A Parade of horribles

I keep starting entries about Canada, but I can't finish them. Instead, I have a few questions for you:

Do you get the Sunday Paper?

Does it carry Parade Magazine?

Have you read Walter Scott's Personality Parade?

If so, you may have noticed that the questions all seem to be written by either publicists or the functionally retarded. And leading that charge is the man with the answers, Walter Scott.

The following will prove to you that Walter Scott had better watch his back, because I am ready to write. That. Column.

Q: Marilu Henner may not have won The Celebrity Apprentice, but her high energy and good nature won me over. What's the secret of her vitality?

A: Marilu is on record as saying that she stays young and vibrant by eating a diet rich in fiber, vitamin C and the babies of the rich and powerful. I'm sure her diet will continue to keep her hydrated and healthy as she writes her follow-up to her latest best seller Wear Your Life Well.

Q: Are the women on CBS's Survivor required to wear skimpy clothing?

A: "Indeed they are," responded producer and host Jeff Probst, "You can't masturbate to dailies of starving contenstants wearing long johns." Be sure to keep that in mind when you watch the latest installments on CBS every Thursday at 8 PM. Who will be voted out next?!?

Q: I can't keep up with Rihanna's hairstyles. Why so many different looks?

A: Rihanna, fresh off her stunning performance at this year's AXE Body SprayTM Booty-tease with Jay-Z, tells us she is wanted in several states and is constantly on the move. "Also," her stylist Whizzah confided to us, "Rihanna has been looking for a sassy look she can use to invade Poland. We are working on her mustache next week."

Q: With so many young actresses making news for their bad behavior, would you single any out for their good deeds?

A: Ashley Simpson gives great head. Oh, was that not what you meant?

Q: I love PARADE's cover story on Mariah Carey, but I'm puzzled by the title of her new CD, E=MC2. Does it have something to do with Einstein?

A: You're fucking kidding me, right?

Poutine on the Ritz

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Don't blame me, I'm in Canada! I'll be back near Monday. Oh, and? If you're thinking of going Amazon shopping, you should consider getting there via that right hand margin over there-->. Am I a whore? Sure, but you were going shopping anyway, and don't you want my cats to eat tonight?

Shut the fuck up, Barack was right

Or, why it isn't "elitist" to think that “It’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

The "Rural constituents who won't vote for Obama" syndrome

Step one: Republican government outsources their jobs and sends their kids to war, leaving them fearful, economically disadvantaged and impotent.

Two: Frustrated with their country but committed to their patriotism, they seek solace in guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment. This does nothing to improve their situation, nor does it help them fight the system for better job security, better pay and better foreign policy.

Three: The government sees this behavior and realizes that their fucked-up behavior has inadvertently bolstered their ranks. And back to step one.

This just changed my vote for Hillary from a maybe to an absolutely

“The frat boys at MSNBC portrayed Clinton as a castrating scold, with Tucker Carlson commenting, “Every time I hear Hillary Clinton speak, I involuntarily cross my legs,” and Chris Matthews calling her male endorsers “castratos in the eunuch chorus.” Matthews also dubbed Clinton “the grieving widow of absurdity,” saying, of her presidential candidacy and senatorial seat, “She didn’t win there on her merit. She won because everybody felt, ‘My God, this woman stood up under humiliation.’ ” While that may be partly true—Hillary’s approval ratings soared in the wake of l’affaire Lewinsky—Matthews’s take reduced her universally recognized political successes to rewards for public sympathy, as though Clinton’s intelligence and long record of public service count for nothing. Would a male candidate be viewed so reductively?" - Amanda Fortini, The Feminist Reawakening, New York Magazine

So, I have been noncommittal when people ask me who I'm voting for in the distant future of the Oregon Primaries, mostly because I think by the time I vote the nominee will have been decided. And, quite frankly, I'd be happy with either Obama or Clinton. But something my mother said when she was up here last month has been stuck in the back of my mind (and I'm paraphrasing here): that Obama will win because sexism runs deeper than racism.

And I think I agree, especially now that I've read this article in New York Magazine that lays out everything so clearly. I mean, while acknowledging that being anything other than a rich, white male will put a candidate at a disadvantage, I think that there are definite stereotypes that a woman has to face that a man does not, and these stereotypes are much harder to overcome.

For example, according to Wikipedia, two of the most common stereotypes of blacks is that they are "Unintelligent/Ignorant/Stupid" and "poor". I don't see Barack Obama having any trouble convincing most people that he is none of these things. Stupidity and net worth are tangible things; there are academic tests and salary amounts that quantify intelligence and wealth.

But one of the biggest problems for Hillary is the perception that she's a shrill, ball-busting harpy. How do you fight that, exactly? One person's speaking your mind is another fucktard's shrill. Ball busting is just another word for doing something better than a man. Can anyone who calls Hillary a harpy actually define that word accurately?

Or are they really calling her a "a foul malign creature in Greek mythology that is part woman and part bird"?

It just makes me so angry. Very angry indeed. And so that is why I will be voting for Hillary. I don't care if her victory is mathmatically unlikely. I don't care if my reasoning here is based on emotion (there's plenty of logical reasons to vote for her: She's on the armed services committee, she knows how to work the system. She's fucking SMART!). I don't care if my decision is based largely on the fact that my vote in the primaries will most likely make no fucking difference whatsoever.

I am voting for Hillary because she can still find it in herself to be professional and clever and relatively normal, even though she has to put up with all this shit every day from Tucker Carlson and Chris Matthews and every fucking neo-con and libertard in the world. That she is still running proves to me that she can handle the presidency.

And I'm not saying that Obama can't, or that he hasn't been through shit too. I'm just saying that I rarely get to do something that puts my girly money where my feminist mouth is, and if I get to make history while doing that, then yay for me.

This may be a bad sign

I've discovered that I lose my ability to think creatively when I sit down at a computer. I spend a fair amount of time not at the computer-- mostly in transit-- where my mind actually comes up with some pretty good thoughts, and naturally I shelve those away in my head for later blog entries.

Apparently I have a hole, or some other thing that can lose stuff that makes more sense in this metaphor, in that particular shelf.

Anyway, I was walking to the bus stop this morning thinking about all the music I downloaded recently. I was actually trying to decide which band I would listen to based on what link I wanted to add next to the list at the right hand of this page (which, really, is a stupid way to decide what to listen to).

And I realized I look a bit like a one-trick pony. A one-note Johnny. Bland as a tofu mayonnaise fondue. And lord knows I don't want to come off as boring to my tens of fans, especially those precious two or three who aren't my family (you're precious too! Don't leave me, family!)

I wondered what I could do to right this misconception. I thought maybe I could start doing the Friday Random Ten, but the I realized that this would require me to listen to the songs, write down the songs, type up the songs (write the feem tune, sing the feem tune...) and that's way too much investment for me. I'm a lazy galoot, you know that.

So, I'm just going to hit 'random' on my iTunes until I hit something that isn't a band of probably British white boys that are a little punky, a little rocky. You know, like almost everyone I mention over there -->.

Here goes:

• OK, I had to hit >> 5 times until I got to a comedy bit by the Marijuanalogues, rather than a band of the genre mentioned above; Still not breaking the mold here.
• 17 more and I finally get a song from before 1995 (The Troggs, whom I originally typed as "The Troghghs" which I think is a better name).
• 14 more to Sarah McLachlan. A girl, at least. Not exactly out of character. Oh, the Kinks right after that, so there's at least some proof of classic rock.
• 3 more until Lewis Black, followed by The Smothers Brothers, so at least I'm funny, right?
• 31 more and I'm at Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. This is not working out as I had hoped.

Look, this isn't going as I planned. I've got classical in here. I've got Boards of Canada and Skinny Puppy and Hoodoo Gurus...

Sigh, they're still all pasty white boys. I'm sorry-- I have a type! Mozart was a skinny white boy too. Don't get me started on Holst. What I'm saying is: I'm open to suggestions for expanding my musical horizons.

(Oh, and? I had the germ of an idea for this post before I read this guy. I did! Shut up.)

((Ooh - I've forgotten how good Caesars are. I had no idea they were Swedish!))

(((Some song by Resurrection has started playing. They appear to be a metal Christian band. I have no fucking idea how they got on my iPod. I'm seriously distraught. To the delete button!)))

I drink to stay warm, and to kill selected memories...

"And yet I can recall in great detail all of the really
embarrassing things that happened to me in the same time period. Not just the things, but the awful feelings that caused or were caused by those embarrassing things." -me, last night

I realized just now that this is a very good description of depression, at least the kind that I have. I haven't talked much here about why I am depressed, only that I am.

My secondary depression-- that is, the one that is relatively new-- is because of the medical issues my siblings have been suffering through in the past several months. In addition to me not being able to cope with my grief (which I seem unable to handle. I have unresolved grief issues from 1982), I also feel helpless. Helpless and useless. Both siblings have been diagnosed recently with serious conditions. Life-threatening conditions. And here I am with my nebulous sadness and intermittent back pain, and I feel like everything I think or write or feel is either petty or inappropriately self-centered.

You know, like that last paragraph.

My overlying depression, the one I think I've had since forever, is the one where I can't stop thinking about stupid things in my past. Any stupid thing-- it's not limited to stupid things I've done or stupid things I've said. Just stupid things. All of them. I think of stupid questions I've asked help desk people. I remember all the stupid things I've thought about people. I focus on stupid things I've written and stupid things I've sung. Stupid places I've gone and the stupid things I've done there. There are so many that I don't have room in my head for good things. I have to be prompted to think about times where I've done things right or I've done things I liked.

Is this a poem?

A haiku (or an haiku?)

Or just some complaints?

OK, that's enough of that. I'm getting depressed talking about depressed I am.

I'm all mixed up, I got nothing to say

I have started and stopped about 6 entries today, because I really want to write, but I don't really have anything to say. But I just finished re-reading some old journals and now I feel like I need to write something, if only to prove to myself I can write something that isn't whiny, embarrassing and forgettable.

I think the only positive thing I can say about my past writing was at least I was prolific. I could write pages and pages about nothing, and not in a Seinfeld kind of way. And I dropped so many names! In 3 days of entries (about 7 pages of writing, mind you. Oh, to have that time and energy now!) I counted 12 names-- and I don't remember anything about them. "Alex" threw a party, "Colin" was in a band. I mentioned 3 different Steves, but I can only remember one of them.

It's really distressing to read about things, written in my own handwriting, that I have no recollection of. I know my memory has been bad for a long time, and I know I've been hemorrhaging the details of my life-- one insulin reaction and vicodin tab and handful of anti-depressants at a time-- but I didn't think there would be such huge chunks of stuff that, even now that I read about them, seem new to me.

And yet I can recall in great detail all of the really embarrassing things that happened to me in the same time period. Not just the things, but the awful feelings that caused or were caused by those embarrassing things.

And on that note, I'm going to go to bed to focus on all my past embarrassments and not sleep.

Return with me to the eighties...

Where's the mixtape? It's on muxtape.
... and check out my mixtape. Then bungee right back to the present and listen to the songs.

Evolution proved once and for all

Join me or die! Can you do any less?

Well, I had plenty of time to post yesterday, but not enough clever in me to come up with something for April Fools day, so I just did nothing. Attrition deprives people of so much of what I could have done. I should embroider that one on a pillow. No, I'll have K do it.

At a friend's insistence, I've joined the Facebook. It's easy to lose track of time, searching for people you knew 30 years ago, trying to decide if you should risk trying to friend that crazy roommate from 15 years ago (hint: you totally shouldn't). I've joined fan clubs and found out my stripper name and poked people electronically. I've been catching myself thinking about what other stuff I could put on my profile to make me sound cool and yet not desperate to look so.

Not. So. Easy.