Tuesday, May 17, 2005

the strangest things



this morning, i am feeling the effects of psycho-writing insomnia. suddenly, ten seems alarmingly early when the last time i saw the clock was sometime in the fours. thankfully, it's actually sunny out there, at least partially - i couldn't handle the brain-reducing radiation of an overcast day. too much.

so as i sat listlessly at the table, waiting for my brain to kick in and the espresso to be ready, i grabbed the nearest magazine and started flipping.

admission: the closest magazine was cosmoGirl!, which was apparently some kind of twisted gift by emilyone's crazy grandmother or something. but i chose to read it.

that humiliation now thoroughly covered, we can move on to the point at hand. as i was sneezing my way past the wretched perfume inserts, drooling mucous attractively, and recoiling at the general horror that comprises the advertising machine called cosmoGirl! (whose typographical choices alone are appalling - why didn't they add a fucking smiley in the name while they were at it?), i ran into an interesting article.

i should point out the unbelievable luck at finding a readable article in cosmoGirl! (i'm now planning to torment you all with that name. cosmoGirl!). this gem of a rag - and i'm speaking of the june/july 2005 issue - features the usual mix of being about 3/4 ads and 1/4 ads-masquerading-as-articles. there was a section of photos of celebrities caught on camera picking their asses - one helpful caption says, "Note to self: Find a way to become Orlando [Bloom]'s hand" - and criticising them for being not-britney clones - another 'embarrassing photo' shows maggie gyllenhaal hasn't shaved her armpits and features a snarky comment thereupon. fuckers. who fucking cares if gyllenhaal has armpit hair? she's an adult woman. we have armpit hair. get the hell over it. she's just as lovely without being plucked like a goddamn chicken. and then they have the chutzpah to run the other half of the page with a huge ad for hair removal products - fucking lowlife motherfuckers.

anyway, i hit page 92 in a foul mood - and discovered i was reading a really interesting article. it was brief - a two-page spread - and was about a child of armenian immigrants who goes to get her driver's license and is arrested. turns out some paperwork wasn't filed and under the bush rules, she's to be immediately deported to armenia along with her sister. when she arrived, age four, her lawyers fucked up some paperwork. now she's locked in a tiny metal cell à la gitmo - with no privacy for her or her younger sister to even use the bathroom or change - and is going to be sent back to a country whose language she doesn't speak and which is totally alien to her, with no one to even meet her at the airport. alone. at age 18 and, i believe, 14, respectively.

well, luck - in the form of a media blitz for two attractive young girls - saved their asses and a VIP intervened to give them a six-month stay of execution to get their paperwork in order.

i found this article to be interesting and informative and consciousness-raising, things i did not associate with my earlier page-turning of this horrid black hole of a magazine. so i check to see the writer.

loolwa khazzoom.

i should have known.

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