Boycott!

Why I will never, ever, buy Charmin. Even if it's on sale.

Just fucking disturbing. 

In Which I Twitpic Midnight Mass

So I was raised Catholic. I went to church every Sunday. I was baptized. I took part in the annual Christmas Eve pageants, and wrote award-winning essays about the meaning of the Christmas Star. I wore a tiny wedding dress to my First Communion. I even went to confession.

When I got to be about 13 years old, I started thinking for myself. I decided I was over it. Church didn't really do it for me. I eventually stopped going. I stopped praying. I started questioning.

I haven't been to church in about 10 years, but for who-knows-what reason, this year I thought Christmas Eve midnight mass at the Los Angeles Cathedral sounded like a good time.

Minus the part about having to get there over an hour early to secure seats, it started out OK. Kids everywhere, news cameras, and police directing traffic outside.

The mass ran like a machine. Always flowing, perfectly choreographed. Songs of praise, sung by a chorus of 5,000, echoed throughout the enormous, modern hall. It was sort of beautiful, and I couldn't fucking stand it.

By the time we had praised God and begged for mercy and proclaimed our unworthiness more times than should be legal, I was ready to flee. I stayed just long enough to hear Cardinal Roger Mahoney's Christmas homily- a full 20-minute commentary on the importance of being obedient and servant to God. No talk of peace, love, acceptance or compassion for our fellow beings. Just obedience.

When I could no longer stomach the call for faith, and after watching an aisle full of folks miming the placement of cash into the overflowing collection baskets, I left.

Now, before you get all "you're going straight to hell and don't you even dare look over your shoulder" on me, let me explain my thoughts.

I believe in love, peace, acceptance and equality, and I believe in Jesus. I believe he was a controversial philosopher, a man who brought about a new way of thinking in a time of violence and opression. He was a Ghandi, a Mother Teresa, a Saint. He walked the Earth as a man of incredible wisdom and light. But he did not walk on water.

I accept your beliefs. If you want to go with the whole Jesus Christ, son of God, born of immaculate conception in a stable surrounded by glowing angels and goats, that's fine with me. But Holy Crap. This spectacle we call religion is insane.

If you follow this blog, you can probably guess the political connections I'm making in my head here. This is the part where names like Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly start popping out of my mouth along with words like "evil" and "imaginary friend for adults." I'm not going there today.

Today I'm sharing my TwitPics.

Organized Tea Parties Protest Something...but what?

Fueled by Republican party organizers and the "fair and balanced" gentlemen over at Fox News, thousands of Americans took to the streets yesterday to protest increased taxes initiated by President Obama. The event coincided with Tax Day, and took it's inspiration from the infamous Boston Tea Party of 1773, in which colonists threw cartons of newly taxed tea into the harbor.

Of course, we all have a right to protest. I've protested wars, propositions, and the passage of propositions among other things. I appreciate that Americans are at least standing up for what they think (or what Fox News thinks) is right. But I think it's time we got the facts straight here.

Finding a list of grievances associated with this call to rebel has proven to be a tricky task. Here's the best I could do, from FreedomWorks...

Whether it’s this latest housing bailout bill (the second in less than six months), a bailout for the auto-industry or failed banks, the more than $1 trillion sham of a “stimulus” bill, or the $400 billion omnibus spending bill that Congress is now debating, Americans are sick and tired of their hard-earned money being thrown around.

Ahem.

Let's not forget, Bush initiated the bailouts.
With the announcement of his $700 Billion bill, Bush said, "I'm a strong believer in free enterprise, so my natural instinct is to oppose government intervention, but these are not normal circumstances. The market is not functioning properly. There has been a widespread loss of confidence."

While the massive economic bailouts do nothing to help our national debt, they are a necessary evil. Bush, Obama, Congress, the people- nobody wants to give away that much money. But in a state of economic crisis, it is a radical move aimed at curbing a national emergency. Bailouts have saved jobs, homes, and retirement funds.

The Stimulus & the Spending Bill
Here's the thing. Without Government help, thousands of businesses would be forced to shut down. That means thousands of people lose their jobs, and lose their income. Maybe they lose their homes, maybe they can't afford to feed their families. So if the President spends a few bucks to keep the general population afloat, I can't see what the problem is. The spending bill was full of earmarks, and what some would call "pork."
Yes, some of the money will get caught up in the political games played by legislators and statesmen, but most of that money indirectly helps US. It fixes our roads, it feeds the homeless, and it keeps America, well, stimulated.

And FYI...
Obama just CUT TAXES for nearly all Americans. Most of the working class is already keeping more of their paycheck than they have in the past. The only class who will be forking over more are the wealthiest among us. If anyone, shouldn't they be protesting?

This whole Tea Party idea seems to have little to do with taxes, and more to do with causing a scene. Signs across the country yesterday had to more to say about Obama "sucking Saudi's jewels," and being a "babykiller" than raising taxes. See The Huffington Post's slideshow: "Ten Most Offensive Tea Party Signs."

Here's something to consider...Obama's Presidential approval rating continues to climb. A New York Times/CBS poll also finds that "almost three-quarters of Americans think it is a good idea to raise taxes on people making more than $250,000 per year. In fact, two-thirds of Americans think the tax code should be changed so that middle-class Americans pay less than they do now and "upper income" people pay more."

A final thought- let's remember what got us so deep in the red to begin with- a pointless and unsuccessful war.

Photo Credit: The Los Angeles Times

The Creepiest Twitter @reply Ever Received

So my cable has been out for two days. I've twittered about it. The cable company apparently employs one TwitterMan to search updates for anyone talking about their company. This TwitterMan is now all over my tweets. Here, his latest:

The "Phenomenon" of Tipping

BBC has a pretty interesting article written by a British journalist about the U.S. custom of tipping for services.

Now, from personal experience, I can tell you foreigners definitely seem confused by the whole "what to tip" question. But that doesn't mean I'll give them any worse service. I may try to trade a table or two, but I'd do that with some of you Yanks too. Call it ageist, call it sexist, whatever you'd like. But when a server sees a table of four women over 80 sitting in their section, he's running for the hills. You may be the sweetest woman in the world, but your $3 tip on a $75 bill for a two hour meal is not enough to convince me that I want to take great care of you.

But I digress. Read this article. The author writes,

"Americans think it is the most natural thing in the world to pay for a service, at the point where you receive it, person-to-person. First, they reason, it keeps whoever is doing the serving on their toes."

He continues,

"A young man in Jackson, Mississippi, once recognised my accent: "Like the Beatles, right?" he said and asked nervously if I knew about "the tipping thing".

I confirmed that rumours of it had reached our side of the Atlantic, but had been received with widespread disbelief."

Now, to his credit, the author does point out that this whole thing is probably based on the fact that Americans are paid far less in service industry jobs, and therefore live on tips. This is true. In California, a server gets paid minimum wage- $8.00/hour. However, an ex-New Yorker tells me he earned somewhere around $2.50/hour in his brief restaurant gig. And according to the U.S. Department of Labor, any employee who is tipped more than $30 in a shift, needs only to be paid $2.13/hour by their employer.

Read that again. Two dollars and thirteen cents. Now, from what I understand (and readers, correct me if I'm wrong), an employee in Britain is paid the Living Wage of 5.53/hour (pounds of course). That's not a lot- it's around $7.70/hour. But it's a definite improvement over $2.13.

The point here is, tipping at a sit-down restaurant IS customary in the U.S., and should be expected when traveling to this country. In Hawaii, it's customary to take your shoes off before entering a home. I can follow that. In Europe there's a lot of air-kissing, whether on two cheeks or one. I can handle that one too. In some parts of Asia, it's customary to present any host with a small gift. So what's wrong with following this tradition as well?

The point of going to a restaurant is to receive service. You eat out so that you don't have to refill your own beverage eight times, retrieve your own ketchup, then ranch dressing, then more bread, then extra napkins, then clean up after yourself. If you are frequenting an establishment specifically for the purpose of getting served, then tip your server.
They work hard, running circles around you to fulfill your every need. They often have kids and families to feed, just like you. They may be from another country, trying to fulfill a dream. They may be a college student trying to pay the way through school.

It's my personal belief that if everyone had to work as a server for just one day, there would never be a bad tip left again. One comment on the BBC article was from a woman who wrote about a restaurant where "the food was so bad, I couldn't leave a tip."

So, what does that have to do with your service? Feel free to complain about your food. You'll probably get it taken off the bill, or at least discounted. But in that case, your tip should only be bigger. Your server is not your cook. He didn't come up with the recipe. Why is he punished? By the way, in punishing him, you've also punished the bussers, the bartenders, the expediters, and the hostesses, all of whom share in a server's nightly take.

One final thought here. Watch the movie "Waiting." Yes, it's disgusting, but it's actually pretty accurate. Well, not the part about the dandruff on the steak. But really, why do you want to mess with the person who controls your food on the other side of the kitchen door? You don't.

Photo credit: Evoke Photography

Worst Advertising Trick Ever

I love MSNBC, and not just because Keith Olbermann is one the network's stars. I make it a point to visit the site every morning for intelligent writing and headlines from around the globe.

But MSNBC's site is chock-full of terrible, terrible advertising. It's generally easy to avoid- I'm not about to click a flash graphic advertising mortgage refinancing on the side column (or a "Free Government Grant from Obama").

But MSNBC has recently started a new advertising campaign utilizing keyword links that open pop-up advertisements. For instance, in an article about American Idol, a sentence reads, "The March 5th wild-card show is sure to save some of them," with the word "save" hyperlinked.

Like a fool, I clicked the hyperlink, thinking I'd read an article about how the wild-card round works. Nope. I got on ad for Dove Body wash. I like to think of myself as being pretty net-savvy, and I was tricked! For some reason, this made me irate enough that I had to blog about it. It just makes me wonder how many people actually get the Dove Body Wash link and think "oh sweet," then click through to the product's site. Obviously somebody is doing it, or it wouldn't be worth the company's money to buy the ad. Ugh.

All this advertising trickery makes me feel dirty. Perhaps I do need some creamy Dove body wash after all.