Gone to Texas (again)

Watching Rachel Maddow with my folks, and Lawrence what's his name who is filling in for Keith these days, I absolutely maintain that nastiness is nastiness no matter who is spreading it around. Teabaggers may be the ones tossing bricks through windows, cutting propane lines, threatening Steve Driehaus' family and leaving very ugly messages for Bart Stupak - but those progressive fundamentalists on Facebook were equally as ugly. I expect they all think they are simply telling the truth as they see it. I don't know how saying "I hope you die you worthless piece of shit motherfucker," is telling the truth, but I bow to their superior understanding in these matters. Why should progressive fundamentalists be any more responsible for their language than John Boehner or Eric Cantor? Or Rush Limbaugh, for that matter.

If a fellow on Facebook thinks he deserves to talk like Rush Limbaugh and that makes him a man, all I have to say is, "Quien es mas macho?" Besides, my issue with the former facebook friend wasn't exactly the commentary he added to the links he shared. He dismissed a woman in the resulting thread who objected to the way he and his followers smugly insisted the bill was not worth passing.

There was an extremely heated debate at the Constitutional Congress back when this country was founded. As I recall, we had to strike a deal with slave owners to get them to sign off on the document at all. I reckon we're still compromising with their philosophical descendants.

Looking at the whole health care spectacle, I'm reminded of a football game. When Obama took office, it was kind of like our side got the ball about a foot out from the other team's end zone. It took 18 months and who knows how much maneuvering for us to get a first down - the Health Care bill.

I'm not concerned about the other team right now. I'm still pondering our own team. Looks to me like there are a number of progressives who are kind of like a player who thinks we should have gone for all 99 yards for a touch down on the first play. When Obama didn't go for 99 yards on the first play, they called him a Pussy and a Corporate Tool and refused to play if he wasn't going to go for all 99 yards in a single throw.

You can't be in Texas without thinking about football - even during the off season.

A lot of people fought hard for this first down, and we've still got 90 yards to go. I still doubt I'm cut out for political discourse. More likely I'm the kind of person who serves brownies and herb tea at half time. I don't have to decide right this minute, though. I have to decide whether to have chicken enchiladas verde for lunch or fajitas. Or maybe barbecue.

Then I'm heading up Hwy 290 to Austin to spend a sunny weekend with my tribe.

Another Casualty in the Class War

This morning I was hopeful about politics and society.
Now I'm in tears.
The situation in the world hasn't changed. The only thing that has changed is my belief that I'm the kind of person who can participate in political discourse.
Now I see that I'm not. I'm just a mom. A preschool teacher who believes people should be able to talk about stuff without being rude and hurtful towards each other. We might have to get shitty with supporters of the Texas Taliban and those bastards at C Street, but we don't have to be nasty to each other.

This morning, I could see that all kinds of talents from all kinds of people are necessary if we're going to find the strength and stamina to push back against oppression so entrenched it's been part of human history for over 5,000 years. The tyranny of the wealthy over the rest of us.

I know that there is no real reform until we have a single payer system like the rest of the civilized world, but I believed that the very flawed bill signed into law today was a step in the right direction. Considering that many of the people in that chamber would cheerfully repeal the emancipation proclamation and outlaw birth control if they could get away with it, I thought it was okay to be glad for small victories.

I thought it was helpful for people like me to put off catalog shopping for spring clothes to send money to Actblue. The deal with the J. Jill catalog was that if you spent $80, you would get $20 off the entire purchase, but I chose to contribute to Anthony Weiner, Dennis Kucinich, Alan Grayson and Howard Dean instead. I knew there was less than a snowball's chance in Hell we would get a public option, but I thought I should show my support even after we lost this round. I saw the tired face of John Dingle on the TV the other night and was happy I kicked in a few bucks, sent a couple of emails and even called my congressman for the first time in my life.

In my heart I still believe that, but my heart isn't up to the challenge anymore. I don't care what entertainers on Fox News and Talk Radio say, and I'm not distressed by the appalling antics of teabaggers. It's Facebook Activism that upsets me.

Some people on Facebook feel compelled to piss on fellow progressives in the name of reality - as if we were somehow too blind to notice reality all these years. They can't even hear themselves saying that it is better to live with the status quo than to compromise. Even if that compromise could give a few million folks the opportunity to go the the doctor this winter when they get sick instead of leaving them to suffer or die without health care. These progressive fundamentalists must think it's okay if more people die. So many uninsured people have died already that a few thousand more or less won't make a difference over the next few years. Winning is much more important than a few thousand sick people. Or a few million. I guess we should consider their deaths and suffering honorable and necessary collateral damage in the class war.

Perhaps that is not what Progressive Fundamentalist intend to communicate, but I fail to see how insinuating you know more about everything going on in politics and society than your peers helps make the world a better place. Of course, when you're convinced the world will never, ever change no matter what - then the goal may be to suck everyone else into the vortex of doom with you. Misery loves company, after all.

That's when I try to remember that the individual who I find most distressing in this Facebook Frenzy is an alcoholic who lives in such deep despair he can hardly face the morning. He will not admit that people who are alienated by his comments could have a point. While he freely acknowledges that some people say he is pedantic and arch, he states for the FB record that if anyone is uncomfortable because he refuses to sugar coat the truth, they need to examine their own selves. The truth I see is that he might collect facebook friends who applaud when he vents his spleen, but you don't keep friends in real life when you believe you are the smartest person in the discussion. So much smarter that our thoughts are as worthless as the pile of shit passing for health care reform.

This morning I thought there was a place for The Menopausal Stoners Militia. A small place, but it might have done some good. Maybe, with a little help from my friends, it could have done as much good one day as The Reverend Billy or Billionaires for Wealthcare. Now I know that it was just the silly fantasy of a silly woman.

If participating in political discourse is like arguing with a drunk, then I'll be glad to stay home where I'm just a mom. A mom who was foolish enough for a season to think six inches down a twenty mile road was six inches up the ass of The Establishment. Six inches today, and three inches tomorrow makes a foot. After a time, we might have gotten a whole yard before the inevitable backlash. Maybe we still will. I'll still kick in a few bucks, write a couple of letters and maybe even pick up the phone, but I'm not cut out for discourse with adults. I'll stick with preschoolers.

A mom wrote, "Which Side Are You On," back in the day when coal miners challenged the mine owners. Her name was Florence Reece, and the Mine Owners sent thugs to beat up her husband, a union organizer. They received a tip that thugs were coming to their home, and the husband escaped. The bullies busted up the house in front of Florence and her children. After they left and she cleaned up the mess, she wrote this song. Maybe she wasn't as smart as the bullies on Facebook right now, but she was strong and brave - and I'll bet she was never mean to her friends just so she could face the morning.

Spring Time and Shifting Paradigms

Jack Daniels sent me flowers yesterday.
Getting flowers is a rare and special treat - at least having a florist deliver flowers is a rare and special treat. I get flowers for myself all the time because I like flowers. My sister sends me flowers on my birthday, and she sent me flowers when I was in the looney bin.

JD sent flowers because yesterday was the 14th anniversary of me going into the looney bin. When I first started having this anniversary 13 years ago, it was pretty ominous. A reminder that life could take a very dismal turn at any moment. Since I've been divorced, though, I've been taking a moment to pause and celebrate the fact that they let me out of the looney bin.

They didn't have to let me out - even though health insurance companies do not like to pay to keep people in any hospitals for any reason at all. I suspect the only thing insurance companies don't mind covering is medication and that some sort of institutionalized kick back is tied up in all that - but I'm not thinking about the Bullshit in Washington and around the country right now. It's entirely too depressing, and today we celebrate not being Depressed anymore.

Although I successfully argued during my divorce proceedings that Buzz Kill drove me so crazy that he had to pay for my psychotherapy for the year following our divorce and that a line for therapy was included in my alimony - I don't really believe Buzz Kill was responsible for my depression. He contributed, for sure, as a terminal trigger to all manner of bad moods, but the suicidal ideations were in place long before I met Buzz Kill. It's just that the divorce has become a place on my personal time line - maybe a spot that shows we don't have to be trapped or oppressed by some circumstances.

The last time I was surprised by flowers by a man was a couple of birthdays ago when the bartender from Boston sent me a dozen long stemmed pink roses. He himself arrived a day or two later to take me out to dinner. It was a memorable evening because he passed out on the stoop in next door to the restaurant before we even got a table. I could swear I wrote about it myself, but I must have deleted it some time ago when I was trying to make up with HCW, The Narcissist aka That Ass-Whole, aka Bluestar727.
Getting flowers yesterday forcibly reminded me of that unpleasant man because, in contrast to people with any degree of maturity, Bluestar727 believes spending any sum of money on another person - male or female - weakens his grasp on The Upper Hand in a relationship. Actually, he was on my mind earlier in the day, too, because I was thinking he probably wishes I had not lived long enough to splash his assholery across the internet. That was kind of a mean thing for me to think about him, though, because I'm pretty sure that he doesn't wish I had killed myself 14 years ago. That I gnawed on the thought for a while shows just how much I can't stand that man. These days, I understand it's okay to be enraged at some people.

I've gone over all this shit a million times before which is how I reached the conclusion that I have more respect for my uncle the incestuous child molester than I do for Bluestar. As it happens, my uncle is now my aunt, but that's another story. He was still my uncle when he doused me with vodka and seduced me. I was fifteen at the time, and he was about 30 which makes him a very leathery, skinny old blonde woman right now who recently had the audacity to nominate his/her own self to be queen of the gay pride parade in Houston. The thing is that my Ankle, which is how my cousin and I refer to him/her these days, has admitted to and apologized for that bit of bad behavior - the incestuous episode not nominating himself to be Queen of the Pride Parade. Bluestar727 can't even acknowledge he willfully drove me nuts with his blogstalking merely because he's an attention hog.

Ever since I started asking myself why I hung out with that man for so long, I knew it all had to do with resolving my abuse issues once and for all. I suppose I should be grateful to him because the whole episode eventually led to my discovering grace and then to giving voice to the rage bubbling inside me as a result of his (insert pejorative) behavior. And I am grateful that I have finally stopped repeating a life long pattern of trying to have an impact on an asshole in order to prove to myself I have enough value as a person to deserve to live.

My ability to break that pattern is why today I'll be going to my very last regularly scheduled appointment with my therapist after 17 years of therapy. It's a great day when a therapist pronounces you Cured. I had to advocate for myself, of course, to prove I was absolutely as fine as anybody ever gets in this world - but apparently that's all part of the ineffable plan of psychotherapy.

Seeing those flowers from JD was more evidence that the pattern has definitely changed. It would be easy enough to dismiss this spring bouquet as evidence that a man is trying to get into my pants - which is most assuredly what the roses from the bartender represented. I thought about it for a minute and decided the preacher from the mountains is not like that. He's attentive, thoughtful and generous - although I must admit that it would be worrisome if he hadn't thought about my pants. First of all, if a man insisted he wasn't thinking about my pants, I'd be offended since there's not a dang thing wrong with my pants, and secondly, it would indicate that his cojones were not up to the challenge. I figures his cojones are fine or else he wouldn't be getting on an airplane in 45 days just so he can meet me in person.

I refuse to speculate on that aspect of our developing relationship. I imagine the topic will come up when he gets here at the beginning of May, but sex is not a foregone conclusion. I maintain that we should at least have coffee before anyone starts thinking in that direction. Besides, one of the main points of changing the pattern is understanding that I don't have to have sex anymore unless I absolutely want to. It's kind of a drag to have sex when it's somebody else's idea - especially when you've decided it's safer to submit, or that telling somebody you'd rather not have sex will be so much trouble you might as well just get it over with and go home. Or when you get swept up in the moment and discover later it was a big, fat mistake. Men often say, "at least you got laid." To me, it's not that simple - and now I have a shotgun.

Velvet is a bit concerned about my safety, however. He remembers those roses as a big red flag that some crazy fool from the internet is storming the gates at Menopausal Stoners World Headquarters on Central Park West. I have told Velvet to put such thoughts out of his brownie baking mind. The bartender came onto the scene because of computer dating and the Summer Boyfriend Reality Show. If I have accurately recreated the trajectory, the connection with the preacher from the mountains came about because both of us read The Mad Priest. Jack Daniels may have been reading Mad Priest on account of theology, but I read MP because he has a wicked sense of humor and a keen eye for the contradictions inherent in conservative expressions of Christianity. It's equally as possible, though, that the connection was made over at Bruce M. Hood's Supersense blog where the environment is decidedly more agnostic/atheistic but the laughs are just as jolly.

As it happens, last year The Mad Priest put me on his prayer list after reading about the anniversary of me being released from the looney bin (Stonerdate 03.29.09). I was touched because nobody had ever thanked G*d for Tricia before and suddenly there were people around the world doing it. Maybe only a handful, but I found the phenomenon remarkable. I'm pretty sure Jack Daniels and I were reading each other's blogs before that recognition from The Mad One.

No matter what your take on Christianity, everyone must agree that the story of Jesus has had an impact on the entire world. Buddha too, and most likely Mohamed as well, but I don't know about that stuff. It's too bad that Christian authorities have abused their power for generations, effectively undermining the original message - which is that any one of us can change our pattern any day. Easier said than done, of course, but it's possible nevertheless.

It's as possible as the flowers that bloom every springtime, changing the earth from a muddy dead zone into a morning singing with life. Pagans knew it long before there ever was a Jesus. Maybe the Jews did too and that's why Passover is in the springtime although there may be historical documentation regarding Pharaoh. In any case, everybody knows that early Christians attached their celebrations on to existing holidays so they could hide from those imperialist bastard Romans. The very same Imperialists who drove my Celtic ancestors into the woods and called them Witches.

I'd like to think George W and Dick Cheney et. al represented the last of the imperialists, but they seem to be an integral part of humanity's repeating pattern. For today, sociopolitical revolution will simply have to take care of itself. I'll be celebrating my own paradigm shift.

Calling a Spade a Spade

Velvet is home for Spring Break. He got home Friday night, and by Saturday afternoon we had settled back into our usual cozy camaraderie. It was touch and go there, for a while, though because a young fellow returning from college is apparently morally compelled to make his mother's head explode.

I wasn't particularly concerned with his announcement that the guys over at the frat house with the six foot bong asked him to pledge. He told them that he promised his mother that he would get a 2.0 before he pledged anywhere, so now the guys are including him in their text blasts when the brothers are meeting at the library to study. Given my experience with Fraternities and Sororities at The University of Texas at Austin, I cringed at the word "pledge." In my mind, some of those assholes are very likely among the smug bastards sitting on the education commission dictating standards for Texas' text books. They were all particularly jolly when Ronald Reagan came to power - them in their Izods and Topsiders. My mother tried to calm me down at the time with the old adage, "give them enough rope." We have seen that with enough rope, these greedy fuckheads will not hang themselves. They will use the rope to tie us up and strangle us. George W is a frat house poster boy if there ever was one. But I digress.

As much as I hated the Greeks back at UT, I can see how kids at a frat house with a six foot bong may not be cut from the same cloth. Given the dedication Velvet is showing to his studies this semester, it looks to me like the fraternity - known around TreeHugger and the Big Beautiful Private School next door as "Crow" - could provide Velvet with the structure he lacked when he first came to college. It may seem a bit odd that a young man would find structure and academic support in the very same house where he was dubbed King of the Halloween Party as a result of his generally magnanimous nature being so enhanced when rolling on Ecstacy that he is like some guru with lightening fast dancing abilities. Here at Menopausal Stoners World Headquarters, we learn to accept unconventional eventualities long as they work out all right in the end. It's kind of like the coed skinny dipping at the Hippy Dippy Quaker Camp. It may seem counter intuitive at first glance, but in the end, the logic of it all is as harmonious as the music of the dang spheres.

I'm not so worried about the marijuana brownies in my refrigerator either. In fact, I'm thinking I might donate some to the Benefit for the International Gay Theatre Festival referenced over in the sidebar to be raffled off as a door prize.

Actually, the thing I'm really worried about is Velvet's developing social skills. As he tells the story, when he got on the bus to NYC at the Student Union at Big Beautiful Private School, he recognized an acquaintance among a small group of Big Black Guys. He thought he should offer to share his light vodka beverage with them, so he approached with the friendly greeting, "Hello, my Niggas."

When I inquired if it was considered socially acceptable for Skinny White Boys to greet a small group of Big Black Boys in such a manner, I was told by Velvet and Cupcake that it can be okay. You'll know pretty quick if it's acceptable because if it's unacceptable, the skinny white boy's ass will be beaten in short order. It seems to me that my child's cockiness has reached such heights that an asswhipping is in order - particularly given his 1.192 cumulative GPA. When I related this story to his "sister" last night on the way home from yoga, Gigi declared she would not be visiting her baby brother in the hospital.

It is important to note that in real life, (1) Gigi is not my daughter and (2) Gigi's father is a fully black high school basket ball coach in Washington DC. Reality gives gives her some insight into social acceptable greetings between Skinny White Boys and Big Black Boys. SWB may know one of the three members of the group of BBBs, but he doesn't know the other two. She shared my belief that one of the unknown two young men might believe the only socially acceptable response when a SWB says, "Hello, My Niggas," is "You stupid Cracker," and a left hook.

Certainly, it seems like "You Stupid Crackers," is about the only response to Teabaggers, Republicans and Blue Dogs - although that's a different social issue. I have turned off the TV news for the remainder of the Health Care Debate because it's getting entirely too shrill. I find that I get enough news from the headlines on my homepage and from my Facebook friends. That's where I learned that Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos called Dennis Kucinich a "little prick" http://tinyurl.com/yf4rv4h. I glanced at the link kindly provided by a facebook friend but didn't find the "little prick" quote in the first two lines. I quit looking because I was getting a headache.

I'm sorry to say that for a very long time I had confused Dennis Kucinich with Lyndon Larouche. Who knows why - but because of my mistake, I never paid any attention to him until very recently. I'm also sorry to say that even though he may be right about a lot of stuff, I still don't like to listen to him. I prefer to listen to Howard Dean and Alan Grayson - and that independent from Vermont who is a regular guest on Rachel Maddow. As it happens, I am familiar with Markos Moulitsas from his appearances on Rachel Maddow - and that's why I say Markos has no business calling anyone a little prick since he looks pretty much like a little prick himself. Maybe the reason I don't like to listen to Dennis Kucinich is precisely because he comes off like a little prick sometimes - but so does Markos Moulitas, if you ask me.

Further, it seems to me that Kucinich has employed exactly the same congressional leadership tactic used by Joe Lieberman and Bart Stupak in order to demand a public option. Progressives across the country should be applauding his balls not calling him a little prick.

I have to confess that when contemplating Markos' statement, it occurred to me that he may like getting pounded hard up the ass. Lots of people enjoy a good ass fucking - which if you can believe what you hear on the internet, is exactly what we're getting with the current version of health care "reform." Maybe this legislation does address some problems, but without a public option, We The People remain screwed.

Trouble in Endor

Even though I'm telephone dating a preacher named Jack Daniels, my essential Bokonism remains intact. I have no more and no less belief in This God Thing than I ever did. I like the idea of a higher power, but in the final analysis, it doesn't matter if God exists or not. Despite some insistence to the contrary, Ethics and Morality have never been dependent on the existence of a deity or two or any kind of afterlife.

Some people have enough faith in their own abilities to declare once and for all there is no God. I don't see how any human who has ever lived can draw any conclusions about God despite all the speculation. When I try to imagine anything like God, I tend to go along with Herman Hesse's Siddhartha or Disney's Pocahontas. I figure that if you listen to the colors of the wind, you'll hear: Respect each other and the planet and calm the fuck down. I can't remember what Siddhartha had to say, but if he were to pass me a reefer right now, I'd smoke it. Namaste.

Apparently, I'm pretty good at contextual, exegetical hermeneutic discussions on the fly. Who knew? I always knew I was helpful with my friend's English papers in college, and frankly, I don't see a whole hell of a lot of difference between a sermon and an English paper except that with sermons, you absolutely have to bring in Jesus and The Bible which is actually what you would have to do if you were in a class in The Bible as Literature. Actually, Jesus is only relevant in The New Testament - but it's all still The Bible as Literature and you can bring in current events and comparative mythologies all you want.

In all this sermonating, I have learned about a character called The Witch of Endor. Never think I have started reading the Bible. I haven't read it yet in all my fifty years, and I'm not starting now. I might read it some day if there's a large print edition with pages that don't stick together. My mother got me an Amplified Bible some years ago in a subtle attempt to nudge me into giving Velvet a Christian Education, and I haven't even filled in the family tree.

**Side Note** I made Velvet go to Sunday School roughly eight times when he was in fifth grade. My thinking was that if he were forced to go to church long enough so that he begged to stay home, Velvet wouldn't turn into an Adolescent Evangelist and start telling me I'm going to Hell in my own living room. I hate that Bible Thumping Bullshit, and I felt it was my duty to society and to myself to prevent my own child from becoming a Bible Thumper. To date, this plan was successful.

Even though I still refuse to read The Bible, I have taken it down off the top book shelf and looked at it once when I was on the phone with JD. My intent is to leave it on the nightstand and pretend like I'm reading it when, really, JD is just telling me what it says.

One of the people JD told me about is The Witch of Endor. Some ancient king was about to go into battle and didn't feel like consulting God/Jehovah about anything. He preferred to consult some dead prophet. This king either went to see The Witch of Endor or had somebody fetch her so she could conjure up the prophet from the underworld. Once the prophet was conjured, he declared that the king sucked so thoroughly as a leader that he had to die in order to make way for the Kingdom of David.

In keeping with the generally patriarchal nature of Bible stories, The Witch of Endor doesn't get much stage time. And frankly, I'm most interested in the Endor part. Anyone familiar with Star Wars knows that the forest moon Endor is the home of the Ewoks.

If we can believe Joseph Campbell, and I believe we can, then Star Wars is just as Biblical as The Bible. Ewoks may be overgrown teddy bears with limited technology and fire power - but they can bring down an Imperial Walker with a length of strong rope. I especially liked it when they smashed one with a couple of well-aimed swinging logs. If memory serves, the Bil Moyers-Joseph Campbell discussions show that people around the world in every kind of culture have stories about little guys triumphing over the forces of Evil.

In Star Wars, we know for sure that every ambassador and senator in the galaxy can't or won't do jack shit about The Forces of Evil - and we see it today when Dick Cheney can publicly admit to War Crimes and nobody in the government even yawns.

It's too bad that real life doesn't play out like popular movies and pervasive mythologies. Maybe here in America we're all oppressed by malaise as we wait and wait and wait for a leader. And truly, the Ewoks of Endor could not defeat the Empire on their own - and neither could the Rebel forces or the Jedi. They all had to work together. This alliance indicates that any changes for the better in this country will only result if We the People, the few true populists in the government and liberal churches work together.

According to Jack Daniels, 20th Century theologians struggled to reconcile the horror of the World Wars with the idea of God. Paul Tillich and some other theologians went in a direction that makes a bit of sense and the rest insisted on clinging to an understanding of God that only works by denying a reality that slaps you in the face every morning - which is how we wound up with Conservative Christian Right Wing Republican Straight White American Males like those bastards at C Street running the show. We have church loads of congregants who have been conditioned to deny facts such a Obama''s Hawaiian Birth Certificate and whose fantastical notions persist even as they are being crushed to death - like the notion that Corporations are basically Good and a free market generates the best of all possible worlds, especially in Banking and Health Care.

Personally, I dismissed The Church back in eighth grade as irrelevant because it was filled with greedy hypocrites. I have to wonder, however, if the liberal branch of the church could provide a structure to facilitate social change from the grass roots. The Church where I work has been calling for social justice since the first service in 1931. Despite the fact that Martin Luther King, Jr preached from our pulpit - and Nelson Mandela, too - we haven't seem to have gotten very far with the Social Justice mission. Those guys were real leaders, however. We haven't seen a real leader in this country since Ronald Reagan took office and told the white people to forget social justice, go back to the suburbs and shop. Rudy Giuliani and George W also said the most patriotic thing Americans could do after World Trade Center Day was shop.

I got an email today from Howard Dean saying he wasn't going to stop fighting for a public option. Naturally I sent twenty bucks - but this endless argufying over health care is making me cranky. I feel like we've passed the point of going to Hell in a Hand basket and are careening toward Idiocracy like the Jamaican bobsled team - except I liked the Jamaican Bobsled Team. Between an education system that is designed to produce an underclass who will follow instructions and churches across the land encouraging cognitive disconnect, the outlook is bleak at best.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Apparently Edmund Burke never said that even though he is often credited with the statement. Wikiquotte says that the line probably came from the screen adaptation of War and Peace. I like the War and Peace idea better since we're up to our ass in a class war where the Tea Baggers have been mobilized by propaganda masters retained by the wealthy to maintain the status quo. At least the Tea Baggers are doing something, though. We watch Rachel Maddow with our fingers crossed.

It doesn't matter which stories resonate for you - The Bible, Lord of The Rings, Harry Potter or Star Wars - sooner or later, Evil gets so strong that little people have to fight back. As much as I continue to support Barack Obama, The Empire is in Endor. Saruman is in The Shire, and Dumbledore is dead.

Davis Fleetwoood from No Cure for That has a suggestion:

A Preacher Named Jack Daniels

Today is not the first day I barely glanced at the headlines.  More earthquakes, more BS in DC and more Goodhair in Texas.  I don't mean to minimize the significance of current world events - it's just that something else has captured my attention: a preacher named Jack Daniels.

His father was a dedicated drinker and thought it would be helpful to his son to be named Jack Daniels for pretty much the same reasons as that dad Johnny Cash sang about in A Boy Named Sue.  This preacher has a last name, but until I think of a suitable pseudonym, he'll have to remain JD.  And he's going to have to have a pseudonym on account of he's coming in from the mountains for the specific purpose of meeting me.

When a preacher comes down the mountain all the way to Menopausal Stoners World Headquarters, you can bet I'll turn the event into a miniseries the same way my internet dating experience turned into The Summer Boyfriend Reality Show.  I canceled that one last year. I got an attitude and wound up deleting 976 profiles in two weeks (Stonerdate 01.27.09). There were still plenty of potential candidates remaining, but I decided to take a boyfriend break.  I had had a boyfriend nearly every day of my life since I was sixteen years old except for when I was married to Buzz Kill which was worse in some ways.  No disrespect to the institution of marriage, but I have observed that the only people who are foaming at the mouth to get married have never been married - and that includes the GLBT community.

Maybe my time on Match dot com would have been more productive if I'd have come out and said I like to smoke weed and wrote a little blog called Menopausal Stoners - but I didn't think that was a good idea.  First of all, it's still sadly illegal to smoke weed, and you never know who is looking at Match.  More importantly, though, I didn't want to mention the blog since I have been known to find a Cautionary Tale in my personal experiences.  I could see how one of those Cautionary Tales could lead to serious trouble if the character in question had my phone number. The other trouble with dating when you're over 50 in New York City is the lack of single, straight, half-sober, half-employed men without young children who are not whiny bitches.  There are so few of them that even the whiny bitches have frenzied harpies trying to lasso them with designer panties. After a couple of months on Match, I concluded that there was not a man for me in New York City and gave up on the idea of dating until I move back home to Texas. 

JD is well aware of the weed, and we've been following each other's blogs for a while.  Not long ago in the comments, Jack Daniels graciously volunteered to be Chaplain and Shooting Instructor for the Menopausal Stoners Militia.  It's too soon to say if he is boyfriend material or not, but we've talked so well on the phone together that he bought a plane ticket with the extra cash he recently made by preaching at a funeral.  I didn't know preachers got tipped well enough for funerals to get plane tickets - but from what he said about the lady who died, I imagine she'd be glad to hear she facilitated his trip to New York City even if she had trepidations about Menopausal Stoners World Headquarters.  I'm thinking that if there is a spirit world, though, folks who were uptight about all manner of shit in real life lighten up once they are dead.

Interestingly, my mother is in full support of this development which is enough in and of itself to make me suspicious.  My mother is rarely in full support of anything.   Nevertheless, she liked this idea the minute she confirmed that JD will be safely back in the mountains before Velvet gets home from college.  As a woman who had four step-fathers in addition to her BioDad, Mother frowns on random men traipsing around the living room.

I'm not worried about having Jack Daniels in the living room - or the kitchen for that matter - because Jack Daniels and I both got our ideas about how people should behave from The Code of The West.  We see the most obvious examples of The Code of the West in John Wayne and Clint Eastwood movies and shows like Gun Smoke - but Star Trek was all about The Code of The West, and so is Terminator come to think of it.

When it comes to romance, I like the model shown by John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara - not only in The Quiet Man but also in Big Jake

The relationship between Maureen O'Hara and John Wayne shows that a strong, smart, creative, motivated, fiery, authentic woman can manage almost any damn thing perfectly well on her own.  She doesn't need to listen to a man at all unless there is a very bad guy involved such as the kidnapper in Big Jake. Everyone needs backup sometimes, and Big Jake is the boy's father, after all. Occasionally a man will turn a fiery, authentic woman's head, like in The Quiet Man.  When a man enters the scene in these circumstances, he has such strength of character, innate good sense and moral authority that the woman will hush up and listen.  That's how successful relationships work under The Code of The West.

As it happens, JD is from Texas and may very well have that sort of Authority.  He lives in the Rocky Mountains now, but he grew up in San Antonio and was in Austin at the University of Texas at the same time I was.  We listened to the same bands except we never met because he went to Club Foot and I went to Raul's back in the Austin, Texas of Myth and Legend.  So now, there are two men from San Antone.  Notably, the Man from San Antone himself - who has only communicated with me via text message since he sent money back in November - finally picked up the phone when I left a voice mail mentioning that a Preacher from San Antonio was bird dogging around HQ.  The Man acted like he never heard that message and simply asked when I was going to be in Texas later this month on my annual bluebonnet pilgrimage.

It'll be early May before I meet Jack Daniels in Real Life.  In the meantime, Velvet will be home for Spring Break - hopefully celebrating his midterm grades and securing summer employment.   Then I've got a couple of weeks off for my own spring break.  I hear there should be a bumper crop of bluebonnets this year.