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Mile High Club

We came back to rain – a welcome relief from the drought we’ve had. The trip went very, very well (including a totally empty Detroit airport) and we’re both very happy with that. There was no overt snarkiness and apparently Nick’s siblings had to have an all-nighter to sort out the New and Improved Nick and the Nice but Aloof Angela that they were presented with. TeeHee! Change is good.

And now for the REAL news: you are reading the blog of one of the newest members of the Mile High Club. Membership declared on Delta Flight 1919 from Detroit to Atlanta, in the right aft lavatory.

Mile High Club!
Mile High Club!

Bwahahahaha! If any of you other pervs out there have ever thought about joining, by all means GO AHEAD. It was the most evilly delicious adventure we’ve had in a while. :->

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The Joy of Misanthropy

It’s my b-b-b-birthday! Yes, hooray for me! It’s been an all round good one, spent with good friends (except Andy, of course, and that SUCKS). I’ve got a new job, a new career path and a reeeaaally sore neck for my efforts, but the sore neck is worth it. :->

On to the meat of this entry, which is all about misanthropy and my joyful, nay, gleeful dispensation of it to those who sorely deserve it. First, I feel that a textbook definition is required:

misanthrope (miz’•an•throp [long O]); noun, “a hater of mankind”. Courtesy of the Random House Dictionary.

Hence, misanthropy is the act of hating mankind and a misanthropist is one who hates mankind. Got it? Good.

Now, about my misanthropy and how it manages to ooze out no matter how hard I attempt to keep it sealed in. I have never, ever denied being a people hater. I detest the unwashed masses and I endeavor to avoid them as much as possible. Anyone who has read any of my Rants *should* know this. Stupid, clueless people are my favourite subjects.

My misanthropy was fostered at a young age, typically directed at my parents or my classmates. I’ve always hated huggybears (people who are always so nice, no matter what, and their fakeness is nauseating) and malkins (people – usually women – who do their best to conform and not rock the boat of social mores). As a child I distinctly remember thinking that my parents were such asses for fighting like schoolyard punks right in front of us. My brother would always get scared, but it made me angry at them for being so self indulgent and grossly inappropriate. I’ve always been a questioner and I’ve never, ever followed directions unless they made sense to me. I’m a misanthropist much to my parents’ dismay and disbelief. Nevermind that they reek of antiintellectualism and their own brand of misanthropy, they just don’t understand why I have such a “bad attitude”. Hmmm, what a mystery.

Add cynicism to my general distaste for people and you would think that you’d end up with someone unable to carry on a conversation or be near people without some sort of rage, but that’s not so. I can be just as charming as the next malkin, er, person. I have the gift of gab and I am a great salesperson. I can talk to anybody, anywhere. No problem with that. The problem is when I have to uphold this social façade for long periods of time or when I am presented with behaviour that pisses me off and I don’t feel obligated to pretend that I don’t get it. Anyone who knows me knows that I’ll only keep my mouth shut for a short time before the smartassed remarks slip out or my true disdain begins to shine through the mask like the sun through the trees. I’ll say I told you so. Just “get to know” me and you’ll hear it at some point. Promise.

Anyone who knows me knows that I do NOT like huggybear behaviour in the least. Hugging people I don’t know is just not natural to me, nor do I think it’s appropriate for people I don’t know to pry into my personal affairs or engage me in debates then get angry when I trounce them. There is a group of people that is doing these things to me at the moment and I’m having a very hard time trying to be neutral in the face of such an all out attack of huggybearness. This group of people has been snarky to me and when they got a whiff of my disdain for such silly psychodrama, they began their assault on my character with religious zeal. They claim I’ve done something wrong by not joining in their group dynamics. They claim I’ve done something wrong by defending myself when I was verbally attacked by one in their group. They have a long list of grievances. All I want is to be left OUT of the psychodrama, dammit!

It is the trademark of a malkin or a huggybear to force conformity, because anything less makes them nervous. Needless to say, I make this group VERY nervous because I refuse to play their game of ‘name that dysfunction’. Sorry, folks, I’ve been there and done that with my own family and I really don’t need a refresher course. But thanks for playing, and have a nice day.

I refuse to apologize for being me nor will I apologize for defending myself. I will not apologize for noncompliance with rules that I do not agree with. I do not understand why I must play the conformity game to placate people that I wouldn’t care to hang out with in the first place. And why do they care so much about getting into my business? It’s not like I’ve encouraged them, but then again, that’s probably the very reason that they want to “know me” better. Huh, yeah, they want ammunition, that’s what they want. If I know one thing, I know how people work. Especially groups. They will draw you in and then happily knife you in the name of conformity. It’s called socialization folks and it just doesn’t work on people like me. (Andy can identify with this statement fer sure!)

That’s why I work for myself. My clients love me because I fix things fast and typically permanently. I do not bullshit them and I do not coddle them. I’m in, I’m out, no painful social interactions that last more than a few hours. That’s why they like me! Now take those same qualities and put them in a 40hr a week cubicle and it’s absolute chaos. It’s the same with groups of any stripe. Like families. I am fine with my family for a few days, but beyond that it may get tense. We have a working arrangement that is very equitable and keeps us all sane: don’t ask, don’t tell. They don’t pry into my bidness and I don’t blab about my bidness unless the subject is to be made public. It goes both ways and as long as we all comply with those simple rules of engagement, we get along famously. That is all I expect from anyone, really. Don’t try to force me to play. It won’t work, baby. I’m a Scorpio. Force is a bad thing to use with a Scorp.

It’s a shame that people have such a hard time with this concept of individuality. It’s a shame that they just can’t comprehend the notion that what they think or say may or may not matter to me and I may or may not react in a given fashion. Why can’t they stop taking every little thing personally? Just because I don’t play the drama game does not mean that I don’t like the people involved. It means that I don’t want to be involved in family or any other drama, that’s all. I’ve wasted a lot of time with malkin and/or family drama and I don’t want to go there anymore.

One of my favourite authors is Florence King, who wrote With Charity Toward None: A Fond Look at Misanthropy. Her book Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady made me realize that I am not a malkin, nor a huggybear. I am a misanthropist and damn proud of it.

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Patriot Act

Well, here it is, folks. The “Patriot Act” that our senators just passed to “Keep America Safe”. Heh, “give The Man the power to entrap your ass, rifle thru your belongings at will and do pretty much whatever the hell they want to do in the name of anti terrorism” is more like it. It ain’t right, folks, it just ain’t right. [We are still dealing with this in 2015. The government has more power than ever. It is WRONG. And now, in 2017 we have a fascist in the White House. Are we seeing a pattern here? -A]

As I’ve said before, we must be vigilant to ensure that the government doesn’t run rampant right now, while our attention is diverted. It’s a politician’s DREAM to have carte blanche to institute whatever laws he wants in order to inflict his will upon the masses. Politicians are megalomanics who thrive on getting in the history books, people! I am NOT a member of the ACLU, nor do I typically support their silliness, but in this matter, I am damned upset about the total absence of voters asking, um, you guys want to do what?? I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t want cops or the Feds to have the ability to look at any and all of my personal info without cause or a warrant! Geez, HELLO, is anyone awake?

Listen, we’ve got to stop this obsession about crazies writing silly notes on an airplane and concentrate on making it harder to accomplish terrorism but with our way of life and our civil liberties intact. If we allow the reactionaries in Washington to institute these new laws without so much as a NAY, then we’ve lost. Period. America is about FREEDOM and our civil liberties ARE our freedoms. It’s what makes this country great and we cannot, CANNOT let those freedoms be compromised.

 So, boys and girls, it’s time to get out your Crayolas and write your Representative to ensure that this heinous bill goes no farther without serious retooling. It just takes a minute, so do it. NOW. Are you still reading? What are you waiting for, GO fer cryin out loud!!

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9/11 redux

It’s been a month since we watched the World Trade Center fall. I’ve struggled so much with what to say about it , that now it seems redundant to do a whole essay on it. So I won’t. I have a couple of things to say, but I’ll just use that as a preface to some other stuff that I’ve been working on.

As the Constant Readers know, I’ve been in the middle of some life changes since before the attacks. When I got the call from my mother on Tuesday morning and I saw the towers crumble to dust with all those people inside, I felt a shift in my mind, my body and my spirit. Right then I knew that I was no longer going to be an apathetic American nor was I going to let my life continue on its undirected path.

After a week of crying and feeling totally helpless, I finally got on an even keel again and I started reading about the things going on in the government in relation to the terrorists attacks and I got severely addicted to Metafilter.com. Lots of different people log on to mefi and it gave me some perspectives that I otherwise wouldn’t have had. For instance, a guy who goes by JISH did a really documentation of images [that no longer is up, sadly – ed.] and quotes from Tuesday, September 11 and I wouldn’t have seen it if not for a random mefi link. I also had CNN and ABCnews on all the time. I tried a couple of other news sources, but I felt they were too preachy (hello, FOX!). That part of it has calmed somewhat, but now that we are finally bombing Afghanistan, the news is on most of the time in my home. So, I am now an involved American and I will definitely use my votes and my pull as a voter to keep politicians in check. I hope everyone else will do the same.

I am still not pursuing any Mac work or web work, but I’m not turning it down, either. I have put out about a dozen retail applications and I hope to have a retail job by the end of the week. It’s not what I want to do forever, but it’s something that I have 10 years experience doing and it will help pay the bills that are pushing our finances to the edge. I accepted a new Mac client today. It’s a very small gig, and I need the money, so I’m gonna do it. But I won’t like it.

I’ve let the California dream go for now. When it’s time, I’ll know. It is not productive for me to pine about moving when it’s obviously not going to happen soon. I suppose I still have stuff to accomplish here. I think it could be that I need to get into herbalist activities, and the American Herbalist Guild is located here in GA, so perhaps that’s why I’m still here. In that vein of thought, I found out that the AHG is having a seminar next month in Helen, GA and I plan to attend the one day intensive. We’ll see where that leads.

In addition to the herbalist and aromatherapy stuff that I can do, I also got a hint that perhaps I should revive my online store. I guy called me about Cedant, my host to whom I gave a testimonial, and he is a web marketer. He was asking about raw logs for sites at Cedant and in the course of me looking that up for him, we started talking about online commerce. He said that using GoTo.com’s (now Overture.com – A) pay per click program is the best way to drive hits to your site besides having specific META tags on every page. That rang a huge bell with me, since a friend of mine who has an online store (The Blessed Bee) was telling me just a couple of months ago about how great GoTo has been for her business. So, I have been looking up various stores that would be my competition as well as using GoTo’s tools to look up how things are listed and I think I really could have a chance with a specialty shop. Do you think that yet another shop that sells pagan, witchy, Indian, jewelry, oils, incense, decor, henna and maybe astrological charts would be successful? Email me your thoughts.

I’ve also been drawn to various inspirational books and ideas lately that have helped me along my path. I’ve read Deepak Chopra’s Seven Spiritual Laws of Success and The Life You Were Born To Live by Dan Millman. Both books been very helpful to me. I also read Disobedience by Jane Hamilton and I really enjoyed it.

So, that’s the State of Angela for now. Later!

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9/11: In Defense of Freedom

“We should resist the temptation to enact proposals in the mistaken belief that anything that may be called anti-terrorist will necessarily provide greater security.” – In Defense of Freedom

“America will find an appropriate way to mourn. But if we must have a shrine or monument for our remorse, let’s put it on the 200th floor, right next to the antiaircraft guns.” – Jonah Goldberg, from the National Review

11:55pm MetaFilter really IS more addictive than crack. I find the discussions there to be well rounded and very diverse. I put in a thread about having kids say the Pledge of Allegiance in school and I got tons of great comments back. I’m currently embroiled in the thread about whether or not we should have a National ID card and how far we should allow our freedom to be eroded because of the attacks. After the initial shock and fear, I now am very concerned that all this talk about giving free reign to the gub’ment to ID us and DEMAND papers whenever and where ever they please is not a very good idea.

The frantic scramble to “secure” the airlines is also appearing to be slamming the barn door after the horse got out. As an Atlantan, I’ve dealt with Hartsfield Int’l. Airport for years. Security? Yeah, riiiight. If you call a posse of silly black girls with purple hair and 2 inch long fingernails making $10 an hour security, then we sure had it. Is it really a surprise that a guy got on an airplane at Hartsfield with a loaded .22 pistol a couple of days ago? Not to me it isn’t. I think it’s silly to confiscate nail clippers and key rings, folks. It’s also irritating and useless to ban all carry on luggage as well. If the goddam airlines could get our fucking luggage to our destinations WITH US in the first place then we wouldn’t be carrying 4 tons of shit ON THE PLANE, now would we? I mean, come ON. Does all this mean a fucking thing now anyway? The deed is done. DONE. OVER. FINISHED.

And as far as bailing out the airlines goes, well, I think it’s a necessary thing for the economy, however, the spinoff industries such as travel agents who are now holding out their hands and using this situation to get free government subsidies – they should bugger off. They were already nearly dead thanks to the online ticket sales explosion and this is just an excuse to get bailed out of a situation they were already in. Hey, people, things are tough all over, get over it and get a shitty new job like the rest of us.

I think we are making ourselves miserable and giving away our freedom and way of life at a time when we should be staunchly grasping it. Meekly standing aside and allowing ourselves to be undone by what has happened is not the way. It is exactly what bin Laden and all terrorists want! They can’t take away our way of life, but they know that we can, if we are scared badly enough. We MUST defend our way of life. Once we’ve let these liberties fall away, we’ll never get them back. Look at what has happened historically when we get scared and lose our heads.

Is it worth it? Do we really want them to win?