Category Archives: politicking

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

Filed under politicking, super furry animals
Tagged as ,

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.

White is a Race

Filed under politicking
Tagged as

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

Filed under politicking
Tagged as ,

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?

Filed under living in new york sucks so hard, no i really do love ohio, politicking
Tagged as , ,

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.

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

Filed under music is my boyfriend, politicking
Tagged as ,

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.)”