No Surprises Here, Folks

Oh, my brain feels like it's swimming in cotton batting and amniotic fluid right now. I spent my two days off from the brain trust sleeping and watching CNN, and I feel like someone who's just come out of a coma and has to relearn basic functions. I wish I could just stick a needle in there and drain it off. I also wish electroshock were still de rigeur. Anyone out there want to do a lobotomy, gratis?

Of course, the big stories yesterday were the Amish school shooting and the marc Foley pedophilia scandal. I can't say anything that will do justice to either. I'm not familiar with the area where the shooting took place, although I may have passed through it once as a kid on the way to the Jersey Shore. (That's where we PAers summer--remember the Billy Joel song? "Our fathers fought the Second World War/Spent their weekends on the Jersey Shore...") I can't even say, sadly, that I'm especially shocked that a crazy man would burst into a one-room Amish schoolhouse and start shooting. The world is going to hell in a handbasket. Why would the Amish be immune? The real tragedy, to my mind, is that because of the Amish's lack of exposure to the rest of the world, they aren't buttressed by the same cynicism that manages to keep the rest of us "safe."

Nor am I especially surprised that Marc Foley was, uh, exposed as a pedophile--oh, excuse me, as an "alcoholic with related behavioral problems." So that's what the kids are calling it these days. I simply love how these fucking Republicans accuse us degraded, immoral Lefties of refusing to take responsibility for our actions, then turn around and play the victim card when one of their own is caught flanging his wang over underaged specimens of studly man meat. And bravo, fellas, for shielding your beloved constituents from Foley's proclivities for lo these many years. Why, if folks had known what he was really like, it might have interfered with their decision-making processes the first week of November! And how nice of you to protect your adolescent male charges by encouraging them to stay away from Foley because he has "problems"! A job well done, and pretty fucking typical of what I've come to expect from the party that engendered Nixon, Reagan, and so on down the slippery slope of the Apocalypse.

On a personal note, it doesn't look like I'm going to be able to swing the NeoFuturist gig for the time being. Their rehearsal night is the same as my therapy group. Sigh. Did I mention I'm going to be thirty in twelve days? Am I ever going to get my shit together? If we keep on going the way we are, is there any point?