Out on my limb

I’m calling it now: John Edwards is one to watch. With Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the limelight so early, the press is waiting to pounce on a misstep. While I don’t think either will provide any macaca-esque moments, I fear another Dean-in-Iowa speech that destroys a great campaign because it provides DJs with a sound clip and uninformed voters with a punchline. If these two are taken down, the Dems will need another.

Enter John Edwards. I heard him speak in Charlotte last month and was trés impressed. I walked into the room as a curious spectator, but left believing he could be back on the ticket in '08, possibly in the driver's seat this time. While I prefer my politics with a little more anger (ohhh, Howie), I think Edwards will have broad appeal to moderates of both parties. His looks won’t hurt either. The man is a looker on TV, but in person, wooo-weee. I was reduced to girlish giggles while shaking his hand. I don't have enough answers to align with any candidate yet, but I've quickly progressed from dismissive to very interested in this one (za-za-zu aside).

But then again, this prediction is brought to you by the one who thought Amazon.com didn’t stand a chance, buying an Arlington condo in 2001 was a dumb move, and “Everyone Loves Raymond” looked idiotic and wouldn't last beyond the pilot. But I swear, these laserdiscs are gonna catch on one day…

Until then, enjoy this -- dreaminess ^2:

Now bring us some figgy pudding!

Happy holidays! Have a wonderful time, get seconds on dessert, and overindulge in sentiment.

Until 2007...

There she is...

This week, American media achieved the newsworthiness trifecta. Timeliness, conflict, and prominence, you ask? No, silly. I’m talking about drugs, Donald Trump, and girl-on-girl action. Alert the cable networks! No need to bum everyone out with that whole Iraq business this week!

For those who have better things to do than follow entertainment news, Miss USA was nearly dethroned after her drunken nights in NY clubs kissing her fellow woman and testing positive for cocaine. People seem most unnerved by the underage drinking aspect, which should have all the shock factor as the revelation that the majority of Americans have premarital sex. Maybe we can use the leftoever grant money to discover that teenagers like the rock music and dentists suggest brushing after meals.

Anyhoo, as much as I’d like, I can’t feign disinterest. Much to Jimmy’s complete disgust/bewilderment/shame, I am fascinated by pageants. I must watch them. If you haven’t spent much time watching and comparing these spectacles, please allow me to break them down. There’s Miss America, the classiest of the pageant family, in which a drinking game could be devised around every utterance of “scholarship competition.” You’d be dancing on the table before Miss Alabama introduced herself. Miss USA, Miss America’s trashier younger cousin, is my personal favorite. A Miss USA contestant might not be especially sharp or beautiful, but she is willing to bend a few rules of propriety to garner attention. I do admire the lack of pretense – they’re only a few years of bad ratings away from the introduction of the pole-dancing competition. However, it is Miss Teen USA that brings tears to my eyes. If you’ve never seen Miss Teen USA, I beg of you to tune in for the question and answer round. They might be talking, but they’re not saying a damn thing -- yet the audience goes wild as if the secret for Israeli-Palestinian peace had just been revealed. This ties into the apparent goal of pageants: for a woman to speak without communicating and to appear sexually desirable without seeming sexual. Many people defend pageantry by stating how difficult it is. Let’s not confuse a difficult endeavor with a worthwhile one.

But yet, I watch.

Maybe the reason I watch pageants is because I insist that they must be a big inside joke that I’m not in on. It’s mind boggling to hear charges of sexism so breezily dismissed when we’re not exactly dealing with gray area here. Young women trot like circus poodles, seeking “scholarship money” while wearing bikinis and stilettos, rubbing hemorroid cream under their eyes and Vaseline on their teeth, and speaking without ideas. Talent is restricted to singing, playing an instrument, or some other talent revered in more Jane Austen-esque days (I don't mean to disparage the performing arts, but what about young women who prefer to play with a microscope than a microphone?). The “substance” of the show is about what these young women want to be... their aspirations in law, medicine, or advocacy sound as pretty as they are. Why are pageants restricted to the young and dreaming? Perhaps because the reality of women’s potential isn’t always quite as pretty?

Hosts gush that all girls watching pageants dream about their chance, and I admit I’m among them. I’ve had the plan for some time: I’d work my way up the pageantry system, advocating such original platforms as anti-crime or pro-education legislation. I’d show off my mediocre ballet. I’d push up my boobs, cinch my waist, then lick my lips and speak of abstinence. And then when the dream was realized, when I’d stand on that glorious Atlantic City stage, state sash draped across my sparkly gown and lips slipping off my Vaselined teeth, Regis Philbin would ask about my vision for the world.

“I dream of a world in which women control their reproductive health, where men worry as much as women do about balancing parental and professional responsibilities, where Congress and the Fortune 500 don't consist nearly exclusively of white men, where all adults are free to marry whom they choose, and where PACs no longer find tax exemptions as religious organizations. Thank you.” (This is when I’d curtsy and do the cute little wave to the section of North Carolinians, who by this time were taking their state cut-out with them as they walked out of the door.)

Of all the Charlie Browns in the world, you are the Charlie Browniest.

Finals, papers, and such mean no real blogging, but here's a Christmas favorite of mine until I get around to stringing some words together.

Save the world. Or at least help it a little.

Alleviate some of your driver’s guilt by getting a TerraPass – the site helps you calculate your car’s emissions and offers a pass that allows you to offset those emissions through funding clean energy projects. Sport the TerraPass on your car and show the world that green is this year’s black.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Jim Crow.

Emotional writing is almost always bad writing, so I hesitate to write anything until I cool down. Yet if Virginia wants to start a conversation about the “sanctity of marriage,” then I’ll jump on the sanctimonious bandwagon. I cannot, cannot believe that Virginia approved the marriage amendment yesterday. It was not enough that gay marriage was already illegal in the state, but Crazy Ol’ Bob Marshall (more on him later) decided that such exclusion should be a part of the state constitution.

First, a few misconceptions I’d like to correct:

- Advocating gay rights does not make one gay. If someone is so afraid of seeming gay, it is time to either grow up, grow a spine, or face some latent tendencies.
- Voting to support gay rights not does commit one to a homosexual tryst in the voting booth. It’s about rights, not sex.
- Supporting gay rights does not mean one has to be “comfortable” with the idea of gay sex. Why are these people evaluating or envisioning the sex lives of others anyway? If comfort level of others’ sex lives was a requirement for marriage, then how did Larry King slip through the cracks six times? Eww.
- If being gay defies one’s religious beliefs, then being an American citizen guarantees the right to have a church that operates separately from the state. No law will infringe on religious habits. Take the Catholic Church – they won’t marry couples unless they have certain views on birth control, doctrine, etc. If someone does not agree, they can marry elsewhere. It’s the right of a church to make its own rules.

This is not about homosexuality, but about equal Constitutional rights for citizens. It’s about modern-day Jim Crow creating a legally sanctioned second-class citizenry. People defended Jim Crow with Biblical passages, with “not being comfortable with" equal rights for blacks, with comments on what’s “natural.” It all seems so ridiculous and unforgivable now. Current American law on gay marriage is just as ridiculous and unforgivable.

How can we deny basic rights to a citizen based on something as irrelevant as sexual orientation? (Really, have heteros done such a bang-up job at marriage?) One can be 18 and marry someone he just met on the street. One can be divorced ten times and marry again. One can be mentally disabled and marry. Marriage is a fundamental right allowed to adults who don’t have to prove their case or meet standards other than being single and of age. Yet we inflict this one standard. Imagine if marriage was restricted to some based on how they have sex. Gross, right? Irrelevant? Absolutely. Why is this any different?

Many people are so focused on being right about homosexuality, that they forget something more important: being kind. If people can cite a moral code that says that homosexuals do not deserve equal rights under the law, then where is their moral code that kindness dictates we treat each other with respect?

This is not a time to be politely silent. A very large group of people are second-class citizens in this country, and to not speak up on their behalf is to be a co-conspirator. I remember a teacher explaining Jim Crow to me, and I asked her, “But what did YOU do about it?” to her obvious discomfort. Expect one day that children will ask us that, and be ready to keep your head up when you answer.

"Don't It Make My Red State Blue"

In honor of the upcoming election day, I composed a little ditty, to the tune of Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue:

Don’t know when I’ve been so blue
I’ve got tears fallin’ in my brew
Dubya can’t be through
And don’t it make my red state blue.

My desire are but few,
My guns, church and FoxNews.
Say the polls ain’t true.
And don’t it make my red state blue.

Rummy’s gone crazy; war’s a real pickle.
Cheney likes torturin’; well that don’t tickle.
Folks like Jon Stewart more than O’Reilley,
Barak Obama’s got ‘em all smiley.

ACLU, Pro-choice, Gay marriage
Makes a right-winger disparage
What’s Ann Coulter to do?
And don’t it make my red state
Don’t it make my red state
Don’t it make my red state blue.

Does this mean I have street cred?

In the news today: Charlotte qualifies among the top ten most dangerous big cities.

News to me: Charlotte qualifies as a big city? That's so cute.

So Charlotte ranks on the same top-ten list as Compton, Detroit and Flint, Michigan. (I had no idea how hard-core I was! I'm practically living on Crenshaw and I didn't even know it!) Yet this is the city that sends five squad cars to arrest someone hiding DVDs in their pants at the SouthPark Blockbuster. I bet we're an embarrassment to the other nine cities on the list.

"Aww" of the day

Scout, taking over the bed once again.

Happy ‘Dress Like a Whore Day’!*

During a recent highlighting, my stylist told me about the Halloween party she attended last year. A college-aged girl arrived wearing nothing but white panties, a little white tank and high heels. When asked what exactly she was, she replied the name on the package was “Sexy Southern Belle.” Her friends promptly inquired as to the whereabouts of the Southern belle portion of the costume. Her response? “My panties have ruffles on the butt!” Well, duh.

I’m hardly a Halloween prude, but these costumes are getting out of control. Let's clarify the difference between sexy and slutty: Sexy creates a fun, flirty costume; slutty creates a photo op that will shame your mother and will one day haunt you when your children find that old scrapbook in the attic.

I can’t exactly claim the high road here; my Halloween resume hardly reads as a feminist manifesta. I’ve been a vampire, cowgirl, French maid, walk-of-shame girl, butterfly. All involved some baring of the skin that didn’t quite contribute to the accuracy of the character portrayal. My defense is similar to all the other “good girls” who use Halloween as an excuse to get all sexied up – it’s all in fun, just about escaping ones own character for a night of playing a new one. Because really, my usual get-up as a sleepy web-developer-by-day, English-student-by-night isn’t all that hot, unless you’ve got a thing for dark under-eye circles. Hubba hubba.

However, even my vinyl-clad vampire costume looks school marmish compared to what’s strutting around elsewhere. The last few Halloween parties I’ve attended have included costumes so revealing they had no place outside of the bedroom or brothel. One should never have to avert eyes from nipple sightings when reaching for the chips. Here are a few such costumes featured online, offensive in two ways: one, the obvious; two, for being packaged costumes-in-a-bag involving no creativity whatsoever:

And thus the “sexy costume” has officially gone too far. A sexy pizza delivery woman? Since when is food delivery the latest in fantasy fodder? And really, should that much skin be exposed with all that hot cheese around?

Here's the "Sexy Deviant Housewife" costume, complete with cooking tools and prescription bottles. If anyone attends a party with someone dressed in this, please promptly flick her in the forehead and throw a copy of Steinem at her.

I think the headline of this "Cherry Pie" costume was the best part. “Want to be food, but sexy?” And to think that someone out there is nodding Yes.

And to bring it home… Is your daughter too small for a adult sexy costumes, but wants to be a whore just like mom? The copy says it all: “Let this cutie nurse take care of you when you arent feeling well. What a day brightener she would be! This nurse costume is for the little girl that is still a little girl.” Um, if my “little girl” ever wore something like that and struck such a pose, she'd play dress-up at a real-live convent for the rest of her life.

* headline courtesy of/ripped off from Carlos Mencia

Do geese like jelly beans?

In the midst of a horrible day, I took my books to Freedom Park for a little scenery to go along with my anxiety attack. There I heard a little boy ask, “Mom, do geese like jelly beans?” He also asked her if geese hang out under willow trees because that’s where they like to have parties. Could anything be cuter? Sometimes I think that life and education are mostly about getting back to that place of freeing your mind enough to just wonder.

To complete anyone's fall wardrobe...

Need a gift for that special someone? Are YOU that special someone? I adore this store, full of jewelry made by a college friend who is infuriatingly multi-talented. I mean, where else can you get Butterfinger earrings or an Annie's locket necklace? Nowhere, I tell you.

Currently I'm sporting a Snoopy necklace from Totes Tamron. And it's the cool old Snoopy. Vintage Snoopy, if you will. Beat that.

David Beckham, sure. But the Hoff?

C'mon UK, I know you can do better. In entertainment news:

David Hasselhoff's European single "Jump in My Car" is currently No. 13 in the midweek charts in the U.K., and reportedly is poised to go higher.

The US might have broad definitions of the Geneva Convention, but somethings clearly go beyond our moral code. Here's one.

Americans? Uninformed? Noooo.

Last week's international Newsweek covers:

My Bestest Friend

I was lucky enough to stand before the altar (or the mantle, in my case) with two soulmates. One I married, the other held my bouquet as I said my vows.

It is fairly representative of the role of best friends in our lives. With the romantic significant other, we get the wedding, the big trips, the fancy anniversaries. But the best friend is the eternal, quiet support in all of these: the one who helps choose outfits, calms nerves and allays insecurities, and reminds us that no matter how sexy a four-inch heel is, we’re going to regret it later.

Today is Tricia’s birthday, my bestest of friends, and this calls for an Ode to Tricia. She’s 29, and our relationship is now 15 years old. Early on, neither of us had any idea of the strength of the foundation we laid during the years of note-swapping and slumber parties. We later realized how truly precious a best friend would become: I can’t count how many times we have said, whether through laughter or sobs, “I honestly don’t know what I’d do without you.” We’ve had more change in our lives than we foresaw or hoped, but one thing hasn’t: when big stuff happens, the other one has been there.

Tricia and I haven’t lived in the same town for eleven years, but we keep up to the point where we can make a pretty safe assumption where the other is at any given moment. We know each other's backstories, so explanations can be conveyed with a mere look or tone. I’ve gotten some ribbing from others about using the title “best friend,” as if it should be retired to the high school lunch table, but there’s too big a difference. To call her a friend would be akin to calling my mother a mere relative.

I have never understood why people allow friendships to fade in the midst of a relationship. What a waste. It has been a must that our SOs “get” that we’re a package deal: that we spend too much time on the phone, that we consult about minor decisions, that we have no desire to change either habit. Jimmy has taken a strategic approach: not only does he “get” it, but also appreciates it. If Tricia’s there to field the “what shoe looks better with this skirt?” and the "does my butt look big in this?" questions, he doesn’t have to. If I ask him such a question, he just shakes his head and hands me the phone.

Tricia and I stopped calling each other best friends years ago. Realizing how much we grew up together, we figured we deserved a promotion and now refer to each other as sisters. The use of “sister” gets us some confused looks (the hues of our skin are a big indicator we don’t share a mother), which amuses us every time. I carry with me so many mental snapshots of our sisterhood: celebrating our first “real” jobs and “real” paychecks; other times, being so strapped for cash we literally dug out change in our car seats so we could go to Taco Bell; whimpering our way through colds because we share the belief that people don’t give enough pity for the miserable common cold; and even talking for hours on an uneventful day about anything and everything. For richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, it’s always been Tricia. With best friends, the vows are never taken, but assumed.

Maybe as a culture we don’t emphasize best-friendship enough. It’s a lifelong bond that has somehow eluded Hallmark’s grasp. Or maybe that’s what makes it so special: that the relationship will always be there, not amid celebrations and fanfare, but in the quiet contentedness of the everyday.

Thanks, Tricia, and have a very happy birthday.

Attack of the Killer Career Women

Many people ask me why I call myself a feminist, as if it's a paranoid overreaction to an imagined threat. This is Happy Equality Land now, where men and women work side by side, earning equal salaries for equal work and sharing equally in household chores, right? Just ask any working mother! We’re in the post-feminist age now, baby! Cue the dance music!

Um, no. Last week, an article appeared on the Forbes Magazine web site titled (I kid you not), Don’t Marry Career Women by Michael Noer. After an outcry from readers and staff, Forbes.com yanked the article and posted it days later with a rebuttal. In this article, Noer asserts that the career “girl” (whom he defines as having “a university-level (or higher) education, works more than 35 hours a week outside the home and makes more than $30,000 a year”) is wrecking the institution of marriage. So now homosexuals are in good company – women such as myself are also working to unravel the very fabric of civilization.

Because my attempts at summarizing this article would not do it justice, and any commentary would just be obvious, here are some excerpts (but please, read the article for yourself):

Guys: a word of advice. Marry pretty women or ugly ones. Short ones or tall ones. Blondes or brunettes. Just, whatever you do, don't marry a woman with a career.

A recent study in Social Forces, a research journal, found that women--even those with a "feminist" outlook--are happier when their husband is the primary breadwinner.

According to a wide-ranging review of the published literature, highly educated people are more likely to have had extramarital sex (those with graduate degrees are 1.75 times more likely to have cheated than those with high school diplomas). Additionally, individuals who earn more than $30,000 a year are more likely to cheat. And if the cheating leads to divorce, you're really in trouble. Divorce has been positively correlated with higher rates of alcoholism, clinical depression and suicide.

If a host of studies are to be believed, marrying these women is asking for trouble. If they quit their jobs and stay home with the kids, they will be unhappy. They will be unhappy if they make more money than you do. You will be unhappy if they make more money than you do. You will be more likely to fall ill. Even your house will be dirtier.

You heard it, fellas. Even your house will be dirtier. But I suppose the upside is that you have a scapegoat for any and all personal failures.

So why am I a feminist? With schmucks like Noer walking the streets, with an article like this in a mainstream economic magazine like Forbes, why ISN’T any self-respecting person a feminist?

And on a lighter note...

Zach Braff is so adorable it hurts. If you haven’t already, check out the Garden State soundtrack as well as the new The Last Kiss soundtrack. His adorable-ness is paired with a killer taste in music.

He’s soooo allowed in my living room.

"Bonjour, you cheese eatin' surrender monkeys."

Rumsfield is transforming into Groundskeeper Willie before our very eyes. He’s got that paranoid uneven temper, the kind you back away from slowly while averting your eyes and speaking in a soft monotone. The man’s gone nutters.

The latest has him calling opponents of the Bush administration morally-confused fascists, and going on to make the dreaded Hitler comparison, the mark of any true crazy. His rant continues in his usual forehead-slappingly ridiculous fashion:

… part of the problem is that the American news media have tended to emphasize the negative rather than the positive. He said, for example, that more media attention was given to U.S. soldiers' abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib than to the fact that Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith received the Medal of Honor.
"Can we truly afford to believe somehow, some way, vicious extremists can be appeased?" he asked.

Appeased, yes, and sometimes even elected. Twice.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/29/AR2006082900585.html

Petfinder.com

Most of us have those sites we can't look at without wanting something RIGHT THIS MINUTE. Overstock, Amazon, and Apple, oh my! Mine? Petfinder.com. If left to my own devices, I'd have dozens of shelter dogs overtaking my home. Can someone please adopt this dog so I can come over and play? Hollis is at the Charlotte Humane Society, and would make a fantastic birthday present for Jimmy on August 12. (She also looks like Murph and Scout's long lost pup... Hey, you've seen those two in action...)



And as my mini PSA, I want to plug local shelters... There's no need to pay insane amounts of money to get the designer dog of your dreams. Shelter dogs need lovin, too, and there's nothing like the feeling of giving a pet his second shot.

But that’s just me.

CNN and I don’t have a great relationship. There were the good early years while I was a young coed, when John King dreamily gave me the latest on the Lewinsky scandal (presidential scandals were so adorable then). But then I noticed that CNN was “that” kind of relationship – the one that makes a huge deal of nothing for hours at a time, while still ignoring red flags popping up faster than a Whack-a-Mole. CNN and I broke up a while back, after I became older and wiser, turning from the young flashy cable news networks to the trustier NY Times, Wash Post and BBC. They're still pretty in the morning without their make-up.

Today, in the midst of international chaos, I checked in to see what CNN chose to run on its front page. Amid some timid reporting in the Middle East, was this:

Publicist: Hasselhoff was sick, not drunk

Ohhh, CNN. You never fail to disappoint. Some stories that I might have chosen to run on the front page, that CNN buries under the Hoff, or doesn’t report at all:

N. Korea-Iran Ties Seem to Be Growing Stronger
SEOUL — North Korea and Iran, two fiercely anti-American regimes, appear to be bolstering their military and diplomatic cooperation, including the possible sale of missiles to the Tehran government, intelligence sources said.

U.S. Says It Knew of Pakistani Reactor Plan
The Bush administration acknowledged yesterday that it had long known about Pakistan's plans to build a large plutonium-production reactor, but it said the White House was working to dissuade Pakistan from using the plant to expand its nuclear arsenal. The reactor, which reportedly will be capable of producing enough plutonium for as many as 50 bombs each year, was brought to light on Sunday

(And coincidentally...)

House, 359-68, Approves U.S.-India Nuclear Deal
The House voted overwhelmingly yesterday to allow U.S. shipments of civilian nuclear fuel and technology to India, handing President Bush a victory on one of his top foreign policy initiatives. Rep. Tom Lantos said the proposal, which reverses decades of U.S. anti-proliferation policy, is "a tidal shift in relations between India and the United States."

(And how do we treat one of our few international allies? Oh well, at least we still have Israel. --smacks forehead-- )

US rejects weapon flight concerns
The White House has dismissed UK concerns about the use of Prestwick Airport, in Scotland, by US planes carrying bombs to Israel. … UK Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett protested to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, claiming procedures were ignored. Mrs Beckett said: "We have already let the United States know that this is an issue that appears to be seriously at fault, and we will be making a formal protest if it appears that that is what has happened."