the mean cowboy

"what do you expect me to do with this?" he held out the silver buckle in that half-accusatory, half-apologetic way that only someone with one foot out the door can authentically pull off.

"expect? i am done expecting things from you."

he wanted to throw it at her, then. just flick his wrist and let it fly, bounce it off that smug eyebrow.

"this is the one that belonged to your father." he managed to push the words out between clenched teeth. "the one that belonged to your father."

she started to cry, then. she'd turned away, but he could tell by her syncopated breathing. satisfied that he could still hurt her without really trying, he silently slid the buckle onto the dresser and walked out of the bedroom.

water, money, and DVDs

on the way home i heard this story on the radio about how the detroit city government is shutting off people's water. not randomly, of course. these people haven't paid their bills for quite some time. it's like 18,000 people in arrears on their water bills to the tune of $47million.

i can't find a transcript for the story, and i don't remember if it was last year or before that - but - most of these same people were not paying their water bills in a previous time. at that time, the water department arranged to put them on payment plans, so that they could keep their water on and so that the city could recoup some of the cost of filtering and piping the water out.

so, these people have been given a lot of help towards paying their bills, but i get it -- detroit is a pit of poverty, so where are they supposed to get this money to pay for this water?

at this point, i am feel pretty compassionate and wondering if i can help these people out and whatnot, when they make it personal and start talking to one particular detroitian. she's a single mom of a nine-year old girl, trying to make ends meet. during the past year, her daughter has been sick and in the hospital, putting even more pressure on funds. she talked about robbing peter to pay paul, choosing between water or food or electricity or medical bills.

part of the story captured her calling the water company to find out her total balance and to see what she could do to keep the water on. her total balance is $587 and now i am totally on board with writing her a damn check. tell me where to send it, kai ryssdol -- tell me where to send the check!

and then, just like that, in a blink, i am over it. why? well, as this single mom continued to talk about what she could do to get some money to pay part of this water bill, she said she guessed she could pawn the DVD player.

okay. what?

see, this where it all breaks down for me. why the hell haven't you already pawned the DVD player? why the hell do i think you should pawn your DVD player? back and forth i go.

on the one hand, how can you keep a luxury like a DVD player when you can't pay your bills? on the other hand, if you were to pawn it you might get like $50, and how far will that go? i guess it comes down to making an effort to get your bills paid. if you have a DVD player, have you made that effort?

i want her to prove her worthiness before i spare any more compassion, not to mention that money i was on the verge of forking over. if i were to pay her water bill, what then? maybe she's really in need, but that DVD player is testament that she's not. i could pay her water bill and then she'd go out and get more DVDs.

on the one hand, that's terrible. she's cheated me and made a fool of me. on the other hand, why do i care? on the other hand, why am i reading so much into one (likely near worthless) piece of technology? on the other hand, why isn't she (or the reporter) reading more?

there will be no conclusions today.

a few limericks

there once was a girl named patrice,
whose clothing was all of a piece.
she liked to look good,
as any girl would,
so that's why she mostly used fleece.

a rainbow contains many colors,
red, blue, green, and the others.
you know them by heart,
so i won't start
naming them, one and another.

most anything goes with fried taters.
beefsteak, boiled eggs, alligators.
eat 'em all up,
each night when you sup,
cause nobody likes tater haters.

if star wars were fact and not fiction,
yoda could be a teacher of diction.
if that were the case,
i'd laugh in his face.
cause yoda always talks all backwards and that's really messed up.

smells like vanity

my car has always had this particular scent. not a new-car smell -- when i got it, it wasn't new. it's more of a formerly-driven-by-a-smoker-but-i've-been-detailed-with-sweet-soap smell. it's hung in there through years of hauling fast food and sweaty bodies and babies and groceries. it's more prevalent when the car's been sitting out in the heat - like getting all hot and bothered brings it out or something. yeah, the heat brings it out, but it's always there. i don't know where it comes from, how it gets replenished, how it fights off other odors and consistently rises to the top. all i know is, it's how my car smells.

until the end of last week.

a couple months ago, out by the mall, this girl nicked my car pretty good. she wanted to come into the lane i was in, and being as our cars are each comprised of a car's worth of molecules, both her car and mine couldn't occupy the same spot on the space-time continuum. go figure. so, she scraped up my right rear quarter panel, and long story short, i had it repaired last week. at the same time, i had the peeling clear coat on the roof repaired.

first thing i noticed when i got in is my car now smells like a mani-pedi salon. it reeks of paint and associated chemicals and the sorts of places where these products abound. i've had repairs done before, and the mani-pedi odor generally dissipates quickly. i believe the difference this time is that i elected to have the roof repaired, which means more of the car was exposed for a longer period of time. longer exposure means longer dissipation time.

it's soon, only been a few days, so i still have hope that my car's unique smell will win out.

i do have hope. i do.

i do.

but... oh, i hate to admit it! the roof repair wasn't about function. nope. it was about my vanity. i didn't like how she was starting to look, so i had her "fixed" - i took her in to get her grey dyed away because i couldn't stand to watch her aging. and now my vanity may have cost her a bit of her uniqueness! i hope hope hope i didn't destroy it altogether. reaching for everything, i may have lost one of the most special things of all.

that's it, see. you can't have it all. you have choose and you have to be careful and wise. choosing one thing could preclude another altogether or alter it in some altogether unexpected way. you can't just make some spot decision. you have to think it through.

and, vanity is rarely a satisfactory criteria.

you can't change running.

my brother cogito's got three kids - beavis, who's 7; regina, who's 5; and champ, who is only 5 months along. of the three, champ does the most crying and the least amount of self-propulsion. the older two have taken up, of all things, running.

beavis is a bit thinky - the kind of kid who checks out basketball books from the library to learn how to play basketball. regina is smart enough but she's the more natural athlete and learns to play sports by playing them. beavis runs like a girl. regina runs like a boy. that's just how it is.

so, they've taken up running, each in their own way.

beavis's school does this program where the kids run around the perimeter of the building and for each lap, they earn a token. the tokens add up somehow to bigger tokens or some nonsense. i really wasn't listening when cogito was explaining that part. point is, beavis did some running every day for a while and sort of caught on to the idea - one foot in front of the other and all that - and realized that it was an activity he could accomplish with reasonable success. he recognized that all the practice was having a positive affect on his skill. he's also social, so this particular program fed into his desire to be around people.

basically, with beavis, you've got an average runner who enjoys the sport for the self-improvement and socializing.

regina, on the other hand, is a machine. she's a natural athlete who doesn't concern herself with socializing, and the only improvement she's interested in is the kind that helps her win. she loves to run because it gets her places more quickly than walking and because it gets her places more quickly than other people. she hasn't done a program at school or checked a book out of the library, and yet she knows how to toe a starting line and how to fly out of the gates.

basically, with regina, you've got a superior runner who enjoys the sport for the competition.

i'm over-simplifying, of course, but what's cool is it's like this sociology experiment right there in one house. you've got a brainiac and a jock, and they have completely different approaches, but they end up in the same place - running. what's great is that they can both totally get the different things they are looking for from the same thing, from running.

you can run because you enjoy the feel of your muscles working and the conversation of your running buddies, or you can run because you like to kick ass, or it can be some of both or anything in between.

and running is fine with it, with all of it. running doesn't care. running will let you use it for any purpose you choose. running will be there for you if you want to lose yourself or if you want to find yourself. running will comfort you and running will celebrate with you. running doesn't care if you are fast or slow, tall or short, pretty or ugly. running doesn't care if you want to just whimsically flit around or if you want to compete hard - or if you sometimes want one and sometimes want the other. running doesn't even care if you love it or hate it.

running just is. you can't change running. and, i am sure you know the punchline... you can't change running, but if you will let it, running can change you.

on the rise

a popular question this election cycle is - knowing what we know now, would you have invaded iraq? by which they mean, since it turned out there were no weapons of mass destruction found, do you think it was right to have gone in there, based on what was clearly faulty intelligence. well, hell. what are you supposed to say to that? it's like asking - knowing what we know now, would you have gotten into WWII sooner? would you have let the damn wooden horse through the gates? would you have eaten the fucking apple??

c'mon, esteemed press corps. you can do better. of the-hell course, anyone would do anything differently, in retropect. that's where the saying "hindsight is 20-20" freaking the-hell CAME FROM!

GAH.

yes, i am upset.

in 1787, great britain opened the work of the house of commons to press reporting. in the british empire of the time, there were considered to be three estates: first was clergy; second, nobility; and finally, third, commoners. when the press was introduced into the mix, edmund burke christened them the fourth estate.

each of the estates has a role. the commoners work. the clergy pray. the nobility rule. the press speak. it's honorable - all of it - when it's done properly, purely. honest work. honest prayer. honest rule. honest voice.

people aren't pure, though, or generally very honest, to themselves or to others. it all breaks down, sure, i get that. but it's one thing to break down and give in, and it's another to break down and yet strive to rise above. it's like we've lost all sense of rising above, that's what gets me.

graduation day

i wish i had a million words to caution you.
i wish that you could listen to advice
before you leap into the great wide open -
heedless headlong, never thinking twice.