Month: February 2005

Confessions of a teenage terrorist

Shakespeare’s Sister: Terror Warnings

Digby and Seeing the Forest have excellent posts on how calling Liberals traitors just isn�t good enough anymore. Now we�re terrorists…. I also question the wisdom of turning “terrorist” into a catch-all phrase invoked to denigrate anyone with whom one disagrees. Surely there is less to be gained by attempts to equate activists with the likes of Osama bin Laden than there is to be lost by desensitizing people to the term, thereby likely creating apathy toward the concept in its original definition, for which we should rightfully reserve some outrage.

SS misses the point. Of course liberals are terrorists to many conservatives, by definition– liberals scare the crap out of them.

I am reminded of two girls I dated in high school– or more on point, the fathers of these girls. To these men, I was a scary fellow. I was a threat– not to their daughters, but to them. I represented an entirely new way of thinking, of something beyond their horizon– and control. I was a Bad Influence (yes, academic standout me who read books and worked after school and– ah, the heck with it.)

I’m also reminded of the year I dressed up as Rorschach for Halloween. That same year, the town hired me to take photos of the local hayride/shindig at the country club for the under 10 crowd. And at one point later on in the evening, a half dozen boys in army uniforms tried to take me down, pull off my mask, etc. They made a creditable effort– I looked like Gulliver with Lilliputians hanging on me.

But what I truly remember is the lady who came over and, rather than help me deal with these hooligans climbing on me, scolded me and said, “They wouldn’t be doing this if you didn’t scare them so much!” I glared at her– at least as much as I could through that mask– then, stunned beyond belief, I shook off the kids and went home.

To these kinds of people, different means scary means bad. No thought, no consideration that different might mean better, just don’t do it. Never change anything. Never learn anything. Never move beyond anything.

And that’s what you get from men and women dancing.

Lightning response

Wow-eee. I haven’t gotten a response like that to a post in a while.

Not in the comments section, oh no. But I got three different people asking me, “So… who were you staring at?” To which the only truthful response was “heck if I know.”

On further reflection, I realize it’s not just me, and it’s not just you. It’s a serious form of escapism, and it shows up in the strangest places. “Wife Swap” and “Trading Spouses” are both on TV right now– even shows like “Trading Spaces” allow you to live in someone else’s home for a weekend, and then you come back to a changed place. The lottery slogan is “All you need is a dollar and a dream.”

And it does feel like a dream right now, doesn’t it?

I know a lot of people who feel like a character in a bad SF time-travel/alternate universe story, the one that has a nagging feeling that this isn’t the way things are supposed to be, and they have to find the frammiwhatzit so that they can set right what once went wrong. Some folks have had it for the last three years and four months, others have been aware of it for the last four years and three months.

But wow, is it out there. It seems like a big undercurrent out there– everybody needs a change. Because there are too many things that just don’t seem to be working right, are there? And I know how many things are actually good for me… and yet still, a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, grass is always greener, et cetera et cetera yada yada yada.

Or maybe it’s just that nagging little voice telling me that it’s time for a shake-up, something different is coming. Again. Wheeee! Now what?

Thunderstruck Madness

There is a universal delusional fantasy that occurs when you glance at a stranger of the desired gender and you’re momentarily convinced that they are the answer to all your hopes and dreams.

To quote Citizen Kane: A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn’t think he’d remember. You take me. One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn’t see me at all, but I’ll bet a month hasn’t gone by since that I haven’t thought of that girl.

My friend Ed has a great definition of population saturation: When you walk down the street and see a pretty girl, and another one comes along before you’ve finished staring at the first one, you’ve reached saturation point. He’s got a point. And when you find that you have the delusion bad, it can happen many times a day, on the street, at the market, waiting at the station– you just see a face and you know you can spend the next year staring at that face with all its little tics and quirks and sometimes they blow it by opening their mouth and saying something and you know it won’t work, or you realize beyond all doubt that this person can be the one. And then a few steps and that person is gone like a mist in a breeze.

My only solace is that this happens to 90% of you too. And misery loves company. Now all we need is a name for the condition, so we can point to it and toast it while we drink. Any suggestions?

Not paranoid enough…

Atrios misses a very interesting angle on the Jeff Gannon case:

Jeff Gannon is a right wing reporter who appears to be a frontman for some seriously right-wing media. He also has a few interesting domains registered to his name, such as Hotmilitarystud.com, Militaryescorts.com, and Militaryescortsm4m.com.

Some folks have used this to point and say “Look, another closeted Republican!” I think it’s worse than that.

Militaryescortsm4m.com sounds like a site that would be frequented by gay men in the military. And, need I remind you, that’s still a no-no in this enlightened age. But the person who ran such a site would have access to all sorts of private data about the users of such a site, a lot of it even given voluntarily.

If that isn’t a scenario for blackmail, I don’t know what is.

Wouldn’t that be a great thing– a journalist who has information that could destroy men’s careers, all he has to do is say the word? If you were looking to compromise officers, could you think of a better way to do so?

Quote of the Day: John Scalzi

Revenge of the Science Fiction Writers!

Here’s a quick rule of thumb: Don’t annoy science fiction writers. These are people who destroy entire planets before lunch. Think of what they’ll do to you.

Words to live by. And this is before you know how good Jim MacDonald is with a weapon.

This from the discussion of Publish America and some science fiction writers response to it.

People had said how bad West Wing had gotten…

…but I didn’t really see how bad it had gotten until last night’s episode.

The snap of earlier episodes is gone, the Sorkin writing is truly missed here. Where old episodes made you feel smart and never talked down to you, last night’s episode was pedantic and self-congratulatory, and logic and internal consistency went straight out the window.

And did they have to get the guy back from that lousy episode of 24 two years ago? He’s horrible, and he looks even worse now than he did then. I’m amazed this guy got re-hired to play any kind of role which requires face time on camera.

But the rest of the supporting characters weren’t much better. Their performaces were completely unmotivated, with actions like “stand up and applaud” delivered with no believable conviction at all, like they were just following stage directions.

Kee-ripes. I can’t wait to see what TwoP has to say about this.

I wonder if this could happen in Nevada?

Telegraph | News | ‘If you don’t take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits’

A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing “sexual services” at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.

Prostitution was legalised in Germany just over two years ago and brothel owners — who must pay tax and employee health insurance — were granted access to official databases of jobseekers.

The waitress, an unemployed information technology professional, had said that she was willing to work in a bar at night and had worked in a cafe.

She received a letter from the job centre telling her that an employer was interested in her “profile” and that she should ring them. Only on doing so did the woman, who has not been identified for legal reasons, realise that she was calling a brothel.

Under Germany’s welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job — including in the sex industry — or lose her unemployment benefit. Last month German unemployment rose for the 11th consecutive month to 4.5 million, taking the number out of work to its highest since reunification in 1990.

The government had considered making brothels an exception on moral grounds, but decided that it would be too difficult to distinguish them from bars. As a result, job centres must treat employers looking for a prostitute in the same way as those looking for a dental nurse….