live free, consume and die

Thanksgiving is upon us once more. When I came to this country, I had no concept of what this holiday was all about; even though I had learned, as much as one learns in a high school American History class, about  Pilgrims and Indians (we still called them Indians then) sharing the colony’s first successful harvest on American soil before the white man killed and/or displaced all the Native Americans.... I digress.

As I said, I grew up with the story about Pilgrims and Indians, but I had no idea what modern day Thanksgiving was all about.  I started learning as a college student from my friends and their families; for it was with them that I would spend this most American of holidays.  I remember piling up with friends into Lisa’s old Dodge Dart and heading for the Mountains of West Virginia where her dad was a Park Ranger.  We would spend the holiday having fun hiking and rafting, reading around the fire, and participating in that age old Thanksgiving activity: eating, like pigs, the great food that her mother cooked.  There were also the trips by Greyhound bus (remember buses?  those big vehicles that actually took more than one person from point A to point B) to Jen’s house in Arlington, where the holiday had a more urban feel. I did not grow up with a family around me, just two loving, if weird, parents who did not celebrate any of the holidays that marked the Brazilian calendar into which I was born; so it was with joy that I would go off to spend time with these families that were not mine, but that took me in as if I were theirs. In college, I learned to love Thanksgiving. 

I left college, and although I still love the holiday, it now exists in a very different context from the heady carefree days of yesteryear. Since then, I have learned about Black Friday and how Thanksgiving functions commercially. After all, who would we be, in these modern times, had we not transformed a nice abstract concept about sharing and family into a portal for a season of shopping. A season in which merchants make up most of their revenue for the year and find out whether they will end up in the black.  And I learned this the hard way, by innocently venturing out to buy something one such Friday, only to find out that one does not shop on the Friday after Thanksgiving; one actually takes one’s life in hand to fight throngs of insane consumers who wake up at dawn to wait for shops to open in order to have quick access to imagined bargains.

The pairing of good will and sharing with commercial profit has always felt a little incongruous to me; but it was two years ago that this perceived inconsistency of the season took one more bizarre turn.  It was then that, in their infinite wisdom, the legislators of the great State of South Carolina, to the bafflement of many and the ironic mirth of some, upped the ante on the insanity that is Black Friday and started calling it 2nd Amendment Tax Free Holiday.  In South Carolina, on the Friday and Saturday after the Thursday of Thanksgiving in which South Carolinians just spent a holiday eating, sharing, and watching football with their family and friends, they can now go out and buy guns together without having to pay taxes on them (-;  I can’t write this down without smiling...  Apparently boosting gun sales without adding any revenue to the state's coffers to pay for such things as, ohhh, let's say education, seems like a good idea to our legislators during this season of "love and good will" that extends from Thanksgiving to Christmas...

Yes, I still love Thanksgiving... proof positive of the persistence of memory...

  

one small decontextualized quote from a damn nice piece of writing

...Popular culture reminds us that we have things in common and that we are mostly okay.  High culture reminds us that we are alone, not that virtuous and bound to die... Each bears its burden of truth.

-Dave Hickey
Revision Number Twelve: Blockbusters

Art In America, November '09

Words with no meaning: We float unmoored

I quote from a radio report:

"(along the Great Wall of China) President Obama strolled alone for the photographers."

What the hell does that mean?!

One more letter to President Obama- for all the fucking good it does

Dear President Obama,

I can’t express how disappointed I am at what, after a ridiculous uni-partisan process, might come to pass as health-care reform.  It might be “bash insurance companies reform”; but it most certainly is not healthcare reform.

What your leaderless prodding of the congress has accomplished amounts to growing an already broken system in the same broken direction.  This will not help alleviate our problems; it will only exacerbate them.  You people have reformed nothing.  All you’ve done is squeeze one part of the system.  You eek out coverage for a few more people without curtailing any of the costs of healthcare, which was part of your initial promise.  This plan will increase costs in one form or another; and regardless of the nice rosy numbers the House put forth to try and bamboozle us into thinking that this is a good plan, your so-called reform will only serve to grow our already astronomically large federal deficit. 

Medicare is going and will go broke; and because of your lack of true leadership on this matter, you have allowed an uncreative thieving congress to come up with an even bigger Medicare-type system as a solution.  In what universe does this make fiscal sense to you?!  Oh yeah, in a universe where lawmakers do not have to live by the same rules and with the same system of care as those of us for whom they make laws.

The problem with the system starts with having employer mandated healthcare.  Once you start with that, all kinds of obscure deal making between employers and insurance companies, insurance companies and medical offices, medical offices and hospital systems, hospital systems and insurance companies get done that make it impossible for consumers to rationally price any procedure or service in order to chose wisely and cost effectively.  Adding another obscure player, such as a government option, only makes the whole system more obscure and more costly.  This is in no way a competitive solution for an already uncompetitive system.  And oh, let’s not forget the drug companies who make deals with whole countries.  Countries for whom we subsidize drugs because, on the surface, we pay lip service to “the free market”, but what we really do is allow drug companies to lobby our lawmakers to keep this incredibly inequitable system just like it is. The system is the problem, and not necessarily the players.  Your so-called reform just squeezes one player; it shifts costs and fixes absolutely nothing.

A friend of mine used to say that when it came to voting, you just had to hold your nose and vote Republican; though that only worked when the Republicans actually demonstrate fiscal restraint. But 8 years of Bush, 4 of which were with a Republican congress, have taught us that, these days, people in office care only about redistributing taxpayer money into the hands of anybody who will help them stay in power.  And my Dear President, very rarely does this coincide with the good of the country.  These days, going anywhere near a voting booth requires that I hold my nose regardless of what “lever” I pull with my other hand.

Seriously disappointed, and typing with one hand only,

Katya Cohen

addendum: from the Ranting Economist: this from someone in the know...  yep, still bending over

by extension

If a man named Nidal Malik Hasan were to enter a room anywhere else in the world and open fire on innocent people, the media would call him an Islamic terrorist.  But because he did it on American soil, he earns the characterization of having a dissociative disorder.  By that logic then, are we allowed to characterize Islamic Fundamentalism as one big motherfucking dissociative disorder as well?

partial quote of the day

...the connective apparatus between the distance of sight and the proximity of taste...

AF November 2009 p.175     

The Jehovah Witnesses came again today

Just as they did in summer, The Jehovah's Witnesses came to my door again today.  And just as in summer, I did spend time listening before breaking it to them that I was not interested in what they were selling.  It seems that the only salespeople I am able to resist are those selling religion; but that is another story...

Based on, albeit a statistically insignificant sample of only two data points, I have concluded that the most beautiful black women in the world belong to that church.  In summer, it was a most beautiful pair consisting of grandmother and granddaughter who came to offer me salvation. While today my doorbell was rung by a couple consisting of a not so pretty red-haired woman together with a most gorgeous and sexy Haitian woman.  Not only was this woman beautiful, she was passionate; and her passion made her even more beautiful as she wove the insane logic of the bible together with present day events. And as I once again tired of the tedious need that humans have to weave faith into things, part of me let her go on telling me about God just so I could keep looking at her; no doubt, one more sin added to my collection of small sins.

When I decided I needed to get back to work, I interrupted The Beautiful Woman by saying that I really did appreciate them coming to see me and tell me about their faith.  I told them that I was sincerely happy for them in their reading of The Book; but that I was not going to start reading the bible because I am a non-believer.   I never know what is more offensive to Christians; whether it is telling them that I am an atheist and refuse to read their bible, or telling them I am a Jew and refuse to do it; either one usually puts an end to the conversation.

This time I kept the "jewish thing" out of it and went with the "unbeliever thing".  But This Beautiful Believer was not so easily deterred.  She looked at me, in disbelief, and asked me how and when "it" had happened.  I answered, truthfully, that at the age of eleven I decided there was no god.  She asked me what I thought had made me think that way....  "It came to me," I said.  She asked, "But what do you think caused it."  I did not want to get into a big discussion on how my young mind became perfectly comfortable with the idea that primal causes were not necessary, so using bible logic I answered, tongue in cheek, "God (?)."   We went on to talk about morality.

I did need to get back to work and again thanked them for their time. And seeing that she was not going to convince me to read the bible, The Beautiful Woman gave me the pictured pamphlet above on the evils, some of which I agree with, of technology.  We parted friends; and I sat back here to work. ...And then the Siren Song of Evil Technology beaconed me to waste more time by writing this blog.  It is a truly beautiful day out there; and there is a possibility, albeit slim, that those women are spending it more productively than I  (-;

One more letter to ATC...

Zoe Chase titles her piece on your 11/4/09 show “Are We Listening In On Rihanna And Chris Brown?”  And speaking as a probable representative of your demographic: a subscriber, 49, and an intellectual snob, the answer is a resounding “NO”. 

 

This is the second time you’ve wasted air time on this story, please leave it for the tabloids to follow and instead why don’t you waste my time with something like dead air instead.

 

Seriously and Sincerely,

Katya Cohen

 

Doug Hoffman: Anti-gay, Pro-life and...

...LOSER!!!!!!

woohoo!

lemme get this straight...

...Obama calls to congratulate Karzai  for "winning" a run-off election that did not take place since his opponent, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, pulled out of the race saying that there was no point in him running in what was certainly going to be as fraudulent an election as the one that prompted this one in the first place (!!!!)

Couldn't "the leader of the fucking free world" have at least waited a few days to call, maybe make the man sweat a little... ...Afghanistan will surely eventually shake this latest empire off itself as it has done with all those that have tried to tame it in the past; and, as usual, it will not do this without inflicting much pain.  Organize this Mister Community Organizer;  I thought you had it all figured out when you were running for president....