how do i not love thee?

let us count the ways...

up-front apologies to bill and leaving aside my aversion and overexposure to expensive weddings and even the institution of marriage. i will discount the behind-the-scenes mayhem at my place of employ that's concurrent with most events. at least once a weekend i do a hammah-dance of "can't touch this." but this one?

a glorious day that should make the entire world wish it lived in this city. sunny, with that slightly briny breeze blowing sailboats across the charles and frisbees and footballs across the commons.

5-figure wedding.

11:15 scheduled start-time for ceremony. 90% of the guests fidgeting in their seats. no groom. dad whips out his cell. he's looking for parking. huh? you bought validated parking in the garage. while he claims to be circling the block with his homies, bride is hurling upstairs, alternating with sips of champagne.

chatting up the officiant while we all wait, he tells me in their pre-whatever interview, the husband-to-be seemed "miserable." silently, i wonder if this is an expensive shot-gun wedding.

11:25: groom arrives. ok, we can start. nope. neither the groom's mother nor the bride's father is yet on-site. what kind of parent shows up late for their own kid's big day?

11:45: at last we can go. i help arrange the bride for her grand entrance. her 4-foot train is filthy with shoe-prints. nothing to be done now. ffs, who was stomping on her dress before she even saw anybody?

"i do." everybody claps and cheers.

reception: pictures, drinking, happy people oh-so-badly dressed. "what not to wear" should have been filming. weird, kind of, because the bride looked storybook pretty and her bridesmaids too were elegant in taupe satin cocktail dresses that were perfect for an afternoon wedding. very wise she hadn't asked an aunt for help with all that.

meal: usual hiccups of "oh, i can't have dairy," and "oh, my kid can't have wheat," blah, blah. we're used to that.

appetizers: bridal attendant returns to the kitchen with groom's plate of shrimp. he's ALLERGIC to it. shellfish of any kind will kill him. WHAT? his wife didn't know this? or didn't care? he never saw the menu? later, i discover together they have a 12-year-old son. even if they went their separate ways for awhile as young accidental parents sometimes do, how could this have escaped everybody?

people in unhappy or unraveling relationships often complain of their partner's lack of consideration or self-centeredness. i have been a painfully close witness to the disenfranchisement this creates, as well as the resulting resentment and heartbreak. with the reality of human nature, i can understand the deterioration that may occur through years, particularly in people who were never very outer-directed in their empathy.

my family's fractured dynamic never wove a "happily ever after" sampler pillow for me. but this? some ladies' magazine my mom read used to (?) have a column called "can this be marriage be saved?" i often thought it should be called "should this marriage be saved?" horrible but obvious question on this couple's wedding day. jeebus.

stop making no sense

working lots of hours, filled with barely contained disgust and even something approaching sadness, as well as this weird sense of aversion, i've been swearing off my usual news outlets this last week or so. the base corruption at the heart of the imminent bail-out (did you know 90% of american home-owners are in good standing on their mortgages?). i also suspect this $700 billion figure is being cooked up with the same crystal ball (or is it crystal meth?) that estimated the cost of the fucking big dig. *leaders* in both the senate and house have been deluged by negative feedback from voters on this anal fiscal rape, yet not one is willing to defy lobbyists so close to election day. the "let's play opposite land" of mccain's apparent untethering to reality makes me sick. no longer riding around on the "straight-talk express", he flails like an epileptic drowning in the undertow. obama has said nothing of substance recently which steams me too. (although, perhaps he's taking a page from fdr's playbook and refusing to become smeared or attached to our era's economic hooverville? hh kept asking for help, even after fdr won the election, but prior to being inaugurated. fdr told him over and over to go pound sand. buchanan leaned on lincoln too, but he stayed above the free-state/slave-state fray til actually in the white house.)

if not for sadists in my life who insist on sending me clips, i would not have seen any of the couric-palin mini-series unfolding on cbs. cringe-worthy doesn't even begin to approach the lack of articulation shown by this woman. sentences to nowhere, anybody? to wit:

COURIC: And when it comes to establishing your world view, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this — to stay informed and to understand the world?

PALIN: I’ve read most of them again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media —

COURIC: But what ones specifically? I’m curious.

PALIN: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years.

COURIC: Can you name any of them?

PALIN: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news.

never mind my persnickety twitch at her lack of noun-NOUN agreement, but is she so stoopid she can't produce the name of a single newspaper or magazine? (rhetorical. puh-leeze, don't prolong this.) how's that look for thinking on one's feet? bush had the hubris to admit he refuses to even read the paper. ok, so she isn't there yet. it clearly doesn't occur to her that reading is fun-duh-mental and might help her public speaking? never mind being able to hit back some softballs lobbed her way by couric.

it's just further proof of the absolute disdain the republican party holds for the american people. toss in a bimbo so everybody gets distracted (that means *you* american media!!!) from the real and fetid messes everywhere.

"morning in america"? then please, don't wake me up.