of hurricane fatigue and the spray-tanned satan

i've battled for months (how long has that spray-tanned satan been president?) with jaw problems from clenching my teeth in my sleep. i find it difficult to let go of the stress the man causes me with his one outrageous, unpresidential, moronic tweet after another. but recently, i've noticed a kind of numbness coming over me. i still can't stand to hear his voice, but i fear i'm becoming immune to the ignoramus, and along with him, my sense of outrage or even empathy is fading. i've noticed it most in connection with these hurricanes. even tho' i know a couple of people who were in the path of both - one who was close to her due date with her first child (he came and they are both totally ok), i have had a hard time mustering caring about it. i've exuded more than few sighs as i open my nytimes app or listen to the daily, and it's all harvey and irma all the time. isn't there any other news? and i fear that it's because the cheeto has rendered me immune. because what can possibly be worse than him? but it's so dangerous to let him render us numb and uncaring. because then we are truly lost. i've got to do something to get back my empathy and caring. but what if it takes a hurricane of our own?

let them drink bacon vodka or observations on the current state of america

just a few observations from our time in the states. it's funny how time away makes what was once familiar seem strange, tho' i simply don't recall some of this stuff, so maybe it's new in the past decade or so...

~ there's a real obsession with anti-bacterial hand cleaners. in bathrooms, in the cleaning product aisle, on the dish soap, little purse-size bottles. apparently americans are really, really scared of bacteria. and i wonder if it's not contributing to illness and allergies.

~ there's a lot of fake stuff - especially fake sweeteners and fake creamers. i just wanted some ordinary half & half in my coffee and that was a rare commodity in many convenience stores, tho' 5 sweetened, artificial flavors of carnation wanna-be cream(er) were on offer.

~ waitresses introduce themselves, "hi, i'm shelly, i'll be your server." do i really need this information? do people actually take note of it and remember their server's name?

~ the lighting is really, really depressing in shopko, k-mart and even macy's. what's the purpose of that? wouldn't good lighting move more merchandise? how can these stores be so off on this important detail?

~ walmart's new logo doesn't hide that they're still pure evil.

~ enormous, chernobyl (as in possibly irradiated), giant fruit and vegetables - peaches bigger than a softball, same with plums and the leeks, as big around as my calves, i tell you. we also had a 50 pound watermelon. talk about having to pee after that...

~ only in the states could you overhear a casual conversation at the airport between two waiting passengers on the merits of the M16 vs. the M4.

~ struck by how people who have BEEN there, still pronounce iraq "eye-rack."

~ a shocking lack of recycling. i had a little shudder of horror every time i saw a bottle or can in the ordinary garbage can.  this is part of why the US is consuming far more than its share of resources.

~ vodka that comes in bacon, marshmallow, cake or cookie dough flavors. i can see these are produced in france, but still, they apparently know what the american market craves.

~ direct marketing (long ads on television and in magazines) of prescription meds. man, that must drive doctors nuts.

~ no television show can be watched or enjoyed with any sense of continuity because it's constantly broken up with ads. i remember when i first came to denmark, it was agony for me to watch an whole episode of the x-files without commercial break, because i was so accustomed to the release of tension the commercials brought with them. now, i can hardly stand to watch television in the states. and don't even get me started on the shameful coverage of the olympics by nbc, i'm still not over that.

~ automatic-flush toilets. these possibly symbolize everything that's currently wrong with america, not to mention scaring the living daylights out of the user. apparently people cannot even be trusted to flush the toilet on their own these days.

~ interesting how with two acts of terrorism committed while i was there - one in a crowded movie theatre in colorado and one at a sikh temple in wisconsin - that i never heard them referred to as terrorism. it seems that word is now reserved only for acts committed by muslim extremists. if you ask me, both of those maniacs were also terrorists. 

~ car design has truly gone awry. i talked about this a little bit after my visit two years ago, but it's only gone downhill. even old design stalwarts like mercedes have given up and started making what appears to be a chevy impala with a mercedes logo. it's sad, really.

lest you think i only observed the negatives, i'll be back soon with a list of positives. because there are also good things about the land of my birth. you just have to look for them a little harder.

aggressive christianity

being in the states for a few weeks, i was struck by the visible increase in christian fundamentalism all around in the upper midwest. there have always been a few anti-choice signs here and there, and my hometown of 1300 has 12 churches, but there are more and more aggressive bible verses lining the highways and byways and christianity just seems to be much more in your face.

but i found this nail-studded cross west of the town where i grew up most disturbing. apparently, with 12 churches in a town of 1300, the youth groups have banded together into one and they erected this cross on the edge of a cornfield west of town. the large, rusty nails represent the sins of the young people in town.

and it strikes me as extremely violent and aggressive. and i wonder how a bunch of kids in small town south dakota can possibly have so many sins. what on earth are they? sex? drinking? playing hooky from school, the odd joint? hello, these are normal teenage issues - not giant nails on a cross. and to display them in such a harsh way, what good can that possibly do?

i'm more than a little worried about the aggressive tone christianity has taken on in the US in the years of my chosen exile. it seems to me not all that different from the sort of fundamentalist leaning of which all of islam is accused because a few choose to be extreme. when extremism comes to a small town in south dakota, what do we have left?

for more on this, read what frank bruni says about michele bachman and her ilk of the religious right here.

olives may contain pits

when i realized this afternoon that there was a delay in the broadcast of the opening ceremonies of the london olympics, it royally pissed me off. it strikes me as yet another symptom of a society far too focused on the wrong things. a late afternoon live broadcast didn't fit with the needs of the network to capture those advertising dollars, so they delayed it by several hours and completely destroyed the continuity by breaking for ads every 5 minutes. and the play-by-play by the anchors - simplistic, insufficiently-researched and well, moronic. and of course, the first 5 minutes had to be spent speculating as to possible terrorism. shameful.

what has happened to this country?  signs in the grocery store, warning that olives have pits. do people really not know this? are we so far from where our food comes from? i do realize that it's also lawsuit avoidance, but shouldn't we also be worried that it's come to that?

i've been here a week and a half and i'm dumbfounded. i can't stand to watch a news broadcast - they're over-dramatic and under-informed and carry little or no news. the speculations as to the motives of the madman killer in colorado have oddly become "the truth" about him, tho' he hasn't said a word. ordinary people quote glen beck and bill o'reilly and fox "news" as if they tell the truth about everything from school testing to gun control and health care. there's no critical thinking in evidence, apparently no one reasons for themselves (at least not out loud) and worst of all, there's no outrage over this.

where is the outrage?

well, i'm outraged, but at least i get to leave again. and leave again i will. tho' i will express my outrage with my vote in november. it's the least i can do.

laughing and crying

this to make you laugh

because this will make you cry. 

back to the caves

i get my news largely from the newspaper and from online news sources like the new york times, the guardian and the huffington post, but also from radio station P1, the danish answer to NPR. i am also a devoted fan of jon stewart's daily show, which we get here in denmark, only one day behind. so, like many, i get my news from sources where i am likely to agree with the slant that's presented. and that's a problem of this increasingly online world we live in...we can isolate ourselves in enclaves of people who share our beliefs and our interests. less and less do we challenge ourselves to listen to views not in line with our own. i'm as guilty of it as anyone.

and so views and the expression thereof become increasingly strident and dramatic (see the streets of london, the recent massacre in norway and the behavior of the so-called "tea party" members in the US congress). and i'll admit that as an educated, liberal-thinking, left-leaning sort of person, i continue to think that arguing with those extremes is still somehow not worth it. the beliefs they spout seem to be so ridiculous as to be beneath argument ("intelligent" design? a new knights templar? a congressional "super" committee? please.).

but those of us who are educated and have the power to reason and articulate good arguments are going to have to start arguing. because what a lot of these groups appear to want to do is to completely turn back modernism and possibly even all of the gains made after the enlightenment, taking us back to something resembling the dark ages, but with really cool electronics.  

take just the tea party conservatives....they're against abortion, homosexuality, humanitarianism, taxes, welfare, the environment. they're for the bible, guns, the death penalty, censorship and the general surveillance of society. what they preach is a fundamentalism not unlike the fundamentalism preached by breivik in norway and even members of al quaeda, who are also largely against that same list of things. and what's worrying is that, like al quaeda, the tea party appears to be shouting loudly and are well-funded.

if we're not careful, we'll find ourselves clubbed over the head and dragged back to the caves by our hair. i don't know about you, but i'm not keen on that...

where to begin?

another rainy day.

it seems like the world is full of turmoil and uncertainty. stock markets are down. starving people are meandering across africa. the syrian government is killing civilians. there are riots in london. fundamentalists of all stripes are getting bolder. the polar ice caps are melting. and the US congress is behaving like an unsupervised kindergarten. no wonder our television screens are full of senseless "reality" programs - we need escapism. because the world certainly looks hopeless. and it doesn't seem like there are any true leaders in the world with a single clue about getting a handle on it.

we had a lively conversation the other evening about whether it's even possible for individuals to make a difference anymore. i know i certainly can't think of anything that i could do (tho' i did spend some time today wondering if there wasn't an app in it). and a friend, whose job in television puts her in a position to have an effect on the wider culture, admitted that making denmark's next prime minister would be considerably less fun than making denmark's next top model.  and while it made me laugh (i do like me some cynicism), it also hits on a truth...if things aren't fun, we simply don't really want to do them. and saving the world would be some seriously hard work (unless there IS an app for that).

it seems like such a hopeless mess that setting whether or not i'm having fun aside, i wouldn't have a clue where to begin. it seems like even a small amount that you might give towards hunger in africa never makes it to those who need it...the big aid organizations have such a bureaucracy behind them that the vast majority of a donation goes to support that. we talked the other night about if it were possible to get even just a fraction of the food we are wasting in our part of the world to the people who need it, what an impact it could have. but so many regulations and rules and laws and transport issues stand in the way that we talked ourselves out of it before we even discussed it properly.

it must somehow be possible to somehow harness all of these social networks and all of the thoughts, ideas and innovations going on and channel them towards something good, don't you think? but where to begin? (maybe we should ask steve jobs.)

not proud to be an american

i can tell you without a doubt that the death of osama bin laden did not bring the immediate return of reason to the wheels and cogs of american government. i spent a bit of time outside the american embassy in copenhagen today and what an experience it was. i witnessed instance after instance of lack of common sense in relation to people who had come to the embassy on various errands.

if you come to the embassy with a telephone, computer or iPad, you will not be allowed in. period. they will suggest to you that you take a train 3 stops back to the main train station in copenhagen and stow those items if you didn't come with your own car, where you could leave them to be broken into and stolen. they are so afraid of electronics (despite an elborate x-ray box of an entrance that appears to be encased within a safe, to protect it from the rest of the embassy), you can't have any of that with you at all.

they were even worried about people's car keys that have a little button you can press to lock and unlock the car. i saw a swedish woman being refused entrance due to her car keys. how do they think people get there? and do they think they leave their keys in the car? and do they really think that there's anyone on the planet today who doesn't have a mobile phone that they are likely carrying on their person? good odin, we don't even have a landline telephone at our house, we all have a mobile and let's face it, that's not unusual.

on top of it, you're not even allowed into the x-ray area with your bag until your bag has been thoroughly inspected - without you being present. you stand outside the mirrored doors until they decide your bag is ok - handing it back and forth to the guard for you remove various items. true story.

me, i was refused entrance because of the computer thing, but also because my errand there wasn't important enough to warrant my coming in. i was trying to drop off the papers for the renewal of sabin's passport. i had everything in order and simply needed to hand them over. i was actually supposed to send them, because we obtained all of the relevant signatures and such a couple of weeks ago in århus, when there was a consular visit there. i still had the papers on my desk and thought that since i was going to copenhagen, i'd drop them by. wrong. and would you believe they wouldn't even TAKE them from me? they said if i was there in person, the consular officer had to SEE me, and witness my signature (despite the stamp that it had already been witnessed) even tho' it was clearly all filled out and signed and stamped and ready and if i were SENDING the papers, no one would see me.  good odin, we'd had to raise our right hands and give an oath over the signing of the papers a couple of weeks before, but that wasn't good enough for them to take my friggin' envelope of papers. so i had to go to the post office down the street, buy an envelope and stamps and send it.

this is what all of this fear has done to common sense.  it's completely and utterly gone. and i can tell you that it's this kind of absurd and rigid inability to make sense of a situation that's right in front of you that will keep me from ever again living in the land of my birth.

i shouldn't be surprised, i guess a similar sort of temporary(?) insanity was also evident in the jubilation in the streets of various american cities yesterday. the power we ascribed to a man named bin laden will haunt us for years to come. look how it's made us behave.  it all has me feeling quite embarrassed to be an american.