Question: When y’all were in college and it came to the idealistic notions that virutally all of us have at that age, how did you express them? Like, did you find people who shared your interests, band together and work to change the minds of others? Keep it to yourself? I ask this because last night, I met for the first time the horror that Political Correctness hath birthed, and either I was a dirty hippy in my past life or students these days are engaging in pragmatism far earlier than they should.
The jist: A grad assistant with the school brought forth a non-binding resolution to the campus’ SGA so it could declare March 19-23 “Peace Week,” where and faculty and students would be encouraged to talk about the Iraq War. There would be movies shown in the student lounge and speakers and so on and so forth. Well, since the resolution was only brought to the SGA by a senator and not actually “sponsored” (aka, correct paperwork not filed), a vote wasn’t going to be taken. Before they’ll even consider it, however, the resolution is going to have to be reworded to, at the very least, be more “inclusive” to everyone’s views, which, on one hand, is probably not a bad idea. But the other reason? They don’t want the SGA—a group that’s been back on campus only since 2005—to be associated with the school’s Social Justice Club, a group they consider “too far to the left”—a direct quote. ("We need to make this more PC,” was another direct quote that almost made me choke on my tongue.)
Seeing what are supposed to be, in my mind, young idealists not just drinking the corporate Kool-Aid, but mainlining it, a few things came to mind as I scraped my jaw off the floor. Outside of the fact that the resolution was essentially slapped together based on a few discussions the grad assistant had with her classes when it could’ve been better easily substantiated by an informal poll of students, I was stunned that the group would not take a stand, whatever that stand would’ve been. I mean, the SGA couldn’t have said “We support getting troops out” or “We need to send 60 zillion more troops to the Middle East” while also supporting discussion from the other side? (Incidentally, at least two of the senators said they agreed personally with the resolution as it stood.) And as far as not being associated with the other club ... well, that was more out of concern for the individuals being associated with what they perceive as being an unpopular group than it was concern for the group itself, pure and simple, and it’s a sad, sad day when you have to temper your thoughts because you’re concerned people won’t like you. All this to say, it was a puss move on their part.
Story’s after the jump.
Social comment n' shit
I haven’t attempted to be all political and indignant in awhile, but a story that ran in the paper yesterday stuck as well as led me into several lengthy discussions that I’m still trying to process.
Our good buddy JB wrote a story (which y’all can peep in all its glory after the jump) about an illegal from Mexico who killed his back while working for this dude. Insurance covered his injury for about 2 months when it discovered that the SSN the cat provided was false and thus stopped paying. Well now, the cat is suing to get paid.
As a rule, I’m not anti-immigrant, and I cringe whenever I hear about these nutbags wanting to build walls along the border with gun turrets and all that crap. But I have to say, I got a little pissed off when I got to the part where the guy said:
I want to work, but I can’t. And now, they aren’t paying me.
“What do you MEAN, they aren’t paying you?” I thought to myself. “When I’m ill or hurt or decide to take time off, do you think I get paid? Fuck no I don’t get paid, and I’m born and bred here. I don’t even have freakin’ health insurance if I DID get ill or hurt. But you, sir, are in the country illegally, and you provided false ID. What makes you think you’re entitled to anything!??”
I took my indignance along with questions over to JB; I didn’t cover the story, so obviously there were facts to which I wasn’t privy, as in specifically, what is the employer’s responsibility in ensuring that the identification a job applicant provides is legit. Well, regardless of whether the employer provided the ID for him or he provided it on his own, therein lies the problem: All the employer’s going to have to say is, “Well, we thought he was legal. Bad us!” and he’ll get off scot free (which totally baffles me because with all the ways we have to check on a brother or sister these days? Please, but whatever). I don’t agree one bit that the insurance company should pay for the guy because rules are rules. Then again, small businesses (and even large ones, undoubtedly) always cry about the wages they have to pay people, so then lawmakers end up looking the other way when it comes to immigrant labor, thereby circumventing a whole other set of rules altogether, and now my head hurts.
Story’s beneath the fold. Any thoughts, y’all?
Teen girl: Um, it’s not like she can hear you through the TV.
-- an actual conversation Poppy overheard in the gynie office today [CLARIFICATION: They were watching Nancy Pelosi’s address to Congress.]
Have I bitched yet about my new neighbors? They took over my landlords’ old crib, and so far, they’ve been quiet. But they have a big honkin’ van and an SUV, however, and they think they’re allowed to park both behemoths out front, thereby taking up precious cul-de-sac space. I’m sorry, but there’s no reason that both those tanks need to be out front when the neighbor downstairs and I have only one vehicle apiece. “But we use both of them!” they said to the landlords when she and I complained. No, screw you. Seniority rules, and she and I have been here for eight years. Jerks.
So, the other day I was working on stories for the paper’s annual Empty Stocking Needy people fund, and it happened that one of the families I interviewed was a single mom with eight kids who’re homeless and have to be out of the shelter they’re currently staying in by Monday, while the mom (who’s 34, btw; oldest kid is 14) is in her third year of nursing school and is trying to study for finals next week. Oh, and the water pump on her van is shot, so she and the brood have been having to walk everywhere in the butt-ass cold. Ok, so I write the story, and for as many people who called in wanting to help out, there was at least one ready to literally jump my shit for daring to publicize a welfare mother who doesn’t understand the concept of birth control?
Of course there was.
Had my one editor allowed this woman to contact me—after some of my past skirmishes with sources, they don’t allow that to happen anymore—I would’ve liked to have told her about the stuff that I DIDN’T put in the story, like how she tells her oldest daughters every day that she doesn’t want them to be like her and how humiliating it is to have to defend the fact that she has so many children at all. Yeah, she knew about birth control. Yeah, one of the baby daddies kind of helps sort of, but you try getting child support from someone who doesn’t want to pay (though I’m surprised by the latest round of stats on this very subject). Yeah, she gets TANF—a whopping $373 a month because you get cut off after the fifth kid, at least in Indiana. Yeah, she’s been trying to get a job. But her oldest kid is 14. Would YOU leave seven kids between the ages of 12 and 2 with a 14 year-old? Yeah, she has friends and relatives who help out from time to time, but who wants to take on eight more mouths on a regular basis?
Here you go, fundie conservative nutjobs who believe no sperm should go to waste. Figure this one out.
Mostly, though, I’d have told the woman that no one was telling her to help them out if she was so morally outraged by their situation and oh, go suck a dick while she was at it.
I’ve implored several of my pals to see what they have in the way of stuff for the family, and this weekend when I go Christmas shopping with the sibs, we’re hitting the resale shops. If any of y’all would like to chip in a li’l something to the effort, Paypal button’s on the right.
(Mothupi, left, and Marshoff, right)
I normally try not to post pictures of myself above the fold (so I’d appreciate y’all not staring at my massive double chin and cheesy, nerded-out smile), but I had to show you who’s now become my favorite VIP meeting ever, even surpassing Jesse Jackson Sr. and Roger Clyne. Surrounding me in this shot taken in the parking lot of my college alma mater are Frances Beatrice Marshoff and Gertrude Mothupi, the Premier of Free State, South Africa and the Executive Mayor of Mangaung. The two were here with a delegation from Free State that’s seeking to drum up business in the United States, and they stopped at the school for a reception and tour.
See those women there? You are looking at two of the most fearless, intelligent women I’ve ever met in my life, emphasis on FEARLESS; not only are they government leaders, but they’re WOMEN who’re government leaders 12 years after a centuries-old belief system was dismantled. Think about that for a sec—12 years after apartheid was abolished, there are women running parts of the country. After the 15th amendment, how long did it take for a woman to get into any sort of power position here? (That’s kinda rhetorical, but if you know the answer, feel free.) (UPDATE: Leave it to Kaffy to actually tell me: Lookit)
I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that it’s a wonderous thing to see women who command such respect.
Since I’m one of those who believes the universe has this (sometimes cruel) way of presenting one with all the information one needs to realize whatever it is they’re supposed to, I’ve been getting a lot of refresher courses on domestic abuse lately. Today’s lesson came via my morning assignment: The county sponsored a seminar for stylists and other salon professionals on how to spot abuse in their clients. And this seminar of course had a workbook detailing the types of abuse, i.e. isolation, denial and blame, coercion and threats, economic and male privilege. Well, under “emotional abuse,” what should they have detailed but “Tries to make you think you’re crazy,” and under reasons women stay with abusers, it lists “Guilt over failure of relationship” and “Guilt about choosing an abuser?”
There’s an oooof for you if I ever seen one.
The other lesson came Saturday night when, against my better judgment, I went out with an acquaintance that I normally know better than to set foot out the door with, but did anyway because ... well, because. Anyway, she and I go to see a local band that wasn’t my homies (for which I got shit today, but you know, got to check out the competition, too), and it started off lovely—met some new people, got stinkin’ drunk, had guys staring at my bodacious tatas because my tank top kept slipping, had some good hair going ... you know, chillin’ and illin’.
I should’ve realized that was not going to last, however, when said acquaintance started talking about how her boyfriend hadn’t acknowledged Sweetest Day, like, before we even got out the door.
After two songs or three songs into the second set, Acquaintance decides we’re leaving because she hasn’t heard from the boyfriend since before we left for the evening, and we’re going over there, but would I take her car home? ‘k, I think to myself; she’ll go in to his crib, they’ll decide it was all a big misunderstanding, and I’ll be home about 2-ish. Yeah, I don’t know how long I was passed out in the car, but I wake up to Boyfriend telling me in very broken English, yet in no uncertain terms, that I needed to get her out of there, because he doesn’t want to have to call the police. All right, I say as Boyfriend storms off into the night. Naturally, Acquaintance is having none of that—even though he’s broken up with her in the time that she went inside and I passed out—so we’re going into the house and waiting for him and his friend (who speaks even less English than boyfriend) to return.
In the hour or so that we waited for them, she called him what had to have been three or four times (he turned his phone off, of course) and proceeded to repeat over and over the whole shpiel of what I missed. Oh, and she isn’t leaving, but I could, which, cool! this was getting a little too crazy for me. So I take off, only to get about two blocks down when she calls me to pick her up a pack of smokes.
Sigh.
Shortly after, the two men return, and Acquaintance chases him first to his room, then to the garage, then to the front of the house and then back to the garage while I’m sitting there drunk and trying to carry on a conversation with a man who speaks marginal English at best. They come back into the house, and since physically moving away from her wasn’t working, Boyfriend decides to play like he’s sleeping on the couch so maybe she’d back the hell off. That only made Acquaintance sit on the edge of the couch and poke him to wake up. He goes back to his room, she follows ... you get the idea. At some point, she tells me I can go again and she’ll call someone else to come get her in the morning. WONderful! I think. I’m out!
Until I got the phone call that he pushed her out of the house, come get her.
Sigh.
I go back, and the friend is coming out of the house. Where are they now? I ask, and he shrugs his shoulders and gets in his car. She then comes around the corner and gets into the car with me and starts telling me how he grabbed her and pushed her. And then? The drunken hysteria started, followed by the “I didn’t do anything wrong” proclamation. Now, you won’t get me to excuse a man for resorting to violence toward a woman ever, but saying that getting all up into his grill isn’t “doing anything wrong?”
Long story short, I didn’t get to bed until 7 a.m. Sunday morning. The end.
For enduring my tale of woe, below is a shot of me taken earlier in the evening, when I was drunk and rockin’ out:
While I’m off chasing the latest storm to hit NWI, I leave you with the comments my small brother just left, because I love his voice and think he should be blogging his own damn self, but why would he listen to his older, wiser (snerk) sister?
oh my gosh. your brother is a complete fool. or a complete hero. as *fate* would have it, last night on the way home a homeless black man (he would be white, well maybe in the next life) came up to me and asked me for food because his family got displaced by a fire. he had this story that seemed sincere, asking for assistance because he had 2 kids, and that the fire had broke out and that he had tried all of the different shelters and they refused him because he had a house to live in. I wasn’t too sure about his story except it made sense to me that if he had tried the different places out, they would possibly turn him away. He asked for “cerial” only. He said he would get cerial and milk because it would last longer if he did.
Me, being the freshly laid up guy with the rotten day thought *well, my finances aren’t THAT bad, and this guy DOES have 2 kids, and I know what it’s like to be displaced from MY home and what it feels like to rely on someone for HELP and how people in chicago will turn you away because they think you might be crooked and trying to cheat. and he WAS asking for CEREAL.
I took him to walgreens. he shook my hand, was one of the nicest guys in the world. I bought him Cerial, milk (*thinking IM A SUCKER*) , and then microwavable items.
Then I started noticing something .. he was buying some of the most EXPENSIVE stuff in the store. Huge .. like 6 or 7 dollars an item. The price kept going up and going up and I had a train to catch. Once he got about 3 days worth of items (TOILET PAPER, some fried chicken. Don’t black guys like Fried Chicken? Well, I guess any family that is BROKE and has no FOOD could like fried chicken and little WHITE CASTLE MEALS TOO!). Toilet paper, some crackers, and stuff like that.
no LIQUOR, no CIGARETTES, nothing that dosn’t seem out of the originary. (Damn, I feel bad even questioning the resolve of this, but geez, $66.90 dollars later and I’m wondering if I got HAD).
So I took the guy up to the thing, payed 66$ for him. Sure, you might think what a stupid idiot he is for doing that for that man. What if he REALLY WAS DISPLACED. We all need to WIPE our ASS, right (did I fail to mention he bought two huge rolls of toiletpaper)?
He’s about to leave with 4 bags of stuff from Walgreens (all I could think about was what a nice thing I was doing for this man!) and the guard there that monitors walgreens goes “who be buyin that for whom?”
i said, “im buying it for this guy.” he looks at the poor homeless man and says ‘i fiddin you ain’t gonna be sellin, eh?’ he goes “man, why you gots to be that way?” the guard goes “yea, man, i see it all the time.” and the guy, who didn’t offer any explaination of his situation with his family simply said “man, you ain’t THERE. you ain’t even THERE!” my anger swelled. so i turn to for an explaination and it dawned on me. you been either tricked, and you too STOOOPID to figure it out, or it just melts your heart so much to think that this is possible that you don’t want to admit it.
so I PROPOSE A USELESS, FAKE, IMAGINARY TOAST TO THIS MANS BUSINESS.
this poor poor man is an entrepenuer! he is taking my items from my pocket, that i have worked just as hard working for in my construction business, and he’s opening his own business. he could be selling the items on the street, he could be providing for his family, but dang nammit he is using this for a GOOD PURPOSE. just think. he is getting business SKILLS. he is learning ECONOMICS. he is even avoiding TAXES (like rich people) and he is pretty much making a SHITLOAD of cash.
*at whos expense*.
I offered out of the kindness of my heart. and besides, he COULD indeed have a family to care for. We never REALLY established that he did or didn’t, because I had a train to catch in 5 minutes. On the way into Walgreens, he mentioned a name of his daughter, 6 years old (of course, her name was like 12 letters long, and he kept repeating it as if he was proud of being about to spell it).
it rained. it poored. i went away mad, and then felt agravated that i just spent $60 on a lesson i could have learned in high school.
my dad would kill me if he knew that i was stupid enough to participate in this learning experience. the fact is, i can’t tell if it was real or not. the guy could go sell my stuff for crack. i once had a crack addiction, and i stole for it too. anything for PLEASURE in the brain.
but then again, providing for your family by asking for help from someone elses’ kindness is not really about pleasure, but about SURVIVAL. Yet, when we look at this man and examine his reasoning for his actions, we think that we should IMPAIR his ability to do what he does because it helps you sleep at night or because it someone reinforces our own emotional or moral wellbeing.
even if he was a crackhead, i am helping keep the economy running for a human being who is trying to survive. call me mother theresa for crackheads, but another person who found out about being “HAD” at walgreens by the guard, might have KILLED him, riped out his organs and sauteed them in a pan. (a delightful stirfry of homeless people sounds like it needs a DASH of salt or pepper to taste).
How quickly my generosity turns to ANGER. Turns to FRUSTRATION. Turns in on myself. and the punchline is.. it might be real. and I feel this way, simply because I offered to help.
All I covered tonight was school board stuff, which was fine because it was my last official story on the one school board I covered with regularity. And since I
[And as a sidenote to Mr. Jackass Attorney who accused me of impartiality when covering the board debates and most likely the board as a whole over the last 3 1/2 years a couple weeks ago, I have this to say: Contrary to popular belief, reporters unequivocally do have opinions about the things they cover; if they say they don't, they're lying, myself included. The true craft of being a reporter, however, is to be able to report the facts no matter how infuriating, nauseating and offensive those facts may be to you, and I will be happy to sit down with you to go over every single story I've ever written on the School Board and compare them to every single minute of meeting tape to show you just how impartial I was. Name the date and time, and I'll be there, though I don't expect you really would because I know you were just lashing out after I asked you if you were bankrolling the one candidate. But the offer stands, my friend.]
Anyway.
My 'hood is now infested with stupid people who yell and scream like morons all the time. Most of the time, it's celebratory yelling and screaming, but I expect the "You done me wrong, Cletus, and now I'm going to throw the toaster at yew" yelling and screaming to commence at any time.
Adrian Zakula is the only person I know that could take a freedom-of-expression controversy and turn it into a beer party.
I'm using his name now because I reported on the story, plus he has absolutely no shame. Not that he needed it ... this time (!), but it's safe to say that our friend Zook, in true Zook fashion, is thoroughly enjoying his time in the spotlight and was goodly plowed by 2 p.m. (Yeah, because I wasn't of course. Heh. And boy, did that feel good! A sunny, 60-degree day pounding a few among friends after I've done my reporting? You betcha. I can't tell you the last time I was out among the living doing stuff other than working or shopping with Greta. Methinks I need to do more of that more often.)
Really, though, I don't know that I wouldn't have done the same thing -- no, scratch that; I know I would've. See, way back in the day, I had a bit of controversy myself with the whole freedom of speech/expression issue.
100 things
Info meme #1
Typelogic says I'm an INFP.
Check my weekly astrological groove here.
Give it to me, baby.
Pssst ... My birthday's Feb. 3, and I want this, and this, and this ...
The Make-Believe Oral Cancer Foundation (M-BOCF) is now accepting donations on my behalf. Won't you please help those of us who jump to hideous conclusions regarding our oral health and help me get a root canal or two!??:
/> Wanna make a bunch of money doing what you're doing right now?
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Broad said: Like I said, my feelings are complicated on the matter, so ... I’m interested, however, in Her Highness’ thoughts on… ...[go].
Caterina said: ARGH!!! Not to deny you your goddess-given right of reflections and wishing what might-have-beens, but this guy was straight up… ...[go].
Wholovesya? said: By the by, guess who was most nasty about the charitable giving? The frigging church. My church and my mom’s… ...[go].
Wholovesya? said: By the by, I’m not the only one I know. I have friends who work at soup kitchens because they’re… ...[go].
Wholovesya? said: As you know, I was a voyeur to the beginning of this, and I was loving your comment! I have… ...[go].
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EE Core
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This explains that large bit of type at the top.
Tagline by Ben F'in Mollin, talking about those times you wake up still drunk from the night before.
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