The Week That Was (Oh, what a week!)

Last week around this time I was feeling a strange combination of elation and crapdom (yes, that is an emotion, the one you feel when your body decides to betray you temporarily by being sick on the happiest day of the year). I was in the middle of an Oracle Financials Training Session, and my body was quickly letting me know that I in fact was about to be sicker than I've been in as long as I can remember. As the lady droned on and on and on about iProcurement, I could not get "Proud to be an American" out of my head despite my abhorrence of overly-indulgent patriotic songs, and kept thinking that instead of wasting my time in class, I wanted to jump around Stanford hugging every person I met.

Last year, I watched "American Idol" with my parents, and every time Kristy Lee Cook came on and butchered the hell out of every "Proud to be an American/America the Beautiful/Yankee Doodle Dandy" rendition possible, I nearly puked. And now, this was me; cynic and critic, belting out this propaganda anthem full blast in my own head, even letting it escape out loud every now and then, and giggling to myself like a crazy person. I would have felt embarrassed if everyone coming into and out of the office was not also having similar issues, keeping Joker-sized grins plastered on their faces, and spontaneously breaking out in conversation that had clearly started in their head and was being voiced mid-thought.

The country had a new President-Elect, and the excitement was palpable. When our Director called us in for an emergency meeting and broke down in front of his staff when he confessed that he in fact had never felt more proud to be an American, I couldn't believe that someone who's had such a long career at the forefront of political thought was compelled to spontaneously share these feelings. I was also reassured, as young people need be by their wiser elders, that California and the United States will one day, and one day soon, do right by all - so that all of the boys, girls, men, and women living under this great American umbrella can share the same rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution. James Baldwin once wrote, "Everybody's journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality." Prop 8 passing definitely says more about the people who voted for it than about the people whom it immediately effects. At this moment in time, I feel both disheartened that Prop 8 passed, but also hopeful because I know it won't last long until my friends won't have to feel like their own state sees them as second class citizens.

Last Tuesday night, having the experience of the last two presidential elections behind me, I thought the counting would go on all night. So, M and I went grocery shopping. Shocker! We came back and within minutes, Barack Obama had officially and by a huge margin gained enough electoral votes to cast no doubt that he would indeed be the next President of the United States of America. John McCain's speech that followed was the first time in months that I heard McCain's own voice. It did not surprise me when the crowd boo'ed at Obama's name (it also did not surprise me that the folks in Chicago cheered and clapped when Obama mentioned McCain), and it kind of freaked me out that most of the people in the Phoenix crowd were middle-aged white folk. I mean, seriously-- almost everyone was over 45 and white. Meanwhile, in Chicago, the hundreds of thousands of people huddled together, laughing, crying, chanting, were children, teenagers, college kids, twenty-somethings, thirty-somethings, middle aged, elderly, white, black, Hispanic, Asian, mixed, all colors and ages and creeds, which encapsulates what America is and has prided itself in being - the cultural, racial, ethnic, religious melting pot of this world.

The images of Jesse Jackson crying I have to say were pretty priceless, and I remember thinking, I wish James Baldwin was alive to see this! I wish DuBois could see this! I do think that John McCain made too much of the "African-American" issue when talking about Barack Obama in his concession speech, but at the same time, he reminded us that people whom we know remember a time when they could not go to the same school, or eat at the same restaurants, or walk on the same piece of street, as white kids. The fact that these memories are not historic memories but actual memories makes this election monumental, but I think that the nation and the world agrees that Obama being black is not the sole or even the main reason why he is perceived with such enthusiasm and anticipation.

My entire adult life has been spent with George W. Bush being the President of the U.S. The 2004 election was the first one in which I could legally vote after becoming a citizen. I remember when my roommates and I volunteered to cater a John Kerry fundraiser in L.A. (note to self- where IS that shirt?!) we all whole-heartedly believed Kerry would win over Bush, no doubt about it. I cast my vote and thought, "Now I am truly an American citizen." Four years later, I am feeling an interesting and hard to explain emotion. I was not born here, and thus will always harbor patriotic love for my home country. And for as long as I've lived here, I've always been happy to live here, and proud. Every time I drove through a particular part of the 5S Fwy in Anaheim, I got an irrational feeling of love and pride for California, and as the plane was about to touch down at LAX, each time I nearly teared up with excitement to be "home." But over the last 8 eight years, it really has become "uncool" to be an American in many parts of the world, because we are seen as bullies instead of liberators, as arrogant instead of accomplished, as ignorant instead of leaders in science. Last week, I actually felt like I was an American, part of the millions of people who went out and voted however they felt was best. But there is always that "adopted" American feeling to it. It's almost like I can see it from both sides - judging the U.S. from a foreigner's point of view, and defending the country from the insider perspective. Again I turn to James Baldwin, who once wrote, "I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually." I think he was completely right in this, and this is the sentiment that I think so many Americans ignore in their blind patriotism. To truly be proud of your country, I think you should judge it with high standards, because you expect great things from it. If you take everything a country does blindly, you face a great risk of allowing that country to become an oppressor without boundaries. That is why I think all those Republican allegations that "they" are the "real" America and that Obama and the Democratic party aren't proud of America were so ludicrous. Don't parents chide their children so that the kids might learn to be better people? Anyways, now I am going off topic, which was initially this strange feeling of being an American, and an outsider, and feeling optimistic that in the next few years the U.S. can make its citizens even more proud to call themselves American than they have been in recent years.

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Moving on from the elections, last week also brought more ups and downs in the Stockmarket, which has people all on edge. I can't believe that literally in a few days, people's entire retirement 401k money is gone!! I guess I am really lucky to have a looo-ooo-oong time to go until I retire!!! But on a positive side, gas is down to under $2.40, which is unbelievable considering it was nearly double just a few weeks ago!!

On a more personal note, M's parents came up for a weekend visit, and M and I had a movie date ("Changeling," which I give 4 stars, but don't recommend to anyone with small children because it will make you SO SO SAD and paranoid). I also bought a really fun hat! Having headed to the mall in search of black, flat shoes with an ankle strap, I returned home sans shoes, but with a super cute brown bowl hat. And yes, I did finish Taltos, a remarkable letdown by Anne Rice. I am now onto George Eliot's Middlemarch because I need to clean my mental palate, so to speak, after Taltos, but I think I might put that aside for some McEwan.

As for the moment at hand, tonight I am very excited about the Country Music Awards!! I think Kenny Chesney and Sugarland will perform, so I am very happy. A few weeks ago, when the VMA's aired on MTV, I had a quarter-life crisis when I realized that besides Britney Spears and Mariah Carey, I had no idea who the majority of the performers were. I didn't know the songs, I didn't know the singers' names, I felt like an old biddy!! That was when I started listening to more hip hop in the car to make up for my exclusive country habits, and now I feel more confident about my contemporary culture knowledge, but I'm still 100% sure that I will know most of the people at the CMA's, because that's just the country bumpkin I've become.

What a week [will] bring

I have neglected my "What's in a week" series, and too much has happened in the past month to write about it right now, but a quick thought process about what MIGHT happen within the week to come.

In a week, we will know who the next president of the United States will be. God willing, we will make the right choice. Everyone always bitches about WHOEVER winds up being president, and I have no high hopes of the next 4 years being smooth sailing if Barack Obama wins, but I harbor deep-seated fears if "that [other] one" (how you like 'dem apples, John?) wins. He won't though. He can't. Can he?!? Oh God.

Moving on before I have an anxiety attack.

Oh wait, one more thing - In a week we will also be voting on all of those "props" that have been constantly in seemingly every commercial on the radio or on TV. Of course, the one everyone is talking about is Prop 8. Why are we voting on this, what is the purpose? We have already voted on, passed, and put into practice legal gay marriage in the state of California. Who are these people that suddenly decide that one vote is not enough, that we must keep voting and re-voting and re-re-voting because they don't like the way people have voted before on a human rights issue? Does this mean that given enough support, we may one day see on the ballot Prop whatever, asking that we amend women's right to vote? What if someone woke up and said, hey, I think a hundred years ago or whenever, they had it right, and black people should only count as a fraction of a person when casting their votes. Should that be allowed on the ballot, even though we have clearly made equal voting rights a human right for everyone a long time ago? How is marriage any different than voting rights? Everyone has the right to vote, to speak, to pray, to protest, to do all kinds of things! Why not marry? And why are religious groups the ones most against this? For Christians, doesn't Jesus tell us to love EVERYONE? Isn't he a defendant of the misrepresented, the marginal, the outcast? Isn't his first miracle performed at a wedding? Why should gay people not have the privilege to enjoy this greatest of human self-imposed misery? The thing that most irks me though is this insane propaganda for Prop 8 that tries to terrify us by using the oldest and lamest trick in the book - "the children." Oh, God, the children! If Prop 8 does not get passed, our children will be forced by their public school teachers to listen to endless propaganda about homosexuality. They will be corrupted! They will turn away from Jesus! They will all become homos and whores! I exaggerate, but this is the innuendo in these ads. I mean, what in the name of all that is holy? When did we EVER talk about "marriage" in elementary school? I don't remember a SINGLE time when we talked about marriage AT ALL unless it was "oh Pocahontas married so and so." Even during Sex Ed no one mentioned MARRIAGE. I highly doubt that if Prop 8 is defeated, suddenly PUBLIC, GOVERNMENT-FUNDED SCHOOLS will all of a sudden include curriculum about GAY marriage, let alone any kind of marriage. It's so sad really that this is even an issue.

In a week, I will have finished this most obnoxious book, Taltos. I don't know what possessed me (ha!) to pick this up. I had sworn off this book after reading Lasher last summer... Oh! It was listening to Blackwood Farm on CD during our long drives to/from L.A.! You see, that books combines the Vampire Chronicles AND the Mayfair witches! AWESOME! But thank goodness we are LISTENING to it and not READING, because I may have actually thrown the book at the wall, Anne Rice is SO annoying in her portrayal of Taaaarquiiiiinnnn Blaaackwoood. Let's out it this way, we are on disk 15 of 18, and we STILL have no gotten to the CORE of the novel!! Anyhoo, listening to BF on CD made me really curious about the gap between Lasher and BF, so I finally gave in and checked out Taltos from that haven of mine, the Mountain View Public Library. The first 200 pages were FABULOUS! I felt SO redeemed! There was character insight, interesting plot turns, short scenic descriptions, teasers, sex, the whole shebang. Now, smack in the middle of the book, it has gone incredibly sour. I should have known when I caught a GARRISH mistake on Rice's part -- on one page, the character Mona decides to drink orange juice instead of coffee, we even get a description of what the oj tastes like (so Rice!) and on the VERY NEXT PAGE, the character (Mona, the slutty 13 year old pregnant with her mentor's husband's baby who may/may not be a Taltos, a non-human giant) sits at the breakfast table drinking COFFEE! Then, in the very next paragraph, she is back to orange juice. Tsk, tsk, Anne Rice! I could have forgiven that, if the following chapters didn't deteriorate into a mindless mush. For some reason, my favorite character (aforementioned Mona) has become a complete idiot, and we have entirely lost track of the other, more interesting side story about the actual TALTOS, which gives the book its very title. Enough ranting about this bad literary mistake on my part, which I nevertheless will trudge through, and perhaps award myself with some Didion once I am done.

In a week I will have survived my lover's first midterms in grad school! I may not be the one studying all the time, writing the papers, doing the projects, but it is very tasking to stand by helplessly as your loved one sells his soul over to the demons of academia. Oh, this also makes me miss school SO much. Tonight, I actually felt envy when I read his paper because I want to be writing them too. Even though those going through this right now probably want to slap me (and probably Dickens, as well!)

In a week I will have entered my second month of being "gainfully employed!" I am still settling in at work but I am quickly becoming familiar and comfortable there, and I think it will bring lots of good things.

In a week I will have watched almost the entire first and second seasons of "Desperate Housewives," living on my DVR at the moment. When one's boyfriend is in grad school, and one doesn't have homework of one's self, and one has developed a DH addiction while UNemployed, one begins watching DH at random moments! Now I have gotten to the point where Bree finally finds out that it was George who killed her trifling husband, Rex! And Gaby is upset that her husband has found religion instead of spending lots of money on her after his return from jail! Escandalo! I think another reason I like DH so much is that the show reminds me of my mom, because we used to always watch it together on Sunday nights last year when I lived at home.

Oh what, oh what, will a week bring? No drama, vote for Obama!! ;)