The Birthday, the Buyer, the Banging Hangover

Another Wednesday has come and gone and I haven't posted about Birthday Wednesday, my journal tidbits festering in draft mode for lo these many days. So let's talk about Birthday Wednesday.

Everyone managed to make it to the appointed restaurant roughly about the same time, with only my brother and sister-in-law running late. This particular restaurant has valet service and my mom was adamant that valet service is an outrageous expense, so after she walked across the street in 105 degrees Fahrenheit from the parking structure a block away in downtown Palm Springs, I got an earful about the multiple double-parkers in SUVs, etcetera.

Our tables were still being readied when DH and I got there, so I greeted mom with chocolate martini in hand at the solid marble bar. Mom squints at my drink with distaste, and chirps "Happy Birthday!" She pecks me on the cheek as I order a strawberry daiquiri for her. Then she glances at the cordoned-off tables where wait staff is finishing setting up our reservations, and DH says hello and mom beams as she hugs him.

My sister Angela arrives with my chocolate-strawberry cake, breathless, glances at mom, eyes rolling before mom turns around, and mouths "happy birthday" and grins as she beelines to the reserved tables. Mom sighs as Angela places the cake on the center table, taking a tight sip from her drink. I can read her mind: What a waste of strawberries, should have been strawberry and angel food cake. Mom is one of the few women on earth who detests chocolate; at least we have strawberry love in common. And mother's birthday is the oncoming Sunday, the 21st -- yes, mother-daughter Virgo tag team.

My cell phone rings; it's CC, texting me...ah, hell...I check the text: CALL ME URGNT....yeeeeah, so much for a work-free birthday ... I call her. "OH HI, HON!" CC is yelling, traffic almost drowning out her voice, "thanks for calling - need a HUUUGE favor from you, sweetie, I know this is your birtday -- HAPPY B-DAY by the way -- but can I pretty-please-with-strawberries-on-top (sharp laugh; she knows about my strawberry-and-chocolate mother dilemma). ANYHEY, pleasepleaseplease may I drop the interrogs by from yesterday with some minor-but-ABSOLUTELY-CRITICAL changes?"

I exhale hard, moving my mouth away from the cell just in time, I hope, so she won't register my exasperation. She knows I'll say yes, Friday is the last day to Fed Ex overnight them to defense counsel, and we've already been granted a two-week extension. "Yeah, CC, it's cool, I"m at --"

"Oh I KNOW where HAHAHAAAA! No worries, hon! My driver-du-jour is ALMOST there!" As I wonder WTF -- did she slip a GPS micro-chip in yesterday's coffee to track me down, I remember that I mentioned the place to the big guy and her because the buyer for one of CC's clients had business dealings with that restaurant's owner. Oops.

And as I'm putting my cell back in my purse, through the open window slats of the bar I see a midnight-blue, drop-top Mercedes pull up to valet parking. A valet opens the passenger door and CC steps out as the driver steps out and in almost one motion hands the keys to the valet and is at CC's side, CC hooking her arm to his. The "driver" walks with a dancer's grace as they enter the restaurant. His slacks and silk shirt exactly match the midnight blue Benz. He takes off his sunglasses and his eyes....wow, his eyes. His eyes were a light blue, but like crushed ice, with a striations in the irises. He smiles, a brilliant dimpled smile.

And CC. CC straightens her curly hair on very rare, very Special with a capital 'S' occasions, and this appeared to be one of them. Not only was her hair flat-ironed, but it was freshly cut, her hair ends cut to frame her face softly, and -- oh my -- she was giggling at something the buyer said, something the buyer said with that light, crisp accent ...

Just then, a tall, skinny blond waiter dashed over booming "HELLO! I will be at your service tonight, my name is Jim!" Big smile on Jim, directing his greeting to all of us but eyes fixed on the buyer. "May I see you to your table?" Again, his swooping arm motion included us all, but he directed his suggestion at the buyer, assuming the buyer was part of our dinner party.

CC locked arms with the buyer and introduces him to us. ....Did I just see my mom bat her eyelashes? This guy cannot be unaware of the effect he has on people ... on women, on our waiter.

All find their seating arrangements without any major drama or disagreements (another little miracle) as CC and the buyer sit at an free table next to us while I'm flipping through the folder o' interrogs she's passed me. DH asks me "Is that a, uh...new lawyer?"

"Oh nah, that's a prospective buyer and business partner for a client who has some issues with the -- oh nevermind, kind of boring ..." I'm wondering what happened to CC's boyfriend, the one she is engaged to and unengages from periodically, as CC's thigh edges closer to the buyer's.

The buyer seems oblivious to the attention, and when Jim brings us our drinks, we are absorbed in his story about his flight to LA and drive to Palm Springs because he loves the drive to Palm Springs even when it's a "how do you say -- pain in the ass" and the way he says "pain in the ass" is so funny and awkward, and yeah, hot. And Diehard whispers to me, "So, was this guy invited, because.." and he glances at the time on his cell phone. And as I'm saying "well..." and thinking what to say next because what to say next has now become a delicate task, CC glances at her cell and yelps "OH MY! Look at the time, we really need to be going!"

The buyer rises and helps CC out of her chair; CC blushes. I suppress an eyeroll. The buyer then comes up to me and takes my hand with his left (ringless, I note) hand and kisses it. "A very happy birthday to a very beautiful lady," he says, glancing up from my hand with Those Eyes. I suppress a squeeeeeee!.

CC is suddenly at my side, all "thank-you-SOOO-much-Letty" with just the slightest edge in her voice. Jim our server is now behind the buyer, right behind him, big brown eyes gazing up at him: "Is the gentlemen leaving us so soon?" Jim sounds like the thought of the buyer leaving is breaking his heart. "Oh yes, yes, I'm so -- " and then the proprietor of the fine dining establishment bounds over and gives the buyer a big bear hug and is rattling off names of friends who've been wondering where the buyer's been. As the buyer chats hurriedly with the owner, Sade's "Smooth Operator" plays on the sound system. Smooth operator indeed.

The buyer is now bidding farewells again but suddenly turns back to me and opens his arms, no words needed; he's hug-ready, smiling that little boy smile, and...those eyes, lit from within. I rise and am sort-of just drawn into that hug, my cheek sort-of this-close to touching his...mmmmm he smell GOOD. The buyer's married right hand lightly slides over my waist as he steps away. Yes, his married, Orthodox right hand, the ring on which I didn't notice until mom pointed it out as soon as he was out the door. Mom looked disappointed, and I thought shit and then why do I give a care exactly?

CC locks her arm to his again and leads him out of the restaurant with a quickness. When Jim comes around to inquire if I want more of the same alcoholic beverage because I've gulped down my margarita so fast -- my throat so dry all this time -- I say "a white Russian sounds good" and feel like a total idiot as I say it. I glance quickly at DH feeling like a schmuck and a slut rolled into one -- a schmut.

I catch DH and my brother Manny, who arrived with my sister-in-law about the middle of all this, as they both stare at their beers, then look up and strike the same hand-to-chin pose, eyes aimed at the flat screen TV over the bar at the opposite side of the restaurant, as if riveted by the muted Bloomberg channel. God, I wanted to slide under my table and stay there. My sis-in-law then tells Manny, "You should try out something like that next time at the mall, I mean just to see if it looks that good -- um, just if it looks good on you I mean," meaning the buyer's ensemble, then shuts up mid-sentence and takes a big gulp of her margarita as my brother sort of slams his elbow forward to lean in for a better view of the Bloomberg report.

The dinner rolls on well; I'm starving by the time my duck curry (yum!) is set before me. And the servers who sang Happy Birthday to me must be a barbershop quartet on their off time because that's just how they brought it down, outstanding! But best of all -- or maybe not -- when the bill came and I was insisting on paying for two, maybe three -- OK four -- drinks, Jim said "Oh no worries, the gentlemen (insert whistle Jim eye gleam there) took care of it."

And as Jim leaves with our plates, DH says "He tells us now. Super Fly didn't want us to know before we ordered, myabe we'd order the whole menu -- make him shit gold bricks." Manny fist-bumps him in solidarity and they both laugh laugh laugh.

Later we met up with my sister Josie who worked late that day, and her partner at a drag show a friend of theirs was in; he was Cher. It's kind of a blur. I'm what's known as a light-weight, you see. Running, yoga, and occasional drinking spell disaster when you overindulge on the odd special days, with a high metabolic rate and over-drinking to stamp out social stress and nervous energy and -- oh nevermind, short story: I.was.smashed.

I remember leaning on DH as we walked across the club parking lot and yammering away about how CC must be finally going midlife-crisis on us and blahblahdrunkasshellbladdyblah, and feeling like the world was spinning as he helped my wobbly butt into the Rover. Don't recall the drive back to his house, remember stumbling through the door after deciding it wouldn't be such a bright idea to cross the extra street to my apartment building seeing that there was a police unit parked next to it and a cop listening to the cat lady of my building rant about my next-door neighbor's music.

Next I recall gingerly laying myself down next to DH on his bed in the living room, grateful for the soft faux-candle light from the front window because I think the glare of full-on lighting would have seized up my throbbing head, and I felt like if I turn my head too fast I'd puke. DH's bedroom and the rest of the house is a construction zone right now, because the renovation from hell is still going on, and so it's like camping indoors, and back to OH MY HEEEAD and the vertigo. But somehow I'm still yammering away and I'm telling DH how it was a great party and thanks for putting up with the drama ha-ha-ha...

And I fall asleep for about an hour, and wake up as the last shred of a vivid dream is fading: Even in sleep I'm trying to keep really still, keep my head steady, and the soft whirring from the air conditioning vents becomes the soft purr of a high-performance Mercedes convertible, as I sloooowly turn my head to my left, and the buyer turns to me from the drivers seat, married hand on the steering wheel, and he smiles that smile and those eyes just glow, as he tells me how he loves to drive back through the desert to LA late at night, with Los Angeles rising before him glittering like a dirty jewel.

And I'm awake again, and sloooowly turn my head to DH, and he opens his eyes and leans over, smiles his Die Hard smile, and kisses me on the tip of my nose, ahhh... and GOD I'm a sucky girlfriend, I almost say, as I black out till the alarm shrieks an hour later at 5 a.m.

Dancing fire, coyotes howling, smell the rain ...

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Nature's fireworks burst over the canyons behind my abode and grazed us on their way to wake up my mom in Desert Hot Springs.

... I blame Whiskey Marie

;D

The owls, watching me watching them tonight.

The owls on this tree are both well over a foot tall. Even clicking to enlarge on the first photo doesn't do them justice. They played this game with me where they'd swoop and stand motionless on the green next to the pond, doing a 360 with their heads in unison as I slowly approached them trying to get a close shot; then as soon as I readied my camera, they'd swoop back up to the tree. I gave up, laid out my blue mat and carried on with yoga in the beautiful old neighboring country club. They watched and cried encouragement now and again. Yoga studio al fresco.

Ah, and the following shot of Mount SJ past sunset doesn't do the mount justice either:



San Jacinto looms larger at and after sunset; it appears to creep up higher and wider against the horizon, breathtaking.

Work was insaner than usual; needed to get out and just couldn't stand more driving and small talk even with the good people at the PS studio. Finally feel clear-headed enough to think and call back on my phone messages...exciting post, I know. Oh well, good night & namaste.

We really might know what it's like ...

Damn.

Believe it or not, 'liberals' aren't all lock-step behind Al Gore regarding "global warming." I've been planning to post for a while about why I think we may indeed be in a Maunder Minimum which may bring another "small Ice Age. The disappearance of this man-made Lake Delton outside Chicago and some of the whacked comments under reminded me of this debate. Will be back with more to say.

...OK, I'm back. The photo above is from the Chicago Tribune, and it's giving me flashbacks to my childhood in Imperial Valley, which is criss-crossed with irrigation canals feeding off the Colorado River. At 12, before we moved to the city that Frank Sinatra built, mom and dad loaded us on the truck and off we went with other families to two large canals that were drained for upkeep. We brought coolers full of ice to haul away with as many flip-flopping catfish and tilapia from the exposed sandy bottoms as our garage freezers could hold. YEEEEEEEEEEEEE-HAW :)

Anyway, the article points out that many Lake Delton residents appeared to have forgotten that their lake view was courtesy of a man-made dam, and not a dam built for longevity. And a dam that maintenance had been skipped till 2009. Infrastructure maintenance has been overlooked in my fair country with catastrophic consequences; sadly Katrina appears to be a lesson lost on politicians and voters alike.

About the Maunder Minimum, what looks like an overdue ice age, and the global warming debate, I think this event shows how little we appreciate the impact of the sun's cycles as well as eons of variables that have not even been taken into account yet. From what I've been reading about global warming, too, a good case is made that hydrocarbons do increase heat, but just how big a factor is it in the long run?

Climate alarmists grabbed an as-yet unproven ball and ran with it. And their head-in-the-sand counterparts on the right can now cry "TOLD YOU SO" while trying to ignoring the consequences of petrochemical toxins and overpopulation, etcetera, in one fell swoop just because the greenies are wrong on the longterm or short term impact of global warming.

So what happens after an ice age, if that's where we're headed? How do we keep ignoring what is happening right now: food and water shortages, riots and wars over dwindling resources that advanced society depends on? I think it's tragic that arguing over climate changes that even the best geologists, astronomers, climatologists, etcetera, don't have a handle on is being used as a way to ignore the mess we are in now.

And speaking of messes, and of my catfishing Imperial Valley days, the desert's own floodwater bowl is in sore need of rescue. For now it remains the go-to place if you enjoy the crunching sound of fish bones as you walk its "beach," the perfect tourist trap for Europeans on discount vacation packages in August, or a cheap place to make a surreal movie or music video:



and oh yes, I love this song.

ADVIL LIQUIGELS: DON'T LEAVE HOME WITHOUT THEM.

I've changed my first swimsuit post pics to more anonymous but still relevant pics to keep it seminonimous here, as that gives me the liberty to relate events like what will follow. I've also added a couple of extra pics since I hear that my derriere has fans ;)

So on to explaining this post's title. Our office hosted another deposition this afternoon. The day had already been pretty trying. Everything seemed to be going fine the first half hour or so; the door to the conference room where the depo was taking place was closed, but soon I could hear muffled but louder voices. Almost an hour later, the defense counsel bursts out, nearly slamming the conference room door in CC's face, who's following close behind yelling "WHAT THE FUCK do you mean by THAT?"

Defense counsel swings the front door open, turns back and glares at CC. His green eyes are bloodshot; then he locks them on me for a split second -- I can only describe that look as homicidal -- before tearing out the front door without closing it. At this point he's muttering tortured incomprehensible curses, and then he stops by the front desk lobby. The part-time student behind the desk staring at him has gone bloodless white. Defense counsel proceeds to swing his metal briefcase across the lobby, straight at a glass "sculpture" displayed on an iron tripod; it resembles (or resembled) a 3-foot in diameter burnt pizza. The burnt pizza sculpture shatters, the sound echoing. Heads pop out of offices around the lobby.

CC is at our still-open door; I think she mouthed "oh shit." Our big guy runs out of his office at this point, stepping between CC and defense counsel. "STOP RIGHT THERE" he booms to defense counsel, who's breathing like he's running a marathon in his head, eyes locked to where his briefcase lies on shards of thick glass across the floor.

Two security guards were at the lobby entrance now, but the big guy waved them off after snapping his cell phone shut. Big guy walked toward the defense counsel slowly saying "Come with me, come." And defense counsel followed, as the big guy's cell rang and he answered. From his replies I gather it was defense counsel's firm. The seconds between when defense counsel unlocked his eyes from his briefcase-missile till when he followed the big guy out the building seemed like minutes to me, and to CC and everyone else there I'm sure.

Maintenance was called to clean up the mess; after an admin from another office commented that "I reported that damned glass thing as an earthquake hazard last safety meeting -- guess it's a moot point now."

And defense counsel...well, the man's father is the pastor of a church in a neighboring county flock-full of important or self-important members of its community. Up to now, this guy was one of those people Jim Heynen seems to be be writing about in the poem which follows.

At the end of the day, as CC rifled through her bag and I handed her the Advils from mine and she took them wordlessly and swallowed them sans water, the Beatles song "Nowhere Man" played on the lobby system. Serendipity or what, what to call it? Defense counsel was so shiny happy clean, one of those guys you just can't imagine having more than the one-dimensional life of upper middle class yuppiefied "godliness," as perhaps his pastor father would call it. And this happens.

Anyway, been a long day and evening, so with renewed gratefulness for my relative freedom and for a family that didn't groom me for a staged life, I afix here Heynen's poem, which I copied by hand word for word in one of my "good" journals when I first read it in contemporary American poetry. And the youtube of the Beatles song. Good night, good morning, or good day now.

The Clean People, by Jim Heynen, from A Suitable Church [1981]

The clean people worry me.
Wherever they go, I face the glare
of their immaculate smiles,
their polished demeanor
declaring the good life of order.
Where is the smudged message of grief,
the scuff-marks of pain?
With all the dirt in the world,
who got theirs?

I think I am one
and take my place with the soiled.
We are the others
who cannot balance budgets,
nor wear white to our weddings.
Our garb is the haggard
will to survive.
Our language is the mono-
syllabics of dust.
Disorderly, vagrant,
we make our salacious way,
staining the world as we go.
We sing of flesh and the earth,

while they,
haloed in the absence of filth,
must live near God,
their heavenly songs
lodged in the unmarred
keyboards of their grins.
Here they come now,
their clean mouths open,
spilling light as they go.

Checking in ...

I've been very busy -- sounding really played-out, but again, very, very busy, and bushed. And very tired and sleepy right now. I'm so sorry to hear that TodayInSeven has been pulled by the authors -- seem to recall their were 2 authors, but anyway it's not as important as time out for them from the loss of someone beloved. So I'll try to keep the TodayInSeven posts alive in here because they remind me that brevity is the soul of ...what? man I'm tired!

I have some pics to upload from the street fair Thursday night -- not the best, and turns out that some peeps at the voters booth and passers-by are about as camera-paranoid as yours truly. Some volunteers didn't want their pics snapped and neither did many people walking by. I don't think it was because they thought Homeland Security would be out to get 'em. It's just that special desert blend of vanity, cam-angle-anxiety, and YES, a dash of men-in-black-out-to-get-us paranoia :O

I've fast-read some new posts from my dear faves on the reader when I could snatch a peek, but want to go back when I can give them the read they deserve and put some thought into them. A couple are stand-outs: both deeply touching and courageous.

Last night I went out to dinner with one of my best friends who was visiting from Santa Rosa, and this happened about an hour after she drove "the split" this man drove straight into. The photo from The Desert Sun is haunting:



I don't know what else to say that hasn't been said at the office, around town, and even the comments thread on the story link, but although life is dear to me, I also understand how someone can do this. I don't want to ignore the heinous disregard for family or friends he may have who would suffer his absence, and especially the disregard for other people he could have taken with him. But I know, have known, enough people in love with both cars and speed, and alcohol, and the thrill of all three involves flirting with death. And I can see where a particularly horrible day or news, depression, could take them there.

Other news reports say he was driving a silver Audi; that's a speed machine, know someone who owns an Audi convertible who relishes open stretches of road where he can play Autobahn for a spell. And I also feel the first poster on the Sun story may be correct: suicide by car. Accelerating at that point regardless of the alertness it requires to turn left -- by the way, I've never found it so difficult -- Palm Canyon is pretty curvy-windy at that point and it's mid-town there, not an area where you'll likely find yourself screaming down it and suddenly go "whoops, what a surprise: turns, splits in the road, and intersections every other block." Yes, there's always drivers with a lead foot itching to get past everyone, but never hitting that speed there. And even my friend, who's driven only once before at night in PS, had no trouble maneuvering there or other points; never said anything about it being a tricky place or one that needed a sign.

I don't want to keep going on and on about this crash, so I'll stop here. Maybe I'll have to re-phrase and elaborate on some points later about this, because some points I don't think I've quite got across even with so much wordage.

And oh yes, it's about 74 degrees F tonight, low 90s today; expected to be in the mid-80s tomorrow. It was 110 just yesterday. It's as if the sun turned up the furnace from Friday through Monday as a preview of the months to come, then notched it down chuckling "ha, just playin' with ya, baby!"

Life & death: Dancer and her shadow. Namaste.

Today In Seven's authors reminded me of how nearly six years ago I learned what Nikki Sixx's lyrics express more profoundly than I can right now:



I have a bracing three days ahead; thank you, TodayInSeven, for inspiring me to throw myself into them like my father would. Peace.

Jehovah's Witnesses knocking -- it's SATURDAY MORNING, mofos!

I was trying to get an extra hour of sleep before I crawled out of bed to clean up and polish nails, etc., and head on over for mom's day brunch with my sisters and brother, and yeah, the religious sect with the worst boundary issues EVER comes knocking like they want to break my door down. They took off after my banshee yell of "NO THAAAAAAAAAAANKS" -- too late and a coffee cup too early to bust out on THEM with the Heart Sutra and ask them if they've met my lord Gautama Buddha; oh well, they show up next weekend and I'll have the Tibetan Book of the Dead ready and waiting by the door!

And so much for this "villa" apts' gates, gah...

In other news, busting out another post mainly for the sheer pleasure of watching it pop up on Google Reader ^_^ TWO fracking hours to bring that Frankenstein back to life! I over-analyze things, in true Virgo style. I peered at every bit of the blog's HTML trying to find HTML knots from the multiple times I re-burned feeds -- or whatever you call it. Also went scouring Google Help for clues. Turns out the problem was that, somehow, while effing around with the layout the first dozen times, I must have clicked into settings and somehow cut off part of the feed URL. Good times. OK, chipped nail polish doesn't wipe itself off -- laters!

DO NOT DISTURB: Attorney napping in office.

You say I kid when I say I babysit lawyers for a living? You would be wrong, my friend. Every now and then, too, I've been known to bribe, cajole, or reward them for good behavior with juice and cookies. The fine art of finessing clients and other attorneys on the phone and in person so that your charges may rest their eyes undisturbed for an hour or two -- or three -- is one of the unheralded talents of paralegaldom. Thus my short but turbulent past as a teacher serves me well.

Good night now; early morn awaits my online homework results, ugh...

YES! YES! YES! THANK YOU, NORTH CAROLINA!

"I love this country too much to see it divided and distracted at this critical moment in history! ... "

So do I, sir, so do I!

& THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU, my beautiful tireless fellow Democrats of the Desert and Stonewall Democrats for Obama! Thank you, a million hugs for tonight's great dinner and rock-solid solidarity tonight!

Overworked, overcrammed, underslept ... fast-forward Saturday, please :(

Lashing winds, fire, earthquake, all tonight -- WTF?!

Yes, that is what it was.

"A small earthquake struck south of the Coachella Valley about 8:55 p.m. today...."

Yeah right, "small" only if you weren't sitting under clattering crystal -- yes, I moved my fine glassery off the shelf above my head next to my desk as soon as the floor stopped rocking. GOD, I'm a California native, I should decorate an apartment with earthquake safety before feng shui, no contest.

Oh yeah (WARNING: TMI ahead!): Last night my period dropped -- for the SECOND time this month! I had a clean physical and exam at the gyno's in February; this two-period thing has never happened to me, I'm as regular as clockwork dammit -- GAH can't take more freakshitness while cramming a 6-unit course in 8 weeks (((sob))) !!

OK, back to online course hell.

E-mail downer: Prof unimpressed with quiz grades.

"After a great start in Chapter 1, the Chapter 2 quiz results were disappointing. This is the most important chapter. ... Most of all: Lecture point 1: ... 2... 3 ... Remember, each chapter builds on an understanding of the prior chapter. Please, ... Please ask questions ..."

Just opened this little eye-popper from the online course prof. Until now, she's e-mailed very tactful, easy-does-it lectures, notes, and responses to our queries. As she goes on a typo-littered little summary of the points she feels we missed as a collective whole, I can see her pounding her head on the keyboard at the end. The e-mail ends abruptly, all her points not finished, as if she caught herself repeating the entire 5-page Chapter 2 lecture, but e-mailed this anyway.

Ouch. I thought I was doing a pretty good job skirting time-eating work in the book but still grasping the crucial points and work at least competently. Only silver lining is that it seems others did far worse than I did -- it's a terrible thing though when the only upside is other people's greater agony. Going back outside for some fresh air, and when I come back, perhaps I'll have recharged enough to re-tackle some of the concepts we're going to "build on" this week.

Bunny driving white van: furry convention tonight?

... I kid ... couldn't resist.

Poor Cons: Liberals come in feisty packages.

Quick post to keep The Big Fat Public Blog's heart beating.

And I notice via my misfiring Google Reader that most of my fave bloggers have been post-less, and Globus underscores how busy most people are with the return of spring.

I've relived what finals week was all about Friday and yesterday. Tried to slam an entire textbook chapter down in two sittings, sweated problems that I know with enough time to work the practice problems would be nothin' but a thang. But was happy this morning, after uploading a B+ quiz, how well I did in a subject that made me break out in cold sweat, math-related.

Anyhey, FINALLY successfully uploaded the text software and the goal is to keep pace with Chapter 2 tonight; my textbook was shipped late last week and that ate up study time.

Something else which ate up study time was my Thursday night's voter booth volunteeration. FedEx delivered my text Thursday afternoon, when all I could think about was handling 5 clients' appointments and two new ones' intakes at the office, AND running through facts and sources in my mind for repelling extra-bullyish neo-cons at the street fair that night.

Shouldn't have worried about the latter. The worst of the neo-cons' heckling came from a hydraulics salesman in 70's-styling running shorts (with matching maroon t-shirt TUCKED IN!) who backed the hell away after all 3 of us on the Obama side of the Democratic Party tables asked him in various versions why he shouted out his only concern as "What are you gonna do to save me from capital gains tax?!". My query to this Bruce-Jenner-Wheaties-era boomer Richpublican was "Why should taxpayers fund your company's welfare tax with more foreign loans, and hydraulics, isn't that an industry relying heavily on continuing the Iraqi occupation?" (Yes, business is good when the government bombs the infrastructure of an entire country, sir; too bad-so-sad for all those troops trying to get college paid for and their families supported by enlisting.) He backed away like he'd been sprayed with buckshot, glancing around the crowd as if concerned if onlookers watched his non-response, and away he walked-ran in his nearly ball-baring retro track shorts.

And let it be known that we were not being big, bad "libooooroools" to the poor minding-their-own-biz random Republicans out for a good time. Tonight we had a couple of idiots try to grab handfuls of the buttons or walking by several times for the sole reason of snickering or hurling some I'm sure painfully memorized line from a right-wing radio shill. The sweet and calm senior ladies manning the neutral middle section of the connected tables with the voters reg cards told us they get a lot of drunken harassment from neo-conned yahoos on regular nights; our take-no-shit attitude kept the trolls at bay this night.

Oh man, and it was right in front of CopyKatz, on the first night of White Party no less! Also held an Obama poster aloft my 3 hours at the table because the Hillary side had the advantage of a looped video on a TV set of Hillary Clinton working a crowd. "OBAMA IN O-EIGHT, HE CAN ENUNCIATE" was my impromptu cheer, with an "UNLIKE A FAKE TEXAN WE KNOW" to the random glaring a-hole meandering the street fair. One beer-can-tan dude turned away from me but gave a slashing thumbs down as he passed by -- he was my inspiration.

We sold out of all bumper stickers and buttons within the first hour, which fund local Democrats, and next week plans are afoot for more crowd-pleasing bumper stickers like "Say NO to McBush in '08". Also, two of our guys got a brilliant idea while shouting "PALM SPRINGS: YOUNGER THAN MCCAIN" as they passed the celebratory bandstand for Palm Springs' 70 years as a city, on the corner of Tahquitz and Palm Canyon...where the precinct wives of the Republican Party table seethed.

There was also an awesome candle-light vigil-march for hate crimes victims led by the San Diego Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. It was a beautiful night all told.

Now I have to hurry outside to meet the setting sun on its way over my favorite, eucalyptus-crowned golf-course. I leave you with a song that's been running on my player during my last couple of runs, and will again this evening.

... Und auf wiedersehen, mein special lurker.

Escape from freedom and enslave the world.

(Skip to 33:00 on the clip above for a quick dose of insight.)

Because I've been so busy and was planning a post anyway about the religion of hate, in all its sects and disguises, and because in spite of being a Mac fanboy, Mark Morford keeps speaking his heart and conscience, and because again he so uncannily speaks for me in this piece, but words fail me and all I want to do is bitch-slap the smug and militantly blind out of people who back the shit going on around us: I've done what I don't want to do regularly and quoted an entire article.

My TodayInSeven post-title was inspired by a book I read in Cal State, Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm, which psychologically and sociologically gets to the heart of the matter that when enough individuals are scared shitless of the work and courage required to be free, even the most "advanced" and democratic societies spiral.

-- oh yeah, and the YouTubery? That's to cleanse my mind of the Christ-hijacking image of "Kriss-chuns" (as a friend forever nicknamed a spittle-spewing regular haranguer from a fundamentalist church outside the old Planned Parenthood clinic in Indio, whose answer to why he was out there waving photoshopped pics of trashcan fetuses and hollering about "whores of Babylon" to women coming into the clinc was "Cuz imma kriss-CHUN!"). Thank you, Anne.


Mark Morford:

I know I know I know — we don't exactly have huge platoons of nasty jackbooted soldiers storming through the streets in riot gear and gas masks and large sticks bashing down on the shiny heads of peaceful monks.

We don't exactly have smashed and burning vehicles and dead bodies in the streets and vicious martial law, ethnic cleansings and curfews and media lockouts and blocked Internet access and all sorts of nefarious, disturbing reports of brutality and beatings and death. Well, except for parts of Oakland. And L.A. And Chicago. But never mind that now.

Overall, even under the deformed and wretched Bush regime and despite how much Dick Cheney's dead raisin of a heart leaps with excitement when he sees the videos of those bloodied and dead Tibetan protesters ("Damn hippies had it coming"), America is still far from the brutality and inhumanity happening right now in Lhasa and beyond.

Or maybe not. For here is what we do have: We have torture. We have a frighteningly simpleminded cowboy-wannabe president who supports and endorses the most inhumane treatment of prisoners imaginable despite its utter failure as a tactic, and this violent belief, this dark energy infects the national bloodstream like prehistoric malaria.

We have capital punishment. We remain the only so-called advanced first-world democracy on the planet that legally kills its own, and we top it off by imprisoning tens of thousands more merely for growing or selling a bit of marijuana or Ecstasy or meth, wasting tens of billions of dollars on an overflowing prison system and a failed drug war that no one at the highest levels of government dares speak against because oh my God all drugs are evil! Now go slam a few beers and a fistful of Xanax and forget about it.

We still have a hateful fundamentalist religious right that, despite nicely fracturing itself over the fact that certain chunks of it aren't hateful enough toward women and gays and sex and non-Christian beliefs, still freaks out when kids play dress up, still is horrified by the notion of a black or female president, still honestly believes homosexuality is an abomination and Jesus spoke perfect English and stem cells have feelings and cavemen rode dinosaurs and the vagina is Satan's playground. Which, of course, it totally is. But in a good way.

Thanks to Dubya's disastrous economics, we now have the largest deficit in history, coupled to the widest gap ever between ultra-rich and the poor, with the largest swath of the middle-class no longer really in the middle and now more like hovering just above oh my God how will we make the mortgage payment this month I hope nothing goes wrong with the Civic and please please please no one get sick.

Wait, check that: Bush's economics haven't failed at all. They've worked spectacularly well, and exactly as designed: The rich got richer and, well, f— everyone else.

We are all but officially in a recession, deepening by the day. China and Japan own the vast majority of America's staggering debt, in the form of massive loans with equally massive interest rates, and if their economies so much as sneeze, we're basically screwed. Check that: more screwed.

The housing market is tanking. Has tanked. Is still tanking. And you know it's tanking when even homeowners in normally bulletproof San Francisco are getting nervous, when real estate blogs from here to SocketSite are all posting items about how even ridiculous multi-million dollar Pacific Heights homes and downtown luxo condos are slashing 50 thousand, 100 thousand, 1 million bucks off their sale prices to stimulate interest, and while there are still gobs of dot-com money floating around, most everyone is feeling very edgy indeed. But hey, at least you have that IRS rebate check coming, right? Smell the economic stimulus package! Mmm, futile.

Is there any good news? Why, sure. Hope is bubbling and churning like we haven't seen for nearly a decade. Given how 80 percent of Americans believe/know we're currently on the wrong track, all attention is turning to the Obama/Hillary cavalry riding all-too-slowly toward us in the far distance. But meanwhile, the feral neocon pigs are still rooting what's left of the garden. As Jon Stewart put it, despite all the change in the air, despite the wisps of hope and progress and fluffy bunnies for all, well, Bush is still president.

Yes, Dubya is still being mocked overseas and still raping the English language at every speech and still taking these remaining miserable months of his failed presidency to see if he can't hammer a few more nails into the coffin of the economy, the environment, the soul of the nation. Hey, what's happening in Tibet is horrible, but have you seen the smoking rubble that was the U.S. Treasury?

Gas is four bucks a gallon. Airlines are shutting down. Newspapers are dying. Oh my, yes. Major media is in upheaval and some of it is good and some of it is very ugly and no one seems to have any idea how to create a new kind of business model that will sustain true and invaluable expertise in journalism, deep reportage that we actually count on — and which all those petulant, anti big-media blogs actually depend on for their very existence — to give the nation some sort of reliable collective narrative.

Whoops, sorry. Sidetracked. But then again, not really. You want to know about Bush's various ongoing abuses? You want to know the facts about the failed surge in Iraq? About Darfur? Burma? Tibet? You need major media, flawed and imperfect and biased as it may be. What, you think it's a perfect science?

As for Tibet, it's sort of amazing, really. This Olympics might indeed turn out to be a terrific opportunity for this same beleaguered media — right along with the blogs and the YouTubes and the rest — to shame China for its rampant human rights abuses and abhorrent record of oppression and ethnic cleansing.

But here's the really incredible thing: Intense international scrutiny could actually forcibly reshape the political and moral agenda of this exploding superpower at the perfect moment, just as it enters the big leagues and becomes a true force in the world. Put another way, Bush's America has essentially failed as moral and theological leader of the world. Maybe our turn at the wheel is done. Maybe a revolutionized, liberated, democratic China can do better?

But this is not a column to say we're in the same situation as Tibet/China. There is no real comparison. After all, Bush has yet to order the Army into the streets of Eugene and Austin and San Francisco to crack people's skulls for doing some yoga and lighting incense and for believing that Jesus wasn't actually a warmongering Muslim-hating isolationist jackass like he is. Not yet, anyway.

This is merely to remind, to point out one of the great things about this country. You want dour news? You want heartbreak and disappointment and oppression, people paying 15-grand to have a tiny bump removed from their elbow because the health care system is a disaster? You want to feel enraged at human rights abuses and overflowing prisons and fascist-like government maneuvers? Wave that banner high, protester. Free America! Free America! Free America!

Hot, sunny...Good excuse for noon nap.

~_~

Everything in moderation, including moderation.

I'm going out, as in the neighbor who smiles like Bruce Willis from Die Hard 1 asked me out. As in the neighbor formerly known as The Range Rover Neighbor, who nearly ran me off the road on Sunrise and Ramon -- anyway, haven't done a "datey" date in lo these many moons ...

...and at the risk of turning this blog into My Big Fat YouTube Blog, here's a trailer for another movie I humbly believe that your life is that much missing out on if you haven't seen it:

Blogger Brian Hughes said...

Free Tibet - Olympic Running Shoes Half Price!

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Much love to you, brother Brian Hughes!

Dragon sleeps in my heart chakra today.

It was difficult to fall asleep last night. I got out of bed after an hour of trying, read through the instructor's e-mails for the online class starting next Monday; then I meditated for 20 minutes.

When I finally got to sleep, deep in it I recall a small, young dragon. She was lean and snake-like in body, but had short, slender legs. Deep blue with spine scales glittering, she was a very chatty dragon. I wish I could remember what she said. But I do remember her merry, sparkling eyes, and how she curled up for warmth on my chest as I lay in bed, still chattering away, but slowly quieting, as she curled in snugger and snugger between my breasts. She curled and curled in for warmth and finally got through my chest, nestling in my heart. I slept soundly and woke up without the alarm's assistance this morning.

I've noticed that whenever I dream of dragons, things seem to go better, or at least I can cope with the coming day much better. May this be the case today.

... I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack. Day went smoothe, including two situations that could have gone in charlie-foxtrot territory with just the wrong touch. So the dragon abides...and just because I couldn't stop this song from looping between my ears all day (DAMN YOU, Fergie!):