Happy Life Day

Did You Know?
In December 1978, a George Lucas approved "Star Wars Holiday Special" aired on CBS. I read about it today in an article posted on the Internet Movie Database.

Here's the article:
Moviemaker George Lucas wants his first Star Wars sequel banned, as he is so disappointed with its quality. The one-off, two-hour-long The Star Wars Holiday Special was originally screened on the CBS network in 1978 and tells the story of Chewbacca's journey home with Hans Solo to celebrate Life Day with his family. During the course of the much-maligned movie, Carrie Fisher's beautiful Leia is seen reducing Hans Solo and Luke Skywalker to tears with a song [a song apparently based on the movie's opening theme]. A contributor on the Star Wars website comments, "The Holiday Special has always been the red-headed step child of the Star Wars family." While a source at LucasFilm adds, "The Holiday Special was the biggest fuck-up ever. The Force was definitely not with Mr. Lucas the day that doozy was born."

Also, it featured Bea Arthur. From the Golden Girls. Bea Arthur.

He shall speak peace unto the Vegan

For Thanksgiving dinner my sister and father and I drove two hours to visit my Grandmother in Chesapeake.
"Pick a nice restaurant," we told her, "the sky's the limit!"
So Grandma picked a place called the Founder's Inn.
It turns out that the Founder's Inn is owned and operated by Pat Robertson.
I was unhappy that my father's $150 was going to such a person, as I'm sure he was, but the restaurant was actually very nice. The waitress didn't try to share the good news with us, and the food was no less delicious for the proprietor's craziness. There was a large buffet, with normal Thanksgiving food like stuffing, and also less common things like oysters, which I tried and liked. There was a bit of a line, but Grandma and I both enjoyed the buffet thoroughly. Dad enjoyed it a little less, because it was overpriced and he was paying. Sarah enjoyed it not at all, because she is a vegan.

We knew this ahead of time, of course. Dad got a copy of the menu in advance to make sure it was vegan-friendly.
"Look, succotash. Mashed potatoes, stuffing, salad. This should be fine right?"
Not being vegans, or even vegetarians, neither of us thought about things like chicken stock in the succotash, or cheese in the salad.
These things leapt out at Sarah though, who sat down after her first trip through the line with a plate of fruit and two rolls. My Grandmother, who was not paying, began whining and complaining about how if we were being charged such a large sum Sarah ought to have something more substantial to eat.
"No, don't worry about it," said Sarah. "I'm used to places like this never having anything for me. If we told them I was vegan they wouldn't even know what that meant. I'll eat something later."
But Grandma wouldn't shut up, and I tried to calm her down.
"Grandma, Sarah's used to this, don't worry. It's alright."
"Sure, it's alright for you," she said, and got up to get herself a plate of free roast beef and mashed potatoes. Partly for Sarah, partly for Grandma, I went and asked a server if they could make something vegan for my sister.
"She's a vegan, so no animal products. No meat, no milk, no butter, no cheese."
"What about eggs?"
"Nope."
"Chef Gerald, this is Dave, do you copy?" the man said into his walkie-talkie. "We've got a situation here with a guest who can't eat any meat or dairy. Yeah. I know. Could we do something for her?"
Ten minutes later the nice man brought my sister a plate of over-seasoned asparagus and charred peppers. Grandma, Dad and I all beamed at Sarah.
"Look at that!"
"That looks great!"
"How wonderful!"
The man smiled and wished us a Happy Thanksgiving, glad, in the spirit of the season, to have humored a hippie freak. My Grandmother finally stopped complaining about how Sarah had nothing to eat and began complaining that our cousin had married a Mexican. Sarah pretended to like her food. "It's awfully salty," she frowned, but, noticing that we were frowning back, added, "but I really like it!"

Who Needs Personal Experiences?

Just now I was looking at old blog posts, as I do from time to time, and I saw an old post where I made brief mention of a hilarious story about my friend's roommate's ex-boyfriend.
"Shit," I thought, "I shouldn't throw away such a good story like that!
Unfortunately, I'm not part of the story. I only have a loose connection to the people involved; the ex-boyfriend in question I have never met, I don't even know his name. So, if you like you may call what follows fiction. Or, if you like the whole "I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT REALLY HAPPENED!" aspect of things, you can think of it as creative non-fiction. I hope I don't distort things too badly.

My friend's roommate, we'll call her Amy for the sake of her privacy, enrolled in a local community college. She already had a teaching job with a provisional license, and needed to take classes to get a permanent one. At one of these classes she met a young man, whom we'll call Doug because we don't know his name.
Doug is apparently a looker. We may assume this to be true because he paid for college with money he earned modeling. Doug is also, at the age of 28 (or something like that), a self-made millionaire. I don't know exactly what the idea was, but he came up with something good when he was about 23, and he made literally a million dollars off of it. Having earned enough money to last him the rest of his life, Doug decided to give back to the community by becoming a public school teacher. Yes, really. He's attractive, rich, and has a social conscience. Furthermore, and I have to go on Amy's word for this one, he's a nice guy. Considerate, good at conversation, a good listener. The word charming was used.
Amy was naturally smitten, and apparently he liked her too. They went on a series of dates, and after a while began having sex. Healthy, normal, consensual sex. Then one of Amy's ex-boyfriends came back to town, and she decided she still had feelings for him. She told Doug she couldn't see him any more, and he was sad, but not in a way that was creepy. He didn't stalk her, or send her anything disturbing in the mail, or even give her dirty looks in class.
Time went by. The class ended, and Amy and Doug went their seperate ways. After a few months he called her up.
"Hey, I haven't seen you in a while. Let's have dinner, not a date, just to catch up."
So Amy said sure. Why not? Catching up sounded nice.
She met him at the restaurant, and they got a table. The waitress came with their drinks and took their order. Amy told Doug about her teaching, Doug told Amy about whatever it is Doug was up to. Then the conversation took a strange turn toward the confessional.
"Do you know what I always wanted you to do with you, but never had the courage to ask for?"
"Uhm, no, what's that?"
"I wish you had shit on me."
"WHAT?"
"Oh not like I'd eat it or anything gross. Just you know, have you smear it around on my chest."
That was not all he had to confess. This was but the springboard into a whole list of bizarre sexual fetishes covered over dinner, ranging from misogynistic Japanese porn and butt plugs to the difficulties of getting semen out of his dog's fur.
Amy went straight home from dinner and told her roommate, who in turn told me several weeks later over the phone.
"What?" I said, "What a great story! I'm going to casually refer to that in my blog and never go into any detail, until six months later when, motivated by a lack of material, I decide to throw caution to the wind and play someone else's embarassing story for laughs!"

An Analysis of Sarah's Mathematical Relationship to Condoleeza Rice

About six months back I wrote an entry on my sister's blog, which she stopped updating soon after. I just found it again, and liked it enough that I wanted to reprint it. It's a total waste of your time, but only about thirty seconds of it.

Sarah likes drugs and animals. She believes things that she reads when they support what she already believes. She is better than Condoleeza Rice. The previous statements can be rephrased as the equation:
Sarah + animals/marijuana > Condoleeza Rice
(it's harder to express the part about believing what she reads mathematically. you probably need calculus or some shit for that.)

Condoleeza Rice looks like vomit and I hope she dies. Either that or Ariel Sharon gets her pregnant and she is forced to resign in shame, and their little Jewish mulato baby grows up to one day end world hunger and create a race of super-cats who talk and cook elaborate French food.

Bounty Hunter of the Marvelous

One Friday afternoon in college I came home to find the following on my dry-erase board:
"Andrew- Dr. Blakemore called. He wants your presentation on solidarity maps ready for Monday."
I entered the room, passed my roommate Clay working at his computer, and went over to my bed to put down the books I was carrying. I started doing standard mid-afternoon things- took shoes off, opened a coke, began playing Diablo II.
"Did you see that Dr. Blakemore called?" asked Clay after a few minutes.
"Yeah. Did he say anything else?"
"No, just that your presentation on solidarity maps was due Monday."
"Clay, what's a solidarity map?"
"I dunno man, you're the one taking-- what is it?"
"European Diplomatic History from 1870 to present."
"Yeah, you're taking it, so you should know. Anyway, you better know by Monday."
"Uh huh."
At this point I got to a hard part in Diablo II, and I stopped talking. Of course, that Monday I didn't make any such presentation. That's because Dr. Blakemore never called. For that matter, solidarity maps don't exist; Clay made them up. I knew this when I read it on the board, and decided to play along.

A couple of weeks later I was sitting at my computer when Clay came in, carrying a laundry basket he had taken home.
"Hi," he said. "I e-mailed Dr. Blakemore for you."
"What?"
"Yeah, to see if solidarity maps would be on the exam."
"No you didn't."
"Of course I did, I wanted you to be prepared. Not like with your presentation."
"Oh bullshit. This isn't funny."
"Okay, whatever."
A few minutes went by, and I started to feel a little nervous.
"You didn't really e-mail him, did you?"
"Yes, I really did."
"Can I have some kind of proof?"
"I could forward you his reply."
"HE REPLIED??"

The e-mail read:
Dr. Blakemore-
Will solidarity maps be covered on the final exam?
Sincerely,
Andrew

Below was the reply:
Andrew-
I have no idea what you are talking about.
Sincerely,
P. Blakemore

I screamed at Clay at the time, but in retrospect it is one of my fondest memories. Thank you, Clay. Please do not take my gratitude as invitation to do anything like this again, now or at any point in the future.

Excerpt from What's the Matter with Kansas?

This week I started reading a book called What's the Matter with Kansas?, by Thomas Frank, a book that has been in great demand following the election. It's an examination of what Mr. Frank refers to as "the Great Backlash," a political phenomenon of the last thirty years wherein social issues are used to mobilize middle class people to vote for pro-business economic policies. I'm not that far into it, but so far I like it very much (you probably wouldn't like it JTR, whoever you are). I wanted to share a paragraph.

From the air-conditioned heights of a suburban office complex this may look like a new age of reason, with Web sites singing each to each, with a mall down the way that every week has miraculously anticipated our subtly shifting tastes, with a global economy whose rich rewards just keep flowing, and with a long parade of rust-free Infinitis purring down the streets of beautifully manicured planned communities. But on closer inspection the country seems more like a panorama of madness and delusion worthy of Hieronymous Bosch (he was a painter, JTR): of sturdy blue-collar patriots reciting the Pledge while they strangle their own life chances; of small farmers proudly voting themselves off the land; of devoted family men carefully seeing to it that their children will never be able to afford college or proper health care; of working-class guys in midwestern cities cheering as they deliver up a landslide for a candidate whose policies will end their way of life, will transform their region into a "rust belt," will strike people like them blows from which they will never recover.

Two Post-Election Resolutions

On election night I heard Carlos Watson say that watching the returns come in had been "every bit as exciting as we'd hoped." I heard other CNN anchors say similar things about the "excitement" of the election and of what the next four years hold in store. So I have decided to never watch CNN again. I will stick to NPR, C-SPAN, the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, and other forms of news that aren't watered-down trivial bullshit.

More importantly, the election has made me hate America. More specifically, the people who live here. This is not something that I take any pleasure in; I'd much rather go on thinking that America is primarily a force for good, or, barring that, go on thinking what I used to think:
"Man, it sure is a good thing the evangelical right-wing fruitcakes don't run things. What kind of crazy shit would they do? Yikes, good thing it will never happen."
CNN might call this a "November 1st Mentality."
The people I feel most isolated from are the Republicans I am friends with. There are a number of them, people who generally don't know much about politics, and just go along with what their parents think. In the past I have been able to look past our differences and have fun hanging out with them.
"Hey," I told myself, "It's too bad [insert name] has his head stuck so far up his ass, but he obviously doesn't feel THAT strongly about his beliefs. Maybe I can be friends with him, and we just won't bring it up. Or maybe I'll become more well-rounded and learn to understand a different point of view."
Again, "November 1st Mentality." Since the election, it has been extremely difficult for me to stop being angry at these people, and I have decided to take a break from them.
As of now, I am temporarily no longer friends with any Republicans. I will not take their phone calls (unless it's an emergency) and I will not hang out with them. This should last until the week of December 15th, when, in the spirit of the season, I will make a magnanimous offer of forgiveness and try to go back to how things were before.
But until December 15th let me say, Fuck you Republicans. Why don't you stop being so fucking dumb and self-centered and try to gain some kind of understanding of the world around you? Why don't you pray to whatever made-up, bullshit God your ignorant, backwards ass believes in that your stupidity hasn't doomed us all. I hope you get some really bad diarrhea.

Serving Four Years in the Prison of Public Ignorance

When George Bush was elected in 2000 it could be argued that the American people didn't know what they were voting for. That argument is no longer possible. We as a nation are now officially guilty, and when Osama bin Laden attacks us next I will be forced to take up the unpopular position that we deserve what we get. I regret that there isn't some way for such an attack to kill only Republicans.