sound and fury (signifying nothing)

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.

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.

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.

…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.

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

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

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.

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

There’s a line from a song by Sugarland: I fell in love out of college/a good man but a bad year.

Never have I been one to define my life with snippets of popular songs (who am I kidding?), but this one seems to ring especially true of late. A lot has been going on recently, and not much of it’s good.

• Andrew lost his job. Actually, that makes it sound like he misplaced it somewhere, or overslept and decided, “fuck it, I don’t need to work.” What happened was that he was cut by the greedy corporate assbastards at Clear Channel Communications. Thanks to the economy’s current state of shittiness, he’s been having trouble getting another one, even one that pays minimum wage and only offers part-time hours.
• I have a job, but it’s a) 20 miles away and b) more different from my previous one than I’d thought. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to have it. And plasma “donation” and blood donation are cousins, but they’re more like the children of estranged siblings that live on opposite sides of the country. And that’s all I have to say about that.
• My car died. The little old Neon that could decided it just didn’t feel like it anymore. I was on my way to work one morning, not even out of Kernersville yet, when the temperature gauge spiked. Upon further examination, Jeff determined that the water pump blew. Of course, given that it’s a Neon, everything about it blows, but I had the stupid water pump replaced three years ago. Is that the shelf life on one of those things? Anyway, by random chance we happened to find a potential buyer, a guy who saw the car with the hood up at the gas station and gave us his card. He wanted it for parts for his kid’s Neon and was going to give me $400 for it. Then, when he came over and actually examined the car (which we’d asked him to do at first anyway), he decided it was only worth $150. Then he got in his Jaguar, drove off to Bible study (I am not making any of this up) and disappeared. Andrew called some salvage yards to see what we could get for it, but they all said they’d have to look at it and see. Problem is, you can’t drive the damn thing more than 2 miles without it overheating. We live 5 miles out in the country.
• My phone is gone, man, gone. And it’s really unlike me to lose things, especially those of value. But that little Nokia that’s been through so much (two screen deaths/resurrections, an overheating mishap in eastern Arkansas) apparently fell out of my possession at some point. Luckily I had an extra SIM card from the backup phone I bought the first time it died, and an old Blackberry. Given that I had to go with the el cheapo prepaid plan, though, I don’t think I’m gonna be having any quality conversations anytime soon.
• The Grand Prix blew a tire. Again, luck was on our side, even though he didn’t have a spare (still doesn’t): he was only a couple miles from home and right in front of a school. Plus, as I know from my many forays into Tire Changing Land, used rubber is one of the more inexpensive fixes for a car. However, it’s apparently im-fucking-possible to find in Kernersville, which blew me away. Of course, I hadn’t needed any tires (yet), but shit, there’s been a used tire place up the street just about any place I remember living, and Kernersville is the same size as Van Buren. However, we came up empty: a tire place that only sold new ones (and wanted $95), a tire place that didn’t “do” tires anymore, and, on a whim, a tire distributor/warehouse of some sort. Actually, that last was sort of serendipitous, because the woman in the front office possibly smelled our desperation and hock-shop stench (having just pawned Andrew’s guitar and our DVD players for money to get a tire and a tank of gas) and called half a dozen places in search of what we needed. The final place said “yeah, we have [whatever size tire it is Andrew's car takes], $25 installed”. When we got there (on the far side of Greensboro, and in the shady neighborhood where we got bad vibes from the Tolstoy selling the Acura), they checked their stock and said, “no, we don’t have that size.” Fortunately, though, they sent us to a little shack a couple blocks up, where they had at least half a dozen of them.

Now, I’m not so myopic that I’m going to cry and wring my hands and bemoan my fate. In fact, I’ve been counting my blessings lately that things aren’t worse: we’re both in reasonably good health (although he has no insurance, so if he gets sick, we’re fucked); I have a way to get to work (but, again, that’s all I have to say about that, at least for the time being – plausible deniability FTW); we live in a nice place with reasonable rent (here’s hoping the foreclosure bug doesn’t decide to bite Jeff in the arse).

It’s just an interesting contrast from when I first got here: even though I was pretty broke and didn’t yet have work, I had relatively few worries. In fact, looking back at it, it seemed nearly utopian, although I know I’m peering through the startlingly rosy glasses of hindsight. Just proves the Wisdom of Biggie: more money, more problems.

Music: Ryan Adams – The Sun Also Sets

Cancer sucks.

I’m kind of a cynical old bird. Well, I like to think I am, because if I didn’t wear such a veneer, I’d be raw and exposed to the harsh elements of life on a constant basis. And then, I suppose, I would become tough and cynical. Or I’d retreat into a world of my own creation and refuse to acknowledge reality. Or I’d die.

Reality is something I’ll doff my cap to. And the reality of the situation is this: life isn’t fair, but the fair only comes to town once a year. However, it’s all kinds of fucked up when a kid gets cancer.

I have enough problems in my life. In fact, these days I’m prone to crying at the slightest provocation. But I have a job. I have my health. I have a place to live and food to eat. I’m not being persecuted and I have the freedom to rail against injustices like the one I see before me, handle toward my hand.

And I’m trying not to politicize it, believe me. I’m trying to be impartial. But I can’t, see, because I have this thing called a soul. I have a sense of empathy, and I’m really starting to think that basic human compassion and American politics are mutually exclusive. I said it before, I’ll say it again: I know that this is America©, and that we have to let the Free Market© work things out, and we can’t let a Socialist Nanny State© coddle everyone from cradle to grave. But have we no decency? 

It’s actually sort of hypocritical, when you think about it. I’m talking about a kid who has cancer. He will die if he isn’t able to raise enough money for treatment. Yet it’s the same people who scream “think of the children!” for every conceivable offense, the same people who claim that they believe in a “culture of life*” who would say that the government shouldn’t interfere in this child’s case. 

What would these people say should be done about Brett? That Brett’s family should pull themselves up by their bootstraps? That his parents should have had money in savings to cover the costs? That the community should step up and contribute to help the family out?

That last I can agree with, even though I think it’s a damn shame that in our country we value money more than human life.

See, Brett is a kid with cancer. And I can’t think of anything that makes me hurt more than a kid with cancer. 

He has a rare form of cancer, what is basically equivalent to a melanoma on the tissue covering his brain. It breaks my heart that anyone would have to go through this, but a nine-year-old? For what purpose?

Anyway, the only reason I know about any of this is because Brett’s dad, Joe, is a Farker. I spend way too much time on that site, given that it’s a haven of trolls, flamewars, and pictures of cats with words on them. But you know what? As big a bunch of random weirdos as we are, we can make things happen when we make a collaborative effort. As is said whenever a small-town paper’s server buckles under our weight, as is said when we manage to make a child-star in a clown sweater a fashion icon, “behold the power of Fark”.

Members of this silly little community have sent, at present, over $15,000 to help pay for Brett’s treatment. The total money brought in by posting on different web forums amounts to over $30,000. Some Farkers have sent appeals to their local media to cover the story; this comes from MidnightSkulker:

Editor,

We hear too often of the cruel, inhumane, and unfair acts of people against their fellow man. Daily, we read about hate, murder, theft, exploitation, and cruelty. It is easy to forget that, as people, we are capable of far greater acts of decency than horror.

For four years, I have been a member of a sardonic, rude, crude, snarky group of people known as Farkers. We are the members of Fark.com, a user-submitted news collection site that usually takes a cynical view of the goings on of the world. There are verbal flamewars on religion, politics, and beer on a regular basis. But today, I am proud to be a member of this website, because it is a family.

I urge Islanders to visit www.carepages.com/carepages/brettjackson and consider donating to help Brett, or at least pass it on to those you know may help. Many of us here on PEI don’t have a whole lot of extra, but we will never have to see our children die because we can’t pay for medical treatment. Humanity is capable of great things. I have seen it and been a part of it, and now ask those of you who are capable to help as well. 

Still others, like Testiclaw, have contacted such influential and generous folks as Oprah Winfrey:

Dear Oprah,

I’m not that good at writing letters, and it’s tough to try to put into words the pain I feel for a family I hardly know.

Joe Jackson has a son, 9 year-old Brett, who is suffering from brain cancer. The good news is that he qualified to receive experimental drugs to treat his cancer. Unfortunately, Joe cannot afford the $100,000 bill that comes along with the drugs and hospital care.

I thank you for your time, and for your consideration. Just one kid, in one family, trying to live the rest of his life. Let’s get behind this 9 year-old and give his cancer something to worry about.

Bravo to them, to everyone who has dug into their wallets and given up their lunches and gone without their TotalFark subscriptions. While it’s incredibly sad that it has to be done in the first place, it makes me proud to be a Farkette.

*Yes, I know that’s just a catchphrase to rally the idiots who go to the polls only to vote based on the issue of abortion.

Things are starting to get interesting, politically speaking.

John McCain (who was the reason I registered to vote in 2000… as a Republican, no less) has chosen his vice-presidential candidate. Well, scratch that. John McCain has met the vice-presidential candidate his party chose for him.

Sarah Palin is a Yuppi-McSoccermom type who is the governor of Alaska. That’s all well and good for the party, I suppose, but I can’t get out of my mind the fact that our nation’s second-in-command would be, basically, Hovis with more kids and a darker shade of hair dye.

No freaking joke: from the party politics, to the highlighted-q-three-weeks updo with nary a strand out of place, to the glasses worn mostly for vanity’s sake, Sarah Palin would be the Elmer Fudd of the political world. Twittering around from this to that, accomplishing nothing.

(There may be a fundamental difference between these two ladies: while I don’t know the biggest challenge Palin has ever had to overcome, I do know that the worst thing that ever happened in Hovis’s life was her son’s leaving for college – a college that was 25 miles away from home, where he would live on campus and go home for weekends.)

What’s sad is that the move itself looks like a direct attempt to say to disgruntled would-be Hillary voters, “Hey, we got your woman right here!” It’s a direct show of the kind of cynicism that you’d think only them damn dirty America-hating libs would be capable of: that they think feministically-oriented voters would pick their guy because he picked, well, a gal to be his backup plan. (A gal who could conveniently also pull in the Single Issue Voters* who think McCain is too liberal, as she is vehemently against abortion, against gay marriage, for drilling in Alaska^¥, and pro-gun.)

Of course, they could just think that they (Hillary supporters) are stupid, which is not only cynical but incredibly condescending. The RNC thinks that by sticking a woman in the #2 slot^♪, they’re going to pull in those disfranchised Hillary folks, either because they’re spiteful at having been shut out of the big game, or because they’re so dumb they’ll vote for a ticket containing a woman who’s pretty much the ideological opposite of Hillary Clinton, just to put a vagina on the throne. (Or at least very, very near it, given McCain’s age and sixty thousand pages’ worth of medical records.) That they weren’t supporting Hillary because they supported the stances she took, the policies she backed, the ideals she believed in… they just wanted to shout a big “fuck you” at the boys.

Surely, the Republican party isn’t right in thinking that the Hillary camp is that willing or able to shoot themselves in the foot so fantastically… right?

As it turns out, they are.

Therefore, I’m pretty sure they’ve lost their right to be taken seriously^√. I mean, I thought we were supposed to be better than that, better than those who turn politics into an us-vs-them fight. Better than the ones who treat the leadership of our country like a college football game and vote only because they want to be on the “winning team”. A Carolina-Clemson mentality is one thing on the gridiron; it’s another when you’re talking about the future of our nation and our people. It makes you wonder, do those people just hate America?^©

*Capitalized because the term is meant to substitute for a variety of types of Selfish Pricks or Fundamentalist Wackjobs, such as people who vote only based on abortion rights, gun control, immigration, gay rights, etc., regardless of how little it personally affects their lives.

^¥Interestingly, she and her husband named a couple of their kids^§ after areas in Alaska they thought were purty, yet she has no qualms about turning an Alaskan widlife preserve into an oil rig.

^§What, you hadn’t heard about this? Not that I think it’s true, that Alaska’s governor is trying to re-enact Mom at Sixteen, but it gives me a chuckle nonetheless.

^♪Hey, I don’t have any pretenses about being a mature political commentator. Therefore, while that comment isn’t quite as hilarious as the major news outlets claiming that McCain “tapped” Palin, it’s still heh-worthy.

^√Not that I’m saying I should be taken seriously. I mean, I did just make a buttsecks joke.

^©Don’t worry, Hannity, your check’s in the mail.

I don’t know much about police procedure, thankfully. I really don’t even watch a whole lot of cop shows on television, but when I do, I know there’s usually one final piece of evidence that convinces them they have probable cause to arrest the bad guy (or the good guy, depending on the direction of the scenario). The music crescendoes, the shot zooms in, and some walking mass of cliché says “book ‘im”.

I’m so at home here. It’s been unexpectedly seamless, so much so that, as hackneyed as it sounds, I’m really just wondering when I’m going to wake up. That seems to be my nature: waiting for the other shoe to drop. Maybe I need to change that. Maybe I’ve come far enough, or just accrued enough karma, that this is going to work out.

It is comforting to know that some things never change, including that if it in fact doesn’t, there will be a buzzard section waiting to tear apart the carcass. These aren’t even people I’ve wronged. I haven’t shoved my happiness in anyone’s face, and no, I don’t think warbling about it on my unseen little corner of the ‘tubes constitutes a face-shoving.

I have this marvelous ability to leave people in my dust. I’m a forgiver, but more so a forgetter, and after this, I’m going to take full advantage of that fact. I suppose it speaks volumes about my ability to delude myself, because how else could I just delete four years out of my life? That’s about as much as I can say without stepping over the line and bad-mouthing anyone. I’m not going to give anyone the satisfaction.

That said, I don’t appreciate people talking shit about those I care about. That’s probably what has me most aggravated. I don’t care what anyone says about me; the historic record will show that my worst criticism comes from myself. I do find it childish and petty for someone to say “she’s only with you because she hated where she was so much.” As though I was just using him to get out of Arkansas.

I’ll say it this way: I wanted to get out of Arkansas since about six months after I got there. I actively made plans to do so when I had the means, the motive, and a place to go other than my mother’s basement.

No one’s getting used. I was lulled out of a state of inertia, for which I can’t express my gratitude enough. But using someone to get away from a place where I was miserable and to get to a place where I was reasonably assured I’d be happy (I’ve loved NC and wanted to live here for years), would probably entail more, you know, actual using. I wouldn’t have spent over a grand of my own money and driven my pitiful crap out there in my pitiful car. I was never looking for some sort of handout. All I needed was a place to land. Happening upon love was the draw, though. Without that, I’d still be stuck in Van Buren.

I don’t mind taking risks. I have a pretty well-developed sense of adventure. And I refuse to feel bad because this makes me look foolish to people whose idea of living on the edge is taking a job fifty-five miles away from the womb.

Music: Brad Paisley – Waiting on a Woman

“What the hell happened to July?”

Summarily speaking, I went from a refugee to homeless to… home. For about 36 hours this week, I was a resident of the road, sleeping in my car with my possessions, having no address but the one I left and the one I was trying to find.

I’m done with Arkansas. I say that with the level of confidence Proctor & Gamble has in Ivory soap’s purity. I hated saying that to people like Shauntae and Dana and Mark. When they asked if I’d ever make it back around that way, I stammered and stuttered and had brief vague fantasies of the kind of traveling I’d do if I ever managed to get ahold of the kind of money that would allow me to travel at will. And even then, would I go back to Arkansas? All signs point to no.

I’m looking at it this way: it wasn’t a failure or anything I’m going to block out of my mind. It was a learning experience. It was an adventure, and I’m hard-wired to crave that sort of thing. I admit that I’m a worrier, but I don’t let my fears stop me from doing the things I want to do. (One could also argue that I’m not smart enough to let my past mistakes stop me from making future ones of similar structure, but I’m trying to be nice to myself for a damn change.)

And hey, I had some good times. Although I have to admit, the best two that spring immediately to mind, didn’t even happen there: one was in Hendersonville (Alicja’s wedding, and I was in excruciating pain the whole time, so that should give some sort of indication as to the nature of things), and one was in Muskogee, Oklahoma.

So, if I ever do come into world-jaunting cash, I might go to Austin or Sausalito or Juneau, but Fort Smith just isn’t going to be on the itinerary. I will miss some of the people I knew from there, and I wish them the best*, but if I ever see them again, I’d be as shocked as Randal P. MacMurphy.

When I was but a girl of 20, I used to wish I lived in North Carolina. From 2002 through 2006, I would make the drive up all the time, sometimes with a destination in mind, but usually just to go, because I was bored and gas was cheap. That’s one reason my car has nearly 170,000 miles on it, probably 130,000 of which were put on in the first 5 years, before I had to get pretty careful about how far I’d go and how fast. (Your cooling system shitting itself in the MON, TN will have that effect on you, I’ve found.)

And I guess you could say that my dreams have come true, because I now am a resident (in location if not yet officially) of Kernersville, North Carolina. The strangest thing is, the force that pulled me here had nearly nothing to do with the fact that it’s a Carolina and I was sorely missing that sort of thing in my life.

No, what brought me here was something else I needed, although I didn’t know it was missing. Well, maybe not that, but I was okay without it. Well, maybe not okay – not all the time, anyway – but I was getting along. A little Eeyore-like in my demeanor sometimes, but not so’s anyone would notice… well, that’s not entirely true, since it was Chris who took to calling me Eeyore, and Chris knows me about as well as I know G. Gordon Liddy.

I’m still kind of foggy from the lack of sleep and the driving and the road headaches, but I remember saying this: if you have something you can’t tell anyone, that you have to lie about because you’re afraid or ashamed, is it such a good idea? Technically, I can’t say no one knew, since Alicja was sort of my unwilling wing-woman on that. She’s the only one who still knows it all, and if I had listened to her in the first place, I wonder how much different things would be.

So that is one thing I’ve done again, but I have tried not to mask my intentions. I moved 1000 miles across the country for a guy. The people I concealed this fact from were people I didn’t feel were owed an explanation as to why I would do that again when it turned out the way it did the first time. Furthermore, I didn’t want to deal with the palpable contempt that’s generally dished out when you reveal that you’re moving in with a guy you’ve never met until you pulled into his driveway with all worldly possessions in your car.

Was it the right thing to have done? Ultimately only time will tell, but so far all indications are telling me that I made the right decision. My sense of adventure was at the helm for this one, and while it’s far from the only motivation I had for coming out here, it’s what led me to give up my cozy apartment, give away two-thirds of my possessions, and give in to my heart.

Honestly, that’s cornier than Nebraska, but not only do I not really care, I couldn’t help it at this point anyway. I write like shit when I’m happy, and I’m happier now than I remember being in years.

*I couldn’t hold a grudge if my life depended on it. Usually I see this as a positive characteristic, but I was thinking about it on the drive over (because hey, 1024 miles will get you a lot of thinkin’ done), and I’m not sure if I was truly feeling benevolent or just trying to maintain overall good car-ma, but I got Erik on my mind (probably because I was en route to Knoxville) and instead of thinking that he was a prick and a bastard who done did me wrong and I hoped he was slinging shopping carts at a Kroger, I hoped he was doing well. As well as a jerk like him could be expected to do considering what a jerk he was.

And while I wouldn’t be so melodramatic and silly as to say the top of my world came crashing down, it’s been something of a wet firecracker.

However, I would put forth that I am getting it back on the road now, and I’m taking the long way. In a precarious Neon that, while it’s running better for the time being (amazing what changing your spark plugs for the first time in three years can do), I in no way trust to take me across 1000 miles of Interstate.

I’ve had a pretty productive weekend. Pretty much all I have left to do is the requisite cleaning, and packing my computer and bedding. This is good, because I have to work tomorrow and Tuesday, and I’m leaving Wednesday. That’s pretty close-cutting and crazy even by my fly-by-the-seat-of-my-britches standards. Originally I was planning on taking those two days off (and using my personal hours, since I’d heard from several people that you don’t get to cash them out like your PTO, you just use ‘em or lose ‘em). I was gonna use them to do all the shit I’ve gotten done yesterday and today.

So now I have everything I’m going to take with me (space in my car permitting) in the corner of the living room. Seems to be a theme with me; when we were moving out of the Fayetteville place, I measured off a 10×12 space in the living room (or however big the storage room was, I forget) and made sure we could cram all our shit in that space.

That’s pretty impressive (and nowhere near the amount of crap I/we had then, especially since the only furniture I have is plastic and/or inflatable). The computer bag is empty (obviously). the ORM box will hold my mattress, nightstand (which is plastic and comes apart easily), and lamp. The box under the laundry basket is full of books and DVDs. I never thought that I’d have gotten to a point in my life where all the books I owned would fit into one box – not even the whole box, just two-thirds.

The Haemonetics box will definitely take more stuff. Ditto for the clothes box behind the suitcases (one for clothes, one for shoes). The Trima box is empty but my television will fit perfectly into it. It’s chuckleworthy and sort of sad that my tv is small enough to fit in a box that holds half a dozen apheresis kits.

The sad news in all this superficial stuff-mongering is that I won’t be able to take my desk chair with me. I like this chair a lot – it’s soft, it tilts, it’s armless. But I can’t figure out how to take it apart into manageable pieces so I can jam it in amongst all my other crap. However, my current computer desk is a plastic piece of junk with PVC pipes for legs: it was one of the crappy tables that they kept on the box trucks and replaced with better-quality folding ones. I salvaged it from the crap they throw outside the staging door when they’re too lazy to carry something 30 feet to the dumpster, covered it in contact paper, and have been putting up with its wobbling ever since. In any event, I’ll be glad to be rid of it.

Part of me wants to congratulate myself for my ability to let go of so many of my material possessions. I’ve brought a carload to the Salvation Army and will have a few more things for them before I’m done. The other part of me says that I should really be able to get rid of all my junk. That at least half this stuff, if not more, is just sentimental foolish crap. Or, in the case of the television and other frivolities, just crap.

I don’t know. I’m keyed up and tired and stressed out and can’t finish a sentence, let alone a thought. But I’m excited. I’m really on a great adventure.

And this time, I’m gonna wear sunscreen.

Music: Fiona Apple – Sullen Girl