Anarchy

OK, let's go over this again.

You do not just hand out the trick or treat candy capriciously, willy-nilly, according to whatever comes quickly to hand.

No. No. No.

There is a system and it must be followed. If not strictly followed, I, I mean, you, risk ending the evening with a bunch of candy I, I mean, you don't like, having given out the good stuff in the early going.

So, let's review; hand out the sweeties in the order following: Smarties, Skittles, M&M plain, M&M peanut, Three Musketeer bars, Snickers bars, and then and only then, Reese's Peanut butter cups. Only after all supplies are exhausted do you dig into the Reese's.

Are we clear?

OK, then. Carry on.

Wonderin Where the Lions Are

Report from the Four Corners:
Booker's calf has been found.

Booker (short for Ubukwele) is queen of our dairy herd. From time to time she asserts the royal prerogative. Like, when there's a gap in the home pasture fencing.

This year, she asserted her self with Tango, the neighbor's bull. Thirty-eight weeks later, she was delivered of a handsome Hereford-Shorthorn crossbreed bull calf.

Now, we think the world of Booker and wish her every happiness but these matches must be carefully planned and even, uh, chaperoned. Romance, even a one-night stand, between lovers who tip the scale at a half to three-quarters ton per each is not a thing to be undertaken lightly. Know what I mean?

And, although one hates to bring up the subject of money where love is concerned, there's a fair amount of cash and income at stake with these critters. Even at current depressed milk prices, Booker will turn over three to four thousand a year. Dollars, that is.

Our dairy herd is only twelve milking cows. Then, there's a couple more freshening and a couple more resting. This is not the Ponderosa, you know. Even if you are not a dairy farmer, you can do the math. Losing Booker's production for the time it takes to wean her calf is a significant loss of income.

But, true love will not be denied. Booker dotes on her calf, Booker T, as do the rest of us. Booker T cause his mama is Booker and his daddy is Tango. Get it?

He's a cutie; full of hijinks and, despite his mixed breeding or, maybe, because of it, shows every promise of being a handsome and muscular prince of the herd.

Rather, he did show promise. Booker's calf disappeared a week ago. Booker has been inconsolable ever since, bawling for her little one at all hours. She does not eat and drinks only a little. She can't even bring up a cud. My niece had to stick a dishrag in her mouth to give her something to work on.

Then, about a day ago, Booker T's remains turned up. They were lodged in a Red Pine, about 20' off the ground. That is lion sign.

Officially, there are no lions around here. Officially.

The old timers say different. Every once in awhile you hear about someone coming across lion sign; scat or blazes on a tree, stuff like that. Myself, I've never seen anything like that and I've been up and down all these canyons and washes.

There are plenty of lion in northern Colorado, of course. They've even been seen in the Denver suburbs, dining on Labradors and German Shepherds. I think it was only last spring that a lion was treed in the backyard of a home in Golden CO, home of Coors Beer.

The Front Range habitat is much different than the San Juan range, though. A lot more cover for a big animal like the Mountain Lion. Here, even the well watered slopes are kind of sparse. Lion are notoriously shy creatures and do not like to move across exposed country of any kind.

Still, hard to imagine what else could hoist a hundred plus pound carcass up into the tree canopy. As if poor markets, depressed prices, down gates, and lovestruck cows weren't enough problems for a hard working dairyman. Now I got to wonder where the lions are.

Thursday Gathering of the Nations Dance Blogging

The Ojibwe clans are holding an autumn pow-wow in town this weekend.

If my white blood count will permit, my nieces, Meche and Katherine, promise to take me to watch the dancers.

Most Ojibwe dances have healing power, especially the Jingle Dress dance and the Fancy Shawl dance. So, you know, it should be good for me.

I'm nearly at the end of my chemical therapy. One treatment left.

Still, probably be awhile before I'm ready for a Round Dance.

Only Connect

What do you even say about this? You feel ill, mostly. You feel so sad and ill.

And possibly one might say that you and you are part of the problem:

So what’s your take on Polanski, this many years later?

I really don’t give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she’s been taken advantage of?

Hmm.

“I say that Foer’s ethical charge against animal eating is brave because not only is it unpopular, it has also been characterized as unmanly, inconsiderate, and juvenile. But he reminds us that being a man, and a human, takes more thought than just ‘This is tasty, and that’s why I do it.’ He posits that consideration, as promoted by Michael Pollan in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which has more to do with being polite to your tablemates than sticking to your own ideals, would be absurd if applied to any other belief (e.g., I don’t believe in rape, but if it’s what it takes to please my dinner hosts, then so be it).”

"e.g." Indeed.

a milestone of the kidney kind

Around the time that M- dropped the L-word for the first time, and I was feeling a little weird about it, someone suggested going through an 'emergency room' scenario, a mental exercise to clarify my own feelings.

We have exchanged L-words (I just can't say it, can I?) but this weekend sort of cemented things. In other words, you know you love someone when you rush from your cozy apt on a cold rainy night to go to the ER all the way on the north side because a nurse called and said 'Your boyfriend needs you.'

He had called from his house earlier:

M-: So babe. What are the symptoms of a kidney stone? (groan)
D : Sharp pain, hurts to pee, and blood in your urine. (my old lady television viewing habits come in handy, sometimes.)
M-: I might have a kidney stone. I have to pee all the time. No blood, though.
D: Wow. Are you sure? Sharp pain in your lower back?
M-: Yeah, but I'm ok. Maybe it'll go away. (groan)
D: Kidney stones don't go away unless they leave your penis. I think you should go to the ER.
M-: Maybe I'll take a tylenol and then come over for our date when the pain passes.
D : Whatever. Our date is off. You need to go to the ER.
M-: (GROAN)
D: You need to be at the doctor; tell me where to meet you.
M-: (GROAN MOAN) Uh, I gotta go, babe. I just tried to pee and almost passed out.

He called from the hospital parking lot (yes, despite fetal position-inducing pain, he *drove* himself): 'I'm about to check in (groan) so I'll call you later. I'm at Swedish Covenant.'

Really trying not to fret I watched tv, looked up kidney stones on the web, ate a sandwich and checked my Blackberry. When an unknown 773 number popped up, I grabbed it.

'Your boyfriend needs you.'
'Tell him I'm coming and I'll be there as soon as I can.'

I texted my friends ('M-! ER! Kidney stones! I'm out!'), dressed, grabbed keys, blew out candles, flagged a cab, grabbed cash, and rushed to the hospital, where I overtipped the cabbie.

It was novel to rush in and exhale, 'My boyfriend was just admitted and I'm here to see him.' Even more novel was the feeling that I *really* did not want anything to happen to this guy. This was beyond the 'gee, I hope things are ok' feeling; this was 'oh, god, it's only kidney stones but if something happens this will wreck me.'

Weird, huh?

Things fall immediately into place when you face what you really feel. The class bullshit I was still holding onto ('We don't match, he's not like anyone I've gone out with before, I graduated from college and he didn't, I don't know if he fits my circle...'), I dropped.

Priorities realign pretty quickly when you see your guy wearing a sad little hospital gown, hooked up to monitors, drugged out of his head, smiling woozily up at you in front of the nurse, and slurring, 'Gimme some sugar.'

Not once did I think 'Let me examine the gender, class and race implications of my brown self being here while these doctors and nurses look at me hold his lily white hand.'

We hid out for the whole weekend at his place reading comic books, watching classic horror movies, eating ice cream and making jokes about the sexiness of peeing into a filter. Silently, I counted how many glasses of water he drank, watched if he was taking his pills on time, and in a rare moment of domesticity, I even made breakfast. (Who cares if it took me 2 freaking hours and I made enough pancakes for the entire Bears line up?)

When I got back to my place Sunday night, I even had a little bit of a cry, for some reason.

It's frakking brutal, this falling in love thing. The books I studied in school don't even come close.

Feel free to share your own moment of 'oh my god, i lurve them.'

[And if you need a more timely political frame for this post, because you don't want to read pointless, girly journal entries from Ding, shouldn't *everyone* have this same right to rush into an ER and say to the admitting nurse My partner is in there and I need to see him/her! ? Civil rights for all is really just that simple. How the world works for me, as a member of the dominant group, is how it should work for everyone.

Or - Shouldn't everyone have the ability to visit the emergency room and not worry that it will bankrupt them forever? Healthcare for all (with a public option) is the decent and right thing to do. There. Political commentary taken care of.]

God bless America

Jarndyce v Dead Cat has been resolved.

In our favor.

(In short, we filed a request for the court to amend the judgment with a statement ordering the escrow company to release the money in account #xxx to us pursuant to blah blah; the court sent a copy of the request to DCP with a form giving them a chance to explain why it should/shouldn't be granted, they didn't respond to service any more than they have to the UMPTEEN MILLION TIMES I'VE SERVED THEM WITH PAPERS, so the order was granted.)

Sorry for the otherwise radio silence. Mr. B. was out of town (with his laptop, which I'm sharing these days b/c we've been TOO POOR* to replace mine that died) for two weeks, then I had PK's birthday party over the weekend, and this week PK and I are going way up north to visit his 2nd and 3rd grade teacher and Mrs. Teacher, who moved away last year and are sorely missed. We get back on Halloween, hopefully in time for him to go a-begging. Then Mr. B. goes out of town for another work thingy, doubtless with the laptop again. So basically if I can't do it easily on my phone (which has been acting wonky lately), it ain't getting done. Which basically means see my twitter feed if you want to hear from me between now and, say, Thanksgiving.

*Temporary cash flow problems should be MUCH BETTER once that check is in my hot little hands, because I'm sending it--just like I did our $8k "first time homebuyer's tax credit"--to my credit card, which will pretty much zero it out. We have some other debt, but that was the biggest one, and with those $500/month payments off my damn back, life is going to be a lot easier.

Don't stand so close to me

The most compelling reason to either stay off Facebook and/or to *definitely* not "friend" people you work with, is that you don't want to know that people you work with are promoting this video.

I'll Eat You Up, I Love You So

This summer, which was all about selling the house, finding a new one, moving, prepping for a new job, was also all about me and my daughter. We stopped all our childcare in May, leaving me without any help for the first time since she was 4 mths old. While we were selling the house. And moving. Somewhere with no friends. Mostly this drove me insane, but then sometimes, mostly times when I wasn’t actually with her, I realized it didn’t.

I hardly ever see my kid anymore. I wake her around 6:30, we leave for school/work by 7:45. I pick her up between 4 and 5, we get home between 5 and 6, she goes to bed by 7ish. This no doubt looks like a ton of working parents’ lives but it’s new for me. As a grad student mama, I got by with 20-25 hrs of care a week (not something I recommend) and worked a lot at night, on weekends. I was with my daughter a lot. More than I should have been, I used to think.

To be perfectly honest, it’s hard for me to imagine how, in this version of life, I could find the energy to give her more than 2-3 hours of parenting a day. That feels so terrible to admit. I feel like I barely make it through what I am doing. Am exhausted in the mornings, run around dressing myself, dressing her, packing lunches, feeding the fucking CAT. Evening is much worse, as all the working parents know, with the day’s exhaustion and the fucking dinner and, again, the goddamned cat, and trying to hear about the day. I get some details out of her (“Hey, have you ever heard of Johan Sebastian Bach?” “Did you know the sun makes all the weather?” “When it’s time to stop eating, your brain sends your stomach a message to tell it, but I’m not sure if it goes in an envelope or what.” “Today we learned about how Eve ate the apple that was bad and then they had to die because they were naked.” Ummm, what was that one? Yes. Please look forward to my future post about what counts as “secular Montessori curriculum” in some parts of the country.), but mostly what I get is the whining of death. That you think might kill you. The kind of whining that comes from a kid who is herself frazzled and confused and 4 and is made of poison darts of swine flu and mosquito bites. And I spend most of that period of the day thanking the patriarchal God of the Montessori school that she goes to bed at 7.

And then after I put her to bed, and after I spend the next several hours working and PLAYING WITH THE CAT, I get sad about how little of my day involved my girl. And I get sad about how I want her to feel swallowed by love, and I am too tired to wrap all I have around her. And I feel shitty about how mediocre I was, how little attention I paid, how clear I made it that I can’t stand playing those role-playing games for more than a few minutes, how maybe I should’ve just taken her to the park even though I felt like shit, how I didn’t listen enough. And I go to bed vowing to be different the next day, to find something extra to give her. And I almost never can find it, when the next day comes.

I tried today though. I feel shitty, like maybe getting the flu shitty. When I picked her up today, she immediately started asking if we could hit the grocery store before home for juice and some other bullshit. I told her I felt sick, probably not, but we would re-evaluate when we got in town. I did feel better-ish when we got there, but didn’t want to go, so declined. And obviously this was one of those things that was make-or-break for the 4yr old’s day. It shattered her, not getting to go to the grocery store. She let loose the wailing about how unfair everything is, how she needs to do what she needs to do, how she JUST CAN’T DO THINGS and that makes her crazy. Forever it seemed. In the car. And people, my epic victory is that I didn’t scream. I let a few tears leak out quietly, but I didn’t scream. And when she stopped, I didn’t talk about it anymore, I just told her about how I wanted to read her two books tonight in bed instead of one. And she smiled at me in the mirror, sort of.
And then it was the same old bullshit. She needed help with everything, I tried to get some leftovers heated, my sister needed me on the phone. The cat needed food, the bathwater got sloshed everywhere, hair washing a battle, I didn’t bother to tell her that her tooth brushing job was total shit. She picked two books that are long and that I sort of hated reading. And then I held on to her and she said, “I promise to take care of you.” And I felt the whole day fall apart again.
I mean, is this how it is? Is this just what it is?

I don’t know what this is about exactly, and I meant to end it by segueing into why Where Te Wild Things Are is brilliantly interpreted and brilliantly made. Which it is, but I can’t quite get there now. You can probably imagine how that was going to go, so just fill it in and maybe we can discuss later.

this post really isn't about hair

I love my Girls. I really do. We are like family.
But you don't always agree with family, do you?

The other night we were talking about Chris Rock's movie about hair, the anger some older black women had about the movie 'making them look bad in front of white people' and somehow we're talking about whether white people think about black people's hair. My XRoomie (who is my absolute BFF) said white people don't think about black people's hair at all.

I snorted. 'They may not think about it consciously but they sure do want to touch it a lot.'

XRoomie said, 'What are you talking about?'

I said, 'I cannot go a week without someone wanting to touch it, compliment it or comment on it. It's fucking fascinating to them.'

XRoomie said, 'When does that happen?'

Our friend T- said, 'When I worked at the Center [on the south side] all the girls wanted to touch my hair.'

I said, 'That's totally different. The context is different.' Not that T-'s dark blonde cap of hair isn't soft-looking and touchable.

XRoomie said, 'I've never seen that happen. I've never heard of that.' And she mentioned some women of color she'd worked with who never mentioned things like that happening.

'They wore wigs and weaves all the time,' she said. 'They thought it was hilarious watching their senior partners get confused when their hair changed.'

'I'm sure this has happened to them. Almost every woman of color I know can tell stories about white people wanting to touch their hair - with or without permission. That's fucking problematic,' I said.

'Well,' she said. 'That's your baggage.'

'That's not my baggage, that's our history. and I'm sure that if they weren't talking about how annoying this shit is in front of you, they are talking about it with their black friends.'

We went back and forth about 'baggage' and history for a bit but this is where something interesting happened: XRoomie insisted that the conversations she'd have with these women would be the SAME as those they'd have with their friends of color.

That's when I stopped. I just shrugged and said, 'OK.'

Leaving unsaid, of course, was the admission that there are conversations I only have with my friends of color that I would never have with my white friends. (Or my white boyfriend, for that matter.)

Also left on the ground was whether this habit of splitting conversations was particularly fair. Fuck it. I'll think about fairness later.

So, instead of unpacking all of our racial 'baggage', we went back to watching a show about a white South African family held hostage by a Taiwanese murderer.

[Stuck in my craw because of this and this.

And this is just a good thing for folks to have.

On commenting: please control the cluelessness. Please.]

WHYAMITAKINGCAREOFAFUCKINGCATIHATECATS

Ok, so right off the bat I want to go on the record saying fuck cats. Seriously. Fuck their superiority and their disgusting saliva hormones or whatever that makes me sneeze and their aloofness. Fuck their tenacious attachment to the cliches of academic, feminist, blogger - get OUT of my identity categories, cats! Fuck them for being pissy and inflexible and generally uninteresting. That's how I feel.

Ok, so. My friend here in this town I live in sees a kitten being throw out of a truck window on her street. A moving truck. And being the bleeding heart cat lover that she is, she goes and scoops it up and snuggles it and gives it food. Christ. But she can't take it in because she has a cranky old cat that will eat it alive. See aforementioned reasons to hate cats. So she calls me and is all, "Sybil, this kitty she's so sweeeeeeet and snugggggly and your daughter can have a pet and you have that BIG garage that she can basically live in until she is a little older and then just come and go, yadda yadda." On and on she goes and because she is slick and I am weak, I assent.

So she brings over this cat, which is - and again, FUCK cats - sort of great looking in a Siamese-y, buttery silver, blue-eyed, punk rock kind of way. Whatever, it's adorable, I admit it. No one ever said kittens are not without their wiley ways. So we give it some food and it, like, snuggles us and purrs and does all sorts of kitten-y things. And the next thing I know I am taking it to the vet and blowing great wads of cash getting shots and listening to the sales pitch about various heart worm products. That whole vet trip was, like, 10% substance, 90% commercial. And so it's bad enough that I am feeding it and vaccinating it, but I have found myself deciding not to let it roam freely outside of the garage area until after it has its second rabies shot. So here I am actually *protecting* it. Gah.

So anyway, there it is. Taking care of a fucking cat. That my kid named Sofia. And which is good looking. I swear to Christ I will never post a picture of the thing though.

*I know someone is going to comment about how inhumane it is to keep an outside cat and how they have way shorter life spans and all of that. To which let me pre-emptively reply that I fucking hate cats, so I don't really care.

Thoughts on the Person From Porlock

Blogs to the blog I have mentally begun:

- On the Advantages of a part-time Commuter Marriage
- On the Complete Suck of a part-time Commuter Marriage
- On Spending Way Less Time with One's Kid
- On Making Picturesque Chocolate Chip Cookies
- How to Get Handed a GIGANTIC Service Responsibility in your 1st t-t Semester
- How to Ask for Accomodation. And Fail.
- On Re-Orienting a Toxic Classroom Environment
- WHYAMITAKINGCAREOFAFUCKINGCATIHATECATS
- The Vanes Camp: A Comedy of Errors in 4 Acts
- On Being Bullied by a Plagiarist
- Funny Things About My Kid, Including Her Rehearsals of her Miss Hannigan Halloween Performance
- On Giving The First Year A Chance and yet Being Seduced By The JIL. Which Sucks, Anyway.
- Requiem for a Running Game

I don't want you to think I'm not doing anything.

Listen up, Los Angeles

Get your asses to Espresso Profeta in Westwood.

I used to live in a neighborhood that had *two* places to get coffee this good within walking distance of my house.

I recently discovered that a fellow displaced Seattleite oepend this place in LaLa land--via another former Seattleite, now at UCLA, who used to babysit Pseudonymous Kid when he was a baby. It's more like 60 miles (1 1/2 hours, with traffic) than my old five minute saunter. But it's worth it.

The first time I stopped by, they'd just closed. But the owner opened the door to sell me some beans; he recognized the longing in my eyes. PK cried, though, because I'd promised to take him to a coffeehouse like the one I took him to all the time when he was a baby. No monkey mural here, or table of toys, but there is a pretty little patio.

Clearly PK and I will be back come the weekend.

happy columbus day, bitches.

"Wherefore, as best we can, we ask and require you that you consider what we have said to you, and that you take the time that shall be necessary to understand and deliberate upon it, and that you acknowledge the Church as the Ruler and Superior of the whole world, and the high priest called Pope, and in his name the King and Queen Doña Juana our lords, in his place, as superiors and lords and kings of these islands and this Tierra-firme by virtue of the said donation, and that you consent and give place that these religious fathers should declare and preach to you the aforesaid.

If you do so, you will do well, and that which you are obliged to do to their Highnesses, and we in their name shall receive you in all love and charity, and shall leave you, your wives, and your children, and your lands, free without servitude, that you may do with them and with yourselves freely that which you like and think best, and they shall not compel you to turn Christians, unless you yourselves, when informed of the truth, should wish to be converted to our Holy Catholic Faith, as almost all the inhabitants of the rest of the islands have done. And, besides this, their Highnesses award you many privileges and exemptions and will grant you many benefits.

But, if you do not do this, and maliciously make delay in it, I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter into your country, and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can, and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of their Highnesses; we shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and as such shall sell and dispose of them as their Highnesses may command; and we shall take away your goods, and shall do you all the mischief and damage that we can, as to vassals who do not obey, and refuse to receive their lord, and resist and contradict him; and we protest that the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault, and not that of their Highnesses, or ours, nor of these cavaliers who come with us." - El Requerimiento

Hmph.

Home

I'm currently homeless. I moved all my belongings to DC last week, into my new apartment with my lovely partner. But I still have a job in Chicago, at least for the next few days. So I'm staying with friends. I've been couch-surfing for a week or so and as a passive guest, one who doesn't require or even desire much attention, I've been enjoying watching how other people live their lives at home. How quickly they get ready in the morning, what they eat, what they watch on tv, whether they do the dishes right away or leave them for tomorrow, the sort of things they do when they're at home, with no particular agenda.

I'm not used to being around active people. You know, the sort of people who get shit done? Me and my partner, and my family members, and most of the people I've dated, are not those sort of people. The one thing I do at home that does not constitute "lazing around" is cook, and even that is a fairly recent development. I do laundry only when I have worn the last clean pair of underwear. I do not putter around picking things up. I do chores only with great difficulty and mustering of will. No, the majority of the time I am home, I am still. I am reading, usually, whether it's blogs on the internet or a book. Sometimes I watch tv, but not usually. Or I am sleeping. And when I am with my partner at home, we sit and talk. For hours. Sometimes snuggling in the bed, sometimes sitting on the couch. That's what I do. Talk. Read. Sleep. And cook, sometimes.

Isn't that what home is for? What do you do at home?

Melissa McEwan is a national treasure

That is all.

Happy Coming Out Day

If you don't know who this guy is, apparently he's a former evangelical Christian who worked at Hallmark for a long time and wrote this book about it. Anyway, so seriously, watch the end of the video, starting at about 3:10 in.

And yeah, I'll second that. Thanks, gay friends, for making me a better person.

Today in the absurd

Airline prices confuse me. Imagine this. Imagine that you are flying from City A to City C, with a layover in city B. Now imagine that you are flying on the same plane, from City B to City C. So, in effect, a portion of the same trip. Now, wouldn't you think that would cost less than the first itinerary? Well, yeah. But even if it didn't cost less, would you really think that it would cost several times more to fly less?

Information retrieved from Kayak just now:

1. $276 - Northwest
Northwest 2283 - DCA to DTW Tue Nov 24 6:20-8:05 AM
Northwest 4243 - DTW to GRB Tue Nov 24 9:05-9:35 AM
Northwest 7140 - GRB to DTW Sat Nov 28 4:25-6:43 PM
Northwest 7114 - DTW to DCA Sat Nov 28 7:15-8:51 PM

2. $871 - Northwest
Northwest 4243 - DTW to GRB Tue Nov 24 9:05-9:35 AM
Northwest 7140 - GRB to DTW Sat Nov 28 4:25-6:43 PM

It's the exact fucking same flights. And yet it costs three times more. To fly less. My mind just does not understand how this can be. Please to explain. What are the market/pricing reasons for this?

Barack Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

Holy Crap!

Can't wait to see the righties blow a gasket over this.

Its going to be a good day.

Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan

I meant to include a link to RAWA in this
post but forgot. I blame the chemicals.

If you want good information on what's happening in Afghanistan and, in particular, the perspective of the women of
Afghanistan, this is a good place to start.

Where are the Prisoners?

...for his part, he never missed a hanging - two eminent bankers guilty of forgery were to be strung up today among the ordinary people - the Stock Exchange would spare neither father nor mother, wife nor child when it came to that sort of thing...

-The Reverse of the Medal

Why don't we turn the clock to zero honey?

I'll sell the stock and spend the money.

- Brand New Day

Late in the third week of August 1914, fifteen German corps stormed across the French frontier, headed for the river crossings between Belgium and Paris. Bypassing the fortifications along the Franco-German border, the Germans expected to pin the French field armies in front of their capital where they would envelope and destroy them, compelling France's capitulation.

Time was of the essence. To escape simultaneous engagement with its two dread enemies, the Third Republic and the Russian Empire, German planning required the rapid overthrow of French striking power. An avalanche of communique from Moltke, chief of the German general staff, scourged his field commanders forward.

Initial reports seemed encouraging. The German infantry proceeded from objective to objective as if without opposition, shooting through the Flanders countryside like shit through a goose. The signals from regimental HQ's were ripe with the fruit of their advance; bridges seized, crossroads and rail junctions seized, hilltops seized, hundreds of square kilometers of France seized.

What gave Moltke the agita was the lack of evidence from the field that his columns were having any destructive effect on French military strength. He searched the reports for data indicating the enemy was falling back on Paris in disorder and disorganization. He expected to see figures for artillery pieces captured, vehicles and livestock captured, food fuel and fodder captured, ammunition and warlike supplies captured. Most importantly, he expected to see figures for prisoners captured.

An enemy retreating in confusion over crowded roads and a paniced countryside will shed prisoners by the carload. This enemy appeared to be withdrawing in good order. Worse, absence of prisoners indicates lack of contact with the fighting units of the enemy. And that means, you don't know where they are, always an ominous development.

Moltke sent out a stream of signals demanding detailed reports on captured enemy stores and prisoners. Failing to receive satisfactory replies, the signals were reduced to a peremptory query repeated hourly; Where are the prisoners?

On the fifth of September, undetected reserves of the French Sixth Army slammed into the flank of the advancing Germans to open a series of surprise attacks that threatened the First and Second German Armies with envelopment and annihilation. German forces only escaped by withdrawing sixty kilmometers back towards their starting positions and digging in on the ground that would be fought over until November 1918.

On the ninth of September 1914, Moltke reported to the Kaiser that Germany had lost the war.

Recently, we have been fed a lot of happy horseshit about reaching the end of the recession. The chairman of the Federal Reserve reports we have hit bottom. The stock market is up. Finance sector profits are up. Bank income is up. Credit card fees are up. Bonuses in the financial sector are up. TARP seems to be paying off. Mission Accomplished!

Employment has collapsed but this, we are told, is a lagging indicator and not significant as a predictor of recovery. Unless, of course, its your ass that's lagging.

But put that aside, for a moment.

We are a year out from the bailout of the investor class by the working class. We are a year out from the biggest, most daring daylight bank robbery in the history of the Republic. My question is this; Where are the prisoners?

Remember a year ago, when capitalism was in full panicy retreat? Remember how we were told we had to give up our savings and our pensions and our 401K's and our wages and our jobs and our homes and our health insurance and our kids' college funds and we had to pledge our taxes to redeem all the bullshit schemes of the buccaneer bankers and brokers and hedge fund fools.

Remember how we were told how if we didn't pay this ransom, things would get really, really bad and our whole vast and elegant free market economy would be lost to some unspecified enemy?

So we paid up.

I kind of expected there would be investigations, though. You know, since we own their asses, I thought we might have a look the books of the enterprises we paid for and see just what they'd been up to. Find out just what the fuck went wrong. And who was responsible.

And I expected there would be arrests. Mass arrests. And confiscations of property and bank accounts. Not just ours. Theirs, too.

And clawbacks of bonuses and inflated salaries. And seizures of yachts and Bentleys and beach houses and Falcon jets. I expected they would be put up for sale at public auction. You know, like they do to our houses when we have a problem with our payments.

I expected a nice surtax slapped on upper incomes. I expected a tax on stock sales to pay back the working class for bailing them out.

I expected to see all the evidence for the rout of the capitalist order we were told was in progress.

By now, I expected to see a steady stream of bankers in handcuffs, pulling their burberrys across their face as they were marched up and down the steps of the US Attorney's Office for Southern New York.

Prisoners. Thats what I expected to see. Where are the prisoners?

Oh To Be Back In the Land of Coca-Cola

Been watching way too much TV lately. Mostly old movies. And a lot of football. Watched the Badger-Gopher game yesterday. Go BIG RED! (You know, I've followed U of M sports my whole life and never understood why they call themselves Gophers. I mean, c'mon. Gophers? The Hell?)

And a lot of baseball. Go ROCKIES!

Mostly movies, though. Saw Casablanca last night. I guess I've seen that about 7o or 80,000 times now. Never get tired of it. Saw Chinatown, too. And let me add, quickly, I am all for flogging Polanski through the streets. I do like his work, though.

Haven't kept up with the news too good. I should do mo better, I know, but its hard for me. My mind is just not right behind all the chemical infusions and whatnot and I have great difficulty following the thread.

So, this morning I decided I should watch the Sabbath Gasbag programs. A thing I never do. I despise most of the people who show up on those programs and all the people who chair them. But, I thought I should, you know, catch up on current events and the comings and goings of the Great People, etc.

Tuned in to watch the panel of experts on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. George Will , filling the role of superfatted ass, never fails to entertain. Cokie Roberts (what is Cokie short for, anyway?) was more than usually flatulent on the subject of sending American troops to fight colonial wars.

She wants the Marine Corps to defend the women of Afghanistan. Which is a grand idea, certainly. She didn't say how many of her sons and daughters are in the USMC. I assume its a good number or she wouldn't be telling the rest of us to send ours.

Katrina van den Heuvel was on the panel, which came as a very pleasant surprise. She was dead set against sending more troops to Afghanistan, pointing out that military occupation is always hardest on the women of the country occupied. So refreshing to hear someone on TV who actually knows what the hell they are talking about.

Matthew Dowd was also surprisingly rational on the subject. He talked about the fallacy of sunk investment, the notion that the more we invest in a thing, the more we must invest in that thing.

They also played a clip of Gen'l McChrystal instructing the President on how to defend the country. You know, if we could only get rid of our third-rate flag officers, we might actually win some fights now and then.

That was all I could take for one morning. A mixed bag, really. I remembered why I never watch these news and opinion programs. The news seems mostly made up and the opinions are mostly fatuous.

If President Obama was watching, I'd advise him to pay attention to what Katrina and Matthew said about Afghanistan. Ignore George Will. Fire Gen'l McChyrstal.

As far as defending the people of Afghanistan, men or women, that's the job of the Afghan people. Any other arrangement is colonialism. And warlordism.

Our military task there is to hunt down bin Laden and shoot him in the brains. That's the mission. There is no other.

Goddamn Polanski

All right, fine. True confession time: why I didn't want to talk about this, why I'm glad I'm a feminazi, and why I'm going to talk about it now (in a nutshell, because I just love blogging about my own assholishness).

When I initially heard the Polanski news, I was at my boyfriend's. He, way more than I, is a literary/artistic snob with, like, good taste in movies and books and egghead shit like that, and so I actually noted the news as "huh, I'll have to mention that to M., he'll find it interesting." I sort of vaguely remembered that Polanski had been arrested at some point in my childhood for sex with a minor and that it had been sort of a scandal and he'd moved to Europe, where they're more tolerant of These Things, but I didn't remember (maybe I never really knew) any details one way or the other.

Now, in addition to being a culture snob, M. is also (and I frequently underestimate this characteristic of his, both because I'm totally male-identified and because he abhors a scold even more than I do) probably the least pornulated person I know well: for example, he saw the movie M*A*S*H for the first time a couple weeks ago, and told me afterwards how completely grossed out he was at the sexual hijinks of the male characters w/r/t eavesdropping on Hotlips, harassing her, and so on. Which to be honest, that stuff just doesn't bug me in a visceral way like that: I mean, yes, it's sexual harassment and that sort of "Porky's" humor is kind of stupid and unfunny, but it doesn't squee me out, it just makes me roll my eyes. But he's really squeed out by the socially normed male gaze thing where women are basically objects and men's sexuality is beyond their control and boys will be boys and yeah it probably sucks to be a porn actress but porn gets me hott and me and my cock are the center of the universe. Bitch.

All of which I mention purely as background to my initial reaction. Basically I said "oh, Polanski got arrested today," and he said "huh," and I said "god, I'm going to have to blog about this" with much the same oh-christ-here-we-go-again attitude that makes me roll my eyes at moviefied frat boy hijinks. Reflecting back, nothing I was thinking of really reflect well on me.

(1) M., being an aesthete and connoisseur, probably digs Polanski;
(2) that Polanski thing was a looooong time ago, and moral/sex scandals are usually really tiresomely based on Righteous Indignation and who gives a fuck, really, what people do sexually;
(3) the feminist blogosphere (TM) is now going to spend the next month having to explain that Rape is Bad, and I don't really feel the need or desire to get wrapped around the axle making that point.

M., actually, didn't have much response to that; probably he was horrified at my blase attitude because, being a culture snob (and better read than I am, plus he's like 150 years old) he surely knew/remembered the details of the case and thought I was being a flippant dummy. Or maybe because he doesn't actually give two shits about blogosphere shitstorms as a general rule, who knows. Or maybe because he was thinking about what he was going to cook for dinner.

Anyhoo, so then I fly home and check back in with The Internets and everyone and their dog is Making Statements Against Polanski. At least, in my corner of the internets they are. And I'm thinking yeah yeah, okay, so rape is bad and evading justice is bad and can we move on now and not be scandalized by a 30-year old sex scandal?

But I'm also thinking, to be quite frank, that I do *not* want to talk about this thing, because I *do* find it boring and sort of shrill and I hate being boring, but I also, to tell the truth? do not want to get into some situation where I'm accused of being a rape apologist for saying so. So fuck it, We Are Not Blogging This.

And then it turns out that Sybil is Outraged.

And I think, aw, fuck. I hate being boring, but I also hate playing the Blog Boss. But I also think, in the back of my mind, "huh. Sybil is not usually knee-jerk or shrill about stupid shit." And this, I think, opens up a chink in the luxurious drapery of the boudoir of my ennui, and somehow the detail that at the time of this vaguely-remembered sex scandal the victim was 13 and Polanski was 43.

And I think, okay. That's actually pretty gross, and not just some humorless American scandal about people having sex outside of missionary-approved suburban marriage. I guess it's a good thing he finally got arrested.

So having figured that out, I then start paying enough attention to learn, or be reminded of, the sordid details (which as everyone knows by now, would really be seen as total overkill if this were a movie: we Get It, Already, Mr. Director! Your Villian is a Very Evil Man! So very non-auterish, this need to bludgeon us all over the head just in case we didn't understand that a 43-year old man fucking a 13-year old girl is like, rape, have some respect for your audience's intelligence for god's sake).

Now, I'm still thinking I don't really want to blog it or have the blog blog it, because okay, it's not just some boring tiresome ancient history shrillness but it's still really rather obvious, so, meh. I'm also thinking that I'm glad that, even when I'm sort of rolling my eyes at it, I care enough about The Feminist Opinion to have refrained from pooh-poohing the thing because fuck Polanski, I don't care how old he is, this isn't some Persecution of Those Who Are Different and Outre, this is a rape case and what an asshole.

But then, since now I'm actually clear enough on the situation to be vaguely curious about why people are defending him, I click on this link (Whoopi Goldberg saying "it wasn't rape rape.") And watching it, I'm thinking, okay Whoopi. *Maybe* you also don't remember the case very well (she does actually say she doesn't remember the details). But presumably, if you all are talking about this on your show, you know that the girl was 13. Thirteen. (Sherri Shepherd does point this out a few minutes later.) And for fuck's sake, you're excusing that? In public??

So, yeah.

Conclusions:

1. Seriously, yay feminism, for serving as a check even for idiots like me who aren't instinctively squeed by this sort of thing (blah blah social norms and the cultural memory of a man raping a 13-year old as "some kind of sex scandal," a point that Robert Halford did an excellent job of explaining in a comment thread at EotAW). Let that be a lesson to those who think feminism "goes a bit too far sometimes" that y'know, thinking that might really be a sign of your own ignorance and/or cultural bias.

2. My boyfriend is a better person than I am, and also a better person than I sometimes give him credit for. I suck. But I have good taste in men. (Mr. B., also, being a better person than me/better than I give him credit for. In some ways.)

3. I honestly feel like this is sort of an "aha" moment about why "those crazy right-wing conservatives" are instinctively squeed by (a) hollywood liberals; (b) "cultural elites"; (c) the French. Because . . .

4. . . . being a mama matters. Finding out that the Polanski's victim was 13, I had kind of a weird realization that on the one hand, knowing 13-year olds, I know that they are *clearly* not adults and no, fucking them is not okay. Especially for someone who, at the time, was older than I am now. Seriously: I have taught 13 year olds. I see them every day at PK's school (which runs K-8). And they are *children*.

Now that said, sure: I also remember being 13 myself, and being a sexual person, and I don't think that being children means that 13-year olds (or 9-year olds, or 3-year olds) are, or should be, asexual. If a couple of 13 year olds are experimenting with sex, I hope to god no one ends up pregnant.* And I hope that one or both of them has someone a little older** to check in with --an aunt, a college-aged sibling, Scarleteen. So yeah, I can see why someone who identifies as "liberal", especially about sexual issues, doesn't want to automatically assume that "sex with someone underage"--even when underage is 13--is a Very Bad Thing. And given that I don't automatically assume that 13-year olds Should Never Be Having Sex!!!, sure, I can see how someone with a vague grasp of the situation and a preference to err on the side of sexual tolerance would think, eh, maybe not such a big deal.

Which I think is sort of the issue that we, as a culture, are still really struggling over when it comes to arguments about sexual morality: if you imagine a 13-year old having sex, is your instinctive reaction, absent any other information, "Oh Hell No" or is it "well, it depends"? If it's the former, then it's quite likely that the second group offends you; if the latter, it's probable that the former seems rigid. Even if (like most people) you would be inclined, given further details, to shift your initial reaction one way or the other, you're still likely, I suspect, to find people who are initially in the other camp somewhat untrustworthy.

And we want to feel like we can trust people when it comes to sex. Especially when it comes to sex with 13-year olds. (I want to make it clear that I really think that the root reason why Polanski raped that girl, rather than just "had sex with" her, is that yes, she was 13 and he was 43. And I suspect that most people who feel firmly that Polanski was a bad man think the same thing--that it wasn't the alcohol, or the drugs, or even the "no" that are the salient issue, but that enormous, enormous age gap. Yes, it would have been rape if she was 40 and he was 43 and she'd said no--or been drunk/drugged--but I don't think we'd be quite as shocked that some folks want to give him the benefit of the doubt.) So feeling like we can't trust "the other side" on the question of 13-year old sexuality feels extremely threatening and dangerous.

Which I guess means that, as usual, I've managed to justify myself yet again. My initial reactions and thoughts about this topic were all wrong; but my sense that I ought to maybe keep my mouth shut and not wade into the argument saved me from saying something that I would have seriously come to regret.




*Not because pregnancy is wrong. I do, actually, really object to the way a lot of folks seem to assume as a matter of fact that teenagers, even young teenagers, Shouldn't Be Parents Ever. That said, the vast majority of 13 year olds are not physically mature, making pregnancy and delivery at that young an age actually comparatively risky relative to even 2-3 years later, and I don't think that 13-year olds really are emotionally equipped to deal with the extreme social pressures of being a Teen Parent, whether or not they would, in a perfect world, be fairly decent parents to their own children.

**Who, obviously, isn't the person they're fucking. Not because fucking someone older is always and inherently wrong--although yes, if we're talking 13 v 43, it is--but because the older person should be someone who doesn't have a personal interest in the relationship itself; someone for whom the emotional (and physical) well-being of the 13-year old, not their own sexual/emotional needs, is the main issue.