Happy Anniversary to Us!

Thirty-eight years. It hardly seems possible... But it is so, and so today I wear the rings he gave me, and read the cherishing words he gave me, and fill the house with peonies, and just...am with him.


Now, don't you think we didn't
Now, don't you doubt I did
I'll take that kiss now, Mrs.
One for the road"

--Jim Morrison, "The Duke of Sunset & The Duchess of Dawn"

I love you, Jim...

Clash of Symbols

As I watch, with varying degrees of horror, trepidation and grim amusement, the presidential campaign unfold like an endless dingy gray carpet of slog and soulless boredom, I have noticed a thing.

American flag lapel pins. Indeed, I've started to keep a running tally: who wears them, who does not. They are not, of course, anywhere NEAR as ubiquitous as they were in the days after 9/11, and this, I think, is a very good thing.

Frankly, I regard the displaying of the American flag in such a manner as a cheap, easy and cynical maneuver, pandering to the stupidest and dullest and most reflexively unthinking souls among us, and I'm glad that Senator Obama hasn't caved in to it. I'm watching Meet the Press just now, and I see that Senator Joe Biden (D, DE) wears one and Senator Lindsey Graham (R, SC) does not. Interesting. I can't remember if Hillary wore one? Perhaps it was a fancy one, more on the order of a jewel than a little pin, but I don't recall. Even Pat Buchanan and John McCain have given it up, though Mayor Bloomberg, I believe, still wears one.

But I don't really care for the public display of any sort of allegiance, be it political or religious. I've never worn any kind of Pagan symbol on a regular public basis, and although I was given a small gold cross at a young age, I only wore it when my parents made me.

I carry a few things with me, in my wallet, protective things: a silver Viking traveller's medal, engraved with a picture of a dragon ship under sail and oar on the front and a runic prayer that Frigg spoke to Odin before he left on journeys on the back; some small pictures of deities (Pele, Yemaya, Maeve, the Seven African Powers); a four-leaf clover found on the campus of my alma mater when I went back for a visit a few years ago; a tiny terracotta tablet of Ganesh; an ancient coin of Dionysus; silver relic medals of St. Michael the Archangel and St. Joan of Arc (the only saints I can stand); a silver Mizpah coin (the other half is with Jim); couple of prayer cards from my father's and grandmother's funerals.

But I wouldn't impose the sight of these things on the public. (Though I do, when I fly, wear the Viking pendant against my skin. I feel that anything is justified whenever there looms the possibility of horrible flaming sudden death. Even Oliver Stone crosses himself before a flight.) I just don't think my beliefs are anyone else's business, and I don't like to see other people's hanging out there being imposed on everyone else.

I don't even care for message T-shirts, actually. And people who wear those idiot shirts ("I'm with Stupid --->", and worse) should be publicly stripped and flogged.

The only thing I will ungrudgingly allow to be worn on suit lapels is the rosette of the Legion d'Honneur. But I don't see any of these turkeys getting THAT anytime soon.

Happy Solstice!

One of the many great things about New York is that the street grid does not run true east and west, even though the street names say so. Instead, they run more northwest and southeast.

Which means that on the day of the summer solstice, the sun sets directly into the Hudson River at the western terminus of every street in Manhattan. Tonight, I was outside to watch: a blaze of gold from higher than the buildings, like a great flame, right down to street level, the sun so bright you couldn't look directly at it. Summer is here...and from this sunset on, every day, the sun will work its way back from its northernmost setting. So, although the summer begins, the winter comes with it.

And that makes me happy.

Like A Virgin...NOT

I see where it has become a big and lucrative business in Europe, apparently, to reconstruct the hymens of stupid Muslim women who are about to marry stupid Muslim men to whom physical proof of virginity is a Big Honking Deal. The women had a normal, healthy sex life pre-marriage, and now that they find themselves unable to prove their "purity" on their wedding night (by blood on the sheets of the consummational bed, how unbelievably primitive is THAT), they're all het up. (And women have been known to cut a toenail, or even bring a little vial of blood to the honeymoon chamber, just so they can satisfy custom...though the men, and the mothers-in-law, are on to that little trick...)

So they decide instead to deceive their intended bridegrooms by scampering off to get a virginoplasty, in which cooperative plastic surgeons do a little snip-snip, and hey presto! they've got hymens again.

I note this insanity in conjunction with a court case in France last week, where a Muslim couple, just wed, went upstairs from the reception to do the defloration bit (he was then expected, and expecting, to show the bloody sheets in front of everyone), and the husband found out, to his chagrin, she was no maiden bride. He then, get this, went back downstairs and ANNOUNCED THIS PUBLICLY at the reception, and headed straight to court for an annulment.

Which he actually got. On the grounds of FRAUD. Yes, that's right, she represented herself as a virgin when she wasn't, knowing that this was crucial to her idiot betrothed. So he felt cheated and lied to and sued for having been defrauded.

And, I guess, he was. Anyway, big huge deal in France, with the usual suspects lining up on both sides of the issue.

I mean, people! Get a grip! This is the 21st century, not the 1st or the 7th or the 15th. What the HELL difference does a tiny scrap of flesh make? If men had hymens, would we be even discussing this stupendously stupid matter? I don't think so!

Okay, if virginity is important to both parties, then yes, they should BOTH be virginal. But lying when you know you're not and it's important to your husband that you are, or going in for surgery to mask the fact that you've done the deed...no. That's just plain wrong.

It just astounds me that it matters at all anymore to anyone. Virginity in and of itself is pointless and useless. It's no loss but a gain, the first sexual experience.
This is just men...Muslims most notably, because they're primitive tent-heads who still think of women as chattel (YES, I SAID it, I don't CARE!!!), but other men too...using this alleged purity issue as yet another means of controlling women's sexuality. Or maybe it's just terror of suffering by comparison to her previous lover(s): "Oh dear, she already got it on with some stallion and now I'm going to look like a poodle prick 'cause I'm not big/wide/long-lasting enough for her. Oh poor me. I'd better just marry some virgin who doesn't know any better and won't ever miss what she never had."

Men.

And then there's the absolutely creeeeepy phenomenon of father-daughter "Purity Balls", where the little girl gets all tricked out like a ho and slow-dances with her daddy at these Christian-sponsored functions and he gives her a ring and promises to "cover his daughter" from any possible sexual contact till he sells her off to her husband.

Noting the fact that "cover" is a verb used in horse and cattle breeding, where the male "covers" the female, and seeing its use in such a context as Purity Balls truly makes my skin crawl, I'm asking where are the Purity Balls for mothers and sons, where mom dances with her tuxedo'd adolescent lad and makes him promise not to stick it in anyone before marriage? Where indeed!

I'm no fan of promiscuity or casual sex, and I think that society is far too sexualized these days for anyone's good. But this kind of thing doesn't help. Women lying about their "purity": hey, girls, just because you bought yourself a new cherry doesn't make your history go away. And guys, sleeping with as many virgins as you can get your hands on and then insisting your bride must be pure and untouched as the new-fallen snow? STUPID.

Maybe evolution will sort this out by giving men, too, a hymen to prove their virginity: I envision some sort of frill or ruff encircling the peccant part. Me, I wouldn't fuck a virgin on a bet. And, Too Much Information though it may be, I never have.

Men should just get the hell over it. Or maybe evolution will sort it out another way, and baby girls of the future will be born, um, natally perforate. That might solve a lot of problems.

Oh, I Run from Hillabama With My Banjo on My Knee...

There's an interesting piece in the NYTimes by Judith Warner, about how Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was, basically, kicked in the slats during the course of this disgraceful campaign just for being a woman.

http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/woman-in-charge-women-who-charge/?em&ex=1212897600&en=3149a226e69054e9&ei=5087%0A

People who wouldn't dream of mocking Senator Obama for his color think nothing of mocking Senator Clinton for her femaleness. Just take any piece of "humor" tossed Hillary's way over the past year by adolescent pissants like Letterman or the Fox toxic waste dumps, change "woman" to "black," and listen for the myriad hissing of indrawn breaths round the world.

There are still millions of people who think that a woman must be twice as good as a man before they'll grudgingly allow her to achieve half as much. And people who think that black people are OWED something like, oh, you know, the presidency, just because of the color of their skin.

Well, guess what, they're ALL wrong: the men (and, sadly, many women) who listen to Hillary Clinton and titteringly think about vaginae dentatae and castrating bitches, and the no-neck rednecks of both genders who look at Barack Obama and sullenly think about forty acres and a mule.

It's still okay to trash women. Pretty much every man alive does it, or has done it. It's okay to trash black people too, at least in some circles of this racist midden of a country, but it's now a bit LESS okay. Gosh, what progress we've made. We should be very proud.

It's NOT okay, however, to think that something as big and serious as a presidential nomination should be automatically given to Obama just BECAUSE he's black, or to Hillary just BECAUSE she's a woman. Which is what the swooners on both sides seem to think.

Fellow Amerikans who would have a huge problem savaging Obama for his weird ears or goofy gait or, indeed, pleasant color (because that would be RACIST) have NO problem savaging Hillary for her hair or her pantsuits (horrible, yes, I admit) or her double-X chromosomes. Racism, no, or at least not so much as it used to be. Sexism, hey, party time!

(Gosh, ARE those chromosomes double-X? You know, I can never remember. Oh, right, must be because I'm a WOMAN! And only have an IQ of 151! And Hillary's is 125! Wow, I feel so...butch.) [rolls eyes so hard she sees the back inside of her skull]

I look at Barack Obama and see no "there" there. No man of judgment or statesmanship, no seasoned politician (which doesn't ALWAYS have to mean hack or greedhound or lying sack of crap), but Obama the Elflord, drifting around, talking golden oratory to his groupies, having nothing to back up the verbal currency but egotistically believing his own hype (Jim could tell him a thing or two about that...), seeing himself as King.

The Lion King, not Dr. King...

I'm no huge Hillarite, either, y'understand. She's lied, she's backtracked, she's backstabbed, and she comes with the Big Dick wrapped around her neck like an Arkansas albatross. (And you can't tell me he didn't sabotage her deliberately on more than one occasion...out of jealousy or just spite that she caught him with his pants down and now he can pay her back...)

But she knows the wicked game, and she plays it well. Except, of course, during the campaign, when she listened to idiot advisors and made bad choices and shot herself in the foot so hard and so often that no one should be surprised she limped to the finish the way she did. Still...

Barack's no Sportin' Life, but he's no Malcolm X either. I am reminded of nothing so much as Woodstock, where easily led idiots wanted so badly to feel themselves a part of something Big and Important that they autohyped themselves into it.

Well, kids, Woodstock wasn't all that, and neither is Obama.

I would be thrilled to the core of my yellow-dog Democrat heart if the administration of President Obama turns out to be not the second term of President Jimmy Carter but the first term of President Robert F. Kennedy (upon whom be the peace of the gods, this his fortieth year to Valhalla...). I do not expect to see it, but if it so comes to pass, I will be the first one to admit it.

Therefore, come November, I will hold my nose (and my double-X's), suspend judgment and the shriekings of 151 IQ points alike, and vote for Barack Obama and whomever he finagles into sharing the ticket.

Because the administration of President McCain must simply NEVER be allowed to happen.

But I will do it as a triumphant Socrates self-awarely drinking the hemlock, not as a defeated Hillarite resignedly drinking the Kool-Aid.

I believe with all my heart and soul that a woman can, should and must be president. Likewise that a black person can, should and must be president. I also believe that neither of these two prize pseuds deserves the job. But the alternative is far, far nastier.

So, come on, everybody, sing out! "Hillabama! Oh don't you cry for us!/ Just get out there and throw McCain/ Right off that Freedom Bus!"

And may we all live to see it.