Mini Rant Against Retailers

Headline on Yahoo! today:  Retailers Report Weak June Sales.

Well, duh.  Has anyone been to retail stores lately?  Especially clothing stores?  It’s like retailers think we are all rolling in dough or something.  And even if we were rolling in dough, the prices on shitty crap made in China are obscene, especially at stores that like to capitalize on brand names.  Most of the stuff is piteously and poorly made, but it has a label in it, so the store charges a small fortune.  T-shirts that are so thin they are see-through.  Clothes have seams where the threads are already coming out before the clothes have even been sold.  Then the retailers want $50 or $60 for them.  And it isn’t just clothes.  Bottles of plain lotion are $15.  Razor blades–razor blades! those little pieces of metal that cost about .20 cents–are 20 bucks a pack, just so people can have four in a row.  Cereal is $6 a box, when the cost to make cereal is lower than it has ever been. It’s insane.

Here’s a clue stores:  Want to sell more stuff?  Lower prices to an affordable and reasonable level.  Forty bucks for a t-shirt is too much, especially a crappy, see-through t-shirt.  Seventy bucks for pants is ridiculous, especially since you can’t seem to vary your sizes so that people can buy things that fit.  $100 or more for a purse is stupid, especially since, in my experience, the straps or buckles break within a couple of months.  Marking things as “on sale” with a higher MSRP is for fools.  You may have been able to sell your crap for ridiculous prices a couple of years ago, but times have changed (and people were probably buying all your crap on credit then anyway.  Now the bills are due and the job is gone and there isn’t anything left to spend with.).

A special note to Goodwill:  Your stuff is USED.  Trying to sell a suitcase with a hole in it for forty bucks is never going to make you a penny. I can go buy a NEW one for that price, without the hole!  Used clothes for $10 or $15 is too much.  And an old, ratty, smelly couch for $150 is TOO MUCH!  Your racks are FILLED with crap you will never sell because, guess what?  Your prices are too high for used junk.  There was a bunch of flack a couple of years ago about your CEO making too much money.  Stop charging too much and giving the money you do make to the CEO.  Start helping the people you put on your trucks and in your ads in your pitiful attempts to look like d0-gooders and actually charge prices these people could afford.

Pregnancy Brain

I heard someone say or I read somewhere that “pregnant women are stupid.” I have to agree. Having gone from a person with so many thoughts running through my head I had to start a blog to deal with them all so I could focus on the other stuff I wanted to write, to someone who can barely compose a coherent sentence, let alone an entire blog piece, all in the span of just under 8 months, I have to agree.

The end of the first trimester and beginning of the second were the worst.  I look back at my blog posts from that time.  The number of posts start to dwindle.  The topics become more inane.  In fact I wrote about the fact that my brain seemed not to be functioning as it had previously.   And I just wrote about the concern, but there seemed to be no real pressing urge to change it.  I was sitting there muddled in a fog.

Gradually over the last few weeks I have started feeling somewhat clearer, but by brain in no way compares to how it was when I was not pregnant.  My energy levels certainly don’t.  I have always been the sort of person who has a list of 20 things to do and gets all of them done with time left over.  Now?  Now it’s a feat if I remember, oh yeah, I have that appointment today, and manage to dress and get to it on time.  Then that’s it.  I’m done for the day.  I also used to clean the house once a week.  Now it seems it takes seeing pink around the drain in the tub to remind me to clean mildew, or the dog chewing up a roll of toilet paper to force me to drag out the vacuum cleaner.  About the only thing I’ve remained regular on in the housecleaning department is keeping the kitchen clean.  Of course, our kitchen is so tiny, if it isn’t kept clean it’s a disaster within 2 days so the “mildew ring” shows up sooner, so to speak.

Words also used to flit off my tongue.  I had a thought and a response to everything.  Often these thoughts had some intelligence behind them, and I would analyze and think around all the angles.  Not anymore.  Now I don’t even have the thoughts, let alone intelligent ones.

I have some great writing projects I’m working on.  They are like cars with broken batteries.  I give them a jump.  I get them going for a bit.  Then they stop again and languish, waiting for AAA to come and jump them again.  Only AAA takes its own sweet time.  I took months completing and revising a short story I’m pretty pleased with.  I was at the query phase, ready to send letters to the magazines I had chosen.  Incidentally, choosing the magazines took weeks.  Then I started to write the query letter, but it didn’t roll off the fingers as such letters had in the past.  I had to write something saying what the story was about.  Stuck, I stopped for the day, then took a trip to Portland, and I still haven’t finished.  It’s on the list.

The list.  I’ve started making these because I forget things.  I was never much of a list maker in my personal life.  As an attorney, I had lists.  I had calendars.  I am extremely organized.  But I never had to in my personal life.  Now I do.  If I don’t make a list, even the stories and non-fiction pieces I’m working on are forgotten.

I realize pregnancy has hijacked my brain.  I realize at some point the thoughts will return.  However, I also realize that soon there will be a little baby to take my attention and getting these things done will be a practicality nightmare.  This realization is somewhat overwhelming.  Will it be years before I get my brain back?  Will the stories I have been working on be dated by then?  I feel the urge to complete these projects, but can’t seem to get them done.  However, I have stopped just lying in bed in the morning when I can’t sleep after I had to get up for the tenth time to pee.  I have started coming here and writing a little bit now and then.  So maybe there is hope.  I guess it will be obvious by the number of posts I make here.  Or not.

This is the Beginning of the Future

My boyfriend wrote this when he was six. It’s quite entertaining. Gotta love that Besty Ross!

Poop Breath Monster

Gads, I love my puppy.  I know this is a silly thing to write about, but she is just such a dear, sweet, delightful little dog, and I adore her so much that I had to say so.  She is so cute.  She is small and white, with a happy grin. Her little butt looks like a sheep butt.  Her ears go up or down.  When she wakes in the morning, she actually has bed head.  She is a good dog.  The best.  The kind of dog people dream about.  She’s no Marley.  She only chews the toys that are hers.  She sits and stays and behaves well.  She doesn’t like to be told no, so when she does something requiring a no, she looks so sad, then doesn’t do it again.

Except for one thing.

She eats poop. Yes, she does.  Not on a regular basis, but when it happens, it’s horrible.  She’s a snuggly creature.  If I’m lying on the bed, she’ll jump up and come over and lie across my neck (she is quite small, only 8 pounds).  This is wonderful, except when she turns her head and I get a whiff of poop breath.  Then the gag reflex kicks in and it’s chaos getting her off me and trying not to vomit.  I happen to be 8 months pregnant.  Smells are stronger for a pregnant woman.  Having the smell of shit right under my nose is like taking a dose of ipecac and receiving the expected and immediate response.  Having the smell of shit on my puppy honey’s face is worse than the simple smell of shit. There is the thought of her eating the poop that adds to the gag reflex.  I have to spend the next several minutes rubbing my lavender pillow all over my face and thinking about flowers and clouds and pretty things, anything to get the idea of my puppy eating shit out of my head.  Not fun.  No, not at all.

I bought some pills to give her to help her stop the coprophagia, but ever since I bought them about a month ago, she hasn’t been doing it so the pills have languished on the shelf.  In fact, I’m not even sure exactly where I put them.  Maybe by her dog food? Maybe in the bathroom?  Maybe in the linen closet?  I don’t know.  Somewhere around here.  Before I bought them, she ate her poop about once every week.  Then I bought the pills, did not give them to her, and she stopped.  I almost forgot about them.  Then last night I was all snuggled in my bed and puppy came in for some loving–the little, poop-breath monster.  I gagged and screeched, Dan and Milla came running (they had been watching a movie together and my yelps interrupted them), and semi-chaos ensued as the puppy was rounded up, the lavender pillow tossed in my face, and efforts were made to locate the offending turds, if any remained.  Puppy’s face had to be washed and I spent 15 minutes thinking those pretty, non-poop thoughts.  Good times.

Like I said, I love my puppy.  If I can get her to stop eating poop, she’ll be perfect.

Betrayal

Betrayal is the breaking or violation of a presumptive social contract, TRUST, or CONFIDENCE that produces moral and psychological conflict within a relationship.

The most immediate effect of the betrayal of trust is in the emotional impact on the person betrayed. Generally speaking, the greater the trust that you had put in the other person and the greater the impact their betrayal has on you, then the greater the distress you will feel.  A number of different emotions may be felt upon realizing the betrayal including, most commonly, anger, although there may also be fear and repulsion.

When you are betrayed by someone, it is highly likely that you will not easily trust them again. Trust is fragile and can be lost instantly or there is a period of time whereby a long-earned trust may be eroded and then finally lost.

From Dictionary.com:
be⋅tray
/bɪˈtreɪ/ Show Spelled [bih-trey]
–verb (used with object)
1. to deliver or expose to an enemy by treachery or disloyalty: Benedict Arnold betrayed his country.
2. to be unfaithful in guarding, maintaining, or fulfilling: to betray a trust.
3. to disappoint the hopes or expectations of; be disloyal to: to betray one’s friends.
4. to reveal or disclose in violation of confidence: to betray a secret.
5. to reveal unconsciously (something one would preferably conceal): Her nervousness betrays her insecurity.
6. to show or exhibit; reveal; disclose: an unfeeling remark that betrays his lack of concern.
7. to deceive, misguide, or corrupt: a young lawyer betrayed by political ambitions into irreparable folly.
8. to seduce and desert.

Bombing the Moon

Ever since I heard about NASA’s intention to bomb the moon (see the story here), thoughts and reactions to the news have been flittering in and out of my head.  There are so many, I have had difficulty articulating what one definitive thing bothers me the most about it.  Yet conclusively, my overall sense is that it is WRONG.

Cost:  Why is it we spend billions on crap like this, chasing water on the moon, when we can’t (or won’t) spend the same amount here to conserve water?  Senseless stupidity.  I won’t even get into the waste of money when unemployment numbers are higher than ever and we are in two wars…

No Choice:  NASA does what it wants.  We might vote in a mostly new Congress every two years, but we have such little control over how they spend our money, ultimately, what difference does it make?  Legislators on both sides of the aisle are unwilling to underfund NASA.  I’ve heard all the arguments about how NASA research benefits us all, and I’m sure there are aspects of their research that do, but this is just silly.  There might be the claim they are looking for water, but it’s really a bunch of grown kids who think it’s cool to go bomb the moon and there isn’t a damn thing any of us can do about it.  If they really wanted to conserve water, just as much would be spent on the very real climate and water problems we are experiencing right here on earth.  Plus, as silly as it sounds, the moon belongs to all of us, collectively.  What right do a few have to go and harm that which isn’t theirs?  They don’t.

The Unknown:  Scientists can conduct all the earth bound tests they want to.  The simple fact is there is no way of knowing what ramifications this will have on the moon and the earth.  These planets are inextricably linked.  The earth and moon are connected gravitationally and energetically.  Messing with these forces could alter our tidal patterns, weather patterns, and who knows what else.  It’s just foolishness.  And dangerous.

I don’t know.  If enough people feel about this as I do, then perhaps we could turn public opinion against it enough to get the government to stop it.  My inclination is though, that a bunch of idiots who like movies by Michael Bay would think it’s “AWESOME” and think that naysayers like myself are just a bunch of fuddy duddies.  American ignorance is so prevalent on so much else, I would not be surprised.  On most issues, I consider myself very forward thinking.  I’m willing to try most things.  But not this.  Bombing the moon isn’t only silly, it is scary and wrong.

Cottonhead

There is fuzz in my brain.  No, not the police, just cotton.  Thick lumps of it, blocking any attempt at coherent thought.  Do you know how many “drafts” I have saved in this blog?  Unpublished drafts of things I started and then never got around to finishing because I either could not figure out what I was going to say or because I was interrupted and when I went back I could not catch the train of thought?  Lots of them.  Lots and lots.  Sometimes what I was writing seemed like something I wanted to say, then when I went back I realized it was just stupid, so I deleted it.

We are looking for a new apartment.  I really want to move.  I really want to move before the baby comes.  But I also am not thrilled at the prospect of looking for apartments.  Yuck.  I hate the ads. So many of them are bogus crap.  Craigslist is wonderful in many ways, but the crap ads are annoying.  I flag them, but they still show up. I wish there were some way for Craigslist to improve that feature of its ads.

Well this is my mindless blurb for the day.  I really have nothing more to say.  So I’m going to work on the long list of things I need to complete.  Maybe my writing projects won’t go as slowly as usual, but I doubt it since my brain seems filled with pregnancy cotton this morning again.  Whee.

Beached Whale

I’m just stuck, energetically, physically, mentally.  I think it’s pregnancy, but I’m not totally sure.  There have been so many changes in the last six months that could be attributable to this logjam.  However, I have experienced major changes before and not felt so inept and unable.  It’s weird having been a person with a quick mind and quick body turning into someone who has difficulty thinking of words and can’t just leap out of bed or a chair.  I feel like a beached whale, stuck here on shore, lying in the salt surf, seeing what was all around me, yet unable to do anything about it.

We recently took a trip back to Portland. While there, we ran around hither and thither, visiting and seeing family and friends.  In the past such a visit would have been delightful to me.  If there had been a free moment, I would have wanted to fill it.  This time, I was exhausted a third of the way into the trip.  A couple of times I just ran into a physical wall in the middle of the day.  I had to say Enough is enough! and go lie on the bed and take a nap.  Pregnancy was definitely the culprit there.

The first trimester of this pregnancy was a nightmare.  I suffered severe perinatal depression without knowing such a thing existed.  My boyfriend thought I was an alien, and wasn’t very supportive as a result.  I still looked like my normal self, but I was not the same person.  I overreacted to the smallest things.  I would sob and sob and sob for hours.  My brain completely fogged up.  I finally realized I was experiencing something physical, so I decided to do some research.  In the process I found Brooke Sheilds’s book on her experience with postpartum depression and discovered that a pregnant woman or one who has just given birth who has gone through an enormous amount of stress prior to the pregnancy is much more likely to suffer from depression.  Considering the level of stress in the years leading up to being pregnant, coupled with the stress of moving across the country, moving in with my new boyfriend, getting pregnant, moving away from Milla for the first time ever in her life, and I was a perfect candidate for peri or post natal depression.

Based on this information, I did further research and discovered that the leading expert on peri and post natal depression was based in New York, not far from where we live.  Her name is Dr. Margaret Spinelli.  She was conducting a study to determine whether counseling a pregnant woman to improve her interpersonal relationships would improve her depression and reduce the likelihood of it occurring after pregnancy.  I had a consultation with Dr. Spinelli and she admitted me into the study.  Since going, my moods have improved dramatically.  It also seemed to help just to know that I wasn’t actually going nuts but suffering from a physical response to being pregnant under stress, and to understand that the troubles in my relationship were making things worse.

I’m still waiting for my boyfriend to understand that my emotional reactions to most things are normal for a pregnant woman, and especially a woman with perinatal depression, but I feel better understanding that how I feel comes from a diagnosable source, one that will go away when my hormones settle down, and if they don’t, there is medication available to assist me.  Considering the level of improvement I’ve experienced without drugs, I am genuinely hoping to avoid that route completely.  I also make sure to keep my sugar intake to a minimum and exercise, because I definitely feel worse when I eat sugar or don’t exercise.

Even without perinatal depression, the physical demands of pregnancy aren’t much fun.  I did not like being pregnant with Milla.  This pregnancy is no exception.  When I was pregnant with Milla I would hear about women who said they never felt better that when they were pregnant.  My response to that was they must have felt pretty crappy the rest of their life!  I like having a clear brain.  I like having a lithe body.  I can’t wait to have the little baby out here so I can get off this beach and back into the ocean.

Library Thieves

When I signed on to edit books for this small publishing company, the owner convinced me to buy Adobe Indesign.  Because the bundled software with 3 programs gave me way more bang for my buck, I bought that rather than just the individual program.  As part of this bundle, I got Photoshop C4, a program I had long been interested in.  Unfortunately, I have no experience with even the Elements program, so I was pretty useless when it came to trying even basic photo editing with the thing.  I’m like an infant with a space ship.  I went online to find instructions, but mostly ran into those useless advertising sites trying to get me to download “free” teasers that I could replace with a full instruction program if I wanted to pay for it.  Um. No.

I decided then that I would go to the library and look at their instruction manuals.  If I found one that was really good, I would go buy one somewhere.  Well, guess what?  Every single copy of every single instruction manual at the New York Public Library that I looked at was missing.  Some jackasses out there are ruining it for the rest of us.  Gee, thanks.  I called the library and discussed with a helper person.  He confirmed that this is indeed a problem.  He helped me do a more advanced search to sort and ensure certain books were available, but all of them had 15 or 20 holds on them.  I’m thinking maybe Amazon used might be the way to go.

In Som Ni A

I hate not being able to sleep. For most of my adult life, I have manifested stress as insomnia.  It’s worse when I have something pending the following day, like an early appointment, or even work.  Sometimes though, when there is really no reason to have to get up early (or at all for that matter), I will awaken in the middle of the night or too early in the morning and not be able to go back to sleep.  Then when I do, the second sleep is usually too sound, or I have to wake up in the middle of its too-soundness, and end up feeling like a slug all the next day.

Last night’s insomnia was the result of being just too warm. We had a houseguest who slept in Milla’s room, so Milla slept with us.  In addition, we kept the bedroom door closed.  I wakened at 2:57 a.m. broiling like a roast chicken.  I opened the windows, but then couldn’t sleep because even with the earplugs I never sleep without, I could hear the noisy street (I have mentioned how much I hate this apartment, haven’t I?).  I also had to get up and go to the bathroom twice.  Then the brain started worrying about money, and arguing with the student loan lenders I had to send a letter too, and wondering how we are going to make the sublet request go through, and forget it.  Sleep wasn’t happening.

I was finally able to stop the brain from spinning on each of my worrywart topics, but even after changing to new earplugs, the windows were too loud.  After lying there uncomfortably, I finally opened the bedroom door and closed the windows.  That seemed to do the trick and I fell back asleep.  I woke again once to go to the bathroom (pregnant woman’s bane), but was able to fall back asleep.  Damn, I hate insomnia.

Where is the Damn Sun?

Would I feel any differently this morning if it were sunny and nice instead of rainy and crappy?  Oregon was rainy and shitty the entire time we were there until the last day.  It had been sunny until the day before we arrived.  Now it is sunny again since we have left.  It was pouring in NY the day we left and the days up until we left.  It is pouring now.  Am I going to get any summer anywhere?

It is difficult for me to discern whether the weather has an impact on my mood when the weather rarely changes from shit.  We have had a handful of sunny days since January, and I remember feeling optimistic on those days.  Hawaii was a boring place to live, but it was so sunny and nice most of the time.  I rarely felt down like I do here most of the time.  But of course, hormones could be playing a part as well, and the constant wondering what each day will bring in my relationship.  I used to bounce back pretty easily after an argument with the boyfriend, but not really anymore.  Now I just wonder when the next one will come.  I can just hear all the preachers out there who will comment and tell me just to leave him, but I would like to ask them how they would like to be single and pregnant in a city with no friends.  It is so easy to armchair quarterback, especially someone else’s relationship.  And then of course there is this weather, this abominable, interminable, shitty-ass weather.  I wish to fuck it would get sunny already.

Traveling is Exhausting

Traveling is exhausting.  I find it difficult to adjust quickly to time changes and whatnot, especially when I’m not sure how much of an adjustment I want to make.  Lately I have been awakening at east coast time (5 am where I’m at) and going to bed at west coast time (11 pm to midnight).  I keep hitting these walls in the middle of the afternoon and taking longer and longer naps.  This is exactly what happened to me when we moved east and I had to adjust there, only I got completely screwed up, taking horribly long naps and going to bed much too late.  It took having a regular job, going to bed at the same time and getting up at the same time, to force my body to figure things out.  Then I go and screw it up by coming home for a visit, and a long enough visit to make a difference.

Several mornings I have wanted to write on this blog when I wakened too early, but I was just too tired to rouse myself enough to do it.  So I would lie there and compose in my head.  That’s a useful enterprise.  Then when I got up we had to start on our marathon running around sessions and I didn’t write a word.

Not surprisingly, the prior two paragraphs were the only one I wrote.  I was interrupted to go and do something and five days later, I’m finally sitting down to finish what I started to say.  This is how it has been since we got here.  We have gone from one place to another to another ever since we got here.  Tomorrow we leave.  Today we don’t have any specific plans except to pack, only Dan hasn’t see one of his best friends since we arrived, and he is hoping to connect with her today.  I hope that’s all we do besides eat and pack.  I’m tired.

Good Ideas

I don’t always agree with Jesse Jackson, but on some things, I absolutely do. The article he wrote for Huffington Post May 30th makes some pretty salient points.  To read it, go here.

How it Is

I have a facebook page.  I mainly got it because my boyfriend would not allow me to view his page unless I had my own, in spite of the fact I told him I really cannot stand those social networking sites.  He did not care so I set one up.  I have one friend who uses it quite a lot and because of her, I became reacquainted with some people from high school, but other than a couple of them, I have never even emailed the other ones or vice versa.  They are just on there. I guess so we can stalk each other to the extent we put up pictures or update our status.  I suppose those who are interested could view this because I link this page there, but based on the information available to me through this site, I can usually tell if someone looked me up here from facebook and the response has been virtually non-existent, so I suspect they are as non-stalkerish as I am.

In any case, facebook has become a funny little barometer for my relationship with my boyfriend. When he and I are getting along, he doesn’t do much on the site beyond finding musicians he’s worked with and adding them to his vast facebook friends network.  If, on the other hand, we are not getting along very well, he posts constant updates and writes on people’s walls and does all those little facebooky things I mostly find annoying.

It’s an interesting phenomenon.  It’s almost like since we aren’t getting along and he isn’t interacting with me, he’ll virtually interact with people through facebook.  I don’t think that everyone who is out there constantly updating is not interacting with the people around them necessarily, although I am sure there are those.  However, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are other people who use facebook (or other social networking sites) in the same manner as Boyfriend.

He actually used to do the same thing with his LiveJournal.  When we first met, he didn’t post anything on there for almost two months.  We had an argument, and he posted something the same day and admitted he had been “Lax in publicizing things.”  And so it went.  When we were getting along, he never touched it. When we weren’t, he wrote a blurb.  For some reason, he stopped using that site in January.  I have my suspicions why he did this, and once alluded to him why I think so, but we were in an argument so he denied it and I dropped it because it really doesn’t matter.  Things are what they are, whether or not he writes about them on his LiveJournal or says anything on facebook.

I can’t say I’m the same as him in the timing of my postings, either here or on facebook or anywhere else.  On rare occasions I will be in a silly mood and actually say something on facebook.  More often I actually have news I think is worthy of sharing, like when I got a new puppy or when we arranged for a visit back in Oregon, and then I will say so.  Other than that, I only check it to see if someone has emailed me. I have some high school acquaintances who seem unwilling to use traditional email, in spite of my invitation to do so, leaving me stuck checking facebook. I also have friends whose news I would like to know or photos I would like to see, and they post there.  Other than that, I really don’t have any reason to look at it.

As for the blog, it has never been about anything related to any reason I would use a social networking site.  I have friends who will read it occasionally, but for the most part, the readers are people I don’t know, and I’m perfectly content with that.  It’s also been a good place to publish political or theoretical ideas I have, or to link to a publication when I get one.  It used to be a place where I would dump the constant thoughts in my brain so when I sat down to do the other writing I do, the constant thoughts would not get in the way, but lately I don’t have those anymore.  I don’t see this as a permanent condition, just one I’m going through now, and probably mostly hormonal.

So why this morning?  What made me want to write anything?  Mainly because I noticed that Boyfriend has been keeping very busy on facebook and we have not been getting along.  The funny thing is that even though Boyfriend would not let me see his facebook page unless I got one too, he does not have his set to private, so anyone can view it if they have a facebook page of their own.  Strangers can read all about him.  Maybe they’ll notice that a lot of the time he doesn’t post much, then suddenly there is a burst of activity.  Maybe I should be glad I get to know why.

Word

Microsoft Word is the stupidest, most non-intuitive, poorly designed, piece of crap, word-processing program ever designed.  The morons who created it should all be taken out and whacked in the knees with bats and have needles poked into their nipples.

Here’s a concept, WORDPERFECT.  Want a well-designed document, WordPerfect can do the job.  Want a fucked up disaster mess of a document?  Use Word.

Piece of shit.  I hate it.

Insurance Companies

It is more fun to have one’s eyeballs poked with pins than it is to telephone an insurance company.

Letters to Annoying People

Dear Hairdresser,
Here is a clue: Just because you think my hair might look “cool” with that fancy cut you propose does not mean that I want you to cut it that way. You are not me. You do not live with me and you are not someone I spend a lot of time with. This means that if you suggest a fab new do and I turn you down, you don’t cut it anyway. It also means you don’t cut it like you want to without saying anything at all. It means you do what I want, whether you like it or not.

Dear Person Who Leaves Dog Shit on the Sidewalk,
The reasons you should pick up your dog’s shit are so inherent and numerous, it honestly blows my mind that you don’t know any better. Perhaps you are simply stupid. If this is the case, you are really too stupid to own a dog. If it isn’t that you are stupid, but rather that you are careless or insensitive, then you are too careless and insensitive to own a dog. You would likely accidentally kill it or starve it to death or something. Whatever the reason, if you leave your dog’s shit on the sidewalk, find the dog a better home and go rub some dog shit on your face.

Dear Woman Who Won’t Step Aside on the Sidewalk,
Yes, you know who you are. You are the bitch who has to prove to everyone she encounters just how ALPHA she is, and in doing so, refuses to step even slightly to the side when encountering others. If someone is approaching you and there is a building or some other obstruction on the sidewalk on their side, and things are open on yours, common courtesy dictates that you step slightly to the side to allow the other person passage. You don’t prove your superiority when you refuse; rather you prove your insecurity, your pettiness, and just how pathetic you truly are. And watch out…one morning when I’ve gone without just enough sleep and my hormones are all over the map, I might actually turn around and whack you in the head with my purse. Hag.

Dear Man from blog Watt’s Up With That?,
You are a fucking moron. I realize from your consistent position near the top of the WordPress Dashboard that you must have a lot of readers. I can only hope these readers actually disagree with you, they just have a stronger stomach than I do. I can’t read your drivel or your claims that the planet’s climate isn’t changing. It doesn’t take a geoscientist to walk outside and figure out that things are drastically different. You can try to claim these are “natural” trends, in spite of the fact that nothing natural on the massive scale we are experiencing occurs in under a decade. You can try to turn people off to buying an environmental car because it’s ugly. You can do all your damage. Just know this: Any success you have in convincing people of your stupidity will only harm your children. There will be no frogs for them to play with, or polar bears or bats or numerous other creatures for them to share the planet with (although maybe that is what you want). Your offspring will fry in the sun and drown in the ocean, and just think, you did it to them! Kudos, asshole.

Dear Rush Limbaugh,
You know, I can’t say it any better than Al Franken. You are a big, fat idiot.

Dear Building Managers Everywhere,
It is not necessary to turn air conditioning up so high that buildings inside are 30 degrees in the summer just because it is 90 degrees outside. Buildings need only maintain a consistent temperature all year round, regardless of what the temperature is outside. And actually, your logic in turning the AC up in the summer is flawed. If you are going to adjust the temp inside according to the temp outside, buildings should be colder in the winter and warmer in the summer because people are wearing more clothes in the winter and fewer in the summer. Maybe if you actually turned the AC down your brains would thaw and this would be obvious.

Dear New York City,
Here’s a concept: Recycling. In a city this size, the fact that recycling isn’t required of buildings and is basically non-existent everywhere else is a deadly sin. You are a ginormous city, the biggest in the US. You have an obligation to the rest of the country and the rest of the world to recycle as much as possible. Do you do it? Not enough. You should be ashamed and get with the goddamned program already. Too much of your shit can be recycled and too much of your shit isn’t. Fix it.

Here’s another concept: Not every damn thing needs to be wrapped in plastic. Guess what? Zucchinis last longer outside of plastic and styrofoam. So do bananas. And guess what else? When a customer at a store doesn’t bring a bag, you don’t have to double-bag in plastic, one is more than enough. Or when a customer buys something like a pop or something else obviously intended to be consumed immediately, you don’t need to bag it at all. Plastic is nasty stuff. There are limited circumstances when it should be used, such as in the medical profession. Otherwise it is a non-biodegradable, environmental disaster and your overuse of the stuff, especially considering your enormous size, constitutes a criminal act. Fix it.

Dear Constant Facebook Posters,
Guess what? I don’t give a shit if you’re off to take a run or a shower or grab a cup of coffee. That isn’t the kind of information I think anyone cares about unless you are a celebrity (And people who care what celebrities do are idiots, so why would you want to please them?). It is nice to have a place where you can find that long lost high school friend and see how they are doing and what is going on in their lives. It is annoying to have to hear how so-and-so had to clean up their kid’s vomit last night or every trivial piece of crap they do every minute of every day. Oh, and guess what else? Pieces of flair are stupid. Throwing virtual water balloons proves you have no life and should consider getting one. Ditto with virtual hugs, “L’il Blue Cove” and all the other crap Facebook flunkies dream up to fuck with you. I have an idea, instead of wasting time on Facebook, how about taking all that extra time you have to waste and heading down to the library or the bookstore and getting a book and reading it. Try it, you might learn something.

Dear Self,
Time to stop bitching and pretend to work. Enough said.

Happy Birthday, Star Bright

Anyone who knows me well knows I am basically horse crazy.  I didn’t come out horse crazy, but certainly acquired the insanity not long after birth.  I was three years old when my mom took me to visit her little sister and the sister’s pony, Patches.  I fell in love.   From that moment on, I was hooked.

When I first told my mom I wanted a horse, because her little sister was twelve when she first acquired a horse, she promised me I could have one at twelve as well.  She made the promise less with the intention of actually getting me this equine nearly a decade hence, but more to shut up my incessant requests for my own four-legged friend.  She never believed her three-year-old would remember this promise.  Ah, the naivete of parents.  Of course I remembered and at age twelve years, three months, I did indeed receive a pony of my own.

The story of that pony is for another post.  Suffice to say I absolutely adored her, but she was only 10 hands tall, which is basically forty inches.  Considering I hit 5′7″ by age 10, this pony was much too small for me.  In spite of my adoration, I eventually had to sell her and purchased a larger pony.   I continued to grow and outgrew her as well.  At age 14 I was 5′9″ tall and it was time to move on from ponies.  I simply needed a horse to accommodate my ever-lengthening legs.

I had started doing some work for local farmers, helping out with horse training and stable cleaning.  Through this I met a couple who had purchased a two-year-old gelding they did not have the time or experience to train.  They offered him to me to buy for $200.  Having just sold my pony to a good friend for $350, I had enough to buy him.  They called him Volcano because he was born on the day Mount St. Helens erupted, May 18, 1980.

I remember the day I went and picked up my very own horse.  I was so proud as I walked him up the road along the railroad tracks from their farm to ours.  Though I would never have admitted it to anyone, and although I was terribly excited, I was also a bit frightened.  He was big!  I changed his name to Star Bright because of the bright star on his chestnut face, plus Volcano seemed a name that did not bode well.  I took him home and settled him in.  He was my horsey companion for the next twelve years.  Life in my extremely dysfunctional family was difficult; Star made those years as a teenager bearable and even brought me happiness.

Star was an amazing horse.  He could perform circus tricks and would give me a hug with his foreleg in exchange for a treat.  I rode him hunt seat and also in gymkhana.  At one horse show, I rode him in an equitation semi-finals class in the morning, which we won, placing us in the finals that evening.  That day, I rode him in a bunch of gymkhana classes because he seemed to really enjoy the speed and agility required for these gaming events.  He won the hi-point championship for the gymkhana.  Then that evening, still energetic, I rode him in the hunt-seat equitation finals and we won reserve champion.  He was amazing like that.  The horse was as happy in a show ring as he was trekking up the side of a hill or at the beach playing in the water.

Keeping a horse after I grew up and moved away from my parents’ farm was a bit difficult to say the least.  I moved him around and even leased him for a year while I traveled.  I was modeling at the time and spent a good deal of time out of the country.  At some point, it became clear that keeping him was not in his best interest.  He needed someone who could focus on him and I wasn’t doing it. My parents didn’t keep horses anymore, so he could not go back to their place, and he would have been ignored there anyway.

The day I sold him was heartbreaking.  He would not go into his new owner’s trailer.  It was as if he knew what I was doing and did not want to go.  I felt horribly guilty and sad.  I visited him at his new home and he always remembered me.  The new owners eventually sold him to someone else, a woman in a small town in the northwestern part of Oregon.  The last time I went to visit him, he was 19 years old, and seemed genuinely happy to see me.   He rubbed his head on my chest.  I rode him and visited, then said goodbye, not realizing I would never see him again.  The farm was over two hours from my home in Portland.  The next time I tried to contact the owners to arrange a visit, their number had been disconnected.  I was not able to locate them and do not know how Star’s life turned out.

Every year on May 18, the rest of the world remembers the day Mount St. Helens blew its ash all over Oregon and Washington, flattening trees and decimating a forest.  I, however, remember May 18 as the day my Star was born.  Not a year goes by I don’t remember this day and think about the big chestnut horse who made me happy.   Happy Birthday, Star Bright.  Thank you for being my friend.

And Then

Liz Cheney is as big a fucking hate-mongering idiot as her devil father.  Spawn of the devil keeps his evil going…

I may have been followed this morning.  A woman I had seen on the train got onto the elevator with me and did not choose a floor while I was on the elevator.  I do have to say though, that she did not get off at the 6th floor as I did.

When I go to businesses that ask my name, I make one up.  Your name?  Aristophanes.  Spell that one.  Then pronounce it.

We are losing.  Here is my prediction of what is going to happen:   The ginormous corporations will continue to get bigger and proliferate.  The masses, increasingly ignorant and sedated with fast food, television, noise,  sports, and religion will become even stupider, turning back into the peasants of the middle ages.  The power elite are going to win and the poor are going to help them.  The poor want to be rich and if they were given the means, they would act the same way so they don’t question being constantly sold and mollified with product, trying so hard, kissing vacations goodbye and futilely trying to shovel their toddlers into Harvard.  Since they will not become a part of that which they seek, they go along and buy their lottery tickets, stuffing their faces, plugging earphones into their heads and turning up the music so they can drown out their own oblivion.  They believe it when they are told there is a magnificent being in the sky who cares about them and will take care of them after death so they don’t have to concern themselves with the fact that the place in which they are actually living right here and right now carries other possibilities.    Numbed and choking on corn and petroleum, they will let the power class continue to take them and take the planet.  In time, those of us who are in the minority and see the damage and want change may rise up and revolt, but success is an unlikely prospect.

And a thought from my friend Carin:  Something that’s been bugging me.  Self righteous boobs claiming to be upstanding and moral whilst they are posing half nude with photographers, getting boob jobs and participating in a meat, sorry, “beauty” pageant.  Or teenage twits who claim they are the voice of abstinence-only sex ed while holding their baby that they conceived obviously not through abstinence.

As I walk to the subway, ride the subway, and walk to my office, I’m filled with thoughts and observations.  The moment I walk through the door and sit down under the flourescent lights, the thoughts fritter away into the ether.  I wonder as I’m walking if I should stop and write some of the thoughts into my notebook, but I don’t do it.  My notebook used to be full of thoughts, but right now the only words there are a note I took to remind myself to contact my daughter’s school about an art teacher who smashes art pieces she deems unworthy of her almighty judgment.  Other than that, nothing.  Is it the flourescent lights?  Maybe it’s the air-conditioning.  Maybe it blows the thoughts from my brain.

Watch Out for the Big, Bad Pig

So a week ago I published a blurb about the swine flu thinking everyone was freaking out for nothing.  For a few days after, I wondered if maybe I got it wrong.  Now however, I’m back to my original premise.  I was also right about the foolish overreacting that would take place.  Some ountries have banned travel to Mexico.  Others have killed off a bunch of pigs.  Everyone is still all freaked out.  Yet the numbers of deaths have remained quite small and very contained even though the flu itself has shown up in many places.  Craziness.

The killing of the pigs really bugs me.  In spite of assertions by doctors and other scientists that this flu isn’t caught from eating pork, nor can it be transmitted from pigs to humans, Egypt killed over 300,000 pigs.  In response, the WHO came out with a statement that the name needs to be changed because killing pigs is unnecessary.

All the news organizations went nuts when a toddler died from the flu outside of Mexico, the first case outside that country.  EGADS!  It’s spreading!  Someone outside Mexico died!  We’re all going to get it!  It’s pandemic! We’re all dead!  Um, yeah.  Lost in the uproar was the fact the child was Mexican and had just been in Mexico.  It wasn’t like the flu came crawling across the border, snaking its way north in ever increasing tentacles.  Yet that is what the media worldwide seemed to want people to believe.

The actual truth is that most of the people who died had not gotten treatment when they should have.  For everyone else who has contracted the flu, their illnesses have been sh0rt-lived and they have recovered.  The trick was early detection and intervention.  It would be nice if the news media could find a nice balance between letting people know they should do something and acting like lunatics.  Unfortunately they usually lean towards lunacy.

The nasty right-winger radio hosts have used the swine flu as an opportunity to spread their hate mongering, lies, and racism.  They blatantly lie, claiming that we’re all going to get sick from Mexicans and we better close our borders further.  It’s disgusting.  Maybe any idiots who believe their bullshit will lock themselves in their homes with a gun and stop wandering the streets. If this happens, I guess in a twisted way the hate mongerers have performed a public service.

Get a Grip

All the world is freaked out about swine flu.  81 people have died.  I’m sorry those people are dead, but claiming this “might turn into a pandemic,” stopping travel between Mexico and other countries, detaining people with a cough and assuming they have swine flu is such a leap of logic, it’s ridiculous.  More people than that die daily in car wrecks; what are we going to do, ban cars?  Right.  It seems world leaders have been watching too many movies.  They also seem to discount the fact that the few who had it in New York have not been conclusively diagnosed with swine flu, and they have healed and are just fine.  It is as likely a possibility that the Mexicans who died from the flu did so because of other problems, such as hospital procedures, as it is that they died exclusively because of the flu.  What now, going to go start murdering some pigs and stopping everyone with a cold and acting like complete lunatics without any examination of reality?  I wouldn’t doubt it.

Nonsense and Cuteness

I am writing this bit of nonsense because I made a commitment to myself to write something every day, even if it’s a bit of nonsense.  I have many writing projects to work on, but today is a busy day out of the house so I will have to postpone those projects until later.  In the meantime, I’ll just write a nonsensey tidbit with the hope that in sitting here and not surfing Huffington Post and the New York Times I will actually be doing something productive, when really I should be blowdrying my hair.

I will also add some visual candy for anyone who happens across this page today.  This is my daughter’s darling puppy, Ava.  This was taken the day of her first walk.  She was a little tired along the way and took a rest in my arms.  She is a pure delight and we all love her very much.

Bag O Weed

Torture is Treason

This piece was published on Huffington Post.  To see it there, go here. If you like it Buzz me up.

The human rights abuse in torture is inherent and obvious, but its implications to our society are ultimately worse.  In the context of terror, when our country tortures those accused of terrorist crimes, we create a climate where others sympathize with the torture victim, taking the focus away from the victims of the terrorist act.  Whether the tortured committed the crime or not becomes secondary to the sympathy felt for the torture victim.  In addition, the fact alone that someone was tortured, even if the confession is coincidentally true, harms any reputation we have of democracy or rule of law and motivates others to retaliation.  Worse, torture confounds the state’s ability to prosecute those who have harmed it.  If we end up freeing someone because they confessed to a crime under torture, it is possible we are allowing someone guilty, someone who genuinely sought to harm us, to go free.  If we prosecute them based on the elicited confessions, we could be punishing the innocent.  We never really know the truth.  In the end, torture makes the original crime against us secondary.

I followed the Daniel Pearl case, then I watched the movie of his wife’s story, A Mighty Heart.  It was brilliantly done.  The filmmakers managed to capture the complexity of the various agencies, organizations, and governments working to find Daniel Pearl. After Pearl’s death, several people were arrested and one man, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, has been sentenced to death, although with his multiple appeals, it is questionable whether he will ever suffer his sentence.  One aspect of his appeals has been the confession by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to the actual killings.  Seems a reasonable explanation.

Except what is true?  Did Khalid Sheikh Mohammed really kill Daniel Pearl?  How could we ever know considering we now have the torture memos released by the CIA detailing the atrocities against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others, including his being waterboarded 183 times in one month (see story here).  It leaves me wondering whether he really committed any of the crimes and whether his confessions were valid.   Maybe he did it.  Maybe he didn’t.  We can’t know because the confessions were tortured out of him.

Daniel Pearl’s murder wasn’t the only crime to which Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessed.  He also apparently oversaw the 9/11 attacks, the shoe bomb attack, the Bali nightclub attack, the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, as well as others.  His under-torture confessions to such a long list of infamous crimes make the likelihood seem even more dubious.  Yet the possibility is there–it is the torture that causes interference.  Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s case is a brilliant example of the dangers of torture to a free and just society.  Not only does it call into question just how free and just we really are, it leaves us wondering who really did what.  We can’t trust anyone, least of all ourselves.

I have heard the primary arguments on both sides regarding whether or not to convict the agents and members of the Bush administration responsible for carrying out the torture.  All of these arguments have centered on whether the actions were justified, as well as on the repugnance of the acts themselves.  I would argue we need to take the discussion a step further.  While torture clearly constitutes human rights abuse, I would argue that it is also a form of treason.

In the United States, treason is the giving of aid and comfort to our enemies.  If torture keeps us from fully prosecuting those enemies, then the torturers themselves are in conspiracy with them, thereby giving them aid and comfort. Torture policies as a whole put our entire country in jeopardy.  It is a form of disloyalty to us inasmuch as we are left even more unsafe, not only from those who would harm us, but also from our inability to discover the truth and prosecute the criminals.  It creates a disintegration of our most fundamental values.  If a person actually commits an act of terror and is then tortured to extract a confession, his guilt will be questioned because of the torture and he may be allowed free.  This person is then free to terrorize us again, but this time he is likely angrier because of the torture he has suffered, leaving us in even greater danger.  Torture, those who ordered it and those who carried it out, caused this.  Allowing torture as an accepted policy of the United States and our failure to prosecute those responsible for it renders our democracy and our rule of law meaningless.

More Ava

Hypnotized

I have a cold and my brain is fuzzy. I sat down here thinking there was something I wanted to write, but now I’m here and all I can think about is sleep.  There is a lulling buzz in the front of my skull.  It’s the viruses doing their little dance trying to take over my mind.  Dan is listening to some choral music that is much too monotonous.  My brain slips into its rolls and waves, the rhythms begging it only to sleep.

We got a new puppy.  Her name is Ava.  She is adorable.  Eat, potty, play, sleep.  Eat, potty, play sleep.  She’s rhythmical too.  Here is her photo:

Charade and Socialists

Milla, Boyfriend, and I watched the Cary Grant/Audrey Hepburn movie Charade tonight.  Good flick.  Milla really liked it.  Some things were kind of dated, but it was still enjoyable.  And Audrey Hepburn’s outfits were fantastic. It’s like the child of Duplicity, keeps you guessing.  Anyway, I recommend it.

On another note, I avoid the news lately.  In my current mental state, I simply can’t handle all the negativity.  However, I peruse a few pages including Huffington Post.  Today there was a story (see it here) regarding a Republican moron, er, congressman, who has created a, shhhhhh!  Secret list of socialists!!  Oooooh!  Can you BELIEVE this?  I was so upset, I could hardly stand it.  No wonder I don’t read the news anymore.  The one time I do and I discover socialists are creeping into our guvment.

Well, we’re just gonna have to root them dang socialites out, I’m telling you.  Get rid of anyone who thinks the guvment should pay for schools or roads or hell, social security (see that horrible word social in there?  It’s like herpes, you can’t get rid of it).  Big bad socialites, wanting the guvment to help pay for things like healthcare, education, transportation, and the like.  Hell, we should let people who can’t afford it DIE if they can’t go to the doctor.  And what’s the point of paying for schools?  They all teach the wrong stuff anyway.  And don’t even get me started on transportation.  All roads should be toll roads. That way the people who can afford it will drive and the rest can just stay home.  And if they can’t afford a home, well too bad for them!  Shit.  What is this world coming to people?  I swear, the anti-American bastards, we should just line them up and shoot them.

Losing Illusions

I have to wonder if as we get older we gradually come to the point where we no longer have any illusions.  Does humanity arrive at the end of a long life seeing honestly and clearly, or do we continue trying to see things as we want them to be and finding our hopes dashed when we realize we were only fooling ourselves?

One tricky aspect of aging for me has been balancing the desire for newness with the reality of shattered illusions.  Plus it just seems like I am not making any real discoveries anymore.  The consequence of living a life that moves from here to there is that I will encounter different relationships and homes and places and, although these things might be new in and of themselves, they really aren’t new to me in the grand scheme of things.  In some cases this has been vastly disappointing.  Knowing myself, I would likely have been bored and unhappy marrying young, bearing children, and growing old in the same house.  But I miss that some things will never be the first again even if they are new with the latter encountered person or thing.

Is all of this part of why we lose childlike innocence?  After a while we’ve seen it, done it, heard it, so what is there to be surprised about?  I don’t know the answer to that question.  Truthfully I wish I could just learn to stop having illusions that will inevitably be shattered, that I could somehow become more fully a realist without losing all expectation and irony.  It is a conundrum, wanting newness, desiring discovery and the comfort of illusions, without the cynicism age invariably brings.

Leaving the Fishbowl

Oh, I keep getting little comments.  Where have you gone?  What does this mean?  I think people are afraid I’ve gone to commit suicide or something just because part of me will no longer be present in this forum.

I am not here means that I am not writing personal stuff on this non-anonymous blog anymore.  I made up an anonymous blog where I can complain and moan and bitch about my personal life to my heart’s content and not worry about people I know reading it, or reading it and knowing it is me.  Part of the reason for this is that I was not unbiased in what I was saying. It got to the point that no matter how innocuously I wrote, no matter how hard I tried to leave out any personal references, people who were involved knew what I was talking about and there was hell to pay for even writing anything in the first place.  I just could not make certain people in my life understand how I need a writing outlet to vent and that it isn’t a personal attack on them.

On top of this, people I know would read my side of things and seriously worry about what was going on.  Gradually, as time has progressed, I have felt more and more bootstrapped by what I could and could not say, to the point where I wasn’t saying much of anything at all because I did not want to have to explain anything I wasn’t already discussing with girlfriends or whatever.  It was like living in a fishbowl.

So I took my person out of the equation.  Now when I go off and write when I’m angry or upset about something in my personal life, no one I know has to know about it, including anyone I might be writing about.  If I get well-meaning advice from strangers on my new blog, well, I’ll just chalk that up to strangers thinking they know all of the story and giving me their two cents.

In the meantime, I’ll maintain this blog for essays and opinions, posting videos I like, whatever, anything that really isn’t too personal.

Gone

I no longer am.

Swingin!

Pure Med Spa Again

In spite of the rather large number of comments I received on my posts about Pure Med Spa, not one of the commenters responded to my request to interview them for an article I am doing on the company.  I am posting this in an effort to find people who were harmed by Pure Med Spa, employees who would like to tell their story, or even those who had a great experience.  If you would like to speak to me, please comment on this post and I will contact you.  If you would like to remain anonymous, that request will be honored.

Thanks much.

Original posts:

You be Sorry You Mess With Me, Pure Med Spa

Let’s Eliminate Pure Med Spa

Good Riddance, Pure Med Spa

Giving Birth to a Kitten

I dreamed I gave birth to a kitten. Giving birth to the kitten was normal. It was black and white.  As it tried to nurse I realized that it was not the human I had been expecting. I remembered registering for baby things on Amazon.  I realized I would have to tell everyone that I did not need those things because I did not have a baby, I had a cat.  I knew why the birth had happened months before it should have, because the kitten’s gestational period was shorter than a baby’s.  I missed the baby that was not human.  I loved the kitten but was so sad it was not a human with arms and legs.

Damn weird dream.

Faith in a Cushion

All the claims people make of faith, yet when a “face” appears in a cushion (see article here), thousands flock to see their proof.  If they are so faithful, why do they need to run get such “evidence”?  This is only one problem in many with belief systems that rely on nothing in order to sustain themeselves.  I have little doubt the “faithful” who want to see the face would say it is because they just want to see Him.  I don’t buy it. They want something to back up their efforts, some proof that their beliefs are not in vain.

Today the Pope said condoms won’t stop the spread of AIDS in Africa.  I’m not surprised.  Maybe the Africans can pray the disease away.

I Do Not Like Hairs

I do not like other people’s hairs.  I do not like them in my food. I do not like them in the shower or on a toilet seat or in a sink or touching me.  I know this is slightly ridiculous.  There is just something about another’s hairs curving or curling and lying there in a sauce or remaining, reminding me of another’s skin cells lining the space.  The worst are hairs on public toilets.  They leave little doubt from whence they came.  I will not sit on them.  If the seat is damp enough they cannot be removed by breath, I do not sit there.

I do not mind Milla’s hairs or Dan’s hairs or even pet hairs really.  I actually enjoy running my hands and fingers through those hairs.  It is the stranger hair or the person less than close to me hair that really creeps me out.  I would just prefer not to touch it or have it in the shower with me, that’s all.

I know.  I’m weird.  I get it.

The Unclean

Things are not clean.  Even though soap and water have been applied, objects remain clogged with grease and protein, bacteria and mire.

Grease beads on a pan, coats a plate, overlaying knives and spoons.  Grease does not like soap.  Add soap and grease goes away, but with too little soap or soaks in water full of oiliness the grease hovers and swims.  Grease prefers cold water to warm.  The hotter the water, the less likely grease will remain.

Starch is another skin.  It adheres carefully and craftily, defying efforts at its removal.  It cannot be seen in the water.  Water must be removed or scrubs must be soapy and vigilant in order to ensure it moves on to pipes.  Left to its own devices, it curls and dries, affixed with tenacity.

The backs of implements used to eat and to prepare sustenance (plates and bowls, pans, glasses and cups) all need cleansing on their backs and under their bottoms.  Material hides there, ignored by those who do not consider its existence.

Toilets with urine that is not flushed begin to smell acrid and pungent.

If a toothbrush is electric and removed from the mouth before it ceases rotation, it leaves small bits of bacteria and spit on all surfaces in its vicinity.  Others who come into contact with these substances may share.

Why remove items from the floor when it is more simple to walk across them than to place them elsewhere?

Used toilet tissue does not replace itself.

The a Turns It Around

Apathy, like a virus worming its way through cells.  It gets in and makes nothing appealing.  It wins.  It is floating, moving along the surface.  It no longer feels the urge to push.  It no longer cares.  Some would call it depression, but there is no pain in it.  Depression connotes pain.  Depression is drowning while apathy floats.  Apathy is flatter, something not angry.  Depression has anger and vile, venom and spit.  Apathy is a pool of water on oil; it sits there, not even holding itself, simply roosting, waiting for nothing.

A pathos.  Pathos with an added vowel that takes it away.  Add the a, the pathos leaves.

Somewhere in my belly if I turn towards certain things I notice a place where apathy has not moved in.  It could, given the right set of circumstances.   There are a handful of things that still know pathos, that still know rage, that still know love.  Give them time and the a will turn them around, help them float.

I Gave a Man an Apple

I gave a hungry man an apple yesterday and I keep thinking about it.  I don’t want to trivialize it, but I wanted to write about him.  I keep seeing him at the other end of the subway car gnawing the apple as if his life depended on it.  And maybe it did.  I thought of him this morning in my insomniac hours.  I thought about the homeless families I read about in the New York Times and I wanted to write and comment about what homelessness is, but that seems so boring and unlikely to change anything.  People read me, but no one is going to read what I have to say about homelessness and change anything.  I don’t know what would remove the image of that man from my brain.  I don’t know that I should remove that image.  I just keep thinking about it.  So many times I have sat on the subway car and a person comes on and says, Excuse me, Ladies and Gentlemen, apologizes, and then proceeds with their spiel.  So many times I have been slightly annoyed by the interruption, yet felt guilty at the same time.  I simultaneously realize how close to precarious is my own financial situation, yet I acknowledge that we are nowhere near completely homeless and there are people in our lives who would ensure true homelessness is a most unlikely possibility.  I know also how pitiful and useless would be the change in my pocket.  And honestly, I am slightly resentful at being asked even though it isn’t fair to feel this way.  So I do nothing.  But there have been times when I have had food, times before moving to New York, when I would give food to people asking for it.  This time I had an apple, he asked for food, why not?  He told his sad story and I handed him my apple, then thought nothing more of it until I looked up minutes later to see him devouring that apple like he hadn’t eaten in days.  It was ginormous and red and beautifully ripe, a sort of dream apple.  It makes me weep to think of his hunger, swallowing the pieces so quickly he could not have had time to enjoy much of its fragrant sweetness.  It makes me wonder what would happen if I ever gave into the urge I have had in the past to ask the person to sit down and talk to me.  Sometimes I am afraid because the person seems to be mentally ill. I don’t want to be screamed at.  Other times I just don’t do it.  I’ve never done it.  But the urge has been there over and over.  I have wanted to stop my car (back when I had and drove a car) and ask the person holding the sign What happened?  How did you get here? But I haven’t done it.  I wonder if I ever will.

Tell it Like it Is: Torture

I read a story on the BBC website today.  The story is repeated in its entirety below.  What struck me after reading the story was the BBC’s willingness to relate the torture described by Mr. Binyam Mohamed, a man held by the US for just under 7 years and released last February, all charges against him dropped.  US mainstream media is completely unwilling to tell it like it is, preferring instead to describe the fringes, keeping the hard truth from reaching our eyes.  Chickens.

Americans need to read and see what torture means.  The word torture isn’t horrific anymore.  We hear a bit about waterboarding, or see the most sanitized photos from Abu Ghraib, but unless we’re looking for it, we’re not hearing what our country did to people.  It’s appalling.

Last week I read an article on Mr. Marri, the man who has been held without charges or trial for years.  It was an online article, which meant anyone could comment.  Some guy commented that “torture works.”  Really?  How is that?  Does that mean that if I hold a lighter to your balls while you are tied to a fence in neither a sitting or standing position and ask you whether you raped my mother you will continue to deny it, even if I set your balls on fire?  Is that evidence of torture’s “success”?

Read this BBC story and judge for yourself.  Ask whether you could hold out under such conditions.  Ask whether you would say anything to get someone to stop drowning you, or cutting you, or leaving you hanging by chains in the dark with music so loud you cannot hear.  Then tell me whether torture works.

The link to this story can be found here.

Demands for MI5 ‘torture’ inquiry

Mr Mohamed arrived back at RAF Northolt in London in February

MPs have demanded a judicial inquiry into a Guantanamo Bay prisoner’s claims that MI5 was complicit in his torture.

In a Mail on Sunday interview, UK resident Binyam Mohamed claims MI5 fed his US captors questions which led him to make a false confession.

His allegations are being investigated by the government, but the Foreign Office said it did not condone torture.

Shadow justice secretary Dominic Grieve said the “extremely serious” claims should also be referred to the police.

‘Dark prison’

Mr Mohamed told the paper he was held in continual darkness for weeks on end in a prison in Kabul, Afghanistan.

He has claimed that while in US custody in 2002, he was rendered to Morocco for interrogation and torture.

Now he has released what he said were two telegrams sent from British intelligence to the CIA in November 2002.

In the first memo, the writer asks for a name to be put to him and then for him to be questioned further about that person.

The longest was when they chained me for eight days on end, in a position that meant I couldn’t stand straight nor sit Binyam Mohamed

The second telegram asks about a timescale for further interrogation.

The legal organisation Reprive, which represents Mr Mohamed, said its client was shown the telegrams in Guantanamo Bay by his military lawyer Lieutenant Col Yvonne Bradley.

Mr Mohamed claimed he acquired the telegrams through the US legal process when he was fighting to be freed from Guantanamo Bay.

Daniel Sandford, BBC Home Affairs correspondent, said Mr Mohamed’s claims would be relatively simple to substantiate.

“As time progresses it will probably become quite apparent whether indeed these are true telegrams and I think it’s unlikely they’d be put into the public domain if they couldn’t eventually be checked back.”

The Conservatives have called for a police inquiry into his allegations of British collusion.

Mr Grieve called for a judicial inquiry into the allegations.

“And if the evidence is sufficient to bring a prosecution then the police ought to investigate it,” he added.

Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Ed Davey said there was a “rock solid” case for an independent judicial inquiry.

Labour MP Andrew Dismore, who chairs the joint committee on human rights, said he would asking the home and foreign secretaries to explain how Britain’s policy against torture is being implemented and monitored.

Shami Chakrabati, director of campaign group Liberty said: “These are more than allegations – these are pieces of a puzzle that are being put together.

“It makes an immediate criminal investigation absolutely inescapable.”

Former Conservative shadow home secretary David Davis accused the government of “stonewalling” by referring the claims to the Attorney General rather than the Director of Public Prosecutions.

“What appears to have happened is they have been turning blind eyes,” he added.

‘Wrong-doing’

Mr Mohamed told the paper the worst part of this captivity was in Kabul’s “dark prison”.

“The toilet in the cell was a bucket,” he told the paper.

“There were loudspeakers in the cell, pumping out what felt like about 160 watts, a deafening volume, non-stop, 24 hours a day.

We abhor torture and never order it or condone it Foreign Office spokesman

He added: “They chained me for eight days on end, in a position that meant I couldn’t stand straight nor sit.

“I couldn’t sleep. I had no idea whether it was day or night.”

Mr Mohamed spent just under seven years in custody, four of those in Guantanamo – the US’s camp in Cuba.

He was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 as US authorities considered him a would-be bomber who fought alongside the Taleban in Afghanistan.

But last year the US dropped all charges against him, and he was released in February.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: “We abhor torture and never order it or condone it.

“We take allegations of mistreatment seriously and investigate them when they are made.

“In the case of Binyam Mohamed, an allegation of possible criminal wrong-doing has been referred to the Attorney General.

“We need now to wait for her report.”

Nothing New

It’s truly remarkable how little I can think of to say.  I have other stuff I’m working on, story ideas and such, but can’t think of anything to say here.  I could rant about politics, but it seems so much beating a dead horse anyway.  I have my theories about different things, I have what I perceive as useful evidence to back them up, I just have no desire to join the cacophony no one is listening to.  Most Americans are too busy watching American Idol, arguing whether Rihanna should leave her boyfriend, and tuning out of conversations, earbuds planted firmly in their heads to make sure nothing else gets in.  Ours is a country of depressed people just plugging along hoping ours won’t be one of the millions of jobs lost in the next month.

One thing I have been thinking of lately is NAFTA and other easy trade agreements.  I read about these job losses. Some economic expert in the New York Times said he thinks the economy is completely changed, and we should not think of America as a manufacturing place anymore. Well, duh.  Think of India, China, and Mexico as manufacturing places.  Manufacturing and exploitation places.  Why pay a worker $15 an hour here (which is shitty) when you can pay $3 an hour somewhere else?  I think it’s time to repeal all these free and easy trade agreements and bring manufacturing back to the USA.  So what if a few companies go out of business over it.  It isn’t like they aren’t going out of business as it is, shipping the jobs overseas and ensuring Americans can’t afford the crap they bring back, terrorizing the planet in the process.

It’s also time to reform corporate law and remove the status of person from corporations.  They get all the benefits without the drawbacks.  Can’t put a corporation in jail for murder, but we can protect their “rights.”  What a load of bullshit.

Ah hell.  I could go on and on and on.  I’m not giving any kind of in-depth analysis here.  I’m not saying anything new.  This is what I’m talking about when I say that I don’t have anything to say.  It’s blah blah blah.  Too much information flowing too frequently every day, all day.

Last night Boyfriend, Roommate, and I went out to New Jersey to a jam session.  I liked the place and the players a lot.  However, the “plans” for getting to and from the jam session were, how should I say this?  A little less than.  Actually, there weren’t any.  In spite of statements made before leaving to the contrary, no research was done ahead of time by the persons who found and wanted to attend the jam session. The result was that we did not know where to catch the bus to Jersey so I asked the driver of one bus who sent us in the right direction.  I then asked another driver who pointed out the bus we were to take.  That driver said his bus went to Teaneck, the locale of the session.  Once we were on the bus, we did not know we had to tell the driver to stop, thereby resulting in a 2 mile walk to the local bus in town.

After the session, I informed Boyfriend that a bus was coming in ten minutes, right before midnight.  Roommate was talking and Boyfriend did not want to interrupt him.  He said we would take the next bus.  Little did we realize that wating for the next bus would mean waiting in the freezing cold for another hour until another bus came.  We were in the suburbs. Very nice suburbs, I might add.  However, theses suburbanites go to bed at reasonable hours. They do not have cafes open along their suburban roads.  They do not run busses more frequently than hourly at midnight.  For the next fifty minutes, we walked in the direction the bus was headed in order to keep warm.  Overall, using my iPhone, I calculated that we walked nearly five miles last night.  Now, I’m not averse to walking.  I actually like a brisk walk.  However, considering I was not aware I would be traipsing all over the state of New Jersey last night, I did not wear the most comfortable walking shoes, the result being that by about 12:30 a.m., my feet were vibrating.  We finally got that bus at 1 in the morning, rode it for an hour to the port authority, and took a subway, arriving home at 2:45 in the morning.  I have since informed Boyfriend that from now on, even if he is the finder and dragger to an event, I will not go without first creating my own travel itinerary to and from the event, especially if it is in New Jersey.

Stylin

I realize on some level how silly this is, but I love the way I feel after having some beauty ritual performed, be it hair dressing or nail smoothing or whatever.  Yesterday I had my hairs arranged and cut and made to look beautiful.  Leaving the salon I could feel it silky and swinging on my neck.  Odd how simply having my hairs arranged can provide a pick me up.

I think I have mentioned before that I am not naturally the sort of woman who easily maintains makeup and hair styling and whatnot.  I am simply not one of those women who look perfectly made up at all times.  I cannot keep my sausagey fingers from looking unkempt.  I manage to keep pedicures looking somewhat okay, but I think mostly it is an illusion fostered by toes existing over five-and-half-feet from my eyes.  If I get closer, I often notice there are little bumps in the polish or nicks on the edges of my nails.

I am perpetually battling dry feet skin, never able to achieve the milky white perfection seen on Photoshopped advertisements.  I could probably make a mint if I figured out how to accomplish that little trick.  I will stay on top of the eyebrows for several days in a row, then realize one morning that Hey, I haven’t looked at them in a while.  It is with some foreboding I look into the mirror because I have had genuine fears of having my head turn into one giant hair pile, Cousin Itt come to life.  Yikes!  Except for lipstick (my take to an island mainstay), I have never been the sort to wear makeup for any length of time.  I invariably forget and rub my eyes, or smear the stuff on my lids, or do something else equally unattractive.

I try to maintain a well put together outfit.  I actually choose and wear quite pretty clothes.  The problem is when nylons start creeping down so the crotch ends up between my thighs, or waistbands creep into uncomfortable creases, or I dribble something on my chest.  You get the picture.  And after a while, in spite of my greatest efforts, my hairs just start to fly about.  I think it has something to do with the fact that my hairs would be curly left to their own devices.  I use a brush and hairdryer to make it straight.  It waits and then when I’m out in public some of the hairs stage a mutiny, reverting back to their curly ways.

While I was in the salon I read a little article about which beauty regimens women are giving up in times of financial difficulty, and those they simply cannot live without.  I chuckled to myself at the irony of my sitting in that chair having my hairs arranged as my bank account is gradually depleted to nearly nothing while taking a break from job hunting.  Attempting some semblance of beauty through hair dressing is most certainly the beauty regimen I will not give up.  My answer to that question is easy.  No matter what, I always manage to get my hairs arranged.

Hair is a funny thing.  I tend to be the sort who, either through thin finances or thin time and sometimes both, leaves my hair arranging for 8 to 10 weeks rather than the recommended 6 to 8.  The result is that I usually arrive at the salon looking like a scruffy puppy.  While it is not much fun to go through life looking and feeling scruffy, it is marvelous to come out of the hair salon feeling like I got a shiny new coat of wax or something.  The feeling lasts for a couple of weeks after the arranging.  Then it fades into the background until the scruffiness reminds me that I really ought to do something and stop scaring people with the way I look.

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss

I’m not alone in saying that the books of Dr. Seuss were among my favorites as a child.  Unique and clever, they hold a spot in my heart because they contributed to the development of my lifelong delight with the english language.  When I started reading to Milla his stories became her favorites too.

I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them Sam I am.  I could recite the lines from Green Eggs and Ham in its entirety at age 2.  After Milla came along and I read it to her over and over and over, she too could recite the entire book.

I could not stand Thing One and Thing Two.  I wanted someone to slap them.  I was grateful when the Cat came along and cleaned up their mess and the goldfish was back safely in his bowl.

I adored Horton.  As a child I pondered whether we humans weren’t perhaps a speck in some giant’s universe or if tiny worlds existed, so minute we could blow them about like the dust that existed all around us.  I admired Horton’s insistence on protecting the Whos and his unwillingness to allow them to perish.

I began to understand about discrimination after reading of the Star Bellied Sneetches.  Mr. Geisel, a foe of fascism and racism, helped to teach small children what it means to dislike someone because of something superficial and meaningless.  He helped us understand just how silly and perverse discrimination is.

I could go on and on, through each of these stories that are so dear to my heart.  Thank you, Theodore Seuss Geisel.  There are those of us who are grateful you were born.

Rick Santelli is an Idiot

I can’t believe this guy.  I heard him spouting off here about how Americans shouldn’t pay for their neighbor to have one more bathroom.  I wanted to reach into the screen and slap his ugly head.  What an idiot.

Here’s a clue, Mr. Smarty Pants:  People who are in foreclosure are in foreclosure because the system is a mess, not because they are “deadbeats” and want a free ride from the government or their neighbors.  Want to point fingers, idiot?  Point them at the banks that overvalued properties in the first place to get people into questionable loans so brokers could collect bigger fees.  Point those fingers at the lenders for telling consumers that their ARM loan wouldn’t be a problem because they would be able to refinance in three years when the rates change (and hey, rates have been going down forever, so  why shouldn’t this continue? Your payment will be lower!) while simultaneously neglecting to point out there would be no way in hell any traditional lender would refinance property that is mortgaged for more than it is worth.  And oh, be sure to keep it a secret from the borrower that refinancing will not be an option if you lose your job.  How about pointing the fingers at lenders who convinced people to take out that second mortgage or a HELOC to “consolidate their debt” without pointing out that trading unsecured debt for secured debt would make bankruptcy pointless should the need arise?  How about pointing fingers at the pathetic and useless Bush administration who drove us into an economic crisis and higher unemployment than we have seen in decades?  Let’s just blame the victim for losing their job.  They should have known to move to China or India ten years ago so they would be there when there jobs were shipped overseas.

I heard the jerk in an interview claim that buyers should have hired lawyers.  Guess what?  Lawyers aren’t free.  And assuming someone could afford $225 an hour to hire one, a lawyer wouldn’t hire an appraiser to know that the bank overvalued the property.  Plus hiring an attorney when you buy a house is theoretically unnecessary anyway.  Mortgage brokers and lenders have a fiduciary duty of care to their clients.  This means they are held to a higher standard of care in dealing with the public.  They are expected to act EXTRA honest because it is expected that they have greater knowledge about the mortgage industry than consumers.  How does this work, Mr. Santelli?  Are the consumers supposed to suddenly educate themselves so they can catch dishonest bankers and brokers?  Would you hold a patient to the same duty before going to a doctor?  Am I supposed to go get an MBA before I go to a financial expert to ensure they are upholding their fiduciary duty?  Should I get an MD before going to the doctor?

I can’t stand the mentality that we are not obligated to help one another.  Guess what?  We are all in this together.  We can sit in our foreclosed bunkers with our guns aimed at our neighbors and barbed wire wrapped around our hearts to protect us from the enemy, ensuring we keep that property because, hell, it belongs to us, right?  We don’t need to share.  Or we can grow up and realize that society at its heart means social.  It means taking responsibility for one another.  It means what we do for each other we do for ourselves. It means we care for and protect one another and when someone is down, we offer them a hand up.  Taking care of one another is the stuff life is made of.  The alternate choice is to live like Rick Santelli, cold and alone with his gun pointed at everyone, dragging his loot into the afterlife.  Good luck with that, Buddy.

P.S. Being a stock-broker might be a high risk financially, but it is not hard work.

Unreasonable Faith

My piece titled Who Would Jesus Bomb was published on the blog Unreasonable Faith today.  If you are interested, feel free to go read it here.

Violence, Murder, and Hatred of Homosexuals

Homophobia needs a new name, a good and ugly name to describe what is really going on when someone hates a gay person.  Homophobia is too sanitized.  It’s just a phobia, like arachnophobia (fear of spiders) and claustrophobia (fear of enclosed spaces).  No.  Hatred of gays needs to speak for what it really is–hate, intolerance, cruelty, VIOLENCE.  It needs a word that encompasses the fear, but also everything gays have suffered because of who they are.

Too many people think homosexuality is a lifestyle choice, like a person would volunteer for exclusion, violence, and pain, as if they could become heterosexual if they really wanted to.  Such “reasoning” is taken a step further to conclude that if a person chose their “lifestyle,” everyone’s hating them for it is okay.  What a load of crap.  Even if it were true that a homosexual made this “choice,” why does that make it okay to beat, kill, exclude, or otherwise bring them harm?  It doesn’t.  No matter how you cut it, homophobia is simple hatred.

So let’s make a new word, one that encompasses what is really going on.  Homo-abhorrence, homo-detestation, homo-disgust, homo-hatred, homo-malevolence, homo-repulsion, homo-revulsion, homo-animus, or homo-repugnance all come to mind.  I’m sure there are others.   Maybe if people who don’t give the issue much thought would consider what is really going on if we called a spade a spade and stopped using an easy, sanitized word like homophobia.  Maybe they would realize it means violence and hatred.  Maybe then they would understand why it has to end.

The Business of Being Born

This documentary is a must see.  If you have netflix, it is available in the on demand option to watch right on your computer.

Letter Again to Love Guru

Well, I received a letter last week from a well-meaning young fellow.  I have to say I am impressed with his fortitude in contacting me.  He is obviously an intelligent person who knows when to ask for help.  Here is his request:

HI love guru i dont know ur reputation but having studied ur letters it made me relaxed and confident enuf to share my problem with u. The problem is that due to bipolar sickness and other problems i feel that i may am lagging behind than my other fellows in mental growth at this time i am doing my masters in digital communications but believe me in social activites and day to day living i spend my most of life in room and have gained very less experiences well thats another problem. My love problem is that i dont feel to marry or engage coz i dont feel mature enuf but ma parents insisted me and after rejecting a few proposals i accpeted one. But that was due to pressure. Now its 4 months since i engaged to a girl. That girl is sincere to me as i am the only man in her life but u know i dont like her much. i dont think about her that much. i respect her she is quite descent and mature girl but i wanted a lil funky girl so that she brighten ma life. ne way now tell me wat to do she is not a type of ma beauty choice. i m very worried these days. tell me wat should i do please.  Ali

To begin, Ali, I would suggest a bit of grammar school.  This would help you immensely in your ability to communicate.  Perhaps improvements in your communications will improve your social skills.  However, because you are a man, a bit of leeway will be accorded to you.  We women know how easy it is for men to revert to their caveman ways, and grammar is not something that appeals to cavemen.  Cavemen prefer banging things with lumps of rock and grunting. This is certainly not conducive to correct articulation.  I understand this.  However, practice your grammar.  Considering your mental problems, you need all the help you can get.

Regarding your love question…Ali, shame on you!  You have a perfectly lovely woman who is willing to put up with you, keep you in your private quarters, and feed you.  What more is it that you want?  She isn’t “beautiful” enough?  If you do not think she is pretty enough, I would suggest the problem is not with her, but with your eyes.  The solution is simple.  Go and find a stick and poke your eyes with it.  Once you are blind, you will not notice what your woman looks like.  An alternative is some wood glue.  Simply rub some glue along your lids.  This will cause them to stick shut, thereby increasing the strength of your other senses.  You will notice the lovely perfume your woman wears, the sounds of the music she plays, the tastes of the food she has made for you, and the feel of the softness of her skin.  Who needs sight when these other senses are so visceral?  Your woman loves you and wishes to keep you near to her.  Simply return to your quarters and all will be forgiven.  Kiss her feet, pour perfume all over your body, and shave.  Then beg for her forgiveness.  She will be so happy to see you, she may even feed you more than once a day.

Unfortunately, if your girl drove you out to the side of the road somewhere, she is over you and nothing you can do will change her mind.  I realize you are suffering from mental delusions in the form of bipolar disorder, but you need to get yourself under control!  How?  It’s simple.  You need to have a beer and watch some football.  You said you do not think of her much as it is.  I am sure the walk alone started you on the way to forgetting about her, but your mental disorder likely interfered.  I assure you the beer and game will complete the exodus of this person from your mind.  You will wonder why you needed to write to me in the first place.

Good luck, Ali.  True love really can be yours if you follow my simple advice.

More Love Guru Love Letters

Here are some more letters to help ladies find their way to true love. Based on the sheer number of letters I’ve received, I am absolutely certain that many of you have similar questions and will find comfort in these answers I have provided.

Dear Love Guru,
My boyfriend says he doesn’t like the music I chose for him. He says I have zero taste and wouldn’t know a good song if it hit me in the head. I told him this hurts my feelings. He said so what? What should I do? Sincerely, Sally

Dear Sally,
I hate to tell you, darling, but your man is a mean clod and deserves to be put out on his head. Telling you that you have zero taste in music is not only not true, it’s just plain cruel. What does he know, anyway? He’s a man. Except in rare instances, men wouldn’t know musical taste if landed in their lap. Personally, I would take him out to the suburbs or the country and leave him there to figure his own way back to town, but if you love him like it seems you do, you are just going to have to change him. How? Well that’s simple. He’s going to have to spend some serious time in private quarters, the music is going to have to go a bit louder, the perfume is going to have to be sprayed a bit longer, and I hate to say this, but I think it is time to withhold some meals from this man. He really needs to learn that your love is what his life is all about and if he’s going to be critical of your choice in music, he should be thankful for every other wonderful aspect of your beautiful character. I would suggest starting out by feeding him only once a day in the late afternoon. He’ll be so grateful for the food, he won’t even notice the music. While he’s eating, turn the song up just a hair, while he’s still in the throes of tummy ecstacy. After about a week, go ahead and add another snack in the morning and when you do, bring the volume up on the music again right after he is through eating. Over the next several weeks, you can add in more meals, and also increase the size of the meals. Each time you do this, turn the musical volume up just a piece. He will begin to associate food with the song choice you made. If at any time he has something critical to say to you about your song choice, reduce the amount of food he receives for the next few days but do not lower the volume on your song. He’ll figure it out and you’ll be on your way to true love’s bliss in no time at all.

Dear Love Guru,
I hate to ask you this because you were probably intentional in leaving it out of your instructions, but what am I supposed to do with my fingernails? I have the hardest time keeping them tidy and I’m just afraid they detract from my entire sexy look. Do you have any advice? Thank you in advance, Nelly

Oh Nelly, Nelly,
What a fantastic question and you are so right that I should have addressed this earlier! What was I thinking? I just wasn’t, that’s all there is to it. I’m so sorry for leaving you out in the cold like this. Here’s the thing, dear. You are going to have to start using falsies. Men love a woman with long nails. They just do. Short nails remind them of their own unkempt manly hands and you know what happens when a man sees something that reminds him of himself…he begins to see you as a man. And we wouldn’t want that, now would we? So find a nice nail salon and have them apply the tips for you. If you can’t afford a salon, go ahead and apply them yourself, but be sure you use a strong adhesive so they don’t fall off. I wouldn’t use the stuff that comes with the nail kit, but go buy some serious glue from the hardware store. You can simply use a bit of sandpaper on them to even out the lumps the glue leaves. After you apply your nail tips, be sure to paint them fire engine red. Fire engine red fires up a man’s imagination like nothing else. He’ll be so hot after seeing those nails, you might not even need his private quarters for a week! Toenails actually need attention too, but they do not need to be very long. Just be sure to have them cleaned up with a lovely pedicure. Be sure to get rid of any unsightly skin or fungus. I’m going to let you in on a little secret: SOS pads. SOS pads are amazing for scrubbing nastiness off your toes and heels. If you get a little burned, put on some lotion. Your feet will be utterly amazing. Throw on some high heeled sandals and he’ll be so gaga for your gorgeous feet, he won’t be able to sleep with loving you.

Dear Love Guru,
My mother, church, God, and the Bible taught me that sex outside of marriage is a sin. Shame on you for advocating sinful bedding like this! Shame on you also for telling women to show skin! Don’t you know that God wants our bodies covered? He does not like us to show others our private parts! Even in the sanctity of the marriage bed, he would be shocked if I allowed my Husband to see my breasts during relations. Shame, shame, shame! I may be coming up on 48 years old, but God will find me a Husband when he sees fit, on His own time. And if I never find a Husband, the Lord Jesus will be happy to comply. Signed, Ruth

Dear Ruth,
I do not know how in the world you came to the conclusion that God would not want you to use your body for sex since He gave you a hoo hoo and breasts, and I’ll bet your lovely form is way sexier than even you can imagine. Plus, there is no reason you can’t follow my other advice for getting love, even without having sex early and often, you just need to modify things a little. I think maybe Jesus is a bit busy healing babies and going to church and all that to be working on being your husband, so it would be best if you found yourself a nice human man to love. It may take a bit more time for you than it will for the average girl, but you’ve got spunk and I know you’ll find true love with a man in no time just like Jesus intended.

Well how do I do that, Love Guru? I can just hear you asking me that right now, so I’m going to tell you. First of all, nothing says that a good Christian lady can’t have her hair attractively styled. In fact I have seen more Christian ladies with the hair style I advocate than I see at the mall. And having a built in support system could be quite useful for you all. You could get together and color one another’s hair! It could be so fun. After Church you could have pie and do hair. God also doesn’t mind if you wear makeup. He made men so that they aren’t bright enough to know you are a girl without makeup, so He must have intended you to use some. Makeup parties can be fun too, kind of like those candle party things you Christian girls go to, only putting makeup on instead of lighting up a bunch of wax. And if you’re feeling especially creative, you could combine one of your candle parties with a makeup and hair removal party, and use the candle wax on your bikini line, armpits, and legs. It could be so much fun! Sitting here I’m thinking perhaps I should go into the Christian lady party planning business. I think I would be good at it.

You also mentioned some concern at having to show your skin. Again, I have to wonder why the good Lord would make skin if He meant for us to cover it all the time, but I also recognize that He did give us the ability to create some fantastic clothing choices, so I suppose He intended us to be creative in this department. It is too bad that he didn’t make men with a bit more imagination so us girls wouldn’t have to make things like nipples and labia so obvious, but it is what it is. I am here to tell you that you can still follow my steps while allowing for a man’s inability to figure out a breast is a breast and not just a lump. Basically you just have to go with ill-fitting clothing all over your whole body. Wear a very tight blouse. It can have a high neck and long sleeves. Just make sure that the silhouette of your breasts is clearly visible. Since your man will not be able to see your areola, you will need to wear your shirts tight enough he can see the shape of them through the shirt. Since it sounds like short skirts would offend your religious sensibilities, simply wear your pants tight enough to see your labia. Dressing to find a man without showing skin really is not as difficult as it seems, now is it?

As you can see, there are many of my steps to love that you can follow even if you are unwilling to have sex early and often. And don’t underestimate private quarters to assist you in developing a good Christian relationship. Suppose you meet a man you really like, but he doesn’t share your devotion? You can use your private quarters to help him along. This is especially effective if you have a very cold basement or root cellar for your man’s private quarters space. Basically, make sure your man’s private quarters are good and cold. Put him in there and leave him for several days. Every few days sit with him and read to him from your Bible. After reading to him about the comfort of the Lord, give him a little something to help him warm up just a bit. Over time, he will begin to associate the comfort of the Lord with the warmth you have provided. You also have the added bonus of his associating this comfort with your love. In no time at all, he’ll love you and the Lord more than anything in the world. Religious hymns can also make an effective musical choice in a case like yours. He’ll associate the lovely hymn with his love for the both of you. What could be better than that?

Dear Love Guru,
I bought some sexy clothes like you suggested. What should I do with my old ones? I really don’t think it would be right to donate them since another woman might end up buying them and keep herself from finding love. I simply could not live with myself knowing I contributed to another woman’s unhappiness. Thanks, Dotty

Dearest Dotty,
You are truly a generous spirit and your kindness will be rewarded with true love. What to do with those clothes? That’s easy, use them to fill in the cracks of your man’s private quarters so he stays warm. There’s nothing like the softness of a nice cotton polo shirt to snuggle up against. And if he’s being naughty, you can use them to poke in his mouth until he’s quiet. Alternatively, you can give them to my previous letter writer or any other Christian ladies who need to encourage their men to be a bit more devotional.

For the original Love Guru post, go here.  For the first batch of Love Guru Love Letters, go here.

My Response to a Comment

I received a comment from a reader of my post yesterday.  I have posted the writer’s comment here and responded individually to specifics.

“You might think that the fact that you use words as “vilify” makes you an authority on something which you obviously know nothing about.”

By phrasing your opening line with the words that I “might think” something, you limit logical denial.  However, while I “might think” using the word vilify makes me an authority on something, I don’t.  My use of the word is as a verb to describe behavior of certain people.  How is it you prove I have no “obvious” knowledge, because I did not give a history of religious bigotry in an opinion piece?  I need not give such a history; your own letter proves my point in its last line.

“You vilify Christians in the same breath you claim we vilify you.”

Show me where I say anything about Christians and show me where I vilify anything.  I am making a valid criticism of organized religion.  You jump to conclusions and take it further, ascribing my criticism to Christianity, then claim I am vilifying, all in the same breath.

“You don’t understand us, but yet we are supposed to understand you.”

Again, this comes from nowhere.  My fundamental thesis requests that we look hard at religion, that we seek understanding.  You miss this point entirely and as you do in your entire letter, making assumptions and jumping to unjustified conclusions.  You state I want “you” to understand me; does this mean you think I am in a minority and want religions to understand me?  Is it something else?  I offered an opinion, I did not ask for religious tolerance of what I had to say.

“It seems that whenever any group of people creates a movement with the same rhetoric you espouse, you want to play with a different set of rules and on a different playing field.  Your attitude and language mirrors that which you abhor in Christians.”

What rhetoric is it that I espouse, that we should look at religion’s place in furthering intolerance and bigotry?  I suppose you are right that I want to play with a different set of rules on a different playing field because I am not arguing we use intolerance and bigotry in making this examination.  And again, where in anything do I specifically mention Christians?  Where do I show abhorrence?  In asking we stop intolerance and bigotry?  Is that abhorrence?  It seems you are the one with the attitude, as well the one who is jumping to conclusions and making assumptions.

“Have you thought about that?”

Why yes.  See my previous response.

“You make leaps and bounds and speak with hyperbole, and use circular reasoning to prove your point.”

Ironic, considering this exactly what you have done through this entire diatribe. Making leaps and bounds?  You have done so by assuming I speak only of Christians.  I said religion.  Does this mean only Christianity qualifies in your narrow mind?  And where exactly is my hyperbole, in claiming religion is used as an excuse in most bigotry?  This is not overstatement; it is truth.

“I don’t think you’re going see people give up on religion.”

Did I make such a request?  No.  I said we need to look at religion honestly to see its place in bigotry.  I did not say do away with it.  Read my words, don’t jump “leaps and bounds.”

“After all, religion is a word that people don’t understand.  What we really focus on is a relationship with Jesus Christ.”

As is typical with those of your ilk, you think the only religion is yours.  There is no response to your narrow-mindedness.

“You don’t have to understand us or believe the way we believe, especially with regard to sin and our own sinfulness.  But, then again, we don’t have to understand you or believe the way you believe, either–even if you don’t want to believe that there is such a thing as sin.”

Again, as with this entire pointless rant, you make assumptions based on your own beliefs, not based on anything I have said.  And again, there really isn’t much one can do to respond to your own imaginings.

“So, I will respect you and let you live the life you want to live; but, please, respect me and let me live the life I want to live without the name-calling and generalizations.”

Name calling?  Where in what I said did I call anyone any names?  You are deluded.  And if this entire letter is your being respectful, I would hate to see what you consider disrespect.

“The proposition was voted, and unfortunately for you, you are in the minority.”

Yes, thanks to religion and the hatefulness of most people like you, bigotry is alive and well.  Thank you for proving my point.

I Have Been Sick

I have not been writing.  I have not been reading.  I have not been doing much of anything except lying in bed like a lump wishing I would feel better.  I try to do things.  I get up and go about for a bit, then I’m so sorry because of the overwhelming fatigue, nausea, and coughing.  It’s a travesty. I even got a fever, and that is extremely rare for me.  The last time I had a fever was fifteen years ago, and it put me in the hospital.  This time I just laid there like a dry stick, sucking on lozenges, popping Tylenol, dextromethorphan, and antihistamines, completely catatonic.  Yuck.

I’ve gotten some ideas.  Really, I have.  It’s possible to come up with some pretty interesting things to write about when one wakes up from coughing after the drugs have worn off at 3 in the morning.  But the thought of being upright to actually type some of these clever things into the computer is seriously more than I can manage.  I have to get up frequently to go to the bathroom because I’m trying to drown this thing (it’s not working).  Going to the bathroom is the extent of my energetic abilities.  It’s getting old, I can assure you.

I told Boyfriend today that I want him to buy some oranges because I’m going to try and kill it with vitamin C.  And some grapefruit.  Maybe if I eat a bunch of them every day I’ll kill the bad little viruses.  Plus I’ll eliminate any possibility of scurvy, and help keep the orange growers in business.  And grapefruit growers.  I’ll be doing my part.

I think it is evident from this post what my mind is capable of.  Today I took a couple dozen quizzes on facebook.  That also gives some indication of my potential mental capacity.  It’s like I’ve been working hard all week and my brain is fried.  I get the fried part, but it has not been because I have been working.  I did do some fun activities because Milla is home this week.  I went to the zoo, then came home and collapsed for 3 hours.  I went to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, then came home and collapsed for 4 hours.  I went to the Union Square Farmer’s Market and almost threw up right there in front of all of the farmers.  Not fun.  Maybe all that running around is kind of like hard work and that is why I feel like I’ve been busting my ass all week.  I don’t know.  In any case, I hope I get over this soon.  I am sick of being sick.