UnFucker of the Month Award

We launched an activist site this month called UnFuckitup.com. It’s from my song “I Didn’t Fuck It up” that was getting a lot of attention, and we decided to offer an award every month for the best UnFucker, someone who is doing something to UnFuck up the world. It’s been really exciting to see what people are doing. Very inspiring. My blog last week about achievement and success brought in some interesting thoughts, but the most common one was that success was having a meaningful and loving life. For the meaningful part, I am finding that most of us agree you can’t feel successful if it’s just about recognition, money, or climbing ladders where others tell you how great you are. It’s about feeling like you’re contributing to something you give a damn about. So for this week, I’d like to offer up some examples of that in our new website and let you vote on your favorite. Either go to www.UnFuckitup.com or read below. More on Success and Achievement as well as thoughts on Martin Seligman’s new book, “Flourish” in next my blog.

Vote For Your Fave UnFucker of the Month!

http://www.unfuckitup.com/2011/3-nominations-vote/

We have three that we love (though seriously, they are all great) – so go and vote (thumbs up for the ones you like) on www.UnFuckitup.com. The winner will be announced June 1^st. And feel free to add more or wait til June 1 to get in the running for next month!

Got look at these three submissions:

1. Sandra – who is submitting her friend: I need to submit my friend Emma Kwasnica as the epitome of international unfuckery. Among other activism work, she responded to formula makers continuing to undermine breastfeeding by creating a global milk sharing network via Facebook. In the 6 months since, hundreds of babies have gained access to human milk and Emma continues to unfuck our society’s twisted views of breastfeeding. Your song has helped us so much in the past weeks to get through the hard unfucking work that needs to be done. You can check out our website hm4hb.net or our global facebook page http://www.facebook.com/hm4hb

2. Our very first submission from sk8r_punks_13 aka Allan Eaton, and whatever you think about the war, we love this guy because he is actively out there using his time and energy to be an activist for what he believes. Here’s his pic:

3. April who ran for office and wrote a book called The Truth Behind Running For Office. We like this because so many of you were moved by the part of our song that talks about being at the mercy of those who fucked things up. So here’s a way to deal with that – run for office! http://www.aprilbuonamici.com/

Gay Means Happy

I have to share that I was amazed by the young feminist and LGBT communities of students that sponsored our show this past weekend at a fairly conservative midwestern college. These committed, brave, staggeringly smart, lovely people worked their butts off to bring us in and support an underdog community of individuals who really seemed hungry for a dose of on-their-team comedy. But it was in the after-show hours that I got to see a glimpse of a possible future for our country: less anger, more “this is who I am… deal with it.”

I think about my 8 year old who is growing up with gay cousins and friends of the family, mixed race marriages and adoptions in what is now my own little familial united nations. I knew we had really done something right in creating the next generation of nothing-phobes when last year, during the Olympics’ ice dancing events, he turned to me and asked in a wholly incredulous tone, “Why are they always a boy and a girl?” Needless to say I called my cousins immediately to report the good news: this generation is going to look at our generation the way mine looked at our parents’ generation and said, “Really? Separate water fountains? Are you kidding?!!”

I have tremendous hope for gay civil rights in the next ten years when these little kids, too, grow up to be activists. Or simply just not indoctrinated with homophobia.    With my son, I happily launched into a nice chat about the film “Blades of Glory” (a comedy about 2 male ice dancers partnered up) and came up with some bogus explanation that you just really need one person to weigh less…I didn’t talk about homophobia. I will, I promise. But I’m not ready to kill his innocence. Not yet. It’s such a nice fantasy planet to live on for a while.