I am writing letters today. After this *hopefully* short post, I am heading to the library and hand-writing a letter. Can “old school” even be a descriptor for that? I don’t know; I’m tired of that goddamn term. I’ve promised myself a letter-writing session for lunch, and I’m digging into my drawer of sugar before I head. Yum, gushers. That’ll do perfectly.

Miranda has some fantastic images on her site right now covering Istanbul, Spain and the like. Seeing them changed my day. And as far as postings go, it’s just kickass when a sleepy one surprises you with a new something tasty under the radar. I wish more did. I see that Seliot has been busy discovering power. I wonder what he’s discovering at Inprint. And I wish I wasn’t worried about these two, but gddmt, I am. What’s going on, guys? Send me an email.

I sent an email this morning to 10 girl”friends” in an attempt to get someone to go to the Nutcracker with me in Dec. Only one replied, then declined. Hours later, thinking back, I’m laughing right now at the realization that I must be a loser. No one wants to go with me! How funny.

Well, to start, today was a good day for LOTA. It’s become a rare occassion – yes, even among bloggers – that someone takes a moment, overcomes the tedium and constructs an original, clear and validated piece about something on their mind. If that’s not effective and intimate communication, I don’t know what is. I just respect that; the writing a personal essay thing. I don’t think those are easy. And I don’t think people take the time. This was a fantastic find too, btw.

Camping was great this weekend, heavily supported by the appropriate weather, “something blue” gifts from SOE, and the fantastic “being outdoors” equipment acquired by KO. I wasn’t sure how the weekend would go actually, as I have been going through some unfortunate thing recently, but he was fantastic company and bore through it, and I’m reluctant to talk about him here, but I appreciate the constant support…even though I know that with me, it is often a weary grasp.

So my hair is really short now. Like, 3 inches below my ears short, and brown to boot. The effect, though wanted, is a bit strange. Wondering who I am now, sort of strange. Noticing how I’m reacted to now, type of strange. Just thought I would go ahead and lay that one out there. I miss long blonde.

I’m noticing many cycles going on around me right this minute. One cycle is the re-emergence of an undermanaged, misapplied and sure-to-fail masked performance. Another is nostalgia, and all – and whatever – that entails. Another one is another One experiencing nostalgia. Connected to me, one I’m involved in. It’s just kind of like, hmmm. It’s always swirling, I guess.

Wish we still had that medica-, I mean, mediTation class, Oaklawn Superhero.

KO and I are going camping today. Heading out and driving north and not looking back and following the brisk November air. We’re embarking the ordeal in style, my friend. We’ve got the 3-room tent and the queen-sized air mattress and all kinds of clouds and pillows and good music and a few drugs and way too much stuff. It’ll be right nice.

De-brief when I return perhaps? Perhaps.
Check this out.
Have a great weekend.

Dude, WTF?
The events of this day have completely swung me off my axis. My breath is gone, my brain misfiring, the figures not computing. Thoughts not swirling, but escaping, eluding, allowing no real meaning. The karmic humbling has been so strange, just so without plausible interpretation. This will happen the rest of my life, I know, but I like to trick myself into the fallacy of having it handled. I am reminded today that I do not have it handled. It wasn’t Wayne who first said it, but it was Wayne who said it best:
I don’t know
How a man decides
What’s right for his own life;
It’s all a mystery.

My god, this mystery. I don’t wish it away, but I feel like Atlas today. Atlas Unshrugged, dear Ayn. But it rests on my chest instead of my shoulders, punishing but not teaching. Heavy and firm and unfurling in my breast, gripping for hours. ataque del pánico? A question? The question. that one.
What is it that I want? (gasp; no air) That I put myself towards (gasp; no lungs?!). How to do it, what drives those who do? How will I know? How do you know? WHEN will I know? How to do it cleanly, responsibly, smartly; with no ripples into the spheres of the others. No fallback, no burns on their hands for having been close to me. Clean like a clean knife slice.
Who can tell me?
All that bullshit.
Fkking, back again.

I waste years wondering how this war will undo itself. When I’ll decide which pole of my bi-poles is the me most satisfying. “Satisfying Me, The Insurmountable Challenge”.

[nodding] Yes, yes, yes, yes;
I know, I know, I know, I know.

But it will never be rectified; will it.
I’ll never know if I’ve made the right decision.

There was a time when this was such a personal, intimate experience for me. There was a time when communication here covered close to everything, when I took it past fear and laid it out there, and everyone else did too, and the result was rich and real and closer and intoxicating.

If you want a moment with me right now, close your eyes and listen to something I recently found that had been lost to me for a very long time. I’ve been listening to it all day.

Beautiful, weighted phrasing. I don’t even know how to do it anymore.

How to get a job at Google and become a millionaire like the rest of them

__________________________________________________________________
And I have to add something to my post from Nov. 4 – the very last thing I want to concede is that I completely underestimated the power of the conservative right. All that last week’s election – and my rant – really verified is what so many already knew, and I had just underestimated: 1.) that the conservative fundamentalist right is very strong and will elect a president if pandered to, and 2.) that America truly is Jesus Land.

I just really hadn’t realized just how true that is. I live in Texas and still didn’t know that so many had such staunchly conservative values. It’s just, wow.

Teleportation – engineering the vacuum or spacetime metric: the conveyance of persons or inanimate objects across space by altering the properties of the spacetime vacuum, or by altering the spacetime metric (geometry)z:

U.S. Air Force Takes a Look at Teleportation

I wish I could post these in their entirety here, but alas, I don’t have the room. Following are what I’ve been reading of late and are very close articulations of my thoughts. Hope you don’t mind the reading…besides; we could all use a little more reading.

“…This election was tipped because of an outpouring of support for George Bush by people who don’t just favor different policies than I do – they favor a whole different kind of America. We don’t just disagree on what America should be doing; we disagree on what America is…At one level this election was about nothing. None of the real problems facing the nation were really discussed. Mr. Bush’s base is pushing so hard to legislate social issues and extend the boundaries of religion that it felt as if we were rewriting the Constitution, not electing a president. It seemed that when I went to go vote, I showed up and the Constitutional Convention broke out…”

What I’ve been realizing more and more this year, completely to the chagrin of probably everyone in my family and even myself at times, is that I’m becoming more socially liberal, more religiously liberal, more politically liberal as each Rove-led day passes. And I’m not afraid of this anymore, I’ve finally realized that I’ve read more, taken more classes on the issues and know the policies more than most people I’ve had to defend myself against. No, I haven’t paid taxes for 10 or more years and I’m not presently raising a family, so my beliefs are fueled by education, youth and limited personal experience. But I believe in right and wrong, limitations and restraint, common decency, protecting the innocence of children. And I cannot tolerate ignorance. I cannot tolerate religious zeal and blind, emotion-rather-than-fact-based arguments. We might as well be illiterate – America has already given up on logic and reason.

This election was won by rhetoric instead of issues. It was validated by people allowing themselves to be convinced that unlinked historical occurrences were connected. It was pushed forward by the swallowing and complete acceptance of clouded truths and constantly re-worked explanations. I don’t believe that John Kerry was some incredible savior; I’m not saying that one candidate is a better person than the other. I do believe, however; that America has forgotten its own history of questioning the establishment – the very reason why we can and should be proud – and has instead adopted the paranoid and narrow mindthink of those we call our enemies.

All exceptions aside, America-the-greater needs to learn that we don’t have to like or relate to our president. So many couldn’t stand Clinton but are wishing for his soft and moderate hand now. What so few realize is the titanic gap between perception and reality. To illustrate, George Bush is perceived as the “Man of the Common People,” but his policies, statistically, reflect the trampling of the common people instead. It is the triumph of perception. When a friend of mine worked for the 1998 Gary Mauro campaign against then-moderate-governor George W. Bush, he asked the cleaning lady in his hotel room who she was voting for, to which her reply was George W. because they both go to church he seemed nice, etc.. Shaking his head, he replied, “Dear, if you’re working as a hotel cleaning lady, then you don’t need to be voting for G.W. He may appear to be like you, but open your eyes to whether he’ll ever do a thing for you.”

The kind of people who vote for Bush because he’s more relatable, because he talks like them and conveys family-based values like them, completely fail to realize that he’s life-threateningly underfunding the social programs that help them. That he instead funds tax breaks for corporations instead of raising the minimum wage. That he destroyed the livelyhood of the manufacturing sector in favor of the interests of the steel, transatlantic trade and oil lobbies. I absolutely understand the economics of making sure that big business is well supported and able to produce jobs and GDP – what I’m pointing out instead is America’s acceptance of the caste-based economic system and their desire to just go along with the guy who makes them feel like home. Performance isn’t fueling their votes – it’s the likability factor. The “he sounds like he’s from here” factor. The “he doesn’t look like some long-faced Lurch” factor.

Terrible or not, I’m beginning to not understand what’s so blasphemous about the perceived “democratic elite.” Why my surgeon brother attests to the ridiculousness of the well-heeled, upper-income Educated Class being so progressive that they could never relate to the working class American majority. Right now I’m saying, “who cares?” If the educated elite care more about helping the poor, funding health care and social programs, and striking down racism, sexism and hate crimes, who cares if they can relate to the upbringing of the people they’re helping? They’re the ones actually getting the work done; they’re the ones with the bleeding hearts. How many wealthy conservatives can technically relate to the poor either?

I’m not sure. What I do know is this – the man who gets the work done, who shows compassion in his policy rather than solely in his rhetoric – that man deserves my respect, well-heeled or urban-ghetto background or not. Show me that. And show me a moderate, on both sides of the aisle – for chrissake.

“…Karl Rove was right – Americans believe in the Virgin Birth than in Darwin’s theory of evolution…Which raises the question: Can a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution still be called an Enlightened nation? The secular states of modern Europe do not understand the fundamentalism of the American electorate. It is not what they had experienced from this country since its beginning. In fact, we now resemble those nations less than we do our putative enemies.”

And to end, a new favorite of mine; a short essay by Wayne Hale (this one is so worth it, believe me):
“...WE CHOOSE TO GO TO THE MOON
AND DO THE OTHER THINGS,
NOT BECAUSE THEY ARE EASY BUT BECAUSE THEY ARE HARD
BECAUSE THAT CHALLENGE IS ONE THAT WILL SERVE TO MEASURE THE BEST IN US
IT IS ONE WE INTEND TO WIN …” <--and that's not even my favorite part of this essay. So many good, emotive points produced.

Besides, I’m a rooter for the underdog anyway.

So I found a glossary of sorts from a co-worker friend of mine and decided to post here as an amusement. A shared amusement. Let me know if you’ve actually heard any of these, or any more phrases to add to the amusement. On one hand, the terms are silly and some are already dated references, but it all changes when you’ve actually heard someone use them, as I have.

Biphonal: Holding multiple phones to your ears or in front of you at the same time, as in cell phone and work phone, etc.
Drailing: E-mailing when drunk, or drunk e-mailing
E-mauling: Stalking someone via e-mail
Fatkins: Disciples of Atkins who have taken the “all the fat you can eat” idea to lunatic extremes (or for me, another nickname for my orange cat, Holly, who is sometimes called “Hollykins,” or “Kins,” so “Fatkins” fits in nice rightly)
GU: (pronounced “goo”) Acronym for geographically undesirable, as in: “Great guy and all, but totally GU…he lives outside the loop for chrissake.”
Guyatus: A hiatus from guys
Helicopter: A significant other who finds it necessary to hover around his or her “other” when in social situations
Karat Dangler: A woman who flaunts her engagement ring whenever possible, like some insecure bratty debutante
Lush Flush: The rosy hue you get in your cheeks after a few too many glasses of wine (as in Jay’s and my general lifestyle)
Mitin: Acronym for “more information than I needed”
Mouse potato: Our generation’s answer to the couch potato (or, Kelly since his smart acquisition of a new Apple laptop in exchange for his old eMachine from BestBuy)
Mousewife: A male housewife (um, don’t wanna potentially embarrass anyone here, but if someone makes your bed sometimes, does your laundry, dishes, all the grilling and has even scrubbed the bathroom once or twice, he might just be a fabulous mousewife)
Phone zit: that damn chin zit that results from spending time on the telephone
Spenny: Pricey; short for expensive. Can also use “spendy”
Stray: (my favorite) A heterosexual male who everyone thinks is gay, OR who can’t decide if he’s straight or gay as in, “He’s married, but I totally know he’s cruising AIM all day long.”
Teenile: Used to describe someone who is way too old for what he or she is wearing
Whore d’ oeuvre: Applies to both sexes…I’m sure you can figure this one out
Yellular: The loudness adopted in response to a bad cell phone connection, in the misguided hope that talking louder will improve the connection

And finally, one that I’ll go ahead and officially proclaim as the shared annoyance of the post-party 21st century (and a conversation I’ve had way too often with certain people linked on this blog):

Pizza: something bad for us and oftentimes even disappointing, but that we crave anyway b/c of some goddamn early memory when it impressed upon our minds that it was absolutely fantastic even though every single time we’ve wasted our money on it since the mid-to-late-nineties (save for maybe one time, like the ridiculous weekend of Superbowl 2003), it has completely disappointed (as described here). A cigarette, too, can be described as “pizza.”