Originally Published on Whiskey in My Sippy Cup

By the time this gets posted, most of you who are unfortunate enough to read my little blog will have already voted. And I’ve waited until today to post it because I don’t even for one second want to come across as “this is who you should vote for.” YOU should vote for whoever YOU deem most worthy. This is simply putting it out there for one day, a day far away from now, when I’ll wish I could go back to this day in our history, this monumental day for our nation, and see exactly what the hell I was thinking.

I am a bit of a conspiracy theorist. I will never, ever check Catcher in the Rye out of the library. I totally believe that JFK got shot by the government to get us into ‘Nam. I am fairly sure that we have proof of extra-terrestrial contact tucked away somewhere, and the only reason they interviewed people like my skull-less uncle for Project Blue Book is to hide the evidence. To discredit sightings. To make us THINK it was insanity. Because, really, if that man told me the sky was over my head, that would only mean one thing: I was standing on it.

And so, as my paranoid little mind works, I am predicting a McCain/Palin win tonight. Well, actually, I’m predicting and Obama/Biden win, a big fat temper tantrum, and an eventual GOP win.

It’s not like it hasn’t happened before. *coughgorecough*

I hope that doesn’t happen. I dream that when the GOP starts screaming FALSE COUNTS! that the DNC remembers that we still have a president until January, and we’ll all happily wait while every single vote gets counted, while all the re-votes are cast. If we can dump $750 billion into the market; we can pay the salary of the vote counters for a few extra weeks.

Hell, we’re CREATING JOBS!

But in all sincerity, I dream that I am wrong. I dream that tomorrow night, that socialist, skinny, not-quite-black-enough Muslim terrorist is my new president. I dream that over the next eight years, he gets the chance to make every single person that threw those hideous accusations around about him eat their words.

{Originally Published in Cafe Philos.}

It occurs to me this morning you might be wondering how someone would have gone about buying a Playboy in a small American town in the early 1970s — and get away with it. Of course, that was back when buying a Playboy in a small backwards town could break your reputation, so getting away with it was key.

Now, I don’t recall how old I was when I bought my first Playboy. Older than 16, at least. So long ago some of the details that never mattered to me anyway now escape me.

I do, however, recall that I bought my first Playboy at Potter’s Drugstore, and that Old Man Potter himself rang up my purchase. Old Man Potter owned and operated one of two drugstores in my pathetically small town of 2,000 people where it seemed everyone knew everyone else. And here’s what I recall about buying that Playboy:

I recall I began sweating the moment I picked it out of the magazine rack, and I began blushing the moment I handed it to Old Man Potter at the check out counter. The only two people in the whole store at the time were Old Man Potter and me — I had carefully seen to that — but I nevertheless felt like the eyes of the entire community were upon me.

For a moment, everything seemed to go smoothly. I handed the Playboy to Old Man Potter; Old Man Potter took the Playboy; he looked at the price just like he would any other magazine: and then he entered the price into his cash register. Smooth. Normal. I was almost about to breath again when suddenly he said, “I’ll be right back. I have to make a phone call.” Then he dashed off to the back room with the Playboy still in his hands.

I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

I didn’t stop blushing. I didn’t stop sweating…

{Originally published on The Bloggess}

Yesterday someone asked me how to deal with trolls and haters. I have no damn idea.

Trolls are just like you and me. Only shittier. Or more honest. Or likely to murder gypsies. Fuck, I don’t know. I’m not a mind reader. I don’t know the motivation of everyone reading your blog but what I do know is that in real life you come across assholes and weirdos and someone out there is selling computers to these people. People like the guy who left me this comment:

“I was right, you aren’t that hot. Damn.”

I didn’t mind that some stranger thought I was un-hot but what was disconcerting was that in the photo the guy was referring to? I was seven. And totally hot.

{Originally Published on The Dr. Laura Blog}

I am extremely disappointed in the choice of Sarah Palin as the Vice Presidential candidate of the Republican Party. I will still vote for Senator McCain, because I am very concerned about having a fundamental leftist, especially one who is a marvelous orator, as President.

At first, I thought it amusing that McCain picked a pretty, smart, and tough female to counter the racist/sexist accusations going back and forth between parties. I remember how Oprah Winfrey got caught in the cross-fire as she stepped up to the political table to support Obama with pride that a black man could rise to such heights in the USA, only to get slammed by feminists who told her it was gender, not race, that she should back. Understandably, Ms. Winfrey pulled back from it all.

Forget gender and race. I’m frankly and sadly caught in the dilemma of having to balance policy versus example in touting a candidate for the office of the First Family. I was ferociously attacked (what’s new?) when I spoke out strongly against Bill Clinton’s dalliances in the Oval Office. That situation quickly turned into a debate whether “private has anything to do with public.” Nonsense.

Role models are very important. Children and young adults look to those who are visible and successful as a road map of what is acceptable behavior and emulate those actions over the morals and values their parents and churches have taught and tried to reinforce. It’s a tough go these days, when the “bad that men or women do” is used for entertainment purposes without judgment, or is excused because of political or financial considerations.

I’m stunned – couldn’t the Republican Party find one competent female with adult children to run for Vice President with McCain?

Originally posted on Mommy’s Martini.

One of my most vivid childhood memories is sitting in the dark, on the screened-in porch of my next-door-neighbor’s house, and listening to the grown-ups talking. In the moist, heavy heat of a Georgia summer, the little ceiling fan on the porch would force a breeze, and the crickets would begin to chirp as night fell. The puffs of wind beyond the screens carried the faint scent of magnolia blossoms, and the asphalt twinkled with embedded sparkles in the pools of golden streetlamp light where hard-shelled Junebugs gathered. There was no light on the porch, so as to avoid attracting insects, and as the darkness gathered closer and enclosed our little room, I felt cocooned in an almost magical place.

We lived in a house on a horseshoe shaped block of homes that had been built for returning GIs after WWII. Every single house on our street had the same front bathroom (what had once been the only bathroom), with the identical pattern of black-and-white tile on the floor and walls. You know the pattern; it’s very like the “retro” one you can buy at big box home DIY stores now, except there is something different, a bit glossier, and better, about the original. We all had the original.

These were small houses — two front rooms, a kitchen, bath, two bedrooms — that had been added onto over time so that by the time we lived there in the early 1980s, they all had a slightly different footprint. Except for three things: that central black-and-white bathroom, the wide front stoop, and the porch. Some houses (like ours) had enclosed the porch. But not next door.