The first is from the brilliantly insightful Carolyn Edgar about ending long-term platonic friendships.
The second is about ending romantic relationships by my number three arch-nemesis, Ken Wheaton. Who I hate. Except when he writes awesome posts. Then, he’s Ken Wheaton who I REALLY HATE! Awesome blog posts ARE MY THING! MINE! Jerkwad.
Holy crap i can speak my post
Ok, it’s probably more than half, but turning 30 has not improved my math skills. What? THIR-TEE. The cake says so:
you wanna fight with the cake, go right ahead, but you’ll look pretty darn silly. Plus, that cake had backup:
Since turning 30, I am sleeping much more soundly though. Of course, now I’m afraid my body is just readying itself for death.
Hopefully that worry will start to keep me up again at night. This 9-10 hours of undisturbed sleep is kinda disturbing. I did have a fascinating historical dream the other day. I meant to google the facts to see if they were real or imagined.
I’m currently reading Oryx and Crake. And listening to the Wicked and Glee Volume 3 soundtracks. I’ve also seen 17 Again three times in the last 5 days. I am beyond spoiled.
Pearatty, Senor pearatty and Wygant got me Oryx and Crake because they are Canadian.
They also got me the ‘History of White People’ because they are white.
And they got me “Can’t Buy Me Love” because they are old. (Wygant added “I do not know why we got you this.”) Though, if they were really old, they would have gotten it for me on Beta max. Not that I know what that is. (Funny story, in Panama, Beta Max took off, much the way VHS did here in the States. So my octogenarian aunts always called the VCR “the Beta.” And even today they call DVDs “Beta tapes.” Weirdos.)
I hadn’t heard from Jake all day and so I texted him that I was reporting him to child protective services for forgetting his favorite child’s birthday. He replied that he had until midnight to deliver my gift. I said he didn’t have to get me anything, just shower me with nonstop praise and attention all day. He then replied he’d rather send cash. Which he promptly did. I should’ve asked for the Benz.
April and Ryan (Drobbski’s son) got me the current soundtracks of my life. There are dozens and dozens of Atlantic city poker players who HATE them.
Alceste and Dawn 2 got me Arrested Development, which made me sad again that it got canceled. Thanks guys. Hmph.
Someone got me 17 Again, and I put it in the Betamax immediately, there was no note though…but I suspect it was Angela. I know she somehow thinks we share Zac Efron. We do not. He is mine. All mine.
And someone got me a backgammon set…I suspect Jamie because now he has a backgammon blog and thinks he will be able to hustle me. Or maybe it was Fuelsellage as he lost a bet to me years ago, for which the prize was to be a backgammon game. Though, that would make it just about the worst birthday present from him ever.
Mary got me the dragon girl tattoo series, so now I can be all hip and cool (So long, I suppose, as I never say the title of it out loud!) OH but most hilariously, she wrapped the books in Miley Cyrus sticker covered paper! Did that sentence make sense? Do you get that the paper is covered with Miley stickers?
Here’s a picture:
Oh PI and Ugarles came to my mama’s house in ECB where that dang Sidney Star and his stupid brilliance and adorableness has pretty much stolen my mommy, upstaged me at my own party AND Jedi mind tricked me into thinking my ball was his ball!
#RUDE
Petitedov and the donut stealer got me a Yale blue cake from my favorite bakery and the It’s Always Sunny DVDs. Plus, they brought the elusive Pretty Numbers! Quell magnifique, nes pas? (Seriously, I don’t know what any of that means or where I pick up these things…)
Tito and Kaz very strangely just brought an empty pie plate. But there was a note inside that said I could redeem said plate for pie. I submitted the plate Monday and am waiting patiently for my pie. Actually, no it did come with pie, and at the end of the night, I refused to let anyone else have any and then I took the whole pie with me to Atlantic City and had keylime for every meal. Some people have a security blanket, I have a security pie. But then the internet told me I might have poisoned myself. Still? Totally worth it.
So that’s the birthday season so far. Birthday poker tournament is this weekend, I’m looking forward to it.
Huh, well, that’s kind of a flat ending.
How about this?
A couple of days ago, a community meeting exploded in tears and anger as opponents tried to shout down plans to turn a small building near Ground Zero into a mosque for lower Manhattan. I don’t know about the Jews in the area, but when I worked at Old LLP, I often worshipped at a Roman Catholic church about 7 blocks away, when stuck at the office on Sundays or Holy days of obligations. I mention that by way of showing that there are other places of worship in the area. That is as calm as I will be for the rest of this post.
Prejudice disgusts me.
Injustice angers me.
Now, I do not direct these feelings to those mosque opponents who quickly add “Not that I’m a racist who hates Muslims.” Those people are morons and I have nothing but pity for the stupid.
No, this post is directed at people who understand that they are being discriminatory, yet think it’s somehow appropriate since a horrible thing happened near there 9 years ago and the perpetrators were Muslim, so, um, you know, something something…er… no mosque for them.
There is no inch of this great country that is unspoiled with the spilled blood of one group or another. In 1991, less than a mile from “ground zero,” remnants of a mass grave was discovered where 15,000 dead African slaves were unceremoniously dumped in an unmarked pile by their no-doubt Christian owners. Yet, trading continues on Wall Street within walking distance. Shackled black youth are arraigned in the halls of the criminal courthouse a few blocks away. There is a memorial now. But life goes on, commerce goes on.
British soldiers held American revolutionaries in inhumane conditions in filthy ships just off the coast of Lower Manhattan during the war for independence. Yet, last week the Queen of England was allowed to dedicate a park to dead British citizens in the area. Where were your spirited protests then?
Ah, but perhaps time has healed those wounds? What about Pearl Harbor? Are no Japanese allowed there? Do we ban Toyotas and Acuras on those roads…you know, out of respect?
Or is this strictly a punishment reserved for terrorists? You commit an act of terrorism on American soil, no one who shares your religious beliefs will be allowed to worship near the site of your dastardly act? Poor poor Christians in Oklahoma City. Screwed you are! Ditto for Christians in Columbine, Colorado.
Oh, and lest we forget, twas a Christian what did the bad bad thing at the Atlanta Olympics! Pack up your crosses and be gone!
Maybe it’s only about criminals in New York? Then let us mete out punishment on all Jews for the Borough Park riot. Shut down those synagogues.
I have never seen a clearer case of when they came for x, I said nothing, so when they came for me there was no one left, in my entire life.
Are you people nuts? Have you ever even seen a history book? Do you have any flipping idea what America is supposed to be about?
Some crazy ass Saudis did a horrifying thing, so now this teenage Muslim girl, who was born and raised here and goes to Stuyvesant public school, has to take a subway an hour away to worship? Fuck outta here! Islam makes you “uncomfortable”? So, don’t go to the mosque! See? That’s one of the awesome things about my country, we don’t force the religious beliefs of others down anyone else’s throats.
What Khalid does in his mosque in downtown Manhattan aint gots nothing to do with what your precious Ashley is doing on Staten Island, which if Sarah Palin’s kid is any indication, is probably her hockey captain boyfriend.
“Oh, but they could be plotting something in there!”
Uh huh. They could. And those freaky Tea Partiers could be comparing Obama to Hitler and advocating overthrowing the government. And by could, I mean, are. Yet their stupid asses are allowed their freedom to congregate and protest and breed. BECAUSE THIS IS AMERICA AND THAT’S HOW WE DO!
If you don’t like it, there’s the door. I hear China might have a regime you’d like. NO MOSQUES THERE! Bon voyage! (Do they say Bon voyage in China. Meh. I don’t need to know, I’m staying here in the land of the free. But you should probably look that ish up before you go.)
You are an intellectually lazy, cowardly bunch. You do not take this vitriol against “Islam” to the people who probably deserve it, because they would cut your fucking head off and mail the video to Al Jazeera. No, you attack law abiding Americans because you KNOW they present no harm. At least if you would stand up to people who *actually* use Islam to warp the minds of young kids against America and hide behind the Koran to lob their chicken shit attacks on our citizens, you would be courageous, a hero even, instead of the shit stain on history that you are now who bullies a small powerless community of Americans. Americans that are hated by Osama bin Laden and Islamofascists JUST LIKE THE REST OF US.
If you really believe the funds for this mosque, come from terrorists or will be used to train terrorists or to raise funds for terrorists, turn over your evidence to the proper authorities. Trust the law enforcement authorities to do their job. We’re not about vigilantism.
Rick Lazio claims this is about making sure “we feel safe.” How about you stop cutting funds for police and fire houses, then? Increase the frequency of trains late at night, upgrade the city’s infrastructure so that whole sections of New York aren’t blacking out the minute the temperature reaches a 100 degrees. Oh no, that might be useful and take work; instead of the easy press that comes with scapegoating an “other.”
The sickest part of this whole disgusting incident, is that the voices of these vile ignorant sacks of garbage will be repeated by our enemies as proof that we hate Muslims. That America is an enemy to be fought. Look, these people paid their taxes, abided by their laws and this is how they were treated anyway:
Artist Barbara Paolucci thinks allowing the mosque to be built is like “handing someone a knife and saying slit my throat”; and Sam Nunberg, of the American Center for Law & Justice, compared it to “removing the sunken ship from Pearl Harbor to erect a memorial to the Japanese kamikazes killed in the attack”. Joseph Reichling of Ridgewood, Queens, declared, “Our forefathers are turning in their graves. Have we forgotten what happened on 9/11? We must never forget 9/11.” Putting the cherry on top, resident Sara Hartman said it was building “a monument to terrorism.”
If our forefathers are spinning in their graves, it’s at the actions of these contemptible jackasses. How do you not see yourselves in the faces of Berlin citizens who watched their Jewish neighbors taken away one by one and sat silently eating their bratwurst? People like you allow evil to thrive and injustice to spread. You are a menace to everything good. And if I had a billion dollars I would buy the mortgages on every one of your homes, foreclose, raze it to the ground and build a Shake Shack on the land. You useless ball of cow dung, again, Lazio, specifically you.
So to the young Muslim woman who pleaded for calm at that board meeting yesterday and very poignantly said “you don’t understand what Islam is about. Maybe you would, if there was a mosque here you would.” That is unnecessary. I don’t need to visit a mosque or find out about Islam. My people do this whole magic thing every week so we can drink the blood of God, I’m in no position to judge or evaluate what goes on in any other houses of worship.
It’s enough that I understand America.
That I understand our constitution and the intent of the men who drafted it. Religious intolerance, bigotry and human degradation are for small men who hide in caves while sending children to blow themselves up in public markets. And petty little men who have won the Republican nomination for Governor of New York.
Grief is a powerful thing, and why it is perhaps best done in private out of the public eye. I’m sure the mothers of dead firemen or the wives of murdered workers don’t mean to keep company with bigots and hate mongers, but sadly, that is where their position on this mosque puts them. This is no way to honor the memory of people who were killed because of religious zealotry.
No one knows the last thoughts of those who died that day, but I bet there was a lot of prayer. Adding another place where people go to pray, especially in the shadow of those fallen towers should not be seen as anything other than a blessing.
I dunno what this poem means, but it’s called “Birthday Poem,” and it’s my birthday season. And it has my blogonym in the first line, so congratulations Ted Kooser…whoever you are.
A Birthday Poem
by Ted Kooser
Just past dawn, the sun stands
with its heavy red head
in a black stanchion of trees,
waiting for someone to come
with his bucket
for the foamy white light,
and then a long day in the pasture.
I too spend my days grazing,
feasting on every green moment
till darkness calls,
and with the others
I walk away into the night,
swinging the little tin bell
of my name.
“Can I die from eating keylime pie that has been unrefrigerated for two days?”
No one answered me on twitter, but I really need an answer. So…baby octopuses….good pet/bad pet? I need a foolproof decision making system and Paul the Octopus has sold me on celaphod power!
UPDATE: Kearns keeps saying he’s going to EAT my octopus with salt! And then he RUBS his belly!! #RUDE
THEY SELL VUVUZUELAS ON AMAZON.COM!! LIKE WHERE I COULD BUY THEM!
WHERE I COULD BUY THEM AND BRING THEM ON A PLANE TO A CERTAIN DECEMBER GATHERING.
Oh, it’s ON. ON LIKE DONKEY KONG!
I DARE ANYONE TO KNOCK ME OUT! DAARRRREEEEEEEEEEEEE.
