please stop tickling me

In which we laugh and laugh and laugh. And love. And drink.

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Location: Portland, Oregon

Otium cum Dignitatae

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Jussa Buncha Fuckin' Words

Ran into Booty yesterday, at the record store. (Listening to results of purchase right now: Zen Guerrilla's "Shadows on the Sun", The Grifters' "Full Blown Posession", The Hollies' Greatest Hits, Aerosmith's "Draw the Line"-with the great Al Hirschfeld drawing on the cover-and Gordon Lightfoot's "Sundown".)

Booty is Lebanese, and his family left that country when he was a boy. They went to visit his grandparents out of town, and when the returned to Beirut, someone had blown up their house. So they moved from there to London, thence to Chicago, settling finally in the Dallas/Fort Worth metropolitan complex. He moved up here with his girlfriend in 2001, where he met me, and often introduces me as the first friend he made in Portland.
He and said girlfriend just had a baby boy, four days ago. His name is Osama.
It's his middle name, and his father's first name. I believe they spell it 'Ossama', but the name, relatively common throughout the middle east, remains the same.

Now, even knowing what I know, I was a little amazed that someone who has been photographed leading anti-war protests, who has already had one house destroyed by bombs and whose parents (full-blown practicing Moslems living in Texas) received bricks through their window in the middle days of September, five years ago, would do this.
There's no reason for them not to name their kid this name, and all the reason in the world not to. It's a family name; it doesn't connote any love for the famous one, the son of Laden.
He already recognizes that just being an Arab at all makes people in this idiotic part of the world want to kill you. He talks about working on construction crews in Texas, and going by 'Paco' ("I spent years in Texas as a Mexican," is how he puts it).
So on one hand, I applaud my friend for his balls, but sheeit...Every now and again, I get into a conversation about how the name 'Adolph' seemed to lose a lot of ground after the Second World War. I've met a couple; it's really what happened to the surname 'Hitler' that I wonder about.
My pal George had a music teacher named Mrs. Hitner, though, and I always wondered about that, too.

As I read a lot of bullshit published by right-wingers elsewhere in the land, I often run across their assertion that Islam is an inherently violent religion. I never know how to counter this assertion, though I know it isn't true. Then I was reminded last evening on PBS's "The Road to 911": the variety of Islam embraced in the oil dictatorships is Wahabi Islam, which is a very authoritarian, fire n' brimstone-and-sanctioned-martyrdom kind of sect.
As Bernard Lewis of Princeton University put it in the documantary: "Imagine if the Ku Klux Klan took over the oil reserves of Texas, and then spent their profits spreading their particular variety of Christianity, saying it was the true Christianity..." And causing the rest of the world to see it that way, naturally.
So I have something there to throw back, but right-wingers immediately shut off, like a lot of people, when you start in with history. They prefer, as a lot of people do, to hear words they are comfortable with, and the only way to change their mind is through coded messages in their own language.
But you sure can piss them off about immigration, and that's why I have to wonder what the Bush is up to, recently, with what certainly sounds like amnesty proposed for "guest workers" from down south. I imagine it has something to do with that forty-four per cent of the GOP vote that was Hispanic, last election, but who knows? Certainly the Republican rank n' file isn't into it; not voters, not the pols.
Bush somehow managed to do something that he never could have done if he was some no-subtlety demagogue who uses the word 'wetback': anger so damn much of the United States, I wonder if there will be a popular to seal the borders.
To keep us in, as much as to keep them out.

And speaking of 'wetback', someone brought up the Chris Rock joke the other day; the one about how there are black people and then there are niggers. I noted that I've been hearing rednecks use that one for years.
But maybe did I mean white trash, when I said rednecks? I've heard country-dwelling folk make that distinction, too. But of course, 'white trash' is an inherently offensive term too, since it more than implies that all others-wetback, nigger, gook, rag head and chink-are just trash by design.
What I do know is that the word 'nigger' is one you can never win with, as a white person: not as humor, not even as a word used in anger. My pal Enouf once put it to me as "Every time I hear it, it's like a punch in the damn stomach..."
Yes, and it's the one word I pretty much never use for that reason: I don't get to. Black people aren't taking unfair advantage by attempting to reclaim it, either. The one place I get to use it is in a discussion of the word itself, which the news networks won't even do. It's disheartening to hear them when engaged in a discussion of this kind, because you then get to hear earnest, educated adults use the phrase, "the 'N' word", which is just pathetic. That only gives the word more power.
In the Nineties, when I spent way too much time arguing gender and semantics with semi-hysterical college students, I pointed out that replacing the suffix 'man' in so many existing words opened the door to the idea that it's the word itself that does the damage, not gender inequality. I further pointed out that my friends and I, as good male feminists, needed to follow their lead and stop referring to ourselves as men, and should opt for 'mon', or 'mun', or something...

So the birth of baby Osama, part of a large wave of marriages and newborns among my friends, is something to celebrated: here again, is someone doing nothing more offensive than being alive, who I will no doubt have to defend from All the Rest of These Assholes.

Required reading:
Nigger : The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word (Vintage)
Nigger : The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word (Vintage) by Randall Kennedy

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Friday, April 07, 2006

Best o' the Blogs

"okay continue from the sports day. tpe that cha sha bao or pork bun face gave back our cards after telling everyone to pick 5 pieces of litter. keeswee, weixuan, dunxin and me were like wtf? then God's light shined upon me and gave me a damn brilliant idea. HAHAHAH. the dustbin was nearby and okay i ran there and took 5 pieces of crap with the rest following me. then we go and show that lard face he tell us, " give me for what! go throw away la!" okay what the shit he told us to pick up and show him then he give our cards back. THE THING THAT WAS RETARDED THAT WAS THE LATER YOU ARE, YOU WOULD GET BACK YOUR CARDS EARLIER SO WE GOT BACK OUR CARDS QUITE FAST COS THE CARDS WERE STACKED ON TOP ONE ANOTHER AND IT WAS A BIGGGGG PILE LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL I LOVE YOU TANPUAYENG."

Three Letter Acronyms gone wild! The above is from a blog titled 'lololololo', by a guy named Ian who lives in Singapore. Quiz: what is Ian talking about?

Also found today:
Burning Taper, which is this conspiracy theory clearing house of sorts, with a rare (for this type of thing) pro-Masonic outlook. We meet on the level, we part on the square.


Drift Glass, in which this guy nicely skewers all the bullshit things about this bullshit time and place we live in. Well done, sir.

"Today i am talking about schools.
Schools are always making use of puils to win trophy,medals and certs. Once you have this kind of awards, they will treat you very special. They will be very good to those very good ones and will not notice those weak ones. School is a jail for all pupils, i agree with 'i am not stpuid 1', Teacher jus look down on them and all the fault goes to them..


Previous Posts These are the thoughts of 'tps'. I'm guessing that tps is a grade-schooler from England, or some former English posession like, say, Singapore. I would have pasted all of this in, but tps enjoys using font colors like light blue and yellow, and I suspect that you wouldn't be able to read them on my template.

And from the Portland Mercury's BlogTown USA section,
Now I Am Drunk("You can only post on this forum if you are currently and legitimately drunk")
there is
this, just because, and also:
this thing by someone I've actually talked about on this blog, and indeed have been drunk with. Look at it at yer own risk.
Sorry I'm goin' hyperlink crazy here. Just a little bored. Coming soon: results of our findings within a grocery bag of old Catholic literature, found on the sidewalk right near here, and a story about my grampa.

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Monday, April 03, 2006

Chain Gang

Hey it is Andy and john the directors of MSN, sorry for the
interruption but
msn is closing down. this is because too many inconsiderate people are
taking up all the name (eg making up lots of different accounts for just one
person), we only have 578 names left. If you would like to close your
account, DO NOT SEND THIS MESSAGE ON. If you would like to keep your
account, then SEND THIS MESSAGE TO EVERYONE ON YOUR CONTACT LIST. This is no
joke, we will be shutting down the servers. Send it on, thanks. WHO EVER
DOES NOT SEND THIS MESSEAGE, YOUR ACCOUNT WILL BE CLOSED AND YOU WILL COST
£10.00 A MONTH TO USE. SEND THIS TO EVERYONE ON YOUR CONTACT LIST. NOW YOU
KNOW WHAT TO DO. PLEASE DO NOT FORWARD THIS or REPLAY. COPY THE WHOLE EMAIL.
GO BACK TO YOUR INBOX AND CLICK ON NEW. AND PASTE THANK YOU FOR YOUR
ATTENTION


"hey everyone, i dont normally send this sort of stuff out but had a look on
the internet and its actually true . On the 1st of november , we will have
to pay for the use of our MSN and email accounts unless we send this message
to at least 18 contacts on your contact list. It's no joke if you don't
believe me then go to the site
(
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1189119.stm ) and see for yourself.
Anyways once you've sent this message to at least 18 contacts, your msn dude
will become blue. please copy and paste don't forward cos people won't take
notice of it.
"

Back in the old days, this is what we would have called a chain letter. The letter would have been written on paper, but that really would have been the only difference.
Well, another difference is that in this case, they're not promising a quick trip to hell, disease or death: they've adapted to the times and are promising loss of internet service...Or having to pay for it, or something.
It sure as hell looks like a virus to me, or a great place to hide one. Many of the more famous viruses were introduced with seemingly absurd warnings like the above. I haven't clicked on that link yet, because it scares me. Mission accomplished.

The message originates from my friend Simone, who currently lives in Scotland. I don't know if she's just unfamiliar with the concepts (chain letters and computer viruses), or if someone just hijacked her Hotmail account. Note that she seemingly wrote that bit at the end. Doesn't sound like her, but who can say?
She hasn't sent me an email since last year. She had sent a picture of herself in her room in Edinburgh, and had failed to cut it down to a viewable size: it was a picture of a corner of her desk or something, and if you scrolled allll the way over to the next county, you eventually saw her.
"BIG HUGE SIMONE!", I wrote back. She may very well have thought I was making some not-very-Rich-like crack about her weight. In any case, she hasn't called since.

I like the "Andy and John directors of msn" part. Whoever wrote this might as well have described themselves as 'The Boss of You' or something. Also the whole "msn is closing down" section. That's technical talk there: no wonder I don't get it. That and my "msn dude" turning blue.
I just emailed her a moment ago (with the tagline, "you gave me herpes!" just to get her attention concerning the potential virus), but it's sort of the middle of the night over there now, so who can say?

My associate Bitchslap the Monkey recently procured employment with a little upstart, ramshackle outfit named Google, who seems to have moved a plant to Oregon. I appeal to him now (and because I haven't talked to him since he went down to Georgia) to look into this weird ass issue.
Or is it you, ya' dirty monkey? "We will be shutting down the servers" indeed. I know how much you hate Andy and John.
Take this to heart, and send it to eighteen other bank account holders in your area.

BY THE BY: DON'T OPEN UP THAT HYPERLINK UP THERE. IT REFERS TO AN ACTUAL NEWS STORY ON THE BBC, YES, BUT THE LINK ITSELF LEADS TO NOWHERE AT ALL...AS FAR AS WE'VE NOTICED. SO DON'T FUCK AROUND. IT'S IRRESPONSIBLE OF ME TO EVEN DANGLE IT IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE LIKE THAT.

And Jacq: my mom's fine, thanks for asking.

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