Notes to Self

"Tech Widow" is now the term that Ray overheard to describe the experience of the significant others during Court's lengthy, lengthy tech / preview week. The show FINALLY opens this SATURDAY and I'm looking forward to seeing it - I've heard so much about it.

Then in two weeks we have the opportunity to take one last camping/fishing trip. I'm really really hoping for it.

Meanwhile...

I feel curiously alone in how I'm experiencing the current political and cultural environment. But I also tend to assume that it comes with age. I can't tolerate the shallow repetitiveness of everyone's political promises and the singularly ignorant opinions the populas makes based on two-dimensional sound bites, hear-say and sliced up media contortions. The first casualty of any War is Truth...can we now just say truth is no longer objectifiable once our culture turned all of its resources in the media into recreating reality? An alternate-reality.

What percentage of the 300 million strong in this Country are directly accountable for this week's bank failures? And what % of people actually walked out of their door this week with significantly less assets in their accounts?

Yet the *rest* of us, with our tiny little savings, our miniscule 401K's, or (for an even greater percentage) just whatever is left in their checking account after taxes and paying bills, will have to suffer much greater.

Gee, I feel so bad for Hillary and her 25 million that she loaned to her own campaign.

Gee, poor millionaires.

And yet this will all hurt "US" for a longer time, a deeper time, and the "trickling down" will splatter and drain and drool all over our daily financial lives.

But do I sense anyone else angry? It's far-enough away and distant enough from our lives that we just go about our lives craving our next pop-culture fix.

I think "we" should be taking this whole thing a lot more personally. To have such a small small elite group of decision makers and, essentially flawed and often power-hungry humans, be so much part of the main line of our economic system that all could and can..and will suffer - Maybe if we took it a little more personally, there'd be a greater backlash and rise of the populas voice.

As I think about it, I don't wish to join in any online forums or discussion groups to find my kindred angry spirits. I don't wish to debate the little nuances, get into an intellectual bitch session, or joust and jockey for position as the most educated and most informed online. If manager Ronald in Michigan agrees with me but accounts exec Diane in Florida very much doesn't - what will spending our time reading each others words and opinions do to make a single dent in the current situation? Online forums are nothing but an illusion of meaning and purpose in my opinion, and actually delay and procrastinate real involvement and interaction. Funny how when I used to be involved on online forums I'd have all sorts of feelings about these people, often trying to be courteous and considerate, open-minded and respectful. But I still wanted to kill any annoying driver sitting in my way on the road. It never really did translate into the real world.

So, action then.

When I was a young kid, during the 1980's hostage situation, I remember spending a night sitting up in a chair and trying to figure out what single thing I could do to make it all come to an end. I thought about what letter I could write to make the people stop. I even started writing that letter. And it got very, very long I recall. It got so long that I decided it was too much and thought instead of what action I could take. The plan I developed in my head was to go on a protest of starvation. I pictured myself sitting across the street from the White House, sitting on that lawn that runs down Pennsylvania avenue, with a banner that said something about my starvation protest until the hostage crisis was over.

I know that vision was influenced by my family's vacation trip to Washington D.C. back when I was 9 years old. I don't know if its the case now, but back in the summer 1979 when we drove past the White house I was so taken....so taken by how many people were planted across the street with their various banners, flags, images and protests. Nothing organized - they were each there for their own separate cause - and they mostly looked ragged, obsessed, and mentally unstable. And I wanted the car to stop and I wanted to get closer to these people and try to understand why they are there, what they want, what their story is.

The feelings and assumption that I took away from that experience, however, was the certainty that none of what those various individuals were doing was actually having any impact on the President.


This new post of mine is really just for me. An open diary that I leave open because I think sometimes we enjoy little insights into eachother. I'm part exhibitionist. You're part voyeur. It's okay.

This is just a snap-shot of me today. I'm done with so much of what our culture deams a priority. I am deeply hoping for any sign of hope. But even if Obama were to come to Chicago and happen to walk into a coffee shop I'm sitting at for a journalistic and campaign snapshot of him "conversing with the people" I'd want to say to him "why would I be ignorant enough to think you have any real promise to give me something in return for my vote?"

By the way, whose going to have enough guts to eliminate the electoral college? No one? Too political? Too costly? People have money invested in that archane system?

That's what I thought.

One person can make only very very very small little ripples. All of our very small ripples, collectively, still doesn't make a current.

I need to go sit on a boat in the middle of some lake somewhere.