Besides Margi coming up preggers . . . an awful lot.

First of all, the continued rise of the Cotillion. I'm indebted to Beth, Jody, Janette, the American Housewife (and how much do I love that blog design? Ooh!), and Denita TwoDragons for totally covering for me during the move and linking my dumb stuff even though I wasn't available to submit it. It is not every woman who will do that for you, but then, these women, they are not every woman. Their milkshakes, they are better than yours. (And now they're all coming to kill me for saying that.)

Second of all, the Michael Jackson verdict. Well, I didn't really miss it, because I heard it on the radio (HOT 103!), but I missed whatever discussion there was on the internet about it, and THANK HEAVENS FOR THAT, and may I just echo Dr. Alice here?

Hopefully I'll never have to hear anything about this guy again.

A-MEN.

Oh but that reminds me . . . can I interrupt this for a short Hot 103 story?

Hot 103 is this sort of hip-hop station and they take a lot of requests, and they tend to get a goodly number of teenage girl callers, and the teenage girl callers, they get a little nervous about being On The Radio. (They should call Michael Savage some time; that'd cure 'em. Did I ever tell you about the time I called Michael Savage? No? Well, that has to wait; this is the Hot 103 call-in story, not the I-can't-believe-Ilyka-called-Michael-Savage story--although come to think of it, I can't really believe it either.)

Anyway. So the boyfriend and I are in the car listening shortly after I get here one night (and the poor boyfriend, he neither hips nor hops, but he was a good sport about the Hot 103; also, it IS my car) and the first request call of the hour, the DJ asks for the girl's name, you know how they do.

"What's your name, baby?"

And the girl goes "Uhhhhh . . ." but for like twenty seconds, which is a long, long time on the radio. And finally she comes up with it: "Chrissy!"

I got a bad feeling Chrissy struggles on those exams where you get extra credit just for writing your name in the upper right-hand corner, you know?

So a couple calls later, different girl, this one knows her name even, and the DJ does the standard thing before ending the call: "What station keeps you rockin'?"

And this girl, sounding completely terrified, cries, "What?!?"

I mean, it was an appropriate response if, say, the DJ had just said, "You know, your mom died today." It was not an appropriate response to "What station keeps you rockin'?"

Okay, maybe you had to hear it, but the boyfriend and I riffed on that one for hours:

"Station? I'm calling to order a pizza!"

"What?! Rocks? In my radio? Where?!?"

In fact we're still running with this, sadly. Today I called him and I had him on the speaker phone, so he didn't quite hear me when he picked up and I panicked, thinking he wouldn't hear me at all and would hang up, so I quickly snatched up the handset and shouted, "What?!?"

It turns out to be a really good all-purpose expression, is all I'm saying. He knew it was me right away.

Finally, the third thing I missed was the Terri Schiavo autopsy.

No, you shriek, talk about something else something else anything else la la la la la I can't hear you!

Of course you can't hear me, dummy--I don't audioblog. Hello! I would never inflict that on you. You have my solemn promise. And I'm sorry I called you "dummy." It just slipped out and I didn't mean it, I swear.

I like this excerpt from a post (found at Judith's) from Right Wing Nut House. Disclaimer: This author strikes me as neither particularly wingy, nor nutty:

. . . I hope we’ve all learned some valuable lessons. I hope we’ve learned how easy it is for this kind of ethical debate to be hijacked by those on both sides of the issue with personal agendas. I hope we’ve learned that if we’re ever going to come to a consensus that we must somehow learn to talk to each other rather than past each other. And I hope we’ve learned that whatever side of this issue you came down on, the person on the other side was not wearing horns and sprouting a tail or trying to enslave all humanity in some kind of theocratic nightmare of a world that would take away your access to internet porn or ban your Girls Gone Wild videos.

Let me do what I do best and take a minute to make this all about ME, because, hey, that's what "my side" was so frequently accused of doing anyway.

The tough thing about the Schiavo case for me was realizing that a fair number of my internet friends were taking pains to be tactful with me despite disagreeing with me about it.

Let me be clear: It's not that they disagreed; that isn't what bothered me. I can handle the disagreement. The painful part was realizing that there were people who disagreed with me who were biting their tongues about it.

And in fairness, I did my share of tongue-biting myself (well, not here. But most of the time). If I were a greener, more hotheaded young blogger, oh, the delinkings that would have ensued! It was damn hard not to get passionate about the whole thing. Yet knowing that it was just as hard for the people on the opposite side to stay calm didn't seem to help me one bit.

And it still doesn't, if you want to know, because I still think you were horribly, horribly wrong. I think this--

we must somehow learn to talk to each other rather than past each other

--was the first notion to go flying out the window.

See, we don't agree on the problem; thus we're bound to disagree on the solution. That's how "talking past each other" starts. You don't have to be Dr. Phil to figure that out, and in fact it helps if you aren't.

I don't think this was a right-to-die case. That makes it basically impossible for me to discuss it with someone who does think this was a right-to-die case.

What I'm left with is one thing: My country said it was a-ok to let a woman take thirteen days to die of dehydration and starvation, and here's what they asked from her as far as proof of her consent:

NOTHING.

I can't get anything in this life without signing something. Here, you try it. Go try to make a major purchase, register for a junior college class, renew a driver's license, file a change of address form, without anything in writing. I have to sign shit just to get a doctor to give me a fucking physical.

"Yes okay you have my consent to take my blood pressure and my temperature and do whatever other shit you doctors want to do, yes okay, that is why I scheduled this appointment with you IN THE FIRST PLACE." I have to sign that stupid form before I can even get behind the Magic Doctor's Office Door, the one you can only go in but can never come out because they gotta route you past the billing clerk and you need a different door for that.

I can't get anything without putting it in writing, and you can't either.

But your husband who's been married to you for less time than Tom Cruise was married to Nicole Kidman, that guy, he can take a couple of relatives with him to court, overrule the man and woman who gave you life in the first place by saying "It's what she would have wanted"--and dibbity-dibbity-dibbituh-that's all, folks.

No. I don't get that. I'm not going to get that. It is not in me to get that.

I've made my peace with the fact that some people think I'm completely off base on this, but it's conditional on the fact that I now think those same people are also completely off base on this, and, well, that's a bummer.

Then again, I'm neither hungry nor thirsty right now. That's one for the plus column.

Posted by Ilyka at June 18, 2005 10:53 AM in hell is other people