Carpool~Torture Chambers Part 2

now the agony of carpooling can assault every sense:

• SMELL: if your driver smokes, if they smell, if they have those air fresheners that remind me of when the dentist Novocaines you. i love when they smoke and they literally "'crack" the window, as if the shit magically all floats to that tiny crack with the wind whipping by, when it has the entire calm car to expand to
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• TASTE: owners, even owners of crappy ones, they say "you can't eat in my car!" even though it's rush hour/dinner time and you're stuck in traffic?
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• HEARING: the driver's "music"! maybe worse than the music: hearing how great their Prius is, hearing for hours them talking about themselves, their kids, them them them
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• TOUCH: drivers that will freeze you to death from cracking the window smoking, or they have a crappy car with crappy heat, crappy a.c... then there's the front seat driver that keeps the window way open and gives the back seater the biggest blow job of their lives. not the good one, the lose your eyebrow one.
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• SIGHT: you have to take their route. so instead of taking the scenic route you take the industrial route. and then that one's backed up because your driver didn't listen to the traffic report because they were talking about themselves the whole time. and did you know that listening to the traffic is one of the few times in our lives that we can see into the future, for free! and how many don't do it! maybe that's why there's traffic jams because they're listening to themselves or their crappy music!

Carpooling~Torture Chambers Part 1

now earlier i compared gyms to torture chambers, but i might be more accurate in assigning them a level of hell, with demons (trainers) putting you thru pain, groans of agony, chubbo folks running in tights, smelly sweat, crappy health food, and the inner circle: the locker room where the older, flabbier you are, the more naked you are.

however the last legal torture in the US outside of gyms, BDSM clubs and the military is the driver and carpool. the driver has all of the power,--their left side arm rest and wheel are becoming like Captain Kirk's Star Trek chair where they can soon control everything.

how about if the TEa baggers talk about that? autocratic regimes within hundreds of thousands of top symbols of American industry, freedom, power, individuality? at least in the past, more controls were in the middle, or the passenger side. now we rarely can even ESCAPE because of POWER LOCKS AND WINDOWS!

Mother of Posts: Biggest Critic

i've received some good response about my writings about my mother. thanks to all of you who have read, enjoyed, commented, very much appreciate it.

however guess who's been the most vocally unhappy about them: of course, my mother! she has said why a bit: that the subject's not worth writing about, makes her look funny, etc. this is from the woman who used to sing full blast at church even with her teenage son completely embarrassed next to her. a woman who would sing songs like the "Aunt Jemima" song at the slightest suggestion. the woman who always said "the squeaky wheel gets the grease".

in other words somewhat stereotypical Irish: big showboat at first, but when you get "too big for your britches (whatever those are)," "well isn't himself a big butter and egg man!", you should mind your manners. passive aggressive Irish behavior.

What Price Conformity? NYC

i gave tours of Manhattan and some of Brooklyn some years ago and im doing them again. hopefully not for long the job is a fucking nightmare. anyway it's interesting seeing what's happened to Manhattan and seeing reading the differences of Brooklyn.

so much of Manhattan's been gentrified now, and now so much of it looks the same. the stores, the people. how many ethnic neighborhoods have gone forever? been priced out? same with artists' neighborhoods? again, price. how many neighborhoods have Duane Reads and Starbucks now? and Subway (not the real subway, but the tasteless sandwiches) is making a surge. again you see the connection: high prices and conformity. you can't beat them so march in the shadows of their golden hinds.

but what suffers? New York magazine ranked the neighborhoods of New York city recently. most of the top ones were in Brooklyn. rankings based on price, schools, crime, transportation, leisure etc.

they wrote that a neighborhood like the West village would've been number one but it's so expensive. the West village, home to a genesis of the modern gay rights movement, off Broadway theater, folk music, Saint Vincent's helping the poor. now it has limousine liberals like Susan sarandon working on her "blood type diet" (i was on a set once where she was talking about it while holding her little dog which seemed like it would fit better in the arms of someone like Paris Hilton), and sticking her nose up at St Vincent's while it closes. the neighborhood also reportedly has the most expensive zip code in the nation. i also haven't seen nearly as many rainbow flags (or fags) as in the past, unfortunately.

get rid of the "different'" folks, your future artists, American citizens, and put up your Starbucks?

Po Folk Cookery

i once read something about Michael Jordan that said that he was somewhat insecure growing up as many of us are, so he took home economic courses because he thought that he would be alone as an adult and need to cook for himself in the future. from the man who would own a chain of steak houses.

im not for now going to go into my state of solitude (by now it's a vast empire of solitude, haha), that's for another blast. but having it for so many years, it's interesting in what i've needed to learn as far as care and skills, like cooking. people like my father was married pretty young, had a wife that cooked, and never learned, and even in his older age, i think the only dish he knows how to cook is eggs and soup.

so i may be throwing some "recipes" out here and there, just ones that i kind of learned to cook by myself, out of necessity, having little money, but wanting some taste (literally) and nutrition. yes, it is a bit of an extension of the stereotypical Irish catch all recipe of "tro it in the pot en boil it", but again it serves a need. so here's one:

i love cooked carrots. depending on how soggy you want them (i like not hard, semi soggy), the earlier they're in the water, the soggier. so i boil 'em, but mix them with a pasta, hopefully a whole grain. cook it with salt, depending on taste. you don't need a ton. boil for right time, but at the end, you don't drain the water down the sink (by the way, if you didn't add salt/carrots, drain the water down the sink with salt and baking soda to de- clog your drain). you catch the water in a dish, cup etc, and you have a nice broth. this goes with other vegetables too like broccoli (pasta primevera and broth).

a bit of taste, and you still consume the vitamins lost during cooking (for the record, carrots have lots of vitamin a, which is necessary to keep away night blindness. otherwise they're not particularly healthy for vision). so again you have a vegetable, grain, healthy broth. carrots are cheap and nutritious, pasta somewhat, etc.

To the Past Darkly: where the Right Wing Takes US

• excusing and practicing torture as being o.k when americans do it
• disbelieving science that has overwhelming evidence like evolution and global warming
• getting paid to believe in abstinence only education like Sarah palin's teen preggo daughter,
• practicing indefinite detention
• attempting to turn America into a Christian republic (yet it's horrible that Iran is an Islamic republic)
• attempting to write discrimination into law with the bullshit "'defense of marriage" act written by whore-lord David Vitter, a married Catholic with 3 kids who believes in abstinence only education
• using might makes right in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, 150 nations where we have troops
• voting in favor of more bombs, weapons etc while voting vehemently against health care, without even discussions about the subject
• attacking Obama for being black (you really think if his name was Joe smith and he was white, it would be believed that he's foreign born by one third of tea party folks?)
• advocating bullshit trickle down economic theories which clearly increase nation deficit, increase income differences between the rich and everyone else
• politicians like Rand Paul arguing that discriminating against for instance blacks at private establishments is o.k, and the equivalent of not allowing guns into private businesses. he also equates it with infringement of freedom of speech

Right Wing Hypocrisy

it's o.k for many of them to discriminate against gays even in attempting a constitutional amendment against them, but it's also o.k to watch faux violent gay bondage shows and use party contributions to pay for It?

dogmatic belief in small government, yet interference with a woman's freedom to chose abortion sometimes in the first trimester and sometimes in cases of sexual assault.

belief in the right to life, yet pro death penalty (!!) and weapon increases everywhere

actions to crack down on immigrants, but also actions to keep their hands off big business in this nation and abroad that employ illegals, child labor, grotesque labor conditions, exploitation, environmental degradation

actions to keep spending away from health care but always increasing spending on our military, which has tens of thousands of troops abroad in Germany, Japan and S Korea and troops in over 150 nations

Idiot Tourists

some dumb actions by tourists when i was giving tours in New York city:

we passed right in front of the NY Stock Exchange. i said maybe more than once that it's the largest stock exchange in the world. think i said it's where trading has been done since dutch colonial times. as we turned the corner, a tourist, white adult, american, asked me twice, "so where does all the trading go on?"

we used to take the bus along Central park south, so the park was to the left. to the right were different buildings, hotels, offices etc. a dentist had an office on the second floor of one of them. an apparently everyday dentist: he wasn't getting high on gas, he wasn't dressed as a clown for kids. you know how many tourists would see the office and say, "'o look a dentist"

so to the left was maybe one of the most beautiful parks on earth, and to the right, a dentist, and they chose him. and these weren't third world folks, these again were middle americans, whites. finally i was so surprised by it i would on the microphone say, "do you folks not have dentists at home? is there a shortage where you're from?" and guess what, i would always get laughs for saying it.

Unique Language, Mom

a bunch of vocabulary my mother says regularly, i've rarely heard anyone else say:

• all heads of hair are called "curls", except if you have stringy hair, then it's "streelyas"--i wrote it phonetically because i don't know if it's a real word.
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• if you have some money to spend, you're a "Butter and Egg man" (a slang term that goes back to the 20s)
• if something's out of date: "that went out with high button shoes"
• she loves to call living things "bold" if they're being a little cocky, like a demanding cat is "bold". but if you misbehave then you're often "wicked'". like Blue jays: "o they're so wicked!"
• i've written before about her use of the word pussy. see blog: Words Change Meaning
• if someone's tone deaf: '"can't carry a tune in a bucket"
• someone talks too much: "could talk a dog off a meat wagon"
• if a female is a "poor soul" (also used often), she's often called "Ella Cinders'" instead of Cinderella
• if a female is strutting around like the bitch is back, she's called "Lizzy Jit"
• if someone's walking around quietly, almost sneaking around: "creeper mouse"

Beltane/May day

it's celebrated around the world in most regions, either as a Spring festival or a time of celebrating labor rights etc.. im focusing on the spring.

between the Equinoxes and Solstices (the days that the sun is directly lined up with the Equator or Tropic lines), are half way points. usually around the 7th but usually celebrated around the 1st, i suppose to keep the calendar neat. so they're more like movable feasts. some of these days are still celebrated much like the above, Samhain (halloween), Imbolc gives way to ground hog day, candlemass. there's also aug 1, Lughnassad. these are all Celtic names, and pre christian Pagan festivals.

anyway around now is the half way point where the Sun is really becoming more prominent in the Northern hemisphere. the Earth is more tilted towards it in the Northern hemisphere. more day light, warmth. celebrated with spring celebrations, fertility, hence marriage (i won't go on an argument against it for once), flowers, youth etc. lovely time, and of course time to send thanks, energy, sacrifice (like prayer and worship) to the Sun for all of the life it gives (most of life on Earth), and the Earth itself for the same reasons. thanks be to the Sun and Earth for giving us this most precious gift of life.

Awe Inspiring: NEw York City

the more you learn about nyc, the more in awe you become. one fact after another.

• NYC contains the largest man made object on earth as i've read. it has more volume than the Great wall of china. it was 25 meters (around 75 feet ) taller than the Statue of liberty. it was a garbage dump: the Fresh kills landfill
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• in Fort green Brooklyn lies a monument and crypt called the Prison Ship Martyrs monument. there lies remains of maybe 11.5 thousand American soldiers in freeing our nation to independence who were kept in prison ships by the british and left to die. that number in perspective: that's far more soldiers than were killed in the entire war. that's almost 300 percent of those killed Sept 11.
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• in down town ny, at 33 liberty st, is the country's largest Federal reserve bank. 80 feet below sea level, in manhattan bedrock, lies 25 percent of the words gold, the most known gold reserves in the world, more than Fort Knox. it's also said to exchange over a 1.8 TRILLION dollars worth of funds DAILY

Ironmen: My Family

please xcuse me for being somewhat self congratulatory in the following writing but i did want to document some of my family's actions:

my family, on my mother's Sexton side especially, have a way with endurance trait seems pretty extraordinary at times. examples:

• my grand father Pa (Kenneth Sexton) worked in Pennsylvanian coal mines for over 30 years, maybe closer to 40. he smoked cigars for years. he also sang into his 80s in public, well (unlike say Sinatra).
• my mother has had Multiple sclerosis for about 40 years now. employed for most of that time. she was only starting to show signs after about the 25th. she's become worse but even after a stroke, she still talks a lot,, can still enjoy many education programs
• some of my "achievements": have out ate guys twice my size, can walk forever, stay awake forever, watch cable forever, scr-w forever, some athletics, have actually lived in weather extremes like freezing cold, desert summer heat, desert wind storms, exercised in highest humidity.

the Mother of Blogs: Explanation

my mother has been quite sick for some years and it's hard to tell how much longer she has left with us, which is why i may be writing quite a lot about her now and for the near future.

partially i want to give tribute to her while she's still here: think of how many people, even the most famous and accomplished, are feted after they're gone, almost seems disrespectful in itself like you ignored them while they lived and now are talking behind their backs (or above their graves) when they're gone.

i especially want to do this because she had a stroke and memory for her is difficult. also i really do want to prepare for that fateful day when she does have to pass as we all do. i want to make sure that the best of her is memorialized and expressed at that time especially.

Selling Out

it's o.k to fight for a cause you seem to believe in for years then leave when they give you hush money?

it's o.k for the deciding factor of whether a woman goes with a man, is his security, read income?

it's o.k to whore yourself for any commercial or media appearance that pays, even after you have tens of millions of dollars?

it's o.k to take job after job even though you don't need the money or advancement when others who are struggling with making ends meet can use those jobs?

it's o.k when a famous starlet/pop chick is "advancing" her career by stripping? (how many of them became "women" by wearing little clothing in pictorials, album covers, magazine covers, videos, sex tapes etc?)