Now back to our regularly scheduled rant

I couldn't believe it! After paddling down this fucking river for seven hours, I realized I had no idea exactly where I was. I was amazed, confused, and utterly pissed all at the same time. How the hell do you get lost on a river?!?! It's a line! With a beginning, and an end! As long as you're on the that line, how could you NOT make it to the end? And yet, here I sit in my aluminum canoe, three hours past the time I SHOULD have arrived at the dam, and I see none in sight. I was on a trip with five other friends, and they were going a little slow so I decided to paddle ahead a little. I noticed, about half an hour later that they hadn't caught up yet, so I pulled off and made lunch. I had no one to talk to, so I started arguing with my little radio. It looked kinda like the face of a bug, so I named it something bug-like. "Damn it Bob! Where are they? They should have been here by now!" Bob, of course said nothing. I knew it was a long way still to the dam, so I decided to just keep going, only more slowly this time. That's pretty much what led me to here.

I just came out of the woods, and now I'm looking across the valley. I should have been at the dam three hours ago, I can see for miles, and there's no dam. I casually mention to Bob, whose face resembles that of a bug, but I'd never tell him that, "I hope we weren't reading the map upside down." I paddle on for another hour or so. My radio didn't get any reception out here. That pissed Bob and I off big time. We're stuck in the middle of nowhere and we don't even have any music. Perfect! After another hour, Bob starts to lose it. "We're not going to make it! Where are we? We have no food, no water, and no one even knows we're out here!" I slap him. "Get a grip! We'll be fine! I have some trail mix, and we're sitting on a river, we've got plenty of water, dumbass!"

In the distance, I see a road. It looks like it comes down to the river. A livery pickup! I scream at Bob to paddle faster, and faster. We make it to the concrete slab, and jump out onto dry land. I look around: there should be an emergency phone somewhere. I find it and call the livery. My friends are looking for me. Stay put the man said. Bob and I chat until everyone arrived. "How did I miss the dam?" "We slowed down to pull off the river. There was a portage we were supposed to make. We assumed you had already gone through." Bob looks over laughing at me. "Shut up!" My friends give me a strange look...

And now for something completely different!

For me, winter was always the most romantic time of year. When it gets cold out, images are conjured up in me of busy mall in the evening with lights everywhere, a warm feeling inside, and a light snow falling. To me, that's heaven. So imagine my surprise when I experienced that same feeling of magic at the end of June, one summer.

My new boyfriend and I were taking a trip to Ohio to get the belongings I had left after moving to Colorado the summer before. He was a handsome, thirty-something Colorado native, and I was a Midwesterner, just this side of jailbait. He had lived here all his life, except for a six year vacation in LA. We set out on Wednesday morning, hoping to make it through Nebraska (we were taking I80 most of the way) before we stopped for the night. As the day wore on, we passed the time listening to music I had never heard, and getting to know each other.

As evening fell, I saw the familiar sights of summer; campfires in the distance, a train rolling by. Then, one by one, the fireflies began to dance in the sky. For me, this was a comforting sight, yet one unworthy of pulling my attention away from my new love. For him, though, this was quite a wonder to behold. After nearly going off the road a couple times, we pull into a rest area for a better look.

Out in the field beyond the small isle of civilization, the fireflies dotted the sky like a curtain of lights on Broadway. Even I had never seen so many at once. He stood there in the dark, completely mesmerized by the sight, a virgin experience for him. I took his hand and led him away from the lights, into the field, and we sat down to watch the show. We sat for hours, until the moon came up. By then, I was resting my head on his chest, absentmindedly humming a song I had heard earlier for the first time. I didn't know the words, so my boyfriend started to sing, and we danced in the moonlight.

Just found this on another site

Thought it was interesting...

"He who is willing to sacrifice a little freedom for a little security deserves neither."
-Benjamin Franklin

Here's Your Sign!

My god what a day. My job sucks. I couldn't sleep, so I got up to make a sandwich. My mind was plagued by the events at work. How could people be so stupid! I work in a printing place inside an office supply place. When you walk up to the counter the first thing you see is a Xerox Doc 12, a 265stm and off to the side are three 545's. Yet, with all this irrefutable evidence that we are, in fact, a copy place, some guy walks up to my counter, seeming to be an educated man by the look of his suit and brief case, and asks me "Do you all make copies here?" I stood for a moment, completely dumbfounded, then found myself about to say "Nope! Xerox just sends us really kick ass paperweights!", but I thought better of it and just said "yeah."

Not to be outdone, my mom calls me up to tell me why I need therapy. She said "Your brain works like a computer, and sometimes you need to defragment your brain." I snicker. "Mom, how does that defragmenting work?"

"During the day all of your memories get out of place, and when you sleep, they get put back where they belong. Sometimes you need help with that, if the day was really traumatic."

At this point I'm completely astounded by my mom's lack of reality. "Ok, first off, that's not how a computer works, and most certainly not how your brain works!" She gets pissy and hangs up.

These are the things occupying my thoughts as I look around absentmindedly while eating my sandwich. My eyes happen upon the window, and, oh my god, there are frogs on lily pads floating by. Have I lost it? Is this the complete nervous breakdown everyone keeps telling me about?! What's in this jelly? Oh, no I know what's going on. This is God getting me back for all of my mean thoughts today. Or, more likely, Attila the Christian (my mom) decided to pray for me to realize that her ill-researched analogy was correct. Yeah, I bet that's it. With that comfort in mind I finished my sandwich and went to bed, now completely exhausted.

My Caretaker

I woke up this morning, feeling like an extra in "Night of the Living Dead: The morning After" and stumbled to the shower. Forty-five minutes later, I'm drying off, and the door swings open. Sitting in the doorway, with a pathetic "feed me, I'm starving, you asshole" expression on her face is my cat. She squeaks a light meow at me and runs to her food dish, purrs at it, then runs back. I feed her; she stares at her bowl for a second, and then shoots me a "you're kidding, right?" Look. I say "shut up" and she starts eating, contented that I do, in fact, love her. So it goes every morning.

In the evening, I come home, walk in the door, and she is sitting on the sofa looking like an axe murderer just walked in and found her. She has the look of a terrified defendant who KNOWS he's getting the death penalty, and she runs into the study, hiding, well in sight, in a corner. This isn't the first time she's been neurotic like this. I made the blunder of buying her one of those mechanical litter boxes. Oh my GOD! What a nightmare! She goes in it for the first time, and ten minutes later the rake cleans the litter. She heard the noise, gave it the most indignant look I've ever seen from man OR beast, SMACKS the box a couple times, then slinks off looking dejected. It got so bad she'd eventually sit in the box for hours just to keep it from going off (this was before she learned how to open doors, so she couldn't come in the bathroom and watch ME go, yet).

Now her vice is rubbing her face on everything. EVERYTHING!!! I'm sitting on my bed reading, she takes the opportunity to scratch her face with the dust cover, unless it's supper time, then she starts chewing on the pages. I open the curtains, and she tries futilely to rub her cheek on them. That's why my boyfriend and I changed her name. She was named Famón when I got her, now we call her Mrs. Whatzit. That's who she reminds us of, this quirky little bag woman who appears out of nowhere and does weird things in "A Wrinkle in Time". She take good care of me though, making sure I'm up on time (to feed her), ensuring I get enough exercise (chasing her to her food dish), and even making me get enough sleep (by sitting on my bed in strategic places so I can't get up without disturbulating her). So caring, and understanding.

Affluent Stupidity

"Have I offended you in a past life?"

"No," she said, annoyed.

"Would you like me to have?!" I countered.

She gets pissy and walks off. I HATE people like that. Nothing seems to please them, convinced of their own stuffy superiority. This one I encountered at the bank. I was there because they once again proved that they can't add. Now, if they were still doing this by hand, I'd be a little more forgiving. But we're talking about the ability to punch numbered keys in a meaningful order! You're even TOLD what to type! Yet these slobbering life forms, just this side of the food chain up from ameobas, seem to fuck this monotonous task up more often than they change clothing. I stand there in line for the better part of an hour, while some old man insists on depositing his entire collection of rare pennies, dating through the decade of the 1980s, waiting to be told that the bank doesn't refund fees due to bank error. I leave after much arguing with this woman.

Another wonderfully cheerful and carefree Monday! I somehow pass the time before I have to go to work. I haven't had to work all weekend, so when I arrive, there's a huge pile of word searches and campy tropical trivia, courtesy of the "Have Fun Committee"--which is essentially what all the student council and drama club queens do in the real world. They insist that, by doing something I was bored with by fourth grade, they can make this a better work environment. I have an idea! Let's all get together for slumber parties, roast marshmallows, sing camp songs, and drool over Josh Hartnett! WHEEEEEE!

Then the phone calls start. I'm plagued by people who insist that their customer's social is only 6 digits (sorry darling, it doesn't work that way) or customers so fucking paranoid (thanks Dubya) that, at the mere mention of giving their social security number to another living soul, they get bitchy, saying, "You can't make me, I don't need this card anyway!"

That's NOTHING compared to the store "ass"ociates themselves! If they're not lying about seeing a student ID, they're trying to use their own Visa for the poor, underpriviledged housewife, who, as it turns out, already has delinquent accounts with every other division my bank services. Beautiful! Then there's the associates (the true Ass. of the Month) that interrupt everything you say, then hang up in the middle of your decline speech. Yummy!

Then there's school. School seems to be mostly populated by a whole new breed of idiot. Here I have to deal with Psych teachers who proclaim that, "According to Freud, since you're male, your mother has a subconscious sexual attraction to you, and vice-versa." Hey sweetheart! Freud also did enough cocaine to kill a small state. I'd pick South Carolina. They're just weird.

My mother still takes the cake. In the early days it was the typical hippie drugs. She was cool then, laid back (placid) and tolerant (unable to give a shit). But since she hurt her back, she's been on anti-inflammatory meds. Then she started bipolar-fixing meds, then meds to counter out their side effects. Now she's on pre-emptive Alzheimer's meds. When she's even coherent she gets high on God. What a winner! The perfect role model! When you're too fucked up to be responsible for anything it's OK! Jesus makes it ALL better--He can make your problems go away!

Oh well, I've survived this long. But if something happens (like Bush stealing the election again), there's always Canada!