Dec 18, 1998 12:49 from ***** ***** Mr. Speaker. I move that we confine the United States Congress to Tiresome> until such time as both parties cool the fuck off and start making sense. I yield the balance of my time.. [Speaker Livingston I Presume> msg #14240 Dec 18, 1998 12:51 from **** ***** The gentleman from San Antonio is not recognized for that purpose. :) [Speaker Livingston I Presume> msg #14241 Dec 18, 1998 12:52 from ***** ***** Fuck. [Speaker Livingston I Presume> msg #14242Have I mentioned yet that I am really disgusted with the government? Jeez. When are the grownups going to get here and put an end to the silliness?
I don't care if the President perjured himself when asked about some affair he had with an intern. Last I checked, lying about sex was not treason. (However, selling weapons to our enemies is treason. Iran-Contra went unpunished. Check. Oh, yes, I trust the government.)
What really weirds me out is the fact that people are upset about a politician lying. Do you people not get it? Politicians lie. There is no such thing as a clean politician, because politicians are human. Humans have an admirable instinct for self-preservation, and the first commandment of human social interaction is cover your butt. Politicians just get to see their lies play out of a grander scale than the rest of us, and are under constant scrutiny so their lies need to be bigger and better than everyone else's.
Besides, anyone with the kind of drive, the hunger for power, that you need to become a highly-placed elected official should, preferably, be sent to a small desert island and not allowed to rejoin the human race. Anyone who wants to be President badly enough to become President is not the sort of person I want making decisions about my life, thank you. Politics brings out the worst sort of craven schmoozer in everyone.
Ah, Bill. I had such high hopes for you.
The site from hell is completed, and barring further complications, I should be winging my way across the friendly skies tomorrow morning towards California.I was looking forward to it. i really was. A few days of relaxation at a bright latitude, the chance to let my mom spoil me, coffee and bran muffins and a cat to play with.
Then i called my parents on Saturday.
"I don't know if anyone told you this, but Margie passed away. She died early Wednesday morning."
Aunt Margie wasn't actually my aunt, she was my second cousin--the daughter of my paternal grandmother's sister. but she was twenty years older than me, and she was fun. She took us on day trips to Sutter's Mill, skiied with us, and was generally more of a pal than any of the other grownups around.
She gave me hope for myself, that being a grownup didn't have to mean you stopped having fun. In many ways, she was a child herself. she never really moved very far away from her parents, and lived for the past ten years in a house around the corner from their house.
I wonder what happened to her birds. I think they were lovebirds, and I know there were a pair of them. I think she couldn't bring herself to take care of any other kind of pet; the ovarian cancer that took her life had made her pretty weak for about fifteen years. She never talked about it to me, though; I always learned this through family members.
I hadn't seen her since a couple years after I graduated from high school. I was looking forward to seeing her this Christmas.
We're spending Christmas day with my great-aunt and great-uncle. This promises to be not very much fun; H is prone to inexplicable fits of anger, and C, though a nice guy, is just sort of....there. Grief will not bring out the best in any of us, i'll bet.I will be grave and silent; i always am, around them. Better to say nothing at all than to risk saying too much.
I'll be taking notes on the road; I'll probably post several entries when i get back.It's been snowing off and on here today; between that and the bitter cold, i'm not looking forward to braving the outside to go get a filter for my fishtank tonight. ah, well; it needs to be done.
Joyous Solstice, one and all! i'll see y'all when i get back.
Excuse me, whispers the dead man, elbowing past like a penitent in Zen vaudeville./Forgive me, whispers the dead man, rehearsing an apology for your imminent long memory.In the circumspect annals of the dead man, no dead weight, no interlude that does not assert its count, no residue that does not rise to embody,/no line on the oscilloscope that does not jump for joy./The dead man has been there, and he's been here, and he likes it here.
—the book of the dead man #59, Marvin Bell
outside: 20 degrees F and falling
doing: getting ready to go
link: GeekTalent has launched!
dream: I have a number of short narrative dreams involving lizards. apparently, I'm supposed to herd them, but they keep escaping.
