homecoming

funnyface returns this afternoon after having been gone since wednesday morning because of the holiday.

i on the other hand had to come back for friday and saturday to work at the toy store.

i'm really excited to see him. i'm so gross. like make-out in the back of the movie theater gross.

i guess i really like him? hmm. maybe i should be mean to him when he arrives so as not to let on.

probably not though. too cute.

blegh.

welcome, jesus

i'd like to take this time to welcome the baby jesus to earth.

i think the best way to do this is by shooting the man next to me in the check-out for grabbing the last webkin toy that my little darling just has to have.

i'm referring to the outbreak in violence this black friday. what brought on the trampling of the wal-mart worker in long island? and the two men who shot and killed each other at toys-r-us in california? is it perhaps the allure of great savings against a backdrop of financial woes? could these customers-turned-savages really only afford The Perfect Gift on black friday and not in the days after?

whatever the "rational" reason for the three deaths that occurred (and possibly more) i am completely outraged that we would allow consumerism to infect our value systems to this degree.

like any other news story, i got a very different picture of the events that unfolded in long island from reading a european paper and an american one. according to the belfast telegrah "about a thousand" shoppers "ripped off the doors" of the wal-mart at about "5 am." then this chilling image follows:

"...the customers stepped over the dead man and became angry when told the store would be closing because of his death..."

stepped over the dead man? became angry?? now i'm no expert on psychology, but it seems like it must've taken a hell of a lot more than simple heard mentality to cause this kind of reaction in a crowd of nearly 2,000 people.

the disgusting part about it is that this man, jdimytai damour, 34, is dead. his family will never see him again. but those people..if you can call them that...that trampled him to death will still get what's on their shopping lists. wal-mart will still make killer profits this quarter and not even this tragedy will stop the machine that is consumerism in this country. i wish i felt that damour's death would act as a social catalyst, and cause people to look at their spending, and how their over-consumption is poisoning our communities, but i know that very little so far has come of it, save this response from wal-mart:

"unfortunate."

unfortunate? it's unfortunate when i forget my cell phone charger and my phone dies, or it rains and i don't have an umbrella, or i try to go to a movie and it's sold out, or my favorite baseball team blows the world series. what happened to jdimytai was horrible and inhumane. plain and simple.

damour, judging by the name was either a first-generation american, or an immigrant (maybe even a migrant worker), and so to the people that trampled over him in the wal-mart he and his labor was invisible. low-wage workers are the indentured servants of today - mainly will never escape these service sector jobs and rise to the middle class.

i am reminded again and again of how the american dream is a downright myth - for both those that trampled damour in literal search for some item to symbolize their ascension into middle-class status, and for workers like damour who will never afford the items that they sell.

i'll stop here with these lyrics that i heard in my own toy store today:

and so this is christmas
for weak and for strong
for rich and for poor ones
the world is so wrong
and so happy christmas
for black and for white
for yellow and red ones
let's stop all the fight
a very merry christmas
and a happy new year
let's hope it's a good one
without any fear

here's hoping i can manage to find the babe lying in a manger, born to a single mother, out of wedlock, on welfare, squatting in a farmer's barn.

with these hands

my current favorite song at the store these days is from the curious george soundtrack.

ben harper's my own two hands with jack johnson on harmony.

i didn't realize how great this song is lyrically until i really stopped to listen to it yesterday while dusting the san rio display. it reminded me of what my own hands are capable of, and that at the moment, they work a retail job, but someday they could change the world.

happy thanksgiving.

no MILK for cinemark theaters

let me first say that i was deeply saddened by the passage of prop 8 in california, mainly because this is the first time that a new law has taken away an existing legal right. nothing could be further than democratic, and nothing could be more scary to me in a time of patriot acts, torture at gitmo, and two stolen presidential elections. this makes me scared for other rights that could be taken away - such as abortion, and who knows...maybe even the right to peacefully assemble.

which brings me to a piece of news that i just came across via a friend's posting on facebook. it seems that alan stock, the CEO of cinemark movie theaters donated nearly a million dollars to the "yes on 8" campaign in california, but is also going to run the docudrama "MILK" in his movie theaters in november. MILK chronicles the life of harvey milk, a prominent gay-rights activist and the first openly-gay elected official in the state of california.

i am urging everyone to boycott the showings of the film at cinemark theaters, and to either see it at an alternative venue, or wait until it comes out on video. i'm really glad that i stumbled upon my friend's posting, since the large movie theater in my (progressive) college-town is a cinemark. i live in an extremely gay-friendly area and i want everyone to know about cinemark's political positions. please don't let homophobes make money off of milk's legacy.

note: cinemark also owns and operates century, cinearts, and tinsletown theaters.

check out these links: www.nomilkforcinemark.com
http://www.examiner.com/x-443-Chicago-Gay-Examiner~y2008m11d19-The-next-step-in-defeating-Prop-8

(photo from inmyheartblog.wordpress.com)

poop in the potty

i have a donkey, her name is molly, she goes "heee-i" all the time.


i am so sick of this song at the store. and also:

living on a farm,
an organic farm,
an organic farm,
it was an organic farm
and the rooster went "cock-a-doodle-do"
and the rooster had a baby
and they called it a miracle...

and: (i shit you not)

poop in the potty
poop in the potty
poop goes in the potty
poop poop in the potty (now that's just vulgar).

these are the lil' ditties that i come home singing every night. the joys of retail.

the potty one is so gross that we literally RUN to the other side of the store to skip to the next track on the cd.

funnyface likes the donkey one. he says i'm cute when i sing it. :)

moving out, moving on?

so i haven't posted since about...halloween...which i'm pretty bummed about. there's been a slew of changes in my fabulous young life which have put the blog on the proverbial back-burner.

i have moved out of my parent's basement (hurrah!) and back to the town of my alma mater. you may think this is chickening-out on the whole launching my post-college life thing (i'm actually writing this from the library of the university), but to be honest, in case you haven't noticed, time's are tough and i opted for a safe bet on jobs and friends rather than a giant leap of faith to some unknown city far away.

i love this town, i really do.

i'm working at a cute, locally-owned toy store in the center of the quaint, new england town which is exactly what you'd imagine it to be -- full of fair trade/wooden/european and sustainable toys. super cute. the mothers that come into the store a lot of times ask if i'll take the product out of the packaging which is both annoying and endearing...as they're looking to see where the stuff is made and if in fact, it will fall apart in two minutes after leaving the store.

we do not sell barbie dolls or any of the other trappings of the highly sexualized and/or gendered toy market. this is such a relief for me...all of these aspects of the store, because i do not feel as if i've betrayed every single one of my values when i leave work everyday.

granted, this is not what i thought i'd be doing with my cum laude degree in sociology, and my minors in african-american studies and women's studies...but then again, i'm not sure what exactly i thought i'd be doing. i'm thinking about grad school of course, but that's still a couple of years away, and in the meantime i'm content to walk (quickly because of that ever-present 20mph wind that rips right through you) to work in the center of town, and sell toys that teach kids to count in swahili, tie their shoes, and share with their neighbor.

the only annoyances in all of these new developments is that i still haven't found a place to live (ugh) and i've been bouncing between friend's houses since right now is the in-between period of leases. the earliest that i'll probably officially "move-in" to "my" place would be december 1st or january 1st..and i'm not sure if my mental health will hold up until then.

i've had serious p.m.s. this week and i'm glad i'm not the type to exercise my 2nd amendment rights or else it wouldn't have been pretty. the poor boy has had to put up with a whole lot. maybe i should do something nice for him.

speaking of...i continue to see boy i mentioned earlier. henceforth he will be known as FunnyFace, and not because his literall face is funny, but because he possesses the ability to make any situation side-splittingly funny.

which can come in handy when you're homeless.