This will be my 20th first day of school – the 3rd and final year of my (/this) master’s – and I’ve been in bed for 2 hours without sleep.

This is not my first admission of this fact, and it won’t be my last: I have what can only be described as a lady crush on Emily Haines.  I’ve seen Metric … 4 (?) times now and each time I’m a little more blown away by just how cool she is.  Most of the bands I listen to have male front-persons, unfortunately, but I can safely say I didn’t know of any female artist that was just so unabashedly comfortable on stage.

Until Thursday.

Thursday was when I saw James Taylor and Carole King, and let me tell you: Carole King could teach us all a lesson about being cool.  She just is.  That 68 year old woman was leg-kicking and song-belting like crazy.  She looked at ease the whole time, but also like she was having the time of her life.  I walked in a fan, but I walked out in love.  The thing these two women have in common, in my opinion, is how it’s so apparent that this is who they are – it’s not an act.

I commented to Kate how simply she was dressed, but how awesome she looked.

—

Now I’m really pumped to read Girls Like Us, which has been sitting on my bookshelf for at least six months.

P.S. – My apologies for how many times I used the word, “cool” in this post, but there’s really no appropriate alternative.

P.P.S. – Emily, if you’re reading this, don’t worry.  You’re still my lady crush.

“A bunch of depressing new surveys reveal that people in droves are starting to believe that global warming is a hoax — and this time, it’s not just us. People are always accusing me of hating America and calling it stupid, so tonight I’d like to take a few moments to hate England and call it stupid. Because now English people don’t believe in global warming either. I thought the English were smarter than that. The home of Newton and Darwin. I can’t believe we let these people build our exploding oil platforms.

Even scarier is why people have stopped thinking global warming is real. One major reason pollsters say is we had a very cold, snowy winter. Which is like saying the sun might not be real because last night it got dark. And my car’s not real because I can’t find my keys.

That’s the problem with our obsession with always seeing two sides of every issue equally — especially when one side has a lot of money. It means we have to pretend there are always two truths, and the side that doesn’t know anything has something to say. On this side of the debate: Every scientist in the world. On the other: Mr. Potato Head.

There is no debate here — just scientists vs. non-scientists, and since the topic is science, the non-scientists don’t get a vote. We shouldn’t decide everything by polling the masses. Just because most people believe something doesn’t make it true. This is the fallacy called argumentum ad numeram: the idea that something is true because great numbers believe it. As in: Eat shit, 20 trillion flies can’t be wrong.

Or take this recent headline: “TV weathercasters divided on global warming.” Who gives a shit? My TV weathercaster is a bimbo with big tits who used to be on a soap opera on Telemundo. Media, could you please stop pitting the ignorant vs. the educated and framing it as a “debate.” The other day, I saw a professor from the Union of Concerned Scientists face off against a distinguished expert on Tea Partying, whose brilliant analysis, recently published in the New England Journal of Grasping at Straws, was that we shouldn’t teach climate science in schools because kids find it scary. As they should. I hope they’re peeing in their pants.

The last decade, year, and month are all the hottest on record. Then there’s the killing of the oceans, floods, Category 5 hurricanes, heat waves, giant wild fires, and the vanishing water supply. You know, the little things. And yet deniers say, it’s just a theory. As is gravity. For progress to happen, certain things have to become not an issue anymore, so we can go on to the next issue. Evolution was an issue until overwhelming consensus among scientists made it not an issue.

When I was 6-years-old, it was an issue how babies were born. There were conflicting theories, and there was not a consensus — some thought a stork brought babies, others contended you bought them at the hospital, the Catholic boys said the Holy Ghost brought them — and one kid said that girls had sort of a — as he described it — flap in front and that men put their penises in it. This seemed the least likely. And yet by the time we reached age 11, even though we still had, none of us, actually seen the flap — the consensus of opinion was overwhelming for the penis-vagina theory — it was no longer an issue.

Devastating, worldwide climate change is happening, whether you phone in and vote for it or not. You can’t vote for rain. What’s real is what’s real, and, like it or not, no one can change the nature of reality. Except, of course, with mushrooms.”

- Bill Maher

I slept (if you can call it that) on the couch because I was convinced I heard some sort of woodland creature in my bedroom last night.

a Trek 7.3 FX in White!!

I should be carrying it up my three flights of stairs by Wednesday.  Though it’s been fun riding around on the bike my dad bought me when I was 13, it’s time for a grown-up set of wheels.  The bike shop right next door was having a $50 off sale that ended 3 minutes after I ordered this puppy.  I’m PUMPED.

The article says that the options listed on the 2010 Census comply with the race categories set some 13 years ago, and won’t be updated for another 10 years.  In fact, the article even mentions that the current form includes the word “Negro;” How was this term not removed in 1997?  It doesn’t exactly give me hope for the changes that will be made in 2020.  In a country with ever-changing demographics, how can we possibly look at the results of these polls with any confidence in their accuracy?  So, what’s the point? 

Many, if not most, Hispanics in the U.S. think of their ethnicity (also known as Latino) not just in cultural terms but in a racial context as well. It’s why more than 40% of Hispanics, when asked on the Census form in 2000 to register white or black as their race, wrote in “Other” — and they represented 95% of all the 15.3 million people in the U.S. who did so.

After I heard this, I felt like it was the way the song was supposed to be done.

“stop it.” - me

“I wish I was lying.” - Petite

“you wish you were wearing it, is what you wish.

Is it going to smell like skunked beer and Axe?” - me

“Latex and chlorine” - Petite

“tanning lotion and cheap vodka” - me

“Second hand smoke and marinara sauce.

Ya know, work the ethnic angle.” - Petite

“you win.

you win with, ‘marinara sauce.’” - me