Merry Xmas!

Having admirably taken part in the annual perfunctory, yet prolonged, shopping orgy, our fearless author proceeds to be attracted to colorful and shiny objects, and wraps said procured goods in varying shades of glittery gift wrap and puts them under her plastic Christmas tree with mirth and glee. Incidentally, the disinterested Lutheran-born does not understand his Hindu-born girlfriend’s fascination with the Christmas phenomenon, and rolls his eyes at each new bow that is curled and every ornament that is precisely hung.

Christ never told us to celebrate his birth by putting glass trinkets on trees and catering to the Milton Bradleys and Saks Fifth Avenues of America. If one ignores all of that, there is still something satisfying about putting up a fir in your home and decorating it with reflective spheres, and giving things to people you like. It is culturally wonderful to participate in a tradition that, for fifteen years of my life, I had no feel for and can now indulge in with impunity. Along with eating delicious foods like shrimp salad, pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce, and … oh, my thighs hurt from their sudden explosion. Did I say “impunity?” I’m going to pay for this in January.

Oh, look, peanut brittle and raspberry tarts! Save me!

December 25, 2002 | culture-society-history, food & drink | Comments Closed

Arab Internment Camps – The Aftermath

Here’s a reaction I got from someone who clearly didn’t like what I had to say yesterday:

I don’t care what Islamists think about America..I already know ..they hate us. OK. Press on. The reason [you] really had to dig for these articles is they have no credibility.

Gee, with that show of openmindedness, who could ever hate us? The terrorists make me very angry, but people like this have me wonder why I am on this planet. That makes me downright mad.

Yes, I really had to dig, but I dug IN the New York Times, IN the Washington Post, and IN the Chicago Tribune. It’s just a shame that it didn’t make it to the front pages of these online papers, but were in the back tucked in between the car ads and the Macy’s sale insert. They have plenty of credibility, alright. No Reuters news correspondent is going to put her name on an article that has no credibility. Have you even heard of Reuters?

Did I not say the INS is doing its job? My opposition is that they don’t have to treat people like animals and cage them or have them locked up 50 to a room to check them out. Civil liberties for immigrants are in jeopardy in this country, and unless each and every American citizen wakes up and realizes that, you’d might as well be flying a bedsheet out there and not your American flag. This is not a matter of opinion and I am not joking. Do you see me laughing?

Why can no Bush-Republican answer the vital question? Why aren’t we pounding the Saudis six ways from Sunday? Yeah, we have been going after a royal princess who gave money to her sick friend who gave it to her husband who gave it to his gardener who gave it to his milkman who gave it to two guys whose cousins ended up flying airplanes into our buildings. But, do you know that 14 out of the 19 hijackers were Saudi in origin and not one was Afghani? Probably not … because 65% of people polled recently on this question don’t know where Iraq is on a map of the world and think that Afghanis and Iraqis were on the 9/11 airplanes. Saddam Hussein does not associate with the Taliban, Yasser Arafat does not associate with the Taliban, North Korea does not associate with the Taliban, Israel does not associate with the Taliban. All of these people are horrendous in their own right, but they have nothing to do with the Taliban. And the people who have everything to do with Taliban have not yet been brought to justice and grow stronger while we go shake our fists at all the wrong parties.

Please, continue not to care what Islamists think about America. The more you don’t care, the more they will hate us for supporting all kinds of atrocity in the Middle East while supposedly not caring. We care enough to meddle in their affairs, but don’t care what they think or if they are living good lives or not. So, why shouldn’t they hate us? I beseech you, keep not caring.

The next time a bomb blasts in a crowded area or another airplane flies into a building, fly your flag up high, send your war jets to Rwanda or some other war-torn nation and keep wondering why the terrorists did this to us. And as long as you don’t care, you’ll never know why.

Do you even know what the difference is between Islamists and Muslims? Or, do you not care?

More news of the profane:

Bush Administration to Propose System for Monitoring Internet

The administration wants Internet service providers to help build a system to enable monitoring and, potentially, surveillance of its users.

But, you see, as our wise president said, “The terrorists hate our freedom.” So, if we let our government take our freedoms away, we may not be terrorized like this again. No freedom, no terror. We put the Republican party in power to solve our nation’s problems. And, by god, they’re coming through for us!

(Of course, we don’t let this one leak or some folks may take it seriously. For a great sarchasm [sic] exists in this country, which is “the gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the recipient who doesn’t get it.”)

So, when is that island for sale?

December 20, 2002 | government | Comments Closed

Arab Internment Camps

Jill Serjeant’s Reuters Article:

Hundreds of Iranian and other Middle East citizens were in southern California jails on Wednesday after coming forward to comply with a new rule to register with immigration authorities only to wind up handcuffed and behind bars. Shocked and frustrated Islamic and immigrant groups estimate that more than 500 people have been arrested in Los Angeles, neighboring Orange County and San Diego in the past three days under a new nationwide anti-terrorism program. Some unconfirmed reports put the figure as high as 1,000. The arrests sparked a demonstration by hundreds of Iranians outside a Los Angeles immigration office.

Having read and researched this development, I remarked to a friend that I really had to dig in each source (New York Times, Washington Post, etc.) to find this piece of news and that it is a shame that only NPR and Pacifica News made any big mention of it.

*Well, d-uh, the terrorists were Arab in origin.* Arguably, the new Ministry of Homeland Security (MiniHose) is doing its job of figuring out whether these Arab men are in America for valid reasons or not. So, they’re doing their duty. But, do they have to pack these men into rooms like a pack of mules for days? Notice also that no Saudi Arabian or Kuwaiti men are scheduled to undergo this same level of scrutiny. They’d run crying to Daddy Oil Sheikh and we’ll have to pay $3.00 a gallon for gasoline.

Yeah, the Islamists are REALLY going to love us now! Repeat after me: duck and cover, duck and cover …

December 19, 2002 | government | Comments Closed

A whole LOTTa ruckus going on

The worrying thing about the booting of Lott is that the Republicans who want him out aren’t doing it simply to save face with the black voting populace of this country, but mostly to get rid of an ineffectual leader who isn’t conservative enough. Lott may make stupid remarks, but he was a liability for his party, too. Remember he didn’t vote for the ban on human cloning?

If Lott leaves, we’ll probably have Nickles or one of his buddies in the senate majority leadership position. You might be kicking Lott now, but you’ll be kicking yourself later. In the time of the lesser of two evils, watching out for these kinds of things is key.

Then again, most age-old politicians are a bunch of bigots. And, the Democrats may claim a rickety majority for a while. *one person claps*

On a weirdly lighter note, check this out: Black People Love Us.

December 17, 2002 | government | Comments Closed

Woman?

In the psychological sense of the word, I never really made the transition to womanhood. Seeing myself as a grown-up when I still feel like a girl seems to me a lot like a kid trying on her mother’s stilletos and clumsily stumbling around in them while trying to act adult-like. It’s one of two things: Either I didn’t know when to make the jump and missed the boat when it came along, or I still cannot accept the fact that I am no longer 16, but 27. Plenty of years of womanhood lie ahead of me, while fraught with the responsibilities of a real job and kids I am not. Yet, I still feel myself as too young to handle some of the situations I do. I question myself, “Am I old enough to make these decisions?” Chronologically, I am. But, the kid in me is not. Some tell me I am incredibly mature for my age (Ha! Tell that to my mother!).

I suppose I can be a grown-up. When faced with an issue or the responsibility of making a decision, I must probably enter some kind of temporal fugue, unconsciously handle the task/problem, snap out of it, and feel 16 again. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to feel young and yet have the capability to arrive at the seemingly reasonable decision.

Earlier, I was an overachiever. Now, I am an overanalyzer. Soon, I will be over the hill. And yet, forever 16.

December 14, 2002 | family & friends | Comments Closed

Of School Pictures and William S. Burroughs a.k.a. Kidnap This

I remember once watching a late-night cop show that warned viewers not to put up pictures of our family members in our places of work. Someone who gets pathologically obsessed with us may exact revenge by stalking, kidnapping, or killing those near and dear to us. The rationale: If they know your vulnerability, they can get to you. My semi-paranoid parents themselves would say something like that to me after having watched the show.

Never mind that mom had pictures of my brother and me everywhere in her office back in the 70s and 80s – despite mom’s impeccable taste, my brother had on his ugly pastel bell bottoms and glasses with five-inch thick, black frames, and me in full buffoon regalia that the parents invariably insisted I wear to picture day – and she worked with some ill-tempered and dicey people, let me tell you. I am sure mom had a large share of terribly disgruntled employees wander through her office threatening her with all sorts of bodily harm because she told them to stop eating and to get back to work. (The untold joys of being a government health administrator with underlings!) But, they wouldn’t have dreamed of kidnapping me or my brother to get back at my mother. Especially not when we looked like what I described above, and would have severely clashed with everyone’s decor. Child models we were not.

I can imagine a former student calling my office and whispering hoarsely into the mouthpiece, “You’d better retract that D you gave me or the old man is going to get it.”

“What old man?”

“The old bastard in the picture by your desk.”

“Oh, him,” I say. “He’s William S. Burroughs. Yeah, sure. You can have him after you dig his cold, dead bones out of a cemetery plot in Lawrence, Kansas. Let me know when you do, I would like to come take a looksee.”

*Click* The line goes dead.

Oh, my imagination and how it abuses its free time!

The adventurous few often wander by my desk, and some even venture to ask me who the grandfather in the picture is. I explain that he is Bill Burroughs, one of my favorite thinkers, writers, and freaks of the 20th century and that I like the black-and-white for its stark Richard Avedonesque simplicity. And it’s like having a strange metabeing watch over me as I work. I especially like the slow, wide-eyed nods I get for saying that. That is alright.

My fascination with Burroughs started with his book, The Naked Lunch and the subsequent movie. Something terribly unsettling and ironically humorous about a typewriter that turns into a talking sphincter. Helps keep writing in perspective upon imagining my pen and keyboard morphing into … well, let’s just let that analogy go into the annals of scatology.

No, such self-deprecating ideas are not shows of diffidence. It’s laughing at yourself. Knowing that you do not know and are trying to work through it, whatever it is. Maybe all is in finding out what it is.

Speaking of keeping myself in line, I should probably try studying for the final final exam of my life, instead of waxing sporadic about photographs and the impact of Burroughs on my life.

It’s full of holes … it’s full of holes …

December 11, 2002 | books, culture-society-history, family & friends, funny, kuwait | Comments Closed
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