My thanks and apologies to Uganda’s Bobi Wine for using his music.

Technorati Tags: Africa, Kampala, Kamwokya, Bobi_Wine, Fire_Base, slums, travel, Uganda, video, vindication

First, it’s already been one long, fatiguing road for the Democrats. With the Hill-dog lingering, I thought it was already November and I missed something. Although, Ron Paul held on longer, besting her Guinness record for the longest goodbye just this week. Actually, he had an even longer and drawner out and tortured goodbye than her waiting to the weekend, since he also stopped in March.

Anyway, it’s not the retarded shenanigans that are robbing me from the thrills and chills of a campaign year (and the FINALLY final end of the Bush years). Nope, it’s old Tim Russert, may he rest in peace.

NBC was the de facto election night channel when you got tired of zippy graphics and all sorts of counting doohickies and just wanted to see, you know, like regular math. Tim was markers and a whiteboard in the face of layered, animated maps and special effects. (I’m pretending the 2004 tablet never happened. In my mind it’s whiteboards, Florida and less flash.)

Who the hell is going to eschew the bullshit this year and just provide straightforward info?

Technorati Tags: 2008_Campaign, campaign, Campaign 2008, elections, pacemakers, Politics

Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick. I am too far away from sixth grade to be playing softball. Let’s face it, I was merely adequate back in the 1970s. Now, I’m adequate leaning hard by sad.

In the desperate hope of hitting a base before a ball ended up in a nearby bit and the base got tagged, I chugged furiously down the baselines, pumping my chubby little legs and try to dig into the dirt. The net result is very, very, very, very sore quads. They feel less like quads than burning eights.

I typed a work email tonight, and I realized that my right index finger is feeling the after effects of a bobbled catch. I was catcher, and I forgot the glove really helps when some rockets a ball to home.

So, in summary, apart from both legs, my fingers and some nice bruises that are starting to show, I’m a fine fucking spectacle of a healthy woman. Oy.

Technorati Tags: competition, age, softball, sports

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Even though a certain someone hadn’t “made a decision,” on Monday I figured it was safe to wear my designer-y, artist-y, subtle-y Obama shirt from this place’s closing in my neighborhood sale.

I do realize that deep down I’m a dark-souled, bitter racist, but for a little while, I’m going to feel a little glimmer of light in my evilness and hope that the Dems don’t fuck it all up completely by November.

There’s a lot of common wisdom, and maybe I’m using that word loosely, that Hill had the power position with her win at any cost Clinton heart. (And again, using “heart” loosely. I figure she has a mechanical device rather than something fleshy and well, human.) And, again, common thought has been maybe American ain’t ready to punch a chad, touch a screen or pull a lever for a real-live African American. You know, a “black man.” Ooooh.

I’m a sister in the feminist wars who dreamt of the ERA passing as a girl and got weepy over that abortive legislation. It would have been cool to vote for a woman. But, Jesus fucking lawd almighty, she didn’t exactly make a sister proud.

I admit, though, this primary season a huge part of my beef is with her husband, a fact that makes me feel a little bit better and a lot a bit worse. If Bill could have shut the fuck up, and not acted the provocateur, I think it would have gone a long way to making her seem, I dunno, ah, presidential or something.

Mostly, I’ve been worrying, though, was she the strategic candidate? The one with enough known about her to be able to fend off grinding GOP politics. The one with the “experience” and grit to fight a political cage match. That’s the worry, right? That all of those “hardworking Americans, hardworking WHITE Americans” Hillary courted could vote for her a white woman over any black man. She’d take a beating but stay in the ring long enough to slug it out.

In discussing this kind of party politics with M. over dinner, he did force an interesting point. Is fear of losing a good enough reason for a minority to sit it out? Does change ever fucking happen if you stay on that path?

If I forget about prevailing wisdom, if I let go the fact that most Americans can’t wrap their heads around words like “madrassa” and “Hussein” without confusing the Taliban, Al Qaeda and the Mid East with the much larger non-Arabic chunk of the Islamic world, maybe I can roll with the notion Obama might win. I guess I’ll have to wait and see, just like everybody else.

By the way, I think the Kennedy comparisons are a bit over the top. But, one funny thing I’ve noticed by going to places that have Muslims, and have for longer than U.S. history, is that there are plenty of folks who are born all Islamic and shit who don’t let it bother them too much. Like the Kennedy brothers back in the day, who raised eyebrows in case they couldn’t balance government work with the demands of the papacy, there’s a lot of dumb, uninformed shit about the other god going around.

As the web and conspiracy nuts freak about Obama’s Kenyan dad or Indonesian step dad and their religion, you got to remember Joe and Rose Kennedy. Sure, Rose like a lot of novenas and rosaries in her day, but her husband’s religion was money, power and getting things done. Obama’s mom didn’t even stay married to the scary religion.

Technorati Tags: Americans, Barack_Obama, campaign, Campaign 2008, Hillary_Clinton, Politics, primaries, race, religion

This morning, I electric scootered to work and came upon mom and the kid ducks strolling down the sidewalk. Watching them stop traffic on a fairly busy street to cross gave me a smile and some weird sense of hope.

No doubt, the Democrats will fuck up that sense of well-being fairly soon.

I honestly don’t know what to think about yesterday’s decision over Florida and Michigan, and/or what my opinion is on counting or not counting the votes. All I do know is that it seems as though my political party is bound and determined to completely, utterly fuck up the 2008 election.

If I’m sitting here in January 2009 watching the inauguration of John McCain to our nation’s highest office I will have a razor blade in one hand and a bottle of tequila in the other.

Whatever you think about Hillary or Barack, this whole episode can’t be good. I hope, pray even, that between this Tuesday when the final primary voters have voted, yesterday’s decision has been tallied and the great not state of Puerto Rico factored in, the Democrats try to get their collective shit together. You know, like keep their eye on the whole fucking point of this fiasco, electing a leader from our party.

Hillary mentioned RFK. For anyone alive and voting back then, was that primary as fucked up as this one in the few months before Bobby was shot? For anyone I know who’s a Hillary supporter, and back on Super Tuesday, I knew quite a few, I’d love to hear some encouragement that this is the lunatic fringe and a small portion of her voters.

What happens now? Do we all remember the point of the primaries and throw our collective weight behind keeping McCain from moving into the Whitehouse? I sure as hell hope so.

Two things I have to pick up on — Writing here and hitting the gym.

M. thinks I may have lost some weight in Uganda. In fact, he’s been brainstorming the new ultimate in U.S. travel, tapping into weight loss and spa treatments. The trip plan is you head off to the developing country, get fed developing portions of sub-nourishing foods, steam up in the tropical heat and voila, instant weight loss and exotic travel bragging rights.

Me, I’m still convinced a bunch of parasites have taken up residence in me, their charming new host organism. An on again off again headache and knowledge that I swallowed a heaping helping of schisto-laden Nile have kept me guessing. Sure, I’m probably just a hypochondriacal freak. But, a tapeworm might do me some good for a little while. Not the liver flukes, mind you, just a nice clean, slimming worm.

The six-vial, one sheet and a small tube stool collection kit handed to me at the HMO lab is psyching out my desire to get a full, clean bill of health. It’s complicated like a badly planned science fair exhibit. I long for the olden days of medicine, when you probably could just poop in Dr. Welby’s hand and he’d take it from there.

But, failing disease, I probably should work out a bit. According to some guidelines I saw while hanging at the doctor’s office to get some delicious Cipro, I’m probably at a coefficient of obese. Maybe I read it wrong, or maybe I’m huge. I can’t tell any more.

As for writing, I gotta say, on top of lazy, I’ve also had some ‘puter problems that I wasted some time not entirely solving. Minor, backup data stuff, but annoying nonetheless.

Worse, I have pissed away so much time on the foolish claims that are Larry Sinclair’s–I swear I blew Obama and them Black folks be all enjoying that crack cocaine–I feel a sickening sense of shame. One should not allow themselves to fall prey to such idle, idle, pointless raging. The counterpoint raging site is a better read, but still a horrible sinkhole of time wasting.

I’m going to lose my mind, my job, my home, my sanity if I read much more. Reading the Larry supporters is like reading stupid on steroids. Blend in good, olde-timey racism and some conspiracy-theory absurdity and you start questioning whether living is even a valid alternative. If these people were the majority, I’d probably cut my head off with a chainsaw, such would be my hopelessness.

The upside is I’m back to the western world where our well-fed bellies can help our brains construct great big heaps of stupid crazy, because we can. I think that’s my biggest life lesson at the moment as I read complete bullshit on the internet. We here in the U.S. have ample time to make shit up and feud over dumb stuff. We have so much time and the resources, we can fuck around with total strangers we will never lay eyes on and flame away on websites, blogs, and bulletin boards.

A lot of places in the world would much rather use that energy on something constructive. Like acquiring a sandwich.

By the way, I’m posting more pictures over here: picasaweb.google.com/FarfromBraintree. The stuff that has actual people that touch upon my professional life are in some of those shots. No need to drag them over here (see notes above about stupid internet).

Over here, insult me, swear, fuck around, I don’t care. But in the places where my actual getting paid and shit matter and innocent people (who I like) are involved, please shut the fuck up.

Technorati Tags: Africa, Americans, campaign, Politics, primaries, self-esteem, work, worry, writing

While we were in Uganda, there was a semi-big flap in one of the local papers, because our group didn’t travel to Northern Uganda. Northern Uganda is by some expert opinions and pretty much all local opinion I heard, a pretty fucked up part of the country.

The group didn’t head there largely, not because of the deliberate snub as the article would suggest, but the sheer logistics. It’s a haul on bad roads, and we already had a lot of miles to cover. I would imagine the organizers had to figure in the risk-benefit of trucking us into a war zone, as well. You know, old fashioned American liability issues.

Anyway, a group from the north did come to us and met in a conference room at our hotel. There, leading women from the community, including one who had lost her daughter for seven years and another who has been a foster mother to children limping home from war, and a colonel from the legit army gave us a background on the Lord’s Resistance Army, Joseph Kony and an update on the current state of affairs. The signs are the conflict might end soon and Kony surrender. The fucked up part to me was all of the talk of forgiveness and reconciliation.

You see, to my jaded, western perspective, a madman who starts an army in the name of god and kidnaps children to be his soldiers gets no forgiveness. He gets no reconciliation. He gets no healing from me. Nope, he gets locked in a very dark, dank place forever.

The women passed around drawings the abducted children had made while in the company of counselors trying to help them put down weapons and wounds and move on with childhood. I took these excerpts at the conference room table with my iPhone.