from the mouths of fake-news comedians

i make no secret of my affection for Stephen Colbert, his show, and his general schtick. This segment exemplifies so much of what i love about him, and it includes Bill O'Reilly demonstrating his utter dumbassery, so it's a real winner. Colbert's last exhortation here is chillingly accurate about our culture's ugly little truth- that almost no one really wants to or likes helping the poor.

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Jesus Is a Liberal Democrat
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Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog March to Keep Fear Alive

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i don't know when i last wrote a poem, but i was bustling around yesterday and suddenly felt that old call, the urgency of words pushing against my hands. This is for my three friends, and for women.

----

Once a week for three weeks

my friends' babies died within them.

Pulsing energy

then lost in silence.

Searching on a screen

poised over a belly,

one, two, three.

Still.

My friends' hearts beating faster, faster,

then

slower,

stopped in agony and in empathy

with their little beloveds.

Shared blood, shared stillness.

Ringing ears giving way to

equal silence.

i remembered a woman in a small dark room

(i don't know why i forget her,

she always comes back to mind with urgency,

reminding me that i've forgotten)

with a screen poised over my belly

as she chatters, chatters, and then

silent.

Turning the screen to me-

breaking the rules-

she points,

pantomimes:

her hand presses her chest twice

then away

touches twice

then away-

thump/thump

thump/thump

my/child

bright/spark

alive.

i stared at the flutter on the screen but

i wanted to watch her-

this rogue stranger-

risking her security for my peace.

i don't remember her name.

i hold my boy to me when he cries,

our hearts facing,

rhythms different.

His doesn't stop, though mine often does.

i watch him when he sleeps,

so silent and still that

fear says

'He has slipped away.'

i do not breathe,

i press my hand to his chest-

in/out in/out

He is here.

i know he is a rare creature,

millions like him are born all the time,

millions of rare creatures

that kept pulsing

when their friends did not.

Every time a little heart stops inside a woman,

more than life is lost:

Peace is lost for every woman who knows.

There is no security

with a child inside.

Wild need of it makes us

break rules,

scrabble,

go rogue-

grip it when we can, give it as often.

i hold my boy to me when i cry

for friends of mine

who lost,

friends of his

who were lost,

for peace lost.

Beat/on.

Hold/fast.

Live/full.

Burn, spark.

a world full of wishywashers

Chickadees, the abuse of the ellipses has become an epidemic of grammatical proportions. No one declares anything anymore, they just.... suggest.... or think...... or hint.... Statements themselves are being distorted into these half-thoughts: "That was an excellent movie...." Where is the other half?? When does the other shoe drop? But what? Because i assume there's a 'but' since the ellipses indicate another thought closes out this first thought. No? No but? You just thought it was an excellent movie? Well then say so. Look, i'll show you how: "That was an excellent movie." You only have to hit the . button once, so you see, it actually saves you time and effort. Facebook is the official festering breeding ground for ellipsabuse. "Finished my essay...." "Heading to the deli...." "Happy Veterans Day...." No one wants to be definitive anymore; status after status is hemmed and hawed and everyone just keeps trailing off...................................................................................................................................................................

If nothing closes out the thoughts, we're all just an endless, low buzzing sound of vague incompleteness, hesitating at the brink of complete ideas. (i have a friend, we'll call her Ryn Losten, who is oft frustrated by Canadians' tendency to bend their voices up? At the end of every sentence? So that everything is a question? "Just say it!" Ryn Losten wants to roar. Or at least, she did that one time at the Canadian guy on my tv. This is nearly equal to my feelings about people who always ellipsize their statements. i oft roar at my computer and text messages.)

Let's get official: ellipses are used to indicate omission from a quote. Por ejemplo, the best-known portion of the famous poem on the Lady Liberty's monument:

Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,/The wretched refuse of your teeming shore./Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,/I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

(Quick pause to consider how well or poorly our nation represents that sentiment. (Hi Arizona!))

If we want to truncate that quote, ellipses would be used to remove non-essentials and we could still express the fundamentals thusly: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses...send these...to me, I lift my lamp." Orrrr we could do something snarky like this: "Send these, the homeless...to...the...door!" but that would be a dishonest use of the ellipses and the quote. (See: any reality show ever)

Ellipses also have a less technical usage, and this is the part that gets egregiously abused. Talking points from Grammar Girl:

"A number of style guides say that ellipses can be used to indicate a pause or falter in dialog, the passage of time, an unfinished list, or that a speaker has trailed off in the middle of a sentence or left something unsaid. For example, The Chicago Manual of Style states, “Ellipsis points suggest faltering or fragmented speech accompanied by confusion, insecurity, distress, or uncertainty.” The Manual contrasts ellipses with dashes, which it states should be reserved for more confident and decisive pauses. ...Use ellipses sparingly to indicate hesitation or faltering speech or thoughts."

Please, fellow speakers-of-English, let's not dilute the language further than it already has been. Don't be afraid of what you're saying. And if you're using the ellipses to shyly invite a response, which i believe is one reason many apply it so generously, then buck up, confidently assert your place in the conversation, and alter your wording accordingly. "I'm wondering what your schedule is...." is passive and a bit off-putting. Just ask me what my schedule is, or i will start responding to the ellipses statement for what it is: "i'm sorry that the mystery of my schedule is giving you faltering thoughts and causing you hesitation." And then we will both be annoyed, which is unfortunate.

i leave you now with a scene from classic (drug-addled) literature. It's not exactly tailored to this subject, but it is suited to the general idea of saying that which we mean:

The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he SAID was, `Why is a raven like a writing-desk?'

`Come, we shall have some fun now!' thought Alice. `I'm glad they've begun asking riddles.--I believe I can guess that,' she added aloud.

`Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?' said the March Hare.

`Exactly so,' said Alice.

`Then you should say what you mean,' the March Hare went on.

`I do,' Alice hastily replied; `at least--at least I mean what I say--that's the same thing, you know.'

`Not the same thing a bit!' said the Hatter. `You might just as well say that "I see what I eat" is the same thing as "I eat what I see"!'

`You might just as well say,' added the March Hare, `that "I like what I get" is the same thing as "I get what I like"!'

`You might just as well say,' added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, `that "I breathe when I sleep" is the same thing as "I sleep when I breathe"!'

`It IS the same thing with you,' said the Hatter, and here the conversation dropped, and the party sat silent for a minute, while Alice thought over all she could remember about ravens and writing-desks, which wasn't much.

i hate it when i do mature stuff.

i do not need The Container Store. i do not need The Container Store. i do not need The Container Store. i do not need The Container Store.....

i love The Container Store. i do not need The Container Store.

Ouch, it hurts to write that.

i love The Container Store because it allows me to feign organization and fantasize about a reality where i am someone who has a place for everything because, in this (sooooo false) reality, i'm someone who puts things in their designated place, and not Lazy McMessypants of the stacks and piles all asunder from car console to night table. It's very similar to the love and fantasy that accompany any office supply store and a cousin to those that belong to the sporting goods and health foods store.

But this is about containers. i love them. i'm an American girl with a shopping problem, so it's appropriate that i want to buy things wherein to put the other things i buy. However, being married to Mr. Perfect has heightened my previously-unconscious philia for packaging and now i notice it all the time. Also, it's time to be green, Earthlings. (Well, the time was Back Then Slash Always, but if we'd been doing it Back Then Slash Always it wouldn't need to be called 'being green' now because it would just be called 'being.') Anyway, my observations of packaging occur on the marketing level and on the 'landfill' level. Insomuch, i've begun to realize just how much technology has created a standard of packaging that really shouldn't be thrown away. Nothing seems to come wrapped in cardboard anymore, amirite? It's all in tubs and tins and bins and canisters. i don't know about you, but throwing away that stuff makes me a little squeamish. i'm not a hoarder (...yet....) (parenthetical sidebar: "yet" can be a really fun word when properly applied, usually to someone else's statement in the negative. Try it out this week.), nor am i Captain Planet (also, i'm always tempted to feminize 'captain' and make it 'captainess' even though i usually enjoy celebrating gender neutral titles.), it just seems that these new fangled packagings are something like a step above 'trash', so treating them thusly feels callous and wasteful.

Therefore: i do not need The Container Store.

Recent remuddlings at Casa Perfect have facilitated the need for me to reorganize (minus-the-'re') the sewing room/office (minus the 'office' because of aforementioned failure to organize said sewinghood in the first place). Sewing is a craft that involves much stuff, most of it of the small and easy-to-lose variety, ie pins, needles, bobbin, buttons. i peruse images of other sewing nooks and see such efficient set-ups that i am CONVINCED that a calculated turn 'round The Container Store would grant me such peace of pieces. Plus: i'm like a shark only instead of needing to keep swimming in order to live, i've convinced myself that if i stop shopping, i'll DIIIIIE.

Except! The packaging, you guys! so much of it in so many conducive sizes and shapes, and almost all airtight, so mold and bugs will not claim the life of my....thread and buttons. Well, you never know.

Such a quandry. (not really, but a little bit, for me anyway)

Soooooo, (dammit) i'm going to organize my sewing room into the pinnacle of cleanliness and efficiency and i'm going to do it without buying any new items designed for organization. This means i will have to prettify (meaning 'to make pretty') countless tea canisters, baby food tubs, paint cans, and sundry and such. Buy stock in ModPodge, dear reader, because i'll be going through it like.... someone who goes through something voraciously.

*sigh* This will be totally super fun. i can't wait.

Maura Kelly: tragically mean and clearly moronic

(Long bloggy dry spell, i know, but i was figuring out how to underfeed a growing baby and washing poop out of my favorite sweats. And since i'm not planning to make this blog all about Theo and motherhood, it was a challenge to find a topic that wasn't A: about those exact things or B: not totally lame on its own, because you simply can't post 'i made a human!' and follow it up with 'Isn't string cheese just the bestest everrrr?' There's the rub, kiddos.)

i stumbled upon this firestorm last night and wanted to offer my perspective, being an expert on absolutely none of things pertaining to any of it. The premise of said storm: There's a new rom-com sitcom starring plus-size actors. CNN remarked about how much of the comedy in it was 'fat jokes.' Marie Claire tasked Maura Kelly, their 'Sex & Dating' blogger/columnist (blogumnist? YES. i'm awesome.) to address whether TV viewers were uncomfortable watching large actors act out physical intimacy. The blogumnist promptly fulfilled her assignment and thoroughly revealed herself to truly be vapid, ignorant and cruel. Then she apologized for coming across as vapid, ignorant and cruel.

My purpose in jumping into this fray is not to decry her dumbass opinion that 'fatties are like, totally icky and stuff', because plenty of internetters are already doing so and it's too obvious to state that her position is tragic and mean. No one stops the presses when a duck quacks, so to ring the alarm when a halfwit blathers halfwittedly is pointless. What i'm observing is how mystifyingly un-self-aware Maura Kelly is and how, evidently, Marie Claire magazine employs a writer who doesn't seem to even read over what she's written before posting it.

From her post:

"Yes, I think I'd be grossed out if I had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat kissing each other ... because I'd be grossed out if I had to watch them doing anything. To be brutally honest, even in real life, I find it aesthetically displeasing to watch a very, very fat person simply walk across a room — just like I'd find it distressing if I saw a very drunk person stumbling across a bar or a heroine addict slumping in a chair."

From her apology:

"Believe it or not, I never wanted anyone to feel bullied or ashamed after reading this."

From me:

She didn't see how "Even watching you put one foot in front of the other makes me feel physically ill" was going to make people feel ashamed or picked on?? She may not have wanted to incite those feelings, but she had to anticipate them. She used the words 'brutally honest' and then was surprised that people found her to be savage, cruel, harsh, coarse and/or inhuman? ...all words from the dictionary's definition of brutal, the word SHE chose to describe her opinion.

From her post:

Yes, anorexia is sick, but at least some slim models are simply naturally skinny.

From her apology:

A lot of what I said was unnecessary. It wasn't productive, either.

From me:

Nor was it remotely accurate. People can be naturally skinny but not naturally fat?

From her post:

Now, don't go getting the wrong impression: I have a few friends who could be called plump. I'm not some size-ist jerk.

From her apology:

People have accused me of being a bully in my post. I never intended to be that — it's actually the very last thing I want to be, as a writer or a person. But I know that I came off that way, and I really cannot apologize enough to the people whom I upset.

From me:

She commands us to not get the 'wrong' impression: that she is a 'size-ist jerk', (implying that we would be so unintelligent as to grossly misinterpret her so clearly presented argument). Therefore she must have a shred of awareness that her opinion is unseemly, but then claims such low manners were the 'last thing' she wanted to demonstrate. Hmmm.... methinks a bull has shat nearby because i certainly smell something.

Also, just because she has 'a few friends who could be called plump' (or could be called 'fatties', judging by the title of her post) does not mean she doesn't secretly hate the sight of her friends kissing their beloveds because of all the 'rolls and rolls of fat.' i wonder how many Christmas cards she's getting from her plump friends this year.

She does not admit to or apologize for being a bully (or another b-word i can think of), only that she 'came off that way'. How very big of her! (pun quite intended) The creator of the sitcom in question, which, of course, the blogumnist admits to never having seen, remarked to Entertainment Weekly that in reading the post, he '

pictured a girl sitting in a high school cafeteria saying snotty things to her other snotty friends.'

That's about as accurate as it gets, and this writer never saw that in her work? Astounding.

From her post:

I also know how tough it can be for truly heavy people to psych themselves up for the long process of slimming down. [... ]

But ... I think obesity is something that most people have a ton of control over. It's something they can change, if only they put their minds to it.

From her apology:

A few commenters and one of my friends mentioned that my extreme reaction might have grown out of my own body issues, my history as an anorexic, and my life-long obsession with being thin. [...] I think that's an accurate insight.

From me:

This blogumnist demonstrates what i've noticed in others before: anorexia can be sympathized with, but morbid obesity cannot. Both require dangerous mental, emotional and physical obsessions. The psychoses are different, but to say 'well mine is a psychological condition and yours is pure laziness' is ignorant. If you told an anorexic he or she could change if they 'only put their mind to it' you'd be flogged.

Also, if she's spent a lifetime dealing with body issues and weight obsessions, why did it take commenting strangers and (only one?) friend to point out that maybe, JUST MAYBE, she would have a hard time being objective about the subject of positively-presented plus size tv characters? (i wonder if it was one of her 'few plump friends'...) She never paused to think that the real voice writing this post might be the troubled person she's been battling to quiet her whole life? Gollum, meet Smeagol, Smeagol, meet Gollum.

i'm not saying we all have to love everyone all the time....well, there's THIS.... damn. Let me try that again:

This writer isn't required to share my opinion or yours. She isn't required to even obey generally accepted rules of social conduct. She has the right to free speech and can shout, 'People who don't look/act/think like me are less worthy and should be sterilized!!!!' from the rooftops. BUT- to be employed as a magazine writer, to accept an assignment, and then to ramble thoughtlessly (and not even eloquently, i might add. (She's a rather poor writer in general.)) is irresponsible. To then be surprised at readers' disappointment in her thoughtlessness is demonstrative of a clear lack of maturity on her part and a true lack of professionalism by her and her superiors. Hilariously, she opens her post by calling herself "kind of clueless." Too bad it's in reference to current television shows and not, more accurately, WORDS AND WHAT THEY MEAN.

In sum, she shouldn't have apologized for what she wrote.

She should've read what she wrote in the first place and either accepted it or put it in the trash where it belonged.

Lord, what a dope. Can't wait to buy her novel.