Ginger's follies, foibles and fixations.
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| You Listen to Me, Mr. Kick-Ass Ginger's follies, foibles and fixations. |
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Friday, March 07, 2003 A Pretty Dull, Really Friday Five! 1. What was the last song you heard? Last night, on the radio as I packed up to leave work. It was a Madonna song, but I don't remember which one. Something off of Like a Prayer, or maybe Music. Dang. Don't remember. 2. What were the last two movies you saw? The Quiet American and Road to Perdition 3. What were the last three things you purchased? An egg-and-cheese bagel A panini and cookie from this crappy new lunch place near work A month's worth of birth-control pills 4. What four things do you need to do this weekend? See Far from Heaven and Lilo and Stitch Cook Clean Work 5. Who are the last five people you talked to? Kimberly David Rainard Nell Melanie posted by Ginger | 4:52 PM Thursday, March 06, 2003 Go Topless for Patriotism In case you haven't seen this one yet - a guy gets arrested at an Albany shopping mall for wearing a peace t-shirt. I shudder to think how many people out there think "Damn right! How dare someone wear a t-shirt with an idea on it as opposed to a pre-approved corporate logo!" The kicker is that they bought the shirts at one of the mall's own stores. I just thought of this when writing the above headline. Perhaps dozens of bra-less women and their companions should visit the mall wearing peace-related t-shirts? If they are commanded to remove the shirts, there would be boobies, boobies everywhere! It would certainly improve the shopping-mall aesthetic. Maybe that's what mall security is hoping for. It would sure liven up the food court. posted by Ginger | 7:49 PM Let it Snow Contrary to every other person in New York City - and really, I mean every other person - I'm happy about getting more snow today. To me it means we're that much farther from swimsuit season, which is just fine with me. Mrs. Boss made a good point last summer - she says if you're going to live in New York you can't hate it when it's cold and when it's hot, or you'll be no fun at all to be around. I complain plenty as soon as the temps creep up beyond 80, so I'm happy as a clam when it's subfreezing with a foot of snow on the ground. I'd just as soon live this winter all over again than have it be like last summer any time soon. Although, to be fair, New York springs are quite lovely. posted by Ginger | 7:31 PM Wednesday, March 05, 2003 The Onion is, as always, Pure Genius The first picture under Other News is hysterical. posted by Ginger | 1:49 PM Tuesday, March 04, 2003 What the Hell? From Hanson's new website: Hanson.net 2.0 is based on our involvement and interaction along with easier access for you to more updates and information. As we begin the setup for this record we will utilize the site to better inform and empower you. What sort of self-help seminars have they been to lately? Love Your Inner Child Star? Resume-Writing for Has-Been Hearthrobs? On second thought...I suppose that would be useful. Tay-tay has a family to feed, after all, and it's been - what? - six years since their last album? Hanson who? Exactly. (Just kidding fellas! Love ya!) posted by Ginger | 2:46 PM Vince Vaughn in Europe "One girl turns and says, 'We were hoping you were Canadian.' Canadian? Since when was it cooler to be Canadian?" posted by Ginger | 1:09 PM Words of Wisdom From my friend Andy who is visiting Costa Rica: Scorpions in my pants sounds more like a local expression than an experience I'd like to have. posted by Ginger | 12:05 PM Monday, March 03, 2003 For Wil I am posting on 03/03/03 because Wil said it was a cool date. And it is a cool date, I just didn't really think about it until he mentioned it. I'm sad to say that I failed to post on the other cool date this year: 01/02/03, not even if you're looking at it in the European way. Not that I have nothing to say, oh no! I had a sorta-blah weekend. I was recovering (or suffering, depending on how you look at it) from an annoying cold, and the radiator in my building was just out of control - 90 degrees in my apartment, with the windows wide open and fans running full-blast. All I could do was lie around and sweat - very unpleasant. I finally called the building manager to ask if anything could be done. He was noncommittal, as always, but by last night it was MUCH better. That may be because the temperature outside went way down, though, which might have helped combat the superpowered radiator. In any event, this morning I was more comfortable in my apartment than I had been all winter. I closed the windows for the first time in recent memory, so we'll see if my cat has been crispy-fried by the time I get home. Yes, now it's back to superfreezing temperatures out here, which seems to piss off most everybody. Frankly I don't mind, because I don't have the scratch for a new spring wardrobe. It can be cold for a while yet - I don't mind. Despite discomfort and a grumpy mood, I did manage to have some fun this weekend. Cudgel and I saw About Schmidt which I liked a lot. Alexander Payne presents Nebraska onscreen more accurately than I've ever seen. It's clear that he knows and honors both the charm and ridiculousness of Nebraska, which I (as a proud expat Nebraskan) truly appreciate. Plus it's just fun to see stuff that's so deeply ingrained and familiar that you don't see in movies very much (ie. the Woodmen building, the State Flag...). It was Cudgel's birthday last Friday and I chastised him for not having a party. We didn't really celebrate but I gave him a card & some cookies. No hard feelings. Even though, let's not forget, I was Deeply Wronged. I picked up The Princess Bride DVD on a whim since it was on sale at Tower. What a great movie - can you find a more perfect script? Anywhere? One complaint about the DVD though - Rob Reiner's commentary. Note: I am a total commentary geek. It's the main reason I have a DVD player. I have bought DVDs of movies I don't even like because of the commentaries. But Rob Reiner's Princess Bride commentary -- what I heard of it -- is next to useless (not unlike this post - ed.). The one interesting thing he said was that the hat he wore in This is Spinal Tap is prominently displayed in Fred Savage's bedroom. Aside from that, his comments are of the "describe exactly what you see on screen" variety. That is, when he chooses to speak at all, which doesn't seem to be much, from what I heard randomly circling through audio tracks during various scenes. Screenwriter William Goldman was more interesting, though sometimes he tends to get too involved in the movie to talk much. Um... so that was my exciting weekend! (blush) Don't forget there's a new Strong Bad e-mail today! posted by Ginger | 7:15 PM Sunday, March 02, 2003 For the Record I really would rather post about anything else than this fucking stupid not-yet war, but it's kind of hard to avoid, when it's all so fucking stupid, you know? posted by Ginger | 2:41 AM Seriously, though, they HAVE to know how goofy that site is, right? Today's Tom the Dancing Bug gets in on the Ready.gov parody action. Nice! And while we're back on the political tip, I am once again foot-stompin' outraged about yet another example of the "freedoms" we so cherish here in the good old U.S.A. (links via Tom Tomorrow's site, again): Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen born in Syria, was on his way to Montreal from Tunisia when he made a stopover at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport on Sept. 26. He was arrested by the INS, questioned for nine hours without a lawyer, jailed for more than two weeks and deported to Syria, all without the knowledge of the Canadian government. Mr. Arar left his wife and two young children vacationing in Tunisia with in-laws and they have not heard from him since. Human rights abuses: not just for Arabs any more! : A Toronto woman coming home from India says she was pulled aside at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, accused of using a fake Canadian passport, denied consular assistance and threatened with jail. In tears and desperate, Berna Cruz says she told U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) officers she didn't want to go to jail. She told them she had to get home to her two children and was expected to be at work the next day at a branch of a major Toronto bank where she works as a loan officer. Instead of jailing her on Jan. 27, an INS officer cut the front page of Cruz's passport and filled each page with "expedited removal" stamps, rendering it useless. She was photographed, fingerprinted, barred from re-entering the U.S. for five years and immediately "removed." Not to Toronto, but to India, where she had just spent several weeks visiting her parents. It took four days, and help from Canadian officials in Dubai and a Kuwaiti Airlines pilot, to get her back home. Human rights abuses: not just for dark-skinned people any more! : Irish activist and former Member of Parliament, Bernadette Devlin McAliskey was detained by immigration officials in Chicago, February 21, and denied entry into the United States allegedly on "national security" grounds. According to her daughter, Deidre, two INS officers threatened to arrest, jail, and even shoot the legendary civil rights campaigner when she arrived at Chicago's O'Hare airport. McAliskey (56) was then photographed, finger-printed and returned to Ireland against her will on the grounds that the State Department had declared that she "poses a serious threat to the security of the United States." "Mommy was this close to being locked up," said Deidre, Saturday in New York. The two were traveling together from Ireland to the US to attend a christening, According to daughter Deirdre (27) the McAliskeys cleared US immigration in Ireland prior to boarding, and received routine permission to travel, but upon their arrival they were stopped at baggage claim. Detained by two INS officers, they were told that the order to bar Bernadette McAliskey came from US officials in Dublin. During the dispute that followed, Deirdre says one INS officer used "very thinly veiled threats" against her mother, including, "if you interrupt me one more time I'm going to slam the cuffs on you and haul your ass to jail." Kids, we're not even at war yet. Yet the scent hangs in the air like a suspected chemical attack (or is that just burnt hot dogs?) that anyone who expresses opposition to a first-strike war with Iraq is an ill-informed, drum-circling, dreadlocked, hemp-wearin', no-blood-for-oil-shoutin', poetry-readin', Saddam-lovin' un-American fool. As if an unprovoked military offensive, with the vocal opposition of both the U.N. and a significant bloc of our long-time allies, against an impoverished, cripped nation, resulting in the possible deaths of Americans and the certain deaths of poor brown-skinned civilians is something any reasonable person would enthusiastically favor. Bill O'Reilly might be a nutjob, but he has a national TV show, and a lot of people go right along with his definition of "bad Americans:" I will call those who publicly criticize our country in a time of military crisis, which this is, bad Americans ...If American military men and women are putting their lives on the line for their country, they deserve our support, even if you don't agree with the cause. Think about this -- some of us actively fighting to remove Saddam Hussein don't agree with the cause themselves, but they're doing their duty. So it's okay to send people to fight and die for something they don't believe in, but it's not okay for those of us back at home to clamor to bring them home (or, better yet, keep them from going to begin with?). Notice that all the folks who seem really eager to get this war underway are exactly the people who would never themselves have to fight. Many of whom in the govt. who are pushing for this have never themselves fought, even when there was a chance to put "their lives on the line for their country." GWB has teenage daughters, so they won't even have to join the National Guard to stay out of combat! And it is our duty as loyal Americans to shut up once the fighting begins, unless -- unless facts prove the operation wrong, as was the case in Vietnam. Feel free to protest the war after it's over! Right now we have only opinions about the war. The facts will be known after Saddam is deposed and we find out exactly what he's been hiding, if anything. When in doubt, have the war. Afterwards, you will get to know all the facts (because why wouldn't the U.S. Govt. tell you everything?), and then you can complain all you want about how the war shouldn't have been fought to begin with. Complaining about the past is so much more effective than encouraging your "elected" leaders to decide wisely in the present. Besides, as of today the only "fact" you need to know is that Saddam's in power, according to The New York Times. Now the only acceptable behavior for a power-mad wealthy militaristic despot is total disarmament and exile? I say to GWB: You first. Anyway, back to Bill O'Reilly: So I said that a loyal American should hold on to sincere opinions but should exercise responsibility in expressing them if it hurts the morale of our troops or gives aid and comfort to the enemy. Well, that's not exactly what he said in the broadcast that he's supposedly apologizing for with the above diatribe. Here's an excerpt from his February 26th broadcast, which is a little more, uh, to the point: Once the war against Saddam Hussein begins, we expect every American to support our military, and if you can't do that, just shut up...Americans, and indeed our foreign allies who actively work against our military once the war is underway, will be considered enemies of the state by me....Talking points invites all points of view and believes vigorous debate strengthens the country, but once decisions have been made and lives are on the line, patriotism must be factored in. The sort of 'patriotism' that deports innocent people to countries they have not lived in for decades without allowing them legal assistance or phone calls to their families, perhaps? God Bless America! Oh, but don't forget...this is all for the Iraqi people. Just because the U.S. govt. pisses on the human rights of its own citizens or legal, peaceful visitors (guess we don't need those tourist dollars) doesn't mean the human rights of the oppressed citizens of Iraq aren't our top priority. I mean, just look what wonders we did for 'liberated' Afghanistan (from The Washington Post): Even as attention shifts to Iraq, America needs to be careful not to forget that its work in Afghanistan is just beginning. We have spent billions of dollars and lost precious lives to vanquish the Taliban. Yet the groundwork is being laid in Afghanistan for a regime that may be almost as repressive as the Taliban, particularly with regard to religious freedom. This is occurring with consent and, in some cases, help from the United States. When President Bush meets with Afghan President Hamid Karzai today, he should tell him that it is essential to entrench freedom, not its enemies. There are disturbing reports that an extreme and strict interpretation of Islamic law, or sharia, is being nurtured in the post-Taliban era. Moreover, attempts are being made to include some of the harshest and most discriminatory elements of sharia in the new constitution and judicial system. The notorious Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which enforced religious conformity and meted out harsh punishments under the Taliban, has reemerged in a supposedly gentler guise. Abuses against women and girls continue, apparently with the support of police and the courts. Women and girls finally have the opportunity to go to school, but recent attacks and threats against schools for girls are keeping many away. Iraqis, you're right-- ousting Saddam is well worth dying for. But for all your suffering, what do you get? Same shit, different hat. When you make a deal with the devil, the devil is the only one who wins. posted by Ginger | 12:27 AM |
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