Something to Say

Image by wallyg via FlickrSo, I was over on Yahoo reading about the US Presidents that have topped the best-seller list... and agog that they're calling W.'s book 'Decision Points' a best-seller.

It hasn't been released yet.


I mean, it takes a long time to reproduce that many pages written in crayon.

Besides, the only ones that didn't cringe at what the guy had to say while he was President were Jon Stewart and David Letterman...they were too busy taking notes because W. made their jobs so damned easy.


Back to Presidential best-selling authors, what got me about the list was how many of the presidents were on it.

They make a big deal about only 13, but the list only started during FDR's presidency.

It's not like Washington and Lincoln tried and failed to get on the list.

Besides that, how many United States Presidents have we had since April 1942?

Fancy a guess?

Thirteen.

Seriously, I looked it up.

FDR died in office before he could do his presidential memoirs. Kennedy died before memoirs also, but Profiles in Courage got him into the club, and Obama has already had best-sellers even before his presidential recollections.

Then there were a few that tried and didn't make it.

Truman, which isn't surprising if one studies his life.

Nixon, who tried 12 times to make the list, but his books probably suffered from his permeating air of desperation and conspiracy theory, and that only works as as sad A&E Biography.

And Bush Sr., who probably had a boring-ass 12 page memoir after editing and blacking out by the CIA, considering his dead-pan delivery.

So, I'm not sure how they came up with 13 on the list when there have only been 13 since the list and three of them tried and didn't make it.

Nevertheless, they all had something to say. Something above and beyond their (usually) majority elected any-time-I-want-to-I-can-garner-unlimited-on-air-time-to-gargle-On-Top-of-Old-Smokey-and-they-will-watch term.

Which got me to thinking... if I ever want to be a famous author (and by famous, I mean VERY well paid, but still able to eat at McDonald's without someone trying to cut into my McNugget time... OK, maybe that is a bad example, I mean seriously, I never go in to MickeyDee's cause that's what drive through is for!  Duh!  You'd think I grew-up in a time before microwaves!... oh, wait...), then I need to have something to say.

And so far, not so much.

But seriously though, aren't fresh-outta-the-fryer-and-salted McDonald's fries the absolute best?

Where was I?

Oh, yeah... so I think AP needs a fact checker; or someone better at doing math.  Because only 13, but total of 13, including the 4 that were never on it? I'm confused. And this probably wasn't the point I originally intended, but now I'm totally craving MickeyDee's fries (admit it, you are too, huh?) and completely forgot the point I was going to make.

Come to think of it, MickeyDee's fries may have contributed to Clinton's downfall; I mean you get distracted thinking about their golden-deliciousness and you forget things... like reminding Monica to drop off her dry cleaning.  Just sayin'.

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The Definition of Irony

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The irony is, I quit smoking pot years ago and my coffee consumption is less than one-fourth of what it used to be.  But see Mom, I was trying to look out for my brain all along!  *coughbullshitcough*

I mean, I know this guy is a professor at a well respected college, but guessing from his age-appearance, it is entirely possible that he's attempting to qualify all the pot he and his girlfriend smoked in the sixties and trying to make it socially acceptable in the now.

I wonder how far this will go toward national legalization... probably no where if the tobacco companies have anything to say about it; then again, it was the tobacco companies that lobbied to make it illegal in the first place.  Haters.

And here I was totally sober all through July when I could have totally used the marijuana vindication.

Sometimes it feels like the whole world is out to get ya.  lol

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Hey Today Show and Neiman Marcus, Kiss My Po' A**

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I'm still suffering from writer's block... at least I was until I came across this story from The Today Show about Neiman Marcus' fantasy holiday gifts. And all I can say is, "Hey, Neiman Marcus, kiss my po' almost outta unemployment ass! And The Today Show can kiss it twice for running the story."

Look, I know the entire country isn't in this shape. I know there are some people that have gotten back to work. I know some families are recovering. I know some people planned well enough that they never even really felt the effects of the recession to begin with. I also know, that a lot of people aren't in that boat. A LOT of people are hurtin' financially.

I know, y'all are scratchin' your heads cause a while back I posted that hubby was back to work. Yeah. That fell through. Quickly enough to continue his unemployment. But, he's almost reached the final pay out so we're at DEF-CON 4 outta 5 on the financially fucked meter.

Bottom line, we're in the same situation as a whole lot of families out there. And hearing constantly how the country is bouncing back isn't really helping cause it's all squawk no walk for most of us.

The smiling 100K-plus earning newscaster has no fucking idea how hard it is to pinch pennies. We've spent our entire earning life pinching pennies. We've pinched so hard our pennies are transparent and there's nowhere left to pinch. So when they're giving out those "money saving tips", they don't help you because you don't do the things they tell you not to do on a regular basis anyway. The "cheap outfits" don't help cause they're spending $30 on a pair of cute shoes and you spend $12 on sneakers that last you three years. And you already eat at home for less than $20 a meal, in fact that's two meals in our house with leftovers, OK? So take your mega-watt-non-helpful-faux-compassionate smile and pucker up Buttercup; Kiss my ass.

So forgive me if I get stabby hearing about the Neiman Marcus list with it's Neiman Marcus edition Jaguar with a price tag of $105,000. We could live on that, VERY comfortably for TWO YEARS ~ AFTER BUYING A NEW TRAILER! Or the customized cup cake car for $25,000, that costs more than my husband earned in unemployment benefits in two years of working his mechanic ass off. I won't even go into what we could do with the $250,000 it takes to buy the ICON A5 sports aircraft and pilot training for two.

So Fuck You Neiman Marcus and fuck you twice American media for trying to convince us that we're doing so much better. A whole lot of us aren't. A whole lot of us are still scared shitless about continuing to feed our kids and still have electricity... and that's with a trailer that's paid off and no car payments. A whole lot of people have it even worse than we do.

Maybe if Neiman Marcus and the people they're marketing their obnoxiously overpriced gifts to were to, oh, I don't know, Stop Thinking About Their Own Greedy Asses for 12.2 seconds and stop emulating George W Bush: the master of fuck your neighbor for fun and profit, and actually donated HALF, just HALF of those ridiculous price tags to people in their own country, IE: NOT ONLY STARVING PEOPLE IN AFRICA, maybe I wouldn't be quite so hostile.

And how's this for a crazy idea: let's not let all the money ONLY go to people in large cities. Because if the US government would bail out it's citizens like it does it's corporations, maybe people would have the money to spend to keep the corporations afloat without only getting in return some bullshit tax credits. I'm trying to keep FOOD on my table and you want to give me tax credits for taking on a car payment and a new home loan. Are you people HIGH? I can't pay rent or buy food or clothe my family in Walmart jeans and piss-poor quality China-made underwear with your damned tax credits.

So keep bringing me stories about where to buy homes at a steal, in places that no one can qualify for the home loans to buy them because the economies in these places are so busted out you have to have AAA credit and enough money to pay cash for the home in the first place, not to mention that you're buying in a broken down ghost town. And by all means, bring me more stories about expensive grown-up toys at Neiman fucking Marcus.

You need to know that you are no longer talking to ME. You are talking to fewer and fewer people with this twaddle. Go ahead and stay on your cloud. The rest of us are sinking and your bullshit is making us more angry by the day.

The only reason I haven't shot out my TV for showing this inflammatory craptasticousness is because I can't afford to replace it.

Y'all Make Me Sick

Y'all make me sick. Gut wrenching, wanna come through the TV screen and hit'cha with a brick to knock some sense into you, SICK.

In fact, I'm so pissed off that I'm actually going to spell it all out for y'all.

What.

The.

Fuck.

As in, what the fuck are y'all thinking? Are we really still this narrow... again? Are we really going to create a huge hoopla over a presidential speech aimed toward our children telling them to stay in school, get an education and create goals for themselves?

Can I ask y'all this; if Reagan or Clinton or George W. more-angles-than-a-protractor Bush was doing this speech, would any of us without kids in school even know about it? Would parents be pre-censoring a presidential speech? I can already tell you the answer...

NO, we would not.

And yet here we are as backwards as married cousins in the Ozarks running our lips against something that has nothing to do with what we're all concerned about. It isn't a presidential speech. No, it health care reform. And y'all want to bitch about that too. So again I say...

What.

The.

Fuck.

Y'all will go and send $30 a month to some bloated-bellied-fly-in-the-eye African child that you have never, and will never see live and in person, but you've got issues with spending an extra $30 a month towards health care so the girl that knows your exact order, greets you with a smile and a kind word, and has you half rung up before you even get to the register every weekday morning at the Arco can get health insurance and not die from a throat abcess because she couldn't afford an out of pocket doctor's visit and a round of amoxicillin in what is supposed to be 'The Greatest Country in the World!'. Please, tell me how this makes sense.

Are we really this greedy? And narrow minded? And fearful of change? As 'The Greatest Country in the World' shouldn't we be able to change. I mean REALLY change. I mean not just buckle under to the rhetoric of the people lining their own pockets in Washington and spew the filth forth from our own lips like it were gospel. Are we, when faced with the ability to take steps forward for our country, going to bad mouth them because they're coming out of the mouth of someone who is from a different political party. Sounds like same-old-shit to me.

When did it become OK to shoot down someone else's ideas without being able to offer up a different one in it's place? And what is so wrong with looking at all types of ideologies and keeping what has been proven to work and pitching out the rest in an effort to build a better system? How and when did this become taboo?

Apparently, all throughout American history. Do the names Lincoln and Kennedy and King Jr. ring any bells?

With all the advances in medicine and science and technology, we should be a better society as a whole, instead we've back-slid like toboggan carrying midgets on a snow covered hill.

We've become a nation of Jerry Springer audience members. The lowest common denominator of society.

And that's exactly what your government wanted out of you for 8 years. Be greedy, so we can be greedy. Be suspicious so we can authorize all kinds of shady shit like going to war with a country NOT harboring the mastermind of a terrorist faction that killed our citizens on our soil. Be fearful so we can justify more shady shit like spying on our own citizens and doing wire taps for fun and profit.

And THAT goes unquestioned. THAT goes unchecked and approved by the general public. But, health care for those making minimum wage and a presidential speech telling kids to stay in school... Oh HISS!!!

On top of that bullshit, this morning showcased an interview with the two brothers who were convicted of murder at the ages of 12 and 13 and are now out of whatever type of prison facility they were in, and they had the unmitigated gall and audacity to say that they had made a mistake, but lots of people make those mistakes.

UH, NO.

I don't know too many other people who WERE CONVICTED OF MURDER FOR KILLING THEIR OWN FATHER BY BEATING HIM TO DEATH WITH A BASEBALL BAT!

That's the kind of shit someone would say on the stage of the Jerry Springer Show right before an audience member got up and tried to throw a chair at them. As far as I know, neither Matt nor Meridith threw chairs at the boys, who are now free men and will no doubt be rich beyond their wildest dreams once the book deals with movie rights are signed.

Oh, yeah, and they also announced a partial line up for the Michael Jackson memorial tour (gotta milk that dead, drug addicted, accused pedophile cash cow one more time, Papa Joe) and Chris Brown was listed along with Mary J Blige, and of course some other Jacksons.

What.

The.

Fuck.

I have to go now. I'm going to go talk to the cows over the back fence as they have more sense than the general American public. At least until Mary kicks Chris Brown's woman-beating-ass and y'all quit acting like fucking idiots by condoning this monumentally colossal amount of bullshit.

Not Wel, Not Fare

Hi Y'all... no I didn't fall off the planet. The welfare office didn't suck me into some alternate universe portal. It did however make me sick... not that I knew it until mid-Monday afternoon (so now I owe apologies to anyone that I was with on Memorial Day... even if it hasn't hit them yet... I'll pray for you).

So Friday, as y'all were reading LMFAO, I was traveling the 30 miles to the county welfare office in an attempt to get food stamps. I showed up at 7:30 for my 7:45 appointment. First one there, lights barely on, no one behind the counter yet, although I could hear people talking and laughing from somewhere behind the combination locked door. So I sign in, and sit down to wait. Within 5 minutes other people start to file into the waiting room and sign in for their respective 7:45 appointments. And there we all sat... silently trying to not make eye-contact with the other waiters until our name was called. I, personally, find that my old cell phone, the one without service, but with all the downloaded card games on it is perfect in this capacity. So there I sat silently gin-gaming my way through until I was the first one called at 8:30.

Don'tcha hate showing up on time only to have the appointment-setting entity be exorbitantly late? Kind of like doctor's offices. Makes being early almost stupid, except that the one time you're late they will be running early and they'll skip you. And they wonder why people are hostile in these places. I'm convinced now that they create these hallway mazes to get back to the worker's offices so that angry citizens don't hop the registration desk, go to the back and shoot up their workers. Cause, honestly, the shooters would be trapped and never make it out.

Anyway... so I'm ushered through the maze of hallways back to my new worker's office. However, despite the lateness of getting started with my "early morning" appointment, I have to say, this was the nicest worker I've ever had to deal with. She wasn't all sanctimonious and condescending. Instead she was personable and the time went by fairly quickly as she typed all my information into the system. She was so pleasant in fact, that I didn't even for a second hold it against her when the computer spit out the amount of food stamps that we'd be entitled to.

$26.00 a month.

Let me say that again: $26.00 A Month.

Because Texas has no compassion whatsoever for it's citizens... and just so I'm not the only one completely incredulous about the bureaucratic bullshit I have to share this; it's a good thing I didn't try to get medical for hubby or myself, cause our entire household can not make more than $251 per MONTH in order to qualify for state medical coverage. Considering that minimum wage is set to go up again on June 1st to $7 and change, I couldn't work 12 hours a week at McDonald's and bring in that small an amount of money.

And yet, I can go to welfare and their shoddy janitorial staff can not disinfect the tables and chair arms in the waiting room and I can wind up with Martian Death Flu or possibly, from the high Mexican immigrant population in our area, Swine Flu. Which one it actually is, is not something that I'll ever know; because I don't qualify for medical at all, and we only qualify for $26.00 per month in food stamps, therefore, I cannot afford a trip to any doctor in the area, as they all charge upwards of $70 for a cash payment office visit, more if they write you a prescription or you need a test of any kind.

So it is dear readers, that this undiagnosed illness, the one that I didn't know I had when we went to our friends' home on Memorial Day (I swear y'all cause I'd never have gone), took three days to incubate, and now I've possibly infected upwards of 8 people outside my immediate family with HolyShitYouDon'tWantThat disease.

And here's the fun part. When you wake up in the morning you don't feel so bad, but as the day progresses you can't make it all the way through Fry's without passing out, unless you get to their in-store cafe and collapse into a chair by the grace of God before your vision fades completely to black and you look whiter than Casper as every inch of skin covering your body is going hot and cold in waves and you don't care that people are looking at you like something they'd pay admission to see because you're just so happy that you're sitting quasi-upright instead of sprawled out in an aisle somewhere while your husband tries to decide which roll of speaker wire would enhance his a/v system even though you told him you needed to sit down cause you were seeing things in front of your eyes.

And this, my dedicated followers, is why I haven't updated since LMFAO Friday. Thank you for your comments. I'm sorry I haven't been all bloggy and commenting on your blogs and reading what y'all are writing like I promised in some earlier post that I would. I miss y'all and I'll catch up blog by blog as soon as I'm able to sit upright in the computer chair for more than an hour without my vision getting all swimmy on me...

And if I don't make it... tell my kids I love them... and for God's sake, stay away from the welfare office!

An Irresponsible Train Wreck in Cotton Pants

I'm getting a little frantic now. All day Sunday, and even now at 2 something on Monday morning I am unable to get online. I fear this is due to a combination of outdoor cats messing around under the trailer and the fact that we had some rain Saturday. Some rain, big deal, right? Wrong. The phone line has been so static-buzzy ever since it rained, that even my daughter doesn't want to talk. I understand completely... it's hard to hear over the buzzing (which is annoying as hell in it's own right) and neither of us likes to shout our conversation.

The modem is still trying to connect, and it is making more progress than this afternoon, but still no go. I'm thinking that I'm going to have to put this onto a memory stick and post it from the library when I get up and make it out of the house... ya know, whenever the hell that'll be. I'm not huge on early mornings right now unless they are left over from not going to bed the night before.

So, with the phones being nearly unusable and not being able to get online, I'm not exaggerating when I say that I'm feeling very cut-off from the world. Stuck here in my back room with no way to connect to civilization. Hubby and Turbo Tot passed out at this late hour. I suppose I could go 5 miles down the road to the Shell station and strike up some sort of conversation with the counter person, but that would be fairly strange, and probably get me introduced to the cop working the night shift.

*sigh* There really is no help for loneliness out here. Hell, even the cows are asleep at 2:30. So are the chickens (did I tell y'all that another one has adopted us?)... and every other respectable human being for miles. I am all alone. Which would be fine if I could check my email or turn up the TV loud enough to hear it over the newly cleaned box fans. Funny how it gets harder to hear the TV late at night, almost like your ears have turned against you. I remember in the not-so-long-ago when the TV seemed to get louder the later it got and I'd find myself turning it down so low that when I turned it back on later in the day, only dogs could hear it.

Speaking of TV, I was watching the Farrah thing on Friday night and aside from the sadness of the whole situation, it struck me that I totally owned the Jill Monroe doll cause she was my favorite Charlie's Angel, (Chris and everyone else that tried to fill the Jill shoes were total imposters) and holy shit, the woman's dying (Ryan O'Neal is still an overacting sanctimonious twit), and Jill Monroe was 32 years ago! 32 Years People! That's like forever ago. That's Steve Austin and Jamie Summers ago... For.Ev.ERRR.

I read blogs written by people that haven't even gotten that old yet. Seriously, do I need to cash in my wheelchair coupons (or is a Hover Round more convenient, Sonny?) and get a Miracle Ear? When did I get this old? When did I become (ominous music DuhDuh Duhhhhhh) ~the adult in the room? When did I turn into the one with the kids in school that's supposed to cook Sunday dinners and appear to have her life together and seem stable?

When? Who's responsible for this grievous mistake. Cause I'm not. At all. I'm an irresponsible train wreck in cotton pants. I haven't managed a consistent tradition ever. I don't do anything special for Sunday dinner that I wouldn't do any other night of the week. And I don't live close enough to my family to have them come over for it if I did. There's no 'same-house-until-the-mortgage-is-paid-off' home front. Hell, my kids consider stable, being in the same dwelling for three years, never mind thirty.

And while I freely admit that I may be worse than some, I know that I'm not entirely alone in this. Sad thing is, now that I am *ahemOLDERahem* I miss all those things. It was up to me to keep them going and I dropped the ball. I'm not sure if it was sheer laziness or not being aware that it was being handed to me in the first place. Because I'm not an age conscious or age phobic person at all, but sometimes, when I do the math and things strike me ~ like Jill Monroe being 32 years ago ~ I'm genuinely surprised.

This year will be my high school reunion, and I JUST NOW realized it's the 20th reunion!!! Aaaakkkk!!! And that's not aaakkk as in OMG I am not almost 40. It's aaakkk as in OMG, where did the time go? Keyport just won state and thigh-length jean jackets were just cool. When did my life get hijacked? I haven't accomplished anything I'd planned on... Oh wait, I didn't plan much of anything, which may well have been the problem. Cause one day I was waking up to Fine Young Cannibals and Lita Ford, and now I'm wishing I could hear the TV without waking up everyone in the house at 3am. And it just doesn't seem... SOOO long ago even if it was. I remember when the song Major Tom was on MTV, now it's on a car commercial.

I need a glass for my teeth and a cane ~ that way I could thwomp people that piss me off with my cane. I'll be able to because in a blink I'll be 50 and if I swallow my breath mint I'll be 60 and if I take the time to try to see my butt in a mirror, I'll bypass 70 altogether and be 80. and if you make it to 80 you should totally be allowed to thwomp people with canes especially if you see them wandering around with their heads up their asses.

But of course, then we'd have two different viewpoints about what constitutes grounds for a cane thwomping which would lead to two 85 year old women thwomping each other which will get caught by some teenager in LA on his 'camera earring' and he'll pitch it to FOX, and we'll have a new reality show, "Octogenarian Cane Wars". Which will get boring after they decide that the ones that need the most thwompings are the politicians and then they'll just start stalking politicians... throwing out a decoy 70 year old while the 80 year olds hide in the bushes to give Mr. Politician-Man a cane thwomping and it'll get twittered and blogged and...

OK... I'm starting to scare myself. Obviously, I need to get some sleep now.

History and the Human Race

So... what did y'all think of the inauguration speech? How about the over-all tone of the day?

Personally, I thought the speech was good, very good, but the 'Yes We Can' speech was better. Although, I'm thoroughly impressed that Obama was able to condemn the past administration and absolve them by putting the weight of the economic crisis squarely on the shoulders of the American public, all in one sentence. And I'm not saying he's wrong. Actually, I think he's right.

It's like that old line that your mother used to tell you... "and if your friends all jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do it too?" I mean just because mortgages were easier to come by than discarded pennies on the street didn't mean that every one of us should have picked them up. Some of y'all knew damn good and well when you were crunching the numbers, that your guts were telling you not to do this. Some of you knew that one false move in the workplace, and the bricks were gonna fall on your head... and yet, you bought anyway. Swept up in the Bush-iness and greed of the then mindset.

And I'm not trying to be insensitive about people loosing their homes ~ I have been there. Actually, yes, I have. I have lost my home. We managed to sell it one day shy of foreclosure... on paper, I guess that looks better, but bottom line, we lost the house. I have been where many are now... credit in the toilet, barely able to scrape your family into an apartment, after busting your ass to make a beautiful place to live for your children to grow up in. Desperate, disillusioned, and wild-eyed with every day feeling like Atlas suckered you into holding the world for him while he went out for coffee ~ and never came back.

This is how I know that Obama was right in putting some of the blame on American citizens and not crucifying only W. and his regime for tanking the economy. Even if he fucked-up ~ a lot ~ by running this country like a good ole boys club in order to carry out his own destructive agenda and line his and his buddy's pockets doing it. We still followed right along like lemmings.

And, not for nothing, but does anyone else think that Cheney really did pull his back out by lugging boxes during the move... I sure do! He wouldn't trust anyone else to move all those box loads of incriminating evidence against him, that's how the dumb asses get caught, don'tcha know.

And now on to Obama and the crowds... So, this is probably gonna get me knocked-off, or at the very least a whole lotta hate mail, cause I'm totally as white a white girl as white girls get without being albinos; but can people lay off the race card... with Obama, and in general?

He's a black man, actually he's a half-black man, half-white man. Still, the significance is not lost on me. I understand the monumentally historic life-as-we-knew-it-is-over-and-I-mean-that-as-a-really-really-good-thing significance of this man being rightfully elected (unlike W.) by the American citizenry. However, we elected him because we felt he was the best man for the job, not the best African-American man for the job.

I am not oblivious to the bigotry, the acceptable-in-certain-company jokes, the deep history of the African-American people. I really am not. But take a clue from the man himself. Obama didn't harp on the race card. WE should not harp on the race card. By continually bringing up race, we are keeping in the forefront of our view what should have been discarded so long ago. We have cultural differences. We have different ancestry. So do the Irish, the Chinese, the Spanish and every other race, creed, religion and culture in America. Please, stop self-segregating. Obama did not say he would do his job as president as a proud black man, just as Joe Biden didn't say that he would do his job as vice-president as a proud white man.

Because the bottom line is, we are all ONE RACE ~ The HUMAN RACE.

We all have to live on this planet. We all have to work like dogs to make ends meet. We all have to raise children that will one day be the adults running this country. We all have bones and blood and lungs and hearts and brains and finger nails. We just come in different packaging. I used to tell my daughter that the reason that people look different is because God wanted to have all kinds of different gift-wraps to look at, and marvel at, and enjoy under his Christmas tree. Because inside, he knew that all the packages were the same. But a Christmas tree would be very boring indeed if every single package underneath it were wrapped exactly the same.

I got the sense that Obama, as proud as he is of, and as much as he is mindful of ~ his history and his culture, is determined to look beyond it in order to come together in a peaceful community-union with all the other cultures and histories around the world.

With the explosion of the Internet, it's no longer Japanese people are in Japan, and Australians are in Australia, and Iranians are in Iran, and Germans are in Germany... We are all on the web, standing side by side as neighbors and customers and suppliers of each other's products. We read each other's blogs. We become Facebook friends. We listen to each other's music and view each other's photo albums. The world, as Obama said, has shrunk. It has shrunk to include every one from every nation on Earth.

Isn't it time we were all just PEOPLE.

Beauty and the Globes

Among other things, I spent the weekend watching the Golden Globe awards and the new show from Kelso, I mean Kutcher, True Beauty... at least I think that was the name of it.

Kelso, I mean Kutcher's, show brings 10 'beautiful people' together to live in one house and through a series of challenges get themselves eliminated each week. The big twist to this one is that the contestants don't know that they're really being judged on anything other than looks because the challenges are day to day life experiences, and the contestants are filmed (unbeknown to them) handling these experiences; all of which are designed to showcase the inner beauty. This group is the most narcissistic buncha people I've ever seen. One of the funniest parts, is watching how the 'beautiful people' interact with other so-called beautiful people. In their little worlds at home, they are used to being the total center of attention because they are the most beautiful in their little bunch, which is obvious by their behavior. They've grown to think that being bitchy is cute

So what happens when everyone in the room is used to being the center of attention for their bitchy beauty? Me-friggin-eow. The biggest bitch of the bunch was voted off already ~ however you say the snapper's name. The other one up for elimination is very good looking, as long as she doesn't smile. Her smile is scary-beyond-all-reason. And the two male most beautifuls that tied and were safe from elimination... The blondie needs to win the competition by what's been shown so far, but the dark-headed one...? OMG that guy needs to get "Asshole" tattooed on his forehead to save people the time of talking to him for 27 seconds to find it out. Hot as he is outside, he is one ugly person inside... given the chance, I'd kick him in the gonads on principle alone.

On to the Golden Globes...

Ho-Friggin-Hum. Why do they televise this one? I needed meth to stay awake.

Heath Ledger rightfully won best supporting actor for the best Joker EVER in Dark Knight. And anyone who sees it and still says that Nicholson was the best... I have one word for you: Rehab. Nicholson's performance was a caricature of the actor himself. Ledger's, by comparison, was brilliance, genius, and only high lit how overrated Nicholson has become as he sits back and plays more and more irascible versions of himself.

Kate (of Kate & Leo) won both Best and Best Supporting Actress for two different roles, obviously. Historic. Anna Paquin won for something, and I liked her dress, but when the hell did she sprout a gap between her front teeth so wide it could hold two Susan B Anthony's? Drew looked very old-Hollywood-glamorous with her Marilyn Monroe hair.

Colin was sober. Mickey won Best Actor, even though with his 'new face' he looks more like a Best Actress ~ at least he thanked his dogs. Yes, his dogs. It got a huge laugh, but the man was serious. Stephen waxed poetic about technicalities during the acceptance of the Cecil B DeMille award... Whatcha gonna do? It's Spielberg for fuck's sake... You could totally tell he's used to being listened to (without interruption) adoringly by any and every one in Hollywood~or the film industry in general. The President of the Foreign Press said hello to 'everyone and Stephen' and looked like he was going to wet himself because Steven Spielberg heard him speak... you know, actual syllables and everything.

And lastly, I have to comment on Meryl Streep...

Meryl, darling,
I know that you are quite possibly the finest living actress in the world. Your mastery of accents and the play of emotions across your face is riveting to watch on screen. Your skills and natural talent make whatever role you play, completely engrossing. But darling, time is marching across your face with 2-ton tanks. Please, please, for the sake of all of my glamour fantasies about award shows, please, rethink the make-up angle. Wear Some. Say, "Fuck it, I'm Meryl Streep, I'll go where and do what I please in Hollywood. I am the female Spielberg." But for goodness sake don't say, "Fuck it, I'm Meryl Streep, and I don't have to wear make-up to awards shows". Sweetie, you're not in Kramer vs. Kramer anymore. You're not making Sophie's Choice. The time has passed where you look wonderful naked faced. So I implore you, by all that is holy, regain your regal stature, and put on some face for the Oscars. Thank you.

...said the pasty-faced-no-make-up-wearin'-haircut-looks-like-it-was-performed-by-a-Toro-weed-whacker-grossly-overweight-woman-in-sweats-and-socks sitting on the couch...

Is It Over Yet ~ Almost?!?

One more day and it's over. We can ring in 2009, which, in my case anyway, has to be better... Hell, I'm due if nothing else! But I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, the only one that's due.

This year has been mediocre highs and low lows. Really, was it only me that found this year to only be so-so in the good department, any highs being left over from previous times? And somehow, it managed to present us with such sub-basement lows, that in the physical, would have been wholly impossible to accomplish within the laws of physics; you shouldn't be able to sink that far that fast without being up higher to start with, but 2008 overrode the natural laws that way.

And yet, the weird thing is, I'm not all excited to celebrate it's exit. Don't get me wrong in the slightest, I'm Happy As Hell to see this year gone, but it's left me wrung out... tired... mopey... I just want to go to sleep tomorrow night and wake up in the new year. Oh, I'll stay up and watch the ball drop, but I'm only doing it to make sure that I don't get caught in that Groundhog Day movie and have to live this year over and over and over again... with Bill Murray... and that would only be cool, if I could get him to do his lines as Carl from Caddyshack.

Because I'm hoping that 2009 will have me as the "Cinderella Story". That inspiration and purpose will renew itself once I'm freed of the shackles of 2008. So let me say goodbye to this year in the way that a multi-million-lotto-jackpot-single-ticket-winner would to her abusive boss if she were buying out the company...


Dear 2008,

You have been mean to us and we want you gone. You've given us just enough to bring a slight smile to our lips and then slapped us into the dirt when we got it into our hands.

You have rocked the foundation of our world, and almost never in the good call-your-girls-and-make-em-sick-with-envy-cause-you-don't-even-have-to-embellish sort of way. You've taken all manner of people and places and things and ideals from us. You've given us great hope and a peek of the sunny-blue-sky through the clouds for minutes; and had us heart-broken-crying surrounded by clouds darker'n'a sack of black cats for weeks.

Things that have happened under your watch, have taken us through the entire spectrum of our spirituality. We've begged, questioned, cussed, given thanks, praised, and talked earnestly in friendship with our God. We have left behind some old beliefs and found some new ones. Those beliefs that have remained are now entrenched. We have learned who we are in a deeper and more profound way than we expected, but that is a common occurrence when you walk fully through the fire.

We have endured the extreme ugly of your reign, we have made it through, and we have had enough. There is only one thing left to say to you;

2008, Get The Fuck Out...You're Fired!

*Nice little synchronicity, I just realized that letter would work being sent to W. too. (tee hee!)

Packaging and Misdirection

Today is my ex-husband's birthday ~ Happy Birthday you old(er than me) coot, I know you're reading this... Hope your day is happy.

His birthday, for many of my years now, has signaled the last bell being rung on the pre-Christmas frenzy. December 19th... only 6 days till Christmas... and only 5 SHOPPING DAYS till Christmas... Sorry to cuss at you like that, but it's the truth.

It also makes me think of when I was an out-in-the-world-woman and had holiday parties to go to and how I'd always groan in January when I finally braved the scale to find I'd gained ten pounds in a month, and what seemed like several inches around the middle.

Along these lines, I was talking to my sister the other night. I was preparing dinner and she was getting ready to go out to eat and was calculating her points on the WW website. It was then that we started talking about 'Serving Size' as indicated by food packaging.

Serving sizes, on the most part, are the food industry's version of drug company deceit. Cause this is where they rook ya. The nutritional information facts are listed in such small print, that by the time you give a damn about what the numbers are, you can't see to read them. They are counting on this. Big time.

They're also counting on our busy lives for two reasons. First, because most of us wouldn't buy the shit we have to eat if we actually had time to make something decent. Second, running around like a chicken-with-it's-head-cut-off doesn't give a person time to read anything but the calories... OK and maybe the fat content.

We give a quick glance at the calories and or fat grams, rationalize that we'll just cut back and eat less at the next meal and pop it in our mouth. Here's the rub though ~ those are the calories for ONE SERVING. That's important people, because therein lies the root of the lie. (you need to imagine that last sentence being delivered by a southern-soapbox-lawyer ~ funnier that way, isn't it?)

With our super-sized-food world being what it is today, I doubt highly that any one of us eats only One Serving of anything unless on a disease-imposed-doctor-diet. And even then... it's iffy. Let me bring into evidence a few items here...

Let's start with the goodies... The two pack of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups that you just bought (and scarfed down with alarming quickness ~ my God man! It's a wonder you didn't eat your hands off!), you know the small package with only two, cause the king-sized pack has three, and hey, in the actual aisle instead of just here in the checkout, they have whole bags of individually wrapped cups just waiting to be bought, brought home and devoured by you, mindlessly while you watch the movie that showed up from Netflix in your mailbox today. They've got you by the chocolate-encased-peanut-butter cajones my friend. The calories on that little two pack that you thought you were being 'good' by buying...

Justify a whole lot more, friendo... those are the specs on ONE peanut-butter cup. ONE. Total bullshit, right? I mean really, who is going to eat one, and then gingerly wrap up the second one and save it for another day? No one larger than a mouse, that's who.

Here's another one for ya. As I mentioned earlier, I was making dinner when this conversation broke out. I was making Hamburger Helper, OK? Now, normally, I make two packages at once. Hubby and I both eat it the first night, and then he gets the leftovers the next night for dinner. That's two packages. Y'all got that part, right. Do you know how many 'servings' they claim are in one box... FIVE. Insidious lies.

With that in mind, I looked at the label on my box of so-sue-me-I'm-not-Kraft macaroni & cheese. One box... one box only fills one of my bowls (and not the mixing ones!) with a little mound over. Let me put it this way, if my 10 year old daughter and my 2 year old son had to share one box of mac'n'cheese, they're gonna leave the table hungry. Guess how many servings that little cardboard box of lies is proclaiming to contain?... THREE.

So, people, listen to me. When you're out at the Christmas parties with their sugar cookies and eggnog, don't worry about the calories. You'll most likely do less damage with that stuff than you will with Christmas dinner and it's ham and turkey, and stuffing, and mashed potatoes, and gravy and goodness only knows what else...

But on January 2nd, I think that we as a people should rise up in protest against the food companies. A two pack of Reece's should be one serving. A box of mac'n'cheese should be one serving. A box of Hamburger Helper should be two servings. These are the portions that the American people as a populace are used to. We should force them to put realistic serving sizes on the packages so we can have our heart failure over the calories and fat content without having to do the damned math! That just really adds insult to injury.

If they refuse to change the serving size, then they should have to buy us dish sets that hold only their "one serving" because everything they sell out there is designed for the current super-sized-minded consumer.

Aren't you outraged at these lies? Aren't you furious at being deceived and wondering why you have trouble loosing weight?

...almost makes you feel better about those 5 shopping days, huh?

That is also known as the art of misdirection ~ practiced shamelessly on the public by advertising executives and politicians for years... btw.

Hell Froze Over

Having spent only two and a half years in the south, I'm not sure whether it was Sam Houston or Stephen Austin who famously said (something along the lines of...) If the devil owned property in Texas and Hell, he would rent out Texas and live in Hell...

With that said, Hell froze over yesterday. With some parts of Houston racking up to four inches of snow and two of it's major bridges closed during the commuting hours this morning because they were iced-over-impassable. Local network news on one station refused to pass the mantle to the national morning talk shows so that they could keep everyone in the viewing area up to the minute (less commercials) with the latest weather conditions.

We went outside here at our own little prairie-trailer last night to find it snowing hard enough to dust the tops of garbage cans, some wood we have out back on saw-horses, and even enough to cover the hideous orange of my brother-in-law's broken-down-van that somehow managed to get parked in what is now my backyard, long before it was ever my backyard, and lessened the eyesore that it is. That is a bit of nature magic right there!

The snow quietly falling was quite a pretty site once hubby was safe at home and the new heater was plugged in and cranking out some warmth~without the aid of my oven being turned up to 400 degrees and leaving the door open since the old heater went out at 11-something the night before... which was just late enough to be too late to drive the 30 miles to Wal-mart and get another one. (we had another heater for the baby's room, it was just our bedroom that was colder-n-a-witch's-tit-in-a-brass-bra! Back off CPS vultures!)

Anyway, with the interior cold snap over, I can now concentrate on some of the great things coming my way! For starters, I'll be a size ten by New Year's Day. Oprah is on her way to call me right now, and she's even gonna put me on her speed-dial just cause I make her laugh... Oh, yeah, and the Mega Million Jackpot for Friday night... THE UBER-HUGE One Worth 207 Million Dollars...It's ours; single-ticket-winner guaranteed.

...I mean, since Hell froze over and all...

The Beginning of the End

Ahh, December. The beginning of the end of the year.

When all the things you've accomplished and changed and lost come into review; and you think about all the things you want to accomplish and change in the new year without any of the worry or grief of the losses to come.

It can be magical with the holiday season flashing it's pretty lights and joyous TV ad campaigns, or it can be so stressful on your finances and your time that you want to move to a third-world country and hide under a banana leaf. Usually it's a bit of both which can be incredibly overwhelming. With any luck, Santa will gift wrap your brain and leave it under the tree for you so you can begin the new year with a shred of mental clarity.

If you're like me, getting through December requires no less than two calendars, a day planner and enough post-it notes to wallpaper all of the Tri-State area. Not to mention enough Advil, Tylenol and Excedrin to knock out repeated bouts with 'The Headache That Ate Manhattan". And sleep is simply a daydream you get to haze in & out of for 31 days, unless you also suck down some NyQuil to battle the pre-requisite winter cold which will attack you because you're living on caffeine, sugar (in the form of holiday goodies) and sleeplessness while purposefully striding into the germ-warfare hotbeds of Target, Wal-mart and the mall--and the grocery store (did you see that report?!? Disgusting!)

Oh, yes, and we get to do all of this running around while freezing our ever-loving-asses-off! I guess the movement creates friction and warms us up making the hustle-and-bustle something of an exercise in survival... Yeah, I'll go with that. Makes me feel better about hitting 17 stores per day to find the perfect fluglehorn for Aunt Ida and the most-specific-call-number electronics item for Uncle Jack. Oh what I wouldn't give to only have to get the items on the 12-Days-of-Christmas list; I could get all that shit online!

This year is even more difficult though, because ~as the American public has known since last December~ we're in a recession, and now it's official. So when you only get little Jimmy one matchbox car with a single piece of track to put under your 4-foot-pre-lit-artificial-tree, you're no longer a cheapskate, you're simply trying to also make sure that little Jimmy gets fed... and if you're doing really well, he'll also have a roof over his head and heat.

I can't say that I'm sorry to see 2008 go. A lot of loss and change this year, and for me, anyway, a lot of those changes were huge and irreversible. I suspect I'm not alone in that. But you can't go backwards, you can only look to the future and try to maintain your hope for the best. Your hope that the Universe knows what it's doing, even if we can't see how it could possibly all work out. I will take several deep breaths and encourage you to do the same.

2009 is coming...soon. Good luck to you during the beginning of the end. And hey, when it get's really bad, you can console your self with the knowledge that W. is almost out of office too...

See, knew that'd perk you right up!

The Power of Obama

I had no intention of posting today. But the power of Obama compelled me...

Since I can remember, which is all the way back to coming home from morning-session-kindergarten and watching Jimmy Carter being sworn in, I have not been political. For many years I didn't even vote because I felt that I was too ignorant of the issues to make a decision that had the potential to... I dunno, turn "Bushish". I watched, I listened half-heartedly, and I deemed the entire process: full of shit. The voting part changed some years back, but I still find the whole process, and politicians in general: full of shit.

But last night something happened that has never in my personal history happened to me. Obama came out and started into his acceptance speech, (my Texan hubby had, of course, gone to bed) and as I watched this man and listened to him speak, I got goosebumps, tears streamed down my face--slowly at first and as the speech continued, they became unchecked-- and the most remarkable thing of all... I Believed Him. For the consummate political cynic that I am, this was the most amazing thing of all to me. I never believe politicians. They have all been inducted into the highest order of liars, and are simply better than most people at covering it up enough to get elected. That has Always been my view. You can not possibly imagine my surprise at my own reaction.

I guess you can say that I fell a little bit in love with Obama during that speech. I was so glad to know it was not just an indicator that I'd mysteriously contracted a mental disease. I watched and flipped back and forth between the after-shows, and they had all felt it, and had fallen for him too. They were full of glassy-eyed praise and optimism that I haven't seen in news reporters maybe Ever... this was the immediate effect of our collective decision to put this man at the helm and what it would mean to this country. I called out inside my own head, "We are FREE" ... of Bush of course! Of all that Bush stands for; the lazy, greedy, sell-out-your-own-country-to-line-your-pockets, fear-mongering, all-about-me mentality that has pervaded and perverted the outlook, world image and general feeling of the entire population of America--I'll stop myself before I tell you what I really think...

And while I feel this strongly about the double-term-dose of hell that W's administration has inflicted on our country, until last night, I was not overly moved or felt really invested in the outcome of this election. I live in the middle of nowhere. Cows, cornfields and chickens don't give a damn who is in power. The only real effect in my personal day-to-day has been gas and food prices, and a generalized low-level sorrow that had gripped me from the day my son was born when I think about the world he's inheriting. Because fear-mongering, although it may not work directly on cows, cornfields and chickens, does distort the surrounding energies of the universe in the long term, so that even I, in the middle of nowhere, had become fearful of standing on my back porch by myself at night. That is how completely it has taken over and placed a secret stranglehold over our citizenry. After the speech, and the post-speech-shows, that fog of fear felt cleared. I stood out without fear for the first time in a very long time.

It was an unbelievable conclusion to a night that had started with my sis & I giving my Texan hubby a ration of shit for voting McCain. He said he did it because watching the SNL political bash show the night before, when he finally saw the Sarah Palin rap with Amy Pohler shooting the moose... well that was it for him. Ohhh, that reminds me, I need to get hubby out there and have him start teaching our son how to shoot... I mean he is almost two already, so if they don't get on it, the state of Texas will revoke my boy's birth certificate!

Yeah, so my only real disappointment of the night--aside from hubby's voting decision-- was not getting to watch the results come in, and seeing Texas turn BLUE....

OK, I have to go, I just laughed so hard I spit coffee all over my 'puter! Ciao for now, readers... and I hope you realize like I did that it's OK to have hope now, because Yes We Can.

The State of America

I have come to the conclusion that SNL's portrayal of Sarah Palin is over-the-top-unAmerican!

The fact that I was tempted for a single millisecond to vote for McCain simply to continue watching Tina Fey as Palin for the next 4 years is wrong beyond words! As my sister would say, "just because they're serving you Kool-Aide, doesn't mean you have to drink it!" And yet, Fey, every week has me damn near spitting my soda across the room in laughter, which is something I am completely opposed to giving up. This is the only thing about the election that has managed to invoke any deep feelings in me. I'm not thrilled with my choices this time around, but then again, why should this time be any different than any other presidential election?

Seriously, McCain scares me. It's not the fact that he's voted with W. over 90% of the time. It's not the erratic, hot-headed behavior that is lurking just below the surface, ready to jump out at you like a prowling lioness at any moment. It's not that Palin has a deeper voice, and I can not for the life of me imagine listening to his nasal-Mickey-Mouse-Arizona-accented voice for the next 4 years. Or even the fact that his wife looks like she could make Imelda Marcos seem like Mother Theresa. While I think all of these things, what scares the ever loving shit out of me is his Skeletor Smile. It simply gives me the creeps.

Well, all of that, and he simply will not live the 4 years if he makes it to office. Look at every single president you've seen in your life. Look at a pic of how they look when they are first elected and then look at the pic from when they're leaving office... They haven't aged 4 or 8 years, they've aged 4 times the length of their term from the stress. To quote Tina Fey from her Leno appearance on Friday night, "Sarah Palin seems to be exactly as smart as me... and that's not smart enough." Amen to that Tina, and since the stress of the presidency will kill McCain, the Caribou Barbie's readiness and intelligence are very much in question.

Don't get me wrong, I'm also not thrilled to the moon with Obama. I have my doubts about him too. Despite his incredible persona, and seemingly unflappable calm; bottom line, he's still a politician. Politicians can only survive as politicians if they learn how to squawk out the side of their necks and talk out of both sides of their mouths while smiling like a Cheshire Cat and cuddling a baby in one arm while shaking hands with lobbyists behind their backs with the other hand and managing to convince the voters that they are as trustworthy as a Catholic priest--oh, wait....

The fact that ANYONE promises to "fix" America is more astonishing to me than the size of Oliver Stone's stones for releasing the film W. while the real W is still in office. No one person can do it. It takes a village--in other words US--the American public to fix things. What is even more bewildering is that we, as a general population, fall for this shit every election. When are we going to wise up and stop thinking that any one president is going to make our lives oh so very much better?

The president is akin to a mortgage company...he might say if we get the loan, but we are the ones that pick the house, decorate it, live in it, and do the maintenance to it. We are the ones that decide who to have over for Thanksgiving dinner and what cars to park in the garage. All the mortgage company does is collect the payment. In the case of W, we just happened to go with the shadiest, most fly-by-night loan company on the face of the planet. Maybe this is why we are so ripe to believe the lies told by the next potential mortgage company. We're desperate to be able to hope for something better in the face of the horrible turn this country has taken under it's current leadership.

Which makes the laughter I experience watching Tina Fey skewer Sarah Palin all that much more addictive. I need the laughs so much more now than I did 8 years ago. Remember when we though Clinton's spooge stain was considered the worst thing that could happen to America?

After 9/11, the War on Iraq, gas prices, the current economy, and "homeland security"; I'd give anything to wake up tomorrow in a Dallas-like turn of events and find myself staring at the shame of one little blue dress again.

Customer Service

There isn't a single person that has worked a customer service job that has not, at least once; come home, kicked off their shoes at the door, flopped heavily into the couch and stated in a deadpan monotone, "I hate people'.

I have made this statement myself at least once per place of employment and I have talked to several other people in the field of customer service, or 'cs' as we call it, and in this respect, we are all the same. We deeply feel that way at the time it's said, but it is a very short generalization for the depth of the meaning behind it. In truth, someone good at customer service does not hate people at all. What they hate is the quality of customer that they managed to suffer through that particular day.

I have worked in, for or at; a salvage yard, a tow company, a beauty supply house, several gas station mini-marts, an automotive repair shop, a donut shop, a credit union, and last, but most certainly not least, the state of California in the Department of Motor Vehicles. I have been on the front lines between my employers and the general public in each and every one of them. And there is one unfailing principle that applies to all of 'cs': It comes in waves.

What I mean by that is this... If you have a terrific customer; one that smiles when they talk to you, and conducts their particular transaction in whichever way is easiest for the cashier. A customer that will put all of their unwanted items back where they got them from and do it properly. Someone who, if they have a complaint, is polite about it and you are able to fix it for them, and they will thank you. This is a customer that makes you as the 'cs' person smile, and the universe will send you a 'wave' of more customers who may not be that terrific, but they will be ones that you will not mind serving in the slightest.

If, however, you have a terrible customer; one that bitches at you in a loud, angry manner about something that you have absolutely no control over, makes a mess, is rude to the other customers. This person will pay in unrolled pennies, so you have to suspend the transaction to help others while they count it out, and they won't be in any way polite about taking up the entire counter space to do so. Then, they will want to take things off their tab because they don't have enough pennies. Just when you finally think this nightmare customer is finished, they will proceed to walk back into the heart of the store, break something, deny doing it, and then return to your counter again to pay for a one dollar lotto ticket with a $20 bill. I won't even mention that when you close out your shift, you get to explain to your manager why you have a suspended transaction on your shift report (oh wait, I just did). If you get one like that, then the law of 'cs' says that you will get more. Being that they are the terrible customers, the universe will also send more of them to you after you've stepped outside and lit your last cigarette with matches, in unexpected wind, because your lighter went extinct when you tried to use it... oh yes, and the universe will also stagger these customers out so the next one it sends you will come in right after you've cleaned up from the last one, and your entire day goes this way. This is how 'cs' people come to mutter that they hate people.

So the next time you deal with a 'cs' worker, please be as kind and terrific a customer as you are capable of being, because you may be kicking of their day... and for them, it always comes in waves.

Let the Games Begin

Well, I got my first political email of the '08 election season the other day. Of course, it was from someone who has opposing political views from my own. It was originally written by someone so ignorant that they were inflammatory and was sent on by my mother. This is the part that disturbed me most, cause I thought she was intelligent, but after receiving that particular monument to biased ignorance I'm wondering if she doesn't need 24 hour monitoring so she doesn't eat her shoes and call it steak.
I could not even stomach to read the entire email... until after my sister added her opposing insights to it and sent it back to us all. Her outrage evident with every response and not surprisingly, matching my own very closely. But it all goes so much deeper, that it's stopped being an issue of political parties, the scope is too massive to be contained or changed by any party or one candidate. Honestly, haven't we all been eating our shoes and believing it was steak... and how long have we been doing it?
We have become a country overrun by fear. And too busy either lining our pockets and screwing anyone that curbs our greedy ways; or we're working two plus jobs to pay rent and hopefully have enough left over to eat crackers. We, as a general population, have given into the Jerry Springer Show mentality; the lowest common denominator of American existence, right along with shows like Big Brother and Survivor. Scriptless ugliness towards our fellow man played out in technicolor.
The middle class is dead and awaiting a proper burrial. With it went consideration, questioning authority, human contact, open mindedness, and the ability to think for ones' self about the state of the country, not to mention doing something about it when something goes wrong. It's actually not surprising since it takes work, time, and strength to be middle class in the sense that I've described. So much easier to sit back and let the news tell you how to think. That Iraq makes sense, all teachers and adults for that matter are child predators, gas prices, while high, are just something we have to deal with, and pharmaceutical companies aren't scum sucking frauds with false test results molded to fit the outcome they wanted. We have bought into it all as a nation.
Part of me wants to be vigilant and watch the news every night so I can call the establishment on it's bullshit because someone has to keep watch, and too many other people already gave that up and have left it to others, that's how we got to this condition in the first place. The other part of me doesn't want to watch at all because it's so deeply infuriating that I'm afraid I'm gonna stroke out because my blood pressure goes through the roof.
Here's the rub... How do we fix it? It's all been going on for so long, unchecked that it's just gotten worse and worse to the point of overwhelming. So what do we do now? How do we fix this massive beyond scope pile of lies, fear, greed and bullshit? We as a nation have been carrying it around for so long that we don't even realize how big it is anymore... More so, some people don't even remember a time when it wasn't SO huge as to swallow up the possibilities of our lives. Oh, we think we're a free country, and we have so many choices. We're just in a bigger, fancier box than most and we're blind to our own censorship.
I am as guilty as anyone for the state of this Union. For most of my 20's I didn't vote. I used to say that I wasn't well informed enough to choose a candidate or make a decision on a proposition. In fact, that made me more guilty than the voters. My choice was to let the country go on autopilot, trusting blindly that the universe would continue to spin and this country would continue to uphold the values I was raised with. By making no choice at all, I allowed the decline of America because I didn't question their bullshit rhetoric and stand against it.
Just like it is now, in another election year for president. We have chosen to be Republican or Democrat based on the most visible candidates instead of what each party is really supposed to have for ideals. That's all gotten lost in what the news tells us and the candidates are the issues. So, my idea to start fixing the hideous, humongous, pit of American existence is to clearly define again what each party stands for... REALLY stands for, not the spin-doctor bullshit they all say. We may find out that as a country, as a whole, we want a lot of the same things. Then we have to re-establish our right to do something about getting those things, not just buying the spin. We deserve better, but we also have to be willing to work harder as a nation to get the better. Make no mistake about it, the way things are going now, we stand to become the biggest fucking province of either China or Saudi Arabia. Think about that over your afternoon Jerry Springer watching.

Updated 1/12/09
And here it is, in all it's explosiveness ~ the scarlet letter...

Lawyers and That Fucking Email

Since you all felt inclined to send me this email (as I appear to be the most democratically vocal person of the 4 of us) I would like to add comments to this absolutely ridiculous email you all sent me. My responses are in red.

These are some amazing facts Facts determined by whom?and solid observations I'll give you observations, doesn't mean it's fact. as to the Democratic Party's thought processes. Laws do not make people honest; it is their inner character that makes them honest. Just like George W. Bush, Tom Delay and Dick Cheney, right?

Subject: Lawyers

This is very interesting! I never thought about it this way. Perhaps this is why so many physicians are conservatives or republicans. According to whom?

Thoughtful (read Retarded.) point of view...

The Democrat Party has become the Lawyers' Party. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are lawyers. Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama are lawyers. John Edwards, the other former Democrat candidate for president, is a lawyer, and so is his wife, Elizabeth. Every Democrat nominee since 1984 went to law school (although Gore did not graduate). Every Democrat vice- presidential nominee since 1976, except for Lloyd Bentsen, went to law school. Look at the Democrat Party in Congress: the Majority Leader in each house is a lawyer. I wont' try to contest this as I have not done the research to support these statemens. What I will start with is that at least in Law school there is are required course called Ethics.

The Republican Party is different. No shit. President Bush and Vice President Cheney were not lawyers, but businessmen. Who have managed to rape this country for all it's worth. Check out big oil--which funds ALL the Bush's including your loved W. and Haliburten which has reaped billions of dollars from the American people through government contracts in Iraq--much of that money can't be accounted for... oh wait, it's going into Cheney's pocket... check it out. I'm not kidding. The leaders of the Republican Revolution were not lawyers. Newt Gingrich was a history professor; Tom Delay was an exterminator Wasn't Delay the one who tried to exterminate the people of New Orleans, La? Great job for an exterminator... the head of FEMA.; and, Dick Armey was an economist. House Minority Leader Boehner was a plastics manufacturer, not a lawyer. The former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is a heart surgeon.

Who was the last Republican president who was a lawyer? Gerald Ford, who left office 31 years ago and who barely won the Republican nomination as a sitting president, running against Ronald Reagan in 1976. The Republican Party is made up of real people doing real work. Are you fucking serious? real people? These people don't know the definition of real. They are making millions of dollars from heading large corporations or being on the boards of said corporations. They wouldn't know a real person if they were forced to sit on a bus riding next to the single mother of 2 that can't pay her electric bill because she's making minimum wage while those assholes sit in huge offices with people catering to their every need. Most if not all came from wealthy families. Do NOT try to tell me they are Mr. Average Man and Ms. Average Woman. It's the lawyers who have defended the average man and woman that have SEEN the blight that many of those great businessmen have put the AVERAGE person in. The Democrat Party is made up of lawyers. Democrats mock and scorn men who create wealth, Yup, You're right. They scorn those men. But it's not for making money. It's for squashing the average person under horrible pay structures forcing many Average people to hold 2 and 3 jobs just in order to make rent. like Bush and Cheney,Who has raped the American public for millions upon millions of dollars in bogus government contracts or $4 a gallon gas prices by letting OPEC and Big Oil run amok. or who heal the sick, like Frist, or who immerse themselves in history, like Gingrich.

The Lawyers' Party sees these sorts of people, who provide goods and services that people want, as the enemies of America Business has never been an enemy of America. Not paying fair wages and sending jobs overseas because they can make a product cheaper at the detriment of the American working public and American economy is the enemy. . And, so we have seen the procession of official enemies, in the eyes of the Lawyers' Party, grow. I'm just curious, is this saying that there are no republican lawyers, because I worked for County government in a republican county in NJ, and let me tell you, I know for an absolute FACT that there are PLENTY of republican lawyers.

Against whom do Hillary and Obama rail? Pharmaceutical companies for the inhumane treatement of animals and overpricing medications, oil companies for increasing the price of a barrel of oil by more than 50% over the last year without any good reason but to line their own pockets , hospitals for overcharging for medical care, manufacturers for sending American jobs overseas, fast food restaurant chains for contributing to the obesity problem in this country and telling us that their products are healthy and safe , large retail businesses for requiring 12 hour work days with less than the required amount of breaks and also requiring workers to work extra hours for straight pay as opposed to giving them overtime, as well as doing away with food breaks , bankers for charging extreme interest rates and targeting the groups that they know can't pay them, and anyone producing anything of value in our nation. Problem is our nation has stopped producing anything. We've sent the jobs to Mexico, Indonesia, India, and China

This is the natural consequence of viewing everything through the eyes of lawyers. Really? Looks more to me like whoever wrote this is trying to skew others views by leading with only facts that support his demented point of view. Lawyers solve problems by successfully representing their clients, in this case the American people. Yes, they sure do. Wether that lawyer is representing Big Tobacco, Big Oil (because I'm sure that Big Oil has one or 2 republican lawyers) or Joe Average. Lawyers seek to have new laws passed, they seek to win lawsuits, they press appellate courts to overturn precedent, when they feel that a precedent was set in the wrong... kind of like the Supreme Court passing a law, a branch of our government that was created solely to INTERPRET law. Oh, and last time I checked, that was predominately REPUBLICAN lawyers... hmmm funny how that works. and lawyers always parse language to favor their side. Kind of like the jackass who wrote this argument did to favor his side?

Confined to the narrow practice of law, that is fine. But it is an awful way to govern a great nation. Really? By passing laws to protect the innocent and standing up against wrongs?? What is this world coming to?! When politicians, as lawyers, begin to view some Americans as clients and other Americans as opposing parties, then the role of the legal system in our life becomes all-consuming. So, this guy is trying to convince us that only democrat lawyers choose sides of some Americans vs. some other Americans? What then, do republican lawyers do? Stand up for the American people only against foreign threats? Some Americans become 'adverse parties' of our very government. We are not all litigants in some vast social class-action suit. Your're right, because if we were, the popular majority would have in office the president we elected 8 years ago, namely Al Gore. We are citizens of a republic that promises us a great deal of freedom from laws, from courts, and from lawyers. freedom from laws courts and lawyers, huh? Isn't that the definition of anarchy? Oh, wait, that's right, it's what we have now. A government that is spending out of control amounts of money on a war we never wanted (and was never approved by congress), selling our debt to China so that we can eventually become a communist nation under the rule of a dictator (oh, wait, again, we're there), gas prices are higher than they've ever been, people can't find jobs and are losing their homes at an alarming rate, and many that can find jobs are taking sub standard positions for what they were trained because their company sent their jobs overseas to be done for less money an hour while they increase the rates they charge Americans.... Somebody's getting rich off the pain and suffering of the average American... I'm thinking it's not democratic lawyers.

Today, we are drowning in laws; we are contorted by judicial decisions; we are driven to distraction by omnipresent lawyers in all parts of our once private lives. I'm just curious, what lawyer is ominpresent in your life and world? America has a place for laws and lawyers, but that place is modest and reasonable, not vast and unchecked. Does the guy who wrote this even have a clue what Bush and Cheney have done to this country over the last 8 years? It's those twits who have run unchecked, not lawyers. When the most important decision for our next president is whom he will appoint to the Supreme Court, the role of lawyers and the law in America is too big. When lawyers use criminal prosecution as a continuation of politics by other means, as happened in the lynching of Scooter Libby and Tom Delay, Scooter Libby lied to the American public on the orders of Bush and Cheney and resigned when caught, that was a lynching all right. And Tom Delay was single handedly responsible for thousands dying in New Orleans when he delayed in DOING THE JOB HE WAS GETTING PAID FOR--NAMELY TO RUN FEMA, and if you're not sure that means FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY... the only thing that man managed was to fuck up even more a devestated area that could have been saved had the federal government taken seriously the reports that the levees would fail. Naaah, he was lynched. then the power of lawyers in America is too great. Meanwhile, Cheney and Carl Rove out an undercover CIA operative, destroying her career and putting her and her family's lives in jeopardy because her husband told the world that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Yet that man not only walks free, but continues to be second (really first) in command of this country. Yup, lawyers are just too damn powerful. When House Democrats sue America in order to hamstring our efforts to learn what our enemies are planning to do to us, then the role of litigation in America has become crushing. Are you talking about illegal wiretapping? It's illegal because it gave the government the right to listen in on any phone call it felt like without cause. That means you or me. For no reason. Last time I checked, that was an invasion of civil rights.

We cannot expect the Lawyers' Party to provide real change, real reform, or real hope in America ... Mostly because the republican party has done so much to destroy the fabric of America over the last 8 years that it may be virtually impossible to recover from the damage. Most Americans know that a republic in which every major government action must be blessed by nine unelected judges is not what Washington intended in 1789. And Bush made the supreme court a republican majority by filling the last vacant seat with a man that wasn't qualified either (kind of a trend for his appointments) but he was most definitely a republican. Most Americans grasp that we cannot fight a war when ACLU lawsuits snap at the heels of our defenders. The ACLU does not say "DO NOT DETAIN PRISONERS!" they just say "It's wrong to electrocute for fun any prisoners... and they must be fed 3 times a day, so as not to kill them by starvation, a form of torture" Most Americans intuit that more lawyers and judges will not restore declining moral values or spark the spirit of enterprise in our economy. They're right. Getting someone in the White House that doesn't rape the American economy for their own good is what will restore declining moral values and spark the spirit of enterprise in our economy. Also, while they're at it, maybe they could work on bringing back some jobs from places like India and China.

Perhaps Americans will understand that change cannot be brought to our nation by those lawyers who already largely dictate American society and business. Wait, didn't you just spend the last 5 minutes telling me that lawyers do not have anything to do with business other than putting it down and regulating it to the point of destruction? If they don't have anything to do with business, how can they possibly destroy business? Perhaps Americans will see that hope does not come from the mouths of lawyers but from personal dreams nourished by hard work. Hard work like the average person that has to work 2+ jobs in order to pay rent? Perhaps Americans will embrace the truth What's your definition of truth? Mine is not the same as this guy's. I'm pretty sure that in his mind "Truth" is a shitty substitute for "My skewed and terribly backed opinion" that more lawyers with more power will only make our problems worse. In my case, TRUTH would be that the only thing making our problems worse is people that read shit like this and back it, and send it around to others without knowing or caring to find out if any of it is truth, bullshit, or somewhere in between.

DO PASS THIS ON! Only if you have the balls to do so with my comments added to give it the justice it deserves.