Happy Freakin' Tuesday

On this post holiday-midst-of-exams-papers-panic-over-finals-enlarged-thighs-as-a-result-of-excessive-amounts-of-turkey-and-dressing-can't-stand-this-creping-under-the-eyes-from-this-freakin'-weather-kind-of-day....I give you.....ME.

Oh, and by the way, if you want a good bwaa-haa laugh out loud, check out Am I There Yet and the blog entry written in "Official APA Style" (That's American Psychology Association for us laypersons)....HILARIOUS!!!!!

MANPANTS DOES MANPANTS THINGS. WITH NO PROMPTING.

Hmmm, what could that mean, pray tell? Get your minds out of the gutter people. Honestly....What it means is that while I was off slaving at the Math Lab...no that’s wrong. One does not slave at the Math Lab. One undergoes torture in the Math Lab. I was being tortured with percentage formulas. So torturous it was, that the tutor, who is a whiz at higher math, was quite frankly, a bit stumped. Or maybe it was my brilliant and overpowering presence that had him so rattled. I’ll live my little dream...

Meanwhile, while I was being tortured in the Math Lab, Manpants, independent of prompting, begging, suggesting, bugging or any other synonym for what some sensitive types like to refer to as “nagging,” decided to do some fixing of things around the ole abode. Things I would probably eventually do myself in a fit of pique. Things that would be nicer done by someone else not possessed by my particular brand of neurotic domestic tendencies. Things that required new fixtures, hardware and power tools. Things that come with directions. Directions that he could choose not to read. Upon arriving home, I was met at the door by Manpants, doing the Manpants dance, singing the Manpants song (which involves something akin to “Gonna Fly Now” from Rocky morphed with anything by Guns n Roses and him holding up one arm like Charles Atlas saying, “Look at that arm! Forgot about it, didn’t ya?”). I looked at him, puzzled.

Manpants: “My first day off in 12 days, and what did I think about? YOU.”

No, he does not have an available brother.

Who I Want to Be When I’m 80 – Except for The Nose Picking Part

I woke up thinking about a woman I used to work for in my youth, so the following is something I actually wrote for another tome of mine, but thought I’d regurgitate since her voice was in my head...

I’ve had multiple jobs as long as I can remember. It breaks up my week and is never dull. One of the jobs I had as a teenager was cleaning the house of an elderly woman named Freda Drahfle.

FREDA: (imagine a voice that sounded like Olivia de Havilland, but with a lot of cigarettes and gin added) “Once I week I employed the young girl who would clean my home, change the sheets on my bed, and be a bit of a companion. I had recently suffered from a broken hip and pelvis, so couldn’t get around as much as I would have liked. I apparently had a horrible habit of picking my nose in my sleep and would wipe the results of my excavations on the side of the mattress – and the young girl learned quickly to watch where she put her hands when stripping the bed. (chuckles) I filled my waste paper baskets daily to the brim with Silhouette Romance novels.”

Now at the time, I knew nothing about Silhouette Romance novels, as my barely-13 year old taste ran to Fantasy and Science Fiction or Laura Ingalls Wilder and I hadn’t yet discovered the saucier side of Judy Blume.

FREDA: “I would ask the child to fix me a highball when she was there. I had to provide careful instruction into the proper making of the beverage, as apparently the child had never been properly educated in that respect. Each time she brought me the drink, I would tell the child she was free to take any of the books with her instead of throwing perfectly good stories away. I called them my sedative novels. I thought she would like them. We could have a book discussion. (Chuckles again).”

I would thank her and say that was very nice but I had too many reading assignments from school. Years later, I’m reading an article by Cynthia Haemel – I’m pretty sure it was her – and she starts talking about reading her first Silhouette romance novel and how it turns out that they are nothing but fabulous PORN FOR WOMEN. It was only then that I realized that Mrs. Drahfle subsisted on a steady diet of highballs, cigarettes and porn and was trying to push the porn on an impressionable junior high school student. Outstanding. I wish I’d brought the books home.

Now I'm not trying to say that when I'm 80 I will have a desire to corrupt the minds of America's youth with racy fiction, but I do admire the sheer mischief of it all. And of course the idea of taking up cigarettes and highballs at the age of 80 just fills me with glee. I'm imagining my drunken escapades as we speak. So to speak.

MY BREASTS ARE STILL SPEAKING TO EACH OTHER

Yeah, I’ll bet that got your attention.

Not that they were ever NOT speaking to one another. It’s just that I’ve noticed that mine happen to look like they get along, and are for want of a better description...friends maybe. Fraternal twins, perhaps. Or identical, because even identical twins are slightly different despite having the same DNA. One might be a tad taller, one more gregarious than the other one who might be more shy (I am now discussing identical twins and am not suggesting that I have one gregarious breast and one shy one….well, maybe I do…I dunno)...anyway, where was I? Oh yes. Perhaps I should explain what the hell I’m talking about.

I was walking down Sunset Boulevard the other day. I like to watch the people around me as I walk, and I am weird enough (and you are hereby forewarned that I’m going to seem a lot weirder by the end of this blog) to say hello to people as I pass by. Even the hookers have gotten used to my “Good morning” or “Good evening.” Yes, I do say “Good evening.” It just sounds better than...well, pretty much anything else. Genteel, if you will. Anyway, I’m walking along and a very young woman walked by me with the most enormous artificial breasts I’ve ever seen in person. They made my back hurt just looking at them. I wondered at the mind that would choose unspeakable suffering from Scoliosis for the chance at having a huge set of knockers. Not only were they huge, but they looked as if they had one whopper of an argument with each other and had not spoken in years. It was as if they turned their backs on each other and simultaneously raised their noses (a.k.a. nipples) to the sky, said “harrumph!” and never looked at each other...or hung around with each other (sorry, couldn’t help but go there)...again. And they were identical. One of the tip offs that they did not occur in Nature.

I got to thinking that maybe there was more than one reason to opt for huge artificial knockers...other than the glances of others; each set of eyes experiencing their own set of thoughts about the giant orbs walking by, or the possible photo layout in the June issue of “JUGS.” There had to be something truly positive about them to get them installed. By choice. They couldn’t possibly be any fun at a mammogram. A mammogram for a REAL set feels like you’ve lain naked on a cold steel garage floor while someone runs the tire of a car over your breast. The fake ones have to have that done TWICE. So that certainly would not be a positive. They didn’t look like they were going to be any help at improving balance. I thought that perhaps in the event of a potential drowning that they would make an excellent flotation device. But I wasn’t sure. Perhaps a little scientific experimentation was called for. It frequently is – perhaps one day I’ll tell you how I learned to lengthen the life of vibrator batteries...anyway...My first experiment involved filling up the bathtub, then filling a sandwich baggie with salt water (a.k.a. saline solution) and putting it in the tub. Nope. Salt weighs more. Okay, never mind. Then I tried Jell-O, which was the closest thing I had in my fridge to silicone. Nope. So no good with the flotation device theory.

This is the part where you discover that I really wasn’t lying back there when I said I was very weird. But if you actually try the above experiment to see whether or not I’m telling the truth, you are even weirder than I am. And you have too much time on your hands. Which comforts me greatly.

I’m also comforted that my friends the Twins are still speaking to each other.

URSULA, THE CUBICLE WITCH

Every office has one. They are that individual that is bored, due to having a poorly defined job description with an ambiguous title that leaves them mad with power. They are that person that, after arriving late, finishing their personal phone calls and e mails behind closed doors, ostensibly in a telephone “meeting” with “corporate,” does a little on-line shopping and makes a few more personal calls. They are that individual that decides to, after all of these various activities, take a little jaunt by the cubicle pods to see what the drones are doing. It is usually at this point that the urge to control overtakes the Cubicle Witch, who will walk into one’s cubicle, place their knarled hand upon some minor decoration, like a 2 inch by 2 inch photo of Manpants or something, and say in a wet gravelly voice to the drone… “This is actually not work related, you know.”

The drone hangs its head in shame and fear of job removal. “Yes, I know,” it whispers.

The Cubicle Witch darts their beady eyes around the rest of the pod, looking for contraband not related to the actually well defined job description of the drone. Satisfied that the pod is returned to a void of nothingness and despair that lightness of being cannot emerge from, the Cubicle Witch shuffles off to search their next victim. Unless it’s time for an extended lunch period followed by a headache that makes it possible for them to knock off a few hours early.

Which brings me to the story of…….Madge, the career transition counselor.

See, Madge was an outside contractor hired to be in house two days a week working with clients. She got to have the cubicle next to mine. That cubicle is now used by Louise, the pod drone I told you about that desperately needs to loosen up a little. (I think I heard her actually snort the other day. It was at something she overheard me say on the phone, so I got great satisfaction in that.) Anyway, the day Madge arrived, it was with two moving guys and several boxes. These boxes contained a couple files related to the task of career transition counseling, but the bulk of them contained……..CUBICLE FURNISHINGS. We’re talking mirrors of various sizes, framed pictures with special attachments that enable one to hang them in a cubicle without messing up the nubby fabric, numerous dried flower arrangements, a little shrine for fruit and incense, an occasional table, a stuffed chair for clients, a new desk chair to replace the regulation one already there, more framed photos, several stuffed animals for the top of the computer monitor, an actual dried flower WREATH and I think some scented candles. It was astounding how she managed to get an entire studio apartment into one small cubicle pod. I think she must have been from New York. They know how to do that. Anyway, this was her first day. Other drones and myself walked by and looked at the environment with absolute awe.

And fear. Mixed with a little schaudenfruede.

What would the Cubicle Witch do? This went so beyond the realm of non regulation, non work related and caused such sensory overload in the sheer act of walking by that we could speak in hushed tones of nothing else for two weeks.

Which is when they fired her. I think it was the stuffed Barney that pushed them over the edge.

SHE THE DESTROYER

I think I should mention that in the menagerie that is my home, i.e. the two dogs, the fish, the mourning doves that nest in our hanging fuchsia on the balcony, Manpants and occasionally me, the house is very full of Life. And sometimes these life forms go into your stuff, take things off tables and out of drawers…and eat them. Okay, Manpants hasn’t done that in a long time, but one of my precious pups (the pit bull-Jack Russell terrier mix that is a year and a half old) likes to run willy nilly through the house when we’re gone and have her version of fun. I can almost hear her running around yelling “Weeeeeeeeee!” as I write this. I am not sure what the other NORMAL and too cool for private school scruffy mutt does when she goes on her adventures. He doesn’t stop her, that’s for sure. Now, some of you who know the virtues of crate training…to you I say, yeah, sure, fine, whatever. Too many hours for me to be comfy. My strangely wired mind goes quickly to fantasies of fire, flood, locust swarm or stampede of terribly angry Peruvian Llamas that level my home while my poor dog is quietly minding her own business in her crate. Nope. Not gonna do it. Just this evening, one of my lab partners in my Biology class borrowed my pink stapler and commented on the chewed and mangled state that it is in. Yes, she extracted the stapler from my book bag and did her worst. She got that out and a small bag of almonds that I had in there for those times when I want a little snack. She ate them and left me an empty wrapper on the floor. What can I say. It still works. The stapler, I mean. I will also comment here that I have already mentioned my abhorrence to pink and I don’t know how I ended up with a pink stapler. I’m starting to be alarmed and have an appointment with my physician to check my meds a week from Wednesday.

I will state at this time that this precious princess has managed to figure out the complexities of childproof locks on cabinets and spent an entire week not long ago taking all the Tupperware out of one cabinet and carefully arranging it in an obstacle course pattern throughout the living room. Apparently leaving them in the kitchen was out of the question. We finally got better locks for the cabinets, so she has graduated to pulling things off counter tops and table tops. Like an entire box of Gevalia coffee - which is very finely ground for any of you who might not know and who have never received that free sample in the mail that suckers you into buying a few months supply – and takes ages to vacuum out of the carpet. I’m pretty sure that one was the one that had her running around yelling “Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” all consumed with glee and my week’s supply of caffeine.

Tonight the object of her desire that was tantalizing her from its perch on the dining room table, was my copy of Hamlet. Apparently she is also rather refined in her choice of reading material. The fact that I actually need that copy of the play to do my paper on the graveyard scene in Act V was not really of major concern to her. Her Dog given right to mangle Hamlet was, in her limited attention span, equal to her right to mangle the box of tampons in the grocery bag that was on the counter. Both are paper products that have things in them that Mommy needs.

Sigh……

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

This middle-aged college student who writes before you is a tad low-performance, academically speaking, in her Biology class. Under these circumstances it is considered appropriate, professor willing, to do extra credit in an attempt to raise that all-important grade. This particular professor picked the activity/assignment/learning experience that she would approve extra credit work on….

Gunther von Hagens’ BODY WORLDS.

Now before I go further I want to preface that I did not really read up on what BODY WORLDS actually was. I figured it was some cool, sciency thing like The Invisible Man or Invisible Woman or The Incredible Journey. Those of you old enough to remember those references, yay. Those too young, look it up or ask you parents. You youngsters can use Inner Space with Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid as a reference. If that is also too dated, then whatEVER. You are a child and should be outside playing and not reading this anyway. Now to get back to BODY WORLDS I remember having heard something about plastic, or plasticizing or something so figured there would be cool models of things. So I traipsed down to the Science Center first thing yesterday morning to attend the exhibit. Actually I didn’t traipse, I spent an hour in Saturday morning traffic on the 110 Freeway. But that has no role in this story.

First thing I read upon arriving was: “ Gunther von Hagens’ BODY WORLDS, The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies.”

Real Human Bodies. Hmmmm. I read the captions on the first exhibits – skeletal systems, individual bones, etc…and noted that the exhibit was made possible by individuals who had donated their bodies to science. I thought about the donor card on the back of my drivers license and thought to my self that I was going to need to add something to the instructions on the card, like, “Organs for use in LIVE bodies only, people.”

Now, it seems that this Gunther von Hagen, not to be confused with Baron von Frankenstein, has invented and patented a process called “Plastination.” He painstakingly dissects entire systems of the human body away from OTHER entire systems of the human body, like say, the nervous system only, or the blood vessels only, or the cardiovascular system only….manages to separate it, and then infuse it with a liquid plastic into the cells until the specimen fills up with plastic – sometimes dyed plastic, sometimes not. He then adjusts it to the structural contours of the human shape and does a kind of SCULPTURE, if you will. It’s got to take years. This is really fascinating and allows one to see the different systems of machinery in the human body in a completely new way.

But then the artsy sculpture. I couldn’t help but remember a bad episode of THE OUTER LIMITS with Anthony Michael Hall in the lead where he plays a frustrated sculptor who can’t get a gallery to take him seriously until he starts killing people and covering them with plaster – passing them off as sculpture. Well, artistically speaking, they WERE. They just happened to be posed dead people sculpture.

So I’m walking along, scrutinizing the pieces, looking at enlarged hearts and smokers lungs and what have you, when I get to some pieces that were definitely Mr. Von Hagen’s masterpieces.

A man, looking to the heavens, standing tall and proud. His skin had been carefully removed so that all musculature, skeleton, organs etc were intact. In his right hand, raised up in the air with pride, or triumph, or whatever, he holds his entire skin like a prized cloak, or trophy, or carpet, or whatever. I started hearing actor Ted Levine’s voice speaking one of his lines from SILENCE OF THE LAMBS...“It rubs the lotion on its skin...” over and over in my head.

There were a couple more that went in that direction that I won’t talk about here, you’ll have to check it out yourself, but suffice it to say it was at this point I was painfully aware that these were REAL people at one point in time. I wanted to know about THEM. What had they done for work when they lived, who were they, why was that guy playing chess so freakin’ skinny? I then wanted to think about Gunther for a minute. Okay, obsess about, and for longer than a minute. I wanted to know what he was thinking about when he stepped out of the realm of straight scientific exhibition and into the realm of fine art, using dead human bodies as his medium and palette.

A little creeped out ultimately, I went home. The traffic was much better and I shrugged off my creepiness by getting a nifty new haircut and fresh highlights appropriate to the winter season.

END TO CALIFORNIA DEFICIT IN SIGHT…WE CAN DO COMMERCIALS IN JAPAN!!!!

Oh my gosh, it'll be GREAT! We can leave this stupid crummy State that can't make any money with its stupid people who don't want gambling casinos in bad neighborhoods because we're all a bunch of Losers and go overseas and do commercials in JAPAN! It'll reduce the whole California deficit! Really! No, silly, we don't need to give incentives to Caleefornia businesses to stay here and keep jobs here. Sheesh! Take film production companies, for example, Film companies NEED to go overseas...sheesh, if they shot films here they'd actually have to pay the people who work on them...I mean the people who aren't the stars...ya know, like the extras? And the film crew? And the stage carpenters? No one sees THEM in the movie! And we just don't have enough money for people like that, I mean c'MON!!!! And layout animators just want WAYEE too much money in Caleefornia for that kind of work when we can get ya know, people? In Korea? To do the same job for 10 cents an hour? Who do these people think they are? They draw CARTOONS!!!! They are not stars! They are hurting Caleefornia! And computer technicians? They are not stars! They are hurting Caleefornia businesses with their salaries. We can pay 3.00 a day to someone from another country to do the job over the phone!

According to the Associated Press, "As a film star, Austria-born Schwarzenegger visited Japan several times to promote his movies and star in television commercials for beer, noodles, energy drinks and other products. Thursday, he talked about filming more commercials to pay for a California trade office in Japan. "It's quick money," he told California reporters. "You work for a day, and you have a trade office open and enough money for several years..."

Well, shee-it, what WERE we thinking? Hell, I thought that if a business was in trouble, you get a whole bunch of investors to take an interest in the business, put money into it and restructure it to get it back on its feet toward the objective of being a financial success again. I didn't know you're supposed to go take a job overseas and then take your paycheck from that job and sign it over YOURSELF to the business in trouble...I would think that to be kinda foolish, though I guess it might seem nice. And appropriate I suppose if you're a benevolent dictator. I'm not sure how that flies when you're the governor. And if a state (which is sort of a REALLY big business) is in trouble,it seems to me that getting the businesses from that State investing back into the State and toward the objective of keeping that state, and ultimately the whole economy of the state...I don't know... THRIVING...that would be kinda sensible to me...but then hey, I'm not the Governator.

Okay, okay, how 'bout this? How about we ALL go over to Japan and do commercials that in one day will pay for us all to have small businesses that we can open here in California with the seed money we got from Japan and then fix the economy THAT way? Talk about your American dream! Via Japan. What? Oh we can't just DO that? We have to be movie stars? They won't pay just ANYONE to do a beer or noodle commercial? Oh. So, we don't get to just bop on over to Japan for a little one day job and use the money to open businesses here and make money here, even though we live here and spend money here? Oh. Okay. I didn't know. I guess I have to read more about these things so that they make sense, you FREAKIN' MORON, HOW DID PEOPLE ACTUALLY THINK YOU COULD GOVERN A STATE!?!?.

Yup. Our Botox usin', make-up wearin', bad hair dye sportin', acrylic manicured (I kid you not) Governator has now decided to help California by doing commercials in Japan to pay for a California trade office there. Hmmm. Well, I guess the gambling casinos in bad neighborhoods idea didn't go over too well with his constituency so he decided to go back to the drawing board...no wait...he didn't decide to go back to the drawing board...no, he decided what would really help California is to do commercials in Japan. I guess it's really taxing when one spends one's day thinking up cheesy one liners and calling the majority of the State "Losers." It must be really hard to be the Governor of a State under all that pressure.

ME, ME, ME, ME, ME....

I’ve decided that today I’m going to escape from the real world into complete women’s magazine shallow superficiality. Instead of thinking, worrying about or volunteering for, some cause in the world, today I will escape by obsessing about the perfect seasonal lipstick and winter moisturizer. I will buy a new mascara because the magazine told me to discard the one I have if it is over a month old. The magazine said that my trusted concealer choices are passé so I will sample the new multi-hued concealers…like Blue. I might try that new toothpaste that is supposed to build up my enamel while simultaneously whitening my smile. I will shop for gloves to wear over that nifty new cuticle conditioner. And maybe a hat. I think gloves and hats are pretty and more women should wear them.

I will think about completing the practice test for the math exam I must re-take on Thursday……later.

I had occasion to be at a star studded fundraiser over the weekend. Most of the stars were from the Broadway stage and so had not made huge alterations to their faces and bodies. Most of them came from backgrounds that included dance, so proportionally they were all fit and lookin’ good, no matter how old. There WERE however many patrons there of the L.A. variety. Those types were generally seen sporting one-out-of-the-standard-five-approved-nose shapes and had that very specific look to the skin that can only be achieved by excessive chemical peels and botox. You know the look. China doll fresh with no discernible character or unique qualities whatsoever. And of course, the L.A. Lollypop People were in abundance –stick figure bodies with great big heads. Imagine a sea of men and women of varying heights all shaped like Celine Dion. Freaks to look at in person, but they look great on camera. Like I’ve mentioned here before, unlike most women in the Los Angeles Basin and surrounding Burroughs, I do not have a desire to undergo plastic surgery or injections of any kind. I believe that I came by each wrinkle through hard work, good fun and a modicum of dramatic self destruction. They make me look like I’ve got a few scandals in my past and that I currently have something going on. Kind of gives me that Mrs. Robinson, “I could show you a thing or two, Sonny” air of mischievousness and mystery that can only be attained by actually having facial expression and eyes that haven’t had the twinkle removed by excessive eye lifts. Shows like Extreme Makeover and The Swan (which is hands down the most EVIL thing on television) succeed in taking women into their embrace and turning them into bad impersonations of drag queens from the 80’s. Which is actually an insult to my friends, the 80’s drag queens. Why on earth would anyone think they looked GOOD after that?

Anyway......I’m sticking to that which is fluffy and superficial today, so I cannot therefore consume myself with disgust over the pervasiveness of TeeVee producers preying on female insecurity and then mutilating those same females on national television. I will go back to talking about ME.

I’m ecstatic to report, that due to my weight loss efforts I was finally able to buy new bras. Two sizes smaller. That’s right, kids. SMALLER. Anti-surgery diatribe aside, I am still a big ole girly girl when it comes to finding great new pretty making PRODUCTS and THINGS not related to forceps, scalpels, needles, scrapers and industrial strength acids….and so my little winter supply shopping spree I’ve scheduled for after work has me all a-flutter and giddy.

"WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS?"

As you may have surmised from my last entry, I am not taking the election results well. I think as of today, I’ve decided to plunge myself into a state of denial about the state of the world. I’ve simply decided that Hell is truly on Earth and that I am living in a kind of limbo purgatory reserved for all humans because we as a collective body have become complete assholes. So here we are. And so life in other areas continues to plod along on life’s terms and things like work and school and dog poop and sour milk in my coffee are all part of it, along with those greater horrors I can do damn little about at this moment.

So since things are going so well, I should mention that any gloating, glee or good feelings about the 90 on my last math exam have been squashed, nay annihilated, by the FAIL that I got on the exam this evening. That’s righty. FAIL. It’s a bone-head class that is strictly pass/fail that I am required to take in order to get to the math class that will enable me to transfer to UCLA. Anything over 3 wrong is a FAIL. I got 5 wrong. I really FAILED. Now I ask you, since I don’t play fantasy baseball, fantasy football or bet on the horses at Santa Anita, when am I ever going to use Ratios? And if you say “when you’re cooking rice” I will punch you in the neck. And units? Proportions? Unless it’s the proportional changes in the circumference of my thighs measured over a three month period of time whilst jumping back and forth between Weight Watchers and whole foods only, I’m truly not interested. I doubt that I will ever use ratio and proportion when taking on a critical analysis of Hedda Gabler or To Kill a Mockingbird….which DO interest me.

Books were my first drug of choice. I never discovered or gravitated toward finite math (or any other kind of math for that matter) as a means of escape from the realities necessary to escape from that Life had trapped within my troubled brain. I suppose it could be equated with a choice between Alcohol or Xanax. Alcohol requires a certain amount of ritual and takes a certain amount of time. Time to savor. There is an actual beginning, middle and end to the experience of alcohol, from the pouring (prologue) to the first sip (introducing the characters) to the conflict introduced after drink 3 when the personality changes (plot commences). Anything can happen at that point. At that point it becomes either a suspense thriller or a slapstick comedy. The experience progresses to the climax, which is facilitated by the lascivious, sloppy or just plain bad behavior of the protagonist slash villain slash omniscient narrator and ends with passing out. There’s a solid story structure to a good drunk, be it comedy or tragedy.

Xanax on the other hand is the 3 martini pill that takes you on a linear path from point A to point B with about as much excitement in the getting there that one might experience picking lint off one’s blouse. I think there is a solid reason, probably related to brain chemistry or talent genes, that so many writers are fabulous alcoholics and so many people in the math and sciences lean toward the predictable, carefully calculated and crafted formulations that are prescription drugs.

Now how did I arrive at this topic? Oh yeah. I FAILED my math exam.

A SCREAM WAITING FOR A MOUTH

That’s how I feel. Like a scream waiting for a mouth. I am saddened, lost, frightened and feel that I’m in a very small group of outsiders that do not belong. You see, and I’m echoing the words of others from that small group of outsiders, the country that I live in is not the country that I thought I was living in. I am most disillusioned, because once again, I trusted. I had hope in people. The definition of Insanity is one who keeps repeating the same action, expecting different results. In my case, I kept hoping that people would turn out to be the kind of people that built this country and fought hard to uphold Its principles. A country willing to fight a Civil War for the rights of all people and adopt a united front that All are created equal under the eyes of the law and that all have the right to Life, Liberty and Property. A country that, while flawed, still maintained a majority of people with a kind of moral character and civility. A country made of people like those who wrote a Constitution that has worked well for over two hundred years, but is apparently now dated and out of style. The Europeans, Asians, Middle Easterners etc who came here (by choice) from all walks of life for the promise of a better life, free from Religious, economic and social class persecution. Not the people who have taken the spoils and inhabit the place now. But the People have spoken. And they have spoken for everything that I am morally and socially against. They have mandated that our government can lie to us and we must accept it. They have mandated that diverting attention from real terrorist danger to attention to a war for oil rights is a righteous and proper thing to do. They have mandated that bigotry and hatred of entire sections of our population is not only acceptable, but legal, despite what our Constitution might say. They have mandated an ever growing divide in the economic status of our fellow citizens, namely those who have the money for services, and those who do the serving. They have mandated that women’s equality is going to have to continue to wait. They have mandated that “Pro Life” means caring for the unborn until they are out of the birth canal, only to then cut back on human services for those children once they are born, like proper medical care, equal education opportunities, proper nutrition, clean air and water, and vigilant protection from sexual predators and other unspeakable abuses that rob a child of any kind of “life” that they deserve. And “God” forbid those children are adopted by a gay couple that would raise the child with respect, love and opportunities.

This is not the country that I truly believed that I lived in. But the majority has spoken and I am an outsider. My country has turned upside down. Therefore, from this day on, I will in silent protest, place an upside down American Flag on the bumper of my car. Who knows. Maybe the concept will catch on. Like the early pacifist Christians who if exposed as Christians would be executed. They were outsiders who didn't belong. So they quietly identified themselves to one another by drawing a small fish in some subtle place outside their home. Look how upside down things turned out for them. They wouldn't recognize those who claim the title these days.

Things seem quite bleak right now and I fail, this time, to see the silver lining.