Resolute

For many years I made long lists of lofty resolutions, that no matter how much I meant them, I always only half kept at best. Then two years ago, I made a brilliant list of anti-resolutions which I of course did a slightly better job of keeping.

But now, after reading seeing so much about all the horrible sh*t that is happening everywhere, and after spending the last six months of this year in a pretty dark cloud of personal grief, I’ve decided that for 2008, I’m not making a list at all. In 2008, I’m making one resolution: To be happier.

Which of course sounds completely lame, vague, and sure to fail, but I actually think it’s the smartest resolution I’ve ever made. Sure, I could focus on keeping up my new health regime, or resolve to write more, blah, blah, blah. But this is so much more meaningful— being cynical, pessimistic, and slightly morose has been such a big part of who I am for so long, but what would happen if I just stopped wallowing as much? I’d like to see what life might be like if I just decide to appreciate it (while still pointing out sh*t that is f*cked up of course). So there you have it, there’s my one resolution for 2008.

To alleviate any live-journalness of this post please enjoy the following photos of me and a monkey.

My Impression of a Monkey

A Monkey’s Impression of Me Impersonating A Monkey

Papa Smurf

Blame it on the pre-Christmas news slump, but this is the most interesting bit o’ news I’ve heard in weeks. There is a guy who’s BLUE!


Everyone’s all like, “Now that he knows the stuff he’s drinking makes him blue, why doesn’t he stop?!” But they're just racist. Besides, he’s already blue, who knows if he could become un-blue. Plus he wants to live forever.

Which leaves me with the burning question, what if this stuff does make him live forever, then the price will skyrocket and there will be a whole new race of rich people. Man, the future’s scary. They should have just left this blue guy live his life.

If this is the World’s Capital, What does that say about the World?

1) Sure, in any densely populated place people will wait in line for ridiculously long amounts of time for often ridiculously stupid things (i.e. products with a lower case i in front of them) But that’s their own damn problem, because if you are misguided enough to camp out or stand in the rain/snow/sleet for an overpriced piece of plastic, you are both a sucker and a fool and deserve everything that rains down upon your head.

Waiting hours in lines around the block to get into family court, is another thing all together. Sure, The New York Times could do a story on some of the million billion other problems with the justice system (especially the family justice system) but at least they have finally written a story somewhat about poor people that actually points to how f*cked the system is that aims to keep them completely demoralized.

Here’s a thought, if you can’t let people on the stairs, and can’t figure out how to fix the elevators, maybe you could let the few people at a time that are missing a court date while standing outside the building use the sacred elevators that the judges use, so they will have a case to judge. I'm just saying.

2) Completely unrelated, but also absurdly ridiculous: Pillow Fight Club. It sounds like something I would have made up with my friends when I was 7-years-old. But these people are adults, and aren’t living in quaint Midwestern town in the 1980s. Plus even as a small girl I wouldn’t have been so one-dimensional to think of a tie-breaking rule like this: “Fighters have been known to get eliminated at this point (a tie) based on outfit choice alone.”

Update: Turns out "pillow fight club" is not a New York invention (although I'm sure they'll try to claim it like everything else). There's even a website: www.pillowfightclub.org and a wikipedia page.

It really does seem more and more that Devo was right.

What I'm Thankful For

We're #1, We're #1!

It’s been a big month for the mitten state. In what has been called "an irresponsible misuse of crime data,” a private research group's report based on annual FBI crime statistics rank Detroit as America’s most dangerous city (and good ol’ Flint, MI as #3).

The main criticism is that simplifying such a complex issue as crime into handy “move out of or don’t move to this already ailing city, it really sucks” rankings does a lot more harm than good to everyone involved. Besides, according to the AP article Detroit “Murder Capital” has lost 1 million people since 1950, and real estate agents attempting to sell the new condos aren’t likely to use the “most dangerous city in the US” tagline in their listings.


(Prime, affordable real estate in Detroit)

The most concise commentary of the report that I’ve read came from Gawker:

“The annual list helps reinforce the cycle of poverty, white flight, and neglect that is killing post-industrial America while the rich create unsustainable fantasy worlds on the coasts. And it provides a nice way for a news anchor to fill up 45 seconds.”

New York, by the way, ranked 130-something. Whatever, tell that to my two stolen bikes and my old roommate’s snatched purse. I’ve never had anything stolen in D-town.

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Squandering 'Merica

Tuesday morning I found myself voluntarily doing two things that normally would sound like a punishment: 1) working out on the elliptical machine before 8am and 2) watching CSPAN. As it turned it out, it was actually kind of enjoyable, if not interesting.

Robert Kuttner was on talking about his new book The Squandering of America, and I actually found myself interested in the trends of the economy. Especially when he started talking about the widening economical inequality in ‘merica and the effects on the struggles of the adult children of the working class to have social mobility.

I don’t know anything about the host, so I could be completly off, but she seemed like an uncomfortable closet conservative that wanted to give him a piece of her mind but couldn’t so she read a section for this awfully shallow researched politically biased editorial in the Wall Street Journal.

The entire basis for the editorial is a study from the (Republican) Treasury Department that basically says “Don’t worry, everything is great! Poor people aren’t poor anymore. In fact if anyone is losing money it’s rich people. Really it’s true, look at this totally scientific and non-bias information that we have gathered.”

Except for even glancing at the editorial there are enough holes for all of the 96,000 tax filers they examined to drive trucks though.

Here are just a few:

1) The tax returns that they looked at were for people over 25 years old, did they take into account how many of those people were single in 1996 and married in 2005 when they looked again? Did it compensate for the taxpayer having a two income instead of one income household?
2) Saying a percent as small as 24% over 10 years is “impressive” is stretching it more than a little bit.
3) It only accounts for what people earned not what they spent or lost, you know things like foreclosures, medical bills, etc. The kind of thing that poor people often have to worry about and rich people don’t.
4) You only have to file a tax return if you make over something like $10,000/year. Hows about doing a study of all the people so broke that they don’t even file their taxes?
5) They use the word “hokum.” Seriously.
6) It doesn’t account in what people have to do to earn this huge 24% more- say working more hours or more than one job. ( And it says “those who start at the bottom but have full time jobs” what about those who have to work two or more part time jobs because they can’t get a full time job and also have to live without benefits)
7) They use all of this to say that rich people aren’t getting richer, and that if there are more taxes it would hold back “regular people” from climbing the income ladder. Surely this wouldn’t be just a scapegoat for the 1% that already owns 90% of the country’s wealth and is afraid to loose even a tiny bit to those dirty poors…

Selling Out

So, journalism students at NYU did a poll of 3,000 NYU undergrads' attitudes about voting, and I think we are supposed to be horrified/surprised/confused with the results.

70% think that one vote can make a difference (cute huh?) and think voting is important, but 70% are also willing to give their vote up for free tuition, even though 60% of the people who said that also said that their families had lots-o-dough and most likely were paying some or all of their tuition anyway and so they probably just wanted the extra cash.

But what I really wonder about is the 20% who will sell their vote for an ipod touch of all things (do they think they’ll get their vote back when the thing breaks in 18 months?)

Even if voting doesn’t make that much of an impact, it's just dumb to sell yourself out like that. Then again I guess the argument could be made that if you're the kind of dumbass who is willing to sell off your constitutional rights, maybe it's for the best that you remove yourself from the political process, kind of like the Darwin Awards of social involvement.


Or maybe they think selling your vote is like selling your soul and you can just buy it back from the Comic Book Guy.