Letters to the Universe

I've been trying to think of something else to say, but all I can come up with today is that I'm appalled at the level of discourse in this country. The latest example is the Schiavo controversy, but I've been appalled a lot longer than that. It's the incessant emoting that's driving me crazy. It seems that everywhere I look, someone is wringing their proverbial hands over something or they're enraged about something. Generally speaking, the emoting is totally disconnected from the facts at hand. Here's the deal. I don't really give a happy fuck how the news folks...or anyone else...feel.

I'd just like the facts. Why is that so hard to get these days? It's so much easier and intellectually cheaper to resort to emotion, I suppose. Here's a mystery. We keep telling our children how important education is, but I'll be damned if we ever demonstrate any intellectual rigor.

Don't get me wrong, virtually every news story worth telling has a solid emotional hook. I have feelings about the Schiavo controversy, the Scott Peterson trial, etc. I just think we've gone way too far into the touchy-feely realm.

I was watching Nancy Grace last night and she had really worked herself into a lather about Terry Schiavo. She was supposed to be interviewing a neurosurgeon, but she really had absolutely no interest in the medical facts. She just wanted to get stuck in that emotional groove and god forbid that someone should try to offer analysis. I love Nancy Grace. I love the fact that she's this Southern belle with hair teased into a frenzy, yet she can go for the jugular when she deems it necessary. It's really a wonderful combination. If she'd just try to calm down every once in a while, I'd really appreciate it.

America. What a cheap date. We're such an excitable nation and we're easily entertained. I'm just tired of it. Here's the quote of the day:

"Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information." ~ Edward R. Murrow

America held hostage day 1898
Bushism of the day:
"I knew it might put him in an awkward position that we had a discussion before finality has finally happened in this presidential race." —Describing a phone call to Sen. John Breaux. Crawford, Texas, Dec. 2, 2000

Website of the day: Iraq Body Count
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/" title="http://www.iraqbodycount.net/" target="_blank"http://www.iraqbodycount.net/...

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I noticed it late in the afternoon yesterday, after spending a couple of hours with my dentist. The harridans inside my head started telling me that I deserve to die. It took a little while before I recognized that it wasn't just a fleeting thought, but a tidal wave of voices. The thoughts woke up with me this morning and have been around all day. whenever I have a moment when I'm not concentrating on something else, my brain returns to that same old tired recording. even though I don't take them seriously, those thoughts are difficult to completely dismiss.

It's not that I have any intention of hurting myself. That option disappeared long ago, even before my father killed himself. When I was around 23, it occurred to me that I couldn't kill myself until everyone who loves me dies. It wasn't a happy revelation. After my dad committed suicide, i fully understood the correctness of that commitment.

It's just very troubling that I can't just stop this internal haranguing. As I mentioned earlier, my therapist suggested that those voices should be directed at the people who hurt me when I was a child. Of course that list is pretty extensive, so sometimes it's hard for me to figure out which villain should be receiving the brunt of the internalized rage these voices represent.

I think my inability to silence the voices is one of the reasons I continue to feel so damaged by my childhood. My therapist likes to point out that I'm the most traumatized people she's ever treated and one of the least damaged. I know that's true. When you wake up first thing in the morning to a Greek chorus of self destructive thoughts, it's hard to have a good feeling about yourself.

Here's the quote of the day:
"Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody's power, that is not easy." ~ Aristotle

America held hostage day 1897
Bushism of the day:
"Dick Cheney and I do not want this nation to be in a recession. We want anybody who can find work to be able to find work." —60 Minutes II, Dec. 5, 2000

Website of the Day: Investigating the New Imperialism
http://www.williambowles.info/" title="http://www.williambowles.info/" target="_blank"http://www.williambowles.info...

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steroids and terry schiavo. our legislators have determined these are the burning issues that must be attended to right away. not the breathtaking deficit. not the fact that the middle class is diminishing in size every day. shall i go on? i could probably sit here all day, naming other issues.

the terry schiavo legislation just absolutely boggles the mind. this fight has been going on for 15 years now. every court which has agreed to hear it have ruled that she made her wishes clear. her husband has been trying to honor those wishes.

as for the parents, i understand the need and desire to hang on. just because they "believe " something to be true doesn't mean it factually true. i may believe the world is flat. i may believe w. is the easter bunny. all of that is fine, but it doesn't mean that legislation should be enacted to perpetuate their misunderstanding of the situation. i could understand if she were in a coma. some people come out of comas--not many, apparently--but some. that's not the case here. her head is filled with spinal fluid. no amount of therapy or love will change that.

so our elected officials decide to intervene. what happened to state's rights, the darling of republicans everywhere? that gets negated when we don't like the courts' decisions? it's so much easier for them to focus on this rather than the multitude of problems this country is facing. it's one of those feel-good things. ultimately, their legislation won't mean anything. the supreme court has already refused to hear it. nonetheless, your average legislator can point out how committed he/she is to the right to life, despite supporting capital punishment and war. it just feels good, though.

i've heard several people suggest that having a living will is the solution, despite the fact that even those wills have been circumvented by hospitals and doctors. a living will is only as good as the medical personnel who encounter it.

back to my original point. first of all, congress should butt the fuck out. secondly, why don't you guys do something that's actually productive. of course, that might mean that some of the decisions we've been reaching have been utterly wrong. people might actually have to engage their brains and think for a change. you know how bad that is. we do not want our legislators thinking. and we for damn sure don't want citizens to be thinking. we'd rather that knee-jerk reactions and hidden agendas should plot our national course. we want our fellow americans to busy themselves with "survivor" or, better yet, "american idol."

i'm going to have to stop now because it's time to go home. more tomorros

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typical texas weather today. yesterday it was rainy and gray. the temperature never got about the mid 50'a. today, sunshine and 76 degrees. people in other parts of the country get to put away summer clothes when it's winter. not here. all of my clothes have to be available at all times. when conversing about the weather, someone always gets around to saying, "if you don't like the weather, wait fifteen minutes and it'll change." i think that's supposed to help us all cope with the uncertainty of it all.

i spent the greater part of yesterday watching the various court proceedings online or on television at home. during coverage of the scott peterson proceedings, cnn briefly interviewd a couple of the jurors. it appeared that the jurors were taking it all very personally and i guess it would be hard not to do that after sitting through months and months of difficult photographs and testimony.

one guy did a little commercial for a cd he put together about his impressions of the trial. there's a law in california that prohibits jurors from profiting from their jury experiences for ninety days. when you go to the website he announced, he does make that statement, but he encourages people to sign up to get a copy when the 90 days are over. apparently he doesn't find it troubling at all to profit from others' misery. it's revolting.

as for the sentence, i'm opposed to the death penalty, but in california it's actually beneficial to the prisoner to be sentenced to death. they get a nice single occupancy cell, as opposed to having to adjust to living in a tiny space with some fucking criminal. no ever actually gets killed there, so why bother? actually someone did get executed recently, but that was highly unusual. the hillside strangler guy is still alive, for god's sake. wouldn't you think they'd just go ahead and kill the guy?

if i were to commit some death-penalty kind of crime, i think i'd much rather just go ahead and be killed. those cells are very, very claustrophia-inducing. just looking at them on tv makes me need to take a valium or something.

i generally keep the anti-death penalty position to myself. at some point i just got sick of people trying to talk me out of it. they always seem to think that maybe i haven't thought about it or something and that i'd come around to the right point of view if they just explain the reasonableness of their position. i guess they expect me to say, "oh man! i was so wrong! now that you've explained it to me, i see what a fool i've been." how insulting. i don't try to convert death penalty proponents to my way of thinking. i give them credit for having thought about it. on the other hand, we re-elected george bush so maybe i need to rethink that part of it.

it's particularly difficult being anti-capital punishment in texas. everyone knows how crazed we are here about killing people. for a while there, it seemed like we were lethally injecting someone at least once a week. the pace seems to have slowed down for a while now.

i think that killing people is morally wrong. it's morally wrong when an individual does it and it's morally wrong for the state to do it. it's sort of like having someone steal something you own and, as punishment, you go steal something from them. i mean, it's just indefensible.

killing people is expensive. it's cheaper to keep them alive and suffering than it is to kill them and put them out of their misery. i'm all for extending the misery as long as possible.

killing people doesn't work. if it worked, we wouldn't still be needing to use the death penalty because everyone would have already learned the lesson. we'd all be too scared to go kill someone.

i'm not expecting capital punishment to be abolished. i'm not that naive. from the looks of things, the country as a whole is getting more punitive. it's like we all woke up with a bad hangover. we're pissed off and we want to punish someone. we've turned into a mean spirited society, which is so amazing considering that we're incredibly powerful and just slathered with abundance in all things.

recently i decided that it's just a manifestation of millenial anxiety. before the dawn of the new century, i kept searching for signs that there was some sea change afoot in the world. i mean, on some subconscious level, moving into a new century has got to be a little terrifying for every one of us. it used to be that people had rites and rituals to appease that terror. all we have is television. because the future is so profoundly uncertain, i think many people are trying to hang on to the way things have been. or maybe they'd like to go back a bit farther in history.

i know j., one of the guys i work with, keeps hoping that white middle aged men will re-gain their ascendancy. he doesn't realize that men still have the majority of the power in this country. he's one of those guys who wakes up every day and checks in on rush limbaugh to figure out what he's going to think. i could really help out here and tell him to just cut to the chase. rush limbaugh's opinions are rooted in anger and bitterness, which he tries to deny even to himself by ascribing his general level of hostility to his greater intelligence. it's really hard for rush to have to deal with morons all day. of course he's cranky.

i think that the fear of change is behind the mounting fervor of both fundamentalist christians and muslims. nothing like some very clear rules about what to do and what not to do. it also helps enormously if, by following your religion, you get to hate a big group of people. that's proof positive of your moral superiority.

this is a topic i could yammer on about all day. basta. here's the quote of the day:
"Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal." ~ Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) German philosopher

america held hostage day 1891
bushism of the day:
"I am mindful of the difference between the executive branch and the legislative branch. I assured all four of these leaders that I know the difference, and that difference is they pass the laws and I execute them."
—Washington, D.C., Dec. 18, 2000

no website of the day

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my big claim to fame at work is my ability to develop databases. that's not saying a whole lot in this instance, because the databases i'm called upon to construct are pretty piddly. i'm the only one here who can do it, though, so i'm called upon frequently to create or fix or alter something. i actually enjoy working on them.

a couple of days ago, a co-worker (t.) called me to ask if i'd develop a separate database which would run inside of an existing database. basically it involved just creating a new series of automatically generated purchase order numbers within an existing purchase order system. i thought i understood what t. was looking for, but the woman who is responsible for input--let's call her k.--called me up right after i spoke with him, wanting to know if i understood what they wanted. uh yeah. duh. not that hard to understand. however, i was my unfailingly polite and professional self. "sure," i said.

after i started working in the database, i noticed that some of the scripts weren't functioning. i don't know whether no one wanted to mention it to me (highly unlikely) or no one needed those functions or (fill in the blank with whatever else could be going on). regardless of the reason for not hearing about the malfunctions, i went about repairing the scripts. that took a little while to complete because i kept trying to figure out how they'd gotten screwed up to begin with. eventually, i abandoned my investigation and just made the repairs. i then created the database they requested. as i left that afternoon, i told k. i'd finished the work. she said, "well, maybe tomorrow you could teach jordan and me how to use it." i started to tell her there was nothing to teach, but it was five o'clock and i wasn't in the mood to have a discussion about it.

a little while ago, she called me and wanted me to explain how to use it to her and jordan. i admit to being a big exasperated, but i told myself that it would only take a few minutes and i should just get over myself. i went into the reception area where jordan, our college student, was inputting data. i showed her how to switch between the two numbering systems. she got it immediately.

then k. started asking me how it was going to work. uh oh. she was supposed to be giving a block of restricted p.o. numbers to an offsite employee, while reserving the original p.o. numbers for the supervisor here. i detailed my understanding of it. she was in a quandary. "but i don't understand how it's going to work." about that time, j.p., the company accountant, came in and explained it to her, too. she was still puzzled. i tried one more time. nope. didn't get it.

i suggested that she think about it for a while and talk to me about it when she could formulate a clearer question or better define what was lacking in the database that was causing her so much consternation. "well, i just don't understand how it's going to work." okay, limit of patience reached and exceeded. "i don't know and i don't really care. i just tried to give you what you and t. asked for," i said with a smile on my face so as not to seem like the raging bitch i was on the inside. meanwhile, jordan is entering the information into the database with no problem.

it turns out that k. has a problem with the whole concept. she doesn't think the system that she and t. came up with will work. well, there's not much i can do about that, is there? again, i don't really care how it works. just tell me what you need and i'll do it. i suggested that she and t. get together and work it out amongst themselves and get back with me when consensus was reached.

this is exactly the kind of thing that happens all the time here. jesus fucking christ, if you don't know what you want, then leave me alone until you do. i have important personal matters to attend to. for one thing, i need to read my voluminous email. i might also wish to make a journal entry. there are any number of things i might need to do that i find infinitely more important than reinventing the wheel every hour or so.

i know that i have a problem with impatience. i work on it diligently. i require that people think. when they won't or don't think, i get annoyed. k. is exceptionally good at being so intellectually befuddled that it takes every fiber of my being not to be extremely confrontational about it.

i was proofreading some of her work yesterday and i noted something she had neglected to include. i pointed that out to her. she then spent a good 45 minutes telling me why she thought the error didn't matter. yesterday i was sane enough to move on and think about other things while she talked to me about it.

shortly after we (or rather, i) finished our database conversation, she started asking me why this particular client requires that every single thing we do be billed separately. here again, i don't know and i don't care. this is how they are. they are our client and our job is to meet their needs, not ours. i told her to stop thinking about it. "they've always been that way and they probably always will be," i said. she told me things like this keep her up at night. why?! here's a situation where understanding something is completely beside the point.

okay. i feel better now. sometimes if i can't talk about the things that go on here, i fear i might end up beating my head against some wall somewhere. we should all breathe a little easier that i don't own any firearms.

here's the quote of the day:
"If you have a job without aggravations, you don't have a job." ~ Malcolm Forbes (1919-1990) American editor & publisher of Forbes magazine

america held hostage day 1890
bushism of the day:
"Natural gas is hemispheric. I like to call it hemispheric in nature because it is a product that we can find in our neighborhoods."
—Austin, Texas, Dec. 20, 2000

no website of the day.

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far as long as i can remember, i've been dedicated to the proposition that no man would ever control me with money. what that meant to me was that i would always make my own money so that i'd never have to depend on a man. a great deal of my childhood was spent watching my mother being physically hurt over money. there's nothing like watching someone you love being tortured to really clarify things. so i've spent the past 30 years of my life ensuring that i'd always be able to be independent.

hubby is a writer. he's an excellent writer and has written several books. he also writes for magazines. unfortunately, he doesn't generate much money doing that...certainly not enough for him to live on. i'm the primary wage earner. i'm not thrilled about it, because it robs me of some choices. i must always make enough money to support both of us, no matter how miserable it makes me. (luckily, abused children are very accustomed to functioning while they're miserable.)

this past weekend, i discovered that we only have $600 in the bank. i just got paid the last week in february. i make a significant amount of money. i'm not into the six figure range, but i do earn more than many people who manage to support several children. we should have more money than that in our bank account. now hubby wants to take the money out of my 401(k) to pay the rest of the bills for the month and ensure that we're adequately fed. i am so angry about this, but i feel trapped. the bills must be paid, but if i take money out of my 401(k), i'm just going to have to repay it. i don't see anything changing so that i could count on being able to do that. in another month or so, we'll have another monetary crisis.

i haven't made a decision regarding the retirement account, but i did call an immediate halt to eating out. i was even willing to allow hubby to continue to eat out while i eat at home. i recognized that was insane pretty quickly, but i just knew that i didn't want to have to clean up after hubby has cooked. i'm not terribly upset about that aspect of the problem because i need to lose about five pounds anyway.

it's the periodic money crises that are driving me insane. there's nothing else i can do. i can not earn any more money unless i take on a part time job. not going to do that. that would be incredibly self-destructive.

the other thing that really just kills me about this is the similarity to my mom's and dad's relationship. after my dad hit 50 (or thereabouts) he stopped working and went on disability. meanwhile, my mom had to continue to work in a place that made her miserable, that didn't appreciate her contributions and that was incredibly stressful. my dad just kind of laid around the house like a beached whale and did absofuckinglutely nothing. welcome to my life. i can't believe i've done this. when you dedicate yourself to not making the same mistakes your parents made, it's devastating to realize that you've just created a new mutation of their mistakes.

i guess the up side here is that my hubby doesn't hit me and he hasn't moved any other females into our house. wow. what an up side. here's the quote of the day:

"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." ~ Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
English poet, critic, lexicographer, creator of first English dictionary
from Life of Johnson (Boswell). Vol. vi. Chap. iii. 1776.

america held hostage day 1889
bushism of the day:
"The person who runs FEMA is someone who must have the trust of the president. Because the person who runs FEMA is the first voice, often times, of someone whose life has been turned upside down hears from."
—Austin, Texas, Jan. 4, 2001

no website of the day

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so dee cleaned my father's blood off of his pickup truck. i can't imagine how traumatizing that must have been. she knew my dad and had visited him in the hospital during one of his many sojourns there. she came by my mom's house the evening before we had the memorial service. it was the first time i'd seen her in years. she was working at a bookstore and she'd been training to join the police force, but she'd injured her leg somehow. she hung around for about 45 minutes and we agreed we'd have lunch before i left town.

she was supposed to come by the day after the memorial service and we'd decide then where to go for lunch. well, she didn't come at the agreed upon time. finally she showed up very late--much too late for lunch--with her husband, her baby son and her daughter. i assumed we wouldn't be lunching. that was fine with me. i became quite entranced with her little girl, but i noticed dee had little patience for her and little understanding of why the little girl was trying to be the center of attention. they all left at some point without her ever even acknowledging the lunch date. i was too emotionally devastated to care.

after i left my mom's house and came back to the city where i live, i sent dee a letter. i told her that i was profoundly grateful for her help with the truck. i think i talked a bit about my father and the difficulties of being his daughter. she wrote me a letter back, telling me that at first she was afraid to open the letter. i have always thought she was afraid i was going to mention something about my pedophile uncle. she told me that she had contemplated suicide many times. i didn't want to hear about anyone else killing themselves. i wrote her back, but i no longer know exactly what i said.

shortly after that, she left her husband, but not before he attempted to make me the reason why his marriage was breaking up. screw him. i had no interest whatsoever in getting involved in any psychodrama. i never contacted dee again.

she had gotten involved with some guy who worked in the bookstore with her. she moved in with him in a scary part of town, in the midst of some ongoing illegal drug enterprises. at the same time, she was required (by law, apparently) to go to some kind of marriage counseling before she could get a divorce. i'm still floored that the state has that kind of power. she ended up in a classroom with her soon-to-be-ex over the period of a couple of months. dee reported to her mom that her husband, steve, frightened her.

later on, she found out that steve was regularly entertaining some other woman at dee's marital home. what comes next is just crazy and trashy. she and her boyfriend went over to the house and broke the door in, just in time for steve to show up. there was a confrontation, of course and the police showed up. (just a parenthetical note here: i've always been afraid to watch shows like "the jerry springer show" for fear that i'll see some of my relatives on it.)

after the divorce, the dee and the boyfriend were staying in the backroom of a convenience store that steve managed. of course, that inevitably ended. the boyfriend took up residence in a storage facility. dee and her children moved into her mom's house. that worked out great for a while, because when dee walked over to visit the boyfriend, her mom could babysit the kids. unfortunately, grandma wasn't much better with the kids than dee. the little girl was in the second grade and still sucked a pacifier when she wasn't in school. she also needed help cleaning up after she went to the bathroom and, since no one would wipe her little butt at school, she just left everything as it was. i don't know what the hell they were thinking, allowing that to go on.

i guess the boyfriend was ultimately not able to pay the rent on the storage facility where he was living and moved into dee's mom's house. the tiny house had two bedrooms. i can't imagine having to live there. thinkgs went downhill rapidly. some big conflagration occurred between dee and her boyfriend. mom tried to intervene and ended up barricaded in her bedroom. my mom called over there a couple of times while this was going on and was told that my aunt couldn't come to the phone.

the day after the meltdown, dee cleaned out her mom's bank account and left town with the the boyfriend and her kids. my aunt died several months later of brain cancer and her daughter didn't attend the funeral.

i sometimes wonder if the trauma of my dad's suicide had something to do with her meltdown. she and her mom had always been really close. i'll never know. i include dee and her kids in my prayers. i hope they're all still alive. i hope her children are being loved and taken care of. neither parent had much interest in them. i think the best thing that could happen for them is intervention by the state. i would try to do something for them, but i have no idea where they are.

here's the quote of the day:
"The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers." ~ M. Scott Peck

america held hostage day 1884
bushism of the day:
"I mean, these good folks are revolutionizing how businesses conduct their business. And, like them, I am very optimistic about our position in the world and about its influence on the United States.
We're concerned about the short-term economic news, but long-term I'm optimistic.
And so, I hope investors, you know—secondly, I hope investors hold investments for periods of time—that I've always found the best investments are those that you salt away based on economics."
—Austin, Texas, Jan. 4, 2001

website of the day:
Luci's Trust

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i haven't added anything lately because i haven't been able to work up much interest in what's going on in my life. my stepson's birthday was yesterday, so i spent about an hour talking to my daughter-in-law and about twenty minutes with my stepson. i would have spoken with him longer, but by the time he got home it was already just about time for me to go to bed. dil (daughter-in-law) was in houston over the weekend, helping some friend of hers move. she told me stepson has been very clingy lately and that she's trying to work on repairing the damage he's done to the relationship. my husband thinks she just get over it and move on, but i'm a little more sympathetic to her plight. my stepson has a gig lined up on march 19. he's still working at the pet store and, of course, he still really hates it. i'm hoping that this will be some impetus towards getting some kind of training for a real job. there's nothing like being a pet store clerk at 36. he hasn't mentioned wanting to figure out something to do with himself other than be a musician. being a musician is great, but he's not making much progress in having that be a source of real income. i don't know. i guess i'm too pragmatic sometimes.

i've been thinking about one of my cousins lately. i really never knew any of them particularly well. this one lived in the same town as i did when i was growing up, but i never saw much of her after her toddler years. my aunt (on my dad's side) was nutty and periodically decided she didn't want to see member(s) of her family. she'd get angry with them for ridiculous reasons. i was around for one of the meltdowns. for some reason, my parents had been storing some fish (??) at my aunt's house. they wanted to get it and drove over to her house. she wouldn't let my parents come in and get their fish out of the freezer because her son (not the cousin i've been thinking of) had thought our showing up to get fish was disrespectful. that resulted in a rift between her and my parents that lasted for some time.

my cousin, dee, was the older of her two children. she was about 11 years younger than i. i'm certain that she was sexuallly abused by my uncle--the one who abused me. he lived with them for a period of time when she was a little girl. for the longest time, she was the perfect older daughter. she and her mom were really close, it seemed. dee went to college and got a couple of degrees. she then got married out of state one day and neglected to tell her mom. after about a year or so, dee left her husband and married another guy pretty quickly after the divorce. after she had her first baby, she developed chronic fatigue symdrome and motored around in a wheelchair for a couple of years. my mom always thought the cfs was just a way for dee to get out of caring for her new baby. i think that's possible, but i think it's just as likely that she really did have cfs or that she believed that she did.

dee and her mom continued to be really close and she ended up paying for a number of repairs to my aunt's house. she and her husband had another baby about five years after the other one. he little boy (whose name i can't recall) was about two when my dad killed himself. when my cousin found out about my dad, she offered to take my dad's bloody truck to be washed. even though it may have had very little to do with what happened next, i think i'll always feel some level of responsibility. part two tomorrow. been arrested for something. she

quote of the day:
"We only regard those unions as real examples of love and real marriages in which a fixed and unalterable decision has been taken. If men or women contemplate an escape, they do not collect all their powers for the task. In none of the serious and important tasks of life do we arrange such a "getaway." We cannot love and be limited." ~ Alfred Adler

america held hostage day 1883
bushism of the day;
"I do remain confident in Linda. She'll make a fine labor secretary. From what I've read in the press accounts, she's perfectly qualified."
—Austin, Texas, Jan. 8, 2001

website of the day: the iditarod!
http://www.iditarod.com/" title="http://www.iditarod.com/" target="_blank"http://www.iditarod.com/

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well once again, no court tv. damn. now where was i?

there were two women i worked with in that office (see "what robert blake and i have in common). one was a czech woman, probably in her late thirties. i can't say with any certainty because when you're that young, everybody over 30 looks about the same--old. she was a very nice person, i'm sure, but we had absolutely nothing in common. she was married and had several kids.

the other person was probably about my age. she was definitely young. i actually visited her at her apartment one day, but i can't imagine why i did that. again, nothing in common. her father was a pentacostal preacher and she had broken ties with them because she wanted to wear pants sometimes and wanted to be able to cut her hair every once in a while. heaven forbid. she was married to a young man who was also raised in the pentacostal church. the main thing i remember about her, other than the religious stuff, was how stricken she was when elvis died.

because of the narrow-minded, asshole supervisor, i was forced to interact with these two for eight solid hours a day. the following events might never have happened if i could have just gone outside, sat under the trees and read my book. i was stuck playing hearts with them in the breakroom for lunch. oh my god, just get a rope and let me hang myself. i hated it.

i had to get out of there. i felt like an alien fallen to earth. at this point in my life, i'm not sure why i decided to handle it this way, but i told them all that my dad died. yeah. not very nice. i got to leave, though. somehow they learned that i had just made up the story and, predictably, they were disgusted with my behavior. before i left, i had gotten roped into haveing lunch with the two ladies. by the time the lunch date rolled around, i knew that they knew the truth.

it became a game of chicken for me. i was fairly certain that they would cancel. they didn't. i don't know why i didn't cancel. so i just went to lunch with them anyway. they made no attempt to hide their contempt. i ignored it. had they been paying for my lunch, i'm sure i would have handled it differently. i would not have allowed them to pay.

so there it is, just one of many, many examples of what happens with abused kids sometimes. the thing that robert blake and i have in common is a selective, but total disregard for the feelings of others. i had no shame. if i didn't respect someone, i would lie to them without a second of hesitation. i would lie to them for no particular reason. living in a psychotic household provides plenty of practice in lying convincingly. one's whole life is a lie. while i was at school, i had to create the illusion that my home life wasn't careening so out of control that an;yone or everyone in my house could die at any time. i became an extraordinary liar.

you may be disappointed that, unlike blake, i haven't taken it to its logical conclusion. fortunately, i have a profound distaste for guns. and even in my worst moments, i would never have physically harmed anyone. i just hurt people emotionally. or not. i'm sure that many times the people i fucked over weren't particularly affected, other than just developing an intense dislike for me.

luckily, those days are over. i am so scrupulous about the truth that i think it's possible people see me as a little priggish. i do tell those little white lies that grease the wheels of interpersonal relationships, though. yes, i will tell you your new hairstyle looks great even if it's just hideous. it's only courteous to do so.

what happened to effect this change? i'll be damned if i know. i suppose i'm a little embarassed by my behavior. i might be more embarassed if i actually ran into any of the people i treated poorly. probably not, though. i can't change who i was then and, when confronted with my own bad behavior, i still have the attitude that no one can judge me who hasn't lived my life. i don't judge other people. how could i? there's some behavior i'm just not willing to tolerate.

i used to have a friend who had a habit of calling me up and yelling at me. she could get vicious in a matter of moments. i told her several times that i was not going to allow that to continue. the last time she was abusive, i cut her out of my life. we had known each other from high school and i have a very clear understanding of why she was abusive. no judgment. i just won't tolerate it.

here's the quote of the day:
"And, after all, what is a lie? 'Tis but the truth in a masquerade" ~ Lord Byron (English Romantic poet and satirist, 1788-1824)

america held hostage day 1877
bushism of the day:
"I would have to ask the questioner. I haven't had a chance to ask the questioners the question they've been questioning. On the other hand, I firmly believe she'll be a fine secretary of labor. And I've got confidence in Linda Chavez. She is a—she'll bring an interesting perspective to the Labor Department."
—Austin, Texas, Jan. 8, 2001

website of the day; social science online databases at hanover college
http://www.hanover.edu/Library/websocsci.html" title="http://www.hanover.edu/Library/websocsci.html" target="_blank"http://www.hanover.edu/Librar...

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http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/articl e_6332.shtml

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i might as well do this. i've been sitting around for about the past ninety minutes waiting for court tv online to get their shit together so i can watch the robert blake closing arguments. i got to see about ten minutes of it before they went on break and they haven't been up since then. that really pisses me off. i've been really looking forward to this for at least a week now. wait. i have to check back in to see if they've miraculously gotten their collective heads out of their asses and gotten their server up. nope. shit.

do i think he's guilty? hell yes. just look at him. there's definitely some darkness taken up long term residence inside his head. you can see it in his eyes. or maybe that's just because i have an intimate familiarity with psychosis. back during the early seventies when he was flushed with the success of "baretta" and getting a divorce from his wife, i had the pleasure of seeing him as he crashed and burned in his own self destructiveness. i clearly remember him announcing on the "tonight" show "the fox is back." that's scary. apparently no woman would actually be crazy enough to get involved with him until ms. bakely came along. we all see how that ended. his kids say he was a fabulous dad who was lots of fun. i have an enormous amount of difficulty believing that.

i've also heard him talk about his childhood. it was bad. really bad. that's also how i know he's guilty. my own personal experience as an abused child is additional proof. of course i never killed anyone, although i was certainly pushed right up to the edge many many times. i guess we were all just lucky that i didn't know where the bullets to my dad's rifle were. in case you didn't know already, abused children don't always behave like good people.

there was a time in my life when i was a very not nice person. i was always kind to my friends and to people i thought had some power to cause me problems, but those who didn't fit those two categories had reason to be cautious with me. i just didn't give a shit. when i was in my early twenties, i had a job that just brought out the very worst in me. it was at the local college and i was supposed to sit in a room with three other people and enter numbers into a database for eight hours a day. i might have been able to endure that, but i detested those three people i worked with.

my boss was this guy who was clearly just waiting for retirement. i don't think it was too far away, but my ability to accurately guess ages was pretty limited at the time. he liked to tell us about going home every day and working in his wood shop until one or two in the morning. i distinctly remember wondering how his wife felt about that habit. after i'd known him for a while, i figured his wife was probably thrilled that he was out of the house. well, except for the noise.

we got along okay until he started to be controlling. the building we worked in was just on the edge of a neighborhood where the majority of residents were black and hispanic people. there were also a fair number of students who lived there and i lived there a couple of years after i left the job. i had a habit of spending break and lunch times outside under some lovely old trees. it gave me a chance to decompress enough to be able to stand what i was doing and who i was doing it with.

one day as i prepared to go outside with my book (i think i was reading a multi-volume bio of henry james at the time), this asshole told me i wasn't going to be allowed to go out there anymore. know why? he couldn't guarantee my safety. jesus fucking christ. it wasn't like there were muggings going on every day and we didn't have anything remotely like drive-by shootings. as a matter of fact, i suspect it was safer to be there than the area commonly known as "the drag," right across the street from the university. when i was a student there, i was regularly harassed by street people who thought i must be flush because i was attending college. the idea that sitting outside under some oak trees was dangerous was just laughable. it was yet another indication that i was in the company of people who had teeny, tiny minds. that was the beginning of the end.

oh look. court tv is back up now that they're on lunch break. i'll have to finish this tale tomorrow. here's the quote of the day:

"An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes." ~ Thomas Jefferson

america held hostage day 1876
bushism of the day:
"I want it to be said that the Bush administration was a results-oriented administration, because I believe the results of focusing our attention and energy on teaching children to read and having an education system that's responsive to the child and to the parents, as opposed to mired in a system that refuses to change, will make America what we want it to be—a literate country and a hopefuller country."
—Washington, D.C., Jan. 11, 2001

website of the day; Sweet Fancy Moses
http://www.sweetfancymoses.com/" title="http://www.sweetfancymoses.com/" target="_blank"http://www.sweetfancymoses.co...

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i was prepared to talk with my therapist on friday about the hunter s. thompson-induced thoughts of my father's suicide. i'd forgotten that i printed out a page from this journal and gave it to her. that was a huge event. i've never allowed anyone who knows me in the real world to read it. we ended up talking about it for the entire 50 minutes. i told her that there are some incidents i still haven't been able to write about. she asked me why and i told her that some things that happened are just too humiliating for me to allow other people to read about--even if i don't know them and will never know them. of course, her position is that there's no real reason for me to be embarassed; it wasn't i who behaved badly. i recounted an event from the period of time when i was around eight. she was angry on my behalf, then she reminded me that my ability to survive in that environment is astounding. she compares me to a rose growing in the desert.

i'd love to take credit for my psychological hardiness, but i don't think i can. i just don't see that there was a choice for me. let's assume that who we are is 50% nature and 50% nurture. we've already established that i hit the genetic jackpot. i have severe depression, but who wouldn't with my history? the absence of more debilitating psychiatric problems was not something i had any control over. the nurture thing didn't really go all that well. the very kindest thing (to my parents) i could say about that is that i was neglected. my therapist likes to say neglected and deprived.

so we come into the world with a certain set of genetic predispositions which are then altered in one way or another by our environment. where exactly in that scenario did i make a choice to learn to love and be kind to others? where exactly did i choose to figure out how to achieve? i don't think it's a choice. i am what god decided i would be. everyone i know disagrees with me, but they haven't been able to convince me.

on that note, here's the quote of the day:

"A man's character is his fate." ~ Heraclitus (540 BC - 480 BC), On the Universe

america held hostage day 1875
bushism of the day:
"She's just trying to make sure Anthony gets a good meal—Antonio."
—On Laura Bush inviting Justice Antonin Scalia to dinner at the White House.
NBC Nightly News With Tom Brokaw, Jan. 14, 2001

website of the day: Human Rights Watch: Defending Human Rights Worldwide
http://www.hrw.org/" title="http://www.hrw.org/" target="_blank"http://www.hrw.org/

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