I'm already sick of Swine Flu

Has anyone stopped to think of what this nebulously corroborated "Swine Flu" actually means on a social level?

-the introduction of increased of international trade limitations
-possible justifications for closing borders
-governmental permission to allocate excessive funds to ambiguously described health campaigns
-and the compulsory compliance of the entire nations as fueled by fear of contraction

Now, I don't know about the rest of you but these concepts seem oddly coincidental (not to mention convenient) on behalf of a government in financial crisis as a result of a costly (and unnecessarily prolonged) war, and an economy in the plummeting downturn of highly publicized purported undoing.

So how do we go about convincing everyone to reinvest in their local market? Get them scared of anything from outside of their own country.

Suddenly, all of the baby-boomers glued to their television news broadcasts are rocketed into cataclysmic terror at the onset of an ominous threat with the familiar face of a new strain of already recognized illness. And this new threat's spread is entirely dependent upon the promotion of information by large numbers of inter-coordinated news networks with clear bias and framing influence.

And then it goes global and everyone starts begging for the quarantining of any and all afflicted members along with the cut off of all imports due to their now high likelihood for transporting external infectious germs.

So what do people do? They start spending their money inside their own local communities and nation.
And what does this do? It stimulates a weakened economy.

In addition, everyone is now fully amenable to the idea of governmental control on international travel. Borders are the new Berlin Wall and obtaining the privilege of leaving ones own country is now a worldwide difficulty.

And all because of a little flu.

Who exactly is telling us there's this flu?
And where did the term pandemic enter into the discourse?

The fact is, we're getting little to no truly empirical proof of this rising menace and instead we're being caused to shiver in fear at the unknown.

Fear. This is all about fear.

And isn't it interesting that in all of this melee, a new National Health and Human Services candidate is swiftly thrown into office whilst we, as Americans, are being informed (not asked) that $1.5 billion are being invested in an anti-swine flu health effort?

What does this mean?
For what is the money being used?
And who is Kathleen Sebelius?

And finally, why are we so afraid?

Sunshine and that

I've spent two days living in the light of real, unadulterated sunshine.
Each day its own.
Every moment special.

I rode my bike and bore my skin.
I played with my comrades and laid with my lover.
I drew pictures and wrote words.
And now I look forward to more of these sunshine promises.

Just when I thought it going so well...

Having entered class today with a rushed effort at what should have been a much more carefully crafted assignment, I felt a little self-conscious about actually handing the piece of paper to my professor.

Imagine my dismay at having him respond with a sound and thorough exhalation combined with a frown deep enough to be mistaken for the Mariana Trench.

I've now been informed that not only was the pivotal assignment completed incorrectly but I've got to finish the missing element by noon tomorrow.

And thus the camel's back did splinter.

I felt myself tumbling back into that familiar sense of overwhelmedness.
I started to make a mental checklist of all of the things I have looming above me and began to lose myself in the squalor clashing due dates, commitments, and too much to do in one sitting.

And then I started thinking about sunshine, the fast approaching Summer, and the fact that this would not be forever.

And I began to feel better.
Sort of.

I just need to take a deep breath and recognize that this is all going to work out just fine.
I just have to take it one task at a time.

You'd think I would have gotten this thing down by now.

When She Loved She

Margret's mother had no tolerance for tomboyism.
She made a decisive point of applying strong discipline whenever she caught her daughter playing football, wearing pants, or signing up for the army national guard.

Margret didn't really mind her mother's aversion.
She kind of thought her mother was boring.
And she couldn't speak English...or any language for that matter.
(She was mute)

Margret's mother's strong sense of tradition tended to go mostly unnoticed considering that she could do little more to promote it than grunt herself into a ruby-cheeked fluster. And this caused her to look more than usual unappealing. A fact that made her constant social rejection at PTA meetings anything but mysterious.

Margret did her best to steer clear of her mother's watchful eye whenever she dressed in the morning or left on a Saturday afternoon with a pigskin under her arm. But on the odd occasions when her attempts were unsuccessful, Margret simply sat and observed her mother chastising the living daylights out of her via a series of sharp inhales and phlegmy expulsions of hot air.

One Sunday afternoon, following just such a mother-daughter arrest, Margret found herself sitting on the counter in the kitchen nursing a glass of lemonade and playing audience to yet another wordless critique. Only this time she had had about enough.
Her mother's facial flare-up was reaching a wheezy crescendo when, on some unfamiliar impulse, Margret flung the contents of her glass into her mother's face.

Margret's mother sizzled like a freshly quenched flame.
Her redness instantly receded and her once-bulging, bloodshot eyes shrunk back to their normal diameter.
An ice cube resting on her shoulder slid carelessly down the front of her now sopping apron.

Margret looked at her mother and then at the empty glass in her hand and then back at her mother. She couldn't decide whether she ought to be afraid or devout.
But while she thought about her mother made the decision for her.

THWACK!

Margret's mother's swing was completely unexpected.
Margret flew from the counter top preceded by most of her teeth.

Arguments ought to be based on logic, not emotion.

While I am in full support of free expression, I cannot stand to see intolerance dramatized for the sole purpose of dredging up vapid pathos.

This advertisement may seem rife with ingenuous motivation and yet, in response to each of the minimalistic, dire, and gravitas-ridden statements made, I have to ask:

-How is anyone's life exempt from their country's government? If you'd rather not have these issues impact you, depart from engaging the system. In other words, you can't just have your cake and eat it to. Others have a right to a slice of the same desert. (Yes, it's a double entendre.)

-Which of your freedoms will be taken away? Freedom to deny equal rights to an entire naturally-occurring population? Freedom to discriminate against those who hold different tenets of faith and morality than you dictate?

-What kind of a California doctor are you and why are you vilifying gay marriage as opposed to voicing your outrage at being discriminated against in the workplace for your faith? (Might you be seeing just what LGBTQ people across this nation are experiencing on a daily basis?)

-How is it you're being punished and by what form of government? Additionally, as a member of any church group oughtn't you be concerned about the separation of church and state that this country's founding predicated?

-You're not helpless, you're a mother. You have the responsibility and role of being the core of your offspring's education. Have open conversations and answer questions with honesty instead of obsequious and fearful muddlings of the truth. And if it's really all that problematic, send them to private school. And to take it one step further, what is so wrong with gay marriage that you're afraid of your child learning to be accepting and open-minded? Might you be afraid that this horrible, oppressive public school is actually permitting your children to begin to grasp the necessity for seeing life from more than one interest group's persepctive? Namely, the church. And on the subject of this menacing public school, according to current literature it is experiencing the same plummeting academic achievement levels and lowered test scores as schools nationwide. These decreasing academic standards are the result of education setbacks caused by lack of funding due to poorly managed government monies. Monies alocated to prolonging a profit-based war and the public acceptance thereof.

-In pointing out the malcontentment of same sex couples who have been "living as they wish" are you blatantly ignoring the fact that same sex couples are discriminated against on enumerable counts? What of legal release of health care information to a same sex significant other? Yes, it's possible in some cases but the process for obtaining permissions is demonstrably more difficult and includes aspects of inquiry that go far beyond limitations put upon attempts at accessing the same kinds of information by heterosexual significant others. And that's only one example. As for "those advocates [who] want to change the way [you] live", advocacy is meant to be an effort at broadening perspectives. If your perspectives are narrow enough that they limit your life then maybe you ought to contemplate how reconsidering said perspectives might in fact open you to newer, more collectivist understandings of how to coincide with a nation full of different perspectives, a nation heralded for its embrace of people from all walks of life and all cultural and religious and lifestyle backgrounds.

-You also have no choice on whether or not you are legally allowed to own slaves. I'd be quite incited by that too if I were a bigot.

-And finally, you call yourselves a "rainbow coalition"? That's just insulting. It's ubiquitously understood that the rainbow is a symbol of queer interests and while it is still a notion free to be utilized by any and all people, its present status is as a token of acceptance and understanding. Not discrimination, stigmatization, or hate- and fear-mongering.
You say you're coming together in love. Well what kind of love rebukes those who wish to embrace the same traditional demonstrations of that very concept as all other members of their society based solely on an argument of difference in sexual desire.

How is gay marriage hurting you?
How is it hurting your families and your interests?
I'm quite sure tithes will maintain themselves, value systems and morality will still hold true (to whatever degree anyone might already be applying themselves), and if anything, the marriage industry will boom from the gargantuan number of couples suddenly granted the same rights as their heterosexual counterparts.

On an economic note, gay couples have been proven to have higher incomes, less financial requirements, and more expendable cash. Want to stimulate this faltering economy? Then let go of discriminatory and fearful ignorance.

Alright, I'm finished...






...for now.

While everyone is sleeping

Here we are, way too sleep-deprived and way too nervous.

But the question is: why?

We are of high vitality, we are confident.
Perhaps we are just thirsty for the conventional.
Maybe that's what we're all longing for: to be considered conventional.

And while we may find solace in our positions of pride and individuality, there is still and undeniable urge to be among the throngs of anonymous unity.
Where everyone is truly the same.

We call such ideas communist or Utopian but in truth we're just turning what we really and instinctively want into a wrong, a problem, a sin.
We're afraid of what is the best for us!

And I repeat my question: why?

Maybe the answer isn't as straightforward as I would like to believe.
But at the same time, I wonder just how much I really care about believing in something.
Maybe I like the mystery and the curiosity it inspires.

Maybe mystery and curiosity are the things I'm really the most excited about.

No, not maybe.
They are.

And by acknowledging that I am free.

When that one person talks a little too much

I'm all for sharing personal anecdote.
I find them to be both poignant and easy to relate to.

But when anyone takes on the role of real-life-example-provider in a class full of students who are looking for an academic basis for their didactic reception let's just say that they become the primary source of my frustration.

I have to chuckle to myself to realize that I'm probably the one and only scrooge truly that misanthropic about someone just wanting to validate themselves by means of public self-exposure.

Thinking for a moment on that last line I have to admit I am by no means above reproach if I am in fact going to vilify those who are open books for the sake of feeling universally known.
As I recall, that very mindset is a steadfast tenet of my character.

So why am I so blithe to point a finger of heckling at the overweight mother all too eager to tell the class about her 5 year-old, pink-wearing, purse-carrying son?

It's probably due to the fact that I feel like the spot light is being in some way taken from me.
It's all about attention and gratification.

Now to gratify my need to quit the attention binge I've been on...

Hot tea and the fresh feel of cleanliness

I'm off to a lovely start with regards to the day tomorrow.
I've already cleaned myself, practically dressed myself (it's all planned out), and prepared myself for all of the knowledge likely to invade my brain over the course of my classes.

And then it's off to yet another night working for this new machine.
I feel like a necessary gear in the mechanism and yet sometimes it feel so easy to lose myself in the impression I get of the whole crazy mess of this new establishment.
I'm maintaining my optimism with fierce determination and I'm additionally resolute in my will to make life happy for myself and those the closest to me.

I'm just feeling a bit worn down.

Clearly it was time for a change.

He knew it.
His friends knew it.
And more importantly, his lover didn't want to know it.

Whenever he glanced at his own reflection in some shoppe window or unsettled puddle he would hold his own hands back from tearing away his features in hopes of erasing the sad, angry, lost person they comprised.

But then, just like that, his strength left him completely.
His restraint became a thing of the past and all at once his nails dug irreversible gouges into the dark spaces beneath his eyes, his knuckles clenched mercilessly around his tongue, and his dirty fists pounded his ears into a ringing deaf submission.

And then he woke up.



The sun wasn't really shining and it wasn't really not shining. It was just the Sun.
His guilt wasn't really palpable but then it wasn't really without flavor. It was just guilt.

And that's when he first saw them.
The scarring gashes and bruises checkering the place that used to be his character.

If you can imagine the thrill of mystery combined with the angst of realization literally written all across a person's face then you might be able to grasp what he felt.

He was nearly ready to start the battering all over again when he stopped just long enough to read what he'd etched in his own visage:

At least when you're bleeding you know you can heal.