i’m not very aware of All Things Shopping (i’m really not aware of many things, actually; my oceans of ignorance are vast and uncharted, but let’s leave the mapping of my kingdoms of ignorance for another ramble, shall we?), but i really never knew that shopping the day after thanksgiving was A Thing that people in this country did; my family never spoke of it anyway (and the ocean of subject matter of which my family never spoke is also vast & uncharted, but again we’ll save that for another time).

so when i first heard of this shopping-the-day-after-thanksgiving thing a few years ago–seeing front page photographs of people camped out at 4 in the morning in front of a wal-mart, waiting for the doors to open; the images of frenzied shoppers mobbing the gates, clawing at the hot new item (elmo? the newest version of playstation? i dunno), the remains of their shared humanity abandoned & forgotten in the parking lot–i did experience a level of shock. what the fuck? shopping season? people camp out over night in parking lots to get a discount on a doll? how many dolls do you have to buy to possibly make that experience worth it? and why do you want to buy the doll that every other kid in the country apparently is going to have, anyway? doesn’t originality count for anything anymore?

but then i rebuked myself for criticizing, upon realizing that (1) i’m not only a dick who rarely buys gifts for my closest friends and dear sisters, but (2) i’m a dick with no family to speak of outside of parents and sisters and grandparents, and i don’t have to purchase hella obligatory gifts for lots of little ones. so i guess a 40% discount is kind of important if you’ve got many crying little ones to consider.

but then, after thoroughly self-rebuking for judging the behavior of those who find themselves in situations starkly different from mine , i returned to my initial reaction of, “what the fuck?”

christ, someone get these kids a deck of playing cards or a set of colored pens or a cardboard box (the acute sense of disappointment experienced upon receiving such a christmas gift will build hella character), and let TMX elmo find his way into some soulless home elsewhere.

and there’s something profoundly disturbing about considering the value of TMX elmo when the “shoppers mob malls for holiday discounts” headline shares the front page of the NYT with headlines announcing that this month has been the bloodiest in Iraq since 2003. and today, it’s finally clear to more and more americans (as it’s been to most of the rest of the world for some time now) that all the violence in Iraq is actually part of what’s generally called a civil war.

RANDOM BLOG INTRUDER: oh shit, no she didn’t; she just had to go there. and we were all having such a good time hating on American shoppers and laughing at the absurdity of TMX elmo. what a downer.

ME: i wasn’t trying to be an upper, Random Blog Intruder. i apologize for nothing.

RANDOM BLOG INTRUDER: well you should; this site’s supposed to be about comedy, asshole. you’ve just gone and ruined it.

ME: well some of the most hilarious comedy comes from some of the most agonizing bits of reality; deal with it.

RANDOM BLOG INTRUDER: whatever. i’m gonna go start my OWN website somewhere else, where i’ll blog about DICK JOKES and CHICKS, putting my THINLY-VEILED MISOGYNY & HOMOPHOBIA to good use.

ME: fine, you go do that.

RANDOM BLOG INTRUDER: do you really want to leave it on this note?

ME: of course not. how about we leave it on the second, less commonly known, definition of the word “paraphernalia”?

RANDOM BLOG INTRUDER: “paraphernalia”? you mean, the noun which means equipment, apparatus, or furnishing used in or necessary for a particular activity, as in the example a skier’s paraphernalia?

quite. the second definition is a married woman’s personal property exclusive of her dowry, according to common law. or, put another way, the personal articles, apart from dower, reserved by law to a married woman.

RANDOM BLOG INTRUDER: really? they let women own personal property outside of her dowry?

apparently.

RANDOM BLOG INTRUDER: weird.

isn’t it?

holy shit:

from today’s NYT

Medicaid Wants Citizenship Proof for Infant Care

i’m one of the very last people to ever say living newborns are more important than still-living people born thirty or forty or fifty years ago (and they’re not), but holy god, requiring proof of u.s. citizenship before helping out a less-than-a-year-old baby? again, it’s not that it’s NOT appalling for an adult to be denied health care for the same reasons, but i’m no longer surprised by the sick fucks who think claiming a certain nationality should be a prerequisite to receiving treatment. but babies? these sick fucks LOOOOOOVE talking about saving babies, and how it’s not the babies’ fault, and how we should protect the friggin babies. they’re trying to protect fetuses whose consciousnesses haven’t even winked into being (okay, that’s just by some accounts, but let’s leave that for the parenthetical for now), and they do NOT want to protect warm live out-of-the-womb little ones? what’s the Right coming to?

in some ways, though, it’s so appalling that it might send a few more people running off in the opposite direction.

for reference, the baby documentation requirements for receiving health care went into effect in july this year (first i’ve heard of it, but granted, i’m hellllsa ign’int) as part of the Deficit Reduction Act, signed by (surprise surprise) bush in february. although this whitehouse.gov press release says it was signed in 2005.
ahhh. it’s so wonderfully fucked it’s gonna inspire me to write a new collection of dead baby jokes.

because there’s nothing funnier than a dead baby, eh? except mebbe a pile of dead babies. and when those babies are undocumented? priceless, priceless…

can’t wait for that remark to be taken out of context.

RBI: can’t be taken out of context if no one’s reading it but the robots, son.

WAAC: good point.

while waiting for my computer to reboot i picked up a four-day-old NYT magazine article about what the author (noah feldman) calls the second nuclear age…i intended to read it on sunday, but good intentions, path to hell, pavings, etc.

i read the word “deadliness” (as in “tinkering to increase deadliness” in the context of suicide bombers) but i read it first as “deadlines” with an extra ’s’ and enjoyed a sad, isolated moment of feeling superior to the NYT for failing to spot & correct such an obvious typo. i’m working on a grant application right now, so i suppose i’ve got deadlines on the brain.

still, for some reason, i’ve never made the connection between deadlines and deadliness–one ’s’ away from one another & one number of syllables away from each other. so i’ve never considered the word “deadlines” as something akin to “deadliness” in terms of substance. but now the word “deadline” rings much differently: dead lines. yeah, yeah, i know it’s obvious: fuck you. i’m slow in general. congratulations on being better than me.
now, going on an etymological hunt, although i really don’t have the time to spare and should be finishing this muthuhfekkin grant, i find the rather uninteresting explanation of the term in its current understanding of “time limit” being developed in 1920 as american newspaper jargon, with additional speculation regarding the use of the term “dead-line” “to mean the “do-not-cross” line in Civil War prisons: Seventeen feet from the inner stockade was the ‘dead-line,’ over which no man could pass and live. [Lossing, 1868].” oh, and that’s 1864.

civil war prisons, north or south?

turns out the south (big surprise; no offense, South, except for those of you out there who might be edified by being offended); a much more helpful description (although i find the back and forth dynamic between potatsy & lewis jop to be possibly more interesting) describes the term coming from a notorious confederate prison camp during the civil war.

and finally, a page devoted to “military humor”–and suddenly i tire of my etymological hunt. more because i know i need to return to the grant thing.

but, now that military, deadlines, deadliness are all on the brain (oh, a suicide bomber fact that is of interest, and very telling in terms of how reality’s perceived via the media in the US, etc etc: from that NYC article, speaking of suicide bombing:

Overall, the trend is definitively in the direction of Muslim-on-Muslim violence. By a conservative accounting, more than three times as many Iraqis have been killed by suicide bombings in the last 3 years as have Israelis in the last 10.

wait, this is a parenthetical remark. allow me to close the parentheses and move on).

i’m working on a play right now that’s ostensibly about the repercussions of the vietnam war as considered in the context of the development anesd dedication of the vietnam veterans memorial, but of course raises questions about wars, current world situation, and such. it previews tonight and opens tomorrow, november 3. “walls,” written by jeannie barroga, directed by wilma bonet, produced by asian american theater company. buriel clay theater. stellar cast & crew, and all that…you can go to AATC’s website to get tickets & information and such.

okay, back to grantwriting.