Are you effing kidding me?

If you weren't already aware, there's a massive hurricane set to make landfall somewhere very near Houston. My parents live in Galveston County, which is looking like ground zero for this thing. They're already in Austin, with their cats in tow.

And that's what this post is about....Austin.

Look at this image capture from weather.com:Are you fucking kidding me? Austin is surrounded by clouds that are being spun off one of the biggest hurricanes (400 miles across) we've ever seen. And yet the clouds break up when they get to Austin and reform on the other side.

Before I continue, I should assure you I don't mean to be glib. I realize this hurricane will take an enormous toll. As I said, everything my parents own is currently its immediate path. That's my point. This massive thing, which could decimate half the Texas coast and continue to wreak havoc as is travels north across the state, might not bring a single raindrop to the only part of Texas still under extreme drought conditions.

Yesterday we had a 100% chance of rain forecast for Saturday. Today that forecaster seems less sure of him/herself, and the chances are 60%. I bet that by tomorrow we'll see 20% chance, but no actual rain.

Did I mention our rainfall totals are roughly 9 inches below average for the year?

Here's our drought index map, for anyone interested.

I live in hell.

Do you ever get the impression...

....that people pick political candidates the same way they pick their second favorite sports team?

By second favorite I mean the team they root for when their home team doesn't win shit. That team has a funny way of being one of the two teams in the world series or superbowl or NBA finals or whatevs. I think you get what I'm saying. Usually the one that's favored to win.

Yes. What I'm saying is I'm starting to suspect that most people vote for the candidate they think has the greatest chance of winning. That way they can be part of the in crowd.

Maybe I'll change my mind tomorrow. Right now I'm not feeling particularly hopeful about this election. All the fucking pigs working for the McCain campaign while simultaneously serving as analysts on various "news" networks clearly consider this election (and politicking in general) a highly amusing game. I hope they befall some awful accident that their health insurance provider decides it won't cover. Really I do. I don't usually wish disease or death on people as I find it unseemly. But I guess they've successfully knocked my noble ass off my ratty old steed.

Again: Jackasses.

by the pricking of my thumbs

Sometimes it matters less what you have done than what you will do.

Yes, I do feel insulted by this

For background details, please see my previous post on FOX's apparent preamble to the naming of Palin.
Actually, why don't I just let you watch the video.



I do wonder if FOX perhaps had a little bit of insight into the imminent plans of the John McCain campaign. I guess the answer is obvious.

Yes, I share the anger of the many, many, many people who consider McCain's surprise pick of Palin as running mate an egregious attempt to pander to women voters (the choice also clearly serves to steal some of the Obama's thunder in the "historic moment" department).

I've read a few blogs now that castigate those of use who are airing our offense at the McCain campaign. These people are calling us sexist for our audacious assumption that Palin was only picked because of her gender. We are such assholes.

Hmm. I don't think her gender was the only reason she was selected. Not at all. She's right in line with the base of the Republican party. She wants to make abortion illegal. She loves guns. She hates polar bears. She doesn't much like icky science because it supports such nauseating ideas as 1. Evolution is essentially irrefutable, 2. Global warming is quite real and very much a result of human activity, and 3. Drilling for oil now would not yield results for many years and would therefore not cause any immediate drop in fuel costs or reduction of dependence on foreign oil, and even when the oil is drilled and refined, the predicted effect on cost is a reduction of something like $0.04 to the gallon.

Yes, I certainly believe that McCain picked Palin just as much (if not more) to placate the right wing as to lure Hillary supporters.

So let me explain something: it's not his pick of a woman that upsets people like me. It's the fact that Palin is now being used as yet another way to pander to the women's vote, in a long string of pandering attempts this election season. We don't like that a bunch of Republican women have been parading as Democrats claiming to be so angry at Obama that they're willing to throw their support behind their political polar opposite. Seriously. Do you PUMAs think we're so stupid that we'll see you and think to ourselves, "Gee, what they're doing is so feminist 2K! I want in!"

Pandering pisses people off. In this case it pisses me off. So Republicans, quit treating me like an idiot and then calling me sexist for having an opinion, all the while denying that the glass ceiling even exists.

Jackasses.

Organizing my thoughts on this election

I know nobody will read this. I haven't a clue how to market myself, and that goes for the blog world too. So I get to use this as a place where I throw out thoughts and ideas and then go back and edit them later, with nobody criticizing me before my ideas have gelled. Yeah, take that!

I've been incredibly emotional through the Democratic National Convention, and I'm trying to pinpoint why.

I was originally planning on voting for Clinton. Then, as I watched with increasing shame and disgust the unraveling of her campaign, I began to second guess myself. I yearned for a female Democratic candidate, but maybe not this one. Obama, who I'd respected but who had not fully swayed me, seemed wise, gentle and intelligent. Originally I was vaguely cynical of his message of hope. I, like many others, wondered if there was substance behind his words. The more I listened to him, though, the more I realized there was powerful substance. Substance on an intellectual level that I'd forgotten could exist in American politics. So in February I both caucused and voted for Obama.

Here's the thing. I've been moved intellectually by the things Obama has done and said since my state's primary. But I haven't been moved to tears. I've thought, "thank god we've got a candidate we can look up to and respect, because when he talks, you can tell he respects YOU. Thank god we have a chance to not have four more years of condescension and contempt." But these thoughts have typically been accompanied by dry eyes.

Then came the DNC and I've been reduced to a blubbering mess. Even between speeches, the crowd shots have turned on the tear spigots. And I've been really taken aback. I didn't expect this reaction. I don't undersand. But I might have a hypothesis.

There's the historicness (yes, not really a word, I know) of it. Nominating a black guy is nothing short of amazing to me. And a dent in the walls of racial oppression is a dent in the walls of ALL oppression. And if women aren't satisfied with that idea, they've got Michelle Obama, who is an incredible role model and a shining example of the strength of our gender.

There's the unity of it....that there are millions of people who really do feel the same way I do, and who care enough to do something about it.

But the thing I think has continually struck me right to my very core, is that this nomination will very possibly mark the end of eight years of oppression. Not just failed policy, war mongering and constitutional decimation, but complete psychic oppression. I can compare the last eight years to being stuck in the shittiest job ever, where your boss sneers every time he speaks in your direction, where you get crappy performance evaluations even though you work your ass off, where you can't ask for a raise because you're afraid of being punished for posing the question, where the Coke machine costs $1.25 because the company keeps those profits too, where your privileged coworkers keep getting raises and free Cokes and glowing evaluations. And underscoring all the crap you deal with day in and day out is that YOU CAN'T QUIT. Because there's not any other job to move to, at least not one you could afford. That is the world we've inherited, and it paints the very lenses through which we see our lives and the world around us. We've been in that fog. You don't even know how bad it is when you're in it. But now I see, and I realize just how awful the Bush administration has really been. They took the hope out of life. On a very real and concrete level my life is harder than it was eight years ago. I have to watch every penny I spend. I can't find a better paying job because the market is both saturated and thinning. I get a jolt of shock EVERY time I finish checking out at the grocery store. I only put $10 of gas in my car at a time, because I can't afford to fill the tank. But worst of all, I've been reduced to base cynicism, the last resort of those of us who are intelligent but powerless.

That's why Barack Obama took hope on as his mission. We've been stagnating in a world that seemed fairly well hopeless. And we have to win. This is more important than anything else I've experienced in my entire life. And the weight of that...well...it's heavy. So I cry. In rage at eight years lost, in hope that things can finally change, and in fear that if we don't win, there will be no place for me in this world at all.

gender and stuff

Yeah. And stuff.

I used that lighthearted title to put potential readers at ease. I'm not going to launch into a vitriolic rant about the gender issues that are boiling just below the surface of this election cycle. Or maybe I will. If my clever title trick worked, you're already reading. Hah!

I turned on Fox yesterday. I do that sometimes. You know why. You do it too. Anyway, they were profiling Geraldine Ferraro. I was confused for a few minutes. Why is this on FOX of all places? What is going on? My confusion was particularly pronounced, because the day before that I'd watched Britt Hume acknowledge that Michelle Obama gave a good speech at the Democratic Convention. I wondered what sort of weird happy pill had been slipped into his coffee that morning. Then the rest of the Fox panel followed suit, with only William Kristol dribbling on about the mediocrity of it all.

"Ok. So has Fox gone soft?," I asked myself. Then it hit me. How could I be so stupid. They're pandering to me. They want women to see how sensitive they can be, and thus how sensitive Republicans can be. They used Geraldine Ferraro's story to strike a nerve with me, to remind me how far women have come, but how far we have yet to go. They want me to think that Clinton's absence from the ballot in November is symbolic of every obstacle we women still face. They want me to vote for McCain.

When I figured this out, I felt really exploited. And angry. Following Clinton's speech, some lady on the Fox panel went on and on about how great her speech was. Kristol was sitting next to her, and his expression was one of utter derision. He doesn't give a rat's ass about Clinton, women who support Clinton, or women in general. He thinks the blonde lady sitting next to him is a dingbat, an unqualified nitwit, unable to analyze her own shopping list let alone politics. And Kristol, I think, is pretty representative of the type of people running the show at Fox.

I don't know how effective this shit is. I tend to assume people are smarter than that, but then people tell me, "No, Claire, they're really not..." and show me some link or other to the rantings of this or that whackadoodle.

Do you think Fox's tactics are working? How about when they pander to black, Hispanic, and other minority voters? Please anyone who accidentally finds this post, let me know what you think.

The truth is....

It's a Wednesday, or maybe a Thursday. I'm actually not sure anymore because over the past seven years my brain has effectively been turned to mush and my soul sucked out right through my sternum. (YES! my sternum! that's how hard they sucked! My soul went right through the thickest, hardest bone in my goddamn chest!) But I'm damn certain it wasn't a Monday, when normal people might start their first day of work.

On This particular Wednesday or Thursday, I'm armed with a notepad and my only partially functional Nikkormat camera, which is loaded with generic 200 ISO film from some shitty place like Walgreens or something. I might have also had a writing implement, but more likely I forgot that important tool of newspaper reporting and had to borrow one from my subject, in this case a 5th grade teacher who had just returned from China with what I can only assume was a marginally elevated understanding of Chinese culture. Oh, and a handful of trinkets.

Um...let me back up a few days. Actually, I suppose I should explain myself and my unfortunate overuse of expletives. Here's the deal with the profanity: my dad was in the merchant marines, meaning he was a sailor. And he swore like one, as the saying goes. I learned everything I know about cursing (and yelling at people, especially other drivers) from him.

This job I'm writing about....it was seven years of unbridled insanity. I swear this to you. I know everybody says their job sucks. I know everybody has (or at least has had) the worst job in the world. But I got feedback from outside on this one. Everyone who came into contact with this place - and that was many, many people, as it was a newspaper - told me it was the worst work environment they had ever seen. I'll let you judge for yourself. So onward.....

In the beginning it wasn't so bad. Really weird, but not mind, body and soul crushing. It begins like this: I've graduated from college. I need a "real" job. The job hunt is a drama unto itself, but I'll spare you. I'm sure all of you have been coated in the slime of entry-level job recruiters. If I wanted to edit car dealership commercials for a pittance, I'd start my own fucking business.

Ok, back on track, Claire. Sorry. I tend to digress. So, my search turns up a job at a newspaper in a small town outside of Austin. I don't have a degree in journalism, but I do have one in radio-television-film. The two are related, right? And I can write. I learned the fine art of the five paragraph paper in the third grade. I graduated to 12-page research papers in the eighth grade. I went to a prep school that believed in no God higher than a well-presented thesis. And yes, I would digress in those, too, and never got a grade higher than "C."

So I send in my resume. And fuck my ass, I get a call. For a gin-U-wine (<--inside joke with myself) job interview! I scramble around for the right outfit. I'm a jeans and t-shirt type, so scraping up professional attire is sort of anxiety inducing. But I find something. I then drive 30 miles through windy roads, trailer parks and cow pastures following directions provided by the editor, who I'm beginning to think might be Ed Gein or something. But then I burst through the rural decay into the bustling metropolis (pop. 7000) that is my destination. This isn't so bad...very historical, lots of oak and pecan trees...maybe the newspaper is in a historical building on Main Street! Maybe the editor is some sort of hippie-turned-academic-turned-hippie-again who left his job as a journalism professor to edit a newspaper in a small Texas town known for its hippie roots. This could be fun. The newspaper is NOT in a historic building. It's in what amounts to a tin can. I later found out it had once been a laundromat. Awesome. The hippie editor part I nailed. Sort of. He had a thin, wiry ponytail that trailed down his back. His face was covered by a mass of gray and grizzled hair that hung down to his chest. His skin was dry and wrinkled and flaking off in sheets. His fingers and beard were stained with the tobacco of a million Skydancer cigarettes. He was missing his front tooth. He did, however, have a way of speaking that commanded attention. He had a deep voice and a light Texas drawl that I can't possibly describe for anyone who doesn't live in this wacky state. He was intelligent and articulate, and seemed slightly bemused by me, the job interview and the work that was going on around us. His attitude put me at ease. I should have fucking run. Which brings me back to where I began. He didn't hire me on the spot, but he didn't send me away with a promise to "let me know." Instead he gave me an assignment. "There's a teacher at the school district who just got back from China," he said in his deep drawl. "Go interview her, take a few photos and bring me an article. If you do good work, you've got a job." I think he gave me the school district's main phone number. Possibly the last name of the teacher. Certainly not her first name. Then he sent me on my way. I guess that's how they did it back in the 1890s or whenever he first got into the newspaper biz. And because I'm a Jew and therefore cursed by God (g-d for you strict types), I did good enough work to get hired. And that's where I end this rant. I'd be awfully surprised if anyone actually reads this. To those of you who had the misfortune of discovering this blog and the patience to read it, I feel I owe you an explanation. I'm writing this stuff because lately I've been feeling like I wasted seven years of my life, which makes me very angry. Yes, I know, I know it's a learning experience. But it's one I let continue for six years too long. So I'm going to write about every fucked up thing that happened in that place until I'm laughing my ass off and not angry anymore.

Stay tuned for Chapter 2, wherein a staff of 12 spends a month wondering why that strange city girl keeps showing up and using one of their computers.