An update.

(With apologies and gratitude to Anthony, who received an e-mail suspiciously similar to the text below just a few moments ago. Whatever, I'm sick and feel like a jerk for having fallen off. I'm trying to catch up, y'all.)

The Political

I saw this BBC article a couple of months ago, and I wish to god he had named the person quoted in this exchange:

A leading Republican, who was in Congress for more than 10 years, answered my question: "Who can beat Obama?" with a casual, "a mammal". Then he added sadly: "But they are all reptiles."

We're all hoping that they destroy each other and don't end up putting up someone who looks moderate enough to lure away disenchanted Dems. In the meantime, I'm usually too focused on keeping down my food anytime one of their god-awful faces is on my tele to pay much attention to what they're saying, and that's probably preserving my sanity.

The Personal

I had an interesting four-day weekend: I went to Florida to meet Colleen's family. They're in the suburbs of Tampa - which is to say, Tampa; the whole bloody city's one big suburb - and they are hardcore Republicans with Christian overtones and Tea Party inclinations. They've long since made their peace with their gay daughter, but loving her deeply and wanting a good and safe life for her somehow does not equal choosing not to vote for people who want her miserable or preferably dead. It's a conundrum.

I had been warned of their political leanings and Colleen had pleaded with me repeatedly not to get involved in any kind of political discussion with them, mostly because a) I'm obviously not going to change their minds, and b) her Dad is a... fucking fucking fuck, I've lost one of my Australian words... he likes to start trouble because he thinks it's funny... AUGH. I get really upset when that happens. I've started forgetting words and street names; I couldn't come up with the name of the Annandale a while back and I drove myself crazy with it. Stupid and unimportant, except that it isn't at all. Anyway, whatever the word is (and please post in the comments if you know what it is)*, that's what he is, so the only way to avoid getting into an ugly and unwinnable argument is to refuse to bite in the first place. But it's hard when you're pottering around in the kitchen and notice the Obama countdown clock prominently displayed on the counter, and when politics keeps coming up in conversations going on around me, and also, well, have you met me?

Fortunately I managed to keep well out of it, and it all went swimmingly and they liked me very much. But it was weird being in that environment. In some ways it felt almost disturbingly familiar - the beaches; the crazy flora I've never seen Stateside, including a bottle-brush tree in their front yard! - and in others it felt so completely unrelatable. The place has no soul, and that's a big part of it - it's all planned/gated communities and strip malls and chains, not an independent anything to be found anywhere - but the other was definitely the people. You'll hear that Southerners are much friendlier, but I don't think that's correct: it's warm, but it's automatic; it's manners, not friendliness. With the people, as with the city, there's no there there. It's dead inside. And the politics are effing terrifying. I really do fear for this country.

But I'm trying to focus on the good of the trip, which was that her family really did seem to like me. I was so fucking terrified: it's been a long time since I dated someone who cared what her family thought. It's a lot more nerve-wracking this way (even though it probably says some very good things about Colleen and the choices I'm making these days. Look at me, growing up).

The Patriots

Didn't happen. Did not happen. Don't know what you're talking about.

XOXO

* EDIT: The word is stirrer. Which I remembered while brushing my teeth, because why not.

For fuck's sake, Australia.

God help you. The next three years will take a lifetime to recover from.

Here we go.

Looks like my fears are coming true.

In through the nose, out through the mouth.

You guys.

For the last two days I've been having run-ins with the American taxation and health care systems. They are... like, I don't even have the words. I don't know how to say all the things that are wrong or how astoundingly wrong those things are. I don't know how it is that either of these systems could be so completely broken and yet still be the civic equivalent of required reading.

I am not stupid. I am not lazy. I am not trying to do anything illegal, immoral, or even remotely out-of-the-ordinary. And yet I have, on three separate occasions over the last 24 hours, been reduced to tears by the incomprehensible garbage that governs my ability to comply with (not break, not stretch, not find-a-loophole-out-of, but comply with) federal and state law, and to access and pay for (not abuse, not cheat, not rort, but access and pay for) basic health care when I need it. And along the way I have talked to people who are kind but lack the knowledge or ability to help me; or who are unkind and uncooperative and lack the desire to help me; or who just plain need a punch in the mouth and make me want to move to Abu Dhabi tomorrow rather than deal with their bullshit one fucking second more; who are all employed to (at least in theory) help me and millions of other people do exactly what I am trying to do. None of this, none of the system that has grown up to support hundreds of millions of people, makes any fucking sense.

In Last Chance to See, Douglas Adams wrote an awesome bit about how hard it was for him to discuss two obnoxious German students he had met in Africa because everything about them was such a stereotype. Writers, he said, should be in the business of destroying stereotypes, not enforcing them. He eventually decides to deal with the problem by making them Latvians instead, which made all of their annoying qualities interesting instead of cliched, and also allowed him to use the line, 'a smile played across his thin Latvian lips' - an excellent result all around. Unfortunately, I do not have that luxury. My recent experiences are so horribly, stereotypically, fundamentally American that to assign them to any other country would rob them of their power (and be unnecessarily cruel to whatever nation I'd picked on). But the flip side of this is that because everyone already knows that our health care system sucks ass and our tax codes were written by day patients, I cannot communicate how truly heinous it is to have to deal with these things in real life: if I rant about it, I sound whingy; if I joke about it, I sound like a hack (amirite, ladies?); and if I try to give you the information straight, I still sound like I'm exaggerating because unless you've been through it personally you would not believe that it could be this fucking ridiculous. So this is where I'll end. I'll shake it off and get on with my day, because that's all I can do, because somehow I've ended up back in a country where these systems are the systems.

AUGH.

I am *cranky*. I just had 3 1/2 hours of belly dancing, in which I was spectacularly useless and injured myself besides. The first 90 minutes was rehearsing my new sword piece, which is both my first solo and my first sword anything, and &?@*%#!!!. Last week we did the first half of the choreo, and my sword work was fine but the rest of my body was having the day off (to the point that my very, very supportive teacher could muster little more than, 'um... I'm sure you'll be fine'). This week we finished the choreo, and my body was more or less behaving but the sword didn't want a fucking bar of it. It would not stay anywhere I put it, and I ended up dancing the entire second half with my hand on the hilt EVERY TIME I RAN IT THROUGH. FOR 90 EFFING MINUTES. Oh, and it went crashing to the floor at one point - which it has never done before - and caught me hard on the wrist, right on a nerve, so I had some really fun tingling all through my thumb and will have a whacking great bruise there tomorrow.

And then, as if that wasn't enough, I had another rehearsal right after with the troupe, wherein we were learning a new drum solo. Except it wasn't new to me, as I did it for six weeks in Zehara's class (which is separate from the troupe) a few months ago. But do you think I could get a fucking step right? No. No I could not. By the end, Zehara was openly laughing at me and telling the rest of the girls about how I'd cussed my way through my first lesson with her. Which, I had to laugh too - it was pretty funny - but it was dead clear that she'd just given up on me tonight. I was not to be helped, so she'd written me a pass. But honestly, I was just... I don't even know how to spell the sound, you guys. And I'm performing both of these songs A WEEK FROM SUNDAY.

I need to lie down.

XOXO