My Opinion on The Tea Party

Now that I've written a fair amount about things that have absolutely nothing to do with current affairs, I thought I'd write about something relevant....

While, I DO think that the tea party has racist elements, I DON'T think the movement is racist per se (gasp, faint, shudder!!) I think they're more out-of-touch and lack any sort of empathy more than anything else.

The overall socioeconomic makeup has been well documented , so no need to talk about the overwhelming whiteness, and richness of it all....which I actually don't even really have a problem with, but then they say stuff like...

1. They want lower taxes: WTFuckitty fucking fuck? It's like these people don't read or something! You do realize that Obama cut taxes for well over the majority of Americans? Right? Right? Where the hell were the tea party members when this shit happened? Did they all just cover their ears and hum really loudly when he announced it? Did they just NOT do their taxes in April?

2 " Keep Your Government Hands off my Medicaid" O_o....If you get past the fact that this sentiment makes no damn sense,  this tea bagger partier is saying, don't take away any of the government programs that benefit me and actually work, (including the Post Office) take away stuff that will save the lives of millions of other Americans because, y'know, that's just frivolous government spending.
Breakdown of #2: Aaaaand this where the out-of-touch part comes in. These rich white bastards have NO idea what its like to feel like you're fucking dying while sitting in the waiting room of a public health clinic for three hours because there's only one doctor. They won't even put themselves in other people's shoes for ONE second and think, " Hmm, maybe if I made $8.00/hour, without any medical benefits, it would be nice to see a doctor if I broke my leg at my low paying job." God forbid, the tea partier's tax dollars (which they pay less of, if anyone would like to recall) helps someone who was less fortunate than them.....Which leads me to my next point.....

3. I don't want my tax dollars going to some lazy good-for nothing: I've heard this sentiment a lot too and while I'm tempted to think that's supposed to be code for " POC" I'll just take it at face-value for now. If you think poor people are lazy, you CLEARLY don't understand poverty. If you make $8.00/hour in any major city in the U.S, you'll be lucky if you get a friggin cardboard box, let alone a house, a car, AND insurance. What kind of world must you live in if you REALLY REALLY think people like being poor? Once again, out-of-touch....

4. Drill, Baby, Drill: BP.. 'nuff said...

5. The Obama Voodoo/monkey/ hitler/ watermelon signs: Once again, tea party itself, not racist, but this is definitely a racist element. The tea party should really try A LOT harder to either hide these people and prevent them from smiling and posing with their racist ass signs for pictures that show up on the NY Times, or they should confiscate the signs in question during their "protests." Which leads me to my next point...

6. All the really racist ass shit that the tea party HAS been doing: It's even more annoying because after you call them out for saying something stupid about Obama, NBPP, Black/Latino/Native American/Asian people in general, they'll call YOU a racist. Like it's YOUR fault that THEY said something racist. And if you had just ignored it, it wouldn't have been racist, because if you just ignore the fact that it's raining then you won't get wet #thatslogic


7. The NAACP/ Shirley Sherrod/ He Said, She Said crap: Because the most appropriate way to respond to an accusation of racism is to totally do something completely racist, just to teach em' a lesson. Fail, tea party...fail... And NAACP...you failed.....miserably. The part that really blows my mind about the whole incident, is that she gave the speech 24 friggin years ago!!! It's not like she gave the speech the week before, or even a couple years ago, NOO! It was 24...freaking...years...ago! How the hell did Andrew Breitbart even find that video? Was he searching for racist acts committed by the NAACP, and all he could find was this anti-racist speech given by an enlightened black woman 24 years ago? If that's, the case, he's a shitty researcher.....and should never be allowed to use google again. They should have banned his ass after that whole ACORN thing. There should be a firewall only for his computer, China-style.

8. Their leaders: I think I would be able to at least tolerate the existence of the tea party and the policies that they're pushing if they didn't insist on recruiting thee most ass-backward people as their leaders. It's been proven many times that Sarah Palin (while conventionally attractive, and can wear the shit outta that messy ponytail and those glasses), is completely void of any kind of political knowledge. Glenn Beck= fat, angry, red-in-the face, white guy. Hell, I don't think he's even genuinely angry. He's just taking advantage of the racist elements in the tea party, and is milking that shit like cows are going extinct tomorrow.

9. Arizona Bill SB1070 vs. The Tea Party: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLni3wbndls
Sorry...I'll be serious about it in another post..but seriously, this is the first thing that pops in my head.....

Conclusion: While I think the Tea Party has some valid points (gasp, faint shudder!) about wanting smaller government, right before I can agree with them, they go "Socialism, Fascism, America is changing, ahhhhhhhh!!"....and then the feeling is gone.....

My Sweet Baboon...

So, my Sweet Baboon, is my boyfriend, we've been together for a bajillion years (read four) . I guess we were/are "high school sweethearts" but I kind of hate that saying. Things haven't always been gravy between us, but I don't know what I would do without him. I will mention him a lot because I spend about 85% of my time with him, which probably isn't healthy, but whatever. I'm thinking about proposing to him, getting down on one knee and everything. 


But, I got the idea of calling him Sweet Baboon from watching Charlie Brown. For those of you who have never truly had a fulfilling childhood, Charlie Brown is pretty much thee coolest old cartoon. Charlie Brown's sister is smitten with his best friend Linus and she calls him her "Sweet Babboo". I always though she was saying Sweet Baboon. In the cartoon, whenever Charlie's sister calls Linus her Sweet Babboo, he always angrily replies, "I'm not your Sweet Babboo!!" So one day, I decided to see if my boyfriend would respond the same way as Linus did. And to my delight he did!! He always hated it until one day we got into a really big fight and I asked him of he was still my Sweet Baboon, to which he replied, "I'll always be your Sweet Baboon."End of fight :). Okay, that's enough lovey-dovey crap for the day......

Pimped Out Top Ramen

So today, after torturing myself to look beautiful by sitting in a salon for 5 freaking hours, I was really craving noodles. So I went to the liquor store ( yep, I live in that kind of an area...) to get some top ramen noodles. Then the little old Korean lady behind the counter asked me how I cooked the noodles. I was confused at first, and ended up saying something stupid like, "uuuhhh, in a pot?" But then she gave me this bomb-ass suggestion to put some eggs, green onions, and other vegetables and random goodies I have lying around in with the noodles. It was the best idea ever!! I could kiss that little old korean lady, I pimped my freaking top ramen noodles OUT!


Ingredients:

• Bomb ass Korean lady (optional)
• Shaved carrots
• Top Ramen noodles
• Garlic Salt
• Soy Sauce
• Green onions
• two eggs
• cooked crab meat/ meat of choice
• potatoes

Instructions:

• cook top ramen noodles as instructed on the packaging
• once the noodles are cooked, put the fire on low
• throw (not literally) chopped potatoes, carrots, and crab meat in with noodles
• season with soy sauce and garlic salt
• chop green onions
• whisk eggs
• scramble the eggs and green onions in a skillet 
• throw (also not literal) green onions and eggs in with noodles.
• Put the top on the pot and let the soup simmer for 10 minutes

BAM!! Gangster ass top ramen.....

Why I Can't Freaking Stand the Eat, Pray, Love trailer....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZzmqHJ0gPU


Okay,, so that ^^^ is the trailer....you can watch, but, read what I write first, I want your opinion to be biased, but only because I'm right. Soon, you too will want to punch every Eat, Pray, Love billboard .


So it's a Julia Roberts film, clearly it's a feel good chick-flick based on a feel good chick-book. I've never read the book so don't go jumping down my throat about how the book was soo different, because I honestly wouldn't know/care. This post is only related to my thoughts on the trailer for the movie. 


First thing I noticed: trusty black girlfriend. She's in a lot of the "post-racial" chick flicks, or some variation of her. There she is, with her sassy black girlfriend advice, only there to listen to helpless ass Julia Roberts whine about how empty her life is because she can't seem to not have a man (???). I know at least three single girls who would punch Julia Roberts/the main character of the movie in the face for having that problem. 


*End of Digression* 


Second thing I noticed: So she's having life problems and decides to travel, which is all well and good, but then she goes to these "far-off" and "exotic" places to "find herself." She goes to Bali and India (I realize I'm skipping the Italy part), and other places full of interesting POC with their own freaking lives to "find" herself." Like these people don't have anything better to do other than color the story of what would have been a bland,white tourist vacation. 


Third thing I noticed: Fetishizing eastern culture in general, just using Bhuddism, Hinduism, and other forms of eastern spirituality to solve her trivial ass life problems. It's so narcissistic and pretentious, it's like every white person's traveling wet dream. To not be just some "tourist" but to meet the "locals" and "learn their ways," to discover the "True meaning of life." Then, to shrug at their poverty, or somehow do something absolutely useless to try to fix it, and then go back to America to suck down hot dogs, find another (white) husband, and talk really loudly in the mall on their iPhones. 


Conclusion/ Stuff that doesn't fit in the other three: Critics have already pointed out how freaking self-absorbed this book is but it's just maddening that so few of them miss the point entirely on the racist overtones in the book/film/preview. They just go on to point out how's it's wrong to think a depressed lady is self-absorbed, and blah blah blah. I've read books about depressed people. I've read books about traveling. I've read books about India. If this preview, and the reviews of the book are anything to go by, this franchise sucks at writing about all three.

About me....

Since I suck so bad at describing myself, I'll just copy and paste a snippet of something I wrote a long time ago when I was forced to talk about myself.....


Ugly People Don't Take Showers

My mother was at her mirror one day, a thousand light bulbs outlined the mirror, making sure to highlight every blemish on her face. She applied her makeup with precision and dexterity, just as she had done in the car all those years ago. I had long since given up trying to wear her makeup. I sat and watched, sitting a little behind her on a small stool. I asked her if I was beautiful. She had been covering a small scar on her cheek with powder. Her hand stopped, and the brown dust from the poof fell silently like snow onto the white counter. She scrunched her perfectly arched eyebrows in confusion, as she looked at my reflection. “What?”, she asks. I repeat the question. She replied, “Of course you’re beautiful. You look just like me. Don’t you think I’m beautiful?”  I did think my mom was beautiful, and I knew that I looked like her, I looked exactly like her. Our reflections matched almost precisely as she continued powdering her face in the mirror and I watched silently. I still couldn’t help feeling like there was something she had that I didn’t. Something that she had given to Denise but didn’t think was necessary to give to me.

            It was attention. My mother had spent so much of her time trying provide for us, that she never had time to tell me things that didn’t matter, like I was beautiful, or special. She was so busy, she didn’t know I’d had a spelling test every Friday since the first grade, until I was 11. Now that she was married, and had one steady job instead of three, she had the time to cuddle with Denise, and rock her to sleep, and tell her she was cute, and tickle her. I was never jealous of my sister, I was more upset at my mother. It took me a long time to understand that Denise and I had grown up at totally different times, and there were things I had experienced that Denise wouldn’t. Like playing outside all day, or lighting all of the candles in the house and pretending they were stars because the electricity had been shut off again.

            The summer after my sophomore year, I went to Philadelphia to stay with my aunt and my cousin, Chyna for two months. I loved the city. It was gritty, and the stench from hot trash was almost unbearable. Flies buzzed lazily around the damp, brown faces of the people sitting on the blue, chipped porches of their red brick row houses. My aunt lived across the street from an old burnt down motel, and everyday, the drug fiends would play cards on old wooden crates in front of the motel to keep their minds and hands busy, toothlessly smiling and laughing at their own guile and trickery. There was a park right in the middle of the neighborhood. It didn’t really fit. It was strange to see greenery in the middle of this cement jungle. It was ivy vines around telephone poles, and the trees and the streetlights were the same height. There was a pool in the park, and when it became too hot to sit on the metal slide, my cousin, her friends, and I would change into our bathing suits and cool off. Alas, a boy. He was staring at me. I had never had a boy stare at me like that. I could feel exactly where his eyes were going as they swept over me. They left what felt like two small holes in my skin where they had rested. After awhile, it was almost necessary for me to get in the pool, I felt like his eyes had singed me in enough inappropriate places.

            It was the first time, in a long time, that I felt desirable, or beautiful. This is how Alaina must feel, this is how Marilyn Monroe must’ve felt, I felt clever and playful. I felt like I smelled good, I felt delicate and dainty. I felt like my smile sparkled and my hair shined. I felt like I could never do anything un-lady like, like fart or burp or pick my nose, no, I was desirable. But then I felt him grip me tighter, tighter than the-getting-ready-to dunk-me-in-the-pool-grip. Then through his swimming trunks I felt something hard and disgusting. He moved his hips back and forth, over and over again in the public pool, gripping me so I couldn’t get away. I imagined a video I had seen once, of a Chihuahua gripping onto a limp, one-eyed teddy bear, something pink and hard and disgusting moving back and forth into the poor teddy’s tail. I kneed him and swam away. Although I was disgusted, and felt dirty, something sick and dejected still felt desirable. The small sick part of me felt irresistible. I avoided the boy for the rest of the summer, realizing that most boys who grow in hard cities like West Philadelphia are bold. The amount of death, poverty, and pain they had witnessed was more to fear than something as trivial as being rejected by a girl. Whenever I did mention the boy or ask about him, my cousin wouldn’t look at me and tell me she didn’t know where he was. I eventually convinced her to take me to his house. He was sitting on his porch with some other boys. But the air was different, I didn’t feel desirable anymore. I felt stupid and desperate. My cousin asked where he had been, and why he didn’t talk to me anymore. He looked at me, and gave that same smirk Donovant had, and said, “I don’t really like you, you were just the first girl I saw, so I decided to play with your head. Did you really think I liked you? You’re ugly.”  I felt like my ears were clogged, the laughter sounded chopped and screwed. I felt my cousin pull my arm, but I couldn’t move, I sat there stammering, trying to be clever and dainty and playful, trying to come up with something, anything to say.

            Then I saw a girl. She peeked her head from behind the screen door and walked towards the boy.  She was light-skinned, with long jet black hair, she was petite, and had to be at least a D cup. It was as if every image of beauty that I had fallen short to had manifested itself in this one girl. Her laughter sounded like bells and rang out louder than all the rest. He draped his arm around her and stuck his chin out childishly, sitting on his porch with his cronies and his woman, as if it were a throne, and my cousin and I, watching from the streets, were just lowly peasants.

            I spent the remainder of my time in the bathroom, looking in the mirror and hating myself. It was the first time I had ever been called ugly to my face. It reaffirmed every flaw I thought I had. I thought that Chriszani, Keisha, Alaina, and every other girl that a boy had liked instead of me was better than me. I became a recluse, obsessing over one small moment in my life, trying to figure out if there was something I had done wrong. I listened to Radiohead’s “Creep” over and over again. I was Howard Hughes in the screening room, peeing in milk bottles and misspelling the word quarantine. I paid no attention to hygiene. Ugly people don’t need showers. I cried way too much to wash my face anyway.

            My aunt got tired of me “hogging up the bathroom.” Didn’t she know I was depressed? She finally convinced me to unlock the door and let her do her makeup for her date that night. I watched her line her lips with a chestnut colored liner, and apply mascara to too long lashes, and eyeliner to the lids of eyes that shone like two whole worlds.

            She was my mother’s sister. They looked exactly alike. We looked exactly alike. We were mirrors looking into mirrors, looking into mirrors, infinite and opalescent instances of beauty. We struggled with our own hardships, trying to find happiness and peace of mind in another person. We covered up our blemishes and hid our sadness, but it didn’t mean we weren’t beautiful. I hadn’t gone through half of the hardships my aunt or my mother had endured. I realized that my level of confidence shouldn’t be based on whether or not a boy liked me, or how many people called me pretty, but on my level of perseverance. I ignored everything I had went through. I had ignored my intelligence.

            I had spent so much time concentrating on one trivial aspect of who I was. I felt like I didn’t know myself. Who was this sarcastic, skinny girl? Who was this doe-eyed, know-it-all?  Who was this brash, impulsive, book-worm? Khadijah, and she took showers.