Snippets from the Train

I don't have the coherence to structure these snippets--or remember all of the very funny comments--overheard during my 60 hours on Amtrak this holiday, so take this as a smaller, less entertaining, one-time installement of Overheard in New York, but On the Train:

**Welcome to the Train**

Conductor: "...We will be training for the next 3 hours until our next stop in Santa Barbara."

9 year old kid: "We're training!!! We have to SIT DOWN!! Mom, what does training mean? We're training! Please, please please sit down, everyone!!!"

**And Where Were Barb and the Trumpets in Santa Barbara??**

Old woman: "Feels like we're going around another turn."

Her older husband: "We must be in Bend, Oregon."

Old woman: "No, dear. Just because we're going around a bend doesn't mean we're in Bend."

**Foiled Again**

Hick Drunk Dude: "Damn, I can't wait 'til the next smoke stop. Hey, let's go open the train window downstairs and smoke there."

Hick Friend: "Naw, man. I just saw them kick off a woman with one leg in that fucking freezing last stop because she was caught smoking."

Hick Drunk Dude: "Fuck. I've got both my legs."

**Sharing Means Caring**

Mother to her extremely irritating and loud 3-year old: "I'm sick of your whining. You need to stop!"

2 seconds pass

Mother to the Porter: "How many glasses of wine can one person buy at the cafe?"

**It's Funny 'Cause it's True**

Porter to the long line of people boarding: "Couples! I need couples first! Any couples?"

waits a few seconds, scanning the line for hands in the air...

Porter, incredulously: "You're all SINGLE??"

Me, audibly and blurtily: "It's a sad and lonely world."


**

As You Lay Frying*

All of my heroes are dying
cracked like eggs in the frying pan
soft yellow bellies exposed

All of my thoughts are mashed
hashed and such
did you know my shell is not so hard in fact

as you all lay frying
in my thoughts
oh why didn't you stay whole
for just a bit longer

*Thank you to ttractor for the most excellent Faulknerian title.

My Gender Bothers Me, or Yes, I'm Messed Up.

I read an excellent post (to which I can sadly not link, as I do not recall whose blog it was, nor what series of magical links took me there) from a woman who wondered if she were a 'bad feminist' because she hated all things womanly, all things 'girly'.

This problem I know well.

My mother is bi-polar and also has borderline personality disorder just to make life a bit more interesting than the normal mood swings associated with bi-polar. My father is a rather stoic, unemotional man, save for the few fits of rage brought on by malfunctioning household appliances, bad drivers, and "oh, c'mon!" ref calls during the Bears' football games. He was also the rational, logical counter to my mother's extremely creative, hair-brained, overly emotional personality. So, as a child, I sought to fully emulate my father to the exclusion of everything 'girly.' Girly, to me, meant taking everything personally, worrying waaayyy too much about one's appearance, and worrying waaayyy too little about others. It meant my mother. And I did not want to be anything like her.

As a child, I had little ability to consciously sift through "womanly" traits and pick the ones which were not repulsive--rather, everything female was terrifying to me. So, I played with the boys, became morbidly depressed when forced to wear dresses, steeled myself to physical pain, and excelled in math and science. I was also horrified when it turned out that I would not be a waify tomboy in appearance, but would, rather, have (ARGH!) curves.

But now, I'm an adult female, and while I am proud that I am better than most men on the pool table, and certainly at taking a derivative or inverting a matrix, I find myself consistently repressing emotions in an attempt to avoid becoming the image of my hysterical mother, or any hysterical female, for that matter. So, when someone elicits feelings from me, I feel self-conscious and angry at myself for feeling an emotion. My inner monologue goes something like this:

"Don't be such a friggin' girl about it!"

But I am one. And that shouldn't be terrifying, but it still is. I still cringe at the thought of showing my emotions to others, or admitting when I love someone, or telling others that they've hurt me. And because I'm angry at feeling something, I usually lash out at the person because they've inadvertently forced perceived feminity--perceived weakness--onto me.

And anger is manly, so anger is fine.

So, as I try to sort through my feelings about femininty and emotions, I feel like I'm wandering around in a friggin' forrest of confusion. But since I haven't yet determined if confusion is feminine or masculine, I guess I'm okay here for now.

Our Ritual

We lie in bed together, and slowly and innocently begin to trace out one another's bodies with our fingers. Arms and hands and earlobes and eyebrows, as though we were blind, we seek to recreate the image of one another through touch. In a soft but persistent wave, every particle and nerve ending awakens and we are in love.

We walk down the street together, and slowly and innocently begin to offend one another with our words. Hurts and feelings and histories and old wounds, as though we are oblivious, we blindly recreate the past through careless assumptions. In a painful but familiar wave, every past emotion and transgression flows over me and we are hurting.

We think of each other distantly from remote locations, and slowly and innocently begin to paint over the wounds with the pigment of wonderful memories. Beauty and laughter and lightness and warmth, as though we were simply old friends, we seek to recapture our past glory through tactile communication. In an urgent but joyous wave, every fiber and quark of my being wants to see you so that we may trace the other's body in our innocent way...

The Political Post

Yes, I am a political scientist. And I happen to study American politics. So here is your political post on Election Day.

First, I am not going to urge you to vote. You know why? I think abstention is a perfectly fine way of sending a signal in a 'consolidated' democracy. What do I mean? Our system is not going to crumble if we continue to have low turnout. It does not mean people are not interested in what's going on. It means, most likely, one of two things:

-->You don't like either party and are sending a signal to the Dems and Reps that you would like a "real" choice

-->You have a job and if the Reps or Dems would like your vote, then they need to make Election Day a National Holiday like so many of our European friends enjoy in their countries. Australia has gone the extra distance and, along with giving you a whole day off to pull that lever, actually impose a fine on your ass if you don't use your free vacation day for its intended purpose.

At the very least, let's keep the polls open for 24 hours! Are politicians really so out of it that they don't realize some people might possibly be busy between 7 am and 6 pm?

Now if you are a Democrat and really prefer them to Republicans, then for Gods sake, go vote! Republicans keep winning not with overwhelming support, but overwhelmingly better turnout. If you don't vote, don't bitch. So there. Vote for the right to bitch.

So, now that we've covered turnout, let's consider the actual lever-pulling.

There are a few propositions on the ballot here in Sunny (really really really sunny and despicably hot) California. Let's consider one, which seems to be a "no-brainer", Prop 89, which among other things, place limits of the contributions of lobbyists.

This is a.....BAD IDEA! Unless you're going to cap the amount of money a candidate can actually have, en sum, in his campaign account, this proposition is only going to obscure the trail from lobbyist to candidate. The campaign finance reforms in the House, perhaps you know and love it as the McCain-Feingold bill, has not dissuaded lobbyists or corporations from reaching for their wallets, but rather, has encouraged them to be a bit more clever in their deposits. Now, instead of being able to pull out the list of contributions for your candidate, you have these uber-PACS which run a shell-game for their pals' contributions, thus making it nearly impossible to track donation to candidate. Think of it as a hydraulic system--you push your finger down on lobbyists, and the money just rushes to middlemen (on their way to your candidate). The only way to actually limit contributions to candidates is to cap the amount they can spend on a campaign. Good luck on that one.


Another proposition being considered in CA: Prop 86--which would raise taxes on cigarettes by $3.00 per pack. This is a....BAD IDEA! Why? Listen, I smoke and would like to personally grab each child by the shoulders and scare them into never trying the disgusting things--e-ver! Smoking is already pretty un-fucking-cool, cigarettes are already $5/pack, and it is mostly the under-educated, over-poor working class which puffs away. I am over-poor, over-educated and thought I would surely be able to quite smoking when I moved from the Midwest (at $2/pack) to CA. Nope. I just don't eat as much. This is, in reality, a regressive tax. Most working class people who smoke (think your waiter or waitress, factory workers, etc) get additional breaks if they're a smoker (I sure did in all of my many suck jobs)-->that's where they get hooked. Unless some of this funding is going to go to free hypnotheraphy sessions or free patches (super expensive in the short-term, and we're mostly running hand-to-mouth here), then this just makes our poorer population poorer. It's not going to make them quit. It's already expensive! It's simply going to take a larger portion of an already small budget. And why is only 10% of this tax going to tobacco-related causes??? Dude, let's tax expensive whiskey or fine wine or fancy cuts of beef--heart disease ain't just for smokers.

***
Non-prop stuff:

I'm not going to tell you how to vote if you've decided to pull the lever today and don't know for whom you should tug. I also don't want to know how you voted. This is one of the great aspects of our election system--we went through a bit of a battle to get the Australian ballot so you didn't have to walk in today and ask in front of everyone, "I'd like the Democrat ballot, please". So take advantage of it.

Not Just Another Year

The age field on all of my many profiles are about to change over to "28 years old" in a few days. I'm not sure I can express the aging which occurred this year here in one tiny blog--wonderful aging of which I am proud and growth which I earned the hard way, the authenetic way. And lately, I find myself thinking back to last year's birthday at a bowling alley with friends. I snuck away from everyone to the concessions counter to secretly buy myself a non-alcoholic soda from the 60-year old, weathered woman with fried orange-blonde hair. I wished with all of my heart her name was Marge.

Marge had inferred that it was my birthday, "How old?"

"Twenty-seven tomorrow!"

"Oh, 27 is a good year. That's the year you'll discover who you really are."

I suppose anyone can be a prophet.

To My Friend

Just like Jesus Christ
She walked out of her sunlit room and into the shadow of the hallway
Wearing only overwashed, overworn underwear
her limbs and torso a delicate image of carved ivory
ribbons of scarlet flowing from her wrists
a name dropped on the floor, a promise broken, drowned in that flowing scarlet
a fragile question mark sliding down her fingertips and into the puddle of blood gathering at her feet
She looked just like Jesus Christ
and I knew I should be bandaging her slender arms
whispering new promises, new lies
but I am transfixed as she stands without her crucifix
beautiful and repulsive at the same time

my blog is hungry

and it is eating my posts. so, every time i post a new entry, my blog swallows the last one. i don't know what to do here.

i'll keep you 'posted'...