some snippets and a something a little bit different
***i think that anthony just drove by my house. impossible you say? ok, true. but then i started thinking about how cool it would be if i could've somehow instantly teleported anthony here to confront his doppleganger - just to see if they would both really explode. not that i want anthony to explode. i would miss his blog way too much. and the other guy - i don't even know him and i wouldn't want any harm to come to him - even if he is anthony's Evil Twin. but you catch my drift, right? i always wanted a doppleganger. just to see. *sigh****we have prayer phone booth like this up the street from our house. people tend to do one of three things equally, from what i've witnessed.
1. drop the kneeling thingy down, kneel and pray
2. take pictures of it. i'll hear the screeching of tires and see a passenger jump out and snap a picture then quickly run back to the car to speed off, as if they've just been very naughty. there is a variation on this one - sometimes the driver will also get out to snap a picture of the passenger pretending to pray, while they both hysterically giggle.
3. men passing by on foot stop to piss on it.
so my question is this - is it my duty as a patriot in george bush's america to tell #1 what #3 has done? should i shout, "HEY! DON'T KNEEL ON THE TOILET!" or should i just mind my own p's and q's? oh, dilemma, dilemma.
(note: i believe the kid that designed these things did so out of a mockery to the bible belt that we live in. he went to the kcai. it amuses me that there's one in front of a church.)
***have i ever told you about how completely fantastic my bloggy friends are? well, they are. every suggestion has been taken to heart, and every proposed option is being explored.
AND someday i vow to meet all of them in person. somehow, someway. maybe when i get the teleportation thing down. or maybe i could learn astral projection?
*** i stole this from adbusters while looking for information on how to submit a poem for publication at the prompting of island amazon yesterday (p/s - go check out her howl for the 21st century poem -- it puts ginsberg's original to shame). it was in their about us section:
not right, not left, just straight ahead. amen to that. i 'd like to see a bit more of that, honestly.
***i think i'm going back to school in the fall, to begin working on a master's program in counseling psychology. it looks like i'll be able to do a bit of self-directed study in depth psychology since my dream school is out of my reach. so that's good. looking through the application, i began to have concerns that the school might beat the love of psychology out of me. i wrote my favorite professor to see if she'd write a letter of recommendation for me. she sent me a note back saying she would and added that if i got started there and it was awful (she is who turned me on to the Dream School) that i should stop going - she also sent me a sentence that i'm going to tape to my computer to look at every day: never forget that psychology is about love and poetry.
i figure if i just stay in school until i die, i'll never have to pay back my student loans. i'll have to spread my phd quest out over the next 40-50 years. it's fine. it will work. or i can just leave the country.
so, where were we...
snippets? check.
oh! yeah!
and now, for the something a little bit different, something completely unexpected, i'm going to rant a minute about how jacked up this whole system is.
gotcha!
but seriously. in my quest to figure my way out of this insane maze set before us, a couple of things occured to me. more than a couple actually, but these are the two biggies right now...
1. we are far from alone.
i found that last year, 288,800 homes were foreclosed on. 2.2 million homes are projected to be foreclosed on this year. foreclosure rates were up 64% in mid 2006. overall, last year, personal savings were at the lowest recorded in the past 74 years. everyone i spoke with, the credit counselor, the real estate agent, three different mortgage brokers all said the exact same thing. what i was telling them, they've been hearing more and more, from almost everyone that contacts them. my exception was that we aren't late yet and hopefully something can be done.
meanwhile, would anyone care for a side of unemployment rising, anyone? that explains why will has had such luck, at least. somehow the department of labor is saying that the job market is still solid. hmmmmm... i sense an alarming disjunct. know what happens when the "middle class" disappears?
but remember, it is of the utmost importance that bush gets the 245 BILLION more dollars that he's allegedly asking for next week, earmarked for warring with.
it's not that i'm asking for a handout, it's not that i expect to be bailed out of tough times - far from. what i do expect, however, is that the wealthiest nation in the world can do better for people that get into tough spots and even more so for those that chronically find themselves in poverty. that is the real threat to america. it is as if there are all of the forces holding people down, while screaming at them to get up.
it sickens me even more to know that i'm paying a mortgage on some land that Someone(s) once decided to steal and re-package to sell back to me. it doesn't even belong to any one person - it belongs to all of us.
call me a pinko commie. it's cool. i'm all down for re-distributing the wealth.
i do feel lucky in the sense that i'am at least able to sit here on this dratted mass of motherboard and screen and search out information. many simply can't. they feel like they have no options. there is nothing worse than that to kill all hope.
2. this is all a perfect example of rightie hypocrisy.
i stay at home with bebe. i got a lot of slack about this from my right-leaning pals -you just can't win with 'em. i voiced my plans when i found out i was pregnant - that i wanted to be with bebe until he/she was at least old enough to speak - what they think all good mothers should do, family values and all... yet, all i heard was this,
"what?! that's not very FEMINIST of you!"
here's the deal. they seemingly want women to be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen still, but they want nothing to do with any sort of resource offering assistance for said women. they want women to stay home and keep quiet.
for me, the feminist movement was about choices. still is. and sadly, we aren't much further as a whole than we were 20,30, oh, hell - even 50 years ago. i think about this as i look for a job each day.
case in point.
a few years back, someone started spinning the whole "women are opting out to stay home with kids" urban myth. i say myth because of the october 17th study that came out entitled, opt out or pushed out, the untold story of why women leave the workforce.
there's a fantastic opinion piece about the study here.
an excerpt:
"'Opt Out'--or Pushed Out? The Untold Story of Why Women Leave the Work Force," released Oct. 17, analyzed 119 newspaper articles (excluding commentary) about women leaving the paid work force between 1980 and 2006. A great deal of this journalism, the authors find, understates the severity of the economic consequences for women who are forced out of jobs by inflexible employers and those who believe working mothers are bad for the bottom line.
Most insidious, says the report, is that reporters often depict women abandoning the workplace as a matter of their personal preference, not a symptom of a nationwide crisis for which employer rigidity and lack of family supports are largely to blame.
The "opt out" stories overwhelmingly focus on white, affluent women with white-collar jobs, a skewed demographic from which to draw conclusions about a majority of working women, given that only about 8 percent of women hold such jobs.
and this:A 2005 Cornell University study of employers, for instance, found that 84 percent of the participants said they would only hire a woman who had no children. Only 47 percent said they would hire a woman with an identical resume who had children and that woman would be offered less in starting salary.
on yet another level, the study resonated with me, as i know that if i do re-enter the work force, even with my fancy new degree, i will be making enough to pay for childcare - and bus fare to get bebe and i where we must be.
the proverbial rock and a hard place scenario.
perhaps the age old question of if a tree falls in the woods and there is no one around to hear it, does it make a sound? would better be phrased, if i consider myself to be a person as a woman, am i still a person if the powers that be don't consider me to be?
in all fairness, though - who among us can really honestly say that we have any real choices in this system? this goes for men and women alike. unless you that one percent of people holding the mass of the wealth, you don't. and you're fooling yourself if you think you do. yeah, i'm bitter. best case scenario is that we make the most with the scraps we're thrown down to fight over.
p/s - head on over to my myspace page (sssh. don't tell evil spock i have one) and give a listen to the song i put up last night. should start to play when you land there. i heart her. can't find her on youtube.
p/p/s - if you can find the sneaky something i slid in my post, you get 400 points and a special surprise.
Labels: capitalism, choices, doppleganger, feminism, motherhood, prayer phone booth
posted by supergirlest @ Saturday, February 03, 2007
