Just when I am too tired to post...

I get a lovely gift from the universe like this:

Busted

I got caught by my boss today doing the happy dance in the aisles of the cubicles at work.

I had just heard that the Dems had taken the Senate and could not contain myself.

"Oh, so you're a DEMOCRAT?" she asked, not at all approvingly.

"Um, no, a Green, actually," I answered, like an idiot.

Uh oh.

In which her head explodes

How deluded are some evangelicals? Check this commentary from Mark Driscoll on the Ted Haggard sex scandal:

Most pastors I know do not have satisfying, free, sexual conversations and liberties with their wives. At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this. It is not uncommon to meet pastors' wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband's sin, but she may not be helping him either.

Exsqueeze me? Because wifey gains a few pounds and doesn't do her hair, Reverend Dorkwad is going to start dreaming of dudes? I just do not think it works that way.

Gentlemen, care to weigh in? Does the sight of your wife in baggy sweats make you start dreaming of Lance Bass?

All joking aside, doesn't Driscoll fairly seethe with hostility to women? First, they trap men. Then they turn them gay. Yikes.

*******

I hate to rain on the happy happy joy joy election parade, but is anyone else flamingly pissed that bans on gay marriage passed in every state but one where they were on the ballot? Homophobic idjits. Grrrr.

******

In other news, it is Red Stapler's 1 Year Blogiversary. Yes, one year of spew and silliness. It has been a blast. Thank you for your support.

Missing out

Once upon a time, I lived in a small college town. I always shopped at the Safeway and I always went to the same checker.

Kirk was friendly and efficient. And cute. Way cute. So what if his line was a little longer? It did a girl's heart good just to bask in the glow of his ultrawhite smile for a minute or two.

Eventually Kirk quit the grocery store and opened a little business across the street from where I worked. On the first day they were open, I went in to see what it was all about and I was impressed by the clean, shiny smoothie bar.

"They could franchise this place," I thought.

I visited Kirk and his co-owners often to get massive, tasty smoothies. I wanted to flirt with Kirk but I didn't. First, he intimidated me with his overwhelming cuteness, and second, I got a gay vibe from him. This does not mean he was or is gay - it just speaks to my tendency to label any man who is cute, clean and well-dressed "probably gay."

His business was a success. How much of a success?


Making-smoothies-for-Oprah-on-the-Oprah-Show kind of successful.

If I had it all to do over again, maybe I would have tried flirting just a little.

I have a dream today

I dream that someday a Christian minister will be deposed in a scandal when it is discovered that he didn't do enough for the poor and the sick.

*****

Today is the day. Vote.

You don't have too many civic duties. Jury duty. Pay your taxes. Obey the law. And vote.

Voting is your little admission ticket to responsible adulthood in a free society. Will I think less of you if you don't do it? Absolutely.

Am I going to tell you how to vote? Absolutely not.

You can go home again. You just can't stay.

I am back in the little town I called my own until 5 years ago, when Mr Stapler lured me away.

He and I are just visiting for the weekend, a quick trip to see his folks, who are vacationing here. It's the kind of town you vacation in.

Yesterday morning I went to Farmer's Market and saw old friends and stood around and talked and laughed in the warm November sun, surrounded by piles of squashes and apples and fresh-baked whole-grain breads.

Then I went to my favorite cafe and had coffee and a waffle with the owner, one of the most charming people in the world. And other old friends and others wandered in and out and said hello or talked for a while...

Sigh. I remember that life. It seemed so warm and fun and simple, everyone I liked doing kind of the same thing on the same schedule. I didn't have to plan a social life, because life itself was social.

I made half the money I did now but I only lived 3 minutes from work, so it felt like my days were long and leisurely. I volunteered at the Performing Arts Center, so I got to see fabulous shows ALL THE TIME.

Sigh.

I know I idealize it. I lived in a rental house with 2 roommates, an insane landlady, and 30 year old carpets. I worked at a job that was as much tedium as creativity, for far less pay than I deserved.

And now I have a new life, and it isn't a bad life. Mr Stapler, seeing my folks every day, being able to have my own house where I can have a big yard for Goldie, a job that pays well (even though I still wank about not getting paid enough), fun freelance work...

Yet I can feel that strong pull by the past, even as I march into the future. Does that ever happen to you?

A couple of new things up over at Linkateria.