Patience is a virtue…..

I’m standing in line at Target today with Sully.  There are 2 moms behind me with their kids, loudly belting their private political conversation for everyone to hear.

• Mom 1- “Did you hear Obama’s speech today on the news?”
• Mom 2- “Yeah- PFFFT!!” (“pfft” is supposed to symbolize a loud ‘disgusted’ sound that came from her- but it was more disgusting sounding than disgusted-sounding)
• Mom 1- “He sounds great and all with his ‘talking’, but we’re all still screwed.”
• Mom 2- “Yeah- I know I’M not doing any better than I was 2 years ago.  What a bullshitter.”

At this point Sully elbowed me really hard in the ribs.  I looked down at his annoyed little face and rolled my eyes.  And he asked me, and the same obnoxious volume as the ladies behind us:

• Sully- “Hey mom, how long has Obama been in office?”
• Me- “Maybe a little over a year and a half.”
• Sully- “Could anyone on the planet fix all our country’s problems in that short of time?”
• Me- “No one, honey.  If there was a god, even he couldn’t do it.”
• Sully- “People need to be more patient.”
• Me- “You’re right.  It’s too bad adults aren’t as smart as you are.”

The woman ringing up our items was red-faced from holding back laughter.  As I took my receipt from her, she said “I want you two to have the most wonderful day!”.  At that point, Sully turned around and smiled the most hysterically huge and insane smile and the 2 fuming moms behind us as we happily hopped away.

We’re all screwed right now in one way or another by the state of our country right now.  Every single one of us.  No matter WHO won the presidency a year and a half ago, we’d all still be screwed right now.  It took us decades to get to this point- it’s going to take more than a couple years to get back to a healthy place.  Realistically- it will probably be another 6 to 8 years before any of us are even close to comfortable again.   We all need to accept this.  Health care, immigration, foreign oil dependency, our cancer ridden economy, the dead housing market, insane unemployment rates, the war, etc., are not going to go away overnight.  Each one of those topics is massive- and trying to tackle them all at once is unthinkable.  I don’t envy Obama.  And I will be patient.

We all also need to come to terms with the fact that the more we play into the media dividing us as a nation, our voice is lost.  Republicans vs Democrats.  Christians vs Scientists.  Tea Party Fundamentals vs Liberal Anarchists.  Right now, we’re all in the same boat.  All of us.  We’re all fucked.  And we’re all getting too caught up in nitpicking and trying to prove the other side wrong to be able to have one national voice.  Which means “the people” aren’t saying anything important… so the government isn’t going to listen, and they’re going to do their own self-serving thing.  And we’re too focused on hating the “other guy” to pay attention the fact that the government is doing their own self-serving thing- and then we get pissed when they “pulled on over on us”.  Pretty ridiculous if you asked me.

I’m just as guilty as the next guy when it comes to making fun of people that I see as ignorant.  But because we’re all in the tar pit together, I’m trying to look at things a little more universally.  So how about this… stop paying so much attention to how stupid you think your political nemesis is, and start working on what you can do to help.  Even if that just means reminding someone to have a little more patience with the state of the world right now.  Because if my 12 year old son was able to see how insane the expectations of those moms at the grocery store were- then we all need to get a little bit more realistic with life.  And for fucks sake, stop paying so much attention to people like Snookie, Lindsay Lohan, and whether or not it’s a big deal that Jennifer Aniston said the word “retarded” in a derogatory way during a morning talk show interview.  The self-serving political figures are SO happy that this is all the average American cares about, because we’re properly distracted by nonsense- which means they can do whatever they want.  You can’t really get mad about someone robbing your house if you leave all the doors and windows open, right?

The end.

Pulling out my soapbox and dusting it off…

A month ago when Sully went back to Kansas with his dad to visit for the summer, I thought I’d have SO much more free time to get all kinds of things done.  I’ll write more, paint more, draw more, clean my house more, garden more, etc etc etc.  None of that has happened yet.  I’m not sure how this human construct called “Time” can get so quickly filled with things that previously didn’t exist, or how it seems to slip away quicker and quicker each day… but it’s oh-so-very rude, and I resent it deeply.

Here’s another thing that I’m getting to resent deeply, but is causing me great internal conflict-  rich white knee-jerk liberals and how seriously they take themselves.  Now, if I was to categorize myself, I could neatly be tucked into the “Liberal” slot on the pegboard.  If you go down the “Liberal” list of do’s and don’t- it pretty much sums me up (except for the death penalty… which I think should really only be for the rapists and child molesters.  And I’d happily gun down every guilty one of them out there and still sleep like a baby at night.)  But to make broad and sweeping generalizations, you can toss me in with the liberals.

Because I’m grouped into this category, it makes me hang my head in embarrassment every time I see them with their pursed self-righteous lips and tightly crossed arms over mundane and even humorous things.  The liberals have gotten even more uptight than the conservatives- but on the “Politically Correct” side of the coin.  “Political Correctness” was brought to the social table to keep people from being a target, as well as to keep offensive behavior at bay (or at least in a public setting).  Not a bad idea.  But of course, as with everything, people have taken it too far.  And now it’s obnoxious, petty, and irritating.  And it’s the equivalent of the crazy fundamental Christians who believe the earth is only 6,000 years old speaking for the entire Christian community.  Unfortunately, the fundamental Liberals are becoming more and more prevalent.

For example- I was watching the news today at work.  I watch the CNN channel HLN (Headline news) because it’s got an even mix of real news and silly puff pieces.  I like that… just when the horrors of today’s society start to get to me with stories of rape and abduction and suicide bombers and murder, they throw in a bunch of stories about kittens or monkeys.  It makes the horror go down a little easier.  But today their “Word on the Street” segment was about the site www.catsthatlooklikehitler.com.   Basically, all the site consists of is photo after photo of cats who’s markings make them look like Hitler.  My Oscar cat has a Kitler moustache.  See for yourself:

He looks like he's snarling, but he really was just about to sneeze.

This site is hilarious.  And what better way to degrade one of the most horrific men in modern history than to dedicate a site to kittens that cop his style, making a complete mockery of the man.  But what was the “Word on the Street” in upper-class white suburban Liberal America?  Horror.  People were “horrified”.  Their word- not mine.  One man was so appalled by these photos of kittens with little moustaches that he marched away from the camera man yelling.  Really?!?! THIS is what appalls our enlightened community?  THIS is what makes them angry?  Kittens.  Who look like Hitler.  On a website.  Ya wanna know what makes THIS Liberal angry? How about the fact that a woman born in South Africa has a greater chance of being raped than learning to read.  Or maybe the fact that we’re still spending billions on a war that we’ll never win while our economy has been leveled and our unemployment rate is through the roof and public schools are closing left and right.  Or maybe the fact that we never really did do much of anything to help the Hurricane Katrina victims and it’s still a mess down there YEARS after the storm passed.  Hell- pick a topic… any topic… and talk about how we’re globally failing at it.  But don’t you DARE post a photo of a kitten that has a Hitler Moustache.  Ever.  THAT’S just wrong!!!!

Fucking idiots.

This is just one example that really got to me today.  But it’s everywhere.  Sheltered white Americans desperate for a cause, and misguided about what that cause should be since they’re so achingly out of touch with what is truly degrading, insulting, and damaging.  The other day, I posted on my Facebook page that I was disturbed by the fact that “Jack in the Box” now accepts foodstamps- and my opinion was called “dictatorial”.  To flippantly throw the possibility of not being able to use foodstamps to buy french fries and milkshakes in the same dictator category as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussein, and others of the like, degrades the horrors of what dictatorships have done to cultures.

I think it’s the pettiness of it that really gets to me.  The pettiness coupled with how very well off we all are… and the misdirected “horror”.  With all the monstrous acts that occur every single  minute of every single day- these silly and completely forgettable things are what that get the open-minded bohemian Liberals upset.  I was in Whole Foods today (a grocery store that I have grown to loathe and I swore to Brad that after today I cannot bring myself to enter one again), and the place was filled with rich white housewives complaining about how the price of organic produce has gone up while ignoring their exquisitely dressed spoiled children tearing through the store behaving like vile rabid monkeys. How out of touch are we in our little American bubble?  If you’re reading this right now, as far as global perspective goes,you’re well-off.  It means you have a roof over your head and a computer with an internet connection… or even an insanely priced cell phone that allows you access to the internet.  How many of you bought coffee at a coffee shop today?  Do you have a TV?  How about an ipod?  Dvd player?  How many of you were able to sleep soundly last night without the fear of gunfire shooting through your walls or having someone come in and assult/kill you or your loved ones?  Will you drink clean water today?  Take a shower without fear of being infected with parasites?  Did you go hungry today?  Did you sell your body on the street to buy your kid food?  Do you have access to medial treatment if you need it?  Are you able to pay most of your bills on time?  It’s all about perspective, and keeping our causes in check.  When Kathleen Hanna now devotes her political efforts to Peta commercials talking about saving the bunnies while infant rape is commonplace in South Africa- we Liberals need to wake the fuck up and realize that we have now become a joke. I’m just as guilty as lapsing into delusion as the next person- but I try to wake myself up as often as I can and realize that just because I can’t pay all my bills every month and things are sometimes a little tough- as far as “The Big Picture” goes, my little family unit is just fine and there are MUCH bigger problems to get upset about.

So to all my fellow ashamed Liberals out there… spread the word for everyone to lighten up.  Because if the biggest horror of your day is a website with photos of kittens with moustaches, you are extremely lucky- and embarrassingly misguided to see that as a “horror”.

“Tolerance” leaves a bad taste in my mouth…

There are 2 completely ridiculous things that people can do to me that make me angrier than anything on this planet.   They are:

1. Tickling me.
2. Looking at/acting like you want/or actually take a bite of my food before I get to eat any of it when I’m hungry.

Yes… these 2 things should be benign behaviors that invoke little sincere emotion- but they make me go bonkers with rage.  Why?

1. Tickling:  I get weird sometimes about being touched if I’m not in the right mood or prepared for it.  And tickling is a completely spontaneous act of overpowering another person.  I know it’s innocent and done in fun… but my automatic defense system kicks in, and my immediate response to it is to repeatedly punch the tickler in the face.  I can’t help it.  It triggers my “fight or flight” response (and that almost always tends to be ‘fight’ instead of ‘flight’).  So when I get tickled, my brain sees it as an attack.  It’s too primal for me to do anything about.
2. My food:  If I’m hungry, don’t fuck with my food.  Don’t look at my food.  Don’t ask me for a bite.  Don’t act like you want some… or at least until I’m no longer hungry (and when I’m no longer hungry, I will share my food openly).  You know when you try to pet an animal when they’re eating and they growl at you- that’s what I do.  Absolutely 100% stupid… I know.  But again… it’s too primal for me to do anything about.

Brad is extremely aware of these 2 things because we’ve actually gotten in really big fights over them.  He now knows that if I’m sitting in bed having a late dinner, he needs to keep walking and not even acknowledge that I have a plate of food he may want in front of me or else I’m forced to hover closely over it and growl.  But tonight, when I was making dinner, he decided to pull a double-whammy by coming in and saying, “What are you making us for dinner?”, acting like he was going to start eating it, and then tickling me.  He thought it was really funny.  I obviously still don’t think it’s funny because I’m bitching about it right now.  This is my public statement to my husband:

Dear Brad… If you ever do that again, I’m going to light you on fire.  Love, your wife.

Brad’s reworking Blacknoise Recordings (his online merch and music distro), and we’re adding a whole new section to it of political t-shirts and such.   I say ‘we’ because I’ve been helping him with the graphics and images to put on the new wears.  As I’ve been hopping around online getting ideas for political subjects to tackle and make into Positive Political Promotion, the word “tolerance” keeps coming up.  Racial Tolerance, Gay Pride Tolerance, Religious Tolerance, etc.  And it’s started to get to me.

Tolerance:

1. capacity to endure pain or hardship
2. indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one’s own

When you look at the actual definition, it doesn’t feel as open, accepting, and loving as it’s intended.  And the misuse of this word insults me.  I don’t think that differing races, sexual orientation, religions, or ways of life should be merely ‘tolerated’- as if it’s a bad medicinal aftertaste that you endure in order to achieve the desired medicinal effect.  Somehow this negative word has taken on this positive meaning, and been embraced by the politically active- but they don’t realize its demeaning undertones.  Women’s rights shouldn’t be ‘endured’. Cultural and religious minority’s rights shouldn’t be ‘endured’. Non-heterosexual’s rights shouldn’t be ‘endured’.  And so on…  “Endurance” is insulting.  “Tolerance” is insulting.  The only thing acceptable is acceptance.  Does everyone have to roll around blind with love for everything everyone on the planet does… of course not.  But if you’re going to promote a cause and try to change the closed minds of people who blindly hate, at least use language that doesn’t promote the opening of minds in a belittling way.  Language is important.  The way we use our words to communicate messages is important.  How can we properly communicate important messages if we misuse the language.  This wouldn’t irritate me so much if it wasn’t on every single god damn site I went on.

If you don’t know how to use the language, then shut the fuck up.

Those are my soap boxes for the evening.  No to tickling.  No to looking at my food.  No to “Tolerance”.  But YES to acceptance, understanding, and dictionaries.