Strangest Fundraiser Ever

I blog from a gorgeous banquet hall that used to be a bank back in the
day when banks occupied buildings that resembled Renaissance palazzos.
Husband's company bought a table for a fundraiser, so he brought me
(and my two lovely lady friends). We were excited to go to a fancy
schmancy dinner event.

Upon arrival, I marveled at the sushi bar, the pasta bar, the moo shu
station, the lox station, and the passed hors d'oevres. If the
reception was so delux, I could only imagine what was in store for
dinner! I stuffed myself silly anyway.

Good fucking thing I was so damn greedy. As we approached our table,
I remarked how close the tables were to one another. "I don't know
how the staff is going to manuver around to serve good," I said to no
one in particular. Our table was decked out with a floral
centerpiece, bread basket, dessert trays, milk and sugar, coffee cups
and saucers, water and wine glasses, two bottle of wine, forks (three
per setting, knives, and spoons. But no plates.

A waiter approached us. "Would you like tea?" he asked. That's when
it hit me: there was no dinner. I thought I should ask to verify my
suspicion. "Uh, is there dinner?" The waiter stared at me. "No,
that was before."

That would have been nice to know, as my friend didn't eat anything
during what was billed as the "reception." She ran off to scavenge
whatever was left and bring a plate back to the table.

I guess $25,000 doesn't buy much these days. Yeesh!

--
Sent from my mobile device

Blog: www.cussandotherrants.com
Book: www.offthebeatensubwaytrack.com

Reading the Label

On my way to my bookclub this evening, I stopped at a Russian grocery store to pick up some treats. After browsing all the various candies, breads, crackers, cookies, and other baked goods, I settled on a package of what I thought were meringue cookies covered with chocolate. When I went to pay, I thought it would be fun to buy some candy, too. I picked up a package on the counter.

"What's this?" I asked the cashier.

"Oh, this is for something like make your stomach better digest," she said, struggling with her English.

"OK, I'll try them."

I paid and as I walked to my friend's apartment, I opened the yellow packaging. Instead of a chocolate bar or oat bar, I discovered four individually wrapped chewy chocolate bites. As I was chewing the third one, I realized it reminded a little bit of the chocolate calcium chews I used to eat years ago. Then I stopped dead in my tracks. Didn't she say that these were for digestions? OH MY GOD. WHAT IF I JUST ATE THREE CHOCOLATE LAXATIVES?!?! Well, it could be an interesting book club, I decided.

Fortunately, I had not shit my pants or my friend's sofa or stunk up her bathroom by the time our bookclub ended. However, I discovered that the cookies were some strange fruity marshmallow. It was deliciously over sweet, like the relief I felt at not crapping myself. But lesson learned: don't fuck around when you can't read labels!

Why I Love Steph and Husband

Steph is back in NYC this weekend to attend a wedding. When she
arrived at my apartment after the event, she launched into a diatribre
against the maid of honor, who boasted that she was born and raised in
Beverly Hills.

"I wanted to tell her that if she thought she was such hot shit, she
should put herself together a little better and get some good hair."

I asked her how the food was. "Well, it was OK. They served
something called Hong Kong lobster, which was lobster with fruit
chunks in mayonaise."

"Damn, that sounds like some sort of Chinese Jell-O mold!" Husband
said and made a face. He is horrified by Jell-O molds and Jell-O
salads. While we visited my family in the Chicago area last weekend,
he watched in disgust as my sister and I snarfed down my mom's special
Jell-O mold; frozen strawberries, Cool Whip, and strawberry Jell-O
mixed together. The final product is the prettiest pink, and the
frothy Jell-O melts in my mouth like a sweet cloud. It was my
favorite special treat as a kid.

--
Sent from my mobile device

Blog: www.cussandotherrants.com
Book: www.offthebeatensubwaytrack.com

Compentency

Other than the fact that I can't sleep,* I've been extra competent
lately. My last two stories were well received at school, although
everyone agreed that they need a bit of revising. I'm on top of my
game at work. It feels good. Now if I just were less exhausted and
able to see clearly out of my left eye, things would be great. But
I'm not really complaining. It could be a lot worse.

*Damn Maurice! He's been jogging along on the wheel that powers my
brain every day, but then instead of napping at night, he decides to
run 5 miles. Even at full speed, it takes a hamster a fucking long
time to run five miles. My brain is on overdrive the whole fucking
time.

--
Sent from my mobile device

Blog: www.cussandotherrants.com
Book: www.offthebeatensubwaytrack.com

A Deadly Sin

In the last two days, I read four things* that lead me to a deadly sin. Oh, envy! How it rears its big ugly head up and makes me covet the talents of others. As I said to two of the writers, "It's like penis envy, only real.**" Yes, I want their tools. Maybe this is also a violation of a commandment, too - do not covet thy neighbor's literary skills.

*Two stories at school; The Scenic Route by Binnie Kirschenbaum; and a blog post by AV Flox about jizz as an anti-depressant whose conclusion I disagree with, but loved the writing anyway. Unlike the prior sentence, which is a good example of very bad writing.
**Sorry Freud, but I'm not buying your sexist crap. He'd probably like the study about how precious pearls of cum prevent women from being depressed that Flox wrote so well about...

It's No Accident that "Stupak" Looks a Lot Like "Stupid"

Two of my favorite organizations, the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and Planned Parenthood are holding a National Day of Action today to lobby the Senate for health care reform that ensures women’s access to reproductive health care. Right now, things are not looking good.

Basically, the House passed a horrible amendment sponsored by Rep. Bart Stupak, an anti-choice douche bag. The amendment would prevent women who currently have health insurance plans that cover abortion from obtaining the same coverage if they buy it through an insurance exchange. This is a problem for me, but even worse is that private plans will likely drop abortion coverage in order to participate in the exchange. People who like imposing their religious beliefs on others are proposing the same thing in the Senate.

Planned Parenthood explains the situation (it's a long one):

The Bottom Line

• Under the Stupak amendment, millions of women would lose benefits that they currently have and millions more would be prohibited from getting the kind of private sector health care coverage that most women have today.


• Millions of women would lose private coverage for abortion services and millions more would be prohibited from buying it even with their own money.

The New Health Insurance Exchange

• The new health insurance exchange is intended to provide a new source of affordable, quality coverage for the roughly 46 million uninsured Americans and the millions more whose current coverage is unaffordable or inadequate.


• The House bill is expected to cover 96 percent of all uninsured Americans by offering subsidies for private coverage or the choice of a public plan. Depending on their income level and the final package approved by Congress, individuals would receive subsidies on a sliding scale to purchase private insurance through the exchange.


• Not everyone in the exchange would have subsidized coverage — a significant portion of people (for instance, those currently purchasing in the individual market and those working for small businesses) who would buy insurance in the exchange would not receive any subsidies, also known as affordability credits.

The Stupak Amendment

• The Stupak amendment prohibits any coverage of abortion in the public option and prohibits anyone receiving a federal subsidy from purchasing a health insurance plan that includes abortion. It also prohibits private health insurance plans from offering through the exchange a plan that includes abortion coverage to both subsidized and unsubsidized individuals.


• The Stupak amendment purports to allow women to purchase a separate, single-service “abortion rider,” but abortion riders don’t exist.


• Women are unlikely to think ahead to choose a plan that includes abortion coverage, since they do not plan for unplanned pregnancy.


• Realistically, the actual effect of the Stupak amendment is to ban abortion coverage across the entire exchange, for women with both subsidized and unsubsidized coverage.


• Example: Currently, a self-employed graphic designer or writer, buying coverage from Kaiser Permanente in the individual market, likely has abortion coverage. Under the health reform plan amended by Stupak, she would purchase that same plan from Kaiser Permanente in the exchange, but it would not include abortion coverage because it would be barred. This ban would be in effect even if she were paying the full premium. Similarly, a woman working for a small graphic design firm, who currently has abortion coverage through her company’s plan, would lose it under reform if the company decides to seek more affordable coverage in the exchange.

For more information on health care reform and the Stupak amendment, visit us at http://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/healthreform.

End of Planned Parenthood info, and back to my ranting... If this pisses you off as much as it does me, call your Senator today. (Or email him or her, as I suspect the lines will be busy.) Perhaps yelling, "Stop the stupid Stupak amendment bullshit," is not the thing to say, but it does have alliteration, which is a good literary technique.

In all seriousness, something like this is NOT going to stop women from having abortions. Instead, it will force more women to wait longer for their procedure while they figure out how the hell to pay for it. If we want more late term abortions in this country, then by all means, support Stupak. But that would be stupid.

Knowledge

Years before I went back to school to study the craft of writing,* I spent scads of money to study social welfare policy and public administration at Columbia. Early on in the program, I realized that I went back when I was way too young, but I resolved to learn what I could. I discovered that I really liked statistics. This was a huge surprise.

My last semester at school, I enrolled in a poverty research class. Students paired up and selected a topic to investigate. We then we given national databases, which we ran many numbers over the course of the semester to support or disprove our thesis. It was exciting.

The topic I chose was whether children living in households with two adults had outcomes that matched those of children living in households with married parents. I pictured grandmothers, aunts, uncles, and other family members offering the same support that a spouse might (or might not) give, thus enabling children to live in more stable environments. My partner and I ran a gazillion multivariate regressions, basic stats like averages, and a fancy-schmancy time-hazard regression to see if this was true.

It was not. According to data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, children from married households had better outcomes than those from two adult households, who in turn were better off as adults than children from single parent homes. I was crushed. Did this not mean that horrid policies put forth by right wing nutjobs were correct? That people really should rush off to get married (assuming they have the right, but that's another story), come hell or high water?

As I moped about my findings, my wise professor opened my eyes. He pointed out that the data may not support my theory, but that the social environment in which we live does not provide the same benefits to unmarried people. Perhaps if I recommended that we implement policies that support different types of households rather than continue to punish them for not conforming to a conservative view of family life, then the outcomes would improve.

I hadn't really considered that it was possible to take a "bad" finding and turn it into a tool for advocacy. This changed the way I interpreted studies and all sorts of news reports. Cool.

*Seriously, just typing "to study the craft of writing" cracks me up. I had hoped to learn how to write a book with a plot and characters. Instead, I discovered that I am not "literary" and my writing will never be literary, because my brain does not think that way. While this discovery caused enormous angst last year, I am OK with it now. I'll just admire people who write really beautiful sentences and go about my business trying to entertain people with a serviceable story. Which is not to say that I did not learn anything, because I learned a lot. But anyway...