**SPOILER ALERTS**

One bad habit I've fallen into since being out of work is that of staying up late at night. Well, to be honest, I used to stay up too late even when I was working...

One good thing about staying up late at night is that I get to watch some really interesting films that I might not otherwise have the chance to view.

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Well, I just got home from a job interview with a local terrazzo flooring company, a very nice little outfit that I would love to work for if given the chance.

This is my second really good interview with a really good company -- I also have feelers out with an engineering/environmental firm in Manhattan.  I'm very pleased that both companies are leaning green and LEEDS keeps coming into play. 

So I found it very interesting that, while sitting in the reception area this afternoon, I had a chance to read an essay by Al Gore in a recent issue of Newsweek.  I found it very moving, so I thought I'd share it with you all. 

Had I not been called into the conference room for my interview so quickly, I would've also read the entire article about Gore that accompanied the essay.  Since I only had a chance to read the first few paragraphs there, I'm still reading it now, here at home.  I'd love to hear some feedback from folks like Donal here in the comments. 

Meantime, to sum up, I really like the fact that "green buildings" are becoming the talk of the town lately.  May the trend continue.

And I don't like the taste of the acai berry.

I don't have a penis that needs enlarging or extending, and even if I did, I'd like to leave it in nature's hands, thank you very much.

When I was a kid, Spam came in a can and was something we saved for camping or when the lights went out for a week in an ice storm. 

I don't want to be a medical billing assistant at home.  I'd rather work for a living, from an office.

I don't need to know my credit score, because I basically have no credit.

The last thing I need when I read the readers' posts at a political website is to see more ads, after having fought them down day in and day out in my own personal email in-box and spam folder.

TPM, pay heed.

Thanks.

She had once thought that Nick was cute.

Nick worked for Otis Elevators. He was shorter than she was, and had a baby face, but he made up for it with a mustache.

He was trouble, and she could tell. But she liked that about him. She liked trouble, in a way.

They'd ride home together on the train and he'd be in the smoking car, but not quite. He'd eventually end up on the little platform that connects the cars. The one that people could throw themselves off of, it they weren't careful.

His long auburn hair caressed his collar and his mustache hugged his upper lip, and he seemed, to her, like a child's doll trying to pass as an adult doll.

He was shorter than she was, as I've mentioned. But she tried not to let that get in their way.

She tried to befriend him, but found him unfriendly.

His nerdier, taller friend was nicer to her, but there was no chemistry. To this day she can't remember that friend's name.

But each night after work she'd rush to make the train that she knew they'd be on, and she dressed in the morning in the hopes that they'd notice her in the evening.

Work was just the go-between. The filler in her day. A paycheck, but not the excitement.

And then, one night, there was Dan.

Dan seemed to be a friend of Nick's.

When she left the smoking car to stand in between the cars of the train, there was Nick, as usual. But, that night, he had a friend with him. A friend introduced as Dan. Wearing a jeans jacket, with blond curly hair and the bluest of wide blue eyes.

He was taller than she. By about an inch.

He stayed quiet while she and Nick make their bantering small talk. They passed stop after stop before Dan moved close enough to get his arm around behind her. He held onto the railing that she leaned against.

Eventually, she realized that his thumb was gently trailing her spine as she leaned against him and the railing both.

Gradually, she realized that she liked it.

She melted into his touch.

They smoked cigarettes and talked about art and Manhattan and all that was wrong with the world. Nick hung around, opposing them or maybe spurring them on, adding to the conversation while ignoring the fact that Dan's arm was around her and his thumb was stroking her back oh so gently.

She was not ignoring that fact at all, but she pretended to, for appearance's sake.

She leaned herself into his questing hand as much as she could, while trying to remain nonchalant. He himself seemed almost vacant, his blue eyes staring not at her but at the passing landscape. She had never met him until now, but was welcoming his touch, and wondering what it meant.

Long Island passed by them as Long Island will: Hicksville, Huntington, Stony Brook.

At Stony Brook, Dan suddenly turned to face her and they gazed into each others' eyes and then he kissed her. It was so sudden and yet expected, it made her wonder at the timing of it all. And then he walked down the metal steps and onto the platform of the station and was gone.

She had not even learned his full name, nor his number.

She only knew his name was Dan, and his eyes were blue, and he was sweet enough to stroke her back for miles before giving her a gentle kiss goodbye.

She rode the train back and forth for months waiting to see him again. Hoping to meet up with his friends.

Wait.

Was it before or after Nick took her virginity?

Years later, she's not sure.

Nick took her virginity at her bequest.

She practically had to beg him to take it.

Afterwards, she wished she'd never learned to beg.

But her little sister had just undergone an abortion, and her best friend from college had just lost her cherry too, and she was feeling somewhat outdated, and wanting to join a club of sorts.

So she saw Nick there on the train, and was wearing a dress and trying to look sexy.

Nick wasn't interested enough in the looks, so she one-upped him. She said, "Hey, I want to lose my virginity."

He might have said, "Good luck."

She took that as a challenge, of course. And then talked him into doing it, as only she could.

When the train made its last stop in Port Jefferson, she followed him to his mother's car in the parking lot, and he let her get in beside him.

He drove down familiar roads and then took an unfamiliar turn into the woods, and drove for what seemed like miles to her.

Parked suddenly.

Grabbed her suddenly.

Kissed her suddenly.

She tried to warm herself into the kiss, but he was already pulling her into the backseat.

It was a large car.

She stretched herself out, beneath him, and waited for the fireworks to start.

But after a few kisses, he did nothing but lift her dress, tear off her hose and panties, and push himself into her.

She balked a bit, she writhed a bit, and wondered why he hadn't tried to at least warn her tender parts of the invasion yet to come.

Her head was mashed against the armrest of his mother's car's back seat door. Her legs were spread and taking such that she'd never taken before.

She described it, later, as a hot poker, stinging and burning and somewhat overwhelming...not welcome at all.

The shame of having one's legs spread in the cold back seat of a cold boy's mother's car was just too much to bear. She tried to at least put her arm around his neck and kiss him, but he was not interested in closeness. He was intent upon the job.

When it was over, she felt she only had herself to blame. Especially when he said, "There's something wrong with you. I'm going to take you back to the train, and find a chick who's willing and warm and wants it."

She'd wanted her virginity gone, and he got the job done. But the cost......the cost.....

It would take years for her to get over that night. She'd felt some small satisfaction in going home and confiding to her mother that she'd got the job done. Over with. Messy stockings and all.

So much blood! Her mother cried. She didn't cry. She wanted to stay brave and think it didn't matter.

But matter, it did. And she knew she could never take it back. She could never have that moment back. That first time. It should have been right.

It should have been Dan, or any man, who would've done it right.

She must've met Dan before then, then. Right? Or maybe after, that could've been right.

Obama and his administration are against pissing off the Republicans with a public option, so he's holding tight onto Olympia Snowe. 

He feels that holding her tightly will win him a bipartisan victory on healthcare.

He feels that he needs her because otherwise six or seven of those asshat Blue Dogs will turn coat, and we won't get the vote.

The public option is this close to being an opt out, as in, Obama will opt out of doing anything spectacular.

Have I got it right so far?

And, if so....how is this any different than the Right, so far?

(For a lady I know)

So many words, so many people

So much time on our hands

I understand

You'd think we'd be spending our days telling people

all of the things we've never shared before

(they'd think we should be spending our days reading

all of the things that we've read before)

At home, it's harder

to live with oneself

No one else

cats and paintings grow madder

Many a word unspoken, unread

unheard will never matter

We've made a lot of mistakes in our lives

sometimes caused our families strife

In our lives, with our little lies

We've helped many a loved one and they've done it back

and with family, it's not like they'd balk, after all

But it's hard sometimes to say flat out

I love you all

so you put up a wall

And now is simply not the time for walls

No, not the time at all

If I marry, I prefer my husband to be alive. Makes going to bed with him a hell of a lot easier, for one thing.

That being said, there was one point in my teens where I daydreamed about becoming a nun. My eldest sister was becoming a Catholic and there were times when I felt in awe and a bit envious. The ceremony, the let us prays, the faith...that sort of thing. She gave me her CCD booklets to study, wherein I found a lot of stuff about the father, the son, and the holy ghost, and I determined that it was easy to understand the father/son thing, but the ghost made no sense, but that was okay, because I had watched a lot of Scooby-Doo.

I started praying to Jesus, one night, in my long white nightgown, kneeling beside my bed, and I tried to open my heart to him the way my sister's CCD booklet told me to, and then I turned off the lamp on my nightstand (wishing in my heart that I could blow out a candle, instead, because that just seemed so much more appropriate, somehow), and then I went to bed with an open heart and open mind.

The next morning, I awoke with my first ever migraine.

Now, I'm sure the two have nothing to do with each other, but....was the timing not divine, or what?

Anyway, I decided through the years that I'm just not religious. I'm not against the thought of God or Buddha or Allah or anyone else, I'm just not into it enough and, even if I was, I'll be damned if I try to pigeon-hole myself into one little religion. Literally. I'll most likely be damned. I'll decide to become a Catholic only to die and be told at the Gates, "Um, sorry.....Catholics aren't allowed. Go back down there and do ten Hail Mary's, and St. Peter might let you live again to become a Buddhist." Or I'll decide to go to my local Congregational or Unitarian Church only to discover it wasn't DEEP enough, or SERIOUS enough, to warrant God's attention, let alone a backstage pass to his daily concert.

My parents baptized me as a Protestant and I attended Sunday School as a kid, but when it came to my family actually practicing our faith, we pretty much sucked at it. My dad confided in me that the closest he could come to pinpointing himself on the religion map was at "Druid". Years earlier, he had watched Exodus and decided to become Jewish. This lasted all of a few days, because he realized that the only reason he wanted to become Jewish was so that he could be like Paul Newman. He then went through a similar phase after watching Lawrence of Arabia, but with different results. By the time he watched Last Tango In Paris, we were ready to lock him up in the attic. But, I digress. My Protestant mother considered becoming a Catholic once, simply because she found the Pieta so soothing, but once she started reading up on it, she decided being a Catholic was too much work. I tend to agree.

All that being said, I'm rather sad to learn, belatedly of course (these things always come to me belatedly, but without the migraines, thank gawd), that the Catholic Church is losing their religion. Um, their religious women, to be exact.

Seems more and more women want live husbands, and less and less women want humble (albeit pretty)  homes to live in while performing good deeds for little pay.

And this is rather sad.

Myself, I'm thinking it has a lot to do with the Catholic schoolgirl uniform, and less to do with the true calling.

But, call me agnostic.

Have you guys been watching the top news headlines on Josh's front page?  There's this and this, right at the top of the news feed, and both are making me feel quite good right now.

Just thought I'd point these two stories out, in case y'all are missing them.

Just wanted to give you all a head's up that there's a radio play being aired tonight on FM radio in LA and also via the web.  It features actor/activist Ed Asner and I found some information on it at Mike Malloy's website just now.

Anyone interested in the Middle East and/or peace might want to give it a listen.  You can also get a CD of the broadcast and/or make a donation if you click on the link provided at Malloy's site, or just go here.

Looks interesting.

She put her new suit on, gathered up the house keys and her portfolio containing ten copies of her latest, greatest resume, and took a deep breath.

Then she exhaled, smiled at the cats, and wished herself luck.  Er, scratch that.  Success.  Not luck.

By the time she make it down the three flights of stairs, she was almost ready for the cold bracing weather.

She walked with head held high all the way to the train station, bought her round trip fare, and then sat on the bench with legs crossed and hands clasped for fifteen minutes straight.  Without praying, or glancing down the tracks.

Got on the train and watched the Bronx go by.

Not until the deep dark of the tunnel did she let herself feel nervous, but one quick glance at her reflection told her she'd be fine.

She made it to the office suite and had to take turns with another woman just as hopeful, just as needy, just in the nick of time.

She found out during the interview that this was just a quickie, an overview before the next big interview.  So she did her best to ace this audition.

Once it was over, she ventured outside into the cold city air, and felt the heat of the people passing by.  She'd forgotten how warm Manhattan could be.  How the heartbeat of footsteps and traffic keeps one alive.  And here it is Fall, after all.  Central Park's falling leaves leave their scent throughout midtown while only barely giving a hint of the burning chestnuts yet to come.  But come they will, she knows.

The late afternoon sun was not warm enough to push her on to other opportunities this day, so she made her way back to the shadowy entrance of Grand Central.  Found her train easily enough, and sat for twenty minutes waiting for its jaws to close before the beast containing her would move.

She was reluctant to go home, but her day here was done.  Other beasts needed taming.  Including her soul, which needed reclaiming, before she'd let the city swallow her whole yet again.

She had missed it, she had kissed it goodbye once, and now the hello was all too familiar.  Twenty years after leaving it, she needed it again.

What beast had been tamed, she had to wonder aloud, before giving her cats their afternoon snack and then stripping herself of her suit.

This is how I'd start the day:

I'd ensure that every person on this planet was able to get up and get out of bed just as the sun starts rising, and I'd make each person go to their window and I'd have them watch the sun rise and I'd instill in them the hope that this day, of all days, will be the best day ever.

I'd ensure that they not get distracted by the neighbor's baby crying or by the condition of their surroundings or by their fear of defeat or their need for retaliation. Instead, I'd make them all feel grateful to be alive and awake and moving, and I'd make them all smile despite themselves.

I'd ensure that enough food and money was in their wallet for this day - but no more than enough - so that each and every person was on the same footing, and yet all their cups would be full.

This is how I'd spend the day:

I'd ensure that people would think outside of their own boxes, think long-term, and long distance. They would wish for global peace and the end of starvation and ignorance. Not because someone urged them to, but because they really felt it was time to think about others, as well as our planet.

I'd ensure that no news would need to be written except for good news about people doing good things. There would be hour-long documentaries and pages upon pages written about "Life": A woman who works full time as an accountant yet spends her weekends tutoring children. A man who works as a butcher yet takes in stray dogs and cats. A city dweller who's found a way to grow vegetables on his 4x5 balcony. These people would be highlighted in the news not for being extraordinary, but for being ordinary, and they would be the only new news of the day.

This is how I'd end the day:

I'd ensure that everyone would go home after a productive day to a peaceful place, a safe haven, either alone or with their loved ones and family, feeling fulfilled and yet not tired. Feeling ready for another day just like this one.

I'd ensure that every person on earth had a safe and comfortable place to lay themselves down, where they could just close their eyes and smile about the day they'd just had, and dream about and plan for the day yet to come.

I'd ensure that not one of them would care to be, nor want to be, nor need to be Ruler For A Day.

I'm talking about homeless schoolchildren. I opened yahoo.com today and there was the headline about 1 in 5 schoolchildren in PS 636 and I thought to myself, "This is horrendous - just unbelievable!" So I went digging around the internet only to discover that the number of homeless school kids across the country has gone up tremendously over the past year.

I posted quite a long time ago that I, myself, had once been homeless...but I was an adult and working at the time, and very few people in my office were even aware of the fact that I was living out of a pickup truck. I cannot even imagine what it must be like to be a child in school who has no home to go to at night.

It just breaks my heart.

Time for me to start volunteering at the food shelter up here.  And as soon as I start working again, I'll be donating money as well as time. 

And Dickday and I are talking baseball and Nobel Peace Prizes, and love and war, and stuff.

Join us with your TPM user name and celebrate a good Friday!

We've all been teenagers.  We all have our stories about our teenage years.  Our embarrassments, our shining moments.  Our realizations.  Our setbacks.

Shit.  I could name this post "Prom Night" and maybe 10 of you will comment about your memories of it, maybe even provide funny links to photos of garish dresses and big hair - both sexes - and mullets.  Some of you could share stories of limos gone wrong and heartaches where the girl you wanted to ask made you take her best friend instead.

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Paging Dr. Quinn!
Paging Dr. Quinn!
Wanted:  Land within your borders
Wanted:  Land within!

Code Blue!  Emergency!  Stat!
Just ask Bwakfat!
We Left must leave America
We are under mass attack!

Please find us, sir, a commune
where we'll stay free and immune
Please do you hurry, Esquire
for the Right is coming soon

The Chicken she is from your parts
but please don't eat her parts
We offer up instead for you
much celery...and farts

Dick can offer history
I offer histrionics
betwixt us two we both consume
a lot of gin and tonics

The broom can bake and also sweep
And Synch can dance and sing
Jeezus he pretends to sleep
but unions are his thing

Grouch and Stillidealistic
could together school us all
and keep us realistic
as we watch the empire fall

All of us can find a farm
and live on it in peace
We'd live there oh so happily
our troubles they would cease

So can you find a corner
of your country fair and dear
for us to move to peacefully
while staying free and clear

The middle class bills all shall pass
the clever bull dogs roar
I got my reasons for skipping class
and letting eagles soar
And if my poem has lost its sense
I hope that you'll ignore
the names that I've left off the fence
but written on the door

A clique, a knock
a click, a rock
a group that we adore
A brick, a sock
the sick, the crocked
what matters anymore?

We all are one and one for all
in the land of Canuckstan
as long as Quinn will take us in
and let shit not hit the fan

So page the Doctor
Page the Esquire
Page dear Dr. Quinn
Your borders are enticing us
So, darling, let us in

Cuz sense is lost upon us here
and we all got our reasons
for thinking clear is not so clear
and the Right does lean towards treason

Miguel the Peeg is cycling
so Quinn's the last one left
to take us in while we let secession
leave us all bereft

Donal on his bicycle
may meet up with the Peeg
and tell us all when all is safe
and we'll return again

To the land we love and hold so dear
but lost to the Right and the crazed
We'll take a break and then return
to the land of the free and the brave

By then the rest will be Glen Becked
and Limbaughed to perfection
and we can return to wave them off
as they embark on their defection