Moving to Blogger

WordPress.com is overrated.  I have been convinced that Blogger offers more flexibility in design than WordPress.com.  I am not happy here. So off I go.  Stay tuned for the new blog address.

UPDATE: New Blog is Jenny on the Left. I will be writing there from now on.

Pretty in Mink Stinks

Yes, there is an actual calendar of conservative “women” draped in slaughtered animal skins, with garish makeup painted on their hardly feminine faces.
“We took some of your favorite leaders of today’s conservative movement on a journey back in time, and made them up into glamorous movie stars of classic Hollywood. Back when the big screen was a little more glamorous, women were a little more feminine, the men a little more charming—and the world a little less politically correct.”

Are they kidding? No, really, are they f-cking kidding!? These woMEN in tortured animal skin and 40 pounds of makeup look NOTHING like vintage Hollywood. This is what vintage Hollywood looks like:

This is NOT:

Note the terribly strong jawline and gigantic man hands. I’m no crazy PETA freak, who spends my days at Sherwin-Williams stores, stocking up on red paint. But if you’re going to kill an animal for fashion, at least put it on someone worthy of wearing the fur.  Someone like…Sarah Palin. She’s the only worthy conservative (and I question her conservatism). If you’re in the market for a how not to wear makeup calendar, then this calendar is for you.  Otherwise, skip it.

For a Little Fun

Check out the Minnesota Senate Race Drama Vote Challenges.  It’s quite entertaining. I just spent ten minutes…well, voting. The voter who wrote in Lizard People should run for President in  2016.

I’m Not a Matchmaker

I’m happy finding a nice Jewish boy, who bakes whitefish, can identify herbs in sauces, reads the Sunday papers with bagels and lox, who thinks it’s cute when I steal thin slices of pink fish from his plate. I enjoy men who would rather discuss the latest news on Huffington Post over cups of tea, than take me shopping for sexy unmentionables. I like guys who butter my toast and sprinkle Romano cheese over my eggs, while I scour the pantry for the last of the Earl Grey.  Take a shower with me or a bubble bath.  Brush my hair.  Spray perfume on my neck for me.  Be a part of me. Those are my standards when it comes to men.  One could even say my standards are on a case by case study. I like uncomplicated men.

My friends need to stop asking me to set them up.  I hate it.  I hear it all the time: “Jenny, that guy you brought to Cindy’s housewarming party was amazing. He was smart, attentive, and all over you. Fix me up.” No.  Because I am not a matchmaker.  What I like in a man is not what you will like; trust me, I know you crazy bastards well. If he butters your toast, he’s controlling.  If he takes a shower with you, he’s clingy.  If he cooks for you, he’s gay.  If he does this, he’s that.  Then, when it all falls apart–and it will, because you’re all crazy–it will be my fault. No, thank you.

Stop asking your friends to find you love, just because they have found it. It’s hard enough to find it for yourself, but then you have to find it for your friends, too?  Just stop it.

Craziness

I find it really odd, but for some reason, I like Sarah Palin. Sure, she’s about as smart as a strand of hair, can’t form proper sentences and throws syntax in the garbage, along with the moose innards, but I like her. She wears great shoes. Her makeup is done well. She has a warm smile. She winks like it’s nobody’s business. She dresses her youngest daughter in high heels (Mom, see, you were uncool). She let’s them have sex…um….never mind that one. But she seems like a cool, fashionable mom.  I just don’t want her being my Vice President.

In 2012, get back to me.

No, You Can’t

Conservatards never cease to amaze me. I may be the only liberal on earth who enjoys reading conservative blogs. It’s my entertainment, sick as it may be. I get giddy when I discover a new one. The fresh meat I speak of is Paul Ibrahim. Michelle Malkin touted his post about not needing Barack Obama to tell him “Yes, he can,” because he already knew he could. But, actually, no he can’t.

“Did Americans, including the poor and minorities, sincerely believe that success was limited by anything other than their own initiative? Did we Americans truly need Obama’s election to finally start believing that we could be anything we wanted to be? Did we not hope, did we not think that “we can,” before Obama told us that we should?”

Yes, Mr. Ibrahim, they did. Maybe you didn’t need Mr. Obama’s election to tell you that you could be whatever you dreamed to be, but there are millions who did. People who witnessed the civil right fights of the 60s, where certain segments of the population–not lucky enough to have the right skin tone–experienced legal discrimination. Certainly, they hoped, and were told insomuch to keep that hope alive. Easier said than done.  A legacy of inferiority exists, created by the oppression of enslavement, but, sadly, continued by social and political apathy. What Mr. Obama’s win did was to reawaken that hope, or make it clear that the oppression has moved out of the hands of The Man and into their own hands.  That success in America does not come with a white-only, rich-only tag. But it comes with a self-determination tag. The “I Matter, Therefore I Will Thrive” tag. That you are, in fact, in charge of your own destiny.  Which maybe you already knew, but others are finally believing.

“I was born into the Lebanese civil war, both chronologically and geographically. My earliest memories are those of hiding in a makeshift bunker, huddling to pray with my family and neighbors, while a barrage of fire rained down outside. My other memories are those of constantly hearing gunfire while in school, and of speeding on more than one occasion toward a ship that would take refugees to the nearby island of Cyprus when the burden became just too much to bear.

I lived in a country ruled by neighboring Syria, with an unstable society and an economy in tatters, until my parents made the best decision of their lives – bringing my sisters and me to America.”

And here we have the issue. You left a situation that your family felt was hopeless, and brought you to a country that was better–the best, I’m sure you’ll agree. Imagine living in the country that’s the best and being hopeless. Whether that is the reality or not, it’s the people’s reality. There is a history there, a history you have not walked in, in THIS country. I am impressed with your life, but I’d be even more impressed if you’d done it in Lebanon. You didn’t, though. You did it here, with no discriminatory history; certainly with no legal discriminatory history.

And going by the conservatives reaction to Obama possibly being a Muslim or “Arab,” even if you were born in this country and able to run for President, your chances would be even less. So you don’t even count. Must hurt. True Americans can run for President. You never can, so you’re just an Arab-American, a hyphenated American…just how the consevatards like you. Smile.

I Know Your Pain

Image courtesy of xkcd.

To the Left…

I know it’s tentative, but this country has shifted left.  And it may be temporary but it’s here.  This is a fantastic opportunity to show America how great a left-leaning America is.  The nature of the left is all-inclusive, which leads to people feeling a part of America, not just a number or a section.  I love it.  The right has alienated so many people that they have been outright rejected.  It feels like it’s the people’s will.  However whimsical the will of the people flows, their will will be done.  That is the beauty of this great nation: governments have a time limit to prove they can get things done, where the basics of life–of American life–will be without contest, without fear.

It’s not hard.  People want jobs.  People want comfortable–even meaningful–shelter.  People want peace.  People want security. People want to be healthy. Everything else is subjective. Get religion out of the equation.  Morality can take a backseat too, it’s not objective. Just let people live.  I know things are not as simple as the previous sentence, but people want a return to simplicity, where the livelihood of Americans is the primary focus.

I beg liberals to take full advantage of this time.  And let’s be rid of the rigid, judging nature of conservatism once and for all. Let’s make conservatism a private, irrelevant practice left to private homes and not the government.  We threw them out.  Let’s keep them out.

I Did

I voted. Did you? Did you have to stand in an insanely long line, verging on disenfranchisement?  Did you endure completely incompetent poll workers, whose explanations for why touch screens were not working is “They’re just not.”?  Did you reach for your cell phone every ten minutes, willing yourself to dial 1-866-OUR-VOTE this time, for real real?  Did your very new boyfriend text tease you about how quickly he was able to vote, while there’s, like, 75 people still in front of you?  Did he text tease you that he actually got to vote by touch screen, and you’re stuck carrying some big, long ballot to a flimsy table that keeps scooting away from you to be filled out with generic pens? Did you bring along an incredibly fashionable sister, decked out in chunky jewelry, designer suede boots with a six-inch heel, along with flawless makeup and hair? Were you the exact opposite in your Payless Mary Jane flats, yoga pants, a gray alumna sweatshirt, no makeup, and your hair barely tamed by a rubber band you snatched off the mail this morning?  What about when you actually dragged yourself to the vote tabulator and were told you over voted, did you vote again? I did. Did you laugh your ass off as your fashionable sister limped out of the polling place because her feet hurt from standing in impractical shoes for almost two and a half hours? I sure as hell did.

And it was all worth it.

Sun Charge

Sometimes when I need to refresh my creativity, I have to get some sun.  So out comes the sunscreen, sunglasses, and my laptop.  Off I go to the park with my fleece throw and sit right in the middle and let the sun just refresh me.  The sun can take you places when you let it caress you.  You can feel warm beads of life sinking into your skin.  Beads of light, it feels like.  I then find a nice leafy tree and sit under it and do some writing.  I attack writing after this.  My thoughts are clearer and I find my words easily.  I express myself more effectively.

Creating is not the easiest thing in the world, it can be quite draining if you let it.  Writing fiction is not any easier but it is more self-conscious that writing non-fiction.  In non-fiction, you have your research backing you up.  With fiction, you may have research, too, but it comes down to how you’re going to tell a story.  And that is where the self-conscious part factors in.  “Am I picking the right words?” “Does this flow?” are all questions I have ended up asking myself.  Eventually, you accept your voice and go with it.

I am in voice acceptance stage.  When that happens, it’s all down to your creativity at this point.  Doing whatever I have to do to nourish the creative process  is important.  For me, it’s getting sun and being outdoors.  I do my best writing in the spring and summer, when the sun is out in all its glory, but on mild fall days like today in Chicago, I take to the sun.  I find I also work well in front of a roaring fire during the fall and winter months.  So, if all goes well, I’ll get a winter home in New York with a fireplace and just churn out masterpiece after masterpiece.

But for now it’s National Novel Writing Month, and I’m going to take part after the election.  I Don’t know what I’m going to write yet, but a moment in the sun, and it should come to me.

I’m off to write in the sun.