Unapologetically Mundane » politicking

Giant Rats Sneer at Construction Scabs

plumpdumpling — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 17:00:07 +0000

Ahhhhh, remember when I had just moved here and was working this terrible job as a slave to an investment banking firm with the lady-owner who hated all other women, and I was so innocent, and everything was brand new to me, and I wrote this adorable LiveJournal post?:

On the sidewalk one block north of Macy’s and one block south of my office, a giant inflated black rat sat on its haunches this morning. It was probably 12 feet tall, with red eyes and claws and a sneer. All of the real New Yorkers passed by as if they didn’t notice, while the tourists and I looked at each other with “Seriously?” eyes.

It seems to me that maybe this isn’t the best way to welcome people to the city for the holiday season. Of course, I was only a public relations major for a quarter.

I was reminded of that when the inflatable rats showed up this morning in front of the building next door to taunt the management company’s use of non-union workers. I’m pro-union as it is, but the rats make it all the more fun.

I Mostly Like People Until Election Season Comes Around

plumpdumpling — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 18:45:37 +0000

God bless you for all you do, political watchdog groups, but perhaps hiring someone with a certain degree of innate spellchecking ability would be beneficial to your cause:

bigger

This was scribbled aaaaaaaaaaaall over the sidewalks outside of the polling place on Kamran’s street this morning. I just want to pat who ever did it on top of their cute, little heads.

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When the President Comes to Town

plumpdumpling — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 16:00:01 +0000

I think that when I lived in Ohio, I was neutral-to-positive about the United Nations. I actually remember defending it to someone–my dad?–saying that even though it allows itself to be basically powerless and just for show, it’s a good idea at its core.

But now that I’m dating someone who lives literally steps from the UN headquarters, I understand that it was created entirely to take pity on people from lesser countries, give them good parking spots for their giant gas-guzzlers, and allow them a place to prance around in the ridiculous costumes of their homelands.

That’s right. The UN General Assembly meeting made me a jingoist.

It was all just so annoying. The neighborhood was littered with cops not doing anything, clumped in groups and lounging on whatever was nearby. Their undercover comrades sat on the park benches and pretended to read books, believable but for the wired earpieces sticking out of their collars. All of the streets were blocked off to non-UN traffic, so the buses we use every day were rerouted, which means we actually had to walk amongst these animals. And of course none of the bus stops actually had signs on them saying the buses weren’t stopping there.

Tuesday, I got to 42nd Street after work, and these guards were standing on the sidewalk behind some barriers, but I was like, “Yeah, I live here,” and tried to saunter by without incident, but of course one of the guards took a step backward to block me and gave me this whole run-around before sending me one block north, where there were no guards. Reeeeeeeeeal intense security, guys.

Wednesday night, I came up out of the subway, and pedestrian traffic was stopped to let one motorcade of black SUVs pass west and then another motorcade pass east on the wrong side of the road. White dudes in suits were leaning out both sides of the cars, yelling at every delivery boy and street-crosser in sight. It had to all be for the President, right? Sirens wailed and horns honked, and you could see all of the Secret-Service-looking guys crammed into the backs of the vehicles despite the tinted glass, and I stood in the middle of it like, “OH MY GOD THIS IS AWESOME.” Because I am from Ohio and am easily impressed by shiny things.

Oh, UN.

It Really Helps with the Whole Guilty Conscience Thing When You Don’t Consider Babies Human

plumpdumpling — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:00:29 +0000

I don’t remember when I decided I was pro-choice, but I remember distinctly that I was still calling myself a Christian when I did. (Realizing that God and I basically didn’t share any common viewpoints is one of the reasons I’m not a Christian today.) I understand that abortion is an extremely polarizing issue and that you can never argue your side well enough to convince someone who doesn’t already agree with you, which is why I like to talk about it so much. I find it unfortunate that the conservative argument is simply “because the church says not to”, because that precludes the need for careful thoughtfulness about the subject on the part of the believer. I also find it unfortunate that the liberal argument is simply “because I should have control over my own body”, because we rarely have control over own bodies when it comes to other kinds of protective legislature (i.e. seatbelt laws, drug laws).

I bring this up because this week’s New York magazine has an infinitely interesting article about modern views on abortion and how they’ve changed since the 70s, when women won the fight for the right to choose. I think the article does a great job of balancing the two sides (though, again, it’s not going to convince anyone of anything), but here are the two most interesting points from my side:

1) Until the mid-nineties, the political debate over abortion remained mostly in the theoretical realm, with the role of government at its center. Had it stayed there, it’s possible we’d be in a different place today. But in late 1995, a Florida Republican congressman named Charles Canady had a stroke of insight that would shift it to the realm of both the metaphysical and brutally physical, which is precisely where the pro-life movement wanted it all along. On the floor of the House, he introduced a bill that would ban so-called “partial-birth abortions,” a second-trimester surgical method previously known as intact dilation and extraction. The procedure was extremely upsetting to behold. In it, the fetus—or is it a baby?—is removed from the uterus and stabbed in the back of the head with surgical scissors. It’s a revolting image, one to which the public was ritualistically subjected on the evening news as the debate raged on the House and Senate floors. Defending it was a pro-choice person’s nightmare. Pat Moynihan compared it to infanticide. Clinton still vetoed the ban in 1996, but it was eventually signed into law in 2003 and withstood a Supreme Court challenge in 2007. More important, women were spooked. “A lot of our patients started asking whether or not the fetus felt pain after that, even if they were early along in their pregnancy,” says Albert George Thomas, who until two years ago had spent eighteen years as the head of the family-planning clinic at Mount Sinai. He adds that many women also came into his clinic expressing confusion about the size of the fetus they were aborting. Some were terrified that it was huge, even those who were coming in at six weeks. At that stage, it’s the size of a lentil.

2) Abortion counselors will also tell you that the stigma attached to the procedure is worse than it’s been in years. “When I started as a patient advocate in Ohio in 1996,” says Jeannie Ludlow, a professor at Eastern Illinois University who has written a great deal about abortion, “what I mostly saw were women who were thinking about abortion in individual ways—this is what’s going on in my life, this is what I’m thinking I should do. But by the time I left in 2008, our patients would be saying all that and ‘Oh, and I know I’m going to feel bad for the rest of my life,’ even if they seemed perfectly sure of their choice.”

I remember the truck that drove around my college campus with pictures of aborted babies plastered all over it, and I hated that I was supposed to be won over by emotional imagery in lieu of actual consideration of how a baby–and even a pregnancy–would entirely change my life in ways that I neither wanted nor was prepared for.

I know that it involves killing (what has the potential to become) human life, but I just can’t imagine myself regretting an abortion for the rest of my life like everyone wants me to think I will. I sort of want to have one, actually, just to make myself a t-shirt that says, “I aborted my baby, and I feel GRRRRREAT!” I don’t want to rub it in anyone’s face or anything, but I want some support for women who made the right choice for themselves and won’t be made to feel guilty.

I’m interested in your thoughts on the article and subject in general, as always.

Hey, not to make matters worse, but seriously, keep your hair off my toilet seat in the future.

plumpdumpling — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:35:34 +0000

You may remember that fateful day a year ago in which I went to my favourite bathroom stall at work to find

THE LARGEST PUBIC HAIR IN EXISTENCE.

Well, today, I came out of my stall, and as I was washing my hands, a black woman from the office next door walked in, half-acknowledged the hello I gave her, and went straight for the very same stall. I thought to myself about how funny it is that I always see her using that stall and how we must appreciate the same sort of conditions while doing our bizness.

And then it hit me. The largest pubic hair in existence was probably . . . the hair from her head. And if she saw that sign, she was probably offended, maybe even deeply hurt. It likely called to mind all of the years of latent racism she’s endured, all of the rage she felt when Don Imus called those girls “nappy-headed hoes”. She probably went to the back of the bus that night out of shame.

I don’t have to feel bad about it as a privileged white person, but I sort of do.

Keep a Little Memory of Your Pet with You All of the Time . . . by Beheading It and Stringing It on a Necklace

plumpdumpling — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:45:58 +0000

My best friend, Tracey, sent me a link this morning to a Craftzine blog post showcasing a necklace made from a dead bird’s head. My immediate reaction was along the lines of, “Cool! I’d buy that and love it and wear it every day if it wasn’t $350.”

When I read all of the comments on the post, though, I noticed that 90% of them were along the lines of, “Gross! This is barbaric and despicable, and you should warn us before you post things like this.” And any comments that were positive received replies along the lines of, “Shut up.”

What’s the big deal? The bird died of natural causes and is being celebrated as art. It wasn’t harmed to make the jewelry, and I imagine that if animals could express their preferences for their remains, they’d choose to be displayed proudly on necks rather than be stuffed in shoeboxes and tossed in holes in the ground. Of course, I could be a little biased, because I think the giant stuffed moose head on my neighbor’s wall in Ohio is rad.

When I suggested that I might like to cut off my dead mother’s ring finger and have it taxidermied to display in my home, wedding ring and all, Tracey agreed that it wouldn’t be offensive. My friend Tim tells me that in Papua New Guinea, mourners wear necklaces of their loved ones’ digits to honor their memories. My friend Anthony thinks people have may desecration of the dead issues with that in the U.S., but Tracey came up with the solution of donor cards that allow you to choose whether or not to permit your family to use your parts postmortem. Wouldn’t you love to see stuffed hands and feet on mantles like any other tchotchke right next to your Christmas stocking?

My friend Nik imagines that most of the people who threw hissy fits at the dead bird head are the same ones wearing leather shoes as they type, and I agree. It’s another example of the way people generally have no problem squashing a cockroach but freak out when anyone harms a cuddly bunny. Of course, I totally understand why someone would protest the squirrel feet earrings, but that’s only because they’re ugly.

And Tracey, you’re getting a cat hair handbag for your birthday. The $400 kind, because I care.

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White is a Race

plumpdumpling — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 18:37:41 +0000

Tracey and I philosophize about whether or not I can actually label an Asian guy on the bus as Asian:

Seriously, how many times a day do you think about this? I never had to worry about there being anything but white folk in my stories back when I lived in Ohio.

The Renaming of the Atlantic and Pacific

plumpdumpling — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:47:56 +0000

As I very professionally wrote at Examiner.com today, the Atlantic-Pacific subway station in Brooklyn is being renamed by British bank Barclays.

On one hand, who cares? It’s good money for the transit authority, and everyone will continue to call it Atlantic-Pacific, anyway. On the other hand, corporations have way too much power in the country already, and it’s sickening to know that anything and everything is for sale here, especially dignity.

How do you feel about it?

Am I the only one who completely accepted it when Walmart took out the hyphen in their name and added a star to the end?

plumpdumpling — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 21:14:28 +0000

Usually when I return to NYC after a holiday in the motherland of Ohio, I feel a huge sense of relief. All of my stuff is here: my apartment, my restaurants, my boyfriend. I don’t have to drive everywhere here, everything and everyone is cooler here (best friends not included, of course), and I don’t have to worry about having to make smalltalk with all the girls from high school who now work as grocery store cashiers in our hometown here.

This time, though, I made the huge mistake of spending my last night in Ohio with my best friend Tracey and my college friend James, who organizes unions for a living (OMG, best link ever, right?). He brought along two friends who used to hang out with us, one of whom is an Antarctic explorer, and one of whom is a boycott organizer. Naturally James’s first question to me was, “So when was the last time you shopped at Walmart?” And then we didn’t stop talking about labor, abortion, religion, and racism for the rest of the night.

It’s rough going back to the vacuousest city on Earth after that, you know? Suddenly the old man at the gym leaning back on his elliptical machine to stare at the ass of the girl next to me seems not just slightly annoying but actually detestable. And suddenly working at a $700 million software corporation seems a little bit more sell-out-y than I already knew it was. And suddenly all of my Democrat-because-they’re-young-but-just-waiting-to-turn-Republican-the-moment-they-make-their-first-million-dollars friends seem a little bit lamer.

But, you know, being surrounded by half-progressive friends is better than sitting in church next to fully-conservative gay-haters, and at least no pharmacist will ever deny me my daily Plan B here. Sigh.

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Morrissey Can Suck My American Balls (But, Like, in a Friendly Way)

plumpdumpling — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:07:28 +0000

At the gym this morning, I was listening to Morrissey’s You are the Quarry, and I was getting a little defensive over his song “America is Not the World“. Because while I agree with him, I’m American, and it’s therefore okay for me to spew hate about us, while he is a dirty Brit and would have never achieved the iconic status he has without the love of Americans, namely 20-year-old Hispanic boys living in California. But then I got to this line:

America, the land of the free, they said,
And of opportunity in a just and a truthful way,
But where the president is never black, female, or gay,
and until that day, you’ve got nothing to say to me to help me believe.

And I was like, “TAKE THAT, Morrissey! Sure there’s a bunch of death threats against our Prez-to-be, but we elected him all the same. IN YOUR FACE! (Looooooooove you.)”

Shafted

plumpdumpling — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:01:04 +0000

Funny how after the conquering, squashing, crushing, licking, vanquishing defeat of McCain by Obama,

I somehow assumed that the world would automatically be different. That war would cease, abortions would spread like wildfire, and the housing crisis would take a chill pill. But no, there was still fighting on the subway this morning the same as always, convicted felon Ted Stevens still somehow managed to win a Senate spot in Alaska, and as Kamran said:

But hey, at least there’s still rotating meat at street fairs:

Absentee Voters for Obama!

plumpdumpling — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 14:34:48 +0000

Barackin’ the vote, absentee style:

Actually, you can’t see whose circle Sonya filled in here, so who knows?

I imagine that anyone not voting for Obama has arguments similar to this one, made by some child on Nickelodeon’s Kids Pick the President message board:

I don’t like how people are sooooooo obbsessed with Obama! He wants to make taxes higher! He wants rich people to pay for poor people! Oh!, and did you know he was friends with one of the guys who was in the nine eleven attack! He has not had ant experence 4 years of congrass…THATS IT!!!! HE CAN’T LEAD OUR NATION HE JUST CAN’T IT WILL FALL APPART AND LEAD TO A 2ND GREAT DEPPRESION!

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay, parental influence!

Undecided Voters Don’t Deserve the Right to Vote

plumpdumpling — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 23:24:12 +0000

My best friend Tracey and I have been talking a lot about undecided voters lately and how we just. don’t. get. them. You either care for

1) the greater human need over your own selfish want
2) the greater human right over your own idiotic hatred

or you don’t. We don’t see how someone could possibly not have a definite opinion on, say, trade policy or women’s rights or taxation. I understand that you can be an independent or a libertarian or a member of the . . . Peace and Freedom Party(?) and not have a viable candidate who really suits your Presidential candidatey needs, but after A YEAR AND A HALF OF CAMPAIGNING, make up your damned mind already!

Tracey sent me a David Sedaris article in The New Yorker today that we think says it best:

To put [undecided voters] in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

I made a deal with Kamran that if he yells at the TV too much, I get to switch it back to that horrible Nicole Kidman movie about interpreting.

plumpdumpling — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 02:29:18 +0000

Lady protesters making a ruckus at the McCain speech, I SALUTE YOU.

What fun!

Barack Obama Held Your Hand When You Were Frightened

plumpdumpling — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:40:33 +0000

Thanks to Anton, I can’t get enough of barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com.

Comment Here

OMGpleasedropoutalready

plumpdumpling — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:39:25 +0000

Kamran and Katie eat pigs-in-a-blanket from the local trailer trash bar for dinner while watching “The O’Reilly Factor”. Kamran says, “Did you hear that Hillary was rooting for Eight Belles? She told everyone to ‘bet on the filly’.” Katie responds, “That makes me almost glad it had to be euthanized.” Kamran shows Katie the Delegate Calculator slider thingy that’s only fun if you hate Hillary (and you do).

Heee!

Unapologetically Mundane » politicking

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