Let the airing of grievances begin!

Ya know, I wonder about the seeming increase in the length of the Christmas/Holiday Season...apart from the horrid consumerism aspect, which I think on a lot.

Already? Ug.

Perhaps as time goes on in this failed way of life* we have, there’s more and more of a need for some big escape from it all. Like the stakes are getting higher. Like it’s more and more vital to make “the holidays” more and more meaningful. And it’s all to distract us from how generally unfulfilling our lives are—our way of life.

* You know—this civilization of totalitarian agriculture/we control the world and it

needs our control/everyone has to live like us because it’s the one right way to live... etc.

I don’t know if this holiday escape is something that we the people unconsciously perceive the need for, or if it’s perpetuated by the mechanisms continuing our way of life, i.e., those selling us all the shit, etc. Probably it’s bi-partisan effort.  

Dear country...

Dear country,

Now that the election is done, can we please start dealing with the uncomfortable truth that we are destroying the planet? It’s not just us, here in the United States, but we’re definitely a huge part of it.

See, it’s the way we’ve been living and consuming all kinds of stuff—stuff that doesn’t really make us happy, stuff that often makes us less happy, but stuff that certainly makes the planet less happy.

We’ve built cities that require mechanical transportation to get around, and we burn oil to get from place to place.

We make and purchase and use cheaply made products—often not easily recyclable—which fall apart or become “obsolete” when the new version comes out a few years later. So we toss it. We throw it in a bin, put it out on the road where it’s conveniently picked up weekly by a loud, stinky truck.

Meanwhile, our rich people keep getting trickle-up richer, and many of the rest of us keep believing that if we stay in this broken system of ours, we’ll eventually win and be rich ourselves.

We don’t have to be this way. But the thing is, before we can start to make a change, we have to admit that there is a problem. We have to look at ourselves and recognize and say, “Hey this isn’t good, this isn’t healthy, this isn’t sustainable. We have to stop this madness if our children and grandchildren, perhaps even we ourselves, are going to be able to survive on this planet.”

Then we need to make some serious changes. And it would really, really help matters if we had leaders who could admit this stuff to themselves and to us. Leaders who would stop focusing on the election cycle and start doing some real work for the people.

Either that, or somebody needs to invent some magical sci-fi tech and find some other planet where we can relocate. And then we’ll start in raping that planet too. 

Do not vote for this man.

Here’s something I’ve been mulling over for a while.

I have a hard time imagining ever voting for Mitt Romney. 

I find him to be untrustworthy. I’ve had this feeling about him for maybe a year or two. How long has he been running for president?

It’s not just the “flip-flop” on positions. And it’s not just the “lying” or offering misleading information. It’s more basic than that. The man seems disingenuous. He does not seem honest or true or upright. When I watch him speak, I feel that he isn’t being true to himself. I don’t believe him, because he doesn’t seem to believe himself. He doesn’t seem to be himself, he doesn’t ever seem comfortable.

It’s like he’s not just being there, in the moment, speaking, like a person does. It’s more like he’s watching himself and reacting to himself and controlling himself based on what he sees himself doing. I find that disturbing.

And I’m surprised that I haven’t heard this from anyone else. I suppose this is what other people have referred to as Romney’s robotic quality. But I don’t think of it as a robot thing. It’s more of a lack of comfort with one’s self. I’ve known other people like that, and I find them disturbing.

Even if I were a conservative—which is just impossible to imagine—I think I would feel the same way about him. Of course, maybe if I were a conservative I wouldn’t care about that kind of stuff. Maybe the party platform, etc., would be more important. I don’t know. I really have a hard time understanding conservatives. It’s like crazy-talk to me.

Spoiler alert!!! ...2

I’m watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It’s on HBO, which I have here at the beach.

When Scabbers, the rat, turns into Peter Pettigrew, he’s wearing clothes. 

Okay, fine. It’s magic. The clothes he was wearing when he last turned are still with him.

Also, it’s a kids’ story/movie.

I can accept that.

Except that several minutes later, when he turns back into a rat, he shrinks out of his clothes and leaves them behind.

So which is it? I vote for nudity. It makes sense. 

Spoiler alert!!!

Last night I watched The Hangover part II. 

The guys from the first movie went to Thailand for a wedding. They had a few drinks then woke up the next morning with no idea where they were or what happened the night before, and they had to piece it all together in order to find a friend they’d lost somewhere along the way.

Same basic plot as the first movie, just with different details in a different setting.

Oh, there was a scene with some penises.

The gang finds a strip club in Bangkok where they’d apparently been the night before. They were talking with one of the girls, and, well, she turned out to have a penis, as did all the “girls” there.

Early in the scene, before the big “reveal”, I knew they were going to have penises. It just seemed the obvious thing to me. So, then when I did see the penises, they had basically no impact. I assume it’s supposed to be hilariously shocking. Or shockingly hilarious? It was neither.

Was it just that I saw the “joke” coming so it wasn’t funny? Am I jaded? Or just immune to the humor of the penis?

Or, was it just not that funny?

Anyone? Anyone?

reading & coffee

This is what I’m doing this morning. I’ve piddled around online a bit, but this is the plan—keep doing this.

Yesterday I finished The United States of Atlantis by Harry Turtledove. It’s the second in a set of three (so far). I liked the first a lot, but this one was so-so. A lot of repetitious dialogue, etc., and a good bit of the time it just seemed like he was setting up the situation for the next book.

If you’re not familiar with Harry Turtledove, he writes mostly alternate history. It’s like historical fiction, except there’s always a “what if” element that creates the setting. Like, what if the South won the American Civil War? Or, in the case of these Atlantic books, what if the eastern chunk of North America—from the east coast to roughly the Mississippi River—were actually a separate continent out in the Atlantic Ocean? And then he writes a story set there. He’ll often use some actual historical characters along with fictional characters. In The United States of Atlantis there are fictional characters who are analogous to various historical characters from the American Revolution.

Anyway... I just started Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes. And that’s my plan for the rest of the morning, which, at this point, isn’t very long. So, maybe it’ll also be part of my afternoon—that, and coffee, and being naked.  Whee!

2 dreams

So I had 2 dreams the other night that I remembered. (I usually don’t remember them at all, so it’s sort of extra odd.)

Dream 1:

I was traveling around with a group of people, and we were fighting these creatures. I don’t think we ever had a name for the creatures. I guess they were mostly like vampires—the creatures, not my group—although, they didn’t seem like vampires to me: no vampire cheesiness. I don’t think they had fangs; they didn’t fly nor turn into bats and fog; and I don’t think they were nocturnal. And they just seemed to want to go around infecting other people. In that sense, they were more like zombies. The infection or whatever when the creatures bite someone turns the person’s skin black. I don’t mean black like African; I mean a dull, solid, non-shiny, coal-like blackness. So even “black” people turned really black.

Anyway, my group was pretty good at “vampire”-slaying. Like I said, we were travelling around fighting these things. We ended up in a church, where there was a service going on. We were suspicious at first, because everyone there seemed to be acting like there weren’t vampire-zombie-creatures everywhere. But there also seemed to be no infected anywhere. When you were infected, you immediately turned—no waiting period. Just BOOM!—your skin turns black and you’re a creature.

So we took a break, sat there in the chapel while the church-folk were doing their thing.

And then there were suddenly creatures everywhere, and we suddenly kinda sucked at fighting them. And the church-folk weren’t any good either. So we were overcome, or at least I was, by the creatures. One of them bit me, and I turned.

I didn’t really feel any different. Usually the creatures were very aggressive and mean, but I didn’t feel that at all. I was just sort of there. Actually once I was turned, I think everyone else was turned too. Not like I was the last human standing, but they just overwhelmed us all at once, I suppose. So I guess there was no one to be aggressive towards. In fact, we creatures were all very “loving” toward each other. And by that, I mean there was suddenly an orgy. Yep, lots of charcoal-black vampire-zombie-creatures, all doin’ their thing. Yee-haw! (Actually there was no “Yee-haw”.  I don’t recall much sound at all at that point.)

And then suddenly that dream was over. That was disappointing, as it was just getting to the good part.

I don’t know if I woke up between the dreams. But they did seem to be distinctly separate dreams, not one dream that morphed into another.

-    -    -    -    -

Dream 2:

This one was set in a post-cataclysmic world, which is rough, but not quite as bad as a post-apocalyptic situation. It was a bit like that TV show Jericho, which I really liked and was sorry to see it end—cancelled. Boo!

Well, in the post-cataclysm, I was with some group trying to defend our town or neighborhood or territory, and there was another group—not sure if they were neighbors or more of a nomadic group—trying to get in and take our stuff. So that went on for a bit—you know, fighting at our make-shift battlements.

Then, toward the end of the fighting—we were definitely winning—I saw someone I know. She’s a singer who was in one show I did the last time I lived in Mississippi. I think she wasn’t actually with the main group we were fighting off. It seemed like she was just trying to get inside, maybe for protection or to join us. But we had strict rules that we couldn’t let anyone in. So, I ended up trying to keep her out and eventually fighting her.

And that was it...

Okay, yes, the fighting did lead to making out. (If that person is reading this...sorry. I didn’t mention that part.) And then I woke up before it went any further than that. I promise.

-    -    -    -    -

Well.

The clear implication of these two dreams is that I want to do some fighting and then I want to get it on. And yes, those two things are certainly missing from my life, and have been for a while.