Election Season

We are about to enter into the political season. And the American people seem to be getting more agitated every day, so I think this one is going to be a real doozy. So, for anyone thinking about participating in political “debate,” I have a few things to say:

First, the “Oh yeah, what about this?” approach is weak. This approach goes something like this. Person one: “Under Barack Obama, all Americans have lost their jobs, or will be losing them in the next 3 minutes.” Person two: “Oh yeah? What about George Bush? Under George Bush, even made-up people like Homer Simpson and Snuffleupagus lost their jobs.” Person one: “Well, at least Barack Obama didn’t have to ask his Daddy to get him out of the Vietnam War.” Person two: “Oh yeah? At least George Bush’s daddy wasn’t a communist/terrorist.” This just becomes a game of increasingly pointless one-upmanship, and only succeeds in making everyone look like first graders.

Second, the delightful hyperbole approach is also weak. Example: “99% of people who voted for Mitt Romney as Governor in Massachusetts had a parent or loved one lose their job based on a ruthless buyout by Bain Capital.” As my friend Emily put it, 38% of all statistics are made up 47% of the time. Exaggeration doesn’t fool anyone.

Third, just because something is your opinion does not make it a fact. Donald Trump said this week, “Most American people don’t believe that Barack Obama’s birth certificate is real.” No, Donald, you choose to believe nonsense. Don’t blame this on the American people.

Next, if you are a racist, just admit it. Just say, “I dislike Barack Obama because I do not like the idea of a black man having power over me. I only believe in racial equality when my race is markedly superior. I do not like being on the losing end. I live in America where it’s okay to be a racist, and I am one.” Just say that. It’s so much more honest than the constant, “I’m not a racist, but has anyone noticed that those blacks get all the welfare and special treatment under Obama?” No, you are a racist AND an idiot. Do not email me about this.

Similarly, if you suffer from religious intolerance, speak up about that as well. Say, “I fear Mormons because I’m afraid of anything that is different from me and I don’t understand Mormon heaven. If a Mormon is President, I might have to accept that different religions are okay, and I’m afraid I won’t get into regular (non-Mormon) heaven if I say that, or at the very least, my friends won’t like me anymore.” Just admit it. Or shut up.

Also, do not get into a debate with someone whose mind you will never change. That person with the Ron Paul 2012 sign in their front yard? They are not coming over to your side. They still believe that Ron Paul has a shot at this thing. You will never change anyone’s mind. Repeat that to yourself. You are wasting air that you could have used to blow up balloons or blow out candles.

Almost last, please do not inflict your crazy on sane people. The candidates all think they are doing the right thing for the American people. Nobody is trying to run the country into the toilet, turn us all into robots, ship all of our jobs and money to China, turn us all into welfare trollers, or allow this to become a country overrun by Mexicans. Nobody is trying to do that, so just pipe the hell down. Stop posting on USAToday.com. Seriously. Stop it.

Last, be gracious. Nothing’s wrong with a tasteful bumper sticker or yard sign. Even a tee-shirt or tote bag is thoroughly acceptable. Hell, adorning your entire body with Mitt Romney paraphernalia is okay. But be respectful. Don’t tell people they’re idiots for supporting someone who’s not your candidate. Don’t bash in their windshield or spit on their child. Don’t tell them that they are certain to DIE if they elect the other guy. I happen to support True American Barack H. Obama, but that doesn’t mean that he’s perfect, or that Startlingly Canadian Looking Mittens Romney would spell disaster for all of us. So let’s all be civil to each other, and support each other. We’re all mostly American, so let’s act like it.

In the Unlikely Event of an Apocalypse...

I’m not a fan of doomsday speculators. I see no point in stockpiling ammo and electrical tape for the second coming or whatever the hell it’s supposed to be. Nuclear winter. Plague of locusts. Whatever.


But what I will tell you is that, when the apocalypse does come, I am going to be awesome at it. I’m not trying to brag here, but different people have different talents, and I am pretty sure that mine is apocalypse surviving. Like Scarlett O’Hara, I have a very keen survival instinct, and I’m not afraid to shoot a Carpetbagger in the face to make sure that I’m the one who sees the sun the next day. I realize this every time there is a bug in my house, and I overkill it, yelling, “DIE, DIE, DIE!” as I smash it to bits.

I am also a habitual escape-plan hatcher, so I’ve given some thought to what the priorities are, come Armageddon. And I’m not selfish, so I’ll share some of my top tips for Apocalypse survival:

1) MOST IMPORTANT – When you hook up with a group of fellow survivors, identify the person with the biggest butt. This is who you will eat first. Do not tell that person.

2) Identify your Eagle Scouts. They know how to shoot a gun, hunt, fish, tie knots, sail a boat, dig a trench, sew, cook, overthrow a small nation, read from a teleprompter, and fold a flag. These are all of the skills that you will need in the coming days and months. Stay friendly with the Eagle Scouts.

3) Do a quick assessment. What kind of apocalypse is this? Nuclear? Famine? Drought? Viral? Zombie? There is no point in being on the lookout for potable water if this is a zombie apocalypse. You want to be on the lookout for zombies.

4) Go looting. Of course you need to get food and survival equipment, but get something nice for yourself, too. You deserve it!

5) Head for the hills. Let’s be frank. The kind of people who stand their ground, compete for resources, build infrastructure and community….they all die. The real winners are the ones who hide. Make yourself scarce, and feel free to come on out after electricity has been restored.

6) If you’re in a group, make sure that they understand that you have a very special skill, and that they can’t live without it. It doesn’t matter if that skill is meaningful in the real world or not. Personally, I plan on capitalizing on my ability to speak Swedish. I will just have to convince my group that our future overlords were manufactured in Stockholm.

7) Make up a money system. Get off of whatever standard was used in the old world and start using something new. Rocks. Bathing suits. Whatever. The important thing is that you need to establish a transactional system by which people give and get things; otherwise, you all will just be beating each other with sticks to get something you want. Getting beaten by a stick is super annoying, especially after an apocalypse.

8) Don’t be the leader of your group. Don’t even be the second in command. You want your position to be something akin to an army medic or an accountant. People shouldn’t be really sure what you do, but they should know that they might need you one day, so they’ll want to keep you around.

9) This isn’t the time to announce that you just recently converted to a vegan lifestyle. See number 1, above. You might have to eat your friend’s butt to stay alive. Refrain from telling your friends how much sodium is in those canned beans you’ve been living off of for two weeks.

10) If you do have to split up from your group to forage for resources or confuse the zombies or whatever, do NOT split off with the black guy. It is a fact that the black guy always gets killed first. Your best bet is to hang with the nerdy computer programmer. They usually figure it all out in the end.

Best wishes, and most importantly, HAVE FUN! This might be your only opportunity for an apocalypse, so make sure to take plenty of pictures.

The Five Foods You'll Meet in Heaven

If you’ve known me for more than an hour, chances are that I’ve mentioned nachos at least once. I love nachos almost as much as I love my son and my dog. I’ve been living on my own since I was 17, and ever since then, nachos have been my personal mainstay. I don’t even get fancy with ‘em. Just load up a plate of chips, mix some Old El Paso vegetarian refried beans in with a couple of spoonfuls of salsa, cover it with an amount of cheese that would make a normal person want to throw up, shove it in the microwave, and when it comes out, douse it with some more salsa and a healthy dose of ranch dressing. If I had to choose one thing to eat for the rest of my life, this would be it.


I’ve been asking my friends what they would choose if they could only eat one thing for the rest of their lives, and I’ve heard answers ranging from chocolate covered strawberries to pizza. We all have our things, I guess. Here are my top five:

Nachos – obviously. Exactly as described above. Don’t knock the ranch dressing until you’ve tried it. I’m a Hidden Valley Ranch girl.

Sushi – Especially spicy tuna and spicy scallop rolls. It would have to come with all of the accoutrements – ginger, soy, wasabi – that might be part of the allure of sushi – I love that wasabi.

Peanut butter – It is a true and very unfortunate fact that, like an alcoholic who is in recovery, I cannot keep peanut butter in my home. When I do, I cannot stop chowing down on it, and peanut butter has approximately 1 million calories. I don’t even like the somewhat healthful kind – I am a Jif girl, and I like the creamy kind. I especially like my Jif on an apple (breakfast!) or on toast (lunch!) or on graham crackers (dinner!). But let’s not fool ourselves, I will sit with a spoon and just eat that stuff right from the jar.

Lox, bagels and cream cheese with capers, red onion, and a little dill – So delicious. Tangy and creamy and toasty and loxy. Normal people build a lox and cream cheese bagel with a light coating of cream cheese and one piece of lox on the bagel. Not me. There is no such thing as too much cream cheese or too many lox and I will elbow you out of the way to get mine. I am like the Jabba the Hut of the lox and cream cheese world.

Chocolate – The top four were easy. The five spot was much more difficult, as I also love salad, Brussels sprouts and beets. But in the end, I can’t live without my chocolate. Dark, milk, mixed with something, low end, high end….bring it. Literally. Bring it to my house. I want some.

Wow! This list is like a primer for obesity! And maybe Rickets! But, you gotta admit, it would be really delicious.

99 Problems

Jay Z claims that he had 99 problems. That is a lot. I hope he has worked those out. I was thinking about some of the problems that Americans face, and in about five minutes, I came up with a list of 51 problems. Oh, and one thing that is certainly, emphatically, NOT a problem. Happy reading.


1. There’s a European financial crisis that could tank our entire economy

2. It is not normal to have 90-degree weather in March

3. Community is still on the brink of being cancelled. Outrage!

4. Crazy people can get guns

5. Crazy people can’t easily access help for their mental illnesses

6. Our old-school educational model does not take into account that more than 50% of the children in it do not learn through sitting still and listening to lectures

7. Some of those children eat candy and soda for breakfast

8. We live in a society where people scream for their right to eat candy and soda for breakfast

9. As a country, we’re getting fatter and fatter

10. And the contestants on Biggest Loser are getting meaner and more obnoxious

11. Also, Dolvett is too handsome and it’s distracting

12. But seriously, people die of obesity

13. Children are hurt and abused by their parents

14. Recess has become a thing of the past

15. Kim Kardashian and Kanye West are dating?

16. Rather than question politicians about real issues, people sit around waiting to catch them “flip-flopping”

17. Gas is expensive

18. So is college

19. The bugs are going to be out of control as a result of the warm winter

20. Americans would rather deny the existence of global warming than change one thing about how they live their lives

21. Angelina and Brad had an affair about a hundred years ago, but only Angelina is considered the bad guy. She wasn’t even married

22. Visiting prostitutes is some kind of team-building activity for our Secret Service

23. People don’t seem to get that prostitutes would probably rather do something else

24. They’re too busy reading 50 Shades of Gray and further warping their view of reality

25. And women in this country who are raped are still accused of “asking for it”

26. Drug and alcohol addiction are seen as willpower problems, and people are vilified for being addicts, but morbid obesity is seen as a choice that should be protected

27. Had Trayvon Martin been white, he would not have been followed. Period

28. But people still deny that this is a racist country

29. They instead blame black people for making them scared

30. And support political candidates who think that black people should get jobs washing toilets

31. As a matter of fact, tweets about a black professional hockey player who scored a winning goal against the Boston Bruins referred to him as the n-word.

32. And there are still people who say, “Why is it okay for THEM to say that word and not me?”

33. Our citizens do not know basic rules of grammar

34. Rules that a second-grader should know, such as “your” and “you’re”

35. And yet we want to keep the Mexicans out because they don’t speak our language

36. We complain about how backwards the Muslim people are, but we execute our own citizens, knowing that we have executed innocent people in the past. Oops!!

37. Families, towns and regions are devastated by tornados, hurricanes, floods and wildfires

38. Our favorite sport is one which causes debilitating, permanent injuries and brain damage in its players.

39. There is no mechanism in place to require child support from both parents

40. The burden of single-parenthood falls largely on American women

41. Who are paid less than men for doing the same work in 2012

42. Political candidates spend MILLIONS of dollars on attack ads against their opposition, but programs that work, like health services through Planned Parenthood, are defunded

43. Human beings are told that health care is a luxury

44. And that, if they don’t have it, they should just die of cancer

45. Because they should have planned better

46. And we would rather take the money that we could have spent on the welfare of all and apply it to a second set of golf clubs

47. After all, new stuff is important

48. There are hungry old people

49. There are hungry families

50. There are hungry puppies and kitties

51. There are hungry children. Which is something we should never have. Not in this country.

Now, after all of this, I’m supposed to believe that two people who want only to love, honor, cherish, and support each other, in a committed relationship, for the rest of their lives, is a problem because they both happen to be of the same sex?

That doesn’t seem like a problem to me.

Pandora

Pandora radio hates me. I am not saying that lightly; I have been carefully cultivating my stations for years now, and Pandora is still messing with my head.


If you don’t listen to Pandora, you probably listen to something like it: Spotify, or I Heart Radio or some other place on the internet where you go, type in your favorite artists or songs, and then get a nice customized music selection for free. In theory.

In reality, as I noted above, Pandora hates me. I tell Pandora that I want a station that plays Goodie Mob and OutKast, and Pandora, basically says to me, “I don’t think you really mean that.” It then proceeds to play “Lady” by Kenny Rogers in every possible formulation. First, it plays “Lady,” from Kenny’s album Kenny Rogers Greatest Hits. I give it a thumbs down, meaning, “Dear Pandora, that’s not what I meant, and please do not ever do that to me again.” Fine. Two songs later, I kid you not, Pandora plays, “Lady,” by Kenny Rogers. This time, it’s the live version. Thumbs down, Pandora! An hour later, I get the saxophone version of Kenny Rogers’ “Lady,” as played by Kenny G. This time, when I try to give it a thumbs-down, Pandora is quicker than me. “I’m sorry,” a banner at the top of my computer reads, “You have exceeded the number of songs you may skip in this hour. Enjoy ‘Lady,’ sucker! You know you love it!” and it continues to play every variation of the song “Lady” known to man.

Later on, as I’m listening to Norah Jones’s version of “Lady,” for the tenth time, (did you know that Lionel Richie wrote this song? Lionel Richie is so rich, y’all!) I wonder, does Pandora know something about me that I don’t know about myself? After all, Pandora is the brainchild of the Music Genome Project, which, according to Wikipedia, was designed to "capture the essence of music at the fundamental level, using almost 400 attributes to describe songs and a complex mathematical algorithm to organize them.” It has the word Genome in it, so it must be scientific, right? I wrack my brains, trying to think of some reason why Pandora has put me in this Lady hole. Is it because I liked a Barry Manilow song once? It wasn’t Mandy. It was Weekend in New England, which is a really lovely song. Was it because I have a show tunes station? Because I like bluegrass? Does my Miles Davis station count for nothing, Pandora? Does my longstanding devotion to Todd Rundgren do nothing to ease your concern that I’m not ready for a little Atlanta-based hip hop? I think I can take it, Pandora. I really do.

And I guess that’s the bottom line: I’m not mad at Pandora for not getting it right; I’m sad because I think that maybe Pandora thinks I suck. Pandora has gotten it in its head that it knows better than me, and that I am, somehow, not ready to hear the songs that I want. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to get Pandora to play “Paper Bag” by Fiona Apple, and how many times it INSISTS on playing everything by Natalie Imbruglia instead. In this contest of wills, Pandora just wants me to give up, and give in to the seductive calls of Michael Bublé, Coldplay, and Kenny Rogers – the things it thinks I need. But what Pandora doesn’t know is that I’ll never give in. You can throw “Lady” at me ten different ways, but I will always find a way to give it the thumbs-down. You’re not going to win this one, Pandora.