Posting fool alert

So, my About editor lives in Geneva now. Big change from Slavic Village.

Wasn’t really a question as to why: in less than a year, her house in  Cleve was broken into four times. Her car got it once. Oh, and one time when she went to the bathroom someone walked in and stole her laptop.

Lovely.

Two years ago, while we met in person at Heck’s (Best. Burgers. Evah.) she told me that Slavic Village was a wonderful place to live and relatively crime free. She stands by this statement being true when freshly minted from her lips. Not too much, now.

So her home is pretty cool – a neat 1870’s brick building where allegedly the founder of Oldsmobile, Mr. RJ (or some such initials) Olds, spent his early boyhood. It has a neat screened in porch and loads of character.  Oh, and no crime out there in the eastern sticks.

But I went to Geneva on the Lake, one of my favorite haunts, and lots of Mom and Pop fun places are gone for good. Hard to tell without paying close attention; it’s basically all boarded-up for winter. Some boards won’t be coming off, though.

Jimmy Stewart’s comment in “The Philadelphia Story” sprung to mind,  his sarcastic “The prettiest sight in this fine pretty world is the privileged class enjoying its privileges.”  So, conversely, is the ugliest site in the world what happens when the priviliged class no longer has any money to burn?

Hardly. Maybe for now, though, it’s a sad sight and one to which we’re unused to viewing up close. 

My editor believes we’ve turned a corner with Obama (a fine man, but no miracle worker, so sayeth I as always). 

She made a fabulous lunch and we went over our big plans for the CIFF this year. I’m attending some weekend film forums at CSU that correlate to the festival events and praying to get tickets to the closing night film, starring Rachel Weisz. Paul Ruffalo and Adrian Brody, the name of which escapes me at the moment.  No volunteering this year, because it really made for a long ten days.  Just director interviews, film reviews (which I will post links to as always) and a film slam piece.  Maybe an interview with Bill Guentzler, if we can get him to stand still long enough.

Best time of the year ever.

And now, some questions to ponder

We have time, don’t we? While we watch the world as we’ve known it slowly fade off, with the country shedding jobs at nearly 700,000 a month, some of you must have some time on your hands. If not now, perhaps eventually. Good a time as any to check the contents of your souls while answering these questions:

1. Did you approve of the Iraq war when it started, even knowing, as everyone knew, that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11?

2. Did you simply swallow, unquestioningly, the official list of events as they happened that day, despite myriad holes that did not and could never add up, like where was Norad and why did they not follow stated protocols – amongst many other problematic issues?

3.  Did you pay attention to the fact George W. Bush had the worst job creation record, officially, since Herbert Hoover, as of 2004, and what that would mean for our economy?

4. Did it cross your mind that huge deficits were unsustainable over any length of time, let alone nearly a decade? And that never, in the history of America, were taxes lowered at the same time one war was underway – let alone two?

5. Did you buy one of those cheesy metallic ribbons for our troops, but fail to bat an eye as these young adults were returned to combat duty, over and over, some without much leave time at all?  Did you know that allegedly more troops commit suicide right now than are killed in combat?

6. Did you look at all the pictures of Abu Ghraib?  The really horrid, awful torture pictures made available on the Internet and elsewhere? 

7. If so, did you say anything about them? Do anything?  Feel much remorse and sorrow for what our country was becoming and how your own actions or inactions helped along the spread of evil?

7.5. Did you speak out, protest, write any letters to your Senators, Congressmen, State Reps, Governors….anyone….over any of these matters?

8.  When new shopping centers started popping up everywhere, and there was a new Chipotle, Wal-Mart, another ubiquitous Olive Garden or Lowe’s, did you stop to think how these stores would be sustained with so much overlap? And why we were destroying the land to build new plazas when old shopping plazas had plenty of empty rental units?

9.  Do you still think people who don’t have jobs right now just don’t want to work, or do you realize how bleak things really are?  During the Depression, it was still a widely accepted myth that people were just “lazy” and unwilling to do the work that was available.  I hear it, still, around here.

10. If you answered yes to more than two of the above, how you doing with that whole looking in the mirror and sleeping at night jazz? 

We really do reap what we sow in this world, and it appears the US has a bumper crop coming in. No matter on what side you fell…you will share in the harvest. But it’s always nice, while there’s some breathing time, to ascertain what kind of evil comes about when otherwise good men and women do nothing to stop it.

Dear well intentioned “folks”

I am having the time of my life right now.

No need to worry or covertly call healthcare agencies

because I write glib comments. I have always been

glib. People who have always known me know this

is as certain as the earth revolving and the sun

shining tomorrow.

I have, for the first time in more than a few years,

a love who treats me like I make that sun come up

just for him every morning.  I have a nice place to live

and a family who keeps taking me out for my birthday.

I have my writing and a full schedule of events coming

up that annually bring me more joy than you can

imagine.

Please stop screwing up these things by reading

into things too much and sticking your noses where

they do not belong and can’t begin to understand:

my head!! Life is the best it has been in quite some time.

Thanks for caring – now kindly go mind your own concerns.

Much love… Anne

Total Economic Collapse? Maybe

A few words about the larger picture: our economy.  What we’re being told is a recession that is truly a depression is only a few slips away from being total economic collapse. Don’t believe me? Okay, then, consider this:  if OPEC moves away from the dollar as its oil currency of choice, moving toward the Euro as many economists predict will ultimately result from the lower stock market price of crude, our dollar will fall faster than Joan Rivers’ face without plastic surgery. 

 

Alternatively, if we reach or exceed a certain debt ceiling, Japan and/or China can do a massive dollar dump, refuse to continue to purchase our debt (they own over 60 percent of it) and call in their loans. Game over.

 

If neither of those two things happen, the dollar could slide all on its lonesome down the market, as it’s slowly doing right now. Eventual game over. Longer life support, but end result is the same.

 

And if none of those tickle your fancy, the stock market can continue on, unable to find a bottom, until our government announces total economic collapse. Would likely happen after a banking holiday, when the government discovers officially that the banks are insolvent, owing much more in liabilities than they have on the asset side of their ledgers.

 

But, hey – I’m just a Cassandra talking about really unlikely things, right?

 

Not if you read pages from the Austrian School of Economics Daily Reckoning or The Automatic Earth blog. They’ve been calling it for years. So has the head of the GAO, since 2006. But what is the GAO? Just the Government Accountability Office. They’ve been saying that debt like this is going to have catastrophic results.

 

For my part, after last year, I feel pretty free, in some weird ways. I’m no longer really scared of much in life. As always, I drive 80 down the freeway, still think money is the root of all evil, and no longer worry about answering to anyone but God – if he’s still listening.

 

This just in. . .

The man I’m currently seeing worships me like a goddess.

No – I’m not kidding. No hyperbole, either. He does. It’s a stunning change from what I’m used to in terms of relationships.

Let me tell you: if you walked around every day feeling like you were Gaia, Venus and Isis rolled into one, your mood would be a lot like mine – smiling all the time, floating around without much care, feeling about 20 feet tall.  You’d be composed of an alabaster outside with a molten lava core, too.

It’s amazing.  Think it’s made my hair much longer and curlier, my face softer, more womanly and yet youthful, and my green eyes bouncier.  Last night at Savannah, swear I caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror and it was positively something Botticelli would have created. I should have come with a half-shell accessory.

Wish it would last forever. Wish I could bottle it and sell it.  The dark circles under my eyes from the past months are starting to go away, replaced by a carefree dewy look.  All that, and he is the only man to kick my ass in Jeopardy.

Holy Hell. I ought to treat him like a God.

What a long, strange trip…

As Rochelle said: the very qualities that made me a quirky, eccentric, different human being converged to make me a very unworkable same over the past year. 

She considers it a breakdown.

 I am more wont to call it a breakthrough, or breakout, or break along, myself.  But whatever you call it, life has been weird since May. I believe the worst is over now. Or, rather, the worst of whats made available, knowledgewise, to standard issue humans.  As it should be.  But whatever comes after this life, well, might be much different for me than previously expected.

Okay, cryptic crap aside: I had serious troubles in December,  trying to get over the fact everything in my life was dropping like a row of dominoes. 

Bill now has Gab. Rightly so.

 I now have a space to live in my brother’s home. 

 Yes, the yeller. This may prove to be WORSE than a breakdown, living with him. Hopefully, it will not last long.  He was the only person going out on a limb to save me during what can only be called my self-destructive three month bender. 

So, yeah. There’s that.

 Weird, how things work out.

So, I’m still alive and will see 42 perhaps, this Sunday. Not because I was trying, really. More like the opposite. But what happens on earth has never really been that important to me, compared to what happens in our collective eternal afterlife.

Half saint, half sinner my whole life, I’ve spent lots of time trying to figure out where I’d land in the hereafter. 

Perhaps I was not as alone wondering that as previously thought.  Nevertheless, I’m no closer to knowing than I was a year ago.  But I made some really good friends in some really strange places over the past three months, and since people are my species, I’ve grown to love these folks muchly. Don’t judge until you’ve walked a few feet in another’s moccasins, right?

The film festival begins March 19. I’m actively and excitedly preparing. If my brain and heart are much changed since covering it last year, it must be muscle memory that propels me along, as I am as happy as ever, today, to be writing for About.com and cover events as they unfold at Tower City’s CIFF.

Amidst a sea of loss and coming off a truly horrible, wonderous year, my spirit is sparked by reading the huge film guide like I do every year since I was seven and prayed for someone with a car to drive me to the far-off, exotic sounding Cedar Lee for the festival.

Ohio’s got a lot of interesting film offerings, including one about a nun murdered in the Amazon and another on the state of family farming in our state.  I circled a whole bunch of movies and then copied them to another guide that will be dropped off at my brother’s neighbor’s house. He’s a film buff and new friend. We’re set to watch “Choke” together tonight.

My media pass is en route via the USPS, I’m planning on sweet-talking someone into tickets for the Opening Night Gala, and life does indeed go on, as perfectly imperfect as ever.