Bin Laden

This is what I have to say about the death of Bin Laden:

September 13th, 2001, my dad and i started on a trip to NYC. the trip was planned well before 9/11 and the plan was to visit our family friend in DC and then go visit my brother in NYC. we had no way of knowing what was in store. as we traveled across the country we saw a multitude of American flags being hung on overpasses and message of love and loss, frustration and mourning. Our friend lived in Alexandria and we passed by the Pentagon to get to her. i saw the collapsed side of the building, reduced to smoldering rubble. i took pictures. my dad, at the time, admonished me for it, until we got to NYC. i think he thought it was macabre and disrespectful to the gravity of the situation. i saw it as first hand account of history and a major event that needed documentation. part of it was macabre, but most of it was historical documentation.

he understood and followed suit when we got to NYC. few things make me instantly scared and sad as remembering crossing the George Washington bridge with the New Jersey Fire Dept. trucks and looking at lower Manhattan on fire. when we got to Times Square the full impact of the devastation was not in the amount of smoke, which was plenty, or in the places we couldn't go or the looks on people's faces. what struck both my dad and me the most were the posters of missing people that Kinkos, or some local xerox company, had done for free for the people looking for their loved ones. walls covered in faces with phone numbers on the bottom pleading for any information, any shred of hope, that their loved ones were still alive. as we walked along the streets and saw these posters plastered on bus stops and empty walls, we began to realize the extent.

it's one thing to talk about the Twin Towers falling, but to remember that it was filled with people is another. people jumping from the 40th floor on live TV. people's whose faces now plastered all over New York City. seeing that, and knowing that everyone you saw there was dead causes me not to shed a tear for Bin Laden.

i live in a very liberal, insulated area and have heard many people say, "i know, but it's still the loss of a life, and that's sad." i suppose that's fair. however, that life lived 10 more years, taunted the world for 10 more years than his victims and, when killed, was given a respectful burial complete with traditional Muslim preparation of the body. that's more than he gave his victims. i think it was noble of us to have done that. i think that is was politically savvy to have done that. i think it was humane to have done that. i think it exemplified the best in us to have done that. we didn't have to, but we knew we had to. if for no other reason, to prove to ourselves and the world that, although this person had orchestrated horrible tragedies upon us and our collective psyche, we will not stoop to his level and will treat him with the respect one person should show another.

a friend of mine, who's a genuinely good dude, keeps posting about his disgust with the American nationalism going on. he scoffs at people chanting "U.S.A.," he judges and admonishes at will. i think that's a position of privilege and lacks perspective. to scream about how much you hate America, as an American, is repulsive. the very fact that you CAN rail against your government and not find yourself in an unmarked grave is a testament to the greatness of our country. his ability to criticize is the very first right we have...as Americans. i'm not saying you agree with everything or are not critical of our government, it has done some profoundly fucked up things. however, it's not all bad and there should be some acknowledgment of that.

however, i digress. this friend of mine belittling people and even going so far as to call it "disgusting" when people who are celebrating being American is incredibly insensitive and, like i said before, lacks perspective. the college kids chanting were mostly 9 yrs old when it happened and have lived the greater part of their sentient life with a nervous, high alert, country. i can easily remember sitting with my mom before her flight left for Hajj. or being met the gate by my brother. these kids have never known that. all they've known is how unsafe we are and if they want to celebrate the death of public enemy #1, let them.

until 9/11, we, as a nation, never really experienced fear. there was Pearl Harbor, but that was in Hawaii, not on the continental United States, so it was still distant. we've always had an aura of invincibility. that was completely gone Sept. 11, 2001. so, if people want to celebrate a normal, cathartic, cry of relief at the death of Bin Laden, give them that. if people want to feel proud to be apart of a country that brought him down, give them that. if people want to express solidarity and happiness as a country, give them that.

on a personal level: until you have to frantically figure out the geography of NYC so you can sort out the distance of your brother to complete destruction while having every attempt to call him met with a busy signal, shut the fuck up. until you ride in with firemen to a burning NYC who may not make it home that night, shut the fuck up. when you stare the faces of thousands of posters, with phone numbers that will never be contacted with good news and fully comprehend the scope of this horror, shut the fuck up.

if ever there was a time to not judge, to not admonish, and to let people heal however they seem fit, it's now.

passwords and tepid water

it took me two days to get into this silly account. i had to reset my password to the password it already was. anyway, it's over. the crap thing is that i have a shoddy memory and had some pretty hilarious gems to post and, of course, i can't remember. that would lead most people, including myself, to think that maybe they weren't that important...and that's fair. however, i ask, how important are most things on blogs? exactly, so it was valid.

i slept most of the day away yesterday. i became a narcoleptic chocoholic. it was embarrassing. my sole attempt at doing anything significantly productive was to clean out the refrigerator. i started the process, tossed a bag of moldy lettuce, went into the bedroom and the next thing i know it's 2 hours later. i fell fast sleep with the refrigerator door wide open. not ajar, but open like a teenager in search of a midday snack. it's was bizarre.

my friend came over and we worked out again to the Badger...who still doesn't give a shit...and got sweaty and gross and glorious all at the same time. i'm a marvel of science and nature. anyway, just before this i noticed the water wasn't getting hot in the bathroom, but who spends 5 min. washing their hands? i figured i hadn't waited long enough for the heat to really kick in. no big...but it bothered me. i kept checking back and soon realized that there was no hot water in the house. my only day off this week that i'd successfully napped away, do you think i took a shower at any point after yesterday morning? if you said yes, because i'm a lady, you'd be correct about the lady part.

now i'm stuck. i've just worked out and have a day and half day's worth of grime on me, on top of sweaty boobs and a increasingly gross feeling on my neck. i *really* wanted a shower, but it was 11pm and have i mentioned my laziness? so i went to bed. yes, those sheets will be washed tomorrow.

i woke up early this morning because i knew i had one of two choices. i could either go to the gym i haven't been to in 6 months and shower there or i could take it back to Ukraine, circa 1998, boil lots of water and hope for the best. i reject the gym so magnificently comprehensively that instead of driving 10 minutes to shower in relative comfort, i opted for a tepid bath. so, 6 pots -of various sizes-- of water later i had my bath. i stored the boiling water in my slow cooker to stay warm. it was not pleasant, but not horrible. i did start out lathering like a chronic OCD patient, but then accepted the fact that between the bubbles and the gleaming white bubbles on my skin, i was clean. midway through i had to refill the slow cooker and running through the house dripping and sudsy was not a favorite moment in my young life. after the wash, complete with wetting my hair so i was submerged in this nonsense, i put the slow cooker filled with hot water into the draining tub, added cold water, and created a mini shower with my loofah sponge. that was nice.

oh the things we take for granted. so, i'm clean now and should be getting a new hot water heater later on today. hopefully i won't have to do this again tomorrow, because i have to work at 9 and have zero interest getting up at 6:30am to do this all over again.

however, i repeat, i'm clean...so it's not all bad.

2 steps forward, 3 steps back with a sundae!

Jillian Michaels had her way with me today.

Not in a sexy, lesbian way, but in a choking-on-my-heart way. My friend and i took 2 days off this week. Thurs was because she was busy and Fri was because we were lazy. Instead of working out, we opted for chatting while watching Independence Day in our workout clothes, which promptly got abandoned for a Friendly's sundae run. This morning we were 0.2% excited to shred, but shred we did. I sweated and hurt, with equal intensity, like i'd never done this DVD before. it was horrible. i almost want to do it now just to prove to myself that i'm better than that, but i'm, fundamentally, a lazy person and the idea of cramming my boobs back into that sports bra is fantastically unappealing. so, i'll just rest on my laurels of three days ago, when i rocked the fucking house.

Monday i felt a pain in my chest. it was above my left breast and really achy. i rubbed it wondering if i was having a mild heart attack. then, i remembered my heart is significantly lower, heart attacks generally start in the arms, i am 33, not morbidly obese, and there was a greater chance that it was merely the first time my pectoral muscles have ever been asked to do anything more than go anatomically unnoticed under my fleshy, ample bosoms.

damn you Jillian and all of your planks!

for all of you worried about my health, the ache never returned.

for all you men, the ample bosoms remain.

Jillian and the light switch

i've been doing Jillian Micheal's "30 Day Shred" DVD with a friend for about 1.5 months. i dread every second of it, even thought it's getting easier. she does a shit ton of planks and you wanna know what the last thing a chubby girl wants to do? hold up all of her mass on her feeble, grossly under-worked arms. even still, i do it. we shred. it's actually pretty awesome. the best thing that's come out of it, aside from the realization this morning that the only place i've lost weight is in my knees...the least fleshy part of my body, which is not a great accomplishment, just funny because it's so random. no, the best thing out of this experience is the ability to slowly turn off the wall switch with my foot, while fully loaded down with dishes.

two things are significant about this:

1) i'm insanely clumsy as if evident by the number of single dishes that were once sets in my cabinets and the stains on my clothes. i once spilled coffee on myself a work so comprehensively that i had to go down to Old Navy and buy a whole new outfit.

2) it also means my core is getting stronger and making me steadier which will, in the long run, make weight loss easier because i can move my flabby body better.

hey, Rome wasn't built in a day.

new me...well, new blog direction, anyway...

i haven't written anything in a long time and, honestly, it's because i'm busy and have become incredibly private/paranoid about what i put out in the ether. so, i don't really have any interest in talking about me and my personal life so much as random experiences.

i attribute this shift to two things:1 ) my boyfriend who is, actually, incredibly private and sorta paranoid. mostly because he's technologically retarded and doesn't understand privacy settings, but, in all fairness, has a point. plus, i respect his right to not blab about our relationship to anyone with ears...or eyes, for that matter, and 2) the fallout with my best friend over said boyfriend. the details are not important, but the virtue of keeping things to oneself has become incredibly relevant and vital to my own sanity. the state of our friendship has revived the super secretive side of me that i haven't employed for years and was once only used to avoid scandal. my actions this time were not scandalous and the situation was not really about him and would've happened for one reason or another, but the aftermath of it all was a general clamming up on my part. better safe than scarred, i say.

they say that girls look for their dad's --for better or for worse-- in men and i have, clearly, latched on to the paranoid, hilarious, and crazy part of my dad. constantly prefacing quirky stories with, "my beautiful, crazy man," he is incredibly sensitive about his private life and pretty sure the FBI is tracking him...just like dad. dad not so much the FBI, but "Big Brother" in the abstract. both have fair points, because technology is this quasi-amorphic bit of magic that we don't have much control over, unless you play World of Warcraft or went to MIT.

this being supported by the fact that mere moments ago a voice projected out of my computer speakers, briefly and loudly, in a foreign language. now, where i live i'm no stranger to non-English speakers, but i am a bit disconcerted by the ability to hear this guy through a speaker that is only connected to my computer. it felt very "Frequency" to me. i have no interest in speaking to the dead, even if they're related.

all of this prefacing was leading up to something and now i can't remember what it is. i don't want to "Draft" this because it'll just join the ranks of 17 other drafts i've composed in the last year. so, i'll end, but not before i say two things: 1) look for more anecdotal nonsense to come your way, because i have been ripe with silliness my whole life and i've been letting that freak flag fly lately and 2) i actively had to stop myself from posting a pithy, yet hilarious, comment on a friend's Facebook status forced to recognize that, while i have great affection for him, he has grown way too humorless for the likes of a frivolous me. he also went from being a prosecuting attorney in TX to a preacher so...no surprise, i suppose.

the comment was pretty funny, though.

MA election: the Democratic problem

living in MA, i welcomed the considerably more liberal --borderline pansy-- atmosphere as opposed to the oppressive retardation of MO. however, we are embarking on a new MA, i think. Sen. Ted Kennedy died in August and they just ran an election to fill his seat...and a republican won it. they whole world is in an upset. how is it that one of the most liberal states and a once safe Dem state elect a republican?

now, i was listening to NPR one morning when a political analyst explained that the reason the race was so close was because Brown (R) was running an incredibly smart campaign and Coakley (D) simply was not a good candidate. i, to be honest, don't know either of their platforms... i mean, can pretty much guess, but i have no idea how accurate that assessment is. apparently it was pretty spot on since Brown won and is the successor to Ted "the Lion of the Senate" Kennedy's wildly liberal seat. seriously, how does that happen?

i was thinking about the health care situation and how we got here and i blame the High Road. i completely respect Obama's diplomacy and that was one of the biggest reasons i voted for him. i loved the idea of the return to political discourse and thinking before reacting. it was such a welcome departure from the bullheaded, staunch, stubborn will of W...or, rather, Rove and Cheney. i think his calm, rational disposition is an asset that has yet to come to fruition and repair our country's psyche and international relations.

i am a fan of thinking and compromise. however, i am also a fan of decisive action on important issues. i understood, in the beginning, when Obama tried to compromise with Republicans and reach across the isle to bridge the partisan gap. it was important to reestablish the spirit of cooperation and to make good on a promise to try to unify. mostly, i think it's important to do initially, because if they do not respond in kind, it leaves you free to make unilateral decisions and not be accused of being a tyrant, because you tried. however, once it became clear that Repubs were playing grade school, temperamental, obstructionist games, compromise should've been a wrap. the definition of insanity is repeating the same action expecting a different result. if you constantly try to compromise with a body of people who routinely reject your efforts, continuing to do so makes you look insane, at best, and moronic, at worst.

the reason Bush had so much support...even until the bitter end...was because he was decisive and focused. now, it was not on the right things, but that's because we assumed our president to work in our national interest. that was not the case with Bush. he wasn't working for us. he pandered to us and tried, with his infuriating "good ol boy" shtick, to make us believe he was one of us and, therefore, could be trusted, but that simply wasn't true. none of it, actually. he's from CT and not a TX cowboy, but more importantly he was not one of us. well, he sure as shit wasn't me with his tenuous grasp of the English language. he is a son of incredible privilege and, consequently, had no idea what it means to be one of us. he was selling a story and we listened, hands propping up our eager chins, with our foolish legs swaying in the air.

Bush was not our servant; he had a different master. he had oil, insurance, and drug company friends to please. he had old vendettas to settle. he had Saudi Arabian friends to maintain. how else do you, logically, reason that, though 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, that Iraq is where you should fight? it, actually doesn't make any sense. and WMD wasn't even the point. a shit ton of countries have WMD. Iraq would, or would not as it turned out, have still be aiming for WMD after we caught Bin Laden and neutralized Al Queda. but we, as a people, bought it because he sold it. he seemed sure, sold it as an imminent threat, and went after it. he took deliberate action on a issue vital to our freedom. of course, we all know it was complete bullshit now...and many of us knew it then... but the bulk of the people bought it. that also endeared him to a lot of very scared people. even if he was wrong, he was willing to go balls to the wall to try to protect us.

this brings me to the problem with the Dems. the natural and strategically beneficial response to a blindly stubborn, unpopular president is to be the exact opposite; be reasonable and refreshing. that was Obama and it worked. the Dems were energized, the GOP was floundering, and it seemed like the dawn of the Age of Reason after the Dark Ages of Bush. however, in their efforts to distinguish and distance themselves from everything Bush, Dems somehow missed the biggest lesson: decisive action yield respect. once Obama tried to reach out to Repubs the first 5 times, the Dems should've --with their complete control of the congress and the presidency-- pushed through their original health care legislation. what they allowed to happen was a negotiation process that allowed Repubs to muddy up just enough of it to make enough Dems sour on it that it was at risk. they allowed themselves to be in a position where so much time was spent negotiating that it gave the GOP time to regroup and work their fear mongering magic. they put themselves in a position where they could be controlled by the likes of Joe Lieberman.

they should've decided that health care was too important to monkey around with and was vital to our nation and pushed it through. they would've been accused to being like Bush. the GOP would've railed that they were no better than the last administration and they may have been right, but they would've yelled anyway. if you're gonna be the bad guy, be it on something that ultimately helps the people.

i recognize that is not the way to run a democracy or a presidency and is not conducive to bipartisanship, but it is better to ask forgiveness than permission. especially since universal health care is such a good idea. Dems aren't trying to pass, oh i don't know, illegal wiretapping and surveillance programs. they are trying to give everybody health coverage. they're trying to stop medical bills from being the #1 reason for personal bankruptcy.

i know that being a Democrat inherently means you are compassionate, mindful, and a firm believer of the High Road. the High Road is all well and good, but it's lonely and you'll go bankrupt if you break your leg from such heights.

fun anyone?

when i was a kid, my siblings and i would fight over the toy in the cereal box. now, kids must draw straws to see who gets saddled with this bullshit.

i woke up this morning and opened up my new box of cereal. i hadn't looked on the box, so i had no idea what was going to be in there. i opened it up and sitting on top of the sealed cereal pouch was a step counter. oh, you read that right: a step counter.

two things i have to concede:

1: i'm 30 years old and therefore am no longer of the age where keys are entertaining. i haven't lost all of my girlish zeal and unbridled imagination, however toys...at this point...have to try a little harder to be fun to me.

2: the cereal was Frosted Shredded Wheat, so it could be argued that it's a relatively healthy cereal, so the toys inside should be health related. that's fair to a point, but complete bullshit. first of all, the toys in the boxes are not for the adults, they're for the kids. kids, generally, don't have much say in the cereal their parents buy, and if the parent has bought the kid shredded wheat you *know* they had no say. few children will choose shredded wheat over lucky charms. anyway, so if the kid has to eat this cereal, the least the company could do is put a decoder ring or something in there. they somehow managed to make a sucky breakfast even worse.

a step counter.

boooo.