It’s Super Tuesday! I think that name is misleading, don’t you? It implies something fun and festive.
I woke up today and thought “Hey, it’s Super Tuesday!” Then I thought “one of these days I should really learn what Super Tuesday is.” So then I googled it and looked at the google results for approximately…I’d say 15 seconds. Then I got so bored and filled with angst and hatred for my country that I returned to my previous google search to sort of clear my palate (“Zelda Twilight Princess Sky City Walkthrough” (I was stuck in that room where you have to clawshot up so many levels. I couldn’t see the vine-covered column! I felt like an idiot)).
This glorious Super Tuesday is when all the most horrible assholes of our nation vote to decide which asshole, of the panoply of available Major Assholes, will go on to represent general Assholery next November. NEXT NOVEMBER, oh god. We still have so many more months of this. Did you know that in France the election season is only like 6 weeks long, start to finish? Can you imagine such bliss
In my class we (I) talk a lot about gender and how men hate women so much and have since around the turn of the 19th century (this seems hilarious but may actually sort of be true–like, there was always patriarchy and oppression, but I’m starting to think men didn’t specifically, emotionally HATE and FEAR women until roughly the 19th century. I could tell you about this at great length but anyway whatever). Some of my students don’t really get this concept of men fearing women. What do you mean they fear women? That’s silly. So yesterday in class I read them this quote from Eduard Fuchs, talking about machines and women in 1906:
Woman is the symbol of that terrifying, secret power of the machine which rolls over anything that comes under its wheels, smashes that which gets caught in its cranks, shafts, and belts, and destroys those who attempt to halt the turning of its wheels. And, vice versa, the machine, which coldly, cruelly and relentlessly sacrifices hecatombs of men as if they were nothing, is the symbol of the man-strangling Minotaur-like nature of woman.
Oh yeah, people are also afraid of machines and modernity. Turns out it’s all the same thing!
Can you even imagine what Rush Limbaugh’s nightmares are like? Crazy sex nightmares.
Today Mr. Snoopy is going to the vet because he has a growth on his arm. He got a bath yesterday and is as clean as a little string bean, prancing around without his collar on. He looks like a lithe little leopard man. He poops right where I tell him to, every morning.
SPRRIIIING is coming! I’m so excited to once again live in a place that has amazing springs, finally. Spring in LA is like, oh hey, it just got shitty-hot again, otherwise everything is exactly the same as it was all “winter.” Spring in Iowa is like, oh hey, would you like to literally drown in thick, sucking mud as you make your way across any open space whatsoever, fighting off swarms of biting flies and gnats? Because welcome to the next four months. Thank god the undergrads can have bonfires outside all night again finally. Also it is now 99% humidity, enjoy! Oh and don’t forget the pig farm outside of town that fills the air with the very strong scent of agonizing suffering and thousands of gallons of pig urine.
Can you believe I lived there for three years? Three years! And managed to never be sexually assaulted (except verbally, obviously). It is a great triumph of the human spirit.
I have now lived, for YEARS AT A TIME, in two of my least-favorite places! Los Angeles, and “the entire middle part of the country.” What’s next, Phoenix? Oh god I can’t believe I said that out loud
I truly have suffered, as Job did.
Every time you talk bad about any place, somebody pops up and is like “I’m from Phoenix! Phoenix is amazing blah blah blah! Iowa has great corn or something!” It’s astonishing. I guess it truly does take all kinds. Also I think if you’ve never lived anywhere else, it’s easy to develop a passion for wherever your parents decided to poop you out. I bet there are people who love Lubbock Texas. There are people who’d love the moon, if it had a football team.
Last night I ate two full-size grilled cheese sandwiches. It was so disgusting. I felt awful for the rest of the night. It’s like I fell off the vegan wagon and then went so far in the opposite direction that I probably have high cholesterol now. It is completely abhorrent and awful. But grilled cheese with the sharpest cheddar from Ireland that costs $10 a pound! Oh it’s good. I have this misguided belief that if I buy cheese from outside of America, it was somehow produced with less suffering than, like, Tillamook or whatever. Like as if dairy farmers everywhere else in the world are still living in the 18th century. “‘Ello Bessie, luv, got some lovely milk for us this morning do ye” etc. I imagine this is an extremely false belief but at this point who’s counting (in terms of false beliefs)?
So yeah, Super Tuesday. I love Rick Santorum’s devil-talk. Keep it coming, man! Did you see Hertzberg’s wonderful, wonderful joke in the latest NYer?
At last week’s debate, Satan got another shout-out from Santorum. To be fair, he was referring to the radical Islamist concept of the United States itself as ‘the great Satan,’ not to the institutions of the United States that he thinks Satan already controls.
Morning In My House:
“Honey I need a shoulder rub. I’ve never been this tight. That’s what she said.”
“We really should be getting regular massages. My chiropractor says it’s medically beneficial, it doesn’t just feel good.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. When we start making a little more money, I think we should start getting regular massages.”
“Hmm.”
“Monthly massage and weekly housecleaner! Our middle class goal!”
“What?”
“Come on, put it up here [holding hand up for high-five]”
“No!”
“Come on, lets try to enter the middle class before it dies completely!”
“No!”
“But I want to be middle class so bad! I DON’T WANT TO BE WORKING CLASS!”
“Honey we’re not working class. We’re the over-educated, under-employed class.”
“I know–the worst kind of class.”
“The worst.”
