Sunday Funday Tuesday Top Ten: Top 10 Weirdos of 2008

When did "weirdo" become the go-to noun for personal greetings? See, all my language is stolen from other thieves, or from an ex, or a BFF. Language is funny like that. I'm going back to school, I'm studying Linguistics. (Other subjects I've claimed I will soon pursue a Master's Degree in, due to recent falling-of-sky, etc.: Education, Welding, Computer Programming, Nursing, Opera.) Because most people I know and/or read about and/or watch on various screens are at least slightly insane, it's always a challenge to select the Top Ten Weirdest Weirdos of 2008. There are so many weirdos. There's obvious choices I'm not allowed to write about, and then other worthy contestants I just didn't include, like Tegan & Sara and eric mathew.

This year we have three repeats from last year's list: Jenny Schecter, Haviland, and me. I will always be number one. Trust me, if last year's number two couldn't beat me out for top spot, then no one can.

Actually I had a hard time writing this, it took forever. I think it's been a really long time since I've actually talked directly about my friends or other living, breathing people who will read this -- like who they really are. I don't know how long it's been, maybe just a few weeks, but possibly that's been a long time for me, relatively?

And now I'm like "what's up, this is me."

Sunday Top Ten: Top Ten Weirdos of 2008
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10. Rachel Maddow

"I have a little stockpile of lawn mowers, some of which it has been years since they worked.
But it seems wrong to get rid of lawn mowers, so I keep them."
(Rachel Maddow)

I've enumerated her many virtues many a'time on this here blog because I love Rachel not only for her political acumen & homosexual hair, but also for her weirdo dorkdom. She's the geek the popular girls are too endeared towards to talk shit about. She's bright, earnest, humble, knowledgeable, well-informed. And Rachel crushes aren't really about sexified passion as they are about being sort of warm and settled, intensely satisfied by the quality of life enabled by this supreme physical and intellectual union.

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9. Stef

"I really want to express first and foremost that my hair in this photo [on my blog]
is inspired probably 99% by alanis morissette,
the only person in the whole world who really GETS me."
(Stef, on an adolescent photograph)

Stef is Weirdo Pride, one day she will write a book like John Waters yet-unwritten Role Models ("a self-portrait where I write profiles of other people and how much I love them and how much they changed my life and influenced me—famous people, criminals, people you’ve never heard of"). Stef faces every day with a Sharpie on a rope looped around her belt-loop, black eyeliner and sunscreen. Stef, fastest texter in the West, is an obsessive conisseour of all things terrible/AWESOME and their bretheren: JT Leroy, Lindsay Lohan & Samantha Ronson, fedoras, The Spice Girls, Amy Winehouse, Courtney Love, Alison from Intervention, etc. and is "a totally shameless nerd about theme parks, water parks and zoos." She's not just moderately interested in things she is interested in. She's also totally ironic about most of those interests, and ironic about the irony of me using "ironic" to mean whatever I want it to.

I've come to realize life's got a lot to do with who knows what you're referencing when you reference something. If it's something weird, I know Stef will get it.

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8. Jenny Schecter

"Well you know what, Kevin? I don't really care what you and your
fucking
purple
tie
think about my whereabouts, okay? What the fuck do you think this is, 1952?"
(Jenny, The L Word)
Initially, including Jenny on this list for the second consecutive year brought me joy. Now, I approach this task solemnly 'cause now I know that Jenny's gonna kick the bucket in Season Six. But y'know. What better time to honor her memory? Right-o. In Season Five, Jenny built upon Season Four's steamrolling glory with all new levels of megalomania, but this time her initial divaliciousness changed as the season went on -- ultimately we saw it morph, like a butterfly, into something laced with humility and sadness and a sort of muted humanity that evolved and then self-combusted.

Though I described Jenny as a "manipulative weirdo amazing ball of psychotic joy" early in the season, things changed by season's end. After losing Niki and her film to All About Adele, I described Jenny as a "dark angel from dark angel heaven" and declared "We love you too Jenny! Even though you've combined a doilies with your garbage bag dress for an all-around disaster, it's fine, at least your tights don't have holes, you've grown up so much."

Although often insufferable, she had some really vulnerable/self-important moments in Season One. What I mean is she was only a weirdo insofar as I, also, am a weirdo, and all of us, who think too much about ourselves, are indicted in this too.

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7. Natalie

" I just feel I'm not human, more of the animal world. I wish I was an animal & I could have puppies."
(Natalie, on how "moo" became a part of her vocabulary)

Natalie is a very special person who I've been besties with since the year 2001 and now we live together. Sometimes when she knows I can hear, she'll burst into the opening chords of "Circle of Life" or "Jingle Bells" or "Where I Stood" and then I'll sing back, from my room, the next line or two. Natalie's pick-up-the-phone greeting: "Moo moo moo?" Natalie believes there are 24 usable hours in every day and each of these hours is equally adequate for any given activity -- the gym, sleeping, working, phone convos, a long walk in the freezing cold, dinner, breakfast, coffee, etc. Natalie talks to strangers. Strangers on planes, in lines, on the street, apparently in the gynecologist's office, at the car rental place, everywhere. Natalie wants her gynecologist to be her friend and just came into my room to announce that she's pretty sure she could seduce Shane, given the chance.

Natalie is also legitimately brilliant and actively contributes to the betterment of the world via a Women's Rights in Development (whatever that means) NGO.

Natalie watches Office Space every night while she (tries to) sleep. When Natalie comes home, she goes: "Bernie?" and then I go "Rabie?" (variations on our last names) or sometimes we'll switch. Natalie wants to walk to Pinkberry right now, and it's about 23 below zero, windy like apocalypse.

There's this part in My So-Called Life where Angela emotes: "there are so many different ways to be connected to people. There's people you feel an unspoken connection to, even though there's not even a word for it. There's the people who you've known forever who know you in this way that other people can't because they've seen you change. They've let you change." That's how I feel about Natalie.

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6. Andy Warhol

"I wanted to paint nothing.
I was looking for something that was the essence of nothing,
and the soup can was it."
-Andy Warhol

This year I became obsessed with Andy Warhol (coincidentally, it would've been his 75th birthday this year, thus inspiring millions of media tributes) and secondarily, Little Edie, who was my party-fashion icon far before I took the time to learn who she was. I feel like I get him. I don't feel like we could've been friends, but if the dead lived among us, I feel like his ghost and my real self could be friends. You know? "Meeting creative new people -- especially young kids -- was always important to him; he thrived on it. But he knew that people only come to you if they think you have something to offer them."

I want to make the Factory, you know, still I do. I mean that's still the point, I guess, if there is one. We can get Rite-Aid brand tin-foil, print our magazine on all the unused credit card applications that still come every day in the mail as if we've got anything left to owe. I'm 27, for Chrissake!

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5. Michael Scott on The Office

"Yes. Money has been a little tight lately. But, at the end of my life, when I'm sitting on my yacht, am I gonna be thinking about how much money I have? No.
I'm going to be thinking about how many friends I have, and my children, and my comedy albums.
I mean, I have a yacht, so I obviously did pretty well money wise."
(Michael Scott, The Office)

If you haven't really watched a sitcom, besides occasionally Arrested Development on DVD, in several years, and if everyone's been telling you to watch The Office and you've thought to yourself; thanks, thanks really but no thanks, when you do, you love it, and watch hours & hours back to back while cleaning .... you eventually begin embodying the spirit of Michael Scott. He's not even my favorite character. After several hours he annoys me. But in some way, sometimes, I get this man.

Though his character is sympathetic but still quite unlikeable, one often desires to inappropriately interrupt people diligently doing work because work is what one does with pointless, poorly executed hijinks and other totally non-productive activities in the name of "having fun." You can see this effect directly in our NewNowNext movie.

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4. Autumn
"ok so i read, re-read, and re-re-read this post. sadly i am at a loss.
maybe i would understand if i would have read the book. that might have helped.
just a little. but the one thing i understood was that hitler sucks."
(one of autumn's first comments ever, on the Oscar Wao book club post )

Starting now the Weirdo Commenter of the Year will be an official designation with a voting process. However I received a lemon tree last week in the mail, therefore cinching Autumn's auto-win. The tree's currently living in our living room. Natalie's singing to it.

Here's the thing: back when we made the 'zine, Autumn declared: "not that your poems arent great and stuff, but i think i can pass on buying stuff, especially when i dont get it." We clearly took action mailed Autumn a 'zine immediately, therefore extending an olive branch to the red stated plains of Kansas, where Autumn lives. But obviously she was already turning around even before receiving the 'zine and becoming the best commenter ever. She even took a photo of her 'zine with Lieutenant Teddy and emailed me a photo of her toilet-paper-hosted list of Cool people, and I was totally on it! Rock!

As I write to you today, Autumn has sent us a lemon tree, no longer lists Jesus as top interest on facebook, and voted for Obama. That means I [kinda indirectly in this sitch, but whatevs] influenced 5 people to vote for Obama this year. That's pretty much my biggest accomplishment of the year. Srsly.

I mean, seriously, actually. It does mean a lot to me to engage someone in a dialogue about political issues that's not possible in their 3-D lives. I think it's really cool.

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3.Haviland
"If I told u where I was and what I'm doing right now, u might wanna kill yourself.
Alternative universe faux reals."
-Haviland, BBM, yesterday.

Haviland is a weirdo still just like last year. Actually, she's even weirder, 'cause I think we are all getting super weird with age.

PRETTY PARTY PYRAMID!

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2. Caitlin
"A hoodie does not a critter make."
(Caitlin)

A quick confession: I listen in, you should know this. I pick up voices, phrases, words, expressions, we swap and cut and paste and incorporate and then develop an intricate and multi-sourced linguistic web. After Cait & I landed in L.A. in February, Haviland declared "you guys are totally talking the same." Some melding of cadence, volume, vocab ... later we determined it probs made it really irritating to hang out with [all of] us. But still, we go on; i have a lot of feelings right now, time for sleepy sloos, this makes me itchy, okay i have a lot of feelings about this first of all, team meeting, i have a lot of questions for [person], hot panic, my head's gonna explode, mouthing off, talking crazy, crazytown, and really an endlessly bountiful bevy of phrases and words we've picked up this year. Like I said in the intro, I'm sort of interested in linguistics these days. When I say "these days" I mean it, 'cause I usually keep an obsession for about 3-4 days.

Caitlin prefers to be the one sitting or lying on the floor and is grossed out by the thought of hot soup.

Caitlin is frequently mistaken for the elevator guy, a situation that [in order to be true] would require serious time travel (which luckily I love), I mean who still uses elevator operators? Paddington Bear or something? By "Caitlin is frequently mistaken for the elevator guy" I mean that when other people enter the elevator and Caitlin is in it, they are inclined to announce, loudly, their intended floor: "TWELVE!" "FOUR!" "THIRTY-TWO" expecting her to press the button.

Anyhow: who among us have not wanted someone else to make that final action, anyhow, the action directed by your choice, let someone else conduct as to how far up you'll be going, how high you can get. Who among us haven't dared to lean against the mirrored walls of that tiny industrial transportation machine with the confidence and surrender and complacency of a person traveling but not conducting, traveling sweetly and laughing, not a care in the world besides to, once you get off into the world; to save it. The thing is, she does do it. She does press the button for them, and it happens all the time. Usually in the time it takes for someone to yell "TEN!", for her to press the button and for us to arrive at our floor, we can hold the laughter and laughter-inducing looks in. More often we can't, and so we laugh and smile as we go up into the air. And so on.

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1. Riese
"Obvs."

Because I still write this blog. Wouldn't it be funny if this was like when Time made "YOU" the person of the year with a reflective cover? I remember thinking it was "YOU-tube," I just couldn't see the "tube" from the street when the cover flashed by. That'd be funny if I could do that here. They'll invent that soon I bet. Then ... who will be Number One? Huh? Joe? Joe Who? Joe Mama, totes.

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In conclusion, one may ask oneself -- "how does one become a prestigious weirdo?" You may notice that this year's list does not include idiots from OurChart or soulless bisexual dating show contestants, like last year's. That's 'cause I've grown & changed and feel it's more important to honour only weirdos with good hearts rather than wasting one's time on the scourge of the earth.

One becomes a weirdo by harboring strange obsessions, maintaining inconvenient neuroses, greeting prescribed situations with unexpected behaviors, being someone that I love, etc. Any sort of functional yet serious psychological disorder enhances one's weirdo-hood, though it is not necessary for your success. One becomes a weirdo by paying attention, and, consequentially, totally freaking out about it. This freakout is the most beautiful thing forevs and evs, I promise. Don't trust me, but I promise for real!

It's Just a Couch. This Isn't Life. It's Just Stuff. (The Story of Dixon the A**hat)

What a whirlwind! Longest move ever -- and at last, oh, hi, here, here ... my & Natalie's new West Harlumbia apartment is a mess but sooner or later it will be a home where our habits can have a habitat. Natalie already knows how annoying I am, so there won't be any surprises.

I've got bruises and cuts everywhere, 'cause I can barely walk straight when I'm not carrying heavy objects, let alone when I am. So I'm behind on everything, which seems to be a perpetual problem, which seems to suggest that maybe there's just too much everything, you know?

[Quick announcement: On Tuesday, if Obama loses, I'm gonna kill myself. I'd move to Canada, but I don't have a passport. I just want to put that out there so we're all on the same [web]page.]

If Obama wins, and I think he will, then I can fully devote myself to all the other exciting things coming up, like Obama winning, the release of the Hot Blogger Calendar (Click here to view more details and to pre-order using my affiliate link therefore supporting me which is what we're all here for right, ME?!?!) and Sex Blogger Calendar, my Mom's birthday, National Novel Writing Month and maybe finishing unpacking.

So I have a story to tell you about hope and Dixon the Douchebag of the Week, who wasted 5 hours of the best most beautiful years of our lives on Saturday. I keep trying to edit this story 'cause it's so long, but every time I edit it I seem to make it longer. So welcome to long story time.

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Me and Natalie, the last time we lived together -- Willard '03-'04.
Look at that couch in the background! It looks so comfy!

I've got a long well-documented fondness for craigslist and I recognise its fallibleness. So I guess ultimately this is a story about what we expect from people, what "good faith" really means, and how petrifying it is when someone refuses to abide by the arbitrary rules of human morality you thought were implicit. I make this mistake often. Then I ask myself: why do I continue to expect?

At one point in this story, I will be suggesting for the fifth time a certain angle at which to push the couch from our hallway into the living room and A;ex will say, "why do you keep trying the same thing over and over again." And I will say, A;ex, as a sane person, you do not understand this, but your team in this endeavor -- me, Natalie, and Caitlin -- we do the same things over and over again expecting different results. Natalie will point out that it's the definition of insanity. We'll all laugh, knowingly, and push, and the only thing different about this time is that the bottom of the couch cuts right through my palm, an injury I don't notice 'til hours later, but which doesn't actually matter, obviously.

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Natalie and I, proud underemployed U-Mich alums, operate on a steady budget of broke-to-almost-broke and so we planned to get most of our furniture from craigslist or the street corner (coincidentally, this is also where we get our blow jobs).

Nata's developed a severe craigslist addiction over the past two weeks;' hauling Caitlin to at least five house/yard sales. Nata even enchanted a (obvs gay) woman on the Upper West who asked them to stay for dinner and sold Nata a teevee that didn't work. (Sidenote: howevs, when we informed her the teevee didn't work, she ripped up Nata's check. 'Cause that's what PEOPLE DO.)

The sofa is the most important thing we've been seeking. A;ex's grandfather is ill and her family keeps changing their mind about what's best for him, and so his old sofa has been offered and then taken back several times. It's like what my ex used to do to me with her bank card when she was in the mental hospital, except not evil.

A final take-back was initiated last week, so we made other arrangements. On Sunday morning A;ex is given the go-ahead again. Too late; we've already promised Dixon we'll buy his couch for $125 'cause it looks like something we could fall asleep on. Here's the ad:

So it's Saturday morning and the Team is in action. We've all been in overdrive supporting Natalie's yard sale addiction and complementary willingness to traverse crosstown for a deal on a stack of paper plates as well as my general mishap-hood and Saturday is no exception.

Caitlin's bringing me a dresser from the goodwill in New Jersey, A;ex is picking up the ebay teevee from Queens and she's got a coffee table and a bookshelf for Nata already in her car, and eventually Caitlin & Natalie rendez-vous @ the W.Harlumbia Palace to go get the couch and then Natalie realizes she's broke. Together, Caitlin & Natalie have got about $65, so there's no sofa-getting until A;ex unloads the furniture in Harlumbia, then goes back to get me & my stuff & my cash in Midtown and then takes me uptown.

Being poor takes a lot of time, we can't just call Ethan Allen and be like, what's up Ethan, I need a couch and some chairs, and he'll be like, okay, cool. Instead we must deal with Dixon.

So, a few hours behind schedule, A;ex gets me in midtown, we go uptown to W.Harlumbia where Cait & Nata are waiting. A;ex double-parks, we dash inside, have a five second Team Meeting and when we emerge, Alex has got a $115 parking ticket. Caitlin & Natalie get in Caitlin's car, we get in A;ex's car, A;ex yells at the ticket, and we then we hear a sharp plunking noise.

What was that, I ask.

A;ex gets out of the car, fully raging, and discovers someone's thrown a nail at us. A nail. I don't know why people do what they do, I'm not God.

I tell her nice optimistic things, which's an attitude I only pull out in times of crisis.

We arrive at Dixon's apartment on 72nd street with our two-car caravan. He's moving to California with his boyfriend, probs so they can tan year-round while sucking the fruits of their mad twatwaffledom and smoking meth from each others assholes.

Nata and I go upstairs, check out the couch.

Dixon admits he's not sure how they got it in there in the first place. Problem #1.

I don't like him, Natalie says. He seems a bit slow.

We'd expected to like him, because of the Instant Homosexual Bond.

The couch isn't as promised. It's falling apart at the edges, the lining's frayed, the skirt's threatening to abandon ship altogether. It smells a little and is impossible to move. Problem #2. But we've not come this far for failure.

I sub out, put Caitlin in, 'cause she's stronger. It's tight quarters up there, we need geometry and manpower, and I've got no idea how the fuck they ever got that couch in there, possibly it was airlifted.

So while they struggle, I walk down 72nd to get a fountain soda. The weather's cool crisp autumn (my favorite) and I'm thinking about how well everything's going considering how terrible everything was, about how people can make up for concrete things but the heart-hurt takes more time, thinking about all the stories I do not and wouldn't tell, and the ones I don't understand yet, of how maybe not everything happens for a reason but things have a way of working themselves out. How nice it is to have people who try to do what they can without expecting absolution, not now or even soon, but just 'cause they can, and we all do what we can, like everyone who did what they can the first time around, too, and all the others after that.

I'm thinking about how strange and silly crazy we all are, and how we go on, and how much better Coke tastes from the fountain than it does from the bottle.

I'm thinking about curling up on the sofa with Natalie and making animal noises all winter. I'm thinking about all the things I miss and the things I'm looking forward to, how to follow your gut and still retain dignity, and then I return to find Nata curled up in Caitlin's front seat saying she thinks she's made a big mistake.

Nata always takes full responsibility for things going wrong if she's even remotely involved. Caitlin takes full responsibility for things going wrong when it's clearly not her fault or within her control at all, like a plane landing late. A;ex always takes responsibility when she thinks it's probs her Mom's fault.

I don't know what I do. Maybe I avoid taking responsibility for situations and logistics but do accept full responsibility for emotional damages, or maybe I don't. Maybe I try not to be involved, or when I say it, I'm just saying it.

It's falling apart, Natalie says, back to the couch now.

We're not paying 125 for it, I say. We'll bargain.

There's this Cuban woman up there yelling at us in Spanish, she says.

You speak Spanish, I say.

She's not helping, Natalie says.

I call Caitlin. Are you okay, do you need help. She's in one of those moods: This crazy woman is mouthing off to us and she just said we need more strong men and there's no way we're getting it out of here. So obviously now it IS ON AND WE ARE GETTING THIS MOTHERFUCKER OUT OF HERE.

The first time Haviland met Cait she said to me afterwards; "Cait's my kind of lesbian," 'cause Cait looked like she'd get really competitive about moving heavy objects and always offer a ride like she did that day they met -- offering the ride.

Caitlin says there's nothing I can do so I just pat Natalie's hair and we eat chips.

15 minutes later, A;ex & Caitlin & Dixon emerge triumphant with the couch, having squeezed it through so many narrow impossible spaces. Dixon almost dies but A;ex saves him from getting crushed. A;ex is feisty and secretly strong, tired but determined, she's a good one. I'm probs driving her bat-shit insane but til I do, I can't seem to cease the sky-high investment of labour and time on her part. Her sanity is a heavy object, too, the kind that carries itself.

I don't really know if I deserve friends like this, I'd never move a heavy couch for any of them. Obvs as I could not move my own.

"She's my hero," Dixon says about Caitlin. Everyone is very friendly, there's no signs here that anyone will magically transform into an evil bastard. You can never tell with these things.

"I feel like the couch is kinda damaged in parts -- "I begin to tell Dixon.

"Seventy-five," he says.

And Natalie and I are relieved. So finally we get the couch strapped inside Caitlin's SUV. A;ex and I end up running into her friends on the street and driving them crosstown, Nata & Cait are getting Starbucks and Pinkberry for everyone and so about an hour later we're all back in West Harlumbia.

This is November 1st, the night of Carly's Tabloid Trainwreck Party. Natalie keeps sticking things under her shirt to see if anyone thinks she looks pregnant, so that she can be Juno and Peter can be the boy from Juno. Peter's her boyfriend, he just flew in from London and is sleeping in Nata's old apartment down the street -- the apartment she would've moved out of already today but then this couch thing has taken forever. Nata's younger brother is moving in here on the 4th and Nata's going to South Africa to save the world on the 8th and her company is two weeks late with her paycheck so she's had to borrow and so I'm just telling you, this is what's going on.

And as for me, well, you know. Me me me and more of that.

So it's dark and we take the couch out of the car and into the building.

But.

It won't go through our door.

It just won't.

And we huff and puff and move and lift and twist and when it finally enters, it's shot back into the room across the hall. Here's a diagram I've drawn for you about the impossible situation we've set up for ourselves:

We try several tricks to get it out of Nata's room and fully into the hallway, where we anticipate smooth sailing and are sorely mistaken. We've scraped up the walls real good and employed various to total body weights for the cause. There's been a lot of laughing and screaming and roaring. We've been at it for about an hour.

Natalie's new job is standing in the hallway and growling like she's about to give birth, which makes Caitlin laugh so hard she's distracted from her task of being the strongest person. When we make progress we cheer, when we lose we scream and growl and kick. It's getting into slapstick territory, that special space where life's ridiculous logistics wedge themselves between the ceiling and the floor, refuse to budge ... and then start getting a little rank.

Nata: "Marie, I feel like we're the weakest link."

Me: "Nata, it smells icky."

Natalie: "I know, it's the couch."

Me: "Really?"

Natalie: "Maybe it's me."

Me: "Is it the couch? It didn't smell bad before."

(Natalie sticks her nose in the cushions): "No, I don't know what it is. Maybe. It didn't smell when we got it. Did I mess up? It's probably me."

Me: "It's not you."

A;ex: "RIESE!"

Caitlin: "I feel upset."

Natalie: "I'm so sorry this is my fault, it was my idea to get the couch, now it'll never go in."

Caitlin and A;ex: "OH IT IS GOING IN."

Natalie: "My stomach is sad."

Riese: "Isn't it fun that we're all here together?"

[Natalie starts singing Missy Higgins at the top of her lungs, Caitlin and Alex sit.]

A;ex is doing this cute rage thing she does where every time I have an idea she goes "REALLY RIESE?" and forces me to go into detail revealing that a large section of my spatial relation-related plans involve desperate certain magic.

Eventually we determine we'll have to take the door to the living room off the hinges to provide an extra inch of space. Alex and Catilin do this, then we eat Pinkberry and laugh about the things that make us laugh and that make other people not like to hang out with us. Nata goes down the street to wake up jet-lagged Peter to help with stage three.

Me: "Does anyone else smell that smell?"

A;ex: "You always think you smell weird things."

Me: "Caitlin, you smell it, I know you do."

Caitlin: "I smell it."

Me: "It smells like a dead mouse, doesn't it?"

Caitlin: "Uh-huh. Ut-oh. Oh boy."

A;ex says she can't smell anything but then points out that I refuse to go into corner delis 'cause they smell like deli and I don't want my clothes to smell like deli and possibly I have an acute super-human sense of smell. But then Caitlin investigates, smells around the couch and then razors open the inside of the couch and the smell wafts out, engulfing the previously fresh air we'd so innocently been breathing.

It is FOUL. It is the unmistakable smell of DEAD MOUSE. We have been sold a couch with DEAD MOUSE IN IT.

Caitlin: "Oh boy."

Me: "Get it out of here! OMG! I don't want a couch that has a dead mouse in it."

A;ex: "I can't fucking believe this is happening right now. Like Really? Really Dixon?"

Caitlin, eyes watering, puts on her hoodie for emotional support, plugs her nose and says "oh no" while A;ex mutters to herself and I sit in the living room trying to be chipper, 'cause like I said before the only time I'm good at being chipper is when everyone else is upset or sad, 'cause I like to go against the grain.

I call Natalie who's mostly horrified that she thinks she's made a mistake and wants to take full responsibility.

We have purchased a sofa. It was overpriced and took the strength of two lesbians, one bisexual and one "I don't believe in labels" to get it into the apartment at all and will take quantum physics to push it in any further to its landing spot but needless to say, no, no, no, we are not getting this into the living room after all, we don't want this thing anymore! This is G-d saying do not take the couch.

This is A COUCH WITH A DEAD ANIMAL IN IT and it's making the whole apartment reek. Surely Dixon will be horrified to hear what's happened to us, and to Caitlin his alleged hero.

And it's getting late and we're tired. We've gotta get dressed for Carly's party and my room needs some attention, the bathroom is filth, Peter's tired, Caitlin aches and still has to drive back to New Jersey and I need to become Paris Hilton so but first we must call Dixon to make arrangements, we figure he'll be apologetic and maybe offer a partial refund, or else fess up to selling us a couch with a dead animal inside it.

I mean, THERE IS A DEAD ANIMAL INSIDE THIS SOFA! I mean, that's a bad thing, yes, that's not the kind of thing you sell, that's the kind of thing you pay someone to remove. We even are prepared to offer photographic evidence of said dead mouse.

Me: "I wish we could send him this smell on email or text. Like a picture message but scratch 'n sniff style."

Getting the sofa out of the apartment is slightly easier, 'cause there's a lot of rage fits happening, and I think we broke it in four spots trying to get it out. I couldn't get near it 'cause I knew if the dead mouse fell out onto me, I'd drop dead on the spot.

Let's fast forward to an hour later. Caitlin has called Dixon, 'cause she's his hero. He didn't return her call. So we've called again. This has been a nightmare.

But not a serious nightmare like DIXON. Himself.

Now mild-mannered Dixon is a menace. Why are we telling him this, he asks. It's out of his hands now.

Obvs he's on meth or coke or one of the other uppers that makes you super-irritable, 'cause he does that thing that people do when they're strung out on uppers where they respond to mild-mannered comments with batshit crazy responses. For example (actual transcript of dialogue, obvs Nata remembers it all word for word, as we do as well):

Natalie: I’m saddened by the fact that you don’t think we could make this a bit more fair for us.
Dixon: I’m a good person! I helped you carry it!
Natalie: You didn't have to -- you should've said something at the time.
Dixon: We made a good faith transaction and that's the vaguarities [his invented word, not ours] of craigslist! This conversation is over!
Natalie: I've done many transactions on craigslist myself and if something went wrong I always try to do the right thing.
Dixon: I'M NOT HITLER! I'M NOT A NAZI!

I believe Caitlin and Natalie are now taking turns trying to reason with Dear Dixon to no avail, and Natalie's about to cry, and the couch is outside and it's cold and we're tired and we are at that spot in life where we seriously cannot afford to lose ten dollars, let alone an entire afternoon and forty dollars each, and we're supposed to go to Carly's party but now Dixon is making Natalie cry. We bought a cover for A;ex's grandfather's sofa so it's not that we're saving money now by taking the free one, 'cause the free one is sort of hideous looking and the cover was $70.

What I'm saying is there is no silver lining here, unless you're talking about the silver lining left behind by the shedded fur of a dead mouse.

Dixon: "This conversation is over. If you wanna have a rational conversation we can talk about Gossip Girl if you'd like."
Natalie: "What's gossip girl?"
Dixon: "That's what you are, gossip girl, a bitchy whiny girl who wants to get her way."

I don't see the similarities, but maybe that's just me.

Dixon is on the phone with Caitlin when Natalie screams "I FIGHT FOR YOUR GAY RIGHTS!" which barely misses Dixon's sheltered ear as he's now hung up on us.

I don't know what we expected, really, I guess we just figured, you know, something.
Caitlin had offered to help me move, she said: "it's the least I can do."

Me: "We should call him back and ask him if his refrigerator is running."
A;ex: "You better go and catch it!"

Dixon's said we can "do whatever we'd like" with the couch. We'd like to throw it at his face, or leave it on his sidewalk, but the idea of getting it back into the car and spending more time on this project, going Itty Bitty Titty Committee on his flat ass, is just overwhelming.

So we leave it on the street and now (Monday) it is gone, at the landfill.

Me: "oo, let's call him and say I'm voting Yes on Prop 8 and then hang up!" [sidenote: obvs I'd never do that, NO ON PROP 8 KIDS! NO!]

What was the least Dixon could've done?

Is he just not a good person on the inside? Is he right? Is it the meth talking? I don't know.

Somewhere between here and the West Coast, Dixon's buying processed snack foods with our cash. I hope he gets a flat tire. I'm sitting on the pilfered cushions right now. It's comfortable. It's not perfect but it does the trick.

are you human, or are you VLOG-star?

The news goes so fast these days we can hardly keep up with our Sarah Palin jokes. I used the last of our footage for this vlog. I've also included footage shot w/A;ex while I was living w/her and her parents on Long Island & footage shot w/Natalie while I was living w/her and someone else's parents in Harlem. I've got parental issues.

So the is about America, Natalie, and how Alex still has Angelina Jolie posters all over her walls. Caitlin and I had a lot of feelings about Alex's room and most importantly its Gwen Stefani wallpaper when we first saw it. In fact we instantly dashed to Barnes & Noble to buy every mag featuring an Angelina spread.

When Alex got our present she yelled at us for supporting the tabloid journalism industry but our laughter drowned out her protests. We were very amused over what we perceived to be our incredible funiness, cleverhood, talentship and invention, and we were and saying things like "Alex, we wouldn't want you to miss this shot of Angie and Shiloh for over your bed!" "Alex, this is an important photograph!"

I have the teevee on mute and Janice Dickinson just pushed a greasy muscled boy into a swimming pool. All the other boys, also in Speedos, are standing at the side of the pool trying to look like the Marlboro Man, I think. I'm glad I have it on mute. i bet the noise would be annoying.

Did you know Lozo stopped writing his blog? I'll probs get all his traffic now. Football. Basketball. This stupid girl on the bus. Baseball. Hi Lozo fans! Anyhow, when I used to think to myself; "Riese, why do you spend so much time on your blogs when it's not really financially lucrative and you really should be focusing on other things, like your career, or long-term plans for life, or writing a book or freelancing or making a living, or that baby you had in Montana that one summer with that ranchboy who smelled like haystacks, where is that baby now?" -- I would then answer myself like this: "Well, Lozo does it."

That's my policy in life. If I can think of one other person who does what I'm doing and seems okay with it then I am in the clear. But now that Lozo isn't doing it, I don't know how to answer myself when I question myself like that. I have a lot more thoughts on this topic, specific thoughts and lists, etc. But this post is going to be about the vlog. It's 3 A.M., I should be asleep, especially since I broke all my fingers from typing too much.

Also now on the teevee they have Janice dressed up like a trannie hooker princess, and all the other kids are dressed like goblins. I have a lot of questions about America. Maybe this vlog will answer them. Actually this vlog is about nothing more than any vlog has ever been about nothing before. the only "greater meaning" I can gleam from the wreckage is that we have a lot of things happening in our head a the same time.:

The Biggest Bestest OMG'est Election Blog Post of All Time in the History of the United States World Wide Webbernet

[UPDATE: new section on climate change] After this, I'm gonna stop writing about the presidential election for at least 10 days. I mean, I'll mention it, but I won't address it as a subject. I gots to get off the sauce. But! This is the final election hurrah!, the last bender, the largest compendium of actual information ever assembled in the history of autowin. We're celebrating the longest sustained period I've gone without talking about myself (directly) (constantly). But also; I feel it's silly to talk about me right now. My existence is so absurdly petty and frivolous, it's difficult to address inner demons when the sky is falling, everyone's broke and unemployed (I've been broke & unemployed for eons, so I'm used to it), and we're in the midst of an extremely high-stakes election.

I mean, what can I talk about right now besides the state of the union? I wanna start new book club, but what if no one can afford to buy books! Omg! What about my feelings? Do I have any?

This blog post covers the important issues as we see them. It also contains every single g-ddamn link I've been sent, directed to, or independently stumbled upon this week. Every link you've emailed me, all the ones Haviland shared via email 'cause she uses Google Reader like a weirdo, facebook posted items, youtube links on twitter. ALL OF THEM. Did I miss anything? Is there ANOTHER PALIN VIDEO I could watch? Please let me know, thanks.

I asked three of my greatest resources – my future bridesmaids – to give me input and help me assemble something that you can use when it's time to email your bible-thumping uncle or your clueless younger brother or your dear friend at the office who apparently would like to see America continue spiraling to hell in a hand-basket along with great minds like Elisabeth Hassleback and Ann Coulter. This, my friends, is the source of all your informational needs.

With avatars!

I present, along with Krista, Natalie, and Haviland --
the greatest bestest staggering work of heartbreaking genius
election 2008 coverage on the entire world wide web.

**

The Team:

Natalie: Grew up in Ohio (heartland of the universe), her parents immigrated from Romania. We met at U of Michigan where she studied women's studies and then got her M.A in Philosophy & Public Policy at the London School of Economics. She currently works for the Association for Women’s Rights and Development and her best friend is a gay and we're gonna find an awesome apartment.


Krista: Grew up in Wisconsin, we met at Interlochen Arts Academy as suitemates our junior year and then forevermore. In our Sparlem apartment many years later she'd lecture me on politics atop a stack of folded-up pieces of The New York Times and donate to shit-tons of causes, thus flooding the mailbox with Sierra Club posters and Planned Parenthood alerts. She's studying for her M.A. at Yale and her boyf is a big shot at moveon.org. She can see Russia from her window.


Haviland: You know Haviland Stillwell, rising star, already obvs. and know all about her. I'll just add that she grew up in the deep south of Savannah and then Atlanta, Georgia, the daughter of a democratic politician in a Republican district. Her brother works in D.C. I don't know how she became a gay at NYU and then a Broadway star. She gets way more excited about Meet the Press than you'd expect, is really hot for Hillary, and only pals around with people who love America and the first ammendment.

---

10. We Need Better Health Care

McCain will tax, for the first time in history, health insurance benefits from your employer, and “deregulate," just like he did with the banks, which didn't work. 20 million will lose benefits, one trillion will lose Medicare and Medicaid.

• The return credit of $1500/individual and $5000/family doesn't come close to the $12,000 price tag on the average American family's policy.
• It'll be legal for insurance companies to select their own pools, so those w/preexisting conditions will have trouble getting insured.
• Obama's laws make it illegal for HI companies to discriminate.
• Obama plans to create universal health care but if you already like your policy, you can keep it, obvs! -- never fear.
• We are the only wealthy industrialized nation without some form of universal health care.

Haviland: “What better way to make this country better than to teach everyone from the time that they are born that they don't have to be privileged to see a doctor?”


Krista: “McCain's health care plan is literally catastrophic, and hypocritical. McCain has seven homes and private jets and has been on tax-payer financed health insurance his entire life. Aside from the judges, this is the thing that scares me the most.”

---

9. We Need to Fix Our Foreign Policy & Our Reputation Abroad
(edited for brevity -- Natalie's complete report here)

We’re marred by the Bush-Cheney foreign relations approach – “you’re either with us or you’re against us, and if you’re against us, we’ll probs drop bombs.” We’re now less safe and our moral standing within the international community has been severely damaged.

• McCain’s position on Iraq: stay the course.
• Obama’s foreign policy: 1. no more fear, 2. have some dignity. 3. diplomacy first, military action as a last resort.
• Obama and Biden will convene a bipartisan Consultative Group made up of Congress members to foster better executive-legislative relations and bipartisan unity on foreign policy.
• McCain’s website does not have a section coherently detailing his foreign policy approach.

Natalie: "Obama's foreign policy plan is nuanced and recognizes the complexities of the world we live in today. He understands the need to engage the international community and that diplomatic pressures are often more effective than military intervention ... but fully understands the importance of a strong and fortified military and the need to deploy it when all else fails."

Obama's foreign policy is the best! McCain vs. McCain: He seems to think he can magically unite the two main strands in foreign-policy administration. He can't (newsweek), Foreign Policy Brain Trusts: McCain Advisers (Council on Foreign Relations).

Obama is not a terrorist! Bill Ayers is totes fine, this guy used to work with him (@slate), and Obama sets the record straight on the radio animated Bateman style (@salon), and he predicted this line of reasoning, didn't he? Yes he did (@youtube).

---

8. Women's Rights

(Natalie's complete report here )

Reproductive Rights/Health Care: Obama supports a woman’s right to choose her reproductive futures. McCain would, given the chance, overthrow Roe v. Wade and terminate the Title X family planning program. He opposes investing in insurance coverage for women's health issues like birth control (and supports abstinence only sex ed w/a running mate who makes rape victims pay for their rape kits)

• More than 19 million women are uninsured in this country.
• Choice is critical to the promotion of democracy. In order to truly have control over one’s life, one must have full control of one’s body.

Women and Work: Over the past eight years, female workers have faced stagnating wages, declining health care coverage, erosion of pension protections, rising personal debt and have been hard hit by the housing crisis.

• Women make 77 cents for every dollar a man makes for the same work.
• A mother can get fired or lose wages for missing work because her child gets sick.
• The Obama economic plan will increase the minimum wage to $9.50 by 2011 and will extend Child Care Tax Breaks to 7.5 million working women. Their plan also supports paid paternal leave.

Natalie: “On their website, McCain/Palin claim that “there is only one candidate (John McCain) who has answers to the most basic concerns facing women voters.” Scouring their website, there’s no reference to the particular challenges women face in the work-force, balancing work and family, obstacles owning their own businesses – anything. They do however discuss Cindy McCain’s travels. Take a look for yourself.

Obama and Biden, on the other hand,have a lot to say -and it makes sense."

---

Famous People say VOTE!: Paris Hilton interviews the best president ever (@funny or die), Betty White has Sarah Palin's crazy (@defamer), don't vote is possibly better than vote or die, also the girls from friends look HOT (@mtvnews), kim stolz wants you to vote (@afterellen), also all the hot people in hollywood are like whatever we're not gonna vote for you (@the la times).

The election is funny! Like, where are the Republicans gonna threaten to move if Obama wins? (@slate), and what would it be like if
Obama and Bartlett had a meeting, I bet Aaron Sorkin could conjure that (@nytimes), and Roseanne Cash would be a better VP than than Sarah Palin (@the nation) and Sarah Palin's debate can be explained in the Debate Flow Chart (@the daily kos), but she's George Sanders's Gal (@the new yorker) and of course there's John Stewart & Steven Colbert breaking it down, as they do this time of year (@entertainment weekly).

---

7. The Union Choice

Haviland: "I'm the member of three unions -- Actor's Equity, Screen Actor's Guild, and AFTRA -- I can safely say, listen to the president of the AFL-CIO about the craziness of voting any other way and trust he knows what he's talking about. He brings up great points about racisim within the election. Many 'blue collar workers' can listen to this guy and understand that a vote for McCain/Palin would be a total loss."

---

McCain is lying about the content of his character! Mishaps mark John McCain's record as naval aviator (@latimes) Make Believe Maverick (tim dickinson @rolling stone), McCain and the POW Cover-up (@the nation), McCain thinks we won every war ever (@the atlantic), mccain yells at everyone when he loses at craps and has an anger management problem (@the daily beast).

Also, McCain is a serious flip-flopper! Here's a clean-cut chart of the double-talk express (@rollingstone), his supporters say the flip-flopping is independence from dogma, but really he's just an opportunistic flip embracer of opposites (@the ny times), the daily show debuts the movie "John McCain is a Reformed Maverick" (@comedy central).

---

6. The Economy

Clearly the Republican "trickle-down" plan has failed -- outsourcing is at an all time high, and gaps between rich and poor continue to expand as big-box retailers and multi-national corporations take over the map. Obama knows change takes time and starts with education and health care. 95% of Americans will benefit from his tax cuts, which focus on the middle class.

Obama will save the economy!: Wall Street, Fall 2009 (@nymag), Obama has found his voice on the economy 'cause he's "Professor and Pastor" (@slate).

---

Everyone on McCain's team wants to be on Obama's team now! David Brooks (@nytimes), Christopher Buckley (@the daily beast), Kathleen Parker (@the national review), and Peggy Noonan (@the wsj), Republicanos por Obama (@huffpo), Republican Congressman Ray LaHood (@huffpo), former Republican Michigan Gov. William Millken (@mlive), and just general concern in the GOP for his campaign right now (@nytimes) and the RedState confounder isn't wanting to vote for Obama, but he can't bring himself to vote for McCain (@joshuatrebino).

---

5. We Cannot Let the Supreme Court go Conservative

Krista: "Our courts hang in dangerous balance with four moderate liberals, four extreme conservatives and one tenuous swing vote. Justice Stevens, one of the moderate liberals, is 88. Our world will change not just for four more years but for our lifetime were he to be replaced by a McCain/Palin appointee.

We could overturn Roe vs. Wade, we’ll likely see torture as a routine and legal interrogation technique, unchecked corporations will pollute our planet for profit, and any power put before the court would likely be ushered into the hands of an ever-privileged few as unions and worker's rights become a distant memory. Our proud history of Civil Rights and Women’s Rights may never have come to be under a court populated by McCain’s favorite justices."

[I did a piece about Alito for nerve a few years ago. He got appointed. Thank you, Bush. Very, very frightening stuff.]

---

4. We Cannot Have Sarah Palin in Power

Haviland: "She's a liar. She doesn't answer questions. To be fair, there's no reason someone in her position, prior to her VP nom, would be expected to know foreign policy details, so she's done a good job learning quickly. But do you want someone who's cramming the info instead of someone who already knows it? Aside from experience and personality, there's other issues with Palin:

• Living next door to Russia isn't foreign policy experience.
• Having a gay friend and tolerating her choice is not pro-civl rights
• Believing it's "not important" to discuss the cause of global warming isn't eco friendly.
• Supporting abstinence only education -- which clearly didn't work, 'cause her own daughter couldn't get with the Palin agenda -- doesn't mean she's pro-life.

Being a woman in a position of power does not mean you're a feminist."

+

Palin is not necessarily the best idea anyone's ever had: Mad Dog Palin: The scariest thing about John McCain's running mate isn't how unqualified she is -- it's what her candidacy says about America (@ rolling stone), The View From Alaska: Amid Troopergate and other government scandals, including killing wolf pups, an Alaskan writer explains why the Palin phenomenon rings hollow in his home state (@salon), Palin's Alternate Universe: In such a serious moment in American history, it's hard to believe that somebody with Sarh Palin's limited skills could possibly be playing a leadership role. (@nytimes), Sarah Palin is ruining my life, I rant about her, I can't stop looking at her (Q&A @salon), For Palin, some pork is kosher (@politico), Eve Ensler's Drill, Drill Drill (@huffpo), Meet Sarah Palin's radical right-wing friends (@salon), Is Sarah Palin a "Muscular Feminist," or simply a Dumb Jock? (@radar), New footage from inside Sarah Palin's church (@the daily beast).

Palin has done some sketchy shit! She blurred the line between church and state in how she distributed state funds in Alaska (@the assosicated press/juneau via huffpo), alternet's got 12 new stomach-turning revelations about her record (@alternet).

The Candidate that Launched A Thousand Sarah Palin Impressions: Riese & Haviland Vlog: Alice interviews Sarah Palin part one and two, Saturday Night Live parodies @ NBC, Palin/Hilary Open, Couric/Palin Open, VP Debate Open: Palin/Biden, and the original Sarah Palin imitator Sarah Benicasa on her youtube channel (one is still the best) and since getting picked up by the Huff-Po where now all her Sarah Palin Vlogs are on 236.com , also what if Sarah Palin's story was a Disney movie it would be: Head of Skate (@college humor).

The 236.com Sarah Palin Video Library: everything this woman has ever said, including recent interviews with Gibson and Couric as well as oldies-but goodies like Iraq war is "god's task" & getting blessed by a witch hunter.

---

3. Savage Inequalities in the Education System

Republicans embrace "big government" and Social Darwinsim, but this doesn't work w/r/t education. Survival of the fittest doesn't apply in a school system that doesn't provide the tools of survival equally -- where poor districts go without books and rich districts enjoy Olympic-sized swimming pools and personal computers. Obama will apply a lifetime record of education activism to fix "No Child Left Behind" and improve HeadStart, retain & recruit & reward high-quality teachers and make college affordable. McCain's rhetoric? Make "parents and children" responsible. "Empower" parents to move their kids from a bad school to a good one -- leaving kids with shitty parents alone in shitty schools. Statistics show this usually results in dropping out, low-wage work, prison, or having babies too young and then being shitty parents so the cycle continues. Good plan, McCain, bravo.

---

McCain/Palin are being mean/assholes/racist: A Republican Mob Scene (john dickerson @slate), Mud Pies for "That One" (maureen dowd @the nytimes)), The McCain-Palin Mob (@blogger interrupted), John Lewis Condemns GOP Campaign Tactics (@the washington post), Campbell Brown Blasts McCain campgin for race baiting (@huffo), McCain Plays the Race Card (@time).

---

2. The Gays!

Obama supports federal benefits and protections for same-sex couples, fully-inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act, hate crime legislation, comprehensive sex ed, a repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and increased HIV/AIDS funding. He opposes the federal marraige ammendment and bans on GLBT adoptions.

Obama loves the gays! see exactly how his ideas are better than mccain's ideas (@the advocate) and also biden loves the gays (@the advocate) and the hrc endorses barack obama (@the hrc).

---

Obama is the best choice for president ever! He's The New Yorker's choice and Esquire's first endorsement of a candidate in 75 years. Also: 15 Papers Endorse Obama this weekend, none for McCain (@e&p pub), Hip-hop stars endorse Obama (@the star online), Sarah Silverman says Schlep it out to your grandparents for Obama, Bruce Springstein is boss, he endorses Obama (@huffpo), also all the hot people in hollywood are like whatever we're not gonna vote for you, Sarah Palin (@the la times), Women's Rights groups endorse Obama (@ap).

Obama attracts all different kinds of voters overlooked or slighted by the GOP! Like the hip-hop generation (@newsweek), the women of wasilla alaska (@the wasilla project), military wives (@youtube), next generation veterans for obama (@youtube). He's battling block by block for the black vote (@nytimes), voters from all over the world if they could vote (@the economist), and the youth (@la times).

Obama is smart! That's a good thing! James Wood thinks Obama's Verbage is top-rate (@thenewyorker) and Maureen Dowd doesn't like Sarah's Pompom Palaver (@the nytimes).

Talk shows and the news love Obama! Look, Michelle Obama on the Daily Show (@comedy central), Elisabeth Hassleback can't seem to defend Sarah Palin on The View (@huffpo), Oblermann's got a Special Comment on Sarah Palin (@huff - po) and Rachel Maddow is such a cutie on the Tonight Show (@afterellen), so also I was just wondering Can Late Night Comedy Sink John McCain? (@the nation) but also, bill clinton - not that helpful (@slate).

---

LATE ADD: 18. Energy, the Environment, and Climate Change
By Bat-Boy Alexandra Vega

Obama understands (and McCain doesn't) that if we were self-sufficient and energy independent, we could preserve economic stability, stimulate the economy over time and consequently avoid wars, conflicts and foreign policy decisions based solely on the need for oil. Obama, with a long record of initatives designed to fight global warming and client change, intends to limit carbon emissions, invest in altertnative energy, raise fuel-economy standards and require 10 percent of America's energy be generated by renewable sources by 2012.

50% of the U.S Oil Supply is bought straight from foreign countries like Saudi Arabia & other countries who often use our payments to finance terror-loving terrorists. Drilling isn't the only answer; we've only got 3% of the world's oil reserves and even if we started drilling in ANWR today, it would only give us about enough oil to last a month -- at its PEAK, which'll be about a decade from now.

So clean fuel isn't just about energy and the environment, it's about creating millions of new jobs and saving American industry.

Check out: Environmentalists for Obama

"Ms. Palin's strategy is frighteningly simplistic: drill for more oil. It is true that nearly every Alaska politician likes to drill for oil; it is the source of much of the state's income. But no other Alaska politician is this close to the presidency. Meanwhile, Ms. Palin continues to express doubts about the human causes of climate change. Her insistence, in the debate, that she didn't "want to argue about the causes" was also alarming."
(The New York Times, "Up and Down the Learning Curve")

---

1. Because Yes We Can

Krista: "In the VP debate, Palin quoted Regan when she warned Americans that "you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children's children, what it was once like to live in America when men were free." For all of us who love our country and what it stands for -- that's our worst nightmare, that the best is behind us. But Regan's quote was addressing the possibility of launching Medicare. So yes, Sarah Palin, we'll act now to make sure our best days are ahead of us, not behind us. We'll do this by not withholding Medical care from the elderly, among other things.

We'll do it by voting, this time, out of hope and faith in the American people -- not out of fear.
We will, in short, listen to our better angels.
We'll build and not destroy.
In our cities and in our hearts we'll start again to work For and not Against.
We'll do our own fact checking and not end up finding out far too late that our fears, stoked by mis-truths, led us to give power to an administration that didn't have our best interests at heart.
We'll rebuild the middle class by ensuring that paying for healthcare won't lead to home forclosure.
We'll rebuild our education system so that teachers and students have the support they need not just to survive, but to thrive.
We'll rebuild our economy with the fundamental belief that someone working a full-time job should be able to afford rent, and that CEOs can't walk away from imploding deals w/billions of benefits.
We'll do it by voting to protect the middle class.

That will rehabilitate our image around the world.
That will make America, once again, what it is meant to be: a bastion of freedom, strength, education, innovation, creativity, generosity, and prosperity. And we will get there together.

Bruce Springsteen at a registration drive in Philadelphia said, "that promise was handed down to us by our Founding Fathers with one instruction: do your best to make these things real."

Over the last eight years we've been failing that one simple instruction. Our leadership can work for us, we have the opportunity now to build again after the storm. Our house of dreams still stands, as Springsteen said, "One thousand George Bushes and one thousand Dick Cheneys will never be able to tear that house down."

Let's take our country back."
++

ok, tinkerbell will write about lilo & samro, all my feelings, books and field trips tomorrow.
xoxo
gossip girl.

On the Night I Die I Swear I'll Sleep Outside Your Window OR "My Life as a House"

Me? I'd keep my library on the wall's built-in-bookshelves. Hardwood floors. Exposed brick. Exposed book. We don't need mirrors if we have each other, we need windows to see what's out there but not too much everything, 'cause then we won't be able to see each other anymore. I want us to really look at each other is what I'm saying.

I had a house once. I mean -- I lived in a house, and it was mine as much as anything can be yours when you're a child and don't really have anything but still believe that you will, one day, have everything.

I nested there, as surely and solidly as anything in the world could've been my nest when I was a child and didn't really have anything but still believed I would, one day, nest somewhere else, somewhere spectacular like in Troop Beverly Hills or The Little Princess.

I never liked adventure stories of swashbuckling, journeys, warriors, quests -- I liked novels where precarious girls in frocks and bare feet discovered secret worlds in the wardrobe or in a box in the attic, stories where adventure was as local as wallpaper.

Natalie, my bestie from college who I lived with at two separate addresses there and crashed with last week, saw her Fiji dream house in Architectural Digest. Simple, clean lines, beautiful, next to the sea, surrounded by mountains and green, endless green. Open & floor length windows, glass walls and the bamboo bedroom walls open up to the spectacular sea. Hardwood floors, lots of ceiling fans, crisp linen, a beautiful kitchen where she can see all the people she loves sitting at once with wine and laughing. Stainless steel everything. Huge bathtub. Colors, and light, and dreamity dream dreams.

And when, at thirteen, my parents got divorced and we were made to leave that house I owned [or thought I owned] I left kicking and screaming, literally, staging a sit-in on the blue carpet in the style of the Vietnam protests my parents had told me about. I said I could not go. I demonstrated this by burying my head in the carpet. To my left -- the closet I'd turned into Samantha (a doll)'s bedroom. To my right, the futon and my loft bed and my desk where I wrote stories on my loud clanking electric typewriter.

To my all around -- my walls; posters of places I wanted to visit (like New York City) and hulking portraits of my hero Nolan Ryan who kept on pitching 'til he won.

Haviland wants a place like this hotel in L.A. called the Visceroy, like 60's stuff like in Bewitched [her typo was "betwitched," which's better, yeah?], the decor from I Dream of Jeanie, and lots of mirrors and of course the beach, always the beach and the waves, and the wind in her fairy-tale hair.

In the fifteen years since leaving that place on 431 Crest Avenue [like the toothpaste], I've switched addresses 23 times. As unhinged as that's made me feel, I've established certain precautions -- I always know where I'll be at least two weeks before I go there. I've never, for example, had to crash, or put my everyday things and furniture in storage, or couch-hop. A luxury, sure, but for me it's hardwired as hardwood and the only thing that keeps me grounded in a life of freelancing and freewheelin' and now, no legitimate roots anywhere, noplace I've ever lived that'd have me back or even knows my name.

Carly: "my dream house is whatever house Robin is living in. What, too gay?" Carly's dream house is not too big and it's modern but not cold, and there's a pool and room for dogs, and she can entertain or just sit around and watch tv in her pajamas. She says, "I can't figure out if that means I want a house on the beach in CA or a penthouse in Manhattan. Guess I'll have to get one of each!"

At boarding school near the end of my junior year, my writing teacher invited his workshop over for dinner. I rode my bike there, it was on campus. I had lots of coffee which was still a drug to me then because I was 16 and full of hope and spirit. I didn't say much 'cause I was shy, but I remember the books in his room, and the warmth they created with their words and possibility. I remember the brook in the backyard, like a cheesy watercolor rendered beautiful.

I remember, remember tangibly, the feeling of whipping through air on my bicycle from his house afterwards and thinking, "Marie Lyn Bernard the world is at your fingertips/handlebars!"

That was when energy, not oblivion, was my drug of choice. And I decided that night that when I got home for the summer I'd build myself a cave -- I'd always loved that shit, the treehouses and secret clubhouses -- a cave no-one else could squeeze into -- a place where I'd read poetry and write brilliant brilliant heartbreaking things. I'd write a novel, I said. All I needed was the right space, the right cave.

Adam's number one awesome houseboat is MacGuyver's. Distant second; Duncan during the relevant season of Highlander. In his elementary school sketchbook he drew his dream house -- he sketched it. It was a castle. With a moat. And a wing for his mommy because he was/is that kid. And he went on to form his romantic archetypes from the relationships in fantasy novels which wasn't healthy but the women were plucky (he chose the angsty young sorceress nobody understood, not the ditzy princess in distress). And then there was a real-life man with a real-life wife who had spines; spines of books, candlelight. That, after all, is his dream house: "I would probs want more light than he got, but it was night when I was there, so just about anything would have more natural light than nighttime."

And so, here I am. Basically what happened was I was all set with the apartment and then five days before I found out it wasn't going to happen ... I don't, and won't, go into detail, because it's my life as a house too, and it's complicated and I hate myself already for typing this sentence already.

Alex wants something she can build with her own two hands, with materials from her stranded desert island, but she realizes that fantasy sounds a lot like nightmare. So then there's this: a margarita shack on the beach in Mexico, where she'd sleep in a hammock and make margaritas all day. But then there's this too: the tree-house. That Swiss Family Robinson house in Disneyworld, anything where she could be inside and around a tree, the warmer the better.

But the whole situation leaves me unhinged, lost, and that's why I'm couch-hopping. I feel dislocated, like Houdini could pop off both of his nice shoulders you know? My Dad used to talk to me about Houdini a lot. I liked how Houdini was stuck in this tiny space and could dislocate his body from himself and that was how he made magic.

I realize, oh I realize, that there are children in Darfur who'd love to be sans-address but have a bed to share with a friend or a couch to hop to, close one's eyes on. Perhaps if I didn't realize this, it would be easier to figure out how I feel. But every thought I have is overrridden by the other thought; the thought of people who are sleeping on the streets, who need more than my change/change.

My short list includes the loft from Igby Goes Down, The Factory, that house in the Hitchcock movie with the cliff chase and the hanging, Walden Pond, the house my writing teacher lived in, and more and more and more that I will think about tomorrow and then add 'cause this post is totes incomplete, like you and me and everyone we'll ever know.

Caitlin. Wants a house on the beach with a pool and a backyard and she imagines her dream house to be like in Life as House, the movie that said: "I've always thought of myself as a house, I was always what I lived in. It didn't need to be big, it didn't need to be beautiful, it just needed to be mine. I became what I was meant to be, I built myself a life, I built myself a house, with every crash of every wave I hear something now. I never listened before. I'm on the edge of a cliff, listening. I'm almost finished. If you were a house, this is where you'd want to be built" and "What? Do I still love you? Absolutely. There's not a doubt in my mind. Through all my anger, my ego, I was always faithful in my love for you."

And so, nowhere I am. And so I do not know who I am. And so I want more than anything to be proud of myself. Which won't set us free but Who I Am is the great mistake in a life full of mistakes.

And so tonight I will go to sleep, ideally, though I've struggled with sleep the past few days 'cause I'm not good with strange spaces, and so I panic, and so tomorrow I will wake up, and I will go to work, and I will, if I have the time, attack this post and try to make it into something as glorious as four walls, as something I could dig into, as something I could keep. Something I can own, as much as any child can own anything.