Boltgirl v. US Soccer, Part Deux

My e-mail to the US Soccer store, after finding plenty of cutesy pink spaghetti-strap tank tops but no basic red-white-blue non-gender-specific t-shirts:

Hello,

I have a bit of a beef with the fact that the WNT shirts offered by US Soccer are available only in a "women's" cut. The immediate concern is that the shirts don't work for every body type. I'm athletic, naturally broad-shouldered and small-chested, and I lift weights. So even a women's XL doesn't work for my shoulders and back, and the girly design with those little cap sleeves and tapered waist wouldn't appeal to me even if I could fit into it. Why is the Fed not offering normal unisex shirts? I look around at the players on my women's team, and I rarely see any of them wearing women-specific shirts of any kind (and I should point out that 2/3 of them are straight, so it ain't an orientation thing).

The bigger-picture concern is that US Soccer has adopted a gender-segregated marketing plan for the national teams, assuming that no men will support the WNT to the extent of buying a shirt (or aren't secure enough in their gender identities to be caught dead in a Wambach shirt), while it's "okay" for a woman supporter of the MNT to wear a MNT or Donovan shirt. By eliminating the option of that most American form of team support (the holy t-shirt), the Fed is effectively discouraging men and boys from getting deeply invested with the WNT and reinforcing the stereotype that only women should be interested in women's sports. Why do you think the WNT is "the best team you never heard of?" Maybe because they've been marketed to a very narrow demographic (let's admit it--the traditionally feminine segment of the female population) since the Founders retired?

Anyway. My (and most of my teammates') refusal to buy any WNT or WWC gear isn't due to a lack of enthusiasm for my country or my game. It's because I can't comfortably wear anything currently being offered anywhere online. Sell some unisex shirts and I'll buy them, and I'd wager that a lot of the dads of all those feminine little girls US Soccer has decided to focus on would buy them too. I love this team and would gladly buy a Wambach shirt for every day of the week if it came in men's M or L.

Thank you for your time.

I got a response last night:

Thank you for your recent email to the U.S. Soccer Store. We appreciate your feedback and your continued support of the Women's National Team.

We have noted your comments regarding the cut of the WNT t-shirts. We will also pass them on to NIKE. As our official apparel partner, we work closely with them on all the gear we sell. Further, we rely on their recommendations as far as styles, cuts, sizing, colors, etc. when making decisionsas to what will be popular with our fans.

Your feedback is valuable though and we will keep it in mind as we work with NIKE on future products.

Should you have any further questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me at 312-528-1264.

Best regards,
Mike Gressle

I'm tempted to write to Nike to ask if Abby Wambach (whom they sponsor) can even fit into one of their Wambach shirts; the woman is built, as commenter truth pointed out, like an armoire.

The obvious solution, which I'm betting will be suggested by Nike, is to just buy men's national team gear just like men are expected to do, because we're all on the same team, right? Except that we're not. When I do that, who is credited for the sale? The men's team. And how is TV time and general support allocated? Why, by fan interest. And how is that calculated? By the almighty dollar.

Lest I come off as a shirt-obsessed freakshow (whaaaaat?) who believes that her purchases and hers alone will make a ripple at more than the molecular level, it's the principle here. The roster of the women's team is more diverse than it has been at any point in the past, with a relatively substantial number of players who are (1) non-Anglo, (2) non-straight, and (3) not conventionally feminine (even the straight ones); it's not the Ponytail Posse writ large any more. While the Fed is not keeping the unconventional players under wraps by any means, the bulk of the coverage is limited to online videos that are very occasionally shown on Fox Soccer Channel, which doesn't reach a hell of a lot of American households. When it comes to ESPN-televised game time, we get the usual features on who's recently married or engaged, who had an interesting childhood, and who just had a baby--a marketing plan straight out of 1999.

In that sense, maybe Natasha Kai is a godsend. As much as I dislike her immaturely inconsistent and selfish play on the field (she'll be good when she grows up, assuming she ever grows up), she brings the freak like no WNT player before her, and it will be impossible for the Fed to ignore her and her tattoos and piercings forever. Even if they give the parents of 12-year-old Bible Belt players the vapors. And if the Fed is reluctantly dragged into the 21st century, maybe they'll start acknowledging the fans who are interested in more than just the next pretty smile to grace the TV.

Boltgirl v. US Soccer

Fucking US Soccer Federation. Did you know the Women's World Cup is coming up in two weeks? Did you know that individuals not named Mia Hamm actually play on the National Team? If not, you have the Fed to thank.

You probably do remember the '99 World Cup, the Brandi Chastain Sports Bra World Cup. That team was electrifying and managed to catch the interest of non-hardcore footballers, thanks to the magnetic personalities, stunning good looks, and kick-ass results delivered by the players on the roster. The WUSA quickly sprang fully formed from the forehead of Bob Contiguglia, the Fed banked on continuing to ride the cult of personality that rose around Hamm, Foudy, Chastain, Lilly, and Fawcett, the reins were handed to April Heinrich, and the program was promptly mismanaged into the ground.

Sure, they kept winning games, but they lost in the semis of the '03 Cup, the WUSA folded, Hamm retired, and the Fed desperately cast about for the next glowing straight-white-girl-next-door to be the face of the program instead of promoting the performance of the team as a whole. Never mind that some key holdovers from the '99 team were still in the stable, including the best goalkeeper in the world (Briana Scurry) and the most durable professional player of either gender (Kristine Lilly)--Scurry is complex, driven, and fiercely intelligent, but also black and gay, and while Lils is unbelievably fit, skilled, and gracious, she has the near-skeletal, angular visage of a marathoner and was pretty sexually ambiguous until her recent wedding to a fireman (did you hear the sigh of relief from 1801 S. Prairie in Chicago? I did). Abby Wambach quickly moved into a leadership role on the team and took on the mantle of top scorer. She's intelligent, witty, gregarious, big, and strong. She's also widely assumed to be gay.











Abby Wambach, leading US soccer scorer.

Shannon Boxx developed into the best defensive midfielder in the world, and is intelligent, gracious, attractive, and tough. And black, and possibly gay.

So who did the Fed do flips to promote as the New Face of American Soccer?

Heather Mitts.

Undeniably lovely, slender, blonde, well-spoken, and straight straight straight. She had finally worked her way up to being a mostly competent left back by the time she blew her ACL in WC qualifying, but the months leading up to that point had more than their share of dicey moments created by Mitts' poor decisions


Heather Mitts, the New Boobs Face of American Soccer.

with the ball and failure to mark. But no matter how sketchy her play on the field was, WNT promotions were all Mitts, all the time, leaving many of us with the gnawing suspicion that the Fed is desperate not to promote the athleticism of its athletes but the pretty faces of the players they're pretty sure most men would want to fuck.

The selection of Mitts as the poster girl speaks volumes about the Fed's assumptions regarding men's interest in this team. Hell, maybe they're right. It's not like soccer fans are legion in this country in the first place. It's the game of the soccer mom and her shrieking female offspring who made a career of screaming MIA MIA MIA at the '99 Cup and subsequent WUSA games, the people Nike assumes would still rather buy a cute pink Mia-in-a-heart t-shirt (no longer available, but the Mia legacy designs will probably never die) than a basic red, white, and blue WNT shirt. Male soccer fan who's psyched about watching the best team in the world fight for the world championship? Good luck finding a t-shirt you can wear. Actually, I'll save you the trouble. You will not find one because no one has made a WWC shirt in men's sizes. Go on. Look. Every single fucking shirt is a woman's cut. And if you don't have a specific female body type, good luck finding one that fits. Hint: if you have broad shoulders and lift weights, it ain't gonna happen.

The message is that even the governing body has given up on men being interested in these elite athletes as anything but pinup material because they are women. To that end, they are also ignoring the segment of the both the existing fanbase and the team itself that doesn't conform to a pretty narrow demographic. And in continuing to flog athletes that retired years ago, they're neglecting to foster new allegiances in the hearts of the kids whose support will make or break the future of the team. I don't think you have to be a lesbian to be pissed off about the emphasis on style over substance.

More Wombat Love

The US women played their final World Cup tuneup on Saturday night against Finland. The evil Finns took out Abby Wambach ten minutes in--and were pretty hacky throughout the match--but the Nats prevailed 4-0 thanks to actual interplay among the midfielders and forwards beyond simply flinging the ball into the middle in the hopes it will carrom into the goal off Wambach's amazing noggin. I loves me my Wombat, but it was good to see that this team is capable of more intricate and creative offensive play.

Wambach didn't make it off the field until the 22nd minute, but her pain and growing frustration were quite evident. My favorite Wombat moment came shortly after her injury. She wasn't able to get to the ball quickly enough and sent a bad touch out of bounds, and clenched her fists and screamed FUCK right in front of the ESPN camera and giant parabolic microphone. Been there, babe, and totally feel you. Got it on the DVR and have no idea how to upload it, but it will live in my heart forever.

Meanwhile, here is another of the top reasons to love this woman.



The World Cup starts September 10 in the wee hours of the morning, all games on ESPN2. I will be catching up on my sleep between now and then, and if a certain 5'11" striker with a nasty streak invades my dreams, well, I won't be saying no.

'Bout Time

One arrogant, lying fuckwit down, several to go. The sound bites and news blurbs have framed Gonzo's departure in terms of the US attorney firings. But let's not forget the torture memo, the warrantless wiretapping program, the lying to Congress, the midnight ICU visit to bully John Ashcroft into signing off on it. Good riddance to the little git.

The Boy in the Bubble is Alive and Well

Since President Bush apparently made it through high school, college, and increasing levels of public service without noticing that pesky First Amendment thing as it applies to speech and peaceable assembly, the White House has an official operations manual explaining how to shield His Nibs from the unpleasant discovery that 70-odd percent of the American public thinks he's a fucktard.

Among other things, any event must be open only to those with tickets tightly controlled by organizers. Those entering must be screened in case they are hiding secret signs. Any anti-Bush demonstrators who manage to get in anyway should be shouted down by "rally squads" stationed in strategic locations. And if that does not work, they should be thrown out.

But that does not mean the White House is against dissent -- just so long as the president does not see it. In fact, the manual outlines a specific system for those who disagree with the president to voice their views. It directs the White House advance staff to ask local police "to designate a protest area where demonstrators can be placed, preferably not in the view of the event site or motorcade route."

Small detail: all public land in the US is a designated protest area so long as those protests aren't incitements to immediate violence. Hurting Dear Leader's feelings isn't enough of an offense to revoke the First Amendment.

To counter any demonstrators who do get in, advance teams are told to create "rally squads" of volunteers with large hand-held signs, placards or banners with "favorable messages." Squads should be placed in strategic locations and "at least one squad should be 'roaming' throughout the perimeter of the event to look for potential problems," the manual says.

"These squads should be instructed always to look for demonstrators," it says. "The rally squad's task is to use their signs and banners as shields between the demonstrators and the main press platform. If the demonstrators are yelling, rally squads can begin and lead supportive chants to drown out the protestors (USA!, USA!, USA!). As a last resort, security should remove the demonstrators from the event site."

Rally squads! With a chant that serves the dual purpose of drowning out dissent and proving that the orchestrated cheerleaders are the real patriots in the room, since they're the only ones mouthing the holy syllables of the 1980 Olympic hockey team's victory over the Russians, which liberal protestors are obviously incapable of uttering, much less hearing, without bursting into flames.

Control the message, baby, and cover up the evidence of anyone being unhappy with the president. Fucking brilliant.

GodDAMMIT

Cortisone shot this morning, left shoulder, giant needle, FUCK.



Fuck.

Dr. M: Here comes the bee sting... and now it's gonna burn for about five seconds.
Boltgirl: ::gritting teeth::
Dr. M: You okay?
Boltgirl, facedown on table: Gah.
Dr. M: You should be sure to breathe.
Boltgirl: Breathing is highly overrated.
Dr. M: All right. You got through it. Now comes the second part.
Boltgirl: Huh?
Dr. M: Ha. Gotcha.
Boltgirl: Does my middle finger still work? Oh, look. Yes. Yes, it does.

Oh No

Well, at least he comes right out and says he's judging, just like Jesus told him to...

Birthday Chaos

Oh, the day started promisingly enough, Coffee Times coffee in hand, annual pass to the Catalinas stuck to the windshield, all ready for a drive up the mountain with stops at various vista points to play in the water that's still bravely holding out against the sun and evaporation.

Stream bubbling past a tree growing between granite boulders in Molino Canyon.

A few remnant puddles stranded high up on the tops of the boulders on either side of the stream were indicators of the awesome torrent that rushed through here last week. Today it was a lovely cool gurgle perfect for wading and splashing.

The next stop was a couple thousand feet higher, up in the ponderosa forest near Bear Canyon. The slope of the streambed here is gentle, creating a wide channel with interesting sandbars, meandering among the pines. Although it was reasonably early in the morning, I didn't see much in the way of wildlife; a large orange dragonfly buzzing the surface of the pool on the left side of the sandbar and a lone waterbug doing the backstroke were about it.

Cool, shimmery water pooling near Bear Canyon.

A lovely morning. Until I walked back to the BoltMobile, at which point I noticed a large puddle that definitely was not there when I pulled off the road. A glance at the radiator and finger-poke into the puddle confirmed that my truck had decided to celebrate my birthday by spewing coolant like an excited and, let's admit it, probably non-Cub outfielder with a bottle of champagne after Game 7.

This meant making the 45-minute drive back down the mountain and into town with the heat on full blast to keep the engine temperature needle just below the red. What's open on Saturday? Why, Pep Boys (shudder), of course. Jesus.

Boltgirl's day takes a turn for the worse.

Four hours and $416 later, I had a shiny new radiator and a big-ass hole in my credit card. And just after finally paying off the summer train tickets last week. Happy birthday to me! Luckily, I have good friends who are happy to drive across town to rescue me and take me shopping to make me feel better.

New Merrell Chameleon Webs make everything sunnier.

So all in all, not a bad day. Not the cheapest day I have ever had, but hey. Forty is better than dead.

Blah.

As I lay back in bed last night, my thoughts drifted toward the impending birthday and the nagging suspicion that I should be making some momentous leaps of consciousness or something in honor of it. How do I even take stock of where I am?

Goals achieved: couldn’t tell you. I have never been much of a goals-oriented person. Maybe it’s telling that in 30 years of playing soccer, I have never once scored a goal from the run of play (indoor doesn’t count). One of my friends compiled a list of things she intended to achieve by 35 (happy in job, own a house, have a kid, major stuff like that) and then spent her 35^th birthday utterly depressed that she hadn’t done any of it. That’s why I’ve never felt compelled to make one of those Things To Do Before I Die lists. I would either end up feeling like a failure or discover, to my horror, that I have indeed achieved all those things, and therefore am due to die immediately. Eh. I prefer the life list in my bird book, recording the things I’ve done rather than the things I have so far failed to do. My goals are more along the lines of get to work with clothes on right side out and don’t forget to pick up son from school. Well, and be a good person who treats other people well. So far so good, minus a couple of bobbles on the first one (in which I once made it to lunchtime before my friends decided to tell me my shirt was not only wrong-side out, but also backwards; ah, the hazards of dressing on a dark winter morning before coffee).

The downside to all this being content to drift downstream is sounding like a complete dullard when getting together with friends I haven’t seen for a while. Two weekends ago a college friend I see once a year asked what the most exciting thing is I’ve done in the past year. Uh. Well, shit. Same thing this morning when an old girlfriend took me out for coffee. What’s been going on in your life? Well, uh... I get up, I go to work, I pick up my kid, he does homework, we eat dinner, I work in the yard, we hang out, I go to bed, I get up... She looked at me cross-eyed and said you need some excitement in your life.

Where should that come from? I get excited about my work from time to time. This is in fact one of those times—I am working on a grand unified theory of ceramic-era arrowhead manufacture and distribution throughout Arizona based on control of raw material sources... and bingo, your eyes just started to glaze over, didn’t they? It’s potentially a career-defining project, but it sounds about as exciting as your uncle Ernie talking about his barbed wire collection. I get excited when my son asks me to go to the park with him to toss a baseball. I get excited when I find a book I’ve been wanting at Bookman’s and have enough trade credit to walk away with it. I get... well, gratified when the dog makes it outside before puking.

So the excitement in my life revolves around collections of small things and individual moments. I feel like I should be able to come up with something better, something edgy or dangerous, something more congruent with the crazy fantasy version of my life that’s always banging around in my head. But I can’t. I’m 40 and I’m still breathing. That will have to be exciting enough for now.

Required Viewing

Jon Stewart being a better pundit than most of the "real" ones out there:

And since McCain's flameout is no reason to waste a perfectly good epithet, well, not that it needs saying, but... Dick Cheney is a douchebag.

In a Stunner, Padilla is Convicted

Jurors took a day and a half to convict Jose Padilla of supporting Islamic terrorism. A day and a half. In a case he was added to only when the Supreme Court looked likely to rule against the adminstration after the government had kept him incarcerated without charges for three and a half years, in solitary confinement where the lights were never turned off. Where he had been prevented for seeing a lawyer for the first two years.

Padilla was originally arrested on dramatic allegations that he planned to set off radioactive "dirty bombs" in the United States. But the current charges are not related to those accusations, and prosecutors did not present the "dirty bomb" plot to the jury.

Neither were jurors told that Padilla was held in a Navy brig for 3½ years without charges before his indictment in the Miami case.

Before trial, his lawyers tried to argue that he was no longer mentally competent to stand trial after years of solitary confinement and abuse -- allegations the government strongly denied.

I have no idea what Padilla actually did or didn't do. And after three and a half years of confinement that was not simply solitary but designed to cut him off from all interaction with other people, nobody else does either. The man--a US citizen, mind you--has been completely broken through the kind of treatment we usually associate with paranoid, totalitarian regimes. He was going to be held until they found some charge that would stick.

I don't care if he was personally blowing Osama--this isn't how this country is supposed to operate. Sentencing is set for December 5. Can't wait to see what that brings.

College Day

I delivered the girlfriend, her ex, and their daughter to the airport this morning before the sun came up so they could make their way out to their Ivy League destination. The first day of the rest of pretty much everyone's lives is underway. It's strange, this business of booting fledglings out of the nest, so maybe it's good I have this trial run before my own offspring takes off in a few years.

The dogs will be miserable. The girlfriend will be miserable. I wonder how long it will last.

My off to college experience was very different from this one. My mom moved to Dallas a month after my high school graduation; I stayed on in South Bend, living a couple of weeks with my German teacher, a month more with my English teacher (see the memorial two posts down), a last couple days with a friend. We celebrated my 18th birthday with cake and Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers (hey, it was 1985) at her kitchen table, and the next morning she and another friend drove me to the bus station. I took the daylong trip to southern Illinois to spend a few days with my dad, and then he drove me the two hours to St. Louis to catch a plane to Dallas. I flew back up to Chicago with Mom and my stepdad a couple weeks later, they installed me in my room at Northwestern, and then they were gone. It wasn't until then that I was officially on my own, but the process had started two months before when I stood in the driveway of our empty house and watched Mom drive away to Texas with my dog in the back seat. I knew at that point that home, home in the sense of knowing that the same old bed in the same old room in the same house in the town where I grew up would be waiting for me to come back, was gone.

This kid is going straight from secure comfort to an alien environment with no buffer, no trip through Purgatory to shed the old baggage and emerge with a gleaming new skin, no intervening weirdness to make the solid stone buildings and regimented daily schedule a respite to be welcomed rather than an unknown to be feared. She'll be fine eventually, I know, however long eventually takes. The same sun that finally peeked over the Rincon mountains this morning had already been shining for three hours in the east. And so we go.

Geekery

*howl*

Memorial

It's been a year since he left us, almost to the moment. Tonight I'll trawl Bookman's and pick up a few more volumes of the classics he taught for my library, put the Beatles on, and light a candle to his memory. Not that he needs any help from me, should there actually be an afterlife that requires letters of recommendation for admittance.

Tom Gerencher, 1946-2006.

Hug your English teacher today.

Winding Down to the Weekend

I should have more to say about the grand HRC-LOGO presidential candidates' forum that was aired last night, I'm sure I should. The wee problems are that (1) I didn't watch it yet, although I read the rehash this morning, and (2) none of it was overly surprising except for Bill Richardson's inexplicable biff of what should have been the easiest question of the night.

Activists were even more frustrated with New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who when asked whether people are born gay or choose to be, said, "It's a choice" and later explained, "I'm not a scientist."

Weirdly, Richardson probably has the best LGBT-friendly legislative record of any of the candidates who were there. Yawn. Next.

Obama, Clinton, and Edwards stuck resolutely to their positions of supporting separate-but-equal civil unions rather than full marriage equality, although Hillary continued to spout the states' rights bullshit mantra that means CUs can never be equal under federal law. Obama admonished us to be patient; after all, CUs were unheard of a generation ago and are supposed to be our best hope for g r a d u a l l y inching toward the full equality prize.

I'm torn there. It's just as easy to argue for CUs as a necessary stepping stone as it is to argue that they'll become a roadblock. I can hear the detractors on the uber-religious right already. Give 'em an inch and they'll still shriek for a mile. No? How about they got their state recognition, so pushing the feds proves it's just about the money and not love after all, the selfish bastards. Next!

Kucinich said all the right things. Unfortunately, he has approximately a snowball's chance in Phoenix of coming in any higher than... 5th? in the primary.

So the weekend's here, almost. I am off to some college friends' annual end-of-summer soiree in the Republican stronghold of Gilbert, AZ tomorrow, where I hope to drink enough cheap beer that I won't notice the crap falling out of their conservative neighbors' mouths. Samples from last year:

Neighbor 1: Yes, the new airline security rules are annoying, but it's better than the alternative.
Neighbors 2-6: (nodding sagely) Mmm hmmmm.

Other neighbor: I don't wanna go to Disneyland and have to explain to the kids why those two ladies are kissing or why the guys in hot pants are grabbing each others' asses.
Other neighbor 2: (shaking head sagely) Tsk.

My friends are very slightly on the conservative side of the middle, but still reliably vote Democratic. What are they doing in Gilbert? We don't talk about that much. Anyway. The gym beckons and the cold beer is hopping up and down behind the gym, waving its hands madly to get my attention. Allez cuisine!

Harry Oliver, RIP

Harry Oliver beat Michigan on a last-second, 51-yard field goal on September 20, 1980. I was at at that game, sitting three rows from the top at Notre Dame Stadium right on the goal line. Oliver lined up for the kick, the 15-mph headwind fell still, and he hit the ball. The stadium fell silent as the ball toppled end over end, end over end, surely falling short... and clearing the crossbar by maybe three inches. And the stadium exploded.

"It's probably what's going to go on my tombstone instead of when I was born or when I died," he said during the 2004 interview. "It's going to be, 'September 20, 1980. Notre Dame 29, Michigan 27.'"

Harry Oliver died yesterday of cancer at the age of 47. Godspeed.

Wow, Who Could Have Seen This Coming?

Fuck. Me.

The day after President George W. Bush marshaled political forces in Congress to grant him greater authority to engage in counterterrorism-related spying, the president stated that he would seek greater changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act when the legislative branch returns to work in September.

What changes would those be? Why immunity for telecom companies that were complicit in the illegal warrantless wiretaps that caused the first FISA firestorm, of course. Oh, wait. I mean allegedly complicit, of course, in the event that their illegal activities are somehow held up as being, yes, illegal.

"When Congress returns in September the Intelligence committees and leaders in both parties will need to complete work on the comprehensive reforms requested by Director McConnell, including the important issue of providing meaningful liability protection to those who are alleged to have assisted our Nation following the attacks of September 11, 2001," he said.

One constitutional scholar derided Bush's reasoning, particularly the tortuous language in his statement.

"Apparently 'allegedly helped us stay safe' is Bush Administration code for telecom companies and government officials who participated in a conspiracy to perform illegal surveillance," wrote Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin in a Monday morning blog post. "Because what they did is illegal, we do not admit that they actually did it, we only say that they are alleged to have done it."

The 16 Senate and 41 House Dems who voted to take the minimal oversight that existed on this away from the courts and hand it squarely to Alberto "How Can You Tell I'm Lying? Are My Lips Moving?" Gonzales can kiss my ass. At this point we can't keep heaping blame on Bush for continuing to take every treat the Dems eagerly throw him and then demand more like an untrained dog or unruly two-year-old. Your job is to rein this out-of-control bastard in. You have failed.

Thank You, Private Property Rights Obsessers.

At the state level, the 2006 elections in Arizona weren't only about the anti-marriage equality amendment (Proposition 107, narrowly defeated). Proposition 207 was a ghastly bit of legislation that was cheerfully dumbed down to "no gummint meddlin' in whut ah kin do with muh own private property" in order to appeal to the braindead masses. It was framed as a safeguard against eminent domain; maybe the recent memory of Kelo scared people into supporting it without a shred of critical thought about the impact on communities when local governments are stripped of their authority to create zoning ordinances.

Who ultimately benefits from a law saying that if government restrictions on property use devalue your property, they gotta compensate you for it? Pretty much not the average homeowner. Real estate developers, however, make out like bandits. A recently arising scourge of neighborhoods in Tucson near the University of Arizona is something called the minidorm. A developer buys a house in a single-family residential area, bulldozes it, and slaps up the largest multi-bedroom building he can (albeit with a single entryway to avoid designation as an apartment), and rents it to as many undergrads as can be crammed in. These are problematic for several reasons, ranging from aesthetics to parking to noise to trash. If you have the misfortune to live next to a property that's been snapped up and converted like this, you can kiss your immediate peace and your long-term equity goodbye.

Even historic districts are no longer immune, thanks to Prop 207. Local governments are terrified of crippling lawsuits that may be brought by developers who will argue that neighborhood zoning restrictions illegally prevent them from maximizing the financial potential of their properties. The City of Tucson's response is to propose architectural guidelines that will minimize the eyesore effect, and to offer incentives to builders to locate the minidorms along major arterials rather than the quieter interior neighborhood streets. These are only cosmetic touches, though, that give very little teeth to neighborhoods interested in retaining their single-family residential character.

Two minidorms have already popped up down the street in the historic district where I live, including one that was built after the historic bungalow occupying the property was razed. My next door neighbor occupies a prime oversized corner lot. And he's 85. I try not to think too hard about what will happen to his property when he dies, because if a minidorm goes in I will not be able to tolerate living there, and will be unable to sell my house for what it's worth. Or what it was worth before 207 took effect.

Maybe that's the solution--filing a countersuit claiming damages from the city government for the property devaluation suffered due to their refusal to enact zoning laws. Way to go, private property screechers. You've preserved property values for real estate developers and eliminated protections for average property owners. Here's a little hint for y'all: government regulation of property use isn't always a bad thing.

Breaking News: Senate Dems Give Bush Head, Again

Thank you, Senate Democrats, for reinforcing the worst stereotypes society has to offer. Thanks for demonstrating that "no" really is just a coy "yes." Thanks for being spineless enablers of a hyper-macho bully.

Yesterday the Senate handed Bush expanded warrantless wiretapping powers, knuckling under and pantingly serving up the authority he requested to listen in on telephone calls and read e-mails without a warrant as long as one of the involved parties is reasonably believed to be outside the US. Even if one of the people is a US citizen. Even if the call or e-mail isn't related to terrorism, but simply has unspecified "intelligence" value.

The elections were truly pointless. The Democrats could have had an ironclad veto-proof majority and they would still be cowed by the slightest hint that a Republican would hang the "soft on terror" label on them come the next election cycle. 65% of the public wants us out of Iraq. Close to 80% think W is a failure as a president. What the fuck will it take for the Democrats to develop spines--hell, at this point I'd be happy with some lumbar vertebrae--and take the bastard on? How hard is it to use what should be the most basic weapon in the arsenal of any reasonable population? You know? The truth?

Every time a Republican or Republican apologist columnist utters "Iraq" and "9/11" in the same sentence, a Democratic senator needs to stand up and speak the truth. Yes, the American public can be staggeringly stupid. But this shit can be boiled down into simple language and repeated until it takes root. Cook up a few simple talking points and make some fucking PowerPoint slides. Iraq<>9/11. Next! Cutting VA funding<>Supporting the Troops. Next! Extending tours to 15 months and allowing as little as 3 months' downtime<>Supporting the Troops. Next! Starting to improve the security situation in Anbar is good but<>Guaranteeing a stable Iraqi government. See? It's not fucking rocket science.

But as much as they bluster and rail against the administration, they're terrified that if they don't hand Dear Leader every fucking unconstitutional power he demands, they'll... they'll what? They'll fall down on their sworn duty to the Constitution and the American people? They'll lead America down the road to ruin? No. It's not even remotely that lofty. They're afraid they'll get voted out of office. Even as the vast majority of the voters are already screaming for their heads for being such abject pussies and continuing to give a reviled president more and more power.

Truth, people. Just use the fucking truth.

Too. Much. Cheese.

The best Mexican food in Tucson north of 22nd Street can be found at Guadalajara Grill (Prince/Campbell). The salsa-to-order at dinner is wonderful, the mole is a tad sweet but works very well with chicken, the beer comes packed in little ice-filled buckets, the chips are hot and the staff friendly. The mariachis are deafening but excellent. So go there often.

Guadalara's owners recently opened Pizzazz Bistro, an Italian place across the street from Guadalajara in an abandoned Burger King building. The decor is cute and festive, the staff is friendly, and oh sweet Jesus you'll end up with a shiny coat if you eat there. Pizzazz is a wee tad overenthusiastic when it comes to applied oils, whether it's the Greek salad drowning in dressing or the horrifically cheesy pizza served with olive oil poured over the top for good measure.

I had something involving Tuscany, a white pizza with asparagus, artichokes, tomatoes, and red onion. It's a great concept, but the thin crust and delicate vegetables were completely overwhelmed by the layer of mozzarella. The pizza--and my stomach--would have greatly benefitted from a sprinkling of cheese, a slight drizzling of oil, and probably some fresh basil and a grind or two of pepper. The edges of the crust not socked in by fats were quite nice, with a light crispy exterior and pleasantly chewy inside. There was just so much goddamn cheese, which is now sitting in a ball in my gut (hey, I was hungry).

My tablemates shared the mentioned salad (large, fresh, swimming), a Caprese salad that looked good enough, although the tomatoes could have had more character, and an order of large mushroom caps stuffed with something and coated in the sacred mozzarella and drizzled in the holy oil. We're all back at work feeling a little sebaceous.

Final verdict: Stay across the street at Guadalajara so you don't have to feel like shooting yourself after lunch.

College

August is shaping up to be official Boltgirl Is Fucking Old Month. My girlfriend's daughter is gearing up to go away to college in less than two weeks, and I'm increasingly dumbfounded by how different it all is now. I can clearly picture every detail of my dorm in my mind, from the layout of the rooms to the cereal dispensers in the dining room (Lucky Charms at every meal!) to the smell of untold years' worth of stale beer soaked into the hallway carpet. When I close my eyes I can go right back to ivy-covered Willard Hall. So how can it have been so long ago?

And so freaking different. I hauled along the baby blue Smith-Corona Selectric typewriter I'd pounded out my high school papers on and hoped the phone my roommate mentioned in her summer letter to me would work. We met for the first time in the dorm room and sat nervously on the edges of the beds while our parents bustled around with the provisions they'd picked up for us at the decrepit Dominick's a few blocks away. The roommate turned out to be a cheerleader (!) and creationist (!!!) from Minnesota; not having yet developed a combative personality, I spent a lot of time freshman year keeping my mouth shut.

Now the step-daughter is leaving bristling with electronics. She's gotten to know her dormmates over the summer, courtesy of FaceBook, and has lists of everything she will need, courtesy of the university's helpful e-mails (encouragingly, "contraceptives" is on the list). I assume they'll all feel the same sense of separation we did, despite being able to instantly contact parents and old friends on cells and IM rather than having to trudge down three flights of stairs to the single pay phone to make a collect call, grouse, grumble, curmudge. They'll still glom onto each other and make friends right away, although if that will be more difficult without free-flowing beer (thank you, universe, for putting me in college in 1985) I do not know.

Substance-free dorms! They have substance-free dorms now! Meaning recreational substances, both legal and illegal. What the fuck? Who wants to live there besides... well, besides people vastly different from me? Kids these days. Imagine the fun we could have had if Northwestern's Sanctimonious Stone Cold Sober Hall Healthy Living Unit been open back then. Points of Wellness? You have got to be fucking kidding me. Jesus. Do people who live there own up to it in public without getting punched? Evans Scholars, you would have been off the hook; even though we obviously would not be able to steal beer from the keg-lacking Clean Livin' Dorm, our post-Halloween pumpkins may have found it a better target than your front porch.

Urban Nature Blogging

A couple of monsoon babies made their appearance last week. I noticed this little guy in the back yard, hanging out on the bench under the mesquite tree. It was about 3/4 of an inch long and kept its pinchers at the ready, although it never took any swipes at my fingertip.
















Blurry mantis nymph.

The pictures of the baby desert cottontail turned out better. This is one of the gaggle of rabbits that lives under the fence behind the office, sunning themselves in the parking lot, dashing off under the shed when people get too close. This baby could fit inside a large grapefruit if he tucked his ears in a bit.

Tiny desert cottontail.

The eastern cottontails I grew up with look strange now when I go back to Chicago, their stubby little ears seemingly out of proportion to their bodies. The desert bunnies' ears evolved long in response to the hot climate, their increased surface area of thin skin over a network of capillaries providing an efficient heat-dispersal system. The eastern cottontails' ears stayed small for the opposite reason, of course, that being heat retention in wintertime.

We used to see a family of Harris hawks prowling the neighborhood near the office, hanging out in the upper branches of dying trees and the tops of power poles. They moved on a little more than a year ago, and since then the rabbit and ground squirrel populations have exploded. Coyotes will figure it out soon enough, I suppose, and maybe the Harris hawks will come back to displace the Cooper's hawks that prey on the doves. Until then, we will burble over the baby bunnies.

Fuzz

I queried my co-worker. So, out of every ten days we work, how many are accurately described by "having a hard time focusing?" She laughed. Just about all of them, I think.

Shite.

Perhaps it's the late-summer doldrums making an unsettling appearance at the end of July, now that the end of summer is getting yanked up earlier and earlier in August by the start of the school year. August 10? What the hell? Back in the day, August 10 meant we still had two or three solid weeks of vacation left. Now it means three weeks of regimentation keyed to the bell schedule before Labor Day even hits.

Or maybe it's the impending birthday, another of the milestone decade birthdays looming in a few weeks. My son turned fifteen yesterday and I'm 40 on August 18, finally officially and unavoidably smack-dab in middle age. Yesterday's shower found me reflecting on the almost 40 years and trying to identify the unassailable life lessons and wisdom I have accrued thus far. Don't try to make social commitments too far in advance was all I could come up with. Not much to crow about there.

Could be my girlfriend's daughter leaving for college in two weeks, and the sea change in our lives that departure will usher in. Maybe I'm getting a premonition of the ache that will come when my own kid takes off. Maybe I'm not sure what happens next.

Perchance I'm noticing my old dog doddering a bit more with each passing month, the canine senior moments coming more frequently, the clouds in her eyes getting thicker.

So I sit at work and stare at piles of artifacts, hoping some great truth will suddenly leap into my brain and give me something to write about. The boss hopes for a revolution every now and then. I have one brewing somewhere in all these data and maps and pictures and boxplots, but the required words balk at being dragged out of my brain and onto the page. Deadlines loom, expectations loom larger, and I wonder when I got too old to be able to knock back copious amounts of bourbon like I used to.

Cartoon Cartoon

Whole lotta catching up to do after the weekend, but first things first. I am majorly crushing on Paige Braddock, who does the Jane's World comic and a few other arty things besides. Just look at those eyes. Swoon. Awright, those eyes and those hands and that body of work. What can I say? I must dig female cartoonists.

Speaking of things drawn, I give the Simpsons Movie ten Boltgirl Seals of Approval out of ten. I do not normally laugh out loud at movies, or at least haven't since the first training scene in Dodgeball (if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball), but quite gleefully did at this one. Could it have been better? No, I do not think it could. It was that good.

In Which Three of Our Favorite Things Happily Converge

The Fighting Irish, every Irish girl's favorite cereal, and Teh Gay! Erin go bragh!

Oh, my, have the cease & desists from Notre Dame and General Mills been hand-delivered to Topeka yet? Fred Phelps (of the gay-hating Westboro Baptist Church) found out that Ireland is taking a breathtaking stride into the 21st century by preparing to accord full marriage rights to same-sex couples in civil unions (h/t Pam's House Blend), and his head exploded right on schedule, spewing a companion site to the execreble one I won't link to here. But I'll link to God Hates Ireland only for the adorable Notre Dame-Lucky Charms leprechaun mashup he chose as a logo. Go see it before he's forced to take it down; how in the world did Fred forget to show Lucky dropping a bar of Irish Spring?

Speaking of things Irish and gay, the latest recommended easy two-evening read is Emma Donoghue's Kissing the Witch, a set of interconnected, reworked fairy tales evocative of Jeanette Winterson, at least when Jeanette tolerably balances "fanciful" and "comprehensible narrative." Familiar stories are twisted just enough to let out the lesbian protaganists you may have suspected lurked there; waiting for charming princes to come to the rescue is not high on the priority list.

Unrelated safety tip: your fingers do not deceive you; those rocks that have been sitting out in the sun all day are hot, in fact, hot enough to leave second-degree burns with blisters on your fingertips. That's all I'm going to say.

Monsoon Madness

The frequent rains and lingering humidity of the past couple days finally ushered in the expected mold-induced headache, and since my stash of old-school Sudafed with the demon meth-spawning pseudoephedrine is gone, I went with the new, non-methable Sudafed with pseudoephedrine HCl. Whoulda thunk a little hydrochloric acid would mess with a body so badly? Or, specifically, with a body's brain? By the time I got to work I was starting to feel odd, and within an hour was certifiably baked. Since I really needed my brain that day to sort out discrepancies between artifacts and the database, I sat back and stared at my wall and thought deep thoughts about arrowhead manufacture along the Mogollon Rim, A.D. 600-1150, until my eyes uncrossed enough at lunchtime to let me drive home.

Good thing. A couple hours later a dandy monsoon ripped into Tucson, turning the street I take home from work into a car-swallowing river. The Daily Star put a slideshow up here.


Benjie Sanders / arizona daily star

Arizona has a "stupid motorist law," meaning that if you drive around barricades or warning signs into a flooded wash or dip in the road and have to be rescued, you foot the bill for the fire department. Maybe people are lulled into a false sense of security when they don't see the signs on streets that don't look like they should be flood hazards, like Country Club in the photo above. The problem is that Country Club was bult with an inverted crown, meaning the turn lane in the center becomes a running wash when the rainfall is more than moderate, and the water flowing east to west down the cross streets dumps into that inverted crown to create thirty foot wide, two foot deep traps with standing waves at every block. Go out an hour after the storm once the water's receded, and there are the piles of debris and stranded cars like ticks on a giant ruler measuring off the tenths of a mile.

Kayak Tucson Boulevard!

In Which We Read Harry Potter in a Single Sitting (updated)

Updated with more space before the spoilers. And stuff.

The plan had been to buy the book at 8:00 yesterday morning and read. I got sidetracked a bit by the need to help a friend move, so I didn't hit the readathon until roughly 1:30, at which point I started playing catchup with my housemates.

Wire-to-wire time: 10 hours.
Actual reading time, subtracting a trip across town to drop the boy at a friend's, and pauses every four chapters until everyone was at the same spot: roughly 8 hours.
Total pages: 782.
Sustenance: handful of chips, teriyaki noodles with tofu, Breyer's Light ice cream, an Oreo.

Spoiler alert!



Crucial details revealed below!



*cough cough* you've been warned.



Deathly Hallows was okay. I got confused about the ending, as usual for me and every book in the Potter series. The unusual bit was coming into the book knowing that somebody important was going to get whacked. The former part-time housemate, who is an expert on all things Potter, warned at the outset that J.K. Rowling had said two major characters would die. So, imagine my surprise when my Dead Major Character counter ticked over to the three with a couple hundred pages left. And then four, then fivesix in quick succession. The woman killed off people left and right. Oh yeah, said the former housemate, she said at least two people would die. Fabulous.

Lupin? She killed Lupin and Tonks? What the hell? They were my favorites (!), and their deaths did exactly squat to advance the story and everything to totally piss me off. And Colin Creevey? That was just plain mean. Snape's murder was too abrupt to be satisfying, and his inevitable redemption left me kinda deflated, delivered as it was via the recovered memory in the Pensieve. I don't know. Maybe Rowling got tired and figured the best way to do it would be through the book equivalent of a flashback show. Same with the whole Harry and Dumbledore in... Purgatory? King's Cross Station? The light at the end of the long tunnel? Too much hurry-and-cram-it-in revelation. The two chapters coming on each other's heels felt like a cheap out after so much grand storytelling.

Even so, I realized I respect Rowling the most for creating nuanced characters that, rather than being one-dimensional stock good and evil children's book figures, were all deeply flawed and thus accessibly human. At the end of the Deathly Hallows, I am coming to believe Snape is the ultimate hero of the series. His choices made all the difference, and were far more difficult than the actions Harry believed were not choices so much as destiny compelled by his place in history.

Rowling's ability to spin such a complex tale and keep it consistently compelling and well-written through seven books and however many thousand people borders on the unreal. Final verdict on book 7? I don't have a regular rating scale, but let's call it... five Oreos. A nice handful. The complete series? It gets the whole package of Double Stuf.

Bye, Harry (and Remus, sniff sniff). It's been amazing.

Breaking News

Bush to cede power to VP during colonoscopy

‘The president has had no symptoms,’ Snow says before Saturday procedure

Routine colonoscopy will search for precancerous polyps, Snow said. No word on whether Bush's brain is also on the look-for list while doctors have the camera jammed up his ass. Snow was similarly mum on whether Cheney's two-hour stint in the Oval Office will result in the invasion of Iran. Stay tuned.

Friday Linkfest

The monsoon finally showed up in midtown Tucson last night after a few days of circling around the mountains to the north and Phoenix del Sur, er, I mean Vail and the hodgepodge of cookie-cutter developments to the south. Wind! Lightning! Thunder! And buckets of glorious rain. Unfortunately, the beagle mix didn't see it as glorious quite so much as deadly threat to be barked at all fucking night long, so I'm a bit fuzzy this morning and hoping the third cup of coffee jolts the synapses into some coherent firing pattern.

Until then, some required reading to ponder.

Eugene Robinson on Bush's bizarre happyland mindest:

It's almost as if Bush were trying to apply the principles of cognitive therapy, the system psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck developed in the 1960s. Beck found that getting patients to banish negative thoughts and develop patterns of positive thinking was helpful in pulling them out of depression. However, Beck was trying to get the patients to see themselves and the world realistically, whereas Bush has left realism far behind.

For soccer fans who like pictures of underfed supermodels and their hawt footballer husbands, the Becks-Posh photo spread in W magazine. Beckham: saviour of the MLS, or league-bankrupting boondoggle? I'm not holding my breath. But his tattoos are nice.

Deb Price on recent Supreme Court trends that maybe should be a tad disturbing for us gay folk, now that O'Connor is drawing a pension:

The Roberts court -- whose votes in nongay cases strongly signaled that Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito can be expected to join Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in opposing almost any imaginable gay-rights plea -- is moving frighteningly close to having the five votes it would need to weaken the groundbreaking rulings of 1996 and 2003 acknowledging that gay Americans are protected by the Constitution.

And, finally, I can't decide if I kinda like Rick & Steve, The World's Happiest Gay Couple or kinda hate it. It has moments that go both ways. Maybe I hate it because some of the digs at both dykes and gay guys jump right across that line from spot-on funny to mean-spirited and uncomfortable.

Maybe I like it because it reminds me of the Playmobil sets I always drooled over (with the coolest accessories ever, especially the pirates). South Park pulls the edgy stuff off better, but it's early yet, so maybe Rick & Steve will step it up. Lord knows I don't make a habit of telling people what to think about anything, so look for yourself.

Niiiiiiiiiiiiice...

A stunning letter to the editor in this morning's Daily Star:

Re: the July 10 article "Drivers, take water for border crossers, new coalition urges."

I am still floored by the article asking citizens to carry extra water in our vehicles to help illegal border crossers.

Excuse me, but when did refusing to aid and abet illegal activities become "an indictment on us as a community," to quote Dr. Norma Price?

Why is this issue even news? I've lived here for 19 years, and every summer it's the same story. If illegals continue to try and cross our desert in triple-digit heat, they're going to die. This is a no-brainer. Weren't two people arrested a few years ago for doing just what this new coalition is asking people to do?

I for one will not help these folks. If this sounds cold, so be it. I am a law-abiding citizen of Tucson and plan to keep it that way.

Deborah Hodges

Tucson

Do I even need to say it? Yes-no, yes-no... ::mulls for two seconds:: Well, Law-abiding Deborah, should your car break down on Route 86 west of town this summer, make sure you're carrying your birth certificate and voter registration card with you, because if I don't have proof positive that you're an American citizen, you're not getting any water from me. Actually, I will also need notarized affidavits stating the same from two other American citizens, which means I'll need proof of their citizenship, and their witnesses' citizenship, and...

Because obeying the law always outweighs saving the lives of other human beings. Always.

Book Anticipation

Yes, I am preparing for the arrival of Harry and those Deathly Hallows. Although the movies are generally a fine accompaniment to popcorn on a Saturday night, I have always gotten much more enjoyment out of the books than the films. There's nothing like getting engrossed in the print version and losing hours in hundreds of pages, being unable to put the damn book down despite the 800-odd pages weighting my forearms into cramps.

The plan was for the girlfriend to run out at the crack of 8:00 Saturday morning to buy an armful of copies from Target, since they'll be on super-sale there and should be amply stocked. Then the houseful of females--me, the girlfriend, her kid, our former semi-housemate--were going to sequester ourselves and read all day, fortified by food from El Molinito. However, another friend needs help moving, so I will miss the first part of the readingfest. It's okay. I read pretty fast and can probably catch up by the end of the day Sunday, so hopefully we will all find out simultaneously whether Harry lives or dies.

Boltgirl predicts: Harry won't die. That would kill the eternal prospects of the franchise, and JK Rowling ain't stupid. I will be very interested to see how she wrangles it if she's decided to redeem Snape at the end. If Hermione or Ron die I will be seriously pissed.

The other book release I'm looking forward to even more than Harry is First Among Sequels, the next Thursday Next novel from Jasper Fforde. If you liked high school English even just a little bit, or have rediscovered British and American classics now that you're a grownup, the series is required reading. I want to be Jasper Fforde. Actually, I want to be Thursday Next. Or date Thursday Next. The writing is crisp and so incredibly, impossibly clever. Anyway, the next Next comes out on July 24, and I'm grooving into it without even a smidgen of the stress surrounding Harry. No worries about some git shouting out the ending on the way into Borders, no hopping around biting my fingers waiting for the rest of the household to get to the part I just read that desperately needs discussing. Just me and Thursday and, probably, a bottle of wine to accompany me on frequent runs into my library to look up literary references that escape me.

Bring it on. My eyeballs are warmed up and ready to go.

Whole Foods Comes Out In Chicago

Regular sound-and-fury boycotts from the American Family Association aside, it isn't all that risky for major corporations to associate themselves with Teh Gay by sponsoring pride festivals or putting ads in The Advocate. Most Americans don't actively despise us enough to swear off their Bud Light just because of the full-page glossies depicting two hot guys holding hands, and even if they do it's easy for them to frame gay-friendly ad campaigns as companies simply tapping into a market that seems to have more spare cash on hand than the average non-Halliburton shareholder demographic.

But installing your retail store as the anchor of a shiny new GLBT community center is a stronger statement more akin to sticking your neck out, and that's what Whole Foods has done in Chicago.

Having Whole Foods as a tenant provides the East Lakeview neighborhood with an upscale grocery store and the community center with income to help its endowment, but it also provides potential clients a discreet gateway into the center, said Modesto Tico Valle, executive director of the non-profit center.

The Whole Foods store has its own set of doors on Halsted Street. But it also has a side entrance that spills into the center's expansive lobby, where there will be tables and seating for 50 around a fireplace and easy access to the center's elevators.

"There's a lot of people that are still struggling with coming-out issues," he said. "We're definitely setting the benchmark when you're talking about a comprehensive center."

Of course marketing research had everything to do with this, and of course the typical Whole Foods customer is more likely to support gay rights than, say, the typical Kroger's customer, and maybe I shouldn't be so pleased that a major store has decided damn the torpedoes and go after gay people's wallets too.

Although Whole Foods is thought to be the first retailer of its size to anchor a gay community center in the U.S., the retailer views its location as more of a gold mine than a gamble, given the population density of its neighborhood just east of Wrigley Field and its demographics.

But I am.

Less Bush, More Helen Thomas, Please

Helen Thomas. 'nuff said. The first 45 seconds of the video are all you need to see.

Q Mr. President, you started this war, a war of your choosing, and you can end it alone, today, at this point — bring in peacekeepers, U.N. peacekeepers. Two million Iraqis have fled their country as refugees. Two million more are displaced. Thousands and thousands are dead. Don’t you understand, you brought the al Qaeda into Iraq.

THE PRESIDENT: Actually, I was hoping to solve the Iraqi issue diplomatically. That’s why I went to the United Nations and worked with the United Nations Security Council, which unanimously passed a resolution that said disclose, disarm or face serious consequences. That was the message, the clear message to Saddam Hussein. He chose the course.

Q Didn’t we go into Iraq –

THE PRESIDENT: It was his decision to make. Obviously, it was a difficult decision for me to make, to send our brave troops, along with coalition troops, into Iraq...

Another presser, more of the same. September 11th, Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein. New way forward. This young democracy. Freedom. Govern, defend, sustain itself. Hard work. There rather than here. Mix 'n' match.

Meanwhile, as W pays lip service to our brave troops, we learn that Marines are being sacrificed in the interest of no-bid contracts.

The contracts continued even though Force Protection "did not perform as a responsible contractor and repeatedly failed to meet contractual delivery schedules for getting vehicles to the theater," the report said. Under one contract issued in 2005, Force Protection failed to deliver 98 percent of 122 mine-resistant vehicles on time despite getting $6.7 million from the Marines to upgrade its production facilities.

The report, signed by Richard B. Jolliffe, assistant inspector general for acquisition and contract management, also found that a subsidiary of Armor Holdings of Jacksonville, Fla., was late delivering some crew-protection kits, which are added to vehicles' windows and doors, and provided others with missing and unusable components. The delays, including reinstalling the kits, "all resulted in increased risk to the lives of soldiers," according to the report.

Remember, voting to cut off funding in order to bring the troops home undermines them, but continuing to pay companies who lag far behind schedule or deliver substandard quality somehow supports them.

And all for what? Propping up a barely wheezing government that will collapse the second we leave? Keeping the bad guys at bay until the Iraqi security forces decide they want to show up for work?

How the GOP Supports the Troops

By filibustering the Webb Amendment, which was designed to ensure that combat units get at least as much downtime between deployments as they get in the theater of operations. Yes, fillibustering. The party of the self-righteous demands for "up or down votes" filibustered, betting that the Dems and defecting GOPers wouldn't be able to muster the 60 votes needed to bring Webb's proposal to the floor for the hallowed up or down vote.

So it died.

And the Republican senators who supported the filibuster while claiming to support the troops will, later today, have their flunkies lock up the office and head off to the bar for a cocktail or two before going home to snuggle into their beds and perhaps dream of the fundraising junkets they'll go on during their upcoming monthlong summer recess. And the boys and girls in Iraq will hit their racks in 110 degree heat so they can get up in a few hours to go out again the next day. And a few of them will leave their limbs and their lives on those miserable fucking streets. And their buddies who get through physically unscarred will get to look forward to a three-month longer stay than they'd bargained for, followed by a few months at home before they're shoved back into the grinder.

And we're called defeatists.

There is some hope, though, as more Republicans trickle over to the withdrawal side of the line.

Two of the Republicans who voted for the Webb amendment, Sens. Olympia J. Snowe (Maine) and Chuck Hagel (Neb.), announced this morning they would also support Democratic legislation, soon to come to a vote, that would begin troop reductions no later than 120 days after enactment. U.S. forces would then shift their efforts to targeted missions such as counterterrorism. The process would have to be completed by April 30, 2008.

"We have arrived at the crossroads of hope and reality, and we must now address the reality. We need to send a strong message from the United States Congress on behalf of the American people that the current strategy is unacceptable," Snowe said.

How long before even W has to address the reality of the mess he's made? Time should be counted in days. Unfortunately, our time in Iraq is counted instead in bodies.

This, That, the Other

Oh, fantastic.

As he sought to renew the USA Patriot Act two years ago, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales assured lawmakers that the FBI had not abused its potent new terrorism-fighting powers. "There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse," Gonzales told senators on April 27, 2005.

Six days earlier, the FBI sent Gonzales a copy of a report that said its agents had obtained personal information that they were not entitled to have. It was one of at least half a dozen reports of legal or procedural violations that Gonzales received in the three months before he made his statement to the Senate intelligence committee, according to internal FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Surely this was an oversight. A slipup. Gonzo wouldn't deliberately lie, would he? Heaven forfend.

Hmmm, then there's this.

White House counsel Fred F. Fielding informed lawmakers in a letter yesterday that Bush was asserting executive privilege for the second time in two weeks regarding requested testimony by former counsel Harriet E. Miers and former political director Sara M. Taylor about the prosecutor firings.

Bush won't let Miers and Taylor testify for real, you know, under oath and on the record. He's happy to make them available for "private interviews," which seems to mean "presenting utter fabrications without penalty. And he's invoking executive privilege because his counsel is part of the executive branch. But his vice president isn't.

It makes perfect sense.

And, in other news--almost too predictably--another family values-trumpeting, traditional marriage-defendin' politician, David Ritter (R-LA) is found to have taken an uncharacteristic walk on the wild side. Oh, but look--he has his very own get out of jail free card, at least where he's hoping the morality police are concerned:

"Several years ago, I asked for and received forgiveness from God and my wife in confession and marriage counseling," Vitter continued.

Evangelism may not mean never having to say you're sorry, but it does seem to mean you can do whatever the hell you want, while working to officially smack down other people for what you define as a sin, just as long as you say the magic "I'm sorry!" words to excuse you from all culpability for whichever of those holy commandments you broke this time, clearing your slate until the next time, and the next. It's the smug arrogance that leads people to wear t-shirts like this one. Few things make me want more to punch people in the face.

It goes without saying that Ritter was a big federal marriage amendment supporter.

"I don't believe there's any issue that's more important than this one," said Sen. David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican.

Except maybe deciding to stay away from the hookers between floor debates on the inevitable deletrious effects of Big Sodomy on his own marriage.

Ah, Food

As I sit waiting to see who Gordon Ramsay will reduce to tears on Hell's Kitchen tonight, I contemplate my culinary history and its standing in the grand scheme of things. The early years consisted of what I might euphemistically describe as honest cooking with simple ingredients with an eye toward economy, but that's like dumping a can of Durkee's over a vat of condensed cream of mushroom soup and calling it cuisine. More accurately, it was midwestern non-ethnic white people food.

I did not encounter a taco until I was ten years old and living in the relatively teeming metropolis of South Bend, Indiana.

Before that it was a trailer park next to a lake outside a small town in southern Illinois. My mom was never big on cooking and didn't pick up the wide range of American standards her own mother put on the table on a regular basis. My grandparents fed me a steady stream of roast beef with noodles, chicken and dumplings, pork chops and scalloped potatoes, turkey and dressing.

Mom's repertoire was a bit more limited, but I didn't notice or mind at all. I'm sure we must have eaten more than four dishes on a rotating basis, but my memories of early childhood meals feature only these: Sweet Sue chicken and dumplings from the can (still available online! I swoon!), pizza (Jiffy crust mix from the box, slathered with tomato paste straight from the can, sprinkled with dried basil and oregano, topped with browned hamburger and mozzarella), beef Stroganoff (noodles. lots and lots of noodles), and the absolute star of the kitchen and highlight of any given gustatory week: Spanish Noodles.

I do not pretend to know why anyone thought this dish had anything to do with Spain, although the "noodles" bit of the title is accurate enough. The recipe: brown ground beef, drain, add can of tomato sauce (or was it ketchup?), squirt of mustard, and several slices of American cheese, stir until melty, dump over cooked egg noodles, stir around into a giant glob, serve.

Horrifying! And so delicious and toothsome! Did I mention this was in a trailer park?

My move to South Bend at age 9 opened up culinary worlds I had no idea existed before. Alien foods called "enchiladas" and "hong sue chicken" blew my hick tastebuds straight into stunned wakefulness. Thank you, Happy House. I would find your Cantonese fare way too tame to be happy there now--amazing egg rolls aside--but you served your purpose, even if your odd choice of house accompaniments (pull-apart rolls served with every dish!) led me to ask really inappropriate questions the first time I went to a Thai restaurant in Evanston (you want bread? are you out of your mind?) As did you, Hacienda, and your wonderful--if unfortunately named--smothered burritos. And you, Al's Anchor Inn, with your homemade pierogi and frog legs on Friday nights.

Then I went away to college in Chicagoland, within a 45 minute train ride of pretty much any cuisine on the planet, and never looked back. Thai, Szechuan, Italian, Ethiopian, Cambodian, Mexican, Peruvian. And trips back home to southern Illinois had their high points--breaded tenderloin sandwiches from the bar in Sullivan, Indiana (a hop, skip, and jump away); tacos on Tuesday nights at the Town House Tavern in Lawrenceville (a hop away) that were shredded beef cooked with onions and green chiles topped with "sweet sauce," otherwise known as pureed jalapenos, wrapped in delightfully blistered and flaky tiny flour tortillas (where the hell did those come from?); and the ever-reliable Big Murt burger and chocolate shakes from Hovey's on Main Street in Olney.

What a wonderful world to live in, with such wonderful things to eat.

Monsoon Onset

Why do people get excited about monsoon season? the girlfriend asks with mild exasperation. It goes from 110 and dry to 101 and humid, and if it rains it cools off for maybe half an hour and then we're steamy again.

I shrug. 110 and dry, 101 and muggy, to me they're simply different paths to the same level of misery, so we might as well have a multimedia presentation to go along with it.

Most of us love monsoon season, I think, because gives us small packages of drama on a daily basis and we're desperate for relief wherever we can find it. Wispy clouds at sunrise give way to cumulus puffs that build through the midmorning into the afternoon, when they tower with brilliant white anvils above glowering purple-gray bases. The wind swirls here and there, lightning flashes over the mountains, and we wait with growing anticipation, listening for the distant rumble, hoping it comes closer, poised for the elusive whiffs of cool air that organize into a genuine cool gust that ushers in the rain, a few bits of spittle here and there, growing into drops that splat in the dust and finally hammer the desert into submission. If the storm is still building as the sun goes down, the sunset is a watercolor masterpiece painted across the clouds, the dust and ice particles in the air creating a perfect wash of brilliant orange grading through pink into purple, the cumulonimbus canvas backlit and edged with liquid gold.

Yeah, didn't happen yesterday, except for the bit about the sunset. I caught a half-minute's rain on my windshield on the way home, but we did get a prodigious wind that dumped pine needles all over the yard and toppled a few signs between home and the office. The swamp cooler apologetically pumped not very cool air into the house last night, which I spent with the floor fan on full blast, not feeling the need to stick my toes under the sheet until about 4:30 this morning.

But that's okay. Today the slate is wiped clean and we watch the sky and hope again.

Seven Years Out

Independence Day is my personal coming-out day; I wrote about it last year if you want the gory details. This year I celebrated with Bailey's in my coffee and the Cubs on TV. They went on to lose horribly, but the coffee was good.

Seven years is simultaneously a lifetime and the blink of an eye, at least to me, at least when that's how long I've been out. It's nothing and it's everything.

Seven years out in America, all of them fortunately spent in Tucson, flitted through my head last night as I sat on the roof watching the fireworks. Friends who got it immediately, family members who didn't then and still don't now, the girlfriend who turned into a best friend, the one who didn't. The shock to the system of suddenly having a label affixed that explained the lifelong sense of difference and separation from what I was expected to be. What I tried to be with little success.

The day came and went with no fanfare, as maybe it shouldn't. Just another day in an ordinary life.

Now There's a Surprise

Oh, fuck me.

In Which We Find One More Reason to Love Trader Joe's

It ain't big, in the grand scheme of things, but considering that my morning's already on shaky foundations, bad coffee does not help. But--BUT--something does help bad coffee. When the brew in the office pot is a bit on the weak yet apparently burned into vague strength side, chasing the sips with a few Trader Joe's peanut butter-filled pretzels transforms the taste experience into something approximating a complex coffee flavor that is not at all unpleasant. And is protein-fortified!

The Cool Church Doesn't Like Us Either

It's been something of a slog, this getting back into the daily routine when I still desperately want to be someplace else and it's unbearably hot, to get hotter, and the AC in my truck decided to die in a very expensive way. But I was getting there, avoiding heat-induced nausea for most of the day, managing to just see the tough little desert trees without comparing them unfavorably to towering oaks and maples, breathing sighs of relief that excellent Mexican food is never more than a few blocks away, you know, feeling Tucson again and being mostly okay with it.

Because Tucson is mostly a cool place. A cool, cool place, so I had never batted an eye when I saw banners and bumper stickers for "The Cool Church" popping up here and there. Some of the banners had pictures of the pastor on them, a muscular, 40-ish dude with spiky bleached hair and an earring. Shrug, move on.

Tee hee. Yeah, whatever. The front page of this morning's Daily Star carried this headline:

'Cool Church' Teachings on Gays Decried as 'Uncool'

And as much as I despise religion-section fluff getting front-page play, even when it's below the fold, I just had to read.

Church member Rinehart said his feelings toward gays and lesbians are hurt and sadness.

"They don't realize the destructive lifestyle they are living," he said.

"Money, sex, drugs, stealing, killing, prostitution — you name it. We all have problems. We all sin. Jesus told us we can't be perfect. That's why we need him."

You know, since it's a Cool Church, I was hoping for a little more cutting-edge characterization of my depravities. Comparing me to a drug-addicted kleptomaniac murderous hooker is just so 1990.

A trip to the church's website gets you hip-deep in tired anti-gay and pro-Christian-Nation propaganda lifted directly from the Family Research Council and the Wallbuilders pseudohistory shills (exhaustively debunked, respectively, by Jim Burroway and Ed Brayton). It's the same old fake evangelical science and fake evangelical history in a slightly shinier package. And, Daily Star, it's still not news.