Alive or Dead?

                I printed out many of the photographs from vacation and put them in frames on the wall.  I actually took a space previously devoted to photos of the children as babies and put up only beach pictures of my children and I.  (Yes, I put the other baby pictures up somewhere else; I’m not a complete asshole.)  What am I trying to prove with this display?  I’m not sure.  But when I looked at it a minute ago, I got a little freaked out, because earlier I lit a candle nearby it, and now it looks like a fucking altar or something.  Maybe I have a problem.

                Maybe I’m the only one who is still guessing that I might have a problem.  J

                For the one thousandth time, I don’t belong in this fucking cesspool called Nebraska, but I’m not sure I belong in that cesspool called Los Angeles either.  There are too many people there.  And while I love those beach cities, it is criminally insane of me not to acknowledge that L.A. has too many people and that getting anywhere is a huge pain in the ass. Is it worth it?!  I think it has to be.  I think it has to be worth all the sacrifices a person makes to be where they want to be at the end of the day.  If I go to bed with an ocean view, I have succeeded in achieving a personal goal.  Isn’t that what people do?  Make plans in life and then try to achieve them? 

                Some people would disagree, and diversity of preference and ideology is what makes America beautiful.  Some people retreat to the woods and camp it out; some people love the woods and streams and fishing with their hands.   Some people go to the big city to see museums and walk all day to see the historical sights.  Some people go the islands of Hawai’i and get transfixed by the crashing waves and midday rainbows.  There are people who choose to live in the frozen tundra of North Dakota, the desert wasteland of Oklahoma, the dense woodlands of Vermont, and the packed cluster-fuck of Manhattan Island.  They have all chosen a lifestyle, and I really think that most of the people (adults, at least) who live here in Nebraska have actively chosen this lifestyle.  It appeals to them on some level.  Kudos to them.   Happiness is where we find it, so if it’s in the midst of corn, so be it; but the like-mindedness of others seems to me very important also, and I find people who are on my broadband channel few and far between here. 

                Yesterday I was open and honest with my family about my intention to find a new place to be.  It make take a year; it may take three … but I can wait, because I deserve to be happy.  And my happiness directly impacts theirs.  Life can be good again, I know it.  

California It Is

While California is arguably full of assholes, rich assholes, surgically enhanced assholes, and liberal hippie assholes, it's definitely one of the greatest places I've ever been.

   The beaches are beautiful,  the sunsets are magical, most of the people are pretty, and the air is amazing.
I realize that most people don't think of L.A. as the greatest place in United States, and I should clarify that I'm talking specifically about the beach cities like Manhattan and Hermosa and Coronado and Monterey.
Venturing too far inland in any California city might ruin the magic.   City sprawl (in the form of chain stores) happens there just like everywhere else.  But how many other places offer Wee Man's Taco's ( I would NEVER eat there) or pot on demand in Venice or hookers on demand in Hollywood?  Not many.  Certainly not my little Christian suburb. My little bible thumping burb would most likely be horrified at the liberals praising Jesus on the beach with guitars on Sunday mornings.  (Even I, as a non-religious social liberal, was a little startled by that last one.)

 But there is just something about a tofu and tabbouleh omelet served outside with the ocean air in my face that makes me a little happier.  And don't even get me started on the farmer's markets.  Good god - strawberries the size of a child's fist.  You won't find that at Target in Nebraska, that's for sure.

Healthiness is another thing.  The people who bike and jog in Nebraska look like they're going to die of heat exhaustion.  In California, no matter how hard they're working, it looks like they're out for a leisurely stroll.

Oh, and they're smiling.  Fuckers.

There something a little bit unfair about being able to run barefoot along the ocean in 65° weather compared to sweating your ass off in a heat index of 107.  No wonder people in the Midwest are fat.  It's either too hot or too cold to go outside.  We have to work around the four good months that we have to do all the things we need to do outdoors.

Oh and the other day, we watched the Hermosa beach volleyball open tournament.  Top prize? $100,000 between two people.  The four guys in the final were pretty damn good, I assume because all four of them went through college on a beach volleyball scholarship.   Yes, I said it: beach volleyball scholarship.  One team both graduated from Pepperdine-on the beach in Malibu.  The other team had one guy from San Diego State University (huge party school) and one from USC (ditto).  Sounds like a pretty good way to get a four-your education: play on the beach a lot in your bathing suit.

I'm just jealous.  After all someone has to live the good life right?  Play all day. Drink all night. Repeat.
I suppose if I had to appear in public in a bathing suit on a regular basis I too would exercise every day breathing and fresh ocean air as often as possible.  It's a lifestyle choice.   Turns out I was confused on the questionnaire, and I chose the wrong lifestyle.

I don't want to be rich and famous. I don't want to live in Calabasas with the Kardashian's. I would probably backhand one of them.  But I was particularly jealous of this bleached out dude who was selling soda from a shack on the beach. He was just kicking it in a lawn chair reading the paper, getting up to give people a drink every once in a while.  I'm sure he didn't make very much money, but he had the Pacific Ocean in his face all day.  Not a bad view.

Even the homeless people were pretty cool. Chill and laid back, not like the very aggressive panhandlers on the East Coast.

I met this guy from Hawaii last time I was in California, and he complained the whole time about how cold it was in Los Angeles.  Really? Shut the fuck up.  Go back to the Rainbow State and choke on a barrel wave.

I'm just saying that place you choose to live says a lot about you.  Again, it's a lifestyle you choose. So choose carefully when you still have options. Even if I had to drive in some of the worst traffic I've ever seen in my life, it would be worth it to get off that PCH offramp and deep breathe that beautiful ocean air every day.  

The Dark Knight Rises

In theory, of course, anarchy sounds good to many people.  No rules.  Do whatever you want.  Take what you think you’ve been denied in life.

                During my screening of The Dark Knight Rises, there is a scene when the people of Gotham go into the wealthy people’s homes and ransack everything, and one of the actors says something about how everything belongs to everyone now.  And the ignorant douche-nozzle behind us in the theater said, “this is Obama’s socialism plan.”

                Are you fucking kidding me?

                It was all I could not to turn around and ask him if he even knew how to define the word socialism.  It is people’s blatant disregard for reality and facts that makes America the declining nation that it is today.  People choose to live in their selected reality rather than in ACTUAL reality.  They redefine words based on the most effective social impact, and they manipulate words and events to reflect their own agendas.  It happens on the macro level of political discourse and on the micro level of interpersonal relationships.  It’s repulsive.  As Holden Caulfield would declare, “they’re all a bunch a goddam phonies.”  We all are.

                America may be ONE OF the greatest countries on earth, but it is not hands-down, unerringly THE GREATEST country on earth.  The simple-minded devotion some Americans have to professing their dominance and superiority over and above every other country on earth is embarrassing to me.  Why not fixate on trying to improve America rather than pompously orate about how much better we are than everyone else?  Personally, I don’t need to think I live in the greatest country on the planet; I’d just like to celebrate those things we do well and develop those things which need work.  Does that make me un-American?  Not hardly. 

                I think I can be patriotic and wonder why guy from Colorado was legally allowed to purchase THOUSANDS of rounds of ammunition online without a single hiccup.  I think I can be patriotic and say that it’s a bad idea for people to be able to buy semiautomatic weapons, because the ONLY thing those guns do is kill people.  You kill a deer with a semiautomatic weapon.  If you’re a REAL hunter, you’re out there with a bow and arrow.  Same argument for the 9mm.  I understand people’s desire to protect themselves, but in no way did the founding fathers of the United States of America foresee those kinds of weapons in the hands of ordinary citizens who might walk into a crowded midnight showing of a movie and gun down helpless people.  That kind of mindless pandering to the NRA is inexcusable.

                The story of Batman is such a simple, beautiful expressive of humanity.  Those who choose to live their lives in the service of others are few and far between, and they face near constant barriers.  Random acts of kindness could revolutionize the world, but they are so few and far between.  Like Bruce Wayne says at the end of the movie, sometimes it’s the simple act of placing a jacket over a child’s shoulders that makes all the difference.  Start small, and the big things will ensue.  No need for a nuclear weapon to change the world.

Internet Revolution …

                … or Internet Shit-fest? 

                This thing that media is doing to our young people is so grossly understated that I don’t even know what to do about it.  I watched the Teen Choice Awards tonight (On Demand, of course, because you never have to actually pay attention to when things are on anymore), and I was fundamentally disgusted.  Given a choice between five actors (or musicians, or whatever), the teens will choose the best looking, youngest person, regardless of any level of talent.  Appearance is king.

                So … teens are stupid?  Or … teens are quite likely to swallow whatever the media gives them without processing for quality?  When I was younger, Mtv became a thing, which was very cool, and my parents hated it.  Mtv now is a bag of shit – a bunch of “reality” tv shows that have nothing to do with most teenagers’ reality.  Prime example:  The Kardashian’s.  This is a family of dumbasses, but what they have done quite well is market themselves to a generation of other dumbasses.  People watch the Kardashian’s live their lives, because it’s more interesting than their own lives.  Why is more interesting?  Because people are sitting on their asses on the couch rather than doing something interesting.  Do you think that Jimi Hendrix (who taught himself to play guitar upside down and backwards because he was left-handed) sat around watching television all day?  What about Steve Jobs?  Did he watch television, or did he single-handedly create an empire of electronic devices that everyone in the world wants?  How about Steven Spielberg?  Did he just watch movies, or did he watch them and then historically make some of the most classic movies of all time?

                How can we make young people today understand that there is a fine line between being a bystander and participating in life?  It’s not enough to just watch other people live their lives on tv.  Those people on tv are living their lives.  You’re not.  I get the surface value of such shows, but I grew up in a time when television wasn’t a 24-hour-a-day activity.  At some point, I had to get off my ass and go live my life.  My mother forced me to do a variety of things which I bitched about at the time, but which ultimately made me a better person:  dance, guitar, piano.  They all created the basis for what I love and what I appreciate in others.  If we allow this next generation to just watch television and get their “values” from those stupid cunts on tv, then we get what we deserve:   a future full of shitty mediocrity.  They won’t even know how to think for themselves. 

                I just want people to be who they COULD be.  I am (finally) trying to be that person myself, and I sure as hell don’t want my children to get caught in the death-roll of tumbler, twitter, facebook, youtube, and everything-you-want On Demand.  Go fly a fucking kite.  

On Writing a Novel

                I had this great idea for a novel.  The idea sort of simmered in my brain while I was on vacation, and then I spend an entire three-hour plane ride jotting down the details and developing the characters and situations I wanted to incorporate.  I felt quite smug upon landing, because I had finally written an outline for a book of FICTION rather than a thinly veiled autobiographical novel like the others in which I’d changed the names and added a few spicy details.

                And then I woke up the next morning.

                I started going over the plot in my head, and it sounded more like bad Nicholas Sparks than something really good.  As a matter of fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that even though the story was fiction, it was really about me.  Again. 

                Let me run it by you:  Woman travels to the Los Angeles coast for vacation (I literally just got back yesterday from L.A.).  She immediately walks the one block from her rental property to the beach (which I did) and is overwhelmed by the immense beauty of the ocean (ditto).  In her hurry to get to the beach, she has just dumped her suitcase, purse, and jacket by the rental property’s door, so she has no ID in her possession (yep).  When she gets to the strand, she is preoccupied by the ocean, and thus steps out onto the strand without looking and gets nailed by a biker (something which ALMOST happened several times last week – runners, bikers, roller-bladers – they’re EVERYWHERE – turns out those exercise freaks are actually dangerous).  She slams her head into the concrete barrier that separates the strand from the sand and blacks out.  (Obviously, this part didn’t happen, but I’ll tell it anyway.)  When she comes to, there’s a crowd around her trying to “help” (read:  “ogle”).  There’s blood running down her face from a huge gash on the forehead, and she is very disoriented (I also am often disoriented, but not from hitting my head on a concrete structure). 

                Ensuing temporary amnesia.  (Really?  But it worked so WELL in my head!)  A guy who lives on the strand comes out to help, and they forge a bond when he invites her to stay, because she has nowhere to go and no ID.  (Wishful thinking on my part.  Did I mention that those two people are roughly my age?  And that the guy looks like a younger Richard Gere in my head?)

                When she doesn’t answer her husband’s phone calls, he’s pissed because he thinks that she is blowing him off, because they aren’t on great terms anyway.  (I answered at least HALF the phone calls from mine when I was gone, so I’m not a complete bitch.)  Then when he realizes she is actually missing, he’s a little upset that he has to deal with it.  (Do you see where I’m going with this?  It seemed fictional, but then I keep putting my own interpersonal junk in it.)

                Cut out a ton of the story-line here, and in the end she leaves her prepackaged shitty life and moves on to something better and different.  Final kiss on the strand where she met him in the first place.  (All daydreaming which I did while sitting on or near the strand and literally wishing these things would happen to me.) 

                Is this where fiction comes from?  I don’t know.  I don’t think so.  Maybe I could make it a very short story and just have her die in the first chapter when the bike hits her.  Put everyone out of their romantic misery before it even begins.  Give her a new afterlife on some alien Mormon planet.  Or, better yet, just cut to black.  End scene.  The Epilogue could be an apology for why I can’t concentrate long enough to write a novel or learn how to properly write a screenplay. 

                I think I’ll skip the fabulous writing career and go straight to the celebratory glass bottle of champagne.  Bottom’s up!

Let’s Talk About S.E.X.

                I have an 11-year-old child.  She is quite lovely in many ways.  She’s a bit spoiled, but part of me is glad that she doesn’t have to worry about life yet, so spoiling her is often quite fun.  The important thing about her (at least right now, in this story) is that she is a CHILD.  She likes to snuggle and is unembarrassed by her body and dresses like tomboy and has no fashion sense whatsoever and calls me in to chat about life while she’s lounging in the bathtub. 

                Then come certain other people.  Two of those such people spent the night at our house last night, which will never happen again.  Those two other kids might be about the same AGE as my daughter, but they are NOTHING like her.  Here’s what I listened to all night:  boys, sex, STDs, condoms, periods.  I got to hear lovely stories about how they listen for the mattress springs to start squeaking in their parents (or older siblings) bedrooms.  I heard one of them say to my daughter than since I drink wine, I probably do drugs too.  One of them explained (and modeled) the best way to get a boy to look at your ass when bending over in front of him at the pool. 

                Did I mention that they are 11- and 12-year-olds?!  What the fuck? 

                On the plus side, none of the nasty shit was coming out of my daughter’s mouth.

                On the negative side … well, all of it.  These little bitches must be everywhere!  Where are their parents?  I had to interrupt their conversation several times to tell them how disrespectful, inappropriate, and rude they were being.  And anyone who knows me knows that I am usually all of those three things in good fun.  But little people talking about that kind of shit is not “in good fun”, it’s just gross.  I can’t believe I am the parent who sounds like an old lady, but at some point society needs to draw the line and let kids be kids for as long as possible.  All the bullshit and drama of being a teenager and an adult will come some enough; can’t they just play Monopoly or something?  My daughter actually suggested the Monopoly thing last night and they laughed in her face.  Then the one (the one who had her face buried in her cell phone all night) said, “Let’s watch videos on YouTube.”  And then whispered to my daughter, “Make sure your mom doesn’t come downstairs.” 

                I’ll tell you what, little wannabe sluts everywhere:  You only get to be young once.  Don’t fuck it up.  

I Brace Myself, Because I Know It’s Going to Hurt (But I’d Like To Think At Least Things Can’t Get Any Worse)

                I hoping that my persistent and unbearable back pain is cancer – at least that way I have an excuse for being so tired all the time.  Then my children won’t have to watch me wither and die from chronic, crushed idealism.  Cancer seems like a nicer way for them to see me die.  Better to burn out than fade away and whatnot.  When you find out that the situation you yourself put yourself in is what holds you under … well, there’s no one else to blame.  (That, and a Memory Foam bed that keep sucking me down, down, down into the foam with no concern to the crushing pain on the spine.) 

                What we tell ourselves often becomes a version of the truth, and that truth is often a very distorted version of reality.  One day, you sort of come out of the anesthesia.  And like any painful, extractive surgery, it’s a slow recovery.  A slow coming-back-to-consciousness process.  And (unlike surgery) you don’t really want to see what’s unfolding before your eyes in this new reality.  It’s hard to swallow, so you resist it – maybe like an unwanted laced joint or something.  You wanted to get high, but you didn’t bargain for the chemicals intertwined with the THC.

                So what do you do?  Weep?  Shuffle about in a depressive stupor?  Hit eject?  Once a person becomes entrenched in a life, it’s very hard to extricate.  Honestly, it’s like a death in the family.  Or maybe like my own death.  I don’t know.  But it can’t be more painful than watching your life become something barely distinguishable to the thing you’d imagined it.  It’s hard to look in the mirror and see one person and then look at the people around you and see someone completely different.   Which one is me?  Who am I if no one knows me because they have their own version of me that I don’t subscribe to? 

                Here is something which sounds familiar to me in a way.  It was written by Virginia Woolf right before she killed herself.  She drowned herself – a terrible, slow death, I’m sure. 

            In her last note to her husband she wrote:

“

Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier 'til this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that—everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been. - - V

                The difference is that I feel exactly the opposite, in terms of love.  I feel that I had someone who was like-minded, I wouldn’t feel crazy.  I wouldn’t want to walk into the river and die; I’d just talk it out.   And maybe the death I look forward to is not a physical one, but more the practical action of cutting out all the negativity in my life and stepping into something healthier and more in sync with what makes me happy.  I’d call the uncomfortable bed a metaphor, but that fucking mattress is really hurting me – it just happens to be the back pain that wakes me up every night and day and reminds me of the other painful parts of life. So I bought a new one.  Let’s see if I can set the rest straight too. 

Television Sucks

                Perhaps I’m a little biased here because I’m getting older, but the shit on television right now is absolutely responsible for making people more stupid.  The eternal access that Americans have to television has tragically obvious byproducts, which are obesity and stupidity.  Some ass-wipe writes shitty dialogue about a shitty and unrealistic situation and gets paid more than I do to teach children.  What the fuck?

                The Bachelor (are you fucking serious that you can’t meet someone outside of television?), The Choice (more desperate, camera-needy cunts),  … I would go on but I can’t even remember the names of the other dating bullshit shows on TV.   Did I mention that my 11-year-old watches this shit?  It makes me want to puke.

                And I think I’ve already ranted sufficiently about The Disney Channel.  Fuck you, Walt Disney heirs for ruining a beautiful thing.  You started by distorting history (Pocahontas) and morphed into cheesy, laugh-track bullshit that glorifies a life that most children have no chance of achieving.  It’s fake and it sucks.  Yes, most TV is fake, but shouldn’t there be some rule about what people are allowed to shove down the throats of children?!  I had to FIGHT with my daughter last night about the meaning of “drama”, because she insisted that she hates “drama” movies, even though she watches Professional Wrestling.  Again, What the Fuck?!  She doesn’t want to read because she can watch bullshit On Demand 24/7, and my husband won’t let me get rid of it because fucking soccer is on an upper-level channel that requires special payment. 

                I love movies.  I even like the occasional TV show.  But isn’t there a breaking point of stupidity?  Isn’t there a point in the industry when executives and writers start thinking about what the hell they’re doing?  Is it coincidental that 35% of Americans are obese?  Obviously not.  We all sit here on our fat asses and watch other people “live their lives” while we shove fast food down our throats.  What a fucking joke this bastion of freedom called America has become.  I’m embarrassed by people’s stupidity and their inability to acknowledge their own stupidity.