Children

“I think that when we say that teenagers are like small adults, we too easily dismiss the fact that they’re also large children.”

Life is a prison sentence. That sounds bleak, I know, and what else could you expect from the World’s Greatest Pessimist. I think it can actually be pretty great sometimes, but as it relates to procreation, it’s like being locked up.

Childlessness is like being paroled. Actually, it’s childfreeness (having no children by choice rather than by chance) that’s like being paroled – there are still all these rules you have to follow, but you get to have some measure of ownership over your own time, and you can take a shower in peace without being violated.

Many people, by choice or by chance, do have children, and are currently serving an 18-to-24. And some of them really hate to see someone else get off so lightly. This is my theory as to why, when I tell someone I don’t want kids, they say, “Oh, you’ll change your mind. It’ll happen.” It’s a scene that’s replayed for the past dozen years at least. I wonder what the mandatory minimum sentence is before you can be taken seriously and even surgically sterilized.

To be fair, I suppose it could be a little insulting to be told that your decision not to procreate is a positive. Not that I think anyone would see it that way, even someone as notorious for overthinking shit as I am. In fact, one guy actually said “good for you!” when I told him I didn’t want kids. He didn’t mean it as an insult (”thank God there aren’t going to be more of you!“), and I didn’t take it as one, and I take everything in the worst possible light.

To everyone else, it’s that I’m too silly and young to know what I really want for the rest of my life. Which is interesting, because if I got knocked up tomorrow – a circumstance that would most likely also affect me for the rest of my life – it would be nothing but a chorus of congratulations and well-wishes. The same people who claim I’m too young to really know that I don’t want kids would most assuredly not turn around and tell me that I’m also too young to know that I do want them.

No. They’d just be glad I was finally starting my sentence.

We’re only human

Here I thought my political blogging career was over. Ah, well, it wasn’t I who made a political martyr out of Dr. George Tiller. Nor was I the one who made the abortion debate political in the first place.

I’ve already explained my position and counted to ten. While I’m open to the opinions of others, I’m not going to change my mind, nor am I going to sway anyone else. The kind of people who think that his death is good, or just okay, or say “well what about the babies he murdered?” are not ones to listen to reason or respond with anything other than rhetoric.

I know that this debate isn’t really solvable. The solution I, and many other pro-choice people would prefer, is for there to be fewer unwanted pregnancies in the first place, owing to comprehensive sex education and widely available contraception. The people on the far right side of this ideological rift insist that humans (well, women) should only ever have sex if they are completely prepared to bear a child, which sounds nice but doesn’t take into account anything about human nature.

What I hope is this: that if a rabidly pro-life person should find his or her friend, sister, wife, mother, cousin, or any other woman they care about facing a decision about a pregnancy that isn’t wanted, safe, or viable, they are able to put aside their differences, turn down their shouting, and offer support to their loved one during a decision that is never easy or lightly made.

Like a fat kid loves cake

This post is part PSA, part bookmark.

Doesn’t this look great?

It’s a rainbow cake. Perfect for a celebration of fabulousness or really just any get-together. The drab color of the frosting really makes the interior colors pop.

I’m fascinated by this concept, even though it’s as simple as food coloring in white cake. I love color like Bob Ross loved happy little trees.

Credit goes to Aleta at Omnomicon, Goons With Spoons at SomethingAwful, and of course, my friend and pal, StumbleUpon, the greatest Firefox add-on ever. (The hell with Adblock, I can ignore flash pictures perfectly well on my own, thank you.)

The American Experience

I’m in a sweatshirt that says Wisconsin.

Driving a car with plates from Georgia.

Heading back to North Carolina.

But I grew up in South Carolina.

I was born in Connecticut.

I left some teeth in a 7-Eleven parking lot in Michigan.

And I’m in Virginia, in what seems to be the methamphetamine capital of the United States.

Time to hit the road.

Country roads, take me home

… although preferably not to Jesus.

I suppose it ought to be noted somewhere that I very nearly died tonight. It was the closest I’ve come to the instant I will eventually shuffle off this wretched planet – that I know of, anyway.

I seem to have this affliction when it comes to mountains: if I can see ‘em, I gotta be in ‘em. I don’t necessarily need to scale them by hand like Uncle Joey; a drive through and a scenic overlook will sate my urge.

This week I’m staying in Harrisonburg, Virginia for work. Not only am I in the Shenandoah Valley, right smack up against the Appalachians, but the center I’m working in features a fantastic view to the west. For the past couple days, West Virginia’s been taunting me. “I’m another state you haven’t been to,” it says. “You’ve got that big old car and gas to play around with.” Am I going to ignore the state that touts itself as “Wild, Wonderful” in favor of another night of hotel internet and takeout? I think not. It’s only half an hour away, anyway.

So it’s a beautiful but chilly evening and I’m driving my rented Pontiac through snow flurries, listening to Ray LaMontagne and thinking about how perfect it all is. The car handles well, even though it’s an SUV; the music is just perfect for the mood, the time, the topography. I get to the summit with no trouble, get out, stretch, look around, and decide that now that I’ve been in West Virginia, my life, or at least my week, is complete.

Coming back down the mountain, I get stuck behind an 18-wheeler.

Figures I would, because at this point I’m actually kind of hungry; I’ve worked my ass off, and the granola bar I snorfed during my 20-minute lunch break is a distant memory. Low gear is too slow and Intermediate is too fast. I switch between the two, mentally apologizing to my engine and brakes. Two other cars come up behind me, so I pull off to let them pass, because even though my rearview has some sort of magic glare-reducing property, I hate having a line of cars behind me (even if it isn’t necessarily my fault).

When we finally get to where it’s level and there are passing zones, I put it back into D and overtake the panel van in front of me. The yellow dash seems to continue on forever, so I try to pass the sedan directly behind the truck, but when I pull out, I realize they’re too close together. I punch it. The passing zone runs out. I top a rise and my luck runs out.

Almost.

I whip back into the right lane what feels like inches ahead of the truck and continue to fly down the road, paying no mind to Virginia’s draconian speeding enforcement. There’s a metallic taste in my throat and my heart is going triple-time. I think about the people in those two oncoming cars, who could have been killed, and how wasteful and stupid and lonely it would be to die in the boonies of Virginia.

I realize that it’s this: this is why I can’t have nice things.

I make it back to town without event. (Obviously.) I call the boyfriend, because I need to reassure myself that I’m okay just by hearing his voice, and in it, how glad he is to hear mine. I debate telling him what happened because, while the Indy fan in him would have found my driving badass, as my friend, companion, and ostensibly protector, he would have been either worried or furious.

I drink a glass of milk, thank God for my reflexes and a powerful engine, and reflect on how it seems that any good adventure story always has some sort of adrenaline-fueled moment in it somewhere.

Ooh, that smell

I offer for your consideration the following: one of the best aromas of springtime that doesn’t have to do with nature (freshly cut grass, rain, flowers – though not honeysuckle, which comes later) is the smell of a barbecue. Fire created specifically for the purpose of searing meat – it’s almost a primal instinct of civilized man.

And another thing I love about the South: you can cook out in the spring. If you live in a climate where the last day of March is cold, frozen, wet, or otherwise miserable, my condolences. Unless you’re in Oz, then I’m just jealous.

In sadder news, I saw a bumper sticker for some high school’s band, the “Marching Vikings”. Do vikings march? I always thought of them as marauders.

Such a muddy line

Being a slob is not a protected class.

I say that because if I owned rental properties and leased them out to people, I would not rent apartments to people who obviously had problems cleaning up after themselves. Gays, Mexicans, cripples, come right in. Messy bastards? Not so fast. To enforce this policy, I’d visit my potential lessees at their current residences, unannounced, to see if they do nasty shit like leave fossilized remnants of salads and yogurts in the fridge, or have a Jackson Pollock-like collection of toothpaste spit-stains on the bathroom mirror.

One might claim I’m being unnecessarily harsh towards the previous tenants of our new place, given that there was a one-day turnaround between their moving out and our moving in. I think I’m being perfectly reasonable. They knew they were leaving, and we had shown interest in the place for nearly a month before they did so. I realize a day might not provide ample time for a cleaning crew and carpet shampooer to do their thing (especially if that day was Super Bowl Sunday), but when I moved out of my last apartment, there wasn’t any need for such things; I left that place as spotless as I found it. (The landlady even made me pull out the fridge and clean the crumbs behind it. Here, I’ve worn out four Magic Erasers cleaning off the “smudgies” that our current landlady claimed not to tolerate.)

At any rate, aside from the cleanliness issues, I really like our new place. It’s a two-bedroom but small; it’s a few blocks from UNCG, so it was meant to house primarily students. It takes me ten minutes (if that) to get to work.

I anticipate my stress level dropping dramatically. Hopefully that means my rate of hair loss will also sharply decline.

God rest ye, merry gentlemen

I’ve done better in the self-esteem department than I think I’ll ever truly get credit for. It’s especially hard to look at yourself as a decent human being when your unconscious mind gives you a sharp kick in the integrity. When you’re down, no less, asleep and unable to give even the feeblest of nuh-uhs.

It’s not fair to wake up feeling guilty when you’ve been an absolute paragon of good behavior (and irrespective of any seasonal list-making or double-checking). That’s the predicament in which I currently find myself. I’m perfectly willing to blame it on Jon McLaughlin.

To his credit, he’s an extremely talented performer, and puts on a fantastic live show*. However, he does have a song called “Four Years” about high school (and moving on therefrom), and my Fark-addled mind has, on more than one occasion, resentfully muttered, “you know what else was four years….”**

The whole reason any of this showed up last night probably had less to do with any pop song and more with a fleeting thought of how different my new set of “in laws” is from the last batch. Add in some residual grudgery, an unfamiliar bed, and the queer sensation of sleeping in satin (as I did wind up with Christmas jammies after all), and I woke up feeling like a complete shit, nearly weeping with regret, about having cheated on my ex with my current boyfriend.

Let me spell it out, both so there’s no ambiguity and to reassure myself that it was all in my head: not only did I not even meet Andrew until my previous commitment was 1000 miles behind me, but I have never cheated. The closest I’ve ever come to infidelity was on a regrettable May night in 2004, when out of the loneliness that a long-distance relationship tends to foster, I kissed someone else. (Who would go on to tell people that it went quite a bit further, although I never touched him below the neck unless my hand inadvertently brushed against his comically small flaccid member through his jeans.)***

However, I’ve always been of the mind that if you wanted to sleep with someone new when you were already chained up, you should break off the relationship first. (To be fair, in my case this was a perk of the breakup rather than a motive for it; if I’d been happy in the first place, my eye would never have wandered.) Since I did what I consider to be the right thing, I wish my ever-yammering brain would shut the hell up already and let me enjoy myself. After all, it’s Christmas, ain’t it?****

Music: Something not-too-unbearably Christmasy

*He’s also tiny up close, like a singing Ken doll. Might be an Indiana thing.

**What would you call such Godwinning of your own stream of consciousnes? This isn’t a riddle; I’m open to suggestions.

***Now that I think about it, I wonder if this whole episode had less to do with Mr. McL than with the stupid juggalo sticker I saw on the back of a Highlander yesterday.

****Indeed, it is, and if you don’t know that reference, you should educate yourself post-haste, lest you be at risk of having no soul.

Hell is other people

Never has this adage been proven more true than at this time of year. I have no idea how the birth of the Prince of Peace inspires such greedy, selfish asshattery. Perhaps something in that disgusting eggnog people keep drinking.

It’s one thing to have to deal with this kind of thing when you leave your house and willingly subject yourself to it. It’s quite another when you’re paying more than 50% of your salary to reside in its midst.

Perhaps this is just an overreaction brought on by the fact that, before I can shower in the morning, I have to wait for someone with a cleanliness compulsion to finish his morning bathing ritual (as distinguished from his evening bathing ritual… how the hell dirty can an IT drone get, anyway?).

Perhaps it’s just attributable to the fact that I glimpsed a tiny ray of hope in the offer to share a room with Andrew and lower the rent to a more affordable rate, yet have heard nothing since. I’ve become convinced that my stunning luck will kick in and the offer will be withdrawn. I’ll continue to have to scrape together the cash to live here, all but ignoring my credit card bills and the debt I owe to my mother, until our tax refunds arrive and we can move out. (I must admit I am curious to hear what rationalizations would be offered for it, and wonder how fast we would be replaced when we left, because without that steady rental income, the flights to Christ-knows-where to do Heaven-knows-what might have to be cut back to only once a month. And we’re not going to talk about certain vices.)

Perhaps I resent being made a dog-watcher and dish-washer. Perhaps it really steams my broccoli to be awakened at 2 in the morning by either drunken shenanigans or the dog’s vocal response to such, when I have to be at work at six in the goddamn morning.

When I moved into my last apartment, it was my first time living completely on my own, without roommates, siblings, or significant others. I was told I’d relish the solitude.

Sometimes I would trade that, even the annoying upstairs neighbors and the dreadfully Arkansan location, just to have a space that was bigger than a bedroom and the option to shower whenever I pleased.

Alteration

There are times I want to hit things, shoot, things, or break things. This is one of those times.

One of the drawbacks to living with roommates is that they aren’t always considerate of your work schedule. So when they wake you up at two in the morning when you’ve only had two hours of sporadic sleep, you become frustrated. When you’re unable to get back to sleep for even a token few hours before you have to be up for work at 4, you feel like a complete failure at life.

When your well-meaning but sometimes singular-minded boyfriend offers a solution to help you sleep, you give it a try because you figure, “hey, what the hell, even if it doesn’t help me sleep, at least it’ll make me feel nice in the meantime.”*

But you still can’t sleep, because now your brain isn’t quite ready to pack in the old carnival tent. Mercifully, instead of reeling around out of control, it merely floats along over the glass-smooth surface of your mind. Instead of a frustrating commute, your mind is on an autumn road-trip to the mountains.

As is your custom during times such as these, you turn to either old memories or threads of new storylines to run on that mental movie-reel that, at least in my case, never shuts down. One in particular, an old standby, comes up in the queue, and you hit the play button. This one’s a mixture of sweet nostalgia and bitter disappointment, but the maybe-promise offered by its open-ended nature keeps the entire thing from curdling.

Until, well, now.

I did some vital letting-go over the past few weeks. Actually, it took place over a matter of hours, but what happened to me tonight served to prove that I made the right decision and I wasn’t just bullshitting myself.

It was all flat, a puzzle put together. Where do you go from that point but to break it apart and put it back in a dusty box? Strictly speaking, it wasn’t even a metaphor but the actual visual effect that happened in my mind. A years-old scene, frozen and peeled away from time, dismantled for storage.

*What the hell am I talking about? It’s not rock & roll.

This is the end

…of my political blogging career, this election season, and a third tedious thing to round it out.

As you could probably guess, I’m pretty excited right now. Not because “we won”, but because we made history.

Given how cynical I usually am, I’m surprising myself. America, fuck yeah and all that jazz. Just give me my moment. Give me a small measure of hope that the next couple years will be incrementally better than the last eight.

I am grateful that I had an opportunity to participate in tonight’s events. I voted Saturday, after waiting in line two hours. And given that the North Carolina vote is barely going to Obama (around 14,000 votes ahead with 99% reporting), I feel like my vote may have made a marginal difference. That’s a first. (Although, interestingly, Washington is the only county in western Arkansas to go blue.)

I will say this for John McCain: he gave a great speech. You could really tell how much it hurt him to have lost. And he showed the kind of integrity that made me believe in him eight years ago. If that John McCain had been around the past couple years, he probably would have had a better shot. He probably would have had my vote.

What I’d truly like to be

Having a song stuck in your head, even a horrible song that makes you want to stab puppies, is much better than having a person stuck in your head. I personally have found myself humming the “Oscar Mayer weiner” song uncontrollably, yet didn’t spend the entire drive home wondering if the song ever thought about me, or what it was up to, or had it show up in my dreams.

I’m seriously starting to feel for heroin addicts. At the same time, I envy them for the ease with which they can fulfill their cravings, however short-lived such satiation might be.

Music: Ryan Adams & The Cardinals – Born Into a Light

When it rains

Seems like with every bit of progress I’ve made lately, comes a caveat: now take two steps backwards.

I’m really trying to be positive, because I’m ready for a change and because I know it could be worse. I do have to let some of it out somewhere, though, before I fucking explode.

What would seem like the biggest fiasco of the day would be arriving at work to hear the fire alarm going off. This meant that the building had to be evacuated, including all the donors who were mid-procedure at the time. So I got to hang out for twenty minutes on the sidewalk with 60-odd other people, and then go back inside and attempt to pick up where we left off, with the addition of the 40-something people who hadn’t yet gotten this party started.

It was actually surprisingly orderly, even though we had to run our asses off to catch up. People were understanding. No one got ornery. Despite initial expectations, things were going to be all right.

Except that pervasive sniffle. And the occasional sneeze. And the feeling like my head was full of sludge. Wouldn’t you know it, I seem to have caught something from the clientele. So I’ve got that head-cold feeling, where your thoughts aren’t able to connect as quickly as they normally do, snot being a much worse conductor than your standard potassium or sodium. I know it’s quite evident in my writing that my thought process isn’t totally up to par, but I’m powerless to change it. Also, I’m too fucking tired to care.

Leaving, I thought, “thank Christ all that’s over with.” Except it wasn’t, not quite. See, my car developed this problem last night, where activating the right-hand directional would cause the headlights to turn off. Not just that, which was odd enough, but they’d fold down. At first I thought I was knocking the lights off when I flipped the signal, but it did the same thing even when I reached down to the base of the signal stalk, on the opposite end of the headlight switch. And it didn’t do it when I signaled left, either. I’d have to stop the car and turn it off to be able to turn on the headlights again.

Well, tonight they wouldn’t come on at all. The switch was stuck between the dash-lights position and the headlights position. When I twisted it hard to get it to go all the way, the dash-lights became stuck on. But the headlights refused to turn on after 15 minutes of fuck-aroundery.

Luckily, the switch that allows you to flip the headlights up and down was still operational. In the end, I drove home holding the high-beams on, trying like hell to stay back from the folks in front of me, mentally apologizing to everyone I passed. I still don’t know what the hell’s wrong with it. Nor do I care, at this point. I’m tired and achy and stuffy, and sort of bewildered that, in a car that’s 20 years old and has just shy of 200,000 miles, the electrical system is having problems that I was warily anticipating in the engine or cooling system.

Perhaps that’s a good thing. To be followed by one or two more tangential bad things.

Music: Radiohead – Fake Plastic Trees

Remember to use a Condon

It’s not news that I registered as a Republican in 2000 partly because of John McCain.

It’s not news that John McCain lost the South Carolina primary election that year because of push polling, specifically, sleazy scumfucks calling potential voters and asking them “would you be more or less likely to vote for John McCain if you knew he had an illegitimate black child?” The black child in question, of course, being Bridget McCain, a Bangladeshi baby adopted by the McCains.

It’s not even news that Charlie Condon, the same sleazebucket who birthed the original push poll idea in ‘00, is running John McCain’s South Carolina campaign this year. That’s right: John McCain, having had his own daughter used in an unbelievably dirty effort to sway the votes of ignorant and racist South Carolinians, turned around and said, “hey, I’m totally over what you did to my family. I want you to be the guy who gets me elected in this state.”

It’s news, at least to me, that apparently Bridget McCain herself found out about “her” role in McCain’s 2000 loss and asked his campaign if they would avoid such dirty tricks this time around.*

So much for family values, huh? Not that it’s any surprise to anyone, red or blue, that John McCain has pretty well devoted his life to winning the presidency at any cost, like it’s a basketball championship or something. Along the way, he seems to have lost a great deal of the integrity that possessed folks like me (who grew up in a pretty liberal family) to believe in him in 2000.

Of course, John McCain is going to win soundly in my home state this year, a state that rejected him eight years ago based on rumor and innuendo. Then again, McCain is a vastly different person than he was in 2000. It would seem his transmogrification is nearly complete, allowing a state full of insular, close-minded fools to once again march to the polls and pull the lever in support of a candidate, and a party, that gives not a damn about the best interest of the common person, all because they have this warped idea that it’s “what Jesus would do”.

I love South Carolina, but there are some seriously cringe-worthy moments in its history, and this is one of them. My only hope is that North Carolina can negate some of the stench wafting up from below by going blue this election.

Music: Sara Bareilles – One Sweet Love

*Not that the plea of his daughter made any difference: not only did Dear Old Dad hire the same jerk who dragged him (and her) through the mud in ‘00, but his campaign has been running push polling again: “would you vote for Obama if you knew he supported Hamas?” Of course, McCain could hide behind the notion that it’s not him, specifically, but his campaign (or, heh, that wily old “overzealous staffer”) making the calls, and he has no control over it; to which I say, you want to lead the country (and by extension, the Free World), and you can’t even lead your own campaign staff?! I’m not too terribly worried about it, since most of your undecided voters are the analytical, gather-the-evidence types who aren’t so stupid as to fall for push polls. The reason this kind of shit worked in 2000 was because they targeted the seedy underbelly of the Republican base – the uninformed racist redneck, or the quasi-informed-but-mostly-single-issue-(abortion, guns, Jebus)-voter. In other words, the ones so stupid that they mostly vote to see their team win, no matter how badly they’re really shooting themselves in the foot.

And in case you’re wondering or care, my greatest hope this election is not for Obama to win, although that’s the direction I’m leaning (to think, I’m actually voting in a battleground state this year! My vote may mean something! Sorry, Ralph). It’s for McCain, through his ineptitude, lack of dignity, and ridiculous choice of running mate, to split the Republican party into two factions: the fiscal conservatives (whose ideas I can understand even though I don’t agree with them, because they’re usually reasonably informed and don’t insist upon foisting their morals on everyone else) and the social conservatives (who have made a mockery of the Separation Clause and represent the type of stupid that shouldn’t be allowed to influence major policy in this country). We could actually get a viable third party out of this. It isn’t the party I’d have hoped for, but it’s a start, damn it.

The difference

Here’s a piece of wisdom I never thought I’d be sharing: don’t believe everything you read. Or anything, apparently. Because anyone who shares any particular bit of knowledge shouldn’t be trusted, as they stand to gain from it.

What I’m saying is that book learnin’s bad, folks. This is particularly problematic for me, because I like reading and learning things.

Unfortunately, however, I also like sharing these things I’ve learned. I do it to spark conversation and debate, to impart what I have learned onto others so that they may in turn share it and spread it. Throwing my seeds into the wind, as it were.

Of course, you could also look at it as my being an obnoxious, overbearing know-it-all, and attempt to subtly undermine me by saying that my “knowledge” isn’t accurate because my source stands to profit (or has profited already) from sharing his or her knowledge with people like me. This goes for social commentary, checkout tabloids, research papers, and calculus textbooks.

(I think I’ve been bitch-slapped by someone I might have previously underestimated. Explains the particularly sharp stinging.)

Besides deciding to become an anti-intellectual bump on the log of society, what’s one to do? I suppose reading only things that are completely unprofitable is an option. It wouldn’t be that much of a stretch – I already write things no one makes a profit off of.

Does that mean that I am an authority on everything?

Music: Ryan Adams – Nobody Girl