apple, meet tree
So my mother calls me tonight from the lobby of the Luxor, cheerful on the eve of her 5th anniversary with her husband.
“I love Vegas, hon, but I love the surprise I’m planning even more!”
“Er… what surprise?”
“Well, you know your grandfather’s been cooped up in that nursing home for the past ten years and hasn’t had a lick of fun, what with all those old farts playing bridge and watching The Price is Right all the time.”
“Isn’t that a part of being ol-”
“Mark and I are blowing out of here a day early. We’re gonna be taking him to a strip club for Thanksgiving! Can you imagine the scene we’ll cause! Maybe I’ll take him up on the stage with his wheelchair and”—
“OK, Mom. I get it. No, really. Seriously.”
Dear Apple, I think, meet Tree. With a family like this, clearly I was predestined to being lewd and crude.
Besides the rather unsavory images in my head of certain relatives ogling bodacious ta tas, I’m rather swamped with work before the Thanksgiving blitz—I won’t be able to update this much with savvy commentary in the next few days, as I have a dysfunctional-family-Dia de las Gracias to organize, papers to write, presentations to finesse. Blah. The Penn homecoming stretch. Good for my GPA, bad for bloggers.
But before I say sayonara for a day or two, I’ll end this with a bit of gloom and doom—Bush’s latest “uniting” move, electing this clown as the new chief of our nation’s family planning programs. This bozo actually believes that giving contraception is “demeaning” to women. WHY IS SOMEONE WHO FINDS CONTRACEPTION MORALLY WRONG IN CHARGE OF OUR NATION’S REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH AND FAMILY PLANNING COUNSELLING?
The fact that someone who wishes to STOP my choice and my freedom to choose when I start a family is in charge of program about making decisions to start a family… it just kills me. It really does. Don’t like the Pill? Don’t pop it. I won’t judge you—your body, your choice, your pitter-pattering little consequences to deal with. But for Popeye’s sake, don’t tell me my choice to take Ortho “demeans” me, buddy. I think your condescending attitude towards female agency to make her own decisions is far more “demeaning” than a little progesterone.
It’s so easy to get complacent, but then I remember that we have a ways to go before this administration is over. Let’s not get complacent. If I’ve anyone to thank this Thanksgiving (besides my awesome friends and family, of course) it’s the people who work to call politicians and pundits out on this shit—bloggers, journalists, writers, activists—who I’m thankful for. Quite frankly, I don’t know how I’d keep my sanity otherwise.
(Well, maybe the new Prada perfume I’m savoring helps a bit. Seriously, it just reeks “post-coital”. Who says consumerism can’t provide contentment—and a little faux afterglow—every once in a while?)
