Archive for November, 2010
Monday Open Thread: November 29th, 2010
What’s on your minds this Monday?
What are people talking about where you live?
What do you know about the organization Soldier’s Angels?
What volunteering are you including in your holiday planning?
QUESTION: Have you ever asked people to speak English in public?
Today, I took my friend Althea’s kids TJ and Niblet to see Rapunzel because Althea hates going to movies (because she can’t stand the sound of all those strangers loudly masticating their popcorn).
For those of you who always wonder, “Niblet” is Althea’s daughter’s play name, and has been since she was a little baby who loved corn. Hence, Niblet.
“What would you have called her if she was obsessed with hamburgers or pizza?”, I asked Althea once.
“Oprah. And I am glad we did not have to go there”.
I really enjoy whenever I get the Dynamic Duo for the day, because I can take them to lunch at the Rain Forest Cafe or Hard Rock, go ice skating at Millennium Park, and then see movies I would miss otherwise. And when they are with me I always end up noticing things I would miss otherwise, especially since the two of them point these things out to me.
Like the couple above…who spoke both English and some Asian language.
The two of them slipped in and out, between English and gibberish, clearly to talk about people.
When we were waiting for the movie to start, these two were talking about school in English, complaining about how hard their midterms were, and about various things they wanted to buy at Best Buy before the sales ended. This was in clear, crisp, English from both of them.
But, then the two would giggle, point at people, and break into gibberish. Which I believe was them making fun of others, taking the chance no one could understand them.
They kept looking our way, since they seemed to think it was weird for a white guy to be at the movies with two little black kids (6 and 10).
They started their giggling and gibberish talking and I had Niblet take her brother to play a round of PacMan (still in eyesight of me) while I had a word with my “friends”.
I asked the Asian man what his problem was and why the two of them broke into gibberish when they didn’t want anyone to hear what they were saying.
That is pretty cowardly, I told him, as the woman with him just put her head down, sheepishly, never saying a word.
I had Mandarin in college and French through high school, and I remember enough of both to talk a few minutes in either, seeming vaguely fluent. I thought the guy was either Japanese or maybe Korean, so I tried talking to him in Mandarin…and he didn’t understand me…so I just pointed at the two of them, laughed loudly, and said about everything I knew in Chinese centered around someone being terrible and/or an animal.
I didn’t get any pushback and, to their credit, these two seemed to realize what they were doing was wrong. I walked away and headed back towards TJ and Niblet and didn’t hear either of these people say another word in the hallway.
They ended up seeing Rapunzel as well, and I sat us in the same row as them, staring at them disapprovingly until the movie began, the woman never raising her head again, seemingly embarrassed.
Once, on a bus, a friend of mine who speaks Polish caught a pair of girls doing this, making fun of people in Polish, and my friend jumped into the conversation and started making fun of what those girls looked like and what they were wearing. They got off at the next stop, red-faced.
So, I am not the only one who calls people out for this.
The funny thing is, I didn’t even realize TJ and Niblet noticed what happened…but when Althea came to pick them up, she asked them if they had a good time and TJ said, “And then Mr. K. had to school two fools who were talking smack at us and he totally made them stop and they were embarrassed. That was fun, and I tried to play Pac-Man but that game is old and stupid”.
Althea loves when I get pictures of people behaving badly because she hopes they see themselves some day and realize they are cautionary tales and teachable moments here on HB.
“Serves those fools right,” Althea said. “Hope you write about them today, the idiots”.
Have you ever noticed people pulling this garbage in other languages?
Have you ever called them out?
Great behind the scenes article on the Stuxnet virus that crippled Iran's nuclear program
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/11/26/secret-agent-crippled-irans-nuclear-ambitions/
This is a good read for people who know a little, but not everything, about the mysterious Stuxnet virus that crippled Iran’s nuclear program.
It is even more interesting if you read it in light of some of the diplomatic cables King Andullah of Saudi Arabia had bewn sending Washington…saying he wanted Iran’s nuclear program eliminated “like the head of a snake”.
So, there was a Mos Isly cantina of unlikely allies colluding behind the scenes to stop Iran, including the Hutts of Riyadh.
That’s impressive casting.
The question is: since Stuxnet just slowed Iran down, what’s the next planned punch?
Another slowdown, or a regime-change takedown that will eliminate this problem completely?
Thoughts?
Removing Dick Lugar is a must
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/us/politics/28lugar.xml
First, there’s the fact his legal, real, actual name sounds like a discarded Falcon videos porn star concept…involving vintage German fire arms and patent leather spankings.
My friend Panda thinks his last name is “Licker”, and I don’t correct him.
Every single Cocktail Party blue blood establishment Republican needs to be primaried in 2012.
Lindsey “Bette Davis Eyes” Graham in South Carolina.
Olympia “History’s Calling” Snowe.
Dick “Too Easy to Mock” Lugar.
Every last fool who enables the Left and is really just a Democrat with an (R) after their name.
All of them. Primary them ALL.
But the trick is going to be dealing with these Cocktail Party aristocrats after they lose their primaries.
How do we get them off the stage when they lose, since these people so insist on clinging to power after they lose their primaries?
Getting rid of them all will be hard work…but it’s great we have two years to figure out how to do it.
What is Governor Palin's New Hampshire strategy?
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/11/28/new_hampshire_turns_to_2012_108073.html
There is a troll in New Hampshire who has written in many times to say that if I “ever set foot in (her) state (she) will stick (me) with used needles from an abandoned hospital and give (me) AIDS”.
I actually applaud the gothic creativity of this…the haunting image of the abandoned hospital, the lunatic rummaging in the rusty dark searching for weapons, the abundance of reality-resistant AIDS just lying around, free for the taking.
It is, honestly, some of the most inventive hate mail I get, warning me to never come to New Hampshire…or else.
Well, I have not been to New Hampshire since the night Hillary Clinton became the first woman to ever win a presidential primary, back in 2008. I don’t plan on going back until I help Governor Palin become the first REPUBLICAN woman to do what HRC did back in the brutal cold of ’08.
When I do go back, you better believe I am stopping in Concord and having my picture taken in front of that troll’s house…so maybe we can capture her on film running outside in her housecoat to try to give me AIDS.
I have no idea why Governor Palin has not been back to New Hampshire since 2008, but maybe this troll writes gothic, creative-writing grade threats to her too.
Iowa and New Hampshire voters sure have a major sense of spoiled entitlement to them. They want not only unlimited face time with candidates, but they practically demand these people spend the night, fix their leaky faucets, and fix them gooseberry pancakes in the morning.
That is NOT how Governor Palin does things.
So I am interested in how she is going to handle Iowa and New Hampshire.
Thoughts?
Do you know about the bizarre books in libraries for teenagers?
Radio host Megan Fox recently showed me a book called “The Rainbow Club” which I didn’t believe really existed. She calls it “the unholy Grail of teenage smut”, and shakes when she talks about it. The book, and its content, upsets her that much.
The book is bad. It’s about teen girls putting on different shades of lipstick and then leaving their marks on boys after performing certain acts on them.
It really is horrible. And the man who wrote the books appears to be in the same league as that “writer” Joe McGinniss, the sicko who rented the house next door to the Palins in Alaska to try to spy on little Piper and the other Palin kids.
Sick.
Megan Fox is launching a crusade against these pervy teen books, with an article today at NewsReelBlog, one of David Horowitz’s sites.
I really hope you read this because I have a serious problem with tax dollars being spent filling library shelves with these pervy books.
Libraries have budgets. They do not have every book ever printed on the shelves. Someone is CHOOSING to put “The Rainbow Club” on the shelf instead of other, more appropriate books.
I think it’s a valid question to ask WHY “The Rainbow Club” was chosen but other books were not.
Maybe Megan Fox has found her calling and will get that question asked and answered coast to coast.
My Favorite Thanksgiving Memory, 2010
This Thanksgiving, I woke up early and did a volunteer stint peeling potatoes, doing prep work, washing pots and pans, and helping out however else I could to get Thanksgiving dinner ready for the homeless, the elderly, and vets at a center here in Chicago.
This is something I have been doing for many years now, for a lot of reasons, because I just don’t like sitting around doing nothing on a holiday. I am not the sort of person who likes going to a meal or a party…but enjoys helping putting it together, doing the cooking, and making sure everyone has a great time. I was an event planner for many years, so it’s in my DNA I think. Also, being single and not having any family I can spend holidays with, it’s just been a natural way to spend holidays. It’s fun, I can be useful, and I always have a great time.
After my shift at the shelter, I accepted an invitation to go out to the suburbs to have dinner with radio host Megan Fox and her family, which was delightful.
When I got there, I peeled more potatoes, did more prep work, washed more pots and pans, and helped out however else I could to get their family dinner ready. Megan made a big cheese ball, which is something I haven’t seen in years, and I loved snacking on it while we worked in the kitchen (and all the other guys in the house disappeared somewhere, in front of a TV I think). It was a lot of fun for me, since it’s been 15 years since I’ve been at a family event like this in the suburbs. I came out at 18, and haven’t been welcome at any family events back in Ohio since. Not unless I magically appear with a girl on my arm. I’ve always refused to lie once the “When are you going to get a girlfriend?” questions come up…Spanish Inquisition style…and though I certainly wouldn’t regale anyone with stories of misadventures in Boystown (which are PG-13 and above), I am who I am and I’m proud of who I am and I’m not going to pretend to be anyone else, no matter who wants me to do the pretending. If you invite me to Thanksgiving, you get “me” at Thanksgiving…not the “me” you wish I was or want me to pretend to be.
Megan’s family is so very, very kind…and funny…and loud…and so very Chicago…and 100% accepting of me, which was such a great feeling.
They had every side dish you could imagine, all made from favorite recipes, with a big smoked turkey and a pork roast. The little kids there did arts and crafts and made all sorts of fun things for the table, including little place cards with all our names on them (turkeys with multi-colored feathers I helped put together on a little kid-run assembly line with Grandma and others helping). It was all so sweet and heart warming…and fun to play with construction paper. It’s been weeks since I did that.
“Why don’t you read grandma Wendy some of your hatemail?”, Megan asked me, at one point, when a lackluster Christmas song came on and the room cried out for some live entertainment. ”Read her the one where the woman said, ‘I know you are probably busy today, but I just wanted to tell you how much I hated you’. That’s a good one. It’s very Thanksgiving-inspired!”.
And so, I pulled up HillBuzz’s gmail account and read Wendy that particular piece of hatemail (which was eventually voted the favorite by everyone at dinner). Wendy laughed and laughed. ”Oh, that was a good one! What else did you get today? Who actively hates you on Thanksgiving?”.
So, I read her some more hatemail…including one letter from a troll in New Hampshire who just wanted to let me know that she was hoping I’d choke on something on Thanksgiving, and hopefully get AIDS. Happy Thanksgiving, Susan! Right back at you!
“Oh, is she the one who hopes you die and nobody finds you ’till Christmas? That was kind of inspired, her thinking that far into the future,” Megan’s sister in law Missy said, laughing about “the favorite” piece of hatemail again. Nobody really could beat that one, all day, no matter how many nastygrams came in. Out of the 50 or so holiday-themed hit pieces I got, the one from Margaret Miller in Davenport, Iowa was consistently named the best. Or is it “the worst”? Whatever it was, it was the one that had everyone practically rolling on the ground with laughter.
Which was definitely NOT what Margaret Miller intended, I imagine.
I eventually passed around my phone so that different family members could take turns reading my hatemail aloud, censoring the expletives in case any of the kids making crafts were listening.
It was fun hearing horrible things read aloud in different voices, with everyone laughing about it afterwards.
That took all of the venom and sting out of this garbage in a way I’d never thought of before.
The people who write this stuff really seemed sad and pathetic, sending these letters on a holiday, wishing me bodily harm because they didn’t like my politics…or they were still mad at me for revving people up to vote for Bristol Palin on Dancing with the Stars. So, they sent me hatemail on Thanksgiving…instead of spending that quality time with their families and people who loved them.
“What are they going to hate you for next week?”, Wendy asked. ”You better think of something really good, and keep them all mad through Christmas, give those grinches something to do”.
I really loved the absurdity of this nice, suburban family taking turns reading my hatemail aloud, laughing about it, and having fun with it. That’s on top of me, a gay conservative activist and political writer from Boystown, being the random guest star at a family’s Thanksgiving far from the city…as if that, too, was the most normal thing in the world.
Who came to dinner last year? Ann Coulter?
Who’s on the Christmas program? Tammy Bruce?
Does Rush Limbaugh play the Easter Bunny for them?
All of this is funny to me because conservative people have no problem at all with a gay writer coming over…but in Boystown the virulent Leftist gays would never in their dreams allow a conservative in their midst without treating that person horribly.
They would be laughing at them, not with them, and issuing them hatemail not reading it for them aloud to take all the sting out.
I hope you all had a blessed and happy Thanksgiving wherever you spent it. Mine was one of the best on record, and not just because the food was so good and I felt so welcome at a family event for the first time in many years. But, honestly, I don’t think I am ever going to look at that hatemail the same way ever again. From now on, whenever I see any of it, I’m going to picture Grandma Wendy laughing about it…and little children drawing crayon pictures of the trolls and goblins they imagine writing it…and all sorts of good, fun, people who think it’s absolutely hilarious that someone would take time out of their day to write such awfulness when there’s parades to watch on TV, turkey to eat in the kitchen, and a roaring fire to gather around.
I will never think of those trolls and goblins the same way again.
Not when I have a new Thanksgiving tradition…thanks to the Fox family: ”the reading of the hatemail”.
Something that might be more at home during “Festivus”, but is now an ongoing part of my Thanksgivings, I’m sure.
Your Sunday Smile: Angel Undercover Edition
Today I am going to try to catchup on Sarah Palin’s Alaska at a friend’s house where there’s On Demand cable.
I can’t wait to watch the show…which has another episode airing tonight on TLC. I think there might even be a Sarah Palin’s Alaska marathon on, too.
And, just for the holiday spirit heck of it, here’s another favorite pic of the Governor with another angel undercover.
George Soros making another fortune off TSA invasive naked scanners
George Soros owns part of the company that makes the invasive TSA naked scanners.
He probably owns the part that focuses the radiation on your genitals…to sterilize you…as Phase Three of his multi-phase plan to takeover the world and destroy society as we know it.
There may still be a Santa Claus, Virginia, but there’s no James Bond…because if there was, a super villain like Soros would not still be walking around up to his mischief.
Show of hands…who is surprised that George Soros is behind these scanners?
Somewhere, in a hollowed-out volcano, hovering above a pit full of great white sharks, petting a giant albino tarantula, George Soros is probably looking at naked photos of the elderly, kindergarteners, and cancer survivors that were taken in airports this holiday season.
And making money off it too!
Awesome Christmas Music, in Boystown and Your Town
What are your favorite Christmas songs?
My favorite Christmas album ever is by Twisted Sister…and my favorite song on it is “O Come All Ye Faithful”. I just don’t know how anything could ever get any better than this.
But, I also love Whitney’s Christmas selections…and can go for a little Mariah here and there.
And, like most anything in life, it’s just not Christmas in Boystown without Laura Branigan.
What are some of your favorites that I can play in the jukeboxes around Boystown?
The more obscure, random, and campy the better!
