Estate of the Union

Or so it seems because it feels like it's going to be a post-mortem. I'm just dreading it. I'm afraid that tonight Obama is going to cave to the Right for no reason as there's nothing to be gained. They won't play ball, so all it will do is piss off his base and the Repuglicans will find myriad points  over which to criticize him anyway. They ALWAYS will. He cannot do right to them and he should glory in that fact. They are the ones who are perennially in the vest pocket of Big Business and the White House has GOT to find a way of making clear to the idiotic American public that that is the case and has been for a long, long-ass time. It has to be a way that is undistortable and a way that can't be turned inside out by anyone as craven as La Palin or the Beck Shriek-O-Matic or any of the people who actually do their thinking for them.

Not That It Should Come As Any Surprise

Not to anyone who knows me at least. Or to me. I always start out strong and then ...poot. But there you go. 'Tis a hellish road and a well-paved one. I am so damned blue over politics, the weather, my pathetic shell of a carcass that I can hardly even stand to face it in black and white. I guess I could change the palette to something more winsome! Pink! Orange! I am going with my usual attitude of gratitude and doing my very best to do the upstream swim as best I can but it feels like progress is mind-bogglingly slow and the slope is terrible steep. The less I accomplish, the worse I feel and the worse I feel the less I accomplish. So it's a self-perpetuating cycle but pain is a wearing, draining, debilitating thing and it takes on a life of its own. Maybe I should name it, make a voodoo doll and make with the pincushion thing. It couldn't possibly hurt. Me.

I have been going around saying that we will be having an early Spring. I have no scientific or empirical evidence for this whatsoever and it's just that I feel like if I say it enough it will happen. And it will help. Being out with Lord Puppington several times a day has gotten me out, at least, but it will be much better when it means getting out with the crocuses instead of among the frozen pee drifts. Robert Frost would never say pee drifts, would he? Stopping By Pee Drifts on a Snowy Evening. I don't think I've missed my calling.

That's it for now. I've typed too much on ridiculous FB today about the excrement with a pulse that is Andre Bauer and Canadians and eco-coops. Tomorrow I should do it here instead of there. I can be more acid here anyway, since I'm pretty darned sure I'm typing for myself for the greatest part. Which is fine. Keep me out of trouble for the day at least.

Pure as the Driven Snow Or How to Mess with Your 6-Year-Old's Head

Well, I just watched a nifty little doc on the cultural phenom of Purity Balls. The gist of it is that father's take their daughters, ages ranging from 5 to @ 17, to these lavish balls where they make goo-goo eyes at each other and the daughters swear before the crowd and a MASSIVE cross that they will save even their first kiss for marriage. As far as I know, it's an exclusively Christian ritual and man, oh, Manischewitz, is it crazy. Just the sprinkles on the top of this wacky sundae is that the girls' gowns seemed to me to embrace a lingerie theme. Hold me closer, Daddy!

This movement was founded, and is led by, a Colorado preacher with a really frightening toupee and five nearly identical daughters who seem to have arrived in two lots. He is fond of holding their precious faces in his cupped hands and telling them what their names mean. I adore my daughter but have never found the slightest urge to do this. Besides, her name has nothing to do with personal duties toward god or being a leader of men (Oh, wait, that was his one son!), so that kind of ruins the moment. Anyway, aside from the fact that the whole thing reeks of a money-making scheme to me, what with the ballroom and the printed covenant  and the rehearsals, choreography, new dress every year, the inevitable guides and inspirational readings and such. It just stunk out loud to me. And there was something deeply creepy and unsettling about seeing a 20-year-old  very attractive young woman who still lived at home, had never been on a date or even been so much as kissed by or held hands with a boy, stand in front of a crowd of fathers and daughters and wax rhapsodic about the wonders of her father even as tears rolled down her tanned and rested face. Brrrrrr. It was icky. I think my father is a man among men and I am deeply grateful to him for more things than I care to or am able to list, including him treating me like his flesh and blood from the day we met, but I don't feel a need to put on a prom gown and tiara, grab a mike and tell a ball room full of paying guests just what makes him and our relationship so darned grand. I'll tell him, thanks.

There's a disturbing amount of Princess imagery here as well. Now I am the first to admit that I am an anti-Princess bigot. I am. In general, I think the whole Princess thing is bad for little girls and I avoided it like the plague for my own. I like women who go to work, rescue themselves and live in something resembling a democracy or, if you prefer a fairy tale, a meritocracy. I am uncomfortable with castles and those who live in them and having actually lived in a country where there WAS a monarchy, if a powerless one, for a few years, I have more experience with this than the Yank who's only been to Disneyworld. Vast amounts of land and lucre that you had nothing to with but getting born to the right womb does not seem right to me. And I don't like the whole hanging around waiting for the Prince, waking up when he kisses you, all that malarkey. Cut your hair and come downstairs, girlfriend!

I've got more to say on this but I want to post something. Consistency is the goal here. Well, one of them.

No More Blood or Treasure...Nope.

Alrighty then. I have made up my mind about it. Get out of Afghanistan. Now. Everybody out of the pool! They don't want us there and there is no point in us being there. Karzai is a corrupt bastard who would keep us there forever as his handmaidens. His brother is the biggest pusherman in town, for heaven's sake. That makes Billy Carter look like a pretty good deal, don't it? It's just a great idea to build schools for girls and all of that. It is, I love it. But if you're dealing with people who will marry those girls to old men for cattle and money, I think you are trying to overcome some cultural obstacles that Hershey bars won't touch. I just do. There is nothing to be gained for us there. We do NOT have a crucial national interest there. It will never be truly stable or have a stable centralized government. That is not how that place works. They are not us, don't want to be and will never be. Our real problem in that part of the world is Pakistan. And though it's right handy to have a place to act as a launch pad for our drones, we are paying much, much too high a price for it. One million dollars a year for each and every soldier. That is an obscenity on any scale. This is not a necessary war or even an advisable one. We need to take our marbles and go home. And it's not like Iraq either. We didn't break it and now we have to stay and fix it. It's been broken for ages. Literally ages. So let's go. Before the accidental killing of civilians fuels any more Muslim extremist ire. Before another American gets killed. Before another few hundred million that could be better spent in any of ten thousand ways gets squandered on carnage and violence. Before the president we elected with such hope in our hearts leaves us any more bereft and disillusioned. Before another day goes by.

Well, it almost HAS to be better...I think.

Last year was an unmitigated disaster from Day One and neither a giant grand piano nor a 16 ton weight have dropped on my head as yet this morning, so things are looking up! And I HAVE been out. Rush Limbaugh is in the hospital and I am openly wishing for a slow and painful demise for him, so I also have a goal already this year. See? Positive things to look forward to. My shrink would be proud.

And I've decided I'm going to keep a blog to keep me from getting into ridiculous spats on Facebook and such, which I've been doing and which is so bloody stupid that it's like JHS all over again but with even more spelling errors. I pushed 2009 over the cliff by having a tiff with some turd I didn't even know over the 3 Stooges, for god's sake. And I didn't even tell him that i think only idjits watch the 3 Stooges. I STILL don't know why he flamed me to begin with. I DO know why I flamed him. Anyway, I have decided that i am going to try very hard not to waste emotional energy on numnutzes like him that i do not even know or wish to, especially in public. So there we are. My first post of the new year. Let's see if I make it to my birthday. I know myself. I'm going to try. I really am.