America's brightest rally against Obama

I was convinced by the below speech that my support for Obama is misguided. Okay, not really.



In all seriousness, this nation is one strange place. Did you catch the fact she supports Hillary Clinton? This is bizarre.

A non-voter's confessional

I'm ashamed to say I haven't registered to vote since I was a senior in high school. My political awareness at that time was well represented by the fact I registered as a member of the Green Party. That changed yesterday, though. I drove my usually non-political self to the Democratic Party Headquarters of Placer County, donated $15, registered to vote, and left with an Obama bumper sticker and lawn sign.

A slim middle-aged woman with short hair and wire rim glasses answered all my questions regarding the voter registration form. I wish I had gotten her name because she was very kind and helpful.

The bottom line is, if you've never registered to vote, bite the bullet and drive to your local Democratic Party Headquarters (odds are, if you're reading this blog you are not a fan of that other political party). The process is easy as questioning Sarah Palin's qualifications, and odds are there will be someone with wire rim glasses and a friendly disposition to answer all your questions and help you through the process.

The Placer County Democratic Headquarters is located in Auburn, CA at 1015 Lincoln Way.

Visit http://www.placerdemocrats.com/ for the phone number and office hours. Obama 2008!


To continue our political trend as of late, I want to point out these clips from The Late Show with David Letterman.

Background: John McCain cancels on Letterman a few hours before the show taping Wednesday night, citing his need to fly to D.C. immediately to help solve our current financial crisis. Dave gets upset. McCain instead stops briefly to chat with Katie Couric that same night. Dave gets more upset. On Thursday's show Dave shares how McCain didn't actually leave for D.C. until the following morning. Dave's still upset.

Wednesday night's clip:



Thursday night's clip:

Separation of Church and State? Never heard of it.

My apologies for hijacking this blog recently for sociopolitical content... but with the election on the horizon, I feel safe that politics have entered the pop culture sphere for the time being.

The cause du jour: Patients Rights. On the surface the Bush administrations latest foray into theologically-motivated legislation seems to only affect women, but the wording is so vague and open to interpretation, it could not only limit access to abortion and contraception, but ANY medical procedure a provider deems objectionable: H.I.V. tests, vasectomy, etc.

An Op-Ed in yesterday's NY Times (thanks to Archetype for the heads-up) by Hillary Clinton and Cecile Richards (Planned Parenthood's president) states the case against this proposed legislation remarkably well. Read it. Especially this part, "The 30-day comment period on the proposed rule runs until Sept. 25."

UPDATE: The instructions for commenting, as excerpted from the draft proposal (available for viewing as a PDF here in its entirety): You may submit electronic comments on this regulation to Regulations.gov or via e-mail to consciencecomment@hhs.gov. To submit electronic comments, go to the Web site and click on the link “Comment or Submission” and enter the keywords “provider conscience”.

Out my window I see Times Square

Recently, or should I say at this very moment, I have realized this blog has certain themes. They are, in no particular order at all: sweatpants, beer, The Office, and/or left-wing cynicism, and/or the phrase and/or. I salute The Lit Department for its awesomeness.

Also, I salute Carly B. for attracting the attention of Our Body, Our Blog and provoking an utterly anal-retentive comment from that same group. I sadly received no such recognition for my groundbreaking article on beer choice and its relation to female reproductive rights in the post-Regan era.

So, have you ever been to NYC? It smells. They never tell you that. Everything from sewage, to grease, to burning plastic, to that unmistakable dive-bar smell that wafts under one's nose like a freshly uncapped Sharpie. It's not a bad thing though, it's just how it is, and the sweet Irish accent of some of the bartenders makes it all highly bearable.

The race is on…

A little round-up of news items that have crossed my desk/inbox today.

First, this insightful post from the ladies over at Our Bodies, Our Blog, the writings of the Boston-based Women’s Health Collective that is generally at the forefront of women’s health advocacy. While during the primaries their blog was heavily pro-Hillary, they are now strong supporters of Obama/Biden for the ticket’s decidedly more progressive (read: not stone-age) stances on health care, reproductive rights, and reality.

Next-up, the NY Times columnist we love to hate: Maureen Dowd. When she isn’t pissing off men, women, feminists, misogynists, right-wingers, liberals, PUMAs, Ann Coulter, your mother, your pastor, her editors, etc… she is writing well-researched investigative Op-Eds, along the lines of this week’s trip down Palin’s memory lane. Ms. Dowd visits Wasilla, Alaska and discovers what it’s like to live in the shadow of Miss Popular, aka Sarah Palin. I’m starting to understand why she has so many fans (if you are perplexed, netflix Mean Girls and talk to me in the morning).

Another NY Times article more thoroughly explores Palin's political experience, and lends more ammo to the Mean Girls theory. A quote from Laura Chase, Palin's former campaign manager from her 1996 run for Wasilla mayor: “I’m still proud of Sarah, but she scares the bejeebers out of me.”

And lastly, this email forward, of unknown origin, which I will paste in its entirety for you here:

I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.

If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."

Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers: a quintessential American story.

If your name is Barack, you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track: you're a maverick.

Graduate from Harvard Law School and you are unstable.

Attend five different small colleges before graduating: you're well grounded.

If you spend three years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first Black president of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional law professor, spend eight years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services Committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

If your total resume is: local weather girl; four years on the city council and six years as the mayor of a town with fewer than 7,000 people; 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people; then you're qualified to become the country's second-highest-ranking executive.

If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising two beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.

If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, left your wife, and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

If you teach responsible, age-appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system, while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.

If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.

If your husband is nicknamed "First Dude," has at least one DWI conviction and no college education, didn't register to vote until age 25, and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

Okay... much clearer now.

And in response to the other bizarro blog I read today, which I will not link to, because its author has already used the number of page-clicks as proof of the veracity of his claims (rather than the more likely sheer astonishment of readers who click to the blog to verify that this kind of lunacy does really exist, and then quickly realize, as I did, that by reading his ranting, I am somehow validating his crazy… oh the guilt). Just trust me, he’s crazy, don’t bother googling and visiting the blog, you’ll be just another page-click in his arsenal. Basically, the gist is, he is suing Obama for illegally running for president because Obama is not a US citizen. Though Obama has the Hawaii-issued birth certificate to prove it, and it has been vetted by various fact-check types, and by the way, McCain was born in PANAMA. Yes, inside the U.S. zone, but the constitutionality of that is tenuous at best, and well, isn’t all of this a bit irrelevant in today’s world, and wouldn’t focusing on, oh say, THE ISSUES, instead of Obama’s passport, Palin’s lipstick, etc., etc.

Phew.

Remember to vote. Wisely.

What your beer choice says about you

The following suppositions of character are completely without base, and most likely only 98% accurate.

Blue Moon: You have ovaries, and have visited (more than once) a bead shop and/or pottery-painting store.

Budweiser: You are the everyman, and dare not rock the boat. You drive an American truck (probably a Ford F-150) and would love to "do" Pamela Anderson.

Chimay: You are a graduate student currently investigating the homosexual tendencies of Gilgamesh, and/or Sumerian marital pottery.

Coors Light: You wear sweatpants and flip-flops to Applebee's. Seriously. Knock that shit off. Also, you find setting up a game of beer pong absolutely appropriate at your niece's 5th birthday party.

Corona: You pop your collar and call women bitches. Most likely, you wear a Livestrong wristband, or some variation thereof.

Fat Tire: You drive a '92 Honda Civic complete with a Dennis Kucinich bumper sticker. You really love The Office, but tell anyone and everyone that the British version was better.

Heineken: You are trying to be different, but really you crave validation from your peers just like everyone else. Also, you secretly love cheesy trance music.

Miller Light: Your narcissism strongly suggests you drink a low-calorie brew, but your checking account demands you forego Michelob Ultra or Budweiser Select

Pabst Blue Ribbon: Certain acronyms come to mind: PBR, GHB, STD, and/or DUI.

Thanks to Jessica C. for her help!

Definition of lit

So, why is this blog called The Lit Department? A brief examination of the word lit is in order.

Lit is most commonly used as the past tense version of the verb light (I want to light Sarah Palin's hairsprayed bouffant aflame; I lit Sarah Palin's hairsprayed bouffant aflame). Secondly, lit. is used as an abbreviation of literature. Lastly, lit is also an adjective meaning lighted, but no one really cares because lit also means intoxicated or under the influence of drugs. These multiple meanings can be useful. Observe:

While lit, I lit the lit lit. department.

Confused by the litany of lit's? Translation:

While drunk, I set on fire the well illuminated and/or concurrently burning literature department.

Therefore, The Lit Department is a well-illuminated department of literature that has recently been set on fire while under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs.

Hipsters and what makes Pabst awesome

Borrowing (stealing) the idea from gawker.com, here is what you missed in midtown Sacramento if you haven't made it out there recently. If at any point you giggle and/or cackle, I don't recommend going to Club Lipstick at Old Ironside's on Tuesday nights. Photos courtesy of Takeover Tokyo.

Requisite creepy old guy in a Hawaiian shirt.

No good can come of this.

Buddy Holly does shiny.

Infamous drunk girl salute.

The three stages of "He's cheating on me!": anger, drunkenness, and melancholy.

Gloira Steinem still fighting the good fight.

No words.

Sir Phil Collins

The universe works in mysterious ways. First, at a party a few weeks ago, I was inexplicably pulled into a conversation defending the musical talent of Phil Collins. I was never a fan of Genesis, but I'll admit to having liked a few Phil Collins songs in my day. But a friend – who is a musician himself, and someone whose musical tastes and opinions I generally respect – dedicated a large portion of the evening extolling the merits of Sir Collins (and his drumming talent), and explaining why we all should stop overlooking his work.

Two days later as a I sat in a plane waiting out a weather delay on the runway, I found NPR on the satelite radio (I heart JetBlue) and was excited to find that This American Life had just started. The topic – break-ups – was a good one, made even better by the first segment by Starlee Kine (of Flight of the Conchords and Daily Show fame). On her quest to write the perfect break-up song, Kine consults heartbreak-song expert Phil Collins himself. The interview is remarkably candid and entertaining, and gave me a newfound respect for the man and his music.

And the culmination of all things Phil Collins: Today at work, someone introduced me to this YouTube Video. I am speechless. And can't get "In the Air Tonight" out of my head.

I'll admit it, two weeks ago I was thoroughly ambivalent about Sir Collins and his work. But the universe clearly has big plans for the man. And truth be told, I do really dig some of his songs. The man clearly has a talent for transforming heartbreak into melancholic musical bliss.

Too bad I discovered all of this about 5 months after he officially announced his retirement from the music biz. Timing is everything, my friends.