OMG America! Part 2

Except for that Prop 8 stuff. What the f*ck were you thinking?

OMG America!

Let me just take a minute out from this to-all-appearances-suspended blog to say: America! I've never been prouder of you - of us - than I am this week. I could probably say more, but I'll probably start crying all over again.

Stop sending me crap!

Dear Wonderful Charitable Organization,

You are. You really are. You do good work, work that this sorry old world needs doing. I believe in you.

I send you money. I send you money so you can continue doing the good work you do. I want you to end torture and genocide. I want you to rescue puppies and kittens. I want you to help those devastated by natural disasters, to feed the starving and house the homeless. I honestly, desperately do. That is the reason I send you money.

These are not the reasons I send you money: I don't send you money to get mailing labels with my name, address, and your logo printed on them. I don't send you money to receive minuscule fleecy blankets adorned with the images of puppies and kittens. I don't send you money so you can send me a letter every other week pleading for more money.

If I had more money, I'd send it.

If I wanted a minuscule fleecy blanket adorned with the images of puppies and kittens, I'd sew one myself.

If I wanted mailing labels, I'd buy my own. Oh. Wait. I do.

If I wanted more unopened envelopes to toss into the recycling bin, I'd send myself homemade minuscule fleecy blankets adorned with the images of puppies and kittens in envelopes with mailing labels embossed with my name, address, and my own frickin' logo.

Dear wonderful, charitable organization, I don't want any of the crap you send me. I don't need the gratitude. I don't need another piece of junk to toss out. I don't like suspecting that the money I've sent you over the years goes not into your cause in which I believe and want to help advance, but into the stuff you send me.

For that reason, and for that reason alone, I will probably not be sending you more money this year. Or, possibly, ever again. And that's a shame, if, in fact, the money actually goes to the people who need it and isn't simply, cynically being recycled back to me and other sincere, well-meaning donors in the form of fleecy blankets, mailing labels, and biweekly bulk postage.

You may find this instructive, so I'll tell you about the two wonderful charitable organizations that will definitely be receiving my hard-earned money this year. Both are local, one a literacy program, the other a homeless shelter for women. They don't send mailing labels or blankets or monthly appeals for money. Once a year, the literacy program sends me a postcard written by an actual student describing in heart-stopping, broken-but-improved English just how the program has changed their life. I know, because I work with the program, that these postcards cost next to nothing to produce and mail and that the students are thrilled to trumpet their accomplishments. The homeless shelter - again, just once a year - sends out a newsletter informing me about what it's been up to, how many women its helped, and how.

They will get my money this year. You will not. Unless you just. Stop. Sending. Me. Crap.

Thanks for listening and good luck to you,

Tequila Fog

It's not enough that it's pouring outside

I did something kinda stupid today. I googled Old Boyfriend.

We were 20-something the last time I saw him. He'd just gotten a graduate degree in a field he'd pretty much decided he hated, but he hadn't yet figured out how to break the news to his dad, who wanted OB to follow in his footsteps. OB admired me for being what he called a mutant. He thought I was oh so cool, but really I was just depressed. Encouraging him to stay in his band? To keep his mold-infested room in the group house he shared with four strung-out roommates and one bathroom? C'mon, dude. Live your art. Like a crazed pinball, he kept shooting back and forth between me and his overachieving college sweetheart. When I was finally willing to believe that he wasn't gonna stick around this time either, I told him he had to make a choice. So. He chose.

In all these years, I haven't thought of him. But this afternoon I was reading something that made me mildly curious about seeing if I could find him. Ah, the google, frightening in the length and breadth of its capability to seek, to find. I learned that OB is now the CEO of a small but stupendously innovative, loftily praised, fabulously successful software startup. Would you be surprised if I told you that he married College Sweetheart? Nah. Me either. She is, ironically, a writer. Published. Reviewed and interviewed. Busy with reading tours and in-store signings. Which she fits in between managing the many-million-dollar home in Old Money Suburb and raising the kids. Two. A boy. A girl.

She's got publicity shots online. Today was the first time I ever saw what she looked like. I was hoping to see someone I'd like, but the warmth is in her pose, not her eyes. It's impossible to know whether the photo doesn't capture it or it's just not there to capture.

I can't imagine living the kind of life they seem to have together. It's so obvious OB and I were never meant to be.

Though the summer home on Vacation Island? In the divorce negotiations, I really would've fought for that.

You win, Luckybuzz. You win.

Four Jobs I've Had
1. ESL/EFL teacher
2. VW repair manual proofreader (pretty close to porn :)
3. waitress in a Chinese restaurant
4. patent goddess

Four places I've lived
1. an attic in Newton
2. a cabin in Vermont
3. twice with various housemates from hell, both times, oddly enough, in Cambridge
4. a tiny room with poetry scrawled on hot pink walls in Barcelona

Four favorite foods
1. just about anything Thai
2. fried clams, bellies and all
3. anything Indian with spinach and cream
4. slivers of manchego cheese topped with green apple slices

Four places I'd rather be
1. in the shade in Spain
2. in the sun in Sweden
3. in a bank counting my lottery winnings
4. here, but with air conditioning

Four movies I can watch over and over
1. Head On
2. Grand Canyon
3. The African Queen
4. Dr. Zhivago

Four TV shows I like to watch
1. America's Next Top Model (hey. It's ART. OK, art-like. OK, it's crazy girls with lipstick.)
2. Lost
3. Mystery
4. Six Feet Under

Four websites I view daily
1. crossword puzzles (can you hear that sucking sound? that's my day...)
2. blogs,
3. blogs, and
4. you, of course!

Four computers I've owned
1. some piece of crap from Radio Shack
2. Compaq
3. IBM Thinkpad
4. Dell laptop

Your turn, DM.

-TF

Just one more....

Let's impeach the President for lying
And misleading our country into war
Abusing all the power that we gave him
And shipping all our money out the door

Who's the man who hired all the criminals
The White House shadows who hide behind closed doors
They bend the facts to fit with their new stories
Of why we have to send our men to war

Let's impeach the President for spying
On citizens inside their own homes
Breaking every law in the country
By tapping our computers and telephones

What if Al Qaeda blew up the levees
Would New Orleans have been safer that way
Sheltered by our government's protection
Or was someone just not home that day?

Flip - Flop
Flip - Flop
Flip - Flop
Flip - Flop

Let's impeach the president for hijacking
Our religion and using it to get elected
Dividing our country into colors
And still leaving black people neglected

Thank god he's cracking down on steroids
Since he sold his old baseball team
There's lots of people looking at big trouble
But of course our president is clean.

Thank God



Okay. Who's next? I mean, really. Who can follow that?

One of my favorites

"I want to live,
I want to give
I've been a miner for a heart of gold.
It's these expressions I never give
That keep me searching for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old.
Keeps me searching for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old.

I've been to Hollywood
I've been to Redwood
I crossed the ocean for a heart of gold
I've been in my mind, it's such a fine line
That keeps me searching for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old.
Keeps me searching for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old.

Keep me searching for a heart of gold
You keep me searching for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old.
I've been a miner for a heart of gold."

Shall we change artists, TF? :)

-DM

Dueling Neil Youngs

My favorite Neil Young song of all time:

I wanna live
with a cinnamon girl
I could be happy
the rest of my life
With a cinnamon girl.

A dreamer of pictures
I run in the night
You see us together,
chasing the moonlight,
My cinnamon girl.

Ten silver saxes,
a bass with a bow
The drummer relaxes
and waits between shows
For his cinnamon girl.

A dreamer of pictures
I run in the night
You see us together,
chasing the moonlight,
My cinnamon girl.

Pa sent me money now
I'm gonna make it somehow
I need another chance
You see your baby loves to dance
Yeah...yeah...yeah.

I'll see your Neil Young and raise you one

Tequila Fog's post got a Neil Young song running through my mind:

"Think I'll pack it in and buy a pick-up
Take it down to l.a.
Find a place to call my own and try to fix up.
Start a brand new day.

The woman I'm thinking of, she loved me all up
But I'm so down today
She's so fine, she's in my mind.
I hear her callin'.

See the lonely boy, out on the weekend
Trying to make it pay.
Can't relate to joy, he tries to speak and
Can't begin to say.

She got pictures on the wall, they make me look up
From her big brass bed.
Now I'm running down the road trying to stay up
Somewhere in her head.

The woman I'm thinking of, she loved me all up
But I'm so down today
She's so fine she's in my mind.
I hear her callin'.

See the lonely boy, out on the weekend
Trying to make it pay.
Can't relate to joy, he tries to speak and
Can't begin to say."

More to come...

-Dirty Martini

I heard Neil Young

on the radio the other night, driving home from work. And today, back at work, I can't get this song out of my head:

I think I'd like to go
back home
And take it easy
There's a woman that
I'd like to get to know
Living there

Everybody seems to wonder
What it's like down here
I gotta get away
from this day-to-day
running around,
Everybody knows
this is nowhere.

Everybody, everybody knows
Everybody knows.

Every time I think about
back home
It's cool and breezy
I wish that I could be there
right now
Just passing time.

Everybody seems to wonder
What it's like down here
I gotta get away
from this day-to-day
running around,
Everybody knows
this is nowhere.

Everybody, everybody knows
Everybody knows.

Barcelona rocks!

Today Barcelona is hot, a bit muggy, and sunny. We got up early and had a splendidly cheap breakfast at Pans & Company. There are tables up on the second floor, so we went up there and sat at a window overlooking Plaza Urquinaona, where
tropical plants crowd the sidewalk. Afterwards, we set off to the beach, a mere 15 minute walk away. It's weird, but somehow I lost 30 pounds on the flight over, the
Little Martini became fluent overnight in both Spanish and Catalan, and Dirty Martini's backache cured itself.

Ah, the sun, the sea, the balmy air. More later!!!!