Know What's Awesome?!!

uno- spilling your Benadryl/generic dephenhydramine bottle all over the bottom of your purse, where there are pennies and coin and string hanging around.

doso- picking the pennies and coin and string out of the pile of benadryl tabs in your hand before you put them back in the bottle because you are broke and are not gonna buy another bottle.

tesay-movies that give me vertigo

quatro-minatro-movies that give me vertigo and are stupid. movies that have about a five-to-six minute long "Muslims are people too" montage

cinco- casual dialogue among the two stars in the movie about basketball so as to show their roots and approachability. extra awesomeness when either shack or Kokey is called a "hater" by the more ethnic and therefore more "real" star.

шесть- missing about 20 minutes to hanging out in the bathroom, ready for puking from vertigo and generally getting head back together

seben- coming back to movie after about 20 minutes and having the sense that I didn't miss anything. extra points for having the "baaaaad American ambassador guy" pop up, look sick at the sight of the dead bodies (which was SOOOOO FUNNY LOLZ) and be a meanie to the main characters by like, representing the asshat politicians that somewhat started the whole template for the plot in the first place.


ocho- fight scene with main actor girl. ooooh and bonus points for life for the knife-to-the-crotch fight ender. take that! patriarchy!

devyat- dumbass MoVal audience applauding main actor girl as fight ends. Not when the fight ended, nor when she got all gender-paradigm-conscious on us, but the few more scenes in between where guy is already dead and she keeps stabbing him. Like, in the back of the skull and such.

decem- how easy it was to throw in that knife-to-the-crotch scene; not just because the girl really didn't do any other up-close fighting, and the "Stupid white guy who's so stupid he was able to get on the mission in the first place even though no one likes him and he's NEVER useful" character was looking kinda good from fighting as best he could once he had to, but because as soon as you think that that's pretty fucked up (I would imagine a gut-cut would be worse maybe although less 'cool'? *shrug*) you can think back to nothing in the movie, at all, but the vague news stories you hear about how shitty they treat their women. take that! actually-fucked-up-patriarchy!

undecim- the ending line, equating "Us" with "Them."

zwölf- realizing that some members of the clapping audience probably Need an ending like that.
tredecim- going to imdb to look up the movie and reading a summary of some show called "Dexter" on a cable station. Looks...not so much a bad show, but a show that isn't good.

Totally awesome.

I Can Bastardize History Too

okay okay okay. If the War between the States was "the second American Revolution,"

then the Revolution of 1776-1783 was the first civil war in America.


awwww hurts, donit?

Assignment

The other options were like, read Cold Mountain and answer "why did Southerners support or oppose the War?" and uh...take two union and two Confederates (Maybe I should have asked if where Copperheads would fit.) , discuss their uh, contrasting manner in which they war blah blah who cares, and then an opinion on how stupid that method is.

This is the one I chose.

The Tarnished Hero

Of all the heroes of the Civil War, none has drawn
more attention than Robert E. Lee. for the first century after the conflict Lee
received unabashed praise from all sides. More recently, his performance in the
war has become a matter of considerable controversy. Drawing on the essays in
Gary Gallager, Lee The Solider, and the discussion of Lee in The
Confederate War, write an essay that deals with the following issues:

• The reasons for Lee's popularity in the years immediately after the war
  
• Problems raised by Lee's critics in the last half of the 20th century
  
• Lee's performance at the battle of Gettysburg
  
• Your own assessment of Lee's contributions to the war and its
  aftermath

Oh and Re

Re "oooh ooooooh the Constitution is a proslavery document."

uno. You don't like the 3/5th clause? Okay, then the slaves are counted as five-fifths. Now there's the House at 40% Southern instead of about a third, with more power than if less slaves were counted. I'm sure y'all can find another reason for your low self esteem, being the reason for which I have to give you free pan pizza at Dominos.

doso. Or count them as zero. To which the South does not join the Constitution and continues on as their own independent confederacy with just trade connections to the North if at all. Civil War instead erupts over Western lands, if Jefferson buys still the entire Louisiana Territory. Or if he doesn't, I'm sure.

tresay. Under the impression that the 3/5th compromise was exchanged for the South having given up on requiring 2/3 of the House of Representatives for a quorum on economic legislation...ooooooh. Plus the prevalence of the Whig Party in the South, kinda negating the gain in Representatives anyway...needing a 2/3 quorum woulda protected slavery much more than a handful of congressmen.

quatro-minatro. the 1808 delay of slave trade legislation. Oh yeah, 'cause black markets don't operate when it's still profitable but against the law. Price of imported slaves goes up, no one's got time to build canals that lead to heaven.

cinco-mininco. Frederick Douglass eventually came around to this side. So...you don't wanna disagree with Frederick Douglass do you? You racist.

I'll Take a Pass on the Pun

I want the Foner to come in already. It was suggested reading by the Civil War professor (first class itself is tomorrow) and because he didn't advise me on what to read over the summer, I guessed good and already read 'bout half of it back in July.

Only 'bout half 'cause all the nonstop quotes proving how much the South was looked down on by the North "oooh for them to civilize, we'd have to bring tools and and like, like show these poor stupid ignorant evil Southern souls how to work them" got kinda old.

Uh yeah but twenty years later the assimilationist-"civiliationist" manner of uplifting freed blacks and now currently just blacks in general...oh yeah that was no good because it assumed that the white Protestant norms of behavior and work ethic was better than theirs.

Idunno what pisses me off more; that I can still remember that argument against the Booker Ts, or that I still ended up failing that class.

I got nothing against Foner himself, most of that book was quotes, long extensive quotes. Such as the "Slave Power/Terrorism" quote I put up here a couple weeks ago. He just strings them along.

What will make me laugh, laaaaugh as if I were a fat man with a huge belley, will be when the CW instructor tells us that the war was basically about slavery; I'll start smoking if he points to South Carolina's secession statement as proof. At the end of Remini's Andrew Jackson and the Bank War he lists where the federal government's surplus came from.

The surplus came from four things: the lack of a national debt, the tariff revenues, land sale revenues, and the general prosperity of the nation.

Hmm okay now only land sale revenues makes sense. I don't get how lacking national debt causes a surplus, and not just prevents debt. I guess it's like Calvinism; I see it but don't. Land sale revenues, that's cool, Clay's plan for sales to be hiked up for his American System wasn't implemented, so I can assume that it was just a bunch of people buying land and then the "sales tax" or whatever...
General Prosperity sounds like ... sounds like nothing. General prosperity only means that .... oh wait it means nothing. Unless income is more than spending, there will be no surplus. iiiis that what happened? Did spending decrease? How? Who was responsible for that? When did this spending get back on? awww wait I forgot government spending isn't "spending money" it's people doing good things. Yaaaay!

And then the tariff. That's uh...that's great. That's really great. Thank you, states that had to pay out the ass.

It Wasn't All Henry Clay

"Indeed, it is very possible that a substantial majority of Americans approved of the Bank, favored its recharter [in 1832], and opposed Jackson's removal of the government's deposits from the Bank in 1833! If this is true, then the magnitude of Old Hickory's accomplishment in destroying the BUS becomes even more impressive. Statistical evidence to prove overwhelming popular support for the Bank is by no means conclusive."

-Robert V. Remini, "Andrew Jackson and the Bank War" pub 1967

aaaaaaaah. HAHAHAHAHA. Statistical evidence to back up what I just said, even though statistics can be smudged around anyway, do not exist. Even though I am the badassest most-renowned auctoritas on Jackson and this entire book is simply an addendum to one chapter out of the three-volume bio of Jackson that I did.

I Was In Nevada

and standing around a bunch of Jews, on purpose, being bored because I was the other person in said group who did not speak Hebrew nor could even parse out any words or even cognates, being embarassed because I sat next to my abba and that happened to be near the tree roots which had some sticky tree, goop on it well scratch that the goop was now on the back of my brown pants Horaaaay.

Did I mention I was bored? Yes okay it was a parade for...whatever reason cities have parades, and yes okay my sister was playing in the marching band and yes okay it's the one who makes "that's my sister" noises around me and others but Gawd they're boring. And I don't know anyone that either my stepmom pointed out, or that my abba made fun of and I was starting to get frustrated by being around really really subdued, mid-to-late 50s aged liberal...people. It's not like I...well I guess even if it were Rivercide I wouldn't have anyone to talk to anyway either. But still.

моя tyotya (and now I'm losing the spelling, le boo hoo) mentioned later that day about how there were children running around the hotel they were staying at. And it was explained to her that people move in there and live. Like, live-live. When she asked how people could do that, how they could live like that, I didn't offer to enlighten her. I could have just innocently mentioned how in California it's against the law to stay now in one hotel/motel for more than I think a month, so now, instead of blight and oh em gee these poor children living in a motel all their young lives, oh em gee these poor children have to up and fucking move every month or so. If they're not lucky enough to be in the same school district, sometimes they get their paperwork caught up and don't miss more than...idunno, gosh a couple days? Maybe a week? Possibly the move can be made like, on a Friday and the kid's back in school for Monday, but then if the parents(singular) is on top of things enough to arrange that, they're probably not gonna be in motels too long anyway.

Oh wait I forgot public schools are super awesome evil. In no instances are they the civilizing factor the only of such in a child's life. Well. I shouldn't start on that; mine was the government sponsored and ran CPS repository that sits in between a county jail and a dog pound (so those liberated government-educated, unwittingly pathetic womyns can get all their ah, errands done near the same bus stop, I guess.)

What was I...oh yeah the law about not living in motels longer than whatever amount of time allowed. Perhaps it's just a county ordinance, I wasn't too keen on reading up on my future real estate prospects like those once I moved out of Orange County. But I do remember hearing about it when I worked for CPS. Turned out that "parents" too stupid to either not piss off a social worker or hide their real abuse tend, oh so strongly tend to be too stupid to give a forwarding address additionally. Shocked I was not really. More so pissed off at the sw of a couple days ago, helping a little girl of maybe six change into clean clothes in the restroom.

*Me washing my hands*

sw: blah blaaaaaah clothes! Clean clothes! Get changed!
girl: ...

oh fuck the dialogue. I don't remember exactly what the little girl said, mostly six year old babble. idunno why she was taken in...mmmm right now a year later I'd guess that it was just that the sw showed up and the ah, domocile, was so filthy and the kid likewise so much that Ron Paul just lost five votes.

Anyway, the fat sw (I think redundancy cancels out an oxymoron) was trying to get the little girl to change into clean clothes. And...a lot of sws have their own kids. Ranging from late twenties to old as dirt, these womyn are used to little kids changing they've had their own kids, blah blah.

Fat sw told the girl something about socks. Oooh we got you clean socks, put the second sock on. The little girl mumbled something about her sock that she had on like "I have one sock on."

And it wasn't so much of ...well it was. I don't want to be a social worker. I look at that "profession" like I see teaching /federal babysitting. I like kids too much to want to be one. At the same time, I have a perspective on 'tha system' that I'm arrogantly certain that 90% of sws do not have. I've been on the other side of their interviews that were supposedly conducted in the strictest confidence. I've been six years old and told to change out of my dirty clothes that earlier that day I thought were about on the upper level of acceptability.

And you know what would just boggle Fat sw's fucking mind? The idea that a big fat teacher looking, dinosaur face (I don't know how there were so many womyns in that office with a face like a stegasaurus; if I ever did drugs I'd swear I was tripping and thinking I was in the Land Before Time), blonde ugly butch-chop hair with no makeup and an ass wider than her torso was long, barking at me in a fake nice-civilized-upperclass tone of voice how to change my clothes...is frightening to a six year old. Pass the boooooooong, fucker.

The little girl in the disabled bathroom stall probably thought she was in trouble; not so much for her lackadasical clothes-changing, but in the whole "taking a ride with a stranger" when she went with the fat woman in the first place. Idunno. But the sw's reaction to "I have one sock on" was just "put your other sock on, we have to get you changed" and then whatever gurgling noise she made at the other social worker standing in the stall with them.

YES. TWO. What, the little girl had a knife or something?

How about "That's great, let's get the second one on and you'll be all set."

Couple weeks later, or a couple weeks before, that little girl's mom shows up as Ten years later at reception. Her sw wasn't in. It was a Friday. County workers; so 50/50 chance that she had a three day weekend. Mom can't see anyone, can't get shit done except show me how little it takes for me to forsake common sense because I rely on a paycheck to live, instead of the Truth.

Mom: Well, here's my situation though. My daughter's 16/17 and ran away from the group home/foster home she was just moved to. I know where she's staying, I know she's staying with this *considerably older or violent drug dealer or rapist or something* guy. The group home/foster home hasn't called in a report yet. If I go to where she is and get her, it'll count as an unsupervised visit, and I'm not allowed unsupervised visits and the judge if he finds out can *blah blah totally fuck me over something something been doing everything else right*...what do you think I should do?

Me, did not say: What the...what the fuck? GET YOUR FUCKING CHILD, DAMMIT.

Me, actually: uuuuh. That's a tough situation. *looked to the other receptionist who rambled on about leaving messages with the group home or ...something.*

And of course, after the scared chronologically 40-something, mentally 14 years old woman left, the receptionist and I had the God damned gall to act annoyed by someone so badgered by everyone else telling her what to do that she was helpless. From her shitty parents, to the part of her that hates herself and her child, to eventually the Department of Public Social Services. Child Protective Services branch, specifically.

And what I really hate about Nevada. About sleeping under my dad's roof. Er, under their floor in their basement/library room. Seeing pictures of my sisters in the second grade magnet'ed onto the fridge, their Jewish-Israeli birth certificates on the wall. Seeing pictures of my grandfather who died like, idunno 30some-odd years ago and choking on the part of my throat when the referents "I have a grandfather" form in my head. The oddness of being hugged by my dad, which I don't think either one of us is used to.

What I really hate about Nevada, is that I can't get this stuff out of my head. The shoebox only two thirds full of pictures, the remaining third of which I threw away when I realized that they were all of people from high school who just happened to let me take their picture.

What I dislike about standing around watching parades witha group of oldish Jewish people is that no one would have gotten the irony of the monument to Le Guerre Monde



being right behind us as we looked forward into the street where trucks with politicians' names on the sides were carrying at two miles an hour said politicians or representatives (Northeast Nevada can't command Obama yet) literally throw candy out at people into the streets, for the youngest subjects to scramble to pick up.








Quoth my sister-in-law: Seriously. Why do we study history. It's in the past.

Suddenly An-guh-ry

Scroll down to European Persecution. And then the blurb titled "Execution of Mennonites."



Uno muh-nuno: Mennonites did not lead the...arrrrgh they didn't go to North America first. That was the people, the Puritans, England.

Doso: Menno Simmons, all the Mennonites, and every. Single. Anabaptist group. Denounced Muenster. A lot of them even tried to backtrack from having been in favor of communal living

Tresay:

by Catholic authorities in Ghent in 1554.

oooooh noooo no those Catholic authorities!! Yes, no mention at all that bringing down the city was an entirely ah, "bipartisan" effort. The Catholics and Protestants (don't remember which at the time) ah, "reached across the aisle" on this one, to you know...restore order.

"Order" being not beheaded for not wanting to be married to van Leyden, the guy in the picture.

Because aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

Not to Gloat...Well, Actually, Yes.

"Here, talk to my mother."

Me: "длфшлвшйю" (No idea what I said.

I was thinking about how my mom was calling her mom-or her first husband's mom, er, her adopted mom now that I think of it...shit, someone's babymama-to ask her for money, as it had worked last time, and that even though she was technically my grandmother, I...hmm. I don't know, but money was involved, or needed to be involved, so I ...I don't know. It was just a foreshadowing of the other times I'd be traipsed out so she could pity money out of people. )

"Do you go to school?"

"Yeah. Umm. Second grade."

"That's good."

I held the phone against my ear just long enough to make damn sure I remembered both her response to the crazy idea that I was in school (as opposed to working as a bricklayer or something, Idunno) and how damn old she sounded. Daaaaaamn old. My mom was sitting in a rocking chair that was supposedly worth millions because it said "Pacific Bell" on the seat of itsweartoGod...I imagined her adopted mother who I'd been told was Cuban even though I hadn't seen a distinctly Cuban person before (this was before she had to ransack her photo albums for...probably birth certificates, and I saw pictures of the lovely Cuban lady who beat the fucking shit out of her adopted daughter and her twin brother, well perhaps not the "fucking shit out" but left them crazy enough for me to have to deal with them, anyway...also the first time I saw a picture of my dad, who allegedly did the same thing) as a little bony, decrepit woman in a black dress with white trim, rocking the same way my mother was. Or rolling a joint, whatever. I didn't imagine her holding a phone though.

Idunno if she sent money or not. For all I know, that well dried up, or she died... hmm.

Hmmmmmmmmm.

Now right now I wonder 1) if my legal grandmother is dead or not--the same semi-curious way I wondered about my dad about that barely over a year ago, not so much curious out of a concern for them but out of a desire to know for sure that I can finally stop caring, and 2) who the fuck was that? Was that even her adopted mom? Was it her adopted mom's sister?

Fifteen or sixteen years later I'm in Northeast Nevada, trying to follow native Hebrew for what I would think would be stops for either entire words or at least ideas, or any phrase I recognize a second time as I walk up the steps of their basement after my dad called my name (or at least it sounded close someone's name, and the girl with a similar name wasn't responding, so I figured best out of 2 or something).

" *Hebrew noise, my dad extends cordless to me* Do you vahn to talk to your gran dmother?"

"Wuhl...yeah, okay....umm....lakjsdfl;asd....hi!"

"Heh-looooooow! Is this Friiiiiiitiz?!"

"Yeah."

"How are yooouuuu?!"

"I'm uh....hahahaha, I'm good, how are you?"

While my dad gets up from the stairway and walks back to the living roomforeshadowinglolz, I both, try to think of something to say to a 90-year old woman the sight of whose likeness I see in my middle sister (exact same eyes) yet otherwise I really don't have much to say to, and trip the fuck out. Because...well. Just because I guess.

"Deeed you know that you have a gran'dmother?!"
My gosh. I can hear her smile. I think she repeated the question and added "in Israel" or something.

"Uh yeah I guess...*my stepmom's name* told me about everyone in Israel, yeah."

"What?"

"Huh?"

"Ummm...hmmm."

"Uh. *Stepmom's name* told me. Umm."
Pretty sure I shouldn't say "umm shit" to my grandmother, at least not the first time I talk to her anyway, I somehow hand the phone back to my dad.

"Huh huh huh....blah blah hebrew noises Yeah, Americantza."

More Hebrew noises, still can't tell where words start and stop, hangs up the phone.

"She tought you were saying that *my Aunt's name* was the one who told you about Israel. You confused her."

"*Aunt's name*? Yeah, that would confuse I guess."

"Yeah, I told her dat you're an American and have problem communicating."

"Ah well."

A Tale of a Terrible Scribe

I believe now there is a general preparation in the minds of the people to look to 'the overthrow of Terrorism' as the ultimate result of our movement. I am struck with the facility with which this word has come into use in the documents of both Democrats and Republicans. Terrorism is now indissolubly incorporated in the political nomenclature of the country, and will be inscribed indelibly upon the historical page. We must make the most of that word. It is not necessary that they who use it should ever know who taught it to them--the name and the thing--but the incessant use of the term will do much to open the eyes and arouse the energies of the people...Let it appear that it is Terrorism which we wish to restrict and curtail; that it is Terrorism whose demands we resist, whose growth we will put down.

-Joshua Leavitt to Salmon P. Chase July 7, 1848
Oh wait, did I copy the word "Terrorism" in there? hahaha. I meant "Slave Power." And not Republicans, but Whigs. Oh well, close enough, I guess.

Found

(this is 'bout a week old...sue me.)

I’m gonna get kicked out of the library for laughing my ass off.

What is at stake...is whether the Republican party can learn to make "a distinction between the conservatism represented by Senator Goldwater and his supporters and the conservatism that conserves...Goldwater's brand of conservatism has its most recognizable American roots in those thinkers, quite numerous in this country, who imagine conservatism to be almost identical with economic individualism.

HAHAHAHAHAHA BUT CONSERVATIVES WANT A FREE MARKET LOLZZZZ!!!!

from "The Paranoid Style In American Politics" by Richard Hofstadter

Copy-damn-right

Because I'm a freaking artist, that's why.