Thoughts come out.....
This is gonna get a little political. Probably as political as I'll ever be in my life. But I think I've gotten to the point where I'm fed up. Fed up with life, fed up with accepting it.
As we sat down to have dinner tonight, Hubby and I noticed that one of the strawberries that we'd bought a couple days ago was nice and hairy. This is an epidemic we've come to notice over the last couple months. We'll bring food home one night. Usually an amount that previously lasted us for a week or more. Nowadays, we find that produce and meats don't last more than 2-4 days tops. The 4 days is if we're extremely lucky. We have tested all factors that could have contributed to it within our home. Refrigerator is set to the correct temperature. Air quality in the kitchen is good and there is no evidence of pests within the house. So we have to wonder what has gone wrong. Usually, when buying the groceries, we've noticed that cherry-picking (which was previously an art only practiced by overly coiffed and fastidious upper class suburban housewives) is now essential if we are to get food that will not rot as soon as we get it out of the store. Some of the produce is actually rotting within the packaging while on display. It has gotten to the point where we end up buying just enough for a couple of days. Any more than that would be a terrific waste of money. Money that hardly anyone of us has available to waste in these trying economic times.
The cause, we've decided, is the lack of proper refrigeration during shipping and transport. Since refrigeration on big rigs probably eats up a lot of gas (which we all know is quite expensive these days), drivers are probably encouraged to turn it off for a while en route. Needless to say, it's making it so perfectly good food arrives near the end of its shelf life. It reaches that end after you arrive home and put it in your icebox. You'll open it the next morning and realize the strawberries for your morning shake are not to be. Thus it's money wasted and you go hungry for a little while. This is how it starts. Eventually, people will truly begin to go hungry.
Speaking of which, it's hard to describe just how it feels to be living through the current situation in this country. For the first time ever in my 27 years of life, banks are dropping like flies. I remember how as a child, I'd notice a bank going out of business here and there. But not like this. For the first time in my life, my own money is at risk. Yes, I know all about the FDIC and how they will come to the rescue. I'm not really panicked. What I do worry about is the fact that the FDIC is not an endless well of money. The current governments solution of just printing more money will not work here. This is what got us in this clusterfuck in the first place. So what are we to do?
Then there's the war. That other clusterfuck. Actually, it's not just two clusterfucks. This country is one giant throbbing clusterfuck! It's filled with tiny little clusterfucks that make up a microcosm of clusterfucks. With the figurehead being the biggest clusterfuck of our species.
This is why I came out from "voting retirement". I was one of those chicks who wanted desperately for Hillary to make it into office. I understand that people have objections about her. However, I believed then (and still do) that she could have done a hell of a job making at least a dent in this mess that Curious George and Spotted Dick have lead us into. She and Bill did that once after CG's daddy created his own clusterfuck. Surely she could do it again. But instead, we got Obama. I wasn't all that keen on him. Not keen enough to swing over to the Dark Side, like some Hillary supporters were vowing. I disliked the idea of him as president just enough to decide not to vote.
Then Sarah Palin came along. Then I continued to watch the coverage. After that, my groceries started rotting seconds after I bought them. Then, after watching Curious George make a speech about the recent market crash, I watched McCain make his infamous "Fire the SEC guy" speech. You know what I found? Those two fuckers look and act exactly alike when making speeches! The squinty eyes that rove around the room trying to look reassuring. The subtle but still dramatic gestures. The assertive forward tilt of the head each time they make a proclamation. It harkens of Pinocchio trying to tell us he IS a real boy!
My point, however incoherent it might be, is that we cannot have any more of this. If we keep up at this pace, we will see this century's version of the Great Depression. And let me tell you, I don't think we'll do as well this time. People are now accustomed to a higher standard. We are riding high in an era where people have quipped about someone being "poor" because they were "only worth millions." We are a race of spoiled folk. Technological advances have made it so we don't have to lift a finger if we've got the money and don't want to. I hate to think of what will happen if we end up in an era where "traveling" means walking down the block in your brand new designer banana peels.
Now, I won't seek to pin this problem on a single person or political party. That would be giving the blame-ee too much credit. The fact of the matter is that we are all responsible for this. We, as a country, elected someone on the basis of affability. "He's someone I could have a beer with," we said. There were warning signs everywhere. We were all very hurt and betrayed because the "elitist Good Ol' Boy" in office got a blowjob in the Oval Office from his fat intern. He had the nerve to deny it at first too. How dare he! Now we'll turn around and elect someone from the opposing political party. They're good God-fearing folk who would never put such a taint on the office. So in he went. He fumbled through and we were okay with that. When we were attacked without provocation on our own soil (that's right, I'm talking 9-11), he said a few comforting words and we were okay. "He's just gotten started, after all. It was just bad luck." He used the attack as an excuse to slowly strip us of our civil liberties. Then he lied and lead the country into a war that put us back in debt and has claimed countless American citizens lives. What did we go and do?
WE ELECTED HIM FOR 4 MORE MOTHERFUCKING YEARS! And now, we want to elect his doppelganger to serve for 4-8 more years? You've got to be kidding me....
To go back to my feelings about Obama: I still don't feel completely right about him. I don't believe he will be the saviour his people portray him to be. I am still very pissed at how horribly he and the rest of the Democrats treated Hillary during the primaries. But you know what? I'm gonna vote for him anyway. The stakes are too high in this election to do otherwise. I know damn well that my vote will not be the be all to end all. I am one in a trillion. I still want to know that, if he is elected, my vote was one of the votes that made it so.
Let me put it this way- his policies actually make sense. They are actually aimed at the average working class person. His goals seem feasible, even if they may take a while. He doesn't seek to turn the country upside down and rebuild at once. He wants to chip away a little at a time, which is fine with me. He is stable and seems to be able to handle pressure better than his opponent. He makes level-headed choices based on reason with just the right amount of emotion. He is not out to look like a "Mav'rick". His running mate isn't trying to push an image of himself as a slimy and dangerous deep sea fish. Best of all, his family life seems to be something I can swallow. While Michelle is out there helping him and getting some exposure, she and the girls are not the center of his campaign. I can remain blissfully ignorant of them if they are not what matters to me about his presidency. In fact, I know very little of his private life because he is discreet about it. And yes, I giggled when he revealed his Grandma calls him "Barry" on Letterman.
When Obama says change, I feel like he's at least 80% sincere. I know that he means real change. Not the kind of change that means the same old shit repacked to distract me. When McBush and Sarah Barracuda say change, it's like watching a parrot who was somehow taught to say "fuck". It's a word that provokes a reaction. The bird knows this and keeps saying it, because it gets attention. But it has no real idea what it means and what to do with it.
This is not meant to be some kinda "Vote for Obama" entry. I am the last person who does that crap. Hubby and his family are all for spreading the word. I like people to make up their own minds. Though you have to admit, the evidence is damning. If you put together all the facts and events, it's pretty scary.
So that's it. I have to be up in about 4 hours, so it's off to bed I go.
As we sat down to have dinner tonight, Hubby and I noticed that one of the strawberries that we'd bought a couple days ago was nice and hairy. This is an epidemic we've come to notice over the last couple months. We'll bring food home one night. Usually an amount that previously lasted us for a week or more. Nowadays, we find that produce and meats don't last more than 2-4 days tops. The 4 days is if we're extremely lucky. We have tested all factors that could have contributed to it within our home. Refrigerator is set to the correct temperature. Air quality in the kitchen is good and there is no evidence of pests within the house. So we have to wonder what has gone wrong. Usually, when buying the groceries, we've noticed that cherry-picking (which was previously an art only practiced by overly coiffed and fastidious upper class suburban housewives) is now essential if we are to get food that will not rot as soon as we get it out of the store. Some of the produce is actually rotting within the packaging while on display. It has gotten to the point where we end up buying just enough for a couple of days. Any more than that would be a terrific waste of money. Money that hardly anyone of us has available to waste in these trying economic times.
The cause, we've decided, is the lack of proper refrigeration during shipping and transport. Since refrigeration on big rigs probably eats up a lot of gas (which we all know is quite expensive these days), drivers are probably encouraged to turn it off for a while en route. Needless to say, it's making it so perfectly good food arrives near the end of its shelf life. It reaches that end after you arrive home and put it in your icebox. You'll open it the next morning and realize the strawberries for your morning shake are not to be. Thus it's money wasted and you go hungry for a little while. This is how it starts. Eventually, people will truly begin to go hungry.
Speaking of which, it's hard to describe just how it feels to be living through the current situation in this country. For the first time ever in my 27 years of life, banks are dropping like flies. I remember how as a child, I'd notice a bank going out of business here and there. But not like this. For the first time in my life, my own money is at risk. Yes, I know all about the FDIC and how they will come to the rescue. I'm not really panicked. What I do worry about is the fact that the FDIC is not an endless well of money. The current governments solution of just printing more money will not work here. This is what got us in this clusterfuck in the first place. So what are we to do?
Then there's the war. That other clusterfuck. Actually, it's not just two clusterfucks. This country is one giant throbbing clusterfuck! It's filled with tiny little clusterfucks that make up a microcosm of clusterfucks. With the figurehead being the biggest clusterfuck of our species.
This is why I came out from "voting retirement". I was one of those chicks who wanted desperately for Hillary to make it into office. I understand that people have objections about her. However, I believed then (and still do) that she could have done a hell of a job making at least a dent in this mess that Curious George and Spotted Dick have lead us into. She and Bill did that once after CG's daddy created his own clusterfuck. Surely she could do it again. But instead, we got Obama. I wasn't all that keen on him. Not keen enough to swing over to the Dark Side, like some Hillary supporters were vowing. I disliked the idea of him as president just enough to decide not to vote.
Then Sarah Palin came along. Then I continued to watch the coverage. After that, my groceries started rotting seconds after I bought them. Then, after watching Curious George make a speech about the recent market crash, I watched McCain make his infamous "Fire the SEC guy" speech. You know what I found? Those two fuckers look and act exactly alike when making speeches! The squinty eyes that rove around the room trying to look reassuring. The subtle but still dramatic gestures. The assertive forward tilt of the head each time they make a proclamation. It harkens of Pinocchio trying to tell us he IS a real boy!
My point, however incoherent it might be, is that we cannot have any more of this. If we keep up at this pace, we will see this century's version of the Great Depression. And let me tell you, I don't think we'll do as well this time. People are now accustomed to a higher standard. We are riding high in an era where people have quipped about someone being "poor" because they were "only worth millions." We are a race of spoiled folk. Technological advances have made it so we don't have to lift a finger if we've got the money and don't want to. I hate to think of what will happen if we end up in an era where "traveling" means walking down the block in your brand new designer banana peels.
Now, I won't seek to pin this problem on a single person or political party. That would be giving the blame-ee too much credit. The fact of the matter is that we are all responsible for this. We, as a country, elected someone on the basis of affability. "He's someone I could have a beer with," we said. There were warning signs everywhere. We were all very hurt and betrayed because the "elitist Good Ol' Boy" in office got a blowjob in the Oval Office from his fat intern. He had the nerve to deny it at first too. How dare he! Now we'll turn around and elect someone from the opposing political party. They're good God-fearing folk who would never put such a taint on the office. So in he went. He fumbled through and we were okay with that. When we were attacked without provocation on our own soil (that's right, I'm talking 9-11), he said a few comforting words and we were okay. "He's just gotten started, after all. It was just bad luck." He used the attack as an excuse to slowly strip us of our civil liberties. Then he lied and lead the country into a war that put us back in debt and has claimed countless American citizens lives. What did we go and do?
WE ELECTED HIM FOR 4 MORE MOTHERFUCKING YEARS! And now, we want to elect his doppelganger to serve for 4-8 more years? You've got to be kidding me....
To go back to my feelings about Obama: I still don't feel completely right about him. I don't believe he will be the saviour his people portray him to be. I am still very pissed at how horribly he and the rest of the Democrats treated Hillary during the primaries. But you know what? I'm gonna vote for him anyway. The stakes are too high in this election to do otherwise. I know damn well that my vote will not be the be all to end all. I am one in a trillion. I still want to know that, if he is elected, my vote was one of the votes that made it so.
Let me put it this way- his policies actually make sense. They are actually aimed at the average working class person. His goals seem feasible, even if they may take a while. He doesn't seek to turn the country upside down and rebuild at once. He wants to chip away a little at a time, which is fine with me. He is stable and seems to be able to handle pressure better than his opponent. He makes level-headed choices based on reason with just the right amount of emotion. He is not out to look like a "Mav'rick". His running mate isn't trying to push an image of himself as a slimy and dangerous deep sea fish. Best of all, his family life seems to be something I can swallow. While Michelle is out there helping him and getting some exposure, she and the girls are not the center of his campaign. I can remain blissfully ignorant of them if they are not what matters to me about his presidency. In fact, I know very little of his private life because he is discreet about it. And yes, I giggled when he revealed his Grandma calls him "Barry" on Letterman.
When Obama says change, I feel like he's at least 80% sincere. I know that he means real change. Not the kind of change that means the same old shit repacked to distract me. When McBush and Sarah Barracuda say change, it's like watching a parrot who was somehow taught to say "fuck". It's a word that provokes a reaction. The bird knows this and keeps saying it, because it gets attention. But it has no real idea what it means and what to do with it.
This is not meant to be some kinda "Vote for Obama" entry. I am the last person who does that crap. Hubby and his family are all for spreading the word. I like people to make up their own minds. Though you have to admit, the evidence is damning. If you put together all the facts and events, it's pretty scary.
So that's it. I have to be up in about 4 hours, so it's off to bed I go.