Eye of the needle and all that shit

Boyfriend and I keep having bits of this discussion but never quite get around to hashing it out because a)neither of us really enjoys disagree or debating with each other (or at least I don't- I don't think he does either, but I don't speak for him) and b)dude is just too dead fucking sexy and I find myself all unable to form coherent sentences on the regular around him.

So what is this discussion that we keep not having about? Does being rich automatically make you a bad person. I say yes (EAT THE RICH!!!!!!!!!!!) and he says no.

Now, the act of having money doesn't necessarily make someone bad. Instead it is the actions required to get, keep and increase one's wealth that make someone bad, or more properly, amoral.

For example, if you were the CEO of a company and you needed to increase your company's profit margin then you would need a certain lack of empathy to rationalize laying off a large number of employees. You would have to either not have, or be able to ignore any pangs of conscience over the welfare of your soon to be ex employees and their families.

And what do you know, science actually backs up the idea that wealthy people are less empathetic than poor people.

It also turns out that the rich aren't quite as charitable as they are made out to be. Turns out the bottom 20% gives away one and a half times more than those in the top 20% do.

That all goes to the getting, keeping, and increasing of their income that I mentioned before.

Of course there are companies that start out with the idea that they can be the ethical exception to the rule. But again when greater profit margins are in competition with those ethics, the profit margin will win. See Google's Don't Be Evil mission statement versus China's censorship laws or even Google's own giant clusterfuck of privacy issues regarding Buzz. See Amazon fuck every one over again and again. and again

Hell, even the do-gooder Gates Foundation has issues because it is funded with monies made by creating the problems that the foundation is trying to ameliorate.

Now we could go around all night with the chicken/egg question of does capitalism make people amoral or did amoral people make capitalism, but I think that's a red herring. Because I am a structuralist (yes how out-dated and 70's of me, and yes like Foucault I am veering more and more post-modern by the day. Problem for another day folks) I don't really give a flying fuck about that and prefer to look at how the system reinforces and encourages the behavior that perpetuate the status quot of the system. Capitalism is an amoral system that ALWAYS breaks down to profits over people. It is amoral. It has no ethics. Ethics of any sort would interfere wit the one mail goal of the system - profit.

But capitalism isn't a mechanical system. There are no gears or levers or belts or buttons. There is no invisible hand. It is a system comprised entirely of the actions of the people involved in it. But we obscure that with passive voice and theoretical discussion instead of looking at the people who control the system and benefit most from it. We are committing the cardinal sin of removing agency from those lofty individuals. The system is amoral because its operators are amoral. Just read what they have to say about current grievances from the bottom 99. The rich are very, very different from us. And they really don't give a flying fuck. They don't have to.

Re: The title of this post is part of an oft quoted bit of Jesus speak. It is no coincidence that most religions have strongly worded bits about kindness and generosity towards the poor. If you were trying to get a whole bunch of people to follow you, you aim your message at the masses. It's much easier to convert people who are suffering than it is to convert the comfortable. Not that there is anything wrong with those messages. I just don't need a sky fairy telling me I'll be rewarded when I'm dead so what injustices that happen to me now don't need to be rectified.

cough*ovaries*cough

"[A] one-term president with some balls who actually got stuff done would have been, in the long run of this country, much better. . . People are literally without any focus or leadership, just wandering out into the streets to yell right now because they are so pissed off. Imagine if they had a leader."
-- Matt Damon

Matt Damon, I love you. I really do. But we had an option for a president with, well for the sake of equality let's call it spine or gumption or hutzpah or any name you can think of for gutsy fearlessness in the face of Republican fuckery. But you liberaldoodz couldn't bring yourselves to vote for the bitch (in the best sense of the word) in the pantsuit.

Now would Hills have been much different? Well we'd have a better healthcare plan, us ladies wouldn't need extra insurance in case of unwanted parasites, and that brief window when Dems had the Senate and the House would have be a magic hour of Bitches Getting Shit Done.

We'd still have multi-wars and drones and a good deal of corporate fuckery. But I'm realistic in who runs shit. The Obama fanboys are less so.

via Tennessee Guerrilla Women

Christmas Music!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Are y'all ready for some fucking Christmas cheer? Are your eggs nogged? Gifts wrapped? Do you need some inspiration because you have 9 dozen cookies to bake and wrap into adorable gift baskets in the next 32 hours and they have to look and taste fucking awesome because their for your boyfriend's family who you haven't met yet? And OMG you still have presents to wrap and laundry to do and packing and a real job and and and and and.

What you (I) need is some inspiration ( or a nice Valium Adderal cocktail) so here is some music to get through the holidays with.

My favorite all time Christmas song (it has nothing to do with my dysfunctional childhood at all. NOOOOOOOO. It has absolutely nothing to do with the screaming tantrums thrown by the only adult member of the family when holiday pressures inevitably got to be too much. NOOOOOOO. Stop head shrinking)is The Ramones- Merry Christmas (I don't want to fight tonight with you)


It's just not Christmas without the Waitresses


Or the Kinks


Or Erasure


Or XTC


I used to include the Pogues' Fairytale of New York in this list. I mean common, Kristy MacColl sings on it. But there is a homophobic slur right in the middle of the song that jolts me every time I hear it. And if I won't let people make excuses for the stupid racism in Breakfast at Tiffany's then I really can't let homophobia slide even if I love the dead singer of the song super hard. So no more.

Now the worst Christmas song ever, hands down, is Do They Know It's Christmas. That colonial sack of bullshit- ugh. Boyfriend and I were in the grocery store last night and I pointed out that song was playing. His response was "Oh is that why I suddenly feel sad and angry all at once?" (That dear readers, is one of the reasons why I love him.) Anyways- enjoy this hilarious line by line take down of the song.

Your turn- hit me with your Christmas songs, best and worst.

This shit is what I mean when I say I hate Volunteerism- Butchy Feminist Mom edition

Like there's any other version of me besides Bitchy Feminist Mom.

Fair warning- links to Jezebel.

Women, mothers in particular, but women generally, are the people expected to fill the hole when the state fails. And the state fails when it comes to educating children All.The.Fucking.Time.

So if you have a child, you're all ready familiar with the barrage of (3rd shift?) work, called "volunteering", that's required (not so voluntary- is it). When kid was still in public elementary school it was the annual fundraising auction that raised enough money to keep class sizes small. Think about that. Parents, mostly mothers, performing enough unpaid work and donating enough hard earned dollars to do a thing that education experts have been saying since time began is necessary to properly educate children. There are also the "harass your friends, neighbors and coworker" campaigns of selling popcorn or cookies or candybars or wrapping paper. And then there's the "make something for the bake sale, arts and crafts fair, auction" where it's again women's labor, time and cash required to fill a hole left by the state.

FUCK THAT.

You will notice, in the link above, that no one is chastising dads for bringing store bought cookies. On the few occasions I've seen dads show up to these things, they are heaped with fawning praise and batted eyelashes for doing the same, or less, than the women have by the same women who've done the fucking work.

FUCK THAT

Now for the historical. You know why the nuclear family became the ideal instead of inter-generational families or matriarchal families or any of the other thousand versions of families that exist. Nuclear families leave the ladies free to volunteer their unpaid labor when the men are around to get paid. Period. Unpaid labor is required for a functional capitalist society (cause let's be honest- a good fucking giant portion of the labor that is paid isn't necessary to society. Making copies and mastering spreadsheets doesn't do a god damn thing for society. If it did, it would be paid at the same levels that daycare workers and CNAs make).

FUCK THAT

So when some deluded little shitface whines about mothers not making cookies from scratch to fill the state shaped hole left at her kid's elementary school- IT'S THE FUCKING PATRIARCHY using that deluded little shit face like a puppet.

And fuck her for letting it. No- I don't have to be nice about that. She gets all the little head pats she wants form the patriarchy all ready.

Just FYI- it ain't no joke that unpaid internships are becoming a giant drain on society. Once the kyriarchy has mastered getting half the population to do for free the necessary jobs to maintain society, what's to keep you white, middle class, middling boys from the same fate? Free labor is good for the bottom line, after all. This shit is all related and it all comes from the same rotting sewage dump of OPPRESSION! If any one of us and out labor is not considered worthwhile, then all of our labor can be considered worthwhile. No one is safe unless they have the money to buy their way out. If you're reading this- you don't have that kind of money and you never ever will.

Intuition, that nagging feeling that can't be exactly explained sometimes.

So there's this person, not a friend, kind of an acquaintance, that I have a vague icky feeling about. I can't exactly say why, it's just a vague icky feeling.

(Well maybe I could say.*)

Anyways, after 36 years on this planet, having read Gavin de Becker, and 10 years of therapy- I have learned to trust the nagging feeling. Even on little shit. And that's no small feet. The therapy was partially to learn how to not be hyper aware of everybody and all their motives for every fucking thing, a problem not uncommon in children with abusive parents. But the problem with that is that you start believing in sinister motives for stupid shit, when really that person who is currently vexing you probably was just run of the mill thoughtless or forgetful or whatever. So yes, the therapy helped me to judge when someone is just being human, and when someone is a shithead you should avoid.

So this nagging feeling, it's not Stranger Danger levels of nagging. It's more "Oh this is a person I really don't want to have to deal with often."

Because of the therapy, I am very specific about why I do or do not like things. I can tell you why sweet pickles are the food of the devil. It's not just that they taste bad (and they do- cloying gross sweet pickles) but that they fake you out. You're thinking "Oh pickles! Yay!" and then instead of salty-sour awesome your get mouth full of gross. Sweet pickles lie.

It has made more than one person mad at me for being so specific in my dislikes, btw. Apparently people are shocked that opinionated me has such clearly defined opinions on every fucking thing. Wevs, people. Get over it.

So when I encounter something new that I don't like, like a TV show or a book or a band or a person, I work really hard at figuring out the whys and hows of my dislike. Sometimes I can't explain it right away, but eventually it crystallizes. This happens a lot when watching TV shows, I'll have a vague sense of icky and then whammo! sexism or racism or some ism happens that makes it clear that I was feeling icky cause the people who made the show are assholes.

This is turning into a long, rambly post. Oops. But I haven't posted in a while and I don't have the time to do a "Fuck all y'all. I was right about Obama being a misogynist asshat- look at what he did with emergency contraception" post. (Oh look- there I just did it). Feel free to drop your thoughts about intuition and/or Obama's fuckery into comments.

*And yes, now that I've taken 5 minutes to think about it- I know exactly why this person annoys me. It's a certain kind of regressive femininity, which while I understand why it exists- I DO NOT LIKE. AT ALL.

I've always worked, and I've almost always been really fucking poor

Newt Gingrich, professional shitface and the architect of the Rethuglikan Revolution of 1995, wants to bring back child labor because....

"Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits for working and have nobody around them who works. So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday."

I had my first job at 12, cleaning timeshares for a friend's parents. It was part time, a few hours on the weekends, at minimum wage and under the table. It had to be. I don't think I was legal to work.

My next job, at 13, was busing tables over Winter Break at Squaw Valley Ski Resort. I got to see what sexual harassment was at that job from the 20 something fucknugget kitchen manager who liked to tell me how sexxxay I was and how I "totally didn't look 13".

My next job was over Summer Vacation at 14, again cleaning timeshares, but now fulltime. I made 5 bucks an hour was fucking stoked at the end of the summer when I had enough money to buy all my own school clothes going into high school and could buy whatever frivolous 50 dollar pair of jean I wanted.

By 17, I had graduated to entry-level office work. It was nice not cleaning up other people's food or used condoms.

Since I turned 18, I have never gone more than a few months without some kind of paid work, except when the kid was a newborn and we lived off student loans and Pell Grants for a brief period of time while I went to school. Even the last few years, I had the tiny monies I made writing this here blog when traditional work wasn't available.

I had a mother who worked from the time I was tiny until her health prevented it when I was a teenager.

And Kid, well I don't want the Kid to feel financially responsible for us, which is so easy to do when you're a super fucking poor kid with a job (cough, cough). So I haven't pushed him to get work. Now that we are semi-flush, he gets an allowance for doing the housework that I can't do because I am at work all day. He did some of the same stuff without an allowance before, but I think it's important he knows that housework is valuable. Though since we are, for now, semi-flush, if he wanted to seek outside employment I'd be okay with that.

So I don't know who the fuck Gingrich is talking about when he says poor kids have no habits of working and nobody around them that works. I'm thinking that he must live on another planet, one with a social safety net. Cause that ain't how the real world looks. And if I am not mistaken, (and I'm not) Gingrich was part of the whole Welfare reform bullshit. So even kids whose moms are on Welfare see their moms go off everyday to sit in a fucking government office and be lectured to by asswipes in exchange for cash and foodstamps that total less than half the poverty line.

But that's just the fucking facts. Let's look at what re-instituting child labor might mean for a country with an official unemployment rate of almost 10 percent (actual closer to 20). You would flood the market with even more people, willing to work for even lower wages. Those 18 to 30 year-olds with the highest rate of unemployment across the generations- fuck you. Businesses can now hire a 16 year old for lower wages and no benefits because that kid's parents are still legally required to provide them.

Yeah, that will make things better.

And we won't even talk about how much better our society will be when the illiteracy rate shoots back up because it's now ok to hire 5 year-olds to pick crops. They don't have to stoop so far to pick the tomatoes, you see they are short. And they aren't so good at organizing unions. They don't know who to tell when their boss is telling them their 13 year-old tits are hot.

But then, that whole "can't complain, can't sue, can't organize" thing would be feature and not a bug to a douchenoodle like Gingrich.

RQ Cooks: The Best Stuffing You've Ever Stuffed In Your Face

For a long time, I thought I was incapable of making stuffing that was yummy. I figured that since my drunk turkey was the bomb, if was ok if I was stuffing deficient. But the truth was, I was trying to make stuffing for vegans using shit stuffing mix from Trader Joe's (FYI NOTHING GOOD EVER COMES FROM TRADER JOE'S. DON'T BUY SHIT THERE).

Once I gave up on satisfying the vegans and using crap stuffing mix, the stuffing got drastically better. The rules of stuffing are this: keep it simple, don't cook it in the bird, and use tasty animal products.

What you need:
(This is to make a huge amount of stuffing. You can easily halve it to go with a chicken dinner or wevs)

2 packages of cornbread stuffing (Pepperidge Farm is good. This year I used some box of something else that was on sale. It was good too. )
celery
onions
parsley
sausage (I use 2 rolls of Jimmy Dean Sage sausage. But I have also made sausage from scratch using ground pork and that was so fucking good)
sage
poultry seasoning
thyme
salt pepper
chicken stock (Better Than Bullion is the awesomest. I can do stock from scratch but this way easier)
Butter (read the stuffing package to see how much you need)

In a large saucepan, brown the sausage over low heat so you can render out as much fat as possible.

When sausage is cooked, remove from pan with slotted spoon and set aside.

Add a wee bit of oil back into the pan to supplement the sausage grease that's all ready in there

Turn heat up.

Add diced onions and celery. I use a whole thing of celery, including the leaves and saving the end bit to make stock later. Also I use 3 large yellow onions. Cook till onions are translucent. Add spices. Lots of spices. Then add the sausage back in.

Meanwhile, in a great big fucking bowl, pour in stuffing mix. Add chopped parsley (I use 2 bunches of curly parsley, but flat leaf is fine too). Melt butter in microwave. Measure out stock according to package directions.

Put onion & sausage mix in bowl with stuffing. Mix. Then add your stock and melted butter. Mix again. Taste. Add spices if needed. You really can't go wrong with poultry seasoning the hell out of it. Really. And don't forget the pepper. That little bit of bite is important.

Loosely pack the whole mix into a giant lasagna pan. Bake, uncovered, in a 350 oven for 45 minutes.

And that is stuffing so good people will whisper "It's better than my....." It's also super fucking easy, so yay.