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February 7, 2012

Category: Fun Stuff

January 13, 2012

Its All Greek to Me: A Column on Sororities in the South : The Grove by M.M. Locker

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This past spring, during some godforsaken AP course in my last weeks of high school, the Princeton Review posted its new rankings of colleges and universities. My bud Abbey and I were nothing short of stoked to tell all our co-graduates that we would be leaving in August for the #3 party school in America with the #10 happiest students and the #3 best Greek scene on the #13 most beautiful campus with the #10 amount of hard liquor consumed. Our best friend told us she’d just checked the rankings too, and that her school, Cornell, had the #1 highest suicide rate. We told her to visit us at our own Ivy League, the long-ago-nicknamed “Harvard of the South,” and not vice versa.

And once at Ole Miss (though not really a part of it all), another set of confidence-boosters emerged to ease us out of the depression of our football team’s season. Newsweek compiled scores in three categories (campus, girls, and guys) to announce the nation’s #1 MOST BEAUTIFUL university. We won. We went out to the bars to celebrate. Billboards were put up on the highway from Memphis to Oxford, simply reading “Thanks, Newsweek.” And just after that, a publication entirely comparable to Newsweek — Tailgater Monthly — named Ole Miss and its Grove the #1 tailgating experience in the country. Or the world I guess, because who else tailgates?

These rankings are what I think about as I look around, from one impeccably dressed alcoholic to the next. Standing in the Grove, rather, wandering it because my family does not come here and my hometown tailgating tent is not always present, I’m pretty much usually dressed well. My roommate and I consistently wake up on Saturdays with no idea how Friday ended, and we swap stories, divvy up ibuprofen, and get ready for our big day and football game. So now, in the spirit of the end of football season, I mourn the Grove.

Girls, the gems of our beautiful little world, are in wedges, which are considered a comfortable compromise, or heels, or on the coldest days dressy boots. I’m looking from girl to girl, envious yes, but mostly just intimidated by the sundresses, Ray Ban or Prada shades, and pearls. The abundance of the pearls. Wrists, necks, earlobes decked out in fat globs of shining white or ivory pearls, the ultimate indicator of what is classy and right in this world.

… I don’t have any pearls …

The classiness goes beyond us, though, to our alumni, mostly former Greek members themselves. They cover tables within tents with white tablecloths. Chandeliers hang from the framework beneath the canopies. Some bring out candelabras to decorate the folding tables, others their finest china on which to serve tortilla chips and corn salsa, buffalo wings, or in the best tents Mississippi delta tamales.

Usually I park myself at the tent of my sorority Big Sister, basically my best friend in the mire of Oxford society, and she pops a plastic-cupped mimosa into my hand. Her parents suggest I enjoy their array of divinely salty snacks, perfect for my current state, and no thank you I will not be leaving this hunk of heaven for any athletic event.

Hey, the food is good, the company better, and most of us don’t go to the football game.

There’s a reason for that. As seriously as we take tailgating, it is impossible for us to take our football team’s season and record anything but lightly. We haven’t beaten a single SEC team all year… not even Vanderbilt, the actual Harvard of the South. We lost to Brigham Young University, the Princeton Review’s #1 most stone-cold sober school in the nation, even amid the raucous time their fans experienced here in the Grove. We lost our homecoming game to Louisiana Tech. Our record is shameful, but our indulgence on gamedays could be labeled nothing but shameless.

At this point, champagne still pouring, I feel less intimidated by the most beautiful ladies in the whole American collegiate universe, and I start to worry more about the opposite end of the spectrum… the, yes, most attractive, guys. It is very easy to feel overlooked here in the Grove. When you realize your college is the country’s most beautiful in terms of people, it gets a little bit hard to tell who is “pretty” and who is “really pretty” and who is “pretty on the inside.” It gets hard, when I put in my retainer at night and walk around dorm floors in shower shoes, when I throw unbrushed hair into some excuse for a ponytail, to maintain the difference between effortlessly attractive and just plain effortless. In my campus uniform of shorts or leggings with an oversized T-shirt or pullover, I’m not visibly trying, but I’m trying. What if I get caught on the sidewalk behind the student union by that one fraternity pledge who asked me to a themed party without even really getting to know me and then tried to get in touch with me but couldn’t find the right means to and so thus we didn’t talk for a solid two weeks or so until we inevitably ran into each other at a party and ended up playing Mario Kart in his room and he just made me laugh and laugh and laugh? How would I feel about that natural-faced chicness then? College is about education, not football, and definitely not finding a mate, but these are important things, these things matter, these help you reassess and find your place in a world, in The South; they help you deem yourself bridal material or the kind of girl who needs to commit herself to grad school.

I’m a really independent person, but being on your own in the Grove just isn’t right. The camaraderie is validating in a way—I’m in college and making friends and having just a good old Mississippi sort of time. But I’m not sure I totally get the Grove, though I know it’s the best pregame environment Tailgater Monthly and I have ever experienced. Oxford is a mecca of social agendas and personal connections, which I’m sure I would know how to appreciate if they were something I had any experience with. I grew up hating the ideas of cotillions, soirees, and other means for entirely regular young people to entertain the beliefs that they are anything but regular. So now, in a place where I should probably be reevaluating and discovering the grace of such things, it’s hard for me to do so.

The Grove is one of these places. Plenty of people covering its acreage believe themselves better than the opposing team, its fans in their ill-fitting jeans and graphic T-shirts, because of the classiness of Oxford. This is OLE MISS, the most beautiful, the happiest, the Greekest, the wildest. Yeah, dickhead, maybe your team is going to come out on top, but no team beats the Grove. It always wins. Your season is going to pass. My easy social grace and classiness aren’t. A famous shirt for sale in the Ole Miss bookstore reads: “We’re not snobs. We’re just better than you.”

These beliefs are convoluted. Mississippi really isn’t better than anybody when you look at the statistics: #1 rates of “rural” STDs, #1 rate of obesity and morbid obesity, #2 rate of diabetes cases, stereotypically common instances of lynching and confederate sympathy. Being from the Deep South, not just a transplant inside of it, I know how it feels to be accused of these things without having any connection to them. I know the anger, the hurt, the embarrassment to yourself, your family, and the place that you love. But this knowledge is also what fuels my detest of the social elitism to which so many deep southerners feel themselves entitled. In a place of bad statistics, assumptions of intolerance, and lots of whiskey, Oxford and the Grove combat these things with proper etiquette, chivalry, and mimosas. And pearls.

Despite my own irritation with high southern society, I mourn the Grove. I miss it less than most people, but I mourn it as one who mourns a charming, dignified relative they never really knew. I live in Alabama, and the outcome of football season has my state and its loyal fans in an earnest tizzy. When I don’t understand their emotions about it, I am reminded snidely that I go to OLE MISS and that I don’t know a lick about football. I cling to what I do know about football season then: the food, the drinks, the “classiness,” and the attitude. I mourn the Grove because it should be important to me, not necessarily because it is.

Upperclassmen laugh and say it will be.

January 12, 2012

The More the Marrier by Ben Greenman

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“Well, what about three men?”
— Rick Santorum, explaining his objection to gay marriage.

- – -

About six months after I decided I was gay, I got married. Nothing fancy, just city hall and a small party afterwards, and then Tim and I bought a nice place in a nice part of town and went about with our lives. We cooked meals or ordered out. We puttered around the house, not fixing things quite as well as we hoped. We slept in the same bed and usually Tim took too much of the covers.

Then one day we were eating Japanese food and talking about redoing the patio, and Tim looked in my eyes and I looked in his, and we just knew. We had to marry a third guy.

We didn’t have a boyfriend, really, but Tim made some calls and before long there was a man at the front door with a suitcase. His name was Pete, and he explained that he had recently moved to town, and that he had been staying with a friend of ours, Jason, but that he couldn’t really impose any longer. We liked the plainspoken way Pete talked, and he had a great haircut, long but not too long, so we married him.

If Tim and I were happy being married, Tim and Pete and I were even happier. That led, in a roundabout way, to Jason coming in as a fourth husband, and then Luis, Jason’s boyfriend, as a fifth. Luis had a former college roommate who had recently decided he was gay, and he joined up as the sixth, and then there was Howard and then a second Pete, who agreed to be called Peter so long as we were married, and Frank and Danny and Walter and Randy. There was a great moment with Guy, who was the tenth to come aboard, I think; Tim was going through the living room and saw him on the couch, and he couldn’t remember his name, so he just said, “Hi, guy.” Guy waved back, gratified that Tim already knew him. Marriage is full of those little stories.

It wasn’t all paradise, though. The house was big enough. That wasn’t a problem. We were all professionals, many of us working in food service or architecture or counseling or medicine or media, so money wasn’t a problem either. But the tiniest things can suddenly change the weather. TV, for example: Perry and Frank loved Project Runway, but Isaac and Kenny thought it was too stereotypical and watched MythBusters instead. And that was only the beginning. Barry, Ellis, and Warren were obsessed with Cake Boss; Paul and Rowan co-owned a football fantasy team so they had to see all the games; Randy was a news junkie; and Howard and Teo just wanted a room without a TV set.

Birthdays, too, were a nightmare. Anton had the idea to keep track with a big white board in the kitchen that Michael joked looked like something from NASA. (We all laughed except for Walter, who actually worked for NASA, and took it as an insult.) With the help of the white board, people tried keep on top of things, but even when we remembered, it was hopeless: how many designer iPad cases or stemless glasses does one house need? Luis, who was the funniest—though Ron was pretty funny, too, and Pete could do great impressions once he got some wine in him (you should have seen his Regis Philbin, and he also did a killer Anton)—thought of the best gift. He got Andy a shirt that said “I Do…And That’s All I Do!” Soon those shirts were everywhere, which made sorting them out after laundry day a living hell.

One morning, I woke up and went to the kitchen. Ellis had already started three pots of coffee, and lots of the guys were sitting at the tables, reading the papers. Tim looked upset. He was far away from me, almost at the other end of the room, but a husband knows. I threaded my way through the crowd and asked him what was wrong. “Let’s go outside,” he said.

Out there in the yard, Tim leaned up against the fence. It was actually a white picket fence; Harry, who was twelfth in or something like that, had put it up, saying it was ironic, but most days it seemed perfectly sincere. Our next-door neighbor, a lovely divorced lady with two teenagers, waved, and we waved back. “So,” Tim said. He tried to go on but he couldn’t and I heard the thickness in his voice and realized that he was close to crying. The lady next door put her back to us as a show that she was minding her own business. “I don’t know if I can go on,” Tim finally said.

“What?” I said. “Why?”

“I just feel lost sometimes,” he said. “Like I’m not being a good husband.”

“You are,” I said. “You’re a great husband.”

“I forgot our anniversary.”

“It’s not until next month,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “What I mean is that I didn’t remember when it was. The board only has birthdays on it, and I panicked. Finally I found an old letter from you, and I was able to figure things out.”

“Well,” I said. “It’s not that big a deal. Don’t worry about it.”

“But I am worried,” he said. “I want you to know something.”

“What?” I said. I was suddenly nervous. I gripped the white picket fence.

“I want you to know that I love you,” he said. “Only you.”

“I know,” I said. “But what does that have to do with marriage?” Tim laughed at this, and then I laughed too, and I relaxed my grip on the fence, and took his hand in mine, and we turned and headed back to the house. We could already hear the murmur of conversation.

January 12, 2012

No Fear of Flying: Kamikaze Missions in Death, Sex, and Comedy: Wheres Tom Petty From? by Michelle Mirsky

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At a moment when the mire of my grief threatened to subsume me, I made the decision to seek delight. I set about entangling myself with a dazzling iconoclast whom I had known and admired for many years. He required no convincing. The beauty of the thing was that it fit into the cracks of my life and of his: lunches and late nights and weekend afternoon snacks. The awfulness of the thing was that it turned out we were very fond of one another. Awful mostly in that I was still married. He was also not single. And this relationship was never intended for the realm of fairytale endings. In its effort to escape the sad morass, my grief-bound heart had reached for distraction and instead found itself in the gulag of an infatuation so all-consuming, my world rang with the song of it like the white noise of the ocean in a shell. If love is a mixtape, infatuation is a broken record; a single song played at a deafening volume. When things get star-crossed enough, you start to live inside the lyrics, and sometimes, it seems not half bad. This is how it went with my iconoclast for a while. During these months Neko Case sang “I’m an Animal” and it echoed everywhere.

“I do my best, but I’m made of mistakes…I’m an animal. You’re an animal too.”

Much of my time with the iconoclast was a bubble of Peter Pan hedonism: champagne cocktails, giggling, marathon naps, bootlegged 1980s TV comedies, and ohdeargod sex. I relished the chance to hide in the surface with him and not apologize for the joy I found there. Sometimes, we’d lay awake at night and drop our diving bells into the deep sea of sadness and longing and existential terror. We were godless and fearless and certain only that there was nothing more than this. We fought intensely about his intractability, my selfishness. He lectured. I pouted. Neko Case again:

“This Tornado Loves You. This Tornado loves you. What will make you believe me?”

When I found myself crying in bed with him a week after Lev’s funeral, I knew my first attempt to break it off with the iconoclast (after he had forgotten my birthday) had not, in fact, been successful. I began to search earnestly for something to distract me from my distraction. My casual dalliance with the iconoclast had become real and challenging and I found myself wanting something less; someone new, something other, but nothing more. The Blond Poet was (until he wasn’t) a welcome diversion fueled, in part, by my drive to erase my desire for the iconoclast (whose siren song I was able to ignore in favor of the poet’s for a brief while). Post-poet, I resisted the easy comfort of going back to Neverland. Instead, I took Joss home to my parents’ house in Albany and walked the blizzard-paralyzed city. I walked my parents’ neighborhood at night and watched the snow shine in the halos of streetlights, listened for the familiar squeaks and pops as my feet pressed the fresh-fallen powder into the texture of Styrofoam on the sidewalks under my boots.

On a late December afternoon, with the tinsel-bloat of Christmas still clinging to everything, I hovered outside a store in the mall while my mother and son shopped, busying myself with my phone as contemporary folks do. After weeks of nothing, my iconoclast had texted to tell me he wanted to take my photo. He’d discovered one last roll of Kodachrome—the iconic slide film, now discontinued—he’d need to shoot in the next 24 hours and send for processing before the last remaining lab in the country quit developing it at the turn of the new year. My heart swelled then broke a little. I was nowhere near, nor would I be for days. That we’d be star-crossed yet again was no bolt from the blue. It was just as well, really. No happy ending.

“You’ll be a hard act to follow, A bitter pill to swallow, You’ll be tough, you’ll be tough to replace.” — Rolling Stones “Plundered My Soul”

After the poet, there was a flirtation with a recent Brown graduate with Vampire Weekend sunglasses and a Harvard scarf. He’d battled cancer and was about to enter medical school. He picked me a flower on his way to our first date. He wanted me to be impressed by these things. But I was not — my ex-husband graduated from Brown; my son died of cancer; I work in a hospital simply lousy with doctors. What else have you got, sir? He told me I made him nervous. And he gave up. Next, there was the PhD candidate from out of town with whom I thought I was developing a friendship founded in vocabulary and misfit snobbery. I thought him quite lovely on our afternoon at the museum, but he turned out, in truth, to be a gloomy misogynist who seemed to feel the principles of eminent domain were valid reasons why his tongue kept ending up in my mouth. After that debacle, I caved, went back to the well. I felt not the slightest bit distracted, but I kept on trying. In the spring, there was the lawyer, who on the strength of his looks and kisses lasted the longest, but was not in fact, well suited to me at all. My description of him prompted the iconoclast to ask: “Will you fall in love with him and stop coming to see me?” Obviously not.

“The storms are raging on the rolling sea, and on the highway of regret. The winds of change are blowing wild and free. You ain’t seen nothing like me yet. I could make you happy, make your dreams come true. Nothing that I wouldn’t do. Go to the ends of the earth for you, to make you feel my love…” — Adele (singing Bob Dylan’s words) “Make You Feel My Love”

In my experience, stemming the tide of one’s own brooding infatuation consists mainly of not continuing to sleep with the person who reduces you to a quivering mess. At this, I was a failure many times over. All manner of poet-shaped and other distractions served as evidence that perhaps my destiny, for a while at least, lay in this relationship that had begun as a distraction from the day-to-day slog of my crumbled and crumbling life and had come to be a security blanket I wasn’t yet ready to give up. Perhaps it was not love or lust that would save me from my sadness. Perhaps I needed another outlet. I contemplated taking a group sewing class, but thought something more physical was probably in order. I looked into ballet. Once, I ran with my dog. But I got winded and felt like an asshole and promptly gave up. The nightlife was more my comfort zone, but what in the hell could I do there other than meet new boys to break my heart worse?

On one of his visits to town, I brought the PhD candidate to a comedy festival. I was friends with the guy who ran the thing so we had great seats and got to schmooze a bit and feel important. I had attended the same festival the year before and fallen head over heels in hero-worship with one of the comics. He was on the bill again this night and I was positively bursting at the seams to watch his new material. His set brought me to tears. Not tears of laughter, actual overflowing soul-deep tears. His work was insightful and reasoned and philosophical while simultaneously being biting and hilarious and moving. I laughed too, of course, as hard as a person can laugh and still take in enough oxygen to stay conscious. Listening to this comedian kill made me as happy as I had been since Lev died. This. This was bliss.

I had been contemplating for a while the concept of trying stand-up comedy. Making light of the worst life had to offer was my one and only effective coping mechanism and my tendency toward dazzle camouflage made me unafraid of putting on a show. At one point, in passing, I had bounced the idea off the iconoclast. Should I try stand-up? He reacted immediately. His eyes got wide and he told me I shouldn’t. Changed the subject. I was so stunned, I didn’t ask why. Regardless of the reason, I had held it in the back of my mind, felt maybe I needed to prove to myself that I was cut from the cloth of my idols. But could I do it? Could I own the room? Could I even get my shit together enough to do three minutes at an open mic? It would be a new kind of writing for me. It would take pathos and sincerity and boundless cynicism. And patience. I would be able to focus on very little else. And I would keep it from the iconoclast. I would do it for the first time in St. Louis where I was headed for work in the spring. I had two months to plan and write. Fucking perfect. Done and done.

I had all of these thoughts and made the decision to venture into comedy in a fog of punch lines and endorphins during some wisp of a second between comedians. The PhD candidate and I went for a drink after the show and geeked out about the amazingness of what we’d just seen. At the end of the night he surprised me by trying to make out with me in a parking garage and we didn’t see each other again. I didn’t tell him about my plan to tell jokes onstage. I didn’t tell anyone for a while. I was all jacked up with frustrated energy, which I poured into joke writing. And I was more than tenacious enough to get up on stage when I had the jokes to fill the time. I didn’t care if I was awful (though somehow I knew I wouldn’t be). I would be better eventually. And someday, I would kill.

January 12, 2012

List: Articles of the U.S. Constitution by Grace Gordon

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I. the
II. the
III. a
IV. the
V. the
VI. the
VII. an

January 11, 2012

Job-Friendly Updates to My Online Profiles by Sam Weiner

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Hi Friends!

I wanted to update everyone in my address book with my new contact information. From now on, I’ll be using this Gmail address instead of my old email, SexxPhreaker77@hotmail.com (“77” of course refers to my ninth favorite Talking Heads album-–I’m counting some live bootlegs in there, too).

As I reenter the job market, it’s important to have all of my online identities project a professional, ready-to-hire public face, which is why I’ve reverted my personalized Facebook URL to just a string of random characters instead of my prior URL, Facebook.com/MasterCOCK. Let’s face it: I’m getting older, and while MasterCOCK is still a treasured nickname and Gamertag, it’s not the first thing I want to come up when a potential employer Googles me. Which reminds me, my Google+ profile can now be found at /SLWEINER instead of /TaintBuster. It also has been deactivated due to non-use.

For those Second Lifers in my address book, you may be saddened to learn that my avatar, Molesto the Scrote’ With Wheels, has been reimagined as a slacks-wearing, ideal job candidate, but–FEAR NOT!-–my SL Marketplace shop will continue to sell the highest-quality virtual sex-bicycles in the Blacksilk district.

Also, my LiveJournal will remain public, but has been scrubbed of all posts tagged CAPITALISTS DROWN IN HELL and PENIS ROT.

You can still find me online, though. For instance, I have reopened my My_____ account. Changing their name to My and then those spaces got me really excited-–this is a great place to network. If you get a My_____ comment from SamLWeiner, don’t worry, it’s still the same old xxPussyNazi666xx as before, just with a snazzier, more employer-friendly profile name.

Some of you are receiving this email because you commented on my Tumblr, Fuck Yeah Ashley Greene Nip Slips. That site has been deactivated. It now hosts my résumé, so feel free to pass it along. My other Tumblr, What Does Cthulhu’s Penis Look Like?, remains active.

And a big apology to my Brazilian friends-–I have shuttered my orkut profile, Dr. Racist McN-Word.

I look forward to continued correspondence with all my friends, online and IRL, and if you know anyone who’s hiring, go ahead and forward them my attached vCard, just please be sure to mention that 69 Balls Avenue is not my current address.

Regards,
Sam

January 11, 2012

Assimilate Or Go Home: Dispatches from the Stateless Wanderers: In it to Win it by D.L.M.

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One day, not long after the Christmas party, I followed a nice lady from a local non-profit organization to a slummy apartment complex in the outer east side of Portland. The deeper you went into the complexes, the more it felt like leaving the Western world: here, time stood still. Nobody had cars, nobody had jobs: everyone came with their culture weighing heavy on their backs, and precious little more.

When I had signed up to volunteer with the refugees, I had immediately noticed the harried and dazed looks of the sweet-souled people who worked for this charity organization. They were in over their heads. As it would turn out, the Somali Bantu were some of the hardest refugees to “integrate” into society. This was a slight euphemism for what happens when you try and transplant a people group who have been kicked in the teeth by the world into the a culture that is still besotted with Manifest Destiny. The cards stacked against them were typical of many immigrants: clashing cultures, an unfamiliarity with American concepts such as buying on credit (and paying it back plus crippling interest), not to mention the language barrier, and post-traumatic stress disorder. To top it all off, the Somali Bantu are a genuinely oppressed people group, denied access to education and who knows what else in their native country by the majority ethnic group.

The day my background check cleared the nice volunteer mobilizer lady called and took me to meet the family I had been assigned to. Ostensibly I was going to be their English tutor, and I arrived armed with a few feeble papers. As my car crept slowly into its parking spot, I realized I had never felt more fraudulent. I was a young, covert missionary with a terrible grasp of English grammar. I knew I would be found out within seconds.

The nice lady marched up to a door on the ground level, and introduced me to the several adults scattered around misshapen couches. She tried to explain that I was there to teach English, and made it clear that my number one priority student was the mother of that particular family, Manu. The nice lady had told me that Manu was a lot of fun, always laughing and bumping shoulders, eager to please. Manu dragged a couple of folding chairs into a weak January sun and we sat in a circle in the middle of the parking lot. This would be the first of many times I realized how silence can be comforting in its own way; how I was beginning to shed some of the layers I had built up to deal with the machinations of everyday life. We smiled at each other, and under the eye of the nice lady, we went over an ESL worksheet or two. I signed a contract saying I would hang out with Manu and her family no less than three hours a week for the foreseeable future.

By the third or fourth time I showed up, kicking up a crowd of children in my wake (terrifying me with their fascination with my moving car), I realized Manu had no interest in learning English. She would humor me for a few minutes, and we would laugh and mime and talk about whatever she was cooking and I would try to get straight the names and ages of all the kids everywhere (polygamy makes everything messy, let me tell you now). And then she would amble off to finish cooking, the lesson closed with an inarguable air of finality.

I eventually grew tired of sitting by myself in a metal folding chair, waiting for an eager tutee. There was only so much I could talk about with the other women milling about, and the men were either nonexistent or smoking under the trees, looking at me suspiciously. After the novelty wore off, no one knew what to do with me—an unmarried girl with all her hair cut off.

I didn’t mind. I started to sit down on the floor with the children. We would work on basic English skills and attempt to tackle the homework, an often hopeless mess of trying to explain word problems to children that had never held a pencil in their life. Around us people would be moving in and out of the apartment, speaking in a tone and at volumes that sounded harsh to my ears. The women would roll in like mountains, masses of flesh encased in beautiful, shimmery cloaks. They terrified me with their shouting and complete and utter mastery of the household.

In some ways, I became another piece of the scenery: the blurry white soul with the good intentions. The children, who were so accommodating to any hints of affection, were the easiest. More and more of my time was taken up by them: finding clothes for the winter, getting vaccinations for school, playing a defeatist game of trying to catch up to grade level. For the adults, I became an errand girl: I learned how to get severe with the welfare people, clean up cockroach infestations, explain grocery store etiquette.

Manu eventually grew more and more distant as the months added up, troubles piling up on top of each other. The initial excitement of arriving in America was met by new and unforeseen hardships every day.

I remained devoted to her English education, until it became clear that she had some pretty severe learning disabilities and was unable to retain very much new information. To this day, she still can only say a handful of English words (although she understands a great deal). As I watched the lines set in her face, a permanent sort of disappointment settle in, and I became desperate for her approval. She would call me, saying she wanted to go to the grocery store, and I would rush over. When I arrived, she would load up my little car with bags of soda cans, and then tell me her head hurt too much to go. I did this for years, standing in line with all the homeless men, returning smelling of stale beer while handing over the pitiful amounts of cash.

I never stopped coming. I didn’t care that Manu was using me. I didn’t even care that she didn’t like me all that much, that the whole community seemed to be keeping one eye on me. I couldn’t blame them, especially in the light of their traumatic pasts and current troubles. When they stopped serving me chai when I showed up and instead just waved me in (never turning their gaze from WWE, which was always on), when they stopped pretending to like what I cooked for them and spit out the food, when they ignored me and we all sat there in silence for many minutes on end—I didn’t care. MY spiritual gift was obtuseness: I sat there, serene and placid, unruffled by the small rejections. I was a missionary, gosh darn it. I was in it to win it. And what started out as enthrallment turned into a commitment that led me to become deeply and irrevocably invested in their welfare. Eventually, after several years, they realized they were never going to get rid of me. Manu even makes me chai every once in awhile.

Over this last Christmas break, Manu’s two youngest daughters were over at my apartment nearly every day. They complained bitterly about not being able to play with certain friends of theirs (twin refugee girls from Kenya), saying their mom had forbidden it on account of their friends being Christian.

“But what about me?” I asked, genuinely shocked. “I’m a Christian! How can you hang out with me?”

The girls looked at me, as only middle schoolers can. Sighing, Manoi said: “You? Oh, my mom knows you.”

“Yeah” said her sister. “You’re our friend.” And with that, they went back to checking their Facebook profiles.

Inwardly I rejoiced. I had made it. I wasn’t the volunteer anymore: I was the friend.

January 11, 2012

Non-Essential Mnemonics: Canadas bloated, openly-apathetic government makes Americas entrenched, debt-frenzied Congress seem somewhat competent by Kent Woodyard

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“Canada’s bloated, openly-apathetic government makes America’s entrenched, debt-frenzied Congress seem somewhat competent.  Canadian officials frequently go marauding across Canada with fresh anti-industry government regulations following close behind.  Now, Yankees might make some unfair stereotypes, but journalists—particularly me—correctly protest neighbor Canada’s godless socialism.”

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A Wall Street Journal columnist fleshes out his dim opinion of America’s neighbor to the north. Also, a mnemonic for the corporations that accepted government bailouts under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) (Citigroup, Bank of America, General Motors, American Express, Discover Financial, Chrysler, State Street Corporation, Capital One Financial, GMAC, Wells Fargo, AIG, Regions Financial Corporation, BNY Mellon, Morgan Stanley, U.S. Bancorp, JPMorgan Chase, PNC, Goldman Sachs).

January 10, 2012

CNNs Political Team Has It Covered by Pete Reynolds

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WOLF BLITZER: Welcome to back to the CNN Election Center, right now, and our continuing coverage of the 2012 Republican presidential primary. I’m Wolf Blitzer, and I’m here in the CNN World Headquarters, which houses, but is not the same as, the CNN Election Center, with CNN’s political team, starting with Roland Martin, David Gergen, and Dana Loesch, right now, and James Carville live via satellite from Washington, James Carville. We’ll also be checking in with Alex Castellanos and Erick Erickson in New Hampshire, Erin Burnett, Gloria Berger and John King over in the CNN Studios in Atlanta, and in the Situation Room, we’ve got Anderson Cooper, Ali Velshi, and Piers Morgan, who will be breaking off at the top of the hour to form his own rogue panel with Ari Fleischer, Dana Bash, Amy Holmes, Isha Sesay, Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez, actress January Jones, and pop star Nikki Minaj, all as part of CNN’s America’s Choice 2012 coverage from the CNN Election Center, right now, Nikki Minaj. I want to start off by taking a look at a clip from a speech by Mitt Romney in Manchester, New Hampshire, right now, campaign, Mitt Romney, take a look:

MITT ROMNEY: This economy is putting a strain on the middle class. Many Americans have lost their jobs, and many more are feeling the pressure as the cost of living keeps rising. At kitchen tables across the country, there is genuine concern about our economic future.

WOLF BLITZER: Is Mitt Romney right? Do people still have kitchen tables, Roland Martin?

ROLAND MARTIN: I think they do, Wolf. People need something to eat on, after all, and kitchen tables provide the flat surface of a coffee table without the inconvenience of having to lean forward to reach your drink.

DANA LOESCH: I have to agree with Roland on this, Wolf. With a kitchen table, you don’t bump your knees like you do with a coffee table.

WOLF BLITZER: John King in Atlanta?

JOHN KING: Wolf, I’m happy to say that I have a kitchen table, and the numbers show that of those people concerned about our economic future, 64% have a kitchen table. That number jumps to 87% when you count breakfast bars, removable folding tables, and sheets of plywood laid across two sawhorses.

WOLF BLITZER: James Carville in Washington?

JAMES CARVILLE: I eat in the tub!

WOLF BLITZER: Anderson Cooper in the Situation Room, think you can handle it?

ANDERSON COOPER: I’m sorry, are we still talking about kitchen ta—

WOLF BLITZER: — Ali Velshi?

(VELSHI stands in front of an interactive map of New Hampshire.)

ALI VELSHI: If you’ll take a look at the map of New Hampshire here, Wolf, you’ll see that we’ve color-coded each county according to the number of tweets in the last thirty seconds using the hashtag #kitchentables and/or #CNNElection and/or #tubdining, and combined it with a motion-sensitive illustration of polling results in each particular county. Each Republican candidate is represented by a different special effect—here, you’ll see Rockingham county is reddish-orange and appears to be bouncing, which indicates that it leans Huntsman and is very kitchen-table heavy. Merrimack County, as you can see, is purple and appears to be violently spinning, which indicates almost no kitchen tables and a strong preference for Mitt Romney and taking meals in the bath.

ANDERSON COOPER: What about Grafton County, which is green and appears to be dry heaving?

ALI VELSHI: Grafton County is actually responding to biofeedback from our cameraman as he sprints around the CNN Election Center.

ANDERSON COOPER: So what does that have to do with New Hamp—

ALI VELSHI: —I just put together a second, interactive chart explaining the first interactive map-graphic and posted it on Facebook for our slower viewers and Anderson Cooper.

WOLF BLITZER: Try and keep up, Vanderbilt.

ALI VELSHI: Now I just tweeted about the meta-chart.

ROLAND MARTIN: And now Foursquare says I’m the mayor of the CNN Election Center.

WOLF BLITZER: Some breaking news, we’ve just received word that Roland’s CNN Election Center mayorhood is now trending worldwide on Twitter. We’ll be keeping a close eye on that, right now, mayor, let’s take an even closer look at this next clip, January, from a town hall meeting in Concord with former Speaker Newt Gingrich, talking about health care, Concord, a very important issue in this campaign season, America’s Choice 2012, right now, take a look, Speaker, Nikki Minaj:

NEWT GINGRICH: We need to get America back on the path of long-term financial security. And the first step is getting rid of the President’s disastrous health care law.

WOLF BLITZER: David Gergen, right now?

DAVID GERGEN: That was a guaranteed applause line, Wolf. It worked very well in that venue, because, let’s face it: it’s fun to applaud.

WOLF BLITZER: James Carville in Washington, fun to applaud?

JAMES CARVILLE: You know it!

WOLF BLITZER: Dana Loesch.

DANA LOESCH: (applauds)

ROLAND MARTIN: Wolf, I saw this as a slap in the face to Mitt Romney, who implemented a similar health care plan in Massachusetts.

WOLF BLITZER: Slap in the face, Anderson Cooper, Ali Velshi?

ANDERSON COOPER: Which one of us are you—

WOLF BLITZER: —James Carville!

JAMES CARVILLE: Taco night tonight, Wolf!

WOLF BLITZER: Crunchy or soft shell, right now?

JAMES CARVILLE: Off to the tub!

WOLF BLITZER: There you have it, folks: crunchy taco, the official taco of the CNN Election Center. Anderson Cooper, your tacos?

ANDERSON COOPER: I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.

WOLF BLITZER: We’ve got to take a short break, kitchen table, but when we come back we’ll be watching very closely as John King explains to us how math works, and how that pertains to elections, so stay tuned for more political coverage, John King, crunchy taco, live, watching very closely, right now, the CNN Election Center, Sophie’s Choice 2012.

January 10, 2012

Monologue: Mitt Romneys Haircut Will Not Be Denied by Jesse Adelman

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I know some folks derive a kind of sick enjoyment from the quadrennial pageant of televised intelligence-abatement that is the United States presidential election, but it’s time to stop the charade. There is no primary. There is no general. There is only this: I am Mitt Romney’s haircut. This is my year, and I will not be denied.

Everything about me is presidential. You may not even know why, but you’ve all thought it, and that’s no accident. I’ve been designed precisely for this moment. I’m a hybrid of every classic American presidential hairstyle since the 1930s. Roosevelt’s fatherly gray temples. Kennedy’s insouciant bouffant. Reagan’s lethal, revolutionary amalgam of feathering and pomade. Think about it this way: what if you could trade in your shitty, 8-year-old Ford Probe for a car that somehow combined the classic flair of a ‘59 Cadillac and the raw authority of a ’68 Mustang? Now imagine ramming that Caddi-stang right through the front doors of the fucking White House. Get the picture? That’s pretty much exactly what I’ll be doing on top of Mitt Romney’s face on November 6, 2012.

The yammering simpletons who comprise our political class have busied themselves for the past year or so earnestly handicapping the Republican primaries, as if they’d actually been contested. I’d like to say something magnanimous about my competition, but come the hell on. Newt Gingrich looks like he’s wearing a bowl of boxed mashed potatoes on top of his fat watermelon face. Rick Perry parts his greasy mop in the middle, like a mental patient. Rick Santorum probably walks into his barber shop and says, “Give me the Bob Saget.” I could go on and on. Those hapless losers might as well be completely bald, like Donald fucking Trump.

Sometimes Mitt will do a book signing, or a county fair, or some other mind-numbing germfest where the people stink of pancake batter and try to tell him racist jokes. These are the events where we don’t get to wear a tie, and have to pretend we don’t fly private. Those times, I’ll let a lock fall loose, right in the front, over the right brow. That way, people think, “Hey, Romney’s hanging loose!” Bingo, genius. I’m still in full control. The president needs a human touch.

Now, Barack Obama may be the incumbent, but it’s only fair to point out that he’s at a severe disadvantage. It was a cheap victory, him taking old man John McCain and his pathetic Giuliani comb-over to the woodshed. In 2012 he’s up against the greatest ivy league/pompadour hybrid ever seen in American politics. And for this epic battle, the president has equipped himself with a buzz cut? I understand, his options are limited. But let’s at least make it interesting. Hit me with a fade, a high-and-tight, a flat-top.

Twenty years from now, I’ll be sitting on top of Mitt’s face, delicately sprinkling in a bit more gray as the two of us eyeball the sunset from the porch of our multi-billion dollar retirement estate. As much as I love to win, I’d hate to look back, reflecting on two long terms, and think, “That was too easy.”

January 10, 2012

Dendrophila and Other Social Taboos: Eminem Sex Dreams Decoded by Dani Burlison

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In the thick of the 8 Mile era, he appears out of nowhere, rescuing me from a pretentious hipster bar. Lanky twenty-somethings sipping two dollar PBRs in their nicotine-soaked white belt adorned skinny jeans avoid eye contact while slouching over bar stools. The room is a thick dark cloud of off-putting pheromones and swollen egos. I grow increasingly restless. A friend excuses herself, stumbling outside with a shaggy-haired bass player and he approaches, politely asking to sit down.

“My name is…” he mumbles, while the indie rock band whines from the stage.

“I know your name,” I say, welcoming the attention. “Sit down.”

We discuss politics, genetic engineering and needle exchange programs. He invites me to a private screening of a factory farming documentary back at his San Francisco hotel room. Tugging at his baggy trousers, he leads me out of the bar.

Back at the hotel, his passionate rant about dismantling the racist prison industrial complex lures me, without hesitation, into the hotel bed, which is stacked with handmade quilts. “I made those myself,” he says.

Eminem is a closet quilter. I am so putting out.

He’s just aggressive enough to keep me pleased without hurting me in ways that I don’t want to be hurt. His hands are smooth and strong, save for the calluses where the mic is usually firmly grasped. But on this night, my night of an unbridled sexcapade, tangled up in Eminem’s hand-sewn rag quilts, the only thing in his hand is my body. Every single naughty bit of it.

As the sun rises, he serves the best organic orange juice ever and asks if I can stay another night. “I have season four of Sex and the City,” he says, brushing the hair from my eyes. “I love it when Samantha explores her sexuality with that amazing Brazilian artist, Maria. Love should see no boundaries. Let’s hold each other and watch it.”

He rubs my feet with Ayurvedic sesame oil, leading his hands to all sorts of glorious places on my ravaged body. He makes sweet tender love to me—with the expected intermittent Eminem-style stamina and welcomed throw down—over and over and over again. And again.

I leave the following morning to meet a friend for breakfast. As I dash nutmeg atop my steamed chai, I notice that he, Eminem, is standing in the corner of the cafe, smiling. “I miss you already,” he mouths from across the room.

I approach him. He hands over poetry and sketches of boats and hearts he’s scrawled across his napkins. “These are for you. I’ll never forget you.” He looks down, pulls up his drawers and walks away.

I know, Eminem. It feels so empty without me.

He shows up again, repeatedly, over the next ten years. He’s always a gentleman, always an animal—sometimes a kitten, sometimes a tiger—in the sack. We meet at airports, on road trips, at campgrounds, in waiting rooms at the veterinarian office. And once in the parking lot at Whole Foods where he carried so many bottles of so much fresh juice. Ten years of the best sex of my life. With Eminem. While I am asleep. Why not Leonard Cohen or Margaret Cho or Mark Wahlberg’s character in I Heart Huckabees? Eminem is so upset. And isn’t it wrong for a feminist to really, really enjoy sex dreams with some dude who, well, hates everyone, everywhere except his kids and Dr. Dre?

What does it all mean?

After shying away from asking my Certified Dream Analyst for insight, I did some research on my own. Here’s what some of the experts say:

Freud: If the dream had a ton of penis action already, then maybe Eminem has a pipe in his pants and I need that game piece to play Clue. But that’s a different type of pipe. Maybe I should still look in his pants. Also, the rooms where we always have sex symbolize wombs. I should probably ask my mom but maybe Eminem is my brother. If he is, Freud would still want me to have sex with him, I think.

Jung: It’s quite obvious that Slim Shady personifies the shadow archetype. Maybe that’s why I keep having sex with him in dark, shadowy places. Is he my animus? Do I want to have more sex with myself? Maybe Eminem’s shadow side is vegan and shops at Whole Foods. Maybe I just need a glass of fresh juice.

Laura Ingalls Wilder: I have a lot in common with Eminem. And if good friends are hard to find, maybe Eminem and I should enjoy life on a prairie somewhere. All of our kids would love it.

Radical activist view: Internalized sexism. I hate myself and my girly bits. Maybe I don’t care as much about the world as everyone thinks. Maybe deep down I hate women as much as he seems to. Shit. I need to take back the night and challenge oppression. In bed with Eminem. And then cancel my subscription to Ms.

My therapist: What do I think it means?

Power animal: Maybe Eminem is my power animal. I’m not sure what Eminem’s native elders think his power animal is, but since he was born in the Year of the Rat, I say it’s a rat. The rat is the first animal in Chinese astrology. Maybe Eminem is like an angry Adam and I am his sex-crazed Eve and together we can rule the world. Kind of like Wonder Twins. Or maybe it isn’t a rat but a rabbit. Rabbits indicate lots of sex, which leads me back to Freud, and me needing to have sex with Eminem, who might be my brother.

Runes (translated to Norwegian): I thought about my dreams and threw some stones. They read: Marshall elsker du og han ønsker å holde deg varm med hans rage. It’s cold in Norway.

Christian view: He needs to be saved. Maybe my life purpose is to smolder Marshall’s seething anger with a big, fierce, naked hug. Maybe I need to find God and if I do, maybe he’ll lead me to a San Francisco hotel room where I can drink juice. I’m really thirsty.

Annie Lennox: Sweet dreams are indeed, made of these. Maybe Eminem and I want to use and abuse each other. I think we can heal each other. It might be really good for us. Really.

Male friends: You need to stop dating crazy angry guys. You’re gonna end up in a trunk.

Female friends: You date wimps. You need to hit that shit. I bet he’s actually a really nice guy.

Yoda: If the dark side clouds everything then maybe Eminem’s dark public persona just casts a shadow over his sensitive, spiritual side. Maybe I should take him to yoga. And then go out for juice. And watch Star Wars.

Joseph Campbell: If dreamtime leads us to permanent fixtures in our psyches then maybe Eminem is a part of me, like a twin, and contrary to Freud’s wishes, we shouldn’t have sex because that would be incest or something and I’m pretty sure incest is illegal, especially for twins. Also, Campbell says dreams support our conscious lives so maybe Eminem is my sugar daddy and I should just ask him to support me and buy me the house he offered up in my 6th dream about him.

Oprah: If living my best life means that it doesn’t get better than sex dreams about Eminem than maybe I should leave it at that and not have sex with him. Maybe I’d end up on fire. Or in his trunk. With no juice. I wouldn’t like that.

Confucius: “What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.” Maybe Eminem lost something in that first dream and he keeps coming back for sex because he’s trying to find it in my pants. Maybe I need an X-ray so I can find it for him and send it in the mail so the dreams stop.

Wizardry and other assorted magic. Namely, the wisdom of Albus Dumbledore: If it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, then I think that maybe Dumbledore thinks the only way to make sense of the dreams is to live this all out, either through sex with Eminem or with a stand-in or body double or what have you. Dumbledore also says that happiness can be found in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light. Slim Shady needs to come to the light, I think. And I think the light is in my pants and in his pants, too. But what does Dumbledore know? He got smoked by Snape. Maybe he don’t know shit.

Eminem: I think he’s reaching out to me, telepathically, and that maybe he’d see this as an opportunity to seize everything he ever wanted and have sex with me. And that I am his portal to show the world that he’s socially conscious and is a really gifted quilter and he needs me to help him set up some quilting classes through an adult education program. Or maybe I’m just more thirsty than I realize and I do, in fact, need some juice.

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