Supplemental Update

Me
The thing is, I don't understand how creepy bi-stalker thought you would use the same technique to pick up a straight girl as you would for a gay guy?

shamus
YOU DON'T REALLY THINK THAT BULLSHIT HE PULLED WOULD WORK ON A GAY GUY!

Me
I've seen it work. That whole "I'm going to brush by you and hard core grab your ass...then go stand three feet away looking off into space waiting for you to come to me."

shamus
Ha. Like all "Who did that?"

(pause)
(pause)
(pause)

shamus
STOP IM'ING ME. I'M FOUR FEET AWAY.

And this, ladies and gents, is why shamus and I will never work in the same office.

 

shamus Delivers

I really feel that my first day in San Francisco can be summarized by this exchange:

Me (baffled, horrified look on my face)
WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? HOW IS THIS HAPPENING? HOW IS MY ASS GETTING GRABBED IN A GAY BAR?

Justin (pulling me away from the main area)
Jocelyn, Jocelyn, Jocelyn, he's bi!

shamus
You've been away too long. You've forgotten how this works.

And ladies, take this advice, which I smartly took myself last night. The hook-up you DON'T want is the creepy bi stalker in the gay bar. I mean, that cannot ever work out for you.

But it was a perfect day, really. Spent the afternoon here. Then I went to Minnie Wilde and bought this and these. Then wine with the lovely AshliEE and then we saw this, which I will write about later. And also, for your enjoyment, here are some other quotes from the evening:

"I think my minimum expectation with sex is not to be pooped on."

Really, I can't top that. So I won't even try.

 

Finishing My Conversation with Pook

Hey Pookie!

I'm totally sorry we didn't get to finish our conversation yesterday, so what I'm going to do is just post what I was going to respond to you here, and then you can read it at your leisure, and it'll be cool. Coolio. Cool like that. Ice cold.

So, firstly, let me just say to you that I agree with you that education is the main key to dealing with the fact that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer and the middle class is going away. And yes, I saw that Oprah too. But I also think there needs to be a shift in thinking about what "middle class" is. And I think that that's an unlikely change to happen, because I think that the US is pretty diseased with a sense of entitlement, and I'm not sure that can get fixed until there's a real rock bottom hit.

So, firstly, I think a lot of people have an idea of middle class that's the same idea that you and I grew up with, but even bigger. Like, have you been back to our lovely hometown lately? Have you driven out to the technology park where the $400,000 homes are? That's the idea of middle class most people are working with now. Remember back in our day when middle class meant you had a nice, reasonable two or three bedroom house and two utility cars and took a family vacation to Ocean City once a year? This is no longer the definition of middle class to most people. Middle class now means a huge house and three cars, one of which is a sports luxury vehcile, and trips to Vegas and fifty grand in credit card debt. This is the new definition of middle class. So lets be clear when we talk about bringing back the middle class that what you and I mean when we say it is different from what a lot of people mean when they say it.

Let's also for just a second consider if the middle class of the 70s, 80s and 90s wasn't a little inflated by a series of circumstances. Firstly, there were a lot of production and manufacturing jobs in the US that have since gone overseas and aren't coming back. Today, most people will be unemployed and re-training for a new job for at least three to five years of their professional career. Ten years ago, the ill effects employee over payments, high pensions, employer covered health insurance and all of those other things hadn't really been felt by large corporations yet, and a part of the reason they hadn't been felt was because a lot of the rest of the world hadn't really launched their hard cord global industrial efforts. Is it reality that a factory worker should be able to buy a Lexus and a house in a gated community? I'm not sure that's reality. But that's what happened, and now that things are settling into a more "real" way of being, it's a hard pill to swallow that middle class may really, honestly, mean middle class. It's hard to motivate people to aspire to something that's less than what they grew up thinking it should be.

And I agree that the education system is totally gutted, and it needs money plugged into it, and it's completely absurd that your schools entire supply budget is less than the budget for a drum core at a suburban school. That's all bullshit. So yeah, money is a big part of the answer. And people willing to stick it in for a longer term solution about connection and community building is an answer too. But you can educate all you want and if the outcome is that people are still living well below the standard they want, the value of education to people will continue to decrease because ultimately it's not providing an end value that's acceptable for the trade off. I'm not for a minute saying that there shouldn't be an intrinsic value in getting an education for the sake of education. I'm saying that's not how people think. At least not most people. So plugging money into education isn't going to get to the root of the problem. Ask yourself this and answer truthfully: If your school had an extra million dollars a year to spend on educational resources, would it really change how your students viewed the value of their education, or would they still sell drugs after school and blow off homework?

It's a broken system for sure. But the break, I think, is deeper than the school system. I'm not sure I'd want to plug money into fixing the engine of a car if I knew the battery was dead and needed to be replaced too.

I'm just saying.

 

In the meantime, some freaking cat photos.

Yeah, that's right. I'm posting cat photos while I'm too busy to write a real update. And worse than that, this update has been in the hopper labeled "Post when busy" for a month. Suckas!

In this photo, Redford:
a. Has had enough of Little Rooney getting all the attention.
b. Has finished his morning read of the NYT and wants you to know how sophisticated he is.
c. Is practicing his disinterested face for "America's Next Top Model Cat"
Submit your answer!

In this photo, SlyBoo:
a. Shows you what a cat looks like moments before he explodes.
b. Proves that weight control cat food is just another way to extort 40 cents a pound from me.
c. Models what twenty pounds of catty lovin' looks like.
Submit your answer!

In this photo, Little Rooney is saying:
a. I'm cute!
b. I'm CUTE!
c. I'M CUTE BITCHES!
Submit your answer!

In this photo, Little Rooney is saying:
a. Still cute!
b. I cannot be bothered.
c. See how quickly you were able to get me fat?
Submit your answer!

 

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

So, this is how the weekend went.

Friday night, 10:00pm
"I'm sleepy. So sleepy. I'm just going to go to sleep and get up and do things in the morning. So sleeply.

Saturday morning, 10:30am
"Oh, it's only 10:30. I still have plenty of time to get things done. I'll just watch half and hour of Made first. Oh, I love this one about the jock who becomes a figure skater. I'll just watch this and then get up and .... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz"

Saturday afternoon, 1:00pm
"Whatever. There's nothing wrong with sleeping into the early afternoon. God, A&E and TLC have some great reality tv. Dog, Honey We're Killing the Kids, Shalom in the Home, While You Were Out, Trading Spaces, Intervention ... they really have this genre nailed. Oh! I can barely wait for God or the Girl. I'll just watch this episode of While You Were Out and then ... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz"

Saturday evening, 4:00pm
"If I just get up by five, I'll still have the whole evening left. I'll just watch some Inside the Actors Studio and then ... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz"

Saturday evening, 8:30pm
"Fuck it. I'll wake up on Sunday."

 

In a backbreaking week, I pause to ponder McLaughlin on a flat screen.

Oh, Pat Buchanan, in discussing that guilty indulgence Big Love on the McLaughlin group, you utter the following garble of stupidity:

"Well, polyandry is against the law of nature.

But if you're going to say homosexual marriage is legal, you should say polygamy is legal."

What are you saying you crazy old man? What?

Firstly, in fairness, you may have said "homosexual marriage" or "homosexual union" or "homosexuality." You may have actually used any of those phrases. I don't think it matters because I believe that in your head, those are all the exact same thing.

But I still don't understand for a moment what you're trying to tell me. Are you trying to say that even though polyandry is against natural law, and by that argument homosexualty/homosexual union/homosexual marriage is against natural law, we should not legalize polyandry and legalize homosexual unions AND polygamy? Or are you using the "not really legal but kind of legal" homosexual union as a great justification for legalizing polygamy? Or are you saying that polyandry, homosexual union and polygamy should be legal? Or are you saying that polyandry and homosexual union should be illegal because they don't follow natural law, but fuck it all to hell anyway because we already told the homos to vote and we gave them a TV show (or several) and now we're all on the path to hell so let's just legalize it all? Because that's what it sounded like, except you made such a big deal about natural law. I DON'T UNDERSTAND YOUR LOGIC. YOU ARE A CRAZY OLD MAN. AND PROBABLY A WANNA-BE POLYGAMIST WITH A STRONG POLITICAL SUPPORT BASE IN CONSERVATIVE UTAH, YOU GOON.

You know who's just as crazy though? Eleanor Clift. Because a couple of weeks ago she sat across from you and said in all seriousness that there was a groundswell of support for abolishing the death penalty in America. No, Eleanor. There is not. There is no number, anywhere, in any poll, survey, data collection -- no matter what the agenda of it is and how it is framed, that reveals anything other than a strong support by the majority of Americans for the death penalty. Is that support slipping? For sure. Still well over 60%? Yep. I'm anti-death penalty, but even I realize that it's a lost cause for the most part. The only place there may be a groundswell of support for abolishing the death penalty is at your weekly Wednesday dinner party for the Delusional Liberals Living in a World Other Than the Rest of Us. There are five of you there and you don't represent America at all. Please, if you want to go on TV and represent people with liberal tendencies, don't just make shit up off the top of your head. Ground swell. Good lord.

But does it matter? Does it really matter? Doesn't anybody else find it suspect that immigration is a level three national issue for years, then suddenly, for TWO SOLID HEAVY WEEKS IT'S ALL WE CARE ABOUT AS A NATION? This uproar lasts not long enough for any real type of educational debate but just long enough that it doesn't tax the attention span of our citizens. Then, a bill is passed with a -- let's be fair -- pretty radical piece of alien worker legislation. And it's presented to the public like it's an incredibly moderate bill. And everybody gets to look like a winner....except don't you think what's going on here is really a lovely ploy to get the hard ass immigration control that most government officials' financial supporters really want? Because all the anti-immigration believers, and there are more of them than you'd like to believe, will now create an actual groundswell (educating Eleanor Clift to the meaning of the word) and we will start to have people supporting legislation to shoot immigrants on their way over the border as a backlash. Am I paranoid? Because I believe this was the goal. And I believe it will happen. (And also, I will say that I'm not sure when we started just deciding to ignore when people break the law, which is what illegal immigration is, but that's another issue. If you want to open up the border, do it. Otherwise, don't set a precedent that the law itself doesn't matter.)

Or maybe the goal was just for our public officials financial supporter's to reduce their cost of doing business, because there's not an economics model anywhere that doesn't support the argument that this piece of legislation will lead to a decrease in wages for the poorest Americans as the before-now-illegal aliens become legal alien workers and are still willing to undercut wages. But I bet GM is happy! Bankruptcy, no union ties, a new huge influx of suddenly legal workers willing to take lower wages and work crazy hours. Does that seem so inplausable?

My favorite moment today was the morning press conference where some senator was saying something like "You know who's watching this press conference right now? Las Vegas. Where it's morning, and the very people this bill is designed for are getting ready to go to work in the casinos. Clean the rooms, prepare the food, park the cars. They're all on their way to work right now."

Do you even know how incredibly, just, offensive what you said is? I'm so glad we passed this legislation. I was worried an actual American might have to clean my room or prepare my food or park my car. Thank the lord you made it possible for us to exploit some more Mexicans.

I'm going to go update my mom's Netflix list right now. That will make me feel better.