Sarah Palin -- really? REALLY????

Last Friday, Senator McCain picked Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate in the presidential election. Though I’ve never used this blog to voice political or even moderately serious thoughts of mine, I simply can’t help but react to this latest McCain blunder. About a month ago, Palin said she wasn’t ready to discuss being VP because she didn’t know what the VP did; moreover, she wanted to stay in her more “busy” and “active” job as Governor of Alaska. It’s certainly saying something that she thinks being second in line to become Commander in Chief is a smaller, less-productive role than being governor of less than 700,000 constituents.

Governor Sarah Palin’s resume includes two terms on City Council and two terms as Mayor of Wasilla, a town with a population of 8500. This means that anyone who's been president of a mid-sized university for that length of time has as much experience as she does. She's currently only two years into her first term as Governor of Alaska, which by the way has a population of 670,000, or just over half the population of that sprawling land mass, Rhode Island. But thanks to the erudite leadership of John McCain, a person who's never been voted for by more than 120,000 people and has never worked in national politics, is now a potential leader of the free world.

Governor Palin is married to her high school sweetheart, who happens to be a competitive snowmobiler. I don't know what that is, but apparently it is in line with the activities of "ordinary" Americans. She has five children, the youngest of which is named Trig, like trigger, as in gun(!!). Sarah is applauded for having had Trig even though she and her husband were well aware he had Down Syndrome a few months into the pregnancy. That is not only a sacred and personal decision, it is one that takes both courage and resilience as a parent, and I do applaud her conviction in her beliefs. You see, when you have the freedom to choose, you get to display conviction to your own beliefs, not just the ones McCain/Palin would like to legislate.

A small part of me rejoices in this, the latest in a series of misguided campaign decisions, because now, I am certain, McCain will not be elected. No one can say in seriousness that Sarah Palin is ready to lead a nation (some are saying it out of a habit of making hypocritical statements, but that’s a whole 'nother issue). Despite a strengthened belief in an Obama/Biden victory this November, however, I am still plagued by the worry of what-if.

What if McCain wins? Sure the idea of a woman in the White House is exciting on face value alone, but this particular woman will likely prove to be an incapable vice president for a number reasons, chief among which is her startling lack of experience. When she does so, which she will, she risks hurting the cause of so many other aspiring female candidates in the years to come. If Kennedy hadn't been such a salient and capable president, no one would point to him as a shining example of religious difference in the Oval Office, thus encouraging the political careers of the many well-qualified Catholic, Jewish, etc. men and women who followed his groundbreaking presidency. And if Sarah Palin flops as she surely will do, she will become an all-too-visible and simply unrepresentative example of the kind of bumbling misdirection a woman will bring to the White House. I can just hear it now: "Don't bring any more in. Remember that Sarah Palin chick? What a mistake that was."

Considering the average life expectancy of an American male is 77 years, it would simply be imprudent to ignore the possibility that 72-year-old McCain may not make it through four years in the White House. What then? One would think McCain would make an extra effort to assuage such fears and concerns related to his age and health with his VP pick. I certainly assumed he would choose a person with a resume that rivals his own; someone whose years of experience on the national and even international level could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he/she was ready to lead the second “VP” turned to “P.” Instead, he picked Sarah Palin. We want a president who is in touch with ordinary Americans, sure; but do we really want an actual, ordinary American in the White House? We seriously, seriously do not.

The greatest problem I have with McCain’s VP pick is that, once again, his decision has proven how misguided and illogical he is as a leader. Every move he has made in this campaign has been motivated by a follower’s mentality: What do the voters want to hear? How do I get them to like me? What will make them like me more? A true leader works to change minds, inspire others, and move forward with an agenda he or she believes in and remains loyal to. Instead, McCain has become almost cartoonishly desperate for approval and support, lowering his standards, which should be presidential, to the level of TMZ and perezhilton.com. This time, instead of carefully selecting a viable vice presidential candidate, he jumped a bandwagon that wasn’t and wound up with a soccer mom.

No one doubts this was a political decision; this is, after all, politics. But if McCain is after the women's vote, or more particularly, the vote of hardheaded Clinton supporters, he would have done better to align himself with someone who is not her ideological opposite. Women are not going to go after anything with boobs that moves like a drunk in a dive bar, and it is frankly both disturbing and insulting that McCain thinks otherwise.

Haikus for all occasions.

"Memories"

Somber lilies
Hollow box and gone forever
Which one was Uncle Howie again?


"The Dirty Deed"

To-die-for body
Killer lips kiss mine
Oh no, you're a double agent! Aaaaaaahh--- (thunk)


"Turning Point"

Three weeks
Still no blood
Fuck, I think I'm pregnant


"Pros and Cons"

Lying bitch
You cheated with that guy from Whole Foods
But, your apartment has central air.

development meeting minutes

July 2, 2008

In attendance: Landry Marks (Principle), Katie Delano (Head of Development), Martin Banner (Screenwriter), myself (Scribe, Office Wench)

Agenda: Discuss sequel to horror movie MOMMY TRIED TO KILL ME (previously SPOILED MILK), opening wide in August.

10:00 AM

Meeting begins. Landry re-announces our film will be getting a wide release. Many rounds of "congratulations" consume the better part of an hour. It is generally agreed upon that we are all great geniuses, brilliant artists, sexy beasts, etc.

10:45 AM

Landry brings up the recent title change for the film, spurring a second round of needless self-congratulations. Each attendee takes a turn explaining the intricate, yet vast greatness of our new title. Generally takes the form of:
- This new title is so amazing. What were we ever thinking with the old one?
- I know, we are such unparalleled masterminds of the universe.
- I have such a very large penis!

11:30 AM

Landry approaches Martin with the idea of doing a sequel. Martin appears interested. They discuss whether he will be paid nine or ten times the amount of my yearly salary. They settle on ten.

11:50 AM

We determine the following things in the next forty-five minutes:
- The sequel should be scary.
- The lead character should be in it.
- The mother (who died in the last film) should not be in it.
- People should go and see it.

Martin suggests Abigail and her "father" become engaged in a tryst. I laugh out loud as he is obviously joking. I am told to leave the meeting.

12:40 PM

Am invited to return to the proceedings in order to take the lunch order.

Submitted by:
Ashley Beaker
Assistant to Landry Marks
Landry Marks Entertainment

Letter from a Precocious Youth to His Grandmother

12 June 2008

Dear Grandma,

Thank you for the pajamas you sent me for my birthday. Even though I was hoping for a new set of water skis (I believe I mentioned this to you over Thanksgiving and again in our phone conversations on March 12 and May 7), pajamas are a much more practical alternative, so I can understand the substitution. Unfortunately, they do not fit and are purple; nothing against the color, but I'm pretty sure you grabbed the garment from the girls' aisle, yet again. You also forgot to remove the price tag. I apologize if this sounds ungrateful, but $3.99, Grandma? You really broke the bank on that one.

As you should well know, I am now in the third grade. While I have a near prodigious knack for numbers (enough to know you are exactly six point five times my age) and what Ms. Lindt calls a "darling precociousness," among many other gifts, what I am lacking is a new titanium-framed bicycle. If you do not know what one looks like, please consult any of the folded pages in the enclosed catalog (which you will probably recognize from three previous mailings). In lieu of a bike I see you've chosen to provide me with another coloring book - one that used to belong to Annie Hodgekiss, according the inscription on the inside front cover, a daring, but talentless young artist who thought - and drew - outside the lines on more than half of the well-worn pages. I would like to say that my love for you does not hinge on your gift-giving ability. However, since my parents deem in necessary to live in excess of three thousand miles from you at all times, and I remember you only as that funny lady with spotted hands who smells like stale cigarettes, all other discriminating factors on which to base my affection are simply unavailable. Purple jammies and used coloring books are about all you have going for, or against, you at this time.

As a minor, I am denied rights in a manner not unworthy of its own constitutional amendment. Daily, I am reminded of my own powerlessness in a most humiliating and demeaning fashion: the need for permission to make a bowel movement during gym class; a school system that fears ingenuity and praises conformity in all matters of spelling, mathematics, and even world history; and a weekly "allowance" that keeps me dependent on adults for all but superfluous items like bubble gum and Cheezits. My parents exercise tyrannical control over every aspect of my existence. My broccoli intake, the cleanliness of "my" room, and even my sleeping regiment has been predetermined by their primordial insights on child-rearing. I bring this up only to assure you that I am not capable of any serious maliciousness. Any ill will I feel can and will only take the form emotional absence: a cold shoulder at our yearly reunions and my refusal to sign any future greeting cards purchased by my mother, but sent to you on our entire family’s behalf. However, by observing my parents I have learned how powerful emotional unavailability can be, and so I shall wield it like a heavy iron bludgeon in your general direction.

Act now, Grandma, and you can salvage the unsalvageable. Without drastic and immediate improvement, however, the future of our relationship shall bear the unmistakable signs of spiritual and emotional emptiness. It shall be cordial, of course, but also disingenuous, superficial, and painfully unfulfilling. Perhaps this does not seem like the greatest of threats to you now, but when I'm in my prime and you're on your third artificial hip, you will see the error of your ways, and it will be too late.

Yours in relation and obligation only,
Timmy

Encl: Bicycle Catalog; Itemized List entitled, "Suggested Gift Items for Use in the Immediate Future".

Putting things into perspective.

Sometimes when life really gets you down, the easiest way to start to feel up again is to put your own woes and miseries into perspective. It's hard to complain about the lack of a parking space when you remind yourself, in a moment of somber reflection, that there are people in this world who unclog toilets for a living.

The other day, I arrived at work at six a.m., only to be sent out again at nine on an emergency grocery run. Nine o'clock is, of course, when every other car is just driving into the claustrophobic parking structure, while I was trying to get out. Since two vehicles can never round a corner at the same time, I only finally managed to scrape through, literally, by gauging the side of my three-month-old Toyota against the cement wall. (As my friend Mike once accurately determined, hell is most definitely a parking garage.)

Once in the grocery store, a search for large, unsalted, hard pretzels, toffee-coated pralines, Diet Cherry Dr. Pepper, and Slim Jims ensued, which meant only one thing: the boss was in town. I once purchased a single pack of gum on the company dime during one of these excursions only to have to cough up the ninety-five cents in a large public display of my powerlessness. But three boxes of pretzels no one else will eat, twelve dollar pralines, and a twenty-four can set of nasty ass cola for a one-day only appearance is, apparently, fine-d-dandy.

I return to the office to an accusing chorus of "Where were you?" Everyone's in on this one, but by the time I remind them I'd been there since six, two hours before anyone else might I add, they've all lost interest. I become known as the office slacker.

"What were you doing last night?" Jill asks me, after I let loose a particularly jaw-popping yawn.

"I was here."

"Sure."

"Until ten." I point to Jarvis, the other production assistant. "We both were."

Jarvis thinks he is funny, but isn't. So when I say, "And then I was sleeping," he jumps in with "Around!" and proceeds to explain why his joke is so hysterical. It has to do with the comic timing and the play on words.

Jarvis is an asshole. But I don't tell him this. Instead I think about the fact that I could have been a caveman. Now that would have sucked. Can you imagine? An entire existence based on just trying to freaking survive. All you do is hunt and try not to get mauled by a woolly mammoth or clobbered with a large wooden club wielded by a hairy guy named "Ug," who likes to say things like "Ug Ug Hoo Ug Ug." And you can't even tell him what a loser he is because you're a caveman too, and all you can say is "Ug ug hoo ug," right back.

Jill is reading over the receipt. "Where are the pralines?"

I look over her shoulder and point. "Right there. Above gingersnaps."

"No," she says, putting one hand on her hip so I understand the seriousness of the situation. "Where are the pralines?" I follow her eyes down to the bags.

Fuck.

Sometimes the grocery store feels like a second home to me. My first being, of course, the office, which probably explains why, lately, I've been so down on LA. In my first home, I am office wench; in my second, I am service boy. Or girl. I am not especially great at either, and am told so often. My true talents lie in a job I will not be qualified for for at least another seven years. Apparently, making coffee and photocopies for that amount of time is the only suitable preparation for a career in writing. My third home is a fairly decent apartment I hardly ever see and pay for, but only just, by home number one.

Forty-five minutes later, I return with pralines and a monster headache, roughly the size of Jill's ego. I settle into my daily activities, which, being utterly mindless, allow me to contemplate the existence of slugs and how much it must suck to be one. To be just two solid inches of slime, and that's it. I could have been born a slug. I could have lived as a blob of goo and died as a smear on the pavement. And as I sit at my desk “looking up stuff on the internet,” the entire span of my hypothetical, meaningless slug life spreads before my eyes. Day one, I am born. Day two through nine-hundred and eighteen, I just sort of hang out, maybe move a couple inches now and again, just for the heck of it. Day nine-hundred and nineteen, I find a rotting apple core on the side of the road; this is the highlight of my existence. Day nine-hundred twenty, some eight-year-old nose-picker steps on me on his way home from school. My final moments are just a blur: me, dying on the pavement, while Nose-Picker scrapes his shoe against the curb. He points one germ-filled finger in my direction and says, "Eewy." As if it’s my fault my innards are all over his foot.

I can’t even tell you how glad I am not to be a slug.

"What are you so happy about?" Jill wants to know. In our office, happiness cannot be trusted.

"Just happy."

She gives me a look. The look. Then, "Don't forget ink cartridges."

"I didn't," I say, pointing to my computer as proof. I am ordering office supplies from staples.com. It is thrilling. My parents and college professors would be proud.

Any existence in which being bludgeoned is, like, a real concern I think deserves to win some sort of pity prize. Lately, I think I’ve been taking my lack of bludgeoning for granted, and that stops now. Because even though the boss would like our refrigerator door to open in the opposite direction, and I am charged with removing the door, switching the hinges to the opposite side, and reattaching it back to the frame, I can go through my day soothed by the realization that I will not be challenged to a duel, or contracted into mercenary work, or impaled by a jousting lance while riding a horse named Goldenfire.

Four hours later, Jill looks over my handiwork, then tells me I smile weird, and I should stop. This is because if she doesn't say something mean once every four minutes, her central nervous system will spontaneously combust. But I'm over it. I could have been a beetle 'got run over by a motorbike. 'Nuff said.

In some ways, my day continued to go south, but with my new life perspective in place, nothing seemed nearly as bad as the plausible alternatives: I could have been a tire swing; I could have married King Henry VIII; I could have been a concubine. Worst yet, I could have been a prisoner during the Roman Empire, forced to battle a lion in an open-air arena with my bare hands. I don't know about you, but in a fight between me and a lion, I will lose. It's just a fact I've come to accept. I once took an online quiz that assured me I could "take" thirty fifth graders, but a lion is a whole 'nother story. In fact I'm willing to bet one lion could take thirty of me. The beauty is, I'll never know for sure.

---

ADDENDUM: More about slugs and why I'm glad I'm not one...

"Slugs are hermaphrodites, having both female and male reproductive organs. Once a slug has located a mate they encircle each other and sperm is exchanged through their protruding genitalia. A few days later around 30 eggs are laid into a hole in the ground or under the cover of objects such as fallen logs.

A commonly seen practice among many slugs is apophallation, when one or both of the slugs chews off the other's penis. The penis of these species is curled like a cork-screw and often becomes entangled in their mate's genitalia in the process of exchanging sperm. When all else fails, apophallation allows the slugs to separate themselves. Once its penis has been removed, a slug is still able to participate in mating subsequently, but only using the female parts of its reproductive system."

--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slugs

Countdown to 24.

In six minutes, I will be twenty-four. There are a lot of things I meant to accomplish before becoming 24, and now I'm really feeling the crunch. Can I publish a well-respected novel in less than six minutes? Uh oh. Five now. Dammit.

Here are some of the other things I've yet to do, which, by the way, I'd definitely planned to accomplish before this very day.

1. Become an international pop sensation.
2. Stop a forest fire (I may actually have done this, but I'll probably never know).
3. Fall in love in the requited sense. Yes, yes, I know. Sad, sad...
4. Hold down one job that made me feel truly important for more than one year.
5. Hold down one job that made me feel truly important for more than one day.
6. Learn to blow smoke rings.
7. Tear down the house with my karaoke stylings.
8. Score a date at the grocery store.
9. Streak. It's definitely too late now.
10. Cease getting pimples.
11. Appreciate red wine.
12. Skate backwards with speed and agility, but without fear of death.
13. Fully understand my car's internal combustion engine.
14. Sustain a relationship for longer than five months.
15. Learn to play guitar. Perform at an open mic night.
16. Incorporate words like "bollocks" and "cheeky" into my everyday vernacular.
17. Brave a Brazilian wax.
18. Cook a gourmet dinner (without getting seriously flummoxed and threatening to burn the house down).
19. Invent a new word, publish it three times, and call it a day.
20. Use a chainsaw. Saw stuff in half.
21. Correctly apply make-up to face.
22. Grow four more inches.
23. Successfully swim the butterfly stroke from one end of pool to other without looking like a dying seal.
24. Genuinely and whole-heartedly love Shakespeare.
25. Master an English accent. Convince total strangers I am British.
26. Have my shit, like, all of it, together.

It's now 12:34 AM, countdown is over, and it's time for bed. Goodbye early twenties and hello mids...

I hate everything about you, no offense.

"No offense" is the weirdest saying there is. Ever notice how it's always preceded by something incredibly mean or insensitive, but then the magic phrase comes around and you're, like, not allowed to be mad? In fact, if you do get mad, the other person will probably come back with, "Hey, I said no offense." Yes, but you also said I was an immature ugly-face. I chose to pay attention to that part of the sentence.

Next time someone tells you "no offense," remind them that two little words can't erase a sentence-full of meaning.




BE AWARE: Even if someone says "no offense,"
they still ARE offending you.


No offense is much like the expression "just kidding." This is another magic phrase that makes it your fault if your feelings get hurt because you can't take a joke. But "just kidding" actually means "and by the way, this is what I really think of you."

While just kidding allows you to mask your true feelings in the guise of a bad joke, this type of deceit is ultimately harmful. Here's an example:

-Do you think we should break up?
-Yes. I feel stifled. You're unbelievably controlling and a terrible lay. Just kidding.
-Haha. For a second there I thought you were serious.
-I was. (pause) Just kidding! Gotcha again!
-Oh Eddie!
-Oh Babette!
They smooch. (Seems nice, doesn't it? But just wait.)

Fifteen Years Later:

-I want a divorce.
-We can't get a divorce! We have two kids and a dog and a split-level house in the suburbs.
-I've wanted to break up with you since 1994.
-You always said you were kidding about that.
-It was just a line, Babette. Like, "Nothing would make me happier." When I say "nothing would make me happier," I am also lying.
-Oh I get it. So you actually hate visiting my parents?
-Yes.
-And taking me to the movie theater?
-Yes. But only because you always have to get up to pee, and then when you come back, you make me tell you what happened while you were gone, and then I always miss something pivotal, and it ruins the whole film.
-Eddie, why are you doing this? Just give me one reason.
-Don't take this personally, but I hate you in every way.
-No, I mean, why couldn't you have done this ten years ago when I was still cute and un-cynical? Now we're both forty pounds overweight and we have baggage and a mortgage. You prick! Why did you say "just kidding" all those years ago?
-I don't know. I was a spineless coward, I guess.
-No kidding. (pause) Haha.
-Haha.
-Maybe we should just stay together and be miserable. What's fifteen more years?
-Nothing would make me happier.


On the other hand, sometimes it's fun to tell someone it is personal even when it isn't:

-Do you know what time Billy's coming over?
-No, he didn't call me back yet.
-Oh.
-What?
-What? Nothing. Just... it's probably personal.