Livingston, I Presume

OK, now I'm just pissed

Manhattan (Montana's) own Mr. Pot Porn and Perversion is back in the Chronicle this morning with a humdinger of a letter suggesting that Governor Brian Schweitzer be grand marshal of the next Gay Pride parade in San Francisco. In a thinly veiled piece of hate speech against gays and lesbians, he claims that Schweitzer's decision to disband the Governor's Council on Families (some two years ago, I might point out) was based on its failure to include gay and lesbian issues on its agenda.

At the time,

Schweitzer said his decision not to reauthorize the Governor's Council on Families - one of 50 committees in the Department of Public Health and Human Services involving more than 1,000 people - is part of his pledge to make state government more efficient. "We want families to have a better quality of life, but not by spending state and federal money for people to sit on councils," said Schweitzer.

Sounds reasonable. Of course, I am not privy to the secret homosexual subtext in the statement like Mr. Triple-P seems to be.

Recently, Schweitzer created a new family council, the Governor's Council on Economic Security for Montana Families:

The new council takes the place of several existing councils in a continuing effort to promote efficiency and effectiveness in state government. Members will seek advice from Montanans on strategies to improve Montana families' long-term economic situation and enable them to become self-sufficient.

Mr. Triple-P claims that the dissolution of the first family council resulted in an "exodus of abused, neglected and abandoned runaway Montana youth, many who [sic] are desperately broke, hungry and easily preyed upon." That would be tragic if it were true, but it strikes me as unlikely that a committee in the Department of Health and Human Services was the key factor in preventing that beforehand. Frankly, I don't remember referring too many needy, desperate people to the Governor's Council on Families. One wonders, in fact, what such a committee would have done if one of these Montana youth showed up for help at a committee meeting. (Uh, Fred? Did you put a desperately broke, hungry and easily preyed upon teen on the agenda under new business? We'll need a quorum to deal with that.)

The letter builds to a crescendo with a great O'Reillian set of rhetorical questions:

...pimps (oooh! fourth P!) and perverts are indeed benefactors of his decision... Schweitzer's decision begs the questions: Why does he campaign for money in San Francisco, headquarters for (you guessed it!) pot, porn and perversion? Are ill-gotten gains funding his campaign? What does Schweitzer have against families?

Mr. Quad-P? You forgot one: Why does Brian Schweitzer hate America and want the terrorists to win? He then goes on to describe in no small measure of detail just how Schweitzer would look on the parade float. One wonders if the idea of the governor in leather fetish wear is appalling to him or strangely tantalizing.

So why am I pissed? I mean, beyond the fact that people like this feel it necessary to try to take down a government official for nothing more than the horror of having gone to a city where homosexuals live? (News Flash, I.P. Freely: They live in Manhattan, too!) I'm pissed because this guy had his first ridiculous letter printed on June 12th! That's barely a month ago! Meanwhile, I send in an entirely benign--and if I might say so, mildly amusing--letter about the state of the Chronicle comics and it never sees the light of day. Must I go all whack job to get a letter on the opinion page?

Perhaps if I were to include something about how Jon and Garfield are secretly promoting homosexual bestiality (Liz is just a ruse! It's Garfield he loves!) I might have more luck. I'll start thinking of more Ps.

 

 

I could totally imagine Connery writing this

I stopped reading The Onion a couple of years ago, but I'm glad I restarted today and found "Adults Have Misclassified Me As A Handful":

Once you get a reputation for being a handful, everything you do is automatically cast in a negative light. Suspicious glances meet you every time you even think about touching the frame of your younger sister's playpen, and God forbid you come within five feet of a houseplant. You have, in effect, already been accused, tried, and sentenced for actions you have not even taken. From then on, anything you do is retroactively construed as "problem behavior."

I'm pretty sure that if Connery could type, he'd have a similar take on our labeling him as a drama king. I thought this was particularly  brilliant:

Not unlike the proverbial infant strapped into a bouncy-bouncy chair, I am at the mercy of the adult world's judgment, a world in which any protest on my part is met with the suggestion that maybe somebody needs a nap. As if a few minutes of lie-down sleepy-time could even begin to solve a problem this systemic and pervasive!

It reminds me that I have, more than once lately, used string of logic that I can still remember my parents using against me. And I remember hating it so, so much. It's only now that I see its brilliance. When Connery gets upset because he doesn't want to go to bed--even when he's clearly tired--sometimes it escalates into tears and tantrums. Much of the wailing will center on how he is not tired and should not, therefore, have to go to bed. But I have the ace up my sleeve: If you're not tired, my son, then why are you crying? If you're crying, you must be tired!

I can see the gears whirring in his head just like mine used to: No, Mom, I'm crying because I'm not tired and I don't want to go to bed and yet somehow you've tricked me into crying so that you can say it proves I'm tired. Curse you and your logic, woman!

Sometimes it's good to be the grownup.

Why no Harry blogging?

NB: This contains absolutely no spoilers, as I have not reached the end myself.

I love the Harry Potter books, and of course I had my copy by mid-Saturday, just like 8.6 million other people. (I feel so unique!) But I will not be blogging about it for a while, and here's why. Chip and I have a tradition of reading the Harry Potter books aloud to each other. We started with the first one in 2000, the summer that we moved to Prague. We brought the first three books with us, and I can still remember lying on the bed in our first apartment in Prague--a dismal affair, at least in location--and reading Harry Potter.

I can't remember exactly why we chose to read them aloud to each other, but I think it had something to do initially with realizing that we probably wouldn't have a television when we moved abroad, and even if we did, we wouldn't understand much. As it turned out, pretty much every furnished apartment in the Czech Republic comes with a TV, so we needn't have worried, but that didn't make the programming any better or more...you know...in English. So we read. Once we finished the three HPs, we tried to read some Bill Bryson to each other. The problem with his books is that there is a fair chance that you may end up laughing so hard together that you could be injured. This happened only once. Pretty soon we had started working and having a life in Prague and we stopped reading to each other. But we restart again every time a new HP book comes out.

That's why, even though I am almost literally dying to know what happens, I am resisting the urge to throw myself headlong into the book. And if I can keep from seeing what happens unti Friday, when we leave civilization, I just might make it through without having the ending spoiled. But that's the other advantage of reading this way. If I were reading the book on my own, I'd be through it almost immediately and then the HP experience would be done for good. I am physically incapable of slowing down and enjoying a leisurely read on my own. This way I have to.

So, if you're reading HP7, do me a favor. Keep it to yourself, OK?

Travelers, not tourists

I quietly added Uncornered Market to my blogroll a couple of weeks ago and have been meaning to write up a little recommendation for it. Since most of the United States will be spending the weekend either: a) sweating b) hiding in air conditioning or c) hiding in the basement wishing for air conditioning, I thought now would be a good time. You can only watch so many movies, you know.

Anyway, Uncornered Market is the closest thing Dan and Audrey--friends of ours from Prague--have to a home right now. They embarked on what most of us would call the adventure of a lifetime--a year to 18 months of traveling around the world--earlier this year and have been writing, taking pictures and video, and posting about the whole shebang. It's the kind of site that will make you wonder why it is that you are reading blogs and not, say, being driven around by mad, drunk Georgians or boarding buses filled with Iranians or taking 10-day jaunts to Turkmenistan. (Why aren't you? Huh?)

Dan and Audrey are the kind of travelers that most of us wish we were. They're flexible, ready to rough it, and absolutely committed to seeing the "real" in any country. They aren't searching for the McDonald's or the Starbucks because they're too busy charming the locals into finding the best places to eat and drink. And with their site, they are putting together an amazing collection of information about places that most people will never see.

Have fun exploring!

Look at me!

Here I am, not blogging about the heat. Because really, what is there to say? I'm not going to waste your time moaning that if it doesn't cool down soon I might have to dig a basement below our current basement. Or go and live in the wonderfully air-conditioned alcove where Sky Federal Credit Union has its ATM. (Do you think they'd mind? Seriously.) Or move to Alaska.

Nah, I'm not going to say any of that, because then I'd be blogging about the heat, and how boring is that?

If you came of age in the 1980s...

No, I'm not posting some list of 1000 hackneyed things that tell you that you were a child in the 1980s. Oh no. I have a link from The Guardian to share that will make you laugh until you cry, particularly if you were--as I was--a diehard tweenybopper fan of teh Duran Duran and, most especially, of the video for Wild Boys.

Just click it. You know you want to. It's genius.

Here's a teaser:

Men with feathered headdresses pop from open hatches in the metal walls like angry Poptarts with no shirts on.

If this isn't why the Internet was invented, I don't know what is.

Half a score minus one year ago...

(That's nine years ago, for all of you non-Abraham-Lincoln types.)

Chip and I are celebrating our ninth anniversary today. Traditionally, that would mean gifts of pottery or willow (willow?) all around, but since I forgot to check that handy site until just now when blogging about traditional gifts, I guess we're right out of luck. (Damn, though, because I totally could have gotten creative with the Willow thing and gone with the seven-season DVD series of Buffy, although it would be pretty obvious whose gift that would actually be.) Chip was wonderful enough to skip the modern gift of leather in favor of the even more modern gift of "gift certificate to that great online store whose clothes I love but can't seem to justify buying for myself, also known as IGIGI."

He's a keeper, that one.

For those of you who don't know already, Chip and I met while touring Europe in college in 1993. It's much less romantic than it sounds because we were chaperoning a bunch of high school students on a choir tour led by Chip's uncle. We did not start dating then, because who finds their ardor stoked by 50 teenagers who all want to know where the nearest church bathroom is and whether Austrian money can be used in Germany? (True confession: I was a teenager at the time, though clearly very worldly and sophisticated at 19. Right.) Even without the dating, though, I knew that there was something between us. Within just a couple of weeks or so we were already finishing each other's sentences.

But it wasn't to be, since Chip was living in California and I was living in Montana. We knew better than to start a long-distance relationship. Those never work.

Fast-forward to December 1994, when Chip came to visit me in Missoula. He was out of college and working, I was still working on college. His visit coincided with the annual Residence Life holiday party, and I was thrilled that I would have a date, even if it was "just friends."

There is some disagreement about who kissed who first on the dance floor that night, but suffice it to say that I'm pretty damn glad that it happened. With that kiss we embarked on a three-year, long-distance relationship that would take us back to Europe, to graduate school in entirely separate regions of the country, to New England--where the 90 miles between Amherst and New Haven seemed like a gift from the gods after enduring the previous thousands--and finally to Great Falls, Montana, where we got married on July 18, 1998. We haven't spent much time apart since then, and that's the way I like it.

Happy anniversary, my love. We've got a ways to go before we reach the dizzying heights of our parents--my parents will hit 40 years in September, and Chip's reach that milestone the following year--but I expect it will fly by just as quickly as our first near-decade as a married couple has. Here's to the next nine and beyond.

Harry Potter and the Disorder of the Theater

My parents were nice enough to come to Livingston for my birthday over the weekend, and besides bringing me a gorgeous, fudge-a-riffic turtle cake and taking me to dinner, they also watched Connery on Saturday night so that Chip and I could go out. We chose to follow the stampeding herd to Harry Potter, and the movie did not disappoint. Order of the Phoenix was my least favorite of the books, but I think the movie did a good job of cutting out the teenage angsty bits that wore on my nerves.

And speaking of wearing on my nerves, I can't remember the last time I was so annoyed in a movie theater. Oh, that's right, it was the LAST Harry Potter film, the one where the entire last 20 minutes takes place in a graveyard and the hero has his vein cut open and one of the young characters is killed. You remember, that 157-minute, PG-13 kids' movie. We saw it at the local Livingston theater, and the presence of a family of--roughly--27, who had chosen to bring all 25 kids, including the teeny tiny ones who were scared shitless during the last 20 minutes, didn't exactly make for a satisfying movie-going experience. One of the poor little girls was whimpering the whole time about how terrified she was, but Mom and Dad couldn't be bothered to help her out.

On Saturday, we chose a Bozeman show, and it was packed. Alas, many people had remembered their cell phones and forgotten their manners. In our row alone, we had someone take a call with full ring as well as having a woman get up in the middle of the climatic scene, shuffle her butt past our faces, and go to the lobby to procure another giant bucket of popcorn. As if one of those wasn't enough to make you a little sick to your stomach.

There were also assorted too-young kids who wanted the running commentary about what was going on, but they paled in comparison to the tiny, sickly baby who spent the entire movie mewling weakly and coughing. For the love of Pete, people. Babies? Don't belong at movies. Any movies. Sick babies? Belong even less. Take your baby home, suck out her little nose, and put her to bed.  And then watch a video. Because I've got news for you. PG-13 does not mean 13 days. It means 13 years.

Becoming a parent doesn't mean you never get to do anything ever again. But it means that, for a while, you have to curtail things. If you're lucky enough to have grandparents or other helpful relatives nearby--or a trust fund to pay for babysitters--you might have a little more freedom. Chip and I used to go to a lot of movies, but we don't any more. That's the cost of parenting, and I don't have a problem paying it. When we do get to go out, it's a big deal and I want to enjoy it. When I'm mentally strangling some asshat for child neglect, it tends to...how do the French say it?...diminish my goddamn enjoyment.

Still, I am also not someone who believes that children should only be taken to Disney movies and McDonald's until they hit puberty. People who glare at you just because you have kids--even when they are well behaved--are just as annoying as the ones who take too-young kids everywhere. Kids have to learn how to behave in restaurants and at spectator events. The key is that you always have to be willing to leave, and fast. The one truly bad meltdown we ever had at a "nice" restaurant resulted in my leaving the restaurant with Connery within seconds of its beginning. Chip asked the server to box up our food, he paid the bill and met us in the car, and we left. (Although he failed to have her box up my goat cheese salad. Bygones.) I am damn sure not going to ruin someone else's enjoyment of a nice meal.

Rant off.

Yeah, what she said

Normally, I probably wouldn't link to a post entitled "I Hate George Bush." I mean, it's not exactly something most progressives haven't thought in their heart of hearts. But in her post about Bush's imminent veto of the expansion of the Children's Health Insurance Program, Melissa McEwan manages to get beyond the obvious to explain why she has her hate on:

Quite simply, I hate this president, I hate his administration, I hate his entire fucking political party and all their asshole supporters, and this story is perfectly exemplary of why.

His rationale for veto, see, is that if the program is expanded, greedy parents everywhere will throw off the shackles of private insurance and seek relief in the government-run program. Because heaven knows most people don't have enough bureaucracy in their lives and would gladly sign on for something that would, in effect, double the amount of crap they have to go through to help their family get medical care.

As McEwan says,

That’s the kind of thinking right there that makes me hate them. What person in his or her right fucking mind honestly believes that there are people just waiting for a government program to take advantage of so they can move their already insured kids onto a government-run program? And not just a few people here and there, but hordes of them—so many just waiting to bilk the government that we can’t afford to risk insuring kids who aren’t insured, because of all the horrible adults laying in wait to screw the taxpayers, including, presumably, themselves, since they obviously work (and pay taxes) if their kids are already insured.

Jebus. I hate these people. I hate them. They’re the reason sayings like “A thief always thinks someone is stealing from him” exist. They have such poor characters—so deeply devoid of the tiniest wee modicum of integrity, conscience, or honesty—that they can’t begin to imagine there are people who don’t grab whatever they can get their dirty little paws on, irrespective of whether they need it or whether it’s ethical to take.

I'd not heard that saying about the thief before, but if that doesn't perfectly sum up the ethics of this administration, I don't know what does. They are minutely concerned with "Welfare Queens" and potentially avaricious parents, and yet fraud and deception on a massive scale is completely ignored.

McEwan:

I hate that they call us the America-haters, as they wrap themselves in the flag and declare themselves the True Patriots while turning America into a nation where the natural and philosophical resources are raped and destroyed in the acquisition of more wealth, where philanthropy and empathy are relegated to little more than cute, clichéd memories, and where the barrel-chested barons of a new Gilded Age stand astride the bodies of those who have been condemned to less fortunate fates, singing the praises of social Darwinism and bellowing about the superfluity of a social safety net. “The government never gave me anything!” they declare, as they deposit their million-dollar checks from their latest no-bid Defense Department contract then head off to Tiffany’s to get the Little Woman a bauble with their fat tax return.

Yeah, what she said.

The cake-eating is great this time of year!

Via Shakesville comes this little Bushian gem on one of my favorite topics, affordable and available health care:

I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room.

Oh, right! That's all I have to do to access care. As Jeff Fecke says in his post on the topic,

Sure.  Because emergency rooms love it when you bring your kid in with an earache.  They’re happy to help.  And they just waive the bill!

Let's remind ourselves what happens to people when they get so sick that they have to go to the emergency room, shall we?

I count myself as extraordinarily lucky that Connery has needed the services of the ER only once since we've been here. (And believe me, I'm knocking on wood like crazy as I say that.) We're insured. Even so, that one ER visit--which lasted only about 20 minutes, five of those with an actual doctor present--cost us in excess of $200. And I still feel like we got off easy, since in Livingston you rarely have to wait to get into an exam room (especially at 3:30 in the morning) and because the problem was solved for us without too much delay.

So yes, President Bush, we had access to that ER. We also had access to a car to get us there and the wherewithal to absorb a $200 bill, which we didn't have to pay on the spot because we have insurance (even though it doesn't pay). Joe Uninsured coming in with his kid in full asthma attack mode would probably not have been given the same bill-me courtesy.

The privilege contained in Bush's two very simple sentences really defies belief. Here is a man who has never once in his life known hunger, poverty, or want (much less need!) telling us how easy it is to get health care in America. I'm sure it is just that easy when you are born into a family dynasty like Bush was. It's akin to the thinking that I imagine he has that it's really easy to get into (and pay for) Yale and it's no sweat to get a great, high-paying job. It's not a problem when you're George W. Bush, that's for sure. The rest of us might have a little more difficulty.

It's giving me a headache just thinking about it. Maybe I should go to the emergency room. In the meantime, I'll be hanging out with the rest of the peasants, having some tasty cake. Don't worry, it's not yellow.