Death in the Mediterranean

People from shitty, war-torn countries are migrating en masse to Europe.  Lots of them.  They are looking for a better life, I assume, so they get on overcrowded ships and simply sail off from the shores of Africa, hoping things will get better.

Things are not getting better. 

Humanitarian groups have estimated that last year about 90 people died between January and April of last year, and about 900 have died in the same period this year.  That last number is going to increase in the next few days, simply because yet another smuggler boat sank this Sunday, and they have yet to recover all the bodies.

This is a tragedy, no doubt.  

While the death of people trying to escape is horrible, these people knew the risk they were taking, when they decided to flee their home countries in order to illegally trespass into another country.  The strangest thing (to me, at least) is how EUROPE is being attacked for not helping these people.  After all, Europe is in its own financial and social crisis right now.  But (unfortunately), the bottom line seems to be that EUROPE should claim responsibility for the lives of people who do not live in Europe, were not invited to Europe, and are illegally attempting to gain a foothold in Europe.

Where is the international attack of Libya?  Or Tunisia?  After all, these are the two most common launching points for the run to Europe.  

Yes, countries should do their best to help people trying to escape dangerous situations, but the real tragedy is that people aren't trying to improve their own homelands; instead they create mass chaos and strife in the countries to which they flee.  

To be even MORE politically incorrect, I state the following:  If you come from a country with Sharia Law, and you LIKE Sharia Law, then stay there.  It is incomprehensible that people would descend on a democratic country, and then complain that the laws don't suit their lifestyles.  If you don't like the law, go elsewhere.  If you don't like the law, change it.  If you LIKE the law, don't go somewhere else and try to impose it on other people.  

Oh, and if you're being herded onto a ship and told to crawl underneath the deck, stacked body-to-body with other people, it's probably not going to turn out well.  Don't expect an ice cream social when you arrive on the shores of a country which has clearly stated that immigrants must come LEGALLY; expect to be deported, immediately.  

Yes, I probably sound like a giant asshole, and for that, I'm sorry.  I just think that taking risks has NEVER been a guaranteed win.  That's why it's called a RISK.  

Amy Poehler, Part II

Yes, I'm still reading Amy Poehler's book.  I can't blow through a book in two days like I used to - I find myself setting the book down and wandering off in the middle of it, because I should be doing something more productive (and then, subsequently, NOT doing anything productive).

But I just read a phrase in her book which reflects my tendencies exactly:  TRAGEDY PORN.

Amy and I have this fetish in common, apparently, but until she named it for me, I didn't know what I was engaged in.  "Tragedy porn" is filling oneself up with every horrible detail about the latest horrible event and telling everyone about it.  (To be fair, I don't talk to that many people, so I mostly just go over the details (incessantly) in my mind.  On any given day, the New York Times puts me in a mentally catatonic state.  I am absolutely horrified by the depravities of human beings, yet I can't stop reading the newspaper.  (Yes, I'm old - I still read newspapers.)

As a side note, I sort of feel the same way about PORN porn.  I have seen porn clips in the past, and while there is an (extremely tiny) part of my brain that understands why some people watch it, the vast majority of my brain is totally mortified.  Questions which cross my mind when seeing porn including the following:  Why?!  More specifically, how did these people find other like-minded people who wanted to record themselves having sex?  Is porn really all about either narcissism and/or low self-worth?  Does anyone REALLY like getting fucked in the ass?!  What would these girls' mothers do if they saw their children getting fucked on film, for creepy internet trollers to see?

(As I have said before, I think too much.  I get it.)

But back to this tragedy porn, why do I keep reading the paper if all it does is make me sad for humanity?  Why do I feel compelled to talk to other people about the heinous murders and rapes and general stupidity happening around the world, when (in all probability) no one even cares?  Do people think I'm slightly off-balance when I get wound up about referees getting murdered after soccer matches?

There is no answer to any of these questions, and I will most definitely keep reading the New York Times, and I will also keep trying to talk to other people (this blog entry is a notable example) about my unease about the state of world affairs.

Sorry, people.  I care, even though I try very, VERY hard not to.

Amy Poehler

"Your brain is not your friend when you need to apologize.  Your brain and your ego and your intellect all remind you of "facts" (Amy Poehler).

Yes, I am sometimes guilty of not paying attention and being self-absorbed and insensitive, but who isn't?  I should more on top of what I am saying, but shouldn't other people take responsibility for what they "think" they hear, versus what is actually said?!

And even though my brain is shouting some things loud and clear, my heart quietly tells a different story.  "Shame is difficult.  It's a weapon and a signal.  It can paralyze or motivate" (Poehler).

Take, for example, DIVORCE.  (I have to capitalize it, because it's apparently the worst thing ever, unless you're actually in need of one.)  Again. to steal from Amy Poehler, "you aren't allowed to feel special, but no one understands the specific ways you are in pain.  Imagine spreading everything you care about on a blanket and then tossing the whole thing up in the air.  The process of divorce is about loading up that blanket, throwing it up, watching it all spin, and worrying what stuff will break when it lands."

What I worry about breaking is my children.

I can't talk to the very people who divorce will hurt most, because they don't like "feeling" words.  They get all weird and either tell me to stop talking about it or they go into a different room.

I can't possibly be alone in this conundrum.  I want to consult the major players in my life, but they all want to just shove their fingers in their ears and hum a tune.  (Not the Divorce Tune, as it turns out.)

Painful experiences make us see things differently, but I would very much like to see my painful experiences in the PAST TENSE.  But when everyone is actively fighting against change, being the "bad guy" is very difficult.  I just wish they could see the positive net balance on such a change; happiness spreads, and if your parent is in near-constant misery, the feeling spreads (and ultimately infects everyone).

I'm sure anyone who listens to me is sick to death of hearing me complain, but all I'm doing is trying to talk myself into making a decision which everyone will hate initially.  Being the only person in the family who can make decisions is fucking exhausting, let me tell you.  I thought that one of the benefits of marriage was supposed to be teamwork.  I don't want to be Stalin, but when no one ever does anything, someone has to step up and make the rough decisions (which, unfortunately, affect everyone).  

I will be the Pol Pot in the DIVORCE situation, if what that means is that I am the intellectual who us trying to start from Year Zero.  I'd like a reboot.

Jordan Speith

Jordan Speith just won the Masters.  He is 21 years old.  He shot an 18-under round at Augusta.  He dropped out of college in Texas to pursue his golf career.  So, he just earned $1.8 million for a round of golf.  But even if he didn't win, the top 50 players split $50 million.

This is another reason why college is overrated.

Gardening

Just a moment to celebrate the wonder of gardening.

The beauty of nature meets the beauty of everyone leaving me alone, because they don't want to be asked to help with manual labor.

Bring me spring all year long, please.

The CHANGE

Sigh.

Just a few months ago (it feels like a few weeks ago), I had a "child".  Now I seem to have a "disaffected youth".  She transformed overnight from an I-don't-like-boys-and-drama-is-stupid kind of girl to a I-am-too-busy-and-cool-to-even-have-a-conversation-with-you kind of girl.

(And metaphoric crying ensues...)

I guess I just don't remember my first two kids changing overnight.  It seemed more gradual.  It makes me wonder what thought went through her head which said, "that lady isn't cool any more.  Don't hang out with her."

I know, I get it - kids grow out of their parents.  But I'm not ready for her to go to the dark side yet.  And neither is she.  That, in fact, is what scares the living shit out of me:  the fact that she is NOT ready to be an "adult", and she desperately needs guidance, but she'd rather look at vine videos for hours on end than have a conversation about literally anything, all the time.

She has LITERALLY told me that she doesn't want to have conversations where feelings are involved.  She will preemptively warn me if she going to show me a video that might me me "have feelings".

What.  The.  Fuck.

Yesterday, The New York Times told me that social media and screens don't really affect the long-term outcome of an individual, but the last two days, I have come home from work and watched my 13-year-old watch youtube videos for two hours, while she's laying on a piece of furniture.  That cannot be right.  Staring at a 6" screen CANNOT  be good for anyone's brain, regardless of his or her age.

I suppose an intervention will have to ensue, even though every fiber of my personality subscribes to the ideology that people should become who they are on their own.

Wish me luck...

Youth and Old Age

I'm pretty sure that the 16-year-old version of me would dislike the 40-year-old version of me.  And I'm positive that the 40-year-old me would despise the 16-year-old version of me.  Why?  Because I was an asshole.  But I am still kind of an asshole, just of a different variety.

Back in the day, I put up with everyone's shit.  My friends were all assholes, and I was an asshole, so we had somewhat of a symbiosis.  I had no self-worth back then, so I just went along with all the pseudo-drama and tried to ignore the rest.

I'd like to say that I'm totally different as an adult, but that would be a half-truth.  I still put up with other peoples' bullshit, but I don't pretend it doesn't repulse me anymore.  I may be less able to shed soul-sucking parasites from my life as an adult, but I am far more likely to let those people know exactly how I feel about them.

I'm not sure if this is progress or not.  Probably not.  It's probably just a manifestation of middle-age onset pre-dementia or something.  I don't want to be an asshole, but sometimes I float out of my body in the middle of a sentence or an action, look at myself, and think, "really?  who the fuck are you?  When did you become this bitter, cranky old hag?"

I don't look in the mirror any more and think I look pretty, but then I didn't do that when I was 16 either.  There was a minute or two in my 20s where I had a little something going on, but I think it had less to do with physical attractiveness and more to do with inner happiness sort of bubbling out.  When the flow of happiness subsides, all that's left is stunned vacuity.

That vacuum sucks just as much, regardless of how old a person happens to be.  Youth and old age aren't so different after all.

Bunnies, Eggs, and Nonsense

                                                                                 

Happy Easter!  Jesus rising from the dead and whatnot.  Very important religious holiday for the Christians.  Churchy things happening – praying and singing and all that business. 

Here’s my dilemma with this particular holiday:  how the bloody hell did the bunnies and colored eggs and chocolate treats get mixed into the rising of the central prophet of an entire religion?!  To be honest, the bunnies, at least, make a bit of sense.  I think we all know that the Christians mixed up their dates in order to get the druids and pagans on board a couple thousand years ago, so the celebration of the vernal equinox (thus the procreation and abundance of bunnies) sort of fits into that messing together of traditions.

But Easter baskets?  And gifts?  And jelly beans?  And dying eggs?  That’s all a bunch of capitalistic American nonsense which seems intended to get more people to celebrate a holiday which has no business being advertised at Target, if you know what I mean. 

How can a religious person possibly believe that Christ rose from the dead on Easter, God’s only son being physically escorted to heaven by his father, and then subsequently celebrate such a consecrated event with brunch and chocolate figures of bunnies?  It seems to send the wrong sort of message to the younger ones, if you ask me.  (Which no one did, of course)

If the only way to get little kids excited about God ascending back into heaven is to stuff them full of sugar and ply them with gifts, then the religious ideology behind the whole event seems lost.  Why not just have two celebrations: one for the beginning of spring, and one for Jesus? 

I’ll never know.  I just watched a documentary about some people in Mexico who celebrate Easter by strapping homemade, paper mache animals loaded with explosives on their heads and running through the local streets.  That makes about as much sense as hiding plastic, colored eggs in the bushes for little kids to find.  Probably a bit less blood in the Americanized version of events, but pointless just the same.  

Suckers

If you just read my blog to use the information against me in some capacity, or to judge me for not making the life choices which YOU made, get the fuck off.

I hear pinterest is interesting for people whose minds are already numb.  Go there.

10 Reasons NOT to Own a House

                                                                                    

I suppose since my last entry was a Top 10 list, this one should be too …

Top 10 Reasons NOT to Own a Home…

1.        Disintegration:  This category actually applies to ALL reasons not to own a home, but I’m putting it here because today I was trying to rebuild my deck, piece-by-piece.  I can’t afford a new deck, so I am buying pieces of wood and replacing the most rotten parts of the deck.  Jesus H.  20+ years of rain and weather will really fuck up wood, let me tell you.  The only good part of the “restoration” process today was my neighbor’s reaction to my profuse and extended swearing in the back yard.

2.       Water:  I’m talking about pipes and whatnot here.  I don’t have a usable dishwasher, because the pipes are … I don’t know, fucked up?  All I know is that when I use it (the last time was like five years ago), the gross water backs up into the dishwasher, making all the dishes worse than they were before.  Plus, when I put food down my GARBAGE DISPOSAL (the name should say it all here), my basement backs up with kitchen-food water.  What the hell?!  I DO NOT want to think about where my water comes from or where it goes.  I simply want it to work.

3.       Electricity:  Another thing I DO NOT want to think about the logistics of.  But when plugging 21^st Century technology into 20^th Century jerry-rigged outlets, shit goes bad.  Like electrical-fire bad.  Again, I have better things to do than wonder if the house is going to burn down just because someone’s iphone charger is plugged in.

4.       Trees:  I love them, don’t get me wrong, but those motherfuckers are messy, and no one ever helps me clean up the 18 tons of shit that drops from them in spring and fall.

5.       Snow:  Again, love it.  Until I have to shovel mounds of it off my driveway, all the time vaguely wondering if I will have one of those snow-shoveling-induced heart attacks I read about every winter.

6.       Dust:  Old houses settle – ALL THE TIME.  So there is dust coming from every place all the time.  It mocks me.  (Just kidding, it doesn’t mock me; I’m not psychotic.)  But seriously, it’s like one of the biblical plagues.

7.       Windows & Doors:  Aren’t they lovely?  You can gaze out them and enter and exit through them.  Oh yeah, and when your house is a million years old, the wind just blows right through them.  Honestly, there is a stiff wind coming through my kitchen door on any given day.

8.       Other people:  If you are lucky enough to own a home on your own, I am very jealous.  Since a person’s home is essentially a reflection of them, the other people who mess it up all the time kind of suck.  I don’t want people coming in and seeing dirty socks on the couch and stray cheese slices on the ottoman, so I have to clean all that shit up. 

9.       Carpets:  Don’t even get me started on how gross a carpet is after 10+ years. 

10.   And finally, ghosts.  (I’m just kidding, I think we ran them all out with loud noises and stray cheese smells…)

10 Things I Learned in College

                                                                                                                 

1.        Being accepted to a university in no way indicates readiness for adulthood, nor does it reflect a person’s intelligence or capacity for learning.  As a matter of fact, some of the dumbest, most ridiculous people I’ve ever met attended university. 

2.       The one class every university OUGHT to offer is not on the schedule of courses:  Substances 101.  In this course, students would learn what to do with a wasted roommate/friend (whether to just roll them on their side so they don’t aspirate on their own vomit, or whether a trip to the ER is necessary), how to decide if the drugs someone just handed you are “safe”, what to do when those “safe” drugs make you start hallucinating or losing consciousness, and why you should never be friends with a person who huffs things.

3.       Every night of drinking is a potential date rape night. 

4.       Once you fall below the qualifications for cum laude, a GPA is just a number, and will have very little bearing on anything, ever.

5.       If you manage to graduate college, people who did NOT get a college degree, will always downplay the importance of college – often referring to it as “unnecessary” to real life.  These people are just jealous.  (Or, they might be right, depending on how much money they make.)

6.       Once you obtain a college degree and put it to use, you will learn more in the first year POST-college than you did in the 4-5 years you spent getting a Bachelor’s Degree.

7.       Living with strangers in a dorm room is among the most invasive things a person could ever do.  That stranger will leave their shit lying around, or steal your shit, or leave dishes covered in baked-on shit in the kitchen for weeks on end, or leave literal shit in the toilet that you have to flush before you can use it.

8.       Fully 75% of the classes I paid for in college taught me nothing and were in no way necessary in regards to my chosen profession.

9.       College graduations are slightly more annoying than waiting in line at the DMV for four hours.

10.   Mortgaging your future is part of the College Dream, but if your major is humanities, get ready for a string of long, disappointing jobs making coffee.  Maybe just get a library card and save your time and money.