My Phone Rang Today

My phone rang today and it had been so long since it had done such a thing that I didn't even recognize it and nearly missed the call.  It was just the salon confirming my appointment.  Weird how use to things a person can become.  I got use to you pulling away.  The more you did, the more I wanted.  You came back from your big weekend abroad and said, 'I left with the hope of meeting someone else.'

That killed me.

So after death I walked around with shutters on;  Pretending I was happy and with someone who felt the same.  I get that I'm a part of this.  I just wish I was privy to the knowledge earlier on that we weren't happening.  Why didn't you confide in me that it wasn't happening for you?  Why do people do that?  If you had been straight with me instead of distancing yourself until I felt like I was the darkest one, most if not all of this heartache could have been alleviated.  Why can we not be honest with one another?  What kept you from being honest with me?  Not wanting to hurt me only drew the pain closer to the surface.  Now I'm raw and alone...not for long.

I'm beginning a new experiment.  I know not of his name but that he seems kind and enjoys to walk.  You hated walking but obliged me for whatever reason.  I'm sick of being obliged.  You like it or you don't.  You like me or you don't.  There is no grey area anymore.  This is my goal.

Maybe I Am

Sometimes I feel like I revert to old ways.  Like unbeknownst to me I become the person I once was.  I can be angry.  I'm not just that.  At least I don't think I am.  Perhaps I am but only my perception of me trying not to be is the difference.  I feel like I don't give myself permission to feel without scrutiny.  Without judgement.  I use to be negative all of the times.  Now I feel a slow progression to something else.  Maybe it's growing up.  Maybe it's my need for something other than tension and dis-ease.  I can be angry but sometimes I feel that I allude to that being my only state.  It's as though the world perceives me as having nothing else to offer but a quick whip, a stern tongue lashed with sarcasm and vitriol... two dimensional character in a life led alone and fearful.  My fear is lessened daily but then why do I revert?  I wrote some things a bit ago that I recently posted.  I posted them more for lack of having posted of late than to actually get things out.  Writing helped to get them out and I didn't need the world to be a part but I posted them anyhow.  I wonder why.  Closure maybe.  Maybe I'm still the same person I've been struggling against and until I can accept that girl and all of her shit, I'll never be free from the shit I've imposed upon myself for years.

I thought I remembered not being this way.  Maybe I only thought this because of how tired I feel;  Knowing there was no way I could have carried on this long in this manner.  Perhaps I was truly fresh at one point.  Bitterness had yet to rear it's toxic head and I was free to choose without the past affecting me so.  Now all I see are patterns of things once learned and I keep away from that hot surface or that cold element.  Struggle I do between comfort and ease.  I have felt a balanced place before but to sustain seems nearing on the impossible.  Maybe I should accept that.  Accept the fact that no one person can ever just be one thing forever.  No amount of peaceful thinking or meditation or impermeability or perceived pain can ever rule out any one thought.  If everything is impermanent than why do I expect goodness to reign supreme or happiness to last forever?  Why do I expect that from other people if it's inconceivable for myself?  I think I'm an asshole and so very tired.

Hunny Bunny

Fuck It.  I cannot control what comes out right now so I'm just gonna go with it.  This isn't about you.  It's about me scraping out my brain full of the shit that I don't want rattling around in there anymore.  "Write it down", all the experts say...well, and why not for the whole world to read and pass judgement on.  Fuck It.

I spent the first six months of our relationship listening to you speak in vivid detail about your ex.  Six months of you wallowing, contemplating and attempting to come to terms with a crazy bitch that took your virginity and messed with your mind.  Your beautiful, fragile, open and compelling mind.  I'm sorry that happened to you but I didn't need to hear about it.  I allowed you to drone on and on because I liked it when you smiled and how wide your shoulders were.

I slept on the couch while you and your bestie slept in the same bed together when we all hung out.  I felt so fucking low that night and I don't know why I stayed.  I enjoyed making you laugh and your mom seemed cool.

I stuck around while your parents disappointed you and the world shat on your ideas.  I took you places you've never been and opened you to a world you've always lived in and never noticed.  You helped me feel alive and new once more.  Oh those defining moments...

Two years later and we're not exactly hating one another but shit be broke.  I allowed the world in and you shut it all out.  You bury yourself in music, technology, blading, drugs, anything to keep you from a single silent moment with that special voice inside your head that only you can hear.  I'm not blaming you.  I'm trying not to blame me.  It's over and for now, that's for the best.

You can't stand on the backs of other people to get what you want.  You can't burden others with your money woes because you want what you want when you want it.  Well, I guess you can because we'll let you.  I cooked, cleaned and took care of you as best I could.  I became your apartment mother.  Tried not to...but you know what they say about the best intentions.  I felt drained.  A shell.  I was becoming someone who didn't enjoy being alive.  I clung to you and your needs like a fly to that last grain of sugar in the bottom of the bowl.  If you love someone, you put their needs above your own.  The other should reciprocate and love prevails!  That's not how things went.  You dug your heels in deeper as I tried to drag you across the carpet to commitment.  I just wanted to belong to you, with you.  Your shit got so annoying and unappealing.  Two years and you still live at home, suckling off the teat of dearest mummy who can't fucking stand ya'll being there.  Two years later and you think the world owes you favors cuz you had it rough.  Two years later and neither one of us can stand the effort it takes to be honest with the other.  Two years later and we have regressed to silence and contempt.

Now I feel relief.  I miss you but you're an asshole.  You take and take and look at me with those gorgeous eyes and I melt and give and give.  Still, with this entry I'm giving away my post.  I acted like a lunatic.  This I know all too well.  You chose to love me how you needed to, all the while denying me my needs.  You dismissed what I wanted from you because you couldn't speak the language...nope, you just weren't listening.  You still can't see it and I'm done being your teacher.  Now you have a swath of scummy friends to learn you how to treat women and get nothing in return but venereal disease and an empty hole where your heart use to be.  Do you want to get understood?  Or do you want to live in Sainthood flipping back pages to understand yourself?  That's the way love comes.

Just think what I would have wrote had I actually been pissed off?

Back-Burner

I hung out tonight with someone I thought I should hate.  She is beautiful and probably smart...I don't even know...and well-dressed and eloquent in speech and manner.  I thought I should hate her because she seemed so very different from me.  Not for all of the things mentioned above but because I thought I already knew her.  Let's face it.  I did.  I do.  She kind of sucks.  I let my guard down.  Free wine tends to lean a twisted branch in the general direction of drunken desultory.

I spoke to said girly-girl.  She was kind enough, just really boring and predictable like most girls that dress and act like her.  She's bought in.  She bought in to the house, the car, the husband and her inevitable brood stirring in her loins as we spoke.  Gross.  She stands for everything I find so distasteful in society.  I was nice to her.  I was feeling all jolly warm and drunk inside so I didn't rip her meager empty life to shreds.  Now I'm the gross one because she will now go through existence not hating herself and her choices.  Dammit.  She will grow to be someones' role model.  She will create a bunch of offspring just like her and the world turns once more.  Boring.  Desolate.  Certain.  Perhaps that's what pisses me off most;  These people are certain in their creations of nihility.  This is the way my parents did it, therefore...I am.  So it is.  So fucking question-less.  So content.  I can pretend too, you know.  I have.  I did.  It felt good to feel included.  Like I was part of something collective, connected and bigger.  Then I realized these people have not the foggiest clue what they speak of.  They are scrambling for meaning in a world that bears fruit of no sort.  It's sad.  It's embarrassing.

I don't think I've ever wanted to be one.  Really.  I've played the part once or twice but I grew so very weary of the performance.  The posturing.  I want to be a Thai dude speaking at TED about saving seeds and building houses for my neighbors cuz apparently land is free in Thailand.  Let's all stop dedicating our lives to things we need to follow and create something real.  Let's feed each other more than the bullshit pictures we take on Facebook.  Live your life for you, not your following.  Travel to go deeper into yourself, not for the constant photo ops people are screaming for as they sit in their homes they can't afford to view the world through the computer lens.  Go to school for your brain and the benefit of society, not for the achievement and bragging rights about how difficult school was to manage with your drinking and social nights.  Love the world because you love yourself and fuck the rest.  Stop showing us the you you think we want to see.  Everybody gets one.  Only one.  Make it count.

Taken

I have an irrational hatred of Liam Neeson.  The famed actor known for his stoic Irish presence in a myriad action flicks.  I fucking hate you Liam Neeson.  You are a taker.  You set a girl up with all of these expectations, like who you are as a person is truly unique and awesome.  You are none of these things Mr. Neeson.  You appear to be sexy as all get up...you're intelligence and calm demeanor save the lives of those you cherish most.  You are a fraud.  You are as fraudulent as your movie scripts and public relations persons.  You told me one thing and acted one way and now you're a shell like all the rest.  No amount of Ricky Gervais illustrating you as a hilarious and disturbed individual will win me over.  You suck.

We use to be cool, you and I.  Strangers, literal strangers would comment on how adorable we were.  I've never experienced that before.  It was like the entire world was conspiring to have us be awesome.  Together.  Now what are we?  Struggling to cobble together something that may very well be impossible.  I am your sister, mother, secret lover and you do nothing in return.  You offer nothing.  You expel no energy in even my general direction.  A few texts here to keep tabs on me?  To make yourself feel like you're in a relationship?  You have no fucking idea what kind of work it takes to keep a life afloat...to breath life into something that we let die time and time again.  I want a love story you fuck.  Instead I'm settling for a smattering of attention when you feel like it or can work it into your busy schedule.  Oh Liam Neeson how you've fallen.

It's my fault.  I fell for you first and have made it every effort to make this fucking nightmare prosper.  That's what I want most in life is to prosper in what I do.  Not just to get by, not just to do what is expected but to fucking grow and pulse with the energy I've been granted for this limited fucking time.  I'm tired of waiting.  No, I'm fucking exhausted.  I will allow Martha Washington* to elucidate further:

'I am young and I am strong but I feel old and tired, over-fired.  I've been poked and stoked it's all smoke there's no more fire, only desire...for whoever you are.  You say my time here is some sort of a joke.  Some sort of incubating period.  You have no idea.  How it feels to be on your own, in your own home with the fucking phone.  I will not pretend.  I will not put on a smile.  I will not say I'm alright for you.  When all I wanted was to be good.  To do everything in truth.  To do everything in truth.  I wishIwishIwishI was born a man.  So I could learn how to stand...up for myself.'

We Spoke Again Last Night

Why is it that the thing I want most in all of the lands, I push away the hardest with both hands?  I am a manipulator and a charlatan.  Why am I such an awful person?  I have photos of me as a kid, picking flowers and being joyful.  I wasn't born negative.  I wasn't born hoping to make relationships only to suffocate the life out of them.  Now I've become so good at it that I don't even realize I'm participating in my own demise.  I think I've become someone I hate, therefore I spread the vitriol like a thick paste over everyone that comes near me.  Is it simply fear that compels me to be awful?  I've fucked up and I don't know that I can remedy it with simple apologies and time.  There may not be enough time.  Life is so short, I tell myself, as I punch holes into everything I've worked so hard to create.  Love is nurtured and in kind nurtures back.  I've forgotten how to nurture.  I've forgotten how to support.  There's only me now, suffocating on my own self-indignation and pity.  I've done this.  I'm sorry.  It couldn't have been you.  You're new.  Fresh.  Open.  I promised myself I wouldn't hurt you.  I promised myself I wouldn't bring you down.  I promised you I wouldn't hold you back and if there ever came a day where I did, I would let you go.  Well that day is here and I brought it forth and now I'm frozen by my love for you.  I am a selfish waif of despair.  How did I get us here?  Slowly, softly...then all at once the pieces fall.  I was a jar on a precarious shelf and now just the sound of me breaking apart is all that lingers.  The pieces were always there but now the whole room can see them in vivid color and I am quietly studied, judged, and labelled.  No more hiding in plain sight on my unstable shelf.  I'm just there alone.  Again.  

When the Hurt has Hurt

What do you do when you see yourself in another person and you hate them and not yourself for it?  Why is the first response blame?  Weak people find solace in blame for it explains away the chaos that we reside in.  I feel chaotic most of the time.  I am a liar and a thief.  I am a taker of time and producer of nothing.  I feel low some days and don't know why.  Some days I lose myself to my inability to be honest with myself.  The ego won't allow me to take responsibility.  It just won't.  There is a very deep part of me that just wants it all out there.  Every wretched piece to be judged and torn apart by a grouping of people I love the most.  There wouldn't be any coming back from that and it would be glorious.  No resets, no do-overs.  Just unfiltered reality and then silence.  What would one have to say after that?  There would be blissful, searing pain and then nothing.  It wouldn't be required of me to fix anything or adapt or change or grow.  I would just be done.  Done trying.  Done feigning effort.  Done.

It's exhausting complaining about everything.  I'm so dreadfully tired of there nothing being wrong.  Other people can only take so much you know.  All people have their limits and I certainly do my damnedest to have them reach the pinnacle of what it means to be fatigued.  Hardly any effort at all on my part, really.  It's become so natural, me being a crazy person, that I don't even notice it happening anymore.  Others have to inform me of the fact by tears, or emitting anger, frustration or just bolting altogether...for fuck that crazy bitch.  I get it.  I really do.  I've forced a hand more than a time or two.  You asked me if I've ever been here before.  I live here, hunny.  I live here.

Dear Millennials,

Fuck You.

You truly are the worst generation.  I know every generation thinks that they are elite in their hatred for every other generation in existence...well I'm elite in hating my own.  Unfortunately I was born on the cusp of being apart of this ridiculous self-interested, wasteful bunch of entitled apathetic suck-faces.  You really are.  Suck-Faces to the ninth degree.  I have never been privy to such a useless bunch of assholes.  Seriously all of you may suck the proverbial dick.

I have never been cancelled on, ignored, forgotten about, or left behind by more millennials than any other grouping of people...ever.  I have made plans with these canker blossoms(thank you Shakespeare), only to be texted moments before the meet-up...'Um, I'm like totally caught up right now...rain check?'  A mere ten years ago, if you broke plans it's because you had something unavoidable happen like a flat tire or death.  Yeah, you had to die back in the day if you didn't meet up for coffee.  That's the way shit use to go down.  Now?  We have texting.  Instagram.  Twitter.  I can see your fucking picture on Facebook with you shaking hands with a local celebrity at the mall at the same time you were suppose to meet me for a beer you fucking fuck.  Most of the time I am not even allotted the courtesy of a 'can't make it' message.  Normally there's just nothing.  No communication at all.  Have we gotten so very lazy that even a text is too dreadfully time consuming?  Gross.

I like making plans.  It helps my brain and gives me something to look forward to.  Is our collective attention span so slight that this is no longer possible?  Do we scramble about attempting importance on our pocket computers, meanwhile skirting over the fact that we hate each other and ourselves.  I feel bad when I bail on someone.  Even worse when I space and miss an opportunity with friends or family altogether.  If something has seriously come up and you can't make it...cool.  Communicate then have a make up date in which the beers be on you.  We're all busy suck-face...your shit is no more important than mine.  Waiting is a fucking disease and I don't appreciate feeling like my time means somehow less because you were raised to only feed your selfish concerns.  Grow up or you'll be all alone in the growing old.

I Deduce I've Been Reduced

The train was out of service.  A stop before I needed and I was stranded with the rest of the doldrums..."momentarily", I was assured.  A man with a scruffy hippy beard, donning a scruffy hippy hat, with a hippy guitar strapped to his poor-postured hippy back, made his way to my location.  On a sardine tight train platform...there was no where to run.  He started with brief small-talk, asking me where I was headed.  I cracked an off the cuffer and he laughed way too hard and far too loud.  Then without hesitation or buying me dinner first, he grabbed my shoulder, put his rotten mouth within spittle distance of my cringing face and said, "You're really beautiful, you know that?"

I being the ever polite commuter muttered, "Thanks", and shrugged off his pass.  He then proceeded to look me up and down rather blatantly, repeating the empty sentiment once more.  I turned my head in disgust.  As if I need some dirty, greasy man on a train platform, brain fucking me with his flaccid, over-baked stinky, twisted junk.  He then went on to speak of how he had a sister about my age.  He asked how old I was and feigned surprise from my response, thinking that would somehow break down my wall of hatred and then freed by this sexy loner, I would be free to hop on his lumpy cock and take a spin.

"Oh WOOOOOW", he proclaims, stifling his halfy, "I would guess you were no more than 22!  My sister's your age.  Well I'm 56...how old do you think I look?"  He says this while pulling back so I can get a good look at his motives...I mean, wrinkled, weathered face.

"56.  My mom's fifty-six."  I say coldly, looking him right in his stupid hippy eye.  He gets quite embarrassed by this and says there's 'no way he looks his age.'  I've hurt his feelings, thank christ but the goof comes back for more.  He grabs my shoulder again, looks me up and down and repeats his adage about my beauty.  So done with his transparency, I thought two things.  This idiot just compared me to his sister, so either he wants to fuck his sister or thinks relating me to his relative will make him seem less off and therefore make me more apt to suck his dick in the darkened corner of the station.  And two,  I just compared you to my mom, who is not a stupid creepy hippy hitting on people half her age(anymore), I insulted your age and you're still trying for it.  Why on god's green earth would I ever hit that?  No amount of compliments from strange men, regardless of my daddy issues, are going to make me fuck you.  You're gross, you're making me feel uncomfortable with your piercing gaze of dirty thoughts and wretched images, and if you lay your hand on my shoulder one more time, you are going to eat the front end of the Expo Line coming down the rail.  What is it about men that they feel like my personal space doesn't concern them as long as I haven't told them to eat a dick and leave me alone?  I have never walked up to a man, asked for the time and then cupped his balls as I pass.  I despise the fact that I am a mere commodity, reduced to a sexual play thing....mostly because I allow it.  I allow it by ignoring the passes, skipping over the ogling stares of passing penises;  I let it go because it's so rampant.  I would have to spend endless hours telling men off, I'd have no time for anything else.  My life would be consumed by the fight so I must pick and choose the battles I partake in.

My BF asked me recently how I deal with it.  He had a similar experience where he felt the eyes of women on his nether regions and it made him not joyous, as one would assume, but sad and uncomfortable.  He felt the impulse to feel shame about his reduction to piece of meat status as a result of the invasive stares of strangers from the opposite sex.  At first it could be thought of as flattering, then it rapidly turns ugly and overwhelming.  When I feel in danger.  When the bells go off, I take action.  The hippy dude was harmless.  Unfortunately, one cannot go around assaulting hippy-dudes just because they have no sense of personal space, or common human decency.  They are driven by their genitals and their lust for some young piece of ass to fuck away all of their dirty hippy problems.  I ask then, on behalf of all women out there to all hippy-dudes who maybe don't realize how they make us feel; How they can ruin a day for a person out of selfish concern for their cocks:  Think about us, these random encounters in your life, as though you think on your sisters, your mothers, your children.  We are not here for your pleasure.  We are designed for more.  Our purpose is not only to serve a want in your weiner, so think about that the next time you inappropriately touch a girl and she's not having it.  What would you do to the dude on the train platform that did that to your sister?        

Transit Woes

I use to feel so smug about taking transit.  I had it all figured out.  There's no sitting in traffic on a train.  I'm polluting far less than most.  It's cheaper than a vehicle(barely).  I can sit back, relax, listen to music and be driven to whatever destination of whimsy I so choose on any given day.  Somewhere, somehow that's all changed.  Now everyday is a nightmarish torment of epic and absurd proportions.

On my to work this eve, rockin' the headphones and gazing out the window at the gorgeous summer day.  The river below and the trees doin' there thing, this greasy white dude sits down beside me.  He hits me with his newspaper which was troublesome yet tolerable as one must learn to stomach the ignorance and ineptitude of others while travelling.  I stood up as the train was stopped to open the window as the train was quite warm and I do not enjoy breathing in recycled air nor the pits of grease fuck beside me.  As soon as I place myself back on the seat, he promptly stands, slams the window and sits staring at me...waiting for a response.  Not one to back down from quelching idiocy, I removed my headphones and looked him square in the eye.  "I needed some air," I said point of factly.

He positions himself two inches from my reddening face and spits, "This is an air conditioned car, can't you READ?"  The signs on the window are very clear and I'm sure Translink totally pays for air conditioned cars while they're trying to fill their coffers with another tax to pay for the shit they're building which they can't afford.

"That was rude," I spoke with, I'll admit, a little shock that this man was getting ready for battle over an open window on a train with someone half his age and size.

"It was RUDE of YOU to open it in the first place!"

I didn't know what to say.  As much as I practice keeping cool and speaking with intellect...this guy had me totally rattled.  I just kept wondering what kind of a day he must of had.  Or if he's like this all of the time; Stirring up shit out of boredom or some empty sense of self righteousness.  I thought of all the things I could have said like bringing up the fact that his body odor was the reason I required the oxygen, or asked him as I would a child if he was having a bad day?  Or maybe the only language people like that understand is to give back ten fold what they've dished out.  I watch dogs a lot and the only way to subdue an aggressive or inappropriate puppy act, the other puppy lays it out clean and clear.  Woof!  Cut it out.  Or, failing that, a little nip on the neck to show business is meant.  All of these things went though my head...in the meantime, he got off at the next stop and for three hours following this utter oddness, I though about what the course of action I'll take in the future.  I mean, he wasn't even on the train long enough to feel a breeze from the window, yet he still had to make a scene and prove something to the rest of the passengers.  I just wanted to be free of stinky breath filled train and angry greasy pit man.  Have we lost all sense of being able to accommodate and relate to one another?  Are we so entitled and set in what we want that in any given moment if someone infringes on that even slightly we must make a stand and return things to what we thought was what we needed.  I bet he would have enjoyed the fresh breeze coming in though the tiny train window slit, had he been there longer than a single stop.  Perhaps this lesson is to be open to others' needs no matter how small they may seem to you.  Maybe I had completely unbalanced his equilibrium with the world by the ever so small change in barometric pressure that his brain screamed and he had no control.  Or maybe he's just a grease lizard with hate in his heart and poison in his armpits.  In the future people, I beg you, ask those around you what they want.  Cast a ballot on if the window opens or remains shut and after you've tallied the votes and made certain that the train is in consensus, let me know how that breeze of democracy and sanity feels once you've arrived cuz by the time all that shit's been dealt with, you'll be where you needed to go.  I'm buying a car...fuck the planet.

Why Vote No

Cuz Fuck TransLink, that's why.  Don't mistake my language for ignorance, for that I am not.  Do I think corporations are evil?  Probably not, but shit son...know who you're getting into bed with.  For those of you who are unaware, allow me to paint the picture as I see it:

TransLink wants our money.  More than they already glean from their shoddy service and corrupt means.  They have introduced a plebiscite in which the dredges of society have the "opportunity" to vote on a new proposed tax hike of 0.5 percent.  The claim is that the tax will provide endless new transit momentum for it's riders in new and exciting ways.  Yes, because that's where our tax dollars usually go...reforming the empire that exists to make it better for the people, by the people.  Beyond the transparent corruption that the corporation has entrenched itself in, which seems to be the only reason people are clinging to, I propose a few other concepts for titillation.  Such as the fact that the tax is truly going to affect the quality of life for those hovering around or below the poverty line.  I work sixty hours a week at two jobs.  I am barely keeping my head above water and I don't believe myself to be alone in this struggle.  I take transit everyday, several times.  Trust me when I tell you, I know how shitty it is.  Long wait times, endless lines, unsafe travel conditions as every week a station is shutdown due to some kind of police emergency, expensive fares, and inadequate access to the city at non-peak hours.  I could go on but you get the picture.  This company has squandered the money they do receive and are now demanding we pay more for dollars going directly into their pockets for lavish trips and yearly salary that puts my meager earnings to such shame.  Blood from stone much?

Look around people and please think for yourselves.  Wonder why you see so much propaganda to vote Yes on this matter?  Where are the no ads screaming at us from every bus/train station?  Where are the giant billboards asking you to think for yourself instead of being brainwashed by giant letters and lavish marketing.  Those ads aren't cheap.  Could have put that money towards a few new skytrain cars.  Voting no means realizing that big business doesn't own our thoughts or decision making abilities.  We need to reclaim our ability to sus out the nonsense from what's legitimate.  TransLink has not been held accountable for any of its past indiscretions...like where the fuck is Compass?  Millions spent to install a program of fare gathering that's been years in the making with no results.  Endless tickets being handed out to commuters who forgot their bus pass easily make the company nearly seven hundred thousand dollars a year...where is that going?  I do realize that this is merely a plebiscite and the wise ones in charge inevitably have the final say, but I ask for all us little peons to use our sheer numbers to cry out, "No more!"  No more will we pay into a program that gives us nothing in return.  No more will we put up with deplorable service when another way exists.  No more will we sit idly by while more and more TransLink cuntomer service employees are hired to stand around and gossip at every station instead of providing a service and keeping people safe.  No more will we be leeched on to provide those in charge with a hefty bonus and second summer home.  You think they'll stop at point five percent?  You think allowing this tax will fix our city and promote transit?  Where are the other ideas?  The former chair of TransLink has voted no because he's seen first hand what this money pit is capable of.  There is another way:  http://www.news1130.com/  In fact I'm sure there are several but we've been bamboozled into believing that this the only one.  Vote no and save your money for a ticket to a town that respects its inhabitants instead of drinking them dry.

Choking on a Sea of Non-Choices

I'm circling the drain here people.  It's dizzying and I don't do well with continuous circles.  Vomit and anger ensue.  I am beyond tense.  I feel as if I've been in a ten year long panic attack of slow and measured precision.  It's swelling now to a piercing vibrato and my fucking back is killing me.  I'm too young to feel so old.  I'm so afraid to be locked in.  Yet I am the one who's doing the locking and the one who is is inevitably locked.  I look to others for respite.  I look to the www for relief.  I long for some peace and quiet in a brain that refuses to stop.  'We're in this together!'  Fucking brain...

I am so desperate to rid myself of my current situation that options seem to flow endlessly in my direction.  Choosing one that I can afford and stomach for a considerable amount of time...now there's the rub.  Well, I scored 15 out of 15 on a Facebook knowledge test...I must be destined for greatness!  I should pursue my dreams of astrophysics and solve the unanswerable.  That's what I want.  What I don't want is to be in my mid forties paying off eighty thousand dollars worth of student loans(and that's on the lowest end), with no experience in a field that rips people apart in a competitive arena made up of the most brilliant minds one can fathom.  Ok.  That's off the table.  So what's next?  Wildlife biologist.  Animals are awesome.  I'd never speak to another living soul if I could warrant it.  Four years minimum...did I mention I suck at math and all of the sciences?  Then every job out there is asking a minimum of two years experience out in the field following graduation to even be considered.  Thirty seven, still in debt from school and working the same shit work I sneered at years earlier cuz no motherfucker will hire a new graduate with no experience.  NEXT!  Vet Tech.  Two years.  Minimal cost.  Low pay.  Cleaning up dog shit all the live long day.  No offense to anyone following this noble pursuit, but how is that different from what I do now?  I clean up after other people all day long.  I spend eight and a half hours watching the clock;  Feeling more and more anxious that I'm never going to amount to anything...never going to help anyone...going to die with no legacy or triumph to speak of.  I am freaking out.  How's about a business degree?  That could take me anywhere right?  Claw my way through the world with a smile and a wink?  Lose everything I hold dear to me like honesty, dignity, integrity and not being a fucking dick?  Ugh...what am I left with?  Stay where I am, always wishing I was somewhere else?  Focus on those once a year trips that seem to make life livable?  Continue to drink and smoke myself into oblivion?  I cut all my hair off and I still fell heavy.  What good's a metaphor if it doesn't fucking deliver?  How do other people do this?  How do other people figure their shit out?    

Damn Dirty Apes

A man was asked, 'What do you fear most about women?'
The man replied, 'That they'll laugh at us."
A woman was asked, 'What do you fear most about men?'
A woman replied, "That they'll kill us."

This hit me, hard.  Underlying every relationship, in whatever form it has ever taken since the dawn of civilization as we know it, this is the foundation from which we begin.  We have nor will we ever be equals.  Sure, some laws are in place and will continue to be implemented that allow us some liberties.  We have safe homes for where we can run to, temporarily.  We have structures in place within our society that keep us relatively safe, in the interim.  Hell, we may very well have a female president of the free world come 2016...thanks Illuminati for understanding the needs of our world before we do.  A black man president?  Let's go crazy and elect the lesser of the sexes to lead.  This will shut em up for a time...See!  We've reached equality!  Racism is over and men and women are as one.  This is all false and fleeting and forged from a place of fear and desperation.  We had to come up with something to protect our little baby-makers...for in the end we are the only reason society has flourished...bless modern medicine but without our miracle uteri, we wouldn't be here.  I wouldn't be here.

E!  You know the channel for entertainment and garbage?  Well, they came up with a 'mani-cam'.  It is literally a camera that they bring to Hollywood-type events to film the manicures of the female participants.  Do you ask the same questions to the male counterparts?  How are we going to advance as a sex if we're forced to participate in the constant degradation of our female populace by concerning ourselves with who they're wearing and what their fucking nails look like.  Is that all we are?  Pretty things to be objectified and over-sexified til we're reduced to walking fucking vagina's with mouths and long eyelashes?  'Oh my Kate Blanchett, who did your eyelashes?'  Fuck you.

A recent female tennis player was asked to twirl in her little tennis outfit by a reporter.  She did so, embarrassed for herself and probably for every female athlete out there.  Your entire life dedicated to a craft and in one phrase, reduced to a pretty little thing to be admired, obsessed over and discarded as readily.  Tireless days and nights spent struggling, sweating, screaming and now...twirling.  I guess you know you've made it as a woman when you're asked to twirl.  Will Hillary Clinton be asked to do the same when she's sworn in?  No bible for her...'Madame President, if you wouldn't mind twirling, we could move on to the business of running the free world.'

I was reading the newspaper...the same paper that scolded the reporter for asking Eugenie Bouchard to twirl;  Claiming that this request was reprehensible...their following print had 'The latest trend for Lingerie' on the front cover.  Sex sells, certainly.  Why is it that the only sex worth merchandising is ours?  Why are tits and ass so fucking profitable?  Ladies, we are 51% of the population!  Could we use our sheer dominating numbers to put an end to this abasement?  And yes, I understand the irony in calling our junk 'tits and ass'...just trying to keep the male readers content.  Fuck!  I'm part of the problem.

Are we so afraid to make true and lasting change to the system because deep down we fear being wiped out?  Really?  Or are we ingrained to believe that we are the lesser sex, we are designed to produce, reproduce, to swallow what we're given, grin and ask for another?  I say fuck this.  Fuck that.  Fuck you.  Fuck those that engage in the 'twirling' for fear of hurting someones feelings...or coming off the 'bitch'.  We have been programmed to feel that there are two types of women: The Bitch or The Whore.  You can be both or one...I say none.  I say I'm Rhandi Diane Neal.  I follow no path but the one I build for myself everyday.  I won't be commanded.  I won't fear your opinion of me if I say no.  I won't change my habits as a result of public scrutiny.  Your judgments are empty until I instill meaning and I won't be a part of allowing you to keep in a bubble brimming with my body parts you insist are beautiful and I should embrace.  Fuck yeah I embrace I'm beautiful but it's not because you told me to feel this way.  It's not because I have these physical attributes that I'm beautiful.  It's the whole.  The package is to hold all the awesomeness in, cuz you wouldn't be able to handle me without it.

Ladies, we don't need to be naked to be valuable.  We don't need to be nude to be marketed.  We are not this body part or that lock of hair.  Don't separate yourself into parts and sell them to the highest bidder.  The price changes but the cost to you and our sex is ever higher.  Stop allowing men to keep us from striving for more because we may hurt their delicate sensibilities.  Stop allowing women to make you feel like less cuz you don't have the right pair of shoes or your purse didn't cost a months rent.  Be you.  Be true.  Fuck the rest.  Fuck the media ran by rich old white dudes with cialis boners.  Fuck the women who engage in the behavior that ties us to our parts and leaves us without much more.  Fuck you if you read this and get up your own ass about how it's not cool to complain about shit when I live where I do and have what I have.  I feel your eyes everyday and it makes me sick to think about where I've been placed in that sick sex obsessed brain of yours.  No I don't want your dick if I ask you nicely not to piss at the bus station next to me.  I'm not asking you to stop because I want your cock and can't stop myself from thinking about it.  I want you to act like a human fucking being cuz I'm someones daughter.  Guaranteed you have a sister, a wife, a daughter of your own...probably not a mother you bacterium from the depths of some ancient pus filled hole.  Take your wiener and go fuck yourself with it, cuz ain't no one in this time or space want anything your wielding.

I am beyond stoked for a female president (let's face it, she's as much ours as anybody else's), and I embrace all of the sexist, ageist, ludicrous comments/acts to come.  Hold your head high Girl...you're going to save us all.  

Dear Parents,

You are fucking up big time.  No exclamation point, no underline...fact...period.  Keep in mind that these facts come from someone who has never experienced being an active parent but has witnessed what it takes to raise two girls by ones' self and nurture/torture them into two pretty kick-ass women.  My mother is the most intelligent, gifted, powerful woman I know and I couldn't have asked for a more well rounded upbringing.  I never wanted for anything, I grew up with morals, grounding and common sense.  This shit cannot be taught, but instilled.  The reason I write to you, dear parents, is that you are trashing the foundation that people like my mother laid.  Allow me to elucidate...

I met a girl today.  Mid twenties.  We chatted for a bit and all seemed well until I dug just that little inch deeper to the real juice...the kind that accidentally squeezes from your butt cheeks when you are completely relaxed and had Subway a few hours prior.  (I had unhappy pants today...fuck you e coli laced spinach.)  She's going to business school, in her fourth year, and her mother makes lunch for her every single day.  Twenty four and living at home.  She knew the onslaught of taunts was coming so she injected a quick, 'BUT, I live in the basement and have my own entrance' ploy which wasn't about to hinder me in any regard.  She went on to say that she's ever so grateful for her mom everyday and blah-de-blah-da...of course you are, she cuts the damn crust from your sandwich every morning you fucking suckling piglet of shame.  Further on into the conversation...the 'apartment' she has in the basement for which she pays no rent for...she also admitted to like an idiot...has no kitchen or bathroom so she uses the facilities of the home which is not of her possession.  Um, that's called a bedroom wench.  I do my best not to choke her out and continue to ask some questions...you know standard stuff like what are you going to school for, is it difficult to balance work life with tuition amounts...'OH, my parents pay for my schooling.'  I tried not to look shocked but my jaw fell a little.  You're twenty something, living at home, your mother makes you food daily, you don't pay rent or any bills of any kind and your bachelors degree is paid for.  'Uh, well I pay for my books...books are way expensive.'  You think I'm being jealous, don't you?  Um, fuck yes I'm jealous...jealous that she has it so fucking easy in an increasingly expensive world... but then another feeling began to creep up my spine...disgust.  I was truly disgusted that this individual had no concept of what it meant to be an individual.  Another welp scurried over from the dredges of the building and shouted, 'What's wrong with living at home!?  My mom cleans my room and does my laundry for me!'  Dear God, they're everywhere....
I tried to explain to her that in the animal kingdom, from which we came and most still reside, every animal at some point leaves its family to make its own.  Every little birdie must leave the nest and fly or fall to the fucking ground.  I attempted to woo her with the freedom of it all, the independence,  the allure of pissing with the door open...all pursuits to open her eyes and release her were unsuccessful.. Worse, her succubus friend exacerbated matters as they bonded over how much their 'rents still do for them.

So here we are Parents.  You're creating life sucking monsters who do nothing but take, receive and refuse to give back for it may inconvenience them somehow.  I am inconvenienced on the daily and it has made me a strong-willed, successfully motivated, grounded, thoughtful individual.  How will these people be when they do finally get out into the big bad world?  Will they siphon off every valuable resource because that's how you taught them to behave?  There will be no respect or thoughtful introspection about what to and what not to purchase, as the money comes from mommy and this black leather Prada thingie that is slung over her arm.  Will they have no compassion for those less off because they've always had it all?  Will they ever understand what it means to fall?  To get up?  How will their growth as people be measured if they only have your eyes and wallet depths to measure up to?  How will these 'takers' ever learn to only take what they need and not what they want?  Forbearance will be lost to the ages as dignity wanes, spurred by the notion that success is not measured by effort but by ownership.  How will this broken system of ours ever change if you continue to wash the hands of those responsible for getting dirty and changing it?  If the millennial's behind me have no concept of struggling to carry their groceries home, or making their own food, or cleaning up after themselves, how will the world suffer in the wake of these taking animals?  If the lunchroom at work is any indication, where no unseen slaving mother exists to take care of it all, we are so fucked.