Happy International Women’s Day!

Every day is a great day to be a woman (well, okay, maybe not EVERY day ), but today is especially great. It’s International Women’s Day, a day where humans across the globe can come together and celebrate the achievements women have made in this world, work toward solving the problems still facing half our population, and commit to human rights for all of us.

They say that behind every great man there is an even stronger woman. (That’s a nicer way to say it than “behind every great man there is a woman rolling her eyes,” even though that’s one of the funniest movie lines ever.) The fact of the matter is, although history is told from the perspective of men, our history is a history of women and men working in collaboration. Women provided the foundation for every shift – legal, societal, spiritual, political, military, scientific, artistic – in our civilization, all while physically creating the future. And while we know of fewer individual achievements by women than actually occurred, there is no doubt that the burden and glory of humankind’s future will lie on men and women’s backs equally. Virginia Woolf said that “for most of history, ‘Anonymous’ was a woman” – but we don’t have to be anonymous any longer.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said that “a woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water.” We’ve all been in hot water, and we’ll probably all be in hotter water in the future. We’re all very lucky to live in a society that has made major strides toward the equality of all its citizens, and sometimes that makes it seem like the water is very fine indeed. We aren’t out of the kettle yet, though. In countries once thought very foreign but now only a plane-ride away, 21st-century women are still facing treatment as bad or worse than our ancestors faced twenty generations back. It doesn’t stop at burqas – contemporary women are subjected to honor killings, slavery, genital mutilation, and any number of other offenses against humanity.

Human rights aren’t a political issue. If you feel so moved, take an opportunity today to support the organizations and movements that are working to help those women less fortunate than us – even if just by keeping them in your thoughts and prayers. Take a moment today to celebrate the women who made you who you are: your mother, your grandmother, your sisters, your daughters, your friends, your faceless ancestors, your future progeny. And take a moment to celebrate yourself. I came across a quote the other day that said something to the effect of “put a beautiful dress on even the plainest woman, and she will unconsiously try to live up to it.” The original speaker may have meant it literally, but I prefer to think of it metaphorically. It’s easy to forget how beautiful we all are, how strong we are, how intelligent we are, how essential we are. Today, remember – and be.

Have a wonderful day.

On the Radio this Morning

Caller: Well, I’m glad that [Idaho is] making English the official language. I’m sick to death of my kid bringing home papers with one side in English and one side in Spanish. I don’t think we -

DJ1: Oh, me too.

Caller: I mean, there aren’t any Spanish people at his school. So why do I have to put up with Spanish stuff on his papers?

DJ2: But then he can watch Dora the Explorer and understand what’s going on…

Caller: The funny thing is, he already can. And if there were Spanish people at his school, their parents should have taught their kids English.

[After a moment of rambling, the caller hangs up.]

DJ2: The thing I’m wondering is, and I don’t mean to bash any callers or anything, but what difference does it make if there’s Spanish on one side? I mean, just don’t read that side.

DJ1: Oh, I think it makes a difference. I think if you’re going to come to this country, you need to learn our language.

DJ2: So, is the deal that the legislature is trying to cut costs on printing and stuff? [paraphrased]

DJ1: They don’t need to be having driver’s ed in Spanish. All of our signs and everything are in English. It’s not like they pull you over and say, “Como estes speedo.”

DJ2: Okay, so now we know you aren’t going to be teaching Spanish.

DJ1: There’s just no excuse for it. These people who want to come into our country… There are lots of classes and opportunities for these people to learn English.

DJ2: Well… this may be a stupid question, but what about illegal immigrants? Are they going to be allowed to sign up for those classes? Or are they going to make them show ID or documentation or something?

DJ1: I don’t know… [brief digression culminating in:] What’s next, are we going to have Terrorist 101 in English for these people?

Idol Speculation

This week, the men and women did a flip on quality. The men were outstanding, and the women were… eh. I mean, come on, they were amazing, but not as good as last week, am I wrong? Plus, with a few noteable exceptions, I thought the fashion decisions were a tad off. I actually thought Simon dissed the wrong outfits, but whatever…

But this isn’t a fashion show, it’s a singing/dancing/performing show. At the top of the singing game is unquestionably Melinda, who blew the everloving doors off of “My Funny Valentine.” I hope that her choice of song won’t prejudice voters against her; she made it pretty fresh and contemporary, so hopefully it will pay off. Then you’ve got LaKisha, the season’s vocal powerhouse – she’s not going to win any dancing awards anytime soon, but the girl’s got pipes. She’s also got a really old-fashioned sound, though, and lacks those “pop star looks” that the judges occasionally talk about, so she’s not liable to win. Stephanie had me worrying that we’d be finding out the color of her underwear as she straddled the stage in that high-slit dress, and I didn’t care for her song, but you can’t argue that she can perform her butt off. Sabrina closed off the night looking and sounding fantastic.

Gina and Jordin are both very good as well, if not as good as the other four. If Melinda is a 10, LaKisha is a 9.5, Stephanie and Sabrina are 9s, and Gina and Jordin are 8s. I’d like to see Gina do something more, y’know?

Then you’ve got my two 5s, Leslie and Haley. I keep expecting Leslie to be really good, and then she does something like that really gargled attempt at scatting. Haley is so pretty (although you wouldn’t know from last night) but there’s no real finesse to her performances.

Finally, you’ve got the girls at the bottom of the barrel, the girls that wouldn’t embarass themselves in a karaoke bar but who got into Idol on the merit of their hottie status. I begrudgingly give Antonella a 3 for last night’s performance, if only because she really nailed the high notes. I can’t stand this girl and the fact that Vote for the Worst is keeping her and her nekked boobies on the show drives me batty. Then you’ve got poor Alaina, undoubtably the prettiest girl on the show, who just really isn’t up to snuff. She’s scared, she’s unready, and she’s just not as talented. Tonight she earned herself a 2 and almost certainly a ticket home.

(Of course, if Alaina’s a 2, I shudder to think how far into the negatives I’d fall.)

If it were up to me, Antonella would be run out on a rail (wearing baggy sweats over her chastity belt, but that’s another story altogether), Alaina would be gently escorted out the door where a modeling agent would be waiting to rescue her and her gorgeous hair, we’d say good-bye to Sanjaya and his flowing locks, and Nick would whisper something in a quasi-sultry voice and slip off into the sunset.

I still say my American Idol is Simon.

UPDATE: Dial Idol, a remarkably accurate website that predicts winners based on busy signals to the voting lines, predicts that the top four are Melinda, LaKisha, Sundance, and Sanjaya. Sanjaya? What on earth? There’s too many people in the mix for it to accurately predict the bottom four, but it looks like Haley, Leslie, Stephanie, Gina, Nick, and Brandon are all in trouble. I’d be horrified if Stephanie or Gina got the ax. Well, as horrified as appropriate for a television show.

Did anyone else see the commerical tonight for tomorrow’s results show? They’re all “Thursday the results will be announced, and all we can say is brace yourself!” Next thing you know, there’s a clip of Simon pronouncing that the American voters have lost their minds. It’s all supposed to indicate that the results are shocking and we’ll be scandalized by the eliminations… but the results shows are live. They couldn’t possibly have that clip of Simon. And voting was still taking place for the women, so they didn’t even know what the results were going to be. It was all clips from previous years. What a scam!

Popcorn! Peanuts! Tickets, only 50 cents!

At the tender age of eight I was initiated as an acolyte of the dread goddess Orthodontia, and I was molded under her tutelage for the following seven years of my young life. The manipulation of teeth was a central theme of my childhood, and to this day I can visualize every detail of the clinic, every mile of the drive there and back – I can trace the outlines of phantom implements long gone from my choppers.

One of the things that I remember is the time they were analysing an xray of my head, presumably in an attempt to determine how much trouble my future wisdom teeth would eventually cause. The orthodontist pointed to one of many large black smudges and told my parents that I had abnormally large sinuses. That meant less to me than it did my dad, who knew someone who had had his nose temporarily removed during sinus surgery, but I think the discussion addressed things like whether I was a mouth breather (I was) and whether I played a wind instrument (not yet). The orthodontist also touched on the subject of future problems with my sinuses, but I honestly can’t remember if the scope of my skull-hollows was supposed to bode well or ill for my adult relationship with congestion.

Little did I know that I had already experienced what the future held for me. As a small child – old enough to know better, little enough to forget – I had been lying on a sofa drinking Coke through a straw. Something went wrong – a cough, a hiccup – and next thing I knew I had Coke burning its way through my nose.

And my tear ducts.

And my ears.

Nothing (well, not nothing, but few things) feels worse than carbonated cola being forced at high velocity through foreign channels. I thought I was going to die, and not just from choking.

I would later come to realize that my enlarged sinus cavities provided for all kinds of inappropriate diversions of misdirected fluid. Sadly, I have yet to put this to good use, such as being able to smoke a cigarette and blow smoke out my ears. (Then again, I only recently figured out how to raise a single eyebrow, so there is hope for me yet!) My childhood was punctuated with episodes wherein one beverage or another escaped through my eye sockets. Memorably (and that “memorably” would certainly be prefaced with “unfortunately,” were it not a crime against nature to use a double adverb) I once suffered the indignity of barfing through my tear ducts, learning in the process that vomit was in fact more acidic than Coca Cola.

I have always been an overachiever. Any kid can have barf come out his nose.

Recently, my prodigious cavities developed a new trick. About a year ago, I began having real trouble blowing my nose. I was a late bloomer in the nose-blowing category, not really mastering the good ol’ nose-trumpet until midway through high school, but since then I really have been a master. It’s hard, however, to really devote your full energies to dislodging nose sediment when you know snot is going to come out your eyes.

“Welcome to the Freak Show, ladies and germs. Step right up and witness the Amazing Phlegm Girl! Stand back, kids, she shoots snot out her eyeballs….”

Okay, I don’t shoot anything anywhere. No one would ever know that my noseblowing efforts had the unfortunate side effect of forcing a layer of thin mucus into my eye, blurring my vision and creating sticky tears. Although, come to think of it, shooting snot out my eyes might be a handy trick in and of itself. Talk about your party tricks!

It’s not as gross as it sounds, and it doesn’t happen every time, but when I’ve been blowing my nose a lot (think cold season) something inside my head weakens and opens up the hatches. The whole “snotty eyeball” thing is something I’ve come to accept.

Is it too much to ask, then, that that be the extent of my sinus weirdness? Is it necessary that the Amazing Phlegm Girl also be subjected to her own private symphony of creaks, whistles, gurgles, whines, and pops as the goo in her cranium shifts and settles? Must the air pressure that fails to shoot snot out nostril or tear duct make its way to the ear, causing short-term hearing loss and dizziness? Is this just?

Apparently the answer is yes, yes, yes, and yes.

Blech.

Feel like utter crap, but at least I’m at home in bed feeling like crap and not sitting at work feeling like crap. I’m watching some sort of Animal Planet show about hippos, and have come to the conclusion that they are definitely dinosaurs. Crocodiles, too. There’s a crocodile stalking a baby hippo right now – which can only end badly – and they’re certainly dinosaurs.

Aw, crap. One dead 13-day-old hippo. That’s awful.

Okay, so I threatened some IDOL SPECULATION, and I’m going to deliver, so here we go.

Stephanie blew me off my feet. I wasn’t expecting much from her, and man was I surprised. She was so comfortable on the stage, too. Very impressive.

Amy’s performance was sincere, but littered with bad notes and capped off with a very shaky end. She definitely seemed like she was scared to move.

Leslie is kind of odd. She had some good body language – man did those boots ever make her legs look eight feet long – and good performance chops, but I didn’t think her singing performance was great.

Sabrina has an amazing sense of drama and control. The only blight was the ending, which still wasn’t bad.

I don’t like Antonella, and she did nothing to change my mind about that last night. She chose a terrible song, obviously didn’t know said song, was shaky, scared, and out of tune. Go home, topless girl.

Jordin’s arrangement of one of my favorite songs turned me off, but once she got into the swing of the song she was amazingly good. Not good enough to win at this point, but good enough to stay in.

Nicole sang with a weird voice, had bad notes, and made scary faces. On the other hand, she was very intense and powerful. If people aren’t scared of her she might survive the week.

Haley seemed to be trying to do a Katharine McPhee tribute there. It wasn’t bad at all, except I hated the vibrato in the chorus, and it wasn’t at all unique. She seems very professional, though.

I like watching Melinda sing because she’s so joyful, so beautiful when she takes the stage. She loves to perform and it shows.

Poor Alaina may be cute, but that was abysmal from start to end. The only thing she did better than Antonella was to look confident throughout.

Gina also has a good sense of drama, and she really let it loose even though she picked a song that I thought wasn’t quite right for her. I like her chemistry on stage.

Finally, LaKisha was extraordinarily powerful and has an amazing natural talent. Will her looks – and I’m not really even talking about her weight – hold her back?

There’s a lot of potential shuffling in my top six, and I’m not completely sure I’ve got them in the best order yet, but here’s what we’ve ended up with:

My Best-to-Worst Picks
Stephanie
Melanie
LaKisha
Sabrina
Gina
Haley
Jordin
Leslie
Amy
Nicole
Alaina
Antonella

Ryan’s Best-to-Worst Picks
Melinda
LaKisha
Gina
Stephanie
Sabrina
Jordin
Haley
Leslie
Nicole
Amy
Antonella
Alaina

Ryan and I seem to be much more on the same page with the women than we were with the men. We have the same top five, just in a different order, and most of our other choices are only one off.

Seems to me that it’s a good thing for the guys that they force six of each gender onto the show, because otherwise they’d all be in trouble…

Shoot Me?

I’ve decided that I’d like to give up germs for Lent. No germs, no viruses, no infections – no kleenex, no ‘quil, no (please, God) pukebuckets.

Oh, I know I’m being sacreligious. I’m a Methodist, I’m allowed from time to time. Leave me alone.

Note to self: Mucinex isn’t worth it. I felt clearer for an hour or so, but twelve hours later I’m so dry I could nearly cry. My eyes are dry, my throat is dry, my mouth is dry. Not my nose, though. It’s in no way dry. And while the medicine may have jostled up those green guys in wifebeaters in my lungs, it hasn’t improved my ability to actually get the mucus out when I cough. I cough until the muscles in my back and stomach scream, until I’m sure I’m going to throw up without benefit of Ryan’s virus, and still nothing comes out of my lungs. It is teh suxor.

I look like unholy hell, too. I really don’t know if I’m going to have it in me to go to work in the morning, and I’ve got a meeting tomorrow afternoon.

I have IDOL SPECULATION but I’m too tired to deal with it right now. Tomorrow. Man, if they didn’t force six eliminations of each gender, this season would be an all-woman show…

Discussion Fodder

Last night I was trying to let the Nyquil take over and, as I drifted in a half-asleep half-drugged state, half-heard a newsy investigation sort of show on prostitution in Los Angeles. They were basically following cops around while they caught and arrested prostitutes, with little asides where they talked with “escorts,” etc., about their lives.

While in this state, my addled brain half-thought, “Now wait just a minute. Except in the cases of underage people – which is obviously deplorable – and where women are being sold against their will – which is horrifying – why exactly is prostitution illegal?”

I mused on modern courtship. How many one night stands rest on the purchasing of alcoholic drinks for a woman? How many short-lived relationships hurry to the bedroom, fueled by a stream of gifts and dinners? Is that really all that different from just handing someone a fifty?

Several hours later, I’m not sure I have a good answer to that question. I mean, obviously I find prostitution deplorable, but is there any reasonable legal grounds for prohibiting it? Things are illegal because they cause harm to people or property, for the most part…

Is this just a remnant of our Puritan past? Should victimless crimes really be crimes? Is prostitution really victimless, even if all parties are consenting? What do you think?

Drawing God

I came across a cute little story yesterday.

A kindergarten teacher was observing her classroom of children while they drew. She would occasionally walk around to see each child’s artwork. As she got to one little girl who was working diligently, she asked what the drawing was.

The girl replied, “I’m drawing God.”

The teacher paused and said, “but no one knows what God looks like.”

Without missing a beat, or looking up from her drawing the girl replied, “They will in a minute.”

At first read, this amused me. Those darn kids, right? But then I got to thinking about the way we, as human beans, are when it comes to our relationship with and perspective of God.

I could go on for pages about theories of interconnectivity between religions, about whether there really is only one God who has been seen in many different ways – sometimes through the prism of multiple deities – throughout the ages. I could, and I won’t (although I’d absolutely love pages of discussion in the comments box – this is great fun to discuss, in my book).

It’s an interesting thought, though, isn’t it? None of us have seen the face of God – well, at least, not that I know of. We know God through the holy texts that have survived throughout the centuries, survived generations of censorship, revision, fabrication, reorganization. I’m not a linguist or a historical theologian, but I understand that if we break down our holy texts to their (close to) original form that a lot of the words – including gender markers – become unclear or nonexistent.

Visual representations of Jesus in Anglo-Saxon homes show a fair-complected man with blue eyes and dark brown hair – sometimes blonde hair, depending on the artist. Of course, no one can reasonably be unaware of the fact that if Jesus was born in Bethlehem He would have looked more like these fellows to the left.

(Or, y’know, maybe not. The Child of the miraculous conception could have any number of genetic oddities, I reckon – although surely stark physical differences from those around Him would have caused even more trouble for all involved.)

However, we’re a species that likes what is like us. If you watch The Office lately you’ve been introduced to the concept of emulating your boss to subliminally win brownie points. And that’s pretty much the root of all bigotry, isn’t it? Racism is the hatred of those who don’t look like us, homophobia is the hatred of those who don’t copulate like us, sexism is the hatred of those who don’t… uh… pee like us? (You know what I mean.) If you don’t believe me, think about science fiction. When a science fiction movie or television show wants a sympathetic alien, they give it a bipedal frame and two eyes – a humanoid form. When they want us to fear or loath the alien, they make it insect-like, blob-like, or snake-like. They make it unhuman. Is it any wonder that we would want our God to look like us – that we would want to be, as it were, made in God’s image? (Just the white people, though, I guess.)

We’ve drawn God that way.

Some people draw God as a woman, though. Jesus is pretty unquestionably male, but there’s some doubt as to whether or not the masculine gender applies to God (assuming, for the sake of argument simplification, that Jesus and God are either two separate entities or two completely separate manifestations of one entity). Matriarchal societies long saw their deity as a feminine, and that ideal really only lost popularity when the more warlike patriarchal societies effectively obliterated their matriarchal counterparts. Now, the idea of a Goddess, a Gaea, the mystical feminine, is regaining popularity through feminism, “fringe” religions, and books like The DaVinci Code.

What makes God masculine or feminine in our minds? I think it has to do with how we’d like to imagine God, as regards personality (god-ality?). If you go to a person who thinks of God as a giver of law, vengeful, a judge, I imagine they’d visualize God in that typical white-bearded man image. God-the-Father would naturally be perceived as having man-like or father-like characteristics, in the traditional (perhaps old-fashioned) sense. This vision of God is one to be respected and feared, one who raises a disappointed eyebrow when we bring home a bad grade, one who has a baseball bat behind the door to ward off unsuitable beaus.

Probably most people who have been brought up in a traditional church setting have God set by default as a male form, but there are those who prefer the feminine or who acknowledge a feminine aspect to God. Here you have people who perceive God as merciful, nurturing, the source of life. This God is one to honor and please, one who scoops us up and kisses the owie when we fall and scrape our knee, one who bakes us cookies and sits us down with a cup of hot tea to tell us that she’s worried about our choices but who lets us make our own mistakes, always keeping a door unlocked and a couch ready for us when we need it.

“Source of life,” of course, is the real kicker there – the miracle of life, of reproduction, is (for obvious reasons) caught up in the feminine mystique. Mother Earth, the Fates – animal mutability expressed in the female form.

Whether or not God even has gender or a physical form is an entirely different question, and one that has sparked controversy and divide. Some faiths forbid the creation of God-images, for example. If God does have a corporal form, who is to say that it can’t be both masculine and feminine? I’m not talking hermaphroditic here, but something entirely beyond our scope of understanding.

We see our Creator in a million different ways, when we “see” Him – or Her – at all. Some see a stern judge of our ultimate goodness, some see a kind shepherd of all souls. Some see a woman, some a man, some a cosmic glow, some a flying spaghetti monster. Some see a triadic God where others see a solitary God. To some, God is a definite, specific entity who hears and answers prayer; to others, God is a vague sort of ideal that we strive for, a general sense of good as opposed to evil. Some see God as the one and only, while others see God as one of many – including, perhaps, themselves. Some peoples’ ideas of God require strict adherence to rules and rites, while others accept all who are well-intentioned and compassionate.

We’re all drawing God, and like the kindergartner, I think we want everyone to see our drawing and realize that we’re the one person who has the right perspective…

Giggles

I’m really tired this morning, and my “internet breakfast” wasn’t the happiest I’ve ever had, so I’m going to tell the world something funny and try to inject a little more inane silliness into teh intrawebs.

Last night I went to the gym and after working out went over to the track to walk it off. The track is on the second story over (and around) the gymnasium. On intramural nights – Thursday, apparently – they have these big curtains that they drop to section off the gym. Last night, it was divided up into four sections – three thirds, with one third cut in half.

About halfway through my first lap I began looking down to see what was going on down there, and what I saw was the funniest thing since – well, probably not too long, but whatever. [Ed. note: this blog entry is about to start sounding vaguely racist, so it's important you note that I'm simply observing what I saw.]

In the first third of the gym was a group of tanned white men and women playing volleyball (badly).

In the second third of the gym was a group of Latino men playing soccer.

In the first half of the third third were four Asian men and women playing what I can only presume was badminton (very badly), although I didn’t know that was played without a net.

And in the second half of the third third was a game of basketball. You know what I’m about to say – and, sadly, you’re wrong. They weren’t all black. Because I think that would have just been too much – I would have had to have laughed out loud, and then the workout police would have surely come and taken me away.

Boise State University Segregated Intramurals – new for spring 2007!

I dunno. I’m having a hard time writing this where it’s anywhere near as funny as it seemed at the time. Maybe I was just slaphappy from the exercise.

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Last night (or this morning, rather) I was dreaming that Meredith, Mom, and I were having a conversation about eggs. Meredith was in the process of saying that she didn’t like eggs in the winter, and Mom was eating a hard-boiled egg out of the shell, with a spoon. As she pried a bit of egg out of the shell, she accidentally flung it across the table and hit Meredith with it. I cracked up laughing – in real life.

Ryan’s all, “What are you giggling at?”

Me, groggy: “Dreaming about eggs. Mom hit Meredith with an egg.”

Ryan: ::pause::

Me: “Hard boiled.”

Ryan: “You woke yourself up laughing?”

Me: “Uh-huh.”

Ryan: “Well, that’s a good way to wake up.”

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It’s kind of cloudy and rainyish, and my stomach is moderately unamused at something, and it’s just totally a curl up on the couch with an afghan and a bad novel sort of day. Anyone else want to go play hooky?

Fitness Diary

It isn’t the least bit interesting, and I’m doing it just so that I have a record – and so that I keep track of myself and motivate myself – but I am keeping a fitness diary. Just in case you’re like a wild stalker and are fascinated by how many minutes I spend pedaling.