Finally.

I have decided that it’s time to find a way out of this town.  I’ve been wasting away here for 13 years now.  Sure, it’s easy to sit here and follow the same path, but… No more.  I deserve better.

It started when I found a job advertised in Portland.  It sounded perfect for me, but for some reason I didn’t pursue it.  Then that job was still posted almost a month later, so I decided it was a sign.  I submitted my application, and said that if anything came of it, I would think about it.  Then one evening it hit me.  I want out of this town!!!

So, I am now looking anywhere and everywhere.  I am ready to sell my house and walk away.  Because, sadly, there is nothing here for me.  Most of my friends have moved on, and the job isn’t going to get any better.

Plus, I hate the heat and I miss the mountains.  Have I mentioned that?

And now the lowbrow…

Apparently, I am a reality TV junkie.  There.  I said it.  A quick synopsis of my thoughts on the current shows.  (Like you care.)

Top Chef: Miami - Please.  Can’t someone find a host that isn’t annoying?  First Ms. Joel and now Padma?  Pretty does not make one necessarily well-suited for all things televised.

On the Lot - What a shame.  This show started out with such promise.  The first two shows were great.  Then some exec got his hand in it and it all went to shit.  The host is a blubbering idiot, and the format doesn’t work.

America’s Got Talent – I swore I wouldn’t watch anything with the Hoff, but I started watching one of the audition episodes and got excited by a singer named Cass.  (I think that was his name.)  But two words: Boy Shakira.  There is now way I can respect this crap now.

So You Think You Can Dance – Since I’m in the mood for honesty, I’ll admit that I have seen every episode of every season.  I just love this shit.  A few thoughts:

• Why is Anya still in and Blondie out?
• Where the hell is Mia Michaels?  More Mia!
• I miss Brian Friedman and his Sanjaya hair.  That alone was entertainment.
• Does picking Wade out of the hat mean a guaranteed bye to the next round?
• Is it possible for Nigel to look any more like a character from the Simpsons?

Last Comic Standing – I’ve never seen this before, but I caught about twenty minutes of the last episode, and that John dude is funny.

So, I think that that is enough humiliation for one day.

First, the highbrow…

On my break today, I grabbed Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and flipped to the middle of the book (dealing with the period immediately following the Spanish-American War).  Two quotes he includes hit me:

How our hearts burned with indignation against the atrocious Spaniards!… But when the smoke was over, the dead buried, and the cost of war came back to the people in the increase in the price of commodities and rent–that is, when we sobered up from our patriotic spree–it suddenly dawned on us that the cause of the Spanish-American war was the price of sugar… that the lives, blood, and money of the American people were used to protect the interests of the American capitalists.

-Emma Goldman

I bring you the stately matron named Christendom, returning bedraggled, besmirched, and dishonored from pirate raids in Kiao-Chou, Manchuria, South Africa, and the Philippines, with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies.

- Mark Twain

Hmm.  Not much has changed.

A Question for You

So, how was the wedding?