Election 2014: Senate

Posted on September 7, 2014 by naomikritzer

So let’s get this started. At the top of my ballot is the U.S. Senate race. Just to quickly recap what happened six years ago: Al Franken ran against incumbent Norm Coleman; the result was ridiculously close and had to be carefully hand-counted, and it was more than six months before Franken was able to take office. His final lead was either 225 votes or 312 votes. I could not ask for a better object lesson on the subject of, “yes, it matters that you vote, and it matters who you vote for.”

The people on my ballot for U.S. Senate:

STEVE CARLSON – INDEPENDENCE
MIKE MCFADDEN – REPUBLICAN
AL FRANKEN – DEMOCRATIC-FARMER-LABOR
HEATHER JOHNSON – LIBERTARIAN PARTY

So let’s just go top to bottom here.

Steve Carlson

Steve Carlson’s party is officially Independence. There was a brief period of time when this party was actually legit rather than a motley collection of weirdos and paranoids. Where Steve Carlson falls can be spotted very quickly on visiting his website. (The fact that the URL is “stevecarlsonforcongress2010” is also a pretty big clue.) Let’s say you have an uncle you see at big family gatherings and he’s okay as long as you stay on topics like how good his BBQ recipe is and how smart his kids are, but when you get onto politics, out come the racism, homophobia, sexism, wingnuttery, and rampant paranoia. Let’s say he made a whole bunch of videos showcasing his political ideas and put them on a website. That’s Steve Carlson.

Weirdly, he makes all sorts of statements about why you absolutely positively should not vote for Al Franken but he makes zero case (that I found — I am really not willing to sit through his videos, though, and there don’t seem to be any written statements beyond the video titles) for why you should vote for him over Mike McFadden, the Republican candidate (i.e., the guy who might conceivably beat Al in the race). I’m curious what he has against Mike that makes him so willing to act as a potential spoiler, or if he’s just oblivious to that possibility. (In 2008, the ultra-conservative Constitution party candidate got 8,905 votes. If three percent of those voters had gone for Norm Coleman instead, he’d have won the election.)

Mike McFadden

McFadden is the Republicans. If you’re a Republican, you’re probably going to vote for him. Let me just note, though, that when I pulled open the issues page, he starts out by talking about health care. The botched implementation of the MNSure site makes it an easy topic on which to take pot shots, but here’s one of the things he says:

Covering Those With Pre-Existing Conditions. Despite all the promises made during the health care debate, there are still Americans with pre-existing conditions who are struggling to find or afford coverage. This is unacceptable. When we repeal and replace Obamacare, we need to make sure that those with pre-existing conditions actually have access to affordable insurance plans that cover their illnesses.

…with absolutely zero explanation for how he plans to do that, other than the previous paragraph where he said it needs to be “a patient-centered, market-based solution that will lower costs and increase accessibility for all Americans.”

You know something I have very little patience for from politicians are solutions woven from fairy dust and unicorn farts. Political solutions that look like this classic math proof:

That math comic where step three of a proof is,

And then a miracle occurs…

You know the solution that will ensure that every individual with a pre-existing condition will actually have access to health care they can afford? Single-payer health care. Socialized medicine. I guarantee you that this is not what McFadden is advocating. The market-based Republican solution for covering the uninsured and uninsurable was Romneycare. It was almost exactly the program that was implemented, which they liked fine before the Democrats said, “okay, fine. You know what? we’ll take it.”

So if you’re a Republican politician who’s going to go after Obamacare by saying that people with pre-existing conditions are still having trouble getting insured (true, for some, because some people still can’t afford insurance) but you’re not actually going to spell out how you’re going to fix this even in the most rudimentary way, people need to call you on it.

Al Franken

I voted for Al six years ago but with some trepidation, to be honest. I struggled with who to support in the primary. Al the candidate was combative and confrontational and frequently negative. The moment I found myself really liking him, to be honest, was when he was asked about gay marriage. “I love my wife,” he said. “Frannie is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I want EVERYONE to be able to marry the person they love because no one should be denied this sort of happiness.” That’s Al at his best: personal, ethical, and committed.

I’ve been a lot happier with Al-the-Senator than I was with Al-the-Candidate because I feel like we’ve seen a lot of Al at his best. He’s avoided showboating and grandstanding; he’s put a lot of time and energy into dealing with constituent services; he’s pursued some small-scale stuff that solve problems. (He authored the amendment to the Affordable Care Act that requires insurance companies to spend at least 80-85% of premiums on actual health care costs, and to give rebates if they’re failing to meet that benchmark.)

Heather Johnson

If you pick your politicians based on how attractive they are, Heather Johnson would be your clear choice. Mike McFadden looks like the guy in the movie who will turn out to be evil in the third act; Steve Carlson looks like your uncle who mainlines Fox News; and Al Franken looks like Al Franken. Heather Johnson looks like someone you’d cast to play the femme fatale in a movie made by Evangelical Christians about the dangers of going to poetry readings with heathens.

Anyway, she’s a libertarian. I was just the other day looking at this political cartoon, the 24 types of libertarians: http://leftycartoons.com/the-24-types-of-libertarian/

I would say she’s probably mostly the “Naive” kind (on welfare and human services: “I support direct effort through voluntary community charities, locally led initiatives, and the free market with all individuals having responsibility and free choice regarding the exchange of goods and services for goods and services”) with a side of “Briefly Tempting” (On the prison system: “The privatized prison system does not work. Our prison population exceeds other developed nations and rivals underdeveloped nations. This is alarming in a country that claims to support liberty, was built to preserve personal liberty and leaders as servants to we the people.”)

The decision here for me is not at all hard: Al Franken.

Election 2014: Missed the Primary

Posted on September 7, 2014 by naomikritzer

I was ambushed by the August primary and failed to post anything.

I also, for the first time in many years, failed to vote in the election — I was out of town that week, and by the time it dawned on me that the primary was going to be in freaking AUGUST, it was too late to get an absentee ballot.

Fortunately, the only actual contest happening on the DFL side of the ballot was for State Auditor. For reasons that in retrospect only seem even more mystifying, former State Rep Matt Entenza ran against the endorsed incumbent, Rebecca Otto, on a platform that seemed to suggest that he didn’t really understand the job functions.

I’ll note that a former State Auditor race is one of the handful of times I’ve voted for a Republican. I voted for Judi Dutcher against a DFL incumbent — although Judi had switched parties before the next election, which I thought vindicated me rather thoroughly.

Anyway, Matt spent busloads of money in order to get about 324 votes total. (OK, I am overstating things, but only slightly; Rebecca got 80% of the vote. Though in an August primary with no real headliner races, only the party diehards are even paying attention.) Over on the Republican side, the endorsed candidates for Governor and Senator took it. I’d say the early evidence suggests that moving the primary back a month has made the party endorsements significantly more important.

I’ve been thinking I should get started with my election blogging; I’ll probably go top to bottom. The thing about starting early is that there’s less information available. “Less” in the context of the U.S. Senate race is not a problem given that there’s no shortage of data out there about Al Franken and McWhat’shisname, the Republican running against him. (I’m not being snarky here, I am legitimately having trouble remember his name. I got a push poll the other day and they asked me what I thought of McWhat’shisname and I said, “um, I’m not sure who that is. Is that the guy running against Al Franken?” Yes. And now I’ve forgotten it again. McConnell, maybe?) ANYWAY. Down-ticket races, “less” sometimes means “none.” There are apparently some competitive judge races this time, though, so I’ll definitely try to get to those.

In Minnesota this time around, we are voting for a U.S. Senator, a Governor, all the big state offices (people! pay attention to these! it really does actually matter who our Secretary of State, State Auditor, and Attorney General are!), all our U.S. Congressional Representatives, all our State Senators, and all our State Reps. Also a bunch of judges, and Minneapolis is having a school board race, and we have County Commissioners and County Sheriffs and (naturally!) Soil & Water Commissioners. AND, for your additional reading pleasure, Minneapolis has TWO yes/no ballot questions — one that’s hoping to solve the Mayoral Clown Car problem for future years, and one that seeks to make it easier for wine bars to operate, I think. (“REMOVE MANDATORY FOOD REQUIREMENTS FOR WINE LICENSES. Shall the Minneapolis City Charter be amended to remove the requirement that businesses holding on-sale wine licenses in the City must serve food with every order of wine or beer and to remove mandatory food to wine and beer sales ratios?”)

If any city resident outside either my St. Paul precinct or my old Minneapolis precinct has a special request for a race for me to cover, let me know via e-mail or comment. (I don’t generally do anything outside the core cities, because I am inadequately informed on the crucial issues. It just takes me a long time to get up to speed on what people are talking about, in the local races. It’s been hard enough getting up to speed in St. Paul — in Minneapolis, I could look at the people endorsing someone and know a bunch of things right off, whereas in St. Paul I totally lack that knowledge base. But I LIVE here now, so I’m actually motivated to acquire it — whereas for New Hope or Eagan, that’s just never going to happen.)

And for new readers who don’t know how this works: I research the candidates, make fun of them, and do endorsements. Most people actually reading these for information are here for the down-ticket writeups; there are very few sources for information about the down-ticket races like Soil & Water Commissioners. (Okay, and last year, I had the distinction of being one of the ONLY one-stop sources for ALL the Minneapolis mayoral candidates.)

For candidates who want to make a case for my endorsement (which you totally should; I am pretty sure I swing DOZENS of votes) or anyone else who wants to get in touch with me about this, my e-mail is totally not a secret. My username is naomi dot kritzer, and I use Gmail. You can also find me on Facebook, and I know about the Other message folder now so I will probably see your message within a day or two.

Convergence programming schedule

Posted on July 1, 2014 by naomikritzer

Convergence — our ENORMOUS local summer con — is this weekend, and as usual, I’m going and will be on some panels. Should you wish to find me, here’s where to look:

Thursday, July 3rd

5 p.m. Sci-Fi Mirror

How does the sci-fi of an era reflect society’s concerns, hopes, dreams, and politics? Panelists: Elizabeth Bear, Naomi Kritzer, Haddayr Copley-Woods, Ozgur K. Sahin, Kenneth Konkol. Atrium 4.

10 p.m. Ultimate Evil Overlord 101

An interactive guide to becoming the ultimate evil overlord – with audience participation. Panelists: Naomi Kritzer, Brian Salisbury, Craig Cormick, Laura Thurston, Christoforo Pasquarette. Atrium 6.

Friday, July 4th

8:30 p.m. Tell Me That Again

Most stories have been told before! What folktales, myths, and legends did Shakespeare tell in his plays? What classic stories are being retold in episodes of Star Trek, the Avengers, or the Big Bang Theory? Panelists: Naomi Kritzer, Sarah Prentice, Joseph Erickson, Tex Thompson, Aimee Kuzenski. Atrium 7.

Saturday, July 5th

I have nothing scheduled but might do the Steam Century mystery. Molly, having played the mystery LARP for years and years now with great enthusiasm, has now joined the cast. Ed is predicting that I will lose miserably because Molly will conscientiously refuse to tell me ANYTHING.

Then again, if the weather’s nice, I may try to lure my friends into coming and hanging out with me on the patio (last year the RadishTree had a lovely, lovely patio off the back end of the hotel, with comfortable furniture and fresh-grilled food for reasonable prices. There was even a bar out there. Smokers were all off in their special corral where their fumes would not irritate anyone else.)

Sunday, July 6th

2 p.m. Women in Genre Not Talking about Women in Genre

Panelists talk about everything EXCEPT what it’s like to be a woman working in genre! Which is better, Star Wars or Star Trek? What YA series will be made into a TV show next? Audience questions will be drawn randomly and answered by the panelists. Panelists: Martha Wells, Damarra Atkins, Lynne M. Thomas, Danielle Indovino, Naomi Kritzer. Edina Room.

3:30 p.m. Urban Legends: Myths, Facts, and Half-Truths

From alligators in the sewer to clowns in the attic, urban legends walk the line between total absurdity and being just so outrageous that they might be true. Where do these stories come from, and why do they capture our imaginations so effectively? Panelists: Jason Thibeault, Anne Sauer, Naomi Kritzer, Bug Girl, Shawn van Briesen. Atrium 6.

In the try-on room at the thrift shop

Posted on May 11, 2014 by naomikritzer

1. How did I not notice the enormous stain on this item when I took it off the rack? Oh, AND it’s ripped. Excellent.

2. When it won’t even go on over my hips, that makes it easy.3. This makes me look fat. Ginormous, in fact.

4. What on earth happened with this seam? Skirts should flow down over your hip, not stick out at a right angle. Was this an intentional design or some sort of sewing mistake?

5. I can envision a woman of my exact size and shape who would totally ROCK this item of clothing. And I sort of wish I were that woman, but I think I need to just accept the fact that I’m not.

6. This doesn’t even REMOTELY come CLOSE to fitting….oh, that would be because it’s a children’s item that got hung with the adult women’s clothes by mistake…

7. What was I even thinking when I took this one off the rack and put it in my cart?

8. It fits me and feels good, but I wanted pockets and a different color. I’d be sold if it were $5, but it’s $10.

9. Wait, this item I grabbed impulsively actually looks AWESOME on me! …naturally, it’s one of the $14 items instead of one of the $7 items.

(Shout out to Erin Jeffreys Hodges, who could probably add to this list.)

MarsCon Schedule

Posted on March 3, 2014 by naomikritzer

I’ll be at MarsCon this coming weekend, March 7th – 9th. If you’re hoping to see me there, here’s my schedule:

Getting into the mind of a religious fanatic
Saturday 11:00 a.m., Exec Lounge (Krushenko’s)
Uber villain or bit player, what are they like? Are there any useful generalizations? Are they likely to be suicidal and does that depend on the religion or the person? How can they make for interesting novels and stories without being stereotyped and one dimensional?
With: Naomi Kritzer, mod.; P M F Johnson, Lyda Morehouse, G. David Nordley, David E. Romm, Ozgur K. Sahin

The Press vs. Science
Saturday 1 p.m., Atrium 2 (Re(a)d Mars)
What are some of the greatest howlers in science coverage? What’s the most common kind of reportorial error? What happens when scientists try to write their own press releases? What happens when institutional PR departments do it?
With: Rob Callahan, mod.; Dr. Tom Gardner, Naomi Kritzer, G. David Nordley

Timing and Pacing
Sunday 11 a.m., Exec Lounge (Krushenko’s)
What does timing have to do with writing? How do you know where to put your action/dialogue/sex scene? How can you tell if you have it in the wrong place? How does this differ between novels and shorter works? What horrible things can go wrong? Why do writers’ groups have trouble gauging pacing in novels? Is there such a thing as too fast in pacing?
With: S.N. Arly, mod.; Naomi Kritzer, Lyda Morehouse

Finding the Key to Your Imagination
Sunday 1 p.m., Exec Lounge (Krushenko’s)
What is imagination? Where does it come from? Some of us are blessed (or cursed) with an excess, and others have very little. Most folks think it’s okay for kids to engage in imaginary play and exercise their imaginations, but a lot of folks think it’s odd of grownups to do the same. Does our culture hinder and damage creative impulses? How do you find your imagination if it’s gone missing? How do you keep it engaged and strong? Is it a use it or lose it proposition?
With: Esther Friesner, S.N. Arly, mod.; Haddayr Copley-Woods, Stryder Dancewolffe, Naomi Kritzer

I will also be around, possibly with kids in tow (I apologize in advance if someone wants to chat with me and I get dragged off by a demanding ten-year-old).

An old photo of the girls dressed in costumes.

Stories Published in 2013 (that you can nominate for awards, should you feel moved)

Posted on January 10, 2014 by naomikritzer

This is an Award Awareness Post, where I’m going to tell you, “Here’s what I published last year! In case you want to nominate it for shiny prizes!”) I will note in my defense that when nominating stories, I appreciate being able to find out easily whether things I liked were Short Stories or Novelettes and precisely where they got published in which month (since you always have to write that stuff down). So. In case you think I’m awesome, are nominating for one of the genre awards (or non-genre! heck, feel free to nominate my penis story for the arty-est most thoroughly literary award out there, if you’re on the nominating committee) and want to know what all I published last year so you can nominate for me for ALL THE THINGS… here you go!

Novelette

“Solidarity,” The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March/April 2013. This is a seastead story, with the same setting and characters as “Liberty’s Daughter” and “High Stakes” (which were published in F&SF in May/June 2012 and Nov/Dec 2012.)

Short Story

“The Wall,” Asimov’s Science Fiction, April/May 2013. This is my time-travel-Berlin-Wall story, in which a college student in 1989 is approached by a woman claiming to be her, from the future, and trying to persuade her to go to Berlin to see the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Bits, Clarkesworld, October. This is the penis story. It’s online and it’s free, so you could go read it right now if you haven’t already. I realized the other week that if you look me up on the Internet, it’s currently the third hit. So this means that the lady I was chatting with at the parent coffee at school, who found out I was an author and wrote down my name: if she googled me, she’s probably now read it.

Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)

Bits, Clarkesworld, October. There’s an audio version! Read by Kate Baker.

Otherwise, perhaps I can interest you in a lovely picture of one of my cats:

: Blogs are for cat pictures.

Yuletide Fanfic

Posted on January 3, 2014 by naomikritzer

For years, I’ve enjoyed reading Yuletide stories. Yuletide, for those who are not aware of it, is an annual fanfic exchange. When you sign up, you request a story (you actually have to give multiple possible options) and you also offer to write one (ditto). You volunteer and request based on “fandoms,” which in the context of Yuletide can sometimes be as narrow as a single blog post or a TV commercial. Yuletide does require that the fandoms be small, or at least smallish — you can’t request or offer Harry Potter-based stories, Avengers, anything that has a huge amount of fanfic already.

Stories have to be turned in by late Christmas Eve, and everyone gets their story on Christmas Day. Authors remain secret until January 1st. All the stories are in an archive and can be sorted by fandom, so you can poke through and read all the stuff that appeals to you. (A Little Princess? Allstate’s “Mayhem” commercials? Georgette Heyer’s Venetia? They’re all in there.)

This year I decided I wanted to play. I was assigned to write for someone who wanted Code Name Verity fanfic, and wrote a story called Damask Roses (it’s also Rose Under Fire fanfic) and I wrote a Treat (an unassigned story I wrote because I looked at a bunch of prompts and felt inspired) about Disney Princesses at a college called Four Things That Weren’t Adequately Covered in Mulan’s RA Training.

The story I received was Addams Family (the movie) fanfic called College First. It’s perfect — filled with spot-on bits of deadpan dialog.

Lucifer, as depicted in John Milton’s well-known derivative work, “Paradise Lost.”

I’ve written derivative work before — in fact, I’ve sold it, as you can totally do if you’re deriving from something in the public domain. “In the Witch’s Garden” (published in Realms of Fantasy in October 2002, available now in Gift of the Winter King and Other Stories) is loosely based on “The Snow Queen” by Hans Christian Andersen. “The Golem” (published in Realms of Fantasy in October 2000, available now in Comrade Grandmother and Other Stories) draws on the Jewish legend of the golem created by Rabbi Loew.

I’ve also written straight-up fanfic, but not on AO3 and not in Yuletide, so that was really a new experience.

“Four Things” … was really popular. And here’s the thing about fanfic — no one’s writing it for money, obviously, so there’s this whole culture surrounding it where people are rewarded for their writing and encouraged to write more with compliments. You do get compliments with pro writing; I’ve gotten some really lovely e-mails over the year, and my most recent published story, Bits, has a comments section with eight comments. By contrast, “Four Things” has 353 kudos (basically like a Facebook “like,” only more specifically adulatory) and 40-some comments, all of them saying things like, “you are SO AWESOME.”

You just do not ever get that sort of feedback in pro writing normally. Unless you are so famous that you are also getting stalkers. It’s a funny thing.

And the weird flip side of this is that with pro writing I also always feel slightly embarrassed and awkward about compliments. (I avoid reviews, even good ones; they tend to paralyze me. The bad ones make me think, “oh my god, she’s totally right: I DO suck.” The good ones make me think, “oh my god, I’m totally going to let this person down.” This is totally neurotic, and yet I know a lot of other writers with this same problem — it’s not just me.) Whereas with the fanfic I read every comment and let everyone’s opinion of my brilliance buoy me up. It felt good.

Anyway. Yuletide was fun. Whether I do it next year will once again depend on whether I remember to sign up, though.

Election 2014 already

Posted on December 17, 2013 by naomikritzer

Apparently it’s election season again ALREADY.

Over on my old blog, I conscientiously and obsessively blogged about the Minneapolis mayoral race. (It was an interesting year.) The election came and went, they counted (which took a few days) and I hung up my political-blogging hat thinking, “done with THAT for a while.”

Picture of the Minnesota State Capitol dome.

Minnesota State Capitol. (From http://www.flickr.com/photos/mulad/)

But…it turns out that here in my new district in St. Paul, our State Rep, Michael Paymar, is retiring. (He’s represented this district since 1996. So — for a while, although our State Senator, Dick Cohen, has been representing District 64 since 1986.) The caucuses are in February (February 4th, I think; I wrote it down on the calendar) and the Senate District Convention is in March (late March, thank goodness! it shouldn’t interfere with MarsCon). And if things in this district run like things in my old district, odds are excellent that it’s the Senate District Convention that will effectively pick our next State Rep.

I mean, officially there is a primary, and there’s an election. But the DFL endorsement holds an awful lot of weight in these races, and the DFL-endorsed candidate has a definite edge in the primary. And come the general election, well, I expect that a Republican will run, but I would be pretty shocked if they won.

(DFL = “Democratic-Farmer-Labor.” It’s just the Minnesota name for the Democratic Party.)

Anyway. I feel much less well-informed in St. Paul, mostly because I have less of a sense of who the jerks are. In Minneapolis, there are certain endorsements that people will put in their materials that will cause me to write them off unless they are also endorsed by the people I know I like, to balance them out. I’m sure St. Paul has a similar crowd of People I Would Hate, If I Knew Who They Were, but I don’t know who they are yet. (Does that mean I pay more attention to who you know, than what you believe? Well, not exactly. It’s more that I pay more attention to who your buddies are, than I pay to what you say you believe.)

This is all preamble to note that I got a phone call this evening from Matt Freeman, a candidate to replace Michael Paymar. He gets points for being the first candidate to call me, although mid-December is honestly a point at which even I do not really want to be thinking about elections. We chatted a little (I told him I’d moved last year from Jim Davnie’s district; he wanted to know why I moved, and it wasn’t until I was telling him my answer that it occurred to me that I might be tipping my hand about how best he could craft his pitch. I don’t think he did, though.) I wrote down the caucus date and his name and then told him to go ahead and give me his pitch.

The two big issues he talked about were (1) raising the minimum wage, and (2) improving the opportunity gap with Early Childhood education.

Having listened to that amazing This American Life episode about free universal preschool as well as having read about studies, I’m on board with Early Childhood education funding as a potential panacea for the opportunity gap. I’m also a fan of raising the minimum wage, although I was curious what he wanted to raise it to. Matt said he thought $9.50 was achievable although he would prefer $10.50; he also wants to peg it to inflation and to work for mandatory sick leave and parental leave. (Universal paid sick leave is one of those “everybody wins” sorts of ideas. Totally aside from the fact that letting sick people stay home is the humane and reasonable thing to do, I do not want people with the stomach flu handling my food.)

I asked him about his stance on gun control (which has been one of Michael Paymar’s signature issues, not that he’s had much success with it.) He talked about background checks and mental health screenings, which is actually a huge red flag for me because what exactly does that mean? Does this mean that people who seek help for mental illnesses are going to go into a database accessible to gun salespeople? Because no. I’m a big fan of medical privacy, particularly regarding mental health records. He backpedaled when I asked for details and it was clear he hadn’t thought about this much.

One thing he had thought about was that we needed to work harder to figure out how to sell gun control to outstate Minnesotans. And he’s right about that. Minnesota has a strong hunting culture in the rural parts of the state, and guns just have a different place in people’s lives when they live in the country as opposed to the city.

(My friend Elizabeth, who is a Quaker and a committed pacifist, bought a gun when she moved to the country, because they were raising chickens and were troubled with possums. In the city, if a possum moves into your garage, you can call Animal Control. In the country, you have to deal with this stuff yourself, and that means either owning a gun, or having a neighbor with a gun.)

Anyway. He does not have a smooth, polished political pitch down yet, and I’m wondering now how long he’s been making these calls. You would think people would start with the people who’ve been to caucuses in the past, but we haven’t been to a caucus in this district yet so presumably he got my number off the voter registration records and that suggests he’s cold-calling registered voters. Seems impractical, but what do I know about this stuff? (He was Chris Coleman’s campaign manager so I expect he knows what he’s doing.)

There are currently seven people running for this seat, I think. (All of them Democrats.) In looking for information, I discovered that someone else is already obsessively blogging about this race, relieving me of the responsibility: http://www.theracefor64b.com/ I’ll probably write about it anyway, though.

Same Song, Different Verse

Posted on December 10, 2013 by naomikritzer

There’s an Isaac Bashevis Singer collection for Hanukkah called The Power of Light, which my family owned when I was little. It’s a collection of eight stories for Hanukkah. My favorite was probably the title story, about two Jewish teenagers trapped in the rubble of the Warsaw Ghetto after the uprising. Probably the best-known story in there is “A Parakeet Named Dreidel,” in which a parakeet shows up on the windowsill of the narrator’s New York City apartment.

The final story in the volume, “Hanukkah in the Poorhouse,” tells the story of a Jewish man from Belarus who was kidnapped from his family as a child, forced to live with a Russian family, and, on reaching adulthood, drafted into military service. (“I had no choice but to eat unkosher food,” the narrator says. “In the first days I spat out the pig meat, but how long can a boy fast? For hundreds of miles around there was not a single Jew.”)

I looked this up, tonight, thinking about this, because I was curious about the historical context. The boys were called cantonists, and this system (which included some schooling) was originally started out as something for the orphaned sons of soldiers. The kidnapping and forced conscription was something done to Roma and Polish boys as well as Jews.

The news coming out of Russia, about journalist Masha Gessen’s fears for her family, and the very real threats from the Russian government against LGBT families — the threat that they are going to take away the children of loving parents because the parents are gay –this has all reminded me intensely of this story.

And, in fact, pretty much everything happening to gay people in Russia these days probably sounds pretty familiar, if you’re Jewish and grew up with stories about pogroms, ghettos, and Russian persecution of Jews. It’s certainly sounded familiar to me, right down to my recollection of the historical theory that the Czars encouraged pogroms because scapegoating Jews was such an excellent distraction for people with legit grievances against, say, the Czar. (In Jewish children’s lit, at last back in the 1980s, “Cossacks” basically meant “the bad guys.” It turns out that the Cossacks were ALSO an oppressed ethnic minority — or, in some respects, a co-opted one.)

Anyway. I don’t really have a particular point here, other than that people should read Isaac Bashevis Singer (you can also find that story in his Stories for Children collection, although The Power of Light has absolutely stunning, gorgeous illustrations in it), boycott Russian vodka, and support asylum for any GLBTQ Russians who ask for it.

Gift Shopping for People You Hate: the Passive-Aggressive Shopping Guide

Posted on December 8, 2013 by naomikritzer

Those who used to follow my blog over on LiveJournal may remember that for several years now I’ve done a list of suggested gifts you could give to someone you didn’t like very much, but had to buy a gift for anyway. I’ve actually never run into this problem myself, but I know an awful lot of people who seem to have it, and as an unfailingly supportive and sympathetic friend, I wanted to be helpful.

There are a couple of principles that hold true every year.

1. Subtlety! If you want an open declaration of war, or if you want to insult them and have them KNOW they were insulted, that’s easy and you don’t need my help to come up with that one. You want them to feel totally disappointed, but like they still have to say “thank you, it’s lovely.”

2. Cheapness but not OBVIOUS cheapness. For instance, if you want to give someone a bottle of terrible wine, people know that Charles Shaw wine is only $3 (or $2 in California? I’m not sure). The big cheap brands (Koala Ranch, Yellow Tail, Barefoot) are also both too recognizable and too likely to be drinkable. But if you look, you’ll be able to find a $5 bottle that’s from a totally obscure vineyard. To maximize the odds of it being terrible, go to a wine store with a good selection and tell the wineseller that you want a bottle of wine for no more than $5 and that it has to have a cork, not a screw-top, and it has to NOT be from a recognizable cheap brand, and that you REALLY don’t care if it’s drinkable because it’s actually a prop for a play or a video you’re making. (Don’t tell them it’s a gift. There are loads of perfectly drinkable $5 wines out there and they will show you straight to those if they know it’s a gift.) If they think that no one will ACTUALLY be drinking the wine, you’ll probably get a surprised look and then, “Oh, well. If you REALLY don’t care how it tastes, how about…” and they’ll hand you some hideous crime against grapes, hopefully with a unique, attractive label and then just add a wine gift bag and you are SET.

3. Minimal effort. Let’s face it, you probably would like to be able to take care of this while doing your other shopping, right? Which is why gift cards can be ideal, because they have a whole big rack of them at your grocery store, probably. Look for any or all of the following: (a) businesses the recipient doesn’t patronize; (b) that are primarily brick-and-mortar and are in an extremely inconvenient location; (c) that are in denominations too small to be useful (like, a $25 gift card to a store where everything costs $50 or more). For the passive-aggressive gift card grand slam you could also look for (d) the subtle criticism, like a gift card for a yoga class (these totally exist, but you’ll have to look up yoga studios and call; you won’t just find that one in a rack between Best Buy and Kohls.)

So there were three specific options I wanted to highlight for you this year.

1. The Worst of Etsy.

Craft fairs can be a great place to buy terrible, terrible things, but they all happen on Saturdays and Sundays and you know, you may have better uses for your December weekends. Etsy is open 24/7 and with the right search terms you can find some genuinely hideous stuff. Some search terms to get you started:

upcycled. (My friend Etelka has a whole blog of upcycling horror: Wretched Refuse.)
hipster.
one-of-a-kind (ooak).
goth or steampunk.
rustic, primitive, salvaged.

Of course, there’s plenty of upcycled stuff that’s cool. Not everything with “hipster” in its description will be an aesthetic nightmare. And in point of fact I’m a fan of steampunk. But if you search for “upcycled salvaged hipster steampunk” you’ll probably find at least a few items that will make wonder WHY, WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THIS, WHY WOULD ANYONE BUY THIS except as a gift to their least-favorite relative?

Just don’t overpay. The great thing about gifting a hand-made item — well, the first great thing about gifting a hand-made item is that no one will expect a gift receipt. But the OTHER great thing is that you can give something that’s really cheap but not OBVIOUSLY cheap and they don’t have any good way to figure out what you paid for it.

And yes, I’m wimping out of providing links to hilariously awful stuff on Etsy and I’m using the excuse that it could be gone by the time you go look, but really it’s that I don’t want to hurt the feelings of the craftspeople selling this stuff (and I live in fear of them following the link back and then telling me about how they’re selling these hand-crafted recycled license plate bracelets because they’re trying to keep from losing their house or whatever.) Etelka’s got loads of links and pictures, if you go look at her blog.

I’m much more comfortable linking to stuff on Amazon.

2. The Cheapest of Amazon.

I stumbled across this the other evening and was sort of freaked by it. This stuff is not necessarily BAD for gifting (I linked to it on Facebook and several people immediately followed the links and bought some stocking-stuffers) but it is so disconcertingly cheap it caused me to start plotting a story about the jewelry which, when worn in your ears, makes you extra-vulnerable to the mind-control rays from the planet Vortol or something.

Cute little owl earrings for 62 cents, free shipping.
Cute little seahorse necklaces for 98 cents, free shipping.
Slightly defective Eiffel Tower necklace that says “ARIS” instead of “PARIS,” 93 cents, free shipping.

You’ll need a presentation box if you want it to look like you bought it from a store, which alas will run you more than 62 cents. Well, okay, they’re less than 62 cents EACH but you have to buy 20. Maybe you have one around the house that you could re-purpose.

These honestly are not terrible gifts; according to the reviews, the chains that come with the necklaces are flimsy but mostly they’re cute and look basically as pictured. You could, in fact, order these for someone you liked, if you were on a budget or wanted an inexpensive stocking-stuffer. (Maybe not the “ARIS” Eiffel Tower.) But you could wrap up the box and gloat over the fact that you had spent less than a dollar on their gift.

3. Menards.

I had to go to Menards the other day. Menards is a perfectly fine place to shop for gifts for someone you like, if that person likes tools. It’s also an excellent place to shop for stocking stuffers; there are many aisles filled with things like keychain carabiner flashlights and fold-up miniature pocket multi-tools and so on. (Maybe I’m the only person who craves keychain carabiner flashlights? I bet I’m not.)

But it is also the best one-stop shop for truly godawful Christmas gifts you will ever find. I took photos.

Basically the canned stuff, in a cute jar.

Pie in a Jar. It’s…pie filling. In a jar. Just add a crust, and bake, for bad pie.

There was a whole trend a few years ago in which people made their own mixes (for brownies or whatever), put them in a mason jar, and tied a ribbon around it. I don’t want to criticize this gift too harshly when it’s homemade, because for one thing is it is an extremely CHEAP gift, the sort of thing it takes minimal effort to do, and there are people who are stuck exchanging gifts with a lot of people. They might even be people they like, and they want to give them SOMEthing, and in that case — yeah, mix in a jar? fine.

(Personally, I have never found that mixing together the dry ingredients for cookies was exactly the labor-intensive part. It’s spending 45 minutes moving baking sheets in and out of the oven that’s a pain, but on the upside, fresh delicious cookies. So, you know.)

Anyway. The excellent thing about this gift is that it’s probably going to be genuinely terrible pie but it comes in a cute little jar (I don’t know the term for the sort of jar with the springs in the lid, but they’re definitely in the “cute jar” category) and looks gift-like. Go for it.

Flag neck pillows, because patriotism, I guess.

Neck pillows!

Neck pillows are actually a useful item that lots of people could probably find a use for. In fact, I’m pretty sure my sister once asked specifically for a neck pillow as a gift (I remember hearing about this from my father, who thought it was funny, and told the story to his brother, who said, “WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING, NECK PILLOWS ARE AWESOME.”)

But here’s the thing:

These aren’t just neck pillows, they are FLAG NECK PILLOWS, because apparently everything is better with flag designs. (They did have plain neck pillows in another part of the story but I think they may have actually cost $1 more.)

Molly was looking over my shoulder while I was working on this, and she noticed that in addition to the U.S. flag neck pillows and the Canadia flag neck pillows, there were UK neck pillows down on the bottom. A UK neck pillow seems like a markedly better gift than either a US flag or a Canadian flag neck pillow, probably because I know far more Anglophiles than Yukonphiles (and while I do know people who will sing the Star Spangled Banner at sporting events and fly a flag on flag day, I don’t actually know anyone who thinks the U.S. flag should be on EVERYTHING ALWAYS.)

Penguin, reindeer, and snow man decorative jars.

Generic Christmassia.

Penguin, reindeer, and snowman cocoa jars. I think they actually come with hot chocolate mix in them.

I recognize this design, sort of. There are eight gazillion penguins out there that look kind of like these penguins, all with slightly sketchy features, black beady eyes, and a scarf. You find this guy as a mug for $1 at Walgreens and as a sugar bowl for $10 at Target and as earrings at Dollar General. And now he holds cocoa.

The great thing about this item is that it’s too cute to just throw away, but not actually attractive enough to display. The Cocoa Penguin will lurk on the counter or in the back of the cabinet for years, taking up space, gathering dust, and making the recipient feel vaguely like he or she is being watched by a penguin. Also, they’ll wonder if they’re supposed to refill it…but unless you make your own from cocoa and milk powder and sugar, cocoa comes in a perfectly fine container already, or in envelopes in a little box.

A hot dog steamer.

If you want to give someone you dislike a kitchen gadget for Christmas, the best options are always are either inconveniently large, or irritatingly overspecialized. This item is both.

Admittedly, I don’t eat hot dogs all that often, but when I do, I find it entirely feasible to cook them in a pan on the stove. I can’t recall ever wanting to cook 12 at the same time, but if I did, I still think I could handle it with my larger frying pans or possibly a baking dish in the oven.

It is possible that you could use it to steam other stuff (I haven’t checked) and that someone could find a use for it beyond hot dogs, but it’s also enormous and difficult to store; I would bet money it’s a pain to clean; and it says HOT DOG STEAMER on it, suggesting that the owner is someone who eats so many hot dogs they actually need an appliance to cook a dozen at once.

There probably are people who would find this useful, but even those people will likely find it annoying to store.

Department stores are always filled with weird novelty kitchen appliances this time of year; if a hot dog steamer doesn’t strike your fancy, consider a cupcake lollipop maker or a Hello Kitty waffle iron or a mini donut baker. (Although I think cupcake pops have more enthusiastic fans than hot dogs, and they’re genuinely going to be complicated to make without the specialized device. Unlike hot dogs. Which can be prepared in just about any other existing kitchen appliance you’ve got, including the dishwasher.)

Finally, this one’s kind of cheating, as it’s kind of expensive ($70) and it’s a gift for a child. That’s cheating because it’s too easy. The topic of “how to give a gift to a child that will drive the parents insane” has been covered admirably in the past and it’s understood by nearly everyone that tormenting the parents is the actual purpose of motion-triggered electronic toys with no off-switch, electronic toys that play a recognizable tune slightly out of key, and Moon Sand. (There are also people who make this claim about Legos and Play Doh. But Play Doh is a great toy that kept my children happy for hours — long enough to make the cleanup worthwhile — and it develops motor skills in toddlers, it still smells exactly like it smelled when I was three, and it’s incredibly cheap. And Legos are AWESOME. Awesome awesome awesome.)

This, on the other hand, is horrifying:

A stuffed dog so large it's spilling out of a full-sized chair.

An enormous stuffed dog.

That dog is sitting in a full-sized chair, and spilling out of it. It is too heavy for a child to move easily (I pulled it off a couch, which it was sitting on with a friend, and stuffed it in that chair for the photo). This thing is ghastly. A child will think it’s the coolest thing ever. The parents will hate it. And because it is ENORMOUS, it will never be lost or misplaced; if they get rid of it while their child is at preschool one day, they will either have to fake a burglary or admit they threw the damn thing out.

Menards also had cutesy jars of cookie mix (you could do a gift bag of both cookie mix and pie in a jar!), scented bath products (even people who like scented bath products will probably not like the ones from Menards), and enormous sculptural things you’d put on your lawn (which alas are mostly kind of expensive).

They also have carbon monoxide detectors, which are an excellent gift to anyone who doesn’t already have one but a totally useless gift if someone does. Which is a different sort of win — it’s a gift that says, “I don’t want you to die! I want you to be safe!” but also “…and I think you might be the sort of idiot that doesn’t have one of these already!” (And if you don’t have one, for god’s sake GO OUT TODAY AND GET ONE and install it when you get home. Sheesh. I don’t want you to die! I want you to be safe!)

Past versions, if you’re dissatisfied with your options on this post and want to look back through previous ideas.

2010: Beyond Fruitcake: Gifts for People You Hate
2011: Gifts that say, “I had to get you a gift. So look, a gift!”
2012: Holiday shopping for people you hate

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