Would You Care to Join Me for an Unbelievably Awkward Dinner Sometime?

I like reading the news in pretty much every shape and size I can get it. I like the traditional, high-quality journalism of The New York Times. I like the sensationalized drudge of CNN.com. But I especially like the fake, satirical news I find on The Onion.

I used to read The Onion regularly when I was in college. They made fun of recent, real news stories and had little regard for political correctness. Finally, I had found a group of writers as cynical as myself! However, since graduating nearly four years ago, I decided I needed to refine my tastes a bit more and replaced my daily dose of that pungent vegetable with an equally bitter, yet slightly more sophisticated, sampling of Maureen Dowd.

This morning, I stumbled upon The Onion again and remembered what I had been missing! I also remembered a particularly funny tale from college that I thought I would share here (as I have been laughing about it all morning):

During our junior year, my college roommate found herself the romantic interest of a markedly unappealing boy. My girlfriends and I teased her endlessly about this (since we were clearly very kind individuals) until my roommate felt quite uncomfortable being in this boy's presence.

One day, the ex and I were perusing The Onion and came across a story entitled, "Would You Care to Join Me for an Unbelievably Awkward Dinner Sometime?" The story is basically a mock-dinner date invitation from a very unappealing man depicting an even more unappealing date. Well, my industrious ex and I figured out a way to mask an email address so that it appeared to be coming from a different one. We could send email that seemed to be from someone else! I am sure you know by now where this story is headed...

We changed the ex's email address to look like Mr. Unappealing's. Then we pasted the text of this glorious Onion invite into the email body and - whoosh! - off went the email to my roommate. Pleased with our prank, we went to sleep.

The next morning, we were playing around with our new hacking skills and came to discover, to our horror, that not only did the masked email look like the fake address, but any replies to it actually went to the fake address! Like a bat out of hell, I flew out of the ex's room and raced back to my place. I threw the open the door to find my roommate hunched over her computer, looking miserable, with the email open.

"Don't respond to it!" I cried.

It turns out, she had been just seconds from clicking the send button on the response she had written - a response which would have gone directly to Mr. Unappealing, original email and all. When I blurted out what the ex and I had done, my roommate was initially pretty angry. Eventually, she came to see the humor in it, but swore she would get back at us. To this day, though, she never has - probably because she's terrified of my prank-playing retaliation.

Anyway, it's safe to say I'm back to reading The Onion.

A splash of irony with your morning coffee

In a speech from the Rose Garden this morning, the continual embarrassment that is our President chastised Congress for not doing enough to assuage Americans' financial worries.

"I repeatedly submitted proposals to help address the problems. Time after time, Congress chose to block them," Sir Incompetence said.

You mean kinda like the proposals to keep funding the war in Iraq? It is currently estimated that the war in Iraq has cost American taxpayers over $515 billion. $515 billion could go a long way to alleviating the problems Americans face regarding the housing market and student loan availability. To make this number even more real, $515 billion equates to approximately $4,700 per household. Your family has paid $4,700 in real dollars to support the war. Take a moment and think of what you could do with $4,700. Doesn't it make you angry?

However, instead of admitting mistake and ending a purposeless war that will bleed the pockets of Americans for years to come, President Bush carries on arrogantly as usual and selectively ignores information. Instead of acknowledging the billions of dollars we have been shredding since 2003, he attacks Congress for not doing enough to fix the economic mess our country is in.

Now, I'm not saying the recession was caused by the war in Iraq. Nor am I saying that we could have avoided the mortgage mess if not for the war. What I am saying, though, is that Congress would have a lot more room to fix it with that $515 billion in the bank.

If Bush wants to point fingers, he ought to start by pointing at himself.

Are you really talking about dumpster diving again?

Yes, I am. I'm talking about it because, after my initial post on the topic, this uptight, misophobic prepster went!

I did some research on the topic and learned about the people who get by via dumpster diving (and similar pursuits). What I found remarkably interesting is that most of these people, who are called "freegans," do not need to dumpster dive but actually do it as part of a greater lifestyle choice. According to that venerable reference site, Wikipedia, freeganism is "an anti-consumerism lifestyle whereby people employ alternative living strategies based on limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources. Freegans embrace community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing in opposition to a society based on materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity, and greed. The lifestyle involves salvaging discarded, unspoiled food from supermarket dumpsters that have passed, or in some cases haven't even passed, their sell by date, but are still edible and nutritious. They salvage the food not because they are poor or homeless, but as a political statement."


Freeganism was something I could support wholeheartedly (even if I did not become a freegan myself) and I wanted to see it in action. I coaxed my friend into going dumpster diving again.

After a few drinks - c'mon, you really didn't expect me to climb into a dumpster stone cold sober, did you? - we arrived out back behind the yuppie bakery where our infamous diving was to occur. I zipped my Northface jacket and threw my hair into a ponytail, certain my sporty look would blend nicely with any freegans we might meet.

A quick survey of the area told me I was wrong. There were three people there hunting for bread. Two had arrived on bicycle and the third in a small, old sedan. They all looked extremely crunchy but none appeared homeless or anything close. One guy looked slightly dirty, but in a very deliberate, I-could-shower-if-I-wanted-but-I-prefer-to-conserve-water type of way.

"What are you waiting for?" my friend said. "Hop in!"

I took a deep breath and hoisted myself over the side and into the dumpster. To my indescribable relief, I found that the dumpster contained bread - and only bread. There was no garbage in sight. In fact, every loaf of bread was wrapped in the bakery's fancy signature bag. It was dumpster diving for snobs! All of a sudden, my adrenaline kicked into high gear and the allure of free food overcame me. I began scavenging through the mountain of bread like a ravenous animal.

When all was said and done, I wound up with 10 gourmet loaves of bread and 5 bags of rolls in the trunk of my car. The excitement was still pulsing through my veins as I headed home. By the time I reached my apartment, however, my adrenaline died down and my rational neuroticism had returned. With the exception of the rolls, the bread was in unsealed bags. What if rodents had crawled into the dumpster? What if someone's shoes that touched the bread? Unable to shake my general craziness, I would up discarding the 10 unsealed loaves in the dumpster in my apartment building. I kept the 5 bags of rolls, since I decided they were safe to eat.

The next morning, my ex came over.

"Where did all of these rolls come from?" he asked, eyeing the bags on my counter.

I paused. I couldn't bring myself to admit I was now eating from a dumpster, no matter how socially conscious it made me.

"They were on sale," I said.

Of course, my ex occasionally reads my blog and he will find out where the rolls actually came from. It's easier to say it in writing than verbally. Also, my friend took a picture of me in the dumpster which I will begrudgingly share on here once we upload it off her camera phone.

Red, White, and All-Around Wrong

I was reading a new post on another great blog, Globally Rational, about the notion of "supporting our troops." The basic premise was that if we really supported our troops, we would care enough about their well-being to understand the effect this war is having on them and, consequently, bring them home.

It got me thinking about phrases like "Support our troops!" and about patriotism in general. A popular criticism of the Left and of those who seek to end the war is that they are not patriotic and that, by questioning and evaluating the actions of our country, they are somehow less "American" than those who don't.

This is absurd and every time I hear such stupidity uttered, my blood boils just a little and I start to think that selective suffrage might not be such a bad idea. (Really, if you think thoughtful, fact-based analysis is equatable to treason, you ought to be disenfranchised.) Supporting your country blindly, without any deep understanding of the facts, is one of the most dangerous things a person could do, and, in my opinion, is about as un-American as it gets. A country needs its citizens to be educated, to engage in intelligent debate, and to keep its leadership in line so that they steer the country down the best track possible. When citizens neglect to be informed and critical, they become nothing more than pawns and they give their government power to make unilateral decisions that may be rooted in less-than-admirable motivations.

Another thing I can't stand is people who insist upon taking fashion cues from our flag. Aside from adding nothing to the debate, this color palette is just plain unattractive and serves as a signaling cue to me about the relative level of that person's intelligence. (Excepted from this comment are children. If you are under the age of ten, red, white, and blue apparel is perfectly fine.) Our country is not a sports team. You need not show your support by wearing our "team colors" and talking about how much "better" our country is than all the rest. Please stop rooting for the home team just because of where you live. If your "team" has problems, talk about those problems and propose solutions until the leadership has no choice but to listen.

Biohazard

I'm not sure if Gavin is consciously trying to kill me, or if it just happens to be an unfortunate byproduct.

When he started daycare a year ago, I knew he'd be getting sick more often. While my ex and I worked, Gavin spent his first year at home, under the nurturing care of his grandmother. My ex's mother had moved to Seattle from Phoenix so that she could help us by watching him during the weekdays. (As you can imagine, she remains one of my favorite people on the planet.) Being home, Gavin got sick very infrequently. Upon Gavin's first birthday, however, my ex's mother moved back down to Phoenix and Gavin started daycare.

I was prepared for some colds and perhaps the occasional rash. What I was not prepared for was the cauldron of germs I was about to plunge into.

It's not just that Gavin started getting sick (and, often, thoughtfully sharing the fun with me). It's that Gavin started getting sick quite creatively and often in ways I had never even heard of. Over the course of the past year alone, he's come down with the following (and I'm sure there are more that I'm forgetting): pinkeye, norwalk virus, ear infections galore, and cellulitis (twice).

Cellulitis is by the far the craziest of all. In fact, what triggered me to write this post is the fact that we just returned from the pediatrician because Gavin has come down with cellulitis again. Cellulitis is an infection of the tissues beneath the skin and can occur in any part of your body. Gavin has had it in his left eyelid both times. Cellulitis is usually caused by a bacterial infection and is therefore easily treatable with antibiotics. The first time he had it, it came on suddenly. I went in his room to wake him up for daycare and this is what I found:

Scary, huh? Even scarier because it happened out of nowhere. He was seemingly fine when I put him to sleep the night before. Anyway, a visit to the ER and a week of strong antibiotics managed to clear this up. But I was already questioning myself and my (lack of) parenting abilities. My apartment was cleaner than most. Gavin received regular baths. How could he be this covered in bacteria this often?

To my dismay, he came down with cellulitis again this week. Same eye, same deal - a week of antibiotics to treat it. And while I worry about all these exotic illnesses my son manages to contract - the doctor assures me they're all very common but I think he's lying - my biggest concern is having to miss so much work as a result. I'm getting to the point where I'm starting to feel uncomfortable telling my boss that Gavin's sick again. I really just need to find a way to keep him healthy. I'd love to get him fitted for a hazmat suit and call it a day...