Saturday, March 04, 2006
Now they're just taunting me
It never fails. The moment anyone in this house lays down in the midafternoon for a well-earned nap, the yoga place on the other side of the fence starts blasting atrocious music. And I mean blasting. Bafflingly, they've got these two huge speakers OUTSIDE THE FUCKING STUDIO, and today, no sooner have I finished my book, turned out the light, and rolled over for my nap, but on comes this unaccountably loud, unforgivably bad Annie-style showtune with two whiny young women. I give them a few moments to realize they've turned the volume up WAY TOO FUCKING LOUD. These speakers are, again, outside the studio, and generally they use them for summertime. What good they are in winter, I don't know. But I can tell you one good thing about winter: the snow is still on the ground out back. So I throw on a sweatshirt, jeans and sneakers and go into the backyard, where the music's even goddamn louder, and start making snowballs.
As I start throwing at their window, the music turns, inexplicably, to Vaughan Williams' Dona Nobis Pacem. I throw harder. This woman comes out and we exchange heated words, but I realize I have not the leg to stand on I thought I did, as it is not exactly their duty to be careful not to disturb the hallowed nap. That doesn't nearly excuse the decibel level, though, and it certainly doesn't excuse their taste, a fact which they subsequently reinforce by pumping Hanson's "Mmmbop," at top volume. This is what I mean by taunting. I want to go over there and show them what inner peace feels like when it's drilled up their asses. Yoga motherfuckers.
As I start throwing at their window, the music turns, inexplicably, to Vaughan Williams' Dona Nobis Pacem. I throw harder. This woman comes out and we exchange heated words, but I realize I have not the leg to stand on I thought I did, as it is not exactly their duty to be careful not to disturb the hallowed nap. That doesn't nearly excuse the decibel level, though, and it certainly doesn't excuse their taste, a fact which they subsequently reinforce by pumping Hanson's "Mmmbop," at top volume. This is what I mean by taunting. I want to go over there and show them what inner peace feels like when it's drilled up their asses. Yoga motherfuckers.
Friday, March 03, 2006
Can't make this stuff up
March 02,2006 | COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Could you call it the colon that ate Columbus? A giant organ that is a natural target for wisecracks is making a stop downtown as part of its four-city tour.
A 20-foot long 'Super Colon,' on display to promote National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, is big enough to let visitors walk through and look at the inside.
The giant inflated tube, brought by The Cancer Research and Prevention Foundation, is meant to remind visitors of the dangers of colorectal cancer and other ailments that strike the lower digestive tract.
One tourist from Michigan wondered if you'd move through it faster if you ate chocolate."
A 20-foot long 'Super Colon,' on display to promote National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, is big enough to let visitors walk through and look at the inside.
The giant inflated tube, brought by The Cancer Research and Prevention Foundation, is meant to remind visitors of the dangers of colorectal cancer and other ailments that strike the lower digestive tract.
One tourist from Michigan wondered if you'd move through it faster if you ate chocolate."
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
DONE
...bitch.
Yeah, I took out the line about drinking the blood of the admissions officer's kids. I balanced it out, though: "Secondly, nu, why they should involve the Jews? This, we had nothing to do with."
The father's middle names are, for Columbia, Warren Ignacio Ashworth, and for Michigan, Warren Siegfried Ashworth. Mom declined to be called Susan Kidneys Kander.
Michigan is sent out (in the end, only 250 words over), and I'm walking Columbia in tomorrow. NYU and Hopkins aren't due for weeks. Who wants to party tomorrow night? It's Isaac's birthday today. Well, actually, it's not. I think he's a leap year baby. So really he's like five.
Yeah, I took out the line about drinking the blood of the admissions officer's kids. I balanced it out, though: "Secondly, nu, why they should involve the Jews? This, we had nothing to do with."
The father's middle names are, for Columbia, Warren Ignacio Ashworth, and for Michigan, Warren Siegfried Ashworth. Mom declined to be called Susan Kidneys Kander.
Michigan is sent out (in the end, only 250 words over), and I'm walking Columbia in tomorrow. NYU and Hopkins aren't due for weeks. Who wants to party tomorrow night? It's Isaac's birthday today. Well, actually, it's not. I think he's a leap year baby. So really he's like five.
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Jackassery
Michigan essay. Unrevised. 350 words over budget. Lazy fuckers. Will probably scrap the whole thing.
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"Discuss an issue of local, national, or international concern. Why is this issue important to you? How do you think it should be addressed?"
I saw a story in the paper this morning that outraged me. This in and of itself is remarkable; reading the New York Times international section every morning is an excellent way to inure oneself to outrageous things. But the news that a charitable organization in France run by far-right-wingers has established soup kitchens around Paris (and now throughout France and Belgium, which means the movement is catching on) which feature as their central staple a soupe au cochon. “Pig soup,” they’re calling it, and it is avowedly intended to keep the Muslims and Jews away.
“‘The only condition required for dining with us: eat pork,’ reads the group’s web site, which bears the image of a wanted poster for a cartoon pig in a pot framed by the words, ‘Wanted, Cooked or Raw, Public Disturbance No. 1.’” There is so much wrong with this I scarcely know where to begin. To begin with, by “eat pork,” what they mean is, “all four of your grandparents must have been French; no immigrants allowed.” Secondly, why are they involving the Jews? We had nothing to do with this. The sad fact is that anti-Semitism there has gotten so bad, that a number of Jewish families I know have left the country. The fatuousness the French have lately shown in their attitude toward immigration is galling.
There is a conviction in France, more than in any other European nation, that they have graciously set up a pax Romana-like system for their former colonials. One of the crucial particulars of the original pax Romana was that it didn’t matter what a man was, whether Arab, Gaul, Breton, or Turk, if he accepted the sovereignty of the Roman empire, he was entitled to equal protection under its laws, a fully-fledged citizen. They left out the part where, in order to do so, the immigrant must first slough off his entire cultural identity. To which the immigrant’s predictable response is, more often than not, “forget it.” It’s impossible. And so what has developed is a three-way conflict between immigrants understandably unwilling to reject their identities, right-wing French people who cannot understand why anyone would want to be anything but French, and the government, which has decided to unceremoniously foist multiculturalism on its people.
The product of this volatile formula is nothing short of jackassery. What is jackassery? It is the word I use to describe attitudes and actions so backwards and senseless that they fail to merit further explanation. Jackassery is John Ashcroft covering the statues of Justice and the rule of Law with blue tarp, which anyway serves only to draw attention to precisely those anatomical details which made Mr. Ashcroft so uneasy. Jackassery is Arab newspapers responding to the recent Danish cartoons by publishing cartoons mocking the Holocaust. What? Why? Look, the Jews had nothing to do with it this time, really; please leave us out of it (same with the soup kitchens, honestly). But the most prevalent and indefensible articulation of jackassery must be the chronic tendency of majority groups, such as Christian evangelicals or, in this case, the French, to feel persecuted. The phantom “war on Christmas” fracas last December was a perfect example of such unaccountable jackassery. Likewise the picture on the Pig People’s website claiming to be “public disturbance No.1.” No, that distinction goes to the “racaille” who torched a few thousand cars back in November. They were rioting because, as young second-generation foreigners, they were completely unable to get jobs in the French system. I was in France throughout the rioting, and most people I spoke with seemed to understand that the country was being actively forced into a reevaluation of this pax Romana sensibility. But naturally, the people I was speaking with tended to be of a more liberal persuasion. But all of them knew people who felt otherwise. My ex-girlfriend’s grandparents, for instance, were unabashed racists. And so we still have soup kitchens pouring fuel onto the fire. What outrages me is the sheer chutzpah of these people making statements such as “our freedom in France is being threatened.” It’s true. Arabs do hate freedom. Furthermore, you should know that as a liberal Jew, the thought of the sight of defenseless Christians huddled around the Christmas tree usually overwhelms me with an raging lust for the blood of the innocent. Just giving you a heads-up.
It’s just that in this postcolonial world, to be part of the majority is so stigmatized, and persecution has, perversely, developed such cachet, that one looks for invasion, oppression and threat wherever one can. France has to have a serious tête-à-tête with itself soon, before the violence escalates any further. Say what you want about America and its problems with racism, multiculturalism took hold here a lot better than it has elsewhere. We understand that our cultural consciousness, young though it may yet be, springs from the confluence of myriad ethnic identities. We have not had the 2600 years France has had to set up an invincible, entrenched national attitude. In this era of rapid globalization, I can’t help but think that’s an advantage.
<<>><<>><<>><<>><<>>
"Discuss an issue of local, national, or international concern. Why is this issue important to you? How do you think it should be addressed?"
I saw a story in the paper this morning that outraged me. This in and of itself is remarkable; reading the New York Times international section every morning is an excellent way to inure oneself to outrageous things. But the news that a charitable organization in France run by far-right-wingers has established soup kitchens around Paris (and now throughout France and Belgium, which means the movement is catching on) which feature as their central staple a soupe au cochon. “Pig soup,” they’re calling it, and it is avowedly intended to keep the Muslims and Jews away.
“‘The only condition required for dining with us: eat pork,’ reads the group’s web site, which bears the image of a wanted poster for a cartoon pig in a pot framed by the words, ‘Wanted, Cooked or Raw, Public Disturbance No. 1.’” There is so much wrong with this I scarcely know where to begin. To begin with, by “eat pork,” what they mean is, “all four of your grandparents must have been French; no immigrants allowed.” Secondly, why are they involving the Jews? We had nothing to do with this. The sad fact is that anti-Semitism there has gotten so bad, that a number of Jewish families I know have left the country. The fatuousness the French have lately shown in their attitude toward immigration is galling.
There is a conviction in France, more than in any other European nation, that they have graciously set up a pax Romana-like system for their former colonials. One of the crucial particulars of the original pax Romana was that it didn’t matter what a man was, whether Arab, Gaul, Breton, or Turk, if he accepted the sovereignty of the Roman empire, he was entitled to equal protection under its laws, a fully-fledged citizen. They left out the part where, in order to do so, the immigrant must first slough off his entire cultural identity. To which the immigrant’s predictable response is, more often than not, “forget it.” It’s impossible. And so what has developed is a three-way conflict between immigrants understandably unwilling to reject their identities, right-wing French people who cannot understand why anyone would want to be anything but French, and the government, which has decided to unceremoniously foist multiculturalism on its people.
The product of this volatile formula is nothing short of jackassery. What is jackassery? It is the word I use to describe attitudes and actions so backwards and senseless that they fail to merit further explanation. Jackassery is John Ashcroft covering the statues of Justice and the rule of Law with blue tarp, which anyway serves only to draw attention to precisely those anatomical details which made Mr. Ashcroft so uneasy. Jackassery is Arab newspapers responding to the recent Danish cartoons by publishing cartoons mocking the Holocaust. What? Why? Look, the Jews had nothing to do with it this time, really; please leave us out of it (same with the soup kitchens, honestly). But the most prevalent and indefensible articulation of jackassery must be the chronic tendency of majority groups, such as Christian evangelicals or, in this case, the French, to feel persecuted. The phantom “war on Christmas” fracas last December was a perfect example of such unaccountable jackassery. Likewise the picture on the Pig People’s website claiming to be “public disturbance No.1.” No, that distinction goes to the “racaille” who torched a few thousand cars back in November. They were rioting because, as young second-generation foreigners, they were completely unable to get jobs in the French system. I was in France throughout the rioting, and most people I spoke with seemed to understand that the country was being actively forced into a reevaluation of this pax Romana sensibility. But naturally, the people I was speaking with tended to be of a more liberal persuasion. But all of them knew people who felt otherwise. My ex-girlfriend’s grandparents, for instance, were unabashed racists. And so we still have soup kitchens pouring fuel onto the fire. What outrages me is the sheer chutzpah of these people making statements such as “our freedom in France is being threatened.” It’s true. Arabs do hate freedom. Furthermore, you should know that as a liberal Jew, the thought of the sight of defenseless Christians huddled around the Christmas tree usually overwhelms me with an raging lust for the blood of the innocent. Just giving you a heads-up.
It’s just that in this postcolonial world, to be part of the majority is so stigmatized, and persecution has, perversely, developed such cachet, that one looks for invasion, oppression and threat wherever one can. France has to have a serious tête-à-tête with itself soon, before the violence escalates any further. Say what you want about America and its problems with racism, multiculturalism took hold here a lot better than it has elsewhere. We understand that our cultural consciousness, young though it may yet be, springs from the confluence of myriad ethnic identities. We have not had the 2600 years France has had to set up an invincible, entrenched national attitude. In this era of rapid globalization, I can’t help but think that’s an advantage.
In 250 words or less.
Q: "At the University of Michigan, we are committed to building a superb educational community with students of diverse talents, experiences, opinions and cultural backgrounds. What would you as an individual bring to our campus community?"
A: The beer.
UPDATE: In the end, I closed that one thus: "I am a catastrophe at math, but I do have excellent table manners." Also included is the line, "my new fighting technique is unstoppable." I am SO bad ass.
A: The beer.
UPDATE: In the end, I closed that one thus: "I am a catastrophe at math, but I do have excellent table manners." Also included is the line, "my new fighting technique is unstoppable." I am SO bad ass.
Monday, February 27, 2006
This close
I swear, I'm this close to ending my Columbia essay with the words, "I've killed a hell of a lot of people to get here."
I can't tell you how good an idea that sounds like right now.
I can't tell you how good an idea that sounds like right now.
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