erica saves the day

Adventures in subway riding.

This morning I was reminded of why I both love New York and hate it at the same time. It’s 9am and I’m on the N train, late to work. I’m guessing most of the subway car is late to work too. I have yet to drink my morning cup of coffee. And there is this man on the train, with an accent like Kenneth’s from 30 Rock wearing high-waisted pleated pants, a fanny pack and baseball cap waaaay too high up on his head. And this man wants to talk to us. About Jesus.

As he starts pestering a poor Hindu man about how reincarnation is like jesus and whether or not they spoke English in India, the train began to go into a silent revolt. Ipod headphones went on. Backs were subtly turned. Eyes were rolled and silent chuckles rippled through the car every time this man stumbled while the train went around a bend. And eventually, after no one would take his materials and even his questions about the statue of liberty went unanswered, the man with the jesus pamphlets shut up.

So, New Yorkers, consider this a love poem. Because where else in the country would it be the friendly jesus freak who was treated like a pariah? Where else would absolutely no one feel the need to be polite to the bumpkin out of towner? Where else do even the religious not want to be preached to, especially not at 9am? Only in cynical, take-no-shit New York is where, and that’s why I love you. We will forever band together to ostracize those who feel the need to come up here from Kentucky and help us save ourselves from sin. Because you know what? This is our city. And no matter how many disagreements and fights we get into with each other, in the end it’s not, nor will it ever be, anything like Kentucky. And that’s exactly why we like it.

The Wall Street Journal wants you to sell your liver.

True to its free market ideology, the Wall Street Journal ran an op ed today by a Dr. Sally Satel on why we should open up the organ donation system to the free market.

Um, WSJ, what? This woman is like the Sean Hannity of the medical world — calling for an end to the “prohibition policy” on organs and warning that unless we start offering people cash, the already-short supply of spare kidneys will all but dry up. She also laments the closing of the donor door by countries – such as the Philippines – that richer nations had been mining for their spare body parts.

The good Dr. Satel, who by the way is the author of other such gems as “PC, MD: How Political Correctness is Corrupting Medicine” and “One Nation Under Therapy : How the Helping Culture is Eroding Self-Reliance,” also forgets to mention how a free market system would mean that only the rich could get organs, but you know, c’est la vie. Still, it is a little amazing that the WSJ would run a piece championing a view that “Unfortunately, most of the world transplant establishment [like the W.H.O.!!!] does not share.”

Oh wait. Stop, and insert requisite joke about new WSJ owner Rupert Murdoch just needing to buy an extra heart here.

Love is universal

This just made me cry, in the absolute best way possible.

Furthermore, in contrast to earlier times, our state now recognizes that an individual’s capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual’s sexual orientation, and, more generally, that an individual’s sexual orientation — like a person’s race or gender — does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights. We therefore conclude that in view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship, the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples.5

...But my hangover is for the *children*

There are some great wite ups of last night’s event — my favorite is the Grub Street headline:Taste of the Nation Marked by Uni, Trannies, Good Times. And you know what? They wrote that because there WAS a tranny there. On stage. All night. Eating a ham.

Why was she eating a ham? For the children, of course.

John McCain still has his left blinker on.

In defense of prostitution

In case you’ve been living under a state-controlled media dictatorship for the past few days or something and haven’t heard, Temeka Rachelle Lewis, the woman who worked as a booker at the prostitution service that Elliot Spitzer was a fan of, just plead guilty to charges of money laundering and promoting prostitution yesterday.

Now I’m totally anti-exploitation. And I’m anti-trafficking, anti-misogyny and anti-women-having-no-other-option-than-to-use-their-bodies-to-make-money situations. But goddamn it, these women were making more than I do. Sure, in some sense their bodies were being exploited. But you can’t tell me they were being forced into this, at least not in a literal sense (all overarching theories on how living in a patriarchy and growing up having your body sexualized affects your decisions aside).

And yes, it sucks (at least for me and lots of other women) that we live in a society where women can still make a hell of a lot more money selling sex than they can in most other jobs (link to pdf). BUT. If a girl wants to make a little cash by charging the men she sleeps with, who the hell is anyone else to stop her? And really, who is it harming? Most women regret at least 30% of the men they sleep with anyways, and everyone’s slept with at least one asshole (Ok ok, I know it’s not exactly the same thing).

I totally get why pimping women should be illegal — the whole beating women, taking their money and forcing them to do things part of it really turns me off. And I can even kind of see why buying sex might be outlawed, in the same kind of way that some blue-law counties won’t let you buy alcohol on Sundays. But really? You’re going to tell me if I want to sleep with someone and then ask them for some cash afterwards that I can then be arrested? The only difference between that and a girl dating a rich guy so that he’ll buy her things is that prostitution is less passive aggressive.

NYT article on parking is kind of like listening to your dad tell bad jokes at a dinner party.

I don’t know if this article appeared on the front page of anyone else’s New York Times, but it sure graced the cover of mine this morning, right below the fold. Granted, I do live in Park Slope. But I’m pretty sure they don’t print special editions of the Times for various yuppified Brooklyn ‘hoods (although I wouldn’t be surprised).

Anyways, yes, the suspension of alternate side of the street parking is a HUGE deal for anyone that actually has a car in New York City (which, by the way means either you’re rich, masochistic, have been living in the city since the 80’s when parking was cheaper or just moved here from Ohio and will probably sell that damn thing soon). But really Michael Wilson? When you’re talking about how much time New Yorkers have to spend looking for parking, did you really have to say:

“And nowhere is this truer than in Park Slope, Brooklyn, named not for the ability to do just that — park — but for the kind with grass and trees, useless to drivers. Even on a good day, parking is scarce: No-Park Slope.”

Ugggh. You just *know* that at some point in the last year or so, he was at a dinner party. Someone had driven there, canme late, and used finding parking as an excuse. Everyone started agreeing how much parking in Park Slope sucks. Someone told the old “sixth day god created man seventh day Man had to move his car” joke that starts the article, and everyone laughed. And then Michael says “parking in this neighborhood is so bad this neighborhood should be called No-Park Slope!”

So if Michael Wilson is anything like my father, no one laughed when he told that joke. My dad’s strategy in that situation is to just keep telling the joke over and over, in the hopes that repeated subjection will somehow make it funnier. Michael Wilson’s strategy? Put it in the New York Times. Because with a readership of just over a million, goddamn it someone out there has to think that joke is funny. 

Side note — notice that Calvin Trillian is the only person quoted in the article without specifying his location (and, um, one of the few that wasn’t quoted while in a “dark bar” ?!?!). His quip? “Is it like a very, very long Jewish holiday?” My guess? He was soooo at that dinner party too.