Back Burner

I spent two hours looking for my keys today only to find them in the refrigerator. Normally, something like that would bother me if I hadn’t spent an hour last night looking for a mislaid glass of wine (found in the medicine cabinet), or the fact that I keep experiencing the shock of rediscovery of the perfectly folded black maternity bra that made the mysterious appearance in my car two months ago, and which, I keep forgetting to remove.

Sailor: What’s this?

Me: A nursing bra?

Sailor: Yeah and uh, what is it doing in the tirewell?

Me: No idea.

Sailor: You want to remove it or something?

Me: Nah, I’ll take care of it later.

But of course, later, I forget. I have no idea where it came from. Sailor has been gone and I am the only one driving the car, so it’s a mystery. But the troubling part isn’t the mystery of its origin, but the fact that I keep forgetting that it’s there and still haven’t addressed the issue.

Clearly this is a the product of a stressed existence. Clearly, a little vacation could be in order. Clearly, no such such thing will occur until after graduation….in May.

On Second Thought

I was just reading CNN online when I noticed an article about a court ordering two men to have their noses and ears cuts off. Obviously, a story like that makes you do a double take.

So I click on the story and as I am reading about these “poor” Pakistani men, I then get to the part of the article where the men were sentenced this very specific punishment because they committed this same act on woman.

Apparently, a young woman and her family refused an offer of marriage from a young man (maybe because they knew bad medicine when they saw it?) and in retaliation, the young man and a friend attacked the woman, strangled her, and performed this truly heinous act upon her.

It’s incredible how an opinion can turn a 180 on a situation, because while I at first exclaimed “WTF? We’re allies with these people?” as soon as I read the rest of the story, I more or less was saying “Well done! Bravo!”

Of course, if you at all follow the news, this is also coming from a country where last year three young women were beaten and buried alive for daring to choose their on husbands and three women who came to their defense were murdered as well. And four years prior to that, a woman was savagely gang raped when coming to the verbal defense of her brother falsely accused of a crime…And these are just the stories that somehow make the world media. Imagine how many are left untold?

I know, I know, turn the other cheek, and an eye for an eye makes us all blind, but here’s the thing: It pretty much sucks to be a woman on about 75% of this planet. So if a country wants to make an extreme example out of a pair misogynistic bastards who commit a horrific violent act against a woman, I am perfectly content to let them do so.

Merry effen Giftmasukah.

Begs the Question

I had new tires placed on my car yesterday and because I forgot to bring a book, I was stuck in the waiting room reading years-old magazines and listening to the radio. In the hour and a half I spent there, the 1984 charity anthem “Feed the World” played no less than 4 times. I’ve easily heard that song a dozen times a day for the last few weeks.

I think I may have this song on vinyl somewhere, but to hear it played in this new millenium always makes me cringe.

“Do they know its Christmas time at all?…..Feed the world/Let them know its Christmas time”. How very Western-centric that song is. How very Christian-centric. How very dated.

I can excuse the song for the time, but to continue playing this song every year grates the nerve in light of a new found realization that hey! there’s a lot of other religions out there! Granted, the song was targeting famine relief in Ethiopia which is 60% Christian…but it’s also 30% Muslim and 2% Animist…so, no, they don’t know it’s Christmas time and even if they did I’m sure they don’t give a damn…as would the 67% percent of the world that isn’t Christian either.

I’m thinking the Pagans, Wiccans, and Druids of the world need to stage a major Take Back the Night and reclaim the season’s true celebrations of Solstice. Maybe it would give me relief from well-intentioned albeit highly misguided Christmas diddies.

Hurts So Good

The real suck-o part about being an atheist who goes to a Catholic college is all the damn religion…classes.

Actually, I don’t mind the so much as long as they are not Christian-based. So I am taking Buddhism to fulfill one of my “god” requirements. And I know it’s only the second week of class and a horde of religion scholars are bound to chew me out for this, but I am going to sum Buddhism, comparatively, in one sentence:

Buddhism is a cult of guilt that puts all Catholic and Jewish mothers to shame.

In short: life is a vicious cycle of guilt to be repeated over and over, and trust me, it’s a mother-effer.

With Catholics it’s a pretty straight up and down business deal: do something bad and confess, eff up bad enough and you go to Hell, do okay and you go to Heaven, get stuck in the in between and it’s Limbo or Purgatory.

Jews don’t believe in a heaven or a hell, so all your guilt is contained to this lifetime and, if you fast for one day and say your sorry, and you really, really mean it, your forgiven…beat that….

With Buddhists, however, it’s all in the intent. You desire something not kosher, you act on said non-kosher desire, and you get smacked something awful with karma whereby you go through all the horror that is adolescence again, and again, again, and again…that is, if you are lucky enough to return as something other than microbe on piece of dung.

Seriously, if I am going to be judged on intention alone, I might as well not even bother to leave the starting gate because I already know I’m coming back as a gnat.

Boy, I’d make one lousy ass Buddhist let me tell you. To become enlightened is to live without desire and to live without desire and how awful is that? It’s good to want. I wholly believe that. And desire? I’ll concede that some desire does cause suffering but all desire? Damn, how is a life without desire worth living? Desire is the reason I get out of bed in the morning.

Desire. Anticipation. Want. Craving. Hunger. Ravenousness.

Hell, wanting the cake, desiring the kiss, hunger for the man, craving coffee, anticipation of the result…if that is suffering, I’ll take it. I love those moments. When everything in your body becomes a live-wire. When everything in life hinges on that outcome. When waiting for the outcome becomes the still point of the turning world…love it. Maybe it’s hedonistic, maybe it is gluttonistic (aren’t those Christian terms anyway?).

And for the record, even though sometimes the cake sucks, the kiss is sloppy, the man is a douchebag, the coffee is cold, and the result you were waiting for crushes your soul and changes your life, the moment of the desire was still good. The desire did not disappoint me, just the outcome did….and you won’t convince me otherwise.

Blowing Off Home for the Holidays

Every other year, Sailor and I trade off going back to Detroit or staying here in Erie for  T-Giving or Giftmasukah. Whether I prefer to spend time with his passive-aggressive-big-on-uncomfortable-silences-in between-the-food-and-excessive-drinking-clan or spending time with my own personal verbal-pre-emptive strike-force-with-the-pleasing-tendency-towards-the-excessive-imbibing-of-alcoholic-beverages-that-can only-be-described-as-not a holiday-but-a-24/7-”happy hour”-while-waiting-for-a-good-old-fashion-Irish knife-fight-to-break-out, is simply a matter of asking myself what side of the bed did I wake up on.

Sigh….

I really don’t wanna do it this year.

Honestly, aside from our mutual predilection towards sizing up liquor purchases based on the quality of bottle with which to make a Molotov Cocktail, how the hell did I ever come to share genetic material with these people?

Let us review 2009:

Big Sis engaged in a trans-continental verbal smackdown of La Parentsia after Father Unit spilled the beans to Mother Gossip about something or other where Mother Unit invariably spread the word around the hood. They waged a three month war of Celtic-Silence which translates into not arguing with each other but through all the people in their lives over the phone. They apparently came to an accord but until the treaty is signed I want nothing to do with that mess.

Second Son then got involved, don’t ask how, but Irish-Saga-Made-Short is that he thinks the family needs to forgive him for effing up his first marriage with another woman 7 years older and her own epic tale that results in my brother being husband #3 in as much as 7 years…(which, side note, I actually have forgiven him, in fact, I’m rooting for them as a couple for the simple reason that he will stay married to this harlot forever out of stubborn pride and to prove a point he certainly will not remember in another ten years, and quite frankly, my brother deserves the merry hell that woman will give him until he is dead).

Where was I?

Father and Mother Unit simply refuse to believe they have done anything wrong – ever – even in light of the overwhelming evidence of a gaggle of supremely messed up kids. But then, if their measure for this success centers around the fact that none of us are on an international watch list, yet, or by the fact that none of us have been picked up, drunk, singing Christmas Carols along the freeway in June in the last 10 years, well, they should consider raising the bar.

Of course, there’s also Third Son, aka the 30 year old child still living in my parents’ basement smoking everything but his bed linens and who always seems to be just one step shy of attending a Star Trek convention…He’s been unemployed for a while. His last job, where everyone hated him for his ignorant and racist attitude….well, if it were me, if I knew everyone hated me and then mysteriously, one day, I am asked out to lunch where I am offered a joint…let’s just say I wouldn’t be too surprised at returning to work to find a drug test waiting for me….

First Son is in a tiff with me for un-friending him on Facebook. I just figured that he should save his hate and vitriol for family gatherings and not post that shit on my wall.

Of course, I’m a perfect ray of sunshine. I don’t what the hell is wrong with those other people.

Sailor’s family is supremely uncomplicated by comparison. All I have to do is sit next to Grandma E and remind her who I am every ten minutes until I’m drunk enough to forget who I am to answer. A relatively simple evening, geopolitcally speaking.

I’m thinking we should stay put. I have the excellent excuse of having ventured into No Man’s Land by staying with sister for T-Giving…that should satisfy some quota somewhere. But then, there’s something to be said for tradition…

On Hold

I am day 3 into a curious experiment I am conducting with myself: a 30 day break from booze.

I’m not exactly sure what prompted this, I mean, there was no DUI, no waking-up in a gutter covered in my own sick, no terrific hang-over for the umpteenth time in a row, no blackouts, no….nothing really. I just woke up Sunday morning and decided.

And of course, everyone thinks I’m off my rocker. I’m so completely known as the Mick-whiskey-swigging-girl that when I mentioned this endeavor to a few friends, they seemed slightly taken aback. As if “why would you ever do such a thing?”

I remember reading an article a few years back about a journalist who did the same. She challenged herself to 30 days of utter sobriety. She chronicled every day and wow, did she make it seem hard. She actually didn’t make it.

For me, mostly, it’s the social aspect that will make this challenging. I like to entertain, people come over, I offer a beverage of their choosing. Sailor and I tend to keep a lot of booze in the house. Good booze too. I still plan to offer a drink, it’s how I roll, but I shall decline partaking myself because I am going to do this….although I have no idea why.

The funny part is that I am going to a Champagne Tuesday gathering this evening. I’ll be the one sipping the soda water. I figure this will be a good first test (while I’m still strong…ask me to try this later around day 25). And really, there’s a little anxiety floating around in my noggin. Not sure why. Kind of like a feeling that I am missing out on a limited offer.

Maybe I should deconstruct that one and figure it out…while I’m sitting around utterly sober in a gaggle of girls sipping the bubbly…27 days and counting…

The Wild Wild West

Political strategist James Carville once described Pennsylvania as Pittsburgh on one side, Philadelphia on the other, and Alabama in the middle. And boy, was he not kidding.

Sailor and I did something we haven’t done all summer: we took the weekend off and went exploring. Money and time are limited so we kept ourselves limited to the western side of Pennsylvania and, damn y’all, has anyone ever realized how effin crazy that part of the state is?

I would normally save this for last but let’s begin with the coup de grace: The Pennsic War. Yup, for the last two weeks there’s been a war  raging down around Slippery Rock where nearly 6,000 people take over a camp ground and play Extreme Renaissance Fair.

And by “Extreme Renaissance Fair”, I mean full-contact Ren-Fair. There’s a land grab, there are battles (and oddly, they are scheduled), there are merchants, and tents and all performed in character and costume, sometimes even with accent, for about two weeks.

Um, who are these people??

Sailor and I were smuggled in by the crafty means of someone securing a magical amulet that allows one to enter the campground. No amulet, no entry. I suppose this weeds out the looky-loos and nay-sayers, but at $145 for an entry fee, we gladly partook of the subterfuge since we only stayed a few hours…which was about one hour too many.

It’s certainly not my cup of tea, but then, neither are Civil War re-enactments, Second Life, or Furries. Life is plenty interesting and whacked-out on its own without me having to pretend to be someone or something else. And 6,000 people?? For real? While I am disturbed to know that there are so many people into this type of stuff, I am simultaneously comforted in knowing exactly where they are so that I may drive around them.

Traveling north-bound, Sailor and I dropped on my father’s relatives up around the Conneaut Lake area. I used spend summers on my grandfather’s farm in Linesville and it has been nearly 20 years since I have been to these parts. I am surprised by the changes, by they are small by comparison. Life truly moves at a different pace and rarely changes in these parts of Pennsylvania. Small farm towns with local bars and truly unique local attractions that I loved as a kid, remain in force.

We stopped at Pymatuning State Park (and could this place be any more beautiful?) where we happened upon a nightmarish attraction I hadn’t seen since I was 10. The Spillway.

If you are not from these parts, The Spillway is where people go to feed freakishly huge carp, or as the vendors also pronounce, “where ducks walk on fish”. The slimy fish with inordinately large mouths look you dead in the eye (or at least you think they do because they have a fake set of eyes and then the real ones, both equally creepy) and open and close their mouths begging for days old bread.

And let’s face it: this kind of stuff is just bad for the environment, I know, but it’s still crazy fun to provoke a fish-fight by blitzkrieging bread in one spot and encouraging the ducks and fish to smack each other around.

The truly bizarre part of this is just how big a draw this place is. Easily, on Saturday night, at 8pm, with clouds threatening rain, there were hundreds of people piled on top of each other trying to get their fill of throwing bread. Where the people end and the fish began, one could only guess.

About a mile or two away, my paternal grandmother lives in Linesville proper. My grandmother isn’t doing too well, so my cousins have been flying in and out from parts all over the last few weeks. Two of my younger cousins that I have recently become reacquainted with were staying at the Hotel Conneaut, the hotel on the grounds at Conneaut Lake Park.

If you haven’t been to Conneaut Lake Park in recent years, it’s still delightfully shabby and full of lots of locals who enjoy a good brew. I personally really dig this place. I don’t need high-tech, super fast, super safe rides. I want nostalgia, I want the fear of riding one of the country’s oldest and slowest roller coaster where said fear is based on antiquity alone. The park is an easy ride from Erie, the prices are reasonable, and most importantly, it’s not overflowing with hordes of annoying people.

I know it’s supposed to be “better” for sheer number of rides and razzle dazzle, but Cedar Point is a serious commitment of time and money and frankly, you won’t find me doing it anymore. It’s a pain in the ass to get there, it’s a bigger pain in the ass to navigate the damn place, and honestly, it’s just more hassle than it’s worth anymore.

But dammit it, CLP is a good time and no one will convince me otherwise. Part of it memories, for sure. I have rather fond recollections of spewing vomit on my brothers in the Devil’s Den, riding a helicopter over the lake (back when they still did that), and running amok in the ballroom (which you unfortunately, some asshats burned down a few years back). There’s something easy and charming about the park and despite it’s lack of uber-crazy rides, the dozens of kids I witnessed screaming and laughing their heads seemed to be having a fine time of it.

We wrapped the day by lounging about the Beach Club on the park grounds. It’s a wonderfully old building with colorful mismatched wooden chairs and booths and tables from about every era of furniture I can think of. The drinks were cheap and large, the band was too loud (but then, they’re too loud anywhere), and hey, the crowd was having a good time, so what else do you need? You wrap up the evening by eating Mama Bear’s next door and the experience is complete.

So there it was. My crazy-ass Pennsylvania weekend. And as much as I do not enjoy living in Erie or Pennsylvania in general, I have to admit that was one of the most pleasant weekends I have spent in this state for quite some time.

Another side of a different coin

I was really pretty shocked to have read that Henry Louis Gates Jr., professor extraordinaire of long standing at the venerable institution Hahr-Vahrd, was arrested two days ago.

But I wasn’t shocked to have read the context and circumstances of his arrest. Sure, there’s the easy explanation of racism in America (you really will never convince me a white professor would have been treated the same way), but then there’s the even easier explanation that no one seems to be talking about and it is this: the arresting “officer” in the affair is yet another example of a douchebag cop with a Napoleon Complex.

Sure, I have no doubt the cop behaved in a racist manner, but that is an action coupled with a personality trait and that trait being that the he is yet another douchebag cop with a Napoleon Complex.

A professor here at school is a retired cop and relayed to me the different types of people who become police officers:

1. The Fitness Nut: the guy or gal who somehow relives their high school athletic glory days by being a cop. They are all about how they look in the uniform. Being a good or bad cop is strictly a matter of happenstance.

2. The Gun Nut: I think this speaks for itself. The Gun Nut, who is almost always male, is also closely related to the Penis Insecurity Nut.

3. The Righteous Nut: this person has an overwhelming sense of self-importance and truly thinks that the worse they behave towards the general public, the better cop they are.

4. The Drunk Cop: who is actually a pretty okay person who took the job as a way of redemption but at the same time, does not know how to handle the stress better.

Now according to Professor Cop, a police officer can actually be a combination of these varying traits but one is always more dominant than the other. Like the thing about Elvis and the Beatles: you can like both, but you always like one more than the other.

With regards to incident involving Professor Gates, my money is on Cop #3. Then again, I’m not at all familiar with the inner workings of cop-hood and the public perception I have garnered of them over the years is really just boils down to the simplicity of the douchebag cop with the Napoleon Complex scenario.

Back to the Swamp They Go!

I hate Crocs. Always have. They were a dumb, over-bloated fad I liken to the Great Jelly Shoe Terror of 1982.

Personally, I like a well-structure shoe and am always of the opinion that feet should look like feet and not like pods.

Hence, to my utter joy, Crocs has gone bankrupt, has too much inventory it can not sell, and has now laid off one-third of its work force. Now maybe those damn ugly shoes will go away and people will get back to wearing real footwear…like flip-flops…oh hell…we all know some schmoe will buy a million of these things, bury them in his backyard only to re-surface twenty years from now when they will become “retro”.

I really hate American culture sometimes.

And while I am sorry for all those good people out there who have lost their jobs, I think back to what my dad told his brother in the late 1970’s when my uncle quit his job to become an “artist” and paint landscapes on the sides of conversion vans: “Don, you can’t make a career out of a fad.”

Hoofin’ It

Wow, long time with no posts. I have no explanation really except to say that after a particularly brutal school term, I needed to a serious mental reboot. While I am working on school project this summer, I am also getting in my fair share of trashy novels and summer sun.

So Sailor actually has most of the summer off, but since he needs to update his Coast Guard license, he is still not in town as he needs to attend classes all over Hell’s Half Acre and take various exams as far away as Virginia.

What this means to me is that not only is Sailor gone, again, but I now have the added benefit of being car-less. As a one car family, Sailor needs it to travel so I am walking or biking my way around Erie…which fairly sucks by the way…

Mostly this is because Erie has, possibly, the worst population of drivers outside of Boston. Pedestrian signals are merely an annoyance and my mere existence in a crosswalk is apparently cause for vehicular manslaughter. A woman actually jumped the curb in her car on 38th street yesterday and nearly took me out in the process. This is because she was texting while driving. After the car came to a stop, she didn’t even bother to look to see if she had struck anyone or anything, she merely resumed texting until I started banging on the hood of her car demanding for her to step out.

There’s also a ass-hat that works at the Veterans Hospital that somehow has the idea that my bike is required to stop and let him turn into the hospital when I have the mother-effin right of way. So everyday has become a game of chicken where I am rushing ahead to avoid getting hit by this jerk-off.

My favorite people are the car load of reprobate teens who thought it amusing to lean out the window and try to push me off my bike. I guess it didn’t occur to them that such an act could quite conceivably kill me, so I didn’t feel too badly about grabbing the kid by the hair and half pulling him out the car window…little bastard…he screamed like a little boy.

But the strangest reaction I receive is from my co-workers. If I bike to work, this is somehow all right, but if I walk, then this is cause for concern. Why didn’t you just call me??

But whether I bike or walk, I encounter the same issues: hostile motorists who do not respect the law or my right of way. Barring that, when I just don’t feel like possibly getting killed and decide on traversing the sidewalk, there’s also the people who leave their kid’s toys everywhere, or who have spectacularly decrepit cement, or terrifically overgrown bushes and trees, or cars who block the sidewalk thus forcing one back into traffic.

So this interesting little experiment continues for the foreseeable future. Sailor return this week, but I am going to continue to walk and ride to work. I like the exercise, I like the time to myself, and maybe I just like the thrill of the evident danger that is cruising the streets of Erie.

Tally to date: Cars – 0, Inmate – 6.