Do your babies take up too much space?  Trying to find a good way to keep them contained?  What can you do?

Use a BABY CAGE!  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you too can have your own baby cage!

If this was a magical, fantastical, young adult literature world, and I had inadvertently been turned into a vampire (as usually happens), I would most definitely NOT go quietly into the good night into hiding and loathing of what I had become.

Nope.

I would also not go alone.

Not a chance.

You always read the vampires whining about being all alone, bla bla bla.  The first thing I would do is turn my family and friends into vampires too.  Well, not the kids yet.  You don’t want to spend all eternity changing diapers or listening to whining and tattling, after all.  Once they hit a decent age, past teenage angst and early 20’s annoyingness, they could become vampires too.

Anyway, back to turning friends into vampires…

We would make a dashing coven to be sure.

C would be first.  There’s no way I would want to go through eternity without my other half and that’s that.

Then there’s Lady Zod.  She and I have been partners in crime for years.  The secret to our success is not only never getting caught, but never even being suspected.  We could get lots of money that way and go along unnoticed in daily lives.  She could then turn her other half.

Then there’s Main Man who already has dreams about the two of us sitting in a corner of a totally Euro-trash club drinking wine while watching all the German hipsters (Why we’re in Germany, I’m not sure) dance to trashy pop songs.  At the stroke of midnight the strobe lights come on and the techno music gets louder.  All of a sudden, I nod and the doors imperceptibly lock.  It’s time to eat and nothing tastes better than hipster blood, full of self-righteousness and indignation, and what I’m calling “damn-the-man-ness.” So sweet!  We then set fire to the club as we silently slip into darkness.

Guido is an obvious choice.  He even already has the teeth to match.  Besides, we would need someone with some kind of actual work ethic to keep us grounded and his scientific ways can always be a benefit when speaking of an eternity.  Plus he could really make some great breakthroughs to better lives in all societies and all that do-gooder spiel.

I’m not including the whole list, obviously.  These are just some of the ones that would be included in what would only be known “the house.”  This would be a kind of special and vast compound with various wings and space.  Maybe hidden away in a forest, if we could be sure to get good internet and DirecTv (so C could still watch his Dolphin games).  Wherever it would be, we would need some space.

With all the time in the world, I think that I would also try my hand at tons of things that I have no time for now.  Just decide on various career paths.  I would continue with theater, maybe some movies, tons of jobs that I think I would be good at just to fill up the time.  Vacations would be plentiful and entire lives thought up at the drop of a hat.

Most of all, there would not be glistening whininess, no morose pining for a loss since the people I love would all be with me, or we could see each other as often as we like.  We, obviously, don’t all need to live together.  But, I’m sure, some of us would choose to do so.

The world, would be conquered.

So, if you were on the “Good” side of OWS (aka, the haves) you are better than the have nots of OWS and make the decisions for the entire group inside the lobby of  a bank (which is really “the common enemy”).  But we’re all equal here, right?

I really want to be the kind of person who sets their alarm for 5 am in order to get some exercise or whatever. I want to be one of those people who cheerfully awaken before dawn, get up while whistling a little tune (maybe some “Zip A Dee Doo Da” or something like that), get dressed and make their way out in the darkness to walk, or jog, or bike. Maybe they get themselves to the gym or to the basement or wherever the elliptical or the stationary bike or treadmill is and just get a move on. I am jealous of these people.

I am NOT one of them.

My alarm goes off almost every day at 6:10am. I proceed to press the snooze button twice. I need those 18 minutes. I need them just so that I can muster enough power to get out of bed, get ready, walk the dogs, get the kids ready so I can get Enzi to school on time. We HAVE to leave by 7:22. No later.
I don’t want to do any of that between 6:28 and 7:22 am. I want to turn around and cover myself back up and sleep for another two hours…. at least.

Sleep.

A beautiful word and concept.

Waking up at 5:00 is not.

I will never be able to be one of those people. During the summer, when it is already turning light before 6 am, is no better. It does not energize me or anything even near that.

Let me sleep.

Later on, I want coffee. And not just any coffee. Good, dark, strong coffee (preferably Brazilian) with some milk and sugar.

But nowhere near 5 a.m.

This is way more like it..

http://the53.tumblr.com/

Not so long ago, but what feels like centuries ago, my friends and I would receive a note letting us know when another friend would be flying back to town.  We would make our way to the airport about half an hour before the flight would arrive.  Breeze through security, where we would just throw our purses, wallets, and other things we were carrying (like signs and Taco Bell cups full of Mountain Dew) through the X-ray machine, walk through the metal detectors and right up to the gate.  There we would prepare ourselves with cans of silly string and giddily hold up our signs with such names as “Phillip M’Hole” and “Connie Linguez” and “Bob” while we would watch person after person walk out of the airplane hallway (Yes, I know that isn’t what it’s called, but it’s what we always called it).  Just then, our prey…um… friend… would walk out and immediately would be ambushed with tons of silly string while we laugh and show our awesome signs (which everyone who has already walked out of the plane has seen and, maybe, chuckled at).

I miss that.

I also miss food on airplanes.  Was it ever anything that you said “WOW!  I can’t believe this is SO good!” but it was food.  You never had to worry if the airport you were going to get stuck in for a layover had a Sbarro or if you would have time to run by the Starbucks.  You didn’t even have to worry if you would end up being stuck with McD’s again or if you were going to have to go eat at the slowest Chili’s on Earth (Yeah, talkin’ ’bout you Chili’s in the Charlotte Airport in North Carolina).  You would get your tiny portion of beef or chicken with some kind of side.  You would eat all of it, plus all the bread.  You might brave some salad with the extremely vinegar-y vinaigrette.  Then you would have desert.  That would be actually be pretty good.  Then you would get some coffee, tea, or milk.  If you had a long flight you would even get TWO meals or two and a snack!

Now you’re lucky if you get a cup of water and the tinyest bag of pretzles you have ever seen.  You really want food?  Shell out another $10 minimum or make your way to that same McDonald’s that everyone else is stuck eating at.  Or making sure that you hit that Sbarro that you’re so freaking glad the airport has… or maybe Nathan’s if you want a hot dog and some cheese fries.

And Starbucks.  You need the coffee to live through the chit chat with your seat mate, unless both of you have your phones and aren’t going to talk anyway because you’ll be watching whatever movie you want.  That is definitely an improvement to watching Revenge of the Pink Panther for the fiftieth time.

Does it really count as a counterculture stance again “Big Business” if you close your account when you are overdrawn?
I’m not sure it does.

To those who call themselves the 99%-

Be quiet!

You don’t speak for me.  It’s not my fault that your degree in philosophy or theater or whatever isn’t giving you the job that you think you deserve.  I majored in theater.  I call it majoring in being poor for life.  Less than 1% of theater professionals can make a living wage on theater skills alone.  You have to do other things.  It doesn’t matter what it is.  A job is a job.

Manual Labor- a JOB

Fast Food- a JOB

Minimum wage work- a JOB

Entry level work- a JOB

My job is not who I am, it’s what I do.   It doesn’t define me, but it sure as hell pays for me to be able to sit at this computer and tell you what I think.  It pays for my coffee and food and fun.

I don’t want to hear about how poor you are while you sit on your i-insert-whatever-you’re-holding-or-reading-this-on-right-now.  Poor is a four year old child standing atop a 10 foot pile of garbage flying a home made kite made from left over tissue paper pieces and a set of chopsticks.  That is poor.  That can’t afford a $7 cup of Fair Trade coffee (because that’s the only kind you drink because of bla bla bla). 

That is the real 99%

Not you.

And definitely not me.

My father was about eight or nine years old when the Germans occupied Greece during WWII.  He never really spoke about what went on or what he saw at that time.  I don’t blame him.  I think that had I seen the atrocities that happened during that time, I would want to forget as well.  Or, at the very least, not impart them on others.

The only thing he ever said about that time was that when he was little, he used to steal cement from the Germans.  I can see him doing that too.  I can just see some little snot nosed kid running down the streets of Thessaloniki with a bag of cement.  But, knowing my dad as I did, I see him having talked his way into getting some random German troops into giving him the bags of cement for free.

So, the TSA has some new programming for the naked machine which will make the images less passenger specific.  It’s basically being touted as an image more like a chalk outline and that the viewers can now be out in the open.

Here is what supposedly things will look like->

But it’s hard to believe since this what deemed a chalk ouline by the TSA before->

As for the visibility of the monitors, I’ve mentioned before that in Orlando I would have had a front row view of every naked image from my vantage point where I was putting on my shoes after walking through the regular metal detector, had the naked machines been in use.

My opinion, get rid of those machines.  Period.  They are a waste of time and money and we are no safer than we were way back when 10 years ago.