Boycotts, Girlcotts, Apricots, Cumquats (Just Kiddin)

Trailer Park Barbie

When I was a little girl, I had all of ‘em:

Barbie, Ken, Midge and Skipper. I had the Barbie Dream House and Ken's Convertible too. One year, Santa even brought me all the clothes for Skipper's prom and the ultimate, extreme piece of wardrobe: 
Barbie's wedding gown.

But I never had Trailer Park Barbie.   
I'm sure lots of us can relate to her though; especially her duds, plastic rollers and eye make-up.  I hear she comes with some very cool accessories too;  Ajax and a bucket, a 20 oz. can of Keystone, and 10 cats, none of which are neutered.

I didn't grow up in a trailer park, but I did live in one for 7 1/2 years.  So did my daddy, my mom and my brother. Well, mom lived in a pre-fab when she left my dad, but was fortunate enough to park it on her own lot not in a park.
I did, however, grow up with orange/mustard shag carpet, faux paneling and frozen T.V. dinners. 
It wasn't until I entered adulthood, that I actually went to restaurants that served various ethnic foods. Our big treat, on Sunday afternoons, was lunch at Kentucky Fried Chicken because the one in our town had a patio for outdoor dining.
We certainly never ate Indian food; never heard of it, which reminds me of the other night. We decided to go to Ambrosia, a yummy, delightful Indian restaurant in Monterey that makes killer cocktails, Tandori chicken and garlic naan.

Aloo Sabzi

After taking a big bite of their hot, spicy aloo sabzi, my mom-in-law snatched up her glass of Cabernet (interesting choice over her water) and told us, 
“Wow, that's hot.  I’ll just soak my tongue in my wine.”  
I love that line.  
Trailers might say, "I'll just soak my tongue in my beer"  Of course, it makes no difference as long as the soakin is easing the pain.

Speaking of 'easing the pain', I'd like to soak a few heads in a 10,000 gallon tank of skunk piss; namely Dan Cathy, president of Chick-fil-A.  Now, I'm not saying Mr. Cathy doesn't have a right to speak his opinion and give his money wherever the hell he chooses. (In 2010, Chick fil-A donated over 
2 million to organizations that are anti-gay, including one called Exodus which "helps men and women surrender their sexual struggles to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.")  Yep, that's his right.  And it's my right to not only bring this awareness to y'all, but also to save the millions of chickens slaughtered annually by Chick fil-A.  We all are privileged to these kinds of freedoms in this country; even those damn tax-paying gays. 
But you know what, buckaroos?  
Mr. Dan Cathy hasn't experienced much hatred, discrimination or bigotry in his life.  
Who exactly is Dan Cathy?  Well, he's a husband, father, gardener, musician, Sunday School teacher and a member of New Hope Baptist Church.  He has money. Lots-o-dough.
So did his pappy.  And it doesn't take a brain surgeon to guess that his grandpappy and great grandpappy did too.   Check out the Cathy family website where you'll meet Truett, Trudy, Dan and Bubba (who lists himself as family man, adventurer and connector) http://www.cathyfamily.com/
The Cathy family are all dudes ('cept Trudy a 'course) who've never had a need, reason or desire to boycott anything.   You know why? 
Okay, I'll just say it.   Because, like the Romneys, Bushes, Rockefellers, Kennedys, Gettys, Fords, Gates, Bertarelli's, Abramoviches, Mittals, Hiltons and the Westons (just to name a few); the Cathys were all born with shiny, gold spoons in their (health-insured) mouths; white and filthy rich.  
And like too many in this powerful and controlling (the 2%) minority,
they've never been in a place where their very heart, soul, livelihood depended on utilizing the tool known as a boycott.

There have been numerous effective boycotts led by the world's oppressed. One happened against the estate land owner, Charles Cunningham Boycott, when in 1880, as part of its campaign for the "Three F's" (fair rent, fixity of tenure and free sale) to protect tenants from exploitation, the Irish Land League under Charles Stewart Parnell and Michael Davitt withdrew the local labor required to save the harvest on Lord Erne's estate. When Boycott tried to undermine the campaign, the League launched a campaign of isolation against him in the local community. Neighbors would not talk to him. Shops would not serve him. Local laborers refused to tend his house, and the postman refused to deliver his mail.  And guess what? It hit right where it counted, in his rich pocketbook because his workers wouldn't pick his damn potatoes and that incurred a loss for Charlie of about 10,000 pound sterling.  At that time, that was a shit load of bank.

Mahatma Gandhi

One of my all-time heroes led a major boycott. 
The boycott of British goods by Mahatma Gandhi, known as the swadeshi policy—the boycott of foreign-made goods, especially British goods. Linked to this was his advocacy that khadi (homespun cloth) be worn by all Indians instead of British-made textiles. Gandhi exhorted Indian men and women, rich or poor, to spend time each day spinning khadi in support of the independence movement.  This was a strategy to inculcate discipline and dedication to weed out the unwilling and ambitious, and to include women in the movement at a time when many thought that such activities were not "respectable" for women. In addition to boycotting British products, Gandhi urged the people to boycott British educational institutions and law courts, to resign from government employment, and to forsake British titles and honors.

Some boycotts in our history have been tragically misused.

Boycott of Jewish Shops by Nazis

While so many others, have been for the good of humanity.

Cesar Chavez Farm Workers Boycott

MLK Bus Boycott in Montgomery

The gay and lesbian communities have held boycotts since the Sodom and Gomorrah times. Why? 
The same reasons people of color, Jews, women, poor, (minority) religious groups, animal rights activists, fat folks, handicap individuals and all other oppressed groups have…Because of the severe and on-going hatred and discrimination against them.

Wealthy, white, straight (or those in the closet) males laugh out loud about boycotts.  They spew their ridiculous views about something they have never participated in and know little about. 
They say, boycotts are petty, ineffective and unsuccessful. They try to trick us into thinking that a boycott harms rather than helps.

Not true. 

Chick fil-A Boycott

Boycotts have been most successful in ancient times, as well as, present day and the recent boycotts of both Amway and ChickFila by the LGBTQ community is no exception.

FRED KARGER LAUNCHES AMWAY BOYCOTT FOR NOM SUPPORT

The anti-gay National Organization for Marriage fervently hides its 501(c)(4) donors, but still has to disclose the donors to its Education Fund (the Ruth Institute), its 501(c)(3). Last year, ThinkProgress reported that NOM had received $500,000 from Douglas DeVos, president of the Amway company. Fred Karger, fresh off the presidential campaign trail, has launched a boycott of Amway and all other subsidiaries owned by the DeVos family. In his letter to DeVos, Karger invited Amway to settle the boycott by donating comparable funds to LGBT equality organizations so as to be ”a good corporate citizen and work toward full equality, fairness and respect for everyone in our great country.”
In 1977 lesbian/gay businesses joined an AFL-CIO boycott of Coors, citing Coors' history of support for attacks on gay rights. Sales of Coors beer plummeted in the gay community. 
In response, in 1978 Coors adopted language against discrimination on account of sexual orientation in employment, and has offered small sums of money to lesbian/gay organizations in order to recover beer sales and improve Coors' public image. But Coors has never stopped funding right-wing attacks on gay rights. 

LGBTQ Boycott

Girlcott is a neologism that combines "girl" and "boycott" to focus on strictly female boycotts. The term was coined in 1968 by American track  star Lacey O'Neal during the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, in the context of protests by male African American athletes. Speaking for black women athletes, she advised that the group would not "girlcott" the Olympic Games, because female athletes were still focused on being recognized. 

girlcott

n. A boycott that includes only female participants.

Example Citation:

"Yet the women—equal partners with the men in providing the product—receive only 63 per cent as much prize money as the men. That is a lower percentage than at any other grand-slam event. 
The difference . . . is generating adverse reactions among increasing numbers of fans and commentators and it has led many of the players to consider a 'girlcott' of Wimbledon."

—Billie Jean King, "Why women deserve equal pay," The Times (London)

The term girlcott was revived in 2005 by a group of young women in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania protesting what they deemed sexist and degrading T-shirt slogans on Abercrombie & Fitch merchandise.  
The Asian community led one against the clothing company as well.  
A & F called their T-shirts "humorous" but I, and the thousands who effectively boycotted, call them "dumb, racist, lookist, ignorant, degrading and offensive." Did they have a right to print them? 
I suppose so. 
Do the multitudes have a right to a full-scale "girlcott?"

Youbetcha!  

"Don't be a marshmallow. Walk the street with us into history. 
Get off the sidewalk. Stop being vegetables. Work for Justice. Viva the boycott" ~ Dolores Huerta 

"When you're listening to the Internet, the discussion is taking place in real time. We're able very quickly, sometimes in a matter of days, to pick up on what consumers are saying. If there's certain issues, like safety recalls or any mention of a boycott, we can set up an alert, so that we can alert a company or a brand so they can be on their guard and be ready to react,
if that's what it takes."
~ Sue MacDonald

"We are expecting that with this national boycott we will be able to further gain some respect, dignity, and improve the lot of the immigrant community."
~ Javier Rodriguez

Historically, here's why the oppressed boycott: 
It beats taking a police-issued semi-automatic weapon into a movie theater, school, Sikh or a Chick fil-A and killing people who hate you. 
I, for one, don't need weapons.  Shit, don't we have enough semi-automatics, bombs, drones, knives and chains on the planet; enough to hate, maim and mutilate a zillion times over?   
For today, my weapon is boycotting. 
I realize I can only do so much, and that I live in a very complex world. 
Yet, for me to boycott a person, place or company that chooses to endorse hatred, feels mighty nice; kick back, feet up, belly-rubbin nice.
I may be a girl from a trailer park, who used to play with Barbie's, but I ain't no stump.
We each must decide which soul we want to feed. It's that simple.
Boycott Chick fil-A for their monstrous donations to anti-gay groups AND their abuse of millions of chickens.

Now, I’ll just go soak my tongue in my wine. 
~tpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_boycotts#Major_historical_boycotts

http://listverse.com/2011/09/03/10-famous-boycotts/

Ying Yang River…Part Two Country Roads

I met up with a friend from high school that I hadn’t seen in 36 years!

Now that’s ancient, eh?  It amazed both of us how comfortable we felt from the minute we sat down  together at the corner table in the local Peet’s. 

I found her with the trusty help of Google and then some amateur detective work.  Our conversations flowed back and forth like the ebb and flow of the ocean;

both of us taking turns sharing our trials and tribulations of days gone by since those hellish times of high school.

It was a tad intimidating when, in sharing about our various professions over the years, she humbly listed a litany of jobs that included “City Planner” “ Executive Director of The Girl Scouts of America” and as for her husband,

she just said, “He’s in oil.”

I found an opening and threw in my 7 years as a trailer park manager and she about choked on her double cappuccino.  Then she bubbled with curiosity and I’m sure she was thinking, “Ok, she’s got a B.A and an M.A. and she chose to manage a trailer park; probably aspires to pass Go, collect her 200.00 dollars and eventually get let into the pearly writer’s gates of Heaven one day.” 

Nice goals.  Successful life.

The park life isn’t a bad life.  It wasn’t then and it isn’t now and I’d probably do it all over again for a juicy stipend and a year’s supply of Hendrick’s Gin. 

This picture totally brings back memories; a captured flashback of well lived years.

You know there’s something about drinking a beer and wearing slippers outside that makes a girl appreciate the finer things on God’s green earth.

Madness takes its toll.  Please have exact change.  

~Author Unknown

I accepted the invitation for tea at Julie’s a few days after our first meeting in my unit.  You know curiosity has been my demise on a fairly regular basis my entire damn life.

When I walked into her trailer; a 1970’s box with wood paneling and burnt orange shag carpet, it felt like a cross between Twilight Zone and Little House On The Prairie.

She appeared to have put on her “Sunday bests” for my visit and giddy, oh was she giddy, over the fact that I had come for tea.

She scrubbed the Formica as she put water in the kettle.

“ Oh! Thank you for visiting…I'm so happy…do you like tea… if you don’t like tea, I can make you something, but I don’t have something else, but I have a ying yang river of tea…Oh! Thank you for coming…let’s have tea and talk… do you like sugar cuz I have sugar…let’s see…where did I put that…”

I noticed a stack about 10 inches thick of albums and I commented on her good taste in music.  Sometimes I’m clueless to the repercussions of saying things like, “Oh, wow…Carole King, John Denver, Simon and Garfunkel, Nancy Sinatra…we have a lot in common.”

F!@*king clueless.  “A lot in common” to a girl like Julie means we're instant BFF’s until Hell freezes over.  Next, she’ll probably get out a sewing needle and want to prick our index fingers so we can be blood sisters.

“Oh! What do you want to listen to?…I feel the earth move under my feet.  I feel the sky tumbling down…I feel my heart start trembling whenever you're around...I love Carole King…I know all the words. I bet you do too…Do you want to hear Carole King or I have The Beatles too…I like The Beatles but my sister….she was always so mean to me …and she likes The Beatles but I like John Denver…”

The next thing I knew we were singing, in unison, at the top of our lungs….

”Almost heaven, West Virginia, Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River…Life is old there, older than the trees, younger than the mountains blowing like a breeze… Country Roads, take me home…”

When you know every damn song, on every damn 33 album someone still owns in 2011, then you actually do have something in common with that person. 

I spent the next hour sipping stale Lipton and belting out every song of my teenage past; wondering if this woman across from me, who was singing recklessly and sipping tea like a Slurpee, wasn’t just a wee bit saner than me.

Julie and my friendship grew as friendships often do…but I wasn’t exactly prepared for the rate of speed.

The phone calls from her increased from 1-2 a day, to about 10 a day in less than a month.

Once I opened my front door to find a gift of tea bags wrapped in tissue paper and a bow, with a note on Strawberry Shortcake stationery that looked like a 10 year old wrote it…

Dear Valerie,

I know how much you like tea and I have extra so I want to give it to you.

Have a nice day.

Love,

Julie

One day I was making my rounds and saw her peeking out her blinds.  Seeing me, she swung open her front door and came running out into the street before I could hide behind a nearby double-wide…

“Hi! Whatcha doing?”

“Oh, just doing some things around the park.  I need to get back and wash my car while it’s sunny.”  I kept on moving, as I wished her a great day.

By the time I finished my rounds, she was down at my trailer with a hose, bucket, soap, a large sponge and 2 towels.

“I love washing cars!  When Grandma Cooley’s car needed washing she’d call me and I’d come running faster than the ying yang river…I’d be at her house in no time and I’d wash her car and I’d dry it and she’d be so happy she’d tell me it looked great except usually I forgot to dry all of the hood and she’d show me and then I’d do it…no problem…”

Sometimes I’d pick up when she phoned.  Sometimes I’d let the machine get it.

What seemed to be a harmless initial gesture of making copies for her, was taking a sharp veer south.
I actually was finding myself feeling like the lead character in some horror film where the heroine slips deeper and deeper into a weird entrapment abyss that demands a super hero to rescue her sorry ass.

Most of you would have changed your number by now or let her down gently, but not me, friends. 

No.  Me, the Mother Teresa of the trailer park, in a spontaneous moment of insanity, offers to take her to Costco.

People unravel privately it’s true, but some folks unravel in public.

When I picked Julie up, she was again dressed for a church function. 

She showed me her list, her pocketbook and her keys to her unit. 

Why the keys, you ask? 

How the hell should I know!   Why the offer to go to Costco is a more intelligent question!

When inside Costco, it became quickly evident that she didn’t get out much.

She frantically pushed the cart ahead of me, which put me into a full-on sprint to catch up with her.  She filled her cart with these items and these items only: a new broom, a new mop, a giant-size bottle of Clorox, Ajax, Comet, economy-size bottle of hand sanitizer, laundry soap, and Lysol wipes.

I thought we’d head to the produce and cheese sections, two of my favorites,

but she informed me she was done, ready to go, and made a beeline

for the check out stand.

In line, the unraveling began.  She frantically fumbled through her purse searching for her wallet and I was literally sweating directly above my upper lip. 

In her ‘special’ way, Julie was drawing quite the audience, and I was mentally guestimating the cost of her f!@*ing  Martha Stewart cart…

“It’s here somewhere…and I have coupons too…lots of coupons that I cut out…don’t worry...it’s here…I put it inside the envelope so I wouldn’t lose it…you shouldn’t lose things and I don’t…”

When she finally found the envelope, I breathed a monstrous sigh of relief, as I’m sure the newly formed line did also. 

Julie was sweating.  I was sweating.  We drove back to the park in complete silence.

When I pulled up to her unit, I helped her unload.  My compassion meter was off the charts as I almost tripped over her heavy heart and embarrassment.  A simple “Are you okay?” would have been sufficient, but instead I say,

“Hey…do you like pancakes?”

She perked up.  “I love pancakes and lots of maple syrup …or strawberry…I like strawberry syrup too…” she exclaimed like a second grader.  She was a glow.

“I’ll pick you up in the morning around 9:00 and we can head over to IHOP!” I said.

You know what people? 

I hate IHOP!

…to be continued

~tpg

http://youtu.be/MWzeInQaUk4

John Denver  Country Roads

“What the Fresh Hell Can This Be?

I'm happy to just blog in a sea of random abandonment this morning; hoping to just float around with ease and keep my head above water. 
You see, when you lose a guy who made you laugh as often as he pissed you off, it’s rough.    A guy who, with his sharp tongue and undeniable wit, left you wondering if he wasn't in fact the male reincarnate of Dorothy Parker.  
Sometimes only a bumper sticker on a truck can truly sum up the man...

Wife And Dog Lost

Reward For Dog

I’m hoping to simply blog with abandon and maybe someone in charge, out there in blog cyber galaxy, will raise an eyebrow and place me at the Top Ten on the Blog Blacklist!  The term “blacklist” got me thinking of all our compound words in the English language that include ‘black’ and of course, the negative conations that go along with many of them:

Blackwater

n. - Any of several human or animal diseases characterized by dark urine resulting from rapid breakdown of red blood cells

Blackmail

n. - Extortion of money by threats to divulge discrediting information

Blackball

n. - The act of excluding someone by a negative vote or veto

Blackout

n. - Partial or total loss of memory (Certainly nothing positive, especially if alcohol is involved)

Blacklist

n. - A list of people who are out of favor

I’m thinking of switching it up, but keeping the current meaning: whiteout, whitelist, whiteball, whitemail, whitewater. (Oh, damn, already been used in Arkansas)

There’s a annual list of Hollywood’s most liked, unproduced screenplays (I'm hoping to make that list as well) called appropriately, Hollywood’s Black List.  Many outstanding, cool films are recognized and awarded from this list.  Of course, the dark side is the word in the description: “unproduced.”

 http://www.harbus.org/2011/life-on-the-black-list/

The blacklist begins (1947)

As you probably already know, in October 1947, a number of persons working in the Hollywood film industry were summoned to appear before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which had declared its intention to investigate whether Communist agents and sympathizers had been surreptitiously planting propaganda in US films.  The hearings began with several Hollywood professionals, including Walt Disney and Ronald Reagan, president of the Screen Actors Guild, testifying that the threat of Communists in the film industry was a serious one. (Personally, I think Ronnie, Walt and the others should have been more concerned about homosexual activity in Hollywood not Communism)

The blacklist, of course, was rarely verifiable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist

Whenever there was a knock at her door, Dorothy Parker would yell, “What the fresh hell can this be?”   Since she is one of my all-time 'crushes' and I so adore lingering in her numerous, interviews, poems, shorts and quotes, I had to investigate if she in fact was blacklisted back in the day.  Well, not surprising,    hers was in fact verifiable…

Blacklisted in Hollywood

Parker helped organize the Screenwriters Guild, joined the Communist Party, and took up with equally aroused lefties like Lillian Hellman. She even had an FBI file more than 900 pages long. (Right on, Dorothy!)  She was blacklisted in Hollywood during the McCarthyite ’50s.

In the 1920s, she became a regular member of the Round Table at the Algonquin Hotel; the watering hole of New York writers who relished in three-hour lunches and liked to dazzle each other with their wit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algonquin_Round_Table

But the thing that satisfies me the most about Parker, besides her writing, was her leftward drift. In 1927, she became outraged at the imminent execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, the Boston anarchists. Amongst the 20,000 who protested their innocence were Edna St. Vincent Millay, Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells.  Parker was arrested and fined for her critical maneuvers preceding the execution.

http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/sacvan.html

Would you believe that Dorothy Parker willed her modest $20,000 fortune to Martin Luther King, Jr., though she had never met him, and dedicated her literary rights to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People? Indeed, when she died, family-less, on June 7, 1967, Lillian Hellman saw to it that Parker was cremated with dignity.

But then Lillian forgot to collect Parker’s ashes. (What the hell?) After an erratic series of removals from one business desk to another in New York City, her remains were safely ensconced at the Baltimore headquarters of the NAACP in 1988, 21 years after her death. 

Her entertaining literary remains, however, can be found in The Portable Dorothy Parker.

  http://www.amazon.com/Portable-Dorothy-Parker/dp/0140150749

Dorothy's poems are mainly reflections of her own disappointments and frustrations. She had a sad childhood, losing both parents at an early age. This shadow followed her throughout her life. Her lovers and spouses only seemed to add to her distress. Parker attempted suicide 3 times, eventually took to alcohol, and died alone in a New York hotel, aged 73. The New York Times printed one of its longest ever obituaries as a tribute.

According to an interview with Vanity Fair in 1925, Ms Parker wanted her epitaph to say, EXCUSE THE DUST.

From a Book Review

"It may be that this autobiography is set down in sincerity, frankness and simple effort. It may be, too, that the Statue of Liberty is situated in Lake Ontario.”

I have a plethora of “Dorothy Quotes” that I like to use in the same way I like to blog, babble or drink...with abandon.  Here’s a child-size handful…

"Ducking for apples -- change one letter and it's the story of my life."

“This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.” 

“The cure for boredom is curiosity.
There is no cure for curiosity.” 

“I don't know much about being a millionaire, but I'll bet I'd be darling at it.” 

“Heterosexuality is not normal, it's just common.” 

“Tell him I was too fucking busy-- or vice versa.”
 

 “I hate writing, I love having written.” 

“I like to have a martini, two at the very most. After three I'm under the table,

after four I'm under my host.”

And of course, “What the fresh hell can this be?” which you’ll hear me yelling from inside my abode if you ever pay me a visit.

I’m thinking of taking a Thelma/Louise type road trip today, 

         except I’ll skip the cliff.  

Enjoy the scenery today!

~tpg