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Gag me


 

Morning rush hour on the subway is usually quiet… 

Morning rush hour on the subway is usually quiet. The mental fog has not yet lifted and talking is at a minimum, so people keep to themselves. No one is selling anything or pandering for money. I wonder if the commuters on the lines going to the financial district spend the a.m. rush pumping each other up because they have to be ready for the trading bell. Those of us on the west side lines generally stare at nothing in a trance-like state.

This explains why I can hear a clicking noise coming from the other side of the car. The clicks are irregular and it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact location until I see a woman give up her seat to stand near the door. Now that she’s gone I have a clear sight to a man clipping his fingernails. The nails are flying. Then he bites what remains of the cuticle and spits it out. I shudder and close my eyes to blot the image out. But I can still hear the clicks. It’s like nails against a chalkboard. This is why man invented iPod. I jam my earbuds in and turn the volume up. Think puppies, balloons, the Yankees, the latte I’m going to get on my way to work. Anything to get my mind off the image. The only consolation is that he’s not clipping his toenails.

I’m trying to let my eyes rest elsewhere and that’s when I spot an elderly woman flossing her teeth just a few seats down. I wish I could say that she is discreetly trying to extract something from an incisor. She’s examining the stuff that comes out on the floss and then putting it on her tongue. Just writing this down is enough to stimulate my gag reflex.

Of course flossing is part of good hygiene, it’s something we should all do, not just the morning we have our teeth cleaned, etc., etc., so before you alert the ADA, you should know I’m simply advocating boundaries. Certain things are privacy-of-your-own-home things, like smoking in New York City and watching Deal or No Deal.

Are these people sane but just confused about public versus private spaces? Maybe they only appear sane but are really fresh from Belleview. I know there are crazy people, let’s call them quirky, everywhere. But in New York, quirky people aren’t confined to their cars and backyards. They’re on the train clipping their fingernails.

 

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My subway blog


I’ll admit that I was a little concerned I wouldn’t find enough material when I decided to undertake this subway blog.

I’ll admit that I was a little concerned I wouldn’t find enough material when I decided to undertake this subway blog. I ride to work. I ride home. For days on end, it seems that uneventful. Then of course I remembered that this is New York, and when you’re riding with seven million people, things are bound to get interesting.

Here is the adventure that is my subway experience.

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Absurdity in the new year


I’m feeling pretty sick of the world right now.

There is the post-holiday barrage of gym-weight-loss-remake-your-body-and-life ads that people will buy into temporarily, half-heartedly, and fully drop at the first sight of Valentine’s Day candy. I love watching people stock up on yogurt and have fast food for lunch anyway.

Which leads me to the new Burger King commercial. Some shaggy loser responds to the news of the Whopper’s demise with a demanding, "Get me a Whopper, now!" Cue the minimum-wage uniform behind the counter to suddenly produce all 670 calories, 39 grams of fat, and 1,020 mg of sodium, saving the day. People in the background clap. And I’m ashamed of my fellow Americans. What’s that you say — the NSA is tapping my phone? Well, I have nothing to hide (oh look, Survivor is on). The news — there’s a second genocide occurring in Africa right now? Well I could go for a burger right now. Hmm? Low-income children still going without insurance? Meh. Burger King stopped selling the Whopper? Hold. The. Phone. This is an outrage, I am pissed the f*** off. How can they do this? I mean, I want a Whopper, get me a Whopper, now!
That’s what you’re willing to fight for? Are you KIDDING ME?

Next up, the Iowa caucuses, specifically, Mike Huckabee’s minor win. First of all, in 1992 I was 11 years old, and even I knew how you could and could not contract AIDS. The entire world did, and so did Mike Huckabee. Quarantining the homo-plague carriers was not about a lack of expert information about the disease; it was just plain ignorant and bigoted.
Next, call me crazy, but I don’t know how well I’d sleep at night knowing that more and more rapists/murderers/pedophiles like Wayne DuMond were out of prison instead of serving their just life sentences, thanks to Mike Huckabee. I’ve read the details of the DuMond debacle. His first murders were committed (or so he bragged) with the "slaughter of a village of Cambodians." His second, or first legally documented murder, was in 1972, when he helped beat a teenager to death. He molested an underage girl for the first time a year later. In 1978 he committed his first rape. The 1984 rape of a teenage girl was the one that stuck in the justice system. Life sentence plus 20 years. Huckabee commuted the sentence to time served in 1996. After that DuMond was convicted of murdering a woman in 2000. If he hadn’t dropped dead of cancer in 2005, he would’ve been charged with the rape and murder of a pregnant woman. Pro-Llfe indeed.

The good people of Iowa voted for Huckabee above all the other Republican candidates. They say the evangelicals were responsible for his victory. Well, that’s just fantastic. My only hope is for New Hampshire, up here in my corner of the world, to show a little more common sense and intelligence.

Don’t even get me started on that con-artist and cult leader Joel Osteen and the "Gospel of Wealth."

Last, but not least, the new article today about how much the cervical cancer vaccinations hurt the poor wittle arms of girls. Shut it, princess. I had the first shot a month ago, and the ache was gone after an hour. If you experience more, say a day or two of pain, deal with it. Am I supposed to break out my violin because for the first time in history you are privileged enough to receive a simple shot that can prevent cancer? Oh I can just hear it now from the pro-lifers: "Do we want our daughters’ arms to hurt? This is what liberals and feminists and devil worshipers want — for your little girls’ arm to ache for 24-72 hours so that they can freely fornicate with the devil starting at age nine! Jesus does not want your daughter to feel the sting! Can I get an Amen?!"  

These pretzels are making me thirsty.

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His Dark Materials


Why is it that only Catholics are complaining about this movie? Or, really, any movie? Where are the other Christian denominations? The evangelicals (oh, that’s right — electing politicians), the Protestants (oops — splitting from the church over gay tolerance), Baptists, Unitarians, Methodists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons? I guess they have better things to do than stand outside of movie theaters stamping their feet and whining about a box office bomb.

Yes, The Golden Compass is a sinking stone, but I highly doubt it’s because of Catholic protestors (all nine of them outside one Florida cinema — and Phil Donohue, the lone gunman). As some learned with The Da Vinci Code movie (another dud), protesting does not work (students of the 60s should’ve also figured that out after a while). It makes a lot of noise and ultimately draws more attention to the boycottee.

I’ve heard the little tummy rumblings about the controversy on the Web all week, but what spurred me to write this was a small editorial in The Providence Journal. I’ll post most of it:

Anti-Catholic Bigotry as Art
Surprise, surprise! Hollywood has done it again. An anti-God, anti-Catholic film is about to hit the big screen just in time for one of the most sacred holy days for Christians, the celebration of the birth of Christ.

The movie, The Golden Compass, directed by Chris Weitz and released by New Line Cinema, has hit theaters. The film is based on Philip Pullman’s trilogy, His Dark Materials. In this film the good guys are witches and the bad guys are an evil group of people in power, called The Magisterium. There is no other definition for the word Magisterium than the teaching authority and hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church.

I would argue that if a script for a movie were presented to Hollywood that had as its villains an evil ruling class called The Homosexuals or The Feminists it would be branded homophobic, a hate crime or sexist, and never see the light of day. Yet, when Catholics are targeted and maliciously portrayed, Hollywood applauds and calls it artistic, enlightening and inspiring. What’s wrong with this picture?
—The Rev. Giacomo Capoverdi 

I love how the italicized hatred just drips from his words. A man of God indeed. Too bad The Golden Compass does not target Catholicism but God (author Phillip Pullman is an atheist) and all religion. Too bad the U.S. Conference of Bishops gives the film two opposable thumbs up. And movie critics for the Catholic News Service have judged the film to be "lavish, well-acted and fast-paced." Aside from that, every other critic has dismissed the film completely, as well as moviegoers (it cost $180 million to make, and earned a paltry $28 million this weekend). The only applause seems to be coming from some of the Catholic community. That is, those have seen it anyway. And really, shouldn’t viewers be the only ones to label it good or bad?

There’s more. There’s always more. From Family Life Center (via Salon): 

"An Urgent Warning for Parents" cautioning that, after seeing the film, children "will rush out to buy and digest Pullman‘s God-hating and Catholic-bashing books. Philip Pullman’s work is about to bring millions of children into contact with the demonic."

After Harry Potter, The Da Vinci Code, the Dark Materials, books and now the movie, you’d think that by now kids would be walking around foaming at the mouth, growling, fornicating in day care and hexing us all. But in the real world, children are simply innocent and beautiful and capable of all that is good. If parents of any religion or denomination could believe in honest education and faith in their own children and parenting skills, maybe they’d stay that way, too.

Some Catholics apparently do exactly that. Much like the many clergy who came to promote Harry Potter, Catholic Digest, the nation’s largest magazine for Catholics, suggests parents use the film as a springboard to “encourage your children to reflect about the issues the book raises in a thoughtful and intelligent manner." But sadly, most are incapable of this. As Stephanie Zacharek writes, "The idea that children might actually think for themselves is still too hot to handle. These Christian groups fear that, if children see the movie, they may want to read the books. And we can’t have children reading now, can we?"

I haven’t seen the movie. Not for any particular reason other than it just doesn’t interest me. I’ll get around to reading the books one day. In the meantime, despite being raised Catholic, I can think for myself and I do have better things to do with my time.

The Catholic protestors, however, obviously do not. Take the nine cinema protestors, including a mother and son. She thinks God will look kindly on her for holding up a sign and yelling, "Do you love God? No Golden Compass!" Her son went there straight from school because "I love God, I think it’s the right thing to do." Meanwhile, my atheist uncle accompanied me to the local food bank the other night to volunteer. Just sayin’.

My favorite piece in all of this was written by Mary Elizabeth Williams, a Catholic mother of two writing about allowing her daughter to see the film. Sanely, she does filter things she thinks will be inappropriate: "My only objection to the film isn’t philosophical, it’s practical: The movie is pretty damn intense." Williams knows she is the parent — she has the power to say, "No you can’t, you’re too young," rather than a hysterical, "NO, you’ll end up worshipping Satan!"

I love a writer who can be both cheeky and dry at the same time: “As far as I know, Bill Donohue has not yet seen The Golden Compass. I have. I suspect it would piss him off.” Someday, I hope to follow her parenting philosophy: I want my children to understand that human beings and institutions are fallible. That sometimes those who claim moral authority can traffic in corruption and abuse. I want them to be angry at every wrong perpetuated in the name of God. To question authority. To be feisty troublemakers for positive change. I’ve told my daughters that no one knows for certain that there’s a God or a heaven. I always thought that was the beauty of faith — that it rests on our willingness to believe in the things we can’t prove…But I would rather they grow up to be kind, generous unbelievers than sanctimonious, blindly dogmatic Christians.

Now, to my fellow human beings: quit whining and go make the world better!

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Second looks


For many people, December is a month full of cheer. But if you look beyond the surface of what seems to be December’s overarching narrative — Christmas, family, gifts, happiness, Santa — you’re likely to find people who are left out because they celebrate Kwanzaa or Channukah, or can’t afford presents for their children, or can’t afford to partake in the ritual of overeating. You might even discover that the chubby man in the red suit at the mall isn’t chubby at all — and doesn’t live in the North Pole.

In this month’s issue of InTheFray, we invite you to look beyond surface-level appearances. We begin with ITF books editor Amy Brozio-Andrews’ review of The Short Bus, Jonathan Mooney’s attempt to relate to children and adults who have been labeled as learning disabled. A severely-learning-disabled-student-turn-Ivy-League-graduate himself, Mooney illuminates “how students and adults labeled as learning disabled assert their own identities beyond established societal expectations.”

Meanwhile, Michael Tedder uncovers just how traumatic a simple greeting can be for the five million Americans who suffer from social anxiety disorder. And Activist’s Corner Editor Anja Tranovich reveals how defiant religious leaders can be when she interviews former nun and activist Lupe Anguianoabout pioneering efforts in welfare activism and the women’s rightsmovement and reframing religious debates to include social justiceissues.

In her photo essay "Shanti Shanti," Emily Anne Epstein visits India and discovers a place that is simultaneously unique and not all that different from the United States. And over in Morocco, American Sumayya Ahmed discovers the importance of visiting — and learns the how-to of being a guest. 

Back on U.S. soil, we turn to Obama and me, Leslie Minora’s humorous account of how campaign propaganda is inviting heartache as candidates try to wedge their ways into our lives. From there we consider Jacqueline Barba’s case for why newspapers should embrace narrative-style reporting as the onus of breaking news shifts to the Internet and 24-hour broadcast news.

Rounding out this month’s stories is Birgitta Jonsdottir’s essay, My mother’s journey in the belly of the Ladybug, which reveals how the author has used old and new rituals surrounding death to cope with the loss of her mother. In this multimedia tribute featuring a poem, a song sung by her mother, and a photo essay with a written essay, Jonsdottir makes new memories of her dead mother with the help of a ladybug box, her mother’s ashes, and an urn.

We hope you enjoy this issue as much as we enjoyed putting it together. Happy holidays!

Laura Nathan
Editor
Buffalo, New York

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