Gimme Indie Rock!

Your duty: listen to last week's This American Life. Seriously. Download it, subscribe to the podcast, listen to it online, but listen.

I don't have words to express the outrage and disappoint I feel. I mean, I've known and been upset about plenty of things this administration has done, but these stories really drive home some unsettling facts. Bush's abuse of signing statements, the administration's bullying of everyone, the complete loss of checks and balances.... how can we have let this happen? It's criminal. Grah.

In which I shake my tiny fist: How is it that in all the belly aching and complaining about taxes in this country that no one ever complains about the craziness of treating urban salaries like their rural counterparts? Of course I make more money than a librarian in Oklahoma, I live in Boston and I need to make this money to pay living expenses. But according the federal government, I make a lot of money. No, I don't, it all goes out to the high rent, the T pass that only gets more expensive, the food that costs more here than elsewhere.... I don't see why people in Boston/NYC/DC/San Fran/LA/Chicago don't complain more about this, we get shoved into tax brackets we don't deserve to be in. And it's not like many of us city dwellers can afford a mortgage, so we get no special home owning deductions.

Also, I propose that rent should be payable pre-tax. Why not have it possible to arrange with your payroll department for them to send out your rent to your landlord from your paycheck before it's taxed? Electable, not mandatory, of course. That would be super helpful for those of us who live in places where rent eats up a third of your take home pay. Health care is important enough to be treated this way, but a roof over your head isn't?

In non-piss-and-vinegar-news, I feel like I've been rocking the kung-fu lately. My goal is that by the fall I'd like to be able to go up to the advanced class. Maybe. It might be more realistic to hope for that for a year from now.

Great, it's been a while since I've opened one of the email forwards from my mother, so I was about due for ( this treat )

Tonight we see The Smashing Pumpkins!! Rock!


Alright, I hate to admit this, but I actually agree with Ron Newman on something in the Davis Square community. There's just so much asshattery going on in this thread, I have to bring it to your attention. OMG. Let's harass people who are just doing their job, get angry when they are not friendly because they are working while you ask asinine questions, and then proceed to make wild assumptions about what's going on and suggest "running them off" to prevent "atrocities" of urban development from happening. What a great idea! *headdesk*

Open letter to the jerk who stole my lunch from the work fridge:

What. The. Hell.

Oh my god, people. Escalators: Walk Left, Stand Right.

What is so hard to understand about that?!

You know what sucks? Trying to get to JP and ending up in Newton.

You know what fucking sucks ass? Trying to get home from JP and ending up in Mattapan and then the back roads of Roxbury. After midnight.

JP, you and I are not going to be cool for a while.

The worst part of the drive, though: seeing two or three lights in a weird formation in the sky ahead of us. The lights kind of twirled, then blinked out. I swear to god, if we hadn't been so lost I would have lost my shit right there. I was convinced it was a ufo. Then a minute later, about 200 yards from us I saw weird lights again, this time they kind of fizzled down, and I realized it was just some jackass setting off firecrackers.

Thank god for Patriot's Day, this weekend came and smacked me upside the head. Having this day off is so nice.

Friday night and all day Saturday I volunteered for Beer Summit. Come inside the cut for ( ranty time )

So that was Beer Summit. I'm done pulling the Iron Man for that, though. I'll be happy to volunteer for a session or two (especially at Oktoberfest, since that involves tips), but I'm not sacrificing a weekend to it anymore.

Yesterday I had a lovely brunch with tenillypo, mrs_muffin, and aquarianna6.

Today I'm going to do groceries, clean the apartment, try to hire a maid, and hang out with the bunnies. Man, that "hire a maid" part sounds so bourgeois.

So well over a week I asked my mom what I thought would be a pretty easy question. I asked her why she voted for Bush. I asked without judgment, promising that I would neither sneer at her views nor try to correct them. Today I get ( a response )

Wow. This invective and rage against Europe is just...crazy. Not the mention some good old-fashioned racism thrown in, with some jingoism sprinkled liberally atop.

Well, in other news, my work's kitchen is awesome. They gave us strawberries!

Reasons why apartment complexes can be pretty cool:
-Heat & central a/c usually included (in Braintree even electricity was included)
-dumpster for trash, so you don't need to haul anything out to the curb once a week
-landlord will never live in your building

The last may be the best reason. Just had a heart-pounding encounter with landlord's son, who mentioned that the old guy has a problem with our bunnies, so I showed him the cage and how clean the area is (thank the lord for having company yesterday, the place is spotless right now). He pointed to 2 little pieces of hay on the floor and said his dad would notice that kind of thing and be upset about it. Like hay on the floor is damaging to the strucutre of the building. Ack! I hate dealing with landlords, and it makes me so nervous for them to talk about my little fluffkins. Since when can a landlord dictate how you clean your apartment (if it's just the kind of uncleanliness that doesn't actually damage anything)? My bitchy "I know landlord-tenant law" side is raring to come out, though it's got to stay under wraps because I very stupidly never noticed that there is still a "no pets" clause in our lease. Regardless of the verbal agreement, that's what would be binding in court. Leave my bunnies alone, I say!

For the past five years (good lord, has it been that long?) I have been receiving various and sundry email forwards regarding how great God is, how bad democrats/left wingers are, and how cool Republicans/right wingers are. These come from my mom and her illustrious new husband. Now, normally I either skim and chuckle, delete without reading, or smack my forehead and roll my eyes. Rarely, one will come across me that I feel the need to respond to. I believe the last was a particuarly bad gay joke that got my ire up, I simply responded that I would appreciate it if he (new husband guy) didn't send me anything homophobic ever again. I also thought it would be a good time to try some remedial education along the lines of "gay people aren't bad" and threw in the "Hey, you know, I'm bisexual, you've spoken to me, I'm not so bad am I." What I got back was something along the lines that he just didn't want to have anything to do with "those people." So anyway, today I got a forward about a quote from a recent speech of Hillary Clinton's, something about taking back the tax cuts. I wrote back to everyone on the forward list that the ellipses in the quote indicate that it's somehow been manipulated (i.e. words are missing!). Ok, so I might have added that the tax cuts didn't benefit any of us, so I didn't see why they (the Southern gentleman and his clan) should be upset. I may also have tried to dispel the myth that democrats are Robin Hoods who just want to steal money to give to crackheads and homeless people (adding some embellishment here). So now I'm getting emails from Southern Republicans along the lines of this: "Jen, it's not your money and you are not entitled to a penny of it to support the causes you happen to like!":
Whaa? I'm not asking for it! I...but...if it's not my money, then how is it this guy's money? I need to go back to just smacking the forehead and deleting. Why can they not be reasoned with??!! I would actually enjoy the political discourse if they would take their fingers out of their ears and obey the rules of basic logic.

Look at me, I can't stop posting today. I blame it on the Blue Moons that are apparantly still fermenting and brewing away in my stomach, it's making me loopy. I'm boycotting unfiltered beers for a while.

So I'm getting my hair cut tonight, and I have to get out my tipping rant. Tipping drives me crazy, I hate doing it (mostly due to my lack of wanting to do math, I tend to way over-tip). It's more the principal of the matter that if I'm paying for a service, I expect it done well and in a pleasant manner just as a matter of course. I do my job well and am nice to people I may not want to be nice to. I don't get tips from the lawyers for finding a book or answering a question. I mean, I can understand that many service-job people are seriously underpaid, but I'd rather just pay a little extra up front to get them a decent pay than have to deal with tips. The whole tipping in a hair salon thing is so awkward, too. I never want to go back to the person to slip 'em a ten spot for not giving me 80s hair, so I usually leave it at the desk. I wouldn?t mind if it weren't so obligatory. Sure, if someone does a truly extraordinary job with something, they deserve extra, but how many times has someone provided you with surprisingly stellar service?

Ahem.

As seen in this week's MA Lawyer's Weekly re: gay marriage: "three reasons offered by the state for restricting marriage to heterosexual couples, to wit: that it made for a favorable setting for procreation; ensured an optimal setting for child bearing; and preserved scarce state and private financial sources."

Because as soon as gay people get married, all straight folk will immediately cease to fuck, marry, and divorce. Of course. Wait a second...so if crazy homophobes stop procreating out of protest, maybe we'll have a few less ignorant assholes in the world... yes....*rubs hands in a Mr. Burnsian fashion*
Oh, and last I checked marriage tends to bring in tons of money, especially for private financial interests. Try ordering flowers for no reason. Then try ordering flowers for a wedding.

The whole procreation argument is so patently stupid that it's hard to argue against, it's like arguing with a two year old.

Homophobia makes me want to kick things people.

I swear to god. If I ever teach grad school, anyone who asks a "single space or double space" question automatically fails. That's it.

Overheard at the bar where we were eating dinner tonight: lame-o college girl saying she was hungry & that the food at a nearby table looked good- when her friends told her she should order something (as they were getting food, too), she said "I can't eat anything! I can't drink anything other than water!" Girl's friend then said "you can eat and puke it up later."
Girl seriously did not get anything other than water.

Oh my god.

Food is not an enemy, people! Seriously, you have to actually take in calories for your cells to function. I know I'm not the only one who eats three meals a day and also believes that snacks that involve fruit (and lately cottage cheese for the protein) are good for you.

Ahem. Rant over.

oh the ( state of the union address )

i am so horrified by the grammy nominations. not that i really expect them to reflect actual talent and music that maybe, um, mattered in any given year, but AVRIL LAVIGNE???? 5 nominations???? sk8tr boi?????? that song is possibly the biggest piece of crap Ever. what irks me the most is that she posits herself as being so "different" and "punk." her music is just as fluffy as anything by britney spears or nsync, and acting as if it's not is annoying. i wouldn't have nearly as much of a problem with her if she admitted that it's all pop, regardless of whether you have a skateboard in yr video. come on, green day was so much more punk than the blink 182's/avril's/sum 41's of today, and green day eventually lost almost all of their punk credibility.
blargh.

i hate to admit it, but out of curiosity, i watched Joe Millionaire last night.
the shallowness was overwhelming. and entertaining. well, it was more entertaining to make commentary on it with my roommate, and suggest better pick up lines than the ones those chicks came up with, such as: "pirates are cool!," "hand me a pabst!," "what is your take on the works of Rushdie?" and "that is an excellent sonic youth record you have there."

where do they find these people?
it saddens my feminist sensibilities to hear women state "i don't want to be the breadwinner." what?!
at the end, one of the voted-off women stole a bottle of wine. that was sweet.

I have been filled with a sudden writing fervor, brought on by not paying any attention at all to my most boring class tonight on cataloging (dear god, it must be more interesting than it seems tonight- how do people spend their entire lives doing that?). anyway, on to thoughts.
thought #1:
as inspired by sketchy unkempt guy i walked by today who, apparently, thought it would be most appropriate to tell me that i "look like i need a kiss." and also, credit due to sketchy guy-in-car from last week who thought that it is not a totally socially unacceptable thing to do to a) stop me as i'm walking down the street to inquire as to my possible european origins, as i have "cute style." and subsequently b) follow me into the parking lot of my work in his SKETCHY car and say that he just wants to talk to me. WTF?
is it me? i am a sketch-magnet to the highest degree! i used to make eye contact and smile at passers-by when i first moved to the city, and when i realized that was certainly giving strangers the impression that i was dying to sleep with them, i quickly ceased to do so. My rhetorical question is this: does any man actually believe that someday, some lady will actually respond to their sketchiness in any way that may possibly lead to hot dirty sex taking place? and, do these people honestly have no idea how threatening and/or degrading it is to have strange, sketchy-beyond-words men saying lewd things to them?

hmmmm.

onto thought #2:
it was recently brought to my attention that i tend to see people as who i think they could be, not as who they really are. i tend to think of it as being optimistic, or generous, or at least forgiving. i don't know where i'm going with that, or even what rhetorical questions i could possibly pose. i'm just pondering.

well, back to class......

Addendum, post-further reflection (class clearly did not suddenly become more interesting)
i think it would amuse me to have t-shirts with clever responses to sketchy comments on the back. these could range from the simple: "i would rather not have sex with you." to the complex: "i am not looking for validation of my sexual appeal today." and the obvious: "the lip ring does not mean i am particularly inclined to sleep with you."

i shouldn't take these things so much to heart, but i'm little and, though loathe to admit it, not too strong. being singled out makes me feel vunerable.
i guess that's all the rant i've got in me for the night.