Steph Matulich's blog

Screw all this democracy crap

2008-09-23T14:07:12-05:00

There are times, especially during election years, when I am asked why I don’t write about politics.

I usually beg off the question by claiming that - as a registered Libertarian - I never have a dog in the fight but really it’s because I’m congenitally incapable of taking the douchebags in either of the major parties seriously.

Take the Democrats for instance. Here’s a party filled with people who are dedicated to the notion that our government - an organization that, if it were a person, couldn’t find its ass with both hands and a flashlight - hasn’t screwed things up enough. No, they want to expand the reach of government despite the fact that government intervention is the biggest non-solution in the history of humankind. They also want to put our government in charge of the care and feeding of a good chunk of the citizenry. Fabulous. And they want the rest of us to pay for it. Double fabulous.

Then there are the Republicans and hoo-boy these people can't seem to shed their civil liberties fast enough. I mean holy crap people, the ink on The Patriot Act wasn’t even dry before your were crawling into bed and asking the FBI to read you a bedtime story - which they’ll get around to just as soon as they’re done rooting through your financial records and looting your stash of internet porn.

Side note: If I were a betting woman I would put a thousand bucks on the fact that somewhere deep in the bowels of the Republican Headquarters there is a shrine to the director of Homeland Security that says “Liberty was overrated anyway.”

So yeah. You have two major parties with two distinct ideas on how best to club the people over the head with horse-killing amounts of government with nary a voice raised in defense of those of us would just as soon take on life without all these government-sponsored and ridiculously bureaucratic "safety features".

But it gets better.

These political parties have presidential candidates. People whose sole purpose - so far as I can tell - is to avoid saying anything on the campaign trail that might be interpretted as the least bit substantive. Yesterday I was talking to an acquaintance of mine when she divulged that a particularly stirring speech by her flavor of candidate had her “on the chair clapping and crying.”

“I just felt so good. Someone running for president has never made me feel so good.” She said.

Well good for you. That’s really flippin' fabulous news, especially for your candidate because so long as voters are feeling really good they certainly aren’t thinking very hard. And really, when you get down to it, winning elections is so much easier when your supporters allow themselves to be led around by their emotions instead of engaging in all that pesky critical thinking.

Which is why candidates get away with stumping around promising things that they have no right to promise and are legally incapable of delivering anyway. Not that this has ever stopped voters from believing; the most rabid of both candidates’ camps really do seem to think that Barack Obama walks on water and John McCain is the second coming.

Side-side note: Wouldn’t it be nice though, if both candidates would simply stand at their respective podiums and shout ”I like puppies and rainbows! And I’ll give out free candy if I become President! Also! I can fly if I flap my arms real fast!” I mean, that would most certainly be less insulting to my intelligence than the typical election year tripe being regurgitated now.

Anyway. That’s why I don’t write about politics.

9/11

2008-09-11T11:26:33-05:00

I know, I know. Another commemorative 9/11 post.

Still. There are times, like today, when it seems more than a little surreal that the events of a morning seven years ago led to my dad being deployed to Afghanistan. Where he has been for months, is right now and will be for some time to come.

Talk about the personal being the political.

My daughter riding on the shoulders of her Papa Sarge.

My dad walking to his aircraft on the way out. All my readers from military families are probably very familiar with this vantage point of their loved one. ;)

CH-47 helicopters taxi and prepare for departure to Afghanistan.

Face? Meet pavement. (Or how I know I'm not Lance Armstrong)

2008-09-07T23:00:26-05:00

I’m sitting here with a largish bruise on my left shoulder and several scrapes and cuts along my legs because I fell on my bike today. I would say that I fell off my bike but that wouldn’t necessarily be true because when I went over I was still very much seated on my bike. Or at least I had my feet firmly clipped onto the pedals of my bike because when the light turned red and I was suddenly required to stop? I experienced several moments of utter retardedness during which I failed to remember how, exactly, to detach myself from my two-wheeled contraption of death.

Luckily for me there were at least a dozen cars waiting at the same light when I came along and gave them a story they’d be telling all night.

I was fairly non-descript at first: just another sasquatch out for an evening ride. Then the light turned red. And I couldn’t get my foot un-clipped. And then I still couldn’t get my foot un-clipped. And after several more seconds? I still couldn’t get my foot un-clipped. I’m sure my expression probably morphed into one of WTF?!?! as I reached the crosswalk, stopped, wobbled, pinwheeled my arms into empty air, and then tipped over onto the pavement.

Several cars honked as I lay there staring at the sky and thinking nasty thoughts about Lance Armstrong and Greg LeMond who, I’d be willing to bet, never endured the applause of four teenage boys in a Honda Civic after smashing themselves flat.

Then I thought that it was a pity that I was the one to fall because I’m sure it was a magnificent sight that I would have enjoyed thoroughly had I been watching and the subject of the falling not been myself.

And for my next trick...

2008-05-17T15:36:05-05:00

As of Tuesday I will have completed my first semester in the funeral services program at ARC and I have to say that I have LOVED it. I love the course material, love the instructors, love my classmates.

In fact, the head in which I dwell is home to a big fat love-in and if there was a soldier holding a rifle around I’d put a flower in the end of it.

Whoa, hippie image overload. Forget I typed that. Shake. Erase. Start over.

Anyway. During the last little while I’ve discovered that I have the intellectual ability to absorb copious amounts of chemical equations and anatomical concepts without my brain liquefying in protest and leaking out my ears to stain my shirt.

What’s more is that I am finding I actually enjoy the science coursework. As in I really get a kick out of it. Like, I’m getting A’s and everything. Who’da thunk it?

I could not be more confounded right now if the skies had opened up and the great forefinger of God himself were to point down as he boomed, “You, with the bad haircut! You’re not nearly as dim as you thought you were.”

…and caused the great ball of deathly black discouragement that has been “the sciences” all my life to morph into a subject area that I can grasp with some ease and holy crap! The notion that I might have be capable of succeeding in an area more technical than Play-Doh would undoubtedly cause all of my ex-boyfriends and most of my extended family to have a collective aneurysm. But I digress.

To this end, my husband – the ever patient patron saint of Encouraging One’s Wife to Pursue Whatever Schizophrenic Path She Pleases – has suggested that upon completion of the funeral services program I leisurely pursue a BS at UC Davis.

So I think I’m going to do that. Maybe I’ll even pursue a masters. Why not? I may be 50 before I graduate but I figure I’m going to turn 50 someday anyway and I might as well do it with a degree in microbiology.

A Letter To My Body

2008-04-06T07:26:41-05:00

Dear Body,

Hey, how’s it going? Pretty good I hope? Things are going pretty well here too, but I guess you already knew that.

So, um, anyway. I was kind of hoping to tell you thanks. You know, for like, seeing me through the last 34 years. I mean, it would probably have been easier for you when - during that last stint in Mexico - we were faced with a dozen beers and horse-killing amounts of tequila to simply say “forget it” but you didn’t. (Not to say you didn’t exact your revenge the next day as I spent several hours dragging you by your forearms to the bathroom while wishing I was dead, but in the end you decided to keep the lights on and let me live to see another day even though I probably didn’t deserve it. Viva la gringa indeed.)

Uh… yeah. So thanks for not killing me back then. Also, thanks for not quitting on me throughout the many abuses I’ve heaped on you over the years. Like that time in college when I wrecked my motorcyle in the middle of Fair Oaks Boulevard. Yeah, if I were you (which I am, kind of) I’d be pretty pissed about the fact that I managed to pitch you over the handlebars and get you run over by my then-unmanned bike. At least you and I were able to get the number of that nice waiter who ran out of Piatti’s to help you get out of the street.

Thanks too, for putting up with my dumb ass during those college years when I experimented with stuff that - as my friend Denise often said - “was made in people’s bathrooms”. I shudder when think back to all the chemical garbage I subjected you to even as I’m simultaneously relieved to have a justification for having spent those years as a registered Democrat.

You know what I’m most grateful for body? You’re energy levels, your strength, and your ability to endure.

You sustained two pregnancies and let me keep running well into the second trimester both times. You delivered two healthy and happy babies with nary a complaint and then gave me the energy to tend to them. Your ability to replicate yourself within my children is something that gives me pause whenever I see my son’s blue eyes or comb my hands through my daughter’s impossibly thick blond hair.

You have completed eighteen mile “fun runs” and pushed your way up Hurricane Point. You never seem to mind slopping around in 10 kilometers worth of mud. Sometimes you object when I drag you into a one-hundred-and-five degree room for yoga, but only a little.

Body, you have been patient with me in every endeavor I have undertaken whether it be diving into the ocean, throwing myself out of an airplane or hiking up the back of Half Dome.

I am very lucky to have you. You have not betrayed me by developing cancer, debilitating diseases or other chronic ailments. You have equipped me with the energy to properly care for and enjoy my family. I have eyes that see, ears that hear, and a mind that works tolerably well (depending on which of my family or friends you’re asking.) Sure, there was that time you threw in a hamstring injury for giggles but now that that’s over I think we can be friends again.

I have to say that after 34 years I’ve got no complaints.