Anniversaries

I’ve been trying since Monday to write something about Katrina and the horrors visited upon the Gulf Coast, but honestly, I still can’t find the words to adequately express my sorrow and my fury.

Two years ago, the 31st. The storm had hit two days previous and still there was no help. No National Guard, no Red Cross, no Salvation Army, no water, no food… I watched newsclips via my computer, scanned the blogs, the news sites, waited – like everyone else – to hear that help had arrived. Instead, photos of bodies floating in toxic water, scenes from the SuperDome with people begging for help, Ray Nagin cursing, George Bush on tour as New Orleans residents died from the heat, from the dehydration, from the lack of electricity to keep medical equipment operating and medications refrigerated.

I sat and I watched and I cried. I wrote and answered angry emails, all of us asking just when our government was going to do something. I called my CongressCritter’s office and asked just what the hell was being done to aid those affected by this storm. Sadly, my Critter then was Don Sherwood, and his staffperson’s answer was something on the lines of, “Well, we’re going to be introducing legislation to help businesses affected.”

I literally answered: “Fuck the businesses! What are you doing to get those people food and water, to get them out of there?!”

His reply? “Well, the SuperDome is being used as emergency shelter and federal resources are being mobilized…”

“Are you fucking kidding me?! Turn on CNN, you idiot!”

One of the great archetypical myths in the US is the cavalry riding to the rescue. Five cowboys surrounded by 1500 Indians, or ten soldiers down to their last few bullets, or the hero of the action adventure trapped by five villians with AK-47s, etc., etc., and just when you think they’re done for, the cavalry comes riding over the hill, or the fighter jets/helicopters/bombers start taking out the enemy, or the cops/military/somebody comes out of nowhere with a flamethrower and an RPG built out of duct tape and bubblegum. “Yippee-ki-yay,” and all that happy horse- …er, manure.

We believe in that shit. Or we did. Until we saw an American city drowned and her people left to fend for themselves for days. Until we saw bodies lying in lawnchairs and floating in murky water. Until we saw desperate people begging TV news anchors to get help, saw children crying for food and water, saw Shepard Smith and Anderson Cooper acting like something other than talking-head robots, saw offers of help – from foreign nations and aid groups and from thousands of Americans affected by the scenes of misery pouring from their televisions – were turned away.

On August 31st, I realized that the policy of the federal government was: If disaster strikes, be it a natural or man-made catastrophe – you are on your own.

* * *

Ten years ago, barely the 31st.

I’d just returned home when I thought to check the next day’s weather. Clicking on the news, and seeing the crawl “Princess Diana in Paris Crash,” my attention was diverted. After an hour or so of CNN, I decided to head to bed, figuring I’d keep the radio on in case there were updates.

Just as my head hit the pillow, I heard the overnight DJ: “Repeating, Princess Diana has died.” I went back downstairs to the living room and turned the TV back on. Hours passed, and I watched the sun rise, tears streaming down my face.

I couldn’t even explain it to myself. Still can’t.

I’ve never been an Anglophile, except where history was concerned. I could tell you about the Magna Carta and what it represents, when the Battle of Hastings was, why Mary, Queen of Scots was executed – all sorts of historical trivia that earns A’s on history tests – but the “modern monarchy” wasn’t really all that interesting.

Except for Diana.

I was 12 years old – the prime target audience, you might say – when I watched the 19-year-old Lady Diana Spencer step out of a horse-drawn carriage and into St. Paul’s. My sister and I watched, awed by the pomp and circumstance – and by the fact that our mother was letting us watch TV in the middle of the night! For kids allowed a mere hour of television in the afternoon and another one after supper during summer vacation, this was a huge deal.

Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White – they all paled in comparison to the spectacle. In their wildest dreams, Disney had never imagined a fairy tale like this.

Of course, unlike fairy tales, this story didn’t end after the kiss on the balcony. Like all newlyweds who go into marriage thinking everything will be just perfect and that their love will last forever, the wake-up call of reality was a hard slap in the face.

Looking back, I think I bonded with her – as much as one can bond with a screen or print image of a person one hasn’t a chance of ever meeting or even seeing in person – as a mother. Diana obviously adored her sons and doted on them, but she often expressed the desire to make sure her sons understood just how very privileged they were.

People often mention her “personal touch,” and they mean far more than her charm. She often touched the “untouchables” in countries around the world. She used her position to bring a spotlight to the poor, the suffering, the desperate, and she educated by example – holding the hand of an AIDS patient, comforting the homeless, putting a child maimed by a land mine on her lap.

It might have been her beauty that attracted our attention, but it was her heart that captured us.

* * *

And what, you’re wondering, do these two have in common? Nothing really, other than a date.

Sunday Sermon – Greed and Corruption Edition

“I want to know why I’m planning a funeral while George Bush is planning a wedding.”
Anika Lawal, of Maryland, whose daughter, an Army sergeant, was recently killed in Iraq
– in Newsweek

From The Great Iraq Swindle, Rolling Stone: [all emphasis mine]

How is it done? How do you screw the taxpayer for millions, get away with it and then ride off into the sunset with one middle finger extended, the other wrapped around a chilled martini? Ask Earnest O. Robbins — he knows all about being a successful contractor in Iraq.

[snip]

A few months later, in March 2004, your company magically wins a contract from the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq to design and build the Baghdad Police College, a facility that’s supposed to house and train at least 4,000 police recruits. But two years and $72 million later, you deliver not a functioning police academy but one of the great engineering clusterfucks of all time, a practically useless pile of rubble so badly constructed that its walls and ceilings are literally caked in shit and piss, a result of subpar plumbing in the upper floors.

You’ve done such a terrible job, in fact, that when auditors from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction visit the college in the summer of 2006, their report sounds like something out of one of the Saw movies: “We witnessed a light fixture so full of diluted urine and feces that it would not operate,” they write, adding that “the urine was so pervasive that it had permanently stained the ceiling tiles” and that “during our visit, a substance dripped from the ceiling onto an assessment team member’s shirt.” The final report helpfully includes a photo of a sloppy brown splotch on the outstretched arm of the unlucky auditor.

[snip]

For all the creative ways that contractors came up with to waste, mismanage and steal public money in Iraq, the standard remained good old-fashioned fucking up. Take the case of the Basra Children’s Hospital, a much-ballyhooed “do-gooder” project championed by Laura Bush and Condi Rice. [...] the Basra Children’s Hospital was a state-of-the-art medical facility set to be built in a town without safe drinking water. “Why build a hospital for kids, when the kids have no clean water?” said Rep. Jim Kolbe, a Republican from Arizona.Bechtel was given $50 million to build the hospital — but a year later, with the price tag soaring to $169 million, the company was pulled off the project without a single bed being ready for use. The government was unfazed: Bechtel, explained USAID spokesman David Snider, was “under a ‘term contract,’ which means their job is over when their money ends.”

The article’s concluding paragraph says it all:

If catastrophic failure is worth billions, where’s the incentive to deliver success? There’s no profit in patriotism, no cost-plus angle on common decency. Sixty years after America liberated Europe, those are just words, and words don’t pay the bills.

Read the whole thing – and keep a bottle of Mylanta handy.

As the article makes clear, the answer to Ms. Lawal’s question – and that of so many others – is spelled M.O.N.E.Y.

There’s money to be made in Iraq — lots of it — and you don’t even need to do a good job or even a fair-to-middling job. BushCo rewards fuckups – mainly because fucking up is all they can manage. (Can anyone name one thing — just one — that this mis-Administration and its cronies and hangers-on haven’t managed to fuck up beyond all repair?)

Just write up a half-assed contract for a rigged award system, and you’ll be rolling in dough while never fulfilling the contract – or doing it so badly that it can’t even be called a half-assed job, so badly it’ll look like a cardboard-and-tarp fort put together by kindergarteners.

And, hell, if you do all that and manage to fuck with the troops – either through piss-poor R&R areas, or contaminated water, or having refrigeration mechanics fixing Humvees or exposing them to unnecessary danger by charging the government for moving empty – but heavily-guarded – trucks back and forth across the desert … all the better.

How many more of our children will die for the great money-maker that is Iraq?

Saturday Potluck

What a weekend this will be. I’m going from being a two-child household to being an empty-nester … all in one shot.

Not only did the girl child move – filling far more bags for Goodwill and more trash cans in the process than ever expected from a girl who, upon learning I’d sorted her clothes and culled them to a measly 21 different outfits, replied, “But, Mom! That’s only three weeks!” (She was 8.) – but the eldest son has moved out as well.

Not just moved out, but moved into an itsy-bitsy two room (or possibly two-bedroom, details not being his strong suit)  3rd-floor walk-up with his on-again off-again girlfriend.  Both of them went out and spent money on “things for the apartment.” He rented a 32″ plasma-screen TV; she bought a new down-filled comforter with matching sheets, pillow shams, and dust ruffle. Both are angry at the other for wasting money, especially since they now have no food and no money. She’s also mad that he wasn’t paying attention when she asked him how something looked. He’s mad that she’s hanging curtains while he (and friends) are hauling her furniture up two flights of steep and extremely narrow stairs in a building old enough to have been God’s first apartment.

Yeah, this has all the earmarks of a Bush-style “success.”

On the plus side, no one’s pregnant and, after Monday, I’ll have two new housemates who will actually pay their share of the rent and utilities – and pay it on time. Not to mention they’ll probably keep their rooms clean. Woot!

So, while I celebrate my newfound freedom scrub the bathrooms and vacuum the cobwebs so my new roomies don’t run screaming, y’all read this week’s round-up of interesting blogs, remembering that I dodged all those trucks along the Internet toobz just for you. Don’t you feel special now?

The Book Bitches — Copy protected or something, so no quote. But, definitely a fun read for those who love romance novels and smart-ass bitchy women.

Word on the Street –

I’ve always wanted to tell stories. As a child, most of my friends played hide-and-go-seek. I read Harriet the Spy. Inspired by Harriet, I would walk around the neighborhood with my Lisa Frank notebook and ask my neighbors if they had any news to share. As an 11-year-old, this was my idea of spying. Intrigued by my inquisitiveness (and the binoculars I wore around my neck) my 74-year-old neighbor, Mrs. Irish, would update me on her children’s lives. Mr. and Mrs. Graham always filled me in on how many cars had sped down the street. Mr. Moore updated me on Esmerelda, the stray cat that often brought mice to his doorstep. Though not exactly breaking news, their stories gave me the opportunity to do what I loved: write and report. My neighborhood was my beat, the place where I searched for people and ideas, the place where I realized how many stories are left untold.  Read it all.

Manslations –

So, there’s this thing called the Internet. You might remember it from “that thing you logged into to read this, right now.” Ring any bells? Hello?

Anyway, like every other piece of technology, people have found various ways to use this “internet” to do sex to one other. (I’m sure that ten minutes after they invented the telegraph, there was a guy tapping out dirty messages in Morse Code and whacking off with the other hand.)  Read the whole thing.

Which Way, Joe?

PSoTD asks :

Will Joe Lieberman support the Republican candidate for President in 2008, reasons why or why not, and what’s the political value to him?

Hmmm…. my answer right now would be, “It depends.”

Lieberman — who will still have four years left on his term when Candidate X is sworn in — faces some tough choices:

If he supports the Republican candidate, and if the Democrats gain the WH and sizable majorities in Congress — as expected — then Lieberman’s support of a Republican will see him lose all the perks that accompanied his so-called “caucusing” with the Dems – namely the chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Assuming those gains, Joe will be stripped of what power he has by the Democrats, and we all know Joe isn’t about to be relegated to the back of the pack, below even the freshman Dems.

On the other hand, if things come down to a horse race in the Senate, supporting the Republican candidate for President could work out for him. By agreeing to caucus with them, he gains access to all those rich Republican donors and gets to keep his committee assignments — just as he did when he agreed to support the Democratic Party’s agenda.

My prognostication right now is that Joe will play his “centrist” card for the next year in order to position himself as the “elder statesman” who’s thinking of “what’s best for the nation” while garnering plenty of blog mentions, column inches, and air time in which to undercut the Democrats. His goal will be to prevent sizable wins by the Dems, while simultaneously pretending to be one.

Whichever party looks to gain the most power in August/September 2008 will be Joe’s BFFs for life.

Saturday Potluck

This is late, but better than never – right? It’s funny, but three days off work and I had less computer time than normal. (Normal in the very-liberalest meaning of the word. Normal isn’t exactly something we do around here…) Things are hectic as the school year approaches, but even more so this year, since prepping for school also means getting the daughter and her possessions ready for the Big Move to the ex’s, as well as getting her enrolled in her new school.

Yep, the fabulous Miss M. is moving.

Ever do something you know is the right thing, but feel absolutely rotten about it? Yeah, it sucks.

For the first time in 15+ years, I will not be the one to check in before going to bed just to make sure she’s still breathing. (No, first-time parents, you never outgrow that.) For the first time in 15 years, I won’t be the one she calls out to after a really bad dream, or the first one to hear about her problems, or the first one to see her report card. (Well, that last one wasn’t really such a thrill the last couple years… which is why she’s moving.)

Anyways, before I end up locking myself in a closet so I can sob in my pillow, here’s this week’s (slightly shorter) round-up of interesting blogs:

I love books — any kind of books — and I love recommendations from other readers, especially when they tell you which ones aren’t even worth buying on the super-bargain discount rack.

The Avid Reader

A friend of mine came to visit a couple of weeks ago; in an effort to lighten his luggage for his trip to Europe, he left Imogen Edwards-Jones’ book behind. I think he was trying to get back at me; previously, I left him this horrible book about gay vampires to read. Either that, or we just have very different taste because I found Air Babylonto be one of the most annoying and shallow books that I have read in a long time. Sure, it had some amusing parts, but it was just so over-the-top that I had to put it down every few chapters and read something else to cleanse my mind of this drivel.

Because we all need a good laugh… Your Daily Fun Dose

From Funny Church Bulletins:

1. Don’t let worry kill you — let the church help.
2. Thursday night – Potluck supper. Prayer and medication to follow.
3. There are some questions that can’t be answered by Google.
4. Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our church and community.
5. For those of you who have children and don’t know it, we have a nursery downstairs.
6. The rosebud on the alter this morning is to announce the birth of David Alan Belzer, the sin of Rev. and Mrs. Julius Belzer.
7. This afternoon there will be a meeting in the South and North ends of the church. Children will be baptized at both ends.

Saving the best for last… I found Crystal’s blog a couple nights ago and haven’t stopped laughing since.

Boobs, Injuries, and Dr. Pepper

I got home yesterday and noticed that it was unusually warm in the house. Since I have it in my head that turning the thermostat down makes the fornits work harder to make ice cubes to cool the rooms or some such thing, I went to set it to sub-zero. And found that it wasn’t working.

I wasn’t immediately alarmed. Our unit is like that jukebox in Happy Days – you literally have to punch the shit out of it sometimes to wake it up and remind it that IT’S A HUNDRED AND SIX OUTSIDE. WORK, YOU FUCKING CLAPTRAP.

After I punched and cursed and threatened and cried and none of that worked, I went to find Chris.

“Air’s not working, babe.” Again, I wasn’t alarmed. Chris is the redneck McGyver. He’s McGyver with copious buttcrack. I’ve personally seen this man take a hair net and some mustard to successfully patch a hole in the roof. There is nothing he can’t fix.

His eyes widened and he began chanting, “Dead dogs. Dead,” as he walked out the door.

You have to read the whole thing. Oh, and please check out the March 30th post, Filed Under: Parents 1, Smart-Ass, Teenage Son, 0

Omilordie! That one’s so funny, I almost snorted a taco right into my sinuses as I — almost literally — fell out of my chair laughing.

For Felicity

I never thought I’d say this, but I think I’ve actually found a company whose customer service is WORSE than Penelec and Verizon: Charter Communications.

Thankfully, they aren’t anyone I’m stuck doing business with, but Felicity of The Hangover Journals does, and she’s being royally f*cked over by them:

I’m going to reiterate everything that’s happened with me and Charter in this post so I have it all neatly in writing somewhere. [...] You know I never ask for links, but I’m asking now. I want this to get around. I want this article to be on the front page of a google search for Charter Communications. I am beyond anger and into a sort of deep, shaking, silent rage.

At some point during the first week of August, Charter turned my internet off. I called them the morning of August 3 to straighten this out. They claimed that my internet had been turned off because I had not paid my bill since May, when I moved. In actual fact, they had been siphoning $55 out of my bank account each month. When I pointed this out, they at first accused me of getting internet at two houses and then said, well, alright, we screwed up and we’ll credit your account at the new house with all the money that we have removed. So that was an hour on the phone and some screaming and one would have thought, well, perils of modern life and all that, right, but it’s over.

Wrong. It was not over. Charter would proceed to turn my internet off again for the same reason on Sunday, August 5: another hour long phone call, same resolution.

And again on Friday, August 10: another hour long phone call with bonus screaming which took place on Sunday, August 12 and ended up with them -

Turning it off again an hour later. On Monday, August 13 I called again and spoke for, yeah, about an hour, with a supervisor named Monica who assured me over and over that it was all taken care of now.

And it was until last night, when they turned it off again and I am even now summoning up my courage to call the assholes again.

Felicity’s asking for links to her post, with the goal of making it the number one site when folks search Google for Charter. Spread the word.

The View From My Window

I wrote about WhyMommy and her fight with inflammatory breast cancer in my inaugural Saturday Potluck, and wanted to share this lovely, perfect metaphor for online communities she wrote:

It’s hard to explain my affection for blogging and blogfriends to those not intimately familiar with it, but I think it goes something like this. [...]

It’s as if one day last August I walked into my room, turned on the lamp, and suddenly noticed the window on the far wall, where none had been before. When I opened the curtains, the room was flooded with light and warmth, and I could hear a chorus of voices spilling through. I looked out, and discovered an amazing view — not the restful mountains or the popular beach — but a courtyard, filled with children of all ages, laughing, playing, crying, inventing, growing up together, and a sea of other windows — moms — each in a room of their own, writing their own lives, but pausing intermittently to check on the children and to be inspired by them and the women who love them. The windows are close enough that we can call to each other on the spring breezes when we are stuck, when we have something to celebrate, when we have something to mourn.

And it’s a beautiful way to live.

I love this description of blogging and commenting. All of us calling out to one another from our windows, finding that one shared interest between us — be it parenting or politics or technology or … anything — and, through our chats and discussions, discovering more and more commonalities on which to base a friendship.

We share our hopes and our fears and our dreams, we share the good and the bad times, we discuss the mundane and the life-changing, and with each comment, each post, each chat, our friendship grows, just as it would in the real world. And just like the real world, we share our blog friends with others, hoping they, too, will become friends.

The difference is – in the real world, we might pass by some people, seeing only the external, thinking they had nothing to offer us because of their age, appearance, economic status, or gender – and we would lose out on an important group of voices that educate, entertain, encourage, and enlighten us; we’d lose what could have been a wonderful friendship.

Here, through my window, I see just friends. Some of you are close friends with whom I chat daily — or as close to it as possible, what with work and family commitments — and some are newly-made friends I hope to spend more time with, and others are passersby on this blog or others, giving a quick wave before continuing on your own journey.

Each and every one of you enriches my life. As I hope I, in some way, have enriched yours.

Fembots?!

Of all the stupid nonsense I’ve ever read, this one doesn’t come close to taking the cake. Heck, it doesn’t take the icing of a cake, but it certainly pisses* me off.

From MSN Lifestyle:

Fembots: The New Breed of Women
by Theresa O’Rourke

[...] In 2007, fembotism is the next frontier in the great big gender divide. We can narrow the pay gap, outpace men in earning degrees, helm a company, run the House of Representatives, choose to raise a child on our own, and match a man’s sexual appetite thrust for thrust. But there’s an unspoken disclaimer: We’d better not forsake our nurturing instinct while doing all of the above. Yeah, well, some of us are saying screw you to the fine print.

[snip]

For as long as I can remember, the most seemingly unnatural things — craving space, delaying commitment — have come quite naturally to me. I’ve always understood the power of reticence, while my mother, so warm and demonstrative, didn’t. I remember once, when she was pissed that my father was out too late with his softball buddies (as he was wont to be), she asked me to read a note she had written him. I was 12 — and precocious. “I don’t know,” I said, pouting my Wet n Wild lips. “Do you have to tell Dad everything you feel?”

Unlike our mothers, women of my generation make up nearly half the workforce. We spend seven-plus hours a day at the office, that classically male arena where men have honed a lot of their own robotic abilities. And we’re learning their tricks: You don’t have to — can’t, really — think about last night’s spat with the boyfriend; just focus on work instead. Disengage, hold things together, keep your cards close to your chest, and you’ll get ahead. Fembots have mastered these lessons and can apply them just as easily outside the office.

[snip]

When time isn’t an issue, it may come down to control. In a binge-prone world, fembots are emotional anorexics. Maintaining a safe distance from your feelings can be liberating (and anytime we co-opt a traditionally male attribute, we give ourselves a little pat on the back), but anyone who made it through Psych 101 knows that too much compartmentalizing will have its consequences. Feelings ignored can come back to haunt you. Worse still is another side effect of fembotism: numbness.

Oh, c’mon!

Is there any freakin’ label we aren’t willing to slap on every single woman out there, solely because she’s female? Jeebus!

We aren’t independent enough, or we’re too independent. We’re too emotional, or we’re not emotional enough. We’re irrational. We’re not rational enough. We’re not ambitious. We’re too ambitious.

Listen well, and understand this: Women are like snowflakes. Not a one of us is exactly like another.

Karl Rove Resigns!

Quickie post as I head out the door:

What should I say? What could I say that hasn’t been said better by the big names? Hmmm….

Nah, nah, nah, nah

Nah, nah, nah, nah

Hey Hey Hey

Goodbye! 

Saturday Potluck

UPDATE – 8/15/07:

I didn’t know it at the time, but this was my 500th post! How cool!

- – -

Yep, the name’s definitely grown on me. I guess I’ll keep it. Here’s this week’s round-up of newly-discovered, interesting blogs – with quotes from each:

Dying Man’s Daily Journal

I am a 54 year old male and my doctors have told me I am dying. It is my hope that by sharing my experiences, I can encourage others faced with the same situation. I hope to also help the families of those individuals to have an understanding of the process and deal with the fear or dread of being around the dying. I am not a doctor, not a man of the clergy, I am not a therapist. I am just me, Bill Howdle, I am merely sharing my thoughts and ideas. I write of death and dying, understand this is my personal prospective, based on what I am encountering.

Rebels Are We

My only question after reading this is, why aren’t bridges falling down all over Massachusetts?

Like A Spaniard - Learn colloquial Spanish

Many Spanish idioms have an identical counterpart in English. Here are two:

“Estar en el septimo cielo” means “To be in seventh heaven”

“Mover cielo y tierra” translates to “To move heaven and earth”

Let’s Play Math

Can your students solve this problem?

There are 20% more girls than boys in the senior class. What percent of the seniors are girls?

This is from a discussion of the semantics of percent problems and why students have trouble with them, going on over at MathNotations. (Follow-up post here.) Our pre-algebra class just finished a chapter on percents, so I thought Chickenfoot might have a chance at this one. Nope! He leapt without thought to the conclusion that 60% of the class must be girls. After I explained the significance of the word “than”, he solved the follow-up problem just fine.

And, for those who either have the world’s worst boss or want to be stunned by just how rotten some bosses can be, check out the My Bad Boss Contest at WorkingAmerica.org