Black Smoke and All: I'm Back in the Saddle Again, but the Pope Is Not

I attended class yesterday and today. I usually would still be in class on a Tuesday, but my gymnastics professor sent out a message asking those of us who could do so to attend a 7:00 a.m. session that would cover both the gymnastics and tumbling courses for the week.   I then had two lectures through which to sit, so I'm finished for the day.

       There go the Men in Red: galaxy defenders.

There was an apparently unsuccessful attempt at selecting a pope, sending the resultant black smoke into the air. It's good that the election happens in Italy and not in the U. S,, because our Environmental Protection Agency would never stand for sending clouds of  black smoke into the exosphere.

What would be done to here in the U. S. to signify a requisite vote (I believe it's a two-thirds majority that is needed for a pope to be chosen.)?  Maybe someone could extend a white cross upward and through the chimney of the Sistine Chapel for a "yes" vote, and a black cross for a "no confidence" vote. Perhaps it could be an auditory signal.  Something upbeat, such as "Everybody Wang Chung Tonight,"  "Celebration" by Kool & the Gang, "The Hallelujah Chorus" from The Messiah, or any one of hundreds of upbeat passages could be used.  If the vote didn't reach the required two-thirds majority, something like  Chopin's Funeral March in B Minor,  "Highway to Hell," something by Pat Boone,  or Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" might work.  I'm barely tapping the well here. Possibilities abound.

                                                         
                            Better  than smoke signals?

Or the signal wouldn't necessarily have be auditory. When Kim Jong Il was born, spontaneous rainbows erupted in the skies all over the world. Why no spontaneous ubiquitous rainbows for the pope? Or, on a less global note, something like the bat symbol that was projected in the skies above Gotham City when Batman needed to be reached could be used.  Depending upon how much info the cardinals and the church as a whole wanted us to have, they could project into the skies an image  of the elected pope, perhaps with a halo over his head. If the election were unfruitful, the highest  (but not high enough) vote-getter's image could be projected, surrounded by a red circle with red slash across the image)  from some tower in the Vatican City into the skies above Rome. This --telling us who was closest but got no cigar -- is probably more info than the red vestments want to give the masses, but something similar could be conjured.  Maybe the image of  a generic, faceless pope with the red circle/slash icon could be used. Or perhaps the signal for a no-two-thirds-majority  vote could be  a Batman-projected image of the devil, complete with horns; most fitting, I'd say. Or, and I think this is my best idea  yet,  is flashing The Joker  (Cesar Romero's version; he'll always be the real joker)  a la the  bat signal when a useless vote has been cast and counted.  I'm not saying any of my ideas must be used, or that they're even good ideas, but they are more creative and less environmentally damaging than the black and white smoke signal nonsense.  Even native Americans have given up on smoke signals, and some of them are quite primitive in how they conduct their affairs, with all their operating of casinos and kicking tribal members out randomly to avoid having to share casino profits.

Interestingly, cardinals over the age of eighty are not only barred from consideration as potential popes, but are not even allowed to be a part of the selection process in terms of voting. They are invited to attend a meeting of the conclave before the voting process begins, but then are asked to leave the Sistine Chapel.This practice seems a bit ageist. I'm as anti-gerontocracy as is the next non-Mormon, and I can see the wisdom that Mormons apparently cannot see in not appointing a person above the age of eighty to a Church's highest post,  but to assume that a person of the age of eighty or beyond is incapable even of making a sound judgement as to whom might best serve as leader of a church is an awfully broadly sweeping generalization. Medical insurance companies, among other organizations,  routinely administer assessments measuring a person's level of cognitive function related to age,   i. e. dementia. Perhaps the Roman Catholic Church should devise a similar system for its cardinals. I''m not suggesting that 98-year-old Ersillo Tonini be made the next pope, either because of his age or in spite of it. I know nothing of Ersillo Tonini besides his age and cardinal status. He could be the most lucid creature on the planet, or he could be  lighting brown kindergarten-sized Crayola crayons and smoking them, genuinely believing that they're Cuban cigars. I'm using Cardinal Tonini merely as an example.

Jamming devices have been put into place to prevent any of the cardinals from leaking any privileged info.  If the Catholic Church cannot trust its cardinals to maintain confidentiality, who in hell can they (or we) trust?  Can't  the cardinals just be told to leave their cell phones off for the duration of the conclave?  Furthermore, why in hell are we, the masses, traipsing into confessionals on a regular basis to confess our innermost secrets to men whose ecclesiastical levels are lower than those of cardinals  if Cardinals cannot maintain confidentiality  regarding matters of extreme gravity? Why should I assume my  parish priest can keep my confidences?

I have questions as to why the ballots must be cast in secret, but perhaps such a thing is for the best. Even though  the church would somehow wish for us to believe otherwise, popes are every bit as human as is the next person. It might be difficult for a pope not to be influenced in decision-making processes by knowledge that a cardinal had cast a vote for or against him.

The cardinals are supposedly not voting again until tomorrow morning in whatever time zone the Vatican City happens to fall. Why? What more important things do they have to do than to elect their next leader?  Are they all so intent on catching the tonight's episode of "Celebrity Wife Swap" in real time that they must postpone the next vote until tomorrow morning? Give me a freaking break.

And one final thought/question/whatever?  These men are presumably dining on the people's dime. My guess is that they're not passing around jars of  of peanut butter and jelly and spreading the contents on bread all by themselves.  Someone roughly equal in skill to Giada De Lorentis or Mario Batali  is probably, even as I type,  preparing food for the cardinals that will make the food I will serve at the wedding I will most likely someday have look like In & Out Burger or school cafeteria fare by comparison.  In the name of feeding the hungry and clothing the poor, the cardinals owe it to themselves and to what they profess to believe to get this job done as expeditiously as possible  so that no more resources than absolutely necessary are wasted on this conclave.

           I'm throwing my full support behind this man.

My vote, even though I don't actually get a vote and my candidate is not considered eligible, is still for Father Alberto Cutie.  Just look at him. Is he pope material,or what?


# and amen

Interesting Goularte Post-Addendum

The girl on the right, next to Grandpa, is the one who most closely resembles Goularte #3.

Goularte kid #3, who is two grades behind me but almost my age,  sent me an email - I have no clue how she got my address - asking me about the University of California system.  Cognitively speaking, she's probably a standard deviation or  two above her brothers. I told her based on what little I knew about her and her family, I doubt that her parents would want her at the campus I attend, but that there are a couple of others within the system that might meet her needs. She doesn't want UC-Merced because it's too close to home, and I don't blame her. UC Santa Cruz still has a bit of a loosy goosy  reputation.  UCLA is probably not realistic for her to expect to gain admission, plus I don't think her parents would be comfortable with her in LA.  Berkeley is too far to the left for her family. UC-Riverside might be a good enough school, but who in his or her right mind would live in Riverside by choice? In my opinion, her best bets would be UC-Irvine or UC-Davis, or maybe even UC- San Diego.   I also recommended a couple of campuses in the California State University system, including Cal State- Stanislaus, Cal State- Sacramento, Cal State Long Beach,  and Cal State - Channel Islands.  I still don't really know if she's a realistic fit for the UC system, but that's hardly my problem. If her parents can afford the application fees, there's little harm in applying.

It just seems weird that after talking about this family after not having given them any thought for several years, one of them would contact me out of the blue.

I'm curious as to why she would care about my opinion.

She may be the normal one of the pack. You know how some familiies are entirely normal, but then have one really weird kid, or are totally bizarre and  have all weird kids except for a single normal one? She's kind of the Marilyn Munster of her family.

I feel sorry for her  -- not so sorry for her that I'd want to room with her or anything like that, but I  have compassion just the same.  My concern in part is that her family hates me so much that if anything went wrong in her life, they'd blame it on the advice I gave her and say I was trying to sabotage her, or say I told everyone she had mastitis or chlamydia or worse. (My cousin Philip says there were local rumors last year that she had chlamydia, but it's unwise to place too much credence  in a rumor mill. ) I feel for her, but my plate is full enough without her nutcase family adding to the insanity that I face on a daily basis. I probably need to try to help her connect with a mutual acquaintance who can advise her.  My mom may know a few people in the guidance counseling business who can steer her in the right direction while keeping my family's name totally out of the picture for her own good as well as for ours.  It's still a Catholic version of a Hatfield/McCoy situation as far as I can tell.

The Rousseaus, the Freitases, the Goulartes, and the Infamous Christmas Pageant

I wrote several years ago about a parochial school Christmas program at which I was the piano accompanist.   I don't really need to get into all the nitty-gritty details here, and so I won't. Suffice it to say that  the mother of the ailing Wise Man -- Luke Goularte -- knew he was not well and therefore should not have pushed him onto the stage in full Magi regalia.   It's damned hard to appear wise -- robe, crown, and myrrh or not, when one is in the throes of a norovirus or rota- virus, otherwise known as the stomach flu. Hell,  the kid could've been carrying around a copy of Gray's Anatomy, which might have been more appropriate than myrrh, since the title would at least have matched his skin tone, and he still couldn't have pulled off "wise," especially when he and everyone standing within the span of his breath knew he was about one-half of a burp away from a highly public catastrophe. Such would have been the case even if luck had been on "Balthazar's" side,  had the worst -of-the-worst not happened, and  had he not emptied his stomach of everything it held. From appearances, his poor, ailing stomach had been storing  partially digested food for days much in the manner a squirrel preparing for winter will store food in its cheeks.

In term's of David's mother's possible reasoning, "Balthazar" was the highest ranking role in the pageant in which any of  Mrs. Goularte's  children had ever been cast. She must have feared that, had she allowed her child to back out of his supporting role (not quite a lead, but at least not a bit part; after the fact, we all agreed he was was  the star of the pageant, intentional or otherwise) at the last minute, even with his 104-degree temp, all of the present and future Goularte children would have been relegated to livestock roles for as long as their association with the school were to continue.  While the role of Balthazar was not a lead by any stretch of the imagination, it was leaps and bounds ahead of  being assigned a  a livestock part, or, worse still, that of a bale of hay, which  actually was designated to a particular child whose mother  innocently brought daisies for a luncheon honoring Sister  Bernadette.  Sister Bernadette  was and presumably still is almost mortally allergic to daisies, and alternately cried and sneezed throughout the entire luncheon held in her honor.  The moral of this little parable is that, while nuns  take a vow of poverty, or at least I think they do, they take no such vow against revenge. Nuns have long memories, and if a person does anything at all to offend  a nun, one may expect long-term retribution from that nun and any and all allies she may have. In many cases, one would be relatively safe; most of the nuns I know have comparatively few allies. The sisters can barely tolerate with each other, much less get along with the population at large. Still, if one doesn't want his or her child to portray a hay bale in next year's Christmas pageant, one would do well to learn what flowers and other things set off allergic reactions with regard to specific nuns. The more important the nun, the more important it is to cater to her allergies.

I've taken far too long to make a relatively simple point here, which is that David Goularte's older brother, Luke, reenacted the role of Balthazar, the ailing Magi, on the night of one of the more memorable parochial school Christmas programs in  the history of  San Joaquin Valley Christmas programs.  According to arguably the most  efficient gossip mill to exist pre-technology (cell phones existed even  then,   but were dinosaur-like and typically were larger than most of the Goulartes' full-term babies, who were gestational diabetes by-products and thus weighed in at birth similar to or greater than newborn calves), barely seven-year-old Alexis Rousseau had deliberately chosen the song "American Pie" to fill the time when the contents  of Luke  Goularte's gastric system were being mopped from the auditorium stage to somehow add further humiliation to the Goularte family name. (Exactly how, after all that had happened,  a barely seven-year-old girl could further aid and abet in embarrassing  the Goularte family  falls under the category of a mystery wrapped in an enigma surrounded by a nutshell,  but we'll allow it for the sake of argument. Still, it would  seem as though the young boy and the mother who forced him, visibly ill, upon the stage, did quite well at dishonoring their own family name without sharing any of the credit with me.)  Anyway, Mrs. Goularte still held the cow/mastitis thing against me two years later, even as my mom was fighting the battle of her life with leukemia. The leukemia issue had little to do with the price of tea in China except to illustrate the level of animosity held by Mrs. Goularte. Even the idea that a barely-seven-year-old child and her twin brother were in grave danger to losing their mother to leukemia did not seem, by Mrs. Goularte's way of reasoning, to be sufficient reason to forgive, forget, and move along with life.

When much of the audience joined in to sing along  to "American Pie" as the vomitus was being cleared from the stage surface, the props, and the costumes of the other characters  as expeditiously as possible,  Mr. Goularte,  who enjoyed a rousing tune as much as did the next inebriated Azores dairyman, sang along with  the rest of those who participated,  and, I might add, according to my Aunt Victoria,  did so with gusto. Mrs. Goularte  took this not as being caught up in the moment or of making the best of a difficult situation  (it was, after all, the eldest Goularte child who had befouled the stage with vomitus) but rather  as disloyalty and dishonor directed  toward her [Mrs. Goularte] personally, since the child playing "American Pie" on the piano and the one who had inferred that she was  a cow were one and the same.

Mr. Goularte spent the twelve days of Christmas on the hospitality of the sofa in the dairy office.   All's well that ends well, though, or at least that's how the saying goes. At least three Goularte babies were conceived and born after the infamous Christmas program incident,  so some form of reconciliation had to  have been achieved. Whether or not mastitis was a factor in any future post-natal intervals isn't known to me, but I do know that I never again made the faux pas of alleging that David Goularte's mother, or,for that matter,  anyone else's mother, would have to be a cow in order to suffer from mastitis.

The Many Banes of My Existence by Alexis: Mastitis, Alexis as a Milk Maid, and the Danger of...

The Many Banes of My Existence by Alexis: Mastitis, Alexis as a Milk Maid, and the Danger of...:                                                    WARNING: PG-13 Picture For two years of my life, I lived in the San Joaquin Valley...

Mastitis, Alexis as a Milk Maid, and the Danger of a Little Knowledge on a Given Topic

                                                   WARNING: PG-13 Picture

For two years of my life, I lived in the San Joaquin Valley. The first of those two years occurred when I was in kindergarten. Then we moved to a suburb north of the San Francisco Bay Area for a year. For various logistical purposes, we returned to the San Joaquin Valley the year I was in second grade. For both of my San Joaquin Valley years, we lived in a house on a dairy that was owned by my aunt and uncle. We attended Catholic School for the convenience of my aunt . My mom is a proponent of public schooling, especially since she earned the bulk of her income through the public school system, and felt that it would have been and was hypocritical for her to have taken money from the public sector while paying to send her children to a private school, parochial or otherwise, yet she wished not to make life more difficult for my aunt, who was doing her a great favor  by providing our before- and after-school babysitting. My cousins attended the local Catholic School, which made delivering us  and picking us up logistically much less complicated for my aunt were we to attend the same school as her two children.


The aunt who babysat us, my Aunt Victoria, was also my Godmother.  She was and continues to be extremely kind and generous to my brother and to me. Her husband and my Godfather, my Uncle Ralph, was sort of a crusty first-generation-born-in-the-U.S.  Azores Portuguese dairyman who, along with his brothers, owned multiple dairies.  He had two sons and no daughters, though he had numerous nieces. For some reason he took to me more so than to his other nieces,  whether biological or by marriage. He found my outspokenness and opinionatedness "cute," rather than obnoxious as most adults found it.  For that reason, he tolerated me, and I spent  much of the time we lived near his dairy amidst his cows.  My Uncle Ralph defended me against my many detractors. When his older brother James complained that I needed to spend less time at the dairies because the sound of my voice was upsetting the cows and interfering with milk production, my Uncle Ralph politely told his brother to go to Hell. (That particular brother is no longer in business with my Uncle Ralph,though we still run into him at extended family functions. He still finds my voice annoying.)


Living among cows, one learns many things. some of which are appropriate for six-year-olds to know. As to other aspects of dairy life, a child could conceivably wait until a later date to be introduced to some of the realities, but any child with her eyes and ears open will pick up on what she sees and hears.  My uncle's dairies do not use artificial insemination breeding techniques. I've been told  by agricultural experts who should know of what they speak that the strength of a bull's sperm isn't proven until generations after his death, and that artificial insemination is the way to go. My Azorean-Portuguese uncle and his brothers, however, believe in the natural method of insemination/conception.  Thus, before I was five, I had observed more than a few bulls and heifers having romps in the hay, and had a vague idea as to why it was happening, although I don't believe I had yet transferred my knowledge of bovine breeding to human reproduction.  If I had made the connection, anyway, I hadn't shared it with anyone significant in my life, or I'm pretty certain I'd still be able to taste the soap that would have wound up in my mouth as a result.

As a young child, on occasion I was  present when decisions were made as to whether or not particular bulls should be castrated or allowed to mature and to be allowed  to gain the ability to reproduce.  Some dairymen castrate bulls at two to four days of age. Others wait until closer to seven months. Still other bulls will not be castrated at all, although the vast majority will undergo the procedure  because the number of viable sperm producers needed is far less than the number of calf-bearing and milk-producing cows. (It's a metaphor to life on a polygamous compound. A limited number of fertile males are nedded; it's the females who are key to continued breeding.)

One afternoon, I remember standing around a pen while my uncle and a few of his brothers discussed the relative merits of a particular bull who may have been about four months old.  There was no consensus as to how to manage this bull's reproductive status.  Tony said to castrate. Ralph, Frank,  Joe, and Fred were undecided. James wanted to let the bull develop his cojones and allow him to  significantly help to entertain the dairy's female population. Though my opinion wasn't asked, I characteristically gave it. "Castrate him," I piped in, "or beef him."

The men all looked at me quizzically. Not only was I suggesting to take away this bull's reproductive ability, but was offering as an alternate suggestion that he be turned into ribeye steaks.

"His eyes look too crazy," I explained.  I don't know if I was in a position to be able to tell at hat age, or even now, but it is supposedly common knowledge, or at least folk knowledge  among dairymen, that a wild-eyed bull may be more temperamental or dangerous than will be the average bull.

"She don't know what the hell she's talking about, " James argued. "She's five years old  [I was actually only  four at the time], she's a girl,  and she ain't even  Portuguese. We're fools if we make a decision based on what she tells us.  I know you think she's funny, Ralph, but that don't mean she needs to dictate our dairy policy."

They dispersed, and the bull was left in its enclosure. About two weeks later,  someone left one of the latches on the particular bull's enclosure not properly secured. Manuel, Ralph's brother James' son, about nine years old at the time, walked past the enclosure.  Dairy bulls, for a variety of reasons, are the most dangerous of bovine bulls. It supposedly pertains to how they were raised, which typically  would have been individually in pens, and bucket fed by humans rather than nursed for longer by their mothers, giving them less identity to their true bull nature and causing them to think they are humans**, therefore making them more likely to view  humans as competitors and more likely to attack them.  Anyway, the bull noticed Manuel walking past and rammed himself at the first latch, which must have been in a weakened state. The second latch, so placed just as added security, was not even fastened. The bull went directly for  Manuel, who by this time had his back to the bull and had no clue the bull was even headed in his direction.

As the bull gored Manuel in his midsection, a dairy employee, Antonio,  and Manuel's Uncle Fred both noticed the situation. Manuel's Uncle Fred came running from one direction with a two-by-four, with which he immediately began pounding the bull, while the dairy employee came from the other direction with a gun, rifle, or whatever it was. I'm extremely ignorant regarding firearms. I know it wasn't a handgun, but I don't know it it was a rifle or a shotgun.  Uncle Fred fought the bull off and got it away from Manuel, who was then pulled to safety by an older cousin.  The employee with the gun then had a safe angle for a shot at the bull, which he took and made. In short, the bull was "beefed."

As for Manuel, he lost a kidney and spleen but you would never know from looking at him today as long as  he has his shirt on and his scars are not exposed.  He should be cautious because he lacks the spare kidney which most of us have,  but his life is a normal agricultural life. He went to Cal-Poly San Luis Obispo and partied just as hard as did the next aggie there, and there are many hard-partying aggies there. Because his father is no longer in business with my Uncle Ralph, I don't see him so often, nor do I see his father James so often. James presumably still finds my voice very grating, but since the assets were split, since he's no longer in business with my Uncle Ralph, and since it's no longer his cows whose milk production with which I am interfering, he probably doesn't care all that much about my voice.  I suspect he wishes he'd taken me a little more seriously, though, the day I stated my opinion that the young bull's eyes looked crazy.

Not only did I learn of castration and insemination. I learned the requisite swear words in Spanish,  Portuguese, and English, and I learned when not to say them if I knew what was good for me.  I also picked up a few bovine- and sometimes human-related veterinary and medical terms.  One day in kindergarten one of my classmates' mothers had planned to bring her newborn baby to school to show to the children, which was probably a foolish thing for her to have  done under the best of circumstances with all the germs we carried. She was unable to come, however, due to a malady related to breast-feeding.

"My mother can't come to school today,"  the kid announced. "She has mastitis."  The mother probably would have preferred that her son  keep the specifics of her malady, but kindergartners aren't known to respect  privacy -- their mothers' or anyone else's.

"No way! " I answered. "Your mom can't have mastitis."

"She does so!" he countered.

"My uncle's cows get mastitis," I informed the boy. "Is your mom a cow?  If she really has mastitis, it has to mean she's a cow," I told him with the authority of a four-year-old who felt that she knew just about everything there was to know on the planet and beyond.

Catholic schools in rural areas are essentially tiny, isolated communities.  Everyone shops at the same places, worships at the same church, sends their children to the same school or schools, and sees the same few doctors.  If a feud over anything ensues, there's little to do by way of getting around it. Soon it was known by all students in the K-8 school old enough to understand the significance [and their parents] just what was said regaring Alexis Rousseau  calling  David Goularte's  mother a cow. Even my aunt and uncle knew, though they initially didn't enlighten my parents because they saw no point in my being beaten when I hadn't done anything intentionally wrong.

The first sign of trouble came when, at mass the following Sunday, my family took seats next to to my Aunt Victoria and Uncle Ralph,  who happened to be in a  pew directly in front of the Goularte family.  Almost immediately, all seven Goulartes, including the new baby, picked up their rosaries, purses, diaper bags, and all the rest of their paraphernalia, and moved to a spot in the church that was as far away from us as they could possibly relocate while still remaining inside the building. In retrospect, I'm surprised they didn't traipse up to the choir loft, except that lugging those massive mastitis-infected boobs up the stairs might have been a bit painful for Mrs. Goulart. Most women would have stayed home from mass if suffering from something as uncomfortable as mastitis, but the Goulartes were devout Catholics with a reputation for attending church when suffering from bouts of diarrhea, chicken pox that had not entirely crusted over, and early stages of labor. Baby Goulart number six was very nearly born in the church.

My parents looked at each other in a puzzled manner, then apparently gave the matter little more thought. My Aunt Victoria and Uncle Ralph, however, knew the back story. They spent the rest of the mass trying to contain their laughter. When my Uncle Ralph went forward to received the host, Mr. Goularte was receiving the host at the station directly adjacent to where my Uncle Ralph was doing the same.  Apparently even being related to me by marriage made my Uncle Ralph a Capulet to Mr. Goularte's Montague status, or a Hatfield to a McCoy if one would prefer. Mr. Goularte gave my uncle a look that typically would have been reserved for such action as my uncle himself having referred to Mrs. Goularte as a cow, and not merely his kindergarten niece having done so.  My Uncle Ralph caught the sneer aimed in his direction. He tried not to laugh while the host was being delivered to him, which caused him to choke. He sputtered his way back to his pew, with my Aunt Victoria firmly hitting his back, wondering if she should attempt a Heimlich maneuver. (It wouldn't have been easy, as Uncle Ralph neither then was  nor is now is a small man.)  My uncle eventually successfully swallowed and quit coughing.

At the conclusion of the mass, my aunt and uncle decided they should let my parents in on the "secret" as to  why the Goulartes  hated us, since everyone else in the church seemed to know. My mother wanted to punish me, but my dad said they needed instead to explain to me that some illnesses can be contracted by both cows and humans, and that, regardless, it will never be taken as a compliment for a person to refer to another person's mother as a cow.

My Aunt Victoria told me just last week that Mr. Goularte started to bid on a heifer at an auction, but immediately ceased with his bidding when he learned it was my cousin Philip's heifer for which he was competing. It seems the feud lives on. I suppose the only thing that would make it worse would be if David Goularte and I were to fall in love.  Such is not all that likely to happen, though, as David Goularte only dates bimbo sorority girls with IQs significantly lower than his, and, while I do not know his precise intelligence quotient, I do know that  it took him three tries to pass the high school exit exam.



** Obviously, even animal psychologists can only make wild guesses as to the reasoning behind bulls' actions. Who can know what, if anything, is really going through a bull's mind as he attacks anything or anyone?

I Want to be a Juror in Arizona / Jodi Arias Case

I want to move to Arizona to serve ona jury. Hell,I'd even transport myself there and pay for my own lodging for the privilege of serving on a jury for an exciting trial there. The idea that jurors get to ask questions of the defendant, even if the questions are subject to censorship by a judge, is mind-boggling. If there were such a job as "professional juror" in Arizona, I would major in whatever field I needed to in order to qualify for the job.

My mom served as an alternate on a molestation trial where, according to her, the defendant lied by saying that he could not possibly have molested the victim at the time and place she said it happened, because she said it happened behind a fast food establishment in his agricultural work truck. he testified that there was not sufficient room for him to have parked his truck there. My mom used to pick up her lunch there on a regular basis, and knew for a fact that there was room to simultaneously park five trucks such as his work truck in that location.

As an alternate juror, she never had the opportunity to bring that up to the other jurors, as the case is not to be discussed until deliberations, and alternates do not deliberate in California unless they are called into service as regular jurors. The jury let the guy walk. It would have been illegal for my mom to have done her own investigation on the topic, but bringing up common knowledge about the place would have been allowable. Had she been permitted to question the defendant, it would have made it obvious to everyone on the jury panel that he was perjuring himself.

The ADA dropped the ball in not checking out the location, but God only knows what kind of caseload with which she was dealing. It may have been virtually impossible for her to have made the time to check out the fast food joint.

In any event, I don't think I would want to practice law in a state where jurors were allowed to play armchair district attorney,but being a juror there would be more interactive, and therefore, a hell of a lot more fun.

Cat Preserves: That Sounds Too Much Like Something One Might Eat from a Jar, Sort of Like Strawberry Preserves

           One of the many things I sacrifice  in the name of academic success!
                     

My time as a lady of leisure is reaching its end. Soon I'll be toiling away at a desk in a classroom or elsewhere during many of my waking hours.  Toiling away is a bit of an exaggeration. I'll be trying hard  not to smirk as others toil away. My hard work was mostly completed weeks ago. I'll have the bittersweet privilege of watching my classmates struggle to complete assignments and studying that should have been addressed weeks ago.  The most difficult part is trying hard not to look too all-knowing as I observe this. To do such, though, would be socially suicidal, and I'm far from the greatest social success on the west coast even as it stands. Instead, I'll nod sympathetically as though I'm going through the very same thing, which I'm not. Adding to the difficulty, apparently, is that the very best parties always happen during Hell week, forcing these would-be students to make the choice between having  the university experiences of their lives or  actually being university students and earning degrees. Such is life -- a series of choices. They'll get through it like so many before them have done. Striking a balance between drunken revelry and higher education is a difficult proposition but one that can be achieved.

The woman of whom I wrote yesterday, who was killed by an African male tiger at Cat Haven, sometimes known as Cat Hell, suffered her death as a result of a broken neckl the county coroner believes death was near instantaneous which is certainly a blessing if it happened in such a manner. it has been hypothesized that the deceased, M. Hanson, was providing food for the animal in another enclosure when it broke through to where she was. This make more sense than an apparently lucid adult entering an enclosure holding a fully-grown make lion.

Actress Tippi Hedron, herself the founder of a cat haven of sorts,  had a less-than sympathetic take on the situation, at least toward the perspective of the woman who lost her life.  "It wasn't the lion's fault. It's the human's. fault always."   However much truth her statement may contain, and while I'm certainly far from suggesting that human error did not contribute to this tragedy,  I found Ms. Hedron's comments callous at the very least.  I, too, am sorry that a lion had to be killed, but I can at least mourn the loss of human life as well. Furthermore, while I know nothing of Ms. Hedron's cat reserve,  Shambala,  but with the manner of reality, karmic forces, human error, and everything else that is usually at work, Ms. Hedron's reserve could be one tiny oversight away from a similar occurrence at her own preserve. She would do well to reserve judgment in such a public manner.

And speaking of the vulnerable, my professor from last year is still supposedly holding a mountain lion, which I personally saw in its holding area on her property last year (you already gave me my grade, lady, and I'm not taking another of your classes, so do your very best to seek revenge if you happen to beat the million-to-one odds and come across this blog)  on a converted tennis court on property in rural Santa Barbara County.  If I were one of her neighbors, I would be very concerned.

Volunteer Killed at Cat Haven

Nearly three years ago I wrote about a trip I took with my aunt , my brother, and two of my cousins to "Cat haven," a feline sanctuary in the foothills east of Caifornia's  San Joaquin Valley. http://alexisar.blogspot.com/2010/07/four-more-days.html  I may be confusing the details because it was awhile ago, but the event  was, to me, most memorable because I toured the place in a wheelchair due to a broken leg and collarbone, and the wheelchair ride was much like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride without the safeguards in place at Disneyland. I think I was dumped out of my chair a couple of times, my chair overturned at least once, and my cousin accidentally lost his grip and sent me roller-coasting down a small embankment. The culminating event was a case of heat  ]exhaustion bordering heat stroke, and a cast on my leg that got soaked to the point that it had to be replaced. Either at Cat Haven (to which I referred as Cat Hell) or at the faciity where my cast was replaced, I picked up a nasty bacterial infection  that caused the new cast to have to be removed for several days while the wounds were treated.  Scars from some of the wounds are still slightly visible.  All things considered, my trip to Cat Hell was not one I would care to repeat.

My experience at Cat Haven, however, was a trip through the tamer rides of Disneyland compared to what was recently experienced by a volunteer and/or intern at the  place .http://www.fresnobee.com/2013/03/06/3201469/animal-attack-reported-at-cat.html  Dianna Hanson, either 24 or 26 depending upon which source is accurate (I would tend to believe her father over her employer in regard to her age, but I'm not entirely sure my own father knows my correct age at the moment, so maybe not) entered an enclosure of a 4-year-old male African lion and was mauled to death. Other workers tried in vain to lure the tiger into another enclosure.   Questions concerning why ms. Hanson was in the lion's enclosure were not yet answered. It is unknown as to whether standard safety features were followed, which seems unlikely, yet there may have been extenuating circumstances . A circumstance would have to be damned extenuating to compel me to enter an enclosure in which a lion was being held, but that's another matter entirely.

When no one was able to get to the woman to provide assistance, sheriff's deputies shot and killed the lion, which had been human-raised since the age of eight weeks. Autopsies and/or necropsies will be performed.

My sympathies are with the family of the victim.

Obscure Phobias

Tonight I watched a bit of Tosh.o on Comedy Central. I'm not a huge fan of Tosh, as I  find rape jokes to be in poor taste, but I couldn't reach the remote control and was too energy-depleted to get up and retrieve it. I knew that at some point one of my parents would come into my room and turn my TV off for me. I'm not above taking advantage of a temporary illness to engage in the simple act of laziness.

Anyway, while I shouldn't enjoy watching Tosh.o, not just for his denigration of victims of sexual crimes but for his overall irreverence and disrespect for many of society's weak and defenseless individuals, I cannot help sometimes finding him funny. (That's probably why I find him funny.) Tonight he was taking shots at ventriloquists. I dislike ventriloquists beyond a level  which I can rationally articulate.  When I was two, my parents took my brother and me to a ventriloquist performance. The entire experience exceeded my creepiness tolerance factor to the degree that I cried hysterically and had to be taken out of the auditorium by my father while my mom and my twin brother stayed inside and thoroughly enjoyed the ventriloquist's performance. Such was very typical. My brother loved mimes  and ventriloquists, yet was afraid he would be sucked into the sewer if he happened to be standing too close to (or, God forbid, sitting on) the toilet while it flushed. Go figure.

Daniel Tosh said that the technical name for a ventriloquist phobia is automatonophobia. Tosh, on the other hand,  thought that a fear of ventriloquists should simply be called "normal." I'm inclined to agree with Tosh on this one.

Learning the term automatonophobia inspired me to research other lesser-known phobias. One such phobia is ablutophobia, a so-called irrational  fear of washing, cleaning, or bathing. Is the use of the word irrational in the description of this condition not redundant? How would fear of washing oneself be considered rational in any sense of the word? Furthermore, a much more realistic phobia would be the fear of individuals with ablutophobia.  I certainly wouldn't want to be stuck next to one of such phobics on a crowded airplane or anywhere else.

    I don't know what particular phobia she has, but she clearly is suffering from one or more..

There is an actual word describing the fear of palindromes. The word happens to be aibohphobia. Seriously, who has time to make up such terms? Is this included in any volume of the DSM? If so, this is proof positive that mental health professionals are, in addition to in possession of too much time on their hands, more sanity-challenged than is the population they purport to serve.

Amaxophpobia has been described  an extreme fear of sitting inside any type of moving vehicle. I have a solution for individuals suffering from this affliction: time travel, as in back to the time before the invention of the wheel. The problem with my solution, of course, is that time travel would involve sitting inside some sort of moving vehicle, The cure is probably worse than the disease in this particular case.

Geliophobia is an [again irrational] fear of being around people who laugh. If person is paranoid, which is a  diagnosis in itself , and the person thinks he or she is the subject of the laughter because of ridicule, this is odd but understandable. Otherwise, as far as gelioophobia is concerned, what a miserable way to live.

Bufonophobia is an excessive fear of toads. I don't particularly appreciate toads, though I don't think my dislike or fear quite meets the criteria necessary for diagnosis of this condition, which is unfortunate, as I otherwise might qualify for hundreds of dollars in monthly income in the form of SSI money if it did.  I selected this particular phobia from the list of hundreds simply because it caused me to think of  the name "Joey Buttafuoco."

Believe it or not, there is an actual term describing the fear of people who are overweight. Cacomorphobia is the term. Australia actor Jesse Spencer, formerly of House and presently featured on Chicago Fire, reportedly suffers from this phobia.  Is it written into his contract with NBC or Dick wwolfe or with whomever he is formally contracted that he is not required to rescue any fat people  on Chicago Fire.?  Or dies he have no issue with fat males but only fat women?  Is it simply Jesse's excuse to surround himself with hot chicks? Exactly what might Jesse fear from fat people? That one might sit on him and crush his svelte body?

Chirophobia is a strange and unexplained fear of hands. My suggestion here is for a person suffering from this phobia to relocate  to the mideast, in particular to where people frequently commit crimes for which extremities are cut off. Not everyone in any locale would be without hands, obviously, as who would cut off the hands of the so-deserving if absolutely no one there were n possession of hands  but a far greater percentage would be hand-free than would be found in most pars of the word, save a few highly primitive leper colonies located on isles in the tropics?  (This reminds me of the old "Bob & Tom radio program faux soap opera [set in the mideast]  All My Children Are Missing Extremities which ran either before or right after The Guiding Shiite.

Hagiophobia is an intense fear of saints and holy things. In today's world, it should not be all that difficult to find places where few saints or holy things abound. I'm not buying into this one. In years past, maybe it was for real, but for now, one must merely stay away from churches (and even some of them are relatively free of saints or anything remotely holy), sanctimonious republicans, and the sort of Portuguese people who insist upon setting up shrines in their front yards.

Koumpounophobia is a fear of buttons.  My suggestion to anyone suffering from this malady is to buy pull-over shirts, sweat pants,  or clothing that zips or snaps. This isn't rocket science.

Medomalacuphobia is an [irrational] fear of inability to maintain an erection.  My thug school restroom attacker apparently did not have this condition. His was not an irrational fear. He really couldn't maintain his erection, or at least couldn't do so once I threw up in front of him. The most fitting analogy I can make here is that a person does not possess an inferiority complex if the person truly is inferior.  The thug really couldn't maintain his erection;  his fear, therefore, was rational. There are drugs that could help him with this problem, but for the well-being of the females of  world,  I hope he never gains access to any of them.

Hundreds of phobias have been listed, and probably an equal number have been omitted. See the site http://www.buzzle.com/articles/list-of-all-phobias-and-their-meanings.html#g  for additional information. Not all phobias have yet to be identified or given names, nor do they need to be.  When my mom was in private practice as a therapist, she had a client who had an irrational fear of getting stuck in a drive-through lane at a bank, fast-food restaurant, or other place of business. My mother told the woman it would  cease to be a problem if the  woman would simply park her car and go inside the establishment to conduct her business. (Again, it ain't rocket science. Sorry for the use of the word ain't, Mom and Dad, but I felt like using it.) It would be better for the environment  not to spew exhaust fumes with one's automobile into the air we all must breather while waiting one's turn in a drive-though lane, anyway.

The list is so exhaustive that it must stop somewhere. Now is a fitting time and place.

"They're coming to take me away, ha haaah
         -- by Jerry Samuels, recorded under the name Napoleon XIV

#  the non-artist still known as Alexis

Rainbows and Other Ordinary Miracles

Why are there so many songs about rainbows?

            This wasn't my actual double rainbow, but I decided to put the picture in just for effect.

This morning when I woke up my mom told me I should come into her room. I have a nice big window facing the east, but my parents' bedroom spans three sides of the house, so they have windows facing three direction.  Wondering what could possibly be so exciting that would cause me to want to take so many extra steps so early in the morning, I made my way to her room anyway. There, from the view of her west window, from which the ocean can be seen if it's not too cloudy, which it often is in the morning but happened not to be today, and if the neighbors haven't allowed their trees to go for too long without being pruned, which also happened to be the case, is a slight sliver of a view of the Pacific. I looked toward the Pacific and saw not just a rainbow but a  most majestic double rainbow. It was a thing of such beauty and glory that it almost caused me to believe another Jong Il or Jong Un or Kim Jong (or whatever their official family title is) may have been born.

It caused me to think of the song from The Muppets' Movie, "The Rainbow Connection," that asks the question as to why so many songs have been written about rainbows. How many songs have been written about rainbows, anyway? One website said Kermit the Frog grossly exaggerated when he asked the seemingly rhetorical question as to why there are so many songs about rainbows, with the website maintaining that songs about rainbows number a grand total of forty-two. (I question the authors' research/and or numeracy skills. First grade standards in nearly all U.S. states now mandate counting with one-to-one correspondence to a much higher level than forty-two.) Lyricsfreak.com lists eighty-six songs with the word rainbow in the title, and in scanning the titles, I noticed numerous omissions.  Lyricsfreak.com's list included only those with the word rainbow appearing in the titles. By the time hymns, folk songs, and children's songs are added to the mix, and the word rainbow may appear anywhere  in the song, the number would have to be in the hundreds.  This still doesn't answer the question of why.

Ben Michaels, PhD, is a fan of the Muppets and sings Kermit the Frog's song to his children regularly.  He cautions those who wish not not know the answer to the second part of Kermit's question -- "what's on the other side?" --  not to click on a particular link [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow} but Kermit himself already offered a basic answer to the question in part. "Rainbows are visions, " as in we can see them,  "but only illusions," even though we can see them, we cannot touch them; they;re not really there. I personally don't need to know more than that, which is, admittedly, a scary outlook for a potential research physician. My lack of curiosity alone is appalling.

I am very loosely tied to the LDS faith. One of the teachings of the faith, which is, in fact, borne on the crests of all the campuses of Brigham Young University, is this: The glory of God is intelligence.  If every religion possesses a single truth that is owned by no other, this would be, in my opinion, the truth held by the Mormons. Almost everything, if not absolutely everything, probably has a logical explanation to anyone sufficiently all-knowing to learn of and to comprehend  it.   To my way of thinking, though, this doesn't mean each of us has to learn of and comprehend the scientific basis of everything that seems to us simply to be a miracle. If truth were to be told, I probably possessed the underlying cognitive proficiency to deduce that many of the presents under the tree each Christmas morning were likely procured by my parents, but it was something I neither needed nor wanted to understand.  In some regards I still feel that way about Christmas and Santa, and perhaps I always will.

It is possible to accept that an element  can be visual yet not quite tangible, yet still somehow be real. One can appreciate its beauty and the sheer miraculosity  (yes, this is a bona fide word according to some but not all sources; I like it so I'm using it)  of its appearance and of its existence.   In my world, ordinary miracles exist every day. The most salient of those miracles I noticed this particular day, which was by now technically yesterday,  was the double rainbow I viewed from my parents' bedroom window. I celebrate its presence and my fortuosity at having witnessed it.  I suppose I could attempt to attach some sort  of religious significance to this, but for now, I choose simply to appreciate its sheer grandeur and leave it at that.

#

Thank You and Good Night: The Pope no longer exists, although only as Pope: one Catholic's perspective

Those were Pope Benedict's concluding words in his final address to the people. (Wasn't that also a title to a 90's documentary about aging?)  The former Pope may have spoken the words in either German or Italian, though, lessening any significance of any connection to the entertainment industry.  I certainly hope a screenwriter did not author the former Pope's final message to the faithful, nor that the former Pope consciously plagiarized Jan Oxenberg.

I was not among the faithful to make the pilgrimage to the Vatican City for obvious reasons. For one thing, I'm not even allowed to attend class in person. I doubt my professors would be happy to learn that I was skyping classes from a third of the way around the world. For another matter, though I consider myself a believer, I'm not that faithful.  I can see the speech or read about it on the Internet. I don't need to be physically present and in the moment to grasp the significance or the historicity of the event..

In a sense, despite the flagrant break from tradition in a pope resigning rather than waiting for the Grim Reaper to make that resignation for him,  there's something altogether  fitting and proper (words borrowed out of context from Abraham Lincoln) for an eighty-five year-old man to retire because he's no longer physically or mentally capable of keeping up with the rigors of  a demanding job. The LDS church would be wise to take  note of Pope Benedict's resignation, retirement, or whatever one would care to call it.  If a church wishes not to be seen as being run by a figurehead, at some point a man needs to know when his limitations have been maximized and would do well for both himself and his church to bow out gracefully.

On the other hand, I'm not entirely convinced this was a case of  anyone bowing out gracefully. The Roman Catholic church has been plagued with scandal since long before the onset of Pope Benedict's reign. (At one point, supposedly a person killed the Pope, dressed himself in the papal vestments, and lived out the remainder of his natural life as Pope; then agai, maybe this is an urban legend.)  Much of the recent controversy has involved sexual impropriety between clergy and minors and the ensuing cover-up. Lately  finances -- perhaps connected to the sexual impropriety or perhaps not -- have been at the forefront. Investigation at the request of Pope Benedict  by three cardinals has taken place, resulting in a roughly 300-page dossier.  Additionally, various leaks about matters such as a Velvet Mafia (essentially homosexual in orientation and in nature of activity) and about blackmail concerning both the Velvet Mafia and financial impropriety  from inside sources have been made to the public in general and, specifically, to those authoring books on the topic.

No public accusations thus far made have implicated Pope Benedict of  guilt of  anything  more serious than the inability to put a stop to the corruption that has been alleged. [Much has yet to be disclosed, though.]  Nonetheless,  I never bought hook, line, and sinker into Pope Benedict's papacy, both for his religious conservatism and for reasons related to his rather severe health issues. Early in his ecclesiastical career, he had been seen as something of a reformist who downplayed the centrality of the papacy. Gradual developments led him to a staunchly conservative position.

Named Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger at birth, Cardinal Ratzinger had requested at the age of seventy (there is no maximum age of retirement for cardinals,but seventy is the minimum barring highly unusual health circumstances) to retire from his position as cardinal in order to focus on his writings without the day-to-day hassles inevitable in the life of a cardinal. He had blood pressure and heart problems.  He was implanted with an artificial pacemaker. He suffered strokes in his official reign as pope. People with less grave health issues have succumbed to the Grim Reaper under less harsh conditions.

The Ratzinger family, and in particular Pope Benedict's father,  was extremely hostile toward the Nazi party.  The future pope's cousin, who was born with Down Syndrome, had been taken and killed by the Nazi forces under the auspices of the Nazi eugenics movement, an action entirely unnecessary for the purposes of eugenics, as males with Down Syndrome are sterile and therefore incapable of passing any defective traits along to future generations. Though the Ratzinger family's deploration of the Nazi party predated the killing of the disabled cousin,  the action likely heightened the family's feelings of animosity toward the Nazi party and toward Adolf  Hitler in particular.

Pope Benedict was conscripted at the age of fourteen, as mandated by law, into the Hitler Youth movement, but was, by all accounts, a reluctant and unenthusiastic  member who refused to attend meetings. At the age of sixteen, after having entered seminary, Joesph Ratzinger was drafted into the German anti-aircraft corps, and later trained in the German infantry. As Allied forces neared his military station, he deserted the German Army and returned to his family's home. Meanwhile, American troops had set up military operations in the Ratzinger family home.  He was incarcerated in a prisoner of War camp because of having been a German soldier, but was released shortly. He reentered seminary shortly thereafter.

Would Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict, have done the world any great favors by refusing his conscription into the Nazi Youth Movement or  dodging his draft into the German Army, thereby forfeiting his liberty and possibly his life? Noble as such an action might have appeared, who would have benefited by such actions? No evidence exists that he directly or indirectly interfered with the well-being of any prisoners captured by the German Army. (I suspect it's safe to assume the Catholic Church did at least as thorough a job of vetting potential cardinal candidates, much less those in line for the papacy, as did the Republican party in the 2008 vetting of potential vice-presidential nominees.)  Any disagreements I have with the former pope ( former as of 8:00 p.m. in whatever time zone he was when he made his official announcement),  would pertain to his stances on birth control, homosexuality, and related issues, but not with his mandatory participation in Hitler's regime. 

Were health reasons the real impetus to Pope Benedict's resignation?  While he had more than his share of health concerns, neither am I convinced that those in the upper echelons of leadership of the Catholic Church had sufficiently cleans hands for me to believe in the impossibility of something scandalous or corrupt contributing to the resignation of Pope Benedict. Whether he personally knew more of the molestations and remained complicit, or whether he was more aware of financial improprieties than he and his supporters would like us to believe, conspiracy theories abound, and few are entirely beyond feasibility.

Emeritus Pope Benedict, as he has chosen to be referred, will spend the next few months in a villa typically used by the active Pope in summer months. (If this stay extends into actual summer months, the new future Pope will presumably have to rough it out in his rest-of-the-year Vatican digs.) During this interval, a building that formerly housed nuns is undergoing renovation for Emeritus Pope Benedict; he will presumably spend his final days there. Pardon me as I momentarily engage in a round of venial sin with the violation of  Matthew 7:1-2  [1. Stop judging,  that you may not be judged 2.For as you judge, so will you be judged, and the measure with which measure will be meted out to you.]   While I wouldn't expect or wish for Emeritus Pope Benedict to live out his remaining days in  a prison cellblock or even a college dorm room, it seems a little inconsistent with vows of poverty  he would have taken at the time of his initial ordination to need an entire convent to be renovated for his comfort.  Pardon my ignorance if I've missed something,  as God and everyone else knows I certainly am not the Biebtard equivalent of all that is Popedom,  but I'm unaware of any vows popes take upon becoming Pope that negate their earlier vows of poverty.  A modest dwelling, whether in the Vatican City or elsewhere, might have been more in keeping with vows of poverty. This situation is virtually without precedence, so expectations  are being made up as we proceed, and I doubt any reasonable person  seriously expects Emeritus Pope Benedict to  make his way to Chile and bargain his way into a hut in the side of a hill squarely in the epicenter of earthquake territory, but a home somewhere along the lines of the one my parents own would have done very nicely for him, and as he lives essentially as single-member family,  there would have been ample bedrooms for the few live-in servants he should require in his retirement. Furthermore, those of us who contribute to his support could have done so less grudgingly, knowing he wasn't living so much "higher on the hog" than are those of us financing his lifestyle. (It's a choice to contribute, I know, so I need not  play the martyr card with such virtuosity.)

In spite of it all, I commend Emeritus Pope Benedict, who chose to give up the power before his mind and body ceased to function. The Mormons'  selection process of their highest leader depends even more strongly than that of the Catholics' on seniority, and hence age. We can hope for the Mormons'  own benefit and for that of those of us who live in states where the Mormons choose to financially back legislation that affects our friends and relatives, that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, as did at least one Catholic,  eventually reaches the realization/revelation that gerontocracy is no way to run a religion.


                                           The three men I admire the most, 
                                           The Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
                                           All caught the last train for the coast
                                           The day the music died.
                                                                           -- Don McLean

All will be well . . .

.  .  .  You can ask me how, but only time will tell.

A casual reader might infer that I am alluding to the great Mormon anthem "Come, Come, Ye Saints," the refrain of which ends in "All is well, All is well."  That, however,  would be an incorrect assumption.  It's just Alexis, otherwise known as #,  manifesting another episode of teen angst.  

There was a possibility that I would have been granted permission a week earlier than had been planned  to return to the university to attend classes. Such was not in the tea leaves. My muscles aren't yet strong enough for me to sit up for the duration of a single class, much less to navigate my way across campus on foot or on bicycle to actually get to each classroom.. I joke about the wheelchair option as a non-option, but, obviously, were it the only choice, I would use it, albeit with a paper bag or an Ann Coulter mask and wig over my head while I was out in the open on campus. 

I love my room and the amenities it offers, not to mention the fact that my mom changes my sheets for me each day when I'm sick. (I've otherwise since been changing my own sheets since I was in first grade and moved out of my crib and into a big-girl bed because my playmates were beginning to make fun of my crib.) Anyway, while I don't mind changing my own sheets and pulling my share of the housework around here, those rare occasions where someone else changing my sheets daily are something I savor. My sheets match my overall room decor, but some are solid in color (pink, black, or white,), some have pink, white or black polka dots with pink, black, or white backgrounds, one set has the score of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor for Organ printed on them, one has black and white jelly beans on a pink background, and a few have miscellaneous stripes, plaids, or patterns. My Godparents were ridiculously indulgent in creating this space for me, and I revel in the chance to enjoy things like the sheets, some of which I've never slept on before because there are so many. The sheets have matching comforters and rugs as well. There's a closet built into the attic  right next to my room, that stores all the accessories so that I can change things when it suits me. I just don't often have enough time to switch things around. Being sick gives me, or more correctly, my mom, the chance to redecorate frequently.


I break into a cold sweat just thinking of how the muscles in my fingers and hands are atrophying as I lie in bed essentially limiting my manual and digital activity to changing the channel on my TV by using my remote control, plus the occasional blog I find the energy to type. Thank the God of Graduation Requirements Coordination as well as my academic adviser that I am graduating next year and not this year, and thus will not need to perform my senior recital until next fall. This is a terribly rude, irreverent and terribly un-politically correct thing for me to say, but any recital I performed within the next two months would be something of a Special Olympics equivalent of a senior recital. Were I truly special, everyone would sit there with tears running down their faces as I massacred one work after another, thinking, "How wonderful it is that she's so incredibly clueless that she will perform in public when she's so very limited in her skills." As it is, the audience, which would consist of faculty adjudicators, my own family and friends, plus students completing music majors in the music department, who are required to attend 80%  of all senior recitals held)  would think I was pathetic and would be embarrassed for me. Applause would be sparse at best, and everyone would get the hell out of the mandatory post-recital reception faster than poop passes through a diarrheatic goose in order to have to avoid lying to me about how my performance really wasn't as bad as it seemed. 


Thank the God of Graduation Requirements Coordination as well as my academic adviser that I am graduating next year and not this year, and thus will not need to perform my senior recital until next fall. 

School will still be there when I am ready for it, as will be the piano.

It's just that I'm tired of waiting.

#

Excerpts from Gabe Dixon's Semi-Modern  Anthem of Angst for Youth with Ambition:

The new day dawns,
And I am practicing my purpose once again.
It is fresh and it is fruitful if I win but if I lose,
Oh,  I don't know.
I will be tired but I will turn and I will go,
Only guessing til I get there then I'll know,
I will know.

The winter's cold,
But the snow still lightly settles on the trees.  (Editor's note: except along California's central coast)

And a mess is still a moment I can seize until I know,
That all will be well.
Even though sometimes this is hard to tell,
And the fight is just as frustrating as hell
All will be well.

Keep it up and don't give up
And chase your dreams and you will find
All in time.
All will be well.
Even after all the promises you've broken to yourself,
All will be well.

You can ask me how but only time will tell.

You can ask me how but only time will tell.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2-3ooX_XkQ

Note the rather nice piano work.

Read more: http://artists.letssingit.com/the-gabe-dixon-band-lyrics-all-will-be-well-fltm2vg#ixzz2MSaMxZSr

Today is the first day of the rest of your life and other sucky proverbs.

I think I may have used that sweet little maxim as a blog title once before, which implies just how strongly I disfavor it. It falls along the lines of , "And your point is . . ."  Yesterday was the last day of the previous part of your life. If you die today, today is both the first day of the rest of your life and the last day of your life, period. It's an inane saying of the sort that was printed on T-shirts along with those obnoxious yellow happy faces under which sometimes was written, "Have a nice day!" or, as in the most extreme of cases, "Smile! god loves you!" in the late 60's and early 70's.   Literary pollution best describes it. Seemingly it is intended to improve the collective mood of society. Seldom does it have such an effect.

The maxims that best exemplify my personal philosophy (beyond the more serious Desiderata, which is  too long to be a proverb, yet in which i find serious solace, are two succinct yet telling statements -- two truisms, I would call them -- and  you may have seen them on bumper stickers.  That's where I first learned them. While I possess a hatred of  bumper stickers with a passion not even close to rational,  I still cling to my favorite truisms.

Truism #1: What if Jesus really doesn't want you for a sunbeam? It's a possibility. Just think about it.

Truism #2: Jesus loves you. Everyone else thinks you're an asshole.

Note: Since the blog in which I discussed very nearly having been named Aubrey and I described the name "Aubrey" as a tiny heart shape that is neither too narrow nor too plump, and I described "Alexis" as all sharp, spiky, and poky like the pound sign on a telephone, I have adopted # as my personal symbol. It's kind of like "the artist formerly known as Prince" except that my name still has a pronunciation, which is Alexis.

#

The Many Banes of My Existence by Alexis: "Celebrity" Murders, Teen Angst, Mental Health Dia...

The Many Banes of My Existence by Alexis: "Celebrity" Murders, Teen Angst, Mental Health Dia...: I'm still hoping the Jodi Arias trial will disappear. It won't, obviously, but still one  can hope. One of my blogging corresponden...

"Celebrity" Murders, Teen Angst, Mental Health Diagnoses

I'm still hoping the Jodi Arias trial will disappear. It won't, obviously, but still one  can hope. One of my blogging correspondent, Paul,   commented that nothing gets media juices flowing like a celebrity murder. I agree  wholeheartedly, and cases such as O.J. Simpson's trial have proven this to be true.. 

Yet while a person's death at the hand of another is no less significant because the person who killed or the one accused of the killing or both are not famous people, I refuse to call a killing a "celebrity murder" simply because it contains sufficiently titillating details that Nancy Grace and her ilk choose to give the case major air time.  I refuse to grant Jodi Arias celebrity status. I'm not sure what it is that I would call her, but there is a difference, however subtle, between fame and infamy. Jodi Arias, if she did half of that even to which she has actually confessed,  has crossed the line to infamy.

On a totally unrelated topic, I have mental health diagnoses. My primary diagnosis is PTSD, which came on  as a result of an incident when I was attacked by a male and two females in a school restroom. The planned attack was intended to be rape with perhaps oral sodomy as an addition of insult to injury. The full sexual intent of the attack did not work out quite as the attackers had intended, as a particular physiological response on the part of a male is necessary to successfully rape someone. Just before the rape was to occur, one of those aiding and abetting my attacker  stepped on my leg where it had been badly broken and was not fully healed. This caused me to throw up, which caused the would-be rapist to fail to maintain the required physiological response. I suffered injuries at the hands and feet of all three attackers, including a kick from the would-be rapist to the place where he likely would have conducted his sexual assault had it been physically possible for him to do so.  My psychological response to this assault was initially "Acute Stress Disorder." when therapy and medication couldn't undo the damage and the manifestations of anxiety continued, the diagnosis became "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder."  Cutting to the chase, that's considered my primary mental health diagnosis.

The mental health professionals by whom I've been treated mostly agree that I have a very minor case of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.  My primary mental health care professional says that not one of us is without his or her quirks, and a tendency to obsess and be a but compulsive happens to be my major quirk, and that I should not take it all that seriously. There may be some wisdom in what he said. For decades or even centuries, there were the bona fide crazies, many of whom were locked up, and then there was everyone else, few of whom were without idiosyncrasies of some sort, with some being more idiosyncratic than others.

One diagnosis that has never been suggested for me by anyone other than my father, who is, for a variety of reasons, about as far from being a psychiatrist as any physician could ever be, is that of bi-polarism. My dad likes to suggest that I'm bipolar. I don't take it too personally, as he accuses others, including President Obama, Mark Spoelstra, the wife of the oldest brother on Duck Dynasty, Bob Saget, Betty White, Jon Gruden,  Celine Dion, and many others of being bi-polar.  It seems that I'm in relatively good company.

My father's quackerous diagnoses notwithstanding, I have felt my emotions fluctuating to a greater degree than I remember  experiencing in the past. Maybe I have PMS. Maybe the barometric pressure is at an extremely high or low level.  Perhaps there was something to  the whole idea of the Mayan calendar, and whoever calculated the whole thing happened to be off by a few months. maybe I'm reacting to the upcoming end of the world.

It all reminds me of an old Billy Joel song, "Summer at Highland Falls,"  except that Jared and romance  aren't a big part of my emotional pendulum swing.  I'll quote the song for the benefit of your cultural intelligence and/or trip down memory lane. 


Summer at Highland Falls

They say that these are not the best of times, 
But they're the only times I've ever known, 
And I believe there is a time for meditation in cathedrals of our own. 
Now I have seen that sad surrender in my lover's eyes, 
And I can only stand apart and sympathize. 
For we are always what our situations hand us... 
It's either sadness or euphoria. 


And so we argue and we compromise, 
And realize that nothing's ever changed, 
For all our mutual experience, our separate conclusions are the same. 
Now we are forced to recognize our inhumanity, 
Our reason co-exists with our insanity. 
And though we choose between reality and madness... 
It's either sadness or euphoria. 

How thoughtlessly we dissipate our energies 
Perhaps we don't fulfill each other's fantasies. 
And so we'll stand upon the ledges of our lives, 
With our respective similarities... 
It's either sadness or euphoria
                                                       --Billy Joel


Exactly what is it about teen angst that causes us  to feel that it is unique to each of us as individuals?  In our minds, no other generation has ever experienced it, or at least not to the degree that we, the present generation, are feeling it.  Is it narcissism?  Or human nature? Or truth?