Politically Incorrect, But It's How I Feel

Since I'm exhausted (no reason why - I slept plenty, didn't run around needlessly, nor did I overwork myself), I probably should not blog about this topic, as the very fine filter that stops me from saying things that I will really regret is not functioning right now. But for the last few weeks, I've been stewing over this, and I read yet another item fawning over the rabbi and rebbetzin (i.e. - rabbi's wife), and it just bothers me.

First, the disproportionate attention heaped on this couple makes me squirm. Every fucking picture of men with beards and peyot crying as if this were their unique tragedy makes me want to puke. Of the hundreds of people killed, the missionary Jews were a tiny percentage. Lots of people lost family members that day; the Lubavitcher community is not special in their grief. The very idea that Jews somehow merit more attention and sympathy because they were killed is partially why people fucking hate us in the first place. This close attention makes me cringe.

Plus, these people were missionaries. They were not angels sacrificing their lives to do good for others just for the sake of humanity. They were there to convert secular Jews into Hasidic ones; to save our souls. Just like any missionary, they did some good works along the way. I'm sure that it can be hard to find kosher food in a vegetarian city. Sigh.

I might add that the very tiny indigenous Jewish-Indian community had nearly no ties to the Chabad house. There are many reasons for this, and they all reflect poorly on Chabad House.

In order to become missionaries, the rabbi and rebbetzin left another child behind in Israel. Dying in a hospital. Dying from a rare genetic disorder that they already had a kid die from. And that makes me the angriest of all. I'm not saying that they deserved for anything bad to happen to them; they absolutely did not. But they sure as fuck don't deserve the accolades I've read about brave people out to do good in the world and help other people. They abandoned their own dying kid to convert others. Enough said.

Warm Fuzzies

It's a bit chilly here in New York City, so I've been wearing my hat with bear ears every day. As I walked down to the subway platform yesterday morning, I noticed a man carrying his preschool age daughter behind me. The girl pointed at me and said, "Daddy, that girl is a teddy bear!" I could not help smiling the rest of the day.

Barbie Sex

It's interesting, although not surprising, that all the comments I received thus far in response to my confession about Barbie confirmed that a lot of girls had their Barbies and Kens engage in sexual activities. We live in a culture saturated by images of sex and sexuality. If Barbie wasn't supposed to be knocking boots, then why would she have fuck-me heels, mini skirts, and giant boobs? (Of course, it's more complicated than that, but that's the message we get.) I'm particularly impressed by Bryna's Barbie house uses - pancake house by day, whore house at night. Hilarious.

All of this reminds of me of a short story I ready by AM Homes when I was in high school. I was in my early stages of rabid feminism, and on a tear about Barbie and how bad she was for girls because of her unrealistic body and consumerist bent. A friend gave me an anthology of stories that we related to Barbie, and one of them was A Real Doll by Homes. Basically, this teenage guy has sex with his sister's Barbie and Ken dolls. (Separately, not as a threesome. To paraphrase George Michael, sex is better when it's one human on one doll.) It is a demented tale of sexual obsession with elements of unrelated torture and ideas of feminine sexuality and body image.

I was completely disturbed and utterly fascinated by Homes's take on how girls use their Barbies, and realized how normal I was in comparison. Now that I know that other people played Barbie whore house, I'm a little disappointed in myself. Despite my love of the Barbie Dream Store and all of the consumer-oriented Barbie products that I wanted, I guess I never had the capitalist instincts in me to think about how Barbie could profit by exploiting penisless Ken's lust. Nor did I have the technology to make a Barbie porno as these teen girls were clever enough to put together, complete with commercial:

Barbie Memories

Instead of going to bed when I got home from post-class hanging out (which I would do if I had better judgment), I farted around online for a while. "Why not check out the status of Off the Beaten (Subway) Track on amazon.com?" I thought to myself. "Sleep is overrated, anyway."

I was distracted from my fact finding mission when I opened the Amazon homepage and was greeted by this:

What's Your Favorite Barbie Memory?
Over the past 50 years, Barbie has filled homes with memories and inspired millions of children to dream--to see themselves as astronauts, rock stars, doctors, fashion designers, professional athletes, and even female Presidents. Shop the Barbie Store for great deals just in time for the holidays.

Gah! I swear that must be James Bond Villainess Barbie! It is so evilly insipid and scary, I can easily imagine it luring James Bond Ken into bed ("Hello, Mr. Bond," it says with a Russian accent as it removes its top. "Would you like to heat up this new cold war?") and then trying to bludgeon him with a frozen Chicken Kiev.

That said, I loved Barbies until I was nine or ten years old, which was several years beyond my peers' interest in playing dolls. In second grade, I received the Barbie Dream House and the Dream Store as gifts for Hanukkah, and I went to town setting up the store on the first floor of the house. I liked combing Barbies' hair, dressing her in glamorous dresses and stiletto shoes that inevitable fell off her feet and got lost in my bedroom carpet until I found one by stepping on it barefoot and driving a mini hole in my sole, and, in the later years, assisting Ken in scoring. It is almost sad how much interest my penis-less Ken had in humping my ultra smooth Barbies.

Somehow I don't think Amazon wants me to share my memories of the sound of hard plastic hitting hard plastic as Ken and Barbie went at it.

Wounds that Lead to More Wounds

After I gouged my knee on the bookcase next to my computer desk on Thanksgiving as I types my sappy holiday thoughts, I covered it with a bandage. When I later changed the dressing, the bandage tore of several little chunks of skin, so that I now had four wounds instead of one. I used a larger bandage to cover those wounds, particularly because everything on my knee hurt when it rubbed against my jeans. I think you know what happened next. I'm not using paper medical tape to cover the entire area with a gauze pad. Hopefully, the tape will not rip off more skin when I eventually remove it.

This could be a great metaphor for life or some shit like that.

Flashback: January 30, 2007

From the CUSS archives. I swear I was way funnier in the past.

When I arrived home this afternoon from my first meeting as a magazine intern (!), I rushed to the kitchen for a snack. An apple with cheese is on my approved low-carb, anti-diabetes diet, and I grabbed an apple up greedily and smeared low fat spreadable cheese on it. Really, it was not the apple but the cheese that excited me so. I realized at that moment that if someone offered me shit with cheese on it, I might actually consider eating it, depending on the type of cheese. That is how much I love cheese. (Or a sign of how disturbed I am.)

Reflecting on shit-covered cheese reminded me of my last shower at my parents’ house. The water in Chicago is ridiculously hard, although it is not well water. (It’s fresh from Lake Michigan, although until modern plumbing solved some serious pollution issues, the water pumped from the lake was actually full of shit and disgusting.) Thus I always need conditioner for my hair when I am at my folks’, whereas I never use it in New York. I noticed that they had a bottle of Herbal Essences conditioner, so I dumped some on my head without really smelling it first. Herbal Essences is supposed to be so good that commercials portray sexy women having orgasmic experiences in the shower, hence I figured it would smell good.

I don’t know what was wrong with their Herbal Essences, but it had the essence of an animal with a flower-based diet that shit on my head. I was not pleased, although perhaps if it had cheese in it, I may have nibbled at it.

Two Words Starting with E, Different Meanings

earn*
1a: to receive as return for effort and especially for work done or services rendered 1b: to bring in by way of return (bonds earning 10 percent interest)
2a: to come to be duly worthy of or entitled or suited to (she earned a promotion)
2b: to make worthy of or obtain for (the suggestion earned him a promotion)

entitlement*
1a: the state or condition of being entitled : right
2b: a right to benefits specified especially by law or contract
3: belief that one is deserving of or entitled to certain privileges

In the sad state that is America today, many people seem to have mixed up the definitions of earn and entitlement. For example, lately I have heard a number of people who have never worked a day in their lives (because they inherited money or mooched off a trust fund or married into money or married someone who makes a lot of money) complain that Obama's proposed tax plan was stealing from them. "Why should I fork over my hard-earned money to the government to spend it on lazy people?" one woman, who has not worked in decades because her spouse supports her,** whined to a friend.

See, you didn't earn that money, lady. Your spouse did. Or your mom or dad or grandpa did. To earn something, you have to actually do something. Being born or marrying to the "right" people does not count. People who work multiple jobs and still can't pay for housing, health care, and education earned their money. And they are entitled to live decent lives.

Really, you are angry that someone is chipping away at your entitlement, saying that you did not earn your privileges. You are furious that other people are somehow as deserving as you are (if not more so) to live above the poverty line. Believe me, even when you pay your fair share of taxes, you will still live a far better life than the vast majority of Americans, who struggle to make ends meet.

Let's stop confusing earning with entitlement, shall we?

*Thanks to my friends at Merriam-Webster Online for the definitions.
**And I am not lumping stay-at-home moms into this category, as those women work hard, even if they are not paid for their labor.