I really enjoy spinning tales in my head to explain strangers. I think we all do. I wonder what stories people tell themselves about me. I wonder if they wonder about me at all. We weren't all cut out to be the heroes and heroines of fairy tales. Though no less worthy, we're the people that make up the small crowd of village people in story books.

So much waste. This evening I read a National Geographic article about feeding the world's population. In America we struggle, but millions of loaves go stale and then go in the dumpster. In Egypt they pass out government-subsidized bread and in Eritrea they starve. And by no fault of their own. How can they plant in arid, war-torn lands? In India they have bread but also cancers from the fertilizers and pesticides that run from the wheat fields, into canals, into thirsty mouths. Die by malnutrition and starvation or by painful disease? Tough call.
My relatives started arguing over the war. So much money wasted on new technology and so little spent on veterans. One relative kept saying 'we should have blown the whole darn country up'. I wanted to ask her which exactly she meant but she's vengeful and likely without answer, feeling that all nations with a majority of devout Muslims is just one big evil stain. We've wasted enough lives ('casualties', they call them. What a disgusting euphemism) as it is. How can you not care that people over are people? We're just people over here. That's all. Nothing makes us any more special or deserving though that's what we're brought up to believe. It gives us no right to live while killing others and thinking it just.
Someone chuckles and says they're glad at least they go to bed feeling safe at night, as if they would ever not be. I doubt many consider how others feel as U.S. bombs drop on their neighbors homes in the soiled name of democracy and so-called peace. They discuss the UT tower shootings in the 60s. They shake their heads over the 15 killed that day. I don't think they even consider how many died in Afghanistan under U.S. fire just a couple days ago.

Remember that you're more than this. Remember?

I don't understand why people are so eager. Don't they know? You might get this. But you might just get that. Don't they understand?

TickTickTick
Here it comes
And there it all goes

I feel like I've been doing this all day in one way or another, hassling with a program meant to keep my laptop safe from viruses. It detects a Problem. But if you were to look up this so-called Problem, you would find that it isn't actually a problem or a threat in anyway. Rather, the program looks at it and is intimidated by it and doesn't like the way it looks and puts it in a big red box, demanding your immediate attention. You have two options: to fix the Problem or to ignore it. Of course there is an asterisk next to the Fix option telling you that that is the preferred method for dealing with it and that it isn't, in fact, better left let alone. I just keep clicking Fix again and again and again but nothing is happening. The program is ignoring my attempts to do what we both think needs to be done. I can look at the scan's progress, I can check on the files it's looked at, I can minimize it or just put it off to the side of the screen, but for some reason I just cannot Fix the Problem. I'm sitting here, looking at the window head-on, with my eyes imploring the program to just let me fix everything. But to no avail. I need to get to bed, I'm very aware of this, but what am I supposed to do about the Problem? If I just shut down for the night, that same Problem will be there in the morning. For how long, though, can I sit here clicking Fix before my little touch pad gives out and the little so-called Problem begets a very real, very serious one?




There are entirely too many metaphors running around on any given day.

Today has been kind of like when you try to walk quietly across a wooden floor, but every careful step you take just brings forth a loud and terrible creeking noise. And maybe it would have just been a better idea to stay where you were all along.