What did we do on our Friday night?
We bought a bottle of cheap red wine, burritos from Pineda (I got the chili verde burrito, possibly the best burrito in the world) and we came home and watched a documentary about the factors that contribute to the successes of certain ancient peoples. A documentary that I bumped up to the top of my netflix queue because I really wanted to see it.
You may THINK your parties and orgies and plays and dinners out with friends are where it’s at, but you are wrong!
Did I mention that I was not wearing pants? it was hot.

Over the summer we have a number of programs running on campus to teach art to all kinds of kids. We have programs for little kids, programs for tweens and of course programs for late teens eager to get away from home and smoke and drink and have sex as soon as possible.
So we have lots of kids running around in various areas.
The other day a contractor came in to say he had walked into one of the restrooms to find a bunch of kids playing in there. One kid was standing IN A TOILET, and another kid had apparently taken a dump in another toilet and a third kid was standing ON the toilet trying to push the turd around with his foot.
Understandably, all the adults were upset and calls were made to various department heads and requests to watch the kids more closely were issued.
Me? I just laughed and laughed and laughed. I could think of nothing more awesome than the thought process of a 6 year old boy. You could ask those kids why they were doing what they were doing and they couldn’t answer you, I honestly don’t think they know, but let me tell you something, I wanna understand everything that goes into the decision to stand in a toilet. Where does that come from? I bet it’s funnier than hell. Standing IN A TOILET! Pushing a turd with your shoe! whatever. These kids are my new heroes. I don’t want to do these things, I’ve grown past the 6 year old stage, but what a fantastic place to be in.
How marvelous to still exist in a world where standing in a toilet is a correct and viable option.

If you are a musician, or singer, or performer heed this special advice…
It is not necessary to tell me you are in the house. I know you are in the house. I can see you (or alternately, hear you if I am listening to a recording). Announcing to me your presence will only perplex me. Did you think that I did not know it was you? Did you think that previous to this announcement the audience assumed you were a holographic image and that you were not in the house. If you are in the house (or on the radio) I know that you are in the house and you do not have to tell me. Also, you do not have to repeat it.
Additionally, if you plan to rock either the house or me you don’t have to actually tell me. Telling me that you are in the house and that you have plans to rock said house does not actually mean you can or will. I will immediately become suspicious of you and your motive.
When Coke spends a lot of money to tell me that it tastes different than Pepsi I know that the size of their lie is directly related to the amount of effort they put forth to convince me of such a thing. If Coke actually did not taste like Pepsi I would know it and you would not have to tell me. They both taste like your mom’s ass.
Armed with this simple knowledge of marketing, I feel confident knowing that the more you promise to rock the house, the less rocked I will feel. As a member of the audience I should not cheer your intent to rock the house or me, but I should only cheer the actual event of being rocked. Asking me to approve of your intentions might be fine once, but repeatedly it smacks of cold desperation.
The first rule of writing is “write what you know” and we know how often you break that rule.
The second rule of writing is “show, don’t tell”.
In your efforts to write a song, please remember these rules. Show me how you intend to rock me or the house. Actually do the rocking. Do not just repeat over and over that you are in the house and that you intend to rock it.
Next week we will discuss the use of simile and metaphor in songs using John Mayer as the bright shining example of everything that is wrong with the state of education in this country (and how it probably got that way because no one wanted to pay taxes because they wanted another garage).

The problem with listening to the news all the time is that you get pissed off about things more often than say someone who watches American Idol.
Yesterday, NPR was telling all about the ‘Cheap Money Era‘ and how it was coming to an end. I could not find a transcript to the story so you will have to listen to it. The gist is that with all the cheap money available there was a flood of cash. Now there’s all this liquid cash and nowhere to invest it. So you have all these uber-rich people and corporations and whatnot sitting on all this cash and saying “man, what the hell am I going to do with all this cash? If I can’t invest it then I can’t make more money with it”.
Wow.
This morning I had to listen to a story about the infant mortality rate in Mississippi. The state with the highest infant mortality rate in the country was getting better, but since 2004 it has gotten worse. Poverty stricken and poorly educated women do not have access to even the most basic healthcare. A woman on Medicaid living in a deeply rural area will not see an actual doctor until she is about 8 months pregnant and only with someone advocating for her. Fewer and fewer doctors are accepting Medicaid and those that do are generally located in the cities.
How exactly does an impoverished woman in the middle of nowhere get to the city to see a doctor?
And then beyond the basic healthcare needs, these women don’t even have enough information available on how to take care of themselve or their gestating babies. In a state that regularly ranks near the bottom in k-12 education standards it is no surprise that huge swaths of the population do not understand what goes into a balanced diet or even what good nutrition might entail. Even if they DID know that, I’m still not sure how they would afford much of what they needed to eat.
We won’t even get started on sex education and birth control. Hell, even if they knew about it, it’s not like they’d have access to it.
It is stuff like this that so deeply shames me. In a nation where the biggest worry of the wealthy is what to do with all that excess cash, we still have people, large numbers of people, who don’t even have their basic needs met. Not only are their needs not being met, but they are in a cycle of poverty dug so deep they don’t even have the tools to escape it.
So I say a giant FUCK YOU to Laissez-Faire. A great big giant FUCK YOU to anyone who thinks that the best idea is to just leave these things to charity, to trust that they will just be taken care of. These things are not taken care of, they’re ignored. The poor and the uneducated are blamed for their decisions, for their circumstances and we say tough luck to you. The rate of return on investing in the poor and the uneducated is just way too low, I guess. It’s probably more adventageous to invest in those shoes with the roller skates in them or in oil. I hear the oil industry is set to make record profits again this year. AWESOME!
Am I being too simplistic? yeah, I am. I know that I am, but I also know that the gulf between these two articles I listened to is so deep and so wide and so shameful to every single person in this country that getting pissed off and being simplistic is not the worst sin.
I am ashamed and you ahould be ashamed and this shit needs to stop. We have no right to be proud or happy or smug in our circumstances when so many infants are dying for lack of resources when those resources exist.

Two weeks ago I was having a crabby weekend. I considered my options…human sacrifice, multi-gun rampage, heroin, turning the ringer off on my phone and doing crossword puzzles…
There we go. I turned the ringer off. Turning the ringer off is completely different than just ignoring my phone. I ignore my phone all the damned time. I hear it ring, I cock my head to the side and then say…meh, i’ll check later. This was a good method for a while but it meant that no matter what I was doing, if the phone rang I would have to stop and cock my head to the side and then make a decision to see who is calling and then make a decision as to whether or not I wanted to talk to the person on the phone. Don’t take this personally, I just don’t like talking on the phone.
If I chose to not even see who was calling, then the worry of not knowing who called would scratch at the surface of my brain until I gave in and checked the phone.
The phone causes a lot of stress for me. Technically, it’s just a phone and it should not cause me any stress, but it does.
So I turned the ringer off and forgot about it. It was the best thing I’d done for myself in years. Seriously, this reduced my stress in ways that ice cream or masturbating never could! I completely forgot I had a phone! I forgot that people wanted to talk to me! I just went about my business and did my stuff completely uninterrupted. Then I would remember my phone at like 11pm and go look at it and see who called and think, “oh nice, these people called me!”
I know it’s selfish, but sometimes you have to be. I can’t be INFP all the damned time.
So I’ve kept my phone off intermittently for the last two weeks. Of course the universe likes to drive home the point on occasion…
My current ringtone is me singing:
Why don’t you pick up the phone
someone wants to talk to you
answer the phone
someone wants to talk to you
doo doo dooot doo
dooo doooooo
It’s really irritating.
I left my phone on one day last week and of course I got calls all day. I got 2 calls (TWO CALLS) during my pelvic exam. Let me tell you something, you do not ever want to hear yourself singing when you are in that position and you certainly never ever want your doctor to be laughing while she’s in there. It’s really disconcerting!
So, to sum up, I’m not avoiding any of you specifically, I’m just avoiding the phone. Email me if you want me to respond. Later this summer, I’ll turn the phone back on.