, 2009

In honor of the 36th anniversary of  the Roe v. Wade decision, I’m blogging for choice. It is fundamental to remember that the right to choose is a hard-won and newly-defended right– despite the explosive scientific and medical advances of the 1950’s and 1960’s, religious doctrine guided by the hand of sexual oppression still determined abortion policy in much of the United States in 1973. Not the decisions of women and their doctors, but the doctrines of religions despite the clear delineation of church and state outlined in our Constitution.

The enforcement of that separation, combined with the right to privacy outlined in the 14th Amendment, provide women with the right to choose abortion without approval from government, husbands, boyfriends, parents, rapists, judges, or police.

It’s become clear in the subsequent years that the overwhelming majority of women do not view abortion as a method of birth control (a favorite argument of the religious right), but rather as a last resort. Despite the assertion that women use abortion as birth control, the same religious right fails to see that women must be provided with quality education about and access to viable methods of birth control– the only realistic way to reduce the number of abortions performed in the United States.

The right to abortion must be protected and defended on a federal level. The states’ rights argument is a shield that would allow individual states to violate a woman’s constitutional rights. Abortion should be safe and legal, and ideally, rare. Rare because it’s a choice nobody likes to make, and that isn’t taken lightly; rare because good reproductive planning should decrease the amount of surgical and chemical abortions necessary. But not rare because the government intervenes and tells women what to do with their wombs.

Here’s a fascinating video on another blog for choice: How to stump anti-choicers

How have they never thought about the answer to this question?

And below, from the DNC’s 2008 party platform:

The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.
The Democratic Party also strongly supports access to comprehensive affordable family planning services and age-appropriate sex education which empower people to make informed choices and live healthy lives. We also recognize that such health care and education help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby also reduce the need for abortions.
The Democratic Party also strongly supports a woman’s decision to have a child by ensuring access to and availability of programs for pre- and post-natal health care, parenting skills, income support, and caring adoption programs.

Defend and protect your rights, and report any organization that tries to intimidate or tread on your right to choose by reporting them to your local NARAL/Pro Choice America chapter.

Yo DJ, that’s my DJ January 7, 2009

Some say the best club DJ is the one who plays songs you’ve never heard but instantly love, or the one who perfectly blends tracks. I disagree. We all know the best DJ is the one who plays your request when you slyly sidle up to the booth and wittily shout, “HEY! Do you have The Roots/Sweet Caroline/David Allen Coe?”

This DJ is the best because when s/he plays your jam, you are the coolest person in the club– the music master is taking advice from you. You are also smugly responsible for everyone’s good time. Awareness of this supremacy usually leads to the busting out of your finest dance moves and shouting, “yo DJ! That’s my DJ! Thanks dude!” after the first verse. For a few minutes, you are Tony Manero.

While I am far too familiar with the elation that accompanies hearing a requested song, I’m not a DJ. I’ve always suspected that they meet Saturday night song requests with equal amounts of derision and resignation (“Really? Don’t Stop Believin’ again?”). I think DJs probably prefer the patron who approaches the booth and says, “that’s an awesome track. Do you have anything else like it?” and lets the DJ do their thing.

Jason is one of those awesome patrons. He read my blog on Christopher Hitchens’ antireligion argument and asked, “How seriously can/should we take the arguments of someone with an evidenced record of poor reasoning and inappropriate public statements?” So I pondered and pondered, and decided that the works of such individuals should be analyzed while we do the following:

1) accept that a broken clock is right twice a day. (Unless it’s digital.)
2) use our own logical reasoning and assessment skills to determine whether their argument commits logical fallacies or goes too far in selectively employing facts in order to prove its point; in other words, does this argument hold water, or is it complete BS?

These rules keep me reading the blather of George Will and Karl Rove every week, despite that I disagree with damn near every word that comes out of their mouths. Will’s arguments are often rooted in conservative philosophies, and are a little more palatable than Rove’s blatant mischaracterization of facts in an attempt to remain relevant. But I read ‘em both, to stay informed and also because… sometimes they’re insightful.

Will’s pet tactic is to use an analysis of a historical event (war strategies, Supreme Court decisions, presidencies) to support his position (usually the antiliberal one). By choosing carefully, Will can argue for the conservative stance; here, he uses the rising cost of healthcare to argue that socialized medicine would be a disaster. His statistics are fine, but his final assessment is flawed. Because Medicare has gotten it wrong, he declares that government can’t get healthcare right. Even though I disagree with Will on this subject, he’s sometimes on-point– like when he said that governments shouldn’t throw their clandestine operatives under the bus a la Valerie Plame. Right twice a day.

Karl Rove is a different breed. While his definition of “fact” wouldn’t get past a third-grade history teacher, he’s a shrewd political mind. He authored the Bush 43 talking points and can deliver them hook, line, and sinker, plus he got Bush 43 elected… twice. His inexplicable stream of op-eds in respected publications always push the neo-conservative agenda, but he’s also able to assess the entire political playing field in real time. He’s like Tom Brady– he can change the whole game by spinning it his way. Therefore, although Rove lives in a fantasy world where Bush 43 is a misunderstood genius, he had a keen eye for the 2008 elections (saying that Hillary Clinton wouldn’t be able to overtake the charisma juggernaut that is Barack Obama), and was able to see plainly what cost the RNC so many seats in 2006. Rove is an evil, evil man who has no problem lying to the American people and to the President he serves, but he’s also got a sharp eye.

So, even though Hitchens supported the Iraq war, he also supported Danish newspapers as they faced a firestorm for publishing Muhammad cartoons. I can get behind that. And even though his book “God is Not Great” is sometimes hysterical, and is in certain chapters a disjointed excuse for him to rail against organized religion, he is right that “Religion Poisons Everything.” Additionally, since Hitchens is one of these George Will types instead of the Karl Rove type– that is to say, he uses rational arguments to assert occasionally questionable positions, instead of using blatantly false and misleading information to get money or power– I am willing to hear him out.

I figure that if we can’t engage those with whom we disagree and find some common point, they will run off to a cabin in Montana and mix up 55-gallon drums of explosives. Or, you know, vote Bush/Cheney. To go back to the broken clock, Bush 43 is currently attempting to slide some protections for the oceans under Dick Cheney’s nose– which means I may have to repeal my longstanding statement that I cannot find a single Bush action or doctrine with which I agree. If no one is right 100% of the time, I guess no one can be wrong 100% of the time, either.

Now I’d like to make your ears bleed a little bit by displaying the only sensible thing Ann Coulter has ever said: “Harriet Miers isn’t qualified to play a Supreme Court justice on The West Wing, let alone to be a real one.” Now that is one busted clock who managed to get something right in her miserable life.

Let’s talk about guns for a minute. June 26, 2008

The Supreme Court’s first-ever ruling on the Second Amendment– a sharp 5-4 split striking down the Washington, D.C. ban on handguns that’s been in effect since I was a child– touched off a lively discourse between myself and my significant other about politics, guns, and the law. It also revives the “bitter-guns-religion” comment the RNC seeks to use against Obama every day between now and the general election.

So let’s talk about it for a minute. Let’s talk about why the handgun ban was (and remains) entirely appropriate, why Bittergate is founded on a comment that, linguistically, makes a whole lot of sense, and why the positions I hold don’t run counter to my belief that law-abiding deer-hunting, target-practicing, crime-avoiding citizens in all 50 states have a protected right to own firearms. (AND I support the Brady ban.)

First of all, the argument for gun ownership that’s predicated on the immediate availability of a citizens’ militia is a joke. It would take a catastrophe we can’t even imagine for United States citizens to get off their sofas, load up their guns, organize, and take on an enemy. Prime example: on 9/11, I didn’t see all the gun owners protecting the Pentagon or encircling the gates to airports cracking down on passengers and sniping potential terrorists. The U.S. military & government handled that. Besides, wars aren’t fought by troop formations in militias anymore. The closest thing I can foresee to minutemen enforcing the law of the land is a solo vigilante enforcing his own brand of justice across the land. We call those “mass shootings.” The closest thing I can see to Americans protecting their way of life from a meddling or misguided government? Waco. So don’t tell me that gun ownership is some form of national security. It isn’t. That’s why we have a military and defense budget that are beyond compare.

Next up: The handgun debate. I grew up an hour outside of Washington, D.C. and I remember (even after the handgun ban was in effect) being keenly aware that Southeast was a good place to go if you wanted to get clipped by a stray bullet. Now, I know what you’re going to say: Handguns legally purchased by law-abiding citizens aren’t the issue in gun crime. And you’re right. They’re probably not. But the D.C. handgun ban is an important tool for law enforcement agencies. If they spot pistols on petty criminals who can’t be charged with much else, there is a law on the books that allows prosecution of those individuals, instead of letting them drive up the rate of gun violence. Banning handguns in the District gives law enforcement reason to believe that anyone who would willfully break that ban and carry a gun is probably not going to use it for shooting Pepsi cans.

The handgun ban doesn’t necessarily stop handguns from getting into the hands of would-be criminals. But it does create a scarcity of handgun dealers within the District. If handguns are outlawed, you can bet fewer stores will stock the clips and magazines for 9- and 8mm guns or .357s. The ban does make it just a little bit harder to commit a gun crime… and when one is committed, it makes the punishment a little harsher.

So some do-good lawyers are up in arms about this (no pun intended, but I’m keeping it). It’s a total violation of civil rights. Right? Is it really, or is it a wedge issue that the right wing can dramatize to keep their coffers full of donations during a campaign cycle? If the self-professed small-government types were that concerned about civil rights, they’d take up the issue of tweezers and shampoo in a carry-on bag long before they’d take up handguns in D.C., don’t you think? Oh but wait. That’s no longer a civil rights issue, it’s a national security issue?

Washington D.C. is unique from all the other states in the union. It’s not a state, and it’s not a city belonging to the State of Maryland or the Commonwealth of Virginia. It’s an independent federal district governed by Congress. D.C. is the international representative of the United States across the world, home to our embassies, our agencies, and our entire judicial, representative, and executive system. There are all kinds of bizarre laws that apply to the District and its residents– diplomatic immunity, an absolutely zero-tolerance DWI policy (if you get pulled over after one beer, it’s off to the chokey), can’t build higher than the top of the Capitol. You can’t even carry a pocketknife there. Why? Because it’s the nation’s capitol. And it’s different.

If banning handguns in the District of Columbia is part of a program to dramatically reduce overall crime (which it did) and make D.C. that much closer to a model city, I don’t see the problem. Owners of rifles, shotguns, and anything else that could be construed as a recreational firearm are welcome to own them in D.C. But handguns don’t make law-abiding citizens that much safer– in fact, in situations where the victim pulls a handgun on their attacker, they’re more likely to have the weapon turned against them than they are to debilitate the attacker. If you’re really that worried about it, get some damn mace!

Now, onto Bittergate. Let’s parse this sentence, and I’ll explain to you why Barry would have defended it if the average American newsviewer didn’t have the attention span of a hamster. About the former Southern Democrats, the Blue-Collar Blue Staters who have gone red, Barack Obama said the following:

“So, it depends on where you are, but I think it’s fair to say that the places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people feel most cynical about government” … In a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn’t buy it.”

And the kicker:

“You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Please tell me what is wrong with that statement? Because I understood it the first time I read the transcript. And this is not me parsing words, this is just me paraphrasing what I hear in that statement:

“People in working-class areas feel frustrated with their government because, 25 years after manufacturing jobs have packed up and left town, it feels like their government’s economic policy has forgotten them. They don’t feel like trusting government solutions anymore because they have been burned. This economic mistrust has translated into a broader general mistrust of the United States government. Since the broader economic worry isn’t something that’s easily divided or articulated, these voters focus on easy explanations and arguments about illegal immigrants stealing jobs, or whether the government is interfering with their right to own guns, because they are easier positions to debate and defend. Since the government isn’t listening to them about the economy, they speak up about more divisive, hot-button issues in order to express their frustration.”

Now are you seriously going to tell me that isn’t totally true?

In conclusion. President Obama isn’t going to take away your .386 deer rifle, and he’s not making fun of your religion. He might try and put some windmills on your Appalachian mountains in place of the mountaintop coal removal that’s decimating the landscape, but he’s not going to destroy your way of life. You don’t need a pistol in the District of Columbia and you don’t need a damn M-16A2 to shoot opossums.

Yeah, what is that? November 7, 2007

Allow me to quote from a film with which I am familiar, given its place in the modern cinematic canon:

Champ: What’s it like, Ron?
Ron: The intimate times? Outta sight, my man.
Brian: No, the other thing. Love.
Brick: Yeah, what is that?

In Anchorman, of course, the group begins singing “Afternoon Delight.” I stop at the question posed. What is love? seems like an overwrought blog topic, but it’s something I’ve pondered lately. Love, relationships, and how the two go together. What is love, and why does it matter, and what does it do?

The story of how my parents met is one I remember well, despite that they are now divorced and can’t stand one another. My mom and I lived in an apartment complex, and there was this obnoxiously loud, souped-up VW Beetle in the neighborhood. My mother cursed it constantly. When a radiologist from Bethesda Naval asked her on a date, my mom was shocked to discover that her date was the owner of that vented, chrome-exhausted monstrosity. In fact, she would ride in that vehicle to her first date with the man who would marry her, eventually adopt me, and with whom she would raise my little brother, Michael. They loved romantically and they married.

But, as I said, their marriage ended fifteen years later. And it hasn’t exactly been my model for healthy relationships. That model has been my grandparents’ marriage, one that endured my Poppop’s military career throughout Scandinavia, Canada, and the U.S. Through hardships to include their inability to conceive (leading to the adoption of my mother and uncles), my Poppop’s medical residencies, and many others that have surely gone unspoken, my grandparents maintained a relationship that has forever made me believe in the existence of true love and true partnership. The two of them were in love, passionately and romantically and emotionally in love, until the day my grandfather died, and I suspect they will be always.

Until I spent last Sunday with my grandmother on a long car ride, it hadn’t occurred to me to ask how they’d met. I’m sure I’ve heard the tale before, but I asked for a refresher anyway. Because I missed my Poppop, and because I’m still curious about love. My Mommom started the following story:

“When I graduated college, I was going on to teach science. But, I felt that I should have one year of practical lab experience before lecturing students.” At this point, it becomes apparent that my grandmother is a genius. Moving on…

“This was when Poppop was a first-year resident, and we would see each other around the lab. There was this handsome, handsome dark-skinned black man, African with beautiful skin, at the bench. He and I would talk during labs, and one day he said, ‘can I ask you a question?’ I said, ‘well sure.’ He asked, ‘are you a Catholic,’ and I said ‘yes, I am.’ And then your Poppop asked me on a date, and I said no. He would always ask sort of at the last minute, on a Friday for a date on Saturday, and I already had a date. He almost didn’t ask the third time!”

So, he sent his friend out to scout? A wingman to see whether you were Catholic?! “Well yes, and it was a nice thing, because that was important to both of us!” And how long did they date? “We’d dated for three years when we were married.”

Following the genius comment, three things about this story immediately strike me: My grandparents were concerned, first and foremost, with their own development as persons and professionals, not snagging a mate. My grandmother really was following that advice she’s given me to not date exclusively. And their relationship, evidently, was based on their Catholic faith even from the very beginning.

Finally, we arrive at my pondering point: Love, God, and how the two might fit together. The quintessential explanation of God to children is that “God is love.” The definition of a Catholic marriage is two people, cleaved onto one another and entering into a covenant under God and the guidance of Jesus Christ. How do the three connect– love, God, and marriage? Is is that two people of faith who fall in love make a good match for marriage? Or is it that love is created out of a marriage of two people of faith? The difference is enormous. The first is entering into a partnership with someone you love. The other is building love with a partner and God, or through God, maybe because of God.

So what is that? I feel sure I know love, but now I’m wondering whether there’s something else. And whether that love I’ve felt is the same thing that held my grandparents together for so many years. There was certainly romance– I’ll never forget an evening in the car with my grandfather, who called my grandmother with the Rat Pack-esque one-liner “Hello, Gorgeous” and held her enrapt on the other end of the line. That’s part of love, too. It’s got to be. I could hear her swooning over her husband of 25 years.

It has been said that love has the power to transform. I wonder if it is what transforms ordinary people into successful married couples. It’s worth pondering in an age when half of all marriages end in divorce. It’s worth questioning what our priorities are even when we date, if a marriage is eventually what we’re looking for. I wonder if we’re currently going about this dating thing all wrong. And I wonder why it seems like a different era altogether when people might say to one other, “This is who I am, these are my beliefs, and eventually I’d like to meet the person I’ll marry.”

Well, when I figure this all out, I’ll let you know. Somebody let me know I’m not alone in considering the subject.