Take Back Our World

An old school friend of mine felt she had mourned the loss of all she believed in; mainly, that the world was basically a decent place. I told her, “You’re not mourning a loss; you’re having a crisis of faith. We all do. I had mine over seven years ago when I became homeless; I had another one about five years ago when my panic attacks came back to where I couldn’t even go outside. We do not receive crises of faith unless and until we are ready to handle them. I now know that God loves me – the REAL me, the me I should’ve been ever since the day I was born if a series of unfortunate events hadn’t otherwise intervened to shape me into a person I hardly recognize now but lived as every day until I was on the edge of thirty. I also know that a lot of what I’ve been told about race and gender inequity has nothing to do with race or gender, but a lot more to do with the people who espouse those beliefs. Crises of faith do not ruin us; they enneal us, temper us, and make us more powerful than ever; we must, however, recognize the power they give us and use it to shape the world we want, need, and desire. In the words of Mohandas Gandhi, ‘We need to be the change we wish to see in the world’. We didn’t stop being decent, or at least I didn’t, and neither did millions of other people in the world. Think of it like this: if the ‘olden days’ had been as media-saturated as our modern days, Baby Boomers and their elders would not have spewed forth their tales of how their youths were idyllic compared to us Generation Xers. If it bleeds, it leads; unfortunately, the bloodshed has gone on too long. We need to stop the hemorrhaging now and make our world how we want it.”

Are you ready to take back the world, be the change you wish to see in it, and make it a home again? You know it’s hard out here for an imp. More to come, my imp children.

V.

Hell’s Backyard BBQ

Yesterday, I cooked barbecue for the very first time (I’m 37). It was less than a good experience: I used a nice rub recipe (from a cookbook) that was similar to a rub my mom uses on her ribs, I mopped my ribs using a mop liquid that was almost identical to what my mom uses, I dressed up some bottled barbecue sauce with what was left of the mop liquid, and I had hoped for melt-in-your-mouth, fall-off-the-bone ribs. Then I decided to involve the menfolk.

What was I thinking?

Pseudohusband decides to fill the grill almost to the cooking grate with charcoal, when all I needed was a modest pyramid of coals to deliver low and slow heat to my ribs and chicken. Stepson #3 soaks the coals in enough lighter fluid to blow up Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, the lower peninsula of Michigan, eastern Wisconsin, and western Pennsylvania. While the briquettes are ablaze, punching yet another hole in the ozone layer, he adds more gas – it’s a miracle the grill didn’t melt. I then brought the meat out when I saw only red-hot briquettes and no flames.

Thank God I didn’t have hot dogs on the grill that day, or they would’ve been fricasseed in 20 femtoseconds (a femtosecond is one quadrillionth of a second; I wouldn’t have had time to take them out of the bag before they would’ve been burnt to a crisp)! I had just put the ribs and the chicken legs and thighs on the grill when I noticed hell flames charring my meat blacker than my granddad (and Granddad was not a light-skinned man!). I had to pour my cup of iced tea on the coals just to keep everything from burning to a crisp.

I then hoped that after a bit of cooking at twice the temperature of the Sun, I could sauce up the meat and hope the sauce would compensate for the scorched exterior of the meat. Not so much; it got just as scorched as the meat. At least Stepson #3 grilled some vegetables in aluminum foil and put some ears of corn on the grill just as it was almost time to eat. I was so ashamed of how my barbecue turned out I almost lost my appetite, but the men ate it like they hadn’t eaten in centuries. I guess I learned two lessons yesterday:
1. Men will eat anything, and
2. There was a damn good reason why my mother had me make deviled eggs, potato salad, cole slaw, fruit salad, and dessert while she womanned the grill.

Ordinarily I’d use our time to kick someone square in the ass for their twisted moral depravity; today’s ass-kicking I reserve for myself.  (Kick) Ow.  More to come, imp children.

V.

Grown-Up, or Messed-Up?

Seven months ago my oldest stepson Jeremy was only 26 when his younger brother Adam found him dead of a painkiller overdose. I suspect Jeremy had also been doing other stuff he had no business doing. Adam, a shy young man to begin with, became withdrawn after his big brother’s passing. My youngest stepson, Andrew, had just gotten out of the Army after a tour of duty in Iraq and we were having dinner with his father when we got the phone call no father ever wants to get.

Their mother and their stepfather were inconsolable, as were his then-8- and 7-year-old daughters; my now-nine-year-old stepgranddaughter was afraid to describe what kind of father he was at his funeral (totally understandable; one shouldn’t expect an eight-year-old girl and her seven-year-old sister to lose their father, let alone have to eulogize him).

I still expect him to call his father to ask to borrow gas money. I still expect him to bring beer over to the house for him and his brothers. I still expect him to fuss at his dad over some dumb stuff. That’s the scariest part of all: he won’t ever get to do that again, nor will he ever get to turn thirty and discover that 30 is the new 21. He won’t get to see his daughters graduate high school, go off to college, give his daughters away at their weddings, or become a grandfather. He won’t even get to see his daughters become teenagers or chase potential boyfriends (or girlfriends) away.

I just turned 37 a couple of weeks ago; no one ever tells us that being grown folks is messy, with stepchildren on drugs or fear of getting old and appearing so or saying many of the same things you heard your mom or dad say to you or any of the other miscellaneous items that cross your path as you get deeper into adulthood. When we were children and teens, ‘grown-up’ looked so easy because the adults in our lives didn’t have to go to bed at a certain time, got to watch TV shows we were forbidden to watch due to objectionable content, didn’t have to eat all their vegetables before having dessert, and got to go to cocktail parties. No one told us about bills that needed to be paid, checkbooks that needed to be balanced, children and stepchildren that needed to have a guiding hand or a firm shake-up to get their lives right, the wonders of home ownership (why don’t they teach stuff like this in school? So many young people would benefit from the information.), or grandparents that needed to be taken care of as if they were babies.

Normally, my musings would be filled with rage and vinegar; today, however, I had to console a MySpace friend whose daughter is, sadly, following in Jeremy’s footsteps, so there is obvious melancholy in my vinegar today. Hopefully, the girl’s mother and I can try to keep her alive. Technically, she’s 26 and therefore not a girl, but I can’t help calling her a girl since childhood seems so extended in this society. That is not to say that as soon as one physically develops adult characteristics one should marry and take on adulthood full-force; scientific studies are now showing that the brain starts thinking in an adult manner into a person’s twenties. Until then, we’re going to do some really stupid shit.

Let’s just hope our stupid-shit phase doesn’t take us out of this world.

V.

Stranger in My Own Land

I’m a Sister.  There.  I’ve said it.  I am an American of African heritage and descent.  That being said, other Brothers and Sisters treat me like an alien, especially my own mother (who happens to have beautiful chocolate skin).  Not all people of African heritage and descent treat me thus; I’ve met some Brothers and Sisters who walk the path of light my good twin walks.

Why do Brothers and Sisters feel the need to tell me how to be ‘black’, especially the younger ones?  I’ve been black for 36 years, and I’ll be black for the rest of my life.  I can’t change my DNA, nor do I want to.  I happen to have light skin and freckles, and I happen to speak and carry myself in a manner in which I am understood by a very large group of people.  I am somewhat well-educated, although I could be better-educated (and I shall be one day), and I dress in a laid-back, casual manner befitting a 36-year-old woman.  How the hell is this ‘acting white’?

I listen to various types of music: rock, soul, jazz, R&B, a little rap, a touch of country, some world music, — stuff like that.  I watch educational programming when I’m not on the computer.  I happen to have dated Caucasian men primarily, although any man of any heritage and descent who is kind, intelligent, compassionate, humorous, preferably Christian, and relatively stable is perfectly acceptable to me.  I avoid vernacular speech (especially the use of the N-word) except around the closest of friends; even then, I don’t use the N-word, as that word is disrespectful.  Yet my Brothers and Sisters perceive me as weird, all because I don’t fit into how they perceive ‘blackness’.

I am black on my own terms; this means getting away from toxic environments and doing my best to seek healing (for myself and my good twin).  This means no longer being brainwashed into believing that desiring financial success or speaking proper English or doing things correctly or dating different nationalities of men or listening to rock music (which, BTW, began as a black American musical genre) or eating different food besides Southern U.S. cooking or having friends of many races constitutes ‘being white’.  This means being the me I was supposed to be from the day I was born.  Anyone who doesn’t like that can kiss my light black ass.

Quit hating, black people.  It’s hard enough to be a black American without other black Americans putting the good folks down; it’s even harder when bad Brothers and Sisters put down the Brothers and Sisters who are trying to respect authority, follow the law, stay out of jail, go to college, wait until marriage to have children, have wholesome, satisfying careers; become financially successful, break patterns of abuse and neglect, avoid drugs, get physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually healthy; raise healthy, wholesome children, and live their golden years peaceably.  Act like you were raised right.  Your grandparents and other ancestors fought too hard for you all to act a damn fool.  I thank God for all those who came before me so that I could live a life they could only dream of and not be a stranger in my own land.

For those who do not have African heritage or descent or for those of you whose African heritage is too far in the past to be reliably documented, please do not mistake this as a dressing-down of all Americans of African heritage; rather, this is just a little wake-up call.  There are fools of all heritages and descents; I just focused on the Brothers and the Sisters today.  More to come, imp children.

V.                                                                       

Eat, Drink, and Be Scary

Today shall be a day full of calm, peaceful musings about the joys of fine dining — NOT!  Since when have I been calm?!  I read my twin’s blog about food and, honestly, that ain’t how we normally eat as a society.  Let’s face it: we eat crap.  We eat prepackaged, partially hydrogenated, mechanically separated crap.  We even feed our pets crap, and now our pets are dying or have died because of it.  Who puts plastic derivatives in dog and cat food?  If we did to our pets what corporations do to our pets, we’d be cited for animal cruelty.  If we fed our dogs and cats plastic the animal control officers would take our dogs and cats away, but laboratories routinely feed experimental animals substances proven hundreds of times more toxic than plastic.

What blisters me worse than what our pets eat is what our children eat; most of the stuff advertised on children’s TV commercials are little better than junior high science fair experiments.  Paint candy?  Are you kidding me?  Ultra-sour candy?  What the hell is that doing to children’s teeth?  TV dinners just for children?  That ain’t right.  If a reasonably intelligent lifeform from another galaxy came to our planet and visited each continent individually to assess what Earth children eat, this would be a brief synopsis of the assessment:

1. Many African children are malnourished because their lands are at war and they cannot get what little food is distributed,
2. Many Asian children are malnourished because the land is relatively poor in food diversity compared to other lands,
3. Many European children are malnourished because many of their government’s economies are unstable,
4. Some Australian children are malnourished because much of the land is unusable for agriculture,
5. No children exist in Antarctica, so assessment of Antarctican children is impossible,
6. Many South American children are malnourished because many of their lands’ governments are unstable,
7. Although North America has much usable agricultural land, its children are malnourished because they are overfed aesthetically pleasing yet nutritionally inferior food.

Fucked up, isn’t it, that a sentient extraterrestrial can easily see what you and I miss right under our noses?

If you go down the cereal aisle of your average megastore you will see, at around what may be waist-level for you but what is eye-level for a child, cereals that didn’t exist thirty years ago when we were children.  Yes, we ate sugared, colorful cereals as children, but we also ate other things for breakfast; modern children practically live on brightly-colored cereal when they’re not eating other foodstuffs that have colors brighter than house paint.  This is on top of the limited choices on children’s restaurant menus and the fast-food children’s meals with the free toy inside.

I saw a talk show some time ago in which the guests had obese toddlers and preschoolers.  Some of these ‘mothers’ fed their children cheese twists, pizza, burgers, fries, ice cream, soda in baby bottles, whole cans of spaghetti, — and then denied that their children were unhealthy!  I got sick and irate at the same time: if these children make it to 18, they’re gonna have a hell of a road to travel if they want to even know what healthy looks like.

To all the broke-down, busted-up, shouldn’t-have-had-babies-at-15 parents out there, STOP FEEDING YOUR KIDS CRAP!  Do you even know where food comes from, let alone your children?  If you say, “The grocery store”, I will slap the living shit out of all of you!  That just shows me how fucking ignorant you are!  Cook a meal, you lazy turds!  If you don’t know how to cook, learn how to cook!  I’m sure my good twin will have some sort of meatloaf recipe on her blog (www.copperdots.wordpress.com).  Get her recipe, and while that’s cooking peel and boil some potatoes, then drain them, mash ‘em up ’til you get all the lumps out, put a litttle milk and some butter in the potatoes, add a dash of salt and a pinch of pepper, and mix it all up.  Bake some buttermilk biscuits, steam some frozen peas, and fix your kids some chocolate milk.  That meal is so much healthier than eating takeout every day, and cheaper, too.  Best of all, it only takes an hour to make.  You got twenty-four hours in a day; you can’t use one to feed your children some good food?  And don’t get all caught up in the, “My kids only eat McFood”, argument; it doesn’t wash with me.  Kids eat what they are served; if that meatloaf dinner is their only option, they will eat it.

OK, so this was a day full of calm, peaceful musings about the joys of fine dining — NOT!   More to come, imp crew.

V.

An Improper Intro

Now that you’ve met me, please allow me to introduce myself: I am Vicki’s id, her evil fucking twin who doesn’t give a fuck what goes on this blog so long as it’s a fire under an evil person’s ass.  If you want sweetness and light and all that flower-child shit, go to http://www.copperdots.wordpress.com.  If you wanna keep it real (cranky), pull up a chair and don’t go no fucking where.

I’ve availed myself the use of modern computer technology to download what my good twin would euphemistically call erotica, but what is really just porn (and shitty porn, at that).  OK, who fucking gets two dicks jammed into her asshole and one in her pussy before the guys blow their loads on her face?  Who gets fucked in the ass and then sucks that nasty, filthy cock?  Don’t even get me started on those paper-thin ‘plots’ to appeal to those with an IQ higher than bread.  What’s even sicker is those fucking perverts who watch this shit, especially those who watch the so-called ‘teen’ porn.  Fellas, THESE WOMEN ARE EIGHTEEN!  STOP FANTASIZING THAT THEY’RE TWELVE!  No wonder little girls (and little boys) are coming up missing and turning up dead; it’s sick bastards like you who rape them and then kill them when they cry and scream!  Parents cannot keep their children under lock and key, nor should they have to!  Pedophiles, just fucking DIE and quit polluting the Earth with your genetically inferior sperm!

Oh, BTW, if any good people happen to read this blog, I needed to amp up the language to get through to all the boneheads out there who just don’t give a fuck.  More good people need to go out and beat the living shit out of all the pervs and child abusers of the world; maybe then, children will be able to go outside and play without fear.  More to follow.

V.

Let’s Piss People Off!

Happy New Year.  Now that I got all the happy crap out of the way, let’s talk about parenting.  For all the wonderful, sweet, healthy parents out there, you may want to leave the room and do some wholesome activities with your young person/people: this message is strictly for the shitty parents out there.  Now when I’m talking about shitty parents, I’m not talking about the parents who have no clue what to do (like putting baby powder on a baby’s hair instead of the baby’s rump during a diaper change), but who want to learn the right thing to do.  I’m talking about the parents who just don’t give a shit how their children turn out, so long as they fulfill the parent’s hopes and dreams instead of their own.

If you scream at your daughter or beat your son because the child got an A- on a test you feel he or she should have gotten an A on, you are an ASSHOLE!  If your child wets the bed constantly because you beat him or her, but you beat him or her because he or she wets the bed, you are an ASSHOLE! If you drag your 7-year-old daughter from beauty contest to beauty contest even though the little girl is crying that she wants to play football with her friends, you are an ASSHOLE!  If your son hates it when you coach his sports team because you scream at him and his teammates and almost beat his best friend’s dad with a 2×4, you are an ASSHOLE!  If you break your child’s bones in anger, you are an ASSHOLE!  If you tease or bully your child because he or she is full-figured but then force food down the child’s throat at family functions, you are an ASSHOLE!  If you tried to kill your daughter’s boyfriend because he’s a different race or color, you are an ASSHOLE!  If you disown your gay or bisexual child because he or she is gay or bisexual, you are an ASSHOLE!  If you prefer one child over another and spoil the child you prefer but abuse the child you don’t, you are an ASSHOLE!  If you molest your children, you are the lowest form of ASSHOLE and I wish you’d just DIE and quit polluting the world!  If you teach your child to hate someone because of the color of a person’s skin, you are the lowest form of ASSHOLE and I wish you’d also just DIE and quit polluting the world!

The good, sweet parents can return now.  Although I am not a parent but merely a stepparent, I know that a good parent is a place for a child (even an adult child) to have refuge.  A good parent lets his or her child know that he or she tried his or her best on a school test — and loves that child anyway.  A good parent does not expect too much too soon from his or her children.  A good parent tries to get to know his or her child as an individual, at a pace that’s comfortable for the child.  A good parent gives his or her child breathing room rather than intruding into every aspect of his or her child’s life.  A good parent accepts his or her child’s love mate so long as the love mate does not harm the child, without regard to race, color, or gender.  A good parent knows that everyone has boundaries that should be respected.  A good parent loves and respects all his or her children and has earned his or her children’s respect.  Of course, every good parent knows that, right?

If I’ve stepped on any toes today (and I KNOW I have),  SO FUCKING WHAT?  GET A FUCKING CLUE!  Stop jacking off to a chat room with the 13-year-old girls in it!  Learn to be a good parent!  Not every parent beats their children, not every parent bullies their children, and not every parent treats their children with contempt!  We bring young people into the world and into our lives to teach them healthy lessons for them to survive.  Anyone unwilling to do that doesn’t deserve to be a parent.  Anyone too selfish to do that doesn’t deserve to be a parent.

V.