Barack Obama and the Dumbest Among Us

Let me be clear: I am sick to death of stupid people. I am rotten to the core with loathing for people who have no idea what they are talking about, but insist on talking. I am done with their misinformation and total lack of reason. It pains me that these people are allowed to vote, and that the dumbest among us have kept our current regime in power for the last eight years. Thank gods, thank gods, the tide is turning against them. Thank gods, thank gods they are beginning to see.

Unfortunately, the dumbest among us have new things to be stupid about.

I'm glad that everybody has the right to vote. I encourage everyone to exercise that right; I would die for your right to vote for George W. Bush, or any other fool you choose. However, I have a request: If you know nothing, if you have never read a book or a newspaper (sports page doesn't count), if you believe everything said in an email or on the internet is true, please SHUT THE FUCK UP.

Ladies and gentlemen of the dumbest among us, allow me to introduce you to a few concepts.

Inductive reasoning is the ability to determine the strength or weakness of an argument based on supporting evidence. Look at these arguments and tell me which is stronger:

1. Barack Obama is probably Christian. He was married in a Christian church, by a Christian minister, to a Christian woman. His children are being raised Christians and attend Christian church with him weekly. He himself has declared his faith to be Christian. He observes Christian holidays.

2. Barack Obama is probably Muslim. I read on the internet that he is. I also saw pictures of him wearing an ethnic costume associated with a Muslim country one time. His middle name is Hussein, and I think it's a Muslim name, but I don't know what it means or where it comes from.

I swear to gods, the next person who insists that Obama is a Muslim in my presence is going to get schooled in logic so hard that they may not be able to watch television ever again.

Even if he were a Muslim, would that make him impossible to vote for? Why do you think that he would hide his faith as though it were something to be ashamed of. Not sure? I'll tell you why: it's because you're a bigot. You think that everyone who isn't like you is WRONG.

Ladies and gentlemen of the dumbest among us, no one is trying to hurt you. The brown people aren't after your land, your guns, or your jobs. Muslims are not trying to take over America by getting a Black Christian American man elected president. You don't have to be afraid of people who don't look like you or don't worship your whitewashed version of Jesus. (FYI, Jesus was a dark-skinned middle eastern hippie, not a white blue-eyed Republican with a Pro-Life bumper sticker on his donkey. Thought you should know.)

Barack Hussein Obama is a brilliant, visionary, Christian man who will most likely be the next president of this great and wounded country. You don't have to like my politics and I don't ever expect to like yours, but please, please, PLEASE, for the love of democracy, LEARN ABOUT YOUR CANDIDATES. Please at least TRY to know what you're talking about before you open your mouth or cast your vote. Don't believe everything people tell you. Don't be a tool.

Will the dumbest among us please shut up?

Sunday Morning

Homeric hymns to summer morning
to the cumulonimbus above the mountain
where the dream haunter
calls us back
the staple prayer
of a Sunday morning
ave Dea
gratia plena
mysterium tecum
exploding into genius
true offering
with the opening chords of
Hey Jude
and suddenly
the sign spinner on the corner
is a Sufi poet
whirling into union with God
a hymn to the hills
to the humid sensual stink of the groves
the heady scented memory
of my lust-torn youth

and wasn't this always the way?
stolen snatches
in the middle of everything
not yawning for hours in church
paying lip service to the divine
but the flashing
immediate
suddenly festive moment
when the truth peels open to reveal
the sublime fruit
of spirit

M.L. Elison, 2008

Paper Planes

Oh, my. I never seem to have any time anymore.

I haven't really had a day off in two weeks. My part-time (HA!) job gave me another forty hour week and the fall semester just started. I am going full time and then some, trying to knock out the least fun part on my undergraduate work. My big box stories aren't as fun this week- bad attitudes in hot weather and entitled people working out their issues on the underpayed.

John is still looking for work, at home and abroad. He had an interview in Boulder, CO last week and a call from a firm in Dubai today. Gods, if ANYONE will hire him I will dance a bloody jig.

School isn't too bad, actually. Anything that isn't work is starting to feel like vacation. Beyond that, I have good teachers, a few interesting classmates, and good work for my head to do.

Also, I have awesome friends. My best, most trusted friends are more valuable to me now than ever. What little time I have to spend with them now feels intensified, more condensed and rich.
So, since I have very little time and not much to talk about, here's some music I really love right now.

Big Box Blog #2

So, a group of kids came in to my store the other day with a busted skateboard. They were patient, courteous, and so helpless. One of them had broken a truck and they knew we could fix things and sold stuff to fix things, so they wandered in. They didn't have the .08 to buy the part they needed, but somebody bought it for them. A super-sweet guy sat with them for twenty minutes, completing the repair with a rubber mallet and some advice.

Today, I was glad I was at my Big Box job.

Later, the funny part.

I have a co-worker who has an unfortunate deep-South twang to his voice that makes him sound like a bumpkin during the best of times. I laugh a little when he says "Hay-low." So, when he retreated to an office and started bawling, I could not contain my gale of giggles. Imagine, in a slow stretch of afternoon, from somewhere offstage you hear shouting. "GawdDAMNIT! Who the HAIL put SAWLT in mah DRANKEN WAWTER?!?!? AGAYIN?!?!?

Even now, I can't stop laughing. He still doesn't know who's doing it. (It's not me. This started before I did.)

Big Box Blog #1

This isn't my first big box job. The big boxes are where the jobs are; they pay for mine and my husband's tuition and I'm not apologizing for where I work. I'm good at my job and I don't let it eat my soul.

That being said, I see over 1000 people every day. I have conversations with the lovely public and HI-larious things happen. This week's highlights are coming at you.

1. A contractor came in with his 10 year old son. The son had kickass Bay City Roller hair and I told him so. His eyes slid away and he mumbled "mmmmkay" like a proud pre-teen. His father leaned across my desk and leered at me and said, "Now son, when a lady like this gives you a compliment like that, you got to pay attention." The he drops me a wink that portends many decades to come of being a dirty old man and they mercifully leave.

2. Three emo-tastic kids came in and bought a small everyday object. I don't know if you've all noticed, but everyday objects are being styled in increasingly individualistic ways. So, this object was hot pink and studded with rhinestones. I asked if that was all he needed and he tossed his dyed black flatironed hair out of his disaffected face, straightened his "I wasn't even born when the lead singer of this band died" tshirt and said, "You know, a lot of guys like pink. Pink is really versatile, it's like something new and different. Pink is the new black." To which I replied, "No, kiddo. Irony is the new black." Punctured, he left the store.

3. Two gentlemen approached my desk. One was short, fat, bald, and old. The other was rail-thin, exceedingly tall, and young. Young Guy said he was buying. Old Guy said, "You always have to pay, 'cause you're the tallest. I get stuff for free because I'm handsome." I studied them both for a second. Then I said, "Hey, Handsome? Your shirt is unbuttoned." He looked down and feigned buttoning it for a moment, then thought better of it and ripped his shirt open to flash me his hairy old fat man belly. I stared in horror. Young Guy looked down, rolled his eyes and said, "Your taco meat is fucking HOT."

WARNING: For those of you who don't live in Hemet, let me break it down for you. Hemet is a desert retirement community full of older folks with varying degrees of mobility issues. Consequently, we see people using scooters as though they are cars, modifying them to look like motorcycles, and generally pimping them out to monstrous proportions. Now, I would never make fun of a person who needs help getting around. It is only when they become a menace to traffic or decent society that I would say a thing. So, ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Scooter as Towtruck.

4. One of my co-workers and I were talking the other day, when suddenly she became preoccupied with something happening behind me. Her face contorted and she said, seemingly out of nowhere, "What the HELL is that??!?!?" I turned around and saw one of our oldest, fattest, meanest customers yelling at a store manager because we don't carry a product line that has NOTHING to do with what we sell. Confused, I continued to watch. When Mean Old Fat Man was done yelling, he turned his power scooter on and executed a U turn. As soon as he turned around, I could see that tied crudely to the back of the scooter was a wagon. Piled into this wagon, with lumps of ass falling out over the sides was a wreck of humanity I could only assume was his wife. I'm not sure what else would convince a woman to ride around tied to the back of a man's scooter besides legal entanglement and holy matrimony.

Ahh, retail...

Congress shall make no law...

Has anybody heard about the new license plates proposed in a handful of southern states? The custom plate features a large cross and the legend, "I Believe."

What's wrong with this picture?

Apparently, other faiths are free to do the same. Floridians might be allowed to order Star of David plates someday. The trouble is, the plates depicting images associated with any other faith would be restricted from using any words in the place of "I Believe." That right, that privilege, like so many in this great land, is reserved only for Christians. If the display cannot be equal, one faith is favored above the others, simple as that. Florida and South Carolina are working to deprive their citizens of their rights.

The part that really bothers me here is that the government officials in favor of this plate becoming available seem to have followed the sterling example of our current President in that they have never bothered to read the constitution. According to CNN, the feeling is merely this:"I think it allows people of faith to profess that they believe in a higher calling, they believe in God," said Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer. Only what the Right people believe is important. Making second-class citizens out of everyone else, making a doily out of the Constitution is not.

Any opposition to this plate is being labeled discrimination. I don't want to get off on a rant here, but Christians in this country seem to scream OPPRESSION faster than Al Sharpton at a lynching contest. Anyone who dares oppose the God-given right of Christians to homogenize this nation and ram their faith down the throats of anyone who has the misfortune to be behind them in traffic is a BIGOT. Christians are such the victims of prejudice. Give me a break.

Christians are not maligned as terrorists or murderers. Christians are not kept out of jobs or housing by a silent majority that fears their interaction. Christians in the middle east are oppressed. Christians in Asia are oppressed. Here, in the land of the two-month long Christmas creche madness, Christian government officials, Christian police, and the Christian standard imposed on the behavior and life events of everyone, they are not. America's Christians, you are safe. Try to act it out gratefully.

Being deprived of the ability to oppress other people is NOT discrimination. Being stopped tooth and nail by the minority from dragging this nation into hegemony is NOT discrimination.

All Americans have the right to believe or not believe. And to say so. It's high time we stopped acting like there's only one game in town.

Forget. Remember.

I'm back in school.

Three weeks ago, I was overjoyed at this. Possibilities opened wide before me and I fantasized about the homework I would have. Oh, the great things that might occur!

Now, as previously mentioned in my blog, I am grateful. I am so grateful that I live in a country where I am allowed and encouraged to pursue my education. I'm grateful that I can almost sort of afford to go to school. I'm grateful that my husband and family and friends fully support this idea.

I stopped going to school seven years ago. I dropped out of the community college where I was majoring in administration of justice and toying with literature and French. I left the country, came home, and got a job. I started a long stint of wasting my youth and teaching myself things from books and Teh Intertubes. Somehow in that seven years, I forgot a lot of things.

I forgot how tiresome it is to be lectured for six weeks on something I could have picked up in eight hours. I forgot how grating it is to have an instructor who posesses neither feeling nor flair for the subject he teaches. I forgot how I used to lose myself in any bit of minutiae in the classroom in my boredom. (Holes in the ceiling tiles, ripples in the carpet.) I forgot how much I appreciated art on the walls of the the classroom to give me something to think about and still look studious. I forgot how unapologetically, vocally ignorant many of my fellow students were and still are. I forgot that my generation forgot how to read, and subsequent generations are out to make us look like ravenous bibliophiles. I forgot that I have not really learned anything new from any teacher since I was 12.*

So, what's different now? Now I'm too old to screw around. That's the long nd the short of it at this point. I'm not 18. I can't give up and fly to Europe and dismiss the idea of ever having a degree. No matter how dull these next few years prove to be, I have to slog through it. I have to do well and in many cases feign interest in order to do well.I have to bide my time, pay my dues, and play the game.

Funny that; in high school those exact phrases made me screech about the purity of the auto-didact and the corruption and bias of the system.

Now, it fills me with a sense of grim, determined dread. I'm back in school.

Now I remember.



*Rich Herold, my art history teacher in 1999-2000 is the notable exception to this rule. I learned more in his class than I ever picked up on my own. His was my favorite class in all of high school and since.