Is Rabbit Brush Kicking My Immune System's Butt?

I can tell fall is coming because I woke up this morning and thought how early it must be, because it was still dark, and why won't the melatonin work all night... and it was 5:30. I couldn't sleep anymore, so I just got up. Here I sit at the table, listening to a crow caw and a dog bark somewhere in the neighborhood, while my snout runs like crazy, and a fever, too. I don't know if it's insane allergies, or if I am coming down with a cold. So, I guess it's just as well we are missing a trip to Yellowstone to hang out with mi hermano y mi cunada this long Labor Day weekend, although the reason for not going is a sad one: HamCat is very sick.

So, anyway, the FFM recently claimed that I am angry in my blog entries. I disagreed, just to be difficult, I suppose, but there is of course truth to the statement. I mostly harp about politics, and I forgo humor sometimes for outright sarcasm. And when I'm feeling crappy physically, like I have been the past several days, I just get all the madder. Yesterday, for instance, I wanted to punch Vladimir Putin in the gut, really hard, and say, "Shut up and take care of your own bad business, you sniveling spoiled rotten baby." (Although I do not agree with most of the world that we should not recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states. They've been considered so, de facto, since the early 90s, and I am a fan of breaking away from something you don't like. Right?) Anyway, I just wanted to punch that man. Or grab him by the collars and pull his beady-eyed little face up close to mine and yell at him, like a frustrated parent yells at a selfishly whining kid. (I don't mean a kid with a real problem, like constipation.)

So, then last night the FFM and I came home from The Queen's house, where we had watched Obama's Historic Speech with her, Stevil, Kelli, Sandi and Mats and Cynthia, and we were talking about the speech, and I was glad that Obama did at least say, "These are the policies I will pursue," at the end of his long list of admirable but questionably feasible goals, but I'd wished he'd said, "But I need you, the American public, to help. I can't do this alone. I need you to go out and vote for Senators and Representatives who will support these policy initiatives and will help me make them real." Or something equally realistic and at the same time inclusive of the people. (VOTE FOR ME.) Because let's face it: The President of the USA cannot just walk into the White House, or Aubergine House, and do it alone, make whatever he sees fit happen. Well, unless he is the Bush Administration, and that's what got me going down the next road. (Plus, the peeps will hold Obama solely accountable when things don't happen that he mentions will under his watch, despite the illogical nature of the thought process leading to that laying of blame.)

As we discussed the subject, the knowledge of the American people about How Our Government Functions came up. I wondered if people get the cursory lessons in civics in 9th grade and then go on to forget them by the time they are 25. I don't know. I wouldn't know. My public school teaching certifications expired a few years ago when I decided to pursue a different path for a while and went back to school myself, and despite that I was at the same time teaching History and Political Science classes at the college level, because my paperwork lapsed, I am no longer qualified to teach in Our Public Schools. Yes, folks, it's true; that paper means everything. If you can't shove a piece of paper signed by someone who doesn't even know you and for which you paid half a week's salary (assuming you are employed at all) into the faces of those who would hire you, then it doesn't matter what you know or what you have done in the past several years. You cannot speak for yourself, you cannot prove yourself. You can try, but you must have that piece of paper from that faceless bureaucrat who knows- because he or she wields the pen- whether or not you can teach our children.

But, back to the subject. I'm just so dang grumpy! But here is what gets my goat, that I brought up last night as we were talking about who watches over us in what ways, including computers ticking away in the depths of government buildings on tax dollars, searching for just the right words in citizens' e-mails, to send a Suit to our doors. Now, I'm not being a paranoid conspiracy theorist here (though if I really jazz it up, perhaps I will get my time on Coast to Coast AM.) Karl Rove was able to skip out on a subpoena while an old political rival was tossed into maximum security prison on the Bush Administration's whim for months. And he hadn't committed a crime. OK, are you paying attention now? Do you like how our liberties have been squandered over the past eight years?

I don't complain much about where I live, and in fact have been found reminding those who do carp that we have much more freedom to speak and do as we please in this country than others. But I told the FFM last night that after I posted a conversation here on my blog between myself and Uncy, that pointed out quite properly some thoughts and feelings I have about some current relevant topics, that I went back in and edited my post, lest someone somewhere try to shut me down because I said something like "I want to annihilate those bitches who are all mad that Hillary isn't going to be President this time so are going to completely shoot themselves in the feet- and reproductive organs and pocketbooks and so on- by voting for McCain instead." Because I was afraid of offending someone so that I would be shut down so that I wouldn't be allowed to speak online anymore, I edited that post.

Well, this morning I'm here to say it's not just that I am feeling under the weather and so really bitchy myself, but that I made a mistake. I shouldn't have edited that post. People should be able to say what they feel and think, and not have to worry about someone suing them because they feel threatened by the term "annihilate," which is used figuratively, by the way, in case you just don't get it. So, yeah, I still want to punch Putin (and I mean the guy in Russia, not the people who own the coffee shop and hold Laramie's coffee drinking, people-watching, socializing public hostage on so many occasions with their insanely high prices) in the gut, hard. Or grab his collar and pull his sniveling little face up close to mine and yell at him. Does that mean I will do these things? That I am a threat to Mr. Putin, or to our current President, whose knees I have wanted to clock with a baseball bat for several years now, just so he can know what it is like to feel a little pain? No, of course not, sillies.

But, if I don't come back within a few days, you might want to check the nearest women's prison.

Oh, yeah, and now a shameless plug for my favorite orange juice, which tasted so cold and fresh and pulpy and just plain healthy as it slipped down my parched throat yesterday: Tropicana Pure Premium. (The photo? That's my very own carton, in the brand new fridge in my apartment. Look at that, how shiny, white and clean. Pretty sweet, huh?)