Hammas? Oh, man, I love that; especially with some pita chips, mmm. What? Oh, that's HUMMUS! oops.

This began as a comment on Virginia Gal's blog, but then I rambled so much, I thought I should just make this my post for today. Saves me a little effort.
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I have to agree with Maidink on this one. Is the White House refusing to play with Hammas distateful because it's hypocritical or because it's Bush? I have essentially no tolerance for this administration, but I can't imagine Clinton, for instance saying, "yeah, we'll play ball with Hammas." It's HAMMAS! I'm sure they've got lots of seemingly great plans for Palestine, but even the KKK adopts highways for clean up. (Though to Clinton's credit, he genuinely worked his ass of trying to settle issues between Palestinians and Israelis; for some reason, I suspect if Bush had the same passion for honest discourse in Holy Land - and not just initial brownnosing of Sharon - tempers wouldn't be flared enough to elect Hammas.) Sinn Fein probably did good things for Northern Ireland, as well, but until they really began to set their guns down, nobody really wanted to play ball with them. And those who did, I'm sure were cautious. No one person, or party even, is beyond redemption, but that entity has to show they are willing to compromise. Nothing I've heard this morning sounds like Hammas is eager to do that.

Ultimately, the problem with wanting to spread democracy is that it may not always produce the effect we want. It ain't the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants: one pair of jeans don't look good for real on different body types! Few of us want to admit, though that democracy, at least the Jeffersonian kind we have, may not be the best for every country. And communism and dictatorship is not necessarily the only other option, frankly.

What smells truly bad isn't the desire of any given White House for democracy to spread, it's the notion that we can forcefully spread it. Perhaps that's why this White House's rebuff of yesterday's elections looks hypocritical? Like: look, you want it in this region so badly that you're willing to force-feed it, and then when someone does it on their own, you scoff at them.
Interestingly enough, yesterday on NPR, I heard a topic for discussion for a show today and I wish I could remember the show: Democracy is great, but what happens when the wrong people win?

As for myself, I can't say I'm excited. Sunnis in Iraq are pissed that their peeps didn't carry the national election like they thought - "hey, did you guys know we were the minority this whole time? who knew?" - so we'll be dealing with a Shiite majority govt, there. Iran is run by a democratically elected, Jewphobic revisionist who is nuke happy. Israel is in limbo, and it looks like the Yitzak Rabin days aren't coming back anytime soon, and now Palestine has a government that would concur with Iran's statement about the geopolitcal cartography of Israel. Oh, and to top it all off, the world's most embarassing Texan - can you imagine he's topped even Anna Nicole Smith on my list? - leads the free world, and by extension, the most stabe example of democracy. Happy w/ yesterday's vote? Nope. But I can't say I'm excited about where most countries are going these days.

But I want to end optimistically: Congratulations, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf! May you lead Liberia to a brighter future!

Release Your Inhibiiii-shhunns

I've got that stupid song stuck in my head right now. In all it's freaking corniness. Thanks a friggin' lot, Natasha Beddingfield!

... no one else can feel it for you...

Looks like yours truly needs a good 3 day fast from lousy commercial radio! (as if there was any other type.)

Miller's Yawning

Shameful confession:
Last night my honey and I were watching Miller's Crossing. And we were bored with it. We let it play 37 minutes into the movie before we finally said, "eh, let's just watch it in fast forward, and play it every now and then to see if something interesting is going to happen."

I feel this confession shameful because I love the Coen brothers. As of this morning, I think the only movie of theirs I haven't seen is Ladykillers. I even enjoy their more underwhelming stuff. I love their dark humor and the way they look at life at a 53 degree angle. But Miller's Crossing just didn't do it for me. And I know lots of people love it. I'm trying to figure out exactly why it did nothing - hell, the opposite of nothing - for me.

The cast was great, all people I completely love watching, no matter what they're doing: Gabriel (yes, I'll marry you) Byrne, Albert Finney, Marcia Gay Harden, John (can't take my eyes offa you) Tuturro and even a scene or two with the deliciously flawed Steve Buscemi. The storytellers were those I adore: Coen Brothers. The cinematography was beautiful. I enjoyed listening to the turn of the century Irish/New York accents. But for the life of me, I just couldn't get involved in the story! For 37 minutes we watched, and then I noticed my honey had pulled this month's copy of Wired off the coffee table. "How interested are you in this?" I asked him as I pressed pause. "Well," he replied, "I am reading a magazine."

Here's my theory: I can't get engrossed in stories about organized crime. But I think I can get interested and pulled into stories about people who accidentally find themselves in the middle of crime rings. For as over Tom Hanks as I am (would someone please start casting other people?), I got into Road to Perdidtion, mainly because it was about "getting out" or the little boy finding himself in the middle of the organized crime. Pulp Fiction has enough of Jackson's character's wanting to leave that there's outter conflict to keep me interested, not just inner mob-boss yadda yadda conflict. Though it's been years since I've seen Barton Fink, I'm sure I'd be very involved in that story because Barton finds himself in the middle of something very sinister, being moved by forces beyond his control. (Was it organized crime there, too? I want to say yes, but I can't remember.) But stories that begin in the middle of organized crime, and deal solely with organized crime just don't do it for me. I'm just not that interested. This guy controls this street corner, and he controls this local politician, but they're all trying to scam over this guy ... blah, blah, blah. I really don't care. Political intrigue stories? Sure. So, it's not that I dont' like stories of backstabbing and power struggle. I just don't care about the power players of the underworld.

Oh, Joel and Ethan. I'm so sorry I didn't like it. It was a visual delight to watch, but an excellent sleep aid, as well.

Randomn Acts

Yeah, I know I misspelled (sic?) random. And I really don't care. Anyhow, this weekend, a group of folks participating in an event hosted by New York's Improv Everywhere were arrested - or was it just "shut down" - by the cops during their annual pantsless subway ride. Too bad. You see, one person riding on a subway pantsless is creepy. One hundred people riding pantsless on the subway is absolutely hysterical. I first heard of this group on This American Life, this summer. I don't know that all of their acts are in great taste, and I really don't care. But what I do love is the idea of creating the unexpected - usually the wonderful and unexpected - in a world where we're all jaded. I'm not sure which act I like best, so far, the Shark Attacks on UNC campus in 2001, or the U2 knockoff, last Spring. Here's a clip from my favorite part of that bit. (note: you'll need Quicktime and if you're at work, put in your headphones.) God love the angry Irish!

In the meantime, I'm proud of myself for having predicted that Superbowl XL would pit the Steelers against the Seahawks. Granted, I made that prediction with only 4 teams to go (a week before the final 2 playoff games), but hey, I still coulda' been wrong. Woohoo, me!

Failed by the world

I heard about this case last night, on All Things Considered. Haleigh Poutre is an eleven year old girl in Massachussetts who was beaten within a centimeter of her life, last September, with a baseball bat. Her stepfather is the prime suspect. She's now in a permanent vegetative state a la Terri Schiavo, and the state of MA wants to remove her feeding tube and let her die. Her adoptive mother (her biological aunt) was found dead with the child's grandmother two weeks following Haleigh's beating, in an apparent murder-suicide. Her biological mother had turned the child over to her sister five years ago when she moved to Virginia to be with her boyfriend.

My first and primary thought is this: regardless of how necessary it may to let this little girl die - if it were my child or loved one, I suspect I'd probably make the same decision - there is something ultimately morally repulsive to me about letting the state make that decision. That was what was one of the two things so repugnant about the Schiavo situation: that a governing body assumed the right to tell a family when or if she should die. (The other, of course, is that the family hated eachother so much that they couldn't or refused to cooperate and give that woman a diginified life or death.) I presume that little Haleigh is now the ward of the state, and so it is legally the state's decision. But am I the only one who is creeped out by that? An emotionally distant governing body gets to decide to pull her tube?

Apparently her stepfather tried to get a judge to rule that he was the default parent in her case and so he should have the right to make that decision. He wants Haleigh to continue in her artificial subsistence until her natural death. When she dies, by the way, he will be charged with murder. I'm sure his motives are entirely in her best interest. (Ugh.) So then I wonder where her biological mother is in all of this. According to the CNN article linked above, she's feeling frantic. I presume she waivered all legal parental rights to her daughter when she passed her off to her sister, but I wonder if there are any legal loopholes that could be pursued so that she could ultimately be the one who makes the decision for the little girl. So that at the very least, it is a family member or (supposed) loved one who gets to make the call.

But this brings me to my second thought: has this poor little girl ever known anything we'd call love? Has she ever really had a decent, protective, emotionally supportive relationship with a parent figure? Probably not. I don't know the reasons why Haleigh's biological mother decided to adopt her out to her sister. I don't know what forces were in play there. They may have been perfectly valid and necessary. And don't most of us think - even if we're deluded - that our family members can best care for our children in our stead? But I'd put money on it that Haleigh herself felt abandoned and rejected. How can a 6 year old process that? If her beating really was inflicted upon her by one or both of her legal parents, then it would be pretty safe to say it wasn't the first. Even if it was only her stepfather who'd abuse her, that little girl lived knowing that her mother did little to nothing to stop it (maybe she was abused, too), and that her biological mother wasn't there to do anything about it, either. What an abject lonliness this child has probably known. What's sadder is that there are probably plenty of little Haleighs who grow up and repeat this cycle in their own families and in their own communities.

How I wish someone, while this child was still alive, could have stepped in and extracted her from that situation. Someone who was not abusive and evil could have adopted her and shown her the love that every one of us deserves and only some of us get. But what I wish now is that someone who loves her and who wants the best for her could make the decision whether to let her die. It seems so vulgar that the state - an entity that cannot love, but only rule - should make that decision. She has been failed by all who should've been there for her.

Insomnia

I woke up this morning about 10 minutes before the alarm and just lay in bed, wide awake, my mind racing. It's rare that I wake up before the alarm, and anymore, rarer still that I can't get back to sleep once I wake in the middle of the night. But getting to sleep has always been a task for me, and lately it's been almost impossible. I lie awake in bed, in the dark and my heart starts racing and my mind soon matches its pace. My stomach starts gurgling too. And of course, it doesn't help that I have two cats crawling all over me. Some nights I sit up in bed, and just want to cry, but I can't cry properly and instead I just tremble with dry sob in the dark.

It's anxiety, pure and simple, that's preventing me from sleeping. It comes in waves and cycles. I hate it. I hate that I'm probably not dealing effectively with what is causing me stress. (work, faith, school, life, etc.) But I'm not sure how to, or if I can. The other night, as I was sitting up in bed, angry and all acid refluxed out, my honey stroked my back and said, "It's because of living here." I was a little confused. Was he talking about our house - specifically the stomach churning process of trying to buy it in this inflated market? I love our house and suggested that wasn't it. "No," he said, "I mean living in this area." This kind of surprised me. He and I have bounced our frustrations with this area off of each other, but it was the first time (that I can remember) that he directly attributed mental health issues to living here.

I love living in a major metro area on the East Coast, but I can't do it forever, and it doesn't come without a cost. While I have always something of a worry wart, I can't remember ever living with a constant dread, a constant necessity to hold my breath. I'm sure a lot of that comes with being a "grown up," but I wouldn't really know for sure as most of my post-college life has been lived out here. The same fast paced energy that makes the metro-East so exciting can also end up being suffocating. It moves too fast, sometimes. And you're judged by your career or your career choices - even more so, I think than you are in general America. A friend of mine on the West Coast who did business in New York on occasion once told me he felt like on the East Coast society judges you by your marketability. This, he further opined, might be why motherhood before age 35 or 36, in the East, is kind of quietly disdained. If you crank out a screamer before 35, you're damaging your marketability, so why would anyone deliberately do that? I really couldn't agree more with him.

Strangers don't really look you in the eye here. Growing up in the Southwest, passing a pleasant smile to a stranger on the street was pretty much the norm. If you didn't exchange a smile, you at least looked the person in the eye. And banter with strangers was common. When we moved here, it was immediately apparent - pretty much the first day we pulled into town - that there is essentially no hospitality to or among strangers here. I learned later that people here are as nice as they are in the west, but it took several months to learn that. People don't extend themselves as readily. You wouldn't know that the person on the subway, across from you who looks like a miserable zombie and who always averts their eyes when you look at him could really be an awesomely warm person. (Ironically, I have found that there is a sort of city bus hospitality in this area. I think it comes from people being on routine schedules. Unless someone thinks they'll see you again in the same area at the same time, the chance of them extending a smile or sharing a joke is rare.)

Forget about strangers holding the door open for you, or thanking you for holding it open for them. The chance of either case occuring is probably one in ten. If you're lucky enough for a stranger to hold the door open for you, it's most likely that he/she kind of "accidentally" kept it open: ie, they let the door catch on their elbow for you because you were half a pace behind them. That's always what I love most about returning home for a visit. People - and granted, not every person you see - hold doors open for you, and they thank you, deliberately, not oh crap, I guess I have to say 'thank you'. The very first day we were in my home state - in a metro area whos population rivals that of many East Coast areas - a young gentleman held open a door for us, even though we were a good 10 - 15 paces from the door. It's such a little thing. But it's a dignity given.

I didn't know how much I loved the little dignities shared with strangers until I moved East, and didn't get them on a regular basis. It's like not knowing how much you appreciate the sun until you move to Nome, Alaska and don't get to see the sun for 6 months, and even then you're under 10 feet of snow. Little dignities, like sunshine, sustain you more than you know. The locals here aren't as affected of it, I think. Just like a native Nomer probably doesn't miss the sun, because she really doesn't know it, or thinks it's a seasonal abberation. A Nomer visiting Arizona may really like the sun while she's there and she's aware of the sun's lack, when she goes home, but she doesn't complain about it. Native or deeply implanted East Coasters are aware of the lack of little indignities, but they don't complain about it. (The little indignities being so important reminds me of "Divorce Song" by Liz Phair. It's not the big things that kill us.)

But, unlike the sunshine, they can do something about it. We can choose to be more proactively friendly to strangers. We can choose to hold the door open for someone. We can choose to thank the person who holds the door open. We can choose to let the person in the crosswalk cross, as opposed to speeding up to mow him down. But few of us choose to do any of these things. Much as I've tried to maintain the manners taught me and modeled for me from my Southwest upbringing, I find myself becoming more East Coaster crumudgeonly. I dodge eye contact more often, I offer smiles to strangers no longer. My banter with strangers anymore is far more constrained than it used to be. I find myself second guessing everything.

And shadowing all these minor daily indignities is the specter of 9/11. If my daily anxiety is fueled by strangers ignoring eachother, then the furnace that processes that is the threat of terrorism. I think we feel it more out here than folks do anywhere else in the country. We were hit. We have two bruised cities on our shores, and we've probably had more closed tunnels, arrested neighbors and "strange backpack on the bus" threats than anyone else. One can argue that a lot of it is just hype perpetrated by a fear mongering administration, but the truth of the matter is, when your city has a hole its skyline, when your farm has a scar across its field and your fortress has a charred maw, it doesn't matter who is governing you, there is a whole different perspective you operate under. Victims of violent crimes are many times forever changed, forever more suspicious. The East Coast was the victim of a violent crime. We can't help but live with a sense of suspicion for the rest of our lives. I don't care how many times we tell ourselves, if we're afraid then the terrorists have won. Try telling a Gulf Coaster, a few years post-Katrina, not to fear thunderstorms or high winds or heavy rain. Try telling them that their fear of a simple tropical storm is irrational. They have scars. Those of us who were on the East Coast for the attacks have scars. Mine is the engine of my anxiety.

I love where we live. I do love the East Coast. I feel very much that this is exactly where we should be at this moment in our lives. I love the ethnic plurality of the area. It's my favorite part of living here. While most metro areas in the US are more ethnically diverse than they were even 15 years ago - I'm constantly surprised by how ethnically diverse Texas is becoming - most places don't have the ethnic equanimity (?) of the East Coast. While in most metro areas, there are two or three main ethnicities or nationalities peppered with other more "minority" minorities, the East Coast is almost nothing but a pepper mill. The kid in class next to you is just as likely to speak Kikuyu as Spanish. I LOVE that about living here.

When the time comes for us to move west again, I will miss the symphony of languages on the subway. But when we're west, I'll feel freer to smile at those having a foreign conversation in public.

Rememberance

Ten years ago, today, I lost a cousin to Muscular Dystrophy. He was 20 years old. I'm not quite sure what to write yet about him, so I'll just share bits of an essay I wrote about him a few years back:

I can’t remember ever not knowing that S had MD. As I understood it, his muscles didn’t work and it would probably get worse. My cousin R was the one who told me it would be fatal. “He probably won’t live to be older than 18,” he explained as we played catch one afternoon. I didn’t believe him. After all, R was prone to cuss - strange for a 9 year old - and punch me for no reason. When I asked my parents about it, they confirmed that people with S’s type of MD usually didn’t live long into adulthood. Suddenly, there was an expiration date for him stamped into my mind.

S had MD, but MD never had him. A speaker at his funeral commented that you’d enter a room S was in feeling sorry for him, but you’d leave the room feeling sorry for yourself. He was more than delighted to meet anyone who crossed his path. Rarely was he ever without a smile – unless, of course, he was quarreling with his sister. He was radiant, ready to discuss anything, play anything and full of jokes. If his outlook was ever dim, he hid it well. His favorite animal was the eagle. He tracked pro and college football with only slightly more diligence than he memorized biblical scripture. He enjoyed volunteering with, and participating in, Muscular Dystrophy Association sponsored activities. During his life, he befriended the head coaches of both a major pro football team and of a university football powerhouse; visited tourist cities on both coasts; sold concessions at PGA tours and worked as a representative of his city in the 1994 World Cup Soccer Championship. All this he did without being able to move his legs or upper body.

He had a great sense of humor. Some afternoons, he and his father would flip on Comedy Central for a few hours of “Mystery Science Theatre 3000”, just to add their sarcastic comments to the tasteless, low-quality films the TV show specialized in. Once, when I was visiting his family with my grandparents, his sister and I slept on the floor in S's room. With the lights out, the three of us talked in the dark about fire safety for some reason. We discussed emergency procedures. “But how would S get out?” his sister asked. You could hear the good-natured grin in his voice as he responded, “Just throw me out the window!” We all laughed so hard that my uncle had to tell us to quiet down.

The legacy of my cousin S inspires me to fight against nagging fears of incompetence, pain and against laziness. Though I may not be graceful, when I dance, I dance with joy and abandon, because I have been blessed with full motion of my body. When S laughed and loved, he did so with joy and abandon because he was blessed with full motion of his heart. Because I have been lucky enough to have a healthy body, I have begun taking care of it better. I even ran a marathon. On days when the run was difficult, and the weather was defeating, I'd imagine S on the sidelines cheering me on. He loved sports so much, and he would have been proud to see me run: particularly since I was always too insecure to pursue athletics, growing up. When a wheelchair-bound neighbor of mine missed bus after bus because none of the wheelchair lifts work, I e-mailed the city transportation system about the problem. Because my cousin S lived with dignity, I want everyone who is overlooked, to be granted the dignity a human deserves. Though there is an overabundance of enriching experiences to cram it all into one lifetime, I am learning to seek all of them that I can. I travel, I go to the theatre, I read books, I run, I swim, I act, I write, I volunteer. If my cousin could do so much, and enjoy so much, then I have no excuse not to.

... I never really wonder what his life would be like if S was still alive. I do wonder what his life would've been like if he had never had his affliction. My grandparents think he would've been the same person. Maybe. But I kind of doubt it. We are shaped by our experiences. If he had been healthy and ambulatory, he may have ended up just as whiny as the rest of us walkin' folk. I'm not glad my cousin was stricken, but I am glad for how his life touched mine.

When he died, all I could think to do was just be in constant prayer for about a day. I kept praying over and over to God: Thank you. Thank you for his life, thank you for his death. His death has really made me think of my own death and the eventual death of those I love a lot in the last 10 years. My cousin needed to die. At the time of his death, I was emotionally prepared for my own and for that of those around me. We like to think of death as a bad thing but it's not always. But, now, pushing 30, I find I fear death more than ever: both my own and that of my loved ones. Probably, because ten years on, I now have to take care of myself more than I did in 1996, and because I have a mate to care for. I want to learn how not to fear death. I want to learn to embrace it when it comes, whether it's a slow, painful encroachment or whether it's swift and unexpected.

Until then, I want to learn to live with the unfettered happiness of my all-too-fettered cousin.

"Christian" ... "leader" once again embarassment to those who follow Christ

Happy Epiphany! According to Christian tradition, this is the day the wise men arrived to find the Baby Jesus. It's also know as the 12th day of Christmas, and my favorite title: el dia de los tres reyes. This day is called Epiphany because it is recognized as the day when Jesus made his public debut of sorts; when the rest of the world (not just Mary, Joe and the livestock) knew of God's being with us in the flesh. It's kind of like the Junteenth of the messianic arrival.

How ironic is it then that on this day of being awakened to the light of God With Us, that one who claims to minister in the name of Christ then speaks with such a dark tongue?

I'm no real fan of Sharon; until the past year he's seemed like a bully to me. But if God smites left and right according to semitic land rights and school board elections, then I'm sure God smites according to smaller chicaneries and pompouseries too. (Ouch! I just got a sharp pain in my left arm! That must be punishment for reading Lamb.) I'm wondering what "God's wrath" on Pat Robertson will be. Frankly, I suspect arrogance - especially arrogance in the name of God - is ultimately its own cosmic detriment.

Now to call the DMV about a bill ... ugh, there's wrath all on its own!

Bring on 2006!

We're already six years into the otts! Since we're living in the first decade of the century, that means we'll have the privilege of telling our kids, grandkids, great-grandkids and bored teenagers on the bus what life was like "back in the day." Even though I'm on the darker side of ambivalent about turning 30 this year, I must say, I will be happy out of my pants excited when I'm finally the age where I can rant on, like Grandpa Simpson about how hard we had it when we were young. Here's a partial list of what I'll recall for my victims:

- the trainwreck election of 0tt-0tt. Two words: Hanging Chads. Okay, two more: Butterfly Ballots. Back then, we didn't think we could elect malignant leaders. Just stupid ones. We also thought the two kinds of leaders were mutually exclusive. Thank God the Supreme Court settled that dispute for us!

- the 'splosions heard 'round the world of ott-one. For years I'd bristled at the Taliban's treatment of women, then in 2001 they blew up giant ancient rock-faced statues of Buddha and for some reason that was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. (Go figure.) I thought, man, somebody oughtta go knock those guys outta power! Well ... they gave us an exuse. 'course what amazed me most was that the whole world responded with a benevolence to us that we, on the ground, almost never show to them when they suffer far more extensive losses.

- the corporate scandal floodgate of ott-two. Technically, I think this started with Enron in ott-one. But boy they kept 'em coming in '02; my favorite was Tyco. But I want front row seats to the Enron '06 trial. Why it's taken almost 5 years to bring these boys to the table, I'll never know.

- the war we started in ott-three. Mission Accomplished! wait, make that a "?"

- boobie-gate of ott-four. We had our priorities high, back then! Plus, gawking at the tragedy of Janet and Justin's "whoopsie" and their apparent lack of good solid family morals helped us cope with real tragedy on a global scale, right? Sure.

- the drowning of a national treasure in 0tt-five. When the Superdome became the Thunderdome. If I ever did half as good a job as "Brownie" in my own work, I'd be fired!

My hope for ott-six: A better job situation, completion of my degree and maybe just a little more compassion in this bitter old world. We should all just get a puppy.