A Rock To Tie A String Around

Today is my tenth wedding anniversary. Which actually marks more like fifteen years of togetherness, which in turn inspires a sentimental blog. The Husband and I met on his first day of college back in 1995, I was his RA in the dorms, and he got me in a whole big bunch of trouble. Turns out you’re not supposed to be crushing on your residents when you’re an RA. Who knew?

But in honor of The Husband, who is beyond doubt the most inexplicably amazing man that I’ve ever met or hope to meet – I’d thought I’d let you in on our strange little world. Yes, we frequently communicate through movie quotes, and we still giggle like schoolgirls over our extremely old, and strange inside jokes.

Here are a few of our faves, in case you’re ever over at our house for boat drinks and wonder what the hell we’re talking about (incidentally ‘boat drinks’ come from Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead’ it’s part of the vernacular around the homestead)

Here ya go:

1. “I don’t know no loud crash….” Magnolia, from the scene near the beginning where they are searching the apartment of the woman who has her dead husband stuffed in the closet. Something falls over and when John C Reilly asks her what it was, she replies with the above.

We like to use this phrase anytime any unexpected noise occurs. It doesn’t have to be a crash, it can be a car horn, a loud belch, really anything. It’s become a little like slug-bug, we jump to be the one to say it first, then we usually have a gigging fit. Yes, we’re awesome like that.

2. “This one’s goin’ this way and that one’s goin’ that way, and there’s this guy in the middle sayin’ hey! whaddya want from me?” Goodfellas, when Joe Pesci and Ray Liotta are in Joe Pesci’s mom’s house and are admiring her newest painting while that guy in the trunk of Joe Pesci’s car tries to claw his way out….

We use this one every time we see an unexpected piece of art. We would probably say it every time we see art, but I think we are both afraid of overusing its funniness. I don’t know if that’s possible. No, it doesn’t make any sense, yet we laugh every time anyway.

4. “Don’t waste my motherfucking time…” Heat, Al Pacino says this in perfect Al Pacino accent, you have to really draw out the motherfucking part, and then when drop the I in Time, phonetically it sounds like: muthafucking taahhhmmee

The sentiment is obvious; I often want to start chanting this at faculty meetings and other events where someone is doing just this exact activity. The husband and I say it pretty often; not always appropriately, I think the appeal is mostly to do a bad Al Pacino impression.

5. “I’m on a mission from God.” Blues Brothers, classic, I can’t imagine we’re the only really awesome couple to use this in regular conversation.
We usually use this little gem to explain why we’re doing anything that is seemingly inexplicable. Why are you pouring dish soap in the washer? I’m on a mission from God sounds much better than ‘You mean this is bad?’

6. “Have you ever transcended time and space?” “Time yes, space no, Actually I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I Heart Huckabees, Jason Schwartzman and Dustin Hoffman discussing Schwartzman’s coincidence with the tall African guy.

I think we were the only people on the planet to like this movie, and we really, really like it. We use this to parlay our frustration concerning a conversation that we were forced to be a part of that made no damn sense.

7. “Gettin’ too big to cuddle” “Got a wart on my fanny givin’ me the fidgits” “Nothin’ more foolish than a man chasin’ his own hat’” “You two are dumber than a bag of hammers” “You know, for kids…” “All for a little bit of money..” “Gotta have a breakfast” “Go Bears” “I know it’s a lot! A hell of a lot!” “The Dude abides” “It really tied the room together.” “Leave my special lady friend alone.”

I know, it’s a whole Cohen Brother’s medly. We use these a lot. I mean, a lot. They usually don’t make sense, they usually only make us laugh. Although in the future, I imagine that our progeny, Mr. Adorablepants, will feign laughter for our expense.

We have what is known as Cohen Brother’s Induced Tourettes. We blurt out random Cohen Brother’s movie lines at random, in socially inappropriate situations and even without the assistance of box wine, laugh hysterically at our own inept timing.

Yes, we’re awesome.

In short, after ten years of marriage, and fifteen years of friendship and dating – I am madly, deeply and incredibly in love with my husband. Thank you for getting me, thank you for laughing at all my ridiculous jokes, and thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for being my north star.

It should be an interesting election, the primaries sure were. California primaries were pretty much as expected; we took down our yard signs for Winograd and Kate Anderson discreetly. One of the many reasons I support yard signs over bumper stickers, you can easily remove yard signs…bumper stickers…not so much. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: you don’t want to be the guy with the faded, peeling Gore/Lieberman sticker hanging by a thread to the backend of your car. Not that you should be ashamed of voting for the losing candidate, although in that race, the ‘losing’ status was certainly debatable. Rather, it just reeks a little of desperation after awhile, plus it show how long it’s been since you really washed your car…

So no, California was no big surprise to me. I hope Jerry Brown beats out Meg Whitman, although I know that won’t save me the next few long months of suffering through her ad campaign, which, if it’s anything like the ridiculously annoying banter she kept up with Steve Poizner, will prove to be nail on chalkboaresque.

What was fun about the primaries as they unfolded around the country, however, was watching the comedic fodder that is the tea party take seed.

Harry Reid must be stoked. I would be. I mean c’mon, Sharon Angle? She’s an incumbent’s dream opponent. She’s radical in a totally off her rocker kind of way. Any reasonable republican and all democrats, moderate or not, will run screaming from this one, leaving only the small, crazy hoard. I suppose that crazy hoard could grow, and she could win Reid’s seat, and I will certainly eat my hat if she does. But, I have to say for a state like Nevada, it seems startling unlikely.

For those who haven’t been following this bag of wind, here’s a little breakdown: she’s the tea party favorite who supports cutting off funding to the Department of Education, wants doctors to have to inform women seeking abortions about a controversial (and proven false) link between abortion and breast cancer. She also supports prohibition, which in a state that houses Vegas, the city of free-flowing alcohol, is pretty amusing. And finally to add a cherry of crazy – she’s not just a tea partier, she’s a scientologist who supports therapeutic, touch point, massage for violent criminals as a major part of their rehabilitation and integration back into society.

Nevada, listen to me for a minute, please vote for Harry Reid. He may be deeply flawed, but he certainly hasn’t threatened those margarita stands in the Vegas malls. I get very protective about margaritas.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/09/sharron-angle-nevada-cand_n_605754.html

Sharon Angle isn’t the only tea party candidate out there. You’ve all certainly read about Rand Paul in Kentucky. Son of Ron Paul, the infamous libertarian, he is not named after Ayn Rand, contrary to the popular rumor, but that really doesn’t make him any less loony in my book.

Rand Paul made the infamous gaffe to Rachael Maddow a week or so ago when he spoke about the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He believes that private businesses should have the right to discriminate against patrons based on race, religion, ethnicity, gender, age….you name it. He stated to Maddow, that the government should not be dictating how a private business owner runs his or her operation.

Okay….but, I think we saw how that turned out, right? I’d like to think that we’d all just inherently do the right thing and not discriminate. But anyone who’s spent any amount of time in the deep south will support me when I predict that within a month of Rand Paul’s disintegration of the Civil Rights Act, we’d have segregated lunch counters and bathrooms marked for ‘colored’. I wouldn’t even limit that to the south, there are racist wingnuts all over who’d love nothing more than to tell a person of color that they had to get the hell out of their establishment.

Rand Paul also supports rewriting our current immigration laws to state that children of illegal immigrants born in the United States should not be granted citizenship. I know there are those who agree with him on this, but I just don’t understand the logic. Actually, that’s a lie. I do understand the logic. It’s the logic of angry, small-minded people. If we can focus all our anger and rage on innocent victims of our broken immigration system, get all our venom out on those who can’t fight back – then we feel like we win a small victory.

The problem is that victory is nothing more than an illusion. Sending a family and their American born babies back to Mexico doesn’t solve anything. But it takes far too much energy to get angry at the appropriate targets: businesses who take advantage of cheap, illegal labor. Politicians who have supported our broken system of indentured servitude in this country, making our agricultural industry reliant on illegal immigrants who will work sixteen hours a day for pennies on the dollar.

But I digress. My point is this folks, while I will certainly find the silver lining in the comedic material that these two would provide, let’s please not encourage the crazy. I would like to make fun of these nuts from a distance, not while their reeking havoc in Washington.

Most of my fun Rand Paul facts came from here:

http://blog.buzzflash.com/dailybuzz/943

and

3D makes me feel old. I saw no fewer than five movie billboards on my drive home today, and all of them advertised ‘3D!!!’ I gave the 3D movie thing a chance, I went to see Avatar, in fact I wrote a whole blog about it if you dig back a ways. But my 3D problem with Avatar has nothing to do with CGI super-effects, nor does it have to do with overly elaborate sets and flimsy plotlines.

It’s the principal.

I remember 3D back in the old days. You could buy get those blue and red glasses from McDonalds with your Happy Meal back in the 1980’s, and then they would play the black and white monster movie on Saturday night and everyone would crowd about and gawk and the 3Dness of The Fog or Creature From the Black Lagoon.

My point is that it was unusual. I didn’t need special glasses just to watch television, and I certainly didn’t have to wonder how I was going to get my two-year old to wear them in the event that I decide to try to take him to Toy Story 3. So far, I’m opting out of even trying. One factor is that he screams ‘BUZZ!!! BUZZ WHERE ARE YOU?!!!!” at top of his toddler lungs whenever he sees anything Toy Story related. But the bigger factor in this is that I know for a fact that he will never wear those 3D glasses, and I have not found a theatre that is premiering the 2D version.

I feel like Andy Rooney grouching about how many varieties of fruit are sold in the grocery store….back in my day we only had apples…green ones, and we liked it…..

This could very well be me in a few very short years....

But five movie billboards, all of them 3D? Really movie people? Another issue I have with the 3D revolution is that it necessitates super big, CGI, action blockbuster, special effects marvels. Sometimes I just want to go see a movie with actors, and a good story, and great dialogue….like the green apples…..back in my day….

Samsung is even marketing 3D televisions. So many problems with this – for one, I can’t be the only one who has absolutely no time to watch television. I watch TV while I’m doing other things. I can’t cook dinner in my 3D glasses just so I can glance at the TV every once in awhile. I can’t even remember the last time when I was able to sit down on the couch and watch TV, just watch TV.

Clark Howard, consumer advocate for thrifty living and good investments on Air America and elsewhere recently discussed the warning that Samsung has put on its 3D television sets, not here in the US, but in Australia.

“If you suffer from, or have a family history of epilepsy or strokes, please consult with a medical specialist before using the 3D function..”

Call me crazy, but I don’t think I should have to worry about my television giving me an epileptic seizure.

This is even better:

“Those who are sleep deprived or under the influence of alcohol should avoid utilizing the unit’s 3D functionality.”

I have a toddler, I am in law school, and I work full time at two different jobs. Sleep deprived is my constant state of being. Under the influence of alcohol? Does box wine really count as alcohol? I think not.

Here’s the last warning that Clark Howard posted:

“Children and teenagers may be more susceptible to health issues associated with viewing in 3D and should be closely supervised when viewing these images.”

http://clarkhoward.com/liveweb/shownotes/2010/06/02/18539/

Ooh, I really want one now. Not only may it harm me, but it’s much more likely to harm your kids. Who’s going to buy this thing? Seriously?

Part of my 3D issue is that I don’t generally like action/super-effect movies that aren’t called ‘The Matrix’. Maybe I’d get into this new way of viewing movies if they started 3Ding things that were more to my taste….like ‘Sabrina’ the Audrey Hepburn version, of course. Maybe they could 3D ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ I love that one….or ‘Muriel’s Wedding’….Australian, Toni Collette masterpiece….

Something tells me I just won’t be going to movies until that Australian warning kicks in worldwide and we drop these new-fangled ideas and get back to our green apples.

*shakes cane at laptop and plucks out a handful of gray hair….*

It’s official that Top Kill didn’t work. Did we really think it would? Evidently, we need stronger stuff to fill in the gaping hole in the bottom of the Gulf and stop the flow of oil that is threatening to end life as we know it not only for millions of marine animals but also the human inhabitants that depended on the fishing and water industries. I can’t even think about what will happen once the oil reaches the loop current and starts traveling up the east coast.

Instead of curling up in a dark closet somewhere and trying to drown out The Hollow Men that keep echoing in my ears, I’ve been reading about all the other possible solutions that we might just want to start consider trying, despite the crazy and politically jarring consequences they might have.

I’ll start with my favorite:

1. Waterworld and Titanic Collide:

Back when Kevin Costner was filming his epically terrible dystopia Waterworld, he began to get interested in water saving environmental technology. Around that time he started investing in Ocean Therapy Solutions, a Louisiana based company that works to create water therapy systems that can separate water and oil, as in the instance that say, a huge oil rig explodes and threatens to turn the world’s oceans into a toxic stew.

He has invested over twenty-four million dollars into this technology, which is run by private contractors and scientists over the last fifteen years. Now enter James Cameron – remember the Titanic submersibles? Those deep diving contraptions they used to make the Titanic documentary that accompanied the hackneyed Leo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet saga? Well, Cameron has offered his submersibles to accompany the water therapy gizmo that Kevin Costner has offered our government as a possible solution for the problem.

Am I crazy or should maybe we think about this? I mean, really, could it hurt? I’m a fan of trying everything, even if you aren’t sure it’s the right answer in lieu of sitting around talking about solutions while all the fish die a slow death and dead dolphins continue to wash up on beaches.

The government hasn’t responded to their offer…yet.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/05/which-celebrities-should-follow-kevin-costners-lead-in-the-oil-spill-cleanup-efforts.html

2. Nuke, Baby, Nuke:

You’ve all heard about his one by now. But the idea is basically that we surgically position nukes deep within the hole, we set them off and the sheer power of the blast causes a massive cave-in, which seals the geyser.

There are obvious problems here, the best of which can be thought of as an analogy to chemotherapy on a cancer patient. Yes, chemo works to kill the cancer cells…it also kills everything else around it. The patient gets sick; sometimes the patient dies from the therapy instead of the cancer. The sicker the patient is with cancer, the weaker they are, the less likely they are to be able to withstand a strong bout of chemo, so you have to weight the options. Do you risk a cure on a weakened patient that will mostly likely kill them? Or do you figure that you’re probably going to die from the cancer, so might as well try?

The nuclear option is a little like that. There are perks though, for one, it’s been done before – the soviets have nuked five similar geysers back in the cold war days, with an 80% success rate, roughly the same as chemo. Plus, the faster we plug this hole, the faster we can actually figure out how to clean up the spill. Most of the pro-nuke crowd touts that the oil spilling into the ocean is far more harmful than the effect that the underwater nuke would have.

Now as you can probably guess, BP doesn’t exactly have nuclear warheads on hand, and despite the change in the political climate, I’d be pretty surprised if we allowed them to use a dirty, commie soviet nuke to do the job. So that leaves us…we have approximately 5,113 nuclear warheads that belong to the United States.

But, can a president who won the Nobel Peace Prize and demanded for us to disarm our nuclear weapons ever use one for any purpose? What if the consequences of not using one meant we will all die a slow death as our food and water sources are turned into a toxic sludge? What if the consequences were a potential planet ending geo-political war caused in part by a wave of oil washing over coasts worldwide?

What then?

http://www.oil-price.net/en/articles/use-nukes-to-contain-the-oil-spill.php

3. Hay!

Two southern farmers have come up with what might be the most elegant and simple solution yet. Now, to be fair, they don’t know how to cap the geyser…but they have come up with what appears to be a pretty good bet on getting the oil out of the water.

Hay. Evidently hay soaks up oil like a sponge. In the link below, you see their demonstration, but for those who can’t watch the video, I’ll explain. They dump oil into a bowl of water, and then top it off with plain old hay. They swish it all around for a few, simulating waves and then lift it off and tada! A clean bowl of water and oily hay.

They go on to say that shrimping boats could go out and skim the oil soaked hay off the surface, or you could even wait till the hay hit shore and haul it away then.

Watch Demonstration Here

I don’t know the effects that hundreds of millions of bails of hay would have on the eco-system, but I’m pretty sure it’s better than oil.

Heard of any other solutions? Tell me about it!

The Gulf Oil Spill is enough to make anyone crazy, but those among us who were borderline anyhow were pushed right off the ledge by this catastrophe. I’m not much of one for conspiracy theories, but some of these are just too good to pass up. So, I thought that instead of just another blog about how someone should make a giant wine cork and plug up the ocean floor, or how we ought to be planting nukes Soviet style – I thought I’d walk you through a few of the nuttier conspiracy theories that are floating around in the ether.

1. Rush Limbaugh: Happy Freakin’ Earth Day

“… what better way to head off more oil drilling, nuclear plants, than by blowing up a rig? I’m just noting the timing here.”

http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/gulf-of-mexico-oil-spill-springs-a-gusher-of-conspiracy-theories/19463861

Yes, Rush’s working theory is that the environmentalists blew up the rig in order to thwart any further off-shore drilling efforts, and to show the world the horrors of oil drilling and our reliance on fossil fuels. The dirty liberal terrorists timed their attack to coincide with Earth Day, for dramatic effect.

Okay, I’ll bite. After all, the United States does have a context for violent demonstrations on part of radical liberal groups. Most of them puttered out in the 1960’s and 1970’s and organizations like The Weather Underground and The Symbionese Liberation Army have been long gone.

This particular action is missing a key component, however. The Weather Underground and the SLA wanted the public to know that they were responsible and why they did what they did. Statements, manifestos, demands, threats most of the time publically issued. The point of being a domestic terrorist was to draw attention to the wrongs that they felt the government was committing.

So where’s the note? The manifesto? The letter to the New York Times, the youtube, the Washington Post expose that explains the motives and purpose behind such a horrible action? Besides, I don’t buy that an environmentalist, no matter how zealous, could ever bring him/herself to risk an action that could potentially kill the world’s oceans. Yes, kill the oceans, no hyperbole about it.

2. New World Order: Thinning the Herd

According to this highly reliable conspiracy site…cough, ahem…

http://pesn.com/2010/05/27/9501657_Gulf_oil_gusher_conspiracy_cover-up/

The New World Order, a nefarious doomsday group, is set on reducing the world’s population to a mere half a billion. So in order to do this they have hit go on the doomsday ticker and the dramatic soundtrack swells….Kevin Costner comes walking into view, the sun setting behind him…..

I joke, but it does have a Hollywood conspiracy movie quality to it. Evidently, according to Sterling D. Allan of Pure Energy Systems News, the NWO had cause to blow up the rig.

Item of Evidence #1 of the timing of the blast, again with the Earth Day irony. They chose Earth Day to deliver not only a crippling environmental blow to the masses but also to destroy their morale.

Item of Evidence numero dos is the fact that Homeland Security is on high alert for civil unrest. Civil unrest is like Christmas time for the NWO, according to Allan that is. If the NWO can get everyone riled up enough, anarchy will ensue.

Item of Evidence #3 is Allan’s assertion that the US Government is willfully cooperating with a cover-up campaign. His evidence is a video he shot of the supposedly live BP feed that he feels is nothing but a fifteen second loop, obvious evidence of hiding what’s really going on.

Huh?

3. The North Koreans: We Sunk Your Battleship er…Rig

http://www.libertarianrepublican.net/2010/05/north-korea-found-to-be-responsible-for.html

Jim Lagnese of LibertarianRepublican.net got an email from his friend Eric this week that showed the obvious correlation between North Korea sinking the South Korean ship and the likelihood that they also probably torpedoed the Deepwater Horizon Rig. According to Lagnese, it’s Occam’s Razor – the simplest answer is usually the correct one – at work here.

Isn’t it blatantly obvious? If the North Koreans could sink the South Korean ship, then obviously the most simple culpability in the gulf oil spill goes to them by default. It’s the easiest possible answer to assume that the North Koreans were able to sneak missiles past all branches of military and civil patrols, strategically aim them at the Deepwater Horizon Rig and, then without any evidence that would ever hold up in court, they just fired away and disappeared into the night the same way they came.

When you type 'North Korea' into google images search, this oversized bunny comes up, maybe this is how they snuck the missile into the gulf.....

It’s all totally clear to me now.

So there’s three conspiracy theories to name just a few. In my defense, I tried to make this balanced, I tried to find liberals who were blaming conservatives and came up short. In my research, all the conspiracy theories seem to be coming from the side of the fence that have long been howling about how regulation will kill the American dream and how the government is over billing our dependence on fossil fuels and the increasing danger in drilling for an ever-dwindling resource. If anyone out there has found any conspiracies from the liberal side, please share.

In the immortal words of Woody Guthrie: “Left-wing, chicken wing, it don’t make no difference to me…”

Recently, a friend told me about bananas. Yes, bananas. I had no idea that the sweet bananas that we buy at the grocery store were the product of cloning, and have been for some seventy-five years. I automatically envisioned scientists working away in a lab, wearing white coat, and splicing DNA to create a superbanana, a banana that would replace the regular banana and result in a TNT movie of the week.

There are lots of reasons for cloned bananas, most of them revolve around the diseases and bugs that attack the crops; Black Sigatoka fungus is one, weevils another. The idea behind cloned bananas is that they are resistant to the strains of weebie jeebie bugs and banana illnesses so farmers in impoverished areas can farm them without trying to afford expensive pesticides and without having to struggle with crop loss.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/07/0726_wirebanana.html

So, essentially, my TNT movie of the week Attack of the Superbanana idea is decidedly less threatening and more of an agricultural documentary. Yawwwnnnn.

But still I didn’t give up, I knew there must be some kind of Machiavellian Scientific plot in this, after all, isn’t cloning always, always evil? I mean really, have you read The House of the Scorpion? Nancy Farmer does a bang-up job of showing us just where those cloned sheep will lead. Bananas are just the floodgate. What’s next? Harvesting banana parts so the larger, wealthier, creepier bananas can live for 150 years?

So I told myself, there’s still a cloning story in this, some kind of Ayn Rand nightmarish fantasy about cookie cutter vegetables and its inevitable lead to Mao. So I did some more homework on exactly how this fruit and vegetable cloning thing works.

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/817/

Turns out you can clone at home, in fact you’ve probably already done it. As I found out, cloning is as simple as taking a cutting from a plant, putting it in the dirt or a little dish of water, letting it root, and there ya go – evil plant clone.

Yawwnnn. How can I turn this into an ecological nightmare?

This isn’t the first time that science has disappointed me with its facts and seemingly simple answers to things like Black Sigatoka. I’ve had many good ideas for dystopic horror stories that were ruined by science.

Greenland

National Geographic has a headline this month that reads: Ground Zero for Climate Change. Climate Change is scary right? What’s scarier than rapidly changing temperatures that make for erratic and horrendously dangerous weather patterns, especially when that Climate Change has been set into fast-forward by human pollution and waste? And what about the indigenous people who are dependent on the ice fields of Greenland for their livelihood? Scary stuff right?

Well, according to the article, the people of Greenland are actually somewhat pleased with the changing climate. Turns out that under all that ice, is oil. So when the fishing economy is gone, we’d do well to start learning a little Greenlandic, cause I have a funny feeling that Nuuk will become the new Dubai, hey maybe you can even hold hands and kiss in public in Nuuk.

Plus, the warmer temperature are making more like it was back in the old days, back when the Vikings discovered Greenland and started trying to lure settlers. Crops that have never grown before are flourishing in Greenland. So what kind of nightmare can I write about? A horrible cloned cabbage invasion that takes over Vestgronland?

Stupid Science, ruining my plot lines.

I love the law. I love trying to figure out the derivations of law, the implications of law, I love legal terminology….love it. Which is why I loved Huffington Post this week. I’m sure you’ve all read this article if not seen the actual broadcast on the Bill O’Reilly show (I’ve been told by my doctor to stop watching O’Reilly – he puts into anaphylactic shock, I’m evidently horribly allergic to public buffoonery).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/10/sarah-palin-american-law_n_569922.html

image

My favorite gal Sarah Palin told Bill O’Reilly this past week that we were not only a Christian Nation, but also that all our laws were intended to be derived from The Ten Commandments. Now, before you get defensive, I’m not here to bash Sarah Palin, I’m here to support her. She’s a busy gal; therefore I think at times that she says things without really thinking it out. That’s why I’m here – for you Sarah, I agree. We need a standard, those shifty founding fathers with their Deist theology and freedom from religious tyranny radicalism obviously were short-sighted enough to not realize what the far reaching implications of their liberal/commie/Nazi agenda really was.

We need to go old school with our laws, I’m talking Old Testament people, we’ve been prancing around wearing mixed fibers and eating shellfish for far too long. Look where it’s gotten us, we live in a nation where preacher’s daughters are free to practice whoredom without the God granted fear of being burnt at the stake (Leviticus 21:9) and cattle freely grazes with other cattle completely unaware of the fires of Hell that await them in the great cow pasture in the sky (Leviticus 19:19).

check out his devil horns and cloven hooves

I think we can all come together on a few key points here though, there are a few indisputable Commandments that will make Sarah Palin and the rest of the world Cumbajah this thing right out:

Do Not Kill

Sure right? We don’t want to kill anyone, of course, ‘Do Not Kill’ covers a lot of ground….who don’t we kill? Foreign enemies? Wolves? Elk?

And while Sarah Palin’s beloved Alaska has never had a death penalty, she’s stated many times of her support for the death penalty in a general way, favoring the death penalty for child murders, and expressing her intent to sign any death penalty legislature that might come her way. So we can kill those people, I mean they have it coming.

Keep The Sabbath Holy

If we’re going to do this thing, I want to do it all the way. Keeping the Sabbath Holy isn’t just about going to church, or letting out a hallelujah – it’s about not working at all on Sunday, not a bit. I’m all for this one, I end up doing a crapload of work on Sunday, and it’s about time someone outlawed that. If you want to see Sarah Palin’s feelings about working on Sunday, here’s a link to an interview she gave on Sunday, February 7th:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/02/07/transcript-fox-news-sunday-interview-sarah-palin/

But let’s get specific here, if we really did have a Bible based law system, what exactly would spring up? Here’s a few good guesses:

1. The Long Haired Hippy Act of 2010 based on Leviticus 19:27, which tells us: “Don’t cut your hair nor shave.” My husband didn’t cut his hair or shave for several years, he looked like the spitting image of Jesus, does that count as a graven image?

not The Husband, but I knew Brad Pitt was on the cutting edge of something

2. The Anti-Ray Charles Decree: Leviticus 21:17-18 reminds us that “People who have flat noses, or are blind or lame, cannot go to an altar of God” Sorry Ray, if it’s any consolation, I think the damned need eternal entertainment more than the blessed.

3. Bring Out Your Velvet Elvis Cleansing prompted by Deuteronomy 13:12-15: “If you find out a city worships a different god, destroy the city and kill all of it’s inhabitants… even the animals.” If you’ve ever been to Memphis, specifically Graceland, you get why this we need this law. Do we really need to tour Elvis’ private jet? Really?

In short people, it’s time to wise up. I haven’t even discussed the homosexuals, the menstruating women, the men who sleep with their wife’s mother, or father’s wife, or the free-range cotton/poly blends that are the scourge of this nation. Psychic Sylvia Brown, Maury – pack a bag for commie land, when we get this Ten Commandments Law thing down, we’re coming for you – unless of course it’s a Sunday….

All Bible Trivia courtesy of:

http://biblebabble.curbjaw.com/laws.htm

To add a scoop of crazy on the sundae of madness that is Arizona’s Immigration Law right now is this new education policy written by Arizona Governer Jan Brewer:

“…schools will lose state funding if they offer any courses that “promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, promote resentment of a particular race or class of people, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals…”

In addition to keeping ‘Overthrow the Government’ off the daily agenda for the public schools, this reform will ban teachers with ‘heavy’ or ‘ungrammatical’ accents from teaching English classes. This comes despite the fact that Arizona has spent the last few years explicitly recruiting teachers whose first language is Spanish for the purpose of broadening bilingual instruction.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/30/arizona-ethnic-studies-cl_n_558731.html

I know what you’re thinking, who would want to overthrow the government? Who would even want to teach it? I can’t even get my students to identify parts of speech and write a decent thesis statement, much less come up with a plan for world domination.

Jan Brewer isn’t the first one to worry about the threat of foreigners with strange foreign ways and foreign accents and their obvious desire to destroy our apple pies and Fourth of July Fireworks displays. Her brother from another mother – Joseph McCarthy also had this fear.

You all read The Crucible, don’t pretend like you didn’t have some well-meaning English teacher cram factoids about McCarthyism down your brain somewhere between ninth and twelfth grade. But just in case your English teacher had an accent, I’ll recap.

In 1940, the government, under paranoia about encroaching foreigners with strange foreign ways and foreign political philosophy enacted The Alien Registration Act, which reads much like the new Arizona Education Reform. It promises not more than twenty years prison, and ineligibility of employment for the crime of:

“…intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or attempts to do so; or Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government…”

The long and short of both acts of legislation is that despite the founding premise of our country, we are now quite filled up with strange foreigners and their strange foreign accents and philosophies. We were cool with the British and German immigrants; we even showed our benevolent sense of inclusiveness to the Irish, but jeeze, enough with the huddled masses already.

The problem with Arizona, and the problem with The Alien Registration Act of which Joseph McCarthy was a huge (if not the biggest) proponent, is simply that it defies the very fabric of what makes America American. We were founded on the premise of overthrowing systems that had become antiquated and had stopped serving the best interests of the people. The Second Amendment lays it out there for us, despite the fact that the popular interpretation is that I should have the right to carry a machine gun over my shoulder to the grocery store – it actually defends our right to form an armed militia in the event that our government needs to be overthrown.

We are entirely composed of displaced people from all around the world. In fact, we made it our mission to almost entirely stamp out any Native American culture and/or influence in this country. So what is different about the Mexican immigrants who didn’t follow the rules of naturalization and my Welsh Grandmother who also failed to file her paperwork when she came here in the 1900’s?

Not much really. I’m protected by the fourteenth amendment the same way that many of my students are, the same way the freed blacks back in the 1868 were. If you were born here, you belong here. You are assured all the rights and privileges of being an American, which means that it is not only your right to overthrow a broken system, but your responsibility. So to teach students that thoughts of overthrowing the government are un-American is not only erroneous, but also more importantly dangerous.

Defenders of Arizona’s immigration and education reform have said that it’s the liberal media that is creating the idea that this will encourage racial profiling. I challenge them to tell me how it will not. Reasonable suspicion, banning school lessons that promote ethnic pride and/or solidarity – these catch terms are justification to hunt out people who look differently, speak differently, worship differently and send them back like the ‘wretched refuse’ they were when they came.

One might take a cue from the Stasi, and see how the implantation of paranoia, fear and forced loyalty worked for Berlin. Of course….if this Arizona thing doesn’t settle down on it’s own, we can always just build a giant wall down the middle of Phoenix…

Hmm….

It’s Earth Day Weekend People, time to not water your lawns and compost your vegetable waste. As an author who attempts to incorporate environmental issues into fiction – it makes me think. I live in a world of ‘what if’s’ and in this world, it’s impossible to not freak myself out about every environmental disaster that’s happened in the last 100 years. I see any and all environmental breakdowns as a chance for a horrifying plot.

So, I thought, in honor of Earth Day, I’d let you in on my thinking process a little – and scare you a little with the scary ‘what if’s’ and ‘what has already happened’ around us.

1. The 1952 London Smog Disaster: Yep, a smog disaster which lasted from December 1952 until March 1953. A horrible combination of pollution, high moisture and light winds created the perfect storm for a cloud of English Smog that killed nearly 12,000 people – mainly children, elderly and infirmed.

At times the visibility was limited to a few meters in front of the face (British for ‘can’t see shit’) and on December 8th and 9th peaked a death toll of nearly 900 deaths per day. The smog was thick enough to actually infiltrate businesses and buildings, closing down industry at its height.

http://www.lenntech.com/environmental-disasters.htm#4._The_1952_London_smog_disaster

Now, monsters? No problem – I see tons of horrible with this, I see the potential plot line of all government or police control disappearing and civilization disappearing into the hands of the masses – Jose Saramago horror style. After all, mankind is much scarier than any monster out there. I could also see a good, old-fashioned brain eater scare in that scenario, the undead, wandering in the fog….searching for fresh brains…. I also see the potential for serial killers, psychotics….basically human monsters finding solace in the smog, under the cloak of darkness…..well, you know….

2. Chernobyl: Nuclear Power Plant Explosion

On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl Power Plant Reactor #4 exploded, killing 31 straight out. Two days later 10,000 times the normal level of Cesium was polluting the atmosphere, finally causing the Moscow officials to be concerned. One day after that they evacuated the area surrounding Chernobyl, by May 2nd, the cloud of radiation had reached The Netherlands – causing the consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables to be banned for health reasons.

Yikes right? The initial evacuation zone has been a permanent ghost town; the animals still test at astronomically high radiation rates, and the amusement park rides that were never used still hang in space, collecting cesium and dust.

As far as monsters go – I have to say zombies, but I would also argue Island of Dr. Moreau-esque mutants. I can definitely see a series of intelligent, yet genetically fucked up deer/rats/dogs ravaging the forest, moving ever closer to a major city. Sure, you’d have to know a bit about Russian language/culture to write that story – bu think it’d be worth it. Yes?

2. Centralia, Pennsylvania: Ever Played Silent Hill?

Yep, Centralia is the disputed inspiration for the Silent Hill game and subsequent movie, although I’d argue that the real thing is much scarier.

In 1962, a trash-burning pit lit an underground coal reserve and created an underground inferno that King James would be envious of. The fire has been burning for forty-eight years now, and no sign of going out. At first, the residents of Centralia were reportedly happy about the warmer climate, however, the carbon monoxide levels in the early 1980’s reached life threatening levels and sink holes caused by noxious gas pits threatened to swallow more than a few neighborhood kids. Most of the residents accepted the fact that their houses had been condemned and took the federal government grants that allowed them to abandon their houses and relocate elsewhere. A few diehards stayed put and said toxic gas is okay with them, it’s the evil government that needs to keep it’s nose out of their business.

Monsters? Definitely the wing nuts that stayed behind. I can only imagine the health effects that huge amounts of carbon monoxide would have on the brain after a few decades, plus the already zealoutous mindset that would cause you to not only second guess the government health officials but also ALL of your neighbors and the giant man-eating sink-holes in your back-yard.

Please, someone do the Silent Hill story justice. The movie was okay, I liked it. But there’s just so much more potential out there. You can make this seriously scary, just imagine a tea-bagger caught in an ever-burning incarnation of Hell on earth with a carbon monoxide flooded brain – in short think Michelle Bachmann.

Just kidding…sort of.

Happy Earth Day Everyone, and remember, with every holiday comes a writing potential, don’t let the monsters pass you by.

I recently turned thirty-four, not exactly old….but a little too old to call myself young. I think it officially lands me in my in middle thirties, and edges me out of the still youthful early thirties category

There are certain things that I just didn’t ‘get’ until I got into my thirties; it wasn’t right on the dot of thirty, but as I edged toward my present age – there are just certain things that suddenly began to make sense where no sense was seen before.

Here’s a short list:

1. ‘Landslide’ by the incomparable Stevie Nicks: I always liked it, I thought it was pretty. If I had ever had any musical talent, I probably would have played it on my guitar in my twenties. But the concept that you build your adult life around a person, and make them not just a partner but also a part of you was lost on me until rather recently. Removing me from my husband would be like amputating the left side of my body.

I don’t mean that in a co-dependent kind of way; rather in the sense that we’re a part of one another’s DNA now, we’ve been a couple pushing fourteen years, my adult life has been shaped by him. He’s seen me in unimaginably ugly circumstances and I would hope equally lovely ones….at least I hope….

But I’ve found recently that I’m offended by the twenty-something buskers strumming away on their guitars and singing Landslide on street corners or American Idol. They can’t possibly get it, especially the single ones. Sing a Miley Cyrus song instead young people; leave us old farts to wallow with our antique Stevie Nicks’ tapes.

2. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: Ever since my thirtieth birthday, I have toasted every birthday with possibly the best line from American Literature in the history of everything: “I’m thirty, five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor.” Seriously, as a writer can you ever hope to write something that great?

I read it in high school, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t for a class; I was a nerd like that. I read it in college for a literature class. I read it right before I had to teach it for my Student Teaching at East High School in Denver, Colorado. I never really got it until this past year or so.

There’s something so devastatingly tragic about the loss of potential and the idea that Gatsby and Daisy will never, ever be together – and what’s more – they shouldn’t be together, that she’s happy with Tom and she should stay married to him. I think I realized in my thirties that Daisy should anchor her life to Tom and her daughter and stop daydreaming about Jay Gatsby, and that realization made pretty much all my literary romantic dreams tank and then grow up by about twenty years.

Conversly, I think The Great Gatsby is also about how badly we can fuck up our lives in our twenties just by being shortsighted and stupid. Daisy telling Jay Gatsby ‘Rich girls don’t marry poor boys’ ruined his entire life, and hers. She never ended up with who could have been her one, true love and Gatsby spent his whole life trying to live up to her snobbish accusations of inadequacy.

The Great Gatsby is really about the idea that love – real, true, love isn’t about a handsome guy you knew when you were twenty. It’s about the guy who carried you across the grass so your feet wouldn’t get wet in your thirties.

3. Risotto: It’s a rice, it’s a main dish, it’s a setting for your finely chopped cilantro and blue cheese crumbles….but up until recently it was a boring substitute for food that I never would have ordered in a restaurant.

Then I made it. You can thank Gordon Ramsey for this one. You can only watch Hell’s Kitchen so much until you get curious about risotto. How can it go so wrong? How can it inspire someone to throw it against the back wall of a kitchen in a rage?

Well, I get it now. Mostly because when it’s cooked right, it’s freakin’ delicious. But, in order to get it right, you have to be patient and keep stirring, and ever so delicately adding the right spices and veggies. In my twenties, I would have hurled the saucepan and the risotto into the trash in the first ten minutes.

Not now. If given the chance, I will stand there for hours, perfectly the just right creamy yet not mushy risotto consistency. This might also be a sign of insanity.

The real idea behind risotto is that the energy you put into your food is what you get out of it. So it might take me a little while to make the ideal risotto dish, but at the end of the process, I know that I breathed life into a previously shriveled and dry grain of nothing. Ten years ago, my idea of cooking was ordering Chinese. Now, I will gladly marinate, chop and steam in the pursuit of a good meal.

There’s a lot more, but at the risk of writing the world’s longest blog, I’ll leave you with these three. Tell me, what did you come to appreciate over the years?