…one day

I digress.

I had an entire post scribbled about Mother’s Day. When writing about things that hit really close to home for yours truly, I like to have someone edit it to make sure the rambling nonsense is kept to a minimum. Naturally, that didn’t happen. For my mere post was tabled in lieu of guitar forums and Facebook.

I woke up to a nice shower of kisses from my darling Milkfaced boy. We had some quality time in the big bed where I answered a lot of “What’s that?” questions and sneaked in a random snuggle here and there. So far, pretty good.

Then comes chaos.

When you’re married to the least organized man in the universe, things can wear on your nerves pretty quickly. When you’re married to someone who travels for a living, all patience is tested by having to run a household by yourself. I don’t care for Mother’s Day, as a rule, but I certainly welcome one day out of the year where I can let down my guard, not have to think about what to plan for meals, not have to think about a day’s activities and not have to think about the laundry list of shit that never seems to get done.

Alas, my sans souci day lasted all of 2.5 hours. One iPod disappeared and the entire world had to come to a screeching halt. My ever constant coaching, my unending pleas for organization unanswered – I sneaked out to the deck while the house was being upended in pursuit of whatever has gone missing at this particular moment in time.

At the risk of sounding entirely frustrated and ungrateful, can a girl not catch a break? Particularly a working mom who has to go it alone more than she cares. Like many, I feel like I’m juggling way too many balls than I’m qualified to juggle. It wears one down very rapidly and doesn’t do much for the overall carriage and demeanor. Maybe if there was just one day a year that someone could recharge without interruptions, life would be a little more manageable.

As solutions normally lie at my feet, next year I vow to have everything organized and within arm’s reach. I will draw up a list of nifty ideas well in advance. Then I’m going to round up a few of my other mommy friends and run away for the weekend. Kids welcome. Husbands, not so much.

For The Record

A public service message,
To set a few things straight,
To conspirators and doubters,
And haters that gotta hate,
Osama’s dead, shot in the head,
Then buried out at sea,
Barack Hussein Obama,
He was born in Hawaii,
While we’re at it let’s set straight,
Some other twisted views,
12 men do not control the world,
Nor the Vatican, nor Jews,
The lunar landing happened,
And Darwin he was right,
(though the way you nutters think,
puts that in a different light),
There often remain questions,
About how people die,
But a simple lack of answers,
Won’t make conspiracy fly,
We wonder about detail,
When the elite pass on,
Except in the case of Elvis,
Whom we know was on the john,
Reptiles are not aliens,
Though you may think it so,
I’m also pretty sure,
2012 will come and go,
Believers of this stuff,
Leave one question inane,
How is it really possible,
To live with half a brain?

Shut. The Fuck. Up.

I’m so filled with disappointment,
Hope it’s okay if I bitch and vent.
But please be quiet for holy fucks sake,
When you have a national test to take.
You’re big kids now and you must see,
That no talking during the test exactly,
Means no talking, no note passing,
No whispering, and no harassing,
Of your fellow classmates or the teacher.
There’s really only one feature,
That I want to see and NOT to hear,
And that is fucking SILENCE, dear.
So keep your mouth shut, do your task.
I don’t think this is too much to ask.

THANK GOD (A Reclamation Project)

So much to be thankful for,
That’s why I say it, nothing more,
No bearded man up in the sky,
No entity, no reason why,
No dogma, no theology,
Just thankful’s a good way to be,
So no,
I do not find it odd,
If now and then I say thank God,
There’s so much to be thankful for,
That’s why I say it,
Nothing more.

If you don’t get just what I say,
Let me put it another way,
Just because I don’t believe in God,
Does not mean I’m not humbled and awed,
By the great whole wide world we share,
By wonders I see everywhere,
It’s natural that me and you,
Want something to be thankful to,
So we made it up, we made a name,
A symbol there to love or blame.

But I like the word, I think it’s nice,
A sound literary device,
No spirit, no nor entity,
The word God is just you and me,
Represents all that we can be,
Our collective thoughts and energy,
No church, no heaven; all that’s absurd,
And truly just pollutes the word,
The word God should mean so much more,
Should show what we’re all thankful for.

So,
God is not good, God is not great,
Got is not angry or irate,
And if you think, I’m sure you’ll find,
God only exists in your mind,
No need to confess or pray,
Just learn to think another way,
Accept who you are and how you’ve been,
There is no original sin,
God is a word, and nothing more,
To show what we’re all thankful for.

Thoughts from a café at T-Centralen in Stockholm (A reality check exercise)

Take yourself out some place. A café perhaps, on a busy downtown street, or ideally to the train station or the bus station.
Now, get yourself a magazine. Screw the articles. Get one with lots of pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. This is not an intellectual exercise.

It’s a reality check that crosses all lines; culture, colour, class, IQ, language, gender, orientation, age. We’re all in this particular boat together baby.

Now, get settled in with those pics in your GQ, Vogue, Elle, Cosmo, or one of thousands of others in the same genre. Soak them in. Admire the pretty people.

Fantasize about their fabulous lives. Wish and dream about being like them, or even just knowing them, and being close to their world. Feel just a little bit smaller.

Now put the magazine down. Leave it open to a picture if you like, it doesn’t matter. It might even help. Shift your attention away from it though, and instead watch the dizzying array of people parading before you. Yeah. You know where I’m going with this don’t you?

Of all the hundreds, perhaps thousands of people walking past you, how many look like the models in the magazine? I’ll tell you. None. Not one. Not a single goddamned one of them. Not even the ones who are desperately trying to look like them. Hell, if one of the actual models from the magazine happened to walk by, even they wouldn’t look like their media image portrays them.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Don’t look away just yet! You’re only half way through the exercise. Keep watching the parade. Watch until you find yourself revelling in the variety, until you realise where true beauty lies, until you realise it’s all subjective and the whole playing field constantly shifts and is only made up of our individual judgements based on our own needs and insecurities. Until you realise that what you see passing before you is an intricate and dazzling display of human beauty in all its forms and that in actual fact it is the media image in its inaccurate simplicity that generally fails to capture that depth.

Repeat the exercise as often as possible, until you really actually get the truth of it. Afterwards, continue to buy those magazines if you want, but for goodness sakes, keep them in perspective.

WOTD: resplendent

With many apologies for not posting a WOTD yesterday but I was too busy being sick and watching coverage of the Royal Wedding. I just love stuff like that. Royal Weddings that is, not being sick. I just find all the negativity and complaints about it to be really sad. “I couldn’t care less!” Well, obviously you do care enough to state that you don’t care. “What a waste of tax-payer money!” Oh moan, bitch, whine, complain. Why can’t you just be happy for the young attractive couple and be happy in general? Also, if you’re really concerned about the cost you can always ask for your 69 pence (each British tax payer’s share of the money spent on the wedding) back from the British government.

But I digress…

I thought I’d choose a word that is inspired by the recent Royal Wedding. Resplendent is an adjective and it’s defined as “shining brilliantly.” It basically means the same thing as dazzling, radiant, gorgeous and magnificent. As in:

Prince William looked resplendent in his bright red wedding coat.

…oh just

shut the fuck up, already!

Honestly. I know some rambling motherfuckers and it’s all I can do to grit my teeth, smile and sit on my hands so I don’t reach for their necks and strangle the last breath of life out of them. These people come in all shapes and sizes, all walks of life and there is absolutely no escaping them. No matter what you do.

Not one to sugar coat things, I have tried all sorts of different tactics to silence the verbose. I have left the room in mid-sentence. I have pretended to be unwell. I have played up being partially deaf. I have (absolutely true) looked someone in the eye and excused myself by telling the gasbag that I had to go stick my head in the nearest oven. Granted, I’m not always Miss Sweetness and Light but even I, for all of my evil, understand when it’s time for silence.

After two meetings today with someone who loves to her herself jabber away, I’m left with little patience and an enormous amount of frustration. If only I could get away with deploying my absolute, most-favoritest STFU meme. Life would be so much easier.

And before you even ask – NO. I am not always a people person.

America: The Greatest Show in the World

We Americans love a good show. Little do we know that we are actually part of the show now. Other people from around the world are watching our slow decline into a Third World nation. While we are busy arguing about the “big issues” like abortion, gay marriage, and evolution; our roads are being unpaved, we are becoming poorer, and more stupid. As the old Carl Sagan remarked in his book, Cosmos, we have more astrologists and psychics than astronomers. And why wouldn’t we, after all, astronomy requires serious thinking? Better to go with the gut feeling of an astrologist.

Just look at your newspaper, one-third of the newspaper is comprised of the sports pages these days! In fact, there’s more sports coverage than foreign news coverage! A whole page is devoted to a home run, while a suicide bomber in Afghanistan killing two Marines gets a paragraph. Charlie Sheen’s Truth Tour gets more exposure than a top general in Iraq discussing rebuilding efforts. The sad thing is we don’t realize that this is happening to us. And if we do, we don’t seem to care as long as the circus continues and we are “pacified” with cheap trinkets from China or entertainment in the form of Snooki. Never mind that Snooki got more money for giving a talk at Rutgers University than Nobel-Fucking-Prize-Winning-and-I-Got-A-Damned-Pulitzer-Too Toni Morrison! How the hell did that happen?

Richard Hofstadter wrote a book entitled Anti-Intellectualism in American Life back in 1963. If you haven’t read this book, I highly suggest you pick it up at your local public library. That’s if you still have a public library! In his book, Hofstadter laments the poor state of the American intellectual, and how he must contend with a rising tide of stupidity coming from his fellow countrymen. That’s a paraphrase of course, and a pretty dumbed down version of things, but hopefully it’s easy enough for people to understand.

Anyhow, I’m off to plan my vacation trip to the Creation Museum, and maybe I’ll swing by Dollywood as well.

Candlelight Vigils

You know what I fucking hate? Candlelight vigils. Not only is a gathering of people with candles a fire hazard, but they just don’t work. I am particularly perplexed by people holding candlelight vigils for missing people. I just read today that another young, attractive white woman went missing, and people have already scheduled a candlelight vigil for her. People, instead of holding a fucking vigil, how about you form a search party instead or drive around the fucking neighborhood looking for her, seriously? For Pete’s sake even putting up missing person posters on a lamp post is doing something! Standing around with a damned candle is pointless.

I will admit that I can sort of understand a candlelight vigil for memorial purposes. Say Princess Diana died and some idiot wants to stand outside and get hypothermia, that’s okay. Nothing says I remember you like almost dying yourself. I’m not going to do it, but to each their own.

Now if I ever go missing, I want all of you to be out there looking for me, and for the love of God, don’t stand around with fucking candles, okay?

Fucking Suburban Blogger Assholes

Here I was in my nice little suburban hell, thinking all was right with the world. Soccer moms in gigantic SUVs trucking around their overprivileged kids, smug Republican dads forwarding racist anti-Obama emails, illegals blowing leaves. Then, out of nowhere, I run a cross some caped fucktardian on the internet inconveniencing electrons with their infantile rants. Yeah, I bet you think you’re so fucking awesome with your Swedish car, speaking all kinds of foreign languages no one gives a shit about and getting all worked up about how everyone sucks except you. Oh, Republicans are stupid, huh? The health care system is fucked up? You have some kind of deep thoughts to share with us? News flash Jack Handey, you’re not that special. Everyone’s got a fucking blog these days. Hell, I’M a suburbanite with a blog who rants about Republicans, health care and stupid people, all while sharing deep insights to the human condition that I observe while speaking to foreigners and driving around in my Saab.

Oh, wait…