Out and about

Just saw an interview with Rachel Maddow on AfterEllen. If you don't know who Rachel Maddow is, there are two things you should know:

1. She is a really smart political commentator on the television. Mainstream television. MSNBC.
   
2. Despite the fact that she is an out lesbian in a committed relationship and a total nerd, everyone who does know who she is, regardless of sex or orientation, has a giant crush on her.

If you want more information than that, you're already on the Internet. Go do some research. Anyway, in that interview, she said this:

“I think the responsibility that we have as gay Americans,” she says, “is to the extent that we can - and we ought to be really ambitious about the extent to which we can - we have to be out.”

“That’s the thing that we owe the people who came before us who are the pioneers, and that’s the thing we owe the next generation of gay people in terms of clearing the way and making life easier for them. I think that there is a moral imperative to be out, and I think that if you’re not out, you have to come to an ethical understanding with yourself why you are not. And it shouldn’t be something that is excused lightly. I don’t think that people should be forced out of the closet, but I think that every gay person, sort of, ought to push themselves in that regard. Because it’s not just you. It’s for the community and it’s for the country.”

And I totally agree with her, philosophically. So, count me out.
I have been out in my real life since 1992. Out to virtually everyone in my real life for a shorter time than that, but still a long time.
I've kept the queer off the blog because — I don't know. Probably because:

• It makes me more easily identifiable, in case people stumble here accidentally (everyone in my real life knows I'm queer, but not everyone in my real life knows I'm bzzzzgrrrl), and
• I am b i s e x u a l, and that is a word that, spelled without spaces, attracts absolutely the wrong kind of people to a blog (and, sometimes, to me personally), which is a bummer, and which is more easily dealt with in my real life, where I can give hard stares.

So, yeah. Big queer here. Last two relationships were with women. Single and looking, if you know anyone.

Does anyone read this blog who didn't know that? Maybe the one guy. Hey, keep coming back, one guy.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask 'em in the comments. Or use the comments to come out on the Internet yourself. Go nuts.

Update: It strikes me that who "absolutely the wrong kind of people" are is maybe not as clear to everyone as it is to me. Those people are the people who have bought into the pornography myth that my particular orientation means I will sleep with literally anyone. If you are one of those people who think I will sleep with literally anyone, you are mistaken. If you are merely mistaken, and not a total jackass, I am sorry to call you "absolutely the wrong kind of people," but you need to be disabused. Really, feel free to ask questions without fear.

Look what they've done to my oatmeal

I just went to the student center to buy a little carton of milk for my oatmeal, and discovered, to my horror, that there is no skim milk available. They are not out of it, they just don't sell it.
Whole, 1%, 2 %, soy, chocolate. All there. No skim.
I haven't had milk with fat in it for a long, long time.
It reminded me of being a little girl in the innocent late-1970s, when my grandmother was in her 70s and insisted that the best thing for breakfast was cornflakes with strawberries and cream. Heavy cream, in fact. I adored my grandmother, and cornflakes, and strawberries, and heavy cream, and summer, which was when we would perform this ritual. But at the time, I was a whole-milk girl, and heavy cream was just an extra step towards decadence.
How is it that the difference between skim and 1% now feels like a step towards just grossness?
And how is it that, in this body-image-crazed time, college students will tolerate a student center with no skim milk?

I'm with the banned

One of my new favorite blogs (curse you, Google Reader, and your tempting recommendations) is My Past In Books, in which a woman just a little bit younger than I am remembers all her favorite young adult novels. Since I worked in the children's room of a library when I was in high school and therefore tore through young adult books like the print might fall off the page when I was just a little too old for them, we share many book memories.
Her latest entry is about Banned Books Week. You can see the full list of 100 most challenged books of 1990-2000 books on her site or at the American Library Association site (where you can also find other challenged-book lists).
Here's what I've already read from the list on MPIB:

• The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
• My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• The Giver by Lois Lowry
• A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
• The Color Purple by Alice Walker
• The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
• Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
• In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
• The Witches by Roald Dahl
• Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
• Blubber by Judy Blume
• Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
• The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
• Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
• The Pigman by Paul Zindel
• Deenie by Judy Blume
• Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
• A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
• James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
• American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
• Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
• Guess What? by Mem Fox
• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• Native Son by Richard Wright
• Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
• Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
• Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
• How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell

Find out more here.
And tell me in the comments what frequently challenged books I haven't read that I should make a priority, and why.
What are you going to read?
What are you going to read to your kids?

Gettin' us where we live

So, didja see this in the Wall Street Journal?

Did you think of me immediately?

I know I did.

Long story short, researchers look at different attributes of different folks in different parts of the country. Cool interactive graphics are here.

Here's how New Hampshire is described:

• Extraversion: 50th out of 51 states-plus-D.C. Or, as I like to think of it, second in aloofness.
  
• Agreeableness: 30th.
  
• Conscientiousness: 44th.
  
• Neuroticism: 14th.
  
• Openness: 14th.
  

And D.C.:

• Extraversion: 3rd out of 51 states-plus-D.C. Or, as I like to think of it, third most likely to give you a business card.
  
• Agreeableness 50th. Or, as I like to think of it, second most likely to pick a fight with you about politics or shove you on the Metro.
  
• Conscientiousness 40th.
  
• Neuroticism 31st.
  
• Openness 1st. I should have something funny to say about this, but I don't. Do you?

I also entirely love that North Dakota is first in both extraversion and agreeableness, but dead last in openness. Now that sounds like my kind of place.

Fall, really

This morning it is in the 30s, and I have turned the heat up from
barely- above- freezing- so- it- won't- accidentally- turn- on to 65- because- I- can't- stay- under- the- down- comforter- in- my- flannel- pajamas- all- day.

Clearly, I am having oatmeal for breakfast.

And I'm only sad that I don't have raisins to go on it.

I may have to throw on some jeans and a sweater and my fleece vest and walk under just- turning- yellow leaves to the convenience store to buy some.

Update: If you'd like to see what other folks are doing about fall, including my friend Lisa who is much, much more dedicated than I (and probably you), see here.

Breakin' the rules

So, there are a few topics we tend to stay away from here on CMC:

• My coworkers, now that they've found the blog.
  
• Sex.
• My real name.
• Religion.

That last one is mostly because many of my readers are unreligious, or antireligious, or religious-but-not-Christian. It's also because you're here for the funny stories, not for proselytising. Nobody likes proselytising.

Anyway.

Yesterday was a rough day for me. The whole September 11 thing hit me harder than it has in the past, maybe because I wasn't in D.C. for the first time since the attacks happened. There's some other stuff going on, too, but that was definitely big.

And several of you are having hardish times, too.

So, for the unreligious and antireligious and religious-but-not-Christian, I direct you back to our hilarious stories at my expense contest from the last time I noticed everyone going through a rough patch.

And for those of you who are interested in seeing what my religious Christian mother suggested to my religious Christian self last night, click "Read More."

Big hugs to you all.

READ MORE

There's a prayer in the Episcopal Church's Book of Common Prayer that we don't get to use much, because it's for the eighth Sunday after Epiphany, and there usually isn't an eighth Sunday after Epiphany, because we've usually hit Lent by then.

It's nice, though, and her church used it a lot around and after Sept. 11, 2001. I found it very, very comforting last night.

Most loving Father, whose will it is for us to give thanks for all things, to fear nothing but the loss of you, and to cast all our care on you who care for us: Preserve us from faithless fears and worldly anxieties, that no clouds of this mortal life may hide from us the light of that love which is immortal, and which you have manifested to us in your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Kiss the chef

I used to date someone who'd grown up not allowed in the kitchen while dinner was being prepared. It's dangerous, and some things are hot and some things are sharp.

I, on the other hand, grew up almost always in the kitchen while dinner was being prepared, because my parents were hoping that some accident would befall me and they could collect the insurance.

Kidding.

But I think of dinner-being-prepared time as time spent in the kitchen, trying to get the attention of one or both parents while they tried to do tricky things and also listen to All Things Considered. Even now, the ATC theme song makes me a little hungry.

Not kidding.

My parents are both good cooks, differently. They raised two kids who would eat anything but lima beans in one case (me, and I did eat them, grudgingly, I just don't any more), and lobster and apple pie in the other (my sister, and she has come around on the lobster part).

My mother can make something out of nothing. We went through some financial lean times, and my sister and I think of kidney beans, canned tomatoes, onions and rice as comfort food. We ate tongue, semi-regularly.

My father is an adventurous cook, entirely unafraid to prepare meals well outside of his culinary ability (and most children's taste buds). To me, the best spaghetti had bacon and eggs and Parmesan cheese in it, and Chinese food came from the Joyce Chen cookbook, not a local takeout place. We ate plum pudding (yes, that's boiled dried fruit and beef fat, doused in brandy and set ablaze) every Christmas.

I have inherited both of my parents' excellent cooking personalities, with a little less inclination to burn the frozen vegetables than my mother, and a little less inclination to use every pot I own than my father.

What does that mean?

This week, it means damn good chili.

Tape, recorded

Would you like to know who is the queen of hemming her pants with tape at work while wearing them?

I will tell you: Me.

I am that queen, and they look damn good.

This is the very first time I have been sorry not to work in a cubicle since I stopped working in one. In a more open office environment, my office neighbors would be very impressed by this feat, as some were on more than one occasion in Washington.

Here, only those who read my blog will even know.

They look that good.

The actual 80s

My friend Amanda has entered this contest.
You should go vote for her in it.
I am not even going to tell you which one she is, because hers is, in my opinion, the only one you could possibly vote for unless you were friends with one of the other participants. Hers is just absolutely the best one. It is not currently winning only because the person who is winning must have a bigger e-mail list than our Mandy.

Played it 'til my fingers bled

I'm home this afternoon, for reasons that will be discussed in an upcoming blog post.

And it is a gorgeous day.

The storms that passed through last night left the air clearer, the temperature perfect. As a result, I am enjoying the deck.

And that is how I know that my neighbor has decided to teach him- or herself to play the guitar.

Outside.

With the amp plugged in.

He or she certainly is dedicated to practicing today.

Fighting with John McCain

So, I didn't watch McCain last night, but according to the AP,

McCain ended his 50-minute speech with a call to arms: He exhorted, "Fight with me. Fight with me," as the crowd's roar of approval drowned out his voice.

And I know most people will think of that as just a rhetorical device, and normally I'm a borderline pacifist, but I think I might take him up on it.

I mean, McCain's tough. He can probably beat me up. But I think I could do a little damage, so the next person could beat him. I could probably land a few solid blows.

I don't entirely trust that he wouldn't, like, bite my ear off, but you've got to remember he also needs to impress the women-are-delicate-flowers crowd (warning: language in the link NSFW), so he might go easy on me.

And really, I have all these single earrings that I either lost the mates to or bought in the early 1990s anyway.

Jail: The new golf course. It's where business happens.

I just had about the strangest call of my life.

A woman named Diane informed me that someone had given my name to the Muscular Dystrophy Association. On September 24, I will apparently be locked up in a Chili's restaurant until my friends bail me out.

I am naturally suspicious.

My naturally suspicious temperament was only aided by the fact that my "friend" has entered the MDA's "witness protection program."

It is a tough thing to be simultaneously sure you're being scammed and totally excited about the The-Office-ness of being imprisoned in a Chili's. Diane no doubt thought I was crazy, but she was very patient with me, as she wants my friends' money. While I had her on the phone, I reverse-looked-up her number (actually the MDA). I also looked to see if there was even a Chili's in this town (there is).

I eventually agreed to have their "officers" "arrest" me at work, around lunchtime.

She also invited me to tell her the names of anyone I might like to have as a "cellmate." I have not yet given her any names, but I will tell you this:

• If I find out that you are this referring friend, I will give her your name.
• If you tick me off, I might also give her your name.
• And if you are nearby and leave a comment saying you would also like to be jailed with some Awesome Blossoms (extra awesome) for a good cause, I will give her your name.