May The Brute Force Be With You

When I was a kid, I got beat up a couple of times by twins (a boy and a girl, known as The Infamous Birch Twins.)  I was in fifth grade, they were in third.  "How humiliating," you mutter between laughs.  Not really, I just found it confusing.  As they pinned me against a tree and started pummeling me,  I remember thinking:

A. Why are they dong this?

B.  How will beating me up make them feel better?

C.  What the fuck??

The second time this happened, one of the neighborhood moms saw it and stopped it. And, being third graders, they really didn't inflict any noticeable wounds. But the whole incident left me bewildered.

You will notice, dear reader, that nowhere in this tale did I scream or cry for help or run and tell my mother. (Who, as we remember from The Legend of Cousin Ned, had the ability to inspire others to commit suicide.) The whole idea was so out of my realm of life-as-I-knew-it that I was in denial.

When I was a sophomore in college my soon-to-be-ex boyfriend threw me down the dorm hallway. (Granted, it wasn't just for shits and giggles, we had been fighting.)  Then, at least, I had enough self-preservation to call my parents to come and get me.  But I never confronted him about it, I just iced my bruises and never talked to him again.  The whole incident seemed so surreal, I chose not to deal with it.

So it's no wonder that when the motorcycle gang stormed our play in December and started beating the shit out of the audience and cast,  instead of getting out of the line of fire, like my friends were telling me to, I sat there, stunned, and thought, "Jesus Fucking Christ, really??? I am the wimpiest, most mild-mannered, peace-loving 61-year-old cunt in the Southeast and AGAIN someone's trying to beat the shit out of me???"

Okay, Karma, you've had your three chances.   Next time....NEXT TIME.....oh, hell, I'll probably just do nothing again.  The Wimp is strong with this one.

Playing Goalie

Whenever I hear anyone talking about setting goals, I feel guilty.  (Disclaimer:  I also feel guilty about global warming, the growing economic disparity, racial intolerance, child abuse, unneutered pets, and the Johnstown Flood.)

 

I  never really got the whole point of the thing.  If I set my goals too high ("Become tall."), I'll fail.  If I set them too low ("Get out of bed in the morning."), well, that's not really a goal, is it?  It's more of a lifestyle choice.

 

At this stage of my life, longterm goals have become irrelevant.  Twenty years from now, there's a large probability all that will be left of me is a name on some posters in the BFT lobby. If I am still around, then, okay, I'll go ahead and make "Get out of bed in the morning" an actual goal.  But don't expect much. 

 

 Rather than goals, I divide my life into two categories:

 

Stuff I Gotta Do

Stuff I Wanna Do

 

and try to create a balance between them.  Although, to be honest, the SIWD almost always takes precedence.  "Duh," you say.  But, here is my Cosmic Reasoning why Wanna times are better than Gotta times.  The Gotta times (work, housework, bill paying, etc.) pretty much  always follow a similar, predictable  pattern, while Wanna times (doing plays/improv, seeing my kids, hanging with friends, etc.) always are an unknown adventure and rarely turn out exactly the way I expect.   It's that World of Who Knows What Will Happen that turns life into Life, and, since my finite life is getting finiter every day, my goal is to scoop up as much Life as I can. 

 

Well, look at me...

Reflections on Reflecting

I have always admired people who had such strong beliefs that  they never questioned them; life would be so much simpler that way.  But, in the words of the great Charles Busch, "Ira, you are what you are!".  And I am not not one of those aforementioned folk.

 

My spiritual credo is nebulous, best summed up as, "I can't explain what I believe, but I'll know it when I feel it."  There are, however, a few truths I hold self-evident:

 

1.  That whole "Do Unto Others" thing makes sense.  If you don't want people to shit on you, don't shit on them.  If you do want people to shit on you, please move along...

 

2.  The whole "God wrote the Bible" thing does not make sense.  Unless he's Harper Lee (hmmm....), you think he'd want to cash in on the royalites of Bible II, Eclectic Boogaloo, with all kinds of modern-day rules we should follow.  "Thou Shalt Slaughter the Trans-fatted Calf and Fry Potatoes in it's Glorious Oil", stuff like that.  And maybe put a qualifier on the cloven-hooves ban.  "Oh, except for bacon, that shit's amazing." 

 

3.  I don't like guns. I'll go so far as to say I Hate Guns.   However, you have every right to own one... (*arches eyebrow*) Responsibly... and I won't give you a hard time about it.  So shut the fuck up about abortions and gay people.

 

4.  I sometimes only make sense in my own head.   (See #3, above).

 

5.  Most of life is spent treading water, with the occasional jump off the high dive and a rainbow through a waterfall.   It can be hard to accept that treading water is as good as it gets, but you should try, cause then it's easier. 

 

Obviously, the above does not constitute the Greatest Story Ever Told.  But, honestly, I don't think the Bible does either.  I enjoyed "To Kill A Mockingbird" a lot more.

 

 

 

 

 



Learn On Me

One of the interesting things about getting older is seeing how things have changed during your lifetime.  And for your timewaster today, I will use the example of education.

 

When I was a lass, we did not have Middle School, we had Junior High. I don't know why they did away with that nomenclature, maybe the thought was that Junior High sounded like a 7th grade pot party, instead of an institution of learning. To quote Blazing Saddles, "And they was right!"  In the future, kids will attend Ozone Enriched Brain Enlightenment Centers.  Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. (Which I learned in "Junior High", so there.)

 

In this antiquated Junior High, girls were required to take Home Ec.  (That's short for Economics.  I know.  It made no sense back then, either.)  In this class you learned two essential feminine life skills--asserting your independence and  making it on your own.  Ha! Ha!  Just kidding, girls can't do those things, we don't have a penis.  No, we learned to cook and sew. The first thing we learned to "cook" was a Grapefruit Basket. You slice a grapefruit in half, slice the peel around the edges and pull these cut edges up and tie with dental floss to make a "handle". Then sprinkle the grapefruit with brown sugar and broil it. Thereby ruining an otherwise perfectly good grapefruit. We also made a Doris Day-like apron and an ugly blouse. Mission accomplished.   To show you how affective (or effective, your choice),  Junior High was, I am today extremely independent and just fine on my own, but I can't cook or sew for shit.  Thanks, Junior Higher Education! 

 

I actually have a point here, other than bitching about my puberty, which is:  what is valued as necessary education changes through time.  All right, I get that.  But I confess to being stymied at the current trend to not teach cursive handwriting.  How are these future-adults supposed to sign legal documents?   Or accept Fedex packages of pot?  Maybe the Brilliant Educators of Today treat cursive the same way the Brilliant Educators of Yesteryear treated sex ed...eh, you'll figure it out.  But, in my dotage, it concerns me.

 

I guess I could broil a grapefruit to calm myself down, but I think I'll just wait for the Fedex guy. 

 

 



Another Post from Debland

One of the reasons I am where I am today (I would tell you where that is, but I don't want you stalking me.  Again.) is because of the skewed view I have of the world.

 

Take my job.  Please.  (Sorry, involuntary reaction.)  I realize that it is a Primary Law of Nature that people have to go around suing each other.  Wait, I don't actually realize that, I think it's stupid.  And here's my crazy, wacked-out theory why:  If you (or your company) do something wrong to someone, either accidentally or on purpose,  you should admit it, apologize and offer restitution.  The key phrase here is "admit it".  Taking responsibility for making mistakes appears to have gone the way of the steam locomotive and Teddy Ruxpin.  Why admit to doing something wrong and making up for it, when you can spend tons more money and time denying it and not?  That's what Jesus did, right?  ("That guy was alive when I got here, I swear, I never laid a hand on him!")  Totally logical.

 

But not to me.  Granted, I tend to apologize to everything, including inanimate objects.  I can't tell you how many chairs I've apologized to for walking into.  But, I also try to own up for the actual shit I do that hurts human beings and/or cats. Cause it's the right thing, if not always the easiest thing, to do.  And it's what I'd want someone to do to me.  Which, correct me if I'm wrong here, is what we're supposed to do.   As vivid as my imagination is, it is hard for me to picture a multi-millionaire waking up in the morning and saying, "Holy Moly, I wish someone would sue me today."  (That was a trick sentence.  The only actual part of that sentence which I cannot picture  a multi-millionaire saying is  Holy Moly.)  I don't live in that world.  I function in it, because I have to, but I don't live there.

 

Bad Steve used to tell me I was naive.  *Pause to appreciate the irony here.*  He's right, I am.  And proud of it.  Because as long as I subscribe to the "Do Unto Others and Unicorns Shit Rainbows" philosophy, I can keep on living in my undisclosed location where lawsuits don't exist and the cats say, "No problem" when I apologize.   It's lonely here, but the unicorn poo is beautiful.               

 

 



The Gays of Our Lives

I will be the first to admit, there are a lot of things I don't get:  younger, richer, dates...but right now I am totally flummoxed by the worldwide anti-gay sentiment.  Every time I read a headline about someone pitching a fit about homosexualty, I get this mental image of a medieval lord extolling the virtues of the feudal system.  "....and serfs?  Hell, serfs will be around FOREVER!!"  (Okay, you could get metaphorical here and argue there are still serfs today, what with an embarrassingly low minimum wage, but, remember, we're here to talk about The Gays, not our Tragic Economic Disparity.)

 

This current onslaught of foreign homophobia confuses me, because these people act like being gay is a new phenomenon, sort of like twerking.  "HUH??  We  never had homosexuals in this country until the Condensed Force of Evil that is the United States of America started letting them get married!   Now it's even spreading to the serfs!!"   Hey, Putinpants, homosexuality has been around since heterosexuality has been around, it wasn't invented by Oscar Wilde.

 

It reminds me of the early 1960's, when I was a kid, and everyone was batshit terrified that someone in some country somewhere was going to set off the nuclear bomb.  Although, in that scenario, the world would be destroyed.  If a gay bomb exploded, it would just leave the world more tastefully decorated. 

 

Is homophobia the new bigotry designed to bring the world together?  I mean, racism is becoming a bit passe and, frankly, it's hard to get worked up about about the inferiority of black people if you live in Switzerland.  But homosexuals!!  There's a group of Satan's Spawn we can globally despise! 

 

It is so. fucking. stupid.  And, perhaps because of the three previously-mentioned-in-the-first-sentence items I no longer get, I have very little patience left for the Devisive Irrational Controlling Knuckleheads Hiding Obvious Latent Evidenditiary Shit, if you get my drift. 

 

Much like other erroneous, outmoded ideas (the world is flat; bloodletting cures disease; Justin Bieber rocks), in time,  this fear-fueled bigotry will pass.  Then the search will be on to find a new undeserved minority on which to focus our irrational hatred!  Huzzah!  Long Live the 15th Century!! 

 

Or.... (call me crazy).... we could stop focusing  our energy on hating people and see what happens if we all try to get along.  There, at least I gave you one laugh.

 



And Now in Financial Muse...

There is a factoid floating on Facebook today that says it's costing the Russians $51 billion to host the Olympics and it only costs $2.5 billion to go to Mars.

Either way, that is a lot of money.  And both those things are really cool, I'm just not sure either project is getting the full bang for their buck here. The Russians have already been dealing with bad publicity and they will be left with a bunch of buildings and sports venues that will very likely sit idle till the next Revolution.  And going to Mars is exciting, but what can you do when you get there?  Other than Starbucks and McDonalds, I doubt if there's a lot going on up there.  Who wants to spend a week staring at a giant face?   

 To tell you the truth, my mind always boggles when it comes to money.  You all know  the Sad Saga of Bad Steve, so I won't bore you with it again. But when I finally realized I was never going to get any of the money back that I had "loaned" him, I was not as upset about losing the money as I was in realizing that he had never really cared for me, just my wallet.  It takes a lot longer for my heart to heal than it does my bank account.

I lead a very simple life and I like it plenty swell.  I have no dreams of owning a big house or retiring to to Sochi or Mars. Living paycheck to paycheck works just fine for me.    My biggest expenses are cat food, beer, and going to see my kids a few times a year.  And I wouldn't trade my kids, cats or beer for all the Mars Rovers in the world.  (Granted, there are probably only 3 or 4 Mars Rovers in the world, but you get my point.)

I suspect this sentiment is a common one in people "of a certain age" and explains the feeling I often get of being completely removed from society.  I just don't understand the expensive, greedy, power-driven, mean shit that people/corporations/governments/political parties/ religious organizations do and rather than try to comprehend it, I just want to sit on my sofa  and pet my cats.  (And, no, I don't mean that euphemistically.)

But that being said, it is breathtaking to hear the vast amounts of money people are willing to put forth for something.  And can you imagine what it will cost it when Mars hosts the Olympics?? Let the games begin!