Up The Middle

We have come to the conclusion that if u only paid attention to billboards in this city you would think its the worst place to live. They're all advertisements for alcohol treatment centers, rehab, rape consueling, strokes, hospitals, health care, and accident claims. What the fuck, the ten thousand legitmate businesses in this city and none of them can afford a billboard ad. We have our bad parts of town just like every major city but damnit what are you trying to say welcome to columbus become and alcoholic, drive drunk, get into and accident, and have a stroke but don't worry we'll take u to st. francis!

Went to the piggly wiggly downtown today cuz lace wanted a certain type of little debbie that you can oddly only find there. Well this piggly wiggly is located in a poorer part of town and as such caters to a lot of people on foodstamps, etc. Well we're standing in line and the lady in front of us who is obviously on a budget is trying to pay with her EBT card and its not going through. Then i overhear another man surrounded by wife and kids getting increasingly loud near the managers booth about the fact that it is saying hes only got 6 dollars left on his when thats not what his balance was last week. Long story short it turned out that this was a national problem with the ebt cards and while the money wasn't actually gone from the cards, the store wasn't getting paid either. Basically it boils down to you can't buy these groceries today, give the EBT people a call on tuesday (b/c monday is MLK day). I'm fucking appalled, these are people with very limited budgets relying on these cards to feed their families and they can't even buy groceries until this is "fixed" on tuesday! That is fucking bullshit.

I felt so bad for these people, and i wish i was in a position where i could have bought all the groceries for them. It also made us think about how good we have it, how i'll just swipe that piece of plastic- if theres a problem with that card then they'll take this one, or cash. But everybody doesn't have that luxury and i think when we live in a good social strata sometimes we don't think about that. We take our purchasing power for granted. That was just one of those times that was kind of perspective setting.

Lastly, i get tired of the ever expanding population of yuppie americans. Heres the newest stupidity- you've seen them the little family stickers that have stick figures (or sometimes photos) with the families names up under them and sometimes the pets too. Its like a child predators dream come true. Ok so on your car, possibly one of the most public items u own, they have the parents names and the kids name, and perhaps what they look like (if not just watch the car they'll be out soon). "Hey Timmy your mom Laura said i was supposed to come pick u up today." It honestly doesn't take a lot of info to convience a child that you're legit. And if you have one of those stickers paired with a my childs an honor student at soandso middle or a sports ball with the childs name and number or both then you've just basically given the predator a script. Little johnny goes to rivertown middle and plays baseball there and his parents are ross and jane and they have a beagle named max. C'mon, just go ahead and put yr kid in the panel side van! Some of us are putting way too much personal info on a vehicle in a day and age where armed with one singular piece a criminal can steal your whole idenity. Sometimes people really need to think....

Whats been going on with me? Not a whole lot, mainly just work as usual. Been kind of depressed and feeling stuck in a rut lately but don't care to delve into that at the moment. Physically speaking life is pretty good though. Hope everyone else is doing well.

 Sometimes i think that its better to wonder how it could have been rather than to find out how it really is....

I was reading the journal of an aquaintence of mine (no shes not f-listed) who i don't mind conversing lightly with on messenger from time to time, though in depth conversations are something i avoid pursuing. This is b/c on top of being a very egotistical know-it-all (of which she actually knows very little), she lives in her own little faux "Leave It To Beaver" world where everyone is a carbon copy in little suburbia. Not that her real world is even like this but she blinds herself to everything she doesn't want to see, she doesn't read the news (internet or otherwise), has no idea about national or world events, thinks the Bible is hands down the hardcore word of God, becomes immediately angry and defensive about any opposing view point, believes that all LGBT persons are on the fast track to hell, and that monogamy and monogamous love are the only ways a relationship can be (b/c otherwise yr going to hell), among a myriad of other self serving and Christian-centric views. 

She is also an unrepentant and self admitted geek- we're talking being immersed in renassiance and victorian culture, writing strange sci-fi victorian era love stories (however that works), having tea and fantasy theme parties, dressing up for Harry Potter and other movie openings, and the list goes on and on (not that i have a prob with any of this in itself- to each their own, but she has a strong tendency to act like she is the normal one and that other subcultures are odd and should act more like her ie. "What, you don't know what Harry Potter character i am in that pic? What?! You don't even read Harry Potter?")

Now the reason i give this backdrop is b/c she made and then wore out in public down a fairly busy throroughfair a victorian-era neck-to-ankle dress (think Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice). Obviously this encited plentiful stares and a few comments from passing motorists. Well her post was all about how she felt a little self conscious after this and whine, whine, whine, oh please validate me, whine. In this super long post where i'm thinking if it didn't bother you (her own words) then why are we still talking about it, she has the gall to say that the reason she got stares and comments was b/c she lived in a "town full of small minded, conservative, republicans." And i about fell out of my chair- you have got to be fucking kidding me! I was thinking YOU ARE part of the small minded conservative republicans of yr town. You think by wearing some antiquated fashion in public that that makes u a raging liberal. I dont' think so honey. I'm sorry but you did this knowing that you would get attention, some of which could possibly be negative, then get upset. It doesn't make others close-minded when they find your taste in fashion odd. I see people in strange outfits all the time, while i don't say anything, i do think some are decidedly weird. If you chose to be different, to go against the norm, no matter what that is, expect and accept the negative attention it sometimes garners. Most importantly don't sit there and use the Bible to justify all your beliefs and prejudices, and be totally uneducated about the politcal and social world around u, yet call others close-minded b/c they think yr outdated fashion sense isn't normal.

Just found it funny how an uber-conservative person wanted to make a comment on the close-minded-ness of her community all b/c they didn't accept her outfit. Oh how blind some can be....

So in that limbo state between being fully asleep and fully awake the other morning i had the strangest thought. I imagined a small commuter plane (think cessna) flies a cross pattern in front of an on coming jumbo jet (think 757). The pilot of the jet sees this and realizes that its a collision course so in this moment of panic does he try and stomp on the nonexistant brake?

Given the ubiquity of cars and the mere fact that anyone who has riden shotgun with a bad driver has probably trried to step on that imaginary brake at times, the answer would seem to be yes.... 

Someone needs to do a study :P