What Did You Want To Be When You Grew Up?

As early as I can remember, I wanted to be a spy. I decided I would have an apartment in New York and an apartment in Paris, all full of great clothes. And I would spy. I have absolutely no idea where this notion came from. But I wanted that up until the third grade.

In the third grade, we had a speaker--some man from the bank?--who wanted to know what we wanted to be when we grew up. When it came around to me, I said, "President."
"Oh, you want to be the president of a company? That's great. There's a lot of money in that."
"No," one of my little boy cohorts interrupted. "She wants to be the President of the United States."
"OH!" The man kind of chuckled.

I decided right then that my first order as President would be to have this man shot.

Anyway, when I got older and La Femme Nikita came out, it was like vicariously living out what I'd wanted so long ago...

My dad brought the movie home one night. I was in love. Then they made a TV show about it with Peta Wilson! Lucky me. Especially considering how hot I thought Michael was.



As a kid, I loved Encyclopedia Brown, Nancy Drew and James Bond. Even Murder She Wrote and Poirot. I've read all of Sherlock Holmes, and I love a good film noir, especially wtih Bogey in it, especially if it's The Maltese Falcon. I watch old Dick Tracey shorts for fun. I watch Veronica Mars now. I love daring, provocative women with a great wardrobe and men who drink hard liquor shots, smoke a sexy cigarette and speak bluntly. I love the blurred edge between legal and illegal.

I should've been a spy.

Just for You

Thanks for the chicory coffee...

Fate Sucks

After reviewing some of my requirements to finish my Masters and get on with my PhD, I've realized that I have a bit of shoring up to do in the language department. I have to have the equivalent of a "B" average in a fourth semester language in order to finish up my Masters. I had four semesters of Italian, but I'm 99.9% sure I didn't graduate with a B at the end of the fourth semester.

Hell, if I hadn't graduated that semester, I probably would've collapsed anyway. I was finishing up a simultaneous B.S. in Economics and a B.A. in English and I was working full time. And Dante was just then 5 years old. I passed with departmental honors in English, but I just coasted by in everything else. I didn't really care. It was done.

So now, I have to either take a couple of courses at the university here or take a translation test in Italian. I don't think I have the time or the will power to force myself to study Italian to the point where I could do well on the translation test. I just have too much to do. So I'm probably going to have to take the "hurry up" version of Spanish here at the university this summer.

Instead of going to Ireland.

Grrr. Something always gets in the way. Always. The last time I was out of the country was 2003 right after college. We went to Mexico. I was supposed to go to the Caribbean in 2005. Didn't happen. Now it looks like Ireland in 2007 won't happen either. Maybe the desire to get out of the country will spur my independent study of all those Italian verb tenses.

I've tried to get to Italy several times, but it just ain't happening. One year I was going to go on a study abroad type of thing. Then the car broke down, and the money for the trip evaporated. In fact, in 2003 we were supposed to go to Italy. Then the Euro took a 30% rise against the dollar and wiped out 1/3 of our trip money.

When I was bitching to an Italian over the phone (I used to work for immigration) about how I was continually denied the pleasure of going to Italy, he replied: "It is not your time. Fate is telling you this. When it is your time, you will go. And you will love it."

Fate can kiss my ass. I'm pissed.

For Sister

Rain



This is one of my top five favorite Beatles' songs. I dedicate it to Sister, who is currently experiencing so much rain in her city that they've closed part of the interstate.

Don't float away, Sis!

A Small Rant on Action (OK, It's Fairly Long)

While I get pretty aggravated at the state of the world and my country sometimes, particularly when I see children going without supper or clean clothes, old people who have to decide between gas bills and medicine, people with learning disabilities struggling to read--don't get me started!!--I have to say that there's a small special place of ire in my heart for people who like to bitch about it but do nothing to stop it.

I'm thinking in particular about a board member or two that I have, but some of it applies to people I know and have discussions with as well. Or people who look the other way. Or people who in general are not kind to children.

It doesn't take much out of life to make the world a marginally better place. Not much at all. You'd be surprised. Honestly. And once you start to give a care, you may start digging deeper. And then you may be surprised at what you find.

For instance, I don't understand why some of the graduate students at my university continue to run the Prison Book Project. This is a place where people can drop off used books that will then be donated to the local maximum security prison. Small problem with that is, 70% of prisoners (nationally) are functionally illiterate. So your books do them no damn good except to beat someone else over the head with. How much time would it take to figure that out? On the other hand, when education is introduced to the prison population (as in reading tutors or getting your GED) the recidivism rate goes down. Consistently. But it's easier to drop off your books and then bitch about the prison system, I guess.

The worst has to be knowing that a child is being abused, seeing the dirty clothes and bruises, the hints about not having had anything to eat since school let out, and doing nothing to stop it. I don't care how you feel about Social Services. No kid deserves to be smacked around (or worse) all the time. I'm not saying people need to have itchy fingers just waiting to dial the phone. But ask. Investigate. Get involved. Try to figure out what's going on.

Another thing that aggravates me, while we're on the subject. There are (around the year 2000, anyway) about 218 million eligible voters in the USA. 111 million of them voted. Part of the reason for the low turnout of eligible voters is that over 30% of people in the USA are functionally illiterate. (See my pattern here?) They can't read the registration forms and they can't read the information on the voting machine, so they won't go vote. I don't know what the problem is for registered voters who for whatever reason just decide not to vote. But why not start talking about politics in a real way again? Why not go to your townhall meetings, or talk with your mayor, your city council, the people who can make a real difference in your town now, instead of waiting for some nebulous November senator to magically fix everything? Why not start forming coalitions with your neighbors, the same ones who have to live next to the polluted creek just like you do? Or go register people to vote instead of bitching about why they don't. Or teach someone to read so they can go register to vote.

Don't bitch about how Washington (or the governor or whoever) spends the money and wastes it. Quit calling each other "conservatards" and "liberal scum". And above all, don't bitch to me about people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. I'll drive you out to a few places here and in my home state, and you can explain it to me over a strip mine. Just stop it already. Roll your sleeves up and go to work. Pick up the damn trash on the road or clean out your section of the creek. Go to somebody's fundraiser, if you don't have the time to pick up the trash yourself. Give them a little bit of money to buy school supplies for needy kids or cheap medicines for poor people.

Just do something.

The Little Things

Now that I'm running around like a mad woman fleeing the orderlies, I find that the small things that bring me pleasure in life are more than important; they're vital to calming me down and making me feel like life is somehow grounded. Lots of times I feel like I'm going off the rails on Ozzy's Crazy Train. I think mainly it's just a factor of how much I have to cram into some of my days. Especially Mondays. But these things always slow me down and bring me back to the present.

flowers
I can get half a dozen roses from Aldi for $3. Are they the most fantastic flowers available? Sometimes. Sometimes not. They're smaller than florist roses, and they don't last quite as long. But I can pay half of what the florists charge around here for a dozen roses and get 2 dozen at Aldi. And I can get them in orange, pink, yellow, white, all kinds of colors! I love seeing them when I'm walking around the house.

marinating food
Something about seeing basalmic chicken in the refridgerator just waiting for me to pull it out and fix it fills me with happiness. Maybe it's just the thought of getting fed? But seeing something marinate is so full of...potential. The potential for great food, great conversation, relaxation, enjoying being human.

sitting on the balcony with a morning cup of coffee
Up on the second floor balcony at the tall iron table & chairs I'd wanted for years and finally bought sipping the coffee with chicory in it that someone dear to me thought enough of me to buy, I'm reminded of friends, pleasures, nature and life. All in the 15 minutes it takes to get there.

old sweatshirts
They're like a constant big hug. My favorite one is such a faded dark green that it looks black.

a ringing phone...
Especially when the voice on the other end is a little one that bursts into song when I say "Hello?". I get sung to quite frequently. I don't know if it's because little boys just don't communicate in the ways little girls do, but most of the time I either get a set's worth of songs over the phone with little discussion or I get a lot of discussion about his new Yu-gi-oh! cards. Either way, the chant of his little voice makes me happy.

Managing Muddy Concerts...One Survivor's Story

I got substantially reduced tickets to go see the Black Eyed Peas at the Nemacolin Resort which was hosting the 84 Lumber Classic golf tourney. It was a PGA event, but I'm not much for golfing. Director/buddy and I basically went for the concert and to nose around and see what it is golf people do. Here follows some of my notes on the event.

Number of golfers spotted: 9, including Howell III, who's supposed to be a golfing "somebody".
Number of posers trying to look like they were with the PGA tour, probably to pick up women: 3 (that I spotted), including one trying to pull off a Vijay Singh impression.
Number of Concert goers: 30,000
Number of girls unprepared for concert in a muddy field: most of them--hello? flip flops!? Wedge heels?! It's been raining all week and even though the ground was soggy at your house when you left, and quite chilly, I might add, you decided to put on your flip flops and boob shirt. Sma-art.
Number of girls stuck in the mud, literally, after the concert: 5 that I stopped to laugh about. The mud was calf deep in some places by this point. That's why you wear boots.
Time concert was supposed to start: 6:00 p.m.
Time concert actually started: 8:30 p.m.
Number of beers consumed: ???? Not sure. We bought them in bulk considering how difficult it was to get out of the crowd and to the beer tent.
Price of beers: $4 a can--for a lousy Michelob light. They know where the gravy train is.
Number of trips to the Port-o-potty: 3 And it was gross.
Opening Act: So sucky I can't even remember the girl band's name. We spent most of our time booing them.
Black Eyed Peas: Right before they came out, some British cat comes on stage and asks everybody to take a step back. He got laughed at. We're packed in here like sardines, moron, no one has any room to go anywhere. You either have to be a bruiser and shove your way through (director/buddy), or you have to be slim and just skirt your way through (me). The BEP played all the popular songs. They sing well live--that's often a gripe about bands; they may have a decent CD, but they sing piss poor outside the studio. The BEP sang consistently. I don't think I have a favorite song, but they closed with Let's Get It Started, which I like. Fergie didn't look as stylin' as I thought she should.
Number of underage drinkers: 4 right next to us. So we made fun of them most of the night when we got a chance. They were too hard on about their two illicit beers to do anything about it. And scared. We knew they were underage because they had no white "beer bracelet," where they check you for ID previously. And on a side note, I still apparently get pissed when someone goes out of their way to comment on how small my wrists are while they're putting some kind of club bracelet on me. Don't you have 29,999 other people to deal with instead of taking the time to comment on a part of my arm?
Number of drunken men that lurched into me: 3
Number of drunken men who got shoved in the opposite direction: 3
Number of people who cleared out from us once strategic maneuvers were employed: A whole swath!! It never ceases to amaze me when people will just shove in front of you without literally 3 inches of space to be had. As in, your shoulder bone is at my nose. That ain't gonna work. So, there are several tactics you can use in a situation like this. Feel free to use them. All of them worked for us at one time or another: 1) Scream "Whooooo!" over their shoulder at the concert. Hey, they decided to put their ear in your face, help them understand why that might be a miscalculation. 2) Get Happy Hips. And one and two and three and shove. Oh, I can't turn three inches without knocking you down? Guess you better back the fuck up, then. 3) Comment on how incredibly rude it was over and over and over and over and over again as loudly as possible. Aww, you can't hear Fergie's London Bridge song? I guess you shouldn't have put your ass in my way then, should you? 4) Sneeze. This was an accident, but it worked anyway. And my personal favorite: 5) Oh, God, I think I spit up in my mouth a little...I think I'm gonna puke! This cleared them out quick.

The bus situation after the concert was a NIGHTMARE. 30,000 people trying to get into 5 or 6 buses at a time, when the buses wouldn't pull up all the way. Pushing, shoving, screaming, cursing, etc. I now understand how the bussing in New Orleans went so terribly wrong. I can only imagine what panic would add to the mix.

Would I go again?: No. It just wasn't worth it. Now, maybe if Rob Zombie was playing in a muddy field...

A Guilty Confession

Hi, I'm Virgil. And I'm addicted to reality tv shows.

I'm especially addicted to Flavor of Love. It's like watching a train wreck in progress.



Who the hell is interested in becoming the wife of a man with a crack problem who wears clocks around his neck?? Watching these women--who aren't particularly smart or good looking or good at ANYTHING other than being skanky--is incredibly interesting to me. And it really shouldn't be. I should be feministly pissed that they're even on that show in the first place. But I can't be. It's just too damned entertaining.

One of them even pooped on the floor, for chrissakes!

He has crazy ways of making decisions. Such as spinning around in a circle with his eyes closed and pointing to one of the girls. She then becomes the "winner". I was actually glad my favorite girl got cut last season--I thought too much of her by that point to want her to end up with Flavor Flav.

His primary motivation seems to be to find a girl who is "real," whatever the devil that means to him. But he consistantly goes for the girls who are there to further their careers or who think they're undiscovered stars or something. They state this explicity. Somehow, he seems to miss that. He kept a white girl around with a fake ebonic accent for WEEKS. And even then, he didn't cut her, she cut herself after revealing that she was freshly out of jail for $30,000 and on probation and couldn't risk getting into a fight with one of the other "ladies" in the house and going back to jail.

Don't his producers check for these types of things?

Nevertheless, I'll be tuning in on Sunday at 10 p.m. I know what time it is.

Ladies, who wouldn't want to get in line for this??

I Just Called...And They Were Listening

I found this link while poking through Virushead's blog. I thought it was hysterical.

NSA is listening to you...

If you're interested in doing something mildly political about it, you can sign this online petition about stopping this activity. Secret police activities disgust me. It makes me mad enough to throw bricks.

I'm Being Righteously Pissed Right About Now

I was in the mall shopping in a record store and holding my new Rob Zombie CD Past, Present & Future (with bonus DVD and 36 page booklet and several previously unreleased items!!!) when two rent-a-cop mall guards come in the store and accost this couple in West Virginia t-shirts. I overhear some crap about them having to leave the store and the mall because of something being "offensive". The guy tries to ask a couple of questions and gets an immediate shut down by the r-a-c who just repeats, louder this time, that they have to leave...now.

"Who's it offensive to?" The woman he's with asks. She gets no answer. Of course, my activist hackles are raised at this point. I see the guy's shirt. It says "West Fuckin' Virginia". That's what they're getting so bent out of shape over. I was pissed for him, and said something to that effect--"This is over a shirt?!" But they were out the door and gone before I knew it. If I had been a little less confused, I think I would've followed them out and raised a little hell on their behalf.

I think "West Fuckin' Virginia" is a modern version of what people love to say around here: "West By God Virginia". It's a comment toward the fact that sometimes people still confuse us with Virginia. It also goes back to breaking away from Virginia during the Civil War. No, by God, we're going to be WEST Virginia.

I don't see how this guy's shirt was any lewder than most of what everyone else was wearing. Some old biddy probably saw a black couple with dreds with a curse word next to her blessed state name and figured they were blaspheming. I highly doubt a good old boy wearing the same thing would've been called on it. I thought it was interesting too that the rent-a-cops immediately read this guy's questioning of their authority as aggression. He was only asking why. I would've been screeching "What the fuck?!"

Where the hell does this idiot cop think he bought the damn t-shirt in the first place?

--Virgil

It Has Begun

The first ever Ex-JW Meetup was...a mixed bag at best.

I didn't do much local advertising before the event, because I was just wa-ay too busy. But the paper came through and published my little notice the day before the event. If I had done a two week run, which I will next time because I didn't know it was free, I suspect I would've gotten more response.

Nobody showed up at the actual meeting, but it was OK because I had a great mocha latte while I was waiting. That isn't to say there wasn't any contact at all, however. I got a call that morning from a man who was studying with the JWs along with his wife. He had some doctrinal issues and wanted to talk about them. He was also convinced I was starting a seperate splinter church from the JWs. Um,...no. This is pretty much dinner and conversation, honey. So we talked for a little while, and I'm pretty sure it was the tipping point he needed to stop fooling with the JWs. Hah! Score one for meetup, 0 for JWs. Another person called me, a former JW who wanted to come but couldn't because of going out of town. That makes 4 confirmed members counting me (the others live too far away to want to make the drive, so they're internet members, I guess). So score another point for not being ashamed to talk to each other.

There were several issues that came up quickly, and I'm still grappling with how to deal with them. Everyone wants to know what my new religion/beliefs are. I'm not embarassed of being an atheist, but I'm smart enough to know that whatever you say is going to color the way other people look at your intentions with the group. So I told the confused man that I was independent of religion, that I had a good sense of what was right and wrong, and that I did my best to help my fellow man and that's really all that mattered. He was pretty excited, and said, "I guess I'm going to be just like you, then." That freaked me out a little bit. The only reason it freaks me out is because when I got booted from the JWs, they said it was because I was "too much of an influence" among other things. So that lives in the corners of my brain and comes flying out at me at times. But I've tucked it back away.

I'm also still unsure about how to handle questions from doubters. I do NOT want to make that my job. For one thing, I don't have the time to sit down and de-evangelize them. But a small part of my mind whispers, if not you, then who? I've gotten several comments about how former JWs would love to start a meetup group of their own, but they're too scared, or too something, but they would sure go if someone else did it. I started this group to give people a chance to share similar experiences, to build strength from each other, and as a way of protest against the unfair treatment that JWs put on their own members. Sometimes protest doesn't have to be a direct confrontation (although I'm sure the JWs will make it so). One of its functions is as a truth-weapon; if you still experience fear, this can help to bring that out of the shadows and give you strength.

Plus, I just want dinner and conversation. :)

But mainly, I just want to help. Call it my activist nature, I guess. I'm sure there will be trouble. There is always trouble when a subgroup goes up against a dominant group, and JWs love having witches to burn. Besides, even though they're a tiny organization, the number of disfellowshipped people is even smaller. I don't expect to get even 15 df'ed people in this group. I do expect to have a rag tag band of people who grew up with a parent who was a Witness, married a Witness, etc. But there are so few of us, and we keep silent too often.

And I'm really not good at not talking. :D

--Virgil

Tag! I'm It!

I've been tagged by The Atheist Mama on the book meme. Pretty appropriate for me, actually.

A book that changed my life
Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Although I eventually outgrew Objectivism, I still love Ayn Rand's work.

A book I’ve read more than once
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

A book I would take with me if I were stuck on a desert island
Thich Nhat Hanh's The Miracle of Mindfulness

A book that made me laugh
Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Sheer genius.

A book that made me cry
Flowers for Algernon--a book I read in high school about a man with a mental disability written from his perspective. He undergoes intelligence enhancing, like the experimental lab mouse Algernon, and throughout the book goes from improvement to being worse off than before he started treatment, and the writing is just brilliant. As he starts to fall backward into mental incompetence, I was completely in tears.

A book that I wish had been written
A book of Appalachian stories written from a modern day perspective. Any stories about my region of the world inevitably tend to be mythic, set back in the "good old days". Nobody wants to touch the way things are now. Although, if you want anything done, sometimes you have to do it yourself... ;)

A book that I wish had never been written
I tend to think that all books have merit, even if they're evil (Mein Kampf comes to mind). There's something to learn from the making of them, if nothing else.

A book I’ve been meaning to read
This list is really too long to go into. In my field, you can never read enough. There's always one more work to go over or one more voice in the field. I guess if I think of it from a pleasure perspective, I've still got D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers that I haven't had the time to crack the cover on, but always mean to.

I’m currently reading
Well, there are books for every aspect of my life, I guess.
Society Must Be Defended by Foucault
A book on the pedagogy of teaching
50/50 Management for my work at the nonprofit
A shockingly thick spiral bound study on the current trends in illiteracy
The Mitford Sisters, a biography that I'm finding fascinating but just can't seem to find time for

Blogs I’m tagging:
I'm tagging Barbie, just because I know she'll have something uttlerly brilliant to say about it.
I'm tagging Audrey, because I like her mind and what she puts in it.
I'm tagging Jo because I absolutely love her, and whatever she reads must be a hoot.
I'm tagging Kari because she just got finished with college and now has time to read whatever she wants to instead of what she has to.
Finally, I'm going to tag Sandra. I'd love to know what she reads.

Busy, Busy, Busy!

I've been busier than a one-legged man in an ass kicking contest.

I can smell Fall in the air, and I absolutely love it. It's like a crisp, white shirt or a newly sharpened pencil. There's something so direct and refreshing about Fall.

I had a great visit with Dante over the Labor Day break. We had fun on his new skates and generally enjoyed just goofing around. And to the bitch housewife who thinks that because he doesn't live under my roof he must not get much from me--fuck you. If you have that little imagination, I fear for your own kids. Fuck off of mine, he's doing great. Just because I don't post it for your beady little eyes to read doesn't mean it isn't happening. Idiot.

::Smoothes dress:: ::Returns to lady-like behavior::

Now then.

My class full of freshmen are doing pretty good. Freshmen are so cute to watch. I know not all instructors feel this way, but I rather like my group of kids. They're so open with me about what they're thinking, and bless their hearts, they're so readable. I know when they're holding back and I can always tell when they're up to something. I work really hard to build trust and seem approachable. I wear jeans in the classroom and I sit on top of the desk. There are so many preconceived notions of the power relationship they think they are supposed to endure with their teacher. I work really hard to get them to trust themselves and their voice. Even though they tell me WAY too much about their private lives. What they do with what I present is up to them. But it's really rewarding to watch someone's eyes light up when they find their voice.

We got better digs at the nonprofit office. So my life there has consisted of trying to unpack boxes and cussing and snorting about "Where in the hell did THAT go??!!" I'm grateful for the space, but we have lost so much in the way of service just by having to move most of our crap ourselves. Fortunately, there seems to be a path to the desk that I can use now, so in a week or so, we should be back to normal.

My Ex-JW meetup group is set for this Saturday. Yay! I'm a bit nervous. I'm expecting the suits to call or show up, and I'm wanting to do a really good job in moderating the event. I'd like for it to grow on its own so that I don't have to keep organizing it. One can only hope, I guess.

My own classes in grad school vary from the interesting to the insane. The composition/rhetoric teaching class I have is great. It feels very practical and realistic. I'm all about realism. The other class--biopower and individual sovereignty. WTF?? Sometimes it's really neat to talk about power and the state and cool heady things like that. Sometimes I look around at these people and think: "You just pulled that straight out of your ass, didn't you??" When I get really bored, I have a special statistic I keep in the upper lefthand corner of my notebook. It's labeled "WTF", and whenever anyone talks out of their ass, I put a tick mark. Last class there were 6 tick marks under WTF.

Blogging is probably the last priority I have right now. But it sure feels good as an outlet from the craziness that is my fall semester life right now. So....what are you guys up to?

--Virgil

Bind the Monkey

The Sutra of Mindfulness compares the mind to a monkey swinging from tree to tree. In order not to lose sight of the monkey while it is in motion, we must keep a constant eye on its movements.

I like this metaphor. My love of the theory of evolution enjoys the thought of brain and primate together. But it also strikes me as being very true of my own mental process sometimes. If I look away, lose conciousness, get distracted or clouded, I immediately start spinning around looking for the monkey again. And I'm reeling until I find it.

The mind experiences itself within itself; there is no feeling without also reflection on the feeling at the same time. You feel a surge of something, you know to call it anger. An object hits your tastebuds, but at the same time you taste, your mind taking it in and deciding whether you like it or not. To truly stay focused, mind has to contemplate mind. Then my mind is no longer scattered.

This is called binding the monkey. And once it's bound, the mind is no longer like a monkey, but rather true mind. A mind at peace.

--Virgil