Adventures with Dr. Lady Cutie Troublemaker

Me Singing Rejoice from The Messiah with the Carolina Ballet from abbyladybug on Vimeo.

I did some singing this week for the first time in forever. Man, it stressed me out. Not a perfect performance, but definitely acceptable. I feel pretty proud that I didn’t completely blow it! My parents are in town and came to see. Jake was there, as were his parents. Lalitree and John came. Shannon came and brought Brian’s mom. LOTS of my peeps made it out. Two more performances to go.

Hope you had a fine turkey day. We spent our day with my friends Roz and David and their family, as well as a visit with Jake and his family. A great day overall.

The obligatory Waffle House trip. My favorite waitress took this one for us! Can you believe my parents went back the next day for more?!

OK, so I’m editing pictures and watching a Tivo’d Graham Norton Show on BBC America, and Martin Sheen is on. The other guest has recently gotten engaged and asks Martin Sheen for advice about marriage. What he says is great (for marriage or any significant relationship):

The ideal way to go into a marriage is that you’ll promise that person that you will help them become themselves at all cost, so you will tell them the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth ALL the time, and most of the time, you’ll be the only person that will. And there’s another level to it as well… People talk about happiness. So, “Oh, I’m happy with Larry,” or, “He makes me happy. She makes me happy. This makes me happy,” but they rarely talk about joy, and that’s the thing that transcends the whole relationship is the element of joy and realizing with gratitude and praise that the other person has allowed you to experience joy. That’s different.

After that, Graham Norton said, “I think I can say safely that’s the most profound thing anyone has ever said on this show.”

I think he’s right!

I recommend you watch from 3:00-9:00. It’s a good 6 minutes. That other guy is really funny, too! I love the bit about what happens when you ask men “What are you thinking?”

Obama ’08 – Vote For Hope from MC Yogi on Vimeo.

A brighter day will come.

Once a year (for only two years), I bring out the video I made in Boston right before I moved away. It’s me carving a pumpkin. My ex-boyfriend, Kristopher, is the one filming. Today, I’m heading to Katy’s house for a pumpkin-carving party. Can’t wait!

So it’s a little long (10 minutes), but if nothing else, watch the first two for the new and viral Halloween song by yours truly! As I said last year, please forgive the Ramadan silliness. The point is that it is ridiculous to make non-sacred holidays sacred, and we’re using the example of making a sacred holiday non-sacred to prove the point.

With hostility on the rise at McCain rallies, I’ve started to wonder who he thinks he’s appealing to. An interview on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow show confirmed my fear – that the people headed to these rallies lately are mostly “wingnuts”.

OK, so I’m a psychologist, and I think like one. You’ve heard of the bell curve, right? Well, it shows the distribution of any given measure across a population. So like any parameter, intelligence follows this pattern. In other words, most people have average intelligence. The way standardized IQ tests are normed means that you can say that roughly 68% of people have an IQ that falls between 85 and 115 (in the Average range). That also means that 84% of people have IQ’s that are in the Average range or higher. I know what Average IQ looks like from giving hundreds of IQ tests, and I’m not seeing it in the videos I’ve been watching of people outside these McCain rallies.

I’ve been saying for a while that I feel like McCain is alienating intelligent Republicans. Given some of the videos I’ve seen and reports I’ve read in the last week, a lot of the people who are going to these rallies lately are people I would argue are NOT typical Americans. Saying that Obama is a Muslim or an Arab or a terrorist… that isn’t something even a CRAZY person of average or better intelligence says, unless they are delusional. And most people are not.

He’s even alienating long-time Republicans. As is presented in the clip above, Frank Schaeffer writes:

If your campaign does not stop equating Sen. Barack Obama with terrorism, questioning his patriotism and portraying Mr. Obama as “not one of us,” I accuse you of deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate, and therefore of potentially instigating violence.

I feel like McCain is doing a great job appealing to the bottom 16th percentile – that part to the left of the blue in the bell curve displayed above. And “shoring up” the bottom 16th percentile isn’t going to win him any elections. There’s just not enough population there.

Let me tell you what I’m not saying: I’m not saying that people who are voting for McCain are stupid. But I think that their support for him must come from the work he’s done in his political life BEFORE the last few weeks or their allegience to their party, because the way his campaign has gone, the only new people left listening are likely people who don’t quite comprehend complex policy. Shouldn’t the smart “winning chess move” kind of thing to do right now be appealing to the swing votes? Surely swing voters are not too impressed with what they are seeing.

Attacks get people at a gut level. They are easier to hurl than calm, non-responsive even thinking. These frothed up crowds are the product of that kind of campaigning, and they are dangerous. In fact, I’m scared now EVEN IF OBAMA WINS. That isn’t strategic chess-playing. That’s reckless irresponsibility, because creating seething anger among groups of people is never a good idea!

It’s all in the Maddow video. If you still haven’t clicked, please do so now and take it all in. It’s important stuff.

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Looks like my representative from Georgia, John Lewis, agrees regarding the recklessness of the McCain/Palin ticket.