Just Something to Think About

There's been a lot of back-and-forth in recent days about the firmly established anti-condom stance possessed by Pope Benedict XVI (and, yes, I think we can now say quite conclusively that he does look like the Emperor from the Star Wars films).

One side paints the sometimes-ineffective contraceptives as dangerous in that they provide a false sense of security and encourage promiscuity; the other has said that they do say lives and, essentially, the Pope needs to stick to matters of Heaven and Hell instead of meddling in the nightmarish realm of the STD.

Here's what I say.

According to the anti-condom camp, mankind can resist their animal urges to engage in adult scenarios. For numerous individuals across the globe, this is true. Just look at all the multitudes of nuns, priests of various religions, and even protesters who live entire lifetimes of abstinence with a startlingly high degree of success. However, as a rule, this is not true. The force that draws two people together is intensely stronger than the various forces that keep them apart. Humans are, essentially, animals, and as a species, celibacy is not a viable option.

Here's the other part. HIV and other STDs are spread through the transmission of bodily fluids (I know, it's disgusting; bear with me). This transmission occurs during human mating. Now, wouldn't it be neat if there were a way to form an artificial barrier to block those fluids from moving from person to person? Oh, wait-- there is! Condoms! They are not accurate 100% of the time at preventing pregnancy, and at preventing infection transmission, that accuracy rate, I've been told, drops over twenty percent.

Let me finish.

That still leaves a likelihood somewhere in the mid-to-high seventies that the spread of disease will be stopped! But when sex is unprotected, there can't be any escape from the risks. The invisible condom has an accuracy percentage of exactly 00.

You can't stop people from doing what people do. Maybe on a small scale, but not every member of the freaking human race. So encouraging people not to use condoms encourages people to think their situation is hopeless. People shouldn't be forced to choose between loneliness/life and love/possible death.

I believe Benedict's "condomnation" (excuse the pun) should be referred to as his message of death. It won't do anything at all to prevent one human life from being extinguished; it may even spur it on. I say bravo to all the people who pass out contraceptives in impoverished nations, and the non-impoverished kind as well. You are preserving a chance for life in the most sacred of all human arenas: love.

As The Who Once Sang, "Miracle Cure"

It seems like the media these days is dominated by one "genre" (for lack of a better word) of news.

That is the genre of people saying unbelievably stupid things in public.

It happened to Mel Gibson, Rush Limbaugh, Rush Limbaugh, Rush Limbaugh, Isaiah Washington, Rush Limbaugh, and even President Obama. These unbelievable utterances are generally followed by half-hearted apologies, which are then followed by more sincere, false follow-up apologies. Unless you're Gibson, in which case they're followed by binge drinking and even worse sound bites.

Can anything be done for this rapid outbreak of foot-in-mouth disease?

Experts have recently approved just such a "miracle cure." It's called a brain.

The best part of this revolutionary treatment is that everyone already has one! Terrific, isn't it? It just takes a little extra training to use it, since the typical human impulse is to let the tongue go first. And I know that can be very tempting-- sometimes, you just want to say something, right? But a stupid phrase by itself is at least a thousand times better than a stupid phrase followed by an apology that everyone knows is less real than the dwarf that sneaks into bedrooms at night to steal socks and underwear.

Here's a good philosophy: your brain is (hopefully) bigger than your tongue. Don't let the latter defeat the former.

Blast from the Past or Jumping the Gun?

Yesterday, I was watching that episode of The Simpsons where Homer and Marge tell the kids of Marge's college days in the nineties (yes, the nineties), and for the first time in my life, I was hit with official nineties nostalgia.

However, the 90s still seem so close... can we really be getting misty about them yet like we do with the 60s, 70s, and 80s?

Well, just because they seem close doesn't mean they still are. At this point, they're nine years away. And lest we forget, people were mooning over the loss of the 80s by 1994... and probably a lot sooner. Also, VH1 aired I Love the 90s a few years ago. So I suppose I am a little behind the times; it's really just because when you're living a decade (especially when you're as young as I was then), you don't notice the weird trends and tones that make it what it is-- you have to wait until you're (un)comfortably free and clear. After all, did anybody notice big hair? Not until it had gone the way of the hippie.

Feeling this kick of nostalgia, I decided to evaluate the highs and lows of the 1990s, the decade that produced coffee culture, grunge, and (most importantly of all :), me! You wouldn't know it to begin with, but there is just as much to love and reminisce about the 90s as there was for many people about the past few decades... and some things to hate and say, "Thank the skies that's over".

Harry Potter. Can you believe the first book was published in the US 12 years ago?! That's right. And the books are actually explicitly set in the 1990s (evidently, the movies' production companies deemed it not important, which was a shame-- it would have been awesome to see Fred and George mourn the death of Kurt Cobain in a scene). Well, they started a craze that has lasted longer than most, and has no end in sight. The first three books (all published, I'm willing to bet, in the 90s) were the greatest because not everybody knew about them and J.K. Rowling wasn't pandering to anyone at the time. Plus, Harry is a British punk-- he has the messy hair, the tattered clothing, and, farther into the series, a certain tangible sense of apathy that's the nineties in a nutshell. If he didn't live in England, he probably would have been carrying around Nirvana and Green Day in a walkman.

Savage Garden. If the 80s had WHAM!, the 90s had Savage Garden. No wonder their music was so popular (for three years, 1997 until their breakup after 2000's Affirmation). "A Thousand Words" is one of the best songs of the 90s, and "Santa Monica" manages to capture the decade's spirit (supermodels, coffee shops, and in-line skating), coming through nowadays as a nostalgic cry for a time and place that seem to exist now only in the mind.

Must See TV. The official title of First Must See TV Show is widely disputed. A lot of people put the moniker on Seinfeld (1990). However, I attach it to Frasier (1993), because it was actually bearable. Frasier had it all-- coffee, post-Cold War sophistication, and the redefined family situation for which the nineties are famous. A year after its premiere, NBC did it again with Friends, which a lot of people find an easier show in which to take an interest. From then on, NBC had a nearly continuous stream of hit sitcoms that other networks and even Modern NBC can only envy-- shows like Just Shoot Me and 3rd Rock from the Sun that, even if they were irritating TV series (which neither of those examples were), were still insanely popular and legitimately well-written. No other cache of sitcoms so influenced the decade or were so influenced by it.

Coffee Culture. Bill Engvall said that before 1990, you could go into any coffee shop in the country and just order a cup of coffee, but in the 90s, "You got to have a latte... or an espresso...." He had a point. Before 1990, it would have been pretty darn inconceivable for people to go into a cafe and pay those ridiculous prices just to have one cup of coffee and sit for two to three hours. After that point, we had entire sitcoms dedicated to people doing just that (see above). Over time, this permanent craze has evolved to include high-speed internet and would-be competition with McDonald's (would be, that is, if McDonald's didn't suck out loud), but it was those dark little beans that had one of the most profound cultural impacts of their day.

Grunge. Another fine product of Seattle, grunge is what the characters of the proverbial That 90s Show would sit around and listen to after hanging around at the coffee house. I still believe Nirvana was the only band that could pull off this sound without seeming like ripoffs, but that was because they had the virtue of being on the frontier. Unfortunately, grunge has also produced wannabe copycats and the mess that is now Courtney Love.

Early Green Day. Back before Green Day believed in social consciousness for its own sake, they produced a long string of great punk records and watered the seed that was planted by the Ramones and left to die by their lookalikes. The 1994 album Dookie is also one of the definitive albums of the decade and perhaps even the genre of punk itself (the opening line of the opening track has the protagonist explicitly declaring he doesn't care anymore).

And the not so good....
Jar Jar Binks. Mesa very not impressed. Even as an eight-year-old enthralled by the prospect of seeing Star Wars in theatres for the very first time, I wanted to throw my popcorn at the screen when he first appeared. (Spoiler alert) The real sin is that they killed off Mace Windu and left Jar Jar alive to torture us! Complain about the Ewoks all you want... they don't even hold an obnoxious little candle to this waxy digital monstrosity.

The End of Calvin and Hobbes. Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz wrote up until he died. Bill Watterson, on the other hand, left a mere ten years of Calvin and Hobbes for us to enjoy. We can only conclude that Calvin's parents finally gave in to the siren call of Ritalin.

Bill Clinton's Near-Impeachment Experience. As recent history has shown, there are far worse things a president can do than lie about having sex with an intern. But the lie was still highly disappointing, and the man everybody claimed would restore the Democratic Party to its JFK-era glory ended up leaving office with naught but a whimper and an "I didn't know perjury was a crime."

Jar Jar Binks. He was so bad, he deserved another one.

Declaration of Xander

It occurs to me that, although I have been writing on this blog for quite awhile now, I have never really been explicit in stating what I believe in, politically speaking. I know my profile labels me a liberal, but that's such a loose description that it barely means anything at all. Therefore, I have decided to write the following in the hopes that it will put everything I have written and will write in the future in some sort of context.

America: It's a great country, and the place in this world I would prefer to live... but it's not perfect. It isn't always right. In fact, saying the opposite of that is about as un-patriotic as you can be. Here is the truth: if we really love this country, we'll point out its mistakes, question its questionable maneuvers, and hold our leaders accountable, regardless of whether or not they are ideologically similar to ourselves.

Bigotry: Hey, folks... bigotry is bigotry! If you have ill feelings towards any gender, sexual orientation, race, or religious group, it counts as hatred. But as heinous as the stereotypes, epithets, et cetera are themselves, double standards are even worse. It is just as bad, for example, for a woman to say, "Men are scum" as it is for a man to say, "Women are for cooking and reproducing." Anyone who complains about the way women or people of color have historically been treated cannot really believe in treating anyone else the same way, which brings us (in a roundabout way) to my next paragraph:

Retaliation: Revenge has been the subject of some great entertainment in the past. It has ranged from the divine (in The Odyssey) to the big-budget (in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan) to the obnoxious (political mud-slinging contests). I generally take an official stance against the concept of vengeance because I believe that fate will almost always find a way to smooth everything out... who are we as human beings to stand in the way of that?

War: We Are never Right. My idea of a perfect world is a world where people don't need to fight to solve their problems. I mean, when we're kids on the playground, we are taught by every adult in sight that grown-ups don't solve their problems with violence and anger, but then how do we see the grown-ups out in the world doing it? All that being said, I realize that we do not, in fact, live in my perfect world. We live in a world where action does not follow thought, but rather vice versa. When war is deemed necessary by those in power, it must be handled as humanely as possible and not be allowed to escalate into global conflict. The few wars that have been completely morally indefencible (like Vietnam and the current, dreadfully mismanaged and misleadingly titled "war on terrorism") just prove my belief that, as nice as that perfect world is, I doubt anyone I know will ever get to see it. I support and love my country, but I can never in good conscience serve in the military: most of the branches make their name doing what I find morally objectionable, and since I hate water, a Coast Guard career is out of the question for me. Don't get me wrong, our men and women in uniform are heroes of the finest kind-- I just wish they didn't have to become heroic the way they do.

Animal Rights: I am not and could never be a vegetarian. Furthermore, I believe that it is perfectly natural for animals (like us) to eat other animals. But animals' objections cannot overpower our voice and strength, so we have a responsibility to treat them with as much respect as we possibly can. Animals killed for food must be treated with dignity, and no animal should ever be killed unless it will end up in someone's stomach (or, you know, unless the death is a humane medical service-- don't shoot the horse just because it's lame, but there is a line to cross).

Gay Rights: Who in their right mind chooses to be part of a minority that is spit upon, disregarded, and generally kicked into the gutter of society? Oh, sure, tolerance for the GLBT population is at an all-time high, but it's still a far cry from where it needs to be. The first big step in the right direction would be to repeal the obscene "Defense of Marriage Act." Our country is built on the principle of "majority rule" and "minority rights." Which means that even if it's not popular in the polls, the minority has a RIGHT to the same basic freedoms everyone else enjoys. And, in my mind, the idea that gays and lesbians can't make good parents is disgusting. The counter-thought here is that "men and women each bring something unique to the child-rearing process." If that's true, it has to follow that every individual brings something unique to the child-rearing process. Some women are unfit to have kids; some men are unfit to have kids. And not every gay man or woman would make a great parent, but those that would deserve a chance.

Separation of Church and State: Remember that phrase? It's been kind of kicked into the dirt all throughout American history. To my mind, it could not get any simpler: the church and the state remain separate. No one religion deserves to wield disproportionate power against any other, even if it is the one the majority practices. Let children pray at home and in their church or mosque or synagogue or insert-other-place-of-worship; that's where it belongs. Not allowing prayer at school is not an attempt to strip morality from public education-- but when you allow prayer at school, it becomes Sunday school. Also, the word "God" should be removed from the Pledge of Allegiance, but only because it was added after the pledge was written and had been in practice for a time. That smells like bait to a controversy to me.

Sex versus Violence: A thousand corpses in a movie get it a PG-13 rating... but one sex scene warrants an R? I don't think so... unless we really want to teach our youth that it's okay to kill someone, but not to show someone you love them.

Sex Education: I think the proof is out there that abstinence-only Sex Ed doesn't work, you just have to look for it (that includes you, Grandma Palin).

And Finally:
The Super Bowl: For crying out loud, people, it's just a fracking football game! Get over it already!!!!!!!!!!!!

A Word for Gandhi

By freak coincidence, I began this week to watch for the second time Richard Attenborough's 1982 classic Gandhi. The coincidence is that I ended up actually watching it on the 61st anniversary of the Mahatma's death.

January 30, 1948... another day to be remembered with December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001. The day the world lost one of probably the three greatest human beings ever to walk the earth.

Oo, big surprise! The liberal pacifist agrees with Gandhi!

Here was a man who asked no material rewards-- all he wanted to do was free his country. Which he succeeded in doing, but not without great cost. Despite his continuous message of nonviolent resistance, by the end of his life, he had witnessed such atrocities as the massacre of Amritsar and nonstop months of rioting between Muslims and Hindus.

It's important to remember January 30th every year. In my opinion, it's more important than Martin Luther King Day, and before you crucify me for saying that, let me explain what I mean.

Gandhi was an example to Dr. King, but no other man in history has been able to cause such a tremendous stir over a pinch of salt.

Real heroes, like Gandhi and King, are people who do things for others while taking nothing for themselves. They don't ask to light up the pages of history, but their actions necessitate it. And there are people in the world who don't even know a single thing about Mohandas Gandhi! As the tagline for the 1982 movie says, "His triumph changed the world forever." His messages will never die. And when everyone in the world follows his example, we will finally live in the world in which we were intended to live.

How to Leave Children Behind: The Christine Gregoire Story

I'd enjoy taking a moment to reflect on the very bizarre year American education has been experiencing.

All around the country, education funding is being cut, which is inexcusable. Let me explain the state of Washington's current situation in that department. Our governor, Christine Gregoire, who once had my support, just lost it. On the bright side, she acknowledged that our state is going through a tough economic time, which was fantastic! How did she respond? Massive, painful budget cuts. Well, that works. Wait a minute-- what did she cut?

Ah, now we get to it!

A few items on her ax list: drug/alcohol rehabilitation facilities (Goody! Problem drinkers with no place to go for help!), homeless shelters (Yahoo, yippety! Thousands more people to leave out in the cold, our worst weather in quite some time!), and... education!

The changes won't really be evident this year, but tomorrow's students and teachers are facing some pretty bleak issues on the horizon. When the cuts are finally felt, one of the first institutions to go will probably be the arts. Athletics would seem a likely candidate, until you realize that it is too readily associated with the American dream to ever be in any real danger. Fine arts, on the other hand? Gracie is in her nightgown ready to say good night.

But what is even more baffling is the amount of praise Gregoire has received for her "smart," "gutsy," "chutzpah-heavy" financial plan. Did any of these alleged critics really understand what was going on? Or were they bought off by invitations, perhaps, to the governor's overly elaborate inaugural ball?

During the election, Gregoire was the lesser of two evils. Her first four years proved her ability to be both an excellent and appallingly bad governor. But now, even Sarah Palin is more gubernatorially qualified.

As for Gregoire, she's proven herself a true goober... but gubernatorial? That is, at this time, anyone's bet.

Too bad the future leaders of America will be too uneducated and uncultured to fix her mistakes.

It's Finally Happened, and We Know It's Happened

2008's list of overused words included "maverick," "change," and (though it's more than one word) "Joe Six Pack." Already, I can tell which terms have been beaten to death in 2009.

"Once in a lifetime." "Historic." "Momentous." "Hope." Et cetera, et cetera... you know where I'm going with this one, don't you? As an Obama supporter throughout much if not all of the campaign, I was delighted, thrilled, and floored to say the least when I watched the inauguration on Tuesday. Barack Obama: America's first black president! Oops... there's another overused phrase.

However, just because I'm pleased and in awe of this historic moment, that doesn't mean nothing else is happening in the world. There are still people in this country who keep talking about, "Oh, can you believe Obama made it?" instead of, "Oh, I wonder what he's going to do?"

President Obama has already made some tremendous decisions... and people are still talking about the hat under which Aretha Franklin belted out a patriotic tune this January 20th. Still tying it in with the fact that it was a day after MLK day. Who is focusing on what needs to be done right now?

Plenty of people will deny it, but Bush left a disastrous legacy, from which you could almost hear sinister laughter as his helicopter made a dramatic escape to his ancestral home, Texas. The "war" (read: ongoing lethal blunder) in the Middle East looks destined to become even more unpopular than the Vietnam War unless handled with delicate precision and expert statecraft. Our economy is... well, every adjective to describe that dead cow has received a worse beating than Apollo Creed did in Rocky IV. Which reminds me-- Russia seems to be reverting to their Cold War-era opinion of us, if they ever "verted" in the first place. All around the country, lines of division are being drawn between the political right and left. Enough already!

And how does America respond to this growing list of drastic crises?

By writing 5 million identical editorials congratulating Mr. Obama for the historic oath he took.

Yes, history in the making must be acknowledged and gawked at while it is passing. However, in this case, history has already passed us. In the history textbooks of the future, otherwise, the days after January 20th, 2009, will read as follows: "Nothing interesting really happened because people couldn't learn to look into the future."

Focus, America. Focus.