Sweetney

Preschooler reality is like a never-ending Mad Lib in which every blank space is filled with the word “BUTT”

(Last evening:)
Me: “Make sure you get a good night's sleep, because we have to go vote tomorrow morning.”

Her: “Vote for what?”

Me: “Tomorrow we vote for who we want to run for President.”

Her: “Oh. Can I vote?”

Me: “No. You aren't old enough to vote yet, sweetie.”

Her: “Mommy. That is SO not cool.”

Me: “Well, when our nation has a referendum on Cuddliest Cartoon Character, or on which Disney Princess is awesomest, I'm sure you'll be one of the first called to serve.”

Her: “Yeah. Called to serve MY BUTT!”

Why does everything have to culminate in something butt-related? Why, sweet baby Jesus, WHY?

But anyway, since we're talking politics, have you seen any of the “Yes We Can” parodies yet?

Well now you have. And aren't you glad?

In other news related to my spectacularly good citizenship, on Wednesday I have Jury Duty. I have never Jury Dutied before, in all my 37 years. I am a bit afraid of the duty, to be honest. (DOODY!! snort!) Any duty advice from those of you who've previously done the duty? Duty tips? Nuggets of (snicker) duty advice, as it were?

Oh god, I'm just as bad as my daughter, aren't I? (And I'm guessing the fact that I find something like this uproariously funny is just self-incrimination.)

PS: Humble thanks to Catherine for listing me as one of her favorite blogs in Wondertime Magazine. I'm all blushy and stuff.

The Miller Metamorphosis

I've been far too busy recently to have many deep thoughts about much of anything, but if there's been one Big, Weighty Matter I've been mulling over in my head at all of late, its most certainly this: I am utterly horrified by what's become of Dennis Miller.

My New Year's Gift To You

I can't think of anything that could start 2007 off on a better foot than this video of a conversation with Stephen Colbert (out of character) at Harvard:

Politically Incorrect Preschool Potluck

I only wish it had been hosted by Bill Maher (despite having a fairly complex love/hate relationship with the dude, alternating as I do between intense feelings of adoration and the powerful desire to poke his eyes out with a stick).

Yes indeed, the holiday season is now officially upon us it seems. Feeling the burn yet? I surely am, though the stretched-thin anxiety hasn't quite taken hold to the point that its squelched my ability to appreciate the warped amusements inherent in adults dressing children up and parading them on stage as actors in an historical drama of conquest and subjugation beyond their comprehension. Because I don't know about you, but nothing says festive to me quite like land acquisition through violence and the vanquishment of indigenous peoples by force. Really, when I think about it, its what I'm most thankful for.

Sniff-sniff. Saaay, is that the smell of chestnuts roasting on an open fire... or the scent of charred human flesh? Who cares! Let's celebrate! Woot!

I do not condone violence. Or this hat.

The Coolest Eight-Year-Old In The World On O'Reilly

Because if evil parent bloggers like myself are going to exploit our children, why not do so for the greater good also?

Snort.

[Thanks, Leah!]

Indecision 2044

I have seen the future of democracy.

And it is HILARIOUS.

.....................

EDIT: Durr, link fixed!
Oh and PS: Be sure to watch both parts for maximum hilarity.

Umm, You Guys?

How They Stole The Midterm Election by Greg Palast

...For six years now, our investigations team, at first on assignment for BBC TV and the Guardian, has been digging into the nitty-gritty of the gaming of US elections. We’ve found that November 7, 2006 is a day that will live in infamy. Four and a half million votes have been shoplifted. Here’s how they’ll do it, in three easy steps.

Uhh.... Crap?
.......................
Update: So far, so good. Dems just picked up Kentucky; a good sign.
Update Deux: [snorfle]
Update I'm Losing My Fucking MInd: I laughed so hard I quite literally cried.

America's Anchors

Because you have a need to know: an absolutely AWESOME cover story in Rolling Stone on Stewart/Colbert.

Go. Read. And be filled with its goodness.

Amen, everybody.

PS: I of course forced Jamie to run out to a bookstore near his office in DC and snag me a copy of that issue. What did I marry him for if not for the retrieving of items I desire, much like an obedient Lab?

(Love you, honey!)

The State Of The Union Of Tracey's Mind Is Strong. The Rest Of The World? Eh, Not So Much.

Good news, ya'll: despite substantial evidence to the contrary, apparently I'm not crazy!

Or so says the Ninja Therapist (NT), who as you may recall I met with last Friday after my week-long battle with the dark side of The Force. According to NT, it is not I but the rest of the world that is deeply dysfunctional, which I took as my cue to start investing heavily in tin foil, as the clamoring for hats fashioned from it will doubtless be great in the not-too-distant future.

World, how you get so crazy, huh?

We talked for about two hours. And it was an incredible relief to just openly and unreservedly ramble on about all the crap in the world that's been rattling around like loose change inside my brain, making a terrible racket and distracting me from the goodness of life that's out there. But what I came to realize over the course of our discussion is that for a long time I've been -- in an almost cliched, classically male sort of way -- swallowing down and repressing staggering amounts of pain and anxiety and anger about the state of the world -- writ huge and in glorious technicolor -- and that I need to find a way to stop doing that shit if my sanity and relative happiness are important to me.

Olbermanntastic Deux.

Have you guys seen this yet? Holy crap, Batman!

That about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this: This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely. And as such, all voices count - not just his. Had he or his president perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience - about Osama Bin Laden’s plans five years ago - about Saddam Hussein’s weapons four years ago - about Hurricane Katrina’s impact one year ago - we all might be able to swallow hard, and accept their omniscience as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact, plus ego.

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris.

I want to have Keith Olbermann's babies.

EDIT: Link fixed!

Does This Mean I Have To Like Adam Carolla Now?

Because honestly, I don't really care for him. But oh boy howdy, do I LOOOOOVE THIS.

This is hard.

The Hitler vs. Coulter Quiz.

I actually got HALF of those wrong.

I don't know how much of that to chalk up to my just-plain-dumbness, and how much to the unforeseen depth of Ann Coulter's scariness.

By Leaps And Bounds The Smartest Thing I've Heard All Week.

[From a discussion of Gay Marriage between William J. Bennett and Jon Stewart on Tuesday's TDS:]

Bennett: Look, its a debate about whether or not you think Marriage is between a man and a woman.
Stewart: I disagree. Its a debate about whether you think Gay people are a part of the human condition or just a random fetish.

Oh my god, I didn't think it was possible, but I NOW LOVE HIM EVEN MORE.

From The Actual Email Files of Sweetney.com.

From: sweetney
Subject: Piratey Goodness
Date: June 7, 2006 9:41:44 PM EDT
To: lothar

Ahoy, Pirate Party Peoples,

Count me in!

Yours in booty,
Tracey

...................................
http://sweetney.com
sweetneyATsweetney.com

Watch This.

Several months back I posted something about Spike Jonze's unseen documentary on Al Gore, and what a shame it was that more people hadn't had the opportunity to view it prior to the last election. Well, now's your chance to see it:

Unseen Al Gore Campaign Video

Hurts, don't it?

You Have To Read This.

If you are a mother, or if you care about mothers, or if you think you may some day be a mother (or a father!), you NEED to read this.

But that's just a taste. I'm currently reading Perfect Madness, and I've dogeared so many pages the book may well reconfigure itself into a pentagon-shape. I'm only through the second section of the book, and am having so many “EUREKA!” moments of self-recogniton and epiphanies and such that I only wish I could scan the entire book and post it here for you. Seriously. This is big, big stuff. I HIGHLY recommend getting the whole book. HIGHLY.

Now I know what I'll be talking about at BlogHer.

Big Brother Says The Darndest Things!

This insanity made my day.

If I had to summarize for you my present state of being at this moment, I think I'd go with Pre-Moving Out Of This Crazy-Ass Country, actually. Or perhaps Pre-Killing Spree... Followed Rapidly By Moving Out Of This Crazy-Ass Country, if that's an option.

And now I must go, because my uterus is requesting I get it a cappuccino.

Stickin' It To The Preschool Man.

So M_ has been doing well overall at her new Jesus-y preschool despite, you know, the brainwashing. Since she started there, we've made a point to play lots of Slayer for her, supplemented with occasional readings from both The Satanic Bible and The O'Reilly Factor For Kids, to balance out the religiosity with some good ol' fashioned EVIL. With any luck, exposure to these polar extremes will push her toward the middle path, and she'll grow into being a snarky, agnostic cynic, just like her Mom.

Anyway, when I've gone to pick M_ up at preschool lately, I've heard tales from her teachers about M_'s refusal to rest during their scheduled nap time. Apparently when rest time arrives, M_ decides that it is the absolute perfect moment to sing loudly to herself, or just randomly run around the classroom squealing like a crazy person. She refuses to sit nicely on her little cot like all the other kids, and either sleep or simply rest, quietly read a book to herself or what have you. The teachers have had multiple little talks with her about why resting is important, and why she needs to be quiet, so as not to disturb the other children. M_ appears to understand the reasoning, yet continues to flagrantly disregard their logic and do what she wants to anyway. I've also discussed the matter with M_ on multiple occasions, and encouraged her to listen to her teachers. No dice.

C'mon, Get Happy!

Happy Housewife vs. Mad Mommy

Yeah, you're going to want to read that.

“And Its A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall.”

A couple of weeks ago, M_ abruptly and inexplicably decided that the most important thing in the whole entire M_-known universe was for her to see the movie Bambi. Yes, the mother-getting-killed-dead-thus-leaving-poor-little-Bambi- wandering-about-the-woods-forlornly-calling-for-his-Mama movie Bambi. That one. Yep.

So you might understand my apprehension about voluntarily bringing into our collective life the grim specter of mortality, knowledge of the fleeting ephemerality of existence, and, of course, the attendant monsters of death that would immediately begin nesting beneath M_'s tiny toddler bed at night, tormenting her with their near-visibility. All that stuff... well that's Jamie's problem as far as I'm concerned. When the matter of death and dying has to be broached, I'll be scheduling a weekend of spa treatments at a resort located at least two states away. And please, hold all my calls.

But we watched the dreaded Bambi yesterday, and truth be told M_ didn't blink an eye. The, ahem, problematic scene came and went, the gravity of it all drifting right past her, apparently subsumed by the endless visual tidal wave of baby bunnies animated so as to achieve perfect fluffy smooshiness (perfect in 1942, of course; were Bambi made now in CGI, today's bunnies would obviously trounce the comparatively primitive 40's bunnies in terms of their realization of exceptional fluffiness and breathtaking rendering of smooshiness). It seems it just plain didn't register. And yes, I was almost embarrassingly thankful for that.

Must-See TV.

Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents' Dinner last night.

Apparently as Colbert left the podium Bush bolted. One can see why... and why it was TOTALLY RAD.

EDIT: Full in 3 parts here.

An Inconvenient Truth.

DUDES!

Gore is back, and he's hotter than ever (heh, get it? HOT? heh)!

Looks pretty incredible, actually. I'm stoked (heh, get it? STOKED? errr.... okay, sorry).

EDIT: The film has a site as well, where you can calculate your “carbon footprint” and thus your/your family's impact on global warming.

Dubya's Nephew On The Today Show.

Just how hard do ya'll wanna PUNCH HIM IN THE FACE REPEATEDLY?

Preschooler Politics.

Study shows correlation between childhood personality and adult political orientation.

It would appear that early identifiable personality characteristics...seem to influence an approach to the world and a reaction to the world that tends, over the years, to evolve into a worldview, a weltanschauung, on a wide variety of issues, many of them political.

My favorite sentence: As nursery schoolers, the future conservatives were described as easily victimized, indecisive, rigid, fearful and inhibited.

Oh, REALLY? [snort]

This Just In.

NO FUCKING WAY.

That's it, we're moving to Mass. As Black Francis once noted, ITS EDUCATIONAL!

Indeed, indeed...

You Want Some Radical Mommyblogging? I'll Give You Some Radical Mommyblogging!

Feminism, I'm mad at you [stomps foot].

I've been thinking about the failures of Feminism for quite a while now, but some things were brought into sharp relief whilst traveling this weekend. You know how it is: you're barreling down the Penn Turnpike in total darkness, torrents of rain lashing your car as you attempt to navigate around a seemingly endless string of 16-wheelers, and suddenly it hits you full in the cerebral cortex: the betrayal. That all this time -- from its inception to the present -- this cause hasn't been about tearing down ugly, false, abusive structures of power, or about helping those who need the most help (the poor, the disenfranchised, those held back by the pervasiveness of racism), but about simply plugging women into the extant male-generated/doM_ted hierarchies that by definition require an underclass, wage slavery, abuse and oppression.

And who decided this was a good way to go?

Meanwhile, Over At BlogHer.

I'm sure you've been seething over all of this in my absence, but just in case you missed your opportunity to, umm, seethe...

And yes, I'm well aware of the fact that I owe ya'll about 50 New Orleans-related posts. Don't you worry your pretty little heads, they're a-comin'.

olbermanntastic!

like, wow. i particularly enjoyed the ted baxter voice he does when openly mocking o'reilly.

dude is just lettin' all the bile hang out... and its joyous to behold.

[totally swiped from styro.]

why we fight.

holy crap do i want to see this movie.

i got so much trouble on my mind, i refuse to lose.

happy Fight The Power day, everybody!!

...of course i mean MLK day. of course i do.

today, let's all think about how nice it would be to live in a world where race really didn't matter. and, in thinking that thought, maybe inch one micrometer closer to realizing it.

be good to all your brothers and sisters today, peoples.

[thanks to fourfour for the righteous MLK image]

to all the trolls i've loved before...

Create an e-annoyance, go to jail.

finally, a bit of bush's big brotherism that speaks to me!

panexa.

do not taunt panexa.

and for crissakes, be sure to read the important information for women, ladies.

don't look back, like dylan in the movies.

the new mcsweeney's comes -- at least to subscribers -- with a sample of wholphin, a “dvd magazine of unseen things.” for the sake of brevity, their self-description:

Wholphin is our new quarterly DVD magazine, featuring short films, documentaries, animation, and instructional videos that have not, for whatever reason, found wide release.

in this issue there's a documentary circa the 2000 election by spike jonze on al gore, and it is freaking heartbreaking. it shows gore, without pretense, in the exact light america needed to seem him in: warm and human, with real passion and depth. you walk away from viewing it thinking: a) this is the guy we could have had. WE SUCK. and: b) if they'd shown this after Friends one thursday back in the day, things might have gone differently in 2000.

[bangs head slowly against wall]

it burns! BURNS!!!

bush drunk.

now that's funny.

mommy+blogging.

here's the deal: i'm going to be profiled on mommybloggers.com beginning the week of january 9th, and the Gorgeous Ladies Of Mommybloggers (or, heh, GLOM) are soliciting reader comments about lil' ol' moi for some sort of lovefest they're devising. i say all of this only as set-up for the following email thread sent to me by the irrepressible styro (this is all going somewhere, don't worry):

oh happy day.

okay folks, now hear this:

if you ever, ever listen to me about ONE THING, let it be the following: IMMEDIATELY RENT THE FILM “RIZE.”

The film features an abundance of dance footage, which in a fictional context or without benefit of cultural background would feel excessive. But LaChappelle's celebratory approach to the material, which follows several groups of dancers as they reveal their philosophical manifestos, relishes the social and political underpinnings that make their movements not mere choreographic wonders, but almost unwitting expressions of rage, frustration and liberation. The dancing adopts proportions larger than the set of circumstances from which it came – and which will no doubt be shared by many of the film's most dedicated audiences – and achieves a certain, human poetry; viewers will find themselves not just bouncing to the beats of the music, but vibrating with excitement at the prospect that these people endured some of the worst conditions available in America and triumphed, resoundingly, to great personal and professional success.

There have been other films about dancing, about competitions and about achieving victory over insurmountable odds. But the key difference between that film and Rize is that there are no tangible victories for LaChappelle's subjects. The film doesn't culM_te in a cathartic victory that validates their efforts, but witnesses the transcendence of these individuals over the adversity of their upbringing and a much more ambiguous “win” over the destructive pressures of their environment.*
[-Todd Gilchrist]

by far the best film i've seen in... forever. unbelievably moving and multi-layered. imagine if Do The Right Thing were a film about a modern dance movement (it'll make sense when you see it). were i still back teaching at Michigan State, i'd be using this as part of a discussion of race in present-day america.

run. go. now.

how i failed feminism*.

and how you and/or those you love may have, too.

discuss.

*or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Patriarchy**.

**i'm sorry. i couldn't help myself.

f**k christmas.

GENIUS!

and, to follow-up, just a little clarity regarding what christmas is all about.*

we call it xmas around here, incidentally.

EDIT: d'oh! i posted *this link and then later realized the original source is here: fuckchristmas.org. just, uhh, clarifyin'.