No! Not the Vegan Potlucks!

If you were at all hopeful that the FBI had become any less silly than it was in J. Edgar Hoover’s day, well, sorry to rain on your parade and/or vegan potluck:

But who am I kidding, forget the First Amendment. Getting paid to infiltrate vegan potlucks? That sounds like the best job ever! Of course, it might be hard to stomach the free food knowing that it’s wasting valuable anti-terrorism resources on harassing social justice groups, and that you’re violating people’s privacy and trust for a few bucks.

But if you find it hard to swallow that spying on vegan potlucks is part of the “number one domestic terrorism threat,” just remember folks like Anthony Bourdain who say vegetarians are “terrorist scum.” Just take a look at soft-core eco-terrorist propaganda like Hoot. And then perhaps you’ll become a true believer, convinced that this “War on Terrorism” is a culture war. After all, you must understand that tofu makes you gay.

Can a thing be both unbelievable and unsurprising at the same time? You’d think not, but more and more I find myself having both reactions at once. Depressing, infuriating, and absurd: That’s government for you.

When Shrill Was Good

Oh yeah, hey, happy Mother’s Day, belatedly.

And speaking of mothers, mine: I remember going all teenaged-incoherent with my mom once upon a time, long, long ago, over how much I liked The Breakfast Club. And my mother replied, “I tried to watch that, but there was so much yelling.”

Keep in mind, now, how few childhood memories I have of my mother NOT yelling.

But okay, fine: I was a teenager at the time she said this to me, so I got what the kids nowadays I believe call butthurt and/or emo about the whole thing, because OMG, that was my movie! It spoke to me! (In hindsight: Why?)

Strangers approached me on the street to tell me how much I looked like Ally Sheedy, albeit always with the qualifier “in The Breakfast Club,” and not in any movie in which she was remotely hot, but whatever! I didn’t have dandruff, I swear, and if I did I would never have shaken it onto a sketch and called it snowflakes, but yeah, those strangers had me: That was the character I’d identified with; that was who I had wanted to hear that I looked like. How was I to know Ally was going to do those movies with the robot and be upstaged by him besides, huh? That came later, in the future, which every teenager knows is a long way away and every old person knows was just yesterday afternoon.

In hindsight, though, I wonder why I didn’t just give my mom a bland look and ask her, in the driest possible tone, “And?” Because what the hell was I raised on, pop-culturally? Let’s see: There was M.A.S.H., which was funny for all of one season and then dove straight into an endless rehash of this plot:

Character realizes people die in wars, gets mad, yells.

Seriously, that’s it. Watch them sometime: Either Colonel Potter is angry and yelling, or Hawkeye is angry and yelling (if it’s an episode Alan Alda directed, this is a dead cert), or B.J. Hunnicutt is angry and yelling, or Hot Lips is angry and yelling, or Father Mulcahy is angry and yelling–I think they may have even thrown in one or two episodes in which RADAR is angry and yelling, and yet, somehow, those episodes are still not funny. All I know is, that show had a lot of yelling, and my mom kept watching it anyway.

Yelling: Totally okay so long as it’s about the Korean and/or Vietnam War(s).

Oh, and All in the Family, who could forget that? Again, every plot:

Archie says something racist, everyone yells, Edith makes dinner and begs for peace, everyone yells louder.

People watched these shows on purpose, made them hits deliberately, and you can only blame the absence of quality cable programming and DVDs so much for that.

Oh! And the movies? PLEASE. Serpico: OMG corruption! equals YELLING. Kramer vs. Kramer: OMG divorce! equals YELLING. Silkwood: OMG radioactivity! equals YELLING.

The only thing different about The Breakfast Club was that it was a lot of yelling about stupid shit. Important to white middle class teenagers?–Yes. But relatively, stupid shit. I can see why my mother thought it was overly hostile: She went to high school in a town of 2000 souls. I went to high school in a student body of 2000 souls. I’m not saying you can’t have cliques in a small town; I’m just saying it’s a lot tougher to manage. If you don’t look out, “the jocks” winds up being ONE GUY.

I grew up with yelling. I come from a hotheaded era, and I’m supposed to speak softly? But I don’t carry a big stick, and I’m deaf from all the noise exposure, and I’m both too proud and too poor to go in for a hearing aid eval.

Primary Blues

Fuck ‘em. Everybody dance!

Yes, I know: It’s a homemade non-video video. Deal. Also, I said DANCE.

I have a bad case of Dirty Old Lady for every young man in that video. I am sorry.

Help Her Out

Donna at The Silence of Our Friends could use some support. Medical bills: Don’t you just love them?

Break

Gimme a couple weeks. I can’t shake the feeling it’s time to shut up and listen, so that’s what I’m going to do.

From a New Zealander’s Perspective

Just a quick link here, to a an excellent summary of recent events by Deborah, a white woman from New Zealand now living in Australia and blogging at In a strange land. I hope she writes more about this:

. . . I just can’t get my head around all this. Maybe that’s because identity politics doesn’t play out in the same way in New Zealand as it does in the US. The whole topic seems like something “over there” to me. Except that thinking that the problem is “over there” would be an easy way to duck thinking about it altogether.

–because I’ve been wondering just how U.S.-centric some of the discussions I’ve been linking to recently are. I don’t mean that the U.S. has a monopoly on racism, not by any stretch, but I suspect that the exact dynamics of racism vary from place to place. I know Fire Fly blogs from Australia and has expressed disgust with “conflicts that centre around white North American women,” and I imagine she’s not alone in that sentiment. But that’s, pathetically, about all I know. I obviously have some learning to do.

Note: This Bomb I Did Not Throw

I have to admit, though, that I was kind of wondering that myself.

I Can’t Bring Myself to Actually Join in, But–

–you may be interested to learn that it’s Post Like Glenn Reynolds Day over at Acephalous.

Heh.