Bent But Not Broken... A Message To The Horde

Well, Horde...I'm putting this here for a coupla reasons.  First, it's self-obsessed and sad.  Second, I'm sure TNC indulges me because I've been around forever, but really...he can't possibly enjoy his comment section befouled by my Miss Lonelyhearts musings.  I can feel him roll his eyes whenever I post.   But honestly, I waxed so breathlessly during August that I want to finish the overshare to y'all.

Anyway, for anyone who paid attention, I thought I found a great guy here in the mid to late afternoon of my life.  "Found" is incorrect.  Brother chased me for 18 months.  He was my age (fifties).  Had a career and a car and our politics aligned well enough. Great dates (food, dancing, convo).  Great, errrr, other stuff.  I was clear about my intentions for a relationship (as opposed to a quick hit which actually has its place and an option I actually offered) and he agreed his focus was on the relationship aspect.  I kept myself open because I didn't want my unlucky in love cynicism to jaundice the possibilities.  (I know big words too.)  I was beginning to be hopeful.  We had a date where I went over to his house, went out for sushi, laughed really hard during dinner, came back and listened to the amazing music on my iPod (on a real sound system).  I kissed him goodbye because he was going out of town for a family birthday.  Great kiss, too.

And then nothing.

In the interest of not jumping to conclusions, I texted (jeez, R.I.P. Mr. Jobs) an "are you okay or have you disappeared from me" snippet.  A succinct response of "Am okay. Haven't disappeared. Will be back next week" was received.

And then, he disappeared.  Fell off the planet.

Finally, after a couple of weeks, I texted (seriously, Mr. Jobs, your genius is astonishing) 'Why, dude?  Did you win a bet because if so, I want my cut.  You enjoyed my A-Game (of food, dancing, convo, and ummmm, other stuff) and that warrants at the very least a 'hey girl, whatsup?'  I'm low maintenance, not no maintenance."  Response?  "Apologies.  Traveling, sick, work, family in town.  My bad."

"My bad."


I waited a couple more days.

Then being the general smart ass that no doubt is part of the reason for my singledom, "What? No alien abduction?"  And expressing that consideration is important to me and I'm not a chore.  More back and forth via text but upshot was my excusing myself from the affair.

And here's the thing.  My feelings were monumentally hurt during those three weeks of silence.  But I'm reasonably okay, if not the worse for wear.  I'm actually rather glad that, (1) I stepped up and relayed my feelings rather than let them fester and let my boundaries be broached and (2) after all this time and all the awful relationships I've had, I still have feelings to be hurt.  I'm haven't turned into the kind of woman I wouldn't like myself to be.


And honestly, there's something shifty, hinky, shady in all of it that I am sure were I to know what the fuck it is (married, girlfriend, even though I asked and asked), I would be glad it is something in which I am not involved.


I don't want to feel across the board that men lie, and play at stuff, and it's rather disheartening that a 52 year old man thinks it's perfectly fine to behave so poorly, but that's not on me.


I suppose that's something.


Seriously, Steve Jobs is all over this situation and post.  Big fan of text.  I'm not confident I'd have been able to express the same over the phone.  In person, maybe, but then that wasn't available.  My, what the world has lost.


Also, just to be completely vain and self-affirming...  That's me on the right.   I'm still kind of a dish at 55.  

That Day and Ten Years After...

On September 10, 2001, I fell asleep with the television on.  Nothing new.  I sleep alone and the noise in the house helps me feel not so alone.

Constrained strife slowly woke me up.  Opening one eye, I wondered what movie I was watching.  I know just about every disaster movie and this wasn't a scene I remember.  So I rolled over to pinpoint what movie I was watching.  And then the commentator came on...I think it was Katie Couric...and fitfully stated in that newscaster fashion, that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center.

And I sat up in bed to watch a movie that had never been made.

I got out my bed to watch mayhem.  And helicopters.  And people waving white believing, perhaps, that an impossible rescue would be mounted.  And people falling.  And fire.  And people I knew for a fact were dying in front of my eyes.  On the living room television because I have to have the noise in the house to help me feel not so alone.

I could not leave the television for weeks.  I watched the skies for weeks.  I cried for weeks.  I could not sleep for weeks.  The people, I sobbed to my mommy late one night.  All those people, Mommy.

All those people.  But what got me, what still gets me, is that I could have been any one of those people hanging out of  windows waving futile flags, surrendering my life, had a different target been chosen.

Today, as I listen to the names of those who died that day read, I know these surnames.  I've known people with these surnames.  They haven't gotten to the Rs yet, but I'm sure the FDNY lost some Ryans that day.  My high school friend, Peach Ryan, is a flight attendant.  Grounded on that day but if the fates would have had it, she could have been one of those who died.

So the people.  All those people.  People I could have known.  People who could have been me.

Racist Dick Brought Low

UPDATE:  This was originally published on 2/11/10!!!  Good lord.  I'm bringing this to the top because it amuses me and I linked to here at FB, so why not stuff I like up front.  Thanks.
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So Playboy interviewed John Mayer and the internet and its contributors have gone all Heathers, picked out some admittedly awful quotes and deemed him pariah. I'm sad to say that I contributed. I'm also loathe to link to TMZ but here's why he's not eating with the popular kids in the cafeteria.

But it's worth it to read the interview, header and all. Something I should have done before mouthing off. Blogs and politics are seductive that way. You read a snippet of something outrageous, have an immediate outraged reaction, and comment about your outrage. And other outraged commenters note your outrage by adding to it. And we're all outraged.

Here's my theory. This interview is irrefutable proof that he is a cocky 32 year old white talented male rock star who got to hang out in the studio with equally talented black folks. Let's say Jay Z and Kanye (himself no stranger to outrage) and maybe Common. Probably Jay Z, while counting his money, offhandedly told Mayer he was a badass guitar playing motherfucker. And then Mayer was just there being Jay's guitar playing motherfucker while Jay Z, Common and Kanye had some "we just talking bullshit" conversation about white-girl crazy. Mayer, stoked beyond the telling of it that Jay Z called him "motherfucker" got into the spirit of things, dropped some yammer about exacly how big Jessica's tits are and what it's like to fuck an almost virgin, everyone laughed (he made them laugh!!!!), got comfortable and nobody was self-censoring. John, imagining that it would be that way in the world for him because after all, his touring band is mostly black and they do the same thing with him and he's, well...John Mayer...and incorporated what he thought to be the truth of him hanging out with black folks for a minute and ran his mouth.

Now see, I blame Jay. And while I'm at it, I'll pull Common and Kanye's and John's band's coattails too. You know you should have told your bad ass guitar playing motherfucker that that bullshit you talk - is just that...bullshit. Don't REPEAT IT.

Yeah, AND. John should have never racialized his dick because if his dick is racist, then he is racist. Much as men like to refer to their peens as something other than they, it is not. It's attached to you, it is, therefore...yours. So, if you think it's just your dick that wants to screw Jessica Simpson*, it is not. It is you. Own it.

And if your dick doesn't open itself up to the concept of sex with black women, then you don't either. And that's hard for me, at least, to hear. It plays into too many insulting concepts about standards of beauty in America.

So, upshot? John was just talking out his neck.

Here's John apologizing. And I still like "Gravity" and he is a badass guitar playing motherfucker. Jack White's better though.



*It seems like I'm bagging on Jessica Simpson but I'm not. I think she's had a hard row to hoe - a row she doesn't understand.

Yikes!

Posted without comment...other than "Um...Wow."

Open Letter to Dodai Stewart at Jezebel

Hi, Dodai:

I'm a Jezebel lurker from way back. Jez Old School. Watched all the slap fights with Sinister Rouge and I GOT Moe.

So, I'm growing my hair out long one last time before I get too old for it to be appropriate. Yeah, I subscribe to the if you're eighty your hair shouldn't hit your butt; you're not going to prom club. Anyway, I'm growing it out. I've worn it short for almost 6 years now. Short. Really short. Amber Rose stole my haircut short. So now it's growing. And gray. It's gray, Dodai. Nearly all of it. **sigh** But it's a pretty gray, so I'm thinking when it's long, I'll have that Emmylou Harris/Helen Mirren thing going on and all will be right with the world.

But now I have to actually care for my hair. Or actually, I'll have to pay attention to it for it to have a style while it's growing. You can have short hair that's easy. You can have long hair that's easy. Hair in the middle is just work. I'm always looking for stuff that helps me not to have to spend time on my hair.

This young woman, Lauren Mechelle, has her own website and quite a few videos up on YouTube that really explain the care and feeding of thick "ethnic" hair. I don't know if Jezebel has already discovered her (since I can't lurk every day because I luckily have a job), but I thought 1) You should know about her and maybe if some of the women commenters get a load of just how much work it takes, they'd shut the frak up with "it's just hair" and 2) her videos are so explanatory that I want her to get some press so I thought I'd point you in her direction. Note particularly that there is a great instruction video on Curlformers - my new easy hair obsession.

Still love all your stuff, Dodai. Miss the old Jez terribly but hopefully, with the next election upcoming (has it already been 4 years??!), Jez'll kick up.

Sherlynn Hicks

aka Parasol (back in the day)

AnonymousSecs (now and still starless)

But Does It Show Pudge Fisk's Home Run?

Ken Burns' "Baseball" is available via Amazon streaming. It's free if you're an Amazon Prime member.

Math is Haard

A truer title never given. I've never had a knack for math. I always could arrive at a somewhat correct number (which I understand is not really math because numbers are by nature definitive), but couldn't really show or know how I got there.

So this is an informative post. As opposed to analytical, that is. With a question at the end. And maybe some in the middle.

Ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, Representative Paul Ryan, released a budget proposal. This I'm pleased about. I seem to remember the "Roadmap for America" idea put forward before with something much less serious than what Rep. Ryan has put together, even though I may not agree with the Republican ideology.

The Congressional Budget Office has also released its analysis (pdf). It's over my head. It's all pretzel logistics and incestuous fiscal reasoning and future decade hopeful projections to me. I do believe that the system as it is is not sustainable and something has to be done. What? I dunno, but at least there are choices greater math minds than mine have to consider.

I'd love to be able to read the CBO's report, much like, say, fine-ass Ezra Klein does and give a non-partisan distillation, but seriously, Ezra has liberal ways. I'd love to read a Conservative or even a Libertarian distillation that I don't end up yelling something like "Are we just going to let our seniors die, or only well-to-do ones get to live"or "Dammit, we aren't each an island" at. But that's just my own liberal bent being reactionary. Plus, if I'm being totally honest, I'm knocking on the "senior" door - softly - am single and frankly don't want to die sitting at the nurses station in diapers in some sub-standard old folks' home because I have more time than life and that's all my vouchers will allow me. Megan McArdle seems to resent my baby boomer entitlement.

You know what I do? I pay my taxes. I pay my credit card bills. I let the government have that tax free loan I give them every year just so I can have extra bucks in my pocket every May.

So, questions.

1. How can a budget, any budget, be sustainable? Aren't there, by nature of the Republic, going to be changes? And isn't each change a ripple that will effect the projected outcome many fold?

2. Really, are we just going to let seniors receive only the care they can afford? Is a comprehensive and caring health entitlement for the aged not something we as a nation can extend?

3. Is it me, or is Megan McArdle's snotty asides infuriating? I just remember that if she's lucky, she's gonna get old too.

Is the Price Too High?

I watched Jeremiah Johnson again today. I really love that movie, not the least of which is for Robert Redford. Yes, I have a weakness for the towheads and if ever there were a prototype towhead, it's Bob...well, I call him Bob...in my mind, y'see.

If you haven't seen it, it's about a man who, sick of war, turns his back on civilization and goes into the mountains to trap, sell pelts and exist in near solitude. He's meager at it at first, but is taken under the wing of an experienced mountain man, taught to be successful in the ways of hunting in lone existence and is then sent on his way. Through both tragic and humorous happenstance, he has a wife and a young boy to care for. He's alone no longer and fitfully comes to enjoy it.

When he seems to be most happy with this family he never wanted but now treasures, he is pressed into guide service by a group, including a soldier and a preacher, looking to rescue cohorts trapped in the mountains. He leaves his wife and boy

On their way to the rescue, he is made to desecrate an Crow burial ground. I say "made to" because his initially tells them that they have to go the 20 miles out of their way around. The preacher, full of pomp and righteousness with a handkerchief pressed to his nose so as not to smell dead Indians, asks why should he honor the Crow burial ground. The rescue party is not Crow. Those they are looking to rescue, who he says are freezing and starving, are not Crow. They must go through. Johnson reluctantly agrees.

They make it to the starving, freezing wagons in the mountains, and Jeremiah turns toward home. When he gets back to the burial ground, he sees his wife's trinkets strewn among the bones of the burial ground. He beats ass for home, only to find his wife and the boy slaughtered.

And here is where I recognized something.

Terry Jones, the Florida Koran burner, has the same bigotry and disdain for other religions, doesn't he? What arrogance it takes to publicly abuse the beliefs of others. Without apology. With full felt righteousness he pulled his church in league with his bigotry. And they brought the lighter fluid. Now, instead of a wife and child found murdered, we have UN workers dead.

The preacher in Jeremiah Johnson rode away to rescue and his life. Terry Jones will preach another day.

Sad.

Yeah, I get the "It's his right as an American to express himself" reasoning. But just because you can it doesn't mean you should. The Good Pastor Jones isn't the one paying for his expression, is he. It would seem he would consider the price too high.