A Very Bloggy Day, Apparently

I've noticed that my blogging is either feast or famine--I can go for ten days with nothing to say, and then all of a sudden I've got a million ideas. But I couldn't let this one go by. This is just the...I mean....Who DOES something like....??

The news story which is currently rendering me completely speechless:

Is here. A brief summary, because links expire and I know people hate clicking: Some guy in Texas died of alcohol poisoning; his wife was charged with murder because it was suspected that she gave him an ENEMA with SHERRY, and the absorbed alcohol was what did him in. Testimony in the case included the following:

In a 2005 interview, Warner said her husband often drank alcohol, but that he had been addicted to enemas since he was a child. She said he often used alcohol in that manner to get drunk.

--from the above article

My reactions, after "eeeeewwww..."

1. I didn't know you could DO that, much less that it could kill you.

2. Who on earth DISCOVERED that possibility? I mean, I've heard the old joke about "who was the first person to look at a raw oyster and think 'mmm! I'm gonna try that!'" but THIS is...wow.

3. Who would make a HABIT of this? Again--I'm not the one to talk about habits, but there's a substantial difference between...(Okay, thinking about the main reaction to those to whom I've told my story, when they've found out about the bit with the needles, maybe not a SUBSTANTIAL difference. But a difference, nonetheless. I simply cannot fathom the concept of being "addicted" to enemas. That, to me, is something happening in the WRONG direction. That door is marked EXIT; it is not an entrance.)

4. I'm sure I mentioned this already, but: eeeeewwwww.

(inarticulate burblings of rage)

See, here I was all ready to feel sorry for myself (we may or may not go there later) and then I found this:

The Infantilization Of America Takes Another Exceedingly Wacky Turn

Because I know you all hate clicking on links: This story details a ban on mail addressed to "Any Wounded Soldier", which in many prior conflicts was used to send holiday wishes to recovering military members. One of the main rationales given for this ban:

USO spokesman John Hanson said that like the military, the nonprofit service organization does not deliver unopened mail to unspecified recipients. He said the USO worries about security as well as hateful messages from war critics. "We just want to make sure it's not, `Die, baby killer,'" he said. "There are people out there who act irrationally, and we don't want anyone to get a message that would be discouraging."

Now you all know I'm rabidly anti-American, and...wait, what???

No. Hold on. Lost my train of thought there.

Seriously: we can send adult human beings to entirely different countries, on largely-specious grounds, for the purpose of killing those with whom we disagree; can send them there to be killed and maimed by hostile factions, some of whom weren't even hostile until AFTER we got there; but by God, we must protect the eyes of our fighting men and women from the war critics' nanny-nanny-boo-boo?

We can lie to them about the death of their comrades, and have them shoot others full of holes as revenge for things that never happened; we can give them nonfunctional and inadequate protection against the attacks we're causing them to face, and point fingers at political figures from years past as the excuse; but dagnabbit, we're gonna make DARN SURE that no pinko commie lib'rul long-haired anti-Amurrican idjit calls our boys names by mail???

Jeebus Chesterfield on a dancing can of tuna-fish, have we LOST OUR EVER-FRAKKIN' MINDS???

Things I Totally Don't Understand

I have just discovered something, and it disturbs me.

Apparently, I am the only person I know who does not actively hate Hispanic people.

I know Tim has issues with them--it's a gang thing; I know a lot of other people who have problems with their existence in this country for economic reasons, legal reasons, reasons of percieved unfairness. And tonight, driving her to pick up a pizza and some cigarettes, I had to explain to Squeaky--several times, and rather emphatically--why I didn't want to hear her "really, really funny" Mexican joke.

My mom came back from a family gathering a few weeks back to report that my aunt Linda--not my least-favorite one, but definitely not a very nice person anyway--was up in arms because of something she'd heard. Apparently some friends from their former neighborhood, which is adjacent to the Catholic cemetery where my father and my grandparents, among various other relatives, are buried, told her that "the Mexicans have picnics by the graves!!!" They were absolutely horrified at this; my aunt, predictably, was also disgusted. "It's disrespectful!" she insisted. (Talk about the mourners weeping louder than the bereaved--this is my aunt by marriage, and it's her in-laws buried there, not her parents. And none of her blood relatives are buried there, nor will any of her family end up there when the time comes. Yet she was the one making the squawk about it, from what Mom said.)

And of course, because one group of individuals from a certain culture has done one thing that upsets you, that makes the entire culture morally suspect, and from Mom's report, the conversation moved on to a wholesale bashing of Hispanics in general. (Ever notice how such conversations, even if they don't descend as far as ethnic slurs, always refer to the people in question as "Mexicans"? Thousands of years of advanced and highly differentiated cultures, all summed up in one word that's almost no longer the name of a nationality--in the hands of these people, it's more a pejorative, full of subtexts and Frito-Bandito stereotypes.) To give her credit, Mom was more disgusted by Linda and her whining than about the alleged atrocity of "picnicking" at the graves. Frankly, I've seen way more Caucasians do that than Hispanics, anyway.

I understand immigration is a hot-button issue, though there are days I think I'm the only one who holds my particular view*; what I entirely fail to understand, though, is the degree of animosity towards a group of people who are only making the same effort that most of us are making every day: to create a good, comfortable, reasonably-easy life for themselves and their families. I don't understand the hate.

But then again, I rarely do. I may not be a "people person", and I can't say I'm too fond of humanity as a whole, but that's a general thing, brought on by my own love of solitude; breaking it down any further than that, I can think of maybe one group of people I can honestly say I despise. ** (Individuals, however, are a whole 'nother matter; there are plenty of them I can't stand to be in the same room with. But that's because they're annoying, or bigoted, or controlling--not because they're white, black, red, brown, or yellow. (Orange, however--now THAT's a problem, because: lay off the fake tanner, okay? I don't CARE what the box says: it does NOT look natural.))

Overall, though, this realization kinda makes me want to look for an apartment in Pilsen.*** (After all...it WOULD insure that Tim and Squeaky stayed away....)

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*My view on immigration and the like: in my opinion, it's nothing to get up in arms about, since national boundaries should not be considered sacrosanct, since they're just man-made abstractions created by those in power at a given moment, carefully calculated to maintain their own best advantage without depriving the guys on the other side enough to instigate a conflict.

**In case you're interested? They're the ones who don't pull up close to the car in front of them, thus occupying TWO entire parking spaces and making it necessary for me to park nearly a mile from work under a viaduct with thirteen other cars, all of whose owners returned at the end of the day to find tickets attached to their windows, regardless of the fact that there was not a single, solitary sign or indicator that parking was not allowed there.

***A highly Hispanic neighborhood, with AWESOME food, on the near South Side of Chicago.