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Nov. 1st, 2003 09:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsittingstillOkay, this is such an amusing idea I need to go with it too.
A Letter To The President
Dear "President" Bush,
I don't want to be protected from gay marriage or pornography, thanks very much.
There are some things I *would* like to be protected from, though, as long as you're in the mood. By great good fortune, some of them are very close at hand for you and should be no trouble at all to eliminate.
I would like to be protected from:
Election fraud, and in particular electronic voting machines a teenager could hack and which are produced by a company whose owner has sworn to deliver his state to the Republican party.
John Ashcroft and The Patriot Act and especially Patriot II.
Packing of the US courts with hard line conservative judges.
Dick Cheny, Paul Wolfowitcz, Donald Rumsfeld and the Project for a New American Century. And especially from hasty decisions to invade countries that haven't attacked us and aren't going to. And *especially* from even hastier decisions to lie about the need for the above.
The two top Administration officials who exposed a CIA operative. (What are you messing around with secretaries and janitors in the State Department for? Pick up the phone and call your *top* staffers and ask them point blank.)
The proposal to use "smart" stamps to track the senders of every single piece of personal mail.
Now as I said--these are all close at hand and should be no problem. So next week, I'd like you to get started on protecting me from
People who talk on the phone while driving.
"Gift cards" whose money leaks out.
Telemarketers
The John Lennon song "Woman"
As a bit of truth-in-advertising that I expect you don't hear very much I'm just going to take this moment to tell you that even if you do protect me from all these things I probably won't vote for you. I'm sorry, but you've had your chance to demonstrate your ability to serve the country as President and you've succeded beyond my wildest nightmares.
Yours, respectful of the office, -Cat Faber
I wasn't sure how many trick-or-treaters we were going to get last night--we wound up getting maybe twenty in little trickles of twos and threes. One interesting demographic was that nearly all of them arrived by car. Okay, New Market is a small and spread out town, but it makes me wonder if more and more people are using their cars for *every* bit of travel.
Some of the kids arrived by bike (about 4). Most of these were not wearing costumes. I gave them some candy anyway, after first asking them what they were going as... but maybe next year I won't. I feel kind of cheated. I give out candy--that's my part of the deal as a grownup. But the kids' part of the deal is that they wear costumes. If you can't afford to buy one, it's perfectly okay with me to make a mask out of construction paper and string and pin a towel around your neck---but these kids didn't even *try*.
Hmpf.
A Letter To The President
Dear "President" Bush,
I don't want to be protected from gay marriage or pornography, thanks very much.
There are some things I *would* like to be protected from, though, as long as you're in the mood. By great good fortune, some of them are very close at hand for you and should be no trouble at all to eliminate.
I would like to be protected from:
Election fraud, and in particular electronic voting machines a teenager could hack and which are produced by a company whose owner has sworn to deliver his state to the Republican party.
John Ashcroft and The Patriot Act and especially Patriot II.
Packing of the US courts with hard line conservative judges.
Dick Cheny, Paul Wolfowitcz, Donald Rumsfeld and the Project for a New American Century. And especially from hasty decisions to invade countries that haven't attacked us and aren't going to. And *especially* from even hastier decisions to lie about the need for the above.
The two top Administration officials who exposed a CIA operative. (What are you messing around with secretaries and janitors in the State Department for? Pick up the phone and call your *top* staffers and ask them point blank.)
The proposal to use "smart" stamps to track the senders of every single piece of personal mail.
Now as I said--these are all close at hand and should be no problem. So next week, I'd like you to get started on protecting me from
People who talk on the phone while driving.
"Gift cards" whose money leaks out.
Telemarketers
The John Lennon song "Woman"
As a bit of truth-in-advertising that I expect you don't hear very much I'm just going to take this moment to tell you that even if you do protect me from all these things I probably won't vote for you. I'm sorry, but you've had your chance to demonstrate your ability to serve the country as President and you've succeded beyond my wildest nightmares.
Yours, respectful of the office, -Cat Faber
I wasn't sure how many trick-or-treaters we were going to get last night--we wound up getting maybe twenty in little trickles of twos and threes. One interesting demographic was that nearly all of them arrived by car. Okay, New Market is a small and spread out town, but it makes me wonder if more and more people are using their cars for *every* bit of travel.
Some of the kids arrived by bike (about 4). Most of these were not wearing costumes. I gave them some candy anyway, after first asking them what they were going as... but maybe next year I won't. I feel kind of cheated. I give out candy--that's my part of the deal as a grownup. But the kids' part of the deal is that they wear costumes. If you can't afford to buy one, it's perfectly okay with me to make a mask out of construction paper and string and pin a towel around your neck---but these kids didn't even *try*.
Hmpf.
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no subject
Date: 2003-11-01 03:31 pm (UTC)We got quite a few undisguised trick-or-treaters as well, which was dissapointing. But the ones that did dress up were cute.
Out of curiousity, what specifically about "Woman" do you dislike? I admit it's not one of Lennon's *better* tunes, but I never found it especially objectionable either.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-03 05:06 am (UTC)"Woman I hope you understand the little boy inside the man" Okay--everyone has a little child inside--but don't you have *any* original way to put that? Why does the little boy inside the man matter--is there something he wants from her he isn't getting? Is there something he did to her he needs to explain? What?
"Woman, I can hardly express my deep emotions at my thoughtlessness" (I think). Deep emotions? What emotions exactly? My deep pleasure? My poignant shame? "I'm very sorry I hurt you" at least has the advantage of being direct and forcefull instead of floating belly-up in the tepid ocean of vague.
"I love you, yeah yeah; now and forever" I'm not even sure how to punctuate that, which is a bad sign. This is, IIRC, the bridge--the musical balance point of the song that is also supposed to move it forward. Please, please, please could we have *something* memorable here. There's nothing wrong with love songs, really there isn't--and if this line were some sort of stark contrast in its simplicty to the rich image-filled lyrics elsewhere in the song it might even come across as deeply sincere (though I'd lose the "yeah yeah"). But it's just more of the same.
Even the form of address he chooses in every verse "woman"--he's not speaking to someone in particular, is he? Or if he is, he never bothered to learn her name, which suggests that those deep emotions can't run all that deep.
Pop songs tend to be bland and generic, I know. (Terrence Chua did a great take-off of that in the Consuite at OVFF, as a matter of fact) But "Woman" carries it to an infuriating extreme. It would be funny if I thought it was deliberate.
Some people must like the song. It got a *lot* of airplay when it first came out. But it's not to my taste.