The Master Debaters

There's no other title for it.

I mean, I'm a creative person, and a sometimes funny person, but even creative people sometimes look at a thing and make the jerking off motion because that's all they've got.

The year and a half of politics leading up to the good part (the part where you vote for the President of the United States if you happen to be a citizen) is going to be especially stupid this time.

In some ways, I want to embrace the stupidity.  I mean...good comedy, right?

Meh...not really.

I mean, it's funny, in the right hands, but mine are tired hands.  As a person who lives here and a person with a over-abundance of empathy, I am ultimately forced to think about this stuff and the thinking leaves me exhausted. My brain is just wired to do it. I tend to think about All The People, like I believe our current President should, and does.

I am physically uncomfortable listening to people...being assholes to other people.

(Of course, your mileage may vary--I'm a Whitey McWhite Girl living in the Middle North, and there are likely plenty of people I've never heard of with very real issues I know nothing about, but yes, as soon as I hear about it, they live there too. With The All.  In my brain.)

I've been in public relations a long time, and I've watched American politics a long time.  My bold statement is this: You cannot be elected President in this country unless people think you are a good guy (or gal...). That means...you have to relate to what they are going through.  You must have empathy.  It is an absolute must, and it is nearly impossible to fake.

Because I firmly believe that you cannot be elected President of the United States without displaying empathy, I know that the billions of dollars, and hours upon hours of time being spent to parade these 17 people around is being completely and utterly wasted.

I want to clarify what I just said there.  I'm sure that each of the individual candidates, in their own space, at home with their families, etc. is probably smart, and nice, and civil to others, or maybe a jokester or family cut-up who makes breakfast for their spouse or takes good care of their families and friends...but that's not what they are selling.

What they are selling is..."I'm an asshole, and an asshole is what you need."

It simply is not true.  It has never, ever been true.

Ever.

There has not been one time in my life where I have needed one outside of my own personal anus, so...I call bullshit on the whole GOP field right now. Rubio is about the closest thing to a non-asshole they've got, if you ever listen to him in a one-on-one situation, but, how's he doing? Not as well as a perceived non-asshole should be.

So, my media friends will get richer, and comedians will do well, but what's in it for the rest of us?

Zip.

Zip, because the scenario that puts one of them in the White House involves several people having to DIE first, or otherwise be rendered unable to compete.  That's how much of a long shot we're talking about, here.

Thankfully the bullshit is getting more and more obvious every time--thanks Celebrity Candidates!  You're really driving the point home about how it is all just for show--but for now we still have to go through it, most of us holding our noses the whole way through.

And thank you Social Media for keeping it funny so we can at least laugh about it.  And the Daily Show, and Nightly Show, and all of the other sources of sanity I'll rely on until next November when I nerd out with Maddow on election night.

Til then...just a girl, making the jerk-off gesture over here (which, I suppose, since I'm a girl, looks like I'm offering, but whatever...), because that's all I've got for this bunch.

Mope and Suffer

People who suffer from chronic pain sometimes forget they suffer from chronic pain.

Let me rephrase that...people who suffer from chronic pain work hard to forget that they do, and sometimes achieve that result long enough to be unpleasantly surprised when it inevitably rears its ugly head.

Because if your choices are "mope and suffer" or "try to be as normal as possible," you try.

You always try.

And, depending on the nature of your situation, you can sort of get there. Everything seems normal.

Then one day you find yourself laid out on the sofa with the pillows stacked just so, watching Paul McCartney sound check videos on YouTube with only your right eye open because you think it is entirely possible your left eye might POP OUT due to the fact that it, and the rest of your face feel like they've been whacked with a shovel.

I might be slightly obsessed with that Shovel To The Face thing...

Also...hi! Have you seen that cool sound check video? Get it before the lawyers swoop in!

I...am never sure how to go about discussing the fact that I have basically had a headache every day for the last 11 years, or that my ears are always ringing a little, or I always feel a bit of pressure behind my eyes.  I prefer to avoid the subject entirely. The problem is, when you never talk about it, even your best friends forget that it's a thing. Then, when you're not acting like "yourself" they ask what's wrong and you say something like, "It's the same shit that's been wrong for 11 years."

Then everyone feels bad.

Ultimately I suppose that's why we avoid the topic--in addition to wanting to pretend it's not really happening: It's that you're trying to make other people feel better about the fact that you feel like shit by pretending you don't feel like shit.

That's not as martyr-y as it sounds. Maybe you got sick of them asking about it when it first started happening, or maybe they were just never all that interested to begin with.

So you pretend, until you can't.

I'm so used to pretending I'm fine that even when the pain comes back kicking, I maintain my normal activity level long past the point that I should. It gets to the level of, "Hey dipshit, it doesn't matter what pair of glasses you put on. Your eyes are blurry BECAUSE YOUR HEAD IS FUCKED UP."

Anyway...that's my day, today. Sofa-bound. I'm telling the blog instead of telling my fiends because I'm pretty sure nobody here will ask me to explain it or tell me I should "just go to the doctor," as if that thought had never occurred to me in the eleven years I have had a headache. (The only person I want to talk it over with LESS than a friend would be yet another effing doctor...) Secretly I want my friends to bring me ice cream and keep me company but I suppose "mope and suffer" is meant to be done alone.