8: The number of justices GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry thinks the Supreme Court has. Whooooooooooooooops.
He also could not remember the name of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of the nine justices who comprise SCOTUS.
Dude's a full-tilt wrong machine.
Josh Voorhees at Slate found a great quote from Anita Perry, the First Lady of Texas, on her husband's gaffe-prone fartbrainery: "I pray for him to have strength and wisdom and for the right words to come out of his mouth and to be patient because we're not on his timetable, we're on God's timetable."
If I believed in god, I'm pretty sure my estimation at this point would be that god doesn't want Rick Perry to be president.
Number of the Day
I Write Letters
Dear Parks & Recreation:
I love you. That is all.
Wait, no, that's not all. I LOVE Amy Poehler's character, and not just because she's an earnest feminist foolishly optimistic do-gooder in Indiana with a picture of Hillary Clinton on her office wall, which I admit has a certain familiarity to it. I love that Leslie was allowed to choose her ambitious career over a man who was genuinely good for her, which I have never seen, ever, on any show.
I LOVE Rashida Jones. She is heartbreakingly beautiful, but she is given the opportunity to be sooooooo funny. (And she succeeds! I love her!) I love that Leslie and Anne are such good friends, and that they are both allowed to be totally cool ladies in totally different ways.
I LOVE Retta. I love that Donna doesn't exist to be the butt of fat jokes. I love that she is fat and stylish and sexy, and that she gets laid! A lot! I would love for her to be in the show EVEN MORE!
I LOVE Aubrey Plaza. I love April's relationship with Andy, and her interactions with Ron. Is there an Emmy for Best Eyeball Rolling? There should definitely be an Emmy for Best Eyeball Rolling, and it should be given to Aubrey Plaza EVERY YEAR. Forever!
I LOVE that I have already written about four major characters, and THEY ARE ALL WOMEN. I would like to mention here that I love BOTH of the Tammys, and Joan Callamezzo, and Marlene Knope (OMG Pamela Reed where have you been?!), too.
I love Tom Haverford (Aziz Ansari). I love Andy Dwyer (Chris Pratt). I love Jerry Gergich (Jim O'Heir), and I love that I know that his real name is Gary and that even though everyone picks on him, he has the best life and a huge penis. I love Chris Traeger (Rob Lowe). I love Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman), almost as much as Butch Pornstache does.
I love Ben Wyatt, who is played by Adam Scott, who used to only play jerks and I wasn't sure I'd like him as not a jerk, but I love him so much. I love that Ben is never mean to Leslie, and respects her and admires her. I love that he owns a Batman costume, and apparently a button-maker.
And I love Li'l Sebastian.
I love watching a show that's about nice people (who sometimes fuck up), trying to do the right thing. It makes me blub pretty much every week. I love that, too.
Thank you for the best Thursdays, Parks & Rec.
Love,
Liss
P.S.
Daily Dose of Cute
Zelda has been with us just over four months now, and she's doing really well. She's so settled in as part of our family, I can't believe it's only been four months.
As she's gotten more comfortable, it's become clear she's more anxious than I originally thought. That might seem counter-intuitive, but she's not as shut down as she was when we first brought her home from the pound, and allowing herself to express her emotions has revealed her insecurity, too. She wants constant reassurance that she's doing the right thing and is safe and valued, and I'm forever navigating that thin line of validating her place in our family without encouraging anxiety.
She's much more independent now, and many of her other anxieties are falling away. We can touch her paws, and hold and stroke them, although we're still not quite able to trim her nails yet. She's great in the bath. She's increasingly playful with us, even though Dudley is still her favorite playpal. And I think he always will be, which is just fine with us.
Her new favorite game with me is to follow me into the kitchen, prompting me to turn around and chase her out with a finger pointed to the door. She scurries out, then comes in halfway; I chase her out again. She pokes her head in, grinning. I run out after her: "I'm going to get you, Bad Dog!" She flops on the carpet, belly up, tail wagging, and awaits her ticklish fate.
Zelly Belly, at home.
Quote of the Day
[Trigger warning for rape culture.]
"We were surprised that participants identified more with the rapists' quotes, and we are concerned that the legitimisation strategies that rapists deploy when they talk about women are more familiar to these young men than we had anticipated."—Dr. Miranda Horvath of Middlesex University, lead researcher on a study to be published in the British Journal of Psychology, which found that "when presented with descriptions of women taken from lads' mags, and comments about women made by convicted rapists, most people who took part in the study could not distinguish the source of the quotes."
[Horvath also noted:] "These magazines support the legitimisation of sexist attitudes and behaviours and need to be more responsible about their portrayal of women, both in words and images. They give the appearance that sexism is acceptable and normal - when really it should be rejected and challenged. Rapists try to justify their actions, suggesting that women lead men on, or want sex even when they say no, and there is clearly something wrong when people feel the sort of language used in a lads’ mag could have come from a convicted rapist."This is a perfect, horrible example of how the rape culture works: Mainstream straight men's magazines normalize the narratives of the rape culture using language indistinguishable from that of actual rapists, which not only communicates to sexual predators that their predation is normal (functioning the same way as rape jokes), but inures the rest of the male population to the horror of sexual violence and encourages sympathy with predators rather than victims, thus creating a culture disinclined to believe victims and hold predators accountable.
Dr. Peter Hegarty, of the University of Surrey's Psychology Department, added: "There is a fundamental concern that the content of such magazines normalises the treatment of women as sexual objects. We are not killjoys or prudes who think that there should be no sexual information and media for young people. But are teenage boys and young men best prepared for fulfilling love and sex when they normalise views about women that are disturbingly close to those mirrored in the language of sexual offenders?"
He added that young men should be given credible sex education and not have to rely on lads' mags as a source of information as they grow up.
Anna van Heeswijk, Campaigns Manager for OBJECT, a human rights campaign group which campaigns against the objectification of women, said: "This crucial and chilling piece of research lays bare the hateful messages which seep out of lads' mags and indoctrinate young men's attitudes towards women and girls. When the content of magazines aimed at teenage boys mirrors the attitudes of convicted rapists, alarm bells must ring."
Frequently, people who object to the notion of the rape culture misunderstand that critics of the pieces of the rape culture, like objectifying lads' mags which undermine the concept of consent, are arguing: "Lads' mags cause men to rape."
That is not what I am saying.
What I am saying is that the misogynist content of straight lads' mags normalizes the attitudes and narratives that rapists use to justify raping women—and that as long as men who aren't rapists share those attitudes, they are much less likely to convict rapists, because to do so feels like indicting themselves.
[H/T to @scatx.]
A Different Kind of Snowbird
We get a lot of migratory visitors in Florida besides the tourists who come down to lie on the beach and get lost on the Palmetto Expressway. The flock also includes the avian kind, like vultures.
On roofs, treetops and buildings they lurk: dark, foreboding, ravenous.And, if you look very closely at the center of the picture below, you'll see one that landed in my backyard, along with two others that are out of frame, to look for some lunch today.
These are snowbirds, but not the ones you're familiar with.
They're vultures on their annual South Florida migration. The nastiest of seasonal visitors, they poop, puke, raise a stink, and tear up property just for kicks. From October to March they soar overhead in lazy circles, aggravate neighborhoods and perch like gargoyles on high-rise buildings.
[...]
Once here, the ghoulish critters scavenge for an early-bird special of dead flesh: roadkill, trash, or even fish washed up on beaches. And they're well-equipped to handle their special diet. They vomit up pellets of unwanted bone and hair, and urinate on their legs to kill any bacteria from traipsing around in rotted carrion. Their bald heads allow them to burrow into carcasses without fear of germs infecting their feathers.
They travel light. All they need is a little carrion.
Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.
Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by snow.
Recommended Reading:
David: EPA Finds Fracking Contaminated Drinking Water in Wyoming
Ayesha: [TW for racism; Islamophobia; police statism] Why I Am Not Protesting at Occupy
Tami: [TW for racism; fat hatred] Fat Black Women Feel Too Good About Themselves
Ragen: [TW for fat hatred] The "Promoting Obesity" Myth
Andrea: [TW for transmisogyny; homophobia; disablism] Awkward Black Girl's No-pology to Transgender Fans and Allies
Aminah: All My Nerd Ladies, Put Your Hands Up
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
I Hate Everything, But This is Good News
I think I'm previously on record as really, really not being a fan of the Human Rights Campaign. I'm also not a fan of their Corporate Equality Index (CEI). It's not that I have a problem with all corporations-- I'm starting a job with one in a few weeks. It's just that it's going to take a lot more than acceptable policies on LGBT equality to give me a boner about Dow Chemical.
Despite both of these facts, the latest CEI contains some good news.
The number of companies (out of 636 surveyed) that provide insurance coverage for trans* people's medical care has more than doubled in the past year, to just under a third.
Unlike previous years, HRC's criterion was fairly realistic. Here's what it took to get the 10 points (out of 100 overall) for trans* medical coverage, companies needed to...
extend to transgender individuals [the following benefits] including... services related to transgender transition (e.g., medically necessary services related to sex reassignment):
* Short term medical leave
* Mental health benefits
* Pharmaceutical coverage (e.g., for hormone replacement therapies)
* Coverage for medical visits or laboratory services
* Coverage for reconstructive surgical procedures related to sex reassignment
* Coverage of routine, chronic, or urgent non-transition services (e.g., for a transgender individual based on their sex or gender. For example, prostate exams for women with a transgender history and pelvic/gynaecological exams for men with a transgender history must be covered.)
*Plan language ensuring “adequacy of network” or access to specialists should extend to transition-related care (including provisions for travel or other expense reimbursements)
The dollar maximums on this area of coverage must meet or exceed $75,000. [Emphasis original]
I'm skeptical of HRC, but that strikes me as a pretty fair criterion.
As I've written about at my [temporarily quiet] fundraising blog, even with insurance coverage, it's pretty difficult for many trans* people to afford any surgical care they may require. Because insurance coverage is rare and insurers are notorious for not providing surgeons with adequate compensation, those surgeons that are willing to work with insurance companies typically require payment up front. That $15,000 I'm raising? That's what I needed to raise with insurance coverage through New York State.
And of course, even with more and more companies enacting trans* friendly non-discrimination policies, all sorts of interacting bigotry still help ensure that trans* people are disproportionately un- and under-employed.
There's still plenty of rain for any planned parade. Still, a rainy parade is better than no parade at all.
--
H/t to the Twitterverse et. al.,
Crossposted.
Improvements
My house is vibrating again. And it's making my brain rattle around in my skull, which has the effect of reducing its function to a single thought: "This can't be good."
The street on which I live has been under construction now for more than two years. It's an "improvement project," but unless the street is paved with magical concrete that resists potholes and resurrects roadkill, no improvement could justify the nightmare that this project has been, nothing could make the headaches and inconveniences and interruptions in basic utility services worthwhile.
At this point, I'd be happy to be left with a dirt road if the construction would just go away already.
That would be an improvement.
We haven't been able to get directly to the main part of town for two years, having to drive 15 minutes out of our way to get somewhere that should take 5. Our sidewalks are trashed and dangerous, and they will not be repaired until at least next spring. One mailbox has been smashed and destroyed; the replacement box was uprooted and tossed on the lawn. Our electricity, internet, gas, and water are regularly turned off for hours at a time, deliberately or accidentally, mostly without any warning. We currently have no garbage service, and no mail service.
This morning, it snowed—and when Iain left for work, the construction crew told him that we would have to park our car "somewhere else until further notice." Where? There are no roads with shoulders near our house. This means we also can't use our garage, necessitating snow/frost removal each morning, and adding wear and tear to our car.
All of these things are inconvenient and annoying—but they are also costly. When one has to drive extra miles every day for two years at $3+ a gallon, that turns into more than just a cost of one's time. When we have to throw out spoiled groceries, when we have to replace our mailbox multiple times, when we have to fix the cracks in our plaster from the house-rattling work, when I lose worktime because I've got no electricity, when we'll have to replace our lawn from driving over it, when we had to spend thousands of dollars installing a fence because we have nowhere to walk our dogs anymore... This is more than an inconvenience.
We're spending an awful lot of money, in addition to the exorbitant property taxes we already pay (which have more than doubled since we moved into this house), to subsidize an "improvement" we neither wanted nor needed.
As I try to write, the house shakes, jarring my skull. The sounds of construction in the road filter in through the window. The beep beep beep beep beep beep beeping of reversing trucks is like a dozen digital gnats fighting a civil war in my ear canals. I breathe slowly and try to tune it out. It's an improvement project! Think of how improved everything will be!
The project was supposed to be done by now. But there have been two strikes, which caused significant delays in the schedule, since workers weren't immediately given the fair pay and benefits for which they were asking. There had to be negotiations and compromise and the usual rigmarole when people have the temerity to ask for living wages. No improvement there. Now they're working on weekends and holidays, making double time and a half, because the project is so over schedule. Thank Maude the state forced them to strike to bicker over pennies.
There are so many problems. There's no communication from the city government. There's no accountability. And now, the Democratic mayor has been voted out of office, in no small part because of the clusterfucktastrophe that is this project. People are angry. I'm angry. (Despite this, on Election Day, I tried to ride my bike to the polls, but I couldn't get there because of the impassable state of my street. Whooooooooops.) So she'll be gone soon, to be replaced by a Republican white dude who is a total garbage nightmare, who was straight-up sexist and racist to my face when he came campaigning at my door.
That's certainly not an improvement.
In the meantime, the project carries on. We have garbage piling up in our garage, nowhere to park our car, and no end in sight. And my brain continues to rattle around in my skull, a reverberating reminder of how much better everything will be totally definitely for sure someday.
Economic News Round-Up
Let's start in Europe, where the history comes from...
CNN Money—European leaders hash out crisis deal:
A majority of European leaders agreed early Friday on a new deal to try to resolve the continent's debt crisis, but some countries including Britain refused to back a broader treaty change.As a result of the news, stocks are up. For now. The rollercoaster continues in the Eurozone.
The 17 members of the eurozone, which share the embattled single currency, reached a deal for a new intergovernmental treaty to deepen the integration of national budgets.
Six other EU nations supported the deal. "We're doing everything we can to save the euro," President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said at a news conference in Brussels following a marathon summit meeting of EU leaders.
Iain and I were talking about the European crisis for a long time last night, and we were both lamenting the push for austerity in Europe, which will be just as ineffectual as it will be in the US, because it's not an economic solution; it's a deflection of accountability. Austerity is just a fancy name for the strategy of making poor people pay for wealthy people's mistakes.
Speaking of which...
The Hill—Dems' payroll tax cut extension goes down again in Senate: "Senate Republicans blocked the latest installment of President Obama's jobs plan—a bill to extend the payroll tax cut—for the second week in a row on Thursday. The bill, titled the Middle Class Tax Cut Act, was shot down 50-48. It would have cut the payroll tax paid by employees to 3.1 percent from the current 4.2 percent while funding itself by imposing a surtax on millionaires."
Paul Krugman in the New York Times—All the GOP's Gekkos:
Almost a quarter of a century has passed since the release of the movie "Wall Street," and the film seems more relevant than ever. The self-righteous screeds of financial tycoons denouncing President Obama all read like variations on Gordon Gekko's famous "greed is good" speech, while the complaints of Occupy Wall Street sound just like what Gekko says in private: "I create nothing. I own," he declares at one point; at another, he asks his protégé, "Now you're not naïve enough to think we're living in a democracy, are you, buddy?"The Hill—GOP seeks to cut unemployment benefits: "GOP leaders hope to build momentum for an end-of-year tax package with sweeping reforms to federal unemployment benefits. The Republican proposal is expected to reduce the total number of weeks unemployed workers are eligible for aid by as much as 40 weeks and tighten rules for eligibility."
...[T]he current orthodoxy among Republicans is that we mustn't even criticize the wealthy, let alone demand that they pay higher taxes, because they're "job creators." Yet the fact is that quite a few of today's wealthy got that way by destroying jobs rather than creating them.
Digby—Next step in our Randian dystopia: stigmatize the unemployed: "[J]ust as you can tell if someone looks like an '"illegal' you can tell if someone's likely to be a drug user. They're just looking for the 'bad people' who are stealing the money from hard working taxpayers."
And in Occupy news...
Greg Sargent: Winning the Argument.
CNN: Midnight deadline passes for Occupy Boston protesters to clear out.
WSJ: NYU to Offer Classes on Occupy Wall Street.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to leave links to anything you're reading and/or writing in comments.
Important Announcement
If I hear one more story about what evangelical Christians in Iowa think, I'm going to smash something.
I get it, I swear I do. Iowa is the first state in the nation to have a say about the presidential nominees. It's a caucus state, which AFAIK tends to skew results away from the center. Mike Huckabee won Iowa in 2008. There's a nasty rumor going around that Mitt Romney's not actually a bigot. So yeah, there are reasons why political horse race fans might care about what that segment of Iowa thinks.
But come on.
Iowa's population is somewhat below average. Even with the extra two votes every state gets just for existing, Iowa only has 6 electors (the average is 10.5, the median is 8). Iowa will get 28 delegates to the Republican national convention, out of 2288 total.
In contested races, the winner of the Iowa Republican caucuses has gone on to win the nomination three out of six times. So that's pretty impressive. I guess.
It's a forgone conclusion that the Republican nominee will be both horrible and religious even if a lot of Evangelicals think he's a heathen.
Could we talk about Florida? That's a huge swing state with an early primary. FWIW, I'll bet there are bigots there, too.
How about Ohio? It's a Super Tuesday state. It's in the rust belt. It highlights the whole 'what the fuck about the economy, assholes?' aspect of this election.
There's another reason I'm tired of hearing about pious Iowans. Yeah, out of all the Iowans who are Republicans, a reasonable fraction of those that plan on attending the caucuses are evangelical Christians. Fun, sexy times.
But while I'm no PhD in Iowology from Oral Roberts University, I have lived most of my life in the Midwest. I detect a certain strain of coastal elitism in the implication that Iowa goes with God.
I mean, only about half of Iowans are Protestant for fuck's sake. And it's not as if Iowa's solidly conservative. It's always had a typically Upper-Midwestern populist, progressive streak to it. In 1933, the governor had to call out the national guard to control rioters who were attacking banks (because, um, the banks were foreclosing on people's homes). Tom Harkin is one of Iowa's two US Senators. He's not Karl Marx, but he's not exactly Chuck Grassley, either.
I'm not arguing that Iowa's a super diverse (hint: it's pretty white) but it's hardly a wasteland of values voters narrow-minded religious bigots. And hell, my neighbor's the [TW] Third Eagle of the Apocalypse, and I live in New York.
Question of the Day
Earlier today, Portly Dyke and I were on the phone, laughing until we were wiping tears from our cheeks at Damn You Autocorrect! [note: not a safe space], a site that catalogs the unfortunate, and frequently hilarious, miscommunications resulting from the autocorrect feature on many mobile devices. This one is my absolute favorite:
"Well this has been a fun chat." Oh my god. LOL FOREVER.
Anyway! I thought digital miscommunications would make for a great QotD, so here goes: What's the most amusing and/or embarrassing miscommunication you've had as a result of autocorrect or a typo?
It doesn't have to be via text; a typo in an email or typed letter qualifies, too. And you could have been the recipient or the sender. Have at it!
Quote of the Day
"I don't think people like children being injected into controversies that are far beyond their understanding. ... An eight-year-old doesn't know what homosexuality is, nor should he or she!"—Bloviating fartsack Bill O'Reilly, scolding the mother of an 8-year-old boy who, earlier this week, told Rep. Michele Bachmann at a campaign appearance that his mother is a lesbian and doesn't need to be fixed.
O'Reilly is obviously a stupendous child psychologist and childhood development expert, absolute tops in his field, he probably has at least three different degrees from Smart Guy University, which is so exclusive you couldn't get in so don't even try, and I'm just some random knucklehead who happened to grow up with gay friends and friends with gay parents, but it seems to me that actually a lot of 8-year-olds do know what homosexuality is, and they find it to be orders of magnitude less controversial than 62-year-old straight men who make a fine living pretending to care about the well-being of children whose families he marginalizes at every opportunity to bring spiteful joy to the bitter homobigots he calls fans who are desperately concerned about their super-special relationships losing the shimmering, golden glow that only denying equality to same-sex couples conveys upon their gloriously gilded unions.
But, hey, I'm no expert.
Number of the Day
$2.2 trillion: The decrease in the the net worth of US households during the third quarter, "its biggest hit since the height of the 2008 financial meltdown during the third quarter. ... The decline comes to about $7,800 for every US resident."
Except, of course, the wealthy have lost more money on average, but less as a percentage of the net wealth. The poor, and particularly poor people of color, have lost less on average, but more as a percentage of their net wealth. If you've only got $300 in the bank, and then it's gone, that's quite obviously a much bigger deal than losing $300,000 of a multimillion dollar fortune.
An Observation
It's really amazing (not amazing) how often paternalistic kyriarchal bullshit used to justify controlling other people's bodies is called "common sense."
Daily Dose of Cute
Happy Accidents Edition: A picture of Sophs and a picture of Matilda, both of which did not turn out as I intended, but I still find cool nonetheless.
Signal Boost: Call for Submissions
In the spirit of caring and sharing or whatever, I thought I'd pass on the following call for submissions that a colleague just forwarded to me:
21 Peaceful Genders - No Boxes, No Bars, No Apologies
Edited by Doris J. Popovich and Jacqueline Boyd
Gender identity is an experience, not an assignment. If you are living this truth and can write about it, we want to hear from you. Together we can dispel myths, give hope to young people, educate peers, friends and family and provide an archive / mirror for our own complex gender expressions.
How do you live your peace while navigating the hetero-normative maze? 21 Peaceful Genders - No Boxes, No Bars, No Apologies embodies gender as a place of possibility. Help us cross-pollinate our species with hope. We welcome the edgy and artful, and treasure the peaceful resolution.
Submit original, unpublished Word or text file to
www.info@21peacefulgenders.com. 1500 word max. Deadline: 6/30/12. Paid in copies.
Goddammit, Part Two
[Trigger warning for reference to sexual violence.]
Yesterday I wrote about the Department of Health and Human Services' decision to overrule the Food and Drug Administration's decision to make Plan B available to anyone of any age without a restriction. Some people wondered if HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was acting on her own or with President Obama's approval, and there was some hope that Obama would direct HHS to back off.
Nope! And not only does the President support Sebelius' shocking move to limit reproductive rights, he is using his daughters to defend his failure to support choice.
"I did not get involved in the process, this was a decision of Kathleen Sebelius," Obama said, referring to the secretary of the Health and Human Services Department.Wow.
"I will say this. As the father of two daughters, it makes sense to apply some common sense," Obama said.
So rejecting science in favor of anti-choice hokum is now "common sense," and the best thing fathers can do for their daughters is restrict control over their reproduction. Awesome.
You know, I don't want 11-year-old girls having the need for Plan B, because an 11-year-old girl who has the need for Plan B is an 11-year-old girl who was raped. But in the imperfect world in which we live, where 11-year-olds are raped and made pregnant, often by the family members on whom they have to rely to get access to emergency contraception, the only real options are giving access to Plan B to 11-year-olds who need it and leaving those 11-year-olds with one less option.
Whether Plan B is available isn't going to change the facts of the world. It's only going to be yet another example of how we routinely consider tween girls simultaneously old enough to be sexual targets, and too young to be allowed to be sexually empowered.
As Shaker Meganology noted in comments: "The absolute only thing this regulation does is prevent [an assaulted] child from taking control into hir own hands by obtaining Plan B for hirself, if zie wants to."
Quite right.
That is, for the record, not "common sense." It's abandoning the most vulnerable children among us and condemning them to further victimization, because we're too uncomfortable with ugly realities to look them in the eye. Better instead to cover them with a veil of mendacious bullshit masquerading as concern.
"Oh noes, what if they take the medicine wrong?" Anyone who is more concerned about a pregnant child being hurt by contraceptives than they are about that child being raped, pregnant, and forced instead to undergo an abortion or a full-term pregnancy and delivery, is living in a silly, stupid, unserious bubble of self-deceit, and no one should listen to anything they have to say on the subject of reproductive rights ever again.
I've Got Your Old ID and You're All Dressed Up Like the Cure
I kind of love this piece by Kat Kinsman about how much The Cure meant (means) to her.
The Cure is a band that has meant (means) something to me, too: I listened to Boys Don't Cry on cassette until the tape was worn thin; it was the first album I owned on cassette that I replaced with a CD copy. The Cure concerts I saw remain some of my favorite shows, even though The Cure is one of the few bands I loved whom I never saw from the front row, whose members I never met.
There are lots (and lots) of bands I liked a hell of a lot, bands for whom I waited outside venues all day just to see their members show up for the soundcheck, bands about whom I thought I'd "literally die!" if I didn't see them every time they were in town, bands whose album covers and posters and t-shirts I treated like sacred artifacts. My Cure t-shirt I wore until it fell apart. Their posters hung on the walls of my bedroom, my dorm room, my first apartment, the corners tattered from thumbtack holes. The jewel case of Pornography has a crack straight down its front, from that time I stepped on it.
Something about The Cure felt less precious to me, and also more intimate.
Most of those other bands never even made it to my digital collection. The Cure is still in rotation.
[Related Reading: Old Fogey, FYI, Happy Birthday, Bob.]
