burn the witch

Florida Preacher Burns Qu'ran

Evangelical preacher Wayne Sapp yesterday burnt a copy of the Muslim holy book the Quran as controversial pastor Terry Jones looked on in a Florida church, reports the AFP.

Jones drew a storm of controversy last year for his plans to burn copies of the Qur'an on the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in New York. The Qur'an burning was presented as an event where the Qur'an was put on trial and convicted of crimes.

The Qur'an was soaked in kerosene for an hour before being set alight while onlookers took pictures.

Jones defended his involvement saying he had attempted to "give the Muslim world an opportunity to defend their book" but received no response.

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i've pasted the entire thing here, because there are so many kinds of wrong, i'm too tired to detangle them all. but...


only reason terry jones didn't burn the qu'ran last year was because the car dealer pulled back the free auto offer when shit hit the media fan.


quite sure not one person at this shindig knows that mohammmed, and his followers, recognize jesus as a prophet, right?

quite sure ya can't put an object on trial, right? (ya know, the "guns don't kill people-people kill people" thing?)

and lastly... when a nutjob loony tries to talk to me about his whacko theories, i don't answer either.

bad pennies

i see a guy waiting to be interviewed. i recognize him as having been fired from 2 places i worked, one a very long time and he was old then. i wasn't his supervisor, so don't know why, other than having been on the back end of his general ineptitude. i share this with my co-workers. when the guy is finally out of the building, they tell my gm. who asks me what's up.

he is genuinely SHOCKED. like :O-kinda face, shocked i tell you, that neither of the places in which i knew the guy are on his resumé. i have to bite my lip as to not laugh. i explain i have nothing personal against the guy, am just sharing information. has he never interviewed a waiter before?

he is hired.

as heard here

"drop your 5-top and make it a 4." ok, done. "now make it a 7-top." ok.

i turn around and it is 2 fat, harried-looking parents, 2 very tired kids, under the age of 10, and an infant ready to go full-tilt any second.

"we'll just have water and for god's sake, could we have some menus?" underwhelmed by their charm, i comply. "uh, could we have the kids' menu?" "sorry, but we don't have a kid's menu..." before i can finish my statement about the bar menu and what other kids tend to eat, the mother snaps," well, if you don't have a kids' menu, we might just have to leave."

seriously? don't break my heart, lady.

unfortunately, they stay and even though the kids had chicken fingers for lunch and both say they aren't hungry, they order them anyway. they smush ketchup about their plates and each eat like 1 piece. i attempt to engage them asking about the toy alligator and such, and the chilluns seem weirdly nice, with 2 such miserable 'rents.

the baby finally explodes, the mom starts packing up, while the dad is still eating, i go over to ask if i can get them anything else, "obviously," she snaps, "just the check." i clear away what i can and bring it over. the dad is still smacking his lips, chewing, and starts fishing out crumpled paper money from all over his person.

mom had soup and salad, fingers for the kids and dad had a steak and a veg. the bill was $96. ridiculous, yes, i already know that and we all know it's why i whore myself out in the place that i do.

he left less than 10% and a table and floor that looked like a damn barrel of grenades had gone off.

and you wonder why i hate people? seriously?

everything in its place

the owner does like to tease me about my exceptional distaste for clutter. besides the tedium of having to dust it all (see second category of mockery, re: cleanliness, lol) i find it just visually tiring. one of the immediate appeals of my last home was its blank slate-ness. an empty box of industrial surfaces, wood, concrete and glass. once i took up residence, the downside was obvious: nowhere to put the odds and ends of daily life. no closet for coats. no shelves for bath towels and hygiene sundries. yes, i own a ridiculous amount of glassware and china for a single person, but nary a cabinet for even a small set of dishes.

for months and months, everything was stowed. even my clothes. i lived in a few sweaters and a couple pairs of pants. if i wanted something different, i had to dig through the moving boxes to find it. it sucked. eventually there were kitchen shelves and a clothing rack, but much else remained messily stored, years in the limbo of never-opened cartons. the boxes stacked high over the soffit, were an eyesore without option.

last week, i moved. closets, cabinets, drawers, armoires and a basement cage to boot. spacious capaciousness i could only have dreamed of a few short weeks ago. in just days, nearly everything has found a home. as i live and move through the place, objects and energy will change the arrangements and the patterns, but there will not be boxes in sight for lack of options, nor will anything go unused because it must remain stored. it feels an incredible luxury.

last week, i moved. the space soars with windows, skylights and rings with the industrial echoes of brick, wood and plaster from over a century ago. i am walking distance to the owner and the amenities of everyday life. much like my crystal glasses and over-coats, now tucked tidily away, i feel finally like this is the place for me. the last, now recognized as only a way-station while so much in both his life and mine got untangled and then knitted together.

i never have been so placed by a place. it's a profound and giddy feeling, full of potential and hope. it's been a long time since those angels came to visit me. i think now they might even stay.

massacres and the free market

this past weekend in a tucson shopping center, 6 people were killed, including a judge and a 9-year-old girl, and 14 people were left wounded, including a congresswoman married to an astronaut.

one-day sales of guns in arizona jumped 60% on january 10th vs. the same day least year.

this is a $500 gun that holds over 30 rounds of ammo. it was the same gun used by seung-hui cho at virginia tech, where 32 people were killed.

according to the brady campaign, arizona scores 2 out of 100 on its rating of state gun laws and its rate of gun deaths is 1- 1/2 times the national average. you do not need a special permit to carry a concealed weapon.

beyond the bipartisan discourse of which other partisan is responsible for a complete krazee going on a murder spree lies the empty cartoon conversation balloon of rational and reasonable gun ownership, the law and the lack of mental health safety net. a boy ejected from community college for nearly a dozen disruptive and dissociative episodes on campus and in class was able to buy a gun favored by cops and gangsters, virtually no questions asked.

when a lone krazee, who was, according to neighbors, quiet and kept to himself, natch, drives a panic of weapons fever, there is something fundamentally flawed with people's thinking. they knee-jerk convince themselves that somehow a gun in the house, or in a hip-holster at the safeway, will safeguard themselves and their families. do they really believe they have the lightning reflex and confidence to shoot first in the face of an intruder or gun-wielding loony whose world-view is absolutely unhinged? soldiers and cops train for this daily and don't always react in time, or on target.

after virginia tech, (gun sales went through the roof then too) i remember pols calling for all teachers to carry loaded weapons to class. that if other students had been armed, less people would have been killed. how do people take the leap that the threat of more violence will curb or cure violence?

states with the highest percentage of gun ownership have the highest rates of gun deaths. the states with the strictest laws have the lowest rate of death by firearm. this isn't liberal hoo-ha. gun ownership in places like alabama and louisana are at least triple what they are in places like hawaii and massachusetts. death by gun is as high as 7 times more. so, yeah, the answer is quite clearly that more people need easier access to loads more deadly weapons. fer sure. duh.

i do know real amuricanz understand that that is why we MUST fear that muslim terror (sic), because they wanna kill us and our flag and get to them heavenly virgins by destroying our liberty and way of life. so by all means let's stomp on over to the damn dessert and blow up their tents, caves and kids before they get to us first. i have yet to hear anybody discussing this as a profound act of home-grown white-faced domestic terrorism. killing someone over their ideas and beliefs. just like the 1995 oklahoma city bombing and the assassination of dr. george tiller in 2009, in wichita. it's terrorism, folks. and it is us.

southern science

“There was a lot of trauma in the breast tissue, blood clots in the body cavity and internal bleeding,” Stephens says. “So, it looks like maybe they got startled, they may have flown into each other, flown into a house, flown into a tree. They don’t have very good night vision,” he says, “and maybe they ran into each other, fell to the ground and died.”

yup. birds have been flying together, in formation, in all sorts of weather, for MILLIONS of years. these hapless guys just flew into each other. or a house. or a mouse. yeah. that's it. 5000 damn birds flew into the same house, at the same time, flew away, then all just dropped dead. yeah. that's it.

oh, and so obvz, all those dead fish? swam into each other! of course!!

phew. so much better now.

night.

aqua-pocalypse

poissons-mageddon.

the world must be ending and the beginning of the end is happening in arkansas. 100,000 or so dead drum fish bubbled to the surface in an arkansas river today.

oh, and the dead birds? now the estimate is 5,000.

i'd kill myself if i lived there too, but this is some shit.

happy new year 2011

1000 dead birds.

the year begins with what could be one of my worst nightmares. in arkansas 1000 blackbirds dropped dead, spontaneously falling from the sky over 1 square mile.

blackbird singing in the dead of night
take this broken wing and learn to...

"doh!"


this times ONE THOUSAND!!!!!!!

my teeth are itching

our quitted gubner of gaffes and spinner of saucy word salad was at it again this week:

yesterday on her pal glenn beck's show:

"This speaks to a bigger picture here that certainly scares me in terms of our national security policy," the former vice presidential candidate said on Wednesday. "But obviously we've gotta stand with our North Korean allies."


confusing north and south korea, was a mistake. fair enough we all make 'em and most of us aren't on tv having to talk about stuff we don't know anything about, and few of us feel the same visceral imperative to stay in the spotlight. she fled to the safety of her fans and facebook page and retaliated by posting links of obama's verbal gaffes. instead of just laughing it off, "oops!" kinda thing, she then wadded her panties all up in a sissy bunch and whined how whenever she makes a mistake (c'mon ms. palin it's often enough that my google alert would 'spolde, ok?)the lamestream media jumps on it and runs and blows it up and i was tired and it's not fair cuz why do you people still like barry? huh, huh, why?

earlier in the week she gave up this little bit of gobbledy-gook:


"I want to help clean up the state that is so sorry today of journalism. And I have a communications degree. I studied journalism, who, what, where, when, and why of reporting"

the first bit of syntax made my head pound the desk and the fact that she forgot the "how" as to the 6th question that should be answered in any solid bit of reporting can likely be attributed to... um... not paying attention in school? or never reading newspapers?

someone with A LOT of time on their hands created this compendium and wasilla greatest hits which is brilliant and scary at the same time:

her high school gpa was 2.2 (maybe bristol is just too dumb after all for them to bother forking out dough for college)

she dropped out of 4 never-heard-of-bumfuck colleges before finally matriculating

compared legal abortions to the tuskegee experiments

like a tiny-town version of #43, she took over a government that had no debt and left it in the hole for $19 millz.

authorized an increase in the sales tax

increased salaries and bennies by 67%

spending on office furniture and supplies went up 117%

her staff of 50 cost the town an average of $140,000 each -- $7 million

she raised property taxes and supported an increase in the sales tax to pay for a sports arena

supported allowing parents to opt their children out of curricula offensive to their privacy, religion or conscience. (which worked brilliantly for not allowing bristol to take sex ed and is working great for the new, and ever-growing, breed of amuricans --including palin- who take the bible literally)

she also admits to having smoked pot. how on earth did i not hear about that when she and her slutty stewardess hairdo were EVERYWHERE in '08? huh? c'mon, lamestream media? how unfair are you?

lots more there, but i want to give myself head-space for something less, um, noisome, tyvm.

abstinence in amurica

the story that inspired my previous post was an awful read on thanksgiving eve.

so just as another side of the coin option, let's remember what might happen to other girls who are supposed to be abstinent. they get knocked up too.

but their mom is white and purty and famous (and famously polarizing) so they get to galoomph their cankles and notorious uterus all over tv. "dancing with the who-the-fuck-is-that-anyway," has brought the palins weeks and weeks of free publicity, tens of thousands of dollars into bristol's bank account, and all sorts of bizarro tea-bagger shenanigans against the "liberal elite." (newsflash to baggers: we are not watching dwts, ok? having even to hear about it is retarded. oh, wait, that's hate-speech. sorry babay trig.)

anybody else wonder why there is no plan for bristol for college? not like they can't afford it. is she too stoopid? bah. even her momz finally found a school where she could graduate but they've proven smart enough to milk the fame machine so she doesn't have to go to school or really work. by the weight she gained on this show (where everybody else drops to bones from the work-outs), i'm athinking lazeeeeee factors hard-core in there too.

white and rich sure does beat black and poor, huh?

this is america?

last january, in allegheny pennsylvania, a pregnant woman died from pneumonia that she contracted while in prison. she complained for weeks to the guards that she was having trouble breathing and was coughing up mucous. they refused to allow her to see a doctor. a sick pregnant woman. IN JAIL. by the time she was sent to the hospital it had become a bacterial infection so severe it could not be cured and she died 12 days later.

she was in prison because she got pregnant on her work-release and it was a violation of her probation. her probation was for shoplifting. food. she also had a previous conviction for prostitution. without it being stated in any of the linked articles i found, i suspect this woman came from a dire economic stance. she was black and from a very depressed area of the country and her petty crimes are those borne of desperation, aren't they?

i'm flabbergasted enough that the state forbade her from getting knocked up (my body, my rights, and all that), especially since her crime had nothing to do with being a mom, fit or not. but if that is a stipulation, shouldn't they have provided her with birth control? was she in fact sentenced to abstinence?

but then, even putting aside this astounding patriarchal hysteria, how on the planet earth can putting a pregnant woman in the slammer be thought prudent and judicious? is that not cruel and unusual? and then for guards to play some sort of petty bullshit power game and deny her medical care? this noodle knows there are plenty of prisoners capable of gaming the system and just as many guards who can only function thinking their wards are pieces of shit to be scraped from the hell of their boots. but for the love of mary.

she was 18 weeks pregnant and now she's dead.

21st century amurrica.

who are we fighting for?

garbled syntax aside, this was in today's ny times, in an article re: the wikileaks, re: civilian deaths in iraq since we invaded:

Civilians have borne the brunt of modern warfare, with 10 civilians dying for every soldier in wars fought since the mid-20th century, compared with 9 soldiers killed for every civilian in World War I, according to a 2001 study by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

eta, and who's fighting whom?

The war in Iraq spawned a reliance on private contractors on a scale not well recognized at the time and previously unknown in American wars. The documents describe an outsourcing of combat and other duties once performed by soldiers that grew and spread to Afghanistan to the point that there are more contractors there than soldiers.

old home week

more like 18 hours, but this past weekend i attended my high school reunion. over the years have remained semi- in-touch with the girls who were my closest friends, but as they had children and moved to places that i have a totally selfish lack of desire to ever visit, i don't see them much. they worried about me (probably still do) because i never married nor had kids and just don't fit the mold.

after maddening adventures with public transport and finally getting to our god-forsaken little burg i was greeted by bursts of lady-squealing and lots of hugs. my friends looked great. totally great. thin, fit, good haircuts, happy.

my window was so small though, there wasn't much time for really catching up except on the very superficial surface of life. "how old are your kids?" college? fucking christ on a stick. the status of everybody's parents. they all knew about the condition of my mother, younger than all of theirs, and that elicited much sympathy. i didn't want to bring a pall so we all easily slid elsewhere with the talk.

the reunion itself was more fun than i had hoped, but full of people of whom i had no memory, even after seeing their yearbook pic. yikes.

a handful of the guys still looked good, but most looked awful. awful. fat, bald, toting mousy wives. one guy with hair-plugs, another husband with a fierce mullet. about half the women looked terribly middle-aged with atrocious suburban haircuts, and frumpy fat-lady clothes.

one transgendered person who does not make a pretty woman.

beyond the surface though? few divorces, many in long-term marriages. 2,3,4, even 5 kids. many men self-employed and the rest in finance or tech. quite a few with summer homes. those struggling or bereft are far less likely to turn up at a shindig like this, but i can only hope it was a representative sampling.

for perspective, i had two conversations that nearly had me in tears. one man who was part of our regular crew had a son in a bicycle accident a few years back. for whatever reason the saga was profiled on their local station and i had seen the video. the boy was in a coma for a few weeks, but came out and is up and about. he will never be "normal", but he is alive. it was amazing to see how changed d. is as a man and listen to how his wife and other children rallied and coped. the vision of wonder on his face, his gratitude at being given back his son, made me glad to be human and know this man.

a second man, (i remember him as funny, but gentle, and he helped me out of a few scrapes with less than upstanding guys) who was not in "our" circle, but, say, the next ring out, had married a dancer when in his 30s. in hindsight he knows that her moody artistic temperament was a veil for something far more damaged. she failed to commit suicide and now rests in a vegetative state in a home. his grief and sadness were so close to the surface as to be pouring out of him. as if his wounded heart was held there, beating in his hands, each in and out a pulse of despair. his pain overwhelmed me.

in between such high and low, the rest of us are cosseted by "normal" life, i guess. even me?

no woman, no cry

sadly, it was a weekend of lots of women, crying a lot.

friday was a fundraiser for a guy who had surgery awhile back and then countless setbacks and complications causing him to be bedridden. his wife has recently changed jobs so can't just up and go before 5:00, has been caring for their two young girls and her incapacitated husband now for months. i'd met her only once in passing and had many absoluts in my system at the time, so the meet didn't stick. the story streamed out of her. her struggle, her exhaustion, her loneliness, her sense of helplessness with not being able to make her man better. yet those weren't the "words." that was all stiff upper lip and gratitude to those who were lending even a finger of a hand to help. i ached for her. people fall in love and yeah, that whole for better, for worse thing... your husband can't even wash himself at 35? mother of god... at 80, mebbe, ya know?

sunday was a wake. a man we knew, in queue for a lung transplant, could no longer wait. up/down, up/down, all signs went south and he died last wednesday. he was sick, but not old. contrary to all the silver hair he sported, both head and face, turns out he was only 58. same age as the owner's oldest brother. reaching distance of the owner, really. he'd been sickly for months, trailing an oxygen tank, not well enough to play the guitar out, but sometimes well enough to join us when others played, and never anything but happy to be out and about. he was one of those rare specimens for whom nobody could find an unkind word. there was a peace and wholeness to him, as a man and a person, that radiated outward and made you feel happy to be with him and know him. i count myself as terribly lucky to ever get those people in my life, even if they have to leave before i want them to.

i had never before met his "lady-friend". i rustled my nerves and said what i could and she started hugging me. hard. this need of people to be touched, held, connected to others always takes me aback. i would never hug somebody i didn't know. yet she wanted human contact, could feel my empathy and grabbed on. did i help her hurt even a wee bit less for even a second? i hope so. there has to be something soul-affirming when strangers tell you that you loved a wonderful man.

his sister, his nieces, his mother all were there with balled up kleenexes and red-rimmed eyes. this is the second son the mother has lost, the 1st to colon cancer 5 years ago. she looked small and tired and alone in her chair at the end of the receiving line and i could only wonder how long ago the mr. had died and how long would this woman live without any of her men?

what struck me was how many 30-somethings were there. musicians, and friends of, (like moi-self) with whom he'd played or saw him play in that little bit of shangri-la on the merrimack. a small stone in a pond rippling out and out and out. we all were terribly sad, but i think there remained for everybody that clarity of thought how blessed we'd been to get him.

there are some who see a a man like this and only see their own shortcomings. i prefer to think i am living my life in such a way that i do allow this kind of goodness in, and that as i get better at that, only more good will come.

i cry still from all the pain i saw and feel. i don't know why a death pall is over life lately. i do know it has to lift.

empty

just about this time last week, the cat died. you might quibble about "the cat". however, i never liked his given name and it also to me implied a supremacy, a singularity. there was no "other" cat, k?

he was old. i think 19. he'd been more and more tired, eating less and less. that was wonderfully balanced by zero upchucking these last months, but hey. he still jumped off the bed or couch and came wobbling over whenever i came home. he pestered to be fed and wanted to be petted, brushed and held.

til last monday. he whinged for food when i came home mid-afternoon, but only ate a bite. his breathing was shallow but i had to go to work. when i got home, he still came loping, but i could see the effort in his ribcage. i knew, but i didn't know how long it would take? so i followed him from carpet to couch, chair to floor. his breath rasping more each moment, and his bony frame so small under my hands.

i lost it and started to bawl. he was dying, i knew there wasn't much time left. his eyes surged, he began to struggle and stand. my sobbing... selfish owner. for many years and more than a few men he couldn't tolerate my tears. he'd come running, wind himself in and out of me, rub my hands and face. i have never known an animal with more empathy. i couldn't do that in his last moments. suck it up.

his eyes were empty, his jaw slack. then... nothing. he was so small and fragile, yet warm and soft, on the floor. it was hours before the clinic would be open.

i went the night without sleep.

i went to work.

i owned him about 18 years. that is the longest relationship i have ever had with a mammal. including my family. including my family. including my family. including my mother and/or father.

five years ago, when i had to put my dog down, after a night of agony of him in seizure, i went to work also.

in either case, if my kid or spouse had been sick/dying and i'd been up all night in hysterics, i could have called in, right? i guess?

why is it that beings so devoted to us get less credence? my dog and cat brought me far more love and security than my parents ever managed, yet calling out over their loss seemed namby and unprofessional.

can i tell you?

a week later, i am home in a very clean, but empty, loft. i cannot believe how much i miss him. them.

weep for humanity

this blog has countless lines and laments about the public. i'm forced to work with huge sections of it and pretend to care about their allergies and birthdays, travel woes and what-not. as i've gotten older it's gotten easier, but it takes its toll nonetheless.

over the last weeks i've had a couple too-close encounters with kids between the ages of 10-16 who behaved like savages. all were with their families and in groups of about 6. what children that age were doing in a place that costs $100 per person for dinner is another point entirely, but what they were all doing in a place in which they had no idea, nor enforcement, of how to act was truly shocking. yelling, hitting each other, cross-talking to the point of shouting, poking other staff members to get attention and whims met... exhausting and appalling. parents, aunts, uncles all blithely carrying on like the cherubs were charming little victorian models of seen and not heard.

you also know much of my teeth-gnashing finds fault in the modern ubiquity of reality tv. hours and hours of programming that must be filled with an ever lowering levee of stoopidness. as a kid, i howled with laughter at the gong show and match game, but the unkown comic was in on the joke, ya know? now it's people fiercely fat, ignorant, with a sense of entitlement simply busting at the seams. watching even little snips makes me uncomfortable and weirdly sad.

as if i needed more evidence, the internet offered me this today. this clip must be watched all the way through. it's another simon cowell project and the brit version of american idol, i suppose. the moon-faced obese girls, folds of fat flopping over their belts and spandex and uggs, unable to stitch together a coherent sentence, never mind explain why they'd like to be on the show. their "singing" is shockingly bad -- like william hung she-bangs-bad -- but unlike hung, who rode his 15 minutes pretty well, they are rude to the audience and boorishly insolent to the panel of judges. they go from bff's to fist-throwing enemies within 6 minutes, in view of millions on tv and their parents backstage.

i weep anew for everything that this video proves to be true.

one-way highway

one of bestest my friends is long-time single and gay. he too is an industry lifer and makes a good living in not too many hours. his condo payment is relatively small for the market so it affords him a pretty broad spectrum to spend leisure dollars how he chooses. he is not a shopper or collector (except of music and recently apple products, lol), so most of his fun money is spent on museums, movies and "reasonable" restaurants.

the last few years he has indulged himself with autumn trips to europe and i was so happy for him when he booked the first one because he's always scoffed at that sort of thing as an indulgence. then 2 years in a row he picked the same city and was about to rebook a third trip there. knowing he likes paris i poked and prodded for him to change his mind unless he wanted to be that old man who went to the same hotel every year for the next 30. he finally relented and is thrilled about leaving in a few weeks.

my idle internet noodles for possible vacations for myself came up with about $1000 for air and hotel for dublin, lisbon, paris, savannah and montreal, which really seemed like a good value. (although strange that such disparate destinations all cost the same?) he's yankee reticent about money but i asked how much he paid. he hemmed and hawed, then i realized he'd booked his trip a year ahead. over $3000 for the flight and a room. yikes. he said he'd rather pay more and have all the details in advance! holy moley! then, even though he is traveling to one of the world's best dining cities where reasonable and heavenly bistro meals are easily had with a mouse click, he refuses to plan for that because he can have "good food at home," and will "just eat whatever." and he truly enjoys dining out!

he will stroll the streets and prowl museums and i'm sure he will have a wonderful time, so i am not disrespecting his choices. it's his trip, lol. i am just a little surprised by the reasoning, i guess, and the willfulness to deprive one's self of all the best a city has to offer.

fat & skinny through time

sorting through some old photo albums the other night, i was really struck by the body shapes. in high school and college we had a "friend" we openly called "fat sweaty adam". there were plenty of pix of another friend and roommate who frequently referred to herself as "roley-poley." and still another woman who constantly fretted about being lumpy and overweight. her genetic lottery would never have allowed her a pleasing shape, but the extra pounds really did NOT help her already low self-esteem. these were all pix from the early to mid-80s. compared to people now, just 30 years later? they do not even look fat.

we had the flip side friend. who was "skinny-non-perspirant adam" and a few others who were VERY skinny, including one of my college boyfriends. they look like wraiths, and i don't think that i now know anybody THAT skinny. even the skinny kids.

as for me? i'd forgotten how truly skinny i was at certain points, especially the high-ana days. jutting collar bones and such. my face all angles. not sure how i feel about that. oy.

gone fishin'

the owner is away for a week with his sons, roughing it at some holy-but-not unitarian church camp. they went last year and he enjoyed it enough for a repeat visit. no shirt, no shoes kinda thing and sleeping in a tent.

a friend is prepping for his annual vacation, this year to paris after spending the last two in london. he goes alone and spends about a week doing whatever he damn well pleases, which is mostly haunting museums and pubs. a scant few weeks after he comes home, he'll be going to malibu for 5 days for a friend's wedding.

this morning i realized it has been over a decade sine i took a real vacation. the owner took me away last summer, an excuse to jet around in his then-new convertible. it was mad-fun, but only a few days. the final day we drove the entire way from halifax to home, in and out of rain, and it was an exhausting end to a whirlwind of lobster eating and fucking.

i've taken a few vino boondoggles to napa and oregon, but those too were only 4 days or so, and getting to and from the willamette valley is a biyatch.

my financial situation since i moved here has been consistently precarious, and the resources haven't been available to be hopping anything besides the subway, so a very real reason for staying home.

BUT...

today i got called off work being too perilously close to the overtime bugaboo. everybody i like is elsewhere so i had free time and suddenly nowhere i needed to be and nothing i had to do. a lovely day and i was showered and prepared to face the public. after the phone call, i had some lunch. i read some. i sat on my deck watching brown men play soccer and white ones play softball. little kids were flying kites and dogs were scampering.

i drank iced tea.

i read some more.

now it's dark and i realize i basically did nothing all day and it was fine.

memories of past trips floated through my mind and i ached recalling how much i love to travel. i am no fan of 14 cities in 10 days kinds of trips. i like to share drinks with the locals, eat their food and stroll their streets. wake up early, then plan my day, or not, not to travel with a jammed agenda. to lose track of what day it is and not care what time it is.

my last vacation like that was to london and paris for 10 days. as beautiful as london is, its chilly citizens and damp climate simply don't sing to me like those where the romance languages are spoken. i prowled museums, had amazing dinners at nobu and vong, the best mackerel of my life in a tiny bistro, and walked and walked and walked. although i was with my fiancee, my memory of the trip is that i spent much of my time alone because he was too drunk and/or passed out to be conversant or mobile. when he was awares, he made me cry a lot. that part sucked. hard. however, it made me know i'd be perfectly fine traveling on my own when means permit. as an only child i suppose that's not surprising, but i felt very peaceful having a glass of wine at a sidewalk cafe and watching just everything, with no particular place to be and nobody making me be... anything, except a woman on vacation.

there is nothing like that decompression, immersion and anonymity of away from home and, more importantly, work.

my money puzzle has one piece yet to be fitted. it drives me often to distraction and sometimes to drink. i am on the wrong end of a rube goldberg contraption waiting for the shoe of unknown size to drop. once it falls, and the stress narrative that is a constant loop in my head can be shut the hell off, i will allow myself thoughts of going someplace. away. on vacation. i deserve it. don't i?

dumb and dumber

one of my issues with "reality tv", from its inception, is that i have zero interest in spending my tube time watching people dumber than i am. that also eliminates most sit-coms as well, but whatevs.

as the genre infests more and more programming time and proliferating channels have more hours that must be cheaply filled, it's just everywhere. and the gossip about the house-witches and the hills who have eyes and the biggest giant losers starving in tv boot camp is nearly unavoidable -- unless i never turn on my internet, or stand in a check-out line.

the corollary to this is a topic i've mentioned before and that is the astounding bottom-of-the-deck intellect of some of my co-workers. really... just... staggering. as the owner tries to maker me a nicer person, i nearly bloody my lips many days biting back the most obvious of remarks and simple observations.

k. sooooo.

there is some show about spoiled brats all chucked in a house with no staff, no money, blah-di-blah. "cut off". my co-worker, a., goes to great lengths explaining this premise. emmm, ok. her eyes fill with wonder when she retells that the girls "didn't know what a broom was and one started to sweep the couch with it."

me: "these girls had servants at home, right?"

a.: "well, yeah, that's why they didn't know what a broom is, or what you use it for."

my mind snaps thinking a. has no idea what servants do and secondly these brats have assuredly seen cinderella and what-not, k?

me: "you don't think the maid ever used a broom in their house?"

a.: "well, how could she if the girl thought you swept the couch with it?"

me: "cuz they script the show?"

her face crumpled, her eyes spun in confusion. other people walked away to not laugh in her face. i did drop it, because i couldn't believe how genuine her bewilderment was!

so, there are people dumb enough to pretend, for 15 minutes of fame, they don't know what a broom does, but there are living, breathing, employed human beings dumb enough to be believe it's true. i weep for humanity.