I am from planet WHEREAMI

I think everyone gets to this point.  At some point, you look around you and notice that you are totally from a different planet.  Nobody thinks like you, looks like you, likes what you like, listens to what you do ... NOBODY.  Some people get to this point when they are 14 or 22 or entering puberty or moving to a new place or marrying into a new family or something like that.  Not me.  I got to this point gradually, over a period of a few years.  And my time has come.  Countdown to total isolation.  Boo. 

I don't use Twitter.  I don't like Twilight.  I don't think the President is too liberal OR too conservative.  I don't give a fuck where LeBron James plays basketball next year.  I don't watch any housewives of any state or county or city.  I hate cable news.  I don't think that the free market is the end-all solution to all problems.  I don't like to watch people yelling or fighting or fucking or gossiping or falling down drunk with a fake tan on TV.  I like soccer and hockey and baseball.  Football is cool, but college football is getting lamer by the minute.  I don't own a smartphone.  I don't CARE AT ALL where you are or why you are there or what you will be doing this weekend or who will be there or what it was like when you left or what shoes you bought or how sad you are today or how that one person whose name you won't say on facebook is just the worst friend/girlfriend/boyfriend/boss/employee/waiter/busdriver/husband/wife/mother-in-law EVER.  I like the kind of drama that wells up when someone overcomes an obstacle, not the kind that is created by chance-meetings or alcohol or fashion fauxpas.  And (with the exception of my close friends and family) I AM THE ONLY PERSON IN AMERICA WHO FEELS THIS WAY.

I imagine a time in the future when some person wants to know what Life In America was like in 2010.  I picture that person watching a documentary or reading a book (who am I kidding, though, they will probably be watching it on their face on some kind of weird iHead contraption that gets wi-fi faster than you can think actual thoughts).  What would that documentary/book/wiki article/iHead video say?  Will it talk about Real Housewives and Jersey Shore?  Will it talk about King James' decision to stay with Cleveland or go the fuck to Miami?  Will it talk about Sarah Palin and oil spills or Al Gore and massages?  Will it show tweets and facebook posts and TMZ and Lindsay Lohan crying and some people talking shit about each other on Top Chef?  Will it show Tea-bagger rallies and Glen Beck screaming and Generals resigning?  I think of this and realize that I cannot identify with any of those things right now.  Granted, the oil spill as a national disaster is concerning and I hope and pray that people are able to clean up the mess and find ways to avert a disaster like that in the future.  But the coverage of the oil spill and the political posturing on both sides makes me ill.  Still, none of the other 'hot topics' of 2010 so far resonate with me as a human, a citizen, a woman, a person, or an Idahoan.  NONE.  This makes me feel like I must be from a different planet.  Or, I am getting really, really, old.  But it can't be that, because Tea-baggers are really old and they fucking love yelling and fighting and shouting and Sarah Palin and cable news.

What is it?  What could make me feel totally out of touch with everything that I read and see and listen to?  One theory is that "the media" thinks that is what I want.  It thinks that I want to watch people scream at each other or call the President a communist.  It thinks that I care what a no-name representative from South Carolina thinks about the oil spill clean-up efforts.  It doesn't want to tell me the FACTS about the oil spill clean-up effort.  It wants me to know what some old white dude thinks about it, because what he thinks is so crazy outrageous, it just HAS to be reported.  REALLY???  Is this what people want?  Do they really want to see screaming and fighting and superficiality and uninformed opinion?  Do they really want information that is all guess-work and no check-work?  REALLY?

The conglomeration of entertainment and news and profit and hype has resulted in one big garbled pile of garbage that occasionally spews out pictures of (ugh) Justin Bieber and Nancy Pelosi on the same news cycle.  The stench has seeped into sports broadcasting, as well.  This week, ESPN will broadcast a ONE HOUR televised event for LeBron to announce where he would be signing as a free agent.  The ad proceeds will go to the Boys and Girls Club, but, come on, man!  It is SUMMER TIME.  People should be outside enjoying themselves, not sitting in front of the TV for AN HOUR to watch some guy they have never met tell them what his next job will be.  But that is what sports is now.  Sports talk shows are spectacle, opinion, hype, and total speculation.  Nobody knows anything.  Everybody thinks something.  Or, they believe it.  Same diff.  We see stories about sports star's divorces, affairs, financial situations, political leanings, and spats in the dugout and locker room before we ever see who actually won the god-damned game.  We spend months watching reporters follow around a diva in a Vikings jersey to see if he wants to play football again.  The news doesn't ever happen.  We don't hear about actual breaking news.  We watch the news DRAG on and on and on and on for weeks and weeks until the thing that we want to know is so watered down with hype and opinion and speculation that we don't give a rat's ass anymore.  We don't care who won the game.  We don't care about the oil spill. 

I don't know.  I have been feeling this way for a long time, and maybe I just don't know where to look for news and information anymore.  NPR does a great job, I suppose.  Like yesterday, when they interviewed a man who worked on a North Carolina vineyard.  (Transcript here:  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128365796) On his vineyard is a grape vine called the Mother Vine, which had been producing grapes for over 400 years.  A power company employee doing work near the vineyard recently sprayed a small portion of the vine with herbicide.  As a result, the Mother Vine began to die.  The story detailed the vine's recovery, explaining how scientists from NC State and the Department of Agriculture devoted endless hours of their time to helping the vine survive.  The man, whose father owns the vineyard, sounded hopeful and thankful.  He wasn't screaming or shouting about the power company, or blaming the government for his problems.  Rather, he was touting the benefits of cooperation to preserve the way of life, history and culture of his profession.  It was interesting and inspiring and I liked it.  It is stories like this, the simple ones, that inspire me in 2010.  Stories of cooperation, growth, and hope.  Those stories are still largely missing from the media landscape.  It is all doom and gloom and lowest-common denominator bullshit that clogs our airwaves and keeps us just distracted enough not to get involved and be a part of our society in concrete ways.  After all, what is the point of getting involved if everything is shot to shit?  It may sound like a conspiracy theory, but these days, I'll take anything--even alien abductions--to make me feel sane.  After all, I am from a different planet.

BSU and the tea baggin', scream spittin' frenzyfeasters

Phew. It has been a few months since my virgin post and here I am again, in my perpetual state of irritation. Not like itchy-rash irritation, rather, more like OHMYGODSHUTUPSHUTUP irritation. This happens to me a lot. Remember when you were in grade school or junior high and some person would taunt you, make fun of you, bother you, nah-nah-nah-nah-nah you? Your mother would inevitably say, "Just ignoooore them. They'll leave you alone." Well, I never could. I would fester and scheme and just pool up like a big puddle of frustration. And mom was right! They NEVER left me alone when I did that. And today, I want to take my mom's advice and just ignooooore all the wildly irritating things happening around me, but, alas, I can't.

I'll start with Boise State. I am an Idaho Vandal. That means I graduated from the University of Idaho and love my school and their dumb mascot and their poor athletic teams. I, however, do not BLEED silver and gold. I do not own a Vandal flag. I do not paint my face. I do not tell everyone who will listen that I am an Idaho Vandal. I just am one, that's all. And part of being an Idaho Vandal is really not liking our "rival" in-state school, Boise State University. We're rivals in sports and funding. UI is in the North, BSU in the South. And it just so happens that BSU has a very, very, very good football team. To many people, this means nothing. To every major media outlet in Southern Idaho, this means EVERYTHING. And BSU football starts today and ohmygod you'd think the SUPERBOWL was in town. I am all for being proud of your school (even if I hate your school and hope they lose by 1,000 points tonight), but this media overload leaves me beyond disappointed, and yes, irritated. There is a local radio station that has been playing Michael Jackson's "Thriller" on a loop for THREE DAYS STRAIGHT because it has something to do w/ the football game (they don't say what it has to do with the game, but that's the word on the street). Every newscast on the local Boise TV station spends at least the 1st 5 minutes on the BSU game and has been doing that FOR A WEEK. The newspaper has had special inserts, front page stories and exclusives about PARKING and shuttlebuses for a week now. And today was "national put a huge flag on your car day" in Boise, in case you missed it or tried driving anywhere and couldn't figure out what the fuck was in your way when you were waiting for the light to turn green. It's BSU football, guys. Reporting actual news and controlling traffic come a distant second and third to the almighty Bronco hump-fest. I happened to notice that the BSU players and coaches are super chill about this upcoming game and seem to try to downplay its significance at every turn. So, although I hope the Oregon Ducks come to Boise tonight and destroy these guys on the field, I still sorta feel sorry for those BSU players. Their media and a bunch of bandwagon-jumping frenzyfeasters are really going to jinx them tonight. I wonder what happens tomorrow if BSU loses. Does that remain the top story? Do the flags come down? Do the blue and orange food specials at the local restaurants come off the menu? Will there be crickets squeaking at every bar, every newspaper stand, every BSU blog? Who will run screaming through the streets, wearing a BSU flag on fire like a cape, telling everyone that ding-dong the Duck-witch is ALIVE???

All this football frenzy that I have been trying to avoid for over a week got me thinking about frenzy in general, and what do you know? The tea-baggers just popped into my head like a little virus warning on my computer. Those guys. Those screaming, marching, spitting, defacing, elderly teabaggers have stirred up some frenzy of their own. (By the way, I LOVE saying tea-baggers. I love that they call themselves that. I love that they have no idea how funny that is. I LOVE IT and I hope that they forever and ever refer to themselves as tea-baggers and never ever stop. Ever.) I don't know what to think about the tea-baggers (heh heh). I can't decide if their anger is real or orchestrated, if they are real dumb or real smart, or if they genuinely love this damn country so much that they can't stand to see it stripped away or are just a bunch of racists. I don't know. What I do know is they can put on some frenzy like it is their job. Their presence at townhalls and on city squares raises the freakout level to about an 11. And the media just eats it up. The media loves covering the tea-baggers just as much as I love sayin' their name. All the screaming and clapping and interrupting and chanting and dressing up the President like Hitler and carrying weapons and (my personal favorite) totally making shit up is just too good to pass up. The false information, the nonsense, the fearmongering, all of it, wrapped up and broadcast to all the dark livingrooms around this country to remind us that, well, we're a nation of nut-balls. Yay.

It is the same thing (on a much smaller, less-scary level) with the BSU freakfest that is happening RIGHT NOW in Idaho. The local media here just blows its wad over any mention of a "bronco", without any regard to any other more important news or events happening around the state or the nation. Just like the national media jizzing all over the tea-baggers anytime they start barking about death panels and socialism!!! Regardless of its importance, its value, its veracity or its truthfulness, the media will cover whatever sells. And right now in Boise, the game sells, man. And on a national scale, scream and spit and death to old people sells.


I say the tea-baggers should get their own team colors and mascot (wait, they already have one) and the liberal left bleeding hearts should do the same. Then we can have a god-damned gridiron showdown in full pads. Then, we'll see who wins and what happens the next day if the tea-baggers lose. Brilliant.

Go Vandals.

The First.

Famous first words for a blog go a little something like this...


"This is my first blog, and I don't know what I am doing, so bear with me until I figure it out."


Sound familiar? Well, those famous first words are a cliche come true for me. This IS my first blog and as of right now I don't like the layout, the font is alright, and I am a little unsure who will ever read the damn thing, but here goes. Feet first.


The idea for this blog has evolved from one about my friendships (inspired by Girl Gone Real), to another about saving the written word from extinction (more on that later), to a forum where I garblepuke whatever is on my mind. It will probably have a political slant, some personal insight, and maybe a cuss word here and there. I am a venter, a thinker, a TALKer, and now, a blogger. Weird.


Today I am thinking about populism and death. Populism because of Sarah Palin and Barack Obama and death because, well, everyone is dying this week, which is fairly true of every week, but if you watch TV or read the interwebs, most especially this week. Being that it is a Friday, every major news outlet has posted a re-cap of the week, and as I read through what has happened, that sinking feeling from last week returns. And I thought I got rid of it. Dammit.

Let me back up. Last week I lost all faith in humanity. That's not true. Not really ALL of humanity, but at least MOST of humanity in this little conservative state in which I live. And when I say "conservative state," I mean "Idaho." A LOT of the people who live here are very conservative and I am very not. But, because the prevailing attitude is NObama and YESarah, some people here assume that when having a casual conversation with others, those others are also conservatives. So stuff comes out. True, unsuspecting, faith-in-humanity-killing stuff. This happened to me last week. Some people I know were talking about health care and of course SOCIALISM in front of this blue girl living in a red state. They assumed, naturally, that I am just as afraid of the downfall of our society at the hands of our new president as they are, so they spoke "freely." I am convinced that had they truly known me, they would have censored their comments a bit. Or at least held back a few. But maybe I just tell myself that to help me sleep at night. Anyway, here are the highlights of the stuff that came out:

"I don't understand why all of the sudden people feel like they need medical care. If I have a cough I don't go to the doctor. I do what I have to do at my house and get over it."

"I don't want people who are 20-30 years old receiving the same medical benefits that I have worked 50 years for."

"I just think this whole 'woe-is-me' attitude these people have is just like those people in New Orleans holding their heads down and their hands out for money." (That one made me almost go through the roof. MY GOD.)

"Socialized medicine doesn't work anywhere in the world. Why would we want it?"

"This new socialism is going to drive out all the private insurance companies and they have no other place to go."

"If somebody wants medical insurance, they should just go out and buy it, like I did. If you can't afford it, tough."

Soo...basically, there are people who exist who I know who think that people who are poor or who have pre-existing conditions and cannot get affordable insurance should just "tough it out." Tough out cancer. Gooooood luck. When I tried my best to be respectful, citing my experience with Hurricane Katrina victims for instance, and explaining the highlights of medical care in countries like Canada and the UK, for another, they got this deer-in-the-headlights look on their faces. Ruh roh raggy. She's not one of us. And I thought, these people represent 80% of my state. And despair set in. Now, I am not going to argue my version of the Obama health care plan. I am not going to tell you about my experiences in New Orleans, or how I reacted to Michael Moore's Sicko. The point I am making in this virgin post is that it seems the compassion has left the building. And it took my faith in humanity with it.

So this week, when everybody was dying, or were at least being recognized for having died, I noticed the same sort of unsympathetic undertones. Steve McNair was murdered by his mistress and many of the media commentary I saw were hedging their "sympathy" because McNair was having an affair. Blogs and comments posted to articles about McNair's death were riddled with lines like "he deserved what he got." I didn't know Steve McNair, but I must admit I am a little shocked that people are so incredibly rude about his circumstance. Sheesh.

Also, my boyfriend this week received a wicked email entitled "Jose v. Joe" about how illegal immigrants are living the high life off of Joe Fucking SixPack, while Joe has to pay for his kids' lunches and the dentist. Again, without going into the details of the email (google it), its content reminded me of the lack of compassion for anyone who is down on their luck, or dead, or foreign, or gay (don't get me started), or compassionate. Which is especially strange since we are all down on our luck right now.

So, faith dashed, I read through more of the week's news re-cap and came upon articles about Sarah Palin stepping down. I noticed a lot of heart-felt sympathy and compassion exerted towards a woman who had been attacked by the media and hounded by litigants. And right there, I just about gave up. The same people who have no compassion for those without health care are just fucking OUTRAGED at the treatment of Alaska's governor. Poor Sarah Palin. The media hates her and now she must quit her job (in a time when jobless rates are sky-high) in order to pursue a higher calling and make millions of dollars raising money, signing book deals and avoiding lawsuits. Must be rough.

Maybe it all comes down to a beauty contest. Conservatives care a lot about Sarah Palin because she is popular amongst their base, and ironically, NOT very compassionate. Unfortunately for them, it isn't very popular to be a murdered adulteror, a cancer victim without insurance, a Katrina victim without a house, or an illegal immigrant without a country. I will be the first to admit I am a "bleeding heart" liberal because I care a lot about people dying (even when they like to screw around or can't afford to pay for private insurance). I don't particularly care about Sarah Palin because she is an idiot. Even though she is a popular one. The real question is, what can I do about the lack of compassion that troubles me so? I guess I will do what everyone else is doing (and no, it is not TWEETING) -- I'll blog. :)