The waning days of the republic

It's all going to hell in a handbasket, of course, but me and mine will be sipping G&Ts on the back patio while we complain about the way things are going to hell.

Front of the house, left wing.
Front of the house, right wing.
The right wing is also the guest area. Which has a separate door and its own bathroom. I shit you not. When guests are not present, it is the television/sitting room.

PK is feeding the koi.
PK is very distressed because apparently the heron that visited the other morning ate Juice, the large orange koi. Yellow Mellow, the large white one, is still alive and well, however, as are the other two or three dozen smaller fish. Above left is the avocado tree. Anyone want some avocados?

View from the top of the waterfall.
The sliding doors you see above right go onto the "master bathroom" (one of three, insanely enough), which is seriously the size of a studio apartment.

View to the left, from the Koi feeding platform.
The brown lumpy thing in this pic is Mr. B. hanging up a towel on a clothesline, b/c we intend to be the low-rent people who do not own a dryer.

Here is the built-in barbecue.
This pic shows one of the six sinks in this house. Also, a fridge under the sink. You know, to hold the beer. The long walkway from the bbq area to the back yard can hold a lot of laundry.

Can the republic be saved?

Promised second post.

First, read this story about a young man who isn't going to hang around and see what might happen to him now that the law allows him to be detained indefinitely without knowing why. He's lived in a country where that happened before and is therefore less complacent than most of us are--even those of us who are angry and worried about what's happening.

Second, okay, so what are you going to do about it?

Here's my list.

1. Mail in my registration to vote at my new address today.
2. This weekend, talk to Mr. B. about volunteering, money, and a strategy for what to do about the upcoming election.
3. As I get to know the other parents at PK's school, ask what they think about the upcoming election, the new law suspending habeas corpus, etc.
4. Convince my dad, who lives in a reddish part of a blue state, that he has both the time and responsibility to call *his* local Democratic organization and volunteer to help register/get out the vote.
5. Call *my* local Democratic organization and volunteer to help with whatever.
6. Join the ACLU. No, I don't belong yet. Yes, I am ashamed. Find out who else to join/read/subscribe to, especially locally, to get the political lay of the land here.

That's for starters. You? Suggestions?

The republic is falling, the republic is falling

I was going to log in and post a picture of this ridiculously luxurious new house we're renting, along with some commentary about how nice it is to live in the waning days of the republic.

But then I did a li'l surfing first and found out that while I was driving cross-country listening to books on tape and the new Madeleine Peyroux CD, our government went ahead and decided to get rid of habeas corpus and to grant the president the power to authorize torture. So much for that ruling that we were violating the Geneva Conventions.

Somehow I'd missed knowing that the bill passed, although I did know about the school hostage thing in Colorado. After all, our news outlets have their priorities!

Turns out it's not so nice to live in the waning days of the republic, after all.

So a bleg, the first of two posts on this subject. Instead of hearing what I think, tell me what to think. Please comment with links/explanations of what the fuck just happened. Specifics, please. I need to get caught up.

Update: Okay, I've got this from the NYT.

The measure would broaden the definition of enemy combatants beyond the traditional definition used in wartime, to include noncitizens living legally in the United States as well as those in foreign countries and anyone determined to be an enemy combatant under criteria defined by the president or secretary of defense.

It would strip at Guantánamo detainees of the habeas right to challenge their detention in court, relying instead on procedures known as combatant status review trials. Those trials have looser rules of evidence than the courts.

It would allow of evidence seized in this country or abroad without a search warrant to be admitted in trials.

Holeey crap. Noncitizens living legally in the US = enemy combatants? Looks like this bill paves the way for rounding up Arab immigrants and putting them in camps.

Is it fall yet?

WARNING!!! GUEST POST!!! (From Orange the crossword chick.)

The last couple days have been absolutely glorious—70 degrees, clear azure skies, pleasant breezes, the suns rays warm but not too warm. But in my part of the Midwest, the weather is starting to turn (though of course it's a little manic-depressive and likes to seesaw between unseasonably chilly and brief returns to summer warmth, only with the sun much farther south in the sky), and I find myself looking forward to nippy weather. (I do not, of course, speak for Dr. B on this count—Bitch is moving to southern California to escape just such a hap.)

Why am I so delighted that cold weather is looming ahead? Because of this shoe. I bought two pairs last winter—black and chocolate brown nubuck—and they kept my feet warmer than my boots did. And my boots were practical-girl boots, not fashion boots. The shoes, they make you feel like you've wrapped your feet in soft, toasty blankets. Love love love 'em! (But I tell myself the lining is polarfleece or wool, because a sheepskin lining sounds too much like fur, and I won't do fur. When I bought the shoes, they didn't have a big sign that said "Sheepskin inside!" so I figured they were fleece. And I love them terribly much, so I maintain a healthy state of denial. Because the feet? They love to be warm during a Chicago fall/winter/spring.)

Colder weather means more indoor activity, and you know what I mean by that! Crossword puzzles, right? Yeah. Here's my secret: You want to look hip, so you want people to see you solving crosswords with a pen. But you'd like to be able to erase and correct if you mess up. Do what I do and try EraserMate pens, which are no longer a goopy mess like they were back in the day. The forgiveness of a pencil in the guise of a pen—it's win-win.

Now, if I could just get the leaves to start turning color, crisping up, and dropping to form great whooshy drifts on the ground, so the intoxicating incense of fall leaves would permeate the air, and my son and I could enjoy crackling and kicking the leaves. We're not the allergic types who suffer from leaf mold or whatnot, so I can't wait! I love autumn (except for the soul-deadening end of daylight saving time in late October) almost as much as I love springtime.

What gets you through the winter months?

Don't fence me in

Dear god, I love the west. Here I sit in The Flying Star Cafe in Albuquerque (highly recommended, btw. The french toast has bananas and strawberries and cream and cinnamon, and the bacon is applewood and the orange juice is fresh-squeezed, and there's free internet access), and it's sunny outside and trending warm and I have to eat quickly so that the mice don't cook in the car (yes, all windows cracked and the cage covered from sun), and here are a few notes from the trip.

1. The landscape gets prettier the farther away you get from the rust belt. Strange, but true.

2. Oh right, real lattes. I have to relearn to add "low foam" at the end of my order.

3. Mountains! Hooray!

4. Okay, the furniture isn't going to arrive until this weekend, or possibly Monday. Which is ridiculous. But who cares, it'll get there when it gets there.

5. I may have to ramp down or discontinue the effexor, lest I get all hypomanic again like I did that one time in Las Vegas. Woot! Sun! Who needs sleep! How fast can I talk?!?

6. Goddamn this is some good french toast.

7. Also good: the Mexican latte. Coffee w/ a little chocolate and a lot of cinnamon. Try it at home. It's the road tripper's nectar.

8. Old college friends are teh best. "Hi, can I use your house like a hotel?" "Sure, don't scare the cats." "Oops, sorry, I accidentally locked myself out and had to slit your screen to get back in." "Bummer."

9. It's like a revelation to dry yourself off after a shower and actually be dry. Not slightly damp, not moist: dry. It's almost as good to put on moisturizer and not have your skin feel kinda sticky afterwards.

10. The hands of western men in their 50s, 60s have a particular weatherbeaten look: leathery skin, thick curved nails that end at the fingertip, held loose and a bit away from the body. Working hands. Dear god, I love this.

11. It's not just me: people just seem more comfortable in their skins, more relaxed, more okay with their bodies out here. Nothing like getting up early b/c the sun streams in your window and getting outside as soon and as often as possible. Everyone's a little hypomanic. Also, there's a particular tone of casual camaraderie in everyday conversations: the chin nod to and from the construction workers, the "it's a good thing I asked for a receipt, so you can learn how to do it" followed by a laughing assent from the motel clerk in training, the Starbucks employees who cheerfully direct you to a different coffeehouse that has internet access and tell you how to get there.

Okay, so, I'm just a bit giddy. I might have to change the name of the blog.

Bitch, I got nothin'.

Update: Link to Spanish Grammar Worksheet is fixed.

When the great Bitch of of North America asked me to guest blog, even offering to kiss my clean ass, I thought, oh no big deal, write something ethnic, slap up a September 11th post, no big whoop. I'll do ten minutes of stand up, tip my hat, and plug my own gig.

Come to find out later that she wants me on Mondays until she's done moving! Maybe I shouldn't have turned down the ass kissing. Last week my back went out, and all I could manage was to blog about a lame dream I had. Luckily, Bitch was able to post about Boobgate, which is just the bread and butter of us ed-ju-ma-cated modern women and men of feminism.

But today, I got nothing. Not even a picture: photos are not uploading right now for some reason. I was going to try to distract you all with a cute puppy, a teddy bear in a cubby hole, and one of my Spanish grammar handouts.

I know, don't you wish No_Nym had Mondays? I do.

I the problem is that I suffer from accute Seattle-itis; a coping condition some of us native northwesterners have. We don't mind the rain, we even like it. But on a day like today, when the weather was all caps, five exclamation points GORGEOUS!!!!! we are too distracted, stunned even, to be bothered by twin wars, with one on the way. Besides, I take my lead from the beautiful Twisty, and even she loses her mind once in a while.

So alas, the best I can do is point you all to a lame... maybe "lame" is too strong a word... I can't point you all to a post that's pedestrian at best about how diversity is a safety issue.

If you really need to get ethnic right this minute, then check out Orange, my kidney mentor, who's got a reader named DWC who has made herself into a straw(wo)man arguement for White-Is-Right.

Peace in the Middle East, y'all!

Are you sitting down?

Some shocking news from the NYT:

Women in science and engineering are hindered not by lack of ability but by bias and “outmoded institutional structures” in academia.
....
For 30 years, the report says, women have earned at least 30 percent of the nation’s doctorates in social and behavioral sciences, and at least 20 percent of the doctorates in life sciences. Yet they appear among full professors in those fields at less than half those levels. Women from minority groups are “virtually absent,” it adds.

The report also dismisses other commonly held beliefs — that women are uncompetitive or less productive, that they take too much time off for their families. Instead, it says, extensive previous research showed a pattern of unconscious but pervasive bias, “arbitrary and subjective” evaluation processes and a work environment in which “anyone lacking the work and family support traditionally provided by a ‘wife’ is at a serious disadvantage.”

I, personally, am expecting the apologies from Larry Summers' apologists to start pouring in any day now.

Grateful journal

Oprah Winfrey recommends keeping a "grateful journal" in which you "list five things that happened this day that you are grateful for. What it will begin to do is change your perspective of your day and your life. If you can learn to focus on what you have, you will always see that the universe is abundant; you will have more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never have enough."

I know it's early in the day, but life is good and I'm sure I can come up with five things I'm grateful for right now:

1. It is no longer "Talk Like a Pirate Day." I can't write in pirate-speak, so No Nym, I couldn't comment on any of your posts yesterday. I find "Talk Like a Pirate Day" to be most irksome. I do not, however, expend any energy deploring its glorification of those bad, bad piratical people, and find those who do complain about pirates to be just plain humorless.

2. I finally got the contract from my publisher (for a book about what else? crosswords), so I no longer feel like I'm in the limbo of uncertainty. Writing about something I enjoy turns out to be fun!

3. While my husband may pay no attention to laundry, he is a good man, a good husband, and a superb father. Plus he puts up with my snoring.

4. My son's having a good time in first grade, his best buddy from day camp is in his class, he's reading so fluidly now, and he does a much better job of listening to his mother than he used to. I've been productive during the hours he's in school, though today will entail more hair salon time (highlights and a much-overdue cut) and less writing time.

5. Pharmaceuticals and medical technology. Seriously. My kid and I wouldn't be here without 'em. While universal health care is sorely needed, health insurance companies drive everyone nuts, and there's plenty of over-/under-/mis-treatment in medicine, we do have a helluva bunch of resources on tap.

What are you grateful for? (And you'd better come up with five things. I know you can do it! If you're in a bind, there's always the weather, the new TV season, and the seasonal waning of heat and humidity.)

Guest post from Orange.

Mastectomies for everyone

Shorter Ann Althouse: because porn has defined titties as sex toys, the only true route to feminism is to chop yours off.

Shorter Jessica: Fuck you.

Heads up to Ogged, who correctly pegs Althouse as a nasty old crone. Which of course, because some people are too stupid to recognize irony, just proves that liberals are as sexist as Althouse herself.

So, not that anyone who reads this blog regularly actually needs this spelled out, I'll do it:

Women have tits. When women hold their shoulders straight, which is good for you, you can tell that they have tits. Most of us, especially those of us who have tits on the large side of average, slouch terribly because sexist motherfuckers have made us terribly self-conscious about our bodies by either shouting at us on the street or prudishly telling us that it's our fault if we get shouted at on the street. You'll notice, in fact, that in that photo Jessica is tucking her ass under rather than really standing up straight (I do this myself), but at least she's not slouching her shoulders which by the way is bad for your neck and shoulder muscles, and bad for your breathing. But hey, ladies, you're supposed to curl up like a fucking pillbug so that nobody can actually tell that you have tits, because titties are distracting and evil and bad, you fucking slut.

The whole fucking point of feminism is that women's bodies--and being as we are human beings, which is to say living creatures, our bodies are us, and you guys are the same way despite having been trained to think of yourselves as emotionless brains on sticks (except when you have a hard-on)--are neither sex toys nor shameful.

Women have tits. Standing up straight is good for your back.

Anyone who has a problem with either of these two statements can kiss my big sticky vagina. Which is equipped with teeth and will bite your motherfucking head off.

Dreams, war, and rumors of war.

I've been flat on my back for the last few days, and not.... in a good way. On Friday, my back seized up, making it hard to walk. Saturday morning I went to Urgent Care, where they wrote me a script for muscle relaxant and told me to talk it easy. By that point, it hurt to sit up. Now, Sunday night, it's better; I walk around an sit up for a half hour pain free before having to lie back down again. I'm almost better now, but I'm taking a sick day tomorrow. Already sent in my sub plans.

So, is the Global War On Terror over yet? I watched the news today, and there wasn't much from Afganistan or Iraq. I remember being outraged in 2003... am I still outraged? I want to be. Or maybe I've been lulled into complacency.

Well, folks, here's a rumor of war with Iran. Let's hope our handlers don't take us there, t00.

________

I dreamt I was sitting at a chrome and formica kitchen table, which opened up into a two-level 700 seat auditorium where uniformed Catholic school kids were attending mass. I had a battery operated casio keyboard on the table, and was leading the congregation in a psalm response. The kids were singing, but they were singing a song I didn't write, so I went along with them. Behind me, my friend Kurt from high school was chatting mindlessly with a very living John Paul II.

When the psalm was over, I turned and asked them politley not to talk behind me while I was working. It was too distracting.

After the psalm of course, was the alleluia.... and I could not remember the piano chords for the life of me. It didn't help at all that the Pope was on his cell phone, talking to someone in French. With a Polish accent, of course.

So in the middle of the alleluia, which I kept screwing up, I stopped playing the piano, turned around in my chair and yelled "ARETTE!" to the Holy See. I heard him say "oui, a toute a l'heure," and then he closed up the clamshell phone, embarassed. I stared him down for a few moments before turning back around, hatefully giving him my shoulder.

Kurt, who I know is a big fat Methodist, tried to mitigate the awful situation, saying "Gee, JP, we're sorry, we didn't mean to...."

"To get me fired from my job?" I interruped angrily. I didn't care. If they want me to play piano for a papal mass, I should be able to expect a more professional work environment.

Heroine of the week

Ann Richards, may she rest in peace. Now there was a woman who should have been the first woman president. The world needs ass-kicking old ladies like her; there are a lot of 'em, but we could sure use more.

Anecdotal evidence sought: Menorrhagia

Men: You can skip this one if you're squeamish.

This one's for the women. Anyone got any advice for someone with menorrhagia (uncommonly heavy periods—as in menstrual + hemorrhage)? My SIL is perimenopausal at age 41, and her last few periods have been monstrously heavy. The most recent one lasted two weeks and was heavy—so heavy she'd sometimes have to go home for a change of clothes, shedding so many clots she thought her body was perhaps disgorging an alien. Not to mention the cramping that accompanies the bleeding. Ski season's right around the corner, and she's going to miss out if she's blowing out tampons midway down the mountain.

Her doctor prescribed the pill, but my SIL doesn't like the side effects she's gotten from it. Teh internets revealed the existence of a newfangled endometrial ablation procedure called NovaSure that sounds like a boon to women with menorrhagia. Have you had this procedure, or do you know anyone who has? How expensive is it? Would you recommend it or not?

What else works without nasty side effects? What doesn't work so well?

If my SIL didn't get any treatment, would years of heavy bleeding be in store, or is it likely to run its course quickly?

I know the Bitch Ph.D. readership includes thousands of brilliant women who are savvy enough to take ownership of their bodies and their health, and I hope you will be able to share your valuable insights and experiences for the benefit of menorrhagic womankind. Thank you, thank you!

P.S. This is a guest post.

Anti-su___ rant

HI, THIS IS A GUEST POST! BITCH PH.D. DID NOT WRITE THIS PARTICULAR POST. IF YOU LOVE HER BLOG, DON'T TELL ME ALL ABOUT HOW YOU'VE BEEN READING "MY" BLOG FOR YEARS. IF YOU'RE TROLLING, BEAR IN MIND THAT YOU'RE NOT TROLLING THE BITCH HERSELF. YOU MIGHT WANT TO STOP BACK TOMORROW OR THE NEXT DAY!!!1!! IF YOU LEAVE A COMMENT ABOUT HOW SMART AND FUNNY I AM, MAKE SURE YOU MEAN IT FOR ME, NOT BITCH PH.D. OTHERWISE, IT KINDA HURTS MY FEELINGS. (WELL, IT DOESN'T REALLY. THAT'S JUST RHETORIC. ACTUALLY, I'M A TOUGH MOFO.)

All clear? Good. I didn't want to have to resort to sausage photos to delineate my guest posts.

I have previously inveighed against sudoku and SUVs, so what could be more fitting than outlining my feelings about the other things that start with su-?

Suave: Some decent shampoos at good prices.

Suburbs: Meh, you can have 'em. I like the city. Suburban folk complain about city driving, but I hate the suburban driving. If one road's under construction, the detour route is, like, a mile away.

Subway: I don't care for Subway sandwiches. They're all, "ooh, our bread is baked right here, ooh," but that bread is completely unexceptional. And what's with the teeny triangles of "cheese" a mere millimeter thick? If it were any thinner, it would be transparent. But riding the subway, or other forms of mass transit? A-OK. A little smelly sometimes, always too noisy, but oh-so-sensible.

Succedaneum: I like words I have to look up the definition of.

Success: Success is good. But don't rub it in.

Succubus: Thumbs up. Incubus, too.

Sugar: Not so good for diabetics, but an essential ingredient in all things chocolatey.

Sulking: Nobody likes a sulker, but we all do it from time to time.

Summer: It's over. Good. I totally forgot to take my son to the beach this year, but I cannot abide heat and humidity, so I'm happy with the onset of fall weather.

Sumo: I neither object to sumo nor admire it. It does make for some great photos (check out that face buried deep in an armpit); here's a photo of 1880s sumo wrestlers (NSFW!), much more compact fellas. Wow, if this is what sumo wrestlers looked like today, I'd totally watch sumo.

Superheroes: Highly overrated.

Sussudio: No. Just, no.

Suzi Quatro: I can't for the life if me remember any of her songs, but I wanted to be Leather Tuscadero on Happy Days.

Please be sure to include at least one su- word in every comment. (And if you're nice, you won't all chime in with "Hey, you suck.")

Corrections from Seattle

Just a couple of errata:

In my post "Hello, Non-Brown America" I included an outline of my three points; in my outline, I included a shorthand subtitle "no more fractions," which at least one cherished reader read as "don't ever use fractions ever again." I regret this subtitle and have removed it.

My point was never "don't use fractions ever again." Use fractions all you want! My point was that fractions are an expression of pedigree rather than ethnic heritage and identity.

So if you want to hang me, you have to claim that fractions ARE an expression of ethnic heritage and identity. In my world, it's more respectful to list ethinic heritages whole, rather than give an equation.

But if saying fractions helps you get through your day, I'm not going to stop you!
______

Much hay has been made regarding "Ay! Sticky vagina!" I would like to clarify that only my Auntie A has been known to say this, it's not a widespread phenomena that all Filipinos go around saying when they, for example, drop their Walkmans. However, Auntie A's unique expression only makes sense in a vaginocentric culture. Although I am amused that many of you have decided to incorporate this expression into your own daily lives, I want to just say that you are on your own. I am in no way advocating for use of this phrase in your homes, places of work, or houses of worship.

That said, my mama has written in to tell me that Auntie A's famous phrase is, in fact, "Ay! Huge vagina!" The words for "huge" and "sticky" being very similar in Tagalog. My mama is probably right. I don't know if this makes more sense to Tagalog speakers or less; either way, my cousins and I find her unique exclamation extremely charming.

I know the difference between "huge" and "sticky" and I could swear that all my life I've heard her say "sticky." I mean, I have a Master's Degree in Linguistics; my phonemic perception is pretty damn sharp. (Update: Mama says that the "sticky" word also carries a "sweet" connotation, so "sticky-sweet" like suman, which is sweet rice steamed in with coconut milk in a banana leaf. Mmm!)

Regardless, whether you believe me or my mama, the word for "vagina" is puki (stress the first syllable). It's NOT a dirty or degrading word, but I must admit that it added an extra depth to our readings of Jim Davis' Garfield and Friends.

Come to think of it, my cousin did get in trouble with Grandma when she skipped around the house with alternate lyrics of Cookie Monster's C is for Cookie... Of course she was singing P is for puki, that's good enough for me, oh! Puki puki puki starts with P!

Somehow, Grandma found that inappropriate.

Oh, we're so colorful, I can hardly stand it.

Just fyi

3yo wants it to be known that today is Big Happy Baby Day.

The appropriate way to celebrate Big Happy Baby Day is to bake a cake. "And you has to put frosting on it, Dada." Oh, and sprinkles or candies of some kind.

That is all.

UPDATE: Note that it's not anyone's birthday, it's just a new holiday. Big Happy Baby Day.

Moving is teh suck

Having movers pack your stuff is nice, obviously, but it's also anxiety-producing, because you have to get up at oh-dark-thirty, and of course they're not going to make any judgment calls about the stuff they pack, and they're not as persnickity about your shoes as you are, so you're running around pre-coffee: cleaning the kitchen and going through the fridge to wash all the storage containers and throw out their contents (which, if I were the one packing, I'd just do as I go along), putting the dirty bathmat inside the tub so you can say "don't pack the things inside the tub, I need to shower tonight" planning to do just one last load of laundry, which you'll fold and put in the back seat before you leave, and then remembering "oh shit, must remember to dig the vibrator out from under the bed and put it in the sex toy bag and put that in the car" and various and sundry first-thing-in-the-morning last-minute nonsense.

Not to mention all the other details, especially when you're selling a house. Must remember to call lawyer, must remember to keep house sale paperwork out of the packing boxes, must remember to call electrical repair guy if possible (and if not, too bad) to have a look at the dryer, which of course crapped out just last week, must remember to pick up the laundry I dropped off for wash & fold at the laundromat today, must remember to get the books I'll need this year from my office so the movers will include them with my household goods (the plan, assuming I get a job in soCal, is to come back next summer and get the rest of it, but I simply was not up to clearing out my entire office along with everything else), must remember to get prescriptions refilled and file change of address forms before leaving town. With any luck I've managed to remember everything to put on the various "to do" lists and won't have a reprise of yesterday's early evening crying jag (which many thanks to the friends who held my virtual hand and sent me cute pictures and funny YouTube videos to try to make me smile. It really helped).

Luckily, the movers are apparently a little late. Oddly, as much as I hate dragging myself out of bed at seven a.m., I'm always glad when people who say "let's meet up at eight" are late. Because it gives me a chance to finish rushing about and sit down and take some deep breaths while I wait for them.

Did you know sometimes white people decorate cookies?

I was invited to a Christmas cookie decorating party once in college. I had never decorated cookies before.

Then a couple of years ago, some coworkers were talking about Christmas cookies, and I said, oh, I made them once.

Once?! they asked, You've only made them once?

It was a couple of minutes before I pieced it together: making Christmas cookies is some kind of white people custom that many of them do! Ohhhhhh!

My parents had been in this country for 30 years, and no one had ever told them about decorating Christmas cookies. My sister and I grew up here, and we certainly didn't know. When I found out about this custom, I explained it to them, and they were all surprised... I was very careful to pronounce "Christmas cookies" so that they could learn the new concept.

So last Christmas, at my parents' house in Vegas, rather than go to the casinos, we stayed home and made Christmas cookies! Like white people! You can check out our first attempt here.

Well, last night, I was invited over to a friend's house. He, a social studies teacher, and another friend, an English teacher, were making not Christmas cookies, but witch cookies, to highlight their unit on the Salem witch trials and The Crucible.

I gushed a little bit to them about finally being in on this American custom. Of course, they thought I was being crazy, and a little pathetic, but I took out my cell phone and took some pictures, because seriously, it was the third cookie decorating party I had ever participated in. In my life. Left to our own devices, Filipinos don't naturally decorate sugar cookies. It takes white friends to show you how to decorate sugar cookies. Or ski. Or refinance.

And no, there is no pedagogical significance to thematic cookie making. They just like to do it sometimes. Yes, they are a couple of goofballs. He is a former high school wrestler that specializes in the Holocaust; she is that tough as nails English teacher that is very serious about literature and good behavior.

They've also been known to make Scarlet Letters.

I just wanted my day of guest bitching about ethnicity and cultural contact to end on a sweet note.

________________

I hope you all caught Kieth Olbermann blasting the warmongers a new hernia. And I hope, as someone (very meanly) implied in the comments section, that we educated liberals get off our complacent asses and take back some of our outrage.

Stop by chez moi anytime if you get a chance, although I saved the my best material this week for my big day at BitchPhd, so there's not a whole lot going on over there. Maybe you can read about my bad day, or learn how to say "Ay, sticky vagina!" but you really shouldn't say that in public. It's not that sophisticated.

Good night, and good luck.

Where Were You When You Heard The News?

I woke up late, 6:30 pacific, and I turned on the radio like every day, and I immediately noticed that NPR was off it's game. The news was coming out choppy, there were seconds of dead air where the reporters were faltering. I heard a live, raw report from the Pentagon, where someone had reported a huge explosion, but no conclusions. I turned on the tv after a while, remembering that tv is better at breaking news; that's what they live for. And that's when I saw smoke coming from the tower.

I took my first period class to the computer lab and just told them to look up news from Spanish-language sources. They were annoyed that they had to read in Spanish, but I didn't stop them from looking at English pages.

I remember the silence in the skies that day, no seaplanes landing on the lake, no passenger jets in the landing route overhead.

I remember one student saying "we should just bomb them all." Another said "Why would they attack us, didn't we save them?" Some students and faculty went home early that day, some of them with relatives in New York, some with relatives in the World Trade Center.

We managed to put together an all-school prayer service that afternoon. Afterwards, I went home and watched the news all night.

Later that week, I went with my friends down to the Seattle Center where people were leaving flowers. It was a riot of color and pollen; people were standing quietly as others would arrive, gradually filling the basin of the International Fountain with piles and piles of bouquets. I had to take a Benadril.

I remember I emailed a former student of mine, who was in his junior year at Columbia; hey, kid, tell me you're ok. He emailed back saying that he was ok, that he was furious, that somebody had to pay, that somebody had to be punished.

And I remember thinking, no, kid, there's no justice.

Nobody missed church that Sunday; I saw a lot of wool, black and shades of gray, white collared shirts; besides that, I don't remember anyone wearing color.

The speeches that followed the attacks were resolute, aggressive, defiant. I remember mayor Giuliani on TV, trying to bring order back, and I remember admiring Tony Blair's stirring tribute, and comparing it to W's bullhorn pep rally.

And I remember thinking, that's it; the future has arrived.

Hello, Non Brown America!

Dr. B is too busy to be everyone's part-time Femme-Prophet right now, but she needs to keep her page hits up so that the advertising checks keep coming. So she's asked me to get all ethnic up in here, even offered to kiss my ass. I told her I would be happy to write at her audience for a while, because I love attention, and that she wouldn't have to kiss my ass. Besides, it's not like I'm going to proof read...

So, staying within the lines of the assignment I was given (Dr. B wants me to get ethnic), I thought I'd write a cheerful letter to Non-Brown America, from one Brown guy who likes ya most of the time. Without a doubt, another Brown person may write in to say "JP doesn't speak for me!" to which I will respond, "SILENCE! YOU ARE CONFUSING THEM!"

Us brown people do have a diversity of perspectives, but goodness knows, we all tend to get distracted by the details sometimes. However when us Brown Americans disagree or have a different perspective, that does NOT mean that you are free to oppress us, take our land, or keep us from jobs, housing, or education. Word? Word. We will burn this shit down, get us pissed.

Anyway, here's an outline:

1. Ethnicity is not pedigree.
   
2. Ethnicity is as central to identity as gender.
3. Relative vaginophobia.
   
   

1. Ethnicity is not pedigree. I am Filipino American. Thanks for asking! It's very important to me. I'm Filipino in that I can't live without rice, I point with my lips, and my favorite way to inflict pain is the karot, the bruising death pinch (if you are too far away to pinch, you'll get hit in the neck with whatever footwear I'm rocking). However, since I grew up in the 1970s in America, I don't speak Tagalog very well, I'm not a fan of dinuguan (chocolate meat! ask me later), I don't avoid the sun, and I don't elect soap opera actors to public office. In fact, in the Philippines, I would feel like a minority.

I'm also culturally American. For example, I believe in the separation of Church and State, I love to eat American things like cookies and pie, and I tend to drive EVERYWHERE. My favorite composer? Aaron Copeland! Come on, I am a big fat American!

So I'm Filipino American; pay attention. This is VERY DIFFERENT than those of you who say "Oh, well I'm half German, a quarter Scotch/Irish, and a quarter Italian!" I do understand, your proud of your pedigree, you're proud of your "blood," but when I say my ethnicity is Filipino American, it's a CULTURAL expression, not blood, not pedigree, not a fraction.

So then what is your ethnicity, if your pedigree is "half German, a quarter Scotch/Irish, and a quarter Italian?" My guess is that you're a White American, but you get to call your ethnicity whatever you want. You can call yourself White, you can call yourself Non-Brown, heck, you can even get away with calling yourself plain ol' American. Sometimes.

The pedigree stuff? That was cannonized by the US Government, trying to put a sunset date on Indian reservations, by saying that you had to be 1/4 Indian to qualify to live on the rez.

But your friend, who is "half Filipina and half African American?" That's her pedigree. If you want to know her ethnicity, ask her; she'll say that she's Filipina and African American. When you're talking about cultural tendencies, there's no reason to say anyone is incomplete in their ethnicity.

"So JP," you ask, "What box are we supposed to check on the government forms?"

Well, my friend, I don't know. My ethnicity was determined by my upbringing, by my parents, by my geography, by some political and life choices I have made. It is not determined by a box on some form that will help someone (?) give some abstract statistic.

2. Ethnicity is as central to identity as gender. I work in a school situation, so I hear this one a lot.

Sometimes, the Non-Brown people will try to show how non-discriminatory, multi-cultural, and accepting they are by saying "I don't think of you as Filipino! I don't care if you're black, white, or purple! We're all just equal."

And God bless 'em, you gotta give 'em credit.... they're trying to be nice. But here's the truth: when you say that, We. Don't. Like it. Ever.

I love being Filipino American. I work at it. It matters to me. If you've never had to question your own ethnic identity, maybe the closest thing you have to it is your gender identity.

So imagine if someone said to you, "I don't think of you as a male or female!" Yikes, you wouldn't like it.

Folks, ethnicity is at the center of everyone's identity, just like gender. Every single one of us. I know that some of you have that zero-ethnicity fallacy going on; the one that says, "I'm not ethnic, I'm just normal." Well, drop your ass in the Tokyo shopping district and suddenly your cultural assumptions come right to the surface, don't they?

3. Relative Vaginophobia. I know, I've been boring some of you all with the Brown People 101 items above. This topic may be more your speed.

American English is all dick this, asshole that, cocksucker, kick your butt, thinking with your dick, working your ass off, penis penis penis rectum rectum rectum.

Some cultures are not so penis/rectum oriented. The French, for example, tend to be more equal opportunity with their "con, connard, connasse."

And Filipinos? Way on the other side of the spectrum. Despite my English-only childhood, I know several words in several Philippine languages for "vagina," none of them euphemisms. How many penis words do I know? Exactly two; one is patutin, which is a little kid euphemism, and the other us buto, which I think is another euphemism, meaning "bone."

(I do, however, know several words "butt" in different Philippine languages, all of them silly, none of them insulting or dirty.)

I first realized this cultural distinction in high school (before I majored in linguistics). When I would tell someone that American humor was all penis/rectum oriented, and Filipino culture celebrated the vagina, my friends didn't want to hear it. They were buried in their own shame and mystique surrounding the Great V, and were convinced that Filipinos were these gross sex freaks. Well?

Well anyway, when we curse someone in Pangasinan or Ilokano, we don't say, "You're a dick!" or "You're an asshole!" or "You're a cocksucker!" Instead, we will exclaim "You're mother's vagina!" or the plural "Your all's mothers' vaginas!" (which is actually how I learned singular and plural personal pronouns). Note that this is not using the word "vagina" as an insult, the way "dick" or "asshole" is; instead the provocation arises from the "mother" part of the equation. You could say "you're mother's elbow" and there would be a fight. Update: commenter Michael pointed out my apostrophe abuses. How embarassing! Your mother's vagina! Your all's mothers' vaginas!

When mama is exasperated about my uncle going back to his ex-wife for the Nth time, she doesn't say, "He's thinking with his cock again," she says, "She must have a golden vagina!"

And when Auntie A drops something on the floor, she doesn't exclaim "Oh shit!" but instead "Ay, vagina!" or sometimes, "Ay, sticky vagina."

So what are the socio-sexual dynamics at play? Is there some underlying feminist commentary that explains this penis/rectum distribution in American culture and the vaginocentric distribution in Filipino culture? Not to mention the negative spin that American culture puts on the sex act, with your "Fuck you's" and your "fuck that's" and your "that's fucked up's."

So who's culture is more degrading towards women, Filipinos or Americans?

Aha! I tricked you into making a broad ethnocentric snap-judgment based on anecdotal, second-hand evidence, didn't I? Admit it!

Aw, don't be mad. We're all oppressive in different ways. You are penis/rectum people, we're not. It's all good.

9/11 photos

If you don't have Times Select, you couldn't read Frank Rich's column, which contained a link to the promo site for a book of 9/11 photos. The pics look like they're quite amazing; a sample selection is here. The daguerrotype is especially touching; there's something about the combination of immediately recognizable "old" format with immediately recognizable "new" content that seems to capture a sense of historical distance that actually makes it seem more, not less, emotional.

And then I died of sweetness

Email from my dad:

we jjust got back from the beach when i asked PK if he liked the snow or th ebeach beetter he said the beach...he had a ball runing ujp and down in and out of the water his dad tried to teach him to skip a stone when we were having lunch dukes is a great hamburger place next to the beach...Mr. B. was telling the story of dcaptain jacks compas which points to what your heart desires...PK asked where would it point to u and when Mr. B. showed him ne PK pointed the compass there and said mom Mr. B. too pointed teh compas ss ne and said ur mom.....love dad

Better than cats

Enjoy your Friday. Make sure your speakers are on. Both links are courtesy Mr. Wolfson.

1. Bookmarked for future commenting hilarity.

2. Remember Woody Arlo* Guthrie's song Alice's Restaurant? Here's the Iraq War version.

*Sue me, it was a long time ago and I was a kid.

The Great Public School Debate, solved

It's commonplace for parents to gripe that people without kids don't really "get it." I actually think this is often true. But in the great liberal debate about whether white professionals should send kids to (it's always implied) mediocre public schools for the sake of economic or ethnic diversity, or should damn well send their kids to the best school they can afford because parents shouldn't sacrifice their kids' education to political ideology--and by the way, I really tried to phrase that fairly, but I think everyone here knows that I'm on the "diversity" side of that argument--a sudden and correct answer from an unlikely source: a 20-something college student. I bow in recognition of occam's razor.

Teofilo, who by the way writes really thoughtful and pretty stuff on his blog, simply suggests

that people who are worried about whether their kids will thrive should chill out a little. . . . there's no reason to reject your local school out of hand unless you know for sure that it really is part of the very lowest tier.

Perfect, huh? Try the school you're afraid might be mediocre before you move out to that more expensive suburb, and see if it's really actually better than you think for the particular personality of your particular kid. Even if you decide to move or pack the kid up for private school after a year or two anyway, at the very least you'll know a lot more about what's specifically wrong with Mediocre Elementary. If enough people did this, it could actually improve discussion about public schooling in this country enormously.

On thinking about it, I suspect the reason a young non-parent can come up with this when parents tie themselves in knots over it is because he's young enough to remember that a year or two of school, especially for elementary kids, does not make or break their entire life. And, unlike those of us who've gone through the Expecting Parent Guilt Wringer, he hasn't internalized the idea that every single decision a parent makes is etched forever in the child's cerebellum.

So thanks, Teo, for helping me, at least, chill out about worrying if Pseudonymous Kid's first grade experience is going to be the exact right way to start educating him for the rest of his life. You're right; it'll be fine. And if it's not, we can change our minds.

Echando pedos

Hola todos, I'm JP, your guest blogger for next Monday.

I just keep a little journal about me over at my blog; sometimes I try to be witty and political... Most of the time I talk about what I'm eating and how much I love living in Seattle. I have about seven readers, total.

I'm a little worried about standing among giants here in Bitchlandia; hoping I will have something intelligent to say, and not make an ass of myself.

I am definitely not going to blog about how a co-worker inadvertently farted while leading discussion in a senior religion class today. We laughed and teased her about it for a good twenty minutes in the office, and then she warned me very sternly not to write about her fart in my blog.

First of all, gross. Second, my blog is about me, I am an egomaniac. So just so everyone knows, if you want to hear the fart story, you're going to ask her yourself, because you're not going to read about it at you don't have to read. Anyway, that would be embarrassing for her.

So I've been thinking about what my big Bitch PhD post is going to be. Should I try to be an ethnicBitch? Should I berate Donald Rumsfeld, and with him all you Americans who are so complacent and decadent in your cushy, comfortable lives, you barely have the outrage to shake your heads in disgust? Should I post a short prophesy a la John The Revelator about the decline and fall of the people who wouldn't stop their idiot president? Should I put out a call for limericks? My recipe for arrozcaldo?

Or should I just post a picture of greasy breakfast sausages and give Bitch the finger?

Well, maybe I'll just take questions. If you have any question that you've been dying to a big fat liberal Filipino American dude from Seattle, I'm listening.

Fear me

This week I have:

- Sold a house
- Not overdrawn my bank account (this was harder than you'd think)
- Helped Mr. B. pack for himself, Pseudonymous Kid, and the cat
- Taken Mr. B., PK, and Daisy to the airport
- Written a manual for the department's new TAs
- Finished planning for TA orientation
- Pulled what I hope will be the last all-nighter for a while

This week my husband has:

- Moved himself, PK, and the cat to California
- Told me he really loves his new job
- Bought me a new pink! razr cell phone, which my dad and then my mom get to use while they're babysitting PK until I get out there
- Promised to take good care of PK and Daisy until I get out there

This week PK has:

- Moved to California
- Started first grade
- Promised to take good care of Daisy and Papa until I get out there

In the next few days I will:

- Get the dryer fixed
- Replace the tires on the Saturn
- Orient the new TAs
- Pack up crap in my office
- Straighten up the crap I'm leaving in my office so that someone else can use it (the office, not my crap, though I suppose they could use both) while I'm gone
- Throw away more stuff in the house; maybe make a trip to the dump
- Mow the lawn?
- Supervise the movers
- Not pay that parking ticket no matter what anyone says
- Fax things back and forth
- Sign legal documents, forward mail, change addresses, ad infinitum
- Pick up what will probably be a few hundred dollars worth of dry cleaning
- Pack up my own stuff for a road trip
- Finish some t-shirt designs I promised to do three weeks ago*
- Hit the road, Jack

Despite not sleeping last night, I'm feeling mighty fine.


*Speaking of t-shirts, I owe a couple of you free shirts, do I not? Email me, ladies, with sizes, styles, and colors!

See? It can too be done!

Hey y'all, head on over to The Tattered Coat and give Dr. Matt some love--he defended his diss earlier today.

Yes, it's another GUEST POST

I'm tapped out and have nothing of substance to say at the moment. Plus, I'm feeling inconsequential. Some of my posts here have drawn the occasional troll (and I'm not even talking about the Defenders of SUVs and the Sudoku Partisans), and frankly, I'm offended. I write two blogs of my own, after all, and have written nearly 1,000 posts, and I can count the number of troll comments I've received on one hand.

So I am forced to conclude that the trolls here (1) are targeting Dr. B and not me, because I'm nobody, and (2) have terrible reading comprehension skills, because it should be fairly obvious that my posts are not hers. Is her kid's name Ben? No. Is she a stay-at-home mom and freelancer? No. (Well, not yet, anyway. Who knows what'll happen when she turns Brady.) Does she refer to herself in the third person as "Dr. B"? No. Does she sign her posts "Orange" or "No Nym"? No.

I've taken the liberty of drafting a small disclaimer to clarify matters for the slower readers among us.

HI, THIS IS A GUEST POST. BITCH PH.D. DID NOT WRITE THIS PARTICULAR POST. IF YOU LOVE HER BLOG, DON'T TELL ME ALL ABOUT HOW YOU'VE BEEN READING "MY" BLOG FOR YEARS. IF YOU'RE TROLLING, BEAR IN MIND THAT YOU'RE NOT TROLLING THE BITCH HERSELF. YOU MIGHT WANT TO STOP BACK TOMORROW OR THE NEXT DAY. IF YOU LEAVE A COMMENT ABOUT HOW SMART AND FUNNY I AM, MAKE SURE YOU MEAN IT FOR ME, NOT BITCH PH.D. OTHERWISE, IT KINDA HURTS MY FEELINGS.

What do you think? Too subtle? Does it need exclamation points?

Rambling early-morning guest post

Yesterday (at long last!), my son Ben started first grade. August was a long month—Ben's day camp ended a few days into the month, assorted ailments had me less active than normal, and we spent far too much time together at home. Why the zoo animals sharing cages don't rend each other's flesh after a few weeks of constant togetherness is beyond me, because I, for one, grew cranky. It's hard to concentrate on freelance editing with a kid in the room (or so the procrastinator is wont to say). And I had one of those milestone birthdays that put me in denial. ("I may have turned forty, but I have the health of an eighty-year-old!" I declared proudly.) So overall, August went on too long.

Now it's September, and school started yesterday. From the selfish maternal standpoint, school's great for two reasons: (1) I get almost six hours of time to myself at home—time to edit and write, run errands, fritter away the hours, think, and just be; and (2) After school, we can hang out at the school playground for an hour and I can talk to actual adult humans. Oh, the luxury! I'll bet most freelancers/at-home parents can relate to this. I love my child, and I love time alone, but conversations that don't involve Hot Wheels cars are as precious as rubies.

Last year's six kindergarten classes were grouped into eight smaller first-grade classes (yeah, it's a huge school—almost 1,600 students from pre-K to eighh grade). Last year, Ben's homeroom was the bilingual class—there weren't enough Spanish-English-speaking kids to fill a class, so about eight kids like Ben and Mohammed also learned a wee bit of Spanish. (The kids shuffle around for reading/language, so only the bilingual kids were learning to read and write in Spanish.) With the school budget allowing for more first-grade teachers, the kids were going to be redistributed, with few, if any, non-Hispanic kids in the bilingual group.

I figured Ben would know several kids in his new homeroom. You know how many? One! And it wasn't a kid he knew from kindergarten—it was his best buddy from day camp. Hooray for day camp! And when they get assigned to their reading groups, presumably he'll know most of those kids, since the groupings are based on ability level.

After school, approximately a zillion kids hit the playground, and the parents convened around the terraced concrete steps. Herewith, highlights of my conversations:

• One German family spent the summer back in Germany and Switzerland. Remember what it was like growing up in the '70s in suburban America? Kids running free all day, going home at mealtimes but mainly playing outside with other neighborhood kids for hours on end? They can still do that in Germany. Toby's mom was delighted to not have to stage-manage his playtime.

• A Polish mom asked if I could recommend a dentist for her son, David. I warned her that Ben's dentists are pricey and like to be paid up front, letting the patient's family do the waiting for insurance reimbursement. Not a problem, she said—they probably take Medicaid, and her son is covered through Illinois's universal health insurance for children. "David gets $600 a month of medications for his asthma, and Medicaid pays for that. He can see the doctor, he can go to the dentist. I don't know what I would do without that. Thank you, President Bush," she said. "Don't thank Bush—he'd get rid of Medicaid if he could. Thank the Democrats," I said. (The All Kids program was an initiative from Gov. Rod Blagojevich. He may be corrupt in terms of hiring practices, but he's our corrupt politician. He also ordered pharmacists in the state to dispense Plan B, and is working on universal preschool. I expect I'll be voting for him again, because I care more about issues like those than about cleaning up the state's pandemic corruption. Let's get some more progressive legislation and executive orders on the books, and then we can clean house.)

• Another mother said that Germany's vibe of "safe for kids to play outside all day" was what it's like in her home country in Africa. "Which country?" I asked. Eritrea. I astonished her by having heard of Eritrea, first off, and by knowing where it is and that its independence came fairly recently (in 1991, to be precise). Apparently many Americans are not too geopolitically savvy. (Horrors!) Handy facts I picked up this morning from the Wikipedia article: The country's name derives from the Greek for Red (erythro) Sea. Hannibal went there in search of elephants a couple thousand years ago. There's a monument of a giant sandal, an iconic representation of the independence fighters. The country's right across the Red Sea from Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

I don't know what percent of students at this school have parents born in other countries, but it's got to be a sizeable percentage. There are other Europeans and Africans, Mexicans, Asians, and South Asians. There's a very international vibe, and the parents speak many different languages, and yet the kids all sound the same—they're American kids, after all.

Whoops, it's almost time to wake up Ben for First Grade II: The Second Day. Gotta go—

Noticias

1. Due to extreme busytude on my part, I have been shitty about checking comments lately.

2. As happens when well-read bloggers don't police their comments, we've been getting shitloads of comment spam and more trolls than usual

3. That is to say, the trolls' comments are hanging around longer than usual--long enough for folks to see 'em.

THEREFORE:

1. A reminder: Do Not Respond to Trolls. I know it's tempting. But when you do, it encourages further trolling. Please ignore obvious trollification. I swear to god I'll delete it eventually.

2. I've enabled comment moderation. This will, of course, require me to start enabling comments at least once or twice a day--if I can't manage that, I'll take the moderation off. I am sorry that this'll mean slowing down or disabling actual real-time conversation in the comment threads, and I promise that I'll have y'all back up and running as soon as I can manage it.

3. I've also enabled some new Haloscan spam blocker thingamajig; we'll see if it works. Hopefully this'll be invisible to y'all.

Thank you! We now return to your regularly scheduled blogging and guest bloggers, who are saving my ass lately.

School's back in session

A White Bear and Tia at Unfogged offer a li'l Feminism 101 for your reading pleasure.

Pretty petty

So the reason my fucking car was towed is because the city was doing some work on the street perpendicular to mine. So for a few days last week and then Thursday and Friday of this, we weren't supposed to park on either that street or this one.

Now, that's fine--except that, in fact, we don't have a driveway. Which is why we park on the street. Last week I made arrangements to park in the neighbor's driveway across the street, and was going to do the same this week. Only I forgot.

So I spent Thursday sort of puttering about the house, taking out the garbage, etc. And at about 4:00 I said to Pseudonymous Kid, "hey, let's go run some errands." We get ready to go, I decide we'll drive so that I can add in a couple of errands I wouldn't be able to do downtown, we walk out the door, and I realize that the car isn't there.

Oh, fuck, I think. That's right, we weren't supposed to park on the street. Goddamnit.

So I go inside and call the city. It's past 4, though, so they're closed. I can't find out anything about my car until tomorrow.

Friday, I call the city again. The department that's working on the street says, "no, we wouldn't have had your car towed. Perhaps the folks in parking did. I'll transfer you."

Parking admits that yes, they towed my car. Further, they inform me that no, the car wasn't actually in the way of the construction, which was entirely on the other street. I point out that I don't have a driveway and suggest that maybe they might have knocked on the door of the house that the car was parked directly in front of, which of course gets me nowhere. Anyway, the car is at Bill's Towing.

"Okay," I say. "Where's Bill's Towing?" "I don't know," says the person I'm talking to. "Then how am I supposed to find out where to get my car?" I say. "Look it up and call them," the city representative helpfully suggests. "Gee, thanks," I reply. "Next question: any idea what this is going to cost me?" "No." "So," I point out, "you had my car towed despite the fact that I have a permit to park on my street, and you can't tell me where you took it or how much it's going to cost to get it back?" "I told you where we took it," city representative snips. "It's at Bill's Towing." She hangs up.

Feeling warmed by the love of my fellow woman, I get the phone book, look up Bill's Towing, find out they're open until 8 pm (thank god) and that my car will cost $145, plus tax. Because, you know, they had to store it overnight. Because the city closed at 4 pm and I couldn't find out where the car was until today.

Fucking brilliant. I paid someone $200 to clean up the vacant lot that is our back yard last week, and I don't have $145 to get the car out of hock. Okay, fine, a li'l more on the credit card. I hang around the house a little hoping that when the neighbors come home they might offer me a ride so I don't have to have a cab, but when Joe's new wife Annie comes home and we chit-chat a little, it becomes clear that Annie is just making a pit stop before taking her girls right back out to buy new school shoes. So I don't ask.

So I log into my bank account, grab another $100 from the credit line we've arranged to take care of the house prep expenses, tell PK to get his shoes on again, and we walk downtown to grab $40 from the bank for a cab. We call the cab, tell the driver to take us to Bill's Towing.

He drops us off, I pay him, we go inside and ask for our car.

Turns out this is Bob's Towing, not Bill's. Also, apparently this is a pretty common mistake, as the guy working at Bob's immediately calls Bill's to confirm that yep, they have our car.

Luckily Bob Jr. (or whatever his name was) is a nice guy and says, "hey, hop in the truck, I'll drive you over to Bill's." So we get a ride in a towtruck, and I remind PK of the last time he rode in a towtruck, when we broke down in the Arizona desert, and Bob Jr. says, "wow, I bet that was fun," and I say, "oh yes, it was July, even" and he laughs, and then we're at Bill's, and Bob Jr. says, "hope you have a better day," and I say, "thank you for being the first part of it that's been good," and he smiles and takes off.

The receptionist at Bill's is also quite nice, actually. I guess you have to be a nice person if that's your job. Anyway, she runs my credit card, answers PK's questions, and tells us where our car is. We go down the hill and find a guy working in the lot who assures us that even though the car had the parking brake on, they use a dolly so no damage was done. I thank him and we go unlock the car.

There's a ticket for $20 on the windshield.

Since the car, which was a hand-me-down from my sister-in-law in Chicago, still has Illinois plates in it; since we don't actually live in Illinois; and since in two weeks I'll be re-registering the car in California, I am sorely tempted to write "BITE ME" on the ticket where I'm supposed to sign it and mail it back to the city on my way out of town.

Looking for something to read?

Try these links while I go get my car at the goddamnmotherfucking impound lot.

Adam Kotsko boils down the standard annoying rhetorical strategies people often use in politicalish arguments.

Don't leave home. Or you might not be allowed to come back.

The WaPo reports on an interesting study that suggests that test scores go up if test-takers aren't first reminded that they're not expected to do well. What's really interesting is that the boys' scores didn't go up with positive reinforcement the way the girls' did. The obvious conclusion is (duh) that boys, as Mr. B. once pointed out to some neanderthal co-workers, are given the message throughout childhood that they can do whatever they want, so they start off with a baseline self image of competence and ability that is frequently undermined for girls.

Really nice piece and link on Broadsheet about the ongoing fuckeduppedness that is the myth that boys who actually like girls are unmanly. The saddest part of the whole thing is how isolated boys feel about this stuff:

"One of the boys said that he'd never talk to his friends this way, the way that he talked to the interviewer, because those boys don't have the feelings that he has."