Grievance II: Names

Sarah Palin is apparently unable or unwilling to give her children names that are not terrible. Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper and Trig. These are not names. These are signs of abuse, the bruises and cigarette burns left by a callous mother indifferent to the plight of her children.

This is a track. It enables runners to run for long distances without actually going anywhere.



This is also a track (several in fact). It enables heroin addicts to do heroin.



Neither of these things are people. They are things. Fun things, mayhaps, but still things. Maybe Track would be an acceptable name if he were a little kid, and he had a twin brother named Field. That would be cute, in the way that dressing up twins in matching outfits and parading them around the playground is cute. Which is to say that it stops being cute and starts being creepy at the age of five. By their 50s, Track and Field would likely live together in squalor, rambling about the good old days and foregoing even weekly showers.

Bristol is similarly horrible. The only time I ever hear that word is in reference to liquor.



I cannot vouch for it personally, but my father tells that Harvey's Bristol Cream is actually quite delicious. But no matter how delicious it is, it is not a good name for human being. What if I were to name my hypothetical children after my favorite alcohol? Little Franzia and her brother Almaden? What about my eldest son Steel Reserve? Or his half-sister with my first wife Mad Dog 20/20? The press would have a field day.

Willow and Piper are technically real names. Still, they follow the family tradition of being other things. Even more disturbing, however, is the dark subtext contained within these seemingly innocuous, even quaint, names.




These names obviously references to satanic rituals. Any viewer of Charmed or Buffy the Vampire Slayer could tell you that. Unlike Sabrina, these teenage witches regularly convene with the forces of darkness in order to perform their ghastly magic. Also, I have it on good authority that this one time at band camp, the actress who played Willow abused herself with a flute, then later abused herself again by appearing in Date Movie*. Are these the so-called family values Palin will bring to the White House? Witchcraft and masturbation?"

Trig?



Trig?



Where to begin? What the fuck? Trig?! That's not a name you give someone in civilized society. Trig is the kind of name you get when you live in a post-apocalyptic nightmare world, where the rule of law has fallen, and all arguments are settled by the sweet whisper of gunpowder and steel. Trig is the name of a lone wolf bounty hunter or at best a renegade sheriff who plays by his own rules. Fine roles, these, but would you really want to destine your child to such a fate? It's like naming your child Jeeves or Higgins. You're dooming him to be a butler.

White people, it's time to get off your high horse. No longer can you poop on blacks for giving kids crazy names. It's time to look in the mirror. Do you like what you see? I bet not. Native Americans can get away with this kind of thing, but only because they have been through enough already. Sarah Palin is not a Native American. She is white. Fail.

*Hannigan is the man on How I Met Your Mother, though

Grievance I: Alaska is Not Even A Real State

Alaska is not a real state. Being governor of Alaska is like being President of the Clean Plate Club (which, ironically enough was started by a real president). It just doesn't matter. You can eat and eat until your swollen belly distends in the manner of a starving orphan. You can run your tongue over the plate for hours until the scintillating ceramic is the envy of all the neighbors. Still, my friends, no one gives a shit if your fucking plate is clean. Alaska is similar. Nobody gives a shit about it or what goes on in it.

Before August 30, 2008, when was the last time you even thought about Alaska? Take a moment now. Let your thoughts drift back to the distant past, and let warm reflections of simpler days wrap around you like a comfortable old blanket. When did you last say to yourself, "Hey, I wonder what's going on in Alaska right now?" or "I wonder if that igloo consortium was able to evince any real change." or even "Alaska? Didn't we give that back to Russia?"

I imagine it has been a very long time since these or similar thoughts have crossed your mind. If you do happen to be one of the few people who has thought about Alaska in the past decade I am sure it was one of the following thoughts.

"Man, Ted Stevens is crazy/does not understand the basic functionality of the Internet/is being prosecuted for massive graft/reminds me of Yosemite Sam."

or

"Polar Bears are fucking delightful."

That li'l motherfucker is absolutely precious. When Joe Alaska first felt the icy firmament of the state that would come to bare his name crunch under his sore and aching feet, it was the sight of this little guy's ancestors which gave him the strength to go on and found his terrible, awful, no good, very bad state. We may forgive the polar bears for this. They knew naught what horrible tedium would result from there adorableness.

Alaska has only two other things worth mentioning. Oil and igloos.

The importance of igloos, and the all-powerful igloo consortium, goes without saying. Without them, how would spend the Winters? How would we survive the blasts of cold wind and falling snow? In shelters made of wood or stone equipped with electricity and/or plumbing? Madness. Pure madness.

Oil, of course, is the very lifeblood of modern America. It goes by many names. Black Gold. Texas Tea. Your Milkshake. No matter what one calls it, however, one must acknowledge its importance. It says so on the news like every night. Alaska apparently has a lot of oil underneath it. If I understand the Palin/McCain position correctly, there is enough oil to supply America with cheap and plentiful gas for a million trillion years. The moment that sweet bounty is tapped, America will enter a new Golden Age, the sort of wonderful future predicted in The Jetsons and insane commercials for cars or something. Energy will be too cheap to meter, and men will never again leave the house without a hat and tie, and women will stay in the home, slowly consumed by ennui as they endlessly bake cookies and do the laundry for hubby. The American Dream will finally be at hand. Also, there will be no global warming. Or black people.

I had heard Alaska had a Bridge to Nowhere. That is some scary shit. Nothing about something called a Bridge to Nowhere sounds good to me. Falling off of a bridge is one my great fears, along with escalators and dying alone. A little research, though, proved this claim untrue. Alaska does not have a Bridge to Nowhere. It has three. That's fucked up. That's the kind of thing that inspires Rod Serling to narrate the opening of a TV show.


Sarah Palin is an ordinary woman. She drives an ordinary car and works hard as an ordinary governor. But Sarah is about to learn that the bridge she drives to work everyday on is not ordinary at all. In actuality it is a bridge...to nowhere. Improbable? Yes. Impossible? Perhaps. But Sarah Palin is about to learn that nothing is ordinary...in Alaska!!

In conclusion, the Inuit language has over two million words for snow, but only one word for shitty states that are barely even states at all: Alaska.

(Also Delaware)