Monday, September 20, 2004

shadowy men on a shadowy planet

My first non-Latin obsessed weekend in ages was actually not as cool as my last Latin obssessed weekend, which is to say last weekend. But it was an average weekend and that was good, and I saw Garden State, which is a good movie. My friend Rob and I were hanging out in Kaffein, downtown Evanston's hip dispensary of caffeine products (the spelling is alternative you see) and wonderful, wonderful milkshakes, and we were having a very scintillating conversation about what a jackhole George Lucas is for not releasing the original cuts of the Star Wars trilogy on DVD along with his precious Special Editions when a young jock type came up to us and asked if he could sit with us. Bewildered, we acquiesced. Apparently he was from some downstate Illinois corn town and he had come up to see the Northwestern football game. Apparently he had nothing else to do for the rest of that night. His main interest appeared to be football, and I was able to extemporise about the only thing I know about Northwestern football (that it once had a coach named Gary Barnett and his son went to high school with us) At any rate, I was relieved that he didn't immediately start talking about Jesus. Rob and I weren't comfortable returning to Star Wars however. I realize that knowing virtually nothing about football is a major social deficit in dealing with a certain breed of American male. I know plenty of people who are renaissance men, quite capable of talking about both football and the jackholishness of George Lucas with ease, but sadly I'm not one of them. He was a nice kid, but ultimately the gulf between us was rather enormous.

I was pissed off by a newspaper story the other day about how previously Democratic female voters are voting for Bush because they are now worried about terrorism. "Security moms" they're called. I hate to seem misogynist or anything, but Jesus! Beware, gentle reader, the mindless she-beast who will sacrifice all reason and decency in a misguided attempt to protect her cubs. That *is* a little misogynist. Ah well, it's stream of consciousness. The notion that Bush is going to be "tough on terrorism" because he invades countries that are marginally (to be generous) connected to terrorism, and Kerry's going to dive under his desk and sob like a little girl at the first sign of trouble is hilarious right-wing caricature that tens of millions of people actually believe. Because they are really, really *really* dumb. The best quote of this article was "There are September 10th people and there are September 11th people and I'm a September 11th person." It's really amazing that I still have long, beautiful hair after the many attempts I've made over the years to tear it from my scalp. Is there a third category of "Person who has a passing acquaintance with thousands of years of human history and not just my own lifetime plus vague TV images of World War II and JFK, who was thus aware of the existence of terrorism as well as numerous other things produced by countries other than America, long prior to September 10, 2001?" Because that's me.

But anyway, today, there were lots of female readers of the Tribune who wrote in to tell those other women what idiots they are so that's good. If only Lysistrata were here...

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