I'm still ruminating over the last entry and why it was so friggin' difficult to dig that deep and be that honest and then admit that I'm attracted to the things that make me feel the worst.

Also, it's finals time and I have 50 30 page papers to read before Thursday afternoon. And a bunch of hysterical first-years who think it's okay to call 15 minutes before their due date/time and tell me they're having a nervous breakdown.

Fuck 'em.

A few days ago, I'd been invited to one of my swimmers' houses by his parents for a dinner. I called last-minute to cancel because I was feeling ill, and because the boy had puked in my car earlier that morning and I was scared that he was going to make me seriously ill.

His mom wound up talking to me for a while, and in the middle of the conversation, I'm not sure how she did it, but suddenly she was talking about religion and asking me what my religious background was. When I told her I was Jewish, she said a bunch of stuff that I didn't listen much to because all I wanted to do was curl up in front of the TV and forget the world.

But then, then she said something like, "And see, it's no wonder that you've got all these issues [ed note: she thinks I work too hard because I have some unhealthy need to push myself, and is not interested in hearing that my life now is about half the life I used to have...she has recently become interested in psychology and thinks that because it is new to her, it must be unknown to me, the lowly ingrate swim coach], why, you've had generations building up to yours of rejecting Christ!"

I couldn't believe it. I felt like I was back in a room where I was about a year ago when someone actually told the Legislators in the room that California's Jews shouldn't get any more of their attention until they owned up to killing our saviour.

Are you kidding me?

Anywho. So, I have a slightly sore throat and am downing green tea and antioxidant pills like they're going out of style, and praying (evidently to the God I and my forefathers helped kill) that I don't get sick, and wondering about how I'm going to change my behavior patterns so that I don't attract mean people and so that I appear attractive to people I might want to date. Oh, and trying to not fall back into my old trusty thought-rut that says I'm never going to be attractive to the people who attract me.

I should just forget about it and concentrate on buying presents for people I don't have the money for for a holiday I don't celebrate and which doesn't really exist because it's been proven repeatedly that Jesus wasn't born remotely around this time but we say he was so that we can have a worldwide cover-up of an important time on the Pagan calendar, right?

I must have too much time on my hands or something, because I've gotta stop thinking so much about these things or I'm going to plain lose my effin' mind.

Also? My Iranian-born-now-American student wrote his paper on the PATRIOT Act, and after reading a little bit about it online? He stopped reading online, went to the bookstore, bought a shitload of books with cash, and only used those for his paper because he was afraid that the FBI would come and get him if he continued to research on his computer or in the library. How fucked up is that? Fuckin guy can't even write a graduate policy paper without fearing for his own personal safety in the country he fought to join and to which he has payed taxes for well over 20 years.

We're going to get that fucking piece of shit maniacal unconstitutional legislation overturned soon, right? Christ. My other student was just told that although she was just approved for citizenship through the Asylum laws, she's going to have to wait twelve, TWELVE years for all her paperwork to be processed so that she can finally be considered a citizen and exercise her right to vote. She's getting her master's degree, she told me, so that she can go work for INS and help them out. They have a backlog of over 8 years for people applying for asylum. She and her family waited 8 years and finally had their trial a few months ago. They won it. Now they'll wait another 12 years for green cards.

Meanwhile, I don't want to travel anywhere far away these days because airport security is such a pain in the friggin ass, and oh yeah, no one likes us outside of our own borders.

I could use some decent food, but you have to have an armed guard usher you through the picket lines in front of the supermarket...which doesn't have anything in stock nor anyone to sell nothing to you.

It's a beautiful world. I think I need to get back on meds.

Posted by twids at 11:01 pm