Rooting for the Pig

I got a note yesterday from a friend telling me about her upcoming planned adventures as a Great Plains huntress. Apparently, she’s going to go bow hunting for wild hogs or I’d imagine what we actually call javelinas with her new boyfriend.
The image in my head is not of her standing proudly over her kill that she’s loaded into the back of her truck with the blood of her prey painted on her cheeks, but that of a wild pig screaming, spewing blood with an arrow stuck in its throat. Such is my graphic lack of confidence in her abilities with a bow and arrow. See, to my knowledge she’s never used one. So, this idea that she’s going to arm herself with latest in compound bow technology and aim it at some moving creature baffles me. She can’t consistently pitch trash into a basket, but at least if she misses the basket it isn’t going to run screaming from a paper wad blow to the rim. And quite honestly, I’m simply not the person to share these stories with.

It boils down to the fact that deep down inside I’m not a hunter. Now mind you, I fully accept that I’m a carnivore or omnivore or whatever vore it takes to get a nice rare steak. I also appreciate that there are people out there that do the dirty work that gets the cow and chicken bits to my freezer. However, I know myself. I know that I’m not made of the same pioneer stuff that brought about Manifest Destiny. Were I part of the ill-fated Donner Party, I would have been Donner Party Snacks. I’m sure I’m the shame of many an ancestor who helped forge ahead and shape the world.

Needless to see that this weekend, I’m going to be rooting for the pig.

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Winter in Texas

It’s 47 degrees here in my city, which means one thing – it’s time to break out the big coat – winter is upon us. Wrap the pipes! Cover the plants! Crank up the heater!

Now I know some of you are thinking, “47? That’s shorts weather” and to you I say “Yankee, go home.” Forty-seven is the temperature at which I begin to burrow under layers fleece and dig out my Homer slippers. (Yes, Homer Simpson – they’re hideous but about the warmest slippers I’ve ever had and they keep the cats amused, which can occasionally be confused with disgusted or contemptuous.)

You see, I don’t “get” cold. Well, I get cold – and that happens when the temperature dips below 65, but I don’t “get” it and I sure don’t take a hankering to it. Now, I’ve been places that were colder and I always show up prepared. Prepared for a Central Texas kind of cold, because that’s the kind of cold I know. What happens next is my friend Jerry invariably drops his jaw, makes me bring out everything in my suitcase and declares everything unfit. Then there are quick calls made around to see who has winter clothes I can borrow for my stay in the cold. Then I end up wearing everything I brought for several days straight (behold the power of body odor) along with someone else’s heavy wool coat. I did this in New York at Christmas and again in the fall in Montreal. In fact, you can see the outfit I wore for about 4 days if you go to Flickr in the New York set. I had shed the wool coat for that morning, but I’m wearing almost everything I brought in that shot.

One thing the world needs to understand is in Texas there’s nothing you can buy locally, unless it’s a ski shop, that will allow you to survive north of the Mason Dixon line. If it freezes where I live, the world literally shuts down. Trust me, you don’t want Texans driving on ice or snow. We don’t have snow tires, we have zero experience driving on ice and most Texans believe kitty litter on the sidewalks and overpasses is much better than rock salt. In fact, I don’t think people south of Dallas know why you’d use rock salt. (For the record, you can really bust your tush on kitty litter – that stuff is slick when wet. I swear the person who thought of throwing litter out never scooped a cat box.)

I guess the bright side is I get to renew my quest to find those perfect pair of boots.

Folly

As I drove into work yesterday it was announced that former Representative Foley was going to name the church leader who molested him. Of course, that got me into the mental rant of “just own what you did”. Sure, it’s sad that it allegedly happened to him, but this minister didn’t text message or make lurid statements to any White House pages. Well, he may have but that information hasn’t come to light just yet.

Then it hit me. I don’t know for certain that this unnamed clergyman didn’t do this. While in the throes of doing something wholly unholy, he could have planted the idea in Foley’s head “run for office, seek out young boys, text – if that fails, offer them candy – kids are suckers for candy”. I figured it had to be that or a rabid pack of Democrats using their telekinetic powers. Sure, they can’t get voters to show up at the polls or take over the legislative branch, but they can turn one upstanding man who served as chair for the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children into a lascivious teenage boy coveting pervert. I now have new found respect for the Democrats (mostly out of fear they’ll unleash their telepaths on me).

Seriously though, I don’t want to see this man’s name in the paper any more. I don’t care if little boys make him tingly in his naughty places. I don’t care about his drinking or this alleged religious figure. He’s 53 years old and a public leader. He should have dealt with all of this by now - not when the press slaps his hands and takes him to task. There’s counseling, there’s AA. Get a sponsor, get your tokens, follow 12 steps and don’t write to little boys. See, that’s the real bummer about free will, guy - unless you’re a psychopath or have some other major chemical imbalance, you alone choose your actions. You’re accountable for those actions.

Stickers

Stickers - insidious little things. I don’t know where they came from, but it’s some place evil ruled by a malicious guy with a black heart that never beats. The same guy that brought you bull nettle. If you don’t know what bull nettle is, count yourself lucky. Nothing stings more and itches more than bare feet on a summer’s day after you’ve leapt into the middle of some of that.

Jay is busily mowing the backyard. My one job is to clean out the beds around the trees and pick up the weathered tools the former owners left behind. Yeah, yeah, so we’ve been here 5 months. We’re lazy. What can I tell you?

So, off I cheerfully trot with the city issued green waste barrel into the backyard. I grab everything close to the house and chunk it in then I make my way across the “amber waves of grain” (a term Jay uses affectionately for the Pflugerville Outback that is our backyard; he’s trying to make a case for it proving we’re super patriotic). I didn’t even reach the half way point when I can feel little pointy things tearing through my jeans up to my knees.

Clearly, my time in the yard had come to an end (well, at least until the field is reduced to grass nubbins). I tossed some more tools into the bin, marched inside, flung myself on the floor contemplating the little *insert your favorite expletive* and tried to figure out the best way to remove these vile things without getting impaled.

Of course, Jay is wearing the good gloves leaving me with a choice of mittens or something in lavender latex if I want gloves. Stickers tear right through latex. We won’t discuss how I found out.

After sitting awhile glaring, brainstorming and wondering if you could die from blood loss thanks to multiple sticker stab wounds, I came upon the solution. Tongs. I’m here to tell you metal tongs are a miracle cure for stickers. You slap those shoes down on the counter with a trash bin nearby and you too can be a sticker removing fool! Clearly I need a podcast demonstration for you guys to appreciate the brilliance of this.

Sooo… who wants to come over to my house for salad?

Re-Tackling Entertaining Ourselves to Death

At Anna's suggestion - from the forums - here's what I was loosely trying to say yesterday:

I'll vent my own spleen about this one. I don't like it. It's not strong enough. I just barf information out there without much thought.

With that said, some other things that reminded me of that book and have been going on the media in general (aside from the Paris/Nicole reunion)

David Karr... The way the stories were written you could tell from the get go he didn't do it. They wrote about how he brought Jon Benet home after school and then mention that it was during the Christmas holidays... and there was more. Then they come out with the announcement like it's shocking "oh, he didn't do it - the DA made a mistake - we've all been duped"

Then there's the shooting at the Amish school - horribly tragic, but thanks to it the media tries to invade their lives because they're off the beaten American iPod sucking track. We get story after story about the quirky Amish - their culture, religion, social structure. It's like they're skittish little sentient alien gophers - so peculiar and quaint. Instead of "it can happen anywhere to anyone - crazy doesn't always discern". The only thing that could top it at this point is if someone went after Hasidic Jews and hit one of their schools.

The other angle the media seemed to beat on with that particular tragedy - this idea that the Amish could forgive. To me that says a lot about our culture. When we sit back and say "what, the alien gophers in the buggy aren't calling for blood? What's up with that?" Let me tread in murky water a bit - we are in theory a Christian based society. Why is it then that we find the notion of forgiveness alien? Alien to the point it becomes a major news topic?

I just think sometimes we take our cues from the media. The media chooses what we find important and what gets tossed aside - it's only by reading the smallest articles in the paper that we tend to get a larger picture of our bigger world.

... and I wish I were smart enough to write about it.

Entertaining Ourselves to Death

There’s an interesting book that was published in the late 1980’s titled Entertaining Ourselves to Death. I thought about writing up a synopsis, but I find Amazon did it best with the review from Publisher’s Weekly:

From the author of Teaching as a Subversive Activity comes a sustained, withering and thought-provoking attack on television and what it is doing to us. Postman's theme is the decline of the printed word and the ascendancy of the "tube" with its tendency to present everything murder, mayhem, politics, weather as entertainment. The ultimate effect, as Postman sees it, is the shriveling of public discourse as TV degrades our conception of what constitutes news, political debate, art, even religious thought. Early chapters trace America's one-time love affair with the printed word, from colonial pamphlets to the publication of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. There's a biting analysis of TV commercials as a form of "instant therapy" based on the assumption that human problems are easily solvable. Postman goes further than other critics in demonstrating that television represents a hostile attack on literate culture.

If memory serves me correctly, since it’s been close to 17 years since I’ve read the book (I read it in my Politics of Hollywood class – I was a sucker for a good elective), then the book also covers the withering away of the average American’s attention span (less than 15 minutes). The book backs up this claim with the results of a test showing that most people cannot watch a 30-minute show and answer a quiz covering what they’ve recently seen accurately

What we’re left with then are sound bites. Sound bites will decide the upcoming election.

There are times I feel like we live in something straight out of a Science Fiction movie – that we as a society collectively chose the blue pill and are content to live in our tabloid times focused on the rich, famous and wholly unimportant. I feel we are the fat Romans enjoying our games, completely unperturbed by the larger world.

We get played by the media. When Steve Irwin recently passed away, it was sad for both his family and for his fans, but that wasn’t enough for the press. They dragged the lake and found a woman who basically said she was glad Steve Irwin was dead. They preyed on our emotions by offering up a villain to boo and hiss about day after day; the stingray just simply wasn’t as fun. It’s my only explanation as to why that obscure woman suddenly became newsworthy. That’s just an example off the top of my head, but there are so many more that happen daily. We get driven this way and that based on the whims of editors and TV producers manipulating our thoughts with the clever use of words or camera angles, but we let that happen because as a whole we cannot focus on anything longer than 15 minutes. Maybe we all need Ritalin. Of course, I digress and can’t possibly squeeze in everything we discussed in my political science class.

My Tabloid Times entry was wholly sarcastic. What happens in Vince Vaughn’s bedroom is not as important as what is happening nationally or globally. And I agree, CNN is occasionally great fun to read, but I challenge you to look for real news. That I was aware of the atrocities happening in the Sudan years ago while it’s just now becoming a media pet topic simply disgusts me.

I’ll try to end on a humorous note. What got me going on this? A few weeks ago the weatherman appeared on my TV with his fat head taking up the screen. He used the happy, overly excited, I love caffeine voice and announced, “Cold front coming to Texas? I’ll give you the hour by hour break-down of the temperature change!!!” He appeared every commercial break to scream that at me while I stared at him blankly. “Dude, I live in Texas. The hour by hour is going to go something like this: 82 degrees, 81.8 degrees, 81.5 degrees…” you get the idea. Now think of all the things that happened in the past two weeks and tell me how this rates as the news lead for the night?

Our Tabloid Times

The news came out yesterday that Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie made up. Thank God! Its been hard watching Nicole battling her eating disorder, struggling with her parent’s divorce, and seeing her endure the highs and lows, up and downs, in and outs of her relationship with her on again off again fiancé DJ someone knowing she was completely friendless. Then there’s Paris coping with the break-up from her long time friend by duking it out with every debutante and quasi celebrity on the club circuit. (If Celebrity Ultimate Fighter ever comes out, I want to see Paris paired with Danny Bonaduce or Tanya Harding. My bets will be on Paris; she’s a wily one.) Thankfully, the fates have intervened and they’re back in each other’s loving embrace ready to tackle another season of “The Simple Life”.

Then there are the Lindsay Lohan’s, Mischa Barton’s, Eva Longoria’s and who could forget America’s sweetheart (so I’m told) Jennifer Anniston. The magazines tell me they’re all important people and claim every belch they make is applause worthy if not cover worthy. From those magazines I’ve also learned that Angelina Jolie is a home wrecking pariah while Owen Wilson is Kate Hudson’s savior. I mean look at them and you can tell – the sultry brunette, obviously up to no good. Wasn’t she married 9 times before, kissed her brother on the lips and sports tattoos? HUSSY! (Saintly Jennifer giggles gumdrops according to the press. I’ve seen them!) In contrast to the hiss hiss home wrecker we have Owen Wilson - a blonde, beach kissed funny guy, riding the white horse to save damsel Kate from a loveless, not-so-fun marriage (according to her friends who wouldn’t be named that testify Chris Robinson is dull).

Congo rape gangs, the atrocities happening in Dafur, human rights violations left and right (to the extent that I can’t list them all)? Who cares! I want to know more about Mel Gibson’s fall from grace. Naughty little anti-semite. I want to be inside the home of one of those slain Amish girls. I mean, it’s not every day the media gets to set foot on their turf. And aren’t they an odd lot? Bonnets, buggies and barn raising. Then they have outlandish notions about forgiveness. - how delightfully quaint. Makes me want to grab one up and hug it.

Serve me my news covered in high glucose corn syrup and a side of sound bites! Ahhh… just the way we all like ‘em.

Ig Nobel Prizes

The Nobel Prizes have been awarded so it was only a matter of time before the Ig Nobel Prizes were announced at Harvard. According to the news this morning one of the awards went to the person who did research as to why Woodpeckers don’t have headaches. The other prize went to the person who discovered a sound – it’s one that many stores now play – the one only young people can hear that is supposed to discourage loitering, shop-lifting, pre-marital sex, iPod usage, Goth-ism (it’s an AMAZING sound!).

Until 6:30 this morning, I had never heard of these awards but I applaud the person who came up with the idea. See, for the past couple of months I’ve been jotting down studies that have made me snort in hopes that I could think of a way to write about them. These are studies that make me wish I could be part of a think tank that sat around all day imagining ridiculous things to study and issuing research grants. I’m absolutely certain I would enjoy this as much as the job I keep begging for at work - the one where I get to create pointless and cumbersome spreadsheets to have people review frequently. Hey, we all have a dream and it did make my supervisor laugh. Little does she know that I’m completely serious.

Some of the findings from studies that have caught my attention (incidentally all mentioned on NPR):
- 20% of male left-handers who graduated from college are more successful than right-handers. Although, it’s not true for left-handed women.
- People in a free economy prefer zippers and Velcro as opposed to people in a closed economy who prefer buttons
- Eating fish on a regular basis will help you remember your grocery list
- People who never vary what toppings they order on their pizza are prone to procrastination. Whereas, people who order vegetables make better parents.

How the researchers involved in these studies did not receive the accolades they deserve escapes me and I can only hope that their work will be considered next year.

Curses!

When it comes to things paranormal, supernatural or that fall into the general category of “too woo woo” (a category that captures magic crystals, magnets, or lighting sage bundles in a cleansing ritual) I’m a huge cynic. Sure, I watch my “Ghost Hunters’, but they debunk and nothing makes me happier than when they show the owners of the “haunted” house how if you just open this door and hop on the middle board the other door will always open without fail. On the other hand, when they can’t explain how the door opens or why the infrared picked up something moving towards them that wasn’t there, then I get a chill. Still, I live in the realm of the explainable with very few exceptions. The kind of person who could argue that the sun didn’t come up if I didn’t see it. Sure, it “likely” came up based on how the universe works, but how do you know for certain?

Still, I’ve had my share of Ouija boards. (I’m supposed to meet a guy named Ben Fitzpatrick in the library and we’re going to be married according to the little magic Matel board as predicted in 1983. I hope you all can make it to the ceremony.) I have a deck of Tarot cards, wrapped in silk, only touched by me and kept in a safe place. They’re so safe, I couldn’t tell you where they were at the moment. I burned an elective in college on an anthropology course titled “Magic, Witchcraft and Religion”. I’ve put prayers in the stump at the Voodoo museum and stuffed pennies in Marie Laveau’s mausoleum for luck. I also have a voodoo doll straight from New Orleans who has been stabbed many times while I rubbed the ju-ju beads and put my thoughts in the gris-gris bag. Heck, I can even tell you a bit about the Lao, Papa Legba, Oshun and Oya if pressed. In that same breath I could tell you about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, too.

I “want” to believe, but my brain gets in the way and the only time I do believe in things that go bump in the night that aren’t serial killers named Julie is in that fog I wake up in at 2am while stumbling into the bathroom. I have a terrific imagination and ability to scare myself senseless.

The other night Jay and I were talking about curses. Sure, I believe curses work if the person cursed truly believes they are cursed, but then it’s really their mind that’s cursing them not some hooey involving black candles, rooster’s blood and an egg. Jay asked me how I knew they didn’t work. “Trust me, I try to curse people all the time and nothing ever comes of it.” Proof positive cursing doesn’t work! Of course, then I realized I was being a little ugly by fessing up and added, “the only thing I try to curse people with is self-awareness. I want people to become more self-aware of the person they actually are.” Jay basically said, “what if they did and they just don’t care.” SHOOT! I didn’t account for that. My curses might have been working this entire time and it just figures THOSE people wouldn’t care – just like them. Cursing is like those twisted little genies in the lamp – sure, you get your three wishes, but if you’re not very specific, the stories show the wishes always go awry.

Now it’s back to the old drawing board. I have to find the voodoo doll and start the project anew. See, you approach it like any good scientific theory. You hypothesize, test and wait for the results. I’m still certain it won’t work, but if you all wouldn’t mind, I’d like some hair clippings (yours) and maybe some fingernail clippings (also yours) – make sure to clean before you clip. I’m not growing things in a petri dish thanks to your poor hygiene; I’m trying to curse you. In a few months, if you feel more self-aware of whatever it is in your personality that might be irritating me then please take steps to correct it. Blowing it off is not the answer and it won’t go towards changing my beliefs on any of this stuff. Your participation is much appreciated. I’m looking forward to helping you become a better person.

NOTE: People who do not participate in the forums will be cursed with or without clippings. I’m sure I have something personal of yours at my house. Don’t test the Lao.