Reflections on a Birthday

Feeling pretty blue this holiday season. Again I just want the holidays to slip silently by so that I can wake up and discover it’s March. I never used to get depressed around the holidays, but ever since Daddy died, all the joy just seems to have run right out of them. And this year, the pressure from television commercials and other marketing outlets to consume, to buy buy BUY every single minute of the day is really overwhelming. Not only because I don’t have a job, so I’m trying not to spend too much money, but because the country is in a recession (I suspect actually a depression), and there’s no sign of things getting better, so it seems foolish to me to spend money like everything is hunkydory when it really isn’t. I can’t help but feel it’s a nefarious plot on the part of corporations everywhere to return us to the days of the company store and indebted servitude. But I’m sure that’s just the paranoia talking, so let’s move right along…

The last year’s been a weird one. It started out pretty well, but things kinda went down hill fairly quickly. I spent 4 months working in a toxic environment, on a show that really did a number on my psychological well-being. Most of the people I worked with were very nice, it’s just the subject matter was so energy-sucking as to be destructive. Never before have I worked on something so many people were thrilled to get their outdates for. It made good television, but the behind-the-scenes machinations were truly horrible. I actually went back to therapy over it. It got easier to deal with once my therapist helped me identify which buttons were getting repeatedly stabbed, but then I finished the show and headed back to Texas, where the person I’d been reminded of at work could stab those buttons in person. And stab them she did…with a vengeance. I came home feeling really awful. About myself and that relationship. It’s tough to come face to face with unpleasantness you always knew was there but were able to tell yourself did not exist, only to discover that yes, it really did, and there is really no escaping it. I was really depressed for about 2 months after returning home, and the feeling of not belonging just seems to persist as a sort of low-level hum through my days. I am an outcast in my family. I’m trying to come to grips with that and find a way for it not to matter, but it’s proving difficult to get over. The things I’ve accomplished in the last year seem worthless without a family to share them with, and I despise myself for caring that no one is patting me on the back for my achievements. Why the hell do I need for someone else to be proud of me? I miss my grandparents, who would be thrilled with what I’m doing. And I miss my dad, who I think would also be excited at the fact I am publishing my own magazine, even if he didn’t really care about the subject matter. It’s not fair that I finally come to an understanding about my dad only after he has gone. But I guess that’s life. No use crying over spilt milk. Yada cubed.

I’m grateful for Ty, in a way I hadn’t been for a long time, and I think he feels a gratitude for me, as well. We have leaned on each other a lot this year. We will never “get” each other, but it’s nice to banish the unsteadiness which marked our previous years together. He has been extremely supportive of my efforts to publish; were it not for him and Nicole (and her husband Erik), I think I’d still be drifting aimlessly through life. I’m so glad Nicole had this idea and brought me in on it. Every moment of it is a labor of love and gives me the feeling I am accomplishing something with my life, at last.

Now all I have to do is figure out how to make it self-sustaining.

I’m worried I’m spending all my money and will have to go back to struggling. I do not want to do that. It’s miserable. So I really, REALLY need a job.

Today is my birthday. I turn 48. 48 is nuts. I’m not kidding, 48 is insane. I do not feel 48. What the hell kind of number is that? I am almost 50. Half a freaking century. I can remember being 7 and thinking I’d never be 21. I remember a Girl Scouts ad on tv that touted where the GSA would be in the year 2000 and calculating how long that was and how old I’d be and thinking that it was so far away as to be impossible to achieve. And now it’s been over 11 years past that, and I’m 48, and it feels like 25. It was the blink of an eye from high school to now. From Star Wars to now. For some reason, I measure everything in terms of how long ago Star Wars was. And Star Wars was 34 years ago. How the hell is that possible? I was so enraptured by that movie, so blown away by it, that my brother and I slept out on the trampoline that night and fell asleep staring up at the sky, imagining we could see far away space battles and robots in search of their prior masters while a rebellion hung in the balance. With laser beams. It was awesome. And I was 13. 1977. 1980, Empire. 1983, Jedi. I measured everything by movies for decades. I loved movies beyond all measure. I wanted to grow up and make them. It’s kind of funny to me now that when most people dream of working in film or television, their parents tell them they’ll need something to fall back on, a realistic career goal, something to pay the rent. And me, my fallback job IS television. It’s the thing I go back to when I can’t find a job doing something else. My life seems to have a knack for irony. I don’t go to movies so much anymore, but I still associate events in my life with the movies that were out at the time, during the years I still went to movies. I saw a LOT of them, and I saw them over and over. Movies were magic. And they promised life could be, too.

I’ve decided I’m just going to tell people I’m 50 from now on. I don’t look it, so that should really freak them out. And they’ll all go, “Wow, you don’t look it,” and think to themselves, “Gee, she looks great.” What the hell; it’s only 2 years away. May as well get used to the number, right? Jeez. I thought 40 was depressing. Little did I know. It wouldn’t be so bad if you felt the number you are, but I really don’t. So it’s freakish to me that it got here. And that there are more to go, besides. I am now closer to 75 than I was to the year 2000 when I found it so impossible to believe I could ever live so long. I’m almost closer to 80. And that just freaked me out to type and read. Holy crap. I will be 80 one day not so very far away. It’s not impossible. It’s not incomprehensible. It will happen. But it still freaks me out. I hope it doesn’t suck.

Crazy Loves Me

Some people attract great opportunities. Some attract money. Others have more than their fair share of good luck or friends.  Know what’s attracted to me?

Crazy people.

*sigh*

So, I head over to Trader Joe’s tonight to get stuff for dinner (swordfish & garlic herbed mashed potatoes).  It was about 7:30pm, so the parking lot, which is pretty much always an obstacle course of epic proportions on accounta how really badly laid out and too small/inadequate it is, was particularly full of activity of the pedestrian and vehicular sort.  I couldn’t park on the far side, where I usually do, so I ended up making a full circuit and coming back around to a spot I’d seen when I pulled in, which was opposite the place where I usually park, which had a motorcycle in it.  I noticed it had a motorcycle in it because like I said, that’s where I usually park.  Since there were so many people pulling out and pulling in and meandering up the center of the driveway like it was a sidewalk, I was driving pretty slowly.  More slowly than I usually drive through a parking lot, but that’s not unusual for that particular parking lot – my speed is usually such that pedestrians can easily keep up with me without even thinking about breaking a sweat.  There were a few empty spots on the right, but I hate parking on the right, and I could see the open spot that had been there on my left when I drove in was still there, so I figured I’d just pull in there, no problem.

Can you see where this might be going?

I get to the spot, which had some sort of largish automobile to the left side of it.  My memory of it is big and white, like an SUV, but it couldn’t have been an SUV, because if it was, I would not have been able to see peripheral motion just as I started my turn into the space.  I did see it, so I hit my brakes as this frigging huge motorcycle surges through the space and out in front of my car.  And I do mean surge.  As in leap.  Burst.  Not some nice slow, I’m driving through a parking spot illegally, so maybe I should be careful in case no one sees me doing that, but a race out of the gates like someone had just blown a starter horn.

And then he stops, about 6′ from my car, and proceeds to stare me down.

Now folks, I am not a bitchy person, despite what my blog entries and tweets might sometimes lead a reasonable person to surmise.  So I did not think, “What, asshole?!” My reaction to his staredown was actually one of, “Huh.”  Then I think, “Oh, maybe he thinks I’m going to keep going straight, despite the turn of my wheels, so he’s waiting for me.”  So I point to myself and then the space, and wait.

And he keeps staring me down.

So I repeat my gesture, still nicely, despite my suspicion that this might be something other than a miscommunication, on accounta the fact that he’s very stonefaced in his staredown, and I think there’s something else going on.  Maybe he wants to repark his bike.  But no, if that’s what he was doing, why pull out of the space?  Nope, he’s leaving. So why the hell is he dishing me attitude?  IS he dishing me attitude?  Maybe he’s just not very bright.  Sweep finger from me to space.  Wait.

He slams his finger down at me in this huge sweeping arc, leaning forward on the bike and stabbing it at me.

Inside my car, I mouth, “What?”

Leaning forward further, he starts yelling at me, one word at a time. “You. Slow. Down.”  Stabbing his finger at me for emphasis on every word.  “You are driving WAY too fast.”

Folks, I have a big problem with people who fuck up and then blame it on other people, especially when the blamee in question is me, and the blaming is being done publicly, loudly, and drawing stares.  But I learned on the last tv show that I worked on that yelling back at a blamer is not conducive to either communication or clearing one’s name, and in the airport coming back from DFW last month, I learned from the lady next to me at the gate that if you speak calmly but firmly to jerks, they tend to backdown, so I say to him out my half-open window, very calmly, “I was not driving too fast. You pulled out of that space illegally.  Now move so I can park.”

Apparently, this particular jerk did not get the memo on calm, firm response.  He upped the ante  and starts screaming at the top of his lungs about how I was driving too fast and I need to learn to drive, that I’m dangerous, etc.  To which I reply when he finally takes a breath, “I was not driving too fast. You are breaking the law. Now get out of my way, idiot.”

Granted, the idiot part was gratuitous, but I was beginning to lose patience.  He sits up on the bike and goes, “What did you call me?”

To which I reply, still in calm, measured tones – maybe even moreso, since he’s clearly very dim, “I called you an idiot. Move.”

At this point, he backs up a little, turns his wheel toward me and starts walking his bike in my direction, at which point I actually think to myself, “Oh jeez, here we go again,” and consider rolling my half-open window all the way up.  I also note that he is not going to be able to clear the front end of my car, and that yes, he really is an idiot.  Then I realize he’s not trying to clear my car, and that the reason he’s concentrating so thoroughly on the front wheel of his bike is because he’s actually walking his bike into my car.  So I mash the brake down as hard as I can (to make sure my car does NOT move forward), right about the time he bounces his bike off of my bumper, rolls backward about a foot and then does it again, actually jolting my car both times, and then starts pointing again and yelling, “YOU HIT ME!  YOU HIT ME!”  He the proceeds to look around the parking lot and scream, “SHE HIT ME! SHE HIT ME! SHE HIT ME!”

I look around at all the people with mouths hanging open watching this display, roll my window down the rest of the way and say, “I did not hit you, you freak.  You walked your bike into my car. What is WRONG with you, you psychopathic weirdo?”  Only now I’m really starting to freak out, because it occurs to me that while there are tons of witnesses to this little episode, if no one speaks up, I could be in some serious trouble*.

“YOU HIT ME! SHE HIT ME!” He starts craning his neck and stands on tiptoe, looking around the parking lot. “WHERE’S THE SECURITY GUARD?! SHE HIT ME!”

To which a woman walking towards us says, very calmly, “She did not. I saw the whole thing.”

“SHUT UP! I’M NOT TALKING TO YOU. HEY, SECURITY, SHE HIT ME!”

I look over at the security guard and say, “I did not hit him. This guy is crazy.”

* I just realized I should have gotten his license plate number so I could call the cops, just in case.  Damn it.  Why do I always forget to do that?  *sigh*

Meanwhile, the guy on the bike has started walking his bike past me toward the security guard.  As he goes past my window and tells the guard, “You need to talk to her,” I see he has little black, skull-shaped buckles on the black leather sidesaddles on the back of his bike.  As if.  I pull past him and into the parking spot, roll up my window, gather my purse, and open my door, since I see the guard talking to him.  Somewhere in there, I’m conscious of the woman who called his b.s. shaking her head and maybe calling him a liar to the security guard. I’m not sure, because now I’m shaking like crazy.  I can see the security guard shaking his head and pointing repeatedly at the exit, telling the guy to leave.  Which he finally does.  I get out of my car and thank the security guard, who admonishes me that people are crazy, and I shouldn’t have spoken to him.  I try to thank the lady, but she’s irritated she had to deal with it and shakes me off and goes inside.  A young couple in tie-dyes wait for me on the front sidewalk and ask “What was that all about?”  I’m like, did you see that, and they’re like yeah, but what was his problem?  The girl sees I’m shaking like crazy and holds my hand, then they both tell me they’re glad I’m okay, that there are some seriously crazy people in this world, and hug me.  We all say take care and have a good night, and part ways.

And that, my friends, is how my life rolls way more often than I’d really like.   But after that, I had to go to another store, and I saw Beau Bridges, who was very nice when I told him I really admire him.  So maybe karmicly, it evens out, and I won’t ever have to deal with that pscycho and his motorcycle again.

Psst! Hey, you!

Once, when I was in the record store when I was 18 (back in the olden days, the place where the music lived was called a record store, because music came on these black vinyl disks big as today’s large-size pizzas called “records”)(pizzas were bigger then), I was looking through the rock & roll albums, and while I’m doing that, I hear, “Psst!  Hey, pssssst!”  So I freeze and kinda glance over to my right, towards the sound, and without moving my head that way, because I’d seen movies, darn it, and no good thing every started with “Psst!” in a public place, and there’s this older guy in a white Levi’s denim jacket, standing about 5′ away from me, pretending to thumb through the albums while he leans toward me, making ever-intensifying “Psst!” noises.

So I whisper, “What?” out of one corner of my mouth, and he looks around the store real quickly and then leans over and hisses, “Wanna buy some tickets to The Who?  I got two.”

Now, instantly, I think two things.  One is “heck, yeah,” because I was 18, about to turn 19, and it was The Who’s first farewell tour, and they were going to be playing on my birthday, and what 18-soon-to-be-19-year-old does not want to see The Who on her birthday during their big farewell tour? Especially when they are one of the coolest bands out there (what? they were at that time, shut up), and Roger Daltrey is freaking hawt.  And the other is that The Who is sold out, and those are probably some pretty expensive tickets.

At this point, my friend Barbara comes meandering over, stands next to me on my left, looks down at the albums in front of her, and says to me out of the side of her mouth, “What’s going on?  Is that guy getting creepy on you?”  To which I whisper no, and fill her in.  She asks me well, how much are they, so I say to the guy, out of the other corner of my mouth, because now I know we’re dealing with scalped tickets here, and scalping is illegal – “How much?”  Then I sorta clench my teeth, try not to grimace in anticipated pain, and wait.

And he goes, “$40.”

Which was face value for the tickets.

So now I drop all pretense of sideways mouth talking and not making eye contact and turn to fully face the guy and go, “40 bucks?!?”  And he freaks and does that quick look around and moves 2 album widths down from me and hisses, “Yes!”  To which I reply, “Why are we whispering?”

At this point, he pauses for a moment, and I can see the gears turning up in his head, and he goes, “Let’s step outside.”  So we do. And I’m all, “You realize $40 is face value for the tickets, right?” And he says yes.  And I say it’s only scalping if you’re selling them for more than you paid, and he goes, “Oh.” (beat) “Do you want them?”  I look at Barbara, and she looks at me, then we both turn to the guy as one and go, “YES!”

Which is how I ended up at The Who’s farewell tour, sitting behind a column as far back as you could possibly get, freezing my ass off in the Cotton Bowl in freaking December, in a sleet storm on my birthday, while back at my house, a kegger was in full swing…but that part’s another story.  I was just thinking of this one because of the fundraising tweet I dropped on twitter tonight.  So now you know the story behind,

“Psst! Hey, kid! Yeah, you! Over there by the Van Halen records. Got any milk money you aren’t using? http://5x5printing.chipin.com/print-5×5“

:)

The most unbelievably awesome commercial ever.

Cats with thumbs. Brace yourself. :)

Operation Swift Kick

WARNING:
While I do not like to use vulgar or foul language on this blog, the subject at hand fills me with a rage that makes it inordinately difficult to stay calm and erudite. I also find that sometimes a little vulgarity is necessary to adequately communicate the level of bile one feels. So there’s a little vulgarity in this blog entry. Sorry about that.

About 3 years ago, a supremely boneheaded misfit known as The Ferret posted a little bout of asshattery dubbed the Open Source Boob Project on his blog (the original post has since been deleted and reposted after seeming to have been sanitized at least in part to spin it more positively), all about how he and others at a particular con (or 2) had decided that it was perfectly okay to ask total strangers to touch their tits, and that women should not only not be insulted or made to feel like valueless pieces of shit about this, oh no, we should all feel honored and revered because some fucking dumbass wanted to touch our mammaries, and that in no way did the whole thing in any way color the world in a way detrimental to all women. I mean, gee, men never have problems understanding where sexual boundaries lay, so this sort of crap could never cause problems for other women, right? What could possibly go wrong with spreading the word that it’s totally okay to go up to random women in the world and ask them if you can grope their tits or ass or crotch? Wouldn’t that just make a perfect fucking world of wonder? What could possibly go wrong?!!!

As you can see, this still pisses me off, years later. Not only because I’m a girl in a male-oriented world full of dicks, but because in my comparatively short life, I have been subjected more times than I can count to jerks who felt it was perfectly acceptable to grope my person or comment on my ass or breasts, and thought I should consider that bullshit a compliment. And I wanted to punch every single one of them. I did punch some of them, but when you’re at work, your employer tends to frown on the fact that you slugged a guy at the bar or table or across the desk, so you generally have to grit your teeth and act like it didn’t bother you, while the dillweed in question gets a pass and is able to pat himself on the back for being able to pad his frail and fragile ego and the need to fuel his own powerlessness in the world by fucking with someone even less powerful than he. I realize all men are not jerks, but so many of them are, that they sometimes ruin it for the whole bunch, at least in my estimation.

Anyhow, tonight, the OSBP came up again on the interwebz, and along with it, something called the Open Source Swift Kick to the Balls Project (OSSKBP). That was written by a girl named Misia on her livejournal on April 22, 2008, and it’s hilarious. It’s since been deleted, but I was able to find a reposting of it, and I’m reposting it here, because I think it makes a valuable social commentary, not just on the asshattery involved in thinking it’s okay to reduce a woman to her sex organs and that she should be perfectly fine with that, but also for its comment on the way society looks at women in general and sexual predation of them in particular.

It’s sharp, well-written, funny (at least if you’ve read the OSBP), pointed, and probably not a little poignant for some of us. Props, Misia. You freaking rule.

A Modest Proposal
As we all know, many women long to give a swift kick in the balls to some male person or other. Yet all too often women are prohibited from doing so.

Sometimes this is due to our culture’s repressive attitudes toward female violence or because of societal pressure for women to behave in “ladylike” and feminine ways. At times women must censor themselves from administering a good solid boot to the greater masculine crotch due to historically justified fear of reprisal. At yet other times it is nothing more or less than men’s self-serving, self-glorifying attitudes toward their precious little patriarchal testicles that lead them to cravenly avoid supporting women’s emotional and political expression.

All in all, we live in a culture that routinely prohibits women this useful and healthy outlet for the outrage that almost every women eventually feels as a result of living in a sexist patriarchal society. Indeed, we live in a culture which punishes women for even thinking or talking about expressing their rage in this way.

This must change, and men, who after all have an obligation to help redress thousands of years of unearned patriarchal privilege, also have a moral obligation to help solve this problem.

To this end, we propose a community-based Open Source Swift Kick to the Balls Project.

Like other Open Source projects, the Open Source Swift Kick to the Balls Project (OSSKBP) relies on a wide pool of volunteers working together for the common good.

The Project has very simple parameters and it basically works like this:

Men who are open to being given a swift kick in the balls need do nothing. Women will simply assume that any man not clearly indicating his position vis-a-vis being kicked in the balls with an approved OSSKBP badge or pin is open to being kicked in the balls, as any progressive, free-thinking, feminist man ought to be, by any woman who wishes to do so.

However, we also recognize and affirm that not all men will be so willing to serve. Therefore the OSSKBP provides two other options.

1. Men who would like to be asked for permission before a woman administers one or more swift kicks to their balls shall wear the offical OSSKBP “Ask First Pin” at all times. This is a black lapel pin with a lavender question mark on it.

Because of the serious and comprehensive respect with which women’s desires vis-a-vis having their bodies touched by others are uniformly greeted in our culture, women will sometimes abide by any given Ask First Pin wearer’s stated preference about getting a kick in the balls at the time that he is asked. At other times, however, women may make their own decisions as to whether or not to give him a quick kick in the nuts regardless of the male’s expressed preference. Fair’s fair.

2. Men who do not wish to be kicked in the balls at all must wear a large visible official “No Kicks, Thanks” badge at all times, including when swimming, showering, and sleeping. They may also wish to avoid areas where large numbers of women are present, particularly at night. Some men may also wish to invest in assertiveness training, sympathetic female bodyguards, body armor, or sessions with a personal self-defense trainer to increase their ability to resist undesired kicks. As these methods have long been considered completely adequate for women who wish to avoid sexual predation we feel that they are all that is necessary here.

Men choosing the “No Kicks, Thanks” option should be aware that they will be ridiculed publicly for their sexism and misogyny and their indefensible, self-serving, anti-female pursuit of their own selfish bodily autonomy. (It’s not like getting kicked in the nuts does them any lasting harm, for heaven’s sake.) Men who comply with all of the above and still end up getting kicked in the balls will be advised that they were asking for it, and that women can’t be blamed for what happens when a man walks by with his crotch just hanging out there where it becomes a target of opportunity. (Besides, if a man weren’t really willing, deep down, to get kicked in the balls, he wouldn’t have stood still for it. Everyone knows that.)

Thank you for your participation in the Open Source Swift Kick to the Balls Project.

Originally posted on the web at
http://misia.livejournal.com/1055120.htm

For an overview of the outrage this whole thing sparked on the net, see the Femiwiki article here.

Diet. Again.

I’m trying to start eating healthy again, and it’s hard. Hard because that generally means I have to give up gluten – which while much healthier for me, is in every single thing I enjoy eating (or at least seems to be) – and because I also have to start counting calories, since if I don’t do that, I eat like a freaking pig All. Day. Long. So until I start also getting regular exercise, another thing I have to force myself to do, I HAVE to stick to the meager ration of 1250 calories a day.

Frak.

Anyway, this means I will be doing – and blogging – the summer Feel Good Fast. Stay tuned.

It’s your crap. Own it.

I was raised on a dairy farm. I grew up eating meat, including some of the cows that had grown up from calves I’d raised. Once a year or so, my dad culled an animal from the herd and took it for slaughter, and that was where the beef we ate came from. Happily, my father never took to slaughter any of the animals we’d given names to, but I know some of them eventually ended up on a plate, whether it was ours or not, because that’s what happens to dairy cattle that fail to produce adequate milk, and there’s very little difference between a fat holstein and a fat angus when it comes to buying an animal you’re going to turn to steak. My dad had also worked for a year or two as a meat inspector for the USDA when I was a kid, so I’ve seen the insides of more than a few slaughterhouses. Sometimes when I played hooky from school, Dad would take me on his rounds, and I used to sit on milk cans and watch them skin the cows; I was fascinated by the process. So I grew up knowing where meat came from. I told myself the calves I was bottle feeding were future milk cows so they were safe, but when I grew up, I knew that wasn’t always true, and all cows meet the slaughterhouse eventually. Thankfully by then, my dad had sold off the dairy, because it would pain me to raise a baby calf that I knew would one day be steak.

But here’s the thing: it might not have mattered if I’d known it when I was a kid, anyway. Cows have their place in the food chain, and sadly for them, it’s beneath humans. So they end up as steak. That’s the way of it, and most people don’t bother to consider the ramifications of what it means for the cow, myself included. We want our burgers and steaks, so we go to the store, scoop up that cellophane-wrapped styrofoam tray of beef and toss it on the grill. No one loves steak more than I do, and for a lot of years, I ate meat with little thought to where it was coming from.

I was wrong.

A cow is a living being. It feels pain and fear. And all cows are not exactly alike, though I will grant you they’re mostly the same, and as a species, they’re not the sharpest tools in the shed. But they do have personalities, and they will follow you around like a dog if you spend enough time with them for them to bond to you. They can be taught “tricks.” Yet we view them as beneath us, here for our benefit, and we think that makes them unworthy of respect or dignity. And that’s simply not true.

I’m not trying to dissuade you from eating beef (or pork – pigs are smarter than your dog, fyi), but I would like you to stop and consider how you want to treat the animals you eat. Take responsibility for how you treat God’s creatures, especially those you plan on sacrificing so that you can eat them. Look them full in the metaphorical face and acknowledge that you are killing another living being. And then grant them the full measure of compassion they deserve. A cow has no say or choice in how it’s treated or the manner of its death. I’m sure given a choice, it would prefer to stay out in pasture than to be loaded onto a too-crowded truck and driven to a slaughterhouse, where someone’s going to hit it in the head with a hammer or shoot it in the head with a .22 before they slit its throat while it’s still living. (Yes, that IS how they do it; I’ve had the misfortune of witnessing it myself, and it’s gruesome.) Do we really need to shove them around with bulldozers and force them to move around with broken legs while we’re at it? Do we as a species really need to be that frigging cruel just so we can have a hamburger?

Legislators in Iowa, Florida, and Minnesota think that we do. More, they think that it should be against the law for people who feel differently to bring cruelty to light and show others how slaughter facilities are treating the animals they kill. http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/04/25/18677994.php

So here’s the deal: If you’re going to eat meat, you need to acknowledge where that meat comes from. You need to own up to how that meat gets from a living being to your dinner plate. You don’t have to like it. You DO have to be honest about it. And if it bothers you – and dear God, I hope it does, because if it doesn’t, there’s probably something really freaking WRONG with you – then you have some choices to make. The first is pretty easy: do you want to keep eating animals or not? If you choose to keep eating them, you need to really look at how the animals you eat are raised and how they’re slaughtered, and make other choices, like whether or not to educate yourself about where the meat you’re buying comes from, how that facility treats the animals they slaughter, and how the animals are raised (in pens or free-range, for example). I hope that you’ll decide to eat animals from places that don’t move them around with bulldozers or keep them in pens where they stand knee-deep in excrement their entire lives and never see a single blade of actual grass. Whatever you decide, I think we as a species have an obligation to treat the animals we kill with compassion and respect. We have an obligation to speak up when we see facilities treating animals with cruelty, to say that it is NOT okay. If you eat animals, you owe it to them to own your decision to do so. And that means stepping up to the plate and taking responsibility for how they are treated. They’re treated that way because we decide to eat them, and for no other reason. It’s our responsibility to make sure they’re treated decently during their time here. Own it.

So, like, I have a job now.

That is all. :) Well, that, and I start Monday. :)

Here’s a youtube video of a boxer dog bouncing around on a trampoline. Just ’cause. :)

Also, this heart-melting puppy. Dogs are the single most awesome thing on the whole planet. God knocked it outta the park and hit perfection with dogs. Mad props for that one, God. :)

Hope or Hype?

So, after 2.5 years of nada and bad experiences, I finally had a good job interview today. I mean it, that thing was like buttah. I got on really great with both women involved in the decision-making process, one of whom is the Supervising Producer (it’s a tv gig); the other, a story editor I will be sharing an office with. They were great, and we had a good chat about shared experiences and shows both myself and the SP have worked on. The rate’s not awesome (it’s a lot less than I usually work for), but I don’t care about that if everyone there is as cool as those two. Not to mention that just to have a job will go a LONG way toward making me feel like a desirable human again, rather than a drain on the life force that is the planet. Even if it is a job in reality tv. ;) The whole thing went so well that if it had been an audition, I’d already be learning my part, I feel so good about getting it.

And that’s what I’m afraid of. Because if I don’t get it, I’m going to be crushed. I don’t mean crushed, I mean CRUSHED. Pulverized. Ground to bits. I can’t take another employment disappointment, and that is worrying, because I don’t want to radiate desperation on those occasions that I actually get to speak to someone about working for them, and that kind of desperate need also screws with your perceptions. For all I know, I sucked pond scum today, and as soon as I left the office, they were both like, “Ohmigod, can you imagine the horror of working with her,” while I was happily bouncing down the stairs to my car, secure in the knowledge that gee, that went really well. I mean when your perceptions are that out of whack, good things seem horrible and horrible can seem normal. And maybe things did go really well, but tomorrow, someone else will walk in the door who really wows them right out of their socks, so they go with that person, and when I find out I’m not their girl, how am I going to deal with it? It’s just not good (or probably healthy) to pin so much hope on the outcome of a single job interview. Because it’s not like I’m all, “Gee, a move to France would be awesome, I hope I get that job,” or, “Gee, I’d like to buy a new car, so that job would be nifty.” No, it’s more like, “Dear God, PLEASE let me have that job. PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZE GOD, PLEASE, I WILL DO ANYTHING IF YOU LET ME GET THAT JOB.”

I misspoke. It’s not like that, it IS that. I NEED a freaking job. Not as much as I did need, what with money coming from the sale of my dad’s property (don’t get me started on that; oh, the issues), but I do still need a job. I have debts to pay and teeth to clean and eyes to examine and a car to repair and a dog to take to the vet and tests to run to see why all his hair is falling out and a physical to undergo and HRT to pay for and a new small business to start. So I really do need a job. I’m trying to stay focussed on the fact that I will have money in a few weeks, and if I don’t get the job, I can just dive headlong into starting my own business, which I actually feel really good about, so it’s not a crushing blow if I don’t end up working for someone else and deferring my own plans another 4 months, especially the long hours of post production in a field I’m probably still fairly burned out on, in an industry full of insecure people who need and expect constant stroking and asskissing. (Happily, the women I interviewed with today do not seem at all to be the kind of women who need stroking and asskissing, so let’s hear it for small mercies, at least.) But it would be nice to be validated and to get some fairly big ticket items taken care of and crossed off the agenda before I start the long haul to fiscal independence. So I really hope I get that job. For a variety of reasons, but probably most of all so that I can find a way to keep my grasp on hope, a commodity which has been in very short supply for me these last 2 years. 2011 has gotten off to a fairly good start. I’d really like to keep that ball rolling. Maybe (and you’ve no idea how much it terrifies me I’m going to jinx hell out of myself saying this, but), maybe this year will be the start of a really good decade.

That would be awesome. :)

This just makes me happy.

I am definitely a Paul girl, and this is just awesome x 10. Jimmy Fallon is the luckiest son of beach who ever lived.

The link to the Jimmy Fallon clip (better quality) is here.