My new favorite thing about Mitt Romney

Finally, a practical use for the genealogy lesson I gave you all a few weeks ago.

On The Colbert Report last night, Jon Huntsman and Colbert had this exchange:

Stephen Colbert: We've been told that the more we get to know Mitt Romney, the more we're gonna like him. You're a fellow governor, fellow Mormon, fellow businessman — you've known him for years. What are the things that make you just love him as a person?
[Explosive laughter by the audience, Huntsman sits back in his chair, obviously amused and taken aback.]
Colbert: Top five.
Jon Huntsman: Well, I'd have to say that's a little bit unfair as a question, because I'm an insider. He's a relative. You're supposed to like your relatives.
[Colbert leans forward, obviously taken aback.]
Colbert: Are you related to him?
Huntsman: We share the same great great great grandfather — [Wait, what?]
Colbert: And you love everyone in your family?
Huntsman: — and this great  great great grandfather had twelve wives. He was a polygamist — [Wait, what?! No wonder you're not in Tampa. Are you supposed to say that out loud where people outside Utah can hear you?]
Colbert: Really?
Huntsman: — and Mitt clearly came down from the wife with better hair.

So, absorb that chunk of awesome and then fill in the blank:

That makes them                                .

God vs. the RNC (vs. the NFL)

If Hurricane Isaac (or any hurricane) hits Tampa during the Republican National Convention, I will not view that as a sign from God. I don't think God works that way.

I might, however, view it as a sign from the Republican Party that it doesn't have more sense than to hold a convention in coastal Florida during hurricane season.

Which would mean, you know, less sense than the NFL, which holds its big event in February, but only in cities that are warm or have a dome.

Just saying.

War is hell

My latest TV Thing is watching old episodes of Upstairs, Downstairs. It's ridiculous, and soap-opera-y, and very much fun. So! Much! Scandal!

But, my friends, if you find yourself thinking,

"OhmyGawd I wish World War I would end; it's so boring," 

while lying on your couch, watching a 40-year-old show about people a hundred years ago, thanks to the magic of Netflix instant

— that is how you know you're perhaps too comfortable in your life.

Bucking the trend

A true story from Wednesday:

I was leaving a bank in York, Maine, that I'd been in for reasons we won't get into because they make me look stupid, when a customer service person from said bank came running out after me and called me by my (real) first name.

I turned around. She held a dollar out to me. "I have no idea who dropped this in the bank," she said (though she knew for sure it wasn't me). "Here. It's another dollar for tolls."

And that is how I know I'm in rural New England and not, say, any big city or the area around Washington, D.C.

One iota...

I woke up one morning recently with the vague, semi-lucid thought that I'd confused Ikea for Iota.

• Ikea, as you may know, is a store filled with simplecomplex furniture made (by you) of particle board.
• Iota, as you may or may not know, is an excellent bar in Arlington, Virginia, I frequented about twelve years ago, with fabulous live music and good bartenders and amazing food and possibly even better memories.

And having woken completely from that jarring thought, I then started making a list of sentences in which it might be bad to have that confusion.

• "Oh, yeah, I saw Frank Black at Ikea. You know, from the Pixies?"
• "We used to go to Ikea after work at the bar."
• "I love the food at Ikea, but the service is crap."
• "I don't go to Ikea as often as I used to, but I like to go feel like I'm a 28-year-old waitress with cool friends and good taste sometimes."
• "I met this porn director at Ikea once who had coincidentally lived in my exact apartment. Weird, right?"

OK, some of those actually work, disturbingly.

Maybe it's better when I don't share my semi-lucidity with you.

What year is it?

As of Saturday, I am 41. 

You may know that, for the last several years, I've been doing birthday-to-birthday "years of."

• 38 was the year of cute shoes, explained somewhat here (complete with link to the original inspiration for said year). It was awesome. 
• 39 was the year of time management. (Meh. Mildly successful, exactly as boring as it sounds.) 
• 40 was the year of having people over. (Mixed results, but, like the year of cute shoes, it has started me on a path I like a whole lot.)
• And 41 is the year of... I don't know.

That's where you come in.

I've had some ideas, of course, but I'm realizing that what makes a "year of" really successful is the combination of implicit instruction and superfun. So, for the year of cute shoes, I was obviously going to buy a few pairs of, and consistently wear, cute shoes. For the year of having people over, I had people over, alone and in groups. And my current 41 ideas are too big. "The year of love;" "the year of art" — that could mean so many things. I need more obvious goals within my control. More along the lines of "the year of crochet," except that I am not interested enough in crochet for that to be it.

So, it's (partially) up to you. Here and on the Facebook page, I'm taking suggestions. What's this the year of? We're three days in already; it's time to get cracking. Feel free to invite friends, neighbors, and total strangers to join the fun; there's no reason for people who actually know me and my interests to have all the fun.

7 thoughts on chicken sandwiches (but you only have to read #5)

SIGH.

I have stayed mostly out of this Chick-Fil-A business, because, ugh.

But my Facebook still remains full of (mostly straight) people on multiple sides (and you can bet there are more than two) of this issue, and a couple of regular readers have asked me for some thoughts or clarity on this, so here it is, in handy list form:

1. I don't care whether you boycott Chick-Fil-A. We all live in a semi-capitalist society, and unless you are Amish or similar, you will sometimes patronize businesses that support your values, and sometimes patronize businesses that do not. It sucks, but it's true.
2. I do not eat at Chick-Fil-A. I don't call it a boycott, because the nearest Chick-Fil-A is 50 miles from me, so it's a pretty academic distinction. 
3. I deeply support Dan Cathy's right to spend his money, and his privately owned company's foundation's money, however he chooses. Seriously. He is entitled to his opinion.
4. I even more deeply thank Dan Cathy, and all other straightforward folks, for discussing where they spend said money. Understanding point #1, I think we all deserve to know where our money's going, and I'd encourage all people who are going to have company foundations to tell us what's what. Many LGBTQ folks and their allies have had this information for a long time. If you're just now catching on, that doesn't make it new. It means Dan Cathy is doing it right, however abhorrent and oppressive I may find his opinions.
5. If you learn nothing else, here is the one point I hope you know, understand, believe, share with all your friends: Boycotts do not suppress free speech. They are free speech. Our right to free speech means Dan Cathy can say what he wants and not get arrested for it.* It also means other people can do what they want about what he says, within the law. Not eating really sugary chicken with pickles is absolutely one of those things people can do.
6. Please be nice. If you've decided, in keeping with #1, that you're still going to eat at Chick-Fil-A, OK. If you've decided that that is a proud and noble stand to take, I don't get it, but OK. But if you know you have (or may have) queer friends, who are actively suffering (or may have suffered) thanks to the efforts of the Chick-Fil-A Foundation, maybe don't make such a thing of your proud and noble stand on Facebook?
7. That's also not a suppression of free speech. That is a person who tries to be mostly kind hoping that her friends will maybe try to do the same in public spaces they know she'll be in. It's not censorship to remind people I exist.

*BTW, as a wealthy white Christian male, the odds that he'd get arrested for it even without our right to free speech are pretty slim. But whatevs.