ordinary extraordinary

Sweet Ride

The LD and I have been tossing around the idea of carpooling for some time now. We live less than a mile apart and generally work the same hours, but for some reason we haven't quite made the leap to ride-sharing yet.

Today, when prices crossed the $4/gallon mark at our local gas station, I got this email from him:

Gas is expensive. Really expensive. It would be cheaper to fill my car with Voss Water. Are you interested in carpooling? I own an irresistable '99 Mustang. Sweet ride.

Have I mentioned lately how glad I am that I bought an SUV right before gas prices started to spiral out of control? Yeah. Great choice. My response:

Yes! Can't wait to go for a spin in that "sweet ride."

So, as of Monday morning, I'll be carpooling a few days a week. Hopefully now I'll be able to afford to eat again.

Preventing Assault

Kevin Apgar has launched his second Grassroots Blogger Book Marketing Campaign for Carly Milne's Sexography, and this time there's a twist:

April is National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month, and it’s a big month for the Rape and Incest National Network (RAINN). The organization’s goal is to raise enough money to be able to offer victims of sexual abuse, sexual assault and rape an online hotline offering counseling and assistance 24 hours a day, seven days a week. RAINN’s Chelsea Bowers, Kevin Apgar and Sexography author Carly Milne have banded together to launch a one-of-a-kind online fundraising event to help RAINN reach that goal.

So for the month of April, the blogosphere is going to talk about sex to raise money for RAINN. That's win-win, right?

All things considered, my sexual history is largely unremarkable. Certainly there were a few awkward experiences (Um, I don't think it's supposed to do that...) and a few things I wish I'd known earlier (You're married? Really? And when exactly were you planning on mentioning that?), but overall I've been lucky. I've never been raped, molested, abused, or attacked.

My friends have, though.

When I turned 14 or 15 and started to express an interest in boys and dating, my father taught me two things: How to break a man's arm with my shoulder, and how not to fight like a girl - to hit soft, vulnerable tissue as hard as I could with my elbows, knees, and heels. My father is not a violent man, but he is a realist. He was very clear that pleading words or logic would be wasted on an attacker and that the only appropriate response was to fight like a caged wolverine.

Unfortunately, he is absolutely right.

In the fall of my sophomore year of college, my friend S and I went to a party at the TKE house with a bunch of other friends. Being savvy young women, we had a pre-arranged system for staying safe at huge parties; we stuck together. Arrive together, leave together. No exceptions.

This particular party was completely insane; people were packed into the house like sardines and spilling out all over the front and back lawns. S had quickly met up with the guy she'd come to flirt with (a cute second string linebacker from her Calculus class) and dragged him to the middle of the madness to dance, so I stuck to the periphery of the party with a few other friends and kept an eye on S as much as I could.

About an hour later I looked up from a conversation with the guy on whom I had a crush and noticed that S and the linebacker were gone. After scanning the room and finding them absent, I excused myself from Cute Guy and set off to look for them. Since I went to college in the Dark Ages, before everyone had a cell phone, there was no choice but to work my way through the crowd and see if I could find them. I was none too pleased that I had to stop my flirting to go hunting, but it a deal's a deal: we stick together at parties, period.   

I did a lap through the house and started to get concerned when I couldn't find either of them - the party was big, but not THAT big. Thinking that S and the linebacker may have taken off to go get some food or perhaps more beer, I recruited a couple of other friends to keep searching the party while I went to see if her car was still parked on the street.

It was, and they were in it. The linebacker had S pinned to the front seat and she was pleading with him to let her go.

S, the tough-talking Brooklyn girl who used to joke that she kept her acrylic nails long so they'd be more effective weapons, was absolutely frozen in terror and very close to being in a lot of trouble.

I don't know what I yelled when I saw what was happening, but it was enough to startle the linebacker. Though truly, I think he was more startled when I yanked the passenger side door open and hauled him out of the car. We ended up in a scuffle on the ground and I was doing my level best to hit him anywhere that would really hurt. S finally found her voice and screamed for help, which brought Cute Guy and a few other friends running. I'd managed to get a few good shots in, but Cute Guy was nice enough to finish the job: he picked the linebacker up by the collar, punched him square in the jaw, and sent him sprawling on the sidewalk.

I don't know what happened after that, S and I collected ourselves and left quickly, but I do know that the linebacker gave me a WIDE berth every time he saw me on campus for the next 3 years.

Later, when I asked S why she hadn't gouged his eyes out with her nails, she said that she didn't want to hurt him, that he was just drunk - as if that were some kind of excuse for his behavior.

When my father stood in the kitchen and taught me how to fight, he taught me so much more than the physical skills. He taught me that an assault is a breech of civilized behavior and that it nullifies all rules of ladylike comportment, and most importantly he taught me that it was RIGHT and GOOD to defend myself, and that I had the strength and power to do so.

Open Letter: Short & Sweet Edition

Dear Berkeley,

Fuck you.

No, seriously: Fuck you.

No love,
Me

I believe

I'm asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington. . . I'm asking you to believe in yours. * * * * * I reject the notion that the American moment has passed. I dismiss the cynics who say that this new century cannot be another when, in the words of President Franklin Roosevelt, we lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good. * * * * *

We are the people we've been waiting for. We are the change we seek.. . . We are the hope for the future, the answer to the cynics who tell us that our house must stand divided, that we cannot come together, that we are not the ones who can make this world the way it should be.
-Barack Obama, Feb 5 2008

Yes, yes, a thousand times YES. It is so refreshing to be rooting for someone rather than just against the greater of two evils.

Many of my female friends are incensed that I'm not supporting Hillary, but voting for a woman simply because she's female is just as bad as voting for a man simply because he's male. I don't like Hillary Clinton. I don't like her policies, I don't like her double-speak, and I don't trust her to bring real change to our ailing government. She is not my candidate. Barack Obama is, and he has been ever since he gave the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in 2004.

I've been mulling over how best to articulate what it is about Obama that I find so inspiring, but ultimately I've decided simply to quote the words of others who have expressed my feelings perfectly.

From Patrick Nielsen Hayden of Making Light:

I’m for Obama knowing perfectly well that, as Bill Clinton suggested, it’s a “roll of the dice”. A roll of the dice for Democrats, for progressives, for those of us who’ve fought so hard against the right-wing frames that Obama sometimes (sometimes craftily, sometimes naively) deploys. Because I think a Hillary Clinton candidacy will be another game of inches, yielding—at best—another four or eight years of knifework in the dark. Because I think an Obama candidacy might actually shake up the whole gameboard, energize good people, create room and space for real change.

Because he seems to know something extraordinarily important, something so frequently missing from progressive politics in this country, in this time: how to hearten people.  Because when I watch him speak, I see fearful people becoming brave.

That’s not enough.  But it’s something.  It’s a real something.  It’s a start.

From Hilzoy of Obsidian Wings:

. . . people often wonder whether Obama's call for a new kind of politics is just empty words. Here again, I think he has a real record to point to. He has consistently worked for ethics reform. In Illinois, where he helped pass what the WaPo called "the most ambitious campaign reform in nearly 25 years, making Illinois one of the best in the nation on campaign finance disclosure." In the US Senate, he was the Democrats' point man on ethics, and was deeply involved in the ethics legislation passed this year. He didn't get all he wanted -- for instance, he and Russ Feingold couldn't get a bill establishing an Office of Public Integrity to deal with Congressional scandals. But he accomplished a lot, and wants to accomplish more.

Moreover, he is very interested in open government. The searchable database of government grant and contract recipients that I mentioned above is part of that. But Obama's proposals (pdf) go further.

And finally, from Wil Wheaton of WWdN: In Exile:

We've been afraid for too long, and it's cost us dearly. Karl Rove and George Bush and Dick Cheney will have many disastrous legacies, but one of the most despicable and enduring will be how they used fear to deeply and deliberately divide our country.

It's going to be a huge challenge for our next president to heal this nation, and end the Culture of Fear that's been created by the Bush Administration. I believe that Barack Obama is the best candidate to do that, and I was proud to vote for him today.

C'mon California... why aren't you on the Obama bandwagon yet?

 

YEAH BABY!!!

Giants Receiver David Tyree making
the CATCH OF THE GAME in Super Bowl XLII.
Photo: Matt Slocum

Oh how the mighty have fallen. And you know what? I couldn't be happier (and not just because I've been a Giants fan since birth). Though I was prepared to have some sympathy for the Patriots as they watched their hopes of being 19-0 get dashed, Belichek managed to obliterate that idea by abandoning his team on the field for the last official play of the game.

Suck it Belichek, you graceless, cheating jackass. The simple fact is, the Giants outplayed your boys for all four quarters.

The Giants understood what was at stake, they brought thier A-Game, and in what was possibly the most nail-biting fourth quarter play of all time Manning & Tyree were nothing short of heroic. Eli breaking free of almost the entire Pats defensive line and hurling the ball 32 yards, where David Tyree kept possession by sticking it to his freaking helmet? That is Super Bowl quality football.

I know that in the days to come, the Patriots PR machine will come out with all manner of excuses for why the Patriots played so poorly, and that annoys me. The Giants earned this victory, and they've earned the right to enjoy it without any excuses from their opponents.

God I love football, and I am so sad that the start of the 2008 season is so far away.

Hey, Patriots, how about you add "learn to lose with dignity" to your list of things to do in the off-season? It's a skill you're sorely lacking.

God's Standards

People, I don't care who you vote for as long as you don't vote for this douchebag:

I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view. - Mike Huckabee, 1/15/08

I'm guessing that he plans to start with the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Dear Andrew

The Mighty Jimbo is the passerby mentioned in this article and he has written that young man a beautiful letter.

I don't know if you saw the sunrise that morning. I really hope you did. Maybe it would have given you hope. Or maybe it let your last sight be one of beauty. But if I had to find you, I only wish I could have found you a few hours earlier. Maybe we could have talked of dolphins. Maybe you would have let Josh lick your face. Maybe we could have seen the sunrise.

At twenty years old, there are just so many sunrises left to see.

Friday Food For Thought

An Oakland Welcome

There are a lot of things I like about Oakland, not the least of which is the fact that my BFF lives there. It's charming, conveniently close to San Francisco, and hey - I'm kind of a big deal there! Until last week it was safe to say that my only real problem with Oakland is the fact that it's home to the Raider Nation - quite possibly the most obnoxious and least sporting fan base in the entire country.

But what happened last week at the Oakland Airport has left me so angry that my hands are shaking as I type this.

On September 27th 204 Marines and soldiers who were returning from Iraq were not allowed into the passenger terminal at Oakland International Airport.Instead they had to deplane about 400 yards away from the terminal where the extra baggage trailers were located.

Let me make that crystal clear: 204 Marines and soldiers returning from WAR were DENIED ENTRANCE TO THE TERMINAL at the Oakland Airport and forced to wait in a trailer like so much unwanted baggage.

No matter how rationally I try to think about this, it just makes my blood boil.

A few points to remember:

• This was a decision made by the Port of Oakland, not the Department of Defense. This was NOT a matter of keeping them sequestered together until they could be debriefed.
• The passengers went through customs in Kuwait, where their flight originated. This is standard practice for military personnel returning to the States and is a far more rigorous screening than anything the TSA does to civilian passengers.
• They were flying into Oakland on a chartered commercial jet, not a military one. This is also standard practice.
• The troops were allowed off the plane both in Leipzig, Germany and at JFK in New York.

The story was first reported on OC Blog and quickly denounced as being a bit of political propaganda. However, Michelle Malkin  did a little research and contacted both the Navy Chaplain who serves with the Marines, and the Port of Oakland. You can read the entirety of OAK's response on Michelle's blog, but let me highlight my favorite parts:

As you know sometimes the way things appear initially regarding an incident turn out to be different after looking into the details. We checked into this once you had called me and raised your public relations concern, so again thank you.

and...

Airside Operations and Aviation Security worked with the ground handling company and other law enforcement partners to coordinate a plan that was satisfactory to the pilot and passengers...

Is it just me, or does this statement read as though Marilyn Sandifur, OAK's spokeperson, is essentially saying "Oopsie! Silly us!" and trying to get out of this mess without actually apologizing? Also, it's pretty obvious that the "plan" they coordinated was NOT satisfactory to the passengers.

The statement that the Port of Oakland posted yesterday is only a slight variation on Sandifur's original and it still 1) blames the military 2) lacks any sort of actual apology.

The worst part is that this is hardly a new policy for the Oakland Airport. Soldiers returning from Vietnam, Libya, Afghanistan, and the (first) Gulf War all have similar stories. Clearly, Oakland is following in San Francisco's anti-military footsteps:

• In 2005, the San Francisco City Council refused to grant the USS Iowa permanent berth in San Francisco - it had been scheduled to open as a museum. Their reasons? Community opposition to the Iraq war.
• This year, the Council is trying to prevent the Blue Angels from flying over the city and the Marines were denied permission to shoot a recruiting video on San Francisco's streets.

Excuse me San Francisco, but who do you think is going to save your asses when Kim Jong-il finally goes crazy and pushes the big red button, or when another earthquake buries half the city in rubble?  The Army, the Navy, the Marines, and the National Guard that's who. The same people who aren't allowed to set foot in your terminals, or fly over your city.

Men and women have staked, and lost, their lives for the last two hundred plus years so that you all have the freedom to be idealistic assholes; they deserve more than just your hospitality.

They deserve your fucking gratitude.

Boxing Up My Well Wishes

I have a handful of friends serving overseas at the moment, so every couple of months I spend a Sunday afternoon putting together care packages. I send one to each of my friends as well as to a couple of servicemen (or women) whose addresses I get from AnySoldier. I've done enough of these now that I've got it down to a science.

• First, a trip to Target and the 99 Cent store for snacks, hygiene items, magazines, and whatever else seems useful or has been requested. I have a stock of the basic items, so I'm usually just shopping for specifics or anything on which I'm low.
• Next, I assemble the boxes with the strongest packing tape possible. It's hard to predict what the boxes will have to go through before they arrive at their destination, so it's important that they be sturdy.
• Then, I spread all of my purchases out on the dining room table and start sorting and re-packaging. Anything that could leak or melt (including bar soap) gets double-bagged in a freezer-strength Ziploc. Anything that can be condensed (like boxes of single-serving drink mix) is removed from its box and also flung into a Ziploc.
• Next, I jot down a note to put in each box. My friends get longer personal letters, the folks from Any Soldier (obviously) get more generic ones. I always my email address at the end of the Any Soldier notes, in case they have time to respond (many do, eventually).
• Finally, it's time to load up the boxes! Food, magazines & games are put into one box, toiletries into another. The separation is key - otherwise they get snacks that taste like deodorant and really, who wants that?  When everything's packed securely, I put the note at the top and seal up the boxes (again, with lots of strong tape).

All that's left after all that is to address them and take them to the post office.

It's hard to describe how I feel at the end of a care package afternoon. On the one hand, I'm happy to have accomplished something that will bring other people some cheer. On the other, I hate the fact that there are so many people over there who need cheering. The whole business of war seems very personal when I'm looking at a collection of brown boxes lined up on my table.

No matter what your politics, please remember that there are thousands troops deployed overseas whose lives are in danger every single day. They deserve to know that they have the support of the people back home. If you have a few dollars and minutes to spare, I sincerely hope that each and every one of you will box up your well wishes and send it to any of the more than 3000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines who have signed up  with AnySoldier.