Uh...Excuse me?!?

Some words from our fearless leader:

"I urge all those who honor Terri Schiavo to continue to work to build a culture of life where all Americans are welcomed and valued and protected, especially those who live at the mercy of others".

"The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak. In cases where there are serious doubts and questions, the presumption should be in the favor of life."

Ullgh! So much hypocracy...don't even know...where to begin...must try to ignore...insanely righteous people.

Some Stuff that Happened, Some Stuff I thought about

No time for the usual carefully crafted post this week.

Quiconque came down for Easter weekend. Mrs. Ass escaped from two pre-schoolers to join us on Friday. We gave hand massages and had not so brilliant discussion on theory of male sexual orientation and flexibility. We went out for treats. A bad waitress served us gigantic desserts very slowly.

While shopping on Saturday, Qui suffered (almost silently) through my indecision and love of beige. Later she successfully drove me to Aunt Liz's suburban home and back without incident. There, we enjoyed tender meats prepared by my aunt. Qui got to meet 2 of my aunts and my cousin. I took a risk and prompted Qui to share the butt growth anthro story with them, which turned out to be a great ice breaker since the aunts are both teachers, though engineer cousin remained silent. My cousin is much girlier than me, has a boyfriend and a fancy German car. I don't even have a fancy German boyfriend.

I tried to make a some boiled eggs for Easter breakfast, but I didn't boil them long enough for my tastes, so I put my egg in the micowave. Even though I slit its side, my poor egg exploded.

Then Qui left.

I called my grandma to wish her a Happy Easter. My aunt answered the phone and said, "Happy Resurection Day," as if we are all in grave danger of suddenly going pagan, what with the bunnies and eggs and all. Grandma, who is in her 90s, wasn't too thrilled about the holiday meal. She observed that you can have ham, turkey and such any time you like now, nothing special.

Did a little improv show on Easter night.

After watching the first season of Deadwood, I wonder how anyone can ever really know how much people cursed in the past. I love how the Deadwood people talk--a combination of Shakespeare, the King James Bible and a Junior High Boys bathroom circa 1985. According to Deadwood's writers, sex with mom and fellatio were much more common in the Wild West than John Ford would have had us believe.

Mean Girl

Once again, someone finds me abrasive, negative and condescending. Most stinging of all --since I'm condescending and should be infuriatingly polite-- is that my behavior was called rude. I fear that I'm doing all these cruel things mindlessly. I hear Nina singing.

I'm just a soul who's intentions are good.
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood.

Really, I really do want to be nice. I am working very hard to filter my comments and facial expressions, but sometimes I just get tired. Sometimes something inside me senses that I'm being attacked, then suddenly I'm the mean girl.

Once I'm the mean girl, I'm damned. I can't take back words, forget about glances. I've tried. Maybe one reason few people apologize in today's culture is that so few people accept and forgive.

Update: the offended party has accepted my apologies.

I value compassion above all else, but I have other values as well -- brevity, quality, honest and self-respect among them. People are at ease when I say yes to everything, but when I say yes to myself I get in trouble. Psychologists and therapists rightly tell us that we are the only ones responsible for our feelings. Why then are we hurting each other so much.

So I have low social intelligence and an inappropriate range of affect. Before I lock myself in my room to stew in bitterness forever, I must find solutions. After all, I love people, damn it!

At least the white witch said I was sweet when I helped her use the stapler today.

My Head is a 3D Movie

Last week I finally I realized that hair is a 3D cinematic experience. Too often, I just look at my head from the front, as if I were half a mug shot or a walking drivers license. When I fix my hair, I need to think like a sculptor and a director.

One of the Shortest Colds Ever

Maybe it was the Airborne. Maybe it was two days in bed. Oh Lordy, maybe it was the cigarette? Who knows what made this cold the shortest ever? Now I can resume my exercise efforts.

The Friday night improv show went well, in spite of the cold and the venue switcheroo. There's something cool about treading the same stage that once supported burlesque. Glad you all could be there. After the show, I went straight to bed.

During my bed rest, I caught up on DVD watching. I finally saw Mean Girls, The Weather Underground, and the lukewarm Cooler. Dare I read up on COINTELPRO or am I angry enough already?

Saint Badass Day

It's probably not my place to complain about the celebration of negative stereotypes that accompanies St. Patrick's Day. But, since my inappropriate range of affect is on full display, I'll go ahead and put my foot in it.

Today, I saw a young woman walking around wearing a baseball cap with a little gauge graphic on it, listing a range of states that included "drunk" "belligerent" and "Irish". Her arrow pointed to "Irish." When I saw this proud and cheerful young woman, I thought perhaps we black people have been advised to model ourselves on the wrong minorities.

I tend to believe that African-Americans need to turn away from self-destructive badassed posturing, yet in the case of the Irish-Americans, the badass pose doesn't seem to hurt them, at least not now. Maybe I ought to rethink my mild middle class values. Most Americans who belong to a group with a badass reputation take some advantage of it, not only to sell music or cable television series, but for its original purpose, to ward off attacks. Harold and Kumar, fictional examples to be sure, were at a bit of a loss without it.

Perhaps I could tap into the power of badass ethnicity. For starters, I may celebrate Black History Month by going around selling red, black and green crack pipes or 40 ounce malt liquor wrapped in kente cloth.

Or maybe not.

Today's Emotional Questions

Why haven't I found the middle ground between ruminating indecision and rashness? And(this question arose from the same incident)what end does embarrassment serve?

Can envy be prevented without having everything you want?

How did pleasure become detached from lust?

Did I sympathize with my roasted chicken or empathize with my roasted chicken?

Two Roast Weekend

Last week, I bought a white board and mounted it on my bedroom door to keep my weekends and evenings on track. But since I forgot to write "get ass out of bed" on the top of my Saturday to do list, I wasn't as productive as I had hoped I would be.

Maybe I deserve a grasse matinee after a week's work, but Saturday morning was morbidly obese. Fortunately, I had plenty of time to shop for dinner.

I hadn't roasted a whole bird in a while. As I hefted the bird in my hand, gently rinsed it and patted it dry, I couldn't help feeling for it as a fellow land animal, a kindred four-limbed creature. "Little guy," I said, then I anointed it's body with herbed oil, laid it on a bed of potatoes, then gently slipped it into a 500 degree oven (so hot for to brown the skin, later I turn heat down for the thorough roasting).

Melba and Snacks arrived. After they generously hauled their old computer up to my apartment, we sat down to dinner.

Martin Bittman's How to Cook Everything is awesome. However, its chicken carving diagram didn't go far enough, only showing how to divvy up the bird into Cracker Barrel sized portions and ignoring the back. That, and my sadly dull and improper utensils made the bird carving too intense for one of my guests, (guess who?)who had to hide in a turtle neck sweater until the operation was complete. Too bad covering your eyes only intensifies the sounds of the procedure. Once the pieces were on the plate, the land animal sympathy had died down to a paletable level so we could feast and talk away the night.

The next day, I septa-ed out to Aunt Liz's for Sunday dinner. Even though I couldn't figure out how to wire her new DVD/VCR combo to her digital cable box so that she could tape her soap, she fed me and gave me the late Uncle P's SLR camera. So kind.

a bit, no, so what?

In response to Hellastopheles'post, because her comments thing isn't working:

Even though I'm disappointed with Mr. Crowe for his recent inability to play well with others, I still take inexplicable pleasure in coming up with defenses for his outlandish statements and actions, alledged and otherwise (except for the time when he bit that guy). It's been increasingly difficult, but this one's a piece of cake.

Here's a quote from the Washington Post's March 9, 2005 Wednesday Style section.
"(CNN reports that a federal law official said Crowe's name was indeed on a list of possible kidnapping targets.)"

So there.

Even before I dug that quote up, I thought the whole kidnapping thing was well within the realm of possibility. Kidnapping threats were reported years ago, although Al Qaeda wasn't mentioned then.

Too bad most of the regurgiated reports of this plot failed to include the federal law official statement.

If something so amazing happened to you, wouldn't you want to tell someone?

365 days later

One year ago yesterday, I posted my first web log entry. After glancing back over that year, I have one definate positive thing to say. My left toe feels just fine now.

Cloud 9

Last night, I achieved profound relaxation by doing multiplication tables in my head. Somewhere around 9 x 17, my jaw went slack and everything was clear. Immediately, I sat up and thought "Wow! Now that's tranquility! What am I supposed to do now? Oh shit. I lost it."

Doing math in my head distracts the worrisome part of my brain with a finite task. Rather than let it get all frothed up gnawing endlessly on a high stakes question like why do people disagree on this or that issue, I give it some elementary school math. Worrisome brain, being part of my head, is much better at political questions than at math, but political answers are endless and endless answers do not lead to tranquility.

I've got a list of stupid brain tricks to keep the worrisome brain distracted for better emotional control.

Last night I also thought maybe I should just become a lawyer.

Bird's Life

Today, this bird's life seems much more entertaining than mine. But since I am not fictional and not a bird and so I can actually write a diary, I guess the jokes on him. Ha ha.

Recipe for Mutants

vealbirds
Originally uploaded by ashyknees.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe...

...the builing manager sends out an "alert" warning of The Return of the Stink. The Stink is so bad, the building manager attached a stink spreading schedule to the alert so that the sensitive can schedule their breathing around it.

His intentions are good, but the fact is we can run, but we can't hide from The Stink.

Mutant Animals Sell Loans

What's up with the stretched out animals in those loan banner adds? Uncomfortably distended animals, chosen at random, tatooed with US state abreviations. Why a pig? Why, lord, why a stegasaurus? They're freaking me out.