My Girlfriend is Addicted to Pinterest

I try to post something new on here every weekend, but as of yesterday afternoon, I still couldn't think of anything I wanted to write about. I mentioned my problem to Jen, and she said, "Why don't you write about what it's like to be in a relationship with a crafter?" Which is her way of saying, why don't you write about how amazing my pillows are? I thought, I'm not sure I'm ready to go public with that information.
     While I think I'm pretty good at treating everyone the same regardless their age, sex, race, religion, or propensity to get involved in DIY projects, the thing you should know is that on the inside I'm judging everyone. Critically and all the time. When I was a kid always assumed that the only people who chose to make things that could more easily be purchased at Pier One were poor people (We didn't have a lot of money when I was a kid, but by god if I needed new jeans, my mother bought them for me. What 12-year-old wouldn't rather show up to school wearing something made in a sweatshop by one of her Chinese peers than something that looked **gasp** homemade?)  and middle-aged cat ladies who've never known a man's touch. I was self-conscious about the possibility of being associated with the former and, while I'm proudly on a collision course with the latter, I was describing applique sweater wearing spinster crafters not gold-star lesbians in my crafter categorization. Then, after living within close proximity of Clintonville for most of my adult life (for non-Columbusites think 90-year-old  $200k houses, organic farmers' markets and Tom's Shoes) I added a third "crafter type." The Pretentious. If you've read the first 283 words of this post, you'll note just how hypocritical this assessment is.
     Over the course of the last month or so though, I've had to rethink my stance on crafting.* Not because I'm less right than I was a few weeks ago, but because I love Jen very much, and rethinking is the only way I can come to terms with our new lifestyle.
     I don't know when Jen found Pinterest, but I first noticed close to Christmas when I realized we hadn't spoken to each other in about two weeks. We lived together. We ate together. We worked together. But it was clear that I was no longer the apple of her eye. All of her time was spent pinning. If you don't know what Pinterest is--good for you. No good can come of it. I will tell you that as far as I can tell, aside from being a potential destroyer of healthy relationships, Pinterest is like a personalized, visual bookmarking system. You know how you might go to espn.com to read about the latest douchey thing Lebron James has done? Well with Pinterest you could bookmark that online article to your own page and, instead of just showing the link so that you can get back to the article anytime you want, it will pull a picture of Lebron James looking douchey from the article and "pin" that to your page. If you still care what I'm talking about or my description makes no sense, I suggest you click this Pinterest hyperlink and take a look around Jen's page so that you can see all the things she finds more interesting than me.
     As far as I can tell, 99% of the people on Pinterest are not pinning sports articles. No, the primary focus of Pinterest seems to be pretty things. Lots of cookable things, but mostly crafty things. If you already date someone who pins things and you ever hear her (let's be honest, this is not a dude activity) say, "hey, I could do that," it's all over.
     Jen first fell down the rabbit hole over New Year's weekend when we went to Erie for a postponed Christmas with her parents. Jen had little faith in her own crafting abilities, but her mom is something of a genius when it comes to making things (especially if there's sewing involved), so Jen thought it would be a nice bonding experience if she and her mom could spend the weekend making some of the things she'd found on Pinterest. She was right. It was a nice bonding experience. Since I entered the scene, Jen's mom hasn't gotten much alone time with her daughter, so I was happy to spend two days drinking rye and trying to blend into the furniture while Jen and her mom made some pendants and t-shirt scarfs. New Year's weekend proved to be significant for Jen in that she realized that she really does have the ability to make pretty things that she's finds on the internet. It was significant for me too, because it was the first time I realized that every trip to the craft store from now until the end of my life will cost at least 50 bucks and that just setting foot in a Joann Fabrics can trigger the onset of menopause, even if you're a man.
     They say (incorrectly) money can't buy happiness, but I'm here to tell you that crafting can. Since New Year's Jen has spent many of her evenings and weekends at her desk in our bedroom cranking out crafts, and I've never seen her filled with such joy. She started her momless quest into craft with handmade coasters, or as I like to call them--the thing everyone's getting for Christmas this year.

We now have more coasters than we have glasses, but that's okay. They do look pretty cool, and they make her happy. Once Jen mastered coaster craft, she decided it was finally time to recover some throw pillows of ours that she's always** hated.
     Sewing the new covers for the pillows turned out to be something of a challenge. Jen has moved her grandmother's old sewing machine to and from 5 different apartments since she moved to Columbus with the poor old thing (the sewing machine, not Jen) collecting pounds of dust and cat hair all along the way and, to my knowledge, she never even plugged the thing in until about two weeks ago. The thing you have to know about Jen is when she wants something, she wants it yesterday. So you can imagine how frustrated she must have been when after we got home from a $50 jaunt to the craft store (fabric, pillow forms, thread) and after 45 minutes of trying to thread the needle on her machine, the damn thing wouldn't sew. She called her mom 3 times, she looked online for help, in a moment of desperation she even asked me if there was anything I could do. There was nothing. She would have to do the unthinkable and wait.
     The next morning Jen and I threw the defective sewing machine in the trunk of our car just in case she could find someone to fix it while we were out at work. Jen and I work at an ad agency, and most of the people we work with are of the computer geek variety, but crafters can smell their own. She reached out for advice to everyone in the office who emitted the scent to no avail. By the time I got to work at 1:00, I could see that let's-just-buy-a-new-sewing-machine look in her eye. It's the same as the let's-go-to-Lowes-and-buy-more-tile-for-my-coasters look and the I-really-like-this-sweater look. I'm powerless against this look. Luckily when I asked her if she was going to ask me to take her to buy a new machine, she pointed out that that would be ridiculous, "but I did think about it."
     After work, we went home and she shut herself in the bedroom while I drank scotch and glued my eyeballs to a super boring GOP primary debate. Sometime between Newt Gingrich's first and 478th condescending eye roll, Jen came out to the living room with a smile on her face and a length of fabric with a perfectly sewn hem. "The needle was on backwards," she reported as she headed back into her workroom (where we also happen to sleep). Twenty minutes later, she came back out with an even bigger grin and a lovely decorative pillow. And that's when it happened. That's when I added a fourth "crafter type." It's the person-who's-stressed-out-99%-of-the-time-who-is-made-to-feel-calmer-and-happier-when-endeavoring-to-do-something-creative-and-seeing-that-project-through-from-conception-to-completion type. Having spent many an hour with nothing more than some Swedish hieroglyphics and an allen wrench, sweating and swearing right up until the moment the last screw is tightened on some pre-fab furniture, I can sort of understand where these people are coming from. It's fun to work with your hands. To make something pretty. I couldn't do what she does. It's not just the desire I lack. It's the patience, the vision, and the skill.

     So, as long as we're in election season and the news networks are hosting 2 debates for me to watch a week, it's fine by me if Jen wants to spend all her free time pinning and crafting. I just hope she doesn't plan to bring her bottle of Mod Podge along on our vacation to Asheville in March. I'm fairly certain there are signs all along the Appalachian trail that warn, "Please don't decoupage the mountains."

*Just this morning, Jen and I had a mini debate about exactly crafting entails. She said, "I don't think sewing clothes is the same as crafting." I countered, "It's crafting if you get some perverse satisfaction out of making something yourself that you could buy for less money." 
**By "always" I mean ever since she got on Pinterest.  
            

My Canadian Marriage Never Mattered

As some of you reading this are probably aware, in 2003 I went to Toronto with a chronically depressed, bulimic morphine addict and did the most sensible thing I could think of--I married her. I didn't really want to, but I also didn't want to hurt her feelings, and since the whole getting married thing was the reason we drove the 8 hours from Columbus in the first place, it seemed like I should hold up my end of the bargain. The closest thing I had to a bachelorette party was when, the day before we were to be married, my betrothed couldn't bring herself to stop doing drugs get out of bed, and I spent the afternoon walking around town alone. I did some window shopping and treated myself to dinner. Then I went to Second City. The same improv company that brought us Dan Aykroyd and the lady who played Kevin's mom in the Home Alone movies. We'd already gone once, but I found out that every evening after the official performance, anyone who wanted to could stick around or come in off the street and watch company rehearse for free. So I went and, while I waited for the show to let out, I had a couple drinks at the bar and flirted with the bar tender. This was the highlight of my time in Toronto. There were brief, hopeful moments when I thought maybe, just maybe my fiance would be too altered, tired, busy throwing up, or some combination of the three to go through with the ceremony. Well, let me tell you, love really does conquer all. That girl, who just 12 hours before hadn't been able to hold her own head up, sprang out of bed like a gymnast when the big day finally arrived. I've officially been married for 8 years, 4 months, and 10 days, and I've regretted every one of them. Well guess what the number one requirement for getting a Canadian divorce is. If you guessed being a Canadian resident, you win a block of 100% pure maple candy.      

Anyway, I've written about this epic mistake before, and it's not the point of this post. The point of this post is that a little over a week ago someone in the Canadian government tried to say that my super legitimate marriage was, in fact, invalid. Not because at least one of us was high when the ceremony took place. Not because a big part of the reason I agreed to get married was that I was afraid my girlfriend would kill herself if I said no. No, they were saying my marriage was invalid because neither my wife nor I are Canadian citizens. The nerve.

We know now that the proclamation was a false alarm, but I nearly cried when I first heard that I might be off the hook where my marriage was concerned. The thing is, I'm now in a relationship with someone whom I'd very much like to marry. In this country. When doing so becomes legal. I don't know much about the United States' polygamy laws. I don't know if, once they legalize gay marriage here, my big Canadian screw up would automatically transfer, making me also legally wed in this country. Another thing I don't know. Where my wife is or whether or not she's still alive. What I'm saying is, I wish my friends up north would decide that my marriage is invalid, I'd be just about the happiest discriminated against lesbian you'd ever meet. And that's the sticky wicket.

The threatened invalidation of the estimated 2,500 same-sex marriages that have been conducted over the last 9 years would be great for me, but it would be kind of a kick to the balls for the other 2,499 couples (okay, let's be honest, what's the divorce rate in this country? I'm not the only person who hasn't seen their gay Canadian wife/husband in more than 5 years). My point is, making sure that gays don't get kicked in the balls is something I care deeply about. Specifically, marriage equality for same-sex couples is something I not only care deeply about, but that I also actively (by active I mean once every few months) advocate for through my website, I Can't Get Married. And that's why what I've already said, that I think it would be awesome if all the foreign gay Canadian marriages were declared invalid, and what I'm getting ready to say make me a hypocrite, and an asshole. Here goes. As far as I'm concerned, the Canadian government would be right to say same-sex couples from other countries who were married in Canada aren't really married after all. Those foreign gay Canadian marriages have never been valid in any legal way that matters. Not really. When I got back to Ohio after getting hitched, I wasn't any more married than I had been before I left. I couldn't file my taxes with my wife (full disclosure: she was on disability and food stamps, so she didn't exactly have to file anyway). No one would defer to me when it came to deciding what to do with my wife's body in the likely event of her unfortunate demise. We couldn't appear on The Newlywed Game. And just as my marriage wasn't recognized here, and I, therefore, couldn't benefit from all the wonderful, U.S. government sanctioned benefits of marriage, neither was the Canadian government having to grant me any of the legal benefits that go along with being a wedded Canadian couple. I don't know what these benefits are, but I assume personalized hockey jerseys are part of the deal.

According to some of the reactions I'm reading about, non-Canadian gay folks are up in arms about this recent proclamation. They feel like if the Canadian government were to invalidate these marriages then said government would be discriminating against them. Well let me clue you in on something. The Canadian government wouldn't be discriminating against you. YOUR UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT IS DISCRIMINATING AGAINST YOU! Suppose I wasn't already married in Canada and my former co-worker and penis wielding friend Jason and I went to The Great White North and got hitched. We'd come back to the states, show our marriage certificate to whomever it is within our government that you show these things to, and wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am we'd be married in the U.S. He dies? I can tell the undertaker to cremate him, take his cremains home, and flush him down the toilet (per his wishes).

While I'm on my little rant, let me just finish up my semi-defense of the Canadian government deciding to put my marriage out of its misery by pointing out that, in at least one very important way, we (when I say "we" I mean right minded people who think that two grown, consenting adults should be able to marry each other regardless what combination of reproductive organs their collectively sporting) have been dealing with this brand of discrimination and disappointment at the exclusive hands of our own country for years. A Same-sex couple living in Omaha, Nebraska who traveled 1900 miles to Vancouver to get married is in no better or worse shape legally than a same-sex couple living in Alexandria, VA who drives 15 minutes into Washington, DC and gets married there. Both imaginary couples go home, and have no more rights than they did when they left. So, instead of getting pissed off at the Canadian government for saying out loud what has essentially been true all along. Let's get pissed off at our own government and demand that it repeal DOMA. Let's keep electing democratic presidents so that maybe someday the Supreme Court can be occupied by enough of those crazy, activist judges that the republicans like to complain about to finally declare it illegal to refuse marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Not just in Iowa or California, but in all 50 state. I'd like to enter into a marriage that matters, and I don't think that's too much to ask.

If You Really Want to Hear About It: In Defense of My Favorite Book

When I first turn to the first page of a book I'm starting, I get the same feeling I get when I cruise onto the highway at the beginning of a long road trip. The same feeling I get on the rare occasion I open the mailbox to find a real honest-to-god letter addressed to me. It's the feeling I get during that last hopeful moment right before I check lottery numbers. But it hasn't always been this way.
     When I was in the 4th grade I was in this gifted program, and our teacher assigned us a book report. We could read anything we wanted, but I'm pretty sure the implication was that we should read something a little more advanced than Beverly Cleary. I don't remember what the other kids in my class chose to read. Probably Proust or Faulker or something of the like, but that doesn't matter because, as far as I know, none of my classmates (wonderful people, all of them) are any closer to curing cancer than I am. I say this in the literal sense. As far as I know, my classmates and I are all doing well. Successful in our own ways. But as far as changing life as we know it goes, I haven't red about any of us on the front page of The Times, in celebration of our breakthroughs in time travel. I think I was 28 when I finally realized that my 4th grade book report didn't actually fucking matter. Anyway, the point is that while my peers were off reading The Sound and the Fury I decided I would read A Wrinkle in Time, a respectable enough intermediate level, Newbury Award winning book about whatever it is that that book is about. I couldn't tell you since I never actually read it. I'm sure that, 22 years later, I have this number completely wrong, but I seem to remember being on page 17 about 2 days before the report was due. My mother, my amazing, wonderful, future-writer-of-my-book-reports mother, said that maybe I could get away with doing a report on The Velveteen Rabbit. So what if it was only 40 pages and half of them were pictures? This book was a fucking classic. I trudged through, and, since the gifted program wasn't a graded class there wasn't a thing my teacher, Mrs. Baker, could do about it.
     Then, when I was 5th grade, I stupidly chose to read Hound of the Baskervilles for a book report. I say this move was stupid not because there is anything particularly wrong with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's third Sherlock Holmes novel. I haven't the first clue whether or not there's anything unappealing about the book, I didn't read it when I was 10, and I still haven't read it now that I'm 31. No, I say that my decision to read Hound of the Baskervilles for a 5th grade book report was stupid because, up until that point in my life, I'd never read anything more sophisticated than a 100 page, Matt Christopher basketball novel, so catapulting into the world of adult fiction was probably a little unrealistic. The night before the report was due, I had barely started the book. My mother, the aforementioned saint, chose to teach me a lesson about doing whatever is necessary to make sure your family is okay instead of a lesson about making sure you get your own shit done. She speed read my book, summarized it for me, then practically wrote the report herself.
     I'm not sure my mother knew what to do with me at this point. Everyone on her side of the family read a book or two a week, what the hell was wrong with me? If this is starting to sound like I'm leading up to a big reveal about my lifelong struggle with dyslexia, I'm really sorry to have to disappoint you. The truth is, I was probably just exceedingly lazy, and too into Designing Women and LA Law. You know, typical 10-year-old shit.
     Though my mom and I shared a love for Julia Sugarbaker's ability to cut anyone who messed with her fellow interior designers down to size, I did get the sense that she wouldn't have minded if I'd picked up a book every once in a while. She did everything she could think of to get me to read. We didn't have much money when I was growing up, but my mother never, not once, said no to me if I asked her to buy me a book. I'd watched the wonderful Wonderworks versions of The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe and Anne of Green Gables so many times that I had them memorized, so my mom bought me all 7 of the Narnia books and a beautiful, gold-leafed, illustrated version of Anne of Green Gables. I leafed through. I tossed aside. I went back to watching a coked up Drew Barrymore in the made for T.V. version of Babes in Toyland. Sure it came out when I was 5, but I had that shit on tape, and I would have rather watched it a 47th time than crack open Super Fudge. But this would soon change.

     Something started happening to me around the 6th grade. No, it wasn't boobs. I got those, and all the joy that goes along with them much earlier. For one thing, I had a reading teacher, Mr. Kenny Moore, who I actually liked, which I think helped me get to the point where I could get through a whole book if someone had a gun to my head. Mr. Moore made us keep a journal about the books we were reading. We handed these in weekly so that he could make sure we were actually doing what was expected of us. I remember reading a children's illustrated version of Robinson Crusoe and writing in my journal that sometimes I wished I could be stranded on an island. Mr. Moore jotted on comment in the margin, "Why?"

     This brings me to the major thing that started happening to me around the 6th grade. The thing that was way more profound than secondary sex organs. Depression Like, I had both melancholy and infinite sadness, before Billy Corgan ever even thought to shave his head. By the time I made it out of elementary school and into the 7th grade, I'd graduated from sort of passively wishing I could be on an island of my own to a full-blown, burning-tapered-candles-in-your-otherwise-dark-room-and-writing-poetry-about-corpse-souls-while-listening-to-Imagine-over-and-over-again-on-a-loop teenage angst. The last bit about John Lennon's Imagine is of particular importance. 

     Even though I was a devout atheist, and nonbeliever in heaven and (non-metaphorical corpse-like) souls, I had the silly little notion that I was John Lennon reincarnated. I had always loved the Beatles, but John was the individual mop head who had my heart, so I assumed, what with my being born less than a month after he was assassinated, that now, at least on a spiritual level, I had his heart too. Well, it was in the 7th grade, when my grungy angst was in bloom that I remembered something a kid named Jared said to me when were were still just 6th graders. He told me that the guy who killed John Lennon had done so because he'd read The Catcher in the Rye. Now, all I knew about the book was that I couldn't remember a time when there wasn't a copy of it in my house and that my mom liked it a lot, but since I was walking around with the victim's soul between my ears (or wherever souls are kept) I crept out of my room long enough to grab the iconic maroon and gold family copy. I read it. And fuck me, I loved it. I loved that book. I still love that book. The Catcher in the Rye is my favorite book, and even though it's a giant cliche, I'm not going to apologize for it. 

     The protagonist, Holden Caulfield, swears (sort of) right in the first line. The kid's a mess. He's locked up in a loony bin for Christ's sake. That scene where he's remembering talking to his sister Phoebe, and he tells her that his dream is to stand at the edge of a cliff that some kids are playing near and catch any kid that's about to go off? I think that's the first time I ever understood a metaphor. How could I not love this book? And where the hell was my Holden Caulfield to keep me from going off my cliff? 

     Look, I know that The Catcher in the Rye isn't the greatest book ever written. But I also know that, without that book, I'm still sitting on a couch watching Golden Girls reruns until my eyes bleed. You know what I did shortly after I read The Catcher in the Rye? I read Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha. Then I read a little Truman Capote, and some Orwell, and Aldous Huxley. Without The Catcher in the Rye, I never take all the literature classes I can fit into my schedule at community college in Dayton, and I never meet the professor who encourages me to transfer to Ohio State to get a BA and take some writing classes. Without The Catcher in the Rye, I never move to Columbus. I never meet any of the friends I have now. I never meet Jen. 

     So, you can ask me tomorrow, or you can ask me 50 years from now, and the answer will be the same. My favorite book is The Catcher in the Rye. What's yours? 

      

   
   
   
      

The Case for Rick Santorum

I'm just kidding. There is no case to be made for Rick Santorum for president. Not as far as I'm concerned. There is, however, a case I'd like to make for Rick Santorum for republican presidential nominee. It has nothing to do with a belief that he's a worthwhile candidate. In fact, it's just the opposite. I don't think there's any way in hell he could beat Barack Obama. And that's the point. Mitt Romney could beat Obama, and right now, it doesn't look like there's any chance that Romney isn't going to be the nominee. He may not appeal to the republican base, but he might just appeal to people who claim to be independents (though I feel the same way about independents as some people feel about bisexuals, which is that they don't really exist) and that's what's got me scared.
   I say we let Rick Santorum gain all the momentum he can. Let him finish a respectable 2nd in New Hampshire, so that he can win in South Carolina and Florida. There is the risk that, as happened with the drawn out primary between Obama and Clinton, prolonging the seemingly inevitable nomination of Mitt Romney will only make him (Romney) a stronger candidate in the general election. That's why I'm not just talking about drawing this thing out. I'm talking about getting Rick-former-senator-from-Pennsylvania-who-lost-his-2006-reelection-by-one-of-the-widest-margins-in-U.S.-history-Santorum nominated as the republican candidate for president.
     If you want Obama to be reelected, like I do, you shouldn't be telling folks that Rick Santorum wants to deny people access to any form of birth control. You should be talking up how he seems like a really sincere, and down-to-earth sort of guy. For now let's talk about his great moment at the Meet the Press/Facebook debate this morning when he was asked how he would feel if his son came to him and told him he was gay, and Santorum responded, "I wouldn't love him any less than I did the second before he said it." Then, after we get him nominated we can point out that it's doubtful any son of Rick Santorum's could ever muster the courage to tell his father he's gay given that good ol' dad once compared gay sex to "man on child, or man on dog" sex. To be fair, he was saying that gay sex isn't quite as bad as man on child or man on dog sex, but, you know, still pretty freaking close on the disgust-o-meter. And whatever you do, please wait until Mitt Romney is hiding out in one of his mansions licking his wounds, before you go ahead and point out to anyone who will listen that you're not even sure it would be constitutional to elect a muppet president.

    

  

     

A Book is Worth 40,000 Words

I was on a real roll there for a while with my blog posts. Well where the hell have I been for the last month? Have I slipped back into the abyss of blogger slackerdom? How dare you suggest such a thing. Let me explain.

As most of you don't know (because, seriously, what's more boring than listening to someone talk about her New Year's resolutions?) at the start of 2011 I set a goal for myself of reading 26 books during the calendar year. To some people that probably sounds like a lot of reading. To the types of folks who are much faster readers than I, it probably sounds like I may as well have made the resolution to remember to breathe once every few seconds. For me, the only person who really matters as far as setting goals for me goes, I just wanted an achievable, realistic number. One book every two weeks or so. For a person with a job, and a genetic need to spend a few hours a week at the gym, and an unabashed willingness, if left unsupervised, to watch 25 hours of television a week, 26 books felt attainable. In the interest of full disclosure though, I am currently supervised for about 90% of my waking hours, and I really only watch about 3 hours of TV a week, most of which is Friends dvds; otherwise, I'd never have reached my goal. Oh, did I just bury the lead there? Yes, I just said I reached my goal of 26 books read in 2011. In fact, I got so into this whole, reading thing, that I couldn't stop myself and a read a few more. I'll admit, when I got to November and I realized I still had 6 books to read, I got a little twitchy. I put the blog on hold, but I filled a few pages in my little pocket notebook with blog ideas, so don't fear: there's more on the horizon. As soon as I figure out what in the hell I meant when I jotted down, "Jason Stark, Einstein hair," we'll be back in business.
     If you're the sort of person who's interested in what other people read, here's the list of my 2011 books.  Just to clarify, when I say "books" I mean those bound things with all the wonderful smelling pieces of paper with squiggly lines printed all over them. The ones you can hold spread open in both hands. The solid masses you can swat people with if they dare interrupt you right when you're getting to the best part. Books.

     Here's a simple breakdown of what kept my eyeballs and my brainball occupied this year:
          Fiction: 22
          Nonfiction: 8
          Male: 22
          Female: 8
          Memoir/Personal Essay: 6
          Science/History/Biography: 2
          Scandinavian Crime Fiction: 5

Rapeseed, rapeseed, my friend

We read a book for my book club that left such a bad taste in my mouth that I decided I desperately needed a literary pallet cleanser. I asked a friend if he could recommend a good mystery, and he pointed me to Scandinavian. I have no real explanation for how I ended up dedicating 1/6th of my reading efforts to Scandinavian crime fiction. They're good, but they're not that good. They were all sort of slow burns that took me longer to read than they should have given that the genre is supposed to compel you to keep going, just one more page, one more chapter, one more plot twist further. Three of the five were part of the Kurt Wallander series by Henning Mankell. The first I read of that series was Sidetracked, and once I figured out what in the hell rapeseed is (this book is full to the gills of rapeseed fields) I really enjoyed it.  Mankell is considered something of a rockstar of the genre. All I know about the man I learned from Wikipedia. He's married to Ingmar Bergman's daughter, and he hates Israel. But Wallander is damaged goods with a gruff exterior and a soft, hidden underbelly. How could you not want to spend a few hundred pages with him. If you liked The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I don't see why you wouldn't like the Wallander books too, especially since they aren't bookended by 100 dull, tedious-to-read pages at the beginning and end of the story.

I can't believe how few books by women I read this year. I should be ashamed of myself, and I am. Having said that, easily the two best books I read this year were written by women, so stick that in your pipe. My last read read of the year was Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri. You may be familiar with her without even realizing it. Perhaps you went to see the movie, The Namesake, because it stars Kal Penn from the Harold and Kumar movies. I've never seen those movies, but I'm assuming he's Kumar. I hope that doesn't make me a racist. Anyway, my point is that Jhumpa Lahiri wrote the book that the movie The Namesake, starring the guy who played Kumar (or Harold?) in the stoner flicks. Lahiri has also won a little thing called the Pulizter Prize for her first collection of stories, Interpreter of Maladies. Sorry, I've gotten off the very important track of talking about how good Unaccustomed Earth is. It's really good. If you you enjoy character driven fiction, then it's really really good. I'd say more, but I have 20-something more books to get through, and I've already gone on and on about Kal Penn. Suffice it to say, for now, that Unaccustomed Earth might have been my favorite book of the year. Or it could just be that it's the one I read most recently. Who can say?
     Either my second favorite book of the year, or my favorite book that happens to be less fresh in my mind than Unaccustomed Earth was Karen Russell's, Swamplandia!. That exclamation point is part of the title. I don't just throw those around willy-nilly. This book was fantastic! The most common way that I've described it unsolicitedly is to say that it's sort of like a The Smiths song. It's kind of fun and poppy, and then you start to pay attention to the lyrics and you realize he's singing about his girlfriend who is in a fucking coma. That's not poppy. Well the setting and the language in Swamplandia! gave me a similar feeling. What a charmingly eccentric family of alligator wrestlers dressed up as Native Americans, and selling worthless souvenirs to the mainlanders they disdain. Oh wait--the mother's died, the father has no idea what in the hell he's doing, and the protagonist has just wandered off into the swamp with a gypsy. I can see how this story might not be for everyone, so if you're on the fence, you might leaf through Russell's earlier collection of stories, St. Luce'y Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. There's a story in there called, "Ava Wrestles the Alligator," that Swamplandia! is based on.

Another common theme for me this year was reading nonfiction by people who are funny who have strong voices that I admire. If you want to be a person who writes, you should also be a person who reads. It's a wonderful way to hone your craft. It's also a wonderful way to spend 2 months not writing while still feeling self-righteous about the fact that you're working on something that you're obnoxiously snobbish enough to call, "your craft." The two best books that feel into this category this year were, Half Empty, by David Rakoff and, Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life, by Steve Martin.
     If you've never read David Rakoff, I'd like to make a couple recommendations. First, start with one of his other books. Fraud, for example. Second, even if you're not the sort of person to do this, get the book on cd. David Rakoff is one of those people who's actual spoken voice adds something to what you're reading. If you've ever listened to David Sedaris or Sarah Vowell read their own work, you know what I'm talking about. I'm not suggesting that Half Empty isn't as good as his other books, I'm just suggesting that, since this one is largely about his experiences with his own cancer, you might want to get to know that guy first. He's dry and snarky and wonderful and I don't understand why my girlfriend, who read this book in 2 days and claimed to love it only gave it 3 stars on goodreads. Jen?
     Another book that Jen only gave 3 stars, though she read it in a day, couldn't put it down, in fact, Steve Martin's, Born Standing Up, gives the best glimpse of what it must be like to slog through the early years of being a live performer or standup comic, something it's never occurred to me to try, but which I found fascinating nonetheless. Having said that, I have always been madly in love with Steve Martin, so maybe I'm not a reliable source as far as this one goes. If a book of the same theme had been written by, say, Andrew Dice Clay, I wouldn't have picked it up with rubber gloves.

I'm going to be honest with you, dear reader, I'm running out of battery power on this machine. I'm out of town, and I have no charger with me. It's the last day of the year, and I swore I would get this posted before the year was over. I'm going to finish this one up quick and dirty.
     Book 26 almost killed me, and it took a year of on and off reading to get through. Jon Meacham's, American Lion, is quite good, and if you had access to unlimited amounts of Adderral or Cocaine, you could probably get through it in fewer than 9 disjointed months. I'm sure it was me. The book won the Pulitzer, and it was about a president whom I've always found fascinating. I would recommend it to anyone looking for an American History or American politics suggestion. Really, it was me, not the book.

I just scanned through the rest of the books I read in 2011, and, yeah, I think I'm good. I don't feel compelled to mention any of the others here. I did mention another of my books in a previous post. Please do check out the rest for yourself though. If you see anything you'd like to know about, you know where to find me.

2012--35 book, 52 blog posts. Hold me to it.
   

Listen Local: Is CD101 Being Sold

(I don't know if I'm allowed to use an image of the old CD101 logo, so picture it here.)

Let me start by saying that if I hear that horrible new Jane's Addiction song, "Irresistible Force" one more time, I don't care how far outside of Columbus and the reach of CD 102.5's signal I have to drive to find one, I'm going to drive off a cliff. But other than the good folks at central Ohio's only independent radio station's desire to please and appease fans of alternative rock other than just myself, I have no complaints about CD101(at 102.5 fm). They play good music. They're involved in the community. They bring good bands to town. What more do you want from a radio station?

     Now, any of you who know me know that I am a rather political person, but I've tried to tamp that down for the sake of this blog as of late. Not everyone, in fact mostly no one, wants to hear my rants. So for the past few months I've kept to myself every time President Obama has backed away from a fight or Mitt Romney has contradicted himself or Ron Paul has sounded like the most sane person in a debate right up until the point when he got on a roll and started sounding completely bat-shit crazy. 

     What I am not going to keep quiet about is the news that CD101 (at 102.5 fm) may be going the way of the dodo. Yes, they've released their official statement about having an LMA in place with Southeast Ohio Broadcasting, but since that doesn't seem to have put things to rest, and since Brian Phillips, Lesley James, Rachael Gordon, and Tom Butler have all changed their Facebook profile pictures to the CD101/102 logo in some apparent sign of whatever the word is for radiostation patriotism, I'm going to assume, if not the worst, then something like it. Even if all the speculation is completely off base, keep reading. I'm trying to make a point here.

     Like I said two paragraphs ago, I've been trying to bore you all to death with stories of my life on this blog as opposed to screaming at you about the only other thing that I think about more than myself (politics) since I got back onto this blog band wagon, but today I'd like to complain. What I would like to complain about is the fact that a handful of giant corporations own just about every source of news, television, and radio that most people are able to get their hands, eyes, and ears on. Maybe I wouldn't care so much if I was a white, conservative, Christian, heterosexual--the subset of folks who are considered the mainstream and are, therefore catered to, even if they aren't the majority. But as it so happens, I am white (though I'm 1/8 Hungarian Jew, and my grandmother who is 1/2 Hungarian Jew told me this weekend I should feel free to tell people this as well as to mention that some of my family died in Auschwitz should I ever find myself feeling a little too privileged and white) but I'm also a liberal, atheist woman of the gay persuasion who is sick of reading the latest Columbus Underground tweets about how the John Kasich loving Columbus Dispatch is buying my favorite newspaper or how some Christian media group is buying my favorite radio station. 

     Over the last couple years in this city there has been a wonderful push for folks to go out of their way to shop local. Take a look at the current list of members of the Small Business Beanstalk (SBB) if you don't believe there's a real passion and commitment to buying local in Columbus. Thanks to the support of local shoppers Tigertree in the Short North recently moved to a bigger space. Wholly Craft in Clintonville can be just as crowded on a Saturday during the holiday season as some of the shops you'd find in a mall. No one really wants to pay $5 for a bag of bruised apples, but we show up in Clintonville in droves every Saturday in September for the privilege of doing so.

     So with all this push in this city to buy local, why is there no push to listen local? Yes, that's what I said. Take out your earbuds. Turn off your iPods. Turn your radio dial away from whatever sports talk radio station you're listening to. You already own whatever's in your iTunes cloud and you already agree with everything the die-hards are saying about the Buckeyes. Instead, tune into 102.5 whenever you can. Increase their market share so they can charge more businesses more money for more ads and buy themselves out of any future bumps in the road. Maybe this is too little too late, but I don't want to live in a town where my girlfriend and I can't speak along as Brian Phillips warns us about the perils of "tubs of subpar yogurt," or where Joe Jewett doesn't feel clever EVERY FUCKING TUESDAY when sometime between 8:45 and 9:00 a.m. he plays the Pogues, "Tuesday Morning," or where Lesley James doesn't religiously follow up the 5 spot with some new wave or gothy classic presumably just because it's what she wants to hear, or where Rachael Gordon shouldn't feel perfectly free to speak for all of us when she proclaims on air that she hates Ke$ha. 

     What I'm saying, like the way-too-old-to-be-such-a-fangirl I am, is I will keep listening to these people play their music at whatever frequency or at whatever website or out of whoever's basement they end up in, but until we know how everything is going to shake down, I will be listening local. I will be tuned to CD101 (at 102.5 fm).  

As Long as I'm Holding this Flag, I am God.

It has long been assumed in this country that a known atheist will never hold a high public office. Well what would you say if I told you it's already happened? No, not Thomas Jefferson. Deists believe in god. Think more recently? Think the early 1990s. Think of an armed woman in uniform.

     In an effort to appear like a uniter (I'm guessing), Gary Alexander (R-Kettering, OH) reached across the aisle and appointed me, Carrie Curtner (D-Miami Twp., OH) to the post. I was Mr. Alexander's Ray LaHood (President Obama's republican Secretary of Transportation). The confirmation process was much less of a headache than what you're used to hearing about. I think my mom maybe had to sign a permission slip. A fellow democrat, she was happy to oblige. So, from July 1992 through June 1993 I served as Harold Schnell Elementary School's safety patrol captain. I took over the position from an avowed Mormon. The the exception of the fact that the entire school only had about 3 black kids enrolled, Harold Schnell was a pretty progressive place in the early 90s. 

     My uniform was a blindingly bright, highly reflective, orange plastic harnessy-sash thing (or a not-quite-as-bright giant yellow poncho if it was raining). I was armed with a flag the same color as my harnessy-sash thing which was affixed to the end of a yard long, 1-inch-diameter dowel rod.
     Though it didn't come up during my interview for the post, I think on some level I believed that my atheism would make me a better captain. My firm conviction that there would be no power higher than myself intervening should a first-grader walking home dart into oncoming traffic gave me the feeling of (dare I say godlike) omnipotence that all power-starved-dictators need to posses in order to keep their people safe (under control/completely dependent upon them). I'm not saying that my inclinations toward control-freakism are caused by my disbelief in god. I'm just saying it's a little easier to not feel like a dick for being a control freak if you believe the buck stops with you anyway. Margaret Atwood would be better at explaining what I'm trying to say, but I don't know if she ever used her position of power and influence as safety patrol captain to try and convert people away from Christianity, so you're stuck with me for this blog post anyway.
     I was raised as one of those people who only go to church on on Easter. I don't know if the once a year on Easter thing was an attempt on my father's part to affirm his Christian faith or if it was just that he wanted to make it crystal clear that he wasn't Jewish. I mean, as holidays go, it doesn't get much less Jewish than Easter. We'll save how wonderfully open minded and accepting of people not like himself my father is for another post. My real point in mentioning the church on Easter thing is to offer up some proof that I was not raised as an atheist. I have been subjected to hours long protestant services by a parent who really does believe in the guy with the white beard. (God's still a white guy with a white beard, right? We haven't switched to a more politically correct Asian-God-in-wheelchair model while I wasn't paying attention?)

     The first sign that I wasn't totally hip to the deity jive came when I was about five or six. I remember playing outside with my friends Krista and Kyle Kettering who lived up the street from me. Their mom taught at Dayton Christian middle school (I think, my 6-year-old memory might be a little fuzzy on some of the finer details) and they believed in god and Jesus and the whole works. I don't know how the subject came up, but we were talking about Jesus and the virgin birth, you know, like kids do. I have vague memories of my mom reading to me from a children's bible when I was really little. I can see some of the pictures in my mind. I remember the Garden of Eden, the flood, and the Tower of Babel. I don't know that we made it much further than that. I'm thinking we definitely didn't make it to the New Testament, because I had some rather heretical things to say about how Jesus came on the scene. "So, Jesus' mom was Mary and Jesus' dad was God, so Mary and god were married." I don't remember how they told me I was wrong, and I don't remember how I responded to their correction, but I think it must have been the 6-year-old equivalent of, "What the fuck?!" By the time we finished our argument, the only thing the three of us could agree on was the fact that Jesus had come out of Mary's butt. At some point my mom was informed that the Kettering kids couldn't play with me anymore. I don't remember whether or not this was related to my heathenism, but let's pretend that it was, because I think this Mary and god were married debate can turn into a pretty badass chapter in the biography that someone will write about me hundreds of years from now as a result of my single-handedly turning the world away from religion and toward a peaceful coexistence. Or not. I don't really care if you believe in god or not. Whatever gets you through the night. Just try not to be an asshole about, and try to encourage other people not to be assholes about it either. See? Peaceful coexistence. I'm sure my Nobel is on the way.
     The first time I remember flat out telling someone that I didn't believe in god was third grade. I was talking to my strict Southern Baptist best friend at the time, Joseph S. I have no idea what I said other than that I didn't believe in god and I thought it was foolish that he did. Whatever I said, it must not have made much of a mark; he lists the Bible twice in his list of favorite books on Facebook and Jesus Christ first (four places ahead of Reagan) in his list of influential people. The Joseph S. phone incident was a full 3 years before I was injected with the ego boosting shot of pretty much limitless power that my promotion to safety patrol captain gave me.
     One afternoon when one of my fifth grade underlings, Shane M. and I were walking back into the school after a successful shift of life saving, we were talking about god. I had formed real opinions and thoughts based on logic by this point. It was a major step in my intellectual growth. I know this sounds like I think pretty highly of myself, but let me follow-up by saying that my opinions and my ability to argue on this topic have not matured or expanded one iota since that spring 18 years ago. But back to my conversation with Shane M. "Just because we haven't found all the answers through science doesn't mean the answers don't exist. Religion is just ignorance settling on an answer," I told him. I have no idea what he said to that. It's hard to listen to other people when you're too busy being impressed with yourself. Remember that thing I said a couple paragraphs ago about not being an asshole about your faith? That goes for atheists too. I was a real schmuck when I was twelve. In case you were wondering, according to Shane's Facebook page, he still believes in god too. Good for him.
     As I said, I haven't come up with any sounder arguments against the existence of god since I was twelve. I'm sure if I'd read more of what Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens had to say on this matter, I'd be further along argumentative education, but the truth is, I don't go out of my way to read books or essays that try to disprove the existence of god. I may not be any good at convincing other people not to believe, but I think I've pretty well mastered my own disbelief, so why spend the time? Something I do spend time on though is reading collections of essays written by people who I think are funny, skilled writers (something I clearly haven't mastered as proven by this essay). Well, sometimes when you're looking for one thing, you find something else just as valuable. A few weeks ago, I read Penn Jillette's new book, God, No! Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales. I will say that the title was the first thing to catch my interest, but the reason I bought the book was that as I was standing in the book store reading the books introduction I noticed the strength of Jillette's voice. He writes like he talks, which is something I try to do, and he's funny, which is something that I try to be. I thought maybe I could learn something from this guy. I was right, but what I learned had nothing to do with being a better writer (no offense Mr. Jilliette). No, what I walked away with after reading page 129 of Penn Jillette's book was the best argument against god I've ever heard. Here's the quote:

          There is no god, and that's the simple truth. If every trace of any single religion were wiped out
          and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. there might be
          some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out,
          it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again.

As my dear mother, the same woman who baptized me in our bathtub with holy water she stole from the hospital chapel, says "Well shit twice and fall back in it." That's a pretty fucking solid argument. I'm sure, for those who believe, there are arguments against the aforementioned, but I'm not going to go out of my way to think of what those arguments would be. In fact, I think I'm set on reasoning against the existence of god for another 18 years. But I'm still not proud of the way I talked to Shane M. that day after we'd finished our safety patrol shift.
     You could say that I let my position as safety patrol captain go to my head. You could say that it ws inappropriate for me to use my position of authority to try to sway the beliefs of my subordinates, but let me just leave you with one last story.
     School had just let out, and all the kids who lived within a safe mile of the building were anxious to get home. Students walked along the quiet suburban streets with nary a care in the world. Students, that is, except for me and the rest of my force. I was standing on the corner of Carnation Street and Palm Drive, proudly wearing my glow-in-the-dark sash when a small group of kids walked up behind me. They were chatting amongst themselves, paying no attention to the traffic situation around them, but so what--that's why I was there. From my left, a car approached. I held my flag/dowel rod in width-wise in  front of my waist and gave the command, "HOLD!" The kids walking behind me didn't stop, but neither did the car. When the first girl in the group ran into my outstretched dowel rod, so firm that the rod broke against the force of her forward momentum. She stopped, unharmed, just as the car passed.
     Maybe there is a god after all.