first of all, you should know that i'm a total dork....

i've been looking forward to the democratic national convention for weeks now, and last night i watched as much as i could before and after the dyke march meeting.

can i just say how much i miss bill?

he was amazing last night. he gave an incredibly inspiring speech -- like he had nothing to lose. he was on. it was amazing to watch. after all of the oratory bumbling and fascist unilateralism i've had to endure of the speeches of the present so-called president, i had forgotten how uplifting a good liberal political speech can be. thank you bill for again giving me hope for this country.

i also don't want to forget jimmy carter. he told it like he saw it -- didn't mince any words...

plus, it's was nice to see a nobel peace prize winner stick it to w.

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i thought the juxtaposition of these two news headlines on yahoo! news were particularly interesting and mind-blowing...

i feel like the whole world's gone mad...

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on love, death and relationships

her eyes were the eyes
of my ex's dead mother
a sign if ever there was one

danger

i have never been presented with a sign
so distinct
so clear
unable to be ignored
the universe not leaving any room
to doubt what i was experiencing

her eyes were the eyes
of my ex's dead mother
who called me from her deathbed
her only lucid moment in weeks
the last of her lucid moments on this earth

it's all about relationships, she said
all we have in this life
is our relationship with one another
with ourselves
with god
four days left to live
one foot already on the other side
and this, she said, is all there is
the point of it all

a woman who was quietly strong
suffered most of her life in pain
she loved me for who i was
she understood
that she didn't quite understand

love the sinner, hate the sin
the pope of nashville
made a place for me
although i slept with her daughter
that she just couldn't seem to reach
i was irish, so i was in
although i know
privately
it caused her great pain

unspeakable pain
she endured it gracefully
she knew she was not her body
so when the tumor
the size of a basketball
took her in less than a month
she was ready
her last lesson in dignity
taught through a morphine drip
and her self-planned funeral

she had the eyes
of my ex's dead mother
but where they had once been
deep and blue and full of love
were now filled with an overwhelming
sense of dread and terror

remember this day
mark this moment
as what comes before and after

it's amazing what can happen
in a day
3,000 people made their way to work
just like any other day
stopped for coffee
stopped for a bagel
rode the train
ended up at the bottom
of a burning heap of metal
and concrete

remember this day
mark this moment
as what comes before
and what comes after

a house of cards
left unattended
will eventually topple
entropy
things fall apart
the center does not hold
flashes of what is already known
seep into our consciousness
marking time
as what comes before
and what comes after

will we be ready when the time comes?
will we be ready when we are upended?

she had the eyes
of my ex's dead mother
when the time came
i was not ready
for what was to come

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yesterday, i went to the dentist to get my temporary crown for the root canal i had last week [a whole other post to come in the future about how much i hate going to the dentist]. the only cool thing my dentist has going for him is that you can watch t.v. while they work on your teeth. last week, i sat down in the chair and was handed a very lengthy list of movies i could choose to watch while i had the root canal. i chose finding nemo, because i hadn't seen it yet -- the irony is that when nemo is captured, he's placed in a tank in a dentist's office -- lots of cartoon depictions of the horrors of the dentist....just my luck...but it ended up being a fine movie to watch anyway. they have headphones for you, which really helps cancel out the drilling noise.

anyway, yesterday i had to go back for my temporary crown. i chose just to watch t.v. instead of a movie. and i got completely caught up in watching the national spelling bee on (of all channels espn). it was so engrossing -- the tension -- the drama -- the crying. i found my self rooting for those kids -- all of them. they're just so cute and brainy.

made me think back to all of those geeky kids (including me) in my gifted and talented classes all those years ago, and i began to wonder where they are today....i know one's a researcher at m.i.t and another's in jail.

i guess the rest of us are just somewhere in between....

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i've been pondering the passage of time a lot lately. could be because i'm about a month away from my birthday. i can't believe i'll be 34. it's hard for be to grasp that p's going to be in the 6th grade next year, ssdd and i will have been together for 8 years in september, i've been at my job now for 3 years and we've been doing girl gang shows for 2 years. where is all of the time going?

i get panicked when i think about it. questions buzz through my head -- am i making every moment count? am i doing what i should be doing with my life? am i wasting my time here on this earth doing too many things that don't bring me joy? what will bring me joy?

fuck it. too overwhelming to think about. i'll just get back to distracting myself by watching *another* episode of law & order on tnt. the last five episodes i watched today didn't do the trick.

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just got back from a press conference for the la/spca. i've been working on their marketing committee and today we had a press conference to launch their new campaign (print, radio and web for now -- hopefully tv to come soon). wdsu and wgno both came out to cover it. from the print side, the tp and the baton rouge advocate also had reporters. the first of the print ads is running in gambit this week. so look for it!

i was a part of the group that redesigned their website, which had a soft launch last week (to get the bugs out before the press conference). you can take a look at it at la-spca.org. nick, my dog, is now officially a star. if you spend enough time on the site, you'll see the rest of st. patrick st. brood there too...

makes my heart happy to know the site will do some good in the world....it's all about helping the puppies and the kitties.

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so, now you can have people comment on your blog thanks to the new and improved, google-funded blogger. thanks mags for keeping me up to speed. i hadn't blogged in a while.

so comment away.

no reason to have that live journal now, kids [hoping to stir some shit].....

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this has to be, hands down, the most replusive and disgusting of all reality shows i have ever heard of (and please note the fact that this is in the entertainment section)....five couples "compete to win a baby"....and to make my stomach churn even more, this jerk is claiming that he "owns the idea" -- apparently it's patent pending because he "was afraid that an unscrupulous producer in TV reality land would steal the idea."

[sarcasm] right, because it's an idea that is just overflowing with scruples. when i think scruples, i think baby-winning competition. [/sarcasm]

what is this world coming to?

what's next? five dying people on the organ donor waiting list compete for a heart or a kidney?

perhaps i should patent that idea right now so no one steals it....

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it was the best of times.....
i'm so proud of ssdd and p for being a part of the march for women's lives yesterday in washington, d.c. the march issued a press release that stated they has 1.15 million folks marching. the washington post reported that there were more people there than at the million man march, which had around 870,000. regardless, it was the largest march on washington in the history of the united states. makes me proud that ssdd and p were there. i wasn't able to go (damn the fact that i have to work today), but i watched many of the speakers live on c-span yesterday. i was having a hard time not welling up with tears of joy. for a moment, i had a vision of what this country could be again -- all the doubts i harbor about whether we can really vote the asshole out of office in november were gone, if only for an hour or so.

it was the worst of times....
and then i saw fucking ralph nader as i was flipping the channel and those doubts all came back again...fucking ralph nader. hasn't he done enough damage to this country? is his ego really that large that he's willing to gamble on the future direction of this country? how can he sleep at night knowing he may well be the difference between fascism and democracy? and who the hell is going to vote for him this time around? are you that idealistic that you need to choose this particular point in the history of the united states to make an esoteric, intellectual point? in theory, i agree -- a multiple party system is better than a two party system. but i'm also from louisiana....i understand that voting is a strategy...the strategy is lesser of two evils....it's a strategy steeped in reality. the reality of the situation is pretty clear to anyone paying attention.....we have a pretty clear choice to make. and one of the choices isn't pissing one's vote away in exchange for 4 more years of death, lies and conservativism.

[sound of me getting off my soapbox]

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"I fought under that flag, and I saw that flag draped over the coffins of friends. I'm tired of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney and a bunch of people who went out of their way to avoid the chance to serve when they had the chance." -- John Kerry

the man is given three purple hearts for his conduct in COMBAT (he was actually there, w, and where were you? lost somewhere in alabama?) and bush's people really think they have a political leg to stand on with this particular issue??? do they think we're that stupid?? man, i want to kick their asses.....

to read the entire article about kerry releasing his military records and the republicans actually having the fucking nerve to question his military service, click here.

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