Weak and way too feeble for a woman with my strong opinions

Hurrah, I suppose. I've survived yet another near death experience. They'd rallied the family, even my parents' minister and aunts who were; waiting in the wings not on my account, but to catch my parents when they collapse with grief at the death of their eldest, seriously flawed daughter.

Wasn't what happened, obviously. My sister says she's sick and tired of my dying all the time. Either do it or not so they all aren't constantly on the edge of their seats.

Geesh I wear people out, mainly my best people. Shit.

I got out to take a few photos the other day and literally fell into a bed of fossils. Fossils make me happy.

Breathless and swooning hearts in midamerica

My breathing sounded like blues harmonica, with a staccato urgency to it. The been done wrong man gently urged me through the snow with oxygen, and I gasped eternal truths during the trip to the nearest ER. He hasn't voluntarily spent time with me in years, and our 24th anniversary went unnoticed by either of us. I still make him laugh. He makes me laugh. We want happiness for one another and know togetherness isn't always the recipe.

The intellectual journalist with the wise and gentle heart I married now listens to books on tape as he drives a big rig cross country to keep the rent paid, having lost our house way too long ago. I'm a clever but useless partner. He doesn't care about anything but getting the bills paid and living up to his obligations.

He was for the war. I was on the steering committee of the Instead of War Coalition.

He left the hospital and drove through industrial ruins to the hub and headed up through Illinois. He got to Effingham when he had chest pain, pulled over and CALLED A FUCKING CAB! They medivaced him back to St. Louis, he'd had a minor heart attack (as if). He was here at least 12 hours before I knew about it because I finally called him and he had to tell me what happened. He didn't want me worrying.

Effingham has earned its name in my book. He's a weird and callous, crusty old booger, but he's my crusty old booger and hero to my children. A cab???; Have I taught him nothing?

WTF MotherKiller?

So I've come out all international now. I used to be a drunk. And I went to AA and was still a drunk by their standards, though I mostly didn't do shit. That's not fair, and I don't care who you may be.

A kindergartner could figure out what my classy liberal arts education couldn't prepare me for. That they're just fucking wrong. Once a drunk, always a drunk?

Wrong.

A disease?

Wrong. If not, then the scientific model has to go as it's the only ailment for which the only "official" cure is religion. The courts back me on this one, too, so already just shut the fuck up about its being a spiritual, not religious, program. Their roots are culty feely Christiany gone bad. That it's become the American standard for treatment of addiction is more ludicrous than anything even Schizoid the Prez has come up with. We are fucking blind, and we do not want to see, at least mostly, most of the time, most of us. Thank justice that there is a bit of sophiticated thinking to be had on this point.

It is the only way to have either/or sobriety and/or stability and/or life.

Wrong. So wrong. So, so wrong. By its own stats, AA has a five (yes 5) percent population retention at one year. And I can guarantee you that's not the same as sober, happy, free, or anything other than a warm butt in a metal chair.

It works if you work it.

Wrong. Just because it works for a sweet and wondrous precious few says nothing about those steps. It says a lot about those sweet and wondrous precious few being ready to be done with being so nuts. Most folks have issues at one time or another with a substance and almost all get over it because it's time to get a life worth having. This is not a credit to anyone, and I wish we could put someone's good future into their present as much as anyone, but life is not that way. Sucks, doesn't it. Our lack of control over anyone else's interior life. But there you have it.

My [fill blank] has been in AA {xx] years and it's changed their life.

Lucky them. Lucky you. I have a lovely face, and lucky me. Luck. Luck. Fuck.

AA is the source of life for people who attend, and saying otherwise is like shooting the jumper off a building.

A tempting proposition for the truly lovely among us to shut the fuck up, no? Except that people who go to AA have a 29 percent suicide rate. That's because their guilt for trespassing is so enormously overwhelming they can't imagine the humilation of returning to that group with their rank stripped, a base rookie, consigned to the stupid corner until later notice. This happens. It is endemic. It is the primary damage of this program as I have experienced it. Utter humiliation is not good juju for the soul. You didn't work it, it's your fault, you're "constitutionally incapable" of being honest. WTF???

I'm now so angry that i have to go calm down before I go on.

More later.

Killing a mother is unforgiveable, so forgive me already. Please.

So I' ve been so sick. Sick almost to death and it's largely my own damn fault for my love of a good smoke. Even now, with oxygen and a gasp to die for, I suck on these fuckers like the teat of life itself.

I am a deeply flawed individual.

But I have good days, too.

So let me tell you what I think.

I think people are largely mysterious, no matter how rational their self examination may seem. I've noted this outside my immediate gene pool, so I suspect it's not just me.

I happen to be a particularly non-spiteful mystery, as humans go. But I'm not particularly holy at all, and love succumbing to temptation as much as a gay preacher with snakes in a drawer. And I mostly cop to it, so that's something.

See how defensive I am from the get go? I'm defending myself against an assumed thought in your head, even as I write. I am so fucked unto the Lord or whatever that I begin with the reasons I'm worthy. Jeezus would say sheeyut.

But I'm fun to have a beer with and am told I'm smart as they come. Not that it has made much difference.

Smart folks can be so dumb. We think it's a virtue when it's just an adjective. That's unless we're crediting our own hard work, and I know that's mainly a lie. Mainly because when I've worked hardest, I've been my best, most transcendent self. But it's never lasted long enough for any righteous infinite jest, which is William James' definition of transcendent wisdom. I may be an iconoclast, but having read that book, I will adhere to its definitions, as is my right. So do not fuck with the James boys. There's no future in it.

I'd love to live in a world in which my own transcendence delighted me constantly. Since I don't, I rely a lot on substances and such to maintain daily, a sin as big as there is, I'm told. And yet, on this New Years, I'm putting my wide foot down that this is not so bad if it keeps you going mostly without hurting others. That's of course excepting friends and family who love me. They can't help but hurt at my diminishing presence, and they mourn it more than I do, which is something.

I am guilty as I am. I am guilty. I am. There it is. Feed as long as necessary. I am naked and flayed prostate before your judgment, and if you only knew, you'd know which line in this bit is the most central and agreed upon fact ever in the history of my life. Then you would come clean my house for me and love me for having taken this mantle so far so long. Or not.

Me, I'm wondering on all my guilt and its value in a gold-based economy. Not fucking much. And I'm dying. Not today, not tomorrow, but before my time. So?

So I have work to do that is different from other work I've done. I am selfish and narcissistic historically, yet I've lost real interest in my own life except as it is killing my family, mostly those three kids. Damnit. That I probably did it so, so long ago is just dawning on me.

We all have to answer to something, and having given up the traditional subjects of devotion as unworkable in my world, there are those people I love that I wouldn't hurt if I could help it.

And I wish I could help it. I'm a cipher. If I were my own judge, I would not be silent and sanguine, for killing a mother is an unforgiveable act. Yet I have to find a way to forgive myself so I can leave my children without a gaping maw where their ma used to be.

They deserve as much high minded positive projection as my soul can deliver, and frankly, I do too.

My smartness has finally revealed to me, ta-dah that the 25 years I spent in a cult was waaay bad. It hammered me from every direction that I was powerless in the face of my own evil nature, unchangeable in that stain, insane, incapable of rational thought, too smart for my own good, and destined to die a hideous death unless I adhered to their commandments.

Understandably, this took some of my good juju away and kept me on a spiritual search that I only put on the shelf quite recently as impossible and indecent. All those years I sought strength in a soul-zapping death cult without even knowing it. Others have had different experiences, including my two most central menfolk. It was a rebellion I couldn't help and wanted not to have and couldn't live with or without. But, the truth will out.

That I stayed says something about my fortitude, and my leaving says yet more. The demonic corruption of my best years?

Alcoholics Anonymous.

More later.

Caroline Kennedy, let's be reasonable

Maybe it's because I remember her losing her daddy that preps me so well for a Senator Caroline Kennedy. I was only eight at the time and losing my dad was the worst thing I could imagine at that age.

But I think that just makes me an empathetic human from an early age, not a knee jerk Camelotophile.

Am I the only one a bit grated by the comparisons being made to other political dynasties? Hillary, Dubya, Jeb et al have so much more to answer for. Caroline Kennedy seems as close to a saint as I've witnessed in the public eye, though I fervently hope there's more to her story. Saints are ever so boring.

Even so, no on is arguing her endeavors have been less than noble. She has not sought celebrity. She has gracefully and graciously worn the mantle of her birth without exploiting it for base purposes, which has got to take some kind of restraint I'm fairly sure I don't possess, and I think you probably don't neither. Say I'm wrong.

That she has been awkward before the press of the press seems a plus for me. I'm sick of the savvy and yearn for the ideals of the heart put into action. Has Obama leached all our capacity for fine feeling for an individual? Perhaps.

But as of this day, I see everything to love and nothing to genuinely suspect about Caroline Kennedy. That's my story and I'll stick to it as long as the facts back it. Isn't that what critical thinking is supposed to deliver? Geez folks, let's be smarter for once, from the get go.

Such Nice Boys

Proving yet again that point of view can be everything. Don't miss these men of true grit, even though theirs is aimed at our own.

VICE Travel: Darra, Pakistan
by Top-Notch112

Need Inspiring? Generic Inspirational Speech PDQ

I grabbed this off of Phil Gerbyshak's Twitter feed. Phil's one of those unstoppable optimists I am drawn to, probably because unspottable optimism isn't one of my more obvious assets, I guess. He's the real deal,though. And that's why he's appealing: others try to wear this powerful personality like a trench coat,but it shows. But with Phil, it's the way he rolls.

Here's a mashup of some 40 rile-the-masses speeches in just over two minutes,ammassed by Matthew Berlinke:



I can't say athis inspired me to do squat on a cold Sunday night, but it was entertaining. Thanks Phil.

A digital valium with a glass of wine, kind of

Friends, the world is a heavy place. The buoyancy of Obamahope has sunk under the weight of the extent of the criminal organization still in charge.

I'm tired.

I've been outraged for so long.And now, when we deserve a bit of lightness in our hearts, the news gets grimmer and grimmer.

So, I read Vogue's feature on Michelle Obama and it was a tonic to my soul, better than a glass of wine and a valium, not that I would know anything about anything like that.

See if it helps you feel a bit brighter.

Boy Jesus discovers the truth about Santa

Thanks, TruthDig

Gay marriage is about love and a seat at the family table

Our great national treasure boils it down to the essence and takes away Huckabee's gay marriage argument.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Mike Huckabee Pt. 2

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video