Thanksgiving Comes First (even if you want to tell the whole holiday season to suck it)

I'm writing this for my new friend, Suldog, who writes fabulous blog entries that I need a thesaurus to interpret but inspires me to be a better - or at least a more loquacious yet articulate - writer (like that?!).

Sully hates the fact that Christmas is now officially celebrated for a quarter of the year.  And I tend to agree, although for slightly different reasons.

It used to be when I was a kid that I looked forward to Thanksgiving for the pure reliable family traditions.  Every year, me and my mom, dad and brother would walk up the street to my grandparents' house for the yearly Thanksgiving feast.  The men would watch football while the women finished up the meal preparations.  Around 2:00, everybody would sit down to turkey, potatoes, cranberries, rolls and some kind of veggie/fruit jello mold thing.

To this day, Thanksgiving just isn't Thanksgiving without a mystery-fruit jello mold.

After dinner, everybody would lay around like giant slugs, maybe play a game of Scrabble or cards and then reconvene in the living room for pumpkin pie and the inevitable showing of The Ten Commandments or The Sound of Music on TV.

There was a lot of comfort in this familiarity.  Family spending time together before the advent of cell phones and Twitter.

The next day, you would start to see traces of Christmas here and there.  Christmas lights on the neighbors' houses, candles and poinsettias in church, holiday trees in the department stores.  Christmas had officially begun.

The sales circulars didn't show up in the newspaper until Thanksgiving Day.  It was fun to sit around after Thanksgiving dinner with a 10-pound newspaper and piece together an imaginary Christmas list.

But Thanksgiving always came first.

I don't know exactly when it started to happen, but Christmas started to creep.  Some years ago, I noticed that stores started to kick-off the season the day after Halloween.  And then it started before Halloween.  In a year or two, I imagine that we will start to hear Santa Claus is Coming to Town on July 5th.

This year, I admit, I haven't paid much attention to the holiday creep.  But now with Thanksgiving just around the corner, it's hard to ignore.  Something about being newly single again tends to make the holidays seem not so warm and fuzzy, and more like a axe hanging over one's neck.

Perspective changes everything.

To me it's not so much that Christmas is taking over, it's that I don't want to deal with the holidays... period.  How does starting it so much earlier sound like a good idea to anybody...except maybe Best Buy?

The holidays as an adult are tough as it is - parties you don't want to go to, gift-exhanges for people you don't like, forced jolliness, fruit cake.  Add into it the pressure to singly provide a fun and memorable holiday for a 11-year old when money is tight and your entire family lives 2000 miles away, and the holidays are downright frightening.

I'm not in the mood for the neighbors who never took down the Christmas lights from last year but turned them on the day after Halloween with a "look how on top of things we are, fuckers".

I don't want to hear Christmas music on the radio before Thanksgiving...or Halloween...or the first day of school.  It's bad enough to be depressed and flipping through the radio stations and have to deal with occasionally landing on the easy listening radio station that plays "all love songs all the time" - or as the newly single like to refer to as "stick-your-head-in-the-oven love songs".  But throw in deck the halls and chestnuts roasting and Frosty and I'm ready to forego something as elaborate as the oven and head straight to the George Foreman grill to see what kind of damage I can inflict there.  I'm not sure I know how to use the oven anyway.

Let's not move this shit up on the calendar any earlier than we absolutely need to!  Sheesh.

But there are things for which I am grateful and I will remind myself of those things on Thursday when everybody takes a break from a full month of Black Friday and gorges themselves on turkey and jello molds.

I am thankful for my amazing 11-year old daughter who, with one smile, makes me forget everything else.

I am thankful for my friend, B, who has had pity on me and invited the me and the Princess to Thanksgiving dinner because she knows that we are alone and I don't cook and I'm a vegetarian and the Princess should definitely not have to suffer without turkey and would likely be served Oscar Meyer processed turkey if we didn't go to B's.  (Note to B - shall I bring the jello mold?)

I'm thankful that the Princess's Christmas list has gone down from "everything in the Pottery Barn Teen catalog please" to a pair of Uggs and a new cell phone.

I am thankful that I have a job.  And that I have a job that only makes me want to stab myself in the eyeball with a fork about half the time.

I am thankful I have good friends who still love me even when I'm sad and anti-social.

I am thankful that I don't have any cavities.

I am thankful for my friend K, who let me cry on her shoulder even though she was 3000 miles away.  And then I forgot her birthday, making me the worst friend EVER.

I am thankful that I have my health and good shoes.

Even though I will likely only receive a hand-knitted slightly crooked Princess-made scarf for Christmas, I am thankful that I will be receiving a hand-knitted slightly crooked Princess-made scarf for Christmas.

And I am thankful that I know when I am coming dangerously close to insufferable self-pity.

So for me...no candy canes until after the tofu turkey.  No Christmas shopping until after the actual Black Friday (or the next paycheck, more likely).  No holiday music...ever.

I'm going to stop and be thankful.

And then I can be a Grinch.

"Touch my junk" and other reasons to feel better about the world in general

I was fully planning on sulking for a while longer, but then I heard the airport security tale of John Tyner.  And nothing will temporarily pull me out of a funk faster than hearing somebody bitch about TSA security processes.

In case you haven't heard, John Tyner - a software engineer from San Diego – chose to “opt-out” of the new and improved full-body naked airport scanners and was asked to submit to the new and improved full-body pat down by a TSA agent.  Mr. Tyner decided, that, no, he didn't want his crotch grabbed by a complete stranger, told them so and offered to go through the regular metal detector like most of the other passengers.  The conversation soon escalated and Mr. Tyner was told that he not only couldn’t board his flight, but also couldn’t leave the airport AND he was likely now subject to civil charges and a $10,000 fine.  Mr. Tyner left the airport.

The best part is that he recorded everything on his cell phone and now the phrase “touch my junk” can be inserted into polite conversation.  

Awesome!

You can read the first-hand account through this link.

Much like the Jet Blue guy who grabbed a beer and exited his plane via inflatable ramp, Mr. Tyner has received both resounding praise for his actions, and loud derision. 

I, for one, am a fan.

I started writing about my experiences with TSA at the San Jose airport back in September.  Back then – which I can now refer to safely as “the good ol’ days" – my biggest issue was continuously setting off the security metal detector with my underwire bra and having to face a friendly “back of the hand along the boobs” pat-down to ensure that I hadn’t stuffed an uzi or exploding breath mints in my bra.

Then it was the backscatter scanners – or the porno scanners as I've now heard them lovingly referred to.  I submitted (and I really can’t think of a better word here) to the new naked Kodak box in September and then was surprised on the other end, without warning or notice, with another friendly “back of the hand along the boobs” pat-down.  The TSA chick just reached and started working me over – although, truth be told, I DO have nice boobs.

Anyway.

Now, because somebody tried to ship something in a box…on a cargo plane…that was definitely NOT a passenger plane...TSA has been given permission to feel you up with the front of their hands.  They are allowed to reach until their hand "meets resistance", like your crotch or testicles or tampon string.  In other words – and as John Tyner implied – government-condoned sexual assault.  Where else in the world would you allow somebody to do that to you?  

I’m still waiting for somebody to coherently explain to me how cupping my breasts and taking naked pictures of me is going to make flying safer or stop bad guys from shipping bad stuff on planes.  Evidently, the porno scanners likely wouldn’t have even detected the underwear bomber's tighty-whitey bomb because the scanners are not good at detecting plastics, liquids or other low-density materials.  

I am, however, pretty certain that there will be a few TSA agents who like their jobs a whole lot more.

In TSA’s defense, there are some pretty awesome officers out there.  I've encountered several at security checkpoints in Oakland and, yes, even San Jose.   I didn’t want to like them – but they were nice and professional and didn’t show any interest in touching my boobs.  This, of course, is the quickest way to my heart.

In fact, the last few times I’ve been to San Jose, the big porno Kodak boxes have been unused and roped off.  I hope it stays that way.  I hope that the TSA receives so much flack on the issue that they have to let their expensive new toys sit and collect dust.  Maybe they can cover them with wreaths and tinsel for the holidays.  

Big, expensive, dusty Christmas trees.

Now THAT is something to cheer me up.

Jane is going to curl up in the fetal position for awhile but not forever

Sometimes life is fun and easy and sometimes it just sucks.  This is one of those times when it just sucks.

I'm sure that in a few days blogging will be a welcome distraction, but right now I got nothing.   I'm going to take a few and lick my wounds and will be back shortly.  I promise.

Try not to have fun without me.  

When hippies have a baseball team...

Baseball fever has struck San Francisco.  The Giants are in the World Series.

This has come as much of a surprise to most residents of the area who weren't really aware that San Francisco had a baseball team...or that there is a sport called baseball.

But they seem to have - after likely inhaling large quantities of pot - adapted quite well to the idea.

This is a city that prides itself on many things - the intellectuals, the liberals, the pot, the tree huggers, the techies, the arts, the pot, the environmentalists...the liberal intellectual tree-hugging art-loving environmentally-savvy pot-smoking techies...

When you ask your average sports fan to name the greatest sports cities, however, chances are San Francisco is not going to be at the top of the list.

After all, it's hard to swing a bat when you're high.  (Pitching is apparently an entirely different story.)

The city is exited about the Giants.  Everybody wears orange.  Giants flags flutter proudly from the back of the city's fire trucks.  Coit Tower glows with orange lights.

The local newscasters are giddy.  OMG, they have something to talk about besides shootings in Oakland and fog!

Now, I'm not a fan of the local news reporters anyway - we have one or two that would make Ron Burgundy jealous - but hosting the World Series has seemingly pushed them over the edge of reason and good taste.  Case in point...I watched a report the other night about the "cultural differences between Texas and San Francisco".  Right out of the box, the over-excited reporter deducted that the difference was, and I quote, "gays and pot."  Seriously...gays and pot?!  So on the flip side, did his Texas counterpart deduct that the difference was "steers and queers"?

He then went on to - not kidding - interview the homeless people on their thoughts on the Giants.  It went something like...

Reporter to homeless man:  So how about those Giants!  Are you a Giants fan?

Homeless man:  Dude, can you spare some change?

Reporter:  Have you seen lots of Giants fans out here on the street?

Homeless man:  Do you have any food?

Reporter:  Will you be heading down to AT&T Park to enjoy the excitement of the crowds during the World Series?

Homeless man:  Do you have any pot?

I wish I was kidding.

Candace got me thinking about the differences between the Ranger fans and the Giants fans.  Go here for her observations on deer antlers and the "claw".  Let's examine the San Francisco side of the story.

The panda hat.

Adults wearing stuffed bear heads.  This is homage to Pablo Sandoval, the Giants third baseman who is lovingly referred to as the "Kung Fu Panda".

I don't get it.  Pandas are fat and slow and don't do much except eat and shit.  Frankly, I think this is a uniquely west coast passive-aggressive way to make fun of the fat kid on the team...but who am I to judge?

My friend, S, who is my friend despite this look.

San Diego Zoo panda taking a dump...not exactly the symbol of stealth and speed

The beard.

At some point towards the end of the regular season, Giants pitcher, Brian Wilson, started growing a beard in solidarity or something stupid like that and dyed it shoe-polish black.  So Giants fans decided it would be fun and stylish to attach foam beards to their faces....or tape them...or glue them...or whatever seemed sensible after a bowl and a bag of Cheetos.

They carry signs that scream "Fear the Beard!", which, like the strange choice of the claw or the deer antlers in Texas, doesn't really seem to inspire all that much fear.

This really speaks for itself.

And I won't even go into the "Jersey Shore Fist Pump" dance that is featured between innings.  

I think it's fair to say that both cities have lost their fucking minds.  But in a week or so, Texans will remember that they actually shoot deer and San Franciscans will remember that foam beards are not biodegradable, and both will recover from their World Series hangovers and return to their roots.

Except by the time the World Series is over, pot may be legal in California and San Francisco probably won't remember any of it anyway.

Jane has baseball post-traumatic stress disorder

I haven't been around lately.  I admit it.  I've been a bad blogger.

It's all baseball's fault.  Stupid playoffs.

Baseball is an agonizingly long season.  My boyfriend, the Boy, leaves for spring training in February.  If his team sucks, he is done by early October.  Unfortunately, his team is pretty ok.  Which means that - depending on how far they go into the postseason - I don't get the Boy back until late October/early November.

This year they made it to the playoffs.  So my October has been a whirlwind of travel and baseball games.  I think I beat my own record this year with 5 games on two coasts in one span of 6 days.  Combine that with work and single-parenting and now the cold from hell and I think I'm officially brain dead.

My October has had the highest of highs and the lowest of lows.  I have enjoyed the obnoxious but mostly friendly fans of my team and the obnoxious but mostly angry fans of the visiting team (which is - mostly - how it should be).  I have been hugged and high-fived by some strangers and yelled at and flipped off by others.  I have had to explain new interesting words to the Princess.

I have flown across country in the middle of the night to get to the next game.  I have driven endless miles back and forth to the stadium.  I stayed up late and got up early.  Ate erratically, drank occasionally.

I had a blast.

I am officially exhausted.

But the Boy will be home soon.  And we can be exhausted together.

And since I'm tired and creatively brain-dead and have nothing really constructive to say at the moment anyway, I leave you with a picture I took this summer during my trip to LA.  It has absolutely positively nothing to do with baseball.

I give you George, my tranny Lego bodyguard, at the Hollywood monument to his hero.

George - overcome with bliss

Jane...out.

Dude, there's a big dead bear outside your store.

When I saw the title of Salt's most recent post, I immediately thought that she was writing about a bear incident that has been making the news in the Bay Area.

I was COMPLETELY off on this one (sorry Salt), but it made me think about this poor headline-making bear some more.

Click here for a link to the news story.

In a nutshell...

A guy walks into a meat market (sounds like the beginning of a great joke, right?) and mentions to the clerk that "Hey, there's a huge dead bear on the sidewalk outside of your store!".

And, sure enough, there was a huge dead bear on the sidewalk outside of the store.

It appears that the 300 lb black bear had been fatally shot in the shoulder and dumped outside the residential area market.

So how does a 300 lb bear end up in front of a meat market?

The Bay Area is just all aflutter with the possibilities.  Even though this is Northern California and we have lots and lots of bears and lots and lots of stupid people and it is bear hunting season, one of our crack local news teams called the Oakland Zoo to make sure they had all their bears.

Reporter:  OHMYGODTHERESADEADBEAROUTHEREDOYOUHAVEALLYOURBEARS?!?!


Zoo Representative:  Huh?


Reporter: BEAR! DO YOU HAVE ALL YOUR BEARS?!


Zoo Representative:  Yah, um, why again?


Reporter:  THERE'S A DEAD BLACK BEAR IN SAN LEANDRO!


Zoo Representative:  You know it's hunting season, right?


Reporter:  BLACK BEARS!  AGH!


Zoo Representative:  The Oakland Zoo only has Borneo Sun bears, sir.  We don't have any black bears.


Reporter:  IT COULD BE ONE OF YOUR BEARS....OH MY GOD WHAT A GREAT STORY IT WOULD BE IF IT WAS ONE OF YOUR BEARS!  "OAKLAND BEAR TRAGICALLY SHOT TRYING TO ESCAPE LIFE IN OAKLAND!"  OH MY GOD KATIE COURIC MIGHT WANT TO DO ME AFTER THIS!!

Zoo Representative:  We don't have black bears, sir.


Reporter:  GO COUNT YOUR FUCKING BEARS!


Zoo Representative to colleague:  Norma, please go count the bears.


Norma:  Why?


Reporter:  AGH!


Zoo Representative:  GO COUNT THE FUCKING BEARS!

Needless to say all bears in the Oakland Zoo were present and accounted for.  I can just picture them raising their arms one at a time as the zoo personnel called out the roll...

Zoo personnel:  Bob?


Bob:  Here.


Zoo personnel:  Sheila?


Sheila:  Yup.


Zoo personnel:  Ducky?  ((silence))  Ducky?


Ducky:  here


Zoo personnel:  What's wrong with you, Ducky?  Bob, you can put your arm down now.


Ducky:  nothin


Zoo personnel:  Ducky, did you have anything to do with the dead bear?  Bob, seriously, put your arm down.


Ducky:  ((silence))


Sheila:  Ducky ordered the hit.


Zoo personnel:  Ducky???


Ducky:  Shut the fuck up, Sheila!  Man, dude was an ASSHOLE!  Owed me MONEY.  DUMPED my sister.  Fuckah DESERVED what was coming.  He's TACO meat now, man!

That's one theory at least.

Frankly, my own personal opinion is that the poor thing offed himself after having to watch hours and hours of Meg Whitman / Jerry Brown ads for the California governor's race.  Lost his will to live.

I understand completely.

San Jose Airport Security - 5, Jane - 0

I'm going to vent for a moment and then I promise to maybe shut the fuck up about this for awhile.

Let me start by saying that I'm not an overly sensitive person.  I usually roll with things pretty well.  I don't get upset very often.  As a single mom, I've learned to be pretty tough.

But today, Friday, September 24, 2010, I admit complete and total defeat to the San Jose Airport TSA.

Since the unveiling of the new security equipment at SJC in June, I have passed through their basic security scanners 5 times.

And 5 times I have been subjected to a full-body pat-down.

Today, I went to the airport totally prepared....no metal, no jewelry, no belt, no watch, NO BRA.  Yoga pants and a tank top, baby!  There was NO chance that I was going to have to endure the pat-down.

The Princess and I waited in the security line for a good 30 minutes, made it past the boarding pass checker, and then waited another 5 minutes or so to load everything in the bins to pass through the scanners.

Only today, I was greeted by one of the new full-body backscatter scanners.  People, these things which have until now been just a vague future impediment - are now operational and way way WAY creepy.

For those of you who aren't familiar with our newest weapon in the war on scary underwear and exploding mascara, here's how this works.

You stand between what looks like two large blue refrigerator-size boxes, hold up your arms and freeze.  A x-ray type scanner takes a full-body (essentially naked) picture of you.  The image is reviewed by a TSA agent in another room who pinky-swears not to make a copy or take a picture of it with his or her phone and post it on Facebook.  Once the image is approved, the hidden TSA agent radios the TSA agent in front of you with the "go" or "pat the fucker down" signal.

The whole process takes a few minutes, holds up the entire security line, is completely and totally demoralizing...

...and, today, ended in a pat-down anyway.  Even though I had on me no metal, no jewelry, no belt, no watch, no bra.

So somebody I'll never see or meet saw me bare-ass naked today AND I got patted down anyway.  Without - I might add - notice or permission.  The TSA woman just moved in and started working me over.

I hate it.

I get that we need to have security to protect us from scary things.  I get it.

I know that TSA says that the full-body scanners are "optional".  But their definition of "optional" is full-body pictures or full-body pat-down.  I'm not sure which is worse.  The "option" is printed in tiny print on signs in the security area.  These signs also provide you an example of the image that the scanner takes....which is detailed enough to show if you need to lose a few pounds and are hiding it under a big sweatshirt, if you are Team Tampon or Team Maxipad, or - for the boys - if your penis is playing scared turtle.

For the record, this is not me

I've also heard anecdotally that TSA seriously frowns on passengers opting out of the scanners and treats those passengers to aggressive full-body pat-downs.  I don't know what an "aggressive" full-body pat-down entails, but I've had the regular kind and it isn't much fun.

So you submit and hope like hell that the TSA agent that you can't see is actually a decent, respectful human being, who is definitely not making copies of these naked pictures of you and your daughter so that he use them to spank the monkey in his basement later.

When these controversial scanners were first introduced by TSA, I remember thinking that it wasn't really a big deal.  Whatever.

But it is a big deal.  Maybe it doesn't bother everyone.  Maybe it's because I'm a female that it bothers me so much.  I do know, without a doubt, that the actual experience is completely and utterly humiliating.

I wish that I could avoid it by booking my flights out of one of the other two area airports in the Bay Area, but it is estimated that there will be 500 of these damn things operational in airports across the country in the next few years.  There's no getting around the future.  It seems that the future is 1984.

Big Brother is here and probably judging your muffin-top and penis size.

Just sayin.