Archive | March, 2013

An Open Letter to my Student Loan Provider

28 Mar

Dear Nelnet, (Or, as I affectionately call you, Numbnut),

I would like to begin this letter to you, Numbnut, by pointing out that I have in fact been making regular payments on my student loans despite the fact that I have yet to go into repayment — well, until last week and without proper warning.  I have been expecting some sort of appreciation, some sort of lowering of my monthly bill that at this point must be paid starting on January 1, 2014.  But do I get any recognition?  Any significant changes to my AutoPay amount?  No.  I get pointless and angering emails.  Which is why I am writing to you today.

Yesterday I received an email from you entitled “Questions about paying your student loans? We can help.”  It seemed promising.  I opened the email, hoping against hope for the message to reveal something like “Out of millions of indebted students in the United States, Warren Buffet has chosen you to be the recipient of a grant that will pay your loans off in full and allow you to travel the globe for the foreseeable future.”  In lieu of that news, I would have taken some advice on ways to scam the system and somehow lower my 6.8% interest rate or some tips on working my loan payments into my monthly budget without skimping on the things I love (books! wine! overpriced clothes from Made Well!).  But no.  What I got was a few phone numbers and the following statement of email intent:

“We wanted to check in to ensure you are having the best student loan experience possible.”

Well, since you are “checking in,” let me be honest with you.  No, Numbnut, I am not having the best student loan experience possible.  You know what would make it better?  The aforementioned note about Warren Buffet.  Or perhaps having someone explain to me why it is that I am paying 6.8% on the cost of borrowing money to go back to school (which you all said we should do because the job market was/is terrible and this will better prepare us for the future meanwhile the future is here and, um, where’s your half of the agreement?) while the interest rate on my savings account is at something like .7% AKA nothing.  Maybe you could tell me why I took money out with CitiGroup, had it bought up by the government, and then somehow had it sold to you, Numbnut, without my approval or consent.  Maybe rather than taking on systemic issues, you can explain to me why, although the people I talk to at your call center are unbelievably friendly, they have absolutely no idea what they are doing.  When I called last week to inquire as to why my interest payment, which had been hovering around $35-$45 every two weeks or so suddenly shot up to $150 after a mere 10 days I was put on hold for at least 5 minutes — a cost I was paying because you are not toll free — at which point the very friendly, though ill-informed, call center guy hemmed and hawed through an explanation that basically amounted to “I have no idea.”    Maybe you could use the exorbitant interest rates being paid by me and my co-students, the interest rates you are presumably making money on, and actually teach your call center people how to do their jobs.  It doesn’t help that they are available 24/7 if they are completely ignorant, like the rest of us, about what you do and how it works.

I could keep going, Numbnut, but I think you get the point.  I think you and your cohorts are hustlers taking advantage of millions of people who wanted to propel themselves forward by getting their BA, BFA, MA, MFA, PhD, JD, MD, DVM and whatever other combinations of letters people might want to acquire.  I think this whole system is going to blow up in your face and mine when countless students default on their ballooning student loan debts.  I think when that happens people are going to bemoan the fact that we are awash in bankrupted lawyers and doctors and librarians when what we really need are people with “real skills.”  Honestly, I think this whole thing is a racket that will only serve to increase income inequality and lower the quality of life, not only for people who can’t find jobs but for those that can — with student loan debt amounting into the hundreds of thousands for some people, job choices becomes less contingent on what you believe and more contingent on your ability to pay off your monthly loan bills.

So, no, I am not content.  I will grumble every single time I make a payment, as I have been doing for the past year, because I am fully aware that I am being hoodwinked and that there is nothing I can do about it.  So don’t insult my intelligence.  This system is rigged in your favor and you will benefit for as long as it continues to function.  Do your thing.  But don’t act like you give a shit about my “experience.”  All you care about is the money.  That’s called capitalism.  You can expect your next payment at the beginning of the month.

Sincerely,

Rebekah

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Yes, Skeevy Cycler, That was Me who Called you an Asshole in the Park Today

25 Mar

So there I was blissfully* running during the late March weather event when, after topping the Prospect Park Hill (which I maintain is much harder than Cat Hill that all the Central Park runners are always griping about), I heard two men behind me, rapidly approaching.  I figured they must be on bikes.  I figured correctly.  Given that it was windy, and they were on the move, some of what they were saying was a little garbled but what I heard was something along the lines of

…blah, blah, blah…I would love that ass for Christmas…blah, blah, blah…so hot.

Obviously, I was annoyed.  Also, my ass happened to be the only ass in their line of vision and it was, at that moment, safely nestled inside a pair of CW-X compression pants.**   Anyway, it was only for a split second that I thought they might have been addressing their comments my way.  More than likely, they were just talking bullshit (albeit offensive bullshit) and my presence was completely coincidental.  Either way, I wasn’t planning on saying  anything at all and instead had resigned myself to just rolling my eyes aggressively and angrily mumbling to myself when I saw who one of the cyclers was.  It was the Skeezy Cycler.  I have intended to write about this guy forever because he has been pissing me off for years, literally.  I bet other women who make a habit of running in Prospect Park know who I am talking about.  He rides around with big groups of other cyclers, wears a red and black tri-suit, has longish brown-grey hair and looks to me like he might be Argentinian, of the Italian variety.  Skeezy Cycler checks out nearly every female runner he sees looping the park, multiple times if you are out there long enough and he happens to lap you.  He has been doing this to me for-fucking-ever and I have been holding a grudge.  Well, when I noticed that one of the dudes was none other than Skeezy Cycler (which I knew because he obviously checked me out for the millionth time), I literally could not help myself.  My mouth went off before I knew what was happening and I said, somewhat loudly,

You guys are assholes.

They then slowed down their bikes, looked over at me and exchanged a perplexed

What did she just say? Did you hear that?

and then, thankfully, rode on.  I was not really up for an altercation right then seeing as how it was snowing and I was cold, but I would have finished what I started had it been necessary.  Anyway, once it became clear they weren’t coming back I came to the realization that the man who had secretly been my nemesis for like half a decade, was now actually my real life nemesis, like, out in the open.  And he would know it was me in the future because I, like him, am hard to miss.  I am not distinguished by my leering but, instead, by the hair that goes down to my ass. Not common.  So I thought to myself why not go stealth and get a hair cut?  But then I was like, why let the Skeezy Cycler win?  Don’t cut your hair to hide from the likes of him.  But then I thought, yeah but what if he calls me a bitch next time he sees me.  Or, worse yet, what if he spits on my when he passes me by!  This might seem an outlandish fear except that it has happened to me before.  Not by him but still. Once you’ve been spit on (twice, in my case, and by the same guy) you are never really the same.  Anyway, ultimately I decided, no, maybe he would be an adult about it and ride up alongside me and say, kindly,

Was that you who called me an asshole the other day?

And then I would say the following:

Yes, it was me who called you an asshole the other day and here’s why.  I have been seeing you for years around the park and I have noticed that you skeezily check out most female runners as you ride by and you know what?  That is not flattering.  That is rude.  We are not out here to impress you.  We are out here clearing our minds, getting in shape, training for a race.  We are working hard on our bodies to feel good and to look good, mostly for ourselves but also for our partners.  Maybe you think it is harmless what you are doing, over and over again, but let me tell you it isn’t.  Some women might not notice, but for others of us, it pisses is off and insults us and makes us feel slightly less human.  We deal with it out on the streets all day, every day, so let us have the park as a zone of safety.  So yes, that was me that called you an asshole and I meant it, I just feel a little bad I caught your buddy in the crossfire.  So, next time you see me, you can wave, or say “hey Rebekah” or “nice pace” or whatever encouraging comment you come up with and I will wave back and return the favor, but for crying out loud stop making me refer to you in my non-running life as the Skeezy Cycler.  Stop making me dread seeing you.  In short, stop being such a dick.  For crying out loud, stop staring.  Staring is rude.

*Actually, it was hailing so not-so-blissfully

**That picture is provided so you can understand why I might have felt slightly uncomfortable about their comments. Furthermore, at this time I would like to point out that I bought my pair of these pants on sale and they were worth every penny.  I would even pay full price for them!  To be honest, I used look sideways at people who wore them but they are oh so awesome for cold weather running.

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At which point I am (not) surprised that we will continue to not ban assault weapons

21 Mar

Sometimes I am left wondering about the overall sanity of this country.

I just read an article in The New York Times about the ongoing attempts of California Senator Dianne Feinstein, who is pretty much my hero, to reinstate the ban on assault weapons that W. let expire in 2004.  Her journey, according to the article, ended on Monday when she stormed from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office after he informed her that the ban would not be included in a gun-regulation measure that is to hit the Senate floor in April.  The conversation surrounding this ban catapulted into mainstream conversation after the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut this past December that left 20 young kids dead along with 6 staff members as well as the killer, Adam Lanza.  You can watch a rather moving report about recent information that was released concerning the mass shooting here, presented by Rachel Maddow.  Beware.  This is not happy-making.

Anyway, the point of all this is that this bill on assault weapons had basically no chance of passing.  None whatsoever.  Despite support by both President Obama and Vice President Biden.  Honestly, I just don’t understand what the big deal is.  Banning assault rifles does not mean people can’t hunt.  It does not mean people can’t protect themselves and their families.  It does not mean people can’t collect some of the other hundreds (thousands?) or kinds of available weaponry.  It simply means that people won’t be able to legally purchase a gun that would then allow them to walk into an elementary school (or a movie theater, or a mall, or a high school) and kill dozens of people in mere minutes.  I mean, to me, and maybe I am just being crazy here, that doesn’t seem like such a big thing to give up.  Like, at all.  So here are a couple of arguments (okay, maybe just the same argument) that I read a lot and hear a lot and that I think are stupid.  So I am going to talk about them.

Argument:  It’s our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

Answer:  Okay, so, the first thing is, and I know we have all heard this a kajillion times and so probably I am wasting my breath, but when that was initially written into the Constitution I am pretty sure that “arms” basically ended at things like muskets, and cannons, and bayonets, and the flintlock pistol (which I had never heard of but then I Googled “weapons used during the American Revolution” and there it was).  People used to fight in formation, for crying out loud.  So, back then when it was written, it made sense, given the recent history, to write a provision into the Constitution to address the legitimate concern of the people that they might have to protect themselves from their own government and also that they actually stood a chance of winning.  But now, here in 2013, even if there was a legitimate concern that we would have to protect ourselves from our own government, we would most certainly lose.  Because you know what? Even with all the assault rifles we still would not be as well trained, or as well armed, as the United States military.  In 2011, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the United States spent $711 billion, or 4.7% of GDP, on defense.  A lot of that money was spent on, you got it, weaponry.  So, honestly, if People with Unnecessary Guns were to decide that they were going to stand up to the United States government in an attempt to topple it or whatever the fuck, those People with Unnecessary Guns would not stand a snowball’s chance in hell.  They would be blown to smithereens, and a Bushmaster .223 would do nothing to save them.

Argument:  It’s our Second Amendment right to have guns!

Answer:  I know, I already said that.  I know that’s not the only argument (it can’t be, right?!) but it seems to be the only one I ever hear).  But, I have another response!  How about people’s rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?  I am pretty sure that more often than not you get none of those things after you have been shot in the head multiple times.  I just don’t understand how this argument that people have a right to guns seems to always trump the argument that people have the right to actually live.  Because, last time I checked, you do need to actually be alive to even be able to appreciate your right to have guns, am I right?  It just seems like when someone who is unbalanced, or vengeful, or whatever gets some crazy scary, fast-shooting, so many bullets gun and goes into some venue full of people and shoots them all, we hear from all these people who are all

“No!  But if someone had a gun then none of this ever would have happened!”

which is patently false because, most of the time, when people have guns in circumstances like these, they don’t use them because they are afraid of being identified as the killer, or shooting someone by accident, or maybe they are too busy protecting themselves or others using their bodies or whatever else to really think about it.  That’s why usually these things end in the killer killing himself, not being killed by a potential victim. Anyway, we also hear about how scary it is, and sad, and unnecessary.  What we don’t hear enough of is that, because people can get guns, powerful guns, with such ease and in such great quantity, other people, sometimes even children, are stripped of their right to life.  To me, life seems like the trump card.  The right to life should just win.

You want your Bushmaster?  Well, guess what?  I want my breath, and the use of my legs, and a full functioning brain.  Settle for a fucking handgun.

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There is a Cat Stuck in this Box

18 Mar

A few years ago I was on the phone with my mom when we started discussing cats.  Or, more specifically, we started trying to figure out at which point one might go from being a lady with cats to a cat lady.  After a good amount of discussion we came to the conclusion that when you go from having 3 cats to 4 you have invariably crossed the line.  In hindsight, this was a rather convenient solution seeing as how at that moment my mother was the owner of exactly three felines and she certainly didn’t want to have to think of herself as a cat lady.  To be fair, though, I had found and lured the two younger cats, both of whom were adorable stray kittens, from different potentially dangerous situations and then dumped them at my parent’s house.  One of them, Chicory, had taken up residence in our front yard and driveway which sits just off of a relatively busy road with limited visibility and the other one, Chamomile, I had wrested from the arms of a drunken co-ed who was sitting weeping on the steps of a fraternity during my Sophomore year in college, squeezing the diminutive kitten to within inches of its life.  And then there was Sassafras, by far my favorite, a bitch of a cat who we adopted from the kennel when I was in Kindergarten who only lasted two years after I brought Cammy home and those two years, to be honest, were not her best.  She was very sick with liver failure and passed away on the very same day I went to a dress fitting for the bridesmaids dress I was to wear that coming summer to my brother and sister-in-law to be’s wedding.  At the end of the conversation I said to my mom, in as stern a voice as I could muster,

Mom, cut me off at three.

I am squarely in the safe zone, being a lady with only 2 cats, one full feline below the edge.  I go through my days proudly telling people about my cats, Clark and Grete, and not worrying about the judgement I would receive if I were to then rattle off an additional three names. It was with this calm attitude that I headed out for a run last Thursday afternoon before work.  As I was running past a train yard I heard a loud, shrill, kitten-sounding call for help coming from somewhere within the gated yards.  I stopped and looked around, following the sound, until I located the kitten stuck inside of a kelly green electrical box.  I looked around for help, but it was after 5 and everyone had gone home.  I retraced my steps and ended up at the entrance to some other MTA-owned property with a security guard who seemed relatively unconcerned about the fate of the cat, although he did assure me that he would “send some fellas to check it out.”  I looked around and didn’t see anyone.  What fellas, I wondered to myself, was he talking about?  I figured he must be a dog person.

I headed back in the direction of the cat, saying to myself over and over again that I had to be at work soon, that there was nothing I could do about the cat in the box, that I simply had to trust in the existence of these invisible fellas and that everything would be okay.  As I approached the box I heard the desperate cries of the trapped kitten.  I simply could not pass it by.  So I crouched there and I started talking to the kitten in the box.  Now, mind you, I was on a busy road and cars and people were passing by and the kitten was invisible to everyone but me and, wouldn’t you know it, as long as I was cooing at it the poor little thing stayed calm.  What this meant for me was that it appeared to those passing me by that I was a crazy person in full running get-up talking to a green metal box and frantically looking at every passer-by with panic in my eyes.  Finally, after 1/2 hour of crouching alone by the box in 25 degree weather, a lady, who had just walked past and not given me a second glance, heard the meow and stopped.  I looked at her and to her stationary back said

There is a cat stuck in this box.

She quickly approached and we started trying to come up with plans.  I had noticed a few minutes earlier that the gate to the yard was open but my law-abiding self was afraid to enter and get yelled at by an approaching fella that I had neglected to notice.  She seconded my concerns (minus the fella) and added that she was pretty sure the gate had an automatic lock mechanism and if someone closed it while I was in there I could get stuck and she didn’t care how official my running clothes looked, there was no way I would be able to scale that fence AND the razor wire at the top without (1) getting arrested, (2) falling or (3) ruining my clothes that she was sure were pretty expensive.*  Just then I realized that a car that had glided to a stop was still idling about 20 feet away and I hadn’t noticed anyone get out.  When I looked up at the car, it approached, and the tinted window of the passenger’s side slowly rolled down.  A man in a baseball cap looked out at me and I said to him

There is a cat stuck in this box.

The man looked shocked and quickly came out of the car.  So there we all were, standing on the sidewalk shoulder to shoulder to shoulder, staring at a stationary electrical box and gesticulating wildly.  The man shrugged off our warnings about the possibility of an automatic lock mechanism and entered the yard, with me closely behind him and the lady standing in the entrance to the yard so just in case the doors started closing she could stop them with her body.  He started moving the lid of the box around, I kept an eye out for fellas, and then, just like that, the whole top and side disconnected from the rest of the box.  We peered in and there it was, the cutest, smallest, scaredest little beige kitty.  It wouldn’t come out of the box but, wouldn’t you know it, the man happened to have cat food in his car so he opened a little can and left it propping the box open so the kitty could eat and escape.  Each of us, we discovered, would love to take the kitty home but both the lady and the man already had 4 kittys and I, as I mentioned before, had 2.  So, we left the kitty to its own devices and went off in our different directions, all of us feeling good about having released the kitty and me, with my comparatively small number of cats at home, feeling even more secure in my status as a lady with cats.

*In actuality I bought them on sale, but I still would have been sad if I ripped them.

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Private Prison Companies and University Stadiums Should Not Mix

14 Mar

I have to start off by apologizing for my blatant plagiarism in this post.  I just spent the past 45 minutes trying to figure out how to install a plug-in to allow me to provide footnotes but apparently there is a difference between a WordPress site and a WordPress.com site and since I have the later there are no plug-ins available and I therefore am forced to either link articles or steal content.  So, either the articles have been linked, or else the information came straight from a document put out by the Seattle University School of Law and to find it just go to “Voices from Detention.”  So, please nobody sue me.

I know that maybe this is slightly old news, but I am going to weigh in on it anyway, nearly a month after I was initially pissed off by the small article I saw in The Times.  The issue is the decision by Florida Atlantic University, in Boca Raton, to rename is football field GEO Group Stadium after a private prison corporation.  The CEO of GEO (ha!), Dr. George Zoley is an alumnus of Florida Atlantic University.  He secured the naming rights to this stadium through the largest charitable donation to the university in its history — a $6 million gift paid out over 12 years that the administration says will go to pay for athletic operations, scholarships, the stadium and “academic priorities,” whatever the hell that means.  Mary Jane Saunders, the president of the university, said that because the school doesn’t take any state money to run its athletic program, it is “important for us to use our naming rights to fund the stadium and fund scholarships.” Scholarships are all well and good but how about, um, promoting good ethics and not associating yourself with a corporation that has been investigated by the ACLU for human rights abuses?  Seems like dirty money to me.

I would first like to make the point that not only is GEO a private prison company with facilities all over the world, but it also runs a number of immigration detention centers.  One of those centers, the Northwest Detention Center located in Tacoma, Washington, is a 1,575-bed facility, making it one of the largest detention centers in the country.  By those working in United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), it is known as a “COCO,” which stands for a contractor-owned/contractor-operated facility.  Which means, to me, that much like with companies such as Blackwater, there is limited government oversight and either limited ability, or limited desire, for the state to get involved in the day-to-day running of the operations or hold the companies that own these facilities to reasonable standards of treatment of detainees.  The ACLU, it seems, came to similar conclusions (albeit with less use of assumption and more use of fact).  In May 2007, the ACLU reported to the United Nations Special Rapporteur that the US “failed to promulgate binding minimum standards for the conditions of confinement for detained immigrants” and also that the US “failed to ensure that detention facilities comply with the nonbinding standards that exist.”  The ACLU went further to say that the management of immigration detention is “further marred by ineffective oversight, lack of accountability and lack of transparency.” (Italics mine.)

The running of these facilities as “COCOs” also means that this is a for-profit endeavor, indicating to me that the more detainees the center houses, the more money the center makes, and, furthermore, that if there is no oversight, then mistreatment and poor living conditions can go unchecked by any regulatory agency.  (I would imagine that not having enough beds, for example, would be cheaper than having enough beds and therefore more money!)  In fact, the Seattle University School of Law’s 65-page report, “Voices From Detention,” cited physical and physiological abuse of detainees at the Tacoma center.  One of the most oft-cited examples of poor treatment involved an outbreak of food-poisoning in 2007 that impacted 300 out of the then 1,000 detainees at the site resulting from food not cooked to the necessary temperature to kill bacteria.  Apparently thermometers are too expensive for GEO.

Here’s another thing.  According to the Population Reference Bureau (PRB), since 2002 the US has  maintained the highest rate of incarceration in the entire world.  According to a report by the Bureau of Justice cited in the PRB report, the United States incarcerates 500 people per 100,000, a rate about 5 times that of other similar countries.  What is interesting, and perhaps most relevant here, is that the South incarcerates 552 per 100,000, whereas the West has a rate of 418, the Midwest 389, and the Northeast 296.  So here we are, naming a stadium after a prison company in the region with the highest incarceration rates within a country that locks up more people than any other in the world.  Doesn’t that seem a little off to you?  Doesn’t it seem like maybe we should have standards for these sorts of things?

I get it, the sports teams need money to continue paying for equipment, for the salaries of coaches and, hopefully, the scholarships of kids who otherwise might not be able to attend college.  But let’s look at it this way.  Education offers kids opportunity to go out in the world and make something of themselves.  Maybe they come from a family of college graduates, maybe they are the first one.  Maybe they come from a family of law-abiding citizens, or maybe they come from a family that has been affected by the legal system, be it due to their own misdeed or due to the increase in arrests of people for petty drug crimes and the blatant racism inherent in our criminal justice system.  Maybe this is their big break.  So what does it say when we link together our educational system, a system that offers opportunity, with the private-prison system, a system that strips people of opportunity, that forever links their name with some crime, be it serious or not.  What it says, to me, is that we in the United States have absolutely no shame.  When we are willing to take donations from, and worse still name highly visible structures after, an organization like GEO that makes its money off of the unnecessary suffering of individuals, the institutionalization of fear and racism, and obvious injustice associated with the privatization of the prison system, we have hit rock bottom.  Or else I hope we have.

I am appalled not only by GEO and what it does and how it runs its business, but by Mary Jane Saunders and Florida Atlantic University’s decision to take this gift.  Let’s hope that the move by the ACLU to obtain records on this deal goes through and that the organization can prove that Saunders and FAU knew about the activities of GEO before accepting this deal.  If it doesn’t get honored, then this country is even more fucked up than I thought because about 5 minutes spent researching GEO Group’s activities reveal some rather questionable information.  I would imagine FAU spent more than 5 minutes on this task and just relied on the apathy of the population of the United States, and its student body, to just grin and bear it.  Well, let’s hope FAU is wrong.  Let’s not allow the private-prison industry to buy access to our education system, the students of the United States, and of Florida Atlantic University, deserve much better.

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People Never Cease to Amaze Me…

11 Mar

…and I don’t always mean that in a good way.

It was my first weekend shift back at work after my (too short) vacation to New Orleans.  I was setting up the bar, feeling pretty good about my morning run and laughing about something that had happened at dinner with my family the night before when the phone rang.  It was Johan.*  I actually didn’t know who Johan was but by the way he started the conversation I guess I should have?  Anyway, apparently Johan had been in the bar the night before and had forgotten his card.  I found the card in the register — it had already been rung up for the amount plus a 20% tip as is our custom — and told him it would be safely sitting there waiting for him to come pick it up.  He told me his friend was probably going to come get it and gave me her name.  He laughed when I informed him his card had already been charged but it wasn’t like a, ‘wow that was funny’ sort of laugh it was more like a rude scoff which I didn’t particularly appreciate but whatever.  I mean, I wasn’t the one who forgot my card at the bar so I kind of figured if anyone in that phone conversation had the right to a rude scoff it was me.  I didn’t scoff, though.  I exercised restraint.  Anyway, I hung up the phone with Johan and went about finishing the task of setting up the bar so I could unlock the door promptly at 12 to the throngs of people waiting outside.**

About 1/2 hour later the phone rang again.  I noticed that the number on the Caller ID looked suspiciously like Johan’s number.  I answered and, sure enough, Johan!  He started explaining to me about the card again prompting me to inform him that I was, in fact, the same person he had spoken to a mere 30 minutes ago and that I remembered the situation quite clearly.  He then told me that his friend would be unable to pick up his card that day.  The rest of the conversation went as follows:

Me:  Oh, that’s okay.  I will just leave it sitting in the register until you can get here.  Don’t worry, I won’t go on a shopping spree or anything.***

Johan, decidedly not amused by my comment:  Well, I was wondering if you could send it to me by post.

So in this brief moment I thought to myself, okay, maybe Johan was just in town visiting some friends but by noon on a Saturday he was no longer in the city.  Or!  Maybe Johan, with his thick Scandinavian accent, was actually at JFK awaiting his flight back to whatever distant land he came from and he was calling in a panic, trying by whatever means possible to get his beloved card back.

Me: Um, where do you live?

Johan: Manhattan.

Me, shocked:  Um, so why don’t you just get on the train and come down here and pick it up?

Johan:  I’m very busy.  My parents are coming to town…I am going back to visit in Switzerland at some point.

Me:  Well, I also am very busy and we don’t have envelopes at the bar right now.  I work all day today and tomorrow.  So you would like me to take this card home with me and then on Monday go out and buy stamps and envelopes and then mail it to you?

Johan who obviously does not understand sarcasm:  Yea, that would be great.

Me:  Um.  Yea.  I’m not going to do that. You’re going to have to come pick it up.

Johan:  But I live all the way on 34th Street!

Me:  Somewhere near Penn Station?

Johan:  Yes! Exactly!

Me:  Oh, you mean you have express trains there?  Just take the 2/3.  It’ll take you like 1/2 hour to get here.  Otherwise I can cut the card up for you.

Johan:  So you won’t send it to me?!

Me: No.

Johan seemed both shocked and appalled by the tragic turn of this conversation.  He really thought that I would mail him his card.  To Manhattan.  Because he was far too busy to get on the train and come pick it up.  And, I mean, if he was on his way back to Europe, or if he lived super far out of town, I probably would have just mailed it to him because I am nice. But dude lived in Manhattan!  He just couldn’t be bothered to come get his damn card. Eventually he informed me that he was going to have a different friend come pick it up for him and all was well and good but seriously, if I ever hear a European tell me that American’s are lazy, I am going to give them Johan’s number.

*Name changed by Googling “common Swedish names.” In hindsight, I should have gone with Lars.

**In the interest of full disclosure there were no throngs.  Basically never are.  And if there were throngs, or even just one throng, I would probably be annoyed about it because a throng, in my experience, never results in something good.  It results in like, stampedes and stuff and it was far too early, and I am far too young, to be stomped to death.

***That is basically my favorite thing to say to people when they call about a forgotten card.  Or I tell them I have already gone on a shopping spree and thank them for my awesome new Vespa but they never seem quite as entertained as me.

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A Certain Word I’d Like to See Die a Quick and Public Death

5 Mar

As regular readers of my blog might have gleaned from my past three posts, I spent about a week in New Orleans visiting friends, doing thesis research, running a half marathon and running amok (totally didn’t know that’s how you spelled that word…learning!).  As a result, I had to switch around a few shifts both before and after to help not burden my coworkers or my financial situation.  One of the shifts I picked up on a trade was a Monday day.  It was a shift I worked for years and a shift that was, shall we say, not my favorite.  The main problem was that we have free wings on Mondays starting at 5pm (did you hear that?  Free wings!  Come one, come all!) and, to me, there is almost nothing more disgusting than chicken wings.  Well, maybe ribs.  Yea, ribs are more disgusting.  But really, anything on a bone that has to be gnawed off by whomever is eating it is really more than I can handle.  That is the reason, in fact, that I originally became a vegetarian.  When I was little I was never a huge fan of meat (well, except for my mom’s bolognese sauce, holy hell was that good).  I had a rather short-lived relationship with steak because, at age 8 or so, I was totally grossed out by the blood that pooled in that little moat around the outside of the cutting board that we had and simply couldn’t eat the stuff.  And then there was chicken.  And the gnawing.  Yea, so Monday’s are not my favorite.  I have to be in a room that smells like wings and then I have to pick up little pile of gnawed-upon bones off the bar because people are animals and seem unable to clean up after themselves.  Oh, and also, they eat the wings with their hands and then pick up their glasses to wash the food down without first wiping the grease off their hands and then the grease is smeared all over the glass and when I pick it up I get chicken yuck all over my hands and I want to hurl.

But I digress.  The point is, I picked up a Monday.  It was a very, very cold Monday.  Cold to the point that I was wearing my scarf and hat and dragged the space heater behind the bar with me so I could sit on it, figuring if my ass was warm the rest was soon to follow.  That, as it turned out, was faulty logic but live and learn, ya know?  Anyway, for the first two hours of the shift I was all by myself.  In the cold.  Sitting on the space heater.  I decided to entertain myself by watching CNN.  On this particular episode they had a few lawyers debating an upcoming death penalty case in Georgia involving a developmentally disabled man.  (Well, it’s no longer actually upcoming since this was over two weeks ago but at the time it was upcoming so we will just go with that.)  The basic issues of the case were as follows:

Warren Lee Hill was originally in jail for murdering his girlfriend and then, while in prison, beat another inmate to death with a 2×4 studded with nails.  How he got said 2×4 and said nails is really beyond me, but whatever.  Anyway, so as a result of the murder in prison he was sentenced to die by lethal injection.  Hill, however, has an IQ of 70 which puts him square within the range of someone considered to be mentally handicapped.  The Supreme Court, in the early aughts (2002?*), in Atkins v Virginia ruled it unconstitutional to execute someone with a significant mental handicap.  But, the Supreme Court left it up to individual states to designate what is considered a mental handicap and therefore who is legally able to be executed and who is not.  In Georgia, the state where this execution was to take place, an IQ of 70 places Hill in a class of people who cannot be executed in that state.  And yet, they were planning on executing him.  Totally fucked.  I mean, capital punishment is fucked anyway but this is just a class all in its own.

Anyway, the details of the case are not the most important part of what I am writing about here although it is absolutely rage-worthy so please, feel free to rage away.  I have been privately doing that for weeks now.  The particular segment that I was watching was one of those ones where you have the newscaster and then two expert people, usually with opposing opinions but not always, and they debate a number of topics.  So in this one, the newscaster was asking these two men, both lawyers, what they thought about this case.  The men both agreed that, given the law of the land, Hill should not be executed the following day (he wasn’t, for those who are curious) although one of the men seemed saddened by the law, all but saying he thinks that the law is crap and that this man who presumably cannot understand the difference between right and wrong and/or has limited impulse control and/or other possible things that I can’t think of right now because I actually know very little about the specifics of different types of mental handicaps and also I have a They Might Be Giants song stuck in my head and it is making me crazy and also sort of stupid, should actually be executed.  I did not like that man.  But the thing that made me dislike him even more than his rather, to put it lightly, tasteless opinion on the matter was his absolute insistence on using the word “retarded” over and over and over again.  It was a nationally broadcast news segment and this fucking guy was using a word that really makes me cringe.  A word that maybe when he was born in like 1882 was acceptable but which has become absolutely not acceptable in the century and a half since.  I was shocked.  And I wanted to write about it but I didn’t know what to say exactly other then to call my mom and be all,

Can you believe this fucking guy?  CNN is gonna get letters!  So, so many letters!

But really, I think what the problem is for me is that the R-word has become a slang that people just toss around.  Sometimes it is used to denote something positive, as in “that was ______ly fun,” but more often that not it is used as an insult.  What the word means to people now, and what it originally was intended to mean, have diverged significantly. It is no longer a descriptor of a condition, it is a way to other someone, to deride them, to question their intelligence.  I don’t think that when people normally throw it around they are actually thinking about mentally disabled people in a literal sense.  I don’t think they are aware, oftentimes, of the fact that before this word morphed into commonly used slang it actually meant something and that, as a result, it still means something.  Regardless of whether it has gotten miles away from its intended meaning it still has that meaning somewhere in its web, meaning that when it is used it is necessarily hurting someone, someone who does not deserve it, someone who is simply living his or her life. To use that word not only hurts its intended target, the one it is hurled at, but it also hurts those who, at some time, fell within its scope in simply a clinical way.  And that’s not fair.  It’s more than that, it is mean and thoughtless.

I don’t know if that made sense.  If not, then this article in the New York Times should make it a whole lot clearer.  It’s short.  And good.  You should read it.  But if you don’t read it, which would be a real shame, I will summarize it here.  Essentially, what author Lawrence Downes says is that words are mere “vessels for meaning,” and that the word “retarded,” has moved away from a clinical diagnosis and has become a “weapon of derision.” (I think maybe I just said that but it sounds way better coming from him.)  He then quoted an op/ed piece written by John Franklin Stephens, a man with Down syndrome from Virginia who is a “global messenger” for the Special Olympics.  Stephens wrote,

“The hardest thing about having an intellectual disability is the loneliness.  We are aware when all the rest of you stop and just look at us. We are aware when you look at us and just say, ‘unh huh,’ and then move on, talking to each other. You mean no harm, but you have no idea how alone we feel even when we are with you.  So, what’s wrong with ‘retard’?  I can only tell you what it means to me and people like me when we hear it. It means that the rest of you are excluding us from your group. We are something that is not like you and something that none of you would ever want to be. We are something outside the ‘in’ group. We are someone that is not your kind.”

I have read that passage about 12 times and every time it makes me teary eyed and gives me chills.  It is a perspective that I had never thought of before and one that is incredibly important.  This is a piece that, if I had the presence of mind to write down the name of the man on that CNN segment, I would have found it in full and sent it to him again, and again, and again until I was sure he had caved and read it.  I want this word to go the way of the N-word and the C-word.  I want this word to illicit anger and outrage when it is used, relatively unchecked, on a national news show.  And I want someone to give Stephens a lifetime supply of whatever is his favorite thing (I would want mangoes but that’s just me) for this amazing take-down of an Ann Coulter tweet:

Alien-Spawn Coulter on election night:  “I highly approve of Romney’s decision to be kind and gentle to the retard”

Stephens: After I saw your tweet, I realized you just wanted to belittle the President by linking him to people like me.  You assumed that people would understand and accept that being linked to someone like me is an insult and you assumed you could get away with it and still appear on TV.  I have to wonder if you considered other hateful words but recoiled from the backlash. Well, Ms. Coulter, you, and society, need to learn that being compared to people like me should be considered a badge of honor.

You can read his full letter here and you should because it is fucking awesome and maybe will make you, make all of us, take pause before using the R-word again.

*I just guessed 2002 because I was too lazy to search on the intertubes and I was right!  My super-smart law student friend told me so!

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Because the Opinion of Fortune 500 Companies Matters More than Yours

1 Mar

Sometimes people make me really crazy.  Right now I am sitting in a coffee shop in The Treme neighborhood of New Orleans, reading my morning news and (theoretically) working on my thesis.  Really, I am gchatting with my friend and it just took me about a half an hour to read one article on the New York Times website.  The article I read, which I am now going to write about a little bit, is called “Refusing to Arrive Late on Same-Sex Marriage” and can be read here.

So first of all, I am a little put off by the title of this article.  The full title of the article, if my knowledge of common English sayings serves me correctly, which I am 100% certain that it does, is “Refusing to Arrive Late to the Same-Sex Marriage Party.”  In the idealistic and naive part of my brain this sounds great!  It’s like, yea! A party celebrating marriage-equality??  I wouldn’t want to be late to that either!  In fact, I would probably be EARLY because, in fact, I have been outside the venue waiting for this party for years now.  But the thing is, this is an article about businesses and so the “party” that this article is alluding to is not the happiness surrounding the fact that this country is finally en route to doing the right goddamn thing already, but instead that supporting gay marriage is a good business decision.  And that’s what kind of gets me about this whole thing.  It gets me that businesses and corporations, while legally they are treated like people just like the rest of us, which is a whole other issue that is all kinds of fucked up, are only doing the right thing because they will potentially reap financial benefit from doing so.  Not simply because treating all people equally is right.  Not simply because who are they, or anyone really, to tell people how they can and cannot celebrate their love and who they can and cannot include on their health insurance policy and who they can and cannot allow to have visitation rights and make end-of life decisions.  They are supporting it because now, in 2013, they don’t see it as a feasible business model to systematically discriminate against a whole group of people.  Because finally businesses have come around to realize that gay people aren’t only some small little proportion of the population who live on an island and have absolutely no impact on the economy whatsoever.  Gay people have money!  And that means that now, finally, they have power.  Or, better yet, that the power that they have had forever, because they are people, has finally been recognized because they have some green.  Businesses can say something now partially because they can’t afford not to.

I know that maybe I am being unfair.  I know that it is a good thing that companies like Goldman Sachs (who was ahead of the curve and whose chairman and chief executive Lloyd Blankfein participated in a commercial in support of same-sex marriage 5 whole years ago! Wow!), Estee Lauder, Abercrombie, Nike, Google, etc. are coming out in support.  That they are lending economic credibility to the movement, that they are making the legalization of same-sex marriage almost (thankfully) unavoidable.  But the movement was credible before.  It is 2013 for crying out loud and it is only recently that we are seriously addressing a disgusting, systematic form of discrimination.  It is only recently that people with money, people that control huge companies, feel brave enough to step up and speak their mind in support of their friends, family members, co-workers, customers.  What took so long and why does it take money to make it happen?  What is wrong with us?

And this other thing.  At the end of the article there is a quote by the Family Research Council which, obviously, filed a brief against gay marriage and blamed a “a corporate environment dictated by wealthy, pro-homosexual activists” for the business movement towards support of the issue.  The Council then went on to applaud Exxon-Mobile, which is the world’s largest company by market capitalization, for not taking a stance on the issue.  The Council said,

“We applaud Exxon Mobil for refusing to cede the moral high ground to the special interests of the left.”

Cede the moral high ground?  Treating people as your equal is ceding the moral high ground?! Special interests?  Seriously, how does someone wake up in the morning, with a brain that thinks these things and actually believes them to be right, look himself in the mirror and think,

“yea, I am an awesome person who deserves to be here and treated with respect.”

Cuz to that person I want to be like,

“No, dude, you’re just a bigoted asshole. Go suck a lemon.”

This spokesman for the Family Research Council thinks the business reasons behind supporting marriage equality are “trivial” and that the companies signing the briefs were “motivated by political correctness, pure and simple.”  You know what?  Maybe they were motivated by “political correctness” and if that is the case, then yea, that sucks.  They should be motivated by “correctness,” plain and simple.  They should be motivated by the fact that we all deserve all the same rights and opportunities, regardless of religion, color, class, sexual orientation, gender identity, and everything else.

And one last thing and then I am done.  I am really sickened by the fact that people are willing to go on the record and say hateful things about other people and think that it is okay because there are a lot of people who agree with them.  That makes me sad.  It makes me sad for all of us that people go out into the world every day somehow believing that they are more entitled to being treated like a human being than somebody else.  I look forward to the day when marriage-equality is just the norm.  When we look back on that the way we look back on the women’s liberation movement and say, god, can you believe there was a time that marriage equality wasn’t a given?  I really do but until then, I am going to continue to be disappointed no, livid, that it is taking us this damn long.  And I am going to continue to be pissed off that, as with everything else, it takes a person, or corporation, with economic power speaking out to really get this done.  When will people just do things because it is the right thing, the only possible thing, rather than when it makes sense from an economic standpoint.

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