International Women's Day Was Yesterday

Basically, I have no idea what is going on outside of my little sphere of work and thesis writing. I thought today was March 8th, which is International Women's Day, and was all excited to write about it. I understand now that March 8th was actually yesterday. I'm going to say some shit anyway.

I wrote a post for BlogHer about 30 Woman Making History, a campaign by the Woman's Media Center to highlight, yes, 30 women making history while also raising some dough to employ women to write about news and politics. Good idea. I picked five women that I thought were making history (Shada [Shatha] Nasser, Eveline Shen, Sindiwe Magona, Shirley Rodriguez Remeneski, and Alysa Stanton). Links for more info on each awesome woman is in my post at BlogHer if you want to know more, and yes, that's my way of getting people to click over there. Whatever.

Today I read a post over at another awesome woman's blog, Suebob's Red Stapler. She quoted a not awesome woman blogger who said that equality is stupid because it is about fairness and we all know that life isn't fair. "Fuck that!" was essentially Suebob's reaction, echoed by all the excellent people who left comments on it.

One comment in particular stood out: "Vagina's are wasted on some people I swear." This was written by Thordora, who totally made my day.

And now, back to my day.

Another Disturbing Ripple in My Universe

My mother and I are planning a trip to Warsaw in mid-June. We will visit the Jewish cemetery and try to find my great-grandfather's grave. (He died before the war, so he probably is lucky enough to have a burial place unlike my grandfather's sisters and mother.) We will see the few remnants of the wall of the Warsaw ghetto. We will visit the Jewish Historical Institute. We will do a records search. We will pass by the address where my grandfather's family owned a butcher shop and/or lived.

We will also go to Treblinka.

I always assumed that my grandfather's family died in Auschwitz, if they even lived to be deported from the ghetto. But, one of the dangers of Holocaust hagiography is that the fame of Auschwitz dwarfs reality. Deportations began in 1942, and when Warsaw's ghetto was liquidated in the spring of 1943, everyone left was sent to Treblinka, 2 hours outside of Warsaw in an isolated forest. There was no work at Treblinka. People died within an hour of their arrival.

Husband has a friend who lives in Warsaw who is very kindly helping me arrange my trip. He sent me a link to the Treblinka Museum. One of the things that fascinated me when I first learned about the Treblinka site is how noncommercial it is. Auschwitz, to me, is tourist attraction at this point. Tour groups go, people gape at the convent built on site, they exclaim over the signs proclaiming how much the Poles suffered* because it was initially built for Polish political prisoners. Treblinka was completely destroyed by the Nazis, so there's nothing "fun" to see. It is a sober monument to the 800,000 Jews and thousands of Gypsies and Romani murdered there.

Anyway, as I read the museum's website, I was taken aback by this statement:

The memorial should be visited with due seriousness and respect.
Within the area of the museum it is forbidden to bring dogs, smoke or eat ice cream.

Damn, I can't eat ice cream there? Well, I guess I'll have to pack ham and cheese pierogies and chocolate kolacky.

I hope that this was a translation error and in Polish it says, "no eating." Otherwise, WHAT THE FUCK? How weird is the focus on ice cream? Even weirder, it reminds me of a fucked up Hasidic monument I visited in Israel:


I mean, they are not the same thing, but the utter randomness of what is forbidden strikes me as similar. (In case the photo does not appear, it is a sign that says that it is forbidden for women to dance at this site.)

Anyway, it is going to be an intense trip. I believe we will also take a trip to Krakow, as Husband's friend recommended.

*Oh yeah, and some Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals died there, too. But whatever. (This is written in the vein of signage at Auschwitz, so pardon my bitter glibness.)

Heaping Piles of Seething Rage of Steaming Anger

Two years ago, my friend Sara and I were interviewed for documentary on abortion. I even put on make up and shit so that I would not look like a fetus-eating zombie on film, hence making the pro-choice side of what we were assured was a "balanced" look at the abortion debate look bad. Nope. I wanted to represent!

I never heard back from the motherfuckers. Not even, "Thanks Suzanne. It was nice of you to take time out to help us make a shitty documentary that no one will see." So when I discovered that the filmmakers actually did come up with something - and it is a scripted "dramamentary" about abortion in which the pretty blond white girl is treated like shit by nasty nurses in an abortion clinic and thus of course have her baby and all is good and - deep breath; this is an angry run on sentence/rant, sorry - the black girl who is raped and comes to NYC to have her abortion is saved by the nice white woman who hosts her through the Haven Coalition (which I was, at the time I was interviewed, the co-head of), I was mad fucking pissed. These douches could at least have had the courtesy to email me and let me know their shitty "unbiased" film (featuring a really cuddly 22 week old fetus in utero) that I helped them with was coming out. Or at least a "Lifetime"-esque trailer that befits a solid piece of filmmaking such as this was online for my viewing pleasure.

Oh. And I did I mention that this "balanced" film is executive produced by the guy who made that other even-keeled movie, Passion of the Christ, and the awesome Ben Stein movie about how "science" teachers who want to teach that evolution is all a lie are persecuted by baby- and Christ-killing Jews like me? Right. (CORRECTION: "The Passion of the Christ" guy is the one marketing this balanced film, although the exec producer is a right winger, too - "Hollywood's Most Powerful Christian," according to Christianity Today magazine. My bad.)

Of course, some of the documentary footage that these tools shot is in the film. (Hence the "-umentary" part.) The pro-choice people, according to the "LA Times," all get to say things like how fetuses are nothing more than parasites (which, sorta, is true, but unlike digestive parasites which make women thin, fetus ones make them fat - ewwwwww). I'm assuming (hoping and praying) that I didn't make the cut, but since this doesn't appear to be available to pro-choice audiences, I may never know. I think it's unlikely that I'm in it, since I said that people who supposedly are "pro-life" have killed a lot of actual people, and that they really scare me. Seems like something that a "balanced" film would not want to highlight.

The Tipping Point

One of my former bosses told me that she always knows who has had restaurant experience when she goes out with a group of people based on how much they tip. She said that people who've never worked in the food service industry generally give tips of up to 15%, but people who have worked tables give closer to 20%. I am fortunate enough to have been able to go through life thus far without waitressing (I guarantee that I would be awful*), but I tip 20% unless service was utterly abysmal (i.e. - the staff was actually rude to me). My ex-boss said I am an exception.

I find that in NYC, most people are calculate tips in one of two ways: they double the tax (which is 8.75%) or they give 20% of the subtotal. Either way seems right to me. The minimum wage in the restaurant industry in NYS is $4.60. In theory, if staff do not earn enough tips to average them out to $7.15 an hour, the restaurant must cough up the extra dough. But how likely is that? Not very.

I rant about this now because I have gone out with some people a few times who consistently refuse to acknowledge that they have to pay tax and tip. It is so bad that I've actually pulled out a calculator to show how their $15 entree is really over $19 when you add tax ($1.31) and tip ($3), so putting in $20 is fair. Even after this, people have argued with me that they overpaid.

Not everyone is good at math. I understand that. I'm no math genius myself. But when I fucking run through the numbers and explain them, and my co-diner still doesn't want to pay his fair share, I am going to be very angry. Because I'm not going to short restaurant staff because my companion is too fucking cheap to pay what he owes, I get stuck paying for it. And it adds up over time. Eventually I just focus on how the person is going to screw me or someone at the end of the meal, and I don't enjoy myself. It makes me not inclined to dine out with certain individuals any more.

*Maurice, the hamster who runs on the wheel that powers my brain, would never be able to keep up with all the orders and I'd always forget to bring people drinks or who ordered what and all that.

Things I Do Not Understand, Part 794A

1. The YIVO Institute has the records of American Displaced Persons Camps in Austria, Germany in Italy from 1945-1952. Since my grandparents and father lived in camps in Austria during that time period, I am eager to see what is in the archive. YIVO is conveniently open Monday-Thursday from 9:30 am to 5 pm. However, the reading room is open until 7:30 on Mondays. I called and asked until what time the library was open today and was told 7:30. After work, I rushed down to get as much time as possible with the records.

After passing through the metal detector and sending my bag through the x-ray machine, using the mandatory coat check, and providing photo ID, I took the freezing elevator to the library and reading room on the 3rd floor. The woman at the information desk informed me that since YIVO closed at 5:00, I could not get the records I wanted. I am extremely confused as to why a reading room is open when the records that one is supposed to read in that room are unavailable, but there were people in there using computers and looking over books from somewhere, so what do I know.

2. On the subway home from my failed trip to YIVO, a woman rushed onto the train with a stroller and four or five year old girl in tow. After mowing people down to get the stroller in the middle of the car, she wedged herself in the small space between me and the extremely large man on the other side. She struggled to pull her daughter onto her lap.

"Excuse me," I said. "Would your little girl like to sit down?" I gestured at my seat and moved slightly to get up.

"I HAVE TWO KIDS WITH ME AND I NEED TO SIT," she yelled in my face. That is when I realized that she had earphones on. They were blasting music. Not only could she not hear me, but if her kids needed something, they were shit out of luck.

Resisting the urge to slap her, I tried again. "Yes, I see that you should sit. Would your daughter like to sit also?"

"DIDN'T YOU HEAR ME? I SAID I GOTTA SIT DOWN BECAUSE I GOT TWO KIDS WITH ME!" One of the earphones slid out of her ear slightly when she pulled her daughter up higher.

"Yes, I heard you," I sneered. "But I am asking if your girl would like my seat." At that, I stood up and tried to wiggle around the stroller to get away from this cuntface.

"Oh, naw. She'll just sit on my lap."

Since there was really no standing room, I sat back down. The woman standing in front of me who witnessed the whole scene sighed. "Yeah, no good deed goes unpunished," I said.

"She's probably just used to people being rude," the stranger replied. The woman, of course, could not hear a word anyone was saying. The stranger was very kind, and chatted up the little girl about Valentine's Day. For all the mother knew, she was soliciting the kid. When she got off the train, the little girl kept waving and saying, "Bye bye. Have a good night."

It broke my heart. I know that there are times when parents don't want to hear their kids, but the girl kept trying to talk to her mom, who just nodded, unhearing. So awful.

Join Today!

Anyone who is 50 or older, whether they are working or retired, can join AARP for $16 per year. I know this because they sent me a membership card and requested that I send them my $16 check immediately to activate my exciting benefits as an AARP member.

I will say one thing: I look damn good for someone who is 50 or older.

One Star!

I noticed a new review of Off the Beaten (Subway) Track: New York City's Best Unusual Attractions on amazon.com. Then I noticed that it was for one star. The last time I received a less than stellar review, the reader complained that the book only had weird and unusual attractions. I was curious what the problem was this time:

I was actually looking for places "off the beaten track" but this book had nothing you could not get off the net or regular tourist book. It's basically a listing of museums and churches. Very Very disappointing

I'm very intrigued by this. Partly because I don't agree at all that it is a list of museums and churches that you can get off the internet (without searching pretty damn hard, anyway - you can get anything off the internet with a little effort) and definitely most places are not in regular tourist books (although some are, and I put an unusual aspect of the place in my book, like the vertical tour of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine). Mostly I want to know what the person expected the book would be about. It has parks, restaurants, museums (some inside people's homes), a former airport, forts, churches, stores, and monuments. Aren't those what constitute "attractions?" I'm not asking to be defensive, I'm asking because I genuinely want to know for next time and there's no way to contact this dude and ask. Any thoughts?

Speaking of Fame...

Obviously, this photo is of the crowd of shrieking 12 year old girls who lined West 75th Street on Friday night, the police cars that escorted a black SUV down the street to the stage entrance to the Beacon theater, and Nick Jonas getting out of the SUV.

I passed by the mob scene on my way home from work and thought it was hilarious enough to stand around in the cold for a few minutes and repeatedly mumble, "Oh. My. God. It's the Jonas Brothers!" as other startled Upper West Siders made their ways home. The best part is that I didn't know it was Jonas-related, but decided that it had to be, given the situation. (I guess it could have been for Taylor Swift, but then maybe boys would also be there.) I was only partly right - the show was Nick sans Brothers.

Once upon a time, in a land far away, I was a 12 year old girl. The New Kids on the Block were the hotties of the moment. The female tweens would line up on cold streets and shriek for their heartthrobs, but I didn't really get it back then, and I still don't today. This weekend, Dr. P and I discussed our wonderment at the crazed desire that girls threw toward Elvis. (We saw a clip of an Elvis flick on TV and she commented that he was sort of chubby, even before he was Fat Elvis.) Maybe if I was a youth when the Beatles first journeyed across the ocean would I feel compelled to participate in such behavior. I'm such a dork.

Thanks for the Heads Up

A minute ago, an email popped up on my BlackBerry. It was from an organization that I interviewed with in early November. The email thanked me for recently interviewing with them.

Since they had told me at the time of my interview that second round interviews would take place in mid-November and then no one called me, I used my finely honed logic to deduce that I was not a finalist for the job. It wouldn't bother me if they had just sent an email two months later thanking me for coming in and informing me that I didn't get the job but for the fact that it said "recently." Two months ago - not recent. Either send a timely rejection, or don't bother. Yeesh.

Incidentally, I accepted my current job once I left that interview. All's well that ends well.

Copping an Attitude

When I walked into the subway at midnight, I discovered that all the turnstiles read "no entry." My writing workshop professor asked a man in the crowd assembled on the mezzanine what was going on. He shrugged. No one seemed to know how long both platforms would be closed.

A large white cop hustled back and forth, walking up the stairs to the street, then back down again. "Can you tell us what's happening?" Zia asked him. He stared at her. She asked again.

He made a face. "I can't tell you."

"Really? Not even a hint? Do you know when can we go back down?"

The cop stopped pacing. "Look lady, if you want to see two dead bodies, go right on down." He practically spat at us.

Geez, sorry for wanting to know what goes on in our city...

Bye Bayh Repro Rights

Many of the bad things that are happening in the Senate today take me back to my earliest years in public policy. In the summer of 1995, the country was hotly debating welfare reform. I interned with the child care division of the Department of Public Aid in Illinois, and I followed the discussion closely.

By the time I returned the next summer, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) had passed Congress and was signed into law by President Clinton. States wrangled with how they could meet the welfare for work requirements and move people off of public assistance programs as soon as possible. Next door, the governor of Indiana, Evan Bayh, embraced welfare-to-work so wholeheartedly that I was certain that he was a Republican. I'm fairly certain that I even had an argument with Husband about it. I was wrong.

These days, over thirteen years after I first cut my teeth on public policy work, Bayh is still causing me to scratch my head. Evan Bayh is now a pro-choice Democrat in the Senate. Yet he voted for the Nelson/Hatch amendment that would have essentially forbid health insurance plans to cover abortion services. On the flip side, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is anti-choice, but voted against the amendment. What the fuck?

Sen. Reid showed great initiative in explaining his position, finding common ground and recognizing the need for health care reform to be passed. I commend him for taking the time to do the right thing for more people than himself. Sen. Bayh offered no explanation for voting against the women that he has courted for votes. It’s baffling. OK, it's more than baffling; Sen. Bayh's lack of courage on this issue is pathetic.

I learned in 1995-1996 that I really couldn't count on Evan Bayh to make sound decisions when it comes to the health and welfare of women and children. A lot of time has passed since then. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Sigh.

What We Saw at a Bus Stop in the West Village

Warning: This is likely the most disgusting thing I've ever posted on CUSS...

As Steph and I strolled through the West Village this afternoon, she pointed out all the things that had changed since she moved. One of new arrivals is fancy bus shelters. We walked up to a glass and metal bus structure, and Steph gasped.

"Do you see what I see next to the bench?"

"Um, yes. Yes, I do."

"That's a dildo."

"With shit caked on it, yes."

Publishers Weekly Best Ten Books of 2009 - 100% Male

The problem with feminism is that it makes women crazy. We seem to believe that our words and our stories matter, and that we are not only capable of telling stories, but that we can excel at it. Our voices and our story telling techniques may differ from what has traditionally been viewed as great literature, but we think that doesn't mean that they are not equally good.

Of course, these beliefs are silly, and Publishers Weekly took great pains to remind people that women's work is just not up to par with that of (white) men. Their list of the ten best books of 2009 includes ten dudes, nine of whom are white. Some people bristled at this. Kamy Wicoff at She Write - an online community of women writers that is free and you should join - wrote:

Try to imagine if they had come out with a list of the Best Books of 2009 and it had included ZERO MEN. Try to imagine if Amazon had released its Best Books of 2009 and it had included only TWO men. I know it's hard. But just try.

Wicoff asked the She Writes community to take action. To protest this ridiculous list, we should all buy a book published by a woman in 2009, take a photo of ourselves with it, and explain why we bought it.



Here I am with the 2009 paperback edition of American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld. When the hardcover came out in 2008, it received glowing reviews. My friend Alex Elliot read it for her bookclub, and said that I would really like it. Sittenfeld and I are the same age, and I wish that I had an ounce of her talent.

I don't have pictures of myself with another two books that came out in 2009, but last night I attended a reading of A Friend of the Family by Lauren Grodstein. I thought it was great. Deborah Copaken Cogan also read From Here to April, which came out in hardcover in 2008 and paperback this month. It was also excellent. Both works were funny and thought-provoking, as were their creators.

If you are also pissed about the Publishers Weekly list, join the She Writes community's protest. Once you post a picture of yourself on your blog holding a book you bought by a female writer that came out in 2009 (the deadline is Friday), send Kamy the link at kamy@shewrites.com. She Writes will send these links to the entire community (5000+) on Saturday. While the emphasis is on women writers protesting, I think anyone who cares about sexism should feel free to participate.

Move On

When the liberal advocacy organization MoveOn.org was founded a few years ago, I was psyched. Approximately 900,000 emails from them later, not so much. Every day in the last few weeks, I received three emails from them. I blew my gasket today.

My motivating MoveOn email today noted that the Senate could really screw up the health care bill. My presence was requested at a rally to support the legislation that was out there. There was a little line thrown in about how anti-choice advocates muscled their religious beliefs into health care, denying women access to abortions, but whatever.

No, not whatever. I am sick of sacrificing my rights for the "greater good" when no one else seems to think they should ever do so. In yet another mass email I received (this time from Media Matters for America; I swear every progressive organization on the planet emails me daily), I learned that media coverage of the legislation is - surprise, surprise - completely misleading:

Media figures continue to falsely claim that a proposed anti-abortion amendment to the House health care reform bill would only have the effect of prohibiting government money from being used to pay for abortions, echoing a myth previously advanced about a proposed amendment to a prior version of that legislation. In fact, language in the current House bill already segregates federal money so it cannot be used directly to fund abortions, and the proposed amendment would effectively ban abortion coverage for some who have it now.

(Emphasis mine.)

Ellen Malcolm explains at The Huffington Post:

The Amendment effectively bans private insurance companies that participate in insurance exchanges from providing coverage of abortion. It tries to camouflage the impact by providing an "abortion rider" that women could choose to pay extra for to cover costs if they have an abortion.

I'm tired of being thrown under the bus so that others can roll forward over me. When the Catholic bishops (who launched "a forceful lobbying effort" that is credited "with the success of the provision") and other religious fundamentalists next want to forbid insurance plans from covering contraceptives or protect "pharmacists" who decline to fill prescriptions that they find morally objectionable, am I again supposed to step aside for the greater good? No. Instead, I shall Move On.

No Justice. Again.

The House of Representatives passed a shitty excuse for a health care plan. It includes no public option. (Sorry, I misunderstood the newspaper this morning.) It also gave in to fundamentalist religious groups and barred abortion coverage for anyone obtaining health insurance with government subsidies.

Some might argue that it is wrong to use taxpayers' money for things that certain taxpayers might object to. But we do that every day, anyway. I object to the death penalty, but every execution that happens in my state (which fortunately has been none) would be partly subsidized with my tax money. I object to Halliburton receiving no bid contracts to do nothing in Iraq. I object to hiring private "security" (paramilitary) firms being paid to "guard" stuff in Iraq. I object to the ludicrous idea that companies that are contracted by the US to work in Iraq are not subject to following US laws, so that women are raped by their co-workers and fired, the company has no responsibility. I object to using taxpayer money to build sports stadiums. The list goes on and on.

The problem with democracy is that sometimes you are stuck monetarily supporting things that you find morally reprehensible. If a person doesn't like it, too fucking bad. He doesn't have the right to impose his religious beliefs on me or other people.

Of course, not all religious groups are obnoxious fucking hypocritical assholes who insist on religious freedom for themselves but them force their beliefs down the throats of others. I know this. That's why, even though I don't believe in a Judeo-Christian God, I support the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. I think they do important work reminding people that religion does not have to oppress other people. I suppose it will be hard to continue supporting them when I live in my cave, hanging out with bats and shunning humanity, but as I said, there's no justice. I don't even know why I expect it every once in a while.

The Gonifs* Win

A few years ago, Rudy Giuliani, a mega Yankee fan and dictatorial mayor, put together a deal offering the Yankees a new stadium. This ballpark would be financed in part by New York City taxpayers. It would also require taking one of the few public parks in the South Bronx** and handing it over to the Yankees for the new structure. Boo! Hiss!

Then, thank to term limits (a concept I generally disagree with as it is not compatible with democratic elections, but that's another story), Giuliani could not run for mayor again. Whew! The new mayor, Michael Bloomberg, announced that the public was not in the business of building new stadiums for sports teams. Hurray! Rah rah rah!

Fast forward a few years, and Mayor Bloomberg inks a deal turning Macombs Dam Park over to the Yankees for their new stadium. There is lots of taxpayers supported financing, and a secret deal for a fancy luxury box for high ranking city officials, which somehow is called a public benefit. The Yankees also get a new MetroNorth stop, so that rich Republican assholes from Westchester need not set a foot in the surrounding neighborhood. In exchange, the Yankees agree to create a series of new little parks for the impoverished people of the South Bronx. Very generous of them, right? Boo! Hiss! Rotten tomatoes!!!

Now that the Yankees won the World Series, are the people who live in the shadows of the new stadium gathering in the newly built parks to celebrate? No, because there are no new parks. At best, there might be a park in 2011. But one of the lots promised to be a park is now actually going to be a parking lot. Sure, I understand that "parking" has the word "park" in it, but my dear Yankees, they are not one and the same.

So, go Yankees. Nice work. Taking from the poor and giving to the rich is considered an admirable American trait. You are exactly the American champions you set out to be.

*Gonif: Thief in Yiddish
**The Bronx, incidentally, is the poorest urban county in the US. The South Bronx is the poorest neighborhood in the Bronx. Clearly, these people have a lot to spare for a struggling sports team that has little revenue...

Elections: Good and Bad News

For the second morning in a row, the day began with promise. I woke up early and with big plans. Then I picked up The New York Times.

At first I didn't understand what I saw. Why was that fucking anti-choice, social conservative idiot with no plans at all for how to govern New Jersey on the front cover of the paper? No paper puts a big picture of the loser, and as my friend said on Monday, a good sign that he is not intelligent is that his first and last names are more or less the same. (Maybe this would work in Scandinavia, but it is silly here, I agreed.) But no. The stupid fuck his his right-wing agenda and won. People in New Jersey chose a moron with no ideas other than attacking his opponent's plans to save their state from recession.* Good luck with that.

I was relieved, however, to learn that the Democratic candidate in a district in upstate New York won. For 150 years, this community was represented only by Republicans. (Of course, that meant something different 150 years ago when it was the party of Lincoln, but that's another story.) Crazy conservatives around the country banded together to smear the moderate Republican candidate because she had the audacity to support gay marriage and keeping abortion legal. She was supported by all the local Republican leadership. But it seems that what people want is not good enough for the fringe elements that control the Republican party, who know much better than everyone else what they want, and if you don't agree with them, you will be punished. After months of verbal assaults from the likes of Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh, who supporting a crazy right-wing third party candidate, the Republican dropped out right before the election and endorsed the Democrat. He won narrowly.

My interpretation of all this insanity is that people still do not want to elect hatemongers. Christie won in part because he hid his conservative agenda, and this is also true of the Republican who just won Virginia. They emphasized the economy, not hating gay people or women's reproductive rights. In upstate New York, when the candidate foisted onto the voters emphasized his intolerance of people not like him, he lost. See, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh and the crazy bitch in the Times who praised the national coalition who imposed their will on a small area of New York, people do not embrace your so-called values. If you want to win and continue to oppress people with your evilness, you have to hide your agenda.

There may be hope yet.

*This reminded me why a story that we read in class that same night made me laugh. My classmate submitted a story about playing guitar in high school, and described his magnet school as offering an education to "the best and brightest of New Jersey." I thought he was making a joke about New Jersey's image as people with big bangs and a love of shopping malls, but it turned out he was serious.

PDA

No one gave me the memo, but based on graphic anecdotes, yesterday was PDA Day. By PDA, I sadly am not referring to Personal Digital Assistants, like my BlackBerry. Every day in New York City is that PDA Day. It's impossible to go anywhere without someone walking into you because he or she is texting while walking down the street. (Guilty!)

Rather, yesterday seemed to be Public Displays of Affection Day. But really it was EGPDA (Extremely Graphic/Gross Personal Displays of Affection) Day. I have only two examples, but I am certain they were part of a wider trend that I missed by staying home all day and watching Top Chef re-runs to recover from whatever stomach bug had me in bed and on the toilet all day on Tuesday. (As an aside, I do not recommend watching "Top Chef" or other food-oriented shows while you are eating toast, bananas, and Jell-O and starting to recover your appetite. Just saying.)

I ventured out at 7 pm to go to class. Still a little weak from lack of food over the last 36 hours, I took the only seat available when I got on the subway. Unfortunately, this was directly across from a couple sucking face. Literally. I might have been part of some horror movie scene in which it seems like a couple is making out, but really the girl is some sort of face eating monster-bot. They did not stop for air once between 72nd Street and 42nd St. The groaning and swaying were over the top. Of course, this happened to be the time I had nothing with me to read, so I had no idea where to look. I tried staring at the bag on my lap, but that didn't stop the pleasure noises from invading my ears. At any moment, I thought the girl was going to unzip the guy and give him a blow job.

Then, as I walked home from my subway stop after school, I encountered another couple going at it. They stood right in front of the Jewish Community Center, vacuum suctioned onto one another's mouths. The man was feeling the woman up right on the corner!!! Unlike on the subway, I noticed two other people pointing at the lovers and laughing.

People, have you no sense of decorum? How bad is it when I, a person who writes about throwing brown acidic stomach contents through my nose, am the arbiter of good taste? Yeesh. New Yorkers, go back to your BlackBerries and clueless and antisocial wandering!

The Two Star Review

There are sixteen reviews of my book about unusual things to see and do in New York, Off the Beaten (Subway) Track, on Amazon.com. Fifteen of them rated the book with five out of five stars. (I am humbled and honored!) In the wee hours of this insomnia-filled night/morning, I discovered a two star review:

This book is much more suited to people who live in New York or know the city very well. If you are new to the city is not a good way to get accustomed to the city, as the book doesn't really lay out general information and most of the attractions in the book are very odd.

The first part of the comment is probably true. The second part is definitely true, as it is a book about unusual things to see and do in New York City. The subtitle is, "New York City's Best Unusual Attractions." Amazon's description includes lines like, "Off the Beaten (Subway) Track is the first book to focus on the hundreds of off-the-beaten-path destinations in the city," and "These are the types of places and things that fit perfectly with New Yorkers' psyches and egos and satisfy the desire of tourists to see the unusual." Given these cues, I am not sure what else a reader might expect. Mission accomplished.

Honestly, there are some potentially excellent reasons to give it two stars. I find it hilarious that it was rated poorly because it delivered exactly what it promised to deliver. It's almost one of those compliment/backhanded insult situations. So, if you are thinking about buying a copy of Off the Beaten (Subway) Track, I hope you will not be disappointed that a book about unusual things to see and do in New York City focuses on places that "are very odd."

The Squirrelly and the Acorn

It's been a bad morning. I overslept, then while eating breakfast, read several depressing stories in the New York Times. The one that upset me most was about a "sting" operation enacted by two ultraconservatives who decided that they would bring about the right-wing wet dream of destroying the community organizing group Acorn.

Acorn is not perfect. It has had a series of scandals involving its officers over the last few years. But it also has done legitimate work to empower and engage disenfranchised, low income Americans in politics and economic growth. In New York City, Acorn has helped families frozen out of the housing market obtain places to live through shrewd credit counseling, homeownership classes, and technical assistance. People who participated in Acorn's programs here are not losing their homes to foreclosure.

Conservatives hate nothing more than when low income people ask for their fair (or I should say, fare) share of the heaping American apple pie. Actually, forget the "fair share" - they loathe when people who have been locked out of the mainstream systems that benefit white, middle- and upper-classes as for even a crumb or two of what they deserve. These groups and people, many of which have engaged in questionable activities themselves (remember Rush Limbaugh's illegal prescription addition and how he blamed his maid?), thus must bring down organizations like Acorn that are successful.

Today's New York Times article explains that two squirelly right-wingers dressed up as a prostitute and pimp, then went to Acorn offices and asked for help acquiring a home that they could use a brothel for under-age El Salvadorean girls. Two Acorn workers didn't blink an eye, explaining not only how to obtain the property, but also how to hide their illegal activity from the government.

There is nothing excusable or OK about what these Acorn employees did, and they have been fired. As a result of disgusting actions, Acorn is losing federal housing funds. But here's the problem with these incidents: they were isolated. And we don't find that out until deep in the article. See, the Times notes that the filmmakers "spent months visiting numerous Acorn offices, including those in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami and Philadelphia, before getting the responses they were looking for."

Why is no one demanding the rest of the tape? The evidence where almost everyone they came into contact to at Acorn did the right thing? It's like shutting down an entire hospital because of one awful doctor and a shitty nurse. Investigative journalism is NOT when you go out and do undercover investigations, find one thing that confirms wrongdoing, and then portray it as rampant corruption. YouTube may have made this video popular, but it certainly did not help tell the truth.

Between these squirrelly, unethical "truth seekers" and the fucking lunatics who protested in DC on Sept. 12, I really give up. Americans are not, as far as I can tell, interested in truth or justice. The sad part is this is what the real American way might be.