Category Archives: Rants

May 10 2012

At Least There Wasn’t a Communion Wafer Monster Sketch…

There’s a man living at my house who is a very strict traditionalist when it comes to church and religion.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about his politics, I’m talking about his attitude toward the act of going to church and being in church.

1.  You go to church, you wear nice clothes, the men should probably wear a tie, or at the least, a pressed shirt and nice pants – jeans are acceptable if worn with a nice shirt.  Women, whatever you want to wear is fine but try not to look like you’re going on a date with Flavor Flav.

2.  Church is dignified.  Church should have its announcements in the bulletin, or at the beginning of the service.  Gentle humor in the sermon is fine if it’s related to the liturgy.  Lectors, please read exactly what is in the Bible and don’t add or skip words and practice pronunciation ahead of time.

3.  There should be communion every time you go to church.  You don’t leave right after communion, you go home after the recessional, and then you eat lunch and watch football.

4.  The music should be done well, preferably with an organ and the choir.  No rock bands.  This is church, for God’s sake.  If you want to go to a concert, buy a ticket and go to an amphitheater.

5.  Church isn’t a party.  It’s worship.  Things are a certain way for a reason and you don’t screw around with them.

You see now why it took me a while to find a church he would agree to attend?

Our new church is pretty great – it’s very traditional, Lutheran, with solid music, a very established congregation, friendly people.

This past Sunday, we went to the service, which had been wildly promoted in the bulletin for three straight weeks beforehand.  The announcements had promised the [Name Withheld] Puppets from [anonymous] church were going to be performing at both services.  Naturally, I assumed they would have a few minutes of floor time during the five minutes the pastor reserves to talk to the little kids before he launches into his sermon each Sunday. I thought maybe a Lambchop sock puppet or something, to talk about how God loves his children.  You know…..a moment or two and then back to the traditional churchiness of church.

First off, the parking lot was PACKED when we got there. People were milling around in the lobby, and smiling widely, and the chitchat factor was about 50% higher than normal.  We got our bulletins and went inside to sit down and noticed that the back windows from the nave into the sanctuary were covered with black plastic sheeting and that all the window blinds were drawn over the stained glass.

And the altar?  It was covered all the way across by ranks of shoulder-height curtains on rods, three levels of them following the altar steps.  The curtains were moving in spots – clearly there were people milling around behind them, crouched down.  The lectern, the actual altar, the chalice and Bible….all were out of view.  And to the side, where our choir usually sits?  A teenage boy I didn’t recognize was sitting at a drum set, and a blandly smiling man next to him strummed away on an electric guitar.  I did not have a good feeling about where this was headed.

The pastor got up and, with a wooden smile that clearly conveyed that this production seven months into his new position at our church was a tradition he did not endorse and could not talk his staff out of, announced that the puppet troop from [anonymous] church was back for their third annual visit to our congregation.  ”The floor is yours, Sandy,” he said, and handed off the mic, walking back to sit down in the front pew next to his wife, who struggled to contain her laughter.

Sandy, from [anonymous] church, intoned in a sleepy and blissful voice how glad they were to be with us, and would we all stand with her as they shared some worship music.  Their electric guitar and drum set blammed into action, and Sandy started singing with her eyes closed and hands in the air, with muttered “Thank you, Jesus,” between verses.

I looked over at my husband, whose face had turned to stone, except for a pulsing muscle at his clenched jaw.  My daughter yeeeeaaaawwwwned audibly, and I looked abruptly at my feet to allow my hair to fall like a curtain to shield my face so they couldn’t see me laughing.

But then? Oh dear God.  Then came the puppets.

First, there was the trifecta of awful:  A sassy teenage girl, carrying a ventriloquist dummy, which was a bird puppet.  They did their bit after being introduced:  Norman (the bird) was just having trouble learning how to pray.  She tried to teach him the Lord’s prayer, which he butchered, line by line, ala “Who’s on First?”  The kids laughed, and many adults chortled along.  I was aghast.  When the bird/puppet shouted “Halloween be my name!” I risked a look at my husband, who was glaring angrily toward the stage.

Next, they had the big puppet troop put on their show, to pre-recorded music over the sound system.  And these weren’t like sock puppets: they were like MUPPETS.  Fundamental Christian muppets, with that goose-down floaty hair, googly eyes, hinged mouths and felted skin.  Singing.  As puppet shows go, it wasn’t bad – the people operating them turned out to be mostly children, and they had their timing down very well.

Like I said, as a puppet show?  Great.  As a CHURCH SERVICE?  You’ve got to be kidding. Because that was the whole service.  Effing puppets.  The worst was when they put out all the lights, plunging the church into complete darkness.  Then the blacklights went on, and a puppet that looked like a two-foot-wide disembodied human mouth started singing a Christianized version of Aretha Franklin’s classic song “Respect.”  With “background singers” that were these weird puppet creatures that looked like crinkle straws rising and falling, shrinking and expanding, back and forth, while singing “He sought me and he bought me and he sought me and he bought me…” instead of the original “Sock it to me sock it to me….”

You guys, it was absolutely dreadful.  Kids were eating it up, but I was feeling squirmy and mortified.  After the lights came back up, there was wild applause and then a man from [anonymous] church bounded up the aisle and announced the audience participation portion of the service.  All I could picture was the Armageddon that would ensue if this man were unfortunate enough to point at my husband to come up to the front.  Thankfully, PC was spared.

The nine volunteers were given cards that spelled out “S-A-L-V-A-T-I-O-N” and then there was a little schtik where the man sent them to sit down one by one until there was only the word “S-I-N” spelled out, and so on….. not unusual dogma for some churches, but absolutely not what is customary for our particular church.  PC glanced over at me and said, angrily,  ”I am never coming back here again.”

The ride home after church was mostly silent.  ”That was awesome,” said Rabbit.  ”Did you like it, Daddy?”  PC paused and then said carefully “Well….I like that you liked it.”

After she went to her room to change, PC announced that he was going back to the Catholic church, never going to this new church again, etc., etc.  Keep in mind, this was only about the fourth or fifth time he’d attended our new congregation.  We argued for about 40 minutes, with me maintaining that this was  an unfortunate fluke but not what the church was all about.  He insisted he was done.

I left for my afternoon open houses.  When I got home, PC said “I’ll go to the church, don’t worry.  But only when there’s communion and NEVER for something like that puppet show.  EVER AGAIN.”

On my morning walk today, four days later, I stopped in at the church and poked my head in the pastor’s office.  He waved me in and I hemmed and hawed and then finally said “Can I weigh in with my opinion about Sunday’s service?”   His eyes got wide and he grinned and said “Did you love it?”

I burst out laughing and said “No, it was horrible!” and he started to laugh and couldn’t stop.   Turns out, it was, as we say, not a hill he wanted to die on.  The act had been reserved long before he started at the church and part of building a rapport with your new congregation is to resist the urge to slash and burn and change things right off the bat.

I talked to him about PCs reaction, and we visited about why it had upset him so much.  Between earnestly discussing what is sacred in church and what is not, we kept laughing about the fact that we’d had to sit through an hour of puppets against our will (in his case, TWO SERVICES IN A ROW).

I really respect that the pastor of our church didn’t just come out and say “No way, we’re not doing this,” even though he could have, in order to be respectful of decisions that had been made before he started.  I also respected how he took the time to listen to me when I said “No way, I can’t believe we did this,” and to talk with me about getting together with PC to explain to him that this puppet show wasn’t what our church was really about.

The whole thing was surreal and funny and dreadfully cheesy and godawful.  I know there are churches that have drama teams and rock music and skits and other things they incorporate into their Sunday message.  I don’t disrespect that.  Really, I don’t.  But to take that method of worship and inject it into a setting that is otherwise very traditional and structured, and make that an hour of showmanship instead of a regular church service….it was jarring.  For my husband, it was absolute torture.

I’m not trying to start a debate about theology.  But really…..PUPPETS?

Mar 1 2012

Dear Rush Limbaugh

Dear Rush Limbaugh,

We are so fortunate to have you.  We are so fortunate that you leaned into that microphone this week and called out a young woman who requested insurance coverage for birth control.  It’s refreshing that you did not just infer that she was someone of shoddy morals.  It’s beautiful that you called her out by name and then said she was a slut and that if she wanted the government to pay for her birth control that she should submit to you a video of herself having sex.

This really happened.  And I’m so glad you made it happen.

Because perhaps once and for all people who find you “entertaining” and “blunt” will be led to redefine their description of you to something more accurate:  I suggest “psychotic” and “evil.”  I’m sure there are other adjectives floating around out there and I sincerely hope they find you and burrow under your crusty, flabby skin.

How DARE you with your cold dead eyes presume to use your bully pulpit to unleash your toxic verbal diarrhea onto the airwaves?   How dare you say such a disgusting thing to someone who was simply insisting on a constitutional right to be able to use her health insurance for preventive care and medication prescribed by a physician?  How dare you get away with it?

I find it interesting that someone who had so little regard for healthcare that he abused prescription drugs would suddenly have a problem with a medication or medical intervention that is not only legal but can protect a woman’s health.  I find it fascinating that you and so many others insist that the government that governs best is the one that governs the least.  Yet suddenly, your tiny little scrotum is clenched up in outrage because a “femiNazi” is courageously testifying before Congress that it is not the government’s role to tell her what medication or health regimen she can or cannot have access to through her insurance plan.

And while we’re at it, shame on your “friends.”  You know, the parasites who allow you to give voice to the vile and scummy things they think behind closed doors but know they cannot say from their debate platforms for fear of political reprisal.  Shame on them for not condemning your appalling screed about the morality of women who choose to prevent an unwanted pregnancy by using contraceptives.

Shame on all of you for the way you have turned the tradition of reasoned debate into demagoguery and a violence of words.  And shame on us for allowing it to go on for so long.

Shame on any women who listen to your show or support people who echo your opinions of women.  They are delusional if they think your cronies give a rat’s ass about them.

I sincerely hope that the young lady you slandered hires a team of righteously furious attorneys and sues the pants off of you.  And when they do and you are standing there with your business hanging out for everyone to see , remind me to grab a microscope to search for evidence of your manhood.

Sincerely,

Mary

Jan 18 2012

Grey Slush and Restlessness

This is that dreadful time in winter when I hit the horse latitudes; I need to organize but am unmotivated.  I need to plan for my spring garden but it is so cold outside it doesn’t seem it will ever be warm again.  My hair needs to be cut, we need new clothes, and of course, there is the dreaded grey slush melting on the floor by the mat next to the back door.

There’s something about that grey slush that just sends me over the edge.  The inability to control my environment, the irritation of stepping into a cold puddle in my stocking-feet? Either way, I hate it.

I’m sick of eating casseroles, soups and leftovers.  I’m sick of ground beef.  I’m sick of waking up in the morning in a dark house, with bare trees outside the windows.  I’m sick of the white residue of salt water crusting the car from the water thrown by other drivers’ tires on melting city streets.

Staticky hair from wearing a hat.  Chapped fingertips, chapped lips, dry skin.  Cracked heels catching on socks, cold drafts next to the door, my  engagement ring turning to the side inside my winter gloves, my eyes watering in the cold, my glasses fogging when I come inside.

My daughter is having growing pains and in the evenings after school, every day this week, she has whimpered while rubbing her thigh, unable to concentrate on homework.  The nurse line at the doctor’s office has cut me off mid-recording each time I’ve tried to leave a message.  It took three tries to ask them to call and let me know if we need to bring her in for an exam.

A thousand things are on the list of what I could complain about, but really what it boils down to is restlessness, the feeling I get every year between the new year and the start of spring.  I’m unable to focus, I can’t take on new DIY projects or crafts, and I just want to curl up in a ball and sleep.

So instead, I’m going to take a hot shower.  I’m going to start a loaf of bread and get ready for a client meeting this afternoon.  I’ll make supper for my family and after PC gets home and we eat, Rabbit and I will sit down and watch “American Idol.”

Spring will be here before long, but it can’t come soon enough for me.

Dec 14 2011

Luke, Who Is Your REAL Father?

As business is slow and I’ve been spending either mornings or afternoons at home instead of at the office, I’ve been watching more television than usual.  I’ll turn the TV on while I’m doing housework or cooking, and either listen or watch whatever it is that’s on.

Which is usually trashy daytime talk shows.

How is it that there are roughly four separate hosts whose entire body of work seems to be hours of televised paternity testing?  Are there really that many people out there who are willing to go on TV and air their dirty laundry in front of a studio audience?

Amazingly, about half the guests on the shows seem to be from the south.  The other half are from all over.  The formula is always the same.  ”Lurlene has a secret from Michael: their baby may not be his!  She’s here today to find out once and for all if the father of her one year old baby boy Davon is Michael…or if it is Michael’s best friend Lance!”

OR, it’s “Lance is suspicious of Tricia because he says their 18 month old baby Bella doesn’t look anything like him.  He thinks that Tricia has cheated on him and wants a paternity test to find out who Bella’s father really is.”

Once in a while, to change things up, Maury will throw in a lie detector test, wherein some “Polygraph Expert” in the front row (a chinless guy in a polo shirt who looks as though he flunked out of community college) assures Maury that the results are incontrovertible.   Which anyone who reads crime novels or watches good police procedural dramas will tell you is patently untrue, but never let the truth get in the way of bad television.

There will be some woman screaming “That baby looks more like him than HE does!” and some guy yelling “Y’all just gotta accept that she’s a lyin’ b**ch.”  Or some other woman will come on in the course of the show to start a fight with the wronged girlfriend/wife and bored security guys will stand to the side and watch them tear out one another’s hair.

Yesterday some talk show host with a British accent (“Oy! Shut up, you.  Right? Just…oy! I’m talking to you, right?  Shut it, you, and listen to me, right?”) was berating his two guests for mistrusting each other after a polygraph test showed each of them had been telling the truth about being faithful.  ”And you want to bring a child into this relationship, do you?” he shouted at them contemptuously.  ”Well, off you go….we have a counselor backstage who’s going to get you all straightened out.”

Then as they slunk off the stage, he shouted something like “Up next – is she prostituting herself for a living, and should her mum be allowed to keep her four year old twins?  We’ll find out what Latisha has to say for herself, after the break.”

God, it’s just exhausting.  And then the commercial sponsors for these programs come on during the commercials, and it’s limited to the following:  online associate’s degree programs, personal injury lawyers, LifeAlert bracelets, medicare supplemental plans, consumer credit counseling services, bankruptcy attorneys and paycheck advance lenders.

No wonder I prefer reading to watching TV.

Nov 27 2011

Vanilla Pudding Sandwich: A Church Encounter

WARNING:  What follows is a really PMS-y tirade against a church service I went to this morning.  Please understand that I am not saying these are bad people.  I am saying that I AM A BAD PERSON and that I really, really, really, really, REALLY did not like the service I went to.

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Oh, dear God, what a morning I had.

I’m determined to find a church for our family by the end of the year.  Of course, something this important should be undertaken in the midst of the holidays and by oneself with little pre-planning.  This is how all great decisions are reached, like….none that I can come up with, for instance.

Anyway, this morning I got up and got dressed for church, and went three blocks away to one in our neighborhood.  I had taken Rabbit to a service there about five years ago and wasn’t thrilled with the pastor, but learned that he’d moved on and that they’d gotten a new one.  Rabbit had also enjoyed vacation Bible school there one summer, and frequently asked me if we could go back.

So I took on the reconnaissance work of church shopping and arrived fifteen minutes before the start of the service so I could observe.  Mostly, I found strikes against this particular church for us.

Strike One:  Five of every six adults in attendance were at least 70 years old.  This indicated to me an aging congregation that would end up the way our former church did, which was shrinking and diminishing until there were only about ten families in attendance, and almost no small children.

Strike Two:  Only three or four kids were there, and all were under five.  I’m sure they have more, but I don’t want Rabbit to be the only kid her age at church.

Strike Three:  Only about one of every seven or eight persons in attendance was male. For my husband, this would be a deal breaker.  A few old guys, one white haired hipster in a black turtleneck, a thirty-ish guy in a tweed jacket with a braid down his back, and that was about it.

Strike Four:  Everything else.

Honestly, you guys. It was a terrible 90 minutes I spent smiling woodenly at earnest and well meaning people who didn’t get excited about anything, who sang out of tune, whose service was all the heck out of order, and whose pastor intoned in a slow, plaintive and meditative voice about things like “journeying to this place of expectation” and “advent is a season where we yearn to be in the birthplace of joy.”

Seriously, at times it was less like a church service and more like a really boring staging of The Vagina Monologues.

Here’s my problem with this morning. During the pastor’s sermon, she did not ONCE mention Jesus. I’m not even kidding.  She talked about Advent and the approach to Christmas in smarmy terms like “a season of waiting” and “a time of peaceful organization of the trash that is in our lives” and then talked about how as a child, she would watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade and always knew that the end of the parade, with Santa on a float, meant that Christmas was coming.

At least twice, she uttered the phrase “…at this point in time.”  (Man, I am awful).

She mentioned a dog video she enjoyed on YouTube.  She mentioned “that time of longing for joy, and the vulnerability we all must come to in order to embrace life’s joy.  Vulnerability that manifests itself in a sigh before hearing the doctor’s results. Vulnerability in wondering if there’s enough money for the house payment.  Vulnerability in going to war…”

Uh…I think you have vulnerability and anxiety confused.

The response to prayers of the congregation was this:  ”God of grace and vulnerability, hear our prayers.”

Listen, sister.  If I were looking for a vulnerable God, I would worship the underbelly of a turtle.

I know right now I sound like a horrible person and if you want to stop reading, please do because I kind of hate myself right now.  But sweet merciful unmentioned Jesus, it was so awful.  The music was dreadful.  The three women up front behind the pastor all wore peasant skirts and dangly earrings and long flowy ponytails and swayed while they sang with their eyes closed.

They did the opening hymn sitting down.  Then they had The Children’s Moment, where they explained what the Advent candles meant, while the kids ran back and forth on the altar.  Then more music, and then the Lord’s Prayer, and then the Peace, and only then did they do the readings in the Bible. After that, the prayers of the people, and THEN the sermon.

This is a minor thing to many people, but I have grown accustomed to a certain order of things in a church service:  Opening hymn, welcome, prayers, Psalm, response, Old Testament reading, response, Gospel, sermon, then prayers, then the offertory, then the Lord’s Prayer, then the Peace, then communion or similar, and then a final benediction and recessional song.  Many mainline Protestant religions and the Catholic church follow this basic outline.  It becomes a clock: during the Peace, you know that there’s communion and then the approach to the runway leading to time to leave and get groceries and make Sunday dinner.

I did not invent this: I just grew up with it.

I’ve been to other churches that don’t follow this outline at all.  They have contemporary music and don’t dress up and have PowerPoint projections of song lyrics and the pastor wears jeans and on and  on.  Those don’t bother me as much as this morning did because this church seemed to be trying so terribly hard to be something it just was not.   And I can’t think what that something might be, but it all felt as though it were falling way short of the mark.

It felt like….like an emasculation celebration.  Is that a weird thing?  It did – it felt like the island of Amazons, all blissed out on sacramental wine after a deep discussion group session and maybe some foot reflexology.  It felt placid and innocuous – like eating a sandwich made of vanilla pudding between two slices of soft white bread.

I’m sure that they are all incredibly lovely people who care about each other and walk hand in hand fully expectant of the season of the birth of vulnerable joy, trembling in yearning for the Advent of grace and vulnerability.  Or something.

But boy, it was SO not for me.

 

Nov 21 2011

Pity Party

Saturday morning while I was idling in a store parking lot, there was a pop and then smoke and steam poured out of the hood of my car.  There was a river of anti-freeze coming out from the bottom and streaming across the parking lot.

Great.

I called PC’s former boss at the service station where he worked before getting his current job and Bruce promised to come tow the car downtown and they would take a look at it on Monday.

He called today and said it was fixed – a radiator hose split open and was destroyed.  Parts, labor and the tow came up to roughly the amount we spend in two weeks on groceries.

I have no current listings and my strongest prospective buyer client just called this morning to tell me how excited she was that they are buying a house offered for sale by owner.

Our tax return is STILL under review, so no hope on the horizon of that windfall coming any time soon.

I know this is the week when we gather to give thanks, but I just feel like sitting down and crying like a baby.  I’m so freaking sick of thinking things are going okay and then having yet one more thing drop on us like a brick.

By Mary • Posted in Rants
Nov 15 2011

Personal Reflection And Inevitable Rant

That whole turning-over-a-new-leaf and resisting-the-compulsion-to-be-a-sarcastic-bitch phase of my life lasted exactly nine days and blew up like a backed up sewer line this evening.

I guess I didn’t mention my decision to be much nicer to the people in my life but it stemmed from my youth retreat the first weekend of November.  I had a deep and forbidding sense of disaster and disappointment in myself when I sat and took a personal inventory of the way I talked to people, the way I looked when people talked to me, and the thoughts I let out of my mouth without filtering them first.

I thought about how words can hurt and how my mind jumps to the sarcastic comment far more frequently than a good person’s should.  I thought about how the tension in my house was thick and how my daughter’s shoulders sagged when I would caustically tell her to give me space and how my husband would coldly reply to my nagging words when I really got going.

I thought a lot about the golden rule, and karma, and the laws of attraction and the theory that we are the average of the five people with whom we spend the most time.  I had to almost physically shake myself, sitting there on my air mattress late that Saturday night, and said out loud “Oh, man.  I am so mean.”

And I am.  I know that on this blog, I have the opportunity and luxury of presenting myself to readers in a way that quite often makes me sound like a wise and loving woman who is overflowing with affection for her little family, who bakes bread and reads and is funny and obsessed with groceries and Tupperware and Robert Plant.

But anyone who knows me in real life knows that I have a very sharp tongue and can easily leap to the catty in a nanosecond if I don’t stop myself.  This doesn’t mean that the person on this blog is not real: if anything, on the blog, I am more my true self than in person because I go deeper than I do in a surface conversation.  I can filter myself and throw away the ugly things, or put them aside, and focus on the way I want to be always instead of the way I am most times.

You know the rants?  That’s pretty much me about half of the time in person.  And it can be fun for a while, but pretty soon even I get sick of it.  I want to be a calm and nice person who stops herself before making a comment that could hurt someone’s feelings.

For nine days, I’ve done pretty well.  I’ve been patient with my daughter, kind and patient with my husband, calm at the office, hopeful with work, positive among colleagues.  Then tonight, I just suddenly felt it all pile up and wanted to punch the world right in the throat.

It had been so long since I’d said something acid and catty and mean-spirited that I was itching to just go haywire and cut loose.  I’m not proud of it, I’m just being honest.

I didn’t indulge in the cattiness, but dammit, I thought mean things for about two straight hours.

Someone on Facebook had a wall post that said something to the effect that “Jesus love’s you when your down.”  It was all I could do to not post a response that told them “Jesus loves people who know how to spell and when to use apostrophes.”  It is a terrible thing to have these thoughts.

My daughter was doing math homework and they are starting division. She didn’t know the difference between division and subtraction and I wanted to tell her to just wait til school the next day and have the teacher go over it because I had no desire to help with freaking homework.  Instead, I gritted my teeth and tried to help her and tried not to just tell her the answers.

I sat in my car in front of the library and thought terrible and judgmental things about each stranger who walked past me.  I looked in the mirror and thought terrible things about myself.  When I got home, I finished making dinner and the biscuits on the chicken pot pie were doughy underneath.  There was too much pepper in the sauce.  I made too many dirty dishes and there was a fine grit of pulverized dried leaves underfoot and the dishtowel basket was overflowing with dirty towels and rags.  I wanted to burn the kitchen to the ground and drive off into the sunset.  But my car is almost out of gas and really, I should just go to bed.

I suppose in reality, the fact is that nobody can be perfectly nice all the time.  At least, I can’t.  Once in a while, I have to step away and get these terrible thoughts out without saying something to someone that I can never take back.   So here is my list, not directed at any one person, but in general, at statements, behaviors or personalities that universally make my hair fall out in clumps and my sarcasm gland secrete acid into my brain and my tongue turn forked like a serpent’s.

1.  Plurals do not require apostrophes.

2.  Your (possessive) and you’re (contraction for you are) are two separate and distinct things and if you are allowed to have a driver’s license and a facebook account and the right to vote, you should most definitely learn the difference between your and you’re.

3.  Don’t freaking touch me.

4.  Don’t follow me.

5.  I don’t want to shake hands when your hands are limp and sweaty.  You give me the skeeves.

AND OKAY NOW IT’S JUST FULL ON RANT BECAUSE THIS IS MY BLOG AND IF I DON’T GET IT OUT HERE, I WILL SAY SOMETHING TERRIBLE TO A PERSON IN REAL LIFE.

6.  Please for the love of all that is holy, do not wear pajama pants outside the privacy of your own home, no matter how casual the setting.  Just…wear regular pants.

7.  It’s not a news channel.  It’s not news.  It’s not the truth.  It’s not something I want you to talk to me about.

8.  I will unfriend you if you use the word “retarded” as a casual phrase about something you find lame or ridiculous.

9. Yes, I’m rolling my eyes.  It’s my physical response to listening to someone and trying to prevent my muscles from reflexively punching them.

10.  At the end of the day, it’s very sort of, I mean, basically, you know, like, duh, for real and absolutely.  I hear these sprinkled into conversation and I develop hives.  And see #9 for my reaction.

11.  If I see one more cleverly spelled baby name I will take a hammer to my own thumb for relief.  ”Heaven” should remain spelled that way, and not backward to make the name “Nevaeh.”  You know why? Because that’s stupid.  Yeah.  I said it.

I’M FEELING ENDORPHINS NOW.  I’M FEELING MY BLOOD PRESSURE GOING BACK TO NORMAL.

I could go on and on but I should stop now.  I’m a terrible person.  I’m not nice, not the way I want to be.  Or is niceness just the ability to keep the mean thoughts to oneself?

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know when to keep my thoughts to myself.

Tell me in the comments: are you a nice person? I mean, are you a person who thinks nice thoughts and says nice things?  Are you sarcastic?  How are you different in real life than you present yourself online?

Nov 11 2011

Demolish It and Salt the Ground

Caution: I curse in this post, and not even as badly as I would like.  There is graphic content about a disturbing current event.  Proceed with caution.

What did he know?  So many people are asking that question, as though the level of detail about the child molestation reported to Penn State University football coach Joe Paterno will help excuse his lack of action to stop and prevent it.

“Oh, he just heard Sandusky was horsing around in the shower with a little kid.” Well, that makes things clearer.  Because THAT is okay?

Here’s the bottom line: we all pretty much know that Paterno and the higher ups knew what was going on. Whether they knew the full extent of it or not (and I think they did), just knowing the bare minimum, the surface details, the general ickiness of a grown man taking little kids on trips with him and into his home and into the goddamned SHOWER?  And they knew even these details and didn’t consider that this was bad enough to report to child protective services and law enforcement.

But they knew more.  They had to know more.  Penn State grad assistant (now assistant coach) McQueary certainly knew more and did NOTHING to help that little boy who was being raped.  Oh, wait.  McQueary walked into the locker room, saw the rape in progress, and then left the locker room after making eye contact with Sandusky and his victim.  He just walked out.  He went home, and he called his own dad.  He didn’t stop the rape.  He didn’t take the boy out of the shower.  He didn’t call the police.  He went home and called his dad.   Think about how it looked to that boy, to see a grown man walk in, look at him being raped….and then walk away.

This was nine years (and how many other victims) ago.  NINE YEARS, you guys.   I don’t want to think about this.  But I cannot scrub these images out of my brain, and every time I think about it, I become dizzy and want to throw up.

Almost worse  is the fact that the student body began to riot when the coach (along with several others in administration) got fired on Wednesday.  They rioted to protest the removal of this adored old man from his position of extreme authority at the university.  They rioted to protest its unfairness.

Nobody at Penn State rioted to insist that the football program be suspended.

Nobody rioted to insist that McQueary also lose his job.

Nobody rioted to protest what had happened to those little boys.

NOBODY.

The news, the opinions, the talk of this atrocity: it is everywhere.  As a jaded society calloused to nearly everything, this defies comprehension.  I’m in shock that there is even going to be a football game at Penn State on Saturday morning.  I’m shocked that the administration of Penn State wouldn’t shut down the whole football program until they had rooted out every last detestable piece of shit cover-up artist in that program and swept the entire mess clean.

The show must go on?  The players need this? It will restore normalcy? Please.  There is nothing normal anywhere on the horizon for Penn State.  Out of common decency and a show of complete distancing from a corrupt and insane athletic department, Penn State should end its football season right now.

My heart breaks for those children.  My heart breaks for their families and the children who have not yet come forward.  I think of my own child, my nine year old child, and I know that I would, bare-handed, end the life of anyone who did something so heinous to her.  The knowledge that a whole cadre of grown men did nothing to help these young boys has helped to destroy my faith in humanity.