Tank Gurl's Two Cents

I want to begin with gratitude. I live in a country that respects the opinions of every citizen, as much as we might disagree. I live in many communities, the gay community, the peace community, the liberal community, and I have found friends in all of these places. To live in a time when your own small voice can be heard by people living on the other side of the country, or the world for that matter, is something I never would have imagined when I learned to write all those years ago.

To meet friends that I've never seen is a wonder to me, and yet it happens everyday. Every day someone will stop by this journal and leave a comment, every day I can visit any number of friends and leave a comment. There is nothing that a writer wants more than for someone to read the words she has agonized over. I am so grateful that you, my friends, have decided to read mine.

I'm not leaving you, just re-locating. I've started a group blog called The Blue Voice. It will be mostly political, and you will find many friends there, people you know already, and people that you will want to meet. If you feel the need to see what other crazy things that have happened to me personally, you can check out Vapor Trails, that's where I will continue my attempt to find humor in everyday life. 

My thanks to all of you great Americans for your support and your kind words.

Peace, Love, (oh and I made some triple chocolate brownies with cream cheese frosting! Help yourself!)

Tank Gurl

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I’m having a weekend. I know it’s Thursday, and you can’t have a weekend in the middle of the week, but when you run a business that’s open seven days a week, you rarely get two days off in a row, so when you do, it’s like a mini vacation. There are some advantages to being off in the middle of the week. I can get in and out of the dry cleaners in less than ten minutes. There are not so many bicycles on the street. I’m all for sharing the road, but when some D-head on a bike pulls into the middle of the lane ahead of me going 5 mph, I feel like running his ass over. Buying shoes on a Wednesday is much easier than buying them on a Saturday. On Saturday there are at least 15 women in the shoe department waiting for the two salespeople that are willing to work weekends. You can see the sweat beads on their faces as they race to and from with stacks pf shoe boxes. When they stop momentarily at least ten women start shouting and waving, “I need this in a size seven! TAUPE or Charcoal Black!” The last time I shopped for shoes on a Saturday I was politely waiting my turn when some skinny bitch tried to shove in front of me. Unfortunately for the skinny bitch, I don’t move so easily. She tried a second time, and I gave her a Tank Gurl hip check that sent her all the way to the cash register. Hey, I’m a size ten; I don’t take any shit from size 4’s.

I should be in a better mood because of my weekend, but I’m not. The day started out just fine, I walked up to the Corner Bakery and bought a couple of newspapers and a large Americano and sat outside (where there were plenty of extra tables). I bought a New York Times, and The Guardian, because you can’t really trust the American News Media to give you the full story. The lead story today in both papers is of course the Tony Blair visit. What’s interesting about this visit is that it’s the first time that both of them publicly commented on the Downing Street Memo. Both declared the memo to be false, and of course we believe them.

End of story. Right?

Pretty much. You can bet your house that there won’t be any independent investigation. We know the facts. The facts haven’t changed since 2002, so we already know what happened. There’s nothing we can do about it. The time for acting was 2004, that time has passed. We can now enjoy the sight of victorious newly elected leaders of the free world tell bold faced lies to the rest of the world and there isn’t jack we can do about it. No Independent Counsel, no internal investigation that we can trust, no reason why we shouldn’t risk the lives of American service people just because we feel like it. For reasons unknown to even the parents and spouses of these dead Americans, we went to war. For reasons that have now been proven unfounded, our soldiers died. How can Blair and Bush climb into such a huge pile of s**t, and come up smelling like a rose?

I wish that Tony Blair and George Bush would stand up like real leaders and tell the families of these fallen servicemen just why they have died. Does it have three letters and begin with an O?

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I hardly ever watch TV news, it has become so offensive in the last decade, that I figure I should just turn it off rather than letting my blood pressure rise to dangerous levels. All of the cable news channels seem the same to me, it's insulting to my intelligence to have to watch white guys sitting around speaking about all the minute details of the Micheal Jackson trial, or the saga of the runaway bride, or geez, Terry Schiavo. Cable news shows are full of these freaks, like Pat Buchannan, and O'Reilly, the prime time media has become a free for all. Weirdos used to keep a low profile, but now that we have them in the House and the Senate, the rest of the whack jobs feel comfortable enough to come out from under their freaky rocks, and infest the airwaves.

Think about this. Some time during the inauguration this year, James Dobson felt comfortable enough to declare that an animated sponge cartoon character was gay. Maybe to him it doesn't seem like a silly statement. To me it sounds a little crazy. This is also the guy who advocates spanking children. Maybe he's one of those weird S&M guys.

Okay. Here's another bizare story of strange right wing nuts. On a Fox News Radio show, Neil Horsley, an avid Christian and anti abortion advocate revealed that he had actually had relations with a farm animal. I know it sounds like I'm sterotyping these red state farm people, but I didn't say it, he did.

And they think gay people are a threat to society?

Another rabid anti-gay politician Jim West, the mayor of Spokane Washington was caught in the act of trying to solicit sex with a minor. Look, gay or straight, sex should always be consensual and between adults, call me old fashioned, but that's my view. And yet these freaks continue to tell us that gay people are the cause of all the woes in our society today.

One more kinky story, and then I'm off to bed.

Dr. W. David Hager, a prominent obstetrician-gynecologist and Bush Administration appointee to the Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs in the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), is having some trouble with his ex-wife. It seems that she has gone public with some intimate information about their marriage. After enduring 32 years of forced sodomy and rape, she divorced him.

Hey, I don't have a problem about whatever goes on in people's bedrooms, straight, gay, bi, what-ever. But the key word here is consensual. I do have a problem with a bunch of freaks telling me that my lifestyle is offensive.

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"We should not use public money to support the further destruction of human life,"

Okay that's what our fearless leader said about stem cell research. But haven't we used public money to destroy lives of Americans and Iraqis, and quite a lot of money, nearly $200 billion and counting? So it's okay to destroy some lives, but how does one determine which lives are expendable?

I'm not so sure about stem cell research, it all sounds really sci-fi to me. And I am a bit uneasy about the thought of some mad right wing scientist cloning someone like Tom Delay, or Dick Cheney, and allowing them to ferment somewhere in a test tube, until there were so many, that they burst from the labratory and took over the Senate and the House.

Oh...maybe that's how they did it.

On the other hand, it would be nice to be able to replace my worn out brain cells with brand new smarter brain cells, or grow myself a new set of boobs, more upright than my present pair. And it would be really useful to grow some new lungs, maybe a new set for everyone in the country, to replace the old ones that have been damaged from poor air quality and dangerous emissions.

The possibilities are endless.

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Why are Americans so fascinated with guns and war? I'm including myself in this mix, I don't mean that I'm fascinated by war, not real war anyways, I prefer the Hollywood variety, with fake guns, fake blood, the kind where no one gets hurt, and in the end, the good guys win. I like a good action flick, ( I especially like both of the Tomb Raider films, cause wow, does Angelina Jolie look hot in those action outfits?) I much prefer action to those emotional chick flicks that my partner likes to watch. But in real life, guns scare me. People who own guns scare me. How do you know that they're not going to just flip out one day and start shooting at you? I would never own one myself, I would be too afraid I would shoot the windows out or something, or maybe shoot my foot off trying to figure out how to work it. I like to be a responsible citizen, I don’t drive drunk, and I don’t shoot guns.

Keeps the neighbors safe.

So anyway, today I log onto the Guardian, (that's a London newspaper, I read it because I can hardly ever get serious news in any of the American newspapers), and I read this article about a report produced by the Arms Trade Resource Center in New York which spells out pretty clearly that not only do Americans love their guns, but we love it when other countries buy our guns. In fact, we love selling guns so much, that we sell them to anyone, even some questionable states that might be considered, well…unstable. How do we know that these weapons will not someday be used against us? We haven’t always chosen our allies wisely, we all know that we armed and trained Osama Bin Laden. We know that before both of the Gulf Wars, that we sold Saddam Hussein guns and WMDS. It is possible that those very same guns are the ones firing at our soldiers today.

“In 2003 alone, the Pentagon and the State Department delivered or licensed the delivery of 5.7 billion in weaponry to countries which can ill afford advanced weaponry; nations in the developing world saddled with debt and struggling with poverty. Despite having some of the worlds strongest laws regulating the arms trade, almost half of these weapons went to countries plagued with ongoing conflicts and governed by undemocratic regimes with poor human rights records. In 2003, 2.7 billion in weaponry went to governments branded un-democratic by the State Department.”

What’s up with that?

Okay, I’m not sure if I understood this part of the article correctly, but it seems that we actually lend these countries the money to buy these weapons. I’m not sure how that makes any sort of business sense, if we lend them the money, then how are we even making a profit? Are we doing this as some sort of gesture? And the money lender, is an American military aid program called Foreign Military Financing, and I hope that it isn’t funded by American tax dollars, because that would mean…no…we’re not funding these sales are we? Because I have a real problem with selling weapons to countries like Saudi Arabia, (shit,19 of their guys killed 3000 of ours, and with our planes!) Pakistan, Afghanistan (you’ve got to be kidding!) Uzbekistan

“Under FMF (Foreign Military Financing) recipients get outright US grants on the condition that they use the money to buy US weapons systems. The foreign countries get nearly free weapons (they incur the operating costs and additional expenses for parts and in some cases, training) and the money is churned back into the US defense industry."

I must have read this article incorrectly. There’s got to be some mistake. How can we, American tax payers, be subsidizing the sales of weaponry to a country like Afghanistan when most of the country is still controlled by warlords and the country is only one car bomb away from anarchy? We only have 18,000 troops in Afghanistan, and I sure wouldn’t want them to be looking down the barrels of a bunch of M-16’s courtesy of the American taxpayer. The same can be said for Pakistan, their leader, Musharref , (please don’t expect me to spell that correctly) has almost been blown up twice in the past year, and the Pakistan military has close ties to the Taliban. And they have nukes. So why exactly are we selling them weapons? Lending them the money to buy them? Is this some sort of insanity? A death wish? And Uzbekistan? I don’t even want to imagine.

Can somebody please tell me that I’m wrong?

Here's the link to the article.

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I was out in the back yard today, and I am happy to report that there is no mushroom cloud over the Capital. Apparently, reason has thus far prevailed, and we still have a Constitution. It is pretty safe to say that we're okay until tomorrow, I'm pretty sure all of our elected officials are off duty, and being wined and dined by the special interest group with the most money.

So, safe for the moment, in the comfort of my office chair, I can still speak my mind about the appalling things that are happening just across town. Basically, it's a power grab.The Republicans have us against the ropes, and the only thing between the Democrats and total defeat is the filibuster. If the analogy is boxing, the change in rules would amount to allowing the guy still standing to continue to kick the guy on the floor until he's unconcious. I hate boxing. Let me give you a different sports analogy. If you're in a soccer match (football in most of the civilised world), and there were 50 members on your team, and you were playing against an opposition of 55 members, the off-sides rule would become really important. If you eliminated the off-sides rule, and the offense could have as many players in the box as they wanted, the team defending the goal would lose, and lose badly.

What is at stake here, and I should totally feel more passionate about defending it, is the checks and balances in our government. I feel sort lukewarm about the whole argument because I still think that Americans should get to know in an intimate way, just what they voted for last November. Here's what they bought. On the up-side, there's no gay marriage. Never will be. On the down side, you can't sue large corporations for damages. You can't declare bankruptcy if you fall on hard times and unemployment. Your SUV will cost you more to drive, and it's not ever going to get cheaper. Oh yeah, if you're really poor, and not insured, you're on your own. Oh and your teenage daughter. If she gets pregnant because we're preaching abstinance while we're marketing sexy products to make her look more attractive, she's shit out of luck, and so are you if the Republicans get to vaporize the law-making process.

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My partner, A, just came back from a writer's conference in New Orleans yesterday. When she leaves town on business, she usually brings me something back from where ever she has gone. It's almost always something to eat, which is the surest way to my heart. We spend the evening catching up, and when it comes time for gifts, she brings me two bags of my favorite coffee called "Wake The F UP!" It really does just what it advertises. Then she presents me with a jar of "Volcano" foot mask. I look at the label and read: "Afraid To Take Your Socks OFF?" Yikes! So she does find my feet offensive. And after all these years she still loves me. How Sweet! So I apply the foot mask and wrap my offensive feet in a couple of layers of Saran Wrap, just like the directions say, and wait the required thirty minutes for my disgusting dogs to emerge born again, odor free and refreshed. I get bored after 2 minutes of waiting, and hobble over to my computer. My feet make this squishing sound inside the Saran Wrap, and I am careful to avoid getting it on the rug. I log onto the Washington Post and read about the current Newsweek scandal that is the talk of the media.

When I read news stories that seem sort of wrong, I get this kind of nausea. It's like I have this BSometer in my gut that tells me when someone's trying to hose me. When Bush landed on the "Mission Accomplished" aircraft carrier, I almost ralphed. When ever I read about Bush trying to fix Social Security, I go immediately for the Tums. When the Administration speaks about democracy and freedom, I get the double whammy, I have to eat handfulls of Tums and drink soda water.

Whatever. So I'm sitting at my desk, waiting for my foot mask to dry and I'm reading this story about the Koran, and the toilets, and the riots, and after all of this violence, Newsweek retracts the story. Why did they do that? If it's already out there, how can you take it back? They're not saying it's not true, even the Pentagon isn't saying it's not true, they're saying that whoever confirmed it in the first place is hiding out in an office in Pentagon City about to shit himself because he told the truth. And now Newsweek is getting the same treatment that Dan Rather got last summer for the desertion story. No one in the Administration said it wasn't true, they focused on the documents as being untrue. NO one challenged the facts.

So what is happening here is that we are trying to shoot the messenger.

My gut is telling me that this is one of those instances where the Pentagon doesn't dispute the facts, instead they smear the person who comes forward with the facts. Yikes. I'm feeling kind of sick to my stomach. Oh no. The Tums are downstairs. My feet are encased in foot splooge and layers of cellophane. I can’t get downstairs to get to the Tums without leaving a trail of foot by-product all over the rug. I’m stuck with my nausea, and my Saran-wrapped feet. I look around for the waste basket in case of emergency, and courageously begin to remove the cellophane from my feet.

Oh Wow! They smell like cinnamon! Minty Fresh!

But in my gut, I can still smell the stench of something foul, and I’m pretty sure it’s not my feet.

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You don't flush a holy book down the toilet. It should be common sense, but would these kids from Texas and Nebraska flush the Bible down the toilet? NO! They'd be scared that they were going to be struck by lightning. How did they get the idea that it was okay?

The Pentagon is of course denying the allegations, but they have as much credibility with the rest of the world as Rush Limbaugh. If you can never admit a mistake, and isn't it common knowledge that everyone makes them, then who will believe you when you stick to these lies even after they have proved false? Who still believes the WMD lies? Who still believes that Iraq was a good idea? The Administration still believes, not that it matters.

The world reaction to this latest report is intensely violent. I mean, you can't insult some one's religion. Remember the British guy who wrote the book about Islamic violence and such? He had so many people trying to kill him, that he had to go into hiding for like a decade. This is not going to go away, this has completely derailed any peace process that might be in the making, and no matter how many stripes the General has stepping up to the microphone to deny it, our credibility is gone for good, and we need to come up with Plan B.

I wish we still had some diplomats left in DC. Maybe the Bolton confirmation will go through this week. Now there's a  guy for the job.

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The first couple of weeks in May are the most beautiful in Washington. I know that we are most famous for Cherry Blossoms, but around May 1st, the azaleas begin to bloom, and the neighborhoods are filled with these amazing bright reds, pinks, and orange. The Dogwoods begin about the same time, so it's just breathtaking.

So this afternoon, I had the day off, and I was out in my backyard building a fence to put around my compost heap. Wow. That sounds so crunchy. Really though, it's practical, because I have so many weeds that I have to pull out and bag for the city to take. I'm not sure what the city does with them after they are removed from my garden, but I hate to think of these numerous plastic bags piling up in some dump in Anacostia. If I compost them, it will save everyone a lot of work. In addition to saving work, I get to build an attractive fence to conceal the big mess, which is fun for me because I get to use my new power tools.

So I'm outside sawing and singing along to Alicia Keys, when I realize that I can't hear Alicia anymore, because of this incredibly loud airplane. It's so loud, that it seems like it's flying right over my head. I look up, but I can't see anything. Then I hear this BOOM! My neighbor Maria comes running out of her house yelling, "What was that?" I thought about it for a moment, and said, "Oh probably just an F-16 Maria. Some young kid flying too low."

When I heard the next one, I wondered if there could possibly be two young kids up there disregarding flight regulations. I figured that the odds were pretty slim, so I went into the house and turned on CNN. The breaking news scene showed a bunch of chubby white guys in suits running out of the Capital, and another scene with a motorcade leaving the White House. I got this weird feeling in the pit of my stomach, and reached for the phone to call A, (who works like a block from the White House).

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"Not really! I asked for my salad with dressing on the side, and it's SWIMMING in balsamic vinaigrette!"

"Honey, they're evacuating the White House and the Capital. You might want to ditch your salad and come home."

"I paid eight bucks for it! Okay, let me find a TV. I'll call you back."

It's not like we live here in DC constantly worrying about a terrorist attack, that kind of fear is exhausting. This is not after all, Baghdad, where the security is so poor that any schmuck with a taxi can inflict serious harm on the general population. On the other hand, in the back of my mind, I worry about our less than ethical military sales to questionable nations, and wonder not if, but when these weapons will come back home to threaten us.

What goes around eventually comes back around.

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It's not that he's temperamental.

It's not his undiplomatic comments.

It's Haiti.

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