Smiling Faces

I never think people will do me wrong and then, being people, they do me wrong.  In a sentence, I am easily played because I am so niaive.  I am past middle age and yet I trust people to be honest and true instead of scheming and lying.  I wish my husband was by my side all the time.  He sees their base nature and doesn't give them a chance.  As it is,  I walk through this world alone, counting on my OWN judgement and once again I am hurt by people being people.  I guess it would be easier to take or to comprehend if I wasn't so earnest, so true.  Maybe if I were like them I would understand the games people play.  I am not and I don't, so I cry once again, "How could they do that, I thought I could trust them."

The Temptations said it best:  Smiling faces leave no traces of the evil that lurks within.  Can you dig it?

"Got my niggas in Paris and they just went gorillas"-From Niggas in Paris by JayZ/Kanye

I think it is a racist affectation to only attack Caucasion Americans for saying the N word.  The African American music artists and comedians who use the vile word liberally should be held to the same standards.  There is an inherent permission assumed when the 'N' word comes from the mouth of those to whom the word is directed.  It gives permission for the word to exist.  The Black Artists who propagate the use of the 'N' word need to be held accountable.  Make ALL users apologize, fire them from their jobs, boycott them.  It's only fair.  

The real question is, "Is fair the point of the black race baiters?"  Clearly it is not.  Those who want to keep the races separate in order to assure a career and personal riches keep on finding non-racial issues and making them into Black vs. White.  Having a black president shows that the Whites of America are anything but prejudice yet Obama himself makes racist comments over and over again, dividing America, not uniting it as promised.

I am sad and sorry that civil rights and the equitable treatment we had worked for is being destroyed to attain a few bucks and a few minutes of fame.  Ladies and Gentleman, you are witness to the de-evolution of American society and your emcee is Al Sharpton.

How to Get Comcast Cable and Apple products to Work Well Together

My internet went down last night.  This morning I called Comcast.  I spoke with four different people for 2 hours and the first 2 people were useless, the 3rd person insisted I buy a service to get my network up and running but the last person, the last person was sublime.  Here is what he explained.  Follow these instructions exactly and it works.

1. Turn your computer off.  Power off router (unplug the power cord in the back).  Power off airport (unplug the power cord in the back).  Hook ethernet cable directly from router to computer.  Plug router in.  When 4 lights are lit steady on the router, turn on computer.  Go to system preferences/network preferences just to check the connection but internet via ethernet should be up and running on the computer.

2. Now, turn your computer off and leave it off so there is no wireless connection interfering with the airport setup.  Power off the router again.  Move the ethernet cable from the puter to the airport in the hole that has a round like sun over top of it.  That is the first plug in on the left as you are looking at the back.  Now plug in router, look for 4 steady lights, then power up airport.  That should give you your network back.  

3. Just in case the airport extreme does not work first time do the following:  Power off router while leaving power on airport extreme.  Reset airport via little reset button in back and paper clip.  Hold it down until the yellow light flashes fast.  Power down airport and then repeat step 2.  You will have to reenter a network name and password.

Have fun!

A Quote From Winston Churchill's Book The River War

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.

The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.

A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.

No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.

-- Sir Winston Churchill (The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50 [London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899]).

Futility

I cry to God and fall to earth. 

Flay flay flay

Still

I am human.

The work it takes to free my soul and follow my spirit

Is more than this measly human can bear

Sometimes

When I just want a smoke and a drink

Hate crime, constitutionally rationalized under the Commerce Clause and theThirteenth Amendment, is not viable when one references the Fourteenth Amendment. When our family plays games, the newest rules rule. Isn't that how the Constitution works? Wrap your head around this without trying to formulate clever rebuts while you are reading. I want you to concentrate.

EQUAL PROTECTION. Tell me what is EQUAL in sentencing based on motivation? Who is to judge which offender has a "better" motivation to assault and so double the minimum sentencing? The guidelines should be equal, across the board or the very heart of this amendment looses it's power. Prejudicial mistreatment is a horror, hence this addition to our mighty law. It is unconstitutional to fake a left attempting to get around this rock of an amendment.

Fire starters: motherly advice

I remember fire when I was a kid. I used to lay under the dark and cool lattice porch. The sun dappled the dirt on the edges of my wooden cave sanctum. I would write my name in dupont cement, that rubbery glue in a tube, then I would light it with a match. Art, emotion, and super cool light effects.

Today someone might call me an arsonist and say I was a troubled child. The fact is, I grew up and became a superior welder. I love heat and understand it, in an intrinsic physics kind of way. I know that the metal gets excited by the fire and then starts stalking it. So one moves the torch and the metal will follow, like a well trained dog.

I digress.

A kid who starts fires may just be curious, wanting to learn fire. In a cave man sort of way control of fire is power.

So I wanted power. Who doesn't? Children ARE powerless and what kid worth their salt wants to feel like that, vulnerable and weak.

LOL, that a complete repudiation of my original claim. Or is a kid wanting to feel powerful wrong.


-- Post From My iPhone

Manarola Suicide

These vineyards are lovely and hard.

Terraced rock.

The heat from below pours up

and drowns me. 

Can I cliff dive from here?

The azure ocean calls.

Donna, bye.

Like DNA, we weave close, then apart, then close again.

Donna Spence died after a long struggle with cancer.  The last time I saw her, before I saw her dead body in the casket, was a while ago at the old WalMart.  We talked about K Mart and Ames and the new WalMart.  We both preferred Ames, which had closed to accommodate K Mart which had closed to accommodate WalMart.  We met over these animal print and very stretchy, tight pajama gowns.  Donna told me she had bought one and wore it as a dress, she suggested I also do so.  I grabbed the leopard spotted one and I still have it although it does not look the same on me anymore, or I do not look the same in it, one or the other.  Now I just wear it as a nightgown.

We talked for quite a while, catching up, as one does with these chance encounters.  She asked what what I was doing and I told her I was a nurse. She told me she just found out she had cancer (I think uterine) and we talked about treatments, etc.  It killed her.  The words we spoke are all gone in the wind.  My intermittant memory, the only record of girls who became women but never changed, really.

When I saw her at WalMart she was round and happy and womanly and filling out her nightgown dress beautifully.  When I saw her in the casket she was skeletal and dead.

I choose to remember the spirit and personality that Donna was, servant to humankind, lively and vital and strong and wearing cool animal prints tight against her sexy body that turned it's back on her, and killed her.

Zaha Hadid-A Show for Academia, Not the World

My mother, two other family members, and I attended "Zaha Hadid: Form in Motion" at the Perlman Gallery, Philadelphia Museum of Art on Sunday.  I was looking forward to the day but was severely disappointed by this star architects show. Walking into the gallery, one is instantly disoriented, kind of like a fun house in a carnival.  Several of the people I was with had to sit down as their equilibrium was affected.  Personally, I find Hadids work, visually incongruent, almost dizzying (as it literally was for my companions).  So, while impressive for their reach, her buildings are not for general consumption.  In fact, her objects and buildings are so confusing in their flow that they are essentially disturbing.  All sense of beauty is swallowed up by the visual discordance.  My brain became too occupied with trying to find the glitch rather than finding the beauty in the form. 


I also wonder as to her clearly obvious and impractical choice of form over function. From the smallest, an oddly shaped spoon that made me want to scoop some broth to see if I could actually eat from it, to the videos showing her largest buildings, I could only see a desire to impress with none, not one little iota, of practicality.  These buildings are a legend in her own mind and will not stand the test of time.  


Please, beauty and form can go hand in hand with practical considerations.  Ms. Hadid seems to think that they are exclusive of each other and it shows in her work.


I am not a fan.

Here is a photo of my bedside table.  No arrangement or cleaning.  Bedisde table raw.

As you can see my bed is not made.  Why make it when I am going to mess it right up again. The sheets are clean.  That is what matters.  The book is a school leftover that I did not want sell on Amazon.  The class was accelerated and left a lot of stories, plays and poems unread.  I am reading through them.  The bottom middle is an electric blanket controller.  I had to get rid of my favorite down comforter.  I cannot tolerate the down anymore, sneezy all night long.  Boo Hoo. The lotion is this really great, minty foot cream with tea tree oil.  I rub it into my feet at night.  It feels so good.  The black thing below and right of it is my sleeping mask.  I used to use it when I worked nights.  Below and to the right of that is a little piece of Hershey's chocolate with almonds. Chocolate needs no explanation.  The white thing next to my phone is a never used in a toilet toilet bowl brush.  A patient of mine had one with her in the hospital.  She told me they are the best back scratchers around.  She was right.  National Enquirer on top of the books.  OJ was beaten in prison.  I wonder if he got even a little idea of how his dead wife felt when he beat her?

So tell me, what's on your beside table?

Okay, here is a story about me.  That IS what this blog is about...me and my perception of outside of me.  That IS all I know, after all.

If you follow this blog,you'll know that I am a nurse.  When I first started being a nurse I worked on the general floor in a small hospital.  I cared for mostly wide awake people who needed much teaching in order to promote best outcome, health wise.  I used to get a lot of elderly women who had urinary tract infections moving towards sepsis.  Most of the women, when asked how much water they drank, would tell me something like "Not much, when I drink water I have to pee all the time."  I would explain to them that it is important to urinate often because the urine kills and washes out the various bacteria that wants to climb up your urethra. (sometimes I would say pee and pee hole, depending on the patients sensibilities).  Now, I am that old lady.  So drink more water Susan.  Your urethra is begging you to.

"Choke" by Chuck Palahniuk

January 4, 2011

Choke

I am reading a book called "Choke" by Chuck Palahniuk.  I'm on page 37 and I am crying.  The reviews I read said it was "humorous", called it a "riot" and pointed out how "gritty and perverse" it was.  The perversity IS the sadness. That the little boy who just wanted his mother to love him could have been mistreated into becoming the wretched protagonist of this book breaks my heart.  This story, while fiction, is fact.  This stuff happens every day and I do not find it humorous. It is gut wrenchingly sad.  Self absorbed parents treating children like less than pets...Oh the humanity.

So our society encourages self expression even if the passion blasting the self into the nethersphere is born of pure pain inflicted on a child...even if that lust is nothing more than an insane repetition of an inhuman past craving resolution.  I do not think it is okay to wallow in the shit that has been heaped upon us since birth.  Shit contaminates, it is poison. Sexual perversion is not the result of a happy childhood.  It is the result of pain, of sorrow inflicted on a child and any adult expressions of that pain are merely reenactments of the same.  It is like a vortex that keeps one prisoner due to it's very lack of solution, like if one keeps putting oneself into that hell it will, one day, turn out differently.  It will not.

We are God's.  He wants to free us all from the chains that bind us, some literally.  He wants to redeem our lives and allow us to become the person we were born to be, not the the person we became, endlessly looking for a different ending to the same play.

Homosexuals in the Military: just say no

Were you in the military?  I was.  We take group showers, run around naked, and generally act with no concern as to who is watching us.  We are all women right?  Now, add into that mix a man.  What is he thinking as we all shower together, surrounded by fifty wet naked female bodies?  What is he looking at when I bend over in front of him to pull on my panties?  Why does my choice to serve my country make me have to expose my self to him in this intimate way?


The above scenerio is what is wrong with allowing homosexuals to serve in the military.  


I am not homophobic.  It is not my place to judge what another human being does.  God does that quite well without my help. My opposition to this law has nothing to do with the sexual choices of a small group of citizens and everything to do with respecting the youth who choose to enter the employ of the government in military service.  What I am is a veteran with a REAL understanding of the situations that are presented in the sort communal living that is part and parcel of military life.  I would not have wanted to have been forced to expose my genitals to a man on a daily basis yet allowing homosexuals to serve in the military is, in effect, assuring that will happen.  


You see, boys and girls, homosexuals are sexually attracted to people of the same gender so it follows that the military should not place them in intimate situations with same sex individuals.  That would be like putting men and women together in boot camp, in communal showers, sleeping next to each other, every minute of every day.  Would you want that?  Would you want your daughter or son to be exposed in such a sexual way by our government?  The heterosexuals become unwitting victims of sexual voyeurism and it is condoned by the law.  Whose civil rights are being tromped on...really!


I do not understand how such a small percentage of the population can dictate such ridiculous terms to the United States Government. 

God's Plan

I love my job.  It is not what I thought I would be doing when I was a kid.  At first, when I was very small and in Miss McConnell's dance school, I thought I would be a ballerina.  Then, I realized my true calling was movie star.  Every day of my life was an act...I acted like nothing was wrong and everyone believed me.  I used to practice my Oscar speech over and over.  It was so humble yet profound.  Then, in high school, I realized I had to DO something so I figured I would be an artist.  I had lots of natural talent and always drew.  I have a good eye and it was easy for me.  Unfortunately, I was too into the party and not the study and college dropped away, just like all of my childhood dreams.  Lost in the 70's, like many of use were then, I waitressed.  It was good money.  I partied and worked and smiled at the rude people who expected the world for a 50¢ tip. I had to migrate.  Knowing I was too hyper to sit still and that I needed to make a living AWAY from small town USA, I joined the Navy and became a metal worker.  Loved it, made money at it and when I left the USN I got a job making good bucks.  I could weld ANYTHING because I understood heat (having been a fire bug from way back) and was a hard worker.  Then along came my sons.  I stayed home with them (thank you God) to raise them and be with them and give them every little bit of love and life and whatever it is that Mom's give to son's and I worked so hard to not make the mistakes my parent's made and to give them all the good things that my parents gave me.  Then I had to go to work.  I prayed.  I went to nursing school. 

All of this, all of the false careers that were mere blips in His true intention for me, all of this and I really, really love my job.  Thank you God, you have been faithful and true while I have been skeptical and unbelieving.  I hated you for letting me be so hurt and destroyed (the suffering made me a more compassionate nurse).  I learned how to act like I wasn't dying inside ( that made me a rock of a  nurse).  I feared that You would see how rotten I felt (That made me a humble nurse).  I felt I had to do it all myself (that made me an efficient nurse).  I learned how to trouble shoot (that made me understand the human body).   I mothered (what patient doesn't need a little motherly love?).  I doubted you but You never doubted me.  You had a plan.  You always do.

Autumn Poem

Fearful of the coming winter

the cowardly yellow leaves let go

and fall in heaps 

to 

the 

ground.

Barack Obama is tired of your motherfucking shit

Barack Obama is tired of your motherfucking shit

hahaahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha this just cracked me up but I don't really know why

An Offering

A male friend asked me why women apologize when we haven't done anything wrong. Here is what I told him:
I say "I am sorry" because I am polite and choose to diffuse. I do not apologize for myself except when I am truly at fault. Sorry does not only mean apology. As a matter of fact, apology is only a small portion of the definition of sorry. I won’t bore you with all the meanings here. Look it up.
Back to sorry…When I say I’m sorry you are upset, I am not apologizing, I am stating a fact. I am sorry that you are upset. Firstly, as an empathetic person, I really AM sorry you are upset. Upset is not a good place to be. Happy is a good place to be. Mellow is a good place to be. Upset, not so good. I feel your suffering in your upset place and am sorry FOR YOU. Secondly, when you are upset it colors the atmosphere around you and I happen to be in that atmosphere of your upset. Consequently, I am affected by your upset in an existential way.

I will continue to say I am sorry. The world is a place full of hurt and I am very sorry for those who suffer, even if it is at the hands of their own twisted psychs.
I think the woman’s sorry you speak of is part of who we are, empathetic, nurturing, caring. These are generally not traits associated with men.
I’m sorry if you have had difficulties in the past with understanding the nature of the female sorry. I am sorry for you because it caused you to view women as other than they actually were. What you apparently perceive as weakness is actually giving, loving and caring.
I hope I have helped you see our sorry for what it is, a selfless (sometimes) verbal pat on the back.

The Racist Census: More questions than answers

I was thinking of how much I despised filling out the 2010 census. I felt insulted by the questions and had considered not sending it in. Today I realized why it bothered me so much. In our country, where we are supposed to treat everyone the same, no matter what color or nationality they are, the government is enforcing it's own racist policies via the US Census.

On the census there are many different kinds of browns to choose from, many different sub groupings of non-whites, non-European peoples. I had considered leaving the areas requiring racial information blank. What did the government care what color I am? What difference did it make? Why are all non-browns, non-latinos lumped together? When I investigated the necessity of this information to the government I found it was, in part, a way to decide voting districts as well as dispensation of government monies. Voting districts are designated along racial lines? Government handouts go by racial heritage not need? Are certain races more needy by dint of their color or language? Is the government perpetuating a welfare race by it's application of racial profiling? Look what the US did to the indigenous peoples. They hobbled them through forced dependence. Why is the issue of one's Latin heritage so important to the census? Could it be related to the 57% democrat versus the 23% republican partisian allegiance that Latinos claim? When will our government stop being racist in order to further it's own subversive agenda?

True Healthcare Reform From a Healthcare Professionals Perspective.

AMA sold out the physicians in backing this bill which is not reform at all, only a government take over of the health industry, with no REAL changes made to improve the system. TRUE reform would have included tort reform and sliding scale clinics available for preventative care, a move which would allow hospital emergency departments to triage and refuse care to non-emergent cases, referring them to the clinics. Another big change to the present system, which unfairly puts the burden for free medical care on the hospital system, would be to allow hospitals to refuse care to illegal aliens. The fact is, the government has been legislating acute care into bankruptcy and long term care into mediocrity.  Real reform means real changes and this bill does not present them.  It only puts another nail in the coffin that is the American economy through higher taxes and encouragement of the "entitlement" mentality by redistributing wealth from middle class people like me to those who feel entitled to the fruits of my labor.