24 hours in vegas

yesterday afternoon, after spending the morning nursing a hangover the likes of which i've not known for days a plenty, i hopped a flight to vegas with six of my k street friends. for those of you who live lives absent lobbyists, you should know that they are some of the coolest, funnest, most interesting, lively people to ever walk the earth. fun is not only guaranteed when hanging out with lobbyists, but taken to a new level. so just think about what vegas must be like with the k street crowd...

we took a limo from the airport (awesomeness!) to the palms, and after dingdong debbie at the check-in desk finally figured out how to check seven people into four rooms, we walked the 4-mile hike to the other palms to get to our bad-ass rooms!

but picture this elevator ride. two of us were women (see young, fun, _hot_ women). the rest of us were old, white, married dudes, and whilst i love them dearly, they might, at first glance, seem a wee on the dorky side. anyway, we were all in the elevator with a hottie guy about my age, and when our boys departed the elevator on the 28th floor, young hot guy turned to my friend and me and said, "really? those guy?"

we were momentarily speechless. but it was fucking brilliant. and my girlfriend and i will laugh about it until the end of time. "really? those guys?"

for the next twelve hours, we had a BLAST with "those guys"! we drank entirely too much, ate entirely too much, and lost ourselves at the craps tables (where incidentally, some hot ass spent the whole night blowing me kisses and making somewhat inappropriate (albeit not unwelcome) comments about my own hotness). getting up this morning, knowing a flight was imminent, was, we'll say challenging; one whiff of the wrong scent and i woulda tossed my cookies from here to high hell.

but i'm home now, and walking out of LAX -from anywhere- remains one of the great joys of my life... all-in-all, the weekend was well worth the pain i feel today, and the attention from the fairer sex went a long way in my rejection recovery process.

~k

teabagger uprising

in this morning's ny times is an article analyzing teabaggers. when i first saw the breaking news email yesterday, it spoke of teabagger anger, which caused my heart to flip a flop whilst the historian in me immediately thought of the bolshevics, the guillotine, and the maoists. or, a typical uprising defined by class struggles, the anger of the proletariat, the road to communism...

and i sort of freaked out a little bit. i mean, the shit that's been going on in response to obama's radicalism and socialism (give me a fucking break!), the "government takeover of healthcare," big bank bailouts, and the general comments about the "very liberal agenda" of the potus, is really scary. not to mention asinine. i mean, where do these people get this shit? it makes zero sense, is weighted not an ounce in reality, and is an overarching emotional response to fear-mongering on the right.

or, as is more likely the case, racism.

per the ny times poll, the 18% of americans who identify themselves as teabaggers are, "republican, white, male, married, and over 45." translation: an ever-decreasing demographic in the american landscape. futher, most agree that social security and medicare are worth the money (see socialism), that the taxes they pay are fair, and they don't think sarah palin is qualified to be president (see not retarded). so if these are rational, educated, thinking people, what's the deal?

well, they believe that the obama administration is catering to the poor and the blacks, and that the president does not share the values of "most americans" (i hardly consider 18% to qualify as "most americans," but what do i know?). one teabagger was quoted as saying,“over the last three or four years, I’ve realized how immense that drift has been away from what made this country great.” (translation: "all these uppity minorities and gays are taking over the safely homogenous america i always knew and loved").

and my favorite teabagger quote makes my case for me, “I just feel [obama's] getting away from what America is. He’s a socialist. And to tell you the truth, I think he’s a Muslim and trying to head us in that direction, I don’t care what he says. He’s been in office over a year and can’t find a church to go to. That doesn’t say much for him.”

it's plain and simple. old, white guys don't like young black presidents anymore than they like the fact that the demographic landscape of america is changing so's to push them into the minority box. i guess the bottom line is that change is hard, especially for bigots, and their only way to fight the change is to slap non-applicable fear-mongering labels onto the president and his supporters which bear no rational resemblance to reality.

thank goodness democrats' balls are beginning to descend enough to take a stronger stance in the public discourse. let's just hope at the end of the day i'm not the only one calling it what it is: racism.

~k

around and around and around

since my last post, nearly a week ago, i've left three in the unpublished queue, and've dropped a few thousand other words here, there, and everywhere. though it probably seems there isn't much i don't share here, sometimes i can't help but hold back.

and i've got a bit swirling about my brain these days. too much, if truth be told. i'm trying too hard to make sense of things that can't. i'm spending entirely too much energy trying to motivate myself, so that once i'm actually near motivated, i'm too tired to do anything.

like, i cannot remember the last time i was this unproductive (though i did file my taxes yesterday, and was pleasantly surprised with an unexpected refund i will use to bankroll my adventure to foreign lands later this year). my tivo is stacked, i'm two weeks behind in 'the economist', both of yesterday's papers are sitting in a pile, and i couldn't even get my ass off the music box steps to go to the office today, which might also imply that i'm still in my pajamas. and don't even ask me about dishes and laundry...

i guess it's not all bad. i mean, i did go to malibu yesterday, and even wrote a lengthy unpublished post about my love-hate relationship with california. i'm going to the office tomorrow, and a lakers game tomorrow night (unless i am successful in talking myself out of it). shit, i'm even going to vegas this weekend for a whirlwind 24-hour party (though in all honesty, i'm totally not up for).

i'm trying. really. fucking. hard.

and clearly failing miserably.

~k

whistling dixie

i have spent a week in hell. and it all began with that foreign service post...

to which paris guy responded, "I cannot stand in the way of someone who wants to change the world. Especially a baller like you whose changes and difference making I fully support and am (make no mistake here) the BIGGEST fan of, no matter any others' claims. Your path is not mine..." (and, omg, the way he uses words, i melt reading them because i can hear his voice speaking them).

and i died.

while writhing about the heartbreak, confusion, and sadness that feels like death (i mean, FUCK!, really? you're the most amazing boy i've ever met, and we have this thing, this connection, this something crazy.), i had to accept the truth about me, that i'm meant to roam the planet for a while. i want my globetrotting destiny, even if it costs this much. at least for now (i mean, the end game is writing full time at home (wherever that is), but for now, i want and need to collect a lifetime worth of unimaginable fodder). and if he doesn't want to get his international groove on alongside me, i have to let him go.

or so says rational me.

but knowing rational me is right doesn't make emotional me hurt any less. and he wants to be friends, which rational me would also love, but i'm ruled by emotional me, and that doesn't work for emotional me. i mean, i want to be friends. i miss him sooooooooo much. he's the best boy i've ever known, and he's set my boy bar so high, nary a one will come close to matching up (but i would never discourage the good ones from giving it a shot). but friends?

is it even possible to step back? to go from feeling romantic love for someone to not? from sharing thoughts and moments too intimate for anyone else to forgetting that's even on the table? or is it just letting him have his cake and eat it too (i.e. he gets all the best parts of me without having to deal with any of the hard stuff (i.e. awesome for him))? i don't know.

but seriously, while i'm sitting here whistling dixie, why don't you share your thoughts in the comments box below? please? i mean, y'all have been in love, you've lost loves, you've wanted to and i'll bet some of you have even tried to hang on. surely you have an opinion. can we be friends? is it possible? should i even try?

help me?

~k

a quieted discomfort

"the truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. for it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers."
- m. scott peck

disaster preparedness

in spite it being 6pm on a monday (see HELL), i knocked trader joe's off my to-do list.

earthquake yesterday, rain today, a girl's gotta be prepared for whatever calamity may befall tomorrow, and i figured i best have something more in my pantry than my last package of ramen noodles. i mean, seriously.

then i added a coupla things to that list. for starters, i really need to hit up goodwill (i have this thing about getting rid of things (e.g. clothes, books) when i bring new things into the house, it keeps my space lighter, and me more comfortable, but that shit piles up fast!).

and i'm thinking it's about time to dig in and finish novel #2. summer project.

i'm feeling it, the story, my girl, the era, egypt's stirring in my soul again. knowing it's gonna be a year or two before i'm going to have to pack my life into boxes for destination unknown means now's the time. and i want to write so badly, i look for thoughts to chase my typing fingers, i'd be a fool not to use this burst of inspiration to tell a great story...

i'm thinking that just might be what the boss calls "the rising".

~k

weekend fail?

i had three things on my to-do list for the weekend: target (i'm down to using travel containers of toiletries), trader joe's (i haven't bought groceries since january), and taxes (i still have 11 days). that list, uh, remains untouched. but i guess the impromptu and most random adventures, nestled between bouts of hard core hibernation, and an afternoon battling with bleach, means the weekend wasn't completely wasted.

even if my ever-growing list of chores and errands rolls into next week...

sigh.

~k