Monday, August 31, 2009

Things That Make You Go ARRGGGHHH!

When your child tells you:

You know Mom, I'm never really sure if Nana loves me or not. Because all she ever does is give me money or buy me stuff, and then she turns around and says mean stuff to me. Like she paid for it or something.

Or, when he says of the two-ish months he spends with his dad each summer:

I don't like being around Dad anymore. He's always trying to control me. Like I always have to wear ankle socks or the shorts he wants me to. But when I come around, he never does anything with me. It's like he doesn't care I've been gone. It's like the same as any other day. He just yells at me. And he always has to be right. But he's wrong a lot and he never listens, he just makes out like he was still right the whole time.
I have never heard such a simple and concise explanation of his father's personality before in my life. And what he says of my mother is totally true. It's something El Hijo and I have discussed for years. She buys him off constantly. Currently she's offering $200 if he'll cut his braids, which she says makes him look like a "savage." Latent racism for the loss!

Zounds. I had always kind of hoped the bubble could continue. I knew when Dante was little and I tried to make peace with everybody for his sake that there was a high chance of malfunction when Dante grew into his personality. It's one thing when they're four years old and cute. It's another thing when they're twelve years old and have ideas of their own. The same stuff that started developing between my mother and us girls is starting to show up in her relationship to him -- and at about the same age. Gah.

Other very telling signs include the week-long conference we've had with Dante about what happened in Florida and Kentucky. I have to say, he's really disappointed in his family right now. And I know that some of that is puberty angst, but some of that is also ignorant relatives. I'd put the total at about 85% relative ignorance. He's made some incredibly insightful comments that just blew me away. I would've never thought he'd have picked up on those below the surface strains families keep buried. But he has. And he's not happy about it. Because Dante is a very visual child, he has represented this new problem in his school work. One of the first assignments they did was a personal "crest", where they got to represent what is important in their lives. Dante always has a family section, and it's usually huge because he has such a big branchy family. This time, however, there were five family members. Him, with his usual spiky stick figure head, me with longer hair than I always have, and El Hijo. Labeled "Dad". And Fanny and Jane, our cats. That's it. No Nana, no Daddy, no representation of Florida in some way. Just us.

In a way, it's always been just us. I worked hard to make it not seem that way, but I think kids have a way of understanding who is really on their side and who is not. After a particularly emotional discussion with Dante about his relatives, the conversation where he said the above quotes, he declared that he was done with Kentucky and he didn't want to go anywhere for the summer. He wanted to stay here, even if that meant he was in a summer program like the Boys & Girls Club. I opened my mouth to remind him of the problems and family obligations, but before I could get anything out, El Hijo said, "Well, I'm for Dante. I'm in Dante's corner. And whatever Dante wants, I'll support that. He's the most important person in this situation, and by God, if he wants to stay here, I'm not going to send him away." Dante burst into tears. He came over for a hug, and he pulled both me & El Hijo together and put his head on El Hijo's chest.

I've always thought that family is what you make of it. It's who is in your "corner," whether you're related by blood or not. And that's who showed up on the crest -- Mom, cats, and good ol' step-dad without the step attached. Because dads are made, not born. Thanks, El Hijo, on behalf of Dante and me.

-- DV

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Home Sweet Home

This is probably a post that should've come earlier, but I've been thinking about the experiences and what I want to say about them for a few weeks. For the first time in his life, Dante went to Florida for practically the whole summer. He's always gone to Kentucky, because his dad and my mom live in the same town (just a few blocks apart, actually). But this year he was desperate to go to Florida. He had arranged it all by Christmas, and the rest of his life past that point was one big countdown to get on the airplane. He flew nonstop to West Palm Beach where his grandma picked him up. It was the first time he'd ever flown by himself, and the parting was pretty traumatic for both of us. But then he landed and he was happy about the whole thing.

Things did not go as planned. Well, they did at first. Dante has only really ever known places that are predominately white. He's used to being the minority. The place he stayed was a black working class neighborhood. Whites are the minority there. This pleased him. Not because he wants blacks to dominate whites, but rather because of the role model factor. He told me, "Mom, black people do all the important work here. I like that." Because he's never seen it before. It's easy to write off experiences like that when you're white -- but the way whites are used to looking at the world is perceived as the norm. For white people, it's normal that everybody who owns a store is white, or that nurses are white or people who deliver the mail are white. We don't give it a second thought. We don't notice it, because it is normal for us, and people don't notice the norm. For blacks, that is most certainly not always the case. So he was happy to see black postal workers, black store owners, black nurses, etc.

Soon after he got there, he started having trouble with his living situation. Dante is an only child, and while he is great at sharing, maybe even to a fault, that's not the same thing as living with other kids. There were between 10 - 14 people in his Florida house at any given time. The two grandparents were there as well as two of their daughters and the daughters' kids. One has three kids, the other has four -- ages five and under. Then there were a couple of boy cousins his age who came over to hang out because they knew he was there. It was crowded to say the least. And so he had to learn to cope with a big family -- people going through your stuff, never enough hot water, somebody always wanting to use the bathroom, fussing at each other. And most of those lessons were good lessons. But some of them, especially as it related to a breakdown in discipline, were not so good lessons. As in, "just hit him back."

The level of violence was something Dante wasn't familiar with. At all. The grown ups didn't hit the kids -- the kids hit each other. And Dante was incredibly uncomfortable with all that, as he should've been. And, because he was uncomfortable with it, his aunt S tore into him one night at the kitchen table, calling him soft. According to her, he was soft primarily because he'd been raised by a white mother. She took a few shots at me, although he was vague on those details, probably assuming he didn't want his mother in jail for murder. He told me about the incident over the phone. He seemed surprised when I wasn't upset about what she'd said about me. The aunt who lit into him is the one with four babies five years old and under. She's 26. We talked about how frustrated she must be, how she must feel like you have to be hard to get by in life. We talked about his other cousins, older ones, that she considered "hard" (and therefore good) and what was going on with them right now. One was out running with gangs, a few others were in jail. Most didn't do much with their lives -- they were too "hard" to give in and negotiate with people. We talked about the class differences, the change in a big family from a small family, and how it wasn't a black - white thing but more of an income level/cultural thing.

We talked about stuff I've only ever talked about in grad classes, just with less big words and more realistic examples. That's the problem with being a bi-racial black/white boy who splits his time between two broke "intellectuals" and a family that makes what little money they have in factories and cane fields -- you can understand what the problem is, but that doesn't shield you from experiencing it. To whites, he's black. For some of them, if he talks too loud, gestures too wildly, or speaks anything other than proper English, he's acting black. If he raises his voice at another kid, he's threatening to escalate into violence. Of course he wants to play football and basketball, and I bet he'd be good at them, too, after all, he's black. To some blacks, he's too white if he hugs his cousins, speaks anything besides ebonics, and doesn't pull back into a fist when something doesn't go his way. What do you mean you want to do some art shit? Art is for faggots. Journalism? What the fuck is that? Now, Jamal, he's starting on the football team next year. That boy's going places. For either set of idiots, the answer is obviously more education and exposure to people who aren't exactly like you.

And I think what's really frustrating, is that while I try my best to educate him, he is the one who educates them by being around them. And as a mom, I just think that's so damned unfair. I'm the adult, put it on my back. Don't put it on the boy's back. It's not his load to carry -- but he's the one who ends up carrying it. Back in Kentucky, more than one set of racist white parents had their hearts melted by his big grin and by how good of a friend he was to their troubled son. He is the center of bi-racial boy culture where we are now. He and his friend Andre recently titled themselves "delicate chocolates" -- hilarious, and certainly better than "oreos", which was the joking slang that went around my high school. But it also highlights how fragile they think their position is, not to over psychoanalyze it, of course. They know they walk in two worlds.

Even back in Kentucky around his father, bi-racial step sister, and his half Palestinian cousins, I think the pressure from White Nana was just a little too great. She goes the other end of the spectrum, because she wants to claim she doesn't "see color". In my experience, those people are just colorblind. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist, just because you think you can't see it. Color and the way people treat it exists. If you can't see it, it's not because you're making a "big deal" out of it and perpetuating it. It's because you're not looking. So, she tends to denigrate the black aspects of Dante out of ignorance and refusal to examine whether she sees color or not, especially when it comes to hair. White Nana can't stand his hair out of braids. The afro puts her off. But she also won't take him to the Kingdom Hall with his braids, so that's an added bonus in our opinion.

Needless to say, all he talked about for the last two weeks of his summer away was "When can I come hoooooooome???" He couldn't wait to come back to the two broke intellectuals. Hell, he couldn't wait to get back to his stepdad. That should tell you something. It's the first time we ever drove him home and he didn't cry. I asked him if he thought he wanted to go to Florida next summer. "Nope. And you know, I don't think I'm that interested in Kentucky, either." Whoa.

In the end, despite the bad experiences, I think there was some net good that came from this summer. On the practical side of things, I don't think I will have to experience my heart sinking when he asks to go live somewhere besides with me. Puberty might change all that, though. But he certainly appreciates what he has now in a way I don't think he ever could before. We're not wealthy people. El Hijo is in grad school, and I make less than $40k as a college prof. We're not poor, we just watch where our money goes. I think he understands that now. He appreciates the "luxury" of a hot shower with nobody banging on the door; he appreciates the privacy of one's own bedroom and things. He understands there is no limit to the value of not being judged for being yourself. He has figured out that adult problems start from childhood behaviors, and that posturing with violence only leads to something worse. In short, he appreciates where he is in life.

He told me this while he was in Florida, and it's practically word for word, because it touched me so deeply and lodged itself in my brain. "You know, Mom, I thought about what Auntie S said, and I think she's wrong. Or it doesn't matter if she's right, I mean. I mean, if I'm soft, so what? I don't want to be hard if it means I'm getting into fights all the time or yelling at my Mom or pushing little kids around. I don't want to have a bad life. And you know, I thought about it, and I think I have a good life right now. I mean, there's stuff I want that I don't have. But I like the life I have right now. I like being in your house and I like (stepdad) and I like my friends and I like my school. And I like the kind of person I am. Because, I mean, I think I'm a good person. I think a parent would be glad to have me as their kid. Because I'm good to people and I can do flips and stuff that other kids can't do. I think I'm a good friend. I like me and I like my life. I think S don't know what she's talking about."

Right on, kiddo. And yes, we then spent the next ten minutes bashing Auntie S with her four kids by two different dads, all under five years old before she turned 26, living on her baby daddy's child support money, mooching off of Grandma, running off at her mouth self. Because I think she deserved it.

And he's right -- any parent would be glad to have him as their kid. I certainly am.

-- Dante's Virgil

Monday, August 24, 2009

Combination for a Heart Attack

So, university started back today for me. Despite my ongoing aggravating struggle with my schedule, the students themselves are great. I didn't think I'd like the new group as much as the old group, but I do. Maybe I'm preconditioned to like them and want to "rescue" them. But today went well, in spite of the fact that a certain administrative someone has completely and thoroughly fucked up the entire scheduling process in ways so complex I'm not sure where to begin. I had a good first day as a teacher. I had a shit-cat of a day as an administrator.

After my last class, I came home and took Dante to his new middle school for a tour and to get his schedule. That's right. Middle school. Schedule. I knew this was coming, but I still don't think I'm prepared for it. He switches classes for everything; none of the people he knows are in any of his classes; the sixth grade takes up the entire second floor; and the most heart attack inducing thing is that he has a combination locker. I'm not sure why that was the thing that gave me what I consider to be my first mild heart attack. But when we were sitting through the principal/parents meeting just before Dante came home, I was doing just fine up to that point. Then he said, "Each student has his own combination locker." And I stopped listening and experienced a thing I can only describe as a heart attack-lite.

He has a combination locker. He's in the beginning throes of puberty. He said, "Mom, I'm pretty much just interested in hanging out with my friends now." His feet are now bigger than mine, and he wears the same size shirt as I do. He is Growing Up. Holy Shit. I'm not ready. I'm just not. I haven't gotten the Kid Is Growing Up memo yet. I haven't purchased the right supplies to deal with growing up. What am I gonna do?!

I was really concerned that he would be afraid of middle school. I'm still worried that he's going to have a crappy first week and come home in tears. He is so excited he can't stand it. He whipped out that combination and his locker down in about three tries. We went to all his rooms, and he was yelling about everything. "They have a DISHWASHER in there!! What do you suppose we're gonna do with it???" He has a science teacher for homeroom and then he moves immediately to his science class. He has math and language arts, and his two added value classes (I like to think of them as supersizing your fries kind of things) appear to be art and world religion. That ought to please Nana. He'll get to try woodworking this year. He can't wait. I, on the other hand, need at least six more weeks.

We go to get supplies tomorrow. I've put it off until the very last second. It's not that I don't like who he is now or that I wish he was still a baby, because I don't. I like the jokes he makes, I like the person he is becoming, I like being able to relate more fully to him now. But I Am Not Ready. Not yet.

Excuse me while I go take a couple of aspirin to thin down my blood. He starts Wednesday.

-- Dante's Virgil

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Boxing Geek Reasserts Herself

So tomorrow, my boxing crush Tommy Karpency fights in the cute little ballroom of the locally owned hotel in which I have come to so enjoy seeing matches. The ballroom has a giant gorgeous chandelier that hangs over the ring, the decor is fantastic, and it's a very ritzy looking event all for about $25. There really isn't a bad seat in the house because the room is fairly small, so you can sit in the back, make a boob of yourself, and it's not a problem for others. Vital requirements for my and D/B's participation as spectators in the world of boxing.

Tommy is going up against Chuck Mussachio, who troubles me because he has the pleasing nickname "The Professor." I'll so be wanting to yelp and cheer when they announce "Chuck 'The Professsssooooorrrrr Mass-AH-keeoooo." That kind of thing gets to me. The Prof is currently ranked #30 in the US and he has had a few less fights than Tommy. But disturbingly (for fangrrrls) his record currently stands at 13-0-2 (two ties) with 5 wins coming by way of knock out. Gack! That means one of two things: he's either had bad competition or he's got a heck of a punching strategy. In other words, he's either "untested" or he's good.

Tommy right now is 17-1-1 with 11 wins by way of knock out. A better record, and he's ranked #15 in the US, but The Prof could still be some serious competition. I think that's good, though, because I'd like to see Tommy crack the top ten, which he'll need to start doing in order to have any kind of shot at being the top contender for the #1 spot, and he's going to need better competition to do so. It's so disappointing to watch Friday Night Fights on ESPN and see somebody put their new boy with a big punch against a "jobber" who's job is basically to lose. It's not a rigged fight, but it might as well be. Even if Tommy wins everything from here on out, he'll still take probably two years or so to be in position to challenge for the #1 spot, as the top five currently all have way more experience than he does, and moving like that just takes time. But he's young and he has the time to give. Three out of the top five are geriatrics in boxing (40 years old). I'm sorry, but boxing should have a shelf life, if only for your own sake.

Tommy has been training with one of the geriatrics, Roy Jones Jr., currently #3 in the US. We'll see how it goes for him. I had to miss his last fight because it conflicted with the KY Derby. Why do the few fun things I do have to cross up with each other?! Anyway, tomorrow I'm totally going to get a geeky fangrrl picture with Tommy after his fight. Because I think he's going to turn into something special in boxing, and I want a "I knew him when" picture -- he'll be fairly untouchable later.

-- DV

Monday, August 17, 2009

Smurf Me A Jehovah's Witness Tweet!

Well, looks like the Jay-Dubs have made a technological stride forward by joining Twitter. Now they can tweet Jehovah's word to unsuspecting Twitter users -- and count "time in the field" to boot! Honestly, looking at some of the tweets, they are soooo representative of the religio-babble that JW's are famous for and so personally familiar to me. But now, in the bright light of over a decade of being free from their brainwashing, it just seems ridiculous and hilarious. Take J_Witness for example. Here is a choice tweet in response to BibleAlsoSays:
@BibleAlsoSays Stop being a tool of Satan. You need to seek the kingdom, this is not about us, it is about doing Jehovahs will.


LOL. "Tool" of Satan. The only "tool" right now is this JW being a douchebag to someone else. Also, "seeking the kingdom" is such a wonderfully nebulous phrase. To JWs it means joining their religion, of course, since people seeking God's kingdom elsewhere are simply doing it wrong. There really aren't too terribly many of them on Twitter. If you want a good sampling, check out jwforum. They report the "news" about JWs. The Good News, actually, if I might make a pun. They don't report the bad news. That's light that comes from a curious black bulb, not the "light that keeps getting brighter" (and appears to have blinded) the members of the Society.

If you scan their followers, you'll find quite a number of porn twitterers as part of their "followers." This is comedic on so many levels, for one because other JWs presumably searching for JWs on Twitter will find JWForum, hit the followers link looking for Twitter buddies and be "tempted" by all that porn. It's funny on another level because so many JW followers do, in fact, sneak porn on a regular basis. So I suppose it's appropriate in some way. It's rather hilarious to find JehovahsPromise listed right next to MeHottyNaughty. Some JW Twitterers just post bible verses. That's it. Some just tweet their lives, like most of us do.

But for serious shits and giggles, (Brunnhilde, where are you dear??) you have GOT to check out JehovahSmurf.

People who used to be JWs or around them in some way are already laughing by now. I'll fill the rest of you lucky people in on why. Jehovah's Witnesses' relationship to Smurfs is the kind of thing you won't find written anywhere in official doctrine, but is rather one of those urban legends that have spread so that every JW, former and present, in the USA at least knows about Smurfs. To sum it up, Jehovah hates Smurfs. Not only does Jehovah hate Smurfs, but Smurfs are actually demonic. You see, at some congregation, let us call it Congregation Ground Zero, someone passed along the idea that Smurfs were actually representative of dead babies. This story was expanded to include aborted babies, smothered babies, however you like -- they're blue and they're little, so they must be dead babies. Then you have that Gargamel, who is a wizard -- already a strike against the Smurfs. But the biggest clue is Gargamel's cat, Azriel. Now, you may not have known this, so brace yourselves, people. But Azriel is a form of Azrael -- and Azrael is the Hebrew word for .... Angel of DEATH!!! Both Gargamel and Azriel want to eat Smurfs when they're caught, which has bizarre implications that even this symbolism junkie can't really decode properly. But suffice it to say, clearly the Smurfs are demonic.

But it gets better. On top of this grade-A Smurf analysis floats the urban myth that every JW knows like it's doctrine: the day the stuffed Smurf came to life in the Kingdom Hall and proved its demon possession beyond the shadow of any doubt! This happened to a friend of a friend (and every JW knows a friend who knew a friend this happened to, so it must be true). The story goes like this. One night, a little kid brought its stuffed Smurf to the Kingdom Hall (probably to help it get to sleep during those boring meetings). At some point during the meeting, presumably because the word "Jehovah" was said too many times, the Smurf suddenly comes to life. JWs believe that demons cannot stand the actual name of Jehovah, although it is unclear to doubters whether they don't like every incarnation and language of His Name, or just the JW English version "Jehovah." But upon hearing the name once to many times, the Smurf pops off the chair and says, depending on the story, "I'm sick of this shit." Or, "Fuck this shit." Or just, "Fuck. Shit. Goddamn. Shit. Fuck." It then heads towards the door, cursing the whole way, where presumably some elder or ministerial servant lets it out into the parking lot. Upon reaching the parking lot, still cursing (imagine it tottering away, the "Fuck. Shit. Goddamn." growing fainter and fainter) it bursts into flames. The End.

So that's why Smurfs were frowned on in the congregation. Or perhaps the entire story is one big excuse for JWs to find a chance to curse in public. I don't know. The story is immortalized in the ex-JW biography I'm Perfect, You're Doomed: Tales of a Jehovah's Witness Upbringing by Kyria Abrahams. She lived in Rhode Island, I grew up in Kentucky. We heard the same story.

There were other Smurf stories not so well known, like Smurf print bedspreads that magically came to life, jumped off the sheets and started running around the room. Or, I don't know, you could check your kid for a Ritalin need or something.

But that should tell you why JehovahSmurf is just so very, very, very smurfing funny.

-- DV

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

I Suppose It Had To Happen Eventually

Graduate Sues College for Tuition Reimbursement

Long story short, Trina Thompson is suing Monroe College for her $70,000 in tuition because she is unemployed and cannot find a job. She alleges the school did not do enough to help her find employment after she graduated, her student loans are coming due soon, and she is going to have difficulty paying them. She now believes that her degree isn't worth the money she spent. I suppose this is the logical conclusion of the university-as-business mentality that many students and their parents have developed over the past few decades. But there are so many things wrong with this lawsuit I'm not even sure where to begin.

How about beginning with logic? Trina must not be the sharpest tool in the shed if she hasn't realized by now that there is a recession/depression happening all around her, and that tens of thousands of jobs are routinely being cut out of the economy each month. She must also be a dingbat if she doesn't understand that universities don't magically make jobs just happen for grads -- they can advise, recommend, help you prep your cover letter and resume, and your professors can act as your references. But they can't make a job just appear for you. The only jobs they control are the ones within the university itself.

She also displays a rather naive understanding of how jobs actually work for university grads. You're supposed to start looking in your final semester, so you have something lined up as you graduate, not wait until after you graduate to start looking, because the good jobs will be gone to those who started earlier. To be fair, perhaps she did this, but she didn't mention it (or the articles didn't cover that part). The article states she got her diploma in April of this year -- and promptly filed a lawsuit July 24. That's just three months after graduation. Most advice about finding a job is that it can take 6-9 months to find one. So she isn't even within the range of time where most people would start to worry about a job yet, and her response was not to go to the unemployment office, not to look for temp work, not to head down to McDonald's for some kind of money no matter where it came from -- but to sue the school for all of her tuition money back. Not even pro-rated reimbursement for the number of months she is without a job, which might have made tad more sense.

Trina does put the spotlight on just how much it costs to get a college education and how onerous paying back that debt can be. Jeffrey Williams, a scholar who does substantial work on tuition and student debt, synthesizes an incredible amount of statistical information that should be required reading for parents with a child in college and the child himself. There are very few situations where a student can graduate without being in debt. Their parents can completely foot the bill (rare); they can go to school on full scholarship and not lose any of their money (rare); they can go to one of the few schools that offers free tuition and makes sure you graduate without owing a penny (like Berea). If you can't fit into any of those situations, then you're probably going to graduate with $19,200 of debt on average. Almost a fourth of borrowers have over $30,000 in debt when they graduate. These figures are more than double of a decade ago (and those figures from the mid-90s were triple what they had been a decade before that).

It is no longer true that you can "work your way" through college. Recent studies suggest that in the 1960s,one could work 15 hours/week during the school year and 40 hours/week through the summer, and essentially pay all their college expenses. An Ivy league or private college student would have to work 20 hours/week throughout the school year. Now, that same student would have to work 52 hours a week all year long -- 132 hours/week for an Ivy league/private school -- in order to pay all college expenses. Jeffrey Williams has also likened student loan debt to indentured servitude, especially since it will take an average of 15 years to pay off a standard Stafford federal loan. You should read his article linked above -- the similarities really are quite striking. But Williams goes on to explain that debt does more than financially cripple people -- it is a teacher in its own right.

Debt, he says, teaches students first and foremost that that higher education is a consumer service. Trina certainly seems to have bought into this worldview. She feels she didn't get her "money's worth," and she defines that in terms of salary. She doesn't consider higher education as having taught her any useful skills beyond the ones she believed she needed to get a good job. This same mentality is what causes students to think they pay tuition for A's and their professors are customer service personnel.

Williams says debt also teaches career choices, and I see the truth of this especially in my first generation college students. They are too scared to try out becoming a history teacher or an astronomer, because they and their families are afraid it just won't pay. So they go into business and nursing instead. One of the reasons they give is being able to pay off their student loans. As a teacher, I owe more in student loan debt than I make every year before taxes. It will take me 21 years at my current rates to pay off my debt. Thank goodness I consider getting an education to be more than a financial investment, because that's one stock pick that certainly wouldn't have given a high return. I know that people like to think college degrees yield more money over a lifetime, and in the long run they do. But none of those figures of how much more a college grad allegedly earns over a high school grad account for student loan debt. If the stats took the debt off the top of the salary, the numbers would start dropping down.

The truth of the matter is, paying for higher education can feel like highway robbery. Plenty of people besides and including Jeffrey Williams have demonstrated that higher education could offer free tuition, remove the onerous debt students leave college with, and still make profit. The middle man (loan companies, including Sallie Mae) is the obstacle to the problem. Trina's situation is no different than most other college students who have graduated with a mountain of debt into an economy not very interested in receiving them.

But Trina can't lay the blame on her college for not handing a job over to her. They don't control jobs. They can, however, control student debt. Trina likely won't -- and shouldn't -- win her case against Monroe. But universities and the agitators inside them need to be pushing for a change in the way higher education is paid for. It's beyond time.

-- DV

Monday, August 03, 2009

Convert Now

My mother now has an email account and internet access and my sister is on Facebook.

Armageddon is coming.


-- DV


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